Disclaimer: All recognisable characters and/or situations are property of Lucasfilm.
I get no profit from this. Just a lot of time crying about Jedi.
I should add that my Obi-Wan characterisation owes a huge debt to *the* definitive Obi-Wan&Anakin drama/adventure, ophelia's Spirit Warriors of Angharad. 'The cold dark' is also cribbed from there.
Sadly, old TFN posts (and afaik that's the only place the full story is posted) are truncated, so if anyone is interested, PM me for it. I cannot recommend it more highly.
Chapter One
"How far along were they?"
"Our scanners indicate conception at thirty-four weeks and approximately three days ago."
Obi-Wan had to suppress a flinch at the wording of the med-analysis droid's response. That was a lifetime away now, and— For the moment he was trying not to think of the little ones as Anakin's. Of Anakin at all.
"Three and a half weeks premature, then."
"Approximately. There is no immediate cause for concern. They are a healthy size and weight for their dates. Unusual for twins of your species, in the circumstances of induced labour. They're on the low end of the range, but appear stable. But even otherwise, they would be perfectly viable in our care, of course."
The med-droid paused. It was naturally programmed to put its patients' welfare first, but its owners had also ensured that it would take account of their interests as well, when those happily coincided. Obi-Wan could see it taking in their unusual party: Bail Organa outside the incubatory, in the corner of the obstetric suite with Master Yoda, discussing plans for returning Padmé to Naboo; a protocol droid alongside a combat-stained astromech; himself, singed and streaked with soot and ash, the smell of sulphur and burning still clinging to his clothing.
"Sir, if I may— Space travel can be physically a strain on the very young, especially preterm infants," the med-droid said, with all the tact a well-programmed bedside manner could convey. "We would advise that they remain under our observation and care for a few days."
Obi-Wan had little intention of lingering on Polis Massa—they would be too easy to track down; the Tantive IV was a highly recognisable ship—but he nodded politely. "Thank you." He hesitated fractionally. "Will—their mother's body be ready for transport soon?"
"As you know, we cannot conclusively identify a cause of death—"
"That's fine; a report will not be required. And only minimal preservative treatment will be necessary."
"That should be done within three standard hours."
"Thank you."
When the med-droid had left, Obi-Wan returned his attention to the little ones asleep in their incubator, where the midwife droid had laid them several minutes ago, after their first feeding. At his request, they had been placed in a single incubator unit, next to each other. He had sensed their bond as soon as Luke was in his arms, and physical proximity to each other could only do them good in their fragile state.
They each had another bond though—with Padmé. Such a powerful maternal bond could be dangerous for such young and strongly Force-sensitive infants. Obi-Wan had sensed Luke trying to follow his mother—with surprising strength—as Padmé returned to the Force, and caught him only just in time. To lay down one's life through pure will was a skill that, for adult Jedi, normally required such deep communion with the Force that he had been blindsided by the little one's attempt. In Luke's case, though, it was not so much voluntarily giving himself up to the Force, as the great Jedi Masters of long ago were said to be able to do, as it was the instinctive reaction of a child so young that he was still psychically dependant on his mother, and lacked even subconscious awareness of death.
Obi-Wan laid a hand on each tiny forehead and gently probed into their bright spirits, studying them carefully. The newness of them crested over him, the way the Living Force focused around and into them as though drawn into the gravity well of a binary star system; and for a moment, it eased the burning ache that the Temple's slaughtered children had seared in him.
He could no longer hide from their paternity. Leia's Force-presence was so very much like Anakin's in its mesmerising brilliance: a sun impossibly caught in limpid adamant. He squeezed his eyes shut, uselessly, against the ingrained response to that presence. Not now.
But this beautiful child would be all right. Though the ragged remnants of her bond with her mother were painful contusions in the still-forming spirit, she was in no danger of slipping away as Luke had been. With great tenderness Obi-Wan soothed the psychic disturbances, weaving Leia's unravelled threads back together as best he could. She would not be the same, but she would be whole again, with all the resilience of the very young. Opening his eyes, he watched her small limbs under their wrappings and her pink, slightly squashed-looking face relax as she fell into true rest.
