Steela watched the fire crackle in front of her, shivering.
Saw had given her his cloak, of course, but even with the added warmth of it and the fire, she was cold. Freezing with fear that she tried not to let show on her face; it very well probably would not have been noticed.
They were all afraid, and shaken up, despite their bragging and celebrations earlier. That day, they had accomplished something great.
They had been unearthed by Separatists, and yet had fought back. They had defeated a whole regiment, which General Kenobi assured them was not such an easy feat. General Skywalker insisted that they were ready.
Steela truly did not know. They had gotten lucky, sure, but were they lucky enough to go into Iziz and take down The Separatists there? The Jedi and clone had trained them well. All the same, could you actually train a person to get ready for death and sacrifice? The amount Stella knew they would have to achieve in order to win back their planet?
Steela looked around at the other rebels. Half the army was out here in the square around the fire. Saw sat on one side of her while Lux settled the other.
A long queue of people sat on the same bench. Saw was staring into the fire, his eyes far away. Probably thinking about their parents.
Lux was looking down at his feet, his handsome face soft by the orange glow of fire. Steela looked at it for a long while, feeling herself drawn in by the thoughtful purse to his lips, the strong tilt of his broad forehead, the short yet strong curve of his neck. Then those deep brown eyes that shone caramel in the fire…
He looked up, and Steela jumped back into staring at the fire before he could notice her attentions on him. In the morning, they set out to Iziz; that should be her focus, not the politician boy who was interested in Commander Tano all the same. If he was ignorant enough to develop a crush on a Jedi Padawan, who could not have attachments, then he was not for her.
Suddenly, the dark forest ahead of them rustled. Steela jumped off the board where she had wrapped her arms around her knees. Several others did the same, blasters aimed. But from the darkness walked General Skywalker and Commander Tano.
The Jedi grinned at the rebels, amused. Steela let out a breath of relief. "Did we scare you?" Ahsoka asked with a small smile. "Scared is only the start of what you did to me," Saw croaked, relaxing his muscles. Steela looked down at Lux, who had not moved.
The Politicians son smiled and shook his head. "Had they been droids, they would have been much less quiet about it," he observed, glancing at the rest of them, panting with racing hearts.
Anakin nodded in agreement. "Why aren't you all asleep? You'll need it for your mission in the morning," he asked. Steela sat back down, embarrassed. How could she explain that they were all scared for the mission ahead?
Ahsoka appeared to be younger than Steela, and there was no sign of fear on her face at all. The others seemed to agree. They shuffled their feet and looked down, muttering incoherent answers. Anakin stared at them curiously for a moment.
Steela avoided his eyes. She felt as if he were studying her soul.
"Looks as if they have pre-mission butterflies, general," said another voice. Steela turned to see Captain Rex walk from the base behind them, his goggles hanging around his neck. She sighed and nodded. "It's true," she said, loud enough to be heard.
The others mumbled their agreement. Anakin nodded understandingly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he told them. Easier said than agreed, Hero with No fear, Steela thought resentfully.
"Perhaps you should give them a show, general," Rex suggested, leaning against the bench Steela was sitting on. "It always eases our nerves, on the field," the clone explained to them. "A show?" Lux asked, looking to Ahsoka curiously.
She smiled at him kindly and then looked to her teacher. "What about it, master? Do you feel up to it?" She wondered. Anakin nodded. "No weapons, do you think?" He suggested.
"The lightsabers look nicer," Rex piped in, giving his opinion every five seconds. Steela was surprised, she had heard that clones were stoic and obedient, bred only to fight and die, and they knew as such. Yet Rex seemed so opinionated, much more so than Steela had expected.
"Very well," Anakin powered up a blue blade of pure energy. The weapon buzzed, as if a giant wasp hive had been packed inside of its power.
Despite the darkness of the night, the light from the sabers was brighter than that of the fire. Steela had seen the power those things radiated earlier, and stared at them in awe.
Ahsoka powered up her own, for some reason she had two whereas the other Jedi had one. "What are you two going to do?" Saw asked, also staring entranced at the weapons. Anakin only smiled, his face was remarkably handsome in the light.
Before he could answer, Ahsoka charged. There was a small gasp as Anakin went on one knee, his saber twisted to meet her own. Ahsoka sailed over him, smiling, and landed on the other side. Saw glanced at her, worry in his eyes. However, Captain Rex chuckled.
"Don't worry. If they wanted to hurt each other, you would feel the tension in the air. This is play," he assured them cheerfully. Steela watched the swirl of deadly weapons and wondered how anything could be play with that much power.
Suddenly, though, she did see it.
Ahsoka's two yellow/green lightsabers spun with enormous speed, twice the pace of Steela's blaster bolts. Anakin's azure saber flashed with less speed but with more skill. They had different skills, she could see.
