Chapter Text
"Ekkreth wears a hundred thousand shapes and has a hundred thousand tricks, and the chain has not been forged that can hold them."
“I will not have my padawan paraded around as a pleasure slave!”
“Another plan, have you, to infiltrate the Zygerrian auction?”
The grandmaster’s voice was inquisitive, not necessarily judgmental, despite Anakin’s outburst.
“Not that,” Anakin growled. Unhelpfully.
Obi-Wan bit back a sigh. He agreed with his former padawan, for once— sending Ahsoka into a slaver’s den was simply not an option. Unfortunately, he didn’t see another one, and neither did anyone on the council.
“I’m inclined to agree with Knight Skywalker,” Master Tii said. Head held high and regal, a calm contrast to Anakin’s storm. A voice of reason. “Finding the colonists is a high priority, but this assignment poses a significant risk to Padawan Tano’s safety. If anything goes wrong, she will be in an especially vulnerable position due to her age and species.”
The words were said clinically, but everyone knew exactly what she was alluding to. Ahsoka would make a very valuable pleasure slave.
“With respect, Master Tii, Padawan Tano regularly engages in front line combat,” Master Mundi cut in. “If anything, she would be in less danger here than on the front.”
Obi-Wan grabbed Anakin’s flesh wrist before he could speak, digging his nails in. Anakin huffed out sharply, knowing exactly why Obi-Wan was cautioning him.
Let me handle this , he pushed through their bond, but Plo beat him to the punch.
“I disagree,” Master Plo said, before Anakin could say something rash. Obi-Wan breathed a silent thanks into the force. “Combat is to be expected in any Padawan’s training, but we have a responsibility to protect our young from particular dangers.”
“There are already hundreds of Torgrutas in the position we are asking Padawan Tano to pose in,” Mace Windu said, sounding exasperated.
Something in Shaak Tii’s dark eyes flashed, Anakin’s force signature roiled , but Mace continued before he could be cut off.
“I don’t deny that this is a dangerous mission, but such is the life of a Jedi Knight. Her involvement is the quickest and most effective way to find the missing colonists. If you all are careful, there is no reason she should stay behind. I’m sure Padawan Tano would agree, if she were here,” Mace finished, pointedly. Obi-Wan could practically feel Anakin’s teeth grating against each other.
Obi-Wan was also fairly sure that Mace was right, and the reason Ahsoka wasn’t there was precisely because she would volunteer herself. He could feel her force signature buzzing outside the conference room, waiting for them to come out. Waiting for news.
“If we come up with another suitable plan, do we have your permission to leave Padawan Tano off this mission?” Obi-Wan asked. Anakin crackled next to him, and Obi-Wan knew that plan or no plan, he would not be taking their padawan with them.
Mace looked like he was holding back from rolling his eyes. Master Yoda, on the other hand, looked thoughtful.
“Agree with your former padawan, do you Master Kenobi?” he asked.
Obi-Wan swallowed heavily, feeling the council’s eyes on him. Feeling Anakin’s eyes on him.
Feeling Ahsoka’s force signature just outside the door, young and bright and nervous.
“I do,” he said, firmly. “If we had better contingencies, perhaps, but as it stands, I don’t feel comfortable exploiting her age and species simply for convenience’s sake. Too much could go wrong too quickly.”
“With respect, Master Kenobi, it is hardly a matter of convenience. The lives of thousands of colonists may be at stake if the auction cannot be infiltrated,” Master Billaba pointed out.
“All the same,” Obi-Wan said, knowing that she was not wrong, and also knowing that he wasn’t either. “I ask that we at least be given time to think of another plan.”
“The colonists may not have that time,” Master Mundi said. “We cannot be hesitant. You must act quickly.”
“Then we will come up with an alternative quickly,” Obi-Wan said, evenly.
“Submit another plan to be approved before you leave for Zygerria, you must,” Master Yoda said. “Otherwise, Padawan Tano you must take with you. The lives of the colonists, we cannot risk.”
“Understood,” Obi-Wan said, bowing slightly. “Thank you masters.”
He shut the holo off before the customary may the force be with you s could sprinkle in, or before anyone else could protest. Anakin rounded on him almost immediately. Obi-Wan was expecting it, it was a miracle he’d managed not to have another outburst during the meeting.
“We’re not taking Ahsoka with us,” he said.
“No, we are not,” Obi-Wan said. He felt very tired very suddenly. “But we must think of some alternative, and quickly.”
“And if they don’t approve it?” Anakin said, arms crossed over his chest. It was a challenge, one Obi-Wan recognized well.
He pressed his lips together, trying to ignore the light throbbing in his skull that threatened to bloom into a full on headache.
“This planet is scheduled to experience mild solar flares,” he said, which was not entirely true, but not entirely false either. The solar flares were predicted to be days away— not impossibly off, but implausibly so. “It is completely reasonable to assume our communications might be scrambled until we return.”
Anakin’s eyebrow ticked up.
“Unless you have a better idea,” Obi-Wan added.
“No, that’s fine,” Anakin said, brusquely. “I just didn’t know you had it in you, that’s all.”
“Yes, well. Halving conditional permission is better than outright rejection,” Obi-Wan said. “And if all goes well, they won’t have much to hold against us.”
Anakin nodded. He’d calmed down some, knowing that Ahsoka would be safe, but Obi-Wan could still feel his anger burning through the force. A tight simmer rather than a burning flame, but enough.
Frankly, if it were up to Obi-Wan, Anakin wouldn’t be going on this mission either. It hit entirely too close to the exposed nerve of Anakin’s childhood, and he didn’t entirely trust his former padawan to keep it together in such a triggering environment.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t up to him. Ironically Anakin would probably protest being left behind just as strongly as Obi-Wan was sure Ahsoka was going to.
It was a small comfort knowing he could keep only one of his padawans safe, but it was not one he took for granted. Not when he knew what this mission would demand of them.
“We’ll still need an offering to get into that auction,” Anakin warned. Anakin would know better than Obi-Wan, though the fact twisted uncomfortably in Obi-Wan’s gut.
“You’ll take me,” Obi-Wan decided. Anakin gave him a look.
“No offense, Master, but a thirty-six-year-old human male isn’t exactly peak offerings.”
“No,” Obi-Wan said, patiently. “You’ll take me . As myself. There’s already a chance they’ll recognize me, we might as well lean into it.”
He’d successfully caught Anakin’s interest. His former padawan’s eyebrow ticked up.
“And how do you expect me to sell that I’ve captured a Jedi master?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Obi-Wan said, waving a hand. “You were on your way to the auction and caught me scuttling around.”
“And how would I keep you caught?” Anakin asked. “I don’t— even if we did have force suppressors—”
“Which we don’t,” Obi-Wan finished smoothly. “No, we’ll take Rex or Cody. Say you threatened them to keep me in line.”
Obi-Wan watched the gears in Anakin’s mind turn, felt his slow but grudging acceptance in the Force. It wasn’t a great plan— really, it was a bad one— but it was infinitely better than putting Ahsoka in Obi-Wan’s place.
“Rex,” Anakin decided. “I’ll talk to him. He’ll do it for Ahsoka.”
Privately, Obi-Wan was a little relieved Anakin had chosen Rex without them having to say what they were probably both thinking— the ruse might work a little too well with Cody being used as incentive. Best not hand them Obi-Wan’s… soft spot on a silver platter. But then again— having him nearby in a less vulnerable position would make Obi-Wan feel better.
“We may want to take Cody along anyway,” Obi-Wan said. “We have extra armor in the ship we captured. It would hide his face well enough— and it might be beneficial to have someone stationed on the outside, just in case.”
“Agreed,” Anakin said.
It was a plan, solid enough for their purposes. It would also never be approved, and they both knew it. Nevermind the fact that Obi-Wan and Rex would be going in with almost no cover, taking Cody with them would also leave the 501st and 212th with no commanding officer.
In theory, Obi-Wan could take another from his battalion. But selfishly, he wanted Cody. There was nobody he trusted to watch his back more— and nobody who had been told more about Anakin’s past. He’d be able to anticipate their moves better than anyone.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, and the Force curled around him with warning. “You know that by putting ourselves in these positions, you may be asked to prove yourself. To hurt myself or Rex.”
Anakin’s jaw tightened. “I know,” he said.
“Then you also know that for this plan to succeed, you must do it,” Obi-Wan said. “I can’t speak for Rex, of course, but know I would never hold anything that happens there against you. I know who you are, Anakin. Being forced to play a part will not change that.”
Anakin’s rage was starting to bubble up again. He hated this mission, hated this assignment, hated the parts they all had to play.
Obi-Wan did too, but he knew it wasn’t to the same level as Anakin. Could never be.
“We may not be able to find the colonists otherwise,” Obi-Wan said. “And you know it will be infinitely more dangerous for everyone if our covers are blown.”
“You and Rex barely even have a cover,” Anakin pointed out, his mouth twisting.
“For you and Cody, then,” Obi-Wan amended.
Anakin didn’t answer. Obi-Wan could feel his frustration swirling in the Force. Anakin’s signature always felt somewhat akin to staring directly into both of Tatooine’s suns, but the overwhelming effect tended to get worse when strong emotions were involved. Which, given this was Anakin, was nearly always.
“There’s no shame in refusing this mission,” Obi-Wan said, softly. “It’s a tremendous ask of the council given your history. Master Plo is only one system over—”
“The colonists don’t have time for Master Plo to cross systems,” Anakin cut in. His eyes were closed, and Obi-Wan watched as he sucked in a breath through his teeth. “I’ll do it. Whatever we need to do to get them back. But once they’re back—”
“We’ll do what we need to do then, too,” Obi-Wan finished.
Ahsoka paced outside the doors of the bridge. Anakin had kicked her out while they talked to the council and while Ahsoka would normally complain, or at least sulk about not being included, something in Anakin’s demeanor had kept her uncharacteristically unargumentative about it.
Maybe it was what Master Obi-Wan had told her on Kiros. About how Anakin— how he used to be a slave. Until he was nine .
Ahsoka had known that Anakin came to the temple later than most younglings. That the council had almost thought him too old to train. But she hadn’t realized it was because of that .
It made sense, if she thought about it. Anakin never talked about anything before he came to the temple. Why he hated Tatooine so much. Why he’d been so angry that they had to rescue the little hutt, the first mission they’d ever done together.
It made sense too why he sometimes swore in Huttese instead of Basic. Ahsoka had kind of assumed he’d picked it up to avoid Obi-Wan chastising him for his language, but like many things her Master did, it was not becoming obvious that there was a lot more to it.
Ahsoka only got a split second of warning through the Force before the door snapped open and Anakin stormed through, Obi-Wan on his heels. Ahsoka jumped back, but Anakin barely seemed to notice he’d almost barrelled her over. Ahsoka glanced at Obi Wan, who simply gave a tired shrug in return.
“So, when are we leaving?” Ahsoka asked, almost tripping her own feet in an effort to catch up to Anakin. Ahsoka was getting taller, but one of Anakin’s long strides was still worth a few of her own. Especially when he was in a mood like this.
“ We are leaving in a few hours,” Anakin said, looking resolutely at the hallway stretching out in front of them and not at her. “You’re not coming.”
“ What? ” Ahsoka yelped. She almost stopped dead in the hallway in surprise “But—“
“This mission is too dangerous,” Anakin said, walking, if possible even faster, as if he were determined to leave her behind in the hallway as well as the mission. “You’re staying on the Resolute .”
Ahsoka gaped. First at him, even though she was ignored, then at Obi-Wan, who at least had the decency to wince.
“But Master—”
“We’re not discussing this. I’ve made up my mind, and I promise you’re not going to change it.”
And with that, Anakin stepped into his quarters and slammed the shut-door button shut behind him.
Ahsoka looked at Obi-Wan, ready to plead her case, but he was already shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, Ahsoka. But Anakin is right.”
“Not you too,” Ahsoka groaned. Obi-Wan gave her a small smile, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“This has nothing to do with your capabilities, padawan. Anakin only has your best interests in mind, I assure you.”
“But these are my people,” Ahsoka said, and to her absolute horror she felt a lump of frustrated tears beginning to rise in her throat.
“I know,” Obi-Wan said. He sounded both tired and sympathetic. It didn’t help at all. “I’m sorry, Ahsoka, I am. But I still think Anakin is right. This path is the safest for everyone involved.”
Something in that prickled at the back of Ahsoka’s mind. Obi-Wan’s shields were stronger than Anakin’s, so it was usually impossible to figure out what he was feeling if it was not freely offered. But Ahsoka could swear she felt the tiniest bit of guilt anyway.
“Is that what Anakin was fighting the council about? Me staying?”
Obi-Wan sighed. It was easy to forget how young Obi-Wan was sometimes, but he looked older than his years just then.
“Ahsoka,” he started placatingly, but Ahsoka cut him off.
“They wanted me to go but Master Anakin thought I couldn’t handle it!”
She was overwhelmed by the unfairness of it all. Anakin and Obi-Wan just didn’t understand . Being human means they can be tetherless, detached, the way proper Jedi should. The way Ahsoka never could. Especially not on this mission, when it was her people who were in trouble, who needed her help.
Obi-Wan looked like he would rather be anywhere else. Ahsoka nearly felt a twinge of pity for him, except that she was pretty sure he had taken Anakin’s side in there. He sighed, scrubbing a weary hand over his beard.
“Your anger is not constructive,” Obi-Wan said, finally. If anything, it made Ahsoka more angry— perhaps because she knew deep down he was right.
“I suggest you go meditate. I promise, we all will discuss this further once Anakin and I return,” he continued.
“Fine,” Ahsoka snapped, knowing she was being disrespectful and not caring at all. To her great disappointment, Obi-Wan seemed unphased. He let her turn on her heel and storm off down the long corridor of the Resolute . When she risked a glance back, he was leaning against the wall, one exhausted hand over his eyes.
In Ahsoka’s defense, she did meditate like Obi-Wan had asked her to.
She just didn’t come to the same conclusion he apparently had about her going on the mission.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she ran through similar scenarios and the particulars of this one, the more she was absolutely sure she was meant to be there.
Anakin had forbidden her from going to the Citadel, but they’d needed her once they were there. And they hadn’t been that mad when they realized she disobeyed orders. Okay, maybe she didn’t have Master Plo to cover for her this time, but it's not like they’d actually believed him anyhow.
Besides, Anakin needed her. She could feel his instability in the Force, never quite balanced at the best of times but in total disarray now. Obi-Wan had asked her to keep an eye on him, but how was she supposed to do that if she couldn’t even come on the mission?
And apart from all that, the colony they were looking for were Torgrutans, her people. They didn’t get that, they didn’t know what it was like. You could throw a rock and hit a human on most planets, there wasn’t any connection between them. Once Master Plo had found her as a youngling, she’d hardly even seen another Togruta— besides Master Ti, obviously.
But the few times she had— once at Dex’s after a rough mission, once a sparing glance on the lower levels of Coruscant doing reconnaissance with Anakin, one on a campaign on a planet very far away whose name she didn’t even remember— there had been a warm sort of recognition. The slightest nod, a brief smile, a natural connection sparking in the Force, however briefly.
The colony had had thousands of her people. To imagine that connection being dampened, or worse, wiped out completely was so miserable she could barely force herself to reckon with it.
It wasn’t their fault they would never understand, Anakin and Obi-Wan. Humans raised by humans, so easily able to blend into the idea of what a jedi should look like, should be. Ahsoka had never been ashamed of who she was, but she recognized she was different all the same. She doubted the thought had even occurred to her master, or her grandmaster.
And if they refused to hear her out, well then. She’d just have to explain after the fact.
It was surprisingly easy to sneak onto the mission. The ship they were taking might not be the Twilight , which she knew in and out, but the Zygerrian vessel they’d commandeered had a hidden compartment in the cargo hold that Ahsoka was very resolutely not thinking of the intended purpose of. She knew Anakin never double checked cargo hulls before taking off anyhow.
Masking her force signature was easy also; though initially she’d anticipated this being the hardest part. It helped that Anakin’s shields were airtight right now; he seemed determined she would know nothing of what he was thinking or feeling. She simply lowered herself into a meditative position in the cargo hold and raised her own shields in return.
It was much easier to control her emotions when she was taking action. If she’d tried this alone in her quarters on the Resolute , she’s sure she would’ve been much less successful.
She could hear muffled voices above her, heavy footsteps she recognized as clones. Ahsoka hoped Rex was there, if only because if he’d been left behind she was sure to be found out much sooner than she planned. The others probably wouldn’t be brave enough to bang down her door if they thought she was in a foul mood. Rex, on the other hand, would have no trouble dragging her out of her quarters if he thought she was sulking too much.
The ship creaked and groaned as it lifted up; Ahsoka thought she heard Obi-Wan’s accent in the lilt of a teasing comment, probably something about the state of their ride. If Anakin answered, she didn’t hear, because the hyperdrive was whirring in her ears, a slight jolt as they took off.
