Scene 2, while not very Princess Bride, is for you, 17. I like your thinking.

Chapter 47: No Accidents

Sidious beheld his apprentice before him. She had emerged from her fighter irritable and exhausted but uninjured. She was the only Imperial soldier upon the Death Star, then, not to have died upon its implosion. Sidious regarded her dispassionately. Her survival was advantageous, perhaps, marginally. She had enjoyed many great victories, but when it had mattered Darth Gelid had failed him countless times: as a duellist, as a pilot, as a leader of troops. But he could not deny that she had absorbed a great deal of pain in her young life. More than any other soldier he had considered as a potential apprentice, and this was why he had chosen her. So much violence – from his hand, more than anyone else's – and such betrayal and heartache, in the years that her heart had been open to love. She had absorbed it all and yet she stood before him, tall and still, and she did not apologise. She had become more insolent, over the years. Sidious did not much mind her tongue. No one else dared show the faintest impression of disagreement in his presence.

"Tarkin was overconfident," she summarised. "You shouldn't have granted him such influence. He failed to break the Princess of Alderaan. And when the rebels came for the station, he refused even to mobilise any fighters. I had to take my own fleet out."

Sidious raised a brow.

"And your fleet performed so admirably."

Darth Gelid shook her head.

"Those three fighters that made the final run… all of them were flown by Force-sensitive pilots."

"A legacy of the pathetic Inquisitorius."

The apprentice all but scoffed.

"One of them was presumably Kenobi's son and that failure is my own," she acknowledged, grimly. "But it wasn't Korkaran Kryze who destroyed the Death Star. Have you heard, Master? What the rebels are calling their new hero?"

A spearing dagger of ice between them, a warning in the Force. He tolerated her tongue but he would not be mocked.

"You suggest I am ignorant."

"You've heard, then? That the pilot who destroyed the Death Star is a teenager from Tatooine named Luke Skywalker?"

Sidious breathed very slowly and very deeply. Yes. He had heard. He had heard and he had known the moment he heard it that it could be no coincidence. There were no accidents in the Force. Why the Force presumed to play such games with him he could not yet comprehend.

"And there was a third fighter, Darth Gelid? A third fighter you could not shoot down?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

The apprentice gave a languid shrug.

"I don't know. The Force signature was familiar. But not one that I know well."

There was a thrumming silence between them. The apprentice inspected a spattering of engine grease upon her black glove.

"I thought you took care of that lineage, Master," she murmured, in vague reproach.

She had spoken casually but Sidious sensed her fear; she knew, then, that she had pushed him too far. He sent a jolt of lightning through her body, withdrew when she fell to her knees.

"Stay down, Darth Gelid."

The apprentice bowed her head in compliance.

"It is possible," Sidious conceded delicately, "that the twins were delivered before Amidala died."

Her head lifted, interest sparking.

"There were twins?"

"Yes," Sidious affirmed, the truth of it bitter in his mouth. "Amidala carried twins, when she escaped to Mandalore."

Another long silence.

"And is it possible, Master…"

Her voice so delicate, in the wake of that rush of pain. Kneeling, bowed, humble.

"…that their father survived?"

Sidious electrocuted her anyway.

"Why do you ask this?" he hissed.

Realising now, perhaps, that she would be punished whether she argued or tried to appease him, the apprentice looked at him with reproach.

"As I said, Master. The Force signature was somewhat familiar. Bright."

A long, steady sigh.

"It is possible."

Tano. It had all been the fault of blasted Ahsoka Tano, who should have been long estranged from her former Master, with the strings Sidious had pulled. Who had come to rescue him anyway, with the Grand Master Yoda in tow. Who had snatched the body of the Chosen One from beneath him while he was engaged in furious combat with the diminutive Jedi leader. Sidious felt a burning anger at the memory.

The apprentice did not reproach him his failure.

"If he is following his son into battle," she conjectured, "there will be ample opportunity to be rid of him."

This much was true.

"To rid ourselves of the Skywalker lineage is a task above you, my ever-disappointing apprentice," Sidious reminded her. "You have not even dealt with Kenobi."

