"You did WHAT?"

Obi-Wan couldn't have heard right. There had to have been some mistake. Padmé hadn't really just said that she had come within shooting distance of Vader's own fighter.

You're not that deaf, old man. (Why did Anakin's voice have to pick now, of all times, to echo through his head?)

Calmly—oh, so calmly!—Padmé repeated, "We apparently ran into the Sith apprentice. Almost literally."

No. No, that was not better than what he had heard the first time. It was worse. Much, much, much worse. There was a difference between "within shooting distance" and "almost literally collided."

Obi-Wan Kenobi needed to retire. Immediately. Yesterday. For some idiotic reason, he had thought life might be easier with an Amidala than it had been with a Skywalker. But it was infinitely more difficult. Because it appeared that where the Amidala went, the (sort of) Skywalker was also bound to end up. And that must be a volatile combination for all concerned.

"Perhaps we should return to Tatooine."

She stared at him as if he had sprouted another set of arms.

"Obi-Wan, we can't just give up because I had one dangerous encounter. I don't want to repeat it, but the odds of anything like this happening again are incredibly slim. I wasn't even recognised: if I had been, the Empire would have put out a bounty for my capture or death."

"Padmé, you could have died. Luke and Leia's existence could have been discovered."

"I know. I've talked to Mon, and we've agreed that I'll only be using drop-jump points with no Rebel association from now on. That should minimize the chances of something like this happening again."

"Still, it could, and if you are caught—"

"I know. This whole house of cards falls down. But what would you have me do? Retreat back to Tatooine, let the years drift by, wait until Luke and Leia are grown up and then pass the responsibility for fixing the galaxy off to them? When I was a girl, one of the most annoying things adults could say was that they had let things get kriffed up and so the younger generation would have to fix it. I'm not passing that burden to my children. I'll do my best to stay safe, but I can't just sit on my heels and let the rest of sentiency suffer."

But you don't understand! he wanted to shout. If he finds out about you, he'll find out about the twins, too! Sidious craves power, and do you think he won't break the Rule of Two if he thinks he can get the power of Anakin and Luke and Leia all under his control? Do you think Vader will scruple to help him in such an undertaking? Do you think, after what he did to the Jedi, what he did to you, that he will think twice, or even once, about corrupting his own children with the Dark Side?

But he couldn't, lest enough of her old faith remained to send her off on another futile quest for Anakin's soul.

Later in the evening, as Padmé read over a report, the twins lounging contentedly over her lap while Ahsoka told them a story, Obi-Wan wondered if he had perhaps overreacted, just a trifle. As Padmé had pointed out, there was no bounty on her head. Vader's relentless pursuit of Jedi, himself in particular, was sufficient evidence that Anakin's single-mindedness remained intact after his Fall. If he had had any notion of his wife's survival, even the insects dwelling under rotting logs on Dagobah would have heard of it by now.

And yet, according to Padmé, the two ships had passed by each other nearly close enough to touch. At that range, it was impossible that Vader would not have felt her presence in the Force. Obi-Wan reached out, seeking her Force signature, comparing it to what he remembered from during the war. Now that he took a moment, recalling her signature of old, he felt stark differences between what it had been then, and what it was now.

Her radiance had diminished over the years and hardened around the edges, which must have been her saving grace. It was as if her emberlike presence had become encased in a prism—the edges sharpened by circumstance, the light focused by purpose. Unless Vader had been seeking her out—and even Vader was not delusional enough to seek a dead woman among the living without provocation—he would not have been open to perceiving all possible variants of her signature, and so he must have overlooked her. Small blessings, Obi-Wan thought. Thanks to the changes wrought by time and strife, she was safe, and the twins were safe—for the present. He looked over at her, and the sleepy younglings draped over her lap. All blissfully unconscious, believing that disaster had flown a few lengthy feet away, when in truth they might have come within but a hair's breadth of losing this fragile peace.

Peace which was temporarily shattered when Rex came into the apartment, water dripping from his armor. "Nighttime field training got canceled," he announced. "Shinies didn't need the added challenge of rain."

At that last word, both twins sat bolt upright, all trace of drowsiness evaporating as they transformed into quivering masses of anticipation.

