Chapter 28: Hurt and Healing II

"Kriffing hell, Kenobi!"

The hurtling teenager knocked Cere from her feet with the power of his leap. They collapsed, a rain-soaked tangle of bodies, the wind knocked from their chests, onto the cold floor of the ship.

"Kryze," he managed, in stubborn correction.

Cere shook her head in wonderment as she pressed her body up from the floor.

"That was Kenobi-like guts," she admitted. "Good jump."

The ramp closed with a shriek and a thud. Cere nearly lost her bearings again as the ship, under Greez's hurried piloting, ascended through the thick cloud and into thinning atmosphere. Korkie, too, had made it, wobbling, to his knees. But Mace lay on the floor still, the clone medic bent over his body. There was an impossible weakness in the Force around him.

"How is he, Kix?" Korkie asked.

Kix grimaced.

"He's breathing."

The medic's face was lined with worry.

"He's got a penetrating abdominal injury and he's profoundly shocked."

There was crying echoing through the ship's hold; the Mirialan stroked the head of the baby zabrak at her chest in vain and the human infant in Cere's possession, perhaps sensing the new racing of her heart, followed suit. The older children stood in shocked silence, some of them emanating anxiety and others with their emotions profoundly dulled, their Force signatures almost empty, after their time in the Inquisitor's Academy. Boil shepherded them into the cramped kitchenette, his voice ringing hollow with cheerful promises of food and warm blankets.

Cere reached out, laid a hand upon her friend's shoulder.

"Mace?"

"What can you do, Kix?" Korkie urged. "How can we help?"

Kix tentatively lifted the pack he was pressing to Mace's wound and probed the gaping defect before hurriedly pressing it down again.

"This isn't something I can fix. His liver's already completely ischaemic, they've severed the whole porta hepatis and probably also…"

He abandoned the jargon and re-phrased.

"He's already lost litres. And I can't stop this bleeding in a way that keeps him alive."

Korkie scrambled to lift his own sleeve.

"Haven't we got a transfuser circuit, Kix? He can have my blood, he can-"

Kix shook his head.

"It won't do him any good, Korkie. Not without a liver."

Korkie's whole body was shaking. He was drenched to the skin from the pouring rain.

"That can't be true, Kix, he's-"

"Korkie…"

Cere laid a hand on the young man's shoulders.

"Korkie, Mace needs us here and in the present moment-"

But Korkie shook Cere's hand from his back.

"We failed him," he spat.

And Cere knew that Korkie was just as angry at her as he was at himself and he was kriffing right about it. She had failed. She had failed a hundred times over. But she could not lose these precious moments to anger. She turned away from Korkie and brushed her own trembling fingers across Mace's forehead. They had been younglings together. The closest thing she'd ever known to family. They'd called it friendship. But Cere knew that the connection between them was now something far more precious than that. She had been lost. And she wasn't sure she would have ever found the right path again without him.

You have returned to us, despite the pain of doing so. And it is this that makes you a worthy Jedi.

Mace had forgiven her. And by forgiving her, he had saved her life. Cere felt her already rain-soaked face flush with hot tears.

From your weakness stems your strength.

"Mace…" she choked out.

He had helped her find her strength, and she willed it all into him now. Everything she had. She was no formally-trained Healer. She did not know how to knit together the tissues that had been torn apart. But she must have given him something. Something small but precious. For Mace opened his eyes.

"We made it?" he asked, with whispered voice.

"We made it," Cere affirmed.

"With all the children?"

"Yes. Fourteen of them."

The ship rocked and jolted in a reminder that they had perhaps not quite made it yet – Greez and the Faulties, still, were steering them out of danger and into hyperspace. But danger seemed very distant and Cere kept her attention upon her friend.

"I'm so sorry, Mace," she murmured. "It should have been me. I deserved that fate. Not you."

Mace closed his eyes, briefly, and fluttered them open again.

"No, Cere. You didn't. This fate was always my own. The Force around me…"

He drew a shuddering breath.

"Everything feels right."

Korkie, furiously blinking through tears of his own, clasped Mace's hand.

"I was too slow, Mace. I shouldn't have left you. I-"

"I told you, Korkie," Mace murmured, "that I was hurt and that I must heal. And this moment now…"

He was so pale, his dark skin fading to grey.

