Hello Everybody and all the rest of you.
I know I know, I should finish up some of my other stuff... and I will... probably? At some point at least but I had this brain thingy better known as an idea and lo and behold. I couldn't not write it. So! What does that mean for this story? I don't honestly know. I've written about 125k words on it already. I'm going to upload around 20-25K words a month. It's going to be fifteen chapters long at about the length of this one. Other than that? I don't honestly know. I'll try to be consistent with this but sometimes life happens and sometimes I end up writing something that won't ever see the light of day, well you get it.
Massive thanks to Valirys Reinhald for taking the time to actually make something of my mad ideas. Big shout out to Lyrical for giving me a title for the story. I know, I know. Guy writes 125k words on a story and he can't think of a title, don't sue me. I'm serious don't.
Generic something about how I'm not JK Rowling or Disney? I don't actually know who owns the intellectual property of Star Wars but either way I'm not making money off of it. So that's that. I think? Probably.
Please Enjoy
WaskeHD (Kisses)
"Shit shit shit shit shit."
Smoke had started to fill the VCX-100 light freighter from one of the compartments near the three thrusters, two of them having already been blown out by the bounty hunters chasing her. The large colourful planet was approaching fast as she tried her best to make sure that her piece of crap stolen spacecraft didn't burn up as she entered the atmosphere. She had always prided herself on being somewhat of a mechanical genius, not as much as her former master SkyGuy but more than enough that she had managed to turn the stolen freighter from junk to an almost serviceable ship. Not that it had been easy to find the parts or fix it since she had been wrongfully arrested and thrown out of the sanctimonious and holier-than-thou Jedi Order. She had barely made her way out of the Senate District on Coruscant before the first bounty hunters had turned up and chased her down into the undercity. No, life had not been good to Ashoka Tano in the last couple of months as she had tried to flee from whomever had tried to kill her and deliver her head to the highest bidder.
The young Togruta female had learned some harsh realities in the past months. First of all, everybody says they like a war hero until the day that a fat enough bounty is placed on one's head. Second of all, bounty hunters feared the retaliation of the Jedi Order but they did not fear a single former Jedi Padawan no matter how deadly she was. Third of all, she learned that without the Jedi Order she had nothing to her name except for her clothes and the two lightsabers she had built for herself when she went from being a youngling to a Padawan and lastly, looting anyone trying to kill you was fair game or turning the few survivors over to the bounty hunter guild for their bounty. Turns out most bounty hunters had a bounty on themselves. It had been the only way for her to survive so far and as far as she was concerned the Jedi could stuff their platitudes about not owning things until they'd been in a situation where the choice was between looting or starving.
Her life had been so strange looking back at it. She was taken, and she firmly believed it was taken, from her mother when she had barely been able to walk. It was almost insidious the way the Jedi Order would gather the children so that they never truly formed attachments to their parents. Looking back at it from the outside it was almost anathema to her as a Togruta, a race of people who on a genetic level was dispositioned to the communal way of life. Not that she really disliked master Plo Koon, who had been the one to find her. He was the closest thing to a father he had called her little Soka as she grew up with her clan watching over her struggles and her triumphs. It was also he who had somehow managed to convince SkyGuy to take her on as a Padawan when no one else had stepped forward to teach her. She had watched as all of the other younglings from her clan had either found a master or had failed to take the step from youngling to Padawan learner.
SkyGuy, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. She had been disrespectful, foolhardy, stubborn, and headstrong when she had first met him. She still cringed back at some of her mistakes in the past couple of years under his tutelage. He had been the only one in her corner when she had been wrongfully accused by the Jedi High Council and forsaken by the Order. He had been the one tracking down Barriss Offee who had been the real perpetrator of the bombing of the Jedi Temple. He had been the only one to try and save her. Safe to say that she was feeling bitter and angry about her situation. So what if she had been prone to aggressiveness, and sure she might have been haughty and looked down on both her enemies and everyone else not a Jedi, but that didn't make her want to blow up the only home she could remember. The fact that the Council had given her over to the Senate as a sacrificial lamb had shown just how much they had valued her. The only regret she had left in life was the fact that she hadn't been allowed to face the Knight trials as it would be grounds for the Council to stop her master from obtaining a spot amongst them.
She closed her eyes, fighting hard against the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. She had managed to vector her ship enough so she didn't burn up as she entered the atmosphere but doing so had burnt out the last of her thrusters, breaking them as she had manoeuvred the ship. There was literally nothing more that she could do to survive. She tried to meditate to feel the force, demanding answers that it seemed unwilling or unable to give as the metal around her heated up until it started smoking. There was supposedly no sound in space around her but that didn't stop the unboard navigation console from sparking out fizzling as she sat in the pilot's seat. She wasn't even sure what the name of the planet in front of her was, or even if she would survive. The last thought on her mind before the ship crashed was to ask herself whether she would be allowed to join with the force upon her death.
Then everything went black as her ship hit the ground exploding around her.
Pain, so much pain was running through her whole body. It was all she could feel as she opened her eyes. She had expected to find herself lying in the middle of the wreckage which had once been her ship, instead she found herself staring up at what looked like a stone ceiling. She heard more than saw someone entering the room she was lying in, her montrals working overtime as she tried to locate the intruder.
She heard a voice trying to tell her something but the language was not one she had ever encountered before. She tried to turn her head only for her to hiss in pain as she pulled at the burn injuries all over her back and neck. Two strong hands gently lifted her up doing their best not to strain her weakened body as she was. Her first impression of the human in front of her was fear, she could spot a warrior from a light year away then she noticed the eyes. She had never seen a human with eyes that shade of green before. That wasn't to say that it wasn't native to the planet she had crash landed on, but they were still taking her breath away. They looked so old on the young man's face. He seemed to be around SkyGuy's age or maybe a little younger. Her gaze travelled down towards his lips, lingering until their movement shook her out of her thoughts. She blushed a deeper shade of orange as she realised that she hadn't responded to whatever it was that he had been saying.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak your language," Ahsoka said, wincing as she felt her throat close up.
She gestured with her hand towards her throat miming a drinking gesture with her hand. Recognition seemed to flicker across the human's face as he quickly and fluidly moved out of the small room giving her a moment to look at her surroundings. It was almost spartan in the way it looked. She was surprised to find several books sitting on a nearby wooden shelf. She hadn't actually seen a book outside of the Jedi Archive and even there they were mostly for novelty's sake. Everything had long been transcribed onto holocrons or datapads. Stone walls with a small see through window made of some sort of glass or crystal that she had never seen before. It must be some sort of thing native to the planet. She turned her head back towards the wooden door as it opened back up. The human had just returned with a large pitcher filled with water and a tall glass he seemed to be filling up as he walked. Handing her the glass he took a step back watching her in a way that was both hesitant, almost defensive and confused. It was almost like he had never seen a Togruta before. She lifted the glass towards her lips and almost made it through the first sip before she lost her grip on it, spilling the water down upon herself, dropping it down on the floor hearing it smash into pieces. She instantly turned her head towards her captor. Frightened, she moved backwards towards the wall as he quickly made his way towards her. Fearing the worst she closed her eyes in trepidation as she waited for the inevitable beating, the standard fare for most slaves.
Her eyes opened in surprise when she first felt something in the Force and then heard the sound of water being poured into the glass anew. This time the human seemed to want to feed her the water instead of letting her drink by herself. She wanted to fight against him, against this helplessness she was feeling. It was all too much. She had been running for so long trying to find a place to hide, to lay low until the worst blew over but here she was on an unfamiliar planet, her ship destroyed, and injured beyond anything she had ever been before at the mercy of a stranger who obviously didn't seem to understand Galactic Basic. She had heard the stories about what happened to young female Togrutas. They were only the slightly more carnivorous Twi'lek according to the gossip going on about her species throughout the galaxy, probably helped along by the rumour that their sharp teeth secreted a venom that would paralyse anyone they bit or that they ate Thimiars raw, a small rodent looking animal native to Shili. Still, Togrutas were almost as popular as the most sought after and sold race of females throughout the galaxy. She drank greedily from the glass in front of her lips as the tears started to stream down her cheeks.
She found herself becoming surprised when instead of a beating for spilling the water and breaking the glass, she felt strong arms circling around her waist pulling her head into a distinctively male chest. Soft noises hitting her montrals as he seemed to be whispering something at them gently caressing her mal'lekku as she clung to the only person likely around for miles. Time seemed to flow around her as she finally found herself relaxing, trying not to aggravate her injuries further until there was nothing left inside of her. Feeling the human move away from her, she whimpered at the loss of his touch, the security his arms provided her falling away. Nervously, she turned her slightly puffed up eyes towards his face hoping against all hope that he wouldn't be disgusted by her sobbing. She relaxed further when she found a genuine smile on the male's face, it reminded her of the way SkyGuy would smile at her after she had had a good cry when everything became too much. She wanted to apologise for the broken glass but when she looked down on the floor to gesture towards it she stopped mid motion as she couldn't see any trace of it being around. Turning back towards the human when he spoke something to her, she saw another filled glass in front of her face as he gently helped her drink the second glass as well before he placed it down on the table next to the bed, leaving the half-filled pitcher next to it before he stood up and left the room one more time.
Ahsoka looked towards the half-open door, not really sure what she was supposed to do. She tried to move her legs but the pain running through her body as she tried was too much for her to bear. Leaning back against the headboard she tried to grab the pitcher of water but once more her strength failed her.
"At least my rescuer seems to be the good sort," she thought to herself as she closed her eyes, trusting her montrals to hear the human when he came back.
Thankfully it didn't take long before he arrived with a steaming bowl. Embarrassingly, she heard her stomach growl at the smell of food. It smelled divine to her senses. Even more embarrassingly for her she couldn't hold the metal spoon in her own hands. She hadn't been spoon-fed like that since just after she joined Clan Clawmouse in the temple. She had almost eaten the full bowl when she felt a wave of exhaustion hit her. With her apparent need for food sated, she found her eyes quickly closing unwillingly. Yawning, she felt the same strong arms helping her to lie down as the blanket was tugged up under her chin. It didn't take long before sleep claimed her once more.
As Ashoka fell asleep the human found himself sitting in a hardback chair looking down at the bed. Harry Potter did not know what to make of the young woman in front of him. She was decidedly alien with a capital A. Since arriving in this place, he had been alone. He had probably spent close to a year in this foreign place. If he was honest with himself he still wasn't sure if this place was hell and now his personal demon had arrived in a burning metal box falling from the sky. Everything around him was hostile from the plants to the animals to the bugs. He had only survived because of the large amount of potions and books he had brought with him as he had walked through the Veil of Death on Earth. Even if he was pretty sure that the demon looking alien in front of him was meant to torture him in this plane of existence, he would never have been able to just let her die as he came across her crash site. She had looked so fragile lying in the rubble of metal pieces. He had brought her home a little over two sunrises ago. He wasn't even sure if it took twenty four hours for the sun to rise and fall in this place.
Half her body had been burned. Thankfully some of the plants around this place had the correct properties for a fastworking burn salve and other potions he had been able to recreate. That was the other thing about this place. It sang with magic. It was everywhere all around him. The beast were filled with magic and the plants and trees even more so. It had taken him a week of testing just to find different things that would have been edible for him. Then he had begun building this house around him. Since he didn't see the point of moving around he had decided to just live out his existence until Death finally came for him at some point or he went mad, though it was up for debate whether he currently was sane. Still, he hadn't expected guests in his own personal version of hell so he decided to spend the time while his patient slept in his bed making another room to his house. It wasn't really a house as much as it was a complex of stone cubes attached to more stone cubes. He could probably have expanded it all with runes but whenever he had used magic in this place he would always be set upon by the local terror more known as the wildlife. Giant mantises, manti, whatever and what looked like reptillian monsters with assholeshaped teethy mouths were the most common. Turns out that roasted asshole mouth was edible and tasted alright if you prepared it with this foliage he had found close to his house.
