Luke walked through the darkness, glad that this time there wasn't snow to trudge through and it wasn't so cold. The voice in his head weakly persisted.

"Help me. Help me."

A thought just now occurred to Luke, that if he could hear whoever was calling him, maybe he could answer them.

"I'm coming, I'll help you."

He felt a small jolt like static.

"Who said that?"

"I did," Luke thought in response.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Luke Skywalker, who are you?"

"I don't have a name."

"Where are you?"

"I don't know."

"Don't worry, I'm coming, I'll find you."

"Oh, please do, it's so lonely here."

"I'll find you," Luke silently promised, "I'll find you."

As he made his way along in the dark over uneven ground, he saw the darkened buildings up ahead and felt that he was actually getting closer now.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, what do you see?"

"A dark room. I've been kept in here since I came to life."

"You came to life too?" Luke asked through their bond.

"Yes, several days ago."

"So did I, that must be how come I can hear you."

"He said we were made at the same time."

"Who did?" Luke wanted to know.

"A man."

"What does he look like?"

"He's very mean, and very ugly."

"Does he wear black robes?" Luke inquired.

"Yes."

"Palpatine."

"Yes, that's his name."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know," the girl's voice replied, "he left the room a long time ago."

"Is he still there?" Luke wondered. "Or did his shuttle leave?"

"What's a shuttle?"

"Hmmm," Luke scratched a spot on his cheek as he tried to figure this out. He hadn't been alive long enough that he had already forgotten all the things he didn't know when he first came to life.

He took out his comm link.

"Father, are you there?"

"Luke."

His mother's voice was in the background, "Is he alright?"

"Father, Palpatine has the girl, she told me," Luke said. "I don't know where he is, but I'm getting closer to the girl, I can feel it."

"That's good, Luke, you keep us updated, and we'll be there."

"Father," Luke added, "she says...the chancellor told her...we were made at the same time."

There was a heavy silence on the link. Luke could almost feel his parents and Obi-Wan looking at each other.

"Father, what's this all mean?" Luke asked.

"I'm not sure, Luke, but we'll figure it out. Be careful."

"I will."

Luke felt the bond drawing him closer, like a homing beacon behind his eyes, telling him where to go. He walked past several houses that were all different designs and colors, all were dark and some looked like they were falling apart. Past the houses were tall buildings that even with as limited knowledge as Luke had, the boy knew that in a previous life they all probably looked either very expensive, or very official, but now most of them looked ready to fall down. As Luke came upon one building in particular, he felt like there was an explosion of bright color behind his eyes.

"Father," he said in his comm link, "I found the place...it's a tall green building that looks empty."

There was static and jumbled chatter coming over the link before Anakin's voice responded, "We know the place, Luke, we'll be right there."

He forgot to tell Luke what he should do in the meantime, so Luke decided to head on in and find the girl. The doors didn't slide open like at home, they were old and haphazardly closed but there was a gap between them large enough for Luke to grab the corner of one and use all his strength to push it open. The door was huge, and heavy, and Luke grunted and huffed and groaned as it seemed he could only budge it a quarter of an inch at a time, but eventally he pushed it open enough he was able to slide between them.

The inside was just about pitch dark, Luke could only make out the outline of certain things, but still not enough to know where anything was, or where he should go.

"I'm here," he told the girl, "Where are you?"

"I don't know," she replied mournfully.

Luke moved cautiously in the dark, feeling his way along, trying to think of some way to figure this out. A thought came to him.

"Were you taken up a set of stairs?"

"I think so."

"Only one?"

"Yes, I haven't been taken anywhere since."

The second floor. Now he just had to find out where the stairs were, or...

Feeling along the wall, Luke found a gated doorway that struck him as familiar.

A hydrolift.

Using all his strength again, he lifted the door up enough he could roll into the lift before the durasteel gate slammed down again. The lift was dimly lit, Luke stood on his toes and reached the buttons on the control panel to take him upstairs. It was only then that Luke realized there was still a working power source somewhere in the building.

Luke thought about comming his parents again to let them know where he was, but an icy feeling ran down his back. He still had no idea where chancellor Palpatine was, he could be anywhere in the building, and if he was, he heard the hydrolift moving.

