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Chapter Text

Chapter 1:

Ahsoka had never thought she’d be thanked for one of her greatest regrets. She never thought that she’d be pulled into a hug and blessed for something she saw in her Nightmares. Saw Gerrera was not what she’d expected. Sure, she hadn’t seen him since she was 16, and that was three years ago, but she’d thought there’d be more screaming. More throwing things at her head. More of a reaction.

Saw had stared at her, at the place where he knew the blaster bolt scar lay under her clothes. He had been partially shrouded by the smoke of the fire that was billowing out of the command tent’s roof. Ahsoka had been relieved by that at the time, it meant she hadn’t had to look him in the eye.

His eyes were the same green shade as his sister’s after all. And Ahsoka was currently confessing having dropped her off a cliff. 

“You tried to save her.” 

He had said it more like a statement then the question it actually was, and it had taken her aback. 

“Yes.” 

Ahsoka was still flabbergasted at the ease of which Saw rose and walked around the fire pit to her. At the way he pressed his face between her montrals. At the way his thank you was repeated like a prayer.

Laying on a bedroll he’d loaned her, staring at the ceiling of the tent, Ahsoka wondered why the thing that had caused her so much stress and regret was the thing that caused the air around Saw Gerrera to hold the sharp scent of relief.

-

Saw Gerrera was too late to save his sister. He was the one who had caused Steela’s death in the first place, even. These two scars had never healed in the three years that he bore their bleeding wounds.

Tano’s declaration of I killed Steela had sounded like blasphemy to from the second she opened her mouth. His prove it were words he would never regret. Tano’s story had passed her lips in an awkward tumble, Tano tripping over her one words in the effort to get it out as fast as she could. She had caught his sister using weird space magic, and the dropped her. It had taken several seconds of prodding before she admitting she’d dropped Steela because Tano’d been shot by a tank and the shock had caused her to lose her grip.

Saw had shot down the tank that had caused the cliff Steela fell from to crumble. And now that tank had injured Steela’s would-be rescuer as well. Saw would hate for the rest of his life that he had caused his sister’s death. But Saw would adore Ahsoka Tano for eternity for trying to save her.

He would do anything if it meant he could make it up to her.

-

“Why aren’t you mad at me?” Ahsoka finally asks, after the Partisan-Rebellion negotiations the next day. Saw stares down at her hand, wrapped around his wrist. She’d dragged him into a corner, expecting this to get messy, but she obviously didn’t know Saw Gerrera all that well, so who the kriff knew what was going on now.

“What.” His gaze shifts to stare her in the eyes, and Ahsoka averts her gaze. She didn’t think she had the strength to stare into that deep green that haunted her nightmares.

“I killed your sister.” Ahsoka draws out the sentence, voice low.

“No.” Saw laughs. “I killed my sister.”

Ahsoka stares at him, flabbergasted. What? What did that mean? Ahsoka had dropped Steela off a cliff. You didn’t get any more dead than that. Saw raises an eyebrow at her, and grins.

“Wanna get lunch?”

“No!” Ahsoka winces the second the shrill word is out of her mouth. That would draw everyone’s attention, if they didn’t have it already. “I want to find out what on earth you think happened. Because I dropped Steela of a cliff. I am not lying about that, and I know I’m remembering it correctly too, because I have nightmares about it. Spill.”

Saw blinks at her, and Ahsoka doesn’t like how he’s immediately concerned. “Can we talk about it over lunch?” He hedges.

“Yes.” She huffs. “We can talk about it over lunch.”

-

Lunch is shebs ration bars. Saw thinks that he caused everything. Ahsoka disagrees. Because no, it doesn’t matter if she got shot, she still dropped Steela off a cliff. No it doesn’t matter whether or not the tank that shot her was shot down by him, she was still the one give him the rocket launcher. 

Saw finally explodes when she makes that last point.

“Well if I didn’t kill her then who did?”

“Me!!!”

“No you didn’t! You tried to save her!”

“Tried. Tried. I didn’t save her Saw, I dropped her off a knifing cliff!!”

“Because you got shot.”

“I get shot all the time, its not an excuse for killing someone.”

