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“Ahsoka Tano?”
The name hung in the air as an unanswered question. Ahsoka clenched her fists, shutting her eyes and trying to rid herself of the feeling that had washed over her since she heard those footsteps approach her open door. It was a presence she hadn’t felt in so long, and presence she knew she was never going to feel again. Clearly, she was seeing visions, hearing his voice over the Force. In the darkness of the outside, she could see his shadowy figure in the doorway, black Jedi robes with a single leather glove, and all.
Anakin Skywalker was dead. He may still be walking in some form, but he was dead.
She’d come to this backwater planet to escape mentions of her past. She’d sometimes considered rejoining the rebels to take down the Empire, but Vader knew her too well. He could sense her. Part of her wondered if he still hoped to turn her as well. So to save everyone the risk, she once again ran; this time not to figure herself out, but to simply escape it all. Just for the time being, at least.
But there, right in her little hut deep in the woods beyond the beach, right when she was just trying to sit down for a little root tea, was a vision of that past she wanted so badly to lose.
“Go away,” she mumbled to the apparition of her former master. She had no time for the games of the Force now.
“Sorry? Excuse me, I just needed to talk to you.” Ahsoka’s eyes shot open as the figure stepped forward into the light, finally revealing his face.
That was not Anakin Skywalker.
Her breath grew heavy. This boy was not Skywalker, but a young man who couldn’t be older than his early twenties, though his eyes made clear that he’d seen far too much for such an age. Oh, he resembled Anakin enough; blonde hair, blue eyes and soft features, but he was definitively not him. Than why did she so strongly feel his presence? Was she truly losing touch so badly?
“Who are you?” Ahsoka snapped, reaching for one of her lightsabers.
“Please, I mean no harm, and I’m with the Rebels,” the boy said gently, raising his gloved hand, plucking his own lightsaber–his lightsaber!–from his belt and placing it on a shelf beside him. “I just wanted to talk to you. I feel like you could give me some guidance. My name is Luke.”
“Luke…?”
He sighed, looked towards the ground, and at the next word he spoke, she nearly dropped her cup. “Skywalker.”
She stood with a start, hands shaking, mind reeling, and also suddenly everything making a little more sense. “That…can’t possibly be…”
“Search your feelings,” he said plainly, taking another step forward, “I know you felt it when I came in.” Her heart beat faster, though she already knew what he was about to say. “I am Anakin Skywalker’s son.”
She shook her head just barely. Because he was right. She had that feeling, deep in her gut, that her master’s blood pumped through that boy’s veins. It was unmistakable. It was unbelievable, it was impossible, but unmistakable nevertheless. She could barely stammer out the only question on her mind. “But, how?”
“I don’t know too much myself. But Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, he told me that he was my father a little over a year ago. Master Yoda had just confirmed it, and I found some notes in his hut…he knew where you were. My father’s padawan. I needed to see you.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she had to look away. This was just too much. Everything was too much. Ahsoka knew that boy was telling the truth, and given his apparent age, the timeline about matches up. But she still couldn’t convince herself to admit it all. “Where have you been all these years, if you are my master’s son?”
“Tattooine, with my father’s stepfamily. Ben hid me there to keep me safe.”
She looked back at him, eyebrow raised. “Ben?”
“Oh, sorry, Obi-Wan. I assume you knew him?”
In a moment, her shock turned to anger. “Obi-wan knew!?” she shouted, spinning around and throwing her arms out to the side, nearly knocking over her tea-kettle. “And he never thought to tell me!?”
“Would he have had a chance?” Luke asked gently. Ahsoka stopped midair, letting out a deep sigh of her own.
“No, you’re right.” She dropped back down in her seat, gripping her forehead with her elbow on the table. “I just need someone to be mad at right now.” He could have sent the boy to her. She could’ve protected him, trained him…but she was off and away at the time he was born, and had no place in her life for baby then. “I suppose…I suppose he did what was best. Vader would never return to Tattooine. Anakin himself hated that planet with a passion…and if he’d found you, he’d have tried to turn you.”
Luke nodded. “He didn’t. I’m a Rebel Commander, and quite the enemy of the empire. One of the biggest, actually.“
She looked up from the table with a half smile. “Tea?” she asked weakly, anything to sway her thoughts from the whirlwind in her mind. With a timid stiffness, Luke nodded, and she took another cup from the shelf above him and poured her kettle.
“Something was calling me to this planet a year or so back. I came here on an intuition. Must have been for this conversation, I guess,” she said, finally in tired acceptance. The Force was mysterious indeed. “What do you want to know?”
“Ahsoka, I know Vader probably hid this all from you but…would you happen to know who could be my–”
“Padme Amidala,” she said without a hint of uncertainty.
Luke looked startled. “What?”
