Part Two

That Monday, the twins helped Obi-Wan clean up the classroom. Then Obi-Wan put all the papers he needed to grade in his bag and they left the school. The twins danced around him refusing to hold his hands except when they crossed the streets. "We go their way all the time, Mr. Kenobi!" Leia called. "We're not going to wander off!"

They also kept telling him what subway train to get on and what stop to get off at. That, Obi-Wan was secretly thankful for, because his mind blanked when he needed the information, even though Anakin had told him on Saturday and Obi-Wan had been repeating it over and over to himself ever since.

Eventually, they arrived at the apartment. Obi-Wan let them in and turned on the lights. The twins dropped their backpacks on the couch and ran towards their bedroom.

"Shouldn't you do your homework before you play?" Obi-Wan asked.

"We always do homework after dinner," Luke said.

"Daddy says we should play while it's light outside," Leia agreed.

"Alright…" Obi-Wan wasn't sure if they were telling the truth or not, but he'd never known either twin to lie. He figured as long as they got their homework done it didn't matter when they did it.

However, as the twins vanished into their bedroom, he couldn't keep from laughing at the absurdity of having to make sure his own students got the homework he had assigned done.

An hour and a half later, Luke and Leia came into the kitchen to find Obi-Wan cooking.

"What are you making?" Luke asked, bouncing over.

"Spaghetti," Obi-Wan answered.

"Cool!" Leia squealed. "We like homemade food!"

Obi-Wan couldn't keep from giving her a strange look.

"Ahsoka can't cook," Leia explained. "Dad can, but he doesn't have time."

That explained why there was barely anything in the refrigerator and cupboards. Obi-Wan vowed to take the twins grocery shopping after school the next day. They were going to eat homemade food, if he had anything to say about it.

The rest of the night went well. The twins got their homework done, and Obi-Wan made some mental notes for himself about how to make his worksheets easier to understand. There were no problems until it was time for bed. Obi-Wan asked the twins if they normally listened to a story before they slept. The twins said they did and pointed out the children's chapter book that Ahsoka had been reading to them.

Not bothering to think if it would be wise, Obi-Wan picked up the book and found the page Ahsoka had been at. He'd began to read, but within minutes both Luke and Leia had been crying.

"What's wrong?" Obi-Wan asked.

"We miss Ahsoka!" Luke wailed.

Obi-Wan cursed himself for being so thoughtless. Just because the twins appeared to be holding up under the massive changes that had occurred in their lives didn't mean they were totally fine.

He stood up so he was level with Luke's upper bunk and ran a hand through the boy's hair. "I know you do," he said in as soothing of a voice as he could manage. "And I know Ahsoka misses you too,"

Leia rolled over and peered up at him, tears running down her face. "Will we ever see her again?"

"I'm sure you will," Obi-Wan said even though he had no idea if that was something he could actually promise. Right now he just needed the twins to calm down.

"Will she be our babysitter again?" Luke asked.

It was just a little hurtful to hear that, but Obi-Wan reminded himself that Ahsoka had probably been babysitting the twins as long as they could remember. Having her vanish and a virtual stranger take her place couldn't have been easy for them.

"I'm sure she'd love to," he promised and turned back to the bookshelf. "Now, do you two want me to read a different book?"

Obi-Wan woke up to the sound of a door opening. For an instant he was confused about why someone was coming into his house, but then he remembered where he was.

He sat up on the couch in the Skywalker apartment. Anakin Skywalker had just let himself in and was shaking the snow off his jacket. Obi-Wan had the lights off save for the ones in the bathroom so the apartment was mostly dark. He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall above the TV, it was 12:38 am.

"It's snowing outside," Anakin said gruffly and somewhat unnecessarily as he hung his coat up in the closet. "Is that going to cause you trouble getting home?"

"I don't think so," Obi-Wan stretched and stood. "I rode the subway to work today and then rode it here, so it's not like I'll be driving."

Anakin nodded. The man looked exhausted, per usual. "Did you have any problems?" he asked.

"They miss Ahsoka," Obi-Wan admitted, deciding not to mention to book incident. "But that's understandable."

"They were good for you, right?" Anakin asked.

"They were," Obi-Wan said. "They're sweet kids."

Anakin smiled. "They are." He moved to cross the room.

"I made spaghetti for supper," Obi-Wan said. "There are some leftovers."

Anakin stopped in the bathroom doorway and frowned at the floor. He stood that way for almost a minute.

"Is something wrong?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I'm trying to remember if I ate supper," Anakin said pressing a fist to his lips.

Obi-Wan stared at him.