"This is my healing, Korkie," he vowed. "This will mend everything. These children will mend everything. All of the hurt."

He gave a faint smile.

"It doesn't hurt, Korkie. I feel no pain."

Korkie dropped his chin and wept.

"One day," Mace whispered, "you will understand. One day you will find your family again and you will know this healing."

His fingers unfurled from Korkie's; the lines upon his face relaxed.

"I had a family, once."

His words were slow and precious.

"I had a sister."

His gaze slid away from Korkie and away from Cere too, fixing upon something in the distance. There was still a faint smile on his face.

"I see my sister."

His chest gave one more heaving gasp and the Jedi Order's mightiest soldier did not breathe again.

Anger led to hatred, hatred led to suffering, and all of it led to the kriffing Dark Side. But Korkie was angry. He was angry at whichever blasted Inquisitor had dealt that blow. He was angry at Cere for failing her Padawan and angrier still that she hadn't had the courage to tell him about it. He was at Mace for sending him away and trying to fight some impossible battle on his own and he was angriest, of course, at himself, for even briefly having listened to him.

But anger led to the Dark Side and they had a whole ship full of quaking younglings who were probably halfway there already and needed his help. So he evicted Greez from the pilot's seat and flew himself, finding peace in the only place he could: in the monotony of parsec after parsec as they limped, damaged but not apprehended by the pursuing TIE fighters of Arkanis, towards their next hyperspace route.

Their final destination would be Tanalorr. This is where the children would be safe to learn under Cere's tutelage – if Cere's tutelage, Korkie thought spitefully, could be considered safe – and where they would build Mace Windu's funeral pyre. But there was a long way yet to travel.

"You've been flying for over ten hours," Cere informed him. "Boil says you're refusing to swap out."

Korkie did not take his gaze from the sprawling stars.

"I'm meditating."

"I know."

Cere sighed and came to stand beside him.

"I'm sorry," she offered.

Korkie fiddled with the map settings.

"You don't owe me an apology."

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth," Cere pressed. "Truly."

And Korkie had not wanted to say anything to her but the words tumbled out.

"Did Mace know?"

"Yes."

"Alright."

And this made it better, he supposed. If Mace in his wisdom had forgiven Cere then there was no use in Korkie being angry. But it stung, too. For they both had known, and presumably had decided together that it was best not to tell him. A secret kept by the adults from their temperamental teenager.

"Her name was Trilla," Cere said. "And she was a good Padawan."

Her knuckles were white as she clasped the arm of Korkie's chair. And all of that grief in the Force made Korkie feel sick to his stomach again. He looked at her with baleful gaze.

"Why are you telling me this, Cere?"

She looked at him with shining eyes.

"I don't expect you to forgive me anytime soon, Korkie," she uttered. "But you ought to forgive her."

It might have been Trilla who had killed Mace; it might have been the Grand Inquisitor. Korkie did not know and he did not much care.

"Have you given up on her?" he asked.

Cere dropped her head.

"I don't know, Korkie," she murmured. "The horrible things that happened on Nur…"

She looked up again, eyes casting over the enormous sprawl of stars.

"They broke me too. I fell, briefly, to darkness. I had decades of training, Korkie, to bring me back. But Trilla is as only old as you are."

She swiped at a stray tear.

"She doesn't feel the same anymore. I can't find the person that she used to be."

And Korkie didn't know what he felt anymore, didn't know whether he was angry or who he was angry with. He only knew that he felt awful.

"You can fly, if you want," he said, rising finally from the pilot's seat. "I've had enough."

Kix tried not to look too relieved when Korkie appeared in the ship's kitchenette, having finally given up what had looked like an unbreakable vigil at the controls.

"You want some rice?"

"No, thank you."

"An energy bar?"

"No."

Kix watched as the young man made himself a cup of tea. He supposed some fluid was better than nothing.

"Are the children alright?" Korkie asked.

Kix nodded.

"All fed and mostly all asleep now. They all have injuries from what they've been through in that horrible place. But everyone's stable."

"Thank you."

Korkie was sombre and restrained in a way that Kix had never seen him – it seemed impossible that this was the same boy who had joked with him as he had stitched his chest wall back together. He kept his eyes trained on his cup of tea as he prepared it with diligent care, and when he finally looked up to behold Kix properly, seemed startled.

