Chapter 23 - The Twin Bond

Anakin had another quiet day ahead of him. There were no battles to plan or Sithspawn, yuck, to fight most days anymore. And every time he came up with a good plan to cause a little ruckus for the empire and it's minions, double yuck, Obi-Wan threw it out.

"It's not good to draw attention to our system," he'd say, or the old fashioned, "If you get caught, I won't be able to bail you out this time." But then at times, when Anakin felt his plan was especially good, and the risks minimal, all Obi-Wan would do is give him a cold stare. Don't you dare! Communicated wordlessly.

And so Anakin was preparing for another quiet day. Of course he did have a few things on his to do list. Nothing really exciting, of course, but such is the life of a married man.

"Obi-Wan, Yoda, welcome," He heard Padme say as she opened their door. "Come in, Anakin is in the garage. I've got stuff to do, but breakfast is on the table, help yourselves."

"Hello Anakin. Keeping yourself busy, I see," Obi-Wan greeted, walking into the garage.

"Yeah, you know how 3-PO is always complaining, how he 'isn't made for babysitting duties.' Well, I think he might be right. I Just pulled this out from his voice-box." Anakin held out a toy.

"Ooh, don't tell him that. You'd never hear the end of it." Obi-Wan warned.

Anakin laughed. "Of course not. Say, I was thinking." Obi-Wan's eyes went wide with worry. Rarely does anything go well when Anakin starts thinking. "There's a group of First Order Goonies visiting Jabba the Hutt again. What if I broke in and messed with their shuttles. I'll do it so they don't notice anything's wrong until they're a good while away from Tatooine. I've been practicing with the old ship parts we've salvaged, and I've got it down to less than ten minutes."

Obi-Wan put on his serious face, as he seemed to be planning how to say no.

Then Padme walked through the garage. She picked up something from inside the speeder, then turned to kiss Anakin. "Goodbye, and don't you dare go anywhere near Jabba's Palace." Her eyes became serious. Anakin opened his mouth to protest, but she spoke first. "Don't, or I'm telling your mother." Anakin shut his mouth and pouted. She turned, having won her battle, and left. "I'm going to Anchorhead with Beru today. I'll see you before dinner," they heard her call out.

Anakin turned and saw a look of pure amusement on Obi-Wan's face. "What?"

Obi-Wan's eyebrows rose. "Just committing it to memory. Threatening to tell your mother, I never thought of that." He laughed.

"Much trouble for the council, it would have saved," Yoda chuckled from the doorway. He was holding a slice of toast.

Anakin looked crossly at them both. "Yeah, well I'm a good son. What brings you here anyways?"

Obi-Wan's breath caught. "I was wondering If I could ask you a favor," he started slowly. "You know I've been volunteering to host Yoda for most of his stays on Tatooine. Well, today Satine is coming out, and I was wondering if you'd take him."

Anakin smiled. "Ah, I see." He leaned closer to Obi-Wan and whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "You know I could watch Ella-Reese too. Give you two some alone time together."

Obi-Wan put on his serious not kidding face. "That won't be necessary. She's just coming to see Ella-Reese. We've been talking, that's all."

Anakin returned it with his best impression of Obi-Wan's own skeptical face, raised eyebrows and all. "Alright. If you say so, Master. Come this way, Master Yoda. I'll get you set up in the guest room."


That afternoon, Anakin had gotten the kids settled for their naptime, and Master Yoda was settled on an armchair, prepared to do some long-winded meditation exercises.

Everything was settled, and he went back to his garage to start his next project. The family's speeder had an issue. Not a very big issue, but an annoying one nonetheless. Mainly it was annoying because Anakin didn't know what it was caused by. Earlier attempts to look in the motor or under the ship showed him nothing. But, given that today was one of those rare occasions when Padme didn't need to use the speeder, and he had Master Yoda to babysit the kids, he was going to try again. And he intended to find it, even if he had to take the whole speeder apart.


Anakin had just pulled apart the thermal ventral valve. He had about a third of the ship scattered around him in various stages of disassembly, when he heard a commotion from inside the house.

Leia was crying. Anakin put down his tools and went into daddy-mode. He ran to the children's room and bent down to hug his daughter. "What's wrong sweetheart?"

"Luke." She pointed to an empty bed next to hers and started to cry again. "Luke gone."

"Sh-Sh-Sh," he soothed. "Oh, look. There he is." Anakin pointed to the door where her missing brother was walking in with Master Yoda."

