I'm mega sleep-deprived so hopefully no typos - but at least I'm inspired to write! I hope you enjoy Satine being the hero we know she is.

angelacorus - I didn't originally plan this opening scene, but I wrote it for you and your request for more Obi Wan and Korkie time. I hope you like it. Thank you so much for the inspiration.

Korkie whirled his training 'saber to commence a new sparring sequence.

"So you're going to a planet that doesn't exist?"

Obi Wan shrugged as he parried his son's blow.

"It might exist. I'll have to find out."

"Wicked."

Korkie turned and advanced towards his father in a flurry of blows, catching his breath as they came to lock blades.

"Can I come?"

Obi Wan smirked and twisted his blade out of Korkie's control.

"I think you know the answer to that question, Korkie."

"But you'll need someone to help while Anakin's on Naboo. I could pilot for you!"

"A kind offer," Obi Wan conceded. "But I promise, despite what Anakin says, I'm a perfectly adequate pilot."

There was another flurry of 'saber clashes before Korkie retreated, scowling and sucking on a burned finger.

"Everything's so karking boring here," he cursed. "Everyone else in the family gets to-"

Obi Wan deactivated his own 'saber.

"Since when did you start swearing?"

Korkie shrugged elegantly.

"Since last kriffing year, I suppose."

"Very funny."

Korkie reignited his blade and his father followed suit. Korkie approached the next round with renewed vigour, employing moves that Obi Wan was certain he had learned from Anakin.

"Anakin says that you swear too, sometimes, when you're mad."

Obi Wan parried the next blow clumsily and Korkie's 'saber slipped onto his hand, inflicting another surface burn. He would have liked to swear but restrained himself to avoid hypocrisy.

"I'm getting pretty good, right?" Korkie asked, grinning.

"You are indeed," Obi Wan agreed. "But watch your footwork."

Obi Wan's quick advance saw Korkie trip and fall flat on his back.

"Haar'chak!"

Obi Wan rolled his eyes, deactivating his 'saber and leaning down to pick up his son. He glanced begrudgingly at the clock he had been ignoring.

"I'm afraid that I really must leave now. Well sparred, Korkie. I can see that you've been practising hard."

Korkie trotted sulkily by his father's side as they exited the gymnasium and entered Satine's private hangar.

"You don't even have time to teach me a new kata?"

"No, Korkie. I'm sorry. But there is still much for you to learn in the katas I have already taught you. If you practice your Rambling Stream kata some more, you won't fall over the next time we spar."

Korkie harrumphed his disagreement as they approached Obi Wan's ship. He wandered away from his father, inspecting the ship's panels and tapping them experimentally.

"I hope you're not thinking about stowing away, Korkaran."

Korkie scowled and turned away from his investigation of the ship.

"I want to come! I'm basically an orphan here, while you're away and Ani's away and Mum's flying all over the system trying to fix this Trade Federation bantha-shit."

Obi Wan sighed and placed a hand on his son's shoulder. Korkie usually behaved far older than his age and Obi Wan could not begrudge him, in these admittedly miserable times, for whining like a child.

"You are not an orphan, Korkaran. You have two parents who love you."

"But I'm not even allowed to tell anyone you're my parents!" Korkie lamented.

Obi Wan gently lifted his son's chin to meet his gaze.

"I love you, Korkie, and that is true no matter who knows or doesn't know it."

Korkie relented grudgingly and embraced his father.

"I love you too."

Obi Wan placed a kiss upon his son's head.

"You'll be good for all the palace staff, while your mother is away?"

"Harshika's on maternity leave," Korkie grumbled.

Of Korkie's formidable squadron of nannies, Harshika was the only one that Korkie truly liked. At four-standard, Korkie had gathered a bouquet of flowers and weeds from the pond and asked her for her hand in marriage.

"When it rains, it pours, Korkie," Obi Wan sighed in sympathy.

"It is pouring," Korkie agreed emphatically.

