As usual, comments fuel me.

Sorry for the lateness of this, but real life intervened.



Chapter 7

The first thing everyone thought was that Anakin apparently could not loose his ability to stun the Jedi Council into silence. Himself... he was no exception.

To no one's surprise, it was Yoda who broke the awkward silence.

"A long time it has been, since an offer of Mastery was refused."

Of course Anakin had done so in the full knowledge about the thermal detonator he had thrown among the Order. The decision to do so had come after many deliberations both alone and with his wife, and he believed it was the right thing to do.

"Masters," he said, "I am deeply honoured by this offer, but... I do not believe I am ready for a seat on the Council. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have accepted immediately."

"Now you do not. Ready, you do not think you are. Why that is?" Yoda asked, though as usual Anakin suspected that the Grand Master knew everything perfectly well. He shrugged inwardly and answered the question anyway.

"Master, if the last year has taught be anything it's that you never stop learning, and just how much I have yet to be taught."

All the Masters knew him well enough to be able to tell how difficult this admission was for him. As someone who had constantly complained that he was being held back from his true potential, that the Council refused what he was due, Anakin still had difficulties admitting his own flaws, but unlike the pre-Exodus Anakin Skywalker, this one was willing and able to do it.

"Our judgement, you do not trust, yes? Think you know better, you do."

Anakin shook his head with a thin smile. "No, Master. But I think that between..."

All the Jedi in the room could sense that Anakin was grasping for words, for the right thing to say.

"Masters," he said, speaking to all of them at once, "frankly, I have broken the Code in the... words and best way imaginable, and I would not give up my family for anything in the universe. But as such, I feel I do not deserve the seat, nor do I want it as I would not only have to enforce the Code against attachment but also it would be me who would be taking my own children away from my wife once they are old enough. I can not and will not do either. I understand why the seat was denied to me in the past, and though that part of me is hopefully... gone, I still think..."

He spoke as a father and husband first, and they all knew it. They also knew that they had never officially sentenced Skywalker to any form of punishment, Order 66 having quite literally interrupted that meeting of the Council. Anakin had never mentioned the issue again, but now it was clear that it still weighed heavily on his mind.

"Punished you for this, we have not. Done this, we should have, but too late it is now." Yoda replied, "And severe punishment, there would not have been anyway."

Not it was Anakin's turn to be stunned, even more so when he sensed no surprise or serious disagreement from any of the other council members. They all sat in the chairs taken from the officer's lounge of the Remnant's Hardcell transport arrayed in a semi-circle in front of the Force Platform they'd found the plates on, and just waited for him to say something about this news.

"There's more." Obi Wan said and waited for Anakin to answer, even though he had a good idea what it was. Frankly, he agreed with Anakin, who knew this, but it was not Obi Wan's place to bring the matter up.

Anakin appreciated Obi Wan creating this opening for him, but he was unsure if he was to take it. He had promised her that he would leave this to her own efforts, but she hadn't actually done anything the entire time they had been on Fearless, and he wanted her to be given her due.

"Yes, there is. To be perfectly frank, I have no desire to be part of a Council that has yet to acknowledge any wrong doing in the aftermath of the Temple Bombing. It cost us not only the services of what would have been one of the best knights to enter the Order in the last century but also was just plain wrong and against someone who I consider to be part of my family. Ahsoka Tano may not be my Padawan any more, but it was not I who drove her out of the order. She may not be related by blood, but I will act on her behalf as if she were."

He took a deep breath.

"What happened then is inexcusable to say the least. Ahsoka was made to run away, her pleas were ignored and then she was accused by Tarkin." Anakin said, speaking the Moff's name with bitter venom, "Even more, when her innocence was finally proven, it was all dismissed as part of her trials when all she wanted, no, when all she deserved was a sincere apology. Looking back at it now, I can understand why she left, and I would have acted the same had I been in her position. For the last year, before the Exodus and after, she has proven again and again that she is true to the living Force, to the Doctrine of the Order, however flawed and to the Order as an organization, even though we have cast her aside the one time she need our help in return. What's more, without her flying Master Ti's fighter, many of us would now be atmospheric dust on Coruscant, myself included. And I ask you, members of the Council, how would you have reacted at her age, in her situation? I can also understand why she is reluctant to re-join the Order, however much she may want to, and she does, believe me. And until and unless this issue has been resolved, I have no desire to be on the Council, but still speak out on Code reform."

