Chapter Twenty-Nine: Naboo

Just when Ahsoka thought she had unraveled the mystery that was Vader, he did something that completely stunned her and forced her to reevaluate what she thought of him and how she would deal with him in the future. Their impromptu visit to Naboo was one of those things, something she hadn't been able to talk him out of when she'd calmed down enough from the initial revelation to have a more sound debate with him. He shot her down on every point, using all her points for why going to Naboo was insane and risky to support why going to Naboo wasn't as insane or as risky as she was making it out to be.

At least, Ahsoka thought wryly, he did seem to appreciate the gravity of the consequences if she was proven right. He tolerated her insistent inquiries about how he planned to mitigate the risks; what his escape plan was if something did happen; and her multiple warnings that if this ruined everything, there was nothing in the universe that would protect him from her impaling him with her lightsabers.

"You used to be a lot more adventurous and less cautious than this during the Clone Wars," he said after he seemed to decide to let himself be entertained by her nagging instead of irritated.

"That was before I became a mother," she snapped back at him. "I thought becoming a father would make you less adventurous and more cautious too."

"Stop worrying, Snips," he'd responded blandly and poked her in the forehead just to needle her even further.

She'd wanted to tell him that his Anakin was showing but swallowed the comment. The last thing she should do was take Vader out of whatever unnaturally good mood had possessed him to go on this trip when they were in what could easily become an overt, hostile environment. Then again, the paranoia that came when he was deeply immersed in the dark side might make him change his mind and take them back to Mustafar.

As aggravated with Vader and as unhappy about this entire trip as she was, Ahsoka would not spoil the twins' excitement. She kept her reservations away from them, even as she brought the Force around herself and them to help hide them from notice as they rowed across the lake to a secluded retreat on Naboo. The most she'd been able to get out of Vader about it was that it used to belong to Padmé's family though Padmé was the one who most frequently used it. Her family had sold it after her death, and Vader managed to acquire it.

She snapped out her thoughts when she saw Luke reach over the edge of the boat to try to put his hand in the water.

"Luke. Come back in the boat," she said, using a little mental nudge to reaffirm her order.

Luke did so, and Ahsoka was glad he was too excited about the boat ride to argue with her about it because she didn't know if she had the patience right now.

"We're here!" Luke exclaimed once the boat docked

He nearly fell off the edge of the boat and into the lake in his eagerness to get out. Vader caught him and stood him upright outside the boat. Leia, on the other hand, stayed in her seat and waited for Vader to pick her up and place her next to her brother. Then they both ran off to roughhouse in the grass while Ahsoka helped Vader gather their things. She continued to glare at him in the meantime. He smirked in response, seeming all too pleased with himself.

The twins immediately got up out the grass to follow Vader as he passed while Ahsoka followed behind them. When Vader opened the doors to the retreat, Luke rushed ahead to explore while Leia stayed behind at Ahsoka's side to take in her new surroundings.

"It's pretty," Leia said.

"Yes. It is," Ahsoka agreed. "Why don't you look around with your brother?"

Leia nodded and went to follow Luke while Ahsoka took note of all the possible points of entry and exit like she always did when she was feeling antsy. She was sure Vader already had a team that took care of the security on a regular occasion since he felt secure enough in an impromptu visit. But Ahsoka continued with her check anyway before concluding they were safe. Relatively.

"What do you think?" Vader asked her.

"Now you care about my opinion."

"Not particularly. I just want to hear you admit I was right."

"We just got here. I don't know if you're right. Even if we leave and nothing happens, it doesn't mean you were right, and I was wrong. It just means we got lucky," Ahsoka stated. If he got to be difficult whenever he wanted to be, so did she. "But it feels… peaceful."

More than peaceful. She sensed Padmé here. Not Padmé on Coruscant, kind, calm, and put together as always but worried. Not Padmé when they went on missions; pragmatic, cunning when needed, and always compassionate. But she sensed Padmé without the mask of being a Senator or a diplomat. The glimpses of the woman she'd been privileged to see when it was just the two of them. Padmé, the friend. Padmé, the older sister. Padmé, even with all the things she'd been privileged to have, happiest when she just had the people she cared for around her. In a galaxy full of darkness and suffering that Ahsoka had long gotten used to, being in a place so filled with that kind of peace and contentment was almost overwhelming. Especially for someone like her, who had an exceptional affinity for Force empathy.

