Originally this story was just going to be a oneshot, but because it's so popular... I think I might continue it. Thank you all so much for your favorites and reviews. Please continue to review- reviews tell me that people like this story and if people like it, well then it makes me want to write more! Thank you all again for your support.
"Master Kenobi?" Ahsoka slid into the co-pilot chair and immediately made herself small, bringing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her dark arms around herself. She didn't look at him, she looked at the calming blue pulsating of the hyperspace lane that was taking them to Coruscant.
He turned to her slightly with a, "Hmm?" He set his datapad down on the console, giving her his full attention.
"I've been having strange nightmares," She admitted to herself, she closed her eyes. She felt like such a baby complaining to her master about something as petty as nightmares. "About Anakin." She wanted to bury her face in something to stop the embarrassing blush from crawling up her lekku and to her face.
Master Kenobi's initial reaction in the Force was apprehensive. She felt as though she had stumbled upon a topic that she shouldn't have. He was just going to tell her to meditate on it; she was so stupid.
"I've tried meditating on it, and it only makes them worse." She blurted as he turned to face her.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, "Ahsoka, tell me what happens in your nightmares."
She looked at him and found nothing but sincerity in his eyes and stance. She felt her legs drop off of the edge of the chair and she looked at him, somewhat terrified. She closed her eyes and thought back, "Ever since Anakin tried to pull me into meditation with him, I've been having these awful Force vision nightmares about slavery."
Obi-Wan waited patiently for her to continue, for her to talk about the horrible things that she had seen and almost felt.
"There's this woman, she's small and kind of frail. She cries a lot. At first, I thought I was seeing the past. Anakin was there, he was really little, though. I thought she was his mother until he disappeared, and things got worse." She closed her eyes and leaned back in the co-pilot chair so that it reclined.
"What does she look like?"
"She's pale, she's very thin, like she hasn't eaten in days. She has dark, wavy hair, it's very long. She has dark eyes." Ahsoka closed her eyes and it was almost like a visual of the woman came to her. "She's always crying. I think, I think she's being abused…" Ahsoka didn't realize she was crying until her breathing shuddered as she inhaled, "I think her master is abusing her sexually." She opened her eyes and rubbed away the tears—Jedi don't cry.
Obi-Wan stood and walked to the back of the cabin where the pilot's area divided into a room of two bunks and a shambling life support station. He closed the metal sliding door as quietly as he could, as to not wake up Anakin who had fallen asleep. He wandered back to his pilot's chair and sat down, swiveling to face his apprentice's apprentice. "I don't want you to tell Anakin any of this."
She nodded, instantly understanding why. These visions were terrifying, and the last thing Anakin needed to worry about was the woman on Tatooine. She didn't want him to fret over how he had somehow given her these visions and plagued her with nightmares that hadn't stopped in a few weeks.
"What exactly did you do with Anakin to create such a tight bond?" Obi-Wan asked, sipping the tea that he had made himself earlier. It was probably as cold as ice by now, but he didn't let that stop him from enjoying it.
Ahsoka turned in towards Obi-Wan, "I couldn't focus when we were meditating, and he pulled me into meditation with him. He said that you had done the same thing when he was younger and couldn't focus."
Obi-Wan nodded, "Did you see anything when he pulled you into meditation with him? Is that when the visions started?"
Ahsoka shook her head. "No visions. Only warmth and relaxation. It was like I was lying in a sunny meadow. He pulled away and I couldn't keep it for very long. The visions started when I went back to my room and tried to do it on my own… I couldn't really keep focus, and my thoughts started wandering, and then I had the visions." She mumbled.
Obi-Wans eyebrows pulled together and he stroked his beard. "Do you think you could pull me into one of these visions with you?"
She pulled her legs back up and crossed them so her knees rested against the armrests of her chair. "I could try, I might need some help getting into a meditative state." She smiled a little, embarrassed by her shortcomings. She had become a padawan at an earlier age than all the rest because of her brilliance and abilities, but she couldn't manage to do something younglings could do.
