There was a constant buzz of activity throughout the lower levels of Coruscant. Flashing, neon lights buzzed and people moved through increasingly cramped pathways the further down one traveled. She knew it was a good place to get lost in the crowd, and as long as they could both reach the destination without attracting attention, it was as safe of a meeting place as they could find on the capital planet.

Ahsoka Tano took a seat at the back of a tapcaf and ordered a drink. The others in the cantina were more interested in their own anonymity than they were in her, which suited her purpose nicely. She waited and waited, eventually pulling on a calming technique she'd learned as a youngling in the Jedi Temple. These meetings rarely went exactly as planned and certainly not on the timetable they preferred. Care was always prioritized over timeliness or it could put them both at risk.

But the crew of the Ghost were sitting on Lothal, possibly exposed and being hunted by a Sith Lord. She'd told them to stay because she knew she needed their help if her suspicion was confirmed, but as minutes ticked by she couldn't help but wonder if she was allowing her emotions to get the better of her.

Just as she'd been on the cusp of deciding he wouldn't make it, a hooded figure entered the tapcaf. He spotted her and made his way through the crowds of patrons to take a seat with her, finally removing his hood. "Sorry I'm late," Bail Organa murmured. "They've tightened security again."

Ahsoka took a sip from her drink. "Thank you for coming."

"What was so delicate that you couldn't risk an encrypted channel?"

Blue eyes darted quickly around the room as she let the Force reach out, verifying as best she could that no one was eavesdropping, before turning to meet brown. "You were with Padme in the end, weren't you?"

He blinked hard, the surprise at the question clear in his expression. It faded slowly into sadness and he gave the smallest nod. "Yes."

"And her child…. he died with her?"

There was a flicker of conflict in Bail as he nodded again. "Yes."

Ahsoka drew a steadying breath and reached out, her fingers touching his arm. "This is important," she stressed. "If I'm right, more important than you could know. I need the truth, Bail. Is Padme's son - Anakin's son - dead?"

"You knew Anakin was the father?" Bail asked, his voice deadly quiet and the Togruta woman snorted.

"He wasn't that subtle."

A soft, sad smile tilted his lips. "Neither of them were." The Senator pushed a breath out through his nose, dark gaze falling on her hand still clutching his arm. "Why are you asking about this, Ahsoka?"

"The crew that leads Phoenix Squadron - the crew of the Ghost - are on Lothal. They came across a teen that would be just about the right age. Look." She reached into the bag she had with her and pulled a tablet out.

Bail took the tablet and the screen lit up with the image that Hera's droid had captured. Some of the colour drained from the Alderaanian man's face as he stared at the image. "He looks just like…"

"Doesn't he? I could have sworn I was staring at a younger Anakin."

A sorrow took over, drawing at every inch of his features. "She named him Luke. Padme named him Luke," he managed, his voice cracking a little at the boy's name. "Obi-Wan took him. He'd planned to deliver him to Anakin's family on Tatooine, but I'd heard that something prevented him from doing so. He raised the boy himself, but I lost contact about ten years ago. Nothing from him and no way to find him without raising suspicions."

"Obi-Wan wasn't there," Ahsoka said quietly. "He was with the Sith that they call Vader. He called him father. I'm afraid the Empire got to him and has been…. What?" She hadn't thought he could find a way to look more surprised than before.

"You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"About Anakin. How he died."

She shook her head. "With the others. I'd heard he was killed in Order 66."

Bail gave a quick glance around to the crowd, reaffirming their privacy. "My understanding was that he died on Mustafar. Obi-Wan certainly thought so, but he….. He was involved in Order 66. He… Obi-Wan said that he'd discovered that Anakin had pledged himself to the Sith Lord."

A chill ran through her. "Anakin wouldn't have. He—"

"Obi-Wan saw it with his own eyes. He…" Bail clenched his jaw, shaking his head a little as if he were shaking terrible memories away. "If Luke is alive and he's with Vader, I fear the worst has happened."

Ahsoka tried to breathe through all of the tangled emotions raging inside of her, each one clambering for a prominent place in her chest. If all of this was true, Anakin was alive and he'd been turned to the Dark Side, just as Maul had predicted a decade and a half before. The Sith Lord had turned him and he'd become the monster that was raining terror down in the galaxy, spreading fear everywhere he went. But why? She had no doubt that Sidious was powerful - persuasive - but she knew Anakin. Her former Master was one of the most stubborn beings she'd ever met. Stubborn, determined, and so very kind. Yes, he had moments that he often pushed the boundaries of the Code, but to become Vader made no sense. To burn the galaxy without reason… no. She was missing something. A key. A reason. The Anakin she had known could be a force to be reckoned with, but it was always to protect the people he loved. Obi-Wan, his troops, her, Padme….

