Chapter 2

AN: this takes place right after "Hide and Seek"

14 BBY: a rebel base

Ahsoka Tano was being patient. She had gone to the debriefing with Alliance high command. She had told them everything she had learned about the Empire and the Inquisitors, and reported everything that had happened on Radda. She had been given a rank and Alliance identification, and had memorized all sorts of decryption procedures and secret codes. She had shot numerous inquiring glances at Anakin silently begging him to please tell her what had happened to him in the years she had thought he was dead. Ahsoka was determined to not be the only person debriefed today.

So, Ahsoka was waiting for him when Anakin stepped out of his and Leia's shared bedroom, having just tucked his daughter into bed. The small room they were in was part of Anakin's quarters and clearly served as a playroom, office, kitchen, and dining room all in one. Space and resources for the fledgling Alliance were limited, and these were, Ahsoka supposed, some of the most spacious accommodations the base had, considering Anakin ranked quite highly in the command structure.

Anakin leaned with his back against the wall next to the door, watching her, waiting for what she had to say. In the days of her apprenticeship, she would have expected him to be impatient, defensive. Now, he seemed content in waiting for her to initiate the conversation. Ahsoka sighed. Anakin might have changed a lot, and he might have been putting up a good front, but she knew that this would still be a touchy subject for him.

On top of that, she wasn't sure the best way to phrase the question she really wanted to ask. Why the kriff did you and Senator Amidala have a daughter was probably not the most sensitive way of putting it.

"Leia…" she began, "her mother…"

"Padme's dead" Anakin supplied shortly, his voice a careful, deep monotone. His mental shields were a tight, impenetrable wall. She felt nothing from him. His frank, unfeeling was response was so unusual for him that she momentarily forgot it was her turn to speak.

Padme was dead. Ahsoka had assumed as much, but hearing for certain brought a lump to her throat. Padme had always been kind to her, had treated her like a little sister, or even a daughter. She had thought at first she was just being kind because Ahsoka was Anakin's padawan, but had soon realized that Padme actually cared about her. Don't cry, she told herself. You were not attached to her. Her death was the will of the force.

"I… I'm sorry" she finally managed to say.

Anakin's mouth contorted into an incredibly rueful smile as he went over to the table and chairs in the corner of the room.

"This is probably going to be a long conversation. You should sit," he told her, nodding at a chair for her and pulling out one for himself. Ahsoka obeyed. She was walking on eggshells with Anakin, but was too curious to discontinue the path of the conversation. She rested her palms flat on the table once they were both seated and took a deep breath.

"What happened to her? And… how did you survive the purges? I thought… I thought I felt you die"

"It's a long story. Not one I ever wanted you to hear" Anakin hedged, a last ditch attempt to avoid this conversation.

"I deserve to know" Ahsoka insisted, finding her courage, and a little surprised to find herself angry.

"I mourned you, Anakin. And I wondered for a long time what happened to you and the Jedi, and why. I wondered if it was somehow my fault. I wondered if maybe I had been there…"

Anakin shook his head at this.

"It was not your fault. There was nothing you could've done,"

"Then tell me. I need to understand" she begged.

"It started…" Anakin trailed off

"I don't know… I guess it was a lot of little things"

In Ahsoka's mind, the fall of the Republic and the genocide of the Jedi were a few very big things. She wasn't sure anymore what "it" Anakin was talking about.

Anakin huffed in frustration. It was clear he had never tried to tell this story to anyone before.

"Start with Padme, then" Ahsoka suggested.

"Padme and I got married, right after the first battle of Geonosis" Anakin admitted. Ahsoka sucked in a breath. She had of course suspected that he and Padme had been involved with each other- had known they were once he answered her question about Leia's mother. But, married? Ahsoka opened her mouth, wanting to protest that he had kept this a secret from her the whole time, almost leading with something about how it was completely against the jedi code, but stopped once she realized how hypocritical and useless that was. She was not even a jedi herself. Was anyone anymore? The order had been decimated. Before she could collect herself enough to say any of that though, Anakin plowed on,

"When I came back to Coruscant after rescuing the Ch- Paltatine, she told me she was pregnant"

The corner of his mouth almost imperceptibly twitched up in remembrance but his lips quickly tightened into a frown again.

"That night, I started having dreams. Visions." A pause. "Of her dying in childbirth"

Emotion flashed through Ahsoka, and her hands clenched. She recalled too well her own visions of Padme's demise. They had been horrible, and she had only been Padme's friend. Anakin had been her husband.

