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Anakin checked in on Leia after the debriefing. His hair was sooty, his face still streaked with sweat and ash, but he felt vibrantly alive for the first time in years. Mon Mothma had taken one look at him and shaken her head, ruefully pleased that one of the Rebellion's finest assets, as she had dubbed him, was once more willingly throwing himself into deadly situations. Then she advised him to get a shower.
Instead, Anakin stood in the too bright hallway of the Tantive VI, watching as Breha Organa brushed his daughter's hair. His stomach twisted into a resentful knot at the sight. Breha's back was to him. All he could see was the drape of her own long, brown hair down her back, the fine cut of her royal garb. Her small hands working carefully through Leia's hair.
Leia half turned, sensing his presence. Anakin forced a smile she didn't see and sent a pulse of reassurance over to her, getting only confusion in return.
He pushed away from the door, feeling raw.
Anakin wandered the ship, stiffly acknowledging salutes and bracing against the general good cheer of the crew, until he found himself at the small room passing as a lounge for the pilots. There was another, vivid Force presence beyond the door. One he had missed, one he had never dared to believe he would feel again.
Hesitantly, he pressed his mechnohand to the controls and the door opened with violent speed.
Ahsoka looked up, but didn't dare move from where she sat in the middle of the blindingly white, undecorated room. She looked recovered from the battle, but restless, tired, still as filthy as Anakin himself. He remembered so many times on the Resolute, the two of them scrunched together into her small quarters, talking endlessly and in pointless circles as they just tried to come down after a battle.
He was the one who went to her, at her side in two long strides and then beside her on the uncomfortably clean couch.
Ahsoka pressed her dirty face against his, her fingers digging into his shoulders. She was shaking against him and Anakin wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pulling her close.
"I thought you were dead, Snips," he said. His lips were against her browline, just below where her montrals began.
Ahsoka heaved a shuddering breath.
"You too," she said. Her hand scrabbled at him, moving roughly from his shoulder to his face. She traced the line of his jaw, holding him in place as she pulled back just enough to look at him. Her blue eyes were wide and bloodshot from crying. "They said you died at the Temple, everyone assumed..."
Just being with her stirred that old bravado inside him. A flicker of a smile crossed his lips.
"They didn't know what they were up against."
Her smile was a strange, broken thing.
"I should have known better."
Anakin shook his head. Of all the things to blame herself for...
"No, Master! I should have –" She swiped a hand at her nose, breaking off as she looked down. "I should have been there."
"You should have been there because they never should have betrayed you. But where you were, Snips, it was where the Force intended you to be." Anakin lifted her chin until she met his eyes again. "I have made enough mistakes for us all. You have nothing to feel guilty over. Nothing."
"I missed you," she whispered.
And then she was back in his arms and Anakin held her tight, eyes slammed shut as their old Force bond flared back to life. He needed the support – she needed it – so they would not stumble again. Feeling another Jedi in the Force, feeling her that way, seared his mind.
He exhaled heavily, trying to bring the whirl of emotion back under control. He clenched his hand into a fist, pressed against her back as he concentrated.
The moment passed and ease, impossible ease, flowed between them.
"I love you," Anakin told her. His eyes were still shut, but his shoulders relaxed, his fist turned to a soft caress up her neck. His sighed. His Padawan was at his side again.
Ahsoka trembled under his touch.
"You... love me?" she asked.
Anakin blinked his eyes open. Five years should not feel so long, but they were. In that time, he had somehow forgotten how hard those words were for other Jedi. He smiled softly at her.
"Of course I do, Snips."
Ahsoka moved with suddenness that even Anakin didn't anticipate, pulling him down into a hard kiss, desperate and biting. And Force help him, he kissed her back, hands clutching at her hips to drag her into his lap.
She trailed her fingers down his neck and he swallowed convulsively, breaking the kiss. She licked her lips, staring him, waiting for him to say this was okay.
He didn't. He couldn't.
It wasn't.
But he didn't stop her from kissing him again.
Ahsoka was clumsy and unpracticed, rough around the edges. Anakin remembered saying that about her once. He leaned out of the kisses slightly, gentling them until she gave in, lips parted as she just breathed against him.
"Master," she started. "I –"
She shook her head, the words beyond her. Anakin could feel her frustration welling up and quieted her, brushing another kiss across her mouth.
"We should stop," he murmured.
He felt her twist of pain as if it was his own.
Ahsoka kissed a line down his jaw and he turned into it. The barriers in their minds had come down and he needed to be a good Jedi, to put the proper distance back between them. He'd never been very good at this part.
Her warm hand slid between the layers of his tunics, and he repressed a groan.
She dragged her mouth back over his and he cupped the back of her head as they kissed.
