Dedication: This story is a birthday gift to one of my best friends, username CaptainJack567, who requested a romantic Anakin/Ahsoka piece. I hope you like it; I'm sorry if it's more canon-compliant than you wanted. I felt like anything more blatant would be out-of-character.

Disclaimer: Unlike many of my other stories, this piece is not meant to convey a message or portray my personal views. Also, I haven't seen all of The Clone Wars, so contradictions to canon are probably unintentional.

"Attachments"

Love is like war: easy to begin but hard to stop. ~ H. L. Mencken

The question seemed to come out of nowhere, during an unusually long and monotonous journey.

"Have there ever been Jedi who married?"

Ahsoka expected the answer to be short and immediate, either an emphatic No or a conceding Yes. But Anakin took a moment to respond, and when he finally did, his tone and words were ambivalent. "If there have been, they weren't remembered. If they were found out, they were probably expelled from the order, and expunged from our history, for breaking the code."

So he thinks, like her, that it is possible. It could have happened. "Why is that part of the code?"

"I don't know for sure. It just goes along with being unattached. It's …" He looked uncomfortable, which amused Ahsoka. "Look, I shouldn't be talking to you about this …"

"Come on, Sky Guy," she prodded. "What are you thinking? What do you know about it?"

"I'll deny having this conversation with you."

"That's fine with me."

"Okay …" Anakin leaned back in his seat, but kept his hands steady on the ship's steering wheel, and barely took his eyes off the front windows. "As far as I understand it … marriage might be the strongest form of attachment, not just in magnitude, but in its different aspects. It involves physical, emotional, and psychological attachment. It would be hard to walk away from that, and to walk into danger when someone was worried about you. Plus, getting married can lead to having children, who would constitute more attachments. Any kind of attachment can be a liability, especially for people with a lot of enemies. Jedi are supposed to promote peace and justice and all that good stuff, and that brings us into dangerous situations. Attachments could get in the way of a Jedi's duty—or their work could endanger the people they're attached to." He gave her a sideways glance. "Do you get what I'm saying?"

"I think so. I guess that makes sense." Ahsoka paused. "But what if …"

He looked at her. "What?"

"What if two Jedi fell in love and got married? Wouldn't that be easier than a Jedi marrying a non-Jedi? They'd have the same vows, the same lifestyle with all its risk and sacrifice. And even any kids they had would probably become Jedi as well, so they could still help raise and teach them."

"I don't see the harm of it, personally. Though parents training their kids could cause favoritism among younglings and padawans."

"Like there isn't favoritism already?"

"I'm not saying they're right, just that it's another thing to consider. Why are you asking if you're just going to shoot down what I say?"

"I wasn't. I was just pointing out the flaw in the argument."

"It's not my argument, it's …" Anakin made an exasperated sound. "You know what, it doesn't really matter anyway. My opinion doesn't make a difference."

"Sure it does. You're a master. You'll probably end up on the Jedi Council."

"Even if I did, they wouldn't do something so drastic as changing the code, especially when there seemed to be no good reason to do so."

"Hm."

A moment of silence elapsed between them. Then Anakin ventured, "What brought on all these ideas?"

"Nothing. Just curious." That was not an entire lie.

Ahsoka almost expected Anakin to tease her, to ask whether she was thinking about getting married anytime soon, but he stayed quiet and let her sink back into her thoughts.

She wondered at his ambivalent attitude. Did he really have no opinion, or was he trying to hide his opinion for the sake of teaching her objectively? Did he ultimately agree with the code or not? The conversation seemed to have put him in a bad mood, so she did not press it again, though she decided to address it again on another day.

She also thought about the present and the future. Although Ahsoka did not say so (at least not to him), she loved being Anakin's apprentice. As much as she looked forward to the day when she would graduate and become a Jedi master, she also felt apprehension at the thought of parting ways with Anakin. They might see each other if duty brought them together, but they would not be constant companions as they were now. And while they both wanted the war to end, there was a fact that neither of them wanted to face: once the war ended, there would be much less need for them to work together.

Ahsoka felt guilty for even thinking that way. Nothing could justify wanting the war to continue, or for any conflict to come up, even if it was in the hope that such conflict would bring people together. That was an incidental consolation, not a reward or work benefit.

She knew she was more attached to Anakin than she should be, and that he probably felt the same way toward her. The question she had in mind was what kind of attachment they currently had, or might have in the future, and whether having the option of marriage would have impacted their present or future feelings.

If the prohibition against marriage for Jedis went unchallenged, it would never change. But if a significant number of people within the Jedi order wanted to marry, then maybe they could change it. Ahsoka would have to convince Anakin, though, and that might depend on whether he cared about getting married or not. She could imagine how evasive and uncomfortable such a line of inquiry would make him.

Anakin was her best friend, and arguably the person she was most close to in all the galaxies. She knew he still saw her as a kid, but she was growing up, and he respected her as an equal (most of the time). Once she was fully grown, the five or six years between them might not seem like such a disparity. Then, maybe, the idea of them forming that kind of intense and multidimensional attachment might not seem so disconcerting or outrageous.

She could wait for that, so long as she got to be near him in the meantime.