Possibly my favourite novel of all time is The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel. It's split into three parts: homeless, homewards and homecoming. This story is ultimately a story about finding home and I've realised that I'm following Martel's same three phases. This chapter is the end of the story's unofficial part one: Korkie's years of homelessness.

Thanks for making it all this way with me!

Chapter 18: Homeless

The Lars family, sheltering from the hostile glare of the midday sun, heard the drone of the fighter as they settled down to share their carefully portioned lunch. With a clattering of dishes, Anakin sprung up and strode outside. Shmi and Beru each scooped a toddler into their arms before they could follow their father who was now standing stock-still upon the desert sands. Listening, feeling. Owen, meanwhile, rummaged for the gun.

"Hold on a moment, Owen, I think…"

Shmi gestured to the window, where Anakin was visible, hands on hips, his eyes closed, face turned down from the sun.

"Who's Dad talking to?" Leia asked.

"He's not talking to anyone," Beru soothed. "Just checking out the ship."

"He is talking," Luke insisted.

Not with words, perhaps. But the children had already proven themselves canny young mind-readers – Leia finding the hidden milk-ice reserved for Beru's birthday celebration, Luke's mournful announcement of "a very terrible thing" minutes before Anakin had come home with the news that the Raiders had broken the east-boundary fencing and two vaporators – and Shmi trusted that they understood something of their father's abilities in the Force.

"He doesn't look worried," Cliegg observed.

Irritated, perhaps. Scuffing at the sand with his boot. But not frightened. And Shmi knew that nothing frightened her son as much as strangers on this homestead. Leia began to sing a nonsensical tune and play with Beru's braid in happy confirmation of the fact.

Owen stuck his head out the window, gun still in hand.

"Just passing over?" he asked of Anakin.

Anakin stood in still silence a few moments more, then opened his eyes and shook his head, sidling back over to the house, hands in his pockets. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and measured, with something Shmi could not quite grasp bitten back.

"It's Korkie."

And in the guarded silence that settled over the house Shmi heard the echoes of the fight that had driven the Prince of Mandalore from their home.

He had me, but he chose to look after you, because it was important for the galaxy. And you're telling me you're going to turn your back on the people who need you-

Anakin kicked the dust from his boots and came back inside.

"Let's set another plate, I guess."

Mace had made it sound easy but as the Lars homestead came into focus beneath him all of Korkie's doubts came back. How exactly had the former Jedi Master convinced him that he could simply waltz back to Tatooine after hurling such anger at Anakin? After abusing him for simply wanting to be a good dad? Not to mention abandoning his work on the farm without any kriffing notice. Shmi had told him he would always be welcome back. But Shmi was the nicest person in the galaxy. It didn't really count.

Anakin's presence in the Force was guarded. Nearly a decade apart in age, they'd never really bonded strongly enough to converse properly, to transmit anything more than surreptitious laughter across the table at dinnertime. But Korkie felt his prodding question in the Force and answered back as calmly as he could.

Yep. Just me.

And he wanted to say a hundred other things-

I'm alone, I'm safe.

I'm sorry I didn't call, I thought it might be risky.

I'm sorry I didn't ask whether you wanted me to come; it was kind of a sudden decision and I had to come before I changed my mind about it.

-but he didn't trust himself to say any of it right.

He touched down clumsily on the shifting sands and took his first lungful of scorching air and knew that this was not home. That he'd been homeless for two years now and he wasn't any closer to finding it. He vaulted from the cockpit and saw the boy he had idolised, who he'd been so proud to call his brother, his face already lined and sun-weary, standing in farmer's linens. His dual prosthetic arms – Korkie had almost forgotten about the second arm; he had known Anakin so briefly since that horrible duel with Sidious – were folded across his chest. But his face wore a smile.

"You've got even better looking!" he grumbled, without malice, stepping out of the shade by the house to greet him. "What happened to your nose, Vod?"

And Korkie could have cried, to hear Anakin call him brotheragain. But he held himself steady as he clasped Anakin's metallic hand in his own and they met in a brief embrace.

"I ran out of money on Corellia," he managed. "Did a couple cage fights. Rani Talapa's Iron-Cage Super-League."

Anakin scoffed.

"You did not."

"I did."

"You never liked unarmed combat."

Korkie shrugged.

"Still don't."

Korkie was enveloped then by Shmi, who held him tight in a mother's embrace before stepping back at beholding him at arm's length.

"Has your nose been broken, Korkie?"

"I took a bit of a tumble on Corellia last year," Korkie reassured her. "Nothing dramatic."

