"In Need of Wings"
Chapter the Twenty-Second
Ahsoka pulled on her black leather jacket before heading out of the ship again, eyes set on the speeder bike waiting outside. She had stolen it several weeks ago, gave it a new engine and a paint job, and cleaned it up. Now it was her baby. When she opted to take it rather than pay for it, the moral weight of her decision never occurred to her until later. And it seemed odd that roughly a year ago she would have judged someone for doing the very same thing.
It was too easy to sense Bane watching her absently from Sleight. The small want to spend the rest of her day with him continued to linger. To pretend, for one afternoon, that they were going to be all right. Might do them good. But she kept walking anyway. She couldn't stop herself.
As she climbed on the speeder bike and polished off her goggles, Bane slowly approached her, like he was hesitating to say something.
"Sure you don't want to stay? Nearest city's almost an hour from here." He adjusted his hat.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Being cooped up in your old ship all the time isn't my idea of a good time," she said, harsher than she meant to.
Bane's gaze turned cold and he glanced away.
"Fine. I have important things to do anyway. Don't need you getting in my way."
Ahsoka figured she should drive off before this escalated into another big fight between them. She was sick of fighting.
"One more thing," Bane added as she adjusted her goggles. "Since you'll be away, you might as well order more fuel. And meds. And food."
"Sure, whatever." Like hell she would let Bane turn her night out into an errand run. She sped off with her speeder bike and adjusted the music she was playing to full volume. Even this could not drown out Vader's voice constantly in her head. Always whispering reminders to her that she already knew.
Then again, at least no one would stare at her if she talked back now.
Ahsoka squeezed the handlebars of the speeder bike, jaw clenched.
"You can cut it out already," she said aloud. Almost called him Skyguy out of habit. But no. This person…no, this monster…it was not her Skyguy. Anakin Skywalker is dead.
"The Jedi are dead too. You spend your time looking for them everywhere you go. You hope that one day you'll find someone who survived." She felt Vader smile. "You won't."
"I don't believe you," Ahsoka snapped.
"It's lonely, isn't it? Knowing you're the only Jedi left? How does it feel?"
"It's not true! There are others out there, I know it. Someday I'll find them all." Her eyes got a little misty. "Besides, I'm not a Jedi anymore. Get your facts right, Vader."
"If you're not a Jedi, then why does this matter to you? They're the ones who abandoned you. They didn't believe you when you said you were innocent. They cast you out and then claimed it was some sort of 'test'." Now Vader almost sounded as if he was pleading with her. His voice no longer sounded so loud and intimidating in her head, but a fragile whisper. More like a child than a machine. "They betrayed you and you want to defend them…why, Snips? Why are you trying to protect the people who took you away from me?"
"It's not that simple. You know that…" She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth.
"But it is. If it wasn't for the Jedi, you never would have gone through that humiliating experience. You never would have had to walk away. You never would have lost me."
"You lost yourself…" But her voice was wavering. Thoughts of the past, of what could have been, pulled her in. She drove her speeder bike a little faster as the edges of the city slowly came into view. The winding neighborhoods circled around the old shops selling broken pieces of garbage a seller tried to pass off as 'ships.' Younglings playing in the street regarded the young Togrutan stranger speeding past with tears running her mascara down her cheeks. Like a goddamn cliché.
"You know it's true, Snips…if it wasn't for the Jedi, we would still be together. It was the Jedi who pushed us apart. And here you are, thinking you can save them. You're making a mistake."
Ahsoka parked her speeder at the first cantina she saw and got out. She took off her goggles and hung them on the handlebar, then used her leather gloves to wipe her stained cheeks.
"Go away." She recalled she shouldn't talk to him aloud anymore and shut her mouth. As darkness was beginning to fall, Ahsoka slipped in the cantina and ordered shots for herself. She craved company…physical company. Someone she could smell and hold. Someone who wasn't stuck in her head.
In a strange sense, Vader's voice quieted down as Ahsoka made her way through the cantina, looking for a girl to pick up after she had had a couple shots. Perhaps the alcohol pushed Vader out. Or he had given up and let her be at peace for at least an hour or so. If that were the case, she had to take advantage of it.
It did not take long for Ahsoka to catch someone's eye. A Human girl who looked roughly Ahsoka's age, hanging around in the back of the cantina, drinking Corellian tequila. She wore purple lipstick and a tight black skirt, her black hair pulled back in a set of tight braids woven together…gods, did Ahsoka know her type well. Unfortunately, Ahsoka's hunting skills only made up for her horrendous lacking in flirting skills.
Whether the Human girl was drunk enough to think her attempts at it were cute, or she was as desperate for intimacy as Ahsoka was. Not that it mattered.
Ahsoka knew it was stupid to do this while drinking, but she could not care less. The warmth and ecstasy filling her body was doing the trick. The smell of someone else's sweat on her own skin. The taste of Corellian tequila under her tongue. She dragged the Human girl to the dark hallway next to the women's fresher, telling her terrible jokes as she pinned her against the wall. Their kisses seemed to get sloppier by the minute.
