Chapter Text
It had been a long time since Ahsoka had held an infant— not since the twins had been young— but she found it came back to her naturally. She shifted her arms so that the child rested comfortably in the crook of her elbow, bundled so that only his wizened little face showed.
Kuna sat beside her, utter devotion made incarnate.
The windows to the house had been draped with heavy tapestries, the only illumination coming from the light-well overhead. The air was thick with incense, burning from several braziers, thin streams of smoke spiralling upwards. It was the Tatooinian way to introduce a new child, she knew, and after so many years it no longer struck her as strange. It was a great honour to be invited, and she was surrounded by others who had also received an invitation, talking lowly and looking towards the child.
Rina was wan, but smiling, from her long chair. Ahsoka had heard that her labour had been long, but beneath her pale skin and scraped-back hair she was luminescent. Kham was much the same beside her, puffed up with pride, his young face lit up with joy as he greeted their visitors. His hand never left his wife’s shoulder.
Kuna had greeted Ahsoka personally when she had arrived and found her place beside her when she sat. Ahsoka could feel her bemused pride, her own sort of bewildered surprise, as she regarded her growing family. Ahsoka could admit it had surprised her as well to hear of the impending arrival. In her mind, Kham was still a child clutching at his mother’s skirts, barely older than her own children, not this grown man she saw before her.
“I know that face,” Kuna said, and smiled when Ahsoka looked at her. The years had been hard to Kuna and her face was weathered. She had never quite lost the jittery energy that Ahsoka supposed had proved so useful as a slave, but she seemed calmer now with all of her family safe and beside her.
Ahsoka smiled but said nothing.
“Your own are not much younger,” Kuna said coaxingly.
Ahsoka laughed in disbelief, as if she had not had the very same thought only moments before. “I miss them being this small,” she said instead, “so small and sweet. So unable to argue back,” she added.
When the twins had been the age of the babe in her arms, her life had been devastatingly hard, but time had leeched at least some of the pain and uncertainty from the memories. It was easier to look back now and allow herself a sense of nostalgia.
“Maybe you will be in my position before you know it,” Kuna said.
Ahsoka tried not to grimace as she handed the child back to his grandmother. Kuna accepted him easily and smiled as though she hardly knew she was doing it. She patted down the blankets with bent fingers. She had hard hands, calloused from difficult labour and long years. The difference was never so stark to Ahsoka as seeing those weathered fingers stroke the downy and unblemished skin of the baby they held.
“Don’t even joke,” she said, “it makes me feel far too old.”
Kuna smiled but said nothing, lost in the child. Ahsoka tried not to read too much into her words. Kuna was hardly wrong; Luke and Leia were 16 apiece, only four years behind Kham in a society that seemed to marry young. Only a year younger than she had been when she had stolen them away— a horrifying thought upon which she tried not to dwell.
“Speaking of my wayward children, I suppose I should hunt them down,” she said at long last, and made to make her goodbyes. It was not so difficult— she was known by many but close to few, and her farewells took but a moment. She made sure to offer her congratulations to the happy couple, and her smile was genuine when she accepted Kham’s exuberant embrace and Rina’s more sedate pressed hand. She had known Kham nearly all of his life, and though there were traces of the boy she had first met, they were harder to see in the face of the man he had become. He did not carry the same burden as his mother, if he remembered his start in life at all it seemed he had shaken free of it, and Ahsoka wished him nothing more than her sincere hope that it never caught up to him.
She had left her gift by the door when she entered— muslin and water— and there was nothing left to do but slip quietly away. She made for the door only to find Kuna waiting there for her, the child still in her arms.
“Thank you,” Kuna said, before ducking her head, “and before you go, I…I would like to ask one more gift. A blessing for my grandson, a blessing from Fulcrum.”
Ahsoka looked at Kuna and then at the baby. She pushed back the blankets from his little face, and accepted the bundle back into her arms.
“Blessings and good fortune, little one,” she murmured before pressing her finger to her mouth and dotting the child’s wrinkled forehead. She passed him back.
Kuna took him, and for a moment Ahsoka was struck by the fact that her friend did not look like she belonged here. In the throngs of the free, Kuna still, after all these years, looked uncomfortable, especially as she asked for a slave’s blessing for a freewoman's grandson. Some people never managed to shake of their past, and in that Ahsoka could sympathise.
Ahsoka smiled at her, squeezed her arm, and slipped out into the street.
The street was scorching; the suns were high and the sky was clear, but the air was a welcome change from the heavy incense of seclusion. Luke and Leia had both been invited to attend with her, but both had managed to wheedle their way out of it. She could hardly blame them; she couldn’t think of many teenagers who would wish to spend their morning cooing over a baby amongst a room full of people they hardly knew. They had begged off immediately, and she had allowed it; all that remained now was to find where they had run off to.
She crossed the road to find the shade of the opposite buildings as she allowed her senses to range. It wasn’t enough to pinpoint them exactly, but she began to head in the right direction. In truth, it would have been more energy than it was worth to divine their precise location. Mos Eisley, though never light in the Force, had grown increasingly murky and difficult in recent years. The Dunes were the only place she felt able to exhale freely now, far from the cesspool of villainy in which she lived and worked, the only place where she could meditate under the open sky and commune.
It didn’t take long to follow her senses and scan the market to see Luke. He was sat upon a low mud-brick wall along the edge of the vendors, opposite the checkpoint. She walked up behind him silently before laying a heavy hand on his shoulders. He didn’t start, nor look away from the checkpoint. He must have felt her coming. She sat down beside her and tried not to wince at the movement. The wall was lower than she had thought.
“Hello, auntie,” was all he said as he watched the storm troopers come and go, sometimes asking commuters for their papers but mostly letting them pass unhindered. He watched them pensively. There had been little in the way of advancement in Tatooine; beyond the initial unrest the Empire had been grudgingly accepted as a new inconvenience to everyday life. After the initial encroachment and show of force it quickly became apparent that the Empire had very little interest in forgotten backwaters. The stormtroopers that were posted were from remedial squadrons who would have struggled to his the broadside of a shuttle-freighter, though they were often the most trigger happy. Their shiny white plastoid dimmed and scratched in the blazing and unfiltered twin suns, and they were normally disillusioned with their role in their glorious Empire before their first month of service had passed. Little in the way of supplies or reinforcements ever made it this far from the Core, and as long as taxes were paid and papers presented, they rarely gave anyone any real trouble.
“Have you seen your sister?” Ahsoka asked eventually.
Luke broke his vigil for that, a canny grin stealing over his face as he glanced at her from the side of his eyes.
“She said she was going to see Lilat in the apothecary for a new hair serum,” he said slyly. Ahsoka, a woman who had nearly wept out of sheer relief when Leia had decided to chop her hair into the same practical bob that most of the women on Tatooine seemed to favour, shook her head in disbelief. She wasn’t falling for it.
“And if I were to head to the apothecary myself, would I find her in there?” She wondered out loud. Luke’s grin grew wider. He looked like he was holding back a laugh, his sombre vigil seemingly over.
“That depends,” he said innocently, “are we still pretending we don’t know where she goes when she disappears?”
In a form of smug and uncharacteristic ignorance, Leia still thought both of them unaware as to her whereabouts whenever she disappeared from their abode. It had been alarming the first dozen times or so until Ahsoka had followed her from the market one day, only to end up at the space-port docks. The thought of her 16-year-old daughter running around the docks and all of the characters and specimens that that entailed should have been a worrying one, and it was at first. After a few more subtle outings as Leia’s silent shadow, Ahsoka had finally relented and allowed her her harmless secret. Leia was young, yes, but she was whip smart, more than able to defend herself, and an usually sharp judge of character. As Kuna had so helpfully reminded her, both of her children were on the edge of adulthood, and if this was the biggest secret Leia brought to her door, then Ahsoka could learn to live with it.
Besides, she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know why Leia disappeared with such frequency. The gambling, the shady dealings and connections that could be made at a spaceport were second to none. Every wupiupi that she made and every whisper from the Mid-Rim were all put to good use on the railroad.
It was her own fault, she supposed wryly; if her children were seditious then they had learnt it from her.
“Well, at least I still have one honest child,” she said, and bumped her shoulder against his.
