Archive of Our Own

MEGARA: You love the light so much?

AMPHITRYON: I do, I love its hopes.

Euripides, Herakles from “Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides” (tr. Anne Carson)

The fall of the Empire ransacks Ahsoka’s entire body.

One moment she’s aware of her surroundings, attuned to them — a strategy room crammed with mouldy furniture inside a temporary rebel outpost deep within the Outer Rim, where the sky is always green and mist curls close to the ground — and she’s looking at holo maps, her hands stained with blue light — and then the slow hum of the electronics around her cracks open, something like a jagged edge of a knife slicing through the centre of her being, a cord snapping.

Ahsoka gasps and steadies herself on the table, face buried in suspended blue hilltops and Imperial outposts.

Her heart hammers in her chest and she’s glad she’s alone in the headquarters — the middle of the night, half of her people on Endor, the other resting fitfully, readying themselves to interrupt an Imperial supply route because everyone has been hoping for Endor to be a win but it might as well be a loss — and so Ahsoka’s alone and glad and her arms are trembling underneath her weight and the Force stretches every which way, so much light in it, suddenly, in places where it was overpowered by darkness.

Ahsoka closes her eyes. The heavy scent of wet earth is everywhere around her, and she takes a deep breath, grounds herself in it, the forever mist. She furrows her brow.

It’s been a while since she could breathe like this — fully, with her entire chest.

She reaches out into the Force, tentatively, hiding in the folds because the light is overwhelming and impossible and unreal. The scales are tipping back, steadying themselves and the Force is an explosion of fireworks, distant, like ripples in the water. She feels such overwhelming gladness which brings out others who have never been there before, others who have been hiding or those simply did not know they had the entire universe at their fingertips. The Force becomes so vast and impossible Ahsoka doesn’t know how to trust it.

She grips the edge of the table, the metal cool under her gloved hands. She understands the universe has changed, irrevocably — that dull knife, that edge of pain — and she waits.

The news of the Death Star comes first. Its destruction replays over the HoloNet transmission so many times that when Ahsoka closes her eyes, she has fireworks imprinted on the red inside of her lids.

The news of the Emperor’s death comes next. It’s followed by startled silence and overgrown fear. It takes a while before anyone believes it.

Then—

“Vader is dead!” someone shouts and the entire station breaks into a cacophony. The Force is an ocean and it covers their heads with tumultuous waves.

vader is dead vader is dead vader is dead grows into its separate entity inside Ahsoka’s skull. This, she knows to be true. She has felt it, harder and harsher than anything else. It was that cord snapping, that overpowering intrusion of light.

It should make her feel glad — that he’s back in the Force, returned to it. He’s where everyone is.

But not me, Ahsoka thinks bitterly.

She quickly hides the thought under the cheer of the Force. When her people drag her into festivities, she distances herself from the galaxy in triumph. She focuses solely on this planet, on the people she was ready to send to their deaths and unequal victories.

Ahsoka’s there when the Empire falls and she’s never felt so lonely.

/

No war ever truly ends and her small outpost, mostly deserted but still as green and mouldy, receives news of what looks like Palpatine’ contingency plan, planets burned by satellites, deadly Imperial squadrons targeting smaller rebel stations, much like hers, except Horox III is quiet and forgotten. Ahsoka does what she can to coordinate retaliations with other leaders, except they’re rebels no more.

It’s a strange feeling, victory. It’s bitter in her mouth.

No war ever truly ends but it comes down, and Ahsoka gets used to the idea she’ll be leaving Horox III soon. It’s not a planet one would want to stay long on but she can’t seem to force herself to leave.

Her outpost consists of exactly four rooms — the strategy room, the recreational room that was deemed Strategy Room Number 2, and two bedrooms with bunk beds. The people that remain with her are: Leylas, her best sharpshooter, a woman who would take the heat of fire for Ahsoka, and did; Aria, a small but skilful mechanic, every inch of her skin constantly smeared with dirt and oil, a formidable pilot; Jov, a sniper with a battle scar over his left eye — good thing he only ever needed his right one.

She got used to spending this war on the sidelines, planning retaliations in small systems, moving in the shadows, contacting High command only when necessary, so when she receives Mon Mothma’s transmission in the weeks that are reluctantly harmless, it takes her by surprise. She was slowly beginning to accept this was the end for her.

But there she is, alone in that strategy room, the comlink set atop the table in the centre. The blue image wobbles on the transmitter, the connection rough and patchy but Ahsoka makes out Mothma’s usual long white robes, golden chains, hair cropped short but styled.

“Commander,” comes out crisp and clean.

“Senator.” Ahsoka crosses her arms. “Or is it Chancellor these days?”

“Formalities”, Mon Mothma says with a curt smile but it matters to her, what Ahsoka calls her.

“What has granted me the honour?”

Mon Mothma pauses for a bit and Ahsoka straightens her back, though it cannot be much straighter. She suspects what this is about but it doesn’t mean she’s particularly willing to make the Chancellor’s job easier.

“The war is not over, commander,” Mothma starts and her voice is steady, bland even. Picture perfect. She deserves her title. “And the New Republic would like to ask for your help in fully restoring the peace across the galaxy.”

“And if I refuse?” Ahsoka asks just to get the question out of the way.

“There’s a medal for you,” Mon Mothma says instead, “I’d at least ask you come to collect it.”

Ahsoka, a war hero. She never wanted this life for herself.

“You know I don’t want it,” Ahsoka says, old bitterness seeping into her voice. You’ve made me into a warrior and now I don’t know who I am without it. Her twin lightsabers weigh heavy on her belt. Just because she still fights the same fight it doesn’t mean it gets any easier when she’s alone in a room.

“There’s a ceremony,” Mon Mothma says with a level of finality. “It’s your choice, whether you come or not. But I have a feeling you’d like to come.”

“And why is that?”

Mon Mothma smiles and something unpolished shines through, the Mon Mothma who has seen too much and is now too tired by the severity of it.

“The Force told me.”

The transmission cuts off. Ahsoka smiles to herself.

/

The ceremony takes place on Chandrila.

Since the announcement of the New Republic, the senate has decreed the planet the new capital and the Senate followed close by. It helps, also, that Mon Mothma was born here. Ahsoka wonders what it’s like, to have such a strong attachment to a place you’d follow it anywhere.

It’s a planet that reminds Ahsoka of Naboo, if she were to compare it to anything else. The single sun warms the rolling and uneven surface of the uplands, providing necessary nourishment for the many trees invading even the thick of the capital. The city itself looks unravaged by war, the buildings dark and tall and glinting with many windows. People roam the streets without much care, the overall atmosphere light, jovial. The marketplaces bustle with customers and vendors alike, small droids zooming past every now and then, narrowly missing bumping into people. The stands, however, are lackings, the carts of fruit not quite stocked, the strings of dried herbs sad and missing pieces. And even though the marketplace is packed, not everyone leaves with their hands full.

Ahsoka sees it all on her way towards the Senate building, the room she booked positioned in more quiet quarters, a little further away from the very centre. The war passed Chandrila peacefully, but not everyone was born here, and the walk through the city is long and diverse.

The closer she circles to the Senate, however, the more people stare. She opted to wear a hooded white robe, one she’s been wearing for some time now and her face shouldn’t be clearly visible but it’s the Force drawing them to her, she can feel the curiosity probing at her with hesitant fingers and then bolder and then with the centre of a palm. She fights the itch to pull the hood over her head, to hide. It’s the New Republic, she no longer has to hide. She should be proud, too. Should be glad.

But—

The Senate building is imposing and made of stone, surrounded by the everpresent skyscrapers. There is music and laughter. Officers in their uniforms roam the plaza leading up to the building, their ranks plastered to their chests and arms. Ahsoka notices officials in vibrant but scarcely embroidered clothes. No one wants to be seen indulging themselves. She passes through people, and through the mutters.

“Commander.”

“Commander Tano.”

Some salute her. Some nod. She straightens her back and juts her chin out, nods back. She doesn’t recognize many of them, some faces only a blur, a memory half-forgotten, plastered to the back of a hand. She intends to get to the building as quickly as possible without outright running but then a pull, a tug in the crowd, she stops, she looks.

It’s Rex. She knows it’s him, even though he’s not wearing his old and dirty trooper uniform. No, he’s in civilian clothes, and his shoulders are as broad, and his back a little hunched, but his voice is loud and booming.

Ahsoka’s walking before she fully registers her actions, the Force guiding her with a gentle, forgiving hand. The mutters and the quiet interlope and the moment Rex twists his neck, notices her, his face weathered, his beard long and grey, she breaks into a run and he smiles and she jumps into his arms, hugs him tight and he hugs her back tighter.

“Rex,” she breathes out.

“Commander Tano.”

She slaps his back and leans back, hands coming back to her sides. Her old life barges through the broken bones and unmended arteries inside her body. “You don’t have to call me that.”

“Don’t I?” he winks. “Commander.”

Loyalty means everything to the clones.

He turns back, people he’s been talking to coming forward, old friends.

The universe is vast but for a moment, Ahsoka’s a few inches smaller, her twin lightsabers a different colour, her mouth finding the muscles to smile a little easier.

/

Later, they enter the building. There’s a burgundy carpet laid down in the middle, fruit and stars embroidered in gold. There are so many flowers in ginormous vases and so many chairs. It’s not the Senate room itself but this huge antechamber with columns supporting the ceiling on each side.

“The New Republic, huh?” Rex says in awe. She’s never seen him like this, looking at everything around him with unadulterated wonder, charmed.

“Seems like it.” Ahsoka shrugs.

Rex glances at her. They’re at eye-level, an unsettling realization. He has this look in his eyes, like he knows too much. Ahsoka can’t bear it.

“So where to now, commander?”

Ahsoka shudders, suddenly cold. “Hm?”

Rex smiles and looks away, giving Ahsoka some privacy. “Well, Hanna City doesn’t seem so bad a place to call home, doesn’t it?”

“What about your cosy AT-TE on Seelos?”

Rex shrugs but a shadow passes over his face, a loss. “Chandrila is green and warm. What more could an ex-soldier like me want?”

yes, Ahsoka thinks. what more could we want?

The ceremony will start soon. She’s here. The past exists next to her, and the future?

The thought of it was never welcome.

/

Two brightest points: Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa.

Ahsoka’s known Leia a long time ago, and Luke she’s never met but they’re unmistakable in the Force. Ahsoka’s stunned to find them so young when they’ve already gone through so much. It’s hard, even in a place like Horox III, not to hear the tales of a brave pilot and an even braver princess.

They’re standing close to one another, and another boy with them, Han Solo— tall, a cocky smile, a leather vest, an empty pistol holster at his side. This one, he emits pulses, as well; faint, but he’s there. And they’re standing close and everyone seems to hover around them like they’re a planet with reverse gravity, and it’s like they only have each other, like it’s them against the worlds.

Ahsoka thinks, Anakin.

Ahsoka thinks, Obi-wan.

Ahsoka thinks, Padme.

It’s dangerous to think like that. And yet—

Ahsoka Tano! the light shouts across the Force (the images fly with it: Vader’s molten face, a blue saber against the light of the red, blue blue blue, and then nothing else), and, “Commander Tano!”

It’s the brightest point, Luke, calling to her across the crowd, waving. Han and Leia both look at him with an identical frown and Leia’s quicker to follow his gaze, snap to Ahsoka’s own. Han catches up and seems to mouth who now?

And Ahsoka can’t help it, the gravity pulls and the planet calls to her so she goes, like she always did, to the bloodline that sung. Rex remains in place, though it takes her a moment to register his absence.

“We haven’t had the chance to meet,” Luke says first thing as soon as she approaches, his face honest and open, too open, and everything visible in the Force as well, his excitement, eagerness.

“I know who you are,” Ahsoka says, making sure to look into each of the trio’s eyes. Luke seems pleasantly surprised, Leia keeps her distrust at bay and Han is visibly confused.

“All due respect, commander?” he looks to Luke in question and Ahsoka finds his distress amusing; he seems displaced, in the way the twins aren’t. “But I don’t think I—”

“It’s okay,” Ahsoka shakes her head when Luke opens his mouth. “I’m Ahsoka Tano. I’m— I was with the Rebellion. I used to go by Fulcrum, maybe you’ve heard.”

It seems like she didn’t help Han much, the confusion in the Force growing but it’s smoothed out as recognition passes through Leia, hyperspace-quick.

“You fought with my father, in the Clone Wars,” Luke adds, oblivious.

The temperature drops. Leia purses her lips and Han instantly pulls closer, places a hand on the small of her back. The Force draws taut.

Luke glances at Leia, sensing her distress, and of course he does. His face falls and Ahsoka can’t blame Leia, can’t, will never, although she wishes things were different and that Leia could be as excited as her brother is.

“I did,” Ahsoka says carefully. “A long time ago.”

In another life, she wants to add. Doesn’t.

The Force pulses in Luke, eager to ask questions but he stops himself, drawing closer to Leia, Han on the opposite side. The three of them, a barrier. To what? What are they trying to protect?

Or: what are they trying to bar from entering?

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, commander,” Luke says, unable to keep the warmth from his voice; unable to keep it from spreading.

A muscle twitches in Ahsoka’s face but she forces herself to smile. “Please, call me Ahsoka.”

“Of course.”

Leia can’t keep things away from the Force, either, she’s raw and untrained and possibly not even aware of the power she possesses, and Ahsoka knows her distrust has everything to do with her father (anger laced with bitterness and grief for something she has never known) and not much to do with Ahsoka.

Ahsoka wishes she could say, he was kind, your dad. he was so much, before.

But it doesn’t matter. Among everyone here, Ahsoka’s the only person who knew him like that. It seems pointless to exchange sentiments that would ring empty.

Before Ahsoka walks away, she catches the first thawing of Leia’s body, the sharp grain of realization in the corner of her eye, trying to unspool the tension that laced her body.

But Ahsoka’s moving before Leia can get another word in. At this point, Ahsoka thinks it would hurt more if she stayed. If she allowed herself to look closer and, maybe, catch the familiar corner of a mouth, the easily recognizable arch of an eyebrow.

And she can’t, can’t. The war is over. Everything is done, finished. There’s no purpose dwelling now.

(dwelling, in the hopes against all hopes, that she still had time, that Anakin wasn’t lost, that Vader wasn’t all that was to him, that Ahsoka could find him, somehow—)

But he’s dead now. She has to get used to the idea.

Ahsoka leans against one of the engraved columns. Rex is lost in the crowd. She can’t help but glance at the three kids, brightening by the second. They don’t break away from one another even as a lone officer approaches them, shakes hands with Luke, The Hero, exchanges words with Leia whose face is nothing if not polite, Han’s mouth snapping the moment in half, saying things that make the twins bewildered or erupting in laughter.

They don’t know what it’s like to live in a world without war. Ahsoka has heard the stories: Leia being captured by Vader delivering the fateful message with the Death Star plans (Obi-wan’s name in her mouth like a dying kernel of a bonfire), Luke destroying the weapon with the help of Han Solo, and Ahsoka has felt the moments: Luke training with Yoda (and Yoda’s death like a swift, quiet cut that woke Ahsoka in the middle of the night, without her knowing what it was), and fighting with his father (Anakin’s loneliness in the palm of his extended hand), and Anakin dying, cutting the cord of all cords, and—

The three of them had to adjust, get used to the Rebellion, perhaps unwillingly. Perhaps there was no choice, there was just the galaxy to be saved.

And isn’t it why all of them are here? Too many wrong choices and the one they’d made, every single one of them, day after day, to get here?

Mon Mothma walks up to the podium at the back of the atrium. She has a long, white cape draped over her shoulders, a golden pin keeping the folds in place. People go to sit down. A hush falls over the room, the marble walls echoing whispers. Ahsoka shifts her weight from one foot to another.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming,” Mothma says, her gaze spanning the entire crowd, the kind of look that seems to pay attention to every single person present. “It’s an honour to stand here, in this room, with people who have fought this war with everything they had. And it saddens me that so many more could’ve been here but their lives were ended too soon by the dark works of the Emperor.”

Ahsoka’s lungs feel heavy and she waits for Mothma to mention Vader, but she never does. It seems Luke has been doing good work, spreading the word of his father’s final deed.

“This war took a toll on all of us, taking our loved ones, our homes. But it did not take everything. Sometimes, all we could do was hope but it’s hope that got us this far. And I hope — still, despite everything, or perhaps because of it — that together we can find what has been buried but not lost. That together, we can start anew.

“Welcome to the new age. Welcome to the New Republic.”

The room erupts into cheers. It’s devastating to hear a crowd of people hope so unapologetically, it breaks something delicate at the base of Ahsoka’s throat, makes her eyes prickle. For a split second, the Force splays itself all over Ahsoka’s skin and she feels everything: all the people they have lost in the battle against the Empire, in the war before that. She feels the presence of a great many beings, so demanding it feels like she would have to do is turn around, look behind her shoulder and she’d see them, everyone.

It hurts, to hope.

Ahsoka looks behind her shoulder.

They’re there and not at the same time, their figures wavering and see-through: Yoda, Mace Windu, Plo Koon.

Obi-wan. Anakin. They’re smiling. Anakin seems to be looking directly at her, and his smile is crooked. His eyes are so, so sad.

Ahsoka bites her bottom lip so hard she draws blood and turns away sharply, towards Moth Mothma. She’s stepping away and other officials are joining her on the podium, flat white boxes in their hands, medals, most likely.

Ahsoka can’t focus, burning with hurt.

(Hope feels like a wound that just doesn’t seem to close, no matter how many bacta patches you press to tame the blood.)

(It just keeps flowing. It fills Ahsoka’s mouth.)

(It doesn’t taste sweet. It tastes like copper and salt.)

/

Luke accepts his medal with the aura of an ordinary boy who keeps being told he’s a hero. The Force cradles his head. How loved he is, and yet he can’t see. Ahsoka hopes he feels it.

Leia accepts her medal with the calm of a person who has had to do the same thing many times before, Bail Organa’s daughter, through and through. The Force touches the side of her neck, her wrist. Hesitant.

Han accepts his medal with the confidence of a newly crowned king. He makes himself bigger than this room. Instead of a crown: the Force.

They call Ahsoka’s name. Her legs carry her forward. She hates the weight of the metal on her chest. (She’d prefer a stone.) She forces out a smile. Belatedly, she realized they’re pinning something to her chest: the crest of a general. She wants to protest but nothing comes out. She shakes Mon Mothma’s hand. It’s dry but her grip is strong.

Mothma says, “May the Force be with you, general Tano.”

Ahsoka hopes her smile doesn’t shift into a grimace. Her mouth feels wrong.

As she descends, she catches Leia’s eyes. She looks at her differently now, curiously. She looks past Ahsoka as soon as she notices her gaze, stares intensely at the gold vase of blue flowers beside the podium as if all along she has been looking there.

Luke gives her a (crooked) smile, all teeth and then not, and teeth again.

When all of this is over, he finds her, Leia and Han trailing behind him like they’re just unable to let him go. Luke, the sun of their planetary system.

He talks of little nothings, the plans he has to look for other Force-sensitive kids, train them.

“Are you planning to train Leia?” she asks.

Leia goes rigid. Luke looks behind his shoulder. “Huh?”

Huh? What does he mean, huh? His sister is right there, the binary sunset.

“Can’t you feel it?” Ahsoka asks, confusion doing a funny thing with her mouth, words tripping over each other. “Your sister, Leia, she’s— she’s like you.”

Luke opens his mouth, closes it. The Force around him brims with questions.

Leia, on the contrary, is composed. The rigidity of her spine melts, dissipates.

“I’ve always been like this,” Leia says, shrugs. “It doesn’t have to be what you say it is.”

i’ve known you before, she thinks. and i’ve felt it then, and i was asked to ignore it, and to hide it.

“You’re a Skywalker,” Ahsoka says before she can stop herself.

The air freezes over.

Leia bristles and Han bumps into her, shoulder to shoulder, almost pushing past, opens his mouth, “Hey—”

“I’m an Organa,” Leia snarls like the sky is acid and it’s raining down.

The Force prickles Ahsoka’s skin and she has to still its fidgeting, draw her own blood away from the boiling point. She’s as stubborn as you, master.

“You can’t run away from a bloodline, princess.”

Ahsoka shouldn’t have said that. Leia looks at her like she’s about to draw a lightsaber she doesn’t have. The Force spreads and spreads, is a breath away from Ahsoka, she can sense it wanting to tap against her chest, knock her back. But then it retreats, or something invisible shoves itself in the way, pushes the Force back into their bodies.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Luke asks and his eyes are crestfallen, his shoulders rolling forward.

Leia breathes out and all the fire goes out of her, escapes in smoke. Her face smooths out with compassion.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“What doesn’t?”

“The Jedi are dead, Luke. And I don’t want to be one.”

“Then let me teach you,” Ahsoka says suddenly. Three pairs of eyes bore into her. She’s digging a hole in slippery sand and burying herself along but she can’t stand it anymore.

“Aren’t you a Jedi?” Leia asks with contempt. She makes it sound like an insult.

“I am no Jedi.”

Leia’s eyes go wide. Luke stills. “What?”

“I used to be one. I’m not, not anymore.”

“But— how?” Luke asks, glancing down at her lightsabers. “How is it possible?”

Ahsoka finds herself smiling, her past is sad but as she’s on the verge of talking about it, she thinks of the brightest moments, first.

“It seems like you do not know everything about me.”

Han stays behind, places his hand at the nape of Leia’s neck, kisses her forehead. Ahsoka thinks she hears him mumble, “Good luck.”

They find quiet outside. The sun is setting, carving the sky until it drips red. Leia sits down on the monumental steps, Luke standing over her. Ahsoka takes two steps down and faces them. She tells them about her past, very little, mentions Anakin in passing, only that he was her master, and it hurts to do so but Leia looks at her like she’s walking on the thin ice of Hoth and Ahsoka doesn’t want to slip. She tells them about leaving the Jedi Order.

She says, “I left my master behind.” Just so Leia can look at her with the same hatred.

But she doesn’t. Ahsoka tilts her head, doesn’t understand. She waits for, why did you leave him? No judgment comes. Leia’s eyes are clear like saber crystals, hardened but showing themselves exactly as they are.

So Ahsoka continues. Tells them she came back, and came back, and came back.

And that’s when Leia asks, “Why didn’t you leave for good?”

As though she wouldn’t blame her for any of it.

Ahsoka’s words die in her throat. It seems like the most plausible choice, like the right one. Leave all the hurt behind, perhaps live in seclusion, the same way Yoda did. She tried to live without it— imagined herself coming back to Trace, helping her run the repair shop, bickering with her sister. Imagined looking for Kaeden, keeping that promise about meeting again, a dream about a house, a small farm. But it always felt like turning her back, like the second she was gone the world would break apart, and it would be her fault.

“I tried,” Ahsoka says eventually. “But I couldn’t. I didn’t know how.”

She senses the conflict in Luke even before he speaks. He presses his palm to the lightsaber strapped to his belt.

“I thought the Jedi were meant to bring balance to the Force. Master Yoda, he never mentioned any of this.”

Ahsoka sighs. Maybe she shouldn’t have, either. But it would feel dishonest to hide it, and she’s had to live a lifetime of lies, and she’s tired.

