Being away from Alderaan was always hard.
It had been hard back when the Republic had still existed, and it had only become harder after the Republic had fallen. But Bail had never complained, and he wouldn't start complaining now. He had too much to do for that.
Still, even he couldn't go on forever, with looking after his family and Alderaan, with trying to uphold some sort of sence of justice in the Imperial Senate, and with hopping from one Rebel base to another. He wasn't getting any younger, and some days he could truly feel it. Sometimes some sorrows just felt too heavy.
It had been difficult for him to concentrate on other things during the past days. His mind kept replaying the image of the destroyed city, and of the sorrow in Fox's eyes. Kamino had not been his home for many years, and had perhaps never been truly his home to begin with, but it had still meant a lot of things for him, a lot of things many people would conflate with him.
Above all else, Kamino had connected him and his brothers. The brothers, who seemed now to be truly lost to him.
Bail was increasingly glad for Breha and Leia, for his whole family, for holding each other together. The three of them were what held Bail together, after all, through all of this, when in all honesty, he just felt out of breath.
The meeting came to an end. Bail turned to look when Mon put her hand on his arm.
"You look tired", she told him. Bail hummed.
"I've heard that's what happens when you have a toddler", he said. Leia had just started to take her first steps without holding onto anything, and had started to try out words a while ago. No matter how tiring children were when they were small, Bail found that he was increasingly reluctant to seeing her grow up either, even if seeing her learn new things every day was more exiting than anything. Perhaps that was just the duality of parenthood.
Mon smiled slightly. There were new shadows under her eyes as well.
"I know that very well", she said. She gave his arm a light squeeze. "Go home. We all need you rested, your family included."
Yes. Going home sounded wonderful. Bail nodded, and was just about to tell her the same, or ask if she wanted to come visit them soon, when-
-when he could've sworn he felt something tugging at the back of his mind.
It was a strange feeling, though familiar at the same time. Many times he had felt the same when he was with Leia, her curious eyes watching him and her mind reaching out to him in a way Bail couldn't properly answer to, other than to try and aknownledge that he had felt her. There was a certain feeling to it, when a child, still unconsciously doing so, reached out, compared to when someone with years of training would do the same.
But Leia was not here. Bail stopped, and looked around. He watched his fellow Rebels, mingling around, getting ready to leave or move out elsewhere in the base that still needed establishing and work, and he listened.
There. He glanced at Mon.
"Just a moment", he said to her, before hurrying off, away from the meeting room and down the still barely lit hallways of the base, and eventually, he could hear it out loud as well.
A child crying. Bail had become extremely responsive to such a noise, lately, and he quickened his pace even more as the sound gripped at his heart.
There was a room, tucked away from the commotion of the rest of the base, furnished to look like a spare room. There was a droid there, leaning over a small bed, making a low, calm humming sound, which was almost completely drowned out by the crying.
Bail almost ran the last steps. The droid noticed him then.
"Oh, hello", it said, in a vaguely female voice. "I'm C-EER4, refurbished medical droid. I was told to look after the child for a moment."
Bail was barely listening to the droid.
There was a small baby on the bed, his little fists grabbing thin air as he cried, tiny tears rolling down his round cheeks. He was younger than Leia, clearly, by several months. Entirely too small to be left alone, even with a droid.
Bail didn't think twice. He reached down on to the bed, and lifted the baby to his arms.
The crying stopped. A pair of dark eyes turned to look at up at Bail, and Bail-
Bail knew those eyes. How could he not, when he loved them so?
"What is a clone baby doing here?" He asked the droid.
"He was brought in by a small cell a few days ago", C-EER4 said. "Some of the younger clones were succesfully shipped out from the cloning facilities before their destruction. He was, by their words, the only one of that age that survived."
Bail looked back down at the baby. He was still looking at him, tears now drying on his little face, and there was the slightest tug in Bail's mind.
It didn't take anything else for Bail to fall in love.
"I will take him", he told the droid. "His father is waiting for him at home."
C-EER4 didn't say anything to that. Bail wouldn't have listened to anything, anyway.
The only thing that mattered to him at that moment was the little gift in his arms, looking up at him, with all the trust a child could possibly have.
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