“I’d never lie, auntie, I wouldn’t know how,” he said, wide-eyed. The effect was somewhat ruined by her disbelieving snort.
“Come on,” she said, and stood with a groan, stretching out her back. “Let’s go and find your wayward sister.”
Luke jumped up and followed her across the market, but they had barely made it fifty paces before Leia came barrelling out of one of the side streets, hair wild and cheeks flushed.
“Auntie, Luke,” she said, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath, “I was just looking for you!”
Ahsoka held back a smile. “What a coincidence,” she said. “We were just about to come and find you. Did you get everything you need?”
Leia looked at her blankly.
Luke coughed and ruffled his hair.
“Oh! Yes, yes, I got everything”, she said hastily and then added, “Lilat says hello.”
“I’m sure she does,” Ahsoka said. They turned to head home, and if she heard a thump and cackle she did not turn, nor look.
Upon their return, Leia disappeared immediately into her room, no doubt to hide her spoils until she could come up with a passable lie and hand them over to Ahsoka. Luke lingered.
She watched him subtly as she moved around their kitchen, putting away their supplies and pouring the water. There was something uneasy about him— that same fey mood she had witnessed as he watched the stormtroopers move about their business. He was normally so easy to read, her son, and she was unused to wondering what he was thinking. He was a string of unease in the Force. She made a conscious effort to probe no further, and instead she turned to her words.
“Everything alright, Luke?” She asked when the water was poured and handed out.
He looked at the mug in his hand and then at her. She had the strangest impression that he was trying to imprint the moment in his mind, as though this ordinary afternoon on an ordinary day was something special, something that ought to be remembered.
He smiled.
“I’m alright, auntie,” he said, and then, “I asked Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru round for dinner.”
“What?” She asked in surprise. They came over often, but it was odd for Luke to extend the hospitality for all of them. He pulled at a thread on his sleeve and would not meet her eye.
“I thought it might be nice,” he offered.
“Of course,” she said curiously, but pushed no further. She was always glad for Owen and Beru’s company, and it was certainly no hardship to have them over for dinner. She could see she would get nothing else from Luke, and so she allowed the diversion.
“Alright,” she said, distracted, “I’ve got some of that Dantooine spice mix around here somewhere, I’ll dig that out if you wouldn’t mind fetching the shoulder cuts from the-“
She cut off abruptly as Luke all but tackled her in a hug. He squeezed her just once, briefly. She barely had time to get her own arms around him before he had ducked away and trotted down into the cellar. She stood there, arms still raised, bewildered.
Still, she had little time to question his odd behaviour for there was too much to do. The air was filled with the scent of roasting meat when the door chimed.
“I got it!” Leia called from her room, and Ahsoka heard her run out into the hall and greet her aunt and uncle. The usual pleasantries were observed as Owen gathered mugs for the water they had brought with them and Beru bustled over to help her serve their dinner.
In no time at all they were sat around the dinner table eating as they had done a thousand times before. Ahsoka had initially wondered if Owen and Beru had any more insight into their sudden invitation than she did, but she relaxed over the course of the dinner as it became apparent they knew no more than she. She even joined in with Beru’s sly interrogation of her daughter regarding any handsome spacer that may have caught her eye. Leia’s ears turned red as she shot them both narrowed looks.
Luke was quiet throughout, but he was watching them all intently, smiling when looked to, but otherwise content to let the conversation flow over him. Something about his demeanour seemed off, and when she saw Leia darting a glance at him over her mug, she felt the first trill of worry. Ahsoka would not pretend to know every thought in her son’s head, but for Leia not to know either seemed strange in the extreme.
It wasn’t until their plates were empty and Ahsoka was refilling their drinks that Luke cleared his throat. He tried to smile at them, and Ahsoka wouldn’t have needed to reach for him in the Force to feel the nervous energy rolling off him. It looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands— one minute on the table, the next down by his side.
“I’ve got some news,” he told them.
Beru caught her eye, and Ahsoka shook her head minutely. Whatever was preoccupying her son was news to her.
“I’ve decided what I want to do after I finish my lessons for good,” he said, looking at each of them in turn.
That wasn’t what Ahsoka had expected at all, and she felt cautiously optimistic. Luke had always seemed rather firm in his concept of the future; most of his education had been geared towards engineering and mechanics. He spent more time with Owen in the garage than the rest of them put together. Owen leant forward, interested.
“Well?” He asked gruffly.
Luke took a deep breath—
“I’m going to join the academy,” he said firmly.
—and the world fell down around her ears.
The reaction was instantaneous. Beru was shaking her head, Leia was stood, already speaking a mile a minute and furious, Owen’s face was thunderous. She couldn’t hear any of it. Ahsoka could only hear her own heartbeat reverberating in her montrals, her own quickened breathing.
Luke sat in the middle of the uproar, as calm as the eye of a storm.
She tried to calm herself, this wasn’t the time to fall apart.
“No,” said Owen firmly, as though it was already decided. Beru was silent beside her husband, silent but unyielding, “absolutely not.”
“I can get in,” Luke told them earnestly as though that was their main objection, “I’ve got the grades to get in as a recruit, and then I’d be-”
“-cannon fodder,” said Owen.
“-in the perfect position to know what the Empire was planning to do next,” Luke said as though his uncle hadn’t spoken. He was leant forward, words quick, as though he honestly expected to be able to sway any of them. “I could help!”
“You help here!” Leia snapped. Her hands were balled into fists, and Ahsoka could see it was only a matter of time before her temper frayed beyond repair.
“I could do so much more!” Luke said earnestly, “Biggs said-”
Leia snorted derisively, “Oh, Biggs said-”
“He said there’s a rebellion out there,” Luke carried on determinedly, “and he said they’re always looking for people to join and help them against the Empire! I could go out there and help, I could make a real difference.”
“You make a difference here, Luke,” Beru said evenly.
“I could do more!” He said passionately.
Leia sneered. It was an ugly expression that Ahsoka had never wished to see on her daughter’s face. “This isn’t about helping people,” she said angrily, “this is about him.”
It was though she had reached across the table and slapped him. Ahsoka wished she could close her eyes and refuse to hear it, but Leia’s tirade continued.
“You think you can help him,” she said, and there was a cruelty in her as she laid out her brother’s most secret wishes. “You think there’s still good in him. Wake up, Luke, we weren’t enough to stop him then, and you aren’t enough to stop him now. He’s gone.”
It was like seeing a pin driven through the body of a butterfly, the wings still struggling weakly. Leia’s powers of observation were fearsome indeed, and she had turned the full weight of them on her brother for all to see. All eyes turned to Luke, his eyes glassy but his jaw set.
“You don’t know that,” he said quietly.
Ahsoka felt sick with it, sick at seeing her family fracture in front of her. She could hardly find the words to form a single objection.
“It’s my choice,” Luke said, his voice steady.
“Absolutely not,” Owen said.
“Uncle-”
“After all we’ve done to keep you alive?”
“It’s not your decision, uncle.”
“You’re right,” Owen said, voice hard, “but you haven’t reached your majority yet, so it’s not yours either.”
It was as though a sudden awareness of her silence swept over them all, and all eyes turned to her.
She was still holding the jug of water she had been pouring their drinks from. The water rippled in the jug, the tremors coming from her as she fought to hold back a tidal wave of grief and fear from pulling her under. She set it upon the table. She opened her mouth, but she could not find a single word.
Leia stood up suddenly, her chair skittering backwards. “How could you leave us?” She asked, her voice shaking, though with fear or anger Asoka could not say, “How could you leave us here and go running after him? He doesn’t want you, Luke! He’ll kill you just like he killed mom!”
The words hit her like a physical blow, and Ahsoka did nothing to stop her as Leia stormed from the room. She heard the front door close.
Luke looked shaken. He looked to Ahsoka as though he were still a boy in need of her comfort.
“Auntie?” He asked.
She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at him without seeing her boy sent off to some far reach of the galaxy, a number on a spreadsheet, a nameless set of plastoid armour. How could she not have seen this coming? How had she failed so thoroughly to know what was in her son’s heart?
“I’m…I’m going to get your sister,” she said and hated herself for her cowardice, “We’ll…we’ll talk when I come back.
