He's Not Our Enemy

Disclaimer: I own nothing, all credit goes to George Lucas and Lucasarts.

Summary: After vanishing from the Jedi temple ten years ago, Anakin Skywalker is found. The Jedi imprison him until he decides to tell them what happened to him. After getting lost after fleeing from some of her abusive class mates, Ahsoka stumbles into Anakin's room and discovers a side to the force she never knew.

The Truth, Ahsoka Tano

Awkward. Awkward. Awkward. I had completely forgotten about the possibility of Master Kenobi seeing all of that 'business' with the dark force wielder and he had to have seen what happened with that translucent white shield type thing. Luckily for me, he had the decency not to ask me anything because I was in a rather large amount of pain due to my broken arm. Yes, I had managed to re-break it on my first day out of the halls of healing. Not a good thing to be doing if I'm honest, especially since I have enough of a reputation of getting into trouble already. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was, though, since the next second Anakin had led me inside to the lounge and sat me down.

At this exact moment he is healing my arm and giving me a look that clearly says 'we are going to talk about this' but is not nearly as serious as Master Kenobi's. I thought he was just going to brush this off and tell me never to do it again but now he looks like he's been charged by a shaak. That must be what happens when you go up against a dark force wielder with absolutely no way to protect yourself... other than the force wielder hidden away that nobody knows about other than the Jedi council and me because I was just too curious to let it go.

My head is resting on a cushion that Anakin handed me because of the 'light-headedness' that I would be feeling very soon and true to his words I am feeling rather strange right now. That's probably what the glass of water is for although I don't want to drink it just yet in case it hurts my sprained wrist, which surprisingly avoided becoming worse than it already is. I think I might have put all of my weight on my broken arm and that's why it re-broke and left my other arm feeling fine, which is more than I can say about the sharp pains in both of my legs. This is by far the worst thing that has ever happened to me in the injury department and that is probably because I've never come across a dark force wielder before. He really is very powerful but I could sense that he wasn't as powerful as Anakin.

Maybe I'll get lucky and the dark force wielder will decide to leave me alone?

"Now, can either of you please explain what that was that happened back there with Starkiller?" Master Kenobi asks, finally.

I bite my lip and stare at the ground. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what is going on with me so the person to answer these sorts of questions would be Anakin. Honestly, if I knew what was going on then I wouldn't have gotten scared and confused and ran all the way here which resulted in a lot of physical pain for me. There are the things that healers tell you and then there are the things that healers don't tell you. In this case, they did not tell me that if I did anything to exert myself it would result in things this disastrous and painful. My own bone was very nearly poking out of my skin until Anakin started to heal it and that was just plain agony.

"It wasn't Ahsoka if that's what you're asking, Obi-Wan." Anakin answers, not taking his eyes off of the arm that he is healing.

Master Kenobi rolls his eyes. "You have never been one for truthful answers, Anakin. I was asking what those lights were and why all of this is happening to Ahsoka if you say she does not do it."

Finally! Someone with some sense! I wait patiently for Anakin to actually answer Master Kenobi's question. He is apparently focusing very intently on the healing process right now and it is a full minute before he looks up and releases my arm, which I can now move perfectly once again. Then, to my irritation, he just starts to heal that large cut on my side from where the stitches came lose on my torso but, finally, decides to answer.

"Protection field." He mumbles, pretending to be solely focused on healing once again.

"Excuse me?" Master Kenobi questions with an arched eyebrow.

Anakin sighs and looks up. "It was the protection field. The one that I put around her a month ago that prevents anything from maiming to seriously harming and killing."

There is silence for a moment. A protection field? I can't remember him ever doing that; I would have known if something like that had happened.

"You placed a protection field around Ahsoka?" Master Kenobi asks slowly.

Anakin nods. "Yes, I did."

"When?" I ask. "I can't remember you doing that."

"Do you remember when you passed out that one time? I told you that you'd had an allergic reaction to something." Anakin says. "Well, that was the protection field and it's the reason for what happened in the vents, in the room of a thousand fountains and just now with that -... I mean, Starkiller."

"Then what about what happened in the competition?" Master Kenobi questions with his arms now crossed over his chest.

Anakin suddenly looks very guilty. "Oh, that. Well, you see, I could sense that Slimo was about to do something stupid and the protection field had sustained most of the damage from the explosion otherwise Ahsoka would have been killed instantly. So, I tried to use the force to get rid of Slimo without killing him at the same time that the protection field tried to do the same thing and at the same time Ahsoka tried to use the force to push him away. Basically, all three powers got mixed up into one that appeared to come out of Ahsoka's hand because she was the nearest force sensitive that was using the force at the time."