"Rain?"

"There's rain?!"

"It's raining?!"

"Mama—"

"Can we—"

"Go ahead," Padmé said, indulgently. It was approaching bedtime, but this was the first time it had rained on Yavin while the twins were awake. "But don't forget your—"

They were out the door before she finished.

"—shoes."

She sighed good-humoredly. "Well, at least it isn't snow."

All four adults followed the children out to the nearest door of the temple, Artoo trundling along just behind. They found Luke and Leia standing just back of the open doorway, watching the downpour with rapt gazes.

"Leia, touch it!"

"No, you touch it."

"No, you!"

Cautiously, Leia inched forward until she stood in the doorway. She put out her hand, jerking it back with a shriek of surprise when the cool droplets hit, and stared at her wet hand in wonder, then back out at the deluge.

"There's so much," she breathed.

Luke, to one-up his sister, actually stepped out into the rain for a moment, before he, too, jumped back inside. "It's cold!" But the slight chill of the rain was not enough to prevent him from partaking in the wonder of it. He went to the doorway again, leaned forward as if about to run, but paused with a backward glance at his mother.

"Yes, you can go out," she assured him. "Ten minutes. And then it's into dry sleeping things and off to bed!"

Luke barely had time to nod before he was out in the rain, capering hither and thither like a wild thing. Leia soon joined him, and they dashed across the ground, skidding on wet stone and fallen leaves, splashing through puddles, spinning circles until they staggered and collapsed on the ground, where they lay for several moments on their backs and watched through squinted eyes as the rain rushed toward them. Then it was up again for a second round of antics.

Padmé realised, of course, that Tatooine was all they had ever known, but not until now did it fully occur to her, to whom rain had ever been commonplace, that her children had in no way been born into their mother's sphere. She told them of Naboo, and of other worlds beyond their own, she had sheltered them as best she could from the harsher elements of life on Tatooine—but for all that, they were children of the desert, through and through, raised on Beru's bread and her stories, who ran inside at the least sign of a sandstorm, who knew which vaporator mushrooms were good for eating, who never left a cup of water unemptied lest it should go to waste.

Who marveled at the rain.

Needless to say, ten minutes ran to fifteen, then twenty, and only when the revelers began to droop, and to show an inclination to nap on the wet ground, were they finally called back to the doorway. Half-asleep on their feet, they were scooped up by their guardians, and told to bid their aunt and ba'vodu goodnight.

Carrying the waterlogged Leia back to their quarters, Obi-Wan remembered watching innocence play in the rain, long, long ago. That child had been a star he had never dreamed might dim—could dim—let alone burn out. She was so similar to that other child, Leia was—Luke possessed his father's looks, but it was Leia in whom his fire lived on. It was Leia for whom Obi-Wan feared, lest that fire should lead her into the dark. It was Leia with whom he was terrified that he might make the same mistakes he had with Anakin.

Unaware of the turmoil that he kept carefully hidden from her, the little girl snuggled closer, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

"Love'oo, Uncle Obi," she murmured sleepily, not caring a whit for the water she was dripping through the halls, or the massive damp splotches she was leaving on her uncle's robes.

The long-ago child had once made a similar remark. He had received a mild rebuke anent the perils of attachment. Perhaps the rebuke had been the dutiful teaching of a Jedi. Or perhaps it had been the word of a mourning youth who rued his own attachment to a Master recently deceased. Perhaps it was both. Perhaps it was the first mistake which had allowed the darkness to take hold.

If so, it was a mistake which Obi-Wan would not repeat. So he kissed his niece's wet curls, and in defiance of all he had ever been taught, whispered, "I love you, too, Leia."

And if a couple more droplets of water fell upon Leia's hair, she was none the wiser.

Rain was not the only aquatic wonder which Yavin IV boasted. A jungle pool might not have been any great sight to a galactic traveler, but to the twins, Ahsoka thought it would be nothing short of a paradise. Some while after the rainstorm, therefore, she suggested introducing her niblings to the art of swimming. She, Rex, and Obi-Wan were due to set out for Kamino soon—Padmé having verified the existence of a cure for accelerated clone aging with Nala Se via comm call—and she wanted one day, just one day, when they might go hide in the forest and spend an afternoon in each other's company, with nothing to do but be. Not a snatched hour here or an evening there, between reports and meetings and planning sessions, but a whole, glorious day.

