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Chapter Text

This is a bad idea. 

Tabitha is well aware of that fact and yet the smirk on her face is worth a million multi-colored kyber crystals as she draws near her destination with light spring in her step and the smell of burning electricity wafting through the air, following her like a malodorous gas cloud in an otherwise clean environment.   

Nobody can insinuate that her IQ has increased in number since meeting Ahsoka Tano with her godsawful attitude, especially in younger years. Nor has she gotten any smarter in the two and a half years since she met the reckless adult duo Skywalker and Kenobi. Or the most idiotic soldiers to ever exist carrying the names Boil and Waxer. 

Cody might be the only one who protected her intelligence and sanity all this time. 

'Evidently not.' Tabitha shrugs nonchalantly, picturing the disappointed and unhappy expression on the commander's face after catching wind of what had previously transpired and openly admitting her involvement in yet another 'impulsive experiment'?

Okay, the one-hundred percent essential experiment was more implosive than impulsive but let's not go into details here. 

" I am innocent!" Tabitha declares blatantly before she fully thrust the tent's flappy entrance out of the way, glaring at the soot on the back of her left hand. The fifteen-year-old steps into the 'furnished' interior of the minimally larger-than-average tent, vision flying over the fabric sleeping bags on the ground at the far back, then the vacant spot in the center - where Obi-Wan mostly updates the council daily -, and over to the man she had loudly asserted her innocence to without rhyme or reason. 

Casually wiping away the incriminating black staining the white of her hand, Tabby grins cheekily as the ginger-haired human, who had been merrily reading away, drags his pricking eyes away from the gloomy, sterile shine demanding his attention by flickering like an offensive replica of a feeble flame's embers. 

The aforementioned man fixes her with an unimpressed raised eyebrow and lays the datapad on the stopgap table with a soft thump, leaning back in his rather uncomfortable folding chair made out of the most back-breaking plastic available throughout the galaxies worst parts, to focus solely on his padawan. 

The grin on her face widens slightly and Obi-Wan himself has to admit he is infinitely grateful for the distraction from this monotone chore. Although, judging by the playful glint sparkling in those algae-pond-like eyes, he is going to have another report on his hands soon. 

"And what, in the name of the Force, could possibly make me believe you were not, Little One?" Obi-Wan hums, pointedly glancing at the spot on her hand Tabitha is failing to wipe away inconspicuously. The girl catches him looking and quickly clasps her hands behind her back, hiding the incriminating evidence and slipping the grin off her face in favor of mockingly biting her bottom lip and casting a thoughtful glance upward. 

A giggle breaks her pseudo-serious expression when in front of her, her master sighs (sort of fondly), his own lips teased by a jerky tug, and rubs his forehead as if trying to brush off an impending headache. 

He answers his own question. "I don't suppose, for once, you, Boil and Waxer had nothing to do with the... 'ruckus' I heard earlier?" 

'Bullseye!' Tabby cheers internally but on the outside, she gasps in theatrical horror and puts a hand above her heart for emphasis. "Why would you say that, Master?" She chortles, trying and failing to suppress a smirk when she can read the urge to smash his head against the table in exasperation in his narrowed eyes. 

"Because, somehow, whenever something explodes it's always you three." Obi-Wan accuses, bite expectedly absent from his voice, provoking a familiar warmth to bloom in Tabby's chest. 

Had you told her five years ago, she would have this with someone besides Ahsoka, be the episodic bane to someone else's nerves (as well as the other way around) and this someone was Obi-Wan Kenobi -the Sith-Killer and the Chosen One's Master- well, Tabitha would have written you off as a crackpot ready for the loony bin (to put it mildly). 

Now, two and a half years after the start of her war and her subsequent apprenticeship, the notion doesn't seem so crazy.

Aware that her master is still waiting for an explanation, Tabby decidedly does not give him that and instead opts to put off lectures and consequences for a bit longer. 

"'Explosion' is a bit of an exaggeration, if you ask me. It was more of a-" (Rambling always works.) "No. No, you know what? I refuse to incriminate myself, I plead the Fifth." The padawan states, sealing her lips with an imaginary key and throwing it down beside her as she plops down onto her neatly arranged sleeping bag. The fabric rustles and creases as she searches for a comfortable position, drowning out the sound of a low chuckle from the other person in the 'room'. 

Ultimately, she settles on her back with her legs propped up and one arm cushioning her head. Not exactly comfy due to the arm guard wrapped tightly around her forearm but she would have to hit her head at least a thousand times over before she took it off for anything less than sleep. 

The conversation is long from over and Tabby knows, so she waits, observing the tent's ceiling moving in sync with the gentle breeze that has managed to weave itself through the mountains and into the small confines of their camp. 

At this juncture, camps and outposts feel more like home than the Temple on some days, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's nice, soothing in a bizarre way. A home outside of home with real friends you can do nothing fun with because you are in enemy territory. 

The stunt from earlier was already risky enough because, for all its natural beauty, Centares' smooth plains and bleak woods make it hard to hide from prying eyes. Especially if said prying eyes are yet unaware of the Republic's trusty forces on the Separatists' last civilized world before the "wild and woolly" Outer Rim territory. 

Therefore, no one was allowed to leave camp and Tabitha had been literally dying of boredom, wasting away on the ground and ready for nature to reclaim her when Boil and Waxer came into her periphery like the two bickering horsemen of the apocalypse that they are.

After only a few seconds, her musings are abruptly interrupted by Obi-Wan clearing his throat. Merely glancing at him once, Tabby reclines fully into the familiar, soft fabric and lets her eyes slip shut. 

Maybe, once this conversation is over, the padawan can sneak in some sweet sleep. That always helps her boredom. Or whatever else is on her mind. 

"Need I expect a visit from Helix regarding bizarre injuries?" The ginger asks and Tabby can clearly imagine the quirked eyebrows framing hopeful diamond eyes and furthermore, the fingers twitching to massage the bridge of his nose when Tabby's reply consists of a single, noncommittal hum.

"I don't think so, no." She adds as mercy. Half-baked mercy. "Though I'm pretty sure, had Waxer stood any closer, we'd find bits of his nose on Tatooine." Tabitha mumbles, just loud enough to make sure her master hears. Judging by the shocked sputtering and sudden creak of plastic, he did. 

Luckily for her, all lectures are balked by the steady chiming of an incoming holo-call to which Obi-Wan growls quietly, finally giving in to the urge to knead the bridge of his nose. 

"We are going to talk about this, Tabitha." He relents begrudgingly, standing as Tabitha points a finger at him from where she lies. "Only if Boil and Waxer get part of the fun." 

Another sigh is her sole answer and a dull thump the only sound that follows. Then there is a beat of silence as the chiming stops suddenly before being replaced by a fixed, droning crackling correlated with a holographic image. 

Tabitha blinks her eyes open and opts to listen, thinking the council has to have some crucial intel to relay, otherwise, they wouldn't potentially jeopardize their cover by one too many calls a day. 

Surprised when instead of the uninflected voice from one of the councilors or the inevitable dispatch from their backup Venator's admiral -whose name she had neglected to remember after the man was just a 'tad' bit too rude to the men under his command- her master initiates the conversation with a lot less formality the aforesaid possibilities would warrant, Tabby pricks up her ears to listen more intently. "Anakin, please, do tell me at least you haven't managed to blow someone's nose off." Tabitha doesn't have to see it to feel the pointed look thrown her way. 

"Almost!" She cries out in her own defense and simultaneously sits up straight to face the back of Anakin's holographic tunics. Her mood lifts the moment her eyes fall on the familiar set of ample shoulders and all boredom seems to take a nosedive out of the airlock. 

The fifteen-year-old springs to her feet just as the older Jedi Knight speaks his first words which are completely disregarding what they had just revealed to him. 

"...Tabitha is there?" 

Immediately, the hairs on Tabby's neck stand up straight and the nerves beneath her skin tingle uneasily. Something in his voice almost makes her falter. Something acid and sour in tone but hidden in appearance. Regardless, she sheds the feeling without too much thought, chalking it up to her typical unwarranted anxiety at being separated by thousands of light-years. Morphing the muscles in her face into a lopsided grin, the raven steps into the communicator's range next to her master and raises her hand as a casual greeting. "Right here, Knuckles." 

At last able to get a good look at her friend's face, her own falls immediately. 

Perhaps the tone's appearance isn't as hidden as she had hoped. Anakin's lips are pressed thin, vanishing into an invisible line, the outer corners of his brows are dipped but the skin between them is creased slightly, and when her gaze darts down briefly she sees exactly what she didn't want to see. His hands are clenched into fists, unwavering and still, with veins popping out on top of them, and even through the holo's pale blue shade, she can see his knuckles ready to burst through his skin. 

Uncertain, Tabitha glances up at her master, who seems to have noticed Anakin's repressed demeanor already, going by the worry shining in his blue eyes, and thus misses the change in Anakin following her appearance. 

Obi-Wan, on the other hand, detects the shift in his former padawan's eyes, the loosening of something so incredibly tense it physically pains the older man to see that tension instantly relocate in his shoulders and back. The bad feeling swirling in his stomach only intensifies once he catches the hesitation with which Anakin narrowly opens and closes his mouth as if he lacks the words to explain his unscheduled call and grim mood. So he decides to help him along. Force knows, sometimes Anakin still needs a little push from his old master regarding voicing affairs this jarring, and Obi-Wan is more than happy to oblige. 

"Anakin, what's wrong?" His tone is so soft and gentle, Tabitha quickly identifies it as the one he carries to nudge someone into talking. No careless pressing and pushing, no incessant digging, only a small question and a cordial tone to lend a hand. Yet, Tabby has only ever heard it directed at her and never at someone else (with the exception of a few of their men), so this is disconcerting in another way. Disconcerting mainly because she just now comes to the realization that the origin of this tone has to have been during Anakin's apprenticeship and that, despite knowing these two for so long now, she never understood. 

Now, here she is, a clueless participant in whatever kind of conversation this is going to be, swallowing around a forming clump in her throat as she watches Anakin's gaze grow withdrawn with an undercurrent of a turmoil coiling beneath. 

"Ahsoka is missing."  

Tabitha freezes. Completely. 

Her breath gets stuck in her lungs, her blood runs cold, and her heart misses ten beats before it scrambles to do its task. 

Every fiber of her being simply stops after hearing those three clear but empty words Anakin spat out as if they were poison in his mouth. Poison that is slowly meandering from her brain through her stone-cold veins down to her heart where it viciously eats away at its vital strings like they are candy. 

It's only then, feeling a bitingly hollow but heavy sensation metaphorically punching her heart like a hated drum, that she comprehends the impossibility that just pierced her ears.

'Ahsoka is missing.' The sentence rings through her head, bounces off the walls of her skull like a slobbery, old rubber ball and bashes against her brain with such high velocity and volume, again and again until it hurts. 

"What?" Tabby gasps, short of breath and feeling a wee bit faint. 

Her best friend from way before real childhood, gone without a trace, vanished into the same thin air to Anakin's left that seems to physically taunt her as her shocked eyes dart down to the vacant spot. missing the usual confident smile and happy greeting. 

In swift consecutive order, her side is bathed in a friendly warmth as Obi-Wan inches a bit toward her in silent comfort and the man repeats her question with a lot more stability despite his own underlying alarm. Anakin counts off the events of what happened, voice strained and forcibly factual, but Tabitha doesn't truly listen. Doesn't need to, to know. She doesn't need to listen, doesn't need to look at Anakin or Obi-Wan, doesn't need to feel anything to know that they have nothing although looked.

After the battle, perhaps hours after Ahsoka first went missing. 

No clues, no way of tracing her current whereabouts, nothing, and furthermore no… 

" Wait, you're not even going to look ?!" 

It's like blowing a fuse. At one moment, it's like a brewing storm, silent but lingering, the next it's an explosion. With no word of warning, fiery and harsh, her debilitating shock throws out simmering sparks that ignite the coldness traveling with her blood, like a match to fuel. 

Abruptly, the icy rivers in her veins start to boil like the lava falls of Mustafar. Her heart pounds not out of fear but of anger, and every ounce of sleaziness in her muscles is rebuilt with a solid foundation. A foundation of emotion that - like a skyscraper looming above crowded streets - crawls all the way up to her face and darkens her eyes right as they flash to Anakin's deeply troubled ones. 

Her outraged screech is met with a sad and guilty avoidance of eye contact that confirms what she thought and adds fire to the flame. That Anakin still deems it necessary to answer doesn't cool it, her, down. "We can't without abandoning Felucia and leaving it for Separatists." Anakin's voice sounds thin and frail, hesitant like he doesn't believe what he's saying himself. "We have to trust her to find her way back." A scoff bursts through her lips and suddenly there is no place for anything besides anger (and hurt and betrayal ). Tabitha glares at Anakin, disbelieving. 'Would you trust a dying man with a crucial mission?' She wants to say but doesn't, instead opting to be more direct. "You know, she could be grievously injured and you wanna do what? Wait? Hope ?!" Her voice is rising with each sentence, each passing moment in which Anakin shows no signs of the action that is so typical for the Knight. (The volume hardly conceals the crack as her own thought that Ahsoka could very well be injured startles her.) With empty thoughts and packed sensations clashing, Tabby disregards the flash of something ghosting over Anakin's expression and takes a threatening step closer to the holo-image of the man she never thought she'd be disappointed in for giving up. Nevertheless, angry at for the very same reason. 

"Do you think I don't know that, Tabitha?" The blonde/brunette man grounds out through gritted teeth (that should have been her clue to stop). "But Master Koon is right…" His rigid voice trails off in her head as she registers who had been the founder of Anakin's inaction. And doesn't that just add salt to the wound? The man Ahsoka looks up to like a father. The first to leave her to her own devices without any knowledge of her current situation. 

How effed up is that? How can someone so close to Ahsoka, so readily turn their back while she might be expecting the exact opposite? How is it possible that between a hundred different men, not one has the guts to do something?

That thought ultimately tips the scale and pushes her slanted emotional state off the knife's edge she had been barely managing to balance it on. Anger turns into fury, disbelief into disgust, and hurt into straight-up betrayal. 

Obi-Wan is startled for a second, so unused to the intense ripples coming off of his padawan in sporadic bursts that shadow unbridled, bitter rage, nevermind Tabby who, deep down, feels like she lost herself in a sea of red.

Too distanced from her usual self, Tabby finds herself exploding.

The gentle hand on her shoulder that tries to hold her back is brushed off heedlessly, the soft warning as Obi-Wan calls her name ignored, and the small parts of her that are not inundated in a chippy, desperation-induced fury disregarded without once listening to what they say. 

"So you all just turn your backs on her?!" The fifteen-year-old all but screams now that her temper is in smithereens. "I can't believe you!" An accusing finger comes up to point at him. "You're supposed to be her master. You're supposed to care !" 'You're supposed to not let her go missing in the first place.' The assignment of guilt is left unsaid but hangs heavy in the air. 

It feels like two different people are living inside of her at this very moment. The kindhearted, empathetic altruist who reels and shakes in terror of the harsh words plowing from her lips, and the hysterical hateful and hurtful twat who relished the moment her words provoked more than just (misplaced) guilt. 

Twin midnight-blue skies set ablaze by fuming flames and the sound of bones and teeth grinding together, and Tabby knows her words cut a little (too) deep. 

" Don't. You. Dare." The words are stretched thin, ragged by the attempt to rein them in before any damage could be done. 

(Tabitha doubts anything could put a stop to that.)

"Don't you dare assume I don't care about Ahsoka, Tabitha! After everything, there's nothing that I wouldn't do to get her back -" An indignant huff spurts from her nostrils. "Oh, really?" Anakin's scowl merely deepens, yet he goes on. " -but I can't take all my forces and send them on a wild goose chase while Felucia is still in the Separatists' filthy hands." The man takes a deep breath that does nothing to lessen the thickness of his tone. "I want to but I can't , alright? All I can do is trust Ahsoka. What else would you have me do?!" 

The angel in her wails, pushes moisture to the forefront of her eyes, trying in vain to grab her tunneled and short-tempered attention. (This is wrong. All of this is wrong. Tabitha hates shouting and yelling and screaming, especially in anger, so why can't she stop? Why can't she understand?)

Meanwhile, the prosperous devil on her shoulder overpowers the weeping angel with furious indifference to his hurt and quenches the tears that blur her vision. (She shouldn't feel bad for saying the truth. She shouldn't feel bad about confronting problems. She shouldn't feel remorseful and she won't.)

"Everything other than nothing would be a great start! At this rate, Felucia will forever be fought over anyway. What makes you think you can make a difference, yo-" 

(Finally) Obi-Wan steps in between them to stop the shouting match this conversation has promptly dissolved into before he could manage to prevent it. 

Ironic that the Negotiator cannot settle a dispute between his apprentices, isn't it? However, he is unashamed to admit that Tabby's abnormal reactions threw him off. Of course, the girl has been irritated before, angry even, but she always felt bad, especially if she yelled at her counterpart. Not a second passes before shame overtakes anger and she urges herself to calm down, apologizing sincerely. However, something is different today and Obi-Wan would bet his seat on the council that something is Ahsoka's disappearance. No guilt at her harsh words or hurt because of Anakin's. All she emanates is a raging tornado of unadulterated and unforgiving hostility that is so unlike her, her master had genuinely believed she was incapable of such for the past two and a half years.

Carefully, Obi-Wan lays a steadying, yet restricting hand on his padawan's shoulder, as if she would be able to do more than glare daggers at the man who was thousands of light-years away. Gingerly, he notes the subtle tremors running through her form and the moist sheen to her green eyes that she's struggling to smother behind steely walls. Without a doubt, Anakin isn't looking much better and one glance at the bruises around his eyes, Obi-Wan could see even through the holo's quality, and the louring grimace distorting his features, confirm that. 

"How about we all calm down before we say something we might regret later on?" The Jedi Master interrupts what would have been a vicious insult from Tabitha who snaps her jaw shut with an audible click yet maintains the evil eye at the pointed look directed at the both of them. Anakin, too, backs down visibly when his former master shoots him an additional look, telling him to get a hold of himself and stop letting Tabby's irate behavior press his buttons. This is fearful desperation mixed with worry and amplified by teenage hormones. A reaction is what she's aiming for. 

The younger man, himself, had episodes like this more often than not and Obi-Wan quickly learned staying calm during these arguments doubled the anger but also the remorse in the aftermath.

Several moments of silence pass in which Tabitha does not, in fact, calm down. Not that she put any effort into it anyway. Like crazy, her heart pumps blood through her head to the point where even the silence is deafeningly loud and the insignificant breeze wriggling into their tent is little more than a pinprick of cold against her heated skin. It's all she focuses on but nevertheless, she does not calm and the truth is she doesn't want to. She's ready to throw rocks because looking up now brings her face to face with two matching pairs of eyes telling her to give in. To surrender to the truth that whatever she does will not change what will happen. That she's too far from it all to alter the set course of events. That no one will listen anyway. 

Bitter vomit threatens to crawl up her throat when the galaxy jeers that there is no possible way she can help her best friend wherever she is and however she is. Not without the war tainting her hands in more red than they're already covered in. 

The rage doesn't diminish or soften, rather curls around the knife in her throat and shoves it deeper, leaving her breathless with prickling eyes and knotted insides. Sharply, Tabitha rips herself away from the hand tightened around her shoulder and takes a decisive step back, holding eye contact with Anakin for a prolonged moment. "You're the worst." Before switching her glowering stare to her own master. "Both of you." 

All volume vaporized within the minute, the words are but a broken, disgusted hiss that glides through the gaps between her teeth and is avoided even by the smallest gust of wind that would carry it away. 

Then the teenager runs. 

She pivots on the spot, not a second after the words left her lips, and dashes out of the tent before they could see the stray crystalline tear escaping the corner of her left eye. Before she could see their reactions which promise to hold… what exactly? Pity? Hurt? Anger? Disappointment? All of the above? 

All of what Ahsoka might be feeling?

The fresh air, free of any electric charge, hits her flushed skin and transforms the tear track into a stinging patch of frozen ice but she doesn't stumble or sputter. The minor pain helps her force her thoughts away and marginally, Tabby shuts them out, along with the bond resting there. 

She continues running, faster than her legs normally allow.

She runs, and runs, and runs…. 

Chapter Text

For what felt like eternities, Tabitha had run. Without knowing where, without knowing how, and barely remembering why when her legs finally buckled beneath her and she was left panting, wheezing for air. Her eyes had stayed screwed shut and even when they opened after minutes she couldn't see past the blurry golden outlines of the sun kissing the peaks of the far mountain range and the luscious green of the endless plains beneath, indicating she had long since left camp and ran all the way to the other side of a mountain onto a little cliff. 

Then her throbbing head had been left for her thoughts to reclaim. Thoughts about the argument (she was right and she wouldn't regret anything she said…. So why did mulling over every phrase sting worse than her lungs did?) Thoughts about the war (it's unfair and cruel but she knew that, didn't she?). Thoughts about the changes because of this lasting conflict (would the Jedi have dismissed the disappearance of their kin so readily ten years ago? Would Tabby have reacted the same had the war not made an impact on her?). Thoughts about the people she couldn't save, the friends she lost (Longshot left a geek-sized hole in the battalion after the Citadel, Click a blooming bitterness in her heart, and the hundreds of other men revealed a futility behind every fight no one wants to acknowledge). 

Ahsoka couldn't be another penalty of war, Tabitha couldn't -wouldn't- allow it. And yet, Tabby realized just how useless she was to her best friend from Centares. She finally acknowledged just how helpless she was.

A guttural scream had ripped through her burning lungs and constricted throat, muffled only by her own hands as red-hot tears plummeted to the rocky ground. 

Right now, walking ahead of the company that has been decimated to half its size in the past two hours or so, Tabitha can feel that same scream build up in her chest, frustration and guilt begging to be released audibly. 

But not here, not in front of everyone, not after all she's done wrong today already. 

It was easy. Get into the outpost, get rid of the trash cans defending it, and take it for the Republic, effectively declaring the onset of the war on Centares. 

One out of three worked out and it's not the first two. 

Perhaps that is the fault of their intel being shitty or the Separatists suddenly being overprepared rather than Tabitha's, but there was so much she could have done better that could have saved at least a dozen lives.

Had she put one and one together immediately, she might have noticed that there were more guards than there should have been. Had she not been hyper-focused on getting the battle on as a last-ditch effort to avoid thinking, she might have given more thought to the bad feeling brewing in her gut. Had she not been so adamant as to forgo talking to others out of petulance, they would have been able to blow the assault off and regroup. 

Had she slept the night before rather than sifting through report after report of missing people in the vicinity of Ahsoka's disappearance, her head might have been in the game when it came down to doing her job. Had she not been so ridiculously worried about the fact that the suspects of these missing reports were Trandoshan hunters no one managed to locate, she could have reduced the casualties and therefore the trauma that stemmed from it. 

So, yeah, the least she can do now is keep it together and not make a fuss about something that was clearly of her own making. 

However, her rushing thoughts seem to want to make it extra hard as they revolve around either the shitshow that was yesterday or the screw-up today. Not that the dozen sagging and sluggish footsteps or the depressing silence help anyhow. 

They would have been victorious by now, mourning some brothers but not so many. Not close to a hundred. Instead, here they are trudging through the shallow foliage of a sorry excuse of a forest, trying to avoid open fields and lose their opponents until they could reunite with the rest of the battalion and her master at the emergency rendezvous. 

Another thing she had quite literally pushed to the back of her mind and shut away since yesterday: Obi-Wan. 

He and Tabitha had spoken the barest minimum since she had returned, seemingly hours after she stormed off, to a camp riddled with worry for their agitated commander. A curt explanation for everyone and a louring glance at her master later and Tabby stomped off somewhere else. 

That must have been everyone's first and final indicator that something was wrong. Tabitha, angry and equally impassive, and Obi-Wan, dejected and uncharacteristically tight-lipped, was something that never should have fit into one sentence together, yet here they were. 

Thus, Tabby doesn't doubt that at least Cody knows exactly what's happened to cause all of this, whether it was from Obi-Wan or Rex, and the others most definitely suspect something. 

Which might have been another point that led to their pathetic defeat today. Too many people worried about her when they should have been worried because of her.

Groaning clandestinely, Tabitha raises her arms to rub her hands across her face in raw exhaustion and irritation at her unruly headspace. The monotonous thump-thump-thump of footsteps behind her only add to her annoyance for their uselessness in her search for distraction. 

However, she can't even be angry at anyone for that. Marching is what a soldier normally does, and soldiers born to fight? Well, no use trying to make them saunter instead of marching in sync.

A sudden pulsating spasm running down her right arm finally presents her with the distraction she was looking for as she lets it fall back to her side and focuses on the replica of her pulse that pumps new blood through the graze she suffered thanks to a particularly trigger-happy droid. 

With nauseous fascination, the padawan watches the wound sluggishly begin oozing again, dyeing the bandage casually plastered over the crusted grey cloth of her upper arm a brighter tone of red. 

Steadily, the boisterous noise of her thoughts turns into buzzing white noise when her brain leeches on the sharp pain in her arm and the ache in the rest of her body. Every painful throb brings her closer to absolute silence until even the men behind her are but a bee's buzzing.

For a few minutes, Tabby ambles ahead in relative peace, head empty and body achy, staring blankly forward at the different shades of green and brown overlaying the blue of the cloudless sky. 

It's only when a sudden presence jogs up to her left that the lulling bubble is popped and sound explodes in her ears, making the dulling pain in her arm vanish from her mind completely. 

Without even peeking to her left, the familiarity and ease with which this presence comes up from her rear tell Tabitha that it's her fellow commander. 

And sure enough, not a second passes before Cody's voice pipes through his helmet's filter, slightly distorted but still his. 

"How's the arm?" The question is formulated casual yet the tinge of concern, which resurfaces with every paper scratch she gets, is tangible. Humoring the man, the padawan peers at the limb in question, gaze lingering on the patch of red standing out from the slightly dirty bandage. Noting its lack of growth, Tabitha turns back to her friend.

"It should stop bleeding any minute now." She dismisses, keeping her previous annoyance from seeping into her voice. In response to her assessment, Cody's bucket tilts sideways almost inconspicuously and Tabby can feel the expectant quirked eyebrow underneath. Rolling her eyes, the young teenie huffs out an exasperated breath. 

"If it doesn't, I'll go to Stitch. Promise." She acquiesces which seems to be enough for Cody, judging by the pleased nod he gives her. Tabitha narrows her eyes at the clone commander. 

"I'm not Obi-Wan, you know?" 

"Is there a difference?" He deadpans in retaliation, earning himself a half-hearted push from the knee-high to his right. 

"Jerkhole." 

"Language."

"Okay, have you come here simply to nag me, O-Great Mother-hen , or is there a point to all of this?" The girl complains frivolously, the ghost of a smile flitting across her lips as Cody snorts in amusement. 

Amusement that dies away gradually and drags Tabitha's achieved peaceful state of mind with it when the real purpose behind Cody's visit dawns on her. 

" Pleeease don't tell me we need to take another detour? I just wanna get to the rendezvous without any more problems." Tabby whines miserably, looking up at her friend with a pleading expression and hoping that she won't bash into a tree or trip over a rock (With her luck, she would probably suffer a broken nose and/or concussion). Cody inclines his head with a worn sigh, one hand coming up to tug at the rim of his helmet as if he actually wanted to rub his chin. 

"Not a detour then. An evasive maneuver?" 

It's supposed to be a joke but it lacks the genuine mirth to come off as one and misses its goal to alleviate the wound-up tension therefore by a hundred clicks. In response, Tabby lets her head sag, chin to chest, cursing their joined luck quietly under her breath. 

'Stop being miserable, start being helpful.'

Gritting her teeth against the renewed wave of frustration, the padawan presses a sharp breath through pursed lips and rolls her shoulders, standing as tall as possible. 

It's time to be the highest-ranking officer on-site again, not a sulking teenager.

"What exactly are we going to have to 'evade'?" Tabitha questions, emphasizing the last word with lazy air quotes and watching as her query is met with Cody digging out his holoprojector silently, activating it with a quick flick of the button. 

Flickering to life, the hologram shapes the forest and plains around them, every individual tree placed exactly where it should be, every mountain and hill outlined in great detail. 

Identical to every other time of the one-hundred times she's gone over that map in preparation. Yet, there's something different about it and it takes her embarrassingly long to figure out what it is. Just long enough for Cody to point it out anyway. 

"Surveillance did another scan of our route to rule out the possibility of an ambush." He informs her, one finger trailing along the red line simulating their calculated way through Centares' wilderness. Instead of reaching their destination, however, the gloved digit comes to an abrupt halt at the entrance of a valley they were to pass through, connecting it to a wide-open field on the right and another forest on the left beyond the cluster of mountains circling said valley. 

Where the passageway was empty before, now there are the blaring red images of numerous small buildings arranged just so that they'd have to pass right through them according to their navigation aid.   

"However, their scanners picked up a small settlement located in the passage nearest to our rendezvous and they have reason to believe a Separatist transporter is deploying infantry troops there now." Simultaneously to Cody's indication, the holographic silhouette of a dropship appears hovering in the sky above. 

"Obviously, we're not following through on that plan then." Tabby states the obvious, earning herself a curt bob of the head from the other commander as her thoughtful gaze travels over the 3D map, taking in the rest of the valley in an effort to find a way out of their current predicament which will lead the rest of their beaten company to impending doom. 

"What are our options?" 

Cody moves before she even fully finishes her inquiry, effectively disrupting her view of the occupied settlement by zooming into a different spot with a short flick of his fingers. 

Another canyon separating cliffs relatively close to their initial path that could serve as another possible passage to reach their goal, although the detour will cost them an additional precious hour the rest of their troops might not be able to dwell in one place for.  

The picture swerves to the beginning of the mountain ring they are just about to enter, showing a path alongside the cliffside right next to the open field. No cover whatsoever, yet they would have some time to spare upon arriving at the rendezvous point. 

Now, it's up to Tabitha to decide whether they take the first or second option. Slow and steady and therefore safe, or fast and reckless. 

Both have their pros and cons but the decision is easy, nevertheless. Not that there were any considerable counterarguments against the first option laying on the scale. Risking their safety for their comfort by taking the uncovered route would have serious consequences for all of them because at some point they will have to pass either directly over the vast field or past the valley's entrance. Sensors and scanners would be completely unnecessary to spot them. Like sore thumbs, they'd stick out from the fresh blades of grass and colorful plumes of flowers. 

She'd rather have them pass as close to the village as possible to head for the other entrance/exit without being detected. Even though it'll cost them some time, the foliage will hopefully provide them with enough cover to conceal themselves from their enemy's infantry and surveillance. 

"We'll take the long way around." Tabitha decides, her left index finger now coming up as they continue to march to swipe at the holo, refocusing it onto the aforesaid way. "Once the settlement comes into sight, we'll graze by it undetected using the valley's vegetation, hopefully saving us some time until we exit it." She says, finger trailing along the path she foresees for them to take. 