His thoughts wandered back to the female sleeping in his bed as he worked. He had tried telling her that he meant her no harm but she didn't seem to understand him and he certainly hadn't been able to understand her. He wished he knew how to quickly learn a language like he remembered Barty Crouch Senior had done, but nobody else had known how he had done that. Nobody had the time to learn over a hundred and fifty languages without some sort of magical cheat. Maybe it was in one of the many books he had managed to salvage before making the trip. He shook his head trying to clear it of those thoughts. He didn't want to dwell on his past. It would do him no good. Even if he could go back it would do him no good. There was nothing left for him on Earth.
He finally managed to close off the new stone cube and reinforce it with runes when the sun was skimming the horizon turning from day into night. He had to get inside. The nights were freezing while the days were almost scorchingly hot and humid. That had actually been the initial reason why he had assumed he was in hell. Now he wasn't so sure. People didn't just fall out of the sky in big metal things in hell, probably. He tried to remember what Uncle Vernon had told him about hell all those years ago. For the life of him, he couldn't remember that far back. Wondering about his relatives fate, Harry made his way back inside. There was only one door to the outside and if you didn't know where it was you wouldn't be able to find it on either side of it, seeing as it was indistinguishable from the wall around it. He made his way back to his kitchen. There were several things in there but most of it was just a primitive stove with a running fire sitting next to a cooling cabinet that he had managed to bring with him where he kept some of the prepared meat. Thankfully, he had been able to analyse the runes making it work so he could reproduce it in a larger cube where he kept the carcasses of whatever he had managed to kill. That was also one of two rooms he had expanded out of necessity, the other being a large library where he had slowly sorted the almost massive amount of books he had brought with him. It was either that or his house would stick out even further than it already did. One thing he had learned was to stay as inconspicuous as possible. The rest of the stuff he had brought was still sitting in a couple of cavernous trunks by the wall, all stuff he didn't know if he would ever need but had decided to just keep at the off chance that he would. Like now when he needed to find an extra bed. He could have transfigured or even conjured one but it was dangerous making something out of magic. It was like a beacon, drawing everything towards him, so he had quickly begun to keep his magic use to an absolute minimum.
Checking on his guest one last time before turning in, he found her sleeping fretfully, seemingly lost in a great nightmare. Making a split decision, Harry brought over a wooden chair and sat down next to the sleeping woman running his hand along the white striped thing on top of her head. It kind of felt like rubbery skin to his fingers and they seemed to twitch under his gentle caress, somehow managing to smooth the fearful frown on the young female. He had a feeling that somewhere out there someone was laughing at him or plotting to make his life more interesting than it already was.
It had taken a week for Ahsoka to get out of bed by herself. She had managed to find out that the human answered to Harry after they had each pointed at themselves saying their name. They had managed to teach each other what water was called, stew, bathroom and a few dozen other words between them but other than that they hadn't really made all that much progress. They had barely been able to spend time together between Harry the human doing stuff around the house and her sleeping or meditating to further her healing. She had watched in fascination as Harry had used the force and an assortment of different things from salves to foul smelling concoctions to help her along. She had expected to be bedridden for months if not longer with the amount of injuries she had sustained from her crash landing. Slumping against the doorframe, she stood there watching Harry bustle around what looked like a primitive kitchen with a large round pot hanging on a metal stick over a fire next to what looked like a stone and metal stove over another fire. It smelled delicious but she was wondering what it was. She had gotten Harry to help her outside, so she could see where she had landed. She was simultaneously relieved and terrified that she had crashed on Felucia. The planet was the closest thing to a death trap that one could find themselves on.
Thoughts about what could have happened if Harry hadn't found her or if he had decided not to bother about her had overwhelmed her as she stared into the forest of flower trees. She should have been dead more than once just arriving here but she would have been even more dead if an Acklay or Rancor had found her first. She would have to see if she could salvage anything from the wreckage of her ship. She hadn't seen her two lightsabers either in the stone house. Maybe they were destroyed on impact or Harry just hadn't been able to distinguish them from the other rubble.
"Food," the dark haired man announced to her, placing two bowls of stew and two plates of what looked like some form of vegetables or root on the large wooden table next to the kitchen.
Ahsoka made her way over to one of the chairs, sitting down bringing one of the bowls towards herself. It was the same thing he had made for her all week. She didn't want to complain especially since it was likely hard for anyone to procure food on Felucia but she was almost missing the field rations that she had gotten as a general in the Republic's army.
"Delicious," Ahsoka said, biting into the meat of the stew.
Another word came out of Harry's mouth that she didn't understand. She had tried opening herself up to the Force to understand him, but it was like he wasn't even there. She just couldn't seem to sense him, which made absolutely no sense. The sink and the fridge hummed in the Force. The shower in the bathroom did as well. She still wasn't sure where the water came from but every time Harry ran his finger over an indent in the wall water would fall down on her face and that wasn't even considering the last two rooms she hadn't looked into before. They practically sang in the Force but Harry himself did not. She was working on the theory that Harry or his family had somehow stumbled upon a forgotten Jedi abode long since lost to time on this Outer Rim planet. She would have a look around the next time he left the house whatever he did outside when he wasn't there. She would have asked, but when their ability to talk consisted of a few words the opportunity for conversation was limited. He probably wouldn't mind, especially after he had spent all that medicine on saving her life, and what a surprise those concoctions had been. A week had gone by and except for feeling weak she didn't even have a scar from what had been truly horrendous burns. She even found that older scars were almost gone if they hadn't fully disappeared from her body as she had last given herself a lookover the last time she had been in the shower.
Looking down at her body, she ran her fingers over the clothes Harry had somehow seemed to pull out of nowhere. It wasn't a style she had seen anywhere in the galaxy before. The leg things were made of a tough blue material but the way they had seemingly needed to be rolled up her legs had almost made think they were a size too small but they had covered her down to her ankles. Either way they did make her butt look amazing if Harry's reaction had been anything to go by. She had never really found anyone attractive before but the gentle warrior healer without an understandable language was awakening something long forgotten inside of her.
"Outside," Harry said, gathering her attention back towards him.
That had been another word she had taught him. He had pointed out the open door one time and said the same word over and over again until she had repeated it then he had expectantly waited until she had told him it was called outside in Basic. That's what he had then said every time since before he would disappear for hours on end.
"Home," Ahsoka said, pointing at herself and then around the house.
"Home." Harry nodded, tasting the word as it left his lips.
Ahsoka's face split into a beautiful smile. She hoped he understood the meaning of the word as she had meant it. She might only have been here a week, but this stone house away from everybody, away from the war, away from the Republic and the Jedi Order and the Separatists with Harry had begun to slowly replace the feeling of home she had once had for the Temple on Coruscant. Here with Harry on this deadly planet also called Felucia. Feeling courageous, she gave him a quick hug before he made it all the way towards the door.
She giggled like a young woman at the shocked look on his face as he stood still one hand on the expanse of wall where the door was hidden, his mouth open as his brain seemed to have shut down. Gently, she closed his mouth with one hand before brushing the shoulder of his large leather jacket made of some sort of reptilian skin. It looked like Rancor hide but also didn't. She almost debated kissing him on the cheek but found herself flushing in embarrassment for even thinking about it, even if she had initially thought of the idea as a way to tease Harry.
Finally, Harry seemed to snap back into the same plane of existence as her, sending her a somewhat bemused smile before he ran his hand over her montrals and lekku before he disappeared out the door, leaving Ahsoka to spend her day healing and looking around the house. Harry wouldn't mind, would he?
Outside of the house getting ready to leave, Harry gently shook his head as he made his way into the nearest forest. They were almost out of his stocked reptilian meat and vegetables. He hadn't really been able to go hunting while Ahsoka had been bedridden. Instead he had been spending his days sorting his books and reading up on warding to make the house extra secure and hide it from the massive predators of this planet and hadn't that been a surprise when Ahsoka had managed to show him by drawing a crude map of the galaxy. Apparently the Veil of Death had sent him to a planet called Felucia. He had fadingly hoped that he would have run into Sirius here and an optimistic part of him had hoped Sirius was somewhere on the planet or somehow had survived long enough to leave the planet but after half a year he had given up on that thought. Lestrange had hit him with something even before he fell through the Veil, and even if it had only been a stunner Sirius would likely have been eaten by one of the reptilian assholes or the giant mantises.
Hunting the reptilians had become almost disgustingly easy for him. The first time around he had almost been eaten by one when it had found him. They had kept coming until he had somehow suppressed his magic until they couldn't find him any longer. Now that he was constantly hiding it and knew how to lure them into a trap, he had begun leisurely hunting them. He didn't want to kill all of them if they played a distinctive role in the ecology, but by himself it would take him almost a month to eat all of the meat and with Ahsoka there it might be something like a week and a half before he would have to hunt again. That girl could really eat and he really shouldn't have given her those jeans. The way they had almost looked painted on her was more than a little distracting, as was the small band she used to cover her chest. He had tried getting her to wear a shirt but somehow as soon as she had been able to move she had gone through the pile of women's clothes and found all of the crop tops in there dismissing anything that would cover up too much. At least the jeans were stretchy and he had more than twenty pairs in her size in his clothing trunk.
Finding his way to his hunting grounds he quietly redid his traps. They were almost hideously simple but somehow those beasts seemed to want to eat magicals more than anything else. So, he would simply transfigure a rock into a cow, overload it with his magic and wait for the beast to approach. As soon as it grabbed the transfiguration to eat it the earth would give away in a large hole and then he would just levitate a nearby sharp rock that he kept there for hunting purposes.
Making sure that all of his preparations were in order Harry casually transfigured a nearby rock into a normal looking cow, filled it with enough magic for it to last days instead of hours if not minutes and then sat back on his branch and waited. It didn't take long before his victim found its way towards him. They really were fuck-ugly those reptilians, and they really didn't share. He could already see a giant mantis attempt to intercept it but suddenly half of the mantis disappeared into the round toothy mouth gushing green blood all over the forest floor. Harry was just waiting for it to finally fall into the trap when he felt more than heard something or someone approach from the direction of his house. He couldn't intercept it and hoped Ahsoka would have stayed safe in the house so as to not find herself on the wrong end of a set of sharp teeth. It wasn't until he saw the reptilian predator change its usual behaviour that he knew something was up.
Following the beast's gaze, he tried to spot what had gotten its attention when he saw the last thing he had wanted to see. Ahsoka was trying to sneakily hide in the nearby bushes. Harry fought hard not to bellow out a series of curses at the young woman's stupidity. She had barely been able to get out of bed by herself and now she was trying to follow him as he hunted. He was honestly unsure whether she had a deathwish. Not that it mattered right this moment. The reptilian had decided that his fake cow wasn't as interesting as the woman trying to get herself eaten nearby.
"Six months since an incident during a hunt," Harry muttered to himself. "She's been here for a week and she's already causing trouble. If I wasn't so lonely… who am I kidding, I would have helped either way."
The only way Harry could see himself being able to save her was if he apparated right in front of her and then apparated both of them to safety back at his house. Taking a deep breath, Harry spun on the branch he was standing on, landed in between Ahsoka and the beast seeing his opportunity to get her out of there he grabbed her by the waist and apparated them both back to the house. As soon as they landed Harry let go of her as she began to heave as she collapsed back on the ground. Harry didn't even bother checking to see if she was alright, he apparated back into the clearing to get a look around. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when he saw the beast had fallen down into the trap munching on his transfigured cow. He didn't really know why he was surprised, for all of its ability to sense magic it was still a beast. Lifting up the rock he quickly based its head in before levitating the beast behind him as he made his way back to the house. Thankfully it would only take him fifteen minutes to half an hour unless Ahsoka decided to come investigate again. He sincerely hoped she didn't.
