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Kaeden is a bit surprised when Ahsoka stops by to visit, but she isn’t complaining as they lay beneath the gorgeous Alderaan sky.
“It’s so different,” Kaeden says in awe because it’s still so new. Ahsoka smiles.
“It always is.”
Kaeden hmms.
“You really didn’t say much about your travels,” she says. “Though I don’t blame you if it was to war zones.”
Ahsoka laughs.
“Not always,” she says. “Sometimes my Master had me pawned off to politicians who ended up getting me shot at!”
Kaeden laughs.
“That sounds interesting,” she says. Ahsoka grins.
“Trust me,” she says. “I was.”
But her comments got Kaeden thinking…
“So now that you aren’t using a fake identity,” Kaeden says teasingly. “What of what you told me was true? What was it like as a Jedi?”
Ahsoka hmms.
“Being a Jedi was a lot of things,” she says. “Though I didn’t get a real chance at it with the Clone Wars. I didn’t lie to you, not really. I was adopted. By the Jedi. They were my family. But I had to leave. And now… the Empire killed them all.”
Kaeden looks down. Oh. Ouch. Now she feels like some sort of insensitive idiot.
“And as for my Parents… we have a Lineage, which could be seen as a family from the outside,” Ahsoka says like she hadn’t just dropped a rather painful call-out. “I traveled mostly from front to front with my Master, Anakin Skywalker. And Master Kenobi, of course.”
Wait…
“So you’re saying that the Hero With No Fear was basically your dad?!!”
Ahsoka… freezes at her comment, and then she bursts out laughing.
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess you could say he was one of my parents, and maybe Padme, too. They were never very subtle, but I just can’t make that leap about Fives…”
The togruta shakes her head.
“I’m sorry,” she says sadly. “I just… I try not to think about them often. They’re all dead, now, not that I was there for it. And I’m only here because Rex saved me.”
Oh… right. Wait…
“Who’s Rex?” Kaeden asks. A soft smile fills Ahsoka’s face.
“He was one of the best people I’ve ever met,” she says. “He was loyal, caring, and unbelievably patient considering what me and Anakin and the Vod’e put him through. Mostly me and Anakin… And he was a clone.”
The woman said it all in such a loving voice and honestly Kaeden can feel her minuscule chance with Ahsoka slowly fading away. But the way she said the last part.
“Is there a problem with him being a clone?” she asks. Ahsoka laughs again.
“Of course,” she says. “You’re Outer Rim. It’s just… most sentients don’t think of clones as more than droids. But they were so much more.”
What?!?!!
“That’s disgusting,” Kaeden says. Ahsoka just shrugs without comment. But then Kaeden remembers… “But… why weren’t you there?”
Ahsoka looks away.
“I… the Jedi made some very bad calls,” she says, sadly. “And I had to leave; I felt it in the Force.”
Kaeden wonders quite a bit if Ahsoka’s just trying convince herself that she needed to leave.
“But… I left without saying goodbye. I think I regret that the most, about those events,” Ahsoka sighs, but then that soft smile comes back to her face. “I am glad I came back, though, if only for a time. I got to say goodbye. And at least I know that there’s someone out there who’s still alive.”
“So where is he now?” Kaeden finds herself asking. Ahsoka immediately just stares up at the sky.
“Somewhere,” she says. “We separated for safety. But I’ll find him again, one day… but, enough about my past, how are you enjoying Alderaan.”
Kaeden recognizes a deflection when she sees one, but she decides to take it.
“Well…” she says. “It’s nice enough.”
And they spend the rest of the evening on far lighter subjects.