Episode 6: The Call
As a Padawan and a Commander in the Clone Wars, Ashoka had quite the rocky career.
Thinking back, she supposed it was her experiences during the Clone Wars that numbed her to what she had become outside her role in the Rebel Alliance. A sorrowful ghost waking up in rooms she didn't remember, falling asleep after a night haunting Corellia's sketchiest dive bars.
It's become more common in recent years, and it's become a sort of shameful game she would play with herself on whether she would wake up alone or not. (Bonus points if it was a complete stranger, or if she was wearing someone else's clothes entirely.)
She knew the dregs of a nasty hangover intimately, like a toxic lover's jealous, magnetic embrace.
What Ahsoka was waking up to, was definitely not the result of searching for the bottom of a bottle the night before. Her blood was on fire, cold sweat seared over clammy skin and her chest hurt.
This was hardly the first time Ahsoka had been kidnapped. She could deal with getting thrown in a locked room bound and bleeding.
What she couldn't deal with is getting drugged.
Drugs scared her, in a way getting shot, stabbed, or even falling out of the sky in a burning ship couldn't. Drugs fuck with the mind, twist and numb the senses, make reality as you perceive it as optional. The aching chill on her exposed skin was pulsing and throbbing and her head-tails writhed in distress as voices-that-weren't giggled and hissed in her montral.
She wandered in and out of the coherency like a drunken buffoon, stumbling between the street and sidewalk. Her senses would sharpen to an agonizing point, her mind clear, and her pain very real only for them to slip away, like gritty water sliding between her fingers. What unsettled and terrified her was that she was aware on some level when she began to lose herself again and she was absolutely helpless against the tide.
After a small eternity tumbling between consciousness and unconsciousness, the first thing Ahsoka became aware of were the bands of cold steel digging into her ankles and wrists. Her aching bones throbbed next, traveling up the krinks in her spine and knocking her montral with a pounding headache. Her blaster wound, all of her cuts, and blooming bruises tumbled in after. She groaned in pain, her throat as dry as a desert.
Ahsoka sat there in a hard metal chair panting, trying to shake the drug-induced ordeal she had just been dragged through. Though her anger flared, she felt utterly exhausted. The clinking of metal on metal startled her senses, giving her ailing mind a rude kick into gear.
Get a grip girl. Take stock. Measure your options.
She wasn't in the conference room anymore. The stench of wet rot was too strong, so somewhere near ground level, or maybe even underground. A background staccato of dripping water echoed around the dim room, illuminated by a single lonely lightbulb hanging naked from the ceiling.
She briefly wondered if Piecemeal was here somewhere, then a blurred memory of his body being thrown back by that Trandoshan's blaster reared its head and grief slammed her chest. Ahsoka closed her eyes and tilted her head upwards, sucking in a shuddering breath.
Piecemeal is gone.
Now he's just another face to drown out in drink. Ahsoka allowed herself to wallow in her sadness for a few more breaths before she swallowed the tears burning at the edge of her eyes and collected herself. Walling off her inner turmoil and stuffing it with the rest of her skeletons.
She shifted her hand and her arm stopped fast by the manacles chained to two loops in the floor behind her chair. Feeling out her fingers thunked against a metal basin filled with what she guessed was swamp water behind her, just barely in reach. Her feet were locked to the legs of the chair effectively immobilizing her. Judging from how stiff her knees and thighs were she had been stripped in this chair for some time.
Okay. Okay, chained to a chair in a dark room next to a tub of water with a sore ass. Could be worse.
She looked to her left and saw a small power cell with two cables hooked to its terminals on a table a few paces away, and laid out lovingly in neat little rows were all manner of toys of the sharp and unpleasant variety. Filed pliers, repurposed power tools, jagged serrated knives, and three different flavors of scalpels all polished to an obsessive sheen. A tiny gulp of dread bobbed down her throat.
Okay, it just got worse.
"Oh. You're finally awake." A bored male voice commented. (The Anakin-imposter, her mind supplied) Ahsoka heard the scrape of someone standing from a chair some feet behind her. "It would seem I misjudged the dosage. You were out for much longer than I had intended."
She could just make out her captor's smug expression through the din, features bleached by the lightbulb hanging overhead.
Swallowing to moisten her dry throat and push down her nerves Ahsoka grated out, " You're a lot more alive than I had intended."
The boss- no, Jordo- Chuckled. "I'm a businessman, my dear. This is just a transaction. Nothing personal."