Ahsoka meditated on the ride there, hours in hyperspace slipping past as she did her best to connect herself to the Force. She knew she had made the decision to stow away out of attachment— to her master, to her people. But the Force didn’t chafe at it. If anything, it seemed to accept it, sweeping her fears away into its endless depths as easily as an ocean current sweeping away a pebble.
She was so caught up in her meditation, in fact, that she almost missed the tell-tale vibration of a ship breaching atmosphere, the smooth scrape of the ship’s underbelly that meant Anakin had landed.
For half a second, Ahsoka hesitated. She had debated about the best time to reveal herself here, and had determined that she had to wait for a point of no return— simply being on Zygerria was not enough, the mission must be underway to the point that there was absolutely no turning back. Otherwise, Anakin would simply order her to stay on the ship and not let her help. She would be found out regardless, of course, but if she was going to get in trouble for this, she was going to make it worth it.
But she felt a tug in her gut, a sharp prodding from the Force she loathed to ignore. She could hear shuffling above her, the group organizing themselves to exit the ship and breach the planet. This was her last chance to plead her case to be a part of the plan. If she let them leave now, she’d be going into this situation completely blind.
Indecision paralyzed her long enough for the choice to be made for her. Ahsoka heard the ramp of the ship lower, the voices and signatures above her slowly fade away.
She was alone.
Notes:
It feels so good to have the first chapter of this finally out in the wild!!! I've been playing with this AU and formulating stuff for it for over a year, so I'm really excited to finally be posting.
I do have a good chunk pre-written, and a good idea of where we're going, but don't want to tie myself to a chapter estimate before I hammer out the last few bits. This will eventually become a fix-it AU, but it is going to primarily focus on Ahsoka's journey with this change in canon in mind. My goal is to not take 100k words to execute the fix-it end of things lmao (looking @ u the ties that bind)
Codywan and Anidala are background ships, but definitely not the main focus. Also have to give credit where credit is due to Fialleril's Double Agent Vader series and Amatakka tatooine slave culture. They inspired a lot of Anakin's characterization here and it was so fun to play in their sandbox!!!
Thanks so much if u made it this far, excited to go on this journey with y'all :D
Chapter Text
It took Ahsoka a little longer than she’d like to admit to actually hype herself up enough to leave the ship.
She wasn’t scared . Anakin had trained her too well for that. Anticipatory, maybe, a little anxious about how to insert herself into the mission in a way that would actually be helpful, but not scared.
And, okay, maybe she was a little hesitant to set foot on a slaver planet without even her lightsabers to back her up. She’d left them behind on the Resolute , knowing that they’d be a dead giveaway of her identity should she get caught, but she still felt almost naked without them.
Ahsoka closed her eyes, took a deep centering breath like Master Obi-Wan always had her do when they meditated together. She let it out slowly, letting her anxieties trickle along with it. Then she hiked the hood of the dark cloak she’d worn for the occasion over her montrails and walked out of the ship.
Immediately, she understood why Anakin had not wanted to bring her here. She was more empathetic in the Force than most, which was useful in most cases but could be overwhelming in others. This was definitely one such situation— the absolute misery stemming from this place nearly made her vomit.
Still, she had a job to do. She swallowed down the bile creeping up in her throat and started to make her way through the throngs of people. The city was crowded and it was easy to slip through the streets relatively unnoticed. Anakin had been bugging her to practice projecting notice-me-not in the Force anyway; this was the perfect place to do it.
The deeper she got into the city, though, the more she realized this might be more complicated than she was hoping. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Rex and Cody were nowhere to be seen, and neither were any of the missing colonists. There were deep pits on the sides of the streets that Ahsoka could tell held some slaves, but they were not nearly full enough to contain even half of the Torgruta colony.
If they weren’t here, then where could they be? She could see some sort of tunnel system underground in some of the pits, but it mostly seemed utilized by guards, not prisoners. And why would they be keeping them so hidden away?
Lost in thought, Ahsoka edged aside one of the pits, trying to peer down to the shadowed edge without drawing too much attention to herself—
—and ran face first into armor.
Ahsoka backed up immediately, cursing internally as the figure she’d bumped into turned around. A tall figure, clad in Zygerrian armor from head to toe, heavy helmet adding a good few inches. Kriff kriff kriff this was a bad idea—
“Commander?”
Ahsoka nearly jumped out of her skin. Then she stared, peering into the shaded eyeholes of the helmet. And— there , she could just about make out Cody’s scar under his own helmet.
Belatedly, she realized that his Force signature, bright and familiar though lost to her in the crowd, had probably been when drew her in subconsciously in the first place.
“What the kriff are you doing here?” Cody hissed, grabbing her arm and dragging her to the nearest alleyway. It was barely secluded from the throng of the slave market. He stepped forward, blocking the entrypoint from view, pulling off the stupid helmet now that they were out of sight.
Briefly, Ahsoka considered lying like she had with the Citadel mission. But she didn’t exactly have Master Plo to back her up this time, and she respected Cody too much to try and pretend like Anakin or Obi-Wan had sanctioned her being here without him knowing. He’d see through it immediately.
“I felt like I had to be here,” she said, honestly. “The Force was telling me to come.”
That might be a slight exaggeration— but only slight. The time she had spent meditating on it hadn’t exactly dissuaded her from joining. It had made her more sure of her convictions, her reasons for stowing away, but she wasn’t sure if that was the will of the Force or just her own will shining through.
Cody sighed, in a long-suffering sort of way that let her know both that she was not the first Jedi to use that reasoning on him, and that he did not find it convincing this time around.
“So I’m guessing nobody but me knows you’re here,” he said. “How’d you even get here?”
“Snuck onto the ship,” Ahsoka said. “But it’s not my fault they didn’t notice.”
That was a petulant thing to say and she knew it. She regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth; the look Cody gave her told her that he was not impressed in the slightest.
“Skywalker’s not going to be pleased,” he grumbled.
Ahsoka knew that “displeased” was a pretty tempered term for how Anakin was probably gonna feel when he realized what she’d done. But thinking of that just made her chest flare in righteous indignation.
“Anakin didn’t get it— the colonists are my people. What if they had been clones and he’d told you to stay behind?”
Cody’s expression didn’t soften. In fact, the thin line of his mouth just seemed to grow thinner. Ahsoka knew he was resisting answering that question because Cody wasn’t like her, and would probably actually follow whatever orders he was given, no matter how he felt about the matter. The fact that she could disobey orders with… well. Not no consequences, but definitely less consequences than Cody would have to face was probably not her strongest selling point right about now.
“Please, Cody,” she said. “I need to help. And I’m already here. Please let me help.”
Cody technically outranked her— by a slight degree, but enough. If he ordered her back to the ship, she’d be crossing even more direct orders if she didn’t obey. But then again, she’d already completely disregarded Anakin and Obi-Wan’s orders. What was another set?
Cody looked up at the sky, muttering something under his breath in Mando’a that Ahsoka was pretty sure was a string of curses on her bloodline.
“This is a bad idea,” he said, finally, in basic, as he looked back down at her. “But it’s not like the ship’s much safer. If you’re already here, I’d rather you be with me.”
Ahsoka resisted the urge to smile in victory. Instead, she nodded seriously, trying to look like this was the outcome she’d expected.
“What’s the objective?” she asked.
“I’ve been scoping out the market trying to find signs of the colonists,” Cody said. He was already fitting the ornamental helmet back on his head. “From what we can tell, it looks like they’re gearing up for some sort of big auction.”
Ahsoka wrinkled her nose. No wonder the Force felt so sickly here.
“There were thousands of colonists. Do you think they’re all still here?”
Cody grimaced. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Ahsoka realized he must’ve already come to the same conclusion she had earlier.
“I don’t know,” Cody admitted. “But I doubt they’ve all already been sold, unless it was to a singular buyer. If that is the case, this is the place to find out who that was.”
Ahsoka nodded, doing her best to swallow away her suddenly dry mouth. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as busting a bunch of cages like she’d thought.
“Stay close, and keep your hood on,” Cody said. “You’ll be safer if it looks like I already own you.”
The helmet hid most of his expression, but she could still see his gold-brown eyes searching her own through the slits.
She nodded, pulling her hood back up over her montrals. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant idea, but that was what she signed up for when she decided to come along.
Cody had not signed up to be a babysitter.
If you wanted to be technical about it, Cody supposed he hadn’t signed up for any of this at all, but he’d always counted himself lucky that his general didn’t have a little Jetii’ka of his own to look after. Skywalker was fully grown and more than enough work all on his own, thank you very much.
Cody had always been fond of Ahsoka, though always from a distance— no use in getting too attached, even if it was clear she, the fifteen year old, had more sense than her barely-legal-adult master.
Or, at least Cody had thought she’d had more sense. She seemed intent on proving that observation wrong by pulling this little stunt.
He had no idea what the kriff she’d been thinking, sneaking along with them to Zygerria of all places—actually, it was clear from her lack of plan that she hadn’t been thinking at all. Begrudgingly, though, he had to admit she had the smallest of points: it had been foolish of Skywalker and Obi-Wan to assume she’d be fine sitting this one out when it was her own species on the line.
It’s their own damn fault, raising a kid to be just as obstinate as they are. He has no idea how that came as a surprise to either of them, though he suspects they would each just blame the other.
Now, the fact that her masters didn’t anticipate her inability to do what she was told didn’t give her the right to disobey direct orders like the ones he knew she’d received to stay on the Resolute . But there was no changing that at this point. She was here now, so they would just have to adjust. He only hoped that Kenobi would be able to keep Skywalker from murdering his padawan in cold blood when they all inevitably found out.
It had been the knowledge that she had a much worse storm coming that had caused him to take pity on her and let her stick around without too much wheedling on her end. That, and the fact that he really did not like the idea of leaving her alone here. He’d seen more than one Torgrutan girl her age in chains already, and was not keen to see that happen to her.
Now that she’d put away the tooka kit eyes she’d used to beg him to stay, she looked determined, expression hard and set. Obi-Wan and Skywalker had both mentioned that the Force was nothing short of nauseating here, so Cody supposed that had something to do with it.
He’d never admit it to Ahsoka and validate her di'kutla decision, but it was helpful to have a Force user around when searching the market. He would’ve preferred his companion to be an adult, but he would take what he could get. It took Ahsoka only a few seconds to scan the nearby pits and cages before shaking her head, indicating there was no sign of the colonists and they could move on.
The problem was, they were running out of pits and cages to search.
It was all but confirmed that the colonists weren’t here. Plenty of other suffering beings, even a few other Torgrutas, but not the specific ones they were looking for.
That all but confirmed they’d already been taken off-world, which meant this wild-bantha-chase of a mission had only gotten more difficult. Cody was already mentally sorting through back-up plans when he heard Ahsoka gasp behind him.
“It’s the governor,” she hissed when he looked around at her. She didn’t point, but she didn’t need to. There was only one last pit they hadn’t checked, and there was a shrouded, shadowy figure curled up in the corner.
Even with Cody’s advanced eyesight, he couldn’t quite make out the governor’s features from the mound on the ground. But he trusted Ahsoka’s ability with the Force if not her judgment, and so he believed her when she said it was the governor.
It seemed Cody was right not to trust her judgment, because he had to grab the back of her cloak to keep her from jumping into the pit.
“We have to help him!” Ahsoka protested.
“We will,” Cody said, taking her by the shoulders and leading her not-entirely-subtly away from the edge of the pit. Obi-Wan was going to owe him so much Alderaanian whiskey for this. “But what exactly do you plan to do for him once you’re in that pit?”
Ahsoka’s mouth, already open in protest, snapped shut. He resisted the urge to sigh. He couldn’t even entirely blame her impulsiveness on Skywalker; if Obi-Wan had been there Cody was pretty sure he also would’ve tried to jump in the pit, and he was a lot harder to physically hold back than Ahsoka.
Cody’s stupidass Jedi and their suicidal plans were going to send him to an early grave. If the war didn’t take care of him first, that was.
Ahsoka suddenly stiffened under his hands. He looked up, well-versed in whatever Force osik gave Jedi an advanced warning about danger ahead. He spotted it quickly in a guard dressed in identical armor pushing his way through the crowd, his sights clearly locked on Cody and Ahsoka.
If they tried to get away now, it would only look suspicious, and Cody doubted they would find much help in the market, which was crawling with guards. Ahsoka seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because she stood resolutely still. Cody dropped his hands from her shoulders, taking a step in front of her just as the other guard approached.
“Where’s its collar?” he asked, without preamble. Cody gritted his teeth, though Ahsoka didn’t react. Then again, Cody thought, she’d probably never been referred to as it before in her life. Cody, unfortunately, could not relate.
“It was defective,” Cody lied. “I was on my way to get her a new one.”
Despite what people might think, working closely with the Jetiise had not made him all that jealous of their powers. His general could do incredible things, sure, but Cody knew the cost of being that deeply connected to the Force could be high. Still, he found himself wishing he could project a little of the Force into his words to make them more believable.
He resisted glancing down at Ahsoka. He wasn’t sure if she’d made it to the part of her training where she could reliably do that, but she didn’t seem anxious to show it off if that was the case.
“Is it new?” the guard asked, peering down to look under Ahsoka’s hood. Cody didn’t need to be connected to the Force to know Ahsoka was practically radiating discomfort behind him.
“No,” he said. “Older batch.”
“Well behaved without the collar,” the guard mused.
Cody was glad the stupid helmet hid most of his face, because he could feel his lips curling into a snarl. In any other situation the irony of the statement might have been amusing, as it stood Cody could think of nothing but removing Ahsoka from the guard’s sight as quickly as possible.
“Still, can’t be too careful,” he bit out. “So we really should be going—”
“Not so fast,” the guard said, holding a hand up to stop Cody and Ahsoka both. “There’s been an… unexpected change. The queen needs a new personal slave.”
Well.
Kriff.
Notes:
Bit of a shorter transitional chapter today! But I love to establish some rapport between Ahsoka and Cody-- they're my fav underrated duo of tcw era :3
Poor Cody does not get paid enough for this. I mean, I don't think he gets paid at all, but if he did, it wouldn't be enough lol
thanks for all the lovely comments and kudos on the last chapter :D I'm very excited to get into this with you guys, and I really appreciate the feedback <333
Chapter Text
Ahsoka had pretty quickly realized that her sneaking onto this mission was a poor idea on her end.
She had not realized, until she was marched towards the palace by the new, real Zygerrian guard, fitted with an electric shock collar, stripped of her outer cloak and practically pushed into a throne room, what a monumentally, stupidly, galaxy-shatteringly stupid idea it had really been.
Getting caught up in this charade had been bad enough. Unfortunately, Ahsoka’s rotten luck seemed to have only just begun, because she had the great misfortune of her master watching her practically trip through the door.
To Anakin’s credit, he hid his surprise fairly well.
What he did not hide well was his anger, which flared across the Force with all the subtlety of a flash grenade. Ahsoka flinched, which nobody but Anakin himself seemed to notice. Not that it would have been entirely out of character anyhow.
Thankfully, the non-Force-sensitives in the room didn’t seem to notice the murderous look in Anakin’s eyes. Maybe it was just selling his disguise better. She hoped it was just selling his disguise better.
She realized, suddenly and very foolishly, that she had no idea what his disguise was even supposed to be. She should’ve debriefed the whole plan with Cody when she’d had the chance; now she was going in at a severe disadvantage and completely blind to what everyone else was pretending to do. Force, please don’t let her be the reason all their covers get blown out the airlock.
The queen— and she must be the queen, with her fine robes and delicate crown— was hanging onto Anakin’s arm in a way that Ahsoka normally would’ve teased him about later. Unfortunately, Ahsoka didn’t think they were going to be in a place where Anakin was okay with teasing for a long while.
She was so distracted by the gag-worthy sight in front of her, she almost missed the flash of warning from the Force, just before something hit her in the back hard.
Ahsoka cried out, more in surprise than in pain, though pain quickly followed when she realized the thing that had hit her back was an electroprod. Electricity arced through her, and she grit her teeth against it, panting when it finally subsided.
“On your knees before the queen, skug,” the slaver spat.
Ahsoka said nothing. She could feel Cody’s quiet, seething rage behind her, Anakin’s twisted hurricane of emotion in front. The queen, a mild sort of interest. But what worried her most was the other Zygerrian man standing silently in the corner. She didn’t care for the way his gaze swept over her at all, nor for the… other unpleasant feelings rolling off of him.
The queen was more forward in her interest than the man. She walked over to Ahsoka, putting two fingers under her chin. Ahsoka let her lift her head, examine it, but kept her eyes deferentially down.
“What have we here?” the queen asked. Ahsoka knew the question wasn’t aimed at her, but she had to bite her tongue around a snippy retort anyway.
“A replacement for the other girl, your majesty,” the guard said. Ahsoka could feel his smugness, his desperation for approval.
“Has she been processed?” the queen asked.
“Of course, your majesty,” Cody said swiftly, confidently, before the other guard could say anything. “She’s from an older batch.”
Ahsoka didn’t know what the kriff being processed meant, but she knew she wasn’t interested in finding out. She sent a silent wave of thanks to Cody that he couldn’t feel.
