AN: A commissioned story from the Star Wars fandom at last! if you would like to commission something like this please PM me! Enjoy!
Ahsoka, Malachor, V Alone
The air had a certain somberness to it, a certain eerie aura of stale death and dried up blood within the moisture all around. The sound of lightsabers clashing could still be heard in her ear, still zooming around and colliding with their unmistakable noise. The noise she had been hearing almost every day since she first became a padawan.
Ahsoka Tano, Togruta and no more Jedi than even the monster she had tried to defeat, knew the sound of lightsabers better than any noise in the universe. As she meditated she looked back, all the way back, to the first day on Christophsis when she met Anakin Skywalker. It seemed like a lifetime ago, in an entirely different universe let alone galaxy, when in actual fact a mere twenty-one years had only moved by. Ushered in with a complete shift in mortality and decadence, the entire planetary collection that was known space was different, entirely different. All because of one man and one man alone; Emperor Palpatine.
She knew him once, back in the time of the Clone Wars, back when people were people and the lines were clearly drawn in the earth, when the world was not sunken and crushed underfoot by such darkness. He was Chancellor and a fairly righteous politician with an ambitious mind, but only later did Ahsoka and the rest of the surviving Jedi and unwavering Senators that all the ambition was seize totalitarian control of the Republic and mold it. Shape it he did.
The Republic, which Ahsoka had fought, bled, and almost died for on so many occasions was morphed and warped in a matter of months into a twisted husk of government - dictatorship - dressed as the Galactic Empire, and suddenly she, and her friends were attempting to overthrow it. Trying, and failing. Only Ahsoka, as she sat in the solitary Sith Temple that was left from millennia ago, or so it felt, could only think about how she had failed, failed so miserably against the machinist monstrosity.
Christophsis, Tatooine, now Malachor. How many systems had she seen with him? More than any Padawan with their master she theorised, only the least was not as a Padawan and he was not her Master, hadn't been for years, not since she vanished from the grid. After she had been flushed from the Order she had taken to the underground, to hide from the annuls of history and from the horrors that she would later discover to be Order 66. A small part of the weary Force User wished she had never left the underbellies of Nar Shaddaa, never ran from the home system, never have become Fulcrum and now wished she had never had thrown all her eggs into Kanan and Ezra's basket. It had done nothing but ended badly for her.
Ahsoka, no longer Jedi, no longer relevant, no longer the woman she was when she had defeated the two Inquisitors who were now lying dead around her, was alone, on Malachor V and with no means of escape whatsoever. And with a gaping wound in her side from when her old Master, Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader, had brutally stabbed her.
Ripping the almost mummified cloth garbs from one the Jedi Guardian's corpses, Ahsoka soon fashioned a medicinal weave from it, wrapping the layers over and over one another so the cloth was stronger. It was enough to wrap around her midriff, with much pain and grunting out into the deserted wasteland that was under the surface of Malachor, where the ancient battle had taken place. What battle though? Who exactly fought? And was it during the Clone Wars or some other conflict? There were over three dozen that came to her immediate memory from her studies in the archives and only a few made sense; there was also no real record of Clone forces ever being deployed into the Malachor system during the war, and from looking around and before her isolation, there were no bodies donning Clone armour anyways. Not Phase I or II. This world had been completely unscathed from the atrocities of the Clone Wars, one of the only worlds that had been, but it also meant that the battle waged around the Temple, around Ahsoka, was far older.
"There's something… Very familiar about this place," Ahsoka voiced into the void as if there was someone or even something there to hear her.
There was nothing. No one. And there wouldn't ever be anyone else coming. This was Malachor, the one planet that if anyone did want to visit, they wouldn't, and the remains and mass graves that Ahsoka was looking at all around her was only the smallest of reasons. No one knew, or seemed to know that the planet existed. Save one.
She missed Chopper, which caused her to miss Artoo, which in turn made her miss Threepio, and Padme, but mostly Artoo. She wished he was with her, then at least she would have someone to voice her one liners to, to brainstorm with, and hopefully figure out a way off of the rock. That was if there even was a way off, Artoo would have found it. "It's like, something out of a dream…" Ahsoka voiced, tightening the improvised bandaging around her waist to ensure she didn't bleed out. It would kill her eventually, but not for now.
