Beru waited until afternoon to take her to the market. Ahsoka still didn't quite have the measure of Owen Lars but by the way he stood and let her tell him the same instructions three times before she would leave without the children he was at the very least a patient man.
It was near enough the first time Ahsoka had been without them since they were born.
She felt foolish and more than a little defiant as she paused before she left the Lars homestead. Beru had found something to substitute for a bassinet, which Ahsoka hadn't even known was a thing, and the children were both contained within.
"I'll be back soon." She whispered to them before straightening up. It felt furtive but she pressed a kiss to her fingers and then to both of their cheeks. They didn't understand, they couldn't, they were far too young. But she hoped they did.
She almost expected Beru and Owen to look at her in disapproval, or even worse, anger. But there was nothing or the sort, Beru gave her a short smile when she tore herself away and ushered her to her landspeeder. Ahsoka couldn't tell the make or model at a glance but she didn't need to know either to know it was of a far better quality than her own.
The journey was quicker on the way back into town and Ashoka spent most of it in silence, though not uncomfortable. She didn't recognise the passing landscape, it looked mostly the same to her and when she thought back to yesterday's journey to the salt flats the overriding memory was one of sickening anticipation. It wasn't until Mos Eisley grew out of the horizon once more that she started to recognise where she had been.
Beru stopped the speeder and parked up. She scanned the street for a moment before raising her hand at a man lounging at the side of the road. He nodded back at her.
"Alright, let's go." She said, starting out towards crowded end of the street.
"What was that?" Asked Ahsoka, looking back at the man.
"Hm?" Beru followed her eyes, "Oh him? He'll stop us from getting jacked. Every street has one."
Ahsoka digested this as she fell into step. She was overtaken by the sudden overwhelming feeling of being out of sync with her surroundings. She'd never been this far from the Core before, excluding this past month, and it struck her that she might have survived this long with the children without any major disasters by sheer dumb luck. It was an unnerving thought and she fought the sudden impulse to stick even closer to Beru. She had been through worse than this, she told herself again, even if the stakes had never been quite this high.
Beru led them down the street, across the road and down an alley which opened out into the market she had seen the day before. It was larger than it had been when she had still been searching for their names and thronged with people taking advantage of the lowering suns. Awnings were strung between stalls and hawkers called out to passing strangers selling everything from protein-cubes to jewellery.
It isn't long before she found herself in the thick of it, in a press of people and bustle. The list of things she needed, that the twins needed, repeated in her head on a loop. One step at a time, she told herself again. She had a feeling she would be telling herself that for years to come.
She could see Beru far ahead and bent over a stall when something caught her eye. She crossed a stream of people and found herself looking down at an array of blasters.
"See something you like, girl?" Asked the owner, a pale skinned Clabronian. She felt his eyes on her as she looked at his collection. It was blatant display and she would have thought him incredibly brazen if it wasn't for the fact no one around them seemed to care. Crime planet, she reminded herself, great place to bring up kids.
"Perhaps." She told him absently as she looked over the collection. Her lightsabers were heavy at her belt and her purse was light but…well, she was going to sell the ship. That could help with the money problems. And sure, she could defend herself if she had to right now but a blaster would would mean anonymity.
She picked up an F-22 and felt the weight of it in her hand. A little unbalanced perhaps, but it was small. She looked up at him and then to her right; Beru was watching her. When she met her eye she began to make her way over, hindered by the crowd.
The Clabronian sucked his teeth. "It's a small blaster for a place like this. Perhaps something more like…?" He reached under the table where she couldn't see and produced a blaster rifle. It was larger, roughly the same size as the clones' standard issue E-11, but modified beyond its original specs.
"That's a rifle." She said, watching his face. She didn't need the oil slick movement of the Force around him to know that he was trying to con her. "I want short range, something I can carry."
His grin didn't flicker as he put the rifle down and handed her back the hand blaster. She took it and checked it over, the memories of a thousand brothers and endless drills echoing in her head. The sight was bent and the casing rough. She inspected it thoroughly.
Beru had finally made it to her side and Ahsoka saw her open her mouth to intervene. She angled herself in front of her and spoke to the man directly.
"I need to protect my family. Will this do the job?"
His smile grew. "Absolutely."
She smiled back at him. "Liar." She said as she raised the blaster at him and pulled the trigger.
He threw his arms up over his face and stumbled backwards but nothing happened. She waited for a moment as the slow realisation that he still lived sank in. When his arms lowered his pink face was ashen.
She laid the blaster back on the table between them. "If that was my family on the line we'd all be dead now. I think you've got something better. Show me."
There was no suggestion behind her words but his fumbling hands replaced the F-22 with a similar model. She carried out the same inspection, aware of Beru silently looking over her shoulder, but was quietly satisfied. She tried to picture Rex's face if he had been beside her but pushed the thought away when the Clabronian started to haggle. She had half hoped that her implicit threat would work in her favour when it came to negotiation but he seemed to perk up when she reached for her purse, though he didn't smile at her again.
She walked away with a new blaster worn openly at her hip, one hidden away, and an empty purse.
Beru walked beside her. Ashoka waited until they were away before turning to her.
"The power pack was fused." She said quickly, "It couldn't have shot anything I swear-"
But Beru wasn't looking at her in outrage. Her face was still pleasant but Ahsoka could feel her presence in the Force, moving like a current under still water.
"It's not a bad thing to make people a little wary around these parts if you can back it up." Was all she said as she led them onwards. She moved easily through the crowded market and Ahsoka tried to keep on her heels.
Over the course of the afternoon Ahsoka felt like she sold nearly everything she had to her name. She had been worried about selling her sorry excuse for a ship but it turned out that being functional put it a cut above a good deal of its competition. Ahsoka had looked at Beru as she haggled but her face had given little away as she watched Ahsoka bargain. She didn't think she had done too bad a job of it. She unloaded the rest of her meagre supplies from her journey and, on a whim, the med-droid too. It hadn't been a part of the deal after all and Ahsoka would have only had a vaguely more solid idea of how to raise a member of her own species, let alone two humans.
She felt very little as she walked down the ramp for the last time. She wondered if perhaps she should. It felt as though it should have been a momentous moment as she handed over the codes for her last means of escape from the planet yet it barely registered. Her commitment was absolute. Perhaps there were more remote places she could go and hide but what kind of life would the children have there? There was nowhere they could be totally safe, and nowhere she would be free of her ghosts. They might as well be haunted with allies nearby.
