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It took approximately three years before something happened on Tatooine, although Owen assured me it had only been about a week since I had arrived. Feeling sore, miserable, tired and altogether too hot, for one delirious second I thought about correcting the great ninny and reassuring him that no, actually, it had been three years, look at my tan. Such a tan does not occur naturally on a Stewjoni, and so it must have been a million years since I had landed on this Force forsaken planet, because that was the only possible explanation for my skin looking like well burnished leather.
As such things were, I did say this to Owen, who replied that this must be the pregnancy hormones talking, since Beru had been much the same way. His face would darken, then, as he was reminded of the empty hollowness of his own halls, and then he would snap at me to go rest, or something, because I was in a delicate way. I had never been cared for in such a gruff manner before, and I admit that the process both intrigued and irritated me in equal measures. As such things were, I would then stomp into my room (although I assured myself that Jedi did not stomp, and thus my exit was more than graceful) and I would go and rest.
This did, admittedly, improve my mood, but I had never once admitted being wrong to Anakin and certainly wasn’t going to start a new trend with his half brother. Owen seemed to know anyway, because he kept giving me this look, and if he kept giving me that look then I was going to get him tested for Force sensitivity, because there was no way I was as transparent as that. When I said that to Beru, Beru just gave me a kindhearted smile and put more green beans on my plate.
This was all a long winded way of saying that there I was, heavily pregnant, staying on a moisture farm with the relatives of the worst apprentice on the planet, when something so miserable occurred that I had to sit down for a moment to process it, and for once, I couldn’t blame the whole thing on Jabba.
“Bah”, said Luke, hitting me with one chubby baby fist, which had the effect of snapping me out of my reflexive horror.
“Thank you, young man”, I said, pressing a kiss to the little hand.
“Bah”, Luke said.
Darth Vader was on planet. Considering the little shit had said he would never, not in a million years, set foot on Tatooine, I was beyond miffed. If he turned up looking for Luke, I was going to carve his helmet head into a million pieces and sell them to the Jawa’s for the lowest price.
I said as much to Owen.
Owen grunted, not so much as paying a lick of attention to me as he fixed one of the broken vaporators, of which I had believed to be called ‘respirators’ for the longest time. I still stand by that. It would be so much more civilised.
It was so hot I could cry, but luckily my rage was keeping me upright and fairly mobile.
“Did you hear me, Owen?” I demanded.
“Yes, yes”, Owen said, “The little shit’s landed on Tatooine”.
“I’m going to kill him”, I said, “In the worst way possible”.
Owen shut the little door thing on the vaporator and shot me a look.
“Kenobi”, he said, “I don’t know if anyone has told you, but you’re eight months pregnant. You’re not going to be killing anyone”.
I took a second to process that little reality check.
“I should have drowned him when he was nine”, I swore.
“I think a whole lot of people would have preferred that”, Owen agreed.
“Bah”, said Luke, and hit me with his fist again.
Contrary to expectations, chiefly my own, Darth Vader did not put his massive foot through the door and march right on in. He seemed to be staying primarily in Mos Espa, doing whatever it was that wayward apprentices and massive assholes did with their time. When I relayed this to Cody, who was on practically the other side of the Galaxy making the Empire regret ever decanting him, Cody was also miffed at Anakin Skywalker’s proximity to my own body. He then stated that he was going to make his way to Tatooine, on foot if he had to, to plant his own size thirteens through Vader’s face. He relayed all this without raising his voice, and without his face so much as changing expressions. I loved him so much it hurt, and admittedly the conversation devolved from there.
The conversation with Cody did make me feel better, and I then spent the remainder of the afternoon balancing Luke on my whale like stomach as I made a special type of bread that we used to make in the temple, whose ingredients had been shipped to me by a particularly proactive Ahsoka, who was excited by what she called the ‘new lineage baby’. According to Ahsoka there was no way in seven hells she would be caught dead as a Jedi again, but there was also no way in the same hells that a baby of her grandmaster would be anything but. So far, in the week I had been staying at the Lars farm, I had received a basket full common Jedi foodstuffs, one of those evil little balls we used to teach initiates how to dodge, and a little hand knitted lightsaber. I thought, on the whole, that Ahsoka had rather forgotten how all Jedi were now sharing the same spot as Public Enemy Number 1, and that owning visibly Jedi like paraphernalia was rather like a death sentence, but then again it was the thought that counted. And I did like bread.
“Bah”, Luke said, drooling messily into my piled flour.
