This chapter's short.

I'm bawling/choked up.

Get the tissues.

Please Review...I'm not going to say enjoy cause this hurts.

But it had to be done.


Aria tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, singing along with the song on the radio as they drove home. Anakin had given up trying to weasel the cause of the irony from her a long time ago, realizing that she was as stubborn as him and would not give so easily on something she deemed important. However, they had struck up Luke Skywalker conversation again, though it was not the kind of questions that Aria wanted to answer.

"So, how is Luke a descendant of Anakin," Obi-Wan had asked.

Aria sighed after a heavy silence. "I really have no way of answering that right now...That's something I can't tell you...sorry."

"Who was his father?" Anakin asked. Aria sighed again, the sound coming out more aggravated this time.

"Can't tell you that either," Aria said with a roll of her eyes.

"Is there anything you can tell us?" Anakin asked sarcastically.

"It's nighttime," Aria responded with equal sarcasm.

"Really? I had no idea?" Anakin shot back.

"So you admit it?"

"More than you're willing to do."

"I know better than to admit any lack of brain cells."

"Okay, we get the picture, you're both very sarcastic and full of wit," Padme intervened with a roll of her eyes. "But you do have two other people in the back seat who don't really want to hear this the entire ride home, so please, let's call it a tie and be done with it?"

Aria smiled. "I won."

"Did not," Anakin grumbled.

"Children, please," Padme said with a shake of her head. "You're going to give us a migraine."

"Yes mother," Aria said sweetly.

Obi-Wan sighed. "Face it Padme, you're not going to get anywhere with them, it's useless."

At his words, Aria started humming a score from the play she had just been in; The Point of No Return. Anakin gave her the evil eye.

"Are you going to be singing those songs for a week or so now? Cause if you are, You're going to drive me to insanity."

"I'll just be speeding up the process," Aria replied instantly. Anakin groaned.

"You're particularly evil right now, you know that right?" Anakin asked.

"I'm in a good mood," Aria chuckled.

"At least we're almost back to the house," Obi-Wan pointed out.

"Yes, at least we have that going for us," Padme chipped in.

Aria laughed. "At least I know how to lighten the mood."

"We have Obi-Wan's dry humor and my sarcasm for that," Anakin quipped.

"Well I just added to it."

"Look, there's the turn, we're at the house," Padme said in relief, pointing up ahead from the back seat.

"Why thank you Padme, I think I would have missed it due to this intense philosophical debate."

"I'm not even sure I know who that sarcastic piece was aimed at," Obi-Wan said in amusement.

Aria, however, didn't respond as she pulled the car into the driveway. The truck was still gone. Strange, her father should have beaten her here.

She shrugged the uneasy feeling off. He'd probably stopped somewhere along the way. He tended to do that sometimes. "Come on, let's get inside," she said, swinging out of the car. "Maybe I can scrounge up some ice-crème for the special occasion."

She opened the door, allowing the three to slip in past her before she took up the rear, sliding right to the refrigerator to search the freezer for some frozen goodness. She heard padding feet, and turned to see her mother standing in the kitchen, a strange look on her face.

"Your father's not home yet?" she asked curiously.

Aria raised an eyebrow, placing the ice-crème tub on the counter. "He left about the same time as us, but he took a different route. He probably stopped for something on the way home," Aria said with a shrug, fishing out spoons and bowls.

Her mother's frown deepened. "He told me he'd come straight home..."

Aria sighed. "He'll be home when he gets home, just give him time."

Her mother sighed. "I'm going to send him a text to see where he is."

"No texting and driving," Aria said automatically, already spooning some ice crème into the bowls. She sighed, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Early to bed tonight...I'm exhausted," she muttered to herself as he mother wandered out of the kitchen to locate her phone.

Aria lumbered into the living room, balancing four bowls of chocolate ice-crème in her arms. "All right, I can't do this forever guys, I don't have the Force here..." she said, walking very slowly so she wouldn't spill any on the carpet. She didn't really feel like suffering her mother's wrath tonight.

Everyone got a bowl and settled down on the couches, and the conversation resumed from where it had been in the car.

"So who were his parents?" Obi-Wan asked vaguely. "Luke's?"

Aria mulled over her answer for a moment. "A renowned Senator and a Jedi," she said just as vaguely.

"I see..." Obi-Wan said, stroking his beard. Anakin glanced at him from the corner of his eyes, wondering where his master was going with this. "And that bounty hunter on the sail barge, from that video a few days ago...what was his name again? Boba Fett?"

"Mhm," Aria said.

"He's just as quiet as when I met him," Obi-Wan said easily.

Aria felt a spike of fear go right through her before she shoved the feeling down, forcing herself to remain calm. "Um...what?" she asked, her voice confused. In reality, she was rushing to figure out what to say. She could say he wasn't the same person he was thinking of...