Hardly half a click of distance will separate them from curious and/or hostile eyes at best, but Tabitha prays that for once Centares will bless them with lush greenery to shield those eyes away. 

"From then on we'll stay low to avoid detection until we rendezvous with the others." Tabitha wraps up her plan swiftly, looking up at the taller commander for some sort of approval she didn't actually need. 

Still, her counterpart satiates her wish for some sign of acceptance with an appreciative nod and a regulatory "Roger that, Commander." before thumbing off the device in his hand and tucking it back into his belt pouch. 

Thereafter, Cody updates the rest of the men over their helmet coms, receiving understanding replies from his tuckered out brothers before the thicket falls back into its natural state of cawing and squealing animals, rustling leaves, snapping twigs, and marching armors.  

They enter the valley, rearrange their course, keep walking, keep listening, keep watching . 

It's a rhythm that ingrains itself deep into every fiber of her being after merely twenty minutes of it. 

Walk, listen, watch. 

Walk, listen, watch. 

Routine is truly a wonderful thing for a troubled mind that has been so desperately trying to stay on a linear path instead of spiraling into unprecedented chaos. Like a lifeline, routine guides her to a safer headspace not wrecked by a wicked typhoon. 

A vacant headspace where nothing but numbness could spread. Where nothing else should spread.

Tabitha is woefully proven wrong when, after a total of thirty minutes of trek, Cody is yet again the sledgehammer that tears her cemented state of mind apart, plunging her into the dark recesses of her thoughts while the man himself is totally oblivious to the havoc he causes. 

"Tabitha, about yesterday-"

" Don't. " The girl hisses sharply. She can practically hear the click of Cody's jaw snapping shut and see the frown boring into her from underneath the helmet. Taking a deep breath, Tabby releases whatever it is that threatens to bubble out of her and presses on. 

"Just don't . I just need…" 

'...Ahsoka to come back? For her to be fine in general? I need someone to do something? I need someone to care again? I need to not feel useless? I need to do something or I'll never forgive myself?' 

"...time." 

Uneasy silence is her answer as Cody rings for something - anything - to say or ask which would help clarify the sudden change in behavior that is continuously reigning between their jetii .

However, one look at the padawan's eyes silences him. 

The reflecting orbs usually so vibrant, now appear shrouded and smothered, their joyous light gorged out of them.  

Therefore, Cody screws his mouth shut, albeit begrudgingly, and determines it the best approach to allow Tabitha the time she requested. 

But the universe can bet its finest, he will find out what caused their commander (their sister) to descend into listlessness and anger, even if he'll have to pester Obi-Wan for a week until he tells him.  

The rest of their 'hike' remains coated in this unsettled hush and Tabitha endeavors to fall back into the rhythm from before, failing more than once when she finds the void now filled with repetitive thoughts and feelings and immediately reels back as if burned, scrambling away in a pure panic because she fears being overwhelmed. 

For another ten minutes, it's rinse-and-repeat of this procedure.

Walk, listen, watch, find the rhythm, and lose it again. Repeat.   

That is until a cacophony of other sounds trifles through the leaves and plants and the elongated, rectangular outline of a dark ship peeks over the shallow treetops, high above the house-like shapes just beyond the treeline. 

Suddenly rooted to the spot by some imaginary force, Tabitha can only stare at the floating ship as wails of terror penetrate the rumbling air and viciously stab through her eardrums like a hundred-million pins and needles.

"That isn't a Separatist dropship."

Chapter Text

Tabitha could hear them clearly now like she was right in the midst of it all. 

At the epicenter of terror. 

The fearful screams, desperate calls, and heart-wrenching sobs all blur along with her vision. Nauseating swirls and twirls across her vision, so regrettably normal that it barely makes her bat an eye anymore when the world is sucked into a tremendous gravity well. 

To be replaced by another.

Vibrant green and healthy brown morph into the creamy yellowing hue of cracked walls with discolored flat roofs, making up the common rotund or rectangular dingy houses. The chiseled stone foundations framing the single-story buildings' outlines and their door frames are covered in grimy moss. 

And in some spots even littered with smoking scorched craters. 

That's the second thing her hazy brain registers once her vision is eventually clear of the dancing whirlwind, the initial being the clash of metal that predominates the symphony of panic that crawls up her back, lifting the hairs on the nape of her neck. 

Movements strong but slow and dull as she pivots on the spot, Tabby swallows past the uncomfortable lump in her throat that festered when she took note of the underlying numbness in her bones, provoked by the multitude of sensations beating down on her.  

"Separate past from present, vision from reality." Master Vos' voice resonates through her head, reminding her of one of their first lessons together. "Focus on the differences, let them ground you before paying attention to the vision." 

The numbness becomes a grudging anchor, her distinction between now and then as her wobbly gaze lands on a handful of metal cages lining the massive mountain wall, darkened by the looming shadow of the very same ship the afflicted padawan saw the canopy of.  

Tabitha pays attention then, doesn't move towards the assortment of multicolored limbs jutting out of the sturdy bars, desperately flailing, praying, and pleading with their captors whose towering forms shake with sinister laughs and victorious utterances. 

Focusing solely on breathing evenly and the feeling of her movements, Tabitha shuts out the villagers' past selves crying out for mercy and the assailants' smug expressions and coerces her legs to carry her closer. 

In hindsight, had she paid closer attention to everything transpiring around her perhaps it wouldn't have come as such a shock to her. 

The fuscous and green scales of reptilian heads, the ample physique, the claws, the lisp, the literal mention of the thrill that comes with hunting these people later. 

Her irises shouldn't have expanded as far as they did when the revelation hit her, wrapping around her ankles like a twisting vine and rooting her to the spot. 

Suddenly, Tabitha is left blinking as a burst of different colors explodes before her, an abrupt silence cuts off the terrific clamor, and a heavyweight settles in her previously hollow bones. Latter threatens to drag her down to the floor if not for the steadying hands cupping her elbows and the firm shape bolstering her left shoulder. 

For another minute, the crux of her vision withers beneath the swimming of brain fluids and the painful palpitation of veins and arteries before her body remembers how to handle the spur-of-the-moment force reaction. 

The migraine-like ache diminishes and her legs work to carry the seemingly doubled weight of her body until she can feel the muscles in her calves grow rigid and the pressure of the ground against the soles of her black leather boots. 

"Trandoshans." 

The fifteen-year-old didn't mean for that slip out like a hiss but it did and due to their close proximity, Cody heard. 

"What?"

The clone commander half-expects nothing to sprout from his inquiry, so once Tabitha manages to hold her own again and all she gives him is a curt nod, he tentatively releases her elbows and steps back, still perplexed by the girl's contextless hiss. 

This leads Tabby to also realize that the entire company has come to halt behind them, some staring at them, others at the posing threat that is that transport. 

And none asking questions. 

Retrocognition has become another constant throughout the years. Since Rhudaur . By now it's nothing more than going through the motions whenever it pops up. No one, except for shinies, questions this anymore.

However, this time she breaks the cycle by forgoing the usual explanation. 

"Com Obi-Wan. Now. "  

From then on, time switches to fast forward, and just like a video, she watches the characters (including herself) jerk around madly, slinking deeper into the bushes, antsy and anxious hardly a click away from a new potential (real, very real) threat with the clankers breathing down their necks. 

Tabitha didn't forget that. Nobody forgot that. 

Yet nobody challenged her command either as they impatiently waited for the 212th's general to answer his com.

Or when she didn't give them anything, despite the questions clear in their concise glances.

Nor when the portable size image of Obi-Wan denies her request to move in and clear out the Trandoshans and she starts spewing some righteous, honorable, good banthashit to cover up her selfish truth. 

She can't even listen to herself blabbering on about how the Jedi must protect people like these as it is their duty as peacekeepers and defenders of the galaxy. Gets sick when she can't be bothered to even try to be genuine in her care for these villagers. 

It's not like she doesn't care at all. It's just that seeing those poor villagers stuffed in cages, petrified and hopeless, wasn't the jumping point for her. To be truthful, without the Trandoshans there presenting humanoid manifestations of intel, Tabitha would have marched on, however reluctantly and guilt-ridden. She would have put the safety of her surviving troops above the rescue of the forty-man village, willfully sacrificing a few excruciating hours of sleep to mull over her numerous questionable life choices. 

But Life thought otherwise and granted her one opportunity to accomplish something. 

For Ahsoka. 

For her best friend who could be Force knows where and in what condition. 

And she would take it. Will do whatever it takes to wrangle this opportunity into her hands. 

Even if it meant being disgusted by herself and her volatile morals as she guilt-trips her master and every skeptic person nearby into conceding, claiming that abandoning these people would prove that the Republic stooped as low as the Separatists. 

Tabitha forces the acid bile down her throat, swallowing to lessen the burn as she stares her master's holo down. 

"Alright." The Jedi General eventually relents, taut shoulders slumping and eyebrows furrowing as he gazes at his restless padawan's invisible fidgeting, concealed by a steady stance. 

Fingers twitching atop her biceps as if searching for something to occupy themselves with, the working of her jaw abruptly ceases when instead of the ecstasy and accomplishment she should be feeling her insides stay remarkably numb, contracting slightly every now and then. 

A feeling she can identify too well as disappointment.

Disappointed at what, one might ask and frankly Tabby knows no plausible answer. It's not like she wanted to be called off for being selfish, right? 

'Right...'

"But under no circumstances are you to engage these pirates head-on, am I understood?" 

Instantly, Tabitha's hardened young features contort into a lowering scowl/glare when her master engages in another staring contest, leaving the intended implication to hang heavy between them. 

'Don't let your feelings for Ahsoka compromise you and the ones around you or you might lose more than just her.' 

Like springs the joints in her jaw lock back into their previous grinding motions and her blunt nails dig into her grey sleeves but this time Obi-Wan will not surrender. 

He grows stern in a way he is scarcely required to with Tabitha. No space for false interpretation or counter-argument. 

Not a plea but an order.

"I'm talking to you , Tabitha. Your only objective is to rescue the residents. No excursions that would endanger yourself and your troops. Am I understood? "

"Yes… Master ."

Chapter Text

In essence, the plan is simple. 

One team creates a diversion while the other one moves in, frees the villagers, and leads them into the nearby thicket where they reunite with Team One before evacuating the valley. 

In detail, on the other hand, 'undesirable' (*cough*) complications were unveiled. 

One of them being the tricky disregard of their general's orders they have to condone. 

However, Tabitha would rather allow a part of their company to be engaged by the enemy on her terms, with Cody and the rest of the distraction team having the high ground on the mountain ridge on the completely different side of the village, far from the hostages. 

This would give the other half of the company, including herself, enough time to accomplish their part of the plan… and perhaps even snatch some sliver of intel on the Trandoshans' main base of operations. Or wherever the kriff they hold their sick hunts. 

Her window of opportunity is small but it exists and as long as that's the case, Tabitha will do her damn best to use it.   

Ahsoka would do the same for her 

Without putting more friends in even more danger. 

So if Tabitha is going to do this, she'll have to do a good part of it alone which is adverse to Obi-Wan's orders, no doubt about it. 

But if more than two years of dealing with the 501st and their Jedi superiors have taught her anything, it's that you have to bend the rules -sometimes until you break them- to achieve effective results.  

They're already kind of doing so anyway, engaging the enemy after being explicitly told not to. But Tabby is one-hundred percent certain that order was meant exclusively for her. And if that's not just plain infuriating…

Honestly, Tabitha is quite surprised she hasn't been subjected to multiple degrading lectures about proper Jedi behavior. Or putting purpose above emotion. 

Or that she was allowed to continue without him after yesterday in the first place. 

Foot tapping against the ground at a rapid pace and arms crossed, Tabitha begins to feel like her sour expression and stiff body language have turned to stone thanks to the sheen of grime (and trickles of blood) . 

Once or twice someone approached her with questions and she tried to stay placid and kind, she really did but they always returned to their previous positions, seemingly dissuaded after seeing the resting glare in her eyes. 

Tabitha attempted to smooth it out because she felt truly bad for making the others uncomfortable talking to her but she could not do it. 

Despite her several attempts, her attitude remains as steadfast as the mountain to her far-right, prompting Tabitha to simply resign herself to being off-putting indefinitely as they wait for Cody's signal.

A quite obvious signal, regarding that even with both teams being on two opposite sides of a small town, it can be recognized without an ounce of effort. 

Admittedly, the beginning of a blaster fight tends to make some… nois e. 

The instant the telltale crescive yowls of discharging plasma bolts light up the near horizon, red and blue clashing in a heated quarrel, Tabitha gives the order to move. 

Taking the front, the Jedi Padawan emerges from the bushes with the warm steel of her lightsabers clasped tightly in her freezing hands as the Force sweeps across their projected path along the edge of the village. 

Like antennary extensions of herself, Tabitha lets the Force map out the area through the buzzing energy exuding from every single living cell residing within. 

Slowly but surely, a mental image materializes before her eyes. Every stone, every small slope, and minor climb, every leaf, every insect she can observe as thin silhouettes trailing the alleys they duck into to reach the oppressive mist of their destination. An opaque cloud of troubled presences she dares not brush against. 

Thus, the Jedi commander keeps her third eye far from that, rather straining it to watch out for the varying sharp Force signatures that she knows represent their reptilian opponents while her actual vision stays trained on the path they hurry along. 

Weaving in and out of small alleyways and open dirt roads, their team creeps from cover to cover to reach the cages as fast as possible. 

Their size, however, makes going unseen a tad harder but with the Trandoshans' distracted and the 212th's ability to maneuver around the best of enemies (a virtue made out of necessity) it hardly poses a minor inconvenience as they draw closer and closer to their goal. 

And as they do so, Tabitha also starts to grow restless, mind and focus wondering, going to dangerous lengths to dredge up some sort of plan. 

Perhaps a chance encounter with a lone patrol at some point during their impromptu undertaking will grant her a private insight into the Trandoshans' secrets. Or maybe one of the civilians caught a snippet of a revealing conversation. 

Too many unknowns and uncertainties for Tabitha's liking. Yet the girl cannot just split from the group the moment the villagers are out of their cages to take a leisurely stroll around town, with the intention to be lucky, nevertheless.

...Maybe this was a bad idea after all. 

Everyone else seemed to think - know - so. They were battered and beaten long before Tabitha decided to serve them on a silver platter to a bunch of low-life pirates. For a lot of maybes, she is willing to trade not just her life but everyone's. The villagers', her men's, perhaps her master's. But what plunges her heart down into the hollow of her stomach is the realization that Ahsoka is another part of the trade. 

Suppose Tabitha walks out of here empty-handed, as clueless and lost and scared as before, will she get another chance? 

Or is there truly no way she can be of any help to her childhood friend? 

Her hands begin to throb intensely and encourage the girl to peer down at the limbs clamped around the curved hilts, enabling the hard edges of their bluish steel to cut into her palms. A bit sharper and they would draw blood, sprinkling the pale skin and snow-white knuckles that frame pulsing veins in crimson drops.

Deliberately, the teenager unclamps one tendon after the other and winces when the ache surges for a split second. She lets it rid her brain of the fog of thoughts that had managed to shroud it, enabling her to collect herself and rearrange her focus. All eyes yet again set on their surroundings, Tabitha squashes her pessimistic thought processes, blocking off every upcoming path with silly consolations, and opts to instead follow the straight line of the plan - until an alternative opens itself. 

Rounding corners and half-jogging across straight patches of the road, they arrive at their destination before long - without any trouble or change of plans. 

The soft thuds and clashes of fleshy tissue hitting and rattling metal bars can be heard ahead of time, long before they step onto the plaza. 

Darkened by the mountain, the frantic villagers initially seem to take no notice of the extraction squad sneaking toward them until a handful of people start exclaiming in restrained hope, giving rise to a different sort of clamor. Quieter, fewer whimpers, yet suspicious of the dirty white-orange armor and prominent robes which are known across the galaxy as part of the GAR. 

Tabitha can't blame them.

A few curt hand gestures and the squad splits in two, one faction moving to the left toward the village's center while the other makes a beeline for the rusty holding contraptions. 

With her at the front of the right group, Tabby glances over her shoulder to see the boys of the left securing the connecting pathways, two each with Hawkeye keeping his keen eye on the enemy transport with a pair of army-issue electrobinoculars from a secluded corner of the deserted plaza. 

The brief glimpse allows the line of her shoulders to shift from a tight line to a healthy curve. 

Feeling more than sufficiently guarded, the young commander addresses herself to the task at hand: Breaking the locks. Quick and easy. 

A cursory skim of the cages' locking mechanisms reveals rustic electromagnetic locks with fail-secure latches to contain whoever is kept within in case of power failure. 

Hence, she forgoes the inspection of whatever supplies these obsolete constructions with power and coils the Force around the locks themselves, heeding structural integrities and engineering faults to exploit. 

Deftly applying force to the selected spots is all it takes and an ensemble of identical crunches announces her success, hardly drowning out the stunned gasps and not at all the flitting mash of sensations surrounded and contained by a stringent sense of awe. 

Eyes fluttering open, Tabitha lowers her strained arms she had raised subconsciously, curling her crooked fingers around the hilts of her lightsabers as the Force withdraws from its victimized object and she watches her men pull the busted doors open. Now and then, sparks burst from their hinges, posing the only visible evidence of maimed open circuits besides the crushed scrap that had made up the electromagnetic bolts. 

Before the doors are even fully open, villagers scramble from their confinement and would have dispersed in all possible directions had the troops not thwarted them by (gently) grabbing, restraining, and ordering them to remain in the group. They obtain wide-eyed, terrified, and mistrusting looks, but with some more consolation that they had nothing to fear, they were here to help, most of them settled down a bit. Although, Tabby believes it might be more out of self-preservation than actual willingness. Not to mention, it would be rather stupid to go against armed soldiers and the civvies seem to share that sentiment. 

Tabitha is about to lend Jumper -one of their aerial troopers who looks painfully out of his depth- a hand with a shrieking Sephi woman when a withered and aged voice hinders her and she becomes increasingly aware of someone's focus resting solely on her.

" A Jedi ! What is a Jedi doing on Centares?" 

The Jedi Padawan senses no malice nor any feasible good emotion in the male Lannik striding towards her with all the authority and confidence that could fit into his tiny body without spilling out of his downward-sloping, large ears. 

Immediately, the image of Even Piell flashes before her eyes who pranced through the Halls of the Temple as if he owned the place and whose presence filled a room faster than most Jedi Masters'. 

Except for the lack of the scar, this Lannik looks relatively similar to Master Piell: A slack, wrinkly face, old grey eyes, and long ebony hair tied up in a sloppy pigtail that contrasts his lightly tanned skin tone. 

Tabitha's chapped lips part, intending to diffuse what could prove to be a rather awkward situation right when they need it the least, however, all that passes is "Sir-" before the very same interrupts her, quite rudely. 

"Has the Republic finally come to drag the war back to this world?" 

'Alright. Uncalled for but… perhaps too close to the truth.' 

The elderly man proceeds to caterwaul about the Republic's betrayal of its citizens and the Separatists' equally negligent governance, and if not for the clock ticking thunderously at the back of her skull, Tabby would have found his restraint admirable. She could still not sense a pinch of malice towards her or her troops in particular. Merely resentment for the whole war, both sides. 

Moments like this, in spite of everything, Tabitha wishes for her master. Two years under the Negotiator have done a moderate job at improving her diplomatic negotiating skills.

 She's okay but far from Obi-Wan, so it was inevitable when the pressure of the situation forced her to act and silence the sullen Lannik rather harshly. 

" Sir! " 

Promptly, the village elder falls silent.  

"I know you might not trust the Republic. Perhaps you even detest us more than the Separatists. But this isn't about whose side you take. This about your people's survival."

This appears to catch his attention and sober him up as Tabitha sees her opening and swoops in. 

"I do not ask you to forgive or forget, but right now I need your trust and your assistance so we can help you and all these people." The padawan says, gesturing grandly to the crowd that had accumulated around them. 

"And how do you plan to do that, Jedi? You cannot defeat the likes of these hooligans with your battered soldiers." 

"That's why we won't fight them." 

The small man raises a bushy eyebrow but the realization is already written in his narrowed eyes and wafting through the Force.  

"You need to convince your people to leave."

A second long delay before the people burst into a rambunctious flurry of protest that has Tabitha gritting her teeth and anxiously peeking over her shoulder to keep track of the ebbing colors over the housetops. 

"We have lived here for generations and you expect us to simply leave?" The Lannik demands, subduing his fellow villagers who all flock around him consciously as if to back him up. 

Tabitha hardly refrains from rubbing her forehead in agitation.  

"Pirates only remain in one place as long as it's profitable. And the only profit for the Trandoshans here is the potential prey for their hunting games." 

Tabitha makes sure to meet each glare directed at her head-on. 

" You ." 

Swiftly, they all drop their scowls, averting their eyes. 

"If you leave, at some point they will too and then you can return to your lives here. But if you stay, you will end up as their hunting trophies."

Unlike his fellows, the senior townsman maintains steady eye contact and Tabitha can feel his stare piercing into her skull, looking straight into her thoughts. Still, she stands her ground, hoping her expressive gaze conveys the gravity of her fierce statement. 

It feels like half an eternity before the Lannik expresses some kind of reaction but, luckily, it is the one she desired. 

"You heard her, my friends. We will return but for now, we shall follow the Jedi and her soldiers."

Understandably, the idea still sparks unease but the villagers seem to take his word and trust his judgment if the way they all back down from trying to charge through her men is anything to go by. 

Tabitha almost manages a sigh of relief when a shrill outcry perforates her left eardrum. 

"No, we can't leave!"

'Honestly, do people just not understand that we don't have the time or manpower?!'  

Tabby has to bite the inside of her cheek to swallow the irked shout, instead turning her head very slowly to the left where she is met with the sight of the same Sephi woman Tabitha had originally planned to help Jumper with. 

Striding towards them with hastened steps, Tabby just now realizes how compact the other woman is built. 

She barely has two heads on Tabitha, whose body had its last growth spurt at the age of ten, and, unlike the few Sephi she has seen mainly ambling through Coruscant's shops, she has more profound curves. Her physique rounds off that look of a young, kind backwater lady (young for Sephi standards) who unfortunately drives Tabitha bonkers right about now.  

Her snow-white hair stands up in chaotic knots, some strands soaked in sweat clinging to her pale purplish complexion. Tears roll from her reddened brown eyes over the crescent-shaped rubies on her cheeks, creating a drying track that is a slightly disturbing hint at how long she must have been crying for. 

Rapidly, Tabby's mood shifts from annoyance to guilt, her queasy stomach doing a sloppy somersault as she harshly swallows the acrid substance in her throat. 

'You're supposed to be a Jedi! So by the stars, start acting like one.'

"Berilyn, dear, what's wrong?" The elderly Lannik steps before the distraught woman, prompting Tabitha to fully turn to the Sephi female. He lays a consoling hand on her forearm that seems to send the already cracked dam crumbling as renewed tears well up in her deer-brown eyes and panicked stammering streams from her lips. Imperceptibly, Tabby reels back from the raw velocity of the words, hardly containing the desperation spurring them on as it slams into the teenager's rigid mental shields.

"Eryk- he's still out there! I told him to hide, and he's not here, and he's still out there..." A wet hiccup interrupts her and gives Tabitha the time to comprehend her words and the sickeningly familiar chunky feeling of a choice regarding life and death settles in the hollow pit of her belly. 

"My poor Eryk… he must be so scared." The Sephi, Berilyn, whimpers, and Tabitha is about to speak up and request more information when a sudden shift in demeanor throws the girl for a loop. 

With the force of a fleet of Dreadnoughts, two frail yet powerful hands grasp at her shoulders, sharp fingertips gouging out her shoulder blades as Tabitha is forced to meet moist but steely eyes. 

"We can't leave, Jedi! I can't leave my son behind! He's all I have!" 

Hardly refraining from twisting out of the mother's relentless grip, Tabby is so fixated on the resolve shining through the cracks of a breaking woman, gluing the crumbling parts back together, the padawan hardly catches sight of Archer, a clone lieutenant, coming up behind the Sephi, the question clear in the tilt of his head and deliberate dip of his barrel. 

Tabitha shakes her head and makes a choice. 

Flat green meets blazing brown and for a moment - just a diminutive moment - Tabby feels a surge of something meaningful as she understands the depth of the mother's will. 

Carved deep into her bones is a rule, a way of life: Nothing can keep her from those she loves. Never would she abandon them. 

And if Tabitha would judge that, what would she be but a hypocrite? 

She came here for Ahsoka and Berilyn wants to stay for her son. 

Perhaps there is a way Tabitha can help both.

Headlong, the padawan drops parts of her shields, allowing all sensations to enter yet suppressing those that dull her senses as she coerces the Force to reach further, past the known plain. Eyelids fluttering shut, dirtied hands come up to wrap around the bare purple skin of the older woman. She dismisses her confusion and silently prays for forgiveness. Unnecessary, for Berilyn, will not feel a thing of the minor ministrations to the bond whose existence even the mother is unaware of. It's a delicate little thing, however inseparable without a doubt and it takes Tabitha less than a minute to locate the raw, frantic energy at the other end, subdued merely by a sheen of hope that his mother will come for him - will come home !

"I know where your son is." Tabitha hears herself say, dulled by the dissipating fog of the Force but unconsciously gentle as if she was treading dangerous waters, at risk of setting off a skittish animal. The pressure lifts from her shoulder blades, leaving aching bruises, as Tabby's eyes blink open again. 

"He's okay?" Berilyn gasps and Tabitha nods, lifting the slack hands off her shoulders and letting them slip from hers with what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze. 

"Yes, and I will make sure it stays that way." The ravenette soothes, beckoning Archer over who had kept a strategic distance up until now. 

"But I need to go alone to do that." 

Instantly, a dangerous glimmer enters the Sephi's slumped stance and her face hardens but Tabitha will not be thwarted. 

"You will only endanger your son further by accompanying me." The fifteen-year-old stresses. "I promise you I can - I will - bring him back to you but for that, you need to go with my men." She says, gesturing to Archer who has long since come to a stand beside her. Tabby can just feel the disapproving stare boring through the visor but brushes it off with too much ease. All the while, a current of emotion whirls around the distraught mother before her, seemingly persistent in its growth until the Lannik steps in and saves Tabby from giving in to the (unethical) urge demanding her to just force Berilyn to obey. 

"Berilyn, the young Jedi is right." For a second, said Jedi is taken by surprise, the previous distrust still fresh in her mind contrasting starkly against what she bears witness to presently. 

"She will bring Eryk back." He says and Tabitha catches his sideways glance impatiently, growing more agitated the fewer sounds of blaster fire reach her ears. 

"You must trust her." 

At first glance, it doesn't appear to be working as the mother's eyes keep dashing from the Lannik to her to Archer and back, and Tabitha almost gives in then. Gritting her teeth and breathing in a lungful of air through her creased nose, the padawan already calls upon that part of the Force and soaks her vocal cords in its power. Merely to be taken by surprise and, consequently, lose her hold as Berilyn complies with the younger girl's request, shoulders heaving with a suffering sigh and lips curling softly. 

" Please. " 

All she can do for an instant is stare at their receding backs, flabbergasted, but shakes herself out of her stupor before someone could notice and turns to face Archer who has yet to receive his orders (although he's quite certain he knows exactly what his commander will say).

"Archer, you're in charge now." Tabitha begins, prompting the clone lieutenant to give a curt nod. 

"Stick to the plan and get these people out of here. I'll catch up to you as soon as I can." 

There's a slight delay before Archer yet again nods, slow and clearly opposed to the idea but he doesn't raise his concerns. 

He understands. Truly does. Yet, he also understands that the kid hasn't been at the top of her game lately, lacking the childish ease that is just so Tabitha he didn't know existed until now. It's concerning but not crucial enough to deter her. 

(That doesn't mean Commander Cody isn't going to learn about it as soon as he can.) 

Archer sets to leave, march off to where the rest of his brothers have rounded up the civvies near their exit route when meek fingers wrap around the scratched armor of his forearm. Looking down at the hand, Archer's hazel eyes trail up the equally as filthy arm braces before his visor comes to rest on the side of Tabitha's face. 

Merely peeking at the lieutenant in her peripheral vision, the padawan keeps her eyes averted as she adds another order. 

"If I'm not back with the boy when you reach the town's borders, don't wait. Keep going and meet up with the others." 

A precaution, really, but a necessary one, Tabitha thinks. Archer, on the other hand, does not and this time opens his mouth to object, only to be intercepted by the girl who had sensed his disapproval. 

"I will call if I run into some sort of problems but we cannot risk getting caught out in the open. Understood?" 

"Comma-"

"Understood, Lieutenant?" 

Finally, her green eyes snap to his, meeting his stare dead-on as if the helmet was nothing but transpirasteel. 

What he saw doesn't scare him (not that the kid could ever scare him) but it has him swallow further objections and ground out a dutiful "Yes, Commander." 

The hand glides from his wrist and without further interaction, Tabitha sets off in a sprint and launches herself on top of one of the many flat roofs, her mop of jet black hair vanishing behind its stone railing. 

In one swift movement, Archer turns around while simultaneously whipping out his communicator.

Chapter Text

Automatic doors. 

Silent, simple, and far more secure than most hinged doors before their time. Hardly any outer mechanics that can rust and fail at the most inopportune times, yet technicalities that still could. But isn't that just the bittersweet taste of failure? 

Star travel begins with these doors. One of the first inventions a species fabricates before the dawning of more complex things. Automated machines and technology that can sustain and ease life. That, even at its base, is the peak of modern societies.

And yet, each society neglects its duty to maintain what they've invented, letting it corrode until it ceases to function only to be replaced instead of repaired.

Tabitha doesn't understand these kinds of individuals. People in backwater sludge holes who make the acquirement of technology a big hassle but then never bother to keep them up to speed. 

Even something as simple as door maintenance seems to go way above their heads as Tabitha, unfortunately, comes to realize, standing in front of the one door she needs to enter that looks - and works - about as good as Artoo after a mud bath. 

Unlocking the door poses no difficult challenge, doing it quietly on the other hand…

A wince pulls at the coarse skin between her eyebrows, the thin layer of dirt powdering under the strain (making her feel wholly uncomfortable and incredibly filthy) while her lips twist into a snarl. As if the door had done something more to offend her than just squeak, and groan, and rattle its way to victory. Tabby can hear every gear and wire grating against the durasteel casing individually as it shuffles its way open, swallowing the growing silence that arose in the wake of the blasters' destructive wail. 

The walls catch each screeching and seem to bounce it off their fellows ten times louder, leading the peevish padawan to fall back into a crouch and let her sharp gaze scan her immediate surroundings. 

It appears the closer Tabitha draws to the mountain canyon leading out of the valley, the denser the infrastructure of the village becomes. Where houses were barely in each other's proximity at the edge of the forest, entire streets are now lined with three to four one-story houses on each side, pressed neatly against one another. The same goes for the street she's on right now - quite a distance away from the cages - which culminates in another line of houses head-on splitting the road to the right (the direction she came from) and the left (where she had spotted some kind of town square before). 