Thus, one morning, she, Padmé, and Obi-Wan gathered up some food, some improvised swimming attire, and the twins, and set off into the jungle. Rex, on training duty, was absent, although he had promised to drop by at lunchtime if possible.

The twins bounced along, impatient to find out their destination.

"Where're we going?"

"It's a surprise!"

"But Aunt 'Soka, how're we s'posed to be 'pared if we don't know where we're going?"

"Don't worry, I'm prepared enough for the both of you."

"Even if there's a jungle monster?"

"Even if." She patted her sabers reassuringly.

"Uncle Obi, where're we going?"

"Your aunt didn't tell me."

"D'you know what we're doing?" Luke prodded, growing sneaky.

"From a certain point of view."

The twins let out matching, dramatic groans of disgust, and Leia flopped down in the moist undergrowth. "Won't move till you tell."

Luke, recalling that strength lay in numbers, joined her. "Me neither!"

Honestly, Obi-Wan thought, were stubbornness and a flair for drama heritable traits?

Ahsoka relented just a little. "Okay, then I guess you won't get to swim."

That got them moving again. "Swim?"

At last, the party stepped out of the trees into a pleasant glen, where a petite waterfall fed into a gently-rippling pool. The banks of the pool were richly carpeted with soft mosses, warmed by the sunlight that leaked between the leaves of the trees hanging overhead.

Leia kicked off her shoes at once to walk barefoot on the moss, then got down on her hands and knees to pet it. Before long, she was joined by her brother, who crawled to the water's edge and peered in.

"There's stuff growing in there!" he exclaimed.

"There's stuff growing everywhere! And crawling." Leia held up a long worm between two fingers. "S'this a worm? It looks like a noodle. I wanna eat it."

Luke wrinkled his nose. "No you don't, it's slimy. And it wiggles."

"Not raw, silly, gross."

"It'd still be slimy if you cooked it."

"So are noodles. It'd just be… worm noodles!"

Luke gagged, picked another worm out of the moss, and tossed it at her.

Ahsoka elbowed Obi-Wan in the ribs. "I think I know someone who's going to be up for trying bugs in a few years."

He cast her a withering look. "Please don't encourage Leia toward the consumption of insects. Especially those in a dubious state of cookedness. Dealing with that once was more than enough."

Ahsoka burst into laughter. Stars, but it was good to have another person to share old jokes and memories with.

Swimming lessons went about as well as one would expect, with two rambunctious younglings experiencing a pond for the first time. Which is to say that the introduction to the pond began with a great deal of shrieking and splashing, which eventually gave way to perhaps ten minutes of floundering attempts at swimming, which interval ended when Luke and Leia decided that they preferred to cling to their guardians' backs, arms, or legs, and let them do the work.

Luke was thus attached to Ahsoka, out in a deeper part of the pool, when he was seized by a mischievous spirit.

"SNAKE!"

"Where?" Ahsoka exclaimed. She scanned the water, her heart pounding, ready to snatch her nephew out of danger and leap to shore at a moment's notice. "Where's the snake?"

He batted playfully at one of her lekku. "Right there!"

"Luke Amidala-Skywalker, don't you ever do that again! Haven't you heard the story of the padawan who cried Sith?"

"But I didn't cry Sith. I said snake," Luke protested.

Ahsoka sighed inwardly. Letting the descendent of a Skywalker be raised by an Amidala and a Kenobi was surely an error on the part of fate. She had a sneaking suspicion that it would take the efforts of all five adults in their little clan, plus both of the Lars, to see the twins safely through their adolescence.

Obi-Wan floated peacefully between Ahsoka and Luke, and Padmé and Leia, who were in the shallows, braiding aquatic vines into crowns. In this little glen, the Force was warm and bright with the concentrated presence of four Force users. If he closed his eyes, he was back in the Temple, in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, hearing the splash of water, the soft rustle of leaves; the murmur of adult conversation, and the happy chatter of younglings. A million miles and half a lifetime away.

