Chapter Text
There was a quirk in space above the planet of Naboo.
Now, the skies above Naboo had never been numbered among the busiest in the galaxy - given both its position in relation to the inner core planets, and its tendency to be diplomatically unremarkable in most particulars - a tendency which perhaps contributed to the amount of time it took anyone to notice this taking place. Since its occupation by the trade federation just a little more than a decade before, air traffic both inbound and outbound had been carefully monitored, and there was little room for joyrides or gadding about outside of official air traffic lanes.
When it was finally noticed, by a small pseudo military patrol vessel doing some routine monitoring of upper atmospheric conditions, it was duly reported to the relevant authorities then promptly drowned in paperwork. It did not come to the attention of one Padme Amidala for almost a month after this, which was unusual. Even if she was no longer officially a member of the primary governing body, she had made it her business to know exactly what was going on, having long ago learned it was to her detriment if she didn’t. It was pure luck that she heard about it at all, tucked in among reports of incoming war refugees that she had worked so hard to facilitate a home for. She didn’t realise it’s relevance then, but of course she didn’t have all the pertinent details yet.
--
For Ahsoka Tano, waking was seldom a pleasant experience. It usually meant early morning training, unexpected deployment, and, on several memorable occasions, imminent death. Today, if you could call such an early hour ‘day’, was not about to buck that trend.
She didn’t notice immediately what had shocked her out of slumber, entire body alert and ready for action. Staring at the ceiling she couldn’t hear any suspicious noises, or smell any suspicious smells. There certainly wasn’t anyone in the room with her, unless they were hiding in the small trunk she kept her robes in. Then again, there could be an entire colony of tiny people in there that she wouldn’t notice due to never actually wearing the things.
She looked at the trunk with suspicion in the dim light. There was something-
Not the trunk, it was definitely the trunk she had walked past on the way to bed, but the positioning of it was wrong. Usually she kept the clothes she actually wore in a ready to go bag on in the recess right above it, but she could see, even in the small amount of reflected light which made it’s way to the towering heights of the temple dorms, that there was no recess. Instead, her go bag was rested against the front of the trunk, presumably so she didn't trip over it in the night. It was terrifying.
This may be her bed, familiar in its rumpled stiffness for all she was away from the temple more than home these days, and that may be her stuff in the trunk, but there was little doubt in Ahsoka’s mind that this was not her room.
Now that she knew what to look for, the little details stood out - for all that the temple living quarters had been built with a common template in mind. The room was just slightly narrower than she was used to, the window a little further to the right.
How had she been moved without her noticing? And why?
Well, laying in bed wasn't going to get her any answers.
As swiftly and silently as only a Togruta Jedi could move, Ahsoka slipped out of bed. She reached under her side table in the vain hope of finding her lightsabers, more worried than surprised when her fingers met their familiar shapes right where she had left them before going to sleep.
What could this all be in aid of? As far as she could sense she was still in the temple, that familiar background hum of being surrounded by friendly force signatures the same as she had grown up with. The texture of the floor under her bare feet was the same as it had always been, smooth and slightly chilled, an incentive not to dally getting ready. The number of paces to the door was the same, and it opened readily to reveal a familiar apartment. Not the one she shared with Anakin, but Master Obi-wan’s apartment.
Mentally, Ahsoka revised her understanding of the situation from ‘dangerously unknown’ to ‘one of Anakin’s terrible pranks’. Though why he’d stuck her in his old room she didn’t know.
Maybe he thought Master Obi-wan would find it amusing? Relaxing just a little, she made her way into the living room, easily navigating the semi-familiar settings in the dark.
For all the time she had spent with the both of them, she really didn’t understand them sometimes. The two of them had a whole wealth of history she had only touched the edges of, and for all they had accepted her into their dynamic with little fuss, neither was the type to open up or make true connections quickly. Her feelings regarding the both of them bordered on attachment, and she knew Anakin felt the same for all the criticism he got for it. Master Obi-wan was more inscrutable, but there had been moments between the three of them that made her wonder if this was what having a family felt like.
“Ahsoka?”
Speaking of.
“What’s going on?” Master Obi-wan asked. He flicked on the light, and they both took a second to let their eyes readjust. Once they had, Ahsoka almost wished she could turn them off again.
Master Obi-wan had shaved .
“Master Obi-wan? ”
He blinked at her alarmed voice, then looked around as if to see what caused it. She had never seen him without that strange tuft of hair on his chin, though Anakin had once explained to her that Obi-wan hadn’t grown it until at least a year into his own apprenticeship. It’s lack gave the setting a strange feeling of unreality, as though her entire world had tilted sideways.
“Yes?” he said, evidently finding nothing wrong with the situation they both found themselves in. She wondered for half a moment if Anakin had somehow dragged him into whatever game he was playing, but immediately dismissed the thought. Obi-wan had a way of acting almost gentle around her, his affection deferred, as if it were somehow more acceptable to show care for her the way he couldn’t dare for Anakin. He would never agree to scare her like this.