So no, she felt no regret as she left her ship, only a small curl of satisfaction at the weight of her purse as they left. Beru remained silent and Ahsoka wondered if she had passed the test.
It was only on their way across the market square that Ahsoka finally gave pause. The stalls were beginning to disperse and Ahsoka paused as she saw one particular vender she had noted earlier. Jewellery here, it seemed, tended towards glass and twisted metals, polished to a shine or strung together on twine. Utilitarian and mismatched, but pretty all the same.
Ahsoka's hand raised unconsciously to her headdress.
"Buying?" Grunted the human woman as she began to shift boxes of her wares into her speeder for the end of the day.
Ahsoka came to her decision. "Selling." She said, and pulled the band of Akul teeth from her montrals.
The woman's eyes were shrewd and Ashoka began once more the already familiar process of negotiating. By the time she left the stall her head felt curiously bare but her purse was fractionally fuller.
It was easy to parrot her teachings on material possessions and attachment back to herself but she had worn that headdress every day since she had won the right to do so on Shili. She could still remember the hunt and the pride, for yes it was pride no matter how she had justified it, in wearing it. Master Ti wore one too, she remembered, or at least she had used to.
But she had very little here. If a few extra wupiupi meant water and formula for the twins then she would sell it and be glad.
She caught up to Beru who, if she noticed the lack of it, did not mention the headdress at all. Between them they carried the meagre remains of Ahsoka's supplies. The med-droid followed sedately a pace behind them.
All the way to the landspeeder and across the desert her small sense of accomplishment did not not wither. Perhaps she had had bigger victories but this was the first step to providing for the children and for that she would sell a thousand Akul teeth.
By the time they reached the homestead Ahsoka was more than ready to see the children once more. It had barely been half a day and yet she gathered her belongings and helped Beru with her own parcels from the market. She was practically buzzing with impatience by the time Beru opened the door, and she had no doubt that Beru could tell from the amusement just barely visible on her face.
She remembered her manners and said hello to Owen but dropped to the floor almost immediately. Both of the children were laid on the floor on a thick carpet. They seemed perfectly content, Leia grabbed the finger Ahsoka offered her and Luke seemed happy to kick his feet at her until she picked him up. They were still too young for formed emotions but Ahsoka was almost overwhelmed when she realised what she could feel from them: comfort, safety and, more than anything, recognition. Perhaps it was to be expected, she had been their sole caregiver thus far in their lives and she was sure that in their young brains she was likely synonymous with food and yet…they recognised her.
It was a comforting thing to once more look after them, even if she had only been gone an afternoon. It seemed Owen had done an admirable job but feeding and changing them, even wiping spit up from her lekku, was reassuring to her now in a way that would have seemed foreign not too long ago. Owen and Beru watched from the sidelines but did not intervene. She didn't even care that she was being observed though she knew the peaceful interlude must be coming to an end. She saw them bustling around their home and eventually had to concede that the twins would not be awake much longer. She laid them out in their makeshift crib and watched over them until Leia, slower than her brother, eventually succumbed to sleep.
"They're asleep." She told them unnecessarily. Both Owen and Beru were in their kitchen, sat at a large and rough hewn table. Ahsoka approached slowly and sat herself opposite them. It seemed like an age as she waited for them to speak.
Eventually Owen looked up. "You're going to need a name."
Ah, she had actually been prepared for this one. Undercover had never been her and Anakin's forte but she had given enough fake names not to be thrown by the concept.
"Ashla." She said eventually, "Ashla Sokath." No relation her own and yet not so far that she couldn't perhaps one day respond to someone calling her 'Soka. Perhaps it was a stupid thought but there was hardly anyone left to chide her for it.
Owen didn't comment, he simply wrote it down and left the room. She thought she might have heard something from one of the multitude of back rooms but Beru drew her attention.
"We'll get you some records for the children as well, enough to prove that they exist and that they were born free."
There was an off-kilter moment when Ahsoka realised what a very real danger she could have faced but Beru was ploughing onwards.
"Did their father give them their names?"
It jolted her out of her spiral to hear someone else refer to Anakin, even so obliquely, but she shook her head. "No…no, it was their mother."
"Good." Said Beru briskly, "No reason they can't keep them then. Luke and Leia Skywalker; two more freeborn citizens on Tatooine."
"What? No, they can't be called Skywalker, he'll…" He'd what? she thought. She couldn't afford to dwell on the maybes and could bes. She had given the bare bones of the story, as much as she could stomach, to the Larses but it had been stark facts. Their mother was dead, they were being hunted and their father could never know they even existed. Plain statements, devoid of the heartbreak it had given her to live through it. She tried again, "They can't…that name, he'd know."
"He doesn't even know they exist." Came Owen's voice as he entered the kitchen again. "Here." He said as he dropped a card onto the table in front of her. She picked it up and turned it over. It was an identichip, a card with her new name and date of birth on it. They were becoming more and more common throughout the galaxy but Ahsoka herself had never owned one. She had never needed one until now. The chip in the corner gleamed, brand new. She wanted to ask how he'd made it, right down to the last detail, but she stopped herself. It wasn't her place to question them when they'd taken her in. At least, not yet.
Owen walked over to the door, opened it and stooped momentarily. When he returned he poured a fistful of sand into her hastily cupped palms.
"Rub that on it." He ordered, "Make it look used."
She did as she was bid as he retook his seat across from her.
"The Skywalker name still means something around Mos Eisley." Said Beru, "He doesn't have any reason to look for them here."
"But-"
"It was the name of their grandmother. Names have meaning." Owen said gruffly, and Ahsoka closed her mouth. She had come here looking for their family and they had helped her more than she could have ever asked. They would keep their grandmother's name it seemed. She nodded.
"They'll ask questions." She sad eventually, "Surely some people around here will still remember his name. They'll find it out."
"So tell 'em their dad was a spice freighter pilot who never made it back. What's it matter?" Said Owen easily. Beru actually laughed at the shocked little splutter that Ahsoka couldn't quite contain. There was a terrible moment where Ahsoka felt the instinctive urge to defend Anakin as though he were her master still; she put effort into not telling them that actually he would have been a great spice smuggler if he wanted to be and he certainly wouldn't have died in a piloting accident-
A thought from a simpler time.
"I don't want to lie to them." She said and it seemed ridiculous to even say it out loud. Had she not lied and stolen her way all the way to Tatooine? Would that really be the place she would draw the line? Of course it wasn't, and she knew it with a heavy heart already, but it was another weight to carry. It seemed presumptuous to sit there and worry what she would tell two children, two teenagers, two adults, when they were sleeping not twenty feet away from her, still newborn and completely dependent on her.