Meanwhile Ahsoka had done her best not to throw up. She had never felt anything like she just had. It was like she had been travelling through hyperspace via the Force without a ship buffeted by the space around her until she had been unceremoniously slammed into the ground. She had barely registered the fact that Harry had disappeared with another crack to somewhere she didn't know. She tried to feel for him in the Force but other than the large anomaly that she had decided to investigate and had walked towards right before Harry had grabbed her she couldn't feel anything out there. In hindsight, it had probably been a stupid idea for her to try and leave the safety of the house. She hoped Harry wouldn't be too mad at having to save her from becoming Rancor dinner, and what in Sithspit was Harry doing being around a bloody Felucian Rancor. Those things were Jedi Killers. They were both resistant to direct Force manipulation and lightsabers. It was suicide for a Jedi to even get close to one of them and those were the normal ones, not bloody Felucian ones.
She had barely managed to get her wits about her when she spotted something coming out of the forest in the distance. She was certain she was spotting Harry moving in front of what looked like a Rancor but he looked like he was genuinely taking his time not fleeing from his life. She was just about to run towards him to give him a piece of her mind when she saw the carcass of the Rancor up close it looked like something heavy had been taken to its head bashing in its brain, she gaped openly in awe until she saw the stormy expression on Harry's face. Okay, so maybe she had been stupid and more than a little reckless but how was she supposed to know that Harry could somehow do things with the force that she hadn't even heard in myths were possible. Mother of Kwath! She couldn't even feel him in the Force.
"Food," Harry pointed to the Rancor hovering behind him.
She stared at him open-mouthed. This kriffing nerf-herder had just gone hunting for a Rancor, a bloody jedi killing Rancor, one of the deadliest animals in the known galaxy as if it was a normal occurrence. Ahsoka once more tried to sense him via the Force but the only thing she could feel was the small amount of force power he seemed to be using to lift the Rancor behind him.
"Ahsoka, Magic, Fire, Night," Harry said as he kept walking towards the side of the house opening up a large hanger it looked like with a lot of Rancor hide getting tanned alongside the wall next to it she saw the remains of what could only have been a different Rancor. She didn't know if she was supposed to be sick. Nobody hunted and ate Rancor. He'd fed her Rancor meat. Argh this human!
"Ahsoka, Magic, Fire, Night," Harry said again.
She was about to mistake it for nonsense when she remembered one of the archivists talking about how some of the primitive pre-space industrial planets had called the Force magic. Fire and night though took her a while longer before she realised what he meant. She was burning like a fire in the Force like a flame in the night anybody would be able to sense her from far away. She hadn't thought about it before but maybe that was how some of those bounty hunters had been able to chase her until she crashed on this planet there was only one thing she could say.
"Teach me." She all but begged him.
Time passed and they had stayed together for almost another six months when something changed. Ahsoka had felt it first being more in tune with the Force than Harry was, at least she hoped she was. The next day she had dragged Harry to the crash site of her ship. Harry had watched with interest as Ahsoka scavenged anything she could from the rubble. He couldn't understand half of the stuff she picked up or put in a pile next to him. He had been surprised to see her lighting up her shoto twirling around the green plasma blade. She also found the parts of her other lightsaber though it was beyond what she could salvage from this wreck. She had even managed to find an intact computer and a datapad and a holonet array to link up to it with the ability to power it through solar energy.
It hadn't taken her more than a day before she had scrambled together half a first-contact droid. Thankfully, it was the top half of the droid, which had helped them in beginning to understand each other slowly over the following months. Harry was now almost fluent in Basic and had picked up a smattering of other languages. She herself had been learning how to speak Harry's language called English and with the help of the droid, he had been teaching her how to disappear in the Force. It had taken all of her knowledge of Jedi Mind Cantrips to fully understand what Harry had been trying to teach her. She had never felt her mind so clear before and she had never had such a control over her own presence in the Force. He had managed to explain that the Rancors and other beasts on Felucia were able to sense the Force or, as he called it, Magic. Something they had kept budding heads about. Harry didn't see the difference between the two things and the fact that Ahsoka and her so-called Jedi Order felt like they had the right to dictate what he called something didn't endear him to the term. Ahsoka had almost argued until her throat was sore when Harry had asked why she cared.
That had ended up shutting her up quite quickly as she sat back into her seat at the table. She didn't care what the Jedi thought, not really. Harry had initially shown interest in what they had been teaching her until something about the Jedi Code made his hackles rise. He had been even more incensed when he had heard the specifics about her training, calling it indoctrination and brainwashing. He began counterarguing everything that she had once understood as the truth of the universe without having any argument. The mind exercises called Occlumency had forced her to re-live everything in her life and the amount of times she almost lost control of her emotions blowing stuff up around the house were too many to count. Never once through the entire process had Harry turned his back on her. He hadn't once told her not to feel her emotions at first; she had been leery about it, thinking that emotions would lead her to the Dark Side until she had mentioned the Old Code to Harry. It had been the first time he had genuinely agreed with something the Jedi Order had said.
Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force. Harry had then begun to describe just why the Old Code should be preferred over the New Code. It had thoroughly turned Ahsoka's view upside her head and she had been reeling because of it for a week, spending her time between getting back in fighting form and meditating.
It was also during this time that Harry had begun to show some of his other Force abilities around her and it had taken her a couple of months just to get her head around the potential of everything that was going on. By the third month Ahsoka had already learnt more about the Force from Harry than she had thought possible to explore and no matter what she had decided to stick around him. The learning hadn't only been one way. Harry had also been learning how to fight with a lightsaber. She had been so surprised when Harry had just waved his hand and fixed her broken lightsaber good as new after she had lamented its destruction openly. Since then she had been teaching him how to reach out to the force and let it guide him. His learning speed was truly terrifying to behold for her. He had a clear preference for Form III, patiently defending until he could instantly switch into the more offensive style of either Form II or Form V. Ahsoka had thought of herself as a prodigy in lightsaber combat until she had watched Harry progress faster and faster as they trained together. He had later confided in her that he had prior experience in swordfighting and it really wasn't all that different with a lightsaber.
She had also taught him everything she knew about electronics, spaceships, engineering and mechanics and when she didn't teach him she was focused on mastering something he had taught her, she would often find him sitting in a chair just going through every manual she had on the datapad, trying to read everything that she had available then again so did she about all of these new Force Powers.
He had even taken her to hunt Rancors. The beasts that had once frightened her to death had long since stopped being scary. That wasn't to say that she didn't have a healthy amount of respect for the predator but seeing Harry hunt them with ease, butchering them and then tanning their hide before preparing it in their meal. Well, they just didn't have the same impact as they had before.
Everything that had happened between them had led to these past few weeks where Ahsoka had finally begun to admit to herself that she had fallen for the human and she had fallen hard. She had ditched the New Code and taken up the Old. The one where she didn't have to kill her own emotions or deny herself the ability to love someone and be with that someone. She wasn't even in the Jedi Order anymore and almost hadn't been for almost a year now. She just had to work up her courage to actually do something about it, soon she had kept telling herself.
She was pulled out of her musings by the sound of footsteps behind her.
"You felt them as well," Harry said softly. "There are two other magic users arriving on the other side of the planet."
"Jedi," Ahsoka said with far less bitterness than she would have just a few months ago. She didn't want to admit it but facing and dealing with her emotions had been soothing, almost therapeutic for her and she didn't hate the Jedi Order any longer. She didn't like them but she didn't have an overwhelming need to stab them with her lightsaber either. Well, maybe with the exception of Barriss Offee. She still felt conflicted about her former best friend. Barriss had betrayed her, framed her and left her to be executed at the hands of the Senate, all because of a misguided need for the Jedi Order to change. She didn't know how she would react if she ever saw Barriss again, either she would hug her and cry or she would want to hurt her.
"Are we going to check it out?" Harry asked. "They might be able to give us a lift off this planet."
"I suppose so," Ahsoka sighed. "I just… I don't like them. I don't want to have anything to do with them."
"The Jedi High Council is not the Jedi," Harry said with a hint of mirth. "Judge these ones without the taint of the few."
"Yes, master," Ahsoka said playfully.
She had noticed whenever she called Harry master he would cringe and look slightly uncomfortable at the address which had only served to make her want to call him that all the more.
"Well no matter," Harry said. "I suppose I should start packing the library."
"No," Ahsoka said quickly. "Don't do it just yet. There'll be more than enough time to do that after we've made contact. Also we still have to travel all the way to the other side of the planet considering where the force presence is coming from."
"How long do you suppose that would take?" Harry asked.
"With our full speed? Probably a few weeks," Ahsoka said thoughtfully. "We'll have to hunt on the road. We'd be too bugged down to carry enough food for such a trip."
"I suppose you're right," Harry said thoughtfully rubbing his stubbled chin. "I think I might have just what we need in one of the trunks. Probably anyway."
"I'll go check the food store room to see what we have already," Ahsoka said. "Also could we bring a couple of books? I'm still in the middle of reading about that one with spells to check plants for attributes in potion reagents."
"You still interested in that huh?" Harry said. "Never had the interest in potions myself. Had an arse of a teacher teaching me when I went to school. Still a damn useful branch of magic."
"You saved my life with potions," Ahsoka said. "Of course I would be interested."
"There is that," Harry said. "I suppose I could focus more on teaching you that instead. Most of the books would have recipes with my previous world's ingredients or maybe we could find the ingredients on other planets or even this planet. I haven't really been looking past finding some replacements for the more essential ones. This place is pretty much ingredients heaven even though they all look different from what I'm used to."
"Maybe someone should have been writing down the different properties then, master," Ahsoka said leadingly.
Rubbing his hand sheepishly at the back of his neck, Harry could only smile vanly and nod at her unspoken request.
"Can the datapad take pictures or do you think you could rig a scanner or something quickly?" Harry asked. "Heck, we'll make a project of it on our trip to find those magic users."
"Force," Ahsoka mumbled under her breath.
It wasn't that she strenuously held on to the word and since she had begun reading some of Harry's many books, she was hard pressed not to consider that maybe, just maybe, the Jedi Order hadn't been as benevolent in spreading their philosophy about the Force or magic or whatever. It seemed like Harry's people might have even more information about the uses of the Force than there was combined in the Great Jedi Archive just in his library alone. She wasn't even certain one person could read all of the books in one lifetime unless your species could become as old as Grandmaster Yoda's could become. Yoda himself was apparently over nine-hundred years old and even he might not have been able to read all of them. What she meant to say was there were a lot of books and she had a feeling Harry wasn't even showing her half of the ones he seemed to own.
Two hours later, Harry and Ahsoka were closing up the house. Well, Harry was closing up the house with two backpacks sitting on the ground next to him. Ahsoka… Ahsoka was caught between running her hands over her brand new Rancor hide coat and Rancor hide boots and looking at him with eyes filled with appreciation for the gifts.
"Well, try it on," Harry said. "The temperature regulating runes in the lining should keep you cool in the day and warm in the night. It was also surprisingly flexible after I had tanned it like dragonhide."
"You did some of your Force tricks on this?" Ahsoka asked. "Thank you so much, Harry."
Before he could wave off her thanks, Harry felt a pair of soft lips on his own. He hadn't noticed her canines before, showing another sign that they weren't the same species, but the way her lekku seemed to rub up and down his chest for a moment before she rushed away from him again, blushing fiercely all the way up through her montrals as well.
"Don't say anything!" Ahsoka shrieked. "I… just forget it happened okay? Please?"