"I didn't know you were a baby person."

Kix looked down at the infant strapped to his chest, resting flush against his skin beneath his sweater. He gave a weary smile.

"Never have been. But we're getting along."

He gave the sleeping infant a pat. Her back was almost entirely encased by the span of his hand.

"Someone had to hold her," he explained. "Even with all the wrappings, she was struggling to maintain her temperature and this is the warmest place we can keep her. She must have been born prematurely. She'd be lucky to be thirty-five weeks corrected."

Korkie bent down to study the newborn.

"She is very small," he agreed.

Kix nodded soberly.

"I've spoken to Cere already. I worry she's too young to survive the flight to Tanalorr. Her lungs are immature still and the blood vessels in her brain will be fragile. I'm told it's an unpleasant flight even for adults."

Korkie nodded his vehement agreement.

"And even if she survived the flight," Kix went on, "she'd need lots of care. Even with Cere and I together on Tanalorr, we'll be caring for thirteen other children with injuries and complex mental health needs and limited resources…"

Korkie looked alarmed.

"But what else are we supposed to do? Keep her on Yaga Minor?"

Kix grimaced.

"Yaga Minor isn't ideal either," he admitted. "We can hardly put the Hidden Path on hold and besides, none of any of us have the money or insurance to access any local medical care."

"I'm not ready to be a parent," Korkie sighed, in half-hearted humour. "I haven't even managed to tie down a boyfriend."

And it was a stupid joke but it was true. For they were each born soldiers above all else. They had waded deep into this battle of resistance and it could not easily be retreated from. Korkie would return to the Hidden Path, delivering more Force-sensitives to their secret haven on Tanalorr, and Kix would help Cere with the medical needs of the rescued children and any new arrivals. Survivors of trauma like the children of the Inquisitor's Academy would need Kix's care long after their broken bones were set.

Kix and Korkie looked at the infant with shared dismay. They had rescued her, certainly, from a miserable pathway. But what good could they promise her instead?

"I think we need to find someone else to take her," Kix concluded.

Korkie barked out a laugh of disbelief.

"What are we going to do? Host interviews?"

Kix sighed.

"Surely you know someone, Korkie."

"Know someone?" he asked. "Most of the people I've ever known are dead, Kix. And the rest are fugitives. Or bartenders."

"That can't be completely true."

"Well…"

Korkie pondered his options.

"I suppose…"

"Who?"

"Bail and Breha Organa of Alderaan were always trying for a child," he offered. "It was one of those things I wasn't supposed to bring up at dinner parties."

Kix smiled.

"Perfect. I knew you'd know someone."

Korkie rolled his eyes.

"We don't know that they still want a baby, Kix. Their priorities might have changed a little since the galaxy fell to shit, don't you think?"

Kix shrugged.

"It's worth a try. And watch your language around the baby."

"She doesn't even have proper lungs yet, Kix," Korkie grumbled. "She's not going to learn any words."

The baby began to mewl and whine.

"I think she's listening to you," Kix quipped.

"That was pure coincidence."

"Maybe."

Kix glanced at his chrono.

"Can you take her for a few minutes? I'm due neurological obs for our young Nautolan with the head injury."

Korkie extricated the infant carefully from her swaddle at Kix's chest.

"Skin to skin," Kix advised him. "Keep her warm."

Korkie chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, I know. Didn't you know I lived the first four cycles of my life in an incubator?"

Kix smiled.

"I'd forgotten."

"I'll never forget. My mother would recite to me the endless list of things she did to keep me alive whenever I was being a brat and needed reminding."

There was both grief and love shining upon the young man's face. Kix gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"Rightfully so."

The medic clone who had introduced himself as Kix arrived for the hourly neurological observations after sixty-two minutes when Anara was beginning to get restless. His assessment was concise, inspecting the swelling upon Von's scalp and checking the tone of his limbs before taking a set of vital signs.

"Everything looks stable," he reported.

"You're not going to wake him up to assess him fully?"

Last time, Kix had used his torch to look at Von's pupils and asked him all sorts of questions, most of which he had been unable to answer. But the young Nautolan had, thankfully, been able to recall his name, which had been particularly useful because Anara had not known it; in the Inquisitor's Academy they had never been permitted to speak to one another and Anara had only known Von as the Second Sister had called him: Fourth Initiate. He had, as Anara had understood it, been the Initiate that the Second Sister had most disliked.

