Ahsoka wasn't sure of the reaction she would receive when she walked into the shop the next day. She had not responded to any of the messages her coworkers had left on her communications console, although she had listened to most of them more than once. She had decided that she would accept whatever consequences she had coming her way and move on from the past weekend as though it had never happened.
She had spent all of Sunday doing everything she could to cut herself off from the Force. She had taken a very long walk and did not use the Force to run, jump, sense around her, or any other purpose besides. All tasks at home, she disciplined herself to do manually. Ahsoka had already been trying to avoid using the Force for mundane things, like lifting the vacuum cleaner when she could walk ten steps to grab it, but now it was a mandatory rule for herself. She felt vulnerable and unsteady, but it was better than the alternative.
At first, she had worried that the hum of the kyber crystals in her vents would distract her and pull her to the Force, but she still didn't have a better place to leave them, so they had to stay. What she did not expect was for the crystals to go silent. Without the Force to listen to them, they became ordinary shards of rock, albeit glowing red shards of rock. There was no song, Dark or otherwise, coming from them anymore. It actually worked out to Ahsoka's benefit: If she could hear the kyber crystals, she was slipping and needed to refocus herself away from the Force. It almost made her want to keep one in her pocket, but she knew what would happen: if the wrong person tried to hold the crystal, it would melt into water in their hand.
When she punched in her code and unlocked the back door on Monday, Luce and Jake were in the garage sorting the new shipment of spare parts. They turned to look at her come in, and she put on a smile. No need for them to know what had been happening for the past day.
Luce piped up. "Long time, no see!" He greeted her, smiling. "You seem to be in a better mood."
"I just needed time to clear my head after the break-in," she said, performing the excuse she had rehearsed the night before. "Thank you for the messages, I appreciated it."
"Eh, don't worry about it," he told her. "Wanna help organize these?"
Jake dumped a few sets of copper wires into the corresponding bin. "We tried to rope Tyme into helping us, but he's doing inventory again."
Ahsoka grinned. "Sure, I can help. How is your leg, by the way?"
"It hurts to walk," he complained, "and it's so itchy! I know it's bad to scratch it, but oh my God, it's annoying!"
"Oh, it hurts to walk, Tano," Luce mocked, raising his voice an octave. "I'm used to being pampered and cared for, and I don't like having to heal!"
Ahsoka laughed while Jake punched Luce in the arm. "Not funny."
"Seriously, though," she mentioned, "it is bad to scratch an open wound. You don't want it to get infected, and that's the whole reason I stitched and covered it up. Just try to leave it alone until the scab flakes off. Then you can pull the stitches and let it air out."
"I know," he admitted, defeated. "I still don't get how you learned all this stuff."
She shrugged, downplaying the significance of the fact. "I had a friend who taught me a few things on the fly. It comes in handy every now and then."
Luce opened his mouth to ask who her friend was, but at that moment, Granger entered the garage. All three of them froze and fell silent when he walked in, as did he. No one moved until he glared at Ahsoka and walked back out. Whatever he had come in for apparently wasn't worth being in the same space as her.
The door slammed, and Ahsoka flinched at the bang. "Yeah," Jake leaned close to her head. "If he didn't like you before, he hates you now."
"I'm not surprised," she replied, returning her attention to sorting. "He has every right to be. I shouldn't have lost control the other day."
"He did kind of provoke you," Luce tried to argue, but Ahsoka shook her head.
"Not his fault. I should have held my tongue. End of story."
Jake and Luce exchanged glances but said no more on the matter.
The next few days went similarly. Other than Granger, no one blamed her for her outburst after the fight. Nobody seemed alarmed or scared of her, and just expressed their relief that she was feeling okay again. As for Granger, well, Ahsoka couldn't really tell, because he absolutely refused to talk to her, or even be in the same room if he could avoid it. Ahsoka also refused to try and use the Force to sense his emotions. All she had to go off of were his withering stares and his absences, both of which spoke for themselves.
