Precipice by shadowsong26

Original Author's Note: As a heads up, while it's not particularly graphic (or, at least, I don't think it is?) there is a childbirth scene at the end of this chapter.

Aftermath: Chapter 6

Careful to avoid security cameras and police droids, Obi-Wan led Padmẻ down through her apartment building and out through a convenient service exit. There was a shipyard of questionable integrity not too far away. By himself, he could have reached it in about an hour; with Padmẻ, heavily pregnant as she was, it took about twice as long. Still well within an acceptable timeframe, provided he could sneak them past air traffic control.

It should be Anakin here, he thought, not for the first time. Anakin was, after all, the better pilot-and the reason Obi-Wan knew about this particular shipyard in the first place. He had, as with many other things, pretended not to know that Anakin occasionally snuck down to join in an illegal street race after a particularly stressful day. At least one of those races had left from this particular shipyard; Obi-Wan knew this because he had, once or twice, discreetly followed his apprentice down to the underlevels, to make sure his choices, while questionable, were not actively harmful to himself or anyone else. Still, while Obi-Wan at least knew where he was going and what he was looking for, Anakin would have known the ships and the area much better, enabling a faster selection and cleaner escape.

But Anakin was-still alive, he's still alive-in critical condition on the other side of the galaxy. Obi-Wan's more limited knowledge and abilities would have to suffice.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

The shipyard was, as he had hoped, all but deserted when he and Padmẻ arrived. They skulked around its edges for a while, to confirm that fact and look for a way in. There was only a single, bored-looking Duros on guard duty. We can probably avoid him, at least until we're actually on whatever ship we take, he thought. He could mind trick the guard if necessary, of course, but if he didn't time it right, he might be spotted before he gained control of the situation. Better to avoid a confrontation that might last too long, that might draw witnesses, if at all possible.

Padmẻ nudged his shoulder, pointing at an approximately waist-high hole in the fence. He nodded, eyeing it and stretching out with the Force to detect any signs of a trap. It was conveniently out of the guard's view; all too easy.

But he detected nothing untoward. Whatever had made that hole wasn't a threat to the two of them.

On the other hand…

Perhaps not so easy after all. It was highly unlikely Padmẻ would be able to duck or crawl through, which meant the hole would need to be expanded. Easy enough, with his lightsaber-unless the distinctive hum and light caught someone's attention-the guard's or even just someone walking by.

"Do you have a knife?" he asked her quietly.

She blinked, then nodded, comprehending. "Yeah. Right boot, I can't bend that far."

He crouched down; the blade was right where she said it would be. He removed it with care. "Keep an eye out."

She nodded again and stepped back into the shadows as he ghosted towards the fence, hoping the knife was strong and sharp enough to suit their purposes.

It took thirty seconds of quiet sawing and drew a few sparks that set his teeth on edge, but he managed to cut a hole tall enough for Padmẻ to get through safely without getting caught.

He signaled Padmẻ, stepped aside to allow her room, then ducked through the hole after her, taking in the closest few ships at a glance.

"That one," he said, pointing to a small freighter that didn't look too heavily modified. It would be easier to hotwire if it wasn't particularly idiosyncratic.

She nodded and started towards it.

He followed her, keeping a wary eye out and one hand on the hilt of his lightsaber. The Duros at the gate remained oblivious to their presence, but there was still whoever had cut through the fence before them. And, while he still didn't sense any active threat when he considered it, the question of who or what he might be dealing with left him uneasy.

But that question was, as they arrived at the ship, unexpectedly answered.

Beep!

Padmẻ stopped short. "Artoo?" she hissed.

The little droid wheeled out from under the shadow of the ship Obi-Wan had selected and beeped again softly.

There were several dozen questions, at least, that Obi-Wan wanted to ask the droid-starting with how he had gotten here, not to mention why here, specifically. But, unlike Anakin, he couldn't understand the droid without some sort of text interface; and the longer they stood around, the likelier it was they'd be caught.

Artoo might have come here for the same reason I did-needing an escape route, seeking somewhere familiar. It's more than likely Anakin brought him along on at least one of his escapades. But it doesn't really matter at this point, I suppose. Besides, having him along will hardly hurt us. "Can you unlock this ship?" he asked, instead.

The droid beeped again, in what he assumed was an affirmative, and went back to fiddling with the ship. In mere seconds, the boarding ramp slid open with a faint hiss and an unnervingly loud creaking noise.

"I think our luck's run out," Padmẻ said, glancing towards the shipyard's entrance.