The houses themselves all look the same except for the tiny decorations, ornaments, and symbols that make them homes. Flat-roofed with chiseled foundations and small windows carved into their rundown but sturdy walls. 

No sign of any threat but also, Tabby mentally sighs, peeking through the curtained window of the home she is about to invade, no sign of the boy. Of course, she knows that he is in there, his Force signature frankly prominent now that she's aware of it. 

Over the time it took for her to get here, his presence barely twitched beyond its seemingly natural trilling hum, intercepted now and then by slight hiccups. 

Mind you, Tabitha has taken her sweet time to get here, as horrible as it sounds, looking for… something. With the firefight over, the girl had thought she would get lucky and cross paths with a lonely guard or patrol and 'convince' them to reveal some sensitive information about their base operations. 

No luck with that, though. Or anything else for that matter.  Perhaps she should start listening to her master whenever he says there's no such thing as luck. 

She would have continued her search for a few more minutes had she not suddenly found herself near Berilyn's home and the frightened boy hidden inside. Close enough to detect the searing cold churning under the crumbling snug sheet of faith that had her faltering. 

It was then that she realized:

Tabitha can't help both.

The kid or Ahsoka? 

A stranger who Tabitha had promised to return to his family unharmed or her best friend who she had promised to forever be with? 

Tabitha was torn. 

At that moment, Tabby felt herself being pulled in two separate directions by two pairs of hands as two disembodied voices wrangled for her attention. The hands pulling her forward belonged to a voice, thick with emotion, that sounded distinctively like Anakin telling her that Tabby was Ahsoka's friend, she couldn't abandon her like everybody else, she'll lose her if she walked away now. 

But then there was that other voice, rich in its accent and infuriatingly lacking the exigent tone of the first one while still maintaining its urging undertone, and it spoke of a Jedi's duty to the people - spitting her earlier words back at her -, about forbidden attachments and clouded judgment that keep her from doing what is expected of her. The hands accompanying it tried to steer her backward, toward the boy, but Tabitha found herself rooted to the spot, breath catching in her throat as the weight of another choice settled on her chest and threatened to crush her lungs. 

Never before had a choice impacted her like this. 

Never before had it sat in between her ribs like a growing fire threatening to choke her as her lungs started to burn and her heart started to clench in order to protect itself from the vicious embers rising to her mouth and eyes. Air seemed like a hundred million parsecs away as her knees began to shake and her hands trembled. 

Right then and there, amid enemy territory, on top of an empty rooftop with no alternatives, the teen sank to her knees, groping at the top of her skull before fisting a bunch of greasy hair in her hands, tears framing her bottom eyelids but not falling. Time slowed - or maybe it didn't - but it hardly mattered as her mind and heart held a gruesome battle that would leave no victors. 

It could have been seconds or minutes when the voices and hands tearing her apart from the inside out we're drowned out by something else. 

Another ghostly touch, so much more gentle, appeared to unfurl the fists ripping out her hair and guide them to her lap where all she could do was stare at her soft palms as the mellow voice of her (missing) friend - her family - rises to her ears and tells her to do what she would have done in her situation: 

"Help those in need. I can take care of myself but he might not…."

Tabby wanted to disagree but she couldn't. 

"We'll see each other again. Don't worry."

In the end, Tabitha succumbed to those words, picked up the pieces of herself, and patched herself back together shabbily, feeling like she had just been catapulted back to square one. 

One long look in the direction she itched to go and she went the one that she needed to go.

(Just like everybody else had chosen to do.)

The thunderous grating stops, wrenching Tabby away from her thoughts, and with a sigh (because that's all she seems to be able to do lately to express her feelings in a contained way) she discovers that it could only have been mere moments since she had pressed the button to open the damaged door.

Sharpening her senses again, the padawan checks one last time to make sure the streets are still clear before she steps over the threshold and into the entrance hallway. Naturally, when the door closes behind her, it's with substantially less noise which draws an annoyed eye roll out of the teen as she wipes off the clammy sweat accumulating in her palms on the fabric of her trousers. The hallway is short, the wall to her left adorned with paintings and a dark oak wood cupboard which brandishes a couple of flat-holos. 

Walking closer, Tabitha picks up the first frame, coming face-to-face with two large black eyes speckled with little pools of honey beaming up at her from a smiling purple face, freckles dotted all over his sharp nose in stark contrast to his platinum-blonde mop of cropped hair. 'Must be Eryk.' Tabby thinks and peeks over at the other picture which portrays the kid standing between Berilyn and another Sephi man. Pinkish skin, long blond hair, and kind black eyes underlined by two identical lines of star-shaped rubies. He carries an uncanny resemblance to Eryk which probably makes him the boy's father.

Carefully lowering the frame back to its original position, Tabby lets her eyes roam the rest of the corridor, noting the two doors on the left and the one straight at the end. Bedrooms and refresher, perhaps, because the open passageway to the living area is located behind her and connects to a small kitchenette at the back. 

For the fraction of a second, the young Jedi focuses on the presence that led her here, hoping to learn its exact whereabouts, only to be forced to stifle a groan when parts of it seem to be drifting around in every spot of the house, signifying the endless amounts of memories held within the home's confines, good and bad. She can feel them scurrying around her shields, weak enough to be quelled but a nuisance nevertheless. 

The old-fashioned way it is then. Starting in his room - if she manages to locate it - since that would be the first place any child would think of as a... let's say, mediocre hiding spot. 

Tabitha walks forward and opens the first door, humming when she comes to face the 'fresher. The shower's door stands wide open, ruling the entire cramped space out as a hiding spot. No other nooks he could possibly squeeze into unless he somehow managed to shove himself into the hanging drawer over the sink. 

Letting the door close again with a, thankfully, silent whoosh, Tabitha steps to the right and thumbs the small red switch to this door's immediate right. Not a second later, the sight of a mess greets her and Tabby knows she's in the right spot. Toys and clothes litter the rug, the wooden wardrobe to the right of her stands open a gap, the single bed in the far left corner is unmade, and the desk a few feet in front of it a proper mess with all kinds of utensils strewn across. 

Gingerly, the teen steps into the room, and upon hearing the door close, shoots a cursory glance around. There is no one under the desk - not that she thought there would be -, so the only logical hiding spots would either be the wardrobe or the bed. 

Regardless, the boy would never emerge out of his own volition, Tabitha thought with a thoughtful glance at the lightsabers resting on her hips, if she was visibly armed. And ultimately, she wants him to come out because he feels like he can because dragging a scared child through a village, that at this point should be teeming with battle-hardened Trandoshans, would stir up more trouble than they could afford. 

With one slick movement, Tabitha unclips the lightsabers from her belt, carefully maneuvering herself over to the desk in the meantime. Twin thunks reverberate throughout the room as Tabitha deliberately puts a little more force into the movement of laying them down before she steps away, glancing over her shoulder and straining her ears to pick up some sort of reaction. 

Nothing.

"Eryk?" The padawan calls out gently, plodding over to the bed first. 

"Eryk, are you here?" 

Pushing away a toy starfighter with the side of her foot, Tabitha slowly kneels next to the bed and cautiously grasps the edge of the sheet. Pulling it back gradually, she peeks into the dark and dusty abyss of the bed, blinking rapidly when a cloud of dust assaults her eyes and forces her to withdraw. Her vision blurs slightly with irritated tears and she hastily wipes them away on her sleeve before ducking her head under the bed again for a brief second. 

Nothing but dust bunnies and forgotten items. 

Leaning back on her knees, Tabitha calls out yet again. "I'm not here to hurt you, Eryk." 

Climbing to her feet, a quiet cough bursts from her lips which she quickly extinguishes as she twists around to face the wardrobe. 

"Your mother, Berilyn, she sent me to find you." She continues softly and trudges forward, throttling her speed slightly when a low knock sounds from her destination, followed by a muffled gasp. 

"She's worried, you know? Wouldn't have left for the world if I didn't promise to bring you back to her." The words left a bitter taste on her tongue the moment she let them slip but Tabby doesn't even try to figure out why. 

Hyperfocused on the ajar door, Tabitha reaches out and wraps her fingers around the delicate wooden knob, intent on nudging the door open when a sudden warning shoots through her brain and, in a flurry of short-lived adrenaline, she jumps backward. The door misses the tip of her nose by a hair's breadth, a strong gust of wind brushing over her sweaty skin just as her widened green eyes meet panicked black ones. They briefly flash down to her right arm which had, to the girl's chagrin, flown to the small of her back, ready to unsheathe the knife tucked securely in the waistband of her pants, covered by the flap of her tunic. Forcibly dislodging her fingers from the leather hilt, she brings both her hands up to shoulder level, palms outward in what she hopes to be a placating gesture. 

"It's okay, Eryk. I won't hurt you."

She takes a step forward.

"Stay away from me!" The boy exclaims the second her foot leaves the floor, and Tabby grimaces. 'Okay, stupid idea...'  

The older girl backs up a few steps and puffs out a relieved breath when she sees the cowering boy relax the tiniest of fractions. 

"Okay, alright, I'm gonna stay right here. I won't come any closer. Good?"  

The boy nods after a long moment, uncertainty clear in his moist eyes, and Tabitha waits, recognizing the beginning of a question forming. 

"Who are you? Where's Mom? She said she'd come for me. Is she alright?" 

Multiple questions but that's fine as long as it calms him down. 

"My name is Tabitha." She begins calmly. "Your mother is fine. She's with my friends right now, getting to safety with the rest of the village. I'm here to bring you to them." 

Tabitha puts on a soothing smile as she crouches down to his level and outstretches her hand. 

An offer that he does not yet seize.

"The bad men…. They were here. I heard them..." His small voice trails off as he yet again looks at her with fearful eyes brimming with tears. The smile on her face falters just a tad, invisible to outsiders but painfully apparent to herself. 

"No, you chose! Stop being so kriffing selfish, Tabitha!" Ahsoka's voice yells inside of her head, doing nothing to alleviate the burden that makes itself at home on her tense shoulders. 

"I know. I won't let them hurt you." Tabitha all but whispers. A pitiful sound that scarcely traverses the room but is still somehow audible over Eryk's hitched breathing.

"Promise?"

"I promise ."

Slowly but surely, Eryk straightens from his fetal position in the closet, extricating one stumpy little limb after the other. Somehow that…  that is what almost makes Tabitha gag. He's basically a toddler, baby fat still clinging to his puffy reddened contours and awkwardly shuffling over to her on his short legs. And still, Tabitha was more than ready to let him wallow here, afraid and alone, a little longer.  

'I'm a horrible person.' The teen sighs inwardly whilst bolstering the reassuring smile on the outside. 

The moment his chubby fingers land in the palm of her hand, she closes hers around them and offers him a gentle squeeze. 

"Okay, perfect." The teen huffs, thinking about how to proceed. 

All they need to do now is get out. Should be easy. 

However, if Eryk's right, then Trandoshans must have noticed their lack of prisoners by now, making the streets rather hazardous. 

So, the roofs… 

Climbing to her feet yet again, Tabby keeps her hand firmly around Eryk's as she makes her way back to his desk and sweeps up her lightsabers, reclipping them to her belt and purposely ignoring the inquisitive look on the kid's face. 

In under a minute, the two of them are back on the street where Tabitha hefts the little guy onto her back and tells him to hold on tightly. That's all the warning he gets before the Jedi propels them up onto the rooftop with the Force's aid. 

There, Tabby steers them toward the edge of the town where she suspects the rest of her squad and civilians to be by now, keeping a firm grip on Eryk's legs to secure him on her back as she dashes across different rooftops, deliberately limiting her vision to the path in front of her.

It's difficult and exhausting and she's not as fast as she could be without him as a burden fastened to her neck but they make quite a bit of progress, driving the padawan to believe that they might actually make it out of the village unseen. 

Of course, merely the thought of it manages to jinx it. 

The shouts erupting from somewhere below are her first and only warning before the compressed heat of a blaster bolt whizzes past her head by less than a tenth of an inch. The pure shock of adrenaline and panic surging through her veins sends Tabby stumbling, a cry of fear in her left ear reminding her of her passenger and allowing her to maneuver them so his head is tucked under her chin just milliseconds before they hit the ground. 

With a grunt, Tabby takes the brunt of the initial fall, only tightening her hold on the boy when their previous momentum flings them further, and suddenly the hard stone of the roof is gone. 

The kid is screaming but all Tabitha can hear is the air whisking past her ears as they plunge toward the unforgiving ground fast and she knows she has to do something. 

And somehow - somehow - she manages to halt their descent hardly one foot above the ground, a thick cloud of the Force serving as some sort of trampoline as they stop dead in their tracks. 

The kid stops yelling but Tabitha ignores him as she commands the Force to right them and slowly lets herself drop to the floor, landing on her feet before taking off in a wild sprint when another shot embeds itself in the wall of the alley they are now in. 

'Dank Ferrik' , Tabitha could have dealt with this (and even get what she came for) before picking up the kid. But now she quite literally has her hands full with him and without the use of her hands, she will never be able to fight them off. 

Yet she won't be able to outrun them either, she realizes as she skids around another corner, narrowly dodging multiple shots from their pursuers. They were close but not that close and even if, leaving now would lead the Trandoshans straight to the rest. 

Tabitha needs to draw them away but not with the kid here. They need to split up. The kid needs to go… alone.  

With a patchwork plan in place, Tabitha draws as deep a breath as her stinging lungs allow and beckons the Force yet again, diverting some of it to her speed and stamina and barreling the majority into the wall of the house they pass. She can hear every little crack splitting the stone as if she was pressing her ear right up against the wall until she is suddenly deafened by the thunderous implosion of the wall crumbling in on itself, drowning out even the screams of the Trandoshans. 

Still, Tabitha does not stop because neither will they. They will find a way over the rocks and resume their hunt in a few minutes, so she has to be quick. 

The mouth of another alley, just ahead. There they can hide so Tabitha can explain. 

She has skimmed past the house's corner and slid to her knees within nanoseconds, peeling the little fingers off her neck before they even come to a full stop. 

Eryk protests the motion, pressing his face harder against the wet spot on her heaving chest as his back shakes with muffled sobs. After a bit of fumbling, the teen coerces him to let go and instantly grabs him by the shoulders to meet his tearful gaze. 

Tabby hates doing this to him, leaving him alone yet again, but he has a better chance of surviving this if she can distract the Trandoshans long enough. 

"Eryk, listen to me: You need to be brave now." 

Her voice is shaky. Must be the adrenaline , she thinks. Eryk remains silent except for his erratic intakes of breath. 

"There's a farm… straight ahead." She continues in between heavy pants, pointing in its general direction. "Do you know it?" 

Eryk stills, evidently hesitant or too scared to answer, so Tabitha strengthens her grip on his shoulders. 

"Eryk!" 

He nods. 

"Good, good." Tabby releases a breath of relief before quickly sliding her hand down his arm to his hand. Guiding it upward to face her palm up, her other hand slips into her waistband and pulls out the knife - a present from Cody. 

Without hesitation, she lays the hilt into his palm and closes his fingers around it. It's way too big for his tiny hands and too hefty for his lanky arms but this way he'll have something to protect himself. 

"Run there. As fast as you possibly can." A crash from somewhere on the street has both of them flinch. "Once you're there keep running, along the mountainside into the forest. And if you see men in white and orange armor, go to them. Your mom will be with them. Understood?" 

"I'm scared." Is Eryk's whispered response to which Tabby shakes her head and plasters a comforting smile on her grim face. 

"I know you are but you have to be strong now. For your mom." 

Another crash, another stone in their protective barricade gone. 

"I know you can do it." 

Albeit with great reticence, Eryk's cropped hair bobs up and down once which is all the confirmation she needs before she clambers to her feet and herds him toward the opposite exit. 

"Whatever you do, don't stop running , okay?" 

"Okay…"

They're getting through, Tabitha can feel it. 

"Good. Now go!"

Chapter Text

Oh, and go Eryk does. 

Tabitha takes all of five seconds to admire the speed with which the kid's little stumps of legs carry him, whilst also praying that he will be alright before the padawan swivels around on the spot. 

The crashes and thunks of rocks dislodging and rolling away grow quicker and quieter with every passing second, leaving Tabitha with very little time to lay some much-required finishing touches to her meager plan. 

She has got to distract the Trandoshans and for that, she needs to be seen. 

But she cannot make it obvious or they'll catch on too early. A setup is what she requires. Something credible that will keep the odds, if not in her favor, at least balanced and steer the confrontation in the right - or more accurately, in this case, wrong - direction. 

Perhaps even… 

Jogging back toward the opening she had entered from, Tabitha presses herself against the wall and peers around the corner, scanning her surroundings hastily. Immediately, her sight falls onto the rubble barricade that had once made up someone's house, shattered pieces of furniture and cloth jutting out of it at crazy angles. Perforated with new clefts, the stability of the already precarious structure begins to deteriorate enough so that she is able to glimpse green- to brown-scaled heads over the jagged boulders. 

A bemused frown creeps onto her face as she performs another mental probe of the area beyond the barrier. Three harsh shadows swell dangerously with something akin to lust as their perverted impetus. Three precise dark imprints on an otherwise hazy sheet of flimsi. However, some are missing, faded away and lost to sight during the insufficient period she had ignored them. She's 200-percent sure that there were a lot more than three hunters involved in their pursuit. The amount of blaster fire at least indicated so.  

"Son of a blaster!" The teen curses under her breath and tosses one withering look over her shoulder to where Eryk vanished behind the - forthwith - sparsely populated house front. 

She can only pray…

Shaking her head to rid herself of any distractions that could get her killed, Tabitha peers around the bend again, reassuring herself that she's still adequately covered at the moment, before darting across the road. Igniting the emerald blade of her right lightsaber with an easy flick of her wrist, Tabby skips the two steps under a random door she picked and drives the energized tip straight into its control panel, cutting approximately four inches deep until molten wires spew a handful of sizzling sparks. 

At first, the buzz of her comlink flaring up blended in with the din all around her until a voice she had dreadfully expected shreds the illusion. 

"Commander, come in!" 

'Oh, for fuck's sake. Not now…' 

"Now's really not the time, Cody." Tabitha grinds out, thumbing off the hissing blade and peering anxiously towards the barricade.

There's no second of silence or any audible signs of relief before Cody thunders on, all business and commander-like would it not be for the extra stiffness to his words. 

"What are you doing?" He demands over the clamor she can hear in the background.

Glaring at the little device on her wrist, Tabitha answers. "Saving a little boy. It's what we came here for." 

"Alone?! Tabitha, we came her under strict orders-" 

"You mean I came here under those orders..." The girl interrupts him. "...but we both know they're a load of shit." 

This time his only response is a burst of static that enables Tabby to focus on the Trandoshans' progress for a second. 

The rubble wall is starting to thin. A few more dislodged stones and it'll fall completely. 

Furthermore, the other Trandoshans are still nowhere to be found, causing Eryk's odds to wane rapidly. Tabitha has to do something. 

She can do something now. 

Thus she breathes deeply through her nose and forces her voice to drop into a calmer pitch.

"Cody, listen." She starts. "I sent the boy to the farm at the western mountain. His mother is with you. Pick him up and get out of here." 

White noise is the only reply she gets for a second but she knows Cody. He'll at least follow the first portion of her plan without objection. 

"We're close. I'll dispatch a squad to escort his mother there." The clone commander relents eventually, and Tabby would have heaved a sigh of relief had he not continued. "Where are you now?"

" No . Cody, your priorities are the civilians. Get them and the rest of the men to the RV. I'll catch up once I'm clear." 

"Tabitha-!"

" Do not come here. That's an order, Commander."

With that, Tabitha closes the line, choking around the sour taste pulling rank leaves on her tongue, and waits. 

Just then, the voiceless but noisy silence is promptly overcome and overshadowed by the dying rumbling of the rubble barrier. 

A flinch pierces her tight muscles and she permits an expression of desperation to slither onto her face as she thrusts out the same hand still enclosed around the curved hilt and hits the button that would usually unlock the door. Predictably, it doesn't now, shutting her out of the safety patiently waiting inside even as she smashes the button over and over again. 

Not till her ears pick up a loud multilayered growl coming from her right does she cease to play that frantic little girl and switches her attentive gaze toward the free pathway her opponents have created. 

There tower the three hulking figures, at their front the tallest Trandoshan she has ever seen. A heavy armored vest rests on his shoulders, his lower body not any less protected with only his head, arms, and feet bare, showing off light grey scales mattered with irregular patterns of khaki and yellow flecks and streaks.

"We are in luck, boysss ~" The leader of their little troop hisses, clacking the blaster - a type she hasn't yet seen - against the armor of his chest plate.

Gleaming orange eyes bore into hers, sparkling in the harsh light of the sun. 

Her stomach contracts abruptly, shoving nauseating acid up her throat, the previous sour taste all but forgotten, and Tabitha has to fight every sense of self-preservation to defy his gaze. Something else still must have flashed through her stare, something that appears to amuse him even more, for his smile expands, displaying entire rows of fangs that grow increasingly more menacing the further they advance. 

The pointer finger of her left hand twitches, a silent beckon of the additional hilt dangling from its strap, and in the sliver of a second, the bluish steel apparatus lands in the palm of her hand with little to no sound. 

Yet, the Trandoshan leader spots the shift in posture accompanying the readying of her second weapon - even before she fully turns her angled body to confront the hunter trio. 

The tone of his slitted eyes seems to change, then. Orange darkens, like colored iron rusting upon undergoing a reaction with the pinch of anticipation her actions incite. 

He wants this. Is prepared for a hunt. Craves it like others crave sweets.

A painful swallow ripples down her gullet, harsh enough to be visible even to the naked eye, although Tabby tries to cover it by shooting the three grown lizards an intense glare. 

If looks could kill, those guys would be nothing but a mashed pile of ash. 

"And here I believed the Togruta girl wasss the only lucky catch…" 

A forked tongue flicks out briefly, running over the edge of his maw before retreating, deliberately dragging over the pointed fangs. 

Gnarled noises of agreement come from his companions, slightly smaller and leaner, nearly identical yellow eyes and orange scales, whereas those of the right one are mottled with dark brown. The same guy carries the exact type of blaster as his leader, rather clunky with a cylindrical muzzle, however, the left one is armed with what Tabitha believes to be a net gun, slim and lanky with a flattened front making up something along the lines of a square garnished with five muzzle-like contrivances. Electrified too, Tabby notes offhandedly after catching a glimpse of the power source attached to its butt. 

In hindsight, that should've been Tabitha's most crucial clue.

Yet, outgunned and outnumbered, the padawan seethes seeing the smug smirk teasing her. 

Knuckles growing bone-white with the tightening of her fists, teeth grinding until they ache, weight shifting even further onto her toes ready to pounce on the shabuir standing a few feet down the street, Tabitha's mind draws a blank. 

Every thought, idea, and strategy she had until now is sucked away. A vacuum reigns, one that takes less than a second to flood with a cold burning sensation, crippling logic and hard-fought equilibrium. 

The only things that had stopped her from running off on wild bantha chase alone, careless and selfish, immediately upon arriving in town. 

"Where is she?" 

Tabitha hears herself growl, a sound so foreign to her vocal cords they tingle and itch the moment the question slipped past her pursed lips. 

The large Trandoshan doesn't budge. Grip and posture lax, smirk steady and sharp, and by all means unphased. Even his compatriots hardly stiffen, merely shuffling their weapons around in their three-taloned hands. 

The blood freezes in her veins, evaporating the heat it had carried before into little plumes of smoke, as the realization hits her. 

Tabitha barely has a nanosecond to admonish herself for the foolishness in her actions, before all hells break loose. 

"Don't worry, girly. You'll be joining her ssoon enough." 

The hissed words evoke a myriad of things to happen at once. 

The Force contorts and twists, jolting through her core and firing up every dozing synapse in her brain whilst overloading those that have not rested for over a day. 

Three weapons raise, however solely one charges up with a low whine. Neon yellow light illuminates the five muzzles of the net gun Tabby had heeded for mere seconds to eliminate the possibility of a threat at that time . 

Tabitha jumps. 

The Force's warning a sheer enhancement to the prickling energy thriving inside of her, Tabitha takes advantage of the minor space the upper step provides, gaining momentum by rushing forward. Landing on both feet at the very edge, Tabitha launches herself upward, amplifying her movements as she goes. 

Crackling electricity grazes past her feet only seconds after takeoff and Tabby does not need to look to see the stun-net nailing itself against the door. Can't, frankly. Flipping midair, straight above the Trandoshans' craned head, Tabitha sets her eyes on a spot a few feet behind them. 

Landing in a roll, Tabby transitions into a slide, feeling the hum of her lightsabers before she hears them plowing through the ground, the pumping of blood drowning out everything beyond. Leaving two charred rifts in the dirt, the traction slows her velocity and before she even fully stops, the Jedi padawan yanks the left blade out, uses her momentum to twist onto her knees, and thrusts out her left hand, releasing an unhinged Force wave that catapults all three men back. 

Net-gun-guy crashes head-first into the stairs she had just occupied, slumping into an unconscious heap on top with his weapon crushed beneath him. 

'That takes care of that.'

As Tabitha finds her footing, so do her adversaries, faces twisting into ghastly snarls at the state of their friend. 

The Force constricts instances before the first red bolt flies toward her. 

Toward her right biceps, more specifically.

 A swift swing of her crystal lightsaber redirects the projectile back to the dipshit who thought he could exploit her injury. The shot hits home, a cry of pain emerging from the orange-brown-scaled Trandoshan as he sags forward, clutching his side. 

Taking advantage of his temporary frailty, Tabby wraps the Force around as an invisible manifestation of her hand and hauls him forward, simultaneously deflecting another pellet and forcing the leader to retreat behind a toppled garbage container. 

Soon after, the padawan charges which does not go unnoticed by the injured hunter. She can hear his fangs grating against one another as he attempts to recover some semblance of resilience, pulling back his fist and spreading his legs to steady his stance. In the last second, Tabitha drops to the floor, some strands of her jet black hair catching in the gust of air following the fist overhead as she neatly slides through the broad gap between his legs. 

Dragging both lightsabers through his calves with the same ease she would feel while cutting through butter, the scream of pure agony above her seems unusually muted to her ears. With only a slight twinge in her belly, she springs to her feet just as he falls to his knees, flips the hilt of her blue saber, and drives the sizzling light through her opponent's heart in one fluid motion. 

Her back turned to the dying man, the scream transforms into a wet gurgling noise before dying with its originator whose lifeless corpse collapses into a bloody, burned mess of limbs. 

Another scream arises in its wake. One so intense it resonates even within the Force as ferocious ripples slamming into her, endeavoring to granulate her. Gradually pivoting on the spot, the glare on her complexion softens a tad upon recognizing the leader's expression, her head jerking down to the body at her feet whose face stays forever distorted in a horrifying grimace.  

"This can end right here…" Tabby speaks up, taken aback by the silky smooth tone dripping from her voice. Raising her head, she blinks into the face of the raging wildfire holding her at gun's point, flipping her lightsaber back around whilst keeping it lowered. 

"If you tell me where you bring your captives." 

His retort is instant, fueled by such hatred, Tabitha has half a mind to regret forbidding Cody to send support.

"The only way thiss will end iss with you on my wall!" 

Predicted but not preferred.

Shifting to her opening stance, Tabitha lifts the green lightsaber above her head, the tip aimed at her adversary, whilst she positions the cyan one to guard her torso. 

"Your move." 

Breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, the heartbeat pulsating against her jaw calms, beating in sync with the perpetual ebb and flow of the Force surrounding her, guiding her to observe just the right spots.

The Trandoshan's entire weight shifts onto his taloned toes and the grip on his blaster slackens, surprising Tabitha, who dwells in the same position except for a minor shift of her right wrist as she bends it into a perfect position for a diagonal downward strike - should it be necessary. 

Like a hungry Rancor towards his prey, he abruptly charges, putting all his momentum into his shoulders and making it way too easy to alter her stance at the last moment. Seconds before impact, she spins out of his way, leaving her left foot planted securely on the ground which effortlessly hooks around his ankle, surrendering him to his full weight as it sends him plummeting to the floor.  

Unfazed even as his contorted face rapidly approaches the dirt, the larger male swiftly clutches the smoking barrel of his gun in one hand and stabs the sharp claws on the rest of his limbs into the ground, negating his speed almost immediately. 

He leaps at her again but instead of throwing himself at her, he flings the blaster at her with remarkable precision, forcing Tabitha to finally release her downward strike. In a flash of blinding light, the sleek metal weapon clashes with the emerald blade. Upon collision, it splits into two, both halves shooting past her ears by inches. 

For an instant or two, Tabitha is stunned, not having anticipated that move, which gives the hunter enough time to act. 

He slams into her little body with full force, thrusting all air out of her lungs as he briefly lifts her above his head before knocking her to the harsh ground. Her back and ribs flare in a short burst of pain, lungs gulping down air and dust, convulsing in curt coughs, but she doesn't stay down for long. Stemming her hands against the floor (and her lightsabers) above her head, the teen kicks out her legs, relishing the grunt of pain she hears upon impact with his stomach whilst also exploiting the attained propulsion to cartwheel backward onto her feet.

Immediately upon recovering her footing, Tabitha shifts to offensive, swinging both lightsabers at her opponent. One aimed at his chest while the other sweeps at his legs, she forces him back to the middle of the street, giving herself more space to breathe before attacking yet again only to be blocked and thrown off by an expertly timed blow to her wrists with his forearms. 

For minutes, that is how the fight continues. Trading blows that rarely inflict more than a future bruise or papercut, gaining and losing ground in an endless stalemate.

Sweat beads on Tabitha's forehead, breath coming out in short pants, arms trembling with rising fatigue and Tabitha dodges another fist flying towards her head, hopping back to increase the space between them.  

The padawan can make out the slight slump in the hunter's shoulder and the trivial increase in the rise and fall of his chest, displaying a fraction of the exhaustion she experiences.  

At this rate, she'll tire herself out in an attempt to incapacitate him instead of killing him. 

But killing him would mean forfeiting her only chance to find Ahsoka…

She can do this. She just has to be smarter. 

She just has to fight a little dirtier, Tabitha thinks with a brief glance around, watching the dust they kicked up settle. 

It's an ancient trick but still quite effective against every living being. Even he should fall for it. 

They've come to a standoff now that Tabitha recoiled, trying to gauge each other's next move. Ostensibly, the Trandoshan expects her to open up with the offense, his own stance transitioning into a defensive one meant to catch whatever she throws at him.

Tabitha has to fight vehemently to keep the delighted smirk off her expression. 

Without a second of hesitation, the young Jedi surges forward again, lifting one lightsaber in the telltale position of a backhand slash whilst keeping the other tucked close to her body. 

She sees the change the lizard performs in order to seize her hand and can't help the tiny grin teasing her lips. 

