Chapter Text
Ahsoka Tano awakened just as the cruiser jolted out of hyperspace and over Christophsis. An ugly blockade overshadowed the planet’s fractal beauty, and down on its surface, uglier battles decimated cities that had stood for thousands of years in a matter of hours.
Her first thought was not that Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the clones were currently mired in a constant tempest of blaster fire, a haze of crystalline death and dust. This was her second thought. Her first thought, in fact, was the forlorn wish that she could have been sent back earlier. Just to have more time.
But if the Force was already funny, then it must have figured itself to be fucking hilarious when it came to the concept of time: having it, losing it, traveling through it.
So she flicked the complaint from her mind, along with the seeds of fear that had already begun to poke little white roots out, aching to grow.
“Glad to see you’re up, Padawan Tano,” said a clone trooper. He and the others in the docking bay had allowed the fourteen-year-old Ahsoka to bother them unceasingly as they traveled to break the Separatist blockade on Christophsis. They probably breathed sighs of relief when she crashed by a port while watching the blur of hyperspace. “Admiral Yularen has given clearance to get you planetside.”
Yularen’s name, spoken so casually, wasn’t quite a jolt—she would save those worthy sensations for Anakin and Obi-Wan—but it did make Ahsoka’s jaw tighten. He wasn’t special, she reminded herself. Just one of the countless Republic military officers who settled into the Empire’s regime because he’d been promised safety and promotions for his service. Because he was cunning and loyal and not a clone.
Yet despite this reminder, Imperial dog muttered in her mind.
Ahsoka nodded and stood. The pack of her belongings weighed on her shoulders. It grounded her, knowing the child she had been was so excited to meet her new master that she kept her meager possessions on her so she wouldn’t have to waste time getting them. A remnant of the Ahsoka who once was; the Ahsoka who never would be again.
Perhaps it was merciful, she mused. The Daughter could not spare her the first time. Perhaps it was also cruel, to steal the life of a child for greater purposes.
Then again, the war did that anyway. Why else would the chaotic noises and metallic smells of the bay make her feel like she was home?
She followed the clone to a transport ship. His presence in the Force was steady and kind, but underneath was a waver of uncertainty. Imposter, he had convinced himself. Defective for being afraid. It made her heart ache.
His name came to Ahsoka in that moment. She might have forgotten the serenity of the temple gardens, and the exact shade of Padmé’s brown eyes, but she never forgot a clone’s name.
“Thank you for helping me, Stack,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
Stack glanced down at her, their height difference apparent. Ahsoka didn’t like being small again, but being bigger had also made her a more hittable target. So she thought of it this way: at least she could squeeze through vents again. It’d been an ability she hadn’t properly appreciated until she found her hips and shoulders too wide and montrals too tall…and her own self in a tight position.
“It’s no problem. Can’t promise the ride will be smooth, though, so don’t thank me just yet.”
They swiftly departed from the cruiser before the battle commenced in full. Stack and another clone, Asher, sat in the pilot chairs while she took up a rear one. Both of them had died long before the end of the war.
(She could not change everything. Remember that.)
“Nervous, eh?” Asher asked, full of friendliness, when Ahsoka’s silence drew out too long.
She smiled. “I suppose. It’s all hitting me now.”
“Just keep your head on straight, listen to your superiors, and duck when you’re told to, and you’ll be alright.”
“Rich coming from you,” Stack said, and he glanced back at Ahsoka again. She felt his wry, crinkling eyes in his voice. “He nearly got his head taken off by our own cannon fire because he stood there like an idiot.”
“So what? I’m speaking from experience!”
Ahsoka’s smile widened. Their banter relaxed her. Not in the way they imagined, but nevertheless.
Too soon, the ship landed in the glassy heart of the warzone. She breathed; centered herself. Anakin’s presence in the Force burned at her skin already. Obi-Wan’s cool water soothed it like tears that hadn’t yet dried. All around them, stars and stars of clones. Alive and bright. Fading. Dying. Familiar.
For a moment, Ahsoka’s memory stranded her just beyond the wreckage of the Tribunal. In front of her, a graveyard. Behind her, a single shining point in the void.
Rex was close to the sun that was Anakin, blue and brilliant and with no idea of what awaited him and his brothers.
The ship’s hatch opened. A gust of warm air rushed in; grains of dust bit at her skin. Ahsoka did not hide from it. To hide was to never escape.
“Good luck out there,” Asher told her as she stood.
Stack echoed, “Yeah, good luck.”
She nodded to both of them. Her smile, while faint, was sincere. “And the both of you, stay safe. May the Force be with you.”
Their surprise—and warm delight—rippled back.
(She would still try to change everything. Remember that as well.)
With her pack and a lightsaber that she felt didn’t belong to her anymore, Ahsoka exited the ship and stepped into the warzone. She kept her breathing even and her shields tight and controlled as she laid eyes upon Anakin, Obi-Wan, and R2.
She focused on their present, impossible youth so their futures wouldn’t rip her away into the black current.
Anakin had never been so young in her memory. He was tall and strong, a master wrought of admirable courage. The Anakin before her was lean and scruffy. Cracks and chips all along the edges. Tired, too, with a slight sneer of disbelief on his face as he watched Ahsoka approach. The expression, she recalled, once made her nervous that a master would regard his new padawan in such a manner. Now it was simply part of Anakin, whose emotions always manifested too close to the surface for a proper Jedi. That was what she loved about him.
And the galaxy bled and burned because of it.
