I'm sorry for the very skimpy update last time, so to make up for it, I tried to make a very lengthy update. I didn't really reach my goal because I got a job! And I figured some update is better than no update. Thank you all so much for reading. I hope you enjoy this new addition to Retrospective.
Ahsoka woke again from a dreamless sleep feeling more relaxed than she ever had in her life. The world, no, the universe, no, the ever-uniting Force had wrapped her up in the warmest blanket known to sentient and non-sentient beings. She curled into it with a smile and hummed contently.
"Good afternoon," A pleasant, but tired voice said from beside her.
She picked her head up and opened her eyes, rubbing away the blur. "Master," She said softly with a smile.
"Did you have a good sleep?" Obi-Wan asked with the same smile. He was happy to see her happy and that just made her a little brighter and a little warmer. She loved him. She loved how he cared for her even though she could sense that he was so tired he was going to drop.
"Yes, you should too." She sat up and stretched.
"Do you remember what happened?" He asked.
Ahsoka thought hard for the very last thing she could remember and everything became chilly and dark as though a sun had been hidden by its moon. "I had a vision… of her, again." She swallowed, looking to Obi-Wan, her smile disappeared and tears began to fill her eyes. "I don't know how much more of this I can take," she cried.
Obi-Wan moved from the chair beside her to the bed, pulling her into a hug and letting her cry as he rubbed her shoulders. "It's okay, Ahsoka."
She pulled back, still sobbing. "It's not okay! I'm losing my touch with reality!" She felt a slight rage building inside of her and attempted to quell it quickly. "I can't sleep without it happening, I can't think. My mind is so… useless! All I can think about is how I need to help his mother!" She let her hands trace down her head tails.
Obi-Wan stiffened, his demeanor switched from compassion to something sorrowful, he looked away and slowly began to pull his calming Force energy back. "Ahsoka," His voice was soft, the sort of soft it went when something bad had happened. He made that face when he had to break the news to her that one of her friends or masters were hurt.
Her heart dropped. "What happened when I was out?" Her voice turned cold and strong like steel. She wiped away the tears from her eyes, but a few of them continued to fall.
"Ahsoka, Anakin's mother is dead. She's been dead for years."
Everything stopped and tilted as though the gravity generators were letting go, but Ahsoka realized that it was just her. One hand went to her heart, as though it was going to pound right through her chest and into her hand. Her other hand pulled back the blanket and she watched herself unsteadily rise to her own feet. She let her hand trace alongside the bed until she stopped.
"Anakin had nightmares of it, of her death before it happened." Obi-Wan admitted, still staring off into empty space. "I told him that he should learn to drop the attachment to his mother, that the nightmares were just… just dreams." He inhaled a shaky breath and continued. "He was assigned to watch Senator Amidala, back when she was Queen, because of some assassination attempts. She encouraged him to go to Tatooine to check on his mother… and she died there. In his arms."
"How?" Her lips muttered.
"Padme told me that she was taken by Tusken Raiders. Sand people." Obi-Wan said bluntly.
Ahsoka was quiet. She didn't say anything else, instead she turned on the heels of her boots and walked out of the room leaving her master behind to deal with the demons of the past.
No one came to check on her or retrieve her.
And for that she was glad.
She sat in the Meditation Garden where she would regularly visit Barriss when they were both on Coruscant, which was becoming all the more rare. She didn't sit cross-legged on the patch of grass, focusing on the all mighty Force that tied all things together. In this moment she didn't care about the Force at all.
Ahsoka had been taught that the Force was there for her, a guiding light in a world divided by the light and dark. She was told to listen to the Force, to trust the Force, to love the Force. The Force was everywhere and the Force had granted her a gift, a gift to serve and protect those that needed protection while upholding certain values and ideals. If she acted in the name of the Force, the Force would look out for her.
She lay in the patch of grass, twirling a plucked blade in between her fingers until it coiled into a wet dark strand of green, then she pulled another and did the same thing. She was angry at the Force, angry that it had betrayed her like that, that it had given her a mission, a cause to fight for, only to take it away. This was her retaliation—the Force was in everything, so she would mutilate these few blades of grass just because.
The visions she had received… why? What was the purpose of the Force showing her such tragedies? Was it trying to break her?
