Chapter 5

Anakin was... confused, to say the least. He thought it would be a good idea to get to know his family over a meal. They would tell each other all about themselves, laugh at each other's embarrassing stories, and act like a real family should. In hindsight he probably shouldn't have compared reality to a holoshow Padmé made him watch all those years ago.

Right now he was trying to keep up with a flow of questions Luke kept asking him all the while trying to get Leia to stop glaring at him. Luke seemed to want to know every detail about his life and some of the questions got him to be quite flustered on how personal it was. Every now and then he would also ask Leia a question and she would either give a one worded answer or act like she didn't hear him. Neither of the two men could quite figure out why that was, but kept trying to keep her involved for as long as possible.

"So Leia," Anakin asked in between one of Luke's questions, "what is it that got you to join up with the rebel alliance?" He looked at her expectantly.

She stared at him for a few seconds, "I believed the Empire to be wrong and unjust, the senate is only a farce and I want to see that changed to give the people a voice once again," she said. Luke looked at her with great admiration in his eyes as she explained her, what he saw as, "noble" reasons. Anakin just smiled whimsically and shook his head in nostalgia.

"Just like Padmé was then, it's almost scary how much you two are alike," Anakin said softly.

"I'm like my mother?" Leia was surprised a bit when he said that, but couldn't help but feel a bit pleased by that.

"Yeah, almost an exact copy of her actually, your eyes are different though, and you are bit less patient than her, but you probably got that from me though."

"... I'm sorry but it's just a bit to take in that you're my father and it's a bit strange to think of you that way when you don't look much older than us. I'm sorry if my attitude made you uncomfortable," Leia suddenly explained.

"Eh! That's all!? I thought you were angry that I wasn't there for the both of you," Anakin was both relieved and confused at her sudden confession.

"Why would we be angry about that? It's not like it was your fault, was it?" Luke asked a bit nervously.

"No! I would never have done that willingly!" Anakin shouted.

"Then what happened?" questioned Leia.

"Shortly before the fall of the republic, Chanc- Emperor Palpatine had called me to his chambers. At the time he was my closest confidant. I told him everything, even visions I kept having of seeing Padmé die over and over again. When I arrived, he told me a way to save someone's life with the force, and if one was strong enough, to bring them back to life. I asked how he knew of this and he told me that his master taught him. It was then that I figured that he was the Sith Lord the Jedi Order had spent years looking for," Anakin seemed to hesitate on whether to continue or not. "Please try and understand before I continue," he pleaded to them, "I loved your mother, more than anything and I would do anything for her."

The twins shared a look of confusion as they did not quite understand what their father was trying to get at. "We understand, but why do you say that? Does it have to do with why the republic fell?" Luke asked.

Anakin's face seemed to cringe up in pain and regret, "Yes, it does. I left him after I had figured it all out, but I didn't inform anybody at first. I actually considered taking him up on his offer if only to save her," he finished the end in a near whisper. "But Padmé never would have forgiven me if I had done that and I never wanted her to ever be sad or angry. So in the end, I went to the Jedi Council and informed Master Mace Windu all that I had learned, but even then I had done it to late for Palpatine had set a trap for them with him and his apprentice lying in ambush for their arrival. I even went to go help them but only one of the three masters that went to kill him were still alive." He paused in his story at this. "Well, things happened after that and I ended up imprisoned for twenty years and Master Windu was executed," he finished.

They were all silent after he finished for a few minutes and the silence started to become unbearable between them all. Luckily for them a person suddenly came into the mess hall, yelling for the princess, "Leia! The Admiral needs to speak to you about some of the intel you gathered on the Death Star. There has been a unexpected development." The man was fairly tall, standing a bit taller than Anakin would if he was currently standing. But the thing that caught both Luke's and Anakin's attention was his shocking silver hair that was tied into a braid behind his back. He wore the standard uniform and his rank tag on his collar claimed him as a lowly private.

Leia stood up and it seemed as if her entire person had changed as she squared her shoulders up, her eyes contained a icy hardness in them, and she adopted an expression of utter seriousness. "Understood Private..."

"Cheshire maam. I am Private Cheshire of the Special Ops Corps," he stated.