"I don't know," she spoke to herself. "It feel like-"
"-Feels like… What?" A voice, not sharp or crooked, or slightly caramel-like as she was expecting, even sensing spoke behind her. She was expecting someone else, Yoda to speak to her as he did in the Temple on Lothal, what she needed right now.
It was something else, wispy and prudent, as if the voice of an Imperial Aristocrat, or someone like Maul. Maul, the man who had ruined it all, destroyed what she and the Rebels had worked so hard to establish. Three living Force Users who were not sith, who were fighting the Empire, whose morale was high enough to actually fight effectively, especially after Hammertown. And Maul had destroyed it; not only that but he had also escaped when Vader arrived, away in the TIE Fighter of one of the Inquisitors that he had slain himself before Ezra.
No, the voice behind Ahsoka was not even Maul's, it couldn't be really, unless he was that astute with the Force that he could master the art of astral projection like Yoda could, and Ahsoka Tano highly doubted that from such a petty Sith like he. But a small part of the wounded and humiliated Togruta barely wanted to turn around to see or find out who had interrupted her thoughts. She was sitting in the bowels of an ancient Sith Temple after all, and her own words from days ago rang in her mind again, what she had said to Ezra and to Kanan before the fallout, before the storm.
'There's alway a little bit of truth, in legend.'
"Like you're… Being watched?" The voice continued after her long and trembling silence. Instead of allowing Ahsoka to turn, the voice soon moved itself, fading from behind her and appearing in front of her, walking out of the darkness.
A tall and rather slender figure, however bogged down with heavy jet black robes with red adornments and accents around, the robes of a Dark Jedi no doubt, or at least an acolyte of the Dark Side. Whoever they were, it was fairly obvious that they were a disciple of Palpatine, or Vader at the very least and Ahsoka churned at the sight of them. Coming from the darkness of the shadowed parts of the Temple, it looked as if they would finish her off, to kill her intimately and in a flash at the same time. About the only thing that had Ahsoka not feeling as if these were her least seconds was what her eyes were looking at other than the stranger's robes. It was on their face, the front guard and the only thing that the Togruta could address if she were to speak to them.
It was the mask over their face, in an ancient Mandalorian styling with a deep and blazoned scar down the area where the stranger's left eye would be situated.
Mask. Mandalorian Mask. Black robes. There was only really one Force User that Ahsoka knew of that fitted that description, only the frame wearing the attire did not match what the former Jedi had read. The body appeared female, but then again, the records were sketchy at best, and the stranger that Ahsoka was looking at was said to be over a thousand years old, in fact over three thousand, and they were still, physical? Possibly.
Nevertheless, Ahsoka drew her single lightsaber, the other taken by Darth Vader as she appeared dead to him earlier, and prepared for another fight, her least no doubt.
"Who are you!?" She shouted into the chamber with a certain tremble of desperate fear and even panic in her voice. She was afraid, very afraid, especially as she thought back to the entry she read on the stranger, and what they did, what they were and what happened. She had reason to be scared, she had reason to want to run and hide, regardless if fear led to the dark side, Ahsoka was very very afraid.
Some form of ancient whispering incantation could be heard as the stranger began to break out into a small jog, a brisk run, words from another language at their back as they charged. "On your feet Ahsoka Tano… And embrace eternity! There is always truth in legend!" They roared coming closer. With a snap of the Force they pulled a single lightsaber hilt from their belt and ignited the proud and burning purple blade from it, leaping into the air of the vast chamber of darkness Ahsoka was sitting in, and coming down again with even more force than Vader had brought upon her.
She stood up quickly, long enough to backstep away from the shade's downward slam with their lightsaber, but equally quickly they were on her, slashing across and up and down, Ahsoka blocking as best she could with her single white blade. She had not fought with a single for a long time and was out of practice, yet the stranger looked to be holding it all back. They were not even trying to duel her and yet they were winning effortlessly as they caught her blade with their own. Barely any acrobatics could be attempted for her side would surely kill her, but the stranger did not relent. They fought just like Vader just like a juggernaut with that purple lightsaber. Acrobatics were not even needed for them for they could shatter the Togruta's defense with the most simplistic of assaults, slashing down on her blade as if their own were a warhammer. She was absolutely petrified, barely moving backwards for her feet were pinned to the floor by their attacks. She knew she dead, that this stranger would finish what Darth Vader started.