Obi-Wan was also not the old, wise Jedi who taught her as much as Anakin did. Gray didn’t yet color his temples, and the full effects of the war hadn’t carved lines around his eyes and mouth. His pauldrons, while scuffed, didn’t beard the dinginess they would in the coming years. Obi-Wan could have changed them out for newer ones that’d give him a cleaner appearance, but he always had to self-inflict in some way. The dirty pauldrons signified his experience in the war, his survival, his status as both Jedi and general. To replace them would be to forego all that he and his men endured.
R2 blinked beside the generals. His circuitry thrummed like a favorite song that had gone unheard for too long. Ahsoka wished she could tell him that he’d obtain war hero status too many times to count, but then he’d be insufferable to the point of implosion, so she would remain silent for his own good. For everybody’s good, really.
None of them expected Ahsoka to step out, small and alone. When R2 trilled, “What’s that tiny thing?” Obi-Wan blurted, “A youngling?” and Anakin followed up with, “Who are you supposed to be?” she was pierced by the distant recollection that in the face of their lacking welcome, she had struggled not to show frustration or fear to the famed Jedis, one of whom would be her master.
But they hadn’t told Anakin about his padawan assignment for a reason, she’d come to find; he never would have taken one if given a choice.
The Council, however, rarely ever allowed him to choose his course. Neither did Palpatine. Anakin’s entire life had been a series of orders, whether they were known to him or not. All of them, in some way, were afraid of what he would do if he were allowed too much freedom.
Ahsoka nurtured a different kind of frustration and fear this time around, but she didn’t hesitate as she walked up to them.
“My name is Ahsoka Tano. I’ve come with a message from Master Yoda: You are to return to the Jedi Temple immediately. There’s an emergency that requires both of you.”
Anakin opened his mouth to retort that they weren’t exactly in a position to leave, but if she heard his sharp tone, she would let some sort of emotion slip out of her and fall into an ugly, exposed heap on the ground, so she continued, “Though apparently, Master Yoda assumed that both of you would be able to leave Christophsis. He wasn’t aware of your predicament.”
“Predicament,” Anakin still muttered. “Yeah. Sure. This is what you’d call a predicament.”
She clung to the coolness of her outward demeanor. “You could relay a signal through the cruiser that I just came from and send word to Master Yoda.”
Anakin paused, surprised at her prompt suggestion, and Obi-Wan imperceptibly brightened with amusement.
“…Yeah. Alright. Let’s do that.”
Anakin stalked off to the nearest comms station. Obi-Wan sent her a glance that beckoned her to follow. Ahsoka walked behind, careful not to get too close. She studied the street, the blasted buildings, the crates of weapons and equipment, all so she wouldn’t stare at their upright shoulders.
The cruiser quickly connected them to the temple. In the brief pause, Ahsoka felt both Jedis observing her. Anakin, coiled and suspicious. Obi-Wan, interested and open.
Do not hide.
Ahsoka lifted her gaze to Obi-Wan first, then Anakin. After too many seconds, he glanced back down at the stalled transmission pad with a slight scowl crookedly bowing his mouth. It didn’t make her feel any better; nothing would. She was here, and so was he, and only one of them had been betrayed by the other in a time now gone.
She didn’t dwell on any vindication or resentment at the moment, however. The duty given to her required resolve, and she had more of it than she knew what to do with. Everything else faded to its steady drumbeat.
They spoke to Master Yoda for but a moment to tell him that they needed reinforcements on Christophsis before the transmission cut. Ahsoka kept herself grounded when she heard the grand master’s voice despite the unexpected sting of betrayal, old enough that it shouldn’t have hurt, yet deep enough that its ache tugged like scar tissue.
Obi-Wan turned his attention again to Ahsoka. “Apologies, young one. Proper introductions are in order.”
She nodded to him and replied, “No apologies necessary. You’re in the middle of a war.”
Then she addressed Anakin. If she hesitated, she’d falter, and faltering would expose her so thoroughly that she might as well start weeping and rambling about the future while she tore at her leks. “I’m to be your new padawan learner.”
Anakin slackened with surprise. It lasted for a second before palpable outrage overtook him, and he didn’t bother to practice Jedi temperance as he began to spout off a litany of protests.
Ahsoka used the battleground as an excuse to look away from him. She surveyed its decimation. “This is something you weren’t aware of, obviously.”
Her voice sounded so young that it almost made her laugh, hollowly, because she didn’t have the strength in her to pretend to be the bright and brash padawan that once called it her own, if only to attempt to reclaim who was lost.
Except that padawan died a slow death over the course of the war before finally succumbing to her wounds in front of the Jei Council. She was gone; the voice, and the body, was just memory given form.
“The matter can wait. You have an encroaching droid army that currently outnumbers and outpowers your forces. So we must outsmart them, and fast.”
“A wise observation,” Anakin remarked. He disliked his poor odds and monumental task being spoken aloud by a child he met a few minutes ago. “I’ll go check with Rex at the outpost.”
He disliked it even more when Ahsoka went to walk alongside him.
They journeyed in silence to a rooftop. Anakin’s displeasure and uncertainty radiated off him, enough that it attempted to tear open the peace she actively maintained to keep her insides from spilling out. His intense reaction once frightened her and filled her head with scenarios of returning to the temple in shame, a failed padawan before she could even be one, which propelled her to try so hard to prove herself in the upcoming battles.
Now, the emotions only made Ahsoka want to growl at him to get a grip.
All of Anakin’s battering fell away, however, when she laid eyes on dear Rex, whose blue paint was fresh and unscuffed. His phase I helmet bore but a handful of tally marks.
He could be on the other side of the galaxy and she’d feel him like a limb, look to him like constant star in the sky.
She tried not to think about how she was no longer the same to him (how he had already been gone to her, finally resting after living the life of a soldier). But like with most things, she didn’t quite succeed, and a moment of complete and utter loneliness flayed her skin. Each fractal grain of the city’s rubble embedded in the raw, bloody remains.
