Chapter Text
When Ahsoka was an initiate, she created an image of the Jedi for herself. It was bright and brilliant and bold, and she worshiped it like any other Temple youngling.
She built it out of lessons and legends told by firelight and the glowing, robed figures that walk the halls, mysterious as the Force itself. She put all the pieces together to create a mighty mosaic, vibrant and vivid, colored with righteousness, compassion, and great purpose.
Keepers of the peace, the Jedi are, master Yoda always says, protectors of the light.
They are not soldiers, they tell her. Except, that’s not true, Ahsoka thinks.
Padawan and commander are one and the same in her mind. She wouldn’t be one without the other. The troops are her brothers, and she knows the vents of the Resolute just as well as she does the halls of the Temple. She studies battle strategies rather than spiritual theory and uses the Force as a weapon just as often as she does as a shield. She follows orders and fights the Separatists to free the galaxy.
Ahsoka is a good soldier.
She tries to be a good Jedi, too.
Keepers of the peace, the Jedi are, protectors of the light
Ahsoka turns up planet-side and sees ash and smoke and barren wastelands where there used to be meadows. She sees mothers clutch their children and cry in despair at the sight of their ships on the horizon.
She doesn’t feel like a keeper of the peace.
All the little inconsistencies and holes in the truth of the war have become chips and cracks in her mighty mosaic until she can hardly recognize it. The war goes on. And on, and on and there’s hardly an end in sight. Worlds burn and good people die and as the Galaxy descends into chaos, the Jedi keep doing as they’re told.
Is this really what they stand for?
Tightness creeps into Ahsoka’s chest among the doubt and fear and other un-Jedi-like feelings she can’t quite manage to snuff out.
The sinking knowledge that something is off fills Ahsoka’s body to the brim and pulls the Force around her tight to the point of breaking. She wants to take the Council by the shoulders and shake them and yell because something is clearly wrong.
Does this war not strike them as strange? Have they not seen the way all the shifts in the tide keep them in a tidy push and pull? Do they not worry at how firmly the senate has them wrapped around its pinky?
Do they even know what they’re fighting about in the first place?
“I sure don’t,” Ahsoka tells the infant in her arms, who babbles incoherently in response. “Yeah, totally. You get me.”
“Ahsoka, please, no more,” begs Raga across the room, looking tired and distressed as he entertains another tiny initiate.
The two of them are on baby-sitting duty together. Which is totally unfair, by the way. She just got back from the front lines! She should get a break or something.
Raga has been suffering through her outbursts of righteous fury for the better part of half a year now, whenever she comes back to the Temple. He’s a little meek, but a good Jedi in all the ways that counts, so he’s got her respect.
Most of the Padawan-commanders Ahsoka has spoken to about this (an admittedly small number), feel the same, at least to some extent, though most aren’t willing to discuss it. But Ahsoka can feel it, clouded around them all, that same sinking knowledge, those same fearful whispers.
But they’re only padawans, and they don't really get a say in the end. None of the masters seem to hear it.
“Sorry, I know” Ahsoka sighs. “It’s just bothering me, you know?”
“Yeah,” Raga replies, and removes a toy from his charge’s mouth, “I know.”
Ahsoka absentmindedly bounces the baby in her lap and ignores the corner of her robe that makes it into its mouth. “It’s just, I don’t even know what the Separatists want, you know? Like, can you even fathom a more generic bad guy?”
Seriously, it’s infuriating.
Raga laughs. It’s weak, but genuine, so she counts it as a win. He gives her a look that says yeah, you got me there, and stands up to put his charge in a nearby crib. “No.” His shoulders have loosened a fraction, but that troubled look remains.
It’s time to switch shifts and get some food. Both of them have got to ship back out in the morning.
The sun is already approaching the horizon as they pick up toys and bottles to put back in their respective places. Golden light spills through the large windows, casting long shadows across the room.
Raga stops, and the light casts his purple skin in solemn pinks and gold. His expression is solemn and hesitant, brows furrowed and lips pursed, “Things are changing, Ahsoka,” he says, “There’s something dark moving in the shadows, I think, and it’s bigger than any of us. I can feel it. So can you.” He meets her gaze with earnest eyes, “I really don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Ahsoka looks back at him with a knot in her stomach and worry on her brow. “…I don’t either,” she says eventually.
Silence stretches between them, heavy and taut. Ahsoka turns a string of wooden beads between her fingers. These halls sing with the light and memories of countless beings. She lets them wash over her skin with the sun and thinks they ache a little, in her bones. It would be easy, she thinks, to pretend the war didn’t exist, here in the depths of the Temple.
Raga smiles, a subtle curve of the lips, “Best to stay sharp out there, I think,” he says. The quiet gravity in his soft words pulls at her stomach and leaves her mouth dry.
Ahsoka nods sharply, “Stay in touch, Raga. May the Force be with you.” She gives him a two fingered salute as she leaves, trying to lighten the mood.
“Maybe the Force be with you, Ahsoka.”
—
The next time Ahsoka sees Raga, they’re lowering his casket into the ground alongside his master’s.
“Luminous beings are we,” Yoda says, but the Temple has never felt darker.
