Work Text:
The tide of the war has done a backflip thanks to Rex. Or rather, to good ol’ Cody, who Rex might have impersonated, and who might have caught Rex impersonating and somehow wrangled his conditioning for long enough that his ‘space the nonbeliever’ instincts were overridden.
Yeah, Cody is the real war hero. He’s the one who brings the twins home.
Home, as in, to Tantive, where everyone is waiting with bated breath to lay eyes upon these children. Rumors have been spreading across the galaxy for years that the Emperor’s executor’s ship has mice on it. Defectors in crowded cantinas throw offhand comments about these little mice, all dressed in white, skittering through corridors and clambering into the arms of officers.
Some hate the vermin. They say that their work was impeded at every turn. Some love the vermin. They say that the vermin are bright stars in an otherwise dreary, monotonous existence.
That the twins are alive is in itself a miracle; that they are apparently socialized and described as chatter boxes and inquisitive leads only to the foot of a mountain of questions. General Kenobi has to sit down when Cody arrives with his purge trooper helmet set tight on his hip and held there by an arm dressed in imperial black. When Cody leaves them again to do a better job than Rex of infiltrating his (now former) employer’s star destroyer, Kenobi appears as though he will crumble into dust.
But when the triumphant returns and the war does its backflip, Kenobi actually sinks to his knees.
He is the first and last known to have handled the twins. They were ripped from his arms by his son, his brother, his student, and he’d fallen to his knees then just as he folds and falls now and, for the first time in the 17 years that Rex has known him, he openly weeps.
The twins are, just as the defectors say, dressed in white, both of them. The boy and the girl. The boy is so blonde that wisps of his hair glow in the hangar’s harsh lights. The girl’s eyes don’t match in color. One is vibrant yellow and the other so dark it may as well be black.
The twins are home. And the war bends away from its course.
Luke and Leia. Kenobi remembers their names; he cradles them both as close to his chest as he can fit them and tells them that he is their uncle.
The children squirm and break away from him to tuck themselves into Cody’s ribs instead, one on each side. They don’t understand what has happened; they seem to think that this is some sort of assignment. A trip. A test.
They tuck themselves against Cody and ask him what is happening and where is Dad and when can they go home. They want to go home.
Cody has been their guard since they were babies. He is their uncle. He is their favored person and one of the few who has known without a doubt for 14 years that the mice were never a legend.
Cody tells them that they aren’t going home; it isn’t safe there anymore. It is his job to keep them safe, remember?
The twins are uncertain, but they are children. They nod and huddle together and ask when it will be safe to go home then. Cody has no answer for them.
After a few hours, they stop asking.
The twins sleep together and huddle together and hide together and it is nearly 36 hours before someone realizes in the mayhem that neither of them has asked for food or water. When offered the necessities, the children crawl further into themselves.
Leia’s eye glows bright yellow. Luke’s become flecked around their edges with the same color.
General Windu pronounces them touched by the darkside, but not lost. Sometimes, the proof of that can be noticed in how the colors recede and sharpen in those irises throughout the day.
When pressed to eat and drink, the yellow expands in both sets. Fear drives it. Cody intervenes and explains to them all that the children don’t eat or drink anything given to them by others.
Three times, they’ve been poisoned in their short lives. Once as babies, once last year.
Who did it?
Cody isn’t 100% positive, but he has a hunch.
The twins are the tools of the Emperor to control his dog, but it is Luke, who finds it in himself to unleash a sunshine smile at Rex even torn away from all he knows, is the Emperor’s preferred target to keep said Imperial dog and his secret princess in line.
He is missing a hand, Luke is. And something is wrong with his skin. Something is wrong with his knee and the way that his eyes burst into a thousand colors the second someone he doesn’t know approaches him.
The jedi say that the dark side swells around him as people enter his orbit; it recedes when they leave. Kenobi believes that this is a defense mechanism. It is yet more proof that Luke has been forced to tap into a power he doesn’t understand to keep himself afloat. He is not as force-sensitive as his sister or his father; Leia’s control over her emotions is apparently ‘shocking.’ Her expression smooths out to blasé calculation and her energy is curious more than anything else.
Still, Leia can feel the light side of the Force. She reaches for it when its tendrils brush her cheeks. She wants to play with it, the jedi think.
It appears that she has no set allegiance. She has hope and talent and General Yoda says that he understands now why the emperor wants so badly to keep her in his back pocket.
She is destined to be the next in line to his throne—a replacement for her father when the emperor’s patience with him is through. Vader must know. Vader must know, too, that Leia’s talents render Luke unnecessary to the emperor. The man already has his heir and his spare.
But it appears that Vader has intervened with these designs by encouraging what a strong codependence between the twins. They do nothing without the other; they may be separated for some time, but if that case remains beyond two or three hours, they both start to become anxious. They reach for each other through the Force, Kenobi says. The jedi can feel them pulsing, putting out radar waves, trying to find the other.
