Our penultimate chapter! Holy moly!
We cover a lot of territory here, chiefly because I am running out of time. My apologies. Get ready for a big journey.
Sidious would speak to no one as the flagship of the Imperial Fleet departed the Mandalorian system. His soldiers would whisper, fearfully, that perhaps the Emperor was displeased with the cost of the assault on Mandalore. In truth, it did not greatly bother him. They had reached the desired endpoint. As Sidious's ship departed, the occupying forces rolled in. The planet would be mined of its beskar and left desolate. The Mando race was all but wiped out and the spirit of those self-proclaimed warriors would be broken. The cost of a star destroyer was negligible in comparison.
No, Sidious did not retreat to his quarters in a fit of disappointment. He simply had work to do.
He had told Anakin – insolent Anakin, wasted Anakin – that Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise that he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life. But he had not told Anakin the entire story.
It was not a creation, per se. Life-giving energy could not be conjured from nothing; it was a matter of transference. Sidious had learned from his Master not only to create life, but to take it.
Through distance and perhaps aided by the shielding of the sprouting Kenobi-weed, Padme Amidala's location had been lost from him. But he had maintained, precariously, the bond that he had forged as their ships briefly crossed paths. That tendril of Darkness curling around her very being.
Through it, he would eat away at her life force. He would bleed her dry. The children would perish with her. The Prince of Mandalore might have been Force-sensitive but was no obstetrician.
Anakin, if he had survived his wounds, would never survive the loss. If he did not fall to Darkness, he would fall to listless despair.
Sidious sat in silent meditation as he drew the last of the glowing hope from the galaxy.
Shmi directed Korkie inside, through the low doorway, past the stunned family, and to the nearest bed.
"Lay her down here, let me take a look at her."
Shmi knelt beside Padme.
"You said she's become unwell over a few hours?"
"I think so."
"It's strange…"
Padme's cheeks were flushed as though with good health. She stirred, weakly, as Shmi examined her, hands making out the shapes of the babies through her bulging abdomen.
"It's me, Padme. Shmi."
She turned and waved the family out.
"I need to examine her properly. Give us some privacy."
Korkie and the three bewildered spectators obliged. The oldest, the one who must have been Shmi's husband – Korkie had forgotten his name – offered words of comfort.
"You brought her to the right place. Shmi's been delivering babies since before she was old enough to have her own. Lots of little ones are born safely at home around here, no fancy hospital required."
Korkie's mouth was dry and he managed no reply. Instead, he gave a valiant nod as he busied himself wiping the tears from his cheeks. The young woman was asking something of the young man, their voices a low murmur.
"So that's Anakin's wife? The one who came a few years ago when Shmi-"
"Yes."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
The eyes fell upon Korkie again.
He was too exhausted and speech too difficult to soften the blow.
"Dead, I think."
The family looked at him in silent horror. There was the surreal feeling of being stuck in a nightmare. Shmi appeared from the bedroom, unaware of the passing conversation. Guilt settled heavily in Korkie's chest.
"The labour looks to be progressing well," she told them. "No signs of infection, no signs of a bleed, nothing. But she's obviously very sick."
She shook her head in bewilderment, eyes finding Korkie's.
"You don't know why she's become unwell? Nothing's happened?"
"I…"
Korkie screwed his eyes shut and rubbed at his aching forehead.
"I can't explain. Except that I can feel it in the Force. That I'm worried it's something to do with the Sith…"
The family would have no idea what he was talking about.
"Do you think she can be healed through the Force?" Shmi prompted, gently.
Korkie gave a miserable bark of laughter.
"Not by me. And I don't suppose you have any real Jedi in the neighbourhood."
His eyes were streaming again.
"I tried to protect her, Ba'buir. To put up shields. I tried everything. But she just keeps getting weaker and I'm not strong enough to…"
Shmi enveloped him in a mother's embrace.
"Owen, take Korkie to get some water. I'll need your help, Beru. We need to deliver the twins right now."
The young woman nodded diligently.
"Forceps?"
"And amni-hook, please."
Korkie struggled against the young man's hand on his arm.
