FicWad

Additional Author's Note: All issues of metaphysics aside, it is canon that the Force is an energy field that binds together all things. It should be noted that energy is defined as any potential for causing change. In physics, this is generally defined as the ability to do work; however, as Einstein proved, energy and mass are equivalent under certain conditions. Light is defined as electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength (though we humans tend to focus only on what's visible to the unaided eye). Because of the wave-particle duality of matter, though, light simultaneously exhibits properties of both waves and particles. In other words, light is a very special and specific form of energy, and its speed is crucial to the fundamental equivalence between energy and mass. Now I don't know about anyone else, but to me, the implications of entities that exist after the death of their physical bodies through some power of the Force seems pretty clearly tied up to the phenomenon of light itself as well as the equivalency of energy and mass. What I've arrived at, though, has been through my own extrapolations, though it all seems pretty consistent with canon, to me.







Everything that has ever existed still exists, most often somewhere within the universe of its birth. Nothing is ever truly lost, not entirely. Everything in existence changes, yes, most assuredly, it all changes, but to the point of ever truly being lost? No. Never that. The slow and gradual building birth of this universe is still tingling its warmly reverberating echoes across the vacuum freeze of outer space. When the oneness of the simultaneity of the inwardly falling quantum of the limitlessly refulgent splendor of the contractive universe first turned outward, its integral extent flashing into nonexistence, and the universes of the multiverse first began to open up, lines of time spreading in ordered sequences like expanding crystals across the interface of the singularity and the continuum, the one burst apart into the limitless and ever-increasing many, infinities of shapes unraveling inside and, eventually, bleeding over from first one of the swooping parabolas of an event horizon into yet another and thence into another and another and yet another, unfolding in an unending and ever expanding spiral of simultaneous but infinitely varied and complex universes, all strung along a fibonacci coil of a logarithmic spiral. Quanta surged helplessly through these mazing patterns in the form of energy, expanding as radiance, radiation, quanta of waveforms endlessly streaming outwards. When the multivere first billowed its mad tapestry, energy whelmed with furiously outflung power at all the locations where point became field, gelling into photon-bundles of complexifying waveforms, compressing into particles that thereby gained spin, mass, and charge, and cooling at last into physically discernable matter. Spacetime itself, though, is still mostly molten with radiation, interconnected and flowing oceans of energy swarming in the hungry darkness of the void.

The all but infinite sky of space is filled with energy from billions of stars, light of trillions of worlds, the blackbody depths of the universe holding every waveform ever engendered within it intact, in one manner or another, at some location or another within its finite and yet unbounded and expanding body of space and the swirl of void and matter that is, in the end, only sufficiently slowed energy, light chilled to the point of physicality. When moving at lightspeed through the continuum, sentience extended into the photon field and along the inertial contours of the universe to feel at the teeming points and all their connections, it is obvious no point is separate or central, all points are radiant, luminous in the nets of their quantum energies, and all are scattered and scattering farther each instant. And for every single collection of points whose pattern generates sentience, there are signature waveforms in the photon field - electromagnetic auras of cellular potentials. The physical bodies that house those glittering, radiant, self-aware minds may live for a while before dissolving until they are gone, but the individual separate minds are never really gone. The light cone of each individual's existence persists in the vacuum field that permeates the continuum. The waveforms of each atom, each body, each mind, continue to exist and change in the expanse of spacetime that surrounds each populated world. Some of the waveforms in the vacuum field interact with some physical creatures again, some cycle back until they reconnect and embody and ensoul new physical bodies, and, for all those bodies that dissolve, blink out, and become ghost lights or the Light that is pure spirit (mind and soul as unfettered energy), new flashes appear, the fire-flicker rhythms among the trillions of comings and goings and endless circlings of individual minds and souls, spirits who learn and grow and change and interact endlessly within the spreading confines of the multiverse. And so, in the end, all things are conserved: it is an immutable law. And so all things that have ever existed still exist, in one form or another, in some location in time and space or another . . . at least from a certain point of view.

Of course, some things continue to exist across more of the myriad possible different points of view than others, and some also persist in existing in a manner more like their original individuated state, even when they have shed the chill that slows their particular waveform into a specific body of mass, reverting to the swifter skirl of energy that is instead pure Light - the Light that is both the medium and the material of the Force. Force spirits are both proof and example of just such persistence in continued existence. But they are not, quite, the only examples or the only proof of such possibilities - a fact that they, at the very least, are quite well aware of, even if most other sentient beings are entirely ignorant of such things.

Someone aware of these things, though, would not have been surprised to observe two Force spirits, recently rudely tumbled from an electrically ecstatic embrace of togetherness within the deeper energy currents of the Force, turning their attention towards the actual physical location of two just such other examples of possibilities - two each of two, to be precise. The first of those pairs of two actually still continues to exist as beings of flesh, despite having more than once willingly reduced themselves to the Light at the core of their beings, persisting in their embodied states through a careful striking of balance between themselves and the overall current of the vast energy field that is the Force, in essence existing in the flesh by having accepted the reality of the Light at the core of their own beings and consciously chosen to surrender to that Light and exist in a constant state of near-surrender to that larger Light, the whole of their beings therefore becoming and remaining so permeated with that energy that their fleshly bodies are actually constantly being regenerated and refined by the power of that Light, the material vessels of the bodies that hold that Light in essence being constantly recreated and held within creation in every passing moment by the power of that Light. The second of the two pairs, though, continues to exist in a much more mundane and simple (some might even say simplified) manner. Bright entities of energy alone, these twinned souls burn with reflected Light, dancing lightly across the fluid surface of the greater energy field that is the Force.