Luke only met Palpatine once, but once had been enough to know he didn't like the man, he was scared of him, and he had no idea what he was going to do if he ran into him. His father had told him to stay away from Palpatine at all costs, but what if the man was right there when the hydrolift stopped, right outside the door when it opened? Luke hadn't thought that far ahead, he just knew he had to find the girl and save her. And now he was starting to wonder just how he was going to do that? What if Palpatine was with the girl? What could he do?

It didn't matter, he knew he had to do something, he had to save the girl.

The lift stopped and the door opened automatically, the corridor was dark but not pitch black, Luke didn't see or hear anyone around.

"We've flown over this place hundreds of times," Anakin said as they exited the shuttle, "it never occurred to me that anyone could actually be living here."

"Where's Luke?" Padme looked around. "I don't see him."

"Father."

Anakin took out his comm link. "Luke, where are you?"

"I'm inside, Father, the girl's up on the second floor, that's where you'll find us, I haven't found her yet, and I don't see the chancellor anywhere."

Anakin's eyes widened as he and Padme exchanged a mutual look.

"That's great, Luke, you stay right where you are, we'll be there in a minute."

"So what do we do?" Padme asked.

"We don't know where Palpatine is, if he's even here, I don't see a shuttle around anywhere but that doesn't prove anything," Anakin noted as he took out his lightsaber and had it ready to activate at a second's notice, "but we better go with the idea he's in there somewhere."

"In which case it might be better if we don't all go in the front door," Obi-Wan said.

"It looks like that's how Luke got in," Padme commented.

"And Palpatine hasn't found him yet," Obi-Wan said, "all the same I suggest we enter from opposite ends, we'd have much better odds of catching the chancellor off his guard. You two go in here, I'll find a way in through the back."

"Alright," Anakin nodded.

"Be careful you two," Obi-Wan advised them.

"I'm not worried about us," Anakin responded as he raised his hands in front of him and channeled the Force to separate the doors, "I'm worried about Luke."

Luke was getting frustrated. He'd tried opening every door he came across on the second floor and he hadn't found the girl yet. He'd tried calling out to her but received no answer. He'd also tried communicating with her telepathically but she couldn't tell him where she was or if he was close. He hadn't been able to find the control for the lights so he was stumbling around in the dark, and the hallway just seemed to go on forever, one door after another after another...

Coming to another door that seemed exactly the same as all the others, Luke felt a newfound sense of urgency as he reached up and was able to palm it open. The door slid open with a pronounced whoosh and Luke practically fell in. This room was as dark as the others, but there was a faint light coming in the window from the moon and the stars, and he saw...

"You're here!" Luke saw the girl.

"Luke!" the girl held her arms out but didn't move towards him.

Luke ran over to her. Up close he was able to tell that she was his size, wearing a long white dress and with braids rolled into buns on the sides of her head. Even in the dark, she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.

"Come on, we've got to get out of here!" he told her.

She shook her head sadly, "I can't walk!"

"I'll help you!" he told her as he grabbed one of her hands and slung her arm across his shoulders and helped her walk in time with him as he headed towards the door.

The room just got far colder than it had been when he came in. A sudden shadow blocked the doorway and Luke felt his blood run cold at a familiar and sinister laugh.

"Young Skywalker," Chancellor Palpatine said as he entered the room, causing the two children to step backwards and away from him, "so we meet again."

Luke pursed his lips together defiantly as he stepped back, supporting the girl's stiff weight against him. He wanted to scream at Palpatine but no words came to mind, he had no idea what the meaning of any of this was, he just wished his parents were here, they'd know what to do.

Finally something came to him. He felt his nostrils flare and felt his teeth showing like a dog about to attack, as he demanded to know, "What did you do to her?"

Palpatine chuckled ominously before shaking his head, "The dutiful Jedi, just like your miserable excuse for a father."

Luke felt an alternating sensation of fear and anger running through his body, now the fear returned as he felt icy chills running down his spine again as he kept manuevering he and the girl back, back, back, out of Palpatine's reach but with no idea where they were going. He felt the girl shaking against him, he clutched her hand in his and squeezed it protectively. He would not let any harm come to her, whatever happened.

The girl closed her eyes and sighed softly. She felt the strength in Luke's grip, felt, something...felt, loved, truly loved. Then she felt something move in her and realized her joints were no longer confined to clunky movements like an unoiled droid. She stepped backwards in time with Luke's movements, and was awestruck by how fluid and effortless it was to walk.