"They were just like... like ones I had had before. Visions that came true"

Anakin dragged his flesh hand over his face, rubbing at his mouth with his palm. Ahsoka suspected he had wiped away tears, and was attempting to hide a tremble in his lips.

An image flashed through the force: Padme, her eyes squeezed shut, gritting her teeth, tears and sweat wetting her face. Ahsoka heard-felt-echoes of a pained cry, a sobbed, "Anakin help me… please"

She raised her eyes to Anakin, and his mental shields, having started to slip, slammed down again.

"Palpatine-" Anakin began again but stopped. Ahsoka blinked. How would he be linked to this? Sure, he had made himself the Emperor, he was evil, but Ahsoka would've thought that particular betrayal was separate from whatever happened to Padme while giving birth.

"He knew about the dreams"

Ahsoka again opened her mouth to object. Surely that was impossible.

"He was the sith master," Anakin confessed, "Sidious"

Ahsoka's hands under the table reflexively dropped to her lightsabers.

"He revealed himself to me. He told me that I could use the dark side to save her. He wanted me to become his apprentice"

Ahsoka was numb. The truth of his version of events rang in the force, but she was too overwhelmed to even have any sort of physical reaction to such revelations.

Anakin continued on. Once he had started talking he couldn't seem to stop. He told her of his growing distrust with the council, how they had asked him to spy on Paltatine, had given him a seat at Palpatine's request. How Palpatine had been playing everything, manipulating Anakin. How Master Windu and four masters had gone to assassinate Palpatine.

"Windu was going to kill him. An unarmed man"

"An unarmed man who had the key to saving my wife"

Anakin closed his eyes. His guilt roiled through the force, settling in the pit of Ahsoka's stomach. She was almost afraid to ask,

"What did you do?"

"Cut off Master Windu's saber hand. Palpatine hit him with force lightning. He fell out the window of Palpatine's office"

Ahsoka took a horrible, shuddering breath.

"He told me the only way to save Padme was to become his apprentice"

"Anakin…" Ahsoka trailed off, not sure what to think. He wouldn't.

Would he?

Unbidden, the times he'd forced choked sentients to get information out of them, the times he'd run into battle, saber blazing, anger blazing, the time he had gone after Obi Wan's supposed killer, rose to her mind. Her voice shook as she asked the dreaded question.

"Did you?"

"Yes"

Ahsoka rose, and drew one of her lightsabers, her free hand flitting to the hilt of her second blade on her belt but not drawing it. The weapon ignited with a sickening chzzk, pure white light emanating from the hilt. She had barely thought about initiating the action; her aggressive response to being faced with a sith had been conditioned into her during the war. By Anakin himself.

She had once found the pale glow of her sabers comforting. Now, it was cruel and sickeningly cold.

Anakin had sprung to his feet a split second after she had, hand hovering over the hilt of his own lightsaber on his belt. The hilt looked the same as the one she had always known him to carry. She imagined it igniting, blood red, bleeding like her own crystals had one bled for the sixth brother.

All of this flashed through her mind in a split second; her battle instincts were beginning to kick in. But she stopped for an instant with her lightsaber raised in front of her body.

Though she had not wanted to admit it as a padawan, she knew her master was fully capable of falling to the dark side. She had witnessed him on the brink before. She herself had some semblance of knowledge of what it felt like to be dark: weak memories of the awful ordeal on Mortis.

Surely, she should have noticed earlier, upon first encountering him in the hangar, if he had been using the dark side. Why hadn't she?

Her light saber still hummed before her, not dropping an inch, but Ahsoka studied Anakin's face. His azure eyes were not trained on her. They stared, horrified, over her shoulder, at something behind her. Keeping her gaze glued on him, she stretched out her feelings, searching in the force for the source of his distraction. She found a force presence, flickering wildly with fear, but with a faint hint of resolution and a need to protect.

Ahsoka craned her head to look at the little girl who stood in the doorway, clad in a white nightgown, brown eyes wide and wet, Padme's unruly curls sticking out from her head in every direction and surrounding her pale face. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and Ahsoka knew, that Leia would try, despite her terror, to stop Ahsoka if she made a move against Anakin.

"Princess," Anakin began, his voice steady and soothing for his daughter's sake.

"Everything's okay." He didn't continue, obviously not sure how to explain the situation to her. Not placated, Leia stood stock still, her eyes fixed on Ahsoka's lightsaber, which was still drawn against her father.

