In the blazing sunset among the sea of orange and red leaves, Ahsoka Tano was perfectly camouflaged in the treetops.

Just as her Master had ordered, she sat perched in a branch as their diligent look out, ready and waiting for any sign of success… or otherwise. She could sense Haki and Vance puttering about the ship below. Although they were clearly nervous about the mission, their mechanical tinkering was a tick she was familiar with. Before or after most missions, she would find Anakin with R2D2 doing the exact same thing to his star fighter in whatever hanger was available. She wouldn't blame them for feeling on edge and didn't sense any harmful intentions to worry about.

General Rhok had yet to return and she could only hope that the journey through the tunnels was longer than they had anticipated. The extra time and mounting anxiety bubbled on the surface of her mind. Kohma's words to Anakin was stuck on repeat in her head. Beware your heart… He had always been more emotionally driven than most other Jedi. Although they frowned upon it, more often than not, she admired him for it. His passion made him work harder to help people and his loyalty had earned him respect among the clones. It was something she didn't shy away from emulating.

But the more they had trained together, the more she saw cracks start to appear. She'd seen snippets of his wrath but she reasoned that most of the time, it was directed at those who deserved it. And yet, come the "death" of Obi Wan, she was unsure how far was too far. He'd been cold and distant during that time, and rarely did he open up to her about any of it. In hindsight, the council's inaction on the whole situation made sense. But in the midst of it, she had seriously struggled to keep herself, let alone Anakin, in check. She couldn't help but wonder, had she not been there running interference, if he would've accidentally gotten Obi Wan or himself killed. The thought sent a shiver down her spine and made her refocus on the horizon with doubled intensity.

"Padawan? Commander? Uhh, Ah…"

The sound of the boy's voice, Haki, popped up from beneath her.

"Ahsoka," she corrected.

After the snapping of a few branches and a couple of muttered curses, she ducked beneath the tree line to see Haki half way up, hanging in a twisted pile of limbs.

"Need some help?" She quipped dryly.

"It might be appreciated…" he said, attempting to remain composed but failing after misplacing his foot into thin air.

She shook her head and dragged him up onto the thicker branch just beside her. He settled down, a firm grasp on the wooden handholds beside him as he took in the bursting colours of the sky.

"So what's up? You need me for anything?" She asked.

"Nothing, Vance just told me to come and check on you," he said, looking away into the distance.

She chuckled to herself. From his interactions with Anakin, she could tell that the two weren't all that dissimilar. His pride definitely ran strong as did his loyalty, it seemed.

"Is she your boss or something?" Ahsoka asked, glad for the company to ease her mind.

"Nah, I'm just too scared to say no," he replied.

She managed to crack a smile. Not so much like her master for whom humbleness didn't come so easily.

"If you're as good at fighting as you are climbing, then that makes sense."

He swivelled on her, a slight pout of indignation on his face.

"If you must know, I sustained a head injury when I was younger. My coordination hasn't been the same since."

Ahsoka sighed, annoyed at her own lack of social tact. She mentally noted to spend more time around Obi Wan.

"I'm sorry, that must've been difficult. How old were you?"

He sat for a moment in silence, choosing whether or not to reveal his vulnerabilities.

"I was about 16 years old. It was around the same time Vance took me in," he said, distractedly playing with a couple of leaves in the trees.

Ahsoka did a double take. She had assumed he would've been around her age but she forgot how the war had changed her perception of maturity.

"Huh, same age as me then…" she said softly.

"Wait… how long have you been a Padawan for?" He asked slowly.

She answered as quickly as she could, powering through the question she'd been pestered with since she had arrived on Shilli.

"I was 14 when Master Skywalker begun my training."

He looked back to her and out of the corner of her vision, she registered his hanging jaw. She could feel him begin to tip out of the tree and nudged the force to stop him from falling.

"That's far too young for a Padawan Learner!" He waved his hands in front of him, processing the information. "Those jerks on the council, forcing younglings into war…" she caught him mumbling.

Her eyes narrowed in on him. He was dancing around a nugget of information. Her suspicion rose.

"How do you know that?" She asked carefully.

The eye contact had obviously worked as he broke away. Again he paused, the silence weighing down on them.

"Haki… Why do you dislike Jedi so much?"

He crushed the leaves he was playing with in his fist. His hesitant reply came out in sections.

"I … once had a friend who was a Jedi," he started, his voice low and fragile. "He died… a little after becoming a Padawan."

Ahsoka felt like the leaves in his hand, slowly being suffocated. Again, she had fallen into the trap of realising what the Jedi were to the rest of the Galaxy and she couldn't quite reconcile the opposing views she was given.

"Oh…" was all she managed to say. More silence followed but Ahsoka spoke up again, finding her ground within the conversation.

"Is that why you're helping us now?"

He tightened his grip. She pressed on, knowing what needed to be said.

"Thank you, Haki."

The breeze picked up, freeing the crushed bits of leaf from Haki's grasp. He lost his breath as he finally locked onto her gaze and for a split second the look in his eyes turned painful. She sensed a flood of emotion boil up within him. Before she could begin any sort of emotional analysis for what it meant, she was slammed by a warning from the force.

Instinctively, Ahsoka's eyes darted across the sky. She spun around, desperately searching for streaks of green or red. Neither greeted her sight. She stiffened. Haki straightened up beside her, following her line of sight. He cursed.

