When She Was Gone

Chapter 22

Despite the Skywalkers' protests, the Rebels would not allow Ahsoka out of the detention block without an escort and cuffs. She couldn't say she blamed them--after all, she'd tried to kill them. Winning their trust was going to take time.

But that cell was making her a little claustrophobic.

One day a few weeks after arriving at the base, she was pacing in her cell, thinking, when the door opened with a hiss.  She looked up to see Anakin in the doorway, and her tight expression softened a bit. With a sour look on his face, he held a pair of cuffs out to her. She sighed, but took them, tightening the cold metal around her orange wrists. He led her out of the cell and into the lift.

"Where are we going?" She asked as the lift opened to the main hangar.

"If I told you, they wouldn't let me take you out. They've got recording devices in those cuffs. They can hear us if they want to."

They walked out onto the grassy field that housed the runway, where a line of speeder bikes was kept. Anakin glanced around for a moment before waving a hand at her cuffs, which fell off instantly.

"Try to keep up," he said, jumped on a bike, and took off. Ahsoka grinned and followed suit.

~

Padmé jerked awake at her desk and was immediately blinded by rays of sunshine coming in through the window. She blinked, eyes slowly adjusting to the bright light. She rubbed her face and sat up. A blanket fell off her shoulders, probably placed there by Anakin.

How late did I sleep? She wondered vaguely, checking the chrono. Not too late; it wasn't even noon. She sat up taller, stretched and pried herself out of her chair.

As she was pulling some fresh clothes out of her dresser, her door slid open. She looked up to see the twins standing there, looking excited, scared and confused all at once. Something would have been off even without their expressions; they couldn't be seen that close together unless it was while piloting or getting into a fight. Padmé frowned.

"What is it?" She asked them, straightening up. They glanced at each other.

Luke opened his mouth to speak, but Leia elbowed him in the ribs and spoke quicker. "We saw--" she paused and glanced at her brother again. He nodded in what he probably thought was a subtle gesture. "We saw dad and Ahsoka go into the woods just now," she said rapidly, "And we didn't know what they were doing so we went to tell Obi-Wan but we can't find him so we came to you and--"

"Slow down!" Padmé cried, cutting her daughter off, whose sentences had been increasing rapidly in speed. Leia stopped and regained her composure, deflating a bit. "Anakin took Ahsoka to the woods?" Luke nodded. "And Obi-Wan's gone on his mission," she muttered, rubbing her forehead. Luke nodded again. "Well, I can just call your father." She grabbed her wristcomm and pressed Anakin's channel. It beeped three times: it was disconnected. She frowned again.

"What?" Luke said.

"His comm's off," Padmé said. She pressed Obi-Wan's channel. Nothing. He was probably out of range. "Strange," she murmured. "Do you think you two can--" she looked up to see them hurrying for her bed, nodding furiously as they plopped down and crossed their legs. She chuckled. Always one step ahead of her.

~

Ahsoka twisted into form three. Six. Seven. Five. Eight. Three. One. Nine. Two.

This had been going on for an hour, but Anakin didn't seem to be tiring, and the training remote wasn't going to run out of battery any time soon. This gave her some time to think; time thinking outside, strongly connected with the living Force, was better than time thinking in a cell.

She considered probing into Anakin's mind to see what he was thinking about, but he didn't need that kind of interference, and she probably wouldn't find anything she wanted to know.

Better to just talk to him.

She waved a hand at the training remote, powering it off and stopping the barrage of stun bolts, then plopped down on the forest floor against a large tree. Anakin sat across from her, waiting for her to say something. She opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again, then shut it, looking like a fish out of water. A smile crept up the sides of Anakin's face. Ahsoka couldn't help but return it.

"What?" She said.

"You do that when you're confused. When I would sit in on initiate training sessions, Yoda would usually ask some big philosophical question when someone messed up. I'd watch from the corner, and you would do that fish thing until you got the answer." She dropped her head back, landing her montrals on the tree with a dull thunk.

"Have I really always done that?"

Now he was laughing. "Yeah. Luke does it too."

"No!"

"Yes."

She looked back up, grinning. "Maybe he got it from you--in fact, you might have gotten it from me. Your mouth just drops open when you've lost control. You'd do it when I got mad at you for blaming our crashes on the ship."

Now they were both laughing.

When they stopped, Anakin's face became solemn. He was silent for a moment. "Ahsoka..." he said slowly, obviously choosing his words carefully. "What happened on Ryloth?"

A/N

I know that this is a super serious scene and all, but I had to put this on here, it's incredibly funny:

Anakin: I have no fears.

Ahsoka: What if you woke up one day and I was taller than you?

Anakin: I have one fear.