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Blue rings of plasma rushed towards her until they crashed against her lightsabers, scattering like water meeting the cliffs. Warning bells tinkled from all directions in the Force. To the unskilled ear, they was all melded together, no order discernible. To her, she could tell the subtle differences of pitch, for each of her men had their own distinctive note in the Force. She danced to this dangerous melody, steps accentuated by elegant flips and twirls in the air. Her lightsabers swirling so swiftly around her it seemed like ribbons. She imagined that each blaster flare was a set to kill and not to stun. One of the shots snuck behind her fluid guard. She fell to the ground.
She awoke a few moments later to see Rex before her. “Not bad,” he said with a nod of pride in his voice. “It took us five minutes to knock you out that time.”
Five minutes! It was a vast improvement from her first time, but it was still to short of a time. On the field, she endured battles that lasted far longer. In the Temple, she could run through her katas and the training droids for hours. She stood up, rolled her shoulders, and said determinedly, “I can do better.” Then she crouched into her opening stance once more.
It took the clones another five minutes and some to get past her defenses this time around. When she got up again, another clone joined them. It was time to wrap up her training session. She looked towards her master and caught the barest hint of a smile and a flash of pride in his eyes.
Later, much later after another battle and minimal rest, found her in the hanger running through her katas, replaying the previous training session. Her form has grown and solidified so much in the last few years but switching between the forward and reverse grips still felt a little stilted. She tried it slowly, testing different methods. She could use slight flips to swing the saber around, or she could just have the saber slide in her hand a tad bit until she could flip it like it was on a hinge. More practice, and it'll come more naturally. She noticed a battalion approaching, blasters held against their bodies. They were probably on their way to the training simulations. She waved them down – they could train against a Force-wielder, then. All of them were brothers to her, and they definitely couldn't resist her simple request.
Her master and Rex found her still training with the clones sometime later (was it only a few minutes, an hour, or more? Time didn’t exist in this moment). She felt them watching, but she ignored them until he finally called them to a stop and dismissed the clones. The clones saluted and stepped back. Her master ignited his own saber, commanding Rex to record them.
He did not wait long before he attacked. Blue clashed against green. For her, she parsed through the tones in the ocean waves crashing against her. Subtle differences, even more so compared to the clones. For him, he felt the intensity, direction, and volume of water washing over him, through him. Their movements flowed like water, two currents meeting. He was stronger, yet she held up admirably. There were many times that she almost had him in a position of defeat, and there were more times he could have defeated her. But there were few people who could challenge him like she did. It was so easy to read others, but she felt different. Maybe it was mean to toy with her, but again, there was none like him. He did not let up until he sensed Ahsoka hit her final breaking point. He quickly disarmed her and held her tightly with her back against his front. His saber hummed at her neck.
“You’re dead,” he murmured with a slight menace in his tone. Then he turned off his lightsaber, and his padawan practically collapsed against him. He added gently, “Can you walk?” He knew she didn't rest properly since their last battle.
“I’ll manage,” she bit back. As they walked towards their quarters, she still leaned on him for support. After several moments of silence, she noted thoughtfully, “Why didn’t you take the advantage earlier? I left way too many openings.”
“You know why,” he answered simply. “I go to extremes.”
“You go past extremes,” she snipped with a snort. They arrived in their quarters, and she collapsed in the first bunk she saw. It happened to be his. At first, it seemed she fell asleep, so he moved around quietly looking for the secret stash of jerky he kept for times like these. Times where he pushed her and tested the extremities of her limits. But she spoke again, so softly he nearly missed her words, “We’re always running on a thin wire, and all the noises of war is nearly like a lullaby. It would be nice for this war to end, but I’m terrified of how the galaxy would sound with peace and quiet.”
“What about right here, right now?” he asked. This moment was peaceful, quiet. A low compared to the highs of the battles. He sat next to where his padawan lay, silently offering her the jerky stick. She smiled brightly and took it gently from his hands.
In between bites, she mused, “No, because I’m drowning in the deep – it’s hard to notice anything else.” Was it the war that certainly raged around them in the Force? He could feel the disturbances faintly, but it was in the background. Was it become of himself? She once described how their bond felt to her. It felt the same to him. A current buried far beneath the surface of the ocean.
They remained silent, swirling together in the Force until she drifted off to much needed rest. He recalled all their hellos and goodbyes since they started getting different assignments. Assignments that separated her from him. When he told her of his (mis)adventures, she’d stare at him with a skeptical look before it softened into something akin to sadness. He was a renegade, and he was determined to prove to her that she didn’t need to save him. He knew he talked in his sleep because most mornings, she’d look at him with an indiscernible expression.
He looked down; she had grown so much in so many ways in the last two (or was it three) years. For one thing, her perceptiveness. They both knew that he lied whenever he made an excuse about his secret calls with Padmé. He had felt her in the background as he gazed at his angel whenever paths intersected. He didn’t know how much she knew, but it was probably a hair away from the truth. And when she came back from Onderon not too long ago, he could tell that her heart was not the same. They may have gotten into a fight about what happened. She opened her mouth to scream something, but no words came out. Instead she glared at him before stalking off. There was something in her eyes that he couldn’t read.