Chapter Text
Ahsoka noticed the feel of the Force before she did her surroundings. The wrongness of it, the emptiness - she almost recoiled as it struck her. The light of all the Jedi, their presences, it was all gone. As though it had never even there in the first place. There was only darkness left it its wake, far beyond anything she'd felt during the Clone Wars.
She shot up. “What...” the word was half a whisper, half a gasp.
What was going on? She reached for Anakin but found nothing at the end of their bond. Only more darkness. Her end was intact but it was like his was gone. Not snapped but ending abruptly.
Her stomach rolled and she wanted to throw up. What did that mean? The only way a Force bond like theirs could be broken was if one chose to end it or if something happened to the other – typically death. Anakin would never do that without warning, he didn't have a reason to end their bond unless he was giving her up as a Padawan. With how terrible he was at keeping secrets – seeing him around Senator Amidala was enough to convince her of that fact - she would have known ahead of time. There would be no way he could hide such thoughts from her, it would have shown through in how he behaved around her. So that left the latter option, something must have happened to Anakin. Could Anakin be dead?
She wrapped her arms around herself. No, that couldn’t be, Ahsoka had seen him last night. And he had been fine then, he was in the safest place he could be on Coruscant short of being the Chancellor himself. She would have felt the bond snap if Anakin died and the more she prodded it, the more she was sure it was intact still. Sort of. She just couldn’t trace it back to him. So there had to be another explanation. Something connected to why she wasn't in the Jedi Temple anymore.
Ahsoka stood up, her legs trembling beneath her. It looked like an alleyway, narrow and gloom. So she was in some kind of city. A poor one she thought, it was dirty, waste littering the ground around her. It didn’t smell any better than it looked.
It could be the lower levels of Coruscant. Yet that didn’t feel right. The Force was sluggish, the feeling of wrongness still permeating it - but that rung true almost instantly. It was dark but she thought she could see sky, with faint stars in the distance, rather than layers of buildings and durasteel. She wasn't on Coruscant anymore.
But how was that possible? She never heard of the Force teleporting anyone, much less when they were asleep. Even if she was still in the Core that was an incredible distance to cover unintentionally. She had done nothing to cause this.
She swallowed. Ahsoka didn’t know who to go to for answers. She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t feel anyone in the Force to call out to for help. But she knew she’d need to find the Jedi somehow if she were to get any answers. And to do that she’d need to figure out where she was.
How she got here could wait until she found someone familiar.
Ahsoka crept forward and peered out of the alleyway. It was just as dark out there, streetlights barely visible from how dull they shun. She didn’t recognize anything. Some people were walking on the street, mostly aliens in cloaks, hoods covering their faces.
A sick feeling only grew stronger in her stomach. Where was she? In some sort of den for criminals? Everyone felt so elusive in the Force, as though they wanted to avoid attention. She didn’t trust asking any of them for help. But she didn’t have much of a choice.
Ahsoka went up to the nearest person, a Rodian male. He was short, not much taller than her, and lean. She spotted at least two blasters hanged by his side but she wasn’t worried. With the Force on her side she could take him if she needed to.
She waved a hand in front of him but he didn’t react. He didn’t even look at her. His gaze remained fixed ahead of him.
Ahsoka cleared her throat. “Uh, where am I? What planet is this?”
The Rodian turned and stared at her like she is particularly stupid. She glowered, annoyance and embarrassment warming her checks. But she held back a snippy remark and waited for him to say something.
“Cyrkon,” he said at last.
Her eyes widened. She didn’t know the name. But she felt sure it was in the Outer Rim. How did the Force take her so far away from Coruscant? And why? Was she supposed to do something here?
The Rodian’s eyes had left her face and she almost wanted to slap him. But then she realized he was looking at her belt. Right at her lightsaber.
“What are you looking at?” Ahsoka snapped, her hand hovering in front of it.
His eyes flickered up to her face, his face growing serious. “I wouldn’t carry that thing out in the open.”
She blinked. “My lightsaber?”
“Doesn’t matter how proud you are of stealing it. It isn’t worth the trouble. You don’t want the Empire to see you with that.”
She almost said she had built it herself, indignation burning up her throat. How dare he assume she was some petty thief. But then the rest of his words caught up with her.
“The Empire?” Ahsoka repeated and the feeling of wrongness increased. She couldn’t even tell if it was coming from the Force or her own instincts. “What Empire?”
He stared at her again, as though she said something wrong. “No one hasn’t heard of the Empire.”
So why hadn’t she? Ahsoka couldn’t remember anyone mentioning it to her. If it were so well known how could the Jedi be unaware of it?
