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Another successful mission. On one hand, Anakin was glad that these missions were trending more and more towards quiet recovery and resupply runs to worlds that had been hurting the most during the conflict, unofficially dubbed R&R missions by the troops.
Happier civilians, less death, better food. The list was endless and the consensus was unanimous: peacetime was good.
On the other hand (probably his mechanical hand, if he was being honest) Anakin missed the adrenaline of battle. Even if it was fatiguing and trying at the best of times. It was exciting. He, Ahsoka, and, more often than not, Obi-Wan and/or Padmé along for the ride, were the perfect team! Fighting side by side and looking good while they were at it.
Without the rush of combat or military strategy to look forward to each mission he felt… itchy. He found himself looking for fights, anything to break up the boredom of peacetime. Sure, there were the random Separatist stragglers out there still, but it’d been over a month now that he’d heard anything about an organized campaign against their remaining forces and even longer since he’d been assigned to one.
They’d just finished a goodwill mission to some out-of-the-way-but-somehow-still-important-planet delivering rebuilding supplies and staying for a while to help out wherever they could. It was one of those rare assignments where the gang was all there: Obi-Wan and the 212th joined them for the combined manpower, and Padmé was sent on a parallel mission to talk politics with the local leaders.
Anakin got to eat at least one meal with his wife every day, and most nights was able to sneak into her (much nicer) room with minimal effort. Some of the tension that always seemed to weigh on Obi-Wan’s shoulders was starting to ease away incrementally. Ahsoka was also really coming into her own as a leader. He made sure to have Rex keep an eye on her when he couldn’t be around, and Anakin had only heard the highest of praise from his usually stoic captain.
Don’t get him wrong. It was nice. Pleasant, even!
But there was only so much boredom he could take.
So he found entertainment where he could. Mainly in the form of fixing things that didn’t strictly, by-the-books need to be ‘fixed’ per se, but could use an upgrade. Or some tinkering. He mostly just prodded around systems on the ships and tried to make them go faster. Like, currently, he was torso deep in the holotable control panel of the Resolute's main briefing room to access a wire that connected to the tertiary thrusters. See, he had a theory that replacing key sections of the power connections with this new type of circuit he was developing would increase the thrusters’ output by an almost statistically significant amount. Which made it worth it.
“Hold up Artoo, what was that last medical log entry?”
Right, and because he had ‘no chill,’ as Ahsoka kept telling him, he was also listening as R2D2 cataloged ship records to test his binary fluency.
There was nothing wrong with his fluency really, Anakin just wanted the practice. Another tally in the peace is lame column was that Anakin didn’t get to fly nearly as much, and thus didn’t spend one-on-one time with Artoo. The little droid was practically distraught that they were missing out on so much bro time, so Anakin humored him with these binary practice sessions reading the data records out loud.
…Okay, so Anakin had been the one to suggest it, but he was pretty sure Artoo liked it now.
The astromech whistled an “I don’t know” sound and rocked back and forth impatiently.
“What do you mean, the user tried to delete the entry? This is a military vessel, that shouldn’t be possible. If someone on this ship is getting medical attention, it needs to be recorded.”
More beeps and whirs that Anakin took to mean that Artoo didn’t actually care about humanoids getting medical attention and maybe didn’t understand why they couldn’t just repair themselves with a good old-fashioned sync to the main server.
“Well, can you find out what the procedure was?”
A bored, yet affirmative beep, and Anakin waited as the droid cycled through a string of binary.
“A… pregnancy test? You’re kidding…”
This was a ship full of clones, who could be taking a pregnancy test here?
Artoo beeped indignantly.
“It’s just a figure of speech, Artoo, I know you wouldn’t joke about data validity.” He paused in his tightening of a microbolt on the new circuit. “Well, it can’t be any of the troops, that’s for sure. But the only female on the ship is…”
“Hey, Master!”
Anakin jumped, hitting his head on the innards of the data terminal. “Force, Snips. I didn’t hear you come in.” He scooted his upper body out of the access panel and stood slowly, fighting a sudden bout of vertigo. He frowned as he took in his padawan’s relaxed recline at the head of the nearby briefing table. “Say, Snips, while you’re here… You don’t have any… big news to tell me, do you?”
Ahsoka scowled and let out a huff as she twirled in the chair. Another change in the past couple of months, they actually used chairs instead of just standing at terminals for briefings. And the debrief for this last mission hadn’t even started and yet here they were. With free time.
