Chapter Text
Anakin thinks that Ashla is… weird.
She’s weird.
He follows after her as they are brought to the Temple again. Master Jinn takes them to the healers and has them get full physicals. Anakin is just happy to see that they now have time to safely remove his explosive chip. His vaccines are normal for a rim slave—no owner wants their investment dying of something preventable, after all—but they give him some boosters and a few rarer vaccines as well.
Ashla’s in the next room, and Anakin can’t hear what’s going on. There’s some shouting at one point, though.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
Obi-Wan elected to stay in the room so Anakin had someone familiar, and the healer is a friend of his, a padawan named Bant.
Bant shrugs. “I don’t know. I can’t hear from here.”
This is apparently a cue for Obi-Wan to leave the room and investigate. He comes back after thirty seconds, looking disturbed.
“Obi?”
“She’s survived the Blue Shadow Virus,” Obi-Wan says, tone even. “She’s annoyed that they’re making a big deal of it.”
“The Blue—”
“Yes.”
Anakin doesn’t know what that is. It sounds bad, though. It’s probably pretty cool that she survived it, like surviving a Sarlacc.
Obi-Wan stays in the room until Bant is done, and they wait in the hall for Ashla.
When she leaves the room, her eyes land on them immediately. She tilts her head, looking them over, and purses her lips. “You’re top choice for babysitter, you know.”
Anakin makes a noise. “I’m not a baby!”
Ashla shrugs. “You’re very short.”
Anakin pouts. He is not ashamed to say this.
“How about I show you to your suite?” Obi-Wan interrupts. “And you two can… start to get to know each other?”
Anakin doesn’t like how blank Ashla looks at that.
He grabs her hand when they start down the hall, because everything she does is kind of scary. Not like she’s going to hurt him or anything, just… he keeps thinking that maybe he’ll turn around and she’ll be gone. Like she really doesn’t like him, but is too professional to let it show. She’s not mean, really, just…
She doesn’t want him. Anakin doesn’t like that.
“Here, I got these from Master Qui-Gon,” Obi-Wan says, passing Ashla a set of keys. “You have my comm number?”
“Yes, Padawan Kenobi,” Ashla says. “I’ll ring you if I need something I can’t find myself.”
They go inside. Obi-Wan leaves.
The room is clean. It’s empty of decorations, mostly, but there’s furniture. He can see half a kitchen from the door, and there’s a stove and oven, and even a fridge.
Ashla looks around the entry room, and then moves away from Anakin to look at the other doors. He doesn’t know if he should follow her. He doesn’t.
She comes back soon enough. “Fresher’s the middle door. There’s two bedrooms, and they’re about the same size. One of them has a fake window that can be programmed for whatever view you’d like, and the other has a real one. I’d prefer to have the room with the real window, because as unlikely as an intruder is, one would be more likely to come through the window than the door. In that event, I’d rather be between them and you.”
Anakin wouldn’t have thought of it that way, but he nods. It makes sense.
She gestures to the closest door. “If you have anything you want to put in your room, drop it off now, and then come here to the living room.”
Anakin hurries to do so. His bedroom is three times the size of what he had on Tatooine. He hears water in the pipes—which is still a little odd, to him—and Ashla’s coming out of the bathroom when he leaves his new room. He sees a few drops of water still on her hands, and rushes to wash his hands, since she already did.
He joins her in the living room. He doesn’t know where to sit. Should he sit lower than her?
“Take the other end of the couch,” she tells him.
Great. Takes the choice out of his hands.
He hops a little to get onto the couch. She waits until he gets settled.
“Okay,” she says. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and lets it out super slow. Anakin wonders if it helps. “I’m… not prepared for this. I’m also not exactly the normal kind of Master a padawan would expect to get. I think, before we move forward, we need to set some… I don’t want to say ground rules, but laying out expectations.”
“Like what?” Anakin asks. He understands rules. Rules are usually good.
“Some things we’ll need to try out until we figure out what works for us, like… bathroom schedules,” she says. “And some things, we need to work with the temple to get started on, like your classes. There’s other things we need to figure out first.”
“Okay,” Anakin says. He can do that. Probably.
“Let’s start with the easiest part,” she says. “What do you want me to call you, and what do you feel comfortable calling me?”
Anakin blinks. “Huh?”
“Would you like me to call you Padawan, Anakin, or something else?” Ashla asks.
Oh. “You can call me my name,” Anakin says. “My mom called me Ani. So did Padmé. And Qui-Gon.”
“Do you want me to call you Ani?”
He has no idea. “I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll call you Anakin,” she says. “And you can tell me if you change your mind.”
Okay. “Should I call you Master?”
“Do you want to?” she asks.
Anakin shrugs. “My name was my decision. Shouldn’t your name be yours?”