Snapping out of it Harry just gave her an amused smirk, but didn't further push the point. He had known about Ahsoka's attraction to him for longer than she probably had herself really but he also knew about the vow of celibacy that Ahsoka had taken as a Jedi Padawan and 17 years of brainwashing isn't something that you can just turn off over a couple of months. At least, he had managed to stop her descent into a hatred-filled monster. It hadn't surprised him when her emotions had almost gotten the better of her in the time since she had crashed close to his house but he was proud of her when she had understood and managed to let go of all of the hate and anger in her towards everything and anyone who had done something to harm her.
He took a moment to appreciate the Togruta standing there in her new coat with a simple band across her chest and tight jeans with her new boots to complete the outfit.
"Master, this is amazing!" Ahsoka gushed. "I can barely feel the heat."
"That's good," Harry said. "Now come on, we've got to make some headway before nightfall."
"Yes, master!" She cheekily saluted.
They had been able to run along at a good speed for most of the day without feeling the drain on their bodies overly much when the sun was about to set. They had found a mountain range where they would stay in a cave overnight when Harry pulled out his next bag of tricks. She had been interested in the primitive canvas looking thing that had been lying on top of Harry's backpack until he had dumped it on the cave floor and waved his hand at it. She had looked sceptical at the flimsy looking tent when Harry had turned to her with a mischievous smile on his lips and gestured for her to look inside.
Five minutes later, Ahsoka had looked inside, squealed, run outside and around the tent a few times, before squealing and running straight into the tent where Harry finally walked in after her only to hear the inbuilt shower run in the adjacent bathroom behind another set of canvas flaps.
"I can hear you found the bathroom," Harry called out.
"I can't even begin to describe how amazing your people are," Ahsoka called back. "I thought we wouldn't be able to do more than wash ourselves down with a cloth or something. Do you have any idea what most of us female Jedi would have done for one of these on the warfront?"
"No, tell me," Harry responded sarcastically.
"Some of them would have gone down on their knees and -"
"Alright, alright! I did not need to hear that," Harry said. "And aren't Jedi supposed to not do those things?"
"Sure," Ahsoka said. "But this is a shower on a battlefield. There's even a tub in here!"
"I'm not sure taking a bath on a battlefield would be such a good idea," Harry said idly. "I'll just be setting up some protections and an alarm outside the cave. You can take your time in there."
"Will do!"
Shaking his head, Harry made his way outside and began waving his wand around. It wasn't many things that he still needed his wand for but anything finicky like layering protective barriers around a tent. He fondly remembered the time where he and Hermione had stayed in the tent on the Horcrux hunt by themselves. That seemed so long ago now. He did have a few prepared rune tablets if he needed something more permanent but for just a night before they were on the move again would be overkill.
Feeling drained, Harry returned to the tent's living room just in time for Ahsoka to walk out wrapped in a towel. Instead of reacting to her provocative display, he just groaned and slumped further down into a large puffy chair. Closing his eyes, Harry tried to regain some of his energy as he opened himself up a sliver to the magic on the planet. His body drank in the energy like it was a dehydrated man in the desert.
"What did you do?" Ahsoka's voice reached his ear from close by.
Cracking open a single eye, Harry replied. "Just had to set up some protections. Projecting the magic over an area to form a shell of protection and imposing my will on it like I've done out there is hard when there is so much magic all over the place. Can you cook tonight?"
It would have been almost funny to see Ahsoka pout at his lack of reaction to her if it wasn't for the beginning headache he was about to endure. He did, however, keep one unclosed eye on Ahsoka as she bent down to grab her backpack. The way the towel began riding up her thighs and hid just the bare necessities but hinted at everything. If only his body had the energy to actually respond to her teasing beyond him looking.
"I'm glad that I'm at least able to entice you," Ahsoka said with a tinkling bell-like laughter as she disappeared behind a different flap of canvas.
Falling asleep soon after, Harry didn't wake back up until he felt Ahsoka place a bowl of food under his nose while she gently poked him in the shoulder. It was pretty much the same thing as their usual fare. Not that there were many ways they could have diversified. Harry had at one point tried to transfigure their food into something else but it hadn't changed the taste or the consistency, so in the end they had just given up on it.
Harry gave Ahsoka another lookover, smiling appreciatively at her choice of clothes once more. She really was her own type of beauty. Thanking her for the food he quietly dug into it. Something the Jedi seemed to not have taught their Padawans was how to cook. The first time he had asked her to cook for them she had almost managed to burn the stone cube down. She had come a long way since all those months ago, and while she didn't seem to have the same flair for cooking as he did, it was a lot more delicious than it had been at the start.
"The protections should keep away any stray Rancors and Acklays; but it would probably still be prudent to have a watch during the night," Harry said after putting his bowl down. "I'll take the first watch and then wake you up halfway through the night."
"Okay, master," Ahsoka said before disappearing behind the flap hiding the alcove with the bed.
That had been their first night together during their travels. It hadn't taken more than a week and a few examples of the protections working before Ahskka had declared that they didn't need the watch any longer and she had dragged him into the bed with her. Since then they had slept together keeping each other warm under the blanket during the cold Felucian nights.
"We'll probably find them tomorrow won't we?" Ahsoka asked one night just as she had lain down on top of Harry.
"Considering how close they feel, yeah." Harry mumbled.
"I'm kind of scared," she whispered, nervously running her hand over her lekku.
"Why?"
"I haven't talked to any Jedi in over a year," Ahsoka said. "And last time I did they threw me out of the Jedi Order. I didn't even get a chance to defend myself. When they called me in they had already made a decision. It didn't matter to them."
"What about the one who framed you?"
"Barriss," Ahsoka hissed with vehemence. "I hope she is rotting in a prison somewhere. She doesn't matter. I highly doubt we'll see her tomorrow."
And with those words she snuggled deeper into the crook of Harry's neck while the only thing Harry could think of was that somehow it felt like the universe was laughing at him.
The next morning Harry woke up earlier than Ahsoka wiggling his way out if the strangling grip of both her arms and her two front lekku wrapping themselves around his neck pulling her face right next to his. It still baffled him how Ahsoka had no hesitancy against lying there all but naked beside him if it wasn't for the earth style panties she had found in the clothes trunk but still blushed whenever he caught her staring at his lips or when she woke up this close to him. She had decisively forbidden him from spooning her because his breath would land upon her montrals while he slept and though she had never explained why, he had a few theories why that was.
He quickly washed his face before sending his senses out into the magic of the planet. This close the two magic users weren't together any longer on one hand he didn't want to split up from Ahsoka but if they needed to check both out they would have to cover more ground. He would have to ask her about her thoughts on that.
He would think more on that after Ahsoka joined the land of the living. Instead he turned his attention towards an ongoing project of his since they had begun this journey almost three weeks ago. He had been trying to find a substitute for tea leaves. If there was one reason why Ahsoka deserved a reward it would be for the scanner she had built. The ability to scan for the properties of the plants on this planet could not be understated in Harry's mind. He had already been able to recreate five more different lifesaving potions with the many different plants they had found including an even better working skelegrow and two potions that theoretically would be able to regrow and repair organs and muscles while another would promote skin growth. Ahsoka had not been happy about him testing that salve on himself. Still it had only taken three days of reapplying the salve before the skin was fully grown back without a blemish.
They had also picked up fifteen different plants that the scanner had determined would have beneficial properties to general health if they were dried and boiled in water. Out of the eight he had already tried, only one of them was palatable, but hey, it was a work in progress. Maybe one of the last seven options would taste like tea from home ,and if they did he would try to find more of them before they left the planet.
"What's that?" Ahsoka's sleepy voice reached him from the bed. "You making that foul thing again?"
"Oi, don't knock it until I've found the right thing, okay?" Harry called back. "I need tea as a British person."
"Whatever," Ahsoka yawned. "I'm going to freshen up okay? Now cook my little slave. I'm hungry."
"Yes mistress," Harry drawled.
Listening to the sounds coming from the shower was as distracting as ever between the humming and groaning Ahsoka did while she cleaned up. If he didn't know better he would have suspected that she did it just to tease or entice him into joining her in the shower.
Thankfully for him it wouldn't take long for him to make breakfast. It was even close to feeling like a proper English breakfast with fried Rancor meat and these large avian eggs they had found in a giant nest in one of the mountain ranges. They almost tasted like normal chicken eggs, it was good enough for him though. Ahsoka seemed to be appreciative over the added variety in her food choices.
"You did well my slave," Ahsoka said as she wandered out of the bathroom part of the tent. Thankfully she was fully dressed minus her coat. "I seriously mean it, Harry. Even on this Force forsaken planet you manage to spoil my tongue."
Rolling his eyes, Harry just put down the plates of food in front of her. They had done this song and dance so many times that he could almost regurgitate it ad verbatim.
"The two Jedi split up," Harry said. "I'd suggest we split up as well but I'll defer to your superior experience."
Closing her eyes, Ahsoka reached out into the Force as well. Nodding her head slightly in reply. "I can't sense them well enough to know who they are. It's like… It's like I should know both of them, like I've met them before, but their signatures... They aren't what I remember them as."
"People change over time, it's been almost a year," Harry said philosophically. "They change even more during war. You aren't the same person as you were when you landed in my backyard."
"I suppose not," Ahsoka said. "Did I ever thank you for saving me?"
"More than once," Harry said softly. "You saved me too."
"What? How?" Ahsoka asked.
"I'd been alone for close to a year before you came into my life. I was beginning to go insane. Hunting, skinning, reading, surviving. That was all I did, Ahsoka. I would have gone insane if you hadn't arrived. I'd almost forgotten how to talk when you crash landed here."
Ahsoka breathed in sharply. She hadn't thought of that. She tried to imagine it but felt an almost crippling fear at being alone for so long. She was a Togruta, a communal species. It was genetically hardwired into her to be social with other people. Being forced to be alone on Felucia for any long amount of time would have been a fate worse than death.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you so much for finding me and letting me stay close to you. I would have been dead without you."
Neither of them said anymore to each other while they got ready to leave for the day. They somehow had managed to communicate that they would keep the tent where it was for the moment until they knew more about the Jedi there. Harry had shown her during the morning how one could make the protections around the tent more permanent with the help of the rune tablet. As fascinating as it was to her, she had been too nervous at the moment to really remember anything he told her. She was more worried about being found by the Jedi if they could feel him working in the Force. She still wasn't sure what she thought about the idea of meeting them. On one hand she didn't want to speak to any Jedi, on the other hand they might just be their best chance off this planet. She just hoped that she had gotten along with the ones here.
"Well that's done, Soka," Harry said, stretching his arms over his head. "It'll be filled with magic by nightfall. My other protections will last until then. I'll take the one in that direction. Just follow them today then we'll rendezvous here tonight and talk about who of the two we should try and contact. Good?"
"Huh, yeah, good," Ahsoka said, watching him stand up. "Do you want to borrow one of my lightsabers?"
"Nah that's alright," Harry said with a soft smile. "I'd rather you be safe than have one of them. Also, you know that I can more than take care of myself."
"Yeah," Ahsoka said. "I guess."
"See ya later," Harry said, looking ready to jump ahead in one direction towards the Force user.
"Wait," Ahsoka called out.
Harry just turned his head towards her, lifting his eyebrow when he felt soft lips upon his own. Her hands running through his hair keeping his head turned towards her. The kiss deepened until they both had to breathe again.
"Wow," Ahsoka whispered. "I should have done that a long time ago. Uhm… if it was okay with you that is… I mean. I should have asked maybe. Uhm… sorry?"
Instead of answering her, Harry just pulled her body flush against his own as he kissed her soundly on the lips once more eliciting small moans from the young Togruta in his arms. His fingers gently ran up and down her mal'lekku as they lost themselves in each other.
"I'm glad you did," Harry finally said, releasing her lips from his tender mercies.
"Will you be my mate?" Ahsoka asked.
Frowning, Harry rested his forehead against her montrals. "What does a mate mean to a Togruta? Is a mate until death do them apart?"
