After all our rebel frolics, some sadness in this chapter - I'm sorry in advance.
In reply to Robin tales fighter but a sort of warning for everyone: while we are approaching the Rebels era, there is not going to be much fidelity to the original series. I've been so busy writing all these years that I haven't actually watched it! I've borrowed some brilliant characters but the narrative arc of the story will be my own. The introduction of the Spectres into the Alliance and Sabine's timeline, in particular, have been changed, as you'll notice later in the chapter. I hope that you still enjoy :)
Chapter 38: Nowhere and Everywhere
"I congratulate you sincerely on your promotion, my Lord."
Trilla glared at the towering cyborg.
"It is no good professing to be sincere, General, when I know that you are not."
If Grievous were speaking sincerely, Trilla sensed, he would tell her that he was glad for a reprieve from her micromanaging him and his troops all of the time. Trilla's skills in micromanagement would now instead be employed across an even greater expanse of the Empire as Sidious's prime enforcer.
Stars, it was absurd. It had been long years since she had aspired to Sidious's apprenticeship, when she had been young and angry and empty without the presence of a Master beside her. The Emperor favoured her now, Trilla understood, because she was none of those things. She was cold and hardened and her life entirely devoid of any meaning at all. She had become, to Sidious's eyes, more predictable. Malleable. An apprentice who would not kill her Master in an infantile temper tantrum like the Third Sister was still prone to exhibiting. An apprentice who did not quietly yearn for home, like pitiful old Grievous who could not shield his thoughts of Kalee. Trilla had made a name for herself as silent and reliable and with her victory over Teralov, massacring the rebel forces who had come to deliver aid to the planet in famine, she had enhanced her reputation entirely too much and won herself a lifetime in noxious proximity to Sidious. Just when she and the General had started to tacitly get along.
"Did he send you to come kill me?" Grievous mused. "The new apprentice's first task?"
Trilla snorted.
"You wish, General."
For they were not friends – they were not even comrades – but they had whittled some fragile bond arising from their shared distaste for life as they knew it. Perhaps for life in any capacity.
"I have come to deliver new orders. You are to devote all of your time and resources now to defending Imperial transport in and out of Jedha."
Grievous's bloodshot eyes narrowed.
"What does the Emperor want with Jedha?"
"Do you presume you are privy to the Emperor's wants?" Trilla challenged. "There are resources to be mined on Jedha and you will protect the Emperor's assets. You will learn of the rest at the Emperor's discretion."
Grievous did not seem troubled by her disdain.
"There is kyber crystal on Jedha," he mused.
The cyborg might have been old and weary but he wasn't stupid. Trilla didn't care enough for her Master's secrets to play these stupid games.
"It is one of his better ideas," she conceded.
Nur loomed outside the viewport. One day, Trilla would turn that miserable moon to stardust.
"Sabine!"
"Oh, kriff!"
The words were hissed in hushed whispers that were swallowed by the blanketing snow. Sabine looked at her mother, faintly illuminated in the reflected light of the moon – she'd tried to choose an overcast night but the wind through the mountains had betrayed her – and felt a petulant, childish hatred.
"You should have waited for the waning moon, dearest."
"Kriff you," Sabine grumbled.
She dug her armoured boots into the snow, stood a little taller.
"Well, I'm sorry you've found me but I'm going anyway," she declared.
Her mother still had a way of looking at her that made her feel so small. Sabine fingered the weapons at her belt and felt a little stronger.
"I mean it, Buir. Don't try to stop me or I'll-"
"-fight me with my very favourite weapons?"
Ursa stood with a hand on her hip, no more solemn – and no less exasperated – than if Sabine had been skipping her afternoon lessons.
"Cyar'ad, I didn't come to stop you."
Sabine's body stiffened with the confusion and then relaxed. Her mother was not much good as a liar.
"You didn't?"
Ursa sighed.
"No, Sabine. Although I'm not exactly pleased that you were going to leave without saying goodbye. Not to mention taking my favourite blaster and my favourite vibroblade."
Sabine gave a bewildered breath of laughter. Was it all some colossal joke? Would her mother pull out a concealed weapon and shoot her where she stood? Drag her back into the house never to leave again?
But nothing happened. The Countess Wren did not appear to be joking.
