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The war ends.
It ends badly, brutally, at least to the perspectives of all involved. The Chancellor is dead. The Jedi are responsible. There is an army of sentient clones, bred for war, who are the property of the Republic, where slavery is outlawed. There is the smoking metal husk of a general, the slaughterer of billions. There is the headless corpse of a political idealist, whom some in the Senate are beginning to argue perhaps had the right idea after all. There is a deactivated droid army. There are a million power vacuums on a million worlds, including in the heart of the Republic itself. There is a mounting refugee crisis, the likes of which the galaxy has not seen in a thousand years. There is the stark reckoning with the intrinsic evils of war; and thus a reckoning of the very soul of the Jedi Order. There are billions of innocents, whose deaths demand answers, when the only answers forthcoming are amounting to: It was all a lie; it was all for nothing. And no one tried to stop it. There is a clarity, that seems to descend upon everyone, with the death of the Chancellor. There is chaos.
Anakin and Padmé go back to the lake.
She gives birth the day after the Chancellor is killed. In the strange, tunneling stillness of the night that Anakin arrives, wild-eyed, at her doorstep, straight from Palpatine’s office where he’d been too late, too late, he'd stumbled out of the borrowed speeder and onto her balcony, only to collapse in her arms. In her apartments, he'd sobbed incoherently into her neck, offering only panicked snippets of an explanation - he’s dead, he’s dead and the Sith Lord and I dreamt- and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. When Padme finally manages to piece together the story, she goes still and quiet, her eyes for a moment far away. Something changed in her, Anakin could sense it; he could see it even then in her eyes. And, for a moment, a stab of fear lanced through him so deeply that he couldn’t breathe.
But then, she’d taken both his hands in hers and squeezed them tight. And she’d said; they should leave, together, tonight, right now. She wanted to go back to Naboo; back to the lake. Back to where they'd fallen in love. Back to where they'd married, in secret. Back to where they could have their child.
And she wasn't going to die, she'd told him. It would be different this time, she insisted, because he was with her. Didn’t he see that? She would be fine, and he was certainly enough to protect her.
It was the worst thing she could’ve possibly said to him. He’d stared at her in mute horror. She was wrong, he knew. His only hope to save her now was gone. His own powers wouldn't be enough; they would never be enough. He also knew, with a deep, sinking feeling - like drowning - that they were all he had now. He made up his mind, then, with everything left in him, that he would never leave Padmé’s side again. He would do everything he could in his power to save her. And, he decided, silently, when it wasn’t enough, when she died all the same, he would die with her.
So, he slips away with her into the glittering artificial night. The act of something that should’ve been so exciting, so freeing and romantic, clouded dark instead by the dread specters of his dreams. It is only the two of them and the droids, Artoo and Threepio, on her silver star yacht as it flashes out of Coruscant’s realspace via a secret, private spacelane. Padmé has ordered her handmaidens to stay behind, acting in her stead, as they’d planned for during her pregnancy. Only, this time, they were to tell no one where she’d gone, or who she’d taken with her. Anakin, for his part, doesn't tell anyone at all where he is or where he is going. There is no one here for him now, at any rate. Ahsoka is gone, somewhere on Mandalore. And even when she returns with Maul, she won’t really be coming back. Obi-Wan is even further away, in more ways than one; still neck-deep in the conflict on Utapau, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if he wasn’t. Obi-Wan wouldn’t be of any help. In fact, he would certainly want nothing to do with his failure of a Padawan, if he knew about any of this. As Jedi, neither Obi-Wan nor Ahsoka, as the Chancellor had pointed out to him, once, would understand -
His thoughts skitter off track. The Chancellor. And then, it’s all screaming down inside him again like a bombshell, delving into the already red maelstrom of writhing panic, grasping for purchase in all directions within him in a way that has driven out everything else, almost even the creeping numbness sinking into him the longer he thinks of Palpatine, sprawled on the floor of his office with a charred black hole through his heart. Because this is the second most terrible thought he cannot get rid of; the thought of his most trusted friend - the Sith Lord. The more he thinks and thinks and thinks, unable to stop it, the faster the solid ground upon which he thought he stood gives way beneath him, opening instead to a festering, stinking rot, under which exists nothing but the twisting black caverns of a vast and endless darkness. A darkness, he realizes, that is smiling at him.
