Ahsoka didn't know how long Rya wanted to embrace for, since she had barely ever done so herself. Not wanting to offend her any further though, she stayed still and waited for Rya to be ready to let go. When she did, tear trails shone on her cheeks. Ahsoka smiled, not really knowing what to do or say next. Now that the actual medical job was done, she was out of her element.
Rya walked over to the wall, where a shelf was supporting dusty pictures of her as a child, usually with her mother. She picked one up, brushing the dust off and smiling back at the woman frozen in the frame. "My mom had this taken the first week I was born. She always said it was the best thing that had ever happened to her." Putting it back, she didn't look that convinced to Ahsoka. "She's always had to work to keep me safe and healthy. Sometimes I wonder if she really thinks it was worth it, to have a child."
Ahsoka had no idea how to respond. She didn't know anything about children, or parenthood.
"Did your parents want you to become a Jedi?" Rya asked, changing the subject quickly.
She shook her head. "I don't know. I was at an orphanage before I was brought to Coruscant, and so they never knew. I don't think they did, at least."
Rya looked ashamed for asking, but she moved on to what she had intended to say. "I was born here, but my mother grew up on Ryloth. She was taken by the Zygerian Empire and sold into slavery."
Ahsoka wasn't surprised to hear it. Twi'leks were often enslaved, both as children and adults. Some were even born into it. So why wasn't Rya?
"How did your mother escape?"
Rya smiled. "My father helped her. They snuck onto a cargo ship and managed to hide until they got here. They used to live up closer to the surfaces, too, when they had me." Her face darkened and turned downcast. "Bounty hunters found my father, I don't know what happened to him. My mother came down here and hid, and started working on her own to support us."
"And you started working for Fuller," Ahsoka guessed, "so she wouldn't have to."
She nodded. "That, and I want to send her home."
"To Ryloth?"
"It's all she's wanted ever since she left," Rya explained. "She's done so much for me, and all I want is to give her something in return."
Ahsoka was stunned into silence. Never before had she ever met someone willing to work for something like that. Is she really that close to her mother? "How close are you to paying for passports?"
Rya looked up at her, confused. "What?"
"To travel. You need passports to travel between systems, or at least some kind of permit."
The blue Twi'lek shook her head. "We can't get passports. We're undocumented since my mother came here illegally."
Ahsoka tried to remember the legal process behind documentation. "I suppose it would take a while. How are you going to get her home then?"
"There's someone who can take her, but he wants 10,000 credits before he'll do it. He says that it's the only way he can sneak her out of Coruscant."
A million alarm bells went off in Ahsoka's head. "Are you sure you can trust this person?"
"Well I don't have a choice, do I?" Rya said defensively. "Without papers, she can't get out any other way!"
"Why can't you apply for citizenship?" Ahsoka asked. She knew it was probably pushing boundaries, but she felt that something was wrong here.
"They said it was more expensive to pay for documentation and a passport than it was to pay him."
"And you believed him?"
Rya stared at Ahsoka, stunned. She's being serious, Ahsoka realized.
"Rya, I just went to the Department of Licensing. Documentation is 250 credits, and a passport is 150. Are you sure that this is the best way to go?"
"What?" Rya jumped up, running to a cabinet and staring at its contents. Ahsoka saw jars of credits, stashed away for safekeeping. After a few seconds, Rya whispered, slightly shaking.
"He said his way was the only way. He said we couldn't get her papers. He said it was too expensive."
"That's why I was asking. The only other thing you would have to pay for is the ticket for the jump over, but that won't cost nearly as much as the other two items. The whole thing shouldn't cost more than 500 credits, unless something changes in prices."
Rya rested her forehead against the counter. She sank to her knees, and Ahsoka could hear her crying. "She can go home. She can go home."
She must already have enough, Ahsoka thought. If she's been trying to save 10,000 credits, then she can probably pay for herself to go with her. They can both go to Ryloth, not just her mother.
Suddenly, Rya turned to the Togruta, her face stained with tears, but happier than Ahsoka had ever seen her. "How long does it take for someone to get those things? How soon can she go?"
