"In Need of Wings"
Chapter the Thirteenth
Ahsoka stared in horror.
Arrest me? The Jedi?
She was too stunned to speak. And the weight of letting Bane lean on her for support meant that she could not move even if she wanted to.
The clones moved in closer and set their blasters for stun.
There was no time for a Plan B. No time to see what the hell was going on, why these clones wanted to arrest her, or what they would to her and Bane if they were caught. No time to stop and scream her throat raw.
She could only act.
Ahsoka grabbed the thermal detonator, tears already rushing to her eyes at the prospect of what she was about to do. If she threw it just right, it would land in the center of the hallway near one of the cells, take down the wall, and form a barrier between them and the clones. None of them would be killed, or even hurt.
If she planned it perfectly. One slight mishap, and one of the clones would die. And Ahsoka would have blood on her hands.
One clone noticed what she was holding and raised his rifle to shoot her in the hand. Ahsoka acted on instinct. In one swift movement, she shifted Bane's weight to the side to free her right arm. Then she raised it back, activated the detonator, and tossed it down the hall, where it ricocheted against the floor, the opposite wall, and then at the cell less than twenty feet away from where the clones stood. It looked perfect.
She barely stood her ground when the explosion hit. More of her strength focused on keeping Bane from falling down, as he seemed to be losing consciousness and slipping away even more with each second. The clones were rattled even harder. As she regained her footing and began backing away, pulling Bane with her even as it strained every muscle in her body, she saw the explosion tear apart the wall of the cell. Quickly, Ahsoka turned to shield Bane's body, and felt dozens of tiny burning shrapnel pelt her back and montrals. Her eyes stung with tears from the pain, but she ignored it and kept moving back.
They reached the end of the hall, and Ahsoka commed Todo to give him their position. She listened to the voices of the clones, dreading to hear one of them crying out in agony as if they had been hit, or some words that would give away that one of them had been killed. Luckily, she heard nothing of the sort. Just angry shouts at the wall of debris that had crashed right in front of them, and the sounds of them trying to clear their way through the wreckage without hurting themselves in the process.
She kept moving, dragging the half-dead Duros with her. A sharp left turn and she drew her lightsaber and stabbed the floor, carving out a hole large enough to fit both of them through. When she looked down the hole, Todo's speeder hovered directly below them.
Carefully, Ahsoka helped Bane drop into the speeder. He whimpered slightly, as he coughed up more blood. Ahsoka yelled at Todo to get to Bane's ship immediately so they could get off Coruscant. Then she grabbed Bane's hand.
"Cad…Cad. Stay with me."
He opened his good eye slightly.
"Do you know who did this to you?" she asked again. But she already knew by now.
"Clones…they…wouldn't stop."
And the pieces fell into place. The attack on the Temple, Bane's torture, and Ahsoka's near arrest…all at the hands of clones.
Rebel clones? Clones under orders from the Republic? If the former were true, the whole situation would have been dealt with already. The Temple would not have been burned.
So then…the Republic had done this.
The Republic almost arrested her for being a Jedi, nearly killed the only friend she knew was still alive…slaughtered all those Jedi.
The realization did not strike an immediate emotional reaction in Ahsoka.
As it hit her, she felt her emotions shut down on her, making her a blank slate. Numbing her so that she was unable to feel anything anymore.
Numb so that as she coaxed Bane to stay conscious, even after he had blacked out and she could feel his presence begin the slow process of going out, Ahsoka did not feel the terror or grief that once hit her when a friend died in her arms. So that during the drive away from the Temple, with Todo cutting away from security and pointing out the high probability that they were being pursued, Ahsoka did not react. So that when Todo landed the speeder in the lower levels and told Ahsoka to follow him, she responded without thinking.
Bane had hidden his ship, Sleight of Hand, in a small hangar in one of the darker lower levels, where no daylight reached, and any rainfall was polluted with dirt and oil. Todo led them inside, Ahsoka limping after him, barely able to carry Bane any longer. As Ahsoka helped Bane lie down on a cot in the back room of the ship, Todo made a quick run back to the apartment only to grab what they would need for the journey.
Even as they were leaving Coruscant, the first time Ahsoka had left the planet in many months, a planet she had spent almost her entire life, she still felt nothing.
Ahsoka had forgotten heartbreak.
The Republic turned on the Jedi. The Republic killed the Jedi.
The idea was so bizarre, so macabre, so backwards in its own way…Ahsoka did not even believe it at first. Surely she was hallucinating. She had smoked something extra than a cigarette. This would blow over.
Maybe she was in the wrong body.
The Republic killed the Jedi…
As soon as the ship had left Coruscant and was in hyperspace, Todo rushed back to help Ahsoka. A very fortunate fact, working in their favor, was that Bane always kept his ship stocked with important medical equipment and supplies, since the risk of being injured on the job—as well as the inability to get to a medbay—was always high. They hooked him to an infusion pump and heart monitor. Then within an hour, they had cleaned and placed bacta bandages on his external injuries, and a dose of sedative medicine took away most of the pain.
They ran out of enough bandages. Without thinking twice, Ahsoka grabbed one of her clothing items Todo had brought from the apartment—sadly, it was her only other change of clothes. Everything else she owned—music, gadgets and equipment and makeup—had been left behind at her apartment. It was the shirt with Sugi's artwork and the caption "Nice Playin' With Ya," which Ahsoka tore into strips and used to wrap the last of Bane's injuries.
