Chapter Text
The chime went off and Anakin swore, blushing as he caught his mother’s amused looked when he opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, I need—”
“To go?” she finished, and he felt the love and affection pouring off her, without a speck of recrimination. “I know. You told me before we started that you wouldn’t have much time.”
“Sorry,” he said again, standing and hugging her. She was small now, which still disturbed him. Not tiny, like Leia, but smaller than him, when she’d always towered over him in his memories, large and soft and safe. “I know we didn’t get much practice in.”
Kissing his cheek, Mom said, “I’ll work with Leia on what we’ve covered. I don’t expect to get far anytime soon, but I would like to do what I can. Especially if I can be of help.”
And wasn’t that like his mother, embracing her Force sensitivity for the sake of the people she loved. Being in the position of teaching her was even weirder than realizing he’d gotten so tall, but Anakin was actually enjoying it. Meditating was boring, but doing it with Mom was soothing, and he could feel her becoming more confident the more they practiced, even in just these few days. Anakin hoped it would help too. He worried about leaving her here on Coruscant.
Speaking of which, “You’ll come again tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sorry, I…can’t,” he didn’t mumble, but he couldn’t look at her as he said it. He’d only see the look on her face back when he’d begged her to let him go to the Jedi.
“You received your new assignment,” she said, understanding him (forgiving him). “Good. Obi-Wan needs to have you back with him.”
“I didn’t say I was assigned to Obi-Wan,” Anakin protested, but his mother’s grin didn’t surprise him. Of course she could read his reaction. She still knew him, even after…
They were interrupted by the door opening and one of Padmé’s handmaidens, Eirtaé he thought (they mattered to Padmé, he had to remember), strolled in, bowing her head slightly. “I’m sorry, but the senator needs your mother, Master Skywalker. We’re preparing for this morning’s meeting.”
“We just finished,” Mom said, stepping to Anakin’s side and kissing his cheek. “Will I see you again before you go, or will the Jedi need you?”
“I leave today,” he admitted, not sure if he should have told her. But it was Mom. “This is it, until we get called back.”
“Or until Leia trains me for the work she’s been doing,” Mom pointed out. “I think I’m reaching the limits of my usefulness on this planet. I expect I’ll be assigned to start traveling with the refugee transports, and who knows how often we might cross paths.”
She was smiling and felt hopeful and sly around him, none of carefully blank background noise he remembered from when she’d first let him go. Concern was there, but also confidence and that warm, gentle love he’d always relied on.
So he kissed her forehead and said, “Just try to get into less trouble than Leia did.”
“Not a very hard mark,” Mom said as they followed Eirtaé out. “Everyone gets into less trouble than Leia has.”
“Slander,” Leia said from the couch, not even looking up from her datapad. “And from my own family.”
“Name one person,” Padmé was dressed for her office already, beautiful in dark blues that swished as she moved, making Anakin suddenly feel gawky and underdressed, “just one, who’s been in more trouble than you, even once, since you’ve been here.”
“Obi-Wan,” she didn’t miss a beat. “You.”
“I was not!”
Before Anakin could protest, Eirtaé coughed something that sounded suspiciously like, “Assassin.”
Padmé glared. “I still wasn’t in as much trouble as Leia has been.”
“If we’re talking about cumulative trouble,” Leia finally looked up, smiling in a way that Anakin thought was a little sad, “then yes. I definitely win. I’m sure I’ve been in more trouble in half my life than you’ve been in for all of yours.”
Which was worrying. More than leaving Mom on a strange and dangerously populated planet, more than leaving Obi-Wan on Radnor. More than…anything Anakin could think of. He’d been with Leia for some of her worst trouble, and she had been pretty flippant about facing a Jedi Master turned Sith Lord. He didn’t think she was exaggerating about her trouble, and he had to leave and…
Mom’s hand pressed flat against his back, reassurance pouring off of her, cutting through the tension. He’d always felt close to her, but this deliberate reaching, offering specific emotions and reactions, was definitely a product of their lessons together. And that soothed Anakin too, how easy it had been to get this close in such a short time.
“Relax,” Leia drawled, turned towards them, her arm slung over the back of the couch. “I’m exceptionally resilient. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”
“By yourself?” Anakin retorted, regretting it when something in her face froze for a second.
“Of course not,” she shrugged. “That’s what I have all of you for, isn’t it?”
