Needless to say, it was a rather astonished Commander who stepped into the apartment's common room some little while later, and an adoring Uncle Rex who settled down on the floor with the two young Amidala-Skywalker cadets just a few moments after that.

The assembled company passed a pleasant afternoon in catching up on the last half-decade (and didn't everyone feel old when Ahsoka phrased it that way) and reminiscing over some of the less fraught memories of the time before. Ahsoka nestled comfortably between Obi-Wan and Padmé on the couch to watch as Rex exhibited his DC-17s at the twins' request and explained the finer points of how they worked (to Luke) and how to use them (to Leia). Which, naturally, reminded the twins that Aunt 'Soka was possessed of two lightsabers!, and so a demonstration was accordingly demanded.

Ahsoka hauled herself from the couch with a mock groan, much to the children's amusement, and ignited her sabers, to be met with enraptured exclamations.

"Oh, wizard!"

"Uncle Obi, you never told us there were white lightsabers!"

"I had no idea that such a thing existed," he replied dryly, with a questioning glance at Ahsoka. "I do hope we're to hear the story of these peculiar blades of yours?"

She shrugged. "Had a run-in with some Inquisitors awhile back—you've heard of them, yes? I knew I would need lightsabers if I wanted to be able to go up against them in the future, and I couldn't exactly zip off to Ilum for kyber, so I took theirs."

"But I thought 'quisors had red sabers," Leia said. "'Cause they're corrupted."

"They do. Kyber crystals turn red when they're bled, when the user corrupts and bends them to their will. I… unbent these two, I guess, and healed them so they aren't corrupt anymore."

"That shouldn't be possible," Obi-Wan said, and Padmé rolled her eyes. Ahsoka could just barely hear her mutter under her breath, "And here we go again…." Louder, she added, "I've been trying for six years to convince Master Kenobi that the Order did not know everything about the Force, but it's been about as easy as teaching a shaak to read."

Ahsoka feigned astonishment. "Really? I'd have thought teaching a shaak to read would be easier. Well, anyway—Master Obi-Wan, the proof is right in front of you this time."

"So it is," he replied—rather stiffly, as if the admission had been wrestled from him against his will. She searched the Force for clues as to the reason for such exaggerated reluctance to accept plain fact, but his shields were impervious to stray thoughts or feelings, and she sensed nothing. Another question for later, then.

Luke and Leia crowded onto the couch between Padmé and Obi-Wan, where they perched on the edge for the best view of the upcoming performance.

Ahsoka brushed away the tendrils of foreboding as she unhooked her sabers from her belt, switched their power settings to training mode, and took up an opening stance in the middle of the room.

"Who're you gonna fight?" Luke called out.

Her intention had been to go through one of her practice katas, but there was no reason they couldn't make things a little more entertaining.

"Who do you want me to fight?" she asked.

"General Grievous?"

"And Dooku," Leia chimed in.

"And some B1s!"

"What, do you want me to just fight a whole entire army?"

"Yes!"

"Padmé?" Ahsoka asked.

Padmé shook her head. "I think the army will have to wait for somewhere with less furniture. And fewer walls."

"Okay, Grievous and Dooku it is, then. You two really don't go easy on a person, do you?" narrowing her eyes at the twins in mock vexation. They merely smiled angelically.

So she gave the command performance—struck and swung and parried as if her life depended on it, dodging imaginary swings right and left, leaping and letting the Force carry her as high as the ceiling would allow.

The twins, initially watching with rapt attention, soon began to provide commentary, and it was not long before they had taken charge of the game.

"Oh no, he's sneaking up behind you!"

"It's Dooku! He's gonna lightning you!"

"Pssszzzzzzttt! There's the lightning! Jump, Aunt 'Soka!"

She obliged, somersaulting through the air and slashing her sabers high as she landed.

Luke crowed. "Ooh, there goes one of Grievous's arms! Duck, Uncle Rex, it might hit you!"

Evidently, however, the arm followed a different trajectory, for Leia suddenly leapt up to throw herself across Padmé, hands outstretched as if batting away a projectile. "I got it, you're safe now, Mama!"

Both children soon abandoned the couch to join fully in the fray, and at their repeated insistence, the other adults eventually gave in and waded into the thick of the battle themselves. Dooku had long since been dispatched by then, and Grievous only had one arm remaining, but somehow new foes kept crawling out of the woodwork, and it was only at dinnertime that the last of them were well and thoroughly trounced.

After dinner, while Ahsoka and Rex regaled the Luke and Leia with the antics of the vod'e in the 501st, Obi-Wan took Padmé aside in the kitchen.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Ahsoka asked me what happened to Anakin. I promised to tell her."

