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Chapter Text

There was a saying among her people; to be alone is the surest form of death.

As with all such sayings, the truth behind it was often more complicated than they made them out to appear upon first hearing. In the evolutionary history that spanned togruta culture, such a lifestyle was necessary for survival. Though beautiful and temperate, Shili was unkind to those who did not have the benefit of someone else to watch their backs. To be alone on Shili was a death sentence, one that could come either slowly or quickly.

Pav'ti was alone, something her people were never meant to be.

Her people were tribal, bound by bonds of blood and kinship, and this aspect was reflected in nearly every part of their culture. Everyone was expected to take part once they could, whether the task was a hunt to help feed the rest of their clan or to partake in communal gatherings where joyous song and dance would be performed, reaffirming their spirits with those of the past.

Pav'ti had long since resigned herself to the knowledge that she would never again be a part of such festivities. No more would she share in a hunt, or commune through breath and hymn with her ancestors.

She was marked, known by all of her former kin.

At first, it had been extraordinarily difficult to bear, the feeling of such crushing loneliness a suffocating pressure on her mind. Over time she had found herself able to ignore the pervasive sense, to the point where she could sometimes trick herself into believing she might come to eventually appreciate it.

Some days she almost preferred solitude, for it meant that she could make decisions and choices for herself that did not affect anyone other than her.

Most days, however, that weight settled on her chest like a lead weight, dragging on the tatters of her heart and making even the simple act of getting up to eat a struggle tantamount to altering the tilt of a planet.

Today had been one such day, and it was only the constant braying of her mount, the only other living thing currently in her life, that had finally convinced Pav'ti to drag herself from the little hut that she had Nak'il had built as their new dwelling, hidden away in a dense grove that obscured them from the world.

She rode astride the mount now, the crunch of soil beneath the fathiers broad hooves. The creatures were not native to Shili as far as Pav'ti knew, but she had learned from interactions with this one in particular that they were surprisingly keen creatures and could somehow sense when their masters were in distress. And so, this one, whom Pav'ti had still not come up with a name for, nor did she believe she ever would, had tromped and stamped and made all sorts of commotion outside of her door until she finally humored the beast and allowed it to bear her on its back.

On a whim, she had decided to bring her slug-rifle with her if they came across some game in their trek, and this had proven to be a prudent choice as she had managed to bag a decent-sized kybuck, the slain animal tied across the fathiers back for the return trip. Its head hung limply, swaying with every step the fathier took like a macabre pendulum.

Pav'ti allowed herself a flicker of satisfaction at her success and decided to be thankful that her mount was apparently more aware than she was of her need to eventually eat.

It was around midday when they returned to her hut, a small structure with a rounded roof of branches and blankets of moss that stood slightly less than three meters wide and had barely enough room for her to stand in without scraping the tops of her montrals on the roof.

Once they were close enough, she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and made a clicking noise, the only vocalization to leave her lips for what felt like the past week, calling for the fathier to halt and lay down, whereupon she slid to the ground with practiced ease. Even then the beasts' shoulders were almost eye level with her and made the effort of both tying and untying the kybuck a more involved affair than it should have been.

The task was made somewhat more difficult by the absence of her left hand.

The kybuck was much less graceful in its fall, tumbling to lay in the dirt before her.

Pav'ti did not move to drag it to her hut right away. She stared at it for a long moment, only a little uncertain as to what kept her rooted in place. It was not until the fathier made a plaintive chuffing sound, nuzzling against her with the top of its broad head and jostling her out of the momentary stupor that had taken hold of her that she returned to herself. She mumbled a few words to it, bringing her remaining hand to gently stroke behind one of its large ears before undoing the simple harness and saddle, allowing both pieces to fall off its back as it stood.

Pav'ti watched as the beast lumbered away, its neck bent low as it searched the ground for edible plants. She did not fear for the beast as it departed, secure in the knowledge of the bond she shared with it. For the past year, it had been her sole companion, and she was careful to treat it well even as she mistreated herself. She did not own it any more than she could own the land on which she lived but knew that it would return if she called for it.

She had refrained from naming it, however, reticent to allow herself to become even the slightest bit attached to the animal.

Soon the beast had disappeared entirely as it left the small clearing of her home at a leisurely trot, not even sparing a glance backward as the thumping of its hooves was swallowed up by the forest.

Pav'ti heaved a sigh, the outtake of breath laden with the desire to follow the beast, if only to keep up the facsimile of companionship she had gone so long without. She ignored it, recognizing the feeling for the implicit sin that it was, and set about the bloody task of butchering the kybuck for its hide and meat. She started by skinning it, peeling away the outer layer of fur with a simple knife.

The saying among her people was that to be alone was to die.

Pav'ti had throughout her exile come to learn that there was more than just the death of the body that awaited her.

No matter how her youth may have brought her up to adhere to the traditions and customs of her ancestors, it had become abundantly apparent that Pav'ti's failing was that she was never able to move on.

She supposed that to be mostly Nak'il's influence. Her husband always possessed a slightly different viewpoint that inevitably led to her reevaluation of how she perceived the customs she was born into. Kiros must be a strange place indeed to inspire a soul such as his.

Pav'ti slowed in her work, as thoughts of her husband, her community, and her neighbors, wound their way through her thoughts, igniting an envy for something that she would never again possess. Such ruminations were unwelcome, as they invariably led to thoughts of Ahs-

Pav'ti slammed the knife into the carcass, burying it up to its wooden hilt in fur and flesh.

The knuckles of her hand tightened painfully around the hilt, the leather texture wrapped about it creaking under her strangling grip.

She remained still, fighting to keep herself from shaking at the sudden wave of furious grief that was never far from her heart, which even now quickened in response to the flare of emotion ravaging through her being like a disease.

Carefully, slowly, she extracted the knife from kybuck, intending to set it aside.

She did not.

The skinning knife remained firmly stuck in her grip, its silvery edge glistening with red.

She held it up to inspect, resting the tip on the stump of marred flesh where her left hand used to be.

She considered it carefully with an appraising eye, gauging the length, and its keenness, watching as a droplet of the kybucks blood fell to land in the mussed fur of the being it once gave life to.

"You must face death."

Her grip softening, Pav'ti turned the blade over, letting the bloody runnels flow in new directions, forming miniature rivers along a metallic plain.

"Do not fear it."

She brought it closer, her eyes narrowing in contemplation. The tip dragged a small line across the scar tissue, and a new stream of darker red flowed from the stump of her missing hand to join with the brighter crimson of the creature she had felled.

That she had killed.

That she had murdered.

It was only right if-

With a scream Pav'ti hurled the knife away with all the strength in her arm she could summon. It whistled musically as it spun through the air, a stream of red left in its wake. Its flight was cut short when it embedded itself hilt-first into the trunk of a tree. There it remained, its edge glinting in the scant streams of sunlight that penetrated the canopy.

Her gaze lingered on it before Pav'ti forced herself to look away, panting as though she had just run a marathon, feeling suddenly sick to the pits of her stomachs. She wrapped her arms about herself, doubling over in soul-searing agony that fought to escape her. She let it, another wail tearing itself from her mouth. The only thing keeping her from falling to the ground entirely was the kybuck as her forehead pressed into its lifeless body, coarse fur brushing irritably against her montrals. The sensation went ignored as her own body became wracked by heaving sobs.

At times the pain was too much. It weighed on her so heavily, the looming cloud of their sin, that Pav'ti's thoughts inevitably took darkened turns.

They grew more and more difficult to ignore by the day.

What kind of creature had she become?

She remembered being proud once. When not held in the grip of her guilt Pav'ti could recall a time when she did not feel so decrepit and worthless, her soul clinging to this useless flesh like the frayed remains of a spider's web.

That pride was long gone, subsumed by a self-directed loathing and hatred that almost eclipsed the sheer enmity she held for those who had brought about this curse upon her family, and the promise that went unfulfilled nearly a decade later.

Sometimes it seemed as though it was that alone, that flickering flame of persistent animosity that kept her going. It was one of the main reasons that drove her to leave her homeworld with her husband, driving them to scout out every smuggler's den and slave market for any trace of what was stolen from them.

But other times it was the hope, the idea, that faintest glimmer of something that told her if she endured just a little longer, held out for one more day, then she would at last feel the light of joy at holding her whole family in her arms again, that their stolen daughter would somehow find her way to them. That hope was the whole reason Nak'il was still looking.

She needed to center herself. She was slipping again, something she could not afford to do. She needed to speak to Nak'il, needed to see and hear the voice of the last good thing left to her, the only thing that had yet to truly abandon her.

She knew it had not been very long since their last communication and to contact Nak'il so soon would cause him to feel concern for her. Pav'ti did not care, she needed to hear him, to feed the desire for companionship even if it was through the medium of a grainy holotransmission. She yearned for his voice, craved the reassurance only he could offer.

She stood, resolving to finish skinning the kybuck later as she started to head inside and drag out the personal holotransmitter from beneath her cot.

She had just stepped towards the door of her hut when the soft susurration of grass blades echoed in her montrals. She almost discounted it as nothing more than the wind brushing past but was quick to discard the assumption when she noticed she realized there was no wind, and the sound persisted in the unmistakable rhythm of footsteps.

Pav'ti's senses immediately went on high alert, sharpening her focus and allowing the whisper of displaced foliage to paint a mental picture in her head of the intruder.

Humanoid.

Tall.

Not togruta, which by itself was cause for some amount of concern.

