Okay, I promise I will put 'The End' at the end of the final installment so that my kind readers won't waste energy stressing over whether or not there is another chapter – LOL! I have tried to tie up all the loose ends that I can in the final chapters.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"So much is happening to me, so much that I can't even see.

So many words of wisdom that I am trying to be.

Catch me if I should fall and even more so while I'm standing tall.

My head is spinning around and it's making me dizzy, I'm spinning around and it's making me ill.

You don't understand what I'm going through just to find a way to climb."

- Delta Goodrem, In My Own Time

While Anakin was undergoing surgery, Luke used the communications system in the suite to contact Leia and Han. He logged in the code to connect with Han's ship's communications.

"Are you still alive, buddy?" he asked cheerfully, grinning from ear to ear.

There was a surprised silence at the other end. "Hey Luke!" finally came Han's ironic voice. "We were wondering the same thing about you."

"Alive and well," Luke replied. "You've done a good job on the Death Star," Luke said with amusement. "It looks spectacular from here."

"We didn't want to leave without you, Luke. Where are you now?" Han asked.

"I'm on the Command Ship," Luke said. "The Emperor is dead."

"You killed the Emperor?" Han asked with a mixture of glee and disbelief.

"No, Darth Vader killed him," Luke replied.

There was another silence. "Luke buddy, have you been taking anything you shouldn't?" Han joked.

"It's true. Leia will explain to you. Vader killed the Emperor to save me," Luke said.

"He's lost his mind," Han said, obviously to Leia who was close by.

"Luke, I want you to bring Father to us on Endor as soon as you can," Leia said. "Okay?"

"He's having surgery at the moment Leia, so it probably won't be until tomorrow," Luke replied.

"Is he going to be alright?" Leia asked, her voice tinged with anxiety.

"Hey, what do you care if Vader is going to be alright?" Han protested.

"I'll explain later," Leia said with a touch of impatience.

"And I thought Bail was your father anyway," Han continued.

Luke smiled to himself.

"Shut up Han, I'm talking to Luke," Leia replied with more than a touch of impatience this time.

"Alright, alright!" Han muttered.

"Will you bring him? We'll be in the Ewok village. I'll send you the co-ordinates," Leia said to Luke.

"Of course, I will," Luke said with a smile in his voice. "I'll bring mother too."

He heard Leia's sharp intake of breath. "Mother? Is she still alive?" Leia asked in an odd, subdued voice.

"Yes Leia, she is. She's been with father all this time. He kept her here and she couldn't get away to see us," Luke explained.

Leia was silent at this piece of information.

"Look, we'll talk about tomorrow on Endor okay?" Luke said.

"It's a date," Leia said but her voice still sounded odd.

- - -

Vader was in surgery for hours and meanwhile, Luke and his mother caught up on over twenty lost years. Padme drank in Luke's story from the time he was a little boy on Tatooine until his final battle with his father.

Padme's heart beat quickly while Luke described Vader's final confrontation with his master. She realized with a shock how close it had been to Luke dying. When Luke described how his father had destroyed Sidious rather than allow him to die, the look on his mother's face nearly broke his heart. It was like someone she had thought dead had come back to life long after she had given up hope.

"I'm so proud of you," Padme whispered to him through her tears. "You have something your father didn't to allow you to resist the Dark Side like that."

"What, mother?" Luke asked curiously.

Padme frowned as she thought. "Wholeness, perhaps. A strong and unapologetic sense of identity and an innocence that no slave boy could ever have, no matter how strong his will or pure his heart," she said slowly and pensively.

"Dad was a slave?" Luke asked with wide eyes.

"Until he was ten, he then became Obi Wan's Padawan," Padme explained.

"No wonder he found it so hard to resist power," Luke said, his blue eyes far away. The same blue eyes as his father's, Padme thought with a queer ache in her chest.

She was astonished at how quickly Luke penetrated his father's character, and understood where his temptations and weaknesses had lain. It had taken her far longer to understand.

"When did you fall in love with father?" Luke asked eagerly. He wanted to know all about them for their story was his too and he had been denied it up until now.

"When he was still Obi Wan's Padawan," Padme said with a smile at her son.

"I thought the Jedi couldn't marry," Luke said with a slight frown.

"They weren't supposed to. We broke the rules and I'm afraid we paid for it, in a lot of ways," Padme said, her gaze turned inward for a moment.

"But you never regretted it, did you?" Luke asked.

Padme looked at her son steadily. "There have been plenty of times I've regretted loving your father but I never stopped loving him, no matter how evil the things were that he did," she confessed.

Luke was satisfied with the answer. "I'm so glad I've finally found you both. I've thought of you both so often on Tatooine. I needed you," he said softly, the expression in his blue eyes breaking his mother's heart.