Luke, however, is still missing a hand. The two must be separated for medical assessment. The result is a scream that could shatter glass.
Leia explodes the second they try to take her brother.
Luke fights them. Chokes them. Tears out the IV lines and needles sunken into his pale limbs. He pries open automatic doors and slams them shut after him. He disappears time and time and time again, somehow into the inner workings of the ship that are freezing cold and nigh impossible to reach. His eyes blaze in the darkness when flashlights land on him.
He grimaces as though he has fangs.
Cody tries his best to soothe the surging fury-anxiety-fear, but Luke screams in response.
He wants his dad.
He wants Dad.
The medical staff tranq him with a dart before he electrocutes himself on the inner workings of the vessel. He nearly stops the dart with the Force. Nearly. Kenobi tears his hand to the side and, in doing so, shatters Luke’s juvenile grip on the energy.
Before the dart takes effect, they lose the kid again. Wherever he is now, he will fast be unconscious. The race is on to find him before he gets too cold.
Leia is angry with them and it takes four master jedi to keep her from crushing Kix’s windpipe in the other hold. Her shouts of effort don’t let up; they are dulled by the medical bay’s door and that is it.
Luke was hiding in one of the lower holds, up in the ceiling storage where the engineers’ tools are stowed. He was floppy when Rex gathered his small frame. Thankfully, he wasn’t burned or losing heat. He’s so small, even at fourteen. Ahsoka was much taller despite her rounded montrals and lekku.
Kix gives Luke another dose of tranquilizer so that he doesn’t wake up and wreck the equipment. The stump on his right arm reveals itself to be covered by a thick prosthetic skin—a bacta bandage for a recent amputation. It is clean and has not yet begun rolling at its edges, which Kix determines to be a sign of a recent application. When he removes it, they are all faced with stabbing tangs in their jaws and guts.
Luke’s stump is perfectly flat on its end.
It has been cauterized. The skin on the surface is burnt and blistered but healing steadily.
Kenobi leaves to retch.
The hand was lost via lightsaber. It was clean lopped off.
There are other smooth patches of skin on Luke’s body which suggest that this is not the first saber burn he has ever received. There are little marks on each side of his neck, and they mean nothing because his whole body—all of it—is covered in a delicate, feathering discoloration.
Several of the jedi healers begin prodding in grave concern. The snaking shapes are slightly raised and appear in some parts dark purple and in others white. General Yoda is called.
He examines the boy for a short time before saying with gravity that the boy has been tortured via force lightning. For the marks to remain for so long after his ordeal and to scar over as they have been, they appear to have been talking nearly a minute of electrocution.
Yoda fears that Luke’s human body may have other effects from this experience. He is not wrong, but there is not much more investigation to be done without traumatizing the boy further than he clearly already has been. So, they back off and let Luke wake up. Cody gathers him into his arms and tucks his head under his chin while the boy heaves sob after sob and begs him take him home.
Everyone else knows what they need to now.
Vader doesn’t use force lightning.
There comes a time in every man’s life where he must call his former best friend and accuse him of child abuse. Rex’s time hasn’t come yet. He and everyone else watches as Kenobi clambers onto the control panel to stick a finger into Vader’s hologram face.
He accuses Vader of wild things of greater and greater severity and he gets exactly what he came for.
A hiss.
Vader tells him to hold his tongue. Kenobi tells him that he’s keeping the kids. There is a pause that stretches on for an eternity, which is punctuated by words that could sink the unsinkable.
“It’s better this way.”
Vader ends the call.
Shock spreads through the rebellion.
Cody lies to the children in front of Rex, Kenobi, and all the little gods gazing un-fondly down upon the rebellion. He tells them that their father contacted the command and said that they would be staying with their uncle Kenobi for a while. He explains that the emperor is currently on board The Executor, and it is fucking telling how the kids ask no questions after that.
Cody says that Vader wants them to know that he loves them.
There are no questions to that either.
Kenobi is raging out of his mind. No one is quite sure how to help him. He seems to be a ball of contradictory emotions—protective, on the one hand, for his nephew and niece but also for his student, his brother, his son. Furious, on the other, that Vader has brought the twins into a life riddled with daily hostage situations.
Luke watches Kenobi pace and gets up to tag along after him. Leia watches for a while and then joins in, and there they all go, back and forth, back and forth, like a line of ducks.
Kix and Jesse get some of the other guys to mimic the line on the other half of the control room so that Kenobi might catch onto what’s happening.
He doesn’t. Cody slots into place behind him and he still doesn’t.
Leia can’t quite tell the clones apart. She calls Rex ‘Cody’ and Kix ‘Rex’ and Jesse ‘Kix.’ She’s suspicious of Wolffe’s beard and does circles around him and Gregor, contemplating.
