Tatooine
Before either of Tatooine's suns were fully up, Shmi loaded Luke into the speeder and set off toward Ben Kenobi's house. As the purple sky faded to pink, she kept one had on the controls and one hand trained on her blaster. She needn't have worried though. The desert was still and seemed to be waiting with bated breath.
Obi-Wan was meditating outside his hut, under the shade of an overhang. He was nearly hidden there as was his preference, and it took Shmi an entire trip around the hut to find him. "Obi-Wan!"
"Shh! Lower your voice." Obi-Wan opened his eyes. "Hello, Shmi. Hello Luke. What brings you here?"
"Can we go inside? I have urgent matters to discuss with you."
Obi-Wan straightened up and led them in. "What's happened? Are you all right? Luke?"
"No, no. We're all fine. It's you I was worried about."
"Me?"
Shmi sat down and told him everything they'd seen on the holonet: the galaxy-wide manhunt, the bounty, the stipulation that Obi-Wan needed to brought in alive.
"Frankly, I was wondering when Vader was going to get around to it." Seeing Shmi's face, he went on. "I cut off his arms and legs and left him on a lava planet. I stand against everything he now stands for. It was only a matter of time before he would set out looking for me. He wants to kill me himself."
"How safe are you here?" Shmi asked.
"I don't know how long it will take for Vader to think of Tatooine, or if he would ever set foot here again. Force knows he spent hours complaining to me about Tatooine. Hours and hours."
Shmi fell silent for a moment. "Is there anything we can do for you?"
"No. Protect yourselves, and protect Luke. It would be far, far worse for him to fall into the empire's hands. Speaking of Luke," Obi-Wan crossed into his tiny sitting room and pulled a box out from beneath a loose floorboard. "This is Anakin's lightsaber." He pressed it into her hand. "Give it to Luke to defend himself when he's old enough. I will train him when the time comes if I am able."
"And if you're not?"
Obi-Wan shrugged. "If I'm dead, I will be able to come as a force ghost. If I'm still alive but under duress . . . hmm. Try calling on my old master, Qui-gon. He may be able to give Luke some training, albeit as a ghost. But if Luke is anything like his parents, he'll probably has the skill to train himself."
Shmi nodded and tucked the lightsaber into her belt. She handled it carefully. The fact that she now clutched one of Anakin's most important possessions was not lost on her.
"One more thing." said Obi-Wan. "Please, try to keep calling me Old Ben. Not even Ben Kenobi anymore, it's too risky."
"You're not that old." Shmi laughed. "But yes. I have to remember that."
Luke toddled up to Obi-Wan and shrieked, "Ben!" a little too loudly.
Obi-Wan laughed and scooped him up. "Luke gets it." Luke giggled and wrapped his hands around Obi-Wan's face, accidentally poking the Jedi Master in the eye. "But please, try not to worry about me."
Shmi nodded. "I know you can look after yourself. It's just that I would especially hate it if the empire got to you."
"It may be quite a while before they think to come here. Living in the outer rim does have its benefits."
Coruscant
This is fine, this is fine. You're still a good person. Ok, so you're a Sith Lord. You're not a good person and you're okay with that. This is fine.Vader opened his eyes. "Leia! Come back here!" He was only a day in and felt like he was losing his mind. "Where are you? You've got to go to your appointment!"Great. Now he was speaking to her like a colleague.
"No!" Leia shrieked. "No no no!" She knew that word alright.
"Yes." Said Vader, trying to sound firm but not too angry as he chased her down the hall. "You're going to go to the med center for an appointment, ok?" Vader was pretty sure that babies had to go to doctors pretty regularly, and it wouldn't hurt to get Leia checked out to make sure everything was ok. He scooped Leia up and took her into his shuttle, to her appointment at a private med center in the city.
"She's healthy, average size for her age, and appears to be hitting all her developmental milestones." said the medical droid, who was trying to avoid Leia's prying fingers.
"Excellent." Said Vader. "Leia, no, we don't poke and prod droids." He sighed with relief. At least Leia had been well-cared-for on Alderaan.
"Are there any other tests you would like me to run, my lord?"
"Yes, actually. I want you to run a DNA test and a midichlorian count." The DNA test would merely confirm what he already knew, and the midichlorian test would find just how strongly the force was with her.
"Of course, my lord." The med droid began to prepare the equipment. "I'll have to ask you to hold her still. We will need a blood sample, and it will hurt a little bit."
Vader nodded and wrapped his hands around Leia, sending a few calming waves through the force. The med droid inserted pricked the tip of Leia's finger and collected a few drops of blood. Leia screamed and Vader fought the urge to throttle the droid for making his daughter cry.
"All done." The droid moved away and put the blood sample into a large machine. "my lord, this machine will scan the sample and can give you any type of genetic information you choose, including ancestry, carrier status, mutations—"
"I told you, I only want parentage and midichlorian count." Carrier status and genetic predisposition could wait.
"Of course, my lord. The machine will take a few minutes to scan single-nucleotide polymorphisms against our database—"
"I don't care how your machine works, I just need results." Vader stood back as the machine whirred and tried to soothe Leia, who had stopped crying and was now staring at her stubby fingers with a look of bewilderment. Vader had to fight the urge to smile as he watched the wheels turn in her brain.
Presently the machine dinged and printed out a sheet of results. The droid picked them up and began reading them out. "Maternal match: Padme Amidala Naberrie, deceased. Paternal match: Anakin Skywalker, also deceased."
Vader took the results from the droid and scanned them. Leia's midichlorian count was high, though not as high as his. She would definitely be strong in the force.
"Do you have any other questions or concerns for me, my lord?' The droid asked.
"Yes, actually. You will destroy the results of this test as well as the blood sample, leaving no record that this test was performed. You will do it and do it thoroughly or I will wipe your memory and sell you for scrap metal, do I make myself clear?"
The droid nodded and scrambled toward the machine to expunge the data. While the machine clonked and whirred, Vader took out his shopping list, which contained everything he thought would need for Leia, from a crib to clothes to a nanny droid.
"Ba?" Leia was reaching for his list.
"Yes, young one. Shopping. For you."