"Not-" Wow, even just drawing the breath and working the words from her mouth was exhausting. "Not from where I'm sitting. It's very personal to me."
"Perhaps." The slaver snorted. "But the thing is. I truly don't care." She felt his footsteps as he approached until he stood in front of her, though he wisely (and unfortunately) stopped just short of biting or head-butting distance. "What I do care for, however, is your value to the Empire, and what I can get from it."
Despite herself Ahsoka felt cold sweat break out over her hot skin. If she were to be captured by the Inquisitorius she… she didn't… It would be over for her.
Her cracked lips, dry from lack of food and thirst, peeled back in a primal baring of teeth, a predator's desperate grin when cornered and faced with a fate worse than death. I will NOT be dragged back to be twisted into one of those Inquisitors! I'd rather die!
Righteous anger flickered in her chest, Passion fueling a short surge of strength.
Just outside the edges of her perception, the Dark, drawn in by her fury and fear brushed curiously against the mental shields she had used to cut her connection to the Force.
Her face curling into a sneer Ahsoka spat, "The Empire would sooner scalp scavver slime like you than bothering to hold up any kind of a deal you could offer them."
Jordo blinked down at her then tilted his head back in a harsh mocking laugh that sounded so- wrong- coming from a face so similar to Anakin's. "Oh my dear. You and I both know that is a Lie."
A shadow fell over Jordo's empty blue eyes. A brand of seething hate so potent cold dread poured down her spine, even cut off from the Force as she was. The slaver glared down at her, dark eyes calculating. Ahsoka kept silent, She watched him as he crossed the room and came to the alcohol cabinet, tinkling glass an unnerving accompaniment as he began to speak.
"I wasn't always the man you see before you today, you know." He started off in a conversational tone in stark contrast to his spiteful expression. He drew back from the cabinet with a tumbler filled with some green liquid. He swirled the drink around watching it as he reminisced.
"I was a farmer's son. Harvesting Waterfoil off the shores of a saltwater lake, selling our wares at the market in a small town nearby. Our life had been simple, idyllic even… but that was before the Clone Wars. Before the Droid Army invaded. Before the Republic-" He turned a knowing sneer in her direction, drink still in hand, and hissed. "-Before the Jedi."
A jolt of fear rippled up her spine.
He knows.
Though she had thought she hid her reaction well the Anakin-imposter must have seen something through the blank expression she had plastered on her face.
"It's funny,"Jordo began mildly, saying, "the things you can find in these old warships' databases…"
Reaching behind him the slaver pressed a button bringing up a flickering image of a young Togruta girl brandishing a lightsaber in faded hologram blue on the projector behind him and Ahsoka's blood ran cold.
"I'd imagine the Empire would pay a pretty penny for a runaway Jedi." Jordo's lips twisted into a satisfied smirk. "It's that right, Ahsoka Tano?"
For one of the few times in her life Ahsoka found herself without a snippy retort. Though the venom in her glare spoke volumes, and only seemed to amuse the Slaver more. She turned her head away.
"Oh, now, now Ms. Tano. don't be like that." Jordo drawled, flicking the holo-projector off and throwing them both back into the eerie glow cast by the single meager lightbulb. "You see, Jedi or not I wouldn't have bothered with setting up your current hospitable accommodations."
"But you are special, Ms. Tano." His slow pacing in front of her stopped short, his eyes hard and sharp as flint. "We had met before, after all."
That whispered statement hit her like a punch to the gut, leaving her nauseous. Jordo grinned, delighted at the reaction he had garnered from this revelation.
"I knew who you were the second you stepped in my town. I could never forget you. Not when I witnessed the figure you cut dismantling an entire droid battalion." The slaver had a far away look in his eye as he reminisced. He chuckled, " An exotic predator among metal prey… I had even thought you would save us, then. Shame I was wrong."
His gaze refocused into a razor edge. "You are going to change that today however."
As he spoke Jordo produced a tiny and horribly familiar imperial data disk from his breast pocket. "No. You see, I had very recently acquired a very interesting data-chip-" Ahsoka felt panic lurch up her insides, the tips of her leeku twitching in dismay. Jordo's grin only widened. "-And I believe you can help me decrypt its contents."
"Go to Hell." She spat, the effort inflaming the pain in her aching body.
"I believe this place is as close as it gets." Jordo chuckled, as if his response was some kind of local inside joke. "Know that I am not unreasonable Ms. Tano. I can offer you a deal."