He looked broken-hearted, but so was she. She paused before she left and crossed the room, pressing a kiss to his temple. She tried to breathe him in. Her eyes closed.
Her son. Her very own son.
She left before the tears she had been blinking back had a chance to fall.
She left the house and took a deep breath. She tried to clear her mind. Ordinarily, she would try and meditate her tangle of emotions away, as she had tried to make her habit of late, but she was in no mind for painful voices from the past giving her garbled messages she could not decode. She was confused enough.
Twilight was settling and she knew in a matter of hours the sky would be bright with a thousand constellations. In the dying light it was easy to pick out Leia’s footsteps in the sand. She followed them slowly, trying to compose herself before she found her.
Leia had not gone far. Ahsoka found her hidden by the swell of the nearest dune, pacing furiously, kicking at the sand, and muttering. She looked up when she heard Ahsoka approach.
“He can’t go,” she said instantly, “it’s not safe. They’ll kill him!” Her voice broke in the middle and Ahsoka knew that, as comfortable as her anger was, Leia hovered over the edge of despair.
She had known for years that these conversations were coming, but she felt no more prepared for them for all the preparation.
She had one chance to say this, she knew, one chance to say it so that it stuck.
“We cannot live Luke’s life for him,” she said slowly, “no matter how much we might disagree, his choices are his own. That is what it means to be free.”
Leia turned from her in disgust and started pacing again.
“He’s going because he thinks he can change Vader’s mind!”
“He’s going to help people,” Ahsoka said tiredly, abruptly feeling every one of her years.
Leia rounded on her. “You agree with me, I know you do! Why are you-”
Ahsoka held up her hand in warning, and Leia cut off angrily.
For a moment there was silence between them as Ahsoka tried to find the right words.
“You’re right,” she said, “I don’t want him to go. He’ll be fighting in a war that’s the very same I started fighting when I was younger than the two of you. I want him safe, I want him here. But…I can’t make the decision for him.” She closed her eyes as the truth of it rolled over her. She tried to accept it, even as her words rang true. “Do you think when I first arrived here that the safest thing for me to do was to involve myself in the railroad? I could have turned a blind eye to the slavery right in front of me, as almost everyone else on this planet does. I could have told you it was wrong, but never raised a single finger to help. It would have been safer for us. I considered it at the time, you know. How could I trade the safety of my children for the lives of others I did not know?”
Leia had stopped pacing and was watching her warily.
Ahsoka continued. “But it wouldn’t have been right,” she said with certainty. “I didn’t want you to be raised by the sort of woman who would let others suffer when she could have stepped in to help. How can I be angry when Luke is incapable of allowing that same injustice to pass him by?”
In the fading light, Ahsoka saw Leia’s face crumple.
“I don’t want him to,” she said, and her voice trembled with unshed tears.
“I know,” Ahsoka said. She held out her arms and Leia fell into them, already crying. She held her daughter until her tears slowed. “Go back to the house,” she said eventually, her voice gentle, “find your brother.”
Leia didn’t need to be told twice. Ahsoka wasn’t fool enough to think that their problems were solved, but Leia was a sweet girl at heart. Sometimes she just needed a moment to let her heart catch up to her temper.
For a moment, Ahsoka was left alone in the sand, the weight of the day pressing on her from all sides.
She felt a presence with her.
“Any advice, master?” She asked softly.
There was no advice, no voice, no kind words. She took comfort from it nonetheless.
She began the trudge back inside. Owen and Beru were waiting by the door. She could hear the children’s voices behind them, tense, in the kitchen.
“We thought it best we leave,” Beru said, a tight hand on her husband’s arm. “We’ll comm you in the morning.”
A moment passed between them, and Ahsoka fought back a sigh. They were all of a mind, she was certain of that much, and the knowledge of the inevitable change in their lives hung silently over all of them. The still waters of Beru’s mind were churning, and no matter how placid the surface, Ahsoka could feel her turmoil.
“Thank you for coming,” she said instead. Beru smiled, as tired looking as Ahsoka felt, and Owen nodded. He was as implacable as the sandstone she had once compared him to all those years ago. He and Luke would fight over this in the days to come, she knew with sudden surety.
They left, and Ahsoka was left with no other choice than to face her son.
As she made her way to the kitchen Leia came out. They passed each other wordlessly, though Ahsoka placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder as she left.
In the kitchen, Luke was waiting for her nervously. He looked less sure of himself now it was just the two of them alone.
Ahsoka, at a loss of where to begin, began to make tea. Luke hesitated for a moment before joining her. He passed her two mugs and they waited in silence for it to steep. Eventually there was no more distraction to be had.
Luke spoke first.
“Are you going to tell me I can’t go?” He asked.
Ahsoka looked at him. He was so young in so many ways, but, she reminded herself, old enough to know his own mind. Two years older than herself when she had first gone to war, one year younger than when she had taken the two of them. He would always be her boy, but he was on the very precipice of becoming a man.
“I’m going to ask you not to,” she said truthfully, “but I can’t stop you.”
He looked down at the mug in his hands.
“I want to,” he said eventually. “I want to get out of here.”
Tatooine was a hard place; she had known that when she came there all those years ago. It was a hard place, desolate, and remote, and that was why she had stayed. It was a backwater and a good place to raise two children unobserved. But it wasn’t the whole galaxy; it was barely even a corner of it. She had known, no matter how little she had wanted to think on it over the years, that one day the children would want more than what they could find in the dunes. There was a whole galaxy out there, and she was not their jailer who could deny it to them.
“Why the academy, Luke? Tell me honestly.” She swallowed and lifted the mug to her mouth to hide her trembling lips, “I want to understand.”
“I want to help people,” he said, raw and honest. She could sense him burning in the Force, pure and good, a supernova of light. “I look at the Stormtroopers in the market, how they treat us, and what they do, and I know— I know— I can help people. I can get information, I can pass it on. I can make a difference.”
She put her mug down and looked him dead in the eye.
“Can you honestly tell me it has nothing to do with your father?”
He hesitated.
“No,” he said quietly, “I can’t. But I’m not doing it for him. I promise.”
She took a moment to weigh his words.
“The academy won’t accept anyone under 18 years of standard age without parental consent,” she said, and he nodded. She took a deep breath. “I do not consent to you leaving, but when you are old enough, I will not stop you.”
She waited for disappointment or anger, but there was none. He was smiling at her tremulously, as though he had expected much harsher words.
“Thank you, auntie,” he breathed. He crossed the room and threw his arms around her. She squeezed him as tightly as she dared and tried to soak the moment in.
He was gone the next instant. Ahsoka didn’t know whether he was comming Biggs or telling his sister, but she didn’t stop him. She gathered up the plates and mugs from the table and, slowly, began clearing them away.
As his aunt, there was little she could do to stop him from leaving, but as his commander…she felt a steely resolve begin to form in her. She would not let Luke go, either of her children go, until she was completely satisfied that they had all of the training that she could give them to help them make their way in the galaxy. Her children were in for a shock the next time they ran their drills, from now on she would not hold back in her attempts to teach them how to wield their lightsabers.
She couldn’t say for sure whether or not Luke secretly harboured idealistic notions of saving his father or turning him from his path, but it hardly mattered. Either way, the net was drawing closed around them, their whole lives on Tatooine were beginning to look like delicate little soap bubbles, liable to pop at any moment.
Yes, she thought as she dried their plates, she would ramp up their training. They would need every advantage they could get.
Life progressed uneasily from that day. Sometimes Ahsoka thought she would be able to ignore the onward march of time, but other times it felt like the timer had been set.
The twins’ 18th birthday had come and gone in a silent standoff. Leia had stalked around, furious at the whole world for weeks in the buildup, disappearing to the docks with alarming regularity. Tales of a mystery woman antagonising the enforcers began to surface. Her and Luke’s training bouts had taken on a level of aggression that Ahsoka wished that she knew how to counteract. She took an almost inordinate amount of pleasure in trying to prove to her brother that he was not ready to defend himself, but, slowly, Ahsoka began to see what Leia, for once, did not— Luke was holding his own. Quietly and calmly, he was beginning to remind her of a true padawan as his sister’s anger washed over him, leaving him unchanged.