"Hold on, I'm staying with Padme, I'm not going-"
"We need to take care of you too, Korkie," Shmi reasoned softly.
"No! No way!"
The family looked at him warily.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't mean to yell. But I have to stay with her. Please."
Shmi relented, and brought him inside.
Padme knew that she was dying.
Her heart ached in her chest. Her limbs were weak and her mind lost in a fog. Her breaths were shallow. And with every breath, weaker and weaker still.
She tried to picture her children. They emerged in golden light through the mist of her delirious mind. She loved them so deeply. She wished so dearly to know them. But no matter how she thought of them, her strength would not return to her. It was difficult, even, to open her eyes.
A needle went into her thigh but the pain was somehow distant.
"We're going to take the first baby out now, Padme."
Shmi's voice.
"Because you're unwell. We'll bring baby to your chest."
The pain between her legs was greater; it forced a cry from her lungs. The effort of it seemed to deplete her ever further. But the miraculous wail that followed, so bright and so new…
"M-m-"
She had not the strength to form the words.
My baby.
"It's a boy."
The voice by her head was Korkie's. The baby mewled louder.
"I've got him here, right here for you, Padme. Can you open your eyes?"
It would take nearly all of her strength. She cracked open her gaze and saw her vernix-smeared son. Curling and stretching with such resplendent life. His tiny hands seemed to paint a swirling picture in the air. His cries softened as Korkie brought him to Padme's side, cradled him between their two bodies.
He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
"Luke," she breathed.
Her eyes fell wearily shut once more. There was the cold of the metal inside her again, and another wave of pain. A few moments of precarious silence. And then, another cry.
"It's a girl!"
Beru's voice.
Padme fluttered open her gaze for the last time. Her daughter had a shock of dark hair where her son had only wispy blonde. Her cry was defiant, commanding.
"Leia," she whispered.
There was movement at the bedside and Beru's murmured instruction.
"Come, Korkie, we'll rest them against her chest like this. So that they can feel each other's skin."
There was no way to describe the miracle of those two, tiny, warm bodies against hers. The infants nestled their cheeks into her chest. She could feel their pattering heartbeats. Padme thought of her childhood in the lake country and the precious humming heartbeat of a wounded bird in her hands. Her first knowledge of the impossible miracle, the beautiful frailty, of life.
But her children were not wounded. Her children would live.
Tears ran down Padme's cheeks, although she had not the strength left to weep. Her children would live but she would never see them grow. All that she would know of them was this unblemished moment.
Warm, damp skin.
Tiny fingers, curling, ungainly in their movements.
Soft cries and snuffling breath.
Padme thought of Anakin and how he would have loved them. She thought of her son's gentle hands and her daughter's fierce strength. It had all been worth it, to create them.
Life was infinite in the Force. Somehow, somewhere, she would love him again.
There was no death, only the Force.
Anakin and Yoda existed in a galaxy of their own, sheathed in the warmth of the Living Force. Healing, slow but true, in joint meditation.
Ahsoka waiting in silent vigil as her companions breathed through their trance. She had deposed already of a territorial bogwing and defended their ship against relentless assault from the flying leaf-tails. She was quite certain there was a python lurking around in the swamp nearby. She was reminded, as she watched a marsh spider spin its enormous web, that the last explorers to Dagobah perished without a trace. But she could not deny that this planet, teeming with life, was a place where the Force seemed to be alive in the very air she breathed. Master Yoda had been right; it was the place to save them.
But then, a ripple in the peace. A grimace on Anakin's resting face. And then a cry of guttural pain.
"No!"
Ahsoka hurried to Anakin's side, dropping her knees into the soft earth. It would be dangerous to wake from a healing trance this fast.
"Anakin, hey, it's me, it's alright…"
He resisted the calming suggestion she offered.
"Something terrible-"
His voice cracked.
"Padme!"
"Oh," she breathed.
Master Yoda, too, was rising from his trance.
"Weak, you still are, Anakin," he warned, voice hoarse. "And weaker still, your grief makes you. Steady yourself, you must."
"But Padme-"
"Rich with the Force, this planet is," Yoda intoned. "Not only with the Light. Darkness, there is, here. Visions of Darkness, you may have seen."
