Hi again everyone! Hope everyone is happy and safe and healthy! I just finished replying to everyone's comments and can I just say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all you kind words and encouragement! It's such a great feeling having your work well received, and I honestly could have asked for better readers. Here's to you guys! *cheers*
Not much has changed since I've last seen y'all, apart from studies and normal life things. Super impatient for more Star Wars content now that the Bad Batch is done. Can't wait for the next one (Book of Boba Fett?) Also, let me know how Visions is, and if it's worth watching. Not suuuper keen on it as everything else, but eager to hear your opinions on it!
Anyways, here's Chapter 7 for you. Love you all!
PREVIOUSLY:
"Even if it's only Kix," he promises. "Even if it's only Anakin. I'll wake you up. And I won't leave until you do."
She doesn't say anything. Just stares sleepily and fearfully at him, like her fatigue is coming too fast for her to deal with. But when she searches for something in his gaze, which he tries to keep as gentle as possible, she slowly leans back onto her pillows and nods slightly, before she turns her eyes to the ceiling to stare at the sterile white paint.
It takes another reassurance, then another, and when he promises for the last time, her eyes flutter closed, and they don't open again.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Loss and Reason
The next day on the Resolute is much quieter than the first. It's also more overwhelming at the same time.
True to his word, Rex is seated right by Ahsoka when she finally wakes up. He doesn't notice her at first, too busy tapping away at his datapad like he used to when she was younger. The memory is a fond one, but unlike before, she doesn't have the immature urge to groan loudly or gesture dramatically to gain his attention. If he realises she's awake, he might get her to talk, and she doesn't want that.
So she just lies still and takes in the familiar and unfamiliar sight of him while she has the freedom of discretion. It's not something that she's had in a while.
He doesn't stay for too long though. It seems that time hasn't stopped for her, and Rex's time, like it has always been, is taken up by the endless war. He looks up at her when his comm sounds, and when he sees that she's already awake, he just smiles apologetically and excuses himself.
There wasn't much word of galactic events on Kadavo, and certainly not to slaves, so it takes Ahsoka by surprise that three years hasn't been long enough to end a war. In fact it's a little disheartening, how little progress the Republic seems to have made. Perhaps if the Republic were to reach the Zygerrian empire sooner, things could have been different.
Not that it matters anymore. It's no longer her war to fight, and whether the galaxy has found its peace, or continued to be war torn, it's not hers to return to. There's nothing to be gained from wishful thinking except disappointment. It does make her miss Rex's company just a little though. Being alone somehow just doesn't feel as reassuring as it once did.
Kix checks in with her once or twice to monitor her wounds. He expresses his protests in not being able to redress them, but Ahsoka doesn't allow him to do anything more than eye the burns and the cuts from a distance as she gingerly unwraps the bandages for him, before hastily rewrapping them back up herself to hide her exposed skin. She won't have him touch her, and she's relieved that he doesn't push her on it.
She's very much aware about what she's done, letting Rex and Kix to let her guard down some, and it's a mistake. It's a mistake to think that she's somewhat safe, left to her own peace and quiet, and she learns it only a few hours later.
The medbay fills up unexpectedly. Her bunk is the furthest back, and at some point, a medic comes in to draw the curtains around her bunk to provide her with some privacy, but it does nothing to hide her from the raucous shouts and laughter of troopers as they come and go.
The sound stems from some of her fondest memories, of long forgotten moments with her brothers. Except that now, it's far less comforting than she remembers.
The quiet room becomes loud, overwhelming, and Ahsoka just about flinches at every voice raised above normal speech. They talk about violence, about who won against who in a spar, who landed hits on who, and promises of petty revenge. It's all light banter, Ahsoka knows this. It's just words and taunts spoken out of their post-training thrill. And yet Ahsoka only now realises that the single mention of a playful wrestle is enough to remind her of a time she was beaten to the floor, blood in her mouth and unable to defend herself.
They're clone troopers after all. Trained to dominate in a fight, and right now, more than capable of overpowering her if they chose to.
It's unnerving, and frightening, and Ahsoka jolts in alarm when a squad finds themselves standing too close to her curtains, their silhouettes moving animatedly and their hands brushing the thin cloth as they make wild gestures.