"He goes by Kryze," Darth Gelid informed him, as though this might be of any interest or relevance to the Sith Emperor of the Galaxy. "But anyhow, Master. You would be foolish to dismiss my abilities. I destroyed Cere Junda. A far stronger Jedi than any Kenobi or Kryze has ever been."

His apprentice did not often surprise him. Sidious's Force-prescience was unparalleled and shielding in his company futile. But this surprised him. For his apprentice knelt before him with all those old shackles, still, weighing her down in the Force. The day she killed her former Master was supposed to be the day that she grew, finally, into the Sith Lord he knew she could become.

"When?" he demanded.

"She boarded the Death Star the day of its destruction. Part of the rescue crew who retrieved Tano and the Princess."

He could not reproach her, he supposed, in not yet having submitted a report on the matter. One problem had led rather rapidly to another.

"And have you truly destroyed her?"

"It was a fatal blow."

There was something his apprentice was not saying. Some failure she was covering up. Sidious could have laughed. They'd seen fatal blows before, had they not? Anakin Skywalker had been dealt a fatal blow, had he not? And Darth Maul before him?

"Her body disappeared, Master," the apprentice spat out. "The moment my 'saber struck through her."

"Disappeared?"

"Completely. All that was left were her robes."

Sidious's grip tightened upon his throne. There was something wrong in the Force. Something deeply wrong. Something more unsettling than the serendipitous resurgence of the Skywalker lineage performing pod-races in the trenches of his battle station. Something more unsettling than the familiar brightness of the third fighter pilot. There was never meant to be such power in the Light. The Dark Side was the only pathway to defeating death.

"And now, Darth Gelid?"

The apprentice cringed with the admission.

"She is with me still. In the Force, she is with me. She speaks to me."

She lifted her head then, in desperate appeal.

"But I do not listen to her, Master."

And Sidious would have killed her in his contempt had she not been his key to unravelling this troubling mystery. But it was no good to convey to his apprentice exactly how disturbed he was.

"Perhaps I have driven you altogether too mad," Sidious grumbled. "But it is as you have said, my apprentice. If Anakin Skywalker is following his children into battle, the opportunity will present itself for his destruction. We will be patient, Darth Gelid. Skywalker will come in time. At present, there is a mess that requires your attention, no?"

She nodded, falling into the familiar cadence of their usual engagement.

"Yes, Master."

"Anakin Skywalker has never believed in his own power. And we will not allow him to begin believing now. We will prove that the Empire is mighty still, despite one rebel victory."

"Yes, Master."

She bent so deeply upon her weary knees that her helmet near kissed the ground.

"It will be done, Master. The fleet is embarking for Yavin 4 as we speak."

After the successful jump to hyperspace, not a moment too soon ahead of the approaching Empire, Ba'vodu Korkie made good on his promise of continuing the celebrations. He pulled out a bottle of what he warned was, "Not really tihaar, but Sewlen's best attempt," and hijacked the ship's speaker systems, much to Rex's consternation, to play music. But it was a strange and solemn sort of party, as hyperspace streaked past them. The music was nothing like Luke had heard in the cantinas of Mos Eisley; it thrummed and sighed, full of longing.

"To the closest place we've had to a home for such a long time," Korkie plaintively toasted, as Yavin 4 disappeared behind them, lifting his glass of not-tihaar.

Rex and Cody nodded solemnly and clinked glasses. It was strange to think. Luke had hated Tatooine just about as long as he could remember but it was his home. He knew that he could go home, if he needed to. Korkie and the clones didn't have that. Didn't even have anything close, anymore.

And the supposed celebrations only got more miserable from there. They had lost so many pilots in the assault on the Death Star and toasted to each of them in turn. And then the lives lost on Scarif. They didn't speak of it but Luke could not help but think of those that had died when the Death Star had blown. He had saved lives, sure, from all the planet-blowing war crimes the Death Star had surely planned. But it wasn't like Luke had met all the sentients – there must have been thousands of them – aboard the Death Star. Hadn't known, exactly, whether they had deserved to die like that. Did anyone deserve to die like that? He didn't know. He knew, though, that Ba'vodu Korkie didn't like to kill anyone, not even stormtroopers.

"In all the chaos, I didn't get a chance to tell you-"

The room was already started to blur and turn strange; Korkie's firm cap on how much not-tihaar Luke and Leia were permitted to drink had perhaps been forgotten. It took Luke a moment to focus upon his father.

