Hey everyone! Look, I broke 4,000 words on this chapter! Isn't that exciting? I figured that if I'm updating once a week then I should give you a nice and long chapter.

I'd like to thank my loyal reviewer yellow14 for sticking with me from the beginning!

I'm posting this a day earlier because I won't be around tomorrow evening and didn't want to be late again. Please leave a review!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a fantastic week and a great Thanksgiving (for us Americans, anyway) and for those of you not celebrating, have a happy week anyway! And good luck to my fellow University Students. It's almost over!

MLV


Danva had tried convincing her into talking further about her relationship with Vader, who Anakin was and why he wasn't around anymore. She shut him down each time, telling him that they were stories for another time, like after she died.

"You can't keep me from getting the answers that I want," he said, and Ahsoka remembered a certain youngling she once knew who would throw tantrums each time she didn't get her way.

"No," she slowly agreed. "I can keep you from asking me, though."

"Why," Danva asked, clueless about the subtle hints she was sending his way. "Why is it so hard to tell me? It's not like I'm gonna turn around and tell the Empire. It's not anything they probably don't know, anyway."

Ahsoka slammed her hand down on the table, unable to control her anger. "Why?" she spat out. "Why can't you get the hint and stop talking about it? Can't you tell that something happened that maybe I don't want to relive? Or perhaps I simply don't know? Or maybe I just don't want to tell you." The words seethed through her teeth and she pulled away from him, not at all embarrassed at her outburst. She crossed her arms and stared him down.

"I'm sorry," Danva said slowly. "I didn't mean to push. I just…I'm so angry with Vader. I know that isn't an excuse, but I feel like any information on him would help me destroy him."

"I already told you that I won't help you do that."

"Yes, you did," he began. "I just don't know anything about him other than he lives in that damn suit. I don't even know what he even looks like."

Her master's face popped uninvited into her memory and she pushed it away. "What do you know about the suit?"

Danva shrugged. "Sometimes when he's angry, he holds his breath. I once heard him trying to catch his breath once, when he thought he was alone. I think, as strong as he is, he's also really weak."

A flicker of pity sparked in her heart, but she knew that no matter how weak he might be, he was still a monster. People were starting to stir around them, and the room suddenly felt like it was closing in on her.

"We need to leave."

After leaving the crowded cantina, Ahsoka led Danva to an abandoned apartment building, close to where the explosion from a few days earlier had been. During her chase with the mysterious force user, she'd seen it being shut down for one reason or another. It was easy enough to break into, and they chose the most comfortable apartment. Unfortunately, they were all unfurnished, though someone had left behind a few sleeping mats. Danva was passed out, propped up against a wall. Though his eyes were closed, he looked as if he was on high alert. Ahsoka watched him. She wondered how many times he'd fallen asleep during his time at the Imperial Academy. She chuckled to herself; she could imagine just how he'd gotten so good at acting awake. All he had to do was learn to keep his eyes open. Even she would have been convinced. At least for a moment, anyway.

But now wasn't the time to be studying her new companion. She needed to come up with a plan. It was important that they get off Coruscant, and soon. Her mind was racing with all the different ways that they could escape. After she had contacted her former master, she knew that he would be on high alert, and therefore every imperial officer on Coruscant would be on high alert. She knew that was a risky move, and Danva had made his opinion of that quite clear, but it was important that she show Vader that no matter what he did, she would be two steps ahead of him. Also, she might be able to slip by the Stormtroopers in the confusion.

Ahsoka stood and paced the room, thinking about what Vader's next move would be. He would close off all of the landing pads, which meant that they wouldn't be able to get her ship back. The thought saddened Ahsoka; she loved that ship, but it wasn't worth risking her life over. Maybe when this was all over she'd return for it, or get someone to smuggle it off the planet for her. Perhaps Solo and his Wookiee friend would be up for the job, should she pay enough. Something told her that he would understand the partialness to her ship.

A though occurred to her. What if she and Danva were smuggled off the planet on an Imperial ship? Danva was still an Imperial officer, and he could probably get use of a ship to go off planet without the Imperials batting an eye. The only problem was she would have to put an insane amount of trust in a man she hardly knew, and that was an issue that she wasn't quite ready to deal with. But even as she tried thinking of a new plan, she knew that this was probably the best way.

But no. Vader would think of that. They had done similar things together before he turned. She had to think outside the box. The problem was Danva. Ahsoka looked over at the sleeping man. He didn't look like he had an agenda. Ahsoka gently probed him with the force; he was sleeping, which meant that his guard was down. His thoughts were full of hatred towards the Empire, hatred so fierce that she had to pull away. Such hatred gave her reassurance that she would not be betrayed by this man. At least not to the Empire, but she still didn't trust him.

