This is an extra long chapter to hopefully make up for the long delay! Thanks again for your reviews! And to the ANONYMOUS reviewer who basically told me how boring the story is because nothing is really happening, there is a simple solution. Don't read it! This is a character study, not an action-filled story, which is something I made clear at the outset. Anyway, after this chapter, we will jump ahead to the ANH timeframe and into the final section of the story.
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Luke and Leia sat down in the rocking chairs while Obi-Wan and Padmė sat across from them on their own bed. The siblings glanced nervously at each other, knowing that this was going to be a heavy conversation. It didn't help that their father had tightened his shields to the point where they could barely sense what he was feeling.
Grabbing hold of Obi-Wan's hand, Padmė readied herself for the conversation she had been dreading for fourteen years. "We have something we need to tell you. We both agreed many years ago that we would wait until we felt you were emotionally mature enough to handle it."
Leia took a cue from her parents and grabbed her brother's hand. She had the feeling they would need each other's support. Luke squeezed her hand gently before focusing again on his parents and their news.
"Fifteen years ago, before the creation of the Empire, I was married to someone named Anakin Skywalker." Padmė paused as her children shared shocked expressions. "He was a Jedi Knight."
"But I thought the old Order forbid attachments?" Luke's confusion was evident.
"It did. Anakin Skywalker and I married each other a few years before in secret. We both knowingly and willingly broke rules, vows, and trust..." Padmė pointedly looked at Obi-Wan. "...in order to marry and keep it a secret."
This time Leia spoke up. "But weren't you a senator at the time?"
"Yes, I was. I knew about their rules of no attachment, and as a senator I knew the connection between the Jedi Order and the Senate made our relationship a conflict of interest."
"Yet you did it anyway," Leia sounded accusing. The teen knew she was destined for a political leadership role, and her sense of duty and honor was already deep. She had always seen her mother as a role model in that regard, but knowing this...
Padmė sighed. "Yes, I did it anyway. It was wrong of me in so many ways. But I dived in thinking I was in love, and that love would conquer all."
Luke's brow creased. "Thinking you were in love?"
"Yes. It turns out it wasn't love. At least, not the kind needed for a happy, successful marriage. By the time I figured this out, it was too late to do anything about it. Anakin would not have taken the news well, to put it mildly. I knew if I asked him for a divorce, it would have sent him over the edge."
"But he was a Jedi!" Luke again sounded confused.
Obi-Wan squeezed his wife's hand to let her know he would handle this issue. "Anakin was not your typical Jedi. Believe me, I know. I was the one who trained him." He and Padmė had agreed to make no mention of Anakin being the Chosen One or what that meant. It had been a major mistake on Qui-Gon's part to tell Anakin, and he would not place that burden on the heads of Anakin's children – on HIS children.
"Anakin was very strong in the Force. Anyone being trained in the Temple normally came as an infant, or at most a toddler. Anakin was nine years old, and a slave, when he was discovered. It was thought by some that this would make him too set in his ways, too filled with anger or fear to be properly trained. It was thought by others that it would be wrong to let that kind of potential go untrained. Due to certain circumstances, the latter group ended up winning the argument."
"Again, due to circumstances, his mastership was conferred on me, despite the fact that I was a brand new Knight. Despite a rather rocky start, we grew to be very close. I threw myself completely into his training, my duty to him second only to my duty to the Jedi Order and the Force Itself. He was knighted rather early, mainly because of the Clone Wars and our growing shortage of Knights and Masters able to fight it. Even then, and despite everything I tried to teach him, he had a hard time reigning in his emotions. And he had the kind of emotional attachments that are dangerous for a Jedi."
Leia gazed at him with her large dark eyes. "What kind are those, Daddy?"
"The kind where you are unwilling to lose the person you are attached to, no matter the cost. The kind where you place the welfare of that one person for whom you feel the attachment over the greater good, over your duty."
"Oh."
"I was one of those attachments," Padmė stepped back into the conversation. "I knew he was absolutely unwilling to lose me, no matter what. Anakin was deeply affected by the death of his mother, another of his attachments, and more and more affected by the Clone Wars. He had become an unhappy, easily angered young man. That was why I couldn't ask for a divorce, despite the fact that I didn't love him as I should have, despite the fact that I had fallen completely and helplessly in love with someone else." She looked over at Obi-Wan with shining eyes.
Luke looked over at his dad with horror. "Dad?" Did his father have an adulterous affair with his mother and get her pregnant? His father was the epitome of everything he wanted to be – his living example of the ultimate Jedi. He couldn't imagine his father having so little honor!