She smiles thinly and drops her head. He thinks she’s trying not to laugh, but in the sad way. “Something like that. You can call me Master if you’d like, but if it makes you think too much of slave masters, then you can call me something else. Miss Torrent, or just Ashla. I answer to a few other titles, but none I would be comfortable hearing from you.”
He thinks about it. Obi-Wan usually called Master Jinn with his title, not his name. Most of the other padawans did, too. “What did you call your master?”
“Either Master or a nickname,” she tells him. “Depended on how much I wanted to tease him. We were closer in age than most knight-and-padawan duos, so I treated him like an older brother.”
Anakin looks at his feet. He tries to pull them up, but a sharp inhale stops him. He looks at Ashla. “Eh?”
“Let’s make a rule,” she says, looking a little faint. “No shoes on the couch. Actually, I’ll just… no shoes past the entryway. I’ll get us slippers for the suite as a whole, or we can just go around in socks.”
Anakin does not understand the point of this rule, but he can follow it. He keeps his feet off the couch.
Instead of seeming happy, Ashla drops her face into her hands, elbows on her knees, and just stays like that for… a minute. Maybe longer.
“Miss Torrent?”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She sits back up, and she looks really tired. He doesn’t know if he can help. “Maybe I should explain.”
Explain what? “Okay.”
“I grew up in this environment, but I was drafted into military service at fourteen,” she tells him. “Sixteen to eighteen was a bit of a weird time for me—um, I spent most of it on the run—but the last fifteen years or so have been me doing black ops work on behalf of a military organization. So a lot of how I think and work is informed by an extensive military background. And sometimes that doesn’t look too different from other Jedi, and sometimes it looks very different.”
Anakin nods. He doesn’t know anything about the military, but she grew up different, so she thinks different. That makes sense.
“So… we’ll make lists,” Ashla decides. “And schedules. A lot of things are going to have nothing to do with me being your teacher, and everything to do with me being the main adult in your life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, did you listen to your mom for the same reason you listened to… what was his name, Watto?”
“No!”
She gestures as if that’s the entire point. “Your mom isn’t here, but I am. So I’ll be the one telling you when to go to bed or clean your room. It’s because I’m now your legal guardian, not just your teacher. Got it?”
Well, duh. Even Anakin knew that, and he just got here.
“If a rule I make doesn’t make sense, then you can ask me why, and I’ll explain. There are things that make our lives easier preemptively, like the couch thing,” Ashla says. “The temple has mouse droids. They clean the floors, and that means we don’t have to worry as much about things like crumbs or dirt that we track in from outside. Mouse droids can’t get up on the couch or bed, though, and so we have to clean that ourselves. If we keep our feet down, it doesn’t get as dirty, and so we have to clean it less often.”
She hesitates, and then seems to come to a decision. “There are rules that are going to be entirely about safety. Things like when you can use certain tools, proving you know how to safely use the stove before I let you cook, that sort of thing. There are rules that are going to be for health, like when you sleep and making sure you eat your veggies, brushing your teeth and exercising. There are rules that are going to be about maintaining discipline and staying on track for being a Jedi knight, like doing homework and practicing saber forms. And there are rules that are, like the couch thing, more about being a good roommate so we don’t annoy each other sharing a living space. Any of that sound unreasonable?”
Anakin fidgets. He looks away so he can stare at the floor. “You like lists.”
“I sometimes found solace in having plans and rules to follow when I felt lost,” she admits. “Force knows I hated learning the regs when I was a teenager.”
“Regs?” Anakin asks.
“Regulations. Big fat book of what to do, and how, and when,” Ashla explains. “Armies are massive and if you don’t have regulations, you lose track of what’s happening, and where, and you lose efficiency. If a soldier comes from a planet that doesn’t have to regulate water usage, like Mon Cala, then they might not know ahead of time that they need to regulate water usage on a ship, so that the filters can keep up with cleaning it for reuse. To that soldier, the regulation that dictates how long a shower is seems like overkill, and unnecessarily controlling. To a soldier from a desert planet, like Tatooine, the rule is common sense. Understand?”
“…are you gonna write a big book of rules?” Anakin asks.
“I’d rather not. I’ll make lists, though,” she says. “And you’ll have influence on rules, if it’s something you need that I didn’t think of. Like… a safety rule on my end is that you should never try to shake me awake, which is very specific to me as a person, not a general rule that would apply to most people.”
Anakin frowns. “Why is that a safety rule?”
“Because I might attack you,” she says, super blunt. “It’s part of why I didn’t think I was ready to take a padawan. My mind and body are still in war mode. If someone surprises me, I may just try to fight them. For someone as small as you, that’s very dangerous. If you wake me up from close range, especially with physical touch, I might hurt you without meaning to. So if you need to wake me up, it’s going to be with sound, or with a Force ping, which we’ll work on.”