He’s not the first friend she’s lost to this war, and he won’t be the last, but Ahsoka still has to find a dark corner to sit in after the funeral and draw her knees up close, where she can suck in long, burning breaths and blow them out again until her heart doesn’t feel like it’s kicking her repeatedly.
It takes a while. She’s still not done when her dark corner is suddenly light again with the opening of the door.
Ahsoka is on her feet like a shot, her face doesn’t quite make it to blankness, but it’s close enough.
“Hey, Snips,” Anakin gives her a little comforting smile that only makes her chest hurt, “you ready to go?”
With a steadying inhale, Ahsoka returns the smile, “Yeah.”
—
Ahsoka shuts herself in an empty training room when she gets back to the Resolute and keeps the lights off. She can’t tell if she’s feeling too much or if she can’t feel anything at all, but either way, it hurts.
The air in the training room is still and Ahsoka can hear the troops bustling outside the door to one station or another. She lets the sounds wash over her mind and sweep away her thoughts.
She doesn’t want to think about it.
Maybe this can count as meditating. She’s sitting on the cushion and everything. Ahsoka doesn’t know how long has passed when the door opens with a hiss. She squints as the lights come on with the opening of the door.
“Commander,” says Rex in greeting, and Ahsoka straitens her posture. He’s got the wrinkle between his eyebrows that means he’s worried, and he taps his helmet rhythmically where he holds it in the crook of his elbow.
“Hey, Rex,” she says, and considers providing an explanation for why she’s sitting alone in the dark in an abandoned training room. But she gets the feeling Rex probably already knows. “Training session? I’ll get out of your way, one sec.”
She makes it to her feet before Rex says anything. “No, actually,” he taps his helmet again, shifting from side to side, “Well,” he says, “I know what it’s like.”
Ahsoka stiffens and feels ashamed to be moping like this when Rex loses more brothers every day than she has lost friends in her entire life. Dread works a knot into her stomach. This isn’t a conversation she wants to have right now or any time soon. Anakin’s worried frown and probes through their training bond are hard enough to deal with.
“And I just wanted to say,” Rex continues solemnly, “you don’t have to be okay.”
It takes a moment for the words to process. She hadn’t been expecting them. They ring strangely in her mind and burn in her throat.
“Whatever it is you’re going through, commander,” Rex stops his tapping to look at her firmly, “well, you don’t have to do it alone.”
Clicking his heels together with finality, Rex stands at attention and waits. He fixes her with earnest eyes, and she has to look away before she bursts into tears. Which is totally un-Jedi-like, by the way, and not something she typically does.
Rex isn’t telling her to spill her guts to him right this second, but she gets the message loud and clear that he would listen if she did. She thinks he might just understand, too.
If anyone did, it would be him, she thinks.
All the same, Ahsoka doesn’t think her worries are something she can share, borderline treasonous as they are. Besides, she’s managing just fine. She smiles, “Thanks Rex,” she says, “I’ll keep it in mind.”
The look in Rex’s eyes tells her he sees right through her front, and that he understands that, too.
“Sir.” Snapping off a quick salute, Rex turns neatly on his heel and marches back out the door, leaving her to ache in silence.
—
They’re not any closer to winning or losing the war than they ever are, but it feels like darkness is slowly wrapping its claws around the galaxy’s neck. Battles are beginning to feel more and more like fighting for the sake of fighting, for the sake of chaos and destruction.
That unexplainable sense of wrongness grows stronger every day until she can feel is buzzing under her skin and Force, it scares her. If she cared enough to think about it, Ahsoka would wonder if she was diving headfirst into exactly the kind of fear the Jedi Masters always warn her about.
Ahsoka fights harder than she ever has before, refusing to lose someone else. She puts more time into studying missions and double checking sources, making sure every dot is connected and every saber form is perfected.
She’d made so sure that there was no way the Separatists would know they were coming, accounted for every overlapping scout and inspection.
What had she missed?
Rex lays in the med bay in front of her with bandages around his shoulder and stomach and his arm is in a sling. Half the squad hadn’t come back at all.
Blood rushes in her ears as she stares wide eyed at her friend. What went wrong? She can’t even begin to think what it could have been. She’d been so careful, so why?
Panic builds in her chest alongside a massive well of guilt that quickens her heart and restricts her breathing. She can’t understand why this is happening. This war doesn’t make any sense and she keeps losing people and she doesn’t know how much longer she can do it.
Fear and anger and plenty of other un-Jedi-like feelings swirl around her in a frenzy. No matter what she does, people keep getting hurt, and this war is no closer to ending.
She’s terrified, and she knows she shouldn’t be.
Jedi aren’t supposed to be. Anakin’s not. He’s the Hero with No Fear. He looks at her with concern from the doorway and she knows her shield have slipped. She shuts them tight again.
She’s spiraling again, and her eyes are starting to sting, so she relocates to an empty training room. There, she places her hands on her hips and stares at a wall. She tries to breath and tell herself the things she always tells herself but can never quite believe. Things like, it’ll be fine, and you’ll be okay.
Keepers of the peace...
She's not doing a very good job of that.
Ahsoka thinks of her mosaic, and doesn't find it very comforting.