Chapter Text
Some nights are longer than others.
Sometimes the controls on the dashboard blink slower. Dragging on and on like a thousand years between them, while her eyes see nothing but the endless swirling stars in front of her.
Sometimes it all feels hopeless.
She wonders often if it’s all been for nothing. All the running, searching, hiding, fighting. She wonders if the galaxy is any better off for it, or if all their efforts have been in vain. Maybe she should have just stayed hidden and not run straight back into the war. But then again, war is the only life she’s ever known. And she can’t just sit back and watch the galaxy burn. Anakin wouldn’t have wanted her to do that.
If he were here right now, maybe everything would be okay. This war would be over within the next standard year.
But he’s dead. Just like all the rest of them.
It’s been seven years. They’re not coming back.
There’s nothing she can do. And she has to fight every day to stay out of the pit of despair she feels herself falling into–to scramble out before hopelessness digs its icy talons into her side and wraps her in its cold embrace.
She has to keep moving.
Her feet shift from their spot on the control panel, and she carefully stretches out her shoulders, her hands, her wrists, her neck.
She stands slowly, making sure her tired legs will hold her before walking into the main hold and staring at the little hole in the wall they call a cot, and the sleeping (almost snoring) form within.
She considers just nudging him awake with the Force, but the last time she did that he nearly knocked the table over on his way out of the bed, so she resorts to the old fashioned way.
“Rex,” she hisses, jamming a finger into the top of his shoulder. She shakes his arm. “Rex, wake up.”
One of his eyes snaps open, but it’s still bleary and fogged with sleep.
“We’re almost there,” she says. “Better get your butt to the cockpit.”
—
—
They’ve quickly learned how to be rebels. Three years of being soldiers will teach you a thing or two about how to escape a military’s reach.
For all these years now, they’ve been doing just that: getting closer and closer to the Empire, but jumping out of its sights at the very last minute.
Rex is frighteningly good at it.
So he leads this op.
Ahsoka grips her lightsabers until her fingers tingle. Watching. Waiting.
The top of Rex’s helmet is just visible across the landing platform as he ducks behind more crates, blasters drawn and at the ready. But his eyes aren’t scanning the platform: that’s her job.
“Find anything?”
She knows she doesn’t need to whisper, but there’s no wind or radio static or whirring of engines, and the environment is a little too eerily silent for her tastes.
“Just a lot of rations,” her radio crackles back. But she can clearly hear the frustration in his voice. “Same regulation ones we had during the war. Must be just old surplus the Empire doesn’t need anymore.”
“Are they worth taking?” Her eyes flit across the canyon again, scanning treelines and lakeshore, then up toward the horizon and back toward the platform.
“Maybe, but it’s not the goods we were promised.”
Ahsoka grits her teeth. Yet another lead gone awry. What else is new?
“I’ll keep looking,” Rex continues. “This place seems abandoned enough, maybe they left something inside.”
Warning signals blare in Ahsoka’s mind.
Red-hot flashes of danger! danger! nearly blind her.
“Rex,” she hisses into the radio as she frantically races across her side of the platform, out toward the open end. “Don’t move. Don’t you dare go into that hangar.”
Danger!
Danger!
Something’s wrong. Something . . .
“What is it?” He knows when to drop into a crouch and wait for orders, blasters raised to eye-level. It’s second nature by now.
“Hang on.” She’s breaking into a sprint, eyes fixed on one point in the forest, right under the landing platform. It’s a reach, but she thinks she can jump down if needed . . .
She’s gripping her lightsabers, but doesn’t ignite them. Force of habit.
Blaster shots.
No.
She spins on her heel, forgets the person in the woods, picks up the speed of her sprint, back toward Rex’s hiding spot.
No, no, no . . .
A flash of yellow.
“Rex!” she shrieks. “Leave him alone!”
A figure had appeared out of seemingly nowhere. He’s heading toward Rex, lightsaber raised, fear and hatred emanating from his very being.
And she only hears him yell one word as he nearly murders her friend.
“Traitor.”
—
—
She barely makes it in time.
Their lightsabers meet in a clash of white and yellow. Ahsoka plants herself like a wall between Rex and the offender, an immovable object meets an unstoppable force.
With a shove, she forces the man backwards, toward the door he must have come from. The mighty push knocks him from his feet, but he’s quick. He scrambles up, readjusts the grip on his saber, and ignites both sides.
He assumes the position of a trained warrior.
And it makes her pause.
Assess.
“Where did you get that?” she demands, flinging out a hand to pull the lightsaber into her own hand.
But yet again: he’s quick.
He holds onto the saber like his life depends on it, and jumps, flinging himself toward her feet. He sweeps them out from under her, rolls to the side, and places himself behind a crate before she can stand back up.