"That has happened before," Anakin said like that wasn't even a slight problem.

Obi-Wan was less willing to see it that way. "If you can't remember if you ate that probably means you should."

Anakin thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. "You're probably right."

Obi-Wan followed him to the kitchen and stood awkwardly in the doorway while Anakin warmed himself up a plate of spaghetti. Neither of them said anything for several minutes. Anakin ate and Obi-Wan wondered if he should leave.

"This is good spaghetti," Anakin said off-handedly, breaking the silence. "Almost as good as Shaak's."

Obi-Wan tried to figure out who that was from context. "Who?"

"Shaak Ti," Anakin said between bites. "She was our housekeeper. She practically raised me."

Had he just said housekeeper? "What about…your parents?" Obi-Wan asked carefully.

"My father couldn't be bothered to do anything but yell at me for messing up the house and accuse me of going to drinking parties—the former I knew better than to do, and the latter I never had any interest in," Anakin explained, sounding strangely nonchalant. "Mom died of cancer when I was nine. I barely remember her," Anakin's aura of calm crumbled a little when he talked about his mom.

"Anyway," Anakin went on. "Shaak took good care of me. She helped me with my homework, taught me to cook and kept me from getting into too much trouble with Tyranus."

"Tyranus?" Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin snorted. "Sorry. I'm talking about the butler. His real name was Dooku, but my friends and I called him Tyranus because he was, well, a tyrant. He was almost as bad as my father."

"Did you have a nickname for your father too?" Obi-Wan asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

Anakin's face stilled, the amused half-smile he'd been wearing while talking about Dooku melted off his face. "No. He would have figured out about it and been livid. He was strange like that," the look he gave Obi-Wan was one that begged for understanding. "If you didn't want him to know about something, he knew. Maybe not right away, but eventually he'd figure out and then…" Anakin shook his head, "well, use your imagination."

There was a long, roaring silence. Then Anakin cleared throat. "Well, that got awkward really fast," he set the empty plate in the sink, he laughed shakily. "Note to self: don't talk about important things late at night."

Obi-Wan felt like he needed to say something, but he didn't know what. Whatever had happened with Anakin's father was obviously a lot bigger than he'd originally thought. This was the moment when Obi-Wan should have said something comforting but he didn't know what to say.

He stood in silence while Anakin washed his dishes.

The next Wednesday, Obi-Wan was waiting for Anakin to come to pick up the twins. Obi-Wan would be going over to the apartment after dinner, because it turned out that Anakin did work on Wednesday nights, he just didn't have to go into work until later.

The twins were entertained with a puzzle when Satine came in rolling her eyes. "I just got done fixing the copier. Again! This is the third time this week!"

Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose. "We really need a new copier."

"That's the understatement of the year," Satine groaned.

"How long did it take you to fix it?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Close to thirty minutes," Satine heaved out an annoyed breath. "You know," she said after a pause, "I have a sledgehammer in my garage at home. What if I were to bring it in to work, and we just hit the thing a couple times? We both know Principal Windu wouldn't mind; he'd probably dance for joy. It would just be a matter of convincing the school board it was an accident."

Obi-Wan laughed. "I can see it now. 'No, we have no idea how a sledgehammer ended up in the copier! It just fell! No, it's not Miss Kryze's. Why would she have brought it here?'"

"I'd make you use the sledgehammer. Then if everything went wrong, I'd just get in trouble for owning the thing," Satine giggled and punched him on the arm. Obi-Wan's heart stopped, but only for a second and in a very pleasant way.

Whatever little moment they'd been having was interrupted by the twins running to meet Anakin who apparently had just showed up. Satine excused herself and went back to her classroom. Anakin glanced at her as she walked out, then turned back to Obi-Wan and raised his eyebrows.

"What?" Obi-Wan asked.

When Obi-Wan turned up at the apartment later that night, the twins were in the front room starting on their homework while Anakin did the dishes. Obi-Wan entered the kitchen and glanced at the time displayed on the microwave. "Don't you need to get going?" he asked.

Anakin glanced at the time. "I've got enough time to finish this."

Obi-Wan frowned at the time. "You're sure?"

"I am," Anakin said. "It's not like there's a lot of dishes."

Obi-Wan could tell he wasn't going to be able to argue. Apparently, Anakin had a strange desire to do dishes. Obi-Wan got a towel out from a cupboard and began drying the dishes and putting them away.

"Who was the blonde?" Anakin asked after a pause.

"Huh?" Obi-Wan asked.

"The blonde woman you were talking to this afternoon," Anakin said. "Who was she?"

"Oh," Obi-Wan said. "That's Satine Kryze. She's the other kindergarten teacher at WES."

