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.

Star Dragon Flying, Ahsoka Tano

I wasn't very keen to go walking around a school full of powerful force wielders after I'd only been in the presence of one force wielder for longer than a few hours but Anakin had woken me up at eight in the morning just so we could have extra time to look around. That didn't do anything to lighten my mood. When all of the kids were inside and learning all of these new force techniques, Anakin nether traveled us to the school and I had to fight not to vomit. I wasn't sure if I'd ever get over the feeling from nether travel. It was just so sickly and twisty like I'd been spun around a hundred times only to be suddenly stopped and forced to do a somersault.

The force wielder who gave us the tour seemed very jittery and I rolled my eyes twice a minute. She was the secretary to the headmaster and she swooned every time Anakin spoke to her. Do you know what the worst part was? She looked at me like I was her number one enemy. I mean, sure she had this huge crush on Anakin and he would never give her a second glance so long as I was his centre of attention but that didn't mean she had to be so mean about it. I couldn't help but wonder if all female force wielders were like this around Anakin. If they were, I wasn't looking forward to spending that much time with them.

When we walked past classrooms people would stare at Anakin with awe and look at me with the 'who in the universe are you' expression. I didn't bother to look in any of the classrooms because that meant looking at the people who were staring at me. More than once a second I felt someone try to break through the barriers around my mind but Anakin had reenforced them himself so they didn't get very far. It was still uncomfortable though. The tour ended at lunch time when all of the kids started coming out of their classes and Anakin took me over to the area where everyone my age would play. We stopped once we reached Simon and Jack.

"Hey, Ahsoka." Simon greeted. "Ignore everyone who's staring at you. They're idiots."

"Okay," I said with a smile.

"Look, I've got to go for an hour." Anakin said. "An experiment got lose in the Alaharmi Desert and unless we want it to vaporise an entire village then I've got to go and stop it. Look after her, okay?"

"Will do." Jack assured him. Anakin disappeared in bright white lights and then we were left with lots of people staring at us. "So, Ahsoka, what do you want to do?"

"I'm not sure." I said truthfully.

"Oh, come on," Simon grinned. "There's got to be something -"

"Oi!" Someone cut across him. We turned around to see a boy stood there who looked to be about our age but had a beefy build and a face like a shaak. "Who's she, twinnies?"

Twinnies? I didn't know what that meant but I knew that it had something to do with the word twins. Were Jack and Simon really twins? They didn't look anything alike with their hair and eyes.

"Rack off, Trudo." Jack hissed. "Unless you want the chosen one to bust you up."

The boy, Trudo, took a few steps back at that but remained persistent. "Well, why would he care about her? I've never seen her before. Who is she?"

"We told you to rack off." Simon repeated firmly. "Don't make us force you."

"I'd like to see that," Trudo snarled. "I could beat you easily."

"You wanna bet?" Jack stepped forwards threateningly. "You'll never be able to beat us much less get away with it. If you so much as touch us the chosen one will tear you to pieces."

"Why? It's not like you live with him." Trudo taunted cruelly.

"She does," Jack jerked his head in my direction. "I believe the term is adopted, isn't it? So beat it. Now."

Trudo glared at us before turning around and stalking into a crowd of nearby people who had overheard the conversation and were now gossiping about it to one another. I was personally confused. Did Jack just say adopted? I hadn't been adopted by Anakin. Sure, I lived with him on the asteroid but that didn't mean he'd adopted me. The Jedi were the ones who had adopted me and since Master Kenobi was here didn't that make him my guardian? I didn't understand it. If Anakin was my guardian now did that mean that he had adopted me? I would have to ask him about it later on. Probably once he got back from dealing with an experiment gone wrong.

"Slimy little git," Simon mumbled. "Can't keep his nose out of other peoples business."

"I guess so," I said. "Did you mean what you said about Anakin adopting me? Because nobodies spoken to me about it."

"Really? Well, he's got to have. Or, at least, he has to at some point. Ben isn't a force wielder or force guardian so he doesn't have enough power to protect you if someone attacks you. That means that Anakin has to either adopt you or put you in an orphanage, which he isn't going to do." Jack explained. "He'll probably talk it over with you at some point. He's got another two weeks before anyone decides to talk to him about it."

I nodded slowly. "Okay then."

"Don't worry about it, though." Simon said. "It's not like you have to call him dad or anything. He's just gonna be your legal guardian."