"When I went out to find the plans, there were stormtroopers on Tatooine looking for them as well. I went out alone. Didn't think there'd be any trouble. But they must have been searching farmhouses. Trying to find who'd received the plans."

Luke blinked blearily. There was something his father was trying to tell him. Something he didn't want to say. But what exactly-

"They came to our farm. And I don't know why they did it… for no good kriffing reason…"

Anakin buried his face in his hands.

"They killed Owen and Beru."

Luke blinked. Time seemed to be moving very slowly and very fast. Leia was already crying into Cody's shoulder. But the words were just barely beginning to sink into Luke's brain.

Owen and Beru. His other parents. Dead. While he and Leia had been running off on some kriffing adventure.

"I'm going to throw up," Luke announced.

He lurched from the table and stumbled to the bathroom. He knelt with his head over the toilet and wished he could vomit but he couldn't. He watched his saliva drip and ripple the water. Or perhaps they were falling tears.

Maybe he would go to sleep there. It had probably been too long since he'd had a sleep. The floor was pleasantly cool and the toilet not a terrible pillow.

"Are you alright?"

He turned and felt the room spin. The Princess Ariarne was standing in the doorway, looking utterly sober and dignified.

"I need to pee," she told him.

Luke mumbled an apology and dragged himself onto his feet. He didn't want to go back to the table in the main hold. He could hear faint murmurs of the conversation.

"Do you remember when Beru would…"

"And how Owen…"

He couldn't sit there and reminisce. That meant accepting that it was alright that they were gone. And it wasn't.

"If you need to throw up again, the toilet's all yours."

Luke realised, with a jolt, that he'd been loitering outside the bathroom like some sort of creep.

"That's okay. I didn't vomit."

"You kind of look like you need to," Ariarne advised.

Luke sighed.

"I feel like it too."

He slid to sit against the wall. Ariarne sat beside him.

"You didn't join the funeral-party-thing."

Ariarne looked a little as though she was resisting rolling her eyes.

"I'm too young to get sad-drunk with the rest of you," she told him. "Besides, I don't feel like it."

She pulled at a loose thread upon her white skirt.

"My planet was destroyed, like… yesterday."

Luke nodded. He really didn't have any right to feel so sorry for himself.

"I'm really sorry."

Ariarne shrugged.

"It's not your fault."

They sat in silence a long moment.

"It's my fault," she huffed. "Well, I mean, it feels like it was. I know it wasn't, exactly. But I knew that something was wrong and I just didn't know what and I let my dad go back to Alderaan and-"

"Are you Force-sensitive?" Luke asked, with a jolt of surprise.

She nodded. Luke hadn't sensed it in her before – she'd been so exhausted, so broken, on their escape from the Death Star – but it was obvious now. The way she looked at him and seemed to understand all the things that his brain was too blurry to say aloud.

"Breha and Bail weren't my real parents," she explained, reading his question. "But I was only a baby when Korkie rescued me from the Inquisitor's Academy on Arkanis and brought me there. So, I mean, they were kind of always my parents."

Luke rested his head against the humming wall of the ship, looked at the creaking ceiling.

"My aunty and uncle were like my parents," he mused. "I wasn't around to protect them either. Didn't know they were in danger."

He rubbed at his eyes.

"I mean, I'm lucky, I had my real dad too. But Leia and I were sometimes too much for him. I don't think he'd have been able to handle us, all by himself. Beru and Owen raised us as much as he did."

Owen, teaching him how to build a fence, use a vaporator. Teaching him how to survive on that barren land. Beru, stroking his hair as he went to sleep. Challenging him to a race across the cool sand at night.

"What about your mum?" Ariarne asked.

"She died when we were born."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Luke echoed. "Kind of mine and Leia's, if anyone's."

He watched her hands at work, picking apart the skirt further still. The hem was fraying.

"Do you know anything about your birth parents?" he asked. "Were they Jedi?"

Ariarne gave a wistful smile, shook her head.

"No. I don't know anything at all. The only person who does is the Emperor's apprentice, probably."

A vicious yank, pulling a long coil of thread.

"She was the one who took me away from them. But she didn't tell me anything useful, while we were hanging out together."

