Author's Note: The other day, I rewatched Episode III, and I almost forgot how truly cinematic that film was. Easily my favorite in the franchise. This story was designed to be a spiritual successor to Episode III and The Clone Wars, bridging that ~14 year gap between the prequels and Rebels. Meanwhile, we've past the 1/3 mark, so we have 2/3 left to go!
Thanks to all those that have stuck with me so far and continued to read. I know most people prefer pairings and romance, and I like that too, but I really wanted to write a character drama with a good story. Stick around, much more to come.
XI
Auratera - 14 BBY
The bazaar was lively as morning grew into afternoon.
A fair weather gale swept dried dirt from the streets around the tent city, provoking coughs from throughout the marketplace.
Adults milled about, gazing over the produce and vegetables for sale as children ran free, engaged in various games of sport or skill to keep themselves preoccupied from their parents' arduous shopping.
One such child had no interest in games.
A small and scrawny figure darted from stall to stall, under a fraying hood, hiding behind tables and peeking around corners before making his move.
The boy was hungry.
Weaving his way through the multitude of shoppers and patrons, his vantage point was a few meters below the average person.
In a way, that helped him navigate the maze-like surroundings of the market, from one tent to the next.
Rodian apples, Naboo nectarine, Alderaanian wines, Mon Calamari lobster. The choices were endless, fresh, and assorted neatly along row after row of color coordinated basket displays.
Eyeing his selection, he ducked beneath a table sheet and waited for the coast to clear.
When the last customer had left, he slowly crawled out, blindly reaching his hand over the edge of the table, feeling around for the circular and solid form of an apple.
He was met with something else entirely. A clenched hand.
Gripping his wrist and dragging him from under the table, the stall owner berated the boy for his behavior, accusing him of thievery and causing a rather unpleasant scene.
"Who do you think you are? Stealing from me? Do you have any idea who I am kid?"
The man was silver-haired and wrinkled, somewhat pudgy on the edges, and his hands were rough.
Towards the boy, the man's words spat from his mouth, saliva spraying like a hose. He shook the captive juvenile for a moment, wrangling him to the ground and holding him down.
"I'll teach you to steal from me ya' little hooligan!"
The child's soft expression had grown hard, terrified. He closed his eyes amidst a drowning of tears and prepared to be beaten for trying to entertain his gnawing hunger.
The man raised his hand to punish the street-urchin.
Bringing it down swiftly, it was interrupted by another, much stronger and firm grasp.
The man looked up into a dark hood.
"Wh-.."
"Release the boy," came the newcomer's voice. The gravitas of his tone lifted the old man off of the child immediately.
"Let go of me!" The old man wrenched his hand free, wringing it in pain. He glared at the boy, who recovered on the ground. A few passersby stopped to help him stand, before moving on with their browsing.
"He is just a child. You will do better in your treatment of them," the voice continued. His face could not be seen under the heavy fabric of the hood.
The old stall-owner rolled his eyes and scoffed, waving the figure off.
"Get outta here. You're lucky I don't call the Marshal on either of you."
"The boy is hungry. Here."
Ten credits were tossed to the geriatric merchant. He obliged with a strange look.
Before he knew it, two apples were gone from his stall, in the hands of the robed stranger and the boy as they sauntered off into the crowd.
Across the bazaar, the stranger sat the boy down against the wall of the town hall.
"What did I tell you?"
The boy looked away, avoiding his gaze while carving out a piece of the apple with his growing set of teeth.
"If I'm going to steal, don't get caught."
"Right. I can't always save you Luko."
"I know, I know.." the boy looked into the darkness of the hood, feasting on his apple ravenously.
Luko was perhaps only ten or eleven, but carried with him the spunk and spirit of a teenager. His hair was black and curly, matted down from hours under a hood himself. His bones were thin yet strong from his time on the streets of the village. The skin that covered his body was a burnished shade of bronze, having grown accustomed to life under the sun.
A growing boy, he needed more nutrients than he usually got. But he made do for now, hoping one day soon the village orphanage would find him a parent.
"You have perfectly good food at the children's home," the voice echoed.
"It's not that good," Luko sparred back. He had a point, it was mostly just bone broth and piecemeal offerings of poultry scraps that the matron managed to swindle from the marketplace herself.
The children's home was not funded by the village, so they made do with what they could find and from donations. Since the rule of the Imperials began, trade to Auratera slowed, and only the wealthy could afford hearty meals and luxurious items imported from the Core Worlds.
Those who could spare the credits, often didn't, feeling no obligation to feed and clothe children who were not theirs.
