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Chapter Text

Looking out the massive viewfinder of the Imperial- class star destroyer—much larger than the Venators fielded by the Republic had been—at the pale form on Dinzo hanging in the open dark of space Quinlan couldn’t help but think there were far too many desert planets in the galaxy for his taste. And he couldn’t begin to imagine how his friend—former friend; he wasn’t quite certain if that title still applied to the questionably stable Sith Lord; his alpha now, he supposed, as of the delivery of the bite still aching on his arm; maybe that ought to have bothered him more, being an alpha himself, but he’d never given much of a toss about dominance and control and had more pressing concerns to worry over—must feel looking at it.

Tatooine wasn’t a friendly place.

Beyond its connection to Skywalker—former padawan, later attached-at-the-hip brother in arms and now mate; Quinlan couldn’t exactly claim to have seen that coming but he also wasn’t strictly surprised—he couldn’t begin to imagine why the other man would have chosen to squat in that Hutt-infested hell hole.

Not that Kashyyyk was that much better, what with the giant sentient spiders, but at least it had greenery. And shade. And rain.

“Your mind is wandering, Quin.” 

There was still a faint growl in Obi-wan’s voice—he wasn’t going to call the other alpha by the ridiculous Sith name that Sidious had given him, aside from in jest; and even then only once he was absolutely certain Kenobi still possessed a sense of humor, which likely wouldn’t be discernible until Skywalker was back in his line of sight—but in the handful of days since they’d left the abandoned sector of space surrounding Korriban for the destination his scrying had found for them he’d seemed to have accepted that his claims of wanting nothing to do with the Rebellion were true. His eyes—cooled back to gray—ceasing to rest on him with a constant reptilian suspicion.

Though how much of that had to do with the aforementioned still aching claim on him he couldn’t really know for certain.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Obi-wan pressed when he took too long to answer. Turning, at last, from his vigil to face him. “You came looking for me, after all.”

That tone was familiar. The wheedling one he’d first found out how to use as a padawan, and had since honed into a silken persuasion. The kind of venom that burned cold and could lead a man to think taking a vibro-blade to his throat was the greatest idea he’d ever had, if he let it. Though Kenobi had always been noble in what he’d used it for, back when he’d been a Jedi.

All he needed now was one look at the glacial, jagged madness in his eyes to know that there was very little truly noble in him left. The once-peaceful defender of democracy replaced by a zealot crusader for a religion Quinlan didn’t understand, headed by a god he suspected was more flesh and blood than philosophy.

Skywalker had always been good at getting what he wanted from his Master.

Something told him even Anakin was likely…wary of this latest development. 

“Just curious.” He said, halting his pace beside him. Close enough not to truly display his wariness—though some part of him, likely falsely, suspected Kenobi could smell the fear on him in much the same way as the beast coiled at his feet could—but taking care not to risk touching him. Still uncertain if uninvited familiarity with a coiled rawl still tensed to strike might lead it to sinking its fangs into his face. “You’re certain this is where she is?”

Obi-wan made a noise somewhere deep in the back of his throat. Not quite a hum—too displeased sounding to be anything of the sort—but acknowledging regardless. “The dark side doesn’t lie.”

“According to the Grandmaster—.”

“Yoda,” he snarled the name, fiercely enough that Quinlan couldn’t stop himself from jumping, before abruptly smoothing out his tone again, “is a blind fool with no true concept of that regarding which he speaks. Everything the Jedi knew, not just about the dark side of the Force but the Force as a whole; the Sith and their origins; their own relationship with the Republic and how truly collared they were even before Sidious, was wrong.”

“Korriban told you that?”

“Korriban confirmed what I’ve begun to realize for some time now. Confirmed our path is the right one. And that we must move forward or all is lost.”

“You really believe Skywalker can rule?”

He turned his head, then, away from the planet before them to stare at him. Baleful. Assessing. With that damned Serennian cloak and the ring of gold beginning to show itself once more around his pupils he looked disconcertingly like Dooku. Appearing to deem him to be skirting the edges of blasphemy but not yet guilty of it, he showed his teeth—it was too sharp of a motion to really be a smile—and answered with a simple “his rule is the will of the Force. His vision that of a united, peaceful galaxy absent the divisions caused by both the Jedi and the Sith. And he won’t be without guidance.”

At one point in time, Obi-wan being present to guide Skywalker away from his more fiery and reckless tendencies really would have been something of a reassurance. Now, though? Quinlan wasn’t certain how willing Kenobi would be to tell the omega he’d deified that he was being stupid when that was what he really needed to hear.

Saying that might get him pounced on, though, so he elected to change the subject instead. Forcibly ignoring the instinct buzzing in the back of his head, warning him not to take his eyes off of a threat while it was still in easy arm’s reach, and looking back out of the viewfinder.

“You’re really certain that she’s down there?”

Obi-wan huffed in bemusement. “You’re truly so desperate to see her again?”

“You would be. If it was him.”

He didn’t argue. That was all the agreement Quinlan needed to know they both knew it to be true.

As a Jedi, had Skywalker run from him, Kenobi would have given up all precepts of non-attachment and gone chasing after him like a dog after a wheel. Begging him to return. On his knees if he had to.

Now, he’d tear entire worlds apart to find him. Leave them dead and devoured in his wake, just to make certain the other man had no recourse to slip behind his pursuit and hide somewhere he’d already looked through and dismissed.

Really, it was a good thing he’d had the time he needed to get a proper grasp on his innate gift. Because Quinlan couldn’t imagine what standing in his presence, now, was like for someone who hadn’t. What he looked like, to them, through their psychometry.

He wasn’t curious enough, however, to risk looking into the face of madness himself just for the sake of finding out.

“You should go down.” Phrased like a suggestion, and spoken like it too, but they both knew what it really was. “It will give you the opportunity to appraise yourself of her trail and reassure your misgivings that I’ve managed to lead us astray. And it will keep the Grand Inquisitor from realizing what is happening before I have him properly cornered and isolated from aid.”

He’d certainly become more upfront with being ruthless. More upfront because Quinlan had never been fooled by his measured persona in the first place: sure, he’d been a lot less flagrant about matters but Kenobi had always been about as merciful as a falling mountain when it came to his enemies. And, looking back, he’d always had the dark side in him.

He’d had a particular habit toward the use of sai tok and mou kei that had been concerning to the Council, to say the very least of matters, whenever he’d let himself really get into the heat of fighting. A fact which, he suspected, had been the other major reason—aside from the desire to be able to shield those he cared for from the harm that had taken his Master from him—why Obi-wan had been so hell bent on sticking to Soresu and Soresu alone.

His friend, when he’d still been a Jedi, had likely feared the violence now coiled proudly about his shoulders like a snake might otherwise reveal itself. 

“I’m good at what I do, Kenobi. And with you here to present an obstacle to simply running off, it won’t take me long to catch up.” Quinlan said. If his old friend bought a word of it, or remotely shared the same degree of confidence, it was impossible to tell. His gray gaze remaining cold and impassive as it rested on his face. “I’ll find somewhere to land that will provide you an enclosed space for your little ambush; that might add a bit more time, but it’s preferable, I’d imagine?”

Slowly, as if still not certain what to make of the intent behind such a statement, Obi-wan nodded. The beast at his feet grumbling as it got to its feet; spiked back arching in a long, luxuriating stretch that scraped its claws across the floor.

“Your consideration is appreciated.” He said. “The most that I can guarantee is two hours.”

That would have to be enough.

He turned, then, and left the other man standing on the ship’s crowded bridge. Slipping between Imperial Officers who belonged to Kulkan, more than they did to the Emperor—likely the only reason they were still alive, at current; he’d heard a few rumors, during his short time aboard The Apophis , that Obi-wan hadn’t exactly been reticent when it came to throwing those whose loyalty he questioned into the fire—and soldiers—a handful of surviving clones scattered in amongst new-age storm troopers, discernible only by the spots of orange splashed across their armor like warning colors—and finding his way, with some small difficulty on account of the ship’s unfamiliar layout, down to the correct launch bay. Clambering aboard his own, much smaller ship without being spared more than a few curious glances by those working the deck and piloting it out into open space. Hiding in the shadow of the destroyer in order to avoid the notice of the second battleship which dropped out of hyperspace a moment later until he managed to make it far enough not to pose suspicion.

Quinlan had seen too many desert planets by this point in his life, in his own—correct—opinion. Korriban, at least, had been something of a novelty given what it was. The history it carried. And the thrill of the hunt. Following a snake into its hole was among the most dangerous things anyone could ever find themselves in a position to do, even when possessed of the suspicion it (might) be swayed into being friendly.

Friendly enough not to swallow him whole, at least.

Nothing about Kenobi screamed ‘friendly’ at the moment but maybe that would change once Skywalker was within arm’s reach and the tight-set tension in his shoulders—like he was constantly coiled to strike at a moment’s notice; like he suspected something would go horribly wrong and the entire galaxy would implode around them—went away.

Either way, the fact remained he’d seen too many dust balls already for his taste. Had never been much of one for dry, gritty, sweaty heat. And maybe that was why she kept choosing places which matched just such a description to hide.

Hide from him, more than from the Empire. Though why she felt the need for such a thing Quinlan couldn’t begin to guess.

If Asajj never wanted to see him again after all of this then that was fine. But he wouldn’t be dissuaded without an explanation. Without knowing why, and what had happened; how it had happened.

The old beaten ship—he’d lost track of what model it was years ago; one of countless things that hadn’t been important enough to remember in the new reality of the post-Republic galaxy where he was running, all the time, from the Empire—settled on the landing pad of the little settlement he’d managed to find his way too—surprisingly crowded, suggesting it was either the only settlement on the planet or the only one for quite some distance—with a heavy clank and he powered it down. Pulling a hood over his head, over his hair, to better hide himself from view and disembarking.

His boots sank into the sand. Dry. Hot. He pushed onward, leaving the landing pad behind and entering the town proper. Stretching out his awareness—subtle; searching—to sweep the area. Relying on his training as a Shadow to keep himself as well hidden as possible, for all that he doubted it would prove to be enough for Asajj.

Not with how well she knew him. How much practice she’d had, now, of sussing him out.

His search returned something familiar just as an Imperial vessel became visible overhead, slowly descending toward the town; its shadow stretching long across the burning sand.

Had it been that long already? The flight in had taken longer than he’d realized.

Cursing under his breath, Quinlan quickened his pace and ducked into the building where he’d found her trail. Ending up inside of a crowded tavern with a low ceiling and stale air heavy with smoke; identical to every other he’d ever seen, regardless of the planet it had come from.

Slipping into the shadows and finding an empty table, he took a seat and waited. Sweeping the room with his eyes. Finding her familiar figure—similarly cloaked and shadowed on the far side of the room, near the stairs—just as the door flew open and allowed a pair of clones into the room. 

They took up position to either side of the door, blasters at the ready across their chests, and were followed a moment later by Obi-wan and a tall, pale figure he assumed to be the so-called ‘Grand Inquisitor’. Silence fell immediately. Dozens of pairs of nervous eyes falling on the White Serpent—whose reputation, it seemed, proceeded him to some degree even out here—in tense anticipation for him to speak.

“We don’t mean to cause disturbance. By all means, carry on. We’re simply…looking for someone.” That silken tone was back, accompanied by a smile like a trandoshan razor. Gray eyes hard and icy. “You wouldn’t happen to know if there are any Jedi on this planet, would you? My…colleague here is insistent that they ‘hunt themselves’, as it were, but I’m not sufficiently convinced that this one will be quite so easily flushed out. Any information you might be able to provide would be a boon for which the Emperor would be most grateful.”

Ventress rose from the table and slipped up the stairs. Quinlan knew that Obi-wan had seen her, but he dutifully pretended that he hadn’t—no doubt to prevent the other Sith’s attention from being drawn in that direction—and likewise pretended not to see him get up and follow. 

He didn’t have much time.

Asajj was fast; a former Sith assassin, trained by Dooku, and respected enough by the late Sith Lord for her abilities to be labeled, at least ostensibly, as his right hand. And Obi-wan’s little performance would inevitably end in a sweep of the building, including the upper floors.

The window for action was quickly closing. 

Quinlan cleared the top step at nearly a run and barely spared the empty hallway or the doors lining it a glance before he started down it. So focused on attempting to find some trace of a trail that he didn’t notice one of the nearest doors open or register her presence until a familiar pair of hands caught him from behind. Wrenching him backward, and into one of the rooms, a moment later.

He’d tripped and toppled onto the bed with a thud before his mind had the chance to catch up with him, but recovered a moment later. Struggling up onto his elbows and peering through the dusty light which filtered in from the windows at her.

“With all the running you’ve done, I hadn’t expected you to be so happy to see me.”

Asajj didn’t look in the least bit amused as she pushed back the cowl of her cloak, eyes narrowing. “We’ll address the matter of your hounding once we’re not dangling above the maw of danger.” Her tone was short and sharp. “When did Kenobi flip to the dark?”

Quinlan canted his head, knowing full well he hadn’t been aware of that fact either until Ahsoka and Yoda had swung around Kashyyyk for an unwanted visit. “You haven’t been paying attention to the news? Sidious has been parading his little love story all over the holofeed for months . Hell, probably years at this point.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “I’ve been a bit preoccupied attempting to outrun you , so no. I can’t say I have.

“Here’s the footnotes, then. Skywalker was Vader. Sidious turned Vader into an omega to bait out his former Master. It worked.”

Under her breath, barely audible, Ventress hissed something that sounded suspiciously like ‘of course it did’ and then said “so Kenobi took his student as his mate and decided to start dressing like Dooku? I can’t say the first one is exactly a surprise—with how attached those two idiots always were, it probably would have happened eventually even if they were still both alphas—but the last one?”

“Dooku was his Grandmaster. Apparently it was a bitter family feud—or at least as close to one as Jedi knew—but he never gave up on flipping him. Apparently, these days, Darth Kulkan has come to the conclusion that Dooku was right about a lot of things. But that’s not really a major concern right now.”

“No.” Ventress agreed as the sound of thudding footsteps started on the stairs. “The major concern is the clone boots coming toward us. We’ll address your ceaseless meddling once we’ve shaken Kenobi and his 212th mutts off our trail; though I can hardly claim to be pleased that I’m still having to deal with them this far after the end of the Clone Wars. Can you fit through that window?”

Quinlan looked over at the window in question.

The answer wasn’t a certain ‘no’ but with the breadth of his shoulders it wasn’t a certain ‘yes’ either.

“I’ll figure it out.”

She opened her mouth to respond, no doubt to mention that now was decidedly not the time to be ‘figuring out’ anything, but the rattle of the door behind them—secured and holding, for now, though posing no obstacle to a shoulder check, lightsaber, or simple use of the Force—and the sound of Cody’s muffled voice calling for attention. Asajj was through the window an instant later, dropping out of sight almost before he could blink, and Quinlan quickly followed.

“Where’s your ship?”

“Too close to where theirs is to be safe, at least for the time being. Never mind the fact that there’s likely at least one Imperial Class star destroyer waiting just outside of orbit.” Come to think of it, he’d told Obi-wan he’d land somewhere closed in but it had slipped his mind in the moment and time hadn’t permitted for him to go shopping about for parking anyway. The least he could do, by that accord, was to ensure he found somewhere closed in to lead them to with a false trail. Fixated as he seemed to be on offing the Grand Inquisitor—Quinlan wasn’t certain why but he thought it a safe enough bet to assume it somehow tracked back to Anakin—he very much doubted Obi-wan would particularly give a kark about the scenery. “We need somewhere to hide. A cave. A mine. We’ll wait them out.”

She didn’t like that plan. It was obvious just by looking at the face that she made in response. But it was equally obvious that she didn’t see any better alternate option. Huffing, Asajj pulled the hood more securely up over her face and started walking without another word. Presumably leading him toward the nearest place that might stand to fit that description. Quinlan did the same and moved to follow just as the door of the tavern burst open behind them and the sound of several sets of running footsteps kicked up in their wake.

The town was crowded, for its size, but not enough to present the amount of an obstacle that would have been needed to shake Kenobi when he was really determined—never mind the fact that he wasn’t exactly trying to cover his tracks, despite being entirely capable of doing so, considering that this was all a part of the ruse—and their opportunity to potentially slip out of sight and wait out the resultant search was only a fleeting one. Asajj was well aware of that much, from the look of things, and didn’t pause to spare a word to him as she slipped behind a dried bush and disappeared. Behind it was the narrow mouth of a hidden cave. After taking care to very visibly disturb the ground outside, he followed. Dropping down the short tunnel and landing in a crouch in the semi darkness.

She’d already scaled another slope onto a raised shelf that offered at least the guise of hiding in shadow. He barely made it a handful of feet up it before Kenobi’s beast landed with a snarl and the clack of sharp claws. Followed closely behind by the Grand Inquisitor. Quinlan activated his lightsaber and raised it, pointing it in the direction of the Pau’an for all that he was considerably more concerned about the beast, and for a tense few moments they stared each other down. Then, with a sneer, the other man spoke.

“You’re slow, Kulkan. Most unlike how you were on Toydaria, or so I was told. Unable to muster the enthusiasm when it’s not Yoda or Organa on the table?”

Obi-wan slipped through the opening a moment later. Landing with far more grace than either the beast or the other Sith and straightening to his full height. Blinking yellow eyes through the semi-darkness, predatory and sharp. “Little point in rushing to chase a rat who’s cornered himself in a hole. Unnecessary expenditures of energy, taken too often, compound to lose oneself the war.”

The new flash of teeth he received in return made it plain what the Grand Inquisitor thought of that pearl of wisdom.

“Well, ‘White Serpent’, is this rat yours or will I be graced with your cast offs?”

The venom in his gaze could have boiled the blood of a rancor. “I’ve been waiting for a chance at this particular rat for too long to be willing to share.”

‘Don’t intervene’ couldn’t have been made more clear if he'd stated it outright. Quinlan lowered his weapon. Satisfied, Obi-wan nodded. Above him, realizing things weren’t so simple as they’d initially appeared, he heard Ventress shuffle about in her perch in agitation.

The Sith Lord made a slight motion with his hand and the beast whipped around. Lunging at the Grand Inquisitor and knocking him onto his back. Its doubled jaw clamping shut on the joined hilt of his saber when, on reflex, he raised it to protect himself.

“Traitor!”

“Traitor?” Obi-wan laughed as he repeated the word. Indulgent and dangerous as he stalked forward, fangs on full display in a savage silver smile. “That would imply the existence of loyalty to a cause to begin with. The only loyalty I’ve ever had, even before I realized it, was to my mate. And Anakin knew that full well. Why do you think he did everything in his power to convince Sidious that I was the better option for siring his twisted little plan?”

Worded that way and without context, whatever had happened to follow Skywalker’s unwilling dynamic change had likely been horrific. Quinlan didn’t doubt that getting that context would only make it worse.

The other alpha’s yellow eyes widened for a moment before his pale face contorted into an ugly rictus.

“That’s right. Anakin planned for this. Sidious might very well have fundamentally changed his biology against his will, enslaved him in the worst way possible, but he’s always had far too much spirit to be broken by something like that. And he knew, even after everything, that I would always help him. Always. ” Obi-wan stopped beside the other man’s prone form, staring mercilessly down at him. Entirely devoid of anything other than cold, murderous intent. “This galaxy is his by right. By the will of the Force. And now that Korriban has shown me how to free him from that monstrous collar, there’s nothing left to hold me back from administering the justice that your Master more than deserves.”

Somehow—with how fast it happened Quinlan wasn’t quite certain what had transpired—the Grand Inquisitor managed to throw the beast off him and leapt to his feet. The red blade of his saber springing to life and whipping up toward the other alpha’s throat.

The talons on the glove he wore were made of phrik, or beskar. Quinlan wasn’t quite sure which, but there was no other explanation for how easily they turned away the strike. Like it was nothing. Little more than a passing annoyance rather than a potential death blow narrowly avoided. His own saber—black and copper—activating with a snarl.

He expected Obi-wan to toy with him.

He didn’t.

With one quick stroke his opponent’s saber was lying on the floor of the cave, alongside his severed arm.

With another, a leg came free. Practiced. Easy. Done in a way that suggested lopping off limbs was something he had previous experience with.

The Grand Inquisitor struggled to remain upright, but it was a doomed battle and before long he went crashing to the ground. The beast darting forward only to be called to heel by his master; it protested, grumbling, but obeyed and remained where it was.

“If you think your precious whore won’t suffer for this, Kenobi, you’ve truly lost your mind! The Emperor will realize! He’ll kill him! And he’ll make you watch!”

“Perhaps he would. If he were permitted to realize what actually happened here. Unfortunately for that little hope of yours, I’ve planned ahead. As far as Sidious will be made aware, the Rebellion laid a trap. Killed us both. Moved on Serenno at the same time and took Anakin hostage. Considering how hellbent he is on co-opting the Skywalker bloodline, and its power, for himself and his lacking desire to ‘waste’ any further bodies he’ll be reticent enough to simply kill him off and retrieve him via essence transfer that his hesitation will buy us time to destroy the clones he’s made of him. Put simply: you lose.” Calmly, hiding the rage that was so plainly coiled in his posture, Obi-wan crouched beside his opponent. Cocking his head as if uncertain what to make of him. “Anything else you’d like to say about my mate?”

