Anakin lay back on the bed, experimentally flexing and relaxing the muscles of what body he had left. Dr Chrysanthemum had talked him through some physiotherapy exercises, left a set of flimsies giving instructions on what he needed to practise daily and what he could try if it wasn't too painful (what did she know of pain, he had snapped, and received a quelling, 'Enough to know that it's your body's way of telling you when you're trying to do too much, too soon,'), and discussed them with Konstantine when he and the fluffy black kit returned from their excursion. Konstantine had nodded briskly, the reliable trooper taking orders from his commanding officer.
So, apparently Konstantine was willing to go on looking after him here, at least for the time being. Nevertheless, Anakin could sense his anxiety – and Severus's resentment and distrust. The kit came in to check on him several times an hour, but with as much fear and hatred showing in his presence as if he half expected Anakin to use the Force to slam the door on his tail.
He couldn't blame the kit. Severus was just behaving the way any normal person would around a Sith lord. What was abnormal was the way that everyone else – Konstantine, and Cheiron, and the cloned doctors – were just treating Anakin like a normal patient. There had been one awkward moment, when Dr Rowan had been explaining to him about the procedures for growing new limbs and why they preferred to grow and transplant them one at a time rather than all in one go, and he had said rather peremptorily, 'Do the left arm first. Then the legs,' and Rowan had looked at him coolly and said, 'We're not slaves now, you know.'
That 'now' had been the kicker, reminding him sharply that Rowan and her family, like him, had been born into slavery. If 'born' was even the right word, with clones. But when he had apologised, she – unlike Severus – had accepted his apology, and they had had quite an interesting conversation about clone rights.
Apparently, in Rowan's universe, cloning was normal, mainstream technology – the first artificially cloned mammals, farm animals, had been created back in Severus's time, before humans had even travelled further in space than their home planet's moon, before they had developed faster-than-light travel, and certainly long before they had invented uterine replicators. The original clones were created in laboratories, but still had to be gestated and born within a mother animal.
Perhaps that had been why, in Rowan's universe, clones were treated more like normal people than the clone troopers Anakin knew had ever been. On most planets in her universe, clones had the same rights as anyone else; even on planets that had a religious taboo on cloning oneself, a refugee who happened to be a clone would be treated just like any other refugee. On Rowan's home planet, clones could legally exploited and killed not because they were seen as less than sentient, but because the concept of sentient rights didn't exist there. Anakin pictured the place she came from as like a colder, wetter version of Tattooine, less ethnically diverse – apparently, sentient life there consisted of normal humans, genetically modified humans, and a few human/animal mixtures, with no intelligent aliens – but similarly dominated by gangsters and crime lords.
He was looking forward to finding out more. It was one of the most bizarre things about the Rock – people were actually willing to tell him things without being forcibly interrogated. They were actually trying to make him feel at home. Not that anywhere he had lived since parting from his mother when he was nine years old had felt like home. But now, surrounded by strange new people from all kinds of worlds, he felt more like the little boy he had once been, longing to be the first person to explore every star system in the galaxy, than like either a Jedi or a Sith.
Now, as he rested after finishing his lunch, he sensed yet another presence. Not human, he knew that much. The Duronas had said something about a nephew of Cheiron's coming to visit him later that day to discuss new prosthetic limbs to allow him to be mobile until his replacement flesh limbs were ready. Yet he had still been left in bed, not lifted into a hover-chair to be ferried downstairs where a centaur could easily inspect him. And this new presence, while it wasn't human, didn't feel like a centaur, either.
Whoever this visitor was, he could hear Konstantine letting them in. His hearing and eyesight weren't as sharp as they had been before his injury – Rowan had carried out some tests, and seemed quite saddened at the results – but he could make out three sets of footsteps. Konstantine, the other life-form, who moved with a heavy, limping tread, and – he stretched out his Force senses – something that didn't register.
Metal knuckles knocked on the bedroom door. Anakin croaked, 'Enter,' so faintly that he could barely hear himself. Instead, he used the Force to turn the door handle. There was a jovial, masculine chuckle and the words, 'Neat trick!' followed by a mechanical voice retorting, 'He's just showing off!'
Konstantine dutifully announced, 'Hephaestus Son of Hera to see you, General,' and stood back to allow the visitors a clear view of Anakin, while staying close enough that he could easily stab them in the back if they made a wrong move. The figure introduced as Hephaestus looked human, but Anakin sensed that this was only because he chose to appear human at the moment. A changeling, like the assassin Anakin and Obi-Wan had chased through the levels of Coruscant all those years ago. Currently, he took the form of a big, muscular middle-aged man, as tall as Konstantine and broader, with curly black hair and beard, bulging forearms, and thin, twisted legs encased in golden calipers. With one hand, he leaned on a massive, long-shafted hammer which he used as a walking stick, or almost as a crutch. The other rested on –
'A droid?' He hadn't meant to exclaim out loud – kriff, the newness of being here really was making him react to everything like a youngling – but the Rock was so different from anything he knew in his home galaxy that he hadn't expected to have a conversation with a sentient machine ever again.
'I'm not a droid!' exclaimed the golden figure, sounding both indignant and amused. Anakin had to admit that it looked very different from any droid he had encountered back home. He had built C3PO to look more human-like than most of the droids he had seen around Mos Espa, because he wanted the protocol droid to be more like a friend or a member of the family rather than just a machine. But he had never seen a droid who looked realistically – apart from being covered in gold – like a slender, beautiful young woman with cornrow braids, with eyes cut from blue gemstones. He certainly hadn't expected to see a droid wearing a dress – yes, the dress was just part of the panelling covering the workings, but it was low-cut enough to show a moderate amount of cleavage.