"Well," Sabine muttered, in half-hearted self-defence. "They're my favourite blaster and vibroblade too."
Her mother pulled a vibroblade from her winter cloak and handed it to Sabine, then offered an open palm for the exchange. Sabine returned her mother's favourite vibroblade without protest.
"You can keep the blaster," Ursa decided. "You're putting it to better use than I can."
The clouds shifted and the light of the moon disappeared, its blue glow gone from the snow.
"It's not yet safe for your father and I to do what you're doing. To stand in defiance of the Emperor. But we will. Soon."
"How soon?"
"As soon as we can."
Sabine sighed. She had listened to enough empty promises in her life. Her mother in her bed at midday, promising to get up soon. Her father leading her away by the shoulder. She'll be better soon, ad'ik.
"Ignore anything we say on the public record," Ursa went on. "We will have to renounce you. But in truth, your father and I are very proud of you."
Words that Sabine had heard so sparingly, from the mother who for many years barely spoke at all and who, even when recovered from those years of perpetual twilight, was difficult to impress. She'd shot a thousand targets seeking those words. Sparred a thousand rounds. Did she believe them now? The child inside of her wanted to believe in them very badly.
"I'm doing this for Krownest, Buir," Sabine resolved. "For our freedom. For Mandalore."
Not for you, she did not say. But her mother understood her anyway. She stepped forward, and then back. Sabine wondered whether her mother might have been about to embrace her.
"K'oyacyi, Sabine," she bade heavily.
Stay alive. It meant everything and nothing. Sabine returned the sentiment with a stoic nod.
"K'oyacyi, Buir."
"Happy lifeday, kraytlings," Korkie bade his niece and nephew, emptying an armful of assorted treats onto the sand-dusted kitchen table. "Or is it happy lifedays?"
"Lifeday," Luke answered, already reaching for a candy. "It's only one day."
"Lifedays," Leia countered. "We are different people, you know."
"Indeed you are."
Korkie collapsed into a seat and helped Leia open the first can of soft drink she'd ever seen; she had been frowning at the aluminium top, perplexed.
"Speaking of lifedays, plural, we are also celebrating yours," Leia informed Korkie, accepting the can with gratitude. "Seeing as you very rudely declined to visit us and celebrate with us."
Korkie gave something between a grimace and a smile.
"That's very generous of you, Leia. But that won't be necessary. You share your lifeday enough as it is."
"Don't you want to celebrate your lifeday?" Luke asked.
Korkie grimaced.
"Not particularly."
"Why not?"
"He's upset because he's thirty," Anakin explained.
"Anakin!"
"I did teach the kids basic addition, you know."
"There's nothing wrong with being thirty," Luke counselled his uncle.
"Maybe not," Korkie grumbled. "But given I still have no home, no real paid employment, and approximately-"
He checked his belt.
"-three-hundred-and-twenty credits to my name-"
"Not to mention you're still unmarried," Anakin teased.
Korkie scowled.
"The milestone isn't exactly welcome," he concluded.
"But you have that-"
Luke pointed to the embroidered patch denoting his Advisory Council status upon his belt.
"And the Darksaber. And kind-of-homes all over the galaxy. Including here."
"You're very kind," Korkie conceded. "Although this-"
He tapped his badge.
"-means more boring meetings and less time doing interesting things. A good problem to have, I suppose. People are obliged to listen to me when I talk now. The rest of the Advisory Council is my own captive audience."
"You should have me attend meetings for you, Ba'vodu," Leia suggested. "The boring ones, you know? Let you go for some more battles."
Luke brightened at the thought.
"And I could come to battles with you!"
"Obviously not, Luke," Leia declared witheringly. "That's not useful."
"I'd be useful!"
"Neither of you are going to be useful," Anakin declared, coming in from his work and grabbing a can of sparkling uj-cordial himself. "Because we need you here."
The Force seemed to darken as the groans began.
"But Dad-"
"I looked at the numbers myself, Dad. I know we're hardly rich but it's not as bad as you and Uncle Owen always say."
Anakin bit back a question as to exactly how his daughter had found and accessed the farm accounts.
"If you keep whinging like that," he counselled instead, "you'll wake Nana Shmi from her rest."