“At the core, yes, that is the Jedi way. But the Jedi were their own downfall. Of course, there was Palpatine — Darth Sidious — there were the Sith, the Separatists, the war. It wasn’t meant to be like this but it doesn’t change anything, does it?”

Leia looks at her openly, like at the same time she’s figuring Ahsoka out, and herself, too. Coming to her own conclusions.

“If you want to follow Master Yoda’s teaching, then, by all means, I won’t stop you. But I can teach you what I know, and you can do with it what you want.”

“Why are you doing this?” Leia asks, a sliver of suspicion laced in her words. The war is over but it continues to breathe down their necks. “Why do you want to teach me, us?”

Ahsoka looks between them. Even with no one around, they remain the brightest points in the galaxy. And this time, she really looks at them, all the ways they resemble Anakin and Padme. All the ways in which they could’ve been raised but weren’t, all the ways in which they weren’t meant to take part in this war but did anyway, all the ways in which they weren’t loved and all the ways in which they were, against all odds.

“Mon Mothma was right about one thing,” Ahsoka says. “It’s a new age. We have balance but it won’t always be like this.”

Luke glances down at Leia at the same time she looks up at him. The Force binds them and snaps itself in place.

Ahsoka’s everything aches.

Hope has such clipped wings.

“I’m no Jedi but I believe in the balance, and I believe we can maintain it if we are together. The Jedi fell because they were alone.”

i won’t leave you alone, she thinks. i found you and i can’t leave you alone.

(The sky so, so blue.)

“Besides.” She allows herself a chuckle, the twins’ eyes flicking back to her, like moths to an open flame. “I could never walk away from this life, could I?”

Luke smiles first, and he has so much hope it’s enough to fuel the whole New Republic.

Leia’s smile is calculated, like she has to allow herself to do it. Ahsoka doesn’t blame her. When she smiles like that, she looks just like Padme.

“I have many responsibilities, as a princess,” Leia says and stands up. There’s playfulness in her voice that wasn’t there earlier.

“Leia—” Luke starts but she inclines her head a fraction and he snaps his mouth shut.

“That won’t derange me,” Ahsoka says because it feels like it’s her choice, the last one she has to make.

“Okay, then,” Leia says. Luke looks at her expectantly, the Force escaping his body in surges. “I have a mission on Naboo but I will decide when I get back. How does that sound?”

“I can start anytime,” Luke comes forward, smiles. “How does that sound?” He pauses, the Force on unsteady legs. “Master.”

The Force explodes like a dying star.

And out of it,

a bird comes soaring.

/

Ahsoka finds Rex when it’s all said and done. Somehow, he knows. The setting sun frames him in gold.

A companion. An old, dear friend.

“The Skywalkers again, general?”

“The Skywalkers,” Ahsoka confirms.

“They just won’t leave you alone,” he jokes.

Ahsoka likes the sound of that even though it pains her.

/

master, master, master.

It’s Luke’s voice when Ahsoka goes to sleep that night, ringing happier than it did in the moment. Glad.

Hours pass. She turns from one side to another, and back again, and in reverse.

master, master, master.

It turns to pleading.

And it’s her own voice, doing the pleading. She’s surprised a please doesn't choke out of her throat.

She doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

/

Only a handful of Jedi texts had survived the Empire and they’re brought to Ahsoka. She supposes she’s the highest-ranking Jedi in the galaxy in terms of experience. She doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge.

She was never fond of books and the mandatory lectures at the Jedi Temple bored her. She contemplates passing them down to Luke, they’ve started their training all the way down from the basics. What Yoda told him was valuable and ultimately what saved him and helped him battle Vader but his skillset is patchy at best.

The Force moves through Luke like an excited puppy and Ahsoka hates that she wants to tame it. He presents himself as composed but inside all his synapses are firing and Ahsoka can feel it where it touches her skin and coils back.

One day, she decides to bring the books to the training grounds which are but a desolate square of land between towering buildings, their shade falling across the grass dark but light-weight. Ahsoka wakes up after another sleepless night and finds in herself a thirst for being proper and thorough, the thirst she didn’t have when she first became Anakin’s Padawan, not like this. She realizes, suddenly, she holds so much within herself, so much she can pass down and those texts, even though she despised them, might help someone else along the way.

She misses the Galactic Republic with a fierceness that cuts like a swift lightsaber.

Ahsoka piles the falling apart books into Luke’s arms, careful to support the weight with the Force. Luke looks down at his hands, brows furrowed, but he smooths them out as soon as he looks up.

“Thank you.”

It carves Ahsoka’s heart in half. He’s so eager, so full of light, so drawn to goodness it makes Ahsoka think she contains nothing of her own.

“You don’t have to read them.” Her voice is surprisingly stable. “You said you want to look for others. They could help, if you want to build your knowledge. I’ll teach you everything else.”

which is to say, everything necessary.

And so she teaches him Jedi forms the proper way; his Shii-Cho is stable and he can hold his own in Makashi when they spar using long wooden sticks. She has no way of checking Soresu, the way in which he’s able to redirect and deflect enemy fire; Han Solo who appears one day seems more than happy to put his blaster to use but Ahsoka levels him down with a stare and he clamps his mouth shut. Han isn’t Force-sensitive in a way that would allow him to be taught so Ahsoka doesn’t mention the flickers she gets from him. He stays because Luke is there. He seems content sitting in the shade of a blooming tintolive tree, watching Luke get completely obliterated by Ahsoka. He leaves as soon as Ahsoka dials down, gives Luke space.

He throws over his shoulder, “Holo me when you do something interesting!”

Luke fights erratically, Ahsoka has to remind him to trust in the Force, to follow its gentle currents. It’s not a knowledge that can be passed down in a week on some swamp planet, with all due respect to Master Yoda. His style is strong; he uses wide strokes and slashes, favouring moving within the first three body target zones — from the waist up.

Sometimes, the image of him will double in Ahsoka’s eyes, especially when they move to lightsabers at the end of the day; the blue of Luke’s weapon will blur in front of her eyes and she will see a scar over his eye that’s not there, and he’ll grow a little bigger, his hair darker, and she’ll see eyes that blink blue gold blue.

She stumbles back, heaving, her lightsaber — because she fights with one, for now, for his sake — pointed to the side, all of her exposed.

Luke powers down his weapon, moves close, his face clouded with worry, the Force like arms, holding them up.

“Master?”

Ahsoka puts a hand out and he stops in his tracks. She cuts her saber off.

“Let’s take a break,” she says.

The sun of Chandrila is setting, the sky darkening. They should be going back to their chambers. The day is as good as done. Ahsoka extends her hand and a flask of water latches on to her palm. She passes it down to Luke. He accepts it with gratitude far too great for a small act like that but she’s starting to think this is how he is — immense where others are small; moving where others stand still.

She walks up to her own flask and drinks from it slowly. Luke all but chugs his down.

“Careful,” she tells him and she shudders at how low her voice sounds, how master-like.

Luke gives her a startled nod and puts the flask away, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand that Ahsoka knows to be bionic through the workings of the Force but it doesn’t seem any less real than his left. The Force prickles with his curiosity.

“Yes?” Ahsoka asks and she takes certain joy in stunning him.

“Oh, I—” Luke looks down, cuts himself off, looks back up, not at all contained eagerness in his eyes, and kindness, and understanding. “Can you tell me what happened when we were training just now? You don’t have to, of course, if it’s too much.”

Ahsoka’s body turns molten; Luke doesn’t have a bad bone in his body.

“I’m not sure if you’d like to hear it.”

Luke chews on his bottom lip. “Is it to do with my father?”

Ahsoka nods curtly. Everything is in the Force.

“I want to. I want to hear because you knew him, knew him in ways I only felt remnants of.”

Ahsoka swallows. She wants to ask, suddenly, what it was like to see Vander — Anakin — just as he was dying. What he said, what he looked like. How the Force felt around him.

It hurts her to think that.

“You remind me of him,” she tries, her throat tight. The corner’s of Luke’s eyes drip with worry. “The best parts of him.”

“What was good about him?” Luke asks and he sounds genuinely curious, like he’s glad to have this blood coursing through his veins. He settles next to her on the ground. The sun has set.

Ahsoka wants to say, everything, everything about him was good but that’s a lie, and the most awful she’d tell, at that.

“His resilience,” she says thinking of battlefields brimming with B1 units, tight corridors full of droidekas, space swarming with Mark I battle droids. “The way he cared,” she says and hears the echoes of his voice i do trust you and they’re asking you back i’m asking you back and are you okay? “Everyone will tell you caring was what doomed him and perhaps they will be right.”

And that’s the question she can’t help but ask ever since she left the Jedi Order, ever since she left everything she ever was behind. Is attachment so wrong? Does it ultimately lead to destruction because you’re unable to let things go? Should anyone let go? What is the galaxy, if not a matter so tightly woven only Force is able to slip through and even then it does so to bind everything together?

There is purpose in death, that’s what her teachings tell her. Doesn’t mean she knows what to do with that.

Luke splits the silence in half. “And if I were to ask you?”

Ahsoka’s heart performs a ton su ma, a somersault. “Hm?”

Luke shakes his head and breaks off a blade of balmgrass. “You say everyone will tell me it doomed him but if it was up to you, what would you say?”

Ahsoka’s voice is quiet when she speaks.

“I’d say his caring saved me more times than I could count. And it was his caring that guided me through life. Anakin, before you knew him,” (she couldn’t bring herself to say it now — Vader) “you’d think he was born to save the galaxy and everyone in it.”

“He did,” Luke says eagerly. “He killed Darth Sidious. He was the Chosen One.”

“I’m not sure if I believe that,” she says faster than she can think.

Luke recoils. “What do you mean?”

He sounds offended, on behalf of his father. It takes her aback, how vastly he’s loved a person that has tyrannized the galaxy.

(How deeply she understands him.)

“Perhaps you were the Chosen One. Perhaps his final choice doesn’t redeem him but your kindness for him does.”

Luke breathes in so sharply it cuts off in his throat. “You really believe that?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t know what I believe in anymore. He made sure of that.”

She didn’t know Anakin as the Chosen One. She knew Anakin as her Master and friend and older brother, of sorts. She knew Anakin as a man who was reckless and kind and jarring and unabashed and loving, so loving he could break the galaxy in half with it.

Which he did, she reminds herself. Which he did.

“He told me to tell Leia I was right,” Luke adds, almost angrily. The Force shudders like an animal ready to flee. “I was right and he had light in him. He did good by the galaxy.”

Ahsoka’s hands feel too small to even attempt to hold Luke’s goodness. To believe so wholeheartedly Vader wasn’t lost, to go on a whim, to accept his heritage.

Would Ahsoka do the same? Has she?

I failed you, master, she thinks. But at least your son didn’t.

“Were those his last words?” she finds herself saying and all the fight goes out of her and simultaneously out of Luke. They’re bound by the Force, in a more delicate way than others, but they are, she knows that already.

“Yes,” Luke says, suddenly calm and quiet.

Ahsoka faces away from him. The courtyard is a mass of shadows. She’s silent.

She senses Luke’s hand piercing the shattered matter of the Force. She feels the centre of his palm on her spine.

He’s silent.

They don’t speak.

/

“You didn’t fail me. I failed you.”

Ahsoka wakes up in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat.

Something shimmers next to her bed, a parting in the Force.

Eyes blue, so blue.

The opening closes and Ahsoka lies in bed, restless, staring at the same spot until she feels like her eyes might bleed.

And even longer than that.

/

Leia sends word from her diplomatic mission to Naboo which Luke laters relays: gigantic storms and Leia, alongside Shara Bey and Queen Sosha Soruna, taking to old starfighters (and listen, Master, you might remember them, the N-1s, I read about them, they were used in the Clone Wars) (they were typical to Naboo) (you remember them) (I do) to destroy the satellites jamming the orbital sensors.

“They’re alright, Han and Lando flew in to help,” Luke sighs and leans back on his hands, his lightsaber discarded in the balmgrass. “I wish I were there.”

But it’s not like they’re sitting still. Ahsoka is permanently back in strategy rooms, getting news from distant systems and helping coordinate attacks against Imperial retaliations. She flies with Luke and their squadrons to Nacronis and they try to prevent its demise as a part of Palpatine’s contingency plan, they really do — at first, Ahsoka is slow on the draw, unused to an X-wing but the Force boosts her up and she tails the black bodies of TIEs in the planet’s atmosphere; she has Leylas and Aria at her side, Jov helping with the evacuation of civilians; Luke evades enemy fire with a finesse of a veteran pilot.

And yet, they fail. Nacronis is swallowed up by a singular storm, something Leia was able to prevent on Naboo, but not here. The fleet retreats until the weather calms down. They count their losses. They find survivors.

Ahsoka searches for days, her X-wing running out of fuel twice, but she doesn’t hear back from Jov.

The whole planet is a pile of debris. Out of the whole population of Nacronis, only a handful remain.

On the last night of the rescue mission, Ahsoka’s squadron sets up a campfire. Everything is a wasteland so it’s easy to find a spot, and they find one near a tree, the only one in the vicinity that has survived the storm. Ahsoka is worn out but when they ask her to join, she agrees.

They exchange war stories and Ahsoka is unaccustomed to so many voices that don’t concern strategy or plans. She speaks when they ask, tells them about the Clone Wars. Says everyone’s name but Anakin’s.

She tastes ashes in her mouth.

Amongst the disconcerting liveveliness, it takes her a moment to notice Luke’s absence. The Force explodes around her like a safety net but he’s there, a little further away from the fire, alone but there. She senses a great calm emanating for him. A feeling too big to simply be what it is.

She leaves when the conversation drifts away from her.

Luke is staring at the sky, his back glowing faintly with orange. The horizon is a wasteland and he seems so—

small.

Ahsoka settles on the ground next to him. She follows his gaze to the sky. The stars aren’t visible, the clouds a permanent feature of a wrecked Nacronis.

The calm splits open, like a fruit.

“Master?”

“Yes?”

Luke mulls over the question and it resembles a river-smooth pebble, with how many times it’s been turned over in his hands.

At least, that’s what the Force says.

“Were the Jedi really so wrong?” Luke asks and a frown overtakes his face. He twists his torso to look at Ahsoka, impatient to know. “Were they— corrupted?”

Ahsoka looks at the angle, his refusal.

“Why are you asking?”

“My father was a Jedi… before. I was trained by Yoda, and met someone else who also knew my father.”

And they were good, Ahsoka hears what Luke doesn’t say.

She asks about someone else even though she could take a guess, “Who?”

“Obi-wan Kenobi.”

The Force braids around that one name. Ahsoka’s lungs fracture and cave in.

Luke tilts his head to the side, a kind curiosity. “Did you know him?”

“I fought with him and your father in the Clone Wars. They— We were close.” Ahsoka pauses, digs her nails into the earth. “The closest.”

The wound is closed and scarred over but it aches with phantom pain. She did not expect loyalty from Obi-wan — she was the one to leave the Order, and he wasn’t a person who lingered on attachments. He cared for Ahsoka, she’s certain of that. Perhaps he would’ve looked for her, had he known she was alive.

“Master—”

“It’s okay.” Ahsoka shakes her head, flexes her fingers. “We were friends a long time ago.” We were family a long time ago. “It doesn’t matter now.” Her heart breaks into softness. “How do you remember him?”

Luke hesitates before he speaks. The Force nudges him forward with the patience of a mother.

He tells her. He tells her about Ben and then Obi-wan, and holding a lightsaber for the first time, and Obi-wan’s stories about Anakin (He was the best starpilot in the galaxy, and a cunning warrior, and a good friend.)

Luke talks until Obi-wan slips into a memory of Tatooine — growing up with his aunt and uncle, helping them out on the farm, the stretches of land with nothing but the sand — and then he’s asking, “Master, have you ever seen the binary sunset?”

His face is open, the gutting kind.

“No,” Ahsoka forces out the words through the graveyard in her throat. “What does it look like?”

Luke smiles but his eyes are sad (a great calm, a feeling too big). “It’s the most beautiful thing in the galaxy.” The fire burns behind his back and the voices of their companions might as well be the wind. “Let me tell you about it.”

Ahsoka nods, unable to do anything else.

Luke speaks into the night. Again, he talks about more than just the sunset, about more than just Tatooine. He talks about the swamps of Dagobah, about destroying the first Death Star, about Leia’s bravery and Han’s stupidity.

Ahsoka listens to the longing laced to the underbelly of his words. In everything he says, the raw nagging of this want to see everything, to reach the edge of the vast universe and go beyond.

He speaks for so long without Ahsoka interrupting.

He sounds like the loneliest boy in the galaxy.

/

Leia and Han get married quietly, without much of an audience.

Ahsoka is invited, courtesy of Luke more than Leia’s, but she comes anyway.

She feels Leia’s happiness in uneven ripples and Han’s like microscopic explosions in the sky. Luke is happy for them, she feels it. But she also feels the unintentional separation he starts to craft between their trio, him versus them.

Ahsoka goes to find him after the ceremony.

“What are you doing here, alone?”

She remembers Nacronis and the naked earth and the fire behind their backs.

“Aren’t Jedi meant to be alone?” Luke looks up from his plate with cake. “That’s what Hoche Trit said, that a Jedi dividing their focus between the will of the Force and the will of others basically invites disaster.”

Ahsoka bristles at the quote and Luke glances at her in surprise because she allows him to feel this. He’s starting to move more carefully in the Force, setting boundaries, expanding and shrinking them as he learns.

“Jedi died because they were alone,” Ahsoka tells him harshly, an old wound open and spreading. “Because they refused their attachments. They were prideful and failed to see that only in togetherness we— they would’ve survived.”

“I’m sorry,” Luke says, shakes his head, bashful. “I wasn’t— It was just, those texts—”

Ahsoka lays a hand on his arm. He goes rigid and she wonders if she might be one of the few people who dare to touch him, and who are allowed to do so.

“It’s okay, Luke. Read, but be critical. Know your own life, what you’ve learned. Apply. I was taught to live by those texts but I would not die by them. I should hope you wouldn’t, either.”

They grow quiet. Ahsoka looks out at the balcony where Leia leans against the embellished railing, the sunlight bouncing off her white robes, blinding, her cheeks pink and hands animated. Han next to her, his back pressed to the balustrade but facing Leia, facing her fully, interrupting her mid-sentence, and Leia barging in with a counter-argument, the two of them going back and forth. Ahsoka doesn’t fail to see the love in it, the love she’s learned to see in every exchange of opinions, in bickering. She used to be exposed to it, day by day. A long time ago.

“I’m happy for them,” Luke says with a smile that could break anyone’s heart. But he’s so gentle about it, Ahsoka almost believes he’s not hurting at all.

“You’re close, aren’t you?”

He takes a moment to answer. “The closest.”

The Force rolls behind Ahsoka’s back like the wind passing through a tree, a presence that tries to hide but is too powerful to really succeed. Ahsoka’s throat goes dry. She wants nothing but to turn around and look. She remembers the day she came to Chandrila, and looking, and seeing Anakin’s face, softened by the Force. She deems the memory enough.

Luke turns, however, the Force too insistent in its echoing joy and folded in half regret. He frowns as soon as he does, mutters, “I could’ve sworn...”

/

Ahsoka gets ready to leave the party. She’s already overstayed her welcome but she couldn’t force herself to leave Luke behind. Now, though, now she finds him drinking with Han and Wedge Antilles, laughing so openly the Force stops and stills next to him, gaping, openmouthed, if Force could be those things, and Luke makes her believe it could.

“General Tano.”

Ahsoka glances to the side and it’s Leia, the setting sun setting her ablaze, golden.

“Senator Organa. How are you?”

Leia is unable to control her smile when she glances towards her brother and husband. “I think I’m okay.”

Her cheeks are red and full, but there’s a hollowness in the shadow of her eyelashes, a past sorrow. Not the darkness of all darknesses, but a darkness nonetheless.

“When did you come back from your mission?”

Leia glances at her and her expression turns void. She stands a little taller. Ahsoka imagines her like this at the Senate, a figure inspiring respect and admiration.

“Last week.”

“Did it all go according to plan?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Ahsoka sees images in the Force, unbridled, the blaster fire and fear so heavy it muffles everything else. It lingers like a memory.

“Of course.”

A muscle jumps in Leia’s jaw and she drops her shoulders. “I’m sorry, general. It’s a happy day. Thank you for coming, I know Luke cares about you, the same way my dad did.”

Ahsoka, her perception wobbly and distorted, thinks she means Anakin and it takes her a second to recover Bail Organa from her subconscious.

“I wish he was here to see it,” Ahsoka says.

Leia scoffs but it rings kind. “I can’t imagine him being too fond of Han.”

“Can you blame him?” Ahsoka jokes. “That boy’s a walking power hazard.”

“Oh, I’d love to see Han struggle to please him,” Leia laughs, sudden and cut too short, but full of life. She sweeps her thumb over her mouth, wiping the smile away. “I can feel him, and my mom, too. I can’t explain it. It’s as though they’re here with me.”

Leia appears even smaller than she already is.

Ahsoka doesn’t have words for her. Everything she’d say would be wrong and unnecessary. To bring the Force into this would feel like sacrilege.

And then Leia adds, “I remember you from when I was little. I remember asking him, my dad, about who you are. He said, an old friend, a trusted ally. I learned to recognize the Fulcrum sooner than I knew how to read. You’d stay, too, sometimes. I don’t remember much but I remember feeling— calm. So calm.”

Bail Organa never told Ahsoka about Leia’s origins. She sensed it — after all, it’s hard to hide things in the Force, and she’s always been too susceptible for her own good. He treated her as his own daughter, with love that poured out in waves. He never wanted this life for her, on the frontlines. But it’s hard to ignore a bloodline, even if it’s not truly bound in blood.

So Ahsoka did what little she could, and taught Leia about the Force without outright naming it. They’d sit in the quiet and Ahsoka would ask her to notice the way the sunlight slanted across the floor; to feel the stars so far away and yet so close; to listen to the winged thrantas crying outside. She’d tell her to focus on everything around her and all that was inside her.

Leia was a kid first and foremost so she wouldn’t always listen. Sometimes, she just wanted to play. But Ahsoka taught her about attention, only adding into what Bail must’ve already told her. She taught her balance. She told her things that had nothing but at the same time everything to do with the Force.

“I couldn’t teach you, not really,” Ahsoka says, decaying resentment curling around her words. “Senator Organa wouldn’t want this for you and I don’t blame him for it. You fight so your loved ones don’t have to.”

The corner of Leia’s mouth twitches, rising for a moment before it falls. “My dad was a good man. A kind one. I understand he tried to protect me, and he taught me all he could but I can’t help but think— maybe, if I knew the ways of the Force back then, I could’ve stopped it.”

Alderaan, the explosion of her home planet like a video looped on the HoloNet, plastered to the back of her eyelids.

Ahsoka shakes her head vigorously. “No, you mustn’t think that.”

“Why not?” Leia frowns, the Force a confused whirlwind. “You kept coming back because you knew it’s the only way to save people.”

“Not the only one. But the only way for me. Everyone fights in any way they can. You did, too. And you continue to fight. He’d be proud of you, your father, I know it.”