The boy, now—he was not merely his mother's son through and through. Reaching into Luke's spirit through the Force, Obi-Wan had the eerie sense that this fragile-seeming young presence was Padmé: the quiet glow of a banked flame that was strong rather than powerful—strong and enduring as the eclogite foundations of Theed. Little wonder that he had earlier sensed only one child—Luke and his mother were virtually of a piece. Still less that Padmé's death had almost taken him as well. And it had left the little one with grievous wounds. Nothing the Polis Massans' finest scanners would detect, but Obi-Wan could sense that they were slowly draining the child's life. Left untreated, they would eventually draw Luke into what Jedi healers called 'the cold dark'.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes again, sinking deeper into the Force. He perceived with the painful clarity of empathy that no one could restore Luke to true wholeness. But he could be healed; he could be made to live. This one I will save. His other hand moved from Leia's head to Luke's chest, and he focused as he poured healing into the child. Yet Luke's wounds ran deep, and Obi-Wan was an unskilled healer, who had little technique, and knew only how to draw on his own strength for the task. And he was already spent.
His awareness narrowed to Luke's presence. The obstetric suite, the incubatory room, the incongruously mingled smells of infant nutri-formula and sulphurous ash, and Obi-Wan's numerous aches, spiritual and physical—all faded away.
An unmeasured time later, a familiar tapping against his shins brought him abruptly back to himself. He was slumped over the incubator, his elbows, resting on its sides, propping up his weight; his hands still upon Luke. He felt terribly drained.
"Attend to the younglings later, we must. More urgent, the matter of Senator Amidala is. Know of her presence on Mustafar, the Sith may, but not of the the younglings' birth. For now, safe enough they are." Yoda turned to exit the incubatory, clearly expecting Obi-Wan to follow.
"Master, the boy is—deeply bonded to his mother. Still. We must help him, or he may follow her."
"Hm. Urgent, say you?" The old Master scrutinised the incubator—which really was all that could be seen of the children from his particular vantage point. The green eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze to the younger Jedi. Then Yoda rapped Obi-Wan's right leg for the second time in as many minutes; this time, harder.
"Be not a fool, Obi-Wan."
"Yes, Master."
"Know better you do, than such healing to attempt, when exhausted you are."
"Yes, Master."
"Higher, bring me, that at the youngling I may look."
Obi-Wan picked the old Jedi Master up and lifted him to waist level, briefly wondering what Senator Organa, just beyond the glass, was thinking of the sight. Probably the obvious—that they didn't want to move the little ones from their incubator.
Yoda laid a three-fingered hand against Luke's head, so gently that his claws did not even stir the child's fine hair. Obi-Wan's skin prickled as the Master's power filled first the space between the four of them, then the whole incubatory. It was directed at Luke, but Obi-Wan could briefly feel healing pass over him, and he took thankful comfort in the familiar deep pool of the Force that was unmistakeably Master Yoda.
The Jedi Master grunted and hmmphed several times. Beneath his touch, Luke squirmed slightly and his tiny fists twitched under his wrappings. Not in agitation, Obi-Wan sensed, but contentment; perhaps even pleasure. Master Yoda had that way with children.
He had been keeping hold of Luke through the Force, and he felt it as Yoda's ministrations succeeded. There was no one moment that it happened; rather, it was a gradual unclenching of the Force-presence that had been twisted upon itself in pain, like a dying pitkin curling its body instinctively around a mortal wound. The web of fracture lines fretted across the child's spirit remained, and he would never be whole as he once was. Padmé had irretrievably taken part of her son with her. But Yoda had ensured he would recover from the maiming. Obi-Wan felt an unaccountable rush of gratitude as he set the old Master down, and returned his left hand to the little one's forehead.
He glanced down after a beat to find Yoda watching him with a canny look. Wordlessly, the ancient Jedi turned and hobbled out of the incubatory. Obi-Wan followed.
