A/N: 4 more chapters coming up for Chris! Thank you!

Reckoning:

Every since Ahsoka had been able to sense Rex again (as soon as they made it to this side of the wormhole), she'd wanted to fly to him with all haste so that she could see for herself that he was still in one piece.

She'd also really, really wanted to yell in his mind, 'Rex! I'm here! We're coming to get you!' But she'd refrained from that as well because she knew if she connected to him, she wouldn't want to let him go.

If they were mates, she definitely would have been babbling to him via telepathy the instant she could have, and kept in constant mental contact with him until she saw him in person again. But because they weren't, because he felt all right, because there was no sense of urgency from the Force, and because they were no longer in an emergency situation, Ahsoka respected his long-established mental shields and controlled herself. (Barely, but it still counted.)

Her patience had certainly been tested as they were escorted to… wherever this was - someplace important, obviously, but not like a palace or anything - and then they were watching a movie. A movie! It was outrageous! They should be flying with all haste to wherever Rex and Cody were and picking them up and hotfooting it back through the wormhole while they still could.

At least, that's what she'd thought before the movie had started and before she could sense Rex getting closer and closer to her at a decent enough rate that her nerves were starting to settle. The movie was actually entertaining and quickly caught her attention because she'd always been curious about how Anakin and Padmè had become mates. (Legally married ones, even! Maybe? Probably.)

Over the years, through her bond with her Master, she'd been able to sense hints of his connection to Padmè. But how they became that attached to each other when he was a Jedi who should have known better than to succumb to temptation like that and she was a Senator and former Queen who knew very well that duty came first before relationships had always been a question that had nagged at her.

And now it looked like her long-standing question was finally going to get answered by the movie, so that at least made it worth the small delay in seeing Rex again.

Also, her beloved Captain's presence was definitely getting closer at an acceptable speed after being stopped for a few minutes. She was starting to vibrate with anticipation instead of worry. Not quite enough, though, that she couldn't enjoy an actor version of Anakin - only a few months younger than when she'd first officially met him (sitting in a few mechanics classes that he'd been coerced into teaching don't quite count) - get all flustered over seeing Padmè again for the first time in ten years. (The resemblance between the actor and the real deal was surprisingly close. The only thing truly off was his voice, which was a bit too high pitched, but that was forgivable.) (All of the actors looked good or similar enough to figure out who they were supposed to be. Even Jar Jar was well represented and looked real enough so that it wasn't distracting. They even made him slightly less annoying than he actually was, which was nice.)

At the moment, actor Obi-Wan was bowing to actor Padmè with Captain Typho and one of the handmaidens (she had no idea which one it was supposed to be, considering that they tended to all look alike and similar to Padmè for 'reasons') observing with watchful eyes. It's a great pleasure to see you again, my Lady.

It's been far too long, Master Kenobi. The actress smiled sweetly after shaking the handsome Human's hand. Meanwhile the poor besotted young Anakin (Force, I don't remember him looking that young!) looked like he couldn't decide if he should hide behind his Master or if he should just sweep the girl of his dreams up into his arms and run away with her as he visibly gulped. The vision of elegance in a fancy purple dress and a massive headdress that was to be his future mate (Wife. Whatever.) turned her head and focused on the second Jedi in the room. It only took her a couple seconds for recognition to dawn in her eyes. Ani? My goodness, you've grown!

The teenage Anakin stepped forward, starting to smile in that same dopey way he still does whenever he sees Padmè. So have you, he replied, which made no sense, which he quickly realized and tacked on, Grown more beautiful, I mean. And that was too forward, which was instantly seen in her eyes, and Anakin tried to fix it by adding again, For a Senator, I mean.

The on-screen Obi-Wan looked like he was refraining from rolling his eyes as he deliberately focused elsewhere.

The on-screen Padmè looked uncomfortable.

Real Anakin groaned.

Real Padmè sniggered.

Real Obi-Wan muttered, "Force."

Ahsoka gave her Master a mental poke. "Smooth, Skyguy. Real smooth."