“It’s mine,” he replies, far too calm for this situation. “I built it.”
She can’t help it: her lips curve into a snarl. “Wrong. Only Jedi can build them, and you can’t be a Jedi. They’re all dead. So tell me: who did you steal it from?”
“Where did you get those? ” he retorts without missing a beat, nodding down to where her right hand still grips the white saber she built from scratch – from discarded parts across the galaxy. Her last connection to her old life.
They’re at an impasse.
“I was a Jedi,” she says. If he wanted to report her, he already would have.
“You just said they’re all dead.”
Oh, he’s infuriating.
“Are you an Inquisitor?” he continues – challenges. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”
This makes her pause.
What?
Why would she –
“Who are you?” she asks, the pieces slowly falling together in her mind.
She lowers her saber, slowly, and circles the box he’s crouching behind. Her hand is outstretched in question, and at this closer angle she can see clearly.
He’s just a boy.
Just a boy with windswept red hair, hiding under the thick layer of a bantha-wool poncho. His hands are half-hidden under gloves, and he’s carrying a shoulder belt with ration bars and extra charges for the blaster swinging at his side. A small white droid perches on his shoulders, clinging to the straps for dear life.
She’s not great with human years, but he can’t be older than nineteen. Just barely an adult.
“You know, I should be asking you the same question. And why you’re protecting . . .” he motions toward Rex, who has been staring in what she can only assume is disbelief this whole time. “ Him? ”
Oh.
Young or not, he just crossed a line.
This time, she’s faster than him. She reaches out with the Force, yanks the lightsaber from his hand, ignites it and her own, and crosses them. Places them right up against his neck, almost too close for even her comfort.
“Try again,” she grinds out, watching his previous swagger drain completely out of his face. He replaces it with a stone-cold determination.
“Are you a Jedi or not?” is the question he chooses.
It shouldn’t take her aback, but it does.
“I already told you,” she bites back, not releasing him yet.
It’s a battle of wills now. And if there’s one thing Ahsoka is, it’s stubborn. She’ll stand here forever, glaring this stranger in the eyes with the lightsabers threatening his life if it means Rex lives to see another day.
She’s not going to tell him her identity. He’s not going to admit to stealing the saber.
They’re stuck. And she has the upper hand.
She’s not backing down.
It happens before she can even think.
But thankfully, Ahsoka doesn’t usually do much thinking in combat situations.
“Watch out!” Rex hollers, and before he can raise his blaster, she’s flying around, cloak almost catching on the crates beside her, just in time to meet yet another rogue lightsaber.
And this time . . . the person fights back.
Doesn’t retreat.
“Get away from him!” the attacker yells, and Ahsoka finds herself locked in a duel with a stranger.
She drops the boy’s saber, snatching her second one off the ground, meeting the newcomer’s every strike. It’s muscle memory. It’s the Force, flowing through her, guiding her movements, it’s –
Wait.
“Master Junda?”
The attacker stops.
Their sabers are locked in an ironic mimicry of just a few minutes ago.
Ahsoka can’t look away. She knows that face. She knows Cere Junda.
Cere Junda died at the hands of the Empire.
But . . . she’s here.
The woman’s eyes widen, and her mouth falls open. “Ahsoka Tano.”
—
—
“That was reckless and stupid,” Cere continues.
The boy sits with his head in his hands, fingers tangled in his mess of hair.
“You reacted without thinking, and you know better. What did you think would happen, Cal?”
Ahsoka’s body is drained of any anger. She’s fallen into pure exhaustion, a letdown after the adrenaline-filled day. And she feels sorry for the boy.
She doesn’t blame him.
If she saw Rex with full clone armor on an Imperial base, she would have reacted the same way.
He would have been what, twelve?
She’s sure he remembers clearly.
They all do.
“I’m sorry,” Cal says. His voice is surprisingly calm and collected, even though he looks like a youngling again sitting on a crate being lectured by his master.
Instead of looking up to apologize to Cere though, he fixes his gaze on Ahsoka.
“Please forgive me?”
She sighs, the memories of that day seven years ago becoming clearer by the second. How would she have reacted if she found one of the people who gunned down everyone she’d ever loved?
Probably no differently than he did.
“It’s alright, Cal.” And really, it is. “You couldn’t have known.”
His eyes flick from her to the tall figure standing behind her like a shadow.
“Captain?” The question is unspoken but it hangs in the air like a laser bolt.
Rex smiles gently, and Ahsoka can only imagine he feels the same way she does: that it’s not the boy’s fault. They all have their ghosts. Especially now.
“No harm done, kid.”
—
—
The story comes out in pieces.