Saw’s face crumples, and Ahsoka’s finally had enough. She didn’t want his pity. She stands up and storms across the courtyard to Kaedan, who had insisted on coming. Tell me about farming she demands. Kaeden does, cautiously, and Ahsoka relishes in the fact that at least someone acknowledged that it was her fault Steela was dead.

-

The nightmare is always the same. Steela’s eyes, wide and green, terrified as she falls. Terror slowly turns to betrayal, to acceptance, and then to the glossy blankness of death. Ahsoka barely jolts when she wakes up, but the things that she was unconsciously floating fall to the floor unceremoniously. 

Kaeden rubs up and down Ahsoka’s arm. “You good?”

“Yes.” She sighs. “Thank you.”

-

The Partisans avoid her the next day, and so does most of the rebellion. Saw, on the other hand, drops down next to her and offers her a ration bar. She avoids his eyes, and he doesn’t ask her why. He most likely can’t look in the mirror for the same reason, Ahsoka muses.

“Look, Tano.” Saw sighs. “You did everything I couldn’t. Do everything I can’t. I guess.. I didn’t think about the fact that you’d probably blame yourself too.”

“I’m not some, perfect jedi.” Ahsoka bites out. “I’m not even a jedi anymore.”

Saw stares at the sky. “No, you’re a blessing.” Ahsoka snorts. “You’re also a terror.” He continues, laughing. “I’ve had half the camp come up to me to ask why you look like you look like you’re going to rip someones head off.”

Ahsoka stares at him. “I’m not.”

“I know. And I didn’t tell them anything either.” Saw finishes his ration bar and crumples the wrapper in between his fingers. “Have fun glaring at air, My Bliss.” He sticks his tongue out at her and hauls himself to his feet.

Ahsoka raises a scathing eyebrow at him. “Bye, Fulcrum.”

Kaeden, who had apparently been sneaking up on them, chokes on air.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2:

Kaeden had apparently only caught the tail end of the conversation. Saw stared at her, eyebrows pinched. “Who?”

Ahsoka sighed. “Saw, Kaeden. Kaeden, Saw.” She gestured with her half eaten ration bar. “Kaeden is my… current situationship, post-Lux.”

“You had a situationship with Bonteri?” Saw’s face twists into a joking disgust.

“Yeah, and I still had one when he started kriffing your sister.” Ahsoka bites down hard on her ration bar as Saw recoils. “Too soon?” Ahsoka winces. Saw, instead of getting mad at her, starts swearing loudly. Ahsoka, practiced from Morai’s antics, manages not to choke on her ration bar. 

Kaeden stares at them. “Who is Lux Bonteri and why is he kriffing Saw Gerrera’s sister.”

“Bonteri, the nerf-dick, is my homeworld’s Senator. And he isn’t kriffing my sister, she’d dead.” Saw growls. Ahsoka reaches out and yanks him down by the belt loop. He crashes on his shebs in front of her. 

“Be nice to Kaeden.” Ahsoka sighs. “I know that you get mean when you’re being over protective, but she doesn’t and you’re scaring her.” Saw grumbles. “But yes, Lux is not currently kriffing Steela, that would be necrophilia.”

Kaeden gives a sharp, very confused laugh. “You know a Senator?”

“Unfortunately.” Saw grumbles.

“I know a lot of Senators, Kaeden.” Ahsoka sighs. “Also I think we’ve gotten derailed.” She twists to face her maybe-partner. “Am I needed for something?”

A small child pops out from the woods. “ Are Mr. Saw and you married?!”

-

The small, very excited child, was named Storgie. Saw had scooped her up in his arms easily,  the scar that had decided to cut across his face at some point in the last three years pulling as he winced; his youngling’s wiggling almost taking his eye out. Because Storgie was just that.

“Her mom took a… little tripdown blaster bolt lane.” Saw explains sheepishly. He’s immediately elbowed in the face, the young rodian slipping back into camp exclaiming the supposed answer to a question she’d never actually had a response to.

-

Saw Gerrera doesn’t laugh. The Partisans know this. He hasn’t truly laughed in the three years since Steela freed Onderon. He doesn’t smile. Those who look in his eyes say the bright green has an almost ghostly sheen to them. That they’re hollow of any emotion except anger and grief. The only time he seems to soften is when he’s handed a baby, and still he doesn’t smile. Just looks at them as if he’s staring at something foreign.

