Chapter Four

It took Padmé—and Ahsoka was only calling her that now at the woman's insistence—little convincing to her head of security that she was fine and Ahsoka would be her Jedi escort. After they set off, Ahsoka and Padmé mutually agreed that the best place to start looking for Anakin was the planet that the so-called accident had taken place: Sartinaynian, a planet in the Braxton System and located in the outer rim.

"We may have to fight our way down there," Ahsoka pointed out. "If the official story is anything to go by, the planet hasn't been friendly to the Republic since the ending of the Clone Wars."

When Padmé didn't respond, Ahsoka looked up from the ship's control where she was mapping a hyperspace route. The woman was staring at her, brown eyebrows furrowed, looking as though she wanted to aske something or worse, was trying to figure Ahsoka out as though staring at her would give the woman the ability to read her mind.

Unnerved by the thought and feeling like her personal space was being invaded despite the fact that Padmé was more than an arm's length away from her, Ahsoka snapped, "What?"

Padmé shook her head, blinking away the tightness in her face.

"Nothing," she said softly. "Nothing. Anyway, Anakin didn't tell me what his mission was about. He refused to in fact."

"It's Jedi business. Why are you surprised?" Ahsoka asked bluntly.

Padmé's eyebrows furrowed again as she glared at Ahsoka, but Ahsoka ignored it. Who did this woman think she was? Just because she was a close friend of his didn't mean her master had to tell her everything. It wasn't like they were married or something.

"I know it's Jedi business. And I know he didn't have to tell me the specifics. But seeing as we're going to look for him and whatever happened on this mission has people assuming him dead, I presumed you'd want to share with me the details so I know what I'm getting into," Padmé said firmly.

Ahsoka pursed her lips together, leveling Padmé with a stare that mirrored her own. Ahsoka decided to grudgingly oblige to the woman's admittedly sound reason as she finished mapping their hyperspace coordinates and sent them into hyperspace.

"Sidious had more allies than the Jedi originally thought and the council gave my master the specific the task of eliminating any more of his allies. He's not the only Jedi with that assignment, but since he defeated Sidious my master feels like it's his personal responsibility to seek them out. When the council caught whispers of a mysterious dark force user in the outer rim, they sent Anakin to investigate the planet where the whispers were said to have started," Ahsoka explained.

"Allies?" Padmé asked.

Upon hearing Padmé's question, Ahsoka felt memories and emotions that she had long suppressed and tried to block from her conscious begin to stir. She inhaled and exhaled slowly and then, while keeping a firm lock on her emotions, said, "His dark adepts. He was planning to take over much longer than the council originally thought and there's no telling how many of them are spread across the galaxy."

"How dark?"

"You don't want to know," Ahsoka gave hoping Padmé would drop the subject.

"Then why did they send Anakin alone. Why not send someone with them?"

"They usually do," Ahsoka said in a hollow tone. "But it was just a rumor of a dark adept, not anything concrete. So the council figured Anakin could handle it and simply investigate the matter as there was likely nothing to come from it."

"Then why were you still on Coruscant?"

Ahsoka blinked. "What?"

"You're his Padawan. Shouldn't you have gone with him?"

The control Ahsoka had over her emotions began to slip and overcome her all at once, and it took some effort to not lash out at the woman. Thankfully Padmé seemed to be blissfully oblivious to Ahsoka's internal conflict for once. She was too intuitive for Ahsoka's liking. She could have been a Jedi, Ahsoka mused. To prevent taking out her anger on the woman, she only stiffly nodded.

There was a pause before Padmé asked, "Then why didn't you?"

Ahsoka tried to be nonchalant, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to do so especially since it appeared Padmé had no intention of backing off the subject.

"They're really dangerous. Trust me. I know," Ahsoka said. "So I don't argue with my master when he says no to that kind of mission."

"You know?" Padmé asked and Ahsoka decided right then and there she hated the woman's inquisitive nature. As private and secretive as her master was, it was a wondered they stayed friends. "So that means you've encountered one of these adepts?"

Ahsoka stared for a long moment and then final snarled at Padmé, all attempts at not lashing out at her forgotten.

"If you must know, yes I have and I don't want to relive it," Ahsoka snapped as she stood up, leaving Padmé in the cockpit as she went to find a cabin to meditate in.

It was in vain though. She hadn't been able to properly meditate in three years and she was betting a flashback would surely surface without her master's soothing presence, without knowing for a certainty that he was alive. It wasn't as bad as it used to be though. At one time her master's presence wasn't enough.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm more concerned that you're still awake," Anakin replied as swung his legs over the side of his bed.

"I can't sleep. I rarely sleep anymore," Ahsoka admitted.

"Nightmares," he said knowingly and she nodded in confirmation. "Then why are you in here."