Ahsoka stayed silent, scowling as Jordo took that as a sign for him to continue. "You give me the decryption code for this data-chip, and I let you go free. Now for a Jedi on the run I believe this quite the generous offer. Deal? "
Ahsoka sat back, her scowl relaxing into a considerate expression. Then she looked back up to him with an agreeable smile and said in a sweet voice, "I trust you about as much as I trust fuel-station sushi on a cantina toilet seat."
Her grin dropped back into a sneer and she added in a low feline growl rumbling form the back of her throat, "You can take your generous offer and go Fuck yourself with it. Deal?"
Jordo just blinked at her for a moment, either surprised at her audacity in someone of their position, or mildly impressed despite himself. His expression turned falsely remorseful. "Well, that's just a shame. And here for a moment I really thought we were making a connection."
The slaver sighed. "All well. Sometimes, you have to break a few Jedi to make an omelette." Cocked his head in thought, "Or was it eggs?" He shrugged and snapped his fingers.
A hissing mass from behind her lept at the slaver's signal and cold scaly claws curled around her arm. Ahsoka gasped in surprise and looked up to see the trandoshan guard from earlier grinning vilely down at her. Even with her incredible hearing and echolocation She hadn't noticed him lurking in the corner of the room at all.
Setting his drink down Jordo slipped closer and planted his foot on the chair between her thighs. "You really shouldn't have returned here my dear." He chastised, his voice once again light and friendly. "But, I am so glad you did." Then with a swift kick Ahsoka was sent reeling back, chair and all. Her arms jerked, her chains bolted to the floor violently arresting her momentum and tilted her over, her head plunging into the tub of water behind her.
Ahsoka gasped, lungs instinctually sucking in air at the frigid, slimy sensation surged over her face. Instead of air filthy bilgewater flooded her throat and choked her lungs, sending her into a full on panic, arms and legs jerking and struggling wildly at their bounds. She tried to get her head above water, her nose and the tips of her montrals just barely breaking the surface only for merciless scaly fingers to shove her back under, the trandoshan letting out a rattling chuckle above her.
Swimming on the edge of her rapidly darkening vision flickers of strangely shaped, incomporal shadows reached out to her, testing the mental defenses she had used to cut herself from the Force all those years ago. Desperation. Pain. Fear. It lingered in this hellhole, steeped in the Dark side of the Force from the countless victims that had spilled their lifeblood in this place.
She did not want to think about how much of the acrid terror poisoning the Force was hers.
Just when she was at the cusp of blissful oblivion her chair, and her along with it, was yanked from the water and a scaly fist buried itself into her diaphragm like a sledgehammer, causing the her to double over and violently evict the water and bile occupying her lungs in sputtering gasps and half-sobs.
A hand grabbed her scarred head horn and yanked her head up, inches from Jordo's smug visage.
"What is the decryption code?"
"S-s-..." Her head loose on her neck the delirious Togruta woman struggled to answer, her words coming up in gurgled gasps, "S-s-s-"
Thinking he had broken the ex-Jedi Jordo leaned in to hear her whispered answer. "Yes?"
"S-s-sit on a rancor dick... Nerf-fucker."
On the other hand, Ahsoka was never known for her diplomatic prowess, but she was known for her snippy comebacks.
"A shame." Jordo released her montrals with a disappointed sigh, her chin sagging to her chest in exhaustion. Then he threw a swift and vicious kick, his heel sinking into the beaten prisoner's stomach, eliciting a strangled cry of agony from her waterlogged throat and reopening the wound in her side. He waved at the Trandoshan standing behind the chair. "Go again."
Then Ahsoka was falling and water enveloped her again in its slimy, frigid embrace. Icy, immaterial fingers clawed at her skin and invaded her choking lungs. Smokey figures danced in her failing vision as thrashing water crashed, screamed, and laughed against her montrals.
At the edge of her hearing, she thought she heard a familiar voice, faint and haunting, like a friend calling to her from the depths of a Hoth snowstorm.
Then she was yanked back to the surface, coughing and gasping, Jordo looming close with that kriffing smirk on his blasted face.
"What is the decryption code?"
With a herculean effort fueled by pain, anger (and no small amount of spite) Ahsoka rolled her bloodied tongue and spat right into the slaver's face, Jordo recoiling in surprise and disgust. Ahsoka wheezed weakly in her tiny vindictive victory before she was struck again and again before she was held under the water, chained arms straining against their bounds until her orange skin broke and her wrist bled.