Spirits who have recently risen up out of the depths of the Force to ensoul the physical bodies of fraternal twins nearing the time of their births - having, as might be claimed from a certain point of view, traveled enough across the vast reaches of the universe and changed sufficiently to migrate back to their beginnings, returning to their origins within the flesh for another (or perhaps even yet another) go-round - they apparently lost their chances at those new lives within the flesh when the vessel holding those tiny and fragile bodies perished quite suddenly and violently, away from anyone who might have been able to render medical help either to her or to the children she was carrying. And yet, because they had not yet been fully embodied at that time, it having not yet been sufficiently close to the time when those new bodies would have been birthed, the two spirits had, instead of being summarily suddenly and violently ripped loose of their moorings and cast out blindly into the wild oceanic currents of the Force to sink back down within its embrace and dissolve back into a state more like oneness with its greater Light, merely been jarred loose of their only half-assumed perches and shook free of the embrace of their physical mother, whose own spirit had been instantly snatched up and carefully preserved by another (actually by one of the two Force spirits who is currently looking towards the physical location of those two persistent spirits). Individuated enough to instinctively seek to remain that way but still innocent enough to know nothing but the half-known warmth and love of the one who would have been their mother and encompassing brightness of the Force's Light, they had followed her a certain distance before being faced with a twinned conflagration of dazzling incandescence and warmth and love and Light, at which point they had instantly and naturally taken up orbit around that brilliant binary Force-signature, circling in a skimming joyful dance around the two beings responsible for that twinned blaze of Light - being who are, as it happens, the other two pair who represent one of the myriad possibilities for entities who persist in continuing to exist without becoming Force spirits.

Of the two Force spirits who happen to be concentrating upon those two very different and yet obviously linked pairs of persistent entities, the one of the two who is, at once, both the elder of the pair and yet also the youngest to the existence of a Force spirit, quietly notes, "It must be happening. The timewinds - "

"I know, Dooku, and I agree. They are changing too rapidly now for it to be anything else. The twins are about to be embodied. That's the only explanation that fits. I'd hoped they would be able to do this, but I never thought it would be so soon. Whatever happened on Naboo must have triggered it, somehow."

"For the timewinds to be moving so swiftly, they will already be too far along for us to be able to safely intervene. Let us hope your more recent protégés prove you correct in your estimation of their capabilities, Qui-Gon."

"They have been more than equal to the tasks placed before them, thus far. I'm sure they will be, again."

"Force will it be so, beloved. Force will it be so."

***

Understanding, now, that their time with Padmé is limited, the twinned consciousness of Anakin and Obi-Wan immediately reaches out to her, quickly, trying to absorb as much information as possible within as short a time as possible, to lessen the strain that her continuation in a form separate from the Force is placing on her.

There follows a moment of silence, and then Obi-Wan is gasping, a sound that is half simply shocked and half achingly, wistfully hopeful. "Xanatos survived the death of his body, somehow, and remained in the Force, watching over me?"

Another moment of quiet, and then it's Anakin's turn to gasp, his body actually reeling slightly, as if gravity has somehow shifted around him. "My children - the twins - their spirits are still waiting near the Force's surface for a chance to be born and Qui-Gon has told you that this is somehow still possible?"

Padmé's smile is beatific as she gazes up at the shocked expressions of the two Jedi Bendu, and in that moment she seems entirely herself to them, despite the strangeness of the body currently acting as a vessel for her mind and soul. Reaching up, she places her hands gently on top of theirs, where they are still cradling the sides of her face, and tells them, "Yes and yes, which is why I wanted to speak to you this way. It was much easier to show you the memories themselves than it ever would have been to try to explain them to you. Obi-Wan, I think this Xanatos has been acting as a sort of self-appointed guardian, watching over you. Although I could not recognize it as such at the time, I know now that the sense I received of him was of someone whose identity and memories had been preserved much as mine originally were, when Qui-Gon placed me within the necklace I'd had made out of Anakin's Padawan braid. I have read about how he died, Bendu. I believe the young man must have had an emergency out, a sort of last ditch contingency plan, which he could follow if he was ever threatened with death or capture by Master Jinn, which for some reason he apparently regarded as a fate at least as bad as outright destruction. Did he leave behind any objects that you know of? I don't know how near his body it would have had to have been. But I'm certain that he must have figured out a way to accomplish for himself what Qui-Gon did to me. That's the only explanation I've been able to come up with that makes any kind of sense. And I believe, somehow, that the object he placed himself within has, at some point in the years between Naboo's occupation and now, fallen into the hands of someone strong enough in the Force to imprison him entirely within that object, since otherwise I'm quite sure that he would have still been watching over you, /am'chara/, and that I would've been able to sense his presence. After I remembered the help he had given me and realized the significance of his presence remaining in the Force so long after the destruction of his body, I tried for several hours to sense him in the Force, but I had no luck. If you could discover the identity of the object he sequestered himself within, though, and you could then track it down to its present location - "

"Padmé, you're a genius! We should be able to find and free him from whatever prison he's been trapped within, then!" Anakin exclaims enthusiastically, catching the oddly wistful, almost longing expression in Obi-Wan's eyes. "Don't you think so, Obi-Wan?"