She could admit that she was an idealist, an optimist with dreams. She wanted to save everyone and everything, but she wanted to do it her way and for her own reasons. Anakin had incited that in her, a sense of self-determined integrity—do what you believe is right even if the Council disagrees. Anakin had explained it to her one of their late night talks when neither one of them could sleep—"The Council forgives everyone eventually. The hard part is living with yourself, and to do that you have to be true to yourself, Snips."
He hadn't been able to follow his own advice. He hadn't been able to save his mother because of the Jedi. She understood the severity of Anakin's attachments, she understood that they were wrong, and a lot of the time she found herself thinking things like "Why can't he just get over it?" "Why can't he just drop it?" Other times, his attachments had saved them. His attachment to her had saved her life more times than she could count, he had also saved Obi-Wan and countless other leaders... simply because he was attached to them.
Were attachments really all that bad?
Ahsoka rolled onto her back and looked up at the fake sky of the Garden. It felt like a paradise, the fake sky looked like Coruscant's as though there was no pollution or night. She felt like it was a perfect representation of Jedi views—a beautiful façade over a system of lies.
Every Jedi except for Masters Windu and Yoda had attachments that she could easily identify. Obi-Wan was attached to his students and the beautiful politician from Mandalore that he talked about in his sleep. Aayla Secura and Kit Fisto were attached to each other, Master Luminara was attached to Miral and her race, even Master Plo had attachments, specifically to his men. Their attachments made them… them.
Ahsoka figured it was probably different since Anakin had had a family before he joined the Jedi. She had heard the vague version of the story as a youngling about the Chosen One joining the Jedi Order beyond the accepted age.
She hadn't noticed that she wasn't alone until her master stood over her, blocking her view of the fake clouds. The fake sunlight gave him a halo making him look like some divine spirit rather than Anakin Skywalker.
"Hey," he said simply, joining her on the grass. He laid on his back, staring up at the foliage and counterfeit blue sky. She could sense that he didn't know what he was doing, he felt unsure if he should confront her or not about what had happened. She knew that Obi-Wan had sent him.
"Hey yourself," she said simply, her mind still wandering on the ideas of attachments.
"Wanna clue me in? Whatever happened between you and Obi-Wan has him nervous." He turned slightly to her, then back to the ceiling.
"When are we being sent out?"
"We're on meditative retreat for six or seven rotations." He sighed, closing his eyes and tucking his arms under his head.
Ahsoka sighed too. "Are you going to disappear like always?" She looked at him from the corner of her eyes, watching him visibly relax.
He scoffed lightly, "No." He paused, then added. "Maybe to explore for a while. The Temple feels cramped after a while."
Ahsoka knew what he meant by 'cramped'. It meant that Obi-Wan was going to be shipped out earlier than they were—the Temple wasn't too cramped, it was too empty. Every single time he left her out of his missions and doomed her to the Temple all she could feel was the intense anxiety and loneliness. She was always fearing the worst—what if they had gotten into trouble that only she could get them out of? What if someone didn't guard Anakin's six like she could? What if the mission failed and everyone died… all because they didn't have the extra strength Ahsoka could lend them? She imagined Anakin's thoughts about Obi-Wan were the same.
"So are you going to fill me in? Or should I just assume it's because Obi-Wan doesn't know how to handle teenagers?" He opened his bright blue eyes and Ahsoka quickly diverted her eyes so he wouldn't catch her staring.
"Uh, it's just… those visions I was telling you about. I guess telling him about them scared him."
Anakin frowned, sitting up, then flipping over onto his stomach so he could look at her better. "Visions and nightmares? The same ones as before?"
She shrugged. "Each one is a little different." She wanted to tell him about how they were ruining her life, how she couldn't sleep or think, how each time she her heart ached and she felt such extreme emotion that her head hurt.
"What are they about?"
She was just about to tell him everything when she stopped and closed her mouth, remembering what Obi-Wan had told her on the ship before they got to Courscant, "I don't want you to tell Anakin any of this." Could she tell him? Could she tell him about the visions she saw of his dead mother?
"Ahsoka,"
She looked up at him, he was worried, scared, for her. He leaned on his elbows, still laying in the grass. He was going to tell her something.
