"LEIA!" Luke's voice was a high and strangled scream. He sat shaking and crying and feeling desperate to find his sister again, to sense her. The warm place she had been had gone cold as if his heart was on ice.

"No." Anakin's chest felt as if it was under tremendous pressure, as if every ounce of air had been squeezed from his lungs. He crawled on his elbows until he was next to Leia. Gently he cradled her head in his hand, only to carefully lower it back down. "No..." Shaking fingers brushed stray strands of brown away from her face. A horrible, sick feeling of agony a hundred times worse than torture began in his chest and spread to every limb. For half a moment all he could feel was anger and hate. It wasn't right...it wasn't fair...Bakara, that coward! He had fired on a child! Anakin almost rose to his feet to choke the life out of the pirate.

The heartbroken whimper of Luke dissolved the feelings of wanting revenge. A look at his son told Anakin that the boy was struggling with the same feelings as his father. With a snarl of rage, Luke rose and gripped his lightsaber, marching toward Bakara with the intent to dismember him.

Both Obi-Wan and Anakin's hands on him made the boy stop and look about. They were shaking their heads. For a moment Luke struggled against them, but knew that killing in revenge wouldn't help anyone. Helplessly he turned back to Leia and sank to his knees. "Leia..." Then Luke lowered his head to her shoulder and began to sob. He hardly felt Obi-Wan's strong hand on his back, trying feebly to offer comfort.

Ahsoka, meanwhile, was ripping every tool and bandage out of her medic-kit, searching frantically even as tears clouded her eyes. "Come on, come on...where are you?" Finally, her hand closed around a small device with a remote. "Here..." The Togruta then scrambled up to Leia and opened the girl's tunic halfway.

"What are you doing?" Anakin asked through a ragged voice.

"It's a defibrillator," explained Ahsoka as she stuck the device onto Leia's sternum. "It might be able to restart her heart."

Resurrected hope dawned on the faces of Luke and Anakin at the idea, and they watched anxiously. At Ahsoka's urging they had to let go of Leia for a minute and take a step back.

Ahsoka took a deep breath as she pressed the activation remote.

Leia's body convulsed at the shock, but her presence was still gone, her body still growing cold.

Ahsoka sighed and clicked the power up a notch, then tried again. Still nothing. With worry rising, she upped the power level once more and pressed the remote.

Again Leia's body convulsed. Again it went still. But a second later, she showed signs of life. Her chest began to slowly rise and fall.

Anakin and Luke lifted their heads in shock as they felt the gaping hole that had been left by Leia's death begin to fill again. "Dad...?" asked Luke tentatively, still trying to process what he was seeing and feeling.

Carefully Ahsoka pressed her fingers to Leia's neck in confirmation and pulled back with an immense sigh of relief. "It worked."

Luke's tears returned, but of joy this time and not of sorrow. Impulsively he threw his arms around Anakin's neck. "She's alive!" he exclaimed.

Anakin held the embrace as long as Luke would let him before turning back to his daughter. Her breath was evening out and, after Ahsoka had fastened an oxygen mask to her face, she began to stir.

"Obi-Wan, will you see what you can do for Anakin?" asked Ahsoka as she looked up hopefully from her patient.

"Of course." Obi-Wan gave the younger Jedi a damp-eyed smile and nod. "Well-done," he added. "All right, Anakin. Let me look at you."

"Wait..." Anakin pulled away from his old friend and reached again for Leia's face. He wanted to make sure that his daughter would be all right. "Leia..." He touched her cheek.

Leia grimaced and whimpered, clumsily covering her burned and bleeding shoulder with her hand.

"Shh. It's all right," calmed Anakin.

Ahsoka began tending to Leia's wound. "I know. Hold on."

Leia grunted and blinked, bleary eyes looking around in disorientation. Finally they focused on the face of her father. "Daddy?" she mumbled.

Anakin nearly laughed from pure joy. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. "It's me, Princess. I'm here."

:=v=: :=v=: :=v=:

Between treating Anakin and Leia so they were stable enough to move, containing the rest of the pirates, and calling in backup to take them away, it was several hours before Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Luke, Leia, and Artoo were headed back to Coruscant.

The council's reaction upon hearing the news was mixed. On one hand they commended Obi-Wan, Luke, and Ahsoka for rescuing Anakin and Leia. On the other, they wanted to see Leia and speak with her in person before passing judgment on her actions...but only after she was well enough.

Anakin, with his various injuries, was confined to his cot the whole trip. Leia was supposed to be resting as well, but once her shoulder was bound, she insisted on seeing her father just long enough to talk to him. The difficult part was getting Luke to leave either of them alone for long.

"Daddy, I'm sorry," sighed Leia, hanging her head.

"For what?" Anakin wanted to know. He was still thankful that his little girl was alive.

"I stole a fighter, disobeyed a direct order, went into enemy territory alone, and then...then I almost used the Dark Side again," explained the girl.

"I know." Anakin pressed his lips together for a moment. "It was wrong of you to come out here by yourself...but you did help me escape."

Leia shrugged. "Maybe...but I pushed you too much and hurt you."

Anakin offered a slight smile. "I was hurt anyway, and that wasn't your fault."

