I nearly forgot to upload this week's chapter! Sorry for the delay. And thanks, 17, for reminding me.

Chapter 6: Homestead Blues

Han might have been keeping an eye out for him but it was easy to forget that distant presence when day and night ceased to exist in the cold and quiet of space. Corellia was torn from him with the blurring of hyperspace and he could not reach back. He had been alone like this when he left Anakin behind on Tatooine but the thrill of it was gone now. At night he could not sleep and his mind ran back and forth, back and forth, across his most precious memories until they became worn and dog-eared. He repeated his mantras, his promises to change this galaxy, again and again and again and soon they seemed to lose all meaning. He dreamed in Mando'a but could not recall when he had last heard his language spoken aloud.

He thought about Tatooine, of the pallet that would be put together for him in the corridor and the place that would be set for him at the table, if he were to return to them now. They would be gentle and quiet with him and they wouldn't ask many questions. They would allow him to slip seamlessly into their lives just as he had when he first appeared at their door. But Korkie could not bear the thought of returning without a single victory to his name. Was it altruism, or simple pride? He quietly knew that it was the latter. He couldn't return empty-handed and homesick after what he'd said to Anakin.

So he followed the stories of those half-Sith underlings and their messy trail of destruction through the galaxy. They were his obsession and only meaning. He had begun his days in Sundari reading at the kitchen table with his mother as she worked her way through the day's briefings and three successive cups of tea and now, adrift in deep space, he drank from a chipped mug as he read through stories censored and uncensored, from decrees presented beneath an Imperial banner to articles written in code.

The existence of the Inquisitorius was scarcely advertised in Imperial media; Korkie found them between the lines of 'eliminating the threat of residual Jedi traitors' and 'the Empire's unassailable taskforce'. He found them tearing gaping holes in cover rebel media, lurking behind 'missing families accused of tax fraud' on Garel and 'the abrupt closure and search of a scrapyard' on Bracca.

Korkie found glimpses of himself, sometimes, in those shadows between lines. Imperial media, cowardly until the last, reported the TIE fighter exhibition of Empire Day in Coronet City as a great success and omitted that the ship had been stolen by two purported plumbers under the negligent gaze of their own soldiers and crash-landed shortly afterwards in the market district. He wondered if he would ever read his own name, as he had once traced the names of his parents with such pride, in that glowing print. He liked the idea of standing tall, of lifting his face to the light. Of forcing the Empire to acknowledge his existence, his survival, the failure of their purge. Of forcing them to say his blasted name.

But the time was not now. Korkie had work to do in the shadows and he allowed the grime to build upon his skin, to become the furthest he could from the wanted Prince of Mandalore, last sighted on Corellia. He learned a thing or two about forging visas and rigging transport and became acquainted with the sort of smugglers his famously lenient mother would have condemned to jail. He did not earn his credits; he won them and cheated them; he sold drugs for them. He scraped by on what he could and resented himself for it.

He grew his hair long and neglected his new stubble and was caught out, sometimes, by his appearance in the mirror. He thought of his mother and how she'd have pretended to disapprove.

"I've seen the footage of Dad in the revolution," he retorted. "His hair was just as bad. And you still fell in love with him anyway."

He was surely going crazy, muttering to himself in the mirror of a grimy toilet on Kabal. But the journey away from Korkaran Kryze was a lonely one and he'd rather be crazy than miserable.

I did, he made his mother's voice say, in her elegant Mando'a. I couldn't help it.

And his father's voice, now. His best imitation.

You know us too well, Korkie'ad.

The lost prince of Mandalore had come to them like a ghost in the lilac dusk. He was the strangest creature that Beru had ever seen, arriving with the cool of the evening, a dying woman in his arms. His hair had glinted silver in the rising moonlight. His eyes had been bright and desperate. The Tatooine desert fell quiet with the night, but Korkaran Kryze had wailed. He'd been a bleeding, broken star, fallen to the barren earth.

And yet, he had become one of them so faultlessly, so stoically, in the days that had followed. He had not resented the sand as it carved new calluses into his hands. Beru had watched his skin redden and brown, redden and brown darker still, had watched his golden hair turn into strands of the Tatooine suns. She had bathed the twins with him, and together they had learned the best way to swaddle them for bed. She had listened to the lilt of his alien tongue as he spoke to them, had come to know the cadence of Mando'a. And then, with the return of Anakin, he had disappeared as quickly as he had arrived, so suddenly a mortal teenager, jealous and angry and lost.

They seldom spoke of Korkie Kryze now in the Lars homestead. Anakin was still bruised by the affair and they did what they could not to prod at his countless wounds. But Beru thought of him often.

She thought of him today, as a slick of oil dripped from the vaporator and reflected the dazzling blue of the sky above. Korkaran Kryze had told her that on Coruscant, the government had engineered an enormous artificial weather system that ensured blue sky on all but a few rare days of the solar year. It seemed a bizarre fantasy to Beru, as she lifted a hand to shield her gaze. If she could control the weather, every day would be the soft lilac of the day he came to them.

