Chapter One
Mana groaned and rolled over when her phone started to ring shrillly. "What time is it?" Anakin asked sleepily.
"Too early." Padmé sighed. "I guess I'll check on the kids while you get that."
"Do I have to?" Mana pouted.
"Well, I'll put it this way, if your phone wakes up the twins then you're the one that gets to deal with them." Padmé stated.
"Ok, ok, I got the point." Mana sighed and then rolled over and answered her phone as Padmé left to go check on Luke and Leia.
"There's another one." Tierney said the moment that Mana picked up.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Mana groaned and attempted to lever herself up from the bed, but she didn't succeed and just kind of flopped back on to the bed.
Anakin smiled fondly at Mana as she struggled and after a minute he moved to help his girlfriend. But it wasn't that easy as he wasn't left handed and he had taken off his prosthetic hand for bed the night before. Anakin had met Padmé when he was a child, after the Jedi "found" him. In reality the Jedi didn't find him as much as they kidnapped him. He didn't realize it until later, and Padmé was a large part of that realization, but it was very clear that the Jedi were a cult. The Jedi believed in what they called the Force. An all powerful, all knowing thing that connected everything.
They believed that if they meditated hard enough that eventually they would be able to harness it. And they believed that a part of what made it easier was that they couldn't have emotional attachments which was why they generally kidnapped infants or very young children. The Jedi found that it was far easier to indoctrinate young children. But that all went out the window when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan met Anakin. Anakin was born with the ability to negate friction and telekinesis. It wasn't the Force but that's what it looked like to the Jedi. And that was all the confirmation that they needed that he was their messiah.
So they took Anakin which, in one respect, was probably for the best as his mother was having a hard time supporting the both of them. As far as she knew Anakin ran away and she never tried to find him because she thought that he was better off wherever he was. That was not to say that she didn't love him, she did, but she was a working girl and she didn't even know who Anakin's father was. It was never the life she wanted for herself or her son. She tried to make things better and get a "real" job but it never worked; the street corners always seemed to call her back.
And well, that's why she didn't put up much of a fuss trying to find out where Anakin went. After the Jedi took Anakin they graciously allowed him to remain in school. Or at least that's what they told him. He was 9 when they found him and he had already been attending a school, it was sporadic attendance, but it would have been more suspicious if he withdrew from that school and didn't enroll in another one. And that's where Anakin first met Padmé. She was a freshman at the high school and was doing an older buddy sort of thing at Anakin's school and they were paired together.
But of course inevitably Padmé graduated and she moved away and Anakin was left alone. When he was a teenager he lost his right hand almost to the elbow in a freak accident. Or at least that's what the Jedi told everyone. In reality it was a punishment. As Anakin grew older he had a hard time not forming attachments and he was in danger of turning to the "dark side" which was what the Jedi said those that left, the Sith, gave in to. The Jedi believed that if they didn't control their emotions, any emotion, that they would be tempted by the evil of the dark side.
As Anakin grew up he was very curious about his parents and where he came from. But the Jedi didn't like that very much and no matter how many times they reminded him that he had to be careful not to form attachments, especially after he met Padmé, he didn't listen. So instead the Jedi cut off his hand as a reminder of the pain lost attachments could cause and how it would then lead to the dark side.
It had the opposite effect, instead of warning him away from attachments it only made him more firm in his decision, though he tried to hide it better. And then 10 years later Padmé came back after getting her law degree. She had originally gone to law school to become a lawyer so that she could help Anakin finally get out of the cult. But before she returned she had spent a little time establishing herself before she returned. And by the time that she did return it was 10 years later and Anakin's feelings for her had only grown.
It wasn't long after they reconnected that they got married in secret. Padmé had wanted to tell the Jedi and get Anakin the fuck out of there, but Anakin begged her not to. He knew that everything that they had ever told him was wrong but they were the only family that he had. And as far as he knew his mother gave him up. But he wasn't quite sure that that was the case because it wasn't like the Jedi had ever told him the complete truth.
The two of them had been keeping their relationship a secret for 3 years when Padmé got pregnant. It was then that Padmé was finally able to convince Anakin to leave and never look back. While Anakin was never sure he could leave the cult for himself he knew that he would never want his own children growing up in the same environment he did. Anakin never believed the Jedi when they told him he could use the Force. From the little he could remember about his mother he knew that he got his powers from his father, a man that he never knew. Anakin also knew that there was a good chance that any child of his would inherit his powers and if that was the case he would not, could not, let them grow up like he did.
