It was insanity, she thought wildly. Her heart was beating a tattoo in her chest as Artoo whistled at her. It was the past colliding with the present, and she could not make sense of it at all. It was the jetsam of a lifetime ago, washed up on the distant shore of her life here. She was found, they were all of them found.
"Oh Mistress Tano, it is so good to see you-"
She started badly. Threepio as well? She hadn't even noticed him next to Artoo, but there he was, dented and scratched, older by a couple of decades since the last time she had seen him. There they both were.
A terrible, sinking realisation began to permeate her mind. The Empire was looking for droids, droids that they were willing to tear the town apart in order to find. What were the chances that on that self same day these two droids would show up on the edge of Mos Eisley?
She didn't like those odds.
She spun on her heel to face the Jawa at her elbow. It immediately held up a hand to show her the asking price.
Ahsoka barely had a single thought as she haggled for the both of them. She heard Artoo whistling and Threepio's indignant spluttering when she brought up his casing, but she paid them no mind. She was beginning to sweat, a nervous sweat, the like of which she had hardly felt in years.
In the end she hardly cared that she had assuredly overpaid for the pair of them. The Jawa took her money with alacrity and motioned for her to take her new possessions away. She all but dragged Threepio from the line up. Artoo needed no encouragement.
As she tried to hustle them back to her 'speeder as surreptitiously as she could, she imagined she could feel the eyes of every fellow buyer on them, the eyes of every Jawa under their dark hoods. She needed to get them somewhere safe, somewhere where no one would see them.
Threepio was objecting as she pulled him along, tottering and unsteady.
"I must say-"
"No, you mustn't," she said, "keep quiet, keep moving."
Artoo was still whistling for her attention, bumping into her legs as she marched them both along when she didn't stop to listen. It was the stuff of far-fetched fantasy to see them again, and there had been many nights on Tatooine when she had dreamt of seeing even one person from her past again, but right now she felt exposed. She felt that at any minute a Stormtrooper was going to look over them, radio back in, and they would be ripped away before she even heard how they came to be here.
When they came to the 'speeder it was more panicked strength than any judicious use of the Force that saw her pulling the back seats down and heaving them both in. She had an old tarp in the back that she sometimes used for her hunts that she pulled over the pair of them. She heard a continuous stream of querulous complaints, and a sharp whistle. It was followed by a muffled clang which Ahsoka could only imagine was a kick.
"You made me do it," she heard, high and arch. She resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She crossed to the driver seat and started up the engine.
What was she doing?
Only that morning she had been innocent of the whole affair, innocent of whatever she was now bringing back to her home, to her entire life. If she had any sense, she'd drive them out to the Wastes and disable them, let the sand and the rust take them, and go back to her home, back to the children.
It was danger she was bringing back with her. Danger for herself, danger for the children. Her old life had its hands around the neck of the new.
There was no choice.
She pulled away and drove back the way she came, plan forming in her mind as she went. She wanted to get them home, but before that she had to check there was nothing on them that could lead anyone to her; no homing beacons, no tracking chips.
She needed to take them to the shop.
The late afternoon suns were beginning to descend when she made it back to the garage. She had pulled around the back and cut the engine early on in the hopes of avoiding curious eyes.
She checked the hall before she unloaded the two of them and, just for a moment, extended all of her senses. It was harder than it had ever been to concentrate, not only for the turmoil of her own mind, but the world around her too. Fear was choking Mos Eisley, a constant shivering and unbroken note of tension.
"Alright, quickly, quickly," she said lowly as she unloaded both of them.
For a moment, she feared that they would both talk at once, but they simply watched her. It brought a lump to her throat to see them. Relics of her childhood, of a bygone age when she was still a girl, stood before her.
Artoo let out a low whistle. Threepio was watching her closely, head tilted and eyes bright.
"He has been looking for you, Mistress Tano," he said.
It was enough to break her reverie. She started on Artoo first, prying back the casing first, reaching for her scanning unit as an afterthought.
Artoo trilled an agreement under her fingertips.
"Hush," she said absentmindedly. There didn't seem to be anything that shouldn't be there, but he was in rough shape. From abrasions to corrosion to a datacard that looked to be permanently stuck. The damage looked more like neglect than anything more pressing, and the thought once again tested her control.
She stood and turned to Threepio. "Now you," she said.
He submitted with poor grace to her scans, with more sputtering than she thought was strictly necessary.
"Mistress Tano, we must speak with you-"
There was a commotion the other side of the door. A racket coming down the stairs.
"Hide," she hissed.
She barely had time to herd them to the mess of her ongoing projects and throw the tarp over them once more before she was diving for anything, anything at all that would make her look busy.
And not a moment too soon.
Varn flung the door open so hard it bounced off the wall behind it. He glared about the room as though expecting to see Stormtroopers hiding in the corner. He slackened when he saw just her alone. Ennen hovered nervously over his shoulder.
"Anything missing?" He asked as he looked over the garage with a critical eye.
Ennen shook her head behind his back, but still when he turned to face her.
"I watched them the whole time, Depur," she said, looking down, "nothing was taken."
He made a noise of dismissal and turned back to Ahsoka.
She hadn't had a chance to check, but she affected an unworried air.
"Everything accounted for," she told him.
She hoped desperately that his ignorance remained true and that he wouldn't be able to tell a half-finished projects from spare parts. Her body was tense to movement; any flicker and she would have to lunge.
He grunted but didn't retreat.
"You been to the Jawas?" He asked.
"Stormtroopers scared them off," she said easily. "Horo Windchaser said they'd be back next week."
He grunted again. He paused so long she thought he might turn on his heel and leave, but he didn't.
He looked at her, and Ahsoka felt a flicker of sharpness she didn't normally think to associate with Varn Abana.
"Probably for the best," he said, drooping eyes still bloodshot. "It's not safe out there. You got your papers?"
She nodded silently.
"Keep 'em close," he said and turned on his heel, storming back the way he had come.
Ennen lingered. They both listened in silence as they heard his retreat, not upstairs, but to the shop floor; far enough away for a conversation.