"No, no!" Padmė knew what her son was thinking. "It wasn't like that at all! Obi-Wan never broke his vows of non-attachment, or any vow he ever made. And he didn't know Anakin and I were married. Obi-Wan and I became very good friends, even grew to love each other very much, but it didn't go beyond that. I was never physically unfaithful to Anakin."
Taking a deep breath, Padmė continued. "I was stuck in an unhappy marriage and unable to be with the man I truly loved, so I decided that if Anakin and I were to become parents, maybe at least we could find some happiness together in that."
Both siblings inhaled sharply, gazes flitting rapidly between their two parents. Luke was the first to vocalize the dawning realization of what they were being told. "Are you saying...you mean that you aren't..." he gestured to Obi-Wan.
"Yes, Luke," Obi-Wan spoke quietly. "That's what we're saying."
Leia released her brother's hand and held on to the arms of her rocking chair in a white-knuckled grip. Her whole world shattering, she gazed over at the man who had always meant the galaxy to her. Tears pooled in her chocolate eyes. "You're not my Daddy?"
As difficult as he knew this was going to be, Obi-Wan couldn't have imagined the devastation packed into that one question from his little girl. "Leia..."
"NO!" Leia shot out of her chair, knocking it against the wall. "No!" She ran out of the room sobbing.
Obi-Wan immediately moved to follow her, but was stopped by his wife's hand gripping his wrist. "No, Love. Let her go. She's too emotional to think rationally or hear what you have to say. Give her some time." Obi-Wan sat back down, knowing Padmė was right.
Obi-Wan swallowed down the knot of grief in his throat and looked over at his son – for he would never think of Luke as anything but his true son. "Luke?"
Luke was obviously trying to process everything. "Dad, I..." His voice broke. The man across from him WASN'T his dad! He put his face in his hands, trying to hide the devastation found there. He steadied himself by taking several deep, slow breaths. Then doing as he had been trained, he worked to release his roiling emotions into the Force.
Obi-Wan may not be his blood father, but he had always been his dad. Luke knew deep down that would never change. What he wanted now was answers to the hundreds of questions flooding his head.
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A couple of days later, Obi-Wan was doing some katas to calm him and focus more on the Force. He had kept his distance from Luke and Leia, giving them the time to come to grips with what they had been told. Luke had handled the news in a way that made Obi-Wan extremely proud. After asking many questions about his blood father and about the circumstances that led them all to be here as a family, Luke had gone into a thoughtful seclusion.
Leia, on the other hand, had gone into complete hiding. She had shunned contact with everyone except Jobal, and that was only an acceptance of food periodically. Obi-Wan was worried about her. She was like Anakin quite a bit in her emotional makeup. And like Anakin, she had made him her entire foundation. Now that foundation had crumbled, and he had fallen from the lofty pedestal on which she had placed him.
As Obi-Wan went through the movements of his kata, he pushed aside his worries. He simply hoped that the day would come when his relationship with Luke and Leia would resemble what it had been before.
Entering the final stage of the kata, Obi-Wan sensed Luke as he came into the training room. He came out of the final movement barely even breathing hard. One thing seclusion at this hidden base had afforded was plenty of time to keep himself in top physical shape.
Obi-Wan smiled tentatively. "Hi."
"Hi." Luke moved toward the center of the room where Obi-Wan stood. "I've had a long conversation with Mom. I wanted to really understand things from her perspective. And I meditated a long time on what I've learned."
Not wanting to interrupt Luke's train of thought, or lead the conversation in any way, Obi-Wan waited patiently for his son to express his thoughts.
"Anakin Skywalker may have been my blood father, but you are my dad. In all the ways that are important. You are the one who picked me up and comforted me when I fell and scraped my knee as a toddler. You are the one who always took time to be alone with me and make me feel special and loved. You are the one who is my example of what it means to be a Jedi, a loving husband and father, and an honorable man."
Luke saw the tears welling up in his dad's eyes – saw the depths of the man's love and relief shining in them. He threw his arms around his dad, knowing that things would be alright. As he grew older, they would become more and more a team – a solid partnership that would change the destiny of a galaxy. He didn't know how he knew that, but he did.
Obi-Wan hugged his son as though his life depended on it. He loved the boy dearly, and felt a sense of inevitability and purpose in their future together. After several moments, he finally pulled back. He gazed into his son's face, wiping away the tear tracks found there. "I love you, Luke. Please don't ever doubt that. I couldn't possibly love you anymore if you were my blood son."
"I know that, Dad. I love you, too." Luke's look turned hesitant. "I hope you don't mind that I want to learn all I can about Anakin. I know he wasn't exactly a role model, but..."