Leia bites her bottom lip. She looks exactly like Luke when she does it, the twins mirroring each other. They are so similar even though they’ve spent years apart, similar in ways that aren’t obvious and loud. They’re similar as though they’re trying to defy the galaxy they grew up in, separate and yet together.

There’s a question Leia hides in the Force. With anyone else, Ahsoka would prod. But she gives Leia time.

Eventually, Leia says, “General, before I left, you said you’d teach me.”

“Yes, I did.”

Leia turns to face her fully, squaring her shoulders. The determination on her face is a reminder, again, times of the old.

“Does the offer still stand?”

The Force expands within Ahsoka until it threatens to burst out of her body.

“When do you want to start?”

Leia smiles brighter than the two stars orbiting Tatooine.

/

The twins are similar but fundamentally different. When Ahsoka teaches Luke, he listens out of a thirst for knowledge, with the willingness to pass what he learns further down, to the next generation. Like he has everything to gain.

When Ahsoka teaches Leia, she listens with a hunger for things she might lose.

“Focus,” Ahsoka says without opening her eyes. She’s drifting a few centimetres above ground, legs crossed.

Leia humphs. She’s squeezing her eyes so tight Ahsoka swears she can feel it underneath her fingertips. All is one in the Force.

“How long are we going to do that?” Leia asks after another minute.

“As long as it takes.”

Ahsoka doesn’t open her eyes but she knows Leia opens her. Quiet displeasure simmers in the undercurrents of the Force.

“You taught me when I was little.”

“Not nearly enough.”

“I can feel the earth underneath me pretty fucking well.”

Ahsoka opens one of her eyes. Leia is boring holes into her but she smooths her features as soon as Ahsoka looks.

“But can you feel the ant on your left knee? Can you feel the one touching your ankle?”

Leia looks down and immediately brushes the insects off.

Ahsoka sighs and lowers herself to the ground. “No.”

“No, what?”

“Close your eyes.”

Leia opens her mouth but Ahsoka narrows her eyes and Leia complies, with ostentatious reluctance.

“Good, at least you can follow orders.”

Leia heaves a breath and the Force pulses with repressed rage. Ahsoka smiles to herself. She was the same, exactly like this. Leia doesn’t need to know that.

“It’s true that I taught you when you were little. But all lessons, if not cultivated, disappear. Are forgotten.”

If Obi-wan or Anakin were here, they’d glance at each other, right now. Anakin would say, when did you get so wise?

Ahsoka clears her mind. It’s not healthy to cling to the past the way she does.

“Luke said you spar with lightsabers.”

“Everything will come in its own time. Now, focus.”

Leia takes a deep breath in and another long breath out. The wrinkles between her eyebrows unravel as though touched by an invisible, loving hand. The Force straightens out, unspools, grows.

“You can feel the earth but can you feel the blades of grass you sit on? Can you feel the tiny rocks embedded in the soil? Can you feel this tree, the way it’s sinking its roots deeper and deeper? Can you feel the water it feeds on? The sunlight?”

The Force shudders as it stretches, opens up. Ahsoka closes her eyes, allows herself to flow with it, to reach out to Leia’s consciousness, like a guide.

Allow the Force to flow through you. The Force is everywhere. The Force is you.

In the Force, Leia is so brilliant she draws attention to herself. All living creatures are opening their eyes, awakening, wanting to be near her. The wind moves, hoping to move matter closer to her. The sunlight seems to cup her face in its palms, kiss her cheeks.

The Force is with me and I am one with the Force.

Leia’s awareness grows, her consciousness wrapping around Ahsoka. Her voice is uneven and barely above a whisper but Ahsoka can hear her.

The Force is with me and I’m one with the Force.

Good. Think it and it will be so.

The Force is with me and I’m one with the Force. The Force is with me and I’m one with the Force.

Leia’s voice in the Force steadies. Everything in the Force wants to guide her, to help her, hold her up. It carries her voice in its arms, cradles it like a newborn baby.

Ahsoka reaches further, hoping Leia will follow: to the spacecrafts speeding in their rightful lanes, a single one breaking off, and another, a few vehicles behind, following; to the Senate where Mon Mothma’s steps are ringing loud and clear through the corridor; to the canteen where Luke is grabbing decaf for Han.

It’s a prank. Han hates decaf.

Ahsoka opens and opens, allowing Leia to peer into the superficial depth, into her gladness. I wish—

She cuts herself off but it’s too late. She allowed Padme’s face to resurface with her kind voice but harsh hands; she allowed Anakin’s to follow closely behind, the time he accepted Ahsoka as his Padawan, the gentleness with which but you might make it as mine rolled off his tongue.

The Force destabilizes and Ahsoka hears a grunt as Leia drops to the ground after she just managed to hover.

“I apologize,” Ahsoka says first thing, throwing her hands behind her back to steady herself on the ground.

She’s not met with hatred, the way she thinks she’d be. Instead, there’s an afterimage of pain, like a damaged hologram that glitches and cuts off at the end of each sentence. Leia’s head hangs low, her fingers digging into the earth. Ahsoka has never seen her stain herself before; at least, not in person.

“Don’t,” Leia says, her voice on the verge of breaking.

Ahsoka knows it’s her fault. All these decades of training, of battles won and lost, and she’s still unable to let go. It’s been so long now, and she’s so tired.

Leia glances up sharply with wildness in her eyes and Ahsoka closes herself off at once, remembering. She sits, rigid, as Leia watches her, judges, weights something in her hands.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” Ahsoka says and jumps to her feet. “Unless you are needed at the Senate.”

Ahsoka knows she’s not but says it anyway.

Leia says, “I’m not.” The Force is so tangled Ahsoka can’t make anything out of it.

“See you tomorrow.”

Ahsoka inclines her head in a tiny bow. She turns around. The bow is reciprocated after she’s walked a few feet away, but the Force lets her know.

/

Ahsoka joins Mon Mothma in a meeting that lasts well into the night. She’s not mad about it but she could do without so much arguing. She speaks as much as she can because that’s when everyone shuts up for a moment and listens, really listens. Even Mon Mothma doesn’t have that. If she were someone else, Ahsoka would think more about this fact but she doesn’t.

Ahsoka follows the intel to Outer Realms with a small troop of soldiers. The people she takes with her are the same ones that followed her to Nacronis and they, too, are tired. Ahsoka is tired but in a way, she’s also glad. Glad when she can turn her lightsabers on, deflect enemy fire, use her rusty bones for something else than training the Skywalkers. She gets shot in the arm, nothing a bacta tank can’t fix but it sears and scorches and she has to cut herself off, forget the pain, flow with the Force. All is as the Force wills it, she thinks, and they manage to squander the Imperial rebellion. They do not surrender. Ahsoka counts her losses. Brings the bodies back, if there are any. She notifies families, personally. Sends the bodies to their home planets, if they still exist. If they don’t, she buries them where they are.

It’s not how Ahsoka wanted this to go but it goes like that, anyway.

She comes back two weeks later, a scar marring her left arm.

“That looks pretty serious,” Leia points out during their morning training.

Ahsoka doesn’t comment. They start on form I that day. Leia drills the same positions over and over again with a wooden stick that Luke no longer uses. Leia’s impatience is a living thing but Ahsoka’s exhausted after being forced to return to the fight she didn’t want to fight anymore.

And yet, when she comes back to her apartment, the one she was given, courtesy of the New Republic, she wonders what would be the point of her, if not war? She sits on the edge of her bed, weighing both lightsabers in her hands. Drags her thumb over one of the hilts, the job wobbly, whatever scrap metal she could find when materials were restricted and the Empire ruled the galaxy. She no longer remembers what her first sabers felt like.

She trains Leia in the mornings and Luke in the evenings and in between she goes to High command meetings. The nights are lonely unless Luke decides to come and ask her about the ancient texts, the language jumbled and unrecognizable.

“It’s almost like they want to make you feel stupid,” Luke mumbles, turning the page of a manuscript with tentative fingers.

Ahsoka doesn’t have such qualms. She flips through the scrolls as if they're freshly written and widely manufactured pieces of work.

“Wouldn’t put it past them.”

Luke stays late but Ahsoka doesn’t sleep. His company is strange but not unwelcome.

During training, she has to find her balance as though she’s a Padawan again. Since the incident with Leia, Ahsoka has maintained her guard. She keeps thinking about it; something about the Skywalkers pushes her slightly off-kilter, and even this unlikely amount worries her. She was able to maintain her composure when she was sent to tame the uprising (dirtied trooped suits, salvaged weaponry, an officer in a tattered suit) but being around the twins seems more dangerous somehow. Riskier.

It makes her itch for something that is no more. The last time she stayed like this, she fought Vader in the ancient Sith temple and he wanted to kill her. She said, I won’t leave you, not this time.

She’s still keeping that promise.

Anakin lives on in Luke and Leia. Everything that was good about him, they carry onward. Luke goes with her to inspect a series of discarded Imperial bases, and the way he submerges effortlessly into the battle as soon as they spot their enemies makes Ahsoka fiercer, makes her take something out of the Force and give back in return, makes her stronger.

She appears in the Senate every now and then. She’s invited to speak but never does. Instead, she listens to Leia, her voice clear and unwavering; the quiet current is always the deadliest. It makes Ahsoka feel pride that doesn’t belong to her. Shouldn’t. She feels it anyway.

At night, she dreams threadbare dreams. Anakin blaming himself for leaving Ahsoka behind during a mission on Felucia, and the vision of Anakin decades later blaming Ahsoka for leaving him. Padme hugging Ahsoka’s teenage body to her side, Padme laid down in a bed of flowers. Barriss’ betrayal, Maul’s golden eyes. She doesn’t get visions anymore. She can’t see into the future.

When she jerks awake the Force is so thick around her it’s forming another presence in the place of air. Ahsoka expects to see the same opening she did one night but it never appears again. It’s difficult to decide whether she’s glad when the longing makes another name for itself in the soft underside of her jaw.

/

Luke and Leia spar in the distance. Ahsoka lent Leia her lightsaber, the regular one, the shoto still tied to her belt. Green versus white. It’s high-time she guided Leia into Soresu but she doubts Han would be willing to shoot at his wife.

She senses a distant chuckle from Leia. She’s perceptive, that one. And strong, and reckless, but her movements are small where Luke’s are big, his arcs like splashes of water across the sky, hers quick and calculated. Luke comfortably retreats into Makashi while Leia keeps on the offensive.

She could do with learning Soresu, it would keep her humble.

“Try recovering some of my ASP-19s. She could train with them.”

An uneven feeling tightens Ahsoka’s throat and she whips her head to the side in disbelief, (in hope), in terrible, terrible fear.

“What? Don’t recognize your own master anymore?”

He looks the same as she remembers him, before the red and black, before the mask, before the Empire. He has the same cocky grin, maybe slightly slanted, as though he can’t bring himself to joke fully, can’t commit himself to it, not the time or place.

“Anakin,” Ahsoka says, breathes out, (chokes out), it’s a blur, she doesn’t know but it’s him, the ghost of him, tinged blue like lightning, like the hottest fire, like his lightsaber, she reaches out, uselessly, perhaps, in the Force, and she knows it to be him, no trick of light, no foolishness of her own imagination.

“As I was saying about those ASP-19s,” Anakin continues as though it’s nothing that he’s here, as though he’s always been here and Ahsoka knows he has, she just didn’t want to see it — and the Force keeps no secrets. “I trained with them… not so long ago. They have many levels of difficulty and could be used if you were to train future Jedi.”

“I’m going to train no future Jedi,” Ahsoka half-murmurs, half-grunts. She’s elated and utterly angry and master master master like a plea, like a prayer to some old, half-ruined god.

Luke and Leia sense Ahsoka’s distress but they’re not able to see Anakin, for whatever reason. She sends a quick order their way, to continue at it, and Luke, take more stock of Leia’s Zone 2 and Leia, train on his Zone 4, and that will be able to keep them busy because Luke’s just aching to go back to Djem So, she can sense it, and Leia’s frustration will grow with it but she can learn something from Luke, as well.

The corners of Anakin’s mouth fall. “Pity.”

Ahsoka thought she could do this, that it would all be the same, that no time would’ve passed and she’d be Ahsoka Tano and he’d be Anakin Skywalker and it would be okay. Instead, it becomes clear that in the meantime she’d also been Ashla and Fulcrum and Master, and he’d also been—

“What are you doing here?”

Anakin mocks a sigh. “It was getting rather loud in the Force. It became painful to listen.”

“A pain in the ass, even after death,” Ahsoka’s mouth forms the words on her own and it stuns them both.

Anakin cracks a smile. “Now, is that a way to address your elder?”

“Old habits die hard.”

It feels painfully familiar and equally strange to talk to him. Ahsoka’s mouth knows what to do even before she does but she’s unbalanced, and it’s only a matter of time before the twins come to check on her.

“Why can’t they see you?”

Anakin looks to Luke and Leia — to his children. Ahsoka expects intense waves of Force entanglement but no such thing comes. Only overwhelming, bright love.

He says nothing but Ahsoka hears it anyway.

The abandoned hope. The painful longing.

“Should you be feeling such things when you’re one with the Force?”

Anakin’s mouth twitches. “The Force is everything and everything is the Force. It’s all about the—”

“The balance,” Ahsoka cuts into his sentence seamlessly. She shouldn’t know what he wants to say but she can’t separate herself from it, from the knowledge of him.

“Thank you for training them,” Anakin says suddenly but it doesn’t feel sudden at all. She’s felt his gratitude like it had already happened millennia ago.

“I’m not doing this for you,” Ahsoka lies.

Anakin shrugs. “Still.” He doesn’t believe her.

Ahsoka wants to say, you tried to kill me and I wanted to save you anyway. you told Luke he was right about you.

She wants to say, why didn’t you come back sooner, when it still mattered?

“You were saying about those droids,” Ahsoka says instead.

Anakin’s ghost flinches and wobbles as if he was readying himself for an onslaught.

“What,” he says breathlessly, if Force ghost can say anything breathlessly.

“ASP-18s, weren’t they?” She twists the number, just so he can—

“19s.”

correct her, stunned.

In the past, she’d hate him for it.

“Well? Where can I find them?”

/

Ahsoka gets Mon Mothma’s permission to go through Vader’s few recovered possessions. Luke insisted on keeping them. If it were up to the New Republic, they’d have burnt them at the stake.

Old habits die hard.

Luke is still trying to clear Anakin’s name but it comes slowly, with great reluctance. Vader might have left in the light but it doesn’t erase the years of oppression, keeping a hold of the Empire with a gloved hand. If he were a ship, he’d be a Star Destroyer. If he were a weapon, he’d be the Death Star. If he were a phenomenon, he’d be a dying star, exploding.

Even stars do that.

Ahsoka retrieves the droids, towering over two metres high, long legs and arms, boxy torsos, and it weighs heavy on her, that Vader used them to train. But Vader is also Anakin and he’s in the Force and it’s a jumbled mess Ahsoka spends too long untangling during extensive meditations in her echoing silence apartment. Luke helps her figure out the settings, the ASP-19 coming to life with a quiet buzz of weapons ready to fire. Luke almost loses his other hand in the Master mode but Ahsoka overpowers the machine and cuts it in half.

She stands over the steaming lump of metal. “Good thing we have more,” she manages to say, heaving.

Luke stands a little off to the side, dazed. The courtyard is scarred with flaming marks where the blaster fire struck.

“I’m not explaining this to Mothma,” he says and Ahsoka collapses in a fit of laughter.

Luke follows, reluctantly, checking for her sanity in the Force.

They figure out the easiest settings and agree not to tell Leia there are levels of difficulty. She figures it out on her own within a week of training. She gets shot in her abdomen.

“I can still train,” Leia hisses through gritted teeth, sprawled on the ground, her head in Luke’s lap.

“You can go to a bacta tank is what you can do,” Ahsoka scolds but keeps her hand pressed to the burn, trying to soothe it with the Force. She can’t do much aside from superficial healing but at least Leia’s chest stops heaving so terribly.

It’s impossible to tell where Luke’s worry starts and Ahsoka’s ends.

Luke stops bringing books to her apartment in the evenings and starts coming with Leia. Ahsoka doesn’t linger on the change and instead lets it flow. They bicker as though they haven’t lived their whole lives in separation. They keep close and they allow Ahsoka to enter their circle of light, draw her in. And Ahsoka lets them. It goes both ways.

On some nights, she manages a couple of hours of restless sleep filled with screams and lightsabers cutting the air in half. On others, she sits in the living space that’s big and too empty and the windows only remind her of what’s out there and what she doesn’t want — but it feels like she should, this big, impossible world. It feels like she should want it.

She stops denying Anakin’s presence. He’s not always a Force ghost but he’s there. And when he does appear, only a week after Ahsoka dared to speak to him, she asks,

“Why do you keep hanging around?”

Anakin looks at her pointedly and she doesn’t open her mouth for a long time.

When morning breaks she tells him about training Leia, about training Luke. She can sense he knows it all already, the little tidbits she points out, the way Leia’s picking up on Ahsoka’s reverse grip; Luke’s attentiveness when Leia breaks and asks about the Jedi history; Leia’s curious, strategic mind that rarely lets her in but when it does, it does so wholly and overwhelmingly, the reaches of her Force sensitivity further than Ahsoka has ever imagined.

“She has to sense you, one way or another,” she tells him, head tipped back against the couch, the ceiling dark but the floor, just beyond her vision, pooling with sunlight. “But she doesn’t say anything.”

“There’s not much to say.”

“Why?”

Anakin’s dry chuckle makes her look up. He doesn’t need to sit but he does it, anyway, on the wide armchair that’s more decorative than comfortable, placed on the opposite side of a low table. The whole apartment is like that, more utilitarian and decorative than anything else, hard durasteel, clean edges.

“Do you have to ask?”

Ahsoka’s body is starting to fail her, drowsy with sleep, the lack of it.

“Anakin…”

“Don’t ask.” She hears something like begging in his voice. It reminds her of her pleading into the night.

She doesn’t ask how he knows. Of course he does.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “Tell me, how’s Master Kenobi? Master Plo Koon? Are they with you?”

“Well, we’re not exactly sitting around and drinking wine.” Anakin’s tone verges on playful and Ahsoka smiles just hearing it.

“Does it feel…” okay, safe, good?

“It’s hard to tell,” Anakin says gently, picking the words between them and tucking them behind his ear. “It’s not entirely different from being alive. There’s nothing besides the Force.”

Ahsoka hums.

“Don’t follow me just yet, okay?” Anakin jokes but it’s tinged with something dark. “Don’t follow me here.”

Quiet rings in Ahsoka’s ears.

“Why would I?” she deadpans.

Anakin doesn’t answer.

She thinks, i’d follow you anywhere but that doesn’t change the fact you went places beyond my reach.

She thinks, and that hurts me the most, that you are where i am not.

She thinks, you always have been.

“Stop,” he begs. His face contorts with hardly suppressed pain.

She stops.

/

Leia picks her up for practice. late late late rings between them as they go to training grounds.

Ahsoka is never late.

“Master…” Leia starts with gentleness Ahsoka only suspected her of possessing.

Ahsoka turns on the battle droid and tunes out whatever Leia wanted to say.

But Leia’s not in the mood for games. She deflects the blaster fire easily, the droid moving around the courtyard on heavy legs, having nothing on her in this setting. And she springs into the air, slashes the droid in half, and then once more for good measure.

Ahsoka gapes but she feels empty inside.

“You weren’t supposed to do that.”

Leia powers off the lightsaber, hastily shoves it behind her belt and storms towards Ahsoka. Ahsoka thinks Leia might land a blow so she steps off to the side just before Leia can collide with her.

Leia’s fury burns the Force until it screams. The ground beneath them shakes. Even the sky seems to tremble.

“Leia.”

“You told my brother there was strength in togetherness and yet you’ve done nothing but cut yourself off.”

Has she? It felt like she was standing in front of Leia with her hands flipped palms-up and throat exposed. “I’ve done no such thing.”

Leia clenches her jaw and the ground murmurs and Ahsoka stomps her foot, shoving Leia’s Force down.

“Enough.”

“I know he’s here.”

She can only be talking about one person.

“And?”

“I don’t understand why’d you want to side with a murderer.”

The Force trashes and howls inside Ahsoka and she knows she’s verging on something dangerous, something that could’ve made the Jedi Council look at her with more attention, crowd her in.

I am no Jedi, she reminds herself and lets her feelings flow, the sudden and overwhelming need to defend Anakin, despite knowing better, despite hating herself for it.

“He wasn’t always like this.”

“You and my brother,” Leia spits out. “You are so adamant on seeing the good in him.”

“He was good,” Ahsoka forces out. She’s not sure what good means, if they share the same definition of it. Who is to say where’s the line and who crosses it?

“Your judgment is clouded.”

“And yours isn’t?”

Leia’s disappointment is like a knee to the chest. She curls her shoulders forward, eases her stance. Ahsoka got so used to seeing her on the offensive that it strikes her, the soft vulnerability of her body, the Force like an ocean around her, deathly quiet.

“He is my father by blood, yes, but in nothing else. He left too long ago to be anything else. I don’t owe him anything.”

“You don’t,” Ahsoka says gently, taking a step forward. “But I do.”

Leia looks at her sharply. “What? What could you possibly owe him?”

That’s a good question. Because it all comes down to this, doesn’t it? A debt Ahsoka can’t articulate. A stone she keeps chasing after, something to weigh her down. The light feels unnatural, easily breakable. Ahsoka used to strive for it but now she doesn’t trust it.

Unless—

Leia burns like a star long before its explosion. Far from it. Might as well never happen.

Ahsoka shakes her head. She owes so much and she doesn’t know where to put it down.

“Let’s go back to training,” she mutters, hiding the cracks of her voice in lower registers.

The Force bleeds with confusion and refusal. Unarticulated apologies. “Of course.”

Ahsoka is exhausted and she motions for Leia to come closer, so they can pick up where they left off, over the ASP-19’s severed torso.

Leia follows.

/

Anakin’s presence haunts Ahsoka as she walks back to her empty apartment. It’s in the sunlight that splays golden over the green earth around her, in the watchfulness of the skyscrapers, in the durasteel that holds.

He doesn’t appear in his almost corporeal form until she’s closing the door to her apartment, the sun curling up on the hardwood floor, the shadows holding it by the nape, pushing it down.

He appears next to one of the couches, a wounded expression on his face. She wonders if Force ghosts appear differently to everyone or if they choose a form for themselves.

Her old master looks like Anakin and not like whatever came after which was also him but, somehow, with a different name.

The silence is oppressive.

“Leia is making progress, fast,” Ahsoka says, massaging her wrists which throb with a half-forgotten pain of a day-full of training.

“She is,” Anakin confirms carefully and it’s as Ahsoka expected; he’s next to her, always.

She’s not sure if she finds comfort in that.

She sprawls on the couch facing Anakin, the remaining sunlight filtering through his ghostly blue form. If she squints, it’s almost like she can imagine the shadow on the floor to be a holodisk, and her master to be a hologram, far away but here.

“Ahsoka,” he says, voice thick. His eyebrows are drawn and the skin between them wrinkles like he suddenly became very old.

