Chapter Text
Though the announcement about the new captains would wait until the troopers agreed to their new positions, the announcement that Rex had been promoted to commander was met with celebration and congratulations. The Jedi very pointedly turned a blind eye to the empty bottles they saw lazily tucked behind corners and the slurred speech of more than a few troopers. It wasn’t hard to do, though it was a bit more difficult not to laugh at troopers who thought they were being subtle and failing.
Vaughn nearly fell over in excitement when Ahsoka asked if he was willing to be captain. She had pulled him aside privately, of course, so nobody else saw it, but he was eager to accept the promotion. Tent was more surprised; after all, multiple trainers had lectured him about the importance of obeying your superiors and how he better start listening better if he ever wanted to move up in the ranks. They never said his recklessness would get him promoted one day, but then again, his trainers didn’t know Tent would end up in the 501st Legion.
Once they accepted, Ahsoka and Anakin worked on updating the Republic database and Rex started preparing them for their new duties. The rest of the battalion was split into two divisions: the 332nd Division, to be led by General Tano, and the 169th Division, to be led by General Skywalker (the original idea for the 169th Division was to use the difference between the numbers 501 and 332 as the division designation. This naming decision was widely accepted once the troopers realized what the difference between the numbers 501 and 332 was ).
The cruiser arrived at Felucia not long after. Once again, Ahsoka and Anakin oversaw the reinforcement transfer, though Rex was still busy with the new captains. Oddly enough, most of the 501st troopers were noticeably absent or busy as well, which could only mean trouble was afoot.
“I really hope they don’t take this division thing too seriously,” Ahsoka remarked. The last of the equipment was unloaded and Ahsoka had come down to the surface to confirm the transfer. “It’s a logistical detail, not a test.”
“Eh, you know them,” Anakin reminded her, crossing his arms as they watched tanks and walkers be parked and designated. “They’ll take anything and make some kind of game out of it. It keeps them busy.”
Not far from them, a batch of shinies were receiving a lecture from their new commander. His voice carried well in the hangar, and so did the shinies’ earnest reply: “Sir, yes sir!” Ahsoka smiled a little bit. They seemed like they would do well.
Anakin had finally gathered enough confidence and courage to bring up the topic he had been skirting around for the past couple of days. Bringing it up at that exact moment maybe wasn’t his best decision ever, but he made it anyway: “Hey, I know it’s been a while, but I think we should talk about what you told me before your Knighthood.”
She knew this was coming. Anakin would just let something like that drop. “You know that you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, right?”
“I do, but…”
“You’re going to anyway?”
“I should,” he said, finally settling on his words, “and I do want to. Sort of.”
She raised an eyemark. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“Well, I have something I want to say, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun, you know?”
Ahsoka laughed a little but nodded. “Yeah. I get it. You certainly know when to pick your moments.”
“Give me a break, Snips,” he complained, elbowing her, but it was good to see her laugh. The jab was half-hearted at best.
The Jedi stationed at the Felucia outpost, Master Kumor, approached Anakin and Ahsoka. “Thank you for delivering the reinforcements safely,” she told them. “The Separatists have not been pleased that such a strategic stop in the Perlemian Trade Route has been captured by the Republic. They have not been able to reestablish control here, but that has not stopped them from trying.”
“We’re happy to help,” Anakin replied. “We’ve had our fair share of conflict on Felucia ourselves. We wouldn’t want all that hard work to go to waste.”
“Oh, I’ve heard,” Master Kumor said fondly. “I was stationed here not long after your kidnap, General Tano. On that note, though, I must congratulate you on completing your Knighthood ceremony. I’ve just heard the news.”
“Thank you, Master Kumor,” Ahsoka said, bowing slightly.
“Fair warning, your Senate trial has received quite some attention from the HonoNet. Local reporters had many a nasty thing to say about the whole ordeal.”
“I’m just glad that it didn’t escalate any further. Enough people were hurt as it was.”
…just glad? Since when? Anakin thought, but he didn’t say anything.
“I agree. You two should be off, though,” Master Kumor noted. “I’d hate to keep you here when you are needed out on the front lines.”
Anakin was about to quip that the 501st was avoiding the front lines for the time being, but Ahsoka bowed again, beating Anakin to a response. He did the same, and they both walked back to the gunship together.
He made sure they were both out of earshot before asking, “You feeling alright? You were kinda quiet back there.”
Ahsoka shrugged. “Just trying to be on my best behavior. I don’t need anyone reporting back to the Council that I’m up to anything suspicious right now.”
“Okay, but being talkative isn’t suspicious. Especially not for us.”
She didn’t respond except to repeat her gesture and climb onto the gunship.
“You’re not too worried about those HoloNet stories, are you?”
“I’m fine, I promise,” Ahsoka told him. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what I think about them. It won’t change what the stories say or what people think.”