It was an attitude of superiority that had festered on Auratera for decades, with the Clone Wars not ameliorating the situation, but instead it exacerbated it. The village's wealthy felt that the galaxy had owed them something after centuries of living under poverty.
When the townspeople struck gold in one of the nearby mines many years ago, they finally were able to enjoy the lives they had always dreamed, while leaving little for those who still suffered and could not profit from their discovery.
Their village was one of only four on an entire planet spanning ten-thousand kilometers in any direction. The world was sparsely populated, with only one spaceport for all of its citizens, in the capital townstead of Harron, forty kilometers from their muddy, forested hamlet of Klaria.
Little Luko had never seen life beyond Klaria.
"It's good enough. You're growing more by the day. You need the nutrients," the stranger said, patting the child on the head as he finished his apple. The second one soon found his hands and he began to devour it as well.
A few of the village's nobles passed the pair, dressed in their finest silk robes and satin weaves, they eyed the two suspiciously.
"They always look at me like that," Luko said between mouthfuls, frowning.
"It's okay. They used to look at me the same way too." The hood fell from the stranger's head, resting around his shoulders.
Luko goggled up at the man before him, a curious smirk wiped across his youthful features.
"Whaddya mean?"
The man's hand met his chin, stroking a trimmed beard. His short brown hair parted neatly around his ears and swept across his forehead. The warmth in his viridescent eyes filled Luko with a sense of a calm unlike anything he had felt before. It was something he always enjoyed, as he felt welcome when around the man.
"I grew up just like you did."
"No way! You're just messing with me," Luko teased, chewing deep to the core of the second apple.
"I'd never lie to ya Luko. It's true."
"You grew up here?"
"Offworld. I was a few years younger than you when I was rescued."
"Rescued? By who? How did you end up here then?"
The curious mind of a child was never sated.
"Another time and I'll tell you that story, yeah?"
"You're too cool to have ever been like me. I don't believe you." The child giggled.
"Maybe one day I'll take you there and show you."
"Show me what?"
"Where I lived as a boy."
"I'd like that," Luko replied.
Smiling, the man looked skyward, reminded of his home if even for a moment. A home that was so distant, so far away. He knew he would never return.
For Orren Kara, this was his home now. Auratera.
"I gotta go Luko, try not to get into any more trouble, yeah?" He ruffled the boy's hair.
"No promises Orren!"
Orren smirked, shaking his head as the child ran off into the bazaar once again.
He brought the hood back over his head and strolled off into the gaze of the afternoon sun, towards the village gates, becoming one with the crowd.
Following a winding path just beyond the gates of Klaria, Orren found himself perched on a bluff overlooking the village, hovels and shops dotting the landscape, the bazaar faintly visible in the center of it all.
Turning on his heels, he faced a small hut and parcel of land at the edge of the tree line to the sprawling forests.
A dark green pourstone home, Orren had found it empty when he first arrived five years prior. Claiming it for himself and filing the necessary paperwork in Harron, he settled in a few days later, and got to work.
Just behind the home lay a vast garden of various fruits and vegetables, beyond that, a small windmill with a weather vane fixed atop it. It spun wildly in the summer breeze, as Orren gazed out over his crop.
It was a month away from harvest, but he was eager to gather his yield, usually opting to store it for the winter and give the rest to the children's home.
Just beyond the garden and his windmill, were the gnarled roots of a sprawling tree, rising skyward ever so gently by the day, growing larger by the year.
Orren was shocked at how quickly it had grown from infancy, springing up nearly overnight, and steadily growing larger ever since. The one thing the tree lacked was the assortment of golden leaves that were typical for one of its species. Orren waited patiently for years to see them arrive in the spring, but they never did.
The tree itself - over time - had created a canopy resembling a massive umbrella of wood that could be seen from all over the village below.
Residents in Klaria had taken to calling Orren "the hermit on the hill," as he was rarely seen in the village, and not many ever ventured up to him.
Luko was always an exception, however.
Orren admired the tree, stepping forward to examine its growing progress and eye his blushing Jogan fruits that were undergoing a swift flourish in the prime rows of the garden.
Kneeling before his soon-to-be harvest, he delicately placed a single fruit in his palm, running an index finger across the surface to test its firmness.
Meters behind him, at the edge of the bluff, stood a cloaked shadow, silent and watchful.
Orren continued inspecting his fruit until the shadow spoke.
"Glad to see you survived."
Orren nearly fell over in righting himself, turning in a frenzy and standing straight to a peak. His instinct would be to draw a saber, but he hadn't carried one in five years.