Ennen looked at her, a look so well-worn and comfortable that in her jumbled state Ahsoka wanted nothing more than to reach out for comfort; to have someone in the world who would think to comfort her before looking to her for reassurance.
"Whatever you're going to do," Ennen said, her voice a low rush, "be careful."
"I'm not doing anything," Ahsoka told her, but her voice came out wrong; too even to be real, too artificial to be anything but a lie.
Ennen smiled at her, indulgently, sadly, and reached out to touch the breast pocket of Ahsoka's overalls. Her long, slender finger tapped the transistor coil, already forgotten.
"I know you, Ashla," she said wryly, "after all this time you don't think I can spot a lie half a klick out?"
Ahsoka's throat was dry. The corner under the tarpaulin was silent.
There was no time for pretence any longer. She caught Ennen's hand in her own.
"Do you remember when I said that you would never need to miss me?" She asked.
Ennen looked down at their joined hands and then up at Ahsoka's face. Her pretty face creased in consternation.
"I do," she said cautiously.
"Did you understand?" Ahsoka asked desperately, "Did you understand what I meant?"
Ennen's hand twisted in hers until she was clutching back, until they were holding hands.
"I did," she said.
Ahsoka could feel the desperation bleeding through her, the tick of the clock in her ear, the consciousness that they were not alone in the room.
"Ennen," she said haltingly,"it's not…it's no longer safe here. For me, for the children. Something has…changed."
"You're leaving," Ennen said in sudden realisation. "You're leaving now, aren't you?"
"We have to," Ahsoka said miserably. It was the first time she had said it aloud as anything more than an abstract, and it left her aching more than she had ever imagined it could. She had lived here longer than anywhere else in her life. She had been worn down to fit and moulded until she felt as safe in these four walls as she once had in a troop transport. Saying it, even thinking it, for the first time left her filled with cold certainty. Whatever was coming for them, whatever shape it took, was coming at them fast.
"Oh Ashla," Ennen whispered. She didn't need to reach for her in the Force to feel Ennen's dismay, her empty, aching, and preemptive loneliness.
"Come with me," Ahsoka said, "come with me and be free."
She heard Ennen's breath catch, and she felt her own still in her chest. She was searching Ennen's face as though she could read whatever combination of words would make her agree there, written plain across it. She could see the pain, the longing, the conflict, every emotion that a slave could feel when being offered their freedom; a kaleidoscope of sentiment.
"I can't," Ennen whispered.
"You can," she breathed back.
"There are people here who need-"
"There's a galaxy of people out there, Ennen, who could all use your help. We can free more people than you ever dreamed there were. Come with me, come and meet them." She paused and lowered her eyes to the lilac hand still held in her hand. She wanted to squeeze it as though she could make her understand through pure force of will. "I need you. One day we could even come back here and do all of the things you can't right now. Haven't you given enough? Can't you help them as a free woman? It's been so many more years than Master Jana promised you."
Ennen's hand slipped from hers at the name, and Ahsoka felt the day finally threaten to overwhelm her.
A finger under her chin tilted her head up. A hand on her cheek kept her there.
Sometimes it seemed that Ennen had hardly changed in all the years Ahsoka had known her. She had never grown wider, nor faded. Her nose was still straight, her lips still full. She was still a beautiful woman.
But there were the marks of a life hard lived, as well. Poor rations and little water had left their marks; when she spoke Ahsoka could see the gap in her teeth where one had come loose and never been replaced. There were fine lines gathering around her mouth, around the corners of her eyes. On anyone else she might call them laughter lines, but Ennen had never had overmuch to laugh about.
"When do you leave?" She asked and hope flared, great and terrible, in Ahsoka's chest.
"Tonight," she said.
Ennen nodded, almost as though to herself. "You'll leave from the port?"
"Yes."
"Then you'll have to pass through the town," she said, "I'll have my answer for you by then."
She opened her mouth to object, but Ennen smiled at her, that same tired smile and she deflated.
"This is my choice, Ashla," she said, and Ahsoka tried to find it in her to smile back.
"Be careful," she said.
"Be safe," Ennen said, "dear Fulcrum."
It was too difficult thing to pull a way but Ennen made it easy. She pulled Ahsoka close and embraced her fiercely before pulling back and kissing her forehead; a slave's blessing, a benediction of affection. She felt her eyes swim. She looked away before Ennen could see.
Ennen left her then, and Ahsoka took a breath to steady her. Then she took another. She had her arm wrapped around her stomach and a hand pressed to her mouth.
There was no time for this.
She took a final fortifying breathe and sniffed. She scrubbed at her face and arranged it to her liking.
"Right," she said under her breath. She strode over to the corner and thew back the tarp. She didn't know whether to burn with embarrassment when she saw Threepio's watchful eyes or try and take comfort from their presence as she had once done as a child.
"In the car," she said briskly.
"Mistress Tano, Artoo says he has a message to relay to you. He says it cannot wait."
"Not here," she said.
Artoo whistled low and urgent, but she was already herding them to the 'speeder.
"Oh dear," Threepio fretted, "I'm afraid he says that it is urgent."
"It will still be urgent when I get the two of you home," she said, throwing the tarp back over them.
She looked back at the door where Ennen had left, but the only way out now was through. She would be back.
She drove carefully as she left the shop so as not to attract attention. She took a circuitous route that would spit her out on the south side of the city; the wrong direction for her but the quietest. She saw more Imperials ransacking houses and patrolling as she went; with so many in the city and so thoroughly occupied she hoped for an undermanned checkpoint.
No such luck. She should have known better than to hope. Still, the queue was shorter than it had been to enter the city. She tried to keep her body loose and her face relaxed as she joined the idling line of vehicles.
She was at the front all too quickly.
"Papers," one of them said, holding out his hand expectantly. He'd taken off his helmet in the heat of the day and probably never thought to put it back on. He was fair, his hair a light red. She'd never looked at them properly before. He was older than Luke, though not by much. His face was red. Unused to the heat, she thought. He'd have to be careful not to burn.
Wordlessly she handed over Ashla Sokath's papers.