"Huh..." I mumbled. I didn't really like the words 'Anakin' and 'dad' being used in the same sentence. It was just... freaky. Really, really, really freaky. "I guess he'll talk to me about it later -"

"Holy force!" Jack yelped as he grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of the way of about ten fireballs.

"The kriff is your problem?" Simon demanded to a large group of people who had obviously been the ones to throw the fireballs. The only answer he got was another wave of fireballs that we all had to duck under. "Okay, you know what? You jealous sithspits can go frak yourselves, you hear me?"

Jack grabbed my arm and we both hid behind a large pillar whilst Simon swore at the top of his voice at the group of force wielder children.

"What did he mean by jealous?" I asked.

"You serious?" Jack asked rhetorically. "Do you know how many people want to know the chosen one? Let alone live with him? We got bullied so much when we were young that it was scary."

"But Anakin said that knowing the chosen one made you practically royalty," I said with a frown.

"To adults who have matured, maybe. But these are kids who come from all kinds of families. The ones who threw those fireballs? They come from the poorest district on Primus. They're here for this scholarship programme the schools trying out."

"I thought the dark side wasn't allowed here."

"It's not, Ahsoka. A little jealousy and fireball throwing is nothing here and if you were taught that jealousy is the path to the dark side then you need some new teachers. What harm is jealousy going to do if theres no-one around to make something out of it?"

I nodded slowly. "Okay... I sort of get it."

"You'll learn all about it in class. I'm going to go and get Simon. You just wait here and when Anakin comes back just drop a hint or two about what happened... he'll end up teaching you some wicked force techniques to defend yourself with."

He disappeared to go and help his brother. I stood there for a moment, wondering just how ugly things got when force wielder children fought with one another, and had a sudden idea. If Anakin was only going to be an hour, and it had already been a good twenty minutes at the very least, then surely he would be able to come and get me soon. I mean, not to put the guy down but his choice of a school was pretty poor. They'd started attacking me already and I hadn't even been there for longer than thirty minutes! I wasn't even a student at their school yet. How Anakin managed to learn all of that cool stuff in a school like this I will never know.

I hear a loud bang and what sounds like a dozen balls falling onto the ground one after the other. Theres silence for a moment before I hear some people groaning and then hear Anakin's voice.

"Ahsoka, get out here."

He sounds deadly serious and thats a tone I've never heard him use before. Slowly, and making sure to sense my surroundings, I walk out from behind the large pillar. Anakin is stood there with his arms crossed and expression the steely calm one that Jedi masters use to let you know when you're in serious trouble. There are a just over a dozen kids lying on the grass who I recognise as the ones who attacked me for no apparent reason and Jack and Simon are stood a little ways away looking extremely guilty. I don't know what they have to look guilty about since they were only helping me but judging from Anakin's expression I'm guessing that's the least of my worries.

"Mind telling me whats going on here?" Anakin asked calmly.

I hesitate for a moment before telling him the truth. "They attacked me with fireballs and Jack and Simon were defending me."

Anakin's expression doesn't change. "And why were they attacking you?"

I shake my head slightly. "I don't know." I admit.

He looks towards Jack and Simon. "Why did they attack her?"

"Because she lives with you," Simon said. "They were jealous and decided to attack her because of it."

Anakin nodded once, slowly, and turned around to look at every other kid who was standing near us. "Well they'd better get out of here if they know whats good for them." He said in a threatening voice and there was a mad scramble as people tripped over one another in their haste to get away. Within thirty seconds we were left standing alone in the small area of the field.

"Ani, it wasn't her fault they decided to attack her." Jack said. "It was ours. We blabbed about where she lived."

An exasperated sigh was the response they got. Along with Anakin running a hand through his hair. "Never mind that." He seemed to have gotten over what just happened. "We're leaving, Snips. There's something I want you to see back at home."

(Line break)

I didn't know what the Duinuogwuin were until Anakin and Ben showed them to me. Apparently it was the rarest sight in the universe to ever see one and most younglings only learned about them if they spent time with Jedi elders which I had not. I knew that Ben hadn't seen them before since he looked to be very anxious to see one if you caught him at the right moment. We were all sat on top of the house looking out at the stars above us. There weren't just stars up there. There were also nebulas and force clouds and multi-coloured pieces of space dust that had clustered together to form some interesting shapes that looked like speeders and lightsabers if you looked at them from the right angle.