Anakin shook his head but could not seem to find words.
"I felt it, Master," Ahsoka murmured. "I felt it too."
"Entered into the Force, Padme may have," Yoda conceded.
He rubbed at his head, not entirely steady upon his feet.
"Chose this path rightly, Anakin, you did."
Ahsoka looked at the wizened Master, aghast that he would let Anakin even entertain that he had some role in this. But Anakin nodded miserably.
"I know."
"Allow the Dark Side to take hold, we must not."
"I know."
They sat in shocked, horrified silence for a long time.
"Wounded us further, this awakening has," Yoda ventured, as dusk fell on the already dim and misty planet. "Return to our meditation, we must, Anakin."
The truth of it was undeniable; Ahsoka saw the grimace of resurging pain in Anakin's face, felt it in the Force all around them. The stump of his left leg was beginning to bleed through the dressings again.
"My children might still be alive," Anakin croaked. "I have to find them…"
"If you are to find your children, Anakin, stronger, you must be."
And the Anakin that Ahsoka once had known would have raged at the Jedi Master then, would have been irrepressible in his determination. But now he had no legs with which to storm to his ship and only one arm with which to pilot it. Wounded further was his spirit.
"Then fix me," Anakin muttered, in defeat.
"In time, the Force will heal us," Yoda affirmed, sinking to his knees once more. "Time, there is, for your children."
Ahsoka laid both of her hands against Anakin's chest.
"I'll travel off-planet and get you some prostheses so that when you're healed, you're fit to travel again right away. Then we'll search together. Okay?"
"Okay."
Ahsoka rose to her feet. The humid planet was suddenly suffocating to her. Thought of Padme made her want to cry but she couldn't cry here. Anakin had to heal. It was a miracle he was complying thus far.
"Don't get bitten by any spiders while I'm gone," Ahsoka managed, with effortful cheer.
Yoda was solemn.
"Bother us, the spiders will not."
Ahsoka nodded and climbed back into the fighter. Her chest ached.
Padme.
If Padme was dead, what chance was there for the children? What was all this healing in aid of?
Ahsoka couldn't help but feel that the sun had burned out in the galaxy. That nothing would ever be good again.
Padme Amidala was buried at daybreak. She deserved a vigil far longer than those few hours of night after the infants were delivered, but heat expedited funerals on Tatooine.
She deserved a hero's funeral. She deserved wreaths of flowers and soaring music and gleaming jewels and swathes of rich fabric. Instead, she was buried in sandy soil, shrouded in her travelling cloak, on a planet where flowers were rarer than gemstones.
She deserved a state funeral – a Republican funeral, although no Republic existed anymore. She deserved millions of mourners dressed in black and an ocean of tears. And instead she was given four farmers, a wayward prince and two infants who did not even know to cry for their mother's passing. The silence of the desert, the merciful coolness of the sand that had not yet seen the day's sun, lulled them into sleep. They cried only when Korkaran Kryze lost control of his shields and they came to feel his tumultuous grief in the Force.
Padme Amidala deserved better. And he had brought her here, to this.
Korkie listened to Cliegg and Shmi as they cleaned up the dinner than Beru had cooked and no one had eaten very much of. They spoke in the low, conspiratorial tone that his parents had, so very long ago, after they had sent him to bed.
"Of course, I want to look after him. All I'm asking is whether I need to be prepared for the soldiers of the new Empire imminently knocking on our door, asking for the Prince of Mandalore."
"They won't know that he survived, Cliegg. He'll be safe enough here. Safer than anywhere in the Core."
The clinking of dishes.
"Does he know what happened there?"
"I don't know."
"You'll have to talk to him."
"I know."
Korkie rose from his bed – a pallet on the floor in the thankfully wide corridor that connected the house's two bedrooms. Shmi had reassured him that they would soon tidy the parts room for him, render it inhabitable. As though sleeping in the corridor would cause him any grief. He padded into the kitchen.
"I don't know what happened on Mandalore," he told them.
Shmi and Cliegg looked at each other – surprise, sorrow, guilt – and then Cliegg dropped his gaze, turned back to the sink. The silence was terrible.