Damn it, how did he keep doing that? Blundering straight into the saddest parts of her past, even when he knew they were there and what they did to her. He’d never had this much trouble with Obi-Wan or Mom. He knew what made them sad, but he also knew how to avoid mentioning it.
When had he gotten so bad at this?
A second chime went off and Anakin knew he had to go. He snatched a half hug from Mom and bowed to the other women in the room. ”Thank you for letting us borrow your space. Good luck with your work.”
He knew Mom was still helping with legislation related to the brothers on top of making sure the refugees were getting moved to the right places. And Padmé and Leia were dealing with even more than that, something about harvesting battle droids (which sounded troublingly dangerous, so it had to be Leia’s idea), and other stuff he’d only sort of understood when he’d heard them talking about it.
“Will you be here this early tomorrow?” Padmé asked. “We’d love to have you for breakfast.”
There was a half cough from Eirtaé as Anakin floundered for a moment. “Ah, no. Sorry. I won’t— That’s…”
“Jedi business?” Leia supplied, not sounding surprised or especially interested. Anakin nodded. “That’s too bad. Just let us know when you’re free next and we’ll figure something out.”
“It might be a while,” he admitted, knowing he wouldn’t have been back here at all except for his Knighting. And he’d probably be even busier now that he was a general with a battalion under his command.
“Then we’ll wait,” Leia promised, expression completely serious before it slipped into a smirk. “Unless you don’t want to come?”
“I do!”
He felt his cheeks burning as there were chuckles from around the room. Mom’s hand patted his back as she said, “We know. And we’ll look forward to it.”
“Take care,” Padmé said as he bowed to her one more time on his way past. “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
It would be hard, but, “I will,” he promised.
He’d have to see if he could get Leia to teach him how to set up what she considered a safe channel. Somehow… Maybe she’d taught Obi-Wan.
“Fly safe,” she called as the lift opened. Anakin couldn’t help smiling as he waved himself out, wondering how often her brother had heard that.
“It’s so hot,” Obi-Wan muttered, ignoring the snort from Cody that said Obi-Wan hadn’t been quiet enough. “Well it is.”
“You don’t say, sir.”
The armor had to make it worse, Obi-Wan knew. They wanted to get him in some, and he’d conceded to try some pieces, which they were waiting for Anakin to bring back with him.
General Skywalker.
In spite of the heat, Obi-Wan shivered slightly.
It took a moment, the scrutiny of a long stare, before Cody said, “He’ll be alright. The 501st is staying with us for now. You’ll have plenty of time to finish getting him trained up. And we’ll help.”
It wasn’t that, Obi-Wan thought, staring out over the orange and white landscape, squinting slightly against the glare. “They don’t teach us how to train them.” Or how to let them go. “And no one trained us for this.”
It was a galling admission, given how much trust his men had offered him. Obi-Wan swallowed around the fear, the certainty, that he wasn’t enough. He was making this up as he went, all of them were. And it had been easy so far, he knew. They’d been on the edge of conflict, not in the middle of it. Christophsis had been nightmare, if Master Windu’s terse, limited explanations were anything to go by. To say nothing to the disaster that was still unfolding on Ryloth. Reports were delayed, information sketchy at best. But it was going to be a long, bloody campaign to take that system back.
And if Anakin did succeed here, what were the odds he’d be sent there next?
“Leia did,” Cody’s observation cut through the haze, the disdain as sharp as ever. “Makes you wonder who taught her.”
“Experience, I would expect,” Obi-Wan said slowly, watching the horizon to avoid the irritation he could feel from Cody. “And she certainly did the best she could with us. But I wouldn’t call it anything as formal as training.”
There was another paused before Cody asked, “Sir, why do you trust her so much?”
It wasn’t the first time the commander had asked, but Obi-Wan could feel something different in the question this time. An almost desperate search for reassurance, maybe. Exposure seemed to have worsened Cody’s view of Leia, not improved it.
But to answer…
Darkness. Not in his eyes, but all around him, pressing against his mind, seeping into his heart. His failures spinning through his memories, his inadequacies, the promise of power if he would just let go…
“You didn’t give up.”
He still couldn’t grasp how she’d known. Leia wasn’t a Jedi, wasn’t trained in the Force in any appreciable way. Falling wasn’t something that should have occurred to her, that should have presented itself as an option for what had been Obi-Wan’s greatest fear.
But she’d seen it, exposed it, without being distracted by anything else. As if…as if even though she’d never been raised in the Temple, had never known the training or the teachings, she had known what it was like to fight that kind of darkness.
