Home One

In orbit around Sullust

Blue saber crashed against green and Luke Skywalker, who was holding the green saber, found himself retreating.

It was extraordinary, really, how little size mattered where lightsaber combat was concerned. Leia was more than 10 centimeters shorter than he was, so her arms were shorter, and her reach was shorter, and yet she was holding her own against him with relative ease.

Of course, Yoda could mop the floor with both the Skywalker twins and lift up a random boulder at the same time.

Size matters not.

He realized his sister was pushing him toward the corner of the room, where it would be harder for him to fight, and he decided on a double twisted somersault over her head and...

The Force suddenly lurched cataclysmically, and Luke was so startled that he crashed into the floor, though he did turn off his saber to prevent whacking himself. The beams were at low power, but still strong enough to sting if they hit flesh.

Leia had also turned off her saber and she reached out a slender hand to pull her brother to his feet.

"What was that?" she demanded, her brown eyes wide with confusion.

"I have no idea," Luke replied, just as the door opened and Yoda zoomed in.

Yes, zoomed. The old Jedi made rather a point of looking old and decrepit by stomping around with a supportive stick in his hand. Old he was, certainly, but he was not decrepit. He was, at this moment, bouncing up and down like a Klatooine paddy frog.

"Dead he is!" the old Jedi Master yelped. "Dead dead dead dead dead!"

"Palpatine!" the twins cried out in unison, just as Mon Mothma hurried into the room.

"Palpatine is dead?" she demanded.

"Dead he is!" the green one chortled. "So very dead!"

It took a moment for the leader of the Rebellion to recover, but when she did, she actually laughed and demanded, "Are you entirely certain, Master Yoda?"

"Certain I am," Yoda replied, determined to maintain his weird speech patterns even in the midst of the best news in the last two decades.

"Do you think Vader killed him?" Luke demanded.

Yoda wrinkled his aged green nose and closed his eyes, then said, "Not know do I, but alive Vader is still."

"We should contact our spies on Imperial Center to learn more," Leia suggested.

"An excellent idea, Leia," Mon said.

/

Executor

In hyperspace

Padme Amidala Naberrie Skywalker adjusted the oxygen mask slightly and leaned into her husband's arms.

"Are you well, Padme?" her husband asked softly, his feeble voice so very different from the deep bass of the vocoder.

"Of course I am, Anakin," she replied firmly. Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, reached out an arm and pulled her a little closer, relishing the incredible joy of his own skin against her warmth.

Much of his arm was mechanical, of course, but he had taken off part of his armor, baring his scarred shoulders, and his helmet as well, and he bent forward to plant a gentle kiss on his beloved's hair.

He had been cut off from human contact for so long, so very long, and to have Padme here, in his arms, was more than a dream come true. It was a miracle.

Of course, his lungs, while much improved by the older time traveling version of his twins, were still not strong enough for him to manage without some kind of oxygen support. When he wanted to kiss his wife, he needed to have the mask off, and thus he and Padme would occasionally retreat to new, large, hyperbaric chamber where they could curl up together on a comfortable bed which was specially designed for a petite healthy woman and a severely burned cyborg. Padme had to wear a breathing mask on to prevent oxygen toxicity from the atmosphere, but he hoped that in the near future, with a combination of medical science and Force healing, he would be able to breathe normal air like she did.

It was no surprise to learn that Palpatine had deliberately kept him injured and weak. He had been tinkering with his suit for weeks now, reducing the support it gave. His kidneys, his stomach, his pancreas – they were all far happier than they had been since Mustafar. His time traveling kids had done a lot, and medical science had done a lot, and the combination was awesome.

He still wasn't entirely sure whether, well, whether he would be able to give Padme one of the things she really wanted – more children – but given how many miracles had already occurred, he wouldn't rule it out entirely.

In any case, there was nothing so wonderful as this moment, with Padme close to him...

The Force suddenly screamed and he jerked in surprise, coming perilously close to hitting Padme's forehead. He pulled away and sat up, his eyes squinty with confusion and incredulity.

His wife sat up as well and stared at him in confusion which quickly gave way to terror. "Anakin! What is it? Is it the children? Are they ..."

"They are well," he said, his blue eyes gazing blankly at a random wall. "Palpatine is dead."

A pause.