“Did Rex tell you?” she whined. “I told him not to. I wanted to wait for the right moment.”
“Rex?!” Anakin shrieked. His heart stopped. He couldn’t believe how cavalier she was being about this. Sure, he had his own secret wife. And the Council did seem to be on the way to relaxing its stance on attachment. But they were a long way from casual gossip sessions and out-in-the-open pregnancies. “It’s— Rex, really?”
His own captain. He’d kill him.
Ahsoka dropped her feet from where they’d been dangling on the briefing table. “Listen, Skyguy. It’s not what you think. I was going to wait a bit longer, but I’m more than ready!”
Yup, Rex was a dead man. “Oh, I beg to differ!”
“You said it yourself! Once I pass the Trials, I’ll be ready for more responsibility—”
“But you can’t possibly think I meant—”
“And why not, you know? With the war winding down, there’s less and less need for military operations with multiple Jedi on the front—”
“Well, sure, but—”
“So I’ll have time to devote to individual missions—”
“I don’t know that I could call this an individual mission, Snips.” He clenched his fists, feeling the unsatisfying clicks of his mechanical fingers closing over air. “I mean, Rex apparently had a part in it.”
“Is that what this is about, that I’m stealing Rex away from you? Because I promise, he came to me about this. Years ago, in fact.”
“Years?!”
“Well, it was just an offhand comment after you pulled the latest stunt that almost got yourself blown up without telling him the plan first. You know, like usual?” she related offhandedly, like he wasn’t planning the justified murder of his third-in-command as she talked. “He told me that if it ever came down to a choice between me and you that he’d like to go with me, please and thank you.”
“A choice?! Me—” he gestured wildly at himself, then pointed an accusing finger at her, “—and you?! Why would that ever be a choice he’d have to make, for Force’s sake!”
Obi-Wan stepped into the room and briefly looked up from a datapad he was tapping away at. “Anakin, what’s all this yelling about? I could hear you from the hangar bay.”
Anakin ran a hand through his hair. Ahsoka was being so flippant about this that he felt like he was going insane. This was a very big deal. Obi-Wan would surely give him the appropriate reaction.
“Ahsoka is pregnant!” he announced accusingly.
“WHAT?!” Obi-Wan and Ahsoka yelled at once. They both turned to him.
“Are you insane, Master?!” Ahsoka screeched. Anakin gaped at her, bewildered.
“But Artoo found the log and then you— you confirmed it!”
“What log?! I was talking about me forming my own battalion! What did you think I was talking about?!”
“But you said— And Rex— And Artoo…”
The droid in question beeped the binary equivalent of “smell ya later, losers” and skated out of the room and down the hallway.
Ahsoka’s words finally registered. He couldn’t help the raw pain that laced through his words. “Wait, your own battalion? You want to leave me?”
“There it is!” Ahsoka threw her arms up in the air and paced several steps away. “Now it makes sense why this wasn’t your initial reaction.”
Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hold on. Start from the beginning. Anakin, why did you think Ahsoka was pregnant?”
“Because Artoo found a deleted log in the medical files. Someone took a pregnancy test— positive, by the way! And Ahsoka’s the only female on board!”
Obi-Wan slowly turned to Ahsoka. “Ahsoka, and I can’t believe I’m asking this, but are you pregnant?”
“What— No!” she spluttered. There was an audible sigh of relief from the two men in the silence that followed.
Obi-Wan took a deep breath and dropped his forehead into his palms. “Thank the Force,” he muttered to himself.
Anakin was still in shock and seeing Ahsoka’s entire apprenticeship with him flash before his eyes. She was a baby herself. A cute, backflippy, snarky baby. Where had the time gone? Had he really not noticed her growing up along the way to the point where they were discussing the possibility of Ahsoka having her own baby? He counted on his fingers, jaw dropping in shock when he needed both hands twice to reach her age. Since when had she gotten to double-mech-hand range?! And there were not nearly enough fingers left before they were in triple-hand territory.
“I could have been an uncle—I was this close to being an uncle...” he said out loud, still mystified.
Uncle? Grandfather? Ew, no, he was too young and good-looking for that yet. He’d advocate for cool uncle.
Ahsoka rounded on him. “I’m sorry, are you upset that I’m not carrying a physical embodiment of breaking the Jedi Code?”