I sighed. At least the heat from the oven should burn out any disgusting baby germs.
…
Week two, day three of my stay on the Lars farm concluded with the awful sensation of Darth Vader coming closer. By like a whole mile, but it was still one more mile than I was comfortable with.
This amazing development coincided with Luke decided that today of all day’s was the day he would get up and walk. Anakin had always been a precocious child, and Padme had made queen at, like, twelve years old, but I had never truly understood the word ‘upsetting’ until I witnessed the baby I was responsible for go from crawling to running around with no in-between steps.
“Sweet Force”, I said, “He’s some kind of monster”.
Beru hummed, a mysterious smile crinkling around her eyes as she pounded some disgusting grubs into a paste that I hoped I wasn’t going to have to eat later.
“I’m going to put him on a leash”, I said, just as Luke Skywalker made a break for the door.
The day continued awfully from there. Distracted by my sense of Anakin Skywalker, I burned my next loaf of bread, threw up in the fresher from the smell, and then a pack of Jabba sponsored idiots turned up at the farm looking for twenty percent more water than they had last month. The last one was actually the easiest to deal with. I just waddled out there and tricked the morons into accepting a bag of sand instead, saying it was ‘extra special krayt dragon sand’. The morons actually believed that I had waddled out into the desert, all eight months pregnant, to find a krayt dragon and scoop up the sand it had shat out, no mind tricks necessary, and I briefly paused to mourn the loss of the higher breed of criminal that had existed before the fall of the Republic, before the Empire rose and everyone in the galaxy lost twenty IQ points each, which was something that most criminals could ill afford.
After that, I answered a call from Cody, where I bemoaned the fact that my former apprentice was still on the same planet as me.
“The nerve”, Cody said, as flat as ever. “Wait a while, and I’ll come over there and take off his other arm”. In Cody speak, this was practically a gushing proclamation of love. I almost swooned.
Alas, my conversation with Cody was practically the only nice thing that happened to me for the rest of the day. Don’t get me wrong, talking to Cody was practically always a highlight, but usually at least one other nice thing happened in a day and I was disappointed by the dearth. I have to admit, though, that the rest of the day paled in comparison to Luke somehow managing to shit without his nappy on, it having been snagged on some useless junk Owen kept in his workshop.
It got everywhere.
The day ended with my sense of Darth Vader getting closer, and I was forced to finally admit that the piece of shit might be coming for me.
…
“If I die, will you avenge me?” I asked Cody, seriously. The sense of the dark side was seriously grating on my nerves, and I hadn’t been able to meditate for days. To a trained force user, the dark side smelled like the psychic equivalent of vomit on the sidewalk that had been there for days.
“You’re not going to die, Obi-Wan”, Cody said. There was a minute pinch between his brows that indicated deep upset, but to the unobservant it looked like Cody had never had an emotion in his life.
“I had better not”, I muttered, “These maternity clothes were expensive”.
“Yes, because it is the wellbeing of your clothes I am concerned about, and not the person inhabiting them”.
“Oh don’t go getting snippy at me”.
“I’m not snippy”.
“Don’t lie to me, darling, I can always tell”.
There was a shout from behind Cody.
“How can you tell?” Rex yelled, “His face literally doesn’t move!”
“I’ll have you know that Cody is a deeply empathetic person”, I said. “He emotes deeply”. Admittedly, in a way that didn’t disturb the surface, like a cool pond I could submerge myself in for hours. Force, I loved that man.
“There’s something frankly wrong with the two of you”, Rex said.
Cody’s face went particularly stony, in a way that did not bode well for Rex in the near future.
“Excuse me, darling”, Cody said, with no inflection whatsoever. “I have to go murder my brother”.
I pressed a kiss into my palm and then pressed my palm to the holo of Cody’s dear face.
“I adore you”, Cody said, as if delivering news of the death of a loved one, and then the holo flickered out.
I whispered a prayer to the Force for Rex’s sake.
…
The following day found me attempting to get my eighth month pregnant ass on a speeder, consequences be damned, before Beru gently coaxed me off with a gentle reminder of how disappointed Cody would be if I fell off and died.
I spent the rest of the day in my room languishing. Why was I languishing, do you ask? Well, Darth whatever his name was again had gotten closer. And he was getting closer at an unconscionably fast rate, as if it had just occurred to him that previously he had been in the running to win the competition of slowest (and thickest) hunter the galaxy had ever seen.
“Cody”, I said into the holo projector. “He is on the move”.
Cody looked unaccountably grim. This was a break in character that was worrisome at best.