"I think . . . no, I am sure that he left behind his lightsabers. Both of them - the one he carried as a Padawan and the one he made for himself, afterwards, on Telos. Qui-Gon took the original back to the Temple, with us. I'm not sure how Master Dooku came into possession of it, but it was in one of the boxes of items he left for us, when he left the Order. I've had it tucked away in a chest in my room at the Temple ever since. The other lightsaber, though . . . " Obi-Wan frowns a moment, a worried, anxious look entering his changeful eyes, the bright colors in them swirling and fading towards a dull, pewter color, like rapidly tarnishing silver. After a few moments of silence, though, a gleam of bright blue reappears as those eyes fly wide and he exclaims, "Great stars, that's right! His son, Granta Omega, had possession of that second lightsaber, at least at one point. He had it with him during the confrontation I had with him on Mawan, when he revealed that he was Xanatos' child! I only caught a glimpse of the hilt, on his belt, but I recognized it from the inlay. It was elaborately and richly made, even for a man as wealthy as Xanatos was after he became the leader of Offworld Corporation, and quite distinctive, with a great deal of the hilt being made up of an intricately patterned dense weave of aurodium, electrum, and platinum."

A sudden stab of worry over the bond causes Anakin's eyes to fly wide with shock, but half a heartbeat later he guesses the source of the unexpected anxiety for himself, and he instantly hastens to offer a reassurance. He's not at all sure why Obi-Wan should be so concerned about someone who, depending on the point of view one chooses to look upon the events leading up to Xanatos' sudden and rather violent parting of ways with the Jedi Order, either deliberately chose to turn or else was abandoned to fall to what the Jedi and the Sith have both, for millennia, erroneously called the Dark Side of the Force, but Anakin's preference, frankly, would be for Obi-Wan to never have a need to fret about anyone or anything, ever, /period/, and so he confidently declares, "Even if he did offer it to the Sith, as a means of proving both his identity and his intentions, Sidious wouldn't have destroyed it. Or Xanatos. He was far too malicious to ever simply destroy someone when he could've tortured him for years instead, trying to get him to share the secret of whatever it was that he did to let him survive the death of his body. Trapping him in the lightsaber and cutting him off from the Force sounds exactly like something Sidious would do, to punish him for not sharing and to try to encourage him to tell him that secret. And don't forget, Sidious definitely would've known that Xanatos had been Master Qui-Gon's first apprentice. He would've kept hold of that lightsaber and held Xanatos in reserve as part of a last ditch backup plan of his own, thinking he might be able to use him against you somehow. I bet you anything that's what he did, love. When we start going through all of his things, in The Works on Coruscant and wherever else he may've established operating bases or hidey-holes, that lightsaber will probably be one of the first things we'll find. And no matter what he may've done to trap Xanatos in there, I'm sure one of the Grand Masters will be able to figure out a way to let him back out again."

Obi-Wan continues to frown ever so slightly, but the gleam in his eyes has become more thoughtful than worried by the time Anakin stops speaking and he nods in at least tentative agreement after only a few moments of quiet contemplation. "You are probably right. And there's little we can do about that now, in any case. Your children, though, are another matter entirely. Padmé, are you certain that Qui-Gon didn't say anything else about how they might still be born?"

"I'm sorry, /cariodal/, but no. Master Jinn simply always said that it could be done and that you and Anakin would know how to accomplish it, when the time came. He spoke to me of the Force and how it worked through midi-chlorians somehow to see to it that Anakin was born, and I assumed, at the time, that this meant the Force itself would somehow help you with this. Although, come to think of it, he never did say that in so many words. He simply said that, when the time came, together, the two of you could see to it that the twins would be /embodied in flesh/, and he always put it in those terms, not /born/," Padmé replies, frowning thoughtfully. "Do you think that distinction means anything?"

'Embodied in flesh' and /not /simply 'born.' Anakin and Obi-Wan share a considering look. And then, their words overlaying each other so closely that it sounds as if one person only and not two were speaking, they simultaneously declare, "I have an idea."

"You do?" Padmé immediately asks, not bothering at all to try to hide her eagerness. "Do you understand what he meant? Do you think you can save them?"

Still regarding Anakin with thoughtful consideration, Obi-Wan replies, with some care, "I don't believe it will be so much a matter of saving them as it will be of helping to translate them across one state of being into another." Recalling an observation he made once, soon after first learning about the existence of Force spirits, Obi-Wan then adds, "The Force is an energy field and it is a basic law of physics that matter and energy are interchangeable. The twins exist, at the moment as pure spirit, meaning that they are pure energy - the same energy, the same Light, that makes up the Force."

With a slight, almost infinitesimal nod of agreement and understanding, Anakin adds, "And their spirits are intact. All they require are bodies to act as vessels for those spirits. I believe that's what Qui-Gon meant, when he spoke of the need to embody them rather than to help them to be born. He wants us to give them flesh to embody, somehow, rather than some inanimate object like my Padawan braid."

Padmé's eyes fly wide in alarm, though, at that. "Wait a moment - flesh to embody - you don't mean - ?" she begins to cry out, her thoughts automatically turning to the odd and entirely unexpected position in which she has so recently found herself, her mind and soul having passed into Sola's body and, in the process, dislodged (by utterly destroying) the spirit that had originally ridden with that vessel of flesh and made that body its home.

"Great stars, Padmé, no!" Obi-Wan instantly exclaims, cutting her off, obviously aghast at even the suggestion of such a thought. "I'm sure Qui-Gon only meant for us to use the Force to fashion them new bodies, not to use the Force to displace others from their bodies so that the twins would be able to put on their flesh as though they were simply donning a pair of clothes!"

Padmé simply stares at him, though, frowning in obvious confusion, plainly not following Obi-Wan and Anakin's shared train of thought. "Fashion new bodies? But how - ?"