Well, that was true. It was rather… wise and mature of Ahsoka to have that realization. Anakin wanted to make a joke out of it, something about Ahsoka being all grown up now, but he bit it back. Hidden in her words was a certain edge suggesting the truth hurt more than she let on. The gunship doors closed, blocking out light from outside, but Anakin could have sworn Ahsoka’s gaze hardened right before the doors shut.
Anakin had rehearsed what he planned to say a hundred times. His drafting process had been a back-and-forth between thinking “what would Obi-Wan say about this?,” “what would Obi-Wan not say about this?,” “what did I wish Obi-Wan had said when I was going through this?,” and “what did I wish Obi-Wan wouldn’t have said when I was going through this?” The result was three lists: one full of things he absolutely should say about this, one full of things he should never say, ever, but especially not now, and one with optional things to talk about or say.
He swallowed down the lump in his throat that used to be a lot bigger a few days ago. He couldn’t help it. Every time he so much as thought about how Ahsoka wanted to leave the Order, he remembered the day Ahsoka fought back tears and resigned herself to Knighthood because that was what it had been. She hadn’t believed that she deserved it or that the Council trusted, but she pretended to anyway and just went along with it to get it over with. Her Knighthood Ceremony wasn’t supposed to be something she resigned to. It was supposed to be one of the biggest accomplishments of her life! It was supposed to be something exciting!
It was worse at the beginning. Anakin had barely kept it together when Ahsoka started crying, but in the late hours when nobody saw, he fell apart. Just a little bit. Now he could keep it together by remembering what he wanted to say to her about it. He had a plan to fix this, and that’s what helped him fight down the urge to shut himself in his cabin and break down.
They got back to the cruiser in a few minutes. The hangar was noticeably empty, and that, at least, made Ahsoka smile. “How much do you want to bet the troopers are getting into trouble?”
“Are you kidding?” Anakin said, scoffing. “I’m not betting against that.”
She laughed to herself, and her smile reminded Anakin why he was going to fight for her to stay. Every person that had stuck by Anakin’s side made surviving this war bearable, and Ahsoka was no exception. He wasn’t going to lose her, not now.
“Do you remember when you said you think you’re not enough for the Council?”
Ahsoka nodded, her laughter from a moment before forgotten. She resisted the urge to argue the ‘think’ part of that question. She knew. There was no ‘think’ about it.
No turning back now. “I know it may not seem like it, but you’re… you’re not the only one who feels that way.”
She looked up at him, slowly. Anakin had this sort of sheepish look on his face. “We’re not really supposed to talk about it. It’s an unspoken thing, but I’ve felt that way before too. A lot, actually,” he confessed, glancing at the ground. “Masters aren’t supposed to talk about it with their apprentices, I don’t think. Obi-Wan’s never talked about it with me, for example. Of course, it’s a little different because he’s on the Council now, but when he was younger, he probably felt the same way at some point. As you get older, it gets easier.”
“Easier to accept that the Council doesn’t trust you?”
“Easier to understand that they do,” Anakin corrected, “they just… don’t always show it.”
Ahsoka really wanted to laugh. She really wanted to burst out that he was being ridiculous. She settled for something else: “They really picked a terrible time to not show it then.”
“Some people react poorly to stress and crisis,” he reminded her. “We all have our moments, right? You can’t ignore what they do when it gets hard, but you shouldn’t forget everything else either. You shouldn’t forget what they do when they have a chance to choose to make you more important than anything else.”
“We face stress and crisis all the time,” Ahsoka argued. “If anyone should be capable of acting rationally at a time like that, wouldn’t it be them?”
“I think that was a little different than battle stress.”
“Okay,” Ahsoka said. She wasn’t really buying it, but she was willing to talk. “Okay, it was just a bad day. A bad sequence of days that all happened to coincide with my trial, and so I feel worse about this than most people do. That still… sucks,” she argued. “This sucks. It’s normal to feel like the Council doesn’t trust you?”
“We’re young, Ahsoka,” Anakin said, gesturing to the two of them. “Compared to most Jedi in the Order, really young. Most people who have to face things like this are a lot older than us, and by that time, they understand more than we do. We live in a time where people our age are getting wrapped up in, in galactic wars and politics and terrorism and… honestly, a lot of terrible, horrible stuff.”
“Yeah, I know. Some of that horrible stuff happened to me. I didn’t like it.”
“But it shouldn’t have. Right? We both agree on that,” he said, pausing just to make sure she knew where he stood on that particular matter. “We’re supposed to be peacekeepers, not soldiers. Stuff like getting framed for terrorism and murder isn’t supposed to happen to Jedi, and it’s definitely not supposed to happen to Padawans. Or young Knights.”
“What’s your point?”
