Jedi Temple

Coruscant

The third year of the Clone Wars

Ahsoka Tano, head bowed, her eyes half shut in her sorrow, strode toward the stairs that would lead her to the base of the Jedi Temple.

"Ahsoka, wait!" a voice called from behind her. A very familiar, beloved voice.

She ignored it and continued walking.

"Ahsoka, I need to talk to you!"

Ahsoka knew it would be childish to actually run away from Anakin Skywalker, so she reluctantly turned around to face her (former) master.

"Why…are you doing this?" the young man asked, his face twisted in anguish.

"The Council didn't trust me!" Ahsoka said, folding her arms and turning to the side, "so how can I trust myself?"

"But what about me?" Anakin demanded. "I believed in you! I stood by you!"

"I know you believe in me, Anakin," the Togruta said, turning back to face him, "and I'm grateful for that. But this isn't about you. I can't stay here any longer. Not now."

"The Jedi Order is your life. You can't just throw it away like this! Ahsoka, you are making a mistake!"

"Maybe, but I have to sort this out on my own, without the Council, and without you."

"I understand," Anakin replied, spinning around fully, his face grim. "I understand more than you realize, wanting to walk away from the Order."

"I know," Ahsoka said softly.

She waited a few seconds and then began marching away. In the recesses of her mind, she could almost feel the mournful music swelling as she walked away from the only life she had ever known.

She was halfway down the stairs when she realized that she was crying a little, which was no surprise. Anakin was right, this was her whole life! She was smart and had friends outside the Order, but this was a huge, dramatic, difficult change, on top of a huge, dramatic, difficult day. She had been framed by Barriss Offee, whom she had thought a friend, for the bombing of the Jedi Temple. The Jedi Order had expelled her and left her to face her trial alone. Only Anakin Skywalker's commitment to her had saved her from execution, as he had figured out that Offee was the real culprit, not Ahsoka. The Jedi had stood aside and let her be framed!

"The Jedi Order…," she said aloud, and huffed indignantly.

"Sucks, yes," an unfamiliar voice finished from her left, and she turned in such surprise that she nearly fell off the step. She was a battle hardened veteran of the Clone Wars, and generally paid close attention to her surroundings, but it had been a rough day and she had totally failed to realize that she had acquired a companion.

"They have good intentions," a feminine voice said from her right, "but their execution is a bit wanting."

Ahsoka, wide eyed, looked to the right and the left. On her right stood a beautiful, dark haired woman in her thirties, dressed severely in black. To the left, a dark blond man of much the same age as his companion stood, also in black.

Both, she realized a heartbeat later, had lightsabers at their waist.

And she didn't recognize them at all.

Her hand dropped to her waist and she cursed inwardly. She didn't have her lightsaber; it had been taken from her.

"We are Light Siders and we won't harm you," the woman said with a smile. "Actually, we are here to help sort things out in this timeline."

"What?" the Togruta asked in confusion.

"We're from the future," the man said cheerfully, as if that was not a totally absurd thing to say.

"And we know," the woman said, hooking her arm in Ahsoka's. "Time travel is impossible. But it isn't. And if you think about it, we must be telling the truth because there aren't that many Jedi and you know them all."

"You might not necessarily be Jedi," Ahsoka said nervously.

A second later, their Force presences bloomed and the Togruta jumped in such amazement that she would have fallen if the woman hadn't been hanging onto her arm.

They were… they were so strong, so very strong. They were masters! And yet she did not know them!

"So I am Luke and she is Leia," the man said. "Also, I am guessing you haven't eaten much lately thanks to stress and being arrested and all. Is Dex's Diner around?"

Ahsoka blinked, thought, and shook her head. "No, it shut down a couple of years ago."

"Pity," Leia said. "Hey, Luke, Do you remember that place Mara showed us? The Ronto Grill?"

"Yeah, that was pretty good. Not a safe place, but I am guessing three Jedi can manage not to get killed or mugged."

"They have divine space waffles," Leia said with a beatific look on her face.

"Does that sound Ok?" Luke asked Ahsoka. The former padawan sighed and said, "Sure, whatever you like."

/

The Ronto Grill

Level 1313

"Definitely seedy," Luke remarked, looking around himself carefully. The Ronto Grill featured a lavish food court, which was inhabited by sentients of at least two dozen species, most of them armed, many of them menacing.

"But the waffles are awesome," Leia said, enthusiastically stirring her waffle in poptree syrup and forking a bite into her mouth. "Oh, this is great."

Ahsoka took a bite of her own waffle, chewed, and swallowed, and then said, "So you are from the future? Did you come here to eat waffles?"

"No, of course not," Luke said, grinning at her cheerfully. "We are here to fix this timeline. But the waffles are a fun side."

Ahsoka sighed and said, "What needs fixed?"

"Everything, pretty much," Leia said, now looking serious. "We don't choose where we get sent, but based on our discussions with the Ahsoka in our timeline, today is the day you nearly were convicted of the Jedi Temple bombing?"

"You know me in your timeline?" she asked skeptically.

"Very well," Luke said, smiling at her. She felt an odd jolt in her brain; Luke reminded her of someone.

"We should get down to it, Luke," Leia said. "I know we're both catching our breath but..."

"We were in the middle of a battle with some Weequay pirates when we were yanked here, so yes, we are tired and hungry. But Leia is right, we never know exactly how much time we will have so first of all, we need to introduce ourselves fully. My name is Luke Skywalker, and this is my twin sister Leia Skywalker Organa Solo."

Ahsoka blinked as she looked back and forth, and her brain made the connection. Luke looked like Anakin Skywalker!

"You are related to Anakin Skywalker?"