Anakin fidgets again. He has no idea how to ask this question. He has no idea if he should.
“What’s up, kiddo?”
“You don’t want me.”
Ashla’s quiet for a long time. Finally, she sighs. “It’s not a matter of want. I want to be involved in your life. I do not think I’m the best choice to be your master, because I’m not well. It’s going to be a long time before my head’s back on straight. If you’d had a few years in the crèche while I went to a mind healer, I’d probably be less concerned, but instead I went straight from Sith-hunting to being responsible for a child, and that isn’t safe or healthy for you.”
--
Living with Ashla is weird.
There are lists. The lists have rules. Anakin practices his basic sometimes by reading them.
There’s an erasable list on the fridge, so they can keep track of what they have, and what’s going bad soon. There are sticky pieces of flimsi on there, too, with emergency numbers for healers and Obi-Wan, and with allergies and ‘dietary needs and restrictions.’ Anakin has to eat a certain number of certain foods every day, because Padawan Eerin gave Ashla a list of foods that are going to make Anakin healthier than he ever was as a slave. Someone gave the same kind of list to Ashla for herself, because she’s not been eating great, either.
Anakin doesn’t have to clean the apartment. He has to keep his room clean. He has to clean up any mess he makes, unless it’s really too big for him. If Ashla cooks, and asks him to clean up the dishes, it’s polite to do so. If he uses a dish when it’s not a mealtime, he should clean it up right after, so they don’t have a build-up. He has a bedtime, and Ashla checks on him to make sure he isn’t staying up to fiddle with droids or read.
If Anakin messes up by accident, he doesn’t get in trouble. If he messes up on purpose, or makes the same mistake several times, Ashla sits down and makes him talk about it until they figure out why.
That’s why there’s a timer on his desk now. It goes off every hour or two to make him stretch, and take a break, and take any dishes to the sink if he has them.
He has to meditate for an hour every morning. He has to meditate for an hour every night. Four days a week, he meditates after lunch, too. It’s really boring, but it’s on the list of things that are going to make him a better Jedi. It also means Ashla feels less like broken glass, in the Force, and he kind of likes it when she doesn’t feel like she’s going to cry.
If he needs to wake her up, and sometimes he does, then he tugs on the bond or says her name until she blinks awake. He does not enter her room beyond cracking open on the door. He waits until she says his name, and he knows that she’s properly aware.
It’s too close to the end of the semester for him to join any classes, so instead he’s taking tests to be placed in the right ones when the new term starts. His Basic is fine, except when he reads, where he’s behind for his age. His Huttese is better than the teacher’s. His Ryl is better than his age group.
He does so good at the engineering and mechanics that the teacher talks to Ashla about it. That feels… good.
He fails the history exam.
“We’ve got modules here for you to practice your reading and writing skills in Basic,” Ashla says, after that part is all done. “I’ll help you catch up with history as much as we can, and you’ll retest at the start of the semester.”
“Okay.”
Most mornings, he studies. Most afternoons, Ashla takes him to a private training salle to work with a practice lightsaber. It’s amazing.
After studying and sabers, Anakin gets to decide what they do. He doesn’t have any friends, yet.
He asks to go to museums. She takes him.
He asks to try Coruscanti ice creams. She takes him.
He asks to go to a pod race. She does not take him, because she doesn’t know where there are any, but there are speeder races, and that’s almost as good.
Obi-Wan takes him to a place like Dex’s, one day when Ashla’s missing and all he can feel—because he knows how to feel her through the bond—is that she’s very, very sad.
Sometimes, Anakin understands why Ashla thought he should be Obi-Wan’s padawan. It’s like having a cool older brother. Obi-Wan is awkward around Anakin sometimes, but it’s probably just ‘I don’t know how to talk to kids’ adult stuff. Obi-Wan has cool stories about all sorts of things, the kind that Ashla doesn’t ever tell, because she thinks Anakin isn’t old enough. Being around Obi-Wan is almost easy, like they were meant to be best friends, even though Obi-Wan is almost three times his age, which is wild. He's old. Not as old as Ashla, or mom, or Yoda, but old.
Obi-Wan is also the one that takes him every time Ashla’s… occupied.
Anakin’s got the schedule in his room. Four times a week, that’s how often they meditate after lunch.
Three times a week, that same time slot is for mind healers.
Ashla had explained it like she though Anakin would fight it. She’d said that she wasn’t okay, in the head, because she had spent a very long time being in danger, all the time, and she couldn’t be Anakin’s teacher properly unless she did her best to fix that.
“You should go too,” she’d said.
“I didn’t fight a war?”
“Being a slave leaves its own scars, on the soul,” she’d said. “I was always in danger, because people wanted me dead. You were in danger of other things. Were you scared of Watto?”