Obi-Wan smiled back, kindly, "Close your eyes,"
She did so, leaning into the back of the co-pilot chair. She felt his hands on her own.
The air smelled of stale incense, behind her eyelids there were small flickering lights, almost like candles that seemed to dance in the cool air.
"It's all you now."
She focused hard on the woman, on Anakin's mother. She imagined the brutality of her most recent vision and suddenly the lights behind her eyes disappeared, as did the smell of incense, and the cool air turned hot.
Ahsoka opened her eyes to the small confines of the room. A hammock and cot were set up in one corner, a table pressed up against the wall, and the lithe woman from before hunched over a sand brick countertop, her chest heaving with sobs.
Reflexively, Ahsoka took a step forward and reached for the woman, but she felt something pull her back. Something held her other arm tightly, almost as though if they let go, the world around them would let go as well.
She turned to find Obi-Wan, his eyes told her everything. She took a step back and the simply observed the woman's pain. She felt wrong. She should be holding the poor woman, helping her find a way out of this hellish pile of sand.
"There's nothing we can do," Obi-Wan's voice whispered reassuringly in her mind. "That's Anakin's mother. She's been dead for years."
Ahsoka's heart plummeted from her chest and sank somewhere onto the floor. She took a step back, almost bumping into Obi-Wan as she let her legs give out. She sat on the floor, watching the woman cry. She too wanted to cry, but Jedi didn't do such a thing.
"You pathetic excuse for life," A voice boomed from the far doorway. It was the tall man, the one that wore the scraps of beige fabric with the scar across his face. His presence made both Ahsoka and Anakin's mother shudder in horror.
Anakin's mother took a step back before she bowed respectfully to the man, her body still trembling with fearful sobs. "I'm sorry," she managed to say, her voice almost a soft whisper.
He slapped her with enough force that her legs couldn't catch up with the momentum and she fell to the floor. She didn't cry harder, or even scream despite the pain that she was in. She sat there on the dusty stone ground and stared at the man's scruffy dark boots. He took a step closer to her, then bent down in front of her. He grabbed her face with one harsh, dry hand, caking dirt on her soft cheeks. With his other hand he tore at the front of her dress.
Ahsoka stood, "No!" She screamed, pulling past Kenobi and marching over to the scene.
"Ahsoka!" Kenobi scolded.
She blocked him out as she pushed past the small circular table in the center of the room and slid herself in between the man and the woman. She sank to the floor and tried to push the man away from Anakin's mother as he began to lower himself down through her as though she was nothing more than empty air.
He pulled away at her dress and Ahsoka screamed into his face as the man began to push the woman down further onto the ground until she was laying still.
Ahsoka stood and tried to grasp at a large pot that sat on the countertop. When her hands went through the material she focused herself on the Force and suddenly, the pot wobbled in its place.
Her heart leapt. She was influencing the atmosphere.
She closed her eyes and thrust both hands out, shifting all of her focus on the single dark, beaten pot and as though someone had swiped their arm across the counter, the pot flew off of the counter and hit the floor next to them with a clang.
The man didn't stop. He eased himself down onto the woman and began to furiously pull away at the wrappings near his groin.
Ahsoka felt unbearably sick. She stumbled back from where she stood and sat on the steps near the doorway as the man had his way. She screamed, her throat tearing in pain as water from her eyes began to fall down her dirtied face.
The air fell cold and everything turned black.
She could hear cries that weren't her own. These cries were too sharp, they were of pure, uncontaminated suffering. They pierced her mind and she stood from the dusty sandy dune where she was sitting. Her feet sunk into the sand, but when she looked down the sand remained untouched.
She looked around nervously for Obi-Wan and felt his hand on her shoulder. She turned back and he looked at her, his eyes soft and heartbroken. He pointed somewhere ahead of them where the woman from before was trudging through the dunes.
The woman slipped, with one arm she pushed herself up and continued over a mound, running down the other side as her other arm hung close to her body. She was carrying something wrapped in linen that had once been white.