“Did you ever blame me for leaving?” Ahsoka asks softly, surprising even her. She’s tired of the past but it seems to reside in every burn scar on her body and she remembers the day she left the Order as though it was yesterday; even the sun was the same, and Anakin’s face hid in its shadow.

Anakin opens his mouth, closes it. He looks somewhere to the side. Ahsoka knows there’s nothing there so she doesn’t follow his gaze. Only her bedroom, the kitchen. Nothing.

“Yes,” he says so quietly she barely hears him, but then he’s part of the Force so the word already exists in her mind before he says it. “But it wasn’t right.”

“Why?” What about his anger and bitterness wasn’t rightful? What was different then, when she left, that he couldn’t handle later, that wasn’t rightful?

Is anger ever really rightful? Is anything, ever?

Anakin looks at her sharply. “You made a choice.”

Even now he sounds like he’s making excuses for his past self. She doesn’t doubt he tried rationalizing it; the entire Jedi Council tried rationalizing suspecting and throwing her out and bringing her back, and saying it was just another test. Even then they couldn’t admit they were wrong.

And the Jedi Council was all Anakin ever knew of family.

“I was your friend,” Ahsoka says and manages just in time before her voice inevitably fractures and she thinks no, closer than that. “You were my family.”

She thinks of the time when she left and had to fend for herself and it was always his training that stayed with her, the inherent need to care for others, to put herself in the line of fire, warm bodies behind her and no lightsabers at her sides but always, always others more important than her.

This is how Anakin lived. This is how he taught Ahsoka to live.

This is how Ahsoka continues to live.

“You were,” he agrees with so much warmth it’s like he’s remembering, too. All that he taught her. All that she might have given him in return, though she suspects it wasn’t much.

Anakin frowns and Ahsoka snaps the Force around her shut.

Denial echoes.

Ahsoka wonders, not for the first time, what would’ve happened if she stayed. If she begged him to leave with her. Could she have avoided it? Could they? What if she talked to him and warned him about the Chancellor, like Obi-Wan wanted? What if, when Yoda asked and looked at her with so much hope in his blue, hologram eyes, she had hoped a little less, had trusted she’d meet Anakin again a little less, (if she trusted the Council more) would that change anything?

At what point do their choices turn into destiny? At which point is this all inevitable?

Ahsoka lowers her gaze to her lap, pants dirtied by the earth, trying to deflect Leia’s spars with her shoto, ducking and bruising her knees. She notices the ache in them now like it has been there for a while but she did her best to ignore it.

“If you could turn back time, would you?” she asks quietly, knowing full well she’s breaking something with that question.

The Force around her freezes over. Anakin stands perfectly still. She expects Obi-wan to show up, to say Anakin’s name. She can hear the echo of Yoda’s Skywalker, Plo Koon’s.

His name grows in her mouth like a supernova. She doesn’t say it.

Anakin’s shoulders slump. The Force trembles and it’s full of so many unshed tears. It’s like a wound the blood seeps out of and never seems to stop, and then it heals but not properly, doesn’t scar.

And then scars but it’s too late.

“Of course,” he whispers. “But I’m not sure it would change anything.”

Ahsoka’s mouth goes dry. To think Anakin was beyond the point of no return until Luke found him is unthinkable. To think nobody could’ve saved him, no matter what they’d have done—

“I thought you were dead,” Anakin says suddenly. His hands ball into fists and he hides them in his glittering blue robe. “After—”

He cuts himself off.

She supplies, after the end of everything.

“I thought you were dead, too,” she says, remembering the moon’s bright surface, the wreckage of the cruiser-carrier like an animal carcass. The helmets painted orange. The legacy she left behind: so many graves.

“I found your lightsaber, near the wreckage,” Anakin continues, his voice sounding more distant as though he’s in free fall. “I took it with me. Obi-wan always insisted your lightsaber is your life.”

Ahsoka doesn’t have arms strong enough to catch him but she wishes she did.

“It wasn’t yours,” she says carefully.

Anakin looks at her for a long, long moment, a moment in which a lifetime passes. “No, it wasn’t.”

Ahsoka remembers the blue of it as though it was yesterday. The blue mirroring the hue of Anakin’s own lightsaber.

She tries to picture him in black, the long cape billowing in the wind, the strained breath behind the mask of terrors. Looking at the moon-dust swirling in the air, covering up the ship, everything white. She wonders if he saw helmets or faces.

She wonders what he thought about the orange, if it was still there at all.

Or if there was nothing, just that lightsaber.

“You know, after our fight on Malachor, I stayed behind.”

“In the Sith temple?” he frowns, steps closer, for the first time, steps closer, distress rippling through the Force, don’t follow me just yet. “Why?”

same reason you picked up that lightsaber, she thinks.

“You know why,” she says, old wounds aching.

It was dark and terrifying and she lets those feelings drift into the Force because they don’t serve her anymore. She made a promise so bright, so full of disgusting, rotten hope that it kept her alive even as the Sith whispers tried to take possession of her heart, even as the things she learned burned her throat.

The promise still lives in her mouth.

I won’t leave you. Not this time.

Anakin’s ghost form shivers in the invisible wind, the outline of his body blurring.

“Did you hope—”

“Always,” she says without hesitation.

and i’m not sure if that hope saved me or was what ultimately killed me.

Anakin’s eyes grow round and his empty hands fall at his sides. What do you do with such hope?

“I’m sorry, Ahsoka.” The way he says her name is the exact same way he did back then, on Malachor. Like begging a god for forgiveness, yearning to be heard and understood. “I never wanted to hurt you.

“I know,” she says because it’s true, her Anakin never wanted to hurt her and she trusted him with her life.

Her Anakin never left her behind.

but you did, you did.

/

But later, in the dead of night—

and yet, i love you still. after all this time, i’m incapable of calling this wound anything else.

/

Ahsoka’s life is a string of missed connections which all, inexplicably, unapologetically, resurface.

She remembers so clearly the twin red blades of Barriss’ betrayal. She remembers exactly how the sky looked when she left the Jedi Temple, remembers the precise downturn of Anakin’s mouth. She remembers the overhead light in Bo Katan’s ship because she did not turn back to look at the Martez sisters. She remembers the thudding of her lightsaber on the moon’s surface — not hers nearly enough, more Anakin’s than hers, too blue. She remembers the shape of the promise she made Kaeden as she was preparing to leave her behind. She remembers the naked hope of Anakin’s eye as she split Vader’s mask.

Obi-wan’s teachings reach her from the periphery of the Force. It is not good to dwell.

It is, indeed, not.

But every time Ahsoka left (and left and left), it’s herself she left behind.

She’s not sure whose body she carries, who inhabits her. She has stripped herself of everything, of her entire history.

Is this what it means to be a Jedi? To be completely and truly alone? To leave until you have no words left to say that don’t resemble goodbye?

The Force is all around her. Ahsoka has nowhere and everywhere to go.

One of them is worse.

She forgot how to recognize which one.

/

Ilum is a ragged vestige of a planet.

It’s there alright, illuminated by the system’s only star, the white of it stark against the darkness of space but where once it was whole, now it echoes with the Empire’s footprints. There’s a wide rift seemingly splitting the planet in half, like two hands tried to break it apart and failed. Ahsoka can make out the artificial substructure even as the T-1 shuttle drops out of hyperspace.

Leia leans forward in the passenger seat, her hands gripping the yoke so hard her knuckles go white. Luke’s curious head appears between them. The Force crests with the twins’ bewilderment and disgust and sadness and anger, all at once, but they reign their feelings in before Ahsoka opens her mouth.

“The Imperial Trench,” Ahsoka explains, naming the rift in the middle of the planet.

“They excavated kyber crystals…” Leia starts.

“To power both Death Stars,” Luke finishes.

Ahsoka nods and gently steers the shuttle towards the planet’s surface. The Ilum that she knows — seen from a lower altitude, almost eye-level with Master Yoda, the snow-covered land, the caves echoing with tiny steps and shouts of glee and so much light — it belongs to her memories.

It makes her feel— upset. Sad. She wants to, against all odds, unmake what is unfixable.

But there’s just no way. There’s only a destroyed, gutted Ilum and Ahsoka’s memories and the past that knocks on every door.

The planet is covered in snow and jagged stones spring from Ilum’s hard surface. Ahsoka lowers the shuttle into the Trench and lands on a dark landing pad, one of many that weren’t there before. The thick layer of snow scuttles sideways from the power of the thrusters. Behind her, Luke zips up his coat and pulls a hood over his head. Leia puts on her gloves and takes a glowrod out of the compartment.

The three of them walk down the T-1’s ramp. The wind howls and the old machinery around them groans.

They stop in front of huge, durasteel doors, the snow splattered across them like white blood. Luke hugs himself and rubs his arms, looking up, up towards the sky. Leia exhales and her breath escapes her in a cloud.

She is calm and Ahsoka can’t read her at all. She’s gotten so good in the months that Ahsoka’s been teaching her.

“You ready?” Ahsoka asks, just to cut off the howling.

Leia shrugs. “We’ll see.”

Ahsoka nods and extends her hand towards the door, closes her eyes. The post has been abandoned since the Battle of Endor, months ago, and the New Republic hasn’t been quick to reinstall themselves on Ilum, but even then all the planet was ever really used for was the Jedi lightsabers, before the Empire. Ahsoka reaches out with the Force and senses all the tiny, intricate mechanisms, the magnetized lock, feels the sheer weight of the doors, the long rasp of durasteel. Her fingers twitch and there’s a heavy thump, and then the entrance begins to open. The ground beneath her feet shudders and she opens her eyes. The snow falls off the doors in tiny waterfalls. Luke’s curiosity is already inside but Leia’s still guarded.

“Well,” Ahsoka says when the doors give their final shudder and stop, hidden inside the rocky walls. She glances at Leia and motions inside. “You may go. Remember, you will know when the crystal is right. It knows you. It has chosen you already.”

Leia’s eyebrow twitches. For a moment, Ahsoka senses that Leia wants to test her faith, her knowledge but she surpasses the urge, presses her lips into a thin line and takes the first step forward. She stops at the mouth of the cave, her bright figure sharply outlined by the dark. She turns on the glowrod and light spills out. She glances behind her back and Ahsoka catches her eyes. There’s a tremor of reassurance, and then she enters.

Darkness swallows her with a simple hunger.

Luke watches the entrance long after the light of the glowrod disappears in the cavern. The wind is loud in Ahsoka’s ears. The cold bites her cheeks.

There’s a scape of synthetic fabric as Luke glances down. Ahsoka knows he keeps his lightsaber attached to his belt underneath. “My crystal’s synthetic.”

He sounds hollow.

Ahsoka shrugs and bumps his shoulder with hers. “Mine are stolen.”

Luke looks up sharply, the startled hopefulness of his eyes before he looks back towards the cave.

“You can go,” Ahsoka says.

“I don’t need a crystal.”

“I know.”

Luke goes into the cave with the green light of his saber paving the way.

Ahsoka goes back into the shuttle and pours herself a cup of steaming Chandrilan tea. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, she watches the mouth of the cave for hours before the twins emerge, talking. Ahsoka can’t hear them but she bets their voices are louder than the wind.

She prepares the shuttle for take-off as Luke and Leia board the T-1. They continue talking but Ahsoka doesn’t focus on their words too much, understanding a simple desire for privacy.

“There’s tea,” she says when Leia drops down in the co-pilot's seat. Her hand is balled into a fist and light tries to escape through the gaps between her fingers.

“I’ll get it,” Luke says and Ahsoka hears him grabbing the cups and the container.

The shuttle trembles as the hatch door close.

“How was it?” Ahsoka asks, punching in the coordinates back to Hanna City.

Leia opens her hand. The crystal rests in the centre of her palm. The light spills on her lap.

Blue, so blue.

/

Leia builds a lightsaber with Ahsoka’s guidance. She works efficiently, knowing exactly what she wants. When she’s done, she weighs the weapon in her hand. It’s metallic and copper, with mother-of-pearl inlays.

It’s beautiful.

They start training earlier that day and there is a change in the Force, the simple knowledge of one’s own lightsaber, the kyber crystal calling out to Leia and Leia alone. Ahsoka twirls her own saber in her hand, missing its familiar weight.

The earth is slippery, the rain that ricocheted off the windows during the night. Ahsoka powers her weapon and finds her footing.

They spar, blue against white.

Ahsoka has to blink to get the afterimage out of her eyes.

/

Hours later, when both of them are dripping wet, Han comes running.

“Leia!” he shouts, his hair dishevelled and a wide grin splitting his face in half.

Ahsoka powers down her lightsaber, Leia following suit. They stand with their backs straight but Leia takes a step closer, controlling the heaving of her chest. “What is it?”

Han skids to a stop, nearly colliding with Leia, Leia’s hand reaching out and steading him by the shoulder. Ahsoka clasps her hands behind her back, the hilt of her lightsaber burning her palms.

“Peace talks,” Han says breathlessly, his inhales ragged. The Force swims around them in many currents, unsure which way to go. “The Empire. They’ve reached out.”

Ahsoka frowns. The Force stills before it erupts, Leia in its epicentre. Her body, however, is unmoving and scrupulously calm. “Han, I need you to say it again. Peace talks?”

She glances at Ahsoka, so quickly Ahsoka could blink and miss it, almost as if Leia does it despite herself, gauging for her reaction. The Force winces as she withdraws.

(Or perhaps it’s Ahsoka. Hard to tell.)

“Take me to the Chancellor,” Leia says sharply, leaning forward and taking the first step, tugging Han behind.

“Yes, princess, right this way,” he jokes and Leia lets go of his arm just to swat at it.

Ahsoka follows. She senses Leia’s awareness of her presence but doesn’t comment on it.

There has to be more to these peace talks. It’s unlike the Empire to surrender like this after such erratic and vicious fights. Even on the losing side, they have refused to bow. What has changed? What are they missing?

Ahsoka doesn’t trust the information, not until she has someone like Mon Mothma explain it to her.

They catch her as she hurries out of the Senate. Four guards dressed in long, blue robes are flanking her sides, blaster rifles slung over their shoulders. Mothma stops as soon as she spots Leia, something like hidden relief on her face.

“Senator Organa. General Tano. General Solo. I’m glad to see you here.”

Ahsoka halts just behind Leia, the calculated moment before their shoulders collide. She nods towards Mothma, “Chancellor.”

Han salutes her.

Mothma inclines her head in greeting. Her guards spread out, leaving them a breadth of privacy.

“What’s going on?” Leia demands, impatient. “Han talks of peace—”

“Well, we hope,” Mothma cuts her off and Ahsoka’s body tenses. “We just got an official transmission about the Imperial remnants’ willingness to grant freedom to our former Rebel Alliance prisoners from Ashmead's Lock.”

The Force expands with Leia’s shock, leaving a perfect circle in the middle. Ahsoka crosses her arms and considers.

Ashmead's Lock is situated on Kashyyyk, an old ship that crashed on site centuries ago which the Empire reconstructed and utilized as a prison. Even though many Rebel and Wookie prisoners were said to be still kept inside, the New Republic wasn’t able to run their own rescue mission because of the Imperial hold on the planet and half the system.

“Why now?” Ahsoka asks, unable to keep the scepticism out of her voice. “Are they asking for anything in return? Their prisoners?”

Mon Mothma shakes her head once. “They wish to open peace talks and our willingness is what seems to interest them in return. I, too, am full of doubt but the talks about freeing the prisoners will be underway as soon as in a few hours.”

“That would mean the end of the war,” Leia muses, mostly to herself, her head angled down in thought.

Han shifts his weight from one foot to another, his hand on his hip. “About damn time.”

“Senator, I expect to see you during the Senate’s meeting later today,” Mothma says with finality to her words, her careful eyes fully on Leia, analyzing her.

Leia tilts her chin up and nods curtly, hands balling into fists at her sides. The Chancellor turns to Ahsoka, her face unreadable but the inconsistency of her faith jumbling up the Force. “General. Though you are not a Senator, your presence and opinions would be greatly appreciated.”

Pleasantries. Ahsoka doesn’t plan on showing up. Something about all this doesn’t sit right with her.

“Of course, Chancellor.”

With a slight tilt of Mothma’s head, the guards are back at her sides, their blue capes billowing behind them as they lead her away. Leia turns to watch the retreating figures but Ahsoka keeps her eye on her.

“What do you think?” Ahsoka asks despite the fact that Leia’s conflict is palpable in the damp air.

Han positions himself in front of them, thrusts his thumb behind his shoulder. “I don’t trust this woman one bit but the Kashyyyk thing seems legit. Chewie’s gonna have a field day with this one.”

Leia regards him with consideration before she turns towards Ahsoka. Ahsoka’s body tenses the same way it does before a fight.

“Mon Mothma’s intentions are clear but the Imperial Remnant’s aren’t. It wouldn’t be wise to trust them but at the same time—” Leia’s expression turns sad. “What will it take for us to believe peace has come?”

It strikes Ahsoka full-on, her inability to trust the war to be over, fully, completely. She’s been living with war sewed to the inside of her skin, the ground beneath her one, huge battlefield.

Han steps closer, bumps his shoulder into Leia’s, their life forces joining in unison. “It seems like we’ve got to start believing it sooner rather than later.”

His words do little to appease Ahsoka or, by the dubiously concealed worry, Leia. Her lips are pressed into a thin line, her gaze distant.

Han’s usual laid-back demeanor disappears for a split second, the furrowing of his brow, the twitching of his mouth, before his concern buries itself under.

“I have to go,” he says as nonchalantly as he can, taking a step forward, his hand at Leia’s nape, his mouth to her forehead. The Force, all at once, stops its erratic shaking as Leia closes her eyes. “Debriefing. See you later, love.”

Leia hums and her body sways as he lets go of her. She looks tiny next to him.

And then he’s walking away, towards one of the tall buildings surrounding the square.

“Leia,” Ahsoka says as gently as she can, her hand twitching at her side, wanting to reach out, stopping herself before she can truly move. “We can resume training tomorrow.”

Leia snaps out of it momentarily, with a ferocity that almost takes Ahsoka aback — except that she’s used to it by now, remembering what it was like dealing with Anakin’s sudden moods.

“No. We have to continue, especially now. We might have peace but it’s fragile.”

Ahsoka smirks and moves back towards the pathway between the buildings that leads to the training grounds, Leia following close by.

“You know,” Ahsoka starts with some of that light in her voice. “Jedi were supposed to be keepers of the peace.”

Leia looks ahead, her stride languid and royal. They move from the sunlit square into the shadows of the trees. The birds sing.

“Were you?” Leia asks finally. “A keeper of peace?”

Ahsoka’s smile falls. The ground is soft under her feet — last night’s rainfall sinking deeper into the soil.

“I was born to a war for peace and never knew it long enough to keep it.”

Leia slows down, the shadow of the huge tintolive tree shattering her body into light and dark. “What do you think, then? About the news?”

Ahsoka stops. She sees Leia out of her peripheral. She stands proud and tall, rarely allowing herself moments of weakness, even when nobody’s watching her.

Only Ahsoka.

“I wish I could believe in it, is all.”

Leia nods slowly. “I thought as much.”

She is fierce in this rare way that Ahsoka has known only a few people to be, during the Clone Wars when the fear was large but not as overpowering as though swallowing the whole galaxy whole. And perhaps her poise, the abundant confidence is where her weakness is. Perhaps it’s precisely at times she’s outwardly perfect, inside the Force coils and uncoils like a poisonous snake.

She has so much of Anakin in her that Ahsoka cannot and will not deny it anymore. And she has to wonder, if it wasn’t for Anakin, if the twins weren’t of the Skywalker bloodline, would Ahsoka want to train them at all? Would she notice, would she reach out?

She’s had all those chances to be a Master. Why now?

Leia regards her without flinching but Ahsoka guards her thoughts better now. She doesn’t store those feelings, either. They disgust her.

“Your flyboy was right,” she offers. “We’ll have to start believing sooner rather than later.”

“Maybe,” Leia says warily.

Ahsoka doesn’t blame Leia for mistrusting her.

She didn’t earn her trust. Doesn’t deserve it. How could she, if she’s training her because she can’t leave a friend long gone behind.

/

News trickle in: prisoners from Kashyyyk are to be freed, chosen New Republic pilots directly leading the recovery, ultimately resulting in Ashmead’s Lock shut-down. It feels too impossible and yet there is a name — Liberation Day, championed by Mon Mothma herself, when the prisoners are to arrive on Chandrila. And with it, peace talks.

Rae Sloane is the face of the remaining Empire. The New Republic doesn’t have much on her aside from the stolen Imperial scandocs. Ahsoka goes through them briefly, flipping through Sloane’s years at the academy, rising through the ranks, her participation in the battle of Endor aboard Star Destroyer Vigilance. And then, silence. The Empire going off-grid, cut from their servers. Their recent actions are so scattered Ahsoka wonders if they’ve even found a way to communicate. By the looks of it, they’ve separated, and become lone rangers. She has to wonder what Rae Sloane’s part is in all of this, if she’s even the person they need to sign the peace treaty. The theory seems feeble and she brings it up with Mothma on the day before Liberation Day, planning the military aid for the festivities.

“A treaty is a treaty,” Mon Mothma says, scanning the image of Hanna City on a circular holotable in front of them. “I need a win, general. Isn’t this a win enough?”

Ahsoka doesn’t say that’s an unreliable way to go about events that could shift the tides of war but she says nothing. Mon Mothma glances at her and then back at the plan.

“Just keep me safe, general. I’ve got enough to worry about as is.”

“Yes, Chancellor.”

Ahsoka gets her own squad assigned, including snipers that she positions on top of buildings surrounding the key streets and alleys. There’s supposed to be a parade marching through the centre of the city, all the way to the Old Gather-House where the prisoners will arrive, the rescue mission led by Han, and where Mon Mothma will give her speech. The latter is not under Ahsoka’s jurisdiction but she positions herself close to the Chancellor in all the planning, always on the periphery. Mothma doesn’t give any signs of deeper contemplation, only agreeing to Ahsoka’s troops’ stations. Once upon a time, to have a Jedi by your side would’ve been a sign of power. Now, it might make one look like a lunatic, believing in old legends.

Mon Mothma is far from a lunatic.

Later that night, Ahsoka paces the length of the windows spanning her living room, the city submerged in darkness, distant waves crashing on the shores, a low hum of speeders travelling between the tall, silver skyscrapers. Even before Anakin appears, Ahsoka starts talking, “There’s something— wrong, about all this. Can’t you feel it, Master?”

When Anakin doesn’t answer Ahsoka stops with her back to the windows just to make sure she didn’t imagine his presence; she doesn’t deem it all too implausible. She’s been getting too used to feeling Anakin in the Force, and her old Master appearing.

There’s a delicate smile playing on his lips, a wobbling in the Force. Whatever link Ahsoka still has to him feels warm and welcoming and a tiny bit amused.

Ahsoka rolls her eyes and resumes her frantic strolling. “Oh, it’s about the Master, right?”

Anakin shrugs as though to say old habits die hard.

“You were saying about the sinister forces?”

“No, not sinister.” Ahsoka pauses to consider and reach out in the Force. It prickles but she can’t see anything beyond the dark clouds. “Well, maybe sinister. The thing is, I just can’t see what it is.”