Fulcrum, known to a spare few people as Ahsoka, doesn’t get angry. She’s calm, collected. Her smiles, her words, the shifting of her weight is calculated. She can do the most chaotic thing in existence with a straight face. Say the most out of pocket things and no one bats an eye. She doesn’t scream, she doesn’t stalk.

But now Saw Gerrera laughs with his whole chest. He grins in such a way that his scar is tugged shiny against his cheekbones. He grabs an extra ration for this woman, this jedi who used to help them, and heads over to laugh, to scream, to get thrown in the mud. Storgie runs out crying about marriage. He’s more concerned about the fact that the child kicked him in the face than the idea of something he had told his Partisans he was never going to do. “It’ll take me away from the fight.” He had said. His wife is just as intrenched in the fight as him. He looks at her, and he laughs.

Ahsoka Tano is free with Gerrera. This much is seen. They orbit each other like long lost friends. She takes things from his hands in large movements, something they didn’t realize she didn’t realize she didn’t do until it was to late to do anything but wonder. She snarks. She corrects. Ahsoka Tano calls Gerrera an idiot to his face and all he does is step back to let her take the lead. She stares at him differently, with a kind of sad look on her face, as if she’s attempting to memorize him. Miara’s heart hurts for her sister, because if this is what Ahsoka Tano looks like when she’s in love, Kaeden doesn’t stand a chance.

-

Kaeden can see the difference. Kaeden knows that even if Ahsoka loves her, it will not mean she won’t leave. Watches as the walls seem to crash down when Saw nudges her. As he hands Ahsoka objects that she actually grabs, not worried about brushing the other’s skin. Not hiding.

He lets Ahsoka manhandle him, the “you get angry when you’re overprotective” spilling out of her mouth like its the air she breathes. He calls her “My Bliss” as if it means something. Something that he has no other way to voice. Like he would worship at her feet if it meant she would look at him.

The talk about his sister, and Senators. They use names Kaeden has never heard. Laugh at jokes Kaeden can never get the oh-so-serious Ahsoka to make, but somehow he can. Kaeden thinks about how Ahsoka had jolted awake in the night, about how the comforting hand had been tensed at. Kaeden doesn’t think Ahsoka would mind if it was him.

She slips away, towards Miara, towards the loss of the love-of-her-life. Ahsoka was a jedi, after all. Jedi didn’t have relationships with nobody farm girls.

-

“Well, the quilt isn’t exactly finished.” Ahsoka states, tone almost mocking, when she’s asked. “I’ve still got a osik amount of embroidery to do.” Most of the Rebel Cell she’s working with stare at her, and she realizes most of them are from Raeda. Saw beats her to the explanation.

“Its a test of patience. Of long lasting love. A group project no one else is allowed to touch.” He stops for a second. Ahsoka smiles at him, and rolls her eyes.

“Its a variation of hand fasting native to Onderonian Culture. Which is where Saw is from, so…” Ahsoka twitches a lekku. She’d never learned Togruti, but people’s eyes were naturally drawn to movement. “Also its not like I’m gonna make him hunt an animal and make me a headdress out of it’s pelt, and a feast out of it’s body.”

Saw frowns. “I could do that.”

Ahsoka blinks at him. “I didn’t grow up in that culture, Saw. I don’t consider the gift of a bloody corpse to end in a marriage.”

“The reason we’re like this is a broken and bloody corpse.” Saw points out. Ahsoka opens her mouth to rebuke him, and then pauses. Fair.

“Okay, well even if we are maybe-technically-probably-not married by Togruti standards, that doesn’t change the fact that we aren’t by traditional Onderonian standards.” Ahsoka pokes him. “And before you argue, the corpse we’re bonded by has not been cannibalized and or skinned.” Saw pales, and Ahsoka immediately shoves him. “Don’t you dare vomit on me, Gerrera.”

He vomits by the treeline instead. Honestly, Ahsoka doesn’t blame him. Because the broken and bloody corpse they had bonded over had been Steela Gerrera.