AN: I was writing more Smoke, when this scene suddenly came to me and I had to stop writing Smoke and write this.
I think I may have created a whole new AU.
Disclaimer: I play in Lucasfilm/Disney sandpit purely for fun, no profit.
The Future, You See
The light was mute in the side room and it was quiet; the only sounds were of droids' servomotors whirring when they moved, the heart monitors quickly pulsing with tiny beats and the occasional little mewls from the new born babes lying together in a single crib. The midwife droid leaned over making soothing sounds as she changed the diaper of the boy who fussed and kicked his legs and gave a sharp cry at the disturbance of his sleep.
"Eepa, eepa," the droid hushed him in the language of the beings who built her, and then added in basic. "This won't take long, little Luke."
Little fists waved in the air.
The door wooshed open and light spilled in illuminating the Jedi Master who stepped in. The door closed just as quickly, and the room was in twilight once more.
Yoda tapped his stick with his steps as he crossed the room and he clambered, somewhat undignified, up onto the counter next to the crib. He peered in at the babies as the midwife finished her duty and trundled away with the wet diaper without another word.
His ears turned down and Yoda leaned further over looking at each child in turn, the girl and the boy, feeling the sadness of their mother's loss, feeling the tragedy of their father's fall.
"Ahead difficult times," he told them softly, whispering. "Choices we have to make. What is best for you."
He reached a hand over them and closed his eyes, stretching his senses into the Force.
It was dark. So very black, and even here he could feel the malignancy of the Emperor and his new apprentice.
"Lives, Vader does," Yoda murmured, "Felt him we do, both Obi-Wan and I. Dead Anakin is. Your father, lost."
Both twins bleated, feet kicking at the thin blanket that covered them and Yoda knew they could sense the same as he.
"Troubling this is," he told them, "strong you both are in the Force. If your presence he feels, seek you he would, use you, if ever find you he does."
His hand hovered over the girl as she cried with her brother, piercing wails of a youngling who does not understand and craves only soothing. He grimaced, wincing; Yoda had never been good with new-borns.
"Shhh," he tried, eyes still closed, gently chiding with "concentrate I must." He dropped his hand into the crib, smoothing the fine hair of the girl's head. "Leia," he said, and then he stroked the cheek of the tiny boy who turned and rooted for a teat. "Luke," he murmured.
Tiny fingers wrapped around his. He opened his eyes to find both twins awake and looking at him with the unfocused gaze of new humans. They held him tightly, as though bereft of touch, as though to let him go would be painful to them.
Yoda sighed heavily, the burden of the last few days weighing heavily upon him. These children depended upon him, upon Obi-Wan and Organa to make the right decision for their welfare, for their very lives.
The boy cooed, and Yoda could not help but smile as he closed his eyes once more and reached into the Force, trying to find his way through the stands of darkness that hung around him without alerting Sidious or Vader to his presence.
Voices. Images. Flickering like a faulty holograph.
"Luke! Luke…. Be sure to tell Uncle…"
"I trust her with my life…"
Twin Suns, bright sand, heat.
Lush green, blue oceans.
"I'm never going to get out of here…"
"Hope."
"How did my father die?"
"You came in that thing…?"
Cold. Ice. Snow.
"Echo three to Echo seven…"
"I love you!"
"No! No!"
The suns again, the desert.
"Jabba, this is your last chance. Free us or die."
"Luke what's wrong?"
Tall trees, damp foliage.
"Leia, do you remember your mother, your real mother?"
"I am a Jedi, like my father before me."
A child crying in the dark.
"Ben!"
An island. Teeming with life.
An ocean planet lost to legend.
"Do you think I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?"
Bitterness and regret.
Yoda slowly opened his eyes, and found the twins sleeping, seemingly undisturbed by the images and sounds from futures still unwritten, paths not yet walked. Always in motion, he told himself. What he had seen was not yet set.
It was then he noticed the twins' hands, little fingers clutching the other tightly and he knew then what he had to do.
He sat in the conference room onboard the Tantive IV listening as Obi-Wan and Bail Organa talked.
"We will have to return Padme's body to Naboo," Organa stated.
"Pregnant she must still appear," Yoda added, as Kenobi nodded. "Hidden, safe, the children must be kept."
"We must take them somewhere where the sith will not sense their presence," Obi-Wan worried, and Yoda could tell that the Jedi was already searching his memory and his mind for that one safe place.
"Kept together, they must be," he stated with some finality. "If we part them, suffer more the galaxy will."
Obi-Wan frowned. "Master, together their Force signatures will be stronger, the Sith…"
Yoda nodded in agreement. "Yes, but know of them, the Sith do not. Hide them we will, in the unknown regions. Raise them we will."
"Where?" Obi-Wan wanted to know and Yoda felt both Kenobi's and Organa's eyes upon him.
Yoda lowered his head, reached for the Force for reassurance that this was the correct path and then he looked up. "Rebuild the Jedi Order the Skywalkers will. No place more fitting, than where it began."
ooOOoo
Any and all mistakes are mine...