“Perhaps you’re not looking hard enough.” It doesn’t sound like a real reprimand, more like Anakin trying to match Obi-Wan’s tone.

And oh, if Obi-Wan were here…

“Believe me,” Anakin adds nonchalantly, crossing his arms. “The Force is with me on this one.”

“Is it?” A new but all too familiar voice asks.

Ahsoka digs her heels into the floorboards, nearly slipping on her bare feet.

Obi-Wan’s Force ghost glitters next to Anakin, his hands hidden in his robes. Just like Anakin, he looks the same as she saw him last, the same trimmed beard, the same brazen glint in his eye.

“Was wondering when you’d show up,” Anakin says as though it’s absolutely normal for Obi-Wan to be here. And maybe it is. Ahsoka can only guess how the Force works until one no longer has a corporeal body.

“You were being so loud I couldn’t sleep.” Obi-Wan inclines his head towards Anakin, sharing some hidden joke only known to them.

Anakin inclines his head, as well, with a mischievous smile. “I apologize.”

There’s a master that should go in there, Ahsoka thinks, but Anakin must’ve worked better on his unsaid longings.

“Master Kenobi,” Ahsoka chokes out because it’s been so long and, for a moment, old resentments stay old.

“Obi-Wan will suffice, Ahsoka, thank you.”

“What—” she starts but then she raises her hands in surrender. “No, you know what? I don’t want to know. We’re signing a treaty with the Imperial Remnant tomorrow and—”

“You have a bad feeling about this,” Anakin and Obi-Wan supply in unison, looking rather proud of themselves.

“Yes, that, exactly.”

Obi-Wan touches his beard and it transports Ahsoka back to the Clone Wars instantaneously. She swears she can hear Rex giving out orders to the 501st, swears she hears the comlinks crackling with incoming confirmations.

“I must admit.” Obi-Wan strokes his beard and Anakin watches him with an undivided focus. “Someone’s trying to tip the scales again. And I’m not sure if it’s Rae Sloane.”

“I knew it,” Ahsoka mutters and clenches her fists.

“It’s too late to back down now,” Anakin reminds her.

Ahsoka waves her hand in the air. “I know, I know. Mothma won’t listen to me.”

Anakin arches up his brow. “I thought you were able to impose your will on anyone.”

“That just about worked on you,” Obi-Wan muses with hints of laughter.

Anakin scoffs. “Like you were immune.”

Ahsoka pauses mid-step and puts her hands on her hips. Anakin and Obi-Wan are glaring at each other. “To be fair, I was his favourite.”

“Oh, woah,” Anakin throws his hands in the air. “You were no such thing. Right, Master?”

And there it is. Obi-Wan doesn’t correct him but a tectonic shift moves through the Force, quickly surpassed.

“I don’t pick favourites,” Obi-Wan says carefully, stroking his beard. “That would be uncivilized.”

Anakin throws her a triumphant look but the Force gossips and whispers.

Obi-wan smiles a small, secret smile. “Admittedly, Ahsoka did—”

“No!” Anakin gasps before Obi-wan has the chance to finish the sentence.

Ahsoka bends in half, laughing.

/

In the early morning, Ahsoka walks with Luke to the docks where the pilots are preparing their ships for the rescue mission. The sun is weak and bleary at this hour, and the deeper greys of the ships are pronounced, matching the flight suits of the technicians and the tubes trailing on the ground, pumping fuel. The Millenium Falcon is standing proudly in the centre, its hatch lowered, Chewie boarding the ship and disappearing inside. Ahsoka spots Han a few feet away from the entrance, discussing something lightheartedly with Leia, their bodies tilted towards each other and mouths trying to work around smiles.

Next to Ahsoka, Luke beams. Leia turns her head towards them just as Luke starts to wave, the Force reaching out and clasping their hands together across time and space.

Ahsoka asked Luke to stay and to be there for the ceremonies. She trusts in his skill, and besides, if there was anything wrong, he’d be the only person able to act as quickly as her. Ahsoka tries not to mourn the absence of Leia, her training stable enough that she’d be of significant help but then Leia will be back with the prisoners at the end of the parade, arriving at the most crucial moment. Ahsoka sent her the plans after waking up, the exact way everything is supposed to go. Leia was at the briefing the other day, as a Senator she’ll be there with the other officials, but Ahsoka asked her to bring the lightsaber along.

Ahsoka spots the weapon at Leia’s hip, next to the pistol holster. Something about the sight makes her content but she can’t quite place what.

“You didn’t have to come,” Leia says when they come close, her face turned towards Luke but giving Ahsoka a welcoming incline of her head. “We’ll be back soon.”

“Unless you want to go with us.” Han’s voice cheerful and booming and he clasps his hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I could always use a co-pilot.”

“Hey,” Leia exclaims in mock offence and crosses her arms over her chest.

Luke grins and pats Han’s hip. “That’s alright, I’m staying. Need to help with security and such.”

“Right.” Han slips his hand off and at the same time drapes his other arm over Leia. “Big guy stuff.”

Leia looks positively bored with the exchange and glances towards Ahsoka. “I got your plans this morning. I’ll go over them again on the way.”

“You’ve already read them?” Ahsoka doesn’t know why she’s surprised. She wouldn’t expect anything less.

Leia elbows Han lightly. “This one was taking forever in the shower.”

Han runs his hand through his hair. “Perfection takes time, princess.”

Leia closes her eyes like she’s about to start praying to whichever god will listen. Luke knocks against Ahsoka as he laughs. Ahsoka hides her smile behind her hand.

When it’s go time, Ahsoka wishes them good luck and Luke says, “May the Force be with you.” Han salutes him and Leia says, “And with you.”

They step away from the landing pads and watch the ships depart off-orbit, one by one. Luke looks towards the blue sky long after the ships disappear from sight.

“Are you worried about them?” Ahsoka asks.

Luke drops his gaze to the sea stretching to the horizon. “No, not really.”

Ahsoka hums and then knocks against his shoulder lightly. She turns on her heel and Luke follows, falling into step easily.

“And you?”

Ahsoka tries not to show in the Force that the question startles her. Is she worried? For the day as a whole, yes, but for the rescue mission?

“No,” she says with a lot more conviction than she’s feeling these days.

She should be worried, she thinks, but being raised by Jedi has skewed her perception of danger. There she is, sending her student on a risky and taxing mission with nothing more than good luck and furthermore, expecting her to be back on duty as soon as she returns. Perhaps she should be overthinking here but it’s not like she hasn’t been by Anakin’s side, following him to the front lines. She recalls keeping tallies of destroyed droids. It’s not the greatest background for a healthy mentorship.

But then, neither Luke nor Leia knew what it’s truly like to grow up in a safe environment. Ahsoka isn’t distorting their reality because it’s been distorted long before she stumbled upon them.

And yes, perhaps Ahsoka should be worried but she trusts Leia, trusts even her recklessness and stupid bravery. She knows she’s given her sufficient training — not nearly enough but sufficient.

She can work with that.

“Your sister is going to make a great Jedi,” Ahsoka says finally. “You’re both doing your father proud.”

The Force trips over itself in joy but it steadies and dwarfs something else. Ahsoka frowns, trying to look into the doubt, into what could’ve caused it.

Finally, Luke asks, looking down at his feet, his hands behind his back, “And you?”

Ahsoka almost stops. “Me?”

They step on a rare sandy track between the trees and Luke sends a stone skidding with the tip of his shoe. “Are you proud of us?”

Oh.

“Of course I’m proud of you,” Ahsoka says without much consideration. She lets him know in the Force that they’re the Skywalkers, that greatness is etched in their blood.

A sliver of disappointment trickles into the Force and Ahsoka knows she made a mistake.

Luke covers it with his usual bright smile. The imbalance disappears.

Ahsoka can’t get rid of the sense of displacement all the way among the trees.

/

An Imperial Lambda shuttle is escorted by four Y-wings to the Chandrilan spaceport. Mon Mothma stands at the helm of the procession as the ship rotates to land, the New Republic starfighters touching down first. Her white robes flutter in the sudden gust of wind sent from the thrusters. Ahsoka keeps to the middle of the small crowd of officials, Luke keeping to her side, his hands behind his back. Ahsoka reaches out in the Force but she doesn’t find anything besides the anticipation of the people around her and an unknown void with its source in the Imperial shuttle. None of it is too out of the ordinary but she leans towards Luke and whispers, “Keep your eyes peeled.”

Luke nods. He’s on high alert already but being extra careful never hurts, considering neither of them ever had the chance to accustom themselves to anything other than unexpected circumstances.

The hatch of the Imperial shuttle lowers and two Imperial Royal Guards in long crimson capes and faces obscured by red masks appear, each wielding a force pike. They stop as soon as their feet touch the ground, guarding both sides of the hatch. And then a woman who Ahsoka recognizes as Rae Sloane from the scandocs descends from the shuttle, accompanied by another female human, their backs as straight as a rod. The officers are reeking of the Empire, the sense of entitlement, the hands clutched behind their backs, the pristine uniforms.

Ahsoka extends towards Luke a comforting cape to hide under in the Force but his demeanor is already sober, if only a little anxious. For a moment, she forgets she is dealing with neither Anakin nor Leia, Luke’s self control the size of another planetary system. She doesn’t retreat the cape and his anxiety eases down.

Sloane approaches Mothma with the Red Guards flanking her sides, her attaché following a step behind. They exchange pleasantries Ahsoka doesn’t quite catch. Several people detach from the group and go up the ramp to inspect the shuttle, their pistols drawn.

Luke bounces on the balls of his feet and tries to get a good vantage point over the heads of the officials.

You can go, Ahsoka tells him in the Force. It’s useless to keep him away from the action if there’s promise of any. She doesn’t sense any other life forces beside the New Republic people and a single pilot that hasn’t yet descended from the shuttle.

Luke glances up at her with a sudden wash of gratitude and gently breaks away from the crowd, rounds the duo conversing at the front and disappears inside the ship, unclasping the lightsaber from his hip.

The inspection doesn’t last more than ten minutes. Luke descends first, to Ahsoka’s mortification, chatting with the Imperial pilot as though they’re best friends. The guards behind him give a sign to their leader who’s standing close to Ahsoka. The ship is clear. They can proceed with the festivities.

Luke breaks off from the pilot and walks with a spring in his step towards Ahsoka.

“What were you two chatting about?” she asks, trying to keep the stern out of her voice.

“Oh, just the shuttle.” Luke shrugs, none of Ahsoka’s concern registering as alarming. “I said it’s an awful thing to pilot and he started telling me about the mods they had installed on the ship.”

“Any weapons?”

“Of course, but I made sure they were all disabled before we descended.”

Again, Ahsoka feels a dissonance, a loss of direction on how to proceed with a Jedi of another generation. She’s getting rusty instead of improving.

The celebrations are loud and colourful, a great mass of people flocking the streets of Hanna City with banners and ribbons and flowers. Ahsoka and Luke slip to the back of the procession and then escape entirely, keeping it in sight from afar. Ahsoka scans the crowd but the Force is joyful, nothing jarring and out of the ordinary.

Do you feel anything?

Luke answers immediately, No. And then, aloud, “Should I be worried?”

Ahsoka considers. She’s never trusted peace too much. Sloane and Mothma stop to talk, guards flanking them on all sides. One of Ahsoka’s snipers shifts from one elbow to another atop a three-story building on the other side of the street.

“Not necessarily.”

A sharp understanding. “You don’t trust this peace.”

“I don’t.” Ahsoka can immediately sense Luke’s disagreement, the pure, unadulterated hope in Liberation Day.

“Why? They’re freeing the prisoners from Kashyyyk, they came here to sign the peace treaty.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. Sloane and Mothma move and Ahsoka nudges Luke’s shoulder before she matches their pace.

“Just a feeling.”

She doesn’t sense anything unsettling in Sloane, nor her attaché or the Guards. They all scan their surroundings and when Sloane’s anger prickles it’s because she’s unused to the disorderly manner of New Republic celebrations. The Gabdorin music seems to be getting on her nerves especially. Ahsoka agrees it’s an acquired taste. Luke tucks his head to his chest to hide his smirk.

By the end of the day, Ahsoka’s feet hurt while being stationed with little to no movement. Her comlink splits with incoming blue six, clear. over. blue two, clear. over. blue five, nothing on the horizon. over the further they go. Luke’s been growing restless, detaching himself from her and patrolling sections of the crowd he wasn’t initially assigned to but then he was supposed to be a wild card, not having to keep post the same way Ahsoka does.

The procession goes all the way to the Old Gather-House, a looming stone building with tall columns and a grand entrance, bright lights flickering inside. It’s where the festivities have to circle back, letting the officials pour into the buildings flanked by Senate Guards and military volunteers.

Ahsoka lifts her forearm to her mouth and speaks into the comlink, “To all units, the party’s over. Code Iris. Over.”

The radio buzzes with confirmations. Code Iris is nothing but a regrouping of troops to gather closer to the Old-Gather House without having the forces fully disperse. They still need to keep an eye on the celebrations but perhaps without snipers. Regular Chandrilan guards will do.

As Ahsoka keeps watch on the crowd, Luke next to her, an officer with the markings of a lieutenant descends from the Old-Gather House steps and approaches them.

“General Skywalker,” the woman says. “An incoming transmission from your sister.”

“Thank you.” Luke glances towards Ahsoka.

Coming, Master?

Ahsoka follows Luke into one of the rooms in the building where a holotable presents Leia, looking as put together as ever, the image wobbly and unstable.

“Brother. Master,” she greets them matter-of-factly. “The liberation of Kashyyyk is proceeding as planned. We should be wrapping up soon and returning within three standard Chandrilan hours.”

“How are the prisoners?” Luke asks before Ahsoka has the chance to.

“In surprisingly good states,” Leia says with a twitch of an eyebrow. “Which should be good but—”

“Isn’t,” Ahsoka supplies.

Leia purses her lips. “Exactly.”

“We’re ready on our side,” Ahsoka adds and crosses her arms over her chest, pressing her feet into the ground to find a root for her strength. “The festivities are progressing smoothly.”

“And Sloane?” Leia asks with a grimace. Ahsoka surpasses a smile. This, she can deal with.

“Everything you love in an Imperial.”

Leia scoffs but she’s amused. “Can’t wait to meet her.”

“Come back soon,” Luke pleads and leans his weight over the holotable. “This day is getting boring.”

Ahsoka wants to say boring is good but she would lie.

Luke gives her a sour look like he heard her in the Force anyway.

“Luke is right.” That gets a surprised expression from both twins and Ahsoka feels a twist of elation. “I want this peace treaty signed and call the whole operation off.”

“Rebels,” Leia scoffs but the corners of her mouth are hooked playfully.

“You were one, too,” Luke reminds her with twin delight.

“Oh, give me a break.” She glances behind her shoulder and back to them. “I should go now. We’re getting ready to leave. May the Force be with you.”

“Travel safely,” Ahsoka says.

The image splits in the middle and folds on itself.

/

The prisoners arrive in five ships. Ahsoka remains near Mon Mothma but Luke takes a squadron to receive the party. The atmosphere is euphoric — even Mothma can’t suppress her elation. People are gathered on the Senate Plaza situated near the Old-Gather House where Rae Sloane and her group remain. The peace talks are to happen the next morning, anyway.

Han looks every inch a war hero and Leia, even though jaded and fatigued, joins the Senators behind Mon Mothma. Ahsoka stands next to the podium, looking over the newcomers with Luke. They do look clean and even somewhat healthy, with a few exceptions. Almost like they were no prisoners at all but simple citizens of another planet.

Their families, if they have them, are waiting in the crowd — Ahsoka can almost feel their tears on her skin. It’s an evening that is quiet, the noise that followed them during the day no longer there.

Everything is peaceful.

And then everything happens at once.

Ahsoka feels the shift in the Force like a switch. Luke is turning towards her when the first of the prisoners throws themselves at a nearby soldier, snatches their pistol and aims at Mon Mothma. Ahsoka is drawing her lightsaber when other prisoners slam into guards, grabbing for their weapons.

Her people were positioned to protect the Chancellor. No one paid any extra attention to the prisoners.

The people in the square begin to shout as blaster fire erupts on the podium. Several senators trip over themselves as they try to run. Ahsoka shouts through the comlink, “Switch your weapons to stun! We don’t want to kill them.”

Luke charges at the prisoners, the green of his lightsaber a blur. On the other side of the podium, Ahsoka notices the blue light of Leia’s weapon.

Ahsoka moves towards the Chancellor when a shot gets through her guards and Mothma falls to the ground. Next to her, Kyrsta Agate is on her knees, pressing the heel of her palm into her eye. Ahsoka snarls and deflects the blaster fire, the shot swallowed by her lightsaber. She crouches low in front of the Chancellor and shouts, “Get them somewhere safe!”

She senses the guards scrambling behind her, trying to pick the two women up. Smoke ripples from the fiery circle on Mothma’s abdomen.

Ahead, Luke is cutting pistols in half and ducking under arms to slam the hilt of his lightsaber into the back of the prisoners’ heads, knocking them unconscious. There are fallen bodies across the podium, some of which are senators. Ahsoka can only feel the life forces in the prisoners. She grits her teeth and throws her hand out, shoving a few attackers back, and then tightening her reverse grip on the shoto saber, the white light pulses before her eyes as she slashes away at the blaster fire.

Leia is nowhere to be seen.

The guards make their way towards the back of the podium and towards the Old-Gather House so Ahsoka moves with them, deflecting the blasts, coming in more scarcely. She reaches out in the Force, looking for Leia. Her energy is firing off like an unstable transmission but her focus is sharp. She senses Sloane nearly rippling with anger and— confusion? Ahsoka frowns. She sees images of fallen Senate guards littering the floor and the blue of Leia’s lightsaber as she diverts Sloane’s blaster fire.

The streets are in a disarray and Ahsoka calls through the comlinks to her man to keep a keen eye on the alleyways but the feedback is clear and united: aside from the panic nothing else is happening further in the city. Ahsoka tries to piece together the facts: the prisoners all of a sudden attacking the New Republic officials, the dregs of Sloane’s bewilderment at the turn of events, the lack of additional forces or riots billowing the streets. The sheer mess of the whole operation.

Ahsoka is missing something. They’re all missing something that is not here.

She doesn’t have the time to think about it as reinforcements flood the podium, taking care of the remaining prisoners. Mon Mothma and Kyrsta Agate are being put on hovering stretchers, swarmed by medics and guards.

Ahsoka runs towards Luke, turning off her lightsabers. She scans him in the Force before she gets to him but he remains unscathed, his body pumping adrenaline. When he notices her coming, he takes a step towards her, extends his hand. They grab each other by the arms, breathing heavily.

You’re okay, Ahsoka pushes the thought into the Force at the same time as Luke says, “I’m okay.”

“I have no idea what happened,” Ahsoka adds, despite Luke’s assurance scanning his face for injuries, finding a sear on the apple of his cheek.

Luke shakes his head, his breathing erratic and his eyes scanning the surroundings, disoriented. It all happened so fast, it was like—

Ahsoka thumbs at the spot under the cut on his cheek. “A switch.”

They both look down at a fallen Wookiee, alive but unconscious. Ahsoka crouches down and Luke stands over her. She extends her hand over the creature’s face and closes her eyes.

In her mind, she hears the echoes of Luke’s voice, Leia Leia Leia.

She’s onto Sloane, she sends back before she focuses fully on the Wookiee.

At first, there’s nothing. She can feel the blood coursing through their veins, their big heart thumping slowly but steadily. She draws her eyebrows together, tuning out Luke’s concern. The Wookiee breaths in and out, the rise and collapse of their lungs.

And then she senses it. Luke’s knee knocks against her back as she opens her eyes.

Right there, a small object attached to their brain, the electromagnetic pulse dwindling down but there. A memory of the Clone Wars.

“A chip?” Luke says aloud, sensing Ahsoka’s loathing.

The liberation of Ashmead's Lock prisoners was a decoy. It was another move in the Empire’s long, wretched game.

“Yes.” Ahsoka straightens up and Luke keeps his hand on her arm as she staggers back. “There won’t be peace.”

Ahsoka chuckles. A deeply hidden part of her believed this was real; a part of her that hoped, against all other hopes. That they could’ve had peace diplomatically, that she’d finally know what it would be like to not be at war.

Not yet. Not yet.

Luke doesn’t say anything but sadness so great it could knock down a forestful of trees stirs the Force. Ahsoka’s knees threaten to buckle under her but she turns with Luke’s palm still on her shoulder and squeezes his elbow. As soon as she does, the sadness is replaced by an overpowering hope.

luke, she thinks, what will i do with you? what will your big heart do to mine?

He scans her face. She guards her thoughts well and he frowns when he can’t sense her anymore.

“Go find your sister,” she says, everything inside her heavy.

“And you?”

Ahsoka examines their surroundings, the guards and soldiers stepping carefully around bodies, the scarce medics in grey uniforms kneeling down next to survivors.

“I have to let them know about the chips so we can extract them quickly. I’ll look for you as soon as I can.”

Luke gives her a firm nod and leaves. Ahsoka’s body is overcome with calm. She approaches the nearest medic. She steps to the side as more stretchers float into the platform, soldiers helping carry the unconscious or dead bodies. Ahsoka makes herself look at their faces. Their open, unsuspecting eyes.

And then she feels a searing pain through her midriff, enough so that she doubles over, clutching her stomach.

“General?” The voice reaches her as though through a haze. She feels hands on her back. A thin veil falls around her, and behind it other hands are reaching for pistols, feet are scuffling back.

“‘S okay,” she forces out and tries to straighten up. The fog starts to clear up and she lets go of her stomach — there’s no wound.

A young female medic next to her scans her with worry. “Are you sure?”

Ahsoka stands straight and grimaces. “Yes, it’s not—”

Terror seizes her before she can finish the sentence.

mine.

The Force slams into her or she slams into it, she’s not sure. She surges past the lives that glimmer like distant stars around her and goes for the orb of light that crystallizes into Luke. She feels his distress at not being able to locate Leia. Ahsoka leaps further, to the binary sun and finds it red and blazing, a flurry of rage and defeat and—

pain.

Ahsoka starts running before she fully registers what direction she has to go. The scent of saltwater hits the back of her throat and her gut twists as she jumps off the platform onto the plaza below, landing on bent legs, her joints groaning but the ache dissipating as soon as she takes off towards the sea. Towards the landing docks.

The streets carry the dregs of festivities, ribbons and glitter and confetti, a few people making their way to their homes, soldiers giving her a cursory glance as she darts past them. It doesn’t take her long to break off from the imposing buildings and into the clearing leading up to the docked starships and the sea beyond.

The sun is setting, basking everything in gold. The Force tosses in the distance, a green lightsaber that slashes the air and the red blasts directed at it.

And the dark figure lying crumpled on the wide road, a road that suddenly stretches into infinity.

Ahsoka’s everything gets very, very quiet. Her right hand trembles a single time.