"The comms on our ship were broken," Korkie elaborated, simply to fill it.
Shmi crossed the small kitchen and brought Korkie to sit.
"Do you want to talk about it now?"
"Yes."
She took a steadying breath.
"The news is sad. I'm sorry, Korkie. The Empire…"
She did not, he realised, have the words for it.
"Did they take control?" Korkie prompted. "Install a puppet government?"
Shmi shook her head.
"There is no government on Mandalore anymore."
Korkie frowned.
"What?"
"They…"
Shmi faltered again. Cliegg turned from the sink and gathered the strength to look at Korkie directly.
"They're calling it the Great Purge of Mandalore," he told him. "They destroyed all the cities."
Korkie's face slackened. Another blow. An enormous, catastrophic blow, when he thought he had faced them all.
"All the cities?" he repeated, voice choked.
Cliegg nodded curtly.
"It's no place to live, anymore. Just a place for the Empire to mine."
The breaths were coming hard and fast in Korkie's chest now. It was unimaginable.
"And my mum? My aunty?"
Cliegg shook his head.
"The Empire's not bothered to confirm anything. No bodies. They don't seem to care much for our sense of closure. But I wouldn't be hopeful."
Korkie looked to Shmi, as though she could tell him it was all some wicked lie. Instead, she looked at him with tears in her eyes and spoke with a hoarse and trembling voice.
"Do you know what happened to my son, Korkie?"
Guilt mingled with his grief now.
"No," Korkie confessed. "But I think my dad died trying to save him from the Sith. So I…"
There was no way to say it. He borrowed Cliegg's words.
"I wouldn't be hopeful, Ba'buir. I'm sorry."
The twins woke at least twice each night.
They took turns in inciting the wailing; once one began, the other followed inevitably behind. Owen, rubbing at his weary brow one morning, had speculated whether it would be better to have them sleep in separate cots, at different ends of the house. Korkie had denied him abjectly. He knew admittedly nothing of parenting, but he knew of the beautiful synergy in the Force as the sleeping twins rambled through each other's dreams.
Noting the now generous streaks of grey in Shmi's hair, Korkie took to employing a gentle sleeping suggestion upon her as he hurried the twins out of the house and into the cool night air. He could hold them and feed them bottled formula just as well as she could, after all.
He spoke to them in Mando'a. His mother had been fiercely protective of the language when he was young; she'd not allowed him to watch HoloNet in Basic well into his school years, lest he come to prefer it over his native tongue. Korkie hadn't understood it, at the time. He'd known war as no more than a physical battle. He had not known then that history was littered with lost sentient cultures, broken and suppressed. Now, his home was a barren wasteland and he would not allow Mando'a to be lost. He told Luke and Leia the stories of ve'vut'galaar's nest in the clouds and sang them baby shatual's goodnight song.
Korkie came to understand, in the early mornings that he stood upon the desert sand, one infant in a sling and another in his arms, that his mother had been right to send him away from their homeland. Luke and Leia were bright in the Force and pure in a way that he had lost. They were the future; he was certain of it. And until the time was right, he would keep them safe.
Korkie came to understand, in the early mornings as he held them, that love was an action. It was not recorded in a marriage registry, nor was it written in stone. It was a choice and it took time. Korkie could not call himself their father. These alien creatures frightened him sometimes with their frailty and their unknowable language. But he would do anything and everything for them. He knew that with a comforting certainty.
Families were made, not born. His parents had worked at their love every day of his life.
Korkie would work at this.
The kid was a good worker, for a prince. He'd understood without being told that the money to feed three extra mouths didn't come from nowhere and had, on only his third morning on the farm, accompanied Owen and Cliegg out into the fields as though he'd done so every day of his life.
"I think we'll see a sandstorm come through this afternoon," he'd said.
And the Mando'ad had somehow been right. With his extra hands, the day's work was done in time to get home before the storm swept through. His hands had been only lightly callused when he arrived but they bled and hardened over the following weeks without complaint.
He was a good worker but certainly no born farmer. He was strange. Owen watched him speak his alien tongue to the infants, singing to them and telling them stories, holding them tenderly to his chest. What sort of teenage boy nested like a mother krayt?