He stepped back from the middle of the half-circle to indicate he had nothing more to say, leaving the Masters to consider what had just happened. Obi Wan had to suppress a smile, it was probably the first time in decades someone had read the Jedi Council the riot act. Anakin on the other hand really had changed. Back in the day it had been that he often believed that the world rotated around him, and that he deserved faster advancement, but now, he seemed to have finally learned that ultimately the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, or in his case, the one. He had desperately wanted to be respected by the Jedi, but it seemed he had learned that respect from someone you could not respect in turn was worthless.

Ahsoka was merely a manifestation of this, but he understood why Anakin was so fierce for her.

His former Padawan was not only his sister in the same way Obi Wan was his brother, but had also become a surrogate aunt for the twins. Both Luke and Leia adored her, and Padmé had become very close friends with her as well. Long story short, all the Skywalkers old and young would gladly defend her against anything.

Even though she had never told anyone, Ahsoka was well aware of this, and very humbled by the fact. For the last two years she'd been forced to live with the fact that she had been forsaken by the closest thing to a family she'd ever had, Anakin's furious defence not withstanding, and Obi Wan knew all to well that he bore his fair share of blame for that. He'd made an effort to repair the damage, but ultimately that power lay with the rest of the Council, not him. They needed to reach a collective decision, and Force, he had no idea which one it would be.

It was then that he decided that he would defend Ahsoka as much as he would have Anakin for his breach of the Code had that been necessary, up to and including resigning his seat.

The Council Chamber was deathly silent once more.

Anakin stood in the half-light of the area near the door, where they had yet to install any lamps and felt... not satisfaction, no, but the knowledge that he had finally said the words he'd been carrying around with himself for the last year. Ahsoka deserved nothing less, in his opinion the matter was far more pressing than the onygoing and tiring discussions about the reform of the Code and Jedi Doctrine. He suspected that this was a discussion that would take years to fully resolve, a task not exactly made easier by the other problems they had to solve, such as their immediate survival.

The silence lasted for almost half an hour as the elder Jedi considered the mirror The Chosen One had just held in front of them. And they did not like what they saw. Windu especially blamed himself for what had happened, having been so convinced of his own rectitude and the infallibility of the Order and it's teachings that he had forsaken his basic humanity.

"I think..." he said after the silence became too much for him, "that an apology to former Padawan Tano is in order. It is the least thing we can do. If there are no objections, then I will approach her and offer her to re-join the Order at the rank of a full Knight. Skywalker, will she accept?"

"Would you? She needs to know that you are sincere, that this isn't just being done out of necessity."

Windu could acknowledge Skywalker's wisdom, and the meeting adjourned soon after.


While this was going on, Padmé was taking the twins for a walk around the colony. She didn't know if it was genetics, their demonstrated force sensitivity, the normal variations usual with children, or a combination of all three, but she was amazed that her children could already walk better and for longer before getting tired than most other humans their age. They had long since outgrown the repulsorlift trolley Fearless' Engineering Department had rigged up when they'd been only days old, to the point where she rarely had to carry them over distances. The colony was spreading out.

As they left the tunnel entrance past two TSF troopers who threw her a snappy salute, she noted that construction efforts outside, on the plateau and immediately in front of the main entrance were picking up. The blast doors to seal off the entrance and the hangars had taken only two days to install, being salvaged from a freighter that had been deemed surplus and was now used for material to establish the colony. All of this would be camouflaged from orbital observation of course, but on ground level, right now, it was something for the twins to gawk at with wide eyes. As one on the Committee, she knew that there was more to it than just habitation. The next run to dispose of some of their loot from that last raid would, for example, include the purchase of at least one, best case two or three large-scale water purifiers and all sorts of equipment they might need for establishing something more or less permanent here. Because if there was one thing that was certain, the Jedi, the civilians, the Fleet personnel, they would all be stuck here for a very long time, supposing they could keep hidden from the Empire.

That part at least was easier than it might seem on the face of things. The planet they'd named Woltei after a figure from Twi'lek mythology, was clear in the opposite direction of where the Republic had thought Chiss space to begin, and scouting of the surrounding systems had revealed no intelligent species, developed or not, and had also failed to show any trace of the Outbound Flight, much to Ahsoka's semi-serious dismay.

