Chapter Seventeen: Diyannah
"You're a Jedi."
Ahsoka gave the young togruta girl across from her a skeptical wide-eyed look at the bold accusation. Then again, Ahsoka wasn't surprised to be confronted by the girl whose eyes she felt watching her for the past week.
Diyannah was her name. Diya for short. To her friends anyway—of which the girl let Ahsoka know right away that she wasn't when Ahsoka had arrived on the planet two weeks ago and joined the non-profit organization for displaced youth. Ahsoka hadn't been sure exactly what they'd been displaced from since Shili, isolated as it was, hadn't been affected by the war in that way. Whatever the reason, it seemed to be something everyone knew about but didn't talk about. And as not to blow her cover trying to find the leader to the small resistance that she'd tracked to the place, Ahsoka had chosen not to ask.
It didn't take her long to find out.
Slave trafficking. Officially, the Empire didn't condone slavery. Unofficially, they turned a blind eye to it so long as it wasn't overtly obvious. Not too different from the Republic, Ahsoka had thought wryly when she heard. But in the last two years under the Empire, the business had gotten an unprecedented boon, exacerbated by the new nonhuman discriminatory policies.
While the big cities spread throughout Shili were faring fine, the villages and rural cities spread across the planet were being ravaged. The larger, more contemporary and technologically advanced cities did what they could for those who escaped, pulling together to give refuge to any who sought it. But it was taboo to talk about openly with the Empire breathing down their neck, let alone make a big fuss about it. No one wanted what happened to Ryloth.
Diyannah was one of those refugees, one of many children and teenagers that lived in the main refugee facility.
As soon as Ahsoka arrived, people made a big fuss about how alike they looked. And they did except for the fact that Diyannah's facial markings were more star-shaped instead of diamond-shaped and the teenager was almost five years younger than Ahsoka. They were likely distantly related. But Diyannah volunteered as much information about her personal life as Ahsoka did—none at all.
"A Jedi?" Ahsoka said, deciding that the best course of action was to play along with the girl since no one was around. At least the girl had the discretion to wait until they were mostly alone.
"Don't play dumb with me."
"I'm not playing dumb. That's just one hell of an accusation to make about someone. A deadly one," Ahsoka added.
Diyannah rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Being a Jedi nowadays is already pretty deadly."
"That's something we both agree on. Which is why no one talks about them in the open."
"No one's around. And you make it obvious."
"No one else has come to me with that observation. So obvious how, little one?"
"I'm not little. You're barely a full-grown togruta yourself," Diyannah shot back. It was no wonder she was constantly in trouble with local Imperial law enforcement. "And that's because no one else pays attention like I do. If they did, they'd notice how weird you are for a togruta."
"Oh?"
"Your lekku give no tells, for one," Diyannah said. "Not when you don't want them too. Like now, they're unmoving and not giving away your curiosity."
"Maybe I'm not feeling curious."
"But you should be feeling something. I just accused you of being a Jedi. And you act like you've lived around a lot of humans before. Like the way you raise your eye markings. That's not something togruta do. That's a human and near-human thing. And togruta are social and tactile beings. You're too reserved and quiet."
"I've just been through a lot is all," Ahsoka replied with a shrug.
"Either way, you're different," Diyannah declared. "So either you're one of our religious priests or associated with them, an Imperial, or a Jedi. If you were a priest, you would have told us. Given the Empire's anti-nonhuman policies, I doubt you're an Imp. So that leaves Jedi."
"The real question, young one, is how is it and why is it that you pay so much attention?" Ahsoka asked, deciding to turn the tables on the girl.
The girl faltered, the twitch of her lekku telling Ahsoka that she'd caught her off guard. Ahsoka resisted the urge to smile. Diyannah hadn't been the only person paying attention. Ahsoka found Diyannah just as strange for a togruta as Diyannah found her. For all the girl's accusations of Ahsoka being reserved and quiet, Diyannah was the same. She did a great job of pretending, but there was something mechanical about the younger togruta's actions. And she always had this aloof way about her, like she was only physically present for social interactions, but mentally having another conversation.
"Maybe," Ahsoka continued casually, "because you being here isn't just because you're a refugee. Maybe it's because you're also using this as a convenient base of operations for a resistance."
Recovering her bearings, the girl huffed and said, "So what if I am? What are you going to do about it, Knight Tano?"