She sighed. "I wish she didn't have to carry the burden of that knowledge—she's so young, and she doesn't deserve the conflict it's going to bring her—but I suppose we can't very well refuse to tell her, either. She's young, but she's not a child."

"No. She hasn't been that in a very long time."

Far, far too long a time—and though she had said that she bore him no ill will for his role in that, still he felt the grinding weight of culpability, and its companion guilt.

"Do you want me to be there, when you tell her?" Padmé inquired.

Obi-Wan shook his head. "It isn't necessary." One of them, at least, ought to be spared the ordeal. It was bad enough to be visited by memories unsolicited, but to intentionally exhume them—he would not put that upon her merely for want of moral support.

"I didn't ask if it was necessary," she said, gently chiding.

"You shouldn't have to tell it, or even hear it."

"Neither should you."

With that, Padmé returned to the common room. She didn't say, "and that's that," but she might as well have done. Six years of living under the same roof had given Obi-Wan ample acquaintance with her end of discussion tone. The matter was settled: she would be present for the difficult conversation.

Which created a dilemma.

Ahsoka would ask if Anakin could have somehow survived, and she would know if Obi-Wan lied to her. She would likely assume that he and Padmé were colluding to conceal some unpleasantness, and would voice her assumption, which would inevitably inform Padmé that Anakin was alive.

How he wished he could have persuaded himself that Anakin had ceased to exist when he Fell and became Vader. It would solve the problem beautifully if he were so deluded that he could say that Vader had destroyed Anakin. Perhaps he might have had that excuse, had he retired to a solitary existence with no company but his mind and his ghosts, but alas, living with Padmé and the twins, he had retained [most of] his sanity. Padmé had forced herself to speak of the events surrounding the Republic's fall, had refused to let grief deceive her into comfortable denial, and had refused to let her children grow up knowing anything but the truth about their father's demise.

Your dad was a good person, but even good people can do bad things, and if they do very, very bad things, and they do not ask for help and try to change, then they can become bad people.

She had ever been adamant that there would be no deception. They'll end up learning the details one way or another, and it will less difficult for them if it's not a complete surprise when they do. So Obi-Wan had heard her acknowledge that Anakin Fell, and he did terrible things, and he died when he and Obi-Wan fought. Hearing the truth spoken, so matter-of-factly, did much to prevent delusions from taking hold. Padmé was wise, indeed—but just now, he did wish that she were rather more foolish, for all the good that it did.

Which, of course, was very little. Wishing certainly did nothing to solve the problem of how in the worlds he was going to avoid a very awkward situation. Oh, yes, as it turns out, I have been not-quite-lying to you for the past six years. That would go over well. But then, he had asked for it, hadn't he, when he failed to trust her with the truth in the first place.

After the twins were in bed, the adults gathered again in the common room. In the dim light, Obi-Wan and Padmé looked grim and drawn. Tired. Shadows haunted their cheeks and darkened their eyes, until it seemed as though the past six years must have carried the weight of ten or twenty. Dread flowed in the Force like an oil slick down a river.

Guilt nibbled at Ahsoka. Perhaps it was better to let Obi-Wan and Padmé keep whatever small peace they had managed to eke out.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Maybe we shouldn't do this. I know, whatever happened, it wasn't easy or pleasant."

"It wasn't, but we're not hiding from the past," Padmé replied. She moved closer to Ahsoka on the couch and reached up to wrap an arm around shoulders. "The only question is whether you are ready to hear the story. That goes for you, too, Rex," she added. "It's been a rather emotional day for all of us. If either of you isn't ready—"

"No," they replied at once.

"I need to know."

"Might as well get it over with it."

"Very well."

"So? What happened?" Ahsoka asked.

"You know," Obi-Wan began, "that Anakin long regarded then-Chancellor Palpatine as a close friend. When the Chancellor revealed himself as a Sith, he retained Anakin's allegiance."

And that answered that. "Yes. Kriff it, Maul was right!"

"Maul?" Suspicion and confusion warred in Obi-Wan's tone.

"Yes, Maul. I should have listened to him—karking hells, how was I supposed to know I should listen to that—" She broke off with a sound of frustration. "He told me his master was grooming Anakin as his apprentice. He thought he would Fall. I thought that was rubbish, just Maul trying to trick me into helping him. I should have believed him—"

Padmé's arm tightened a little on Ahsoka's shoulders, and Rex leaned over to place a steadying hand on hers, saying, "Commander, if the Force had wanted you to listen, it damn well should have known better than to pick Maul as its messenger."

"Okay. Anyway. What else did that reek in tooka's fur do? There must have been something—it couldn't have been as easy as nicely asking Anakin if he was sure he wouldn't rather be a Sith." A tremble in her voice belied the flippancy of her words.