"I don't need to wake him every hour," Kix explained, packing up the blood-pressure cuff and returning it to the medi-kit. "I'll do the full assessment four-hourly."

Anara nodded, jaw tight. That was a long time to wait to make sure that Von could still speak and open his eyes and wiggle his fingers and toes when instructed. A long time to wait to make sure that she hadn't killed him, or given him horrible brain damage, or something. All because she'd wanted to make the Second Sister leave her alone. All because she'd been scared. Now that the adrenaline of the escape had waned all Anara felt was horrible, swelling guilt. She should have refused. She should have let the Second Sister take her to the blasted torture chamber.

"I can see that you're worried, but I really think he'll be okay," Kix told her, with a cautious smile. "Truly. Everything looks alright. I'm just being cautious by checking him so often."

He motioned with his hand to Von's bruised temple.

"There's a big blood vessel just under this bone, inside the brain, on the part of his head where he was hit. That's why I'm being extra careful."

Hit by me, Anara did not say. For she'd not kicked him there by kriffing accident; she'd been trying to knock him out, to make the Second Sister call off their blasted sparring session and let it end. But she hadn't thought in all her stupid panic that she might seriously injury him. She hadn't known about the big blood vessel. Tears began to swim in her eyes.

"It's good that you're looking after your friend," Kix told her. "But please don't feel afraid to take a break to get some food or have a sleep yourself."

And the kind-hearted clone might as well have stabbed her in the gut. She wasn't Von's friend. She was the coward who had hurt him.

"Maybe after the four-hour check," Anara suggested, with wobbling voice.

Kix nodded.

"Alright. I'll get you something to drink, at least. We've got sugar-electrolyte sachets. Would you like yours made up cold or hot?"

No one had brought Anara food – the Inquisitors' nanny droids did not count – since she had been an Initiate in the Temple. Master Nu, who had appreciated Anara's interests in her Archives, had brought Anara cups of tea when she was the last one reading of in the evening time. Even as the tears burned at her eyes, Anara managed a faint smile.

"Hot, please, Kix."

Korkie regarded the infant in his arms, watching her tiny nostrils flare with the effort of her breaths. He had been far smaller than this once. It seemed impossible. But the evidence was tucked away in the Family Book – Korkaran's first weight: 521g – with his beskar'gam in a case in the Lars family tool-shed on Tatooine.

"Where is your family, young one?" he murmured.

The infant spilled the milk that Korkie had so carefully syringed into her mouth and looked at him with vacant gaze.

"I see."

Kix had told him already that he'd done a basic blood profile and she could not be genetically linked to any of the few distinct human populations that had become isolated on insular planets. Her ancestors were nomads and she could have come from almost anywhere. There was no way to trace her parents. Even if they had somehow survived their encounter with the Inquisitors, they would never see their daughter again.

"You'll probably like Alderaan," he mused. "They call it the planet of beauty. If you can't go home, I suppose it's the next best thing."

His reasoning sound flimsy aloud but there was no good alternative.

"And how are we going to get you there, hmm? Who's going to take you?"

The infant blinked, watching him still with wide, dark eyes. Around them hummed the ship's engines; this was the warmest place on the ship that Korkie could find to bring her.

"There's a funeral I'm supposed to attend on Tanalorr, you know."

But someone had to take her and it had to be done soon. They had seemingly lost their pursuers for now and could not afford to be tracked down again before they made the journey into the Koboh Abyss.

"It might be nice to see Bail and Breha again," he mused. "But on the other hand, they'll have all sorts of questions and-"

The infant opened her mouth and made some high-pitched protest at his inactivity. Korkie picked up the syringe of formula and began to feed her again.

"This will all be much better when you have a mother and a father. You might even become a princess if you're lucky."

Although perhaps there was not much luck in being the princess of a planet whose regime was tenuously tolerated, but certainly not endorsed, by the Emperor. How long could the Organa family walk that tightrope? Would this child's royal upbringing be as blood-stained as his own?

"I'll only leave you with them if they promise to protect you," Korkie vowed.

The infant seemed to blink her approval, although perhaps this was only in recognition of his improved feeding technique.