His eyes flicked to the back of the 'speeder. It had been too much to hope for that same laxity of security she had grown so used to on Tatooine continue under the Empire's suddenly watchful eye, but nevertheless she had hoped.
"What's in the back?" He asked.
"Spare parts," she said tiredly, "I'm a mechanic in town."
She knew what she had to do. It was all coming to a head now, and there were certain actions that no longer had their associated consequences now that her remaining time on the planet could be measured in hours rather than years.
His hand had barely reached for the back of the car when she leant across and grasped it.
"You don't need to check the car," she said sternly.
"I…I don't need..no, I-"
She could feel his will as surely as if it had been her own. She had not needed to bend someone else's to her own in all the long years since she had fled from Alderaan. She was rusty.
"You don't need to check the car," she said again, forcefully.
There was conflict in his face, but it cleared in the exact same moment it overwhelmed him.
"I don't need to check the car," he said, and his voice sounded relieved, as if he had been resolved of a terrible conundrum.
He waved them through the barrier and Ahsoka fled into the desert and turned towards home.
The wind whipped at her, and she fumbled one-handed for her goggles. She tried to uncurl her fingers from where they had been curled too tightly around the wheel.
She had not succeeded by the time she reached home.
She teetered for a moment when she cut the engine before her resolve firmed. She got up from the 'speeder and then retrieved the two droids who had shattered the peace of the last 19 years.
Threepio tottered uncertainly on the sand and Artoo's wheel span before she gave him a push, but she got them both through the door and slammed it behind them. She felt the false sense of security wash over her and she wanted to hold it close.
But there was no peace. Threepio was looking around the room, movements jerky as if the sand had already worked its way into his joints, but Artoo was trilling at her and beeping, ramming into her shin as if he thought she was going to try and ignore him.
She was, but only for a moment.
She took her time sloughing off the ride, shucking her jacket, pouring her water. She didn't know why she was prolonging the inevitable, only that the soap bubble of her life was going to burst and she wanted just one more moment to appreciate its ephemeral sheen.
"Alright," she said, "I'm ready now. What's the message?"
Artoo wasted no time, and projected it right in front of her.
She had expected Bail, perhaps Breha, or someone who she had once known. It was to her mild surprise that she did not recognise the small figure of the girl in front of her. She wore white in the Alderaanian tradition, but apart from that, she was quite unfamiliar.
When she spoke her voice was high and clipped, but shot through with fear. Her eyes, even in the grainy image of the hologram, were wide. Ahsoka watched, rapt.
"Commander Tano," she said as if that name hadn't been given up long ago, "years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in person, but my ship has fallen under attack, and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I have placed information vital to the survival of the Rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Ahsoka Tano. You're my only hope."
The girl in the projection faltered at the end of her message and looked over her shoulder as though she had heard something coming that Ahsoka could not. She bent at the waist and terminated the recording. The image flickered and then went out.
Ahsoka sat back in her seat, her thoughts moving too quickly to catch them. Her water was forgotten in her hand.
"Princess Neena is the daughter of the Viceroy and Queen," Threepio told her, voice prim. He raised an arm to point at where her image had flickered and disappeared. "She is the heir to the throne of Alderaan."
Ahsoka didn't respond. When she raised her mug to her lips, her hand was shaking.
Bail and Breha had a daughter. The thought brought back the guilt that was never too far from the surface when she went searching through the muddy waters of her memories but that, perhaps, in recent years, had become easier to think about without being drowned. Now, however, it threatened to pull her under.
They had known where she was, she realised, with a terrible lurch. Whether from the start, years, or maybe even months, they had known where she and her stolen children had lived. The thought was almost unbearable.
The child had called her a friend of her father's.
She couldn't think on it any longer, not if she wanted to continue on.
"Rebellion," she said, her voice cracked despite the water, "she said there was a rebellion."
It was not a question, but she looked to the two of them for answers nonetheless. Neither of them answered. She wondered if they could, if their programming allowed it. Perhaps they could not speak of the rebellion that she had abandoned in its infancy. She had never allowed herself to dwell on it for very long; inevitably she would turn to wondering if it still existed, if it had ever existed. Sometimes she would wonder about what they would have had her doing. There had never been room for such doubts.
"Alright," she said, "Alderaan."
The bag was drawing closed, the debts being called in. She looked at Artoo, the old friend she must deliver to Alderaan and see to her own censure. She had known the day was coming but to see it arrive was quite another thing. She looked around the room. The task of picking through her life, choosing what they would need to take with her seemed impossible. Quite without her meaning it to this place had become more than just a hideaway in the desert. The children had imbued it with more she could ever have dreamed when she had first brought them here. Every corner held a memory, every room a fond remembrance.
She was attached, she realised. She was attached to her home.
"I have to call the children," she told the pair of them, "wait-"
She was interrupted by a crashing, raucous cacophony, as though a herd of bantha had decided to run through their estate.
"Check the back!" She heard Leia say, her voice in a picnicked shout, "I'm going-"
"Her 'speeder's here!" Luke called back, his voice high.
She had barely risen from the sofa in askance when the pair of them crashed the door, pale and frantic eyes wide.
"Auntie!" Luke said, sickly with relief, as Leia rushed at her, already gabbling.
She caught her on instinct, before looking at the pair of them. They felt cold with fear, sickly and anxious.
"What's wrong?" She asked, bewildered. She had seen them only a few hours ago and messaged them even less than that.
"Auntie, are you alright?" Luke asked urgently.
"Of course I am," she said, "What's happened?"
Leia stepped back from her but didn't drop her arm. They exchanged a look with each other.
"Auntie, we were in town," Leia said, her eyes half wild. "We heard the slaves at one of the cantina's talking."
"They've put a bounty on you, auntie," Luke said. "Ten thousand credits. No one knows why. What happened?"
She felt clammy. She thought she had more time than this.
"They know," she said, "I was seen."
Of course she was, she thought savagely. How naive to believe that a tarpaulin and a brisk walk would be enough to save her. The clock was counting down. It wouldn't take them long to find out from some unscrupulous figure where they all lived.
"What?"