The teenagers ignored the usually effective warning and continued their protest with hushed voices.
"We've only waited sixteen-kriffing-standard-years!"
"We'd be perfectly safe."
"Ba'vodu Korkie would look after us."
The two bright faces looked imploringly at their uncle.
"Wouldn't you?" Leia pressed.
"Of course I would, Leia."
"No," Anakin declared emphatically, pointing a finger at their guest in warning. "You are not bringing my children to that fight."
Korkie did not acquiesce in the manner that had become his habit over his years visiting this house. Anakin had been right a hundred times about his children. They had long been too young and the galaxy too dark. But Leia's rounded face had sharpened into her mother's now. Luke stood almost as tall as his father, limping almost imperceptibly now on the leg that Korkie had once begged Anakin to allow Sewlen Jerac to repair. And their childish ideals of adventure and heroes and villains had given way to the teenage idealism that was so often scorned by adults but had won Satine Kryze her revolution on Mandalore.
"They're not children, Anakin," Korkie pointed out, voice level. "Don't you think it's time to start listening to what they want for their lives?"
The children had grown, but Anakin had not changed a bit. His face darkened.
"You're talking bantha-shit, Korkie," he grumbled. "They're sixteen-standard. They're sure as hells not adults and they don't get to decide any of that yet."
Korkie shrugged.
"On Tatooine or Mandalore-"
"Forget kriffing Tatooine, they are children by Republican law!" Anakin hissed. "Are you not a captain of the Alliance to Restore the Republic?"
"You know I'm really there as an anti-Imperialist," Korkie countered. "Remember, Anakin, when I was sixteen-standard, I was already-"
"What?" Anakin challenged. "Kissing twenty-year-olds in nightclubs?"
Korkie raised his brows, faintly amused at the twins' surprise.
"-already fighting the Empire, Anakin," he corrected him. "I first kissed Mahdi on my seventeenth lifeday."
Anakin did not share in his levity.
"You were a miserable orphan with no one to look after you and I'm sorry that happened but I am going to do better for my kids."
"Ouch," Korkie grumbled.
It was true, probably. He had been miserable. But not always. He'd had victories. Glimpses of sunshine between those rolling storms. And he'd come out of it alright, hadn't he?
"The Princess Ariarne is basically on the Advisory Council," he countered. "She's not a miserable orphan."
An orphan, technically. But with the best adoptive parents in the galaxy and certainly far from miserable.
"How old is the Princess Ariarne?" Leia asked.
Korkie frowned, counted on his fingers. Born in the year of their raid on Arkanis.
"Thirteen-standard, I think."
Chaos erupted again.
"See, Dad?"
"Thirteen-standard?"
"Korkie, don't tell them-"
"But it's true!"
"I don't know what sort of parents-"
"Bail and Breha are good parents, Anakin."
"I don't know how you can say that if they're putting their child at risk like that."
"I think that good and bad parenting is maybe a little more complex than-"
"You don't know the first kriffing thing about parenting."
"I've been parented, Anakin. I've been sixteen."
"Did you start the lifeday party without me?"
Shmi Skywalker appeared in the doorway of the kitchen and finally, with her arrival, the anger and clamour collapsed into silence. Korkie tried to conceal his shock. Shmi had long been grey but he'd never seen her like this. Shrunken and frail. Sleeping in the afternoons. How old was Shmi? Surely not old enough to-
"I hope you're planning to save some of those treats for when Owen and Beru get in from the fields."
Luke, who had perhaps been viciously devouring sweets to distract from all the things he'd have liked to point out in their argument, relinquished the plastic packaging he'd been wrestling with and offered it up to his grandmother.
"Try this one, Nana. It's a Veromulan candy. It's stormfruit flavoured."
Shmi smiled but placed the offering aside.
"Perhaps after dinner, Luke."
Shmi didn't look as though she'd eaten any dinner in a long while. Korkie waited for the explanation but nothing came.
"You are still fighting for freedom and justice in the galaxy, dear one?"
Korkie found a smile for her. Her hand was so bony against his shoulder. But she was still Shmi. Still a warrior for freedom and justice – as great of a warrior, Korkie knew, as his own mother had been, but without the Kryze privilege and power behind her. A quiet warrior in her small galaxy.