That has to be the longest and most complicated explanation ever... wait, haven't I said that about one of Anakin's explanations before? Well, this is the longest and most complicated explanation he has ever given me so far. Just when I thought that he could never surprise me with anything else. This is the answer to all of my questions. A protection field... that makes perfect sense! True, I don't know much about them and have only just learned about their existence but this is great! There's nothing wrong with me, aside from the open wounds, and I can stop trying to come up with explanations for the twins and myself about what's going on around me. Wait a minute, if it prevents serious injuries, how come I broke my arm and nearly died?

"Anakin, what exactly is a protection field? I know you said that they prevent harm but I think that this is one of those moments when you can't get away with a very brief explanation." Master Kenobi points out.

"Oh... right." Anakin begins to explain. "A protection field is something that is made by force wielding alchemists. It's a white ball with a shield symbol on it and when babies are born the healers use the force to place it inside of them. The protection field lasts until you turn eighteen years old and there is no way at all to overcome it or change it in any way. People made sure that there was no way to change it just in case someone tried to sustain it forever."

"And this is something that you just happened to have had in your pocket all of this time?"

Anakin shrugs his shoulders. "I never clear them out and it was a gift so yes, it has just been lying around in my pocket this entire time. Well, until I put it around Ahsoka."

"I thought you said it went inside them?"

"Yes, and then it expands to a field that protects them. Hence the name 'protection field'."

Master Kenobi sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Anakin, if this lasts until Ahsoka is eighteen then when and if she becomes a padawan it will be the equivalent of invincibility. Do you know how serious this is?"

Anakin rolls his eyes. "Relax, Obi-Wan. Back home this is not considered invincibility because the kids are always getting into fights and you can easily be knocked out, just not killed."

"Back at your home there are billions of powerful force wielders who can do next to anything and bring people back from the brink of death itself."

"This would not be a problem if you would just let me go home in the first place," Anakin points out smartly. "And take Ahsoka with me, obviously."

Say what? I stare at him in disbelief. Anakin wants to take me back to his 'planet of the force wielders' with him and all because of a protection field? This just gets better and better in my book.

"Anakin, I seriously doubt that the Jedi council will allow you to take a Jedi youngling with you back to your planet simply because of a protection field." Master Kenobi says. "I'm not even sure if they will believe me when I tell them about this and believe me I will have no choice but to tell them."

This time Anakin sighs and summons his datapad to him with the force without even lifting a finger. That still unnerves me slightly. He turns it on and the clicks and beeps indicate that he forgot to mute it as many people do because of how annoying the noises can be. Well, maybe he finds the noises soothing because it doesn't take a genius to see that Anakin loves mechanics. A few seconds later he comes across the page he is looking for and sets it down on the coffee table so that it faces Obi-Wan. Thanks to the wonderful ability of being able to read things upside down like most children can, I notice that the words 'dimidium semino' are displayed. I've read those words once before.

"It's an old language, Obi-Wan, and I'm guessing you know what for." Anakin says. "Read that and you will know exactly why I placed the protection field around her and many other things. Meanwhile, Snips go and lay down. I swear if you use the force even once I will force feed you sea urchins."

Okay, that is a threat that he really means. I have yet to meet, and never want to, a person in this galaxy today who likes to eat sea urchins. Either they come from Mon Calimari with that salty taste or they come from Dantooine with the polluted water. The only decent place to get sea food from is Naboo and they don't exactly have any sea urchins to sell. They have large animals who are either harmless and inedible or extremely dangerous and inedible.

I stand up slowly because even though Anakin has healed all of the wounds that reopened, and a few others because of something he refered to as 'hipocracy'. Anakin stand up aswell, most likely to stop me from trying to read whatever it is that Master Kenobi is reading, and leads me out of the lounge. I hardly see how this is fair since I really want to know what exactly a 'dimidium semino' is and why that means that Anakin had to place a protection field around me and wants to take me back to his planet. It is all just far too confusing for me without any answers, other than the stuff about the protection field, to try and wrap my head around everything.