'What are you, then?' If the being were a cyborg, he would be able to detect a presence, if only of a brain encased in a metal skull.
'I'm a 'noid, of course! Short for gynoid, which means "like a woman", because Hephaestus built us to look like his first wife, just after his divorce came through! My preferred pronouns are she/her, and if you get it wrong, I'll be very annoyed indeed!'
'"Us"? There is another?'
'Yeah, Wonder used to look like me, but they didn't like this shape, so they rebuilt their body to look less feminine. They're a 'poid, short for anthropoid, which means "like a person".'
'Sparky, that's a bit of an info-dump for a first meeting,' said the big man.
'No, it's not! He needs to know what to call us, if we're going to be coming in to look after him!'
'She is welcome to talk,' said Anakin magnanimously. 'So – your master created you and your fellow – poid – as replacements for his wife?'
'We're not slaves! Hephaestus is like – our dad. And we're not replacements for Aphrodite, that'd be gross! We just look like her – well, I do, and Wonder did to start with. No, we just work with Hephaestus, in the forge.'
'And besides, I'm a happily married god,' said Hephaestus. 'Charis and I celebrated our three-thousandth anniversary a few years back. I was only with Aphrodite a couple of hundred years, and it never really worked out, but that's the relationship everyone goes on about.'
Anakin didn't feel like talking with a humanoid about relationships. He focused his attention on Sparky. 'I had a good friend who was an astromech droid, once,' he said. 'When I still had friends.'
'What was he like?'
'A true hero. Clever and resourceful, brave and indomitable, and stubborn and insubordinate, and so expressive that even people who couldn't understand what he was saying had a good idea what he meant.'
'Is he still alive?'
'Yes. He is with my son, now. And, probably more importantly, with another droid whom he loves very deeply.' Anakin had never wanted to ask Artoo what he and Threepio did in private, but he was fairly sure that the relationship wasn't limited to Threepio being Artoo's translator any more than he, Anakin, had been simply Padme's bodyguard.
'It's good to meet you, Anakin Son of Shmi,' said Hephaestus warmly. 'Uncle Cheiron told me quite a bit about you. And I'm glad you get on well with Sparky. Some people take a while to get used to her.'
'Some people expect droids – and even noids and poids,' Anakin added, as Sparky cast a sharp glance at him, 'not to be people.' Konstantine, silently watching the conversation, didn't seem any too comfortable with Sparky's presence, for a start. Yet he was from a spacefaring universe – his ancestors must have sent droids to explore newly discovered planets long before they sent anyone who needed to breathe. Anakin didn't recall seeing any droids in the memories that Konstantine had shown him, but they must be around somewhere, surely?
'Cheiron sent me to discuss your new prostheses,' Hephaestus went on. 'I've got some pictures of designs I can show you.' He removed a hand from Sparky's shoulder to reach into a fold of his robe, trying not to stagger as his legs took his weight, but Anakin could sense his pain. Why hadn't Hephaestus replaced his own legs with some sturdy cybernetic limbs, instead of just using calipers?
'My hover-chair is free, if you wish to sit down,' said Anakin. 'Since my housemate forgot to fetch a chair,' he added nastily. He could sense traces of guilt in Konstantine's mind – after all, Konstantine was used to being around disabled people, and wouldn't have neglected Hephaestus's comfort if Hephaestus had been someone he liked and trusted. But at the moment, he was wary, refusing to leave anyone unattended with Anakin. From the feel of his emotions, it wasn't that he had a grudge against Hephaestus or Sparky, but simply that he hadn't met them before and was suspicious of anyone he didn't know well. But if he didn't trust Cheiron's nephew, whom Cheiron had sent to help Anakin, why let him in at all?
'You don't like robots, do you?' demanded Sparky, turning to the guard.
'No,' growled Konstantine.
'That's okay. I don't like rude, grumpy, ugly humans, either. But Cheiron asked Wonder and me to offer to come here and help you look after Anakin, as you're having trouble with your wizard. So unless you want to lift Anakin in and out of the bath by yourself, you can get used to us.'
Konstantine said nothing, but his presence was a roil of distrust, revulsion and fear.
'What is wrong with her being a – robot?' demanded Anakin.
Konstantine couldn't bring himself to speak out loud, but his mind broadcast the message to Anakin: It isn't a 'she'. It's a thing pretending to be a woman. It's like a hallucination, only solid.
'Droids – robots – are ideas made solid,' said Anakin. 'That does not mean they are not people. I…' he wondered why he was saying this, when Konstantine had watched holos about his life and probably knew it anyway, but somehow the Force insisted that this was the right thing to say – 'I had no father. As a child, I never thought about it – most of my friends were slaves, like me, and most of them did not know who their fathers were. But my mother told me that I truly had no father – that I had been conceived in some way that she could not understand. When I was older, I learned of a powerful Sith who discovered a way to create life. So it is possible that I was conceived by one of his experiments. But I am nonetheless a person. And so is Sparky.'
Konstantine's face remained as blank and hard as ever, but Anakin could sense his consciousness rippling thoughtfully underneath, as if there was something he was wondering whether to confess. It was so near the surface that it wouldn't be hard to probe into his thoughts to find out what it was that he wasn't saying – no, NO! He had promised not to do that.