Quietly, so no one hears her movements, she eases herself off the bunk, stumbles painfully and unsteadily to her feet, and hunches defensively with her back to the wall, ready to either strike or flee if a trooper happens to find himself too close for Ahsoka to handle. She hasn't decided which one yet, the prospect of both terrify her.
In the end, it doesn't matter. She doesn't end up having to make that choice, because just as quickly as the medbay had filled up, it empties, until she's once again left to herself and to her pounding heart that she can almost feel pulsing through her montrals. Then it's just her and the bunk. And the curtains.
Curtains that wrap around her already little square of space, pushing her closer and closer into a corner that only grows smaller and smaller.
She's in the cage of her master's ship, curling into herself to feel less trapped. The constant hum of the medbay equipment turns into the hum of an active shock-leash, with the end attached to her collar threatening to bathe her in white hot pain if she moves too much. She can almost feel the jerks of the ship as it enters and exits hyperspace lanes, and she can almost hear her master's harsh voice in the cockpit.
On her way back to the mines on Kadavo if she's lucky. On her way to his estate on Zygerria if she's not.
With a small yelp, she jumps forward and rips the curtains open, darting outside their dangerous confines. The room is completely empty now. It's spacious, brightly lit and sterile, the complete opposite to any place she was kept during the last three years. Ahsoka knows that it should be enough to snap her out of… whatever delusion she's seeing, but she feels like she's suffocating anyway.
The bed. She has to get away from the bed.
Gasping and whimpering, and stupidly not considering the consequences, she makes a split decision and sprints out of the medbay and into the hallway.
The regret is almost instantaneous. The sound of loud chatter is everywhere, no matter if she takes a right or a left. It's a miracle that she doesn't bump into anyone on her flight, but each close call is like a shock to her system, and eventually she finds herself aimlessly running away from nothing, towards nothing. Lost on the very ship she used to know so well, and blinded by fear.
Still, as time passes, no one comes for her, and as minutes, maybe hours, pass, the rushing noise turns out to be the blood racing through her montrals. No one comes for her. No one orders her back to the medbay or traps her in small spaces. And once she really takes the time to look, she realises that she's not actually lost.
She's at the back of the Venator. At the place she used to run to all the time when she was younger, when she didn't want to be found. Here, there are only naval officers and technicians, clones wearing their soft grey uniforms rather than the intimidating plastoid she's used to. All too caught up in their work, and all too busy to bother themselves with hiding padawans. Or in this case, hiding slaves. And they're considerably more restrained than the infantrymen, talking amongst each other in soft tones. They don't even give her a second glance as she hurries past them.
The quiet in this part of the ship has let her pulse lower considerably, but she's still on edge. She's still not quite alone, and still much too easy to find if someone was to go looking. She continues forward, searching for a place out of the corridors that she can hide herself. She passes a few closed doors, leaning towards them to listen out for any noise. When she thinks she's found an empty one, she presses the control panel to open the door, and freezes in shock.
There's a trooper in here. He's in his blacks, his armoured plates scattered around him on the durasteel floor, and there's a bucket of blue paint next to him and a dirty paintbrush in his hand.
His back is facing her, so he doesn't notice her standing in the doorway right away. He just hums to himself and shifts on his knees as he fidgets with the brush, deep in thought.
She's about to leave when he suddenly whirls around at the noise and stares at her. His eyes grow wide for a moment, and his mouth drops open in shock. His eyes travel from her face to her right lekku to her medbay gown like he doesn't exactly know what he's seeing. But then he shakes his head, gives off a shy smile and raises a slow, tentative hand.
"Hello," he calls, his hand giving a small wave. Ahsoka nearly darts out of the room in panic, but he's not moving to stand up or move towards her, or telling her that she needs to go back, so she forces herself to keep her feet grounded. Her courage is a lie, but one that she doesn't quite want exposed around an unfamiliar face.
He's… younger, she notices. A shiny. His voice is less gravelly and his face is a little softer than Rex's. He reminds her a little of some of the boys back in the day, back when they were all younger. The trooper is innocent and unassuming, though he's old enough to have grown his hair out. Shinies are usually shipped out of Kamino with standard cuts, and this trooper's hair sits in a small bun. He's no danger, at least for now, but she still doesn't dare to move.
He's still looking at her a little expectantly, waiting for her to respond. She doesn't have to, but she swallows the lump in her throat anyway and puts on a pretense of bravery.