"Better to lie and live than die an honest fool." Said Beru and her husband nodded his agreement. It was…practical, she supposed. Perhaps that would be the secret to living in the desert, perhaps in time she would become practical too.
"Luke and Leia Skywalker." She said quietly and ran the edge of her new identity along her finger. She had scratched and dulled the surface of it with the sand. It looked like it could belong to someone who lived here, she thought, it looked like it could belong to Ashla Sokath.
After that it seemed the floodgates had opened.
That night they kept her sat at the table and tried to teach her how to survive life on Tatooine. It was too much for a single evening and so by day she cared for the children and helped as best she could with clumsy and unpracticed hands, and by the cool air of evening she learned everything they could teach her.
Owen taught her the price of food and how much was too much to pay for water. Beru taught her the politics of the Hutts and how to avoid their enforcers. She felt like an initiate again faced with so much information but there was no time to feel overwhelmed when Owen was showing her how to work a vaporator and what to buy from Jawas and Beru was telling her what parts of town to avoid after dark. She repeated the information to herself on an endless loop during the days, determined to remember all of it.
The next night Owen sat her down once more at the table as Beru cared for the children, and laid a thick tome of flimsi in front of her. In a low voice he explained their finances to her, what they were taxed and how it should be paid.
I need an income, she realised, and it was a sour thought. She had known she would need to provide for the children but before Tatooine it had been a somewhat vague plan for the future. Seeing the price of water and fuel, the cost of a household laid out before her it seemed a much more immediate problem. Her own protein rations could be stretched but they too would eventually run out. She was well aware of the limited options available for young women on a planet like this, and young Togruta women especially. She tried not to think of Zygerria and failed profoundly.
But she also had time, and at least enough money to continue onwards, though not indefinitely. Selling her ship had given her a little padding and Owen and Beru had refused point blank to accept any of it from her. She felt helpless in the face of their generosity, stuck between wanting to repay them and not wanting to offend them by insisting. In the end practicality won out, as it seemed increasingly wont to do. She would use the money for the children.
Eventually Ahsoka came to her fifth and final night in their home. In the morning she would drive to her new dwelling, the old Sandmarch estate, and her life would begin anew. She had watched, unbearably impotent and unable to express her thanks, as Owen had loaded one of their vaporators into her landspeeder that evening.
"This is a loan." He had said clearly, "Not charity. You pay us back when you can but not a moment before, you hear?" She had nodded and tried to thank him but he had waved her off again. "When family comes knocking you answer the damn door." Was all he had said. She didn't know how or when but she vowed on the spot that if the Larses ever knocked on her door they would find it opened immediately. She would repay their kindness if she could, if such a thing could ever be returned.
After she had put the children to bed she floundered. She was beginning to think the Larses were a people who didn't care much for words but at the moment she had very little else to her name, and nothing that they hadn't already politely but firmly refused. She was still stuck trying to find some expression, some combination of words that would let them know how much she owed them, how unspeakably grateful she was, when Beru's voice broke through her reverie.
"Come sit with us a moment, Ahsoka."
She was at the table again and even as she spoke Owen joined her, a large clay teapot steaming in his hands. He set it carefully on the table and Beru poured three cups.
She sat.
"On Tatooine some families- old slave families- have a tradition. When a new member of the family is welcomed they gather and brew tzai. It is a way to give thanks but also a way to say welcome." She handed Ahsoka a cup of the steaming drink as Owen took his own. It was aromatic, earthy and familiar. "It's an old family recipe, everyone has their own, but this came down from the children's grandmother. We want you to know that you are welcome with us, you and the children both."
With that she raised the cup to her lips and Owen did the same. After the barest moment of hesitation Ahsoka raised her own mug and drank, eyes burning.
She had had this before. Years ago, just after Christophsis. Anakin had served her and Master Kenobi tea and not said a single word about it.
She set her cup down. "Thank you." She said, her voice rough. "I know you had no reason to help me but…thank you."
She waited for Owen to wave her off again but he huffed, something that could have almost been a laugh. "I've known you longer than I ever knew him. Family's family and those two children are her grandchildren."
She went to sleep that night to the soft breathing of the children and the taste of tzai still on her tongue, passed down from a woman she had never met.
The morning came quickly and, with little fanfare, she set out to follow Owen and Beru in her own landspeeder. They had tactfully suggested they take the children in their own and then Owen had less tactfully told her that her speeder was a piece of shit. The worst thing was that she agreed. As jarring as it had felt to hand them over she had done so; the added weight of a vaporator had her landspeeder dangerously close to the ground. One of the repulsors was definitely on the way out. Still, she made it in one piece across the salt flat and Beru had been right; it wasn't that far from the Lars homestead.
But distance was all it had in common.
The old Sandmarch estate was, at first glance, derelict. It was half buried under the desert where one slope of the domed roof had disappeared under the build up of sand blown in from the eastern wind. The masonry held none of the gleam of the Larses' homestead and the stone was pitted and rough.
It was going to be home. She was sure when she looked at it. Home had been a somewhat transient concept the last couple of years when she been travelling from one end of the galaxy to the other but she knew it when she saw it. She could see the years stretch out before them.
The door had sagged and Owen had to shove his shoulder against it to get it to scrape open. The inside had fared only marginally better than the outside. The place was mostly bare, clearly whoever had left this place last had left nothing of value. The space inside was smaller than the Larses'; a central room with an open kitchen attached, a few doors leading off to what she guessed were other rooms, hopefully a bedroom somewhere among them. In the central room a light well offered a look up into the clear blue sky, though the shutter was broken and it appeared that it had also offered a way for the sand to build up even inside the house. She could see dust motes in the newly disturbed air.
There was little in the way of furniture, a few chairs, spindly legged and unsteady looking. A table, a ceramic pot or two holding the remains of a plant that was long since dead. When Ahsoka pulled open one of the doors to investigate she yelped as a cascade of tools fell forward. A broom, a couple of shovels; some corroded, some broken but more importantly, some usable.
She heard Owen dragging the twin's cobbled together cot in and shook herself out of it before going to help him. Beru watched them with the children and when they were done she stood.
Ahsoka found herself at a loss of what to say. She didn't have the words to express the helpless gratitude she felt and for a moment she wished Master Obi-Wan was there to tell them properly what it meant to her. He was always far better than her at turning emotion into well thought out phrases. She didn't have the knack. There was a lump in her throat as she watched Beru lay the twins in their cot.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but faltered.