"Just as you taught me, Ba'vodu Shmi."
Shmi scoffed.
"Your parents taught you that."
"You did too."
She rolled her eyes but gave his shoulder a tender squeeze.
"Can you believe they're sixteen-standard now?"
Together they beheld Luke and Leia, who were sipping their sparkling uj-cordial and having what looked to be a well-practised silent conversation while their father glowered across the table from them.
"It's bizarre," Korkie confessed, with a grin. "I remember the day the two of you were born, you know."
"Saying stuff like that makes you sound old, Ba'vodu," Leia sniped half-heartedly. "So if you're so ashamed of being thirty-standard-"
"I remember delivering you both," Shmi contributed. "I remember the warmth of you in my hands."
Luke made a face.
"That's gross."
"It was a sad but wonderful day," Shmi intoned.
She stepped aside from Korkie, then, to lay a hand instead upon Anakin's shoulder, where he sat slumped.
"Well, I was not there," Anakin contributed. "I was many planetary systems away with my arms and legs cut off because I had tried to kill the Emperor. So if we could all give the rebellion argument a break and enjoy the lifeday celebrations-"
"Lifedays," Leia corrected half-heartedly.
"-I would appreciate it."
Anakin lifted his face, implored his children for understanding.
"I just don't want to miss anything else, okay? I want us all to be alive and together when you kids have your babies, one day."
Luke softened, gave his father's hand a squeeze across the table. Leia's anger flickered too in the Force but she put on a stern countenance.
"Neither of us will have any babies, Dad, because I'm not marrying Biggs and I don't think Luke has ever even met a girl."
"Hey, that's not true, I've met-"
"Staring at girls is not the same as meeting girls. Besides, you've barely even-"
"When do they grow out of this?" Anakin asked.
But he was looking at his children, despite it all – despite the exasperation, despite the deeper undercurrent of grief – with beaming, radiant love.
"I thought that Phoenix was the one cell I didn't have to worry about getting us into trouble!"
Despite his words of exasperation, Korkie in truth was glad for an excuse to be out of mission with Ahsoka and the Faulties again. It had been too long, even if this mission brought them to arguably one of the more unhappy and Empire-choked planets in the galaxy today: Lothal.
"Forgive me for running one mission that didn't go to plan," Hera grumbled, picking off a cluster of stormtroopers with her blaster. "Everything was going perfectly smoothly. But all of a sudden we've got two kids-"
Korkie feigned surprise.
"I knew you and Kanan were basically married, but I didn't know you-"
"Korkie!"
Even with soldiers pressing all around them, Hera found the time to whack him in the back of the head.
"Be serious, please? What I meant to say is that there are two kids running amok in the city getting right in the way of all of our plans. Some punk stole the weapons shipment off us – Kanan and Zeb are taking care of him. And the place was crawling with troopers before we even got here because some militant artist has been painting subversive murals and graffitiing TIE fighters and setting off paint bombs."
"What in the hells is a paint bomb?" Ahsoka asked.
"It's exactly what it sounds like. I think she must be a relation of yours, Korkie. A pacifist Mando."
Korkie's brows shot up.
"She's a Mando'ad?"
Hera shrugged.
"Has the armour for it."
Korkie brightened.
"Forget I ever complained about coming down to Lothal."
"Good," Hera gritted out, narrowly avoiding a new barrage of blaster bolts that were now coming from the buildings above them. "You two can go get her. I'm joining Chopper back at the ship."
"You're not going to win any medals for your infantry work, Hera," Korkie called after her retreating back.
The Twi'lek, who had already won more medals than anyone else in the Alliance (and certainly more than Korkie) for her piloting, gave Korkie no more acknowledgement than a one-handed obscenity, which he accepted with a grin.
"Are you going to do any work today?" Ahsoka asked. "Or just talk shit?"
They began to run from their increasingly undefendable hiding place, 'sabers extended to deflect the still flowing blaster bolts.
"I am working! This way, don't you think?"
Ahsoka nodded, sensing what he had.
"Ba'vodu will be devastated when she hears we found a Mando'ad without her."