“Who’s the youngling?” he asked, not hiding his wariness. His voice sounded young as well, young and unchipped by years of missions and tragedies.
“Ahsoka Tano. I’m meant to be Master Skywalker’s padawan, but there seems to have been a miscommunication.”
Again, she saved herself some pain by taking in the view from the outpost. The electrically-charged ozone from all the droid and cannon activity caught in her montrals. Soon, they would start to itch. She’d have to grow accustomed to the sensation again.
“No communication, to be precise,” Anakin corrected. “I explicitly stated to the Council that I never wanted a padawan.”
It was somewhere along here that she had given Anakin the nickname Skyguy. Rex would have laughed before he caught himself, and Anakin would call her snippy in return, soon to be shortened to Snips. They’d get into an argument, and he’d foist her on to Rex to escape responsibility and skulk back to Obi-Wan.
But now—
No. She couldn’t do it again. Let that memory remain unforced.
So, Ahsoka offered Anakin a reprieve by saying, “I’d like to see the perimeter.”
His nose wrinkled like he smelled something unexpected. It was a mild reaction, for Anakin. “Uh, sure. Captain Rex can take you.”
“General—” Rex started, then cleared his throat when Anakin glared at him. “Of course, sir. Come with me, youngling.”
She didn’t bother correcting him.
They descended down to the perimeter in silence, though Rex shot loud glances her way. Ahsoka couldn’t help herself; when he finally did it for the seventh time, he found that she was already peering at him.
He jerked his head straight. She smiled, then told herself not to get too affectionate with Rex prematurely. One-sided friendliness would only disturb him. He was already disturbed enough that a child had been sent into the midst of battle, and this was before he learned that she was meant to stay. She had been offended at his discomfort, once, when it saturated the air around him and he resolutely didn’t look at her at all. Another small difference.
Now she only wanted to tell Rex that he was right to feel this way. He always had the best instincts.
At ground level, Ahsoka noticed several errors that only a veteran of the Clone Wars would. The cannons weren’t properly defended, the perimeter edge ended too close to the enemy’s front lines without the ability to swiftly retreat, and there wasn’t enough cover for the chokepoint the GAR had tried to turn the main street into.
Anakin and Obi-Wan didn’t become perfect generals overnight. Each lesson they learned about war, they learned in clone lives. Christophsis intended to teach them.
“Thoughts?” Rex neutrally prompted when her quiet judgment got the best of him.
“There has to be a better way to form up. The clone forces are going to suffer major losses once the droids start pressing again.”
“The generals believe this is the best position to maintain.”
“Do you?”
Rex stalled. It lasted just long enough for the Separatists to save him from thinking of an answer that was honest, believable, and loyal when they activated their energy shield. So instead he stated, “That’s not good. It’s gonna make things damn near impossible.”
Ahsoka couldn’t help it; she patted the side of a montral to futilely alleviate the buzzing from the energy shield’s discharge.
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” she said. “I have an idea or two.”
Rex didn’t buy it, but her calm threw him off enough to not sarcastically reply. “Then we’d best get back to the generals.”
She waited for Obi-Wan to give his briefing on the energy shield, the forces within, and his suggestion to retreat into the buildings and attempt to fight in the close confines of the city center area. She could feel Rex expecting her to speak up; if she didn’t, then he’d drag the attention on to her, for better or worse. So when there was a pause, she said, “The energy shield must be taken out. The Separatists will only destroy the buildings our soldiers are in before we can even put a dent in their numbers and force us into a full retreat. Then they’ll have their impenetrable energy shield and Christophsis.”
Anakin crossed his arms. He agreed with her, but he wasn’t going to admit it out loud this time around. “And how do you propose we do that?”
“The two of you could tiptoe through the enemy lines,” Obi-Wan suggested on her behalf.
“It’s possible,” said Ahsoka. “We could huddle in an overturned crate while the shield and the army passed by us. But it’d still be quite a distance to cover to get to the shield generator, and we don’t have enough time to retreat to another part of the city with our supplies and cannons before the droid army is within firing range. Waiting on us to find and disable the generator will take too long. Lots of men will die.”
“So again,” Anakin drawled, “what do you propose?”
Christophsis intended to teach them. Ahsoka refused to let it.
“Energy shields stabilize themselves using a frequency, right?”
“Yes, but nobody has been able to crack the one that the Separatists use.”
Until around the end of the first year of the war, that is, when good intel on busting the frequencies came through. After the GAR dismantled the energy shields during a number of battles, the tactical droids found it more advantageous to rely on other strategies and weapons of mass destruction. The Separatists attempted to change up the frequencies a few times, but once the GAR had learned their foundational structure, it always turned into a round of bets to see who could set the record for unscrambling them the fastest.
Except she wouldn’t wait months for the intel; she would protect soldiers that she wasn’t first able to, now.
“I can figure out the frequency. The moment I get the shield to drop, use the heavy cannons on the army. Keep the soldiers from engaging directly with them. Once the cannons take out enough droids and tanks, General Loathsom will surrender.”
Eyes matte with condescension, Anakin said, “Forgive me if I don’t want to place the entire fate of the battalions into the hands of a youngling who sure is confident for someone who’s never stepped foot outside the temple.”
It was easy to lie about the origin of her skill so long as she could show for it. “I’ve been studying shield generator mechanics since the start of the war. I can do it.”
“Right. And if you can’t?”
“Then you dismantle the generator directly, soldiers die while they wait on your heroics, and I go back to the temple without protest.”