Owen had made his disapproval abundantly clear, and, though Beru never agreed with him outwardly, nor did she contradict him.
Ahsoka herself had felt like she was being marched inexorably towards her own execution the closer they got to the twins’ birthday. It was only when, a week after the day in question, Luke had nervously presented her with an accepted matriculation form that she had felt she had been granted a reprieve.
“It’s an officer training course,” he told her, “it’s remote so I can stay here while I study and…” he looked up at her, still shorter by half a head, still her boy. “I haven’t changed my mind about joining, but it takes three years to complete.”
Three years to complete and a way out from beneath the meat grinder of the lower ranks. If it was a reprieve then it was a good one, and she was thankful for it.
“Have you told your sister?” She asked.
Luke shuffled a little. “Would you like to?” He hedged, and then deflated at her hard look. “Fine, I’ll tell her.”
She left him to it.
Leia was in the living room, she knew, fine-tuning her lightsaber. She would have wondered at the wisdom in sending Luke in after her, but so very many of their conversations were difficult these days. This would hardly make a difference.
Ever since Biggs had left for the academy it felt like Leia watched her brother with untrusting eyes. Ahsoka knew it came from the fierce love she had for her family, but Leia’s anger had been known to get the better of her on occasion.
As if on cue, she heard raised voices from the living room. She sighed and went to mediate.
“I thought you’d be pleased!” Luke said, somewhat bewildered.
“Pleased?” Asked Leia incredulously, “Why would I be pleased that my brother is still planning on going and getting himself killed in some far off corner of the galaxy?”
Ahsoka tried to intercede once more. It was a familiar role she had taken on in their arguments over the past two years. She knew that nothing new would be said here, old arguments would be rehashed, and all parties would leave sore and hurt.
“Okay,” she said wearily, “that’s enough-”
“There are people who need you here, Luke!” Leia said over her.
And then, for the very first time, something happened that Ahsoka could not have predicted.
Luke bit back.
“I can’t stay here, Leia! I’m not staying in the middle of a kriffing desert all my life!”
Leia reared back as if he had hit her. Luke was breathing heavily.
“Isn’t it good enough for you here?” Leia asked dangerously, “The people here aren’t worth saving, is that it? Or is it something else? You’re just going because of him.”
It was Leia’s favourite argument every time they got into it, and yet it stung every time. She wouldn’t even say his name, and yet Ahsoka struggled every time she said it.
“Enough, now,” Ahsoka said quietly. She was thoroughly ignored.
“Well, so what if I am?” Luke snapped back, “Maybe there’s good in him still!”
“Please, that’s enough-”
“What makes you think even if he knew about us he’d change anything at all! We weren’t enough last time!”
“Enough!” Ahsoka shouted. They both looked at her wide-eyed. “That’s enough,” she said.
Not enough, she thought, not enough to save him. The children hadn’t been enough, nor Padmé, nor Obi-Wan, and certainly not herself.
She wanted to meditate again, she wanted to feel the familiar presence that brought her comfort even if it was so very difficult to understand him.
She looked between them. Luke started first.
“Auntie, I’m sorry-”
No sooner had he got the words out than Leia turned her heel and left, lightsaber in hand.
After a pause and look, Ahsoka followed her.
She found her in the same place she had two years ago, but this time she was hacking at the sand with her lightsaber. It sent up a flash of sand with every strike, and even as she watched rivulets of glass were forming at Leia’s feet.
Leia did not look at her. She merely continued with her furious display.
Ahsoka gave in. Making herself comfortable, she settled in the sand and gave her mind over to meditation. As ever, she felt the comforting presence that seemed to wait for her in moments like these. The message was secondary. She had never come so close to it as she had when she had been fevered and sick. Promises of untold power, power undreamed of, striking people down… she lost it. The thought slipped away. Instead, she focused on her surroundings: the sun, the granules of sand, her daughter hacking her way through the desert. When she heard Leia falter, she opened her eyes.
She was drenched in sweat, panting heavily, the deactivated saber in her hands. She collapsed in the sand next to Ahsoka.
“He’s going to get himself killed for the man who killed our family,” Leia said blankly, the anger drained from her along with her energy.
Ahsoka looked at her and tried to see her as a stranger might— Leia with her short hair and tanned skin, her ragged clothes and mulish expression. Leia was content with her life, Ahsoka knew, after she had found her purpose as little more than a child. Her daughter was many a smuggler’s contact, involved with illegal operations within the town and Quarters, and more than familiar with the complex systems of money laundering and rescues that happened in both. On paper, Ahsoka felt like she should object, but how could she when she knew that all of it, every single dangerous or illegal action, was all for the benefit of freeing those who had never known a moment’s freedom in their lives? Freeing slaves, creating new identities and documents for them wasn’t cheap, and there were many former slaves who bore the name Leia or Ekkreth in her honour. Leia was practical to the bone; these people were in-front of her, and her burning sense of injustice would allow her to do nothing less than stay and help them to the best of her ability.
But Luke was different. Luke was a dreamer.
“He’s not going to get himself killed,” Ahsoka said at last, “Luke is… Luke strong. He’s clever and optimistic. He sees the good in people, even when there’s precious little of it.”
She felt more than saw Leia look at her from the side of her eyes.
“You’re like Luke, you still love him.”
There was no accusation in her tone, just a bone deep weariness.
Ahsoka closed her eyes in shame.
“Yes,” she whispered, “I still love him.” She was aware it was a terrible thing to tell Anakin’s daughter, but it was the truth, no matter how burdensome. “I wish he was dead, but I do love him.”
Leia looked at her properly, and Ahsoka saw the anger and confusion there, the desperate need to understand. “How?” She asked plaintively. “How can you love him and still wish he was dead?"
Ahsoka tried to find words that Leia could accept.
“I wish he had died a hero,” she said eventually, “so that I could mourn him in peace.”
The galaxy remembered Anakin Skywalker as a hero of the Clone Wars, tragically cut down before his time. She wished she could join them in that ignorance and remember him that way too. In many ways, it would have been a gift.
There in the desert, her mind still so close to mediation and Anakin’s name in her mouth, she felt a whisper of despair that didn’t belong to her.
“I know you don’t understand how I feel about your father,” she said, trying to articulate her point carefully, for it was too important to get wrong, “but I want you to know one thing. He was not born evil nor made evil by forces outside of his control. He made choices, one after the other, until he is where he stands now. But there was a time… there was a time when he was as light as he now is dark. I will never be able to forget what he has done, and I won't ever be able to forgive him for it, but nor can I ever stop loving him.”
It was an ugly truth and one that she wished she hadn’t been forced to say aloud. In many ways, Ahsoka had never grown past that one horrific day when Anakin had burnt down her life around her, along with every other person she had ever known. She was a fly trapped in amber; her love for him crystallised and unwelcome, but unfortunately preserved.
She hoped Leia could understand, even a little. She had more hope of it than Luke. Luke was optimism and right and wrong. Leia understood shades of grey far better than her brother ever would.
“I picked his crystal, didn’t I?” Leia asked.
Ahsoka looked at her; it had not been what she was expecting. Leia was looking down at the lightsaber in her hands.
“You did,” she said cautiously.
“That’s why you worry about me more than Luke. I…I’m like him, aren’t I?”
“I don’t worry about you more than I worry about Luke. I worry that you might give into your anger and so something you’ll regret, sure, but I worry Luke’ll wander off the edge of a Sarlaac pit and won’t realise until he’s half way down.”
Leia snorted.
Ahsoka smiled. “I worry about Luke trusting someone he shouldn’t,” she said, “and it’ll get him hurt one day.”
Leia chanced a glance at Ahsoka, her eyes were red-rimmed. “I’m just so angry all the time,” she whispered, “none of it’s fair, and I know that it isn’t, but I just want to…” She broke off and clenched her jaw, frustrated. “I don’t want to be like him.”