But perhaps, upon reflection, Bo-Katan would have felt something far more complex than that. For the Mando'ad they found at the end of the trail of paint-spattered stormtroopers had painted her armour an unaffiliated rainbow, but there was no mistaking her in the Force, nor in the convor she had depicted upon her pauldron. This young warrior was once the infant who had been declared the mascot of the New Mandalorian era of the Nite Owls.
"Sab'ika! That armour is a work of art!"
He leapt to stand beside her, defending her from blaster fire while Ahsoka leapt up a level to take it out at the source.
"Hi, my famous Ori'vod," she greeted him, not even faintly breathless. "Everything's under control. You needn't have-"
The ground trembled with an explosion in the near distance.
"The Empire has made quite a fuss about you and everything else happening on Lothal," Korkie informed his young companion. "We've got pilots fighting off Imperial troop-carriers up there. Let us help you out?"
A pensive tilt of her buy'ce.
"Fine. Want to see my mural before the Empire blows it up?"
Along the wall of the largest market hall in Capital City, Sabine had painted a sprawling scene of an endless landscape where one planet bled into the next. King Lee-Char emerged from the ocean of Mon Cala. In the jungle of Ryloth, Cham Syndulla and a lylek bared their teeth. Mas Amedda and a littering of stormtroopers lay trampled by an uprising of workers on Coruscant. Queen Dalné stared, quiet but fierce, from her throne upon Naboo, a Gungan warrior by her side. And on the razed soil of Mandalore, Korkie and Bo-Katan Kryze stood in armour. Between them, larger than life, resting a ghostly hand upon each of their shoulders, was the Duchess Satine in ceremonial dress, risen from the shattered earth.
"Sabine…"
The voice that spoke on rebel media with beskar conviction and the Negotiator's silk wavered.
"How in the stars did you manage-"
"Nightworks. Met some kid who agreed to help me stop any stormtroopers patrolling down this particular laneway. Think he's one of your types. He speaks and they listen."
But Sabine could see that he was not really listening to her answer. He could not seem to look away from his mother.
"Oi! Are we getting out of here or not?"
The Togruta warrior leapt down from the building behind them, eyes catching briefly on the mural.
"I mean, that's beautiful, but Cody and the others are being shot at up there, and-"
There was a whistling overhead and a swooping fighter spat its cannon fire into the factory wall. Sabine tried not to grimace.
"As I said. I knew they'd blow it up."
And she turned and followed her rescuers the hells out of there.
Nana Shmi was sick with something that could not be cured on Tatooine; they had known that quietly for many months now, as she wasted away. On Leia's HoloNet medi-dramas, droids performed scans and bloodwork, biopsies and immunofluorescence. None of that existed in their corner of the galaxy and Luke knew it made his sister angry but he wasn't so sure himself that it was such a bad thing. It looked painful, going through all those tests. Undignified and uncomfortable. Luke felt in the Force all around them that his grandmother was dying and it did not seem that there was any other path forward. Forget the laboratories and the labels: Luke simply wanted to spend the time that Shmi had left basking in her fading sunlight.
It still hurt, of course. As she became weaker and weaker and stopped leaving her bed entirely, it hurt a great deal. For Nana Shmi's calloused hands had delivered him into this galaxy and she had hurtled across the desert sands to mend his leg when it had been broken. And Luke had grown so tall - well, perhaps not so tall, as Leia was fond of reminding him - and had grown so strong, since all of that had happened. It was not fair that Nana Shmi would fade like this now, with Luke powerless to stop it.
"Nana Shmi wants to speak to both of you."
Beru emerged from the bedroom with something conspiratorial about her Force signature; she watched Owen and Anakin – who of course manifested their own grief through intense focus upon the farm work – through the window with some caution, as though standing sentry.
"Go on. It's important."
Leia and Luke shared a look – each as uncertain as the other – and rose to stand from where they had been feigning interest in their schoolwork at the kitchen table. Luke reached out to his sister in the Force, gave a gentle nudge. It'll be okay. Leia loved her grandmother as much as any of them but she didn't like going into that room. Luke could not blame her. The scent of coming death was heavy in the air.
"Hi, Nana Shmi."
They came to sit on the floor beside her pallet, still warm from Beru's presence only minutes before. Owen grumbled about the farm work more out of habit than anything else, but they had all found the time in the passing days to create a vigil of near constant companionship as Shmi was confined to her bed.