All Jedi had a degree of Force empathy, but Ahsoka had always been particularly attuned to it when she was younger. More able to sense people's true intentions, their true heart's desire, even when their actions contradicted them. Somewhere toward the end of the Clone Wars, she thought she lost the affinity because of the continued fine-tuning of her Force abilities during her padawanship. Jedi younglings having a power as a child and losing it as an adult when their emotions and personalities stabilized wasn't uncommon. But the affinity began to come back to Ahsoka little by little in recent years. Ahsoka didn't think it was a coincidence that it started to happen around the time she began to genuinely question the Jedi way and then renounced it completely.

"Padmé was happy when she was here," said Ahsoka. "She's everywhere around here."

"Is that what you sense?"

For all her powers of empathy, Vader had blocked her from sensing what he felt about that statement.

"Can we go outside?" Luke asked, having come back from his and Leia's exploration of the house.

"After, I show you your room," Vader answered, gesturing for the twins to follow him. Then he looked back at Ahsoka and asked, "Are you just going to stand there all day?"

Ahsoka gave him a wry look before following him. Their rooms were all clustered in the same hall on the second floor of the retreat. Once Leia and Luke had been shown their room and how to get there, they ran back the way they came to go outside. Vader followed.

Isolated as this place was, Ahsoka still didn't like the idea of being out in the open with no plausible cover for her being here. Thus, she opened the balcony doors of her room, which allowed her to see and hear Luke, Leia, and Vader out in the fields behind the property and decided to get some rebellion work done.

Normally, she would use these visits to take a break from the ever-growing pile of rebellion duties that more and more she was finding herself having to recruit people to delegate. But the work would help her not worry so much. There were no warnings in the Force and no physical indications of danger. She was just being as paranoid as she always accused Vader of being. Besides, the reports from both Diya and Barriss about a rebel cell on Eriadu were troubling.

When she got Diya's report, she instructed the girl to keep an eye on the situation and have Barriss make contact if needed. Diya could be as much of an unforgiving hardass as Vader sometimes—something that explained why the two didn't get along. But when Barriss told her about the uneasy feeling she'd had when she met with the cell and that some of their ideas sounded terroristic, Ahsoka began to get concerned. She became even more concerned when Barriss, who was as close to pacifist in her ideals as someone could get without being pacifist, suggested that the group might respond better to a more forceful brand of diplomacy.

Ahsoka wanted to think that maybe they were making a big deal out of nothing. But the more Ahsoka read the transcripts of multiple meetings, reports from no less than six agents, including Barriss and Diya, the more she suspected there might be something to their concerns. The Force told her there was a lot more. But she had time. Ahsoka would have to do something soon, but she didn't have to do anything about Eriadu now. She flagged the folder on her datapad to instantly notify of any updates that were uploaded about the situation before turning to the next thing on her to-do list.

Financial reports to look over and check off.

Ahsoka groaned in annoyance. Someone she could trust to deal with the finances was going to be her primary recruitment focus. But like anything with the rebellion, when no one else could do it, the task fell to her. And this was just the stuff she had to deal with running a fledging rebellion and getting into fighting shape to go to war. She couldn't imagine what it was like running the Empire. She wondered if Vader knew all this and more was in store for him when he became emperor. The prospect of paperwork and administrative work alone might deter him from wanting to rule the galaxy.

Ahsoka chuckled to herself some before resigning herself to reading the summaries. Inevitably, her eyes began to get heavy, the constant moving and being on the run starting to get to her. And one moment, she remembered putting the datapad down to rest her eyes for a moment, and the next she opened her eyes, it was dark, the balcony door was closed, her boots were off, and the covers were pulled over her.

Goodness, she must have been more exhausted than she thought if she didn't remember doing all that. She started to drift off again when something caught her attention. Ahsoka didn't need to use the Force to know that it didn't feel like danger, but certainly, her hunter instincts made her feel like she was being watched.

Ahsoka tiptoed out of bed, shifting her weight in such a way as she walked that her footsteps were silent. She first checked the twins' room first and found they weren't in bed. Then she looked in the room Vader had taken for himself and saw he wasn't there either. She silently went downstairs, following her connection with the twins and Vader to one of many living areas in the house.

She found the three asleep on top of a large blanket that they'd spread on the floor near the fireplace, the twins lying haphazardly over Vader's large form. The holocaster was on, and Ahsoka assumed at some point, Luke and Leia had roped Vader into watching their favorite cartoons with them. Half-empty bowls of their favorite snacks and sweets lay in a corner, and Ahsoka just hoped that Vader fed them actual dinner first before he let them con him into this.