Anakin wasn’t expecting such a response, so devoid of parrying sarcasm and yet somehow brimming with it, and twitched.
Obi-Wan tugged on his beard. “Why don’t we compromise on the method? I have faith in Ahsoka’s conviction, yet it would be safe to have Anakin move in toward the generator as backup.”
“Oh, the kid is here for five minutes and now I’m backup? Great.”
Not reacting to Anakin only upset him further, but Ahsoka’s mouth couldn’t contort to a sly remark. Instead, it formed the words, “I’ll need to use the transmitting satellite.”
-
In the end, the climax of the battle of Christophsis was about as spectacular as a shorted charge.
Ahsoka quickly built a frequency disruptor with several clones watching her work. Their interest was cool air to her overheating systems. She showed them the right equipment to use and how to test the frequency match, and she answered all of their rapid-fire questions.
Once, it had been them answering her questions, which were less rapid fire and more delayed detonations. They never once complained.
Past the clones’ crowding attention, she felt Obi-Wan’s gaze settled between her shoulder blades, where the protection of her back lek had not yet grown in.
When she set the disruptor on the battalions’ largest transmitting satellite and activated it, the frequency rippled outward, thrumming high-pitched in her montrals, and crashed into the energy shield.
It came down. The heavy cannons rained Republic justice on the droid army. General Loathsom swiftly surrendered before he got obliterated. Clones cheered, and the ones who gathered around her were brave enough to pat her on the shoulders and back. Their joy brought a smile to her face, distracting enough that she wasn’t unbalanced by the absence of adult fangs pressing against her lower lip.
Reinforcements descended upon a planet already won.
“Well done, kid,” Rex said to her when she rejoined him and Obi-Wan. Anakin was making his way back from sending off General Loathsom. As he closed the distance, he kept his eyes on Ahsoka.
She met them with squared shoulders, however thin they were.
Obi-Wan echoed, “Yes, well done indeed.”
“So, you can back up your claims with some talent,” Anakin said to her, coming to a stop and crossing his arms. He didn’t smirk because that’d show his begrudging approval.
“I wouldn’t do otherwise.”
The words tasted like a lie, even after all these years.
Anakin made a short, huffy noise. He didn’t like that Ahsoka wasn’t giving him much rope to tug at. Still, he said, “You’ll need to show me what you did.”
Little Ahsoka would have practically raised her chin up to the sky with pride and made Anakin groan at her wide grin, regretting that he ever said anything. Now, she dipped her head and briefly studied his dust-covered boots. “Of course.”
His frown told her that he was upset with the Council, with Obi-Wan, for assigning a padawan who they considered wiser and calmer and more serious than him. She was a lesson. A standard. A guideline. A reminder of everything he’d never been when he was a child and everything he wasn’t now. When really, Ahsoka was meant to be a lesson of a different kind: recognizing himself in another, good and bad, and growing up because of it. Letting go of it.
He had learned, yes. Not that it mattered in the end.
(There is no end; there is journey.)
Reluctantly, Anakin continued, “I guess you’re not going back to the temple just yet then, huh?”
“You have the prerogative,” Ahsoka replied. “The Council is not meant to choose a padawan for a master, nor a master for a padawan. Whether I stay or leave is ultimately your choice.”
Her choice was already made. Once, when she knew nothing of what awaited. And again, when she knew in excruciating detail.
A wisp of discomfort emanated from Obi-Wan, though not simply because of his position on the Council and whatever hand he had in pairing Ahsoka and Anakin. Most of it came from Anakin’s wry, “Guess they never got the message with you and me, huh, Master?”
“I did choose you, believe it or not. My, imagine what life would have been like had I inflicted you on to some other unfortunate Jedi?”
Obi-Wan only chose Anakin because Qui-Gon Jinn instructed him to with his dying breath. Then he was a Jedi knight with a padawan deemed the Chosen One before the next Naboo sunrise.
“Boring? For you, you mean; my life could never be boring.”
“Mm, yes, that is true. Though I’m more inclined to describe this intriguing possibility as peaceful.”
Ahsoka observed a gunship that slowed in the air and began to descend. In it was Master Yoda.
Before she had the sense to stay quiet, she said, “And yet war would’ve shattered it anyway.”
Ahsoka hadn’t prepared for the encounter with the grand master. But in truth, she hadn’t felt prepared for anything since she was fourteen, sent to meet a master who hadn’t agreed to her apprenticeship while war waged. Anakin had no concept of preparation either, so he taught her to face conflict when it was mere inches away from killing her. War made his lessons the perfect salle to teach them in. After that, everything was simply a change in landscape, day after day, decade after decade, right down to sprinting after Morai through the World Between Worlds.
Meaning, life went as it always had.
Anakin muttered, “Well, she’s got you there.”
They approached the gunship. Master Yoda hobbled past the scores of marching clone units to meet them. His attention slipped past Anakin and Obi-Wan, whose forms she uselessly attempted to veil herself behind, and encircled her. Ahsoka had forgotten how it didn’t pierce; it weighed her down and up and sideways, inescapable.
What her presence in the Force was to him, exactly, she couldn’t name. Only that he hadn’t missed the insurmountable change in the youngling he had just seen off.
The Jedi talked about Christophsis and Ahsoka’s ingenious method of bringing down the energy shield. She kept quiet; her focus faded from Yoda and went to the clones passing by instead, without control or resistance. Though she couldn’t see their faces, and though they didn’t yet bear their blue paint of the 501st, she recognized them. Just a scant few had survived through the years, long enough to paint their helmets orange, long enough to be buried on the border of the Tribunal’s twisted remains.
Somewhere, soldiers sang Vode An.
“A great accomplishment you have made, young Ahsoka.”