And when he wasn't working, or mothering, he did not seem to sleep. Owen woke one night, thirsty, and found him standing outside, wooden stick in hand, performing some intricate dance of martial art. Owen never saw him in meditation, sitting still and cross-legged, like the generic images of the wizard-Jedi he had seen in his childhood. But he was half-Mando, he supposed. Wouldn't be much into that peaceful stuff. Owen long wondered whether he carried weapons and in the end found them easily in a case that Korkie had lugged off his ship before they sold it and kept beside his pallet. The case revealed two hilts, one silver and one black. Owen felt instantly guilty for having betrayed Korkie's privacy and never asked him about them. Clearly, the prince did not intend to use them anytime soon.
In fact, he quickly transformed into a young man who seemed to have lived on Tatooine his entire life. He was an unexpectedly good pub-mate; he attended infrequently but quickly became almost universally popular through his sharp wit and uncanny knowledge of Huttese profanity. He drank elegantly – never too much – and was an excellent dancer. He had a way of breaking up fights before they began, which made him the publican's favourite and scored him a raft of free drinks that were passed generously onto Owen.
He was a mystery, but he was a friend.
When Korkie danced in that shitty Jundlands cantina, whirling his rotating cast of giggling dance partners, he thought of his Ba'vodu Bo. They used to step on each other's feet on purpose. Just to make the other laugh.
The traveller appeared on Tatooine several months later.
The Lars-Skywalker family marked their time now by the prolific growth of the twins, the suns of their lives. Leia could roll over, now, and was wreaking havoc with her new mobilisation ability. Luke could levitate a piece of flimsi and would likely soon wreak more trouble still.
The traveller measured his time not in the movements of children but in the clunking steps of his metallic gait. He was accustomed to the prostheses now but detested them no less. He had travelled such a great distance already on his impossible journey. Thousands and thousands of steps. He had decided, in his sorrowful realisation at how large the galaxy truly was when searching for something so small, to go home and see his mother.
There was a strange presence upon Tatooine. Familiar, but guarded. Fiercely guarded. The suns were setting over the Jundland Wastes and the traveller was thirsty. He wondered whether the Force was truly leading him into the local cantina or whether his dehydrated mind was playing tricks on him.
He went anyway.
It was the end of another hot workday and the cantina was packed with farmers from across the salt plains. The traveller was given the usual berth granted to strangers, perhaps a little larger. He wore a hood and Ahsoka, bless her, had accidentally got him legs that made him a good half-foot taller.
"There's a galaxy-wide shortage of prostheses and bacta," she'd told him glumly.
Anakin asked for water, earning him the expected dirty look from the bartender.
"I'll buy a proper drink next," he assured him.
He looked around the cantina. It was nothing like Mos Eisley or any other space port – no music, no show. Barely any lights. A place for farmers to have a drink and remember that they weren't the only lonely people on this wasteland.
A glint of auburn-blonde hair caught Anakin's eye.
"Be careful with that, Vod. That'll make you puke bright orange."
Korkie very nearly dropped his Sunriser all over the floor. He looked up and gaped.
"A-"
He held himself back from spilling the name.
"How-"
"Outside."
Korkie sculled his drink, bade his friends a hasty farewell and followed the cloaked man out of the pub.
"How- holy stars- is it… really you?"
It was a stupid question to ask. Korkie knew that face. Anakin's face. It could be no one else.
"Missing a few pieces, but yes," Anakin answered wryly.
Korkie looked at him in stupid awe, mouth dry. It was a miracle. But one miracle didn't mean…
Anakin read the question that he could not bear to voice.
"Your dad saved my life," he told Korkie solemnly. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't save his."
Korkie nodded bravely, pretending that his eyes weren't pricking with tears.
"I figured. Don't worry about it."
He'd started speaking like a farmer. Curt, matter-of-fact. Never particularly bothered about anything. They'd never quite spoken like this, he and Anakin. Korkie had always thrown himself willingly into the role of the vod'ika, the kid brother.
"How'd you find me, anyway?" Korkie asked, disconcerted. "I've been shielding. Trying to stay hidden. Did you sense me?"
