Luka and Ahsoka were cooking themselves dinner after a long day of training when Luke had a sudden thought.

“Ahsoaka?”, he said tentatively

“Yes?”

“Could I ask for a favour?”

“Sure”. Ahsoka was getting curious now.

“A friend of mine was captured by a gangster called Jabba the Hutt about a week before you found me, and I’ve been thinking about how to get him out of there ever since but…I just don’t know what to do.”

Luke looked puzzled at Ahsoka’s smiling face. “I’m sorry,” she said, “Jut thinking about how the droids used to say: ‘The Jedi rescue is a scenario that occurs 73% of the time beep boop beep’”, she finished, in a sorry imitation of a droid voice.

“So…are you gonna help me?,” Luke asked. 

“Of course.” she said smiling, “We’re Jedi, how could I not?”

Luke smiled back, and they got to work.

Ahsoka told Luke everything she knew about Jabba, leaving Luke shocked that he was so old, and Luke briefed her on his odd vendetta with the smuggler. Crime lords like him usually didn’t hold such a grudge so whatever Han had done must have been really something.

“Do you have any Star Charts we can refer to or any schematics of his palace on Tattooine?”, Ahsoka asked.

“Maybe, let’s go see if R2 has some specs.”

Luke walked them to his ship, where the droid was waiting. Ahsoka hadn’t through much of it before, there were a lot of R2 units, but when she saw the droid there was no mistaking him. Incredulously, she asked, “Is that droids number R2…D2 by any chance?”

“Yeah”, Luke replied, “How’d you know?”

“Holy Banthas”, Ahsoka breathed, right before R2 came hurtling towards her.

Beeb Beeb Screeech

“Artooee! I missed you too buddy!”, she exclaimed with jubilation. 

Beep Bop Boop

“I’ve been busy little guy, and I see you have too. Have you been taking good care of little Luke here?”

Beep Screeech, he said, spinning his head indignantly.

“Hey! I’m not little!”, Luke said, getting over his shock for a moment.

“This droid and I have been through a lot”, Ahsoka told Luke. “He belonged to your mother before your father even met him, he accompanied Anakin and I throughout the clone wars, and the last I saw him he belonged to Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan. How in the galaxy did he land up with you?”

Luke was so shocked he could barely formulate words but he managed to spill out the story of how R2 came into his possession. Ahsoka laughed as he finished, unsurprised. This droid had lived an incredibly wild life. He was probably the only droid in the galaxy who had never had his mind wiped.

Ahsoka knew exactly what that droid held in his memory banks, so she asked him to pull up a start chart of tattooine and its binary sun system along with everything he had on Jabbas palace. He’d been there a few times and he had the records from the Jedi Temple too.

Luke was barely keeping up with Ahsoka and R2’s strategising, and had to remind them more than once that this was his mission to rescue his friend, before they slowed down.

R2’s presence equally delighted and saddened Ahsoka. He reminded her of Anakin. All the adventured they’d been on, all the challenges they’d overcome. It was only fitting the R2 would be the one to guide Anakin’s son through his own adventures. Ahsoka marvelled out loud at the strangeness of the Force. ‘Nothing happens by accident’, she remembered, one of the first things Anakin had taught her.

It was the will of the force that she had been at Anakin’s side then, and that Luke was at hers now, and, of course, that R2 had been there all the way.

Photo Credits: Star Wars The Clone Wars