“Well, I mean, no…” Anakin answered honestly. It would be a major inconvenience at this point in his life. He was working on a plan to petition the Council to formally accept changes to certain rules, but he was still months away from getting himself drunk enough to hit send on that particular transmission. And if Ahsoka was pregnant and in a relationship with a subordinate, that would seriously speed up his timeline.
“If it was gonna happen though, I would’ve been a great role model for the kid. But no, that’s not the point—” He purged the image of a little half Togruta running around the gunships from his mind, as cute and possibly heart attack inducing as that would be. “Snips, this whole thing has made me realize that I’ve neglected to complete your education on, um…”
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. “Education on what, my young padawan?”
Ahsoka crossed her arms and made a facial expression so similar to Obi-Wan’s it had Anakin doing a double take. He’d have to start limiting the amount of time she spent with her grandmaster if this was the result he got.
“Just—you know…” Anakin put a hand to the side of his mouth to block Ahsoka from hearing him and whispered quietly to Obi-Wan, “Safe sex.”
After a rather colorful swear in Huttese from Ahsoka —okay, so teaching her that one was on him— Anakin remembered that Togruta hearing was superior to humans’ and that he didn’t know how to whisper.
“Luckily for you, I’ve already taken it upon myself to have that conversation with her,” Obi-Wan announced with all the superiority of a man who thinks he’s the only responsible adult in the room.
“You did?!”
That backstabber. Obi-Wan stole a pivotal moment in Ahsoka’s upbringing from him. He would never get that back. Ahsoka was growing up before his eyes and sooner rather than later she’d be taking her Trials and becoming a Knight herself, as she had just painfully reminded him. What would he do then? Go on missions alone? Well, the Council would still probably let them team up like they did with he and Obi-Wan, but his point stands! Time is precious! Does Obi-Wan not understand that?!
“Yup! And thank the Force that he did, Master,” Ahsoka told him with no consideration for his poor nerves. “Because based on the conversation we’re having right now, I would probably need a memory wipe if you tried to actually teach me—!”
“Hey!”
What a hurtful thing to imply. He was a great teacher. Sure, maybe this wasn’t his best area of expertise… He’d only ever been with Padmé after all. And he knew nothing about the biology of Togrutas… or their mating rituals or whatever. He was not searching for that on the Holonet, no thank you!
But he cared! And shouldn’t that count for something? Mister I’m-so-smart diplomat over here probably just outlined everything clinically. No talk of feelings or gray areas. Insert tab A into slot B, done.
Wait. Did Togrutas have a slot B? Maybe he should ask Artoo to download him some—educational!—material on the sly. Artoo knew all the backchannels to the Holonet so a search wouldn’t show up on some ship data report. Speaking of which…
“Hey!” he repeated with renewed volume. “Then who’s pregnant?!”
“Ani?”
All three Jedi turned with wide eyes to see Padmé standing in the open doorway. Her gaze darted between them as she read the tension in the room.
“Oh Pa—” Anakin caught himself and glanced at Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. “Senator Amidala. I didn’t realize you were still on board.”
To Anakin’s shock and horror, Ahsoka started to laugh. Deep belly laughs that couldn’t be controlled. “Oh, this is rich.” Tears were starting to stream down her face.
“Yes, a little cosmic justice, I’d say.” There was badly veiled mirth in Obi-Wan’s voice.
Anakin watched their reactions in confusion and not a little bit of frustration. He was feeling very attacked right now, and not in the good way. “What are you guys talking about?”
Obi-Wan shook his head in that infuriating way of his and began making his way to the door. Ahsoka patted Anakin on the shoulder as she brushed by him to follow her grandmaster in retreat. Anakin tripped over some loose wires that were still wrapped around his ankle but quickly shook them off and hopped on one leg to follow them to the doorway.
“Hey, we’re not done with this conversation, padawan!” he yelled after her.
“I think you’re gonna have something else on your mind pretty soon, Skyguy,” she said with a knowing smirk as she walked backwards away from him.
“And don’t think I missed the part where you said you were stealing my captain! Or that you never denied having— relations with him!” The sound of her laughter merged with Obi-Wan’s chuckles as they fled down the corridor. “And what—” They turned a corner and were lost from view. Defeated, he reentered the briefing room. “Padmé, what were they talking about?”
Padmé observed him for a long moment. “Oh, Ani,” she sighed finally. “You’d better sit down for this.”