"I've met a Boba Fett; a young boy...son of Jango Fett," Obi-Wan said seriously, his eyes piercing into Aria's own. She did her best to keep her face impassive.

"You mean the clone Boba Fett, the one that Jango wanted unaltered so he could raise Boba as a son," she said pointedly, an eyebrow raised. She hoped that by the tone of her voice and such she would give off the impression that there was another Boba Fett. Obi-Wan either took the bait or realized that she wasn't going to give anything away, and he backed down.

"Never mind," he said with a sigh.

Aria gave him a tiny smile. "Sorry," she said, her apology sincere. She wasn't going to let anything slip out.

She paused when the phone rang, drawing her attention away from the conversation. She picked the phone off of the couch, hearing her mother's footsteps draw near. "I've got it!" she called, and her mother turned back to the room she'd been in the first place. Aria stood up, hitting the green button and pressing the phone to her ear as she started towards the other room. "Aria Neads, who's this?"

Anakin watched with a growing sense of dread he couldn't explain as Aria suddenly froze in the doorway, her back to them. The bowl slipped from her grasp, shattering against the floor.

"Mom!" she screamed.


Obi-Wan volunteered to stay at the house with Roxanne and Joshua, who were both sound asleep in their bedrooms, oblivious to the fact that there world was crumbling around them while they slept.

Anakin and Padme came with Selina and Aria. The car trip was dead silent, with the quietness in the car broken only by the all too frequent sobs of the two in the front. Speed limits didn't exist for Selina as she drove the car as fast as she could to the hospital.

Aria stared out the window in shock, praying to any and every deity out there for a miracle as the tears streamed down her face. She felt as if she'd taken a blow to the stomach that had knocked everything out of her, and she was still falling. She was afraid of what would meet her at the bottom...

She didn't remember the car stopping. She didn't remember getting out and running into the ER. She did remember endless halls of white blurred by her vision and the faint feeling of Anakin's hand on her shoulder.

The doctors wouldn't let them in. They had to stay in the empty waiting room, just the four of them, waiting for some sort of news. The barest details that her mother had heard ran circles in her head, trying to register in a brain that rejected them like its survival depended on it.

Distracted driver...head-on collision...truck flipped...fire...

Aria stared out the window and up into the starry sky that she felt should be clouded with a thundering storm as it unleashed torrents of water upon the earth to match her mood. "This isn't happening...it's not true...this is just a dream..." she whispered to herself, wrapping her arms tightly around her torso to give herself a comforting hug in vain.

Anakin and Padme sat side by side in silence across from where Aria stood, watching her sympathetically in silence. Padme's eyes were watery, but Anakin was still getting over his shocked state himself. Selina sat in another ridged chair, chewing her nails anxiously.

The clock on the wall ticked off the seconds as they passed, and with every second came a fresh wave of dread. Aria choked back yet another sob and defaulted to her usual comfort and shield; music.

"Daddy can you hear the devil drawing near? Like a bullet from a gun, run daddy run. All the songs you used to sing to me would rock birds to sleep; I need you now so please somehow put rockets on your feet..." she sang softly, her voice echoing hauntingly through the room as it trembled and cut off through her tears. "Daddy can you hear the devil drawing near, like a bullet from a gun, run daddy run. Mama's been crying in the kitchen, sister's been afraid of the dark; I've been gathering the pieces of all these shattered hearts. And I don't care where you go to, and I don't care where you land; just get out of there daddy as fast as you can...Daddy can you hear the devil drawing near? Like a bullet from a gun, run daddy run. Run Daddy run, run daddy run..."

"Miss Neads?" came a quiet voice from the doorway. Everyone immediately turned to face the grim doctor in the doorway, and the three that were sitting immediately stood.

"That would be me," said Aria's mother, stepping forward. "How is he? Is he going to be all right? How bad is it? Will he live?" she asked in a rushed voice, the anxiety and fear leaking out of her in droves. The doctor let his gaze wander around the room to take in the other occupants, his gaze lingering sorrowfully on the sixteen year old that stood by the window.

"I'm sorry..." he finally said in a low voice. "We did all that we could..."

Aria heard nothing after that. Her legs gave out from under her and she let out a soul-deep cry of despair, dropping to her hands and knees on the floor and sobbing her heart out. She didn't want the doctor to finish; she didn't need him to. She knew perfectly well what that meant.

Anakin came out of nowhere, pulling Aria into a strong hug that she wished made everything go away, but it didn't. There was only one pair of arms she wanted around her right now, and they would never hold her tight again.

Selina let out a wail of despair, followed quickly by Padme trying to comfort the woman, but Aria hardly cared. She leaned into Anakin's chest, sobbing unashamedly and pulling him close for comfort even though she hardly knew him. She needed someone right now, and he had offered.

"Why'd it have to be him?" she sobbed. "Why?"

That was the one thought on all of their minds at the moment.

Why him?

Why now?

Why like this?

Why, out of all people, did life have to take Aria's father?

Why Alaric?