"Ahsoka," Anakin addressed her now,

"Search your feelings. I'm not a sith- not anymore"

He let down his shields. His grief and guilt flooded the force, and his fear too. But he wasn't dark. Behind the roaring sandstorm of his emotions, his mind shone like Tatooine's suns, with the clarity of its crystal blue sky. She knew it to be the mind of her master, Anakin Skywalker. Perhaps it was even brighter than she remembered it from the rare occasion he had let her in as a padawan to show her mental shielding techniques.

"No" Ahsoka conceded. "You're not a sith"

Ahsoka lowered her lightsaber. As soon as he knew she wouldn't hurt him, Anakin brushed past her, making a beeline for his terrified daughter. He crossed the small room in a few long strides, dropping to his knees in front of Leia, folding her into his arms, letting her bury her face into his broad chest. Ahsoka remembered the rare feeling: the safety she had felt when he embraced her as a young girl. Encircled in his strong arms, she had felt for a moment like nothing evil could ever touch her.

Ahsoka deactivated her weapon, placing it on the table and then bracing her hand on the cool metal surface next to it. She let out a shuddering breath, realizing she had been holding it in. A million questions ran through her head. The light she had seen in Anakin went against everything she had been taught about the dark side. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

But Anakin had been a sith. And now he wasn't. How could that be possible?

Ahsoka had also been taught that sith didn't love. But watching Anakin whispering platitudes into Leia's ear, Ahsoka knew that Anakin loved his daughter.

After a moment, Anakin shifted, and Ahsoka's muscles tensed, but he was only moving to stand up, hoisting Leia in his arms.

"Tea sounds good right now, doesn't it?" he asked Leia, but in a loud enough voice that Ahsoka could hear him and know his intent was innocuous as he moved towards her and the kitchen. The girl nodded mutely. Ahsoka leaned heavily on the table still, drawing deep breaths to dispel her tension and emotion into the force. She knew she shouldn't have been, but having seen into his mind, she was sure in her heart, that Anakin could be trusted.

She watched Anakin help his daughter measure out the ingredients to prepare the tea. It was, she distantly realized, the secret Skywalker family recipe from Tatooine, the one he used to make for Ahsoka in the mess on the Resolute or in the temple after she had experienced a particularly harrowing nightmare. She had wondered then how he managed to obtain the spices needed, and still did now.

Everything about Anakin Skywalker, it seemed, was an enigma.

Occasionally Leia would glance over at Ahsoka with distrust. The careful rapport they had formed in the hangar earlier had been destroyed by the sight of "Auntie 'Soka" facing her father with a lightsaber.

Eventually, Anakin pulled two mugs from a cabinet and poured the finished tea into them. Wordlessly, he held one out to Ahsoka, meeting her eyes for a fleeting moment, and she took it, her long, slender fingers shaking slightly. He then switched to holding Leia with his mechno hand and dipped his flesh pinky into the second mug. Seemingly satisfied that the beverage wasn't too hot, he handed the mug to Leia. The large handle dwarfed Leia's tiny hands, and the cup obscured most of her face from view as she raised it to her lips.

The achingly familiar taste slipped warmly over Ahsoka's tongue as she drank from her own mug. Her hands stopped shaking after a second sip.

After drinking in silence for a while, Leia leaned up to whisper in Anakin's ear. Her eyes were focused on Ahsoka. Anakin whispered a few sentences back to her, and whatever he had said made Leia relax. The little girl let her eyes slip closed tiredly for a second before she nestled her head into Anakin's chest sleepily. He gently took the mug from her, and drained the rest of it before placing it on the counter.

"Think you can go back to sleep now?" He murmured into her curls. A beat passed before Leia minutely nodded her head.

"Good girl" he responded.

Anakin glanced at Ahsoka warily before carrying Leia back into the bedroom. They were out of her sight for a minute or two, which should have bothered Ahsoka if Anakin were truly a sith. Never let an enemy out of your sight if you can help it Anakin had told her after her first confrontation with general Grievous.

"I'm not your enemy, Snips" Anakin startled her, having reappeared in the doorway.

"If I were, I'd be leading the Empire, not the rebels" he continued. This brought Ahsoka's many questions roaring back to the forefront of her mind, but first she asked,

"Is she okay?"

Anakin crossed back over to the table and sat down again before answering,

"She was pretty shaken up, but she's already asleep again. Rex must've worn her out pretty good playing with her while you were debriefing"

Ahsoka sat down across from him, not sure if she should apologize. Anakin precluded her saying anything by offering,

"I don't blame you. I would've reacted the same way in your place. Probably worse."

Ahsoka dropped her gaze to the table, choosing not to think about what "worse" would've meant.

"Anyways," Anakin continued after a long silence, "I was a sith, all told, for about an hour."