She runs but doesn’t feel herself running; the body feels all too familiar and for a moment she thinks it might not be Leia, after all. She recognizes the body in a way that suggests years, decades, a body you grow up next to. Ahsoka’s brain supplies her with too many names: Anakin, Obi-Wan, Plo Koon, Barriss, Kaeden. The Force inside her swells and ebbs like the sea, the echoes irrational, the body twisting in her eyes in ways that Ahsoka doesn’t recognize.

She skids to a stop. The duel continues on the docks but Ahsoka doesn’t care.

Leia is lying on her side in a fetal position, the heel of her palm pressed to her abdomen, her other arm outstretched and serving as support for her head, the turned-off lightsaber in an open hand.

Ahsoka drops down to her knees, hardly registering the pain.

Leia’s distorted expression evens out for a second when she sees Ahsoka.

alive, alive, alive.

Ahsoka nearly chokes on her next intake of breath.

“Master,” Leia says and groans, curling on herself. “I’m okay.”

“Shh,” Ahsoka says and touches Leia’s waist, the Force pressing down, pliant like a puppy. “Let’s get you to a medic, alright?”

Leia juts her chin out and Ahsoka turns. Thrusters of the Lambda shuttle are blowing full force, the person on the docks shielding their face from the gust of wind, the lightsaber still glowing green, their long, brown cape swelling like the sea waves.

“That’s Sloane,” Leia forces out and drops her head down, closes her eyes. “Nearly got her.”

“It wasn’t her,” Ahsoka says and as soon as she does, she realizes this is the missing piece.

Leia frowns, the Force rising up in confusion and rage. “How can you know?”

“The prisoners, they had chips. Sloane came here with only four people. She knew the city would be guarded but it didn’t matter if she made it out of here alive. To whoever orchestrated this, it didn’t matter.”

Leia bends the elbow of her outstretched arm and tries to lift herself up. Ahsoka surges forward and it’s the first time Leia doesn’t flinch away from her help. Ahsoka wraps her arm around Leia’s back and props her up against her side.

“I hate that you’re making sense right now.”

The lone figure on the docks is approaching fast, probably wanting to get back to Hanna City quickly but they slide to a stop before they can pass them by. Ahsoka recognizes Norra Wexley, one of the pilots who helped with the liberation of the prisoners. If she isn’t mistaken, Norra’s husband was also among them.

“Sloane escaped,” Norra says, pissed-off.

Leia nods. “Figured as much.”

“Could you get us a medic?” Ahsoka chimes it.

Norra glances towards the port and sighs.

“Get me a medic and I’ll cover you before Mothma if you want to chase her,” Ahsoka adds.

Surprise swims around Norra like a deep ocean creature. “Is this allowed?”

Leia’s amusement might as well be her own.

“I’m a general. I answer before no one else.”

Norra runs towards Hanna City and when Ahsoka looks at her retreating figure, only then does she notice her limp.

“A tough woman.”

“I imagine.”

As Ahsoka looks at the jagged lines of Hanna City, bathed in gold, thinks of everything that has transpired, not only now but ages ago when hope still mattered, and she can’t help but count her losses. The dead on the podium, the dead on the battlefields when people believe in heroes and legends.

And now she’s here, a Togruta with no home, and a human girl in her arms, and so many dead friends that she can see out of the corner of her eye.

She thinks, with relief,

i didn’t lose you. i didn’t lose you, too.

Leia’s spine goes rigid and Ahsoka feels it against the inside of her arm.

“Is that what I am to you?”

Ahsoka struggles to focus. “Hm?”

“Vader’s daughter?” Leia asks, words dripping venom.

Fear sets Ahsoka’s body ablaze before it trickles out, her mind too exhausted to keep up with her lack of barriers.

“No.” But she isn’t sure whether she’s telling the truth.

“He hurt me, Ahsoka. Master.” She’s desperate now, her voice crackling like an unstable connection. “He’s not my father.”

Ahsoka’s too calm for this conversation, too empty.

“I understand that.”

Leia deflates in her arms. She’s quiet when she says, “And yet he’s always on your mind.”

Ahsoka is quiet, too.

“He was my friend, Leia.”

“Nice friends you had,” Leia scoffs.

Something inside Ahsoka flares up. For a moment, she despises Leia, despises her furious emotionality and turbulent selfishness.

“You have no right to judge me,” she snaps, watchful not to tighten her grip on Leia’s arm, even though she wants to hurt something, someone. “The Jedi raised me. I didn’t have the luxury of growing up in a palace with loving parents.”

Leia gapes. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“That has everything to do with it.”

Leia tries to sit up, winces. Ahsoka tries to stop her, fails.

“He terrorized half the galaxy.” Leia’s voice is an open wound, her face a scar. She shakes her head. “No, the entire galaxy. He served as the Emperor’s right hand. You can’t have compassion for him.”

Ahsoka watches her, this fearless warrior, this girl princess, this human drowning in the sun’s gold.

She looks down at her own lap, at the soot, the blood, the cuts in the material. The Force is a monument inside her. The waves lap at the shores, back and forth, back and forth.

“But I do,” she whispers. “I do.”

Leia clenches her jaw. Compassion and anger battle inside her, forever the push and pull of the ocean. How familiar it feels. How comforting.

Ahsoka closes her eyes, the hurt of her body like a yearning for another person.

“I’m not like Luke.” Leia’s voice is harsh and gentle, all at once. Ahsoka can’t see her, but she can feel Leia’s eyes on her, full of intent, open flame. “Luke told me he was right but I didn’t see it. I’ll never see it.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Ahsoka can tell Leia is getting worked up at her short answers. The Force morphs and grows spikes.

“If my brother and I weren’t his children, would you have trained us at all?”

Everything stills. There’s no sea, no distant city, no space. Not even the stars.

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka says truthfully. Opens her eyes.

Leia collapses on herself, the fight pouring out of her. The air clears, there’s only a hint of salt and sweat.

Leia lies back, says towards the sky, “You’re as fucked up as the rest of us.”

Ahsoka snorts. “More, I’d say.”

That makes Leia smile.

She looks vulnerable in this light. Tough but vulnerable.

“I’ll see to it that you finish your training,” Ahsoka says slowly, gently.

The sea moves in the distance.

“And then you’ll go?”

Ahsoka has to imagine the wound that splits the Force, she has to. Leia’s face is so peaceful, so full of light.

/

Yes.

Yes. I always leave.

/

Leia heals quickly and Ahsoka doesn’t stop her when she says she wants to go back to training. They spar in the mornings when Leia doesn’t have obligations, and in the evenings the three of them, with Luke. Han keeps them company under the tintolive tree, spewing lies about his past adventures. Ahsoka knows them to be lies in the Force, and also looking at the twins’ reactions, the hidden glances, the yeah, rights, the smiles tucked in the corners of their mouths. Sparring becomes more taxing and Ahsoka enjoys it, the workings of her muscles, the stretching after, the stories in the tree’s shade.

One day, Ahsoka is at her apartment and the twins are there, discussing politics (which Luke is not the least bit interested in but Leia insists he has to know what’s happening in the galaxy) at the big table in front of the glass wall, the city grand and vast and full of blinking lights, and Ahsoka realizes she always eats at this table alone and Luke used to keep all his books there but now they visit her in the evenings just because, and she decides to prepare food for all of them. She usually keeps to small and compact meals that resemble old rationings in small packets, and she doesn’t yet know how to unlearn a habit like this, but she has a fridge full of produce that someone, presumably Mothma, had delivered to her apartment. She can’t think of anyone else who’d care enough, but then even the idea of the Chancellor being this concerned doesn’t sound too plausible.

It doesn’t matter. The fridge is stocked full of food and has been ever since Ahsoka arrived; long expiration dates, not for another couple of years, preserved in air-tight compartments. She only had to supply things like meat or vegetables, but she does it every few days, before her training with Leia. The marketplace is already full in the morning, merchants loudly proclaiming the superiority of their foods. Ahsoka got used to buying her things from an old Togruta woman, right at the entrance to the market.

Ahsoka fumbles with the stove and the pan but the way she chops the vegetables is fast and precise. She uses spices she finds in the cupboard, hoping they’ll fit well. She never had to cook, not for herself and not for others and it feels strange and new but slightly exhilarating, to prepare a meal for someone else, the process of it fascinating. She can’t see herself doing this every day but as the sun tickles her cheek and the food sizzles on the pan, something akin to a chasm, light-full, yawns open inside her chest.

She brings the pot with dishtowels wrapped around the hot handles, reminiscing on Master Yoda’s words of not using the Force on useless things. Leia pauses mid-sentence and Luke pushes himself away from the table and hurries to the kitchen to grab the plates.

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Leia says, weighing her words. “Master.”

Ahsoka smiles at how uncomfortable Leia still is with the honorific. She places the pot in the centre of the table and leans back, puts her hands on her hips.

“I didn’t know, either. We’re about to find out.”

Leia looks slightly worried as Luke comes back with plates and cutlery: two knives, two forks and a pair of chopsticks, all made of metal with ornate blue swirls running along the length of them.

Ahsoka settles down and extends her hand for Leia’s plate at the same time as Luke extends his hand for hers. It surprises her, such a caring gesture, but she passes him the plate and Leia passes hers to Ahsoka.

“How’s the situation?” Ahsoka asks, watching the steam rise from the pot in clouds, Luke carefully lading her plate.

“Coruscant is still under lockdown,” Leia sighs and rubs her forehead, her voice suddenly weary. “I’m trying to persuade the Senate to deploy help but they’re hesitant.” She sounds properly pissed off. “We’re getting intel of scarce Rebel groups forming and aiding the citizens in the uprising, taking down whole sectors but nowhere near overthrowing the Grand Vizier, Mas Amedda.”

Luke hands Ahsoka her plate and Ahsoka mouths thank you and stands up to fill Leia’s portion.

“There is also the Iron Blockade in Anoat sector that we haven’t been able to take down, not to mention the Shadow Wing attacks General Syndulla is dealing with. The Chancellor is doing her best to send troops which are formed of the remaining Rebel Alliance and Imperial deserters. Thank you,” she adds as she takes the plate off Ahsoka’s hands.

“Why can’t they send us?” Luke asks, stilling over the pot. “We’ve been on several aid missions already. We could help.”

Ahsoka takes the chopsticks in her hands and hums. “We could but the Senate is not big on this idea. They might like the idea of Jedi, or whatever they imagine we are, close by, especially after Liberation Day.”

Leia chews her food and swallows properly and adds, “The Senate is not big on any idea that involves sending our troops anywhere. We’ve been getting worrying information about Imperials amassing on Jakku but the Chancellor is having a hard time convincing the majority, and we will have to make this debate official and cast our votes soon.”

“The war isn’t over,” Luke says angrily, food forgotten. “If we can help, why aren’t we helping?”

“Politics, brother dear.” Leia shrugs but she looks anything but carefree about it. “Same way the Rogue One crew didn’t get clearance to infiltrate Scarif. We won the Battle of Endor but our forces aren’t all that stronger for it and the New Republic is wary of any operation that could endanger its fragile position.”

Ahsoka was aware of the talks regarding the planned military operations that were mostly going nowhere; she is one of the few advocating for an organized assault but it’s exactly as Leia says; the Battle of Endor might have been a victory but it didn’t mean the war was over.

“I’ll keep the discussions with Mon Mothma alive,” Ahsoka says, forcing herself to take a bite of the food which doesn’t taste as horrible as she expected, maybe if not for the slightly tangy taste. “Hey, this food isn’t that bad.”

Leia arches her brow. “You sound surprised.”

Luke piles a pyramid of food into his mouth, and chews, and looks rather pleased. “Tastes good, Master.”

Ahsoka sends him a pleased smile and side-eyes Leia. “You can try cooking next time.”

Leia chokes on her food and Luke pats her back in worry. Her cheeks turn scarlet and she clears her throat. “Um, no, thank you, I’d rather— the food is… okay. Master.”

“Suit yourself, princess.”

Leia rolls her eyes and juts her chin out at Luke. “Why can’t he cook?”

Luke looks between them as they bore their eyes into him. He swallows thickly and jabs his thumb into his sternum. “Me? Sure, I could try.”

Leia throws Ahsoka a stunned glance.

Ahsoka murmurs, “That went easier than expected.”

Luke still looks terribly and endearingly confused. “I used to help my aunt and uncle with meals, it’s not—”

Leia hides her smile behind her hand and Ahsoka shakes her head.

“It’s okay. It’s just, I— we’d love to try your food.”

Luke shrugs but one more glance at his sister and Ahsoka and he’s smiling, too, piling more food into his spoon.

“That so?” he concedes and a laugh bursts out of Leia’s mouth, clipped and abrupt, over too soon but the Force vibrates with a frequency of warmth only the hottest planets experience.

And most of it, if Ahsoka looks closely, is her own.

/

Ahsoka stays behind on a military meeting, with the rest of the High command. She caught a glimpse of Hera Syndulla, operating on a faraway planet, informing the council of the progress on chasing the Shadow Wing, a group of surviving TIE fighter pilots, an elite group, incredibly skilled, taking part in Operation Cinder, Palpatine’s contingency plan. They’ve lost many New Republic fighters, some of their best who were hoping to come back home from the war. Ahsoka could’ve sworn Hera dipped her head Ahsoka’s way before the hologram disappeared from the holotable, other generals following suit.

Ahsoka approaches Mon Mothma who’s standing off to the side, in the middle of a discussion with Kyrsta Agate, the Commodore of New Republic Starfleet, their heads bent towards one another, Mothma’s face an expressionless mask, save for the slight crease to her brow.

“Chancellor. Commodore.”

Both women turn towards her, Kyrsta’s mechanical eye flashing red. Ahsoka has had enough time to get used to it but the glow still reminds her of a different kind of red, the one she wished she had never seen, and never known who it belonged to.

“General Tano,” Agate says and nods.

Mon Mothma regards her cooly, her face not showing any signs of what the discussion might’ve been about.

Ahsoka looks between her and Kyrsta, unsure whether she should request to talk to the Chancellor alone.

“It’s okay, general,” Mothma says in her soothing, very senator-like voice. “You may speak.”

Ahsoka nods. Kyrsta, as the Commodore of the Starfleet, might prove even more useful.

“I wish to speak about the situation on Jakku.”

The Force bristles. Kyrsta glances at Mon Mothma and the Chancellor clenches her jaw, looks somewhere behind Ahsoka’s shoulder before she catches her gaze again. Ahsoka squares her shoulders.

“We might want to talk about this… in private. Come, let’s walk to my office.”

Ahsoka feels a disturbance in the Force, so fine and quiet if she were any less careful she’d miss it, even with the years of experience she’s had. She chances a discreet look behind her shoulder as they leave through the sliding doors, quickly scanning the officers left in the debriefing room. The feeling isn’t, however, attached to anyone in particular, as far as Ahsoka can tell, and she follows the Chancellor and Commodore frustrated, two guards peeling off the wall and following behind.

Mon Mothma’s office is on the highest floor, the doors guided by four blue-clad individuals outside and four just on the inside. She doesn’t take a seat behind the desk but instead offers Ahsoka and Kyrsta something to drink. Kyrsta takes water and Ahsoka shakes her head, “Thank you.”

Mothma nods towards the guards and they file back into the corridor, the doors sealing shut. Ahsoka frowns and sends the Chancellor a questioning look.

Mon Mothma looks to Kyrsta and the Commodore, almost imperceptibly, nods.

Ahsoka grounds herself in the Force, feels its ever-present companionship all around her, thick and rippling with apprehension.

“See, general, the situation on Jakku— It’s much more delicate than we thought.”

Ahsoka wants to snort but she stops herself before any signs can show up on her face. “Excuse me, Chancellor, but the Imperial Remnant gathering their entire fleet on a desolate planet in the Outer Rim is anything but delicate.”

Kyrtsa opens her mouth to speak, her annoyance sending great waves in the Force but she calms down with one shake of Mon Mothma’s head.

“I understand your concern, general, but all the nuances lie here, in the Senate.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“I suspect some of the senators, I can’t tell which, are being coerced to sway the vote in the possible military involvement on Jakku.”

Ahsoka crosses her arms and presses a balled fist to her mouth. “Huh.”

“I assume you’ve acquired the information from Senator Organa.” Mon Mothma scans Ahsoka’s features, seeing if anything gives but nothing does. Ahsoka has been doing this for too long, speaking with people higher in rank than her, waiting for her to trip.

The only times she allowed herself to trip were when Anakin was next to her.

Now, nothing was supporting her fall. She simply had to make sure she didn’t stumble.

Mothma nods to herself. Ahsoka stands her ground.

It is Kyrsta who speaks next.

“We believe Rae Sloane was just a decoy and the real threat is hiding on Jakku. They might have been in play all this time, we just didn’t notice.”

“How did we miss that?” Ahsoka demands, grievances seeping into her voice like old blood. She steadies herself in the Force, evens her voice out before she speaks. “What kind of remnants are we talking about?”

Kyrsta sighs with something that carries the weight of a whole planet. “Most, if not all, of them.”

An understanding weaves through the Force, the apprehension and dread circling back to the only outcome that matters. This is why Jakku is critical and this is why such a large part of the Senate is hesitating with the vote: it’s only a few Senators before Mothma can secure the majority.

“If we won this,” Ahsoka threads carefully. “What does it mean?”

Kyrsta looks to the Chancellor and Ahsoka wonders if she’s aware that her right hand twitches when she’s troubled.

“The end of this war,” Mothma says with utmost conviction. “The final and total obliteration of the Empire.”

/

Ahsoka walks back to her apartment on high alert. For some reason, it brings her back to the Clone Wars when every conversation with an official could’ve ended in an ambush, in an entirely different manner than during the reign of the Empire. Because now were the times of fragile peace, of uncertain stability and nothing such as a hidden attack should occur.

As Ahsoka exits the elevator on her floor, she senses the presence of other Force wielders, the energy trailing from her apartment, and her heart rate spikes up. Her hand reaches towards the lightsaber on her hip and she bends her knees to assume a position more suitable for a fight but as she nears the door she recognizes the people inside, their irreplaceable light, and breathes out through her mouth, her arm falling at her side.

“What are you doing here?” she asks as soon as she steps into the apartment, the door closed but unlocked.

Luke pauses mid-sentence, his twin sister and her husband’s mouths frozen mid-laugh, the three of them lounging in Ahsoka’s living space, a few boxes of takeout on the low table between the couches.

“We were waiting for you,” Luke says, a little unsure as he glances towards his friends.

“How did the meeting go?” Leia asks unabashedly, straightening her spine, Han pressing his hand into the nape of her neck.

It’s the first time they let themselves into the apartment like this and Ahsoka doesn’t even want to know where they got the door lock combination from but it somehow doesn’t bother her the way it surely should. She’s a little startled but somehow, the sight of the three of them makes so much sense, as though it’s as the Force willed it, Luke’s steadfastness, Leia’s courage, Han’s daring, all coming together to form one single entity.

The door closes gently behind Ahsoka and she walks towards the couch where Luke is sitting alone, the food on the table smelling like distant and hard to obtain spices.

“May I have some?” she asks, and motions towards the leftovers, sitting down on the edge of the couch.

“Of course,” Luke jumps to his feet and rummages through the boxes, procuring two unopened ones. “These are for you.”

Ahsoka’s speechless at the earnestness of his offering and at the fact they, indeed, thought of her when ordering their dinner.

Leia’s curiosity is sharp in the Force, Ahsoka’s face like an open book. She clears her mind and swallows.

“Thank you,” she says and her voice is, thank everything in this galaxy, steady.

Leia’s curiosity settles back but she keeps it at bay. Han’s arm moves to the backrest of the couch and Leia’s body, as if unwillingly, follows suit, leaning the back of her head against the inside of his elbow.

Ahsoka unwraps the food and eats chyntuck, a deep-fried vegetable served in rings, with her fingers. She tells them about Mon Mothma’s suspicions and her desire to assemble a small and trusted group of spies that could figure out which senators are being coerced to vote against.

“I promised I’d ask if any of you had people you trusted,” Ahsoka asks, looking between Luke and Leia, and eventually, also, Han.

“Oh, I’d love to do it,” Leia says with wistfulness in her voice. “But I’m afraid my face is too recognizable.”

Han smirks and even though Leia doesn’t look, her mouth mirrors the shape of his.

“However,” she continues. “Evaan Verlaine. A lieutenant in the New Republic Defense Fleet, a fellow Alderaanian. I trust her with my life.”

Ahsoka nods. She senses a spark in the Force surrounding Han and she waits for him to speak.

“Fuck it, I can do it.”

Leia leans back to inspect her husband. He looks back and a moment passes before Leia says, “That’s not such a terrible idea.”

“Are all of my ideas terrible to you, princess?”

Leia shrugs and positions herself comfortably against the backrest. “Most of them.”

“We can also get Shara,” Luke adds, breaking out from deep though. “And Kes.”

Ahsoka puts the food back on the table and wipes her hands in a stray, unused tissue. She knows most of them, Shara and Kes the best of them, both part of the Resistance the longest in very similar places Ahsoka had been, and if the twins vouch for anyone, Ahsoka trusts them.

“I trust you,” she says as much and the Force billows with purpose. Ahsoka realizes she truly means those words, and she has used them scarcely all her life.

(And the only person she truly trusted—)

“I’ll notify Mothma and inform you about following procedures.”

“Real fucking delicate,” Han muses, stretching with his arms towards the ceiling.

They all smile, Mon Mothma’s words related by Ahsoka ringing in their ears.

“Anyway,” Ahsoka says and leans back on the couch. “What were you talking about earlier?”

They let her into the conversation easily enough and they talk until the middle of the night when Leia remembers her senatorial duties. No morning training, then. Ahsoka finds herself missing it, despite herself. She has many thoughts before she goes to bed but, somehow, they all disappear as she lies down.

She sleeps through the whole night.

/

Ahsoka stops in front of a fruit stall as soon as she sees the Jogan fruit.

She made her usual trip to the marketplace to buy fresh meat for the evening, and also got ingredients for Haroun bread which Luke mentioned so much as the food of his childhood that she ended up asking one of the lieutenants hailing from Tatooine for a recipe.

Jogan fruit is round and purple. Ahsoka remembers it from Coruscant, her mouth full of the fruit as her steps echoed in the halls of the Jedi temple, her head tilted up to see Anakin right, a quip heavy on her tongue, the corners of Anakin’s mouth creased with laughter. She remembers its sweetness in the Jogan fruit cake which she always requested when Padme asked what she likes.

She picks out four fruits out of the bunch, the exact amount they used to sell in containers on Coruscant. She hands them to the vendor, her elbow narrowly missing a pile of round white fruit the size of a fist. She doesn’t know why but she stills and stares.

“Those are starrine fruit, ma’am,” the vendor says, his Rodian eyes glinting blue. “An Alderaanian special.”

Ahsoka startles. “Alderaanian…?”

“Well.” The Rhodian laughs an embarrassed, hiccuping laugh. “They used to be Alderianiaan but now we just grow them here, on Chandrila. The climate is most favourable, and my family has owned a farm for two generations. We know how to do it, and we do it well.”

Ahsoka stares at his hands, holding up the bag of Jogan fruit.

“I can throw one in,” he says, already reaching for the starrine. “On the house. I guarantee you’re gonna come back for more.”

