You guys motivated me to update quick. Expect this story to be non linear and updated irregularly.


Did they send you break me?" He laughed.

"They should have sent Windu."

"Mace Windu is dead."

"Hopefully the Republic and the Jedi with them."

"...was it all a lie, Darth?"

"The only lies I've ever told were the ones the Jedi told me. Peace is a lie, just like the Republic's justice."

"You never could live without a Master could you? You couldn't let go of me, or Padme, so now you look for the Sith to rule you."

"You do not know a thing Obi-Wan!"

"How long were you working for him? All that talk about justice, freedom--a lie to cover up your Master's hard work?"

"Don't get sanctimonious with me Obi-Wan. Don't try to defend an entity content to buy their savior like chattel to me."

"Your grief excuses nothing, and hardly explains the depravity of your actions."

Obi-Wan slid a picture through the meal slat. Anakin wished he could see his face. He wanted him dead.

"What the hell is this?" He asked when he caught sight of the flimsi.It was the actualization of his nightmares.

Padme lay on the table like a corpse. Her bulging eyes were half open, the sclera reddened, her lips blue and cracked. Her swollen tongue parted them. Her skin was grey, purple and red; a spectrum of color like the dead. Dried tears left white tracts of salt on her cheeks down to her ears. Dark bruises collared her neck in an indefinable shape. Blood stained the sheet between her splayed legs.

"What is this?" Anakin whispered. "What is this?!"

He slammed himself bodily into the door. The Force churned, cold, but his rage couldn't warm him. The furnace of feeling the Dark Side had conquered sputtered weakly to life.If the cold slab of steel and spigot weren't nailed down, they would have shuddered and shook in time with his agony.

"NO. I stopped this! I saved her! I saved them all!"

"You can't handle the sight of your own handiwork, Darth?"

"You did this," he hissed, "I saved her."

"She begged me to save you," Obi-Wan roared, "I should have killed you, Darth. You aren't worth the name your Master gave you."

"YOU DID THIS! YOU KILLED HER. YOU TURNED HER AGAINST ME!" Anakin pounded on the door until his fists were bloody. Padme's picture haunted him. Her bloody, sightless eyes stared damningly at him from where the flimsiplast lay. "She loved me. She understood. She understood that my power was going to save her, and my baby. I had one more task, and then I would have been strong enough to save her. But you stopped me. You did this."

"You're weak, Darth," Obi-Wan sneered. "You were only ever strong enough to murder a defenseless pregnant woman."


"He's not our dad," Leia snapped after the visit. "Dad is our dad."

It was easy enough for Leia to say. She was wanted. Bail loved her, and Breha loved her, and Sola and Pooja and Ryuu loved her.

Only Obi-Wan wanted him, but Obi-Wan was a Jedi. Jedi didn't have families. Mother cried when he asked if he could be a Jedi, so Luke had told him no.

Sometimes, when he really focused, he thought he could feel the Force. Certainly he felt more than Leia.

It was nothing really. A feeling, a hunch. He was the fastest in the footraces at the palace, and he always knew when Mother was hurting before Leia did. Locks and droids and concrete things were easier than people. Only his sister made sense to him, and he thanked the Force every day, even when she was more annoying than helpful, like she was now.

If Obi-Wan hadn't come, he never would've known it was the Force. Once he knew, he couldn't unknow, and the thought haunted him.

Everyone in the Palace knew who their father and mother were. It was embarrassing, and the other children were cruel and fearful in equal measure.

Mother didn't mean it, but she was afraid too. Luke didn't think she knew he knew it, but it hurt every time the two of them went to her villa for visitation.

Luke remembered the first time he saw a picture of his father. They were four, and Leia had grabbed his hand and pulled him into their secret room.


"Luke, did you hear about Auntie Sola?"

Of course Luke knew about Auntie Sola. No one could stop talking about it--not that anyone talked to Luke. But she was a bright woman who laughed a lot and picked Luke up and gave him shura sweets.

"Yeah, she's really nice," Luke lay on his bellie and kicked his legs. "I think I still have one of her candies."

"No, I heard she's going to take us to our real mommy!"

Luke frowned. "Mommy is our mommy."

"I heard her say a lady named Padme is our mommy, and Shitbag is our daddy and we have to take a picture for them."

The thought had distressed Luke so much he had cried all the way through the photoshoot, and the drive to the villa, even though being in speeders usually excited him.

The only thing that had made Luke stop were two pictures; a broad-shouldered man in black as pitch Jedi robes, with long blonde hair and Luke's blue eyes. The second was of a gentle looking woman lounged on a chaise, elaborate hair that would put the most extravagant of Breha's styles to shame, and a round, sweet face.

"This is your Mother and Father," Auntie Sola said, wiping his eyes. "Are you ready to say hello?"


Bail and Breha, as he called them now, though Leia still called them fondly Mama and Dad, had met them there and explained, as best as could be explained to a couple of four year olds.

Mother was wonderful, even if she wasn't there at first.

She had laughed when Luke asked who Shitbag was, and why he wasn't there.

