How to Take an Empire

Chapter Six: Birthday

Ahsoka woke on the twins' first birthday to Luke and Leia, playing with her left montral together. Sort of together. Luke was playing with it, trying to get it in his mouth like he did everything nowadays, and Leia was trying to push him out the way to inspect it herself. She sat up to try to deny them both the privilege. But all that did was make Luke pull up on her arm to try to reach the top of her head.

"No, little one," she chided lightly, and predictably, Luke pouted, which meant crying because he couldn't get his way was soon to follow.

"Don't do this to me," Ahsoka added. "I'm not trying to let you cry first thing on your birthday."

She sent affectionate waves across their bond, which caused Luke's pout to just as quickly turn into a giggle as he settled for giving her a sloppy kiss on her face. Not to be outdone by her brother, Leia crawled into Ahsoka's lap and did the same before turning to Luke and pushing him so that he fell on his bottom on the soft bed.

"Leia. That's not nice," Ahsoka said to the girl whose response was to send something like defiance across their bond that Ahsoka responded to with unyielding disapproval, easily overwhelming the young girl's strong but not strong enough against Ahsoka's, will.

The result was Leia angrily pouting and laying her head on Ahsoka's chest for comfort and in some attempt to ignore her, which only caused Ahsoka to laugh.

"Come on," Ahsoka said standing with Leia in her arms. She held out her hand toward Luke who determinedly climbed off the bed before reaching up to take Ahsoka's hand so she could lead them to the 'fresher to clean them up for the day.

Once she had them cleaned up, she sat them in their booster seats at their small table. While Threepio took care of breakfast, Ahsoka made herself busy preparing the pastry that Padmé once made for her on her seventeenth birthday when somehow, miraculously, Ahsoka wasn't on the war front. Ahsoka was uncomfortable with it at first as birthdays weren't something the Jedi celebrated. But Padmé had thought it nonsense and made her a traditional Naboo birthday pastry with fruit preserves made from the sweetest fruit found on Naboo. She said it represented gratitude for the sweetness of the previous year and anticipation for the sweetness of the year to come, even though it might come with hardships. And hardships were right. The next year was the year Bariss framed her.

Ahsoka banished the thought from her head. Though she wasn't nearly as a wreck and depressed as she'd been a year ago, she still had enough bouts of sadness from time to time. Today was like that. Not just sadness, though. She was happy too. Because Ahsoka wasn't sure that she wouldn't have succumbed to the dark side at her lowest if the twins hadn't been there to pull her out. But sad because she wasn't the woman who Luke and Leia should have been calling "mama" and celebrating their first birthday with.

Regardless, Ahsoka was determined to do at least part of what Padmé would have done for them, even if Ahsoka didn't have the sweet Naboo birthday fruit for the pastry. She'd just make do.

She sensed May and her son's arrival long before they knocked on the door, but waited to actually go to the door until they knocked because that's what people who weren't Jedi did.

"The twins are eating breakfast," Ahsoka said as she made her way back to the kitchen.

"Don't rush, Ashla," May assured as she came in. "Tariq and I were ready, and I just figured I'd make my way over in the meantime."

Ahsoka smiled at the woman before turning her attention back to making the sweet preserves to pour on top of the birthday pastry for the twins.

True to the May's word, she'd helped Ahsoka get her bearings straight. No one would hire a girl with no obvious practical skills to her name who had two children to tend to. However, when Ahsoka fixed May's broken down speeder and saved the woman from having to shell out money she hardly had to fix it, she spread the word amongst some friends that Ahsoka was good with mechanics.