“I only know of the Republic,” Ahsoka said.
He laughed. “The Republic has been gone for years,” he said, his tone dismissive. As if it a simple fact everyone knew. She sensed no dishonesty from him, no hint of it being a lie.
Her chest tightened and Ahsoka felt like she couldn’t breath. “That’s impossible. How can it be gone?”
“It became the Empire. After the Clone Wars ended.”
His words didn’t make sense. How could the Clone Wars have ended without her knowing? Ahsoka’s face felt hot. Maybe this was a Force vision... just an intensely real feeling one. But that didn’t feel right. She never heard of a vision feeling like this. And why have her on a random planet being told information by a stranger? None of it made sense.
Her voice came out hoarse. “How long have the Clone Wars been over?”
His face was beginning to grow suspicious but she ignored it. She needed to know more.
“Years now. It was before your time.”
Years? Ahsoka felt her breath catch again. It was starting to seem like she was in the future. Nothing else could explain what the Rodian was telling her. Yet time travel was impossible. She had never been taught the Force could do that. Ahsoka hadn’t done anything to warrant this. It wasn’t like she had touched any strange artifacts or done anything out of the ordinary before she went to sleep.
He squinted. “You look familiar.”
“Well, I am a J-” Ahsoka began and stopped. The Force pulsed in warning, so urgent and sudden that it almost took her breath away.
She whirled around, hand flying to her lightsaber. She nearly unclipped it to ignite it but something made her stop.
Her eyes scanned across her surroundings. Nothing was behind her. No signs of danger. Her breath came out heavy, she could still feel adrenaline pulsing though her.
She looked back at the Rodian. His stare was even heavier now, something probing behind it.
“Who are you?”
Ahsoka opened her mouth but no words are out. Somehow she knew it would be a mistake to tell him anything more.
She swallowed. “I have to go.”
Ahsoka turned and walked away from him, ignoring his calls for her to stop. She took long strides much like Anakin did when he was in a hurry. Her chest squeezed at the thought of him. If she was somehow in the future... where was her master?
Ahsoka spent the next few hours trying to piece together what happened to her. She didn’t talk to anyone else. She could feel the Force whispering to her to not.
She kept reaching out to Anakin to no avail. It only increased her worries. Their bond might still be new and forming so early in her apprenticeship, but it never felt like this. Even when Anakin closed off his side of the bond, she could still feel him.
Her face felt hot and her eyes stung as she fought to keep her lips from quivering. She furiously wiped away the tears dripping down her checks. What was she going to do? She had never been cut off from the Jedi like this before. Even on dangerous missions, she always had Anakin by her side. She thought of their most recent mission on Geneosis, even then she had Barriss with her for most of it.
Now she had no one. She was trapped in some strange future she knew nothing about, with no way to get home.
Ahsoka needed to know more about the Empire. But even the thought of it made the Force almost darken, though it was hard to tell with how dark the Force already was. So the Empire couldn’t be anything good. Not with how dark and cold everything felt. She couldn’t feel any of the Jedi.
She wondered if that was on her part from her spontaneous time travel. Maybe there were side effects and it affected her connection to the Force. Or maybe the Jedi were just shielding themselves for some reason.
If only she could find someone familiar to explain it to her....
Ahsoka stiffened, tenseness filling her whole body. She felt something dark, endlessly so, grow close. Her stomach dropped. It was on the planet. Close to her, too close. How did it get here so fast?
It reached out to her, so much hatred and anger within a simple touch. She slammed up her shields, jolting upwards. A Sith. A Sith just probed her mind. Whoever they were, they knew she was here.
She trembled. They were strong in the Force too. She had to get out of here.
She jumped to her feet and darted out of the alleyway, practically sprinting through the worn streets and past seedy buildings. People stared at her as she rushed around them but she ignored them. She needed find some way off the planet. There had to be a spaceport of some kind here.
Ahsoka wanted to reach out to the Force and let it guide her, hopefully to a spaceship. But she didn’t dare. The Sith was still pressing against all her senses. If she opened her mind again who knew what they could do?
She cut through an alleyway and came to a halt within steps. A dead end. Adrenaline rushed through her, her body trembling with energy and the urge to act. Ahsoka didn’t see the Sith Lord chasing her and yet it felt like it. She felt like she was being hunted.
Her skin prickled and she felt cold. So very cold. An eerie sound of breathing filled the air, inhaling and exhaling. Ahsoka whirled around, looking for the source. It sounded like it was coming from all around her.
