By the end of the next day's work, Wonder was much nearer to being their old, intact self. 'If we keep this up, they should be ready to switch back on by tomorrow,' Hephaestus promised. 'But they'll need a full night to recharge, and then – we'll have to see whether they want to go anywhere near you, Anakin. I think it's best if they recharge at my house.'

'Oooh!' exclaimed Spark. 'If they're only semi-powered down, I can transmit the last two nights' episodes of the vid, and tonight's, for them to watch while they're resting. It is the last episode tonight, isn't it?'

'It is not a cheap holodrama for droids' entertainment,' snarled Anakin.

But, he had to admit as he settled down to watch a few more phials of memories, it felt like watching a holodrama. Not that he had ever had much leisure to do that, but the times he had done had almost all been when he had managed to steal some time with Padmé. They couldn't spend much time in public without people being aware of their relationship, so snuggling together on a sofa watching holos had been something they could do.

If holodramas didn't end with a medal ceremony, another of the standard endings was a wedding, and this story was clearly heading that way. After the many dangers they had undergone together, the hero and the heroine had the peace to…

The scene changed abruptly from Cordelia Naismith, reunited with Aral on Barrayar just in time to dissuade him from drinking himself to death, cosily snuggling with him, to Cordelia Vorkosigan some weeks after the wedding, travelling to the city with Aral and Konstantine to visit an injured friend in hospital whom Anakin recognised as the young Barrayaran soldier who had been shot by the mutineers in the first episode, and to attend the birth of Konstantine's daughter, the child of the young Escobaran woman with the long black hair whom Ges Vorrutyer had ordered him to rape.

It was strange, seeing a baby born when her mother wasn't present and didn't even know whether her child had survived until birth. Just as Anakin hadn't known that his child had survived – let alone that there were two of them. Why hadn't he and Padmé thought of replicators, when he started having those nightmares about Padmé dying in childbirth? There were thousands of replicators left over from the clone army project, though he wasn't sure whether the Kaminoans had much experience of transferring a human foetus to a replicator halfway through a pregnancy.

He wanted to talk about this, but he could sense Konstantine withdrawing into his own thoughts, a tight, hard knot of anguish and regret that Anakin could almost physically feel, even with Konstantine standing behind him. He wished he could say something to help, but didn't know what could possibly make matters better.

Of course, Spark, who not only wasn't Force-sensitive but didn't have a human's awareness of human emotion, had no such inhibitions.

'We don't get to see the wedding?' she complained. 'What does a Barrayaran wedding dress look like? Were you at their wedding?' she asked Konstantine, turning her lamp-bright eyes on him.

'No. Uh, sort of. It was – real quick, just the day after Captain Naismith arrived. Admiral Vorkosigan wanted it to be at once, before the Count – his father – could invite hundreds of people. So it was in the Speaker's house in the village, with just the Count and Commander Illyan and the Speaker's record-keeper. We – all Count Vorkosigan's armsmen – stood outside to cheer for them when they came out.'

Severus miaowed disapprovingly. 'You should have been invited,' Anakin translated.

'I was the newest guard sworn in. The Armsman-commander said I took too much sick leave as it was. And – I didn't want to – I was scared,' Konstantine admitted.

'You're scared of weddings?' asked Spark, baffled by human emotions.

'No – I didn't remember what happened in the war – only a few bits. So I didn't know – I thought probably I'd raped Captain Naismith, so I couldn't understand why she didn't hate me – why she seemed pleased to see me, talked to me like I was a friend. I – I was glad she'd come, because Admiral Vorkosigan needed her. But – the morning before they got married, they went for a walk. I had to tail them from a distance. They stopped, to sit and – cuddle, only Admiral Vorkosigan accidentally trapped her hand, and she threw him off – she was scared, that moment she wasn't seeing Admiral Vorkosigan, she was seeing – I don't know. Me, Admiral Vorrutyer – both. Monsters.'

'I think everyone was still recovering from the war,' said Cheiron. 'But Cordelia clearly did like and trust you.'

'Yes. I – figured that out.'

'Couldn't you just have asked her what happened?' said Spark sarcastically. 'Or is that too simple for humans?'

'I did, in the end. When she'd been there about six months.'

'At least you were not too much of a monster to be allowed custody of your child,' said Anakin, turning his hover-chair so that he could look the older man in the eyes. What would he have given, to be allowed to hold his new-born babies in his arms? Not that they would have been new-born any more by the time his wounds had healed enough for him to be fitted with prosthetic arms, of course.

'It's a matter of circumstances,' said Cheiron placatingly. 'Anakin, at the time when your twins were born, you weren't in a good position to be a parent. But if you'd stopped working for Palpatine and found a steady job that didn't involve being a Sith lord, if you'd had friends who were able to be a support network to you, and if you'd had access to at least some medical care, I think you'd have coped with being a parent as well as most people do. And I'm sure Aral wouldn't have let Konstantine find out that he was a father if he wasn't confident that he could trust Konstantine to be a responsible parent.'