Bail Organa, perched on one of the stools scattered about the obstetric suite, looked up from a datapad, which he held out towards the approaching Jedi. "Earlier, I'd requested, from the Chance—Emperor's office, a list of successes," —his mouth twisted— "so far, in foiling the Jedi rebellion. I had to use my Security Committee–level clearance, and even so I'm not sure this is much more than propaganda, or how current it is—your name's still on it," he nodded towards Obi-Wan, "but if you wish to look, Master Jedi…"
Yoda glanced at the list, then up at Obi-Wan, who numbly took the datapad. The list was neat, well-organised, brutal in its clarity: numbered names going down in aurebeshical order on the left, the planets which had served as altars for this holocaust on the right. From Aayla Secura … … … Felucia through Mon'nauaré Lakremi-Re'um … … … Lasselanta to Zyrrko Yrrfelzarr … … … Tanis V. Two thousand, eight hundred and ninety-three.
None of those killed on Coruscant were listed. No younglings or their clan-masters and teachers; none of the Temple's great scholars, healers and ascetics. Jedi in the field only. Obi-Wan scanned back up the ghastly length of the list, each line searing his vision to the point of hot blurriness. During the war, Jedi had still been sent on the kind of old-fashioned diplomatic mission familiar from his own apprenticeship. Peacekeeping, not peacemaking, and certainly not warmongering—staving off border disputes between neutral systems, smoothing the course of interstellar trade, reconstructing worlds in the brittle aftermath of violence. But they were in increasingly few numbers, and those increasingly from the ranks of Jedi with very young Padawans who would just a few years earlier have been kept to Deep Core assignments, for their inexperience in combat. Yet the list was overwhelmingly of Masters, Knights and senior Padawans on military commissions. Obi-Wan's gut clenched. The end of the war had been in sight. If the Council—if he—had acted faster to recall them, and left the mopping-up operations to the clones—if they had been re-assigned sooner—
Stop. This helps nothing. He wrenched his thoughts from spiralling self-recrimination, and forced dispassion into his consideration of the numbers. The past three years had worn the Order's numbers down to barely more than half what they had been before Geonosis. War, and the desperate extremes of expediency to which it drove the Republic's field commanders, had killed thousands of Jedi and dragged dozens more into Darkness, or into bitter disillusionment with the Order. Fewer and fewer parents would entrust their children to the care of those on the frontlines of battle. The magnitude of these losses against that unrelenting attrition—Obi-Wan's mind shied away from the word genocide—that was something that happened to others, something Jedi prevented or put right—
"We have—we had about fifteen hundred younglings," he murmured, slightly surprised to hear himself speaking steadily. "Three hundred Knights and Masters in the Temple—their caregivers, and those who could not or would not fight—" His throat closed up at the memory of whom they had had to fight, in the end. He shoved the flickering blue holo-images away and continued, "If three thousand others were killed, that leaves about twelve hundred unaccounted for. We could…"
He trailed off. Master Yoda was shaking his head slowly, his ears twitching. In his eyes was the look Obi-Wan had seen there as they had wended their way through the ravaged halls of their home, picking a path between the corpses of their people. "Sense, I do, that underestimate the deaths, this information does. Thank you for it, we do, Senator. But," and his gaze turned to Obi-Wan, "help what survivors there may be, we cannot. Along different paths, our destinies lie."
The Force pulsed with the truth of the words. Obi-Wan bowed his head. For a moment all he could see was the lake at the Temple's heart, in which he had once taught a desert-bred child to swim, dark with the blood and floating remains of the handful of Mon Cal, Nautolan and Vurk younglings who had retreated to their natural element to make their last stand. The Force keening with horror. And at the water's edge, bloody ripples lapping at her tabards, sightless silver eyes wide with defiant resolve, and arms outflung with her lightsaber still clutched in her webbed hand as though to protect the little ones even in death, Bant—her chest laid open with a two-handed diagonal strike that was well-known to Obi-Wan, for he had once laboured to correct the striker's grip on a training hilt—
He found that he had stumbled, off-balance, into the stool across from Senator Organa, who was looking between the two Jedi with horrified sympathy. Swallowing, Obi-Wan turned to Yoda. "Yes, Master."
"To Naboo, we must return Senator Amidala. Public funeral she will have. Convinced, all must be, that still bearing her children she was, to the end."
"I would like to bring her back personally," said Senator Organa with an apologetic glance towards the old Jedi, "but Master Yoda feels that is not a good idea."