His eyes drifted down to the grass underneath them. "When I was a padawan… I used to get really intense visions… wait, let me take that back, I still get them now." He smiled a little to himself, but it soon disappeared. His eyes went vacant, his voice got a little darker and deeper. "I was here on Coruscant, protecting Padme from some assassins… and I kept getting these awful, vivid visions of my mother…" He paused, closing his eyes. "I convinced Padme to go to Tatooine with me, after Obi-Wan told me not to, that my dreams were just dreams, and when we got there… my dreams were right. She died." He said softly, after a moment of silence passed between them, he looked up at her. "Ahsoka, you need to tell me if you think it's serious."
Her heart and stomach twisted with anxiety. She felt slightly sick and rolled onto her side to face him. "It's not like that." She didn't look at him, but rather at the ground. "It's..." She growled in frustration. "I don't know if I should tell you or not, because I was told not to, and I don't want to hurt you." She said aggressively, fighting hard not to raise her voice.
Anakin was obviously shocked and somewhat offended. "You don't have to protect me from anything. I'm your master. I'm the one that should be protecting you." He rolled over and sat up, getting to his feet.
"Anakin," Her tone exasperated, "Look. I want to tell you. But it's… it's not what you want to talk about." He paused, his back still turned to her as though he planned on leaving, but she knew he was just using this tactic to get her to talk. "Ever since you pulled me into meditation with you, I've been having visions of your past."
She saw a fragment of the façade crumble and his shoulders fell. This was Anakin Skywalker, this was her master. She watched him turn slowly to face her and retake his spot in the grass. He didn't meet her eyes.
"What exactly have you seen?" His voice wasn't his, it was cold and emotionless.
Ahsoka closed her eyes, sitting up and pulling her knees in close to her chest. What hadn't she seen? "They normally focus around your mother."
He looked at her, giving her a look that she couldn't decipher. She couldn't sense what he was feeling through the Force, only that he was heavily guarding himself from her. "How do you know it's my mother?"
"She's kind of pale, especially for being on Tatooine, she has bushy dark hair, dark eyes, she's very thin. She calls you 'Ani'." Ahsoka looked at the grass in front of her, but could sense Anakin uncomfortably shifting positions.
"What happens?" He didn't ask, he commanded. His voice still flat, but she could sense his guard faltering.
"Some man… in linen wrappings. He… abuses her." She didn't want to tell Anakin about how his mother was raped, how she was whipped. She closed her eyes tight and pressed her forehead against her knees, holding herself as tight as she could.
Anakin was quiet for the longest time. "Who else is in these visions?"
"You were in a few of them, there was another child, too." She felt chills up her arms and down her back. She picked her head up a little, looking over to him. "Not all of them were bad."
Anakin didn't meet her eye. He stared directly ahead of him, his eyes blank. "I… I want to see." He said softly. "I want to see her again."
Ahsoka didn't say anything. She didn't want to see her again. She didn't want to see this woman cry again, she just wanted to see this woman genuinely happy, and for longer than a few minutes. She wanted to see this woman skip in joy, she wanted to see her sing, not for the sake of putting a child to sleep, or to distract herself, but because it was the only way to express such pleasure.
Anakin stopped himself, realizing how much torture Ahsoka had been through for the past week. She had seen the horrors of the slavery he refused to talk about, she had seen the past that he refused to mention. He knew that she had always wallowed in curiosity of his past, and he had liked that—adding a bit of mystery to her view of him, but now that mystery was traumatizing her like it had traumatized him.
Ahsoka remained quiet, watching him as he thought. He stared at the ground between them and after several moments he looked up at her.
"I'm going to try to remove the memories from you." Anakin said plainly, scooting over closer to her.
Ahsoka backed away from him, "No, no, the memories are not the problem." She didn't want to be kept in the dark. She didn't want to live in a reality where she didn't know why he cringed at certain words and sounds. She wanted to know his past, she wanted to help protect him from those evils and she couldn't do that if she didn't know.
"Ahsoka, you can still have nightmares from the memories." He looked at her, then looked down, like he was ashamed, as though somehow all of this was his fault. "If I sever the memories from your mind, it might stop the visions."