When she determined the intruder to be no more than twenty paces away Pav'ti spun on her bare heels, and in a single fluid motion born from the experience of years' worth of mercenary work across the mid rim, she used her right hand to snatch the stock of the slug-rifle and swing it up to rest the barrel on what remained of her left forearm, the severed stump still able to provide enough stability to keep her aim steady.

The entire motion had taken only slightly longer than the brief span it required to blink,  and ended with Pav'ti facing the intruder, finger hovering the trigger and ready to put a hole through whoever would seek her out.

The sight of an aging male human with silvery white hair and beard gave her pause.

He came to a smooth stop, his posture both unthreatening and unconcerned, as though the fact he had a weapon aimed directly at his face was somehow not worthy of notice.

Pav'ti did not like humans very much, for one reason or another, but in her and Nak'il's numerous dealings with them she had learned that their reaction to the threat of impending harm was generally indicative of two things, which Pav'ti was currently using to gauge her "guest".

One possibility was that this human had so much misplaced bravado that he deemed himself able to smoothly talk his way out of any situation. Over the past several years she had had the misfortune of being acquainted by necessity with several such individuals, human and otherwise, both as targets and as temporary benefactors looking for a little extra muscle. Pav'ti had found that she greatly disliked working with such beings.

The other possibility was that this human's apparent lack of care toward his well-being stemmed from a surety that there was nothing she could do to threaten him.

During the early days of stumbling into the career of mercenary work, Pav'ti had learned it was always better to overestimate.

"You are not welcome here. Go back where you came from," she commanded, stepping past the immediate urge to demand the identity of the intruder. Regardless of his reason for seeking her out, she knew she wanted nothing to do with it.

The human proffered up his hands in a placating gesture, the motion parting his cloak and allowing her to glimpse that he was dressed in a fine tunic of dark synthweave that bore no sign of wear or damage.

"There is no need for such hostility," the human said in a deep voice that carried on its timbre the unmistakable note of refinement that Pav'ti seldom heard, the words delivered with an intonation that was both disarming and unnerving. Despite the claim, Pav'ti kept her slug-rifle leveled at him, the only movement being the slight tilt of her head as she regarded him with suspicion, her desire to see him gone one way or another now buoyed by the undercurrent of curiosity. "I must confess," the human went on to say, "that I was surprised to learn that you had returned to your homeworld, especially considering the reputation that you and your husband have carved for themselves in the guilds." He raised an eyebrow. "You are Pav'ti Tano, correct?"

For a long moment, Pav'ti was unsure how to answer, now thoroughly disconcerted to know that this human apparently had enough connections to know of the occupation she had sworn to leave behind. She felt a surge of discomfort in her left arm as the stump itched, a sympathetic sensation that was only exacerbated by the small cut from which a small stream of red continued to drip. She blinked, retaining enough wherewithal not to allow her guard to slip, deciding that whoever this human thought he was, he was not someone to dismiss lightly.

"Who are you?" she asked, letting some of her curiosity about him override part of her wariness. "You know of me and my kin, but you do not look like you're from the guilds, come to collect on past debts." As she spoke Pav'ti injected the observation with an obvious undercurrent of threat and menace, such that even an oblivious human would understand that she was not one to trifle with either. She was the one with an already drawn weapon after all.

"Appearances can be deceiving," the human said cryptically, his dark brown eyes glinting dangerously in the wan shafts of light that found their way through the canopy. "But you are correct, I did not seek you out on the perceived grievances of a former employer, nor did I come to threaten you." A pause, wherein he seemed to take in a breath as his broad shoulders rose and fell smoothly. "Tell me, do you recall accepting work from a man named Tyranus?"

Pav'ti felt her eyes narrow at the question, and for the first time, the barrel of her weapon lowered, but only fractionally.

Tyranus?

It took several moments of thinking on her part, but by the end of it, Pav'ti was able to comfortably say that the title was one that she had heard before. Years ago, when she and her husband had first embarked on the dangerous profession of mercenaries for hire in the hopes the lifestyle would succeed where the false promises of the Jedi had failed. It was a name that had become familiar to them as across the years they were commissioned several times by a benefactor who went by that name to perform various jobs across the mid-rim. The jobs were usually simple and easy, ranging from guarding shipments of supplies between systems to tracking down lone fugitives on the run. Payment for their work was always made remotely though, and neither she nor Nak'il had ever seen this Tyranus in person.

"Yes, I remember," Pav'ti finally said, her tone relaxed even though her posture remained tense. Her eyes narrowed, suddenly viewing him in a new, if not entirely appreciative light. "Am I to assume that this "Tyranus" has further need of our services?"

The slight upturn of the corner of his mouth bordered somewhere on the edge of patronizing.

Pav'ti snorted in mild derision and said, "Well then, I am not at all sorry to tell you that you came all this way for nothing. If you've found me, you can find my husband, so if you have work you can bother him about it. I'll have no part of that life anymore."

Tyranus opened his mouth to say something, but Pav'ti beat him to the punch by raising the slug-thrower, the click of internal mechanisms as she primed it audible enough that even his subpar hearing probably detected it. She held his gaze evenly, having decided that she had grown tired of this rapport.

"In case the fact you had to look for me was not enough for you, I have no interest in risking my life in the service of fools with more credits than sense. Leave. Now."

She spat the words like venom, the utterance recalling memories of the years spent fruitlessly wandering from planet to planet, system to system, gaining notoriety any way they could by accepting any means of income they could. And often those jobs required her and Nak'il to discard the luxuries of morality and principle. While she did not begrudge her husband for persevering, she wondered how he could force himself to remain in that lifestyle, all in the name of fulfilling a dream that has likely been dead for almost a decade. . .

She admired and pitied him for it.

Tyranus remained motionless, his demeanor still damnably stoic. The only outward show of emotion she could read of him was the subtle slump of his shoulders, as though disappointed. And throughout it, he gazed at her with a strange glint in his eyes that Pav'ti found unsettling.

It was a predator's gaze, one she had witnessed too often in the eyes of the various beings she had had the misfortune of becoming involved with. But theirs was something she knew how to deal with, often with a few broken bones and the occasional cratered skull. This however was different in a way that unsettled her such that it felt he was looking through her, as though his gaze alone were peeling away the layers of her psyche, inspecting the aspects of her soul like a surgeon would a freshly excised organ.

She tried to stifle the feeling, suppressing the urge to shiver, and the strange feeling seemed to retreat slightly from conscious notice, but a lingering trace of it remained like a scalding fingerprint.

"I did not come all this way to offer you work, Pav'ti Tano."

Pav'ti bared her teeth in annoyance and anger, wondering where she could shoot this presumptuous human who had dared intrude on her solitude. The shoulder seemed like a good place. Yes, that would leave the ability to crawl his back wherever-

"I am here because your daughter yet lives."

Pav'ti went still.

The memory of her daughter, her little face contorted into a pleading expression as she was carried away, raced through her mind.

"What?" she breathed, the word little more than a whisper.

The human gave a slow dip of his head in a shallow nod. "Your daughter, Ahsoka Tano, is alive."

An emotion welled up within Pav'ti's being. But it was not relief that she felt. No, it was something else, something dark and poisonous that was quick to rise and strangle any budding sense of hope the words she had just heard could engender. 

"How dare you?" she said at length, her shoulders shaking and her lekku flaring. "How dare you!?" She stomped up to him, shoving the barrel of the slug-rifle directly into Tyranus' face, her finger itching to pull the trigger. "What gives you the right to come to come here and offer more false promises?!"

Her daughter. . . alive. Alive, while Pav'ti had given up any hope of seeing her again after years of searching the stars.

She could not believe it. Could not allow herself to believe it.

Because if she started to hope again. . .

Tyranus blinked, a slow deliberate motion that conveyed no sense of wariness or alarm in the man.

"Do you recognize this?" he asked, and Pav'ti tore her furious gaze away from his face to glance down long enough to see that he had procured something from his belt, previously obscured by his robes.

It was silver in color with accents of darker grey metal, about a foot in length, and one end terminating into an emitter that resembled the coils of a power coupling.

Had it been the first time Pav'ti had seen this device, she might have discounted it as being no more than a strangely constructed flashlight.

The memory of the lightsaber and the damned Jedi it had belonged to had engraved itself into her memory like a sulfurous brand.

Her eyes darted back to Tyranus, his expression having not changed in the slightest as he said, "Yes, I believe you do." Acting as though nothing was wrong, he proffered the lightsaber out to her, cradling both ends in his hands. "Master Plo Koon made a valiant effort to retrieve Ahsoka so that he might return her to you." For the first time since their encounter, Tyranus' stony countenance wavered, as though pained. "Sadly, he perished in the attempt, and almost any hope of Ahsoka's return was lost with his passing."

Pav'ti was barely listening as she faltered, the slug-rifles barrel drooping until it scraped against the ground, before falling completely away with a clatter of protesting mechanisms.

Pav'ti reached for the lightsaber, not caring that only her right hand was capable of grasping as she received from Tyranus' grasp. He let her take it, his arms hidden once more behind the folds of his robe. It was cold in her hand, the metal smooth and polished to a degree that bespoke of having been used quite a bit. Her thumb brushed over the activation switch. She felt it. . . felt the essence contained within.

She did not possess the gifts her daughter had, but something within Pav'ti knew what she held was no product of deception, and once more the feeling of tattered hope tried to wrap her within its embrace.

She was not even aware of when she had fallen to her knees, the lightsaber still clutched in her hand. She only noticed it when Tyranus knelt to meet her eyes.

"No. . ." she muttered. "No, you lie. Ahsoka is dead. . . I killed her. . . you lie. . ."