"I needed you too," Padme admitted, her brown eyes filling with tears.

"Don't cry, mother. We're together now and we'll be happy," Luke said confidently.

Padme smiled at the innocent enthusiasm of her son. He was still a boy in so many ways. She glanced toward the medical niche where Anakin was still being operated on. She hoped that Luke was right and she did believe that the real Anakin had finally shown himself again after so long but… she had learned to doubt in the past twenty years.

- - -

Padme made up the bed in Anakin's suite for her son. He was obviously exhausted and needed to sleep. He had been too fascinated by his parent's story to settle down but after the first torrent of his questions was answered, he was struggling to keep his eyes open. He washed himself in his father's bathroom and put on some of the trousers and tunics that Anakin kept for when he wasn't wearing his armour. They were rather big on the boy, his father was a powerfully built man but it seemed to mean a lot to Luke to wear his father's clothes. It made him happy.

Padme sat next to him until he fell asleep, thinking of all the lost years when she had wanted to do just this. She almost couldn't take her eyes off him, afraid that he would disappear again if she turned away for an instant.

She was anxious about Anakin however and went back to the medical niche. To her relief, the worst of the operation was over. The droid was making final adjustments to the new mechanical arm he had fitted.

"The new skin tissue will need to be grown to size," the droid said to Padme as she came in. "But he should be back to normal within three months at the most."

"Good," Padme said gratefully. "Just as long as he won't be in pain."

"Nothing unmanageable," the droid reassured her.

"I need to operate on you next," the droid said, still making adjustments and testing the reflexes of each finger.

"On me?" Padme said with a slight frown.

"Your husband ordered me to take out the slave device in your neck," the droid said. "It won't take long and I won't need to give you general anaesthetic," he said comfortingly. "It will only need a few stitches."

Padme sat down very slowly next to the still unconscious Anakin. She looked at his peaceful face. Had he realized that she could quite easily make a run for it while he was still unconscious? Maybe he had known that she would not leave her son now that she had found him. If he had guessed this, he had been right. Would she have left if Luke had not been here, she asked herself seriously? She honestly didn't know the answer. The desire to find her son and daughter, and her love for Anakin would have pulled her apart trying to make that decision. She was glad that Anakin had chosen his moment wisely. She wondered what he foresaw for their future for him to now make the decision to free her. She couldn't fathom it.

"Perhaps its time to take his old slave device out too while he's still unconscious," Padme said to the droid.

"Yes, Mrs Skywalker," the droid said cheerfully.

- - -

Many hours later, Anakin woke up with a new mechanical arm and sore all over. Once more, he had burns all over his skin and once more he sought assurance from the droid that they would not leave scars. He was relieved to be told that they would not. His life support was working perfectly again but he had one last order for the droid.

"I want you to make me a new mask but a transperant one," he ordered.

"Yes, Lord Vader," the droid said.

"Lord Vader is no more. You can call me Anakin," he replied. "Did you take the device out of my wife's neck?" he asked.

"Yes, master Anakin," the droid said obediently.

Anakin got up and went in search of Padme, hoping against hope that she hadn't run from him and taken his son with her. He was relieved to the point of feeling weak in the knees when he found her asleep in her bed. He was covered in burn cream and antiseptic powder so he didn't lie down next to her. He sat beside her bed and watched her sleep.

As he sat there he pondered his last few minutes as Darth Sidious' apprentice. He had followed the grand Sith tradition of killing his master, he thought with a wry and humourless smile. In the end though, there had been no choice between his master and his son. He would rather be dead himself than see Sidious kill his son and then spend the rest of his life having to be a slave to the creature who had murdered Luke. It was impossible to contemplate that life. Not only would he have hated serving his son's murderer but it would have been the last nail in the coffin of his marriage. His eyes traveled over the soft, beautiful curves of his wife's sleeping face. He would not have Padme hate him for sacrificing his son to the Dark Side even if he could have borne the horror of it himself. The strange compulsion that had forced him to not only obey his master regardless of his own feelings but also defend him against Luke's attack had lost its hold over him when he saw Luke dying. Love had overcome the Dark Side of the Force at long last.

- - -

Luke found his parents in Padme's room a short time later. His mother was still asleep.

"Hey Dad, your clothes are cool. Are they proper Jedi uniforms?" he asked sleepily, his hair all mussed like a little boy.

Being called 'Dad' caught Anakin by surprise and he was even more stunned at the shaft of emotion that went through him to hear the words from a young man who looked so much like his younger self.

He smiled. "Yes, my son. You are wearing a Jedi Knight's traditional clothing," he said.

