Author's Note: Because you asked for it! Here is the continuation of my Star Wars: Clone Wars AU (which begins with Lawless which you can find on my author's page). This story picks up right at the end of Only Words and The Expelled. I had an ending written for my Clone Wars AU that was NOT this. Then I reread it and decided… I'm going to write a different one. So here it is. The story will switch back and forth between Rex and Ahsoka (maybe others).

Remnants

Chapter 1: The Stolen Child

The frown on Ahsoka's face deepened as the rickety ship descended through the Kalevala cloud cover. In the starless and moonless night sky the ship itself was nearly invisible as it skimmed just under the overhanging clouds. Spread before her in green night vision projected onto the viewport mountains rolled, covered in dense shrubs and cut by deep ravines. Balanced on the edge of the largest ravine was the Kryze Mansion. It looked like half of a bridge reaching forward into empty space and cutting off where a large landing pad extended, cantilevered, hundreds of feet over the rushing, white river that carved the valley below. Two familiar shapes rested on the landing platform and they were the cause of Ahsoka's displeasure.

There was a time when the ungainly silhouette of a LAAT/i gunship would have made her cry in relief. They meant fresh supplies, ammunition, back up, evac, safety…

Now they meant death.

Ahsoka pulled on the control column, raising back into the clouds. Blind to the world now but for the sensors, she hovered in the darkness. Ahsoka closed her eyes and leaned back, shoulders tense, bracing herself to reach out into the Force.

It washed over her just as readily as it always had but it was unsettlingly quiet and resonated with a grief that took her breath away. Pain followed, intermingled with the grief. Ahsoka took a deep breath and held it as she focused in on the pain, looking desperately in the ever shifting currents of the Force for the man who had once been her master. She felt a tug on her stomach, like gravity pulling her laterally and let it guide her hands on the controls. The ship veered east, away from the mansion, deeper into the mountains.

Anakin's impression in the Force was more turbulent than Ahsoka had ever remembered it. He felt like himself, a deep well of compassion leveled by a staunch determination, but there were new peeks of fear and anger in him as well as deep troughs of love and sadness. All of this was writhing beneath pure physical pain. Even as Ahsoka dropped out of the clouds, descending toward the source of the pull, she could feel him fading, slipping away into oblivion. It shook her to feel Anakin so close to death.

She no longer needed the Force to find him. His path was marked out in a long blackened streak of destruction in the bush and a gouge in the earth. His starcruiser was canted onto it's side, one wing buried in the ground. A figure moved on top of the crashed vehicle, clutching something in their arms. The figure was too slim and feminine to be Anakin but Ahsoka didn't recognize her until she was closer. The figure looked up, blond hair flapping into her face with the wind, as the rickety ship set down a few meters away.

Ahsoka hurried with the hatch and reached the crash in one Force-assisted leap.

"Satine!" she gasped, seeing the former Mandalore Duchess cradling a bundle of blankets to her chest. Satine looked as unrefined as she ever could, her hair wind tossed and tangled falling around her face which was red and tear streaked. Her dress was ripped and muddied. Her arms shook around the bundle and she looked at Ahsoka with abject relief. Her feelings in the Force were as wild as her appearance.

"Ahsoka! Please, Anakin… he's…" Satine looked helplessly toward the cockpit.

The Jedi was unconscious in the open cockpit and everything inside was tainted red with blood. His head was tilted back, eyes closed, and his face was stark white in the pale, bluish moonlight filtering through the clouds. His hair was dark and matted with sweat. His robes were equally soaked and bloodied. The smell of burning flesh and hair wafted over Ahsoka in the gentle wind tinged with the metallic tang of blood.

"Here, help me get him out," Ahsoka said. Satine hesitated and glanced down at the bundle protectively. Ahsoka looked closer at it and saw pink flesh peaking out. A small wrinkled and scrunched face was nestled between the folds in the Duchess's arms. "Oh," she said softly and swallowed. That complicated things.