From where Luke stood it looked like Palpatine got impossibly taller, he was absolutely towering over the two children as he took a step towards them to match each step they retreated. The room seemed to get even colder as the chancellor got angrier and angrier, his hands clenching into fists as he told them, "I spent years molding Anakin Skywalker to be the perfect servant to the Dark side, to me, with our combined powers I could've destroyed the Republic and become Emperor over the entire galaxy, and I knew right where to attack. His insecurities as a Jedi, the Council refusing him a position of master, his failure to save his mother, but there was always someone pulling him away from my hold, first it was Obi-Wan Kenobi, and then Padme Amidala."

Luke felt icy chills running up his neck as they backed into the wall and had nowhere left to go. The chancellor looked directly at Luke as he told him, "I don't know why you were made or how you came to life, but you should've been the perfect cause for Anakin's downfall. For years I was able to get under his skin with his insecurities that they had no children, and then when you came along, I had a new, even more perfect goal in mind. Anakin Skywalker would not know one moment's peace with such a destructive, clumsy, worthless little child. He'd either get rid of you or he'd kill you, and in doing so destroy himself and seal his fate to the Dark side, but somehow you eluded that fate, but you won't escape it now."

Luke heard the words, and he knew what most of them meant, but something else played in his mind that actually started to override the panic he knew was supposed to be building inside of him.

"Fear's his greatest defense," he whispered to the girl without moving his head towards her.

This new idea in mind, Luke let go of the girl's hand and took a step towards the chancellor, whispering to himself, "His greatest defense is fear...his greatest defense..."

Before Luke had much time to think about it, he lunged himself at Palpatine and bit the chancellor's hand as hard as he could. Palpatine let out a pained yell and tried to knock Luke on the floor with his other hand, but the boy persisted and struggled with the chancellor. In that moment the girl sidestepped Palpatine and got behind him, then dropped down on her hands and knees. Luke saw this around his struggling, and threw himself at Palpatine with all his force, just enough to knock the chancellor's wind out of him, and his feet off the floor. He stumbled afterburners over teakettle over the girl, who got to her feet and clung to Luke. Their instincts told them that they should run, but they felt frozen where they stood as they watched.

Palpatine let out an assortment of noises that were both pained and infuriated. He rose to his feet again, but he had changed. His skin had become a pale color with a thick, waxy and almost reptilian texture, his blue eyes now glowed a menacing gold color.

Luke and the girl huddled together as they saw this and had no idea what to make of it.

"Now, my young friends, you will both die," he said in a low ominous growl.

"No, you will!" another voice entered the room.

"Father!" Luke and the girl ran past Palpatine.

Anakin went down on one knee and caught both children in his arms just before they collided with him, he ordered, "Go with your mother!" and stood back up, his deactivated light saber in his hand.

Anakin waited until the children were out of the room, and closed his eyes a split second before activating the bright blue laser.

A pained groan came from Palpatine as the sudden laser in the darkness nearly blinded him, but it was short lived. Anakin opened his eyes again, and they immediately doubled in size as he saw Palpatine in his true form.

"What...are you?" he absently asked.

"I, am," Palpatine responded slowly, "Darth Sidious."

"I always knew there was something about you the Jedi didn't trust," Obi-Wan said as he entered the room, his own light saber also glowing brightly in the room, "I just didn't know what."

Palpatine turned his head but didn't appear overly surprised by the other Jedi's presence, "I should've known you'd be involved. If I'd killed you years ago-"

"If you kill one of us now," Anakin said as he advanced towards Palpatine, "the other will still kill you."

"And if you kill one of us, Darth," Obi-Wan added as he stepped towards the sith lord, "we will only become more powerful."

"You stupid Jedi," he noted in a tone of almost disbelief.

The sith raised his arms, one hand aimed towards each Jedi, and hit each of them with a batch of Force lightning. Both Jedi screamed in excruciating pain as they felt themselves simultaneously paralyzed and electrocuted. The pain was nearly blinding, both men lost their hold on their light sabers and they fell to the floor.