"Brilliant!" Luke said, obviously impressed.

Padme opened her eyes to see her son and her husband smiling at each other. She wondered if she was still dreaming. She had never expected to see this scene in her lifetime but she had seen it many times in her dreams. She lifted one hand and brushed a tear away.

Anakin turned back to face her as soon as he realized she was awake. His eyes examined her face anxiously. She put out one hand and ran her fingers comfortingly through his hair, carefully dodging the small line of stitches at the back of his neck. He relaxed immediately, the familiar gesture reassuring him. He frowned suddenly and placed his good hand on the back of his neck tentatively.

"What happened?" he asked her.

"They removed yours too," she said cryptically. It was a secret that should be kept between just them, she knew.

They exchanged a look that Luke could not interpret but he had the feeling they would be kissing if he wasn't present. "Are we going to Endor today?" Luke asked hopefully.

"Yes darling," Padme said. "Are you up to it, Anakin?" she asked, turning her eyes to her husband's face. Luke beamed at his mother's term of affection.

"If the droid finishes my new mask then yes," he replied with a nod.

- - -

It felt strange to Padme to finally cross the threshold of her prison only a few hours later. She didn't want to make a big deal of it so she quickly strode over it without hesitation. She found she couldn't help staring at everything. It felt surreal to be in a different environment after so long - even just a passageway.

She was still unused to seeing Anakin with a transparent mask. She was used to seeing him in his Jedi clothes as he wore them in their suite during his rest periods but the mask was new.

Luke was as excited as a young pup. Only his father knew that Leia had been with the Rebel Alliance on Endor. It was the only reason that he had agreed to meet with them. His mother had no idea that she was about to see her daughter again so soon.

They took a transport to Endor, leaving Admiral Piett in charge. No-one on the Ship apart from them knew that Sidious was dead. They would keep the secret as long as necessary to re-establish a new order, Anakin had decided. Padme, for the first time in a long time, had agreed with him.

As they landed in a dense part of the forest, a small party came through the woods to meet them. Leading the party was a very beautiful, slender young woman with autumn brown eyes and glossy brown hair. Padme could tell immediately that she had been used to leadership from a very young age. She felt an instant kinship with and attraction to her.

Luke bounded out of the ship first and went up to the young woman and hugged her. He then shook hands with a slightly older, fair-haired man and they clapped each other on the back. A wookie was also there and grabbed Luke into a bear hug that he looked like he wouldn't escape from.

It did Padme's heart good to see the friends her son had. She knew he would engender loyalty and friendship wherever he went.

The small group of Ewoks with the trio cheered to see Luke again.

"Han, Chewie – I want you to meet my father. Leia, I believe you've met Dad before," Luke said nervously.

Padme's head reeled. Was this beautiful young woman her daughter? "Leia," she whispered, her eyes full.

"You don't look like Darth Vader," Leia said to her father, her gaze unfriendly.

"Darth Vader is gone," Anakin said tiredly. He knew this was going to be difficult but it had to be done.

Leia looked like she was going to say more but she was arrested by the sight of the small, beautiful woman standing next to her father. She frowned slightly and then her face cleared. "Mother!" she breathed, her face lighting up. "It is you! I remember you. You look just like I remember," she said rather incoherently.

Tears welled up in Padme's eyes yet again and she ran towards her daughter. She couldn't bear not to hold Leia for another second. The two women embraced while the others watched with full hearts. Leia was taller than her mother and had some of Anakin's features but generally, they looked very much alike. Leia pulled away first and examined her mother's face. "I remember you!" she said again softly. Padme was unable to speak. She only nodded.

Meanwhile, Anakin was examining his own impressions. He should have known this woman was his daughter. There was a reason why she had reminded him so strongly of a teen-aged Padme. There had been a reason why the Force had put a check in his emotions about harming her. And also, he had felt something he had not been able to identify because it was so improbable – the girl had Jedi powers as strong as her brother, they were just completely undeveloped.

It made his heart ache to see just how much like her mother she was. He regretted the harm he had done her. He could apologise but it wouldn't change the past. It was up to Leia whether she chose to forgive him and have a real relationship with him. He suspected that his past actions would always be a barrier between them. It was hard to forgive and forget torture, regardless of how comparatively mild it had been compared with what he had done to Han Solo.

He turned his blue gaze on the pirate and found he was staring at him with a look of undisguised dislike. Anakin didn't give a damn about Han Solo's feelings about anything, least of all himself but it would make it difficult because of the strong attachment between his children and this friend of theirs.

"Come and have some dinner," Leia invited, after she and Padme had dried their tears. They still stood hand in hand. "The Ewoks have prepared a celebration feast."

The party moved off into the darkening forest.