Ahsoka tried not to think about the little child being Anakin's or Padme's, much less both of theirs. It was still too strange. She bent down by the cockpit to drag Anakin out to find the injury that was bleeding, but she didn't have far to look. Where his right leg should have been was a severed, burnt and bleeding stump tied off with a ripped cloth.

Ahsoka had seen dismemberment's before in the army. With heavy fire and munitions it wasn't uncommon but seeing her master, the seemingly invincible Anakin Skywalker, disfigured like that nearly made her sick. She froze when she saw it and just crouched there, hands shaking, staring at the carnage, unable to look away. Her stomach tried to heave but there was nothing in it. She'd already thrown up an hour or so ago, on Shili, with… Ahsoka cut off that thought before it could fully form and swallowed the bile rising in her mouth.

With shaking hands she pulled the unconscious Jedi out of the seat and onto the flat wing of the craft. His missing leg left a long wet streak of blood on the paint. Satine moaned and gave a short sob behind Ahsoka.

"I need to do a Jedi healing. I… I'm not very good at them but…" Ahsoka's voice trailed off. There's nothing else I can do, she thought and settled cross legged on the speeder. Her heart was pounding and her blood racing. "Will you be alright?" She asked Satine.

"Y-yes, we'll be ok," she said looking down at the child in her arms. "But Padme's still in the mansion with those troops."

"Is she injured?"

"N-not that I know of just…"

"Anakin needs me more," Ahsoka said bluntly. It wasn't cruelty but logic. She was back in the Commander mind set. She couldn't worry about anything other than what she could do in that moment. "That ship has motion scanners. Go turn them on and watch for anyone approaching."

"What do I do if they come?"

"I don't think they will, but just shake me. I have to go into a trance to do this."

"How do you know they won't come?" Satine asked, carefully climbing off the speeder with the child in her arms.

"Because they know we'll come to them eventually." Ahsoka said, half to herself. She took a deep preparatory breath and slowly let herself fade back into the Force. She dimly heard Satine stumbling through the bush toward the parked ship. Vaguely she thought she should have warned Satine all the controls were labeled in Togruti.

It was hard to stay focused on the healing with the emotions in the very unfamiliar Force. Ahsoka tried to push away her memories of the terrible moment in Bituin when the Force itself cried out at the deaths rippling through it. It was hard to focus on the mutilated body of her master without feeling the nausea welling up again, making her dizzy. It was hard not to wonder what was going to happen now that the galaxy was so irreversible changed. What would it become? The uncertainty weighed on Ahsoka as she urged the Force to heal her broken mentor.

Anakin never stirred, but the flow of blood from his wound slowed and stopped. His tense expression eased a little, and his erratic breathing evened out becoming deeper, less labored. Ahsoka surfaced out of her trance when she knew there was nothing more she could do without real medical supplies to see light hinting at the horizon, promising day was only hours off. She knew in the day, without cover, they couldn't stay out in the open as they were. She would have to move Anakin and Satine… and the child. And there was still Padme.

She felt in the force that Padme was alive and still on Kalevala, but there was no guarantee she would stay there. The best chance of rescue was under the cover of darkness. That gave Ahsoka just three hours until sunrise. The longer she waited the harder it would be, and she was already disadvantaged. She mentally cataloged the situation as she'd been taught. Assess your assets, Rex would tell her, then the problem. Consider the best uses of what you have then make your plan and execute it.

I have my lightsabers. She thought, I have Re—two DC-17s. I have a rickety togruta shuttle with night vision, bottom mounted mag clamp, medium sized cargo bay, hyperspace drive and basic forward laser cannon. I have a Jedi starcruiser, crashed but probably runs, one injured, one non-combatant, and one newborn baby.

I need to keep Satine, the baby and Anakin safe while I rescue Padme. I need to get past a company of troopers and rescue a woman who's just given birth and probably can't walk. And I need to get away clean.

This is just the kind of challenge you'd enjoy, Master. She thought and took Anakin's bloody hand in her own. She turned to look over her shoulder toward the faint halo of light coming from the Kryze Mansion on the dark horizon. A plan was slowly forming in her mind, one that filled her with dread.