But that didn't help their situation. She needed to get off this planet, and soon. Whatever the Empire had planned, they didn't want her getting involved. Well, even though she hated to admit it, she was stuck here. And then it came to her: even if she got off the planet, she'd still need to find out where the Empire was planning their attack. That could take days. However, she was stuck on the planet, and she knew that Vader will put more troopers in the lower city, as well as around the landing platforms. This, however, would leave other targets less guarded. Targets like the Imperial Palace.

Ahsoka stopped pacing and grinned. Vader would never imagine her to attack such a high profile target, and while he was technically right, she could at least make it look as if there was an attack. Blame it on the rebels? Obviously that is where the blame would automatically go, but she was sure there were underground groups here on Coruscant that would take credit. Pirates hated the Empire as much as the rebels did. She used the force to rouse Danva, who seemed startled that there wasn't actually someone tapping him on the forehead.

"Did you think of something?" he asked, rubbing his forehead with two fingers.

"Is the Emperor, or any other high profile Imperial Officials at the palace?" she asked, taking her lightsaber about and placing it on the ground in front of her.

Danva watched as she began to take it apart and shook his head. "I don't know."

Ahsoka paused in her disassembling. "Okay, I suppose it doesn't matter. No one would know that, unless they were in intelligence?"

Danva nodded slowly at first. "Yeah, even I don't get to know where the Emperor is at any given time."

"Good. I have a plan," she explained. "I'm going to set up an attack on the Imperial Palace, make it look like pirates did it."

Danva's brows furrowed, and he crossed his arms. "How, exactly, are you going to accomplish that?"

She waved away his question. "You don't need to worry about that. I need you to go to the landing bays and secure us a ship. Steal one if you have to. I don't care, but just get one."

"How am I supposed to steal one?"

Ahsoka faced him and gave him an incredulous look. "Figure it out. You'll have plenty of time." He opened his mouth to say something else, but she held up a finger. "Nope. Just do it. I don't care."

He didn't say anything else. "Good. Before I continue, I need to know something. I need to know that I can trust you, Danva. I need to know that you won't betray me."

"If I wanted to, I think I would have done it by now. Don't you?"

Ahsoka hoped so; her life depended on it. But she continued explaining her plan anyway, though she made sure to keep certain details to herself. "I'm going to procure some explosives and set them around the edge of the palace, rig them to blow, and then meet you at the landing bay. You will have our ship by then, understand?"

"You and your karking ship," Danva muttered under his breath. "I get it."

"Good," Ahsoka, and hoped more than she had in the past twenty years that they would be able to pull this off.

It wasn't as hard as she'd expected to get explosives. They weren't high grade in the slightest, but there was a lot of them. Now all she had to do was get them into the palace. Perhaps she could impersonate a gardener. Ahsoka muffled a laugh; she imagined the Emperor berating Vader for teaching his former pupil to be so smart. Her laugh ended in a long sigh. She needed to focus.

It didn't take more than an hour to get enough bags of fertilizer to hide the explosives, and an easy conversation where she convinced a random woman to swap clothing with her. The only downside was now she didn't have a place to hide her lightsaber.

The security at the palace was high, but easy enough to get through. The first few checkpoints were the hardest; she dare not use the force to affect their minds. If she got caught, there would be no trial. But once she got into the inner wall, she knew it would be smooth sailing. She didn't need to get any closer. Placing the explosives was actually harder than she imagined. Guards patrolled the grounds constantly, and she was never alone for more than two seconds at a time. She worked quickly and quietly, using the force to keep her calm and focused. A wrong move would set the guards off, and she didn't need to deal with that.

When she was on the last one, she set the timer for 30 seconds, giving her barely enough time to get out. But if she were caught in the aftershock of the blast, the guards would be stupid enough to assume that she was a victim. No one in their right mind would blow themselves up trying to escape, right?

A twinge of guilt stabbed her heart, and she remembered a particular person who hadn't escaped an explosion so that she could get away. But no. She would not think about that right now. She needed to escape. She got up and walked away from the final bomb, counting down the seconds. She braced herself, and then the force from the explosions propelled her forward. She slammed into a wall and everything went dizzy. A Stormtrooper ran up to her and asked if she was alright, and she nodded wildly. He left her to go check on a few others caught in the blast, and she carefully stood up. Her ankle was injured, but she pushed herself so that she could get away.


It was an hour later, and the imperial docking bay was mostly empty. Ahsoka couldn't believe how long it had taken her to get here from the Imperial Palace. She had been stopped half a dozen times and asked who she was, why she was in the vicinity of the palace and why she wasn't with a medical droid. As difficult as it had been not to just use the force to get out of the situation, Ahsoka knew that she had made the right decision to repeat the same conversation over and over.