The lush green blade recedes into the kyber-crystal and Tabitha yanks her hand close to her body, taking a gleeful second to watch the genuine shock blooming on the hunter's face before her left shoulder barrels into his chest, the bone crying out in protest. As he staggers back, head angled downward with a pained grimace, Tabitha sweeps her cyan lightsabers across the ground, slicing deep into the amassed dust. 

A thick cloud of dirt sprouts from the gaping fissure, propelling directly into the Trandoshan's face, eliciting hacking coughs to spew from his maw and encouraging him to rub his hands across tender, teary eyes. 

Wasting no more than a second, Tabby gathers whatever the Force would offer in the palms of her outstretched hands before launching every ounce of it at her weakened enemy. 

To his endless shock and misfortune, the sheer amount of power slamming into his unguarded body hurls him across the entire width of the street where his unexpected flight is ultimately 'cushioned' by the very same garbage container he had taken up as cover minutes before. 

Even from her spot in the center of the street, Tabby can hear the disgusting crunch of bones breaking upon impact, however, the girl refuses to pity him. 

She had offered him mercy in exchange for information but he spurned her offer.

Everything that happens now is on him.

In the blink of an eye, before the hunter could come to his senses, Tabitha is on him. Her whole body weight pressing down on the joints in his legs, the fervent blue of her lightsaber flickers dangerously over his stomach and hands - more than willing to relieve him of either - joined shortly after by the vibrant green blade illuminating the heated glare on the downed man's expression. 

"You're beaten." 

Tabitha growls, pressing the side of her lightsaber impossibly closer to his jugular. 

"Tell me what I want to know." 

The demand is laced in the power of a Force suggestion, sounding somewhat transcendental even to her own ears as she stares deep into his eyes, unflinching as she wills her labor to bear fruits. 

Scaled skin tightens around his features and he shakes his head tersely as if to shake her off, away from the vulnerable parts of his mind. Unexpectedly, he jerks forward - lacking the strength to buck her off - and bares his fangs, snapping at her, thus making her recoil. 

Tabitha's jaw locks, refusing to back down any further even as he opens his foul mouth in what she knows will be an angry riposte.  

"Thiss isss only the beginning of a thrilling hunt!"

His voice sounds so distant all of a sudden, as if the whole street was submerged in water, and Tabitha takes just one second too long to comprehend the reason why. 

One second too long to detect the glance over her shoulder.

One second too long to understand the triumphant pitch to his voice and its meaning. 

Entire three seconds is the amount of time it takes for her to whirl around, eyes widening to full-size saucers. 

Three seconds before the front of her head explodes in pain, blinding white stars bursting across her vision, promptly extinguished as her body hits the floor hard, leaving her in absolute darkness.

Chapter Text

Everything is so loud.  

There's a low rumbling coming from… somewhere Tabitha can't pinpoint because her head just won't stop spinning, won't stop thumping in tune with that obnoxious beat pulsing through her body… won't stop listening to the deafening remnants of senseless weeping, incoherent whimpering, mad shouting of someone's name (her name?) lounging at the brittle edge of her hearing, following her from the deep abyss of unconsciousness. 

Too loud. Too much. She can't- 

A strained moan sets her throat alight, scraping against the sandpaper-like tissue without warning, leaving in its wake a coppery tang spreading across the roof of her mouth. 

It finally draws her focus away from all the conflicting noises thundering in- and outside of her skull and to the pulsing pain coursing through her entire body. 

Mainly her head. 

It feels like a gundark decided to slowly dig every single one of its claws into her forehead. 

Tabitha has had a mild concussion before and this throbbing mess of a headache comes awfully close to that. 

There's also something tacky dry crusted to the… right side of her face? The side that isn't squished against some warm panels but left to weather in the musty climate of wherever she is. 

She might want to figure that out since it clearly cannot be the medbay - the lacking scent of antiseptic in the air gave it away - or anywhere remotely safe - honestly, she got pounded in the head by a Trandoshan . But her battered head is still striving to bring the world to a standstill behind her closed eyelids and her limbs are littered with massive contusions pinning them to the metallic floor, and all in all, Tabitha is way too tired to even bother at the moment. 

Perhaps she can just keep her eyes closed for a few more minutes, relax the building tension, let her flagging mind drift off… 

Suddenly, her heart lurches, skipping a beat before madly pumping blood into her aching extremities. With her hazy consciousness still caught halfway between the alluring fog of sleep and sharp alertness, Tabitha, at first, doesn't understand why her body would punish her like that. Until her hearing eventually catches up with her body's instincts, allowing the same rumbling as before to pass her tender eardrums, albeit a bit louder and a lot less grating. 

Initially, Tabby had brushed it off as the sound of an engine of sorts - a ship's most likely - but now, if she legitimately focused on it, she could feel its vibrations under the panels mashed against her face. 

'So what the hell is that?' Tabitha grumbles to herself.

Partially curious but mostly aggravated and perhaps a little unnerved, the exhausted girl grudgingly disperses sleep's final residues and attempts to pry her eyelids open. 

With much coercion, the thin muscle over her left eye quivers open, revealing blurred lines and sludgy greys, yet the right side stays glued shut, the dry crust coating even her eye. Clumsily, Tabitha plucks her hand of the warm metal and brings it up to her face. Groping alongside her face, feeling dried fluid that had long since ceased dribbling down her face, her blunt fingers seek out her eyesocket to scratch away the thick husk, enabling it to flutter open as well. 

Dingy light assaults her sensitive irises, sending another -thankfully weaker- spike of pain through her skull that rips a shaky groan from her lips but leaves her senses blessedly intact. Blinking at the durasteel flooring, Tabby sends quick thanks to whoever constructed this ship using dark plates instead of reflecting ones before attempting to push herself up, her sideways position on the floor putting extreme pressure on the fresh bruises on her midsection. Even then, they protest the movement, a feeble dizzy spell washing over her, but the padawan barely heeds her body's ineffective signals any attention due to the strange rumbling's sudden shift in tone. 

It seems somewhat coaxing but that can't be, right? Neither rumbling nor machines can express emotions. 

As her thoughts trip over themselves, trying vainly to come up with an explanation, Tabitha finally maneuvers her upper body into an awkward sitting position so as to keep strain off her ribs and comes face to face with a sight that should have probably disturbed her to a larger extent:

Geometrically shaped bars of a cage surrounding her on all sides except for the floor. One of many, Tabby notes, eyes trailing down the length of the low-ceilinged room. Even she wouldn't be able to stand upright if she tried. 

Which she won't. The headache is still making her vision blur every time she shifts a little too quickly. No need to knock herself out by smashing her head against the floor. 

Therefore, one by one, the girl lets her misty sight roam over the cages, finding most of them - fortunately - vacant. 

One by one, a noose that had unbeknownst to her wrapped itself around her heart like a dozen cold claws, gives leeway, making breathing a tad easier. 

Tabby doesn't know how or why the constricting cord even existed, but along with it, a seemingly unwarranted sense of dreadful anticipation lifts off her conscience, freeing a vague memory she hastily tries to reel back in. Yet, it slips through her fingers, evaporating in her grip with faint echoes of blaster fire and the rattle of armor plates before vanishing completely and leaving her with the unsettling knowledge of having forgotten something . 

The feeling persists, gnawing at the base of her skull even as her attention frantically snaps to one of the tiny cages she had previously thought empty. A sudden movement catching in the corner of her eye has the pulse beating against the flesh of her neck skyrocket for a split-second. Without concern for further damage, Tabitha scrabbles toward the front of her cage, rapidly blinking to ward off the mist creeping across her fixated vision as pain rekindles throughout her skull. Pressing herself against the bars, Tabby peers several feet down the corridor into a cage practically bursting with brown... fur?

Metal bites into the encrusted side of her face, making Tabitha hiss when a particularly burning spot over her right brow comes in contact with the frigid alloy. Still, she flattens her entire upper body against the confines of her cell to get a better view of the large, hulking mass of hair, clotted with soot, gazing back at her with small blue eyes. 

'A Wookiee… Explains the rumbling, I guess.' 

Tabitha is still processing the fact that she's trapped feet away from someone she doesn't know as they're hauled Force-knows-where by a bunch of maniacal big game hunters hell-bent on stringing their heads up as trophies alongside what Tabby can only pray will not - never - be Ahsoka's, when the 

Wookiee speaks up in growls, rumbles, purrs, and whatever else their species employ as their manner of speech. The string of noises lances through her head like a blunt pole being rammed through one ear all the way out of the other. It drives boiling tears into her eyes and a clunky groan up her throat, both of which she quickly stifles in favor of comprehending the words she knows are spoken to her. 

The Wookiee finishes whilst Tabitha still scours her scrambled brain for what little Shyriiwook she recalls. 

"Uhhh… I-I'm sorry, I'm-" Tabby slurs, temporarily choking on her soggy cottony words. "I'm not q-quite fluent. Y-You asked my name?" 

They make an affirmative noise and Tabitha inhales deeply. 

"Tabitha. Flux." She responds, enunciating each syllable with careful deliberation. "And yours?"

Tabitha swears the response is somewhat subdued, a soft purr a fraction of its original volume that gently brushes against her ridiculously oversensitive hearing and whose content she has a difficult time deciphering.

"Chew-" Another clarifying rumble and the translation finally clicks as a triumphant grin teases her lips. "-bacca! Chewbacca." The padawan exclaims, a grimace contorting her expression at the sheer volume of her own voice that partially drowns out the agreeing growl from Chewbacca. 

Believing the conversation to be over as they lapse into silence, her slim frame melts against the metal web and her mind tumbles down a condescending spiral consisting of perpetually monotonous thoughts, asking herself how this could have gone so wrong . 

'I did ask for it, didn't I?' She admits to herself, reflecting on every action and choice she made since entering that goddamn town. 'Got only myself to blame.'

Choosing fight instead of flight, taking her time to rescue Eryk, going off on her own, arguing to enter the village in the first place. All of which she would have never done if not for Ahsoka .

Ahsoka who might as well be dead at this juncture in time, more than a day after she was first abducted. Alone, abandoned, waiting, trusting…  

'No . No, she's fine. She has to be. Ahsoka would never just… leave.'

Tabitha didn't realize that her heavy eyes had slipped shut yet again, mind drifting towards what would be very fitful sleep, until she hears Chewbacca's 'voice' piping up again, firm and steady enough to slam a girder into her descending mind's way and ground her in the present. 

Slowly blinking her eyes open, Tabitha frowns at Chewbacca's inquisitive look, piecing together what little terms she understood in between the persistent headache and the lack of exercise in Shyriiwook. 

"A Jedi? Yeah… yeah. Just a padawan though." Tabby mumbles, brows creasing as much as they could without inflicting pain. "Why?" 

His explanation is forthcoming. As far as he was aware, there have been no reports of Republic forces near Kashyyyk - where he had been captured-, least of all ones with Jedi company. 

As she first acknowledges his words, she simply nods along, soaking up every ounce of information on their whereabouts she can grasp, but their actual meaning doesn't register to her until the rug is ripped from under her already unsteady feet. 

"Wait, wait, wait! Kashyyyk?!" The padawan blurts out, interrupting whatever the Wookiee male was about to say and prompting him to bob his hairy head once. The unspoken question tangible in the color of his small eyes, Tabitha elaborates, comically wide eyes raking across the room as if it suddenly differed from the state it was in just seconds ago. 

(Crates secured on one end, cages everywhere else, so nope. Just as desolate as before.)

"I was on Centares when they got me." 

"That is a day's flight away." Chewbacca growls - at least Tabitha thinks that's what he said since it fits the context - and Tabitha sighs. 

One day… Longer than the head wound warrants unconsciousness for, which means they must have kept her stunned the entire time, and definitely too long to hope for rescue to reach them any time soon. If the dullness of the training bond at the back of her mind is anything to go by, they are still star systems away... 

"Great…" Tabitha grumbles, gingerly easing her forehead to rest against the bars. Relishing the cold that seeps through her skin and alleviates the pain throbbing in the space between her temples, Tabby attempts to come up with some sort of plan, a starting point that might kick-start an escape attempt, and is frankly baffled when her thoughts hardly bump against each other. Forming a much more orderly line than a couple of minutes ago, the girl can actually decipher some useful ideas without losing them a mere second later. Additionally, a good portion of the fatigue that had weighed her down seems to have dissipated, leaving her still fairly weakened but thankfully awake. 

Stealing a glimpse at the Wookiee carefully observing her from his spot a few cages down, the injured padawan can't help but huff as realization chambers up her spine, an indistinguishable smile tugging at the corner of her lips. 

Twisting her head to fully face the large creature awkwardly folded in on himself, Tabby has no qualms in letting her gratitude show. 

"Thanks."

It's simple but ostensibly enough for Chewbacca who purrs his acknowledgment with what Tabitha imagines to be a relieved expression on his face before moving on, seemingly having had the same idea as Tabitha. 

"We can't be far from Kashyyyk.' He tells her. 'I have been here for a little over an hour."

Lips pursing in thought, Tabby dredges up every piece of information she has on the Kashyyyk system. 

The Trandoshans wouldn't bring them to one of Kashyyyk's moons, nor would they take the risk and bring them to Alaris due to its proximity to the Wookiee colonies on Alaris Prime, one of its moons. 

'But that would leave…. No, that would be plain stupid. Right?' 

"They wouldn't bring us to Trandosha, would they?" 

"No, too many people. But perhaps Wasskah." 

Her brow curls at the side, cracking the dried layer of blood. 

"Wass-? Their moon?" 

Chewbacca's mouth opens, fangs glinting in the dingy light as his throat produces a sound he chokes on when suddenly the walls around them tremble, aforementioned lights flickering in sync with the ship's tremors. 

Fingers wrapping tightly around the metal in her palm, Tabitha hastily plucks her head away from the potential source of further injury, ignoring the way the quakes travel up her arms and make her bones rattle against the damaged flesh of her right biceps (She had honestly forgotten about that one. Shouldn't pose much of a problem at this point) .  

The trembling lasts less than a minute, giving way to the occasional stray aftershock and a charged sense of anticipation burdening the air. 

"Guess we'll find out soon enough…"

_____________

Chapter Text

"Guess we'll find out soon enough…" 

Air propelled from her lungs, swallowing a mouthful of sand in the same gasping motion, the split-second sight of the planet explodes in a glaring white supernova, driving burning pikes of pain through more than just one part of her body. 

Every thought of how frighteningly weightless she had felt just a second ago as her coop's floor was (this time literally) snatched from right under her ass and the relieving, yet scary sensation of fresh air assaulting even the tiniest inch of her, rushing past her ears in what could have only been lightspeed, is engulfed in pains and aches of an already bruised body colliding with the sandy ground of a beach. 

Tabitha had expected anything when she said that one sentence. From being dragged out of their appalling confinements by the hair and onto whatever hunting ground Trandoshans prefer, to being shocked or otherwise stunned before being abandoned in some malignant patch of nature. 

What she had not expected was to be jettisoned like some sort of cargo. 

Screwing her eyes shut, Tabitha forces darkness over the garish mash of checkered stars dancing across her vision, ignores the rushing blood traveling through her ear canals to form a new thin trail of the hot fluid down her brow, and pushes up onto shaky arms. Waiting until the last specks of light are squashed by the dark veil of her eyelids, Tabitha eventually lets them shimmy open and surrenders her glassy eyes to the natural light of whatever planet they have ultimately been discarded on. 

Beyond the moisture mantling her retinas, she can discern crimson splatters amidst the sea of sand grains instants before a massive hirsute hand clasps around her shoulder, providing support to her unstable frame and a point of contact to convey the intense vibrations of Chewbacca's voice. 

"Yeah, I'm good." Tabitha assures the Wookiee perched at her side and lets her weight fall back onto her knees, slinking into the warmth of the palm on her back. 

Rapidly blinking the vapor from her eyes, the silhouettes of dozens upon dozens of trees, interwoven by vines and thick foliage, come into sharper focus just as she levers herself to her feet with the careful help of Chewbacca. The sound of water sloshing up against the shore, crashing against rocks of all sizes, notifies her of the ocean lying at her sun-kissed back. 

Patting her hands and trousers clean of any residual grit, Tabitha can't help the mildly inappropriate tomfoolery surfacing.

"Jungles… Narrow it down any?" Tabby glances over her shoulder, too brief to catch a glimpse of the Wookiee's expression as he retorts something whose translation falls flat. However, going by the particular pitch of his grumbling, the responding sass is palpable, prompting a smirk to pull at the corner of her mouth for the mere second she allows it to remain. 

Gradually, the low thunder of the transporter's thrusters grows fainter and there's no telling how this big game hunting thing goes exactly. Either way, they cannot stay out on the beach for much longer, Tabby remarks silently, slowly sweeping her gaze over the wide-open beach, right to left. 

Lips parting, the padawan intends to state her thought process…  

"Tabby?!" 

… only for the first letter to morph into a gentle gasp. 

Whirling her head around, her eyes immediately set on the lean figure scrambling towards them, maroon boots sinking deeper into the sand with every hasty step. Her orange face coated in all sorts of dried muck, pupils dilated until blue turns black, and mouth slack in shock, Ahsoka illustrates a flawless copy of Tabitha’s overall state… which is worrisome. Regardless, the split-second stutter of Tabby's brain does little to impact the function of her legs. 

"'Soka!"

On the naked beach, with the threat of vindictive Trandoshans looming over the horizon, the two padawans and best friends collide for the first time in three grueling days, wrapping their arms tightly around one another. 

Between them, the air reeks of salt and copper, sweat and blood, but Tabitha merely sinks deeper into the embrace, clinging to the warm, solid body and allowing her mind to ghost across Ahsoka's before slamming her shields down on the dull flurry of sensations intruding on this little cocoon they've created. 

This little cocoon where Tabitha can feel the cozy bubbles in her belly, can feel happy and elated, ignore everything and everyone around them as the majority of the last few days lifts off her shoulders. 

With her best friend in her arms, alive, nothing else matters right now. She knows it should, has and was distracted enough times to know how badly this can end, especially regarding that they're pretty much backed up against a wall with no promising way forward. But it doesn’t and upon opening her mouth, all that comes out is a frail, wavering whisper. 

"You're alive." Arms tightening around her friend's chest, Tabitha squeezes her eyes shut and dares not open them, afraid Ahsoka would vanish into thin air in her arms. "You're here." Her voice cracks on the last word but the girl does not notice, still not quite getting a grasp on the luck in her misfortune. 

Just as she doesn't notice the tension riding up Ahsoka's spine, clambering up one vertebra after the other until the older padawan withdraws reluctantly, nudging Tabby's shoulders, encouraging her to pull back and create a small gap between them. Their eyes meet and begrudgingly, the younger teen obliges, watching as a worried scowl pulls at her friend's white markings and suppressing a wince when slender fingertips dig into her sore shoulder blades. 

For a moment, Ahsoka's mouth opens and closes at random, tongue flicking across her cracked lips before the words seemingly come to her.

"What are you-" The Togruta pauses, shaking her head. "How are you here?" She eventually settles on, aghast eyes tracking the blood on the side of Tabitha's face and scanning the large gash above her brow.

The worried scrutiny and stunned question have the human girl grimacing, eyes flashing up and down, left and right looking for an answer that refrains from revealing the stupidity in her actions leading up to this very moment - the exact same kind of stupidity she always berates Ahsoka for. 

For one instant, Tabby ponders lying but one look at her friend dispels the inane notion. Focusing solely on Ahsoka again as her shoulders shoot upwards in one jerky motion. 

"Long story." She admits sheepishly, hoping the answer will please her best friend for now. 

Disregarding her wishes entirely, the reply clearly does not quell Ahsoka's need to know and the frown on her face deepens significantly, eyes narrowing to take on that look that translates quite easily to "I don't believe you at all."  

And Tabby, in all likelihood, would have, if not for the foreign, young voice suddenly booming from their right. 

"One that can wait for later." 

Startling with a flinch that rattles every single raw nerve under her skin, Tabby realizes that they are not as alone as she originally assumed. 

Looking - frankly looking - around for the first time, the fifteen-year-old finds herself gaping at three equally soiled tunics surrounding them (with Chewbacca directly behind her)… Jedi issue robes, worn to the point where the fabric is mottled with close-meshed tears, loose threads, and in some places kept together by makeshift leaf bandages. 

Her vision trails up the tense feminine figure of the person who had interrupted Ahsoka and her. 

Shimmering emerald clashing with fervid hazel staring at her - or staring her down, she can't quite tell -, the disconcerting gaunt features of a human girl, perhaps a bit younger than herself, leap into her line of sight. With an unruly, brown mop of hair - minus the expected padawan braid -  framing her lightly tanned and starkly dirtied complexion, the girl is backed by two other figures wearing varied styles of the same material. Twi'lek and Cerean, both male, both displaying an identically-

Out of nowhere, three expressions contort into fearful grimaces, eyes gawking at something above and behind Tabby's head but before she can even attempt to follow their line of sight, she's unexpectedly ripped from both her thoughts and off the sand in a dizzying twirl. 

World is reduced to a lone, discolored smear and Tabitha cries out in either surprise or pain or both. 

She can hear the bones in her left hand grinding against one another under the bone-crushing grip Ahsoka has on it. Beneath her, her legs pump to keep up with the reckless speed the older padawan subjects her to, staggering onto more solid ground whilst her sight fights its way to clarity and her ears pick up various roars overlapping in the sky above. 

Roars similar to the transporter's thrusters working against the planet's gravitational pull before. Similar yet weaker, growing nearer with the second. 

In a wink, her warmed heart is dunked into a bucket of ice-cold water, spurring it on to jam more blood into each last part of her limbs and digits, and her eyes tear themselves wide-open to their natural surroundings, dispersing the hindrances from her eyesight. 

Keeping her head and vision trained on four tunic-clad backs leading her and Chewbacca - who is running about half a step behind her - into the dense jungle, Tabitha wiggles her fingers until the digits enclose her best friend's equally vice, then pushes renewed strength into her legs. 

Nevertheless, the engines grow louder and it takes approximately 0.1 milliseconds for the weeping of blaster bolts to join. 

Jumping over the root of a tree, a shot splinters the timber. 

Close distance sniper shot judging by velocity and force of impact. 

They need more cover.

Before her, another bolt misses the brunette by more than an inch, prompting a subtle flinch and sharp turn left where the vegetation's density thickens considerably. 

The rest of the group follows dutifully, Tabitha and Chewbacca more or less relying on the others' knowledge of the territory as they're dragged along. 

Swerving in between colorful plants, bland bushes, and towering trees, the thicket stretches on seemingly forever on each side of her except above. 

Sun rays flood through the open canopy, bathing the monotonous green in ever-shifting hues of yellowish-orange, and Tabitha should probably stop paying attention to the blending colors and more to the sizzling holes eating through the jungle in their wake but her legs are burning, stinging, hurting, whatever. She needs something that draws her focus away from that and the boundless stretch of plant life, for otherwise, her knees will give out, deeming running a lost cause with her adrenaline flagging, and drag Ahsoka down with her. 

And that cannot happen! 

But Tabitha is so kriffing tired of running and the déjà vu breaking her back with the disembodied weight of a small boy hardly helps matters. 

Yet even if she tried stopping Ahsoka certainly would not let her. The grasp on her hand forbids her, leaving out the survival instinct boiling beneath the surface.    

So, Tabitha holds on tighter, squeezes Ahsoka's hand, and focuses solely on the path she steers her, dodging what she can to the best of her ability.

Nobody's talking, panting heard beneath the fire as the minutes stretch long and Tabitha's clumsy feet stumble over one another yet again, Ahsoka tugs her along, Chewbacca has to zigzag to avoid a hit, and the three other Jedi Younglings spare but a glimpse back. 

Or at the buzzing sky. 

Tabitha feels it long before she hears. An unnervingly familiar jolt traveling up her nervous system, along with the rattling charge howling through the air behind them, has Tabitha lunging forward using up whatever strength reserves she hasn't discovered yet.

Throwing her body weight against Ahsoka's, snatching the younger human girl's arm, Tabitha catapults all three of them off to the left. 

"What are you-?!" The brunette grunts after the trio collide heavily with the floor, hurriedly trying to disentangle herself from the heap of limbs. 

Simultaneously, Chewbacca howls a warning to the boys, shoving them out of the way just as a raging fusillade reduces the place they just occupied to a smoking cleft and tears the trunk beyond into pieces. 

They're granted no reprieve, no time to comprehend and stare, for, in the very next instant, four skiffs hover just above the jungle’s thin roof, back to back, facing each trio of the group with roaring rotary guns. 

Tabitha scrambles upwards, closely followed by Ahsoka and the girl as each of them try to regain their footing before they have more holes than a Sarlaac has teeth. 

Just as the ravenette heaves herself up to tingling feet, unblinkingly staring down a flurry of barrels and weighing their odds to outrun a kriffing minigun, not to mention with a six-man-group heading Force knows where, her wrist is caught in a bruising grip and she is yanked backward, away from Chewbacca and the two boys tucked securely behind his massive form. 

Disbelieving, her stare falls on Ahsoka’s back as the Togruta yet again tows Tabitha behind her (as if she can’t run on her own ( ‘You really can’t.’ )). Then it flashes over her shoulder to where she can still make out the male trio retreating in the opposite direction, out of their sight and the range of the two skiffs hot on their tail. 

“What about-” 

“They’ll be fine.” 

Scowling at the girl, who for the second time today interrupted her, Tabby proceeds to open her mouth, worrying for the Wookiee and fellow Jedi, but clamps it shut, swallowing her protest when Ahsoka throws her a pleading glance. 

Puffing out an irritated gust of air in between her raspy breaths, Tabby dutifully follows her best friend and the youngling while the jungle around them is pelted by a rain of scorching hot pellets from the remaining half of the skiffs and their occupants open fire. 

These guys couldn’t hit the side of an AT-TE if it stood stock-still. The thought almost provokes an inappropriate giggle. Honestly, she’s seen clankers with better accuracy than theirs.

Tabitha ducks under a low-hanging twig, suddenly staggering forward a few steps when the heat of a blaster singes the hair at the back of her head. 

Okay, bad accuracy does not suspend luck.

They need to lose these guys before their own stroke of luck comes to an abrupt end, Tabby thinks, letting herself be hauled along as her eyes fly around their surroundings, looking for someplace to hide. 

Few plants, many trees, a lot of dirt, no cover whatsoever.

How is this jungle made out of trees and branches rivaling those of a Wroshyr tree, with a lot fewer leaves, but there is not a single dense patch of shrubs or a stone outcrop of sorts? 

Going up won’t save them, running won’t help any, turning around is plain stupid, therefore they need something on the ground. 

But there’s nothing here! 

Her analyzing gaze turns frantic as another shot almost takes off the tip of Ahsoka’s Montrals. Bouncing from one barren spot to the next, she contemplates every single row of bushes, regardless of how thinned out they may be, growing more hopeful the deeper they go and at the same time more discouraged by nature itself. 

'Nature…' 

The scowl crumbles, making way for wide eyes and slack lips as an idea comes together before her third eye.

'That's it!' 

On each and every planet, flora blooms to provide fauna with places to thrive, survive, and live. Places to hide in case of danger. Places off-worlders would never be able to uncover.

Ultimately, nature knows best, so why not trust it like the local fauna already does? 

For these Trandoshans, they may as well be wild critters in need of extermination. Why not act the part? 

Chest heaving, heart pumping, legs burning, and her very core aching, Tabitha attempts to block out the physical toils of her body and move beyond its confines, diving headfirst into the ebb and flow of the Force all around. 

Greeting her, the muted chill engulfing her mind tells tales of hunts long passed, lives long taken in one of the most inhumane ways, fear and loss long felt. 

A shiver runs down her spine, cold seeping into her bones as Tabitha momentarily slinks back into her body to feel Ahsoka's grasp on her arm. As her palm's warmth temporarily fends off the cold, grounding her long enough for her mind to plunge deeper down the river, she lets the current take her to its largest clusters, the place where animals go to survive predators and hunters alike. Remaining where her body is still in her control, Tabby lets the Force guide her, feeling her mind drifting off somewhere to the right(-ish) whilst her body keeps running forward, straight past a beaming herd of live beads scurrying towards that one spot where the Force amasses greatest. 

Relief threatens to wash over her limbs but the padawan forces all signs of it back, denying herself the ease of tension until they reach relative safety. She fears if she now lets go of that pressure and the adrenaline it is induced by, she will waver before they get there. 

Thus, Tabitha utilizes that exact hormone-induced energy (- weirdly fluctuating in her veins like adrenaline probably shouldn't do in a healthy body -) to overtake Ahsoka and avail herself of the older teenie's hold, using her own tactics against her as Tabitha hauls her off in the direction of (anticipated) protection. 

Ducking under another shot too close for comfort, Tabby feels Ahsoka tottering behind her, her confused gaze boring into the back of her skull, soon followed by another. Knowing exactly that the brunette will question what she's doing, Tabitha doesn't deign to retort with a detailed explanation.

A quick "This way!" is all the warning the other girl gets before Tabitha also seizes her bony wrist in her fist. 

Not daring to run in a straight line with two armed hover pods in pursuit, the young Jedi ushers all three of them in seemingly arbitrary zigzag lines, ignoring the concrete skepticism - and mistrust - palpable in the person to her right. 

That is until Ahsoka's yelling can suddenly be heard just above the raging cacophony. 

"Just… trust her, Kalifa!" 

Unconsciously, Tabitha files the name away for later, believing it better than to label her as 'the brunette' or 'that other girl'.

After several long-drawn moments filled with nothing but the same pelting downpour of searing raindrops wailing through the air, the jungle begins to thicken, broad trees growing in closer patterns, merged inseparably with brushwood grown above face level that could hide everything - or everyone - under six feet. 

'Finally.' 

The petite girl puffs out a chafed breath, gulping down whatever fresher air she can get into her lungs before catapulting it out with a yell usually reserved for battlefronts. 

"Ahsoka, help me with this!" 

The request has barely left her dry lips before Tabitha grinds to a stop, causing both other girls to do so too, and - not for the first time since they have met in their childhood - finds herself unbelievably grateful for Ahsoka's understanding and trust. 

With nothing but a curt glance at each other, the older padawan nods her approval, shortly after sending a begrudgingly obliging Kalifa further away, through various more trees to find a safe hiding spot in the bushes. 

Luckily, the skiffs have been affected negatively by the immense change in territory, forced to go at a much slower speed to evade branches and vines, lest they want to get stranded down here as well. 

This enabled the girl trio to expand the distance between them until the hunters were pretty much shooting in the dark, lesser and lesser with every minute, which in turn will simplify matters for Tabitha and Ahsoka, and let Kalifa go undetected. 

Synchronously spinning on their heel, the black-haired girl instantly spies out the dark metallic glimmer between the greenery, rapidly closing in on their position, while beside her she can already sense Ahsoka's consciousness drifting into the Force.

Slowly, Tabitha also dips back into the Force, reaching for the planet's pure and sweet energy and waiting for it to reach back. 

It does, willingly accepts her as a part of its being, and wraps delicate tendrils around her fingertips, lending Tabby partial control of her surroundings just as it does Ahsoka. 