We walk into the mostly empty room with the bookcase that I hid behind one time when Master Windu and Master Plo came in for the first time to ask for Anakin's help. There aren't any beds in here but there is one chair to the side of the room that is supposed to be where Anakin would sit and read, if he ever does read. Without warning, Anakin waves his hand at the small corner table and it transforms into a comfortable looking bed on the floor. There is no frame to hold up the mattress so it's just like the beds that padawans use in the quarters that they share with their masters. I've never been too keen on the idea of a bed on the floor but at least there's no chance of any idiots hiding under your bed waiting to jump out at you.

"Anakin, what's a dimidium semino?" I ask as I sit down on the bed.

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. That's what he always does when he's avoiding the question so I can't expect to get anything out of him right now. "I'll tell you later." He says. By that he means that he's going to come up with many excuses to avoid the question until I find a way to corner him into telling me. "Just get some rest now and I'm going to go talk with Obi-Wan."

With that, he turns around and leaves me in the room but not before he flicks his wrist and makes the blinds fold to block out most of the sunlight from the sun that lights Coruscant in the day time. Well, in our half of the day time that is. My mind is temporarily taken off of everything that I have just been told when I realise that the bed is exceptionally comfortable and wonder why Anakin never transformed his own bed into one like this. I lay down on my back and pull the covers over me because I can never seem to get to sleep without some kind of blanket over me, that is, apart from in summer time.

I close my eyes, turn over onto my side so that I am facing away from the door and start to think about everything that has happened. The most pressing issue of my life: I am now practically invincible, as Master Kenobi pointed out. Why didn't Anakin tell me that he had done something like this? I was so worried that I was going to die in the competition and now it turns out that there was no chance of that even happening in the first place. Second of all, what is a dimidium semino? Anakin avoided the question and I have the sneaking suspicion that if Master Kenobi wasn't being told right now I might never know. I'm just lucky that Master Kenobi isn't that good at keeping secrets.

However, it seems that surviving an attack from a dark force wielder named Starkiller is fairly exhausting and I fall asleep soon after those thoughts pass through my head.

I am woken up when I sense the force presence of another person and when the bright, white, translucent shield appears around me. Since I am far too tired to have any reflexes kick in, I simply lift my head slightly and look up at what made the protection field protect me. I am surprised to see that it is just Master Plo and he has his lightsaber ignited. Oh force, he isn't that mad about me going to visit Anakin is he? I thought Jedi masters were supposed to have an excellent anger control system!

"Sorry to wake you, little 'Soka." He apologizes. "I just had to see if the protection field that Skywalker told us about actually works." He sits down in the chair beside my bed.

Yawning, I put my head back down on the pillow. "Okay, Master Plo." I mumble in a sleepy voice.

"You have been asleep for a long time, Ahsoka."

I frown sleepily. "Really? How long?"

"Myself, Master Windu and Master Yoda arrived five hours ago." He says. "Kenobi did some of the explaining over the com. link but it was Skywalker who told us everything. Including why he placed the field around you in the first place."

I lift my head off of the pillow. "Really?" I ask hopefully.

He nods. "Yes, although you are not going to find out from me."

My head drops back to the pillow with a disappointed, "Oh."

"Do you not wish to return to your room now?"

I shake my head. "It takes too long to get there," I say, thinking that he means my old way of getting here when I needed to avoid them at all costs.

Chuckling, Master Plo shakes his head. "It may have taken you a while to reach here through your route through the ventilation shafts but if you go the proper way I think you will find it takes ten minutes."

Oh, that's right. It only took me five minutes when I ran the normal way and jumped out of the way of the two Jedi knights who tried to stop me. I wasn't exactly in my right mind then. A dark force wielder had just attacked me whose name literally meant that he would destroy stars and the protection field had made itself known in a very obvious way. There wasn't anyone around to see it, other than the force wielder himself and Master Kenobi, so hopefully none of the younglings will be on my case tomorrow morning. It is night, right? I check the blinds. Yep. It's night time.

"Master Plo?" I ask.

"Yes, little 'Soka?"

I hesitate a little. This is a question that has been bothering me ever since I was told that the council knew I went to visit the person that they specifically told me not to. "Am I allowed to visit Anakin now?"

He appears to have been expecting this question and smiles warmly at me. "Yes, you are, young one. You need not worry about getting into trouble this time around." I smile back at him in happiness, deliberately ignoring the silent hint about 'this time around'. "Now, you must get out of bed for you cannot stay here."

"I was allowed to stay here a few times before." I say in a slightly whiney voice but get out and off of the bed none-the-less.

