Chapter Text
The tractor beam pulled in the Silver Angel, steady but surely. Trace fidgeted uselessly with the pilot controls, watching the military vessel get closer and closer in the view shield. Rafa was in the copilot’s seat with her head in her hands, looking like she wanted to go to sleep and not wake up for the next few decades. Ahsoka was pacing the cockpit, more agitated than Trace had ever seen her, mumbling silently to herself.
They had all thought they were home free. All of the mishaps of the past few days, all of the imprisonments and close calls and stupid decisions, and it was finally over. Except for when Trace had stupidly gotten into the wrong lane again in Coruscant’s atmosphere , and the GAR authorities had gotten wind of the many crates of spice they still had in their possession and flagged them as a smuggling ship. Lifetime sentence here we come, Trace thought with a grimace.
“Ahsoka, are you going to tell us what you’re thinking, or are you going to have a seizure right here on our ship?” Rafa didn’t look up as she asked the tired question. Trace chafed a bit at the ‘our ship,’ but frowned when she looked at Ahsoka’s cringing expression.
“It’s- it’s- probably nothing. Sorry.” Ahsoka cleared her throat, halting her incessant footsteps. “I just…give me a second.”
Trace watched in bewilderment as their Togruta companion gently shut her eyes and took a deep breath in, seemingly deep in concentration. Fifteen seconds later her eyes snapped open, staring at the GAR ship in a panic.
“Oh, great,” Ahsoka moaned in defeat, scrubbing a hand up and down her face. “This is just- this is just amazing.”
Rafa snorted. “Ahsoka, what the hell?”
“I-” Ahsoka ground her teeth. “I… know someone on that ship. Is all.”
Trace perked up while Rafa raised a suspicious eyebrow. “Someone who could help us get out of this?” Trace asked hopefully.
Ahsoka actually squirmed. “Maybe,” she said in hesitation. “But…It’s going to suck.”
***
Ahsoka had the worst headache of her entire life.
After they had been formally arrested on smuggling charges and a detail was sent to search the rest of their ship, the GAR officer in charge of them had stepped off to the side to take a comms call. He had come back, looking mildly bewildered and annoyed, and announced that instead of being immediately shipped off to the Coruscanti prison complex they would be held on the military vessel for a bit longer. Ignoring the sisters’ baffled responses ( “Special treatment?” Rafa had asked, “Since when have we ever gotten that ?” ) the officer had escorted them to a small holding cell on the ship. Ahsoka felt his curious eyes on her the whole way there.
“Do not attempt to leave this room,” he said stiffly, motioning them inside. “A- er… someone will be along shortly. To…talk with you.” He grimaced, cleared his throat, and swiped his card on the doorframe. It slid shut and locked.
The holding cell was empty except for a bench along the back wall. Trace immediately plopped down on it, leaning her head back against the wall. “Holy stars, ” she exclaimed, groaning. “What was that?”
Rafa crossed her arms, wary eyes moving around the room. “You can say that again. Something’s off about this whole thing.”
“ A lot of things are off!” Trace corrected. “I mean arrest us, sure, but this cannot be normal protocol! And did you see that guy? He looked like he was about to blow a blood vessel! What did he even mean by ‘someone will be along to talk with us?’”
Rafa snorted, and went to sit down next to her sister. “No idea. But I think Ahsoka does.”
Ahsoka snapped her gaze towards Rafa to find the other girl watching her with knowing eyes. “What do you mean by that?” Ahsoka asked, the words harsher than she’d meant.
“I mean that you’ve been agitated as a fussy motor even since we got grabbed,” Rafa explained. “You want to let us in on the big secret?”
“We’ve been arrested, Rafa,” Ahsoka snapped, gesturing around the cell. “I think that gives me a right to be agitated!”
She shrugged, looking at Ahsoka with a dry expression. “We’ve been in prison before, Ahsoka. And you did just fine. Didn’t even bat an eye. And that prison was way scarier than this one. No, something’s up, and you’d better tell us what it is quick.”