Control they use - or abuse, if you want to see it that way - without batting an eye.

Wielding the energy of the planet as their own, the tendrils tangle around the twin tree trunks at their sides and squeeze. 

Squeeze until she can hear disturbing cracks. 

Squeeze until she can feel splinters digging into flesh that isn't hers. 

Squeeze until the Force whines at the loss of something living. 

The trees fall and all the duo does is nudge them directly towards the oncoming aircrafts before pivoting on the spot and taking off after the third member of their involuntary group. 

The following crashes, thunks, and shocked (outraged) shouting are enough to vividly visualize the total havoc their little stunt must have caused for both nature and hunters. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Tabitha catches Ahsoka grinning smugly in her direction, prompting a smirk of her own to tug at Tabby's lips. 

Oh, how she missed this! 

The easy camaraderie and natural connection between them, allowing spectacles like that back there to happen. 

Her best friend and closest family…

Her sister in all but blood, Jedi Code be damned for a few minutes - If anything these last days have only reinforced the pride she wears in that fact. 

Solace in and after the direst of times only 'Soka can give her. 

Even now, nerves she didn't know had itched for the past days calmed at the sight of Ahsoka and her carefree, yet serious personality. 

All of the paralyzing worry and the blind terror is over now, and Tabitha has never felt more spent. 

Nevertheless, they are - literally - not out of the woods yet. 

So, Tabitha and Ahsoka sprint side by side, listening for their pursuers, who have yet to recover from whatever evasive maneuver that they had to put together and making sure the both of them are out of sight before scampering deep into some lush area of bushes where they both know Kalifa to cower in. 

It takes less than ten seconds to find the youngling amidst said leafage, thus they drag her deeper into it before flattening them against the dirt in prone positions. 

There they wait in uneasy silence. 

Uneasy silence that is unexpectedly broken not by the sound of the thrusters’ energy discharge but Kalifa’s hushed voice.  

“This is never gonna work!” She hisses in Tabitha’s general direction, glaring at her with torn open eyes, shortly fluttering from her to the noise of clamoring hunters echoing through the jungle from the path they vacated. 

And Tabitha understands. Understands not wanting to stay still while people, who want your head as a trophy, breathe down your neck. Understands the fright slamming your heart against your ribcage, forcing your breath to come out labored and strained as you hide mere inches away from those very same people.

But running isn’t an option for any of them - especially Tabitha whose legs have long gone from prickly to alarmingly numb.

“Shush! Just be quiet.” Tabby whispers, one hand waving at the brunette as if to disperse her words.

Just then, the twin rumbling of the skiffs’ engines draws nearer to their position, the strong gusts of wind repelling from their thrusters blowing through the bushes around them, thankfully keeping them hidden from sight. 

For now…

“They’ll find us!” Kalifa whisper-shouts. 

Tabitha shakes her head, glancing at Ahsoka who is merely looking at her, waiting. 

“They won’t!” The shorter girl grounds out in between shallow breaths, eyes fluttering shut as she nosedives back into the planet’s torrent. 

Around them, she can sense so much apprehension, anger, lust, fear, and worry, correlating each of them with their source proves too much of a feat for the tired young girl, therefore she heedlessly dismisses them and sets her focus on the curled and huddled up presences in their immediate vicinity. 

Animals hunkered down in every nook and cranny.

The perfect diversion.

Establishing a psychic bond between herself and a single bird within its flock way ahead is easy enough. Stimulating its anxiety, causing it to skyrocket and a primal fight-or-flight instinct to kick in hardly poses more of a challenge. 

Staying still more so. 

Since the bond is more or less mutual, Tabitha trembles and her legs twitch awkwardly but she suppresses the desire to get up and run, waiting for her animal counterpart to do so in her stead. 

Behind them, the thrusters comb through the scrubs, seemingly honing in on their position, and Tabby can hear Kalifa shifting beside her.  

Ahsoka yanks the poised girl back down just as a barrage of startled squawks filters through the leaves overhead, catching not only the attention of their pursuers but that of a wild Momong as well as it frantically scrambles away. 

To every seasoned hunter, clamor like that would indicate the movement of some creatures the animals perceive as predators. Such as the three of them would be. 

Even these guys cannot pass up a chance like this, shooting right past them with both skiffs and holler that sounds triumphant enough to both reassure and amuse Tabitha. 

'This worked better than expected.' p ops up in her mind but she shakes her head to will the thought away, unwilling to lull herself into a sense of safety just yet. 

It's only when the engines' noise grows faint, clearly audible over the breeze's whining but faraway, that Tabitha pushes herself up on unsteady arms and peeks through the leaf bed concealing them. 

Seeing nothing life-threatening lurking in the treetops, the shaking padawan plops down on her ass and tries to fill her sore, burning lungs with air, concentrating on each deliberate intake of breath to calm her racing heart. 

If she thought her body was battered before, it's absolutely shagged now. 

Her legs are pretty much nothing more than two limp noodles attached to her hip, her head went from pulsing to piercing again, and the rest of her ached. But not that ache you get after a long training session or even by sitting too long. No, this ache penetrates through skin, flesh, and muscle straight into her bones, down to their very marrow. 

Sitting has never felt more like a privilege than at this very moment, submerged in twigs that tickle her nose and pebbles that poke into the numb meat of her legs. 

Nor has it ever been as beneficial for both her physical and mental health. 

A benefit that she is well aware will, unfortunately, end prematurely upon observing both of her new companions climbing to their feet in the twinkling of an eye. 

While they cautiously let their gazes wander across their, now quiet, surroundings, Tabby attempts to rub some life back into her legs, ears perking up when she hears Kalifa's wary voice, quirked eyebrow evident although she has her back to Tabitha's seated form. 

"They… actually fell for that." 

Ahsoka snorts and Tabitha can see her feet pivoting on the spot, toes turning towards Tabby's quivering knees. 

"Yeah, but they'll eventually come around." The oldest girl reckons. "We should get going."

All of a sudden, an orange hand, covered in little scabs and calloused skin, materializes in her line of sight, and with one last wistful look at the floor, Tabitha reaches for it, hand clasping around her best friend to let Ahsoka heave her into a vertical position.

The change, although expected, drives pins and needles up and down her lower body and she staggers. Her rapidly pounding heart skips two beats, expecting her face to get to know the ground a bit more intimately. Instead, her cheekbone meets Ahsoka's sharp collarbone and two lanky arms encircle her shoulders, intercepting her collision course with the dirt.

Her heart unclenches, lungs pressing a breath of relief through her throat as her muscles lose their tension all at once, forehead lifting only to sag back against her shoulder. 

This allows Tabitha to feel the vibrations of Ahsoka's voice instants before she hears it.

"You okay?" 

In response, the shorter girl merely closes her eyes, attempting to coerce some semblance of feeling back into her prickling muscles before ultimately pushing away with a languished sigh. Locking her knees in place to keep them from buckling, Tabitha puts on a sarcastic pacifying smile as she meets Ahsoka’s frowning scrutiny. 

"Just peachy…"

As suspected, the older Togruta does not believe a single word that came out of her friend's mouth and her scowl further aggravates her heavy feature. 

If not for Kalifa, she would have called Tabitha out…

"Yeah, you look it." 

...and Tabby is unsure whether or not to be thankful for that. Concluding that it doesn't matter, either way, the ravenette shifts her speculative gaze to youngling and cocks her head to the side, pursing her lips. 

Tabitha is undecided on what to make of the younger girl. After mere minutes, she seems… abrasive? A little rough around the edges is perhaps the expression most suitable to describe Kalifa's behavior. Curt, blunt, mistrusting, snarky, to name some of the adjectives that first spring to mind.

The problem is that maybe those, primarily hostile, characteristics are all due to their current predicament - be it having run from quite persistent hunters for what felt like an hour or being hunted in general… for who knows how long ('It couldn't have been that long, right? Someone in the Temple would have mentioned something…') - and if not for it, Kalifa would behave differently. 

All these perhaps' and maybes make it impossible to determine the best approach when dealing with the youngling. 

So perhaps, staying as passive as possible is best for now. 

Until Tabby has gotten some more input.

Dislodging herself from Ahsoka for good, Tabby goes for the most objective opening.

"I don't think we were introduced yet." She clears her throat, biting the inside of her lip. "I'm Tabitha." 

By the looks of it, Kalifa couldn't care less for any approach Tabitha could have chosen, giving Tabitha's head wound one pointed look before walking off to the left without further notice. 

"Kalifa."

Left blinking at Kalifa's retreating back, Tabitha's bemused uncertainty is met with a simple shrug from Ahsoka as she glances at the other girl who reluctantly withdraws her hands from her shoulders, lingering in the same spot until eventually, Tabitha moves to follow Kalifa into the trees, shaking her head both to hide and physically rid herself of thoughts on how she could have handled that better.

For multiple minutes, the current lack of action lulls the trio into a strained silence, each of them listening for any signs of the Trandoshans, with their own anxieties and thoughts contradicting their desire to establish any sort of chatter.

At least, for that limited amount of time until one of them seems to overcome said tensions. 

Who? Take a guess. 

For all that she gives of that gruff aura, Kalifa sure is talkative.

"What did you even do to piss them off so much?" 

To some degree, Tabitha's brain has abandoned any thought that does not include a good nap now that running has finally been suspended, hence why it takes her embarrassingly long as well as a questioning glance tossed her way to realize that the genuine question was addressing her. 

The fifteen-year-old sputters, her transfixed eyes snapping away from an animal scuttling through the foliage and just so catching the aforementioned glance. 

"What, me?! Why?" 

Kalifa snorts. "Well, I haven't seen them hunt one group with four pods before. You or the Wookiee did something.” 

And doesn’t it say something about Tabitha and the working speed of her brain nowadays that for multiple long instances that something doesn’t occur to her? 

That something that would be one of the worst crimes to normal people? 

That something that would have seemed like a crushing incident to her just a few years back and now just slipped away from her mind? 

That something that consisted of pained cries, sizzling flesh, and deathly silence, provoking sympathy she could not quell despite whom it was for, and ending in a death that may have spurred on a personal vendetta. 

Her lips press into a thin line, eyes shutting for less than a second as a hand comes up to card through her matted hair, the throbbing ache in her right biceps intensifying when it comes to rest on the nape of her neck. 

Scratching the clammy skin, Tabby puffs out a downtrodden sigh. 

She knows what she did was justified and hardly preventable, yet she couldn’t stop the pit of her stomach from growing cold, quelling the tortuous pang of hunger and erasing whatever appetite has had time to build up over the last thirty minutes or so. 

Logically, she is aware that they would have been hunted, either way, the only difference being the number of hunters after them. But who’s to say it would have been as relentless? 

Who’s to say she’s not partially at fault for everything that happens? Because she stirred up the hornets’ nest in the worst possible way? 

‘This would have never happened to Obi-Wan…’ The padawan thinks.

“I… killed one of them.” She admits out loud, blinking her eyes open just in time to catch the plain disbelief tossed her way. 

“Wait, you fought - and killed - one of them and only got clocked over the head?” Kalifa echoes, upper body twisting to observe Tabitha as the older human’s hand comes to dangle at her side and a wince graces her features.

“I mean… Three, actually. But-”

“Three?”

“Alone?!” 

Head whirling towards the third voice entering the conversation, coming face-to-face with Ahsoka whose expression contorts into a multitude of emotions, Tabitha cowers. Tucking her head in between her shoulder blades, watching as her friend’s expression eventually settles on a disquieting glare that even had Kalifa screwing her mouth shut in a fraction of a second. 

In a vain attempt to save herself and her dignity, the ravenette spits out the first coherent sentence before Ahsoka could speak again, hoping it will not be the last nail in the coffin.

“Who said I was alone?”  

“The fact that you’re here!” Ahsoka glowers, her narrowed eyes promptly stiffening as a thought seemingly pops into her mind. “Did someone at least know where you were?” 

Tabitha opens her mouth to answer that “Of course someone did”, but freezes when she recalls her last conversation with Cody. Recalls calling him off without as much as a hint at her current whereabouts, and reluctantly shuts her mouth without framing the answer Ahsoka seemingly wanted judging by the vexed exclamation bursting from her lips. 

A shapeless exclamation Tabitha is one-hundred percent certain would have been accompanied by hands ripping out her hair if Ahsoka had some. Every other time that thought popped into her mind, the younger of the two had enough common sense to back down and quit the confrontation but for numerous reasons that include sleep deprivation and a general upheaval of her mood, this time is different, and instead of backing down, her hands fly up in grand, flailing gestures as a scowl of her own emerges from someplace she’s seen too much of lately.

“What did you expect me to do? Patiently wait for back-up as we were evacuating a village?” 

"Yes!" Ahsoka all but yells, stepping into Tabitha's bubble whilst maintaining their current walking speed. "You always tell me not to rush into things." 

"Hey, you two-"

"That's different! You-" Tabitha resists the urge to sidestep and enlarge the space between the pair.

"Guys-" 

"How is that different?!"

Both of them engrossed in their petty argument, neither Tabitha nor Ahsoka heed Kalifa - or their surroundings - much attention. 

Not until they suddenly find themselves shoved behind a tree's unusually gigantic roots, silenced from one second to the other by tanned hands clasped over their mouths and staring into the youngling's scrunched up face. 

Adding her back to the ever-growing list of aches after colliding with the ribbed bark, Tabby tries to dislodge the constricting grip on her jaw, only to have a cold glare sent her way, receiving a sharp jerk of its sender's head. Seemingly indicating to something on the small clearing they were about to-

"I'm telling you, I heard sssomeone over here!" 

Breath freezing in her lungs, her heart rate spikes, soaring from jittery to ballistic in the span of the second where her hearing finally picks up what Kalifa appears to have heard long before either of them. 

The sound they all feared to hear since first losing it: Thrusters, on the lowest settings, carrying a skiff just above the twisting leaf canopy of the jungle that conceals the trio.

The balls of her feet dig into the dirt, bark cuts through her tunics into the nape of her neck, and a chilly breeze nips at the beading sweat on her brow. Still, Tabitha dares not move a single muscle, dares not even inhale through the gaps between Kalifa's fingers despite her lungs' desperate plea for air, hypervigilant of the rumbling's increase in volume as it flies practically right above them. 

“They’re gone. Let uss not waste time. The hunt isss almost over." 

Heart skipping a beat as hope thins her curdled blood, Tabitha chances a look upward, catching a peek of the aircraft's underbelly gleaming in the marigold light of the evening sun as it passes through the rustling leaves.

"But-"

"We will get the Jedi whelp and her friendss tomorrow." 

It seems like minutes before the skiff and its occupants disappear from sight and hearing. 

Minutes where each second stretches on seemingly forever, little eternities where anxious anticipation prevails, and by whose end her lungs are burning and her head is swimming, prompting her to gulp down multiple deep breaths upon being released of Kalifa's stifling hold.

Beside her, leaning heavily against the tree trunk, Ahsoka fares similarly. Wheezing for air and recovering their motor functions one after the other, the argument - and words in general - is all but forgotten by two-thirds of the group. 

One of them is not yet ready to let that one go. 

"You know," Kalifa begins, giving both Ahsoka and Tabby the stink eye. "If I'd have known, you two bickering like an old married couple would almost get us killed, I wouldn't have asked." 

And with that, the brunette walks off, yet again not letting her two companions utter a single word in their defense. 

Tentatively, Tabitha glances to her right, at Ahsoka watching her with that firm shine in her eyes that tells Tabitha all she needs to know. Their ‘discussion’ is far from over but for now, the older padawan will leave it be, waiting until they are either hidden or off the planet for good. Frankly, Tabby would prefer the latter.

Accepting the orange-skinned hand offering her help to pull away from the tree, a light squeeze before the hand releases her’s, eases some of the tension out of the shorter girl’s back as both padawans follow Kalifa’s lead. 

Silence reigns...

“If I ask another question, are you two gonna argue again?”  

 … for all of one minute. 

“Depends.” Ahsoka and Tabitha shrug simultaneously, grinning when Kalifa raises her eyebrows at them. 

All of a sudden, however, the youngling seems to sober up, raised brows dipping into a fleeting scowl before averting her subdued gaze, staring straight ahead so that Tabitha, whose grin had dissolved upon noticing the sudden change in the younger girl’s behavior, couldn’t see her expression. 

“You two know each other, so your Masters do too, right?” 

The question is simple enough, a request for some piece of information whose significance Tabby cannot yet grasp and honestly doesn’t need to. Its deliverance, on the other hand, confounds the fifteen-year-old. 

The voice she has come to link with a fierceness that could come relatively close to Anakin and Ahsoka’s sounds frail all of a sudden. As if the slightest gust of wind could shatter whatever lay quiet within the soft tone. As if whatever answer she would get could either carry her further down the stream of life or drown her in it. 

Unsure, Tabitha nods, realizing one second too late that Kalifa still isn’t looking at them. “Yeah.” She exchanges a halting look with Ahsoka who appears just as confused as her. “Why?”

Silence.

“They’ll redouble the search efforts then, won’t they?”

Tabitha freezes, staggering a minuscule step. 

The question is like a sharp slap to the face. 

The hope she can hear trickling through the cracks a punch in the gut. 

The clueless questioning both Kalifa and Ahsoka reek of breaks her heart.

Somehow, Tabitha has managed to keep that one question off her mind.

Would they? 

Her heart tries to convince her that they would, that her kidnapping was the last straw for Obi-Wan and Anakin and the Jedi in general, and they’ve finally put the necessary efforts into rescuing them.

Her mind, however, informs her that zero times two still makes zero. Why would anything change because of her when they haven't sent a search-and-rescue team for Ahsoka, have barely spared it a single thought, and Tabitha cannot remember hearing about three missing younglings, nevertheless some kind of investigation into anyone's disappearance. 

To be fair, she has only been there for a few days at a time, two weeks max, but the kidnapping of or other crimes against younglings - which have sadly happened often enough before - usually sparked a fast-spreading uproar throughout the Order. 

What changed? 

Simple. The war. That's all everyone talks, thinks, and cares about nowadays. It's priority number one in a galaxy where an individual's sole wellbeing slipped close to the end of that list. 

Even the Jedi Order is part of that galaxy, and even they can't resist the toll of war apparently.

But could Tabitha really tell them that to their faces? That the Order they pledged their lives to will abandon them in favor of winning one more skirmish? 

Could she tell Ahsoka that Anakin is waiting for her to return, moving no muscle to assist in any way?

Could Tabitha be that weak gust that demolishes Kalifa's resolve and hope?

Yes, Tabitha should be because if anyone deserves to know, it's them. 

But she can't. She simply can't . 

Because how do you say that? How do you explain that their only chance to flee is themselves because nobody else will try? 

Not only would the emotional consequences hurt, but they also would interfere with any chance of escape, trapping them here for good until the hunters collect their trophies. 

Therefore, Tabby won't be the one. 

She cannot be the one. 

She lies. "Probably." The fifteen-year-old rasps, swallowing around the lump lodged in her throat. "Do you really want to wait that long, though?" 

This time, not even Ahsoka detects Tabby's lie. 

"No, we have a plan." The Togruta states with new confidence in her gait. In comparison to hers and Kalifa's enthusiastic paces, Tabitha's steps seem sluggish, more so than before, and she can hardly pull herself to full height when her best friend shoots her a determined look. 

"You didn't think I'd give up and hide, did you?" 

Just then, they come to an abrupt halt before a tree the size of a venator's hyperdrive. A glance upward shows why: 

A large cavity carved into the tree, concealed by its own leaves. 

Their hideout. 

Kalifa reaches for the wooden ridges and begins the climb upwards. 

Ahsoka quickly follows suit. 

Tabitha does not. 

Upon making sure, her friend has climbed far enough to be out of earshot, the ravenette releases a breath she has not realized she's been holding since Kalifa first uttered her question, and places the palm of her hand against the cracked bark. 

"You never know who does." The defeated girl mutters and closes her fist around the first point of leverage.

Chapter Text

The branch groans beneath her feet as she touches down - or perhaps that is just herself she hears above the rushing in her ears. 

Tabitha trips over her hurting feet, narrowly avoiding careening over the edge as her fall is broken by a rather hard collision with the trunk.

‘Keep going!’ 

Puffy eyes spasm as they wander across the ever-stretching tangle of lush nature. Green blurs together with a rash of other vibrant hues, hindering her attempt to make out her way.

Squeezing her tired eyes shut, Tabby condemns insomnia that kept her up the previous night and the thoughts she could never shake. 

The thoughts about her friends, her master and brothers, and what they are doing right now, if they're doing anything, hurting like she did when Ahsoka went MIA. 

The thoughts about the Jedi and the war and what it did. 

The thoughts that scared her beyond belief. 

The thoughts that gave her nightmares… 

They didn't leave even in the morning. 

Don't leave even now when she needs her head clear.

She needs to keep going, though, she can't stop. 

She chants in her head a bleak mantra, furiously jerking it from one side to the other and rubbing her eyes in order to clear sight and mind. 

'Keep going, keep going, keep-'

Waiting for less than a second until her sight begins to focus, each color individually taking shape, her scrutiny immediately springs towards the brilliant sun rays filtering through the perforated leaf canopy, determining the sun's position. 

A few hours after noon going by the slouched angle of the rays burning down her neck. 

Tabitha only dashed out of the hideout mere ten minutes ago, so the sun could not have moved significantly, meaning she must still be on the right path. 

'Thank the stars,' is all that crosses her mind before she rights herself and drops down onto another branch, landing in a crouch that enables her to gain the minimal amount of propulsion needed to barrel her body over the chasm between the next two. 

There was no time to wait until the burden of sleep dissipated and stopped weighing down her movement. Not when it hadn't done so the entire morning. 

No one else had seemed to notice the slightly swollen bags framing her eyes when they woke, the sluggishness and lack of precision in her movement that even adrenaline cannot negate anymore, the way her eyes burned, torn open with every blink. 

Or at least, nobody had mentioned it even as they parted ways sometime in the morning, Ahsoka and the three younglings going off to track down the Trandoshans' base whilst Chewbacca and Tabby did their best to stock up on supplies they will most definitely need. 

Nobody had said something and Tabitha did not feel the need to, glad for the distraction that involved a lesser amount of action and the chance at meditation, a chance at rest free of anxious wondering. 

And she was just about to take that chance, settling down in the farthest corner from the crumbling embers of their campfire, crossing her legs beneath her, when blaster shots bellowed through the copse of trees and the eyelids she had allowed to latch shut willingly for the first time in four days shot open again. 

'It's too early… It's not supposed to start yet. Not yet… Late afternoon. O-Mer said so. They would be back by then.'

Clawing at the bark behind her, fumbling for leverage to support her swaying weight, intuition and instinct took over as she clambered to her feet, staggering towards the exit just as Chewbacca's alarmed countenance popped into view. 

"Stay here in case they come back," She remembers telling the Wookiee before darting into the thicket, orienting herself towards the beach - where she knew the four other young Jedi to have gone - with the aid of the sun. 

Now she's unsure whether or not she should have stayed back as well, in safety where her exhaustion can't be a burden to anyone. Maybe they are even back already. Perhaps they arrived after she left in a vain attempt to search for them. 

Perhaps Ahsoka and the others are safe and sound, anxiously awaiting her return. 

(Or perhaps she is the reason why Ahsoka is now jeopardizing her safety by going after her.)

But then what is that feeling pressuring her to keep going? 

Fear? No, she knows how that feels. The last few days alone have granted her some insightful expertise on that matter. Not that she didn't know fear beforehand. She's been a Jedi her whole life, taught to oppose fear and anger. 

Landing on all fours, Tabby growls. Yeah, a fine job she did lately, raging at Anakin and Obi-Wan, avoiding everyone else and their questions because she was… afraid, overly worried, too emotional. Everything a Jedi wasn't supposed to let themselves be influenced by, Tabitha grumbles silently, dangling from the edge of the branch by her hands and gingerly lowering herself to the one below. 

It's too late to change or take back everything she's said and done, anyway. (Doesn't mean the squeamish sensation building in her stomach every time she thinks about her screaming accusations goes away.)

The question remains: What is it that sits at the back of her mind, monitoring each and every movement with a menacing precision, urging her to keep going despite her brain telling her differently. 

It goes beyond emotion, beyond what Tabitha knows. This, she has to follow and trust that her physical condition will not thwart her, no matter what lingering doubts niggle at her brain. 

'When did that ever go wrong?' the teen snorts when all of a sudden she sees and hears a skiff closing in. Quickly flattening her upper body against the trunk, Tabby's eyes gaze into nothingness as her head turns toward the wheezing of the craft's engines, following it as it whizzes past her and farther into the foliage. 

Puffing out the breath she's been holding, Tabitha eases the back of her head against the rough wood, ignoring the way the jagged edges tug at the bandage wrapped around her skull, the bacta patch underneath scuffing against the still tender but, thankfully, healed skin. 

Thoughts swirling around the ticking red numbers her mind clings to, like a lifeline about to snap and toss her into the depth below, Tabitha does not dare let her eyes slip shut, squinting through the leaves and the clear blue sky idling above as she contemplates her next move. 

She must be on the right track going by the Trandoshans' presence but even they seem to have lost their prey, leaving her with no clue of her friends' whereabouts. 

They have to be nearby but where? 

Perhaps Tabby should just- 

Suddenly, there's rustling beneath the branch she occupies, derailing her train of thought, then the sound of twigs snapping and what appears to be voices speaking in hushed whispers, prompting her to peer over the edge. 

Light beige and strong mint layered in grime immediately jump into focus, and, before being even fully cognizant, Tabitha has dropped down from her perch, touching down merely a few feet before the cowering pair.

Startling, O-Mer gasps in surprise. "Tabitha," 

Jinx stays perfectly still except for the microscopic flinch spasming through his taut muscles and the twitch of his ever-present scowl, both of which Tabitha brushes off, hastily surveying their garments for new gashes smeared with blood. 

Finding none but not yet reassured, Tabby creeps closer to them, dry lips cracking open. 

"O-Mer. Jinx. Are you okay?" She asks, voice raspy due to recent disuse plus physical exertion.  

Jinx steps around the tree, checking their surroundings in case the Trandoshans decide to pull a U-turn. "We're fine." He retreats behind cover, eyeing her. "What are you doing here?"

"Take a guess."

The male Twi’lek rolls his eyes. “That’s stupid. You could have just waited.”

“I never claimed to be particularly clever.” Tabby shrugs, viewing the empty space around them with a scornful glare, eyes narrowing to tiny slits as if that would make the missing two members of their group simply poof into existence in the dirt suffering under her contempt. “Where are Ahsoka and Kalifa?” 

Piercing her with a look that would usually make the older girl want to shuffle awkwardly or have the ground swallow her whole (which, by the way, it would have, had her sluggish focus actually caught it) , Jinx sighs, obviously deciding Tabitha’s snarkiness is not worth any further comment. 

“Don’t know. We got separated.”

‘Again?! How often does this happen?’

Shifting her weight onto her heels, Tabitha's lips purse, teeth chewing at the blemished tissue of her lower lip and eyes viewing the seamless stretch of plant life as the red numbers in her head begin ticking down again, cruelly loud. 

"Which way did they go?" 

O-Mer is the one to answer, pointing to the north. "That direction."

"Alright," Tabby says after a second. "Chewbacca is still at the hideout. Meet up with him and stay there."

"They could be anywhere by now!" O-Mer hisses at the same time as Jinx fixes her with an incredulous frown. 

"Are you out of your mind? You'll get yourself killed!" 

"Well, I'm not just going to hide while they might need my help." Tabitha glowers, a dangerous twinkle flashing in her pupils before she can restrain its origin.

"If we're not back by the night, don't come for us."  

With that, Tabby lunges for the vine above, clambering up the durable arrangement of fibers before planting her feet firmly on the tree at her back and flinging herself northbound where she lands on yet another thick limb of a tree. 

Minutes pass by, each second reverberating spitefully throughout her otherwise empty cranial cavity. The environment blurs despite Tabitha's strong disinclination to blink even once - or perhaps due to it -, yet the padawan keeps going. Bouncing from point to point, each of Tabby's senses, however dulled they may be, is trained on her surroundings, seeking any sort of clue that could steer her in the right direction.  

Animals have long since fled the area in search of another shelter deeper within the thicket, having most likely given up on the one Tabitha uncovered yesterday. Forestry and foliage give away little other than the stray gusts of wind wriggling through gaps in the trees, and it's been established that her eyesight is less than 20/20 at this point. 

Her hearing, on the other hand, seems to be as keen as ever - or at least as close as it gets with all the different hindrances clouding her senses. 

Not that the heart-wrenching howl penetrating the semi-dense woods isn't deafening by itself. 

With the force and magnitude of a meteorite shower, crippling anguish hails down on her mental shields. An onslaught consisting of rage, sorrow, pain, and so many more emotions so easily connectable to the tremor racking the Force a mere nanosecond before, stirring the entire planet’s life energy as it begins to mourn the falling of something - someone - it has become acquainted with.        

The intensity has Tabitha crumpling against the tree she had, fortunately, landed on a scarce few instants before the excruciating pain rapidly expanded throughout the forest and another haunting memory joined the countless others residing within this place, taking with it a lost soul Tabby has a hard time pitying. 

Because she has a vague idea whose it was when the scream abates and all that is left is a boundless fury that leaves a familiar taste on her tongue. 

Bitter and tingling, the familiarity has Tabitha sprinting towards its source, heartbeat and breathing suspended as dread takes hold of her heart in between its cool talons. Not that long ago, she’s heard that same scream before, that white-hot anger…   

But back then it was directed at her as she cut down its owner’s comrade (and a bit before that her own throat dried out due to a similar sound) . Today it can only be caused by two other people and that thought terrifies Tabitha.

Gradually, after one torturous ordeal of dodging branches and collecting - even more - trivial bruises, a ray of light peeks through the dark the leader’s turmoil doused the Force in. 

There, all but untouched by that same inky blackness, is a gleaming presence she should have felt minutes ago, and Tabitha’s own instinctively cants toward it, like a powerful magnet utilizes all its power to draw her to it. 

And, without hesitation, she lets it, righting her way automatically.

Swinging over a larger cleft at a sturdy vine, Tabby touches down heavily and is immediately confronted with a scene that will surely haunt her in many nightmares:

Approximately one level below her, Ahsoka helps an injured Kalifa to her feet, slinging her left arm over her shoulders as the girl’s right one hangs limply at her side, clearly injured and possibly fractured, judging by the limb’s complete stillness from the elbow down. Tabitha has seen enough of those - too many for her liking. 

However, what has her brain stuttering to an abrupt standstill is when her eyes wander to her left and the hidden glimmer of metal greets her. 

Hidden behind thick brown vines, right in her friends’ blind angle, is the hunting guild’s leader with his rifle poised, aiming at the Jedi pair’s backs. His finger twitching on the trigger, Tabitha doesn’t have to imagine the expression concealed behind that layer of plants to know he won’t hesitate to kill one of the two girls in his scope, vengeance for the hunter lost making him see red where strategical hunting once took place.