"Shut it."

Actress Padmè decided to put the poor fool in his place, which didn't surprise Ahsoka at all, by rolling with it, smiling, and saying, Ani, you'll always be that little boy I knew on Tatooine, before turning away.

"Ohhhhh. Burnt!" Ahsoka crowed as actor Obi-Wan filled in the awkward moment in the movie with platitudes.

Anakin physically shoved her nearly out of her chair. (Obi-Wan saved her on the other side, thankfully.) "You try wooing someone five years older than you when you haven't seen them in forever! I doubt you'd do any better!"

Ahsoka shoved him back. "I bet I could!

"Undoubtedly," Obi-Wan chimed in, laughing.

"Ha!" Ahsoka grinned thanks at her Grandmaster then looked around Anakin at Padmè. "Did you really say that to him?"

Padmè grinned back. "I did. I was trying to remind him that we were friends, though, and to not make it awkward."

"I wanted to sink through the floor," Anakin muttered, inspiring his wife to pat his arm consolingly.

"Sorry, Ani."

"No, you're not," Anakin grumbled, all of them completely ignoring the movie now as more entertaining drama unfolded in real life. (Threepio was helpfully translating for the two Earth Humans who didn't speak Basic.)

Padmè winced slightly. "Okay, maybe not entirely."

"See!"

"She was only trying to help you keep your Jedi vows, Anakin," Obi-Wan pointed out.

"Exactly!" Padmè all but pounced on the excellent excuse provided.

"Not karking likely," Anakin muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at both Master and wife with a swivel of his curly head. (Ahsoka leaned back to help stay out of the line-of-sight, even going so far as to nudge her chair further away from the table.) "You just didn't want to see me as grown up enough to give you compliments like that."

"You weren't!" Obi-Wan exclaimed what pretty much everyone was thinking. (Seriously, the echo in the Force was very loud.)

"I was nineteen! Plenty old enough to know my mind!"

"Not hardly!"

Everyone's eyes were bouncing from Anakin to Obi-Wan and back again at the developing argument that had undoubtedly been brewing for years. There was no way whatever the movie was playing could compare to this. Just out of curiosity, Ahsoka glanced at the screen and saw Anakin talking to Jar Jar, Messa burstin' with happiness seein' yous again, Ani! in Aurebesh letters at the bottom of the screen. She grimaced. Yep. Real life is waaaay better.

Anakin's scoff of indignation was impressively loud. "Oh really?! And how old were you when you fell like a rock for your Mandalorian Duchess?!"

Obi-Wan's cheek-bones reddened instantly. "That has nothing to do with this!"

"How old?"

"It doesn't matter."

"How. Old."

The two Human Jedi glared at each other for a full ten seconds before Obi-Wan spat out, "Twenty."

"Liar!"

"Am not!"

"Are too! You were still nineteen when you were first assigned the mission to guard her! I looked up the date on the old report!"

If looks could kill, Obi-Wan would have just skewered Anakin in that moment.

Ahsoka and Padmè looked at each other behind Anakin's back with wide eyes, not quite believing that they were privy to this but enjoying the show immensely.

"Fine," Obi-Wan muttered, after looking away and glaring at the movie with storm-grey eyes that most definitely weren't tracking it. (A Mandalorian was handing a female bounty hunter a canister and saying, Take these. Be careful; they're very poisonous.) (Ahsoka did a bit of a double take at what she'd just read. What? How did we go from Jar Jar to bounty hunters?) "I was nineteen when we met. But only for a few weeks." And because she'd gotten distracted, she had to replay her grandmaster's words in her head before she could make sense of them and focus on Anakin to see his reaction.

Anakin was radiating triumph as he smirked at the older man. "Still counts."

Obi-Wan huffed, still glaring at the screen but starting to actually watch and look intrigued. "If you insist."

"I do."

Only slanting his eyes at his former Padawan, Obi-Wan closed the subject by saying, "Fine, I will grant that you weren't too young to know you were romantically drawn to Padmè, but you were definitely too young to make anything but a hash out of it."

