Chapter Text
Anakin knocks like an avalanche.
This isn’t unusual, but he usually doesn’t do that on personal time. Anakin at least tries to be quiet when it’s time for something… illicit. They both know how messed up things will get if a non-Jedi natborn finds out.
Rex sighs and gets to his feet, abandoning his datapad, and goes to the door.
“Gene—”
“We need to talk.”
A sentence nobody wants to hear, as Rex has reliably been informed.
He steps back, opening the door, and Anakin brushes past him. The door whooshes closed. Anakin moves to sit on Rex’s bed without preamble.
“Okay so—”
“I was throwing up a lot and Ahsoka bullied me into going to the medics and anyway Kix says I’m pregnant.”
Ah.
That’s.
What?
“You can’t… no,” Rex says. “You—you barely even menstruate anymore, like… once a year at this point, you said.”
“Yeah.”
“You said you’re basically sterile.”
“Testosterone doesn’t actually make me sterile, but the lack of menstruation at least should have… yes.”
“And the clones—we’re basically sterile.”
“So we thought, but since Padmé can’t get me pregnant, there’s literally nobody else it could be.”
Rex buries his face in his hands.
“Rex?”
“Give me a minute.”
Fuck.
Just… fuck.
“You’re pregnant,” Rex finally says. “How long…?”
“I found out two hours ago,” Anakin says, and then realizes he answered the wrong question. “Oh, um, Kix said about 12 weeks.”
“And… you… you’re a Jedi, so…”
“Jedi get pregnant by accident too,” Anakin admits. “Not very often, but there’s a few every year, I think. Maybe more that get terminated? It got brought up when they held sex ed classes. Pregnancies happen, we just… we’re encouraged not to have much contact, and the actual relationship that leads to it…”
Rex grimaces. “And there’s a war on.”
“And there’s a war on, yeah. Bit more relevant than just being a Jedi.”
He doesn’t immediately notice when Anakin stands up, but he does notice when he gets pulled to join his boyfriend on the bed.
“Does… did you tell Padmé yet?”
“No. You deserved to know first. It’s… I can make the decision to keep it, but your survival might depend on who we tell. Right now, the only people that know about the pregnancy are you and Kix, and he ostensibly doesn’t know the paternity.”
“Okay,” Rex says. “I’m… okay. You want to keep it?”
Anakin doesn’t meet his eyes. “If… if I wasn’t throwing myself headfirst into danger every other day, definitely. As it is… I don’t know. I’m surprised I even got pregnant in the first place, but… hells, my mom didn’t even have a partner when she got pregnant with me. I don’t even have a father, so maybe miracle pregnancies just run in the family. I could… maybe tell the Council that, actually, if you don’t want anyone knowing you’re the father? Like you said, you’re supposed to be sterile.”
“I’m…” Rex trails off, dropping his gaze to Anakin’s abdomen. He reaches out, unthinking, and Anakin presses his hand to the fabric. “There’s a baby in there.”
“Two, apparently,” Anakin says, and then laughs self-consciously when Rex’s head snaps up. “Yeah, um, the scan was informative. I think Kix is judging me for all of this. Also, you can’t feel them kick for a while, I think at twenty-eight weeks? I, um… I asked. Kix threw a pen at me and told me he’s not an obstetrician and to stop making him do things outside his training, but he looked it up for me anyway.”
“And you… don’t mind being pregnant? It’s not, um… how did you put it…”
“Making the gender alarms go off? No,” Anakin admits with a shrug. “Pregnancy doesn’t bother me nearly as much as having breasts did.”
“So… you want… I mean…”
“I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as much as I want to be a dad,” Anakin says. “I love you, and Padmé, and being a Jedi… but I’ve always wanted kids, even if I was expecting to adopt or take another padawan or—”
Rex kisses him.
Anakin rears back from the momentum a bit, and then laughs and kisses back. Rex keeps his hand on his General’s stomach, mind whirling. His other goes the small of Anakin’s back, and Anakin puts his hands up to pull Rex closer and—
“I want you to keep them,” Rex says, breaking. “If—if you’re already planning on it, then…”
“I want to,” Anakin moans, and it’s not sexy at all, really, just frustrated and a little angry. “I really, really want to keep them.”
“But there’s a war.”
“Mm.”
“And Kamino will flip a lid about intellectual property rights.”
“Ugh.”
“And I’m not… I’m not legally person. So someone might try to argue they belong to the Senate, or to the long-necks, or—”
“I’ll fight ‘em. So will Padmé, but she’ll do it smart, with words.”
Rex presses his forehead to Anakin’s, breathes deep and holds it. “We need to talk to her.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And… and figure out what to do.”
“Yep.”
“Are you… going to get kicked out? If you keep them?”
“Like I said, not for the pregnancy. The secret marriage and fraternization… maybe.” Anakin shifts and drops his head onto Rex’s shoulder. “They’d want to put my kids in the crèche, and that’s a fine way to grow up if the other parent isn’t interested, but—but if I want to stay a Jedi and have to give up the kids for someone else to raise, I’d rather they stay with you or with Padmé, even if they’re Force-Sensitive. At least for a few years.”
“Do you plan on staying a Jedi?”
“I have to finish out this war,” Anakin says, and Rex pulls him closer. “I have a duty to you and my men to keep you as safe as I can, and a duty to the galaxy to keep people from dying. I can hold back a few months for the pregnancy, but I can’t just… even if they have me stop being a Jedi, I’m going to fight to stay a General, and to keep my saber. You need me, all of you.”
“And if they strip you of your rank for violating fraternization rules?” Rex prods. “If they tell you that you can’t—”
“Then I’ll lie,” Anakin says, simple as that. “If they ask who the father is, I’ll lie until I can’t. If they do a DNA test, well, there’s three million possible fathers, and no way to narrow it down to someone in my own chain of command. People will guess, but so long as I have plausible deniability, so long as I have the option, I’m going to stay on the field.”
“I don’t like that.”
“I can tell the truth after the war is over. See about… I don’t know, transferring to the ExploriCorps or something. Retire from being a full Jedi and just be a pilot for the Knights going to dangerous situations, maybe. Stick around with the clones to make sure you do okay once the Senate realizes they need to give you post-war jobs and I’m the loudest voice the media will get.”
“The Hero With No Fear, carrying the child of a clone and mad he can’t marry the baby daddy?”
“I mean… it’s not the worst angle…”
Rex snorts. Then he pauses. “Anakin.”
“What?”
“Sir.”
“I’m not hearing a no.”
“General, that’s not a good plan.”
“We’ll let Padmé decide that.”