Anakin nodded then glanced at Obi-Wan out of the corner of his eyes. "Have you asked her out yet?"

"What?" Obi-Wan spluttered. "What are you talking about?"

"Have you asked her out on a date?" Anakin turned to look at Obi-Wan. "She's obviously interested."

"She is?" Obi-Wan stuttered, unable to explain the sudden leaping feeling in his chest.

Anakin rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Obi-Wan, you're like 35. You expect me to believe you've never had a girlfriend?"

"Thirty," Obi-Wan said. "And I have had a girlfriend, it just…didn't work."

"Oh…" Anakin said. "Do I want to know?"

The look on his said that he really did want to know, so Obi-Wan told him about Asajj and braced himself for the laughter that was the normal response when he told this story.

Anakin didn't laugh, for almost a minute he just stared at Obi-Wan then shook his head. "Wow. That's rough, buddy."

Obi-Wan wasn't sure how he should feel about the widower thinking that what had happened with Asajj was bad. He just cleared his throat and said, "Umm…Yeah, I guess it was."

Anakin shook his head. "At least Padmé agreed to marry me even if things didn't work out for a long time afterward," seeing the look on Obi-Wan's face he said, "She died a couple weeks after the twins were born. She was walking home from work on a Friday night, and she was hit by a car," Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan, his eyes narrowed in sudden anger. "The guy driving the car was drunk. He ran a red light and didn't see her until it was too late."

The first thing Obi-Wan thought was that story was a lot more terrible than what had happened with him and Asajj. He swallowed and tried to think of something to say. "I'm sorry."

They stood in silence for a long time, then Anakin took a deep breath. "Well, we were talking about how you need to get some romantic experience that doesn't end in a girl standing you up, not my young adult novel-worthy marriage. You need to ask this Satine girl out, if you don't I will bug you about it for the rest of your life. Understand?"

Obi-Wan stared at Anakin. Was he really being told to ask someone out? "Okay…" he said.

Anakin smiled. "Good."

"Umm…Satine…" Obi-Wan asked the next day when he ran into her by the copier. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she said. "You look worried. What's going on?"

"I-" Obi-Wan ran a hand through his hair. Had it been this hard to as Asajj out? He couldn't remember. "I was wondering if…"

"You were wondering if what?" Satine asked. "Are you okay, Obi-Wan?"

"I was wondering if you would like to go out with me," Obi-Wan burst out.

For one blank second, Satine just stared at him. Oh, no. Obi-Wan thought. She's going to say no. This was a really bad idea. Why did I let Anakin talk me into this? This is going to be just like Asajj.

Then Satine broke into the biggest smile Obi-Wan had ever seen. "I would love too!" she exclaimed. "What were you thinking about doing?"

"Well…ah…we could…we could go to a movie," Obi-Wan stammered, then cursed himself for his foolishness. Asajj had always said that kind of date was cheap and cliché.

However Satine just graced him with a big smile. "That sounds great! When?"

The date wouldn't be until Sunday because that was the only day Obi-Wan didn't babysit. They could have gone on Saturday night, because while Anakin did work on Saturdays he was normally home by six. However Obi-Wan figured he'd need some time to mentally prepare without having to worry about the twins.

Even though Obi-Wan would never have thought to ask Satine out if Anakin hadn't pushed him, Obi-Wan couldn't help hoping that Anakin would forget all about it. It wasn't a complete impossibility, the man did seem to always have a million things on his mind; maybe Obi-Wan's love life was unimportant enough to slip through the cracks.

Unfortunately, that was not the case, because the first thing Anakin said to him after getting home from work that night was, "Well, did you ask her?"

Amazing that the man was still awake enough to ask about dates at almost one in the morning. "She said yes," Obi-Wan said. "We're going out on Sunday night."

Anakin beamed, suddenly looking far younger than he normally did, which was saying something. "See? What did I tell you?"

On Friday night, the twins finished their homework early. "What do you want to do now?" Obi-Wan asked. "I could read a book or we could watch a movie."

The twins looked at each other, thinking hard. Luke leaned in closer to Leia and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and whispered something back.

"What are you two talking about?" Obi-Wan asked.

Leia looked at Luke who nodded, then she turned to Obi-Wan and said, "We'd like to look at the photo album."

"What?" Obi-Wan asked.

"The photo album," Luke pointed at a small maroon book on the top shelf of the bookcase. "Leia and I like to look at, but we can't reach it without a grown-up."

"Is your dad okay with you looking at it?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Yes," Leia said.

"As long as we're careful," Luke agreed.

