Instead of bothering with the Chasm, or trying to walk through the sector, she just flung herself down the shaft until she was down at Level 10-4. Once on the ground again, she slipped the Rising Phoenix's band on her arm and began walking, not even paying attention to where she went.
This was why she should have left. Using the Force to save her friends was one thing, that was clear. They were in danger, and she was the only person in a position to stop the thugs. That was fine. She had kept calm, after her confusion in the garage, and taken care of the situation quickly and efficiently. Once the fight was over, she went back to using her hands and feet to get things done. Nothing was wrong with that, that she knew of.
But lashing out at Granger? Uncalled for, rash, undisciplined, irresponsible, impulsive, reckless, utterly, and completely stupid. Everything she had trained herself to hide for years while training with Anakin had come boiling up inside of her. Even if it was to defend the clones, her emotions should not have gotten the best of her. The reason for her reaction did not justify it, especially since it was her. In the seconds it had taken her to say the words with the Force, she felt as if she could rip the whole building apart, and that certainly did not come from a place of Light. That was Darkness, one hundred percent.
That was the risk she had taken when she allowed the Force to well up inside of her again. She knew, she knew that she should have found another way, that she shouldn't have let the Dark Side of the Force come out and this was why. The second she had let her guard down, it had overcome the Light and all of her better judgment instantaneously. This was why the Jedi taught to suppress all emotions: Anyone with the Force had power, and that power could hurt people.
Ahsoka screamed at herself. I thought I was getting better, I thought I was forgetting! She could barely make one month without succumbing to the Dark tendencies she had acquired as the Inquisitor. Except for the nightmares she had all but silenced the Darkness inside of her, until today. She was back to square one.
She wrung her wrists. I should have known that the Darkness was permanent, she scolded herself. Once I submitted to Sideous, there was no going back. I should have known. It's either this or nothing.
Nothing was better, she decided. It didn't matter what she had to sacrifice in order to keep people safe from her, from the monster trying to escape. If she had to go the rest of her life without fighting, without meditation, without visions, without heightened abilities, it would be worth it so long as no one else got hurt. She couldn't chance it happening again. It had only been words this time, but next time she lashed out only the Father knew what would happen.
Ahsoka finally looked around at her surroundings and found herself in the training rooms at the Rising Phoenix's headquarters. She was standing next to a punching bag, hanging from the ceiling, and her wrists were taped.
It made sense. She needed to vent her emotions on something, something that was not a person. Since she couldn't meditate to calm down anymore, this was somewhere to start.
She dropped back into her fighting stance and started hitting it again like she had watched others do recently. Obi had explained that it substituted for punching people, but it was perfect for Ahsoka to get her mind together again. She gave the punching bag everything she had, sweating through her clothes (which still had Jake's blood on them) and turning her hands red. She punched until her body was sore until she could barely stand. The room around her became timeless, and time ceased to exist altogether for Ahsoka.
There was no telling how long it was before Tawnya came up behind her while she was taking a break, trying to catch her breath. "Are you okay?"
Ahsoka stood up, pretending like it didn't hurt to just do that. "Yes, why?"
"You've been here for over three hours."
She stared at Tawnya, trying to see if she was joking, but she wasn't, and she looked deeply concerned for Ahsoka. Holding out a water bottle with one hand, she guided Ahsoka to a bench and sat her down before she fell over.
"I guess I wasn't watching the clock," Ahsoka said dismissively, taking the water. She didn't realize how thirsty she was until the liquid passed her lips.
"Uh-huh. What happened?" Tawnya asked, and she knew there was no dismissing the conversation.
Ahsoka downed the water and swallowed before answering. "A break-in happened at work today, and I needed to clear my head."
"By going to town on the punching bag for three hours?" Tawnya asked suspiciously. "You don't do that for a break-in."
She sighed and tried to figure out how to explain it to Tawnya without bringing up the Force. "I made a mistake, one that almost hurt a lot of people. It was so stupid, but that didn't stop me from doing it."
Tawnya nodded. She was finally getting somewhere. "Mistakes happen, you don't need to beat yourself up for it. Literally."
"Not these types of mistakes," Ahsoka objected. "Remember that cult I was talking about?"
"The cult that wasn't a cult? Yeah."
She sat up to talk. "I've been trained my entire life to control myself, to not hurt people the way I almost did. Every day, every second spent in training, it's been ingrained in my head since I was five years old."
Tawnya whistled. "Sounds like a hardcore group."
"It did nothing. Thirteen years of training and when it should have stopped me, it didn't." Ahsoka closed her eyes. "I can't do that again. I can't risk it."
Tawnya just stared at the Togruta. She was wise enough to know that there was something bigger going on here, something that Tano couldn't talk about. Maybe she was sworn to secrecy or something, but it clearly meant a lot to her.
She squinted at her. "I thought you said you left. Why do the rules still apply to you?"
"Because they were right," Ahsoka responded. "Just because I left doesn't mean their rules are bad."