"Is this to do with all the Stormtroopers in town?" Leia asked.
Ahsoka felt wild with it, but she calmed herself. This was not the time to lose her head if ever there had been one.
"I saw them when I went in this morning. I didn't think anything of it. They didn't stop me and when I got to the shop Ennen said they were after droids, not anything we'd done. It wasn't until I went to the Jawas that I… that I found them."
Inexorably, all of their eyes turned to the droids in their midst. For a moment, silence hung between them.
Threepio was the one to break it.
"Bless my circuits," he uttered, "it's Master Ani."
Luke looked at her wide-eyed.
"You look like him," Ahsoka told him.
"Did they…know our parents?" Leia asked, hushed.
Ahsoka nodded, an entire history condensed into a single gesture.
"Artoo had a message-"
As if he had been waiting for the sign, Artoo played the message once more. Ahsoka watched her children as they watched it, entirely absorbed.
There, but for the grace of the Force, goes Leia, she thought.
She schooled her face when the young woman looked over her shoulder once more, and the image flickered out.
"We have to help her," Leia said immediately. Luke nodded fervently.
"We just have to find this Tano person," he said, "see if we can get her the message-"
"It's me," she said, before she had even realised the problem. "I'm Ahsoka Tano."
"What?" Leia said. For a moment, she thought they were in for another explosion, the like of which had characterised their last few fraught years, but there was no anger behind her shock, nor in her brother's slack jaw. It wasn't something she had kept from them intentionally— why would she when she had all but gutted herself to offer them all of their terrible past?— but, somewhere in the intervening years, she had let Ahsoka Tano fall away. Ashla Sokath had become comfortable, a friend, a protector, an aunt.
Auntie Ash got to be a mother. Ahsoka Tano was a child on a battlefield.
"Okay, okay," Leia was saying rapidly as she tried to take it in all at once. Ahsoka couldn't help but feel that she was leaking into the Force, her badly concealed fear and panic colouring her children. She once more tried to steady herself, to put a little steel in her spine and assurance in her voice.
"We don't have time for this," she said as evenly as she could, we have to-"
"Leave," Luke finished. He looked at his sister and then back at her. "We have to leave, don't we?"
Ahsoka nodded.
"Yes," she said, "we have to leave."
This day had been coming since the first moment she had set foot on the sands of Tatooine and there were days that had felt longer ago than a single lifetime. Now it was here, she thought, for the briefest of moments, that she wouldn't be able to go through with it. How many homes could she stand to lose in a single lifetime— because no matter strong the wind, nor how coarse the sand, Tatooine had been their home.
She looked at the two of her children. So close to adulthood, so close they could reach it if they stretched their hands.
She was the same age Master Obi-Wan had been when she became Anakin's padawan. They used to call him old man, tease him for the grey at his temples and his grumblings in the morning. She wished she could reach through to wherever dead things went when they died and weep into his chest. She understood now, she understood what it was to be old before her time.
But she could not. Home was not sandstone and drapes. Home was where they were.
She took a fortifying breath and summoned back Commander Tano from the field.
"Leia," she said briskly, "do you have Han's comm frequency?"
"Yes,-"
"Call him. Luke?"
He turned to her expectantly.
"Pack only the essentials," she said. "Load the 'speeder with fuel and water, as much food as you think it can carry. Go."
He ran off without a second glance. She held out her hand for Leia's commlink.
"Hey, princess," came a pleasantly surprised voice from down the line, "what's up-"
"Captain Solo," she said briskly and ignored what sounded like a choke from the other end, "we need to get off planet. We're in danger. Tell me, are you for hire?"
There was no need to beat around the bush. Leia was watching her breathless, but, with a sharp jerk of her chin, Ahsoka sent her to help her brother.
"We can come to an arrangement," Han said cautiously down the line.
"You said you could outrun an Imperial starship," she said. "Was that true?"
"I can outrun anything," he said, and she heard that self same arrogance that had made her laugh at the table the first time they had met.
"Alright," she said, the plan coming together in her head, "we'll be with you in four degrees: be ready to leave in a hurry."
"Has this got anything to do with why the whole port's shut down?" he asked.
"They've shut the port?"
"We're all just kicking our heels."
She rubbed a hand across her forehead.
"Can you still-"
"Docking bay ninety-four," he said, "I'll have the engines running."
He hung up, just as Leia walked back into the room, carrying Ahsoka's lightsabers. Her own was clipped to her belt. Ahsoka did the same, right next to where she already had her blasters. She tossed her back the commlink.
"Leia, that boy is in love with you," she said as she walked past and into her own room.
She ignored the detritus of her life, her former life now. There was little worth keeping; all of it worthless now it had been cut short. Plans and projects for a later day, a ball of moss floating in a jar of precious water, small gifts the children had given her over the course of two childhoods. She rummaged through her possessions until she found what she had been looking for.
With her own commlink in her hand, she dialled a number she had dialled a thousand times before.
When Beru's face appeared in the projection she began pacing up and down the length of her room. It felt better than what she actually wanted to do which was to collapse on the edge of her bed.
"Ashla," Beru started warmly, but Ahsoka cut across her.
"There's no time," she said, and then faltered. In that moment she envied Beru's composure, the same that she had relied upon so often. She swallowed and forced herself to continue. Beru was silent. "There's a bounty out for me. It won't be long before the children follow. I don't know what's…it's all happened so fast, I need-"
"You need to get off the planet," Beru said. There was no recrimination in her voice, no panic, and no plea. Just the hard practicality of a Tatooinian woman, the same that had pushed Ahsoka to survive all of these years. "The day's finally come."
"We have a ship waiting," she said, "but I couldn't just leave without word."
It was more than sentiment, more than family; she was well known around town, and so were Beru and Owen. It would not be long before the Empire was at their door. It was a poor repayment to a debt she could never repay.
"How are you getting to the port?" Beru asked. Ahsoka could hear noise from the other end of the connection as Beru's face disappeared from view.
"We've got the 'speeder," she said, rushed, "it should be a tight fit but we can make it."