"Palpatine is dead?" Padme demanded, pulling down her mask. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Padme stared at him in bemusement and repeated, "Are you sure?"

He turned on her, his blue eyes blank, his lower lip sticking out just a little in a pout. "Yes."

"What is wrong, then?" she asked, obviously confused. "Is it ... do you think the children fought and killed him, and now they have to make their way out of Imperial Center, and everyone is hunting them..."

"No, I don't think that," Anakin said. "I think they are safe. But I wanted to kill him!"

Padme blinked.

Anakin blinked back at her. (He had eyelashes now. He was still bald, but he was now growing eyelashes.)

"You can't be serious," Padme said. "Palpatine is dead at someone else's hands and you are pouting?"

Anakin lurched to his feet and when he was certain he would not fall over (he was still adjusting to his new limbs) he said, "I wanted to kill him. Me. He tried to kill you, he lied to me, he enslaved me..."

Padme suppressed a groan, stood up, replaced her mask, and moved forward to wrap her petite arms around his blinky chestplate. "Anakin."

"Yes?" he whispered.

"The kids are safe, we are safe, and Palpatine is dead. That is a good thing."

"I suppose," he muttered truculently.

"Think of it this way—we'll probably be able to see the kids soon."

He sighed and forcibly allowed his disappointment to drift into the Force.

Then he smiled and said, "I can hardly wait."

/

Mos Eisley

Tatooine

Two weeks later

"This place is a total dive," Anakin muttered, pulling his wife a little closer to him.

Padme looked around in interest as she walked past the bar, and then past a band which was making a lot of mostly euphonious noise.

"It is," she agreed absently, but her eyes were flitting from one side to another and he could feel her tense muscles under her long sleeved robe.

"This way," he murmured, and guided his wife toward a booth in the very back of the establishment, near the refreshers and the back exit. It was, he guessed, slightly smelly, but one of the few advantages of his burned body was that his sense of smell was still pathetically pathetic.

Padme was obviously too excited to see her son to bother about weird smells. She slid into the booth and scooted all the way over so that Anakin could jam his body next to her.

The cloaked figure sitting across from them lifted his hands and pushed his hood back, revealing the face of a young man with a cleft chin and blue eyes and dark blond hair.

Padme couldn't help herself. She stood up and threw herself across the rather grimy table and hugged her son, her eyes filled with tears.

"Luke, oh Luke!" she sobbed.

Her son's expression was an interesting mixture of joy, confusion, and minor concern, as he kept one eye on the tall, cloaked figure who was his cyborg father.

"Mother," he murmured, and gently pushed her back into her seat with the Force. "It is so wonderful to finally meet you."

"I too am pleased to see you, Son," Vader murmured, pushing back his own hood. He felt the twinge of curious horror from Luke at the sight; he had an oxygen tube attached to his nostrils, and his face was terribly scarred, and he wore a fuzzy purple hat to cover his bald head and his damaged ears, as he grew cold easily without his helmet on.

Not that he minded jettisoning his helmet. He hated the stupid thing and only wore it now when he needed to intimidate people.

"Father," Luke said, and held out a hand, which Vader took with awestruck care. He had fiddled a great deal with his prosthetics and was able to hold a human hand without crushing it, but he still was very, very careful. He did not want to frighten his child.

"I assume your sister is not here?" Padme asked, having regained control of her emotions.

"That's right," Luke agreed. "She's, um, a little uneasy around Father, for obvious reasons…"

"I understand," Vader said, and he did. He had tortured the daughter of his angel. It was no surprise that Leia hated him.

"So," Luke said in a determined voice, "part of the way I convinced Leia and Rebel High command to let me meet with you was so I could get some information from you."

"I have been speaking to Mon Mothma on a regular basis," Padme pointed out.

"Yes, but while she's awesome, she can't sense the Force and I convinced them that if we met face to face, I would know whether you were telling the truth," Luke said.

Padme and Vader glanced at one another and Vader shifted slightly in his seat. It was definitely too small for him.

"I sense you have grown in the Force," he said solemnly. "You may ask your questions, but we do not promise to answer."

"I understand," Luke answered. "So, the reports out of Imperial Center are very confusing, and everyone wants to know - did you kill Palpatine, Father?"

Before the fledgling Jedi's startled eyes, his father's face shifted from stern and remote to … pouty?"

"No," Anakin whined.