Perhaps even his child.

She pushed a breath out though her nose. "Thank you," she said quietly as she stood.

"Where are you going?"

"To get answers." She pulled her hood up and set some credits on the table to cover her drink.

"You can't save him, Ahsoka. Even if he was Anakin, the man you knew is gone."

"Maybe, but I have to know for sure. I'll be in touch."

She felt his concern follow her out, nipping at her heels and all the way to the lift. She couldn't blame him, but she couldn't just abandon them. Not again. Not with so much on the line.

—

Mara woke in the earliest hours of the morning, a soft knock at the door of the quarters she'd been provided with pulling her out of a light sleep. She glanced at the clock next to the bed. Just past four local time. Great.

The second knock drew a frustrated groan from her and she rolled out of bed, her tired senses catching wisps of a familiar presence. She trudged her way to the door and unlocked it so that it slid open to reveal Luke holding a data cylinder. "I come bearing a gift," he offered.

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "You sure your dad is in a sharing mood?"

"Didn't ask. Mind if I come in?"

Mara stood there for a long moment, letting him question if his charm would win out or not. She shouldn't let it, but she knew she would. She plucked the cylinder from his fingers and turned to pad her way back into the room. She could practically feel his grin from behind as he followed, the doors sliding shut behind him. "I'm going to guess this isn't your work?" she asked, holding up the peace offering in reference.

"I've been a little tied up, but when I heard you had switched focus on your investigation, I had Lieutenant List pull the full report we have on the Visra brother."

She wondered, by the way he said that, if certain information hadn't been made readily available to her. It wasn't beyond the ISB to play politics, even with her. It was all a power game. "I'm sure he loved being woken up for that."

Luke shrugged, taking an uninvited seat on the edge of her bed. "It's his job."

"How's your impromptu assignment go?"

He snorted as he fell back against the bed. Mara turned to the console and inserted the cylinder. "That good, huh?"

"They've gone to ground. Father thinks they're still on the planet, and maybe they are, but he hasn't been in a sharing mood on what he needs me for."

Mara risked a glance behind her as the intel booted up on the screen. "You know what he wants."

"What's that?"

"You, jumping at his every whim."

Luke sighed heavily from his place on her bed and she heard him shift, but he didn't sit up. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked, the words echoed from earlier that night at Visra's party.

A smile tilted her lips. "As well as you."

"I'm serious. This has to stay between you and me."

She turned, finding him on his side so he could look at her and Mara moved to the bed. She took a seat, slowly lying down so that she was facing him. "On my life."

There was a beat of silence between them before Luke nodded. "He's afraid. Afraid of losing me."

"And he thinks I'm going to steal you away?" she chuckled.

"For him, yes."

"Him?"

"Palpatine."

Mara watched him closely. It wasn't the first time he'd spoken like this, but it had been a long while. "We're on the same side, aren't we?" she asked carefully.

"Yes. Father pledged his loyalty to Palpatine, but there are only two. Someday, that's going to mean something."

She let the words sit between them for a moment before offering a quiet response. "Palpatine won't live forever, you know. Vader is his heir for a reason. You're Vader's heir."

"Is that how everyone sees it?"

"That's the way it is."

He heaved a breath and offered a tired smile. "Peaceful transfer of power isn't exactly the Sith way, but maybe. I hope so."

His eyes slipped closed and Mara continued to watch him. Strange, how she'd always assumed that Palpatine was resigned to Vader's eventual ascension. As if once he was old and frail the Sith Apprentice would do away with him as perhaps he'd done to his own Master, but never a day before. Maybe it was a lie she told herself. Maybe she'd just never let herself linger on the question too long, because if she did she would have to recall the order that had never been rescinded: Vader should not have an absolute ally in his son.

But he did, and Mara knew that. Palpatine likely knew it too, which would eventually lead to the question of what that would mean someday.

Thankfully that someday wasn't that day. Or night. Or morning. Whatever it was.

Mara hadn't realized that her own eyes had fluttered closed against the swirling thoughts, but as she opened them she saw Luke's remained shut. His breathing had evened out and she inched a little closer to him. "Luke?"

"Hmm?" he answered sleepily.

"Promise me something?"

He eased a little closer to her as well so that their foreheads were almost touching. She tilted forward so they were. "No matter what happens, I don't want us to be enemies," she murmured, the confession feeling much louder than it really was in the room.