Darth Vader, the only image that kept spiralling in and around Ahsoka's mind, even as the incantations and whispers invaded her thoughts from the enigma she was battling. Well, not even that, she was losing before she even stood up. They were completely on the offensive and she was doomed and wondering why they hadn't just ended it already.
"Who are you?!" Again did Ahsoka yell into the void, she wanted - she needed to know. The stranger had said only few words and she was dying before them, her heart shattering and her eyes even crying as they slammed their purple blade on her own. She was done she knew it, until, the assailant relented, kicking her in the gut and the backflipping away again.
Ahsoka was left battered and bruised, heavily fatigued from the broken defence and panting from where they had kicked her, winding her and crippling her stance. If they wanted to finish the job either by lightsaber or by simply the Force, she would not stop him she couldn't. Ahsoka even wondered if she had the energy anymore to hold back a Force attack, if they tried to choke her would she be able to push it back? She heavily doubted as much.
"Please," she struggled, with heavy breath and a raped throat, nothing left to give as her side began to bleed a little more as she could feel. "Just finish me off, I don't have anything else left in me, whoever you are," Ahsoka called out to the stranger, expecting nothing but a swift end to her struggling life.
What she did not expect was the stranger in the mask to put their blade away.
"I expected more from you, Ahsoka Tano. At least I expected you to know who I am… Was," they said breathlessly. Before anything else they faded into nothing, gone before Ahsoka's eyes with the whispering too. On the edge of it Ahsoka heard the noise again, the dreadful cacophony of Vader's breathing, and the horrors that were associated with it, what he had done to Ezra and Kanan, and herself.
She was once again alone and unwanted, stranded and isolated in the bowels of the Temple with nothing except her single lightsaber. The wound was dry suddenly again, no bleeding, just dried blood dressed with the ancient cloth weave taken and made from the garments of the dead and scattered Jedi Guardians. The stranger, or, who she thought they were, was certainly gone. As Ahsoka sank to the floor to grab her breath back she could no longer sense them, no longer sense anything, not even the Dark Side, not even her own ambiguity. There was nothing there at all, just her, alone.
Naturally, she tossed her lightsaber across the chamber and began to sob, tears flooding from her eyes, balling. There was nothing left in her but despair for she had succumbed to it, crippled by it, it's all that was there. She was out of motivation, fresh out of it, finished with determination and there was not an ounce of happiness around for miles. It was all sadness and despair.
"What, am I meant, to do?" She asked herself aloud through her trembling tears and crumbling voice. There was nothing to do, no options at all. There were no ships and nothing in orbit, there was just no way for her to get away, to go to Ezra or Kanan or Hera. She was utterly stuck, and very very soon out of time. "I'm done for. Finished. I'm dead."
"Less dead than you think, you are," came another voice, and one that made Ahsoka instantly stop her blubbering and look up in a flash.
Only one voice sounded like that, only one voice spoke in the backwards manner as that had, and only voice could make Ahsoka look up so quickly and so full of hope. And of course as she looked to see the second astral projection of the humble and powerful Jedi Master, the green and aged alien smiled with a fatherly and warm smile. "A chance to survive, there always is," he breathed to her, and she smiled, more so, she laughed with tears falling again.
Ahsoka was simply elated, broken even, to see him, to see Yoda, at the end of everything come to see her off into the Force. But he was wrong, he had to be, there was no way she could survive, there was no way off of the planet and not a cryogenic freezing chamber around that she could see. She was done for, as she knew.
"Master Yoda…" Ahsoka spoke, almost a whisper and meek, out of energy.
He came a little closer, walking with his walking stick as he used to in the Jedi Temple when she was a child and then again as a teen. He was older however, much much older, and she was too, but nowhere near as old as he. She never would be, he was impossibly old at this point, and she was still too young for her own good, even younger than Kanan Jarrus. In fact she was still not even as old as Anakin was when he took apprenticeship of her, at least in her life span. Togrutas still lived slightly longer than humans and she was just reaching her stride as an adult, barely into the equivalent of her mid twenties. And in her mind, she would die in them, and in a Sith Temple no doubt.
