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One pale, shaking hand clasped another wrought of steel as their owner— tall, fair, and perhaps more gaunt, presently, than he ought to have been— collapsed into a chair. He looked around his sparsely-furnished, one-room house (no matter how much he tried, it was not a ‘home’ to him) with its curtained-off alcove in one corner. It was nice; wood and stone, and very solid. He had built it, by himself, with a combination of his own physical strength, and mastery of the Force.
He’d been promised help, but very little help had come.
So, here he was: Hiding helplessly in a dwelling of his own construction, on an unpopulated moon he wasn’t sure even had a name.
It was not supposed to have been like this. He regretted every second that he’d fled instead of standing his ground... but it was too late for that, now. He simply shook his hair away from his face as it fell, and breathed in all of the composure he could draw from the air in the room.
A rustle; a whimper from the alcove, then an exhausted Jedi Master unclamping that clammy hand of his to rest his head in it instead. In barely a murmur; a deep voice in response to the little noise: Desperate, pleading, and sympathetic all at once:
“Luke...”
He rose, just moments after having sat, and paced gingerly over to the curtain. He pulled it back slowly and gently; peeked past it briefly before stepping inside.
Both of his children lay in a cot, of the same construction as their home— and to them it was a home, filled with love if not much else. They didn’t yet know they needed more. A boy and a girl, it was obvious to all who had seen them that they had inherited their parents’ tranquil beauty, but not much else about their future was clear.
Anakin bent down to scoop up his infant son; wispy blonde, like he had once been, and just weeks old at this point. The young father had found out, and found out quickly, that a baby’s sleep was extremely fragile— even that of his less-excitable child, which was why he was so cautious not to rouse her, too, as he exited the tiny nursery with a single small bundle pressed against his bare chest.
He paced the length of the room a few times; the child settled, and his noises stopped, for the time being. Already fed and dry, the little one had just needed to be held, he supposed. Anakin understood that very well himself, and in spite of his own tiredness, he did not withhold any parental affections from the young boy.
He looked around, and decided to carefully lower himself back down into the room’s only chair; his chair, the one in which he had rocked, fed, coaxed the twins to sleep since their arrival on this small and barren world. He even sang to them there— unselfconsciously, as there was never anyone but his own offspring to hear him. The lullabies were typically in Huttese, but they did not sound harsh coming from their human father, whose intonation and lilt he copied from increasingly distant memories of his own mother.
Right now, however, he was as silent as he could manage as he leaned down to kiss Luke’s head. Padmé had told him, when she’d been pregnant, that infants’ heads had a unique scent to them; she’d experienced it with her own family members, when they had given birth. He’d laughed it off as something to do more with female hormones than facts, but as he lifted his own head, he thought to himself that he wished she was here— so he could tell her that she’d been right.
He also wished that Obi-Wan was here, although he understood very well why he wasn’t. The Senate had descended into chaos after he had left with his wife; Palpatine was on a violent and single-minded vendetta against him and his new family on top of his other pursuits, and hiding— for a while; for now, at least— was his best option.
You wouldn’t be safe if you came with me; not right now, and anyway— those children need you, Anakin. You can’t abandon them.
That was what Obi-Wan had said, as they watched Padmé give birth to the babies, name them, and die. He had held her hand; pleaded with her; kissed her face and neck as his fellow Jedi Master had held the children helplessly, watching and awaiting the inevitable.
Had it been inevitable...? Anakin would never know. Padmé had come to him on that awful hellfire planet, Mustafar— hotter than the barren desert on which he’d been trapped as a child. He’d stood there and held her and cried what felt like endless tears, after committing acts he would never be able to atone for.
He’d believed her, when she’d said to come; believed her when she’d said that he had done the wrong thing, and that it would all would be okay if he just abandoned his path to the Dark Side; came with her, and with Obi-Wan.
Now he wondered if she might not still be alive, if he had just stood fast in his initial decision. He had no way of knowing; might not ever have any way of knowing, but now that she was dead and he was alone— he felt alone, at least— he wished with everything in his tattered, beaten heart that he had done something differently, no matter how much it might have hurt him.
Whatever decision he had made, it would have been one borne of love for his family; his family that he had created in secret and would have done anything to protect. This hiding; this solitude— it had all been for love.