'The only one of us who should have been a parent is Severus,' said Erik.

Severus miaowed in protest.

'I know, being a teacher is enough to put anyone off wanting to have much to do with children,' said Cheiron. 'It's different when they're your own foals, and I think Erik is right. If you'd had the good luck to fall in love with someone who loved you, you'd have been a wonderful husband and father.'

Severus miaowed again, wistfully this time. Anakin guessed that he was thinking of the mirror they had both seen in their dream. He reached out in the Force to stroke the kitten's soft fur.

'Was there a party, after Aral and Cordelia's wedding?' Hephaestus asked, trying to lighten the conversation.

Konstantine nodded. 'The whole village celebrated,' he said. 'I got talking to the woman who kept the Speaker's records. She asked if I was new working for Count Vorkosigan, was I married, did I have any children. So I said my wife was dead and her baby was due in a month – told her it was a new experiment in Vorbarr Sultana, keeping babies in uterine replicators. So she asked who was going to be looking after the baby while I was working, and I said I was looking for someone who'd be good to her and keep her safe and happy. And – she offered. She had three children herself, all grown up and left home, and she missed having a baby around.'

'Did you believe it was true – about the baby's mother being your wife, I mean?' Cheiron asked.

'Yes – sort of. I knew I thought she was, only it didn't make sense. Someone that beautiful would never go for someone like me. And if she had been my wife, she'd have come to Barrayar to be with me. It's just – my daughter mustn't ever know she was a bastard. On Barrayar, you're nothing, if you're a bastard.'

'Well, after all,' said Cheiron, 'I'm a bastard myself, and that's probably the reason I was almost the only one of my father's children that he didn't eat. He assumed that being a bastard and a centaur meant I couldn't possibly be a political rival.'

Severus miaowed.

'Yes, and some pure-blood wizards think being a wizard with a Muggle father is on par with being illegitimate,' Cheiron translated.

'I didn't even have a father,' said Hephaestus.

'Neither did I,' said Anakin. 'Apparently, I was conceived of the living Force. Possibly I was an experiment by Palpatine, or one of his predecessors.'

'I wish my father hadn't been around,' muttered Erik. 'Or my mother. I got out of their house as soon as I could.' Severus miaowed in agreement, and Anakin could feel Konstantine's agreement, too. Anakin wondered whether he was the only person there who had actually been sorry to be separated from his mother as a child.

When everyone was ready, Cheiron poured the next memory into the vial: Aral and Cordelia a few months later, being interrupted from their plans to go away for a seaside holiday by being summoned to a meeting with the Emperor: old, sick and dying, but as cunning as ever. Anakin tensed, and he could see Severus's fur fluffing out in fear and anger. Man and cat glanced at each other, and then Severus sprang into Anakin's lap for comfort, and seemed to calm slightly, though his tail still fluffed out like a brush.

Anakin had expected Emperor Ezar Vorbarra to remind him of Darth Sidious. What startled him was how much the frail old man, hooked up to life-support mechanisms, reminded him of himself. 'Did I look that bad, dying?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Konstantine, and Severus miaowed, yes.

'So, Aral, tell me how I look.'

'Very ill, sir.'

'You refresh me. First honest opinion I've heard in weeks.'

Severus, in spite of himself, purred with amusement.

The Emperor came to the point of the meeting: he wanted Aral to rule as Regent until the heir, Ezar's four-year-old grandson, came of age. After requiring Aral to kill his son for him, he now wanted Aral to be locum, protector and mentor to the widow and son of the man he had killed – and, presumably, prevent the boy from finding out what his father had really been like until he was old enough to cope with the knowledge. Anakin thought of Luke, who had genuinely believed that his father was a heroically dead Jedi rather than a barely-alive Sith lord.

He could sense that Severus identified with what was going on, too. Even when the kitten wasn't miaowing in commentary, his mind was fiercely concentrated on what was happening between the characters in the stone dish.

Cordelia was speaking now:

'I've always thought – tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. If you think it's really wrong, that's one thing. Maybe that's the test. But if it's only fear of failure – you have not the right to refuse the gift for that.'

She's like a Jedi, Anakin thought. He remembered how, in an earlier memory, Konstantine had said to her, 'You're like a Vor,' – and, even as someone who in general didn't like Vor, he said it with respect. In the same way, Anakin thought that Cordelia was like a Jedi, but in a good way, the way Jedi ought to be and frequently weren't, the way he had expected Jedi to be when he was a child. And Aral was clearly born to be a politician as well as a warrior, but in a good way – not a power-hungry schemer like Palpatine, but someone who cared about justice and could see what needed to be done. Like Padmé.

'The trouble is,' said Cheiron, 'even when you know that someone like Ezar is emotionally manipulating you with questions like "What's going to happen to this poor fatherless child if you're not in a position to protect him?" and you know they know you know, it doesn't make it any easier to decide whether to do what they're asking of you.'

