A/N: Another quick update. Phew, I'm on a roll! I listened to the track: Ahsoka Leaves, from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars Original Soundtrack. It's very moving, I recommend it.

I remembered once that someone once said that true wisdom is the skill and practice of death. And I used to think he understood everything far better than anyone else. But, I came to realize the death which is wisdom was the death of our passions and desires and vain opinions. And immediately I thought I saw my way clear, and not impossible. To say I was Sith meant I was as ugly in soul as Palpatine. But if I practiced death as Obi-Wan once meant it, I should change my ugly soul into a fair one. And this, Force help me, I would do.

"I am good with engines," he tells his guard later. "I don't wish to sit around doing nothing, I would like to work on repairing your droids, or something else mechanical. I rose to my position in part because of this."

The guard shrugs and brings him along to speak with one of the superiors.

No one comments on the way his speech patterns fluctuate. They're all eager and willing to chalk it up to Imperial conditioning.

It's something that rings true enough, and he would be a fool to argue otherwise.

As he asked, they bring him to their broken droid bay, and tell him he can get to work fixing the astromechs and the training bots.

Of course, they will be double checked by the other engineers to make sure he hasn't tampered or planted trackers in them, and he shrugs, because it's to be expected.

His guard, Rui, then sits in the corner of the room and browses the Holonet while he hooks up a music player and settles in amidst the rubble.

It's calming work, and it's a system he can make do with.

It's enough.

He tells himself again and again, it's enough.

Rex stops by every so often to check up on his 'bunkmate', and joins him on the ground as he's piecing together the droids.

Rex isn't exactly fluent in Huttese, but he can follow along better than most, so he sits and complains at Rex in Huttese, while Rui rolls her eyes at doesn't even bother trying to decipher.

I can't believe it's really you, Rex says in halting, jagged Huttese, and he quirks a crooked grin.

What, you really thought that someone like me could ever die? C'mon Rex, you've seen me get out of worse scrapes than this.

And Rex will laugh, and he'll be grinning, and for just a moment, the knot of guilt and shame loosens.

Rui knows a few languages, like they all do, but Basic is the only language she shares with him.

This comes as almost a relief, because he's then free to converse in Mando'a, Huttese, and Binary with the droids he repairs, or with Rex, and she doesn't really know any better.

He's grateful, in a quiet sort of way, that he's lucky she's so easy going. She doesn't get weird or defensive when he speaks a language she can't understand, and she doesn't even question it. She just cares that he's not giving away their location via installing tracking devices in the droids.

And since he's not? They get along just fine.

"We got this astromech here that needs repairing. You seem to be the best with repairing droids like this, so if you could get this one right and fixed up, that would be fantastic."

He doesn't look up from where he's hunched over a cleaner droid. "Yeah, as you wish. Just place him by the door."

The pilot grunts in affirmation, there's a clunk, and then the quiet.

Rui makes a noise from the back of the room. "If that's a flight astromech, you might wanna get started on it sooner than later."

He grumbles out a few choice curses under his breath. "As you say," he says, turning to look over at the astromech and-

He freezes.

A dusted over white barrel and burnt dome top, chipping and faded lines of blue paint, and a dimly flickering blue-red light.

The breath catches in his throat, and then he coughs out a laugh. You little shavit, he murmurs, a slow smile spreading over his face.

Artoo Detoo warbles, it's visual processor chipping and blurred over.

He smiles then.

Really, truly smiles.

An hour later, and Artoo sputters too life, beeping furiously, waving its utility arm in his face, and he can't help but laugh as Artoo scolds him loudly and aggressively.

I don't know what I was thinking either, I know, I'm a fool, he says through his laughter as Artoo blows raspberry after raspberry at him.

"I don't know what you did to piss off Commander Skywalker's droid like that, but it must have been something," Rui calls lazily from the back of the room.

Artoo turns to Rui to start beeping angrily at her too, and he huffs out a laugh.