A cold breeze rushed through the Force, rippling placidity into motion. It was Dark, and yet it was not the smothering, caliginous darkness of a Sith—rather, it had the fresh chill of a temperate autumn's predawn. The Force did not warn of danger, as if this curious presence did not signify a threat.

A dry, sarcastic voice called, "Well, Kenobi. Fancy meeting you again after all this time."

He opened his eyes to see none other than Asajj Ventress standing on a rock at the edge of the pool, smirking down. "I thought you must have finally pissed off someone you couldn't sass your way around."

"You know, I do like to think that my sparring ability isn't limited to the purely verbal."

"Really? How interesting. I seem to remember kicking your—" she glanced at the two children who were now watching attentively, "nether regions several times over the course of our acquaintance."

"Strategic retreat."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"Asajj, stop heckling my grandmaster," Ahsoka called.

"You really take away all my fun, you know that?"

"Don't worry, I'll give you something better than bickering with Obi-Wan. Come meet Luke and Leia. Luke, Leia, this is your Aunt Asajj."

Ventress rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. "Oh, no, you are not tractor-beaming me into your little family."

"Too late!"

Luke and Leia were already heading for shore, where they ran around to the rock where Ventress stood, undeterred by her uninviting aspect.

"Hi, Aunt 'Sajj!" they chorused, while Luke reached up to hug her around the waist, and Leia more cautiously held out her hand, as she had upon meeting Ahsoka.

Ventress' expression was something well worth seeing. Ahsoka just wished she had a holorecorder on hand to capture the shock, quickly replaced by feigned hauteur that melted around the edges to reveal a hint of the secret warmth that Asajj would die before admitting that she harbored. And then her absolute befuddlement, as Leia remarked, "You feel funny in the Force, but it's kind of nice," nipping in for a quick hug before she raced Luke back to the water.

Shaking herself out of her daze, she said, "You're going to have to be careful with those two, or they'll be trying to make friends with the Inquisitorius before you know it. Anyway—I just dropped by to tell you that Rex says he won't be able to make it. Something about a call with Wolffe."

Ahsoka nodded. "Thanks. You staying, by any chance?"

"I have better things to be doing with my time. Frankly, I don't get the obsession with water."

"Oh, come on. You know you want to."

Ventress huffed, but she sat down on her rock, and leaned down to trail her fingers through the water, listening in with more interest than she cared to let on, as Leia asked, "Mama, is this what it's like on'N'boo?"

"No, the lakes are bigger—"

Leia's eyes went wide. "Bigger'n this?"

"Much bigger. And there are hills, and great open meadows, and the air isn't hot, but warm."

"Can we go there sometime?"

"Sometime. When it's safe—when the Sith are gone, and when the Empire doesn't control Naboo. Then we'll go, and we'll stay at Varykino, and you'll meet your grandparents." She shared a rueful glance with Obi-Wan. Much as she longed, sometimes, to see her parents and Sola, she did not relish the thought of informing them that she had been alive all this time. She would be in for the scolding of her life, she knew, whether the promised visit happened next month or thirty years hence.

Luke was pouting. "But that'll take forever!"

"Then you'll have something to look forward to forever."

He shook his head. "Don't wanna, that's too long. I know! We can send Aunt 'Sajj, 'cause she used to be a 'sassin, and she can kill the Siths so we can go to Naboo."

"Don't think I haven't tried," Ventress drawled from her perch. "But I swear, Vader has Skywalker's own luck, and as for my grandmaster…."

"Ew!" Ahsoka exclaimed, squinting up at her friend. "Do you have to call Palpatine your grandmaster? It's… disturbing."

Ventress shrugged. "It's true, though. I can't help if your Jedi sentiments recoil."

"I'm not a Jedi!"

"Never said you were, darling. Jedi sentiments, that's all."

Ahsoka flicked her fingers, and a spray of water shot up to splash over Ventress, who swiftly retaliated by levitating a water globule the size of her head, which she released directly over the Togruta.

This was correctly interpreted as a formal declaration of war. Ahsoka flung a barrage of fist-sized globules, only one of which managed to hit Ventress; the rest were deflected to spatter harmlessly around the clearing. Embroiled in combat, Ventress didn't observe Leia on the other side of the pond, wadding up a ball of sodden moss, which she handed to her mother. "Throw it!"