Luke's arm snaked around her waist, fingers toying at the fabric of her shirt as it settled at the small of her back. "Never," he swore.

—

Getting into Lothal was easier than getting off with a blockade settled around the planet, and Ahsoka proved that three days after she'd told them to sit tight and wait for her. And they had. Through the burning of Tarkintown that had clearly been meant to drive them out of hiding and the two relocations to avoid stormtroopers. By the time Ahsoka finally arrived, even Hera had been ready to call it. It wasn't just them that was taking a risk by staying, but Lando - who had been helping to shield them - and the people of the planet that were being used as bait by the Sith.

With Ahsoka came a few answers, but those bred more questions. She told them a story - or at least the highlights, as Hera couldn't help but feel so many details were being left out - about her Master and a child that they had all believed was dead. The child that she believed was the teen that had attacked them along with Vader.

"Let me get this straight," Kanan managed, looking almost ill as he spoke. "You think that Anakin Skywalker - hero of the Clone Wars and rumoured Chosen One of the old prophecies - had a kid that has been raised as a Sith?"

Ahsoka nodded. "You see why I needed to come here. If that boy is Luke Skywalker…."

"And what?" Sabine demanded. "Do you want to take him with you? We'd need an army to get to him and likely all we'd end up doing is bringing Vader down on us. That's a huge risk for someone that doesn't want to leave the Empire."

Hera sighed. "I know how important this boy must be to you, Ahsoka, but Sabine's right about the risk."

The Togruta woman gave her a soft, sad smile. "Kanan knows the prophecy, but I wouldn't expect the rest of you to. The Chosen One was said to bring balance to the Force. Obviously things didn't… work out that way, but—"

"You think maybe his son can?" Kanan asked. "Kid's definitely powerful, and he's young. I don't want to know what he'd be if he finishes his training under Vader."

Hera turned to look at her lover. "You're usually the skeptic."

"This is huge."

"Yeah, and impossible," Zeb grumbled from the outskirts of the conversation.

"Isn't that what your crew specializes in?" Ahsoka asked. "The impossible?"

Hera sighed. They did have a habit of pulling off jobs no one would be crazy enough to even attempt, but she didn't have time to answer. Kanan answered for them all.

"What do you need from us?"

—-

The intel Luke had brought her had been surprisingly thorough. He may not have gathered it all himself, but he'd focused laser precision on what she would need and had had List obtain it for him. One of the pieces of intel led her to a particular hangout for Doman Visra and she found him surrounded by people that the Empire didn't have on their radar yet. And one of those people turned out to be very useful in making her way into his trusted circle.

Aurous Fyr hadn't been at the meeting in the Visra home a few days prior, but he was close with Doman and after a few drinks had been willing to provide an introduction. Mara had given him the name Salina, a cover that placed her as a displaced farmer-turned-factory-worker. A perfectly crafted cover to endear her to the budding rebels, and it had. None of them had spotted her at the party and while they weren't sharing their deepest secrets with her from the start, they also weren't as tight lipped as they should have been around a newcomer.

Especially Aurous. He was the weak link, at least for Mara. He could go on for hours and hours about his idealistic views, how the Empire got everything wrong but they - in all of their infinite wisdom - could get it right. She wasn't sure if he was sad or irritating or both, but at least he was useful. Sometimes more useful than others.

"Every move is small until its not," he said as Mara sat with him outside of the empty warehouse they were meeting in that evening. "A thorn in their side until real change can be made."

"What does real change look like?"

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, the corners of his mouth tipping up before he turned back towards the stars. "Like making a splash they can't ignore."

Mara forced a laugh. "You just said the same thing with different words."

Aurous chuckled at that and glanced back to the others who were out of range to hear his lowered voice. He leaned in closer. "There are sects, you know, all over the galaxy. Some people are boots on the ground, some are the pockets that fund them."

"I've seen how you look at the tab at the tapcaf," she laughed at him. "You're not funding much of anything."

"I'm not, no, but others are." He glanced back towards Doman Visra.

"Like what?"

"All kinds of things all over the galaxy."

Unlikely. Doman might be inflating his own importance to his followers, but the intel she had showed his finding was mostly local. Granted, local could cause a sizable problem on a planet like Lothal.

"But here, now…. Retribution."

"For what?"

"What do you mean, for what? Didn't you hear? Vader burned Tarkintown to the ground."

"Sure, but it's Vader," Mara answered, a strange knot starting to form in the pit of her stomach. "Going up against him is a quick way to end up dead."

"Directly, maybe, but Seyda knew a guy who knows a woman and she's the real deal. She can hit Vader where it hurts: his son."