She spoke the words over and over again, the disbelief and anguish digging their claws into her, refusing to be cast off so easily after being so firmly rooted into her core for so long.

But despite everything, despite her insistence and the knowledge of just how unlikely it was that what Tyranus was saying was true and not a cruel ruse on his part, the faintest glimmer of hope clung to her, its touch as poisonous as it was comforting.

"Why are you here?"

The wretched question was delivered in a croaking whisper, the utterance barely able to leave Pav'ti's throat even as it tightened with the years of repressed grief she had been fighting off every day since she had lost her hand, along with any smothered sense of hope that she would be made whole again. Those emotions raged through her being with a vengeance, igniting every fleeting feeling of guilt and joy and despair and wonder until it felt like they would consume her from the inside out.

"She is here. On Shili."

Pav'ti's body reacted as though it were unsure whether to leap at the man or recoil away from him, leaving her stuck and shuddering in place, the words on her mind begging to be released, the wordless plea for that which she most desired.

Where her voice failed her, Tyranus made the offer for her.

"Would you like me to take you to her?"

Ahsoka ran and kept running, relentlessly driving herself onward further and further into the plains, too terrified of the consequences of stopping for any length of time to allow even the consideration of slowing down to keep her from sprinting for all that she was worth.

She did not know if anyone had come after in pursuit. She did not care. All Ahsoka could think of was getting as far away as possible, as quickly as possible.

To where she did not know. Only the objective of distance mattered to her, that singular goal occupying every iota of her being and refusing to settle long enough to dwell on the events. She could only think of it as an event, had to think of it that way, because the moment she actually let herself truly consider what she had done and the ramifications of her shortcomings. . .

It would happen eventually. Ahsoka knew it, her persistent flight was just a delaying tactic more than anything, regardless of the notion of someone coming after her. She was just avoiding confronting her shame. As though the simple act of moving would somehow keep her out from under the shadow of her contemptibility, when she knew, had known perhaps for a long time, that she had been under its shroud for as long as she could remember.

She resolved to keep up the pretense for at least a little bit longer.

You did try to leave.

Pure adrenaline could only keep her moving for so long, however, and it was not much longer before fatigue started working its way into the ambiance of her thoughts and began manifesting as tremors in her limbs. She tried to keep pushing, to ignore the weariness, tried to refine it into motivation to not let up as she had always done.

The deep gash along her ribs had other plans, for as soon as the adrenaline started to fade from her system a lightning strike of agony seared across what felt like the entire right side of her body.

It shocked her, drawing a soundless gasp that stung her already dry and hoarse throat, and forced her to the ground in a tumbling heap. She tasted soil and plant matter and was too spent to summon the effort to spit either of them out.

Ahsoka writhed in place for several moments, unable to even so much as moan in pain even as it wracked her body and soul, both hands pressed firmly into the gaping cut along her ribs, a fresh torrent of warm fluid seeping around and through her fingers. The feeling reminded her of-

She smashed a fist to the ground, her knuckles bruising on the hard earth, a sharp pebble cutting a small slice along her middle finger.

Focus!

Still keeping one hand pressed to the wound, Ahsoka propped herself up onto her knees and tried to stand. The moment she placed any weight on her foot though another lance of pain shot through her core, her nerves on fire as she was again forced into a pathetic display of writhing and scrabbling at the ground for anything that might alleviate her torment.

It's not your fault you were too different.

Focus you kriffing idiot!

This time Ahsoka did scream, a harsh and shrill vocalization that rang with just as much afflicted rage and grief as much as physical agony. Her wound throbbed, and when Ahsoka was finally able to grit her pointed teeth enough to crane her head to inspect it, the very sight of the gash in her side almost seemed to elicit a sympathetic twinge of sharply felt discomfort.

Several inches long, and very deep, the weapon Surah had stabbed at her with had gouged a gruesome rent across her orange flesh, allowing her full view of the layers of skin and muscle and yellow-white fat beneath, and when she took her hand away, she could make out the unmistakable coloration of bone where the bladed end of the spear had ran along her ribs. Loose flesh and skin hung like a curtain, exposing raw sinew to the open air.

As if on cue a fresh spurt of crimson leaked from the wound, and Ahsoka quickly reapplied pressure in a futile attempt to keep any more of her vital fluids from escaping. It was a useless effort she knew, and it became apparent that more than anything else she would have to find a way to at the very least close it up, and it would take more than a length of bandages to do that.

She did have some medical supplies, foresight dictating that she packed her satchel with at least the necessities one might need to address most forms of injury from infections to broken bones. She even had a small amount of bacta in the form of a syringe that could be pressed down anywhere on the body, preferably near the injury or at least into a major vein or artery. Short of that she would have least been able to apply a layer of plasti-coat, though the material was generally used to immobilize broken bones rather than seal cuts.

The only problem with that was that Ahsoka, in her haste to escape the Pha Hi, Surah, and what now must be every togruta who had heard of her flight, had left behind her satchel with all of her supplies in the same berm Nataruk had invited her to rest in.

Ahsoka grimaced, more from the flash of discomfort as a gust of wind blew by, tendrils of air snaking their way past her fingers to grope and sting at the tender exposed flesh of her wound, but also from the thought of what she had done.

You wanted to feel like you were part of something and look where it got you.

Not. Now.

She had to improvise. She could not go back. Would never go back, even if doing so meant she died out here in the plains from eventual blood loss, the only trace left of her existence being her body as it was picked clean by whatever niche of scavengers held dominion over Shili's endless plains.

The pain was great. Greater than the cuts and scrapes and bruises and cracked bones she had been made to endure in her life thus far. So great was it that Ahsoka could barely breathe as it fought to beat her into submission.

It was not insurmountable though. With an effort that provoked another scream to tear itself from her lips, Ahsoka forced herself to sit upright, feeling every protestation of her body as the connective tissues along her ribs throbbed, feeling like the rest of her was about to tear open to allow the rest of her to simply fall out of her skin. No such thing happened, but that did little to inspire any feeling of relief from Ahsoka as she surveyed her options, finding them distressingly limited.

With no other tools available to her, Ahsoka started by tearing a length of fabric from the shawl, given to her graciously by her hosts along with the rest of her current ensemble as a show of hospitality, a declaration that no matter where she hailed from, she would always be welcome in their community.

Tearing it apart to unravel lengths of thread, Ahsoka was too busy to consider much in the way of irony. When she had dissembled enough of the shawl to where she had a few meters of thread spread out, Ahsoka moved on to thinking of how she would use it to close her wound. She had no needle, and her immediate vicinity was short on any sort of shrubbery that could conceivably possess thorns sturdy enough for her needs.

She did still possess her aurodium pendant though, still on her person and tucked in the folds of her animal skin trousers. Made up of interlocking bands of polished metal and formed to resemble the circular crest of House Serenno, Ahsoka had to fight to push aside the pain in her side long enough to use the Force to snap the pendant into curved bands as sharp as any needle.

Again, the thought of stopping to consider the ramifications of the tools she had been forced to rely on remained the farthest thing from Ahsoka's thoughts as she struggled to tie the thread around a suitable piece of the destroyed pendant.

"Okay, okay, here goes," she said in an effort to steel herself, taking several deep breaths, each inhalation inciting a sharp sting that preceded the white-hot sensation of already tender flesh being pierced by the makeshift sutures.

It did not become any easier as Ahsoka hoped would happen, her teeth feeling like they were about to shatter from how hard she was biting down, but it was more that she was able to partition away the discomfort of repeated puncturing of her skin and flesh into an untidy corner of her mind since her usual method of focusing the pain into fuel and motivation was proving elusive. At least there it could be somewhat ignored.

Her resolve won out in the end, and when the work was finally done and Ahsoka cut away the remaining length of the pilfered string with her teeth she was left panting and woozy from the sheer concentration it had required and allowed herself the reprieve of inspecting her handiwork.

In place of the gash was an ugly-looking line of enflamed and puckered flesh several shades distant from her usual skin tone, appearing a stark hue of pale yellow surrounded by a border of deep crimson. It was shoddy and would not be suitable for any length of time longer than a day at best, and there was every chance that the swelling was indicative of a possible infection, given how long the wound had remained open to the elements and whatever airborne pathogens Shili possessed. In the back of her mind, Ahsoka belatedly deduced that it would have been prudent of her to at least sterilize the makeshift needles over a hastily made fire.

Too late for that now though.

Too late for a lot of things.

You never belonged anyway.

Gathering the fragments of her resolve, Ahsoka tentatively brought her feet beneath her, only just then feeling the blisters that had formed on their soles, prompting her to wonder how far and long she had truly run for. Long enough for Shili's sun to begin peeking over the horizon at least, long enough for the relative coolness of night to bleed away into the warmth of dawn as it crested over the rolling hills, painting the landscape in shades of pink and purple. She noted the observation, then summarily discarded it as irrelevant as she tested the sutures, feeling them pull at her still tender skin such that it felt like if she moved too much they would pull free and reopen. The feeling only intensified when she rolled her arm and shoulder, the sensation like what she imagined splitting open would feel like. Maybe that was what it would be like to be disemboweled, to let everything spill out of her onto the ground and-

Ahsoka cut off the thoughts before they could continue and set her mind to working on the next task now that she had mended herself.

The first thing that came to her mind was to leave.

She did not want to be here anymore.

She had not wanted to be here at all, not really.

From the first moment she had learned of her impending visit to her homeworld Ahsoka had felt the dread bubbling within her core. It had eaten at her like acid, eroding her sense of being and igniting a persistent dread that could never fully be quashed.

What was her father thinking?