On Wednesday, she went back to 10-4 to train. She needed to get used to fighting without her Force abilities, and the Rising Phoenix headquarters was as good a place to do so as any. Ahsoka found Obi and Tawnya and dragged them down to the training mats while Tallie tagged along behind them.
Just like Ahsoka had feared, her slowed reflexes and lack of anticipation cost her more than one fight. In fact, she lost almost all of them. The couple of rounds she did win were due to mistakes on her opponent's part. A missed step here, an off-balance swing there, and Ahsoka was able to capitalize on it. She could see why it was so important for these people to take advantage of other's weaknesses and why they were willing to hit an unarmed fighter: without enhanced capabilities, they had no choice.
She was thrown down on the sweaty mat again, and she closed her eyes and rested for a second to catch her breath. When she opened them, Obi was extending a hand to her, which she took gladly. She didn't mind losing a fight, but that didn't mean she had to like it either.
"Are you sure you're back to normal?" Tawnya asked from the sidelines. "I could have sworn you've fought better than this before."
"Can confirm," Obi agreed. "You kicked my a..." he glanced at Tallie before amending his statement. "You kicked my butt that first time around."
Ahsoka stepped off the mat to take a drink while she answered. "I'm trying to fight differently than I was back then. Now, I only have myself to rely on."
Obi wasn't tracking with her answer. "You didn't have weapons that day. Were you on drugs or something?"
She laughed before she realized that he was being serious. She also remembered that she hadn't told either of them about her past yet. "Have neither of you figured out where I come from?"
They shook their heads, and Tallie, who had gotten bored with watching her brother beat Ahsoka, wandered off to go do target practice.
Ahsoka sat down on the bench. "Remember that trial with the Jedi Gone Rogue?" She asked, dropping the name the press had given her.
Nodding, Tawnya leaned against the cables that wrapped around the mat. "Sure. Someone bombed the Jedi Temple, and there was some kind of deal with one of the workers. So and so blamed it on someone...I think their name was-"
Her eyes widened as she remembered exactly who the Jedi Gone Rogue was. Obi caught on a few seconds later.
"You're a Jedi."
"Was," Ahsoka corrected. "I was a Jedi. Not anymore."
No one spoke for a few moments. The silence grew uncomfortable, and Obi felt inclined to fill it. "I guess we all know why my name threw you off, huh?"
The ladies laughed awkwardly. "Yeah," she agreed. "It took a little while to get used to. I think I'm okay now, though. It's not like I see your namesake on a regular basis anymore, anyways."
"I'm surprised you referred to it...the Order, as a cult," Tawnya confessed, "but I guess you had to make do with what I was saying."
"It was the easiest way to hide it," she admitted.
"But why hide it?" Obi asked. "Since when has being a Jedi been a bad thing?"
Ahsoka laughed but her heart wasn't in it. "Well, first of all, opinion of the Jedi doesn't tend to be very high this far down in the Lower Levels. Secondly, I got expelled before my trial started for obvious reasons. Not to mention that after everything finished, I chose to leave." She looked up at him. "It's not exactly the type of thing I'd like to go around announcing."
He shrugged. "Fair point. Still, though, you have all those powers and stuff."
"No, I don't!" She countered. "That's why I came here, to train without them. I'm not supposed to use the Force anymore, and I need to learn how to fight without it."
"Starting back at square one," Tawnya added, and Ahsoka nodded. "Back to the basics."
She chuckled coldly and gazed at her hands, which were still bruised from her episode at the punching bag. "It might even be square zero, at this point."
Obi and Tawnya glanced at each other. "I think we could make that work," Obi suggested, and he stepped back onto the mat. "Come on, we might as well start now."
Ahsoka looked up, grateful for their understanding. She and Tawnya followed him into the ring, and Ahsoka waited in the middle of the mat for them to begin.