"Sabia-love, try to understand," Anakin cuts her off, his manner almost surprisingly gentle. "The Force is an energy field. When we went into the Force together that first time, we literally dissolved into that sea of Light and became one with it, after which the Force used a part of itself to create us new bodies after the fashion of the images we each hold of one another in our hearts. These are not our original bodies. Every time we dissolve into the Force, it remakes us in the image we hold of one another. Everything is exactly accurate, as far as I've been able to tell, all the way down to the sequencing on our DNA, but the process of remaking us has also refined our appearances somewhat. I don't like to use that word, /refine/, as if we were metal ingots being worked in a smithy, but I don't know how else to describe what's happened. I'm sure you've noticed that I no longer have my mechanical arm; what isn't quite as obvious, though, is that we're both a little bit taller than we used to be, especially Obi-Wan. It took me a while to figure out, myself, what with everything that's been happening, but we're both measurably taller than we were before we first went into the Force, and it's enough, in Obi-Wan's case, that if you were to stand him right next to one of the clone soldiers now, he would be noticeably taller, whereas before he was close enough to Jango Fett's height and, therefore, that of the clone troopers that he could - and sometimes actually did - wear the armor made for the clones without having to really modify it first. It's because these new bodies aren't bound by any of the limitations that were imposed on our original bodies by things like the physical hurts we actually took to those bodies or periods of time when we were growing up when we were," Anakin pauses for a moment here, as if searching for the right words, before finally, with a twitch of his shoulders that is not quite a shrug, he continues by simply bluntly admitting, "less than optimally nourished. This flesh," he adds, gesturing left-handedly towards Obi-Wan and himself, "is Light that has been slowed to the consistency of matter and shaped to the optimal specifications of our DNA and the image we carry of each other in our minds and hearts. It's pretty much literally perfect, because of the medium it was shaped from and the fact that the Force did the shaping."

I'm /taller/? Perceptibly taller than the clone troopers? Obi-Wan demands, clearly stunned.

Yes, love, you are. Didn't you notice, when you were talking to Cody, that you had to look down slightly to meet his gaze? Anakin asks back with a mixture of fond exasperation and amused tolerance, raising a questioning eyebrow and trying not to let it show too much just how typical he thinks it is that Obi-Wan has so completely failed to notice his own increase in height.

/Well, I . . . /Obi-Wan frowns, casting his thoughts back to the moments before they had departed the /Vigilance /for Utapau, and the way he had seemed to be looking down farther than normal, to speak to Cody, and how he had assumed he had simply been sitting up a little higher than normal in the new little starfighter. Huh. We are a bit closer to being on eye-level now, aren't we? I'd thought that, since you were wearing slightly different clothing, now, you'd simply chosen a pair of boots with a lower sole. Or something.

These are the same boots I've been wearing for most of the past half year, Obi-Wan - or as close to being the same as the Force could make them, anyway. I'm not sure how much taller we both are - though I'm certain we've both grown, as I had to adjust the way I was sitting in the Eta-2 I flew to Utapau, to keep from hitting my knees on the console - but I know that you're at least a finger's breadth closer to matching my height now than you have been since my last growth spurt, back around when the war first began. Your body fits even more closely to mine now, when we lay down together, than it did during the war, and I would have sworn that you were a perfect fit to me, then.

Obi-Wan, remembering nights when Anakin had curled his greater height in around him on one too narrow cot or berth or another and Obi-Wan had slept blanketed in his warmth all the way from the tips of his toes up to the crown of his head, is tempted to agree, though the way that Anakin has phrased the observation automatically makes the color rise in his face, even though he knows, rationally, that Padmé can't hear them when they speak mind to mind like this. Carefully skirting the embarrassingly personal topic of just how well their bodies fit together, he merely notes, I think you're probably right, Anakin. Perhaps, though, we should schedule a trip to the Healers' Wing, after we return to Coruscant, so that we can be measured properly.

If you want to, Master. I'm sure Bant and the others would be happy to have a chance to see you when you hadn't been either forced to visit or carried in unconscious.

Obi-Wan is tempted to scowl and to point out that he hadn't been the one who stubbornly refused to go to the first half a dozen scheduled follow-ups with the Healers, after the replacement of half of a major bodily limb with a mechanical substitute, but the memory both of Anakin's obvious pain and his stubborn refusal to talk about it, during that time, makes him hold his silence on the subject. Instead, he noncommittally notes, I am not the only one the Healers would be surprised to see under such non-life-threatening circumstances, O former Padawan-mine.

Anakin simply gives him a look more eloquent than any words, somehow giving the impression that he has rolled his eyes and given voice to a scoffing snort even though he has done neither thing, before reminding him, I'm not the one who had to be forced to visit the Healers after being kidnaped and tortured by a Sith wannabe for over a month.

There were other, more important things that needed doing first, Anakin. The visit to the Healers could have waited another few hours. I wasn't hurt that badly. And I do wish you wouldn't refer to Asajj that way. She wasn't an evil person, Anakin. Her anger clouded her judgment and the Sith took advantage of that and of her. She saw her error, before the end, and she returned to the Light. You know that, love.

Flatly, Anakin immediately retorts, You were hurt badly enough that they put you through half a dozen sessions in a bacta tank and made you visit the Soul Healers nearly as many times, to make sure you'd taken no lasting harm from the way the Sith torture mask had disrupted your connection with the Force. And there is nothing that is more important than your health and well-being, Obi-Wan. I've been trying to tell you that for years. You take absolutely abysmal care of yourself. Force knows how you managed to keep yourself alive for so many years without me there to look after you. But you really need to start taking better care of yourself, Obi-Wan. I wouldn't survive if anything ever happened to you, you know.