Shmi's lips quirked, sensing some silent communication flitting between the brothers.

"I'm sure," she agreed, magnanimously. "Speaking of tumbles…"

She turned her gaze back to the door where a golden-haired boy with a graze upon his chin and his scab-kneed sister toddled out across the sand, their sandals haphazardly fastened by Owen and Beru who knelt in the doorway, unable to contain them any longer.

They had been so tiny, so helpless, when he had last known them. Korkie could not contain himself; he laughed aloud with sheer joy.

"Luke! Leia!"

The children beheld him in wonderment.

"This is your uncle Korkie," Shmi explained. "Now, dear ones, you won't remember him because it was such a long time ago, but he looked after you when you were very, very young."

Luke beheld the visitor with a pensive frown, a generous spilling of dust-stained drool running down his chin.

"I remember," he informed his grandmother.

Leia's hair was dark like her mother's. Someone had tried to tame her nest of messy curls by tying it atop her head, so that it now resembled a sprouting grass. She judged Korkie with a squint against the sunlight, chewing contemplatively on her fist.

"Me too," she announced, eventually.

Korkie laughed once more as he knelt to greet them.

"That's very kind of you both. What's this, Luke?"

The boy's chubby fingers were tightly gripping a piece of metal that might have been a droid-screw.

"Are you allowed to be playing with this?"

Luke deflected the question.

"I do remember you," he insisted.

"I'm sure you do," Anakin reassured him, joining them at toddler-level, deftly collecting the choking hazard from his son's protective fist and pocketing it.

"Ve'vut'galaar," Luke announced.

Korkie gaped, his chest flooding with an unfamiliar warmth.

His home. The language of his homeland, spoken upon alien Tatooine.

"That's right, Luke," Korkie breathed. "That was me. I told you that story. But you were only a tiny, tiny baby."

"Luke is a tiny, tiny baby," Leia contributed smugly.

Anakin shook his head with quiet laughter.

"We did their health check last week," he explained. "Leia is one centimetre taller and four hundred grams heavier than her brother and she's quite pleased with herself."

Luke employed what seemed to be a well-rehearsed move for irritating his sister, plucking the hair-tie from Leia's hair so that her fringe fell down into her eyes.

"Luuuuuuke!"

"Time for lunch," Anakin announced firmly, bundling his flailing daughter under his arm before she could hit her brother and carrying her back inside.

"Ve'vut'galaar," Luke repeated, in his tiny voice.

He held onto Korkie's trouser leg as they followed Anakin and Leia back to the house.

Anakin stopped Korkie in the doorway with a gentle hand. Luke finally detached himself from Korkie's leg, trotting ahead of the adults at the sight of lunch.

"There are just a few things you should know, before you come in."

"Shoes off?" Korkie asked, eyeing his weathered boots.

Anakin thought inexplicably of Obi Wan and all their griping arguments about boots on the couch.

"Nah. They're fine. Whatever you want," Anakin reassured him, with a chuckle. "About the kids."

The levity drained from Korkie's face. He raised an expectant brow but said nothing.

"They're too young to be taught any discretion," Anakin explained, in a low voice. "So you have to be very careful about how you speak around them. We can't say anything in their earshot that could be unsafe if they repeated it."

Korkie nodded pensively, watching the toddlers attack their food.

"No Jedi, no Sith, no Force," Anakin spelled out. "No rebellion, or whatever it is you're doing out there. And no names of anyone who is or has been an enemy of the Empire."

At this, Korkie laughed aloud.

"I'm an enemy of the Empire. And so are you!"

"Yeah," Anakin conceded. "But I'm Dad or I'm Ani. That's it. No Skywalker. Our surname is Lars."

Korkie looked bewildered.

"What am I supposed to go by?"

Anakin shrugged.

"Korkie's fine. But no talk of Kryze or Kenobi."

The young man's face fell.

"I was going to teach them Mando'a. Like I did when they were babies."

Anakin gave an apologetic grimace.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Not now."

Korkie acquiesced with a tight nod, his right hand busy picking at the nailbed of his left – a habit for which Satine had always gently reprimanded him.

"Are you ever going to teach them about all this?" he asked, voice low.

"When it's safe," Anakin reassured him.

But he could tell that the young man was not reassured.

"Do they know their mother's name?" he pressed.

Anakin gave a heavy sigh. Korkie wouldn't like this.

"Not yet," he admitted, pressing on before his quasi-brother could get a word in. "They're young, Korkie. Too young to understand. They don't ask after her."