"There has to be a way to stop the visions without taking my memories of those visions." She sat up and got to her feet. "I'll check the archives."
Anakin followed her lead and got to his feet, brushing the dirt and grass off of his robes. He didn't say anything, she could feel that he was still too preoccupied with thoughts of his mother. He followed her out of the gardens and to the archives.
"You know, before all of this I wanted Force visions." She told him, sitting across from him at one of the tables as they sifted through data.
"Why?" Anakin asked, she could sense his distaste for such images.
She shrugged. "I wanted to feel special to the Force, like it had picked me of all people for this vision."
Anakin pulled a face, "Ahsoka, the Force already chose you. That's why you're a Jedi."
She rolled her eyes, "It's not that special, Skyguy. There are hundreds of Jedi. I wanted to be one of the special ones that had a special connection to the Force. I wanted something more."
He looked up at her, then back to their data. "Are you finding anything useful? Because all I'm finding is prophecies and jointed visions."
Ahsoka leaned forward to look at what he was looking at. "Where's the stuff on jointed visions?"
"That won't be helpful. Jointed visions are when a Jedi connects himself to those around him in order to share a specific vision that he's already had. Sometimes the added Force presence gives greater clarity of the vision." He continued to scroll through until he stopped. "Did you tell Master Yoda about any of your visions?"
Ahsoka shook her head. "I didn't want to admit to him that it was because you helped me meditate and I knew he wouldn't understand."
Anakin nodded. "And you went to Obi-Wan with this?"
Ahsoka nodded, "He wanted to see for himself, and that was about it. He told me not to tell you." She scrolled through another entry on the datacard about ancient mediation types, then stopped. "What if it's on a holocron?"
"It wouldn't be. Holocrons are only used to keep information away from the Sith. Sith are also capable of Force visions." He ran a hand through his wavy mess of hair and Ahsoka looked away, trying not to think of how it fell just right over his blue eyes.
"Well, what causes Force visions? Maybe we should start there." Ahsoka set down her datapad, letting Anakin sense how discouraged she was.
Anakin set his down too. "Easy answer, Snips. The Force."
She rolled her eyes and shot him a look. She didn't even have to taunt him with 'Skyguy', although it was becoming more of a term of endearment than an annoying nickname.
"Well, there are places where the Force is stronger, there are items that make the Force stronger."
She interrupted before he could continue, "People, too." She could always perceive things better when she was with him, as though his Force energy aided her own.
Anakin thought about their list for a moment, staring at the datapads that lay side by side on the table. "Maybe we should be looking at mind probing." Anakin grabbed his datapad and typed it in.
"Mind probing goes both ways though, we would both be seeing the same thing at the same time." Ahsoka put her head on the desk.
Anakin shook his head, "Not if I'm not aware that you're doing it. If I'm aware, then I can close myself off to you, that's when I can see what you're doing."
"How do I stop myself?" Her eyes lit up, he had come up with an answer. She was so excited that she almost knocked her chair over when she stood up. She walked around the table to read over his shoulder as he scanned through entries.
"I think our bond is too strong."
Ahsoka took a step to the other side. She enjoyed their bond, it was as though the Force tied them together. It had helped them so many times, it had been developed through their training and the Council actually recommended such an attachment… until the padawan grew out of it. "I don't want to break our bond." She moved back over to her side of the table and sat down in her chair. "There must be another way."
He looked up at her, slightly aggravated. "Yes, I can remove the memories."
"I don't want you to." She said strictly, crossing her arms over her chest.
"I didn't want you to know in the first place, Ahsoka." He leaned back in his chair, setting the datapad back on the table.
He could feel her anger rising. Her eyes got brighter and she gave him a fierce look. "Why? Because I don't deserve to know? Because I'm not good enough to know?"
She had pushed him over the edge. He glared at her, anger brewing in his blue eyes. "Because I don't need you making judgements based on my past." He stood quickly, pushing in his chair, and leaving without another word.
So much for finding a solution…
Ahsoka let herself relax, leaned over the table, and rested her head in her arms. She closed her eyes, and let herself cry.
Thank you again for reading! Please review! I love to hear your thoughts, even if it's just something simple like "I like this." or "I don't like this". Both of them are helpful. Thanks and may the Force be with you!
