CHAPTER ELEVEN- COLD TURKEY
Disclaimer: I don't own The Clone Wars. I do own John, Sierra, and Hero.
MINA
"Steela!"
Saw Gerrera sprints past Hutch and Hero, who are still in shock, and races to Steela's side, cradling her in his arms like people say he did at the bottom of that cliff.
I follow him, kneeling on her other side.
"What's wrong?"
Steela doesn't answer, and instead throws up all over Saw. I grab her under the shoulders and whisk her over to the sink.
"What's wrong, darling?" I ask, holding her hair back while she empties the contents of her stomach.
"I feel awful," She sputters.
I press a hand to her forehead. "You don't have a fever."
"Wait. Steela, are you on something?" Hero asks.
"What?" Saw asks incredulously.
"When my mom quit smoking, she got these awful headaches and couldn't sleep at night. Is something like that going on?"
Impressive, Hero. Considering Dendup essentially brought Steela back from the dead, long-term medications would make sense.
"Were you on something?" I ask.
Steela nods, right before throwing up again. I readjust my grip on her hair.
John approaches. "Steela, listen to me. Was it morphine?"
"Probably one of them was." Steela coughs.
John sighs with relief. "Well, that explains the vomiting."
"But there were lots of others."
The relief is wiped off everyone's faces.
"Do you remember any of the drug names?" Tandin prompts.
Steela blinks. "There was morphine, bacta…and then this herb. It started with a N."
John rubs his temples. "Oh no. Oh, Force no."
"What is it?" Saw asks.
"Was it nysillin?" John asks.
Steela nods, and John utters a few choice words.
"What's nysillin?" Saw demands.
"It's a healing herb." John replies. "Very effective, but it's not good if you quit cold turkey."
"Which I did." Steela mutters.
"But they weaned you off it." Sierra says. "You didn't get any medications when we were together."
"They were putting it in the food." Steela replies. "I would have tried to taper off if they didn't."
"Do you have any idea what dosages they were at?"
Steela straightens up and fills a glass with water. I let go of her hair. "Considering I could taste them in the food, they were pretty strong."
John sighs. "All right. Does anything hurt?"
Steela nods. "My feet. They hurt…a lot."
"Makes sense. You landed on your feet." Hero replies.
"All right, then let's get you off them." I reply, ushering her over to the couch to sit her down.
John shakes his head. "I'd put her in bed, Mina. This is just the start."
John, the second I get this girl tucked in you had better explain exactly what's going on.
John shrugs like I really don't want to say it within Steela's earshot.
Okay. So it's bad, then.
I take Steela into the spare bedroom, where she's already been situated, and take her shoes so she can lie down.
"It's bad, isn't it?" she asks.
BS-ing this girl would be useless, so I tell the truth.
"I'm not sure, Miss Gerrera-."
"Please don't call me that, Mrs. Bonteri."
I sigh. "'Mina,' please, Steela. But if you need anything, just call for me."
When I get back to the living room, John is having a conference.
"At work, one of my prisoners had been on nysillin." He explains. "We couldn't get any for him for a while, so he went through withdrawal. Some of the effects were fever, chills, pain in the areas that were being healed-."
"Which explains why Steela's feet hurt," Lux muses.
John ignored him. "And to top it off, paranoia."
Saw raises his hand. "If Steela's going to get paranoid, I would make sure there aren't any throw-able objects within her arm's reach."
"Steela doesn't miss, Mom." Sierra explains to my confused look.
"Has it occurred to anyone that she probably still needs the nysillin?" I ask. "I'm not a doctor, but that was a severe fall she took. And she's been wasting in a cell for five months. Now that she's on her feet again, she probably needs it now more than ever."
John nods. "Nysillin is rare. There's no way we could buy it without drawing immediate attention to ourselves. We can give her other medicines, but there's no way we can provide that specific herb."
"So, we can't do anything? She's hurt, and we can't do anything?" Saw asks.
"No," Hero says. "There's one thing we can do. Something that's been weighing on her chest for a long time."
"What's that?"
"Ahsoka."
Lux's head pops up.
"Ahsoka?"
"Yeah," Hero replies. "Sierra told her Ahsoka thinks that this was all her fault, and Steela feels really bad about it."
"Well," Lux interrupts. "I'll call her right now."
"Lux, she doesn't know that Steela's still alive and kicking." Sierra interrupts.
"…I'll make something up."
THIRD PERSON
Ahsoka Tano is supposed to be resting after her illness for another week. She has a strong feeling that Padme and Anakin exaggerated the symptoms in order to spend a week together, as a family.
You can only watch sitcoms and bake cookies with Padme for so long before you go stark raving nuts, so when she gets a call from Lux asking her to Onderon for a day or two, Ahsoka jumps on it.