"Rest, child. Rest. A long journey ahead of you, you have. Much you must do, there is," he told her slowly, in his old and withered voice, sitting down with seemingly nothing in her vision, but of course he was still wherever he was. Last time there had been a small branch, or log of a tree that he sat on, now there was just nothing. Perhaps he was sitting on the earth, or on a chair, something in a little hut or house, or cottage. She could see him in a little cottage, in a small hut in the wilderness somewhere with tiny furniture and tiny pots and pans and such, though she could not imagine him cooking much. Perhaps he would use the Force to do even that, or maybe he shared it with someone, a friend or partner, companion.
Ahsoka huddled together all the determination she could muster, just enough to get up and then to her knees, reaching out with the force and grabbing her lightsaber again. He maintained herself, seeing Yoda was enough to do it, was enough to snap her back into reality, enough to make her realise that maybe there was a chance that she could survive and get out of here, somehow, all she had to do was stay alive.
But how could one survive… On Malachor V?
"Master, please, tell me how to survive, tell me how I can get off this planet and back to the Rebels," Ahsoka asked, pleaded with Yoda, for her very survival. She doubted he would even tell her, if he could. Dealing with Jedi Masters was always a tedious and convoluted task, they would often talk one around in circles, provide them with riddles, or in the rare circumstance, simply tell them a half truth, or the truth from a very certain point of view that was only their own.
He grumbled, Yoda grumbled, trying to figure out the words with which to tell her the horrible news; there was no way off the planet, not for now, but there was a way to survive almost indefinitely until there looked to be a way off. But would that be enough of her? She was dying, not quickly, but slowly, all she had was a bag of food and water meant to last for days, not weeks or months. With his solution however there was barely any need for them. All that needed answering was if she could learn the techniques.
If Ahsoka could not, then she would indeed die here, on Malachor, and be a part of the mass grave of Force Users that had died millennia before her.
"Master, please! Help me!" She roared at him, letting loose her anger and frustration, all the negative energy she had built up, now it was threatening to come out, to take hold of her.
A Grey Jedi she might have been, but that still meant she suffered from the same threats of falling to the Dark Side as her master had done, as any Jedi could. She was still susceptible to falling to the will of the Dark Side and Yoda grimaced when she yelled.
Still, he had to help her, the way he saw, there was only her, Kanan, Ezra and Obi-Wan Kenobi left alive who could wield the Force that were not Vader or Palpatine himself. Little did they all know about Maul. Or about the Inquisitors or anything else that might be lurking about the galaxy. Ahsoka had to survive, she was needed as one of the last non-Sith in the world. And Yoda would help her if he had to.
"A method there is, often used to survive through long times it is. Force Hibernation, called it we did," Yoda sighed, telling her how to survive. The method, deep in the force, involved shutting one's mind and body off from the normal constraints and limits of time and the physical realm. Many a Master had performed it awaiting rescues in the past. The real question was could she do it.
"Clear, your mind must be, Ahsoka. Calm, you must make yourself. Cut off from the universe, you must be. Now, do it you must," Master Yoda instructed her.
She gulped, laying her head back and breathing out. "Okay, I'll give it a try master."
"Forget the lessons at the Temple did you child? Try not!" He snapped, more like a cranky old man than a wise old Jedi Master. But he was still the same old Yoda as when she was a child and a teen, and she loved him dearly. She adored Master Yoda even still, and hoped that she could live, if anything just to see him again one day when it was all over. "Do. Or do not Ahsoka. There is no try."
She took another breath and exhaled all the negativity she could from her bones. He kept on talking, but she did not listen attentively, not really. She was busy trying to focus, or rather, not trying but doing regardless. The physical realm left her, the sense of place, the sense of light and dark, the sense of time and the sense that she even had a body. Ahsoka Tano just became a thought, a memory and a name, a name she would most probably drop once again.
The comos morphed around her, the clocks and dials warping into nothingness and the whispers of the Temple where she closed herself off from became nothing.
Until finally, she was awoken, by the sound of thumping, of blasting and of men, stepping closer above her. From their dialect she detected Rhodian and Basic; a scavenging team caught wind that here was something on Malachor after all.
Now was her chance. Ahsoka Tano would escape. And escape, she did. Slashing through the Rhodians and the Humans, even the droid accompaniment she soon found their ship, breaking through layer of clouds she felt the sun on the deflector shield and the window.
Ahsoka was free.