“What?” she said, in a vain effort to find her mental footing, “What are you-” doing here, she couldn't say, because this was his rooms. What was she doing here would be a more apt question.
“Is it the dreams?” he asked, voice concerned while rough from sleep, taking a step toward her. Had she woken him up? He got little enough rest already, being woken up in the early hours of the morning by a bewildered grandpadawan was the last thing he needed.
“Dreams?” she asked. It had been a while since she’d had to worry about prophetic dreams. Hers were usually immediate and easy to interpret, and she couldn’t recall having had one lately, certainly not any serious enough to have confided in Master Obi-wan of all people about them.
“We talked about this less than a week ago, did you really think I would forget?” he asked, taking the time to look her over top to toe as if she were the one who regularly concealed their mishealth. “As I told you then, this is something we all go through. Dreams pass in time. Mine did, and yours will too.”
Ahsoka did not know how to deal with this. She had no recollection of such a conversation. Was Obi-wan remembering incorrectly, or was she? Given he was a Jedi Master, odds were it was her brains that had been scrambled, though Master Obi-wan got himself into enough of the type of situations that the opposite was just as possible.
“I’m sorry, Master Obi-wan,” she said, deciding it was best they stopped talking past each other, “I’m not quite sure how this happened, but I don’t remember why I’m here. Last thing I remember, I was going to sleep in my own room.”
A wrinkle appeared on Obi-wan’s brow as he tried to process this information without the normal shot of adrenaline which usually accompanied his unexpected awakenings.
“Your room?” he asked, as though the concept were foreign to him.
“You know, the one in the apartment I share with Anakin? My Jedi Master?”
At that, Obi-wan’s mouth thinned, and he suddenly seemed wide awake. He crossed the space between them, bracketing Ahsoka’s shoulder in his overly warm grip.
“Ahsoka,” he said, the concerned furrow of his brow suddenly more pronounced. “I don’t know any Anakin. And last I heard, I was your Jedi Master,”
If Obi-wan were the type to wear his feelings, Ahsoka could have almost called him insulted. As it was, she wasn’t in the frame of mind to care.
“But that’s not-” Ahsoka peered desperately into Master Obi-wan’s eyes. “What happened to Anakin?”
“Ahsoka, the only Anakin I can think of has been dead for over a decade. Are you sure this wasn’t one of your dreams?”
Despite the unreality of the situation, Ahsoka found herself automatically relaxing. It took her a moment to work out why, but once she did her sense of dislocation only increased.
Master Obi-wan was soothing her through what was unmistakably a training bond. Anakin had rarely used it this way, not much for being calm himself, but she did use the one they’d shared as a sort of positive feedback mechanism, portioning strength or determination or whatever else was needed during long and tiring campaigns. But it was no longer Anakin on the other end of that feedback, and Ahsoka found herself missing him with a sudden fierce yearning.
“Was it Anakin Skywalker, the Anakin you’re thinking about?” she asked.
Obi-wan’s face went from open concern to shuttered suspicion in an instant. Feeling suddenly cold, Ahsoka shrugged his hands from her shoulders and stepped back, giving her a better view of his momentary all body withdrawal before he managed to pull himself together.
“That would be him, yes,” he said stiffly.
“But he’s not dead, I saw him yesterday. He was just heading out as I was going to bed.”
Panic was beginning to set in, now. Ahsoka had to stop herself from folding her arms in on herself, knowing Master Obi-wan would see it for the tell it was. How could he not remember Anakin? Or think he died ten years ago, which was just as bad.
In an attempt to ground herself, Ahsoka stumbled the three remaining steps needed to take her to Obi-wan’s battered and much loved couch. As she sat down, gravity doing the work far better than her legs, she caught just the slightest smell of difference. The couch did not smell slightly charred, as though it had almost been set alight by careless mechanical work many years ago.
Anakin’s face when Master Obi-wan had told her that particular story had seemed riotously funny at the time. Not so much now she was- wherever she was.
Now that she let herself get a good look at her surroundings, she couldn’t help but notice little inconsistencies, things that appeared slightly different to what she remembered them to be. Shelves set up differently in the kitchen, the pattern of the flooring more stylised than they had been last time she visited. The one she was familiar with must have been a replacement after another of Anakin's little ‘accidents’. Or maybe he hadn’t liked the original and deliberately sabotaged it, that sounded like something a less mature Anakin would do. Come to think of it, it sounded like something current Anakin would do.
Ahsoka breathed deep. Behind her should could feel Master Obi-wan hovering, plainly as good with dealing with overt displays of emotion as he’d ever been. It was oddly comforting, that one point of similarity. Live in the moment, she’d always been told, and at the moment she was confused but safe.
Focus.
What was the problem in the moment? That something had happened to Anakin.
What could she do about it?
Find out more information. Obi-wan had said he died over a decade ago, so she needed to find out the circumstances of that. Or, why Obi-wan now thought that that was what happened.