Hanging out. Interrogation and torture. It was an admirable attempt at humour, a wry smile on her face.

"I don't think she even knew who I was," Ariarne concluded. "I didn't get a chance to tell her."

Luke nodded thoughtfully.

"I don't suppose she did. Why are you ruining your dress?"

"It's not mine," she told him. "Tarkin put me in it. They ruined my first dress."

She did not elaborate.

"I think there are some spare clothes on board," she went on. "We have heaps of extra uniform stock. I helped make them. Trying to be useful without doing anything dangerous, you see."

She gave an empty laugh at the notion of it.

"What a terrible kriffing week!" she tittered, looking about as delirious as Luke felt.

"Korkie says it's the worst week since Leia and I were born."

"What week was that?"

"Same as the first Empire Day."

He didn't know why they were laughing. But their voices fell into each other, sparked the other forward.

"A famously bad week."

"Exactly."

"But no planets actually exploded that week," Ariarne pointed out.

Korkie shrugged, wiped his eyes.

"I guess they didn't. Except Mandalore might as well have been blown up. They bombed it that badly."

Ariarne slumped forward, chin in her hands.

"Poor Korkie."

"I know."

Luke rested his head on his tucked up knees, turned his head to look at her. Ariarne was blotting tears from her eyes. She wasn't laughing anymore. Korkie realised, then, that his cheeks were damp too.

"I guess it's not really a competition," he decided. "But it's been a very bad week."

"Yeah," Ariarne agreed, voice low and effortfully stoic. "Good job blowing up the Death Star, though. I guess that makes it an okay week, on balance."

She offered him a small smile. Luke shook his head, closed his eyes.

"Lucky shot," he mumbled.

Ariarne laughed again.

"Bantha-shit!"

The sound of it gave Luke the strength to lift his head again.

"No, I'm serious!" he protested. "It really wasn't me. I think I had some sort of magical Force guide or-"

Luke shook his head. Even after however much not-tihaar he'd drunk, he knew he sounded crazy.

"I don't know. I was hallucinating, or something. I felt like I had someone else guiding me through the whole thing. So it wasn't all that hard."

But Ariarne did not laugh at this. She tilted her head, circumspect.

"That's funny," she mused. "Because when I was captured and they were interrogating me and all that horrible stuff…"

She shrugged.

"I mean, I figured I was hallucinating. But I felt like I had someone with me, too."

Korkie wasn't sure whether to blame his advancing age or Sewlen's dodgy knock-off tihaar for his headache as they approached Lothal. Thirty-three kriffing standard. It was a miracle and it was horrible. It was the age at which his parents had died. Korkie put the water on to boil and closed his eyes, leaning against the benchtop. Tea would make things better. With some tea, he'd be ready to face the day.

"Hey Korkie?"

He turned, blinking effortfully, to find Leia with last night's blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Perhaps it was Sewlen's tihaar, after all. Even nineteen-standard-year-old Leia looked rather haggard.

"Hmm?"

"You knew Han, before all this?"

Korkie smiled with the memory.

"I met him on Corellia nearly twenty years ago. He was a scumrat for a gang called the White Worms and I was a creditless rebel who'd just blown up my hyperdrive. We stole some ship parts together. Couldn't have got off-planet without him."

Leia nodded vaguely.

"How old is he, then?"

She had asked the question as matter-of-factly as she could muster, avoiding Korkie's gaze as she reached for a mug of her own. Korkie poured a cup of steaming tea for each of them and tried not to look too smug. Too old for you, he might have told her. But he remembered that feeling. He would trust Leia to figure it out.

"My age, I think," Korkie told her honestly.

Leia blanched.

"Exactly your age?"

Korkie shrugged.

"He doesn't strike me as the type to keep a birth certificate. But I met him on Corellia when I was fourteen-standard and he looked about the same."

He set his tea down and gave an innocent smile.

"Why don't you ask him?"

Leia gave him a glowering look that said, You know why. Korkie lifted his hands in placation.

"It's none of my business and I really do trust you," he promised, "so I won't give you unsolicited advice. But should you ever feel hurt or upset or unsafe you are to tell me immediately and I will fix things."

"There's nothing to fix," Leia grumbled, into her tea. "He barely even knows my name."