Korkie sat back in realisation of his decision with a sigh. He would be the one to make the dangerous journey and deliver this tiny child to Alderaan. He hoped that Mace would understand.

It had been one week and one day. Which really wasn't that long. Most of Ben's work trips took about a week. And he had said that this one would probably be longer.

But Mahdi was still worried, blast it.

"Do you have any days off this week?" Riyan asked, sitting down at the table to begin his breakfast.

"One. After the weekend."

"So will you stay being nocturnal?"

Mahdi shrugged.

"I don't know. Do you want to do something together?"

Riyan made a face.

"I have to go to school. According to you."

"I meant after school. I'll have a nap while you're out and then we can do something."

Riyan pondered this while spraying toast crumbs in an impressive radius.

"Maybe could we go to the shipyards? Jez says that if you go at night they don't bother guarding their junkyard and there's all sorts of cool things-"

"Something legal, I meant, Riyan."

Riyan waved a piece of toast remonstratively.

"I bet you Lana wants to come. There'll be lots of boys there for her to meet."

"You think I want her meeting junk-scavengers?"

"You're so boring, Mahdi," Riyan grumbled, licking a stray dollop of jam from his plate. "Hey, what happened to you and Ben?"

Mahdi felt a lurch of fear.

"What do you mean, what happened to me and Ben?"

"You used to be friends," Riyan pointed out. "But you haven't invited him over for breakfast in ages. Did something happen? Did you have a fight?"

"Oh. No. Nothing happened."

And as the anxiety left him, Mahdi felt instead a flush of guilt. For what had happened, of course, was Ben's eighteenth lifeday and everything that had followed. Riyan hadn't seen or heard anything about Ben for months now and that was because Mahdi had constructed a firm divide between his home life and whatever it was he had with Ben.

"We're still friends," Mahdi went on, and it felt cruel to call Ben that even if he was a hundred parsecs away and couldn't hear him. "I see him here and there. But he's away on a work trip just now."

"Well," Riyan advised, swallowing down the last of his toast, "you should invite him for breakfast when he's back. It's no fair if you keep hanging out with him without me."

Mahdi raised a brow, amused.

"You liked having Ben around?"

"Yeah. He's funny. Not like you."

"Ah. Thanks, Riyan."

"It's just that you're so serious all the time!"

Mahdi chuckled, regarding his solemn, crumb-faced brother.

"Yeah, okay. That's true."

He sighed.

"I'll invite him over for breakfast again when he's back. Okay?"

Riyan nodded his approval, brushing the crumbs from his face.

"When will he be back?"

"Don't know."

"Can't you comm him and ask?"

"I think he's too far."

"Where is he?"

"Don't know."

Riyan narrowed his gaze, suspicious.

"What does he do? Run spice?"

This was another reason, Mahdi's adult brain told him, that he should not be kissing Ben and certainly should not be bringing him over to hang out with Riyan over breakfast. As best Mahdi could tell it wasn't spice that Ben was transporting, but it didn't exactly seem to be legal either.

Too young for you. Too affectionate in public. No sense of danger. Some sort of illegal freighting job.

Mahdi's adult brain had a great list of reasons why the whole situation was terribly wrong.

But he wanted Ben to come back, blast it. He really, really just wanted him to come back safely.

"He doesn't run spice, Riyan. You can ask him over breakfast."

He wanted him to come back. So he made this stupid promise, repeated it silently to himself, in the hopes that it might will Ben, who had only ever asked Mahdi to let him be a part of his life, to have breakfast in the kitchen and walk together in the streets, to come home to him.

Bail Organa, Senator of Alderaan in a powerless Imperial Senate, had never been so busy as he was in the early years of the Empire. He relayed to the Senate Breha's promises of compliance to the Emperor and in the shadows they pressed the boundaries where they could. They accepted the Emperor's money and built the checkpoints at all entries to the Alderaan sector, staffed with Imperial soldiers. But Breha did not flinch in her refusal to allow the Emperor's troops upon her own soil and she gave the Emperor no reason to insist on the matter. Bail, with his wife's knowledge but never her involvement – one of them had to be clean, he insisted, when the inevitable day came and something went wrong – quietly constructed new access points, unguarded. One day, he promised himself, rebels would know that they could travel safely to Alderaan.