But lilac evenings were precious and the days were blue and long. There mightn't have been much in the way of stormtroopers on Tatooine but they couldn't kid themselves that they were beyond the reaches of the Empire. Trade routes had been shaken by the new balance of power and everything, from grain to clay to infant formula, had become more expensive. Meanwhile, as Owen could not help but incessantly remark, the farm wasn't making any more money.

Beru wrenched shut the oil leak and replaced the vaporator's filter device. She endeavoured to find lightness in her footfalls as she made her long way back to the homestead. Her bones were exhausted already but there were precious children waiting for her. They'd be ready for a mid-morning feed and then their first nap of the day. Beru might sit down for a little while, let them fall asleep against her chest, before she got on with her jobs.

Anakin's left hand had stopped working completely. Ahsoka had done her best but the prosthesis, scavenged by a fugitive at a time when limb amputations were at a galaxy-wide peak, was never going to be a fair match for the cyberkinetic hand crafted for him seemingly a lifetime ago in the Jedi Temple. He took an electrode in his right hand and set to work trying to find some functioning loop in his left. He didn't have the resources to start again. He could always replace a wire but if the interface had failed him completely…

"Kriffing damn it!"

Anakin reeled with pain as a hot bolt of electricity flashed up his left arm. At his feet, the grumbling of his children, due soon for a feed and a nap, turned to crying.

"Just a second, Leia, my hand's not…"

It wasn't completely fried, then. But the surge protector was definitely broken. It'd probably give him a shock strong enough to kill him if he got it wet in this state. He probed the toolbox for some insulating tape – Owen must have had some, kriff's sakes, didn't he keep anything useful in there? – but found nothing.

Luke joined in the chorus. Anakin shoved the toolbox aside in frustration. The clattering of implements, falling from the desk, joined the din.

"Kriff's sakes!"

He tried to yank the prosthesis from his arm but it didn't budge in the face of his brute force; its correct removal required delicate unlatching at each of its attachment sites. Anakin was blind with the pain in his arm. His mind was clamouring, seizing, filed to the brim with the crescendoing cries of his children.

"Just let me get this kriffing thing-"

"Anakin?"

Anakin's gaze slid back into focus and he saw Beru in the doorway, her cheeks flushed red from the morning sun. She'd been working this morning. Doing something useful. Helping to feed his family. He wanted to scream at her to leave him. She seemed to understand. Her blue eyes were bright and nervous.

"I just…"

Anakin was panting with the intensity of everything he felt in that moment.

"I just need to get this arm off. Please."

Beru nodded and hurried to help, silent as a slave at their master's side. Her delicate fingers – her warm, soft, real, organic fingers – performed the task easily. She detached the useless prosthesis and laid it carefully amidst the mess he had made of her husband's workbench, then knelt, avoiding his gaze, to soothe the twins upon their blanket.

"I can do it, I'm sorry, it's just that I was trying to fix the arm when they started crying and-"

"It's okay," Beru told him hurriedly.

She already had Luke in her arms and was stroking Leia's forehead, murmuring placating words as the baby reached out her chubby arms. Anakin dropped to his knees beside her and reached to scoop up his daughter. He was clumsy, with one cyberkinetic hand and an elbow stump. Beru laid her spare hand against Leia's back to steady her as Anakin scooped her into his arms.

"You're okay like that?" she asked him, as they rose to stand. "If you'd like I can get the sling and-"

"I'm alright."

Anakin wished he could believe it. Wished he could pretend that it was even faintly alright that his children would never know the touch of their father's hands, that they would always know him as some gross, useless, cold-fingered cyborg with a bad temper who was prone to panic attacks. He wished that it wasn't his anguish that flowed over them like poison in a river, that it wasn't his fault that they cried, that they wouldn't be happier calling Beru and Owen their parents.

"I mixed up some milk for them just before," Beru told him, as he followed her into the kitchen. "Here, Leia will hold it herself now, no need to worry."

Anakin clenched his teeth and said nothing. No, there was no need at all to worry. It was not at all an inconvenience to have only one hand. It was completely fine. He forced himself to look at Leia, suckling happily at her bottle. To see Padme's eyes upon her. To watch Luke blink blearily as he readied himself for sleep. He tried to feel grateful that he had lived to know them, to love them, to care for them. But even that was an empty consolation, for they would have been so much happier in the arms of their mother. Padme never would have failed them in the way that he was failing them.

"Babies okay?"

Owen marched past them, footfalls heavy in his work boots, pausing to take a precious swig of water in the kitchen.

"As lovely as always," Beru informed him.

"Good."

Owen turned to Anakin.

"Can you come out when you've got a chance and have a look at vaporator three? It put out less than a litre yesterday and I don't know what's going on with it. I wasted my whole morning out there and I can't afford to fall behind on the fencing. I'm just about to go out and make Dad and Shmi come back inside, they're too old to be working out there in the middle of the day."

"I'll take a look at it," Anakin resolved.

Apologetically, he lifted the stump of his left arm.

"I really can only take a look, though. Once I figure out what's going on I might need your help to…"

Owen took in the absence of his prosthesis, face falling.

