I navigated the shuttle craft to a small clearing outside of the village where I would drop off Malek for the day. Although there were closer places to land, it was the first place I had landed on the planet when I first began training with my master, and it just sort of stuck with me. Not to mention, I wasn't fond of the possibility of having my ship stolen and few were brave enough to traverse too deep into the woods of Endor for fear of disturbing the Ewoks.
"Watch your step." I said, as Malek and I disembarked from the ship and began our trek through the forest.
"Ugh, it's so hot here." Malek said, not five minutes into our walk.
I laughed a little. Malek was tough, but you would never be able to tell from all her complaining on planets. She hated pretty much all weather as far as I had been able to tell.
"Isn't your home world a tropical climate?" I asked.
"Yes." She whined. "There's a reason why I left. I hate the heat. I like it on the ship where I can control the temperature, thank you very much."
I couldn't say I totally agreed with her. More often than not I found myself missing my village island on Naboo. The Andromeda had been my home for most of my life now, but I never missed a chance for fresh air when the opportunity presented itself.
"It's nice." I offered. "The fresh air will do you good."
"Yeah, sure." She said, sarcastically, batting foliage out of her way. "If Ewoks don't get me first."
Not a few moments later we reached the outpost clearing, a small village built around an abandoned imperial base.
"There's the cantina." I said pointing to a circular building in the middle of the small village. "They should be able direct you anywhere you need to go. I'll meet you there before sunset."
She gave me a wave and I departed back into the village to a familiar trail. If I had any fear of Ewoks before they had been long dismissed by the interactions I had with them often on this trail. I had been coming this way for nearing a dozen years now, and any meetings with one of the species had been friendly since I had first been forced to explain to them my reason for encroaching on their land.
I practically ran down the old trail, vaulting over felled trees and the small stream that ran between the village and my master's home. Maybe it would have been wiser of me to conserve my energy but ever since my encounter with Snoke I had been worried he had seen more information than I thought. A sinking feeling entered my gut as I entered the clearing and saw no sign of my master. My nerves were frazzled and unfocused as I slowed after emerging from the tree line.
"Why are you running?"
I nearly jumped, turning with surprise and smiling.
"Ahsoka!" I said in relief and excitement, glad to know that she was okay. "I just...I-"
There was rarely anyone who intimidated me or left me at a loss for words, but I suddenly felt childish in the face of my master - especially with the weight of the last few days in mind. Still, here was perhaps the only place I didn't have to take myself entirely seriously. Even as I took my study of the Force seriously, here was a place where I could lose myself like I couldn't as Captain of the Andromeda.
"You didn't tell me you were coming today." Ahsoka said, leaning against the staff she had begun to walk with in her older age.
I opened my mouth, then closed it. There was so much to say and I wasn't sure where to begin.
"Come," She said, motioning for me to follow as she stepped towards the small cottage she called home. "I sense you have a lot on your mind."
An hour later, my second cup of tea had gone cold, and I had explained my situation to her in its entirety. Ahsoka knew more about me than anyone else, and she was the wisest person I knew. If anyone would know what I should do it would be her.
I looked up for her response. Her brow was furrowed, her lips pursed. I watched as she took a deep breath, the wrinkles from her brow smoothing and her lips relaxing into their natural position. The corners of her crystal blue eyes crinkled as she smiled softly at me.
"You must do what you believe is right." She said, simply.
I closed my eyes, my own brow furrowing. Had I heard her correctly? Had she heard me?
"That's the problem." I pointed out. "I don't know what the right thing to do is."
Ahsoka shook her head, passing me a fresh cup of hot tea.
"No, your problem is that you do not trust yourself. You are caught in what others expect you to do, what others believe is right. That is why you are confused. You must do what you want to do, what you believe the right thing to do is. No matter the consequences. Or you will never be able to live with yourself."
I felt the Togruta woman's eyes boring into me as I looked down into my cup of tea.
"You must listen to yourself. The Force is within you and so are your answers."
Always so cryptic. I thought.
"Now, finish your tea." She said, standing. "You're still not getting out of training.
Training, as it turned out, and how it usually turned out, was a death trap with a side of lightsabers. Ahsoka had three large, wooden pillars, around 15 feet high in her garden, each around ten feet apart. Around fifteen minutes after our conversation, I found myself perched atop the one in the middle, my violet lightsaber humming softly beside me.
"The goal is dodge and deflect." Ahsoka said, setting off a few floating droids set to blast stunning bolts from different angles at different speeds. Ahsoka's aging hands gripped a remote control that I stared at wearily as the last droid rose to a high even with me. "You will have to use your intuition to know when to dodge and deflect and your swordsmanship and agility to do so without hurting yourself. We will go until you have disabled the droids or until you can no longer keep going."
I was convinced at this point that becoming a Jedi Master was less about one's knowledge and wisdom in the Force and more about one's creative ability to sadistically torture padawans in training exercises.