“What do you think, Lars?” the queen asked Anakin, turning Ahsoka’s head in his direction. Ahsoka didn’t dare lift her eyes to gauge his expression. “She’s a sweet little thing, isn’t she?”
“A mere slave could not compare to your beauty, your majesty,” Anakin said, in that horrible syrupy voice he used when he was trying to get beings who found him attractive to do what he wanted. It took every ounce of self-control Ahsoka possessed to not grimace, both at the tone and the implication his words held. “But she seems well-behaved.”
The last bit was said pointedly, though whether it was a jab at Ahsoka’s current predicament or a warning to her, she wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
The queen nodded, apparently satisfied with Anakin’s answer. “She will do nicely, then. Take her down to the slave quarters and get her a proper uniform.”
“Yes, your majesty,” the other guard said, lifting Ahsoka up from the metal collar around her throat. She did her best not to gag, but she couldn’t help but cough at the sudden restriction of air. Another spike of anger rolled through the Force from Anakin, though it was overcome with a larger feeling of helplessness.
As they walked out of the throne room, Ahsoka could hear Anakin's voice trailing down the hallway.
“I’d like to see the processing facilities for myself. The results are quite impressive…”
Ahsoka breathed a silent sigh of relief. If her presence sparked some useful development here, maybe Anakin would be less inclined to murder her when they all got out.
And they would get out. The alternative was already unthinkable. Ahsoka had barely managed to make it through a short interaction pretending to be a good little slave, she knew, she knew she couldn’t keep it up much longer.
She also wasn’t very keen to feel the electroprod again. With that in mind, she widened her pace so she was more in line with the guard and Cody, who had deftly taken up the back of the group. It was a smart move, both protecting her from more jabs and obscuring the fact that he didn’t actually know his way around the palace.
Though, it seemed, there really wasn’t that much to know. Once they exited the throne room and surrounding hallways, it became obvious that the palace itself wasn’t actually in that good of a condition. The walls were stone and crumbling, the air hot and humid and stale.
They reached a doorway at the end of the hall, and the real guard shoved her through with the prod, though thankfully the dead end and not the live one. Ahsoka stumbled but managed not to fall.
It was busier in this wing than it had been in the rest of the castle. There were life forms hurrying around looking busy— mostly twi’leks, one or two torgrutas, and a few humans. Ahsoka saw collars like the one that was currently snapped around her neck on every single one of them.
“Asara!” the guard escorting her yelled into the room.
One of the twi’lek women, her skin a light floral green, turned around. She looked older than the others, her expression pinched and stern.
“Is there something you require, masters?” she asked. To Ahsoka’s surprise, her voice had a thick Zygerrian accent.
“This is her majesty’s new server. She needs a more appropriate outfit,” the guard said.
Asara gave Ahsoka a once over. She looked decidedly unimpressed.
“I should think so,” she said, pinching the hem of Ahsoka’s red shirt between her fingers, rubbing the fabric between them. “I will take care of it.”
“She needs to be ready for the auction,” the guard said.
Asara nodded. “Yes, master.”
The guard nodded back, apparently satisfied, and turned back to Cody, jerking his head towards the exit. Ahsoka selfishly wished Cody could stay with her, but as it was there was no real reason for him to, and she seemed relatively safe down here. Still, though, she caught his eye through the slit in his helmet once the real guard had turned his back.
“That guard is interested in you,” Asara said, once Cody and the other guard had left. She said it almost conversationally, still holding the fabric of Ahsoka’s shirt between her fingers.
Still, it caught Ahsoka off guard, her heart hammering a little too quickly in her chest as a result. She knew Asara meant Cody, and knew still that she was simply (thankfully) misreading their knowing each other as something else. But still. This was a chance to gather information, one she might not get again for a while if she was to be sequestered upstairs with the queen.
“Are they allowed to…” Ahsoka asked, hoping that her trailing off would display the appropriate amount of fear and trepidation.
Fear and trepidation that she certainly was not feeling right now.
Asara gave her a pitying sort of look. “It is not what they are allowed to do. It is what they can get away with,” she said. “You are the queen’s to do as she pleases, to give as she pleases. That does not mean the guards will not try.”
Ahsoka swallowed heavily, nodded. So she wouldn’t find herself alone with a guard. Shouldn’t be too difficult, all things considered. And if she did— well. They didn’t know she was a Jedi. She’d like to see them kriffing try her.
Asara, meanwhile, seemed completely uninterested in Ahsoka’s line of questioning. She turned over her shoulder, shouted at another twi’lek girl in a long string of heavily accented Ryl. The girl said something back in the affirmative. Ahsoka could feel a mild, almost passive curiosity from the other girl. From Asara, however, she mostly felt indifference.
The other twi’lek girl returned, carrying a bundle of turquoise fabric. Ahsoka felt her stomach flop uncomfortably in her stomach. She had never thought much of wearing shorter outfits before the war. Ahsoka had always been the most flexible of her peers, and she liked showing it off. Who cared if people saw her stomach because of it?
It was only after getting tossed from a speeder bike mid-mission that Ahsoka finally listened to Rex’s near incessant begging for her to at least put a shirt on if she refused to wear armor. Anakin had always been somewhat indifferent pre-speeder bike, understanding the need for flexibility, but after she’d gotten wrapped in half her body weight in bacta while he’d gotten out relatively unscathed, he started taking Rex’s side.
Now, though, the thought of removing her shirt and putting… whatever that was on sent a very un-Jedi-like spike of anxiety through her.
Still, though, it wasn’t like she had a choice. And this was her own doing, after all. Whatever it was, she was just going to have to suck it up and put it on.
It turned out to be less bad than she was expecting. Still garish and ugly and something she would never choose for herself, but it actually covered more than she was expecting. It was also a touch too big, hiding her body more than she expected. There were other girls here her age, some (she shuddered to think) even smaller than her, and they all had clothes that fit.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up at Asara, who was doing the tie on the side of the dress.
“Do not thank me,” Asara said flatly. “I cannot help you,”
Ahsoka nodded, swallowing down a protest. She knew that wasn’t true— Asara already was helping her. By warning her about the guards, by putting her in a larger, shapeless dress instead of a skin-tight and skimpy one.
But maybe acknowledging these small dissensions was too dangerous. Asara had clearly been here for a while, if her accent was anything to go by. She had survived for however long, working her way to some sort of authority. Ahsoka respected that.
“When you serve the queen, keep your eyes down. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. Always address her as ‘your majesty,’ and the others as ‘master.’ Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Ahsoka said. That all seemed relatively straightforward— she already called Anakin ‘master’ on the daily. Really, the hardest part was going to be keeping her and Anakin’s covers intact.
“Good. You will go now. Tivva!”
The younger twi’lek girl who had gotten Ahsoka’s dress earlier returned. She eyed Ahsoka up and down, a small smirk playing at her lips. It didn’t feel kind-hearted. Her clothes, Ahsoka noticed, were of the skin-tight and skimpy variety.
Ahsoka felt her cheeks warm up in irrational embarrassment. A second ago she was just thinking about how glad she was that she had this stupid shapeless dress instead of something like Tivva’s.
“Yes, Asara?” Tivva asked. Her accent was different than Asara’s, more Ryl.
“Take this new girl down to the auction. She is to serve the queen.”
“Her?” Tivva asked, giving Ahsoka an unimpressed up-and-down look.
“Yes, her,” Asara said impatiently. “Go on. The auction is starting soon.”
“Alright then,” Tivva said, rolling her eyes briefly. Asara just gave a short, annoyed tut before walking away.
“Come on,” Tivva said, starting off down the hallway Ahsoka had come from earlier. Ahsoka followed, trying to project an air of confidence she wasn’t sure she felt.
“What’s your name?” Tivva asked.
“Ashla,” Ahsoka lied. It was an easy one— Ashla was one of the most common female Torgruta names, to the point it was a stereotype. Nobody ever questioned it.
“So, Ashla,” Tivva asked, “how is it you just showed up and you’re already serving the queen?”
Was that… jealousy? Ahsoka couldn’t imagine feeling jealous over being in a more exposed, high-risk position. The fact that there just so happened to be an opening in the queen’s court the day Ahsoka showed up didn’t feel like a coincidence. If Ahsoka had to guess, she’d say it was a position that found itself open more often than not.
“I don’t know. They just picked me out of the crowd,” she said, honestly. “The queen has a guest with her. I think he liked me.”
She had to keep herself from wrinkling her own nose at the implication. It wasn’t true in any sense of the word at the moment— she was pretty sure she was going to be on Anakin’s shit-list for a long time over this. He was definitely way too pissed off at the moment to remember that he actually did like her, in the most normal, not-gross sense of the word.
“Hmm,” Tivva said. “Maybe she’ll give you away to him. If he likes you so much.”
This was clearly meant to be another mean-spirited jab, but it was hard to take personally when it would actually solve nearly all of Ahsoka’s current problems.
“Maybe,” Ahsoka said mildly.
To Ahsoka’s surprise, Tivva snorted.
“You must be fresh out of programming,” she said, shaking her head in clear, single-handed amusement. Ahsoka kept her mouth shut. She didn’t know what the kriff “programming” was supposed to mean, but she doubted it was anything good, and the last thing she wanted to do was reveal that she’d never been to programming at all. At least it seemed like she was putting up a good front.
The hallway they were walking down widened some, fresh air starting to flow through the passage. Tivva led her around one more curve, then stopped at a doorway. From the sunlight streaming out, Ahsoka could tell it led outside.
“Go on,” Tivva said, nodding towards the doorway.
Ahsoka steeled herself, taking in a deep, steadying breath and then letting it out again. She was not nearly as centered as she should be, and it was more difficult than ever to release her fear and trepidation into the Force, knowing what she would likely find on the other side of the doorway.
Briefly, she considered running. She could take Tivva down easily, if she even put up a fight. But she was clearly expected here, and the last thing she needed to do was draw more attention to herself than necessary. Leaving Tivva here, incapacitated or not, was sure to do just that.
Besides, she hadn’t had the pleasure of experiencing whatever shock the silver collar around her neck delivered, and she had no idea how incapacitated it would leave her if it was activated. She had to assume that there were safeguards against removing it by force and she wasn’t eager to find out what those were. All it would take would be running into one guard and she would be trapped all over again, only this time with much more suspicion laid on her.
She’d gotten lucky getting this far in without anyone bothering to check any sort of background or credentials on her, just taking Cody’s word that she’d already been “processed.” She did not want to find out what would happen if anyone learned that wasn’t true.
It was with that unfortunate truth in mind that Ahsoka walked out to the doorway Tivva gestured to.
It led to a balcony overlooking a sort of arena. The stands were full of cheering and jeering beings, Zygerrians mostly, though a few other species scattered throughout. Ahsoka spotted more than a few silver collars like hers around the necks of some of the other species, though not all the non-Zygerrians wore them.
The balcony was occupied by none other than the queen, Anakin, and the Zygerrian male who had been looking at her earlier in the throne room; though she stood a few paces behind Anakin and the queen, who were both sitting.
Anakin had adopted Obi-Wan’s relaxed way of sitting, one leg crossed over the other, though his hands were occupied with a glass of something blue and probably alcoholic. The queen held a similar glass, though hers was much lower in level. There was a pitcher on the table between them. Noticing her presence, the queen held her glass in Ahsoka’s direction, not stopping whatever conversation she was having with Anakin.
Ahsoka might not have actually been “processed,” but she could fill in the blanks well enough. She picked up the pitcher on the table between them and filled the queen’s glass.
Anakin didn’t look at her. She filled his glass too.
There were several more minutes of blithe chatter. Ahsoka kept her distance. Anakin was shielding from her now, or trying to anyway, and Ahsoka tried to raise hers in response. She’d almost gotten used to the rotten feeling of the Force in this place, the pain of so many beings like little bugs crawling beneath her skin; stronger here in the arena than it had been anywhere else except perhaps the market. There would be no way to concentrate on anything if she didn’t at least try to block it out.
What she couldn’t block out was the auctioneer, whose voice boomed so loudly and suddenly throughout the stadium that Ahsoka flinched without meaning to.
“Your Highness, Zygerrians, and guests from a thousand worlds,” the auctioneer said, “our auction begins with slaves of unmatched quality and impossible quantity. I give you Togruta from the Kiros System!”
Ahsoka watched in horror as Governor Roshti was shoved out into the center of the arena. He stumbled forward, clearly injured and in pain, though his pace was clearly not fast enough for the guards accompanying him. His collar was activated, and he fell to the ground, writhing in agony.
Ahsoka swallowed, her own collar feeling heavy on her neck.
“His handsome sample represents a lot numbering no less than 50,000 beings,” the auctioneer continued, unperturbed by the disturbing sight in front of him. “Note the compliance. Virtually untrained in combat; there will be no rebellion from these slaves.”
It took every ounce of Ahsoka’s self-restraint to not hiss and bare her fangs. Untrained in combat they might be, the Torgruta were still a predatory species; artist colony or not. Ahsoka liked to think her people would not go down without a fight. She knew she wouldn’t.
“So where do you keep 50,000 slaves, like the people of Kiros?” Anakin asked the queen, taking a sip of his drink. She just smiled into her own, reaching out and stroking under Anakin’s chin.
Ahsoka and Anakin were joined for a brief moment by their mutual disgust that they could not hide through their shuttered bond. Anakin, thankfully, was better at hiding it.
“All will be revealed in time,” the queen said. “In fact, I think it is time we make this a little more exciting, hm? Why don’t we bring out your contribution?”
Ahsoka suddenly had a very, very bad feeling about this.
She stood, making her way to the front of the balcony. Her voice took on the booming quality of the auctioneer, though Ahsoka spotted no microphone.
“Before we begin the auction, I would welcome a most special guest,” the queen said, gesturing forward. “Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi!”
It was only pure survival instinct that kept Ahsoka from letting out the strangled gasp that died in her throat. Obi-Wan was being dragged to the center of the arena by two Zygerrian guards.
Even worse, Ahsoka could not sense his Force presence at all. They had a weak bond, nothing compared to the training bond between her and Anakin, much less Anakin and Obi-Wan himself, but it was usually enough that Ahsoka could at least sense his presence if he was nearby, even if he was shielding his more complex emotions.
But Ahsoka could feel nothing. She looked to Anakin, cover forgotten in her panic, but he was staring straight ahead at Obi-Wan, expression frozen.
Your contribution. That’s what she’d said to Anakin. Obi-Wan was down there on purpose. They’d planned this, this was part of their cover.
Which begged the question: where was Ahsoka originally supposed to fit into this plan?
Before, she’d been dying to know. Now she thinks she’d die happier not knowing at all.
“My friends, my good friends, do not fear the Jedi,” the queen said. Ahsoka hadn’t even realized the crowd had been booing and jeering as soon as Obi-Wan had come into view. “They are no different from others we have forced into submission, for they have forsaken their ideals to serve a corrupt Senate.Every Jedi has become a slave to the Republic. The Jedi Order is weak, and we will help break it.”
The queen pulled an electro-whip from her belt, and turned to Anakin. She placed it in his palm, smiling all the while, her sharp teeth glittering in the sunlight.
“Teach the Jedi his place.”
Notes:
ruh roh!!!!
sorry for the later post-- i A) had forgotten that i posted on monday last week and B) am so sick I have spent 90% of today in a brainfog infused daze lol. still wanted to get this chapter out today though!!!
thanks everyone as always for the lovely feedback :3 i am the bunny in ur garden and ur comments and kudos are the dandelions i am nibbling on <333
Chapter Text
Anakin was having trouble breathing.
He wasn’t sure which emotion was strangling him so badly— the incandescent anger Ahsoka’s presence had provoked in him, the absolute fury at seeing her treated like— no. At seeing her be enslaved. The fear, because he wasn’t too proud yet to admit that it was there, bubbling under the surface, panic right alongside it because he was supposed to protect her and he didn’t know how.
Anakin was well aware that these were very un-Jedi like emotions. He knew they were clouding his judgment. He knew that a better Jedi than him would release them into the Force, focus on the mission, and would not fantasize about giving their padawan a real dressing down somewhere safer than this.
And oh, Ahsoka was going to kriffing get it as soon as they were out of here. And thinking about that, the fact that she’d snuck away with them after everything he and Obi-Wan had risked to try and spare her of this— the arrogance and impulsiveness required to pull a stunt like this was beyond what Anakin had even imagined Ahsoka capable of. And the thought of that set off the fury anew.
His blood boiled. His throat tightened. He wanted to hurt something. Not Ahsoka, never Ahsoka, because no matter how angry he was with her he would never stoop to that level, would never hurt those he’d sworn to protect. But the anger in him needed an outlet or it would burn him from the inside out.
The Zygerrian queen. Or the minister who had eyed Ahsoka in the throne room. They were worthy targets for his rage, but to his deep chagrin he needed them to find the colonists. And if he played his hand too early, Ahsoka would be trapped here— or worse, sold or taken off world.
The thought sent a new wave of panic racing down his spine. He forced a breath in through his teeth, trying and failing to steady himself, Anakin would tear the galaxy apart to find her if that happened. Kriff the Order, kriff the war. Padmé would understand, there was no risk there. But the things that could happen to Ahsoka before he managed to find her— it was unthinkable.