There was a hardness to Leia that reminded Ahsoka so much of Anakin, all of the good in him before the rot took root. Perhaps it was wilful blindness or ignorance, but she didn’t worry about Leia being seduced to the Dark as Anakin had been. How could she? She had raised her from birth and she knew the depth and ferocity of her love. Her girl was kind as Ahsoka’s own master had once been kind. Perhaps the Jedi would have tried to teach her to temper the children but they were no longer there to condemn her for it. No, in her most honest and secret fears, it was Luke who she worried after. Sweet Luke, sweeter than his sister, and so easily hurt. For all of the blond hair and wide grin, he reminded Ahsoka more of her mother, and had Padmé not been the very first victim of the Empire?
“You’re not,” Ahsoka said. “Anger isn’t a bad thing, Leia, and it doesn’t make you bad. You just have to be careful with what you do with it.” She sighed and continued. “You think I don’t get angry every time I walk past a slaver in town? Every time I see Varn talk to Ennen like she’s an object? Of course I do. I get so angry I think I could reach out and choke them with my bare hands.” She looked at her daughter and found that Leia was watching her intently. “But I don’t,” she said, “because if I’m gone, who’s going to help the next person, the person after that? So I take my anger and I channel it. I make a choice, and I choose to keep helping. Anger isn’t wrong; it’s what you do with it that matters.”
It wasn’t what she had been taught as a child, but it was certainly what she had learnt since. The desert had worn her down into something different than what she had once been— she was certainly no longer a Jedi— but that didn’t mean she hadn’t helped in her own right. Perhaps it would have been different had she arrived older than she had, but she had never been more than a Padawan and even now the ways of the Force often left her confused.
“Would you kill him?” Leia asked, “If you could?”
Ahsoka tried to think about it. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully.
“I don’t know either,” Leia said.
Together they sat side by side in silence as the time wound down around them.
“I have to apologise, don’t I?” Leia asked abruptly. Ahsoka smiled at her but said nothing. “Fine,” Leia sighed, and stood up. She extended a hand down to Ahsoka and levered her to her feet. Together, they used the Force to push Leia’s cooling river of glass deep into the sand— another secret lost to the desert.
She followed Leia into the house and listened with half an ear as Leia apologised to her brother and challenged him to another bout of sparring in the same breath. She listened more intently as they left together, but there was no anger clouding them now and she could hear their bickering and prodding as they fought playfully against each other. It was an apology— given and accepted so very easily— that she suspected only siblings could give to each other.
She smiled to herself as she watched them from the window. They were near enough grown now, only hers for a little while longer. Soon they would outgrow her entirely, and the day was coming quickly.
Around her, the presence she so often sought for comfort stirred.
Life took on a more normal semblance of itself after the storm of Luke’s decision had passed. Though Ahsoka wished often that he would change his mind, she knew he would not, and she knew that pushing him on the matter would only succeed in pushing him further away. It was a truth she accepted reluctantly, and Leia even more so. Beru kept her own council on the matter, which left Owen as Luke’s only vocal opposition.
It meant that more of his time was spent studying at her kitchen table rather than his uncle’s workshop, which had been the site of so much of his earlier education. They had all learned long lessons in compromise and conciliation.
“The results have been published,” Luke said abruptly, from his spot at the table. Ahsoka looked up from where she had been curing the efforts of her last hunt.
“Well?” Leia asked eventually, not looking up from her own delicate work. She was trying to find the central programming code in the new generation of chips that they had found in the last former slave they had rescued. Leia’s self appointed task was to stay constantly one step ahead of the masters of Tatooine, and it was a task at which she excelled, much to their chagrin.
“I… I’ve come top of the module,” Luke said, his voice faint with surprise. Ahsoka felt like wilting. “I’ve… I’ve been accepted to the academy.”
It had been her last desperate hope that Luke wouldn’t make the requirements for officer training, though she should have known it was a fool’s hope. Luke was bright and motivated, and they would have been remiss not to take him. He had spent months working on his application, and the weeks after his 19th birthday trying to mould himself into the perfect candidate on paper. The Empire had no way of knowing about the clandestine meetings he had had with Biggs Darklighter while the former was on leave, conspiring over the best methods of funnelling information into the so-called Rebellion.
Ahsoka mustered up a smile. “Luke, that’s wonderful news,” she said and crossed the kitchen to embrace him. He squeezed her back tightly. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered into his hair,” and those words, at least, were truthful.
Leia looked back down to her soldering.
“Leia?” Luke asked tentatively.
She looked up. “Well done,” she said at last.
There was a pregnant pause.
“You could at least pretend to be pleased for me,” he said quietly and at great length, and then, when she didn’t reply, “I’m trying, Leia.”
She swallowed and then said, very quietly, “I know.” She looked up at her brother and added, “I’m trying too.”
Ahsoka clapped her hands together, determined to navigate the minefield gracefully. She felt if she examined the situation for too long she would sit down and be unable to stand again at the thought of Luke so far away and in so much danger.
“We should celebrate,” she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful. “Invite the family, Leia call-”
“Or,” Luke added hastily, “we could do something small, just us?””
Ahsoka’s smile felt stiff as she gathered his meaning. They were trying very hard to keep the situation light; after all, Luke still had two more years until he left. This was simply a step closer to his goal, and one he wanted to celebrate without having his Uncle’s glowering judgement visited down upon him.
“Of course,” she said, smoothing his hair back from his face as though he were still a child. She was already planning a run into town where she could pick up some Yurogi stew, Luke’s favourite, and push the boat out for a special occasion.
“I’ve got someone I’d like to invite,” Leia said abruptly.
“Oh?” Ahsoka asked.
Leia flushed dark red and wouldn’t meet her eye. Ahsoka saw Luke slowly break into a grin.
“Oh?” Luke asked, his voice higher than Ahsoka’s had been.
Leia sent her a withering glance. Ahsoka began to cotton on and, for a brief moment, feared she may get whiplash from the breakneck speed of the afternoon.
“It’s someone I’d like you to meet,” she muttered, still flushed.
“And would this person happen to spend a lot of time at the docks?” Luke asked, his voice suddenly serious despite his face lit up with the prospect of getting to embarrass his sister. “Would he be the reason my sister disappears so often?”
Leia glared at him. Luke was unperturbed.
“In fact, would this person be the same person who last time I asked you if you’d be bringing him home to meet Auntie, you told me he would be the last person this side of the Mid-Rim you’d ever think about-”
“Luke,” Ahsoka broke in, “am I correct in assuming that you might also know this man?”
“He followed me,” Leia said glaring at her brother again, and then darting a glance at her aunt, “last month.”
“Only because I was so worried about what could possibly be keeping Leia in such a disreputable part of town,” Luke told her wide-eyed.
Leia was watching her apprehensively, and Ahsoka wished she knew herself how she was going to react. Luke, at least, looked like he was having a wonderful time.
Ahsoka gestured at Leia to go on while fighting the need to pinch the bridge of her nose.
“He’s a pilot,” Leia said tentatively.
Luke snorted, “He’s a spice-runner.”
“He owns his own business.”
“Smuggler,” Luke translated, and then in faux-shock, “you want to invite a criminal to my celebration dinner?”
If Leia could have reduced anyone to ash with the force of her malevolent stare, then she would have been an only child.
“I’m trying," she said again, at long last.
Luke’s grin faded, but he was still smiling at his sister, heartfelt, when he said, “I know.”
There was a moment of silent communication between them until Ahsoka sighed.
“Bring him round.”
They both turned to look at her, Leia in apprehension, Luke in barely constrained glee.
“Really?” Leia asked.
She fought back another sigh. She hadn’t been prepared for this; for the children growing up, yes, but only in the vaguest of terms. She hadn’t thought of people being brought back to her for her approval, and certainly not when she had such dubious information on them.
The only saving grace was that she trusted Leia to know a person completely with a single glance. If Leia thought he was worth bringing around then she was at least ready to hear her out.
Leia was out of her chair and had flung her arms around Ahsoka before she had time to react.
“Okay,” Leia was saying to myself, “I’ll tell him; I mean, I’ll send him a message and I can ask him-”
It was unlike her girl to get so flustered, but she tore from the room still muttering under her breath about the hundred things that apparently still needed to be done.
She looked at Luke, utterly out of her depth. Luke was still grinning, the tension of his announcement utterly fled.
“If we run out of conversation just ask him if he’s ever done the Kessel run,” Luke told her.