The other Sith wasn’t given the chance to make good on the opportunity to answer that question before claws sheared through his throat. Leaving him able to do nothing but gasp and choke around a tide of blood which rapidly soaked his front in red. The grin on Obi-wan’s face became sharper, crueler, and he brushed a lick of stray hair back from his face. Blotting gore across his forehead. 

“No? Such a shame. It seems this was your final chance to do so.”

There was a long tense silence in the wake of those words before Obi-wan turned his gaze on him again. Still gold and glowing. “Take her up to The Apophis. Resolve what you must, and tell Piett he’s to execute my orders; I’ll be up in a few moments. Once I’ve made certain he’s properly dead.” He said. “She can leave from Serenno, if she wishes to. That way there won’t be a trail here for them to potentially follow. So long as she understands not to interfere with us, or threaten Anakin, there’ll be no reason for us to have further encounters. Though she’s welcome to join our pack as well, if she wishes. Her skill set would be invaluable.”

Quinlan didn’t attempt to argue the point. Not just then. Not when confronted with the bloodied madness Obi-wan normally kept carefully restrained under his skin. Not when there was real risk the other alpha might suddenly decide he was a threat as well, and act with all savage leave. Asajj seemed to share similar sentiments, as well as a desire to put as much space between herself and the feral-looking Sith Lord still crouched beside his prey as she possibly could, and followed him back up into the open air without a word.

Chapter Text

Quinlan eventually managing to catch up with her, if nothing else than through the merit of sheer stupid persistence and statistical chance, had been something Ventress had expected. To a point, some part of her had hoped that it would happen sooner. That every time they’d come close, and she’d still managed to slip away from the grasp of the former Jedi Shadow, would be the time that something—fate, perhaps the Force itself, or simple turn of fortune—would conspire against her to ensure that her efforts were for not. That she could have him back without breaking her word to her sisters; without breaking the terms of the deal that had seen her back from death.

She’d never imagined it would ultimately end up being anything like this.

That he’d get desperate enough to turn to a Sith, after falling at Dooku’s hands once before and narrowly avoiding losing himself completely.

Nor that that Sith would be Kenobi.

Kenobi. A Sith. Now that was something she’d never have believed, in any scenario, could ever end up being possible. Not after everything he’d endured, much of which she’d had a hand in putting him through, without falling. But everyone had their limits. And something like Order 66—the ultimate culmination of Sidious’ plans—had likely pushed a great many in the galaxy to and past it.

It also shouldn’t have come as a surprise that his fall, however it had ultimately happened, had ended up finding its roots in Skywalker.

What was a surprise—and a concern; a major concern, especially seeing that Quinlan, in his seemingly infinitely lacking wisdom, had signed himself away to whatever warped scheme the corrupted Negotiator had managed to cook up in the confines of his mind—was that he’d ended up being so viciously violent in his presentation when she’d have expected him, instead, to have ended up with a temperament closer to Dooku. 

There were a lot of answers that she didn’t have. Answers that she needed if she was going to make the proper decision in the matter which had now been set before her—Kenobi had claimed that he was willing to simply let her leave, and would leave her be afterward, so long as she didn’t get in his way; even ignoring the fact that she knew well better, after serving for so long under the former Count of Serenno that trusting the word of a Sith was a stupid choice at the very best of times, war had a bad habit of forcing sides out of everyone, no matter how neutral they might otherwise have preferred to remain—and had turned to her erstwhile lover in an effort to gain them. Only to promptly discover that the idiot alpha didn’t know what he’d agreed to !

On the face of matters it was odd that Kenobi, as a Jedi, had seemed so content to surround himself with a gaggle of hot headed fools who’d go bullrushing into danger without a moment’s thought given the right provocation. Skywalker, his precious apprentice and now mate; at least so it seemed. Tano, his grandpadawan, though admittedly that much he hadn’t had much say in; unless, of course, the rumored notion Quinlan had told her about once was true and he’d conspired with Yoda and the rest of the Order’s council to attempt to humble Skywalker with a mirror of his own recklessness. Quinlan himself, though up until that point Ventress had been under the—apparently incorrect—impression that he possessed at least enough sense to attempt to get the read of a room before he leapt into it from above. Perhaps it was nothing more insidious than the fact that he found comfort, and even refreshment, in the stark difference to his own nature.

Perhaps he simply enjoyed knowing he was the smartest person in the room, and that he had them all wrapped around his fingers should he find himself possessed of the desire to press.

Either way, Quinlan had received the appropriate address regarding the potential danger of his choices before she’d left the alpha—slightly stunned, and looking rather like a confused tooka—to sit and think a bit on what he’d done and gone searching for their dangerous host. His packleader now, the fool!

Ventress wasn’t quite certain what motives, exactly, Kenobi could possibly have with going out of his way to tie together a bonded pack of all things when solid ties of that sort had been the very anathema of the Order he’d once championed, at least to her understanding. But she knew better than to assume he was the type of Sith who would prove nearly so easily satisfied as to settle for something because it would have been against what the Jedi would have wanted. Even before he’d fallen he’d been sharp, and venomous, and calculated to the last. And she wouldn’t let herself fall for the notion that he wasn’t up to something deeper.

“Most would consider skulking about like this to be a clear sign of someone being up to no good.” His voice sounded from ahead of her, not far to her right, and Ventress nearly leapt out of her skin. Halting abruptly in her tracks and interrogating the broad hall of the Star Destroyer for any signs of his presence. “You’re making my crew nervous.”

There, in the well of shadows gathered beneath a window; the fragmented lights of hyperspace casting his form in strange illumination. He watched her over one shoulder, through one slightly narrowed eye; gray, instead of gold, but no less reptilian for it. 

White Serpent, they’d called him.

A fitting name, for many reasons, because a serpent was exactly what he’d always been even during the war. Back-fanged and conniving in much the same way that Sidious was.

Small wonder they hated each other. Apex predators never did get on when they crossed paths, even in nature.

“Is there something I can help you with, my dear?”

Even the way he said those two words was the same. Laced with a faint mocking tone, though not bitter enough to truly be considered snide. A beast playing with its food as it attempted to determine whether or not it wanted to eat it. 

Ventress had never been afraid of Kenobi before. Appropriately cautious, yes. Infinitely frustrated, absolutely. But never afraid. Not like now, standing before the shadowy bulwark that made up the alpha’s figure; one that should have been familiar, looking just as he did all those years ago despite the passage of time, after all the times they’d fought and fought together, but remained able to present itself only as foreign and threatening. 

Kenobi made a curious sound somewhere deep in his throat and turned further away from the window. Cocking his head to better observe her. It was difficult to tell, in the draping pall of darkness, but it seemed like he’d cleaned the blood from his face and hands since coming aboard. He still possessed some sense of decorum, it seemed, and hadn’t gone entirely insane. In honesty, Ventress was uncertain if that fact made things better or worse.

“You can ‘help me’ with some answers.” She said, as tersely as she dared. Watching what little she could make out of his face twist into what looked like bemusement. “It doesn’t seem that Voss asked all of the questions that he should have before he took your claim, and isn’t as able as he ought to be to answer my questions.”

Another hum. Almost careless. “He’s lucky I have good intentions; I told him as much, when he all but sold himself away in return for my help in pinning you down. For all that it doesn’t seem he cares all that much what our goals are. Though,” the way that he looked at her was cold and sly, but not overtly hostile, “the fact you came looking for an explanation suggests you don’t share that carelessness.”

“I like to know what I’m getting myself into, or into the path of.  I’m sure you can appreciate that much, at least to some degree.”

“Appreciate it, yes.” He said. “Though I’d advise against ‘getting into the path’ of us. Especially when you’ve the much safer option of simply slipping away into obscurity again.”

“You and I both know that isn’t how war works. There’s no such thing as neutral. Not really.” She said. “The Republic didn’t align all that well with me, as I’m sure you’re well aware. We fought about it. Several times. I’d like to know what my other option is.”

He observed her in silence for a long time. Eyes faintly narrowed but showing no traces of gold. “It’s the Force’s will that Anakin, its child, rule the galaxy. And I intend to see to it that he does. I’ll build an Empire for him. Lay the galaxy at his feet. And restore the understanding of the Force as it was before the Schism; where the light and dark side were both practiced and accepted.”

There was something…off in the glint of his eyes when he spoke about Anakin ruling the galaxy. One that was more than merely concerning, for all that it didn’t all together come as a surprise after witnessing him claw another man’s throat out in his precious mate’s name. 

“I’m going to need more of an answer than that.”

The look he gave her was sharp and savage but she held her ground. Watching his eyes narrow and his lip threaten to curl. “He’ll do what the Republic refused to. Equality for Omega. Rights for droids. An enforced end to slavery. There will still be a Senate and most choices will be left in the hands of the representatives of the planets that are under his rule, but he’ll retain the ability to make rulings without them should he need to in times of war.”

He certainly appeared to believe in what he was saying, but Kenobi had always been good at making whoever he was speaking with think whatever he wanted them to when it came to any attempts that they might make to read him. Ventress folded her arms and narrowed her eyes but her opponent stubbornly refused to yield any further revelations. 

“You claimed that my particular skill set could be of considerable use to you, in whatever it is you happen to be planning as the next few steps in this…attempt to fool Sidious.” An attempt which, thus far, had included such ridiculous measures as killing the Grant Inquisitor, blowing up an Imperial Star Destroyer with his own and having his crew destroy their own responder in order to make it appear as if The Apophis had gone down as well. Not exactly the measured moves she’d have expected out of the former General of the GAR, but Ventress supposed smaller maneuvers had already been made in the past in order to get them to that point in the first place. “I’m not taking your mark. But I’ll help you. At least for a while. Until I’ve gotten an understanding of what you’re really doing for myself. Any decisions about joining your pack on a more permanent basis will go from there.”

It wasn’t a deal that she particularly expected him to take. At first, it seemed like he wasn’t going to; that threat of a curl remaining in the set of his mouth. Then, he blinked and straightened. The tense coil in his posture easing. “Given that your connection to Quinlan would, theoretically, leave you partially bound regardless, and that you wouldn’t be the first associated with our pack who didn’t properly join it, I’ll permit the matter.” Though he didn’t seem all that happy about it. “To that end, I have to ask. Why were you running from Quin for so long? I’m to assume it has something to do with your miraculous survival despite you being quite plainly dead, to the last of my recollection.”

“Nightsister magic.”

“And that has something to do with your flight as well?”

“It did.” She said. “But that’s hardly a concern anymore.”

She’d fulfilled the terms of the deal, as far as she could parse. And hadn’t broken them in this, as her ‘heart’s desire’ had pursued her instead of the other way around.

No. Of greater concern were the two Sith Lords so plainly gearing up to go for each other’s throats and the fighting that would break out in the wake of it; another war which would surely shake the very stars which made up the galaxy to their foundations. Not the Clone Wars but something worse. And she got the distinct feeling that there was something more than even that he hadn’t mentioned. Something that would clarify why the Force, if such a thing was true, would have any care for who was ruling the galaxy at all.

“I suppose we all have greater concerns now, times being what they are.” He said. “I’ll let you get back, then. Unless you needed something else? No doubt, Quin’s gotten worried by now.”

He’d fashioned himself a great deal after Dooku, beyond just his dress and title. A fact which, no doubt, had been done in pursuit of gains both for his position within Sidious’ Empire and his goals. But in this much—a polite dismissal, almost friendly on its face, which belied the threat of danger if denied—the similarity seemed genuine and all the more dangerous for it. She’d long since learned that it was best, at such times, to simply make herself scarce and she did so, again, with this. Passing by him, and feeling the weight of his gaze resting unrelenting against her shoulders as she went, without allowing her nerves to show through; heading, once more, for the room where she’d left the former Jedi behind.

Though his presence lingered, stifling and icy cold, within the twisting confines of the ship Kenobi didn’t follow her.

Chapter Text

Zaghnal had been watching him for the better part of the last hour, the great beast’s body taking up the whole of his bed in his room in the belly of The Apophis, but hadn’t made a sound before that moment. His curious ‘wah’ enough to give Obi-wan pause, drawing him out of his thoughts—panic, mostly, that his calculations about what Sidious was going to do as a reaction to his apparent death and when would prove incorrect and that Anakin would be harmed; one that refused to be stifled despite the best efforts of his mate—confused, but entirely whole and safe, at least from the appearance of things—to soothe him from the other end of their link—enough to halt his pacing. For a long moment he simply stood there staring at the creature, which seemed to stare back at him intently despite his lack of eyes, then he sighed and crossed to the bed. Shunting Zaghnal far enough aside to make space for himself against the headrest and grunting when his companion proceeded to drop his full weight against his lap and make himself comfortable. Immediately starting up a rumbling purr so loud it sounded like a backfiring speeder when his hand found his ears.

“I know it isn’t rational.” What in the Sith Hells did rational matter anyway? Nothing had ever been rational surrounding Anakin before. “But I can’t help but worry more and more the closer this comes to being over.”

Over.

That wasn’t nearly true. ‘Over’ would be after the Empire was in their grasp. When the rebels were brought to heel. When the Vong were gone, once and for all, and they could finally find the peace that his Dear One wanted and so desperately deserved. ‘Over’ would be the eternity they had together after, once he managed to uncover the secret to Essence Transfer and remove death from the equation for them both, where nothing would ever be terrible again and, one day, Anakin would have given enough of himself to helping the downtrodden and hurt to feel he’d made up for things that had never been his fault.

Over was a long way away. But the collar, and the hell that it brought with it would be done with soon, at least. 

“He’ll be safe soon.” Obi-wan was no longer certain if he was talking to the beast or attempting to reassure himself. His hand sliding up Zaghnal’s ear to gently run the thin flesh between his fingers. Feeling it flick against his hand. “He’ll be safe, our pack will keep him safe, and he’ll finally be free. I’ll give him the galaxy. More if he wants it. And everything will be worth it in the end.”

His hands continued petting, distractedly, at the coarse, thin coat of the creature well after words failed him. His eyes locked on the porthole until the slithering lights of hyperspace faded away into the uniform black of open space.

Zaghnal grumbled in complaint at suddenly being dumped back onto the mattress when Obi-wan leapt to his feet again. Hopping down off the bed and stretching—long and luxurious; claws flexing as they scraped against the floor—before trotting along behind him toward the bridge.

Serenno hung in the viewfinder, verdant and bright against the dark backdrop. They’d be on the ground in just under an hour. Would be back at the castle that had become their home—yet another home they’d have to leave, however temporarily it might or might not be—in a little more than that. Anakin was so close that he could almost see him, like an after image clinging to the corners of his vision, and Obi-wan felt his palms begin to itch. Fangs uncomfortably large in his mouth.

It hadn’t even been a month since they’d parted.

To him, it felt like an eternity, and he needed the sight of the other man—the feel of him in his arms; his scent—like a starving man needed food. Anything—a touch, however fleeting; a glance, however small—enough to sustain him for all that it felt as if he’d die were he denied them another moment more.

“Just when I thought Quinlan was a clingy alpha.” He hadn’t heard the door to the bridge open—largely on account of once more having fallen too deep into his thoughts; his anticipation for his reunion with Anakin, so close, now, and yet still so far away—but when he turned his head it was to find the other two there. Quinlan looking altogether rather amused by whatever expression was currently resting on his face—Obi-wan didn’t have enough care to spare the matter to bother attempting to determine what it was—while Ventress eyed him cautiously. “You’re acting like you’ve been away at war for years, Kenobi.”

It felt like it.

There were times where being out of sight of Anakin made it feel like a vibroblade was being turned in his chest. Like he might wake up back in his damned hut on Tatooine and discover it had all been a dream; that Mustafar had been the end, and there was nothing on the road ahead of him but dust. Resisting the urge to snarl, he shook his head to clear it.

“We’ve never done well apart.”

Understatement of the millennia. A fact of which he was well aware, and a notion Ventress seemed to second for all that she didn’t mention the matter. Turning, instead, toward the viewfinder as well; her face pinched.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.” She said. “I never thought that I’d come back. Certainly not to that castle.”

“You won’t have to stay for very long.” Damn it all that such a thing was true. This planet, this place, had become their home. Anakin had managed to find some sense of happiness there. Some sense of peace. And now, because of Sidious, they were leaving. Picking up and heading to Koboh, first, and then to Tanalorr beyond. And after that to parts unknown. “We’ll discuss matters tonight, and begin making whatever moves we need to—whatever moves we can—come morning. It will be a long time before we see Serenno again.”

If they ever did.

Now Ventress looked alarmed. “You’re planning to pick a fight with the Empire and your brilliant opening move, Negotiator, is to abandon your fortified fortress?”

“Sidious will expect us to be here. He’ll come here first. And he will waste his time in doing so, while we are somewhere else. Somewhere safe that he can’t get to. And once we’ve had the time we need to convene and plan, we’ll make a foothold for ourselves somewhere far enough away that even the Empire will have trouble reaching us.”

Somewhere in the Expanse Region or the Outer Rim, or even just beyond the lip of the known galaxy. Though the ultimate decision in that much would go to Anakin.

“I may well seem mad, my dear, but there is a method to it.”

She muttered something that might have been ‘you don’t just seem mad’ but didn’t otherwise respond. Losing interest in the matter as the notion of their impending reunion drifted back across his mind like clouds across a full moon—Anakin was fine; he knew that he was fine because his mate had asked Cody to inform him of as much when he’d sent him to rendezvous with the rest of them over Dinzo with the news about the Hidden Path’s close call. He wouldn’t be satisfied that he was fine until he was able to confirm as much with his own eyes; his own hands—and resuming his stare at the approaching planet. 

Much to his frustration, impatience did nothing to close the distance faster and the planetary body continued approaching at the same maddeningly sedate pace. By the time The Apophis breached the cloud line he was all but spinning in his own skin and it was only through sheer force of will that he stopped himself from scratching at the nearest destructible surface once they finally made it aboard the Lambda.

“Skywalker isn’t here.” Quinlan said, rather artlessly giving voice to the disappointed turn of his thoughts despite Obi-wan knowing better than to have expected him to be. Thankfully Cody—well aware of his mental state even without the feedback no doubt buzzing through their bonds; he’d been watching him with some degree of concern since he and the rest of his brothers from the 212th had met them in the flight bay—chose that moment to intervene on the matter. Sparring Obi-wan the need to scrape together the necessary coherence to do so.

“The Empire is under the impression that The Apophis was shot down, and Obi-wan with it. Which is why it will be going back into orbit behind the second moon once we’re on the Lambda and why Anakin can’t risk being seen outside of the castle. He’s supposedly in mourning.”

Quinlan made a rather unhappy noise somewhere in the back of his throat and folded his arms, frowning. “Never did get on too well with this level of cloak and dagger.”

“Yet you were a Shadow.” Ventress said with a snort.

“Nothing I did as a Jedi Shadow had anything on this.” Quinlan said. “Though I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering he’s trying to out-Sidious Sidious.”

Losing what little interest he’d still retained for the conversation as the Lambda—piloted by Hawk—lifted off and maneuvered free of the Star Destroyer he moved toward the window. Watching the tiny gray-green dot that was their home draw steadily closer with Zaghnal pressed against his side.

He had the answer.

He had the key, at long last, and yet he couldn’t set him free. Not yet. There was still a chance for Sidious to realize what was happening. Still an opportunity for him to blink himself clear of his own arrogance for long enough to destroy everything that had ever mattered to him and there was nothing he could do but pray that he’d remain blind.

The dark side hissed a promise.

It wasn’t reassuring and his fingers curled into fists around the empty, recirculated air. The sharp points of his claws raking over his palms but not quite finding the right angle to cut through.

The flight was short.

It felt like it lasted a millennia and then some.

The Lambda landed amidst the well tended garden and Obi-wan was in the grass a moment later. Zaghnal leaping down to join him before the ramp could fully lower. Gray eyes snapping up at the sound of a familiar squeal and meeting the relieved gaze of blue ones.

Anakin, holding the excitedly whirring droid in his arms, looked tired but unhurt. Worry set in lines around the corners of his mouth even as he smiled. But he was whole, and safe, and as he pulled him into his arms—dropped his face into his hair; breathed in his scent—that was all that mattered.

“I’m sorry I was gone for so long.” He said after a drawn out moment of simple, contented silence aside from OB’s gentle babbling. “There were a few unexpected detours. And some equally unexpected…acquisitions.”

Not a term Ventress was too terribly happy with, judging by the way she crossed her arms, but—apparently thinking better of antagonizing him with Anakin nearby—she kept quiet on the matter. Returning the omega’s curious but not hostile stare with a mild one of her own.

“Unexpected indeed.” He said. “Are they both…?”

“Just Quin.” For now. Anakin blinked at him, seeming to gauge something from his expression, and then addressed them properly.

“It’s good to see you again, Quinlan. You as well, Ventress. I…never got the opportunity to thank you. For your help with what happened to Ahsoka.”

He did a good job of holding his voice steady when he said her name but Obi-wan still caught the way he waivered. He pressed his lips together in disapproval, resisting the urge to snarl over how unreasonable their pup was being. Not unexpected, all things considered, especially who her Master was, but the fact that she was causing Anakin such obvious distress wasn’t one he could simply wave away and overlook.

Appearing to sense his agitation, if not the turn of his thoughts, Anakin reached up to stroke his beard. Smirking, just slightly, when Obi-wan leaned into the touch without an ounce of shame or hesitation.

“I can hardly claim it to have been voluntary, considering you threatened me while I was unarmed, Skywalker.” She said. “Regardless of that, I suppose you’re welcome.”

“Are either of you hurt?” When both shook their heads, Anakin looked back up at him with a question in his eyes. “Are you, Ji Muna?”

