When She Was Gone

Chapter 21

Leia tossed and turned, the events on the Destroyer still playing in her mind. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw that terrifying Togruta's helmet, opening to reveal nothingness. Once or twice she dozed off, only to jerk awake, fearing she was still in that cell.

Finally, she gave up on sleep and went out into the hall, trying not to wake her brother. She could sense her father's tight anxiety in the next room, and her mother's faint sleeping presence.

Quietly, carefully, Leia slipped down the hall past her parents' room and Obi-Wan's. She found it strange that just a day and a half ago, there had been a firefight here, and now she was in utter silence as the rebel base slept.

When the grated doors opened, she squared her shoulders and hurried down the long hall of the detention level. She wasn't allowed down there, but nobody had to know she had gone.

~

Anakin huffed and sat up. Sleep obviously wasn't going to come that night.

He needed to see her.

He slipped out of bed carefully; Padmé stirred but didn't wake. He tugged a loose shirt on and grabbed his lightsaber, then stole out of the room and down the hallway to the lift.

As soon as the doors opened, he was out of the lift and hurrying down the hall, past door after door of empty cells. He cursed himself for not asking which one she'd been put in.

Anakin was so distracted that as he rounded a corner, he rammed into someone who had been standing in the middle of the walkway. "Watch it!" He said as he regained his balance and his breath; they had slammed directly into his midsection, knocking the wind out of him. He straightened up to see--

"Leia?"  His daughter shrunk a bit beneath his gaze. "What are you doing down here? You're not allowed to--"

"I know," she said sheepishly. "I'm sorry. But I needed to ask her something."

"Ask who something?" Anakin asked, though he was fairly sure he knew the answer.

She shrunk a bit more. "Makari," she said quietly. He sighed.

"Yeah. Yeah, I need to talk to her too," He said, deflating a bit.

"I don't think you're going to be able to," Leia said. Her father's head snapped up.

"What?"

"Unless, of course, you provoke her," she mused.

"What are you talking about?"

His daughter grinned mischievously, pushing past him to reach a door panel. She waved it open, and Anakin leaned around her to look inside.

There, half-asleep at the table in the middle of the cell, sat Ahsoka.

The veins lacing her lekku and montrals had receded, their stripes were back to blue, her skin had brightened, and the markings on her face that were temporarily dark grey had returned to white.

And those eyes, those eyes he thought he'd never see again--at least not really, not for longer than a moment of confusion--they opened to see him.

"Anakin?"

~

"Padme."

Not now, she thought. She was having the most peaceful dream, back on the beaches of Naboo.

"Padme. Wake up."

That voice was becoming more insistent, and didn't sound as far away this time. Her surroundings began to dissolve.

"Mom. There's someone you need to see."

A new voice. Luke? No, Leia. The sands and waters were disappearing into darkness. She pried herself away from her dream, waking up.

"Mmm? What is it?" She asked drowsily, eyes still closed. Someone--Anakin, probably--laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

"Padme, get up. Someone wants to see you." Definitely Ani. She forced her eyes open and blinked hard, sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Things came into focus, and Leia handed her her robe. Luke poked his head through the doorway, hair sticking up like he'd just been shocked.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"I'd like to know that myself," Padme muttered as her daughter grabbed her hand and pulled her up onto her feet. No one answered her, and the more energized two coaxed the half-asleep two to the lift. When the doors opened to the detention level, she was even more confused. "Ani--?"

"Just wait and see," he said. Something had changed; she could see it in his posture and hear it in the happy tilt of his voice. So she allowed herself to be taken down the hall. Leia stopped abruptly before a cell and waved it open.

Ahsoka was inside.

The real Ahsoka, not the Sith that had housed her.

Padme gasped in shock and covered her mouth as the Togruta's familiar blue eyes met hers. She rose from the chair she was in, and Padme took a tentative step forward.

"Ahsoka?" She whispered. Her friend nodded slowly. Padme released a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob, and the two closed the space between them and hugged each other tightly.

Just inside the doorway, Anakin, Luke and Leia looked happily upon the scene before them. When the (rather emotional) women broke apart, Anakin fished around in his pocket and pulled out a long-lost chain of silka beads.

"Let's get you back, shall we?" He asked, holding them out to her.

She stepped forward and met his gaze with a fierceness in her eyes.

"Yes, Master."

Update: I forgot to mention that the Skywalkers, Obi-Wan and Rex all got in the Syren and went back to Yavin 4 between this chapter and the last. I'll make that more clear in the future. :)