Ahsoka stared at him. She did not believe what she saw. Cad Bane was not someone she expected to see lying half-dead in the back of a cargo ship, hooked up to machines, beaten to a pulp, looking like a ghost. It just didn't fit him. This could not be real. She was stuck in a hallucination, that was all.
"Is he going to make it?" she asked Todo, her tone of voice hollow.
"This should hold him off until we can get to a medbay that isn't under Republic control. A few hours in the bacta tank and he'll be as good as new," Todo said. It seemed he was trying his best to lighten the mood.
"Good…" She nodded. "You should stay in the cockpit, keep watch on the ship. I'll stay with him."
Todo left without another word.
Ahsoka wished she could cry, but she was all dried out, drained of emotion. The hum of the ship lulled her and put her back in the here and now. Maybe this was her own body after all…
As soon as Bane stirred awake, Ahsoka was there at his side.
"Hey, look who's finally back." She tried to smile, sound cheerful, just like Todo. Of course it didn't pull off. Ahsoka amazingly sucked at acting.
"Hey, little bit," Bane said weakly. "You shouldn't have come…"
"Don't say that. Okay? I was right to come. Had to get your sorry ass out of there." She forced another smile and tried to laugh, although her face was numb. When she spoke, her voice was shaky. "Now…don't make me regret saving you, old man…got it?"
"It was you…" Bane closed his good eye. "They wanted. They were after you."
She stopped pretending to smile.
"What? What are you saying?"
"If I had told them where you were…" He coughed. "You'd be long gone. So you shouldn't have come."
The numbness inside her felt like it was about to explode. Ahsoka let go of Bane's hand, her eyes widening.
"You mean…they tortured you, because you wouldn't turn me in? They were trying to get information out of you?"
Bane did not have to answer. It all made sense. It explained why he insisted she should not have come, and why the clones had nearly killed him.
Something stirred in her as she glanced over his injuries, gave him another dose of medicine to kill the pain, felt his presence through the Force waver from fading away and giving up. This was all because of her. Bane had been willing to be tortured to death so the clones wouldn't find her—and most likely, so she wouldn't end up like the other Jedi.
And here she had been pitying herself because she thought he abandoned her.
Oh, gods…
"Well…looks like I owe you one now, don't I, sleemo?" she tried to laugh. But the last word—that old nickname she always loved to call him—never made it off her tongue. The river of tears broke her down, which could not stop once it hit, crushing her until she was a sobbing mess crying and screaming into her fists, as Ahsoka felt the weight of the galaxy crash down on her shoulders.
Six months ago
.
Cad Bane had met the young Togrutan before. Four separate times, actually, now that he recalled. First, she had joined Skywalker to stop Bane after he kidnapped Bolla Ropal from the Devaron system. He had noted her skills as a fighter, as well as her cockiness and brazen attitude, which ended up giving him the advantage. The second time, she helped Skywalker capture him on Naboo. That…had been considerably less fun in the end. The third, once again, the same duo who had caused him trouble in the past got in his way, and Bane wound up in a rather embarrassing situation where Tano ordered him to carry the crate Bane had been hired to steal in the first place. And finally, on another occasion, they had crossed paths during Bane's job to kidnap Chancellor Palpatine, but fortunately that did not end with any Jedi Mind Tricks, or getting shot in the arm, or becoming the Jedi's personal delivery boy.
And now, this would mark the fifth time.
Bane never liked young Tano one bit. Maybe it was his personal bias that a lot of Jedi Padawans were very spoiled—growing up in that luxurious Temple, surrounded by peers and respected role models, fed and clothed and housed every single day. Maybe the fact alone that she shot him in the arm within their first few minutes of meeting each other had done it. Maybe it was just her attitude. Not to say Bane also did not have an attitude, but at least his was well seasoned and experienced.
Whatever the case. Bane thought that once he would find young Tano, she would be just as annoying as ever. And he would definitely regret ever taking this job for Skywalker. He mulled over this as he was making his way through the lower levels of Coruscant, searching for clues as to where Tano had been surviving—or, trying to survive—for the past three months.
But when he saw her again, after all the searching, Bane was caught off guard.
Tano had been surrounded by Trandoshan thugs. And from what Bane could hear of their conversation, they planned to surround her, abduct her, and devour her. One of them grabbed her shoulder. From the shadows, as he waited for his chance to move closer, Bane saw the terror in her eyes.
It stirred something in him he had not felt in a very long time.
Tano may be a spoiled kid…but she was still just a kid nevertheless. Someone who was, for now, completely alone, the opposite of what she had grown up with.
Kids, no matter how spoiled, should not be living alone on the streets. Nobody should for that matter, give or take a few exceptions, but never kids.
It stirred an anger in Bane. An anger against anything or anyone who had abandoned her and forced her to live alone. An anger against whoever had seen her pain and loneliness, and turned her away.
Hell, Bane knew this Padawan, among others, had been dragged into the civil war. However the hell that mess would turn out. Tano was too young for war. Too young to know what it was to kill, to see people killed. They were all too young. But that's how it all goes in the end…that's how fucked up war is.
Without the hesitation of caution, Bane drew his blaster and emerged from the shadows in the alley to attack the first Trandoshan. He didn't care whether Tano needed the help or not…which she probably didn't.
Bane just did not find himself in the mood to stand by and watch anymore.
A/N: Ahsoka is on the verge of a breakdown and she doesn't even know about Anakin yet...a very awkward conversation between Bane and Ahsoka is coming up.