No. Blowing their cover had quickly ceased to become an option, and with it Anakin’s preferred if already risky backup plan of fighting their way out. There was no other way, not if he wanted to keep Ahsoka safe; not to mention Cody and Rex.
How was it that Obi-Wan had expected this and Anakin hadn’t? This entire world should be his wheelhouse, he should know these people inside and out. One Depur was just like another; there was a reason they were all the same in the Stories. He’d been foolish, he’d failed to remember. And somehow Obi-Wan had.
It had taken enough self control to let Obi-Wan and Rex go when Anakin had presented them as offerings to the queen. He’d known what fate awaited them then, but it was one thing to know and push to the back of his mind so he could try and concentrate on his part in the mission and another to see his old master bruised and bloodied with his own two eyes.
And another thing altogether to know he had to contribute to it.
Anakin knew the look Obi-Wan was giving him right now, knew exactly what his old master was trying to communicate to him, despite the force-suppressing cuffs hindering their bond. It’s okay. We discussed this. Don’t worry about me.
The truth of the matter was that Anakin had never actually intended on following through on his promise to Obi-Wan. What was worse was that Obi-Wan probably knew that. What would he think of Anakin now? Could he feel Ahsoka here, her force signature normally so bright and familiar, now dampened with fear? Did he know why Anakin would do what he was about to?
He thought through it again, rolled the backup plan over in his mind, and knew that it was hopeless. Even if he had a saber for Ahsoka hidden in Artoo, she was still collared and they’d shock her to the ground in an instant; same with Rex and Obi-Wan. Anakin was good, but he couldn’t fight off an arena full of guards by himself. Not with his best friends and his padawan so firmly under their thumb.
They don’t know who she is to me, he reasoned, a little desperately. He was certain if they did it would be her kneeling before him, not Obi-Wan. But it wouldn’t matter. The second he started to fight back Ahsoka would join him, and if they didn’t know who she was now they certainly would then.
There was no way around it. Panic crawled in his throat. He felt lightheaded, mouth dry, ears ringing.
Without meaning to, his eyes found Ahsoka’s. She was staring down from the queen’s box. It was too far away to make out her expression but he felt her horror, her fear. He remembered how her hands shook as she had poured his drink.
It was her fear that drove him, in the end. It sparked anger in his chest, because how dare she be scared, how dare she judge him for how he would save her life. It was not her place, it was not her right, she should be safe back on the Resolute and instead she was here in this hell where Anakin could not protect her.
Obi-Wan pushed something gentle across their bond and it nearly broke him in two. Instead, Anakin brought his arm down.
The crowd roared in approval. Obi-Wan barely grimaced, though Anakin knew the pain had to be excruciating. And yet, he still managed to flash Anakin a quick field sign with his fingers.
Again.
Anakin followed his command. One, two, three more times, and that had to be sufficient because Obi-Wan was nearly passed out and Anakin could not make himself focus on the carnage he had caused. He looked instead up at the queen.
He found Ahsoka instead. He didn’t need to see her eyes to know that they were wide and welling with tears. In any other circumstance this would trigger something primal and protective in him; today all he had to give was anger.
You caused this, he thought, spitefully. Do you understand now? Do you see?
Ahsoka turned away, back to the queen, his original target. She was stroking her finger down Ahsoka’s right lek, looking down at Anakin approvingly. However mad he was at Ahsoka, it was nothing compared to how he felt about the queen.
Anakin had never wanted to strangle someone so badly in his life.
(He imagined it then, indulged himself for one brief exquisite second. The delicate feeling of her throat crushing under the Force and his fingertips, the life slowly, luxuriously leaving her body. Fear, panic and pain all melding into one and then nothingness.)
He would go back to the balcony, watch over this abomination and do nothing for the sake of the mission. He would watch Obi-Wan and Rex be dragged away to Force-knew-where, with no concrete plan in place to find either of them.
He would sit beside Ahsoka as she poured him another drink, her Force signature dredged in pain and fear and confusion.
Anakin knew he should summon her to his rooms once the event was over. The queen had practically told him to; it was an easy cover on that front to keep her safe. But every time he so much as looked over at her anger threatened to drown him from the inside out.
He should summon her. He should push his emotions aside, out into the Force, and keep his padawan safe in the best manner available to him.
But what if she needed keeping safe from him?
The thought was not sobering. It actually scared him more than he wanted to admit, how completely out of control he felt. How he couldn’t actually guarantee he wouldn’t take it out on Ahsoka if she was in front of him and they were alone.
The queen, on the other hand… well, at least if he snapped while alone with her she would deserve it.
One way or another, he was going to get some answers.
Ahsoka wanted to throw up.
She understood now, more fully than she had before, why Anakin had been so insistent in keeping her away from this mission. She had never thought he would be capable of– of what he’d just done.
Ahsoka understood that it had been necessary to keep their covers intact, that refusing would’ve put them all in a more compromising position. That Master Obi-Wan was probably in on it to begin with, had probably told Anakin to do what he had to do before the mission even started.
None of that helped ease the fear in Ahsoka’s racing mind as Master Obi-Wan was dragged back under the arena along with the governor. He looked nearly unconscious. Anakin made his way back up to the balcony, expression tight and hard.
His face was splattered with Master Obi-Wan’s blood. He made no move to wipe it away.
The rest of the auction passed slowly. Ahsoka could barely keep herself present enough to follow the queen’s subtle, unspoken demands. Anakin was not looking at her at all. The low vibration of suffering in the arena had crept from her under skin to her ears and her skull. It was miserable and nauseating.
Finally, finally the auction finished and Ahsoka was dismissed. A guard— a real one, not Cody— escorted her back to the slave quarters under the palace. Ahsoka had been expecting it to be the same as how she’d left it a few hours ago; sparse but bustling.
Instead, there was a crowd cramped into the small quarters, a sort of semi-circle forming around some center Ahsoka couldn’t see. But then a cry of pain rang out through the stone room, a collective wave of fear and disgust following in the Force.
Ahsoka pushed her way to the front of the crowd. It wasn’t hard— there still weren’t all that many people, and none of them objected to their view being obstructed. As soon as she got a look, she understood why.
Tivva, the girl who had led Ahsoka to the arena, was lying face down on the floor, shivering. A guard stood over her, electrowhip poised for what looked like another strike.
“Hey!” Ahsoka cried. She didn’t even think— for a minute she forgot where she was, who she was supposed to be pretending to be. Instincts that had been instilled in her since before she could walk took over. When she jumped between the electrowhip and the slave, she was a Jedi.
When the whip came down on her raised arm, she was reminded of just who she was pretending to be. Of who she— maybe was.
She didn’t cry out; she’d gained just enough awareness to grit her teeth against it, but it hurt. Her show of grit might’ve been more impressive if she’d managed to fend off a snapping kick to the back of her legs that sent her knees crashing to the floor.
Another snap of the electrowhip, this one against her back, had her gasping for air.
“Looks like someone volunteered for a little entertainment,” the guard sneered. There were two now, one in front of her and one behind. If Ahsoka wasn’t undercover, if she could use the Force, if she didn’t have the stupid collar around her neck… it wouldn’t even be a contest. They’d be on their shebs before three seconds were up.
But Ahsoka was undercover, she couldn’t use the Force, and she did have the stupid shock collar on her neck. And if she beat these two, what then? She had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She was stuck here.
Ahsoka sort of wished she’d thought of all that before diving in front of the electrowhip, though she still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have done it anyway.
“She didn’t do anything,” Ahsoka protested, though she realized as she said it that she actually had no idea if that was true or not. Not that anything Tivva could’ve done would warrant this, but still. Ahsoka could feel the guard behind her still leering over Tivva’s unmoving form.
At that, both guards laughed. And the one behind her gave her a jab with his electroprod for good measure. Ahsoka swallowed the pain down, trying to force the tears welling involuntarily in her eyes back down.
“Did she, now?” the guard in front said. He sounded amused. Ahsoka felt a bright flare of anger in her chest, which only doubled when the guard snapped his whip down on Tivva again.
Tivva groaned in pain but didn’t open her eyes. Her shirt was stained blue with blood. It took everything in Ahsoka to not grab the whips out of the guards hands with the Force, but she knew now if she did she’d only be condemning both Tivva and herself to a worse situation than she’d already put them in.
There is no emotion, there is peace, she thought, a little desperately. No emotion, just—
The whip snapped down again, and this time Ahsoka was too focused on her meditation to keep a gasp from slipping out.
“Maybe this’ll teach you to mind your own business,” the guard in front of her said with another snap of the whip, a burst of electricity following.
“Watch it,” the other guard grumbled. “Molec wanted her face untouched.”
Ahsoka’s head was spinning. Sparks seemed to be racing up and down her spine even after the whip left it, leaving her limbs shaking uncontrollably.
“Have you had enough, skug?” the guard above her taunted.
Answering either way seemed entirely too dangerous, so Ahsoka kept her mouth shut. It turned out that was a dangerous decision too, because the whip came down again, harder than before.
“I asked you a question,” the guard snarled, though it was clear he was deriving some sort of sick pleasure from torturing her.
“I–” Ahsoka stuttered, but not quickly enough, because the whip hit again and again and again, each strike more painful than the last.
“Clearly not,” the guard said, snapping the whip through his fingers, something coppery and orange flicking off the ends.
Oh right. Her blood.
“I’m– I’m sorry,” Ahsoka gasped.
Wrong answer again. The whip hit her legs this time, which should’ve been a relief– new, unmarred skin— but instead hurt worse than before, her muscles twitching with the electricity coursing through them.
“Why are you sorry, little slave?” the guard in front of her taunted. “You should be thanking us for showing you your place, since you seem to have forgotten.”
Ahsoka breathed in raggedly, then out. She had never felt the pull of anything other than the light, but she had never once before felt the urge to hurt somebody like she wanted to hurt them—
Tivva moaned in pain on the floor beside her, and Ahsoka came back to herself. She had gotten them in this situation, and it was up to her to get them out of it. The guards were waiting, goading almost, daring her to say the wrong thing. To try, fruitlessly, to resist. Fighting back, fighting for what was right, standing up for herself and those around her were convictions that Ahsoka held in her very soul. And yet, in this moment, she knew that they were worse than useless. She was nothing here. Worse than nothing.
Ahsoka swallowed down her pride. It took every ounce of conviction she had, and something deep inside her seemed to crack irrevocably with it.
Was she really so weak? One good beating and she would abandon who she was? Her sense of self gone over a little pain?
But Tivva was still twitching weakly on the ground. Ahsoka had never witnessed abuse like this before, but she wasn’t sure how much more of it Tivva would survive. Maybe it was worth it, leaving herself behind, if she and Tivva made it to tomorrow.
“Thank you, Masters,” Ahsoka croaked out. It was easier, at least, to keep her eyes deferentially down than to look at them as she debased herself for their amusement.
And amused they were. Ahsoka could feel it in the Force, could feel too the mild disappointment that she had not held out longer. It seemed they found more enjoyment out of torturing an unruly subject into submission than a compliant one.
The whip still cracked down, but it was her back and not Tivva’s. She swallowed down the shout of pain that came with it.
“You’ll have to be more specific. We do so much for you, after all.”
There is no emotion, there is peace, Ahsoka repeated to herself, even as her heart spiked in righteous anger. She forced a deep breath into her lungs, forcing out the whirlwind of emotion buried in her chest.
There was no peace— just emptiness. But it was better than the pain and the anger, at least.
“Thank you for showing me my place, Masters,” she said, her voice unwavering.
Apparently, she had chosen the right thing to say, because the guards only flicked one small final strike of the whip to the back of her thighs. A warning.
“And don’t forget it, skug,” one said, spitting on the floor by her hands.
And then they were gone, and Ahsoka’s body gave up. One moment she was still kneeling, the next her arms had given into their shaking and her face was pressed against the cool stone floor, slippery with tears and something hot and slick dripping down her hand. The pain was— immense. Her body was trembling, from the pain or the phantom sparks that seemed to even now race up and down her spine, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was that the world had narrowed, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
Something touched her arm, the one not dripping with— blood. Blood. Ahsoka flinched, but the grip around it only tightened. Vision blurry but desperate, Ahsoka searched the Force, trying to find the intention of whoever was grabbing onto her. There was exasperation, a little disappointment, but no malice, so Ahsoka stopped fighting. Not that she had that much fight left in her to begin with.
“Foolish girl,” someone sighed, and someone else grabbed her other arm, pulling her toward the edge of the room. She was sat down. It took a lot of effort to keep her head from rolling, but she thought she managed it.
Someone handed her a cup of water, guided it towards her lips. Ahsoka drank, not realizing how dry and hoarse her throat had become.
“Thank you,” she choked out. Blinked hard, tried to clear the spins from her vision. The voice sighed again. It was Asara, Ahsoka realized, the older twi’lek woman.
“Don’t do that again,” she said, guiding the water towards Ahsoka’s mouth again. Ahsoka didn’t argue. The next words from Asara’s mouth sounded garbled, it took Ahsoka too long to realize she’d spoken in Ryl, not basic. The presence on her other side disappeared, pressing something into Asara’s hands.
A rag, stained orange. Her arm was dry. They’d cleaned up the blood.
“Is Tivva—” Ahsoka started. Asara’s grip tightened suddenly, long nails digging into the flesh of Ahsoka’s arm. It hurt, but it was a different sort of hurt, grounding.
“Alive,” Asara said, though her voice was flat. “No thanks to you. They might’ve left her alone if you hadn’t jumped in.”
Ahsoka swallowed, guilt and fear bubbling in her stomach. If Tivva had died because of her, because she hadn’t thought—
“’m sorry,” Ahsoka said. Asara’s grip lessened a touch. Ahsoka almost missed it.
“Don’t do it again,” she repeated. “You should rest.”
She stood, letting go of Ahsoka for good. As she started to walk away, a spark of something flickered in Ahsoka’s consciousness.
Molec wants her face untouched.
“Asara,” she called. The other woman turned.
“Who’s Molec?” Ahsoka asked.
Asara’s force signature dipped, suddenly slippery with fear. She bit her lip.
“I’m sorry,” she said. It sounded sincere.
She turned again, walked away, and Ahsoka’s tenuous grip on her consciousness fell away.
It wasn’t quite sleeping— it wasn’t peaceful enough for that. Time passed in odd flashes.
Everything hurt. Her arms, her legs, her head, her montrals. Her lekku, which were more sensitive than the rest of her skin, absolutely burned the few places the whip had caught them. Dreams came uneasily, swirling confusingly and disappearing again.
She woke to something shaking her arm. Blinking her way back into some sort of awareness was more difficult than she’d anticipated. It was impossible to tell the time in the stone underbelly of the compound where no light could reach, but most people seemed to be asleep. It must be night, evening at least.
Ahsoka didn’t recognize the girl shaking her arm. It was a human, her age or a little older, a grim expression on your face.
“Quell asked for you,” she said. For half a second Ahsoka’s heart seized, then she remembered the queen had called Anakin by that name. Quell was Anakin. He’d sent for her.
Half of her would almost rather take another round with the electrowhips. The other half of her, the childish, desperate half screamed in relief. Anakin would be angry but he’d keep her safe. He always kept her safe.
Ahsoka nodded, pushing herself up off the bunk she’d been deposited on. Her whole body ached, pain shooting through her muscles as she slid onto her feet.
It was time to face Anakin.
Notes:
oh Ariana, we're really in it now...
thanks for all your continued support!!!! the comments and kudos have been so lovely and the best writing fuel :D
Chapter Text
A guard led her to Anakin’s chambers.
It wasn’t Cody, and it wasn’t either of the two who tortured her earlier. Their Force signature was bored and uninterested, which was a good thing considering Ahsoka stumbled more than once on the walk from the slave quarters to the guest quarters. The pain, which had been manageable while sitting down, was quickly becoming unbearable while moving.
Something wet trickled down her back.
Anakin was waiting outside of his chambers, arms crossed over his chest, signature radiating fury. Ahsoka swallowed heavily, hiking her shields up in response. She couldn’t let him see how scared she was. Or how in pain. She wasn’t sure which would be worse.
The guard handed her off to Anakin. He led her inside, and the door snapped shut behind him.
And in an instant, his anger was unleashed.
“What in the sith hells were you thinking?” Anakin snarled. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? How dangerous this place is for you?”
Ahsoka wished she could find some anger within herself, some indignation. The idea that she deserved to be here too felt very silly and very far away. All her reasoning suddenly did. Normally, she knew, she would draw herself up in defiance, argue back— they didn’t truly fight often, her and Anakin, but when they did— well. The 501st knew to make themselves scarce.
Now, though, all she could feel was a desperate, churning guilt; pain and pain and pain and more pain. She’d made a mistake and she knew it, she’d been so, so foolish and now she was paying the price.
“Now the whole mission is at risk. Because now we need to focus on protecting you instead of finding the colonists.”
He might as well as hit her across the face. He half-looked like he wanted to, she could see his metal hand practically squeezing itself out of its glove.