The conversation on the mountain slopes felt like it had happened millennia ago, but the notion that this would somehow be good for her resonated like a damning knell. The insinuation that her coming to Shili, the place that had cast her out, in the supposition that it would somehow cure her of her insecurities seemed like the dream of a fool.

A delusion.

One that she had latched onto, because there was nothing else to keep hold of for the sake of her sense of resolve, save the prospect of returning to Serenno.

Kriffing idiot, Ahsoka thought. Her fingers, caked and smeared in dust and the gore of her freshly sealed wound, curled into her palm, her fingernails digging into their toughened flesh.

"Kriffing. Idiot," Ahsoka spoke aloud, the hiss of vitriol seeping through her clenched teeth, the idea of slamming her fists into the face of her father a pleasant one that she found herself indulging in with increasing delight. The thought of causing harm and the sight of Nataruk, lying broken and clinging weakly to life, a pool of red that flowed freely from his severed lek. Some of it was still in her-

Ahsoka blanched, unable to cut off the gruesome memory before it could rear its ugly head. She brought a hand to her mouth, and it was then she realized from the feel of the layer of dried crimson across her lips and throat that her entire front was still covered in blood.

Almost none of it was hers.

The sickening taste of copper lingered on her tongue, the scent in her nostrils, igniting her senses and setting a fire in her mind that roused something primal within her being. It was familiar and unwelcome. The euphoria it once bestowed was absent, replaced with a crushing wave of disgust and revulsion that made her gorge rise.

The hand over her mouth did little to help as her innards violently churned, forcing her back to the ground on her knees as her heaving ignited a spasm of agony along her midsection that radiated in pulsing waves. Her makeshift stitches pulled at her skin, threatening to tear themselves free so soon after being wound about her wound.

She tried to fight, tried desperately to keep up the ever-fraying sense of control she had over herself. But like the battle against her distraught mind, she lost the fight against her own body, and the first of her stomachs emptied itself onto the ground, leaving her throat burning and raw.

She spat globs of stringy saliva. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes of the moisture that had built up in their corners. When she opened them, she was presented with the sight of a small pool of her bile that was rapidly being soaked up by the ground, and a chunk of something small and rubbery could be seen among the acrid mixture.

Look what happened because of you, you sick little animal.

She refused to give it any more consideration and averted her eyes.

She had to get moving.

Staying here was pointless. Coming here at all was pointless.

Nothing was achieved, she decided. Her father was wrong.

Shaken and left somewhat disoriented from the near debilitating sense of moroseness, Ahsoka knew that her only goal from here on was to leave, to get away from this horrid place before it broke her, or made her go insane, whichever came last.

She started to walk, glancing up at the sky to gauge her position. Though the morning was fast approaching, the distant dawn painted in hues of pink and purple, that night previous had yet to flee so much that a few identifying stars could be picked out amidst the brightening sky, and she was glad to have studied enough of Shili's unique starscape to have a set direction in mind.

From there it should be a simple a simple matter of surviving long enough to get back to Kirames' residence and her father, presuming he was safe and comfortable in her home, likely enjoying all manner of luxuries while his adopted daughter had been busy almost bleeding out in the middle of nowhere.

Oh yes, she was absolutely going to give him a piece of her mind once they reunited.

Maybe show him what happens when you're pressed too far.

Of course, the prospect of meeting her father without meeting her appointed goal gave Ahsoka enough pause in thought to reconsider. He would be disappointed in her failure to kill an akul.

Ahsoka shook her head, trudging ahead with a slight limp to her gait, using the pain of her wound to drive her onward.

Kriff him, him and his goal for her. What did butchering an animal accomplish in the grand scheme of things anyway, and despite her assertion to Pha Hi she did not think it likely that the ruling class of Serenno would be that much impressed by the achievement.

Just a gigantic waste of time for everyone involved and look what happened.

So intent was she on thoughts of how she would explain her failure, that Ahsoka nearly stumbled over a loose stone jutting out of the soil, its point digging into the exposed flesh of her sole and causing her to wince as she hobbled forward.

Later, she told herself. Later she would begin to enact a scheme of comeuppance. Right now, she needed to focus all her attention on staying alive long enough to get to that point.

Taking a wide detour so as not to make a direct path back to where she came from, Ahsoka put one foot in front of the other, her visage set in a stony mien of simmering anger and resentment.

Ahsoka's eyes shot open as the warning through the Force slammed her into awareness, and every instinct screamed at her to roll to the side. She obeyed it without question, just in time to narrowly avoid the shaft of a spear from skewering her through her eye socket, the rasp of metal grating against dry soil.

Ahsoka stood up in a crouch, nearly falling over as her tender side protested vehemently against the sudden movement, and she let loose a hiss of aggravated pain. Any notion of seeing to it went out the window as Ahsoka surveyed her attacker.

With only the dim glow of the starlight above their heads to see by it was difficult for Ahsoka to make any details from the shadowed silhouette, but the familiar outline of tall montrals and large eyes that glinted with unmitigated grief and contempt was more than enough for Ahsoka to surmise who she was facing, and the revelation made her want to sag to the ground in defeat, wondering if would not have been preferable to let Pha Hi kill her right then and there.

"Kriffing- " was all she was able to say before the elder togruta brought her spear up to point it straight at Ahsoka's heart. She let loose a scream of pure hatred as the tip of the spear flashed. In the brief light of its illumination, Ahsoka was given a sight unrestrained by the surrounding gloom. Before her Pha Hi looked terrifyingly ghoulish, her features contorted from the soft and welcoming visage of a gentle if firm matriarch she had first met into a mask of such hatred it bordered on the daemonic. New marks of blue and yellow pigment had been added to her face, harsh lines that carved paths through the mask of blood that still coated Pha Hi's entire front half of her body. It was like looking into a grotesque mirror of herself.

So intense was it that Ahsoka was nearly too struck by the sight of the woman to realize the danger she was in and ducked out of the path of an incoming bolt of golden light that shot from the tip of the spear.

"Talagret!" Pha Hi roared as she loosed bolt after bolt at Ahsoka as the younger togruta hurried to retreat, each missed shot either setting a portion of the tall grass about them alight in short-lived fires or carving smoking craters into the ground, Ahsoka barely able to pull her feet away in time to keep them from being blasted off at the ankle.

With each dodge and duck and weave Ahsoka's stitches pulled in profuse agony at her side, and within moments of being awoken to an attempt on her life, she was already feeling warm fluid seep out of the wound, wetting her side in her own blood.

"Talagret!" Shrieked Pha Hi a second time as she rushed Ahsoka when she inevitably stumbled, intending to run her through and pin her to the ground through her exposed stomach.

The spear tip came closer, and Ahsoka knew there was no time to roll away again. Even if she could have done so, there would be no more second chances to follow up the dodge to scurry away. She needed to take control, or Pha Hi would kill her.

Instead of fully diving to the side, Ahsoka instead angled her body slightly so that the spear would whistle past her shoulder, not quite quick enough to keep it from carving another line of red through her flesh. The new wound was shallow, however, not immediately detrimental as adrenaline forced any more notions of pain away from Ahsoka's considerations, such that even the freshly torn stitches ceased to be of any notable concern. Pha Hi followed the thrust with a wide swing, and again Ahsoka was only slightly too slow to completely avoid it as the razor-sharp tip of the spear carved a grove along her brow. It was not deep enough to scrape against her skull, but Ahsoka now had to contend with the distraction of blood running from the wound into her left eye. She blinked at it rapidly and attempted to wipe it away with the back of her hand. Pha Hi, intent on making use of the distraction, rushed Ahsoka.

Ahsoka was marginally more prepared for the attack this time, anticipating the move as she grabbed at the spear haft, her left hand wrapping about Pha Hi's wrist while she twisted, eliciting a grunt of pain from the woman as she stubbornly kept her hold on the weapon. Heaving with every iota of panic-induced strength she could muster, Ahsoka rolled backward, dragging Pha Hi forward and propelling her feet upward into the woman's sternum. A whoosh of air escaped Pha Hi in a pained gasp, followed by a grunt as she impacted the ground.

The fight was far from gone from her though, as her other hand remained stubbornly affixed around the spear's trigger mechanism. Again and again, flashes of yellow were sent either skyward or into the dirt as each of them struggled to win the contest of strength. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air now, the flickers of uncontrolled firelight casting them in harsh shadows and allowing Ahsoka to see her opponent more clearly.

It was a contest Ahsoka was rapidly losing. Empowered by the Force as she was, the combination of her injuries and the sheer difference in stature between them made it apparent that the contest was forgone conclusion that Pha Hi was going to win out, and in short order, Ahsoka felt forced onto her back, the gruesome image of Pha Hi's bloodstained face hovering her, fangs bared and eyes brimming with hate. One of several small fires burned to her left very near her face, the heat close enough to singe her lek.

"You took my son from me," Pha Hi spat through gritted teeth, shoving the haft of the down into Ahsoka's throat. Ahsoka was quick to react, shoving her forearm underneath to desperately keep the pressure off her windpipe, but Pha Hi's weight and manic strength were swiftly overcoming any hope of that. "After everything we offered you, after everything he did for you!"

Ahsoka tried to speak, guilt and shame flooding her being to take root alongside the adrenaline-fueled panic.

"No, please I- "

Pha Hi cut her off with a vicious shove downward, putting her weight onto the spear as its haft pressed down on Ahsoka's throat and lekku, the only thing keeping her neck from being crushed being Ahsoka's forearms as she struggled to push Pha Hi away.

Ahsoka was strong for her stature. She needed to be to keep pace with her father's brutal training regime, the years of drills and exercises rendering her wiry and lithe with muscle.