Obi-Wan gives him a stricken look. Anakin, I -

No/, Obi-Wan. I mean it. And don't you dare try to give me that damned Jedi platitude about how there's no death, only the Force. I don't kriffing care if we do have actual proof now that the Force can be used to help at least some people transcend bodily death. /I wouldn't survive if anything ever happened to you. /And that's a truth that simply will not /ever change. So just accept it, love. It'll be easier on both of us, in the long run, if you do. And start taking better care of yourself, too! Discovering that I am in love with you is not going to discourage me from wanting to keep you well and safe. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I was going to say, Obi-Wan finally replies, with a sudden utter seriousness that immediately wipes the hint of a smile that had crept onto Anakin's face during that last observation right back off of it, that I will take better care of myself if you agree to do the same and to stop taking quite so many insane risks. Perhaps it is weak and selfish of me, but I don't believe I could stand to lose you, now that we're truly together. You are my life, Anakin Skywalker. My life would end, if anything were to happen to you.

This time it is Anakin's turn to look stricken as, tightening his arm around Obi-Wan's waist, he swears, I love you, Obi-Wan Kenobi. And you could not be weak or selfish to save your soul, love. It is strength, to admit these things, not weakness. And it is not selfish to want to protect those who mean the most to you. It is /human /and it is only right. I will try to be more careful, if you will, too. I don't want you to worry about me. I don't want you to worry at all. Anakin sighs then, a look of resignation coming into his eyes, as he adds, But I know you too well to really hope that you will ever stop worrying about things, even those things that you can't help. Worrying is one thing that the Order taught you all too well, I fear, he sighs, a hint of bitterness creeping in.

With a seriousness nearing solemnity, Obi-Wan reassuringly replies, /I know that the Jedi, myself included, have taken harm from the old Order's system of beliefs and expected behavior, and I am willing to learn another way of being, Anakin. You know that. If you honestly believe that my tendency to worry is unhealthy and has been caused by the way in which I was brought up, in the Order, I will try to refrain from worrying so much. It will be easier to do so, though, if you will just accept the fact that caution is not the same thing as a sign of fear and that heroes do not necessarily need to be without fear to do good deeds,/he adds, a slight hint of a smile curving his lips.

Tilting his head consideringly, Anakin narrows his eyes and asks, Okay, so how about this: if you will try to cut back on the worrying, then I will try to cut back on the insane risks, alright? And when we go by the Healers Wing to be measured, we can recruit Bant as an impartial third party, to help make sure that we both start taking better care of ourselves, okay?

That sounds like a reasonable plan. Very well, then. Agreed!

Good! And if worse come to worse, we can always get Bail to keep an eye on us, too, to keep us from slipping.

True. Though considering what a poor job he's done of looking after himself, lately, we may end up having to drag him to the Healers, instead.

Anakin grins at him at that, clearly amused by the fact that Obi-Wan, of all people, is critiquing someone else's ability to take care of himself. With a surprising amount of tact, though, in response he merely diplomatically offers, Perhaps we should simply aim at setting him a good example and let the rest take care of itself.

Perhaps, Obi-Wan allows, his shoulders twitching slightly, though not quite enough for a real shrug. /We may have to discuss this more later, though, love. Padmé's time with us /is limited.

True. Sorry. Later, then. And there will be a later for this, love. This is too important to just let slide.

I agree. There may even be time on the way back to Coruscant. But not now. Padmé is waiting on us. Before Anakin can add anything else, he then turns his attention back towards the patiently waiting woman and explains, "If we're understanding Qui-Gon's intentions correctly, he told you that because he means for us to use the Force in such a way as to deliberately cause it to create new bodies for the twins, much as it automatically does for us whenever Anakin and I move in to and then back out of its embrace."

"And you think you can do this?" Padmé asks after only the very slightest of hesitations, her clearly uncertain face betraying far more doubt than her calmly measured voice alone ever would have.

The two men don't even bother to look a question at each other before they reply, their identical and simultaneously given answers blending into one quietly confident and resonant, "Yes."

A breath that Padmé has unconsciously been holding abruptly whooshes out of her all at once then, flooding out of her newly acquired body along with a rigid tension that has been keeping that injured body straining up towards the two men in an attitude of desperate hope that she has not otherwise dared to even allow herself to acknowledge, much less to openly speak of, relief sapping the strength from her so that she abruptly sits down on the floor, collapsing in on herself in a long and all but exultant, if oddly silent, sigh of, "Oh."

Anakin makes a small, abortive motion towards her with his free hand, frowning in concern, though his grip around Obi-Wan's waist never slackens. "Sabia-love? Padmé? Are you - ?"

"I will be all right. I just - my children - I never actually thought . . . " she trails off, a violent tremor wracking her body. Then, looking up at them - especially Obi-Wan - with dark and liquid beseeching eyes, she whispers, almost pleadingly, "They are your children, too. Both of you. They will actually be as much if not more your children than they will be mine, if you can do this. Take care of them. Please. /Please/, Obi-Wan, Anakin, take good care of them. My babies . . . " her entire body shakes again, tears welling in her eyes.

"Padmé, if you want to stay with them for a time, after - " Obi-Wan begins to offer.

"I will stay as long as I can. I promise you both that I will. But I can't remain indefinitely. You know I can't. I'd be trapped here, if I stayed too long. I'm tired, /cariodal/. And this isn't my body. My family would never understand - " Padmé's voice begins to rise at that, taking on a more strident, almost hysterical tone.