“No, Nal Hutta. The Grand Inquisitor was hardly a fight worth writing home about.”

His lips twitched again into a brief, vicious smile. “I did try to train them, back when I was still Vader. Not very hard, granted. But maybe they wouldn’t have been so simple to deal with if they’d listened once in a while.”

“Better for us that they didn’t.” Obi-wan said, taking Anakin’s head in his hands and watching his mate melt into his touch the same way Zaghnal always did whenever he was scratched behind the ears. “But we should head in, Dear One. There’s much that needs to be discussed and not much time to do it; we have to leave come morning.”

Surprise flitted across their link, before giving way to resignation. A tired reluctance briefly flashing up on his face; the omega, understandably, unwilling to give up yet another home. Especially one where he’d been able to become comfortable; settle and nest surrounded by pack.

There was no choice.

He wouldn’t ask it of him, if there were.

Anakin nodded, then, and stepped back. Taking his hand, as he did so, and gently pulling him with him toward the door; experiencing a brief moment of trouble walking when Zaghnal attempted to wind his sinuous body between them. Quin and Ventress, the latter with far more caution, following behind.

Inside it was warm, despite the settling chill of recently arrived winter, and smelled pleasantly of roasting meat. Anakin stopped just within the foyer and turned to face them again, gently adjusting OB’s weight in his arms. “Take them to the sitting room, please. I left Rex and Hawk in the kitchen; I’ll get them and then go grab the others and come back. From the sound of things, this ought to be heard by everyone and there’s no reason to make you repeat yourself.”

“I’ll get my brothers from upstairs, Anakin.” Cody was already moving as he made his offer, prompting the omega to snort in amusement before turning blue eyes on Obi-wan again.

“You’ve rubbed off on them terribly.” He said, not sounding at all bothered. “I swear, if they had their way I wouldn’t have to do anything but supervise.”

An exaggeration, at least for the most part. Nonetheless, he reached out to drag his fingers through his mate’s thick curls, prompting a soft hum of contentment. “You’re the heart of our pack, Dear One, and as precious to them as you are to me. You’ve looked after them for years, as their General. Is it such a surprise that they’d want to return the favor?”

Anakin chirped, then looked over at Quinlan and Ventress. Sizing up the other alpha before apparently deeming the beta as a better option. “You’ll save me if they wrap me up in plastitape, right?”

The former Sith assassin stared back at him for a long moment before answering. “I don’t know, Skywalker. Your packmates wrapping you up in packaging bubbles sounds like a good means for me to get some peace and quiet.”

Anakin laughed, prompting OB to look up at him in confusion, and finally turned to head toward the kitchen. “I’ll meet you in the sitting room in a few minutes. Just let me make sure everything is ok to be left to cook on its own.”

He was gone a moment later, his familiar form disappearing around the doorframe, and Obi-wan was left with the beast and their most recent two companions. He knew that he was only a few yards away. That he was safe. That, realistically—barring some strange act of the Force—Anakin was in no danger. Still, he couldn’t stop a grumble of distress from escaping in response to his mate’s absence prompting Ventress to roll her eyes and press her way past him.

“Some Sith Lord you are.”

Quinlan didn’t comment on the matter, perhaps still too wary of him to do so, but his eyes and the curve of his smile said enough to make it plain that he agreed.

That was fine. He wasn’t really a Sith Lord anyway. And if it was plain for everyone to see how devoted, how attached, he was to his mate—how desperately he needed him—all the better. They’d wasted too much time denying each other because of the Jedi’s damned code for him to be anything but proud of his devotion. And it wasn’t as if attempting to conceal that Anakin was, perhaps, his only weakness would make that fact any less obvious.

It seemed her years away hadn’t been enough to dull her recollection of where the various rooms within Castle Serenno were located because he found Ventress and Quin waiting for him in the sitting room. Obi-wan crossed to the couch opposite the door and seated himself on it to wait. Zaghnal dropping onto his feet and placing his head in his lap, letting out a chattering demand for attention which was granted in short order.

“Affectionate for an attack dog.”

“An unexpected result, admittedly.” Obi-wan said. “But one that worked out for the better. He’ll be able to keep the rest in line.”

The inferred existence of more of them—created for the purpose of being sent to various Imperial installments to augment their patrols and already bound to him with the same ritual he’d used on Necrosis, but not yet deployed—didn’t appear to instill any sense of comfort in the beta, not that Obi-wan had much of an opportunity to spare her attention. His gaze drawn back to Anakin immediately as he entered the room, at just about the same time as Cody and the others. Hawk and Rex—older than he’d last seen him; older, in appearance, than his brothers around him—at his side.

He was so distracted by the omega’s return—by checking him over; making certain the dozen yard walk between there and the kitchen hadn’t harmed him in some way—that he almost didn’t notice who wasn’t present.

“Where’s Maul?”

Anakin exchanged an amused glance with his Captain, the omega apparently having been waiting for him to notice the other alpha’s absence. “He left a few days ago to deal with something regarding one of his contacts. He gave me a channel to reach him at, though, so we’ll be able to continue with the plan; what little of it we’ve discussed before now, at least.” He said. “But I think we should take care of marks before we get into the depth of anything?”

His blue eyes rested, questioning, on Ventress as he spoke.

“It’s going to take a lot more than Kenobi showing up and spouting some nonsense about a united galaxy to convince me to join a bonded pack, Skywalker.” She said. “For the time being, I’m just here to make sure your alpha doesn’t get my alpha, who decided to be an idiot, into trouble that he can’t handle.”

“Fair enough.” Anakin said before turning to Rex. His next words pre-empted by a fond but altogether tired sounding interjection which made it very clear that the question Anakin had been about to ask had already been answered at least a dozen times since they’d been reunited.

“Cyare’se ori’vod, yes. I’m just as aware of what I agreed to the last several times you asked me this. And I haven’t changed my mind in the past minute.”

Cody did a poor job of covering a snort with his hand. Anakin’s cheeks tinted pink, the color climbing toward his ears, then nodded.

“You’re no longer a general, Nal Hutta. And he’s no longer a soldier. I very much doubt Rex is here out of any sense of unwilling obligation.” Obi-wan said. “His choice to come with you, to join our pack, was his own. You didn’t force his hand. Let yourself relax.”

There was unmistakable anxiety in his eyes when Anakin looked up at him but he nodded regardless. Huffing softly when Obi-wan leaned down to nuzzle his temple before he gently pushed him away.

“Later, Alpha. We’re here for a reason, and I can’t get distracted enough that dinner will burn.”

He chuckled but allowed his mate to wave him off.

Anakin had prepared for the matter, despite his worrying that his old Captain might be getting cold feet or have some form of reservations. That, or Kix was the one responsible for a roll of bandages being immediately on hand.

Either way, shortly after everything was over, Anakin busied himself with an unnecessarily thorough effort to clean and bind the wound which, mercifully, seemed to help ease some of his worries. A bemused Rex dutifully sitting through the fussing omega’s hovering while occasionally shooting cautious, apologetic glances in his direction.

Finally determining he ought to take mercy on the beta, he laughed and shook his head. “Whatever your brothers have said to scare you, Rex, I have no concerns for his loyalty. I’m no ‘jealous alpha’.”

“Except for when Maul is involved.”

Obi-wan set his jaw so hard his teeth clicked together. “Maul is the exception, not the rule.”

“You do realize he does that short of kriff because he’s trying to get a rise out of you and that’s the only means that works?”

Obi-wan didn’t bother dignifying that comment beyond a half-hearted grumble of annoyance.

“You said we had to leave come morning, and that there wasn’t much time. So let’s not waste anymore of it.” Anakin said, finally appearing to deem the bandage satisfactory—or, more likely, admit to himself there was nothing more he could do to fuss with it—and peering up at him through his lashes. “You found a key?”

“More a work around. But it will serve to break the collar, and set you free. In the end, that’s all that matters.” Obi-wan said. “I found a star chart on Yavin IV that led me to Korriban and there I discovered…a few things,” to put it rather lightly, “one of which was our way out. Are you familiar with the term Kaggath?”

Anakin shook his head.

“It’s an ancient rite of the Sith, enforced by the Dark Council which, it seems, yet retains some capacity to lock contenders in once it’s invoked. A challenge between two Sith Lords in which they wager all they have, and are forced to cede anything they’ve taken from the other back to them for its duration if it doesn’t belong to them.”

“And because I’m legally your property, as of our mating, that includes me.” His blue eyes narrowed. “What kind of challenge?”

He knew. Obi-wan knew that he knew from his insistence that they leave with all possible immediacy. From the way that he was looking at him, with something equally resigned and fierce in his eyes. But he’d asked him anyway. And he expected an answer.

“War.”

Anakin nodded, clutching OB a little tighter where the droid rested in his lap, and then raised his head. “We need to make sure we tie up all our loose ends. Nothing can be left behind for Sidious to make use of.” He said. “The moon base. The holocrons at the palace. Our bodies.”

“The moon base shouldn’t be a concern.” Cody said from the spot he’d taken up on Rex’s other side. “The beasts you’ve made aren’t active yet, and even if they were they’d listen to you over anyone else. The DNA profile is also stored on site. And Anakin can reprogram all the K-series droids.”

“We’d have to break them all first.” Rex said. “I don’t know if you’ve had to deal with K-series droids before, Cody, but the Empire's ‘security droids’ are a lot more trouble than our old friends from the Clone Wars were. If there’s more than a handful of them, that might present a problem.”

Especially since handling the situation on the moon would have to take place before he issued his challenge and kicked the hornet’s nest. Which meant Anakin would still only be armed with a blaster at that point in time.

“‘Problem’ has always been their specialty, ‘Captain’. I’m sure they’ll manage.” Ventress said. “They always did before, despite the best efforts of Grievous, Dooku and I.”

“The rest of it is of more concern.” Anakin said. “I assume the challenge has to be made in person?”

That hadn’t been made explicitly clear by the mural left behind. “I’m not certain.” He said. “But it’s best we assume so, to ensure it functions as intended and you’re not hurt as a consequence. I haven’t found the secrets of Essence Transfer yet and if anything were to happen to you, Anakin, I couldn’t bring you back.”

Aside from that, he had a plan.

A plan to shatter Sidious’ carefully crafted image of an old grandfatherly Forcenull and reveal him as not only being a Sith Lord but for having had ties to the CIS. To unravel at least some portion of his precious propaganda and start the slow process of the Empire fracturing apart at the root.

“Ventress is more than able enough to sneak into the Imperial Palace and plant bombs to bring the archive down and destroy the holocrons inside it. And the measures to only permit Force Sensitives through the doors won’t do much to stop her either. But despite her skills as an assassin and infiltrator, she can’t be in two places at once.” Anakin said. “You recall the coordinates of his hidden lab, don’t you?”

The one where he’d created and stored the legion of empty shells that were meant to ensure both he and Anakin were kept at his mercy for an eternity. The dark side hissed at the reminder and Obi-wan, recalling the altogether disturbing sight of thousands of copies of his mate floating like dead things in transparisteel tubes, narrowly bit back a growl. “I do.”

“I think it’s time we reached out to Boba Fett about another job. He’s efficient and discrete. And he doesn’t ask questions. He’ll get the job done, regardless of what he might end up seeing while doing so.”

And then it would come down to praying that Sidious’ arrogance undermined him again, and that he wasn’t sitting on additional facilities housing copies of one or both of them.

“Once that’s done we’ll head to Tanalorr, from Koboh. We’ll need to check in on everything we’ve set up there, and give Maul’s people time to distract the Empire. And then we’ll plan our next move; hopefully in a bit more depth.”

They’d have more time to do so, certainly. Tanalorr would be safe. Secure. And Anakin wouldn’t have the collar on anymore, threatening death at any moment.

“Sound enough.” Obi-wan said. “Prepare whatever you need to tonight in order to leave come morning. Aside that, we ought to all focus on resting as much as we can.”

Anakin hummed as he got to his feet. Gently running his hands down the front of the house robe he was wearing—blue like the desert sky; a paler shade than his eyes—to smooth away the wrinkles before crisply stating “dinner should be ready now. Let’s move to the dining room; it’ll be a bit more comfortable to eat there.”

There was no objection to the pronouncement and Anakin rose from his seat again, disappearing back in the direction of the kitchen and leaving Obi-wan to go through the motions of leading the way to the dining room. Ventress still seemed wary, to say the least of it, but he decided against bringing up the poised-to-bolt-if-necessary tension held in her frame. Dismissing it both as a consequence of being back on Serenno and as something she would ease out of, with time, as Cal had. Busying himself instead with conversation with Rex who, apparently, had occupied most of his time in his forced retirement from fighting with Joopa fishing from an old AT-TE, until Anakin returned with their meal. Setting the steaming platter of roast rail and protatoes in the middle of the table with a smile before claiming the empty seat on Obi-wan’s right.

Dinner was a placid affair, thankfully, and ended without fanfare. Anakin, after having the dirty dishes abducted from his custody by three of their brothers, taking the effort of showing Quinlan and Ventress to a room for the night while Obi-wan was left to make his way to their’s alone. Leaving Zaghnal lying sentry just outside the door.

They were leaving come morning. If they ever returned, it wouldn’t be for a long time and there was no guarantee the castle would still be there when they did. Yet another temporary home they had to abandon.

How many more times would this happen before he could give his mate a safe place to settle in something closer to perpetuity? Somewhere they could confidently set down roots in? Somewhere they could raised their pups, in the future, when Anakin recovered enough for such a thing to be a possibility?

“Don’t go so deep into your own head that you leave me behind, Obi-wan.” He startled and looked down, eyes widening slightly at the sight of Anakin standing at his side. He hadn’t heard him come in. Hadn’t noticed him approach. His mate reached for his hand, taking it gently; a faint concern writ across his features. “What were you thinking about?”

“Just the consequences of war. What can’t be avoided.” Obi-wan shook his head. “Nevermind it. Let’s not think about that now.”

Anakin hummed, though he didn’t sound particularly happy about matters. “Better we don’t. We’ll have plenty of time, after all, come morning.”

He didn’t want to leave. Obi-wan didn’t want to make him. But they had no choice, and they both knew it. Gently, he cupped his chin in his hands. Running his thumbs along the curve of his cheekbones. Watching the smaller man sigh and melt into his touch.

“Where’s OB?”

“With Zaghnal.” He said. “I put him on sentry duty so he wouldn’t feel shut out, given he normally sleeps with us. I know we’re meant to be resting. But it’s been so long since we last…better we don’t waste the opportunity?”

Better sense suggested he deny him. But better sense has never had any real say whenever it came to Anakin in the past, and that remained to be the case now. A harsh heat kicking up inside him as it registered, properly, what his mate was suggesting.

The omega’s squeak of surprise quickly morphed into a hum of satisfaction when Obi-wan yanked him forward; eagerness making him rougher than he’d normally dare to be. Their mouths clashing with enough force to briefly knock their teeth together before Anakin secured a firm grip on his shoulders and hoisted himself up into his arms. Adjusting their positions and easing the way for him to carry his smaller mate to their bed. Anakin making a noise of disapproval when he pulled back, after dropping him amidst the soft contours of their nest, and began tugging at his clothes; growling, low in the back of his throat, at the refusal of the fabric to simply come free with ease but resisting—narrowly—the urge to simply tear them off. Dropping them onto the floor without much care a moment later, once he finally managed to get them off, and granting his mate the returned contact he was so pitifully mewling for. Big, calloused hands slipping underneath the thin robe and slipping it free. Roving over soft skin, followed shortly behind by a nipping mouth and hot tongue as Anakin’s hands caught a grip in his hair: uncertain whether they wanted to pull him back up or hold him where he was. Refamiliarizing himself with the taste and feel of him; of his skin and his warmth.

It soothed something fierce in him, to have the younger man beneath him like this. To know he was safe; to cover him over with his own form and hide him away from the world. To bask in his presence and renew their shared scents in their nest, even knowing that they’d be leaving it behind in only a paltry few hours.

But such concerns could be picked back up later, when he had time again for the world outside their bedroom door and the war that he’d be sparking. When there was something to focus on that wasn’t as important as the little noises of pleasure and relief that the other half of his soul was making or the sting of his claws on his back and his teeth on his shoulder or the way his wrists fit so easily in one hand when he sought to capture them. Anakin submitting with only a brief, playful struggle and wrapping his legs around his waist to pull him closer. Purring in contentment when Obi-wan dropped down atop him and, after a handful of minutes spent catching his breath, maneuvered them both into a sleeping position that could comfortably support their tied condition.

He didn’t know what woke him up or how much later it was, but it was properly dark outside the windows and Anakin—alongside his robe—was gone. Grumbling in confusion and not quite fully awake yet Obi-wan found himself feeling around in search of his mate only to discover nothing but a divot in the mattress—stil faintly warm—left behind. Pushing himself upright and taking a moment to stretch, he retrieved his pants from where they’d been unceremoniously tossed and, after pulling them back on, padding out into the hallway outside.

Dark. Quiet. Both Zaghnal and OB were gone, no doubt having gone to accompany Anakin. Satisfied that his mate, whatever he was doing, was safe and that there wasn’t any urgent need to rush, he took a moment to mentally follow the link between them before choosing a direction. Eventually finding his way outside of the castle and into the gardens.

Anakin was sitting on a rock near the cliff’s edge, looking out toward the still faintly visible light of Carrania’s sleeping streets. OB cradled in his lap and Zaghnal lying at his feet. He turned his head at the sound of his footsteps but didn’t speak until he was sitting beside him. Adjusting his position enough to lean against his shoulder.

“I knew it was inevitable.” He said. “But…this is still our home. Our home the way 500 Republica and even the temple never was. Maybe it’s just instinct, something I ought to be able to swallow and push away, but it’s an uncomfortable thought all the same.”

“It’s perfectly natural not to want to leave, Nal Hutta. This is our home. And I wouldn’t ask it of you if I felt there was any other choice.” Obi-wan said, running his hand across his back. Gently encouraging him to lean more weight against him, and to seek out more of his warmth; encouragement Anakin needed very little of. “We’ll come back. Some day.”

“Some day.” He repeated, a wistful sort of melancholy in his voice that made it plain Anakin knew the same thing he did. That he couldn’t truly make such a guarantee. His mate was quiet for a long time after that and the only sounds aside from the wind and Zaghnal occasionally shifting in the grass was OB’s gentle whirring. Then, he said “I don’t want to spend this entire war waiting for some day. I want to make a new home. Somewhere permanent, this time. Even if we have to return to Coruscant, eventually, it can at least be a retreat. Somewhere to go, from time to time, once the galaxy has settled enough to allow for things like peace. Somewhere that can be ours, instead of inherited from someone else.”

It sounded like something he’d been thinking about for quite a bit longer than the time that he’d been out there. “You have somewhere in mind?”

Another long silence where Anakin gently stroked the curve of OB’s head. “I used to dream about going back, some day. Once I was strong enough. Overthrowing the Hutts. Saving mom. Saving all of the slaves in the entire galaxy, and making sure they don’t have to suffer anymore. I…can’t save her. Not anymore. But there are a lot of other people I can save. That we can save, together. And since we need to go somewhere anyway, I think…” he looked up at him at last with fire in his eyes, “it’s time to go back. Once we’re settled, and we can leave Tanalorr, I want to go back to Tatooine.”

Where he’d been born.

Where his mother had died.

Where Luke had been hidden away from him, in the custody of his step brother and his mate, though the Rebellion would likely take him soon if they hadn’t already.

Where sand meant suffering, and failure, and loss, and all the things Obi-wan had failed to protect him from despite being his Master.

But he knew better than to attempt to dissuade him in the face of that look. So he simply sighed and nodded and ran gentle fingers through the other man’s long, unbound curls. “If that’s what you want, Dear One.”

They stayed like that, curled together in the frost-draped gardens in companionable silence, until dawn began to tint the skyline pink.

Chapter Text

Whatever holoprojector the Zabrak was using must have been old, or damaged, or both because his image wavered periodically as it hung in the air in front of them. Skipping, slightly, whenever he moved and pixelating around the edges in a way which threatened motionsickness if one dared to stare for too long. Nothing of the background was visible, providing no notion of where he was or what he might actually be doing; he’d been vague, perhaps deliberately, perhaps simply not caring enough for matters to ask about the how or why, before he’d left. Telling Anakin only that he’d received a call from one of his ‘contacts’ regarding ‘an issue with the Empire’. His former General—perhaps unwisely—had accepted the notion without further review and, after instructing him on where to rent a ship and requesting he not make too much of a spectacle of himself and risk drawing Sidious’ attention, had waved him off. 

Rex was wary of Maul, to say the least of matters. An understandable and arguably sane position, all things considered. He hadn’t forgotten the debacle that was Mandalore, entirely orchestrated by the mad former Sith, prior to Order 66 being initiated and everything else going to hell. And he hadn’t forgotten Maul’s bluntly stated—and apparently now defunct, given the bizarre and nearly performative deference the alpha now subjected the younger man to at every possible occasion—intentions to kill Anakin were he ever presented the opportunity. Still, if Obi-wan was willing to tolerate—barely—his presence in proximity to his mate, who was he to question the wisdom of the matter? Especially if he was half as protective as Cody had claimed.

Given everything he’d seen, he didn’t doubt it.

But that in itself led to new, fresh concerns regarding Kenobi. Their alpha, now, rather than just the Master of their General who, in all technicality, outranked him in the hierarchy of orders.

