Chapter Text
4 BBY
Ahsoka stood in the hanger of the base on Yavin when she felt Asajj break through the atmosphere.
It had been a long time since they’d met face-to-face after the other woman had split from them rather abruptly nearly two years after their escape of Mandalore. She’d kept an ear out about her, had even managed to keep in contact with her despite all their false names and different aliases to stay under the Empire’s radar.
She was glad that she’d built such an inscrutable persona as the rather infamous Fulcrum among the rebellion, hiding from even them underneath her cloak with its hood up and over her montrals, because she needed a moment. It had been months since she’d asked Asajj to go to Ilum, to try and save Quinlan Vos, but they’d been out of contact. It had haunted her thoughts as she didn’t even know if Asajj had got there, let alone if she’d succeeded or if she’d just sent the other woman to her death.
Not after getting word from Rex that Vader himself had gotten there earlier than expected, just as eager to settle his fifteen-year-old grudge-match with Vos as Vos had been to engage Vader all these years. Then Rex had told her that Bly had gone rogue, had volunteered himself to join Vader’s personal guard, out of some need to make things right with Vos, even knowing Vos would hold him personally responsible for his former Padawan’s death.
Rex had been quietly grieving when he had told her, knowing as well as she did that Bly had done this fully expecting to die, if for nothing more than to delay even for a moment Vos’ death to atone for his General’s death.
Then he had told a secret that he must have held for almost twenty years now.
Bly had loved his General with everything he had, and had been planning a way to always be there for her even if as nothing more than a friend and a soldier at her side, for when the war ended. That it had destroyed him, when he’d killed her.
That it had taken years for Bly to admit to anyone that they’d shot to kill, but she would have died in pain because it hadn’t been a clean kill, alone and thinking they’d betrayed her, somewhere on a planet that would eat her and leave nothing to find. He hadn’t shot himself immediately after his chip was gone like some, because like Wolffe, he had to hope that she’d survived. That Bly had known it was a foolish hope, and knew the chances of it being true were far too few to consider, but he needed it if he was to continue this fight. Bly hadn’t thought himself strong enough to march on if she had really marched away into the Force because of him.
Ahsoka couldn’t help but think of Cody then, because even if her Master had been oblivious to it, his Master had always looked at Cody with fondness. It had always reminded her of a far-more toned-down version of how her Master had looked at Padmé, but she’d always dismissed it because a perfect Jedi like him didn’t have attachments. So, she’d kept quiet on how Cody would return those looks, strongly flavored with worry and exasperation, when Master Kenobi had been in the medical bay for one of many reasons, because she had thought it cruel to tell him it was impossible when the man had already known.
After she’d left the Order, and Master Kenobi had taken her aside and told a very abridged version she had never gotten the chance to get the fully story on, about the time he left the Order, and things she would need to do to survive outside the Order that she would have never thought to do otherwise. Then she’d realized it was possible, and not just possible, but likely that Cody and Master Kenobi had danced around their feelings because it just wasn’t the time.
Not just because her Master had been absolute trash at hiding his relationship with Padmé, and nearly everyone around them knew it. Master Kenobi had even shown her a copy of the wedding he’d had Artoo film for him.
She’d thought that after the Wars, that maybe the two could have done something. Then everything had gone up in flames.
Over the years, she’d admired Cody’s strength to march on in the cesspit that was the Empire, aiming to destroy the thing that she thought may have broken Master Kenobi. She’d known either way, Master Kenobi hadn’t come out of hiding in fourteen years because he was guarding her Master’s children as perhaps the only person in the universe aside from Cody and Rex to know who and where they were.
Which went out the proverbial window when everywhere in the Empire got a broadcast from the man himself shortly after Asajj would have gotten to Ilum, and the resulting chaos had kept her almost too busy to worry.
Now, though, as the Ghost landed and a familiar tall figure swept out in a dramatic twist of her cloak, Ahsoka could only smile, knock back her own hood and greet the woman, “Asajj!”.
A much-thinner and older Vos followed at Asajj’s heels out of the ship, and said something she didn’t catch before Asajj smirked.
Ashoka knew it was trouble; then she laughed loud and long as Asajj did a very familiar little sashay of her hips and shrugged out of her cloak.
It was good to see the other woman was doing more than fine.