"I don't know, Ahsoka." Padme fretted at the spaceport. "You're still on sick leave."
"I haven't had a fit for days." Ahsoka replied. "Anyway, Mina and John are going to be there. I'll be fine."
"All right," Padme relented. "But call me when you get there. Actually, have Mina call me. And remember, the Council said you and Anakin could be called to Cato Neimoidia early!"
Ahsoka rolled her eyes, and boarded the shuttle.
…
When she knocks on the door, General Tandin answers.
"Master Jedi," He said with a curt nod.
Ahsoka blushed. "Just 'Ahsoka,' please, General. Nice to see you again."
"The pleasure is all mine," he said, ushering her in.
To Ahsoka's shock Lux, John, Mina, Saw, Hutch, Hero, and a girl she didn't know were all seated in various places in the dining room.
Lux jumped to his feet, sweating nervously. "Ahsoka!" He cried, dashing toward her with his arms open.
Ahsoka felt her heart speed up as she wrapped her arms around him.
"I missed you, Lux." She replied, smiling blissfully.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were sick, otherwise I would have called or something. I can't believe I didn't do-."
Ahsoka smiled, and gave him a quick peck on the lips, effectively stopping his running mouth.
"Irony, Mr. Bonteri?" she asked mischievously.
"And so it is," Lux said right before their lips met again with a deeper kiss.
Saw fake-coughed the words "Get a room!"
Mina cleared her throat. "You know, Lux, your mother is here. The one who changed hundreds of your diapers."
The teenagers separated.
"Mom!" Lux protested.
"Ahsoka, have you met our daughter?" Mina asked, motioning to the young girl with a bad dye job.
"I'm Sierra." Bad Dye Job says with a polite smile.
"Nice to meet you." Ahsoka replies, shaking her hand.
Tandin coughs. "You two can get to know each other later. But right now, we have a more pressing concern."
Ahsoka looked up. "What is that?"
Lux took her hand. "Will you follow me, please?"
"Um…sure?"
She and Lux walked down the hall, toward one of the spare bedrooms. Under normal circumstances, she would have said something along the lines of "I have lightsabers and I'm not afraid to use them," but this was different.
This time, she could sense someone inside.
"Ahsoka," Lux said softly. "I'm right beside you. Please, please remember that when you go in there."
Ahsoka's mind spun. Who could possibly be in there to make him say that? I can't think of anybody, except, her blood went cold, Tor?
But she steeled herself, and opened the door.
Ahsoka froze solid, and squeezed Lux's hand.
"Hi," a dead girl said.
Ahsoka shook her head wildly. "This isn't real."
"My parents aren't supposed to be alive," Lux replied. "Steela is alive for the same reason."
"How?" Ahsoka cried. "You fell off a cliff."
"When doctors really want you to live, they make it happen," Steela replied.
When Ahsoka managed to peel her shocked eyes from Steela's face, she notices Steela is propped up in bed; and the only reason Ahsoka can think of for her to be in this position is that she is in immense pain. She's kicked off her covers, and Ahsoka can see her feet. They're covered in surgical scars, and so is the skin of her legs.
And it hits her, that Steela has most likely been held prisoner until now. Lux probably called her the first chance he got.
Ahsoka doesn't want to cry. Really, she doesn't. But she just can't stop the tears from flowing at the sight of what her failure did to her friend.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed, pulling herself away from Lux. "I should have remembered the gunship, I should have been faster-."
Steela shook her head.
"Shut up." She replies. "Ahsoka, if we're going back to that, then it's Dendup's fault for pushing me off the cliff."
"W-wha?" Ahsoka stopped crying, completely confused.
"You did the best you could, and I'm grateful for that." Steela said. "Now come here."
Ahsoka didn't move.
Against all odds, Steela smiled. "And I'm going to hug you now. I hope that's okay."
Ahsoka half-laughed-half-cried, and embraced Steela.
The only thing she could think to say is "I'm so glad you're not dead."
"Yeah, me too."
A/N: And that, my friends, is the end of "While Others Found Success". To get a feel for when this is happening in canon, Ahsoka and Anakin are about to go on the mission to Cato Neimodia.
Thank you Starwarshobbitfics, StarwarsRulz, and Kasai1214 for your reviews. You all make me so happy.
In case anyone forgot the author's note for the last chapter, there will be a third story called "While Others Fell to Darkness." We will be seeing the rebels' perspective on the Fugitive Arc as well as deeper investigation into the Lazarus Project and how to strike back.
One really important thing about "WOFTD": It isn't finished yet. Therefore, it's not going to be up as fast as this sequel popped up, and updates will be slower.
In order to speed it up, reviews really keep me motivated. Please, please drop one on your way out.
Thanks for reading this today!
~ Lux's Sister