Rex wasn’t a Jedi. Or a Sith, for that matter. Or whatever they had determined to call their new, strange amalgamation of dark and light which only seemed to cleave together when all sense and logic suggested it should have pushed apart and broken. He wasn’t familiar with the Force. And though he knew a vague sense of family from his time on Kamino—it was hard to be more than vaguely connected when you have millions of siblings, after all—and a stronger sense of belonging from the 501st he wasn’t used to this. Being physically connected, in some inexplicable way, to other consciousnesses with the same thin, yet no less inexorable threads of gravity which held a system’s planets in the orbit of their central star. Or stars, in this case.

He didn’t know how to differentiate the stellar winds of sense and light from one another yet—he’d learn, but it would take time—but even still he could clearly make out how incredibly unstable Kenobi was. A star on the edge of implosion into a black hole large enough to swallow the entirety of the galaxy and, quite possibly, the rest of the universe beyond it. It’s only stabilizing grace the smaller star beside it; faint and flickering like a candle, cut off from everything that had once made it blaze but still warm and familiar.

Not that it hadn’t been obvious how integral the omega—it was still strange to think of his former General in terms of that dynamic, for all that he seemed settled in it; happier, even, whenever he found himself in a position to soak up affection from a packmate like a drought-parched Vormur blossom would soak up rain—was to what few brittle underpinnings might yet remain of the alpha’s sanity with the way that he looked at him.

If anything ever happened to Anakin…

All in all, and regardless of the barely held back teeth of the apocalypse, slipping back into the familiar concern for the other man’s safety shouldn’t have been too terrible of a surprise. Not after so many years spent at war. Years in which he’d been prepared, at any moment, to step into the path of death if it had meant his Jedi would have survived the battle. No doubt Cody had felt something similar, when he’d been approached on Akiva; a mix of duty and kinship and concern. It seemed, for the most part, that his brother had been able to put it behind him and now stood as firmly at Kenobi’s right hand as the beast he’d manufactured did his left. A part of Rex looked forward to the day he could do the same with Anakin—he didn’t regret the choice to accompany him; he believed he truly wanted to make up for what he’d done; knew him better than to think he wanted the galaxy to become a hell of blood of fire yet again—but for now concern remained.

And it was obvious, looking at Ventress and the way she watched Kenobi like he might suddenly transform into an actual snake, he wasn’t the only one.

All in all, he supposed, it would only prove a good thing to have some in the pack with more reservations than the rest surrounding their alpha’s crusade.

That was the only word that could be used for it, and that in itself carried connotations that worried him.

Kenobi had a gentle god, at the very least. One who cared enough for the suffering of even non-organics to call clones family and cradle a droid like an infant. One who wanted to stop suffering, despite himself carrying the bitter temper of a dragon.

Rex wasn’t certain it would do them any good.

Maul’s voice—petulant and drawling; nothing had changed in that regard, at least—broke him from his thoughts. He looked away from Anakin—sitting between Arrow and Hawk, his head resting against his brother’s mechano-arm with OB in his lap—and squinted at the flickering image again.

“And so this is the best the great Negotiator could come up with? All these months you’ve had to plot and scheme, ‘White Serpent’, and yet we still arrive at a mad scramble?”

Obi-wan did a good job of keeping his face free of reaction, though his gray eyes narrowed a fraction. When he spoke, his voice carried the smooth chill of the flat of a blade. “Admittedly this is shorter order than any of us would like. But he’s been left to languish for too long, and opportunity and circumstance have aligned into an…unfortunate press for time.”

“‘Unfortunate’?” Maul repeated, sounding utterly disgusted. “Yes, that’s certainly one word for this. Quite ‘unfortunate’ that it will take more time than you seem to expect to realistically set any of what you’re asking for in motion. Even sowing discord requires some degree of finesse."

“I’m not asking you to have the galaxy burning by the morrow.” He said. “We need time before the full brunt of the distraction can occur, lest it be wasted. I’m only asking you to get things moving with your contacts. Stagger them into setting off tensions that already exist. Into causing riots. Into setting fires to Imperial Facilities. And anything and everything you can to splinter their attention and spread them thin. Make Sidious think the Rebellion is moving and force him to convene the Senate for an address.”

Whatever Kenobi was planning, Anakin didn’t speak up to question the matter. Though he was paying markedly more attention to the conversation than he had been a moment ago; blue eyes open and alert. Maybe he knew something of precisely what his mate was planning. Maybe he trusted him enough not to care about the specifics.

Maul grimaced but some of the tension in his posture relaxed. Still, the unfriendly tint to his features remained. “Very well. I’ll do what you’ve asked and then head for this ‘Koboh’ once I’m finished. You intend to make for your mysterious ‘safe place’ after, yes?”

“We’ll have no choice if we want any real freedom to plan our next move.” Obi-wan said. “Seek out the settlement Rambler’s Reach once you get there. And once you arrive behave.”

The other alpha responded to the command with a growl and a rude gesture before the feed flickered off. Obi-wan flashed his teeth at the Lambda’s now dark projector and Anakin failed at stifling a snort.

“Master’s mate mad-d.” OB chirped.

“Not mad.” Obi-wan reassured the droid, turning away from the projector at last. “Merely…agitated.”

“Agitated: feeling or appearing troubled, nervous, unsettled or upset. Synonym: mad.”

Obi-wan directed an almost helpless look at Anakin, who simply smiled at him in return before gently hushing the droid. Prompting OB to let out a metallic peel of laughter. “The Apophis will be joining us once we’re finished on Mantero, right?”

“I have Piett on standby, yes. As you’ve mentioned before, Dear One, K-series droids are large to say the least of it and attempting to transport all of them in your Lambda is…liable to not meet with particular success.”

Depending on how many of the things there were on the moon base, the little ship—though deceptively powerful for its size, at least according to Anakin’s praises—might not even manage to make it off the ground.

“Cody and the rest of the boys ought to be finished moving everything out of the castle by now,” Anakin said, shifting the subject without further fanfare. “For all that using the damned TIEs to transport anything, including people, is a nightmare.”

“A cold day in hell to hear you speaking ill of a ship, Anakin.” Rex said with a snort. “Can’t claim to be entirely surprised, though, having seen the things. The fact that they can fly at all is…”

“A miracle?” The other man’s face pinched in distaste. “The Republic’s karkbox Aethersprites were better! They at least had attachments for an external hyperdrive! TIEs don’t; they’re entirely built with the shortsighted expectation of being ferried around everywhere by a Destroyer.”

“We’re using TIEs as well, Dear One.”

“TIE/ds, not base TIEs! Because Thrawn thinks they’re stupid too! And he’s right!” Anakin said with a derisive huff. “Could you imagine getting stuck in space in one of those things? You’d need luck or the Force to get out of it alive! Not that my father cares; everyone’s expendable to him so long as he gets to maintain his grip on power.”

“I’m sure there will be something close to a working prototype of the TIE/d, at least, available once we make it to Tanalorre. You’ll be able to review it, and fly it, and ensure it’s up to snuff with your expectations.” Obi-wan said, a soothing note to his voice. “Your expertise behind the controls are the main factor for its design, after all.”

Apparently, despite all of the years they’d spent together, how well they knew each other, and the fact that they were mated now Obi-wan Kenobi still retained the capacity to accidentally put his foot in his silverlined mouth when it came to his former padawan. Anakin’s blue eyes narrowed and his posture stiffened. Shifting enough that the little droid looked up at him with a questioning beep.

“So this is some sort of plot to keep me off the frontlines, is it?”

To the alpha’s credit, he was able to pivot the situation quickly. “You know full well from your time leading Gold Squadron during the Clone Wars that wing squads spearhead the front lines, more often than not, and are integral to providing support to the troops they’re leading.”

“Don’t spin the fact you don’t want me on the ground into something pretty! I’m not an idiot, alpha! Even knowing I’d have the Force back by then, that I wouldn’t be helpless, you’d rather put me in a metal tin!”

“Nal Hutta, I don’t doubt your ability to defend yourself or others. But we both know—and I know this to be the case, beneath your offense at this perceived greivance—that you’re the most potent flier this galaxy has ever seen. Not using your skillset to its optimal effect would be a fool’s errand in a battle where both of us are present.” He said. “Aside that, I haven’t forgotten what you’ve said already. That you’re tired of fighting. That it’s hard on you. That seeing so much blood is…distressing after everything we’ve already been through. Given the opportunity, would you not rather stay behind the lines with the wounded?”

“We don’t know for certain that I’d be able to do anything for them.”

“You’d be able to do plenty for them even if your assertion that the Force might have granted you abilities you didn’t have before proves not to be correct. Kix is well trained but he’s only one man and could use all the help that he can get.”

Anakin frowned and crossed his arms but relented. Grumbling all the while.

Obi-wan, though he hid it very well, seemed relieved to have successfully diffused that particular situation.

Thankfully, the rest of their travel to the second moon of Serenno passed without another debacle. The hidden facility they were heading for growing larger in the viewfinder with every passing moment; industrial and stark against the dusty background of the ground behind it.

“Well, Kenobi,” Ventress said, breaking her silence for the first time since they’d left the castle behind. “I assume you have some sort of plan?” 

“Quinlan and I should be capable of securing the DNA profile and the remaining beasts ourselves. The rest of you will be assisting Anakin in…forcibly deactivating K-1N4 and the rest of the K-series on the premises. He doesn’t have the force back yet, or a lightsaber, and I’m given to understand that they’ve been designed to be resistant to blaster fire?”

He glanced over at Rex as he spoke, plainly looking for confirmation. “‘Resistant’ is to say the least of it.”

Anakin, who had apparently been in the midst of opening his mouth to protest, closed it again with a huff. “Let me guess. You’re sending Zaghnal with us too.”

“A marvelous idea, Dear One.”

The omega made an affronted noise. The beast, either oblivious to his irritation or entirely uncaring, trotted over and dropped its head into his lap. Nearly unseating OB, who squeaked in surprise before unfolding his spindly inner arms. Though whether he was trying to pet the beast or whack it was difficult to discern.

“There are liable to be alarms on the premises.” Ventress said after another moment of watching the proceedings, arms still folded and expression still pinched. “Considering you seem to want as little of this as possible making it back to Sidious before you’ve positioned everything you’re of a mind to, it’s for the best that we disable them before we attempt anything else.”

A beat of momentary silence made it clear that that had not, in fact, been the plan but Anakin—true to form—adjusted quickly. Gently setting OB aside and dislodging Zaghnal’s head from his lap—much to the voiced displeasure of both droid and beast—and moving toward the pilot’s seat.

“I’ll set us down just behind that rise, there. It should be more than large enough to conceal the Lambda from view while Ventress deals with those alarms.”

The fact that the former Sith assassin could have also collected the DNA as well, while she was in there, was something Rex didn’t bother to point out. Not when Obi-wan, detecting the turn of his thoughts, shot him a look that sat strangely between stern and pleading and it became clear what was actually going on.

For all of his very clear worry for Anakin being placed in the line of fire, he was trying to give him the opportunity to participate in as controlled a setting as could possibly be found.

Rex hadn’t known Anakin when he’d still been a padawan to the older former Jedi but he wouldn’t have been surprised to have found out that the alpha had a vast wealth of experience in mcgyvering similar situations out of missions they’d been sent on that he’d simply dusted off for further use now that the time had come back around for the omega to resume active participation in war.

All things considered, for all that it was—to say the least of it—a pursuit that was only marginally better controlled than simply setting Anakin loose on a battlefield it was likely for the best.

“I should go change into my gear.” He said instead, turning to make his way toward the back of the ship. “It’s been a few years. I might have to refamiliarize myself with some of it.”

Mostly because the Kaminoans, who’d been responsible for initially devising the kit that had since been taken over by the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps, hadn’t exactly designed the stuff with convenience in mind. As such some of the fastenings were…more complicated than ought to have been feasible.

That the Empire hadn’t bothered to change that spoke volumes of how little they valued their rank and file despite them now being made up almost entirely of organic humans.

He’d left his old equipment behind, largely owing to the fact that it simply hadn’t fit any more after…well…needless to say a largely sedentary life in an old AT-TE on a forgotten planet where most open ground was inadvisable to set foot on on account of giant worms hadn’t exactly been conducive to retaining a soldier’s physique. He’d gone soft in the opposite direction that Anakin had, quite frankly. A contrast that was all the more stark compared to his other brothers—now packmates—who’d either remained at their posts or, like Cody, had depended on odd jobs to survive.

In honesty, Rex was surprised they even made armor in his size. But he supposed that change had been one the Empire hadn’t been able to avoid, considering organics were anything but standardized.

Boomer and Voca had gotten it for him from the barracks aboard The Apophis; understandably, and likely under direct order from their admiral, they hadn’t asked questions. It was the same, or very near it, to the second phase armor they’d been issued all those years ago, lacking the customizations he’d engineered into his own. And all of the markings. The wear and tear of experience.

Wearing it, he’d look like a shiny again.

The thought sat oddly in his chest. Like something not quite right, after everything he’d been through. And he wondered, distantly, if some portion of that wrongness had been felt by Anakin and Obi-wan the first moments after looking into the faces of their younger reflections.

“You alright, Rex?”

He hadn’t heard the door open and jumped at the sound of the other man’s voice. Anakin was watching him, leaning against the doorframe, with an expression on his face that he couldn’t quite place. Uncomfortable. Not like he didn’t want to be there, but like someone who still wasn’t certain they were welcome.

No doubt it would take a long time for that to fade, if it ever did, despite all reassurance to the contrary.

To a degree, Rex supposed, he deserved to feel that way after everything he’d done.

Unlike most in the galaxy, he was trying to make amends.

He was his brother. And it was clear to see the pain that he was in.

So he forgave him. Even if what he’d had a hand in was arguably unforgivable.

“Have we landed already?”

“No. I left OB at the controls.” Anakin waited just long enough for him to process the notion of the tiny metal menace being left the responsibility of piloting a ship before he laughed. “I’m kidding. We landed a few minutes ago. Ventress has gone to deal with the alarms; she won’t be back for an hour at least.”

His humor had disappeared, toward the end, leaving him constantly angry and on edge. Rex had chalked it up to the stress of the war finally catching up to him. Rationalizing it as something that happened to all of them, in the end; scars they all handled differently. He hadn’t questioned it.

He should have.

Would it have made any sort of difference if he had?

Had Obi-wan asked himself these same questions, looking back?

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Anakin was peering at him from beneath dark lashes, the uncertainty on his face now pushed aside in favor of concern. Rex blinked, having to take a moment to recall what that question had even been, and then looked down at the blank face of the helmet in his hands.

He didn’t need to say more, apparently. Because his former general already knew.

“Once we’re safely on Tanalorre, I’ll make sure you have everything you need to modify your gear however you want.” He said. “In the meantime, since we have a bit before we can leave the ship anyway…I brought this.”

It took a moment before he correctly identified the faintly beaten object in Anakin’s hand as an unopened can of blue paint.

“Between the two of us, we should be able to get your armor done before she’s back?”

That faint, unspoken, possibly unconscious expectation he’d be turned away was back. Rex dropped the helmet onto the bed and reached out; not for the paint, but for the other man’s shoulder. Tugging him, gently enough that he could have pulled away had he wanted, toward the bed. Anakin went and they ended up both perched on the edge, side by side, in a way reminiscent of how they’d often ended up sitting on the stairs of The Resolute.

“The help’s appreciated.”

Finally, the tension eased. His face smoothing out into a faint smile. Anakin set the paint on the ground between them with a dull thud and, with a surprisingly practiced motion, popped open the lid. Handing over a brush.

“I brought smaller ones for detailing and larger ones for coloring larger pieces. And this is the kind of paint that dries in about five minutes—not the stuff they gave us back during the war that took days—so everything will be usable immediately.”

Nevermind the fact that paint like that was far too expensive for the Republic to have been throwing at their disposable tin soldiers.

Grim as the thought was, Rex found himself unable to hold back a chuckle.

“You’ve gotten used to luxury, I see.”

Anakin turned pink and ducked behind his fringe.

They settled into companionable silence for a handful of minutes after that. Thorough and efficient as they applied pigment to all the right places to make the new gear look a margin more like what he’d once been used to. It was after Anakin had finished painstakingly applying the familiar Jaig eyes to his helmet that he broke the quiet again.

“You know what these mean, right?”

Anakin cocked his head in confusion. “The Jaig? It’s…awarded for an act of courage, right? It’s a Mandalorian thing.”

“Yes,” Rex said with a snort, “it is a ’Mandalorian thing’. Part of a larger tradition of marking armor with honors, clan symbols, and representations of loved ones.” He handed him his right shoulder guard; the as of yet unpainted one. “If you have a mark, I’d wear it.”

Anakin looked utterly bewildered. Eyes wide and blue and wet. Mouth opening around words he didn’t seem to be able to make come. Then, abruptly, he nodded and turned his attention to the white plastoid. Relaxing against him when Rex bumped their shoulders together and, now long after that, starting to softly purr.

A handful of minutes later he’d donned his finished armor; still disconcertingly glossy, for all that that would fade with time, but now appropriately doctored into bearing the trappings of the 501st and proudly sporting the image of a serpent and an ever lily on the shoulder. Just in time for a knock to descend on the door before it opened, revealing Obi-wan on the other side. The alpha’s eyes immediately finding the new symbol.

“Ventress is back?” Anakin asked from where he was standing at the sink, running the brushes under a stream of water.

“Yes.” He said. “The alarms have been disabled, though that will only last for so long; we’ll need to make use of the window that we have. If you’re ready?”

“We’re ready.” Anakin said, drying his hands before going to a cabinet. Opening the doors and pulling out a blaster, which he hung at his belt. “I’ll head up to the front to make sure OB will be alright while we’re out. It should only take a moment.”

“Of course, Dear One.”

Anakin moved past him, disappearing through the door, and like that, without further ceremony, they found themselves alone. Obi-wan looked at him again, then, and this time his expression was an open one of tired relief.

“Thank you, Rex.”

He’d had some involvement with the Duchess of Mandalore, in the past. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that one look at the placement of the mark that Anakin had painted told him everything he’d needed to know.

Smirking, faintly, behind the faceplate of his helmet Rex offered up a faint shrug. “I’m not certain what you mean to thank me for. You’re not the only one who loves him.”

They all did.

“A fact I’m grateful for.” Kenobi had always had a habit of gilded words. Rex wasn’t certain he’d ever heard the other man sound so sincere. “I’ve tried to protect him alone twice already. I failed. I fear for what I’d do, if I were to fail again.”

Obi-wan didn’t give him the opportunity to reply to that statement, sweeping out of the room an instant later. Rex wasn’t certain what he would have said, even if he had.

Ventress was leaning against the wall of the Lambda when he made it back to the main room, arms crossed and pale face making a tense attempt at being unreadable while her eyes lingered in Quinlan. The other alpha standing beside Obi-wan, listening to the man detail the layout of the base they were about to siege. Anakin was standing not far away from her, the clingy little droid still clutched in his arms and Zaghnal slumped across his feet, and smiled when he joined them. A playful glint in his blue eyes.

“Well, Captain, it’s time to see if you still remember how to shoot.”

“I remember that I taught you how to shoot.” He said. “And it sounds to me like you’re looking for a game. Can’t say I think it particularly wise, considering we’re dealing with K droids, but knowing you, Anakin, it’s probably better we play along than try and talk you out of it.”

Anakin huffed at him, gently settling OB on the nearest chair. “You all talk about me like I’m some sort of wild menace.”

“I can’t possibly imagine why that could be.” Ventress drawled, finally pushing away from the wall. “If the both of you are ready, we’ll leave those two to finish brainstorming whatever plot Kenobi has in mind and start dismantling those droids. We’re hardly served waiting for them.”

She was back outside an instant later, flitting away like a shadow. Anakin cocked his head in a way that left him looking quite a deal like Zaghnal and then glanced at him again. “I guess some things never change. Even years later.”

Mantero was, ultimately, a mausoleum, the largest plot of which had belonged to the Dooku lineage—though the prior Count of Serenno, before Obi-wan had ended up occupying his position, hadn’t been buried there—and as such there were no settlements for them to worry about concealing their activity from. Anakin only hesitating a moment before slipping back into the familiar skin of the General he’d served during the Clone Wars. Pulling the blaster from his belt and holding it at the ready—not quite the way he’d once have held a lightsaber, but similarly; one that left no doubt of his readiness to use it—as he led the way forward.

The facility that had been built there for Obi-wan’s uses at the Empire’s behest was ugly, industrial, and not all that different in appearance to what he’d have expected out of a droid factory. The doors massive, blast shielded and fully able to be sealed tight enough to withstand a siege.

Unfortunately for Sidious, it hadn’t been built with infiltration in mind and, following the same means that the former assassin had used to disable the alarms—with no small amount of effort; both he and Anakin were out of shape, for different reasons, and it showed—they made it inside without drawing any notable attention. Ultimately ending up crowded together in something that was likely meant to pass as an air vent, watching a K droid amble by below them.

“Neither one of you are going to be particularly useful, from the sound of things, if those droids are as resistant to blaster fire as your Captain claims.” Ventress said. “Stick close, Skywalker. The last thing I need is to be implicated in you getting yourself killed; I doubt Kenobi would take that too well.”

“You don’t need to worry that I’m going to go running off alone.” Anakin said, watching the former assassin quietly dislodge the grate from its pins and shift it aside. “Just keep in mind that we’re here to deactivate the droids. Not destroy them. We have a factory set up on Tanalorre for Clone Wars era battle droids as part of our deal with Kalani but there’s only so much damage I’ll be able to fix even with those resources."