Korkie snickered.

"He wants you to think he barely even knows your name."

"Men are stupid," Leia grumbled.

"Mostly," Korkie agreed. "But sometimes they're wonderful."

"Then why have you been single forever?" Leia challenged.

Korkie scowled.

"Who told you that?"

"Ariarne."

Korkie tutted and grumbled. Soon he would have Kawlan, Ruma, Ariarne and Leia all harassing him…

"I've got more important things to do than fall in love. I'm going to take back Mandalore."

"Good for you."

Leia surprised Korkie with a tender embrace.

"Thanks for not giving me a lecture," she mumbled, into his shoulder.

Korkie chuckled, gave her a squeeze.

"I couldn't. I've made every mistake there is to make."

"I struggle to believe that."

"That's because you never saw it," Korkie counselled, as they parted and sipped their teas again. "I kept my distance from you and Luke during my hot mess era. Didn't want to be a bad role model."

"Hot mess era?" Leia repeated, sounding somewhat impressed. "Now that I'm not an impressionable child anymore, you can tell me all about it."

"Good try," Korkie snickered, with a roll of his eyes. "You should have asked me while I was still drunk."

"Welcome to sunny Lothal!"

Sabine jogged over to assess the disembarking survivors. Korkie, in one piece, albeit looking a little bleary-eyed and grateful for the dim grey of the sky. Rex and Cody, as steady as always. The Princess Ariarne, in oversized rebel uniform, walking gingerly, shoulder to shoulder with Ahsoka Tano. And new faces: two teenagers a little younger than herself, wide-eyed in worn out farm clothes, and an older man in a dark cloak, a jagged scar crossing one eye. He almost looked like a Jedi of old. But perhaps, Sabine realised, as he reached up to brush a strand of hair from his eyes, he wore the cloak only to conceal his prosthetic limbs.

"You've been recruiting," Sabine observed, as Korkie drew near.

"Recruiting?"

Korkie barked out a laugh.

"Too busy to be recruiting. This lot joined up of their own volition. Or, Luke and Leia did, at least. And they dragged Anakin along with them."

Sabine's eyes widened.

"That's Luke? As in, blew-up-the-Death-Star-Luke?"

Korkie snickered.

"Baby face, huh?"

Sabine frowned, trying to reconcile it all.

"And the one who looks to have actually seen battle before… Anakin, you said?"

"Mhmm. Recognise the name?"

Sabine rubbed at her forehead, tried to remember.

"I think so."

"Bless you, Sab'ika," Korkie snickered. "So young! He was very famous, in the first three years of your life."

"Was he?"

"Anakin Skywalker."

"Luke's father?"

Korkie seemed to be rather stunned that Sabine had heard of the son but not the father.

"And a great Jedi," he informed Sabine. "My father's Padawan, you know."

Sabine blinked her surprise and made an effort to look interested. Korkie gave a wistful smile and a heavy sigh. Sabine knew the distant concept of the Jetii father that had endowed her Mand'alor with useful but rather dar'manda abilities, but she did not know Obi Wan Kenobi. Had no memory of him, although they had feasibly, she supposed, once or twice, shared a banquet table in the palace of Sundari during her toddler years. He had been a heroic general of the Clones Wars – her mother had taught her that much – before leaving the Republic for Mandalore. For the Duchess Satine and his son. But in truth, the name carried for Sabine no more weight than any other on the very, very long list of sentients killed by the Empire. She wished Korkie couldn't sense it in her.

"Anakin's kind of like my brooding, problematic older brother," Korkie went on, switching from Mando'a to Basic and raising his voice a little as he cast his gaze at the former Jedi, who acknowledged the taunt with a rueful smile and strode over to join them. "Anakin, meet Sabine Wren. Ursa's daughter. An excellent artist and an even better rebel."

Sabine gave a reluctant smile at the praise.

"My rebellion hasn't all been a wild success."

Kanan. Ezra. So close to the finish line. She'd saved their shebs a thousand times but hadn't done it when it had mattered.

"All of our victories seem to have come at heavy cost," Korkie acknowledged. "Would you call me crazy if I told you I was chasing another?"

Sabine cocked her head.

"Where?"