“Anyone who would, for whatever insane reason, end up in your situation and go through what you had to go through would normally be older, more experienced, and have already built more trust with the Council,” Anakin explained. “Trust is built with time, and you’ve only been doing this for a few years. I know it seems like a long time, but most other Jedi would have had longer. Most other Jedi wouldn’t be working through the feeling of distrust at the same time they had to go through this nightmare. You just… this whole thing had really, really bad timing.”
You’d think that, because of the war, those few years would have counted for more than normal, Ahsoka thought, but something in her mind whispered that maybe, maybe Anakin was right. She wasn’t willing to admit it out loud yet, but that didn’t deter Anakin.
“Look, if the same thing had happened to me at your age, or even now, I would feel the exact same way,” Anakin told her. “I… I’m still working on the whole distrust thing myself, but it does get better as you get older. It’s not fair to you that this happened to you when you’re still so young, and this piled on top of what you’re feeling doesn’t help anything. It does suck,” he said, echoing what Ahsoka had said a minute ago, “but it’s not supposed to suck this bad.”
“If that’s the case, then why didn’t I feel any of this until the trial happened?”
“We all have things that make it feel worse at some times more than others,” Anakin explained. “Something goes wrong, or the Council makes a decision, and we start doubting their trust in us. Your moment had execution attached to it, which is so much more extreme than what any other Padawan has to face. Like I said, it’s really bad timing.”
“If my moment was caused by their distrust, is that really just timing?”
“No, that’s not it. Something was always going to make you feel like this. No getting around that, but if this had happened… I don’t know, ten years in the future, your moment would have already passed,” Anakin said, trying to convince her. “I would have been there, just like now, and we would have worked through it together and come out the other side after a while. Then the trial would have happened later in your life, and by that time, this whole thing would have made more sense to you.”
“Does it make sense to you? You’re older than I am,” Ahsoka countered, crossing her arms. “You think what the Council did makes sense?”
He faltered. That was the weakness of his argument, but Anakin wouldn’t lie to her. “No. It doesn’t. Like I said, I’m still working through this myself. I’m younger too,” he reminded her, shrugging a little bit. “It… it’s a gradual thing.”
That didn’t seem like enough. How could handing over Ahsoka to be unfairly executed make sense at ANY age? Gradual or not, Ahsoka thought that sense had nothing to do with it.
Except Anakin believed it. She trusted Anakin, and she didn’t think he was lying to her. Her stubbornness won in that moment, but even as she shook her head, her voice sounded less certain than before. “I wish I had your faith,” she said, looking up at him. “Even if it’s gradual, you believe that eventually it will make sense someday. I… I can’t see it.”
“I know,” he said, nodding sadly. “I don’t blame you. If it were me, I don’t think anyone could convince me to try and trust the Council after what they did. Well,” he trailed off, hesitating. “Obi-Wan probably could. If anyone could, he could.”
Yeah, that made sense. It was Obi-Wan.
“Still, though.” She wasn’t giving up just yet. “Why is it normal that young Jedi think the Council distrusts them?”
“We’re still learning. Come on, Ahsoka, you know that.”
“That’s different. I may still have things to learn, but I know better than to blow up the Jedi Temple. That’s not inexperience, not even close.”
“And they know that, but these things take time.”
“So I just have to spend the next few years thinking the Council doesn’t trust me?” Ahsoka asked incredulously, holding her arms out. “And so does everyone else?”
“That’s just how it works.”
“And you’re okay with that? We should all just… accept this?” Ahsoka asked, looking around as if another answer would materialize in front of her. “We shouldn’t, I don’t know, try to change it? Make things better?”
“How?” Anakin asked, dropping his voice. He didn’t like not trusting the Council any more than she did, but he didn’t have the answers she was looking for. “What are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, but if there are Jedi who have gone through this before us, why wouldn’t they try to do something about it? Why are people just letting this… this stupid tradition keep happening? This is a bad thing!”
“But it’s our thing,” Anakin argued, bringing his hands to his chest. “Look, nothing’s perfect, right? There’s good things and bad things in every part of life. No matter what you do or who you are, there’s going to be bad things that you just have to suck up and deal with. This is our bad thing. It’s not great, but I told you, it gets better. It’ll fade, and then I’m… I’m sure we’ll find some other thing to complain about.”
“If we found this out about a… a school or a government or an army, we’d be trying to fix it,” Ahsoka replied. “This is a normal, known thing about the Jedi Order, about our people, and we just let it happen?”
“That’s just it,” Anakin pointed out. “It’s normal. Anything that might change this would have to be big, and we’re in a war right now. Maybe the Council doesn’t get this right, but they get a lot of other things right. There’s not enough time for us to nitpick mistakes, even if it could be fixed with enough work. We need the Council, and so does the entire Republic.”
