Chapter 12
Anakin jerked awake in the rear seat of the speeder, and noted that everyone save Obi Wan at the controls was looking back at him with concern. "Annie..."
He smiled at his wife reassuringly. "It's alright, Angel. I'm fine."
She kissed him on his cheek, somewhere between showing her love for him and minding the others. Obi Wan saw it out of the corner of his eye and only smiled, but Ahsoka was flabbergasted, simply because knowing something and seeing it happen were two different things entirely. But when Padmé and Anakin only looked at each other, forgetting the universe around them, slowly she began to smile, wondering how she had not noticed this before. Knowing now and looking back at her time with Anakin, there were a dozen times when she should have seen it.
Yet... she decided that even if she'd officially known, more than suspected that is, then she would not have told on them. If this was how they were when together then her old Master was happier with his wife than she'd ever seen him. He deserved it.
"Was it a nightmare?" Obi Wan asked, and Anakin opened his mouth to answer. Then he considered what he had dreamt, closed it again and shrugged. "I don't know, Obi Wan. It wasn't as – vivid as the others, but certainly not something I care to remember."
He related the dream. "It was an odd sort of moon though, considering how machined everything looked."
Obi Wan shook his head. "Can't be a moon, this sounds more like a space station."
"I don't think so, it was too large for that."
He scratched the back of his head.
"At any rate, it was less bad than the other ones, so I suppose something changed for the better."
Padmé looked at him with concern, and resolved to talk to him about this later. After all, it had been Anakin who had said that she had interrogation skills to rival his own.
A short time later came to land at 500 Republica and Ahsoka hid beneath her cloak, and to make herself look like yet another one of the nameless aides that kept much of the Republic's government going.
They needn't have bothered though, because not only was it at a time when most people living in the building were at work or busy with lunch, but also because they used a not very well known back entrance, and as they entered Padmé's rooms, all of them felt reasonably safe for the first time in days. Ahsoka and Obi Wan remained in the living room as Anakin and Padmé retreated into her office for a few moments to themselves. The young Togrutan was taken in by the splendour of their surroundings, but after a short while she turned to Obi Wan.
"How long have you known, Master?"
He shook his head. "For certain? A few days, just before we left for Corellia. Suspected? Force knows, I have no idea."
Her frown made him realize why she had asked the question. "Ahsoka, he didn't tell you because he didn't trust you or didn't -"
She waved his concern away. "No, it's not that, Master. We saved each other's lives too often for that, I know that now." Her shy smile was evidence, it was far more genuine and heartfelt than any emotion she'd displayed since they'd met her again.
"No, Master. It's..." She sighed and walked over to the table where Anakin had placed his lightsabre. She slowly ran her right index finger along it's length. "For a while I believed that he only told me because I would not run to the council to tell on him, but that's not his way."
Obi Wan didn't tell her that he wouldn't be so sure the way Anakin had been lately, but that would only create problems. Ahsoka had wandered over to the windows and was looking out over Coruscant.
"Would you have told them?" she said, obviously referring to the council.
The elder Jedi Master shook his head, even though she could not see it. If there was one thing he'd achieved certainty about since leaving Corellia, it was that. "No, I would not have. I believe that back then I would have reached the same conclusion as I have now, though I do admit it would have taken me longer to do so."
"I spent a lot of the last year with a group of -" she paused as Anakin and Padmé returned to the room, but she knew that she would never get this out if not now and all in one go.
"I spent the last eleven months with a group... they call themselves the Paladins. Apparently they are an offshoot of a group of Jedi who... did not see eye to eye with the Council. They left the Order and their group since they believed that they could not discover their own way of the Force on Coruscant."
Obi Wan frowned. There had been rumours about something of this sort happening before he had been elevated to master. Force if he knew more than that, he had never been someone to put much stock in cantina gossip.
"They left." Ahsoka went on, "Eventually they reached a moon on the outer rim, away from the war and the tradelanes. Cue me and my boss having a hyperdrive malfunction on the Steam Runner, and crashing right on top of them. My... friend did not survive."
Her grief was evident as she relived the events that had brought her to a small moon orbiting a world choked with lethal gases.
"But they found me in time, they healed me, they helped me repair the shuttle. And then... they taught me."
"Your Force Wave?" Obi wan asked, very, very interested in that group.
"Yes. But don't worry, they are not Sith. In fact they..."
Ahsoka searched for the right words, well aware that she was speaking to a member of the council, and someone who should by rights be on it, for all their infractions against the code.
"They mostly expanded on the teachings of the Order. Their philosophy is that the way the Order fights is not the end of all wisdom, and that other tools can be of use for a Jedi. They taught me how to shoot this one." she said, padding the holstered DC-17 on her hip.
"They also taught me new ways of using the Force. You've seen some of that."
She paused again, and let her gaze wander around the room. "My point is, I deviated from the teachings, I... acted against everything the Order stands for, and though I am not a member, you two are, and I couldn't be sure..."
Ahsoka sighed, and then said with a low, almost inaudible voice: "I couldn't be sure you would accept me."