The wind whipped at them and Ahsoka took a step back, pressing herself against her master, who protectively put his arm around her. They watched silently as the woman stopped in between two dunes to check on her wrappings. She pulled away at the first few layers and smiled softly before saying something that Ahsoka and Obi-Wan couldn't hear.
Obi-Wan began to move, this time. He led Ahsoka forward and they kept a light, slow pace behind the woman.
That's when they realized that she was holding a child.
Ahsoka looked at Obi-Wan, fear in her eyes. Why was this woman carrying a child in the desert? Was this child...? Her heart pounded in her chest, like it was going to escape through her ribcage.
The woman began to sing a soft lullaby that the desert wind carried to their ears.
"Is this baby… Master Anakin?" Ahsoka asked Obi-Wan, not bothering to look at him. She let her feet carry her a little quicker than her master. He let his arm fall to his side and she quickly fell into step next to the woman, she peered over and looked at the small, crying, squirmy bundle that the woman held in her arms.
The baby's small hand reached out from the linen wrappings, reaching out to their mother as they babbled. They weren't a newborn if they could do such a thing.
Anakin's mother smiled softly, tears falling down her face again as she continued with her haunting tune. She let the child grasp her finger with all its infant might and she looked forward, onto the setting dual suns.
The infant's skin was a deeper bronze, much darker than her master's. Their eyes the same deep, sparkling blue. The careful wrappings that the woman had placed to protect the baby from the sand masked the child's hair and other any defining marks.
"I don't think this child is Anakin." Master Kenobi's voice was soft, defeated. He pulled Ahsoka back from the woman and they fell into step together. Something told her that he knew what the woman was doing in the bleak nothingness of the desert banks.
The woman stopped again in the trench between two menacing peaks of sand. She knelt down in the fine, light tawny colored granules. She placed her precious bundle down in the soft powdery sand and took her finger back from the small infant. She continued her song until the startling blue eyes began to droop and sleep evened out the small breaths of the baby. She leaned in close and kissed their forehead before standing to her feet.
Tears tracked down her dirtied face and she began to walk back the way of which she came, leaving the dual suns and her beloved bundle behind her. She turned back once she had reached the top of the mound, looking back at the sleeping tot. She blew a kiss and slid down the other side of the dune.
Ahsoka was paralyzed.
"Ahsoka," Kenobi whispered to her, his hand taking hers.
She couldn't find the power to respond to him, she couldn't find the power to move her legs anywhere but forward. She let Kenobi's hand slip from hers as she walked down the embankment to the tiny bunch. She knelt down in front of the small little baby and tried to gather them in her arms.
"Ahsoka."
She ignored him and tried again, her hands slipping through the sand and sleeping baby.
"Ahsoka."
She remembered how she had manipulated the pot before and channeled her energy on the small tot. The sand around them began to blow, stinging her skin. She reached out for the baby.
Obi-Wan put a hand on her shoulder again. "Ahsoka," he repeated, his voice softer than before. The visions were getting to him too. They were wearing him down. He took her upper arm in his hand and helped her to her feet.
Her eyes were transfixed on the sleeping form in its own sandy crib as she continued to channel the Force.
She felt his arms snake around her in a hug. "There's nothing we can do,"
"No." She hissed, her voice menacingly protective over a child that wasn't hers. "No, master." She lost the grip that she had on the Force as he pulled her into a tighter embrace.
She couldn't see the baby anymore. She stared at the grain of the fabric of his tunic. Her sight blurred with tears. She closed her eyes and prayed to the Force.
"By the power of the Force, please," She begged, she couldn't find it in her to continue her plea. She shuddered and buried her face into the folds of his scratchy linen tunic.
The scene around them began to darken and she closed her eyes, letting a few more tears soak the woolen linen layers of his tunic.
She opened her eyes to a familiar cry, one that she had heard before. She didn't want to look at the new atrocity that was unfolding in front of her. She cowered into Kenobi's tunic, she was ready for this all to end. She didn't want to see anymore.