Maybe she half-wanted him to, too. Maybe it would get the anger out. Maybe then he would let her lie down. Let her take a rest she didn’t deserve.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out. She was shaking. Anakin didn’t seem to notice.
“Sorry? Is that all you’ve got?” Anakin asked. It was half a delirious laugh. Ahsoka didn’t think she’d seen Anakin this angry ever before in her life. It swept over her in the force like a storm, like a dark violent cloud. And she knew then, that nothing she said would get him to calm down.
It was at that inconvenient moment that her knees decided they’d had enough.
She felt herself collapse to the stone floor, though whether it was due to the physical weight of her pain or the crushing guilt, she wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry, master, please—”
The tears came before she could stop them, hot and unbridled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried in front of Anakin— maybe never, at least not on purpose. She had cried in their tent on the front a few times, but always when he was asleep, or pretending to be. If he’d noticed, he’d never said so.
She tried to stop them, but she couldn’t. That just made her cry harder, because surely Anakin would just be more angry that she was trying to get out of her punishment. She deserved it, whatever he threw at her she deserved because it was all true—
“Get up,” Anakin said, and he sounded horrified. “Ahsoka—”
And she tried, she really did. But her muscles were trembling, seizing from the electricity. It was safer here on the floor, if they shocked her again that’s where she’d fall anyway. She knew if she stood she would fall down again, and Anakin had told her to get up, she could get up, she had to get up—
"Ahsoka," Anakin said again. His voice was urgent, closer, and then his hands were on her shoulders. She flinched, but he didn’t let go. He was on the floor with her, kneeling down with her. His force signature was still a confusing swirl of fury, but there was an undercurrent of something else this time. Something like— concern.
She forced herself to look up, to meet his eyes, to overcome the conditioning they'd drilled into her head the bare few hours she’d been alone.
Blue eyes met her own, wide and worried. No, beyond worried. Terrified.
She dropped her gaze, teeth chattering with the effort of holding it for so long.
"Snips, I need you to tell me where you're hurt," he said. His voice was calm now, maybe trying to be comforting, but it was too stiff, too forced. His anger was not sated, it was just redirected— pushed back by a more immediate concern.
It occurred to her, vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he'd skipped past the part where he asked her if she was hurt.
The honest answer to his question? Everywhere. Her head ached, her arms and legs were trembling ever-so-slightly, her lekku were throbbing, montrails ringing.
But she'd been trained as a soldier, had learned how to identify the most pressing injuries first, to ignore the pain of the others.
"Back," she said, and it came out more like a pathetic whimper. She barely had the energy to be embarrassed about it. Anakin, for his part, just moved to her other side.
"I'm going to look, okay?" he asked. She could feel his metal fingertips at the edges of her shirt. She knew they were the metal ones because they weren't shaking.
She nodded. Anakin peeled the shirt from her back, and it was all she could do not to let out a high pitched keen of pain as it caught on the wounds on her back, sticky with blood and plasma.
Ahsoka felt a quick burst of something powerful and angry in the Force, quickly smothered.
"I'm sorry," Ahsoka choked out, pulling her arms around herself.
"Stop," Anakin said, pulling at her shoulders oh-so-gently, turning her so they faced each other. He sounded pained. "I’m not… you don’t need to apologize for being hurt."
"But you just said—"
"I know, and we'll discuss that later, I promise,” Anakin sighed. His eyes were closed. He looked… tired. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I'm not going to pretend I’m happy about this, but I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it."
"But master—"
She didn't expect Anakin to flinch. She shrunk into herself on what had become instinct, hating how it only took a few short hours to rewire who she was. Anakin realized his mistake instantly, bit back what she was sure was a huttese curse.
"Sorry, I'm sorry," he said, squeezing his eyes tighter than could be comfortable, "just— Anakin for now. Or Skyguy. Until we're out of here. Okay?"
He sounded apologetic, which wasn't fair. Ahsoka understood anyway.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. He drudged up something close to a smile, eyes open but devoid of any sort of humor.
"Don't be sorry Snips," he said, and his voice was warm, at least. A small comfort but one she would gladly take. “Let’s fix you up, okay?”
He held out his hand to her, the flesh one. It should be easy to say yes, everything in her body hurt and all she wanted was for it to stop. But there was something else, a thought in the back of her mind that wouldn’t go away.
Anakin would never hurt her like that; this was an inalienable fact of the universe, as sure as gravity and lightspeed. That wasn’t the fear, that barely even registered, it was the thought underneath that one— what would they do if they realized that Anakin didn’t—
The thought would not quite come, inconceivable as it was. Her eyes betrayed her though, straying over to the bed in the middle of the room.
He was supposed to— supposed to—
"Hey," Anakin said, his hands catching her cheeks, forcing her to look away, cutting her spiraling thoughts off at the source. He sounded surprisingly calm. "Don't think about that."
"They're gonna— gonna know," she spit out between still chattering teeth. Force, why couldn't she stop shaking? "They're gonna k-know you didn't— didn't—"
"They're not gonna know," Anakin said, soothing now.
"But if you h-heal me—"
Anakin grimaced, made a face that told her he wasn't going to share the thoughts running through his head right then.
"It won't matter. I promise," he said, and the tone of his voice was such that Ahsoka didn't argue. "It will matter if you get an infection."
Ahsoka forced air into her lungs, pushed it back out. Anakin wasn’t above lying to her for her own good, but she found herself believing him anyway. Maybe because she needed to.
"Kix would k-kill me," Ahsoka chattered, a lame attempt at humor. It drew a wry smile to Anakin's lips.
"I think he would kill me," Anakin said. His smile died as quickly as it had come.
He took her by the hand like she was a youngling, led her into a side room– the fresher, she realized, one that had a shower with a basin big enough to sit in. Helped her climb in, back facing the spigot while he turned the stream of water on low.
She hissed involuntarily at the temperature— cold, slowly warming, but cold, hot would’ve been so much worse on the cuts and sores on her back, but she’s never been one for cold showers. Anakin muttered something apologetically. He was half in the shower himself, sleeves already soaked.
"I'm gonna need to take your shirt off. Is that okay?"
Ahsoka nodded, hardly thinking about it. Trying not to think about the fact that he asked so delicately, that he’d asked at all. War had made them no stranger to each other's bodies; field surgery was not private or pretty or respectful of boundaries. Anakin had seen her bare back before, had held her hand while Kix spent two hours picking shrapnel out of it with tweezers one time. It shouldn't be a big deal, except that they were here and it was.
But Ahsoka knew that Anakin was right, her back was a mess and they couldn't afford an infection right now. And if anyone on this force-forsaken planet had to fix it, she'd rather it be him.
She knew he was catching her hesitation, knew that her fear was bleeding out into the Force like an open wound. Anakin didn’t call her out on it, simply handed her a towel from the stack next to the basin. Ahsoka took it gratefully, clutched it to her chest along with her knees as Anakin started to peel her shirt away from her back again.
It hurt less this time around, water from the shower loosening the grip the fabric had on her shredded skin. Anakin’s force signature was mysteriously quiet, shields locked tight as he examined the carnage that was her back.
“Arms up, Snips,” he said lightly, like they were training or sparring and not pulling bloodied clothes off her body. She complied, still hunched over to her knees. It took a bit of wriggling but Anakin didn’t complain. He tossed the shirt into the wastebasket. It was unsalvageable, Ahsoka knew, but something in her stomach still twisted at the loss.
Anakin pulled a bottle of something from a shelf– soap, she thought, she could definitely smell the same heady clean scent on his skin— took a cloth in his other hand.
“This might sting,” he said, and his grim expression tells her it’s probably gonna do a lot worse than sting. Still, she nods, resolves not to make her inevitable discomfort known.
Her resolve was quickly broken. It didn’t sting, it burnt, hot and deep into her skin even as Anakin worked as softly and carefully as he possibly could. Ahsoka didn’t even realize she was making little whimpers of pain until she noticed Anakin was making soothing noises in return.
“Almost done, you’re doing great.”
It was a lie, probably on both fronts. Ahsoka was glad she was facing away from the drain so she didn’t have to watch the muddy colored water flow down it.
Eventually the water turned off. Anakin wrapped another towel around her shoulders, letting her fingers find it, grip on like an anchor.
“I don’t have any bacta,” he said. “But I can’t leave these exposed. I’m going to wrap it, okay?”
Ahsoka nodded. They ran out of bacta sometimes, on long campaigns; or else had to ration it. She’d treated her fair share of burns and little injuries with just cloth bandages and hydrocortisone. She let him take the towel away, shivered a little at the exposed air.
Anakin was careful as he wrapped her wounds. She barely felt his fingers on her back, just the slight pull of adhesive as bandages went down.
“Stay here,” Anakin said, then he stood. Ahsoka had no intention of moving. She wasn’t sure she could if she tried.
When Anakin returned, he was wearing a new, dry shirt. He handed her a soft tunic, turned around while she pulled it over her head. It smelled like the soap he’d used to clean the blood off her back. It went down past her knees, so she shucked the rest of her wet clothes off for good measure.
Anakin turned back around, offered her a hand to help her out of the bath. She took it, but her knees shook so badly she ended up sitting on the rim where her second, mostly dry towel had ended up. Anakin didn’t seem to mind, kneeling in front of her.
“What happened?” he asked.
She’d known the question was coming, but it still took her a long time to force the words out.
“I tried to help someone,” Ahsoka said. She swallowed down the sudden dryness in her mouth. “Another slave. They were— hurting her.”
Anakin’s eyes were sad, understanding. He squeezed her shoulder lightly.
“They punished you for it,” he finished.
Ahsoka nodded. She didn’t need to explain what they’d done. The evidence of it was all over her back.
“I’m sorry,” Anakin said. His flesh hand had moved from her shoulder to her cheek, thumb tracing her face markings softly. “I know it’s hard. But from now on, you need to keep your head down. I’ll try and keep you around when I can, but if the queen gets suspicious…”
“It’s ok,” Ahsoka said. “I know better now.”
"Ahsoka," Anakin said, and she could tell from his tone that she was not going to like whatever came next. It was hesitant, and Anakin was never hesitant. "I need you to be honest with me. I wouldn't ask right now if it wasn't important, okay? I just need to know."
Ahsoka nodded, her stomach twisting angrily. She already knew what the question was going to be.
"When you were there, did they--"
"No," Ahsoka said, cutting him off before he could finish.
"Ahsoka--"
"Nobody did anything," she bit out, forcing herself to look up at Anakin, at his worried eyes that didn't quite believe her.
The next sentence got caught in her throat. One of them wants to. I know his name.
But she couldn’t say that to Anakin. If he knew, he might— kriff, Ahsoka didn’t even know. Kill him? She’d like to think he wouldn’t, that his self control would win out, that at the very least his worry over Obi-Wan and Rex would stop him from doing anything rash.
But Ahsoka had never felt him just this angry before. She was already jeopardizing the mission, he’d said so himself. She couldn’t set them further off course by siccing Anakin on this Molec person, intentionally or not.
And if something happened to Rex and Obi-Wan in retaliation for something that hasn’t even happened, Ahsoka would never forgive herself.
Anakin held her gaze for a few more seconds, then, seeming to believe her, let out a short breath, nodded.
"Okay," he said, and the relief was a little more apparent there, in that word. "Okay."
They were quiet for a minute. There was no sound but the steady drip of the faucet behind them.
“Do the other slaves trust you?” Anakin asked, breaking the near-silence.
Ahsoka blinked. Whatever she’d been expecting him to ask, it wasn’t that.
“I don’t know. Some of them tried to help me, once the guards left.”
Anakin nodded. “We think Obi-Wan and Rex are being held at some sort of processing facility. Hopefully the rest of the colonists are there too. I’m trying to get the queen to tell me where it is, but she’s being cagey.”
“You think the slaves might know,” Ahsoka realized. A tiny wisp of hope flared in her gut. Maybe she wouldn’t be completely useless after all.
“You need to be careful,” Anakin stressed. “You’re supposed to have already been processed. If they realize that you were never there, they might rat you out and this whole thing could fall apart.”
“You really think they would tell? Even if we’re trying to help?”
Anakin gave her a wry smile. His eyes looked dead. “Trust me, Snips. There are plenty of enslaved people who would sell out the guy next to them for a step up. When you’re in that position, you do what you have to do to survive.”
Ahsoka thought about how nobody else had stepped up to help. Not until the overseers had left, anyway. And even then, only a brave few.
“I’ll be subtle,” Ahsoka said. Anakin nodded. satisfied.
"We're going to get out of here. Soon," Anakin promised. Ahsoka nodded. She did believe that, did believe that whatever else happened, Anakin would get them out.
"But we’ll probably be separated again," he continued. His voice had taken a decidedly sharper edge, grimly determined. The same tone he used on their men while doling out impossible orders from above. "And if we do, and somebody tries something on you— forget the mission. Forget the Code. Forget about our covers. You fight like hell and you don't give up, do you understand me?"
"But--" Ahsoka protested, even as she felt her lekku flushing in humiliation. If she fought like he was asking her to-- and she knew perfectly well what he was asking her to do-- there would be no chance at finding the colonists, no chance of completing the mission. Of finding Obi-Wan and Rex. They would be trapped there, and for what? For Ahsoka to avoid more pain?
It was her own fault she was in this situation. She had to take the consequences of that.
"No buts," Anakin said. "This is non-negotiable. An order. Do you understand?"
Ahsoka looked up at her master, and for the first time truly understood exactly why the Jedi banned attachments.
She also understood why Anakin and Obi-Wan seemed perfectly content to ignore that particular doctrine.
Ahsoka nodded.
"Say it, please," Anakin said, sounding pained.
"I understand," Ahsoka whispered.
And she did, understand. She just didn't know if she'd be able to follow through when the time came.
***
Ahsoka was shivering.
Anakin could feel it, even sitting on the floor by the bed like he was. There was enough room for two, but… well. He was sitting on the floor.
Ahsoka ran hot, got cold more easily, he’d learned that quickly from the few missions they’d undertaken on icy planets. She wasn’t normally one to complain, not seriously anyway, but being cold always made her crabby and miserable and worse, sluggish. He’d had to order her special gear to keep her core temperature up.
The room wasn’t cold though. And Ahsoka was covered in a thick blanket. A spike of panic wrought through his defenses at the thought of infection and fever— he was a terrible healer in the best of times and he had no idea what to do if Ahsoka developed an infection from the wounds on her back.
“Ahsoka,” he said, quietly, in case she was asleep. But she twitched in such a way that let him know she was awake, her shivering halted for the time being.
“Yeah?” she asked, her voice small and quiet in a way he’d rarely ever heard it.
In response Anakin turned around, kneeling beside her. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, the same way his mother had when he was young and she was checking his temperature.
The memory of his mother here and now, in this place, was not coincidence. He thought of her at every turn, half expecting to see her face in every human in this gods-forsaken palace. But she was not here. She wasn’t anywhere, anymore. Not here, not Tatooine. Dukkra ba dukkra, her voice seemed to whisper.
(Except it wasn’t, because she had already been free. She had been free before the sand people had butchered her. Shmi Skywalker had not needed to die to gain her freedom. She’d already had it and it had been torn from her.)
Ahsoka was here, though. And she would not die. Dying would not make her free, not here, not this way. She was not the People, she was not a slave. Not really.
(Except that they had collared her and he couldn’t take it off. And they’d whipped her so badly she’d carry scars for the rest of her life; not just on her back. And they held her and they owned her, and this was not a mission Anakin could pull the plug on, not one with an extraction plan neatly built in. Ahsoka was— Ahsoka was a slave here.)
Her forehead was normal though. Warm, like she always was, but not hot. Ahsoka gave him a strange look, and he realized he had never done that to her before. They always had scanners and medbays and medics, and Ahsoka rarely got sick anyway.
“Are you sick?” he asked. She looked at him, a little nervous, a little confused.
“You’re shivering,” he said, by way of explanation.
Her lekku flushed a darker blue in the dusky light of the room. She’d managed to lock her shields down tight, but Anakin still sensed a flicker of embarrassment though her side of the bond.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Are you cold?” Anakin asked. Ahsoka shook her head, curling her fingers around the blanket.
“I’m scared,” Ahsoka said, so quietly Anakin could barely hear it.
You should be, he bit back. It wouldn’t help to say out loud what they were both thinking. And it would help less to let Ahsoka do what she was so much better at than him at doing— releasing emotions into the Force, letting them flow through and away. She didn’t need to be scared. She needed to be focused. She needed to be brave. Brave and clever and determined, traits Ahsoka held in spades that seemed uncharacteristically absent at the moment.
Dukkra ba dukkra, Ani.
No, he thought again, desperately, no it’s not. Not to her.
Ahsoka was not the People. But right now— right now she was close enough.
“My mother used to tell me stories,” Anakin said. His voice felt hoarse, his throat dry, but his stomach almost uncomfortably settled. He had never told the stories to anyone. Not Ahsoka before, not Obi-Wan, not even Padmé. The fact that it felt right to do so now suggested a truth he wasn’t comfortable exploring.