“There’s no hints at what Darth Vader is doing on Tatooine”, he said, “Imperial chatter is showing nothing. If he’s found you he hasn’t told the Emperor. What is he bloody thinking?”
“He’s not”, I said, “This is Anakin, remember? If there was a stupider boy in the galaxy then I certainly haven’t found him”.
“Obi-Wan, you need to leave”.
“I tried”, I said, “Beru pulled me off the speeder. She is of the mistaken impression that I cannot handle the journey”.
“Babe”, Cody said, “You’re eight months pregnant”.
“Eight months pregnant”, I said, “Does not mean I am dead!”
“I’m three days out”.
“Three days out? Weren’t you on the other side of the ruddy galaxy just the other day?”
Cody’s expression was colder than ice. “I started coming back as soon as you told me Darth Vader was on Tatooine”, he said, which was possibly the most romantic thing somebody had ever said to me. “I would never leave you to that monster”.
This was all well and good and lovely, but unfortunately it only took Anakin two days to show up.
…
I first realised Anakin Skywalker was on the premises when he bloody well knocked on the door.
I had been growing suspicious lately. The feeling of the dark side had faded, enough to mean that I could go around outside without my metaphorical clothes peg. Rather then taking this as a sign that Darth Whoever had vacated the planet, I had formulated a new and exciting habit of constantly looking over my shoulder.
He was just around the corner. I could feel it.
My wayward apprentice was coming home.
I had been expecting an air raid, and possibly Palpatine to sail in on a cloud of Force lightning, cackling like an idiot, but I can honestly say that it never occurred to me that Anakin would knock on the door.
I had been in the middle of changing Luke’s nappy, so of course I bloody well didn’t answer it, but unfortunately Owen did. There was a short silence, followed by a blood curdling war cry, as Owen presumably tried to blast Darth Vader’s head off with a second rate blaster bought half off in a sale of used goods from a sandcrawler. Then I got to see Owen sail through the air, and had maybe half a second to wince in pain as my neck protested my sudden, startled movement, before Darth Vader was there. As in, in front of me.
I was less then enthused by this, let me tell you.
My idiot apprentice had gone for the masked and robed look. He was dressed in some kind of black armour, with a cape of all things, and a chrome dome of a shiny black helmet. Admittedly, he would probably look scary in the dark. To a child. But the whole Sith apprentice thing wasn’t really working for me, I have to admit. I crossed my arms.
“Kenobi”, came the raspy voice of a vocoder.
“Hello Darth”, I said, turning around and folding my hands over my large, protruding belly. There was a pause, and then Darth Vader took off his helmet. Underneath, he was the same stupid apprentice I had always known.
Right now he was starting fixedly at my stomach, face creased in a look that was one hundred percent Anakin Skywalker.
“You’re pregnant?” He said, sounding horrified at the realisation that his old master had a sex life.
I sighed.
…
Amazingly enough, we sat down for tea, and nobody even came close to dying.
“I can’t believe you’re pregnant!” Anakin was saying, as Owen lurked in the background with a sawed off blaster, eyeing the back of Anakin’s head longingly. Beru had taken Luke and had holed up somewhere on the farm. It hadn’t seemed to have clicked for Anakin that baby Luke Skywalker was actually his. Then again, it is a truth universally acknowledged that all babies look the same.
I sighed.
“Honestly, Anakin, is this really the time?” I said.
Anakin scowled. “Don’t call me that”.
“What am I supposed to call you then?”
“Darth Vader”, came the menacing reply.
“Darth Vader? Goodness, this is like your Princess Penelope phase all over again”.
“Master…”
“Do you remember that?” I said, warming up to my theme now. “You dyed your robes an awful shade of salmon pink, and tried to convince everyone to call you Princess Penelope. Dear force, it went on for months! I had to introduce you as her Royal Highness every mission we went on!”
“Master, must you always bring that up? I was a kid!”
“You were seventeen!” I cackled.
Anakin slumped in his chair and covered his face with his hands. Owen was looking extremely interested in the proceedings.
“Darth Princess Penelope!” I said. “Oh the Emperor must be proud indeed!”
“Master…”.
“Do you remember the time-“.
“Okay, that’s enough”, Anakin said. “I came here with a very important mission, you know?”
“Why, does this mission have something to do with killing me and desecrating my body?”
“No”, Anakin frowned.
“Then I’m not interested”, I said, “I’d rather talk about the time with the Chadrian Space Slugs”.