Ahsoka just looked at Rafa, keeping her expression studiously blank. It was taking everything she had to stop the swirling emotions she felt off of her face. She couldn’t even pick them apart; anger? Fear? Regret? The only thing she knew for sure was settled in her chest was a heavy, heavy dread.
He was here. He was here, on the ship, and he knew. That was why they hadn’t been sent to prison yet. But she couldn’t say those words, not right now, not out loud. They just wouldn’t come out.
“Look,” Ahsoka said quietly, looking at the floor. “Something is about to happen. And…I just need you two to be quiet and let me handle it, okay? I promise I’ll get you out of this.”
“Ahsoka, you can tell us what’s going on,” Trace said earnestly, looking more concerned for her friend’s wellbeing than their impending arrest. Good old Trace.
“I-” Ahsoka cut herself off. A feeling so familiar it nearly brought tears to her eyes had taken root in her chest. Panic rose inside of her, uncontrollable. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t-
She could feel him on the other side of the door, so fast he was nearly sprinting. Anakin had always been easy to sense; he was a supernova in the force, a hurricane, a sandstorm. She knew he was coming but she still flinched when the cell door slid open and he burst into the room.
“What the hell, Snips,” were the first words shouted out of his mouth. She swallowed, forcing herself to look him in the eyes. She could feel the anger and frustration roiling off of him in waves. “Are you going to tell me what in the Force you’ve been doing hanging around with drug dealers? I don’t understand, it’s only been a few months, I told the Admiral he was crazy when he said you were involved, I can’t-”
“Hi,” Ahsoka said softly, interrupting his tirade.
Whatever words he had been about to say died in his throat. “Hi,” he said back, gentle as a tooka.
They just looked at each other for a moment. Anakin looked exhausted, like he was a ghost. Ahsoka fought the urge to break into tears with all of her strength.
“Ahsoka, what-” Trace’s confused voice said from behind her, followed by Rafa’s shushing sound. That snapped her out of the moment. Ahsoka looked down, forcefully cleared her throat, and wiped a quick hand over her face. When she crossed her arms and looked back up at Anakin, she tried not to look like a helpless child.
“I mean, drug dealers, Snips,” Anakin said abruptly, as if he had just remembered why they were there. “Really?”
“They’re not drug dealers,” Ahsoka protested immediately.
Anakin snorted, running an agitated hand through his hair- longer, than when Ahsoka had seen him last. “Not drug d- I hate to break this to you, Ahsoka, but the nine crates of spice in their cargo hold beg to differ!”
“They didn’t know what they were doing,” she explained stubbornly, raising a hand. Don’t raise your voice at me, she said in her head. “They thought it was a legitimate job, that the spice would be used for medicine. It’s not their fault the Kessel family took advantage of two disenfranchised girls from the Coruscanti underworld.”
Anakin’s eyebrows pinched together in partial disbelief. She had said that last part with more bite than she had meant, but it had just come out; the Martez family’s situation had been weighing on her heart since she had learned of it. What is that supposed to mean? Anakin was saying without saying it. She gave a miniscule shrug in response.
He shook his head, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “How did you even get involved?” he asked, directing a questioning glance at the Martezes.
Ahsoka huffed, shifting on her feet. It felt like so long ago. “I…I was driving through traffic on one of the lower levels when my motorcycle broke down out of nowhere. I crashed it on their landing platform. Trace offered to help me fix it up, if I agreed to stay on and do a little work in her machine shop.” She ticked off the events on her fingers. “We got attacked by a demolition droid, and a gang…um, Rafa told us about a job she’d signed up for, transporting medicine. We flew to Kessel and picked up the crates. That’s all.” It was not all, but he did not need to know about their encounters with the Pyke Syndicate. It was really none of his business.
Anakin looked mildly at a loss. He fidgeted with his belt the way he always did, pacing the length of their tiny cell. “Is this what you’ve been doing?” he asked, throwing up a hand as he trekked back and forth. “Playing your hand at the Coruscanti underworld? Helping mechanics with odd jobs?”
Ahsoka’s mouth opened, slightly shocked. “I- my motorcycle broke down, Anakin, I didn’t join a gang!” Who was he to judge her actions, anyway? She was on her own now, and she could fend for herself. Ahsoka gritted her teeth. “And come to think of it, what did you think I’d be doing?”