"None of that." Said Beru, not unkindly. "We've said all that needs to be said. We'll be back to see you and you'll come to see us. We're family now."
"And you answer the door to family." She mumbled and Beru smiled. She moved towards her and for a moment Ahsoka thought she might try to hug her but before she could freeze Beru laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She had a strong grip.
"Exactly. Remember, if you can protect the children then they're yours. That's the way the desert works. Keep an eye on the horizon. I'm sure people'll find a way to test you before long."
It should have felt ominous but Ahsoka nodded. Threats she could deal with, in fact it might even feel good to have a problem that she could simply hit and be done with.
Beru smiled and with a final squeeze turned to say goodbye to the children. It was disconcerting to watch them prepare to leave, like something monumental was hovering on the horizon. As soon as they left there would be no mission, no task to complete or people to find. There would be Ahsoka and there would be the children. Nothing more, and nothing else.
Before she knew it they were at the door. She stood and watched them walk through it but did not cross the threshold. Her threshold now, she supposed.
They did not pause as Owen climbed in and Beru started the engine but he did raise a hand in farewell and, after a beat, Ahsoka mirrored it.
Then they were gone.
Ahsoka watched until the speeder was no longer visible over the horizon and then watched a moment longer. There was nothing, nothing in every direction.
For a moment her resolved quivered. Beru had been a font of knowledge on human infants; Ahsoka now knew how to test the heat of formula on the inside of her arm and the importance of laying them on their stomachs for stretches of time but it felt like a great void of inadequacy and woeful under-preparation was lying in wait, ready to swallow her whole.
It felt almost like having all of her strength stripped away from her. She could be strong in a battle, quick in a fight and decisive in a strategy meeting but what use was that to Luke and Leia who needed to be bathed and fed and taught? Perhaps she was strong in other ways but in the face of such monumental betrayal that she still couldn't look at head on what use was any of that? She wanted to wonder if she would have been a good knight, a good master maybe one day. She wondered if in a different life Anakin might have been proud of her as she met him, finally, as an equal. It was all another life. The only thing she knew for certain in this life was that she was a poor replacement for their mother.
For a brief moment she wondered if she would spend the rest of her life in mourning for what she had only had for a few scant years, or if she was mourning for what the twins didn't have and would never realise the depth of what they had lost.
The wind picked up. Ahsoka took a deep breath. The air was dry. There was a house to clear, walls to be dug out and a vaporator to set up. All of the grief that was choking her, there was no place for it in this new life. It felt cleansing to have some small kernel of herself back, some part of Ahsoka Tano…no.
Not Ahsoka Tano, but Ashla Sokath.
She was going to build a life out here, brick by brick and year by year.
It was time to dig in.
The first three months of her time on Tatooine passed in the same way she remembered the last year of the war; long stretches of inactivity interspersed by moments of sheer terror and crippling doubt.
During the days she witnessed miracles. She could remember the first time Luke had held his own head up, the first time Leia had made an uncoordinated grab for her lek and the feeling of their minds coalescing into something she could recognise. At times the joy she felt at seeing them grow still felt stolen but it was hard to focus on anything when she could feel their comfort at seeing her.
Time was passing and their short lives were growing longer, their bodies heavier. Ahsoka had even stopped bursting into tears at random intervals when she fed them, mostly due to the omnipresent threat of dehydration but she was learning to take her wins where she could.
During the long hours of light she worked with the vaporators, juggled children and speeder parts and a host of other responsibilities that she wan't sure she was qualified for. Sometimes it felt like she was barely keeping their heads above the water, that any moment now something was going to arise, something she hadn't foreseen, and then all of play-acting at being able to keep the twins safe would be ripped away.
The grief was a constant companion but when the darkness fell and the children were put to bed the anger would come. She couldn't help it. Sometimes it felt like she would choke on it as it rose in her, anger she didn't want, staining everything she had loved. She was angry at Anakin for everything, absolutely everything. She was so angry at him for giving up, for turning and abandoning them all. He would never see Luke's first steps or hear Leia's first words and she was so furious with him for it she could spit. But it didn't stop there, oh no, it seeped like a poison. She was angry at Obi-Wan for having the audacity to die, Bail for offering to take Leia and Breha because Ahsoka knew she would be better at this than she was. As the moons rose one night she realised she was even angry at Padmé. Had they not trusted her? Had she done something to make them think she would have told the council? She had loved both of them with everything she had had in her and they had't even trusted her enough to tell her they were married. And now here she was, alone with their children, hunted and living at the edge of the galaxy.
But the anger couldn't sustain them in the desert and for that she was glad. She had seen what it could do and she had no desire for the children to see it, even if they could understand. It was easy to release it to the Force when the day grew light again and once more there were a thousand things for her to do. She tried to pull her mind from it and she snatched sleep in minutes every night before tending to the children once more and trying to make her dilapidated ruin into a home.
She moved the children from room to room with her as she worked. She chatted away to them as she dug out the foundations of the home from a decade's worth of built up sand. The process took the best part of the week but she was pleased with the results.
Her efforts had revealed a split level floor in the central chamber and enough timber to at least fix the shutter over the light well so that no more sand could get in. She had been right that most of the furniture was eroded beyond repair but some of it was salvageable. A trap door set into the floor of the kitchen had revealed a lower cellar for preservation, cleared out but still useful.
It would need a lot more work still, more than she could manage before she had more resources, but it was the first space she had ever had that was purely hers. Well, Ashla Sokath's, but the difference between the two was lessening every day.
She tried once to meditate in the main chamber. She could remember the light and airy feeling of the Force and how it had permeated the stones, walls, courtyards and gardens of the Temple; she wanted the children to know that peace. She would have tried more than once but almost as soon as she settled Leia fussed and Luke needed changing. Perhaps aiming for peace had been a lofty ideal, she thought, when dealing with infants. Either way, different though it may be, she thought some of her intent may have suffused through the space of their humble dwelling. Whatever the reason, it was beginning to feel like home.
For those first few days she didn't venture beyond their property line. They did nothing apart from learn how to exist alone with one another in their new abode. She learnt how to tell a hungry cry from a scared cry, how to get spit up out of leather and how to take a sonic shower in less than three minutes. She learnt that holding Luke would calm him but with Leia she needed to pace the length and breadth of their new home before she would let herself be lulled into sleep.