Her solution to all this nonsense is to devise a star system. She forces Luke to take part. In return for his compliance, she draws a cluster of red stars on his new bacta skin-bandage and sets herself to enduring his instructions for how to draw an X-Wing.
Once that’s done, he helps her peel stickers off paper and slap them onto armor and blasters and chronos while people are unaware. Rex doesn’t even know what’s happened until after he’s been branded.
He’s got a shiny, foil-like green star tacked to the bottom of his armor’s breastplate now. It will not come off.
Cody has a gold one on his arm. Kix has an orange one. Gregor a blue.
There are a rainbow of stars floating around Tantive, but the most illustrious of all of them is reserved for Senator Organa.
Leia insists that he wears the purple one. It’s her favorite color. She likes him best of everyone on this pressurized can.
Organa humbly accepts his new rank and then the twins are off again back to go flop down and compile a key document so that they can keep track of who’s star denotes who.
The war is long and endless and boring, and there are two almost-teenagers on board this ship now, and they keep finding stories they want Cody to tell them, except they don’t actually want him to tell them. They interrupt him and start telling each other their own stories.
Gory.
Grim.
Full of explosions.
Kenobi’s blood pressure is sky high. He intervenes and tries telling them jedi stories. Nice stories with moral lessons.
Even Cody looks like he might drift off. Rex does catch himself nodding once or twice.
For his crimes, Luke and Leia bully Kenobi out of their creative circle. They return to telling Cody about how Luke is going to build a space station with impenetrable shields but that isn’t as ‘stupidly shaped’ as the Death Star.
The kids—
Well.
The kids hate the Death Star. They want to explode the Death Star. They’ve made some rather graphic plans regarding its inhabitants and the eventual destruction that the Death Star will meet in its near future.
Rex asks Cody to help make this make sense, and Cody decides that they hate the station so much because their Dad spends more time dealing with it and its many operations and construction necessities than he does with them. And while the twins appear to have been raised within highly collectivist culture despite their separation from others, they do not share their Dad.
There is a line in the sand.
They don’t even really seem to like the idea of sharing him with the Emperor. Luke, understandably, explains that this is because the Emperor is a fuckhead with an inflated ego. Leia jumps in to maintain the party line by clarifying that it is important for Imperial leaders to be fuckheads with inflated egos because that’s what the Empire needs to keep expanding, but all the literature says that they, as minors, need to have at least one parental figure in order to not turn out ‘maladjusted.’
When asked who the current parental figure they have is, they reply ‘Dad and Cody.’
Cody preens. Rex wants to shove him.
When asked if Uncle Kenobi counts as a parental figure, the twins blast the mere idea to pieces.
Uncle Kenobi is the lesser of their two evils at the moment. He doesn’t cut off hands, which makes him tolerable, but he is bossy and insistent on things like water showers and hair combing and meditation and so is altogether too overbearing and straightlaced.
Dad is superior to Uncle Kenobi in every way.
He tolerates them throwing things in their apartment and lets them ‘fight it out’ when disagreements arise and sleep on the floor if they want to. He also cooks, which sends Ahsoka, back from her espionage adventures for the week, into paroxysms when she hears it. However, this is an important point for the kids.
They don’t trust food or drink acquired outside of their apartment on The Executor, so they consume mostly things that would be wildly difficult or generally idiotic to tamper with. Ration bars, protein cubes. Water from communal fountains. Cody would often stop them and take a nibble of things first, which the kids find as annoying as the day is long.
Cody still does this for them, but mostly because he seems to enjoy their whining.
Still, Vader—Anakin—cooking.
The idea in itself is ridiculous; the fact that its real and true and the twins have preferences for the things he prepares for them stops traffic in Rex’s head.
Rex asks if they would like to try some cooking on board Tantive so that they can eat something besides B rations.
He gets wide, multi-colored eyes locked on him.
Cody sweetly refers to the twins as ‘baby sith,’ which catches on among the jedi and proves itself to be a hassle. Rex can’t decide if they’re baby sith because they’re teenagers or if they’re baby sith because they keep busting through hermetically sealed doors.
Making fried tubers with them is an exercise in jedi-like patience. He trusts neither of them not to steal knives. He cannot take his eyes off them for so much as a second before one of them tries to make the other take a huge bit of raw onion.
They don’t know how herbs and spices work. Luke is chewing on a stick of sweetbark. Rex can do nothing but stare at him.
He asks if that’s not gritty.
Luke swallows painfully. Rex catches Leia before she follows his example.
The jedi resolve to move the kids somewhere a little more stable while Kenobi is again standing on a chair threatening Vader’s hologram for more information as to A) his machinations, B) if he’s being coerced, C) what the fuck to do to keep the kids from trying to dislocate their thumbs, and D) how long he expects to keep this game up.
General Yoda asks Luke if he would like to learn how to use the light side of the Force.
Luke declines.