He folded his arms and looked up at his father. He somehow looked much older than his ten-standard years.

"You'll be careful, won't you?" he asked. "And come back safe?"

Obi Wan squeezed his son's shoulder.

"Of course. I always do."

Korkie grimaced.

"I have a bad feeling, Dad."

There was a sudden ache in Obi Wan's chest and he gathered the child in another embrace, holding him tight to his chest and lifting his feet from the floor.

"I love you so much, Korkie. Don't you ever forget it. Everything will be fine."

He released his son and clambered into the pilot's seat.

"Tell your mother that I love her, will you? There mightn't be any comms out where I'm going."

Usually Korkie would have something along the lines of that's yucky to say of his parent's love for each other. But today he nodded bravely.

"I'll tell her."

Everything was all wrong in the Force from the moment he landed on Kamino. It rained as though the world might end. Obi Wan looked at row upon row of clones and he could only think of Satine.

How her heart would break at seeing this. How she would weep. For she had lived a war and sworn her life against it, and now war was coming to the galaxy in a scale she could not conceive even in her nightmares, wearing the face of a Mando'ad.

The call came through shortly after Satine landed on Kalevala. She had saved her easiest visit for the end of her nightmarish tour through the system trying to salvage her sabotaged economy and steady her suddenly besieged government.

"Dad, quick, it's the Duchess Kryze! The signal's reached! I got through!"

It took Satine a moment to place the faces before her; they belonged to Cliegg and Owen Lars, who she had seen fleetingly in holo-calls with Shmi, usually tinkering with home repairs in the background. Owen looked worried; his father was distraught.

"Cliegg, is everything alright?"

"No, Duchess, not at all, something terrible- I'm so sorry to have interrupted you-"

Satine stalked from the runway and away from her waiting transport.

"Tell them it's a family emergency, please," she bid of the bewildered young assistant beside her. "I need to take this call. My schedule for the evening may be delayed."

"Shmi was out gathering the mushrooms that grow on the vaporators just this morning and she's not come back and we can't find her," Cliegg explained, in one hurried breath. "It must be Tusken Raiders that took her. And she had the good comm on her and we've only got this shitty one at home and we couldn't get through to Ani and we couldn't get through to Obi Wan and so we thought we'd try you and thank the stars-"

"I can reach Anakin for you," Satine assured the ageing farmer. "I won't be able to reach Obi Wan, he's well out of range in some star-forsaken corner of the galaxy. What do you need from Anakin? Do you think she can be rescued?"

"The Raiders are tough fighters," Owen contributed. "We'd have a better chance of getting her back if we had Anakin."

"But the sooner we go the better," Cliegg asserted. "They're always on the hunt for new human slaves because the brutal, dumb bastards don't take care of the ones they've got. They don't use them for any real purpose. It's sick entertainment. They beat them, starve them, and let them die."

Satine grimaced back against rising horror in her chest.

"I'll call Anakin right now."

"Thank you Duchess," Cliegg managed, desperation shining bright on his face. "I don't know what we'd have done if we couldn't reach you."

"But you did reach me," Satine reassured them. "We'll handle this."

Anakin woke from another nightmare. This one felt worse. He'd hoped, perhaps foolishly, that being in Padme's company would make the nightmares better – she had such a beautiful glow about her in the Force. But apparently it couldn't permeate his sleeping mind.

He rose from his bed and came outside to behold the lake. Obi Wan had said he needed to find peace despite his fear. Anakin needed all the help he could get, and the tranquillity of the Nubian lake country couldn't hurt.

He tried to breathe and find peace in the Force. But the Force only blared with warning. Where was peace? Why had he told Obi Wan that he could manage this on his own? What was he supposed to do?

Maybe he would call her. Obi Wan had said not to call her after every nightmare and that they could trust Shmi and Cliegg to tell them if anything was wrong and Anakin knew that was sensible and good and obsessing over it wouldn't help but-

His comm buzzed.