He won’t hesitate and neither will she. 

Unable to utter a single word of warning, throat too dry to pronounce the syllables, Tabitha launches herself from her perch. Flipping in mid-air to land on the soles of her feet on the flattened rim of the leader’s skiff, upright and dead steady with even those slight tremors in the deepest tissue of her muscles gone. She heeds the second Trandoshan behind her target with little attention even as his taloned hand jerks toward the blaster safely holstered. Nor does she care about the flinch lancing through her opponent’s body as his head shoots up to gawk at her when his finger finally presses down on the trigger.

In one swift motion, she kicks away the rifle’s barrel just before it releases the fatal bolt that would have lodged itself right in Kalifa’s chest, diverting it to instead whizz past the brunette’s shoulders. 

An outcry of surprise, shock, pain, whichever one it is reaches Tabitha’s ears but she doesn’t dare look in the pair’s direction, both afraid of what she would find and careful to not leave her back vulnerable to attacks. 

Instead, she merely allows herself a curt glance to the side, just in time to catch Ahsoka launching herself and Kalifa - who may or may not have received another injury - behind cover, and her mind curves around the words her mouth could not. 

“Ahsoka, get Kalifa out of here!”

“Are you out of your mind?!” is the immediate answer, underlined with worry, disbelief, all the emotions a friendship brings in situations like these that often complicate matters. 

All the emotions she appreciates but doesn’t need right now. 

“Don’t argue with me,” Tabitha answers, averting her gaze, not a split-second after letting it flit towards her best friend. "I'll be fine. I'll meet you back at the hideout. Now go!"

Reacting before the Trandoshan can regain his bearings, without checking whether or not Ahsoka will actually listen, the leg that kicked the weapon away repeats the very same motion, this time at the Trandoshan’s face. The kick hits home and sends the hunter sprawling to the floor with a grunt just as she hears Ahsoka’s silent grumble at the back of her mind before she can feel her and Kalifa’s presence reluctantly retreating.

“Don’t die!”

Grip loosening around the rifle’s stock and barrel as he stumbles backward, Tabitha snatches it from him at the last second, takes aim at the brown-striped yellowish-green head of the second man - who has finally freed his blaster pistol of its holster - and pulls the trigger.

The subsequent click followed by the long-winded hiss, and all of Tabitha’s makeshift plan dissolves alongside the tibanna gas escaping its chamber. 

‘Safeties… Dwang it! Should have known…’ 

Heart sinking upon catching sight of the smirk magnified in the rifle’s scope and hearing the smug chuckle coming from the hunter at the end of her barrel, Tabby has but one second to wish her rash order undone (however, she also knows it was better to get Kalifa to safety instead of both her and Ahsoka having to worry about their injured companion) before she slips back into combat-mode. 

Deeming the rifle a lost cause, she launches the idling weapon toward the Trandoshan, whose taloned finger is twitching on the trigger and whose eyes simmer with the desire to claim his kill before widening in surprise. Too startled by her immediate change in tactics, the large reptilian neglects to dodge the incoming 'projectile' which hits him square in the chest, knocking him and more importantly his aim off-center. 

The Trandoshan staggers backward, opening himself up enough for her to lunge over the disoriented leader's attempts to scramble to his feet and shove the yellowish-green Trandoshan off the parked skiff with all of her might. 

It is then, when her reddened hands impact with his jagged cuirass, that she feels and sees the dirty grey handle complete with a bluish-black knob protruding from a sheath that contrasts its rather pristine glint of metal. Weathered and ruined beyond any kind of restoration, she knows this ragged piece of cloth to be way too big for the blade it holds before she even reads the meticulous words carved into the side.

Aliit ori'shya tal'din.

Family is more than blood. 

The world narrows down, coiling around the phrase like a snake around its prey, and Tabitha can feel a tinge of anger layering her rampant heart. 

'That's mine.'

The padawan snarls, remembers receiving the sharp blade and tracing the engraved letters with delicate care as her disbelieving gaze kept switching between the knife and Cody, who watched her with the corners of his lips twitching and a fond glimmer in his limpid brown eyes. 

A hunting knife small enough to fit in her boots or sleeves, sharp enough to cut through most layers of skin, sturdy enough to tolerate a certain degree of erosion.  

A gift after a battle with Grievous where the droid general had robbed her of both her lightsabers and she had to resort to a vibroblade she ransacked from a commando droid to protect herself… 

… And it belongs to her, not this sithspawn. 

Cody gave this to her! To protect herself in hazardous situations.

Such as this one. 

Like puzzle pieces clicking together, Tabitha knows her next moves, can shape them in her mind down to a science. 

Time to take back what's hers while simultaneously gaining the upper hand. 

All it takes is one additional twist of her wrist before gravity yanks her opponent toward the ground and she snatches the knife from his sheath. 

Swiftly dragging the tip across his chest plate, cutting through fabric and scales alike, eliciting a pained hiss, Tabitha plunges the blade into the soft flesh of his shoulder with little resistance. 

Promptly, the hiss morphs into a full-on cry of pain and Tabby shoves the Trandoshan the last way off the raised platform. He lands with a thunk that instantly silences his cry.

However, before Tabitha can verify whether the six-feet-drop knocked him unconscious or not, three meaty fingers wrap around her throat. 

The yelp that spills from her lips is cut off, strangled as the fingers squeeze and talons dig into the flimsy skin underneath her jawline, straining to lift her off the ground. Tabitha can hear a growl in her right ear just as her feet leave the metal surface, drowned underneath the rivers of blood suddenly rushing through her ear canals, struggling to transport the quickly decreasing amounts of oxygen to her brain. Desperately, she attempts to stifle the gasp that threatens to propel the last of her oxygen reserves from her lungs, but she can already feel the hot air brushing past her lips, igniting the spark of panic loitering in the back of her mind. 

She can feel it dripping down her spine, worming its way into her heart, yet before panic's cold claws can puncture the overheated tissue, just like the talons digging into the side of her throat, the very same vanish.

They vanish and suddenly she's weightless. 

For all of two seconds, air shoots past her head, her chest, her legs, cuts through her pale skin, but there's nothing in her lungs. Nothing to be expunged once her back collides with the steering controls. 

Nothing from her but everything from the panel that abruptly halted her impromptu flight. 

Sparks crackle and flicker - presumably due to the dent she can feel curving around her back -, singeing the fabric of her robes and the layer of skin underneath. 

The flinch is instinctual and all too familiar to Tabitha, forcing her to regain her bearings just in time to catch the fist flying her way. Eyes widening, the teen rolls out of the way and to her feet just as the fist smashes into the dented metal, evoking another bout of electric sparks to spew from the damaged controls. 

Tabby flips the knife, surrendering her steadfast reverse grip as she comes to a crouched stand, facing the seething Trandoshan. 

Harsh, ragged breaths rattle in his chest, slip through gritted fangs shining beneath vicious orange eyes, blazing with hatred and anger and grief and everything that darkens the Force… so much more intense than she recalls it being back on Centares. 

Back there, anger overruled sadness. The death of a comrade on the field of battle. Painful but feasible, a possibility at each and every corner.

Back there, his actions were fierce but conscious.

Here he seems downright desperate, flailing for vengeance even though there's little to hit, with his eyes blinded by rage and his senses dulled by misery. 

This man, right now, is the incarnation of everything the Masters have ever warned them from. 

Everything they are never supposed to be, lest the dark side is what they choose. 

Everything Tabitha never wanted to understand but does . 

Because she's felt it. She lashed out at people who weren't at fault. She hit them - hit him - where it hurt because she couldn't see beyond herself. Because she was blind. 

She made decisions because she was desperate. Decisions that turned on her and led to her downfall. 

Vengeance, however, was never her motive. 

Believing Ahsoka was still alive, the saving of family was. Closure… 

He doesn't have that because he knows and Tabitha hates that it makes her sympathize with this cruel, cruel man. Hates that she can understand but still cannot make herself feel any more pity or kindness regarding him. 

Forgiveness, a trait every Jedi should possess. One she should show where others would never dream of it.

Does he deserve it though? Tabitha thinks not. 

This is what he chose to do. This is the profession he chose for himself and the family he lost today. Everything that happened was his fault. 

(Does that mean he deserved suffering? Perhaps.)

Tabby stares at this man, hurting and craving. Never before has looking at an enemy, who threatened her very existence and that of her friends, pained her so deeply and threw her so off course. 

She will do whatever needs to be done, of that she has not a single doubt. But it scares her that suddenly the two of them are not so different anymore. 

Of course, she knows that she would never stoop as low as him, that she would never be him but up until now little of her adversaries have ever seemed so human, so vulnerable . 

It doesn't matter, she wants to convince herself. They're enemies, still on two different sides of the same conflict, and that's all there is to it. 

That's all there should be.

However, now that the thought is there it won't go away, therefore all Tabitha can do for the moment is shove it to the back of her mind, pray it won't bother her, and shift her focus to the shaking Trandoshan, readying himself to launch another attack. 

Perched on the balls of his bare feet, upper body angled toward Tabitha, and orange eyes somewhat clouded as he stares her down, he appears to be completely disregarding the blade poised in front of her chest and the possible fatal outcomes striking her could have. 

He pants, sucking in precious air as if there was little left.  

"You!" He exclaims, voice wavering. "I will skin you alive and make the other whelp watch before killing her the way she murdered my son ." 

Tabby blinks, relatively unperturbed by the death threat but all the more disturbed by the way the clouds in his eyes suddenly clear, to be replaced by twinkling mist. 

Ill-restrained tears the leading hunter visibly struggles to quench just as Tabby struggles to swallow around the unexpected clump obstructing her throat. 

Fingers tightening around the hilt of her gifted knife, to the point where she believes she can hear the durasteel creak underneath the strain, Tabby shifts her hold one last time.

Both of them look at each other, prepared for the rematch that could end all of this.  

Prepared for anything but an abrupt lurch from the craft underneath their feet that has both of them careening into the opposite sides of the skiff. 

Barely managing to catch herself on the rail, Tabitha grunts when the edge rams into her mid-back, already bruising from her previous impact with the controls. Which appears to be the reason why, when she tosses a startled glance around, the ground gradually shrinks and the branches come dangerously close to ending both of their lives.  

The padawan ducks just in time to avoid getting hit by a stray twig as her prickling eyes flick from the vengeful Trandoshan staggering with the quakes shaking the skiff, to the closed-off tree canopy posing a very real threat all of a sudden, to the destroyed console. 

Wires jut out of the cracks brought about by the back-shaped dent, sliced open or shred to pieces, the lone sparks have transformed into a cascade of blinding particles all at once. 

'Navigation's definitely busted. Acceleration and brakes too,' Tabitha muses, cautiously peering at her opponent out of the corner of her eye. 'But the steering itself might still be okay.'

Her eyes narrow as they gaze at the necessary switches, determining whether the plan slowly forming before her third eye would work. Nothing seems to be acutely damaged in that area, excluding the flickering buttons and incessant beeping coming from somewhere, and with one well-balanced jump, she might be able to escape unscathed. 

Tabitha doesn't need to know anything more, nor does she require any assurance before she madly dashes for the main lever, never completely turning her focus away from her enemy.  

She moves, he does too. 

She yanks the lever back, the Trandoshan lunges, talons first. 

She holds on for dear life as the craft tilts backward, he flails for a leverage point only to be met with air. 

She jumps, he falls, and the craft plows through the trees, leaving a giant rift in its wake. 

To her chagrin, Tabby comes up a little short on her jump, missing the branch she had been aiming for by miles and having to resort to the convenient vine just beneath. 

A hiss bursts from clenched teeth as she slides down the natural rope, grip too slack to hold her, and thus feels the skin on her palms burn and abrade. Bracing herself, Tabitha screws her eyes shut and her hands clamp down on the plant, halting her almost instantly at the cost of her aching shoulders wrenched upward in one jerking motion.

Tabby knows she releases an outcry of pain, can feel it reverberating in her chest, but all of it is drowned out by a roaring explosion concealed behind a veil of leaves and twigs that bend and burn with the blast's outgoing force and heat. 

Minutes go by, or perhaps it is only seconds before Tabby plucks open her eyes and finds herself dangling dozens of feet in the air, head lolling against the thick vine. She sighs, shaking her head to get rid of the persistent ringing in her ears, simultaneously coercing her achy arms to pull herself higher up the vine. 

Slowly but surely, her ears settle and her hands get a grip on the branch she had wanted to land on, heaving her up. Which is when she hears it:

The screaming and the yelling.

"I'll get you! You and all the others! You can't hide from me! You killed my son! I will kill you!

The threats of a father at the behest of his dead son, so full of wrath and sorrow and- and twisted determination. 

He cared for his son, deeply. Despite their profession and their situation, he cared . 

Unbidden tears spring into her eyes.

Do the Jedi? 

Do they care about them, despite the war? 

Chapter Text

Dusty hands scrub across heavy eyelids, endeavoring to rub away the sleep weighing on them and pulling them shut. 

Tabitha sits back on her heels, lets her numb fingers ghost over the sensitive skin above her brow - finally relieved of bacta patch and bandage - before letting them slide from her cheeks. 

As they hang limply in the space between her thighs, a disgruntled scowl sharpens her features upon noticing the little tremors running through her hands. 

Sighing, Tabby clenches and unclenches her shaky hands time and time again, and when that yields no results, she fists the loose, grimy fabric of her pants in her hands, willing them to still. 

Rather foolishly, the fifteen-year-old had hoped that rising from her perch against the far wooden wall - drenched in the eerie viridian light of Trandosha dominating the night sky - and doing anything but continuingly failing to finalize with the handful Vibroblades, would help. 

For hours after the group successfully ransacked the crashed prisoner transport (which they may or may not have been entirely responsible for… along with the death of the few prisoners onboard) for parts they could use to assemble a transmitter, with which Chewbacca can contact his folks back on Kashyyyk, and a few weapons, courtesy of Tabitha herself because you can never have enough weapons, Tabby has tried to get the inner electronics of her makeshift Vibroblades right. However, her hands never did want to stop trembling and her eyes never did stay open, thus leading the fusing pen clutched between her pointer finger and thumb to slip from the circuit and generate an electric shock that scorched her fingertips.

And maybe that should have been Tabitha's clue to go to kriffing sleep instead of carefully shuffling around the snoozing figures reclined against the walls and floor, listening to their even breathing underneath the dying crackle of the campfire she skirted around. 

Maybe she should have laid down instead of checking out Chewbacca's failed attempt at a long-range transmitter, which caused Jinx to (eventually) lose his temper and propose a different approach: 

Convince the prisoner Jinx and O-Mer took - strangely the same unlucky guy she stabbed the day before - via mind trick to call for pick-up. They would then hijack said pick-up and use it as their way to launch a full-out frontal assault on the guild's flying base and, if they are lucky, escape. 

That's what Tabitha needs to finish these Vibroblades for! 

But she physically can't…. Just like she physically can't sleep for more than an hour, her brain too cramped and cluttered to settle. 

So, after mindlessly letting her eyes rave across the dysfunctional device without any intention of actively altering anything, Tabitha examined the prisoner they rendered unconscious with the help of a simple mind trick. 

He kept raging at them, Ahsoka and Tabby in particular, about how Garnac - the guild's leader - would destroy them for everything they've done until, surprisingly, O-Mer was fed up and demanded he shut up and sleep until they needed him. Judging by what Tabitha has come to know about them, she would have suspected it to be Jinx but hey, in the end, O-Mer's trick worked. To his own surprise, too. 

The sleepless girl checked his restraints - consisting of a dead snake and some vines ( 'Yucky…') - before leaving the unconscious man shoved in the corner and ambling over to the last stop of her insomnia-induced inspection: 

Kalifa. 

The youngling had suffered a charred flesh wound on her right shoulder from the stray blaster bolt that luckily only nicked her skin and the flesh underneath, missing any major blood vessels. 

Unfortunately, on the same arm just below her elbow, Tabby had been able to sense a simple transverse break straight across the ulna with the Force's assistance. 

Combined, the two injuries have caused the younger girl enough pain that by the time Tabitha had finally trudged back into the hollow tree that made up their hideout, Kalifa was lying on the floor, barely conscious but thankfully not in shock. 

An anxious and worried Ahsoka hovered over her, keeping Kalifa's right arm immobile and already dressing the graze with basic medical supplies Tabitha had had on her and apportioned amongst the group for this exact circumstance. 

Upon catching sight of the raven-haired padawan heaving herself into safety - no further injuries visible - some of the tension bled from the Togruta's back, and following an interrogation concerning Tabby's wellbeing, she beckoned the younger girl over to help her with their injured compatriot. 

It was times like that, gazing down at someone hurting, that Tabitha was thankful she dragged Ahsoka to some of those extra Force Healing lessons and actually paid attention to some of the medical jargon Helix spewed whenever she sat at someone's - mainly Obi-Wan's - bedside in the medbay. 

It allowed her to heal Kalifa's wounds with Ahsoka's assistance. Enough that, when she checked Kalifa's condition just now as the girl slumbered away, the bacta bandage had knitted the graze back together and her fractured ulna sported little more than mere cracks on the surface. 

'One more healing session and we should be able to take off the cast,' Tabitha muses, relief flushing the concern from her veins. 

Kalifa had made it very clear that no matter what, she would not stay behind tomorrow - today? - while they risked their lives on what Tabitha would label a suicide mission. 

Of course, it's not supposed to be one but, honestly: No intel, weapons that didn't work yet, no reinforcements, 90 percent of getting killed up there…. 

Suicide mission, for sure. 

Those 10 percent though? They have had worse odds of survival.  

At least, that's what the raven tells herself as she uncramps her stiff fingers, disentangles them from the grainy fabric one by one, and stands. 

Her heavy gaze wanders over Kalifa and the peaceful expression she only ever gets when she sleeps, thanking the stars that she had somehow slept through Tabby's superficial ministrations. Then it travels across the rest of the 'room', observes how Trandosha's light mixes with the fire's unstable glow. 

She studies the dancing shadows on the walls for minutes, transfixed, hoping for the lull of sleep to finally coerce her to lie down and rest. Puffy eyes flit towards the spot she has occupied for hours on end, frowning at the cluster of small parts and lackluster blades strewn about, and lets out a heavy breath, laced with exhaustion. 

Tabitha could go for a loth-catnap at the very least. 

'Might as well try. Again…' , the padawan murmurs mutely and meanders over to her spot, lying down on the hard floor and (too easily) closing her tired eyes. 

Forty-two minutes and 23 seconds pass and all Tabitha manages to achieve is dozing off for all of ten minutes before snapping to 'full' (read: mentally and physically tired, but somehow still there) wakefulness. 

The reason: Tabitha doesn't know. 

… 

Well, no, scratch that. She does know why, she just despises it with a fiery passion and would really rather ignore it. 

How can you not when all you hear in the dead of the night are screams and yells of not one but hundreds of people? 

How can you not when you have to go through the torture of deciphering every wail, every shout, every sob, as the ones of the long-deceased or the ones of the living? Of having to dissect your mind to find the memories that truly belong to you because exhaustion has made your control sloppy? And then having to relive said memories and dwell on why there was even yelling and screaming involved?

Of having the same questions pop up in your mind, but never being able to find the answers? 

'Was I in the wrong? Was I unfair? Are they okay? Are they looking for us? Are they even trying? 

Do they care?

Did the war make the Jedi and the Council more complacent and cold than hunters already? Enough to give up on their kin? '

Tabitha wants to sleep, she honestly, truly does - did the days before as well. 

So she tries, clenches her eyes shut for four more minutes, breathing slowly, deliberately, focusing on the rise and fall of her chest and the sound of air rushing over her lips. She bats away the questions and the answers that aren't there - or are they and she can't see them? - , she curls onto her side and tucks her head in between her shoulders, hoping to muffle Garnac's desperate screams, Anakin's restrained voice, the scared whimpers of villagers, the dying wails of strangers.

Tabby breathes the way Obi-Wan taught her to, releases overwhelming sensations into the Force without settling on the dormant visions hiding in its gloomy recesses.

Yet, none of it helps. 

Her surroundings are too quiet and her head too loud. The questions won't go away and possible answers start to clash, jumbling together into one big mess. 

Meditation might help but she's too strung up at the moment, too unfocused. 

Thus, the girl heaves a sigh and props herself up on her arms, looking around to discern whether her tossing and turning woke someone. Judging by the deep, steady breaths, it did not. 

"Good," she mumbles as she strains her arms to push herself backward. 

Back against the wall, Tabby wiggles and writhes until she finds the most comfortable position before grabbing the fusing pen and one of the Vibroblades, turning the open hilt with its dead electrics towards her. 

She sets to work, again.  

Trandosha rises higher into the sky - or perhaps it's beginning to set behind the horizon - already while Tabitha finally manages to finish the knife in her hand, burning her fingertips ten times during the ten-minute process. 

Thumbing the activator, the sharpened blade thrums with low, yet intense vibrations, and the vibration generator, slash modified power cell, exudes a pitiful whine as the rewired electronics sputter and gasp, straining to do their job. 

It's mediocre work, at best. It's a weapon but it's dangerously unstable.  

Had there been power cells on that transport that were not second-hand junk or badly damaged by the crash, Tabitha could have stabilized the makeshift generators. As they are now, they'll need to cool down after only short times of use… unless you don't like your hand anyway. Then you might as well let the generator blow it to smithereens. 

Tabitha, however, still needs her hand, so she shuts the blade off, puts it aside, and picks up the next. 

Three down, two to go. Then they'll be armed 'sufficiently' for tomorrow and Tabitha might even be able to get some rest. 

Unlikely, but a girl can dream…  

Suddenly, blinding white light overtakes her vision, and a short stab of pain prickles through the quivering tips of her fingers, eliciting a shocked gasp from the young girl. 

… Or not.

"Kriffing-" 

Yanking her hand back, trying to shake off the sting, the fusing pen slips from her fingers and clatters to the ground. 

A wince pulls back her features, afraid to have woken someone, yet her attention stays on the overloaded circuit, on the fading sparks flying in all directions, unable to be properly processed. 

Her attention clings to the circuit as it dies, spluttering periodically but otherwise inactive, until her next mistake where it will jump into action and punish her sloppiness.

Tabitha wants to fling the stupid thing across the room, watch it shatter against a wall, and laugh, refusing to let it mock her. But, at the same time, she wants to hold it close, embrace it, encourage it to produce energy out of more than… than what exactly? Spite? Sporadic desires and needs? 

A blade can't feel, can't perceive resentment or comfort… 

So why can't Tabitha look away? Why does she feel sad when she notices how dull the circuit looks? When she thinks about its erratic bursts of energy? About the overwhelming sparks clashing with its inner workings? 

Tabby hasn't even realized that her hands, including Vibroblade, had fallen into her lap or that her chin came to rest against her chest in order to frown at her unfinished work, sight blurry and unfocused. 

Not until orange fingers snap before her eyes, jarring her out of her trance. 

"-itha! You there?" 

Ahsoka's hushed voice filters through the cotton in her ears, prompting Tabby's head to shoot up way too fast. Inky blackness encroaches on the blurry, colored outlines making up her eyesight, and her head feels all too light all of a sudden. 

She swallows the groan that swells in her throat, blinking rapidly to clear the dark. First, the dim lighting of the campfire returns as little specks, expanding quickly to reveal vague shapes and hues before finally piecing together the world, sharp and clear.  

Brain still caught in that strange place between consciousness and unconsciousness, a disoriented "Huh?" is all that comes from her mouth upon being greeted by narrowed ocean eyes and the pinched expression decorating her friend's face.

"You back with the living?" Ahsoka snorts quietly, a tiny smirk teasing the corner of her lips but not quite reaching her eyes. 

Attentive eyes that give Tabitha brief a once-over, taking in her slouched posture, her glassy eyes, the dark bags beneath them contrasting her, even by her standards, unusually pallid skin, her trembling hands and the quivering blade she vainly tries to burrow in her lap.

Sensing the pervasive scrutiny, the younger girl hunches over herself just a little bit more, one hand darting out from that little cocoon to scoop up the discarded fusing pen.

"Yeah, sorry. Got distracted." Tabby answers curtly, hurriedly averting her eyes when she notices her Ahsoka's smirk fall and that same concerned expression as before returns. 

Joining the narrow tip with the cool metal board, intent on continuing her forgotten work, Tabby fails to catch Ahsoka's abrupt movement before it's too late.

"No." Tabitha blinks down at the empty space between her fingers, and then turns to glare at the missing object now in her best friend's hand. Ahsoka disregards the hard look with practiced ease and stares right back. "You're not touching that until you tell me what's wrong with you." 

"What's wrong with me?!” Tabby sputters, eyes narrowing into thin slits. “We're about to face a dung-load of very unhappy hunters and I'm not done with these things," She whisper-shouts, snatching the stolen tool from the Togruta’s fingers, who makes no move to stop her. "What's wrong with you?"

Immediately, she regrets each word that just crossed her lips, feeling shame heavy in her stomach when she sees Ahsoka squint at her, dark lips pursing, forehead crinkling, and index finger beginning to tap against her thigh, seemingly impatient. She regrets them - just like she can’t help but regret her last conversations with Obi-Wan and Anakin - but does she take them back? No, and if questioned, Tabby wouldn’t be able to tell you why she didn’t apologize. Not when she is usually the first one to after the littlest of mistakes. 

She wouldn’t be able to tell why she’s not doing it now, nor can she tell why she didn’t back on Centares. 

Answers, in general, seem to elude her lately.

Realizing her thoughts are beginning to descend again, Tabby quickly tries to pull herself out of it, clamoring for a distraction, only to realize that a few beats of silence have passed where Ahsoka’s stare bore into hers, looking straight into her very soul. 

She would have glanced away, tempted to just shut Ahsoka out and proceed to sit in utter silence, let Ahsoka decide whether talking to a wall is worth the lost sleep. However, when the older girl abruptly moves, bewilderment locks her prickling eyes in place as she observes her standing up, stretching before gazing down at her. Narrow eyes and wrinkled brows gone.     

"Okay, up." Ahsoka orders with one swift hand gesture, and Tabby looks at her, surprised, processing the words and searching her steady blue eyes for some kind of hint.  

Nothing. Her pupils shine in contrast to the filth covering her entire body, but at the same time they appear blank, full of nothing substantial, or perhaps Tabby just promptly lost the ability to read her best friend. Either way, the human girl stays seated, objects clasped loosely in her hands and owlish eyes focused on her friend.   

"What?"

Ahsoka sighs as if the answer should have been clear - or maybe she hoped Tabby wouldn’t put up a fuss. "We're gonna wake the others like this. Now up." 

And, believe her when she says, right then, Tabby wants to put up a fuss and protest because she has a vague idea where this is going, and no thank you. She’s already (emotionally) drained enough that a heartfelt conversation about… everything that’s been happening will only make her feel worse.  

But would it really? Would it honestly make her feel worse than she already is, or is she just afraid to make it all real? To let it be a real problem out there, instead of something she can ignore because she’s the only person afflicted? 

Is she too tired or too scared to tell Ahsoka?

‘Confronting fear, the destiny of every Jedi is.’ 

An old, jovial voice suddenly chimes in, the clack of a wooden cane in the background and an infectious smile flashing before her eyes, reminding her of that one day in her initial training where the old master all these things belong to pulled her aside and told her exactly that.  

Tabitha doesn’t let herself ponder it anymore, knowing she’ll only find all the more reasons to avoid following Ahsoka, to avoid talking things through, to avoid facing this . Reluctantly, she puts both fusing pen and unfinished blade aside, and rises to her feet, slightly unsteady despite Ahsoka’s hand on her shoulder as she promptly begins to steer Tabby out of their little hideout.   

Not a minute later, the pair find themselves seated on one of the countless branches in the hideout’s immediate line of sight, gazing up at the brimming sky in terse silence, none yet aware of how to successfully start this conversation.  

The breeze ruffles through the unruly strands of her dark hair and caresses the benumbed skin stretched across a skull it feels way too tight for, all the while flowing through her nostrils and cleansing them of the mellow and biting smell of fire and electricity. 

An impossibly light cloud replaces the weight in her head, and for one single second, Tabitha can forget what the circumstance of their potentially perilous ‘night walk’ is and just count the stars visible beyond Trandosha’s light. 

Until Ahsoka clears her throat, tearing her own sight away from the mottled sky to instead focus on her best friend.    

"I'll ask again: What's wrong?" She starts, words deliberate and gentle, as gentle as her soft eyes Tabitha meets with her cloudy ones.  

A sole sigh is the first reply the Togruta gets, spotting the little shake of Tabitha’s head and the way her shoulders drop more than she even thought possible anymore before the human mumbles on, eyes gong back to stare off into the distance. 

"Nothing. I'm fine, just can't sleep. Might as well get things done." 

"You're fine? That's why you've been awake for three days? Why you're running yourself ragged? Because you're fine?" Ahsoka huffs, leaning forward in a vain attempt to catch her friend’s gaze, hands stemmed against the branch. When Tabby doesn’t answer after a few seconds pass silently, Ahsoka puffs out a slow, controlled breath, releasing every ounce of frustration the human’s stubbornness provokes.   

"I'm worried about you, Tabby,” The Togruta admits, laying a gentle hand on Tabby’s wrist and squeezing. “You haven't been like this in a long time, not since Rhudaur. I wanna help you, I wanna understand but for that, you have to let me know what's going in that big brain of yours."

And that’s all it takes for Tabitha’s last walls to crumble, the tension along with it as she lets herself fall back to lie flat on the branch, staring up at Ahsoka at the sky behind her Montrals. 

"I- I don't know," She stutters after an instant of careful consideration, eyes flicking back and forth between Ahsoka and the sole star above her head when the Togruta shifts to face her completely, cross-legged. "It's just been a lot lately. The campaign on Centares, which I don't know if the guys got away from okay, all of this right now, and then-"

"Then what?" Ahsoka prods with a tilt of her head when the human trails off, blocking Tabby’s view of the lone star. 

Unsure of what to say but simultaneously unwilling to stop now, Tabby decides to just let it all go, let her mouth speak the words that have been weighing on her mind for days. 

"Before- Before this, before you got here, did you know that there were even younglings missing?" She begins somberly, propping herself up on her elbows before returning to her previous seated position. 

Ahsoka looks dubious for a moment, dirtied white markings touching."No? What does that have-"

"Was there ever any kind of warning or a search party? Anything they did to rescue them?" Tabby interrupts Ahsoka’s question, voice growing steely and face growing warm. Noticing this, Ahsoka is left a bit perplexed but not at all disappointed. Tabitha is starting to open up, she’s beginning to talk about it instead of bottling it all up, exactly what Ahsoka intended to make happen out here.  

Yet, she doesn’t quite understand what her best friend is trying to get at here. If the Jedi could have, they would have tried.

"...I guess not. But- we're at war, Tabby. There might not have been the people to spare for a search, let alone a rescue from a bunch of armed Trandoshans." 