You could only see the things by lying on your back if you didn't want to get a seriously bad cramp in your neck. So there we were. Lying down on the rooftop of Anakin's house and staring up at the things around us that definitely weren't in our old galaxy. I wondered if there would ever be things like this for the other Jedi to see. They would probably be fighting against the empire by now with those senators that Anakin had saved. I couldn't help but wonder how they would be doing in the fight against Starkiller since he was a dark force wielder who could probably level entire buildings with a single thought by now.

"Two more seconds," Anakin said. He waited a moment. "Now." He pointed to the edge of a yellow and green nebula.

Where he pointed there appeared a creature with wings, dozens of legs on dozens of segments of its body and horns all over its body. More followed it and they all looked different and were different colours. Some had dozens of legs were some had only a few. Some were green, some were purple and I even spotted a few that were orange and yellow. Fire spouted from their mouths and I realized that they could breathe fire aswell as fly in space. There were so many of them as they made a formation and fly across the nebula and then started to come closer to the solar system that we were in. I wondered for a moment how close they were going to come.

"They do come closer, Snips." Anakin answered before I even got to ask my question. I hated it when he did that. "And some of them speak basic too."

"They do?" I asked without taking my eyes off of the star dragons.

"Yeah. They almost invaded Coruscant hundreds of thousands of years ago but a philosopher was able to create peace between them and the old republic. A few have been known to be force sensitive and two were actually Jedi." Anakin explained.

"Jedi?" I questioned. "Really?"

Anakin nodded. "Yep. One was around when the clone wars began but General Grievous got to him with his hyperdrive."

I made a face. "Grievous killed lots of Jedi."

"Well, you could always get your revenge by making sure he doesn't get Obi-Wan. Grievous and he go way back, don't you Obi-Wan?"

"Oh yes," Ben agreed. "But I'm afraid the old grease bucket won't be seeing me for quite some time now. Perhaps never again."

The star dragons were now coming closer and a few had already made it out of the nebula. I frowned at a thought I had.

"Hey, Anakin? How come its so rare to see a star dragon?" I asked.

"Because they're very secretive creatures, Snips. They never stick around long enough for someone to get to know them and they never let someone do a scan of their body structure to discover how they survive in space and have characteristics that Togrutas and humanoids do. The people in your galaxy haven't realized yet that they survive because the force wants them to and other than that their structure is basically the same as a condor dragons."

"How do you know?" I asked. "I thought they weren't supposed to stick around long enough for anyone to figure that out about them."

"Are you kidding? Do you know how many animal magnetize practitioners there are on Primus? The star dragons and force wielders are like old buddies. We feed them if they want it and they make their nests for the season in our forests or in our solar system where we can look after them. They're always somewhere nearby."

"Do you know any star dragons?"

"I've met a few but theres only one that I know well and that's mainly because I found her egg and looked after her for eight years until she started looking after me. I even named her."

"Named her what?"

"Teal."

"That's not a name. Its a shade of green." I protested.

"That's because she's the exact shade of teal, Snips. I couldn't think of a name that she'd like so I named her after her scale colour."

"Okay," I said slowly. "So which one is she?"

Anakin pointed to the star dragon that only had two hind legs and two front legs that acted like arms when it was flying but clearly weren't used as them when it was on the ground. The star dragon wasn't following the path of the others and seemed to be making a path around the asteroid before it was going to resume its natural course. It took a few minutes but the star dragons came close enough to see the really detailed parts of their bodies and Anakin's friendly star dragon Teal did a pass by where we were sat. She roared and fire came out of her mouth that started out as orange before morphing into blue and then turning into space dust and twinkling like stars as she rejoined her kin.

"Cocky dragon," Anakin mumbled. "Using that sort of language..."

"You mean you understood that?" I questioned.

"Yeah. She asked me who my friends were in some words that you really don't want to know. I think those juvenile star dragons are having a bad influence on her." Anakin said. "I should have never released her into the wild permanently. Stupid rules against harbouring animals that deserve to live in other environments."

"But... can't you still talk to her? Or do the rules say that you can't do that anymore?"

Anakin looked at me from the corner of his eye. He was silent for a moment before saying. "Do you want to fly a star dragon?"

Even Ben seemed shocked by that question.

"Fly one?" I asked slowly.

Anakin nodded. "Yes, Ahsoka. Fly one. Or, more specifically, fly Teal. We could even go into hyperspace if you want?"

"Hyperspace?" I was as pale as a Togruta could go. "Uh... that... um..."