"Get on board, quickly," Obi-Wan said. "Artoo, get the ship started." He positioned himself at the base of the boarding ramp to cover their exit.

None too soon-Padmẻ had just barely disappeared into the ship when the Duros, now no longer bored and armed with a heavy pistol, ran around the corner.

The guard didn't bother yelling, just aimed his blaster and started firing. Obi-Wan deflected the bolts with ease-concealing his identity as a Jedi no longer served any purpose. Barring any major problems with the engines, they would be on their way before any substantive pursuit could be organized. And he highly doubted the Force would have allowed him to choose this ship if that was a significant risk.

"Artoo, close the ramp!" he called, backing along it as he shifted to deflect another volley from the guard.

He almost missed one; it singed the base of his tabards, but he remained unhurt. The ramp sealed shut and the ship rocked into motion.

"Are you all right?" he asked Padmẻ, pausing for half a second to wait for her answer.

"Yes, I'm fine. You?"

He nodded once and continued on to join Artoo in the cramped cockpit.

The droid had, fortunately, found an outlet and plugged himself in, which meant the readouts enabled actual communication. "Any difficulties with air traffic control?" he asked.

\This ship belongs to a small-time smuggler. I am locating their sliced access codes now. Once I have them, we should have no trouble.\

"Good," he said. He strapped himself in-heard Padmẻ do the same behind him-and concentrated on piloting them out between the buildings and into the atmosphere. He did his best to behave as though this were a perfectly ordinary departure, as though they weren't fugitives in a stolen ship, and trusted in Anakin's highly-modified pet droid to get them past security in one piece.

The Force was with them; they made it through the last layer of shields just as an alarm burst across their com channels, containing a fairly accurate, if vague description of Obi-Wan himself-male human, bearded, roughly 1.8 meters tall, mid-thirties, Jedi survivor, kill on sight-and thankfully nothing about Padmẻ .

\Where are we going?\ Artoo asked.

"Polis Massa," he said.

The droid ruminated on that for a moment, seeking the appropriate navigation data and making his calculations for the jump to hyperspace.

"Polis Massa?" Padmẻ asked. "That's...pretty far out."

"Yes," he said. "Senator Organa brought us there before. It's only very tenuously connected to any of us, and there's a... there's a reasonably well-equipped med center."

She looked away, gripping the arms of her chair a little tighter. "Right."

Artoo had finished the calculations, and Obi-Wan pulled the lever to send them into hyperspace, holding his breath in case something went wrong.

Nothing did. He slumped a little in his chair. We did it. We made it. We're clear, at least for now.

Behind him, he heard Padmẻ sigh, and shift a little in her seat. She said nothing, but he could sense that, now that the adrenaline of their escape was wearing off, she had the mental energy to think again. And her thoughts were starting to twist in on themselves, forming a tight, tense spiral of keen distress.

"What exactly did you and Motee decide to do?" He was mostly asking her to distract-well, both of them, if he were completely honest with himself. His own anxiety and grief was feeding off of hers, and vice versa. Best to try and derail the feedback loop before things got too out of hand.

He had guessed at least a portion of their plan, of course. Obviously, the end goal was for Padmẻ 's departure from Coruscant would go unnoticed for as long as possible. And, given that Padmẻ had indicated Motee and Typho would need her ship, they were probably going to lay down a false trail, going anywhere but Polis Massa.

Still, he was somewhat curious about the details. And it would give them something relevant but distracting to discuss.

"She'll give us a few hours' head start," Padmẻ said. She glanced at the ship's chrono. "So... probably about now, or in the next half hour or so, she's going to collapse. Typho will take her home, citing a medical emergency."

He raised an eyebrow. "Coruscant's medical centers are more than adequate. Won't people question why you left at all?"

"Maybe," Padmẻ acknowledged. "But my pregnancy is...at this point, I'm pretty sure it's an open secret, even if no one's said anything to me yet. And it'll have to be made public now. We prepared a couple of...scenarios, so depending on how things...depending on what happens next, we'll upload a set of forged records to a medical droid. Given the circumstances-whatever those end up being-I'm sure people will understand why I wanted to be at home."

"I see." He didn't particularly like the idea of one of the 'scenarios' she had hinted at, but she was probably right to consider all possibilities. Even the unimaginable ones. And the part about her condition being an open secret was almost certainly true. He was hardly an expert on such things, but she was...well, a little obvious at the moment. She'd been dressing carefully to conceal it, but...