.

Ahsoka could sense Padme in the Mansion like a beacon. She was a silent scream in the Force crying out helplessly in pain. Ahsoka picked her way toward the presence she knew across the curved rooftop of the mansion, skirting around skylights and watching the troopers patrolling the halls below her. Unconciously she started counting them, picking them out in the Force. The red markings labeled them as members of the Coruscant Senate Guard. She wondered if any of them disagreed with using a Senator they previously protected as bait to catch a Jedi they previously followed. She would never know. They would all be dead soon. That knowledge weighed on her and so she kept counting the white armored figures that passed by underneath her.

Ahsoka found Padme in a room in the far north hallway lying on a bed of rumpled and stained sheets. She could see from the skylight that the Senator was soaked in sweat and pale as Anakin had been. Her face was turned into a pillow and her thin shoulders shook with sobs. Around the room a squad of clones stood ready. They were expecting Anakin, an angry and injured Anakin.

They weren't expecting the floor to give a great shudder beneath them like an earthquake. Padme tried to sit up as the soldiers stumbled.

A sharp, deep, booming explosion echoed through the ravine coming up from underneath the flooring of the mansion. Ahsoka took her chance and reached out in the Force, pressing in on every window and skylight in the room. They all shattered with a high pitched clinking of glass. The troopers cried out and stumbled around. The floor heaved and then tilted sharply. Ahsoka allowed herself a small triumphant smile.

Anakin's starcruiser had done it's job. She'd left it propped at the bottom of the ravine, nose pointed up toward the underbelly of the mansion and it's sweeping supports that were now crumbling and giving way after being rammed by the pre-programed craft.

Ahsoka reached for her lightsabers but at the last moment hesitated and lifted Rex's DC-17s from her belt instead. It seemed wrong to kill clones with a Jedi weapon even now. She threw all those thoughts aside and jumped into the crumbling mansion.

"Who the—"

"Intruder!"

"What's going on?"

"Shoot the togruta!"

"Where—AHH!" Before the clones could get their feet under them or lift their weapons on her Ahsoka opened fire. She aimed for the neck and armpits, the weakest points of their armor. The high powered custom blasters jarred her wrists with the recoil over and over while the muzzle flashed bright blue, like the hottest part of a flame. One, Two, Three, Four clones fell with screams or cries of pain. A blast shot over Ahsoka's head, missing her montrals by so little she could feel the heat of the plasma. She dodged the next two shots with a jump and roll but no sooner did she have her feet underneath her than the Mansion and the floor gave threatening shudder and pitched suddenly further out into the ravine.

Ahsoka waved her arms to get balance and stumbled. She recovered faster than the clones though.

Bang, Bang! Two more clones fell almost silently. Ahsoka ran to Padme on the bed. She was looking at the little, togruta Padewan in shock and horror.

"A-ahsoka…?" The senator's voice was rough and trembled. The floor pitched again, dropping nearly a meter beneath them. Ahsoka stumbled into the bed.

"We have to go, now!" Ahsoka gathered Padme in her arms, lifting the senator's frail, shivering body.

"My son," Padme cried, "I can't leave without my son!"

"The baby is with Satine!" Ahsoka cried and ran for the hallway door, which was now at a dangerous angle to the room as the floor cracked and pulled away from it. Ahsoka made a mad dash down the hall for the nearest balcony.

Three troopers were stumbling in the hallway and looked up as she passed.

"The senator!" one cried out.

"Stop!" The second yelled but it was the third who sealed all of their fates. He was quick enough to pull up his blaster and take aim. Ahsoka jumped and spun in mid air. In the weightless zero gravity of free fall she threw out her hand toward the clones. The Force dragged them screaming back down the sloping hallway toward the ravine swallowing up the building. Ahsoka and Padme rolled when they hit the ground. Padme to her credit didn't even cry out. She just moaned as Ahsoka shook herself.