Anakin's breath caught in his throat and he felt like he was choking. It couldn't be Obi Wan. Obi Wan was well out of comm-range. The truth was clear and heavy in the Force around him. It was bad news.

He answered with shaking fingers. Satine appeared before him. She was standing on a runway dressed in a long gown and clutching an ornate headdress in her hands. Her hair fell in wild waves around her face; she'd pulled off the cumbersome headdress in a hurry.

"Anakin, dear one, I'm afraid I have bad news."

"I know," Anakin managed, with shaking voice.

Satine frowned for a moment but didn't question his insight. She'd hung around Jedi long enough to make sense of it.

"Shmi's gone missing just this morning. They think she's been kidnapped by Tusken Raiders. Cliegg couldn't get through to you but managed to get through to me. They're hoping that you could come to help rescue her."

As Satine spoke, Padme appeared behind Anakin, dressed still in her nightclothes, gaze hesitant.

"Ani, what's-"

Satine slipped into her firm autocrat mode.

"Senator Amidala, if I might have a private word with Padawan Skywalker, please."

"My mother's been kidnapped," Anakin murmured, at the same time.

All three stared at each other in shocked silence.

"Satine, we can trust Padme, we're friends," Anakin explained hastily.

Friends was one word for it. There was no time to explain whatever bizarre relationship existed between them now. They'd kissed, yesterday. It had been like a dream. But there was no time to think of dreams when they seemed to be living in one of Anakin's nightmares.

"Padme, Satine is a friend of my mum. She just heard that there's trouble on Tatooine. I'm going to have to go there and help. You can st-"

"I'm not staying here."

"Padme-"

"You have to protect me, remember? And I'm going to Tatooine so you'd better be coming too."

"You're being ridi-"

"You can bicker while I come to get you," Satine announced firmly, tucking her headdress under her arm. "I should arrive before lunch."

Anakin looked away from Padme and back at Satine, bewildered.

"Satine, I… You don't need to come. You've got your own problems on Mandalore. I can handle this."

Satine arched a brow.

"Mind whose leadership you're calling problematic, Anakin."

There was no malice in her reprimand; it was delivered with a flashing smile before her face settled into solemnity once more.

"Anakin, you know that Obi Wan will be distraught when he hears that you went through this without him. He can't be with you right now but I can."

"But Satine-"

"Cliegg's optimistic that we can save her, Anakin," Satine pressed on, "but it's possible that we can't."

Such heavy, heart-breaking words. But words that Anakin knew he needed to hear.

"I've seen my parents killed in front of me, Anakin. I'm not letting you go through that alone."

Obi Wan was fond of saying that Satine was the only person in the galaxy against whom he could not win an argument. Anakin knew what he meant. There was an absolute finality to the Duchess's words.

"My ship will be faster than yours, anyhow," she muttered. "If Padme could find me a change of sensible clothes to travel in that would be grand. I'll see you soon."

She shouted something in Mando'a over her shoulder at an approaching staff member. Anakin caught snatches of family emergency and Almec's in charge and reschedule for next week. Stars. Anakin was pretty sure that she was abandoning something important. His guilt mingled with relief ; he did feel safer, stronger, knowing that Satine would be with him.

The image flickered and died and it was no use protesting anymore.

"Her ship will be faster," Anakin admitted grudgingly.

He looked down at the still-bewildered Padme beside him and tried to find some levity. Obi Wan would have something amusing to say, in a time like this. Something to steady the ship. To strengthen their teamwork and fortify their courage. He looked at Padme in her exquisite nightgown and couldn't help but smile.

"Do you even own any sensible clothes?"

Padme had not quite anticipated that Satine Kryze of Kalevala, sworn pacifist and ever-composed diplomat, would be a completely maniacal pilot behind the wheel of a Kom'rk-class de-weaponised starfighter.

"Before you made a name for yourself terrorising your Master with your piloting feats, Anakin, the pleasure used to be mine," she informed her passengers calmly as they swerved through an asteroid belt.