"Whatever happens from here," she said quietly, staring out the viewport with one hand on her stomach, "whatever happens from here, I will make sure my child is safe, and I'm free to act."

He nodded. "I'll help, in any way I can," he promised.

She gave him a quick, fierce smile. "Thank you."

He managed a small smile back. "Of course."

She paused for a minute, her smile slipping, and-and now we get to the questions she really wants answered. There was, after all, no longer any excuse to delay the conversation-no more pressing needs, no chance of eavesdroppers to put Anakin at risk.

He took a deep breath to center himself. There is no emotion, there is peace. He sought the detachment he'd need to walk her through Anakin's injuries; to prepare her, as best he could, for what she might find when they arrived, with...somewhat mixed results. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, there is peace.

He opened his mouth to start, but his inner turmoil, despite his best efforts, must have shown on his face, because she held up a hand to stop him, shaking her head. "I'm not-do you have any...any scans, anything written down? I don't...I'm not going to ask you to tell me. That's not...that's just cruel."

"I...oh," he said, far more relieved than he should have been. "Yes, I...I should still have it with me." He'd copied the scans onto a data card before leaving. It accomplished absolutely nothing, except that it made him feel like he was accomplishing something. As if just having the information at his fingertips meant he was doing something to solve the problem, even from a distance. As if knowing exactly what was wrong with Anakin made it easier to set right.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

And there it was, still safe in his pocket. He passed it over to her.

"Thank you," she said, and retreated to find a datapad to read it.

He sank back into his seat, staring bleakly out the viewport at the swirling sky. They were safe in hyperspace now; he didn't need to focus on piloting anymore, and he had-there was far too much on his mind for him to function properly. He'd done rather well so far, but now that he was left with nothing to do…

Master Yoda was right, to send me away, he thought, with no little chagrin at the way he'd initially reacted to the suggestion. I'm in no fit state to confront anyone right now, let alone Palpatine.

Well, the trip to Polis Massa would take several hours. Time enough for him to at least start to put himself back together.

He shifted into a proper meditative posture, closed his eyes, and sought whatever small measure of peace he could.

"Obi-Wan?"

"Mm?"

Time was hard to track in hyperspace under the best of circumstances, but a glance at the ship's chrono showed Obi-Wan that it had been several hours since Padmẻ had left him alone in the cockpit with Artoo.

He'd been-not quite meditating, despite his efforts; but not quite aware, either, of much of anything other than the swirled sky of hyperspace around them. Artoo was doing most of the piloting, so it had been safe to drift for a moment (or, apparently, much longer), and he had needed-something. He wasn't quite sure what he needed, really, other than the ability to turn back time and undo the past few days somehow.

But, as that was, so far as he knew, utterly impossible-there is no ignorance, there is knowledge-and as he had been unable to focus properly, he had settled for drifting aimlessly in his head. He had been, to not put too fine a point on it, hiding in his fog of exhaustion, just close enough to alertness to be able to act if something went wrong, but far enough from it that he didn't have to think.

"What's our ETA?" Padmẻ asked. He wasn't sure exactly when she'd come back into the cockpit; she hadn't brought the datapad with her, but she still looked pale, and had her hands clasped tight, white-knuckled, in front of her. She was full of nervous tension, mixed with something else that he couldn't quite read.

And it wasn't hard to guess why. She'd had more than enough time, he guessed, to read through and fully grasp what was on the scans he'd shared with her. It was one of the many worries he was hiding from, in his comforting fog. "He'll still be…" He trailed off. Anakin was still alive at the moment, he knew that much. He'd devoted a tiny tendril of energy to their bond, monitoring it, making sure it didn't wink out while he wasn't paying attention. But this moment was no guarantee for the next one, or the next. How could he reassure her, when he could barely reassure himself?

"No, I know," she said, though she sounded approximately as certain as he felt. "I just...how much longer?"

A simple question, one that could be answered with raw data, concrete facts. He could handle that. "Of course." He checked the readouts. "Ah, about two hours."

"Right. Okay." She took a deep breath. "We...may have a complication."

Obi-Wan blinked. "What do you mean? Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine, but…" Despite what she said, her voice was tight and he could feel a new spiral of anxiety starting to work its way out of her. She took another shaky breath. "Um. I think the baby is coming. Now."

For half a second, Obi-Wan's world whited out at the edges. Not back into the fog; this was an entirely different sort of non-place. What? No. No, I can't deal with this. I simply cannot take one more thing going wrong and I've barely even been to a creche since I aged out and I have never done this before, and if I do this wrong, if we lose her, too-

But only for half a second. As off-balance as he still was, he had been a Jedi for far too long to let blind panic take over. He tried releasing it into the Force and, when that didn't work, locked it down in a corner of his mind to process properly later and focused on what he could do, immediately, in that moment.