"Oh! Burnt again!" Ahsoka couldn't help but tease her Master.

Anakin only growled, now glaring at her as Padmè giggled her agreement behind a hand that did nothing to hide the quiet sounds from Ahsoka's excellent hearing.

Obi-Wan was purposely ignoring them now, the way he did whenever his Padawans were getting too childish again and he couldn't stand to deal with them anymore. Instead, he nodded at the screen, head tilted a little and anticipation thrumming through him. "I remember this. This is about to get interesting."

"What? What's going to happen?" Ahsoka said as she looked at the screen. Actors Anakin and Obi-Wan were talking in Padmè's apartment. (Also incredibly accurate, right down to the shape and colours of the sofas.)

I don't think she liked me watching her.

What was she thinking?

"Privacy from the intense Jedi boy who couldn't stop devouring me with his eyes, that's what I was thinking," real Padmè said wryly as they showed actress Padmè asleep in her extravagantly large bedroom with Artoo keeping watch.

Ahsoka wasn't the only one who guffawed loudly while Anakin sputtered for a few seconds and then finally spat out, "I wasn't that bad!"

"Yes, you were," Dormè piped up, one of the only ones not completely losing it. "If I hadn't been a hundred percent certain you were a Jedi, I would have called the police about a stalker who'd shown up to fawn all over his favourite Queen."

"Did that happen a lot?" Ahsoka asked as Anakin flushed bright red and sank into his chair like he'd rather disappear than have his family and a couple strangers laugh at him right now.

Padmè answered. "Not often, but it wasn't exactly a rarity either. It got better when I was only a senator instead of a queen, at least."

"The assassination attempts never tapered off, though," Anakin mumbled into his chest, he was slumped that low.

"True," Padmè conceded.

Putting the few clues together that she'd gotten so far, Ahsoka answered her own question from earlier. "Oh! Someone's trying to kill you again right now, aren't they?!"

"What?!" Anakin and Padmè exclaimed together, the former popping up instantly out of his slump and casting a suspicious look at the now wide-eyed Earth people in the conference room with them.

"She means on the movie," Obi-Wan said dryly.

Anakin looked at the screen, that was showing the actor Anakin and Obi-Wan talking again, and then said, "Oh, yes. That's what was happening at the time. And my wonderful, hypocrite of a Master was lecturing me on attachments again."

Reading the dialogue that was being translated into Huttese for them, Ahsoka had to agree with that.

I'd much rather dream about Padmè. Just being around her again is… intoxicating.

Padmè, hearing (reading) this three years later, snorted in amusement, making real Anakin protest, "It's true!"

Ahsoka nearly rolled her eyes at that, but then thought of how she felt whenever she was in close proximity to Rex and his delicious male scent and blatant strength and conceded that the word might be accurate when it came to being in the presence of one's mate. Especially when the Force was involved to enhance the feelings of attraction.

"I suppoooose I'm flattered?" Padmè teased back, patting his arm as she kept her eyes on the screen.

Actor Obi-Wan didn't look impressed with young Anakin's confession. Be mindful of your thoughts, Anakin, they betray you. You've made a commitment to the Jedi Order; a commitment not easily broken. And don't forget she's a politician and they're not to be trusted.

"Someone's speaking from experience, Mr. Look At Me, I'm In Love With the Pacifist Leader Of The Neutral Systems, But I'm Going to Pretend I'm Not And Be The Best Karking Jedi Ever," real Anakin muttered bitterly.

The image had switched back to Padmè's dark bedroom and more words were likely on the screen, but Ahsoka was ignoring that again in favour of watching her Masters, her head swiveling from left to right and back again fast enough to make her lekku sway on their own. These issues have been festering in them for far too long. It's good that they get them out now, even if it is in front of strangers.

Obi-Wan turned to look at Anakin fully again, leaning on the table, his copper eyebrows drawn together in a deep frown. "I'm not trying to BE the best, I'm just trying to DO my best with the situations I've been given. And as far as Satine goes, I've never kept it a secret that she is a good friend of mine."