"But can you trust them? You're down here now, so are you sure everything is the same?"
"It isn't," she answered, "but I can..."
Ahsoka sighed. She couldn't trust the Jedi, she knew that, but they were right. If they were right about this, then there were other things that they were correct on, but she couldn't just assume that they knew everything, she couldn't believe them anymore. There was no right answer.
She leaned on her knees and rested her head in her hands. There had to be an answer somewhere, she just didn't know where to look. If it wasn't to the Jedi, who else could she turn to? Not the Sith, not the Jedi, and there was no third option.
Both, the voice from before told her.
No, she stubbornly replied. No more Darkness, no more Light, no more of anything.
"It's complicated," she finally told Tawnya, who seemed to understand despite the vague answer.
"I think you're making it more complicated than it has to be," she advised, wanting to help, but not knowing how.
Ahsoka sat up and drew a breath. "I'm used to having my life laid out for me," she confessed. "There has always been someone to tell me what is right and wrong."
The older woman raised an eyebrow. "You've never been on your own before?"
Immediately, she thought back to what she had said after returning from the Trandoshan's capture: 'All I had was your training, and the lessons you taught me. And because of you, I did survive. Not only that, but I was able to lead others to survive as well.'
She thought back to the past year when she had nothing but her goal, her one hope in all of her misery, to keep her going. The hope that she could kill Sideous, that she could stop Order 66 and the fall of the Republic.
Neither of those memories helped her. She was forcing herself to let go of the Force, to hide it and never use it again. She had no overarching goal, no mission other than to survive and hide. Ahsoka felt more alone at that moment than she had ever felt before.
"Not like this," she told Tawnya. "Not like this."
Late that night, when she got home, her house looked more lonely and cold than it had when she had first moved in. It was so empty, so still, so solitary, that Ahsoka wanted to run back to 10-4 and stay there for the night, maybe forever. She didn't though and sat down on the couch, activating her comlink.
She had gotten a few calls while she was at the punching bag, calls she had ignored. They were from the other workers at Gauges and Gears, checking up on her. They had left messages, telling her to ignore what Granger had said and that they were grateful for what she had done. Luce had even complimented her for standing up to Granger, but Ahsoka couldn't laugh at the memory as he could.
Ahsoka was about to retire to bed when she heard the humming from her pocket again. The kyber crystals. They had stayed quiet for the entire day, but now they were the only thing she could hear. She pulled them out and stared at them.
The thugs had probably stolen them from her lightsaber after she had abandoned it on the roof. After all, they were extremely valuable on the black market, and she had left them out in the open for anyone to find. Someone must have beaten Anakin to the spot where she had faked the Inquisitor's death.
She couldn't just toss them out onto the street, where another black market dealer could find them. There was no telling what they might do with them, and even if she was cutting herself off from the Force, she wasn't about to abandon kyber crystals to people who knew nothing about them. Reaching up to her hidey-hole in the vents, Ahsoka set them with her identification report and forced herself to forget about them. If she had any luck at all, they would stay there until the end of time.
Ahsoka went to sleep and dreamt of the days she spent in training on Dromund Kaas. She dreamt of the people she hurt, and of the crimes she committed, and about everything she hated about herself until the next morning.
Streak took off his armor that night in the Republic Center for Military Operations, like every clone trooper who was stationed on Coruscant did. He was off duty for the rest of the evening, and he hit the showers, trying to partake in some of the hot water before everyone else used it up.
He was eating in the mess hall when someone came up behind him. It was an older trooper that he didn't recognize, and had never met before, much less spoken to.
"Someone in line said you saw Commander Tano down in the Lower Levels today. Is it true?"
The troopers around his stopped eating and turned to listen in to what he would say in response. They all looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to confirm or deny the story.
"There was a break-in at one of the mechanic shops this afternoon. She was down there, cleaning the mess up."
Someone to his left asked, "So she really was down there?"
He nodded. "As real as any of us here."
His brothers started murmuring around him, asking about her and what she had been like.
"The 501st boys still talk about her, you know."
"I heard she snuck onto the citadel mission. Did you hear they froze themselves in carbonate to get in?"
"There's a starfighter waiting for her on one of the cruisers, it's got messages from all of her troopers."
"I think Fives got to sign it before he went down."
"Can't imagine what Captain Rex would give to say hi to her again."
Streak watched everyone talk around him and smiled. He recalled his own conversation with her and piped up. "I never knew she had a sense of humor. I mean, she was all business in the beginning but once we were leaving she lightened up a little bit. It's to be expected, I guess."
"What'd she say?" the trooper asked, and Streak just shrugged.
"Not much, it was just an offhand thing. I asked if there was anything she needed, and she has the nerve to ask for a break."
Everyone around chuckled, trying to imagine Commander Tano using one of their classic jokes from the locker room. Streak joined them, remembering the face she had made. Something like nostalgia, if he wasn't mistaken. It was nice to know that the commander still had some good memories of clones.