Severus didn't deign to miaow in reply. Anakin wondered whether he would want to talk about it in a shared dream tonight, but he wouldn't blame Severus if he wanted to relax with a dream about swimming or brewing potions.

By the end of the meeting, Aral was already making plans to appoint Ensign Koudelka, the young soldier who had been wounded in defending him and who was worrying about being discharged from military service and having nothing to live for, as his secretary as Regent. So the memory ended with Aral going to visit Koudelka to tell him the news, and giving the younger man his own old Lieutenant's tabs to signify his promotion. So, despite all being either retired from the Imperial Service or medically unfit for active service, Aral and Konstantine and Koudelka would still be together, if in very different circumstances. Anakin thought again of the picture he had seen in the mirror, of himself and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka having stayed friends after all leaving the Jedi Order.

'Are there more memories?' he asked.

'Of course not!' retorted Spark, her electronic voice crackling with derision. 'After a line like "You pour out honour like a fountain," anything else would be an anti-climax!'

'This was the last of the memories Cordelia decanted the first time she came here for a visit, just after Aral was appointed Regent,' said Cheiron. 'She came back to visit the following year, just after her child was born, and she had plenty more memories to work through then, starting just after this one. But tonight, if you feel ready to watch more, I'd like to show you a memory from someone else: a man, this time. A young pilot named Falco Ferrell.'

Anakin had expected this to be another view of the war in space, but instead it followed the experience of Ferrell and a middle-aged medtech, Tersa Boni, in collecting the bodies – or bits of bodies – floating frozen in space, to identify them and return them to their home planets for burial. Ferrell had qualified as a pilot just too late to take part in the four-month war, but Boni had treated wounded combatants, and her daughter had been one of the soldiers killed in the war, so Medtech Boni was here on a personal quest to retrieve her daughter's body.

Yes, Anakin remembered: the other classic way to end a holodrama was with a funeral. But usually it would be the funeral of a central character. Here, although he recognised one of the dead soldiers as one of Aral's officers who had briefly appeared in an early episode, the point of this story was that every death mattered, because everyone was central to their own story and important to the stories of those who knew them, and that Tersa Boni could appreciate this even about people she had never met in life:

'Think of all the work he represents on somebody's part. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, two years of diapering, and that's just the beginning. Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtime stories, years of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too. A lot of people went into making him. That head held the universe, once.'

The memory ended on a line that was not exactly spoken, but hung in the air in Ferrell's thoughts: The good face pain. But the great – they embrace it.

Anakin turned to face Cheiron. 'Is that supposed to be good – embracing pain?' he asked, half bitterly, half curious. After all, he had been filled with both physical and emotional pain for most of his adult life, and it hadn't made him a noble and saintly person – but would it have done so if he had deliberately decided to get maimed and to murder his wife so that he could feel guilty and miserable about it? Jedi believed that it was essential to avoid anything that can fuel negative thoughts and emotions. Sith believed that negative emotions are what free you.

'It depends on what sort of pain, and how you embrace it,' said Cheiron. 'This isn't about harming yourself in order to feel pain, but accepting what life brings you, and responding appropriately. So, for Tersa, that meant acknowledging the full grief of her daughter's death by acknowledging the tragedy of everyone's death, Escobaran or Barrayaran or Betan or Tau Cetan, and treating the corpses of enemies and allies with the same respect. But there are all kinds of ways of responding to grief that would be unhealthy.'

'Like mass murder?' said Anakin drily. He knew a pointed comment when he heard one.

'That's just one example, but yes.'

'Or deciding to die of a broken heart when I let Christine go?' added Erik.

'That's another, yes. It was a better idea than trying to force her to be your wife, but – I wish you could have acknowledged the disappointment, maybe worked it out creatively in music, and gone on living.'

Anakin's mind wandered back over something else in the memory: Boni's explanation to the young pilot about Barrayaran good-luck charms, like the vial that Aristede Vorkalloner was wearing, containing his mother's tears. 'Did you carry good-luck charms?' he asked Konstantine.

'Not – then,' Konstantine said. 'Didn't have anyone to give me something like that.'

'But you did later?' Anakin prompted.

It was an evening for honesty. Konstantine unbuttoned the left-hand breast pocket of his jacket, and took out a small cloth bag. Inside it, braided and carefully coiled, was a lock of long black hair.

Author's note: The description of Aral and Cordelia's wedding day is based on The Practice of Barrayaran Sex by Philomytha, which can be read on Archive Of Our Own (Philomytha also posts here, under the name Blaise, but I haven't seen this story in their ff account – it's not the same story as The Rules of Barrayaran Sex). I'm sure that, if the wedding had been slightly later, Cordelia would have wanted to invite Bothari, and Koudelka if he was out of hospital by then, as guests, but at this point they hadn't really had much time to get to know each other.