When Anakin landed on the death star with his mother and wife in tow, his children had no idea. Luke didn't know how to react to seeing them for the first time. His entire life he had only seen old recordings and a single photograph Uncle Owen had on Shmi's wedding day with Cliegg. And for his mother, well, only old senator recordings here and there. To see everyone in person was shocking, and even more so for Leia who hadn't grown up hearing about these two people at all.

Padme looked at her children in awe. When she was alive, she had no idea she was carrying twins. The fact that there were two of them still astonished her.

"You both look like your father," she said, smiling.

Leia replied, "I wish I looked more like you. Look at you!" She gestured to her entire body, then glanced at her grandmother. "Or you, at least."

Shmi said, "You look great as you are, dear."

"I'm sorry," Padme said sadly, "I wasn't strong enough for both of you." She remembered how devastated she was to hear what Anakin had done. How desperate she was to see him with her own eyes, only to meet the deranged man he had suddenly turned into. She knew she couldn't raise a baby alone, and then when it was twins...without Anakin's help how could she go on?

Luke said gently, "You shouldn't apologize. The entire galaxy changed so suddenly back then. Everything was so unknown, it must have been a terrifying time to be alive."

Shmi marveled, "A princess, and a farmer, turned jedi. How noble."

Anakin asked Luke, "Is everyone off Exegol?"

"Yeah," he said, "Sevriko landed just after you. He should be here any-" he stopped as the doors opened and revealed both him and his wife. A clone.

The cloned Padme turned to the real Padme. "You're the real one."

"You're your own person," Padme explained, "no matter what Sheev Palpatine has said to you over the years, you can be whoever you want now. You don't have to try to become me."

She nodded. Those words were so foreign, she knew it would take a long time before she truly believed it.

A communication came over the radio. "Master Skywalker, the planet is clear!"

"Understood."

Anakin said, "Go ahead, Luke, Leia."

The twins turned and activated the half-built death star aimed directly at Exegol. Anakin still couldn't believe after all these years it was real, and he could have been able to talk to his mother and wife for so long. Shmi took her son's hand one last time and Anakin squeezed it tight. Padme walked up and held his other hand.

Then, with an explosion, it was over. They vanished.

The senate decided to dismantle the death star and destroy what they couldn't repurpose so no one in the galaxy could try to duplicate it once again. The first order soldiers were stripped of their weapons and sent home while the rest of the senate helped the former enslaved systems resettle into new lives.

Meanwhile Anakin went to the place he always did whenever he had returned from somewhere else, Padme's grave. This time however, he wasn't alone. Padme's clone stood by her gravesite and touched the stone cover.

She squealed in shock when Anakin appeared in the doorway.

He asked, "Are you alright?"

"You're scarier than I thought you would be," she said, nervous, "I'm sorry."

He assured her calmly, "If you think I'm scary now you should have met me before." He paused. "You're safe now, Padme, do you understand that?"

She nodded, looked over Padme's grave, and said, "The real Padme always seemed to know what was right and what was wrong, and stood firm in what she believed in no matter what. At least, that's what I could see in the old recordings I watched growing up. I don't understand how she could live with such conviction, but I could never find the courage to leave that ship."

"She lived a different life," Anakin assured her, "and you might not have stood up in front of the senate, defending your beliefs, but you defied Palpatine in your own way."

She said, "I'm sorry she's gone, and that she lived such a short life."

He said, "You want to stay on Naboo and learn more about her, about yourself. You belong here."

"Sevriko says we're not wanted here," she replied, "we'll be leaving soon."

Anakin insisted, "There's no need for that. You shouldn't be on the run, you haven't done anything wrong. I'm the only one who doesn't want see Sevriko." It still bothered him that this Padme existed as well, but he knew he couldn't put that pain onto her.

Padme looked up at him with her big brown eyes. There was a deep fear she had in them, something his wife never had. "You really want us to stay?"

"It's not about what I want."

He turned, sensing Sevriko's presence walking up behind him. He didn't want to see them happily reunite in front of him again, so he turned and left before he had to witness it.

Anakin sat away from the city and looked out over a river valley leading to a waterfall. Usually, the Nabooian countryside brought him peace and happy memories of Padme, but instead he remembered seeing her ghost return and talking to her for the last time on Exegol. Then the fact that a clone of hers had been tormented by Palpatine for decades, and his own mother's DNA was stripped and used to give him a genetic half-brother. It made him sick just thinking about it.

He took his lightsaber hilt off his belt, and just when he began staring at it, Leia used the force as she walked up from behind him and ripped it out of his hands.

"I wasn't going to do anything with it!" he claimed.

"That's not what your thoughts just told me," Leia said, sitting down beside him, "you've had your chance to die, Dad, but you chose to live."

"I needed to help Ben," he said sadly, "and the idea of getting this new body was an enticing one. I couldn't refuse, even with Palpatine whispering in my ear 'I'm the reason you live while the jedi let you die.'" He shook all over as he remembered.

Leia said, "I'm sorry he cloned your wife, and gave you a brother, and that the two of them married and had a child, giving us a tangled mess of a family tree."

