Chapter Text
Padmé’s water breaks while they’re in hyperspace.
Of course it did, Anakin will think later, once the surgery’s done and the very nice drugs have worn off. It’s not enough that he’s down to zero natural limbs now and that the Republic has been turned into the Empire, it’s not enough that Obi-wan’s missing, it’s not enough that the Jedi Order’s been slaughtered, Padmé’s water just had to break, as a final topping of shit on the crap day they’ve had.
Right now, though, he’s a bit too in pain to actually register all of that. His limbs still feel as if they’ve been set on fire despite not actually being there anymore, and he’s probably going to hack up a lung at this rate.
Fucking Mustafar. He never wants to go there again.
He grips on to a handle with his only hand and tries very, very hard not to start screaming. No wonder he passed out before Obi-wan pulled him up the hill. Now that the shock’s worn off, the pain’s set in, and Force help him, this is--this is a lot worse, he thinks, than the time Dooku cut his arm off.
The ship drops out of hyperspace. He knows because he nearly lurches off the bed, and who the hell’s piloting this ship? He knows Ahsoka and Padmé wouldn’t be so clumsy--
“Sithspit,” Ahsoka’s saying, and Anakin blinks up at her, “Anakin, I am so sorry about that but--Padmé’s water broke.”
“Oh,” says Anakin, then, “oh, fuck.”
--
All in all, Padmé’s much more relaxed about the whole thing than she really ought to be, considering she’s going into labor and all. Ahsoka’s kind of impressed, somewhere underneath the incredible worry she’s been feeling since Anakin got loaded onto a stretcher and Padmé got helped into a wheelchair to be wheeled off somewhere far away from her husband.
“I’ll be fine,” says Padmé, when Ahsoka drops by. She’s reading a holopad that Bail Organa must’ve left at her side, strangely calm despite, you know, the fact that she’s going to be giving birth shortly, and that she’s kind of--gushing, down there. “Contractions won’t start for a few more hours at least.”
“You’re sure?” Ahsoka asks, anxiously.
“I’m sure,” says Padmé, waving her hand. “Go, talk to Anakin before he can annoy someone into a rage.”
“We haven’t been here that long,” says Ahsoka, with a small chuckle.
“Under the circumstances,” says Padmé, “I kind of doubt it’ll take him very long.”
--
Anakin says, his voice a slight rasp, “I’m fine, Snips, but what about Padmé? She’s okay, right? She’s safe?”
“Of course she’s safe,” says Ahsoka, sitting down next to her former master. “She says the contractions aren’t going to start for a few more hours at least.” She looks at the stumps of his limbs, and guilt and horror stab through her stomach like blaster bolts. If she hadn’t come by in time--
“Ahsoka?”
She shakes her head. “How did this happen?” she asks. “I was there for the funeral. Why would Master Obi-wan come back as--as a Sith, of all things?”
“He wouldn’t,” says Anakin. “Not by choice.” His lone hand clenches into a fist, then, and Ahsoka finds herself wishing she had that confidence, that blind faith Anakin seems to have in spades. “They must’ve taken that choice away from him,” he says.
“How do you know that?” she asks.
“I just do,” says Anakin. I have to, he doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air between them all the same.
“I wish I had that confidence,” she tells him. “But I don’t know if there’s anything left of him in there. He did chop off all of your natural limbs.”
“And then he dragged me up a hill so I wouldn’t burn to death,” says Anakin. “Obi-wan’s still in there, I know it. I’m going to save him.”
Ahsoka stares at him, thinks of the horribly broken look in his eyes when she sat with him outside the funeral. If it had been Anakin in Obi-wan’s place, she wonders, would she be just as adamant she could somehow pull him back?
How far would she have gone?
“I’m going with you,” she says. “And Padmé.”
“What, really?” asks Anakin.
“Well,” says Ahsoka, with a shrug, “someone’s got to be the babysitter.”
Anakin states at her, his face scrunched up, before he says, “I really hope you’re talking about the actual baby.”
“Of course I am,” says Ahsoka, with as much fake innocence as she can muster. “I mean, I certainly can’t be including you in that count.”
--
Two or three systems away, a former apprentice watches the remains of his tracking chip float away with the rest of the garbage, and exhales his first breath as a free man in over a year.
He needs to get rid of this ship. It’s very obviously stolen, having first belonged to one of the late Separatist leaders who used it everywhere, and he has no doubt the Empire will be looking for it when they realize they can’t track him anymore, when they realize he took a ship and ran.