Fearing the worst, Ahsoka stilled when she thought he was about to reject her. She tried to pull away from him only for his arms to tighten. What did a mate mean to a Togruta? She didn't really know much about Togrutas in general. She knew her homeworld was called Shili and they were a bit more tribal than most. She remembered learning that to survive the Akul they had to hunt in packs. It was all about the group taking care of each other until someone died.
"Yes? Togrutas hunt in packs to survive," Ahsoka said softly. "Shili, my homeplanet. My people are predators but the Akul is too much for one Togruta to take down alone. We hunt in prides but we keep our family alive until they cannot hunt any longer."
"I've been married before," Harry said softly, whispering into her montrals. "I've raised kids and I've buried them as well. I'm old, Ahsoka. Very old."
"What do you mean? You look like a human in his twenties."
"I can't even remember much from my twenties," Harry said with a deprecating laugh. "I've lived for a long time. I've had to watch as the people I love grew old, withered and died."
"I don't care," Ahsoka whimpered petulantly. "I want you, Harry."
Breathing in deeply, Harry wondered about how this would in turn shape his life going forward. He supposed it didn't matter. He had long since stopped thinking about the future and remained living in the now. If Ahsoka wanted him as her mate, who was he to deny her that? He liked her well enough. He would even go as far as to say he enjoyed her company and found her intelligence and eagerness to learn incredibly attractive. He had been left in a rut before Ahsoka arrived and it was she who breathed life back into him when he was slowly going insane inside his little stone house.
"Okay," Harry said simply, leaning down to kiss her again. "I guess I'll be your mate."
"Just like that?" Ahsoka asked, seemingly hit by the whiplash of emotions their conversations had produced.
"Why not?" Harry said. "I like you, Ahsoka Tano. You're fun to be around and you've helped put some energy into these old bones. If you'll have me I would be an idiot to say no."
Ahsoka felt her mouth splitting into an almost feral grin, she could feel the heat pooling around her stomach as her eyes, hands and lekku took in Harry's appearance. It was official. He was her mate and she wanted to bed him right this instant. Instead of agreeing with her thoughts, Harry flicked her in the forehead bringing her back to the situation around them.
"Later, love," Harry said with a small smile on his face. "We've got other things to do, remember? I'll fuck your lekku into knots later."
Despite herself, Ahsoka felt a shiver run down her mal'lekku. Her breathing became rougher as she tried to remember her new mate's scent before they went on a hunt together. She might have been raised in the Jedi Temple but something primal in her spoke to her whenever she was about to go into battle. It was also why she was so fond of her Rancor coat. It was something Harry had hunted by himself and fashioned into a gift for her. No, her mate was very fierce and a good hunter. There would be no problem feeding her future family with his prowess.
She separated from him with a whine and a massive pout but just before they were truly apart she leaned up, pulled his own coat away from his shoulder and bit down on it until she drew blood.
"Why did you do that?" Harry asked with amusement.
"So that other females know that you are mine," Ahsoka growled playfully.
"I think I might like the sound of that," Harry said with a soft smile. "Now go on, Soka, or we're never getting off this rock."
"Fine," she pouted. "Make it back home okay?"
"Always," Harry replied before he dashed off in the direction of one of the Force signatures.
Ahsoka watched his retreating back until he was almost out of sight before she finally got her wits about her. "Right, I better find this other Jedi before tonight. Then I'll drag my mate back with me to bed."
Shaking his head, Harry put the thoughts of the horny Togruta he had just left behind. He'd probably end up paying for delaying whatever she had been about to start but something in the Force had urged him to move fast towards the Jedi he was about to meet. It was like the world, air, and energy was screaming for him to move faster to not be late. To run faster and faster than he already was. It wasn't until he almost broke through the forest in front of him that the feeling stopped. He had made it in time for whatever was about to happen.
In the valley in front of him he watched as a large convoy of white armoured unidentifiable troops walked in formation. The only way of identifying some of them was by the extra colour or shoulder guard. Behind those walked large robotic quadrupeds with guns on them walked over the uneven terrain. Harry's eyes followed the convoy until he spotted the Force sensitive he was here for. A blue skinned woman in leather pants and a leather crop top was scouting a little ahead of the convoy with one of those white troopers next to her.
Something inside of him urged him not to rush forward even if it would probably have been for the best. It was like something important was about to happen and he needed to wait until the right moment before he intervened. Deciding to use a skill he hadn't practised in a long time he slowly concentrated as his body shrunk and in its place a nondescript black feathered hawk stood in his place. He turned his avian head around to see that the blue woman had noticed his use of the Force and was moving her way towards his position. He quickly took to the air gathering her attention when everything changed. His hawk eyes zeroed in on the nearest white trooper seeing him talking to a small bluish hologram.
It was instant. The white troopers that had definitely been on this Jedi's side was decisively her enemy now. Harry cried out in warning but instead of alerting the woman to danger, he found her staring at him in wonder. That's when it happened the troopers raised their weapons and fired into the back of the woman, shooting her down as Harry transformed back and all hell broke loose. His anger multiplied turning into a ferocious amount of Force being tossed around in the air, flames and winds shredded the white troopers until none were left alive in the valley and the quadruped robots laid in piles of scrap to never move again. He quickly ran over to the woman lying head down into the dirt. He was just about to start crying when he heard. A deep rattling breath being taken like the last one before oblivion takes you into the next great adventure and it would have if not for the fact that Harry James Potter was standing right there. With an almost righteous fury he bellowed, "Oh no you don't!"
His wand moved in instinctive patterns as the statis enchantment froze the woman in time. It had been the only thing he could think of that would save her. Even stasis charms normally used for potions ingredients only slowed time down to half, extending the shelf life this wasn't that. He had stopped the woman's time. She would never age nor life nor die as long as the magic was in place. Gently he wrapped his arms around the still body and did the only thing he could think of; he apparated back to the tent.
His wand was already clearing space inside of it as he transfigured the dining table into an operating table, placing the jedi into it. He cut away the clothes and began to assess the damage. Some of her organs were burnt and destroyed but most of them looked to have survived even if some of her bones were pulverised or shattered in places. Thankfully the time magic had also stopped her heart from pumping so she wouldn't bleed out where she lay. Indecision hit him with the weight of a freighter. If he lifted the magic she would die if he didn't lift the magic he wouldn't be able to heal her. Still, he kept moving, gathering all of the experimental potions he also would need a massive amount of blood replenishing potions.
He was just about to make a decision when he felt it. The Force quaked and wept as death spread throughout it. Images of silhouettes falling as white figures stood above them and above the white figures stood a black shadow laughing menacingly down upon the fallen.
Harry went to his knees and wept. He had never felt so connected to the force as he did in that moment and it was both truly beautiful and truly terrible. He didn't even notice the sound of Ahsoka's voice as she rushed into the tent before he felt her arms around him.
"Harry! Come back to me please!" She cried, shaking his sobbing body as she did.
"Soka?" Harry whispered.
"I'm here. I felt you in the Force. Your anger and destruction then…"
"Death," Harry said shakingly. "I tried to do more. I couldn't stop her from being shot."
Ahsoka gasped. "That's Knight Aayla Secura. Is she…?"
"No… yes… I've frozen her in time on her last breath. She is neither alive or dead," Harry said. "If I don't remove the magic and resume her time she will technically never die but I won't be able to heal her. If I do remove the magic she will be on her last breath. I don't know how to save her. I would need phoenix tears to do so but the only phoenix I know is Fawkes and I haven't seen him for a long time."
They both felt a pressure building in the Force as if a light had somehow managed to boil through the darkness and death rebirthing on the other side as a massive flame appeared in the air. Ahsoka stared in wide eyed wonder as the bird made of Force and flame appeared in front of them, trilling a reinvigorating tune uplifting her spirit dragging her out of the despair she felt.
"Fawkes?" Harry called out, getting an answering trill in reply. "I… why now? Why not before? Where have you been? I…!"
"Focus Harry," Ahsoka said. "Can you save her?"
"I can," Harry said with a firm nod. "I'll need both of your help."
"We'll help," Ahsoka said. "Just tell me what to do."
What followed was three hours of intensive healing after Harry had made the initial preparations. Fawkes's tears were liberally cried into the deathly wounds while the potions were switched into the two stomachs of the twi'lek woman lying there dying on the table. Several times throughout the healing Aayla's heart stopped beating but Harry managed to start it again and again. Finally, the woman seemed to be breathing normally and the wounds on her back had turned into white circular scars.
"Who is she?" Harry asked after wrapping her in a white sheet and lifting her into the alcove further inside the tent.
"She was once a friend," Ahsoka whispered. "She wasn't there during my trial. She would have had my back."
"But then you decided to leave instead," Harry said, dragging the Togruta into his lap. "What about the other Jedi?"
"Dead," Ahsoka said tonelessly.
"Anyone you knew?" Harry asked.
"Barriss Offee," Ahsoka snarled before turning sad, confusing emotions warring across her face. "She must have been reinstated as a Jedi. I don't know. I didn't even try and save her as the AT-TE fired its cannon into her. Her body was destroyed before I could make a decision. The clones have betrayed the Jedi and the only way that could have happened was if the Supreme Chancellor would have ordered it. I just don't understand why!"
"You told me about the Sith," Harry said leadingly.
"No!" Ahsoka refused. "That… can't be?"
Her tone had turned almost whining from her initial outrage. She didn't want to believe it but that was the only thing that made sense. The chancellor was the Sith Lord they had all been trying to find and destroy.
"The Chancellor is a sith," Ahsoka said. "If only we'd have known in time. If we had just had a little more time we could have saved so many people."
"Time," Harry murmured. "You just need a little bit more time. I can't believe I'm doing this. I need to make a quick trip back home."
"That would take you weeks," Ahsoka said. "What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"
"I never did show you a portkey before, did I?" Harry asked mischievously. "It'll only take a few minutes to travel the distance from here."
"Why didn't we use it to get here three weeks ago?" Ahsoka groaned. "We had to walk through that swamp. I was sure I'd never be clean again after that."
"I'd need to know where I'd be going," Harry shrugged. "It creates a wormhole between the place you're standing and the place you want to go. It probably isn't safe if you don't have a clear image of where you're going."
"Wormhole?!" Ahsoka asked, rising up on her feet to look at him incredulously which turned out to be a mistake. Harry took his chance and ran towards the kitchen and quickly made a portkey back to the house before Ahsoka could stop him. "I'll probably be back in half an hour."
"Half an hour?! You told me it would take minutes?" Ahsoka shouted.
"I need to find something in one of the trunks," Harry said with a smile on his lips. "I'll get you all of the time you need. See ya later, Love."
Ahsoka watched with dumbfounded amazement as Harry disappeared in bluelight. Cursing loudly at her unreasonable mate for putting himself through a wormhole just to find something in a trunk back at their house. She was walking and raving until she remembered what he said. He was going to find something that would give her all the time she'd need to save at least some of the Jedi.
Instead of continuing to rave about idiotic males and their stupidity, she walked over to Aayla as she laid comatose in their bed. So many thoughts and emotions ran through her head as she sat down with a sigh. Ahsoka hadn't had many friends in the Jedi Order. Acquaintances sure, a few enemies as well, but few friends. The Jedi masters had focused so much on enforcing the idea of no attachments that she had almost fallen into a depression with the lack of community. That was also why it had hurt so much to get thrown out of the Jedi Order. Her second tribe had abandoned her not because she had been too weak to survive as would have been the Togruta way. No, she had been abandoned because of politics.
"The individual is not the whole, she is not the Jedi Order," Ahsoka whispered to herself. "What has happened since I left? What is going on out there? Why did the clones turn on the Jedi? What happened to everybody? Wasn't I a good enough Jedi?"