"They're closing the town checkpoints," Beru said from the background, voice muffled and far away. She ducked back into the screen, tying her shawl and wrangling her driving goggles over her head to hang at her neck. "Take the backroads to the Quarters, they'll be the last to close. We'll meet you there."
Ahsoka started, "No, I can't ask that, you're already in danger just from-"
"Family, Ashla," Beru said sternly, "if you can protect it, you can keep it."
The transmission ended abruptly, leaving Ahsoka alone in her room.
She snapped the commlink closed and held it numbly for a moment. The sounds of the twins packing roused her, and she swiped roughly at her face. She was there for a reason.
She crouched to ground level and pried back the skirting board just by the edge of her bed. It came away easily. Beru and Owen had taught her the value of a hidden compartment, and she had long since learnt the virtues of preparation.
The items she fished out from within were not much to look at, but Ahsoka had watched Beru perform miracles with them time and time again; a small vacuum chamber, an electromagnet, and a length of plastoid chamber. Everything that one could need when removing a slave chip without exposing it to oxygen. She bundled it carefully into a canvas bag that only two days before she had been using to carry Leia's fruit and Luke's spice mixes from the market.
She looked around. How many storms had she and the children sheltered from on the bed? How many times had she told them stories until they fell asleep right there on those blankets?
It would have been so easy to let the grief consume her in these walls, this house, this life. There were times when it almost had. But for every storm, there was a Leia who had tried to cut her own hair at twelve years old. For every nightmare, there was a Luke and his first attempt at growing a moustache. For every fleeting moment of despair there was a lifetime of pride, from the first time she had held Luke in her arms to the last time she had seen Leia take a former slave's hand while Beru pulled the chip out from under their skin.
"Auntie?"
"I'm coming!" She called back. She turned and made to close the door on the life behind her, but something made her pause. There was little time for keepsakes, but she turned and roughly pulled open her bedside drawer. She pulled a string from her nightstand, a single akul incisor glinting at the end of the cord. She looped it over her montrals and tucked it under her shirt.
She left the room without a second glance.
The children were a frenzy of motion, and the house looked as though it had been ransacked. The cellar door was open, the vaporators empty.
"Alright," she said, "that's enough. The droids?"
"Already in the 'speeder," Leia said.
"You have your sabers?"
They nodded.
"Good," she said, "hold on to them, they are your life. I'm sorry it's come to this, but everything else must be left behind. We need to go. Now."
There was less protest than she thought as she chivvied them out the door.
"Wait!" Luke cried. She went to push him along, but he held firm, eyes looking past her. She turned.
There, tottering out from it's charging port, came Em-Kay. Arms raised and locked the joints long since corroded, and with one eye flickering and the other permanently dark, it made a sorry sight.
"We can't leave him," Luke begged.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Em-Kay teetered forward before coming to an unsteady halt in front of her. When she had first stolen the droid it had been the finest Naboo had to offer. She could have used its casing as a mirror. Now it was so dented and scratched she wondered at how the circuits were still working at all.
"Chil…dren," it garbled.
"What?" She asked in amazement. She could not count the hours she had spent trying to graft some kind of vocabulary processing unit to its hardware, and ever to no avail.
"Chil…dren," it repeated, the voice wavering but uncanny, somehow recognisable. It reached a fused hand to her shoulder and prodded her ungently. "Look after the chil…dren."
The only command she had ever given it, the only command she had ever trusted it to follow.
"Luke, get in the car," she said without turning away.
"But-" he protested.
"Now," she said, and her voice must have brooked no argument, for he allowed himself to be dragged miserably away by Leia.
She looked at Em-Kay closer.
"I'll look after them," she said softly, "it's all that's ever mattered to me."
"Look after the children," it told her, her own voice recorded a thousand times over and parroted back to her.
"I will," she said, and paused. This droid was the only being she had known in nearly twenty years that remembered Padmé. "I'll look after her children."
She took a blaster from her belt, pressed it into it's stiff hand and closed the fingers around the grip before she could think better of it, just as she used to when she had to go out an face the world when the children were young. It grasped it as best it could and tottered away. They would come to the house, she knew, when they came looking for Ashla Sokath and her children, but at least now she did not leave it undefended.
She looked around her home for the final time: the light-well and the kitchen, Leia's module reading and Luke's machine parts. The rug, her very first purchase that had meant so very much to her at the time.
The presence that sometimes lingered when her mind was clear and the children were asleep.
"I'll see you soon, master," she said, and closed the door to the Sokath estate for the last time.
The children were waiting in the 'speeder, and she slid into the driver's seat in silence. Soon they were flying across the desert. Her eyes flicked to the mirror. The children— hardly children now, she supposed— were sat bundled in the back, the essentials jammed in around them. Luke was wide eyed and pale, Leia pale and mouth drawn tight. Their hands were clasped tightly.
She turned back to the road. She tried not to think about how many times she had made this journey. She tried to appreciate the wind on her face as though it were not the last time. The night had fallen around them.
As she wound their way to the city one last time, it became evident that all was not as she had left it. She saw the moment that Luke and Leia registered the change in the mirror. The murky presence of Mos Eisley was no longer suffocating in its own tepid inequity, but instead it was ringing with terror, sharp and distinct. She didn't think she had ever felt its presence like this— so quicksilver and shrill.
There was a column of smoke rising from the east quarter, still at a distance but illuminated by what could only be a terrible fire.
She swung the 'speeder round and began to retrace the winding route by which she had left the city only that day. There were no vehicles queueing by the south side, and when she drew level the guard looked twitchy as he stalked over for her papers.
She didn't let him even finish his approach. She held up a hand. He turned on his heel.
"Auntie?" Leia asked, her voice thin.
"We don't have time," Ahsoka said grimly.
She drove carefully through the streets. It was deserted compared to how it had been today, as though everyone had retreated as far back into their own houses as they could and battened down the hatches. The streets were dark, the houses unlit. She could feel them, trembling sparks of life hidden behind sandstone bricks. They pulled up only a few streets away from the entrance to the Slave Quarters and she cut the engine abruptly. She turned in her chair.