"How good are your reflexes?" Obi asked, squaring up to her.
"Right now? Terrible, by my normal standards."
Tawnya made a face. "Well, your standards are pretty high. Cut yourself some slack here, Tano."
"Let's just find out," Obi suggested. "I'm going to try and hit you. Don't let me."
Ahsoka nodded and breathed out. She cleared her mind of everything Force related and lowered her center of gravity.
He started punching towards her, and at first, she was able to stay out of his way. It was so difficult to not rely on her abilities, but she managed. At least, she did. Then she started concentrating on that too much, and she was nearly tripped by Obi's kick. Ahsoka dodged it just in time to receive a full-force punch to the jaw.
She stumbled backward and massaged it. Not about to be deterred, she stood back up and faced him again. This went on for some time, each knockout discouraging her more than the previous. Ahsoka stood back up every time, but both Tawnya and Obi could tell that she was wearing thin.
Eventually, he called for a break, and he sat down outside the ring. Ahsoka made to follow him, but Tawnya shook her head. "Nuh-uh. I want to try something, then you can rest."
Ahsoka didn't have enough energy to fight her on the matter, so she returned to the center of the mat and waited for Tawnya to knock her out too.
Tawnya had been watching the whole time, and although she was just as frustrated with Ahsoka's condition as she was, she had noticed something and wondered if there was more to it. "I'm going to throw a right punch. Block it with your foot."
It was an odd request, but not an impossible one. Ahsoka had done as much hundreds of times before, and since she knew it was coming, she had no trouble doing what Tawnya asked. They repeated this a few times, and each time, Ahsoka deflected the right punch with both her left and right foot, as she switched back and forth a few times.
"Is it too much to ask for you to block with your left leg and punch with your right immediately after I hit you?" Tawnya asked, ignoring Obi on the sidelines, looking at her incredulously.
Ahsoka shook her head. "No, I can do that." She squared up again, and she prepared for the punch that was coming. She kicked Tawnya's wrist away, then continued to spin on her toes and used the momentum from her leg returning to the ground to power her fist as she drove it into Tawnya's side. For the first time in fifteen minutes, she had knocked someone else down.
It kind of reminded her of Anakin's teachings on blocking blaster fire. He had made adjustments to the usual techniques used by Jedi, but it had worked well for Ahsoka, who had in turn passed it on to Caleb in her spare time. She could hear him teaching her if she thought hard enough. "Keeping your saber moving is key to deflecting fire from multiple adversaries. Move in motion, one into the next, into the next, and so on."
What Tawnya had asked her to do employed the same idea: the momentum from her defensive block with her foot flowed into the force that became her offensive attack. Her right foot kept her on the ground, but she had pivoted around it to connect the movements. The lessons from deflecting blaster bolts were taking on a new form.
As it turned out, though, that wasn't what Tawnya wanted to focus on. "Obi, come here and try to do the same thing."
Ahsoka backed up against the cables and watched as Obi attempted the same move. However, he lacked the coordination, flexibility, and balance ingrained in the ex-Padawan. His legs could not spread wide enough to form a vertical split, he couldn't balance on his toe, and when he tried to punch Tawnya, he fell forward onto her, knocking her down in that way instead.
She tried not to laugh, she really did, but it was so silly that she couldn't help it. That, and she had been very stressed recently. It felt good to really laugh again. "Are you okay?" She asked, and Obi grumbled as she pulled him off of Tawnya.
"I'm fine. I hope that was worth it," he complained to Tawnya, who smirked.
"Force or not," she explained to Ahsoka, "you're a good fighter all on your own. Not many people can do a vertical split on command. If you need an example, well, you just saw one."
"You're welcome," Obi interrupted.
Tawnya smacked him. "My point, if you take advantage of that, maybe you can find the fight that you lost. I'm just saying it's worth a shot."
As she walked out half an hour later, Ahsoka was starting to think that she was right.