A mirthless, hollow laugh bursts from Tabitha’s lips. A sound so foreign to both of them that a beat of silence passes before the younger girl proceeds, her tone just a tad too venomous for Ahsoka’s liking. 

"You sound like Anakin," She all but hisses, face twisting into a pained grimace as she recalls their argument, clear as kyber. 

She turns her head away so that Ahsoka won’t see, taking a moment to breathe and listen to her accelerating heartbeat.  

"Everyone's using war as an excuse to stop caring. To justify that we lose what we stand for as Jedi. As if that makes it better somehow. As if that heals the wounds our insensibility has caused," Tabitha says, head whipping back around to face Ahsoka, expression hard. "War made us as cold as the Separatists and even the people we protect always thought we were when it should have made us understand. All this fighting and suffering should have made us see, should have made us care about the little people. Little people like the younglings trained to fight their war. Yet the Order ignores and forgets about them ." 

A finger juts out to point at the tree where three abandoned Jedi younglings sleep, about to walk into the gundark’s den without the support the Jedi have always promised. 

"About us… What does it matter if we win the war when there's no one left to celebrate?"

Voice cracking on the last syllable, Tabby stares down the lush ravine beneath their dangling feet, cursing the burning behind her eyes.

"They're not looking for us then, huh…" She hears Ahsoka whisper suddenly and looks back up at her, trying to gauge her friend’s reaction, expecting to see sadness, anger, disappointment, all of it. 

However, the older the girl is merely looking at her, the downturned corners of her eyes the only sign that what Tabby revealed caused concern and disappointment.     

Unsure whether or not she’s waiting for some kind of response, Tabby shakes her head.

"No.”

To her endless bewilderment, no anger or sadness is making its way onto her expression. Instead a small, almost triumphant smile tugs at the corner of her lips.  “That’s what’s bothering you?”

Tabitha frowns, averting her eyes yet again.

“They're sitting ducks, assuming we'd manage to get back to them on our own. A bunch of kids," She says, wringing her trembling hands and breathing shakily through her nose. "When Anakin and Obi-Wan tried to convince me that was the best course of action, I… I said some stuff I'm not proud of. I didn't want to admit it then, didn't talk to them the day after, but I just…"

"Felt betrayed?” Ahsoka cuts in, tone soft.

"Yeah, I guess," Tabby mumbles, still focused on something far off in the distance.

"No, listen." 

Promptly, the older girl grabs hold of Tabitha’s shoulder and forcefully turns her so that they have to look at each other.  

She knows Tabitha has been thinking about all the problems over and over, forgetting to even once ponder why exactly this has affected her so heavily, why she can’t sleep after something that to other people - including Ahsoka - might not even carry any significant weight at first.

Thinking about the “whats” and “hows”, she’s either disregarded the “whys” - the driving emotion behind it all - or found them impossible to think about. 

An exact replay of the events after Rhudaur. 

A replay Ahsoka intends to stop, even if she has to slam Tabitha’s own emotions into her face to make her realize the crux of the situation.

"You're not guessing. You felt… still feel betrayed because the Order doesn't have your back - our backs - the way they should. You're angry, hurt, perhaps a bit afraid, and you haven't worked through any of that." 

Gulping down a sharp breath of air, Tabby's gaze drops down to her lap, fingers picking at her pants and conveniently finding a loose strand to play with as her best friend's words register to her. 

When she registers how true they are. 

Everything has been going downhill lately, issues piling on top of her, crushing her without once giving her time to catch her breath and process her emotions and thoughts like Obi-Wan always taught her to. 

She felt betrayed, misled, and instead of working through it, working towards a solution with the others, she let it overwhelm her, let it turn her against them. 

Her violent emotions ran wild, using Ahsoka's kidnapping as fuel and a front, and even now, with Ahsoka beside her, they didn't stop. They just found another one of her worries to leech off of and grow. 

They took that original bitter sensation of betrayal and amped it up by a thousand… until her blind trust in the Jedi cracked, leaving room for doubts to seep into her mind. 

And that's scary . 

Because it reminds her of Rhudaur, just like it does Ahsoka. Of how she didn't trust the Force completely for days to come, how her connection, her relation to it suddenly shifted and left her reeling, descending a spiral only the old Masters' teachings and her friends helped her out of. 

She doesn't want that again. Doesn't want to look at the Jedi's actions with the same critical eye she's ever since regarded the Force's will with. 

Tabitha wants to trust without question, but it takes a lifetime to build that kind of faith in something, yet a mere moment shattered her's, brought it to its knees, and held it there.

Sighing, Tabby's shoulders drop and the girl leans forward, forearms propped against her thighs. Ahsoka's right. Had Tabitha just handled the situation on Centares better, none of this would bother her. She wouldn't be so damn tired and she wouldn't fear for what might come if they return to the Temple.

All of a sudden, orange fingers nudge her chin, pulling her out of her reverie and back into reality where Ahsoka looks at her with a consoling smile in place. "Not that you had the time to. So believe me if I say, you're allowed to feel everything you are right now." 

A sad twinkle flashes through her soft eyes and Tabby can hear her murmuring a downtrodden "I do too…" before the older girl can shake it off (for Tabitha’s sake) and carry on calmly. 

"And you're right, the war did change the Jedi, perhaps not for the better. But we can't let that define us. You can't let that define you. We both know you're better than that. So do Anakin and Obi-Wan, and they'll forgive you for anything you said." 

That would be great, but she doesn’t deserve that, does she? Tabby doubts it will be as easy as saying sorry and moving on with life, even if they’ve known each other for years.    

Ahsoka sees the doubt in her eyes and digs her thumb into her shoulder blade to gather her counterpart’s attention, face determined. "They will, believe me."  

Waiting until Tabby nods her assent after a moment of hesitation, meanwhile pondering her next words with careful deliberation, Ahsoka comes up with a proposition that will hopefully not only give Tabitha hope for tomorrow but also allow her to find rest for at least a few hours.

"So, here's what we're gonna do: We pull through this and get back home, show them that their faith in us isn't misplaced. And then we'll show the Order how to care, about the big and the small people alike, during and after the war. Sound good?" 

And this time, the answer is instantaneous: A weak nod accompanied by a wet chuckle. "You've been spending too much time listening to Obi-Wan."

"And you've been spending too much time around Anakin in general. All his heroics are starting to spread to you," Ahsoka laughs but grows serious not a second later. "Seriously, though, you ever feel like the Order doesn't have your back - like no one does - remember I always will."

Dizzying warmth spreads throughout her chest, eases the ache in her heart, and for the first time in days, the smile that breaks out on her face is genuine and full of happiness. "Together forever, hm?" 

Ahsoka reciprocates her smile without a second thought. "Wouldn't have it any other way." 

Perhaps they sit there in silence for five more minutes or twenty, just listening to the rustle of leaves, the squeals of nocturnal animals, the wheeze of the wind, taking time to process their entire conversation and think about what comes next. 

Feeling no rush to get back, fearing that despite how much lighter she feels now, sleep might still elude, Tabby sinks into this newly retrieved sense of peace and allows it to soothe nerves that haven't known calm for days.

She could have stayed there until the sun rose, relieving Trandosha of its rightful place and reminding Tabby of the day to come. She would have too, had Ahsoka not taken precisely that moment to climb to her feet, hand sliding from Tabby's shoulder and coming to offer the smaller girl a help up. 

"Let's get back inside and get some rest." 

A look of apprehension crosses Tabitha’s sunken features, dreading the inevitable onslaught of dreams or visions or whatever else it was that plagued her each night. However, she knows she’s lost this argument by the determined look settling on Ahsoka’s face.

"Both of us. Don't worry, I'll be right with you."  

"What about-?"

"You’ll still have enough time to finish your blades in the morning." 

With a sigh, Tabitha finally admits defeat and grasps Ahsoka’s hand tightly in hers, letting herself be pulled up swiftly by the other girl who continues talking as a way of distraction.  

"By the way, did Chrys show you how to do that?"

Nodding, the raven-haired girl chuckles when the memory rushes to the front of her mind, her plain glee at being taught how to do that ushering away all else. 

"Some mission where we got ambushed by commando droids. Took one with us to dismantle and analyze it for intel, and when we had the time, he just decided to show me how to assemble and disassemble a Vibroblade," Tabby says, smiling as they trek back into the hollowed tree where everyone is still soundly sleeping, dead to the world for the few hours of respite they’re allowed.  

Ready to trot over to her cluttered spot and settle down, most likely trying and failing to follow Ahsoka’s plan of going to sleep, Tabitha is taken aback, to say the least, when Ahsoka grabs her wrist and pulls her over to her resting place in a large nook in the tree’s wall. 

Letting herself be dragged along, she throws a questioning glance at her friend, receiving a nonchalant shrug in return.

"Just… humor me, nerd." The older girl mumbles, causing the younger to giggle and wave her hand dismissively.

"Sure, Lurdo."

Settling down next to each other, Tabitha pressed tightly into Ahsoka’s side with one arm slung around her middle, it takes a mere minute for her to melt into her friend’s embrace. Every synapse and nerve and muscle calming down, suddenly everything around her is silent, dead silent, just like she has wished it to be.

Sleep doesn’t seem so impossible anymore, she smiles to herself as her eyes begin to slip close without any additional force needed.

Before they can fully fall shut though, her pupils travel across the room one more time, taking in the peaceful expression on her companions’ dirty faces. 

‘We’ll show people how to care,’ she can’t help but promise herself. ‘For their sake, above all else.'

Chapter Text

‘This worked better than expected,’ Tabitha hums to herself, thumb tracing the engraving on the side of her knife absentmindedly as she throws a speculative glance around the little crammed skiff they’ve ‘chartered’ - with their prisoner’s forthcoming aid, of course. 

You could hardly make out the floor beneath the six of them, nor could anyone move without jabbing a knee or elbow into someone else's side. 

That's what you get for seizing a skiff made for a max of three people, Tabitha supposes - none of which are full-grown Wookiees. 

She just hopes they get to that stupid airborne base soon. Her hands are beginning to fidget, her foot taps against the metal floor impatiently, and Tabby is pretty sure her backside will merge with the skiff's wall if she stays pressed against it. 

At least, her body isn't wrecked with tiny little shivers anymore and her eyes don't burn with the desire to sleep. For the first time in almost a week, she feels relatively well-rested. It's as if her entire body has been rejuvenated, infused with strength and awareness she's needed for days. 

Even her head is calm for once, nothing but a straightforward, linear flow of thoughts that do not include doubts and questions. 

Right now, all they consist of is the battle ahead, the dangers they face, and the possibility of escape. 

They could either escape or be pushed back, they could face five hunters or twenty… they could live or die. 

A lot "either…or", nothing she hasn't experienced a dozen times before battle. Nothing worse than the looping "what-ifs" that have been occupying her mind for days, smothering instead of meek nuisances. 

Tabitha ought to thank Ahsoka for that. She ought to thank Ahsoka for a lot, come to think of it. 

'Once we're out of here,' Tabby promises, glancing at the other padawan out of the corner of her eye. 

The older girl is leaning back against the vessel's low walls, hip perched on the edge and the Vibroblade's shaft tapping restlessly against her arm where it's crossed over the other. 

The picture of calm before the storm but Tabby recognizes the tension in the line of her shoulders and the jittery anticipation in the Force. 

Though some of that might ooze from the three younglings rather than Ahsoka. 

Understandably, they've been more than just a little on edge the entire time it took Tabitha to finish the blades, this being their first major battle and all - if you exclude Jedi training and running for their lives. 

This is different, something they're not accustomed to, nor prepared for, but Tabby has faith in them. They might be young, just like she was on Christophsis, but they know what's at stake here, they're aware of the risks. 

She trusts them to have her back as she will have theirs. 

Speaking of… the three younglings are the picture-perfect example of barely contained energy. O-Mer is trying his damn hardest to keep their course steady as they near the hostile HQ, Jinx keeps staring ahead stoically, the fidgeting blade a dead giveaway of his eagerness and anxiety, and Kalifa… well, she keeps rubbing her forearm furiously, right where the fracture had been situated previously. 

Tabitha prays putting strain on the bone so early after healing it won't result in any more damage. Damage meaning fracturing it again, which would, no doubt, hurt a hell of a lot more.

She would have insisted Kalifa stay behind and rest, so they could pick her up later, but the girl was stubborn and wouldn't listen. Tabitha would put her up in the top ten percent of the most stubborn people she's met. Which makes it kinda sad that she still hasn't found a way with guaranteed success allowing her to deal with them. Instead, she just opted to give up and trust Kalifa's judgment.

A low growl brings Tabby's attention to the last of their group. Chewbacca's helping O-Mer with the controls, his own Vibroblade tucked in the otherwise empty bandolier across his upper body. She's well aware that the Wookiee is in no need of a melee weapon, his brute strength compensating for his lack of weapons. 

However, you can never be too careful, so… 

"We're almost there." Ahsoka pipes up, deciphering the growl's meaning since she's certainly a lot more fluent in Shyriiwook than any of them, including Tabby. 

With that, all the anticipation, the jittery and giddy sensations regarding the battle ahead constrict and contort, mashing into a giant ball of tension - and perhaps, apprehension.

This is gonna be hard, they all know it as they look up and watch the gigantic structure's rim grow in size, fingers tightening around the (partially functional) weapons. 

It reminds Tabitha of something. 

"Everyone remember what not to do?" 

'Just to be sure', the raven-haired girl smirks when Jinx groans in annoyance, rolling his eyes in sync with just about everyone else. 

"Don't hold the button down too long, yeah, we know. You've said so a hundred times." 

"Just making sure you can't sue me for compensation once we're back on Coruscant." Tabitha warbles, pointedly ignoring the three mortified looks thrown her way, the amused chortle bursting past Chewbacca's lips and the fond head shake from Ahsoka.

The nearer they get, the more Tabby's heart rate spikes. Just a tad, enough to make itself known to her ribcage as her heart begins to knock against the bone softly. Growing somewhat restless, the fifteen-year-old pushes away from the wall, running her knuckles over the cramping muscles in her back as she carefully maneuvers Kalifa out of her knee's range. 

The lean muscles under her hands are taut and hard, like the coils of a spring pulled apart, so Tabby squeezes the younger girl's shoulders as she leads her toward the skiff's rear opening, smiling reassuringly when Kalifa's dilated eyes land on her. 

"Let's do this," Ahsoka says, coming up behind the two younger girls with Jinx and Chewbacca and raising her empty left hand, palm towards Tabitha. Without thought, the raven's own left hand slips from Kalifa's shoulder and over hers, grabbing Ahsoka's hand awkwardly.

When she feels the squeeze, she squeezes back. 

A silent promise to stay alive.

Time seems to slow tremendously just before they start appearing over the outer deck's edge, coming into the Trandoshans' field of view just as they enter hers. 

Two single hunters, standing in the middle of the large empty area, are staring at them awestruck, shock immobilizing their muscles and preventing them from drawing their blaster rifles. 

That short moment of hesitation costs them their weapons as Tabitha takes advantage of their stupor and jerks one hand back, the Force consequently yanking the blasters right from their hands and over their rails. 

Two rapid taps against Kalifa's shoulder blade and the girl moves, jumping down onto the deck with Tabby and everyone else close behind her. 

Except for O-Mer who, the second Chewbacca's feet left the skiff, takes off into the sky again, offering cover fire and a way of escape should things go wrong. 

Which they might, but Tabby doubts they would even have the chance to think about flight if it does. 

Shaking that festering thought from her head very quickly, a curt glance around their surroundings shows three possible paths for reinforcements to arrive: The upper balcony and two walkways weaving around the sides of the structure. Too many pathways to effectively cover with just the five of them. Though, the two skiffs parked on the deck could offer some cover and/or a way to get rid of unwelcome guests. 

For that though, they'll have to get that far. 

The unarmed Trandoshans' come charging at them, clearly unprepared for Chewbacca to simply grab the bulkier of the two by the shoulders and fling him into the cloudy depth below. 

Seeing this, the leaner hunter grinds to an abrupt halt, fear in his yellow eyes. However, before he can turn around and run off to his pals, Ahsoka has already pounced on him, landing on his shoulders without as much as swaying, and rams the Vibroblade into his chest, vibrations activated just before the tip penetrates his thick layer of protective clothing. 

The large reptilian goes down with a gurgling scream, blood spurting from his lips. But the pitiful sound is shortly drowned out by another low-pitched howl, a mix of growls and choked cries that seem to echo throughout the entire floating structure. 

'A cry for help,' Tabitha realizes with a start, head jerking up towards the balcony where the horrific sound is coming from. O-Mer must have come to the same conclusion because not a second later, a barrage of blaster bolts zeroes in on the balcony and successfully cuts the cry off - if the offender is dead or only dodged remains to be seen. 

Unfortunately, the Cerean youngling was just a second too late. Four Trandoshans pour from the walkways, two on each side, and up on the balcony Tabby can make out three more, Garnac being one of them. He's shouting something, ordering his peers to do something, and normally, Tabitha would have done her best to listen. Yet, it proves rather difficult to do so this time thanks to the immediate blaster fire directed their way, forcing them to split into two groups. Ahsoka, Jinx, and Chewbacca run for cover behind a skiff the Wookiee toppled, pinned down by relentless fire perforating the vehicle. Kalifa and Tabby, on the other hand, dodge the first salve of bolts bursting from two blaster pistols by bouncing from one spot to the next, ever out of their scope and oh so closer. 

Until they're close enough to disarm them. 

Kalifa jumps up, twists, boots the Trandoshan in the face before using her sideways momentum to kick the gun out of his hands and land securely on the floor. 

Simultaneously, Tabby grabs the pistol of her opponent and wrenches it upward, causing a shot to whiz past her head instead of puncturing her heart. Without a second wasted, she jams her beloved hunting knife into the crook of his elbow, slicing through blood vessels and nerves alike and ripping a howl from her enemy's snout. She doesn't wait, doesn't listen or pity him, just rips the blade from his arm and jams it directly into his throat. 

He's dead before he hits the floor and Tabby struggles to fight down the queasy feeling that spreads through her belly. 

Killing, taking a life she was supposed to be defending once, never gets any easier but she's well aware leaving him alive would have ended in her or one of her friends' demise. She hates killing but she knows it's inevitable in certain situations, she knows it's necessary. 

Therefore she doesn't allow her eyes to dwell on the corpse bathing in its own blood. 

Mind blank, she turns away just in time to see Kalifa slam the second guy's head into the wall with a powerful Force push and hear the sound of metal scraping over metal. 

Turns out, Jinx and Ahsoka have utilized the second skiff as a battering ram that sends one of two Trandoshans careening over the edge and leaves the other scrambling back to his feet, only to be clocked over the head by Chewbacca. 

All of a sudden, another flurry of wheezing blaster bolts pierces the air, making Tabitha throw herself against the wall in an instant, Kalifa hot on her heels before she realizes that the shots were not aimed at them.

A sniper rifle crashes to the ground next to her and a quick glance upward shows why. The blaster bolts' target, another Trandoshan that is definitely not Garnac, slowly tips backward, several scorched holes oozing blood, while O-Mer soars overhead, attached minigun still rattling as it rotates. 

She notices him looking back at her and gives him a thumbs-up, hoping he can make out her gratitude despite the distance. He has, at least, seen her gesture, waving offhandedly before returning his full focus to the controls.

Straining her neck to toss another cautious peek over the balcony's banisters, discovering nothing but deserted mounted guns, Tabitha takes one deep breath to calm her racing heart, wipes her knife clean on her trousers, and steps away from the wall. 

Seeing three Trandoshans round the corner close to Ahsoka and the others, she motions for Kalifa to get going and help, receiving a curt nod in return as the brunette starts to sprint away. 

Taking one last cautionary look upwards, the older human sets to follow, the balls of her feet digging into the metal, ready to take off immediately… 

When suddenly there's a hand in her hair, talons boring into her skull, so similar to those clawing at her throat not two days ago. A yelp/cry of pain spills from her lips as the hand abruptly hauls her backward, ripping out tufts of hair in the process, and the last thing she sees is Kalifa pivoting on the spot a few feet from her, eyes wide with bone-deep terror. 

"Tabitha!" 

The hand vanishes but so does the ground beneath her feet, in a twisted replay of the events that occurred two days again. 

Kalifa's horrified face shrinks and blurs as the wind whips her skin, tears at her tender scalp, and for a second all that crosses Tabitha's mind is a weary 'Not again…' 

Until her synapses short-circuit, sparking white-hot electricity that flashes across her vision, blinding her as the multi-colored bruises on her back - which she has, until then, mostly forgotten - explode in pain upon having a rather harsh meeting with the base's railing. Jarring muscle, nerve, and bone underneath thin layers of skin, Tabby can't quite tell if the vibration in her throat is an actual sound or just an aftershock of the impact. 

Not that she cares that much when her collision with the sturdy bar doesn't break her flight as she expected it to. 

Sounds kind of take the backseat when she's hurled over the rail, primal fear taking over as her arms flail and thrash, desperately looking for a groove, a ledge, anything that will stop her from joining the two unfortunate Trandoshans at the bottom of the ocean. 

Instinct alone saves her life, allows her to clutch at the deck's smooth rim with one hand and hold on for dear life even as her shoulder is almost ripped out of its socket, and her back plus ribs throb and burn. 

Sharp and short gasps expand her lungs rapidly, gulping down the thin air that is the only thing separating her from the rolling waves, sharp rocks, and certain death. Panic constricts her heart, squeezes the organ, again and again, slams it against her aching ribcage with enough force to shake her entire body. 

Tabitha attempts to reach up with her second hand, to stop herself from dangling bonelessly above a foggy abyss, and heave herself back onto solid ground, but each time, her fingertips brush the edge, just an inch too short. 

Above her, she can hear chaos: Blaster fire, yelling, a loud, thunderous crash, more yelling, wails of pain. She can hear it all, yet she can see nothing but the calmly swaying water below the clouds, and she can do even less. 

She's helpless. Helpless as her friends continue to fight for their lives. Helpless in the face of her own death. 

Helpless when a looming shadow settles over her, a large silhouette blocking the scorching sun. 

"Thiss isss for Smug," The shadow sneers and slowly raises a flat, clawed foot above her hurting fingers, his intent to murder clear in his stance alone. 

And, to be frank, Tabitha resigns herself to her fate at that moment, bracing herself to die on a remote planet far away from the war her family is dying in, regretting a lot of what has happened in the past week, lamenting the poor state she's going to leave her most cherished relationships in. 

The young girl gets ready to do what she's known she might have to do at some point: Embrace the possibility of an untimely demise; and waits. 

Waits for her fingers to be crushed.

Waits to fall endlessly, free but at the same time trapped by the heavy air currents. 

Waits for the harsh impact on cold water that will then begin to fill her lungs - if she survives the initial impact.

Yet none of it comes. 

She waits for seconds but the foot stays frozen above her slipping fingers and then the sneer crumbles to make place for a saucer-eyed, slack-mouthed expression of surprise and shock as he gapes at the vibrating metal tip protruding from the thick layer of scales, clothing, and armor plating over his abdomen. 

His blown eyes flick to Tabby's disbelieving but hopeful ones, mouth flapping open and close as if trying to choke out something that's stuck in his throat, be it words, a scream, or blood. 

Whichever it may be, it never makes it past his fangs. 

Without warning, he's suddenly shoved over the rail himself, revealing the Vibroblade stuck in his lower back for one split second before he too disappears in the clouds, one last outcry of fright fighting its way from his mouth. 

Someone shouts something above her, someone whose small hands then pull and tear at her shoulders in an attempt to haul her back onto the outer deck, but they're not gonna be able to do this alone. 

So upon being pulled up the last few missing inches, Tabitha's dangling left hand shoots up and finally connects with the smooth edge, enabling her to put more strength into her struggle upwards and her helper - Kalifa - to clasp her hands around Tabby's quivering biceps and heave. 

Combined, they manage to get Tabitha halfway onto solid ground when all of a sudden a loud, sickening crack permeates the air right next to her ear, followed shortly by the heart-wrenching sound of Kalifa screaming in utter agony. 

Her hands disappear and Tabitha can only stare as the younger girl falls onto her back, cradling her right arm against her chest, pain-induced tears mixing with grime and dirt. 

Struggling all the way back onto the deck with ease now that she has more leverage, the fifteen-year-old hastily crawls over to the brunette, eyes scanning her for more injuries and hands hovering over her newly broken arm. 

'I knew this was gonna happen. I just-' 

"Tabby, watch out!" The human teenager suddenly hears Ahsoka's voice cry out to her, a warning that she also receives through the Force, not a second later. 

One hand shoots up, thrusting the rifle barrel nearing her head away just in time to avoid a blistering hot bolt through the brain. She shoves the barrel backward, the butt of the gun still held by large hands jabbing into her opponent's stomach, provoking a pained grunt to spurt from his nose. 

Rolling onto her feet, Tabitha is about to charge the stumbling Trandoshan, take the fight away from the injured youngling, when another smoking barrel presses itself against the back of her head, evoking a quiet hiss as it's mashed into the tender skin of her scalp. 

"Move and you're dead." A grating voice whispers into her ear, its owner's hot breath ghosting across her neck, sending a cold shiver down her spine. 

Tabitha freezes, heart skipping several beats.

Her wide eyes flick down to Kalifa's half-lidded, glazed ones, then towards the hunting knife, she had dropped just five feet away from them. 

She could take both these shmucks effortlessly if she could get her hands on her weapon - which also doesn't pose a problem. 

The problem is Kalifa. Incapacitated like she is, starting a fight near her would most certainly only end with her injured worse, or dead. Tabitha would need to lead the both of them away, leaving Kalifa to potentially be picked off by someone else. 

" Don't even think about it, Jedi." The voice hisses again, apparently having noticed her not so inconspicuous plotting, digging the gun further into her skull. 

Tabitha cannot do this alone. 

Where is everyone-?

'Oh…' 

Looking past the first Trandoshan that tried to shoot her, she sees exactly where everyone else is and why they aren't helping. 

Beyond the crashed wreck of what must be O-Mer's skiff, the three other younglings and Chewbacca are surrounded by five hunters, armed to the teeth with heavy weaponry that is collectively aimed at their heads. 

One twitch of a muscle and they're all dead while Tabby sits back here and can't even do shit to save herself and Kalifa from just two. 

They lost. 

The realization hits Tabitha like a speeder truck, rattling her to the marrow of her bones.

They were so close but they lost. They kriffed up. 

It's over… 

She can see it in Ahsoka's eyes as their gazes cross: Crushing defeat written in bold letters and stark colors. Colors that seem to be fading as all hope abandons them. 

Hope that they could escape. 

Hope that everything could go back to normal.

Hope that she could see her family again, laugh, and joke, and fight by their side again. 

They're dead. 

Tabitha isn't ready to die, though. 

Hasn't been two minutes ago. Despite putting on a brave face and saying that she was, she has never been ready to die, especially not now with so much left to do. With so much left unsaid. 

She isn't ready to die yet, but when has the universe ever listened to her needs and desires? 

Disregarding the gun against her head, Tabby tilts her head down to gaze at Kalifa, wishing that they could have at least helped these three find their way out of this nightmare and back to a normal life. 

That's the least they deserved for everything they've been through. 

But Tabitha and Ahsoka couldn't even do that, instead leading them into their death at the hands of the hunters they escaped so long before they interfered. 

Perhaps it's better like this, anyway. The Jedi would have never come to save them until the war was over. And then it would have been too late, they would've been dead or broken beyond repair. So, maybe dying now is mercy.

Tears prick at her eyes, however, Tabby forces them down, unwilling to show weakness in front of her enemies but especially in front of Kalifa. 

Kalifa whose half-lidded eyes flutter open, awareness slowly creeping back into them as the pain in her broken arm begins to dull slightly. Her moist pupils expand, staring at the clear sky above, in what Tabby brushes off as a shock reaction to her injury.

Until a small relieved grin spreads over her sweaty face, and she looks at Tabitha with the happiest expression she's ever seen gracing her features. 

That is the moment, her ears finally decide to pick up on the sound Kalifa seems to have heard minutes before her: 

The whirring and humming of multiple ships closing in on their position. 

Ships that definitely do not belong to the hunting guild, as shown when the older human's head snaps up and the heads of a dozen Wookiee warriors peer down at them, howling angrily. 

'Chewbacca's transmitter worked!' Tabitha laughs, silent cheers reverberating through her head as the ships descend and Wookiee after Wookiee pours out. 

What happens after is kind of a blur of thousands of colors rushing from one side to the other, regaining shade as they go.  

Someone blasts the two Trandoshans cornering her and Kalifa away, allowing Tabby to summon her knife back into her hand before gently endeavoring to coax Kalifa into a standing position, hoping to get her out of the line of fire. Ultimately unnecessary as one of the Wookiee warriors rushes over to them at the behest of their… Chieftain, she believes Wookiee leaders are called, and scoops Kalifa into their arms, quickly but carefully carrying her into the waiting aircraft. 

With that worry removed from her mind, Tabby sprints after them, along the way making sure Ahsoka and the others are being assisted. Arriving at the ship, she asks for a weapon, anything of the ranged kind to help in the firefight, and receives one from a female Zabrak dressed in a red tank top and brown pants, fawn head tilted as she inquires if Tabby even knows how to shoot. 

Forgoing an answer and shaking the weird feeling of familiarity she gets from this woman from her mind, the Zabrak's only reply is the young girl shooting a Trandoshan coming up behind Chewbacca dead in the chest, after which the older woman merely hums, a touch impressed. 

For minutes, the firefight continues, fewer and fewer hunters pouring from the walkways and balcony each minute, only to be met with an impenetrable wall of Wookiees. 

In between it all, Tabby loses sight of the others, too focused on breaking up the gunfight to notice that Ahsoka has been gone for quite some time now, having gone after Garnac alone. 

Just when she sees O-Mer and Jinx drawing closer to her, a certain Togruta nowhere to be seen, does she realize. 

Swiftly pulling the two boys behind the line of Wookiees, leaving them to cover the open gap her absence creates, Tabitha raises her voice to be heard over the boisterous sound of blaster fire. 

"Jinx, where's Ahsoka?" 

The Twi'lek in question shakes his head, Lekku twitching anxiously as he points up to the deserted balcony. "She went after Garnac, I think." 

"Alone?!" 

"She was gone before we could say anything - Wait, what are you doing?" The younger boy sputters, grabbing Tabitha's wrist before she could set foot through their hairy line of defense. 

"What does it look like? I'm going after her." Tabby says, throwing a doubtful glance at the ship behind the boys' backs. "Make sure they wait for us." 

With that, she's off, taking advantage of the rare quiet they have to let the Force propel herself over the banister and onto the vacated balcony, littered with a handful of bodies, some alive, some dead. 

Landing in a crouch, unfortunately, seems to have been a bad idea because upon standing up Tabitha becomes keenly aware of the pressure she had just put on her battered and bruised body, its relief causing flaring lances of pain to shoot through her chest, arms, legs, everything honestly. 