Anakin spluttered. “I don’t know, I- not this! Not getting arrested for kriffing smuggling!”
Something in Ahsoka felt like it was on fire. The flames churned in her stomach, heating their way up to her throat. In that moment, she thrust all her training and gut instinct to the back of her mind. In that moment, she let the anger and hurt burst inside of her.
“I’m not a Jedi, Anakin, and I never will be!” She practically screamed the words, taking an involuntary step forward. Anakin froze, staring at her. Ahsoka’s hands balled into fists. “That means I still have to survive , and get a job like everyone else. Have a purpose, even if it’s not saving the galaxy.”
He just stood there, mouth hanging open. Like he didn’t know what to say. Ahsoka’s heart was hammering away in her ribcage. She could feel the anger and hurt mixing with guilt in him, pulsing through his shields. She almost said something about it, how lax his shielding was, how she could feel nearly everything he was feeling and it was giving her a headache. They were still in a war, weren’t they? He needed his shields. But a part of her thought back to the last four years and remembered that Anakin rarely bothered covering up his emotions in front of her, when it was just the two of them. Like he didn’t care if she could sense his feelings, like it was okay if it was her, like Anakin wanted to come to her as an open book, something she knew absolutely and could trust absolutely. Ahsoka had been a safe space for her master as much as he had been a safe space for her.
She thought about that as the emotions poured off of him, as she watched his guilt win out. There had always been plenty of guilt between them, hadn’t there?
“Snips,” her master said quietly. Too gently. She wished he would scream back at her, but instead he just looked at her with big, sorrowful eyes. “If you needed help that badly you could have come to me.” You know I’d do anything for you, said the hurt on her older brother’s face. She’d seen it before. Why do you always have to make me say it?
He was looking at her the way he used to, when she was little. When he carried her over his shoulder back to their quarters because she’d fallen asleep in a briefing. When she fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her head in the middle of a battlefield because there were so many corpses, so many, she could feel them all dying around her. (Just laying there, all looking the same, dozens of white-armored soldiers who had been her only friends for years. She couldn’t tell them apart. She crouched there, droids firing all around her, but she couldn’t make herself move because are their eyes still open under their helmets? was the only thought echoing through her brain. Did they die thinking I failed them? Did they die cursing the Jedi for their pain? Did I know all of their names? There’s a man lying here who’s dead and I never learned his name. Did he know that? ) Anakin was the one who stood in front of her and blocked the blaster bolts, who knelt in front of her and said Look at me, Ahsoka, look me in the eyes. Breathe, okay? I’m going to get you out of this, who had switched to sign language when he realized the screams and blasts had become so much for her lekku that it was all she could hear anymore. Always Anakin. Always her master, who Ahsoka thought could do anything, that he could fly his starfighter straight into a star and come out with singed robes and a sheepish grin.
They couldn’t do this anymore.
But Anakin was looking at her like he used to, like he could still carry her off the battlefield and sing to her in Huttese and she’d walk away without any scars. She wasn’t that girl anymore. She wasn’t in so many ways. He was looking at her like he could still save her, like there was something to save her from, and it pushed her over the edge. She didn’t want his pity, she never had. “I’m not thirteen anymore, Anakin!” she shouted, her voice echoing throughout the holding room. “I can take care of myself!” This isn’t something you can fix! she practically wailed in her head, almost hoping he could hear it. He had always been so good at fixing things. At making everything better. Ahsoka did nothing but break what had been given to her.
He flinched back like she had struck him. “That’s not the point!” he cried, looking as desperate as Ahsoka felt.
“Then what is your point?” she shot back, not caring if it hurt him, not caring if she was being selfish.
He growled something incoherent, rubbing two hands over his face. “I don’t know, I don’t…” he cut himself off with a groan and looked back at her. “Look, we don’t have to do this. I’m going to help you get out of this, but it’s going to be a headache.”