Then she saw where it must be coming from. A monster stood at the start of the alley, blocking her in. Even with the distance between them he towered over her. He was dressed in unrelenting black, his face covered by a mask she was sure haunted many people’s nightmares. But his Force presence was so much darker. She felt like she was drowning in all the hate and angry swirling around him.
He didn’t see her yet, the darkness of the alley covered her. She took a slow step back, trying to blend further in. She could feel him searching for her through the Force. She closed her eyes.
He was a Sith, there was no doubt. There never had been for her, but any room for uncertainty had been destroyed now. And she didn’t recognize him. She hadn’t heard the Separatists had another Sith join them. The Rodian’s words about the Clone Wars being over for years echoed through her mind. Could she be looking at the allusive Darth Sidious?
Heavy steps thudded against the ground and her eyes shot open. He was striding closer to her. He stopped mere feet away, close enough to kill with a lightsaber in a moment if he chose.
His mask didn’t tilt down but it felt like he was looking at her, right into her face. She didn’t know how but for a moment she thought she caught his gaze through the mask. Something spiked in the air. It wasn’t simply anger, shock and something else echoed through the Force. The other emotion disappeared behind his shields before she could identify it.
Her breath caught but he didn’t move, didn’t make any motion to strike her down. He was distracted. Maybe she could catch him off guard. Her hand went for her lightsaber.
But before she had it, it went flying off her belt and into the Sith’s hand. Ahsoka gaped at him as he turned it over in his hand, as though studying it. The tension deepened even further.
His mask lifted up. “Who are you?” a deep voice boomed.
“I was going to ask you that, Sith,” she said. But her voice was not as bold as she had hoped.
“Who are you?” he repeated, the question louder now, more urgent.
She felt it reverberating in the Force, the words almost echoing in her head. She took an unsteady step back. “Get away from me. That’s none of your business.”
She was in no position to say that, she knew it was a mistake as soon as she said it. She could almost hear Anakin in her head, calling her snippy. But Ahsoka couldn’t help it. The intensity of his emotions and question were too much.
Ahsoka jumped as he ignited her lightsaber, turning it over in his hand.
He wasn’t looking at her anymore, his eyes were only on the lightsaber. “Where did you get this?”
Ahsoka swallowed. “I built it.”
He must already know she was a Jedi, lying to him wouldn’t be able to fool a Sith.
He turned it off but he still held her lightsaber. “Ahsoka Tano,” he said. His voice was almost quiet, as though speaking aloud to himself.
Her eyes almost popped out of her face. Her body felt as though she had been dunked in ice cold water. How could he know that?
“How-” she started, her voice faint.
He moved toward her, far faster than she would have thought possible with his hulking frame. She took a step back and felt the wall of a building press against her, the cool metal stinging against her bare lower back. There was nowhere to go.
He reached out and she thought for sure he was going to kill her. But his lightsaber never ignited. His hand didn’t come in for a blow. Instead it rested in her shoulder.
“You’re real,” he said, almost as though in wonder.
She stared up at him, too baffled to pull back. “Of course I am.”
His hand dug into her shoulder, it was hard and unyielding like Anakin’s prosthetic arm. It probably wasn’t a flesh hand. “You are coming with me.”
Horror cut through the confusion. “No, I’m not,“ she shook her head wildly, sending her lekku swinging against her cheeks. “I need to- I need to get-“ her words cut out, she didn’t know what she needed to do. All she wanted to do was go home but she didn’t know how. Ahsoka didn’t even know where to begin.
“You don’t belong here,” he said. “The Force brought you here for a reason. And I am going to discover what that it is.”
Ahsoka flailed around and hit him and pushed against him but it was like attempting to move a mountain. He didn’t budge against even her strongest hit. She couldn’t break his grip.
His other hand came around and griped her shoulder. She jerked as she felt him pushing against her shields. He was so strong in the Force, the darkness was overwhelming. Within moments he found a crack in her shields and was in her mind.
Sleep.
She tried to fight him, to push him out. But he wouldn’t go away. It was hard to keep her eyes open now.
Sleep.
He was doing a Force suggestion. Whatever reason he had to want her unconscious couldn’t be good. She had to fight it. It was what Anakin would want her to do if he were here.
Sleep!
Somehow it felt more forceful this time, any trace of gentleness erased. Her eyelids grew even heavier. Ahsoka fought to keep them open but the rest of her body was rebelling too. Her legs wobbled and she pitched forward. Her face came against a firm wall of leather and pointy things digging into her cheek. The Sith?
Everything felt so unreal. It was hard to think, much less fight against it now. Arms hooked under her knees and the last thing she felt conscious of was being lifted up.
Ahsoka slept.