The words were in vain; Korkie wore an expression of silent horror.

"Really, Korkie," Anakin insisted. "They're too young. It hasn't crossed their minds. If I explained it, they wouldn't understand. They've got their grandmother and aunty and uncle and they're loved. This homestead is their whole galaxy and that keeps them happy and safe."

Korkie chewed pensively at his lip.

"I always knew," he muttered. "For as long as I can remember. About Ba'buir Adonai and Martise and the war before my birth. And about Qui Gon Jinn."

Anakin gave Korkie a glare of warning at the dangerous names.

"The circumstances here are a little different, Korkie," he reasoned, voice low.

Korkie gave a hardly convincing nod.

"Korkie, please," Anakin groaned. "Don't look so sad. I'm sad every day. But these kids are happy. It's too early to share that hurt with them. I… couldn't do it right. Not yet."

At this, Korkie shifted his gaze. He watched the twins at the table. Cliegg poured blue milk for an eager Leia. Beru swept sand from Luke's golden hair.

"I struggled so hard in those first few months," Anakin confessed. "I didn't think I could care for them. I thought I'd ruin them. That they'd be as miserable as I was. But I've held that sadness away from them and they're happy kids surrounded with love. And I'm doing alright now. I didn't think I could do it at all but I'm doing alright."

Korkie finally dipped his head in genuine acquiescence.

"Of course. Sorry, Anakin. I don't mean to offer advice, I…"

He barked out a laugh.

"Stars. I'm sixteen-standard. I'm no-one's dad. Don't let me tell you what to do."

Anakin grinned in return. The gap between them was not quite yet bridged. But this was better.

"Thanks, Korkie," he sighed. "I really will tell them, you know. When it's safe."

Korkie mirrored his uneasy grin.

"Yeah. I know. Sorry for being a dickhead."

He gave Anakin a quick pat on the back. He moved like an adult – like a callous old farmer, like a world-weary soldier – these days.

"Let's have lunch."

The guest, as with all novelty, provided the toddlers with a great burst of joy and excitement that eventually deteriorated into arguments and irritability. Shmi had long assured Anakin that this was normal behaviour for children amidst the terrible twos. He watched, with deliberate calmness, as Luke and Leia argued in their separate bids to win the most affection and attention from their newly-returned uncle.

"Korkie, look my bracelet!"

Leia waved the beaded leather strap made by Beru in Korkie's field of vision for perhaps the tenth time today.

"My bracelet!" Luke whined.

It was indeed Luke's bracelet; Leia's had gone missing, presumably slipped from her wrist on a dusk walk around the property a few days ago and Anakin had not yet been able to recover it – a windy night had buried it beneath the sand. Luke had said, with impressive generosity for a two-year-old, that Leia could have his instead. But this offer had of course been made before there was a new guest on the farm to impress with all manners of trinkets. The boy's voice became shriller.

"My bracelet!"

"Luke, bub, that's a bracelet that you share with Leia, remember?" Anakin prompted gently.

Leia had slipped the bracelet onto her chubby wrist and brought it to Korkie's face for closer inspection.

"My bracelet!"

There was a yank in the Force and the bracelet flew from Leia's wrist and up into the air where it hovered, suspended, out of reach. Korkie raised his brows, impressed. Anakin grimaced. He knew what was coming.

Leia shrieked.

"Luke is being naughty!"

She toddled clumsily towards her father – she had not yet quite coordinated a running gait – and threw herself at his legs.

"Luke is being very naughty! Luke is being not safe!"

"I can see, Leia. Everything's alright. You take some deep breaths now. Aunty Beru will give you a cuddle."

He came to sit beside his son on the cool floor and spoke to him, voice low and firm.

"Put it down, Luke. Right away."

Luke's lips were trembling with anger and shame.

"Breathe," Anakin murmured, taking Luke's hand in his own. "And put it down, please."

The bracelet wavered in the air, then levitated slowly down to the ground. Leia, who had disregarded her father's advice and ignored Beru's offered consolation, scurried to pick it up.

"Well done, Luke. Don't you worry about Leia now. It doesn't matter what Leia is doing. I want you only to think about your breathing."

Luke managed a juddering inhalation, his eyes streaming.

"Good, Luke. You keep breathing, now. Let the anger float away. Put the power back inside."

The boy's breathing became slowly gentler, the anger that had sparked so blindingly in the Force quietening like embers, flickering ever dimmer.

"Good boy, Luke. You put that power back deep inside. All the way, hidden."

Luke nodded.