General Yoda asks Leia if she would like to learn to use the light side of the Force.
Leia thinks about it for a moment and points out that it sounds hard. She’s already good at using the Force, thanks. And anyways, Dad is training her and Luke both, so they require no frog-intervention. Luke backs her up.
General Windu saunters over and points out that they’ll both die faster if they keep burning themselves out with the darkside. He makes a great hum-ho about darksiders having no manners and less diplomatic ability. He begins musing on the short-mindedness of darksiders and sighs gustily about how their beloved father Vader was once a jedi knight.
He has the kids’ attention now.
Leia tells him the prove it.
It is a tragedy that Luke and Leia don’t know the man in the flat image Rex holds up for them. They are insistent that it is not their father. Their dad doesn’t have hair. Or arms. Or legs. Or good lungs.
He does have eyes, though. They will give Rex that point and that point only.
He tries appealing to the maternal lineage, which to be fair, Cody warns him against. The result is the same. Luke and Leia don’t especially look like their mother or their father. They’re a solid mix of both of them and spend most of their time looking at each other, which makes it hard for them to see the similarities of their features in the people in these images.
Luke determines that the lady in the image looks ‘tall’ and this is enough for them. She can’t be their mother. Neither of them has cleared five feet by more than a few millimeters.
Rex has never felt frustration like this. He is trying to be patient because he knows that both children have been raised with zero context about the galaxy around them (besides the propaganda), but he hopes that Vader would have at least shown them an image of Padmé.
Clearly, he is a fool.
Cody intervenes; he sashays over and plops himself down to be immediately attacked from both sides.
Any discussions of heritage are quickly forgotten.
Cody tells Rex later that his hopes are too high. The most that can be sought for the children is for them to reach the age of maturity. If they survive the war—if the emperor does not crush their throats for the sin of confused loyalty—and go on to live lives that are not consumed with destruction, then that is already a greater success than can be asked of them.
Cody is loath to leave them for this reason and more. He is convinced that the moment Palpatine becomes aware of their removal from Imperial custody, he will put plans into motion to kill both. Leia is his intended heir, yes, but even an heir can be spoiled.
Kenobi arrives, having heard everything, and swears to Cody that he will not let that happen. He insists that the children need deprogramming and rehabilitation, and after that, he, if no one else, will take personal responsibility for their safety. They are his family, like it or not.
Cody smiles wryly and says that they’re his family, too.
The day comes where Tantive must touch down to refuel and load up on supplies. Alderaan is beautiful. Senator Organa is glad to see it and gladder to see those he represents. He is swept away and everyone else is on leave. Rex searches for Cody to join him and the others for a drink. He can’t find him. Usually, he is glued to Wolffe’s side like they always have been, but Wolffe, too, is nowhere to be found.
It is nearly half an hour before Rex discovers the pair, both holding the hands of the wide-eyed twins who refuse to come down the side ramp.
They won’t be dragged.
They won’t be persuaded.
They’ve never touched land before.
Rex takes a moment to find a wall to bang his head against until Ahsoka finds him like that and asks him if this is about Vader-kin.
It is.
“The least he could do is let them touch grass,” he spits.
Ahsoka arches a brow and decides to go throw herself off the ramp, scaring the shit out of the kids as she falls. The sudden panic is immediately followed by devastation. Tears. Crying.
It comes on suddenly and doesn’t leave when Ahsoka pops up and hauls herself back up onto the ramp to show that it was just a joke.
It’s no use. The twins think that she’s spaced herself. She is now their 3rd favorite person. It’s a fucking nightmare for them.
Cody orders her to apologize while she talks over him, trying to explain that there’s just ground under there. It’s just plants and stones. She holds her hands out to Luke with intention to take him off the side of the ramp and set him down. He’s the more adventurous of the two. This logic is solid.
Rex strides forward to bully his way between his older, far-too-protective brothers to catch Luke around the ribs. He nearly gets bitten in the hand off to Ahsoka, and Ahsoka quickly, mindful of her own limbs, sets Luke flat on the ground.
There is a pause.
Leia screams like they’ve just murdered her brother.
But then, Luke lights up and leaps up and catches ahold of the ramps edge. He is beaming. He holds his stump up for his sister. Leia stares at him for a good beat and then takes it.
They might not have thought this through. Or maybe Rex and Ahsoka are the ones who haven’t thought this through. Cody has clearly thought it through and, any day now, he can stop turning around in circles and panicking. Alderaan is safe, and the nearby forest isn’t that dense.
Wherever the twins are now, they’ll be noticed by someone and surely coaxed back in the direction of the ship.
Surely.
“I’m going to rip your spine out through your throat,” Cody says with a grimace.
“Tano,” Wolffe says urgently.
“I’m on it,” Ahsoka says.
Kenobi finds them. They have climbed a tree—not a small one either—and now they are stuck and Rex is witnessing only joy.