“I may not be as familiar with dismantling droids as you are, Skywalker, but I know what I’m doing.”

When it came to the matter of taking the K droid beneath them down, Rex would have to admit she certainly did. The unsuspecting security droid barely having the opportunity to process it had been pounced on from above before it was lying on the floor with a smoking hole in its back. The blade of Ventress’ lightsaber—yellow, now, instead of the blazing carnelian it used to be—casting odd shadows on the walls.

Anakin let out an aggrieved sounding squawk and dropped out of the vent after her. Landing on all fours—with far more grace than Rex managed, following a moment later—and scuttling over to the droid. Shooting a narrow eyed glare in her direction.

“I just said…kriff’s sake! Force willing you didn’t hit anything too important because if you did I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to fix it!”

The beta looked less than impressed with the matter and regarded his fussing over the smoking hunk of metal in front of them with an err of exasperation.

“Considering those things are strong enough to crush your chest with one hand, if they manage to grab hold of you, it’s better that we risk you being unable to repair it than that it’s able to get back up.”

She had a point with that one.

More than a point.

Anakin looked up at him with big, hurt eyes when he put a hand on his shoulder and it became immediately clear that the real source of his distress had very little to do with the possibility that they might lose potential assets that could have been at use against the Empire. The snapped off remains of a restraining bolt clenched, white knuckled, in his fist.

“The droids themselves are resistant to blaster fire but the bolts on them aren’t.” He said. “Anakin and I will shoot them off. That ought to distract them enough to give you the opportunity to shut them down. Without running the risk of destroying them completely.”

Her eyes flicked between them. The bolt in his hand. The stricken set of his features. Ventress wasn’t stupid. Rex knew that much full well from all the times he’d faced her before, on opposite sides of a battlefield. Knew she’d made something off the matter. Thankfully, she didn’t ask. Nodding, a moment later, and turning to leave the hall.

“I’m trusting the two of you not to get me killed.” She said. “Don’t mess this up.”

Anakin straightened up. Reluctantly releasing his grip on the bolt and allowing it to bounce away across the floor.

“Thank you.” He said. “R2 told me. What wearing one of them is like. They don’t have any choice.”

Anakin had always had a love for droids.

It had never stopped him from mowing down legions of clankers, back in the day.

He hadn’t thought anything of it, then. Now, Rex couldn’t help but wonder how much that, too, had weighed on him.

“We’ll give them a choice. But we can’t do anything about those bolts if we stay here. I’m sure she’s getting a bit impatient for us to follow her.”

Anakin blinked, then nodded. Lifting his blaster again and forcing what passed as a smile onto his face. “Still up for the contest?”

The first time he’d handed Anakin—his Jedi General, then—a blaster the other man had been less than comfortable with it. And it had shown even in the way that he’d held the weapon. He’d been an abysmal shot, the first couple of times, but he’d learned quickly and though he’d never gotten to the point of being considered a sharp shooter like Crosshair he’d been among the best in their Legion when it came to hitting his mark. Rex had suspected that some part of that aptitude, at least, had come from the Force. If only because everything about the Jedi, to the untrained eye, had seemed like it was in some way connected to their mysterious powers.

Apparently, he’d been wrong.

That or Sidious, in his wicked madness, had seen fit to strip the other man of the Force but had permitted him a blaster and time to practice shooting because they ended up going head to head in successful shots by the time that it was over. The remnants of destroyed restraining bolts littering the room around them, alongside the deactivated droids.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to find a tie breaker later.” The omega said around a grin as he stowed his weapon at his belt. “That was close.”

“I’m sure we’ll have plenty of opportunities.”

Not that making a regular habit of turning war into a competitive sport was a sound idea. To say the least of it. Judging by the amused glint in his eyes, Anakin knew that much full well.

“Obi-wan should be finished getting the DNA profile and unleashing the rest of the beasts by now. He’s probably called on Piett; The Apophis ought to be here in another few minutes.” Anakin said. “We should probably get started moving them outside for loading onto the star destroyer.”

Stepping around Zaghnal’s hunched form as the massive beast nosed through the wreckage of broken metal and burnt rubber covering the floor, Rex clipped his own blasters back into place and bent to help the omega hoist the first of the K droids up off the ground.

Chapter Text

Two Imperial Star Destroyers had been brought down over Dinzo.

The Apophis had been one of them.

According to what little had filtered back to him of the Rebellion’s intelligence—Scakir, and the efforts to transform the forgotten planet into a proper safeworld where the twins could find shelter, having become his primary focus when he wasn’t being specifically called on to attempt to sway other scattered cells of resistance to join their alliance, Bail admittedly wasn’t privy to much of it but this much had immediately caught his attention and concern—the Empire believed that both Kulkan and the Grand Inquisitor were dead. And credit—for better or worse—seemed to be being levied in their direction.

If it was a rebel cell that had been responsible, it hadn’t been anyone connected to them.

Yoda—hunched at the far end of the table—and Ahsoka—leaned against the nearby wall, expression unreadable beyond a sense of deep concern—seemed unconvinced of the truth of matters. The Grandmaster convinced that whatever had really happened had been some manner of machination by the Sith to frame them, and use the Empire’s distraction to employ a sleight of hand.

Considering who it was that they were dealing with—Obi-wan, who’d always been a devious opponent to say the least of matters—Bail supposed he wouldn’t dismiss the matter as something outside of the realm of possibility. Certainly not when he was better served worrying over what that might possibly mean for them.

Regardless of how long it took for Sidious to find out the truth of the matter, it was all but a certainty that the Empire’s attention was now on them with far more focus than before. And that was certain to lead them into considerable danger in the relatively near future.

But the future would have to be a concern for later, as there were far more immediately important matters to focus on for the time being.

“Slain the Grand Inquisitor has been. Shot down two star destroyers were, though found only the remains of one could provably be. Begun to boil over unrest has throughout the galaxy; suspect the timing is.” Yoda said. “Making his move, Kulkan is.”

“We knew this was going to happen eventually. He was never reckless like my Master was, but he was never one to sit idly by when he could be doing something to advance his goals. Even back when he was still…” Ahsoka’s expression wavered for a moment before she abruptly pushed forward. “We should make our own. It should be safe, now, to bring the twins to Scakir. They’d have just turned fifteen recently. The sooner they can start their training the better.”

“Trained only Leia shall be.”

Bail and Ahsoka both exchanged brief glances over the Grandmaster's continued insistence that only one of the twins be trained, despite their dire need of capable hands, all because of whatever vision he’d had that had served to lead them astray in the first place. But the young Togruta spoke again before he had the chance to voice misgivings.

“Even if he isn’t going to be trained to be a Jedi, Grandmaster, he can still be taught to fight. And he’ll want to be.” She said. “He’s Anakin’s son. There’s no way he’ll be willing to sit by and do nothing.”

Anakin’s son, who shared nearly every facet of appearance with his sire; perhaps moreso, now, that the man who’d once been Vader had had his dynamic altered. Who shared the same floral notes in his scent. And who’d displayed a deep interest in his father—who he’d been and what had happened to him—despite Owen’s best efforts to steer him away from the matter.

Anakin’s son who was still on Tatooine, at risk of being spirited away by Kulkan the moment his omega’s mercurial moods turned toward wanting his children back after all. Who was an omega himself and would be taken away from the closest thing he had to a pack in favor of bringing him there, to that sad quiet place, where he’d be expected by Yoda to strive for none-attachment despite not being trained. All because he had the Force, and to do otherwise might be somehow dangerous.

Acute Attachment Syndrome, even managed actively, limited quality of life.

Untreated, it could kill.

Even knowing its dangers, and watching for the signs, there was no guarantee they’d be able to keep it at bay.

They couldn’t leave him where he was. Couldn’t allow the inevitable to happen, even if that might be better for Luke in the long run. Because they had to think about the war, and the ultimate effort, instead of the people in it. The people it would cost.

He’d do his best to look after him. And should it come to it, he’d find a way to get Luke back to his father and the little pack that he and Obi-wan had made; the only thing that stood a chance to save him. Even if it meant risking everything the rebellion had managed to build, by then.

Because he’d seen too much horror, and had his hand in enough tragedy, to be able to bear the thought of the bright boy he’d seen at that isolated moisture farm withering to death like a desert flower clipped from the vine.

Because he was Padme’s son.

“I’ll look after him.” He said, thankfully without enough of a pause to signal a lapse in his attention. To perhaps tip one of the Jedi—perceptive, thanks to their connection with the Force, in ways he simply couldn’t fathom—off that he’d been contemplating something that might as well be treason. Something that would absolutely put them all at risk. “He might have an interest in learning to fly. Becoming familiar with the inside of an x-wing ought to keep him sufficiently distracted. At least for a while.”

It didn’t seem as if either of them noticed anything amiss. Yoda’s ears drooped, the aged Jedi still looking less than pleased with the notion that Luke would be permitted any sort of involvement with the rebellion at all. Ahsoka’s gaze seeming momentarily far away. Likely recalling how much her Master had loved to fly, or perhaps one of the specific less than advisable escapades that love had gotten them involved in during the course of the Clone Wars.

“If we’re going to make it to Tatooine in anything approaching good time, we ought to set off in the next hour.” Bail continued. “Once we’ve collected Luke, we’ll head for Alderaan. The flight back will give the two of them time to meet. And to start adjusting to each other’s existence."

Time Luke had already had, up to a point, having learned of the existence of his sister partially by accident when the beta looking after him had held him at blaster point.

Leia, though, wasn’t aware of the fact she had a brother. Let alone a twin. No doubt, he’d hear quite a bit about that little deception from his daughter in due time.

Preparations for the journey didn’t take long, all things considered. Not when most of it was already done well in advance; most of the little settlement simply waiting for the moment to come where the decision to retrieve the twins would be made. The decision to take them both from what had been their normal lives and place them on a path of war.

One that wasn’t easy to make, as a father.

A decision there was no real choice in. For any of them. Not while there remained a dragon to be slain; a beast with two heads that had once been something noble.

The Tantive IV held up well for its age, even subjected to the more bitter elements of Scakir and maintenance that was both less frequent than preferable and less skilled, owing to the limitation of parts and able mechanics that were available on the isolated world. Still, the hum of its engines sounded familiar as Captain Antilles fired them up and carefully guided the ship out of the atmosphere. Making the jump into hyperspace.

He saw C-3PO on several occasions. The old protocol droid that Skywalker had built in his youth puttering about, attending to any task he could find and otherwise pacing like an anxious tooka. It wasn't a particularly odd sight, all things considered. But R2’s absence from the other’s side, though increasingly common in recent years, still seemed out of place.

The astromech was depressed. Had been since the disastrous events on Mustafar; since being dragged away from where it had wanted to wait, on that volcanic planet, for a master that was never coming back.

It was strange, thinking in such terms about a droid. Something that was a facsimile of life—some more convincing than others—but little more. Yet it was undeniable in every refusal made by R2 to activate. And in the fact that the most vigor he’d seen from the astromech in years had been the binary dressing down he’d been unable to make sense of after it had learned it hadn’t been permitted to see Vader again and the immediate aftermath of Ahsoka’s return, though that hadn’t lasted long.

He should have had him reset years ago, around the same time as C-3PO had been. But something—maybe pity, he wasn’t sure—had stopped him. And now…a sense of foreboding stayed his hand instead. That something terrible might come of matters if the rolling menace wasn’t left precisely as he was.

Was it instinct that warned him? Or, perhaps, some brief touch of the Force he couldn’t normally perceive yet which Yoda, and all the other Jedi before him, believed was present in all things?

Maybe it was just stress. Or his imagination. Maybe nothing was going to happen at all, and Luke wouldn’t spiral into illness upon a failed adjustment to his new surroundings, and he was just being foolish. Risking a great deal for nothing.

At least R2’s lengthy sessions of being powered down left the astromech’s knowledge of their plans and movements years out of date. So if it did suddenly revolt, steal a ship and go flying off into the larger galaxy in an effort to reunite with its master it wouldn’t be able to give them any pertinent information.

The jump to Tatooine was the shorter leg of the journey by a considerable degree, Scakir’s positioning within the Mid Rim placing it closer to the Outer Rim than the Core, and they arrived over the desert planet within the better part of a week. A part of Bail had expected to find the place overtaken by Vader’s forces—a notion which, it seemed, the other two had shared—but all that met them was the same heat and sand that he’d experienced the last time that he’d been there. Mos Espa was a hive of activity, despite the oppressive temperatures, with no signs of disturbance on the part of Stormtroopers or Clones.

“Wherever they’re hiding now that they’ve slipped the Empire’s leash,” Ahsoka said, “it doesn’t seem like it’s here. Which means he hasn’t gotten to Luke before us.”

Because he’d chosen not to.

It was the only explanation, when Obi-wan had known where Vader’s son had been hidden all along. When the former Jedi, now Sith, no longer had any reason to conceal information on the behalf of the Rebellion.

Why he’d make such a choice Bail couldn’t begin to guess. In the end, it was better for them so he supposed the ‘why’ of Vader’s reasoning mattered little.

“Been here before you have.” Yoda piped up from his other side. Starkly obvious despite his efforts to conceal himself within his cloak, on account of his small stature. One claw raised in an attempt to shield his face from the sand kicked up by the whipping desert winds. “Know where he can be found you do? Where Obi-wan hid him? And how to get there?”

He did, if only on account of the vague directions provided by the smuggler who’d called himself ‘Han’.

“It’s too far to go on foot. Especially not when a child will be with us coming back.” Fifteen was hardly too young to take care of himself, at least for the most part, and Luke had grown up on this planet. No matter how sheltered Owen and Beru had kept him, the likelihood was that the little omega knew more about managing survival on Tatooine than any of them. Even still, he didn’t like the thought of putting the boy at risk. “We’re going to need an Eopie.”

He remembered where the Eopie dealer was as well, if only after a handful of minutes squinting at signs bearing unfamiliar Huttese script in search of recognizable landmarks. The placid creatures farted in response to their presence, and eagerly followed along by their lead reigns. One of them proving itself considerably more interested in Yoda than the Grandmaster was in it—either on account of his size or out of a desire to eat his hood—and was rewarded for its curiosity with a whack from the ancient Jedi’s gimmer stick.

He ended up riding behind Ahsoka, who was doing a rather poor job of hiding her smirk, leaving Bail to take Luke back with him once they’d retrieved him.

The twin suns hung broad and gleaming overhead, baking the sky white and hard and turning the sand beneath them into a rippling sea of fire. But their mounts seemed unbothered, adapted as they were to the unforgiving environment, and made good time in delivering them within sight of the isolated moisture farm: all that was visible of the structure above ground the squat hump of the entrance and a handful of apparatuses he could only assume were vaporators of some form.

“We should be careful from here.” He said, pulling his mount to a stop just before crossing onto the property and prompting Ahsoka to do the same. Glancing back at him in confusion. “Owen is Luke’s uncle. Your Master’s step brother. He’s…protective of the boy, to say the least. Would never let Obi-wan anywhere near him. Has strange views about the Jedi; that they’re a cult, who stole his brother and got him killed; turned into a monster, now. He held me at blasterpoint, when I first came by.”

Ahsoka’s expression had settled into one of mild alarm. “So expect an unfriendly greeting.” She said. “Does he know we were always going to come back?”

“He was informed that a time would come where Luke would no longer be safe here, and that he’d have to be taken away.” He said. “That’s where my concern comes from.”

He wasn’t Vader’s sibling by blood, merely by marriage, and from the sound of matters they were all but perfect strangers. Still, it seemed the beta loved his brother. Enough so, certainly, to take in his son and look after him; a not inconsiderable strain, surely, on a planet as harsh as this one.

Bail couldn’t help but wonder what Shmi must have told him about the little boy she’d given up to the Jedi, presumably so that he could have a better life free of the slavery the Order had knowingly left her in.

“Boobytrapped the property is not.” Yoda said, leaping down off the back of the Eopie and promptly putting enough distance between himself and the animal that it wouldn’t be able to attempt to chew on him again. “Time we do not have to waste.”

Admittedly, he had a point with that much.

Dismounting as well, ignoring the harsh crack his boots made against the parched earth, Bail did the best he could to smooth the wrinkles from his cloak before starting forward. Forcing himself not to give any hint of the hesitance he was actually feeling away as he reached out to knock on the door.

The answer didn’t come immediately, though it was difficult to tell if it was due to the size of the structure buried beneath the sand or reluctance on the part of the occupants inside. When it finally creaked open, it was to reveal Beru on the other side.

She remembered him, it seemed, and must have realized immediately why they had come because her mild face turned cold; the sort of steely you could only really find in country-folk who were used to having to deal with even the worst for themselves. For a moment, it appeared she might be debating telling them to take a short flight off the planet—albeit in less rude terms—then, with an almost defeated sort of reluctance, she sighed instead.

“He’s out with Owen repairing the northwest vaporator after the most recent sandstorm swept through.” She said. “They won’t be back until evening. If you’d like to wait—?”

“Collect Skywalker ourselves we will.” Yoda abruptly piped up. “Time to waste we do not have. Make its move at any moment the Empire might, or Vader. To safety he must be taken.”

Her fingers turned white against the frame of the door. “Bring him by, before you go. So we can say goodbye. And I can gather his things.”

It was the closest thing to an agreement they were going to get.

Ahsoka, realizing this, was quick to speak instead. “We will. Thank you.”

Much to the Grandmaster’s dismay they were back on the Eopie a handful of minutes later, padding across the sand in the indicated direction. Thanks to the unique flatness that only ever seemed to come about in desert terrain it didn’t take long before the correct vaporator, and the figures working on clearing out the filtration system, became visible. But the field of view in that place was deceiving because it took almost another hour before they were within earshot.

Thankfully, Owen left his blaster rifle—likely brought along in case of aggression by Raiders, or any of the local wildlife—leaning against the shielding of the machine—much larger up close than Bail had thought it to be at first glance—but that didn’t stop him from aiming a glare in their direction that would have halted a Krayt in its tracks. Luke, picking up on the beta’s sudden agitation, wriggled himself free of the open panel and straightened up. Peering around like a wary lava meerkat only to come bounding over, deaf to the other man’s protests, as soon as he spotted them.

“Uncle Bail!”

“By the Force,” Ahsoka said, half under her breath, as he ran toward them; kicking up comet trails of sand on his wake. “He really does look just like him.”

Blonder, because of the sun. Sweeter in the face, maybe, if only for the absence of the bone-deep sadness Vader carried with him like a mantle. He didn’t attempt to leap onto him this time, though how much of that was due to the fact that he was still mounted several feet off the ground he couldn’t be sure, but he grinned from ear to ear as he skidded to a stop. Wrapping the Eopie’s head in his arms and, to the vocalized delight of the animal, pulling it against his chest.

“You said you’d bring Leia with you the next time you came. Is she with you? Do I get to meet my sister?”

It seemed that Yoda saw a great deal of Anakin in his behavior—the excitable chattering most notably, likely dating back to when he’d been a youngling well before Bail had ever encountered him—because he quickly noticed a sense of radiating disapproval from the old Master. Ignoring the matter, at least for the time being, Bail did his best to answer the questions he’d already been asked before Luke had the opportunity to fire off more at him. All while keeping a cautious eye on Owen’s approach.

“Leia is still on Alderaan, but we will be picking her up before we return to where you’ll be living for the next few years; to keep you hidden during the war. You’ll be able to meet her soon.”

“To keep us hidden.” Luke repeated. “Because Dad is looking for us.”

He wasn’t.

If he had been, he’d already have found them both.

But the way Luke had said it—like he wanted nothing more in the world than for his sole living parent to want him enough to bother searching the galaxy for him—made it seem like informing him of as much would serve more as a crushing blow than any sort of reassurance. So he held his tongue.

“Luke,” Owen’s hand found his nephew’s shoulder, firm but gentle, for all that his hard gaze never left them. “Head to the speeder. We’ll go back early; you can’t just go running off with them without preparing first.”

The little blonde, abruptly appearing to remember himself and what he’d just been doing, startled slightly and glanced back toward the machine. “But Uncle Owen, the vaporator—.”

“I’ll take care of it later.” He said. “I managed for years before you were old enough to help. I’ll manage again. And if it comes to it, I’ll hire a hand or two. Or buy some droids off one of the Jawas.”

Luke still looked less than certain on the matter, but nodded and began trotting away. Lanky and mostly leg, like an Orbak colt. The moment he was out of earshot, Owen turned narrowed eyes on them; the majority of his ire focused on Yoda and—perhaps because her sabers were visible on her belt—Ashoka.

“You lot already ruined Anakin. You’d better not ruin him too.” He growled, managing to sound surprisingly menacing for a beta. “I told Ben this over and over again. I don’t want him trained. I can’t stop it, as much as I might wish otherwise. I can see that now. But Luke doesn’t have the disposition for a battlefield. And if he comes back broken, after all of this, or he doesn’t come back at all, you’ll find out just how good of a shot living out here has made me.”

With that, he grabbed the blaster rifle and headed for the nearby speeder himself.

A moment of stunned silence followed before Ahsoka recovered enough to speak. “They might not be blood, but that’s definitely his brother.”