The rising water in the well that held all her sorrow and failure receded at Yoda’s rumbling voice.
She turned her head back to him, unflinching.
He went on. “Sense hesitation in Skywalker, I do, on whether or not to take you as his padawan.”
“Hesitation?” Anakin protested. “I wouldn’t call it hesitation—”
Ahsoka said, “He can do whatever he believes best. I will gladly accept apprenticeship, but I understand if it isn’t meant to be.”
Her little self would have bitten down on Anakin’s arm to keep him from escaping her. Yoda hummed at this.
Obi-Wan put in his own comment. “She has shown great promise already, but…” his eyes glanced sidelong at Ahsoka, “it is his choice, after all. And I’m uncertain if their personalities will align. Such promise may not flourish because of it. Perhaps I can take on—”
Anakin chopped his hand through the air to intercede the conversation being had around him. “Hold on, hold on. I never said that I refused.” He didn’t like the insinuation that he’d struggle to teach someone like Ahsoka. Always had to be the best. His pride wouldn’t allow otherwise. “Alright, maybe she’s a bit too serious, but she’s smart.”
He took a don’t-make-me-regret-this breath. The sound of it in his lungs, in the air, drew her gaze to him.
And then she really was a girl again, staring up at Anakin Skywalker. He was haloed by the hazy orange sky, aglitter with infinitesimal crystal dust. A small smirk lifted the corner of his mouth, and his blue eyes crinkled. He was as she had always remembered: tall and brave and radiant. A Jedi.
“Let’s see where it goes, huh?”
Ahsoka’s head came above water, and when she blinked away the blurriness of memory, all she could think was how young Anakin was.
He looked like Luke. Like Leia.
She nodded, eyes dropping to spare her heart from more torment. “Thank you, Master.”
Anakin responded with a snort. His elbow nudged her shoulder. “Don’t be so stuffy about it, Stuffy.”
The new nickname unspooled her insides so swiftly and violently that she almost didn’t catch Yoda saying, “Then go with you, she will, to the Teth system.”
“Teth? That’s Wild Space. The droid army isn’t even in that sector.”
“Kidnapped, Jabba the Hutt’s son has been.”
“You want me to rescue Jabba’s son?”
Ahsoka hadn’t realized until years later how cruel it’d been for Yoda and the Council to send Anakin on such a mission. How careless. A slave rescued by the Jedi, only to be sent as a Jedi to assist one of the most preeminent slave peddlers in the galaxy. It was one of the many little injustices they wrought upon him until the cuts were a gaping wound, and he made everyone else bleed like he did.
With conviction, the two masters spoke to Anakin about the Republic needing Jabba’s alliance for hyperspace lanes, for not allowing the Separatists to have it, for winning the war, until he was reluctantly persuaded to retrieve Jabba’s son from nefarious kidnappers.
Nefarious was one word to describe Asajj. Bitch was another. Ally, in years to come. Friend, never spoken aloud.
“And what does my wise padawan think of this?” Anakin asked. “Is she up for the task?”
“She thinks that it is against the Jedi’s principles to assist the Republic in allying with a slaver empire.” Her words came out cool and steady as a breeze, nothing like the churning clouds that descended around her ribs. Good to know that the anger was still there. That she was still herself. “But she also thinks that if the Jedi command soldiers who are not considered people, then they have already given up such principles.”
In the damning silence, Ahsoka tilted her head back up to Anakin and smirked, just a little, because their discomfort was too funny to pretend ignorance. “And yes. She is up for the task.”
Anakin opened and closed his mouth. She was appropriately smug about rendering him speechless.
Yoda was the first to muster. “Organize your troops, Kenobi and Skywalker.” He turned and used his cane to beckon Ahsoka. “Walk me back to my ship, Padawan Tano.”
Leaving the two Jedi to stare at her back, Ahsoka fell in-stride with the grand master. Once the gunship’s engine protected them from a potential Skywalker eavesdropper, Yoda centered his cane in front of him and peered up at her.
“Ahsoka Tano, you are and are not. A young protostar in a vibrant nebula, you once were. Forming, shining, rising. Now—a blindingly luminescent point fixed in the Force, established for eons among the turning galaxy, though shield this as you may from others. An explanation of the transformation, I would like, hm?”
She folded her arms. To deny what Yoda saw would be a pointless fight.
“What a nice way of putting it.”
“A way with words, I have.”
Ahsoka examined the gunship. She had lost count of how many she went down in. The pilots were always the hardest to pull out of them, if there was a pilot alive to save. Gunships tended to nosedive.
What could she say? Yoda would listen, but she didn’t have enough faith that he would listen. He and the Council heard the tearing and unstitching of the Force—heard and did nothing, for they somehow came to believe that their involvement in this terrible war was the path to peace and balance.
And even if Ahsoka maintained faultless belief in Yoda like she had before his fear compelled him to banish her from the Order and leave her at the mercy of the wolves, what difference would weaving a tale of the future make? The start of the Clone Wars marked the end of the Jedi; the years that followed were simply the funeral rites.
Despair, constantly an old friend and a new face, pressed a slow blade into her chest. She breathed through it and maintained her shields, though from Yoda’s deepening concern, she didn’t do a complete job of keeping it from him. Hard not to, given the grand master spent nearly nine centuries in harmony with the Force.
That he still failed her, failed the Order, deepened the blade to the hilt.
Yoda patiently waited for Ahsoka to answer. She leaned into the Force, let it give her the strength to pull the blade out and what fresh resentment that came with it. The issue was too complex for any simple emotion to take hold. When Yoda died, she had felt his presence in the galaxy fade like a sigh before a long, well-earned slumber, and she grieved. And when Luke said that Yoda spoke of her, and her embodiment of what it was to be a Jedi, she grieved all over again.