He doesn’t let go of Padme’s hand the entire journey. He vaguely remembers crushing his commlink beneath the heel of his boot, at some point. He thinks, desperately, maybe, maybe, there could still be time. There may still be hope; something he can do, if he is diligent enough and clever enough and fast enough. But then, the ship lands, and all of the sudden, Padme’s grip on his hand becomes a vice. And when Anakin hears her sharp intake of breath, he knows, with a nauseating certainty, that it is already too late.
-
The attending MD droids tell him they’ve never seen a birth involving human twins go so smoothly.
“There is nothing to be worried about, An-a-kin,” an AZ-series medial droid Anakin vaguely recognizes from a lifetime ago; the droid assigned to keep an eye on his still-healing arm, back when they'd returned here for their wedding, floats chipperly in front of him like an old friend, entirely unaware of the harrowing screams that were, even now, screeching through Anakin like the cries of a thousand hungry bonegnawer birds. “Medically, she is completely healthy,” the droid goes on. “We expect her to make a full and speedy recovery. And, of course, the children are in perfect health.”
Anakin almost passes out on the floor. But then, the droid is handing him a baby.
-
And so, when it is all over, after Padmé doesn’t die; after the two little stars are in his arms and they are warm and he is holding them; after Padmé smiles at him through a face flushed with life and shining with tears; after the endless battlefields and the blaster fire that still rings in his ears; past the endless pain and death ripping a sucking black void in the Force like the most ancient of sarlaccs; after it all, something settles in his soul, and the rest suddenly seems far away. Every other sharp-toothed, gnawing thought of The Republic and The Chancellor and The Jedi and The War, that had been so viscously eating him alive, now eclipsed in totality by the weight of the world as he’d known it shifting in his arms, not only once, but twice. What follows is a relief so dizzying he almost collapses from it all over again. He thinks as, arm-in arm, he and Padme carry their children over the threshold of the house on Varykino; it’s over. All of it is over. This will be some sort of peace, at last.
-
It is. But, at the same time, it isn't.
"Ani," Padmé groans into his shoulder on the morning of the fifth day. "I don’t think we’ve slept in four days."
They hadn't. Not even the nurse droids conscripted by Padme’s close family could get the babies to stop crying. It wasn’t until this morning that they'd finally, finally, managed to get both Luke and Leia asleep at the same time. They were now curled up between Anakin and Padmé, settled deep in the cushions of the settee in the cozy sitting room.
Anakin put his arm around her and pulled her close. "I know," he nuzzled his face into her messy hair as she snuggled deeper into his chest. "I'm so sorry." It had been far longer than four days with no sleep for him, but Padmé had just given birth, and the medical droids had told him that the most important thing she needed now was rest. He'd been determined to make sure she got it, and had been trying his best, but she'd been just as reluctant as he was to let the babies out of her sight, refusing to even leave them with the droids. "They just need someone warm to hold them," she'd explained to Threepio, when this had hurt his feelings. "Oh, miss Padme," he'd lamented, "I just feel so - useless!" Anakin had empathized, and so, today, he'd taken pity on the droid and sent him out for some groceries.
"Just close your eyes and rest, my love," he muttered now, into her hair.
Padme let out a sleepy hum and snuggled closer. "Love you, Ani," she said, and there were so many other things to think about; so much else to worry over, but every time Anakin thought of anything outside this room for more than two seconds, he found himself gazing into the depths of those horrid black caverns all over again, feeling so dizzy and overwhelmed that his thoughts firmly arced away, back to only what he could see in front of him. There was only this, he decided firmly, that mattered - what was happening right now in this little room. And for a moment, he was certain - tears gathering in the back of his throat - this truly was the most peaceful thing he had ever known.
Eventually, he even started to nod off himself, eyes fixed on the two little babies breathing beside him; Padmé curled up under his arm. He felt more at ease than he could ever remember. He thought, as his eyes drifted shut, his head nodding forward, that he never wanted to leave this room again.