"Ready?" Ahsoka, questioned.
I nodded, already leaping to the pillar to my left to avoid the incoming bolt, deflecting blasts along with way. My landing was a little awkward as I found my own slight fear of heights kicking in.
Follow your intuition. Be one with the Force. Your mind will only distract you.
I recovered easily deflecting a bolt into a droid to disable it, leaving five more to dispose of. I flipped backwards back to the middle pillar, using the Force to aid me into another flip onto the pillar located even farther away. I sliced another droid in half during the second flip, but landed almost short of the pillar, teetering on the edge before regaining balance.
The bolts were quickening in speed, and I continued to deflect with my saber, managing to grip one droid with the Force and destroy it.
The final three closed in one me, forcing me to spend a considerable amount of time feeling trapped, blocked in by them.
If I leaped to one of the other pillars I would buy myself a moment of reprieve and possibly the opportunity to disabled another droid, but I feared being able to land well enough to avoid falling while deflecting the bolts. Still, I was spending far too much time doing nothing, tiring myself reflecting blasts that were increasing in speed. Sweat beaded on my brow as frustration began to grow.
You're going to have to trust yourself.
Ahsoka's words echoed in my head.
I relaxed myself, letting the Force flow through me until my limbs moved of their own volition. The Force urged me to leap and I leapt, slicing through two of my final opponents and landing perfectly in the center pillar where I had begun.
I easily dodged and deflected, moving through forms my muscles had recorded into near perfect swordsmanship with ease as I trusted my years of training and growing intuition. Finally, my deflection hit just right, disabling the final droid which fell to the ground, joining its fallen kindred with a sad clatter.
Deactivating my saber, I wiped the sweat from my brow. The whole session felt no longer than a few minutes, though my watch showed I had been training for over an hour. The exhaustion in my arms echoed the watch in proof.
"Very good." Ahsoka said, as I descended one of the pillars. "I can see you've been meditating. You're getting better at tuning in to the Force in battle."
"Thank you, Master."
"However," She interrupted. "You let your anxieties rule you. It is alright to contemplate your next move, but you must not let your thoughts overcome you, lest you waste precious time and energy."
She was right. I could not let fear rule my decision making. I needed to trust that whatever decision I was making would be the right one or that I could handle the consequences.
We spent another portion of the morning meditating for a few hours. There was a small creek not far from Ahsoka's cabin that provided water for her gardens when it did not rain enough as well as ambient noise for meditation. I let myself dissolve into the gentle sounds of water travelling downstream. Noises mixed together to form a symphony of nature infinitely better than the industrial noises of the ship I called home. In the creek water rushed against rocks and tree roots, small stones occasionally clacking dulling against one another from the force of the flow. Above head gentle winds rocked the canopy of trees whistling through the leaves. Birds fluttered from tree to tree and sang calls with no meaning to my ears.
Although I could not totally block out the anxiety that was building in my stomach and the endless stream of thoughts that rushed through my head for more than a few moments at a time, it was most relaxed I had been in the last forty-eight hours. Meditation was not something I normally struggled with, but the reality of my situation pressed down on me as I did my best to refocus. Eventually, I found myself with my eyes open, staring at Ahsoka with my brow furrowed in frustration.
Ahsoka's Force signature was calm and collected, her focus juxtaposing the erratic changes in the Force around me as I did my best to tamp down my worries. I looked fondly at her wrinkled features and felt her comforting aura, realizing with no small discomfort that Ahsoka was the person that I had known the longest, aside from K-9, which I hated to not count as a person. Her nose scrunched up a bit, her mouth turning down into a frown as she noticed my lack of focus.
"Can I ask why you are staring and not meditating?" She said, not opening her eyes.
I tugged nervously on my shirt, unable to go back to meditating when all that was there for me was worrying about what was coming over the next few days.
"I…I don't know." I said, sighing in defeat.
Ahsoka tilted her head, narrowing her eyes.
"You don't know, or you don't want to talk about it?" She responded.
I pressed my lips into a flat line and took my legs out of my meditative position, leaning against a tree behind me.
"Both?"
My Master sighed, looking at me with kindness in her eyes as I struggled to not let my emotions carry me away.
"There are certain things that meditation alone cannot fix." She explained, gently. "Meditation is a good exercise for processing our everyday worries subconsciously, for understanding the Force, and honing our own ability to focus. However, there are deeper wounds and emotions that, if kept to oneself, can turn to fear and hatred."
I considered her words carefully, reflecting on the events of the last few days and my anxieties of the upcoming days. Although I normally took the wild events of pirate life in stride, the last few days were far from normal for me.
"Now," Ahsoka said, scooting closer to me in the soft grass. "What's really on your mind."