Anakin shook his heads.
"Your shields are good, Vod. I found you by accident. I came home to see Mum."
"Oh. Good."
So he knew nothing, then. Nothing of Padme, buried beneath the sand a twenty-minute walk away. Of his children, who Shmi and Beru would be readying for bed at this very moment.
"Padme made it to Mandalore," Korkie ventured. "When things turned ugly on Coruscant my dad sent her to us. Did you know that?"
Anakin paused in their slow walk back to the homestead.
"No."
"She and I escaped Mandalore together. Mum insisted that we go. We tried a few places but there were stormtroopers everywhere. So we decided to come here."
Anakin was looking at Korkie as though hypnotised. Korkie reached out to his brother in the Force. He knew. On some level, he knew. Korkie took a steadying breath and pressed on.
"She got sick, Anakin, in labour. We don't know what it was. It was like the Living Force was just being taken out of her, this horrible coldness…"
"Palpatine," Anakin murmured.
"I brought her here. Shmi tried everything. She and Beru delivered the babies but they couldn't save her. I'm sorry."
Anakin took Korkie abruptly by the shoulders.
"The babies. Did they survive?"
"Yes. They were fine. They're here."
"Here?"
Korkie should have known better than to deliver the news when they were still over a mile away from home. Anakin took off at a run, Korkie on his organic legs trailing effortfully behind.
Cliegg, who had been too tired to follow his sons to the cantina that night, had thought that their last dusk-time visitor was the strangest thing he would see in his life. But this was something else.
This visitor didn't knock, for starters. He swept like a tornado through the house, clunking on metallic legs, until he skidded to a halt in the corridor where Shmi and Beru were feeding the babies their milk, readying them for sleep.
Cliegg got his gun. But he had barely lifted it to his shoulder when-
"Ani?"
Cliegg had not heard emotion like that in Shmi's voice in a great many years.
"Mum."
Shmi inclined her head at the bundle in her arms.
"Luke," she stated.
Beru, stunned, found the whirlwind's gaze upon her.
"Leia," she managed.
And they were folded, all of them, even wide-eyed Beru, into the man's embrace. He shook with quiet sobs. Korkie appeared in the doorway, panting with exertion, hands behind his head.
"Anakin's home," he informed everyone, belatedly.
Korkie and Anakin sat awake long after the rest of the household had gone to bed. Anakin resonated a giddy sort of joy as he ate what was likely his first proper meal since it had all gone wrong.
"They're amazing, aren't they?" he asked Korkie, for perhaps the tenth time. "Their tiny hands and bright eyes and the way they reach out in the Force..."
He shook his head in wonderment.
"I know I've already thanked everyone a million times but Korkie… I don't know where I'd be without you. Without them. Thank you."
Korkie gave a weary smile.
"Ahsoka's going to be so happy," Anakin rambled on. "We were searching together for a while but we split up to cover more territory. She's on Shili. We both decided to go home for a little while. There's lots to do against the Empire there."
"Ahsoka's alive?" Korkie gasped.
"She's the reason I'm alive," Anakin affirmed. "Well, she and Master Yoda. He's alive too, on Dagobah. And I've heard talk that Windu and a couple rogue troopers are making their rounds of the galaxy."
He gave Korkie a tender smile and patted his shoulder.
"You saved those clones, Korkie. Finding out about the chips. We've got the beginnings of a strong resistance. Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are leading things from the political side."
Korkie did not pause to bask in the praise.
"You, Yoda, Windu, Ahsoka… troopers and politicians…"
He found a grin, his first grin, of new hope.
"You'll have to introduce me to them all. We'll surely soon have the power to overthrow this Empire, to make right all this terrible-"
"Slow down, Korkie."
The Anakin of old would never have said such a thing.
"I'm not going to be part of any revolution yet," Anakin told him. "I need to be here. With my children. Raise them. This rebel alliance is going to be years in the making."
And Korkie's excitement soured quickly into anger. An anger more potent than he had ever known.
"You're not going to do anything?" he demanded. "You're going to let the Emperor continue burning down cities and hunting Jedi?"