Anakin blanched but soldiered on. “But master, it’s important”.
“Not interested Anakin”.
“I’ve come to tell you that I made a mistake”, Anakin said, “I’ve changed my mind”.
“You’ve changed your what?”
…
In lieu of anything better to do, I put Anakin in time out.
Admittedly, this was not one of my better ideas, considering the fact that Anakin Skywalker was a grown man and clearly humouring me.
“Master, this is ridiculous”, Anakin said.
“Face to the wall!” I said, head buried firmly in my hands, and heard a huff of air as Anakin angrily complied.
“This is ridiculous”, Anakin said, but his face was to the wall.
“Yes, well, your face is ridiculous and I can’t stand to look at it!”
“You’re being a child”.
“You tried to kill them, Anakin!” I said, raising my head and glaring up at my stupid, stupid apprentice. “You did kill us, and now you want forgiveness?”
Silence.
“I am sorry, master”, Anakin said, softly, quietly.
“I cannot stand to look at you”.
“I know, Obi-Wan”.
“You disgust me”.
“I know”.
I brushed my face, and realised to my horror that I was crying. I made a hurt, hitching noise in my throat, and I was horrified with myself.
Anakin’s shoulders tensed. “Obi-Wan-“
“Shut up”.
Anakin started turning around.
“No don’t turn around-“, was all I got out, before Anakin enveloped me in a soft, gentle hug, holding me as if I was something he was afraid to break.
“I hate you”, I said, quietly, breath almost obscured by the sound of my own crying, as if I was imparting some great secret upon the world, some great hurt in my soul. I hated to hate, but there was no other emotion for it.
“I know”, Anakin said, equally as quiet, and rested his head against my own.
…
Cody arrived the next day.
To say Cody was not happy was an understatement, but I feel as if I should backtrack here, and discuss the other things that happened leading up to Cody’s arrival.
Anakin was, apparently, well aware that Luke Skywalker was, in fact, his son. I was unclear as to what gave it away. Maybe it had been some sort of Force ordained sense, a vision in the night, or somehow the last name ‘Skywalker’ tipped him off to the fact that the child was his. Or, I don’t know, maybe he recognised him? Just because babies all looked the same to me didn’t mean that was true for their parents. I made it quite clear to my very stupid apprentice that, just because he had fathered the baby, didn’t mean I was prepared to declare him a fit guardian. I said all this, loudly and with prejudice, and Anakin didn’t subsequently spear me on lightsaber and hoist me up like a flag staff, and so I was cautiously optimistic that, when Anakin said he had changed his mind on the whole ‘Sith Lord maniac’, he hadn’t actually been talking out of his ass.
I wasn’t about to forgive the piece of shit, though.
Anakin had yet to lose patience at my unwillingness to capitulate to his demands, and hadn’t done something so gauche as to throw a tantrum, or call me mean words and tell me that he wished Qui-Gon had been his master instead (and if he thought Qui-Gon Jinn would’ve been more tolerant of his actions, boy did dear old Ani have another thing coming). He did, however, make several snarky remarks at Owen, when his half-brother made him take off his ridiculous armour and fix one of the vaporators. He did fix the vaporator though.
I made some bread.
Anyway, the first day of Anakin’s miraculous Anti Sith Lord Crusade Thing of Legends was starting off swimmingly.
It was only a pity that Cody was going to kill him.
…
“You”, Cody said as he stepped off his speeder and made his way over to the Death Lord Dark Murderpants. He was holding his blaster in such a way that did not bode well for Anakin’s future, but which I was not likely to intervene. Cody was an adult human being who was more than capable of handling his relationships, unlike a certain apprentice I could mention.
Anakin froze, a war of emotions clamouring for attention on his face. Cody crooked a finger at him and, like he knew he was going to his death, he shot me a despairing look and trudged after Cody. I blew a kiss and, solemnly, Cody pretended to catch it and press it against his heart, before disappearing inside the farmstead with Anakin Skywalker.
Owen leaned in close to me.
“What’re the odds that Anakin survives this?” He asked.
I hummed. “Oh, fairly even with his chances of total annihilation, I’d wager”.
Never mess with Cody.
I sat back under the shaded area that Owen had set up for me and pulled out my holonovel as I waited for the two men to emerge from the house. Owen went back to his shed, probably to tinker with some pieces of scrap metal.
Approximately a hundred years later Cody came out of the house to join me at my site of convalescence. He stooped and rested his forehead against mine, and we existed in a moment, together, sharing breath. The sheer relief I felt at his presence humbled me. I closed my eyes.