Ahsoka rubbed a hand over her forehead. “Maybe I should invite Owen and Beru, after all,” she said.
“Don’t you dare,” Leia hollered from her room. Luke grinned, ever willing to concede his peaceful evening of cerebration in deference to embarrassing his evening.
“Well, if there are no more suitors to be trotted out, I’m off to work,” she said and then looked at Luke expectantly. He held up his hands as though to show them suitor-less. She kissed his forehead even as she left, despite his attempt to duck.
Her life was never boring, she thought, at least there was that.
The security checkpoints on the edge of the town recognised her now, and she passed them easily, with little of the alarm that had heralded their arrival. Most of them knew her well enough to wave her through without stopping for her papers anymore.
Ennen, predictably, loved the idea of Leia bringing home a smuggler for dinner. They were sat drinking tea at Ahsoka’s workbench. Varn had disappeared the day before with a warning of dire consequences if they missed the Jawas passing through town, but as he had gotten older his nights out had turned into days long jaunts. Ahsoka would feel him coming before he even got to the threshold, a fact that Ennen trusted enough to tentatively take tea with her during work hours.
“Tell me again,” she said, laughing into her tea.
“A spice-running smuggler, a decade older than her,” Ahsoka said obediently, and tried not to smile when Ennen nearly snorted her tea up her nose. She treasured the moments when she could get her friend to laugh, even if only at her own anguish.
“Oh, little Leia is going to flay him alive,” Ennen laughed, clapping a hand to her thigh in mirth.
Ahsoka reluctantly smiled. It seemed so odd to her, but in many ways Leia was coming late to the world of romance— if that was what this could be called— and it was a place that Ahsoka could offer no practical guidance of her own. Ennen was correct, however, and Ahsoka had full confidence in Leia to look after herself. If a bruised heart was the only thing to come out of this little encounter, well. She would count them all lucky.
With a warm mug in her hand and her friend’s laughter still ringing in her ears, Ahsoka could not help but stop and appreciate the moment. How impossible this life would once have seemed to her, how rich and full it would have appeared to the teenaged girl and her two stolen children.
“What’s that face for?” Ennen asked, still smiling, “What are you thinking?”
Ahsoka smiled and tried to wave off her concern, “About how far we’ve come,” she said plainly, “I never thought I would get this far.”
“You’ve done well by them,” Ennen told her, “look at them now.”
“Yes,” she said, and thought of her two children, “they won’t need me for much longer.”
Ennen made a disproving noise, but Ahsoka knew it to be true. They might want her but they would no longer need her, and the day was close at hand.
“What will you do?” Ennen asked at last, looking at her intently, “What will you do when they are grown?”
Where will you go? She heard.
It was a thought that had almost seemed blasphemous when first she had had it, but it had persisted throughout the years, and now Ahsoka was staring down the barrel without knowing the answer.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
What could there be for her to do? The galaxy, and her friends besides, had surely forgotten there was ever a girl called Ahsoka Tano, and what use would she be to them now anyway? Should she stay there on Tatooine, a port for her children to call upon when they remembered her on occasion? She could join the rebellion, or be Fulcrum until she died, or else start anew entirely. She hadn’t had the sensation of so much choice since— well, perhaps in her entire life, but at least since she was very much younger. Another watershed moment, so many years after the first.
Ennen was looking at her, laughter fled and her face unreadable. She looked away and then back when Ahsoka met her eyes.
“I shall miss you,” she said quietly.
“You won’t have a chance to,” Ahsoka said automatically, and realised that, however rashly, she had spoken the truth.
Ennen was looking at her with round eyes, luminous in her face. Her meaning hung between them, unspoken.
Ahsoka cleared her throat and stood, “I should go,” she said and tried to keep her voice light. “I have a stew to make and a smuggler to threaten. I’ll be back in time tomorrow to trade with the Jawas.”
Ennen stood to see her off and clasped her arm gently. “Good luck,” she said, and Ahsoka smiled in return.
She hurried through her errands, picking up what she needed from the market before making her way home. She tried to push everything from her mind that wasn’t immediate; tonight was a celebration.
She spent her journey home trying to talk herself into something resembling her usual manner. She was barely through the door when she saw that Leia was having markedly less success on that front herself. She was on the floor, hands and knees, rolling up their rug as though it had personally offended her.
“Auntie Ash!” She said, looking up when Ahsoka closed the door, “Can I put this in your room?”
“Is there something wrong with it?” She asked. She caught sight of Luke shaking his head behind her sister, but it was too late to take it back.
“No,” Leia began slowly, before immediately giving up on tact, “I’m trying to make the place look nice, and this is…well, can I put it in your room?”
“Sure,” Ahsoka said as she went to the kitchen. It had been the same rug that she had bought for the children all those years ago, with her first proceeds on the planet. It had seemed monumental at the time— the first sign that she could actually give them something resembling a childhood. She supposed they had outgrown it now. It was a bittersweet feeling, though it was hard to remain morose when Luke sidled up beside her and tried to swipe some of the bread she had bought. She slapped his fingers away.
“She’s been like this all afternoon,” he informed her with a brother’s glee. “Watch this. Hey auntie Ash,” he said, raising his voice, “do you mind if I do Em-Kay’s maintenance at the table while we wait?”
There was an inarticulate noise of rage from Ahsoka’s bedroom. When Leia emerged, she was flushed from lugging the rug across the room, her hair a flyaway mess. She looked ready to lock Luke out of the house for good.
“Okay,” said Ahsoka, trying to keep a straight face so as not to enrage her daughter further. “Leia, you’ve done a gorgeous job in here. Why don’t you get yourself ready? Luke can help me set up in the kitchen.”
With a little grumbling and stamping and another attempted bread theft, things were finally underway. Her melancholy had receded to be little more than a distant recollection, for with the smell of roasting meat and simmering stew, the sounds of a household in preparation for celebration, and the lingering anticipation, it felt like everything a family should be. It felt like something she would have imagined if someone had told her to imagine a family.
Luke went down to the cellar to store the carcass and bones to make broth later, and she looked behind her, out the window at the darkening evening.
“Can you believe it?” She murmured to herself, to thin air, to the nobody who replied. She smiled anyway.
Leia emerged from her bedroom, carefully scrubbed up and then back down again, so as not to betray any extortionate amount of effort.
“Come here,” Ahsoka told her when she looked a moment away from pacing a trench. “Try this.”
She all but stuck the spoon of stew in her mouth.
“Good?” She asked.
Leia nodded mutinously.
“Someone’s pulling up,” Luke said suddenly.
Leia shot him a poisonous look.
“No, really, look,” he said and pointed at the window. Against the darkening sky, it was just possible to see two headlights.
For a moment, Ahsoka thought Leia might combust. She ran for the door, remembered the spoon still in her mouth and doubled back, only to be stopped by Ahsoka’s hand, heavy on her shoulder.
Ahsoka fixed her with a look, half commander, half mother.
Leia deflated.
Ahsoka tried not to grin as she walked the length of the hall and went to answer the door.
It chimed a mere half moment before she pulled it open.
She hadn’t been sure what sort of man she was going to find on her doorstep, and she looked him over at her leisure.
It was a man, human, tall—though not as tall as her— and yes, quite a bit older than Leia, likely closer to her own age than her daughter’s. He was broad, thick-featured, his clothes clean, though not pressed, and, intriguingly, wearing Corellian bloodstripes. She extended all of her senses towards him— feeling absolutely no compunction in doing so—and was reassured by what she found. Though the majority of it consisted of absolute mortification in the situation he had found himself in, there was a strong undercurrent of bewilderment, amounting to a plaintive:
How did this even happen?
He looked utterly terrified. She kept her face expressionless.
“Can I help you?” She asked coolly.
“Is this the Sokath estate?” He asked.
“It is,” she said, and then no more.
He was visibly uncomfortable as he stood on the doorstep, “I was… invited?”
There was a scuffle behind her, a thump and a sudden cackle, that was all of her warning before Leia ran up behind her.
“Han!” She said, and then cleared her throat and collected herself, “This is my aunt, Ashla Sokath; Auntie Ash, this is Han.”
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said cautiously, and Ahsoka finally smiled. She saw him tentatively relax.