Obi-Wan quieted his son with a finger. "It's is only natural that you would want to know about the man who fathered you. Don't ever hesitate to ask me or your mother about him. Despite everything that happened, I still love Anakin as the brother and best friend he was before he turned."
"Thanks, Dad."
Obi-Wan slung his arm around Luke's shoulder. "We better make our way to the dining hall before your mother gets grumpy and hails us over the intercom."
Luke laughed. It was something that had happened to them several times before. "Yes, we better." He smiled up at his dad as they made their way out of the training room.
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Leia huddled between a couple of bushes in the meditation garden, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
"Disappeared I thought you had."
Leia jumped, not having heard or felt the ancient Master's approach. "I would prefer to be alone, Master."
"Alone for two days you have been, Young One."
"I need time to think."
"Thinking you are not. Brooding you are." Yoda settled himself on the grass beside Leia. "Taught you have been on how to handle turmoil."
"Turmoil is an understatement!" Leia huffed out her breath in anger. "I found out the man I thought was my father has been lying to me my entire life!"
"Lied to you Obi-Wan never has. Love you he does. Think you do that love is merely a matter of blood?"
Leia stubbornly didn't answer that. "A lie of omission is still a lie."
"Decided from the first your parents did to tell you when ready they felt you were. See I do that misjudge your readiness they did."
Leia's head popped up at that. "What do you mean?"
"Handling this maturely you are not."
Looking into those wise, too-knowing eyes made a flush of shame creep up Leia's face. She turned her head away, as though trying to hide her reaction. She heard the old master sigh.
"Judge the situation rationally you cannot, if know all the facts you do not." Settling in for a long conversation, Yoda told Leia Obi-Wan and Anakin's story.
By the time Yoda was finishing up his tale, Leia was not only listening intently, but was asking probing questions. "So Anakin turned his back on everything he was ever taught, the Order that took him in, and the one person who always believed in him and trusted him?"
"Hmmm." Yoda nodded. "Very cunning and persuasive the Dark Side is. All the right things Darth Sidious said to Anakin. Preyed he did on Anakin's fear of losing your mother. Arranged Sidious did for Obi-Wan to be called away from Anakin. His anchor, Obi-Wan was – his tether to the Light. Turned he would not have if by his side Obi-Wan had been."
"But in that was his downfall," Yoda pointed his claw at Leia.
"Why do you say that?" Leia couldn't help but be offended on Obi-Wan's behalf.
"Anakin's foundation, his entire belief-system, dependent completely on Obi-Wan it was. Dangerous that is, for when that person is not there, inner strength dwindles. Built within oneself a foundation must be – one built on principles, not on a person."
Yoda looked pointedly at the girl beside him. "Your entire foundation Obi-Wan has been. That's why shattered your world has become by these revelations. Emulate your father in making principles your foundation, not a person, and honor him you will."
"My father..." Leia whispered.
"Your father, Obi-Wan is, in all ways that matter. To love you any more would not be possible. His daughter you are, his daughter you will always remain." Yoda watched as a tear trickled down the lovely girl's face. "Much hurt Obi-Wan has dealt with in his life. Add to it would you?"
"Never!" Leia looked at the tiny Master aghast. Then she looked down again at her hands clasped in her lap. "I mean, not intentionally."
"Hurting him you are by pushing him away, blaming him for not being your flesh and blood."
Leia got up off the ground, a stricken look on her face. Without another word, she ran to find her father.
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Obi-Wan glanced again at the empty spot to his left, where Leia usually sat at the dinner table. Leia had kept her shields tightly closed since that painful conversation. But now, some of her emotions – strong emotions – were leaking through. She was close...
"Daddy?"
Obi-Wan's head turned abruptly at the anguished voice. His Leia was in the doorway to the dining hall, tears streaming down her face. Despite the anguish in her voice, he was thrilled to actually hear the word come from her mouth again. He got up and ran to his daughter and swung her into his arms.
"I'm sorry, Daddy! I didn't mean to hurt you! I love you! You're my Daddy, you'll always be my Daddy!" Leia sobbed into her father's shoulder.
"It's alright, my Princess. I love you, too, very much. I never wanted to hurt you or Luke."
"You didn't! I mean, it wasn't YOU." Leia sniffed, wiping her face with her sleeve. She snuggled back into her father's arms, feeling like she was home again.
Obi-Wan glanced over at the dining table. Padmė and Luke were both crying, and the rest of his children wore looks of utter confusion and worry. Well, he thought, I think we're definitely going to need a family meeting tonight.