Ahsoka wanted to claw at the walls of the room with her fingernails until her hands bled. It was all too familiar, the pit in her stomach, and she wanted to scream herself hoarse until it went away. She didn’t want him to save her. She didn’t want him to pull strings, to fight on her behalf, when this time it was her own stupidity that had created the situation. She didn’t want to feel helpless. She looked at Anakin’s face, promising to once again carry her off of the battlefield when she couldn't bring herself to stand, and it made her heart break in half. They couldn’t do this anymore. She was on her own and she couldn’t keep letting him save her.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said softly, almost dangerously. Before she knew it, the words were out of her mouth. “I’m not exactly your problem anymore, am I?”
Anakin’s jaw snapped shut. The ocean of shock and pain and guilt that burst out of him was enough to make her flinch. He looked at her, shell-shocked, hands trembling, for a few seconds.
“If that’s what you want,” he said thickly. “If that’s- fine. I’ll leave you alone.” He stumbled backward, pressing the controls for the door, and left.
Ahsoka stared at the holding room door after it slid back shut, not taking her eyes from where he had been. There was silence. Then she started to cry.
It was a torrential, all-consuming kind of sorrow; pure misery so deep she thought she would drown in it. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. Why had she said that? Why- she knew better, she knew not to go down that road with Anakin, she knew how it would end- but she had done it anyway. She had reached for the ugliest thing to say, the thing that would hurt him the most, and hurled it in his face like a blow from a lightsaber. It was all so twisted and awful and broken she wanted to scream until her lungs bled.
Her breakdown was broken only by a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Ahsoka,” came Trace’s gentle voice. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s- here.” She guided Ahsoka’s sobbing form backwards until she collapsed onto the bench in between the sisters. Ahsoka curled in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest. I should be better than this, she thought, because she was never the one to fall apart. But the bone-deep sorrow gripped her like a vise and wouldn’t let her go.
“I don’t know what the hell that was,” Rafa said. “But I think you blew our chance of getting us out of here.”
“Rafa!” Trace protested in shock, but Ahsoka laughed a little through her sobs. She lifted her head to look at the other girl’s expression. It was confused, but sympathetic.
Ahsoka took a shuddering breath and wiped some of the tears from her face. “I guess…you two have a lot of questions, huh,” she managed to say.
“Yeah,” Trace said reluctantly. “But you can take your time.”
“It’s okay,” Ahsoka replied. “It’s…complicated. But here’s what happened.”
It took much longer than she would have expected, but Ahsoka slowly explained her relationship with Anakin. She walked the Martez sisters through her experience with the Jedi, and why she had left the Order. They listened aptly as she struggled through the story.
“That’s awful, Ahsoka,” Rafa said sincerely, no malice or snark in her dark eyes. She rubbed at her forehead. “I get why you’d have some unfinished business to talk about with him.”
“I need to talk to him again,” Ahsoka groaned, digging the heels of her hands into her eyelids. “I need to- apologize, I guess.”
“I guess you could shout really loud through the door,” Trace suggested halfheartedly, and Ahsoka snorted. “Hey! I don’t know how else you could get someone’s attention.”
“I do,” Ahsoka said.
She missed Anakin. She missed him like he was dead, like he was a ghost she carried with her. Even now that they were on the same ship she missed him. It was one thing to walk away from the Order, from her home, from the people who had raised her and then left her to die. It hurt so much, but deep in her bones she knew she couldn’t have gone back. Ahsoka knew she had made the right decision.
It was one thing to walk away from the Jedi. It was another to walk away from Anakin.
Oh, Force, did Ahsoka love her master. It was the kind of love that had started as simple and pure, a child who loves the person who takes care of them, who thinks they can do no wrong. It had grown in different directions over the years, twisted in complicated feelings of war and violence and ‘ who’s right? Who’s wrong?’ but that love still beat fiercely in her chest. That was her brother. Even if he wasn’t her master anymore.
Ahsoka meditated until she found his presence on the ship. Then she took those thoughts, the huge complicated bundle of feelings she had for Anakin Skywalker, and pushed them all through the training bond they had never bothered to sever.
I’m sorry, it said. I’msorryIloveyouImissyou. I’m sorry. Talk to me again?
“What just happened?” Trace asked curiously.
“A truce,” Ahsoka whispered, opening her eyes.