Surprised not so much by the outburst itself as by that final claim, Obi-Wan's eyebrows shoot up until they nearly vanish into his hairline while Anakin's brows knit together into a perplexed and bewildered scowl. "Your clannachd strikes me as very reasonable people, love. If that's all you're worried about - " Anakin begins to say, cutting her off before she can wind herself up any further.

But Padmé just huddles in upon herself and cries out, in a low, desperate voice, "You don't understand! This body is married to Darred Janren and is Ryoo and Pooja's mother. But it's done horrible things to them, as well as other crimes against the clannachd/, for which it has been lawfully cast out of the family and banished from Naboo. Legally, these things will not change, whether Sola is the one who is embodying this flesh or not. Worse, whether I meant to or not, I destroyed Sola to be here. I killed the one who was my sister - the very essence of her, if not her body. To some, it might even look as if I came here, deliberately, to tear my sister's soul from her body and destroy her so that I might then possess this body as my own. My /clannachd has already suffered so much pain and shame because of me. How could I ever inflict such a scandal on them?"

"Padmé, nothing is irreversible. Anakin is right. Your clannachd is made up of very reasonable people. If you would just let us explain to them - " Obi-Wan begins to try to offer.

But, "Explain /what/? That I nearly unleashed a Dark Empire on the galaxy, through my folly? That I remained here, after my death, because of my guilt over what I had done and almost caused? That I apparently learned nothing from the time I then spent pondering my mistakes and appeared to you here because I was so angry at Sola that I wanted to punish her and didn't care who else might be hurt, in the process?" Padmé laughs bitterly, raggedly, her head dropping down into her hands. "No, /am'chara/. I can't do that to them. I can't go to them to salve my own conscience when all I will do for them is end up bringing them more pain and trouble."

"Don't be ridiculous, love! They're your /family/. They love you. They deserve to have a chance to at least say goodbye to you. You'll regret it if you leave without telling them how much you love them and will miss them," is Anakin's sharp response, the sense of both hurt radiating from him over the loss of his mother and disappointment in her for suggesting that it will somehow hurt her family less in the long run not to see her, now, so overwhelmingly strong that Padmé actually flinches away from him.

"Ani, I'm sorry, I didn't mean - "

"Yes, you did. And you're being selfish about this, Padmé. This is your family. They love you. They won't care what you did or didn't almost cause or what you might've done to be where you are now. They're in mourning for you and you could ease their pain just by going down and speaking to them for a few minutes and all you can think about is how tired you are and what a scandal it is that the Force put you into that body. I had no idea you were even capable of being so selfish," Anakin cuts her off, clearly offended by the entire situation.

Padmé jerks again, this time as if she's actually been struck, and her head snaps up so she can look at Anakin. "I - I'm not - I didn't - " Padmé stammers, staring up at him with watering eyes that have gone so dark that they look like black holes gouged into her face.

"It's not just that you're being selfish and short-sighted about this, though, is it? You're actually afraid, aren't you? Afraid of what, though? That you'll disappoint them, somehow? They already know you're not perfect, Padmé. They love you anyway. So what is it? What's holding you back? Is that just that you're afraid you'll actually have to deal with their grief over losing you?" Anakin demands, gazing back at her with eyes that have gone pitilessly hard, holding her gaze intently and refusing to let her look away. "I know you don't deal well with the pain of others. For all that you've decried the Jedi Order for its unnaturalness, in insisting that its members excise most of their emotions and therefore their humanity, you're almost just as bad as the worst of the Jedi, Padmé. You hate to lose control over yourself. You hate to show your temper or your own pain. Laughter you don't mind sharing, but tears? Regrets? Worries on a more personal and less galactic-wide level? I never even knew your sister had lost two of her children, before Obi-Wan told me. Are you really so small that you can be so afraid of having to deal with other people's pain that you would rather willingly cause them even more pain than have to face them and see evidence of their distress?"

Obi-Wan actually startles slightly at the accusation, shocked by level of contempt in Anakin's voice. "Anakin, perhaps it would be wiser if - "

"No, Obi-Wan. I want to know. Like a fool, I always admired her for her bravery and for her poise, her ability to keep calm and to do whatever needed to be done, even in most desperate of situations. But I can see now that I was wrong. She's not really brave at all. She's just so terrified of letting people down and then having to deal with their pain, where she's disappointed them, that she'd do anything to keep or to make people happy and safe and go to any extreme necessary to avoid them if they end up suffering any anyway," Anakin sneers, his words seeming almost deliberately cruel.

"Anakin - !"

"I said no/, Obi-Wan!" Anakin all but snarls as he cuts him off, his arm tightening around Obi-Wan and bringing him up short when he tries to step forward, to go to Padmé to comfort her. "I cared for this woman enough that once I would've sold my soul to try to save her life. And I find that I never truly knew her at all. I'm just a /little bit upset about that, considering what I learned of that future when I saw your far-sight vision about it, and I damn well think I've earned the right to an honest answer! So how about it, Padmé? Are you really so small and self-centered that you honestly care so much more about saving face and clinging to this crazy idea you apparently have that your family has some perfect little idealized image of you that would be diminished in some way by going to speak to them now that you'd rather go without visiting them one more time, even though this would be the last time you could ever see or speak to them again? Are you really that much of a coward that you would rather depart from here forever without telling your family goodbye and letting them tell you how much they love you and will miss you than run the risk of having to deal with their pain when they see you like this and find out everything that's happened to you and that you won't be staying in this body?" he demands.