"We are his twin children," Leia explained, forking in another bite of waffle and chewing it happily.

"Our mother is Padme Amidala," Luke finished.

Ahsoka gasped so hard that she choked. After a few coughs, she managed to regulate her breathing sufficiently to demand, "Skyguy has kids with the Senator?"

"Well, not yet," Leia said judiciously. "She might be pregnant by now; not sure. But yes, they are married and have been since the beginning of the Clone Wars."

"Skyguy is married?!"

"Secretly, yeah, because the Jedi suck," Leia said, her brow lowering fiercely. "This no attachments nonsense is just that, total nonsense. Marriage helps ground a Jedi. Luke and I are both married and we both have four kids each."

Ahsoka ran her hand down her face and reminded herself that these people might be escapees from the Coruscanti Insane Asylum. Though with those Force presences...

"Hello, Doll," a voice slurred from behind Luke's back.

Leia turned toward the voice, which had emanated from a Gotal who was now leering down at her, and said, "We aren't interested. Go away."

"Pretty thing like you, and the Togruta, ought not to wander down here if you ain't interested," the Gotal said, eying the females with interest.

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. She was so not in the mood...

"You need to leave, now," Leia said, standing up. She was a tiny woman and looked rather absurd compared to the giant alien.

The Gotal reached out a long arm toward her and said, "Baby, don't..."

Before he could finish his words, the female human lifted a hand and the arm froze in the air. The Gotal looked confused and Leia said, "You don't want to talk to use. You are hungry."

"I am hungry."

"You want some space waffles."

"I want some space waffles."

"With poptree syrup."

"I want space waffles with poptree syrup."

"Go on, then," Leia said, releasing her hold on the Gotal, and the tall alien turned and rushed toward the Ronto Grill in search of space waffles.

Ahsoka, who had expected a fight, eyed the other female with respect. Gotals were, she knew, notoriously hard to use Force suggestion with, and Leia Skywalker Organa Solo…

"Organa Solo?" she asked aloud, her brow creasing. "Are you married to, um, an Organa?"

"I was raised an Organa," Leia explained, picking up her cup of tea, inspecting it dubiously, and putting it back down. "The Republic fell in our timeline, about three years into the Clone Wars. The Jedi were slaughtered, Chancellor Palpatine, who is the Senior Sith Lord Darth Sidious, took over as Emperor, Padme our mother died, and Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader. Luke and I were separated within hours of our births and I was adopted by Bail Organa."

Ahsoka felt her face pale and she choked, and coughed, again. "What?!"

"That was kind of an information dump, Leia," Luke said reprovingly.

"Sorry, yeah. I just realized we are being kind of slow to give vital info…"

"Skyguy turned to the Dark Side?" Tano gasped.

"Unfortunately, yes," Luke said in a sympathetic tone. "He was having dreams of Padme dying in childbirth and Palpatine, who has been grooming him for literally a decade, convinced him that with the power of the Dark Side, he could save her. Of course, Skywalker dreams being what they are, his attempts to stop her death actually caused her death."

"That isn't always true of Skywalker dreams," Leia argued. "Before Bespin, you had precognitive dreams but you didn't cause what happened there."

"True, but Skywalker dreams tend to be set in stone in my grim experience. You can try to avoid whatever you see, but they happen."

"Which is definitely depressing," Leia said moodily. She was, she decided, thirsty. She also, thanks to the combined efforts of four children who delighted in collecting illnesses and passing them around, had a strong immune system.

She drank the tea.

"If this is true," Ahsoka said, struggling to remain calm, "what should we do?"

"First thing is to get Anakin straightened out," Luke said cheerfully, collecting his trash into a tidy heap and then floating it over to a nearby trash can, much to the awed interest of some of the onlookers. "Then we kill Palpatine."

Ahsoka realized that she had, in the midst of her horror about Anakin, not focused enough on the information about Palpatine.

"Wait a minute," she ordered. "Palpatine? He isn't a Force sensitive!"

"He is, but he shields ridiculously well," Luke said.

"Show her your scars," Leia suggested, her eyes twinkling.

"I am not taking off my shirt in the middle of a food court in the lower levels of Coruscant," Luke said in exasperation. "But anyway, yes, Palpatine is very powerful and I have a bunch of scars from when he blasted me with Force Lightning."

"It…it is hard to believe," Ahsoka said tentatively.

"I get that and we can prove it to you. But Ahsoka," and here Leia looked grave, "you have to realize that part of what happened with the Jedi Temple bombing was either deliberately caused by Palpatine, or fed directly into his plans for our father. His goal is to isolate Anakin from those he cares for, you see. He lost his mother, our grandmother, he has now lost you through the Order's idiocy in throwing you to the loth wolves, and he is terrified of losing Padme. Palpatine wants Anakin to trust him over anyone else. Does that make sense?"

Ahsoka swallowed and leaned back, thinking hard. It was true that Palpatine made a great deal of time for Anakin, especially given that the Chancellor was, well, the Chancellor. He had a lot of work to do. And Anakin did have an edgy back story, with him coming to the Temple late, and being a slave on Tatooine…

"I see what you are saying," she finally said. "I am not sure I totally believe it, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"We should head to Padme's place, then," Luke said.

"Are you sure…?" Leia asked, quirking one dark eyebrow.

"Yeah. They will be, erm, done by the time we get there," Luke said.

"Done?" Ahsoka asked, all at space.

"He's upset because you left the Order, and naturally he, erm, is enthused about finding comfort in the arms of his wife," Luke said.

Ahsoka stared in confusion and then blushed bright purple. "Oh. Oh!"

"Hey, they are married!" Leia pointed out.