“Oh, I was only teasing,” she told Leia’s glaring face, “it’s my prerogative.”
“I, uh, brought you this,” Han said and thrust something towards her, a guest gift.
At first she mistook it as a mason jar filled with water, but something in it caught her attention and she raised it to her eye level. There, suspended in the water, was a little ball of moss, free floating, lazily roaming the jar.
“It’s a Xio moss ball,” he said, hands shoved into his pockets, “it’s-”
“-from Shili,” she finished for him. “Thank you,” she said, as she lowered it. As guest gifts went, it was a fine example, but more than that, it was thoughtful. She looked at him again and smiled genuinely. If anything it seemed to make him more uncomfortable.
“Come through, come through,” she said, and ushered them both in.
She watched him take in their home and tried to see it through new eyes herself. It was spacious enough for the three of them, though not overly large. Over the years she had collected tapestries for the walls, and the few tables they had were loaded with flimsi and various accoutrements that Luke had abandoned in his attempts to maintain Em-Kay.
“Hey Han,” Luke said, rubbing his arm, no doubt from Leia’s last attack.
“Hey kid,” Han said and then fell silent.
“Luke, come and help me with this,” Ahsoka said before the silence could get awkward. “Leia, give him the tour, would you?”
Leia needed no second telling and all but dragged Han from their presence. Luke wandered over and inspected the gift.
“You need help watching it?” He asked mock seriously, but quietened when Ahsoka hushed him.
“Shh, help me spy on your sister,” she said, and he gladly fell silent.
The house wasn’t large enough for them to go far, and Ahsoka could hear the low murmur of voices from where she stood. She heard Leia laugh.
She closed her eyes and felt for them in the Force.
“This seems like a pretty shady use of the Force,” Luke whispered loudly. She swatted his arm and felt rather than heard him laugh.
She hovered on the edge of Leia’s awareness. Despite her actions, she didn’t want to deprive her daughter of any real privacy. She could feel her as always, just as she always felt her, as a part of herself. Leia felt…anxious. A good deal of trepidation and a high strung fear that it would all end in abject mortification, but there was also…
Joy. A thread of nervous joy, taut as a bow string.
She opened her eyes.
“Go get them for dinner,” she told Luke and gave him a brief smile, before turning back to their food.
She was portioning up by the time they all finally returned.
Luke helped her bring the bowls to the table, followed by her own food, and they sat. She shook Gisan spice-salt over her meat liberally before passing it to Luke, who did the same to his stew. Han watched them in badly concealed horror.
“He gets it from me,” Ahsoka told him wryly.
He gave her an uncertain look.
Luke grinned, “I don’t think he sees the resemblance, auntie.”
Han looked to Leia for help instead.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Luke,” Leia said, holding her hand out for the shaker, “Auntie’s much prettier than you.”
Ahsoka laughed along with the twins. Han managed a cautious smile when he seemed sure he wasn’t the one being mocked.
“So Han,” Ahsoka said, and watched as he immediately tensed, “Leia tells me you’re a pilot.”
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” he said when it became apparent an answer was needed.
“Ashla,” she told him, “a pilot’s got to have a ship, no?” It was a safe bet, and she knew all too well how pilots loved talking about their ships.
It was like he lit up in front of her. “Oh, I sure do, ma’am— uh, Ashla. Fastest ship in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon.” He said it with flourish as though she should know the name.
“The whole galaxy?” She asked, smiling.
“You bet, I’ve outrun Imperial starships,” he said, before realising that perhaps that wasn’t something he should be bragging about in his present company. “A misunderstanding,” he said sheepishly.
“I’ve seen it,” Leia said before admitting grudgingly, “it’s pretty impressive for, you know, a bucket of bolts.”
“Pretty impressive?” Han asked incredulously. “It’s the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!”
Leia groaned as Luke crowed suddenly with delight. Both Han and Ahsoka looked at them in askance.
“Pay up!” Luke said, grinning ear to ear.
Reluctantly, Leia fished a credit chip out from her pocket and passed it over the table.
“I bet you’d make it thirty minutes without bringing that up,” Leia said.
“And I bet less than ten.” Luke said, before adding sincerely. “You made it further than I thought you would.”
“I’m trying to impress,” Han said, all affront and indignation. He shot her a look, before pretending he hadn’t, and Ahsoka realised something glaringly obvious.
Han had absolutely no idea how to talk to her. She’d met enough Spacers to know they were a rough bunch with few exceptions, and she was willing to bet that Han wasn’t one of them. He was trying, though.
She didn’t know how much he knew about her, about any of what they did. She didn’t know if he knew she was Fulcrum, nor what Leia did when her head wasn’t stuck in her coursework.
He did know she was important though, important to Leia, and for that he was trying.
Dinner passed much the same, in fits and awkward starts. She saw the way Han watched Leia out of the corner of his eye, and the way that Leia brutally beat back an honest-to-Force grin whenever he made a joke.
It was a shame, she thought as she started clearing away their plates, she’d been rather looking forward to threatening him at the end of the evening, but it didn’t seem like there was going to be any need. She’d even toyed with the idea of borrowing Beru’s slug thrower and leaving it leant up against the wall before she thought better of it.
The evening was slowly but surely winding down, and Ahsoka once again called on Luke to help her in the kitchen. He complied with minimal grumbling.
“So what do you think?” He asked her, stacking their plates.
“I think it went well,” she said before grinning. “Ennen will be pleased. She was rooting for this one.”
“You two gossip like a pair of old women,” he said, before dancing out of the way of the flick of the washcloth she sent his way.
“Well, when you get to be my age, Luke,” she said gravely before grinning.
She left him cleaning to collect the rest of the remnant of their meal. She didn’t mean to give in to temptation, but Leia was seeing him off by his ‘speeder and…
She was peeking behind the curtain before she had even made the decision.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying from behind the glass but she could see them. Stood by his ‘speeder, him leant against it and her standing barely half a foot away. The night was dark, clouds obscuring the moon, and the only light came from the open front door. Leia looked awkward, her arms folded across her body, weight shifting slowly from foot to foot, but in a flash she looked up at him, the light of the house limning their faces. She had half a smile on her face, and he had the rest. Like that, he didn’t look so very much older than her, after all.
She closed the curtain and allowed them what privacy she could.
She had barely turned back to clearing the table when she heard an engine start and the front door close. When she looked round, Leia was there watching her apprehensively.
“So?” Leia asked, “What did you think?”
Ahsoka looked at her, so close to being the woman she was always going to be, but not quite done with the girl she was, still seeking her aunt’s approval. She set down her dishes and crossed the room to her daughter. She cupped the side of her face, still round with the last vestiges of baby fat. She looked so much like her mother.
“I like him,” she told her, and couldn’t hold back a laugh when Leia all but squealed.
“Really?” She asked, breathlessly.
“Really,” Ahsoka said. She could see the blatant relief in Leia’s face, and for the first time all day she allowed herself to wonder what Padmé would have thought about this— her daughter making time with a criminal, a criminal herself technically, and all with Ahsoka’s approval. She wondered what she would have given to be here instead of her, the genuine article instead of the haphazard substitute. But it wasn’t a moment for sadness, and as if to prove her point, Leia flung her arms around her and squeezed her tightly.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she chanted.
Ahsoka laughed and held her back before pulling herself back together.
“Of course,” she said, “he’s far too old for you, and a smuggler to boot, a criminal-”
Leia stepped back, flapping her hands, still grinning. “We’re criminals too, Auntie Ash,” she said.
“Not me, Auntie Ash,” Luke called from the kitchen, “I wouldn’t even know how to be a criminal.”
Leia laughed, eyes shining.
Ahsoka smiled.
“Go on,” she told her, “go and help your brother clear up.”
Leia left without a word of protect. Ahsoka thought she could have told her to take apart every ‘vaporator by hand and she wouldn’t have minded.
He wasn’t an ideal match, true, but Leia was 19. Forbidding it would make the whole affair more illicit, more attractive and, despite everything, Han seemed decent enough. Likely nothing would come of it anyway, but Leia would always know she could tell her Aunt these things and not have the suns collapse in their orbit. Leia was so capable, and Ahsoka trusted her; the worst case here was a bruised heart, some hurt feelings and some light vandalism. But even so, Ahsoka had learnt not to judge people too harshly over the years. There was no guarantee anything would go wrong but, if it did, Ahsoka would be there ready to drag Leia through it kicking and screaming if need be.