Kriff.
"How about we move this discussion to my room?" Ahsoka suggested calmly to the girl.
"Sure thing," the girl said with a grin.
As they made their way to Ahsoka's quarters, Ahsoka wondered if she'd been this obnoxious at Diyannah's age. She was willing to bet that if she asked Vader, if he were willing to answer, he would say that she had been.
Once in the privacy of Ahsoka's quarters, Ahsoka directed Diyannah to sit down in a chair and demanded, "Alright. What do you know, when did you know it, and how do did you know it?"
Diyannah shrugged. "A feeling."
Ahsoka raised one of her eye markings, only to immediately lower it because that was apparently something humans did.
Diyannah huffed, "I followed the war very closely for years."
"You followed it? You couldn't have been what? No more than nine when it started."
"Yeah. But our village was one of the ones that got hit early on by the slavers who decided to take advantage of the fact that the Republic had other concerns. And before you ask, yes, Shili put in a request for aid. Hundreds of systems did and thousands of individual planets, but the Republic picked and chose who they wanted to help. Who provided a strategic war strategy," Diyannah explained.
Ahsoka was more than familiar with the politics of the war. Even if she'd wanted to, that was a point that she couldn't argue. Instead, she asked, "Our village?"
"Why do you think we look alike? We're probably related one way or another. People talked about you, you know. It was a great source of pride for our village that one of our own went to become a Jedi."
"But not to you?" asked Ahsoka.
"I think you more than anyone can understand why I'm less than impressed by the Jedi," the girl said wryly. "I followed what they did to you. It's a wonder you stayed. I would have left the Jedi to their politics."
"Trust me. I wanted to, but I had nowhere else to go. It just… wasn't the best decision at the time." That wasn't all the way truthful. Having nowhere else to go wouldn't have mattered. She would have slept on the streets if it had meant getting away from the Order. It's why she'd willingly requested and taken the longest missions the furthest from Coruscant once she was knighted.
"So, you're admitting to who you really are now?" Diyannah asked, and Ahsoka shrugged in response. Then the teen added, "You should have come home. Togruta protect their own. The planet would have welcomed you back. If our Senator and other non-imperial planetary officials knew you were here now, they wouldn't tell the Imps. This would have been the last place they expected you to come back to even if they'd known you weren't dead like all the other Jedi."
Ahsoka always knew that. It was why Shili could be running a secret resistance out of a refugee operation. There was no such thing as an orphan on Shili. Not really. When parents died, the village cared for the child, made sure they had a place to call home. So it wouldn't have been out of the norm that when entire communities were ravished, the bigger, industrialized cities came together to provide refuge.
"I couldn't," Ahsoka replied and left it at that. "But if you knew all that, if other people know it, why did you decide to say something?"
"Other people don't know it," assured Diyannah. "Not if they didn't follow the war like I did. I mean, it was impossible to miss the propaganda in media, so people knew who a lot of the Jedi were. Especially you. You were already associated with the most famous Jedi in war, and you shot up in fame and infamy after your trial, and you started heading missions as a general. But it's been almost three years, and the Empire has censored all mentions of the Jedi on the holonet. People are starting to forget."
Knowing that should have stirred something sentimental in Ahsoka, but instead, she found herself not caring. Maybe the Jedi were something better left in the past, dead with the Republic. And in a few years, the Sith along with them if Ahsoka had anything to do with it.
"That still doesn't explain why you outed me."
"I didn't out you. I just let you know I knew who you were. And now I'm telling you that whatever reason you're here, we want no part of it," Diyannah declared.
Ahsoka might have been amused by the girl's declaration if she didn't recognize where her refusal stemmed from. It reminded her of herself not too long ago—hell, of herself right now. Burned by people she should have been able to trust one too many times and given too many empty promises and platitudes. Even on the front lines of a war, Ahsoka hadn't been this jaded. Not at first anyway. That didn't happen until later.
"What do you think I'm doing?" Ahsoka asked softly.
Diyannah confirmed Ahsoka's suspicions when she admitted, "I don't know, but any time a Jedi shows up out of nowhere, history shows it's never been a good thing. Your Order and your Republic are the reason Shili's in the mess that it is combating these slavers."