The hall floor lurched under them, and the entire structure groaned and shuddered. A rending sound of tearing metal and cracking duracrete came from behind them. Ahsoka jumped into action, grabbing Padme back into her arms and sprinting for the gaping balcony doors.

"Hold on!" he yelled to Padme just as they passed the opening of another hallway and the mass of staggering white plastoid armored bodies there. Blaster bolts filled the air around them as Ahsoka sprinted across the sharply angled platform and vaulted off the railing. The cracking sound of duracrete split the air and the platform gave way, dropping off the side of the house with the clones on it.

Troopers' screams echoed up the rock walls of the ravine as Ahsoka and Padme plummeted into the dusty smoke blowing up the canyon. Behind them the house crashed and groaned before giving a colossal grinding sound as it dragged free it's moorings and fell.

Ahsoka's heart pounded in her ears for the seconds of terrifying free fall before a ledge looped like a dark shadow in the smoky air before her, speeding up toward her feet.

Trust the Force, she reminded herself moments before she touched down and felt all the killing energy of the drop bleeding away from her, dissipating into the Force like water trickling through a sieve.

"Oh…" Padme gasped and slowly released the bruising grip she had on Ahsoka's shoulders.

Behind them Ahsoka heard the familiar whamp, whamp of one LAAT/i gunship. She assumed the other had gone down the with mansion. She looked up into the smoky air that hung in the gorge, down wind of the destruction she'd caused. They wouldn't find her, at least not until the sun came up.

"Oh no," Padme moaned, "no, no, no, no, no…" she sobbed in Ahsoka's arms, her whole body trembling, and the force of her grief nearly brought the little former Jedi Padewan to her knees. "My son, my little Luke… my son…" Padme sobbed into Ahsoka's shoulder.

"Padme, the baby is with Satine," Ahsoka tried to tell the grieving mother. "He's fine. I'll take you to him, ok?" But nothing reached Padme.

Ahsoka fumbled for her comm.

"Satine," she said into it.

"I'm here. Are you alright? Did you find Padme? I heard a crash."

"I'm fine and I have Padme. Bring the ship down the ravine, stay as close to bottom as possible. The smoke will cover you. Padme and I are on a ledge three hundred meters up. I'm sending the coordinates, R2 can direct you to them. Can you do that?"

"Yes. I—I'll try. But Ahsoka, what then?"

"I don't know. But I think I know someone who can help us."

.

Rex stood at attention by the doorway on the raised landing, half a meter above the floor of the high-rise suite. The apartment was as fancy as any senator's accommodations. The wide open room looked out on a magnificent view of upper Coruscant's artificial skyline of jagged buildings shrouded in smog. To Rex it was all familiar but no longer comforting. Coruscant used to mean rest and relaxation. It used to mean a few days where he went to bed and didn't have to worry who might not be there at breakfast. It meant no surprise attacks. No thumping of cannons or pounding of boots to wake him in the night. Just nightmares.

Now it was all a nightmare.

Below him a nurse rocked a small child as she fed him. She was utterly silent, hardly paying attention to the child in her arms. The entire apartment was just as quiet and still. It was nothing like Jaina's apartment, which was just a few sectors away. There was no warm smell of the togruti spices Jaina's jovial personal chef used, the near constant rustle of flimsy and shifting of data pads, or guards sharing quiet jokes as they stood guard or relaxed in their quarters. This apartment was silent as the dead.

Even the child was quiet.

It unsettled Rex. Babies were supposed to cry, weren't they? They were supposed to be demanding, or happy, or screaming, or sleeping. This child slept fitfully and woke up silently with little gasps. He stared with wide eyes silently at everything. He ate when fed, at regular timed intervals. He slept when laid in his crib. But he was silent.

The door behind Rex gave a soft beep as the hall motion detectors went off. Rex glanced down at the security console beside him and the camera feeds. A clone in white armor strode down the hall purposefully to the apartment door and pressed the buzzer.

"This is a secure area," Rex said over the com. The trooper didn't even twitch.

"IT-3011 reporting as assigned, sir." The voice was familiar.