Before she could succumb she was dragged back to the surface where Jordo was waiting.
"What is the decryption code?"
Each time he would ask just once, and when Ahsoka would refuse to answer she was cast back into the frigid water.
Minutes could have passed, or hours. She couldn't tell as she was tortured, her captors hanging her on the edge of agonizing consciousness.
"I admit," Jordo drawled over Ahsoka's sputtering gasps, "I'm impressed at your… tenacity. Shame, it's all for nought."
Her chest heaved and another splash of spit and water dribbled from her lips and down her ruined shirt. Despite her disgraced appearance her cyan eyes still flared with vengeful spite as they burned into the Anakin-imposter frowning down at her.
"You may be the first Jedi I've had the pleasure of accommodating but you are hardly the first stubborn bitch I've had to break in. But somehow, I think it will take more than a little water to finish the job." Jordo added, a hand reaching towards her stomach. Ahsoka jerked in pain as gloved fingers probed the re-opened blaster wound in her side.
"S-stop… hurting... me."
An evil sneer darkened the Slaver's face. "Good." He hissed, fingers digging between the filthy bandages around her flank and into the charred flesh underneath, pulling a delightful garbled groan of pain from his victim.
He pressed in deeper, crimson spilling around his fingers, then rocked his head back to dodged the Togruta female's sharp montral snapping forward, missing his face by scant inches.
With a snarl he drove his fist over the hemorrhaging hole in her side, a ragged cry ripping from Ahsoka's throat. He grinned at his handiwork, the shackled ex-Jedi shaking in pain and exhaustion. He basked in the power he lauded over an object of his hate for a moment then gave a short nod to his trandoshan guard.
Right before the chair tipped back Jordo cupped Ahsoka's cheek and gently whispered, "Careful now, Jedi. don't pass out now, or you'll die~!" Then he kicked the seat between her legs and she tried to draw in whatever air she could when she went under, scaly fingers scratching and throttling her.
Darkness curled closer, nearer than before. Hate and anguish pounded at her crumbling mental defenses, incorporeal shapes, emotions, and voices hissed in her mind, intangible and confusing.
"And what about me and the water?" She had asked playfully, blue eyes playing over his handsome, rugged features.
She was dragged to the surface, cheated out of unconsciousness, coughing and vomiting water.
"What is the decryption code?"
She looked away, no words leaving her lips until she was shoved under.
Unaware of the effect he had on the poor girl, Anakin answered in a low voice that did things to her , " If you ever find yourself in over your head and drowning-"
Scaled hands dragged her back up from the water and encroaching dark where Jordo waited.
"What is the decryption code?"
Still she didn't answer. Slimy swamp water enveloping her face seconds later.
"-just reach out-"
Her head broke the surface, her lungs weakly working out the liquid from her throat in a faint gurgle.
"What is the decryption code?"
But still she didn't answer.
Jordo stood silently watching her gasp, sputter, and cry, her shoulders shaking and chest heaving. He gave the trandoshan a look and said in a mocking, disappointed tone, "Truly a shame. Kill her and be done with it. We can sell the Empire her head."
"Ack!" Steely claws clamped around her throat as her head went under for the last time, a reptilian hiss of laughter following her into the water.
-reach out-" Ghostly fingers trailing throat the void that was the Force,
"-and take my hand."
She reached, through an empty dead gap in her decayed, neglected mental defenses, and for the first time in nearly six years she touched the Force.
The Dark Side of the Force.
Something cracked, her defenses suddenly crumbling as horror settled into her Soul at the skeletal, metallic fingers curled through her shredded defenses. A horrible, steel skull scowled from the dark. Then it spoke, its breathing coming up in scathing, terrible rasps, but the tone terribly familiar.
"I Found You." The Nightmare growled triumphantly.
"NOOOOOO!"
Ahsoka felt something inside break, then all Hell broke loose. The scaly claws slicing into her throat slid free, the chains keeping her bolted to the floor wrenched loose and her head blessedly broke the water's surface and oblivion claimed her.
When Ahsoka came to, she was still in that damned chair, laying sideways on the floor this time, face and leeku stewing in a puddle of water.
And her very being feeling shredded, bloody, and raw.
She knew instinctively what was wrong. Her connection to the Force, she could feel its feeble ebb and flow rolling fitfully between the cracked ruins of her mental defenses.