As the Force’s steadying guidance remained, Ahsoka thought of the Daughter’s will; the Light that held fast in a vastly Darkening galaxy; and every choice she made that had led her to this moment.
Words spoke through her rather than from her. She looked back to Yoda, clear with conviction.
“I am Ahsoka Tano. I am changed, but my purpose is not. I defend light and life. I am a peacekeeper; I dedicate my life to freedom and justice. When the time comes that I tell you the truth, I will ask the question: Are you dedicated to the same?”
Her eyes narrowed, equal parts somber and playful. Together, dangerous. Directing it at Yoda felt undeniably good.
In a conspiratorial pitch, she added, “And I’ll know if you’re lying.”
-
The clone trooper Slick was a ghost story among the 501st and the 212th. A scary tale to tell to shinies in dark barracks or around dim fires. A tale of a defective soldier who betrayed the Republic and his brothers to Separatist scum.
Ahsoka had arrived in the aftershocks of Slick’s actions. She heard his name muttered like a curse here and there, but it wasn’t until later into the war that Rex told her about the traitor after she insistently prodded him to.
Then it wasn’t until much later, during the bleak period in the undercity where she had little else to do other than think and think and think, that she realized few knew about Slick’s disobedience because the Republic superiors, and by extension the Order, covered it up to prevent more clones from getting similar ideas.
“Despicable, it was,” Rex had said with a twist to his mouth, like he wanted to spit in disgust.
“Why did he do it? Nobody ever says why he did it.”
“He…called us slaves to the Jedi. Had brothers killed because he believed clones were pawns in the Republic’s war, which we were only made to die in.”
“That’s crazy!” Ahsoka had exclaimed, filled with instinctive anger. Clones weren’t slaves! They weren’t pawns! They were good soldiers who defended the Republic—she had seen it with her own two eyes, over and over.
Rex snorted. “Yeah, that’s what we all thought. Real nice way of trying to save us, letting Ventress try to blow up our whole battalions.”
“Well, you stopped him. That’s what counts.”
Because she had been a child, she grinned to show her pride in Rex’s unwavering loyalty.
Then, when Ahsoka believed she could never smile again under the shadow of the Tribunal that stretched through hyperspace, Rex had breathed a quiet, humorless laugh.
She mustered the strength to ask, “What?”
Bitterly, so bitterly that it was viscous between his teeth, he said, “Nothing. Only that Slick was right.”
(Ahsoka’s hand reached for his shoulder, and Rex’s tears were just as bitter.)
Now, she figured that she had to start somewhere. The Rebellion taught her not to pass up on an opportunity to bring others to the cause even if their past, or present, wasn’t spotless. It gave them a chance for vengeance or atonement. Then it gave them hope somewhere along the way, too.
Slick’s regret howled and thrashed like an injured beast, which swelled into Ahsoka the moment she entered the building where he was being kept. A quick search in the data pad Rex gave her, along with some clearance codes that she impressed herself by remembering, told her his location and imminent fate.
It was alarmingly easy to splice the recorder so footage would loop. The battalions were sloppier than they’d become, Ahsoka noted, because in the aftermath of the battle and the hurry to relocate, somebody forgot to update guard rotations on Slick’s cell. Though, she was thankful that she didn’t have to pull a Jedi mind trick on troopers. It’d save them from standing dumbly in front of Rex or Cody and going, “Uhh…” when asked why they had abandoned their post.
Slick didn’t hear her approach. He sat on a bench, bowed over to the point where he didn’t see her either.
“A changing room.”
His head snapped up.
“I think this is a changing room.” She examined the framing where the ray shield had been implemented and the full-length mirror attached to the side of the cell. “The GAR commandeered a whole shopping center. They didn’t have anywhere better to put you, I guess.”
Slick rose to his feet, jagged yet cautious. He glanced at the lightsaber attached to her hip and scowled.
“Who the hell are you?”
“They’re going to ship you off to Kamino within the next few hours,” Ahsoka continued as she reread the information on the data pad, “for reevaluation.”
He stalked forward, sneering, “They’re going to decommission me. Pump me with medicine until my heart stops, scoop my brain outta my skull for research, then vaporize my cold fucking body. Come to gloat about it, Jedi?”
Her brow quirked, and she pulled up the schematics of the shopping center.
“This city has a beautiful sewage system. Neat, spacious, easily navigated.” Her own escape through it after aiding a Rebel cell had almost been a stroll. “There’s an access point out back.” She dropped a pack in front of her. “I got you a commlink and entered my code in it. There’s also civilian clothes, hopefully the right size, food and water, and enough credits to get you off-world. Things will be moving again now that the blockade is broken.”
Slick stared, warring between astonishment and suspicion. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Wh…Why are you—is this some kind of trick?”
Then he took a quick step back, scalded. “If you’re a fucking Seppie, piss off. I’m done with them. With all of it! There’s nothing now—I won’t betray my brothers more than—”
Shame choked him into silence. Unable to bear it, Slick hissed at her, “And you’re a little young to be a Separatist spy, aren’t you? What’d they offer you to give up the Republic?”
“I’m a little young to be a Jedi commander, but here we are.” Ahsoka set to work on the control panel, which only had a few modifications to turn the changing room’s opaque panel into a barrier. “And I don’t have to be a Separatist to commit treason.”
The ray shield powered down. Ahsoka leaned against the wall, arms folded, and inspected Slick. He had frozen himself deliberating on whether to fight or bolt, so while he stood there, she said, “You betrayed your brothers. This is the truth.”