But the outside world could not be held back forever. She knew what her accounts looked like, thanks to Owen, and she knew how long their rations would last. It was time for a trip into Mos Eisley. The twins had enough formula for a while yet but a supplier would ease her mind. Her own dietary needs were becoming more dire; she could live off protein packs if she had to but it wasn't pleasant and it was certainly not ideal. At this rate it wouldn't be long before the cramps and the shakes started to set in. No, if she wanted to be strong she was going to need meat.
She needed a job.
She thought about it as she readied the speeder for the journey to Mos Eisley. She wasn't naive, she knew what the likely options would be for a young woman alone on Tatooine, and if she hadn't Owen and Beru's emphatic insistence on employment would have clued her in. She hadn't a lot in the way of transferrable skills and her most attractive trait to an employer currently was that she was utterly desperate, or at least if nothing came up then she would be in the very near future. She looked at the shrouded faces of the children as she carried them to the speeder; there weren't many lines she wouldn't cross for them if it meant them being able to eat.
She thought about the cantina she had heard on her first nights planetside. She'd be willing to bet it would be full of bounty hunters. Bounty hunters and dancing girls. Neither prospect thrilled her.
"One problem at a time." She told Leia seriously, as though she could understand. Ahsoka smiled. It wasn't an easy task to remain grim and dour in the face of chubby cheeks and flailing limbs. Luke grabbed at her hand when she tried to strap him in next to his sister. His grip was strong. She was measuring her success here not in time, but in the strength of their fingers and the roundness of their cheeks.
She climbed into the speeder and, after a tense moment, the engine turned over. Another item on the impossibly growing list. It didn't feel right to have the children with her in such a janky speeder but it wasn't like she was swimming in options. She could have left the twins with Beru and Owen, she knew they would be pleased to see them again in their own understated way, but it felt important to have them with her. There was no use hiding them, not now that she was planning a life here. She wanted to show them, and maybe even herself, that she could do this. She could walk right back into Mos Eisley and fend for all of them.
It was a mantra she kept up the whole journey.
When she made her way into the city she parked two streets away from where Beru had taken her the first time. It took a little while to settle the children and hide them from view but when she had she scanned the street. A man, different to the one she had seen last time, was leant against the wall, casually looking up and down the street. She waited until he looked her way and raised her hand. She tried to look like she knew what she was doing. The man paused, looked her up and down, and inclined his head. She tried not to smile when she walked away. It wasn't even a victory, not really, just a mimicked custom.
She made her way through the streets, recognising more and more of the city around her. For all of her worry no one accosted them from an alley or pointed from across the street. No one screamed "Jedi!" as she crossed from one side to the other, wending her way towards where she knew the market was. In fact, no one seemed to be taking that much notice of them at all. She could feel an awareness around her, abutting her, in the Force. It was like waves against a shore, the consciousness of Mos Eisley washing over her. People noticed her, evaluated her and then moved on. She was new, new enough for curiosity, but not interesting enough to sustain it. She hoped it remained that way. Last time Beru had been seen with her, talking to her and leading her around, and Ahsoka hoped that that small measure of acceptance was enough to stave off any hostility.
In that regard Tatooine was an excellent place to hide. Natives, immigrants, Spacers and people just passing through, Ahsoka had seen them all already on just her short time on the planet. She knew what they must think when they saw her; people had already seen that she had children with her but probably hadn't had a close enough look to know anything else. Beneath the shade of the linen they could be hers. She brushed past a few people on their way elsewhere and caught their notice.
She wondered if people would wonder where she had come from, and what could make her run so far as to come and settle in a place like this? Had she stolen these children, was she running from a spurned lover, their father?
She felt the curiosity wash over her and break against her as she moved through the throngs of approaching market goers. There were half truths amongst the barely formed speculations and she wished that they would be able to last. It would be much easier if she could claim the children as her own but it wasn't an illusion she would be able to maintain for very long. Likely only the fact that Tatooine didn't seem like the sort of place that welcomed too many questions was keeping someone from asking what a Togruta was doing turning up with two baseline human children and no explanation.
Or perhaps she was simply being suspicious. Perhaps their interest would wane and she would be able to live out her days raising the children and being left alone.
She had arrived at the market. It was busier than her last visits. She hitched Luke higher and Leia closer.
She had a plan of attack when she begun, she would start in the north west corner and work her way down the rows until she had covered them all. It was a good plan and lasted all of five minutes. The stalls weren't in even rows and she often found herself buffeted in the eddies of people moving between them. She asked at everywhere she stopped, trying for casual, if they had any work going or if they knew anyone who did. The answers came in consistently, a resounding 'no' with varying degrees of politeness.
It was at one of the later stalls that she stopped for a moment. The vender was selling rugs, from beautiful geometric weavings to plain square carpets. She fingered the one closest to her for a moment; the floor at the house was very bare and she had been using her bedsheet for the twins to lay on during the day. It might be nice to have something for them to learn to roll over on, to crawl on, to learn to walk… But there were many things she could not offer them, rugs and toys and all the other trappings of childhood being among them.
She planned on asking the seller, more out of habit than any real expectation, if there was any work going at all but she looked and hope died in her throat.
The owner of the stall sat a ways back, casting an eye of her wares and doing very little else. When she turned to the man selling the carpets and haggling her heart sank.
He was a slave.
Beru had taught her some of the ways to recognise a salve on Tatooine. It wasn't always obvious but Ahsoka was sure; a collar and rough spun tunics were two of the signs Beru had told her of. Ahsoka tried to cast her mind back, there must have been many slaves selling wares in the market today, she must have spoken to quite a few. It felt like a stone had settled in her stomach. She might not know much about Tatooine's culture or even the economy but even she knew one basic fact: she was more expensive to hire than a slave.
She closed her eyes and breathed evenly. She ghosted a hand over Leia's head and felt Luke's little foot. There were still options. She could ask in the restaurants, in any of the freestanding shops. If it came to it she would leave Luke and Leia with the Larses and venture into the cantinas.
Quite suddenly the day seemed wasted and failure weighed heavily on her. She wanted to go home. She wanted to take the children back, write the day off and start again tomorrow.
She took off at a brisk pace back to where she had left the speeder. At the edge of the market she passed a stall selling some kind of meat cooking on a spit. Just the smell of it made her stomach cramp but she didn't even bother to stop. Meat was expensive here, and however much it cost it was beyond her meagre means. She would live, she told herself sternly, she could live without it. Togruta were natural carnivores; if she had to she would hunt.
By the time she reached the speeder the suns were growing high. She flipped the man a coin as she walked past and he nodded once more. The children were growing restless and she could feel it permeating into her own mind.