"Sidious is powerful, Korkie," Anakin told him. "Really powerful. Not even Yoda's strong enough to face him now, that's why he's meditating on Dagobah. I want to be here for Luke and Leia-"
"Like my dad was at home with me?" Korkie erupted, rising from his seat. "Kriffing hell, Anakin! He didn't stop looking out for you a single day in his life!"
Anakin paled.
"Korkie…"
The wail of an infant, and then the second, rose from the corridor.
"He had me, but he chose to look after you, because it was important for the galaxy," Korkie spat. "And you're telling me you're going to turn your back on the people who need you-"
"I'm not as good as him, Korkie!"
Anakin had yelled too now. There was the pattering of footsteps as Shmi hurried to console the crying babies.
"I'm not good like him," Anakin repeated, voice softer now. "I'm not strong like him. I never was and I don't think I ever will be."
There were tears tracking down his face.
"I need to be here because…"
He wiped at his cheeks.
"You don't know how your dad died, do you, Korkie?"
Korkie shook his head. They sank miserably back onto their stools.
"He was trying to save you, right?"
"He did save me, Korkie," Anakin amended. "I was… tricked. Tempted. By Sidious. He wanted to turn me. He sent me all these horrible visions… Padme dying. Obi Wan dying. I thought that by defeating Sidious alone I could save them. But he nearly turned me, Korkie. I only resisted him because…"
He dabbed his eyes against his sleeve.
"Your dad came and we started to fight him together. Sidious cut him down. It broke my heart, Korkie. I had failed him. I had failed him so bad. But… I had one way to make it right. I refused to fall. For him."
He took a great, shuddering breath.
"I need to be stronger, Korkie, before I face Sidious again. So that I don't get anyone else killed."
His voice was heavy with remorse and self-loathing.
"I don't even know if I can ever face him again."
Korkie's jaw was clenched against his own streaming tears, his arms folded tightly at his chest.
"You have to, Anakin," he muttered. "You're the kriffing Chosen One."
Anakin looked at him, imploring.
"I'm sorry. For all of it."
Korkie shook his head and said nothing.
He would forgive Anakin in time. But it just hurt too much, in that moment.
"I'm going to go help settle the babies," he announced, and left Anakin in the kitchen alone.
After the babies had returned to sleep, Shmi followed Korkie wordlessly out into the cool night air. They stood for many minutes in silence.
"I'm sorry for waking everyone up," Korkie muttered, eventually.
"That's alright, dear one."
Dear one. Like his mother had called him.
"I thought we'd be orphans together, you know?" Korkie mused. "That I could be like a father to them."
He shook his head, reprimanding himself.
"I'm glad Anakin's alive. Of course I am. It's just that now…"
He turned to Shmi with silver tears tracking down his cheeks.
"Now, who am I? What am I here for?"
Shmi rubbed a comforting hand along his back.
"Those children will still love you as the desert loves the falling dust, Korkie. And we will too."
Korkie managed a watery smile.
"Thanks, Ba'buir."
He stood a little taller, beholding the deep purple sky of glistening stars.
"If Anakin's not going to join this rebellion, I might as well."
Shmi nodded, perhaps unsurprised.
"We'll miss you, Korkie. All of us. You'll be welcome back anytime."
"I'll come back. For visits."
He felt so horribly shaken up inside. He'd lost his home and found it and then lost it all over again.
"I don't know if I'm angry at Anakin for being a good dad, or at my dad for being a bad one."
At this, Shmi looked at him mournfully.
"I didn't know your father well, Korkie. But I know that he loved you more than anything or anyone."
Korkie nodded.
"I know."
He rubbed at his eyes and stretched his arms wide.
"I guess we can't all be good, everywhere, all the time. Dad did his best."
"He did."
Korkie scuffed his boot in the dust.
"I will too."
So much emotional turmoil in one chapter! Grief and joy and grief again. But I think it was important that Korkie and Anakin talked (and yelled) it out. It's been a long time coming.
Next chapter (I fully cannot believe this) will be our final one. Sixty's a good number to finish on, isn't it? In our epilogue, we will see glimpses of Korkie's adventures through the galaxy, and reunions with old friends, as he grows into the hero we all know him to be.
xx - S.