"No?" Luke repeated, looking at his mother in confusion.

"It was Palpatine's Royal Guard," Padme said, reaching out a petite hand to pat her husband's cyborg arm. "Anakin really, really, really wanted to kill the old rancor himself, but no, the guard got fed up with Palpatine's murderous ways and attacked and killed him."

Luke mulled this over and said, "That's…surprising. And good. I'm glad."

"I am not," Anakin said sulkily. "I was all ready to stick my lightsaber right through his gullet and then dice him into one hundred pieces."

Luke opened his mouth at this, no doubt preparing to dish out a Jedi proverb, and then closed it, and sighed, and said, "Given what Palpatine did to our family, I totally understand that. So next question, are you intending to take the throne, Father?"

"No," Padme said firmly. "No one should take the throne of the Empire because the Empire needs to be dismantled."

"Or," Anakin said in a longsuffering tone, "someone could become Empress and dismantle the Empire from the inside."

Padme wrinkled her nose and nodded slowly. "That is also a possibility."

Luke stared at his father, then his mother, and asked, "So you both want to dismantle the Empire."

"Yes," they said in unison, and Vader said, "I thought to bring peace and prosperity to the peoples of the galaxy through the Empire; that sounds foolish, no doubt, but the last years of the Old Republic were very difficult. The Clone Wars killed millions, and the Jedi were at the front of the battles."

Padme snorted and said, "Yes, because of Palpatine. He started the Clone Wars."

"Oh," Luke said rather blankly, and then smiled shyly. "I admit I am a little hazy on the history of the Clone Wars, and the rise of the Empire."

"Which is a pity, but Palpatine very cleverly covered up most of it," Padme said. "Here is what happened..."

She began to explain how Sidious had risen to power, though it was a struggle to form eloquent words with her son sitting across from her. Her grown up son! So handsome, like his father. So short, like her. It was a miracle.

She suddenly felt Anakin tense beside her and turned her head, along with Luke.

A tall Twi'lek male had appeared out of nowhere, a blaster in his hand, with at least four thugs behind him, also armed. Two of the thugs were human, one was a Weequay, and one was an unknown species. All were tall, and all looked brutish.

"Well, well, well," the Twi'lek said in heavily accented Basic, "what do we have here? A lovely girl and a handsome boy. Such fine specimens!"

"What do you mean?" Luke asked boldly.

The alien turned an unpleasant smile on the youth and one of his lekku twitched menacingly. "It was unwise for you to wander into Mos Eisley unprotected and now you will pay the price. You will both fetch fine prices in the slave ring."

Luke's eyes narrowed in fury and he began to stand, only to stop and look at Vader. Padme, watching them, was quite convinced that some kind of telepathic communication had passed between father and son. Her question was more how far she should let her husband go when he was obviously seriously pissed off.

"Don't bring down the building, Ani," she murmured.

Vader did not openly acknowledge her words, but the building did not tremble as he carefully wiggled out from his seat and rose to his full height, which made the Twi'lek, himself a fairly tall sentient, look up with a mixture of bravado and unease.

"I advise you to walk away," he snarled as three more minions appeared to the left of the group.

"Jabba is dead," Vader said, though naturally he didn't sound like Vader because he didn't have his menacing vocoder. "The slave trade is eradicated."

"And someone new has moved onto Tatooine in the last weeks," the Twi'lek chuckled. "You are a fool to think that with the Hutt gone, Tatooine will be free."

"Who has moved in?" Vader demanded.

The Twi'lek, apparently tired of talking, fired his blaster, which promptly reversed position and struck the sentient in the chest. He fell over in surprise, just as Vader's red blade leaped to life.

"Watch your mother," Vader ordered Luke, and waded into the fray, chopping and deflecting and more or less causing havoc.

"Don't kill everyone!" Padme yelled, pulling her own blaster out of her holster. Luke stood up and took a position such that he could defend his mother from stray blasts, and watched in awe as his father took all the bad guys apart.

He hoped that the hapless bystanders, most of whom were now screaming and running from the building, weren't hurt in the stampede.

"So...," he said to his mother, though he kept his eyes and Force sense focused on possible attackers, "are you Ok with Father going full bore rancor?"

"We hate slavers, Luke," Padme said simply.

The young man sighed, nodded, and said, "Yeah, me too."