He balefully glared. His fists clenched at his sides.
“What you believe is also true. There is more to this war than it seems, and the clones unknowingly pave the way to ruin with their blood and bodies. There will be no honor for them at the end of it. No reward. No justice.
“With these truths, I suppose it comes down to two options. You can either get out of here and never look back. Have the freedom you wanted. That’s what Ventress promised, wasn’t it?”
“You promising the same?” Slick spat. Sweat dewed at his temples.
“No. I can’t promise anything. I can only give you a chance at it.”
Ahsoka’s gaze drifted to the empty hall that stretched out before them. “And you’ll find that freedom is more than breaking from the purpose put on you. You might not feel like it’s there for a long time, if ever. But I hope you do.”
Then she looked back at Slick with a small smile. “The other choice, the one I can promise will have more suffering and fighting, is that you get out of here, find a planet to lay low in for a few weeks, and stay in contact with me. Then together, and maybe with some help from a few others, we can try to free your brothers from the fate others decided for them.”
Slick scoffed, and yet through his tangible derision, his eyes shone. “You’d have to take down the whole fucking Republic to do that.”
He didn’t expect Ahsoka’s smile to widen. She pushed off the wall and started to walk in the direction of the access point.
“Hey!”
“Are you coming? Or is Kamino calling you home?”
“You little—fuck, fuck, fuck this, fuck!”
Yanking the pack left for him, Slick caught up to Ahsoka. Steeped in doubt and doom, he growled out, “If this is some kind of trap…”
“You’ll what?” she cajoled.
“Wouldn’t you like to find out.”
“Big talk for a man without a blaster.”
Despite Slick’s deep distrust of her, he had the audacity to sound offended. “You didn’t pack me a blaster? What the fuck am I gonna use to defend myself?”
Ahsoka glanced sidelong at him. Mirth breathed into her whenever she bantered with clones, and to some extent, life. “You’re going to be a civilian running from the violence. Civilians don’t typically carry weapons. And if you find yourself in a tight spot, I’m sure you’ll get inventive. That was the selling point of the clones, right?”
“Haven’t you heard? I’m defective.”
“Defective? Or just a little dumb?”
Slick scowled, then shot back, “And what’s your excuse, huh? For being defective. Dumb. Whatever you wanna call it.”
“The Force, I suppose.”
“Riiight. That’s the excuse for all you Jedi, isn’t it?”
“Usually.”
“Did it guide you to betray the Republic by helping a traitor escape?”
“This may come as a surprise, but the Force isn’t beholden to the Republic.”
“And neither are you, I take it?”
“I am, actually, though nobody will see it that way right now. Maybe someday.”
It took minimal effort to reach the access point, which was a maintenance tunnel that’d direct Slick to the sewer system. “The journey is several miles,” Ahsoka told him, “and I’m not sure what the tunnels look like after the battle, so watch out. Otherwise, the directions to Intera Port should be easy to follow on the sewer walls.”
Slick eyed the maintenance tunnel’s entrance, then Ahsoka. “How do you know this?”
“I saw it in the future,” she replied, just to get a reaction out of him.
He gave her a flat, disdainful look. It was perfect.
Ahsoka jerked her head to the tunnel. “You better get going while you can.”
With a sharp exhale, Slick gripped the pack’s strap and stepped through—then stopped. His trepidation suspended like a buzzing note, but it promised momentum. Ahsoka had faith in momentum.
He angled his head back to her, though his gaze didn’t connect.
“Do you mean what you said? About my brothers?”
“Yes. With my entire heart.”
Slick’s jaw tensed. “Look after my squad, then, if you’re so righteous. I—I did it all—”
He fiercely swallowed the rest of the words, too afraid that if he spoke them aloud, bile would come out as well.
I did it all for them, he would have said. I wanted to save them the most. They did nothing wrong, and still I’ve branded them traitors. I did it all for them.
“I know,” she whispered. “I will.”
He believed her enough that it mattered when he went forth.
Ahsoka shut the maintenance tunnel behind him and strolled back to the shopping center’s main level, enjoying the momentary lightness in her steps. She snatched clothes from a shop that her fourteen-year-old self would have turned her nose up at because they didn’t align with what she pictured Togruta wearing on Shili.
Not for the first time, she chuckled fondly at all the assured thought processes she had back then. It took far too long for her to admit she needed better clothes, stubborn as she was. Now she’d save Rex some unnecessary worry and herself embarrassing trips to Kix with scrapes and bruises on her bare stomach.
“Where’d you go off to?” Anakin asked when Ahsoka returned to his side. A glance at her improved outfit answered his question. “Did you pay for those? Because not paying, young padawan, is stealing, and stealing is not the Jedi way.”
“I left a note in the shop. They can put what I took on the Republic’s tab.”
He found it funny, so all he said was, “Uh huh, because that’s a thing that exists.”
“When are we shipping out?”
“Thirty minutes. Why, you got somewhere to be?”
“Yes. See you soon.”
As Ahsoka walked away, Anakin called, “Oh, yeah, see you around! Not as if I’m your master or anything!”
He didn’t order her to stop, however, so she didn’t mind him as she disappeared into the activity of the troops.
It didn’t take much concentration to locate the squad. They were overseeing equipment storage, and although they looked like they were part of the 212th’s operation, there was a mutual dissonance that isolated them from the rest of their battalion. It permeated the Force like miasma, which was what made them so easy to find.
Ahsoka didn’t recall Jester, Gus, Punch, Sketch, and Chopper. Granted, she wasn’t as close with Obi-Wan’s men, but only just, so they might have slipped past her awareness. They also might have died too early on for her to know them. But the most likely thing was that Cody had them transferred out to another battalion, maybe separated into multiple battalions, so they could get a fresh start. Since Slick’s betrayal largely went unknown amongst the GAR, the stain they carried by association would have been invisible to everyone else.