"Perhaps a better question is what I didn't do. He's got boosters that have been out of order for years on end it seems, and he wants them fixed immediately. Come back here, let me fix you," he says, reaching after Artoo, and Artoo turns its attention back to him to keep yelling.

"I know," he says, as Artoo berates him for losing all his limbs.

"Yes, I know," he says, as Artoo yells at him for siding with the Emperor for twenty years.

"Yes, yes, of course," he says, as Artoo pulls the guilt card, saying that Threepio had his memory wiped, and it was only cosmic coincidence that led them to his son.

By the way, the droid says casually, as if it hasn't been tearing into him for the past thirty minutes. You have twins you abandoned. Also a wife you left to die.

He freezes. "Cheekta…chuba nee choo? Nobata ma fauta?" His heart is beating loud, thundering in his ears, and his vision tunnels. His right hand trembles.

Artoo goes very quiet, almost remorseful. She gave up on life, it says. She just. Gave up.

"Oh," he says out loud, and he can still feel the ghost of Padmé hands around his throat. "Oh."

He tries to adjust a bolt at the base of Artoo's thrusters, but his hands shake, and shake, and he drops the wrench, his breaths coming in uneven rasps. "Your… thrusters should work now. Rui, I'm… going to take a nap."

Rui shrugs. "Knock yourself out, I'm gonna grab some food. Com me when you wanna wander anywhere else that's not your bunk."

Artoo follows him back to his bunk, unusually silent, and when he falls asleep, he dreams of running through rooms where the lights won't turn on.

Artoo is there, though, in the breaks in his dreams, when he wakes, unsettled and uneasy, and trills reassuringly every time.

"She really gave up, then? It wasn't… wasn't me?" he whispers to Artoo.

The barracks are empty at midday, and everyone is busy with some job or another. Rex, even, is out running drills and helping shape strategies. He is alone in the barracks, with his droid.

Artoo snaps out something waspish, and he sighs, resting his hand on the droid's glossy dome.

"Yeah. I know. I failed her. I should have been there, and I just… wasn't. There is no excuse for that."

Yeah, there's not. Sleemo, the droid grumbles.

He glares. "Hey now. I fixed your damn boosters, and this is the thanks I get? See if I ever repair you again, you ungrateful bantha ass."

Artoo blows an angry raspberry, and starts berating him, then when that doesn't work, attempts to ram into his side, and somewhere between trying to fend off the irate droid and justify himself, he finds himself laughing, loud, helpless, and free.

"If you could just say thank you, maybe for once in your life. You never thanked me back in the day, either! I do so much work for you, I chased down a bounty hunter to get you back, and- ouch!"

Artoo zaps him, entirely unremorsefully, and he glares. "Force give me patience, because if it gives me strength, so help me I will tear you apart," he says, and Artoo blows another raspberry, and then-

Zaps him again.

And he can't help it. He bursts out laughing.

Between trying to ward off the angry astromech, and keep his wheezing laughter from echoing too loudly, something settles in his chest, warm and peaceful.

Familiar.

He rests a hand on the droid's dome. "I missed you," he whispers, his voice choking, strange and gentle. "Force, I missed you."

Artoo burbles some reply, and he can't stop grinning, and maybe this time, just maybe, things will be okay.

Of course, it's now that he feels the flicker of a familiar presence at the edges of his senses, and he spins to look over at the door and-

And-

In the doorway, she stands, her eyes wide.

He stares back, unable to move from where he's sitting on the floor.

Ahsoka's eyes rove over his face, tracing the faint lines of the scars, the mop of his hair, the oxygen tube looping under his nose and over his ears.

His throat constricts as he stares at her, the scars decorating her face and arms, and remembers her desperate, frantic words as she vowed never to leave him again. And, of course, it was him who left her, beneath the ruins of a crumbling temple.

"I," he starts, but there's nothing that can be said.

Not here, not really.

Not to her.

But he has to say something.

"I don't deserve to apologize to you," he rasps, his voice catching oddly in his throat, the oxygen coming in thin, reedy through his oxygen tube. "And, and I certainly don't deserve your forgiveness but, Snips," His voice breaks, betraying him, and he looks down to his hands, the way they shake and shake and shake. "Snips, I'm-I'm so sorry."