Now she saw two Stormtroopers posted at each ship. After a quick count, she saw that there were six ships in total, making her have to deal with twelve troopers. Reaching out with the force, Ahsoka searched for a sign of Danva, but could not sense him. Frustration grew within her and there was a part of her that decided to just leave him behind. Just as the thought entered her mind, the man strode confidently into the docking bay and walked right up to a trooper.

"I'm going to need to commandeer one of these ships," he said, his voice strong. Ahsoka noticed that he had a thicker Coruscanti accent when talking to imperials. "There was an attack on the Imperial Palace, and I need to take a diplomat off planet."

The trooper turned to his partner, and Ahsoka could feel the confusion in the room. "What kind of diplomat?"

"A former rebel. They've seen the error of their ways and were about to give us the location of the rebel base. However, they insisted that we protect them from the rebels, who would be sure to keep them from talking to us." Danva sighed deeply and leaned forward. "Do you want to be the one to tell the Emperor we don't have the location of the rebel base because you stopped me from doing my job?"

Ahsoka's eyebrows lifted in surprise; Danva was damn convincing.

The trooper shook his head. "No, of course not. But we've been given orders to not let anyone off the planet."

Danva sighed once more and rubbed his forehead. "Of course you weren't told about this. You're only a lowly Stormtrooper. You don't know a thing. Which is why, when a superior officer tells you that plans have changed, you change the plans!" Danva's voice rose as he neared the end of his sentence, and the troopers flinched.

"Alright, alright," the second one said. "Bring them out."

"I need you both to excuse us. They do not wish to be seen on the off chance that the rebellion hasn't noticed their change in political standing."

The troopers faced each other once more, and for a moment Ahsoka was afraid that Danva had pushed them too far. But after a moment that seemed to never end, they left their post. Danva turned towards the entrance and raised his thumbs.

Ahsoka was on high alert. She reached out with the force, taking in her surroundings. Nothing nearby posed any danger to her. She supposed that should have comforted her, but she didn't allow her guard to go down. The ship was just up ahead.

"I'm piloting the ship," Ahsoka told Danva when she reached him. He opened his mouth to protest, but must have seen how determined Ahsoka was, because he didn't reply. He merely unlocked the ship and the two walked in.

The ship was so different from Ahsoka's in every way. Everything inside this one looked so pristine and clean. It felt too clean, like the owner of this ship was being forced to keep it up to impossible standards. How like the Imperials, Ahsoka couldn't help but think.

"Follow me," Danva said, and he led Ahsoka to the cockpit. He gestured to the pilot's seat, and she sat down.

"I need to put in the codes so that we can takeoff," Danva said, and he punched a numbered sequence into the computer. After a moment, he stepped back. "Okay, we're good."

Ahsoka waited for him to be sitting in the co-pilot's chair before taking off. They left coruscant air space without any trouble.

"So where are we headed to now?" Danva asked.

"The Empire is up to something, and they needed me occupied so that I can't cause any problems. We either need to find out what their plan is, or strike the empire in small areas and cause enough trouble that they have to withdraw their plans."

"How do you know that will work?" he asked.

"It's what Vader will do," she replied. "He won't be able to think about anything else."

Danva looked at her, and Ahsoka could tell he was trying to figure something out. "How do you know Vader?" he asked slowly, as if he wasn't sure if he should be asked this.

Ahsoka shrugged. "I've run into the Empire numerous times, and I've made many enemies. He's simply one of those enemies."

Danva wasn't impressed with her answer. "No, this is personal isn't it? It is on his end. It was like…he knew how you worked. How you operated. Like he once knewyou, and it was different than the way he would talk about the rebel leaders, or even other Imperials. When you were mentioned, it was always very familiar."

Damn, Ahsoka thought to herself. This kid is perceptive. She looked at him, and then looked back at the computer. "Perhaps he did," she said, but offered no more on the subject. "So, where do you want to cause issues?" Danva didn't answer her for a moment, and she faced him again. He was no longer looking at her, and she sensed that he felt some guilt.

"I know the Empire was planning on transporting Wookiees from Kashyyyk as slaves. I think it was soon, too."

Ahsoka glanced at him oddly. "How do you know that?" She was probing, knowing that however he knew this information was laying heavily on his heart.

"I was intelligence. I knew about everything. It was my job."

Ahsoka wasn't satisfied with this answer, but she didn't say anything else. "Alright then. Where are the coordinates?"

Danva gave her the hyperspace route, and told her how the pilot's usually stopped by a small, backwards planet to sell one or two Wookiee pups for their own profit.