Anakin shrugged, then. “Not really. He was better than most owners. He didn’t really beat us much.”
Her face has twitched, like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to force her pity on him. “How often did he threaten you, Anakin? With the chip, with beatings, with… rationing your food?”
Pretty often. Mostly the last one.
“That’s not a healthy way to grow up,” Ashla tells him. “Please? I’m going to, so it’s nothing shameful.”
Anakin had shrugged again. “Okay. If you’re going.”
He doesn’t know why she thought he’d fight it. It’s not like he does anything there. He just talks to the healer, and draws things or plays with droids. Sometimes they talk about Watto, but they also talk about his friends on Tatooine, or about Mom, or about pod racing. They even talk about Ashla, and how Anakin’s fitting into the Temple, or Obi-Wan.
--
Transcript – Ashla Torrent (A), first meeting
Healer: Persepolia Madrás (M)
A: I hope you understand that I won’t feel comfortable telling you certain details. There’s a lot of information in my history that’s classified.
M: I am one of the highest certification levels a soul healer can possess. I handle plenty of Shadows. That said, yes, I recognize that you will be withholding details.
A: Thank you. Where should we start?
M: Can you give me a rough overview of your life, and what you’d like to achieve through our meetings?
A: [pause] When you say rough overview, you mean things like major missions, important events, the age I was apprenticed, that sort of thing?
M: Yes. Be as vague or as detailed as you like. If I need more to understand, I’ll ask. Unless you have an intention of hurting yourself or anyone else, I will not share any of this information with anyone, not even the Council.
A: Alright. I was brought to a Temple with a similar environment to this one when I was three. At thirteen, a large war broke out, and nearly all the Jedi of a fighting age in my Temple were drafted into it. I was drafted at fourteen, and became padawan to a new knight, who was six years older than me. Due to that age difference, much of my training was split with his master, rather than solely his own discretion.
M: May I ask about what the war was? Which temple?
A: Classified. All I can say is that there were Sith involved, and my Jedi community led a force of non-Sensitive soldiers who had also been drafted.
M: I understand. If you feel alright to continue, please do so.
A: I died, temporarily, at fifteen. There were a lot of missions that could be broadly classified as traumatic during this time, but that was the one that sticks out the most. At sixteen, about two and a half years later, I was framed for a terrorist attack by a close friend who had fallen to the dark side. Due to the civilian property and deaths involved, it could not be handled as an internal Jedi matter, and my Temple was forced to expel me, and turn me over to a military tribunal. I escaped, but by the time evidence of my innocence came up, I was already doubting myself and my place as a Jedi. I decided I needed to take some time for myself.
M: Your temple didn’t invite you back?
A: They did. I deferred. I found myself a job as a mechanic. Six months later, I was contacted by a Mandalorian woman who had once tried to kill me, asking for help with a Sith problem of her own. I agreed. She is the one who gave me my beskar, in thanks for my help with that problem. During my time working on that problem, I encountered my soldiers again. For a set of complicated reasons, they turned on me and my community against their own will. My escape resulted in… a number of deaths that were unfortunately necessary due to their intention to go after civilians next.
M: Were you close with these soldiers?
A: I called them my brothers.
M: I see. My condolences.
A: By that point, my Temple and all associated Jedi had been razed and nearly wiped out. I had planned to return at some point, but… there was nothing left to return to. My people were dead. I can count the survivors on my hands with fingers left over, and half of those are just suspected, not confirmed.
M: You survived a genocide?
A: Yes.
M: That’s an awful thing to have lived through.
A: No shit.
M: [silence]
A: Sorry. I know you’re just… anyway. The Sith started hunting Force Sensitives in my region. I spent the next year on the run, and then met up with the leader of a rebellion movement and offered my services. The next fifteen years, I spent running covert ops for him and his movement. My last mission had me investigating a Sith planet, where I ran into an old enemy. I was followed, however, by one of the Sith that had taken over the government of my region. The old enemy ran off, and I began to fight the Sith. I damaged the mask he was wearing, and found that… that he was my Jedi Master. I’d suspected, but in light of the situation, I’d hoped that he was simply dead, like the rest. He was not, and instead put all his effort into trying to kill me. A friend interfered, and removed me from that fight in favor of placing me on Naboo. I don’t know how. That brings us to now.
M: You’ve led a very eventful life, Knight Torrent.
A: [scoff] Yeah, that’s one way to put it.
M: Am I right in assuming that your current worries circle less around your own mental health than around how it may impact your padawan?
A: Yeah. I have coping mechanisms, I’ve had to have coping mechanisms, but none of them accounted for having a kid.
M: We can work with that. If you don’t have a specific part of your history you would like to talk about—
A: I’d rather not. After all that.
M: —then how about you walk me through your daily routine as it is right now?