By the time they reached the top of the cliff, the twins started to tire, so Padmé led them to where some of the other younglings and civilian children were playing under the watchful attention of some of the adults. Ahsoka was one of them. Padmé knew that the young Togrutan liked the younglings, their unreserved and very much mutual adoration making for a needed change from her still undefined status with the Order and the mixed feelings she had to be able to sense from some of the Jedi. The Younglings on the other hand, they always accepted her. Especially Luke and Leia, so when she sat them down and they ran over to their 'aunt', Padmé knew that her children would be in very good hands.

She allowed herself to look away and take in what was going on up here. Beyond her field of vision, about a kilometre away and connected to the main 'settlement' a few of the ex-slaves who had come from more rural worlds were setting farms, even though equipment, seeds and livestock were near non-existent for the moment, and another thing on the very long shopping list the Committee had put together. Some had opposed getting 'too comfortable' on Woltei, but it had been pointed out to everyone that it would be years, if not decades before any Rebellion had a chance to seriously harm the Empire, never mind actually toppling it, and until then, the Republic Remnant was stuck here and needed to be able to feed itself beyond what they could capture, because those easy pickings would not last.

Padmé knew that there also was long-term strategy to consider. Just raiding Imperial supply convoys would win them nothing and doom them to an ultimately doomed defence, quite aside from the manpower problems the Jedi faced. During the last strategy meeting someone had floated destroying the cloning facilities on Kamino as an idea, but it had been Anakin who had shot it down by pointing out that they had only two vessels that could be described as warships, and on those vessels only ten starfighters, and attacking a world as vital to the Empire as that planet would require a force at least four or five times the size unless something happened that diverted Imperial attention elsewhere.

Instead priority would be to establish themselves here so that they could lay low for a while if need be, continue to raid supply convoys, try to increase their fighting force by acquiring more ships and crews and, most importantly, make contact with friends in the Core Worlds, people like Bail Organa or Mon Mothma by means that didn't require a traceable HoloNet link. Coordination and organization would be the key to the destruction of the New Order.

She turned back to the Younglings. In the last years she had been given a far more intimate education in the ways of the Jedi than she'd ever have imagined possible even by being married to one, and the heartwarmingly nurturing way the Creche-Master cared for the Younglings with was a far cry from any of the rumours that were going around about the baby-stealing Jedi. Intellectually, Padmé had known that most of that was hogwash, but seeing it for herself was something else entirely, and she felt honoured. She would still never give up her children to the Order as long as she drew breath, but at least they would have been cared for. As it was, Luke and Leia were still too young to take part in the normal education programme, however torn and damaged it was now that the resources of the Temple had been lost, but she knew that the twins would certainly benefit from it, and she knew that as long as she was allowed to have them back each evening, she would gladly let them have it.

"Senator Skywalker?"

Even though she was no longer a Senator, she still reacted to the title as well as the name, and her husband had promised her that one day he'd say it to her in the Senate Chamber. Speaking of which... "Annie! How did the meeting go?"

Anakin came over and placed one arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. "About as well as can be expected."

He let out a deep breath. "The mission is still on, and... they offered me a seat."

Padmé looked up at him. "Annie, that's great!"

"I declined."

Frowning, Padmé turned in his arm. "By the Force, why?"

"Because, my dear Angel, they have yet to really try and fix that." he said, pointing over to where Ahsoka was giving Leia a ride on her shoulders, having the girl and her brother in a fit of giggles. "I also think that I have things of my own to resolve before I deserve that seat."

"Your loyalty does you credit, you know?" Padmé said with a smile and stood up on her toes to give him a kiss on his cheek.

"Of course it does. This is me we are talking about." Anakin said with a grin that made his humour obvious, but he sobered up quickly. "This is by no means altruistic. Our war hasn't ended with the shut-down of the Droid armies, and if I have to take on the Empire, then I want Ahsoka, Obi Wan, you... all of them by my side."

"Besides, it's the right thing to do."

"That of course as well."

The two parents watched how their children were having a ball with their surrogate aunt, all of them, children and parents, utterly unaware of the dangers and adventures that awaited them in the coming years.

tbc

I know that what happened to Ahsoka was done to explain her absence during ROTS, but you can probably imagine how bloody furious I was when I watched the episodes in question, and in some ways I can understand Anakin's dissatisfaction with the Council. Overall I must say that IMO TCW did a sterling job to help set up the events of ROTS.