There was a frantic knocking at the door.
Anakin’s head jerked up. He felt Padmé groan into his chest. “Threepio,” she said, curling in closer. “He thinks he has to knock every time. No matter what I tell him-“
Anakin leaned his head back on the settee with a groan. He shut his eyes again. “Let’s just leave him out there."
“He’ll keep knocking,” Padmé said miserably into his robes, just as, sure enough, Threepio knocked again.
Anakin slowly began to rouse himself. “I’ll take care of it,” he said thickly. He dropped a kiss to the top of Padmé’s head before reluctantly extracting himself from his little family, still snuggled in the cushions. He draped a nearby throw blanket over Padmé. “You get some rest, okay? I’ll be right back.”
The problem with Threepio, Anakin reflected bitterly, as he padded to the door, was that Anakin built him when he was nine. Even worse, the droid had spent the next ten years working in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Tatooine. Anakin had only the rare opportunity since to work out any kinks or frays in the droid’s wiring, and there were bound to be little things like this he’d missed, when he'd first spruced up the droid for Padmé.
Well, he had plenty of time to fix any lingering bugs in Threepio now. This particular problem, in Threepio's case, most likely had something to do with the droid’s sight-processing units crossing wires somewhere with the droid-to-sentient security interfacement, which was not where many people would expect to look for the problem, in a protocol droid. But Threepio was different. Only Anakin and his mother truly knew and understood how to modify and repair all of the various little ins-and-outs of the desert scrap he'd cobbled Threepio together from. And, now that his mother was gone, Anakin was the only person left who knew how to fix him.
But, then - his heart made some big dramatic move - I can teach them. His babies. His children. Imagine little hands, wrapped around a vibrowrench, Anakin’s hands there, too, showing them how it worked. Anakin could teach them all of the good things he knew, and none of the bad. He could tell them about his mother - their grandmother, he realized with a jolt - who was a part of them, just as she was a part of Anakin. He would tell them how she'd taught him how to hold a hydrospanner; how she’d been the first person to show him how to fix something, just as he was showing them how to fix something now. He would tell them how much she loved them, even if she wasn't here. And through them, he realized, there would always be a part of her, and the truth of it was followed by a swell of feeling so strong Anakin almost forgot where he was, and something in him soothed over; something he hadn't even realized was still burning.
He found himself in deliriously bright and sentimental spirits, despite his abject exhaustion, when he reached the marble foyer. He opened the door, fully prepared to joke with Threepio that he had to be quiet as they passed by the sitting room, or else Anakin would program his voice box to speak only in Purrgil for the rest of his natural life, and, by the way, there was no need to knock -
It wasn’t Threepio on the other side of the door. Cold, icy horror froze Anakin to the spot.
"Well," snapped, instead, a scene straight from the worst of Anakin’s waking nightmares. Standing there, glaring at him from the threshold of Padmé’s private lake retreat, Obi-Wan crossed his arms. "I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to open the -"
No time to think. Anakin reeled back and slammed the door.
Or, at least, he tried. Obi-Wan was faster. He must’ve seen it coming, as he sometimes did, with these things, because he sprang forward before Anakin himself even realized what he was doing, and managed to jam his boot between the foot of the door and the frame, just in time. More panic; Anakin kicked at his foot in a deranged attempt to dislodge it, slamming his shoulder against the door to force it closed, which, of course, prompted Obi-Wan to do exactly the same thing, only in the opposite direction.
A few more moments of desperate struggle, “-stop it, Anakin!” “You stop it -” “You'd - better have a good explanation for this, Padawan!" "Get - lost!", and Obi-Wan finally landed a blow right into the sensitive side of Anakin’s knee, causing him to stumble back, just long enough for Obi-Wan to wedge himself the rest of the way in, which he managed right as Anakin recovered enough to bodily throw his entire self at the door.
It slammed shut beneath him with a bang, echoing over the marble fixings and jarring against an ache in Anakin’s shoulder he hadn’t even realized was there. As the noise rang into silence, he slowly turned back around, like an angry, cornered Nexu.
Obi-Wan was straightening up in the foyer behind him.