"Oh, alright. No worries. Sorry the arm's giving you grief."

He was gone from the house before anything further could be said. Beru lifted her eyes shyly to Anakin.

"I'm sorry he's a bit brash. I think he forgets that we all work hard."

Anakin shook his head stoically. There were tears pressing at his eyes. What a waste of kriffing water.

"It's fine, Beru. It's all fine. I'll…"

He took a steadying breath. His voice had almost cracked, in that moment.

"I'll make it up to you all once I'm fixed, okay?"

Once the arm is fixed, he'd meant to say.

"There's nothing to make up," Beru told him, softly.

Anakin shook his head, but said nothing more.

"What are we going to do about him?"

Beru sat on her bed, arms folded against her chest, as she watched her husband pull his boots from his feet.

"Owen, he's doing his best," she reasoned. "There's nothing to be done."

"I'm not saying it's his fault," Owen countered, pulling his tunic over his head now. "But his best isn't much."

Beru looked at her husband reproachfully.

"Not right now, maybe. His arm is broken, after all. But once we fix that-"

"-then one of his legs will break," Owen grumbled.

But he seemed to realise as he cast himself to lay on the bed beside her that he'd been too harsh.

"Look, I don't mean to be unkind, but we're running a farm and we've got to be realistic about things."

He looked to Beru pleadingly.

"Dad and Shmi are getting older. You're having to spend half your time mothering those babies because Anakin can't do it by himself. Luke and Leia won't be of decent working age for ten years-"

"No one can do it by themselves, Owen," Beru reminded him. "And if it weren't for Anakin, there wouldn't be any children on this farm and there wouldn't be anyone reaching working age ten years from now. He's given us a gift and you know it."

Owen nodded, chewing at his lip. He seemed suddenly lost for words.

"I agree that we have to take better care of Cliegg and Shmi," Beru went on. "I'm sorry. It's more my fault than Anakin's. I should leave it to Shmi to tend the babies and be outside working in her stead. I'll make sure of it tomorrow, Owen."

But her husband was not consoled. He picked at his jagged fingernails with quiet ferocity.

"What aren't you saying, Owen?" Beru pressed.

Owen hesitated.

"It's just that…"

Her husband's voice was hoarse and hushed. His eyes were bright and could not meet hers.

"…I wanted to be the one to give you... to give you that gift."

Beru sighed her understanding and came to lie beside him.

"Oh, my love. I know. I feel that too."

She cradled his coarse stubbled against her callused hand. They had survived so much together, on this unforgiving land.

"Remember what we said, Owen? It's no one's fault. It's just not working. We'll never know exactly why and we don't need to know why because it doesn't matter."

"Because we don't have the money to fix it," Owen gritted out.

His eyes were full of tears.

"There's nothing to fix, Owen," Beru whispered. "We have all the family we need right here."

"They're his."

"They're ours. All of ours."

He looked at her, still half-disbelieving.

"They're all of ours, Owen," Beru repeated. "Just as Anakin is one of ours."

She lifted his chin so that his eyes met hers.

"He needs us, my love. He needs you, his brother. And he needs this small village to raise those babies and there's not one thing wrong with that. We're all family and we're all going to take care of each other."

Owen finally conceded a weary nod.

"This farm gets the better of me, sometimes," he murmured.

"I know, my love."

Beru cradled his face against her chest.

"We're all going to take care of each other and if we can do that, the farm will take care of itself."

Owen's arms tightened around her. His voice was muffled against her breasts.

"You're everything to me, Beru. You know that?"

Beru smiled and kissed the top of his head. There was sand in his hair.

"We'll get through it, my love. One day at a time, okay?"

"Yeah," Owen muttered.

He gave a wry half-smile.

"Day by scorching day, huh?"

Beru nodded, squeezed his hand.

"One blue day at a time."

Anakin lay on a thin pallet and waited for his babies to wake. They would. They always did. It mightn't happen for hours but Anakin could not rest. They would wake and their cries would echo through this clay house and everyone else would wake and know what a horrible father he was. Anakin waited with the sling tied across his chest and the infant formula by his bedside. Perhaps tonight he'd pull off the miracle and quieten them himself. He had to try. It was the least he could do.

In the next room, Owen and Beru radiated gentle contentment through the Force. They were falling asleep in each other's arms, their stresses evaporating like the heat in the cloudless night. They had forged a precious alliance that Anakin had known, once. He tried not to think of Padme but on nights like this it was impossible.

Anakin had known that feeling. Padme's touch had been like water after a century of drought. She had been everything to him. And it was nothing short of a miracle to him that he could so much as breathe without her.

He tried for her voice in his mind.

You're going to be the most wonderful father, Ani.

She'd said it, she truly had. She had meant it. She had seen some good in him. She always had.

Anakin felt the inevitable tears leak from his eyes. Padme had seen the best in him. And he could not help but feel that the best of him had died with her.

So sad! I'm sorry Anakin. I'm sorry Korkie. It will get better.

I'm excited for next chapter. We will encounter a famous villain as well as some more old friends. Korkie begins his work saving lives from the Inquisitors.

xx - S.