Mara schooled her expression carefully. "You really think she'll pull it off?"

"We'll know soon, I guess."

"It's happening now?"

For the first time, Aurous shot her a curious look and Mara knew she'd pushed too hard on one subject. She looked out at the sky and let a frown tug her lips down. "What time is it?"

"Twenty-one-hundred, give or take."

"I should get going. Morning comes early." She leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek, using his distraction to snag a small bug to the fabric of his shirt. "See you tomorrow after work."

He mumbled a reply as she slipped off of the stack of crates they'd been sitting on and started back towards town. The moment she was out of their range, she quickened her pace. She needed to find Luke.

—

Six days. It had been six days since the rebels had escaped from the shipyard and six days since they'd gone to ground. Luke knew he wasn't the only one questioning at this point if, perhaps, they'd managed to sneak past the blockade, but Father was convinced they were still there. Convinced that they could be found and that Luke's attention needed to be focused entirely on the situation at hand. So while Mara had the more exciting task of worming her way into Doman Visra's inner circle to figure out who he was helping to fund with the rebellion, Luke was stuck with orders to meditate and seek out their prey. He was talented, but no one was good at everything, and the patience that it took to intentionally reach into the future had never been his strong suite.

One blue eye cracked open at a noise from outside in the hallway. He closed it, pulling a deep breath in through his nose and then back out, reaching through the Force. He saw… a bird. Small, a little bit round. A Morai. He'd read about them as a child, but had never seen one. Luke reached deeper, following the bird, and saw a figure standing in the distance. The person was cloaked, possibly alien, but as he tried to get a better look, a set of voices from the hallway outside dragged him out of the vision, the figure gone before he could discover anything else.

Luke gave a frustrated grunt as he unfolded himself from the floor. This was pointless. The base was too loud. Too distracting at all the wrong moments. He either needed utter silence or a steady stream of noise to work as a backdrop. He wasn't going to get either there.

He made his way out of the compound, none of the officers or stormtroopers daring to stop him. The cool night air caught the hem of his dark cloak he'd wrapped around his shoulders and he pulled the hood up to shadow his face as he made his way into the city. It was late, most of the vendors having turned in for the night and only a handful of people milling around the streets. The quiet wrapped around him, easing his mind and his frustrations.

After a while, he found himself moving aimlessly, thoughts resettling on the Morai and the being in the distance. Slender, dressed in a hooded, brown cloak, the person hadn't looked like any of their rebels. Possibly the pilot - Syndulla, he recalled from the file - but that didn't feel right. It was someone else. Someone that the Force had been trying to show him. Someone —

A sense of warning washed over him and he spun, finding the street mostly empty save a stormtrooper escorting a cadet. He blinked hard, hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, and let his gaze sweep the area. There was something here. There had to be.

The stormtroopers passed on the opposite side of the street and Luke continued to look, finding nothing. He turned, ready to reluctantly call it a fluke, and found the troopers had crossed to his side, the older one raising a blaster that wasn't regulation and aiming right at him.

The stormtrooper fired and with a speed that had been built through years of training, Luke's lightsaber leapt to life in his hand in time to deflect what turned out to be an attempt to stun him.

Another blast came from off to his left from the cadet, and Luke didn't have time to fully bat that one away. Part of the blast struck his shoulder and a numbness spread. The cadet seemed to realize he was in trouble the moment Luke didn't go down at the sneak attack and Luke jumped forward, still blocking the occasional blast that came near him from the older man as he chased down the now fleeing cadet.

Frustration built as he chased him through an alley and rounded a corner. Enough frustration that he didn't sense the trap. He realized the mistake too late as he slammed into a giant Lasat who grinned toothily at him. "Sorry 'bout this, kid," he offered as he took Luke by the cloak.

The teen didn't have a chance to react as a stun ray hit him. He felt the numbness spread and desperately tried to push back against it. Another hit him, and with the third, he was dragged into darkness.

TBC

Notes: Bail Organa is one of my very favourite of the "minor" characters in Star Wars. I put quotes around minor because of just how much of an impact the man has on everything that happens in the rebellion. I knew from the beginning that he'd have a place in this story, but I didn't really plan for him to pop up this early. I sat down to start this chapter and bam, there he is lol. I really didn't feel like it would have done the weight of the topic justice if the conversation was simply discussed rather than shown. That, and Ahsoka and Bail can be a bit more honest than she can be even with the Ghost crew when it comes to Anakin. Anyone notice what Bail did hold back on though? ;)

Next Time: Luke comes face-to-face with his father's former Padawan while Mara Jade and Darth Vader are forced to put aside their differences to try to find him.