"If I throw it, then whoever I throw it at is going to throw water at me."

"Mama-a-a, pleeease?"

"Maybe I don't want to get all wet, Leia."

"But Mama, we have to help Aunt 'Soka," Leia protested earnestly. It was a fair display of civic responsibility from a young child. Or maybe she just wanted to see her mother get splashed. The two were equally likely from this particular child. Leia could be quite mature for her age at times, but at the end of the day, she was still a five-year-old.

"You know, you could throw it," Padmé suggested.

"But you can throw it better."

"I think you just want to see me get splashed."

Leia's eyes widened. "Me?"

"Mmhm."

With an injured expression, Leia took aim and hurled the moss, which miraculously struck the distracted ex-Sith-acolyte on the side of the face with a squelch that Leia found hilarious, judging by her shriek of mirth. Up on her rock, Ventress whirled to face her assailant.

"Who did that?" she demanded.

Leia, the little hellion, pointed innocently to Padmé.

"Hey, now!"

Ventress, however, was impartial in her retaliation, and both mother and daughter enjoyed a liberal drenching.

Things devolved from there. Obi-Wan was dragged in as Ventress' ally, and water and moss-balls flew until no one remembered whose side they were on, and the battle became a free-for-all, the only alliances being Padmé-Luke and Obi-Wan-Leia. (The traitor having decamped once her objective was accomplished.) Chaos, however, can only reign for so long, and after a while, the combatants began to flag and withdraw, to make their way to the sun-dappled bank of the pool, where they arranged themselves in positions of varying dignity. Obi-Wan adopted a meditative posture. Padmé tucked her legs neatly beneath herself. Ventress lounged against a fallen tree. Ahsoka sprawled in the midst of them all, serving as a pillow for Luke and Leia, while she rested her heels on her grandmaster's leg.

"Aunt 'Soka?" Luke asked.

"Yeah, Skykid?" she replied lazily.

"Aunt 'Soka, if you're not a Jedi, how're you gonna be one of Leia'n me's masters?"

"Oh, Luke, just because I'm not a Jedi doesn't mean I can't teach you how to use the Force."

He rolled over to face her, brows drawn together in an anxious frown. "But how're we gonna be your padawan if you're not a Jedi?"

That was a question, indeed, and it was a thing to which she had not yet given any thought. It hadn't occurred to her that Luke and Leia would assume they would grow up to become Jedi. She looked up at Obi-Wan, sending an air of questioning through the Force. In reply, she received an impression of uncertainty.

"I don't know," she told Luke. "Maybe we'll find another Jedi who survived, by then. Or maybe you won't even want to become a Jedi by then."

"But I wanna go on adventures! Wanna fly to all the planets!"

"All of them?" she teased. "Even all the other Rim dustballs?"

"Yeah! Me'n Leia, right Leia?" He nudged his dozing sister.

"Huh? Yeah… all of'm. An' get rid of th'Hutts."

Luke scooched closer to Ahsoka's montrals, whispering confidentially, his words for her and Leia alone, "And maybe we'll find Dad somewhere out there, and then he'll be good, an' he won't think I'm dead anymore."

"What?" Find… "Luke, what are you talking about?"

"I dream about Dad sometimes. One time he thought I was dead. See, I think he's not dead, because I thought he was dead and dreamed about him, and I'm not dead and he was in my dream, see?"

Ahsoka did not, in fact, see. That is, she didn't see Luke's tangled logic. What she did see, however, or rather feel, was his certainty. She shouldn't place much store in the certainty of a six-year-old, even a six-year-old as strong in the Force as Luke. Alone, she probably wouldn't have, would have dismissed that certainty as a childish wish. But there were just enough other uncertainties, that she began to wonder if she ought to give his convoluted theory some degree of credence. Between her unbroken training bond and Obi-Wan's odd reactions... But there was no proof, only coincidences and odd things that couldn't be explained, so she put the thought aside for now.

"You never know what the future will bring," she said, noncommittally—for her own benefit as much as her nephew's.