While they were making plans to leave, Anakin snuck out of the Jedi compound one night to try and find his mother. There was a part of him that never believed the lies the Jedi had told him about his mother. He followed his murky memory to a house he quickly discovered that his mother had died some years ago from HIV/AIDS. Anakin was devastated when he heard the news. The whole trip back to Padmé's apartment was a blur and the next clear memory he had of that night was collapsing into Padmé's arms unable to contain his sobs any longer.
By that point Padmé was already several months pregnant but they didn't have everything in order yet so they didn't leave town until a couple of months later. They had found a small town a few states over. One night they packed everything they had scrounged up in Padmé's car and they never looked back. They were about a day into the drive when Padmé started having contractions. Anakin wanted to stop but Padmé convinced him to keep going. She wanted to be as far away as possible before she gave birth.
But when they were just outside of the town her contractions got worse and they had to pull over. It was at that point that they met Mana and her right and left hands. Newt had the ability to sense magical auras and track them down. He had felt Anakin at the town line and he told his boyfriend Percival Graves who then told Theseus who then called Mana and the three of them headed to the town line. They had arrived just as Padmé delivered Luke and Leia. It was pretty clear to Mana that they were running from something or someone and she offered them her guest room until they got on their feet. That was three years ago and Anakin and Padmé and the twins and Mana had been together since then.
It was a little rocky at the beginning when Mana told them that she was the head of one of the mobs in town seeing as Anakin and Padmé were running from a cult. But it quickly became clear to them that Mana and her mob was nothing like the Jedi. Eventually Mana introduced Padmé to Queenie Goldstein, who was a very gifted lawyer and the wife of Tierney Payne; the head of the other mob in town; and Queenie helped Padmé get a job as a lawyer for CPS with her. And Anakin decided that he wanted to be a house husband, so while his wife and girlfriend were at work he stayed home with Luke and Leia.
Tierney ran their mob a little differently from Mana. Mana was a Necromancer and everyone in her mob had some sort of power or magic and they did magical favors for people. She ran it out of a private detective agency where Percival and Theseus worked with her. On the other hand Tierney's mob's motto was basically be gay, do crime. Tierney and Queenie owned a foster house for queer youth. They had adopted three children Chastity, Credence, and Modesty, who had been living with their very religious and abusive aunt, and the couple were fostering a lot more.
Most if not all of Tierney's mob were queer. Queenie worked as a lawyer to get the queer children that were kicked out by their families placed with them. And Tina worked at Mana's private detective agency to dig up dirt on the asshole parents and fuck with them. Most of Tierney's mob activities involved going after asshole parents and family members the rest of it was just being very gay and doing crime. Occasionally Tierney would work with Mana because they could talk to ghosts and Queenie could read minds. Which was exactly what Tierney was calling about.
"Unfortunately." Tierney replied to Mana’s question.
"Ok, text me the address. I'll meet you there." Mana sighed and hung up. A moment later her phone dinged with a text and Padmé re-entered their bedroom.
"What is it?" Padmé asked.
"There's been another murder." Mana sighed and got off the bed to dig through the closet for something to wear.
"That's the second one this month." Padmé sighed sadly.
"Actually it's 5 if you count the three elderly people that died." Mana said and emerged from the closet dressed in what were unmistakably Anakin's clothes.
"Are those my clothes?" Anakin asked incredulously.
"Ani, that's not really the point." Padmé rolled her eyes fondly at him. "Are you sure that they are all connected? You never resurrected the elderly people, right?"
"Tierney and I are sure. I didn't resurrect the first three people because it looked like they died of natural causes. But Tierney talked to their ghosts and they all described the same masked man injecting them with something. But by the time we figured that out it was too late to resurrect them; they had been dead for too long. Well anyway I'm off to resurrect the dead." Mana said cheerily and pecked Anakin and Padmé on the lips.
"Be careful." Padmé said. Mana nodded seriously and left.
"Have fun storming the castle!" Anakin called after Mana.
"You're a nerd." Padmé teased Anakin.
"But you love me anyway." Anakin replied.
"I do." Padmé kissed him. "Now come on, I want to get as much sleep as possible before the twins wake up."