Chapter 23: A Promise for the Future

The portal to Naboo snapped shut, returning the Tatooine desert landscape to its monotonous reality. The silence it left was heavier than the hot air. Anakin stared at the spot where the interdimensional doorway had been, his Jedi mind struggling to comprehend a science that bordered on sorcery. Padmé looked at Kaelen—not the hero or the genius, but the man who had emerged from the garage that morning, a man harder, colder, and somehow, more terrifying.

Kaelen broke the silence, his voice that of a commander on the battlefield.

"Skywalker, to the ship," he ordered, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Calibrate the port and starboard shields to rotating frequencies and prepare the weapons system for possible combat deployment. Touch nothing else. We leave in ten minutes."

Anakin, for once, didn't retort. Kaelen's overwhelming display of power had left him speechless. He nodded stiffly and headed for the ship, leaving Kaelen and Padmé alone in the farmyard.

Once Anakin was out of earshot, Kaelen's commander facade vanished, replaced by an exhaustion that seemed to reach his very bones. He looked down at his left hand, flexing his fingers. He knew that beneath the skin, the metal and circuits he had implanted hummed silently.

"Kaelen..." Padmé began, her voice filled with a mix of fear and concern. "What have you done to yourself?"

He didn't look at her immediately. "What I had to," he replied quietly. "I made myself a better weapon."

"I don't want a better weapon," she countered, stepping closer and taking his hand, the one he hadn't modified. "I want you."

He finally looked up, and in his eyes, she saw the storm. Fear, grim determination, pain, and something else... a desperate need to hold on to something. He held her there, his grip gentle but firm, preventing her from moving.

"Padmé... I know this is the worst possible time in the universe to say this," he began, his voice losing its harshness and becoming vulnerable. "With Obi-Wan captured and a war about to break out... it seems crazy."

A Reason to Be Human

My mind, the Rick part, is screaming at me. It's telling me this is tactically stupid. An emotional distraction before a critical operation. But the other part, the part that's mine, the part that clings to her like a shipwreck survivor to a raft, needs to say it. It needs to create a 'why.' A why bigger than just surviving the next Rick attack or the next Sith conspiracy.

Last night, as I cut myself open and rebuilt myself, I felt myself slipping away. Every piece of metal I added was a piece of my humanity I tore out. And I realized that if I didn't have an ultimate goal, a true north, I would become just a problem-solving machine. An empty shell with a borrowed brain. I would become him. Rick.

A Promise Beyond War

"Last night," Kaelen continued, his voice barely a whisper. "As I was doing... this... I was afraid. Afraid that, at the end of all this, after I'd built all the weapons and won all the battles, I'd look in the mirror and wouldn't recognize the man you saw."

He gently squeezed her hand. "I need a reason to keep being me, Padmé. An anchor not just for the present, but for the future."

He looked directly into her eyes, his entire soul exposed in that gaze.

"When all of this is over," he said, his voice trembling with an emotion he hadn't shown since his confession on Naboo's balcony. "If it ever ends... I want to build more than just portal guns and force shields. I want a life with you. A normal, boring, wonderful life. And in that life... in a future..."

He paused, gathering his courage.

"...I would like... I would like for us to have a child."

Padmé gasped. The confession was so unexpected, so profoundly human, so tender amidst all the madness and danger, that tears instantly welled in her eyes. The man who had become a machine to protect her was asking her to help him remember how to be a man.

Her fear vanished, replaced by a surge of love so powerful it left her breathless. She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him, a kiss that was not of passion or desperation, but of a sacred promise. A kiss that said, "Yes, you're still in there."

"Oh, Kaelen," she whispered against his lips. "Yes. Of course, yes. Nothing would make me happier in all the universes."

She cupped his cheek, her thumb brushing a thin new scar near his temple. "That, that is what we fight for. Not for the Republic, not against the Sith or the Ricks. We fight for that future. For our family."

For the first time since the night before, Kaelen felt the gears in his mind calm. The cold logic of survival was replaced by the warmth of a purpose. That of a father. That of a husband.

He pulled away from her, and though his face still showed exhaustion, the hardness in his eyes had been replaced by a new light. A fierce determination, but now anchored in love, not just fear.

He looked towards the ship where Anakin waited for them, oblivious to the oath that had just been made.

"Alright," Kaelen said, his voice firm once more, but now filled with a new resonance. "Let's go save your Jedi friend."

He took Padmé's hand, and they walked together towards the ship, a united front, ready to jump into the heart of the war. They were no longer fighting just to survive today. They were fighting to build a tomorrow.