Good riddance, he thinks, he’s never liked flying anyway.
(Bright blue eyes, a huff of breath, we crashed the ship your way--)
A flash. A sign he’s gone without a wipe too long, he realizes quickly, and he has to shut his eyes against the sudden phantom ache pounding in his temples, the dread tying his stomach into knots.
There’s nobody here but him, and if he plays this right, Sidious won’t ever find him. And he has to play this right. If he doesn’t--
--he has to.
He puts a course in--a mostly forest planet in the Outer Rim, with small pockets of civilization here and there. The name of it slips his mind, but he could almost swear he knows it. Like he could almost swear that he’d known Anakin Skywalker, a long, long time ago.
(Take my hand--)
He shakes his head. He can deal with these flashes later. First he has to make sure the incision in his side won’t fester--he’s not going to die of an infection, not when he’s out at last--then he has to take stock of his supplies, what few he can take with him.
He stands up and moves to the med-kit, starts to rummage one-handed through his supplies, one hand pressing down on the bandage over his wound. Soon enough he’s found enough rations to keep him going for a few days, enough medical supplies to fix up minor injuries and to clean and disinfect the incision in his side, just enough credits to buy a ship, and--
--he turns the blaster over in his hand, fingers unused to the grip and the strangely heavy weight. He doesn’t have to check to know there’s only one shot left in it.
The Empire will keep looking for him, he knows that. They can’t have him again, not ever. And--it would be painless, he thinks. Quicker than he deserves.
He shakes his head and puts the blaster away.
He isn’t that desperate yet. There are still ways to deny the Emperor his weapon without resorting to drastic measures, no matter how much a private little part of him might welcome it.
First things first.
He needs to clean that incision. Then he needs to dump this ship and find himself another one.
--
He lands in a clearing just ten miles out from the nearest village. It’s a tricky enough landing to make even with a light, unnoticeable ship, he’s surprised he even managed to land the heavy, ludicrously expensive ship with most parts still attached, even with the noise, and even with it tipping over with all the grace of a dying bantha.
Fuck flying.
He manages to make his way out, cutting and kicking out a hole in the doors when he realizes they’re too damaged to open properly, and blinks at the young Twi’lek aiming a blaster at him, her eyes narrowed and her calloused hands steady.
“Who are you?” she demands.
You tell me, he thinks. “Not here to hurt you,” he says, his voice strangely hoarse from, perhaps, all that time spent in silence, holding his hands up and trying to rein in the dark presence he’s probably exuding.
The Twi’lek woman lowers her blaster and squints at him. “What’re you doing with your eyes?” she asks.
He blinks. “What?” he asks.
“That thing,” she says, waving her hand over her eyes, “that you’re doing right now. They’re not yellow anymore--oh, there it is again.”
“Oh,” he says. “Well.” He looks back at the ship. “Do you know anyone who might want a ship?”
“I do,” she says. “I’ve got a shop, I do ship parts. I’d have to do some repairs on some of them once they’re disassembled, but I think I could get it up to scratch.” She looks at the ship, greed clear in her eyes. Good, he thinks, he can use that. “But I usually know who I’m doing business with, sir,” she adds, cocking her head to the side.
“I think it’s best for you if you never saw me,” he says.
“Oh,” she says, catching on, “you’re on the run. Aren’t you?”
“I--suppose I am, yes,” he says.
The woman whistles. “Damn,” she says, “no wonder you look like some moof-milker chewed you up and spat you out, man.” She holsters her blaster and says, “I’ll cut you a deal. How much money you got on you?”
“I don’t have much,” he says--it's true enough, he just doesn't mention the fact that he essentially stole all of it. Neither Dooku nor Palpatine had ever thought their weapon would need money to get around, considering all his needs were provided for.
(Barely, some part of him--the part that often resurfaces first when he’s been gone too long, the part given to sarcasm--supplies.)
“Oh, bantha shit, you stole that ship,” she says, dawning horror creeping into her tone.
“To be fair,” he says, trying very hard to be reassuring, “the owner was deceased by the time I found it.” He should know, he’d taken the man’s head off on Mustafar. “You’re not going to get a better deal anywhere,” he adds, a small amount of Force behind his words to sway her greed.
The woman lets out a long breath. “Maker’s balls, this is such a bad idea, Carve’s going to kill me,” she mutters. “Okay. Mother’s tits, okay. I’ll take your ship as payment, just help me take it apart.” She glances at the deactivated lightsaber in his hand, and says, “I don’t want to ask, do I?”