Padmé flinches away from him so violently that for a moment her whole body wavers, in danger of toppling over backwards, and for an instant her dark, tearful eyes seem to waver weirdly, the dark brown color swirling like curtains in the midst of being drawn aside. Anakin, startled, leans forward, staring with a morbid curiosity to see if that familiar rich chocolate color is going to lighten to the pale, limpid blue that is natural to that body (thus indicating that Padmé is actually willing to flee, rather than face his questions) or leach out to the sickeningly hard and bestial yellow that betrayed the true depth of Sola's betrayal and the nature of her involvement with Sidious (and therefore prove that some bit of corruption from Sidious somehow still lingers in that body, despite the destruction of Sola's mind and memories), but in that moment Obi-Wan jerks in the circle of his arm hard enough to stagger Anakin sideways, colliding with Obi-Wan and breaking Anakin's concentration, and what Obi-Wan says next stings him badly enough that all thought of the momentary strangeness and apparent lightening of those eyes instantly flies out of his head. "Anakin, for shame! The Dark Side may not be what the Jedi and the Sith have always assumed it to be, but that's no excuse to let your own pain and anger drive you to harm another! Padmé was your /wife/. More, she is the one who brought us together. She deserves more from you now than your scorn! She is guilty of far less than either you or I can honestly claim to be, in terms of letting her fear or any wish to avoid the pain of others influence her, and her time here is far too limited for you to be wasting it with your hurtful accusations and childish antics!" The sense of Obi-Wan along the open bond is galling - bitterly disappointed in Anakin; shockingly, almost fiercely, protective of Padmé; and, in general, about as close to angry as he usually ever gets, the same mixture of bone-deep offense at a blatant injustice and implacable determination to redress that offence that Obi-Wan almost always exhibits whenever he learns of someone who is committing a deliberate wrong. He hasn't quite managed to pull away from the circle of Anakin's right arm, but he has withdrawn his own arm from around Anakin's waist, and his body is pulled away from him at an angle that makes it obvious that he would currently rather be at Padmé's side than Anakin's.

Anakin can only gape at Obi-Wan, at that, hurt beyond words by the accusation of childishness and shocked by the thought that Obi-Wan could believe that he might be foolish enough, after seeing what he came so close to becoming, to let his darker emotions rule him and angrier than ever that Obi-Wan would choose to take Padmé's part in this argument when she's the one who's clearly in the wrong, and his arm has tightened around Obi-Wan again, anchoring him to him with grim purpose, and he is about to lash out furiously and say as much when an echo of malignantly dark, gloating laughter in the back of his head suddenly brings him up short. He's just standing there, staring at Obi-Wan, mouth open but unmoving, the words he would have said having deserted Anakin as utterly as all thought of the momentary oddness of Padmé's suddenly seemingly lightening eyes, when Padmé lets out a long, shuddering sigh that is not quite loud enough to be a sob and quietly, dully, begins to speak, her voice sounding like a stranger's, neither her own nor Sola's.

"No, I don't, Obi-Wan. Am'chara/, please. /Please. You don't need to try to defend me. He's right. Ani's right. I'm being terribly cowardly about this. And what's worse, I know better. I know this about myself. This is a flaw I thought I'd understood and conquered, while I was in the braid, waiting and watching to make sure the two of you were healing from the hurts my cowardice had caused. I'm sorry, my cariodals/. I am /so sorry. You don't deserve this. Neither of you. Please, don't fight because of me," she begs as she raises her head up to them, her voice falling back into a slightly more familiar rhythm and cadence as a little more life filters into it.

"Padmé - "

"Obi-Wan, please. Anakin has given me an honest challenge. He is being truthful and just as his own sense of familial duty requires of him, not cruel. He is angry with me for being such a coward and from keeping so much of myself from him in the time since we wed, yes, but then, he has a right to his anger. I have been and I am being a coward, and I have kept far too much of myself hidden away from him for one who has claimed to love him. I am a near-stranger to my husband, Bendu, and it is solely because I was afraid of causing him pain and did not want to disappoint either him or you, am'chara/. And if I should have known better than to give in to my cowardice then - first my fear of being alone and then my fear of causing pain through disappointment - I certainly should know better now than to allow my cowardice to repeat any of the same mistakes with my own /clannachd/," Padmé only insists, her spine straightening and her eyes flashing darkly as more life, more passion, returns to her voice and she refuses to let Obi-Wan either defend her against Anakin's words or try to protest her own words. "You know what happened to his mother, Obi-Wan. Anakin is only trying to protect my /clannachd from the same sense of desolation that so nearly destroyed him, after he lost her without being able to properly tell her how much he loved her. He is being a true friend to me, in challenging me this way."

Seeing the sudden thoughtfulness in Obi-Wan's eyes, a part of Anakin desperately wants to let Padmé's words simply stand. But the rest of him, remembering both the potential for devastatingly destructive darkness hidden away at the heart of him that his sharing of the memory of the far-sight visions with Obi-Wan had revealed and the ease with which he had initially been coaxed and goaded and manipulated into giving in to that darkness, as he had for a short time aboard the /Invisible Hand/, and haunted by the memory of the sound of Sidious' mocking, hateful laughter, knows that he cannot afford to do it. Shivering convulsively, he declares, "I wasn't thinking of being your friend, Padmé, or of protecting your family. I was thinking only of my own anger and pain. I lashed out at you. It was wrong. Obi-Was was right to be disappointed and to bring me up short. I said those things to hurt you."