Silence.

Silence, like the long stilled hush of the open deserts on Tatooine before the sandstorms roll in, and through the Force he hears nothing, feels nothing.

Then-

Then, she takes a step forward.

Then another.

"Anakin?" she whispers, and her voice is scrubbed raw, aching like an open wound.

He breathes in.

Breathes out.

"Maybe," he says softly. "Something like that, I think." Pauses, and shrugs a shoulder. "I hope."

She takes another, hesitant step forward. "You're here."

He nods. "Yeah. I guess I am."

"Anakin," she says again, and this time, he looks up to meet her eyes. She sucks in a breath through her teeth.

"You-"

He looks away again. "I don't- know how."

She breathes in, and looks at the floor, then the ceiling, her fingers curling into fists. "How are you here."

He closes his eyes. "Did you- did you know. I." He breathes out, and the Force hums reassuringly in his ears. "Padmé and I were married," he whispers. His throat is knotted tight, his eyes burning. "I have kids here."

Ahsoka huffs out a sigh, or something like it. Something too weak and frail to be a laugh. "It wasn't too hard to figure out that much. I didn't know about the multiple children, but one of them's galivanting around the galaxy with your last name. I- I had to come help."

He nods, and still can't quite bring himself to meet her eyes. "I just want to be able to face my children. As their father. Not a monster."

Ahsoka takes another step, and sinks to the ground across from him, her legs folded beneath her.

"You can't change what you've done," she says softly, and despite the weight of the guilt on his shoulders, there is no judgement in her voice.

"I know," he says. Then, softer. "I know that."

"Hey," Ahsoka says at long last, and here, he finally meets her gaze. She smiles, a weak, lilting thing. "It'll be like old times, yeah? Snips and Skyguy, stickin' it to the man."

He huffs out a laugh, and it's so weak, and so, so fragile.

But it's something.

"Something like that. He-" he cuts off and closes his eyes. "He convinced me to sell myself back into my own slavery. And I, the fool that I am, believed him."

"From the way I remember it," Ahsoka says softly, "he had us all pretty well fooled." And he can't help but laugh, a shattering, breaking laugh at that.

"He was good at that." He looks at his hands. "He was good at selling lies."

"A true politician," Ahsoka says, and there's humor curling in the line of her lips.

And here-

Here-

He grins back. A small, fragile thing, and for just a moment, it's like the years, the torment between the two of them never happened.

For a moment, they are just Skywalker and Tano again.

"Hey, Snips," he says, and the fingers of his right hand tremble, tremble, tremble. He swallows down the lump in his throat and sets his jaw. For now, he's done running. "You- you've done better than I ever could. I know- I know my word means little to you now. But for what it's worth. I'm- I'm so goddamn proud of you. You've had it bad, and instead of turning into an intergalactic kriffing mess, you went out and saved everyone you could. You did damn good, Snips."

It's hard, to get the words out, to listen to the way they creak out of his mouth and break off of his tongue.

Across from him, Ahsoka takes a sharp breath in.

Then, another shaking, hitching breath.

And to his shock, there are tears spilling down her face. "'M not crying because I'm sad," she forces out. "'M crying because I'm angry."

He can't stop the shaking grin from spreading across his face, and he sets a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Okay, Snips. Whatever you say."

She curses at him in Huttese, an old, familiar habit, and then she's throwing her arms around his neck and holding on tight. He breathes out a stuttering breath, and wraps his arms back around her, his eyes burning as she shakes and cries against him.

They sit there like that for hours.

Two disgraced former Jedi with little left in the world, finally, finally reunited.

I was going to make this sad and make her hate him but I remembered how desperate she was to save him in Rebels and I couldn't :/ Anyways, as always, let me know what you think in your reviews! I hope the pacing was appropriate, and especially considering what's coming up next chapter, he deserves a little bit of happiness and support. We've got two chapters left to this monstrosity, and then an epilogue. I hope you all will stay tuned!