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The soft sound of children’s coos echoed softly on sterile white walls. New life, new birth, new hope, and a new begining. The soft cries were a song celebrating a galaxy clean of Darth Sidious’s filth.
Anakin stared down at the bundle in his arms, a girl with fat fingers that liked to tug on his clothes and rosy cheeks and a lick of brown hair on her sweet head.
Leia, her mother had named her. It meant lioness.
He smiled every time he remembered that he was holding a little lioness in his arms. Padme joked that she would grow to be just as wild and untamable as her father. His fingers brushed her round little nose again and bright brown eyes fluttered open to meet his. Her small laugh as she reached distantly for his face he decided would never not make him laugh as well. A perfect little being. Lioness indeed.
If lionesses had porcelain skin and a shining smile.
A kind, calming voice that assured him he was right and pointed fingers at those whom his heart burned against. Looking back he wondered vaguely how he’d missed the snake’s whisper under the voice. Maybe because it was never there, and his memory added it after learning the truth about the man he’d called a father.
If he could keep his little girl tucked tight in his embrace forever he would.
Cold cackling as Master Windu fell. Morbid yellow eyes that stared right into his heart and froze it. The sickly, sinister sweet voice telling him he’d made the right choice seconds before the odd, choked screech as a blue blade struck. They’d come terrifyingly close to an outcome so different than this, where Darth Sidious had won.
Ice ran through his veins as he realized his children would never have been safe. Not ever, not in a galaxy clenched in Sidious’s lightning-wreathed fist. He would kill them. Or maybe worse.
He hadn’t been safe even in a galaxy where Sidious hadn’t won. He hadn’t been protected as a child, just taught to fend for himself.
A curious coo came from Padme’s bed and a smile tugged at his lips as he saw his wife had fallen asleep and his four-day-old son was staring at him, still tucked into the arms of his mother. Anakin carefully laid Leia - now asleep - next to Padme and gathered the infant up, humming a Tatooine lullaby his own mother had taught him as he held Luke to his chest.
“I will give you what I never had,”
A promise in the form of a whisper and a warcry. He’d broken promises before. He wouldn’t break this one.
“You’ll be safe.”