"I think hyperspace speed might be a bit much for Ahsoka, Anakin." Ben stepped in. "And after learning how rare star dragons are she might not be ready for flying one right now. Especially one that was raised by you."

Anakin gave him an offended look. "Fine, we won't go into hyperspace speed. We'll just keep it at the cruising speed for a civilian cruiser that takes people from Coruscant to Naboo and so on."

"How fast is cruising speed?" I asked.

"About one parsec a day." Anakin said. "Basically enough speed to go from Primus to here in an hour. Not even fast enough for you to feel it."

I shifted around nervously. "What if I fall off?"

"There's a saddle for you to use, I'll be there with you and the protection field will transport you to the safest place which will be on Teal's back. So there is absolutely no chance at all that you could get injured, hurt or feel the air wooshing out of your lungs. Well, the last one might happen if you do something stupid like going out of your comfort zone too soon but it'll be fine." Anakin answered.

I still wasn't so sure about the whole flying a star dragon thing.

"Look Snips, its either you fly a star dragon willingly and have the time of your life or I make Teal go at hyperspace speeds with you alone on her back around the solar system until you decide to fly willingly." Anakin threatened.

I said I'd fly the star dragon.

When I was standing in front of a twenty foot teal coloured star dragon with a saddle on the juncture between its five foot long neck and shoulders I really wished that Anakin would let me keep my feet on the ground. His star dragon was long in length but in width it was only a little wider than a Jedi star fighter. It could probably fly through a thin trench without bashing its sides if it kept its wings folded at its sides. Anakin had climbed up onto the star dragons back the moment she landed whilst myself and Ben kept our distance like the smart people we were. I had taken one look at Teal's razor sharp teeth and sturdy horns and decided that I liked my feet where they were.

After some encouraging words from Ben and some nudges I walked close enough to Teal for Anakin to lift me up and sit me on the saddle. I gripped the thing so tight it would have ripped had it not been made out of such strong materials. There were no reigns like there were on the animals that most people used when they were riding a flying creature and I knew that it had something to do with Anakin's idea of fun. He was sat just behind me, leaning against one of his star dragons wings which were each the size of Teal's body put length ways and without her tail or neck. I had to fight not to start hyperventilating.

"It's okay, Snips." Anakin assured me. "Just relax and be yourself."

I didn't relax my grip on the saddle.

"Okay Teal, lets go!" Anakin shouted to the star dragon and before I even had time to panic it took off.

The air rushed around us like the strongest winds in the universe and we left the atmosphere of the asteroid in a matter of seconds. I yelped and tightened my hold on the saddle to the point where it couldn't get any tighter. We got a fair distance away from the asteroid before we finally slowed down. I was shivering with fear and nervousness.

"Sorry about that, Ahsoka." Anakin apologised. "But getting out of an atmosphere as close to the ground as the one on my asteroid takes a great deal of speed to go. A creature Teals size can't take off if she goes any slower than that."

I nodded in response without taking my eyes off of the saddle. Looking out at space only made me even more afraid.

"Come on, Snips. Relax, look around and enjoy yourself. We're not going to go any faster unless you want to." Anakin continued to reassure me.

I shut my eyes tight and relaxed my grip on the saddle a by the tiniest amount. "How's this?" I asked.

Anakin laughed. "Nope. You're going to have to do better than that, Snips."

I sighed and opened my eyes. "What about now?"

"That's a little better." Anakin conceded. "But not as good as it should be if you want to enjoy flying."

"How am I supposed to enjoy flying a hundred ton beast that never shows its face to a galaxy of people who want to know about it?" I asked.

Teal turned her head around to look at me and breathed fire through her nostrils.

"I'd watch what you say there, Snips. She can understand basic you know." Anakin reminded me.

I sighed and did my best to remain calm when I had just angered the very creature that was keeping me alive in space. Come to think of it, how was I still breathing out here?

"Sorry," I mumbled and Teal turned her head back around again. "Anakin, how are we still alive out here?"

"Oh, Teals body structure creates a bubble where any life can exist right here on her back of on any part of her body really. You'd have to be more than a giant for it not to work for you." Anakin explained.

I slowly nodded and readjusted myself on the saddle to get more comfortable. "Okay, so now what do we do?" I asked once I had gotten as relaxed as I possibly could.

"Now we fly until you start to enjoy yourself," Anakin said.

I gave him a look.

"Okay, since we don't have that much time we'll stay out here until you get tired." Anakin decided.