"Hello," she says back, more like croaks with her voice hoarse from disuse, and he positively beams at her, taking her off guard. She hasn't seen a smile like that in years.
"Are you lost?" he asks her. "I can help you get where you need to be." Then he eyes her medbay gown again, and his grin widens. "Or do you need help hiding from Kix?"
She shakes her head no. To which question, she doesn't really know, but she doesn't want him to take her anywhere. Not with so many other loud troopers on board.
He beckons her forward with his hand, and she steps away from the doorway to allow the door to hiss closed. It should probably alarm her, being alone with someone that she doesn't know, but he's much quieter than the others, and she trusts him just a little more than anyone else she might bump into. That's dangerous, she's already learnt that lesson once since she'd woken up. She inches forward slowly and takes a seat on the floor far away from where he is.
"I'm Tup!" he tells her happily, not at all put off by the distance, or by her presence. "I just came back from my first campaign, so I'm painting my armour. You can watch if you want."
Ahsoka pulls her legs towards herself and nods slightly at him, hoping that it's enough to please him and take his attention off of her. He looks satisfied that she's staying, and gets back to work. His cheerful face turns to a frown as he thinks, tapping the end of the brush against his knee while he stares at the blank helmet on his lap.
She used to love watching her brothers paint their armour. She loved helping them even more, laughing and squealing in indignation when one of them playfully flicked the blue onto her orange skin. Without even thinking about what she's doing, she reaches forward and runs a hand lightly over an abandoned brush from the floor.
Tup is staring openly at her again, and she panics. She yanks her hand away and, and inches slightly closer to the door in case he's angry that she touched his things. Her master certainly was, and rightfully so. She's a slave. A skug. She doesn't get to touch things.
"I'm sorry, I-"
"No please, go ahead!" He waves her off and pushes a few of the armoured plates towards her. "I'd love the help. I'm trying to hurry so it can dry by the time I need to go back to the barracks. I just know they'll smear it all if it's still wet."
Still cautious, but not wanting to bring out any anger in him, she reaches forward slowly to bring the pieces a little closer to inspect. A shoulder pad, rerebrace, gauntlet and glove. It's the plates that run down his right arm, from his shoulder to his hand.
"Here, this is what my left arm looks like." He gestures to a couple more painted plates on the floor that have been left to dry. There's a single thick blue stroke on all of them, joining together to form a line that would run down his arm. "I'm not really sure what else to paint yet, so I'm just marking them blue for now." Then he pushes the bucket of paint towards her too. "Blue for the 501st, of course."
She doesn't really respond, and he must take it as her not knowing about battalion colours, because he starts to explain the concept to her. Blue for the 501st, Orange for the 212th, Green for the 91st. She knows all of this, but it's still nice to hear him talk about it. No, nice isn't the right word. It's distracting, and it takes his attention slightly off of her. She dips her brush into the blue and starts to paint while she listens to the merits of each battalion colour.
"Plus it's my favourite colour, it reminds me of Kamino where me and my batchmates grew up. What about you?" he glances up at her. "Do you have a favourite?"
He asked her a question. It's strange that he cares about her preferences, but she doesn't question him. "Blue," she says quietly, to please him. Tup claps his hands in delight.
"Well that's great! You'll fit right in then. Most of the guys here like blue too. For obvious reasons."
They stay like that for a while, Ahsoka painting quietly as she listens to Tup's happy chatter. He talks about Kamino, training with his squad during the day and sabacc games at night, and their excitement when they were assigned to the 501st on their first deployment.
Ahsoka hardly notices when he stops talking. When she eventually does, and glances up at him, he's looking longingly at his helmet. There's a tiny mark of paint on it that wasn't there before, and he's staring at it, though his gaze looks far away. It's a small teardrop, painted on the right of his visor.
"I lost a batchmate on my first campaign. It was on Umbara," he explains to her sadly. "His name was Dogma, and he just wanted to do the right thing."
The explanation is vague, and Ahsoka doesn't really understand what he means by that, but she of all people knows better than to push.
His fingers hover carefully over the wet paint. He doesn't touch it, not when it will smear so easily, but he seems to draw some kind of strength from it, because after a moment he finds his smile again. He looks up at Ahsoka watching him.
"It's to remind me of what I lost. My brother and my best friend, and all the other brothers as well. It's so I can look at it and miss them and remind myself of who I'm fighting for. I'm fighting for them. It's what they would want."