It was a good question. Ahsoka should have stayed in her room, like a real Jedi should have. She shouldn't have given in to her fears and emotions. She was perfectly safe in her room, by herself, and no one was going to hurt her in there. But that was the point. She was by herself. So she grabbed her pillow and blanket and made herself as comfortable as she could on the floor of her master's room.

"I am tired though. I just didn't want to be alone," she finally admitted, avoiding her master's gaze. Her master was the only one she would admit that to. For the sake of keeping her place as a Jedi, Ahsoka wore the pretense that she was fine.

Anakin came to sit next to her on the floor, and she tentatively leaned on him. He didn't push her away, only put his arm around her. If any of the other Jedi saw them like this, they would say the physical comfort did nothing to solve problems and only fostered attachment. But her master understood what she needed.

"You can't let this control you anymore."

"I know," Ahsoka whispered. "I don't want it to."

"I know the feeling," Anakin said leaning his head against the wall.

"Will it ever go away?"

"It's all up to you. It might or it might stay with you and drive you."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Anakin didn't reply, and Ahsoka took that as uncertainty. Her master had so many secrets, secrets that he didn't trust anyone to know. Secrets from the past and secrets of the present. But while others in turn wouldn't trust him with their own because of his secretiveness, his mistrust of people was the very reason Ahsoka trusted him with her own.

They didn't say anything else and after a while Ahsoka began to fall asleep, but it seemed Anakin noticed this for he gently shook her awake and pushed her off him. She would have been lying if she said she wasn't at least a little disappointed.

Anakin stood up and then to her surprise reached down to help her up.

"What?"

"That floor's uncomfortable," Anakin said. "Come on. If you're going to sleep in here, we may as well share the bed."

Ahsoka froze. "No… I-"

But Anakin ignored her as he got back in his bed and left space for Ahsoka to get next to him. It went against all her Jedi teachings but Ahsoka was beyond caring; she was too tired to care. So she made herself comfortable next to her master. She knew no more nightmares that night.

Ahsoka blinked out her stupor and cursed that she had another flashback. At least it was of one of her good memories and not her torture. She wouldn't have been able to explain off to Padmé when she went into hysterics. The woman seemed to be too compassionate, too intuitive to simply let it go. Ahsoka sighed. She had a feeling by the time all this was over, she was seriously going to regret ever allowing Padmé to tag along with her.

Padmé stared in the direction Ahsoka had gone after she stormed out of the cockpit. Admittedly, she had probably pushed the girl too far into something that she was clearly uncomfortable with. The togruta suddenly couldn't look Padmé in her face, and after she put the hyperspace coordinates in, she leaned back in her seat and gripped the armrests tightly, her breath slowing dramatically as though she was trying to stay calm. Padmé pretended not to notice for two reasons. First was that she didn't think the girl would appreciate her observations. Second was that the longer she could pretend to be oblivious, the longer the girl might be patient with her prying. Either way, her reasoning failed because the girl still got angry at Padmé and rushed out the room.

Padmé leaned back in her seat and sighed. She probably shouldn't have used her politician's skills to pry more information out of the girl, but she couldn't help being curious. The girl was mysterious as it was, and in just a few short hours of knowing her Ahsoka had proven that there was a lot more to her than the scandalous way the media portrayed her.

An hour or so passed before Padmé decided to go into the back of the ship and check on the girl. She was just going to knock on the door of the cabin she had seen the girl isolate herself in when the door slid open on its own, leaving Padmé to crane her head up to look at the taller young woman face to face.

"What?"

Unlike right before she left, she didn't sound angry or annoyed but more so weary.

"I was just coming to check on you," Padmé said and then smiled. "You were quiet and you were angry earlier, so I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I'm fine," Ahsoka replied curtly as she went back to sit on the bunk in the cabin.

"And I wanted to apologize," Padmé added. "For prying earlier. I should have backed off when I noticed you were getting agitated."

Ahsoka continued to stare at the wall, not acknowledging Padmé immediately, and after a few moments, Padmé began to assume she wasn't going to at all and almost turned to leave the room. Ahsoka speaking stopped her.

"I hope you're not standing there expecting an apology from me. Because I'm not sorry for lashing out at you," she said and without allowing Padmé to respond, she continued. "Let's set some ground rules here. I'm not interested in trying to become your friend on this mission. The only thing I care about is finding my master and the only reason I'm tolerating you is because outside of you, no one else believes that he's alive and is willing to help. So don't get your hopes up and stop trying to use that politician's brain of yours to try to find an angle to get through my tough exterior or whatever you think. Your energy is better spent elsewhere."

Padmé stood up straighter, rolled her shoulders back, and set her jaw as indignation built inside her. She took a few breaths to collect herself and formulate her response before saying, "You'll be happy to know that I wasn't trying to befriend, but I figured since we're going to be together for who knows how long we may as well learn a little about and get comfortable with each other. It's called manners and being polite if you didn't know."

"If you haven't figured it out yet, I have no interest in pretenses, Senator."