Only the laboured breathing of Aayla interrupted the silence after Ahsoka's small rant. Leaning back in one of the puffy old chairs in the tent, Ahsoka decided to just go find a book or maybe even brew some of that disgusting tea Harry had been making over their trip. She was never going to admit it to him but number thirteen tasted good to her tongue and it did have a calming effect on her species. It was also a lot more interesting than the plain water they had been drinking so far.
Even as experienced as Harry was with portkeys, taking one across this distance was more than a little jarring, making him extra glad that he wasn't taking this one with Ahsoka as he face planted in the soft ground next to their house.
"That was embarrassing," Harry said self-deprecatingly. "Gotta have to compensate for that when I get back. Now which trunk is that old time cube in."
Over the years Harry had been experimenting with time magic in a misguided attempt to change his personal past. He had made time turners and rituals but nothing he had ever conceived would have been able to change his own personal past or anything he had personal knowledge off. Time did not like being changed by anyone. Still, he had improved on the design of the original time turner. It still needed the enchanted sands of time from the Moon Valley of Iah in Egypt back on Earth. You could only gather a small amount of sand each year during the five extra days in July when Thoth had initially placed them after having won those from Iah. Still, it was a finite resource and he couldn't remember the last time he had filled his cube up. Hopefully, he had enough for a two person trip. Still had to find it first he supposed.
Now came the not so fun part, finding the bloody right trunk. He had never been as organised as some people had thought of him, drove his first wife right up the wall back when she had first seen his house. Daphne had not been about to let that happen. She had taken five house elves and sorted through the books and trinkets of five different families. It had taken her years but finally she had everything sorted and duplicates stored separately. Then Harry and Tonks had tried to make a mess of her sorting alongside their children ever since. Good times, he thought fondly. He had kept companions since but never until death did them apart. He wasn't even sure why he had agreed with Ahsoka when she had asked earlier. Maybe he should take a little time to… he did have the relevant trunk open after all.
Picking out something to signify his commitment to the promise between them turned out to be harder than he had expected. Something told him that the usual rings, while appreciated, would be seen as more of a novelty than significant for the young woman. Ahsoka had told him about the marriage ceremony of the Togruta. It was a months long trial starting with the hunt of an Akul, a native tiger looking predator from Shili. He didn't have those here on Felucia but there were Rancors. He decided to fashion two armguards from their hide and inlay gold in a grasslike pattern and a single tooth along the length of it. Gathering the materials for his project didn't take long, not nearly as long as finding the Time Cube.
Finally, he had gathered all of the things he was there to get, including a book on crafting materials into clothing and armour. He had also picked up a few more potions and ingredients for Aayla's initial recovery. He wasn't sure if those would be needed but it was better to have too many than too few. It was weird seeing this place so empty or being here without Ahsoka. With a smile he walked outside the wards to portkey back to his mate. Yeah, he could get used to calling her that.
The first thing Ahsoka heard since Harry had left was a loud "Oof!" coming from the outside. She quickly gathered and ignited her lightsabers expecting trouble only to find Harry lying face down groaning on the ground.
"I hate portkeys," he said. "Vile things, but fast. Feels like you're spinning the whole way."
Trying hard not to laugh, Ahsoka coughed into her hand as she turned off her lightsabers. "Very dignified, my mate," she said with a thrill in her voice. "Fawkes and I have been watching Aayla, but there has been no reaction from her since you left. Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Oh yeah," Harry grinned. "A little thing I made some time ago."
"What is it?" Ahsoka asked excitedly.
"My Time Cube!" Harry said proudly.
"Your time cube?" Ahsoka asked sceptically.
"With a capital T and C," Harry said, nodding along sagely.
"What does your Time Cube do?" Ahsoka asked.
"It lets us travel back in time of course," Harry said.
"Pfft, pull the other one, Harry."
"I'm serious," Harry said, fighting a smile. "Well it isn't as much time travel as it is stretching your own personal time by skipping back up to a day."
"Time travel?" Ahsoka asked again. "You're telling me you have a device that lets you travel back in time? The possibilities are endless!"
"Not so much no," Harry sighed. "Time does not like being meddled with. There are a few rules to using it, especially for the first time. It's all rather logical really. You didn't know it was a possibility to time travel until this moment, so we cannot be found or felt or seen by our past selves because we didn't see or feel our past selves. If we'd seen us our first instinct would have been either insanity or trying to attack ourselves thinking they were imposters. Doesn't matter as much when you've become used to it, you set up a system of questions and answers or code phrases. Also we can't change anything that would stop us from going back in the first place or changing anything we know happened."
"So Aayla has to get shot," Ahsoka said.
"And Barriss has to die," Harry nodded. "In fact it would be best if we weren't anywhere near where we have been earlier. Fawkes?"
The phoenix trilled back questioningly.
"Could you keep an eye on Aayla and come and get us if she wakes up? She shouldn't before tomorrow at the earliest but it would be better if Ahsoka at least was here when she woke up," Harry asked.
Nodding and trilling, Fawkes flew over to the back of the chair by the bed that Ahsoka had been sitting in until recently and began softly singing. Ahsoka walked over and gently ran her fingers over the flaming plumage of the magnificent bird.
"Well, we'll be back in a moment, Fawkes," Harry said cheekily. "Come on, Soka. They won't even notice we've been gone."
"This is insane," Ahsoka grumbled. "What are we going to do?"
Suddenly a large roar of engines reached them from a direction further out, they turned their heads only to see three large spaceships rising up from the ground and leaving the atmosphere before they disappeared from sight into the night sky.
"So it's been what? five hours since the attack?" Harry asked.
"Something like that," Ahsoka nodded. "What's the plan?"
"I'd say we find the base where the republic stayed before we turn back the time," Harry mused. "They ascended from that direction."
"And after we turn back time?" Ahsoka said, still sounding disbelieving at the thought of time travel.
"I was hoping you would have a better idea about that, love," Harry said. "It's not like I know what everything would look like or what we would need. Weren't you supposed to be some sort of bigshot general or something?"
"Ha, ha," Ahsoka said. "Try to keep up?"
Twenty minutes later they found what looked like an abandoned camp. Destroyed weaponry and prefab buildings already empty and without signs of anyone or anything there. They quickly found a spot where it would be unlikely for them to be spotted as they arrived a bit further away in between a few of the flower trees. Harry pulled the small looking cube out of his pocket and began fiddling with it.
"Do you think nine hours would be enough to get everything done? It would give us three and a half hours before the attack on Knight Secura happens," Harry asked.
"That should be more than enough," Ahsoka said. "These bases are pretty much alike in their construction. Military standard. I should be able to find our way around it without a problem. How does it work?"
"Well, it's really three different rings that you turn depending on what you want to happen," Harry began explaining. "The first ring denotes the time in increments of three hours. Don't know why it had to be that way but time doesn't like to do smaller intervals. You could but the fuel burns one unit whether or not you travel one hour or three, so usually I just travelled the full three at a time. The second ring determines how many people travel back up to seven. More than that and the temporal field gets distorted and dangerous. The last ring is really just for show since it really doesn't do much other than letting you add double the fuel in for a smoother trip. It can feel disconcerting to travel back on the usual amount. Not that we have a choice, we only have enough for one nine hour trip back for the two of us and I probably won't be able to find more of it. After this trip it'll just be a glorified paperweight I suppose."
"Couldn't you find more somewhere?" Ahsoka asked.
"Maybe, maybe not, it takes some very specific conditions for the sand to get the right properties," Harry mused, losing himself in thought.
"Ahem," Ahsoka coughed. "So, what should I do?"
"Oh, just put your hand on top of it," Harry said sheepishly. "I've already adjusted it for our trip. Don't close your eyes, but don't focus on your surroundings either. It'll be a rough one."
"Why don't I like the sound of thaaaaaaaaaaat?!"
Around them everything started to move backwards in time, Ahsoka tried first not to look but soon got dizzy by the illogical way of seeing everything, as amazing as it was to see the moons of Felucia move backwards and the sun start to rise in the west. It made her lekku almost melt, then she closed her eyes but her body somehow felt that it was moving in the wrong direction and with her eyes closed, she could feel everything more clearly. It felt wrong to her senses and wrong to the Force to move against the natural flow of time. Thankfully, as soon as it had begun it had stopped again almost as soon, making her almost fall to her knees if it wasn't for Harry's arm around her waist.
"That was horrible," Ahsoka said in between dry heaves.
"I know," Harry said softly. "It's unnatural to do this but sometimes needs must when the Devil drives. At least you will likely never have to do that again. I was right, no more juice."
He gently shook the little cube and even opened it up showing that it was empty inside. Putting it away, Harry gave Ahsoka a few more minutes to gather herself while he gently rubbed her mal'lekku and back. Turning his head towards the base, he was impressed to see the three large ships hanging in the lower atmosphere while a lot of the clone troopers walked around looking busy.
"Well, Love," Harry said overly cheerfully. "Are you ready to go save some people?"
"I hate you," Ahsoka groaned. "How can you not feel the wrongness right now?"
"I focus on what I have to do," Harry said softly. "We need to go warn the Jedi Temple about how their Supreme Chancellor is about to kill all of them in around three hours, we need to secure enough stuff so that we can leave the planet and maybe some droids and weapons, but I don't have a clue what we need. I need you, my mate."
"I'm so going to fuck you when this is all over," Ahsoka growled.
"I'm looking forward to it," Harry laughed. "Here hold on."
Ahsoka eyed Harry's wand warily. He almost never used it and only when he had to do something delicate, as he called it, with his magic. If anybody asked, she didn't shudder all over her body when it felt like mud was poured all the way down her body. She tried not to gasp when she saw a faint outline coming from Harry next to her.
"Sense the spell in the Force it leaves a trace," Harry said. "It's camouflage, so we need to move slowly not to be spotted. Oh, and let's hope there isn't another Force sensitive in there."
"There shouldn't be," Ahsoka said. "Jedi don't know how to disappear in the force. You can still sense Aayla and the traitor in the distance."
"Lead the way, love," Harry said.
Smiling from ear to ear, Ahsoka barely kept the squeal trying to escape from her inside as she began moving forward. She kept her Force senses on him just to make sure that she would be following him. It felt both wrong and exciting to be sneaking into a Republic base. She had been right; the clones followed the same layout as they always did, making it easy for her to lead them to the Communication hub off the East Side of the compound.
"There are too many clones in there," Ahsoka whispered to Harry. "Do something."
She could almost feel Harry's bemusement in the Force as he waved his wand over the door and into the room.
"Ey Striker, isn't it almost time for lunch?" One of the clones asked.
"I need to go check some stuff in Inventory." And a few other excuses to leave later and the communication hub was emptied of everyone.
"What did you do?" Ahsoka asked.
"Compulsion field. They'll think they have something else to do or be as long as it is up," Harry whispered back. "But we still have to hurry. It will look suspicious if someone takes a closer look."
"Right," Ahsoka said. "I just hope the codes are still the same for the Jedi Temple."
A few seconds later the communicator was lighting up and the blue face of another Togruta lit up over the display.
"Who's there?" The woman asked.
"Right," Ahsoka said. "Remove the camouflage, please. Master Shaak Ti." Harry noticed that Ahsoka's voice was decidedly neutral.
"Padawan Ahsoka," Shaak Ti said. "What are you doing, this is a restricted channel?"
"We don't have time for that, in three hours the clones turn on the Jedi, on all of the Jedi."
"Impossible!" Shaak Ti said, shaking her head. "Why would you say such a thing?"
"It's the truth," Ahsoka said. "Me and my mate have used a Force Artifact to travel back in time. We had to spend three hours saving Knight Secura's life in the future, our past."
"And what about Knight Offee?" Shaak Ti asked.
"Dead," Ahsoka said. "There is nothing we can do. If we change anything we personally know and have seen about the future, Time and the Force will take its due. We cannot change anything that would directly change anything that would have led us to go back in time."