She secured the children and pulled out of the street carefully. The speeder was listing to one side. She made her way out of the sprawl of the Mos Eisley streets but stopped before committing to the journey home. The desert stretched out before her.
She stretched her awareness beyond her own body and resisted the urge to slump against wheel. She could feel the barren landscape before her and the complex and sticky web behind her. She could feel Luke and Leia beside her, glowing brightly, pure and uncorrupted. She closed her eyes. Another day with nothing to show it. Another day of resources and expended energy and she was no closer to being able to care for Luke and Leia independently. Another day of failure and being kept alive off the charity of others. She was not going to cry again, she thought firmly, there had been enough of that going around. She took an even breath in, held it and released it. She took another. It worked, she felt her control return and her equilibrium return. She was just about to engage the engine once more when-
A terrible grinding noise. The speeder dipped dangerously to one side, almost touching the ground. She could smell burning rubber.
"Fuck!" She said loudly and then glance at the children. "You didn't hear that." She told them. Neither seemed alarmed at the sudden tilt in the world but the tide of inadequacy rose once more.
No, it wasn't inadequacy. Something else simmered under her skin and for a moment she couldn't place it. It felt like a buzz, a righteous and dangerous swell that had her out of the speeder and slamming the door. They were still above the ground, though by millimetres, and she disengaged the gears and began to push from her side door. The progress was slow and stuttering but the fire of her anger kept her going until she could see her destination at the end of the street: the wide shop front and the uneven step. She held herself back just long enough to take the children from their seats before she was storming through the door.
The auto-shop was as cluttered as it had been the last time she was there three months before, perhaps even more so. Aside from that it looked as she remembered, the guts of an old fusial thrust engine were scattered across the floor as though someone had pulled it apart and not been able to reassemble it. She scattered them as she walked up to the front desk, fuming.
The proprietor was awake this time but still sitting in his chair behind the desk looking fit to doze. He started when Ahsoka brought her palm down on the desk.
"No refunds." He said immediately and she fought the urge to bare her teeth at him. He was unkempt, hair greasy and two days worth of stubble on his chin. She could smell him even with the desk between them. It felt good to see his eyes widen when he looked at her face but she tried to check herself.
"Oh no." She said sweetly, "I don't want a refund. I just want what you sold me."
He looked at her suspiciously. "I sold you a land speeder."
Her voice became starched when she got angry, too much of Master Obi-Wan's clear cut accent and dry delivery. She wanted to lower it, round the vowels, and sound like everyone else on this backwater.
"You sold me a working landspeeder."
He leaned back. "It was working when I gave it to you." He said dismissively.
Her patience snapped abruptly. She was hungry, stranded and tired. She had two children with her so she couldn't even shout.
"Listen here, you sleemo," she hissed and leant half way across the desk, "either you fix that piece of shit you sold me or I'm going to…I'll…" she cast around furiously for a curse bad enough to fit her current mood and bit out a phrase that Anakin had used once or twice in her hearing. It was Huttese and he'd always refused to translate it but the one time he'd used it in front of Master Obi-Wan he'd had to duck for cover. It wasn't her best work and she didn't know what was going on with her face but he must have believed her because he blanched.
There was a small laugh from behind him, hastily disguised as a cough.
"I'll go…see what we have out back." He stammered as he all but fled from his chair. Ahsoka watched him go with a hard eye. He was unsteady on his feet. It wasn't difficult to guess where he spent most of his evenings.
She was left alone in the front. It was hard to climb down from her anger with it still thrumming through her but she made the effort. She shifted her weight from side to side and paced to keep the children calm. She looked down at Leia on her front and then at Luke over her shoulder.
"We'll be home soon." She told them in a whisper, "Home soon, we'll get you both fed and we'll come back tomorrow. Gotta be a job for me round here somewhere right? Not long-"
Abruptly she realised they were not alone. She broke off her assurances and looked up. There was a woman standing in the door way to the back office, the same one she had seen on her previous visit. She was Twi'lek, tall and her skin a light lilac. She was watching them.
Ahsoka watched her back.
The woman's mouth was pursed as she took them in and her eyes were shrewd. She was lithe, her face perfectly symmetrical. A collar rested across her delicate collarbones.
"We don't have a mechanic."
"What?"
The woman looked behind her but came no closer. Her eyes lingered on the children. "We don't have a mechanic." She said again, "It's why he's selling junk."
A small spark of hope caught in her chest but she took care to keep her face even. "What happened to the last one?"
"He got what everyone around here wants; the next ship out. Probably in the mid-rim by now if he's got any sense."
Ahsoka looked at her. 'Why are you telling me this?"
The woman shrugged. The movement was graceful. "Seems to me if you could keep that piece of garbage moving for a couple of months then you must not be too bad with engines. We could use a steady hand around-" She broke off suddenly and darted back into her office. Barely a moment later the man reemerged from the back with his hands full of coils and wrenches which he all but thrust at her. He looked at her expectantly.
Ahsoka felt the beginning of a plan forming in the back of her mind and she wondered if the Force wasn't cutting her some sort of break. She made a decision.
"What, you're not going to fix your own mess?" She asked him coldly.
There was a bead of perspiration at his temple and he wrung his hands before balling them at his sides.
"We don't…currently, there isn't a mechanic…"
Behind his turned back the woman had once more crept from her office. Ahsoka feigned shock and wondered if she wasn't laying it on too thick. The woman was watching her closely.
"What's you name?" Ahsoka asked him.
"Varn Abana." He said quickly and then waited. She didn't offer her own name.
Ahsoka let him squirm a moment longer before looking over the parts he had offered her. She picked through them; some were bent or twisted, some rusted through, but some of it she could use.
"Well Varn," she began, "if you let me use your garage to fix your mistake I suppose I'll consider us even. I might even forget to tell people where I bought that piece of junk."
She saw his eyes light up, she had been right to think he cared about his reputation. He agreed quickly and she left the shop to pull the speeder round to the back. She took a moment to strap the children into their seats and look down at them.
"Just a little bit longer." She told them before pulling up the where Varn was anxiously waiting for her.
He didn't say anything as he gestured to her to pull the speeder forward into the garage. It was no better than the shop but there was at least a space cleared where she could park. He didn't offer her any direction but she had the feeling he didn't know anything useful anyway. He watched her closely as she located a jack and got the speeder high enough from the ground that she could get a good look at the problem.
Two repulsors blown and another one on the way out, the compressor was shot and quite frankly it wasn't the colour she would have chosen for a vehicle given the choice. At least two of those problems she could fix.