Padmé thought that was truly something from someone who obviously had something to hide, but realized that pointing that out wouldn't help their situation. Instead she controlled her frustration with the girl and decided to focus on their mission since that's what Ahsoka was so intent on doing.

"Then I suppose you'll be more interested in the second reason I came back here. Since it's going to be a while before we get to Sartinaynian, I thought we might go over the specifics the mission."

"There are no specifics. I already told you everything I know about my master's mission. If there was anything else, it's back in the archives of the Jedi Temple. There's nothing else to tell."

"I'm not talking about Anakin's mission. I'm talking about ours," Padmé declared. She went back to the cockpit and grabbed her discarded bag. Then she took out two datapads and handed one to Ahsoka. "I downloaded as much information and books about Sartinaynian as I could. If we're going to be investigate, we have to be prepared for what we're going to face down there."

That said, Padmé began silently reading through the information on her datapad and a few moments later, Ahsoka began doing the same. Padmé read over the information she already knew, like the fact that Sartinaynian was of the Braxton system in the outer rim, with a temperate climate, hilly landscapes, and a sky made of reddish-brown and white gassy clouds, and that it was periodically plagued by severe lightning storms. Then she read about how the planet was colonized by humans with anti-alien sentiment and opposed so-called alien membership in the Republic. They kept mostly to themselves until political realities forced them to join the Republic. Even still, though they benefited greatly from the Banking Clan run by the Muuns for financial support, other than strictly business they still held very strong anti-alien sentiment within its social structure. And despite their "loyalty" to the Republic, the Sartinaynian system had resided within confederate territory during the Clone Wars. That alone was enough to make Padmé a little nervous and question exactly what Anakin may have gotten himself into that the entire galaxy thought he was dead.

Padmé looked up from her datapad to discuss this with Ahsoka, who had brought up a holographic map of the entire planet.

"According to what I've researched, the accident that supposedly killed Anakin happened as he was leaving the planet during an electrical storm. Normally, an electric storm wouldn't have caused a ship to spontaneously explode, but there have been cases where the right alignment of technological failure combined with the storm can," Ahsoka said as she spun the planet and then zoomed into a large city. "Republic authorities in Ravelin say the explosion was witnessed by at least a hundred civilians and upon going to the supposed landing site, they only recovered a few spare parts which matched the specs of Anakin's fighter and the body was assumed vaporized in the explosion. A jedi who was dispatched from a nearby system verified the information, including that Anakin was dead."

"What else is there?" Padmé asked.

Ahsoka shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't quite sifted through everything I managed to download after I hacked into the mission archives in the Jedi temple."

Padmé snapped her head to look at Ahsoka.

"What?"

"I said—"

"I heard what you said," Padmé cut in. "But you told me that you didn't know anything else or any specifics about the mission."

"I didn't. Until I put this into the datapad and began to sort into the information," Ahsoka said holding up a datachip.

"And you didn't think that it was imperative enough to tell me about it?"

"I was going to tell you eventually," Ahsoka said with a nonchalant shrug as she went back to inspecting the map.

Padmé pressed her lips together trying to suppress her rising frustration. Her husband, the father of her two beautiful children, was missing and his life was in certain danger. Every moment they wasted was a moment closer to possible death that Anakin was. Yet Ahsoka had somehow seen fit to "forget" that she had more information about Anakin's mission and what officials thought happen. What if Padmé hadn't suggested they research Sartinaynian? Would Ahsoka have even bothered telling her that she had more information they could use?

Padmé set her datapad down and said, "You may not like me very much, Ahsoka, but I am very interested in finding Anakin. I'm the only other person who believes he's alive. We're the only allies in this that each of us have. So I have my own ground rules to set."

Ahsoka turned to look at Padmé again, a smug smirk on her face, the facial marking above her right eye raised. The she said, making sure to drag out the s as she did so, "Yes, senator?"

"We both obviously have our secrets. More personal reasons for wanting to save Anakin than either of us are going to share with each other. But when it comes to this mission, there are no secrets. If at any time either of us find out information that might help or hinder us from finding Anakin, we tell each other," Padmé declared. "Agreed?"

Ahsoka stared at Padmé for a while. She looked torn between anger and reluctant resignation at Padmé, judging by the downward curve of her lips and the narrowing of her eyes. But Padmé wasn't intimidated anymore. She no longer cared about trying to find common ground with Ahsoka. The only thing she cared about was finding Anakin, and she would not allow Ahsoka to make that task any more difficult than it already was. Finally, Ahsoka huffed and rolled her eyes as she went back to studying her map.

"As you wish, senator."

Chapter Ending Notes:

So sue me. It's been forever since I updated. Not through any fault of my own. Been busy. Started a new job and all that lovely jazz and have had no time to be on the computer and write at all. So I'm just getting some time to write this, edit it, and post it. Yep. I'm writing as I go for once. I feel like the spontaneity will do me some good. Anywho. Enjoy. Update coming soon. Just don't know when. Lol.