"I'm sorry, Dada."

Luke noticed Korkie, who was watching the exchange with quiet curiosity. A new emotion was rising now in the Force around Luke. Fear.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, voice anxious. "Dada, I'm sorry, I-"

"It's alright, Luke," Anakin soothed, scooping his son into his lap. "Korkie is safe. Korkie won't tell anyone."

Luke's anxiety melted into a wave of relief.

"But it is still important to learn to hide that power," Anakin went on. "To keep it wrapped up inside you. Because one day someone might see and it will not be safe."

Luke nodded soberly.

"Let's practice together," Anakin suggested. "Making your cocoon."

"And is no one going to play with me?" Leia demanded.

She waved her hands – the bracelet clasped tightly in her right fist – in an aggravated appeal for attention.

Korkie grinned.

"I'll play with you, Leia. Let's go to the kitchen. Let Luke and your dad concentrate for a little bit."

"Luke was very naughty today," Leia declared authoritatively. "Very, very naughty."

"We all make mistakes sometimes, Leia," Korkie advised.

Leia shook her head soberly.

"Never me."

Korkie had successfully shooed everyone else out of the kitchen to wash the dishes after dinner alone. Anakin understood that he felt a burden and that he wanted to help; he understood also that the young man's mind was racing with thoughts he could not quite reconcile and the mindless task would be good for him. The children, exhausted by a long afternoon vying for their uncle's affection, surrendered to sleep with little resistance. Anakin padded into the kitchen and placed the dishes – dutifully washed with minimal water – away as Beru so meticulously liked them arranged in the cupboards.

It was subtle but unmistakable: the lifting of Korkie's shields that he had, perhaps in fatigue, allowed to lapse. A silent, invisible, but nonetheless imposingly real wall between them.

"You're teaching Luke to shield," Korkie ventured.

Anakin nodded.

"As best I can."

Korkie handed him the final dish and got to work scrubbing a stain from the benchtop.

"Are you going to teach him anything else?"

His countenance was of perfect, glassy calm. The Duchess Satine had been a master of that look. And Obi Wan had done the same in the Force, most of all in the days when a young Anakin had first known him.

"Only to shield and to control his emotions," Anakin answered. "I'm not going to let him be turned into a weapon as I was."

Korkie nodded soberly and offered no resistance.

"But no troubles with Leia?"

"No. Thank the stars."

"She has a very strong presence in the Force," Korkie mused. "It's just…"

"Different. I agree."

Anakin took the cloth from Korkie's hand and dipped his head to catch his eye. The kitchen was plenty clean enough.

"She's very, very sensitive to changes in the Force," Anakin went on, in this safely neutral topic. "Well-attuned. But her abilities are much subtler. Again, thank the stars. Teaching her to shield isn't quite so urgent."

Korkie gave a grudging smile, leaning back against the bench.

"I suppose she's a handful enough without the ability for telekinesis."

"Definitely."

Anakin cast his focus across the house to where his children slept, their minds unfurling beautifully into the Force.

"Luke is easy to calm when he's angry," he mused. "But Leia… appearances aside, she's got more me than Padme in her. She's got my temper."

His words were tinged, he realised, with bitterness. Korkie looked surprised.

"You don't seem to have much of a temper at all, these days."

Anakin barked out a laugh.

"Not with them. Never in front of them."

This wasn't entirely true; he had, more times than he cared to admit, broken down before them in their infancy. But it had become easier with time. With better sleep. Shmi told him that they would not remember those early days. He quietly feared that somehow they would.

"But I still have to walk away, sometimes," Anakin went on. "Go out, fix some fences. And I've been working on it all my life."

He gave a half-smile.

"Leia will get there too. But it'll be a long journey."

Korkie nodded, his gaze somehow distant.

"You know," Anakin went on, "I remember the day you first lifted something with the Force."

Anakin hadn't planned to tell the story. But he saw a faint spark of life in Korkie's eyes.

"It was a model starfighter. Before you were even one-standard. I was playing with the toy, using it to tell Satine some story about a mission Obi Wan and I went on. And you tugged it right out of my hand."

"I…"

Korkie faltered.

"I never knew that story. Mum and Dad never…"

"You were such a cute baby," Anakin told him. "And you got up to so many antics. There were too many stories to tell, probably. But I'm sure Obi Wan and Satine remembered it all their lives."

Korkie swallowed effortfully. His shields were still in place but the emotion that had washed over him was obvious. He seemed vaguely surprised by it, lifting a hand to his chest, massaging the skin where Anakin caught the faint glimpse of a scar.