Pitted against Pha Hi, a full-grown togruta who had spent her entire life living in Shili's harsh and unforgiving environment, where there was no room for weakness and coupled with the disadvantageous position Ahsoka was in, that strength failed as the most she was able to accomplish was a stalemate that Ahsoka could not maintain as limbs shuddered under the sheer pressure her elder was exerting, and within moments the spears haft was pressing down onto Ahsoka's windpipe, just enough to restrict her ability to breathe.

She started to choke, and Ahsoka frantically kicked her legs to dislodge Pha Hi enough to get away. It was a futile attempt, her struggles going ignored as Pha Hi continued to press downward, her mouth open in a hateful snarl, her teeth glinting as her head was haloed by the night sky.

She could not breathe.

Ahsoka gasped as she struggled, meager breaths hoarse and ineffectual as spots started to appear in her vision.

She was going to die.

Trapped, confined, held to the dirt like an animal.

"Pl-. . . please. . . "

Ahsoka could say no more aside from that choked word.

She tried to still her mind, to tap into the Force, knowing it was the only thing now that could save her, but it was like trying to grasp an eel as it continued to slip away as she fought to keep hold of her waking self.

In one last desperate effort to cast herself into the Force, sending her thoughts and feelings as far as they could. It was not a conscious effort on her part, but rather the last instinctual attempt of a frightened girl calling for her parents, begging them to save her.

Nothing came of it, and the slim hope of going home slipped away entirely.

"Jen. . . Jenza. . . a-auntie."

Pha Hi's face shifted. The snarl fell.

The weight on her throat eased ever so slightly.

Immediately Ahsoka acted, her left hand swinging outward towards where the source of heat was. Her fingers burned but she forced herself to press as she wrapped her hand around whatever had caught alight, which she proceeded to shove directly into Pha Hi's face.

The woman screamed a harsh, soul-splitting sound that no being should ever be able to make as she wrenched herself away, falling to her knees while clawing at her eyes.

Ahsoka coughed, a deep rattling sound as she rolled over, her hand burning as she felt the urge to vomit, her empty stomachs producing only stringy bile that stung her throat. She hardly cared as she sucked in great lungfuls of air. She looked at her hand, the skin red and blistered from the holding the bundle of embers.

But she was alive.

The utterance of a pained groan distracted Ahsoka brief sense of relief, reminding her that she was still in danger.

Turning over, she looked to see Pha Hi stirring, and already the woman was stumbling to her feet. She glanced about, blinking rapidly, her eyes red and singed from the embers. Yet still, even after having a bundle of burning plant matter shoved into her face her vision retained a semblance of functionality as she sighted Ahsoka down, her confusion at what had just occurred melting back into the veneer of determined violence. Her eyes went to Ahsoka's right, and the younger togruta followed it to where the spear lay temporarily in the dirt.

Pha Hi dove for it, her gait suffering from a slight stumble as balance eluded her. Her hands grasped nothing but soil, the spear slipping away from her as though pulled by invisible strings.

The smooth metal of the haft slapped into Ahsoka's waiting palms, finding it to be surprisingly lightweight. It caught her slightly off guard as she fumbled to align it properly.

Recovering from her fall, Pha Hi leaped to her feet, lunging for Ahsoka, her fingers curled into claws to wrap around the younger togrutas throat.

Ahsoka had no time to consider any other option.

Her hand found the trigger mechanism, and she squeezed.

A burst of light bathed their surroundings in the corona of a golden flash, the whip crack of its discharge shattering the night. Unprepared for the recoil, the spear seemed to jump out from Ahsoka's hands as she was sent sprawling onto her back for the second time, tiny pebbles and stones digging uncomfortably into her rear lek.

She hurried to scrabble upright, bringing her hands up in readiness to defend herself.

No further attack came.

No cries of anguish and fury.

Nothing but the prone form of Pha Hi, completely still as a whisp of acrid smoke poured from the hole in her chest.

Ahsoka stared.

It was all she could do.

And there you go again.

Slowly Ahsoka came to her feet, swallowing past the sudden dryness of her throat, the taste of bile still on her tongue.

Ahsoka approached one careful step at a time, feeling on the verge of passing out.

Pha Hi did not respond.

She did not move.

She did not do anything.

Ahsoka fell to her knees beside the woman, struck by a strange and morbid fascination with the faded glimmer of reflected starlight in eyes no longer able to see.

The glint of her headdress caught her attention, drawing Ahsoka's flat gaze to the array of triangular pieces of jewelry that decorated Pha Hi's forehead.

Not exactly how you imagined passing your trial, eh?

Ahsoka drew her fingers over Pha Hi's eyes to close them. "I'm sorry," she whispered sincerely before taking hold of the headdress and pulling until the thread and leather keeping them affixed snapped and came loose. Ahsoka rose, clutching the solul with enough force that even dulled by the ritual of their creation, the teeth of the akul to which they once belonged retained enough sharpness to cut into her palm, droplets of blood seeping between her fingers to water the ground beside Pha Hi.

Ahsoka flicked her gaze upwards, spotting the glow of firelight in the distance, and detected the murmuring of a group as it approached.

Though she was long gone and had resolved to not stop long enough to give anyone else with aspirations of revenge time to catch up to her, Ahsoka could still hear across the plains the despair of a man whose family she had taken, and knowing what ruminating on such knowledge would do to her, Ahsoka forced any further thoughts of it away from her mind and kept going.

During their travels across the mid rim, Pav'ti and Nak'il had once been forced to reside for several weeks on a water world of relatively shallow oceans and expansive lakes, where island chains and peninsulas where the settlers could make a living harvesting the shoals of aquatic arthropods. Their stay had been brought about by a lack of credits to afford legitimate passage, and they had to stow away on a bulk freighter carrying said arthropods to offworld markets, Pav'ti had never been happier to get away from the oppressive scent of salt water.

She had at least enjoyed the feeling of coasting along on a rugged watercraft, taking the time at her husband's behest to take at least some time to rest, relax, and recenter herself before planning their next steps. Though any memory of the planet's actual name had passed beyond her ability to accurately recall- Pac, or maybe it was Drac- Pav'ti was glad to have heeded her husband's advice. There had been something soothing about those vast waters, some aspect of the constant motion of the waves that invited Pav'ti to let her mind and heart drift with them, allow herself to forget her troubles, at least temporarily.

That had been shortly after they first left Shili, unsure of what to do or where to go, faced with a task that was impossible to achieve. She remembered that uncertain time to be when the option of finding positions in the various mercenary guilds had first been brought up.

As the landspeeder glided along at a speed that seemed to edge in the territory of not being recommended based on the sounds the starboard engine nacelle was making, Pav'ti was reminded of that brief period in time, watching as the striped grass parted like waves in the wake of the vehicles repulsors.

Dry air heated by the coming of morning whistled past, tousling Pav'ti's lekku and montrals and creating a deafening commotion that she could scarcely hear over. The din of the landspeeders engines only added to the racket as they rumbled in a manner indicating they would not last much longer. She was not sure why Tyranus had chosen this as his mode of transport, but any thoughts she might have on the matter were curtailed by the one thing occupying a portion of her mind.

She still held the lightsaber, the rod of metal clutched tightly in her hand as its presence served as a catalyst from which sprang all manner of wonderings and suppositions, making her consider everything that had transpired over the last several years, and wonder at what had happened in the interim, and invariably such considerations made her turn her attention away from the idle comparisons invoked by the passing scenery to the man piloting the landspeeder, and not for the first time Pav'ti considered the possibility that Tyranus was lying to her.

Very little had been spoken between them since departing from her humble domicile, and Tyranus had deemed any effort at idle conversation to be pointless. That suited Pav'ti just fine; the less said between them the better, but she nevertheless resolved to not place her full trust in this human until he had made good on his word.

She did wonder what his purpose was as his previous claim regarding the Jedi played through her head.

For the longest time she had held onto a deep-seated resentment towards the Jedi, particularly Plo Koon, for being too late to arrive and save their daughter from a horrific fate, and the feeling had only festered inside of her as the days turned into weeks, then months as they waited for any word or sign that their daughter was safe, all the while being ostracized by neighbors and relatives.

Now though, she could not help but wonder if that anger had been misplaced. At least according to Tyranus, Plo Koon had met his end attempting to rescue Ahsoka. The lightsaber in her hand was proof enough of the Jedi's death. The question percolating in her thoughts was how this human, who did not at all appear the warrior monk Plo Koon embodied, had managed to succeed where a Jedi had not.

And he knew their daughter's name.

That mere fact alone had been almost enough to convince Pav'ti to leap at him and demand he tell her where Ahsoka was, and before she could take the time to properly consider what she was hearing and the possible implications they were already on their way, but now that suspicion had eaten at enough of her desperation to make reconsider the still silent human as he steered the landspeeder ahead, following some path she could not see but seemed evident enough to him.

But the more she thought about him, the less it made sense that he would go to all this trouble to seek her out all for the sake of some cruel punishment. Unless he was with the guilds and some prior "acquaintances" had decided to make good on the multitude of threats they had made towards her family, but that still did not sit right with her as a good explanation. If Tyranus wanted her dead. . . well, he would first find out how difficult a task that would truly be, but Pav'ti felt he would have made the attempt by now. No, Tyranus did not impress her as a person bent on needless cruelty.

Pav'ti could not say for certain what it was, but something within urged her to trust him, to at least see where he was taking her.