"I see," Shaak Ti said. "What would you have me do?"
"Get the word out, save the younglings," Ahsoka begged. "All we know is that the Chancellor betrayed the Jedi and ordered the execution. Save as many as you can. I beg you. If you ever cared for me you will do what is right."
"It's time," Harry whispered.
"Goodbye master," Ahsoka said. "I hope you survive and may the Force be with you."
Ahsoka turned the console off before Shaak Ti could say anything more. Taking a deep breath, Ahsoka got her emotions back under control looking heartbroken as she reached out towards Harry's silhouette. Feeling the reassuring squeeze around her hand put a small smile on her face.
"You did everything you could do," Harry said. "Now, let's go liberate some stuff. What do we need?"
"Ships, astromech droids, a medical droid, food supplies, medical supplies and weapons and ammunition," Ahsoka listed off.
"Do you want to get Aayla's things as well? What about Offee's?" Harry asked.
"I suppose," Ahsoka said uncomfortably. "It's just… it's one thing taking stuff from the Republic."
"It's a lot more personal when you know the person," Harry said, nodding. "I can see that but we know they leave Aayla behind and maybe she would like to bury Offee's things in a marked grave. I know that Offee wronged you in the past, but even if she has yet to die this time around we know her fate."
"I know." Ahsoka whispered. "We used to be best friends. She and I almost became Padawans at the same time. Our masters' teachings were so different in their approach that we really complimented each other on the battlefield and off of it. We ended up saving each other's lives multiple times each but then she bombed the Jedi Temple only to frame me for the job. It led to my expulsion from the Jedi Order. They took my Padawan braid. It was my everything. I just couldn't and then I found her again on the battlefield as a Jedi Knight. Why didn't I get the same chance? Was it because she was so much better than me? And even now that I know she will be dead before the day ends, I still can't stop thinking about the good times. Remembering how we used to laugh and talk about how our masters would do something stupid. That's the Barriss that I want to remember, not the woman who betrayed me and my trust."
"I would never want you to," Harry said. "There have been many whom I have disliked, and even some that I have outright hated, but Death is the ultimate equalizer. It doesn't matter what you do right or wrong in life. Death comes for all and the dead can do no more to you."
Ahsoka sent him a long, painful look. Harry might not realize it but sometimes he would just come out and say something that would make even the stuffy Jedi masters in the Temple seem fun and upbeat. She reluctantly would admit that he had a point. It didn't matter what animosity had excited between her and Barriss after today and, in the grand scheme of things, she would never have met Harry if it wasn't for Barriss and the Order. Not that she would ever say it out loud. This had been her final act of kindness towards those who had betrayed her. After today she didn't owe them anything.
"This way," Ahsoka said after feeling the camouflage on her body again. "We'll go to the hangar first. We're going to need at least two Low Altitude Assault Transport/Infantry ships, usually shortened to LAAT/Is and some way of entering hyperspace. The LAAT/Is aren't equipped with hyperdrives. They're landing crafts."
"You're not trying to tell me we have to steal one of the big ones in the sky do you?" Harry asked with a hint of trepidation. He was good but that seemed closer to suicide than actually possible.
"No, no," Ahsoka said. "If I know Aayla right, her starfighter will be on the base which means that her hyperdrive ring will be in orbit. There might even be two hyperdrive rings in orbit. So we'll need to secure both of those as well. Maybe we'll even be lucky enough to find a Consular class-cruiser."
"Sure, uh-huh, I see," Harry said airily. "Soka, I have no idea what you're talking about. Just point me towards what you think we need okay?"
"Right," Ahsoka blushed in embarrassment. "I keep forgetting that you really don't know anything. You're such a back-water nerf-herder."
"Never said I was anything else," Harry teased. "You just point and I'll work my magic."
Nodding, Ahsoka just led them into the large hangar. She wasn't surprised to find over twelve LAAT/Is across one wall but unfortunately she couldn't see any Consular Cruiser-class ships. They'd have to somehow scrap a starship together from the LAAT/Is. She did see two starfighters off in the far corner away from the LAAT/I ships.
"Three of those, and those two over in the corner," Ahsoka said. "We'll also want at least three of the astromech droids."
"And those are?" Harry asked.
"The ones with the round top," Ahsoka said. "Seriously, how can you not know?"
"The trashcan looking ones?" Harry asked. "Do we need that thing they are hanging on as well?"
"The charging station?" Ahsoka asked. "Yeah, we need the charging station or else the droids would stop working. Just shut up and steal the stuff I'm asking you to."
"Can do," Harry saluted cheekily. "I'll cover the ships in fields that will make people ignore them. They won't be able to find them. Should I send the droids to the tent?"
"Do that," Ahsoka said. "Come on. Let's go steal some medicine then we'll get food supplies."
"Do the Republic supply spices to the frontline?" Harry asked excitedly.
"Of course," Ahsoka said. "Ingredients too, as well as field rations."
"Let's steal it all," Harry said grinning wickedly. "Oh I've been wanting to experiment with different spices and ingredients. I'm so looking forward to this."
"This way then," Ahsoka said with a put upon sigh though her lips were twitching into a smile.
She might have spent half a year with Harry but this was the first time she had seen Harry go all out. Whole pallets as tall as her were shrunk into small cubes and put into Harry's back pack while he somehow made a Force copy identical to the ones they had taken. Food, Spices, Rations, medicine. Everything went into the backpack. It should not fit into the back pack. More than once she looked at it with awe in her face.
"How? What? Why? How much stuff is in there?" Ahsoka asked.
"Hmm," Harry said. "I'm actually not sure. There is the extra stuff I picked up at the house, potions, and a few books. We can't move Aayla before she regains consciousness and we can have another look at her so we might have to stay in the tent for a while. Then all the stuff we took from here. That's the stuff I put in there today. I honestly don't remember if there was anything else in it before. It's kind of bottomless."
"What do you mean bottomless?" Ahsoka asked.
"I don't think it's meant literally." Harry shrugged. "I think a more reasonable description would be a big ass bag. They can get filled; it just takes a lot before it happens."
"You're breaking the laws of physics," Ahsoka said.
"And hyperdrive technology doesn't?" Harry asked back. "Moving faster than the speed of light?"
"I suppose it does, doesn't it?" Ahsoka said. "I never thought about that. Hyperspace technology has always just been there. It works so nobody ever questioned it beyond `can we make it faster'."
"Heh, it's probably using part of the Force to make it happen, creating a calculated wormhole around the ship or something," Harry murmured. "We still need a medical droid and then the Jedi's stuff before we're done here."
"What about afterwards?" Ahsoka asked.
"We'll camp out in the vicinity or something until we see them leave," Harry said. "Then I guess we'll begin flying our stolen ships back to the tent."
"We could sabotage some of the weapons," Ahsoka suggested.
"Why would we do that?" Harry asked.
"If the chancellor has betrayed the Jedi," Ahsoka said.
"Then he might have betrayed or taken control of the Republic," Harry finished. "And that would be a bad thing, I take it."
"If he is the Sith lord then yes," Ahsoka said.
"Great, another Dark Lord," Harry sighed tiredly. "It's a good idea then. Show me."
"The armoury is this way."
Harry couldn't quite suppress the gasp coming from his mouth, when he saw the giant AT-TE up close. "That's a big gun."
"I suppose," Ahsoka said. "It'll never fit on a ship though."
"Are you sure?" Harry begged.
"Yes," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "God, it's like listening to SkyGuy."
"So, I can't steal the big gun?" Harry asked.
"Sure, go ahead," Ahsoka said with resignation in her voice. "Over here."
She led them both over to two boxes filled with what looked like giant rockets. Harry watched as she began arming a few in each crate.
"That should do it," Ahsoka said. "Can you do something so nobody would notice anything wrong?"
"How about that?" Harry asked, as he cast a few illusions on top of the missiles with an added compulsion charms, so whoever brought them on board would feel compelled to bring them.
"Now we just need to get the Jedi's stuff," Harry said. "Good job so far. How long until?"
"Twenty five minutes," Ahsoka said tonelessly. "Harry, I…"
"It's okay," Harry whispered. "Just this last stretch and we'll be able to huddle up together and wait it out. No need to stay tough after that."
"I know, I know," Ahsoka said irritably. "I… thank you for staying strong."
"Last stretch," Harry repeated comfortingly.
Ahsoka just nodded but didn't say anything further as she moved further into the compound. They walked along a long building with different locked doors on both sides.
"Their rooms would be in this building but the doors are all locked," Ahsoka said, looking more and more drained both physically and emotionally.
Instead of saying anything Harry just lifted his hands sending a command through the Force to open all of the doors. He was beginning to feel it too. Nine hours back in time was the longest trip he had taken before but you started to wear a bit thin as you got closer to your initial jump point. He watched Ahsoka until she just pointed at two rooms, neither of them feeling like talking about this any longer. There was no joy, no anger to fuel their trip, just a bone deep tiredness setting in. Harry just unceremoniously used a spell to pack everything not bolted down in the rooms before he turned to Ahsoka and stretched out his hand, gesturing for her to grab it. As soon as she did he pulled her into a tight hug and apparated her to a different spot than they arrived.
"I hate it when you do that," Ahsoka said tiredly.
"Come here," Harry said, pulling them both down in front of a tree. He placed her in between his legs and gently laid her head back on his shoulder. "Sleep, love, I'll wake you up when it is time."
"What about you?" Ahsoka asked.
"It wouldn't be the first time I've had to stay awake for a couple of days," Harry said. "And I won't be much use flying things back and forth when we need to do that."
"No, I don't suppose you would be, my back-water nerf-herder," Ahsoka murmured.
Harry kept running his hands down her front lekku as she slept against his body. He dreaded what was coming and was almost tempted into knocking out Ahsoka so she wouldn't have to feel the wave of death through the Force. The last time he had felt that much death was when the bombs began to fly on Earth destroying everything. The Last Great War between the magicals and the non-magicals of Earth. Nothing had survived. He had spent a couple of months travelling around the destroyed continents picking up whatever he could find, mostly books from all corners of the world. Art and metals, anything that could be saved had been saved. It was only when he found nothing more to save that he had taken the only way out on Earth, the Veil. That had been more than a year and a half ago.
He hadn't been lying when he had told Ahsoka he would have gone insane if it wasn't for her. There was no question about it. That might have been why he had agreed so easily to being her mate. He was tired of being lonely. He wasn't ready to tell her he loved her, but he left no doubt that he was fond of her.
That's when it happened. He could feel his own anger coming from far away; it was like a raging storm of madness and destruction wanting to devour anything in its path. There had been no mercy and there had been no forgiveness. He clutched Ahsoka tighter to his chest. Force forsaken time travel. He wouldn't even be able to shield them from the Force when the wave would hit in a second. He felt it then. The planet cried so he cried too, the Force wept so he did as well. It was all encompassing and truly horrendous to feel the second time around. Even Ahsoka stirred in her sleep, whimpering as she grabbed his arms tightly around her body using him to shield her from it as she curled up into his chest.
Finally it ended and all he would have to do was wait. Deciding to stave off his hunger he picked up one of the field rations they had stolen. It was tasteless but he honestly didn't care. He was in for a long wait.
Ahsoka woke up feeling soft lips on her montrals. She remembered having nightmares then feeling safe and protected from those. "Hmm?" She murmured.
"They're leaving now," Harry said softly. "Right on time as well. Do you feel rested?"
"Surprisingly yes, though I'm feeling a bit hungry."
"I'm afraid all I have for you is field rations. Not the most exciting thing to eat," Harry said, exhaustion marring his every word.
"You don't sound well," Ahsoka said.
"I'll sleep when we get back to the tent," Harry said. "No need to worry about me just yet. Let's go get our ships."
"The astromechs!" Ahsoka moaned.