Kenobi circles the tree while Cody tells Luke that he is not to move a muscle. The threat falls on deaf ears. Leia’s the only one looking down at them. Luke is an adrenaline junkie with one hand and a head filled with bad ideas.
Kenobi begins to climb the tree, which Leia recognizes as a reason to follow her brother up higher.
Wolffe thinks out loud that all these jedi have forgotten that these two aren’t jedi children. They’re sith-kids. Sort of. A mix between sith-kids and normal kids. Or perhaps, he thinks with a smirk, they’re far worse than that.
Perhaps they’re Tatooine kids.
Force help them.
Kenobi has lectured the living shit out of the twins. He is living up to his new reputation like it’s his job. If Cody weren’t having a moment that required him to be limp with relief, then Rex is sure that he’d be amused. As it is, no one is amused by Rex and Ahsoka. It’s a shame.
A reprieve comes when General Yoda sticks his nose into the business and tells Kenobi to take his level 13 personality down to a 5 and a half. He is being overbearing. Important, it is, for the young to explore their world and their limits.
Kenobi seethes at his grandmaster and flagrantly ignores him. Ahsoka starts laughing so hard she coughs. Yoda, however, shakes his head and leaves with the sudden interest of Luke.
Luke’s got an addictive personality. Finally, finally they all get it.
He’s so friendly (too friendly) and excitable (too excitable) which means that he is exactly like Anakin as a young man.
All this to say that within a few days, Luke forsakes his sister, Cody, and Kenobi to go follow Yoda around like a duck. This is the first sign anyone has seen of Luke taking an interest in anything light-side adjacent. He has been loathe to meditate or think about his connection to the Force and what he wants it to be. He flat out refuses to engage with that business or starts trying and gives up on account of how difficult it is to focus.
And yet, following Yoda around and being constantly tripped and prodded by him seems to be really getting through that thick skull.
Luke tells Yoda in private that he’s positive that if he lets go of the darkside, he’ll die. And he doesn’t want to die because he doesn’t want to leave Vader and Leia alone. They’re nearly the same person, he explains, so they argue all the time and Leia doesn’t know when to quit and has no problem pissing their Dad off, even when their Dad makes rules for their own good.
He hints that when he and Leia act up, Palpatine beats the shit out of Vader, which is not surprising, but definitely seems to explain why Vader’s calculus has landed on stowing the twins with the rebellion.
Yoda asks Luke if he thinks his father will return for him and Luke says outright that he doesn’t think so, and Leia doesn’t think so either. And further, Leia wants to move on with things and start a new life, but Luke can’t make himself.
When asked what he wants, Luke says a new hand.
He doesn’t go beyond that.
Yoda asks the medics if it is possible to evaluate him for a prosthetic.
Some of the rebellion leaders want to use the twins as Vader-bait. It comes up in a group meeting that grows awkward immediately upon the suggestion.
Someone points out that the children are force-sensitive and deeply connected to their father and Anakin’s level of force-sensitivity is both unprecedented and unmatched. As the children pulse for him in the force, pleading softer and softer with each passing day for his return, it seems like he will occasionally pulse back to them.
The question is: why shouldn’t they use the kids to guide them to an attack point?
The answer is: because Cody will murder anyone who dares to in cold blood.
He leaves the meeting and locks himself into the twins’ quarters with them while they sleep. Wolffe goes after him before the generals claim that Cody, too, is an untrustworthy defector.
Kenobi states that the Rebellion will not use children as bait or spies. These are the jedis’ terms. Yoda stops him and says that he has a different idea. He wants to see how far Vader’s conscience and attachment to the children goes.
Cody threatens to defect again in the face of Yoda’s idea. Kenobi threatens to defect with him.
Yoda thanks them for volunteering and gives them 3000 credits and a week to get their affairs in order.
They leave the men and the twins on Tatooine. The defiance that Cody and Kenobi radiate from their new dumpy little home seems to say ‘good riddance, the lot of you were just holding us back.’
Wolffe chucks Rex’s chin and tells him that it’s all part of a plan. They will come back and bring all four home if it doesn’t work. No one is exiling anyone.
Rex already misses Cody, though. He wouldn’t have come like Wolffe with this comfort. He’d tell Rex to honor the decisions made by the unwieldy strength of idiots. It is something to gaze upon in awe and learn from.
The thought helps stave off the guilt for a while.
Vader comms in after three days and threatens to destroy the rebellion, the empire, and himself if the locations of ‘Obi-Wan and his hubris’ are not immediately given. Yoda makes a show of flippantly stating that Kenobi feels a responsibility to rear the children since there appears to be no end of Vader’s absence in sight.
The response is a glowering silence. Vader demands Kenobi’s location. Yoda tells him to search his feelings. Vader shuts down the comms.