The girl chewed her lip. "What about the Dark Side? When Bakara came around the corner...I hated him so much. I just wanted him to...die." Leia sighed in frustration. "Why do those feelings keep coming?"

Anakin cringed. "I don't honestly know. Maybe other Jedi don't struggle so much with their emotions because they don't know their families...that's why, for the longest time, Jedi weren't allowed to fall in love and get married. But now they are. Like I told you before, Leia, emotions aren't the problem...you just need to learn to control them. And I know it's not easy. For me, it's the most difficult part about being a Jedi."

Leia blinked in surprise. "You? You're the most powerful Jedi who ever lived. I thought it would be easier for you."

Sadly Anakin shook his head. "No...if anything, it's harder for me..." When Leia looked confused, he let out a heavy sigh. It was time to tell her the truth. "Leia, do you remember when I told you and Luke that I wasn't like the other Jedi at the temple...that I had a mother, and was nearly ten years old before I started to train?"

Leia nodded. She'd enjoyed the stories of her late grandmother Shmi, who'd lived on Tatooine as a slave but had never stopped showing kindness.

Anakin grimaced. "Well, I never told you everything. No matter how much I trained, or how talented I was with the Force, I never stopped missing my mother. I thought about her every day. When I was nineteen and your mother and I started falling in love, I was having terrible nightmares. I saw my mother suffering in my dreams. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore and went back to Tatooine without permission."

Leia absorbed this information without much surprise. She'd heard part of this story already, and knew that her grandmother had died. "Oh. And when you got there..."

"When I got there, I found out she'd been captured by Tusken Raiders. So I went to find her. When I did-" Anakin closed his eyes fighting back the wave of emotion that had returned with the memory. "They'd tortured her...hurt her. She was so weak when I found her, that...she died not long afterward." Anakin took a deep breath to keep from sinking back into the depression that had followed him for so long. "I was so angry. All I could think was that I'd been away from her for so long, and then she died. All I wanted was to hurt the ones who had hurt me...so I killed them."

"Well, they deserved it!" cried Leia indignantly. "Who would capture someone just to torture them?"

"No, Leia...you don't understand. I killed all of them...that entire village of Tusken Raiders, whether they had hurt my mother or not. I didn't stop until all of them were dead. And even if I had only killed the ones that had hurt her, it wouldn't have justified anything. I used the Dark side." He looked her in the eye for a long while until he saw the shock in them. Then he turned away in shame. "I only ever told two people about it...one was your mother. Even after all that, she loved me. I still don't know why."

Leia found her throat had gone dry. Knowing her father had murdered in cold blood made her stomach churn. The frightening part was, she understood his reasons. "But...that was...a long time ago," she sputtered.

Anakin shook his head. "It wasn't the first time...or the last. One of my friends at the time was Chancellor Palpatine."

Leia gasped in disbelief. Everyone knew who Palpatine had been...a sith lord who had orchestrated the Clone Wars and plotted to wipe out the entire Jedi order. To the Younglings he was something of a bogeyman; the stuff of nightmares.

Anakin cringed in seeing her expression and decided to explain. "He'd met me when I was a little boy, and gave me advice. No one knew who he was, not even the Council. He justified every wrong thing I did and kept planting lies in my head about the Jedi. I started to believe him...until he finally told me that he knew the Dark Side, and I realized he was the Sith Lord."

"But you killed him," reminded Leia, taking her father's hand. "When you found out, you killed him...right?"

"Somehow I did. But it didn't make my anger go away. You see, I thought your mother was going to die, and I thought that using the Dark Side was the only way to save her. It took more than two years before I was finally able to let go of my anger."

Leia listened breathlessly. Emotions bounced about in her head until she wasn't sure how to feel. Knowing what her father had done made her feel afraid...but then, knowing he had literally stared Evil in the face and defeated it made a pride and a hope she hadn't yet known rise within her. He hadn't just saved himself, he had saved the galaxy.

Anakin let out a shuddering sigh. "Leia," he said, looking up to find her eyes again. "I do understand what it's like to struggle with the Dark Side. I know what you've been feeling...because I felt it, too."

For a moment Leia just sat there absorbing what she had been told. Fear threatened to make her walk away. Then the love in her father's eyes helped erase her doubts. Tearfully she leaned forward to wrap her free arm around his neck. "I'm sorry...I thought...I didn't know!"

Anakin returned her lopsided embrace with his own. "Oh, Leia. I'm sorry, too. I should have told you weeks ago. Maybe it would have helped you."

"Why didn't you, then?" Leia wanted to know. There was no accusation in her voice.

"I was worried about what you might think...that you'd be afraid of me," confessed Anakin.

"No! After all that, you won," she reminded. "If you did, maybe I can."

"Leia, of course you can. You've always been so strong and brave. I know you can do it." He pulled back to find her eyes again. "I'll do whatever I can to help you. No matter where our lives as Jedi take us, I'll always be there for you and Luke. I promise."

A tearful smile broke out on Leia's face. Her father always kept his promises. Moreover, his eyes spoke more truth than his mouth ever could. "I love you, Daddy."

Anakin held his daughter close. "I love you, too."