"There's something I need to do," she told them, "I'll be back in ten minutes. If I'm not, Luke, I want you to drive through the Quarters towards the port. Do you understand? Owen and Beru will get you as far as the port, and then you need to find Han."
"We're not going without you," he said instantly.
"Ten minutes," she said, and tried to keep her voice even.
"Don't leave us," Leia whispered.
She leaned across the seats and grabbed their conjoined hands. She pressed a hard kiss to the back of them. "Ten minutes," she promised. "I'll be back in ten minutes. If I'm not, you know what to do."
She grabbed the bag she had packed, wrenched the door open, and fled the vehicle before they could try and stop her. She didn't look back.
She ran down the familiar streets made treacherous by the night, towards the shop and the city's centre. As she got closer, the streets became less deserted; thickets of people clumped together and eyes suspicious, dark figures darting from house to house and the whispers— the whispers were everywhere.
There was a sinking feeling in her stomach and a moment of pure precognition that had nothing to do with the Force.
She was running towards the column of smoke.
It wasn't until she reached the shop's street that the huddles of people coalesced into what could reasonably be called a crowd.
She stopped running. There was no use to it when she had already arrived.
The shop was in flames.
The whole building had gone up, flames licking out the window, the facade cracked under the heat. It was spreading to the buildings either side if the aghast crowd was any indication. People had gathered to watch in communal horror and even as she stood there some had fetched long poles to try and pull down the buildings either side to try and erect a hasty fire barrier. It was no use; the stone was sturdy and it seemed only the heat of the fire could make any headway.
There was a knot of people the other side of the street, bent down but straightening, gathered around something in the midst of them. She was pulled into their orbit slowly at first, and then drawn in when she saw splayed limbs on the floor.
She elbowed past the onlookers and finally saw what had drawn them.
Varn Abana lay dead at their feet.
"Gone," she heard muttered, "the smoke got him."
She didn't know who had spoken, but she felt the moment they looked up and saw her among them. She heard the sharp intake of breath. She didn't look up.
Varn was made no more palatable by death, but whatever spark of malice had been bred into him had fled in the face of such an inferno. With his blackened face and blistered hands, his eyes rolled back and mouth ajar, he held no more dignity than he had in life.
"Ashla," someone breathed before her, and were it not for the hand suddenly on her shoulder she wouldn't have known who it was. Kuna pulled her into a rough embrace that she didn't have the presence of mind to shrug her way out of. Over her shoulder she could not take her eyes off Varn. His hair was burnt unevenly, fried at the ends.
"What happened?" She asked numbly.
She released her. A woman beside him was already kneeling and patting down Varn's pockets.
"I don't know," she admitted, her voice high and reedy, "I wasn't here when it-"
"What happened?" She asked instead to the woman kneeling at her feet.
The stranger shrugged. "Imperials. Must have firebombed the place." She held up a credit chip she had found before pocketing it herself. Ahsoka wanted to shake her. "Place was up in minutes. He managed to stumble out, but…" She stood and nudged his foot with her own.
"I thought you were still in there," Kuna said, her face stark in the roaring light of the fire. "He kept saying he'd told you to run."
"What?"
"Over and over," she said, " he kept repeating it: 'I told her to run, I told her to run.' I thought it was you."
Despite the heat, despite the sudden cack of splintering beams, Ahsoka's blood ran cold. She whipped back round to the shop. The flames were reaching higher and higher sending sparks in a plume into the sky.
"Ennen," she said.
"Who?" Asked the stranger at their feet. Kuna looked at her in dawning horror.
She was running before anyone could stop her. The door was nothing more than a gaping maw into the inferno, the heat blistering. The sound of it was terrible up close, but she gritted her teeth, extended her reach, and pulled the Force around her. How much good it would do she did not know; she could hardly pull the clean air in with her, the heat about her was blistering but not immediately fatal, and the structure did not collapse before her.
She forced her way through the remnants of the door, heedless of the wordless cry of the crowd, and stumbled forward.
The entire shop was ablaze; floor and walls, the fire licking across the ceiling. It wouldn't be long before it would come down around her, Force or no.
She had wanted to run but she dropped to her knees on instinct, the smoke less choking. She crawled through the burning remnants of her life of the past two decades on memory alone.
"Ennen!" She called out, but her voice was dry and cracked, overtaken by the fire. With the fear behind her and the rising panic in her own chest, she could not even feel for Ennen's life before her.
It had been foolish, she realised. If she wasn't quick she would die on the floor, choking on the smoke just like Varn.
She moved faster, as fast as she could. She got past the desk, into the hall and to the door of Ennen's office. Unthinkingly, she grabbed the door handle and recoiled with a cry, her hand burnt. She gritted her teeth once more, pulled down her sleeve and tried again.
She pushed her way into the office and looked around frantically. Ennen's desk, her tomes, all of it aflame. But no Ennen. She scanned the room desperately, sure that her eyes were deceiving her, but there was no one there.
Where would she go? Was she outside, had Ahsoka risked everything for nothing? What could possibly be worth the risk of staying?
A beam cracked ahead, and once more cold certainty overtook her.
Ennen would go and find the one thing she couldn't live without.
Ahsoka reached the stairs that she had only ever taken once. She didn't waste her breath trying to call out again. She held her shirt over her mouth and tried to take as deep a breath as she could manage with the choking smoke.
She stood and took the stairs at a run.
The smoke was worse at the top of the stairs; so bad she could barely see, her eyes closing and refusing to open against the stinging air.
"Ennen?" She called, her voice nothing more than a croak, "Ennen?"
She stumbled forward, blinded, and tried to remember what it had looked like all those years ago. A small room, barely furnished, she would be able to see—
Her foot struck flesh as she staggered forward. She leant down blindly and grabbed. She could barely open her eyes long enough to confirm that the leg in her grasp was lilac before she had leant down and grabbed with the other and heaved.
Ennen, prone upon the floor, did not assist her. Ahsoka grunted as she hauled her once more. There was no finesse, no time to get her in a proper hold. She just gripped with all her strength and dragged her across the floor. When she reached the stairs she had plans of trying to soften the blow but the heat at her back and the ominous noise of splintering stone sent her tumbling down them, no thought as to how either of them landed.