"What about them?" Harry asked.
"They're back at the tent. I'll need them to help fly all the ships back," she groaned.
"Oops?" Harry chuckled. "We'll just portkey them back with you. I suppose you would need one for every ship you don't fly yourself?"
"Yeah," she said. "I'm not looking forward to travelling through a wormhole."
"It'll be fine," Harry reassured her, not sounding all that sincere. "Come on, Ahsoka. Let's get through the home stretch. I'll want to be there when your friend wakes up."
"I'm not sure if I still count her as a friend," Ahsoka muttered under her breath.
Ahsoka was trying not to laugh at Harry's expression as they lifted up in one of the LAAT/Is. He was positively vibrating with childlike wonder as he looked left and right at the different buttons and lights.
"Which way?" Ahsoka asked.
"Feel out your connection to the protections on the tent," Harry said. "They are tied to your blood."
"Alright master," Ahsoka teased. "Hang on."
"I'll never get tired of flying," Harry said.
"Wait, I thought you told me you'd never flown before," Ahsoka said.
"Of course I've flown before. I was eleven when I had my first time on a broomstick."
"Broomstick? The sweeping tool?"
"Of course," Harry nodded sagely. "Second best way there is to fly."
"Uh-huh," Ahsoka said. "And the best way to fly?"
"With my own wings of course," Harry said.
"Your own wings? You're having me on," she laughed. She didn't however like the smile that appeared on Harry's face when she said that.
Keeping half an eye on him out of the corner of her eye she saw him shift in his seat and then begin to shrink until a small black bird with emerald green eyes sat in his place.
He squawked indignantly when Ahsoka almost crashed the ship in her surprise. "Mother of Kwath! Harry?"
She watched in no small amount of awe as the small bird flew up to land on her shoulder gripping tightly enough for him to not fall off as he nuzzled his small black beak against her montrals.
"Fine, fine I believe you," Ahsoka said. "Can you teach me how to do that?"
She would never admit it but seeing a confused bird trying to shrug its shoulder was one of the most adorable things she'd ever seen in her life. She almost wanted to keep asking Harry about it until she realized they were almost at the tent. Seeing the different droids standing around the opening of the tent she gently put down the LAAT/I.
"Well, you can turn back now," Ahsoka said with some amusement in her voice.
She watched in fascination as Harry flew out of the LAAT/I and transformed mid air only to land mid stride before turning a cheeky but tired smile back towards her as he walked over to the rack of five astromechs.
"You'll need four of these right?" Harry asked. "Also, could you activate the medical droid so I can get another in-depth scan of our patient?"
"Sure," Ahsoka said. "Just let me make sure that their ownership is turned over to us."
"And you can do that from here?" Harry asked.
"I just need the datapad to couple it up to the droids," Ahsoka said with a smile. "Could you do what you need to do while I do that?"
"Sure," Harry said. "You'll need four of them?"
"Two for the starfighters and two more for the LAAT/Is. I'll need them to synchronize the flight controls on every ship tethering them to the one I'll pilot," Ahsoka lectured.
"And you just went completely over my head," Harry laughed. "Sure. I'll just turn the rack back into a portkey and keep one of them here. You'll just need to hang on to it as it goes."
"You're very convenient, do you know that?" Ahsoka said.
"You might have mentioned it a time or two," Harry said. "I'll go and check on our patient. Just say 'activate' while holding the rack and you'll be on the way."
"Will do."
Walking into the tent, Harry wasn't surprised to find Fawkes sleeping in the same position as he had been when they first left. "And how is our patient, Fawkes?"
One bleary blink was all the answer he was going to get from the phoenix. Shaking his head, Harry began waving his wand over the full length of the Twi'lek's body. Her injuries seemed to have been healed and she no longer seemed on the edge of death. All of her vitals looked good and there were even some old injuries that looked better than they had before they had begun the marathon healing session. He grabbed the skin salve and gently began rubbing it into the scar tissue on the woman's back. He didn't know if it would ever fully heal but he was determined to try his best at leaving her skin unblemished. He kept applying the Force as he did his work to help activate the Force from inside her to help her natural healing.
He kept getting a response from her lekku on one of his diagnostics telling him that there were trace amounts of some foreign harmful substance in the fat that made up most of the lekkus. It seemed old however, almost ingrained into the tissue. He might be able to remove it with a purging potion but he couldn't give that to her until she had regained consciousness. Throwing up and unconsciousness was never a good combination and she looked to have survived with the stuff inside of her so far.
"I'll be leaving now," Ahsoka called from outside the tent. "I've just reactivated the medical droid. Give it a minute before it's online. You're set as the primary owner for that while I've taken ownership of the astromechs. There is another one if you need it for anything, though I doubt you will. How's she doing?"
"She's stable," Harry called back. "Though she'll probably be unconscious for quite a while longer. Are you really going to leave without kissing me goodbye?"
He didn't have to wait long before Ahsoka flew through the front flap of the tent and engulfed him in a tight hug, kissing him enthusiastically on the lips. All of the tension he had been holding inside bled out of him as she kissed it out of his body.
"You're dead on your feet," Ahsoka said softly. "You should go rest."
"I might just do that," Harry said. "I suppose the medical droid will be able to watch our patient for us while I rest."
"That and more," Ahsoka said. "Sleep, my mate. You've been awake for too long."
"You're probably right," Harry yawned. "Have a good trip."
"I'll be back before you know it," Ahsoka said.
Harry watched as Ahsoka left the tent and waited until he heard her say the activation phrase before turning towards the recently activated medical droid. "And what am I supposed to call you?"
"My designation is 2-1B-53A," the droid said. "I have been called Toby before."
"Toby it is then," Harry said. "Do you have the medical records for Jedi Knight Aayla Secura in your database?"
"Affirmative, sir," Toby said. "I take it you will be needing access to those."
"No," Harry shook his head. "I'm not even sure if I would be able to understand them, Toby. I just need you to do a medical scan of her and compare it to your records and tell me if there is anything that I have missed in my healing of her."
"Affirmative, Sir," Toby said. "What will I be doing with this new data?"
"Make a list of symptoms needed for treatment and keep watch over," Harry said. "I've been ordered to go to sleep."
"I wasn't going to say, sir, but you are looking a little bleakish," Toby said.
"What has my life become?" Harry muttered to himself. "Now I'm being sassed by a droid."
Harry barely made it to the nearby couch before he collapsed into an exhausted sleep. Images of long forgotten battles and losses alongside images of people dying that he had never met before. Harry had long since grown dispassionate to the suffering and death of people he hadn't met before. He would do what he could to help people in his surroundings, like saving both Ahsoka and Aayla, but he wouldn't go out of his way to help either. He wouldn't have suggested going back in time to Ahsoka if she hadn't wanted to help herself. It was the problem of becoming old, you stopped caring about the big picture. You became that little bit more selfish and cared less for ideals or fighting the good fight. That's why it was good for him to surround himself with people who did care, so that he could care for them in turn.
Harry woke up the next morning feeling a weight lying on his chest, looking down Harry spotted a knotted bundle of lekku, mal'lekku and montrals twitching around his face and sides or where they could reach him. Leaning forward, Harry kissed the top of Ahsoka's montrals before he gently lifted her up, so he could begin his day.
"Toby, are you online?" Harry asked after waving a silencing charm around Ahsoka.
"Affirmative, sir," Toby said. "Would you like the results of the scans of Jedi Knight Aayla Secura?"
"That would be great, Toby," Harry said as he found the materials for Ahsoka's armguards. "Also, Toby, would you please alert me if Ahsoka wakes up?"
"Affirmative, Sir. The medical scans of Jedi Knight Aayla Secura indicate that she is in greater health than she was according to her medical records. Specifically her injury in the knee has disappeared while some of the glitterryl in her lekku has been diminished. There are indications of muscle loss in the lower back region but those are within standard errors of fluctuation. There are also seven round scars more than indicated in the medical protocol. They have the appearance of blastershot injuries. That is, however, medically impossible as she would have been dead if she had been shot in those regions," Toby said. "She will wake up within the hour. Ahsoka Tano will wake up within the hour."
"Thank you, Toby," Harry said, reading his book on crafting trying to find the spells that would help him shape the hide into armguards. "I'll be working on a small project that is to be kept a surprise for Ahsoka. She is not to be given information about this project."
"Affirmative, sir," Toby said.
Finding the spells needed for the initial shaping of the guards and the hardening process alongside a standardized series of runic arrays that were commonly used on the armour, Harry quickly began to work hoping that he would be able to finish them before Ahsoka awoke, though he doubted he would be able to finish today. He was, however, surprised that Aayla would be waking up within the hour. He had estimated that she wouldn't regain consciousness until at least 48 hours had passed.
He had just finished inlaying the two Rancor teeth into the middle of the armguards, when Toby interrupted him telling him that Ahsoka was about to wake up. He quickly hid the two armguards in his personal backpack before removing the silencing charm around her.
"Hey sleepyhead," Harry said cheerfully. "Did you get everything?"
"Ugh," Ahsoka groaned. "Of course I did. I even went up and got the two hyperspace rings in out there. We've got two sets of two hyperspace capable engines and eight low altitude engines all around."
"Good job," Harry said. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Only if you make it alongside breakfast," Ahsoka said. "I'm still exhausted."
"That would be because of the time travel," Harry said. "The body really doesn't like existing at the same time twice."
"I suppose that makes sense in some way," Ahsoka sighed. "How's she doing?"
"Toby tells me she's doing better than her medical records show," Harry said. "Something about an old knee injury that has been fixed as well and something about Glitterryl. I suppose that would be the harmful substance in her lekkus."
"She's still got that in there?" Ahsoka asked in horror. "Is there anything you can do?"
"Sure," Harry said. "I can brew her a purging potion. It'll remove any foreign substance in her body both positive and negative. So if she needs vaccinations or other such things she'll need them again afterwards. I'm afraid it doesn't really distinguish between positive and negative substances."
"Thank the Force," Ahsoka said.
"What is Glitterryl if I may ask?" Harry asked while bustling around the kitchen.
"It's this drug that makes people forget who they are," Ahsoka shuttered. "Aayla got caught on an undercover mission and was pumped full of the stuff. She even turned to the dark side while not remembering who she was. They did everything to bring her back."
"But they didn't have the medicine to completely remove it from her system without damaging her lekku. I see," Harry shrugged. "It'll be horrible for her to go through, the potion will force out the impurities from every orifice as it does it's work."
"For how long?" Ahsoka asked.
"An hour or so," Harry shrugged helplessly. "It might not find anything after a short while but the sensation of being cleansed will last the full hour and I would not recommend eating or taking anything in while it works. It will even remove food from the stomach, or stomachs in Aayla's case."
"She'll still want to do it," Ahsoka said. "How long have you been up?"
"Toby?" Harry asked.
"A little under forty five minutes, sir," Toby said.
"Toby?" Ahsoka asked.
"2-1B-53A was such a mouthful," Harry said. "And Toby was a common enough name on my planet. I think it was short for Tobias."
"So what's the plan now?" Ahsoka asked.
"We'll wait for Aayla to wake up," Harry said. "Depending on what she wants to do, she can either stay with us or go back into the galaxy. She'll get her stuff and some rations and then she can go her own way. The two of us can take the ships back to the house and either try and salvage some more from the wreckage of your ship or begin putting together our own starship. If we give Aayla one of the hyperspace rings we'll still be okay with just the one ring right?"
"Sure," Ahsoka shrugged. "It wouldn't be the fastest ship in hyperspace but a ship for the two of us and the droids wouldn't need to be bigger than the ship I crash landed in. When will she wake up?"
"She is already waking up, Mistress," Toby said.
Harry and Ahsoka both turned to the Rutian Twi'lek groaning painfully as she woke up with varying degrees of trepidation on their face.