How crucial it was that in the face of it, they hadn’t given up.
Even his mind healer hadn’t managed to grasp it. They’d talked about the torture, the feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness from being imprisoned, weak, paralyzed by pain and exhaustion. The hurt of those things at the hands of one who should have been an ally (not that Dooku had ever been close to Obi-Wan). They’d covered the fear during the escape, how he’d worried that this almost stranger and his padawan would also be captured. That they might be hurt or killed.
(Not that they could be used, not that he’d worried Dooku would be smart enough to use them to break Obi-Wan.)
But they’d never discussed how close Obi-Wan had come to reaching out with his anger and pain and desperation, scrambling for power, enough power to flee. To escape. To kill.
Viscerally, Leia had known.
Tilting his head back and shielding his eyes with his hand, all he could say was, “I understand her. I don’t agree with everything she does. With the risks she’s willing to take. But I understand being desperate. Wanting to protect something so badly you stop seeing the consequences as you decide what actions to take.”
Cody huffed. “Not a problem you have, sir.”
Obi-Wan chuckled. “Oh, you just missed the worst of it. You should have seen me when I started training Anakin. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and Qui-Gon—“ He couldn’t finish that thought. Couldn’t remember if Cody knew who Obi-Wan’s master was. “I couldn’t fail them. I couldn’t imagine the consequences.” He shook his head. “You’re lucky you missed that.”
Their break was over. That was Gregor, coming with the last patrol reports. And Obi-Wan wasn’t going to waste a chance to read those inside, where it was moderately cool.
“You’re doing well,” Cody said, before Gregor had quite reached them, and Obi-Wan started a little. “However bad it was then…You take care of us. You keep your eyes open.” And then, with a grin. “Just let us watch your back. We’ll let you know if you pick up any bad habits.”
“Oh,” Obi-Wan grinned, “I have every confidence of that.”
“They did not,” Leia’s voice cut through the bustle of the bay, “seriously give you a baby Jedi, did they?”
Anakin’s face pulled into a scowl as he looked up from his conversation and the togruta that was with him twitched, face shifting to a similar expression.
She was so little.
“What, you think I can’t handle it?” Anakin’s demand came with a half-smile, but he was also offended, if she was reading him right. And given that this was Anakin, there was almost no way she was reading him wrong. Since he was, as usual, everywhere.
His retort didn’t quite cover the togruta’s quiet, “I’m not a baby.”
“I think it is borderline criminal torture to ask a child to babysit you,” Leia shook her head, making sure not to smile. “Talk about trial by fire. Did they at least let her know what she was getting herself into?”
The offense had disappeared from the togruta, shifting into curiosity. Anakin was still annoyed, but not quite as hostile. “Hey, I am the adult here,” he said, tapping a thumb to his chest. “Newly knighted and all, remember.”
“If Padmé won’t let me claim to be an adult who can’t be grounded, I categorically refuse to believe you’ve earned that privilege. And don’t,” she jabbed a finger in his direction, “say anything about my ship getting hit. I was on Geonosis, remember? Who blew up our ride?”
“I was following your plan!”
“Oh? And do you remember what your plan had been?”
“Wow,” the slightly awed voice next to them brought Leia back to the present. “You’re Leia Skywalker?” Not sure exactly what was causing the wide eyes and slight breathlessness, Leia nodded and the togruta broke into a huge smile. “Master Koon was right. You’re incredible!”
The sudden burst of excitement had Leia scrambling to catch up with the conversation shift. “Thank you?” And then, “Master Koon talked about me?” When had he had a chance to do that?
There was some enthusiastic nodding. “He said you see ghosts. Even Jedi ones!”
There was a stifled gasp from Anakin and Leia had to hide a wince. “I mean, not regularly.” Luke’s voice snorted in the back of her head and she, with perfect maturity and dignity, ignored him. “But I’ve seen a few in the past, yes. Sorry, you’re…?”
“Oh,” the girl jumped back a bit, flustered. “I’m Ahsoka Tano.”
There was a polite bow and Leia took the brief reprieve to observe, noting a beaded chain imitating a padawan braid, a meticulously clean cloak, and a lightsaber glinting on her left hip.
Leia kept her face smooth as she noticed the last, and felt herself slipping under her skin to keep her reaction muted. It earned an instinctive poke in the Force from Anakin, and Leia pushed back, careful but firm.