Smoke.

From the sanctuary of their former village, thick, black clouds of smoke poured into the sky, far more than Ahsoka had recalled seeing earlier that day. Listening intently, she could make out the ruckus of screams and blaster bolts.

"They're attacking the village," she whispered. "Kohma…"

Ahsoka dived back down the tree at break neck speed, leaving poor Haki stammering down after her. Her body flicked into overdrive, abolishing the calm she had felt only seconds ago.

"Could they have tracked us here from the palace somehow or maybe they decided to skip a village…" she rambled, racing up to meet with Vance.

The human woman rolled out from underneath the ship's engine, goggles cinching her frizzy hair in place. Ahsoka marched up to her.

"The wrong village is being attacked," she repeated, snatching a bundle of flares laying beside her and tucking them away into her poncho.

"What?" Vance asked, scrambling to her feet.

Haki had just made it down the tree after deciding to jump the rest of the way down.

"It's true, the entire village is under fire," he confirmed, striding over to Vance.

She shook her head, throwing her hands in the air. "This was supposed to be easy…" she huffed. "Well then, Jedi, I assume you're going to help them?"

Ahsoka halted her fussing about as a cold stab of realisation hit her. This was a choice. A choice all Jedi had to make. The many or the few. The village, or potentially all of Coruscant. The intel or the innocents.

She had agreed to Anakin and Obi Wan's compromise. They still had a chance at helping these people if the mission was successful. But this wasn't it. This was something else and now she owed them for their trust. And not just theirs, but the trust of the Council and the entire Grand Army of the Republic. Responsibility and circumstance had pushed her into this corner and not matter how she tried, there was no way around it.

"I-" she began, feeling the weight Haki and Vance's expectancy bore into her. "I can't…"

Her head became too heavy so she let it drop to her chest. Haki moved forward.

"What do you mean you can't, the village is right there! You're a Jedi, you can save them!" He protested.

She felt a bitterness well up inside of her. He may have befriended a Jedi but he still had no clue the burden it took to be one.

"Of course I can! But what if I don't get back in time? What if they return and I'm not here?" She snapped. "They wouldn't leave without me. In the end, we'd all end up stuck here or captured or worse!"

She felt herself on the verge of hysteria and breathed deeper to reign in her anger. They didn't deserve it. It wasn't their fault that they didn't understand.

"I'm a Jedi. My duty is to the Republic; to Coruscant." Her voice was quiet, repeating Anakin's words. "No matter how much I want to, I can't…"

"Even after General Rhok put his faith in you? That's his village, the people who took you in and you're going to let it burn?" Vance accused, walking to stand over her. Ahsoka held her gaze. As soon as Vance spotted the defeat behind the Padawan's eyes, the human broke away, fuming.

Haki's chest evenly rose and fell and she could sense him relax. There was no more of the gumption he seemed to fall back onto in their prior conversation. He must've been at a loss for hoping for anything more from her or the Jedi. All their choices leading up to this point were meaningless. Connecting with General Rhok, fighting with Anakin & Obi Wan, discovering more about Kohma; all for nought now that she had lost her own agency. Protocol dug in its nails, leaving the three companions standing there as solemn as statues. All her strength vanished…

Her strength…

Her resolve…

A memory resurfaced.

"Your resolve is your greatest asset. Should you forget where that strength comes from, look within to see without,"

Out of curiosity or better yet, desperation, Ahsoka suddenly became aware of her breathing. She let her feet sink into the ground and centred herself in the river of the force. Felt it bend within and around her. A rise of white noise rose in and out of her focus, what could've been the sounds of battle. The louder they became and the quieter she let her mind be, she started to make out whispering. Thousands of voices reverberating around her.

"Beware your heart…"

"Yourself -"

"And your friends…"

She fell deeper within herself, sifting through all of them. Some were strings of sentences. Some almost animalistic.

Soon, a voice spoke from right in front of her, soothing and tangible.

"The choice is yours to make, young one. Not the Council's, or the Republic's or the Sith or even us. Whatever path you feel is right, know that you are one with us and that we are with you."

It was a man's voice. Deep, yet gentle and completely unfamiliar to her. But upon recognising it for the first time, it felt like she had heard these voices her whole life, guiding her and giving her comfort. The force rushed around her more fiercely. She not only sat in it. She was submerged, allowing the voices to wash over her; drowning in it.

"It's time young one," the voice echoed louder. "The moment awaits…"

In response, a bird cawed above the chorus and she felt it careen towards her, felt its wings beat and its talons dig into her skin.

Ahsoka gasped. She'd been standing there for hours. But from the look on Haki's face, it had been mere moments.

The choice lay ahead of her.

She looked back down the tunnel where she had farewelled Anakin and Obi Wan. From where General Rhok would soon come rushing back out.

The wind stilled, allowing her the room to breathe.

The moment awaits... and I won't keep it waiting any longer.

Leading with her chest, Ahsoka marched towards the forest with the sharpest sense of clarity she had ever felt. Vance started yelling after her as she briskly jogged passed them. She barely heard her order Haki to follow her. Even as she slowed to let him catch up, every ounce of her being spurred her onward with no signs of faltering. A swift breeze of support pushed her along and Snips grinned. It was time to start listening.