“Thank you.” Ahsoka clears her throat and reaches for her satchel. “But I’ll pay.”

“As you wish,” the vendor says and hands her the bag with the Jogan fruit and a single starrine.

/

Ahsoka puts the fruit in the bowl and unpacks the rest of the ingredients in her kitchen, and goes about her day which is: training with Luke, strategy meetings, training with both twins. The three of them return to Ahsoka’s apartment, the sun setting behind their backs. They’re all tired but Ahsoka gets a strong sense of gladness, of looking forward to rest.

Her apartment is soaked in the gold of a setting sun. Luke goes to the kitchen as soon as he hears about the possibility of Haroun bread. Leia pauses at the dining room table.

Ahsoka pauses with her. Pots clatter in the kitchen but she watches Leia’s face. She watches as the corner of her mouth quivers, and the Force lulls to a stop next to her.

Leia reaches towards the fruit bowl and gently picks up the starrine, rolls it into the centre of her palm.

“Right,” Ahsoka says and scratches her elbow. “I don’t usually—” She gives up. “Do you know this fruit?”

It takes a moment for Leia to speak and when she does, it comes out strangled.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” Ahsoka digs her nails into her arm. “Did I offend you?”

Leia shakes her head. A lock of hair falls out of her spotless updo. The quiver is still there, her mouth unsure whether she wants to smile or—

“No,” she whispers. “No, it’s— Well.”

She pushes a chair away from the table and sits down. She glances at Ahsoka for a split second and looks back down at the fruit in her lap. “Starrines used to be my favourite. My mom—” she swallows. “Starrines were in season when it was summer, and only for two weeks at a time. When I was little, my mom would always peel them for me.”

She digs her thumb into the skin near the top of the starrine, and there’s some resistance, but it goes in. She peels back a layer, from top to bottom, but not quite, unearthing the purple inside. She then rotates the fruit and repeats the motion — thumb to the cut skin, thin and white, and a peel, top to nearly bottom.

“She’d put it in my lap,” Leia continues, in a daze, the fragmented starrine skin unfolded like petals. “And she would say, here, a flower for my—” Words die in her throat and she gently separates the skin from the rest of the fruit. “For my Leia,” she finishes up and places the open flower in her lap.

Ahsoka’s rooted in place.

“People would be surprised, you know,” Leia continues, and Ahsoka is unsure whether Leia remembers she’s there at all, in someone else’s apartment, her brother’s cooking a distant noise. “That she got her hands dirty. She was the one to take care of the starflowers in the palace lawns. She always came back with earth stuck behind her nails, and I’d sit next to her on those evenings, and watch her clean them meticulously, one by one, with a wet towel.” She cups the naked starrine in both her hands. “And I’d always dig my hands into the earth so she would clean my nails, too.”

Leia looks so young, too young for a galaxy like this, for the responsibilities she’s had.

Right now, she’s just a girl, sitting in an empty apartment.

Just a girl who lost everything and still peels a fruit like a flower.

Leia looks at Ahsoka and Ahsoka gets the sense she’s see-through, that she’s a kyber crystal and the light shatters in her and falls everywhere around them.

Leia breaks the fruit in half, droplets of juice staining her white gown.

She extends a piece towards Ahsoka. It’s stark purple in her palm, almost like a Jogan fruit, but softer.

Ahsoka accepts it, the flesh of the fruit to the flesh of her skin.

“Thank you,” she says and sits on the opposite side of the table.

The starrine is made of crescents that you’re supposed to peel off, one by one, and bite into them slowly, so as not to spill the juice everywhere.

The fruit tastes sour before it turns sweet in Ahsoka’s mouth.

She didn’t have a home like that but when she remembers everyone — Anakin and Rex and Plo Koon and Obi-wan and Padme, and even Barriss — it truly doesn’t matter. She remembers the columns that were so high they disappeared in the shadows of the Jedi temple. She remembers the arrow of the sun in her eye as she trained in the yard with others. She remembers the whispers of the Force, a love language.

Not all of it was bad.

Not all of it was lost in hyperspace and quicksand.

Some of it remained quite simple — she was born on Shili and was found by Master Plo Koon when she was three years old. The Jedi were her family. She ate the Jogun fruit on days full of sun.

When she looks up, she catches Leia watching her closely, the Force open with curiosity.

Ahsoka’s life was a story as old as time, so tattered she doesn’t know how to tell it anymore.

“Should we help Luke?” she asks.

Leia nods, and moves to get up, pauses, grabs the starrine flower from her lap and places it on the table. Her eyes linger on the Jogun fruit.

Ahsoka taps her hand against one. “I used to eat them when I was a Jedi. They taste amazing in a cake.”

Leia pauses, opens her mouth, closes it.

“Maybe we could make it today,” Ahsoka offers, her skin peeled back.

Leia nods. “Sounds good.”

They help Luke make the bread and fumble their way through a cake and before they know it, it’s the middle of the night and Luke is asleep on Ahsoka’s couch, and Leia is shaking him awake and he startles so bad it’s both sad and hilarious and Ahsoka is very tired but she laughs, and Leia giggles with her hand on Luke’s shoulder and Luke smiles with his head tipped back against the couch.

Some of Ahsoka’s life remains as simple as that.

/

The morning is pink and bleary, the sun slow to wake up properly. Ahsoka drinks her caf on the balcony, looking out at the city. She notices the distant sparkling of the Silver sea, calm and dark blue. The Force is with her and she’s one with the Force. She feels everything around her like one uninterrupted song.

Even Anakin’s presence next to her isn’t startling or unusual. He’s the Force and he’s also her, and she’s him.

“It’s a beautiful morning,” he says, the Force wavering as he steps closer and leans against the railing next to her. For the first time, it strikes her that she can touch him, that he’s been made corporeal, drawing on her link with the Force.

Words die and bury themselves under her tongue. She looks at her former master, the homespun outline of his profile, the one she’s able to trace in every single one of her nightmares before it’s replaced by the infinite dark.

Anakin tilts his head and regards her with a concerned frown.

“I wish you weren’t gone,” she says, her voice strained.

A muscle jumps in Anakin’s jaw and he tears an opening in his face, a smile, but the Force struggles. “No one’s ever really gone.”

Ahsoka has his training, she has the memory of him, and she has his presence in the Force but it’s not the same as battling next to him, not the same as him being in the debriefings, not the same as splitting the galaxy in half in a starfighter by his side.

“I talked with Obi-wan when you were told to spy on Palpatine,” Ahsoka says and her voice is gentle until Sidious’ name like acid doesn’t burn her tongue. “I asked him to tell you— Did he?”

Did he tell you be careful, we’ll talk when I get back, I won’t leave you again, I’m sorry?

His eyes scan her like one might try to commit another’s face into memory. “He did.”

Perhaps Obi-wan didn’t use the words Ahsoka needed Anakin to hear but perhaps, in that moment, the words weren’t precise either.

“I wanted to tell you so much,” Ahsoka says and her voice snaps in half like a battleship. Tears prickle her eyes but she blinks at the sky and they disappear. When she looks back at Anakin his body is twisted to face her, everything about him open and tearing itself apart. “Maybe if I did—”

Anakin shakes his head roughly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please, don’t. There’s nothing you could’ve done. And besides,” he says, his gaze finding hers, holding. If she was foolish enough, she’d think he was on the verge of crying, too. “I know it all. I know everything.”

And that didn’t seem to help, she thinks bitterly.

Before she can stop herself, she’s reaching out, cupping Anakin’s cheek in her hand, her thumb brushing the familiar scar. His skin doesn’t feel like proper skin but it’s real enough and it has a very tangible weight in Ahsoka’s palm, a weight that presses at her lower back.

Anakin’s eyes go wide and then they soften.

Don’t blame yourself, he thinks and she hears it at the same time as it happens, the Force connecting them, one and the same.

Ahsoka’s lower lip trembles and she bites it so hard she draws blood but the trembling stops.

I can't, I can't. I owe you so much.

Anakin’s hand covers her own. It’s touch enough that Ahsoka’s knees nearly buckle underneath her. She forgot what it’s like to be touched by someone she loves. It has been so long, so long—

“There is no debt between us,” Anakin says gently, tilting his face to lean into Ahsoka’s palm ever so slightly. “And if there is, it is I who is indebted to you.”

“No,” Ahsoka’s voice is a tremor, a trembling. “Don’t say that.”

Anakin looks at her and there’s so much love in him, so much.

“You’ve given me more kindness than I deserved and you’ve made me hope even in the darkest of times. Hope was not something I allowed myself. Maybe if I did, none of this would’ve happened.” He stops and inhales, his chest rising, his breath patchy and uneven. Ahsoka presses her thumb into the apple of his cheek. “And yes, I do wonder— What if you were there. What if I didn’t listen to Sidious. What if I loved better and by that I mean not harder but with something softer. What then?”

Ahsoka has always thought it was Anakin’s attachment that made him fall. The fact that he loved too much, with his entire being, something snapping shut. The fact that he was unable to let go, the fact that he wanted to possess the lives of others to save them. But as Vader, he was truly unattached. He cared for nothing, no one. Perhaps it was the incessant quest at trying to uproot his love that irrevocably made him turn.

To imagine Anakin loving better was impossible because he had already loved enough, and in such vast and wonderful ways Ahsoka to this day can’t find proper words to describe it.

“You couldn’t have loved better,” she says gently and Anakin’s arm shudders, the Force throbbing with a pain so old it forgot itself. “You’ve loved enough. And you were loved enough.”

Suddenly, Ahsoka sees it all so clearly it’s like she’s standing in front of a shatterpoint, a shimmering tear in the air, begging for her to touch it, to walk through it, to understand the past — not unmake it.

“You were loved,” she repeats.

Because he was. Anakin was so, so loved an entire galaxy could have spawned from that simple, unearthing fact. And that didn’t change anything. They were doomed from the start. But doom is not a destination, it never was. It was the fact that he found her lightsaber and took it, it was the fact that he said her name when she fought him on Malachor, it was the fact that he reached out his hand towards Luke.

This is what shapes him. The love he found despite recoiling from it.

Anakin squeezes Ahsoka’s hand and lowers it down so he can properly hold it, entwining their fingers together. He feels so much like family that he shaped Ahsoka’s understanding of what family is, the bond, the trust, the I’d follow you anywhere, if you allow me.

He looks smaller, somehow. Easily dissolvable.

“I know that now,” Anakin says and his voice is thin, one misstep and the ice underneath him breaks. “I wish it happened sooner but I know that now.”

Ahsoka’s acutely aware that she’s older than he was when he turned and that, if the Force allows it, older than he’ll ever be. And nothing can undo the hurt and the damage but perhaps Ahsoka doesn’t have to turn back time to learn how to live with it. To call this wound by its name and learn to defend it and love it for what it is.

A memory of something good and kind. A memory that was tarnished but the fact that it existed, once upon a time, nothing can erase.

“And you, Ahsoka,” Anakin says, his thumb digging into the bone of her wrist. “And you, you were loved, as well. You are loved.”

Something in Ahsoka breaks, shatters irreparably and she falls forward or perhaps Anakin tugs her hand and she wraps her arms around his neck and he presses his hands to her spine and she sobs into what could’ve been his shoulder but isn’t, or perhaps this skin that isn’t skin is finally more.

She says what she’s meant to say all along which is, “Thank you. I’m sorry. I miss you so much.”

Grief clawed at Ahsoka until all she could feel was a longing for something she didn’t have, and that’s just another way of saying grief clawed at her until she was empty. When you miss something so much, it just means you have nothing that returns under your roof when it starts to rain.

I’ll always be here, Anakin’s voice is a whisper in the Force but it carves out empty spaces inside Ahsoka’s bones and what were empty spaces but placeholders for the earth, the rain, the sun, every cavity wanting to be filled. I'll always be here. You can look for me in the Force and I'll be there.

Ahsoka trusts that he’ll always be with her — Master and friend and older brother, till the end of days — but it doesn’t terrify her anymore.

She doesn’t want Anakin to leave but maybe she doesn’t have to beg him to stay.

/

Luke and Leia train together and Ahsoka stands off to the side.

The sun is setting and the glare of their lightsabers comes and goes, blue against green. Luke is precise where Leia is cunning. Their feet tap the soft earth, blades of balmgrass trembling and bending sideways. Leia deals a blow and Luke parrs. They look like dancers. They resemble what Jedi were supposed to look like, all those centuries ago.

Ahsoka doesn’t have much to tell them, or— anything to tell them. She has taught them what she could and now there’s nowhere else for them to go. The times have changed. She doesn’t need to train Leia until she’s pushing on thirty. She can’t be denying her the growth she’ll do on her own.

Leia force-pushes Luke to the end of the training ground, his heels digging into the earth and making a double-railed pathway. Leia smirks, a sight Ahsoka barely catches from the distance but she knows it’s there.

Ahsoka feels them in the Force, powerful and fierce and loving.

Out of her instinct to leave grows another, much more difficult to tame.

Leia and Luke bend their knees, the Force swelling with intent, their blades to their side. They take off at the same time, jumping high into the air, Force propelling them as a guardian would. Their bodies are framed gold by the sun and they shoot towards each other in a perfect arch. They ready their lightsabers.

They look like twin suns, colliding.

Two scraps of cloth fall to the ground and Ahsoka’s chest is an uprising of something that’s too big to name, and exists only in the Force.

There’s an old fighting technique that looks exactly like this and the only way they would know it is if they read the old texts. Perhaps Luke had told Leia about it or perhaps Leia had told Luke about it. Or perhaps neither did. Perhaps the Force surged with the idea until they both trusted it enough to trust each other. Or the other way around.

They land on opposite sides of the courtyard, one knee touching the ground, a fist supporting their weight as they sway forward. The Force exhales with exertion.

They turn around to look at one another, and then glance down at their garments where a tiny cut still sears with the burn of their weapons. Their confusion is a mirror. Ahsoka tries to hide her smile and swings her hands behind her back.

Luke moves first, runs towards the scraps on the ground. Leia moves quickly, her stride long and purposeful. They crouch down, each grabbing a piece of fabric.

“Master, you be the judge,” Luke says and straightens up.

“Pretty sure I got you first,” Leia murmurs.

They both look at Ahsoka with anticipation that only comes with hope.

And hope is the most open thing there is.

Ahsoka walks towards the twins, their hands clutching the fabrics.

“And don’t say we both won,” Leia pleads as Ahsoka inches closer. She looks about ready to roll her eyes as soon as Ahsoka opens her mouth.

Luke stands with his back straight and Leia looks as relaxed as ever, almost bored. In the Force, they both care. They care so much about what Ahsoka has to say that she nearly stops dead in her tracks, fire crackling at the base of her throat.

She slows to a stop close enough that, if she wanted to, she could extend her arms and touch their shoulders. In comfort, in pride.

“You both fought like Jedi,” Ahsoka says and inclines her head in a tiny bow.

Luke sucks in a breath and Leia opens her mouth to fight, the Force surging with a retort that latches onto the tip of her tongue but it snaps in half and the twins glance at each other and then back at Ahsoka, their expressions full of hesitant wonder.

“Does that mean—” Luke starts.

“Am I—” Leia clamps her mouth shut. She braces herself for disappointment like for a blow, her feet planted firmly in the earth.

Ahsoka touches her shoulder. Warmth seeps through the palm of her hand and enters her bloodstream.

“You’ve completed your training.”

Leia gapes. Ahsoka feels unsure for a split second — not about what she has to say but if she has the authority to say it. She’s come into their lives a stranger and now—

“You’re a Jedi, Leia,” Ahsoka says softly, soft enough that painful memories start to creep up on her but she doesn’t let them.

It’s not their time and she doesn’t let them.

Leia blinks at her as the Force swims with joy that comes from all directions, but particularly from Luke, He moves first, jumping on the balls of his feet and then he rushes forward, enveloping Leia in a hug. Ahsoka smiles and takes a step back.

“You did it, Leia, you did it!”

It takes Leia a moment to wrap her arms around her brother’s waist, bury her face in the crook of his neck.

The Force sighs with relief. It touches everything around them: the ruined by combat earth, the sweat-stricken backs of their napes, the fallen off the tree leaves.

Ahsoka breathes it in.

It’s the most painfully at peace she’s ever felt.

The twins break off, Luke’s hand on Leia’s shoulder and Leia’s hand in the dip of Luke’s waist. He’s grinning and she’s allowing herself an honest, satisfied smile.

Ahsoka nearly staggers back as they look at her with the enormity of an ocean planet, with the collisions of suns. Leia puts her fist to an open palm and bows. Luke follows with barely a moment’s pause.

Ahsoka’s breath is stuck in her throat.

“Thank you, Master,” Leia says. Luke emanates the sentiment in the Force.

(A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—)

Ahsoka echoes the gesture, bowing her head lower than they are.

“You’re welcome,” she says and words are a bone and they come out fractured. “My padawan.”

Tears prickle her eyes and she blinks them out. Hands touch her shoulders, gentle, reassuring, pressing in all the broken points.

“Master,” Luke says. “It’s okay.”

The Force seems distressed at the size of her gratitude. It doesn’t understand where it’s coming from.

Ahsoka straightens all the way up and holds her chin high. Leia looks at her curiously but she doesn’t say anything.

Instead, she turns towards Luke with a smirk, her hands on Ahsoka’s arm.

“Well, I think that means I won.”

Ahsoka barks out a laugh and Luke groans.

/

At night, hope rattles in Ahsoka’s body like a wounded animal making its way through a forest.

/

(master, she thinks.

and this time, her own voice merges with Luke and Leia’s, until it’s drowned by them.

master, she thinks.

and it’s only the twins she hears.)

/

The senators rigging the votes are found and a decision is made:

they’re taking the fight to Jakku.

Ahsoka spends hours upon hours in the tactical operation centre lit by the blue of holoscreens. She returns to her apartment in the middle of the night. She pulls out her holoprojector and goes through the plans they’ve made, looking for fatal loopholes. She finds too many for her own good. More often than not, Luke joins her at the empty dinner table. They trade ideas and forget all about sleep.

Ahsoka returns to the op center with her hands full of scraped and rewritten plans.

Everything is at stake here. The future of every single person in the debriefing room, the whole of Chandrila, other planets in the system, the entire Galaxy depends on the New Republic winning on Jakku. If they come out victorious then it doesn’t matter if meager forces of the fallen Empire scatter because it’ll mean there’s not enough of them to do any real harm.

Assuming Ahsoka comes back from Jakku, she’ll fall asleep and wake up and no war will be waiting for her on the other side.

Ahsoka has a hard time assuming.

Luke and Leia start to eat breakfasts at Ahsoka’s apartment. They take turns in preparing meals, Luke’s being objectively the best. Ahsoka watches his hands as he peels a starrine, splits it in half between Leia and Ahsoka.

Ahsoka, in turn, breaks off half of hers and hands it back to him.

Leia brings fresh pastries from the market and drags Han in with her. Chandrilan tea steams in their mugs as the waking sun spills over the table, setting everyone in the dining room aglow.

Han says something Ahsoka doesn’t catch and Luke tips his head back and laughs towards the ceiling as Leia shoves Han with more force than necessary, the chair dangerously hovering on the side until Ahsoka stills it with a bend of her hand and a push of the Force.

They look so youthful, so free of worry in this exact space, at this exact time in the morning that it’s hard to imagine she’s sending these kids to war, again.

Ahsoka finds it hard to assume but she wants to, for them.

Four days before the battle of Jakku marks a year since the battle of Endor.

Ahsoka can’t wrap her head around the space of time between then and now. It seems too short, like she’s lived through much more but at the same time it’s long enough that the memory of Anakin’s death and how it cut through her with an accuracy of amputating a limb seems like it happened just yesterday.

A year since Anakin brought back balance to the Force. A year since Ahsoka lost a friend that was already gone, since Luke lost a father he barely knew. A year since the Empire started its slow, painstaking decline where even the stars don’t shine.

Almost a year since Ahsoka met Leia after many years, almost a year since she properly met Luke.

A year that feels like a lifetime. A year that feels like the birth of a star.

Hanna City explodes with fireworks. They paint the sky in oranges and whites and reds.

Ahsoka sits between Luke and Leia on the bare tiles of her balcony. The Force around them stretches in many directions, like a memory. One moment you’d think it happy, the next you’d remember it to be painful.

No memory is perfect.

Ahsoka’s life narrows down to this moment: the colours spilling over the sky, changing shapes; the twins’ arms pressed into hers despite the warm remnants of the sun on the tiles under them; the taste of a Jogan fruit on her tongue.

The world.

“Do you think we’ll win?” Luke asks, unsure only of the question but in his mind, the battle is already over and he’s coming back home.

On Ahsoka’s other side Leia has no such qualms. Her mind is blank, blocking out the unfortunate outcomes.

“What are you planning to do,” Ahsoka asks instead, “Once we win?”

Leia shuffles. “So you think we’ll win.”

“I’ll look for others,” Luke says with a stuffy dream clinging to his vocal cords. “I can feel them in the Force, sometimes. I’ll look for them and I’ll train them.”

“Where?”

“Javin IV is still functional, if I remember correctly.”

It is. Ahsoka already mourns the loss that hasn’t come yet.

“And you?” She tilts her face toward Leia.

Leia shrugs. The red on her face changes into yellow as sound erupts in the distance.

“There’s still much work to be done in the Senate. Much, much work.”

An image flickers in her mind, of Ahsoka in the debriefing room, speaking, and something like this and something like want, and something dangerously close to admiration, but it disappears before Ahsoka truly registers it.

“What about you, Master?” Luke asks.

“You can call me Ahsoka,” she says.

The Force keeps quiet.

Ahsoka hums. Where does she go from here, from a full life lived and loved? Is there another place that will welcome her?

She feels nauseous, thinking of other places. A motion sickness she never had. Going from one place to another, this has been her whole life.

The Force budges on Leia’s side.

“Like I said, there’s much work after we defeat the Empire,” she says, hesitance trimming her words.

“And no Jedi could ask for a better Master than you,” Luke adds, his mind filled with the overwhelming green of Javin IV, the misty fog that rises in the heavy morning.

“Don’t say that lest Master Yoda hear,” Ahsoka jokes and Luke laughs.

It’s easier to say than: i want to stay but i don’t know how.

In all her life, nobody taught her how.

/

On the go day, Ahsoka wakes up earlier than she usually would, the sun barely scraping the horizon, the sky a smear of gold. If she squints, she can just barely make out the shape of Admiral Ackbar’s Star Cruiser, Home One, and three of Starhawk-class battleships hidden behind the wispy clouds, blurred by the atmosphere.

She makes caf in the machine and listens to its low hum before she moves on to make breakfast. She eats slowly at the foot of the table. It’s so big when no one else is around. The Force around her is pillowy, and if she were to fall it would catch her.

She meticulously puts on her trousers and a sleeveless shirt on, then takes out shin and forearm protectors and lets them hover close to her skin until they latch onto her body temperature, a quick zap as they’re secured onto the protective armbands and pant legs. She straightens the dark leather chest piece and the surface is rough under her palms. She carefully tightens the belt around her hips and picks up her lightsabers from the nightstand, weighs them in her hands before she attaches them to the tiny hooks on her belt.