"Mandalore," he told her. "It's time to take back Mandalore. Before the Empire gets its shit together again or builds another Death Star. Don't you think, Sab'ika?"

"Now?" Anakin asked, surprised.

"About kriffing time," Sabine told him instead.

Korkie gave a grudging smile.

"Cut me some slack. We had a few other jobs to do."

"There's always other jobs to do," Sabine grumbled.

Kanan was dead. She had seen enough to know that Kanan was dead. But Ezra… None of it made sense. He was missing. And missing meant that he could be found.

"You're under no obligation to come," Korkie told her.

Sabine shook her head, folded her arms.

"Are you kidding? Of course I'm coming. Mandalore first."

She would walk to the end of the galaxy for him, otherwise. Search forever. And she wasn't sure she was strong enough for that.

"Where did my Buir end up?" Sabine asked. "Is she coming?"

"Haven't spoken to her yet. But Ursa will come, I'm sure. She was with the part of the fleet that evacuated to Hoth."

"Hoth?"

"Ice planet. So miserable no one's bothered putting it on any maps."

"Huh. Buir will be right at home, then. While all the other rebels freeze their boots off."

Korkie chuckled.

"Ruma won't be happy about it. She used to say the best part of a Sundari winter was the dome."

"Keldabe soldiers," Sabine muttered, with a snicker. "Terribly soft. Nearly as bad as the Sundari dome-dwellers."

"Oi!"

She turned on her heel, giving them a beckoning wave.

"Well, come on, then. Unless we're seizing Mandalore today, Hera and I have plans to put you lot to work. Lothal's got a long way to go."

Korkie followed without complaint, beckoning Anakin to follow. Her Mand'alor was alright, really. She'd follow him home. Then Ezra. She wouldn't forget him. She'd walk the galaxy for him, one day.

Hera was starving. The sort of hungry that gave her a spinning headache. But Jacen was crying and they had guests for dinner and she couldn't really expect all of them to enjoy their meal while he screamed his tiny head off. So she ducked outside, into the biting cold of the falling dusk, and tried to placate him at her breast, well-knowing that he would be dissatisfied.

"How are you supposed to feed him without eating first?"

Korkie emerged from the dining hall, arms laden. He draped a blanket about her shoulders and lifted a mug of soup to her lips.

"What are you doing, Korkie?"

Jacen was still screaming but Hera couldn't help but laugh.

"Can't you see I'm a little busy?"

Korkie gave a good-natured shrug.

"Well, if you can figure out how to hold him with one hand, then you can feed yourself the soup. Otherwise you should let me feed you."

He tilted the soup to her lips and Hera managed an awkward mouthful.

"You're going to spill it all over me!"

"I'm not."

They managed another. Hera licked a stray drop from beside her mouth.

"This is very undignified."

"You should stop complaining and keep drinking."

Jacen seemed to agree; the food must have done something for her let-down. Squirming less now, Hera managed to handle him with one arm and take the soup with her free hand. It was a little too hot to scull but she did so anyway.

"Thanks, Korkie. I appreciate it."

"Not at all. I'll get you another?"

"No, that's okay. I'll come back in soon."

She handed him back the mug and ran her hand over the dark sheen of her son's wispy hair.

"You know that you're well within your rights to stay at the dinner table while he cries," Korkie advised. "No one would mind."

Hera shook her head.

"I prefer to step out. I don't like to feed him with an audience."

Korkie dropped his head in apology.

"Ah. Sorry. If it helps, you know I have no interest in women."

Hera snickered.

"That's not why."

"Nor would I ever critique your feeding or settling techniques."

The damned Jedi always knew what she was thinking.

"I just feel like I'm not very good at it, sometimes," Hera muttered. "Not as good as I should be."

"I think you're doing brilliantly," Korkie told her. "He's alive and you love him. That's all there is to it, as best I can tell. Not to mention you managed to lend a hand on Scarif and you're doing all this on Lothal."

He gave a cautious smile.

"Would it be too forward of me to venture that it's possible you're being too brilliant?"

Hera groaned. She'd heard that before. Between Zeb and Sabine, someone told her that every blasted day. Told her to rest. Didn't understand that she could not.

"I'm alright," she told Korkie. "Really."