“She’s the only one that makes sense. They were obviously in love, in fact they were pretty terrible at hiding it. What people weren’t sure about was if they’d actually acted on it. I mean, I was fairly certain they had at some point…” she quirked an eyebrow over her cup, “and now I guess I have proof. Looks like Rex owes me money.”
“Who?”
“Nevermind.” Ahsoka gave a tired chuckle, setting aside her cup. “Your mother was a beautiful, wonderful woman. Strong as hell. Her people loved her, and she had a way of speaking to the senate that you wouldn’t believe. Even people who didn’t like what she did had to respect her. Bail Organa–”
“Leia’s father?” Luke piped, eyes lighting up. “She knew him too?”
“Princess Leia Organa? Oh yes, the Organas were great friends with Padme.”
Luke looked nervous again. Tentatively, he spoke. “Obi-Wan just told me something else, something that…that I’m still absorbing.” He sighed. “Leia is my sister.”
This time, Ahsoka didn’t seem to even react for several moments. Until, “What?”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I’m not quite sure myself, to be truly honest.”
Ahsoka didn’t even have the energy for disbelief. At this point, he could tell her that Anakin had secretly been a sarlacc this whole time and she would simply say “oh, odd. I never noticed.”
“I can’t believe they had time to make not one baby behind my back, but two,” she said with a huff.
“We’re twins, actually. Just the time for one.”
“Oh, what a relief,” Ahsoka drawled. She took a passing glance over at his lightsaber. “Looks like Obi-Wan’s. Did you make it yourself?”
“Yes. I used to use my father’s, but…” Luke’s eyes dragged down to his gloved right hand, and he clenched it. “We had a confrontation.”
It took her a moment to understand. But then Ahsoka bit her lip and nodded. “Did he…?”
Luke gently tugged off the glove. From it emerged a right hand whose artificial skin was wearing away from a laser wound, revealing glinting metal. “He cut it off. The saber went with the hand. I don’t know where it went. Then he told me that I was his son.”
“Wow. Good timing, Anakin,” Ahsoka grumbled.
Luke looked at her with a hope in his eyes that was painful after he said next. “Do you think he’s still Anakin Skywalker? Do you think Anakin Skywalker is still in there?”
She felt her heart drop to her stomach. What could she tell this boy? That she had left him, and helped his fall to the Dark Side? That the last time she saw him, he tried to kill her in rage? That as much as he may want to save him, she had failed at that very task? That she had spent years convincing herself that it was over, that her master was long dead?
Damn if that boy could read her just like his father could, years ago. His hopeful gaze fell. “Obi-wan didn’t think so either. He wants me to kill him. He wants me to kill my own father.”
“I tried to save him once. He doesn’t want to be saved. He’ll try to turn you, at best.”
Luke simply shook his head. “I’ll never join the dark side.”
“Luke…you, you’re essentially family to me.” She paused. “No, you are family to me. And as your family, I must tell you that I have to side with Obi-Wan. I’ve tried, Luke, I tried. That man may not have been my father, but he was close enough. And he felt nothing but hatred for me the last time I saw him.” She lay her hands over his. “You are brave, and noble. But you cannot perform the impossible. And the dark side is tricky. It sneaks up on you. Your father was one of the greatest men I ever knew and–”
“And that man might be in there. Somewhere. Ahsoka…I can sense that you loved my father deeply. And I wish more than anything that I could have known the man he was. But how do I to avoid the dark side if I don’t even try to bring him to the light? I have to try. I know the Jedi speak against that, but I must. Part of him feels for me. I felt it. I just…I just have to find that part and bring it out.”
Ahsoka’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she gripped his hands tighter. “You may look like your father, but you speak like your mother.” It was true; in this moment, when she looked at him, despite the blue eyes and blonde hair all she saw was Padme. Luke grinned like she had handed him the universe.
“Would my mother have ever given up on him?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. She would not.”
“Then neither will I.”
She tutted. “You Skywalkers, always stubborn and with far too little self-preservation instinct.”
The boy shrugged and cocked his head. “Someone has to do that dirty work.”
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. As much as this boy took from Padme, there was a little Anakin in there too. Perhaps…perhaps just enough of both to accomplish what he hopes to do.
“Ahsoka, trust me,” he said gently, just over a whisper. And she could feel the sheer strength of his Force abilities reverberating through the air around them. As strong as his father’s. Maybe even stronger, hard as it was to believe. “I really think I can do this.”
And in that moment, his father’s padawan truthfully said, “So do I.”
“Then I know I can.”
Not too long after, she felt it through the Force. It did not hit her, hard and cold, but seemed to drift through her, peacefully and bittersweet. Her master was dead. But he had died as Anakin Skywalker.
She looked to the sky, tears stinging her eyes. “I have to hand it to you, little brother. You were right.”
And over the breeze, she could swear she heard another voice–not as a sound, but as a feeling, and it filled her with a warmth that she hadn’t felt in years.
Thank you, Snips.