Ahsoka puts on the headpiece last and does it in front of a small mirror attached to the closet. She traces the white markings on the sides of her face. She doesn’t remember what she looked like when she was still a Jedi padawan. Has she changed much? Would she recognize herself in a picture? She’s not even sure if there are any pictures taken of her.

The comlink on her forearm pings, reminding her of the approaching rendez-vous at the Hanna City docks.

As she walks towards the entrance door she realizes it could be the last time she’s ever seeing this place. She stops in the middle of the living room. There’s not much to remember here, Ahsoka did not particularly care to make it her home.

But then there are pillows that Leia once brought and then never took back, placed on one of the couches. If Ahsoka were to open the apartment logs, she’d find some of Luke’s notes that he wanted to keep track of, quickly punched in before one spoonful of food and another.

There’s the spot she’d walk back and forth through as she argued with Anakin and, briefly, with Obi-Wan. The balcony where she saw the fireworks. The dining room table that the twins made her occupy more than she was initially planning to. The living room that held the ghosts of their laughter.

There’s a good chance she’s not coming back. As a Jedi, she learned how not to linger too long in the past, nor on the tangibility of her immediate surroundings, nor the uncertainties of her future. She learned how to move through the world efficiently, hyperspace jump-quick. The afterimages of where, exactly, she stood are already fogging over, like she was never really there.

(But she was. Something in her fights violently to remind her that she was here, that she occupied this space, that she’s lived in a way that left an imprint.)

(That, if someone were to ask the Force about an Ahsoka Tano, the Force would tremble with recognition.)

She places her hand on the panel next to the entrance and the door slides open.

“Ahsoka.”

She turns. Anakin’s Force ghost steadies itself in the middle of the apartment. His face is kind.

Ahsoka understands, in a way that some knowledge is hidden underwater, that it might be the last time she sees him.

That it might be a while before she sees him again.

Anakin doesn’t need to say anything because his love flows through their bond but he opens his mouth anyway, and Ahsoka knows what he’s going to say even before he says it.

“Good luck.”

Ahsoka snorts for no reason at all.

A wise man once said there’s no such thing as luck.

Anakin rolls his eyes. Don’t know the guy but he sounds like a prick.

Ahsoka can feel Obi-wan's presence, there and gone, for too short a moment, his disdain lingering in the air as Ahsoka turns on her heel and goes through the door, her mouth threaded with a smile, the blue of Anakin in the corner of her eye, and then—

nothing.

But also: everything.

/

Anakin asked Ahsoka not to follow him just yet. It seems like such a long time ago.

Back then, Ahsoka couldn’t make any promises.

But now, if Anakin asked that same question Ahsoka would feel him everywhere around her and promise him to hold out a bit longer.

And it would be the truth.

/

“To all personnel,” General Ackbar’s voice resounds across Home One. “We are preparing to jump out of hyperspace. Report to your stations and may the Force be with you.”

/

It’s been a while since Ahsoka took a starfighter into a space battle. And yet—

The X-wing cockpit feels as though she’s never left it, the controls in her hands as familiar as the shape and weight of her lightsabers. She recognizes the imminence of a fight in the Force that tugs at her from a million different directions at once. She closes her eyes for a moment, the imprints of hyperspeed blue behind her eyelids, and focuses on the pull, her vision spanning the entire universe, places she’s been and is and never will be. Her insignificance among those life forces comforts her.

Ahsoka opens her eyes just as the New Republic fleet jumps out of hyperspace.

Jakku looms ahead, split in half, shrouded in darkness on one side and lit up by its only sun on the other. And separating the New Republic fleet from the planet are the clusters of the Imperial Remnant.

And they truly are remnants. There’s what has to be the last Dreadnought looming like a colossal animal and a handful of Star Destroyers positioned below its underbelly. TIE-fighters are immediately ejected from the barrels of the monstrous ships and Ahsoka adjusts her controls, sits more comfortably in the leather seat. On both her sides, X-wings of her squadron are waiting for her orders. Other squadrons in twin starfighters position themselves next to teams of Y-wings. Behind them amass A-wings and B-wings, waiting for further orders.

Ahsoka trusts the Force and she trusts the people of the New Republic. Her focus zeroes in on her target and she sees the events ahead, goes through the plan one last time. In her mind, she sees herself and the twins on the deck of a starship, a Star Destroyer exploding behind them and the surface of Jakku looming closer as they make their way to help the ground assault.

And all is in balance, as they make it out alive.

Ahsoka doesn’t dare to hope but she does, despite herself.

As the TIEs inch closer, their dark, round bodies blocking out the stars, she flexes her hands on the yoke and says, “Ranger Leader. You know what to do.”

Her comms crackle with responses and then green blaster fire splits the darkness of space.

“Let’s get ‘em. Ranger nine, over.”

“Copy. Ranger five, over.”

“On it. Ranger six, over.”

Ahsoka punches the accelerators and the surge makes her body slam into the backrest. Her squadron darts ahead and Ahsoka gives in to the Force.

Her scanners pick up an incoming TIE, the fighter approaching her dead on and Ahsoka makes a series of deflections left and right, the red blasts missing her by a breath, and she fires even before her computer trains on the target.

The enemy pilot fails to dodge in time and the ship splinters the same exact moment Ahsoka hits it. She flies through the debris, the speed too great to make a run for it. All she sees is fire and pieces of shrapnel clattering against the cockpit, but then she’s coming out on the other side, unscathed, her droid buzzing about insubstantial damage and something like please, watch out.

Ahsoka smiles to herself and says, “You shoulda stayed in maintenance, then.”

And she’s back amongst enemy fire, TIEs falling apart as she blasts them into nothing.

Further ahead, the Star Destroyers and the Dreadnought are taking fire but still holding the blockade. The whole operation relies on making a hole big enough for the New Republic fleet to start making their moves on Jakku but so far it seems like they’re barely making any progress.

It’s not Ahsoka’s job to worry about it. And even if she wanted to, there are TIEs incoming and shouts of her squadron coming in and amidst that—

Hey, I had him! Luke’s bewilderment travels through the Force bond. Ahsoka’s attention naturally drifts towards an X-wing making a sharp U-turn, and a similar starfighter flying overhead.

Leia’s response appears inside Ahsoka’s head, Catch up, little brother.

Ahsoka dodges the incoming TIE, narrowly missing their companion following close behind. She pulls the yoke towards her and down, and her ship swims up and for a moment she’s upside down, the seatbelts crisscrossing her chest pushing down on her lungs. She fires at the escaping enemies, once, twice. Both go up in flames.

No, she says with amusement in her voice. You two catch up.

The Force scrambles for a response but she’s already righting herself and ribboning paths with one of her Rangers, onto another pair of TIEs. The twins’ spike in determination laces itself through the scattered space debris.

Ahsoka would love nothing more than to join them but both her and Luke have their own squadrons to worry about, their own maneuvers discussed with their teammates. Still, it reminds her of the space battles she fought by Anakin’s side and how they were both children of war but in those moments, it just felt like they were somewhere far away, where death had no weight.

Death in space is different. Death in space is momentary when it hits you and death in space seems inconsequential as it happens around you.

And it happens, as Ahsoka takes a hit to the hull and her droid panics as it calculates the damage made to the shield.

Her partner is not so fortunate. She watches Aria being engulfed by flames in the very corner of her vision as she speeds past, the cockpit rattling in the proximity of the hit.

Ahsoka grits her teeth and destroys the fucker but the damage is done. She feels the link, severed, in the Force. Something going out but also appearing somewhere else in that very same moment.

Nothing is lost in the universe, in the Force.

But it still feels lonely and vast as it happens.

Something else shifts, too. Ahsoka turns just in time to see the large body of a Star Destroyer sink into one of their Starhawks. Time seems to slow as the New Republic ship starts to split and fall apart, the Imperial cruiser like a dark, jagged finger in the middle of its splintering hull.

It picks right up when Ahsoka, and the entire fleet, realizes the Dreadnought is not flanked anymore and the Imperial barricade is ultimately broken.

“That’s right!” Ahsoka hears through the coms.

“We got ‘em!”

“Let’s do this.”

The TIEs scurry to protect the Super Star Destroyer but it’s no use. Another Starhawk, Ahsoka realizes it to be Concord with Commodore Agate at its helm, fires all they have at the Dreadnought.

“Ranger Leader,” she says with a hint of a smile. “We’ve got ourselves an opening.”

Luke’s Gold squadron begins to make their way towards the Star Destroyer.

“We’re making sure Gold gets on board,” she adds, already tailing a TIE that’s gaining speed on one of Luke’s squadron’s X-wing, “and then we follow.”

“Roger that, Ranger Leader. Ranger two, over.”

“Understood. Ranger nine, over.”

“Flanking you, Ranger nine. Ranger seven, over.”

Ranger four and five come in but then it’s silence. The names of her fallen squadron pilots rise up her throat but she trusts the Force to guide them where they need to go. She focuses solely on the line of Gold X-wings making their errant way towards the Dreadnought.

/

Ahsoka slams her back against the wall, right next to a set of closed, durasteel doors. Leylas presses herself against the panels on the other side, aiming her pistol down the corridor. Blaster fire, shouts and heavy thudding of boots resound inside the belly of the ship.

R7 rolls forward and out of his body extends a hand which he plugs into a panel on the wall. Ahsoka fixes her grip on the lightsabers and reaches out with the Force. She picks up on five beings behind the doors, and about a dozen further down.

She glances at Leylas and, holding her sabers with her thumbs, makes a four and a one with her fingers. Leylas nods, her braids falling over her shoulder.

R7 gives a single beep of warning before the doors open. Three stormtroopers appear hiding along the hallway, the remaining two crouching on both sides of the entrance. Ahsoka takes on the one to the right, slashing their blaster in two with an upward arc of her saber, followed by a slash across their chest with her shoto. She crouches low to avoid incoming fire, Leylas mirroring her as the body of the trooper Ahsoka took on slumps to the floor.

The three further down pause briefly, not expecting to be overtaken so fast, and Ahsoka takes advantage of their hesitation to reach with the Force, yanking the pistols out of their grip, the weapons charging through the air and clanking to the ground at her feet.

The troopers start to scramble but Ahsoka’s already making her way forward. She sends one of the Imperials at Leylas who uses the butt of her blaster to do an uppercut, right in that spot where the helmet doesn’t quite connect with the chest piece. Ahsoka takes this moment to somersault and as she’s coming down she extends her leg and her heel connects with the back of a helmet, the force of the impact slamming the trooper to the ground. She uses the leverage to whirl towards the remaining soldier but before she can slash, a shot flashes past her elbow and embeds itself in the centre of the enemy’s chest. Ahsoka lands when the body hits the floor.

She looks back at Leylas who grins.

“Nice work,” Ahsoka says and motions towards the pile of weapons. “Fancy anything here?”

“Extra fire never hurts,” Leylas replies and crouches down to inspect the blasters, picks up one, weighs it in her hand and drapes it across her back. “Okay, let’s go.”

Ahsoka looks back at R7, still hiding behind the archway. “C’mon, little guy, let’s seal them in.”

Her droid makes a series of compliant beeps and follows behind to another set of doors. He plugs himself into the controls again and a red light flashes in the passage they just left, the doors on the opposite end slamming shut, the entryway right in front of Ahsoka following suit.

She glances towards Leylas just as three troopers round the corner but her companion is already on it: three clean shots and they’re on the floor with burning holes in their chestplates.

Even though the Imperial forces are not what they once were, it’s still a vicious fight to make their way to the main reactor. Ahsoka kicks and slashes and rolls across the floor to dodge incoming fire as Leylas fires shot after shot, decking the troopers with her blaster when they come in close combat, using her fists and elbows and knees when all else fails. It’s exhausting and Ahsoka is hoping Leia managed to at least jam the coms across the Dreadnought, preventing them from sending reinforcements.

They round another corner and Ahsoka sees a whirlpool of green among emerald and crimson blasts. Luke redirects fire and his squadron send in their own. It’s a fight almost done, a handful of troopers guarding the huge, metal doors leading to the reactors but Ahsoka knows more wait ahead.

Luke glances her way but otherwise doesn’t lose focus. “Perfect timing, Master.”

Ahsoka joins at his side to deflect the missiles. “You’re doing a pretty good job yourself.”

Three more troopers fall down and both her and Luke move at the same time to take care of the remaining two, a precise gash in their armour. The squadron moves in before the bodies fully hit the ground, R7 and another droid moving to the control panel to disarm the barriers.

Luke sends a pair from his team to keep a lookout on the hallway.

“I don’t think more are coming but…” he chews on his lower lip as he looks ahead at the heavy doorway.

Ahsoka retires her lightsabers and places her hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Better safe than sorry.”

Luke closes his eyes and exhales. “Any luck with—”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “We’ll find her once we’re done here. I’m sure she’s holding her own.”

As she says it, she knows she’s right. She senses distress on Leia’s end but she’s there, on the opposite side of the ship — there.

Luke must pull on the bond, as well, because he nods and smiles at Ahsoka. “Right. Once we’re done here.”

Ahsoka squeezes his arm one last time before she lets go, something enormous and hard to articulate in her chest. They both go over to their people positioning themselves on both sides of the doors. Ahsoka crouches next to Leylas.

“You alright?”

Leylas nods, her brow knitted in determination. “Let’s get this over with.”

Ahsoka looks to the other side, Luke making last clarifications with his squadron. It’s everywhere around him, in the faces of his companions, how much they trust him, how they’d follow him anywhere. She doesn’t think he’s aware of it, the influence and impact he carries.

He makes a great leader and a formidable Jedi.

The Force on his side tentatively touches the feelings and absorbs them as accidental. Ahsoka doesn’t mind, as long as he knows.

A series of short alarms cuts through the space as the mechanisms behind the doors start to spin and lose the latches. Ahsoka bounces on the balls of her feet, sways left to right, and grabs her lightsabers, twirling both once so she can activate them with the blades appearing in reverse. She hears someone behind her charge their blaster, another person muttering a string of words too quiet to be anything else but a prayer. On the other side, Luke leans against the wall, ear close to the doors. He catches her looking. A worry for his sister clings to the back of his mind before it dissipates.

May the Force be with you.

And also with you.

The alarm cuts off as the doors begin to decompress, the personnel behind having added additional measures of safety after the New Republic forces had breached the Super Star Destroyer.

Ahsoka reaches out to every single person around her, all seventeen of them, feels their lives next to her skin, cradles them. She takes a deep breath, holds it, and releases it when the doors slide open, her muscles drawn taut, ready for a fight.

Two shots make it through the breach before the whole ship gives a violent shudder.

Ahsoka balances her weight with her knees bent and several fighters steady themselves on the wall. They all exchange bewildered looks, Leylas checking her blaster and glancing into the engine room in confusion. Luke gives her a worried glance.

Did we hit it?

I don’t think—

And that’s when the ship tilts two-three dozen solid degrees, sending them skidding backwards.

The New Republic soldiers around her glide to the opposite side of the hallway, several stormtroopers falling through the open doorway, clawing at the floor and side panels.

Ahsoka understands what’s going on as the alarms across the entire Dreadnought begin to blare.

“We’re going down!” she shouts. “Everyone make your way to the hangars!”

Luke joins at her side when their people begin to slide their way down the hallway but a few remain behind, waiting on them.

“You should go with them,” Luka says, his expression wild and full of worry.

Ahsoka plants her feet and grabs Luke’s shoulders as the ship shakes once more. “What about you?”

He shakes his head. “I need to find Leia.”

Ahsoka opens her mouth and closes it. They can’t both go to find her because some of their troops will follow, not wanting to leave them behind. And she desperately doesn’t want her people’s blood on her hands.

Almost as much as she wants Leia to be okay.

Almost.

“Okay,” she whispers under her breath and then louder, with durasteel matching the walls around them. “Okay, go. I’ll wait for you with a shuttle.”

Luke frowns, his brain probably already making up new escape plans. “But—”

Ahsoka grips his arm more firmly and looks him directly in the eye. “I will wait.”

It takes another shudder and holding onto her elbow before Luke nods.

Ahsoka nods back.

And then she is turning towards the squadron that remained behind, and her droid. She hears Luke making his way down another set of corridors.

“Let’s go.”

The way back to the hangar takes half as long as coming out of it, the remaining personnel scrambling to fight a bunch of New Republic soldiers and a former Jedi. Ahsoka skids down the halls, her lightsabers like a natural extension of her limbs, swiftly cutting through opponents trying to find their footing in an unfavourable environment. Leylas and several others deal with long-range threats.

If anything is a testament to the fallen Empire, it’s blind fanaticism even as a starship is falling through space.

When they file into the hangar, Ahsoka takes in the chaos. Overturned ships smoldering and empty spaces where starfighters used to be, a couple of TIEs tumbling down the runway in front of her eyes, falling out of the open mouth of the hangar, the gate unlocked, and below the surface of Jakku growing nearer and nearer. The only red she sees is the planetary one, meaning they haven’t started breaking the atmosphere yet.

Ahsoka grabs Leylas by the arm and stops her in place. Her companion turns around, confused.

“I’m staying behind for the twins,” says Ahsoka. “Make sure everyone makes it out safely.”

Leylas looks downright offended. “I’ll stay with you.”

Ahsoka doesn’t comprehend how she can still command such loyalty. What has she done to deserve it? Who is she to deserve it?

“That’s an order.”

Leylas doesn’t budge and even pushes into Ahsoka space, her gaze flashing with defiance.

“Okay.” Despite herself, Ahsoka smiles, her hurt boiling down to nothing in the imminence of Jakku’s surface. “Let’s make sure everyone makes it out and then we find a shuttle for ourselves.”

Unsurprisingly, several stormtroopers remain behind and they try to blast them as soon as Ahsoka and Leylas lose their cover. Ahsoka deflects the fire with her lightsabers and Leylas picks up a fallen blaster, returning the onslaught. Two X-wings give heat to their engines and knock down a group of enemies on their way out. Another nears the mouth of the hangar and makes a U-turn. Ahsoka has a split second to grab Leylas’ jacket and hurl them both behind a box crate, the X-wing opening fire, a series of TIEs exploding nearby, the heat searing Ahsoka’s exposed arm, the side of her face.

When the detonations cease, Leylas grabs Ahsoka’s shoulder and motions towards a shuttle a few crates down.

“We’ll have to get to it at the last moment,” Ahsoka says. “Or they’ll blast us down.”

“So let’s take a few of them down in the meantime.”

It’s ugly at this point. The Dreadnought is skyrocketing towards Jakku and the only thing keeping Ahsoka moving is the Force and an unhealthy dose of adrenaline. She impales stormtroopers on her lightsabers and pushes heavy machinery around with the Force to knock her opponents down. Leylas hides behind a crate and sends consecutive blows into the same person, making sure they’re down.

Ahsoka sends a trooper to the ground and as she gets up, she glances towards the mouth of the hangar. The very edges start to blaze and quickly lose titanium pieces. The next crate that flies into space gets incinerated, leaving a trail of embers behind.

“We’re real close to impact!” Ahsoka yells towards Leylas.

Leylas takes another shot and glances towards her. “I’ll ready the ship.”

Ahsoka opens her mouth and simultaneously reaches down the bond towards the twins but amidst the chaos, she can’t make out such precise emotions as how close they are to making it.

So she clamps her mouth shut and nods.

“I’ll cover you.”

Ahsoka stands up and starts rotating her lightsabers in circles fast enough to create a sort of shield and starts to back up, conscious of Leylas making her way towards a Lambda shuttle.

The blaster fire dwindles and Ahsoka redirects the bolts at the troopers remaining on ground. The majority has already escaped in leftover TIEs or New Republic starfighters. Tremor after tremor travels through the Dreadnought and Ahsoka has to grit her teeth and use the Force to propel herself up.

Leylas runs up the ramp of her vehicle of choice when Ahsoka takes care of the last stormtrooper in sight. She’s already sitting at the consols, starting up the engines as Ahsoka makes it inside the shuttle.

“We’ll have to take off,” Leylas says, the multicoloured lights illuminating her face. “We can hover inside the hangar for about a minute but that’s as much time as we can get without going down with the ship.”

“Alright.” Ahsoka balls her hand into a fist and looks away from the reddening vision of Jakku, back towards the demolished and smoldering hangar. “Keep it on standby so we can blast out of here as soon as everyone’s on board.”

It’s the most excruciating minute in Ahsoka’s life. The Force is a rattling noise inside her until she realizes it’s not the Force but her own thoughts.

/

She never properly knew her parents to miss them. She still remembers Kaeden’s words, what do you even know about family, light years ago when Ahsoka lied on Kaeden’s homeplanet and everyone thought her name was Ashla (and she thought her name was Ashla). you never had one.

Ahsoka thinks of Anakin, Obi-Wan. She thinks of Rex, senator Amidala, Master Plo Koon.

i had a family that loved me. they’re all gone now but i had them.

Except it’s not true.

Except not everyone is gone.

/

And when that minute is up, Ahsoka knows she’s either leaving here with the twins or she’s not leaving at all because they’re hers.

They’re all that remains of what she hasn’t left behind.

“It’s getting hot in here!” Leylas shouts and Ahsoka has to steady herself on the chair, the Dreadnought shuddering fiercely and without a stop.

She’s made her decision. “You have to go. I’ll—”

And that’s when she sees them. Both at once, because Leia is draped across Luke’s shoulders and Ahsoka’s heart stops for what feels like an eternity but then Leia takes a step and another and Ahsoka exhales and realizes it must be a wound, a simple wound, and Leia’s alive, and they’re both alive and—

She sends an impulse down the Force.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.

The twins’ heads snap towards her and the ship is falling through the sky and they’re limping and running, and limping and running towards her, their robes and skin covered in soot but alive—

The shuttle starts to slide after another shudder and Ahsoka panics. Luke and Leia are close but not quite there.

“We have to get moving,” Leylas says and the engines underneath Ahsoka’s feet power on, the shuttle beginning to hover in the air. “You got ‘em?”

Ahsoka says through gritted teeth, “I got ‘em.”

And she stretches the Force as far as she can and as soon as she touches the edges of light she pulls, and yanks the twins towards the ship, the ramp rolling up, threatening to close.

She gets them at the last moment. They tumble to the floor at her feet, Leia hissing and Ahsoka’s knees buckling underneath her. The doors close and Leylas shouts we’re off! as the shuttle breaks out of the hangar and into the war in space.

Except, Ahsoka doesn’t see that war. Her back is turned to the cockpit and she watches Leia hold her shoulder and she watches Luke breathe heavily, a smear of blood on his cheek. The three of them look between each other, the Force snapping into place after what feels like millennia. Relief so great Ahsoka cannot discern its beginning or end floods their bond and suddenly she’s holding her hands out and the twins grab onto each other and fall into her arms.

Their bodies are warm against her and they smell of fire and too much steel. Their breaths are scattered until they start breathing in unison. Ahsoka can feel their hands clawing at her and her own hands clawing at them. Her eyes prickle and something else floods her chest, something she hasn’t felt in a long time.

She doesn’t name it as she starts to cry because she’s afraid of reducing its nature.

Its gentle knocking, its terrible tenderness.

The twins hold Ahsoka in place.

She doesn’t move.

She stays close to the light.