Anakin woke to sense that something had changed. Something to do with Severus. The cat was awake, and his mind felt more fully human than it had done since he first transformed. Not only that, but – he felt more nearly cheerful than he had done at any time since Anakin first met him.

Anakin prepared to get up. Hephaestus had built two working hands for him now, and left it to Anakin to design and build a pair of legs to his own preferences. However, everyone – Hephaestus himself, the Duronas, and Cheiron – had warned him not to wear them 24 hours a day, even with socks over the stumps of his limbs to prevent chafing (when had anyone cared about chafing in the past 23 years? But he didn't need to think about that now. This was his new life, in the afterlife, and everything was different here). He was supposed to take his limbs off at night, to allow the skin on the stumps to breathe, and again when he washed. It made getting up a more complicated process, but he was used to that.

He levitated the right hand, the one that he had insisted look skeletal and metallic like the original prosthesis he'd had as a young man, onto the remains of his right arm, not bothering with a sock. Once it was in place, he used it to pick up his other limbs from the bedside table and put them on, and then used his left hand to take off the right arm, arrange padding underneath it, and replace it in a more comfortable and secure position. The left hand looked and felt more like a flesh hand, like Luke's, and was even warm to the touch, to be more comforting for stroking a cat's fur. His right hand had good touch sensors on the fingertips, but too many exposed joints that fur could get tangled in.

'Sir? Do you need anything?' Konstantine, hyper-alert as always, had woken at the first sound of Anakin moving about.

'No. I am well. You may sleep, if you wish. Or if you want caf, I believe it is my turn to make it.'

'It's not right,' grumbled Konstantine. 'You're an officer…'

'I am also in recovery. Performing household tasks is part of my physiotherapy. Unless you doubt my competence?'

'No, sir.' If Konstantine had been a crew member back on one of Darth Vader's ships – maybe not a trooper, as Vader had no particular wish to bully them, but an officer pushing his luck by daring to argue with the Emperor's Enforcer – Vader could have terrorised him into silence with the threat of murder, if he held back from actually murdering him then and there. But Konstantine wasn't afraid of him at all – afraid for him sometimes, if he risked falling and reopening old injuries, but also experienced enough in caring for a disabled person to know that he needed to encourage Anakin to be as independent as possible.

How long had it been, Anakin thought, since anyone had paid attention to him for any reason other than fear? He remembered a line from one of Mark Vorkosigan's memories: 'Oh. So that's what respect looks like.' Thinking of it made him quote another Mark line, just before killing Baron Ryoval: '"It really pisses me off when people underestimate me, y'know?"' As usual, Konstantine's smile didn't register on his face, but Anakin could sense it in his mind.

As he passed the 'fresher door, a voice called, 'Does your therapy regime extend to tea? Earl Grey, no milk or sugar.' A high voice – a boy's voice.

Anakin's mother wouldn't have let him get away with not saying, 'please,' and Obi-Wan certainly wouldn't. 'What is the magic word?' Anakin growled.

'I can think of a great many, mainly curses,' retorted the voice on the other side of the door.

'You sound better.'

'I feel it,' Severus admitted.

As Anakin set about making the drinks, he resolved that soon, he would get together the ingredients to make a proper tzai to drink with Severus and Konstantine. Conscience reminded him that he ought to explain to them the significance of this: that tzai recipes were handed down within families on Tattooine, and that offering tzai to someone makes them a member of your family. He had no right to trick his friends into that, just because he had lost his own family. He needed to ask them whether they wanted to be family. But then, he needed to find out where to get kaktru petals and ginsu bark anyway. Not that he needed the painkiller properties of ginsu any more – or not nearly as much as he had for the last quarter-century, anyway.

The 'fresher door was still locked when he came back upstairs. He levitated the mug of tea to lower it gently to the floor, as it was easier than bending. A small figure wrapped in a bath-towel opened the door, took the drink, and disappeared inside again.

An hour later the 'fresher was still occupied. Anakin and Konstantine had drunk their caf, given up waiting for a chance to wash and shave and gone down to have breakfast in dressing-gowns, but by now the caf had completed its exploration of their bodies and was impatient to exit. Anakin rapped on the door with the metallic knuckles of his right hand. 'How much longer must we wait?' he demanded.

'This is my first bath for over two months!' retorted Severus. 'Washing myself in public with my own tongue isn't something I plan to go on doing.'

'What are you doing that could take so long?'

'Washing my hair. Which I do do regularly,' said Severus defensively. 'It's not my fault that it just goes back to being a disgusting greasy mess by lunchtime.'