But had it been right? This certainly didn’t feel right— not without Padmé; not, indeed, without Obi-Wan. He still missed Qui-Gon, and his mother, too, and they had been dead much longer than his wife— could he have helped them, too, having made a different choice? Again, he would never know— all he knew was that he needed these people, and that save for Obi-Wan fighting far away, they were gone.
The slight weight in his arms became heavier as tiny Luke fell back asleep against his father, never having really known any other touch. He kissed the boy again, closed his own eyes a moment, and thought.
He had no idea how long he would have to be here; how long he would have to raise the children alone. He didn’t know when Obi-Wan would return, or indeed, if his friend would even survive the remainder of the war. The spectre of that thought frightened him deeply, although he’d already been doing some of the hardest of this work by himself for several weeks’ time.
The babies were beautiful, but they were babies, and they were frequently hungry, wet, tired, or otherwise upset in tandem. The Force was good for boiling water, constructing shelter, and even aiding in harvesting the wild sheep’s milk he’d been feeding them in lieu of their mother’s. However, it could not do the work that only a parent’s arms could do, and Anakin only had one arm for each of them.
He would switch the two between his bionic arm and his natural one, when they both needed holding at once. Frustratingly, they both seemed to prefer the warmth of the one hewn from flesh, and large parts of each day were dedicated to him finding the correct balance between skin and steel.
He stood, now, from his seat again to very carefully cross the room and deposit Luke back in his cot. Leia was not roused by the motion, so against his better judgement, he leaned down to kiss her as he had her brother. She stirred, barely, and after turning onto her side, continued to rest soundly— Not a bad choice after all, he thought to himself as he sported a small smile of satisfaction.
As he closed the curtain behind him to darken the children’s space, he reflected on how much happier he would have been about that accomplishment with somebody to share it with. Looking out at the empty room, his eyes filled with tears, as they often did when both babies were sleeping. He walked, again, to his chair and again, he sat. Rising, pacing, falling; rising and pacing and falling again— this was his life, now, and only his life.
He imagined a bigger chair; imagined Padmé curled up beside him in it, asleep, perhaps with one of the children in her arms. He looked to the pot he used to clean the babies’ feeding utensils and remembered his own mother next; then, he looked outside to where he was building a new structure for his family and wished for his Masters; his friends, to be by his side, too.
“Do not grieve” had never sounded like worse advice.
These people, and only these people, had loved and trusted him with little to gain. Why were they the ones who had to be farthest from him?
He thought back to the moment Padmé had told him her wonderful news: The shock, the fear... the nightmares. But also the excitement and affection, and wonder at the notion that his love for his wife could be made so tangible. He was so young; too young, and back then he’d only expected a single child. He never thought that things would turn out like this.
He never thought, when she had revealed to him that his destiny would include fatherhood, that he would be alone, with twins, on a far-flung world; nothing on it resembling a sentient creature.
Yet, here he was— and there was nothing he could do about it, other than keep himself and his babies alive and well enough to someday leave, when it was safer. He prayed that he would be leaving with Obi-Wan, but his departure was still too far away to truly consider such details. Anything, after all, could happen to his best friend; just as it had to the rest of his family, including his first Master.
All he had now were himself, and his children.
This was why he had waited until they were sleeping to cry as he was crying now; unrestrained, sobbing as quietly as he could into a set of hands that were as stark in contrast as his own confused feelings of tenderness and anger. No one to judge him, he curled into his chair and wept this way for a long time; finally, he was deeply mired in an uneasy sleep: A sleep filled with dreams, and ghosts.
He would wake only when one of the little ones began to feel hunger; at that time, he would rise and repeat his steps from the previous day— almost always the same, but changing with his children’s growth so slowly that he barely noticed.
What he did notice were things that brought him unexpected joy, and unexpected relief from the guilt of his past. Over time, he would find that smiles from his babies, along with grasps and gazes and new sounds, would soften the edges of his yesterdays and brighten his tomorrows as well. Anakin would, graciously, not be immune to the joys of fatherhood. It was a blessing he would never truly appreciate— but that was a gift in itself.
On this night, however, he simply cried and mourned as the children rested contentedly, unaware of all their father had sacrificed for the simple act of being with them; of raising them. On this night, Anakin Skywalker fell asleep wondering if anything he could have done would have changed the outcome he was living. He regretted the worst of his actions as the Senator’s near-apprentice, and he hoped what felt like a very hollow hope that life for Luke and Leia would be better— happier— than it had been for him.