"Growing up on Coruscant," Anakin explained, "the jedi tried to convince me that family isn't everything. They claimed it's dangerous to put people you're related to on a higher standing than others, just because you share DNA. But I knew none of them understood. They didn't know what it was like to be loved."

"If Luke and I were born and our mother lived," she said, "what would you have done with us?"

Anakin said, "I would have left the jedi and told them to leave both of you alone, but we didn't get a chance to live that life. Sevriko and Padme deserve that chance, so I won't stop them."

She asked, "What are you going to do? Leave?"

"Yeah."

"What about Luke?" she asked, "Where will you go? If you say Tatooine I know you've lost your mind."

"I'm never setting foot on that sand ball ever again," Anakin answered, "as for Luke, he'll stay. Mara and Annika need him now more than ever. He still has jedi to train. There's nothing more for me to do here."

Leia asked, "Should I even bother asking about your oath?"

He shrugged, "That was for Anakin Skywalker, and Lord Vader. As far as I'm concerned they're both dead. I'll be someone else from now on."

"Who?"

"I'll figure it out," he replied, shrugging, "eventually." He took his lightsaber back out of her hands and stood up.

She followed him and asked, "Will anything I say keep you here?"

Anakin said, "You have Luke here to help with Anakin, and Jaina, and Jace. You'll be alright without me, Leia, you always have been." She hugged her and she squeezed him back. "Have you talked to this Padme?"

"I have," she replied, "she feels more like a scared little girl than a mother."

"Give her a chance."

"I will," she said, turning away, "how long are you going to sit out here all alone?"

Anakin gave her a half smile, "I'm not alone, I have the force."

Leia waved him off as she walked away, back towards the city and her home. Meanwhile, Anakin turned around and didn't merely take in the view again. This time, a cold wind blew in beside him and shaped itself into a glowing Obi-wan.

Anakin snarked, "You didn't age too well, old man. You weren't even 60 when I killed you."

"Worrying over a child and being on the run on an inhospitable desert planet for 20 years will do that to someone," Obi-wan replied, "and you weren't lying about the sand people in your youth, they can be quite vicious even to those who haven't done anything to them."

Anakin cracked a smile at him.

He replied, "I'm glad you can see and hear me now, Anakin. I've been wanting to talk to you for a long time."

"After getting cut into pieces and being left to die I haven't been in a talking mood," he snarked.

"I knew you were in love," Obi-wan explained, "I didn't know you were married, and I wasn't aware of the pregnancy until the very end. I knew the moment I asked you to spy on Palpatine when he was still the chancellor, I had made a huge mistake. You had such loyalty and I asked you to break it."

Anakin said, "The jedi didn't value loyalty."

Yoda appeared on the other side of him and said, "That they did not, Master Skywalker, and wrong we were, to devalue it so."

"Easy for you to admit that now that you're dead," Anakin said coldly.

"Yes," Yoda agreed, "easy, I have it now. Join us, you may."

"What?"

Obi-wan explained, "With proper training you could become one with the force and live on after death as we do, and Master Qui-gon, although appearing is much more difficult for him as he couldn't complete his training before he died."

Anakin replied, "The jedi didn't like me when we were all alive together, why would I spend the rest of eternity with them?" He shook his head, turning to face the both of them, "I'll join my mother and my wife one day."

"I like this new jedi order your son has formed," Obi-wan said, "I think they'll go far."

"A master, they will need," Yoda added.

Obi-wan said, "You've been a master jedi for a long time now, Anakin."

"Thank you," he said, "but Luke will take care of them. Now that I can finally breathe on my own again, there are parts of the galaxy I still need to explore and things I still need to take care of."

As Anakin walked away, Yoda said, "Pain, Master Skywalker still feels."

"Yes," Obi-wan remarked, "if I had just learned of a half-brother being created out of my mother's dead DNA, I don't think I'd be so happy about it either."

Anakin said goodbye to his family, all mostly understanding why he was leaving. Annika made the most fuss on the runway, but he hugged her tight and promised he wasn't leaving forever. Sevriko was the last to come forward.

"It was nice meeting Shmi for real," he said carefully, "she loved me like I'm her son. I would have assumed she would reject me and claim I wasn't hers-because I'm not-but she actually loved me."

"That's a mother's love, Sevriko," Anakin replied, "how real and whole it is."

He asked, "Are you sure you want to leave Naboo?"

"I've been hiding from the galaxy here for too long," he insisted, "that's what I was doing in that mechanical body since most of the galaxy wouldn't even tolerate my presence. What you told me when we first met-that you can't apologize for existing-it's my time to get out there and do exactly that." He looked down to see R2D2 ready to go into the tandem ship.

With that, Anakin and R2 turned and walked inside to go on their next adventure.

That's it everyone! Thanks for reading!

This was actually the hardest fan fiction I've ever written. Not only did I have a lot going on in my personal life that made actually writing it difficult, but having so many characters to keep track of was a huge challenge!

I'm not totally in love with how everything came together so if there are sneaky re-writes in the future that's why, unless you really like how it turned out, then let me know!