"Hello, my bright stars."
Almost everything had changed, but Shmi's eyes were the same warm brown as always. In the Force, her presence was weaker. But it was still her.
"I have a gift for you," she whispered. "For the two of you."
She proffered a small gift wrapped in flimsi. Luke heard the unmistakable clinking of currency as Leia accepted it into her hand.
"Only for the two of you," Shmi stressed. "Your father and your uncle love you and I know that they mean the best for you. But many years ago now, I realised that their fear of losing you is too great. That if they had their way-"
The effort of all these words had been great and Shmi paused, closing her eyes as her muscles flared in her neck with the work of her breath.
"That if they had their way, they'd keep you here forever."
Leia passed the package to Luke with wide eyes. He felt the coins slipping within the folds of flimsi. Luke had never seen nor handled this much money.
"Nana Shmi, how did you-"
"Beru and I have been saving for many years now. From our midwifery work. It's not much but…"
She opened her eyes, found a small smile for them.
"It's something."
It may not have been much anywhere else in the galaxy. But until this moment Luke and Leia had not had a single coin to call their own. This gift, these slivers of earnings tucked away over so many years, was enormous. It was not enough for a flight off-planet. But the twins had learned enough from their rare ventures into Mos Eisley that in shrewd hands, money begot more money. Luke fumbled for words with a dry mouth.
"Nana Shmi, this is-"
"I know that you want to go out into that enormous galaxy and fight," she went on. "And you have my blessing to do that. But please remember, dear ones, that your father wanted that life too, not so very many years ago. That he was terribly hurt and you may be too."
Luke and Leia reached in synchrony for their grandmother's hands. Felt the weakness in her as she clasped them in return.
"I need you to swear to me, bright ones, that you will look after each other."
"We promise, Nana."
"We swear."
"Your father is only alive," Shmi went on, "and the two of you are only alive, because Obi Wan Kenobi devoted his life to looking after that lost slave from Tatooine."
Devoted his life. Had given his life. Luke thought of the carefully shielded grief in the Force that Korkie Kryze could not entirely erase on his visits to their home and felt a little closer to understanding it.
"Yes, Nana."
"We promise."
"We're going to take care of each other and do something good."
"For the whole galaxy."
"Just like Obi Wan would have wanted."
Shmi relaxed back against her pillows, contented.
"I know you will," she agreed. "Send your father in, please."
Cere strode out across the rust-coloured sand and greeted the approaching Dathomirian with a warm smile.
"I thought you might be coming! Troopers were all jittery and talking about desert ghosts again today."
Merrin snorted.
"It's one of the nicer nicknames I've been given. Thought I'd drop by on my way back from Persaya."
"How's Cal?"
"Alright. He's heading back to Tanalorr to help Barriss for a little while. He and Gerrera are a bad match – they'd work each other to death if I didn't stop them. You should hear the sound of Gerrera's lungs. How are the Archives going?"
Cere sighed.
"Slowly."
She had made excellent progress in her first years on Jedha but she knew that she had barely scratched the surface on the ancient moon's lore. In recent cycles, she seemed to find trouble every time she ventured from the concealed refuge of her Archives. She led Merrin inside, where the icy cold of the falling dusk did not bite.
"Can't do anything here without running into Imperials these days," Cere went on. "Have you noticed?"
Merrin gave a grim nod.
"There are more stationed here every time I come."
"More every week," Cere affirmed. "Their mining efforts are ramping up. More kyber than a whole army of Inquisitors could ever need."
A pensive silence fell between the two women.
"What do they want it for?" Merrin ventured. "New blaster technology for their troopers?"
Cere snorted, shook her head.
"Waste of kyber. Those idiots can't even hit a target. Besides, I don't know if you could engineer kyber to behave like a laser."
Merrin frowned.
"I think you could. It wouldn't be very efficient, though, on the scale of a blaster. It would need to be insulated and amplified…"
"You know they've turned Ryloth into all but one big doonium mine."
"Same on Lothal and Umbara," Merrin sighed. "There's going to be an ISD for every moon in this galaxy, at this rate."
"It'd work as an insulator," Cere pointed out. "All that doonium."