"The refresher, he needed to use," Yoda explained.

"It's okay," Luke walked up to his sister and sent soothing waves to her through the force. "I had an axe-see-dent. And I cwy lots, but Mustard Yoda helped me. I feel better now."

Anakin looked to Yoda and he nodded in confirmation.

Luke, meanwhile, went on with his story. "He told-ed me a funny stowy. Mustard Ran-see-ses had an axe-see-dent too. Only he was on a me-shun. In a room full of dee-plow-mats, they's important people, and when they went to check on him in the wefresher he said 'the Force is a flow'en in here.'" Luke finished his story in a fit of giggles, with Leia joining in.

"Yeah, that's funny bud." Anakin put his son back in bed and stroked Leia's head one last time. "Time to go back to sleep."


When Anakin returned to the living room of the house, he passed by Yoda. "Master Oppo Rancisis is going to kill you. They're three. They can't keep anything to themselves."

"Kill me, maybe he will. Make the youngling stop crying, the story did. Worth it, it was."

"Awe, you softie," Anakin teased.

"A troubling revelation, this brings. Strong the twin bond is. Block it, Though I did. Trouble, it still caused."

Anakin turned to glare at Yoda. "What are you saying! I thought we agreed attachments are not forbidden anymore."

"Not attachment. Bonds I speak of. Strong bonds, your younglings have. Found in many twins, it is. To block the bond, when Luke became distressed I tried. Distressed, she still became."

"Bond? Like between master Obi-Wan and myself. The training bond."

"Yes, different forms of bonds, there are. Developed over time, yours was. From the womb, theirs is." Yoda nodded. "A strength, while this can be. To function independently, they must learn, or a weakness, it will become."

Anakin squinted his eyes as he listened, then sighed. "Alright, I guess I can see it that way. But they're three. They have years to learn this."

"Almost four, they are. Easier to teach now, it will be. Harder and more painful, lessons learned when you're older often are," Yoda said, leaning on his staff.

This got Anakin's attention. "Alright. How do you recommend teaching this?"

"The twins, after their nap we will separate. The bond, we will block. Let them have success at separate tasks, we will," Yoda explained.

"Okay, that sounds like a good idea," said Anakin enthusiastically.


This is not what Anakin pictured. He'd pictured a happy day spent with his daughter. One where he'd teach her all about droids and let her design one. Even though he knew it would be pink and sparkly. She'd help him build it, and they'd enjoy the quality time together. That's what Anakin pictured. This wasn't that.

Luke and Leia became immediately distressed to have their sibling bond blocked, and they became tearful even before the other had left the room.

Anakin held Leia back as Padawan Cal, who was helping Yoda today, picked up Luke and brought him to their speeder. "Come on Luke. You like speeders, don't you. We're going for a ride." Cal found the boy didn't share his enthusiasm.

"Leia honey, Luke is fine. He's spending his day with Yoda and Cal, at the race track. You don't like racing speeders. I thought you'd be happier spending time with me," Anakin tried. Leia's cries were down to a whimper now. She wiped her nose with her sleeve. "We're gonna build a new droid. What color do you think it should be?" Leia's pouty lip showed him how successful that was.

Anakin wanted more than anything to relent, but when he commed Yoda, the old Jedi said, "Adapt, they will. Time, we must give them." And though it pained Anakin, he knew the grandmaster was right. His children needed to learn this sooner or later. And sooner was better than later.

He led Leia into the garage anyway and sat her by his workbench. "I'm gonna show you what our droid is going to do, then we'll start to build it." Anakin launched into a lecture, but pulled out part way through when he realized his audience was staring off into space.

"You make-ed big mess, Daddy. You get in twuble when mom sees." Leia pointed at the big pile of speeder parts, pushed to the side to make room.

"Yeah, I was gonna fix the speeder." Anakin stroked his hair nervously. "But that can wait. Let me worry about mommy."

"You fix squeaky noise?" Leia inquired.

"Squeaky noise? I was gonna fix the rad-a-tat-tat. What squeaky noise?"

Dee Speeder always squeaks. Maybe it's 'cause it's got a rat attacken it," surmised Leia.

"No, a rad-a-tat, you know what, never mind. Young ears, that's what I need. Tell you what. I'm gonna let you color here, while I test out a few parts. When you hear the squeak, let me know."

"Um-hmm." Leia hummed. "I tell you when I hear the rat."