His father's name was Anakin Skywalker. Sola didn't like him. Padme married him when she was 25, and he had done something very evil. She showed him their wedding flimsis, and Luke loved him immediately. He first saw himself in his father's dimples--the shared all three, and the same crooked grin.

What made Luke mad was the fact that Leia seemed unwilling to give their father the same opportunity for reconcilliation as she gave Padme. Breha loved her, and she still accepted Padme as mother, even though she left them. So why did she get so mad at Anakin?

"Bail is your dad," he snapped, kicking his legs in the back seat of the speeder. "I just live with him."

Her face softened. "You really believe that Luke?"

"Yes, I do," he said. "I don't want to talk about it."

She sat primly, like the perfect princess she was. "Well fine. But I'm not going back. I don't want to, he's nothing to me. You hear that, Madame Towleit? I'm not coming again."

"Why are you like this?" He sighed, but even he couldn't smother his smile completely. That was Leia, utterly fearless. She made it easy to be brave.

"You love me for it," she smirked, anger easily forgotten.

"But Leia, really, I don't understand. What do you have against him?"

Anakin had been perfectly kind. His presence was inimitable, and Luke could feel it from even outside the diner. It was like lying under a warmed weighted blanket. The feeling was incomparable to any Jedi Luke had ever felt, not Obi-Wan, or Master Yoda, or Knight Jarrus.

It had passed like a blur, a holovid on fast forward. He never knew a standard hour was so short.

"I'm your father," he had said, and offered a large and calloused hand. Luke had been timid, Leia, obstinate.

"I've been away," his voice clear and warm, as warm and all encompassing as his presence in the Force. "Do you know why?"

Leia said nothing. Luke fidgeted. "Mother said you'd done bad things," he finally said.

"Evil things," Leia interjected. "They put evil people in prison, where they belong. I don't know who let something like you out."

Luke frowned. Leia was often sharp, but not cruel. Not like this.

Anakin was calm, though he did stop smiling. "Yes, I was in prison. Did she tell you I was a Jedi?"

"Obi-Wan told me," Luke couldn't meet his pale eyes, identical to the ones he saw every day in the mirror, so instead he stared at his neck. "He said you were his padawan. His...student."

"Obi-Wan...is..." His face twisted, "I don't want to talk about Obi-Wan. I want to talk about you."

"Why don't you talk about Mother," Leia snapped. "And what you did to her."

Anakin sighed bitterly. "Well you're a real piece of work. You must have given Obi-Wan nightmares. You sound exactly like me, if better. That's probably all Padme."

"I'm nothing like you," she said, but she stuttered. She couldn't meet his eyes either. He looked at Luke and smiled. Luke hesistantly smiled back. He didn't quite know how to feel.

"I'll tell you about your mother," he said after a long pause. "I knew she was mine from the first moment I saw her. She was an angel, my savior--the presence most lovely in the desert--"

"Water," Luke said.

"Very good," Anakin turned his palm up. "Yes, her signature in the Force was like water. More precious than gold, more pure than light. When I met her again, nine years later, we married. She was mine, and I hers."

"She's not a thing to be owned, she's a person!"

Anakin laughed, heartily and genuine. Luke wondered why, because Leia was mad, scary mad.

"She's my angel," Anakin sighed, and leaned back. "And I've spent the last nine years of my life trying to become someone she won't hate, because I surely do not deserve her love. Everything I've ever done is because I love your mother."

Before Anakin could withdraw his hand fully, Luke leaned forward and grabbed it. The look of wonder on his face made Luke's face flush, and his real father gripped it like a lifeline.

His whole life, Luke had felt like a cuckoo in the nest. Bail and Breha didn't love him. Mother did, but she loved him at arm's length.

Whatever his father had done, there was good in him. How else could there be such a pure and whole love under all this turmoil?

Luke could feel it.

When they arrived back at the intergalactic port, Leia was still nagging the social worker.

"Please, please, please Madame Towleit, I don't want to come back to Coruscant! I don't like it, I don't want to see him!"

"Princess, you'll have to talk to your mother about that," the Mon Cala was exhausted. "Look, there's Captain Naturu, he'll be escorting you back to Alderaan. Have a good day."

The Padawan bowed with a grin. Luke instantly felt bad for forgetting his name. "Goodbye, younglings! I'll see you again next month."

Their liner was bustling, as starships always were. Luke, yearning for the warm touch, wrapped his hand up in Leia's, in a way he hadn't sought her out in years. His breath came quick and shallow, and the world slowed around him, dark spots in the corners of his eyes.

"Leia," he asked, "Why do you hate our Father so much?"

She looked at him incredulously. "Luke? No one told you?"

Her warm hand was the only thing he could feel. In his mind, he saw the news reels, the flimsiplasts, the stories Padme and R2-D2 told while he sat at their knee.

Anakin Skywalker was a hero of the republic, a former Jedi, a top-notch pilot. He was a troubled man who had to go away for doing an evil thing. He had killed criminals without a trial, denied a sentient their due process.

It was the Civil War, it was public pressure, it was the Will of the Force.

"Luke, he tried to kill our mother."


Hope you enjoyed! I know a lot of people were hoping for more fluff, but uh, it's not going to be that easy. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!YellowWomanontheBrinkSeptember 16, 20202:30 AM