"You're the only person alive who remembers that about me, Anakin."

And in that moment the shields crashed down and Anakin was enveloped in a wave of gratitude.

"Ever since the galaxy fell apart, I've had this crazy feeling…"

There were tears in his eyes.

"Like I'm not real, you know? Like I'm not permanent. Which, I mean… I'm not, right?"

Anakin opened his mouth but didn't know what to say. The teenager rambled on.

"I mean, obviously none of us are permanent. Because we all die. But I've just kept having this thought that I could die and not be connected to my lineage or my home and I'd just be lost, you know? Gone without a trace. I just feel like I've been drifting and I don't belong anywhere and…"

He waved a hand, indicating at some words beyond his grasp.

"We know you, Korkie," Anakin managed. "All of us. We all know you. You're connected to us."

Korkie nodded, his jaw set. The tears had welled but did not spill.

"I guess I forgot," he managed. "Because I hadn't seen you in so long."

And a silence fell between them. Whose fault, exactly, was that? This was the rift that had not healed between them, that had undermined their every moment together since Korkie's return.

"Korkie, Vod, I'm sorry, I-"

"It wasn't your fault," Korkie told him firmly. "It wasn't. It was me. I chose to leave."

"Because I failed you, Korkie," Anakin protested. "Because I couldn't do what you needed me to do."

Korkie shook his head and Anakin could feel in the Force between them that this was the first time that Korkie believed what he was about to say.

"I should never have asked you to leave them, Anakin," he muttered. "I… I didn't get it. I didn't understand. But really, Vod…"

He turned his head and Anakin knew that he, too, was reaching out for Luke and Leia, reading their presence in the Force.

"You've done everything right for them," he said. "You're a really good dad."

And Anakin enveloped his brother in a crushing hug. It was, perhaps, the first time that he truly believed it, too.

On the morning he left Tatooine, Korkie pulled a heavy case out from beneath Anakin's spare parts crate and opened it to behold his beskar'gam in the faint golden light of the coming dawn. He studied it for a very long time, the voice of his Ba'vodu Bo-Katan drifting through his mind.

You're not going anywhere without this, ad'ik.

The great Al'verde Bo-Katan Kryze had been tasked on that horrible day with the evacuation of their entire planet, but she had found the precious minutes to bring this case to him. She had laid it at his feet as he had prepared to leave his homeworld. She had been wearing beskar'gam of her own. It was the most concrete memory Korkie had of that moment: the feeling of the cold metal digging into his chest as she embraced him for what had surely been the last time.

And kriff, he'd failed her. Because he'd gone so far without this armour. Mon Gazza, Kalarba, Corellia. Kabal and everywhere else along Rossan's stupid spice runs. Dantooine and Yaga Minor. To Ryloth, where it certainly would have saved him a few scars.

Aren't your people famous proponents of wearing armour at all times?

He heard Cody's voice now and was childishly irritated at him all over again. It was foolish of Cody to assume Korkie had a people. As though he weren't a complete mess of bloodlines and ideologies. How could anyone expect him to know who he was? He was born to a Jedi who had given his life for love and the pacifist Duchess of Mandalore. A collision of contradictions. His mother had planned for him to decide who he would become through years of study of constitutional law. To decide whether he would ever carry the Darksaber and call himself Mand'alor. Look, it wasn't like he was going to give the Darksaber up, no matter how heavily it hung from his frame. But that was only because there was no one better to give it to. Every Mando'ad he had ever known was presumably dead.

He snapped shut the case and slid it back into place. The armour would be safe here. But he'd been right when he'd told Cody that the blasted beskar was too heavy to travel with. It's not like there was any room to keep it in the shoebox apartment he shared with Kawlan on Yaga Minor, and he never knew when he'd next be sleeping on the streets again. And wearing it every day like a Mando'ad of old was out of the question. Korkie was trying to save Force-sensitive lives and the task required a little subtlety.

"Sorry, Ba'vodu," he muttered.

And he slung his backpack over his shoulders and turned to board his ship. Yaga Minor wasn't home. But Kawlan would be waiting for him and he had to get on with his work if he was ever going to find it again.

Anyone got toddlers in their lives? Luke's meltdown was really rather restrained. The benefits of writing fiction.

I hope Anakin and Korkie's healing moment together gave everyone the joy it gave me. Something, at least, is right in this galaxy.

Next chapter, Korkie returns to Yaga Minor and gets back to work. The Inquisitors, unfortunately, are at work as well.

xx - S.