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The comm dinged and Ahsoka paused her fruitless rearranging of clothes.
“Ahsoka.” Anakin’s voice. Without a fake smile to go with it the unease in his voice was uncomfortably clear and did nothing for her own state of calm. “We’re coming up on the planet in five. Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she muttered, too low to trigger the comm.
“Yes,” she said loudly enough for the pickup. “I’ll be there now.”
She didn’t have as much time as she’d hoped to compose herself because they were arrayed with their backs to the ramp already. All three. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Rex. Like an interview panel. Or maybe a firing squad, given the sober looks on every face.
She stared from one to the other, looking for a clue.
“Did I miss something in the briefing?”
“Nothing like that.” Anakin shook his head. Paused. Glanced at Obi-Wan. Sighed.
“Ahsoka… We… I need to know that you know that you can call a halt on this at any time. Without having to explain anything, or account for it, or justify it. If you’re feeling unsafe, or it’s too much, or any reason, or no reason at all. The mission can go get spaced and we’ll find another way. Okay?”
Ahsoka opened her mouth to offer automatic agreement but her jaw tightened. Were they really that worried she couldn’t handle this?
Rex gave Obi-Wan an urgent look. Obi-Wan nodded at him but spoke to Ahsoka.
“Padawan Tano, are we making it clear this is not a request?” The older man asked. “If this becomes too,” he was clearly casting about for the right word. “Distressing, you are to let one of us know and the mission is at an end. That is a direct instruction.”
Ahsoka scowled. “Distressing as in an entire planet full of my people have been kidnapped into slavery, or distressing as in my masters don’t think I can handle the same for so much as a few days in order to get them out?”
Anakin groaned, looking only mildly appalled at this defiance towards his own master. Ahsoka was mildly appalled herself but it was too late, the words were out.
Anakin grabbed her shoulder with such sudden urgency that she jumped.
“You have got no idea what these people are capable of. They’re vile. Violent. Perverse. They wouldn’t think anything more of hurting you than of kicking a faulty power converter. Please, Ahsoka. Please take this seriously.”
It was the fear bleeding into the Force that convinced her. Anakin was never afraid except when he was afraid for other people and she intensely disliked being the focus of that.
She raised her hands in surrender. “I’m taking it seriously.” She lowered her hands again, one of the atop his where it still held her shoulder. “I am.” She offered a weak smile. “C’mon. You can’t think this stupid outfit doesn’t have my full attention when it comes to their opinion of the likes of me?”
But that had been the wrong thing to say as well and she should have seen that coming because it had already caused a huge row when she’d selected it as the least worst option.
Objectively measured a percentage of skin receiving daylight it was not really that much outside the bounds of typical Togrutan modesty, except that it was offensively flimsy, except that it was designed to deliberate mimic and mock and twist that looser-than-galactic-standard sense of propriety.
She wasn’t so young as to not know why, and the fact she was entirely confident in her ability to serious maim anyone who thought they could do more than ogle, was not the comfort it should have been to her masters. Or, entirely if she was finally honest, to herself.
“I promise,” she said at last. “I absolutely one hundred percent promise you will hear me yell for help if I need to. I will keep my head down. I won’t take risks, and I won’t hide it if there’s a problem.”
She’d meant it when she’d said it, and all three had accepted it, but her resolution lasted only until halfway through the market.
She tried not to look. And where she couldn’t not look without bumping into people she tried not to see.
Until the Twi’lek hit the ground, and the slaver raised the whip and she had a sudden sickening presentiment of what that sparking weapon would feel like landing across lekku and she’d moved to intercept it before any conscious decision had crossed her brain.
Dammit, Snips. Almost audible and then Anakin had knocked her aside and it was so startling even as he caught her with the Force, that she needed the catch to keep her feet.
She fought to think it though and gather her wits. She’d hit the deck at Anakin’s hands any number of times in training. She’d even gone headlong at least once to that exact shoulder-check, on one occasion she’d got her footing particularly badly wrong. She had assumed any play-acting of this sort that the mission might require would feel the same, would feel harmless and safe, and it did not.
are you okay we don’t have to do this tell me if you’re not okay
She gathered herself and sent reassurance but for the first time she realised what not-okay might be like.
Somehow they put the plan forward. Anakin’s ruthless impression of a slaver was so obviously a shield propped up before a blazing blue-white righteous fury, that Ahsoka was honestly surprised that even people blind to the Force couldn’t feel it.
She herself was operating on an absolute nailsbreadth-trigger and only Anakin’s presentation of her as a known troublesome recent capture was keeping their cover intact.
The first time she was expected to kneel, Anakin had barely the brushed the air near her shoulder in warning. Not even touching, just a whisper in the Force that wasn’t even a request.
you don’t have to if it’s not okay tell me if its not okay
She went to her knees secure in the knowledge that if she had declined to do so they’d have fought their way out of there together. For a few moments they were at least vaguely convincing.
Until the Twi’lek girl had died. Died of her own will rather than submit while Ahsoka merely pretended subservience, free at any moment to say the word to make it stop. And nothing was okay.