"And you never told any of your superiors about it?" Ahsoka asked, punching in the coordinates in the nav-computer.

"They paid me not to," Danva said. He didn't look at Ahsoka, but the guilt was so thick that she didn't think that she needed the force to tell how he felt about the situation.

Ahsoka offered no words of encouragement. She hated slavery, and felt like he deserved to stew in his guilt. He could have done something-should have done something, cover or no cover. And instead he took bribes. She calmed herself.

"Let's go right some wrongs," she mumbled to herself, and the ship leapt into light speed.

They were still a few hours away from the planet, which apparently was an unnamed rock that was nothing more than a meeting place between the Empire and space pirates. They would land the ship and wait for the Imperial's to arrive, and then free the Wookiees. Perhaps Ahsoka could send the Imperial's back to Vader with a message.

"Tell me about the Jedi?" Danva's sudden question pulled her out of her mental letter to Vader.

"What do you want to know, exactly?"

"What were they like? You're the only Jedi I really know, and I don't even know you."

Ahsoka sat back against her chair and sighed. "The Jedi believed in a calling. They believed they were meant to protect the galaxy. But at some point during the clone wars, that vision became skewed. Jedi were no longer protectors. They were warriors. Younglings were brought up with the knowledge of how to destroy battle droids, and how to withstand the temptation of the dark side. No longer were we taught how to best serve the galaxy or allowed to learn about the mysteries of the force. We were trained to harness the force as a weapon. We were trained to become killing machines."

"But the galaxy was at war. You were still protecting it," Danva insisted, and Ahsoka could tell that he genuinely believed that.

"The Jedi were never supposed to be warriors. Protectors, yes. But there is a difference between coming to the aid of someone who is being threatened and attacking a planet that doesn't have the same political viewpoint as yourself. And now they're all gone. Betrayed by the men they trusted most." Ahsoka's anger flared, and it dawned on her that she was as over what happened as she had previously thought. That was something that she needed to confront.

"Who betrayed you?" Danva asked quietly.

Ahsoka turned to him, and then looked away. "It doesn't matter, Danva. You need to learn how to put the betrayals behind you. It does no good to keep the hurt locked away. Let it go, or it will consume you."

Her thoughts drifted towards her former mentor, and how he was now just as skewed internally as he was physically. She didn't know what had happened to put him in that suit, just that he must have deserved it. Perhaps the Emperor had put him in it, hoping to create a more terrifying image of the Empire. Or perhaps Vader hadn't wanted to associate with the image of the chosen one. She supposed it didn't matter.

She glanced back at Danva, who was looking out into space. "You know, the Jedi tried recruiting me. My mother had already seen them take her brother. She couldn't bear to see me go. So she told them that galaxy or no, she wasn't giving me up. As it turns out, I'm not sensitive enough to the force for it to have made a difference. When I joined the Imperial army, they scanned me. And though I was-or am, I supposed-force sensitive, it wasn't even enough for me to be considered a threat to the Empire." He chuckled softly. "I suppose that's a good thing, right?"

Ahsoka smiled softly. "I suppose," she said slowly. "But you do realize that by helping me, you're forcing your hand. You will be labeled a threat to the empire."

"How long have you been fighting the Empire?" Danva asked, and Ahsoka was painfully aware of how hard he was ignoring her comment.

"Since the beginning," Ahsoka said, and suddenly felt the weight of all those years. "I was seventeen when the Empire was created."

"You've been fighting them for twenty years?" Danva almost shouted. "Why didn't you retire, or give yourself a break?"

She held in a breath and thought about the question. Why hadn't she? Time had flown by so fast that the past twenty years were nothing more than a blur. But what had caused her to keep going? Danva looked at her expectantly, but the question wasn't one that she could answer easily

"I suppose I have a personal connection to the Empire," she began, but she really wasn't sure what else to say. "So I have my own reasons for wanting it destroyed. And I can't stop until that happens. I won't be able to live, to be at peace, until the whole galaxy has peace." She paused once more, and then continued. "I've been fighting for most of my life. I don't think I know how to do anything else."

She hadn't expected to say that. To be fair, she hadn't even realized that was how she felt until just then. She clenched her teeth and stared at her companion. Danva said nothing, and Ahsoka hoped that share and tell was over. She didn't want to dig any further into her past that she already had.

The nav-computer beeped, telling them that they were nearing their destination. It sliced through the tension like a lightsaber and she felt a deep sigh erupt from deep within her. There were some places in her psych that she did not want to discuss. She turned away from him and focused on a smooth entery.

"Alright, Danva. Get ready for a fight."