“What kinds of stories?” Ahsoka asked. Her shivering had abated slightly, replaced by curiosity.
“Ekkreth stories,” Anakin said.
“What’s Ekkreth?” Ahsoka asked. Her voice was soft still, a little breathless, but interested. Less scared.
“Who is Ekkreth,” Anakin corrected, tapping her nose with his pinky. She wrinkled it, the barest trace of humor in her eyes that quickly flashed away. “Ekkreth is the one who becomes free. They’re a shapeshifter and a trickster, and they use their powers to help free the Amavikka. The People.”
Nobody can hold the Sky-walker for long, Shmi’s voice added.
Ahsoka didn’t ask who the Amavikka were. Anakin supposed that one was obvious.
And, though he had not heard the words in over a decade and had never spoken them aloud himself, the next sentence flowed smoothly. “There are as many Ekkreth stories as there are slaves on Tatooine, which is to say, there are stories without number, and more every day. This is one of them.”
The story he told her was a classic one, one that was told over and over again and that he remembered well. Ekkreth was captured by Depur, the master, and set to be executed. But Ekkreth was clever, and knew Depur longed for the secret of the tzai drink that only the Amavikka held.
So Ekkreth asked Depur for more time to live, and in exchange he promised to get the Amavikka to tell him the secret of the tzai. Depur agreed, and every day Ekkreth asked Depur for something— a broken power generator, a box of scraps, to trade with the Amavikka for another part of the secret tzai recipe.
It was Ekkreth’s longest trick, his most elaborate; and by the end he had given the Amavikka enough parts to build a speeder that they rode out to the desert and to freedom. Ekkreth transformed into a bird, cackling as he escaped Depur and followed the Amavikka into the endless seas of sand.
Anakin hadn’t liked that particular story as a child; not since he turned seven and had tried to build a speeder out of scraps like it had suggested and realized it was not possible. He felt as tricked as Depur in the story.
Now of course, he realized what the story was really about. Patience. Biding your time. Using what you had to take your freedom as well as you could. That sometimes subterfuge and trickery prevailed over brute force and power.
Maybe it was no wonder he hadn’t liked it after all. But Ahsoka, he thought, would appreciate it. She would understand.
Ahsoka was quiet as he talked, not interrupting once, not even to ask questions. To Anakin’s relief her trembling had all but subsided. She was still as Anakin spoke the final words.
“I tell you this story to save your life.”
She was quiet, so quiet that Anakin half wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then—
“I’ll remember,” she said softly.
Anakin felt the hairs on his arm and legs stand on end. He swallowed heavily, trying to banish the memory of himself at eight years old saying the same exact thing to his mother. It was— not necessarily the traditional response, but one of them. That Ahsoka had known exactly what to say—
There are no coincidences in the Force, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Obi-Wan whispered in his head.
“Anakin?” she said. Her voice was still soft, a little hesitant. She almost never called him by his name. But he had asked, after all.
“Yeah?” he said. He tried to keep his voice light. He failed.
“Thank you,” she said.
This was never something I wanted to share, was what Anakin wanted to say.
“Go to sleep, Snips,” he said instead.
“Okay,” she said. Agreeable in a way she only was when she was really worn out, drooping and sleepy and dozing off on his or Rex’s or Obi-Wan’s shoulders.
Soon enough her breathing leveled out, even and relaxed in a way that told Anakin she was blessedly too tired for nightmares tonight. He knew he wouldn’t be so lucky if he allowed himself to sleep.
Instead he occupied himself by trying and failing to feel guilty for telling Ahsoka the Ekkreth story. Amavikka was— closed, that’s what Padmé had called it, a closed religion. It was hidden, subterfuge, sacred in its secrecy. The Ekkreth tales were not bedtime stories for your weary and frightened apprentice, not unless—
Not unless she was a slave too.
But she wasn’t. At least, not for long, because Anakin refused to accept the alternative (that she could so easily be swept away and sold, that his grasp on her here was tenuous at best, that so so many things could go wrong and she could hardly be counted as undercover when she’d been caught so quickly).
But even now, if— when, when they made it out of here— this time wouldn’t just go away. Anakin knew that well enough, though, he argued with himself, there was a difference between being born a slave, born knowing you do not own yourself, and that knowledge being thrust upon you.
Perhaps the other side of it was worse. He only knew himself, after all. Only knew that freedom felt like a drug, a high he was constantly chasing and never quite achieving. Maybe denial on the other side was even more terrible, something intractable that was silent and taken for granted suddenly ripped away.
He didn’t know. He never would. All he knew was that a few days under the whip and the collar and Ahsoka’s fire seemed to have been doused, her normally indomitable spirit dampened. How was he supposed to keep her alive here?
I tell you these stories to save your life, Shmi’s voice whispered, a bit pointedly.
Anakin sighed, leaning his head back against the bed. Ahsoka’s knee shifted against his hair, but she didn’t wake.
I’ll remember, mom. I remember.
Notes:
once again taking inspiration from the Double Agent Vader Series by Fialleril! this chapter was especially inspired by this particular work, which is where the story anakin tells ahsoka came from <3
things are heating up!!! hope yall enjoyed this chapter and see u all next week!
Chapter Text
Cody really, really hates this mission.
It might be his least favorite one he’s ever run, which is saying something. Battles, at least, are easy to understand. Easy to strategize against. Or, not easy, maybe, but something he’d trained for at least.
This entire scenario was just one fucked up hour after another, with absolutely no end in sight.
He’s doing his best to keep an eye on Ahsoka, but it’s hard when she’s constantly by the queen’s side. When he does manage to escort her back to the slave quarters, she’s quiet and reserved, deeply unlike her usual bubbly self.
When he’s not worried about Ahsoka, he’s worried about Rex, and about Obi-Wan. The two people he cares for most in the world are enslaved on some backwater planet or moon somewhere, and he has no idea where they are or how to get to them.
The other guards are no help. He’s too wary to reveal himself as a clone, which means he misses out on any sort of casual interaction that might give him the information he needs. The slaves resent him too much on principle, and he doesn’t trust that they wouldn’t rat him out either.
In other words, he’s stuck.
Or, at least, he thinks he is.
He’d figured the throne room would be his best bet at overhearing something he shouldn’t, and he was right. After Scintel had sent away Anakin and Ahsoka, and the other slaves, when it was just the queen and her slimy advisor that had looked at Ahsoka just long enough that Cody felt somewhat obligated to remove his eyeballs from their sockets.
But alas. Not yet.
“He’s interested enough in the operations,” Scintel had said, sipping from her glass of wine.
“He’s digging to find Kadavo,” Molec said, carelessly.
Kadavo. Cody had never heard of it but that didn’t mean much. It was a big galaxy. But if they were talking about Skywalker (not necessarily ideal— clearly they were onto him) then this had to be where they were holding the slaves. Which meant it also had to be where Rex and Obi-Wan had been taken.
“He won’t,” Scintel said. “Besides, he’s too preoccupied with the girl.”
Molec grunted, but didn’t speak. Cody once again resisted the urge to strangle the man with his bare hands.
“You haven’t contacted our… ally, have you?” Scintel asked.
“No, your highness,” Molec said. “But we will need to eventually.”
“I want to see how this plays out before we bring in any other factors,” Scintel decided.
Molec clearly disagreed, but simply nodded. “Of course, your highness.”
That was the last thing of interest Cody parsed out before he was tapped to switch shifts, and slipped out into the long, underground hallways unattended, desperate to share the intel he’d collected.
He didn’t have to wait long— Skywalker managed to call for Ahsoka that night, again, and Cody managed to be the one to escort her there. A good thing too, since she nearly collapsed into Skywalker’s arms once they made it through the threshold.
Skywalker swears, and Cody bites back one himself. He slips through the doorway, abandoning the stupid helmet as he does. Skywalker is already lowering Ahsoka to the floor, hushing her softly.
“What’s wrong?” Cody asked, fear bubbling in his throat.
Cody doesn’t panic. But that doesn’t mean the sight of Ahsoka collapsing in pain in the middle of enemy territory doesn’t inspire a little fear in him either.
“It’s karking infected,” Skywalker says, lifting the edge of Ahsoka’s collar and peering down her back.
“What’s infected?” Cody asked, dreading the answer, already knowing it.
“My back,” Ahsoka hisses out. She’s shivering, probably feverish— and little gods, as if this mission couldn’t get worse. He doesn’t even want to know what the hell happened to her back, though he hardly has to ask. He’s got an electrowhip on his belt the same as everyone else.
“Haar’chak!” He hisses. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Ahsoka shrugged, her shoulders trembling. With fever or overwhelm, Cody wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
“Not much to do about it,” Ahsoka said, curling in on herself once more. “No supplies.”
Cody shook his head, digging around in his utility belt. It had fit fine under the stupid armor, to his great relief. If he didn’t have his plastoid, he at least wanted this. And now it was coming in more handy than ever to be overprepared— though, with a general like Obi-Wan and his padawans, being overprepared felt like being woefully underprepared sometimes.
Case in point: Cody only had one small tube of bacta and a few patches to offer, though Skywalker took them with the reverence usually associated with religious artifacts.
“You’re a fucking lifesaver, Cody,” he said, kneeling back down behind Ahsoka.
“So I’ve been told,” Cody said, dryly. Mostly to cover up how close to literal that felt right now. “Listen to me— I might have an idea of where they took the slaves, and Obi-Wan and Rex.”
Both their heads snap back up to him.
“Why didn’t you say so!” Ahsoka asked. As if her shivering wasn’t an answer in and of itself.
“Bit busy trying to keep you from keeling over,” Cody said. Ahsoka had the audacity to roll her eyes. Cody won’t admit it, but seeing she still has a pinch of her usual attitude makes him feel a bit better.
“It’s some place called Kadavo. Not sure where, but I figure we can punch it into a Navicomputer and find out. Preferably on a ship out of here.”
“Good work, Commander,” Skywalker nodded.
“When are we g-g-getting out of here?” Ahsoka asked, her teeth starting to chatter. Skywalker put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she leaned back into it as if physically soaking in his strength.
Then again, they were Jedi. Maybe she was.
“Tomorrow,” Skywalker decides, interrupting Cody’s thoughts. “We’ll give the bacta time to do its work. I’ll send Ahsoka to my ship, say I want to send her back to my estate. We’ll all leave together if we can, but if we can’t, Ahsoka goes without us and calls for backup. Master Plo is only one system over.”
It’s a bad plan— a desperate one. There are too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. And yet, Cody can’t think of a better one.
“Is that going to work?” Cody asks. “They won’t just let you take the commander without—”
He stops himself before he can say paying for her, even though they all know exactly what he was going to say.
Ahsoka and Skywalker exchanged a look. It was charged in a way Cody wasn’t entirely sure how to read.
“The queen gifted Ahsoka to me,” Skywalker says, grimacing. “Said if I liked her so much, I might as well keep her.”
Cody… didn’t really like that at all. It was a little too easy, a little too convenient solution to the question of how to escape sight unseen.
But what choice did they have?
Ahsoka really karking hated this throne room.
It was an effort just to stand up straight. Her clothes were starchy and cheap, chafing against her newly bandaged back. The bacta Cody had given them had helped tremendously, but Anakin had suspected she’d start to feel worse again in the morning, given it wasn’t enough to kick her infection completely, and he’d been right.
She had her hands clasped behind her back, her head bowed. It was easier to hide the fever shivers that way.
“Did you not find her satisfactory?” The queen asked, drawing Ahsoka out of her thoughts.
Ahsoka had to bite her tongue so as not to physically cringe at the words.
“I did,” Anakin said evenly, though she could practically hear the squeak of his leather glove around his tightening mechanical fist at the implication. “More than. It’s the reason I’d like to move her to my household right away.”
“I see,” the queen said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “Very well. She is yours to do with as you wish, of course.”
Anakin nodded, then turned to Ahsoka. His expression was dismissive, but she could very clearly see the pain behind it.
“Go to my ship and wait for me there,” he said. His words were hard and cold, the way Anakin only got when his temper slipped and he was angry about something he couldn’t fix. It scared her, sometimes, that tone. It scared her now, even though she knew it wasn’t real.
Ahsoka also knew that Anakin did not want her to wait for him at the ship. He wanted her to leave, like they’d discussed the night before. Wanted her to comm the Jedi and ask for help from the nearest general— Master Plo, if he hadn’t moved out of the system already. Cody was retrieving Artoo, making sure she had Anakin’s sabers available at the ship.
Normally, Ahsoka would never leave a mission like that, even under direct orders. But, well, defying Anakin’s orders was what got them into this mess in the first place. It didn’t feel right leaving everyone behind, but they needed backup, and this seemed like the only way to get it without completely showing their hand.
“Yes master,” she said, inclining her head. He didn’t flinch that time. Maybe because he’d known it was expected.
Scintel snapped her fingers, and two of the guards immediately flanked Ahsoka on either side.
“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Anakin said. He sounded annoyed, but Ahsoka knew it was just to cover up his true intentions. “Unless you were exaggerating about the effectiveness of your training.”
“Of course not. But she is still fresh. There is no reason to take needless risks,” the queen said. Anakin had placed the barb in the right place, it was clear she was irritated, but unfortunately not irritated enough to change course.
“Of course, your highness,” Anakin said smoothly. “I trust your guards are well trained? I don’t enjoy others playing with my toys. I can be rather… possessive.”
The guards beside Ahsoka seemed to bristle slightly in annoyance. Ahsoka swallowed down a bout of nausea. Scintel just laughed.
“You are a true slaver, Lars,” she said, drawing a finger under Anakin’s chin. Ahsoka had no idea how he managed not to shudder at her touch.
“If you insist, then. She is yours alone. None of my guards will touch her.”
Anakin looked down at Ahsoka. His hands flashed quickly in movement behind his back, out of view of the queen and the guards.
STATUS? The field sign asked.
Ahsoka dipped her chin, hoping the Zygerrians would read it as a sign of respect, and not the affirmative she meant it as. They’d planned for this contingency, and Anakin hadn’t been happy about the idea. But as long as Cody and Artoo made it to the ship on time and she had access to a saber to remove her collar, she felt fairly confident she could take both guards out, especially with Cody’s help. Even in the state she was in.
“Excellent,” Anakin said crisply. He wasn’t pleased, but Ahsoka hoped she was the only one who could see that.
It was fine. It was all according to plan, and Ahsoka could do this. She could follow orders.
The queen nodded towards the guards, and they pulled Ahsoka to her feet roughly. She avoided looking at Anakin. She didn’t want to see his reaction, or his overly forced lack of one.
The guards didn’t let go of her arms, even as she matched their pace down the hallway. Away from the throne room, away from Anakin.
Maybe that was why she didn’t see it coming, when the guards shoved her into a side room off the hallway. Too far from Anakin for him to hear her scream, and Ahsoka knew then that the guards had never intended to follow Anakin’s directives, or the queen's orders.
Ahsoka should’ve fought back. She should’ve shoved them away, should’ve fought through whatever shock they delivered to her collar, should’ve just followed Anakin’s instructions and said kriff it to their cover.
But she was too slow, too used to playing the part, to letting it consume her, and the brief moment of shock and hesitation was just long enough for the guard to snap something new and awful around her hands. She knew in an instant what it was, the way her senses immediately dimmed, the bright light of the Force quickly, silently, and brutally severed from her consciousness.
Force suppressants. They knew.
Ahsoka should’ve fought back when she’d still had the Force. When she still had a chance.
Because standing in the center of the room was Atai Molec. And the look on his face was hungry.
Anakin almost thought they got away with it.
The queen seemed pleased, after her initial questioning. Anakin wasn't surprised- he could tell she found him attractive, and probably wanted her attention all to herself. Loathe as he was to admit it, having Ahsoka over to his rooms every night had been a protection for both of them- though it didn't much feel like it now.
But none of that mattered. Ahsoka was getting out of here, with Artoo and Cody. They'd be safe, and Anakin could survive this viper's den long enough for Master Plo to come and rescue him... he hoped.
Or, at least he thought so before everything went wrong.
Something sharp pushed to the forefront of Anakin’s mind, then quieted. He strained, listening for it again, but to his horror could find nothing on the other end. Ahsoka’s side of the bond had gone desperately quiet, the same way Obi-Wan’s had been when he’d had the Force suppressants on him.
Anakin swallowed back his alarm, doing his best to not tip off the queen that he knew something was amiss. He’d lost the element of surprise here, but if he played his cards right, then so had she.
At least, he’d hoped so, until he saw the look on the queen’s face.
“So you’ve finally figured it out,” she sneered. “Do you take me for a fool, Anakin Skywalker? You thought you could just march the Negotiator here and we wouldn’t recognize the Hero With No Fear standing beside him?”
“What have you done?” Anakin asked, heart in his throat.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific, my dear,” she said, examining her long, sharp nails.
“You know exactly what I’m asking you,” Anakin growled.
“If you’re referring to your little apprentice, I’ve given her to Molec,” the queen said. “He has a… taste, shall we say, for Torgrutas. It all just worked out a little too perfectly, I’m afraid.”