"Ahsoka," he tried again.
Ahsoka shifted them, pushing him against the couch back and straddling his lap properly. Anakin was almost relieved, because that gave him the will to stop her. He broke from the kiss, pressing his forehead to her shoulder.
"Ahsoka, no," he said. "I can't."
"Why not?" she asked, tone as snippy as her nickname.
Anakin laughed.
"You know why."
"Her?" Ahsoka spat.
Anakin startled, looking up at her. There was a bitter hardness in his Padawan's eyes, lips pursed in anger. For a wild moment he wondered if Ahsoka was actually that jealous of Padme.
But then he remembered.
"Padme isn't what you think," he told Ahsoka.
So many holotransmissions over the years, the Chancellor of the Senate standing in black, bejeweled gowns, Emperor behind her. Every new law, every police crack down, every purge, announced to the public first by her red-stained lips. Anakin was well aware of what it looked like, of the number of Rebels who swore they would someday kill the traitorous Amidala.
"I know what I've seen, Anakin. I've seen the end results of her idea of 'peaceful containment' for rebellious worlds. Sometimes I can't believe she's the same person we knew – but it is her," Ahsoka said with emphasis. "There's no use denying it."
"It's not her. It's Palpatine. He's the one making the laws, he's just using her as a puppet."
Ahsoka smiled sadly.
"You really do love her that much."
She climbed off of his lap, stretching and scrubbing her hands over her face. The flow of the Force between them ebbed, not retreating fully, but receding to the soft and quiet background hum Anakin recognized as the kind he shared with Obi-Wan. It was a more adult, refined bond. A distant one.
Detached, as befitting Jedi.
He knew damn well it wasn't because of him, and he knew that calm was hardly permanent. It never had been in the past.
"I should get a shower," Ahsoka said. She picked at her tattered half-shirt, quirking her lips at him, despite the hard look in her eyes. "See you later, Skyguy."
Anakin buried his head in his hands after she left. He took his time finding his way back to Leia, breathing evenly, pushing away all the guilt and love and fear Ahsoka had awoken in him.
And it all came back to him in a sudden, angry rush when he walked in to the Organas' quarters to find Leia draped drowsily across Breha's lap, Bail sitting with his arm around his wife as he read some trash holonovel to Anakin's daughter. He strode quickly, unthinkingly, across the room and scooped Leia up. Breha looked at him in bafflement while Bail rose cautiously, hands raised in a placating gesture.
He knew Anakin's temper well enough.
"Is something amiss?" Bail asked mildly.
Anakin clenched his jaw, trying to rein his irrational anger in. He looked to Leia, who was frowning into his shoulder. Breha had pinned her hair into twin buns on the sides of her head. Anakin hated the style intensely.
"Nothing," Anakin managed to grind out. He wanted so badly to tell them to never come near his daughter again – even though he'd left her in their care. Never to look so much like the family he should have, the one that Palpatine had stolen from him.
He turned on his heel, cloak flaring behind him as he swept out of the room.
Leia sat still in their quarters as Anakin pulled pins from her hair, throwing them to the floor. The look she had in the mirror was pure judgment.
"Daddy?" she asked. Anakin's hands slowed. He loosened the buns, combing his fingers through the hair carefully. "What's wrong?"
Anakin dropped a kiss on the crown of her head.
"Nothing. You just looked silly, that's all. That's not how Naboo princesses wear their hair."
He didn't actually know how Naboo princesses wore their hair. He'd only seen few holos of Padme as Princess of Theed and never had much reason to interact with the Princesses reigning during the war. His missions were generally of more global or galactic importance, so he met directly with the Queens.
"But it is how Alderaanian princesses do," Leia argued. She stumbled on the long word and looked proud when she got it out half way correctly.
Anakin forced lightness he did not feel into his voice, "You aren't Alderaani."
"But Tatooine doesn't even have princesses!"
"It has you," Anakin told her. That was close enough.
He began repinning her hair, rolling it into the seashell shaped buns he recalled Padme wearing as a Senator. Leia sat patiently as he worked, a miracle in itself. She usually did sit still, but chattered the entire time. Perhaps she really was tired.
Or she was thinking about something.
"Who was that lady? The Jedi?"
Anakin thought for a moment and decided on the truth.
"She was my apprentice. In a way, she's your sister."
"I always wanted a sister!" Leia tilted her head to the side and Anakin righted it, tsking at her as he worked on aligning the buns properly. "Or a brother."
Anakin closed his eyes briefly.
They would be a family again. He swore that to himself. Padme and Luke and Leia and Ahsoka. If he told himself that, it would guard against anything else happening with Ahsoka. At least, he hoped so.
He hardly needed more reasons to hate himself.