"And in hurting me, you gave me wisdom. And a reason not to give in to my cowardice. It's alright, Ani," Padmé simply insists, gazing up at him with tears shining in her eyes and a tremulous but genuine smile on her lips. "Some truths can only come clear with pain. Some truths are pain. It is as Obi-Wan told me, once:/ wisdom is seldom comforting, because so much of what sentient beings find comforting is nothing more than pure illusion. /Life is growth, and all life is a struggle to find and keep the balance that allows such growth. You've given me a reason to struggle for that growth, that balance, a little while longer. It's more than I deserve, given my actions and my words here, Ani. But I will try to make up for that. I will stay here and I will see the souls of those who would have been my children given new bodies, by you and Obi-Wan, and born into flesh and true life. And then, after I have seen them and perhaps, if you and they will permit it, held them and so come to know, without a doubt, that they will be all right, I will go and I will speak to the members of my /clannachd/, one by one, and tell them farewell, before I go. I promise you that. I can be brave, husband, and endure their pain and disappointment. Just give me the chance, and I will do it."

Obi-Wan and Anakin share a look, the implacably determined sense of Obi-Wan along the open bond promising that they will have a long discussion about this, later (after everything has been resolved with the twins, Padmé's farewells to their shared clannachd/, and the arrangements that will need to be made to see to it that the consciousness-emptied body that once belonged to Sola Naberrie and the secret apprentice and willing tool of Darth Sidious is properly seen to and taken care of) and the still hurt and hurting but now also sorrowful and quietly repentant sense of Anakin promising just as inevitably that they /will have a long discussion about not only this but also the sudden and violent loss that Anakin suffered, on Tatooine, when Shmi Skywalker Lars died, and both the many ways in which that loss hurt him and why it wounded him so deeply that it still hurts him so badly. With the barest nods of acknowledgment and agreement for such an arrangement, Obi-Wan calmly repositions himself so that he is again standing shoulder to shoulder with Anakin, winds his left arm in a loose but accepting embrace back around Anakin's waist, and then quietly tells her, "If you are sure that this is what you wish, Padmé."

"I'm sure, Obi-Wan. Please. This is what I want," Padmé immediately fervently declares, her hands clasped before her in a gesture of mingled hope and pleading

"Very well, then," Obi-Wan agrees, his previously agitated voice and manner transmuting to the soul-deep serenity of one who has let go of his doubts and surrendered to the unfolding moment and the will of the Force. "We will speak no more of other things, then. It will require your help to summon the twins into the bodies we will ask the Force to fashion for them, I think. Will you join us in a meld?"

"I will do everything that I can to help," she swears, not pausing long enough after Obi-Wan's final word to allow Anakin to do more than begin to draw a breath to speak.

Anakin and Obi-Wan share another look then, Anakin's eyes narrowing in consideration and Obi-Wan absently stroking at his chin in gesture of deep thought. Still holding his former Master's gaze, Anakin finally carefully offers, "I think the version of meditation I use that's not really meditation might help with this. Going all the way down past cellular awareness to the very shape and function of each strand of individual DNA should make it easier to fashion them bodies more like the ones they would have had if they'd simply been born. And I know you've seen them in your far-sight visions, Obi-Wan, so we know what they're supposed to look and sound right. We will have to do more than simply share her conscious memories, though. The knowledge Padmé has of the bodies originally meant to hold the children's spirits will be more at the level of instinct than of conscious knowing. We'll need to seek out and bring that knowledge to the surface, to understand the ways their individual DNA strands and sequences of chromosomes once fit together."

Obi-Wan's arm instantly grows tighter around Anakin's waist, hugging him warmly against his body, and the sense of relief that Anakin feels makes him sag gratefully against that warmth, instinctively burrowing closer and having to restrain himself from ducking down and hiding his head in the crook made by Obi-Wan's shoulder and neck. "I believe you are right. And that should work. Padmé?"

"I'm ready."

Anticipating her reply, they have both taken a short stride forward, until they are so close to her that she has to lean back and crane her neck at an awkward angle to keep her eyes on their faces. No sooner has she signaled her readiness than Obi-Wan holds out his right hand to her, commanding, "Then come here, /alanna/."

She seizes it instantly, even as Anakin reaches out his left hand to her and catches her other hand, and then they are pulling her back to her feet, even as they are reaching out to her mind and to each other and to the Force, Anakin's previous uneasiness about touching his wife's mind so thoroughly swamped under a giddy rush of anticipation and unalloyed joy over the prospect of being able to hold and to help raise his children that he almost doesn't notice the infinitesimal hesitation from Obi-Wan, the brief flicker of doubt and pain, as though Obi-Wan fears he is somehow intruding on what should be a private moment between Anakin and Padmé.

Almost. Not quite, though. Even as Anakin's awareness flowers, his mind and soul once again reaching out to and fully melding with Obi-Wan in a rush that carries them forward towards Padmé and the Force, he feels that fractional moment of pained indecisiveness, reverberating in his awareness like a blow hard enough to make his ears ring with the noise of the strike, and once again he finds himself flooding with a tender wash of protectiveness and love that makes Anakin want to boldly declare that his highest purpose in life is the laying to rest of that doubt and all others like it as well as the allaying of all of the many different (if related) sources of pain that have helped make such doubts possible, and that he will do anything and everything in his power towards the meeting of that twinned goal.

And then the Force is at once opening before them like a blossoming flower of fire and engulfing them in its embrace like the lapping waves of warm and richly perfumed sea, and spoken words suddenly seem to lose all of their power.

***