Eventually, he pulled away.
“The Emperor doesn’t know about you and Luke”, Cody said. “Vader has been acting on his own. He doesn’t know about Padme”.
What Cody was referring to was, of course, Padme’s grand escape from the clutches of the Empire.
When the galaxy ended, only to be reformed in Palpatine’s image, I had been planet’s away strategically cornering mind controlled clones and knocking them out with the butt of my lightsaber. The whole thing was terribly inefficient, but I do admit that my clone save ratio improved drastically once I had freed Cody and a couple of the medics, who took to knocking out their brothers with worrying alacrity. The side effect of all this was the I totally missed Anakin’s ascension to higher heights of stupidity, and only learned about Darth Vader secondhand from Master Yoda, who had been dragging half a Temple’s worth of surviving Jedi behind him in a makeshift fleet. In the three minutes of conversation I managed with him, I learned of the sacking of the Temple, led by the resident Temple idiot, and how it had all but failed when Alpha 17, bless his overly large socks, had managed to interrupt the broadcast to the chips all the way from Kamino on the orders of a newly freed, and subsequently highly agitated, Cody. As such, the Emperor was currently locked in all out warfare led by legions of highly sophisticated, intelligent, competent men who all had a chip on their shoulder the approximate size of a star cruiser. But I digress.
What all this long winded tale is trying to get to the point of is that Padme Amidala, despite being permissive of almost all of Anakin’s Skywalker’s unusual personality quirks, was not permissive of her husband mistaking prenatal care with premeditated genocide. However, this was where Padme ran into a problem. Believing the best of her darling little Ani, Padme didn’t run for the hills immediately once faced with some of her husband’s concerning problem solving skills. Apparently, love is the cure for all ills or something, because she stayed, birthed her children, tried raising them with a homicidal maniac and realised that rose tinted glasses weren’t really working in this scenario, because Anakin wasn’t getting better.
She took the children and ran. Somehow, Luke ended up with me, and Leia had been adopted by the Organa’s, who evidently had big brass ones the size of houses. I don’t know where Padme went, but evidently Cody did.
I didn’t ask.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was running around the galaxy with a blaster, flanked by her pack of highly trained killers masquerading as her handmaidens, disrupting supply lines or something rebellious like that, and good luck to her. I was happy if I managed to roll out of bed in the morning without leaving half my stomach behind in the ‘fresher.
“I take it that you tortured this information out of my erstwhile apprentice?” I said.
Cody’s face looked like a gathering thunderstorm. It was, of course, perfectly blank.
“No, he volunteered”, Cody said, “I’d wager his sudden change of heart has more to do with Amidala leaving him than any sudden onset of remorse”.
My heart ached at that, but Cody had always been able to see Anakin clearer than I. I didn’t contradict him, just leaned forward until my head rested against his chest. He wrapped his hands loosely around my shoulders, and together we just…existed.
Eventually, Cody shifted and sighed.
“I’m going to use him, Obi-Wan”, he said. “Regardless of intentions, and we’ll never know his intentions, not truly, he was the Sith’s Apprentice. I’m going to use him for all his worth”.
Cody was running a war. I understood, but I had to say it.
“I can’t bring myself to forgive him, Cody”.
Cody smoothed a hand over my brow and looked tenderly into my eyes.
“I know, and I would never ask you to”, he said simply, and it was enough.
…
The following day Cody and Anakin left.
I had spent the night cocooned with Cody as he whispered his regrets into the hollow of my throat. The sacrifices this never ending war demanded of Cody were heavy, but it was by dint of Cody being Cody that he was the one to bear them. He wanted nothing more than to stay with me, to be with me as our child grew within me and was born, but the risks were too great. Cody was the leading General in a war to overthrow the embodiment of evil itself, and my place was no longer by his side. Apart, yet together, forever.
“Forgive me”, Cody whispered, in the darkest part of the night. We did not sleep.
“There is nothing to forgive”, I said, and pressed a chaste kiss against his dear, dear forehead.
In the morning we parted once more, Cody taking with him my very stupid apprentice. Whether Anakin Skywalker had truly repented remained an unknown, but he was following Cody willingly into the arms of the Rebellion. I watched them go, and felt a war within myself whenever I thought of my lost apprentice. I wanted to forgive, but I could not. I wanted to follow so they would not be hurt, but could not. My place was no longer in war.
My place was here, safeguarding the next generation until the war ended and the galaxy was finally at peace once again.