"No. It wasn't that easy. Not quite. Ani started having dreams where I died. He told me that Palpatine had offered him a solution. For a price, of course." Padmé's mouth twisted bitterly. "He accepted it. No price was too high, no sacrifice too great, and at Palpatine's command, he went to the Jedi Temple."

"No…" But Ahsoka's feeble denial had all the effect of a crecheling trying to levitate a Venator.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, as if it would shut out the images playing before them. "There was no mercy. Anakin had no mercy. I saw the security footage. The elderly, the padawans, the younglings—" His fingers turned white as they gripped the arm of the couch. "None were spared, either from him, or from— It was after Order 66. When he went to the Temple, the 501st was with him."

"Haar'chak!"

The others all started at Rex's outburst.

"Skywalker knew about Umbara! How could he pull the same osik that kandosii demagolka Krell pulled? Shabuir! He was a slave himself! How could he lead the vod'e against their own, and when they weren't even in control of their own minds? I know neither of us believed Fives when he told us about the chips, but it should have been clear the instant the vod'e were willing to follow him against the Jedi!"

"The Dark Side is a corrupting force. It destroys all regard for anything but power, strength, and personal gain. That, combined with his obsession with saving Padmé, rendered him blind to all reason."

"Did you try to stop him?"

"I did," Padmé said quietly. "The Separatist leaders had assembled on Mustafar. Palpatine sent Anakin to eliminate the unnecessary pawns. I followed. Obi-Wan stowed away on my ship." To Obi-Wan, she added, with something that wasn't quite a glare, "And I'm still not sure whether I'm more angry with you for ruining any chance I had of getting through to him, or relieved that you opened my eyes to how delusional he was."

The words washed over Ahsoka like the babble of a holonet program. They were droplets of water, and her mind had on a raincloak.

"Padmé went to talk to Anakin. I couldn't hear them from inside the ship, but it was impossible to imagine that the conversation could go other than badly, so I left the ship to confront him. He was unstable, irrational. He strangled Padmé."

That sank in.

"He what?" Ahsoka met Padmé's eyes in horror. "You? He did that—to you?"

Maybe she shouldn't have been surprised. She herself had, after all, fought her own master after the Son had turned her to the Dark on Mortis. The memory was blurred, but that much she knew for certain. The Dark Side's influence could warp a mind beyond belief. Even so, to imagine her master turning on Padmé, after everything she had seen of the two of them throughout the war? It hardly seemed real. But the Force snapped with Padmé's anger as she brought her fingertips to rest at the base of her throat, as if even now she could not rid herself of the feeling of an invisible grasp.

Ahsoka shuddered.

"Commander?"

"I'm okay, Rex. I mean, I will be." Later. After she somehow managed to make sense of this. Or not, since that was a hopeless task… maybe it would be better to have a good cry and not try to overanalyze the dead past.

She took a breath to steady herself and pressed onward. "What then? For obvious reasons, I'm guessing Obi-Wan intervened?"

"Yes. We fought."

"You fought? Didn't you even try to talk to Anakin, get him to back down?"

"We spoke."

And that was a no. Or maybe a "Very little constructive effort was made. It seems I had left my negotiating skills on Coruscant." As was usually the case with personal conversations between her master and grandmaster.

"How could you—" She fell silent. Perspective, Ahsoka. Remember how you felt that day. Now magnify that tenfold because your sibling Fell and helped to kill the rest of your family. Would you have been able to have a calm, collected discussion with him?

Probably not. The individual who could engage in a calm, collected discussion after that must be either a saint or a lunatic, and she knew Obi-Wan well enough to acknowledge that he was neither.

He sighed. "In hindsight, my approach was confrontational, but there was no point in giving significant effort to diplomacy. He was beyond all reason. A duel was inevitable." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than her. "What else could we do at that point? He would not back down, and there could be no turning back. He was a Sith, and it was my duty, as a Jedi, to combat the Dark Side and the Sith."

An unpleasant idea wormed its way into Ahsoka's mind, at that, a nasty little suggestion which rapidly matured into awful certainty as Obi-Wan's voice wavered, and his gaze shifted once more into the middle distance. Jedi and Sith, mortal enemies.

"Obi-Wan?" Her throat was so tight that the words came out at a childish pitch, breaking now and again. "You didn't—you wouldn't—not my master—not your padawan—"

Obi-Wan pulled himself back to the present with effort, forcing himself to meet his grandpadawan's eyes. Stars, the fathomless horror in their depths—and the sorrow—and yet, somehow, she regarded him without malice or resentment, even as he whispered, "He wasn't your master anymore, Ahsoka."

"You tried to kill him."

"I—" He tried say, I did kill him, but the words refused to come—perhaps because he knew that she would perceive the lie.