Her Kalevalan headdress lay unused atop the dashboard, obscuring some buttons that Satine insisted weren't important. She was dressed in brown trousers and a cream shirt – Padme did, thank you very much, own some sensible clothes – and looked a crazed explorer as she urged the ship to the limits of its capabilities.

"Did you ever make him vomit?" Anakin asked, reaching for humour despite his obvious tension.

"Once, with a speeder on Vakkar. We corkscrewed through a tunnel. I think that was the last time he let me pilot him anywhere."

"Impressive," Anakin murmured.

"It was weeks before he forgave me," Satine murmured, with a distant smile. And then, with humour fading to worry, "I hope he's flying safely, out wherever he is."

They were speaking largely as though Padme were not there. She didn't mind. It gave her ample time and space to process the bizarre relationships revealing themselves before her. Anakin was the Duchess Kryze's… Padawan-in-law? Via Obi Wan Kenobi? Obi Wan had struck Padme when she had first met him as pretentious and rule-obsessed – he had been rather brutal in rejecting the advances of her childishly infatuated handmaidens. It was logical, now that Padme considered it, that he would have found his match in the mighty Satine Kryze. If the day weren't so dire she'd have asked a hundred questions.

"We're nearing the atmosphere," she said instead.

"Thank you, Padme."

Padme tried not to sigh with visible relief as Satine finally turned the friction-shield on - not a moment too soon - and began once more to recite their plan.

"You'll stay with the Lars family, Padme, and do everything you can to find someone medically trained who can help us. Anakin and I will go to Shmi. We'll take the ship's first aid kit and a set of comms. If we need back-up from the farmers we'll call for it but we want to risk as few lives as possible."

"We won't need back-up," Anakin murmured.

He had a dangerous, far-away look in his eyes. Mos Espa was rearing up before them through the thinning atmosphere.

"You'll be safe, Ani?" Padme murmured, placing a hand on his.

Satine watched the gesture with a faint smirk but said nothing.

"No need to worry about me," he muttered, fiddling with the weapon at his belt. "It's those Raiders who should be worried."

Padme felt a jolt of fear. He couldn't mean that, could he? The Anakin she knew wouldn't hurt anybody. But the anxiety inside her calmed as she watched the Duchess lift her chin and speak with regal authority.

"No one," she enunciated, clear and unmoveable, "will be hurt."

They raced across the scorched landscape, ugly pillars of stone rearing up ahead of them, stopping only once at an isolated homestead to ask directions towards the Raiders. Satine remembered flame-scorched Enceri and the wind in her face as they fled. But today she held Anakin's torso, not Obi Wan's, and they were not fleeing the enemy; they were advancing into their heartland. Anakin was stony and silent. The suns flared deep red and disappeared over the horizon.

"There they are."

Anakin stopped the speeder with a jolt. Primitive huts were visible in the valley beneath them, the settlement dotted with campfires.

"I can sense where she is. I'll cloak us in the Force and move quietly. I might be able to get to her without a fight."

He was somehow simultaneously so grown, instructing her with curt authority, and so young, with a child's fear in his eyes.

"It's wrong of me to risk you getting hurt. You should stay with the speeder."

Satine shook her head.

"That's not why I came, Anakin."

Anakin sighed but did not argue with her any further, and they advanced across the stony wastelands into the settlement. Two massiffs wrestled over a bone by the fire but did not sense them. Anakin's feet moved with an uncanny certainty and stopped before a hut. With the quiet hum of a lightsaber, he carved their way in.

Satine was hit by a dizzying combination of relief and horror. For Shmi was lashed against a wooden frame like a prisoner for crucifixion, blood smearing her wrists and face. But she breathed. She lived. Satine and Anakin hurried in synchrony to unfasten her bindings. Shmi looked at them with unfocused gaze as they brought her to lay across their laps.

"Mum."

"A-"

"Mum. I'm here. It's me. I've got you."

"A-"

She could not make out even two syllables of her son's name.

