Outter rim, forty days after Palpatine's death and four months after Anakin's disappearance

Rain fell outside of the isolated hut; it hit the ground with hypnotic thuds. The sound became entrancing and served to calm Padme's troubled mind. She watched the clouds above, losing herself in non-existent thought.

In the sixteen days since they arrived on the planet, she had done as much as she could to keep busy. She read the few books in Ahsoka's hut for the most part. Other than that, she helped cook, clean, and plan out their next moves. None of that lasted long enough for her though, and the others seemed to lose themselves in meditation leaving her alone.

Slowly, she turned to the projector in the corner of the room. It played a broadcast that Ahsoka managed to tap into. The headlines hadn't changed over the past few days, they only managed to have different talking heads.

With Palpatine dead, the Republic sought new leadership and found it in a member from the banking clan. Not a surprising move since most of the congressmen had taken some sort of donation or payoff. One thing had been made very clear: the war would continue until won.

After that, they focused on the Jedi infighting. An anonymous source brought to light the major schism in the order. Yoda had left alongside the other three "dissenters". No one knew where they had gone, but the reporters left the audience with a clear answer; they left over Anakin Skywalker.

Padme turns from the screen. Though part of her needed to see his picture again, most of her couldn't bear to see it. She grips her pillow tightly, then changes her focus.

"Padme?"

"Come in, Ahsoka."

The door opened and the young woman stepped into the room. Ahsoka carried in a tray of assorted fruits, careful not to spill them. She sets them on the edge of the bed. Tentatively, Ahsoka sat in the chair at the edge of the room near the small dresser.

"Are you okay?" Ahsoka asks.

Padme's eyes looked back out the window and away from her friend. "I'm alright."

"You don't have to lie, it's rhetorical." Turning to her left, Ahsoka saw the broadcast and understood. "I can contact him if you want."

A jolt ran through Padme's veins. Her fingers tightened on the pillow in her hands. Did she want to talk to him? What would Anakin tell her?

"That's not necessary. I doubt he wants to talk to me."

"Maybe, but I want to anyway. I need answers," Ahsoka told her strongly.

"Ahsoka - "

"I need them. I don't understand what you're telling me - what you've told me. Why would Anakin turn to the dark side? How could he know about the Chancellor, about the babies when you never told him?" The younger woman looked directly at Padme, piercing her with the stare. "Don't you want to know?"

"I can't say I do. At least, I'm not certain that I do."

"How can you not want to know? If I were you, for your sake or for the baby's, I'd want to know what happened to Anakin."

Padme looked at her fingers as they wove through the knitted blanket that she had wrapped around her legs. It gave her comfort when there was little else to find it in.

Was that right? Did she want to know? The more she thought about it, the less it made sense. Knowing what happened with him during his time away wouldn't bring him back. There wasn't a reason to. If he turned to the dark side, if he didn't, then the happiness they once shared still disappeared. Little could bring that back if anything. No, in reality, knowing what happened only brought more dread.

"I want to know," Ahsoka stated firmly, "whether you do or not is up to you. I'm going to find him, and I'm going to figure this out for myself. Obi-Wan either won't give me answers or doesn't have any."

Padme didn't respond, she only nodded. Ahsoka stood up from her chair and left the room at once. There weren't answers to be found in the broken down mother-to-be. In fact, Ahsoka doubted that Padme wanted to know. She seemed lifeless unless it came to caring for her children. Without them, Ahsoka doubted that Padme had the will to live.

The rest of the hut was silent. A fire crackled in the corner of the room and the rain continued to fall, but it didn't create a sense of comfort. Loneliness radiated throughout the walls of Ahsoka's small shelter. Obi-Wan had volunteered to hunt for food and firewood earlier that morning, leaving the young woman without company. Even when she had been alone the hut didn't seem as empty.

She moved past the living room and into a sideroom no larger than a closet. Inside the sparse room was a small chair and a small projector. Darkness suffocated the room.

Ahsoka sat on the chair to think. She closed her mind, wondering how to reach her friend. Broadcasts failed to mention anything about his whereabouts. Not once did they say where he went to, what direction, or who he'd been with. She'd asked Padme and Obi-Wan about any potential partners Anakin had; they remained silent on the matter. They were hiding something from her. What else was new?

A thought came to her, one that she bertated herself for not thinking of earlier. Her fingers danced across the console, punching in the digits to a frequency she knew all too well. She watched the projector impatiently.

Waiting became a chore, one that she despised deeply. Ahsoka's fingers tapped on the side of the projector. Her eyes watched the blue light and her heart hoped that something familiar appeared on the other side.

"Come on...come on…"

Deep, tweet, boop.

"Artoo!"