Ahsoka flipped and turned, tossing and spinning around Anakin with feet as light as a dancer's. She was moving so fast that Steela ceased to see the physical person and only saw the lightsabers. Anakin did not move so much, but he used power, Steela could see it in every move he made, as elegant as he was.
She had never seen a man so flexible or elegant, and she felt a blush creeping unto her cheeks from watching him. She glanced around, but everyone was caught in the spell of watching two amazing swordspersons fighting.
Steela found herself watching every stroke, every par and feint of these two, caught in a spell of careless amazement. Her fear melted out of her stomach like ice melting in the desert.
Very soon, the green, yellow and blue sabers turned into every color in the rainbow. Vivid red, dramatic blue, flamboyant white, lucid purple, even glowing black.
And they moved so fast that one color turned into the next without warning. Magic, Steela thought. These people are made out of pure magic. Steela could still see the physical forms of Anakin and Ahsoka through this tangle of lights, and she was shocked.
They were smiling widely, sweat running down both faces as they twisted and turned with elegant ease.
Anakin picked up Ahsoka by the waist, spinning her at the same time as blocking the attack she aimed at his forehead.
Then he rolled back, and in the crucial seconds before the trick that is a back flip turns into full-effect, Ahsoka was on one hand, balanced perfectly on Anakin's stomach as his back bended in a posture that Steela had never thought possible.
Ahsoka walked on Anakin's middle-section for a moment, before Anakin rolled into a ball, flying backward. Steela looked up, to see the young girl fifty feet in the air.
Anakin had catapulted her up with his stomach!
Due to this amazing feat, and also in due to gravity, Ahsoka was falling back down. She was also spinning like a corkscrew as she came down, her head-tails flying around her in a flapping flag of blue and white.
Her two lightsabers were held in between her montrals, pointed straight down. Steela inhaled sharply, watching such amazing acrobatics. Anakin looked up from his position on the ground, and grinned with immaculate delight, so much that his face looked like one of a child.
Steela also saw love stir in his depths, along with pride. How do they not die? She wondered incredulously, watching Ahsoka.
Anakin was nowhere near her; how in all the universe would he catch her? Or would she catch herself? How? She was falling from fifty feet up!
She was so close to the ground… Five feet… Four feet…. Three feet… Two feet…
"Wow!" The crowd gasped as suddenly Anakin slid forward on his knees and caught his apprentice in his arms as if she weighed little more than a feather. Steela let out a breath he had not known she had been holding in. Ahsoka was alive! The young girl was also laughing.
It was the first laugh Steela had heard from her, and she saw a grin stretch over Lux's face. Evidently, he had never seen her laugh either. Anakin was glowing as he panted. "Blast, Ahsoka," he said as he stood and put her down.
Ahsoka put away her lightsabers, and Anakin stretched out his weapon flew to his hands as if it had been called, and he clipped it back on his belt.
"You've gotten faster. And that corkscrew spin was a new one, you're lucky I caught you," so it hadn't been planned? Alternatively, choreographed. To someone who knew nothing about the Jedi; they would have assumed these two were dancing.
Steela felt the breath leave her lungs in a whoosh, and yet she still felt overly breathless. The spectacle had been priceless to watch, yet so nerve-racking she had found her knuckles were white from squeezing her knees so hard.
"Sorry, master, but it did look nice, huh?" Ahsoka replied, not sounding at all apologetic. They seemed to have forgotten the crowd they had been performing for. "Maybe. A little cheap, though… Ow!" He laughed as Ahsoka nudged his arm with a sharp elbow.
"Aren't they amusing?" A new voice said. Steela jumped for the second time that night and spun around to see General Kenobi standing next to Rex, his arms crossed and eyes crinkling at the sides with laughter. "Why do you all do that?" Lux gasped, he had gone pale. "What?" Obi-wan asked innocently. "Did I scare you?"
Saw chuckled weakly next to her. "I might just die of fright before we can save the planet," he answered. "Try basically living with these three," Rex grunted, shaking his head. "That was amazing!" Someone suddenly gasped, having just then come out of the spell Anakin and Ahsoka had painted. Similar sentiments went around.
Anakin shrugged. Ahsoka walked over and sat down across from her, in between Gulanji and Frea. There was a sheen of sweat on her brow, but she was smiling. "They can do better," Rex told them confidently, sounding slightly bragging about this.
"We can, but those tricks would be too dangerous near the fire," Ahsoka agreed. "You didn't look the same as you did fighting the Death Watch," Lux piped up thoughtfully, staring at Ahsoka with nothing less than extreme veneration.
The smile on her face lessened, and the childish sparkle of innocence in her eyes died completely into plain kindness. Somehow, with that sparkle gone the magic in the atmosphere was less.
"There are three types of forms a Jedi can take. One is kill, the other disarm and another practice or play. I was trying to disarm Viszla, not kill him. What we were doing," she jerked her head to Anakin.