“You missed," he snapped, sharply adjusting his robes in a way that said just try something like that again. "What the blazes was that all about, you imbecile?"
Anakin shoved himself off the door with the shoulder that was hurting, making to stalk forward. He was fully prepared to grab Obi-Wan by the front of his robes and throw him out the door again himself. Maybe even into the lake, if he could get that far.
"Don't look at me like that," Obi-Wan interrupted him, right as Anakin was stalking closer, opening his mouth to tell Obi-Wan exactly what he thought of all this. And he said it with the same insufferable sense of self-righteousness that he brought to all things, and that, in this instance, tried to suggest he hadn't technically just broken into someone else’s home. And, as if that weren’t enough, he followed it all up with, “Just what exactly do you think you're doing here?"
“What am I doing here?” Anakin snarled at him incredulously. "What are you doing here? Get the fuck out.”
“Oh, I'm sorry!" Obi-Wan yelled, unaware that the world was different, now, and that there were two precariously sleeping infants just down the hall. “What do you think I'm doing here?” His voice echoed off the decorative marble columns. “Where in the seven Sith hells have you been?”
"None of your kriffing business, is where!"
"None of my business?" Obi-Wan exclaimed, loudly. "You disappear, without a word to anyone, in the middle of a - a crisis! And it's none of my business?"
"You should keep your voice down," Anakin growled threateningly.
"I hardly think that's the issue at hand here, Anakin." Obi-Wan did not keep his voice down. "Need I remind you, you are a Jedi Knight - on the Council, no less! You have a responsibility to the Order! To the - the Republic!"
“Responsibility?” Anakin's hands clenched into fists. It was dawning on him, like the first sunrise after a stay of execution, that none of the horrible things Obi-Wan could possibly say to him - about Anakin being married, about the the babies; his babies, about any of it; none of the disgust and rejection Obi-Wan could possibly come up with - could hurt Anakin too permanently now. He thought of the twins, and suddenly it all seemed so small. And he felt, in the face of it, strangely invincible. “No one wanted me there to begin with!” He threw at Obi-Wan. And then, he proved his own assessment of himself wrong almost immediately, as the first of the painful, festering words were wrenched out of him before he could stop them. “No one even wanted me on the council! No one. Not you, not any of them! No one, except for - except for –“
The ground giving way beneath him again; he felt for a moment as if he were free-falling through the air, or like maybe he was about to throw up on Obi-Wan’s shoes.
Obi-Wan stared at him, still clearly riled up about Anakin trying to slam the door in his face, but the glare he'd been giving his former Padawan twisted somewhat, replaced instead by a delirious look that appeared almost comically dejected. In the soft light of the marble foyer, Anakin realized his old Master looked terrible; dark shadows under his eyes, hair entirely out of place, robes still noticeably disheveled; like he, too, hadn’t slept in days.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Anakin,” Obi-Wan finally said, not quite yelling anymore, but still speaking to his former apprentice as if he were the stupidest person in the entire galaxy. And then, like the liar that he was: "You’re a vital asset to the Order. Everyone knows that. And you have completely lost your mind, if you think-“
But whatever it was Anakin was supposed to think, he never found out. Because, just then, there came a loud, wailing cry from down the hall.
Obi-Wan's voice cut off mid-sentence. Anakin felt himself freeze on the spot. They stared at each other.
And then a second, even louder, set of cries joined in with the first.
Obi-Wan's face drained of what little color it had left. “What is that?” he said.
-
It had been about three or four days since then. Possibly even five. The droids had mostly kept the blinds shuttered over the windows since the day of the twin’s birth, so the only true indicator of any passage of time discernible to anybody was the number of half-drunken cups of caf littered about the sitting room, and the various discarded boots and robes and blankets gathering and/or strewn about the floor.
“I don’t understand how they make so much noise,” Obi-Wan was presently saying from the settee, on which he had been lying with little Leia in his arms for the last indeterminable length of time. There was a desperate edge to his voice that Anakin hadn't heard since they'd both been strung up over a gundark's nest when he was fifteen.
“Probably because you woke them up,” Anakin sharply accused him, again, for probably the fiftieth time in the last three-to-five days.