That sounded okay, so Obi-Wan went and took the album off the upper shelf. It wasn't extremely large and a layer of dust covered it, like it was rarely looked at. Obi-Wan couldn't help being surprised by its existence; he hadn't thought many people bothered to print pictures anymore.

By the time he set the album on the coffee table, the twins were bouncing up and down with excitement. The instant Obi-Wan sat down on the couch, Luke opened the album and pointed at a picture in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. "Look! That's our mommy!"

The picture was of Anakin at about seventeen giving a piggy back ride to a girl around the same age. She was clinging to Anakin's back with her arms wrapped around his neck. They were both laughing. The girl had dark eyes and curly dark brown hair, she looked a lot like Leia.

Obi-Wan studied the image more closely and noticed something just slightly strange. From what he could see, Padmé was dressed like any typical teenager would in the summer. Anakin however was wearing khakis, a dress-shirt and a vest. He looked like he should be going to some kind business meeting, not hanging out with friends.

Obi-Wan wanted to look at the rest of the pictures on the page, but the twins had already gotten bored with it and were turning to the next one. The picture that caught Obi-Wan's attention on this page was another picture of teenaged Anakin and two other boys his age. They were standing close together and smiling at the camera. Anakin was in the middle, on his right was a tall, lanky boy with black hair and silver-gray eyes, this boy was holding the camera (or maybe it was a cell phone) out in front of them. On Anakin's other side was a dark-eyed boy with short-cropped blonde hair. All three boys were the wearing basketball jerseys.

"Daddy played basketball in school," Luke explained. "He said that he'll teach me and Leia sometime."

However, the fact that Anakin had played basketball in high school was not the thing about the picture that captured Obi-Wan's attention. It was the uniforms themselves. Anakin and the other boys were wearing the colors and logo of Theed Academy. Obi-Wan had done a research paper on that school as an undergrad. Theed Academy was a private high school in Naboo and was one of the most elite prep schools in the county. The school was attended exclusively by the children of celebrities, politicians and CEOs as well as a couple very lucky scholarship students.

Now it seemed that Anakin had gone to that school. That had been something Obi-Wan hadn't been expecting, and now he had one burning question that he was starting to think he needed to solve:

Who is Anakin's father?

"Luke, Leia. Wake up, it's time for bed."

Obi-Wan opened his eyes to find himself still sitting on the couch, with the photo album spread out over his knees and Luke and Leia curled up on either side of him fast asleep.

Anakin was leaning over them, shaking the twins awake.

"What time is it?" Obi-Wan muttered thickly.

"12:30," Anakin said, then turned his attention back to the twins. "Come on, you two need to get to bed."

Eventually Anakin got the sleepy twins on their feet and into the bathroom to brush their teeth. Obi-Wan hurried into the bedroom to get out their pajamas, his face was flaming red. How had he been so foolish? It was his job to make sure the twins did all normal things for small children and that included going to bed at a reasonable hour, how was he going to explain this?

By the time the twins were in bed, Obi-Wan had had enough time to work himself up into a fairly decent panic. He stayed in the bedroom for several minutes before he worked up the courage to head back into the front room. He found Anakin sitting on the couch looking at something in his lap. As Obi-Wan drew closer he saw that it was the photo album.

After the twins had fallen asleep but before he'd dozed off himself, Obi-Wan had gone through the album more thoroughly and looked closely at every picture. He'd studied the images of Anakin and Padmé's wedding (they'd been young, hardly older than they'd been in the first image Obi-Wan had seen of them). There'd been one picture of a very young Anakin (seven or eight, maybe) with a dark-haired woman who Obi-Wan assumed must have been Anakin's mother. There'd been pictures of the twins as babies, though the number of pictures with Anakin in them decreased sharply along with the last images of Padmé. When the twins were about one and half the quality of the pictures took a nose dive. If Obi-Wan had to guess, he would say that the pictures after this point were taken on the cheap track phone Anakin used, Obi-Wan couldn't help but wonder what had happened to whatever the earlier pictures had been taken with.

When Obi-Wan reached the back of the couch and could see what page Anakin was looking at, he saw that the young man was studying a picture that had captured Obi-Wan's attention while he was looking through the album. It was a picture of Anakin, the twins at a year old, the blonde boy from the basketball picture, a severe man with short, dark hair, a dark-haired boy several years older than Anakin and a ten-year-old boy.

Anakin glanced up at Obi-Wan, then pointed at the blonde boy. "This is Rex. He is—was—my best friend. That's his dad, Jango, who was our basketball coach, and Rex's brothers, Cody and Boba. Jango's wife, Zam, was taking the picture. The twins and I lived in their basement after Padmé died," Anakin sighed. "I haven't talked to them in years."