There is a minor skirmish in the days that follow, followed by the realization that they are all now being haunted by a great, shiny, six-foot-five ghost.
This goes on in the same cycle for nearly a month. Not once does Vader comm back in to demand information; rather, he seems intent on shaking the shit out of the ship until someone’s seatbelt comes loose so he can snatch them out of space and torture information out of them.
All seatbelts, however, are inspected and snapped tight. The harnesses on this ship have never been more utilized or secure.
By the 2nd day of the new month, something finally gives. Perhaps Anakin’s ragebrain clears for long enough to actually process rational thought. Perhaps he realizes that no matter how many times he pings the ship with force energy, his kiddos aren’t going to ping him back.
It dawns on Rex that Vader thinks that the rebellion has put force suppressors on his babies and are holding them captive. It also dawns on Rex that Vader is 110% in Dad-mode and is no longer pursuing imperial objectives.
The situation is roiling. The Emperor could notice it at any moment.
Vader’s clarity comes not a second too late. The destroyer behind Tantive seems to melt into space. It falls back and then out of sight.
Kenobi calls in an emergency report on Tatooine less than ten hours later. He sounds exhausted. The kids are cheering raucously in the background of the call. Cody’s shushing is also present.
“Consider us breeched,” Kenobi sighs as the sound of a bang slams through the comms. “Took you long enough,” he calls over his shoulder.
“Proceed with caution, Master Kenobi,” Windu says conversationally.
“No promises,” Kenobi snaps.
“May the Force be with you,” Windu says. “Over and out.”
Anakin tries to steal back his kids. The kids try to go with him. Kenobi sticks his foot in that plan every five minutes until Vader tries to choke him to death—it doesn’t quite work out as he plans because in their month of solitude with Kenobi on Tatooine, the twins have decided that Kenobi is their grumpy, no-fun uncle, and he is not to be tampered with.
They guilt trip Vader into non-choking behavior and instead redirect his energies towards hauling them out of the sand at the mere sight of a scorpion.
Luke claims to have eaten one.
Vader’s all-consuming attention zero in on him.
It becomes clear through these interactions that Vader is convinced beyond all doubt that Luke is going to die from rambunctious behavior far sooner than any external body will kill him. Rex is privy to a recording of a hissing, puffing, tense but enlightening conversation about how the scorpions with the red tails are fine, are friends, are not to be eaten, and how the scorpions with the black tails are not fine, not friends, and are still absolutely not to be eaten, you aggravating child.
Leia intervenes in that discussion to declare that Luke was lying, and he only ate a single scorpion leg because he chickened out.
Vader’s attention shifts.
Leia quickly admits that she too has eaten scorpion, and she was disappointed that it wasn’t grosser.
Yes, they stole it from the wastes.
No, they didn’t tell Kenobi.
Yes, they have been trapping more.
Vader’s hissing takes on new levels of fury. He tells Kenobi that he’s unfit to parent and apparently just glares or something at Cody before telling the twins to get their clothes. He will not have them out here dressed like moisture farmers.
Luke whines about it. He likes his new clothes; they offer much more movement and freedom than his old stiff white ones. Vader ignores him and tells Leia to put up her hair. She says no. Vader tells her to put up her hair or else. She says that he’s not the boss of her. Vader makes a great deal of rustling, which is presumably him lowering himself down to the height of his most esteemed princess.
“Every day,” he says between puffing air, “You try me.”
The twins seize the opportunity to form a tiny resistance of their own. They decide they want to stay on Tatooine. Vader scoffs. He accuses Cody of mind control.
The twins maintain that they want to stay on Tatooine and if he tries to make them leave, they’ll throttle each other to death.
Kenobi announces sharply that no one is throttling anyone else to death. Not in this house. So the twins amend it so that they’ll go out and fight a krayt dragon—which they helpfully explain to Vader, as if he has never heard of a krayt dragon before.
Vader’s silence isn’t really silence with his breathing mechanism, but it is furious.
He elects to respond with decisive parental action. Both kids are whining and shrieking and growling immediately after his decision. He ignores their noise-making to strap them into seats in his ship and, when he’s finished, tells Kenobi to keep out of this business and away from the children.
Kenobi calls after him that they’ll be back. Just wait.
And the transmission is over.
The twins have been lost.
The twins are found the next week. Back on Tatooine. This time, it is discovered that Luke is capable of piloting an X-wing on his own at 14 years old.
Ahsoka pumps her fist in his honor. She and Rex have joined Kenobi and Cody in their desert hell, waiting for this very thing to happen. The jedi have had faith that the rebellion has made an impression upon the youths. They’ve trusted in the Force and now the Force has rewarded them.
Rex gets to witness this time the landing of the ship and Luke’s little body popping out of the front compartment in an Empire-black flightsuit to wave. Leia jumps up from the rear section. They match once again.
Kenobi pats their heads like he’s taking count of a children’s class when they come tripping over their too-big suits into the home.