It hurt, of course it hurt. The first time she'd worked on any sort of engine Anakin had been hovering over her shoulder visibly restraining himself from jumping in. He'd talked her through the whole process and grinned at her when the diagnostic had read fully functional. He'd coached her through it whenever they had a problem and she used to love spending that down time with him, as though they were just a regular master and padawan, the war a distant nightmare. He'd joked about one day letting her work on his prosthetic arm and she'd told him she'd shock him on purpose.
It hurt, but many things hurt to think about. Here practicality left no time for painful memories and half remembered jokes.
She could feel Varn's calculating gaze on her as she worked.
She worked to a fine line, swift economical movement but with enough flourish to imply that she could have fixed something far more complex.
It wasn't terribly difficult to fix with the right tools and by the time she stood once more barely half an hour had passed. She almost stumbled with a sudden head rush but remained steady. She tossed Varn the broken repulsors one at a time which he fumbled but caught. She was stained up to her elbows in grease and oil but she felt more settled now that the day hadn't been a complete waste.
She looked at him a moment longer, willing him to connect the dots. She could see him teetering.
The moment passed.
Luke grumbled from the car and Ahsoka was suddenly aware that it had been a long, hot, and terribly tiring day. She turned and put her hand on the speeder door. She had almost opened it when he shook himself from his stupor.
"Wait!" He called out, and Ahsoka with her back to him, grinned at the children. "You wouldn't happen to be looking for a job would you?"
It was easier to enjoy her time with the children knowing that come the next Centaxday she would officially be gainfully employed. It would be an adjustment being away from them for hours at a time but she would be lying if she said that she wasn't looking forward to having genuine work. There were other benefits too; with the promise of income in the near future Ahsoka had been less sparing with their meagre funds. She'd paid for a somewhat patchy connection to the holonet and a commlink registered to one Ashla Sokath. She only had two contacts on it so far but when she called them to tell them the news Owen and Beru had both approved of her choice to work. She didn't even realise she had been nervous until Owen had nodded and Beru had put in "You'll be leaving the children with us of course."
She'd hesitated but they had brooked no argument and from the gleeful tone in Beru's voice she had the feeling they might be quite looking forward to it. She hadn't protested. It was another problem solved.
Her last purchase was frivolous but she hadn't regretted it for a minute. She was sat on the floor on her brand new rug with both of the twins beside her. It was cheap and not large enough to cover even a majority of the chamber but she all but burned with pride when she saw them laid out on it, babbling away, all happy kicks and lifted heads.
But life was a constant shifting nebula and she should have realised that as one problem was solved another was barely beginning to make itself known.
They came as the suns began their descent.
Ahsoka had been wiping Luke's face after his formula, her own unappetising meal still on the table, when they had registered. She'd moved him calmly to his crib, checked on Leia and then walked to the front door. The shadow of their home was lengthening along the sand as the day grew late but in the far off distance she could see them.
Beru was right. She was far out enough that she had plenty of warning. Ahsoka had known this moment was coming practically since she set foot on Tatooine, drawing closer every time she went out in public. A part of her wished she could have left the children with Owen and Beru until she was sure that their home was safe but she knew that wasn't the way the desert worked. If she could protect them she could keep them, that was the rule. She had said she could, now it was time to prove it.
Quietly she moved about their home. Luke and Leia were asleep for the time being and she hoped it would stay that way. They were too young for memories, she knew, but nonetheless she wanted them to sleep on unaware. She placed the Med-droid in their room. She had had vague plans about retrofitting some security features into it, grafting some new programming, she simply hadn't had the chance. She took one of her two hand blasters and pressed it into its metal hand.
"Protect the children." She told it, her voice low. It gripped the weapon but made no further movement. There would be time for upgrades in the future; as it was Ahsoka had no intention of letting anyone past her.
After that she sent a message to the Larses, turned out all of the lights, and set herself up. She had her sabers at her hips but no intention of using them except as a last resort. Her blaster she wore openly. She slipped out of their backdoor and hunkered down by their vaporator, half hidden by the domed silhouette of their house.
Her pulse was slow, her hands steady. She could see them more clearly now, or at least the sand that they were disturbing in their wake. She estimated just the one vehicle, but a large one, perhaps enough for eight or nine men.
She had known this moment was coming, likely hastened by her integration into Mos Eisley. She was a single woman with two young dependents living far out in the desert where help, is she even had any, would not be able to reach her quickly.
She was going to make an example of them. She was going to send a message.
She felt a familiar prickle of anxiety at the thought of the twins sleeping unaware but it strengthened her resolve. She was used to worrying about the children now. She would worry about them all she liked but she would not doubt herself. Out of everything that had happened in the last few months this was the first situation she found herself in that was intimately familiar to her. In a way she supposed she had been spoiling for a fight. Fighting was what she had known, what she had been all but raised in. She had never known a life without its shadow.
The speeder grew closer. Night fell.
It was a cruiser, and she was right; it was large. She counted nine heads including the driver. They were cheerful as they drew closer. She couldn't hear the words but she could hear raucous bellows and a rowdy jeer. They stopped a hundred meters from the house and she watched as they spilled out of the vehicle. One of them, a human male, large, bald and stocky, seemed to shape them up, slapping cheeks and shoving them into some sort of formation. The ringleader she was willing to bet. They straightened under his gaze, each of them clutching some kind of blaster.
Her own pistol felt small in her hand. She wished she had another, or even a vibroknife.
They began moving forward slowly but with more confidence when no defences kept them at bay. The ringleader looked around carefully but headed the group closer still.
"That's close enough!" She called when they had covered half the distance.
A few of the men startled, tense, but their leader grinned. He took another step, hands high as if in surrender.
"The name's Cen. And just who am I talking to in return?"
His men jostled each other, a barely contained laugh passing between them. Cen's eyes scanned the house; he hadn't seen her.
"You're not welcome here. Turn around."
Cen smiled as though she had told him a joke. "Well now, that's not very friendly. I'm your nearest neighbour around here." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the Wastes. She said nothing in return. Master Obi-Wan had told her never to interrupt someone when they were revealing information.
When it was apparent she wasn't going to answer he continued, his hands going down to his hips. "You see I was in town the other day when someone told me that the old Sandmarch estate had someone living in it again. And I said to them, I said 'well that can't be right, there hasn't been a Sandmarch around here since the old man'. Didn't I say that?"
"Sure did, boss." Said one of his men from behind with a smirk.