Probably not to them, though.
Two of the squad mates bumped into each other while they went for the same crate. Instead of laughing or jeering about it, intense animosity spiked between them. One pushed the other, and the other pushed back. Of the three now watching from the sides, one attempted to intervene but was stopped by a brother.
The ones fighting ripped off their helmets to unmask their bared teeth and vitriol.
It might be kinder, Ahsoka thought, to let Cody transfer them. Although they would never stop questioning if they were as capable of defective behavior like their sergeant, they could heal in other ways. Maybe live longer, too, away from the heroics of Obi-Wan’s 212th.
But promises were promises, and she wouldn’t break the first one she made in this strange and familiar present.
Cody, who saw the brewing altercation and began to stomp his way over, paused midway to watch when Ahsoka reached the squad first. The three clones stared as she walked up to the crate responsible for such negativity and lifted it. Her unexpected grunt from its weight and her lacking teenage strength startled the other two out of their boiling point.
Once she hefted the crate onto the hover bed, albeit crookedly, she asked all of them, “Are you soldiers joining us on Teth?”
They shared their bewilderment and looked at each other to see who’d answer. Eventually, the clone who held his brother back and probably spared him from getting hit in the face by the other two spoke up, “Er, no—ma’am. Sir, I mean. Commander Tano.”
“What are your names?”
The three clones removed their helmets.
“Sketch, sir.”
“Punch,” said the one who Sketch stopped.
“Jester.”
Ahsoka turned to the other two, waiting.
“The name’s Gus.”
“…Chopper.”
“I knew an astromech named Chopper. He was a piece of work.” At the mention of him, Ahsoka saw Hera Syndulla, young and fresh-faced to the war tearing Ryloth apart, with only Chopper to make her laugh. She needed to stop striking at her heart. She couldn’t. “He thought he was real funny, too.”
“You comparing me to some droid?” clone Chopper asked, still raw with anger.
She pushed the handlebars on the hover bed. “No. Any droid would be more efficient than you right now.”
Chopper glowered, but Ahsoka didn’t give him or his squad time to fire off a comeback. “Come on, you’re all holding up the transport line. Don’t you know that we’ve got a baby Hutt to save from the Separatists?”
Sketch placed his helmet back on and straightened her poorly-aligned crate. “Of course, sir.”
Ahsoka’s presence made them fall in line. Cody’s attention diverted elsewhere, though she was sure that he’d go running back to Obi-Wan with a new story the first moment he got—after he learned about Slick missing from his personal changing room, of course.
The squad didn’t talk to her about anything other than which crates went on which ship, but that was alright. The important thing was that the tension eased, and they didn’t draw more ire or judgment from the battalion. Ahsoka wasn’t in the mood to prompt conversation either, which made the absence of her younger self twinge. The fourteen-year-old would have forced them to reveal their favorite colors and weaponry. If they didn’t have one, then she’d spend the time interrogating them until they discovered it together.
This Ahsoka only spoke again when Cody and Rex arrived as expected to question the squad, and it was a simple, “They’ve been with me for some time now.”
The sentence solidified the squad’s innocence and left Cody and Rex’s fury with little place to go. Certainly not toward General Skywalker’s brand new padawan who just took down the overwhelming Separatist army with a frequency.
Forcefully restrained, Rex pressed, “And before then?”
“Being painfully slow with their checklist.” Ahsoka handed him the datapad for proof. “Look at their time stamps.”
“And all of you were here to complete your duties?” Cody said.
Sketch nodded, resolute. “Yes, sir. All of us.”
Despite their earlier contention, they had closed rank around each other the instant they were scrutinized.
Chopper curled his hand into a fist. “We didn’t have anything to do with Slick. Why the fuck would we help that traitor?”
“I sense nothing hidden from them,” Ahsoka said to reassure Rex and Cody. “They’re honest in their whereabouts.”
“And if the Jedi says so…” Jester shrugged, and he got simultaneous shoves from Gus and Punch from it.
Her comm beeped. Rex’s hawkish gaze narrowed in on it. “That’ll be the general,” he said.
“Then I’d better get going.” She acknowledged the squad with a slight bow. “Wish you boys could be with me on Teth.”
With her desire to have them close to her solidified, Ahsoka returned to Anakin, who relied on agitation to hide his nervousness as a new master. “Here’s a lesson: padawans shouldn’t take their sweet time returning when they’re summoned.”
Ahsoka watched Christophsis sprawl underneath her as the gunship rose, pockmarked and pitiful. But still standing. Even in the time of the Empire, many of its citizens would rather shatter than bend.
“What about any of this is sweet, Master?”
“That’s not—” Anakin cut himself off with a groan. “You need to lighten up, Stuffy.”
She did not look away from the war-torn planet growing smaller and smaller, larger and larger.
“How do you recommend I lighten up when I must gaze at war, Master?”
Anakin rolled his eyes and didn’t answer her question, instead asking, “Did you say something similar to Master Yoda? What did he talk to you about?”
Ahsoka also didn’t answer. “He said he agreed with my stance on the Jedi Order’s current failings regarding its involvement in the war and that we are withdrawing from it. Congratulations—we’re not going to save the Huttlet. We’re actually going back to Coruscant to mediate on the ways of the Force with everyone else. All together. For a long time. Your favorite activity, so I’ve heard.”
The laugh that got from him burned her, but it was the burn of sitting too close to a campfire to survive the blizzard at your back. She huddled close to it, welcoming the pain, because it kept her alive.