They didn’t linger for very long but the Eopie were nowhere near as fast as a speeder and by the time they made it back to the farmstead the little family had already completed their preparations. Owen—still slate faced—clapped Luke on the shoulder and, just for good measure, warned him once more about being wary of alphas even while not in the Outer Rim. Beru hugged the pup and ruffled his hair and pressed his bag into his hands. And Luke promised to return, once the war was over; chirping happily like he expected it to all be said and done a week from now.

He was young.

He’d learn, given time, the hard lessons that they all had.

Bail would make certain he stayed alive for long enough to do so.

Still radiating happy excitement and eager anticipation for what he perceived to be the adventure to come, Luke accepted a hand up onto the Eopie’s back. Grinning ear to ear. Chattering excitedly about how he’d never ridden in a starship before and how interested he was in the experience until Ahsoka let slip she’d been Anakin’s padawan and immediately became the subject of fixation for what seemed like an eon’s worth of questions.

It was a happy moment. And a peaceful one, all things considered. And with fate being as cruel as it seemed to be, of late, Bail ought to have known better than to fail to brace himself for the inevitable other shoe to drop. Yet still, somehow, the sense of dread which overcame him at the sight of Captain Antilles’ pale face the moment they stepped back aboard the Tantive IV struck like a blow.

“We’ve an emergency, Sir. The Empire has launched an attack on Alderaan.”

Koboh looked little different than it had during his first visit there, nor did Rambler’s Reach: a sprawl of rugged buildings, stretching across an arid valley. Occupied by rugged folk—mostly miners—who would likely still recognize him, at least by his fake name. And now, the last stop on the road to Tanalorre and the safety it offered. Anakin, posted once more at the control panel of the Lambda, had contorted himself into an odd half-seated half-raised-on-his-toes position in order to peer curiously over the nose of the ship at the planet beneath them as he maneuvered it in for landing. The engines slowing to a dull whirr as they powered down and they alighted at last with a faint rattle.

“I’ve heard about this place from Cal,” he said after a moment as the sounds of the others shuffling about in preparation to disembark started up behind them. Zaghnal letting out a burring yawn as he leapt down from the couch he’d been sprawled across. “But I still wasn’t certain what to expect. It’s…certainly a frontier world.”

“And it has been since the High Republic. Though it seems that the Jedi fortifications here were abandoned around the same time that the Order withdrew from Tanalorre.” Obi-wan said, drawing the omega into his arms as he rose. Rumbling in contentment when Anakin immediately leaned his full weight against him, trusting him to hold him up. “It’s remained largely uninhabited since that time owing to its location, the destruction wrought by the explosion of its moon during the Great Hyperspace War, and the recently remedied infestation of outlaws. Priorite being the only main draw, most of which is sold on to the Empire via contractors; to my understanding, it has military applications.”

“Which means we’ll be cornering the market on it. With a bit of funding, and help from Cal, I’m sure the miners here won’t mind too much if they end up selling direct to a different Empire.”

They had some capital—mostly donations given as incentives for favor from several of the formerly Separatist Senators he’d ’dealt with’ on Sidious behalf throughout his tenure as his apprentice—but it wouldn’t be enough long term to make much of a dent in the expenses nation building was liable to incur. Nor to fund the cornering of a market that the Empire would, presumably, be quite interested in keeping a grasp on. Especially if that ‘military application’ coincided in any way with Project Stardust.

The coffers of a certain Hutt, though, might just stretch well enough to cover the rest.

“That will be something we can concern ourselves with in time, Nal Hutta.” He said. “For now, let’s focus on freeing you. The destruction of that collar can’t be delayed.”

“Nor would I want it to be.” Anakin said, reluctantly drawing back after a moment. “We should probably figure out what Maul has been up to as well, seeing as he’d have gotten here before us. The settlement doesn’t seem like it’s in ruins, but with him we can’t quite be sure.”

There was levity in his mate’s tone, no doubt owing to the fact that—rather inexplicably, and likely originating from a deep desire to see him agitated—Anakin and the former Sith Lord got along like a house on fire. Obi-wan had to put effort into keeping a frown off his face.

“Yes, Dear One. I suppose we should.” He allowed, watching Anakin go to collect OB from where the excitable droid had managed to get himself trapped on a window ledge. The others had all already disembarked, though he could see Zaghnal’s shadow lingering just outside the door. “The Apophis sent word a few days ago; Piett managed to locate a stretch of open ground large enough to house a Destroyer about four parsecs south of here. No doubt, we’ll be staying out of the ship as Pyloon’s, from my understanding, is more a saloon than an inn.”

“It’s not like we aren’t both familiar with doing just that; in both Venator and Imperial class versions.” Anakin said. “We’ll manage.”

They always had before.

They always would, if Obi-wan had any power in the matter.

“I’ll send word to Cal that we've arrived. No doubt he’ll be by to see us within the next few days, if not tomorrow; all depending on how quickly he can slip through the Hidden Path’s fingers.” He said. “You’ll be able to send a message out to Boba Fett today?”

“I already did. On our way in.” Anakin said. “Haven’t gotten a response back yet but he’s reliable. He’ll get back to me within another few days, and within a few days of that he ought to be able to get here.”

“You trust him a great deal, for a bounty hunter.”

“He’s a beta, Ji Muna, just like all his brothers.”

Obi-wan snorted. “I’d no intent to come off as jealous, Dear One. Merely surprised; most would consider trusting a bounty hunter to only be a rung above the same for a smuggler.”

“He proved himself.”

“Except for the ‘disintegration incident’.”

“Well, Vader found that amusing. Despite the setback.”

Anakin’s eyes lowered and his shoulders curled in. A note of shame entering his scent. Stifling a growl at his own misstep, Obi-wan reached for the other man’s arm. Drawing him close against his chest again and trapping the little droid between them.

“That isn’t who you are. It never was.”

“Yet his crimes are mine. His actions. I bear responsibility for all of it.”

He had to stifle a growl. Tamp down the urge to show his teeth. Instead, he pressed their foreheads together. Hand slipping around to the back of his neck and pressing, faintly; not enough to scruff, but enough to calm. Anakin resisted for a moment, stubborn as ever. Wanting to hold on to the guilt. The grief. Likely out of some misinformed belief that he deserved to suffer. Then, he went lax and let his eyes flutter shut. Sighing.

“Will there ever come a time where I feel like I’ve done enough to make up for any of it? Or will I always feel…like this?”

He didn’t have an answer for him. And he’d never hated himself more. “I don’t know. But I’ll be here for you, Anakin. Either way.”

His mate nodded, but didn’t otherwise answer, and placed a hand against his chest. Fingers curling in the fabric he wore to anchor itself there. They stood like that for a long time after without moving. Then, reluctantly, Obi-wan stepped back enough to gently nudge the omega toward the door.

“We have some time before nightfall. We ought to familiarize ourselves with the town while we have the chance.”

Anakin nodded and allowed him to lead him from the Lambda by the hand.

Maul, as it turned out, had been haunting one of the many priorite borrascas pockmarking the planet’s surface, lurking around the settlement by day like some dangerous specter, and quickly made an appearance after their arrival. Delivering a report—clearly aimed at Anakin, more than him, though Obi-wan didn’t give the other alpha the satisfaction of allowing that to ruffle him—on the successful distribution of orders for chaos dispatched to his various contacts, and the glee with which many of them had taken the opportunity. Soon enough, the better part of the galaxy would be burning and Sidious would have no hope of spotting their movements through the smoke.

Not in time.

They didn’t linger in Rambler’s Reach long after that, though Anakin—pleased with the weather, and tolerant enough of the dust despite its best efforts to coat everything in sight—did get the chance to wander into Pyloon’s where it became clear that Cal had mentioned him to the Latero who owned the place, because he was greeted with a jovial welcome likely only reserved for the beta’s known friends. Returning to where the destroyer had been docked and to the rest of their pack, they spent the night in the Lamba on account of his bunk onboard not being large enough to hold the both of them and were greeted in the morning with a message that Cal was waiting for them.

The red haired beta called out to them in greeting once they drew within hearing distance, pushing himself away from where he’d been leaning against the outer entrance of Pyloons. Anakin perking up and trotting toward him, OB chirping excitedly at the sight of BD.

“I heard from Anakin what happened on Jabbim.” Obi-wan said as they reached their packmate, subtly checking the younger man over for any signs of lingering injury. “It’s good to see that you’re alright. Were there any casualties?”

“No.” He said. “It was close. But thanks to your warning we all made it out.” Though the faint wince Cal made a moment after he finished saying that left Obi-wan wondering what the leadership of the Hidden Path might have had to say about him not being open about the matter of their identities. Seeming to sense the turn of his thoughts, the beta said “I should probably warn the both of you that Kawlan is expecting to meet you once you get to Tanalorre.”

“We’ve already met.” Anakin said, following the other man as he moved toward the outer door of the saloon. Obi-wan trailing them both from not far behind.

“Not in person. He doesn’t feel like he got the necessary chance to ‘size you up’.”

“You’d better warn him he’ll be ‘sizing me down’ if he’s expecting Vader. I’m shorter than I used to be.”

Obi-wan concealed a snort behind a cough as the inner door slid open with a faint hiss. A spill of music greeting them as they stepped inside. Pyloon’s was all but empty, aside from the bartender M-6NK and Greez, reclined in his chair, but at that hour—early enough in the morning that the establishment wasn’t technically open to the public—that was only to be expected. Anakin looked around with bright enough curiosity that anyone looking on would have been fooled into believing he’d never been there, peering through the foggy glass of the fish tank at the animals swimming slow circles inside.

“I heard something about K droids?” Cal asked after another moment, when it seemed like the prospect of the Hidden Path’s leader expecting an audience with them would have no further input.

Anakin, brightening further at the opportunity to discuss his latest project, immediately turned away from the fish. A wide smile lighting up his face, forcing Obi-wan to blink sunspots out of his eyes. “We recovered them from the Mantero facility. I’m going to be repairing and reprogramming them once we get to Tanalorre, but I could use help if you and BD wouldn’t mind?”

BD immediately squeaked an apparently affirmative response, considering OB’s excited reaction and rapidly spinning wheel. Cal and Anakin both exchanged fond looks over their companions.

“I don’t know how available I’ll be, but I’ll come by when I can to lend a hand. BD, though, seems happy to help even when I can’t.”

“I’m sure he’s eager to spend more time with OB.” Anakin said. “How are things going? With the two of you? And Kata?”

Cal’s face turned nearly the same shade of his hair and Anakin let out a bark of laughter, dark curls tumbling down around his face. Not for nearly the first time, and decidedly not for the last, it struck Obi-wan just how beautiful he was. 

To the beta’s credit, despite having the coloring of an angry Reek, he didn’t stumble over his reply. “Things have been good. I don’t know…we haven’t really had that conversation. Merrin and I.” He said. “But Kata has adjusted well. We found out recently that she’s force sensitive. Merrin's going to train her.”

“To be a Nightsister?” Obi-wan asked, taking care to keep his voice mild. Still, the question earned him a sharp sideeye, as if the younger man expected him to demand otherwise. “Easy, Cal. We might well seek to establish the Je’daii in the Jedi’s place but that doesn’t mean all other Force practices throughout the galaxy are to be rooted out and destroyed. Only those which cause damage and distress. Unlike the Sith, the dark side has no distaste for Merrin’s people. And with their traditions and power on the brink of extinction, fostering a new generation is a wise endeavor to say the very least of matters.”

“But that’s no reason not to train her to use a lightsaber as well.” Anakin said. “The rebellion is out for our blood, led by Jedi who believe all practitioners of the dark side are ‘evil’ and must be destroyed. So is my father’s Empire; Sidious hated the Nightsisters and already once tried to destroy them, all because he viewed Mother Talzin as a threat. And once they’ve been dealt with, one way or another, and this war is over another might start at any time. This one against monsters that even the Force is afraid of. The more able we all are to defend ourselves the better.”

The uncertainty that flashed across his face was familiar. The same doubt he’d once confronted every time he’d looked into a mirror, from the moment Anakin had come into his care to the final days of their time together as Jedi. “You are perfectly capable to have survived this long, Cal. And you’re not alone. We are a pack, after all. She’ll learn from all of us, by the time this is over.”

“I’m the only one of the three of us that ended up with a padawan after becoming a knight the proper, traditional way.” Anakin said. “It doesn’t make a difference.”

Taking mercy on the other man—it was difficult to tell if he was reassured by the notion that there was no such thing as ‘ready’ when it came to teaching or simply disappointed the fantasy had been dashed—Obi-wan moved to push the conversation in another direction. 

“Are Merrin and Kata with you, or did you leave them on Tanalorre?”

“We are here.”

He jumped, faintly, at the sound of her voice issuing from nearby, much to the Force’s hissed amusement. Turning to find the other beta tucked into a booth nearly hidden at the crux of the corner of the wall and the door, Kata’s dark eyes peering over the top of the table at him from behind a half-finished glass of green milk.

How much of the interaction, if any of it, had been an intentional test he wasn’t certain but it seemed they’d passed. At least for the time being. Anakin, either oblivious to the matter or simply uncaring, immediately beelined towards the table. Pulling the pup into his arms, when she wriggled free of the booth to meet him, while purring a string of Huttese endearments and looking every bit the part of the doting uncle.

He’d always been good with children, even back then. The pups in the crèche had adored him. But Obi-wan knew saying as much wouldn’t prove the compliment he wanted it to be, so he held his tongue and watched. Offering a nod and a smile he hoped was sufficiently warm when she peered up at him again, briefly, before ducking back behind the dark spill of Anakin’s hair.

It would do him good to have a pup around. Even if it wasn’t his own.

Again, the urge to defy Anakin’s request and go collect Luke, at the very least, from Tatooine reared its head.

For the first time, the Force answered with a hiss to wait. All in its time. That Luke would come back to them of his own accord, soon enough, and everything would at last be put right. 

He gritted his teeth and held himself in place.

“Since the two of you are waiting on your bounty hunter anyway, we thought we’d show you around. Koboh’s a nice place. Nicer now than it used to be with the Raiders finally gone.” Cal said after another moment’s silence. “I arranged for some Nekko, and Greez prepared a lunch if you’re both ready?”

The part of the royal tour that Anakin had enjoyed most had been getting out into nature. Seeing sights he hadn’t before. Places that he hadn’t visited. This would be a good distraction. For both of them. With a last bit of effort, Obi-wan finally managed to derail his focus from the notion that waiting more when he could act instead, and potentially further his mate’s recovery, was ultimately for the best and nodded. “I think some fresh air and exploration would do us both some good.” He said. “Lead the way.”

Cal led them back out of the saloon and across the broad, dusty road which ran through the center of Rambler’s Reach to where a fenced in paddock surrounded what Obi-wan assumed was a stable. The structure housing several of the avian-like Nekko that the inhabitants of the planet favored for travel, owing to the rocky terrain and frequent inclines which made the use of speeders less than ideal. Obi-wan, during his time undercover on the planet, had seen the beasts before but had never gotten close to any of them. Anakin, though, had never seen anything of the sort and pulled up short. Eyes wide with surprise but scent lacking the anxiety he’d had upon first being confronted with a Ghorla. Urged on by Kata gently tugging on his hand, and OB’s excited squealing, he edged forward until he was in reaching distance of the nearest beast. Laughing when he was immediately rewarded by it attempting to shove its head down his shirt.

Obi-wan ended up astride a red beast, while Anakin rode the downy yellow one that had so eagerly greeted him, with OB balanced in his lap. Kata—after a moment’s effort to determine whether she was able and willing to ride on her own—perched on the saddle of the smallest beast with Cal and Merrin to either side; both keeping a careful eye out in case she showed any signs of falling.

The trail, though rugged, wasn’t anything terribly demanding and the Nekko managed with the same ease he’d have expected from a stroll through a well-tended park. Leading them passed tar mires and through shaded curving ravines before ending on a clifftop with a nice breeze and an enviable view of the rough natural surroundings the planet had to offer. OB and BD were quick to run off and play among the rocks, their shrill chirping echoing back even when they were out of sight, as Anakin joined Cal in helping to set up the meal they’d brought with them. Pinning a blanket to the hard-dried soil with whatever rocks he could find and then distributing the various plates and containers into easy reach.

“You are always watching him.” Merrin said abruptly from beside him. “It is like your eyes cannot move away. Do you not trust him?”

Obi-wan looked at her, then. Too incensed by the notion to be angry. “I trust him more than anything.” He said. “More often than not, there’s nothing else in the galaxy worth looking at.”

“A smitten alpha.” There was a note of something that might have been surprise in her voice, but he couldn’t quite be certain. “Cal tells me you were apart for a long time. That it was not an amicable parting, and that finding each other again was more out of desperation. Yet now…you are this.”

Never one without the other. How it always should have been. How it was always supposed to be. How it would be, now, and ever forward.

“We were apart as well. Though it was much more agreeable. And not for as long. Nor were we as close as you. Friends, but not…” for a moment they both seemed lost for exactly what word ought to be used there before Merrin simply settled for “more. Yet I still find myself watching him like you do. Because I worry he’ll disappear if I don’t. That I will lose him, as I lost my sisters.”

“He is no longer the Imperial Nuisance running amok on his own, Merrin. He has our protection. Our resources. You both do.”

It didn’t guarantee safety. Not in war. Nothing did, and both of them knew it. An alpha’s mark would mean nothing to the swing of a blade or the point of a blaster, and until he learned the deepest secrets of the Sith—the ones Sidious hoarded like dragon’s gold, which would finally relinquish death’s grip on the back of their necks—he couldn’t truly offer more.

Even then, it was unlikely most of their pack would want it.

A part of him suspected Anakin didn’t want it. That he’d only agreed to the notion of eternity out of some terrible combination of obligation, in order to prevent corruption from rooting itself amidst what they would build, guilt and a desire to make him happy; hold him back from the monster the omega had likely realized he’d become, were he to lose him, well before Obi-wan had ever recognized its nascent potential sitting dormant in his chest.

It didn’t matter. They’d be together. Even if Anakin didn’t strictly want it, he’d make him happy anyway.

“You are not like I expected.” Merrin said, choosing not to comment on the fact that his eyes had once more gone back to his mate. It was only vaguely, in a dazed sort of disconnected way, that Obi-wan realized she was talking about the conversation they’d had with Cal back in town.

“Anakin wants peace. Not conquest. So long as no single planet or practice finds itself possessed of any…ideas the only thing we’ll ask of them is cooperation.” He said. “Unlike Sidious, we don’t see threats in every shadow. And though you refused my mark, you’re still pack enough through Cal. Family. I had no reason to suspect your Nightsisters will pose a threat.”

In their lifetimes, at least, that wasn’t likely to change.

If that came to be different, later, it would be dealt with as necessary.

“Come eat, you two! Before the food gets cold!”

Anakin’s voice broke him from his thoughts and, with a nod in the other beta’s direction, he began making his way toward the little encampment the pair had made with Kata’s help on the flattest portion of the cliff top. Merrin took a seat on Cal’s left side and Obi-wan swiftly found himself becoming Anakin’s seat. Not that he had any complaints about the matter when it left him in the ideal position to feed them both off the same plate and left his mate relaxed and purring against him. Eventually, after they’d finished off the last of the meal, Merrin led Kata away with a plate full of scraps to feed to a nearby population of Relter. Leaving him and Anakin—fast asleep against his chest in the sun—alone at their little camp with Cal.

“I understand from what you said earlier that the leader of the Hidden Path is expecting to speak with us?” He said, gently shifting Anakin about in his lap so that his mate could more comfortably curl into his arms. “Please inform him, when next you see him, that I’m eager to speak with him as well. I’ve a proposition for the Hidden Path. One that will allow us to begin properly securing our Order’s future, and undermine the efforts of both the Jedi and Sith to do the same with their own.”

“You want to use their network to smuggle Force Sensitive children out of the Empire.”

“From how quickly you arrived at that conclusion, Cal, I think it safe to assume such a thing was on your mind as well?”

“Not for a long time.” The beta admitted after another moment. “I thought about it once. Back when Cere…before she died. About collecting the ones I could. Taking them somewhere isolated enough that we might stand some chance of being unnoticed. Training them the best I could. But the Force showed me what would have happened if I’d tried to do it alone.”

Ruin. Failure. Found. Gently pushing the dark side’s voice aside to make way for his own thoughts, Obi-wan said “you’re not alone anymore.”

“I know.” He said, eyes drifting briefly toward the direction Kata and Merrin had disappeared in. “But sometimes…it’s hard. To believe that. After so long. So much loss.”

None of them were strangers to it. As much as he might wish otherwise.

“Not just the children, but their families as well. It may be too much to ask, but we’ll provide what resources we’re able to in order to facilitate it.” Obi-wan said. “Tanalorre would be the easiest place to take them, for the time being. Tatooine, eventually, once we’ve secured the planet and set everything in place that we need to. Whatever he needs arranged to manage that, he’s welcome to ask for.”

“If nothing else, Kawlan knows how to drive a hard bargain Obi-wan.” Cal said. “You might have met your match with this one.”

That much he doubted. “I welcome the challenge.” He said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve truly put my ‘Negotiator’ title to the test.”

The younger red head didn’t look convinced but didn’t press the matter further, instead turning his attention to the return of the two droids: dusty and, in places, streaked with mud but otherwise unharmed; OB clutching a chunk of what Obi-wan only assumed was Priorite in one of his spindly hands. Refocusing his own attention on the warm weight in his arms, he watched Anakin breath as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Chapter Text

He wasn’t exactly the most worldly person. Luke knew that much full well. He’d grown up sheltered, after all. His aunt and uncle always keeping him close, and under close watch, as if they were afraid that something might come out of the desert and spirit him away one day without warning.