"Right," he said, his voice remarkably steady, he thought, given the circumstances. "What can I do to help? I'm afraid I don't-have much experience in this particular area." Though apparently I'm about to get some. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

"I know," she said. "I know this isn't-um, I've been reading, but I never...I n-never thought it would be like this. I didn't want it to go like this." She was starting to cry. "W-we were...w-we were supposed to go home, a-and h-he was supposed to be there, I don't…I-I don't th-think I can do this alone."

"I know," he said, projecting calm as best he could, when it was all he could do to keep from breaking down himself. "I know, none of this is going how any of us planned. But you're not alone. I know I'm not-I'm not who should be here, but I am. I promise. You're not alone. I'm here, all right?" He rested a hand on her forehead briefly, trying to soothe her without actually sedating her-he had no idea how that would interfere with the...process. And it was all too easy to overdo this sort of thing.

This time, he seemed to gauge it right, taking the edge off the worst of her fear without making her groggy or disoriented.

Then she cried out, stumbling into him.

The next hour and a half were something of a blur. Obi-Wan made decisions based on subtle hints from the Force, and what Padmẻ could relay of her research between contractions. He tried to keep her calm, to ease her pain-though, the way she was screaming told him that that last, at least, was somewhat less than successful.

And then-

"I'm...I'm fairly sure that's a head," he said. "All right? We're close, Padmẻ. Almost there. Almost…"

She cried out again, he felt her push, and then-

Oh. My.

There was an entire tiny human in his hands. An entire very tiny human, slick with blood and the other effluvia of childbirth. The Force sang around him, welcoming the new life; this new, bright and shining entire being that-

"Obi-Wan?" Padmẻ said.

"A boy," he told her. "Your son." Anakin's son. I am holding Anakin's son.

"Luke," she said. "His name's Luke. I was right. I was-"

She tensed again, and the Force surged around him, because-

Oh, dear.

"Padmẻ? Padmẻ, I think-I think there's another one."

And he had nowhere to put Luke while he helped with the child's sibling; he shifted him a little, as gently as he could, and then Padmẻ pushed and…

The second child, the little girl, handled the transition from what was probably a very nice, warm, comfortable, safe place with far less aplomb than her brother. She made her displeasure known with an impossibly loud wail that should not have been able to come from a baby that small.

"Is-" Padmẻ panted.

"A little girl," he told her. He was smiling; despite everything, with these two golden presences in his arms, shining bright through the Force, he felt like he might never stop.

"Leia," she breathed. "I guess we were both right."

"About what?" he asked. "Shh, shh, Leia, it's all right, you're all right…"

"Is something wrong?" Padmẻ asked. "Let me see them-Obi-Wan-"

Oh. Right. He very, very carefully stood up, moving around to stand closer to Padmẻ 's head. "Here they are. They're fine, they're perfectly fine."

"They are," she said. She let out a little choking noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob, and, feather-light, ran a finger down Luke's cheek. "Hi."

Obi-Wan held his breath for half a second, trying to hold on to this island of perfect joy; with his brother's children in his arms and the faint sense of Anakin still alive at the back of his mind. The sheer sense of hope, of life, was almost enough to make him forget the horrors of the past few days, and the darkness that all too likely still lay ahead of them.

But there was still work to be done. Very, very gently, he set the babies down next to their mother. As he cut the cords, an alarm went off in the cockpit, bringing a rather abrupt end to that idyll.

Padmẻ blinked, and tensed a little, briefly distracted from her children at her side. "What's…?"

"We're coming out of hyperspace," he said. "Will you be all right for a moment?"

She nodded, relaxing again.

He hesitated for half a second but-everything he could see or sense indicated that she and the children were fine. And they would be landing at a med center in just a few moments.

"I'll be right back," he promised, then headed for the cockpit to help Artoo bring them safely into Polis Massa.

Original Author's Note: So this chapter ended up way longer than I thought it would-I thought about splitting it into two, and there is a breakpoint I could have used, but I wanted the happy at the end to go up this week. Obi-Wan is just very...wordy.

Also, a couple people asked about Yoda after last week's update. Just wanted to let you guys know that I'm not going to show his duel with Palpatine, because it goes pretty much exactly the same as it does in canon.

Thanks so much for sticking with me this far! ~shadowsong