About the Inquisitors. The holocron. The mad race across the galaxy, relearning the skills he’d suppressed in order to survive, avenging his master and making peace with his past. About torture chambers and fallen apprentices and redemption and death.
How they faced off with the Emperor’s Right Hand and made it out alive.
And it’s Ahsoka’s turn. So she tells them about Anakin and Obi-Wan, and about Mandalore. About the chip in Fives’ brain, about his death and the uncertainty. About running for their lives, gunning down legions of brothers to make their narrow escape.
About wreckage and burials and hopelessness.
“I can’t believe we’re not alone,” Ahsoka finishes.
Cere shakes her head in awe, and Cal’s expression is nothing less than stunned.
The other crew – Ahsoka hasn’t learned their names yet – sit still as statues, backs pressed into the soft leather, hardly daring to say a word in the echo of silence through the ship.
The Mantis is a fine ship. The thought slips freely through her mind that she and Rex could use a ship like this, with its aerodynamics and spacious bay and low profile. And while she’s grateful that they have anything at all, their current ride isn’t what she would call . . . inconspicuous.
She takes another quick assessment of her surroundings.
The five other figures sit together on the bench. By a stroke of ill fate, Rex sits in the middle, keeping his arms and legs tightly to himself, helmet planted on his lap. Master Junda leans forward – rests her elbows firmly on her knees, hands folded together. Next to her, Cal toys with a loose bolt at the edge of the table, screwing and unscrewing in a rhythmic pattern. The girl with red robes and a pale face (she looks so oddly familiar) keeps her hands folded neatly at her knees. She catches Cal’s eyes every so often, and they seem to communicate in thousands of silent sentences. And the captain of the ship, the four-armed Latero, seems furious at every word Ahsoka speaks. Though she senses no anger from him. Only a genuine curiosity.
“It’s good to know we’re all fighting the Empire together,” Cere says quietly, with more than a little hope in her eyes.
Ahsoka looks at the ground. “More like running from it, usually.”
Cal chuckles in agreement, which instantly slices a lightsaber directly through the tension that filled the room before.
“Beating it up, too,” the captain adds.
“Grinding it into the dust,” the robed girl says with a determined grin.
The little droid perched on the table gives a series of enthusiastic beeps and trills.
Rex’s expression finally changes and Ahsoka can feel the awkwardness rolling off of him, dissolving into the air. They’ve found people they can trust, as mismatched and inexperienced as they might be.
But at least they’re not alone.
Not anymore.
—
—
“I’m sorry for assuming the worst about you.”
The voice behind her doesn’t startle her – in fact, she wondered when the boy would approach her. His curiosity and sincere, forgiving nature seems to be his main driving force.
She meets his eyes and is shocked yet again by just how young he is. Something about him reminds her of Anakin when she first met him: determined, kind, and haunted by his past. Willing to give and give and give and fight and fight until he bleeds dry for the cause.
“Cal,” she responds quietly. “How old were you when you escaped Order Sixty-Six?”
He stares down at his shoes. That wasn’t the response he was expecting, she knows that. “I turned thirteen the next day.”
“And you didn’t leave Bracca for five years?”
He shakes his head.
“When I was twelve, I still thought that Knights and Masters knew everything. I didn’t think they could make mistakes. I thought being a Jedi Master was the highest honor you could have, that you were perfect when you reached it.”
She braces her hands against the workbench behind her, and Cal slouches against the doorframe. “But during the war,” she continues, “I watched my master slip up. He made mistakes and we fought. All the time.” She smiles. (The pain of losing him is becoming less every day. She’s learned to heal.) “He taught me that what makes you great isn’t being perfect. It’s falling, and getting back up again, stronger than you were before. Not because you never make mistakes, but because you learn from them and you become better because of it.”
She unclips a lightsaber from her belt and holds it gently, imagining it’s her old one – the one Anakin put so much love into that he turned it blue. She looks up, and tosses it to Cal, who catches it without flinching.
“I lost the first ones I ever had,” she admits. “Buried them with my brothers when our Venator went down that day. In the first few years I was running, I would have fought someone who was holding one, too. I didn’t think any other Jedi survived. I understand why you reacted, Cal. And I don’t blame you, I promise. Even I had to remember what my master taught me. To get back up, to be better than I was before.”
Cal clenches his jaw, never taking his eyes off the white, curved saber in his hand.
“You’ve been through a lot,” she says, quieter this time. “Give yourself some grace.”
“If I’m being honest,” he finally says, “I thought I learned this lesson already.”
She laughs, but kindly. “You’ll see pretty soon that you never stop learning. Ever. Don’t beat yourself up about it, okay? It’s in the past now.”
He nods, then looks up with a smile. “I’m glad I ran into you, then.”
“Me too.”
—
—