He had to say something. She was watching him closely, seeking any sign of truth or falsehood, doubtless scanning the Force as well. He could not deny that he had tried, but if he said that, then she would ask if he had succeeded. And Force help them all when that tooka came out of the bag.

"You did, didn't you?" she asked again—not quite accusing.

"He… didn't just try, Ahsoka," Padmé said, gently. (Was it reprehensible of him to allow her to intervene, to conveniently let the lie live on?)

But Ahsoka was shaking her head, with a querying glance toward Rex, who gave a minute nod, as if in encouragement.

"That can't be true," Ahsoka said—but she said it with confidence, rather than denial.

"Ahsoka, I know it's hard to hear—"

"No, it's not that! It just doesn't make sense that Anakin would be— Our training bond never broke. It's still there, just barely, but all the same—Anakin can't have died, because it's still there."

Obi-Wan flinched. He had never considered that, even if Ahsoka had somehow survived, her training bond with Anakin might have done so, as well. He would have assumed it to have shattered in the Fall, as his had done.

Perhaps he ought to tell her. At least, then, he would no longer be alone in bearing his curse of knowledge. But Ahsoka deserved better than to bear that burden, and so the Negotiator lowered his shields to let the truth of his words be felt, and said, "I don't know why your bond didn't break, but I was there. Anakin is gone."

Please, Padawan, don't ask any more questions. You don't want to know what I know.

Mercifully, she ceased to ask. But the questions remained in her eyes, and he knew that they would be put forth sometime, somewhere, in some way.

Neither Ahsoka nor Rex felt like returning to the small suite that they shared with Asajj after they departed from the Amidala-and-Kenobi residence. They roamed instead over the temple complex until they eventually ended up sitting on the roof atop one of the towers, where the peaceful sounds of the nighttime jungle were interrupted only by an occasional distant clang or clatter from the hangar.

"We didn't dream that, did we," Ahsoka said. It wasn't really a question.

"No. I don't think I could dream up something like that even after drinking Hardcase's hyperdrive homebrew."

"You drank that stuff?"

"Are you joking? Kix would've had my head, if that stuff didn't melt it off first."

Ahsoka couldn't help smiling just a tiny bit, even as a lump rose in her throat. "I miss Kix."

"So do I." Rex scowled into the night. "He knew there was something amiss with the chips. I didn't believe Fives when he told me what he thought they could do. I didn't believe him, and the whole legion—hells, the whole karking GAR paid the price. A captain is supposed to watch out for his men. Haran, so is a general! How could Skywalker see them shooting the Jedi and not realise they would never do that of their own will? How could our general care so little for his men's values, that he would take advantage of their weakness and let them do something they would hate in their right minds?"

"I should have stayed. After the trial. If I had stayed, then I could have helped. Listened to Fives, convinced you and Sky—Anakin." It didn't seem right to call her master by the old, affectionate nickname anymore, after what she had learned that evening. "If I had been there, I could have helped him to stay in the Light. I could have stayed, but I left. Rex—what if this is all my fault?"

He brought one hand to rest on her shoulder. "It's not your fault, 'So'ika. I don't think it would have made a difference, whether you had stayed or not. The Chancellor ordered an army with control chips in their heads. He was never going to settle for almost getting his empire. If he thought you stood any chance of getting between him and Skywalker, he would have done whatever it took to get you out of the way."

A beat of silence, and then,

"Rex. I think that's exactly what he did."

Her whisper was just loud enough to rise over the nighttime chorus of the insects in the jungle below.

"The Jedi should have handled it, but it just had to go to the Senate… the death penalty for a minor, no kriffing way was that standard protocol… and Tarkin's a Moff now, second only to Vader in terms of proximity to Palpatine, he had to have been working under his orders one way or another… and the whole thing killed two gundarks with one shot, didn't it? Whether I was executed, kicked out of the Order, or left, I was out of the way, and it worsened Anakin's distrust of the Council. It's partially their own fault, of course, because Palpatine had to have known they would respond the way they did. That—" She trailed off into a growl of frustration. "How are we ever supposed to beat someone who can play people like that?"

"Yeah, but we know who we're up against now. That takes away a good bit of his ability to manipulate us, at least. And now we have General Kenobi and the Senator on our side. I'll bet you a hundred Imperial credits that the Empire doesn't last another ten years."

She snorted. "What kind of a bet is that? If we win, you win, and if we lose, then we're dead and you don't have to pay."

"Which makes it the ideal bet. Minus the dying bit."

"You spent way too much time around Torrent Company."

Just like that, the brief respite of levity melted away.

"It wasn't nearly as much time as it should have been."

"I know."

She leaned in close, offering what comfort she could—a single sister, who could never fill the gap left by a multitude of vod'e.