A quick look confirmed that the way she came was impassable.
"Come on," she grunted, to herself or to Ennen she didn't know. She grabbed her once again, under her arms this time, and pulled her to the back of the shop, where her work floor had been. The heat was lesser there, the fire not yet all consuming, but she did not stop to look at all of her work being turned to ash. She staggered to the back door, the same door she had walked through a thousand times before, and burst into the cool air of the night.
She didn't stop until she had them a safe distance, meters from the sandstone walls. The crowd hadn't made it to the back of the building, and for a moment it was just her and Ennen under the night sky.
Ennen's face was blackened, just like Varn's, and the end of her left lek, terribly burned and cracked, flesh a livid red beneath. Her hands were clenched, arms contracted, pugilistic, from the heat.
Ahsoka choked on her breathing as she tried to suck in air past the soot in her throat. She crawled to Ennen's head and kneeled over her.
She patted her on the cheek, coughing.
"Ennen," she said, "Ennen, wake up, we've got to get out of here. I've got the children in the car, we've got a ship. Come on, wake up, we've got to go. Ennen, wake up!"
Her eyes were filling with tears. She wanted to shake her, she wanted to shake her so hard that Ennen would swat her away, irritated.
"I can take out the chip!" She said desperately, grabbing her bag will stung across her chest. "I came back for you, I told you I would— you, you can be free!"
The tears were spilling now, making tracks through the soot on her face. One of them dripped on to Ennen's cheek.
"No," she said vehemently, "no, it doesn't end like this, dammit!" She took as deep a breath as she could, past the catch in her throat and the smoke in her lungs, and sealed her mouth over Ennen's. She watched her chest inflate. She took another breath and did it again. She leaned back, hands on Ennen's chest, and pushed down sharply with all her weight, once, twice, three times. She felt her ribs crack like a chestful of dry twigs.
She took another deep breath, but she was done. She sobbed.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm sorry."
Ennen was dead.
Ahsoka looked at her, her dear friend, curled up from the heat of the fire that had killed her. Her hands were pulled to her chest, contracted, and clenched so tightly around what had mattered most to her in that entire dwelling— her detonator. She had risked her life to get it; out of fear of what would happen to her if it was destroyed by the fire, or because she had made her decision and she was waiting to give it to Ahsoka and be made a free woman?
Ahsoka would never know, and the clock was ticking.
"I'm sorry," she whispered again. She leaned over and kissed Ennen's forehead, still hot under her lips, before leaning back and dotting her finger where her mouth had been— a final blessing.
She ran.
She hardly remembered making it back to where she had left the children, and if she had looked strange no one stopped her, covered in soot and ash as she was.
She came upon the car and was opening the door and sliding into the back before the children had even realised she was there. They jumped, badly. Threepio's lamp-like eyes fixed on her face, but he remained uncharacteristically silent.
"Auntie?" Leia asked with alarm, "What-"
"Drive," Ahsoka said wearily, her body numb.
Luke looked at her uncertainly but did as he was bid. Soon they were peeling away from the curb and winding their way to the Slave Quarters.
It had been eleven minutes.
Ahsoka paid little attention to the journey as Luke drove them. Both of them were silent, though she caught both of them darting glances at her. She scrubbed her face with her sleeve, though she doubted it made much difference.
They reached the entrance to the Quarters.
"Down here?" Luke asked.
"Madam," Threepio began, "are you quite sure-?"
She nodded.
She understood their hesitance. The streets were narrow and close, and she doubted whether they had ever had a 'speeder drive the full length of them. It was not a place the Masters' concerned themselves with.
"Keep going," she told him.
He drove carefully, though the sound of the engine was abominably loud in the silence of the night now that they had left the chaos behind them.
A door opened up ahead of them. A lamp was lit.
"Keep going," she repeated when he slowed.
Another door opened.
Soon it seemed that every door they passed opened, the people and families within coming to the frame and watching silently, all lit up. As they drove past, their eyes lowered and their heads dipped, a sign of respect. An honour guard.
"Oh," said Leia, her voice small.
Luke swiped at his face but kept driving.
When they came to the heart of the Quarters he idled the 'speeder and Ahsoka could not bring herself to tell him to continue. There, outside the Grandmothers' abode and standing with the occupants, stood Beru and Owen.
They approached the 'speeder but when Luke put his hand on the handle as if to open it, Owen kept it shut.
"We couldn't let you go without saying goodbye," Beru said softly, "and neither could they."
Luke and Leia were crying. Ahsoka suspected she had never stopped.
"This isn't goodbye, you hear?" Owen said gruffly. "Whatever's going on, when it's over, you come back and you tell us all about it."
"We will," Leia said, her voice thick.
"We'll miss you," Luke said, just as upset.
"You be good for your aunt," Owen said as though they still came up to his hip and were excited for a trip to the market, "and you mind what she says."
"You'll be careful," Beru said, and then looked at Ahsoka, "all of you. Because you'll be back, and we're going to want to hear all about it."
She knew her words would be rebuffed just as they had been every single time, but she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she didn't try one last time.
"Thank you," she breathed, "thank you for all of it. I couldn't have…I wouldn't have been able to…" she broke off, betrayed by her own voice.
"Oh Ashla," Beru said, "don't you understand? We should be thanking you."
"We're out of time," Owen said, rough but not unkind. "Don't worry about us back here. We'll see you again. Now go. Don't look back."
He nodded at Luke and Luke started up the engine again. The children's wide eyes were fixed on the roads ahead but Ahsoka couldn't help it. She looked back.
The image of the Larses, hands clasped and surrounded by the Grandmothers, seared itself into her mind, the final image of yet another home lost, another family left behind.
"Auntie?" Leia asked her gently.
"Keep going," she said, and realised that she had been following her own command for nearly twenty years. Artoo whistled behind her.
Leia took her hand and she held it tightly in her own as more faces appeared at doors, more lamps were lit to guide their path. Luke didn't bother to wipe his face as the tears rolled down his cheeks as they left. The droids were blessedly silent.