Master Plo ignores that, probably because he has something else on his mind, and turns towards the door. "Come along, Ahsoka."

I follow him out of the small room whilst stifling a yawn behind my hand. Since there is a hallway separating the small room that I was asleep in for the past five hours I only catch a glimpse of what is going on in the lounge. Anakin is sat on one couch whilst Masters Kenobi, Windu and Yoda are sat on the other. They all appear to be talking about something in great detail and it makes me wonder why the Jedi council pays so much attention to me simply because I know Anakin better than they do. Now that the thought has occurred to me, it might be because of the protection field and every strange thing that has happened around me in the past month. The strange floating writing, that was Anakin. What happened in the vents, the room of a thousand fountains and in the competition was all the protection field. However, since Anakin put it there it is still his fault.

I follow Master Plo out of the suite where Anakin lives inside the temple and through the corridors and hallways. It's kind of strange to be walking through the temple now with the knowledge that nothing and no-one can kill me, especially since it's war time. Imagine if I was three years older and a padawan to someone who was in battles constantly throughout the time of the war. I'd be practically unstoppable unless the droids made to harm me in some non-severe way and then the torture sessions... well, I'm not exactly sure what would happen but I know that I wouldn't be the one getting hurt that's for sure.

Unfortunately, and luckily, for me I am not old enough to be a padawan since the average age is fourteen years old and I am only eleven. To be perfectly honest, I don't want to be in the war at all since I will get myself killed one way or the other protection field or not. There aren't many younglings wondering the halls now since curfew has got to be very soon if not now and the only Jedi that I can see are knights and a few masters. It's odd how at nighttime it's like the Jedi masters come out of hiding and start to walk around everywhere to where they want to be. I don't know if it's because of the war or if I was just too young to remember otherwise but this is what happens every day. True, there is the occasional master around but I'm not exactly in an area of the temple where they like to be.

We walk through the entrance hall and I inwardly, and outwardly, cringe. It looks like a bomb has gone off and the signs of blood on the floor means that either I ran through here or someone was killed. There is just so much of it that I have to look away at the walls, except they are no better. They are filled with shrapnel, holes and a life sized shape of a person who has gone right through the wall and to the other side. Several cleaning droids are at work but I know that there aren't enough of them to get everything cleaned up for at least a few days. This will make all those who protest against the Jedi being involved in the war have another thing to shout about, that's for sure.

A support beam that was used to help hold up the roof has been brought down and I gulp silently. That was made of twelve inch thick durasteel and if the force wielder was able to cut that clean through then I would have been turned into sushi within a matter of seconds. Thank force for the protection field. I'm already glad that I have it and I've only known about it for the past few hours, most of which I was sleeping through. It may just be my imagination, which I'm hoping it is, but I could have sworn I saw something move from under that beam that looked like a hand. I'm really hoping that's not the case because if the force wielder came here because of me and killed people then I am going to start feeling more guilty than I ever have before.

As we head through the door that leads to the exit and towards my room I curse, silently of course, when I realise that this is the way to the place where I used to sit and watch Coruscant go by. The entire floor with the window sill has come down but the cleaning droids have made a path through it so that normal activity will not be diverted, or so they think. I'm not sure what the council thinks will happen when something like this goes on but the younglings will start clogging up the halls like a drain blockage. Whenever you try to get them to move along the very next day there is double the size of the crowds as the day before as a result and I just know that they don't want that to happen.

Master Plo leads me through the newly created path without so much as a glance at the rubble that was caused by the force wielder, and in an indirect way also by me. After that very disturbing scene which I hope never to see again, we walk through several more corridors until we reach the corridor which houses my room and several other places where the younglings sleep. My room, as I have noted many times, is extremely small because there were too many people placed in my clan and not enough room. That being said, you'd think it would be a good idea to put me in a place near them and not five corridors and six turns away.

When we get inside, I find that nothing has changed other than the fact that the room has obviously been searched. In fact, it looks like it was rather thoroughly searched since the room itself is absolutely wrecked. There are things littered all over the floor and my bed has been torn open. Whoever did this was not a Jedi because they never search people's things like this. In all honesty, this could only have been done by someone who either wanted me hurt, Slimo, or by someone who wanted information about me. Either way, Master Plo looks thoroughly displeased and surprised by this.

"It seems that you will be staying in Skywalker's room after all," He says with a cautious glance around the room and the broken window to the left hand side.