There was a pause, then Anakin went on, "Jango worked as a Phys. Ed. teacher at my high school. They got discounts on the tuition. That was the only reason they could afford to send Rex there."

"You graduated from Theed Academy," Obi-Wan said surprising himself by his boldness. How could he ask questions like that when he'd just proven himself a horrible babysitter?

Anakin shook his head. "I went there," he corrected. "I didn't graduate."

"What?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I was close, don't get me wrong," Anakin said. "My father figured out I married Padmé and that she was pregnant just over two weeks before graduation. He went ballistic—understandably, I guess—and disowned me."

Obi-Wan couldn't say that was a surprise. With the way Anakin had been talking about his father, Obi-Wan had figured something like that had happened, however, it was just a little unnerving to hear Anakin say it. He couldn't imagine Qui-Gon and Tahl (his own parents) disowning him, even if he had gotten married and had kids in high school.

Anakin wasn't finished with his story. "However, at that point all the bills and things for my last semester of school were all paid and I could have just gone for the last two weeks and graduated. Unfortunately, I got angry and made the mistake of telling my father that having an excuse to never speak to him again wouldn't be a punishment," Anakin shrugged. "So while I was upstairs getting my stuff, he called Theed and pulled me out."

"With two weeks left," Obi-Wan said.

"Yeah," Anakin sighed. "I would have been Salutatorian. Actually, I really should have been Valedictorian, but the reasons I wasn't are a story for another day."

"What about Padmé?" Obi-Wan asked.

"She graduated," Anakin said. "She'd lived with a foster family in Naboo and after she turned eighteen, she stayed in the city—mostly because of me, actually. She went to the public school.

"That's what protected the secret for so long, actually," Anakin said. "My father was constantly having people snoop around for gossip about me, but while Padmé's pregnancy was prime gossip at NHS, no one at Theed knew who she was.

"In the end it was my own carelessness that got us caught," Anakin went on, he was completely off topic, but didn't seem to have noticed. "I was sitting at the kitchen table of my father's mansion looking at some pictures of Padmé and me on my phone. Shaak called me to help her with something and I left my phone on the table. I must have forgotten to lock it, because Tyranus just prowled into the kitchen, picked it up and started looking at the pictures."

Anakin heaved a sigh. "I'm good with machines and computers. When I'd started going out with Padmé I'd known my father wouldn't like it, so I built this failsafe into the phone that would delete all mentions of Padmé if I typed in a certain code. Only problem was that it was meant for those times when he demanded that I allow him to search my phone, not when the butler decided to meddle in my personal life."

"The fact that you not only thought to do that but actually could do it is impressive regardless of whether or not it actually worked," Obi-Wan said. "Did you get your GED?"

Anakin shook his head.

"You didn't?" Obi-Wan asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice.

"I was going to," Anakin said. "But then the twins were born, and Padmé died and it all just snowballed, and now I don't have time. I'm too busy paying the rent."

"You need your GED," Obi-Wan said, perhaps a bit too strongly. His parents had always been firm supporters of education, he couldn't imagine being in the position Anakin was in.

"I know I do," Anakin snapped. "You don't know how to add a couple more hours to the day do you?"

Well here's part two. I've decided to go with the four-part variation of this story, but I've got the rest of it planned out, so I promise it won't get any longer.

I'm having a really hard time with the Obitine in this story. I just can't feel it. Granted putting them in a position where its totally alright for them to be together completely changes the dynamic of their relationship, so maybe that's the problem.

It has always been my intention to kill Padmé in a car accident. I'll admit that after reading Rufescent's review of Part One, I did consider having her die in childbirth. However as much as that would be going with the actual Star Wars Canon, I decided that it didn't work. After all, death in childbirth is rare in First World countries. (It is rare in the Star Wars galaxy too-if you're not on a planet like Tatooine-but in ROTS there was the whole "Force-choked-by-my-husband-who-betrayed-me-and-is-now-evil" thing to deal with as well.)

I was going to have the housekeeper be Bohle from the Clone Wars Gambit novels by Karen Miller, but I decided she needed to be a character who would be known by people who hadn't read those books. (If you haven't read them, you should.)

I'm going to need to do something about that copier, aren't I?

Kudos to anyone who knows who the last boy in the basketball picture is.

Preview for the next part: Anakin whump both past and present.

Also, the title of this story comes from the song Lean on Me. I'm really embarrassed by that mix-up because I sang the song in choir a couple years ago.

Please favorite, follow and review!

Emjen