"Enter your security code," Rex said and pressed a button on the console. A panel opened outside to display a port and keypad. The trooper input his data stick and the key code. The door opened a second later. The trooper entered and snapped to attention in front of Rex.

"IT-3011, Sergeant Coric, reporting for duty, sir."

"Acknowledged," Rex replied in his professional tone but his voice changed as he kept speaking, "Su'cuy, ner vod. Me'vaar ti gar?"

"Captain?"

"Been a while," Rex said with a nod. He couldn't see Coric's face but he could hear the joyful disbelief in his voice.

"You're back? How? The surgery?"

"No surgery just hard work. Still don't pass the physical but someone doesn't seem to care."

"Is the Empire that desperate for clones?" Coric asked as he took up a mirror of Rex's parade rest stance on the other side of the door. To the nurses tending to Luke in the apartment below they were silent and emotionless white, armored statues. Inside their buckets they could talk as they pleased.

"Something like that," Rex told his old medic, evading the question. "What about you? How did you end up here?"

"Distinguished service during the execution of Order 66." Coric said it in his best mindless-meat-can voice. It was the kind of response that would make a Kaminoan almost giggle with pride. It made Rex suspicious, but he had his own secrets. He decided to leave his old Sergeant his.

"Welcome to the most boring assignment this side of flash training."

"I could use the R&R."

"Respectfully, vod, I wouldn't mind if an army of tinnies landed on that balcony."

"I know what you mean," Coric replied, sounding tired. It wasn't about the droids or having something to vent repressed anger on. It was about life being simple again. There had been a time when they just shot the bad droids and followed the General. Then somewhere along the way the war got complicated, somewhere on Christophsis.

"Who's the kid?" Coric asked after a pregnant pause. Apparently his briefing had been even sparser than Rex's.

"The Emperor's son," Rex replied, deadpan. He almost expected Coric to laugh.

"Doubtful," the medic replied with a frown in his voice, not even a hint of his old humor. Rex furrowed his brow behind his visor and remained silent.

"Any idea who he really is?"

"No," Rex lied and he knew it was clear in his voice. Vode couldn't lie to each other. How could I not know? Rex thought. He was confronted with the truth every time the silent child stared him down with those wide blue eyes, so much like those of the man he used to know. Even thinking of the General now brought up the same sickening feeling that memories of Umbara did. He repressed a shudder.

"Tayli gar ranov'lase, vod," Coric replied. Keep your secrets. "What have you been doing since you left the GAR?"

"Since I was decommissioned?"

"The General said you were working in Coruscant for a while, but then even he lost track of you."

"I got hired by a senator."

"One I know?"

"Probably not. Shili's not very important in terms of Galactic politics."

"This have anything to do with Comm—with Ahsoka Tano?"

Hearing her name was like twisting a knife in Rex's gut and he could hardly breath to speak past the sudden pain. Coric heard the silence and made his own assumptions.

"Ni ceta, Rex, kaysh ru'cuyi gar cyare," the medic apologized as fervently as any Mando could.

"She's not dead." The surety of his own voice surprised Rex. It was more than conviction. It was a desperate need. He needed to believe she was alive for some unidentifiable reason. He wasn't sure what he would be in a world without her. Or maybe he just wanted another shot at her. He wasn't sure.

"I see." Coric reverted back to his meat-can voice, bland and blank, emotionless, droid-like.

What's wrong with us? Rex wanted to scream. What's wrong with you? Ahsoka was nearly as important to you as she was to me? Or at least I thought she was. You called her ge'vod, almost sister. What happened to that? What happened to me? But the com was just tensely silent, like the strange apartment and the strange child.

"What was it like?" Coric asked suddenly.

"What?"

"Being normal, having a job outside of… this?"