“That was an entire day ago, Anakin,” Obi-Wan shot back. He’d apparently been in such a rush to yell at his wayward Padawan for disappearing from the shitshow on Coruscant, that he’d left his commlink in the cockpit of the (stolen and unauthorized, Anakin was beginning to suspect, otherwise someone would’ve come looking for it by now) Jedi starfighter he’d shown up in. Obi-Wan still hadn’t realized he’d left it in there, or else he was purposely forgetting to go and retrieve it, and, without it, seemed to have a tenuous grasp on the passage of time and clearly had no idea what day it was. Anakin was this close to reminding him about it, along with it's probably untold amounts of unread messages and attempted calls. "And anyway," Obi-Wan went on, entirely oblivious to Anakin's vindictive trains of thought, "as I'm certain you'll recall, I wasn't made aware there would be two sleeping infants in the house."
"Well, there are," Anakin bit out. He hoped Obi-Wan had been placed on some high-priority missing-persons list by now, and that it would be very embarrassing and awkward for him indeed when he returned to Coruscant. "Or at least, there were."
"And whose fault is that?" Obi-Wan asked him curtly. But then he looked back down at Leia, still screaming at the top of her lungs in his arms. His brow furrowed in concern. "I think there's something wrong with them," he said.
"There is nothing wrong," Anakin bit out at him, "with my children."
Obi-Wan snuggled Leia closer to his chest, bouncing her a little. "Yes, alright," he agreed absently, frowning at the little baby in his arms. Leia, abruptly, noticed him staring, and quieted somewhat at the realization, her wails fading into sad little sniffles as she focused in on his face. Staring up at Obi-Wan with wide eyes, she finally stopped crying completely, and, as they watched, let out a tiny little hiccup.
"She hates you," said Anakin.
Obi-Wan ignored him. He was staring back at Leia with an abjectly terrified expression on his face. And then, Leia reached up a clinging little hand and tried to grab onto his beard. "Ow," Obi-Wan told her, when she got a little fist around some of it and tugged, which only seemed to delight her. She let out a shrill little giggle, and swung her other first around to whack him in the jaw
"That's right, Leia," Anakin encouraged her. "Get him."
Obi-Wan shot him a glare from under his brows, careful not to move too much and dislodge Leia's hands. "You can certainly tell they're yours," he glanced back down at the baby, his eyes going strange and soft-looking. “Disgusting little beasts," he said.
“Give her to me, then,” Anakin still felt so tired he could no longer see straight, but he'd involuntarily snatched a few hours of sleep that morning, while Obi-Wan and Padme had looked after the children instead. He'd felt immeasurably guilty about it all day. “I’ll hold her.”
Obi-Wan pulled Leia closer to his chest. “Why?”
"What do you mean why? Because -” but then, Padmé shuffled into the room, distracting them both. She looked even paler and more drawn than Obi-Wan, her hair pulled back into a mess of what might have once been a braid. In her arms, she held a brightly-awake baby Luke.
“Ani,” she said hoarsely, coming around to the chair directly across from the settee, in which Anakin had remained sprawled across since he'd woken up from his nap. He’d positioned himself in such a way that he could keep a close eye on Obi-Wan holding his children, in case his old Master tried to do something evil and twisted with them, like criticize their lightsaber forms, or offer unwanted and scathing corrections of their pronunciations of words in Basic. Which didn't make any sense, really, but, for some reason, had made sense to Anakin all afternoon. "Why are you sitting there staring at me with such concern," Obi-Wan had asked him testily, after about the first twenty minutes of this. He'd had Luke in his arms at the time, who, they'd all learned eventually, could be calmed easily, but only as long as someone held him at all times. "I'm not staring at you," Anakin had snapped back at him.
Padmé held Luke out to him now. “Please take him.”
Anakin sprung from the chair. “Sure," he held out his arms for the baby, leaning forward to plant a kiss on Padme's forehead as he took Luke. “Get some sleep, my love.”