The girl wasn't wrong. Jedi showing up never bode well, but historically that was because a situation was already at a precarious tipping point, which made it look like them showing up was an omen. But Ahsoka had no desire to defend the Order. She should, instead, have been concerned that Diyannah managed to figure all this out. But the girl was smart, fearless, passionate, and painfully honest. Ahsoka liked her.
"What if I told you I renounced the Jedi?" Ahsoka asked as she sat down on her bed. This was a huge risk, but Ahsoka got the feeling that she needed Diyannah. "What if I told you I'm raising a rebellion to stop the Empire?"
"I'd tell you we want no part of it. You wouldn't be the first one to come to Shili making empty promises."
"That's true. But you certainly can't fight the Empire alone," Ahsoka said. "And you can't fight them the way you've been doing."
"What's wrong with what we've been doing?"
Ahsoka gave the girl a wry look. "Diyannah, you've been arrested twice since I've been here in the last two weeks. And you've got an impressive record before that. You can't fight for your people if you're constantly in and out of jail."
"It's been working so far."
"Until it doesn't. You're asking for the Empire to pay attention to you. And you're woefully unprepared for it if they do." There was no guarantee it would be Vader that the emperor sent either. Palpatine had many enforcers, and Ahsoka wouldn't get a heads up from them of an attack. Or a series of lucky accidents to help them escape. "But I can help you become prepared."
Diyannah didn't respond to that as she sat with arms crossed, lekku twitching in contemplation. Finally, she asked, "If you're not a Jedi, then what is it that you fight for?"
"Because it's the right thing to do."
Diyannah huffed. "That's a load of fodder, and you know it. It might be right, but right for who? So tell me. What is it that you fight for? Or are you still a Jedi."
Ahsoka didn't break eye contact with the girl, but her thoughts went to earlier that morning on a holo call with Luke and Leia. Coordinating good times to make contact with them was difficult since the rotations of the Alderaan and Shili didn't sync to the same time every day. But she and Breha figured it out. Alderaanian tutors were beginning to teach them the Basic alphabet, and Luke and Leia proudly held their datapad up with the help of their handmaiden to show Ahsoka what they'd learned. Leia went first, but when it was Luke's turn, he faltered on a letter. Leia, being Leia, called out the letter her brother was stumped on, causing the Luke to shout, "No, Leia!" while Ahsoka laughed at their antics and wished she were there.
Luke and Leia were something she wanted to keep to herself, to not share with the rest of the galaxy while she didn't have to. But trust begot trust, Ahsoka supposed.
Ahsoka finally replied, "My children."
"Children?" asked Diyannah, narrowing her eyes some. "Jedi don't have children."
"I told you I wasn't a Jedi," Ahsoka said with a small smile. "They're like me. If there were a Jedi Order still, the temple would have been getting ready to request me to give them up. Actually, they would have already taken them."
"They would have let you stay after getting pregnant?"
"Wouldn't be the first time a Jedi found themselves in that predicament," Ahsoka said with a shrug, a little uncomfortable at how easy it had become over the past few years to answer questions without really answering them to avoid lying.
Things like this had been taboo to talk about openly. The Jedi had an image to uphold. But it wasn't unheard of for a Jedi to have a child and the child to end up raised in the Temple. They were usually taken right after birth, though, to avoid forming attachments. The carrying parent usually didn't even get the chance to see or name the child, not if they wanted to remain a Jedi. If there was any case of a Jedi parent leaving the Order with their child because of it, Ahsoka had never heard of it.
Ahsoka continued, "The point is that I'd like for them to be able to grow up without having to hide their powers because they'd be hunted otherwise. Or to be compelled to become part of an organization without really understanding what that choice means."
Diyannah crossed her arms, eyes still narrowed at Ahsoka as she leaned back in her chair. Finally, the girl said, "Huh? Maybe you really aren't a Jedi."
For a second, Ahsoka sensed that the girl had something else to say to that, but she shook her head and said instead, "I'll see if I can get you to our next meeting. Then we'll hear what you have to offer our people's rebellion by joining onto yours."
The girl stood to leave, but as she did so, someone hurriedly knocked on the door. Diyannah looked at Ahsoka, who shrugged and gestured towards the door. The younger togruta answered it to find Noni, a purple togruta with white and pale purple lekku, at the door. The normally pale purple stripes on his lekku were a few shades darker, and he was huffing like he'd run all the way there.
"Diya. You gotta get out of here," Noni said, lekku twitching with nerves.