He is not the missed person here. Cody is. And Cody gloats in satisfied silence as the kids clamber into his arms and talk to him a mile a minute.
Vader lands an hour later and falls right in the sand.
It is hysterical. Rex and Ahsoka, watching from the window, force themselves to shut up and flatten their expressions just in time for Vader to wrench open the front door with the Force.
“Maul is out there,” he snarls right at Kenobi.
“I am aware,” Kenobi replies coolly. “He’s waiting for Leia. He took a shining to her last she was here.”
There is a pause.
“MAUL.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, Anakin. You’ve been with them the whole time. I’ve done nothing to contact them, just as you asked.”
“You brainwashed them.”
“I brainwashed them?”
“First Cody. Now them.”
“Luke, darling, come here. Did I brainwash you?”
Luke stares. His hair has never been less controllable. Cody has gotten him more or less situated on his left side so that Leia can sit on his right.
“You can’t ask him,” Vader snaps.
“I’m brainwashed,” Luke informs Cody.
“Who else am I to ask? Rex? Rex, have I brainwashed them?” Kenobi asks.
“No,” Rex says with confidence, “You’re a pillar of convenience for them.”
Kenobi gestures his way as if saying ‘checkmate.’ Vader nearly trembles before them.
“We can keep doing this,” Kenobi says. “Or you can realize that they don’t like being cooped up on a ship, in an apartment, wherever it is you keep them, every minute of every hour of every day.”
“This is not freedom,” Vader suddenly snarls.
“Have you checked them for chips?” Kenobi asks benignly out of left field.
Rex’s mind goes completely blank. Even the desert outside seems to settle down to hear the answer.
“How dare you,” Vader says.
“Yes, yes, how dare I. I’m not stopping you from taking them back, Anakin. I’m only asking the question. Have you had them checked for chips?”
“There is no need.”
“Have you had them checked?”
“This is not your business. Luke. Leia. Nonnegotiable. Back in the ship. My ship.”
The twins stare owlishly with their mismatching eyes.
“But Cody’s stuck here,” Leia says.
“Of his own choice,” Vader warns. “Ship. Now. I am upset with both of you.”
The kids’ faces crumble, but they stick to their guns, bless their little hearts. They burrow in closer to Cody, chins shaking but jaws set hard.
“LUKE. LEIA,” Vader thunders. “This is not a game.”
“He’s there, though,” Leia suddenly says. “He’s there and he’ll kill us.”
“We’ve been compromised,” Luke mumbles.
Vader’s breathing answers them. It clicks on. It clicks off. Inhale. Exhale.
“He will not touch you. It’s time to go,” Anakin finally says.
“Leave them,” Kenobi cuts in.
“Shut UP—”
“Leave them,” Kenobi says loudly over him. He stands, every bit the general despite the bleached clothing. “If you cannot save yourself and I cannot save you, at least spare what’s left of Padmé’s legacy. Do her that honor. I will let no harm come to them.”
“We are not family—”
“Maul can keep trying to get in here, but he will not succeed. If I cannot mind them, then one of us here will. Cody. Rex. Ahsoka. Who do they have on your ship, hm? Who else when you aren’t there to stand between them and the man who corrupted you?”
Rex finds himself lowering his eyes to his hands. They are creased now and clammy despite the dry heat. He can’t make himself look at Vader. Ahsoka will carry that banner for him. Her eyes are acid blue with determination.
Vader stands before all of them, still in the doorway like a void. His breathing is like slashes to a length of canvas. And Kenobi remains before him, shoulders perfectly straight. Boulders could balance upon them.
“I will have them checked for chips,” he says. “And I will report back to you what I hear. You can make your decision then. But now? You leave. And you will come back here when you have thought over how many lives your twisted love must ruin for you to be satisfied.”
Vader leaves.
It is almost surreal that he just leaves. He leaves with such vehemence that Cody has to wrap an arm around each twin to keep them from having second thoughts and chasing after. Luke mainly, though.
He struggles against the grip, already shouting after Vader. He tries to throw Cody off and finally begins to invoke the force but isn’t able to do so before the sound of an engine starts up outside.
He’s not fast enough to get out there before Vader’s ship takes off into the sky.
Luke cries.
Kenobi goes out and talks to him in the sand for a long, long time.
It never occurred to Rex that the twins might have chips in them but given Palpatine’s history it just makes sense to double-check.
They start with the bio-scans because they take far longer, but thankfully come back without finding anything. Luke and Leia don’t seem to quite understand what these results mean. Cody takes them aside and explains several times in different ways. He lets them see and touch the scar on the side of his head.
There is relief following the first scan when they finally grasp what it means.
The second scan, however.
Yeah.
The second scan.
Rex finds Kenobi sitting at the small table in the small home that he and Cody have built in the sands. He has fingers pressed tight against his upper lip so that his mustache obscures their tops. He stares at the other side of the table.