All of Bail and Breha's projects seemed to point in some direction they could not quite discern. Breha spoke, as they laid together in the night, of her hopes to one day form a new alliance, of leveraging the Empire with Alderaan's great economic power to exert real political pressure towards the restoration of the Republic. Chandrila would stand by them when the time was right. Sullust would stand by them when their economy had recovered. Kashyyyk and Mon Cala would stand by them when they had healed from the devastation of their wars. And perhaps Ralltiir could find a way, perhaps New Plympto might be brave enough one day…

In truth, Breha and Bail both knew that such an alliance was years away.

Bail could not help but think that the bridge they required to get them to that future laid with the Jedi. That there must have been some role, still, for a warrior with a sword who believed, truly, in peace and in compassion.

For there were survivors of the Purge, Bail knew. Many more than there might have been. His informants reported Jedi at work all across the galaxy but had so far managed to track down and recruit none of them. Some worked like heroes of a childhood tale, slipping invisibly through crowds and upon great journeys, leaving a trail of good deeds behind them like glimmering angel-dust but leaving no footsteps to be traced. Others had merged into the shadows completely and forsaken the heroics of their broken past. Bail had perhaps foolishly expected the surviving Jedi to declare themselves, warriors as proud as they had been in the age of the Republic. But there were many reasons to hide, some of which Bail could understand and many which he supposed he could not. The fear of having seen friends and mentors who had seemed invincible surrounded and slaughtered by their own soldiers. The hopelessness that must well from the near extermination of one's people. The heavy guilt, the sense of failure, that the Order's many selfless perfectionists must have taken to heart. The galaxy was enormous and its could-be heroes kept their heads low.

Bail had almost given up on finding one until Korkaran Kryze came to his door.

The young man's arrival – he had been a boy, when Bail had known him last – was heralded by unusual behaviour from Bail's typically scrupulous head of security.

"There is a traveller at the palace gates who must speak to you tonight, Senator."

The bleak winter sun had long sunk below the jagged horizon and the snow begun to fall when the message was relayed to Bail in his study.

"A traveller who must speak to me tonight? Who is he, Marin?"

And the guard had looked bewildered to be asked.

"He has travelled a long way, Senator. And he must speak to you tonight."

Bail had wondered for a brief moment whether it was possible his most esteemed soldier had been poisoned by some sort of cognition-addling toxin. But if this were an assassination attempt there was no reason for Marin not to shoot him himself. Bail studied his guard's expression. He had seen that glazed look somewhere before.

"Where is this traveller, Marin?"

"At the palace gates, as I said."

And as soon as Bail had hurried to the window and pushed the thick curtain aside he had understood. The visitor was huddled within a brown cloak, threadbare at the elbows, that no sensible traveller would have donned in the Alderaanian snow. Bail had seen that cloak before.

"Bring him in, please, Marin."

"It is exceedingly rude of you to have so thoroughly bewitched my head of security."

Korkie wrapped his stiff fingers around the steaming mug of tea and offered his host a weak smile.

"Forgive me. It's my only talent."

Bail Organa, elbows planted upon his stately desk, rubbed at his forehead in the aggrieved manner that Korkie's father had, once upon a time.

"How in the stars did you get here? I haven't got-"

"-your new secret entrance ports running yet?" Korkie finished. "I know. My loss. It took me almost a whole lunar cycle from Christophsis. I've barely touched a hyperspace lane since Quellor."

Bail blinked his surprise and regathered his composure.

"What I meant to say is that if I'd known you were coming I'd have helped you, Korkie."

"I know."

Korkie sipped at his tea and burned his tongue; the cold had left him impatient.

"I appreciate that, Bail. But I didn't want to put you at any additional risk. You and the Queen Breha have done exceptionally well to keep this planet clean of Imperial rule."

He finally began to extricate himself from his father's old cloak. It was damp with melted snow.

"I'd have troubled you if I needed to but it all ended up working out," Korkie went on. "I came in with your last import of sugar from Tepasi. The merchants were terribly kind-hearted. Very willing to help an impoverished young father upon his journey."

"A young what?"

Korkie smiled, patting the bundle of cloths at his chest. He had allowed his arms to suffer the cold in exchange for keeping the baby warm.