"I don't know," Ahsoka admitted. "I've never had to get one until I moved down here. I...had someone else take care of my traveling expenses last time."
"Is the D.O.L. open tomorrow?" She asked, pulling out the jars of credits and beginning to count them.
"What is th-" wait, never mind. "It should be. It is normally open during the week."
"If I get started tomorrow, then maybe she can leave, oh..." she began muttering in Twi'leki too fast and too quiet for Ahsoka to hear.
"It might be good that you have to wait a few months," Ahsoka offered. Rya shot up to object, but Ahsoka kept going. "Hopefully the war will die down by then."
Rya went back and forth, before returning to her counting. Ahsoka picked up her bags again.
"I should go. You need to rest too." She walked to the door, shouldering her pack. "Is there anything else I can do to help you?"
Rya shook her head, before changing her mind. "Wait. You said your parents, they're..."
"Dead, most likely," she filled in.
"So you've never had a family?"
Ahsoka shook her head. "Not the way you have your mother. All I ever had were...teachers or other students. Maybe a few friends," she admitted. "Maybe."
"How do you live like that?" Rya asked. "The only reason I ever made it this long was because of her. Don't you miss having someone to...you know? Having a family?"
Again, she shook her head no. "I can't miss what I never had. Jedi don't have attachments."
For a long time, Rya didn't reply. In the end, she just said, "Thank you, Tano. For everything."
Ahsoka nodded and left, closing the door behind her.
Rya watched her go, before remembering to lock the door and kill the lights. The more they saved in the electricity bill, the better.
As she changed into light pajamas and crawled into bed next to her mother, who was sound asleep, she let Tano's words turn over in her head. No family? She thought. How could anyone survive without someone to lean on?
There had to be someone there for her, Rya knew it. Maybe it wasn't family, but one of the teachers, or one of her friends. There was more that Tano wasn't saying about where she came from.
'I can't miss what I never had.' That was what she had said. Tano had never had a mother or a father. Rya never knew her father, but she had stories and she had a few pictures, stored away in the closet. She knew her father had been smart, and he had been a good worker while he was still with her mother. She knew that he loved her, both of them, and always would.
Tano probably had no memory of her parents, whoever and wherever they were. Rya wondered how any loving parent could stand to have their son or daughter taken from them, but if they were dead, then that was different. Still, though, not every Jedi had dead parents, right?
Rya couldn't imagine her life without her mother. She would probably be on the streets, or she would be a slave too. If Fuller hadn't taken her in and given her a job, even though she was underage, they wouldn't be this close to getting her mother home. They were even closer now since Tano had told her that the pirate had been lying to her.
She closed her eyes and snuggled into her mother, barely able to wait to tell her the good news in the morning.
Walking back home, Ahsoka thought about the family she had witnessed over the past hour or so. She was still trying to comprehend how someone could be so loyal as to spend their whole life trying to give them a gift like Rya was doing. What had her mother done that Rya was willing to do that much for her?
It had to be the attachment, Ahsoka decided. Something about living as a family brought on emotion and connected them in some way. It was the only explanation she could come up with.
What really rocked Ahsoka was the way Rya had looked at her when she had explained that she had no family. Not only were they dead, but she hadn't known them while they were alive either, so she was entirely on her own.
Rya had looked at her like she was crazy. As if not having a family meant something. For Ahsoka, it didn't. She didn't know what family was. She wished that she did so she could understand it, but without attachments, family was foreign.
Even if she did have a family, would they care? If they had known everything she had done, would it matter if the people who gave birth to her were alive or not? If they had been out there to find, would they want her to find them? Would they want to find her?
Ahsoka knew attachment could drive people to make some irrational and illogical decisions, but caring about someone like her, like a murderer, like a traitor, like a failure, not even attachment could bridge that distance. No one would claim loyalty to a monster.
She sat on her couch, her mind churning, and Rya's stare burned into her eyes. She closed them and tried to focus.
If I'm going to make up for it, I have to learn control, she thought. I have to stop the Darkness. No more nightmares, no more rage. No more hatred.
She did not move for a long time. When she finally did, she felt no more calm than when she started.