The blue, white, and silver astromech droid beamed in front of her. She could see the droid rock from side to side as it tooted and whistled a greeting to her. Ahsoka felt herself feeling joy for the first time that day.

"I'm happy to see you as well. Look. Artooie, I have to speak to Anakin. Is he there?" she asked.

The droid responded with a low sound. Artoo's dome shook slowly.

"Not there? Are you with him at least?"

Several brighter sounds came in reply.

"I don't get it. What can he be planning, and who's Hera?" Ahsoka waited for some sort of explanation. What the droid told her only made her more confused than ever. "For the battle and his adopted daughter?"

She listened to Artoo again, however, her mind was miles away. Her face contorted into an expression of utter confusion. What the droid told her made Ahsoka wonder if Artoo still believed them to be in the war. Anakin planning for a battle, that wasn't anything unusual, yet there weren't any enemies to fight - not unless he planned on fighting on his own. Then again, adopting a child? That's something she couldn't let herself focus on, not right now.

"Who is he going to fight, the Separatists?" She listens again. "I - I don't understand. He's on his own war? Artoo, this means little to me. I must speak to him and him alone."

The droid again tells her that Anakin isn't able to speak, not yet.

"Can I at least have your coordinates? I wouldn't be a pest if it wasn't important."

When the coordinates come through she puts them down immediately. Ahsoka commits them to memory, then bids the droid farewell. It won't be long until they see one another in person.

The device turns off leaving the eighteen-year-old in the dark. She leans back in the chair staring at where the light had been. Minutes passed by until the full weight of the conversation fell on her.

Anakin was a father albeit in a different way than she thought. He...adopted a child on his journey. How? Why? She knew that Anakin was aware of his biological child, so there couldn't be a reason to adopt one. Maybe it was before he knew? Even then, there didn't seem to be any logic to the choice. Anakin's rashness was well known, but this seemed extreme, even for him.

A choice weighed on her shoulders. Padme should know about it. Her husband took in another child, a daughter. Padme had a right to know about this...Hera, she believed that, yet something held her back. While reasonable, it still didn't seem like a good choice to make. When she came back she'd tell Padme.

Ahsoka left the room in search of her things. She immediately grabbed her pack, then stuffed it to the brim with clothes, rations, medicine, and blaster clips. The rifle behind the front door was the last thing Ahsoka grabbed. In minutes she gathered everything she needed to make the journey to see Anakin.

She went into Padme's room one last time only to find the former senator asleep. The battle over telling Padme about the adopted daughter rose again. She knew it was wrong. If it was her, Ahsoka would want to know more than anything. Instead, she wrote a note on a spare datapad that sat on the dresser, then left it on the bed for Padme to find. Ahsoka made sure to tell Padme to contact if anything came about.

Ahsoka walked out of the hut, closing the door behind her gently. She pulled up the hood to her cloak to protect her from the rain. Her feet splashed in the mud as she began to walk towards her ship.

Canopies overhead did little to protect from the monsoon. In no time at all, Ahsoka was soaked to the bone. She shivered as the wind cut through the layers of clothing like the blade of a lightsaber. Compared to the things she'd faced in her young life the rain was little more than a nuisance.

"Ahsoka?"

Coming down the mudpath in the opposite direction was Obi-Wan. She noticed that his skin had become pale, his lips a light blue. The auburn hair that normally swept to the side now hung low over his forehead. For a man who normally looked composed, Obi-Wan Kenobi looked lost.

"I'm going to find Anakin," she told him without introduction.

He paused in his place. For a split second, a heartbeat, it looked like he might protest it. The words must have been on his lips, she saw them form. Ahsoka readied her rebuttal.

"That is wise," he said low.

"We need answers, it's the only way."

"I agree," Obi-Wan added. There wasn't any excitement or pomp in his words. They sounded hollow as ever.

Ahsoka squinted to get a better look at him. She read his presence in the Force, but there wasn't anything to read. He closed himself off.

"Padme is in the house resting. I left my frequency in the datapad on her bed."

Nodding, he said, "there's little reason to worry. This planet is far off the paths of the Republic and Separatists. We are safe here as you well know. I wish you luck, Ahsoka. May the Force be with you."

Ahsoka barely got to repeat the Jedi greeting before Obi-Wan proceeded to walk the path back to shelter. She stared at him until his figure faded into the rain. There was no purpose in thinking about his demeanor. That solved nothing, and having her attention anywhere else took away from the mission.

Once inside the ship she set her pack down in the co-pilot's chair. She pulled on the appropriate knobs, pressed the right buttons, and the ship roared to life. Her sights were set on the outter rim, and her mind focused on the one thing the trio desperately needed: answers.