"It was…" Rex debated how to explain, glad for the change of topic. How did he sum up the progressively wilder meals that Jaina's wide-hipped cook would make for him just to laugh at the legendary appetite of clones? How did he sum up the kind words of encouragement that Jaina saved for the cloudy humid days when his whole body ached and the acid burns stung at the slightest movement? How did he describe walking down the Coruscant street and not feeling like he was an intruder… feeling like he belonged there? For the first time in Rex's life he had truly been more than a number. He could make his own choices, go where he pleased, say what he wanted, and maybe love who he loved. He could hardly remember who he had been just a day ago walking down the warmly lit streets of Shili-Kai with her. No, there weren't words to explain that to his brother, not yet.

"It wasn't that different." He said simply.

"Glad to be back?"

"I missed the simple life," Rex replied. It was a half truth and they both knew it.

"Protect the drooling infant. Sounds simple enough to me."

.

The first word out of Anakin's mouth when he woke up on the Polis Massa medical station was "Padme."

"Anakin!" Her beautiful voice called back to him from his side, and a hand squeezed his. He forced his heavy eyelids back with effort, blinking away bleariness to see her face leaning over him. Her eyes were red and rimmed with dark circles but her smile and relief were real. She was beautifully, wonderfully alive.

"Angel," he breathed and reached for her with one heavy, clumsy arm. "You're alive. You're here."

"Yes, Ani…I—I'm here." She reached out and took his hand, bringing it up to press against her cheek as the tears spilled out of her eyes. They didn't make sense in the context of her smile.

"What's wrong?" He asked, his tongue taking more effort to work than normal. "Are you hurt? The baby!"

"No, Ani, no," she was shaking her head against his palm and turned to press a kiss to the sensitive skin. "I'm not hurt…not physically. You—Ani, you nearly died."

"I'm alright." He said but realized that he wasn't really sure if that was true. The sluggishness and fog in his mind was the all too familiar sensation of pain killers coursing through his veins. But there were others more important than him. "The baby?" He asked Padme.

Her expression broke into remorse and heartbreak before his eyes. He felt a sinking dread in his stomach. As if in answer to their feelings the child in the crib behind Padme gave a bubbling cry. Padme turned quickly, dropping her husbands hand and lifting the child. Anakin just stared in confusion as his wife cradled the bundle of blankets.

"A-anakin, this is Leia," she said in a horse whisper, "your daughter." Anakin just stared at the little wrinkled red face between the folds. He marveled at how small she was. Leia scrunched her face and wriggled against the blankets, yawning. Her brown eyes opened and looked right at Anakin. He felt like she was seeing right through him with Padme's eyes.

"She's alright?" He asked anxiously.

"She-she's perfect," Padme said nodding, but her eyes were still brimming with tears..

"What's wrong, Angel?"

"I—I had twins."

"Twins? But..."

"Th-they took him away." Her voice trembled and she looked down at the floor shamefully. "They took our son away. Palpatine was there. He said you had betrayed him and…and he was taking Luke in your place. I couldn't stop them. I couldn't do anything. They would have taken Leia too but I gave her to Satine just before they arrived and I told her to run. I didn't know what else to do."

"Angel, you did everything you could and we are going to get Luke back. I promise."

"How can you say that? You don't know where he is?"

"I'll find him."

"Palpatine won't let you. He's declared himself Emperor. He's killed off all the Jedi, burned the Temple, practically hand-cuffed the Senate… there's nothing we can do to him."

"You got away!"

"Only because of Ahsoka. She saved us, all of us," Padme looked meaningfully down at Leia.

"Ahsoka? She's here? Is she alright?"

"Yes. She's… I think something happened on Shili. She needs you. I need you. Leia need you. Anakin. Please, just… just…"

"I will not let him take away my son!" He said every word deliberately, each ringing with stubborn assertion.

The door to the small room opened as Anakin was speaking to admit the small Togruta in her dusty and mud stained robes.

"Anakin, please," Padme whispered, "I—I don't want to lose you too."

"You're not going to lose me," he whispered and reached out for her hand again. "We'll all be together one day, all of us."

"You're in no condition to go anywhere," Ahsoka said tensely. She came in but hovered by the door. "Rest. We can find Luke when you're back on your feet."