He chuckles quietly to himself.
"And who knows? Maybe when my other brothers see it on my helmet, it can be a reminder for them too!"
Ahsoka nods, as she processes what he just said. She stares at it a little longer before she drags her eyes away from it to continue her own work. Tup is looking at her thoughtfully.
"Did you lose someone too?" he asks tentatively.
"I…" No she didn't. Not really, not in the way he means. Whether she was wanted by them or not, the people she had always feared to lose were all perfectly fine. Scattered around the Venator as if nothing had changed. No, she hasn't lost anyone.
And yet she has, because she was the one that was taken away from them, and now that she's back, it's like she's been jammed into a mechanical system that she was once a part of, but it has worked without her for so long that she no longer fits.
She's never felt more alone.
"I lost myself," she tells him.
"Oh," Tup says quietly. She doesn't know if he understands or not, but he doesn't ask either. It's a small mercy, because she doesn't know how she could even begin to explain.
They sit in silence for a bit, content to ponder their own individual thoughts as they let themselves get lost in the repeated strokes of their brushes. Combination of the movements and the quietness is surprisingly calming. It's only after a few minutes that Ahsoka realises that her once tensed muscles have almost fully relaxed, and at some point she had moved to sit with her back to the doorway without noticing.
She shifts herself slightly to correct her mistake and keep it in her vision once again, but there's surprisingly no relief that comes with the sight. She wasn't really scared in the first place.
"You know, you can use my helmet too if you want," Tup tells her after some time. She frowns lightly, because it doesn't quite make sense. What she's lost isn't quite the same. How? she wants to ask him. "The teardrop can be for you too. To remind yourself of what you lost, and why you fight. You fight for you."
Oh. Ahsoka smiles sadly at the words. If only. But she's not in the fight anymore. Any part of her that might have had the strength to fight has been lost with the rest of her. Buried deep in the mines. Maybe once, but not anymore.
"Thanks Tup," she says anyway.
When Tup arrives at the barracks at the end of the day, he's wearing a wide grin on his face.
That's not exactly a surprise to anyone. Not even his batchmates have ever seen him without a smile. Happiness is consistent with Tup, even amongst war. It's rare for a trooper, even if he's still a shiny.
What is surprising though, is his armour. It's no longer plain white, but laced in 501st royal blue. It starts at his shoulder plates and runs down to the end of his gloves. The strokes are thick and bold and proud, and it takes everyone's attention off the tiny detail on his helmet, too busy fawning over the more noticeable marks.
"I had help, you know," Tup tells his batchmates once most of his brothers have said their congratulations and left him alone to migrate towards his bunk. "I found a girl, and she helped me paint my armour."
"A girl!" One of them exclaims, throwing his hands wildly into the air. "Pah! Tup you're a dreamer. There are no girls on the Resolute!"
"No, it's true! We're even friends now! I'm telling the truth!"
"Sure thing, Tup," another one says with the shake of a head as he looks disbelievingly at his other batchmates as if to say, Can you believe him?
"I'd say he breathed in a bit too much paint while he was painting!" the third brother laughs. "Does this imaginary girl have a name?"
Tup frowns, like it just occurred to him that she never told her. "Well, I forgot to ask, but-"
"Hah!"
The delightful bickering continues for the majority of the evening, and eventually bleeds into the night cycle. It's no use of course, because Tup's squad is stubborn, and he remains brushed off and ignored by everyone. Well, everyone except for one trooper.
The Captain believes Tup. He smiles quietly to himself as he continues to listen to Tup's insistences from his own bunk in the corner of the barracks. He'd been looking for her all day when she'd been reported missing, before she had come back to the medbay on her own after a few hours. Looking down at his datapad as usual, he quietly listens in as Tup attempts to recount the story of Ahsoka Tano to his unbelieving batchmates.
And there you have it! Another character into the mix (and the most adorable one ever! Absolutely love Tup with all my heart, Clone Wars did him dirty :(( Not gonna lie, I planned for Fives to find Ahsoka in her hiding spot, but then Tup just slipped out! I think I prefer it this way. Let me know what you guys think though! Curious if you're more Tup&Ahsoka or Fives&Ahsoka.
And that's all for now! Feedback is lovely!
See you all for Chapter 8. Stay safe!