Soon the road began to open up again and Ahsoka could see the port growing near. She remembered back to the first time she had arrived, so young and scared, and it seemed a miracle that she should be back with those two children she had once strapped to her to keep them safe.
Luke killed the engine before they got to close.
"How do we get in?" He asked, voice low and worried, "There's got to be guards and-"
"I'll get us in," Ahsoka said evenly. "Follow close."
They climbed from the car, and grabbed their packs. The children had packed wisely but still it was a lot to shoulder. She held back a cough as Leia helped her adjust the straps. They made a rather rag-tag bunch.
They kept to the shadows as they crept forward. The port was lit from within and Luke had been right; there were guards posted to the entrance. More than usual, it seemed to her, with four men patrolling the gate and more waiting in the hastily erected gatehouse. The port wasn't quiet like the rest of the town; she could hear a rowdy crowd out of sight, likely Spacers growing raucous with their enforced respite. She wondered if Han was among them.
Ahsoka held out her hand to stop them.
"We need a distraction," she whispered.
The twins looked at each other before Leia looked at the 'speeder. Luke grinned.
As one, they lifted their hands. Ahsoka felt them reach into the Force and pull. Slowly, their abandoned 'speeder began to roll, picking up speed. Ahsoka watched as they closed their eyes in concentration. For a moment she thought they meant to roll it straight through the guards, but the 'speeder veered at the last minute, plunging straight through the guardhouse.
"Quick," she hissed as the men scattered in disarray. She grabbed the two of them and pushed them on, as quickly as she dared, back bent and on silent foot. It was not enough to stop them from being spotted, but with the distraction and the tension and the panic it had caused, it was easy enough to redirect their attention if they tried to look over.
They cleared the entrance and ran in earnest. Threepio and Artoo trundled on behind them.
"Ninety-four," she muttered to herself, "ninety-four."
She felt painfully exposed as she tried to find docking bay ninety-four, both the twins fanning out behind her. She could hear the chaos they'd left behind her. The back of her neck prickled.
"Hey!" She heard someone hiss, "Over here!"
She looked around to see Han waving them over, crouched on the loading ramp of the most uninspiring getaway ship she had ever seen.
Leia lit up and took off at a run. By the time Ahsoka had grabbed Luke and run over, Han was already whispering in her daughter's ear. He flushed when he saw her.
"Captain Solo," she said and then wavered, "Thank you-"
"No time," he said quickly, "In the ship."
They hurried up after him, and with some small measure of relief she relaxed when the ramp closed behind them.
Silence overtook them.
"Make yourselves at home," he said, before disappearing down one of the rounded corridors.
Her knees buckled.
Alarmed, both of the children grabbed her.
"I'm fine," she said, "I'm fine, I just—" Ennen's face flashed before her eyes, "I'm fine," she said more firmly.
Threepio approached her hesitantly, "Perhaps you should sit down, Mistress Tano."
She smiled tiredly. She grasped his arm. He looked down at it and then back at her face. "Perhaps I should, Threepio, but first-"
A roar came from behind them.
Despite it all, despite the heartbreak, the adrenaline, the ash, and the soot, she gave a disbelieving laugh.
"Chewie?" She asked incredulously, before she was engulfed in two massive arms, her face pressed to his pelt. For a scant moment it felt as though Chewbacca was the only thing holding her up in the world, and she sagged against him.
Was there no end to the parade of familiar forgotten faces on this, the strangest of all days?
When she was released she turned to see the children staring at her agog and Han's incredulous face from where he had reappeared. Chewbacca gave a bellow.
"What do you mean you know each other?" Han demanded.
"It's a small universe," Ahsoka said wryly.
"And getting smaller all the time," Han grumbled, before turning to look at them all in turn. They must have made a sorry looking bunch. "Alright," he said, "what's going on?"
As she watched him evaluate them, a terrible thought crossed her mind: how easy would it be if she could turn his will to hers, make him take them away from here without a single question? Surely it could not be more difficult than everything else she had faced that day, that year, that lifetime? She had done far worse for her children.
But, no. She had given up almost everything she was, but there were some lines she would be loath to cross. Telling friend from foe was one of them. She might wonder how far his affection for Leia would take them, but for now, watching this man subtly check her daughter for injuries before turning away, she decided to trust him.
"There'll be time for questions later, Captain," she said, "but first, we need to get to Alderaan."
Han looked at her and, for a moment, she wondered if he would tell her that she was mad, that he would demand answers and refuse to go a step further.
"We can pay," she added in case that sweetened the deal.
"Alright," he said and turned his back. She waited for him to call out a price, but none came. She followed him to the cockpit.
"We'll need to be quick," he said, hands moving comfortably over the controls. "We'll need to hit light speed as soon as we leave the atmosphere— hey, kid, what are you doing?"
Luke didn't look up from where he was already wiring Threepio into the navigation systems. "He said he can do the calculations."
"I can do the calculations," Han groused, but didn't stop his work.
The ship juddered as it rose from the ground.
"Are they…?" Asked Leia, looking out the glass.
"Firing at us?" Han asked, "Sure looks like it, sweetheart."
Artoo trilled madly and some small part of her thrilled at it, at the remnant of what had once been her every day.
The ship rose steadily. Out of the viewing port Ahsoka watched as the figures on the ground below, firing at them, waving, presumably shouting at them to come back, grew small and smaller. She had the mad urge to wave back.
Tatooine stretched out below them, Mos Eisley nothing more than a speck in the rolling dunes of the great oceans of sand. Somewhere down there were the ashes of everything the children had ever known. Somewhere down there was the body of a slave lying alone in the street.
The ship turned and the great dark expanse greeting them.
"Got 'em," Han said triumphantly. The calculations complete and input, he wasted no time and pressed the thrust throttle all the way forward.
A familiar lurch, gone from her life for nearly twenty years, had her hands gripping the back of his chair. Ahead of them, the starlight warped and stretched until it was streaking past them quicker than the eye could see. Her stomach dropped, her breath came short, and Ashla Sokath was left behind.