Seeing her again made Anakin long for the old days, when their relationship had been simple. It also made him realize how unatainable those days were now. Ahsoka had changed in more than just physical ways. Her entire posture and disposition was different. There was a world wearyness about her shoulders that he didn't recognize.

"You sticking around this time, Snips?" He asked her, forcing an imitation of his old cocky smile. It felt awkward on his face, un-befitting of the father and Jedi Knight that he'd become since losing her.

"For a while." She was deadpan. Anakin looked her over, noting the baccta patch under her lekku and the tired expression on her face.

"How did you know where to find Padme and I?" He asked.

"Obi-Wan contacted me on his way back to the Temple to disable the beacon."

"Is he back yet?"

"We haven't heard from him," Ahsoka said looking down and scuffing her feet on the floor. Her hands lifted for a moment toward her lightsabers, strapped where they always had been to her belt, then she dropped them. "The Empire knew he where he was going, so we have to assume he was captured in the temple."

"How did they know it would be him? It could have been any Jedi."

"One of the clones knew his plan."

"What? Who told a clone?" Anakin growled.

"It was Rex. He betrayed us." She said softly and turned away. Anakin saw the familiar pair of DC-17 handguns clipped to the back of her belt as she left with tense shoulders. Anakin was stunned into silence to see them without their owner. He desperately tried to reconcile what he knew about Rex with what Ahsoka had told him. The man that he knew just didn't seem capable of that kind of betrayal but the evidence was undeniable; Rex would never hand over his weapons unless he was dying or dead.

"Captain Rex?" Padme asked in disbelief. She could remember awarding those very weapons to the Captain and sole clone survivor of Vindi's Laboratory. "How could he? How did this happen?"

"I don't know. I really… don't know." Anakin just gripped her hand tighter.

The world was spinning out of control all around him. Friends he had once trusted now betrayed him. Mentors he had once idolized attacked a leader he had once praised. Obi-Wan who had always stood by him was lost. Anakin thought back to the day he'd seen his old master off for Utapau and how they had joked only days before about taking on the Council and the Chancellor together, just the two of them. It hadn't seemed like such a daunting prospect then. Now, without Obi-Wan, Anakin thought the Chancellor and the newly made Empire looked daunting and indomitable. But he still had her, the one thing in life he always clung to, he had Padme. He watched his wife cradling their daughter and murmuring softly to her. It was what he always wanted, not having to hide his love or his wife, wasn't it? But at what cost?

Anakin let his heavy eyelids droop again, and reached out into the Force. He reached out for his old master into the gray shadows that shrouded Coruscant. He looked blindly for his son in the shifting currents of loss and pain. Beside him Padme was a beacon of bright joy and simultaneous crushing sadness, Leia was content and peaceful though she knew something was wrong, and Ahsoka was closed off, hard and cold to him in the Force.

Anakin opened his eyes again long enough to tug Padme down beside him on the medical cot. She nestled the sleeping child between them and curled toward her husband. Anakin listened to her gentle breathing and drifted back into the drug induced hazy sleep.

Author's Note: So some Mando'a in this chapter. There's likely to be more. If you're an expert or something I'd love to talk. Languages are fun :) (I'm just very bad at remembering vocabulary. Yay for Excel. I never thought I'd say that *insert horrified expression*.) I think the only thing I didn't translate (that wasn't "hello, how are you?" was Coric's apology. He said "Ni ceta, Rex, kaysh ru'cuyi gar cyare." Ni ceta is a very serious apology like for when you bring up your buddy's dead girlfriend the day after she died, Mandalorians would rarely use it, if ever. Kaysh ry'cuyi gar cyare - she was your beloved. Cyar-ika is a term of endearment you might have seen in other RexSoka stories. It's the diminutive form of Cyare. The term isn't just reserved for lovers, it can be family members, pets, etc. It can just mean a loved one (considering that Mandalorians set very loose boundaries for family may apply to lots of people.) Well I hope you enjoyed and you'll stick around for the other chapters. Leave me a review if you have a moment... or not... that's ok too. -Ember