This was not good. Reaching out to that… thing in the dark had ripped her shielding apart like wet tissue in a gale. Just as she knew she could feel others in the Force meant that they could feel her too.
Ahsoka touched upon long atrophied skills, her power in the Force. She flexed long forgotten mental muscles in the vain hope of erecting some kind of shield, or at the very least a mask to disperse her Force Presence.
Agony answered. Pure, unfiltered agony that her entire body convulsing, back smalling against her upended chair.
Once she regained control (or consciousness?) over herself she just focused on breathing and figuring out What the Kriffing Hell just happened.
After thinking it over and feeling out the shredded edges of her Presence she knew what was wrong, she just wished it wasn't true.
I'm- I'm crippled.
The Force blast that had saved her from drowning had crippled her. Like a muscle that overexerted itself, going above and beyond what her atrophied Force Powers could handle. The power had rendered her soul apart from the inside out, leaving her feeble and in agony.
Fire burned in her tattered, waterlogged lungs with every breath, panic rising like a poisoned tide. Ahsoka threw her arms against her shackles, the cuffs dug further into her wrists… but there was give.
Ahsoka blinked, her heavy breathing echoed in the still room. She craned her neck down. Her right cuff was loose, compromised. Her panic receded, replaced by cautious hope. A male groan of pain rose from behind her, her elation surging into hastened action.
She tugged her wrist, ignoring the pain that jolted up her arm, and let out a satisfied growl when the metal hinge snapped and her arm came free. Quickly her fingers clawed at her other wrist, her side flaring up from the odd contortion of muscles as she finally ripped the clasp loose and freed her other arm.
Freeing her legs was an equally painful but fast process. Her limbs trembled like a newborn deer's. Jordo groaned again, more pain laced in his tone, more coherence. He wouldn't stay down forever. Then she spotted the barest glint of metal poking out of the unconscious slaver's breast pocket.
Acting quickly she dragged herself across the room and fumbled the data-chip from Jordo's vest with shaking fingers slick with her own blood. She crawled away and leveraged herself against the wall to her feet to the control panel next to the exit.
The door to Jordo's little fun room stuck, old motors reluctant to heed the control panel's commands. With a deafening squeal the door opened, and so did Jordo's mouth.
"My face! My Kriffing FACE! I'm going to Kill you Jedi! You hear me?!"
A primal howl of agony following Ahsoka down the empty hall before her limping figure was swallowed by shadow.
The Rider shifted on his steel mount. The mid morning sun tinged blue-green by the swamp planet's atmosphere. The metal rasp betraying the labored breathing, harsh, with an undertone of panic and pain.
His right hand trembled, mechno-fingers twitching and nerve-endings firing as if the Rider and grabbed a live wire.
The Force thrashed around him like a wounded thing, reeling back from his/her pain. He didn't know. A stagnant, atrophied Force Connection ripped open from Her side. The distant end to a Force bond he had thought long dead.
A faint beeping from the AT-RT's dashboard drew the Rider's attention away from his shaking synthetic hand. His Comm-link was blinking, a call from home.
He stared at the little blinking red light, his breath steadying as he turned his wants, needs, and responsibilities over and over in his mind.
His shaking hand clenched. Old and worn mechanical muscle winding tight into a steely fist. The Rider came to a decision and connected the call.
"Forgive me. There is something I must do first."
He didn't wait for a reply and silenced the Comm-link. Then the Rider spun his mount around and gunned the throttle following their Force Bond towards the rising sun.
They felt it. They all did.
The bickering from her other red-blade siblings ceased, their jaws clamping shut like a trap and as one every head turned to the east. To the disturbance in the Force.
To her.
The first Sister grinned, purple lips pulled green skin back, revealing a prim, savage smile. Her teeth bared in reverent glee.
Finally.
I found you.
Old Friend.
A/N: Ack! Finally done! It took a hot minute but here it is! What you've all been waiting for- an episode of torture and angst with a spicy cliffhanger.
Not to worry! Episode 7 is hot on the coattails of this author's note.
Shoutout to my amazing beta-reader/editor/grammar sorceress. The one, the only- WingsTakeMeAway!
You are amazing, and the main reason this Fic is alive. You keep me accountable and convict me to be better as a writer.
And to the wonderful readers who commented and poked at me for updates:
Bluebee (AO3)
Jose884 ( )
Kitsuneklaw (AO3)
Anuin ( )
LadyDeviance20 (AO3)
Here's to you!
Cheers!
-The ever elusive and frequently lost SoulUntraveled