Anakin's light saber moved along the floor jerkily before it left the floor entirely and flew through the air, landing perfectly in Luke's hand. The sudden momentum nearly knocked the blonde child over, but he remained standing and held the weapon in both hands to steady his grip. Once again he found himself in a situation that seemed to rely on sudden action instead of actual forethought. Luke had never seen his father draw his light saber, let alone use it, but he had a fairly basic grasp on how it worked, and what needed to be done to save his father right now. He closed his eyes and got ready to do what he had to do, when he felt the light saber being pulled out of his hand.

The next sound to fill the room, aside from the lightning and the pained screams of the two men who had dropped to the floor, was the sound of a light saber cutting through a body, and an inhuman sound of excruciating agony.

Palpatine fell to the floor in two pieces, tendrils of Force lightning still escaping his fingertips but dying out where they emitted. Anakin blinked his eyes rapdily as he tried to regain his senses. He was seeing brightly colored spots behind his eyes and it was hard to tell exactly what had happened.

"Obi-Wan?" he choked out painfully and uncertainly.

"I'm here, Anakin," the elder Jedi weakly answered from where he turned over on his back and was sprawled out on the floor.

Anakin got one foot planted firmly on the floor and used that to push himself up. As he did he saw Palpatine's bisected corpse in the middle of the floor, and past him, Luke and the girl, and beside them...Padme, wielding his light saber, a murderous look of fury in her eyes as if she expected the sith lord to rise up again.

"Padme?"

At the sound of her name, the senator blinked and took in a heavy sighing breath. Anakin cautiously inched his way over to his wife and was able to take the light saber from her and deactivated it, slipping it back in his robes, then taking his wife into his arms.

"Are you alright?" Anakin asked.

"Are you?" she responded as she opened her eyes.

He nodded, though the effects of the Force lightning hadn't completely passed. He turned his head and saw Obi-Wan getting to his feet, "Are you alright?"

"I will be," the other man answered, then added in a stunned disbelief, "a sith. If we would've had any idea..."

"Luke!" Padme turned towards their son, "are you alright?"

Luke took a step towards his parents and answered, "I'm fine, Mom," despite Padme's insistence on kneeling down and grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him one way and the other to check him over. The girl saw this and felt a pain deep in her chest, knowing there was no one like this for her, that even though she was now freed from the evil chancellor, she was still all alone without anyone who cared about her.

"Let's get the younglings out of here," Obi-Wan advised his former padawan, "they don't need to see this."

Anakin took one last look at the remains of Palpatine and he agreed. They scooted the children out of the room and headed for the stairs. Down on the first floor, Anakin turned on the lights so they could get a better look at one another.

"Is everyone alright?"

The general consensus was that they were. It was just now that the adults were actually able to get a good look at the girl. Anakin felt stunned by how beautiful she was, even moreso because she bore a strong resemblance to Padme. It was impossible, and yet...

Anakin turned and saw Obi-Wan staring at the girl, just as dumbstruck by this as they were.

"What do you think now, Obi-Wan?"

The older man shook his head, "I know it is real, but I still have trouble believing it."

Luke saw the girl lower her head self consciously and turn to walk out the door. Luke caught her by the hand and exclaimed, "Wait, don't go!" He looked up at his parents imploringly.

Padme crouched down to look her in the eyes and asked, "What is your name, darling?"

The girl shook her head sadly. "I don't have one."

"Would you like to be our daughter?"

Her gaze lifted and her eyes got big with an unspoken hope. No words came to her so the girl merely nodded in response.

"Luke...would you like to have a sister?"

The boy's eyes got big and a large, infectious smile formed on his face. "Really?"

Luke was so overjoyed by this proposal that he couldn't even speak and didn't know what to do, he stammered excitedly as he alternated looking to his parents to the girl, then yelped ecstatically as he hugged her hard enough to lift her off her feet.

Padme and Anakin exchanged a look and with it the unspoken thought that had come to the forefront of both their minds. They had planned so much when they tried starting their own family, if it was a boy, if it was a girl, a name for both. It was as if fate had finally decided to reward them with the family they had always wanted.

"Your name," Padme told her, "is Leia Skywalker."

Anakin was jolted out of sleep by a fierce and repetitive assault on his legs. He didn't know how it was possible, but Leia kicked even harder than her brother.