Numbly she lied in response to Anakin’s frantic enquiries because if she wasn’t okay then they lost their chance to end this for anyone except her. She could tell he didn’t believe her. Could tell he was fighting between that disbelief and the fact she’d promised and that questioning her promise right this moment, in such a state of high and fragile emotion was also not-okay.
Struggling for focus she received a back-handed slap from the queen for inattention. That was okay, however much Anakin’s fury at it spiked across their bond. It was okay. It was only humiliating. A slap in the face wasn’t death on a sandy street as the only replacement for hope.
A rough hand on her back lek yanking her chin up was not-okay. The shock-collar slid around her neck as she fought not to struggle and make that bruising grip worse was not-okay. But they’d known it was a possibility. Likely even. Most slaves did not run around unrestrained and with the lack of self control she’d shown since arriving, she could hardly have done more if she’d actively tried to make herself look like a flight risk.
She was okay. They had a plan. It was okay.
Ahsoka, please
The urgency was almost dizzying as they finally, finally headed to the wretched auction.
the truth
I’m okay
Doubt spilled across the contact but Ahsoka risked raising her head to make eye contact and glared at him because he just better not dare override her on this and make every horrible thing so far for nothing.
The silent argument was interrupted abruptly.
“Wipe that unattractive look off your face, little skug, unless you want to feel that collar sooner rather than later. The moment this auction is concluded we really must get you to processing immediately.”
It was only the third time Ahsoka had heard the expression on this planet and it already made her blood run cold. She lowered her gaze and kept moving.
I’m okay I’m okay
The fight when it came, came as a welcome relief. It’s ending came with more fury at herself that the queen because how could she have forgotten that Sith-forsaken thing around her neck?
She wasn’t okay. And Anakin wasn’t okay. Obi-Wan and Rex weren’t okay and this time it was her fault because she’d acted without thought and she could have stopped this if she’d taken a split second longer to deal with the collar before the queen.
In utter contrast to her own feelings, a wave of relief and reassurance rolled through the Force around her. Anakin’s but what was there possibly to feel relief about?
That she was alive? He’d have known that. That she was conscious again? She wished she wasn’t. No. None of that. It was relief at not having to feign indifference. Relief that the plan was once again the same “Well that first plan went to bantha-poodoo let’s improvise” that they had long done better than any carefully staged scheme.
She could wait. She could convince herself she was okay with the prime minster’s vile taunts, okay with the shocks, okay with the burning sun on the shining bars, okay with the freezing night, okay with her parched mouth and protesting belly. Okay with waiting.
Okay because there was zero possibility that Anakin would fail to come, and all he needed, and all she had to do, was not to get herself killed in the meantime.
There would be a new plan and it would be ridiculous and chaotic and…
The cage swung nauseatingly over the drop and she was not-okay and she forced her eyes to focus anyway, to see what new creature had come to try and peck at her now, and instead there was Anakin swaying atop the wretched thing like he was riding a ship at sea.
A smile pushed through the weary, queasy headache.
“Well hello, Master. Took you long enough.”
The cradling comfort he was projecting through the Force was almost comically at odds with his tone as he shrugged, prepared to play the same game.
“Well, I knew you had a nice view.”
He hopped back to the rooftop and lifted the cage up and over to safety. The violence with which he ripped the door off was the only immediate betrayal of the playful tone. At least until she was actually back on her feet before him.
“Are you okay?” And the fact it was out loud shouldn’t have made it feel so much heavier but it did and she had to think about it, had to answer honestly and found she really didn’t know.
She snapped the collar. One less not-okay thing.
But any further self reflection was cut off by more urgent matters. There was something here now even darker than the past few days and it was most definitely not-okay.
Anakin frowned at her non-answer but let it pass for at least the moment.
And they were off and running, flying, fighting, planning re-planning, fighting again. And the familiarity of all of it started to become okay.
Obi-Wan and Rex were not-okay but they would be.
The Togruta were not-okay but they would be.
Somewhere in the middle of the rescue she heard over the comm, “On your signal, Commander Tano,” and it was such an unexpectedly, overwhelming relief to be addressed by something other than a mocking diminutive, or an insult, or by the desperate worried calling of her name, that for a moment it made her less okay. But she acknowledged it, and gave the order, and made it okay.
She caught herself tallying things that were okay on the flight back to Coruscant. Having her own clothes back. Snacks at will. Showers that pushed the limit of the ship’s water recycling and temperature control capacity without anyone hassling her about it.
Other things she knew would take longer to stop being not-okay. The way Anakin had hesitated when she’d asked to spar. The way she’d flinched when he’d put a hand on her back to correct her positioning after he’d finally agreed. The way she wasn’t the only one wandering the ship in the middle of standard night, awoken from dreams of what had been and could have been not-okay.
When that happened they sat together, in twos or threes or all four, telling stories of previous misadventures. Because they’d come out of them okay then hadn’t they? They’d been okay. They’d be okay.