"She's a lovely travelling companion. Slowed us down a little, of course. Human infant formula and winter clothing is harder to come by than you might imagine outside of the Core. And she really couldn't afford to lose any weight."

The ever-composed Bail Organa all but gaped as Korkie unwrapped the infant.

"She's gained just over four hundred grams on the journey. It really should have been more like six hundred but this was the best I could do."

He readjusted the infant from where she was strapped at his chest, moving her to be cradled in his arms. Colour good. Breathing good. Tone good. The constant checklist that had consumed his every minute of Korkie's every day since they had left Kix and the rest of their companions behind.

"Which is why I'm here," Korkie went on, smirking at Bail's persistent shock. "I'm not actually her father."

"Oh."

Bail seemed to regain a little colour in his face.

"I didn't want to say it but you really are rather too young-"

"Tell me about it," Korkie agreed, sobering. "I rescued her from the Inquisitors. But there's no hope of finding her parents, if they're even alive. And I can't care for her, Bail."

And Bail fell silent again as he realised Korkie's unspoken request.

"You brought her here…"

"I would completely understand if you and Breha no longer wished for a child," Korkie reassured him. "The galaxy has changed abundantly for the worse since I last knew anything about your hopes for a family. But I figured that even if you couldn't take her, Alderaan is probably the safest, happiest planet in this whole miserable galaxy so we could find someone-"

Bail had stopped listening to him, speaking hurriedly into his comm. There were the staccato footsteps of heeled boots – the sound, Korkie realised, with a jolt in his chest, of his mother across the palace floor – and Breha Organa opened the study door.

"Bail, what's-"

Her eyes found Korkie, then the child, and then returned to her husband.

"Korkaran Kryze has brought us a child," Bail explained, his voice hollow with his own disbelief.

Breha looked at the infant again. She said nothing.

"To keep, your Highness," Korkie clarified lamely. "If you wanted."

Breha nodded. Her trembling hands came to grasp the thick shawl at her chest. Still, her voice failed her. And then, with such a beautiful flooding of joy in the Force, the Queen of Alderaan began to cry.

With flushed and tearstained cheeks Breha accepted the infant into her cautious embrace. Though she spoke to the young Mandalorian seated at the desk beside her, her eyes were fixed upon the child.

"We stopped speaking of adoption when the Republic fell," she explained, voice hushed. "It seemed too selfish. To waste a moment's thought upon anything other than keeping our planet safe. And though the imminence of that danger is fading now, although the galaxy is finding some sort of new stability… somehow we still haven't really drawn breath."

Bail nodded his sombre agreement. It struck him that now, in this very moment, was the greatest stillness he had seen in his wife since the birth of the Empire. Perhaps since the beginning of the Clone Wars. Breha stroked the baby's wool-capped head and Bail understood that finally the weight of the galaxy beyond this room had finally lifted from her narrow shoulders.

"I had begun to wonder whether it was best to allow the throne to pass to an indirect relative," Breha admitted. "To allow the nieces and nephews to present a Day of Demand as we used to do so long ago, to find the most rightful heir amongst them. It seemed impossible to select a child as our own, to endow that inheritance upon them."

She looked up, finally, at Korkie, and recited the questions that Breha and Bail had asked of each other a hundred times.

"How could we choose? Of all those children without parents? How would we know? How could we do what was right?"

Her eyes found Bail then.

"But my love, do you feel…"

She could not find the words for her question.

"This feels right," she told him. "This feels right to me."

Bail reached for his wife's hand and found that his own cheeks, too, were wet with silent tears.

"Then it is right, Breha."

He turned to Korkie.

"We are deeply grateful, Korkie. That you chose to come here, to us…"

Korkie sat back in his chair, giving a sigh of relief and closing his eyes with a weary grin.

"You don't know how long it's been, Bail, since I've done something right."

17: I'm sorry. So, so sorry. It was too late for a re-write (I really did think about it).

We've entered a pretty sad era of our tale. It will - I promise - get better.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing Breha and Bail. It felt cruel to have robbed them of a child (i.e. Leia) in this AU. They're beautiful parents and it brought me joy to bring them the baby they deserve.

Next chapter, Bail and Korkie talk rebellion. Breha and Korkie talk baby names. And the Hidden Path struggles on without their beloved leader.

xx - S.