Anakin leaned forward too, hands slamming on the table, and glared back. "Oh, she's more than that."

Obi-Wan's frown somehow deepened. "So what if she is?"

"Then I call you on all of the lectures about attachments I've had to endure over the years!"

"I was just trying to save you from the same pain, confusion, and depression that I've gone through because of my own!"

Anakin sucked in a breath (maybe everyone did, because the room suddenly felt airless) and Obi-Wan looked shocked that he'd just confessed to something so un Jedi-like. Confessed to being just like a normal being with feelings who made mistakes. Confessed to being less than perfect.

The only sound in the room came from the movie, which was fairly quiet right now with only some creepy music playing. (Ahsoka couldn't peel her eyes off of Anakin to check it out, though; his shocked expression was seriously way too good to miss.)

After a few seconds, Anakin snapped his mouth closed and kind of sank into himself as he settled his rear end back in the chair. "Oh."

And that was it.

Outwardly, anyways.

But across their shared bond, Ahsoka was pretty sure she could feel him apologizing rather profusely to his former Master via their own bond. She couldn't hear the specific words, but the emotions were clear enough. Actually, she'd probably be able to sense them even if she didn't have a mental bond with her Master because he was bleeding more than enough remorse and shame into the Force for any even slightly empathic person to feel. His face and body language were plenty expressive too, if Padmè squeezing his hand in support was anything to go by.

The rest of the people in the room - Typho, Dormè, Threepio, the young man who spoke Huttese called Ben, and Administer Champilo – were staying respectfully silent even as the movie suddenly sounded like Coruscanti traffic while they watched the tension ease from the two best friends who'd somehow forgotten that along the way thanks to the stresses of the war.

And then Obi-Wan smiled a little ruefully as he glanced at his audience with a single sweep of light blue eyes (one of the happy colours adopted by his changeable eyes, the brighter the blue the better, meaning that apologies had been exchanged and accepted between Master and Padawan) before settling on Champilo. "I apologize for all of the interruptions to your movie. But from what I have actually seen so far, the script has been nearly word for word what I remember of the events, with only a few gaps for missing scenes here and there. It's probably safe to say that the rest of this movie, at least, is close enough to events that we lived."

Champilo waited for Threepio to finish translating, the droid having taken over from Ben completely a while ago, and then shook his head with a smile at Obi-Wan. "Don't worry about it," he said with the helpful protocol droid echoing his words in Basic. "This whole experience has been more than informative enough. We are just happy…" he paused as his wrist comm beeped and a quick spurt of Earth words emerged from it in a female voice that made him smile slightly before he replied with something that sounded like a direction and then he turned his focus back on them.

Champilo told them something that Ahsoka didn't need to hear any of the translations for, because she could already sense it now that she wasn't caught up in Anakin/Obi-Wan drama.

Rex was here. Her unclaimed mate was HERE! Probably on the roof, by the feel of it.

Ahsoka's hold on her patience snapped and she burst from her chair and was already through the (previously) closed and locked door before Threepio's Basic translation of, "They're here, Sir. Tell Smythe we'll meet them on the roof momentarily. Your friends have arrived," could be completed. (Force powers were handy things to have in situations such as these.)

"Ahsoka!" Anakin yelled after her, and she could sense him rushing to catch up as she sped down the long hallway, along with the rest of their group trailing behind, but she wasn't stopping for anything.

Rex was here and she was going to see him in the next minute or die trying.

And since her control had snapped anyway, she reached for his familiar mind and called out to him, "Rex! I'm coming!" as she used another wave of the Force to open the lift doors that led up to the roof. (There was no elevator in the shaft, but that wouldn't stop her; she'd just jump up instead. It was faster anyway.)

Nothing had ever felt more satisfying nor brought more hope to fill her chest like a burgeoning sunrise after a long, cold night than hearing Rex immediately and unthinkingly answer back, "Ahso'ika?"