"She has a head injury, Anakin," Satine murmured, her hand flitting over the wet blood and uneven bone at Shmi's scalp. "We need to get her back to the farm."

Her cousin Ariarne had died like this. The Old Guard had grown bored, perhaps, with decapitating her family before her, and had beaten the child's head with the hilt of a 'saber. Her skull had crumpled like the ancient, weather-worn seashell that Satine had found on the beach of Kalevala as a child and cried as it broke in her hands.

But Shmi was not, so far as Satine could tell, so desperately injured. The wound was singular and small and Shmi was squeezing at her son's hands. Ariarne had been limp like a doll and hadn't responded to Satine's voice or her desperately reaching hands.

"Let's get back to the farm, Anakin. Padme and Cliegg have surely managed to find someone to help us and we can-"

Anakin was staring at his wounded mother and there seemed to somehow be firelight in his eyes. One hand gripped Shmi's; the other hand closed around the hilt of his lightsaber.

"We will not take vengeance, Anakin," Satine murmured.

Anakin shook his head. He was gritting his jaw hard and his body was shaking.

"They did it to her and they'll do it again," he spat out. "They're heartless."

He rose to his feet and his voice grew louder.

"Why should I let them keep doing this?" he demanded.

For the very first time in a decade of knowing him Satine came to understand what the Council must have meant when they said that Anakin could be dangerous. He was a man now, of impressive height, and he was looking down at Satine with true anger in his eyes.

"Because violence begets violence, Anakin," Satine pleaded, holding Shmi's weak frame against her. "We don't need any more suffering in this galaxy."

"They don't give a shit about our suffering!" Anakin roared.

He had unclipped his lightsaber from his belt. Stars. She needed Obi Wan. Anakin needed Obi Wan.

But she would have to do.

Satine rose to her feet, laying Shmi carefully on the ground. She brought her hands up, one to stay his sword-hand and the other to lay against his cheek.

"Anakin, cyar'ad, don't do this-"

He twisted from her grip and advanced a step towards the door of the hut.

"I'm not a child, Satine!"

Satine threw herself in his way.

"You are her child, Anakin!" she hissed desperately, grabbing him by the collar and forcing him to look at Shmi where she laid. "You are your mother's child and she would never want this!"

Anakin's face contorted with fury and anguish but he did not say anything else, and he although he could have overpowered her easily he did not push her from his path. He was frozen in pain. Satine laid her hand upon the hilt of his lightsaber.

"Give it to me, Anakin," she murmured.

Anakin's eyes flickered from Shmi to Satine and back again. He swallowed painfully but did not say anything. His hand relaxed, marginally. Satine pried the lightsaber from his grip. She ignited the blade and slashed through the pile of weapons laying against the wall of the hut, then extinguished the blade and clipped the 'saber at her belt.

"Let's go now, Anakin. Your mother is alive. There's no more for us to do here."

Anakin nodded imperceptibly. Silent tears were tracking down his face. Satine dropped to kneel at Shmi's head.

"We're going to take you home, Shmi. Ani's here, he's going to take you home."

Anakin knelt and took his mother's body in his arms.

"I've got you, Mum," he managed, through tears. "I'm here. I'm…"

His eyes were blue, the firelight gone from them.

"I'm still here, Mum. It's me. I'm not leaving you."

Satine is a pacifist hero and I love her. It makes me inordinately happy that the Chosen One had her with him in his darkest hour.

I'm aware that I've tweaked the timeline as to when exactly Shmi was kidnapped by the Tusken Raiders/how long she was with them etc. Such is the joy of writing an AU. Apologies also for the Australian spelling - 'Mom' feels too wrong to me, I just couldn't do it.

This was a scene that needed to be included in the story but hopefully I will not repeat much more of AotC from here on out. We are, after all, here for our beautiful Jedi-Mando family and original content with them. So you can look forward to much more Korkie time next chapter.

I love reading your thoughts and the things you're looking forward to - keep it coming!

Much love,

S.