Ahsoka decided to give Vader credit and assume that he did. For all that Ahsoka was the one with the twins all the time, Vader had taken to parenting with an ease and care that Ahsoka wouldn't have believed the Sith Lord to be capable if she didn't witness it with her own eyes. She imagined that if he could see them more often, he'd fret and fuss over them to the point that it was overbearing. To the rest of the galaxy, his mystique and legendary status lay with the fact that no one could fathom a living being as powerful as the whispers and ghost stories said he was.

For Ahsoka, the mystique lied in the fact that he could be everything that the galaxy thought he was—the dark monster, Sith, despot, ruthless, warrior, killer, murderer, and Force knew there was more—but at the same time could love his children though he didn't obviously show it. For instance, how he gave them his full attention when they talked to him even about the most mundane things. If Vader didn't care or wanted to ignore someone, he scowled, rolled his eyes, just walked away, or all three. Ahsoka would know. He did it to her frequently enough. She supposed the old Shili saying that even an Akul loved their cubs fit here.

The fact that he was so good with them and had such an impact on them when he might see the twins three times out the year if he were lucky sometimes made Ahsoka feel a little insecure about her place once all this was over. Once Sidious was gone, Vader was emperor, and he didn't have to hide them from his Sith master. When he could spend more time raising them, and he didn't have any use for her. Her fears for that future weren't usually something she dwelled on, but here in this place, filled with Padmé's love and joy, it was hard not to think about. Hard not to remember that, really, she didn't belong in this picture.

That feeling of being watched increased. Ahsoka resisted the urge to look out the window and alert the watcher that she knew they were there. She went back to her room, silently crept out onto the balcony and then the roof, making her way to the room Luke, Leia, and Vader were in from the outside.

Once she was there, she crouched on the edge of the roof and peered down below. Like her hunter instincts told her, someone was there. Vader must have been exhausted to almost death if he, in all his paranoia, hadn't sensed that. Whoever they were certainly didn't pose any danger because surely a threat to her children would have had the Force practically screaming at her. They only wanted to observe.

Ahsoka still didn't like it.

She leaped off the roof and landed silently on the ground behind the observer, lightsaber lit and at the side of the person's neck as soon as she stood.

"How about we not make any noise?" Ahsoka suggested. "I wouldn't want to wake the children."

"I don't mean any harm," said the female voice calmly, as though not bothered by a lightsaber at her neck. Ahsoka couldn't get a good read on her in the Force either. She wasn't Force-sensitive, but was trained in masking her emotions.

"Not very reassuring. Turn around. And tell me who you are."

The woman turned around. Ahsoka couldn't make out who the woman was or any defining features beyond the shadow of the woman's cowl. Only that she was human.

Before the woman could decide what to answer, the window behind them swung open, revealing Vader casually standing before it. If Ahsoka weren't as trained as she was, she would have probably jumped in startlement. The intruder would have probably jumped too if Ahsoka didn't have her lightsaber at her neck. Ahsoka would never know when or how Vader had gotten so good at moving so quickly so silently. Even in the suit.

"Sabé, you could have just knocked on the front door," Vader said in an amused, chiding tone.

"Sabé?" Ahsoka repeated.

"And you're always telling me about being so hasty with my lightsaber," Vader responded. When Ahsoka's expression didn't budge, Vader continued, "You can put the lightsaber away. Sabé means no harm. I've been waiting for her."

That statement said a lot of things to Ahsoka, but first and foremost…

"You knew she was here?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't tell me!"

"I didn't get a chance to." Before Ahsoka could dispute that, he continued, "Why don't we bring this inside? I'm sure we have a lot to talk about. Use the door this time, Sabé."

AN: Leia stole the show in the last chapter even though that was far from my intention. Lol.

This chapter is a little on the short side, but that was where it naturally ended. Some of Ahsoka's insecurities are starting to show here. Early twenties is a rough period, and as brilliant as Ahsoka is, she's not infallible from the normal problems of youth. As a character that becomes something of a true nomad in canon and who deals with asking herself who she is and what's her purpose, I thought it would be natural that she'd worry about her place and purpose in my universe too. Especially because she's never really gotten over the fact that, in her head, Padmé was supposed to be in her place and now Vader has dragged her to a place that Padmé loved so much. Vader has definitely never made that disconnect any easier on her either.

Anywho, hope you enjoyed. Review please. I appreciate it.