'How long?' Anakin repeated.

'I need to rinse.'

'Do not try the patience of a Sith.'

'Or what? You'll strangle me through the bathroom door?'

Anakin remembered how Severus had threatened him on his first day. 'I cannot kill you here. However, do you really want to find out how much pain a man with metal hands whose pain sensors can be deactivated can inflict by spanking you? You would not enjoy it.'

Severus was doing his best to Shield his thoughts and emotions. Nonetheless, Anakin could sense him refusing to be intimidated by the threat of physical pain. Undoubtedly his Sith master had used torture on him just as freely as Palpatine had on Vader, so that a mere beating held no terrors by comparison. Anakin felt furious that the boy wouldn't listen to him, just as Luke hadn't. Not that he was planning on chopping off Severus's limbs, but there must be something he feared, surely? 'Especially if I do so in public,' he added.

This time a wave of remembered pain, fury, helplessness, hatred, grief and despair shot through Severus. Anakin felt ashamed. How had he reverted to bullying like this, so soon after congratulating himself on reaching a place where he was respected and not feared?

'I apologise,' he said. 'That was inexcusable.'

'Most things people have done to me were.'

'I had no right to threaten you, or hurt you. However, two of us need to use the 'fresher. Soon. Please.'

'Severus emerged, still wrapped in one towel, with another around his head. 'I need to go back in and finish rinsing when you've finished,' he announced.

'Or you could get a haircut,' grumbled Anakin.

By the time Cheiron arrived, all three of them were clean and as presentable as possible. Severus was wearing another black robe which looked virtually indistinguishable from the one he had lent Anakin, except that the hem and sleeves were currently pinned up.

'You're looking better,' Cheiron observed.

'Liar,' muttered Severus. 'I'm still ugly. And spotty. I looked much better as a cat.'

'You were a beautiful cat,' agreed Cheiron. 'But it's good to be able to have a conversation again. How are you feeling?'

'All right.'

'And Anakin? How are you?'

'Behaving badly,' said Anakin. 'This morning, I threatened to hit Severus for taking too long in the 'fresher.'

'What do you think about that, Severus?' Cheiron asked.

'I suppose I'd better get used to it,' muttered Severus. 'If I'm a child again, presumably that makes Anakin and Konstantine my foster-parents, and it's up to them to decide how to punish me if I don't do what they want.'

'But do you think that's fair?'

Severus considered. 'When I started at Hogwarts, they still used the cane. It was banned when I was in the third year. So, before that, there was nothing to stop teachers or prefects beating me. And afterwards, anyone who attacked me didn't have to fear being caned.

'But they didn't anyway,' he added, thinking it over. 'Before third year, Sirius Black boasted about how many strokes of the cane he'd taken. Afterwards, he boasted about how many hours he'd spent in detention. The only punishment he and James Potter really minded was being off the Quidditch team, and they didn't care too much about that, when they could spend every full moon running around the Forbidden Forest with a werewolf.

'And probably Sirius Black was used to his parents hurting him anyway, whether he'd done anything or not, the same as my dad did. So he wouldn't have thought there was any point in trying not to get into trouble. I didn't, except that if Professor Slughorn had got cross with me, he might not let me and Lily borrow the Potions lab out of hours.'

'So, if you had children, would you hit them?' asked Cheiron.

'No.' Severus checked himself, evidently reflecting that he might lose his temper and do things he hadn't intended to, and added, 'I hope not.'

'Konstantine, what do you think?'

Konstantine's mind already felt unpleasantly intrigued by this conversation. The Dark Side would always have a hold on him to some extent, just as it did on Anakin. Most people saw this and were afraid of him. Ges Vorrutyer had seen it and recognised him as a useful henchman. Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith saw it and knew that he needed them to be responsible authority figures who could let him know when it was all right to use violence. But they weren't here. And Konstantine thought that the Barrayaran Imperial Service had gone soft now that misbehaving soldiers were no longer beaten with lead-lined rubber hoses the way he had been…

Cheiron looked him directly in the eye, a look that said firmly, 'Think about this – don't just react.' Konstantine considered for a few moments, and then said, 'When Elena was a baby, I decided – I mustn't ever hurt her, except when I was teaching her to fight and she could hit back. It was my job to decide what she was allowed to do, but Mistress Hysopi's job to decide how to punish her if she disobeyed. If I'd had to be the one to punish her, I might not have known when to stop. Might find out that I enjoyed hurting her. So I didn't. Lady Vorkosigan says no-one should ever hit children anyway. I don't know if that's right. But I know I shouldn't.'