Anakin’s heart drops to his stomach, his blood running cold. How could he be so stupid? Of course the queen had given Ahsoka to him— she’d known he’d take it as an opportunity to try and get her out safely, known she could trick them into separation. Could maybe even trick them into revealing their ship, their sabers, leaving them with no means of escape.
Half of him wants to kill Miraj Scintel where he stands, the other half is far too concerned for Ahsoka to bother. Without thinking, he bolts for the door.
“Not so fast,” Miraj warns, revealing a remote in her hand— the same type he’d seen used to activate the slave’s electric collars before. “One press of this button and she dies.”
Anakin froze. His head was too mixed up to properly read her intention in the Force. He swallowed thickly, tasting blood in his throat. Was that even true? Would it work from such a distance? Did these collars have a kill switch? He wouldn’t put it past slavers, but he couldn’t help but think this was all just an effort to control him.
“You’re bluffing,” he said, but it was unconvincing even to his own ears.
“Am I?” Scintel asked, raising one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Is that something you’re willing to risk?”
Anakin took a deep breath, trying to center himself. Regardless of the truth, Ahsoka was in trouble right now. But if he risked it, if she wasn’t lying…
Could he rip the trigger out of her hands fast enough? Could he kill her before her guards intervened? Could he do any of this in time to help Ahsoka in any meaningful way?
No. He couldn’t risk it, and she knew it. He had to trust that Ahsoka would take care of herself, follow the instructions he’d given her. She was alive right now— they wanted her alive, for their own sick purposes, but alive and traumatized was better than dead. It had to be better than dead.
Dukkra ba dukkra, Ani, his mother’s voice whispered. Rather unhelpfully in this exact moment— he brushed it aside.
He let out a shaking breath, turning back to Scintel.
“As I thought,” she said, smiling wickedly. “You are so easy to control, Skywalker. Too easy, in some ways.”
“What the hell do you want from me?” Anakin asked. He was sick of these games, sick of being in this place that made him nauseated at every turn, that brought up every horrible memory he had ever had.
“I want you,” Scintel said. “I want the Jedi golden boy enslaved by my side. I want to show the galaxy that my empire—”
“You’re insane,” Anakin spits, not caring to hear the rest of her unhinged spiel. “I’m nobody’s slave.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong, Skywalker.”
Anakin suspects she has more to say about that, but she’s interrupted by the doors of the throne room being thrown open by some invisible force.
“What– no!” Scintel cries. “Who did this?”
Anakin just stares, shocked— though maybe he shouldn’t be. Because striding through the wide double doors is the imposing figure of—
“Count Dooku,” Anakin says, flexing his empty hand. He knew he should’ve had Artoo stick closer by.
“How lovely to see you again, Skywalker,” Count Dooku said. He’s already pulled his saber out of its hilt, held at this side by elegant long fingers. “It’s such a pity I have to kill you.”
Notes:
Mando'a
Haar'chak - Damn it!Amatakka
Dukkra ba dukkra - "Freedom or death"; alternatively, "Death or freedom" - a saying that exemplifies how "freedom" and "death" are the same word in Amatakkan***
I am. SO sorry this was so late. when I say shit has been crazy i mean it y'all!!! work drama, bestie getting married, all the chaos of traveling cross country and having a four day long headache culminated in this chapter fighting me tooth and fucking nail
I know things are moving kinda fast, but a lot of this fic is going to be focused on the recovery aspect of everything that went down here. next chapter is pre-written, and the chapter after that and after that have decent drafts, so i might be able to stick to 1x a week through november!
thanks for sticking out the wait!! loved reading all the comments and reactions to last chapter <33 see yall soon!!
Chapter Text
There was a rumor, out in the galaxy, that Torgruta fangs were venomous.
It mostly stemmed from the fact that Torgruta were not the most common species, and that their fangs tended to be large and intimidating. People took one look and assumed that the venom was how the Torgruta had climbed to the top of Shili’s considerable food chain.
But the truth was, Torgruta fangs were not venomous. They did not need to be.
Ahsoka wondered, vaguely, if Atai Molec had been aware of this fact when she tore his throat out with her teeth. Had he spent his last few choking moments thinking the venom would get him, or had he been fully aware that severing the artery in his neck would be more than enough?
She could still taste his blood on her tongue, feel it on her skin. It was coating her clothes, which already weren’t covering very much. Even her bare stomach felt sticky. She didn’t look down to check. She could feel it was there, and that was enough.
There was even blood on her feet. The pool around Molec’s body was growing steadily, to the point where it’d found her in her little corner of the room. He had so much blood. Ahsoka had watched people bleed out before, mostly clones, and it had never been this much blood.
Maybe it had something to do with Zygerrian physiology. Maybe it was just his size— he was taller than clones by a few inches, wider too than most of them. His blood was the same red, though, it had the same coppery stink to it. Stained the same, Ahsoka was willing to guess.
She should get up. She should get up and go find Anakin or Cody, should leave before one of the other guards found her here and killed her for her trouble.
Ahsoka blinked, as if remembering. There had been two guards with her, before. Had she killed them too? Or had he– sent them away. He’d sent them away. They were going to come back—
As if she’d summoned them with her thoughts, footsteps echoed down the hallway, getting louder and closer with every second. Ahsoka tried to get her limbs to move, tried to push them into a fighting stance, but they refused to budge. She was locked in her position, knees to sticky chest, feet soaked in blood, arms wrapped around everything, holding herself together. Maybe if she stayed still enough they wouldn’t notice her. She could just blend into the blood.
The footsteps stopped abruptly.
“Haran’e,” a familiar voice muttered.
Ahsoka didn’t look up. She couldn’t even find it in herself to be relieved that it wasn’t a real Zygerrian guard. Her body refused to feel anything at all.
“Osik— Commander–!”
She watched the feet approach, the boots squelching in Molec’s blood. Then they were replaced with knees, sinking down into the blood like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even there. Cody’s worried face appeared in front of her— he’d had the foresight to remove the helmet before approaching.
Somewhere, in the back of Ahsoka’s mind, was the idea that she had never once seen Commander Cody look visibly worried. He was stone-faced, always, except for the rare few times someone managed to crack a smile through. Usually Obi-Wan.
He looked almost like Anakin now, the way he was looking at her.
“Commander,” he said, loudly, and she blinked. Snapped back into focus, into herself, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
Something flashed in Cody’s eyes, suspiciously close to relief. Maybe he’d been talking to her for a minute.
Ahsoka swallowed, tried to focus, but that didn’t help because now the taste of Molec’s blood was in her throat. She gagged, coughed, spit some pinkish spittle into the ever-growing pool of blood on the floor. It had sunk into the stone, into the grout, into every inch of the ground.
A slave would have to clean it later. The thought made her nauseous again.
“Commander,” Cody said again, more urgency this time. “We need to get out of here. Can you stand?”
Ahsoka stared at him. Stand. Yes, she could stand, that was easy, except that her feet were glued to the floor by wet sticky blood, her arms stuck to her legs, her legs stuck to her chest.
“I—” she rasped out. Coughed again, but the blood wouldn’t go away. “I killed him.”
Cody looked at her, clearly at a loss for words. He glanced back at Molec, probably noting the rather large hole in his throat. Ahsoka was sure her face was covered in it.
“Yes, you did,” Cody said, finally. There was no judgment, no congratulations. Simply a statement of fact. “And I’m sure the demagolka deserved it. But we need to leave, now.”
His voice was firm, the same tone he used on shell-shocked Shinies. And Ahsoka tried. She really did. She could hear the urgency in his tone, could feel the anxiety rolling off him in waves, knew he was telling the truth when he said they needed to leave, now.
Her arms wouldn’t move. They shook with the effort of it, her brain fighting against her base instincts, which had solidly declared that she’d done more than enough fighting, and it was time to freeze for the foreseeable future.
“I can’t move,” Ahsoka whispered.
She almost expected Cody to snap at her, to tell her to get it together. To be firm. Instead, something changed in his expression, something understanding and sad.
“Come on, vod’ika. I know you can do it,” Cody said, his voice taking a decidedly softer edge. “Can I help you?”
She wasn’t Cody’s vod’ika— at least, she hadn’t been. She was Rex’s and Fives’ and Jesse’s and she had been Echo’s vod’ika, before he’d died. But the word, in that voice (distinct as Cody’s was, all clones were if you listened hard enough, and Ahsoka was always listening hard enough) familiar enough at least to soothe something over.
Ahsoka liked Cody, they worked together often enough, but he was always professional with her and with Anakin. Then again, if there was ever a time to abandon professionalism, Ahsoka supposed this was it.
Ahsoka nodded, jerky but the intention was clear. Cody sighed and Ahsoka could swear it was a sound of relief.
When he reached out, his hands were gentle. They tugged ever-so-slightly at her hands, unwrapping her arms from her legs. He didn’t seem to mind the blood, still wet but in the process of dying, thick and sticky, getting all over him.
His eyes flashed in alarm, and it took Ahsoka a second to realize that he was looking at her hands, the cuffs.
“Those need to come off,” he said, voice strained. He must know then, what they did. But the thought of it coming off here and now made her stomach roll so hard she nearly threw up.
“No—“ she choked out, panicked. “Not here, please—“
If she was opened up to the Force here, if she had to feel what she had done—
Cody hesitated, the restraint clearly painful in a way that was unlike him. But her fear seemed to convince him well enough, because he dropped his gaze from her hands, breathing out through his teeth.
Somehow he maneuvered Ahsoka into a standing position, still bracing her arms with his like he didn’t trust her to be steady on her feet. She slipped on the slick floor and stumbled almost immediately, so it was safe to say that was a pretty fair assumption.
“Sorry,” she said. Cody looked down at her, curiously. “About the blood,” she clarified.
Cody stared at her for a second longer, then coughed out something close to a laugh. She hadn’t meant it to be funny, but there was something kind of absurd about the whole thing. Ahsoka felt a deep and unsettling desire to giggle. She swallowed it down.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Cody said. He was helping her navigate the floor, the arm around her practically carrying her for all the good her legs were doing. “We’ve got bigger problems. General Skywalker is squaring off with Dooku right now.”
Ahsoka stopped her shuffling. It made up so little of their combined efforts to move that Cody didn’t seem to notice for a few steps.
“Dooku,” she repeated, stupidly.
“Figures he’d be wrapped up in this mess,” Cody groused. “But in theory, we all should be busting out of here, once the fight is over.”
“I should be helping him,” Ahsoka murmured. Something in the back of her mind was screaming this; maybe it was her bond with Anakin trying to break through the Force suppression, maybe it was just her, how she was supposed to be.
Cody muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like “jare'la jetti’ka” though Ahsoka couldn’t be entirely sure.
“Commander, you’re not even in a state to walk, much less fight a Sith lord,” he said, bracingly. “He’s got it under control. Our job is to get to the ship.”
Ahsoka knew that he was right, that her traitorous body had given up on her. She’d be a liability more than anything— she didn’t even have her sabers.
“Ok,” she said. Her mouth felt numb.
The palace seemed to be in a state of chaos— she probably should’ve noticed that earlier, but everything had been fuzzy for a while. Still, it made it easier for them— or, really, just Cody— to get control of their ship.
He set her down gently in the hangar, against a wall, wrapped something around her shoulders. It might’ve been a blanket. It might’ve just been the canvas they’d used to cover the crates in the storage hold. Her mind had already started to slip away, so she missed whatever it was he said before he vanished again, though she had a pretty good guess what he’d told her when the ship lifted into the air.
It was a short flight, the fight with Dooku must not have taken Anakin far, because the next thing she knew there was a familiar set of footsteps running up the hangar ramp.
“Ahsoka!”
Anakin’s voice barely shook her from her stupor. She felt like she couldn’t move again. He was in front of her, suddenly, hands on her shoulders. Ahsoka flinched without meaning to, Anakin winced but didn’t pull back. His hands had migrated to her hands, to the force-suppression cuffs.
They cracked under his fingers. Ahsoka wasn’t sure if it was the strength of his metal hand, the Force, or just sheer force of will that did it, but she didn’t have time to think on it, because all of her senses were suddenly pummeled with a wave of Force activity so strong it nearly brought tears to her eyes.
She could feel everything. All the Force signatures on the planet below, the panic, the death, waves and waves of suffering. And she could feel Anakin again, their bond singing in recognition, a bright tether in a horrible storm.
“You’re okay, I’ve got you,” Anakin said, and he was flooding their bond with the same thing— comfort, relief, a bout of protectiveness so fierce it made her shudder.
“I did it,” she sobbed. “I did what you said I didn’t give up I did it—“
“I know,” he said, and he leaned into her shoulder, not caring it was sticky with blood. A flicker of pride-horror-grief. “You did good, Snips. You did so good.”
She buried her face in his robes, breathed in the sweat and burnt something and the hint of motor oil that clung to his skin like perfume. It was easier here, in the quiet dark of his shoulder. Familiar.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone there, I’m sorry,” Anakin mumbled. Ahsoka could feel his guilt, palpable and thick, oozing across their bond.
Ahsoka wanted to say you had to and we’d all be dead if you hadn’t and I wish you hadn’t anyway, but the only noise her voice would produce was a choked whine.
“I know,” Anakin said again, soothing. He couldn’t hug her, not really, not when he knew exactly how bad the injuries on her back were, but he pressed her close as best he could. His hand cradled the back of her head, tucking her into the safety of his robes.
Ahsoka wasn’t sure how long they sat there, Anakin cradling her on the cold hanger floor of a slaver shuttle. Long enough that they jolted into hyperspace and jolted out again, Ahsoka could feel the slight vibrational change in the engine, could feel the stark absence of Zygerria’s Force signatures, and then a new, familiar darkness.
“General,” Cody said, and Ahsoka could feel his regret at his interruption. Anakin pulled back, his gaze on her still intense. She already missed the muffled safety of his half-embrace.
“The processing plant,” Anakin said, “we’re meeting up with Master Plo to free them all.”
“Oh,” Ahsoka said. She could help, now, she thought— now that the cuffs were gone, even if her montrals were ringing and she was getting a headache from the sudden presence of the Force again after being so violently cut off.
“Don’t even think about it,” Anakin said, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep her from trying to move. “You’re going straight to medical on the Triumphant. They’re already expecting you.”
“Oh,” she said again, sitting back against the walls of their ship. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved by that news or not. She hated medical usually, and she hated it more when it was with officers she wasn’t familiar with. But on the other hand… her body hurt. She couldn’t remember a time she’d hurt this much, not even the time she’d taken a blaster bolt to the gut.
“I have to find Rex and Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, and there was a hint of regret in his words. “But I’ll be back with you as soon as I can.”
Ahsoka’s stomach twisted miserably. Rex and Obi-Wan had borne the brunt of this mission and they weren’t even out yet. What if something happened? What if—
She swallowed her fear down, as she’d been getting good at doing the past few days. They were alive. They had to be alive. Rex and Obi-Wan were not people who died, Rex and Obi-Wan always made it out, and if they didn’t this time it would be all her fault—
“They’ll be fine,” Anakin said, like he could read her thoughts. And, well, with her shields as much of a mess as she suspected they were, he probably practically could. “And so will you. Cody’s going to go with you, okay?”
Ahsoka glanced up, past Anakin’s shoulder. Cody was off to the side, presumably giving her and Anakin space, but he was clearly distracted with whatever readout he was checking on his vambrace.
Ahsoka nodded. Anakin smiled at her, gloved metal hand resting against her cheek. He pressed a short kiss between her montrails, then stood.
Things began to get blurry again, after that. She was vaguely aware of Anakin jumping off the hanger bay, docking on the Triumphant, being introduced to a medical clone named Gurney, who, to his credit, didn’t seem phased at all by the fact that she was absolutely coated in blood. His mouth did flatten to a straight line when he took her vitals, his expression suddenly becoming very blank and professional when he got a look at her neck and back.
“I’m going to prepare a bacta tank,” Gurney said, and Ahsoka had known it was coming but it made her feel sick anyway.
She wanted Anakin here so much it hurt. It was selfish, he needed to find Rex and Master Obi-Wan, she’d never forgive herself if he didn’t find them and she didn’t even need him here, she was just being a baby. But still.
The thought of going into bacta, alone and exposed, made bile rise in her throat. Anakin would watch her back, Anakin would make sure nobody came near her but he wasn’t here—
“General Skywalker will be back soon,” Cody said, quietly. It was the first thing he’d said to her since they were alone again, or, at least, the first thing she’d processed. “I won’t leave ‘till he’s here.”
It was said softly, casually as she thought Cody had ever managed anything, but the implicit meaning was clear: I’ll stand guard until Skywalker is back.
Obi-Wan trusted Cody and Anakin trusted Obi-Wan and Ahsoka trusted Anakin. And Cody had called her vod’ika and that meant something.
He wasn’t Anakin— they were both very well aware of that— but Ahsoka was grateful for him anyway.
Ahsoka nodded, wished her throat would work so she could thank him properly. But he nodded back, and she knew he understood.