"A private in a Special Ops Corps? How did that happen?" Anakin asked.

Cheshire seemed to smile at him in embarrassment, "I've only joined up a week ago but do to some special talents, I was immediately placed in the Special Ops," he explained.

Leia waved a hand at him in dismissal before turning towards her new found family, "I'm sorry but we'll have to continue this later, you can ask Master Kenobi on where you two can get a spare room." With that said she immediately took off after the direction.

Luke looked at his father in worry and hesitation for a minute after she left and opened his mouth to speak up, "So you want to go find out what's going on?" Anakin asked with a mischievous smirk on his lips. Luke looked at him in disbelief.

"Won't they get mad at us?" he questioned nervously.

"Probably, but it's Snip's and Obi-Wan's fault for trying to leave me out of this. They should have known better."

"Who's Snips?"

"Hm? Oh, that's what I called Ahsoka when she was my padawan back in the day. Come on, let's go before she gets to far ahead." He immediately headed into the same direction he saw his daughter head off to. Luke reluctantly followed after him still not sure if they should be trying to eavesdrop on them. After a minute of going down the maze of never ending corridors, Anakin suddenly stopped at an intersection and motioned with his hand to Luke to keep quiet.

Anakin then reached down and used his lightsaber to open up an air vent that had escaped Luke's notice. "What are you doing?" Luke whispered.

"Well they probably stationed guards outside the meeting room so we have to do this the old fashioned way, by sneaking through the vents," he explained with an excited grin on his face.

"This feels like something out of a cheesy holo-movie though," Luke complained despite crawling after his father.

"Really? I never really had time to watch them but they had good taste," Anakin said.

"That's not the poi-"

"Shhh! They're below us, just be quiet and listen," he cut off.

Down below, through the vent's opening, they could see Leia, Obi-Wan, a Mon Calamari, Ahsoka with her apprentice and a few other people surrounding a holo-projection of a giant spherical base. They seemed to be arguing over something that the father-son duo had missed as the Mon Calamari said, "We can't follow through with the operation without taking care of it first! It will simply cost too many unnecessary casualties!"

"But we don't have time to take it out before attacking the Death Star, our spies reported that freeing their prisoner has put them into an extremely cautious state of emergency and is preparing their entire fleet before coming here. We cannot take on their entire fleet at once and come out victorious!" Leia retorted, getting impatient.

"Calm down your highness," Ahsoka instructed. "Arguing won't resolve anything, we merely need to look at this from a fresh perspective of someone who has more military experience on the battle field than all of us," she said turning to look at Obi-Wan.

Both the admiral and the princess turned to the old man as one and the admiral asked, "Well general Kenobi? Do you have any solutions?"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and let out a sigh, "Unfortunately, she is not talking about me, I was mostly a voice of peace, trying to talk our problems out more often than not during the Clone Wars. She is referring to the newly freed prisoner that we managed to find."

"Really? What combat experience does this prisoner have that you do not possess?" the admiral inquired.

Up in the vents, Luke looked at his father, admiration shining in his eyes as he looked at his father, "Really? You have more experience than Ben?"

"Yeah, I was a bit more. . . aggressive than Master Kenobi," Anakin replied.

"Why don't we ask him ourselves admiral? Well Anakin, you can stop hiding now. I mean seriously, did you think that I would forget that you are the incarnation of all cheesy holo-movies?" Obi-Wan said aloud, much to the confusion and surprise of all but Ahsoka.

"Oh yeah, I thought I was forgetting something when I called this meeting. Sky guy hates being left out of the loop."

Everyone then heard a loud thump coming from above and they all looked up to the ceiling to see Anakin and Luke looking through the vent and down on them all. "Well there goes me thinking I could pull one over on you old man." Anakin sighed. He then moved out of everyone's sight for a second and kicked open the vent, causing it to swing out on its hinges and dropped down through the newly created opening followed shortly by Luke. "Sorry, I didn't hear the begging of what was going on, care to fill me in Ahsoka?" he asked his former padawan.

Without batting an eye she walked closer to the holo-table and pressed some of the buttons, bringing up the picture of Darth Miran stepping onto a landing platform. "Darth Miran has been seen on Felucia near a military base that was previously regarded with little importance. Though it was strange that they would have a base seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We now know that Darth Miran has been training a team of assassins that has been code named Cait Sith."