Ahsoka heard the din of the speeder engine long before she ever saw it, the clamor of its engines, clearly in need of some tuning if the racket the craft was producing was any indication, echoing across the grassy plains. Too weary to break into an open run and adverse to giving herself away, she instantly went prone as she tuned her senses for approaching danger, checking to ensure that the string of akul teeth was still affixed to her waist. In the thuru grass, she became practically invisible, the pigmentation on her lekku and montrals blending almost seamlessly with their surroundings and breaking up her profile such that she was confident that searching eyes would simply pass right over her.

The sound of the speeder came closer and closer, the rattling whine of its engines causing her montrals to ache, and her grip tightened about the spear in her hand as she readied to defend herself.

For the whole of the night no one else had accosted her, but Ahsoka was not convinced that more togruta would not come after her. Despite her best attempts to cover her tracks and reseal the stitches, she knew that anyone with half a brain could very likely pick up her trail, as even now the various gashes she had sustained during. . . her bout. . . had left in her wake an easily traceable path of red droplets and grass smeared with her dark blood.

Though it was only a guess that someone had finally tracked her down, Ahsoka still kept herself low to the ground, hoping that whoever was out there would pass her by.

The disappointment she felt when the distinctive sound of speeder engines winding down reached her was like a lead weight upon her, and she almost swore aloud. Her first instinct was to cast her thoughts out beyond her field of vision, to determine exactly how many beings she might have to deal with, but instead opted to bring them close upon herself, dampening her presence in the Force such that her already obscured form would seem as nothing to passersby.

More than anything else she did not want to get into another fight.

Enough grief had been caused by her already, and though she would fight to avoid capture Ahsoka was unsure how much longer she could put off the torrent of dark thoughts beating at the doors of her mind.

Stealth was her best option, and she only hoped that the lessons of her Master were enough to ensure she remained undiscovered. Perhaps if she were lucky, at least luckier than she had been these last few days, she might even be able to steal whatever vehicle and use it to bear herself away to the relative safety of Kirames' home. That was preferable to fighting.

With that new option presented to her, Ahsoka slowly began to creep forward, crawling on all fours like a lizard. As she neared where she guessed the speeder to have been parked, she overheard the chatter of voices, one deep and refined, the other soft and strangely melodic, both pricking at Ahsoka's memory.

" -ou said she would be here," came a woman's voice, causing Ahsoka to freeze in place, angling her head to better catch what was being said. "I do not see anything."

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes as she listened, recognized the note of disappointment and resentment the woman's voice carried, and her suspicion that whoever these people were had been looking for her was only reaffirmed.

But something about it. . . felt oddly familiar, but she could not say for certain why that was the case only. . .

Ahsoka found herself strangely afflicted with the sense of gentle foreboding like something long forgotten was trying to resurface in her memory.

It invited a sense of longing within her that she could not readily explain.

The second voice spoke, and several emotions ranging from relief to confusion to smoldering resentment flooded through her, pushing aside the strange feeling as the all too recognizable voice of her father rang clearly through the fields.

"I assure you, she is near," he said in response to whoever had spoken to him, and even without being able to see him yet Ahsoka could clearly picture the reserved and somewhat bemused expression written across her father's stoic features, and before she knew it Ahsoka was on her feet once more, stumbling to creep forward, still keeping the wherewithal to remain cautious on her approach. She did not know why her father was out here or who he was accompanied by, encouraging Ahsoka to retain at least some sense of prudence.

Had someone waylaid her father, looking to use him to track her down? That seemed an unlikely possibility, as the idea of anyone being able to intimidate him of all people seemed ludicrous to consider. Perhaps they were looking for someone else aside from Ahsoka. Again, that notion was about as far from plausible as she could imagine, as who else but her would they be looking for?

Before long Ahsoka had progressed far enough that she was now able to spot two individuals through the stalks of grass, one of which was undeniably her father, his refined appearance standing out like a monolith, starkly contrasted among the warm colors of the gently swaying foliage about him. Standing a short distance from him, heatedly staring him down as though sight alone could reduce him to ash, was a togruta woman, her back angled towards Ahsoka, something metallic clutched in her right hand, the other arm terminating into a useless stump of scarred flesh just above where the wrist would have been.

Ahsoka immediately recognized the object as a lightsaber, and she was barely able to clamp down on the sense of alarm before it could spread through her and give her away.

Jedi.

Despite the presence of a Jedi before him, her father seemed not at all concerned by the togruta's irritation, which even with Ahsoka shielding herself abraded against her senses like coarse stone.

What was going on? Was her father in danger somehow? Normally Ahsoka would immediately discard the possibility as preposterous. Despite his age, the Count of Serenno was an individual only the foolhardy would dare threaten. But if this togruta was a Jedi, someone who could potentially match the Count in skill and fortitude. . .

Ahsoka's first instinct was to intervene, to leap from her hiding place and tackle the togruta on the ground while she still possessed the element of surprise.

She was preparing herself to do just that, rising from her prone position into a low crouch among the grass, fully intending to hurl the spear with all the strength she still had left.

The memory of Nataruk and Pha Hi came to the fore of her thoughts. The memory of what instinct, and a lack of control and consideration of the consequences had wrought.

Ahsoka stilled the urge and resisted the call to immediate action as she kept herself rooted in place.

She released a breath she had not known she had been holding, and forced herself to more carefully assess what she was seeing.

"I do not enjoy this game of yours Tyranus," the woman seethed, pacing to the left and right like an agitated animal, the lightsaber hilt still unlit as she looked more prepared to throw it at his head rather than ignite and strike him with it. "Did you bring me here just to torment me? To make more false promises? What purpose does this serve you to torment me like this?!"

Tyranus?

Ahsoka felt her brow knit in confusion, wondering at the use of the name. For as long as she knew her father, and had heard the stories of his exploits, not once had she ever heard him referred to by that title. Did this woman think her father was someone else, and this was all a case of mistaken identity? Ahsoka thought that unlikely, and her father apparently had not felt the inclination to correct the woman either.

That aside, it occurred to Ahsoka that this woman was no Jedi at all. For all of the ire she was directing at Ahsoka's father, her presence did not give off the feeling of someone attuned to the Force in the way she and her father were, not that Ahsoka had much in the way of reference. This woman's presence was muted and unfocused in the manner of normal beings unable to tap into that all-encompassing energy field. And more, she carried the lightsaber in her sole hand as though it were uncomfortable to hold like her fingers were unaccustomed to its weight and build.

No, whoever this woman was, she was no Jedi as Ahsoka initially feared. As much relief as the knowledge brought, it did not change the fact that her father had somehow gotten himself involved in some potentially dangerous business and might need Ahsoka's help to get out of it.

And Ahsoka would prefer that to be achieved without spilling any more togruta blood.

Now confident that she would not alert the woman to her presence by doing so, Ahsoka reached out with her thoughts and senses, feeling them brush against the taciturn aura of her father, the sensation bringing with it as much trepidation and a surge of resentment as it did relief at finally reconnecting with him. Ignoring the conflicting emotions attempting to waylay her thoughts, Ahsoka attempted to impress on him her intention, hoping that by doing so they might be able to subdue the woman before the strange situation escalated further.

Ahsoka wanted no more blood on her hands, and if something happened while he was watching. . .

His reaction was only half what she expected from him. He made no obvious sign of registering her presence, retaining his stoic composure as the only notable move he made was a slight turn of his head in her direction, though his eyes remained on the woman as she continued to accuse him of misleading her, and Ahsoka was struck by the very likely possibility that he always knew she was there. And something about him felt. . . different somehow, though Ahsoka could not say exactly what it was that compelled the thought.

The other half of his reaction was not all that Ahsoka anticipated. Instead of keeping the woman's attention and playing for time as Ahsoka thought he would, her father instead said in the familiar matter-of-fact tone he used when addressing someone's shortcomings, "I encourage you to reconsider your assessment. For I have indeed kept my word to you." As he spoke, he nodded in Ahsoka's direction, and she felt a fresh wave of confusion and panic as her mind struggled to understand what was happening. He went a step further as he waved his hand, and the grass about the bent low as it flattened to form a roughly circular area of unobstructed ground a few meters across, fully exposing Ahsoka.

Initially startled by the inexplicable phenomena, the woman pivoted as she followed his gaze, and both hers and Ahsoka's eyes met.

When Tyranus had brought the landspeeder to a stop in the middle of seemingly nowhere, with nothing but the expansive rolling fields of thuru grass about them, her suspicion of his intentions had immediately resurfaced into an enraged paranoia at the thought that he had tricked her.

How long had she been suppressing the hope that one day she might finally see the face of her daughter, only to have this insufferably unruffled human make the offer to see that hope realized?

She should have known it had been a ruse from the start, another cruel ploy, possibly by what she was now certain were previous rivals in the guilds aiming to use her grief to their advantage. While she did not care much for such petty grievances, she had no tolerance at all for the prospect of being duped in this manner, and was seconds away from caving the humans face in with her bare hand and shoving the lightsaber hilt down his throat, until he had performed his minor miracle.

But the revelation of his control over the material world was quickly supplanted by the next thing Pav'ti saw as she looked, somewhat begrudgingly, behind her.

And saw a girl standing no more than a few meters away, looking just as bewildered by the situation as Pav'ti had felt just a moment prior.

An entirely new feeling came to Pav'ti then, one that caused her heart to skip a beat and her stomachs to tighten in on themselves as though squeezed by a vice.

A girl.

Skin the hue of a fiery sunset, the same as hers.

More than a head shorter than Pav'ti, her squat and undeveloped montrals barely meeting Pav'ti's collar.