Merrin raised her brows, appraised the suggestion in silence for a few moments.
"They're doing something crazy, Cere," she decided eventually. "ISDs with kyber lasers, or something."
"Something crazy," Cere agreed.
And part of Cere wanted to lock herself in her Archives and never leave again. To immerse herself in the task of unravelling that ancient knowledge. To be a scholar, not a soldier. It was a better life. It had been such a quiet joy, all these years, not to be at war.
But it was a privilege that few in the galaxy enjoyed.
"I'll speak to Gerrera about it," Cere resolved. "He'll be pleased for an excuse to militarise the planet more heavily."
Jedha, the sanctuary of the spiritual. It was wrong to bring the war here. But perhaps the Empire had brought it here already. Cere could only hope that this war would be the last that she would ever fight.
"Anakin?"
"Yes, Ma?"
"My time is near. But your life is not done yet."
"Ma..."
"Your life did not end with those mistakes on Coruscant."
"Ma, I can't. I..."
"Be brave, Anakin. Don't look back."
It happened at the hottest part of the day, as the Tatooine suns climbed and flared at their zenith. A sharp in-drawing of breath and then nothing.
The feeling of it in the Force was terribly strange. Leia could never seem to understand any of it with the clarity her brother did – it was not a simple thread to be tugged, she could not manipulate objects at will – but she felt it in all its intensity. Knew the Force as a brilliant tapestry. And in that moment, the part of her galaxy that was her grandmother stilled and gave way to a terrible emptiness. For weeks now, Leia had probed and been reassured, probed and been reassured, as she found the familiar pangings of warmth reflecting back at her no matter how shrunken or ill Shmi looked. But now there was nothing.
And yet there was something, all around her. As though the presence that had been so distinctly her grandmother's was now part of the very fabric of the universe, nowhere and everywhere.
Everyone cried, even Owen, which took away the strangeness of seeing tears upon her father's face for the first time in her life. (Anakin was never tearful, despite being perpetually sad). Leia couldn't look at her father as he wrapped that tiny body in its shroud. Nana Shmi did not live in that body anymore.
She found Luke outside, digging, even though it was much too hot and far too soon to be doing so. The sight of him made Leia angry. Anger was easier than the rest of it.
"She's been dead ten kriffing minutes, Luke. What in the hells are you doing?"
Luke looked at Leia with swimming eyes but no tears upon his face – they evaporated as soon as they had been shed beneath these suns. His jaw was set firm.
"It'll be much nicer for her than in the house. It's cool down there, if you dig deep enough."
And it somehow seemed impeccable logic – Leia was perhaps becoming heat-stroked already, or perhaps the grief was to blame. Her anger evaporated. She took a shovel and joined her brother in his work.
"I'm going to Mos Eisley as soon as I'm done crying," she told him.
Luke did not look up from the churning sand.
"What for?"
"To turn that gift into something bigger. To get us out of here."
Luke grimaced.
"How can you think about that now?"
Leia felt the rising of new tears.
"Because that's what she wanted, Luke! That's what she wanted for us."
"This is going to kill Dad."
"Nothing could kill Dad. The Emperor tried."
They looked at each other in a miserable stalemate.
"I think it'll wake him up," Leia muttered. "I think he's already been halfway dead all these years. And I think maybe it'll bring him back again."
Luke shook his head. He was crying again. Their shovels slipped helpless in the loose sand.
"I hate it here, Leia. I wish I didn't. I wish I could stay. But-"
"I hate it here too," Leia told him firmly. "And we're going to get out and we're not going to say sorry to anyone because we shouldn't have to."
All around them, the blistering heat of the day. Their father's swirling grief. And Nana Shmi, somewhere, out there, nowhere and everywhere, watching over them.
Rest in peace Shmi. We all love you.
Korkie's unacknowledged thirtieth lifeday and his three hundred and twenty credits in savings is for everyone out there who doesn't feel they're ticking off those adult milestones. Today's economy really isn't conducive to owning a house.
Next chapter... well, unfortunately it's only halfway written. I've finally run out of pre-written content. But I'll put in my best effort to stick to weekly chapters. What I can promise you is Cere chasing answers and Ursa making an important comm-call.
xx - S.