The shadow stepped closer as he stood his ground, and Orren watched the hood fall from a pair of montrals perched atop the figure's head.
He could recognize her anywhere.
"Ahsoka?"
Orren blinked, barely believing his eyes. There she stood, five years of advanced age clearly visible from the last he saw her, but nonetheless, it was her. The lekku that drew downwards over her shoulder blades had lengthened considerably, and her eyes carried more wisdom and war within them. The maturation had indeed been swift, undoubtedly out of her control.
A gray cloak draped over her frame, swaying in the wind. Beneath it, Orren could barely identify her pair of lightsabers.
"Hello, Orren." Her hands clasped behind her back and she righted her posture, eyeing him gingerly.
"You're alive."
"Surprised?"
"Not at all," Orren answered. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking for the right words. Solitude had been his life for five years. The man had never considered he would run into another Force-user again, much less a Jedi and a friend.
But she defied his odds.
"How did you find me here?" Orren continued.
"We have a new mutual friend."
Orren thought back, five years prior, to his last meeting with his troopers and his savior.
"May I ask where you are going?"
"Somewhere green."
"Green?"
"Yes. Where the Force dwells the most. I must leave the public eye behind."
"If you need a ship, I can arrange it, just say the word."
He knew who that friend was, the only one it could have been.
"Laeda."
"Don't worry," Ahsoka replied, "she only knows the planet, not the village."
"So, how'd you locate me then?" Orren said suspiciously, still in a state of relative shock at her apparent survival.
"I felt a Force presence here."
"I-.."
"Not you," Ahsoka said, her eyes following a trail that led behind Orren altogether, and up the roots of the tree he so carefully had preserved.
"It looks like I found it," a smirk spread across her face.
Orren tossed a glance behind him, eyeing his tree.
"An Uneti," he said, turning to face her again.
"Like the one from the Temple.. may I touch it?" She asked.
"Go ahead."
Orren stepped a few paces aside, watching her warily as she approached the roots at the base of the sprawling tree.
I thought I was the only one left, he thought. The clones had turned on their Jedi masters years ago, wiping out everyone. When he had arrived on Auratera, he felt nothing, no one. There was nothing left but him, and he felt alone.
To see another Jedi almost brought a tear to his eye, as his mind was returned to a simpler time, before the dawn of the Clone Wars, when his master was still guiding his path.
Her hand ran across the tree's trunk, admiring its grooves and textured bark. He watched from afar.
Is this a trap? He wondered. Was she sent here to gain my trust, and kill me? Was Laeda compromised? His relative isolation had left him slightly more paranoid of the visitors Auratera received, and the possibility of being discovered one day by the Empire. Yet, she had done it with relative ease.
But on the other hand, she was Ahsoka Tano. Far from a slouch, padawan to the esteemed and beloved Anakin Skywalker.
At least, beloved to the galaxy. The Council had always thought otherwise of Anakin, leaving Orren in a state of hesitancy towards the High Council's priorities: their image, or their honor.
Anakin was one of the only Jedi in the Order than Orren had shared a sense of mutual respect with. He looked up to Anakin, and eventually learned that they had both come from similar upbringings.
On occasion, Orren had confided in the Force prodigy in regards to his frustration with the Jedi Council, and Skywalker always listened. Anakin's padawan also held that kindness.
Even though she was under the tutelage of Skywalker, Orren had never underestimated Ahsoka. They had sparred in the Temple often during their time as padawans. He was a few years older, and advanced through the trials before she could reach that milestone.
She left in the final year of the war, and he still recalled his last memory of her.
"Orren!"
"Hey there. Long day?"
"You have no idea. Wanna spar?" Ahsoka egged him on.
"Can't today, Master Plo insisted I join him on a reconnaissance flight over Cato Neimoida, to prepare for a siege."
"Aw. We've ran through that system a dozen times already. Bummer." She frowned. "Well hey, there's always next time!" With a slap on his shoulder, she hurried off to find her own master.
"Yeah. See you!" He called after her.
She was convicted of murder and treason just four days later, and was cleared soon after. She left the Order the week following. He never saw her during or after her trial, and that was that.
The woman he saw now was far more a warrior than a padawan, hardened over the years of fighting and tragedy.
Orren, feeling stressed at the implications her appearance brought to the table, ran his fingers through his hair, his brown locks getting almost snarled in the process, and he swore in a wince of pain.
"Has it always been here?" Ahsoka asked, her eyes not leaving the tree.
"I planted it," Orren replied.
"With a seed? Does this planet have an Uneti merchant or something?" She giggled.