Back when he’d been a pup—a younger pup; he was aware that other, older people would still consider him such at fifteen but he was quite mature in his own mind—he’d thought it was the Tusken Raiders that his caretakers had feared. Or, maybe, some of the more ferocious animals native to Tatooine that, though very rarely, sometimes wandered close to settlements. He’d learned better the day he’d first met his other uncle—the obviously rich alpha with no idea how to dress for a desert who Owen had only reluctantly tolerated—and found out that what his family had really feared had been the mysterious Jedi who’d supposedly been watching over him. And his father.

Darth Vader.

Tatooine was a poor, backwater planet too far off the beaten path to have a properly working holonet system so he couldn’t do his own research simply by watching a newsfeed on the well-used data pad he’d received for his tenth birthday. But Luke had been determined—desperate, even—to learn more about both of them. His father—who wasn’t a smuggler after all, and wasn’t dead either—and his mate. So he’d pester and pleaded with his aunt and uncle, whenever one of them was going into Mos Espa or Mos Eisley or Anchorhead, to go with them. And he’d spend the time he was reluctantly afforded asking anyone and everyone he could for information.

Most simply swatted him away. But a few talked. The ones with the most information were the smugglers and the bounty hunters, so he tried to seek them out as much as possible. Most of those only have fleeting information, and vastly out of date; describing his father before recent events, when he’d still been an alpha, as a towering portent of death clad head to toe in black. Something more like a Krayt than a man; all temper and venom and teeth. A few had tidbits of the name Obi-wan as well. Fleeting tales from the Clone Wars, years and years ago, about a red haired Jedi Master with nothing behind his lips but honeyed promises. A man they’d called ‘The Negotiator’ who’d lead thousands of clones without faltering, and always took the field of battle clad in white.

But his favorite person to seek out was someone he knew Owen would have had his hide for talking to, had he found out. Mainly because he was obviously on Jabba’s retainer. Had a reputation for it. And it would mean very bad things if the truth of his dynamic had ever gotten back to the Hutt. But the man in the beskar helmet and jet pack had talked about his father like he knew him personally, at least to some degree. And he’d painted a very different picture. A more recent one. And it had made Luke long for a reunion even more. Settling determination in his mind.

He’d go with the Rebellion, when they came. He’d listen to the Jedi that would train him and learn as much as he could. And once he was strong enough to be sent out to battle, and found himself facing his father, he’d beg him to take him home. Would take his sister with him, if she wanted. And they’d finally be a family.

Vader, the beautiful Imperial Prince who’d become like him now, would be able to teach him what it meant to be an omega. How to conduct himself. How to dress. How to behave to attract an alpha who would love him with the same obsessive devotion his own mate seemed to, from what he’d heard. His aunt and uncle had done their best for him but they were betas. There was only so much they knew. So much they understood.

They loved him. And he loved them in return.

But he’d craved connection with his father all his life. Some part of him—maybe the part connected to the Force—always knowing the notion of his death to be nothing but a lie.

Still, even sheltered as he’d been, even as idyllic as his childhood had been, despite the hardships of life on Tatooine, Luke wasn’t an idiot. He’d always been far more perceptive of the emotions of those around him—something he’d simply assumed was a result of his dynamic but which he now thought might just be the Force—and despite the best efforts of the adults onboard to keep him distracted and go quiet whenever he drew too near a conversation there was nothing they could do to shield him from the miasma of tension which had flooded the ship like a gas leak.

The Empire had attacked Alderaan. They didn’t have the numbers to fight, and no allies strong enough to call on; and too short a notice to manage, even if they had. The best they could do was rescue his aunt and sister and flee, ceding a Core World to their enemies. A harsh blow to the Rebellion which would cost them a considerable chunk of their funding.

Yoda and Ahsoka—his father’s padawan. That was still wild to think about. A part of him, petty and small but undeniably there, was jealous; she’d been raised by him, had known him, while he hadn’t—would be going down, along with Bail and some of the crew, in one of the smaller support ships. The Tantive IV would remain in orbit. And Luke would be staying on it.

Missing the action.

Not being able to help.

The fact he wouldn’t be any help at that point hardly mattered. It was the principle of it. The unfairness. How was he ever going to get to the point where he could find his father, finally be a family, if he was never placed into a position where he could learn?

But he knew better than to complain about the matter—to waste his breath attempting to change any of their minds—and as such hadn’t tried to linger near the bridge as they neared Alderaan. Instead retreating deeper into the ship in search of something that might manage to keep his mind off of matters, after sulking in the cabin he’d soon be sharing with Leia had proven insufficient as a distraction. Poking around the boxes of supplies and old equipment, strange objects and dusty swatches of cloth, and eventually managing to locate something he hadn’t expected.

There was an old Astromech sitting behind a little tower of empty crates. Luke wasn’t certain what model—he’d taken up tinkering, in order to feel closer to his father, after Owen had accidentally let slip that Anakin (even after learning his brother and the Empire’s former Fist were the same person, his uncle always called him Anakin where Luke could hear) had built a droid when he’d still been a little boy; had gotten his hands on any scrap he could, whenever they had the credits to spare and the Jawa came by, though his fiddling with machinery had mostly been relegated to the machinery around the farm—but it looked to him like it was in good shape. A bit dusty, like most of its surroundings, with a chrome and blue casing and a big dark viewfinder staring sightlessly past him. Squinting at the dated consul on its front, Luke dropped onto his haunches and reached out to touch it.

Only to topple backwards in alarm when the droid immediately jerked to life, beeping at him in a way that sounded decidedly unhappy. Clattering from side to side on its two stocky legs.

“Hey, sorry! I didn’t realize you were only resting. I was just trying to help.”

The Astromech—an R2 unit, if he had to guess, judging by the faded string of numbers and letters that had been painted onto its side: R2-D2—beeped at him again, though in a less agitated way. Rolling backward and almost seeming to squint at him. Then, to Luke’s concerned surprise, the little droid emitted a warbling squeal that sounded almost pained.

“I’m sorry. I don’t really understand much binary: haven’t had the chance to learn, since there weren’t many droids around my uncle’s farm. I can’t really understand you.” He said, hesitating another moment more before pushing himself back upright and planting his hands on his knees. “I didn’t mean to upset you. My name’s Luke. Luke Skywalker. No one said anything about a droid being back here; why were you powered down all alone?”

It was probably stupid of him to attempt to hold out a conversation with R2 knowing he wouldn’t be able to understand the droid’s replies. Though he’d do his best to learn as quickly as he could, if only to keep the little droid from feeling the need to returning to its apparent long term habit of sulking in silence.

He wasn’t really expecting an answer.

The Astromech still managed to give him one. Spitting out a pale blue projection which rapidly took form into a pair of figures. A man—an alpha—in dark clothing and a woman with her hair done back into elaborate patterns, standing close together; holding each other and smiling in a way that made it plain they were a couple. They looked only a few years older than he was now, and it only took a little bit closer of a look for Luke to recognize himself in both their faces.

“I can’t let you go running off to war alone, Ani. Especially not if you’re going to be giving 3PO to me. Take R2 with you. You’ll need an Astromech to co-pilot for you anyway, and it would be a great relief for me to know you have the very best that the Republic could hope to offer.”

“You worry too much, Padme. But, if you insist, I won’t turn the offer down. R2 and I have always gotten along well, and I’d be honored to have such a capable droid at my side in all of this. With any luck, the battle on Cristophsis will be squared away quickly and I’ll return to Coruscant by the end of the month.”

“If only we could be so lucky. Be careful, Ani. You and Obi-wan both.”

The projection flickered out as abruptly as it had formed, and the voices of the pair faded away into the ambient rumble of the cruiser around them. Luke continued staring for a moment, frozen in shock, before his mind clicked over and he truly processed what he’d seen. What it meant. “You belonged to my parents! That’s wizard!”

But R2, it seemed, wasn’t finished with projecting revelations because it—he! He’d belonged to his parents, his mother first it seemed and then his father, and that made the Astromech a family member and not just a thing—immediately projected another image. This time of another man—another alpha, if Luke had to assume—dressed in rumpled robes with his red hair, streaked with gray, in abject disarray. A Jedi, judging by the lightsaber hanging from his belt, clutching a swaddled bundle in his arms like it might vanish if he didn’t; looking down at the infant inside—was that him—with an expression of tortured grief.

“I’m so sorry Luke. I failed them. I failed them both. You’re an orphan now because of me. Forgive me. Oh, Force forgive me.”

Was that Obi-wan? His father’s Master, whom his mother had mentioned? The man his uncle had only ever known as Ben, and had hissed about with agitation whenever he hadn’t thought that Luke could hear? The Jedi who’d been meant to remain on Tatooine and watch over him, but had gone to rescue his father instead. To save him from his grandfather, the wicked Emperor, and his terrible machinations by becoming the very thing it seemed that the Jedi had been meant to fight?

Luke knew he wasn’t meant to see it in a positive way, certainly not judging by the way that his uncle Bail had talked about all of it, but he couldn’t help but find it romantic. To have someone who would love him so much, so completely, to absolve him—in their heart, at least—of any wrong he’d ever done in order to be with him. It sounded like something out of a story. The pretty kind that he’d never actually heard himself, the kind that didn’t really have a place on a planet as harsh as Tatooine, but that he knew existed from the way the other boys had talked about them whenever they’d ended up running off into the desert to go shooting womprats. More than enough to further solidify the image in his mind of what he hoped would be his future.

His father, the perfect prince charming, teaching him to tinker and use the Force and wield a lightsaber and Obi-wan, his gallant alpha knight in shining armor, to protect them both from harm.

It wasn’t realistic. He was old enough to know that. But it was still a pretty story. Something happy to carry him forward through what was sure to be hard times ahead.

R2 beeped in a way clearly meant to draw his attention and Luke blinked himself clear of his thoughts. Finding the Astromech peering at him from the doorway of the mostly forgotten storage room.

“Right. You’ve probably been back here for a while; I can’t blame you for wanting to get out.” Luke said. “I’m going to be sharing my bunk with my sister soon; they ought to have just left to go and rescue her from the Empire’s attack. But I’m sure she won’t mind if you join us as well. I can’t promise any real repairs—I’m not nearly the whizz with droids my dad is—but I can at least clear the dust off.”

That seemed to be alright with R2, because the Astromech simply chirped in response and resumed the process of rolling out into the hallway. Smiling, Luke tore a strip off one of the nearby folded pieces of cloth and followed him out.

The Force was staring at her again, but had thankfully remained silent since the last time it had spoken. Radiating a sense of worn disapproval, and near parental disappointment, but never bothering to break its silence ; a fact for which Ahsoka could only find herself grateful when she had so many more immediately pressing things to worry about.

Kulkan and Vader had detached themselves from the Empire, so they weren’t directly behind this attack. But she wouldn’t be surprised to find that her former Grandmaster had orchestrated Sidious' attention falling on Alderaan immediately after. If nothing else than to distract both the Emperor and them.

The Sith Lord himself didn’t seem to be there—surely Yoda, at least, would have noticed if he were—and she didn’t sense any other Force Sensitives waiting for them on the rapidly approaching planet below. Not that she’d truly expected to, when Kulkan had done a good job of shredding the Inquisitorious apart with his own claws while the organization had been under his tenure. Still, that did very little to limit the danger they were certain to find themselves facing. Alderaan’s capital city no doubt having been transformed into a battlefield that wouldn’t have looked out of place back during the clone wars.

Only, it would be one she’d face without any of her former allies. Anakin was gone, subsumed by Vader. Obi-wan, too, had been swallowed by a serpent. Cody had gone to follow his General and, bafflingly—unless, somehow, he’d been tricked—Rex had done the same.

She wasn’t a padawan anymore. And she still had her Master’s teachings. Still carried the spirit of them both—the Jedi that they’d truly been—with her in her sabers. She’d face this alone. And she’d survive.

The Force sighed. Its radiant form wavering between man and bird for a moment before settling again, all to allow it to press a lambent hand against its face. But, still, it said nothing. So Ahsoka ignored it, and her thoughts turned instead to her other concern.

Luke didn’t just look like Anakin in miniature, he’d thus far proven to be every bit his father’s son. And, knowing that, his failure to be underfoot and demanding to come with them despite never having been trained and having no weapon seemed out of place. Enough so that it left her more than mildly concerned for the possibility the pup might attempt to stow away inside the carrier. A notion Bail had dismissed and Yoda had retained silence on but that had proven insistent enough that Ahsoka had ducked away with a hurried promise to return in a moment. Doing a last sweep of the Tantive IV before they left, just to make sure, and becoming increasingly concerned that she might have been right the longer she failed to find any trace of Luke.

Until, just as she was rounding the corner toward the bunk the pup would soon be sharing with his sister, she heard C-3PO’s exasperated voice emanating from the other side of the door; left faintly ajar.

“Oh, I assure you Master Luke. I know R2 quite well enough to be aware that that rolling menace isn’t nearly so polite under normal circumstances. He’s only being nice because he likes you!”

R2 beeped shortly in response.

“Now, that is precisely what I mean! Did you hear him?”

Ahsoka peered through the crack in the door in time to see Luke—kneeling in front of the Astromech, carefully wiping out the interior panel with a piece of salvaged cloth—make a poor attempt at stifling a smile. “Sorry, 3PO. Like I told R2 when we met a bit ago, I don’t have the best grasp of binary. I’m not certain what he said.”

“Well, it doesn’t bear repeating! I wouldn’t want you saying anything of the sort!”

Luke appeared bemused, to say the least of it, that the protocol droid could ever believe he wasn’t already perfectly fluent in all manner of colorful vocabulary after growing up on Tatooine. A place where, to her understanding, encounters with smugglers and bounty hunters were fairly common. R2 burbled something else, sounding entirely too smug about the matter, and 3PO took a step back in affronted surprise.

“What do you mean you retain a curated list of his father’s favorite swear words? The fact that you belonged to Darth Vader at one point and didn’t get reset when you came into the possession of the Rebellion is incredibly concerning. No wonder you’ve been so difficult!”

The Astromech made a low, unhappy burble. Luke, likely responding more to the tone of distress than the threat it was meant to carry, placed a calming hand on top of R2’s blue dome. “I like the fact that he belonged to my dad. And it was back when he was a Jedi, 3PO, from what he’s shown me. Not after he fell.”

She’d known R2 had recordings stored of Anakin already. He’d shown her one, when she’d first encountered him after joining the Rebellion, in an attempt to get her to help his master; a master he didn’t understand, couldn’t accept, was gone. She hadn’t realized he’d had more than the brief test of his sensors from the early days of the Clone Wars.

She’d have to warn Bail. Not to separate them, but to keep an eye on the matter. Just in case…something he was shown gave Luke—a lost pup desperate for connection with his father, to the point where he’d talked about being hunted down by Vader, or on Vader’s behalf, like he couldn’t want anything more in the world—ideas that might get him hurt or worse.

But that would come later. After they’d rescued Leia and Breha from the chaos going on below. After they’d staunched what they could of the bleeding that was certain to come from losing their biggest source of funding, as there was no chance they’d manage to force the Empire out and hold a Core World with the numbers that they had. Sidious would install a puppet government in the Organa’s place. One that would be sympathetic to the Empire. And for the foreseeable future, possibly until well after the end of the war, that would be that.

Their chances of success had already been little more than a distant star. Now, faced with this, its light only grew dimmer.

You seek hope in the wrong places. Not a dying star, but the echo of something that was never truly there.

It seemed like the Force had grown tired of its silence.

All things considered, Ahsoka supposed, she ought to have known better than to expect her reprieve to last forever.

Ignorance cannot last indefinitely. Even when it's willful; a refusal to embrace one might be wrong; their wisdom flawed. You’ll return to them eventually. A grin stretched across his face as he spoke. Unnatural. Too wide. Pulling at Anakin’s features in a way that looked wrong in the corners of her vision. “All things do, in the end, to their proper place.”

“My place is fighting.” Because she had no other place. Nothing and no one left to return to. Because the Dark Side had taken them both; swallowed everything up with its vast devouring maw and left nothing behind.

Some things cannot be defeated. Destiny is one of them. You fight a battle already lost. 

Ahsoka didn’t bother to dignify the projection with a reply and sped her pack back toward the bridge. The feeling of his eyes burning against her back never left but, thankfully, the image of her Master made no attempt to follow.

Chapter Text

The little support ship they’d crammed themselves into was nothing like the open confines of a Clone Wars era LAAT/i—too small and too confined, lacking the telltale open sides that allowed for the quick roll on roll off passes required by the troops it serviced—but it was equally as cramped with so many of them inside and no less bumpy for it. The faintly canted gait of the ship as it skimmed haphazardly across the atmosphere leading Ahsoka to suspect they may have overburdened it just a bit. Thankfully that inadvisably heavy load didn’t prove sufficient to cause them any real problems and they streaked down through the cloud line. Dipping behind the thick trees just outside the city outskirts and managing—partially through luck, and partially through the merit of Captain Antille’s incredible maneuvering skills—to avoid being noticed by either of the massive Star Destroyers hovering overhead like waiting sharks. The black forms of TIE fighters swarming around them like flies.

“We’re about a mile east of the city.” Bail said, urgency in every motion, and set deep into the lines of his face, as he leapt down from the ship the moment it landed. The forest floor—mud and loam, mostly; filling the air with a nutty, faintly moldered smell when disturbed—squishing underfoot. “They’re likely inside, by this point, of the city’s walls. But the castle itself ought to have proved sufficient to keep them out for the time being. Breha and Leia should still be safe.” 

“Keep the Imperials out it will. But keeps us out it will as well.” Yoda said. “Another way to get in, there is? Or over the walls must we go?”

The alpha didn’t answer. Either because he hadn’t heard the Grandmaster or he simply didn’t feel they had the time to bother with an explanation. But from the way that he was moving—a way she recognized from Anakin, when he’d had a purpose and a goal in mind he knew would work—it was clear enough, at least to Ahsoka, that he had some other means in mind.

They ended up walking a little bit over half a mile in almost the direction of Aldera. The angle of their travel just slightly too shallow to lead them directly into town. Eventually arriving at what appeared to be a portion of a passageway sticking up out of the leafstrewn ground, though it was difficult for her to make out much more than that through the thick carpet of roots that had grown across it. Yoda stepped forward, tapping his cane against the hard, knotty wood.

“Old this emergency passage is, and forgotten to have been so ill maintained at its exit.” He looked up at Bail. “No longer in normal use I take it that it is?”

“It collapsed at the halfway point almost a century ago.” Bail said. “But it will still lead inside the walls. And clearing the way shouldn’t be difficult with the Force.”

For a moment, as if carried faintly by the wind, Ahsoka thought she heard Obi-wan’s voice reciting something along the lines of ‘an irresponsible use of powers that aren’t meant to be toys’ echoing back to her from some long over chiding aimed at Anakin. Yoda, it seemed, didn’t possess nearly so many qualms about whether something was a worthy task for the Force’s employ and nodded. The tops of his ears flopping about with the movement.

“Yes. Clear the way we shall. But go we must. Running out our time here is.” Yoda had his lightsaber in hand before he’d even finished speaking. The green blade a flash of brightwork in the shadows of the forest, cleaving away the wood which blocked their path and leaving the cut ends glowing orange. The mouth of the passage which had now been revealed to them was dark; featureless aside from a set of uneven stone steps leading down into its depths and smelling strongly of earth and wet rock. “Lead the way I shall. Easy my size makes navigating tight spaces.”

The Grandmaster was gone an instant later, the glow of his saber receding into the darkness. Bail was behind him the next moment, the rest of the crew that had accompanied them down following soon after. Blasters at the ready.

Sensing eyes on her again Ahsoka took a last glance around at the trees but was unable to make anything out. The Force unwilling to show itself to her, in either of its favored forms. Dismissing the matter as one she could concern herself with later, Ahsoka pulled one of her own saber’s from her belt—the longer, brighter one that represented her Master—and activated it. Holding it over her head for light as she descended into the abyss below.

She caught up to the rest of their party fairly quickly, where they’d been forcibly halted by the collapse that Bail had mentioned. Nothing nearly so massive or difficult to move as the tumble of rock slabs they’d moved in Chandrilla, though with a little bit of added difficulty owing to the fact that it had to be moved vertically up and out of the tunnel, they managed to shift it free enough to allow them all to squeeze passed, one by one, in a fair amount of time without leaving too obvious a disturbance in the ground above.

The far end of the old passage spat them out in a buried chamber which, presumably, was located underneath the castle. Bail feeling around along the ceiling for a handful of moments before managing to locate the hidden switch. Pushing the massive stone tile which had been slotted over the top to hide it up and out of the way.

They ended up in the courtyard of the palace, the handsome stone spires of the building rising high overhead into the sky. Smoke stained the air, heavy with the acrid burn of fuel and chemicals and the sounds of fighting—blaster fire; shouting; what might have been an explosion—echoed back over the walls. The windowglass a few floors overhead reflecting back the distorted image of what might have been an AT-ST.

“This way.” Bail said, already halfway toward the entrance of the palace. Pelting toward the front doors; closed, and likely secured, but unguarded. Alderaan’s security force, the closest thing they had to a military, already on the streets outside in a doomed attempt to repel the Imperial Invaders. “Hurry!”

The doors, as expected, didn’t budge when Bail attempted to throw them out of his way but swung open with ease when Yoda waved his hand. Removing whatever blockage had existed on the other side, be it a board or something else, with a powerful ripple of the Force.