"What's going on?" Ahsoka asked standing up as the Force gave her warning. Urgent. There was time to do something about it, but they had to move soon.
"Inquisitors are here," Noni said.
Ahsoka's first instincts were that they'd somehow figured out she was here, that she hadn't been careful enough in blending in with the other togruta and the Imperials had run her picture through their records. But then Noni added, "They're looking for you Diya. Something about an incident when you were arrested."
Ahsoka frowned and looked at Diyannah. "Wait? Are you Force-sensitive?"
"Yes… No… I'm not really sure," Diyannah finally said.
"Diya. You gotta go. Come on," Noni said hitting the wall to emphasize the need to start moving.
Ahsoka grabbed onto Diya's arm and began to pull the girl out the room. The rebellion and the girl's Force sensitivity was something to talk about later.
"Let go of me. I don't need your help," Diyannah exclaimed in the hallway.
"Running away from Inquisitors is totally different than running from local Imperial law enforcement. And if your record has anything to say about it, you're not even good at that," Ahsoka said, falling easily into the crisis mode that the war had drilled into her. "Now if you want to live, stop arguing and let's go."
"Diya…" Noni said, confusion in his features.
"She's a not-Jedi."
"A not-Jedi? What's that?"
"I'll meet you all at the emergency meeting tonight," Diyannah said.
"What emergency meeting?"
"The one I just called. Spread the word—Discreetly! Once those Inquisitors are gone," Diya added.
"I know," Noni snapped. "I'm not—"
Ahsoka suddenly got that feeling in the Force that told her to move and to move right then. So she grabbed Diya's arm and said, "We gotta go. Now."
Without waiting for the girl to agree, she started to run with the girl down the hall, both rounding the corner just as she heard the heavy footsteps of troopers in the hall they'd just been in.
"Now would be a good time to show me how exactly it is that you sneak out of here at night so you can get yourself arrested," Ahsoka said as they made their way down the hall.
"You're the Jedi."
"And you obviously know a secret way out of here. All my possible escape routes are probably crawling with troopers, and I'd like to get out of here while drawing as little attention as possible. Now lead the way."
"Are all Jedi this demanding?"
"I'm not a Jedi."
"Are all not-Jedi this demanding?" Diyannah corrected as she led them toward the kitchens.
"There's an exit in the kitchen?" Ahsoka asked, not because she doubted the girl, but because she'd done a sweep of the entire building in the name of getting Noni to give her an extensive tour when she'd first signed on.
"Sort of," Diyannah said as she made her way to the large industrial kitchen walk-in freezer and then pushed the large, wheeled, metal shelves away from the wall. She took a magnet out her pocket and latched it onto the bottom of the wall before pulling upward. What Ahsoka though was a wall rose into the ceiling revealing what looked like the entrance to an old loading zone.
"So this is how you've been getting out," Ahsoka said as she scanned the area while Diyannah pulled the shelf back and lowered the door. Something wasn't right about this…
"Yeah. This place used to be some factory or warehouse. And this was some kind of loading dock. If the Imperials got their hands on the most recent blueprints, they'll find this spot isn't on them because technically it's not here," the girl explained. "There's a side door on the other end of this that leads to a secret alley. Because of the strange way the city ended up designing this, it doesn't look like it's attached to our building. We should be safe here until the Imperials move on."
No sooner than the words left the girl's mouth did the lighting of a red lightsaber contradict her statement.
"Well, well," the woman said, her voice muffled by her black helmet. "What is it that we have here?"
AN: I had way too much fun with this. Mostly because I had a great time putting Ahsoka opposite another togruta who noticed she was weird as far as her biological species goes from spending time with a lot of humans and because of her Jedi training. Also, I love the first line of this because Ahsoka just got done renouncing the Jedi in the last line of the last chapter and then the first line of this chapter is someone accusing her of being a Jedi. Ahsoka is essentially going to spend the rest of her life telling people she's renounced the Jedi while people around her, Vader included, insist she is one. Much like in canon, I suppose.
Diya is also my baby. The last OC I create whole plays a pivotal role in the plots of this story. If you read "It'll be like I Never Left" (Which chronologically takes place after this story and after "Force Distortion"), Diya's there. And very predictably, she and Vader pretty much can't stand each other but mutually tolerate each other.
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! Review please.