Jagged white markings across her brow formed diamond-like patterns, with other markings reminiscent of raised wings below each of her eyes. Eyes that were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, indicative of a clear lack of meaningful rest for some time, but still shone as brightly as the glittering sea of the water world of years prior.

A finely made solul bearing the teeth of an akul hanging from her waist.

A girl.

The lightsaber fell from her trembling hand as she felt her body lurch forward, one unsteady foot placed in front of the other, carrying her closer to the newcomer.

"Wh-who are you? What's going on?" the girl asked in basic, her accent free of Shili's usual musical inflection, her youthful voice resonant with hints of refinement even as it was colored by nervous uncertainty. She took a half step away from Pav'ti, casting furtive and unsure glances in Tyranus' direction.

Pav'ti was not dissuaded by the retreat as she allowed herself to be pulled closer and closer with each cautious step, her searching eyes never leaving the girl's face.

Nervousness and apprehension were writ on the girl's face as plainly as the stripes of her paling lekku, but she was no longer retreating, allowing Pav'ti to close the distance until they were only a step apart from each other.

She raised her shivering hand, and the girl flinched slightly as she brought it to hover over her cheek, but her expression had turned from cautious and distrusting to thoughtful and inquisitive, the confusion melting away into a furtive curiosity as they gazed into each other's eyes, eyes that Pav'ti believed she would never see again.

"Who are you?" Ahsoka asked quietly while Pav'ti's fingers finally made contact, gently brushing along her cheek.

Unsure why she was doing so, Ahsoka tilted her head into the touch, letting the woman who she should not know but somehow did press her palm to the side of her face, the warmth of the touch spreading outward in a wave of sensation that felt achingly familiar.

Tyranus watched.

Ever had it been Pav'ti's personal failure that she had never been able to truly move on. Her people encouraged the mourning of those lost but cautioned against allowing that mourning to take root and become something worse. So it had been that Pav'ti had seen fit after years of searching to sever herself entirely. Nak'il would go on, while she remained behind, deciding that she would either overcome her failure or that her grief would consume her entirely as she waited to die in isolation.

And so it was now that she was fully unprepared for the feeling of having what was lost returned to her.

"Ahsoka?" she said breathlessly, still plagued by the fear that this was yet another harsh cruelty of the universe as if the mere act of speaking would cause the girl to evaporate into nothingness if Pav'ti dared to believe this was truly real.

Ahsoka nodded lightly, and Pav'ti could hold herself back no longer, bringing her daughter into a crushing embrace as she began to weep.

Mother.

There was no other way to reason it out, no other alternative to explain the overwhelming feeling of resonant familiarity Ahsoka felt pouring out of this woman.

Her mother.

Ahsoka felt her body go into a state of rigid stupor as the thought ran through her mind with all the violent speed and ferocity of a podracer, every cut and bruise and awful memory shoved aside while her mother held her tightly as though she were a woman drowning and Ahsoka were the only thing amidst the turbulent sea of profound gladness and joy emanating from her like the gravitic waves of a star collapsing in on itself.

Her mother.

At first, Ahsoka thought there might be some mistake, her earlier eavesdropping inciting the notion that this woman was confusing Ahsoka for someone else. She had incorrectly referred to her father by the name of Tyranus after all, so it was not far from the realm of possibility that this woman had confused Ahsoka for someone who happened to share the same name.

But the Force did not lie.

Somehow Ahsoka knew that there was no mistake made, no veil of confusion that had yet to be lifted. Everything about this woman, every subtle similarity in their features that Ahsoka could pick out in a mirror had she one available, to the ambient feeling of closeness that surpassed every other instance where Ahsoka had been with another of her kind. And through the Force, she felt that bond, threadbare and strained to the point where it was practically nonexistent, but there all the same, there in a way that Ahsoka did not feel even in the likes of her adopted family, the bond of shared blood that was now all too apparent to Ahsoka as she was held by the being who had brought into the galaxy.

Realizing that made Ahsoka drop to her knees, feeling a combination of bewilderment and awe and confusion and a pervasive weakness as she sunk to the ground. Her mother never released her, instead following the motion as she fell with Ahsoka, still letting her bereaved soul bare itself as she continued to weep, their leks smushed together to the point it was almost painful, but neither took notice.

Ahsoka heard muttering in togruti, and it took her longer than she would admit to recognize that it was coming from her mother as she spoke between choked sobs.

"Ohmat, sae ma'iim sasan," she cried, gasping the words out quietly, though this close they rang loud in Ahsoka's montrals.

"Sasan. Ma'iim sasan."

I'm so sorry, heart of mine.

Finally, her mother allowed her the luxury to breathe as she loosened her hold on Ahsoka but did not let go for even an instant as her right hand began to gently caress Ahsoka's cheek, the knuckles of fingers brushing against the inside of her lekku while the stump of her left hand rested on Ahsoka's shoulder.

How did she lose it? Ahsoka found herself wondering.

"Look at you," her mother said with openmouthed awe as she took in Ahsoka's face as tears that had yet to abate continued to flow in saline lines down her visage. "It's you! It's really you!"

Still, Ahsoka did not know what to say or how she should react. Because she should have some sort of reaction to this. . . right? What was appropriate? Should she smile, and start crying as well? All Ahsoka could manage as far as facial expressions went was to squirm her mouth indecisively between a grin and a grimace while her mind struggled to make sense of what was going on. Here she was, covered in bruises and cuts and one careless exertion away from reopening her impromptu stitches again as she was being held and caressed by one of two beings in the entire galaxy whom she never expected to meet for as long as she lived.

Somewhere deep within her being, roughly around where the conglomeration of subtly malfunctioning organs near the center of her chest, an emotion stirred, pressing painfully at its confines. The only problem was Ahsoka did not know what that emotion was even supposed to be, but she needed to do something.

Finally, Ahsoka felt herself nod, not sure what to say in response as she licked at her lips, tasting dust and copper. That reminded her of the state she was in, of what she looked like, the coat of red she was still covered in even if the evidence of it had since started to darken and flake off in patches like grimy ash.

Her mother was not blind to it either as she took Ahsoka in fully, her brow knotting and her lekku turning a shade of white that bordered on sickly.

"What. . . what has happened?" she inquired, her gladness at the meeting ebbing away into a mounting worry and concern that echoed painfully between them, causing Ahsoka to wince, less out of concern for her appearance than from the discomfort of being close enough that her mother's unmitigated emotions resonated loudly across their strengthening link.

"I. . . don't. . . " Ahsoka started, the first words she had spoken in what felt like hours since she first let herself be wrapped in her mother's arms. She could not complete them, her thoughts feeling like they were becoming twisted upon themselves in knots of worry and confusion and other feelings that only added to the already muddled pile of neurons that her mind was devolving into as it struggled just to make sense of the present.

She could not get any father in her incoherent rambling before her mother's mouth parted, her fangs bared in consternation rather than aggression as she demanded, "Who has done this to you?" Again, Ahsoka was unable to even begin formulating a response before her mother snapped her head around, her lekku nearly smacking Ahsoka in the face as she turned her gaze onto her father, who up to this point had been oddly quiet, seemingly content to stand by and observe. Ahsoka had almost forgotten he was even there for a bit.

"Did you do this?!" her mother demanded in sudden fury, her stripes rapidly shifting from light to dark.

A silver eyebrow crawled upward at the accusation. "No, I had little to do with the state your daughter is currently in Pav'ti Tano." His gaze slid over to her. "I confess that I am quite confused as to how she could have allowed herself to be in this sorry condition."

Tano.

The words were like ice upon Ahsoka's being, and she felt herself flinch in unconscious response at the derisive tone only she could hear as her Master spoke them.

Instantly her mother's- Pav'ti's- attention was upon her again, the hand tightening about her shoulder. She said something only half heard amid her daughter's internal strife, her face contorting into an expression of such profound concern it hurt Ahsoka's heart to look at. So she did not, instead allowing her gaze to drift to the side.

Her eyes found the lightsaber still lying on the ground where her mother had dropped it.

Its construction was simplistic, yet elegant in every aspect.

It was also strangely familiar, the sight of it causing flickers of what seemed like recognition to spark in the corners of her memory, and she knew that she had seen it before.

A tall, broad figure dressed in brown. . . and a feeling.

She thought about it, long and hard, and it felt to her as though she existed in her bubble of perception, beyond which all seemed to slow to a crawl for the duration of her contemplation until at last, she recalled something.

Her visions. . .

Her dreams. . .

The years of nightmares repressed in the hopes they would one day be forgotten. . .

Whatever feeling was desperately trying to fight its way from within her being, it was overshadowed by something else, something that had had many years to slowly grow and ferment.

"Why?"

That singular word was enough to cause her mother to fall quiet. She pulled away slightly, comprehension coming to her as her face fell, and something like the earlier sense of anxious grief Ahsoka had first sensed from her had returned the fore of her sense, abrasive and cloying like phlegm. She did not immediately say anything, her face falling to reflect the inner turmoil within, her already tear-ridden eyes glistening wetly,

"Because I was blind," she finally said in a trembling voice. She shook her head lightly. "I. . . I've had so long to relive that day, over and over again. To look back and see how I had failed." She uttered a mirthless laugh. "I remember us, me and your father, being so happy, believing we were doing the right thing, our hope at what you would become blinded us to what you were saying until it was- "

"Too late."

Her mother flinched at the softly spoken word. They had barely been a whisper, but their impact was deafening. Her mother's breath hitched, and Ahsoka could practically feel the spiderweb cracks of guilt-ridden pain on her soul as her expression melted further from tearful joy into solemn grief and resentment. Ahsoka felt something of a similar strain within herself as her heart ached in sympathy and her stomachs cinched in on themselves.