'Neither should I,' said Anakin. If he had been allowed to bring up Luke or Leia, when he was Darth Vader, he would have been training them as his Sith apprentice, probably as cruelly as the way he had trained Galen Marek. If he tried to recall a time when he'd had parental responsibility for a teenager without being a Sith, he'd have to go back to Ahsoka, and – that was so long ago that he could barely remember the person he had been then. He hadn't been mature enough to train a padawan, when he had been still a teenager himself. Was he capable of being a decent foster-parent now? 'Do you want us to be your foster parents?' he asked.

'I think we're meant to be together,' said Severus. 'What am I supposed to call you, though? Dad Vader, or Daddikin?'

'Now you are testing my resolve not to strike you.'

'Precisely.'

'You sound more like brothers than father and son,' commented Cheiron. 'Would that be a more helpful way to think of it?'

Everyone was willing to accept that, and also to agree that Severus was more a young adult who should be involved in decision-making than an infant who should have decisions made for him. The three quasi-brothers spent the next hour working out a set of house rules that they could agree on, with Cheiron sometimes making suggestions but mainly letting them get on with it. They agreed on the following:

No-one was to hurt or threaten anyone. Everyone was to treat each other with respect.

Severus's bedtime was to be 9pm, allowing half an hour to read before putting the light out at 9.30. This applied only when he was human, and assumed that he would be sleeping in his own room when human; if he took cat form again, he could go to bed when his housemates did and sleep on one of their beds if he chose, or go out at night on his own if he wished, since it wasn't practical to prevent a cat from doing whatever he felt like, provided he took sufficient cat-naps during the day.

All members of the household would let each other know, when they went out, where they were going and what time they planned to be back. If Severus planned to take cat form, he should discuss this in advance with his housemates.

Severus was allowed to work as a potion-brewer no more than ten hours a week (he had said twelve, the adults had said eight, and they had agreed to compromise), with up to one hour of brewing Monday-Friday and five on Saturday.

They would take it in turns to do housework, and a rota showed whose turn it was to do which tasks when. Now that Severus was back in human form, he was eager to resume doing at least some of the cooking, but Anakin, now that he had usable hands, wanted to try finding ingredients to approximate some of the spicy Tattooine meals he had enjoyed as a child.

There was also a rota establishing time-slots for taking baths or showers, allowing for the time needed for Severus to get his long hair properly clean, and the time needed for Anakin to climb into a bath unaided, remove most of his prosthetic limbs, keep one hand on for ease of washing himself, levitate it off and levitate the other one to him for washing the remaining arm, etc. Konstantine protested that he didn't need more than a few minutes to wash and shave in the mornings, especially as he took a shower after work anyway, but Anakin and Severus insisted that he have a time-slot that allowed him the option of having a long, relaxing bath in the morning if he wanted to.

Severus needed to get some new clothes that were the right size for him.

Severus could have a few weeks' holiday to get back into the habit of being (a) human again and (b) thirteen years old, but fairly soon they needed to work out what was happening about his education…

It was at this point that Severus announced that Mr Nutt had invited him to attend classes at the Mook Rehabilitation Centre.

'You're not a mook,' objected Konstantine.

'I am a Death Eater. Was a Death Eater, in the past when I was grown up,' Severus added, looking at his unblemished left arm. 'It is my right to be there.'

'If Nutt thinks it's a good idea, it's definitely worth a try,' said Cheiron. 'But Konstantine has a good point. You're an intelligent man – boy – who's going to be in classes where most of the other students can barely remember their own names. Do you really think you'll fit in?

'I have spent my entire life not fitting in,' said Severus. 'I want to try this.'

Author's note: I didn't mean to write this chapter. However, I noticed that of the 82 de-aged Snape' fanfics on Archive Of Our Own, quite a few had the tag 'spanking'. I didn't think this was a good idea, so I thought I'd better promise Severus it wasn't going to happen in this fic.

Tzai as a key part of Tattooine tradition is the creation of Fialleril . It's worth going to their Tumblr account to read not just their thoughts on Tattooine slave culture, but the ideas they and their friends have exchanged about various different fandoms and everyday life.

Also, see Darths and Droids 1633 for the complexity of having a bath when you're Darth Vader:

Vaneé: Shall I drain the bath, dry you, and dress you?

Darth Vader: No, leave me.

Vaneé: Suit yourself.