"Momma," A little voice cried out, "Momma," They repeated, this time a little louder. Their feet tapped against the stone floor, past Ahsoka and Obi-Wan to an area by their left. "Momma," They whined.
Ahsoka pulled back from Obi-Wan out of curiosity, but kept her hands gripping onto the folds of his Jedi attire. She watched as to her side a small, little Anakin crawled up onto the cot next to his sleeping mother.
"Momma," He cried, he held a finger close to his chest. "Momma it hurts," He sobbed.
Ahsoka could smell the blood. She pulled away from Obi-Wan as nausea rolled in her stomach. She held his hand tight, her frame shook, anticipating a distressing scene that would haunt the back of her mind for the rest of her days.
Anakin's mother sat up slowly from her cot. She brushed her dark mess of hair out of her face and smiled kindly at her small son. She lifted him into her lap and smoothed out his wild blonde hair. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"
He held a finger out to her. Ahsoka could see the ruby blood dripping from a cut that sliced down the side of his finger. The blood dripped onto his sandy, ragged tunics.
"Oh, Ani." She frowned a little and took his finger, kissing it softly before she lifted him up and set him next to her on the cot. She got up and sifted through a small crate to the side of the bed. She pulled out a small, broken box with a Republic insignia.
It was the sort of kit that they handed out to refugees. The clasps of the small box were broken, she opened it with great care and pulled out a small scrap of gauze. She took out the small tube of ointment that Ahsoka had come to truly appreciate. It came in every medpac and instantly disinfected small wounds, the only downside was its awful smell and the sting it gave when applied.
Anakin's mother applied a small amount of the ointment to her finger. With her other hand she took Anakin's hand and stuck the bloody finger into her mouth, cleaning away the blood. She took the finger out of her mouth and tickled Anakin with her free hand.
He giggled, squirming as she quickly applied the ointment. He froze as the medicine met his skin and he tried to blink away the tears that were bound to flow from his little, sparkling blue eyes. Bravely, he watched her wrap the gauze around his finger and secure it with a tiny sliver of medical tape.
"Be careful, ma nyee." She kissed his forehead and brushed her fingers through his hair.
"You mean 'mwa nyee'." He corrected with a smile, hugging his mother tightly.
"What does that mean?" Ahsoka asked the man that she continued to hang on.
"My Huttese isn't the best, but I think it means 'my boy'." Kenobi let his hand trace down Ahsoka's back.
Anakin's mother smiled brightly and picked him up, putting him back on her lap. She held him close to her, pressing his head into her chest as she began to sing the same haunting melody that she had sang to the child she abandoned. She nuzzled her head into his hair.
In a frail, loving voice Anakin sang the next verse of her ancient lullaby and she pressed her lips to his head, kissing him. She continued, rocking him back and forth until the tune was over.
"What were you working on?" She asked softly, stroking his arm.
"A present," He pulled back from her with a wide smile, his eyes closed in delight. He slid out of her lap and ran past Ahsoka and Obi-Wan back outside into the Tatooine suns, then returned with a small shiny piece in his hands. He bounced back onto the cot next to his mother and cupped his hands, hiding the small trinket.
She put her hands out, cupped, ready to accept whatever her son was going to give her.
"Close your eyes," He instructed.
She obeyed with a smile as he dropped a small intricately folded piece of metal. She picked it up carefully, surveying it. It was small, thin sheets of metal formed to make flower petals with a thick wire threaded through the petals to keep them together. She wrapped her arms around her son and cuddled up close to him, marveling at what he had created.
Ahsoka allowed herself to pull away from Kenobi. She was waiting for the scene to turn grim, waiting for the punch in the gut.
The scene began to dissolve with the sound of an alarm and suddenly Ahsoka was alone, surrounded in black.
Thank you for reading! If you liked it, like I said earlier, please review! Reviews let me know that people enjoy the story and want more. Thank you so much. I love you all.