She should say something, knew that she should be more mindful of the pall of corrosive remorse eating at her mother's soul, knew that she should at least try to ease it, to let her know that everything would be better now.

She did no such thing.

It was like something within her cracked, a barrier inside of her mind that had been steadily picked away.

How out of place she felt at the Academy.

Her tutelage under her father.

Jenza rebuking her for her lack of control.

The arrival on Shili.

The Gathering.

Luli.

Nataruk.

Pha Hi.

Her memories, visions, the years spent dealing with the endless nightmares.

No, it was less a breaking and more an unlocking.

And even as the other emotion that lay within her heart begged to be heard, she ignored it and opened the door.

Tyranus sensed the change within his apprentice, and it seemed to him as though very air had become stillborn, the change manifesting itself in the form of an icy claw running up his spine, cruel and exhilarating.

He had watched the entire exchange between Ahsoka and her mother and knew that everything was happening exactly as he had ordained it.

There was no other way.

Except. . .

Tyranus. . . Dooku. . . for some unexplainable reason could not summon up the satisfaction he knew he should have felt, not fully. Is this not what he wanted, what he had been planning for years, almost from the very day he had taken Ahsoka on as his apprentice? This was the path of all Sith according to his own Master, to fully embrace the hate within them and use it. This was how it had to be.

He looked at Ahsoka, her presence in the Force no longer the maelstrom of confusion and unfocused anger and bitterness she had been harboring for most of her life. Now her thoughts were still and focused and calm, but calm in the manner in which the eye of a violent hurricane is calm, a portent to something inescapable.

Then he saw her face. Saw the darkness in her eyes, the hate swirling within.

He should have been satisfied. Why did he suddenly feel. . . regretful?

"It's not too late."

Yaddle stood before him, the diminutive form of the Jedi Master somehow seeming even smaller as she gazed hopefully, pleadingly, up at Dooku.

Dooku felt himself blink, and suddenly he was hesitant, his brow knitting in sudden concern. He looked to Ahsoka once more and was unable to drive away the memory of the charming, brash little girl he had taken as his heir, his ward.

His daughter.

She was hardly recognizable behind the mask of venomous hatred that had fallen over her.

A motion in the corner of his vision caught his attention, and he looked just in time to see the lightsaber on the ground slide across the grass towards the pair.

He raised his hand, a slight inaudible gasp of alarm escaping his lips.

"I'm afraid it is far too late."

With those last words, each syllable a chain binding him to his destiny, Dooku brought the lightsaber down on Yaddle's head.

The snap-hiss of the lightsaber activating shattered the quiet, the sound tapering into an angry hum like that of a swarming hive.

Pav'ti jolted in place, her eyes widening and her body going rigid as she attempted to inhale.

What had happened?

Why could she not breathe all of a sudden?

Her gaze drifted downwards from her daughter and saw the hilt of the Jedi's lightsaber held in Ahsoka's hand. A beam of brilliant blue with a core of purest white emanated from the hilt, piercing her at an angle through her ribs. The area of flesh where it penetrated had instantly cauterized, the edges of the wound smoking, stinging like a brand. A similar sensation echoed from her right shoulder blade where the blade exited, the skin of her rear lek singing from the blade as it erupted from her back.

She looked up at Ahsoka, taking in the beauty of her daughter's face and eyes as they were underlit by the glow of the lightsaber.

She never allowed her gaze to waver the slightest amount even as the edges of her vision began to fade and darken. With a monumental effort, she raised her right hand, resting her hand tenderly on Ahsoka's cheek, brushing a thumb over the wing-like pattern.

Because she understood.

Her daughters' eyes narrowed in sudden uncertainty, and she brought up her left hand to tentatively rest over Pav'ti's.

The sound of the lightsaber deactivating was only the slightest distraction, as was the oddly soothing sensation of her cauterized lungs and heart being exposed to the air as Pav'ti struggled to remain upright, feeling something rattle within her as she tried to keep a hold of her breath. She could not win against her body even as it rapidly failed. She started to fall to the side. Yet even as she felt herself slip Pav'ti refused to let go, fighting with all of her wavering strength to keep that contact, as though mere touch could somehow speak for her.

Because there was so much that she had wanted to say, needed to say, that Pav'ti never thought she would be able to, and now that Ahsoka was here in front of her she was rapidly running out of time. So she fought for as long as she could, her body failing and her vision going dark at the edges.

It could not last.

Her traitorous arm failed her, slipping away from Ahsoka's face, the warmth of her living daughter on her fingertips fading away into a long-anticipated stillness.

Pav'ti supposed she was foolish to try in the first place, but try she did, to hold on to the memory of the warmth, so that at the end it would be the last thing she felt, hoping beyond anything that it would ensure Ahsoka knew of her love.

But then again, her greatest failing was that she was unable to recognize when it was time to let go.

She only. . . wished that she had. . .

. . .more. . .

. . .time to. . .

. . .

Ahsoka sat still as a stone, the fingers of her left hand still curled as though holding on to something, even though her mother had already fallen to lay on the ground, silent and inert.

The seconds ticked by as they dragged into minutes, yet Ahsoka could not bring herself to notice.

She looked up then, and saw her father, remembering that he was still present. That he had seen.

He looked down at her, but his expression was vacant of its usual refined menace. Instead, he had adopted a strange look that resembled concern, one hand slightly raised, and one foot placed just in front of the other. His gaze was searching as he looked her squarely in the face. He looked at her, eyes unseeing, as though he did not recognize her.

"You. . ." he started to say, pausing to reorganize his thoughts. Hardly typical of him, and she was quick to reason why that might be. It was sitting right in front of her, a whisp of acrid vapor trailing from the still smoldering hole from the lightsaber, and a part of her wondered ashamedly how deplorably indicative it was that the fact she had just murdered her own mother was taking the proverbial backseat to speculate what he would do in response.

She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a tortured sound like her throat was clogged. Maybe it was. Maybe she was dying, mere seconds away from dropping to lie beside her mother she had just murdered. She could not do anything but sit and stare dumbly at him, like a criminal awaiting judgment.

What would he say? What would he do? What could he do, given what she had done? When she had once again proven him correct, that she was impulsive, temperamental to the point where it ruled her decisions, unable to control herself?

What have you done?

This was it. This had to be it. There was no recovery from this. Unless he had somehow learned some arcane secret to bring back the dead or reverse time, there was nothing she could do to rectify this.

What would Jenza think? What would she say once she found out that all of her fears of her niece being an uncontrollable monstrous little creature, that every holonet article and news piece and rumor about her turned out to be true?

That she was little more than an animal?

Flurries of thoughts of how she might somehow explain away her failing. He spoke before she could say any of them.

"You have done well."

. . . What?

Ahsoka was unsure if she had spoken the question aloud. She had to have though, because what else could she say in response to that? Ahsoka stared at him, squinting as her expression morphed into a pale reflection of the horrified puzzlement creeping into her because she knew she could not have heard him correctly.

But the longer she looked at him, the more it became apparent that, no, her sense of hearing had not spontaneously malfunctioned.

She had heard him perfectly.

For you.

Ahsoka felt the muscles in her arm twitch, a spasm crawling its way along her back like a needle-legged insect as the full implication of his words bore down on her.

He. . . did this?

He wanted this to happen?

He wanted her to be like this?

A spasm of movement suffused her as in a flash of blind and inconsolable rage she leaped over her mother's body at him, the lightsaber igniting into a beam of furious sapphire flame as her soul screamed in tormented rage and grief, emotion guiding her arm in an arcing sweep before she even realized what she was doing.

It slammed to a stop, the impact reverberated through her arm, the humming blade rebounding off of something as solid and immovable as durasteel. The lightsaber, not built to fit comfortably in hands such as hers, was sent spiraling away to land with a thump next to the prone body of her mother, scorching the ground before some automatic function built into the weapon caused the blade to shrink back into the hilt with a hiss.

The hum persisted, and Ahsoka looked at her father.

She did not see blue as it was depicted in the various murals and holostills showcasing Serenno's history.

Not blue as she was led to believe from the recordings Jenza had given her to peruse, giving her greater insight into the type of person her father was.

Not the blue of a Jedi.

A scarlet glow fell over her, and Ahsoka's heart felt like it was about to shatter into a million pieces. The crimson light cast in face in a hellish light, rendering brown eyes into a shade of sickly amber.

Ahsoka stumbled backward, falling over the almost forgotten body of her mother. She fell, agony flashing along her side, feeling incredibly cold for some inexplicable reason she could not presently parse out.

She scrambled to get away, gasping for air as her depleted strength and mental faculties urged her to do one thing and one thing only.

Run.

She did not get very far before the accumulated weight and duress of the last days finally took their toll. And she felt him reaching out to her, his presence washing over her in a river of suggestive calm that she struggled to free herself from.

Already heavily depleted in body, mind, and spirit, she could not fight it for more than a handful of moments before she felt herself fall to the ground, a dull throbbing ache that seemed to encompass her whole body before a new wave of calm enveloped her, coaxing her dulled thoughts to temporarily forget the discomfort. She almost welcomed it, hoping it would result in the release of some eternal oblivion.

The ground fell away from her as she was lifted upward, then scrolled by in a hazily recalled semblance of interest. She vaguely recalled trying to wriggle herself free, to no avail. With one last effort, she craned her head up, the weight of her lekku seeming to drag her ever downward.

Another wave of calm suggestion fell over her, and the last thing Ahsoka saw before unconsciousness took her was the odd sight of regret across her father's face.