"Senator, it is too dangerous. Palpatine doubtless knows by now that I was on Mustafar, and it will be easy for him to discover that Senator Amidala was there around the same time. If you are seen taking her body back to Theed, Palpatine will conclude you have been in contact with me. You must avoid accusations of treason, however tenuous, if the Alliance you and Mon Mothma established is to survive."
"Master Jedi, Palpatine will learn if he hasn't already that I was at the Temple—that night. I am already known as a Jedi sympathiser. This will make little difference."
"Great difference it will make. Before the emergency session of the Senate, the attack on the Temple was."
"As long as the Senate survives, so does some vestige of the Republic. You are needed, Senator; you must remain above suspicion. You know Padmé would not wish you to risk your position for this."
"What do you propose, then?"
"Have the protocol droid fly her back on her own ship. I will record a message for her family." Obi-Wan glanced at Master Yoda, who nodded.
The Senator's mouth tightened. "But the children—should we not place them with their grandparents? Or their aunt? We cannot entrust them to the droid for the trip to Naboo."
"Strong in the Force, the younglings are. Seek to use them, this Emperor will. Endanger Senator Amidala's family, we might, if with them, both are placed."
"Even if Palpatine wanted them, that gives him no sufficient reason to harm their family—"
"Allow Darth Sidious to take the younglings, we cannot! And need reason, the Sith do not, to harm, to destroy."
In truth, Obi-Wan had been so focused on the children themselves, in the past hour or so since their birth, that he had not considered their future. Master Yoda was right, of course, as he usually was.
"Senator Organa, Palpatine was personally acquainted with Padmé. It will be unremarkable and far too easy for him to contact her family himself, particularly at her funeral. If he meets the little ones, he will sense their provenance."
"Surely we should inform their grandparents of their existence, at least."
The two Jedi exchanged a look.
"Hidden completely, the births must be. Know, the Naberries must not. Danger I foresee, if sense any deception in them, Sidious does."
Senator Organa reluctantly inclined his head. "I understand. And I defer to your judgement on the ways of the Sith, Master Jedi. Forgive me; we take such things—family—too seriously on Alderaan, perhaps."
"Comforting, such traditions are, in dark times."
The Alderaanian began to answer, then fell silent as Obi-Wan handed the datapad back to him. He looked at it a long moment. Finally he spoke, his gaze fixed on its screen. "I have no words to express how ashamed I am that the Senate—the Republic—has repaid millenia of faithful service and sacrifice with this…" His knuckles whitened around the datapad "…genocide."
Obi-Wan let out an unsteady breath.
"Speak for you, your actions do, Senator, more eloquently than any words," Master Yoda gravely replied.
As the other man looked up, Obi-Wan's eyes caught his and held them. "Thank you," he added simply.
"It is the Republic that should thank you, Master Jedi. I only wish I could do more." He swiped the screen blank. "I will enquire about purchasing the med-analysis and midwife droids. I'll have them wiped when I do."
"Ask the Polis Massans to erase all other records of our visit, I will. Friendly history with them, I have. Trust their discretion, we may."
"Very well, Master Yoda. And once they are ready with Padmé's body, I will see to it that the med-droid ensures she still looks pregnant."
"No," Obi-Wan spoke up. "Leave that to me. Not a droid." His voice dropped. "It's the least I can do for…"
Bail Organa nodded, regarding him with sympathy; Master Yoda, with deep compassion.
"Tomorrow, Obi-Wan. For now, rest we must."
He knew, of course, that by "we", Master Yoda here meant "you". And it was only then he realised with not a little embarrassment that he had been seated while the ancient Master was standing. He rose quickly and bowed to the older Jedi and the Senator.
When he arrived at the guest quarters, bone-deep weariness pushed him fully clothed and shod into his assigned sleepcouch. He was heartsick, and aching in every limb; Mustafar's stinging grit still clung to the insides of his eyelids; and the sleepcouch, made for the small-built Polis Massans, was uncomfortably short. But trained by long discipline and the demands of war to take what rest it could under any conditions, his mind set aside the physical discomforts, and the far more painful thoughts, and he fell almost immediately into sleep.