Caught off-guard by her body's sudden betrayal, cursing each and every contusion making her tremble and wobble on her feet, the fifteen-year-old has to lean on the fence she just jumped over for support while she coerces her lungs to expand and suck in deep breaths despite the stinging that each gust of air ensues. 

Breathing through clenched teeth, Tabitha seizes her unwanted break as an opportunity to scan her surroundings. The bodies, she hardly bats an eye at, shrugging off the uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach upon meeting lifeless eyes. The mounted guns on the fences are unusable, damaged beyond repair by a dozen smoking blaster holes. 

Other than that, there's nothing of importance up here… except for the large blast door on the wall opposite her, a bit to her left, presumably leading inside the floating base. 

'Ahsoka and Garnac must have gone that way,' the ravenette muses. 

Taking one last, long-winded breath, Tabby pushes away from the banisters with gritted teeth, grateful that the pain amped down to an unnerving throb, and takes one step toward the door… 

Only to stumble back two when the door is ripped clear of its hinges, landing on the floor with two deafening thunks, and a body flies straight past her, too fast to make out any details but slow enough to see the distinctive outline of a grown Trandoshan. 

Dumbfounded, Tabby can only gawk at the missing railing where the Trandoshan, including metal fence, went over the edge for a long moment.

Creeping over to the edge, the young teenager peers down the large distance between here and the deck below, breath hitching when she catches sight of the twisted, gnarled body at the bottom. 

Green-grey skin and glaring bright orange spikes on the top of his head paling, unfocused and dimming eyes staring off into the distance, Garnac lies broken on his own ship, killed by the girl he swore revenge on.

Back arched due to the metal pole beneath his corpse and legs folded at unnatural angles, his neck is bent just a bit too much to the left to be considered healthy.  

'He's dead. The di'kut at fault for all this misery is dead…'

Her brain is still trying to process that piece of information when Ahsoka steps over the door's debris and joins her at the edge, blinking down at the guild leader's corpse with a wrinkled nose, disgust evident on her face. 

For an instant, the both of them only observe the semi-circle of people coming together around Garnac's remains, silently digesting that their not-so-great-very-horrible week has ultimately come to an end with them on top. Until Tabby finally jerks out of her stupor and lays a delicate hand on the nape of her friend's neck, thumb rubbing soothing circles into the tense muscle underneath. 

"You okay?" 

Ahsoka stays silent for one more second, back relaxing ever so slightly under her best friend's soft ministrations. 

She hadn't wanted to kill him, just like she hadn't wanted to be part of his son's death, but he forced her hand. It was him or her, and Ahsoka had made a promise. 

To the 501st, to Anakin, but most importantly, to her little sister who deserves nothing but loyalty and truthfulness. Especially after the struggle of a week she just fought through. 

Thus, it had to be Garnac. 

She would never regret choosing her promise over his life. 

Nor would Tabby ever blame her for doing so if it meant she didn't have to attend Ahsoka's funeral. 

"I'm good," the older girl settles for, releasing the last of the tension with a sharp sigh before turning away from Garnac's mangled body and towards Tabitha, whose hand slides from her back. "Let's go home, huh?" 

The smile she gifts Tabitha is genuine, the one she receives half-hearted at best. 

'Yeah, home…. Hopefully, that's still what it is after this hell of a week.' 

Chapter Text

A jaw-breaking yawn cracks her mouth wide open, driving water into her closed eyes as the total of last week’s exhaustion manifests itself in one disconcertingly long, animalistic noise. 

A noise that is thankfully drowned out by the usual hustle and bustle of Coruscant, plus the clamor of two relieved High council members expressing their gratitude to the Chieftain Tarfful for their charges’ rescue, Ahsoka and Chewbacca conversing, the strong humming of the Zabrak mercenary’s (the very same mercenary Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and she had fought alongside to defend those farmers on Felucia) ship underneath her back, and so much more, in the end, it all just turns to white noise drumming against her eardrums.  

The sound is a steady constant, soothing in its familiarity even if the static sizzling and crackling surround her mind, numbing her perception to a degree she’s only comfortable with at the moment because she’s way too tired to actually care… 

… and she’s on Coruscant, lounging in a foreign ship on the outer landing pads, Kalifa somewhere inside said ship on a makeshift cot, resting, O-Mer and Jinx beside Master Windu and Yoda, Ahsoka and Chewbacca just to her left. 

She’s safe. Dead on her feet but safe.         

Which is better than she expected to feel, considering the misery her thoughts have put her through just thinking about the Temple and the people inside. 

Yet, the moment she spied out the tall structure with even taller towers looming over Coruscant’s upper levels, a part of herself that’s been buried so deep down finally broke through the suffocating layers of stress, anxiety, and doubt, and eased some of the baggage off her shoulders. It didn’t fix it completely, didn’t eliminate the pressure in her head, but, in spite of her own expectations, just the sight of her childhood home, the sound of Yoda’s - and even Windu’s - low voices made breathing a tad easier, even if every inhale still made her black-and-blue ribcage sting.       

Perhaps the Jedi Council didn’t care enough to search for them outright but seeing the relief on just the faces of two Council members makes Tabitha realize that maybe, just maybe, she drew a rash conclusion in her fear of losing Ahsoka. Perhaps she’s been a bit too harsh - she’s definitely been too harsh to Anakin and Obi-Wan, and really disrespectful towards Cody and the others. She behaved inappropriately, she knows that now. 

Nevertheless, even if she did jump to conclusions, there’s still some truth in the things she said to Ahsoka that night.

(There’s still that bitter taste on her tongue, brought upon by wavering faith and masked insecurities.)          

The war did change the Order, not in a lot of good ways (not in ways some may want it to change), and if it kept changing them - if it kept forging them into soldiers and soldiers only -, the Jedi would lose, regardless of which side came out on top. 

Because by then, their compassion will be limited by numbers, by thinking of resources rather than lives. By everything, they ever stood against. 

With every day this war rages on, they are losing themselves, and Tabitha isn’t sure they can do anything to stop it, not like Ahsoka and she had agreed to do, not alone…  

‘But we have to try, don’t we?’  

‘…’  

‘Tomorrow.’ 

Tomorrow when Tabitha isn’t so godsdamn tired. Or someday after that, depending on how long she sleeps, which will hopefully be like… a week to make up for the week of rest she lost. 

Starting now… 

At least, that’s how Tabby would like it, considering the (lately) rare calm that has settled over her. But the frame of the gunship’s opened blast door just keeps digging into her spine, grinding against each vertebra individually, and the floor she’s seated on, one leg dangling out of the cargo/troop holding area, is way too uncomfortable, even for Tabby’s low standards. 

There’s also the extremely probable danger that Sugi, she thinks the Zabrak’s name was, would kick her out of her ship regardless of the consequences. Most of which would affect Tabitha alone, rather painfully. 

Alternatively, Tabitha could just get up, go back to the quarter she’s yearned for, and flop down on her bed without even bothering to change or wash up. 

Truthfully, she doubts consciousness would accompany her that long. It would probably just abandon her in the middle of a shower and leave her to drown, or something like that. 

So yeah, theoretically she could do that, but Master Windu told each of them to wait here for the healers and get their scrapes and bruises - or broken ulna, in Kalifa’s case - treated before returning to their quarters.  

Therefore, Tabitha stays half-inside, half-outside the ship and comes only as far as dozing off, tuning out the chatter around her but keeping a vigilant eye on each person’s whereabouts in the Force. 

At the edge of her drowsy perception, she can suddenly feel someone’s Force signature shifting, a detached and dimmed presence shuffling over to her from the inside of the ship, a stark contrast to its usual intensity. 

As the presence draws nearer, Tabitha crawls fully out of sleep’s dovelike reaches. Yawning yet again, a clumsy hand comes up to rub the sleep out of her closed eyes before she lets them flutter open, frowning when the cacophony of sounds sharpens and stabs through her sensitive eardrums. 

A small part of her has not missed this . This dissonance of thousands of people’s lives interlacing and colliding in the rush of the daily grind. 

She prefers the leisurely soundscape of the Negotiator and the Temple, even those confusing moments of quiet on the frontlines where the mechanical sounds of battle are slowly marching towards them, over Coruscant’s ignorant precipitancy. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be resting until the healers come pick you up?” Tabitha drawls when the presence is finally within earshot, earning herself a snort from Miss Maroon-Pants standing right next to her hunched-over form. 

“You’re doing it enough for both of us at this point.” 

Raising her head, Tabitha grins up at Kalifa, using this opportunity to take in the sight of the girl before her. 

Broken arm swathed in new bacta bandages and immobilized in a temporary sling, the youngling’s flushed countenance looks a lot better than it did right after their rescue. 

The waxen shine to her skin is gone, making her look less like a ghost and more like an actual living, breathing human being. Even so, Tabitha can still see Kalifa swaying on her feet, little tremors she seems to be trying her hardest to suppress traveling up and down the length of her arms. The skin around her pale features is tight, stretched thin by pain the Wookiee medic had said the hypospray would keep at bay for some time. 

Apparently, ‘some time’ ended a few minutes ago and Tabitha dreads to think what could happen if Kalifa passed out standing up. Helix would… probably look at her with those awfully disappointed eyes again, which is admittedly worse than being killed. Imagining it already makes her skin crawl.

Keeping the lighthearted grin in place even when her heart skips a beat upon witnessing the standing girl tilting just a bit too far to the side, Tabitha reaches up to tug at Kalifa’s intact hand, upper back pushing away from the stabbing doorframe as the padawan swings her right leg over the edge to join her left in dangling above the floor. 

Now facing the outside and the clusters of people talking to one another, Tabitha ignores all of them, points at the empty space to her left, and says: “Sit down before you fall down.” 

Hesitating only a second, Kalifa obliges and awkwardly eases herself to the floor, legs crossed and gaze traveling across the clustered landing pad in silence. 

“That’s how I cope, by the way.” Tabitha proclaims after a few more seconds of sitting in silence, ignoring the quirked eyebrows Kalifa directs at her until she speaks. 

“Sleeping?” 

Tabby shrugs, fingers fiddling with a tear in her robes. “What can I say, it’s been a few stressful days. What better way is there to unwind than sleep?” 

She finishes her sentence with her hands snapping up to shoulder height palms up, eliciting a bemused chuckle to bubble out of the other girl’s mouth. 

“Probably a few.” 

Smiling, Tabitha chances a glimpse at Kalifa, relieved to see that she must have at least taken her mind off the worst of the pain if the softening of her features is anything to go by. 

Yet, something still seems to be weighing on her mind. 

The Force ripples around her, overlaps and twists in multiple directions at once, pulling at Kalifa from all sides, and Tabitha realizes that Kalifa is debating something?      

“You good?” The older girl questions, expression growing sour as the easy smile slips from her lips. 

In response, Kalifa merely takes a deep, deep breath, as if trying to suck in as much of Coruscant’s smog as humanly possible, and smiles. 

A sincere, genuine, and unpained smile that Tabitha makes even the sleepiest part of her heart sing.

“Yeah, better than I’ve been in a long time.” She finally answers, some tension leaving her shoulders as she does.

Throwing the sling around her right arm a skeptic look, Tabitha cannot stop the quizzical “Really?" from rolling off her tongue.

“Really,” Kalifa assures her without an ounce of doubt. “And I wanted to thank you - and Ahsoka - for that.”

A frown creeps onto Tabby’s face. “What? Why?” 

“Because had you two not ended up with us, we would still be back there. Or dead.” 

“I-” 

Tabitha is at a loss for words. They hadn’t actually done that much. In the end, it had been Chewbacca’s transmitter that saved their asses. Charging in head-first almost got them killed multiple times, so Tabitha doesn’t understand why Kalifa feels the need to thank her for that. 

But if it makes her feel better, she guesses she’ll just roll with it. 

“I guess, you’re welcome?” The fifteen-year-old all but squeaks, scratching her warming cheek. “I mean, we wouldn’t have been able to do it without all of you… I definitely wouldn’t have. I should be the one thanking you, actually!” 

Head snapping up and towards Kalifa, Tabitha continues before the other girl can interject. “You saved my life back there… You saved my life and got a broken arm for it.” The ravenette mumbles, averting her gaze as abruptly as it met Kalifa’s. 

A huff shoots out of Kalifa’s nose, intercepting Tabitha’s self-deprecating thoughts before they even have time to form. 

“This? This’ll heal just fine, you’ll see.” The youngling chuckles, if somewhat strained.

Tabitha can only shake her head in disbelief, an amused smirk pulling at one corner of her lips. 

‘Definitely top ten percent of the most stubborn people in the galaxy.’

“Probably. I’d prefer if it stays healed this time, though.” 

“I would second that.” A silky voice cuts into their conversation, smooth but firm in a way that makes that statement sound more like a promise than it should. 

An ability only one Jedi in the entire Order possessed. 

"Master Che." 

Putting upon the most amiable and placating smile she can muster, Tabby casually twists her head back around to face front, contrarily to Kalifa who swivels around, almost launching herself out of the ship and face-first onto the floor. 

The Twi'lek Jedi strolls towards them, natural grace in her every step that the two younger healers - a Pandoran man with brilliant blue skin and dark, almost black eyes, and a young Lasat, whose light purplish fur curls in Coruscant's musty climate - can hardly match up to whilst steering the hover-gurney after the Chief Healer. 

"Padawan Flux,” Vokara Che returns her greeting, eyebrow twitching upwards upon catching the famous ‘Kenobi smile’, which has cost her most of her sanity, on his sweetheart of an apprentice.

Kenobi corrupted this girl with dry wit and devil-may-care demeanor over the years, to the point where the Chief Healer dreads each frequent emergence of the pair in her halls and only allows senior staff members to treat them, quite aware that they would easily… to put it bluntly, bitch their way out of the Halls otherwise. 

Slowly but surely, Padawan Tabitha Flux is transmuting into another Obi-Wan Kenobi, which means that that smile is most likely hiding some tremendous pain and/or a serious injury. 

“Is there something I should know? A crippling injury? Poison?”

Pursing her lips, eyes squinting up at the speeder-besieged sky, Tabitha makes a show of contemplating the healer’s inquiries. A thoughtful hum that she knows drives Master Che insane later, the fifteen-year-old takes mercy on the healer, knowing she could annoy the older Jedi as much as she wants and still not get out of a visit to the Halls.

“Nah, not this time,” the young padawan settles for, smile never faltering. “Bruised ribs at worst. She’s the one with the broken arm.” She adds quickly when she catches the dubious furrow in Che’s brow, jabbing her thumb at Kalifa who has been watching the interaction slack-jawed, mouth slightly agape and eyes worried.

“That I can see, padawan.” Master Che relents after giving Tabitha another quick once-over with both eyes and Force, determining that the older teenager of the two is indeed telling the truth about her injuries for once, which do not seem as severe as the youngling’s. 

Her keen blue eyes then travel over the youngling down to her broken limb, dressed professionally yet somewhat hastily with the intention to relieve pain and stress until she could be brought to a sufficiently equipped facility. Beckoning the two younger healers to bring the gurney closer, Master Che smooths her features down as she regards the pained girl striving to keep the pain from affecting her. 

“Let’s get that treated properly, shall we?” The healer smiles, reaching forward to help Kalifa maneuver into a supine position on the gurney. 

After a few moments of squirming and twisting, the brunette is finally settled in a comfortable position and swiftly hoisted away by the two junior healers, leaving Tabitha to wave goodbye to the top of Kalifa’s head. 

She expects Master Che to immediately trail after her patient, leave her sitting here, or finally allow her to go back to her quarters. Instead, to Tabitha’s chagrin, the blue-skinned Twi’lek pivots on the spot, dark brown robes billowing around her as she returns her scathing focus to the teenager’s seated form. 

Said teenager squirms a little under the Jedi Master’s piercing eyes, suddenly meek in the face of her mute scrutiny.  

“I want to see you and Padawan Tano in the Halls within the hour, understood Padawan Flux?” The healer says, tone hard with no room for argument, and Tabitha deflates, both relieved and disappointed. 

She has the opportunity not to do it but then Master Che would only march into her room and drag her into the halls by the ear, consequently keeping her there for longer than strictly necessary as punishment. 

And Obi-Wan would probably go along with it. The hypocrite.   

“Yes, Master Che.” 

Temporarily satisfied, the healer eventually jogs away to fall in line with the rest of the healers, leaving Tabby to slink back into utter silence as she contemplates what to do next. 

A nap sounds appealing, but it would probably turn into a protracted slumber the moment her head hits the cushion, so that’s out of the window. 

Go and converse with others instead of sitting on her lonesome might also be a good idea. Counter-argument being that Tabby’s drained. Prolonged social interaction just for the sake of it might be counterproductive at this juncture, even if it was with Ahsoka. Instead of recharging her battery, it would in all likelihood just tire her out even more after days of practically sitting on one another.

Besides those two options, there really isn’t much she can do except sit here and ponder just going to the Halls right now and get it over with. 

Conveniently, her stomach takes that precise moment to make itself known, churning out an aggressive grumble as it constricts painfully and leading Tabitha to realize how famished she is. The last thing she’s eaten was the meager, cooked carcass of a bird at camp the morning of their rescue, and after that nothing. 

Thinking about it now makes her belly pucker up even further. All she’s eaten lately was dead animals and bland ration packs, she craves something sweet, something with actual flavor… 

Dex’s chocolate chip panna cakes and a cold cup of milk! She would kill for those right about.

Mouth watering at the mere thought of the Basilisk’s delicious hand-made breakfast, Tabby loses herself so deep in the captivating, imaginary confines of Dex’s Diner filled with all his delightful meals that she completely misses the carefully measured steps hurrying her way until a familiar pair of boots enters her vision, which somehow slipped down to the floor during her fictional escapade. 

At first, she doesn’t even notice the dark red boots at the top of her vision, doesn’t register their existence till a cordial, radiant, and blazing presence presses against her fortified shields, entreating her to lower her defenses and let the presence in.

And Tabitha does so without second thoughts. 

Quicker than she ever thought possible, the cool walls she had only lowered once in an entire week come crumbling down, turning to dust beneath the other presence’s warm touches. The moment the last brick falls, a tender embrace encompasses her entire being, kneading each last knot of tension from spots in her mind that even she didn’t know existed, and prompting the girl to lift her gaze, at last. 

Eyes crinkling at the corners, words rest on the tip of her tongue, although she hardly knows what to say now that she finally has the chance. 

Should she apologize immediately? Start with small talk? Pretend everything is normal for now, like the last time they talked wasn’t him giving an order she disobeyed, consequently ending up being kidnapped? 

Words for each option burn on her tongue, yet none of them make it past her parted lips when Tabby sets her eyes on her master’s face. 

A face she’s missed very much over the duration of the past week.

A face that looks so controllably disheveled, as if he just fell out of bed when the news of their arrival came and had to make himself presentable real fast - which, by the way, is unlikely since it’s early afternoon and the ginger Jedi Master hardly ever sleeps anyway (After this week, Tabby can comprehend that even less). 

A stray strand of hair escaped his neat hairdo and now hangs in his eyes, making the typical dark bags latching onto his eyes appear even darker. His beard is as tidy as always but even that looks wrong somehow, like it just doesn’t fit his face anymore because of the expression underneath. 

Upon their gazes finally crossing, the corners of his lips twitch upwards, parting slightly with sound coming out at first. However, the timid smile does not reach his eyes, which shine like steel in the bright sun rays glaring down at them, relief swirling in the blue-grey orbs besides… something else. Something she can’t identify.

Not without help.  

Deepening their mental embrace, Tabby uses the opportunity to steal her way past Obi-Wan’s outer shields and into the vulnerable part of her master’s mind, making her own presence known as she attempts to get a better sense of what she sees with naked eyes. 

Relief and happiness at seeing his padawan again offer a taste of sweetness. Worry at noticing the bruises under her clouded emerald eyes and the little puncture wounds at the sides of her neck, looking like they’ve been done by sharp claws, souring the savory flavor. But undermining it all is an acidic aftertaste that has its tendrils coiled around all of the above and causes goosebumps to ripple across her skin. 

Rue. Guilt. The sense of having done something wrong that could have prevented all of this, although it’s obvious that it was beyond his control and could have only been changed by Tabitha herself. 

Obi-Wan feels guilty and it makes his padawan’s stomach churn with something other than hunger, wipes the beginnings of a smile from her face before it could even fester. 

Now more than ever she needs - she must apologize because the bags under his eyes are only deeper and darker because of her. Yet, the words don’t come out, jumbling together into a big heap of letters that get stuck in her throat because she simply doesn’t know where to start. 

Her master must have drawn a different conclusion than her realizing the fallouts of her actions from her sudden change in expression though. Or perhaps he felt something in her unguarded mind that prompted the bitter worry to overpower both relief and guilt for a few moments.

“Tabitha, are you okay?” 

And of course, that would be his first question upon being reunited with his missing padawan, Tabitha thinks with a fond headshake as she swallows the befuddled words stuck in her throat to answer.

“I already told Master Che. I’m fine. See,” The girl sighs, exasperated, and hops out of the ship as a show of how fine she was… only to have to bite back a groan when the movement pulls at the mess of bruises on her back and have Obi-Wan’s hands on her shoulders to keep her steady. Intercepting anything Obi-Wan is about to say with a warning finger wag, Tabitha grumbles: “Okay, I feel like big, Zillo-Beast-sized bruise but - but ultimately it could be worse.” 

“I’m so sorry, Little One.”

Whatever Tabitha was anticipating as a response, it wasn’t this. 

It wasn’t an immediate apology for something he had no fault in. 

She’s hoped he would snark back like they always do after even the worst of battle. Force, she was truly certain he would because he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Negotiator with the silver tongue, sassing - and flirting quite blatantly with - every single opponent they’ve ever faced (plus, mayhaps, a certain clone commander of the 212th, even though they thought she didn’t take notice of the highly inappropriate comments) , regardless of his condition. 

And Tabby was kinda hoping for that part of his personality to show because she still doesn’t know what exactly to say, especially now upon finding out her master blames himself for this. 

An apology is easy. 

An apology that consoles someone, not so much.    

So perhaps she needs to separate it. Figure out why exactly her master blames himself first, make him realize that despite what she said to him in Centares, she did not, and then ask forgiveness for her unwarranted vicious words. 

Sounds simple enough, but with her master, it probably won't be. 

Still worth a try though.

Tilting her head to the side, the padawan carefully wipes her face clean of anything that could be interpreted as judgmental or anger or anything of the likes and adjusting the tone of her voice to completely clueless. 

"What for?" She questions, eyebrows knitting together when the older man suddenly refuses to hold her gaze, at the same time refusing to let go of her shoulders.

"For not going after you when I had the chance. For allowing you to get captured in the first place-"

"That's hardly your fault," The fifteen-year-old objects, lips pressing into a thin line when he merely shakes his head, having completely resigned himself to the unwarranted guilt crashing over his head like an overwhelming wave.

He interrupts her before another word can leave her mouth. 

"You were right. We- I should have insisted they let us search for Ahsoka when she first went missing. I shouldn't have stood idly by as you struggled to save her. I should have been there for you as I promised instead of letting you wander into those hunters' hands." 

Having heard enough to make her feel even more disgusted by her own action, incredulity motivates the young teenager's hands to trap her master's armored wrists to keep him from moving away and to obtain his undivided attention. 

"No, Master, that was my decision, my mistake," She starts, tone firm as she jabs fingers into her own chest. "You did everything you could to deal with my selfish ass at that moment. In fact, I remember you giving me the explicit order not to go in alone, yet I still did. I disobeyed and that's what got me in trouble. Nothing you did could have changed that." 

Pausing her attempt to beat some sense into her crazy, self-blaming master, Tabby mulls over her next words carefully, however, rushes to release them when she sees the ginger opening his mouth to protest one or all statements she's made. 

"Which is why you're wrong. I was wrong. Everything I said on Centares was wrong." 

In her peripheral vision, Tabby catches a glimpse of dark robes and brown-blond hair just one good moment away from hugging Ahsoka and never letting go. Of a master who cares for his student, would have done everything in his power to help her in any way, shape, or form but wasn't allowed to by the orders of someone else.

"Everything I said to you and Anakin was wrong, insensitive, and out of line. I lashed out in anger and fear, and I realize now that that wasn't okay. You wanted to help but I didn't let you, and then I accused you of something out of your control." 

Tabitha is beginning to ramble, fingers sliding from Obi-Wan's scratched vambraces just as her eyes slip down to her boots, unable to look at the person she's wronged so often during the last week. 

Thus missing the easing of her master's features and the calming of the tumultuous swirl of emotions she had been able to perceive over their bond. 

"What I'm trying to say is that… I'm sorry, Master," The padawan finishes, finally looking back into her master's soft blue eyes staring down at her in… pride.

'Pride?'

"You were in a difficult situation not many have ever had to experience. Your reaction, if emotional, was entirely reasonable and understandable. In your shoes, I believe I would have acted similarly." 

And they've gone full-circle in the comfort zone again, an endless give-and-take between Master and Padawan that has permeated their entire time together. 

"But perhaps we can agree that we both still have much to learn when it comes to dealing with these situations together?" Obi-Wan proposes as a 'peace treaty' that would end this infinite exchange, the smile teasing his lips finally reaching his tired eyes. 

Instantly, a chuckling Tabby nods her head. 

"Yeah," she agrees. "And, Master?" 

Obi-Wan hums lightly in acknowledgment, granting her his continuous attention. 

"In a sense, you were there for me. Your teachings helped me survive out there. Everything you taught me in combat and the ways of the Force helped me defend myself. Yours and Master Vos' help with my 'Retrocognition' allowed me to focus and overcome a lot of challenges. And the things Chrys, Cody, and all the others have taught me allowed me to aid others in their survival as well," Tabitha confesses proudly, gesturing towards O-Mer's belt and the hand-made Vibroblade still tucked underneath it.

Immediately, the Jedi Master follows her line of sight, smile morphing into a pleased grin as a snort escapes him. 

"I have never been gladder to have encouraged this pastime of yours." 

"Likewise," Tabby snorts, the smirk that has made its way onto her face growing into a full-blown smile, she vainly tries to reign in by biting down on her lip. 

“I missed you, Master.”

“I missed you too, Padawan.”

Standing there, smiling together in front of their home, at last, everything is okay. 

Problems dissipate for just that one moment because everything is fine.

Everything is fine even as Anakin and Ahsoka walk away from them, and Tabby loses her chance to apologize to the Jedi Knight in person. But that's okay, she will do it tomorrow and she will accept whatever outcome Anakin chooses, be it forgiveness or the exact opposite. 

Regardless, right now everything is fine, with no menace looming over them and no death to be mourned, and Tabitha relishes it.

Relishes it as long as it lasts, which, unfortunately, is only roughly a minute and not a second more. 

A minute of peace before two different fast-moving, fierce storms roll towards them, thunder drowning out the comfortable hush that has blanketed the pair and diligent lightning curling underneath the cloudy surface, driving the fear of gods into both Jedi.

Immediately, Obi-Wan twists his upper body, and Tabitha peers around him to see a carefully restrained Cody marching lock-step towards them, a scowling Helix at his side. 

You can tell the exact moment the soldiers espy the Jedi pair, Tabitha specifically, since a wave of relief merged with affection and a pinch of concern emit from the storm clouds that are them in the Force. But above it all, Tabby can sense aggravation in the form of prickling lightning bolting towards her, upset with her for… probably multiple reasons that are all valid. 

Which does not mean that she enjoys being reprimanded for them, even though she does deserve it. Deserves more than that, too, but that can wait until tomorrow right? 

An angry Cody and an angry Helix simultaneously are a force to be reckoned with, and Tabby’s unsure if she has the strength to reckon with it right now. 

She certainly does not have the courage, therefore, ever so slowly, as if the clones can only perceive rapid movements, the fifteen-year-old commander moves to duck behind her master’s back, shoulders hunched, when a couple of stray sun rays catch on something shiny metallic strapped to the belt of Cody’s armor.

“Are those my… lightsabers?” Tabitha wanders, not realizing she did so out loud until Obi-Wan sighs sadly, turning to face her and explain why their commander was in the possession of the girl’s lightsabers for a whole week.

“From what Cody told me, himself, Helix, and a squad of our newest recruits went back into the village after your last call.”

A frown weighs her features down as she looks back up at her master. “But I told him not to.”

“That you did, but you were not the only one to disobey orders that day,” Her master answers with a funny grimace that could mean anything from trying to be comforting to dreading what could have happened. “They got there just in time to see you be taken away and attempted to stop the Trandoshans but were pushed back after a short firefight.”

“Oh.”  

They were there when she was captured. Despite her giving them the explicit order not to come for her, they did and they tried to save her. Because they cared about her, even if they couldn’t save her then. 

And then Cody kept her lightsabers, so sure that she would come back that he even polished the steel to a fault by the looks of it. 

Cody who must have been the frantic voice yelling her name she heard when she first regained consciousness on the transport to Wasskah, Tabitha realizes with a start, breath hitching. 

Force, first Anakin, then her master, and now Cody and the men. She truly ruined quite a few people’s days, did she not? 

All of sudden, Obi-Wan side-steps, effectively negating her cover from two quite possibly pissed clone troopers, and instinctively Tabby reaches for the back of her master’s robes, catching it in between her fingers and tugging desperately when he starts to move away. 

“Please, don’t leave me alone with those two, Master.” The padawan pleads, looking up at the man with wide terrified eyes. Merely to have him lay a reassuring hand on her shoulder and meet her fearful gaze with a playful glint in his. 

“As much as I cherish you and your presence, Padawan, to put myself between you, our dear commander and lovely medic is a plain suicidal endeavor.”     

“But-”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be right over there,” Obi-Wan chortles upon seeing the scathing look of betrayal in his student’s eyes. “And I’ll intervene if it appears you are about to get murdered.”

With that, the ginger master pries Tabitha’s fingers from his robes and walks away from her, hearing but pointedly ignoring the grumbled “Traitor.” following behind him, even as his padawan stays where she is, having resigned herself to her fate.

Drawing nearer, the clone pair passes the Jedi Master - Cody and Obi-Wan brushing shoulders completely unnecessarily along the way - which both Helix and Tabitha ignore deliberately (this futile hide-and-seek is not even funny anymore since everyone already knows ) - before they come to a standstill not two feet away from her, Obi-Wan joining Master Yoda and Windu in their talks with the Wookiees. 

Worrying her lower lip, Tabitha’s eyes switch from Cody to Helix and back to Cody as static silence dominates the air between the three of them, strangely oppressive coupled with the intense twin stares directed at her.

Swallowing past the growing unease in her stomach, Tabitha opens her mouth to break the overbearing silence. 

“H-Hey.”

Cody’s brown eyes narrow as Helix intuitively steps forward upon noticing the claw marks on the sides of her throat, putting his index finger under her chin and tipping her head back to get a closer look. 

Tabitha doesn’t even fight it, knowing that that will only make it worse, glancing at Cody out of the corner of her eyes when he finally unscrews his mouth.  

“We’re putting a leash on you, Bitty.”     

“Coodyyy, noo…”