He smiled in amusement, but was quick to clarify himself.
"A podling, recovered from the Temple by a friend."
"I'm glad it fell back into the hands of a Jedi, and I hope the leaves grow in soon," she finally averted her eyes from the tree, meeting his.
He broke the stare, looking back to the Uneti once again, and its unique and twisting spiral to the sky above. After a moment of silence, she cracked the ice.
"So, what are you doing out here Orren?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" His response oozed a tad more sarcasm than he anticipated, but he didn't bother correcting his tone.
"It looks to me like you found your green thumb."
"I suppose that's one way of putting it."
"You could be out there fighting," she shifted her mass, looking at him straight on now. He felt her stare burning through his soul, and a wellspring of shame rose from within him.
"Our war is over, Ahsoka," he muttered.
"For the clones, maybe, for the droids, maybe. But not for us." She paused, exhaling in subtle frustration. "We don't get that luxury."
"What would you have me do then? Go knock on Sidious' door?" Orren fired back.
"I doubt he answers door knocks from strangers."
"Very funny."
"Fight with us. Push back against the Empire, they're slaughtering hundreds of thousands, oppressing billions more by the month."
"I'm just one man. I can't stand up against an Empire."
"I'm one woman, and I'm not alone in my fight, you wouldn't be either."
"My fighting is done." He turned away, looking to his hut, desperately seeking to hide inside and lock the door forever.
"That's not the Orren I know," she mused. He scoffed under his breath, but she seemed to have noticed. "I'm surprised they haven't found you yet."
"I don't think anyone's looking, other than you."
Ahsoka pondered his quote for a moment, until she realized. She only felt the presence of vergences on Auratera, she only felt herself as the sole Force-user in the system, in the sector even. Other than the tree, something else connected to the Force was on the planet, but it was not Orren.
"You've cut yourself off…."
"There was nothing left for me."
"What are you talking about?" She inquired, her gaze still intense upon him, not letting up for even a moment.
"We lost, Ahsoka. The Jedi Order is dead," Orren said.
"The Order may be, but the Force is alive and well."
"The Force is broken."
"Because you feel no one out there?"
"Because it let me down."
"How?"
He took a second, gathering his thoughts and emotions, shutting his eyes.
"Since I was a child, the Force has never let me down. I relied on it before I even knew what it was. It saved me from worse fates than you could imagine." Orren took a breath, opening his eyes again. "At the end of the war, I felt a victory in the Force, and instead I was given a defeat. I failed, and the Force didn't save us. It led to the deaths of thousands of my men, and almost my whole squad, and then they tried to gun me down. We lost everything. I cannot let that go."
Ahsoka's face softened, and a slow warmth gathered in her cheeks to replace the cold stare that long permeated Orren's spirit.
"Orren," she started, "none of us are perfect."
Orren shook his head, yet she continued.
"Failure is a part of living, it is a powerful teacher. The Force guides us to our path. But it's up to us to walk that path. It doesn't do it for you. You should know that better than most. Master Plo told me about when he found you-.."
"Ahsoka, don't. Please."
She stopped herself.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
The long quiet that followed was unimaginable, but Ahsoka knew why he stopped her from continuing. She didn't want to prod, but needed to hear it from him to affirm her own inference that was made years ago. Deep down, she knew the truth, but needed to know in finality.
Stepping towards him and out from the immediate shadow of the Uneti's wide trunk, she posed the question.
"You lost him then?"
Orren felt it flooding back.
The silence in the Force was unprecedented. It felt fractured, lacking structure, lacking balance. There was nothing. No friends, no Jedi, no Order. It had all disappeared in the blink of an eye. The familiar presence of his master, always lingering no matter the distance across the galaxy, had burnt out with the rest of the fire. It was just him now.
"As far as I know. Yeah," he said painfully.
The silence enveloped them once more as Ahsoka quietly tended to her own grief. Plo Koon was the wise and honorable Jedi Master who had found her on Shili, and asked her parents if she could be brought to the Temple for training. They allowed it, wishing their beloved daughter well, and she waved goodbye to them from the rear seat of Plo's starfighter, cruising into the atmosphere and away into hyperspace.
She never saw her parents again. And now, she will never see Plo Koon again either.
Yet, the pain she felt was probably incomparable to Orren's. They were master and apprentice, the bond they shared had almost resembled father and son. Plo rescued Orren when he was young from a precarious situation, and while it was not truly Ahsoka's business, Orren had given his master permission to recall the tale to her should she ever ask. She knew that the severed connection would be hard on him, and she loaned sympathy silently.