“I know that. I needed the Council, and they weren’t there for me.”
“And I don’t get why,” he repeated, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I hope- I believe that one day I’ll understand all of this more than I do now. I’m sorry I don’t have answers for you, but if I did have them, I’d give them to you. I’d do everything I could to make this hurt less.”
Ahsoka sighed. Faith. That was the answer here. The key to stopping the ache in her chest was something she didn’t have, something she lost the minute her Padawan braid had been ripped from her head.
Maybe Anakin was right. Maybe Ahsoka was just young and stubborn and subject to a stupid, hurtful rite of passage that coincided with one of the worst events of her life. She didn’t believe it, but that’s what Anakin was telling her.
He could tell she was still discouraged, but she wasn’t walking off in defiance or outright rebuking what he said. Anakin hoped that was a good sign. “Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do, for your case or mine. I just… I hope you know you’re not alone in this,” he said quietly. “You’re not the first Jedi to feel like the Council doesn’t trust you, and you won’t be the last. It’s normal. That’s not a good thing, but it gets better, and it’s not personal. It’s not your fault, Ahsoka.”
It didn’t feel true, and it wasn’t totally reassuring, but she knew that’s what Anakin was trying to do. She gave him a weak smile, hoping he understood that she appreciated the sentiment. She knew this wasn’t what he wanted for her. It wasn’t his fault she felt ostracized.
“If you want some space to think, we’re just going back to Kamino. I can look after the troopers.”
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it right now. “I don’t think being alone is going to help anything. Besides, it’s been too quiet for too long,” she pointed out, nodding at the empty hangar they were still standing in. “Who knows what’s going on right now?”
Anakin got the message. “Good point,” he said, taking a breath. All things considered, their conversation went pretty well. “What are the chances the mess hall is living up to its name?”
Ahsoka smirked, even if it was mostly for Anakin’s benefit. “Probably pretty high.”
“Great. Well, might as well face it head on.”
She followed him towards the door, keeping up her facade until Anakin turned away. As she walked, her gaze fell. Despite not wanting to think about what Anakin said, it was working its way through her mind.
As a Youngling, she had been taught to have faith in the Force and in the Light her whole life. Since she always associated the Light with the Jedi Order, extending her faith to the Jedi as a people was a natural next step. So was having faith in the Jedi Council It wasn’t until now that she realized that faith had been jeopardized.
It wasn’t that she wanted to lose faith in the Council. That was the last thing she wanted. They had looked after the Order and after her for as long as she could remember, up until last week. She just wished that hadn’t changed, that they hadn’t done something to make her think anything else than what she had thought her whole life. That was why she wanted to leave, that was why everything was going to end.
Ahsoka was still thinking when they made it to the mess hall, so it took her a minute to notice the troopers.
The trouble they had been getting into earlier was evident now; the 501st had updated the paint job on their armor. The whole mess hall smelled like fresh paint. Half of the troopers had an additional ‘169’ marked on their armor somewhere, and the other half had Ahsoka’s facial mark on their helmets. Across the hall, they could see that Rex, Jesse, Fives, and Kix didn’t have division designations but instead repainted the designs already present (they needed repainted anyway) and added an orange diamond to their shoulderpads or chestplates.
Ahsoka’s heart broke a little bit more in that minute.
When the troopers saw their generals had joined them, they cheered and stood up, brandishing their armor so the Jedi could see. Anakin joined his division in laughter, unable to remain professional, but Ahsoka was biting down every urge to tell her troopers that there was no point, that she was leaving and this whole gesture wasn’t going to last long anyway…
…but maybe that was the reason she loved it too. There was always a risk they would die on the battlefield. One way or another, chances were most of them would leave one way or another anyway. Was that a reason to keep her distance and tread lightly, or was it a reason to lead her division in stride and enjoy it while it lasted?
Permanent marks made by impermanent beings. In war, there was something to be said about the value of the temporary.
Vaughn, who had the idea of repainting his armor first, came up to his general and held out the helmet. “What do you think? Rex helped us get the pattern right.”
Ahsoka held the helmet, the paint overpowering her nose now that she was less than a meter from it.
Some people react poorly to stress and crisis. You can’t ignore what they do when it gets hard, but you shouldn’t forget what they do when they have a chance to choose to make you more important than anything else either. There’s not enough time for us to nitpick mistakes, even if it could be fixed.
“I think it’s perfect, Captain,” Ahsoka answered, reaching up and placing the helmet on Vaughn’s head. “As long as you don’t mind being bright orange on the battlefield.”
Clearly, he didn’t mind because he cheered and turned around to the others, pumping his arms in the air.
A thought struck Ahsoka; without realizing it, she had come to a point where she had more faith in the soldiers that were nearly expected to die in a war than the family dedicated to protecting peace.