“Is that really necessary?” Obi-Wan said derisively from behind them. Anakin shot him a nasty glare, about to tell him to shut up, but then Padmé just fondly rolled her eyes instead, and the anger seemed to drain out of him. Padmé had appeared mostly unmoved by Obi-Wan's various little hang-ups and snide comments over the last few days. When he'd first shown up, trailing inside the house after Anakin, stunned and radiating primal fear until they reached the sitting room, where Padme was currently trying to calm down both babies at the same time, she'd dealt with his unexpected arrival by simply exclaiming, upon noticing him, “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” and immediately shoving one of the screaming twins into his arms. “Now we can all take turns sleeping.”
“Thanks, Ani,” she said now, ignoring Obi-Wan’s comment entirely and thus giving Anakin the strength and willpower to do the same. At some point, since Obi-Wan had arrived, she, or maybe even Anakin, had curtly informed him that, actually, they were married, thank you. The details of the whole conversation remained fuzzy to Anakin, but he did remember Obi-Wan looking at him like he wanted to shove his former Padawan out of a window. Only, he couldn’t, because he’d been holding a baby.
“And thanks, Obi-Wan,” Padme said over her shoulder. And then she looked back to Anakin and, completely within earshot of everyone, added, “You know he doesn’t mean it. He just doesn’t know any better.”
Obi-Wan let out an offended exclamation from behind her. “I absolutely do mean it,” he informed them both. “And I’m sitting right here.”
Unfortunately, he said it too loudly, and Leia started crying again.
Padme's tired eyes lit up a little as she smirked. “I’ll tell Threepio to bring you both dinner,” she told Anakin, over the sounds of Obi-Wan gently, frantically, trying to shush Leia from the settee. “Maybe this time they’ll finally stay tired when it gets dark.”
“It’s Obi-Wan who’s upsetting them,” Anakin told her, hoisting Luke up to his shoulder and gently bouncing him in a way he hoped was soothing. He tried to send the little bright thing nice feelings through the Force, just in case Luke started to get any ideas from his sister. “He’s unpleasant to be around,” - which was true - “and they’re picking up on it.”
“That is not true,” Obi-Wan hissed back at him in a low whisper, which didn’t help at all and only prompted Leia to let out her loudest wail yet. Obi-Wan looked back down at her in alarm.
Padmé closed her eyes and silently, rather manically, started to laugh, where only Anakin could see. He reached out for her with the arm that wasn’t holding the baby, and she leaned into him, turning to press her cheek into the front of his misaligned robes. She angled her head so she could watch little Luke, who had sleepily dropped his head down onto Anakin's shoulder.
Anakin carefully pressed another kiss to the top of her head, mainly because he wanted her to feel better, but also because he loved her with his entire soul and everything else in him, and he did so with the strength of a thousand blazing stars. But also, just partly, because he wanted to piss off Obi-Wan, who didn't even seem to notice, because he had finally managed to settle Leia back down.
“They’re so small,” Obi-Wan was saying instead, gazing at Leia as she snuggled up against his chest, her eyes going droopy. He'd said this rather a lot, over the last three-to-five days. Padmé peeled away from Anakin to look back at her daughter, and as they all watched, Leia let out a wide, tiny, squeaking yawn, her eyes finally drifting shut.
Obi-Wan cradled the back of her head in one of his hands, his thumb ghosting over the soft brown curls on her forehead, only just beginning to grow. "Anakin," he said, his voice cracking a little.
“What?” Anakin tried to snarl back, but his own voice was too thick to really manage it, so it just sounded like he was crying.
Obi-Wan's face did something strange. "I don't know,” he said.
"Shhh," Padme told him sharply. Obi-Wan flinched, glancing up from Leia with a startled look, which quickly turned into a glare, when he noticed Padmé was smirking back him.
"Thank you, Obi-Wan," she whispered.
Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes at her even more. "Shhh," he said.
Padmé rolled her eyes again, but with even more fondness, this time. Anakin, for his part, settled back with Luke into his chair. For a long moment, nobody said anything, and, finally, a still, peaceful silence settled over the room.
There was a frantic knocking at the door.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Anakin groaned. He tried to remember if Threepio had ever returned with the groceries.
Padme let out a long sigh. "You stay here," she told him wearily. "I'll get it."