Korkie shrugged, fished in his coat pocket and found a ration bar. He unwrapped it and held it out for a bite. Hera was hungry enough today to enjoy a ration bar and gratefully obliged.

"Hypothetically, Hera," Korkie mused. "It would be okay if you weren't okay. My mother the great Duchess, for instance, had post-natal depression after I was born. And my father wasn't even dead. Just sort of moody and absent."

Hera glared at him. Only Korkie Kryze would have the audacity to be so damn on the nose about it all.

"I don't know if it counts as post-natal depression if the galaxy has granted you a hundred and one reasons to feel depressed," she grumbled. "I think it's just being a normal sentient."

Korkie scoffed.

"Of course you're a normal sentient. But that doesn't make everything alright or mean that you don't need any help."

"My crew helps me," Hera told him firmly. "Fighting helps me."

She could not be left to think about Kanan and all that she had lost. She could not simply sit back and recuperate, to be nothing but a mother. She wasn't any good at being a mother. She had to be good at something. Couldn't give it all away.

"I'm sure it does," Korkie agreed. "Do you know what else would help you?"

Another bite of the ration bar from his proffered hand. She was behaving vaguely like some wild beast in a petting zoo but could not bring herself to care.

"What?"

"A good night's sleep, or ten. We're going to be here at least a week or two, while the dust settles, before I can get all the Mando'ade together again. Let me do night duty."

At this, Hera laughed.

"You're being ridiculous. Do you know what night duty involves?"

"Of course I do. Feeding, changing and settling."

"He's breastfed," Hera pointed out, as though it was perhaps not obvious. "There's no formula on Lothal."

"But there is refrigeration, thankfully. You could try expressing during the day."

"Since when were you some sort of midwife?"

Korkie rolled his eyes.

"These are the bare basics of sentient mammalian child-rearing, I fear."

Hera scoffed.

"You are such a blasted snob."

Korkie accepted this insult with good grace.

"That's probably true. But I was also a solo-parent for several months. And baby Ariarne turned out just fine."

Hera stared at him in a blank sort of shock.

"The Princess of Alderaan?"

"Indeed. All the way from Arkanis to Alderaan together."

There was pride in his voice, but a tinge of sadness. There had been no way to know what laid in the future, when he had made that choice of the infant's new home. Hera thought of the Princess, sitting at the dinner table now. She'd certainly grown to a decent height, at least.

"Jacen sleeps by my pallet," Hera pointed out, finding the next flaw in his proposal.

Korkie shrugged.

"So could I. Or the next room over, if you preferred some privacy."

Hera snorted, indicated the infant at her breast.

"I don't believe in privacy anymore. Fine. Let's see how long you last."

"How was your night?"

Hera was radiating smugness. Korkie rubbed at his bleary eyes.

"He doesn't settle so easily as a premature newborn," he admitted.

Hera chuckled.

"I could have told you that."

"But look!"

Korkie lifted the baby with pride, presenting him as a great gift.

"He's alive. And very happy to see you."

The infant gurgled cheerfully and reached for his mother. And the smile on Hera's face, the warmth radiating through the Force, was worth all of the hours of lost sleep. She accepted Jacen into her arms.

"Thank you, Korkie. Very much. I slept… appallingly well."

"Deservedly well."

"I'll be good for at least a week after that."

Korkie laughed.

"Not a chance. I'll be back this evening."

He brushed a gentle hand over the infant's scalp, tapped a fingertip upon his nose.

"You, young man, behave for your mother today."

There were no accidents in the Force. This brief reprieve between battles was meant for something. The bond that sparked between them was just as important, Korkie could not help but think, as Scarif and the Death Star and the return to Mandalore. Jacen was alive and he was loved. Kanan was gone and it was so terribly unfair. Hera was not alright, but she would be alright. And that was worth the galaxy.

So after a whole load of action in recent times I've given you a chapter in which not much really happens. Sorry. Pacing. My nemesis. But I hoped you enjoyed some tender moments here. I have realised that the most prominent theme in this whole enormous trilogy is my endless admiration and love for the solo or struggling parent. To raise a child well is a very honourable thing to do and it takes a village.

Next chapter, we'll be on the move again. The fight for Mandalore begins. Anakin follows his own calling. The twins seek training. And some forgotten characters resurface.

xx - S.