"Was play," she explained. "Play?" Saw croaked. "You could have been killed!" Ahsoka smiled. "Death no longer has any meaning to me," she replied cheerfully.
Steela assumed it would not. "You look tired," Obi-wan teased Anakin. "Getting old," Anakin agreed breathlessly, stretching his back. "I think Ahsoka nearly broke my spine when she stood on me," he gasped.
Ahsoka chuckled. "It was for ten seconds!" She said. "Nine seconds too long," Anakin added, plopping himself down in front of the fire. He looked so young, so relaxed that Steela could not help but admire his cool.
It was obvious who was still in charge, of course, but now their leader seemed to be just another rebel sitting by the fire. "You're fast," Saw said to Ahsoka, who shrugged. "It's my style. I work with speed and flexibility. Anakin," she waved at him lazily.
"Works with power and strength. And then Master Skywalker says that Master Kenobi bores his victims to death with lectures," she told them knowingly.
"Oh, he does, does he?" Obi-wan demanded, turning to Anakin who was still trying to shush Ahsoka by metaphorically running a hand across his throat.
"What?" He asked, when he noticed Obi-wan's glare. "It's a good style!" the rebels chuckled as Obi-wan shook his head.
"How could you do that?" Lux asked. "You two looked perfectly in sync," he said. "It's our bond," Anakin explained dully, staring into the fire. "You're who?" Steela could not help but echo. "It's sort of like telekinesis," Rex explained. Steela frowned; telekinesis was the ability to share thoughts, as she understood it.
"It's a type, yes," Obi-wan agreed logically. "A bond is a force connection between master and apprentice that most Jedi develop. Our substitute for love, you might say. With it, we can communicate across planets with our minds; feel each other's pain and thoughts. That sort of thing. A bond is built through trust and friendship, and as such can be broken just like those things," he gave them what Steela was sure was the precise definition.
"You can read each other's thoughts?' came a delighted voice. Steela wasn't so sure she would like the privilege of a bond. She would not want Saw in her mind; that was for sure. "Only if we let each other," Anakin answered.
"A bond can be closed, just like a door. When a Jedi is interrogated, we will often close the bond so that whoever is connected cannot feel our pain. And whenever Ahsoka is angry with me and doesn't want me in her head lecturing, she can close it and all I know is that she's mad at me, which is very unhelpful," he told them jokingly.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes and rested her knees on her elbows. "Not to me," she chirped plainly. "I couldn't imagine you in my head all the time. Nor do I want to be in yours," she told him. Anakin nodded in excited agreement. "Anyway," Ahsoka continued, sounding as logical as Obi-wan.
"Those two look better when they practice," she looked at Anakin and Obi-wan, pointing out whom she was talking about. "Because they've had a bond longer," she explained.
"It's the strongest bond in the Order," she added, almost as if an afterthought. "One of the strongest," Obi-wan and Anakin corrected in unison. Ahsoka nodded and swiped at the sweat on her brow.
"Does anyone feel better?" Steela blinked, having forgotten why they had given the show in the first place. "I do, thanks," she said. "Yah," Saw piped in. "I forgot all about my nervousness," of course, he would call it nervousness when the rest of the universe would describe it as fear.
All of a sudden, Rex's comm. Link beeped. "That would be the council," Anakin said, standing. "Indeed it would be, come Ahsoka," Obi-wan said, turning back towards the huts. Ahsoka hopped from the bench, her face once more concocted into serious maturity.
Anakin crossed his arms, his once friendly voice now commanding. "Get some sleep, all of you," he ordered. "Victory will not be won easily," no, Steela assumed it would not be. The rebels nodded, and someone poured a bucket of water of the fire.
It went out like the hiss of a lightsaber, bathing them in black. Steela looked at the spot where the Jedi had been a moment ago, but they were gone, having vanished into the safety of the hut.
"Quick, aren't they?" Saw mumbled. "And creepy," Lux added with a shiver. Steela stood and stretched, shaking her head. "I don't know," she contemplated. "I like them," she said.
"We all do," Saw agreed. "But you have to admit, I'd hate to have to fight against them with those moves," Steela felt something like alarm stir in her at the thought. Would she want to fight the speed and power demonstrated a moment ago?
"They aren't enemies I'd like to have," she consented, handing Saw back his cloak. He took it, eyes dark with the realization that somehow, someway, the Republic was rumored to have been losing the war.
"What will happen to them if the Separatists win?" Steela wondered out-loud.
Everyone looked up, frozen with confusion at the question, then looked at the place the Jedi had been in a moment ago. "They will die," Saw whispered sadly, expressing what they all knew. "They will all die," Steela shivered.
She could very well imagine how, as well. And it was something she did not want to think about, much less imagine how they felt living with it.
More to come as soon as I get a new idea.
~Queen Yoda