Rex sits down next to him, already shaking his head.
“We know you said it as just a threat,” he says. “Just something to make him remember himself.”
Kenobi tips his head forward and scrunches his eyes closed.
Rex lets out a shaky breath.
“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay, they can be removed.”
Kenobi nods sharply without speaking.
Rex swallows.
“The emperor knows where they’ve been this whole time,” he says.
“Bait,” Kenobi grates out. “They’re fodder. For the empire. To keep Anakin compliant. He was always going to kill them. It was just a matter of when.”
Always.
Cody’s been right this whole time.
Kenobi doesn’t want to call Vader. He busies himself with the twins first, trying to think of ways to explain to them that their bodies have detonator switches in them and probably have for years. Cody is already calling Kix and making arrangements for removal.
Ahsoka and Rex can do little but start making plans for the longterm. When Vader knows, a few things could happen. Some suicidal. Many suicidal. Or maybe not. They don’t know him like they used to.
Lately, they’ve seen a father who loves his children. Who’s raised them despite the burden and despite his master planting every seed possible to make their lives and his hell.
Maybe he won’t fly into rage. Maybe he’ll give up entirely? Or maybe he’ll tumble into depression like he did in the sand the other day.
Maybe he’ll run. Maybe he’ll throw everything away and come take the twins and find somewhere safe.
Or he’ll explode into rage and be killed by his master.
Maybe he’ll become the emperor next.
What to do with the kids then? The Order won’t take them. Kenobi and Cody can’t live like this forever.
“Anakin,” Kenobi’s voice says behind them.
There is no time.
“You may want to sit down.”
The breathing is so quiet somehow aboard Tantive. It still puffs and hisses, but the sound is nothing compared to the noise the lungs made on Tatooine.
Leia is first, and she is frightened. No one here has ever experienced this type of removal before but one person.
Just one.
And he kneels before her in a thick black suit and cups her cheek in his hand and tells her to be brave.
Be brave. It will only hurt for a short while. She has endured greater pain. She is so strong already. These people will be so careful. Nothing will go wrong.
Luke is next. Vader puts his helmet against Luke’s forehead and the routine starts again.
Be brave.
Be brave.
Rex isn’t sure what he’d do in Anakin’s position. He really, really doesn’t know, and so he doesn’t blame Vader for taking some time away from the kids and from everything to think it over.
Kenobi is tense and worried, but he is always tense and worried. Cody gives none of his thoughts on the matter away, although Rex is positive that he’s shared them with Kenobi already.
Betrayal hangs heavy in the air, even after Vader has left the ship.
Resolution returns.
With it comes, of all things, two little stems of delicate pink flowers.
How easy it is now to recognize the set of Anakin’s shoulders under all that black armor and cloth. To watch him present one stem to one twin and the other to the next. They are perplexed by the flowers but follow Anakin’s quiet urge to smell them.
Luke sets his on a knee and plucks a petal to feel between his fingers. There is a bandage on his arm where the scalpel removed his chip. It sits nearly parallel to the end of his other arm.
“You’re leaving,” Leia says quietly.
Anakin rests a hand on her head.
“You’re safe here with them,” he says.
“You’re leaving us. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“Not forever,” Anakin says. “But for now. For the war.”
“Dad,” Luke whimpers.
Anakin shushes him and squeezes his shoulder.
“Don’t go. You can stay, too?”
“No.”
“Dad.”
“Dad, stay,” Leia pleads.
“No,” Anakin says again. “You two will stay here. With Cody and Obi-Wan.”
“Why can’t you stay?” Leia snaps through tears already bubbling in her eyes.
“Because,” Anakin says, “This is the right thing to do.”
He spends another half hour or so with the kids and then bids them a terrible goodbye, knowing that this time may be the last time.
Rex follows him into the hangar.
“Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” Anakin says stiffly over his shoulder.
“Don’t you ‘hey yourself’ me,” Rex huffs. “You’re gettin’ old over there, old man.”
Anakin’s hands pause on the keypad of his Tie-fighter. He slowly turns back.
“Never as old as you,” he says.
“This is the right thing to do,” Rex says.
Anakin turns away again.
“They’re weird fucking kids,” Rex continues, meandering over to lean against the ship while Anakin fumbles the code for a third time.
“They fight. Don’t let Leia bully her brother.”
Rex lets his face smile.
“I bet Kenobi’s sobbing his eyes out—overcome with joy and despair and parenthood and all that,” he says.
The keypad blares its error alarm for a fifth time.
“We’ll take care of them until you’re ready to come back,” Rex says. “However long that may be.”
The last code works. The Tie-fighter’s top opens.
“You’ll be waiting an eternity then,” Anakin says. “Good bye, Rex.”
“See you soon, Anakin. Try not to fight a war you don’t want to win.”