She also needed to figure out why she remembered, but Obi-wan didn’t. It wasn’t their bond. Frowned upon as keeping a training bond active after a padawans knighting was, she’d never been in any doubt that Anakin and Obi-wan kept theirs. It was too convenient otherwise, the way they still managed to work together, in sync as only training pairs could be. Which left-
-nothing.
They were both Jedi, and she doubted it was a physiological thing. There had been numerous studies which all came to the same conclusion; in the force, all species were equal, and interacted equally. Her training bond with Anakin felt no different than the one she now shared with Obi-wan, though by virtue of their personalities they interacted with it differently. That in mind, Ahsoka gave the bond a ping, signalling to Obi-wan he’d have more luck interacting with her now she’d centered herself a little.
In the corner of her vision, Ahsoka watched Master Obi-wan sidle his way around the couch before gingerly sitting down next to her. His mouth was tight, but his eyes were as soft as they always were when he looked at her.
“I promise you, Ahsoka, I’m not mistaken in this,” he began. He lifted his hands a second, as if to take hers in his, but seemed to think better of it and withdrew. “I see his mother at least once a year, and I can assure you she makes sure I never forget it. Understandable, of course, given there’s no-one else left for her to blame.”
“His mother ?”
Anakin had never so much as mentioned his mother. She hadn’t realised until now that there might be something suspicious in that, but the Anakin Skywalker she had known had never been one to just leave his connections be. Something must have happened to her, as something had happened to Anakin in this strange reality.
“Yes,” said Obi-wan, back in more familiar territory. “Shmi Skywalker. She works at the SRPA along with Padme Amidala. You remember Padme, don’t you, you met at the Trescos function last year.”
“Of course I know Padme, she’s my-”
But she wasn’t Ahsoka’s friend. Not here, not now. Obi-wan was gazing at her calmly, eyes assessing. He was testing her, she thought. Trying to gage what she remembered, or thought she remembered. Trying to work out what to do with the familiar stranger who had taken the place of his padawan.
“Master Obi-wan,” she said, hating to hear her voice tremble, knowing perhaps that Obi-wan needed to hear it, “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Obi-wan sat back, and his eyes lost that hard edge. Ahsoka knew she’d played things right, and hated that she’d had to manipulate him like that. For all he’d probably realised she’d done it- that was his purview, not hers, and she hoped it never would be.
“I must admit I’m rather at a loss myself. Where could you even have heard the name Anakin Skywalker? The council kept the events on Naboo strictly under wraps,” said Obi-wan.
Naboo? That was- well, there were a lot of strange rumours about what happened on Naboo. Anakin had told her his side of it, but good luck getting Master Obi-wan to open up about what happened when he faced down the first Sith the Jedi had come across in a millennia.
“Anakin died on Naboo?” she asked, still at a loss that this was her reality now. Perhaps she had been captured, and this was all some strange mind game? It was a strange way to go about things, if so, but she’d be careful what she said in any case. Real or virtual, the best course of action seemed to be to play along. It all felt real, and the force wasn’t giving her so much as an uneasy feeling, an odd thing to consider given her current situation - whatever that was.
“I’m afraid so,” said Obi-wan. “He somehow ended up in the midst of an orbital battle, and was killed after being caught up in the explosion of a droid control ship.”
Well, she had her divergence.
“Anakin told me about that, after the first time I met Padme,” said Ahsoka. “He said he and R2 destroyed the control ship and got out just in time. It was the main reason the council decided to let you train him, despite their misgivings. Nobody but the chosen one could have achieved that.”
At that, Master Obi-wan gave her a look, one of mingled disbelief and strangled grief, and she knew. She’d got him. She didn’t know how, but he now believed there was more at play than an apprentices faulty memory. Almost against her will, she felt her shoulders loosen. She wasn’t alone in this, she would not have to fight for the support of her only known ally. She had someone to watch her back now.
“The chosen one-” Obi-wan finally managed, swallowing his unappealing emotions back beneath the fathomless calm of his surface, “-the council never, and you know the name of the droid. These aren’t visions you’re talking about, are they? Those are never so kind as to be so precise.”
His facade was strong, his voice steady. Only someone who knew him well would notice the slight tightening of his hands where they rested in the folds of his sleep tunic.
“They’re memories, Master Obi-wan. You have to believe me!” Though by now she was sure he did. It was never wise to underestimate a person's capacity for self denial, Master Obi-wan had taught her that. “When I went to sleep my Jedi Master was Anakin Skywalker, your former padawan. He said, when you agreed to teach him, it was because you made a promise.”
“To Master Qui-gon,” he completed for her, the grief pouring back, hanging in the air between them. This was an Obi-wan who’d never got a chance to fulfil that promise.
“Yes,” she said, simply.
“Okay,” Obi-wan breathed, visibly pulling himself back together. “We need to talk to Master Yoda about this.”