And so Anakin pulled out parts of the speeder and used his tools to activate them. Doing it this way was a time saver because he didn't have to do a complete disassembly to rule out a problem with each system.

"What's that?" Anakin heard a little voice asking him.

"Oh this, it's a dipstick. I use it to see how much oil is in the tank."

"Why?" Leia asked again.

"Because it's always important to make sure you have enough oil in a speeder. Without it, the engine doesn't work properly."

"Oh." And Leia went back to her drawing. A few minutes Later she asked again, "What's that?"

"A Turmbal Crankshaft. Are you interested in this? I thought speeders were boring to you?"

"They are." She said with conviction. "But Luke likes them, so I tought I can teach him 'bout it."

"Okay, well come over here and I'll show you the engine." Anakin wasn't going to let a chance to share his love of anything technical with his daughter slip past him.


"There it is!" Anakin proclaimed. Leia had just finished tightening the last bolt, fixing the part of the speeder that had been producing the squeak. "Now, I've just got to put this part back, and we'll be all…" As Anakin talked he stepped back to grab the last part, and his foot accidentally knocked over an item that was stored in the garage.

Screech. The item scraped against the speeder as it fell, and Anakin winced.

"Oh." Anakin had to remember quickly that there were a pair of young ears nearby, or else he'd of been swearing. "I guess I'm gonna have to paint her too." He pulled out the canister of Bogden Grey paint.

Leia's nose wrinkled and she whined.

"What's the matter? You don't like grey?"

"Dats an ugly color."

Anakin laughed. "What color do you think we should paint it?"

Anakin knew what she'd say. He smiled as his hand went back to the shelf of paints. Leia's finger went up to her chin as she thought long and hard about this decision. "Ummm, Pink!" she announced.

Anakin's face broke into a full out smile as he pulled out the can. "Alright, well, I'll tell mom it was your idea."


The door opened with a bump and an energetic three-year-old ran inside, followed slowly by his worn out chaperones. Luke excitedly ran up to Leia and started talking about his day.

"We sawed a dewback and it was dis large." Luke held his hands out. "And dey even had a little birdie called a Porg. It eat-ed fish, but it no fly. It swim, 'cause it a water bird."

"I thought you guys were going to the race track?" Anakin asked.

"Yes, We did. But settle down, he did not. A petting zoo, they had. And wanted to see the animals, he did." Yoda explained.

"He wouldn't stop talking about how much his sister loved animals," Cal added.

"And I got you dis." Luke proudly held up a stuffie of a porg, which his sister took and hugged.

"We had an ess-citing day too. Me and Daddy fix the speeder, so it no squeak no more. Come see it. We painted it, too, so it's not ugly no more." Leia took Luke's hand and dragged him to the garage to see their family's speeder, now painted bright pink. It even had sparkles of glitter dust, thrown on as the paint dried to add, as Leia put it, "a sparkle of happiness to every trip."

Anakin shook his head and laughed. "You can separate the twins, but you can't separate their hearts."

"What was that?" Cal asked.

"Oh, something Padme likes to say." Anakin smiled fondly.


Anakin was lying in bed, sleeping peacefully after having a wonderfully peaceful day, when he felt it. The tell-tale feeling of having another vision. He was on a ship, and though he didn't recognize it, he knew from what he did see that it was a passenger freighter.

Then as he rounded a turn in the ship, he felt his mind reel with panic and death. He was surrounded by death. As he turned he saw bodies floating around him. The ship was clearly having several technical malfunctions, too. He reached a door and it opened automatically for him. Inside was another chamber, with a single, charred body lying on the floor. Maris Brood. It was Maris, and she was dead!

Anakin woke in a panic, clutching the sheets. A very panicked Padme and Yoda were in the room looking down at him.

"Another vision, did you have?" Yoda asked, when he finally caught his breath.

"Yes, and this was a bad one." Anakin started.


Hello guys,

I am rather proud of this chapter, but I'd love to hear what you think.

I'm rather sorry to anyone reading this for whom English is not their first language. This chapter may be harder to read. The quotes where a three year old is talking are meant to be read phonetically, and include mispronunciations children often make. I don't have an actual three-year-old so I tried my best to make it sound like one.

I also have zero technical skills, in real life and star wars life. But I tried to make the speeder repairs sound realistic.

Next chapter we get to more angst. And I warn you, it won't all end happily. There are some tragedies ahead. But the story will continue. I have plans to take this to the Original Trilogy timeline, and perhaps farther.