Notes:
Mando'a
Haran'e - "Oh hells"
Osik - shit
demagolka - monster (particularly one that harms children)
vod'ika - little sibling; in this case, little sister
jare'la jetti’ka - suicidal little Jedi***
I know we missed a lot from anakin and cody's POV, but we'll be doubling back around to those soon!! in the meantime, poor ahsoka is finally back safe <3thanks to everyone for your lovely comments and kudos, especially last chapter! I'm excited to get to the recovery portion of this story <33
Chapter Text
When Ahsoka woke, she woke to beeping.
It was steady, and slow. The sound bounced around her montrails, and she felt her face screwing up in irritation. She tried to move, and then— pain. In her back, yes, but her head was pounding.
“Snips?”
Her master’s voice was tinny to her montrails, but clearly hopeful. She blinked sluggishly, vision blurry but revealing the general size and shape of Anakin sitting next to her.
“Ow,” she said, and winced at the state of her voice. It sounded like someone scraped her vocal chords with sandpaper.
Anakin snorted, the sound clearly one of relief as much as half-hearted humor.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Anakin said. She felt a slight pressure on her hand, realized he was holding it and had squeezed it. She tried to squeeze back, but wasn’t entirely sure her fingers responded.
Her vision was starting to clear, revealing Anakin’s worried face hovering beside her. He looked like hell— greasy unwashed hair, rumbled robes that looked a few days old at least, dark circles under his eyes. She tried to push herself into a more dignified upright position, and Anakin dropped her hand to help her, propping a few pillows behind her back.
“How long was I…” she trailed off.
“A day and a half in bacta, and another two asleep,” Anakin said. “Kix was going to put you back in the tank if you didn’t wake by morning.”
He was clearly trying to be clinical in his description, and clearly failing. Ahsoka could practically feel the mix of worry-relief-worry radiating off him.
“Kix?” she asked. She distinctly remembers a clone named Gurney having been the one to put her in the tank to begin with.
“We’re back on the Resolute,” Anakin explained. “Swapped over the first night you were out of the bacta. Master Plo sent his well wishes.”
Her mind still felt backlogged. She had a vague impression of everything that had happened, why exactly she’d needed to spend nearly four days unconscious.
“Rex,” she gasped. And then, equally as terrible— “Obi-Wan—”
One of the machines started beeping rapidly, which didn’t help her headache, but she didn’t care because Rex and Obi-Wan had been enslaved that whole time and what if they hadn’t made it out—
“They’re fine,” Anakin soothed, glancing worriedly at her monitor. “They’re okay, Snips, I promise. Take a deep breath for me, okay?”
She followed his instruction mostly out of instinct, but still pushed another round of worry-doubt through their bond. If they was alright, why weren’t they here? Why couldn’t she feel them through the Force?
Anakin seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. He sighed, rubbing his flesh palm against his forehead.
“Rex is still in bacta, but he’s going to be fine,” Anakin amended. “Obi-Wan and Cody are still on the Triumphant, but they’re going to rendezvous with us in a few days. Everyone’s okay, I promise.”
Before Ahsoka could say anything about the admission, Kix pushed back the curtain surrounding her bed. When he saw she was awake, he smiled, though it was tight with concern when he glanced at her monitor, still beeping rapidly.
“Welcome back,” he said. “Everything alright over here?”
“She’s just worried about Rex,” Anakin said.
“He’s going to be fine,” Kix repeated. “He’ll pop out of that bacta tank good as new.”
Ahsoka, trusting Kix slightly more to be truthful with her than Anakin, at least about medical things, nodded. Or tried to. Her neck hurt. Still, she felt her body relax a little, her heart returning to a more normal rhythm.
“How are you feeling, Commander?”
“She needs more pain meds,” Anakin said, before Ahsoka could get a word in edgewise. She glared at him, or tried to. Her muscles still felt sluggish and unresponsive.
“Your first word awake was ‘ow,’” Anakin reminded her. “So don’t even try to pretend you’re fine.”
“What hurts?” Kix asked, shining a pen light into her eyes. Ahsoka squinted against the intrusion, but answered the question all the same.
“My head, mostly,” Ahsoka said. “And my back, a little.”
“Mm,” Kix said, checking her monitor against his datapad, and adjusting something in her IV. Immediately, the pain in her head lessened a discernable degree. “The headache’s probably from the bacta. It’ll go away the longer you’re out, but we’ll keep an eye on it.”
“What about my back?” Ahsoka asks. She almost doesn’t even want to. She’d never actually seen it herself with her own two eyes, but she’d felt exactly how bad it was, and she knew the longer a wound is left without bacta, the less likely it is to heal 100% back to normal.
Sure enough, Kix’s stoic expression wavered slightly. “The infection ran fairly deep. We were able to clear it out, but I’m afraid it left some scars that the bacta couldn’t quite heal. The scar tissue is going to be tender for a bit, but the pain will fade in time.”
Ahsoka swallowed, her mouth feeling especially dry.
“How bad is it?” she asked, her voice coming out smaller than she’d meant it to.
“What it looks like now is not an accurate representation of what it’ll look like forever,” Kix said. It was, perhaps, the most diplomatic she’d ever heard him. Knowing how blunt he usually is, Ahsoka felt certain that it couldn’t be a good sign.
“It’ll be okay, Snips,” Anakin said. “We’ll have Master Che take a look when we end up at the Temple next.”
“We’re not going back?” Ahsoka asked, turning back to her master. He winced, exchanging a look with Kix.
“No,” he said, apologetic. “Master Mundi’s forces needed backup, and we were the closest by with the freshest troops.”
“Oh,” Ahsoka said. She tried her best to keep her disappointment at bay— all she’d wanted that entire mission was to go home, and now even that felt horribly out of reach.
“You’re on medical leave for the forseeable future, so don’t worry about it,” Anakin said, brusquely. Ahsoka had assumed as much, but she still scrunched her nose in displeasure.
“You and Captain Rex can keep each other company,” Kix said, dryly. In any other scenario, it might’ve made Ahsoka laugh. Now it was hard to find anything funny. “Speaking of, I should go and check on the good Captain. I trust you have things well in hand here, General?”
“We’ll call if we need you,” Anakin agreed
Kix nodded, then took his leave. Ahsoka settled back against the wall of pillows Anakin had constructed for her.
She wanted to ask more about the mission— what happened and why Rex was in bacta and if Master Obi-Wan was alright and… and how it ended. If they found the colony of Torgrutas that had brought them to Zygerria in the first place.
It was hard to say out loud. She wasn’t even sure she really wanted to know.
But that was fear talking. Fear that Anakin had been right when he’d yelled at her in his quarters on Zygerria, that her sneaking onto the mission had caused it to fail.
“What happened?” Ahsoka asked. “Did… did you save the colony?”
The ashen look on Anakin’s face at her question just about answered it, but Ahsoka still found herself waiting with baited breath for his response, which he was taking an uncharacteristically long time to formulate.
“We found the colony,” he said, finally. “They were on Kadavo, just like Cody figured. They were holding Rex and Obi-Wan hostage separately, but they managed to get away.”
“And the colony?” Ahsoka asked. Tears prickled in her eyes preemptively, and the shake of Anakin’s head only confirmed her worst fears.
“We tried everything, but… the Zygerrians were using them as a shield against our attack on the base. There was no way to safely extract them from the base before the Zygerrians… we saved as many as we could, but most of them were killed. I’m sorry.”
Ahsoka felt the tears overwhelm her throat and her eyes, spilling out over her cheeks without her meaning to.
“It’s all my fault,” Ahsoka said, “If I hadn’t come—”
But Anakin was already shaking his head. “No, Ahsoka. There’s not much we could’ve done to save them with what we had, but if anything, this whole thing is my fault,” Anakin said solemnly.
“Master, no—” Ahsoka protested, but Anakin cut her off.
“Yes, Ahsoka,” he insisted. “You never should’ve been here, yes. It changed the plan a bit, yes. But I was angry about the mission, and I let my emotions cloud my judgment. I never should have banned you from the mission without explaining why. Not for something like this.”
“I still disobeyed your orders,” Ahsoka protested. “If I—”
“Don’t misunderstand me, padawan,” Anakin said, and his voice took back the sharper quality she was used to with his lectures. It was a little relieving, if she was honest. “What you did was reckless, dangerous, and egotistical. You could’ve died, or worse. I’m not pleased that you disobeyed direct orders to come on a mission you had no business being on, again.”
Ahsoka cringed. She’d gotten away with it after the Citadel because Master Plo had covered for her, but everyone knew the real reason she was there. She had gotten lucky that time, and she hadn’t even realized just how lucky until now.
“But,” Anakin continued, tone already softened, “as your teacher, I bear the bulk of the responsibility for this mistake. Especially since my behavior made you feel as though I’d forced your hand.”
Ahsoka gave him a look. Or, at least she hoped her look was conveyed, everything still hurt and was hard to control. She thought Anakin understood though, because the corner of his lips quirked up to an almost-smile.
“Tell me why you snuck on the mission,” he said. Ahsoka resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew he already knew why, but he was looking at her expectantly, so she sighed.
“I was worried about you,” she started. “Master Obi-Wan asked me to keep an eye on you. And I wanted to help my people. It wasn’t fair that you wouldn’t let me help and I thought— I thought you would need my help. Like the CItadel. I thought I could help.”
A little something flickers in Anakin’s expression at Obi-Wan’s mention, but his face remains curiously blank otherwise.
“So you disobeyed me because you thought I was wrong. Because you thought I didn’t understand your perspective, because I refused to listen to you. Right?”
Ahsoka nodded miserably.
“And what do we always say about the clones? Why they’re better than droids?”
“Because they can think,” Ahsoka rattled off. “Because they don’t blindly follow orders.”
“And neither do you. Neither should you,” Anakin said, squeezing her hand. “I disobeyed the council’s orders when I refused to let you on the mission, because I believed it was the right thing to do. You stowed away on the mission anyway because you believed that was the right thing to do. It was foolish, yes, but only because I refused to give you the information you needed to make a better decision. I should’ve explained to you. Shutting you out was unacceptable of me, and I’m sorry.”
This was all wrong. Ahsoka was the padawan. She was the one who was supposed to be quiet and listen to her master. She’d broken the rules and nearly got everyone killed, she was the reason Rex was hurt so badly. It was her fault that she was captured, her fault…
She shivered involuntarily, and Anakin’s hands were there, cupped at her shoulders, keeping her steady.
“‘S not your fault,” she said, and she meant it. Anakin sighed, his eyes closing a little, for just a second.
“Answer me honestly, Ahsoka,” Anakin said. He was kneeling so he was at her height, blue eyes serious. “If I had explained to you why I didn’t want you to come, why you specifically would be in more danger, would you still have disobeyed me?”
Ahsoka thought of the unfamiliar hands on her lekku, the sour breath in her face, the horrible feelings of lust and hunger that leered through the Force. The collar on her neck. The electrostaff, the lick of a whip, the force suppression that felt like cutting off a limb.
The feeling of being owned. Knowing that she could be used in any way someone else pleased and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
She’s not sure how Anakin could’ve explained all of that. But she knew, she knew that if he had, if he’d given her an inkling, if she’d known she’d be sparing him the stress of knowing she was in that situation, she never would’ve disobeyed Anakin. If she could go back, knowing what she knew now, she would never set foot on Zygerria at all.
“No,” Ahsoka said, quietly.
Anakin nods. “Then that’s that.”
It wasn’t, and they both knew it. But if Anakin was being surprisingly forthcoming about all this, then…
“What did they say that made you so angry?”
She was almost scared to ask. It felt intensely personal— it was intensely personal. But she also feels like she needs to know the reason why he’d shut her out.
“They?” Anakin asked, brow furrowing in confusion.
“The council,” Ahsoka said. “You said the mission made you angry, and after you and Master Obi-Wan talked to them, that’s when you were mad. Not just about the Zygerrians.”
Anakin’s face darkened, a shadow crossing over his expression. At the same time, he looked hesitant. Like he doesn’t want to say.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Ahsoka said, as if that wasn’t obvious. Somehow, it seems to be the thing that convinces Anakin to relent, because he sighs, runs his un-gloved hand through his hair.
“They wanted you to go undercover as the slave,” he said, quietly.
And now things are clicking into place. Why Anakin was so mad, why Obi-Wan had clearly agreed with him but refused to tell Ahsoka why. And Obi-Wan— it was bad enough that he’d had to play the part, but knowing what she knows now… there’s plenty of uses for men, for force-sensitive men. There’s only one reason to enslave a young Torgruta girl. And the council had wanted— they’d wanted her to—
“Oh,” she said, and felt a bit sick. Anakin sent a pulse of reassurance through the bond, a fierce sort of neveragainnotonmywatchyou’resafewithme.
“I didn’t want to tell you that,” Anakin admits. “I didn’t want you— I don’t want you to think about yourself in that way. It was wrong of them to ask that of you. That’s why I was upset.”
Oh. He was upset for her. She didn’t know why that felt so surprising— it wasn’t like it was the first time. But it had been so— fierce. And sharp. And he had turned it back on her, though that feels less surprising. Not the first time that had happened either.
“But aren’t we supposed to put how we feel aside? For the greater good?” Ahsoka asked.
Anakin makes a soft, unimpressed noise.
“I know you’ve been through a lot and you’re more than capable, but you’re still a child, Ahsoka,” he said, and his words are laced with affection, and clear regret. “There are certain things you should still be protected from. The council shouldn’t have asked that of you.”
Ahsoka’s Jedi training bumped up against that (because isn’t that selfish, to be asked to be spared of that? Shouldn’t the lives of the innocent slaves be placed above her comfort?) but Anakin seemed sure. She almost wished she could ask Obi-Wan, but the she remembered what he’d said after the meeting with the council, face ashen:
This path is the safest for everyone involved.
Well, she’d certainly kriffed that up. But knowing that Obi-Wan might say the same thing, that it wasn’t just Anakin’s protective nature clouding his judgment, made her feel a smidge better.
Unfortunately, thinking about the council again just brought its own problems.
“They’ll want to punish me,” Ahsoka said dully. It had happened before, when she’d karked up this badly. Gotten people killed because of her hubris, her unwillingness to submit and follow orders like a good padawan. And the mission had gone so egregiously wrong, she wasn’t sure there was a way to hide her errors. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“This whole situation was punishment enough,” Anakin said, and there was a dark flicker in his eye that she wasn’t sure she liked. “I think it’s safe to say we’ve both learned our lessons, didn’t we?”
Ahsoka nodded. It still felt like cheating, but she’d be lying to say she didn’t also feel relieved. She didn’t think she was capable of recounting this mission to anyone, much less the high council.
“We’ll tell them I changed my mind at the last minute. Fudge some of the details. Obi-Wan will cover for us; it’ll be fine,” Anakin said, waving his hand dismissively. “Like I said, I don’t think it affected the mission outcome all that much.”
The mission outcome in question was near-total failure, but Ahsoka didn’t say that. Anakin knew it better than her.
“They gave us an impossible task,” Anakin said, perhaps sensing her guilt through the Force. He gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. “We saved as many as we could.”
Ahsoka nodded, her eyes prickling with tears again. She swallowed heavily. “I’m really tired.”
“Go back to sleep,” Anakin said immediately, just as Ahsoka knew he would. “We’ve got another full cycle in hyperspace before we reach Master Mundi’s rendezvous.”
“Wake me up when Rex is out?” she asked. She’s not exactly in a position to be asking for anything, but she throws the tooka kit eyes on anyway.
She must look particularly pathetic, because Anakin sighs begrudgingly.
“Alright,” he says, smoothing down the pathetically thin med-bed blanket.
“You should sleep too,” Ahsoka said, yawning as she wiggled into a more comfortable position.
“I will,” Anakin said, in such a way that made Ahsoka think he was lying. Which was bad, because if he was tired when they met up with Master Mundi, he was more likely to get hurt. Or worse.
Now that her eyes were closed, she was finding the pull of unconsciousness more and more difficult to ignore. Kix must’ve put her pain meds on a scaled time release so it would sneak up on her.
Bastard. But Ahsoka also felt certain that he’d bully Anakin into a nap before they dropped out to the rendezvous, so she couldn’t be too mad.
“What was that, Snips?” Anakin asked. His voice was fuzzy. Ahsoka blinked heavily. Belatedly, she realized she must’ve said some of that out loud.
“Worried ‘bout you,” she mumbled.
His reply was lost to her as she drifted off, but she felt the steady pressure in the Force of him next to her, and that was enough.
Notes:
heyyyyyyy....,,, i'm alive...,,,!!!
I know it's been a minute, and if you've been reading my stuff for any amount of time y'all know I usually try to be really consistent and timely with my updates and i usually succeed. I think it's time to admit defeat here and say that's probably not going to happen with this fic 😅
transparently, work has been really tough lately, and the subject matter of this fic being as heavy as it is means i just don't have the mental energy for it as often as I'd like.
So, updates will come when they come. I do feel confident that i'll finish (i've never not finished something I started posting and I'm not about to start now and I have a good chunk of this prewritten anyway) but it's gonna be slow lol. thank you for sticking around in the meantime <33
see ya when i see ya!
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