For a moment no one said anything, and it was Padmé who reacted first. She rose as fast as she could, waddled over to where Ahsoka seemed to sink in on herself while staring at her feet and hugged her as close as possible. Obi Wan was unsure what to say or do, but Anakin was far too dazed at what his former Padawan had implied. Did she really believe he would reject her because she had shown the strength and will to seek her own way of the Force? Dis she think so little of him?
Anakin shook off the worst of his daze and looked over to where his wife was comforting Ahsoka, wordlessly hugging her to her side. He watched the scene for a few minutes in deep thought before taking a breath.
"Snips, if there's one thing that you can be sure of, I would never turn you away, nor would Obi Wan. Force, in some ways you've managed what I always wanted to do, so please, never think yourself unwanted or unworthy. You are the sister I never had and nothing will change that, I promise you."
"And as for the Council, we have no intention of revealing your presence." Anakin said, hoping that Obi Wan agreed. Thankfully, he sensed nothing but agreement from his old master, though he did seem the be slightly uncomfortable with it.
"You will always have a place here, Ahsoka."
Padmé said that and genuinely felt it, but the current Ahsoka was not one to like being vulnerable in front of others. She visibly pulled herself together and took a small but determined step away from everyone else.
"I suppose you want to know how this whole mess got started?"
Anakin noted the 'you better never mentioned what I just said again' but resolved to fully disabuse her of her wrong notion at some point.
"Of course we would." Obi Wan said, "We have to tell the Council something after all."
She nodded. "About two months ago I started making short runs between my studies to.. well, finance myself, and on one of them I came onto a trader's space station near the edge of Hutt space. I did what I came to do, collected my payments and was just about to leave when some sort of.. Force user tried to test if I was weak of mind. I tried to track him down, but lost him in the bustle. A few weeks later I returned to the same station, with half a mind to trying to track that guy down, but I roamed every publicly accessible compartment and some that weren't, though no success."
"I take it that you were approached?"
"Yes, Master. In the Corellian Restaurant..."
Over the next minutes she told the tale of how she had entered the small, shady tenth-rate restaurant, how an equally shady figure had called her on being a former Jedi, how that figure had offered her employment for her very special skills, how she had turned him down and walked out.
"I take it he didn't react too well to rejection?" Obi Wan asked, stroking his beard in thought.
"Not at first. I made it back to the camp without trouble, but I didn't stay there for long after that."
"Because," Anakin said, "whoever approached you had to have known where and who you were."
She nodded. "Yes, since he did call me by name."
"What happened next?"
"Well, I had saved up and inherited a few Credits, so I tried to disappear. I figured that shouldn't be too hard, but they caught up with me near Aldraan a week and a half before I contacted you, Senator. I managed to get away since their pilots were banthadung, but I started up the communications line I used then."
"That doesn't sound like any Jedi splinter group I know. The ones you approached, I mean." Obi Wan said, and Padmé, who had only listened eagerly, frowned.
"There have been rumours that someone was combing the Naboo underworld for beings who had 'Jedi experience' about a year ago."
Anakin looked at her, and she felt she had to explain. "Not much more than that, but it has been persistent. I only remember this because I was sent another report on it yesterday." She paused and readjusted her position to ease the load on her aching back. "Even if that isn't part of it, who is behind it?"
All three Jedi in the room had long been trained not to jump to conclusions so it took some time before Obi Wan, as the only council member, spoke.
He knew more than anyone else in the room about Master Yoda's suspicions, he knew how clouded the Force had been of late, and he knew who had to be behind it. "The Sith."
Ahsoka nodded, but Anakin stared at Obi Wan.
"Are you certain?"
"Haven't you noticed how clouded the force has been since before the war? That it was more and more difficult to reach into it? Everything that has happened..." He sighed. "Anakin, there's the Rule of Two to consider..."
"The Rule of Two?" Padmé asked.
Obi Wan was the one who explained. "Supposedly the Sith always operate as a pair. A Master, who trains an Apprentice. At some point, once he is strong enough, the Apprentice is to kill the Master, take his place and take a new Apprentice of his own. Since Maul and.." he paused, glancing at Anakin who judging by his pained expression knew what was coming next, "and Dooku both had to come from somewhere, it is likely that there's a second Sith out there still. Now, whether Dooku was the Master or the Apprentice... We never did get around to asking him."
To his credit, Anakin looked even more uncomfortable now than he had before, so Obi Wan decided to let it slide for now.
"The Council knew this?"
"Suspected. We still don't have more than circumstantial proof." Obi Wan said with a shake of his head.
"So what do we do next?"
Obi Wan glanced at Ahsoka and silently bade her forgiveness. "We have to tell the Council, Anakin."
Ahsoka tried to speak up, but Obi Wan. "No, I will not tell them it's you, I promise. But we have to tell them something."
Anakin was about to object, but his and Obi Wan's comm links beeped, recalling them to the temple for an emergency meeting of every Jedi currently on the planet. This was very rarely done, and they, as well as Ahsoka, felt the ripple in the Force radiating out from the Temple.
tbc
What happened to get them to the Temple was not Order 66.
After four tries and failures to write the scene where they try to recruit her, I gave up and coped out. Also, I am about to play a bit fast and loose with some ROTS events, if you mind, please tell me. Anyhoo, the reason why this appeared so quickly is because it grew out of something that wouldn't fit with the previous chapter.