The bed was a little more cramped now with all four of them in it, Luke peacefully asleep next to his mother, Leia tossed and turned and rolled around next to Anakin, wrapped up in the pink blanket Luke had given her, and nestled in the crook of one arm was the doll he'd given her.

If things were confusing before, they were doubly so now. For a rare change, upon returning home, R2-D2 had been thoroughly confused by the addition of another human child, strangely enough C-3PO had taken to the news quite easily. And where Anakin and Padme had just finished Luke's room a few days before, now they had to decide whether to divide it down the middle for Leia or to prepare another room for her; also they had to get two of everything now, and for the time being Luke had to share his clothes with his sister. In the meantime the parents had decided their first night as a completed family should be spent together, and here they were.

Anakin grunted as Leia jabbed him in the side with one sharp elbow. Apparently he hadn't tucked her in tight enough. All the same, he couldn't help feeling a large grin on his face as the thought reoccurred to him that he had a daughter now. A daughter. When he and Padme tried to have a child naturally, he'd thought about it from time to time but ultimately didn't dwell on the idea too much, he'd just figured they'd be happy with whatever they got. A daughter...he couldn't explain it but just thinking about it now was mind blowing for him, especially under the circumstances, to have a daughter who looked so much like her mother.

Turning his head since that was the only part of his body he could actually move without waking his new daughter up, he looked down at the two kids sleeping side by side, and he knew now that his world was complete. Through the corner of his eye he saw Padme staring at him with a mischevious smile on her face. He turned his head further and shot her back a knowing look.

"Happy Life Day," she mouthed the words, briefly glancing to their two sleeping children.

He smirked in spite of himself and silently remarked, "You too."

Saun Dann groaned as he heaved a crate onto his countertop by the register. Closing time had been an hour ago, and it was pitch dark outside, but before he turned out the lights and headed home for the night, he decided to rummage through his excess inventory to find some stuff to replenish the shelves that had been emptied over the past few days from people buying Life Day gifts.

"Eh, what's that?" he muttered to himself as he removed the lid of the crate and peered inside, then in a tone of recognition, "Oh."

More stuff from the previously mentioned wizard's estate he had inherited sometime after said wizard's passing. At the initial time, the trader couldn't figure out what to do with any of it, so it sat in the back room of his shop collecting dust, until one slow day when he decided to find some new knickknacks to put on his shelves. He would've sworn he'd finished sorting that stuff long ago. Then again things were so uneventful, one day tended to fade into the next with little hesitation.

"Let's see, what've we got here?" he asked himself as he reached in and took out the first object.

He blew off a cloud of dust and saw it was an old, handmade book with faded writing on the brown leather cover. Inside he flipped through and saw several pages of graph paper with sketches on them of crystals. Looking through his glasses, then over them, he struggled to make out the handwritten fine print under the graphs and in the margins. It looked to the old man like it was some kind of guide to the different kinds of crystals in the galaxy.

"Hmm, might be a collector for something like this," he mused as he turned through the pages.

One whole section of the book was dedicated to kyber crystals, and past that, the sketches looked like more of the same, and in truth, similar to the ones he'd sold a few days ago to that kid. But the writing was different.

"Eh...let's see here...'lilaea crystal, of unknown origin, commonly believed to be merely an object of mythology. According to historical documents, the lilaea was often mistaken for the kyber crystal due to its presence of a similar shape, color, and density, with a likewise ability to 'call' to certain people. In ancient times, the lilaea was believed to possess the magical power to bring life to an in...inanimate object, if, and only if, said object was properly loved and cared for by its owner'."

The old human's eyebrows raised slightly upon reading this, and he thought back to the blue and white crystals he'd had so long he'd forgotten about, and then sold to Kotto.

"Nah, nah, couldn't be," he said as he closed the book, letting loose another cloud of dust. "Impossible. Ancient folk lore, that's all that is."

A sudden noise startled him before he realized it was his old wall screen, which had a tendency at times to turn itself on without any assistance. He reached for the controls to shut it off when he saw footage being replayed of Senator Amidala, her husband, and their two children, from a public appearance they'd made earlier that day on Coruscant, letting the galaxy get its first glimpse of their 9-year-old son and daughter.

"Hm, nice looking family, mm-hmm," Saun Dann murmured to himself, then thought to ask, "hm, I wonder where they've been hiding those kids all this time?"