I realized that the concerns I had expressed to her earlier were not so much my personal concerns, so much as the concerns I felt for all of the Kingship. While they overlapped with my personal feelings and reservations about morality, my emotions and anxieties over the events of the days prior and upcoming ran much deeper.
Tears never found me, as I explained my feelings to my master, even when I felt they should, and I suddenly feared I had trained myself out of them. But Ahsoka never judged me. She knew my heart, and responded with kind words when I needed them. We spent much of the early afternoon like this, working through my fears and the deeper feelings behind them, until I felt I would be able to make it even without my master to guide me for the next few days.
Normally our training days were far more intense, considering they were fewer and farther between than they used to be, but Ahsoka gave me the rest of the afternoon to relax, suggesting I do some light reading, gardening, or work on my forms if I really wanted to train any more. When I objected, she insisted I needed a break, and sometimes having a break is the most productive thing to do.
I ended up rotating between reading and working on some new bo staff forms I was reading about. It was easy to lose myself in something like this. As important as I knew meditation and reading was to perfecting my use of the Force, I preferred learning about new weaponry and fighting styles. Most of my opponents would always be larger than me, perhaps even faster than me, but I could control how skilled I was and build my stamina.
In my fight against the troopers after my recent betrayal by a trusted informant, I had left my back too exposed which had resulted in receiving a stun in the center of my back. It threw me off enough that I had been unable to deflect a blast that grazed my side. Fortunately between the bacta the med droid aboard the Finalizer had given me aided by my increased Force healing, the wound was feeling more akin to a bruise at the moment. I had been very lucky not to have been killed or imprisoned, and as long as my form lacked better defense, I was in grave danger dealing with foes like Snoke and Kylo Ren.
Fortunately for me, the Jedi were warriors that focused solely on defense, so it was easy to find literature pertaining to the subject. I worked on a set of forms dedicated specifically to defending your rear that I found in a book entitled, Fundamental Forms for Force Users. The name was ridiculous, but I ended up asking Ahsoka to borrow the book after an afternoon of practice.
I bid Ahsoka farewell around an hour before I was supposed to meet Malek, and after a short walk back through the forest I found Malek flirting with the bartender.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" I asked, gesturing to the bartender for one of my usual.
"Oh, I think I found more than what I was looking for." Malek said, winking at the bartender who blushed while he poured me a glass of Corellian whiskey. "What about you? Did your…thing? Go well?"
I took a long swig of whiskey, savoring the burn for a moment before answering. No one from the crew knew outright where I went on trips to Endor, and if they suspected they never said anything. Ahsoka mind tricked villagers she came into contact with in town, so the people here likely thought I was a friend of the Ewoks. No one knew about Ahsoka but me, and that was the way I wanted to keep it.
"Yeah." I said, simply, relishing a moment in the peace that the alcohol mixed with a day away from the ship brought.
"How do you think Ari and the twins are handling the whole Kylo Ren situation?" Malek asked.
And, the moment was gone.
"Probably not well." I responded, picturing a series of things that could be going wrong right now before amending my statement. "I'm sure he's handling it."
We wrapped it up at the bar, and Malek snagged the bartender's comm code before we left town. She was in a stellar mood, but I was despondent and distracted as we walked back to the shuttle. I grew anxious to get back to the Andromeda as I piloted us back, and Malek grew quieter, eventually taking the hint. Upon arriving back at the ship I quickly made rounds, finding Ari in the cockpit with K-9.
"I assume all went well with the prisoner." I said by way of greeting. The rest of the ship appeared to be running as smooth as ever while I was away, but the rest of the crew was not my concern with Ari in charge.
"Somewhat." Ari said, suddenly very invested in something on the navigation screen.
"Somewhat?" I questioned for clarification.
Ari was of the philosophy that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and while this worked very well when he needed to make split second decisions in my absence, his temper often got the better of him, and he often thought with his fists.
"He got a bit mouthy, and…"
"Ari punched him." K-9 interjected, not looking up from the controls.
"K-9," Ari scolded him tersely.
"K-9 did nothing wrong. You were told to keep an eye on him, make sure that he doesn't escape, but to otherwise leave him unharmed." I admonished him. "Mouthiness was not listed as a reason for harming the prisoner."
"The little prick is fine. I'm surprised that you care so much -"
"This is not about him. You violated my orders and lost your temper. You antagonized a powerful Force user and have put yourself and your crew at risk." I clarified, careful not to lose my own temper. "This is about leadership in my absence, Ari. If I cannot trust you to follow my orders and lead with your head and not your fists, you will no longer be left in charge. Is that clear?"
Ari cast his eyes down as at his feet. I could tell he still disagreed with me, but I hoped he had a better understanding of why I left orders not to harm the prisoner and why he was in trouble. He would get over it.
"Yes, Captain." He muttered, and I turned back to the navigation screen.
"Good. K-9."
"Yes, Captain." K-9 said, sounding smug with himself.
"Set course for Chandrila."