She wasn’t sure she knew her own thoughts (or feelings) well enough to share them.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Leia said, working her smile into something pleasant and natural. “Although, I’m wondering what else Master Koon told you. I wouldn’t say I’ve done anything to earn the description ‘incredible’ from him.”
“Oh, and that’s not slander?” Anakin said, shaking his head.
“Of course not,” Leia retorted. “It can’t be slander if I say it.”
“Right, it’s just denial.”
It was tempting to keep arguing with him, but Leia reigned herself in, telling Ahsoka, “I hope they’ve warned you about him. He’s mostly harmless, but don’t listen to anything he says about ship upgrades without running it by another engineer first. Mikhail is still crying about the ‘minor tweaks’ Anakin made when they were rebuilding Mikhail’s freighter that he didn’t consult the owner on.”
“The specs are still within his safe range,” Anakin protested. “And he hadn’t even flown it yet. He shouldn’t have complained.”
“His. Ship.” Leia let each word snap off her tongue. “Not yours.”
There was an almost pout, but Anakin noticed Ahsoka watching and straightened up. “Just wait. Next time you see him, he’ll be happy with all the changes.”
There were good odds on that, but Leia didn’t feel bad about having warned Ahsoka. Given what Anakin had done to his own fighter, she shuddered to think what sorts of ships Ahsoka might be exposed to. Forewarned was better than not.
“Actually,” Ahsoka piped up, “I won’t be staying with Master Skywalker. I’m being assigned as Master Kenobi’s apprentice.”
There was no good way to respond to that. “Assigned?” Leia’d had the hazy idea that Jedi chose their apprentices.
And for once, Leia felt Anakin pulling back and into himself, his face going unnaturally blank as he nodded. He still vibrated around her, but it was more muted, a less overwhelming cacophony of uncertainty, frustration, and unease.
Assigned. And as a padawan, that meant, “As a commander?” Leia checked. Another nod.
Oh.
Oh, now Leia did know what she was feeling.
Before Ahsoka could get too uncomfortable, Leia said, “Obi-Wan is an excellent strategist. Or at least, on his way there. And he’s a committed and excellent Jedi. I’m sure if you follow his guidance you’ll learn quite a bit from him. You’re very fortunate.”
And Obi-Wan was still stationed on Radnor, if everything Leia could glean through the Refugee Committee was correct. Which, in spite of the anomaly during Leia’s visit, hadn’t seen too much action, and was (relatively) safe.
And it had the 501st. Shmi’s boys would keep an eye on a child under Obi-Wan’s care.
Leia hoped.
“Thanks,” Ahsoka said, still looking slightly unsure as she glanced between them. “I’m really looking forward to it.” Then, “So what brought you here? Did you need something from Master Skywalker?”
It had to say something, Leia thought, that it wasn’t until the padawan had brought it up that Anakin considered how odd it was for Leia to be present. She’d even already said goodbye to him this morning. He had no reason to be expecting her.
“I was invited to the Temple to meet with Master Gallia. She let me know Anakin was just leaving and I thought I’d see him off.” It seemed like the kind thing to do, and Leia would get one of Shmi’s looks if her grandmother ever found out Leia had skipped it.
Leia hated those looks. They were almost as bad as Mama’s.
“Oh.” It would have been nice if Anakin hadn’t sounded so surprised. They couldn’t have Ahsoka thinking Leia and Anakin didn’t get along. “Thanks.”
Her clever plan to drop a couple of snappy jokes and then bustle away had been derailed thanks to Ahsoka, and now Leia wasn’t sure how this should play out. For Luke or Han or Chewie there would have been hugs, kisses, a lingering as all of them delayed letting go.
The memory left Leia slightly breathless and hesitant. She wasn’t that close to Anakin, no matter how far they’d come. But now that she’d bothered to show up, she had to do something. Especially now that she had an audience.
Making every effort to keep the movement smooth, to disguise her hesitation, Leia held up her hand, relaxing a little as Anakin smiled and pressed his palm and fingers against hers. “May the Force be with you.”
“And you,” he said, unable to help the affection that buzzed around him, slipping under her skin where they touched. “Stay safe, Leia. Don’t make us come and rescue you.”
“Don’t worry. I know how busy you’ll be. I’ll be good.”
He didn’t voice his skepticism, but she caught it on his face all the same. He bowed, gestured to Ahsoka, who did the same, and they turned to go.
“Fly safe,” Leia said, and was surprised by the seriousness of Anakin’s expression when he looked back.
“Of course.”