"What about yours?" Orren asked, expecting only disappointment.
"Yeah."
He blinked a few times, driving the invading tears away through sheer willpower, then turned to face her for the first time in what felt like ages.
"So what is it you seek from me? Your presence here is dangerous for my village," he said poignantly.
She sighed, knowing the risk existed almost anywhere she went at this point.
"I need your help."
"I'm not leaving this planet, Ahsoka."
"You don't have to. But I need knowledge.. more knowledge."
"About?"
"The temple on Ossus."
"What about it?" Orren asked.
"It was raided. By the Empire."
"Raided? That's impossible, nobody could ever have found it."
"Somebody did, because I found leftover stormtrooper pieces and scattered debris all over the place."
"Stormtrooper?"
"You really don't get out much do you?" She asked with a half-smile.
"I've been right here for five years," Orren replied.
"Anyways. I believe the Empire stole something from this temple. The underground levels appeared to be a containment room for something. Not as strong as a prison, but something was being held there."
"Ahsoka, the temple has been empty for countless millennia."
"What if we were taught wrong?"
Orren mulled over the possibility.
Wouldn't be the first time.
"So what do you need me for?"
"I need to figure out what was down there so I can try and find it."
"I told you I'm not leaving."
"I know. I just need to know if you memorized the High Bendu or Whills alphabets. You were in a more advanced phase of training than I was."
"Yeah, that's not something I easily forget."
"Great. Could you just.. write down the symbols for me? I still have the runes memorized, I can try to piece it together."
"Runes?"
"On the floor there were runes carved, over what was the old mosaic."
"Give me a minute."
Orren retreated into his hut, only to return moments later with a bit of parchment and a pen. Pressed against his hand, he drew the symbols of two alphabets in order, before handing it over to her.
Ahsoka inspected the letters briefly, putting together some of the symbols in her mind to correlate with the rune patterns.
Orren watched her eyes light up as she seemingly worded it together.
"I got it!"
"Well, what is it?" His curiosity grew by the minute, as much as he swore it off subconsciously.
She mouthed the letters first to ensure it was correct, before proceeding to read the translation that was spelled out.
"The one lies dormant beneath, the one of light and dark. For all those who trespass, the shadow of chaos shall remain untouched. The chains shall remain bound. The judgment shall remain unbroken.."
"The Force is one," they read together, finishing the line. She shot him a look of satisfaction, but that soon resigned itself to confusion.
"What does this even mean though?" She asked.
"It sounds like whatever was down there, needed to stay there," Orren replied.
"Do you think the Empire might be trying to use Jedi artifacts to their advantage?"
"I'm not sure this sounds like an artifact, Ahsoka."
"Whatever it is, it's powerful. I could feel it in the temple. It filled me with this.. cold dread that I couldn't shake for hours after."
"You need to be careful then. I'm sure Palpatine is digging up whatever he can now that he thinks the Jedi are gone."
"He doesn't think that."
"What do you mean?"
"The Empire.." She sighed. "They have hunters."
"Hunters?"
"Force-users, equipped to hunt Jedi. I've faced one before." She remembered Raada.
"So they're still hunting us down?"
"Yes. That's why I was curious as to why they haven't found you yet. They use the Force to track us down."
"Which means you need to be careful Ahsoka," Orren pleaded, almost out of character compared to the onset of their meeting.
She nodded, folding the parchment into a few squares.
"Can I keep this?" She asked with a grin.
"It's yours," he said, obliging with no issue.
She started towards the bluff facing the village, arms crossed over her chest.
The wind had died down to just a faint breeze, echoing through the distant valleys and careening through the red trunked coniferous forests, leaving just a whisper that tickled at the hems of their robes.
He joined, standing alongside her in silence.
"Come with me Orren."
The man stood silent, strands of hair fluttering in the breeze.
"I can't."
"The galaxy needs us now. More than ever."
"Then go save it Ahsoka." He turned to her. "You have the support, I know you can."
She said nothing, watching the tiny villagers herd in and out of the village gate below. Closing her eyes, she inhaled softly, focusing on the moment if only for a second.
Releasing her breath, her eyes opened, and she looked to Orren. The deep blues of her irises gleamed in the afternoon sun, hiding years of memories.
Without saying another word, she began to walk away.
"Ahsoka," he called out.
"I'm still a believer in Orren Kara," she said, pulling the hood back over her head. "Even if you're not."
Orren stopped in his tracks on the climax of the trail, and watched Ahsoka descend down the bluff towards the village, and eventually, out of sight.