The inside of the palace was dim—unlit, aside from the faint light of fading evening—but there was no damage to the interior to suggest any sort of breach. Their rapid footsteps clattered off the stone tiles on the floor and they rounded several corners at speed—more than enough to leave Ahsoka less than certain of the right way back—before arriving at what appeared at first to be an empty stretch of wall. Another hidden switch revealed the door of a safe room which swung wide with a bang, leaving Bail to all but tumble into the space on the other side. Immediately pulling his mate and daughter into his arms. Speaking hurriedly to them. Urging them, no doubt, to come with them. And quickly.

Ahsoka couldn’t hear what he was saying. Not over the sudden ring of insistent pressure in her ears. The Force bearing down with such power that the only thing she could hear over a tempest of agitated wingbeats was its insistent voice.

Come. Quickly. 

Yoda, as always, showed no reaction to the Force’s near-physical presence. Bail was too distracted to pick up on her sudden stumble and wince. Not-Anakin was staring at her around the doorframe, eyes blazing like newborn stars.

Come. The blind one can see them safely to that ship. But it will never make it out of the atmosphere of this planet if you do not heed me.

It seemed more like a warning than a threat. A notion that something was coming, rather than a suggestion it might attempt to do something against them itself. Still, she hesitated. Glancing back at Yoda and the others.

Snips. Now!

Anakin had used that tone only a handful of times. The one he’d learned from Obi-wan, it seemed, that meant his patience with his padawan’s antics had worn thin.  It had been a long time since she’d heard it. It was still effective in getting her to move, toward the door and past the Force, only to have it phase back into existence at the end of the hallway and round the corner in front of her.

She was led, in this way, back through the castle to a windowed tower set high enough up to have a view across the city. Smoking. On fire, in places. Swarming with the Empire.

The ship. 

A transport was cutting its way down between the Star Destroyers. Still distant, but bound for landing soon. Not a TIE, but far more aggressive than a Lambda. And someone on board was Force sensitive; a notion she could only sense faintly, from that distance.

Our child’s chosen did not get them all. You must deal with this Inquisitor. They will go without you, and will escape the trap that is being laid with your distraction. I will guide you out when you are done.

Trust in the Force had once been a guiding tenet of the Jedi Order. Something she’d clung to, even in the darkest times when nothing else was left. Now, knowing what she did about the truth of its nature—which was very little, even still, but enough to throw its intentions violently into question—the concept was one that didn’t sit well with her.

Trust an entity that had their defeat in mind, yet still seemed bound—perhaps, to some degree, against its own will—by whatever underpinnings of existence it seemed to have itself put into place to offer a waning sliver of its power. An entity who was both the light they’d served and the darkness they’d fought and had created, with the aid of the Sith Lord seeking their destruction—though whether Sidious was aware he’d been manipulated was unclear—the man who’d been her master once. Who was supposed to be a hero. Who’d chosen the path of a monster instead.

But what other choice did she have?

It was possible it was lying. Saying what it felt that it had to in order to get the outcome that it desired, whatever that might be. That the little supply ship they’d come in on, and the Tantive IV circling in orbit, weren’t in any true immediate danger.

If she took that risk and turned out to be wrong…

“Sensed it, you did. Even before me.” Yoda’s voice echoed in the empty tower, bouncing off the walls around them. She turned in time to see the Grandmaster, leaning on his gimmer stick, walk straight through the star-eyed approximation of Anakin without seeming to notice it was there. The Force made a noise like an offended convor—a low almost hiss somewhere in the back of its throat—and vanished abruptly. Reappearing in its avian form—brilliant plumage blazing in the light—on the windowsill outside. Urgency in every facet of it hunched posture and fanned tail feathers.

She didn’t have an explanation for the matter that he’d have been likely to accept.

Luckily, the situation being what it was, it didn’t seem like Yoda had any intent to look for one.

“Take them back to the ship, Grandmaster. I’ll stay behind. Deal with the Inquisitor.” She said. “I’ll catch up after.”

“The last of the Inquisitorious he is.” Yoda said, large eyes fixed on the window and the little form of the approaching ship. “Soften the Empire it will to lose him. For us. And for Kulkan.”

“I doubt Sidious doesn’t have something under his sleeve.” Ahsoka said. “They weren’t exactly true Sith.”

“Because only two there are. No more. No less.”

The Emperor didn’t strike Ahsoka as the type to cleave to tradition for the sake of pomp or ceremony. He’d throw such trivialities away at a moment’s notice if it meant more power. Would find a way to accomplish something in secret if he couldn’t do it openly. And she wasn’t convinced they wouldn’t soon discover that, in the years since the Order’s fall, it had been the Empire collecting Force sensitive children from across the galaxy.

And building an army of Sith in secret.

“Either way, we can’t afford to take chances with the twins.” Ahsoka said, stepping past him and beginning to make her way down the stairs. “Tell Bail not to worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.”

Whatever response Yoda might have had was lost around the bend in the stairwell as she sped her pace to a run. The tap of her footsteps echoing back off the wall filling her ears, alongside the din of her own thoughts.

She would be doing the rebellion a disservice by not killing the dark acolyte.

She would be playing into the Force’s hands, and softening the Empire—at least in the short term—for Kulkan. Who, she had little doubt, was lurking somewhere relatively nearby Coruscant waiting for an opportunity to pounce like a Raxshir on a wounded prey animal.

How was one meant to fight a three sided war, when advantage could never be gained without also handing it to one of your enemies? When winning didn’t necessarily mean beating your opponents yourself but being clever enough to let them wear each other down for you.

There was no beast more clever in the galaxy than a Rawl. And they were pinned between two of them.

Ahsoka pushed all thoughts away—the war, its potential outcomes, the possibility she was looking at a choice of which direction to worsen their odds—and darted across the courtyard. Using the Force to make clearing the tall, reinforced walls around the grounds of the palace seem like child’s play. Landing, with the faint clatter of disturbed debris, in the middle of a group of Stormtroopers who all shouted in surprise.

She didn’t give them the opportunity to recover.

Once, there’d been a time where she’d been trained to avoid killing opponents at all costs. Where even Anakin—angry, quick to lash out and prone to violence—had stressed the importance of maneuvers like Cho Mai or even, in extreme cases, Mou Kei over killing blows. But fighting against droids had made defaulting to death second nature, even when she found herself facing targets with blood and bones instead of circuitry and hydraulic fluid. 

Just another sign of how damaged even those of them who remained in the light had been left by Sidious’ plot.

She left the men lying in the ruined street and kept running. Following the ember bright flicker of feathers toward where the Imperial ship had landed. Sensing her opponent a split second before he made an attempt to ambush her from above and leaping clear. Skidding a handful of feet backwards on the broken cobblestone before dropping into a battle stance.

The Tenth Brother—the last one left, according to what she knew of the Rebellion’s intelligence, after her former Grandmaster had systematically torn their ranks apart—was a Miralukan man with stark pale hair. The half of his face visible over the black mask he wore pulled down into a vicious glare.

All of them had been Jedi, once. Jedi who, over the course of the Clone Wars and for various reasons, Sidious had managed to bring to his side alongside her Master. Many of them had been masters. But the dark side showed its brittle promises in him. Just as it had in all of the others.

He was fast and his blows were powerful but without panic to feed his strength they were more than matched. Unlike when she’d faced the other Inquisitor on Raada, Ahsoka wasn’t fighting years of tarnish nor using an enemy's weapon that wanted to fight her at every turn. And the acolyte, fierce as he might still be, had nothing against the nightmarish experience facing Kulkan on Nur had been. Even knowing, then, that he’d been turning the worst of his blows. Protecting her. If only because his mate wanted her alive.

They exchanged a quick back and forth of blows. White parrying red twice before she saw an opening and drew on the Force to fling him backward off his feet. The man fought to regain his balance but wasn’t fast enough. Ahsoka leapt forward before he could, closing the distance between them, and her pale blades arced downward in a last, decisive blow.

She was getting too used to the sight of bodies lying at her feet.

The war wouldn’t be ending any time soon. No doubt, this same scene—some details different, others identical—remained to repeat itself many times over before all was said and done.

It worried her. Worried her that there might come a time where death no longer came with any concern at all.

Would she find that her own eyes had turned Sith gold, then? Or had they been wrong that callousness was only relegated to the dark side as well?

The Force’s presence materialized behind her an instant later. Warm and radiating against her back,  but not comforting. Not familiar. Even if the voice it spoke in and the face it chose to wear were.

Come. The ship that he flew in on is nearby. 

It was moving again, past her, a moment later. Heading in what Ahsoka could only assume was the direction of the ship in question; moving with far more urgency than she felt an entity that couldn’t be seen or damaged by anything around them had any right to.

Quickly. It’s inadvisable to linger. 

There was little arguing with that much.

With a last glance at the dead man on the ground and an uncomfortable billow of uncertainty kicking up in her chest like the first winds before a gale, Ahsoka stowed her sabers back at her belt and followed the false image of Anakin further into the smoke.

At fifteen, Leia liked to think she was more mature than most. Certainly more mature than her idiot cousin Niano who had always failed to understand that his status and dynamic didn’t actually make him all that important in the grand scheme of things. She certainly liked to think she was mature enough that—though decidedly unhappy with her apparently adoptive parents over the fact they’d concealed several important facts about her blood family, including what her sire actually was and the fact she had a twin brother—she was able to keep the majority of that displeasure set aside for a later time when they weren’t fleeing for their lives from the only home she’d ever known.

Her father had been away with the Rebellion, preparing somewhere safe for her and her brother to go where they’d be hidden from Vader and his rabid mate. Alderaan’s security force had immediately leapt into action and her mother had taken her into the safe room to wait for rescue after sending a distress call out to the Tantive IV.

And then they’d waited.

She knew, despite Breha’s assurances otherwise, that they weren’t going to last long fighting the Imperials alone. Knew because she could feel it; a hollow, cold shock of pain somewhere deep in her chest. Stark enough to make it hard to breathe. A sense that she could only assume warned of deaths occurring just a few hundred feet away outside the walls of their home. Some aspect of the apparent power she had.

The Force.

Vader had mentioned it, during his brief uncomfortable visit half a decade ago. Had spoken about it with a wistful sort of longing. Like someone who’d lost something so integral to their being they didn’t know how to exist without it. He’d been an omega with sad eyes, then. Had looked nothing like the nightmare he really was, though Leia suspected she still hadn’t been told the full scope of what he’d done during the fall of the Republic and in the years immediately after.

He wasn’t the real danger anyway, from the sound of matters. Not at the moment, at least.

It was his mate that was the real concern. The old, bearded ginger alpha who’d been a Jedi, once, and was now something else. Something dark and violent that wanted to break everything around him into glittering pieces and rearrange them as he liked into a gift for the husband who had been his student, once.

The nature of their relationship, and whatever briar laden snarls it might contain beneath the surface, was far from her concern, Leia supposed. Especially not while her father was bundling them both through the forest outside Aldera, toward a waiting supply ship that would take them up to the Tantive IV with a tiny green alien holding a lightsaber bounding along at their feet.

The last time she’d seen a lightsaber, especially up close, it had been Vader’s.

He’d let her hold it. Had shown her how to turn it on. The weapon had weighed next to nothing. The blade which shot out of it had been blue.

He’d known. He’d known who she was, surely, because Kenobi had betrayed them by then; had told him everything. Had to have. And he’d done nothing.

She wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything else. Wouldn’t have wanted to be taken away from the parents she knew, who’d raised and loved her, by a beast just because she shared its blood. Still, the rejection stung.

He’d killed their mother.

He didn’t want them.

He and his mate were going to destroy everything if they weren’t stopped, and because of that their inheritance—she and her brother she still hadn’t met yet—was to be branded as the heroes who took up arms to slay a dragon.

It was a proposition that sounded a lot better when it stayed relegated to stories of warrior princesses and daring knights. Bled over into reality, all it left her with was a pit of uncertainty that only burrowed deeper with every passing moment.

But they’d do what they had to, she and her brother. Together.

Trees rushed past them. The damp ground and scattered leaf litter muffled the hurried passage of their footsteps. A bird called from somewhere off among the trees and the air hung cool and damp. It was better, she supposed, if she didn’t focus on the immensity of the matter; the scope of it, or how sharp destiny’s teeth really looked up close when it opened up to swallow someone against their will. So she turned her thoughts, instead, to the other Jedi that had been with them.

She was a Togruta. Younger than her father but older than her, with a grim face and two sabers hanging from her belt. She’d seemed…distracted before she’d left the room in a hurry. Almost like she’d been listening to a voice that no one else could hear. Had looked into the hall, before walking hurriedly away in the same direction, as if she’d seen something. Yoda—the green Jedi’s name, according to her father—had gone after her but returned alone. Informing them, in his strange way of speaking, that Ahsoka would catch up with them later.

She’d gone to hold off the Empire.

Surely, even alone, a Jedi Knight would be ok.

“There!” The urgent sound of voices pulled her out of her thoughts and Leia raised her head. But she wasn’t given much of a chance to do more than look at the beaten little thing they’d be counting on to slip past TIEs and Star Destroyers alike before her father’s warm hand pushed her aboard. The doors sliding shut behind the last of the men who squeeze in a moment later. The little ship lifting off with a rough shake and a harsh rattle. Limping through the sky, more than it flew, and somehow—likely through some sort of miracle—managing to make it back to its docking bay on the side of the larger cruiser.

Captain Antilles exchanged words with her father, too low and quick for Leia to make out, before rushing away toward the bridge. Bail turning toward her, once he was gone, and attempting to drag a reassuring smile onto his face.

Her father was a brilliant politician. The kind of figure she hoped to be, one day. Even still, it didn’t work.

“I’ll take you to see your brother.” He said, gently guiding her down another hallway. “He’s been excited to meet you for a few years, at this point.”

So her brother had known well before her, had he?

Leia narrowed her eyes but kept her disapproval of that revelation to herself. Still, it seemed like her father saw it in her eyes.

“We hid the truth for your safety, starlight. Your mother and I can only hope that you’ll forgive us for it, some day.”

The rational part of her knew that they hadn’t done it to spite her, or out of any sort of malice. But the hurt part—which was a considerable part; maybe even larger than the rational one—wanted to hold onto the tiny ember of anger burning in her chest. Another part whispered that that impulse was the dragon’s blood in her; the part of Vader that he’d left behind in her making. Something it was important to reject, unless she wanted to end up like him.

So she’d compromise with herself. Hold onto it until she felt sufficiently ready to move on, and they’d adjust and rebuild as needed from there.

They arrived at a door a few moments later and her father called out her brother’s name before pushing open the door. Allowing Leia in ahead of him. The bunk looked familiar, in a vague way; just another of a handful that existed on the ship. Occupied by gray walls and two beds and an immediately recognizable Astromech which beeped at her in greeting.

“I see you found R2.” He sounded surprised. “I didn’t expect to see him active. He’s been…listless for some time now.”

“I found him in one of the storage rooms. Was gonna try and fix him—I can tinker, just a little, but nothing like dad—but all he really needed was a bit of dusting.” When Vader had come to Alderaan in the company of an Imperial entourage, his hair had been dark; brown, or else a shade of something very near it. Her brother’s hair, though, was a desert-drenched gold nearly as shiny as 3PO’s outer casing; straighter and shorter as it hung shaggy just below his ears. He had Vader’s eyes, though they lacked the broken sharpness of their sire, and the shape of his face was almost the same. But unlike the older omega, who’d come painted and dressed in the finest fabrics, Luke wore simple white farm clothes and had broken nails. “Is it ok if I keep him here? He doesn’t take up much space. And he seemed sad, all alone in there.”

R2 beeped again and rolled closer to the bed her brother was kneeling on. Luke immediately placed a hand on the top of the droid’s dome, like he expected someone to try and take it away.

“If R2 would like to stay with you, Luke, I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t be able to.” Her father said. “He was your mother’s droid, years ago.”

“And after that, he belonged to dad. Was his copilot, during the Clone Wars. 3PO was translating for him a bit ago; he’s got a lot of stories.”

It was concerning, the way his eyes lit up when he spoke of Vader. It made her wonder what he knew about him, and what he didn’t. If he’d even been told about what he really was, or if whoever had raised him had made him out to be a Jedi and nothing else.

“Nothing too violent, I hope.” Her father said, wincing slightly. “The Clone Wars was…a terrible time for the galaxy. Even at fifteen, it’s better you not know too many details.”

“He was mostly telling me about flying. Dad really was the best pilot in the galaxy. Even if he…crashed sometimes.”

R2 beeped in a way that seemed a great deal like it translates to ‘more than sometimes’. Her father’s smile was slightly tense.

“There is light in Anakin’s legacy. But much of what he’s done is terrible, Luke. You should be careful how much you let yourself idolize him.”

It was a perfectly sensible statement.

Her brother ducked his head to hide his frown. “Yes, Uncle Bail.”

“I’m needed on the bridge, so I’ll leave the two of you to get to know each other better. If you need anything, you know where to find us?”

Leia nodded and watched her father exit the room. The door sliding shut behind him a moment later.

There was a beat of silence in the aftermath, in which she was only able to process that his scent was also nearly identical to Vader’s—floral nectar and sand after rain, lacking the notes of vanilla and fruit—before he was shuffling eagerly toward her. Not getting up, once he reached the edge of the bunk that he’d claimed, but leaning so far forward that it seemed like he might fall.

Immediately, Leia stepped forward and grabbed his shoulders to prop him up.

“I still can’t believe I really have a sister.” He said, grinning ear to ear. An accent to his words she’d only heard once before, when Vader had gotten angry enough to swear at her father in what she’d later learned was Huttese. “You grew up on Alderaan, right? That’s a big Core World, isn’t it? Is it nice? Does it raid there? I’ve seen rain once; it only happens every hundred years or so, on Tatooine.”

He’d been raised on Tatooine? A lawless dead desert full of smugglers and slavers and Hutts? And no one, not even her father, had thought to take him somewhere safer once he’d presented as an omega?

So much for ‘protecting’ both of them! 

Why hadn’t they been raised together from the outset? Why had her brother had to suffer a hard life on an Outer Rim purgatory world, his only defense a traitor, while she’d lived in luxury ignorant to his existence?

As the alpha between them, it was her job to protect him! And the stars only knew what he’d been through while she’d been none the wiser!

Apparently her sudden agitation went entirely over her brother’s head, because Luke kept chattering happily away at her.

“You met dad, didn’t you?”

Leia blinked. Stared at him. Unable to comprehend, for a moment, why he was so obsessed with Vader.

Initially she’d thought he didn’t know the full truth. But apparently, given his reaction to her father’s gentle reprimand, he was well aware. And he still loved him anyway.

“He’s not our father.”

Now it was Luke’s turn to stare at her in abject confusion. “What do you mean? Of course he is. He’s our dad.”

“He might have sired us, but he’s not our father. My father is Bail Organa. And your father is whoever raised you.”

“Owen?” If anything, now he sounded even more confused. “No. Owen is my uncle. Dad is his brother.”

So he’d been raised by direct family.

That explained a few things, at least. Like why he believed there was something in Vader worth clinging to.

“That’s not how family works. Just because we were raised by someone else that doesn’t make him not our dad.“ Luke said. “Wouldnt you want the chance to know him? If you could?”

With alarming clarity, Leia realized what it was that her brother had in mind. Either because he’d been raised on a brother’s bias or had simply been sheltered from the truth until it was too distant to truly have an impact, Luke was under the delusion that an opportunity might come one day where he could go running off with Vader and find something close to a happily ever after where the family unit the monster had shattered might somehow be put right if they just tried hard enough.

He was sweet. And sheltered. And, it seemed, just a little bit stupid, at least about some things. Her kind fool of an omega brother, who was technically older than her—if only by a merit of a few moments—but was in need of her protection.

She could tell her father. But the motives of the Rebellion, and the possible consequences for Luke if such a thing got out, were things she couldn’t be certain of. Better to leave that for a last resort.

So she’d simply resort to a stark dose of reality instead. Something which, admittedly, might be just a little bit cruel in the moment but would prove to be for his own good later if it succeeded in nipping all of this in the bud.

“He doesn’t want us.” Leia said, putting everything she could into making her voice firm. “Vader doesn’t want us, Luke.”

“What?” He said it like she was the one being unreasonable. “He just couldn’t find us. The Rebellion hid us. But he’s looking. That’s why we have to hide.”

“We haven’t been hidden for five years, Luke. You most especially. Obi-wan was supposed to be watching you, but he went to join Vader. He told him everything. Including where we were. He could have come for us at any time.” She said. “He didn’t. Because he doesn’t want us.”

Her brother looked at her like she’d just ripped the sun out of the sky. Abject betrayal painting his features and his scent souring with distress. R2 beeped angrily at her but she ignored the droid in favor of dropping onto the bed beside him and pulling him into her arms. Somewhat to her surprise, despite his hurt and anger, he didn’t resist. Turning more into the offered contact and hiding his face in the crook of her shoulder.

“You’re wrong.” He said after a long moment of quiet where the only sounds were the rumble of the engines and the Astromech’s continued threatening beeps. “I know you’re wrong. I can feel it. More strongly than I’ve ever felt anything. That isn’t why he didn’t come.”

She wasn’t wrong. He was just in denial.

But that wouldn’t last forever. With enough time. With enough exposure to the truth of what Vader really was; something that would quickly become unavoidable in war.

He’d grow out of it.

She’d just have to look after him until he did.