Luke’s voice broke her out of her reverie, a falsetto “Mrs Solo- ow!” followed by a swift thump. She smiled and tried not to feel her age as she retrieved the tattered rug from her room and rolled it out over the floor. She was older then Obi Wan had been when they had first met, and for the first time that simple fact felt more humorous than heart-breaking. She understood his constant complaining about his back, now at least.
She wandered into the kitchen to find her two children flicking left over bits of stew at each other like children half their age. They froze guiltily when they saw her.
She stared at them and willed herself once more not to laugh.
“We’ll finish clearing up?” Luke tried tentatively.
“Well volunteered,” she said and, despite the ducking, complaining, and stew, kissed their faces as though there were still her chubby cheeked little children. They escaped her eventually, laughing, and shooed her away. She went gladly, lightly.
Despite it all, despite everything, she still felt light.
The Jawas would not be passing through town until the next afternoon, and so Ahsoka passed a pleasant enough morning picking up after the children and curing her latest kill. More often than not ,she delivered the meat fresh to the Quarters, but there was hardly such a thing as an overabundance of caution in their lives.
Luke worked diligently all morning, though Leia was conspicuously distracted. The third time Ahsoka saw her check her comm-link for messages, she turned her back so Leia wouldn’t see her smile. It wasn’t a feeling that she could relate to, but she was glad to see it all the same. It was pleasing to see one of her children getting to enjoy being young, at least for a little while.
At around noon, though, the tasks were done. Rather than haunt the house and hover over Luke and Leia, she kissed them both goodbye and headed into town. Like as not, they’d follow her in after they’d finished their studies. She was early for her agreed hours by a good while, but often if she went to the market and just so happened to buy two mugs of the good caf they sold in the centre then Ennen could be persuaded to take one rather than see it go to waste.
Especially if it was accompanied by the news of last night. Perhaps Luke was right; perhaps she really was becoming a gossiping old woman.
Simple thoughts of talk and caf occupied her mind to the edges of town, but, slowly, as she drew closer, her ‘speeder slowed to a crawl.
There was something different— a buzz of activity around the outskirts of the town. The checkpoints were bustling with stormtroopers, a long line of ‘speeders trailing back from the city. She watched as each driver pulled up to the checkpoint and handed over their papers, which were scrutinised before being handed back. Stormtroopers walked up and down the queue, blasters aloft, peering into vehicles and popping trunks.
Her mind worked quickly. There was nothing incriminating in the ‘speeder, she’d been doing this for far too long to make such a mistake. Her papers had held up to scrutiny a thousand times over the years. There was no need to worry.
Slowly, she joined the traffic.
She didn’t have long to wait until she drew level with the checkpoint. She handed her papers over when the demand came.
There were many such checkpoints over the city, mostly indistinguishable from each other. Shabby little ramshackle buildings that hadn’t been made to stand up to the Tatooinian suns, sheltering sweltering stormtroopers in dinted plastoid. They usually waved her through without stopping to check if the card she flashed even belonged to her.
Not anymore.
The trooper scrutinised her identity chip, her face, and then the chip again. He threw it back into her hand and waved her through without a word. She pulled away, relieved.
The relief did not last long.
The market was hushed and harried, no doubt by the change in routine. It made her uneasy, very uneasy indeed, and she could tell she was not alone in her sentiments. The sudden and heavy Imperial presence cast a pall over all of them. She saw more troopers combing through the market, barking questions and pushing their way past vendors to look into shops with no leave given at all.
She made her purchase and all but fled back to the shop.
The bell sounded overhead as she tucked herself through the front entrance, and Ennen, harried and stressed, was already calling out when she came into view.
“We haven’t received any more shipments or goods since the last time- oh, Ashla! Thank the suns, I’m not sure if I could have taken another visit.”
Varn was nowhere to be seen, but a pair of filthy boots by the bottom of his staircase told her that he had at least eventually made it home.
Ennen saw her looking.
“He’s been no help,” she said lowly, accepting one of Ahsoka’s cups with an uncharacteristic lack of protest. “We’ve had practically a whole battalion marching through here all morning, and he hasn’t even stirred. Not even when they went to check upstairs.”
It was hard to tell with the general state of chaos, but the place looked even more untidy than usual.
“What’s going on?” Ahsoka asked.
Ennen practically inhaled her first sip of caf. “Haven’t you heard?” She asked, and leant against the front desk, “stolen goods apparently. The troopers are turning over practically the whole city.”
Ahsoka felt tense, her fingers white around her mug.
“What are they looking for?”
“They won’t give too many details,” Ennen said, “only that they're looking for a couple of droids, so naturally we and every other auto shop were the first to be ransacked.”
Ahsoka’s anxiety eased. “Droids?” She asked, “All of this for a couple of droids?”
Ennen waved her hand in exasperation. “I told them we don’t have any droid maintenance jobs scheduled on the books, but they wouldn’t listen. They insisted on checking for themselves.” She peered closely at Ahsoka over her mug. “We don’t have any droids, do we?”
Ahsoka shook her head truthfully. Relief was cautiously unwinding in her chest. They dealt mainly with engines in the shop and the occasional ‘vaporator or processing unit. The only droid they had at was Em-Kay, which Luke maintained out of tradition more than utility, these days. With Em-Kay’s tottering gait and dim lamp eyes, she couldn’t imagine why anyone, let alone the Empire, would ever show any interest in it.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly. She would let the trouble roll over them and emerge the other side. She shot off a quick message to the children, forewarning them, and then set to work. Occasionally she heard a groan from overhead, but aside from that, the shop was silent. There were no more searches and no customers at all. It seemed the city was holding its breath, waiting for the hammer to drop. She tried to lose herself in the work, but the minutes inched past slowly.
Finally, the suns had dipped enough in the sky that she could justify setting off for the outskirts of town. The Jawas came by semi-regularly, but they never came closer than the very edges of the city to trade. They were sly and quick, liable to exploit any perceived weaknesses, but they made fair enough business.
She popped her head into Ennen’s office before she left.
“Be careful,” Ennen told her, “I don’t like it out there.”
Ahsoka tried to look reassuring, but Ennen failed to look convinced.
She paused at the entrance of the shop. They were unlikely to receive any business this late in the day, and Varn would be none the wiser. She locked the door behind her, leaving Ennen locked inside, safe from interlopers.
The mid-afternoon air was still warm as she made her way to her ‘speeder and then through the backstreets. She knew the way well to where the Jawas would arrive in their gargantuan sandcrawler and she had made the journey many times before.
She saw their monstrosity long before she heard their high chattering voices. She was not the only one to turn out, but punters were few and far between.
She picked her way through the laid out wares. She haggled for a transistor coil before dropping it in disgust at their named price. She countered with an insultingly low offer, which had the Jawa recoil in offence. Eventually they came to an understanding. Haggling was a skill she had picked up long before Tatooine, and something that she had learnt was half theatre. She tucked her prize into her breast pocket of her overalls and continued.
There wasn’t much to interest her as she made a few more half-hearted attempts to secure a price. A handful of wiped chips for the shop, a new learning module for Leia. She caught sight of a couple of Jawas unloading a gaggle of droids, and her curiosity got the better of her. She had no doubt that the stormtroopers would soon tear through every one they had looking for their stolen goods, but the earlier thoughts of Em-Kay had made her wonder if Luke would appreciate any spare parts that she could scrounge in his ongoing attempts to coral the droid into working order.
She looked over a 3B6-RA-7 seemingly in working order, an old security droid which was most certainly not, and an EG-6 Power droid which she considered hauling back to the shop. All in all, it wasn’t a poor showing but there was little that captured her attention. She shook her head at the Jawa that had followed her hopefully from one to the other.
She had barely turned away when suddenly, from the back of the group of droids, there came a beep and a whine, a familiar pitch and roll that catapulted her back almost twenty years.
It couldn’t be.
She was moving before she had even fully registered what was happening.
She pushed through the first row of droids and felt her whole body go cold in shock.
“Artoo?”