“Best not,” he says, clipping the lightsaber to his belt.
“Still, I gotta call you something,” she says, as he walks up to join her. “I can’t just say, hey, random stranger human.”
Obi-wan, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say the other name, either, the one Dooku and Sidious so graciously “gave” him, doesn’t even want to think it.
Somewhere in the depths of his ruined memory, a soft smile, a lilting voice, whispers a name.
“Ben,” he says. “Just Ben.”
“All right, just Ben,” says the woman. “I’m Maran. As you can see, I’m too small to carry some of the shit you’re going to be dumping on me, so what you’re gonna do is help me carry your ship, part by part, back into town.”
“I can do that,” he says.
--
(This is what it’s like to be Ahsoka Tano, right now:
You are tired.
Not really an old feeling, that. You’ve been running yourself ragged since Mustafar, since you landed on the hill and saw your former master’s unconscious, maimed form leaning against a rock. You’ve been tired, you think, since the clones--your friends, your comrades, your trusted allies--turned their blasters on you, since Rex took his helmet off and put his weapon down and said, I’m here to rescue you and you knew he meant it.
You’ve been tired since even before that, perhaps since you left the Jedi Order with wings to fly with and thought, well, Tano, what now to yourself. It’s just manifesting itself now.
But you can’t be tired, not right now. You can hear Padmé screaming in one room, and Anakin’s cursing up and down in Huttese in another, and you have to check on both of them and--
“Ahsoka,” says Senator Bail Organa, snapping you out of your reverie, “haven’t you rested?”
“I napped!” you say. It isn’t a lie, you did shut your eyes for a few minutes, before Padmé’s labor started.
“A brief nap nearly twelve hours ago doesn’t mean you rested,” says Senator Organa.
“It does,” you say. You’ve had plenty of naps before, in between battles. It’s always kept the exhaustion at bay before. “Senator, I can’t--I can’t just rest. Not when Anakin and Padmé might need me.”
“They don’t,” says Organa. “Or--I suppose General Skywalker might ask for you, but I think he’s a bit occupied with surgery right now.”
A noise drifts out of the room Anakin’s been in for the past day or so. You recognize it immediately as his voice, and you recognize the words as Huttese. You heave a sigh--some things don’t change.
“But I have to check on them,” you say.
“They’ll be fine,” says Organa.
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” you snap, the words lashing out of your mouth before you can think any better of them. Organa blinks at you in surprise, and suddenly shame burns hot in the pit of your stomach. You’re better than that, you know that. “Sorry,” you mumble, leaning back in your chair, “it’s just--it’s been a long day.”
“So rest,” says Organa. “I’ll keep watch over Padmé and her--her husband for you.” He huffs out a breath, says, “Strange thing to say, but then again, these are strange times we live in.”
“You’re telling me,” you say. Exhaustion is seeping into your limbs again, into your very bones, but you have to keep awake, because what if something goes wrong during the surgery or the labor, what if the Empire figures out you’re all on Alderaan, what if someone in the center is a traitor, what if--
“Rest,” says Organa, sitting down next to you and offering his shoulder. You’re leaning on him before you know it, and his shoulder--while it jabs into your cheek a bit--is much more comfortable than the cold, hard ground. “You’ve done enough,” he says.
“Have to check,” you say.
“I’ll do it for you,” Organa says. “Besides, I don’t think you want to get your hand broken by Padmé right now.”
You chuckle, and close your eyes. You’ll just rest them for a few seconds, no problem with that, then you’ll be back on guard.
When you open them again, you’re on a bed, a soft pillow under your head.)
--
Luke emerges first, wailing from the very first second. Years from now, Bail will joke that he knew Luke was Anakin’s boy from the moment he opened his mouth to scream.
Leia comes next, and she’s a perfectly quiet baby up until someone else tries to hold her. Then she starts crying too, and that sets off Luke again.
Definitely her and Anakin’s children, Padmé thinks, wanting their voices to be heard from the very start. Ordinarily she’d be up for it, but, well.
“Congratulations,” says Bail to Padmé, who’s squinting tiredly up at her two children. They’re so small. So fragile, like spun glass. So loud. “You have a boy and a girl.”
“Oh,” she murmurs, dazed. “So I suppose Anakin and I owe each other some apologies.”
Then she passes out.