"What does this have to do with the stalling of launching an attack on the Death Star?" Luke asked.

"I was getting to that. Our spy stationed there has overheard Darth Miran ordering the assault and destruction of our base here on Yavin 4 when we launch our forces at the Death Star. Since the operation will require most of our fire power, the base will be left mostly defenseless, making it a perfect time to destroy it," she explained.

"So it's safe to assume that we have a group of Ventress wannabes that we know nothing about?" Anakin asked, looking for confirmation from the only people who knew who Dooku's assassin was.

"Yeah pretty much," Obi-Wan confirmed.

"Well we do know that one of the Cait Sith has been tasked with attempting to infiltrate our base, we have the Special Ops team working on interrogating every new recruit this past week." Ahsoka added.

Anakin rested his chin in his hand as he began to muse aloud, "So we can't attack the Death Star without a large attack force, and we can't pull to many forces away from the base here because it's the main base of the Rebel Alliance and houses all the information and data on rebel bases and spies located elsewhere so the Cait Sith can't be allowed to get their hands on it or the entire alliance will immediately fall to pieces. We could send a small stealth force to destroy the Death Star from the inside? No, they know we plan on destroying so they would be on high alert. We could go to Felucia and try to eliminate the assassin's there but that would give them time to move the Death Star to a safer position and strengthen their position. Even then, we might not get all of the assassins. Hmmm, what to do? What to do?" he said now tapping his finger on his chin.

A sudden gleam entered his eyes as he looked at the surrounding rebels. "Begin to transfer all sensitive data onto an exterior holocron, and then delete all the data stored here. Next we need to make sure that the Death Star doesn't get any reinforcements, so order your spies stationed at harbors to set explosives on the cooling systems on one of their Ships and then get them extracted back here. That will stall the majority of their fleet for a while. We will need to send a small cruiser over to Felucia led by the Special Ops to remove the Cait Sith. While all of that goes on, we need to move locations, somewhere where the empire doesn't pay much attention to. Once all the data has been moved there, have the fleet group up three systems over form the current location of the Death Star and have them remain on standby. We can work any problems left from there. Any questions?" he asked the stunned rebels who were all staring at him.

Ahsoka cleared her throat before speaking up, "You heard him boys, get moving! Galen, go inform the Special Ops to prepare for an emergency raid, you will be joining them for it as well so you too should prepare yourself."

All of the rebels began to move in hurried movements and Galen bowed before heading off to do as instructed. Obi-Wan walked over to Anakin, "and what will you be up to in this busy week, I assume you have a way to keep yourself busy?"

Anakin smirked before draping an arm over his children, "I'm going to be doing some family bonding of course!" causing Luke to smile proudly, Leia to roll her eyes, and Ahsoka laugh out loud.

"And will you be doing it the same way as you bonded with Rex and the 501st back in the day?" she asked.

"Of course!"

Leia looked at her father and brother in extreme annoyance, "Is this what you meant by family bonding?"

"Of course," came Anakin's muffled replied before he came out from underneath an ancient, yellow interceptor with a wrench in hand. He was currently working on fixing the ship he and R2 used to use during the war against the Separatists.

"What's the problem Leia?" Luke asked from his position of working on the comms relay near the hatch.

"You two are the only ones who are the mechanics here, I would just get in the way," she retorted.

"Maybe, but you can still help us out while telling us about yourself. Same for you Luke, you can tell us about your time with Owen." Anakin shrugged carelessly at Leia. Leia merely sighed before taking a seat on top of a nearby crate and positioned the tool box close to her so she could hand the young men the tools at their request and they each began to tell about their times while they grew up. Unknown to the twins, Anakin already knew most of what they were telling since he saw most of their memories during his time recuperating from the Carbonite's effect on the Millennium Falcon. But he still smiled as he listened to his children, sometimes telling them about Padmé and his strange adventures with her, but mostly he just listened to the two of them.

AN: Sorry it took so long to write this, I am not good at writing quickly and I sometimes work on other stories of mine. I hope this meets all of your standards and expectations. Don't forget to review and favorite. Until next time
-LF