Cen turned back to the house. "I used to know the whole family. Good people, hard workers. And I thought to myself I wonder how they'd feel about a squatter and her two whelps living in their home. I mean anything could happen to someone all the way out here. In fact, in that situation I thought, maybe that woman would like some kind of protection. Maybe we could work something out so that no one would come bother her. After all there's no reason we can't be friends is there, little lady?"
Force, all he was missing was the stupid hat and the blue skin, she thought disparagingly.
She shifted her weight forward and gripped her blaster. "I don't need your protection, I do just fine."
Cen sighed and dropped his head but she caught the edge of a smile. He seemed like he was hoping for a fight and was pleased he was shaping up to get one.
She raised her blaster. If I can protect it, I can keep it, she told herself again and again, If I can protect it it's mine.
He pushed his coat back from his hips and she saw the holster there. "Now that's not the attitude to take with a man like me." He said, and once again some of his men grinned, this time in anticipation. "You should think of those two little babies you've got hidden away in there because I'd really hate to have to do anything I'd regret-"
She squeezed the trigger.
It wasn't the headshot she'd hoped for; she got him in the throat. He went down still struggling, hands scrabbling at his neck. She heard a wet gurgle for all of a second before the pandemonium drowned him out.
There was a horrified cry from one of the men and a hail of bolts flew over her head. She ducked low and stuck to the shadow of her house, waiting for a pause in the volley. She climbed up over the dome of the central chamber, keeping low, and took careful aim. It felt wrong to have the front door between them but she took down the closest two with a clean shot each before jumping back down to cover. The sand muffled the noise of her approach as she rounded the edge but she could hear them clearly. Panicked breathing, high pitched babble and a rough voice swearing as he reloaded.
She took time to count her assailants. Six left. This would have been child's play with her sabers but they remained at her belt.
She heard a rev and took a glance past the house. One of them had got to the speeder and starting up the engine, the vehicle already turning back they way they came.
She took careful aim and shot once more. The speeder hit the ground.
It would have been quicker with her sabers too but one of them decided to help her along and try and run. He got a bolt between the shoulders for his trouble. Seeing him fall bothered her exactly as much as it had done in the last days of the war.
Once more there was a returning racket and she ducked back down. It was the wrong move. She panicked, unable to see the door between them and, without a second thought, stood and vaulted the domed house and sprinted. It had none of the grace of the acrobatics she used to practice at the Temple but it was unexpected. Two of them fell before her before they even realised what was happening. She barely registered them. She stopped a blind swing from the third and used his own momentum to twist him to the floor. She saw his face, white with shock, a snarl, before she had shot him point black.
She barely had time to see his face go slack before she was tackled from her side.
It had been a long time since she had been in a knockdown fight and he had surprised her with a glancing blow to her head. But she could remember well enough. She saw the moment he realised she was not going down as easily as he expected and he tried once again to hit her in the face, but succeeded only in getting her montrals. He loomed over her and so she fell back and used her leg to throw him over her head. He landed with a dull thump in the sand. He staggered to his feet, winded, and she was on him before he could recover. He knocked the blaster from her hand but she barely noticed. She caught him with a knee to his thigh, a jab to the stomach and when he doubled over, wheezing she saw his exposed neck and bit.
She jerked back and he fell to her feet, hands batting ineffectually at his neck just like his leader.
She spat the blood from her mouth. It didn't feel strange, Togruta were hunters by nature after all. Adrenaline coursed through her and she felt strong and powerful and utterly like herself.
One left.
She stalked forward and he fell back as he tried to scramble away from her. He was young, maybe as young as her but she felt no pity as she looked at him. He looked up at her in undisguised terror and a distant part of her wondered at what kind of picture she made in the dark with blood dripping from her chin. She felt loose-limbed and dangerous as she stalked towards him.
"Please don't- I won't come back, I'll tell them-"
He was babbling and he continued to as she sank to her haunches beside him. She waited until he ran out of breath.
"You won't come back here." She said. Her voice broke the night air between them and she was almost surprised to hear it so even. She barely sounded like herself.
He shook his head frantically. "I won't, I swear it, I promise-"
"Because if you do," she continued, "I'll find you. And I'll do to your family what I did to them." She looked at the bodies around them and felt him do the same. When he turned back to her she could see the white all around his eyes. It should have felt cruel to threaten people she had never met but she felt nothing of the sort. Her two children were sleeping soundly behind her, unaware they had ever been in danger, and she knew she would spill more blood than this if it kept them safe. "Do you understand?
He nodded frantically but only released his breath when she rocked back on her heels and stood.
"Clean this up." She told him, "Don't let me see you around here again."
She walked to her door calmly, opened it and shut it behind her. Only when she heard the click of the lock did she slump against it. Her face throbbed dully with the blow she had taken and the adrenaline was wearing off, leaving her feeling cold and shaky. She pressed her face to the door and made out the noise of movement. She could hear the boy crying as he went about his work. She could hear him dragging his comrades through the sand and the grunt as he lifted them back into the speeder. At one point she heard him vomit. Eventually, after what seemed like it could have been the entire night she heard the door of the speeder. There was a whine of protest from the engine and then a grumble of acquiescence as it turned over and then-
Silence.
She slid down the door and hit the floor. After a moment her head fell to her hands. She'd killed people before, growing up as she had, but she'd always felt something about it. Be it remorse, or sadness at the necessity of it. She felt none of it now. She felt no regret but no pleasure either. Only simple acceptance. Was this how he felt when he killed?
Hesitantly she reached for the Force. She almost expected it to be sickly and twisted as it moved around her but it was quiet. She could sense the children, safe and whole, not an ounce of corruption anywhere ear them.
She took a deep breathe and then held it it, releasing it slowly. Owen and Beru had told her something like this would come and that the easiest way to protect herself would be a show of strength. She doubted they could have known what that would entail. She had worried initially that there might be retaliation but Owen had simply shook his head. They were looking for easy pickings.
They would find none here.
She hoisted herself up and made her way through the dark to the doorway of the children's room. The Med-droid's backlit eyes followed her as she bent over each other them in turn. She went to kiss them both goodnight before remembering the blood on her face. She kissed her fingers and pressed it to their cheeks instead. Neither stirred.
She backed away and looked at the droid. It didn't move as she took the blaster from its hand.
"Thank you." She said quietly, and wondered if it could understand.
It tottered off and she was left alone with the children. She cast a final look back at them before she left. Asleep in their own beds, never having known the danger they were in.
It was worth it, she knew. She had killed people and betrayed friends to get them this far and she was wholly certain she would do it again if she had to.
One challenge down, she thought to herself, only a lifetime more to go.