Against her better judgement, Ahsoka agreed to go with back to the girl's hotel room. They spent all night together, taking breaks between fake orgasms to smoke and stare up at the stars, like that sort of thing was romantic or something. The Human girl talked absently of the family waiting back home and all she had to look forward to when she went back to school next semester. As for her Togrutan one night stand, she only listened so she could pretend they would see each other tomorrow. That she was invested in another life for once…a normal life ruled by final exams and obnoxious parents, not wondering why your best friend had taken everything away.
She forgot how good this felt. Who was the last one? Probably Barriss. Then it had been over a year. Should be a crime to get laid less than once a month, Ahsoka pondered.
With less than three hours left before sunrise, the Human girl, whose name had already slipped Ahsoka's memory, curled up under the covers and could not stay awake any longer. Ahsoka lay down next to her, hoping to get some more warmth from her body. The moment had already begun slipping away, leaving a pit of emptiness in Ahsoka's stomach.
If only she knew some way to make that moment last longer.
"Sorry to make this so sudden, Cad." Ahsoka smiled sweetly at him. One of her arms was bent at an awkward angle, and her nose was broken, but she made no motion to help herself. It was as if her body was slowly falling apart.
What was the matter with her? Why was she acting like she wasn't hurt?
"Just let me help." Bane reached out for her but she stepped back.
The middle of her shirt slowly discolored. Blood. Had she been stabbed?
"I said sorry, Cad. You're just not…needed. Not anymore."
He stared at her, not believing it. Or not wanting to. Ahsoka stared back as blood ran between her teeth, coloring them pink. She sure wasn't the teenage brat he met all those years ago. She was all grown up.
"But you need help," he insisted. "Look at you, you're hurt." The blood on her torso was spreading.
"You're joking, right? I'm fine! I don't even feel a thing!" she laughed. With that, the Togrutan turned on her heel. "Listen. It was fun, seeing you as a friend, even like some sort of father figure. But I have Asajj now. You're out of the picture."
"Stop lying to me, 'Soka!" he snapped at her, feeling as if a rope were being tightened around his neck.
"You're just not…useful. Why is this so hard for you to understand?"
Maybe there had been a time when Ahsoka would not make it without Bane there to show her around, teach her the dirtier means of survival they hid from her at the Jedi Temple. Pick the kid up where the Jedi abandoned her. Help her grow her wings back.
But she didn't need those wings anymore. She could walk without him beside her.
She did not need him. Nobody did.
It didn't matter, anyway. They had started as strangers, and as fate would have it, they would end as strangers.
As he watched her leave, blood trickling down her legs and leaving a long trail behind her, she remained blissfully unaware that she was dying, and she never looked back once. The rope around his neck continued to tighten until the ground shook underneath him.
He always woke up before the ground gave out.
Ventress noticed something was bothering Bane as soon as she saw him outside the ship. It had been another long restless night for her. Nowadays, if her own nightmares didn't wake her, Tano's usually did. She wanted to cut the kid some slack, since she understood some of the trauma Tano had been through, but it was getting frustrating. And she had Bane to deal with at the same time too.
"What is it?" she asked, hoping he wouldn't bring her bad news. She swallowed her pills and waited for them to kick in. They had been stolen from the last spaceport, of course. Ventress couldn't remember the last time she paid for any medicine.
"Nothing you'd care about."
"Humor me then." She leaned against the doorway. "You know, if you want some of my pills, just ask."
"It's not that." Bane refused to look at her. "Just another nightmare, that's all."
"Ahh. I thought you were still fuming about the time young Fett knocked you out."
He sneered at her. Of course, that was the exact reaction she had been expecting from him. When Cad Bane wasn't working, he tended to lower his guard, and this made him a hilariously predictable person.
"That wasn't on my mind but now that you bring it up…" He got up. "I'm over it."
"You sure know how to hold a grudge."
"And you don't?"
"My point is…" She glanced away and adjusted her long sleeves which were torn at the ends. She picked at a small dried bloodstain on the toe of her boot. "I'm bored living like this. It's either running from the authorities or do nothing around your crummy ship. And you're not making it any better with all your sulking."
He looked disgusted with her, like she had suggested that they get married, or worse still, go on a meat-free diet.
"What are you suggesting?"
"If you want revenge on Boba, you should go take care of it. Not make the rest of us miserable about it."
"But 'Soka—"
"Doesn't need you. She's not a child." Ventress didn't know why he looked at her that way after she said it. Maybe something else bothered him about that statement she had no way of knowing about. "You can comm her if you're worried about her, but she'll get on just fine without you always watching her."
"I don't trust you to stay here. Backstabbing is your favorite pastime."
She grinned at the irony of that statement.
"I never do it by choice, you know. Hard not to when your own back's against the wall." She heard her own voice getting quieter. "But I have no plans to be who I used to be anytime soon. If that's any comfort to you." Ventress almost made a face…speaking her own emotions? Opening up about her past? She must have taken too many pills.
Bane walked off. Ventress could see him getting his weapons together and packing. Must have finally taken her advice after all.
"I'm not going to kill him, you know. Not at first anyway. I'll get information out of him. If he's working for the Empire, he could have some useful things to tell us. Maybe then I'll let him go so he can run off with his tail between his legs."
"Good thinking. Tell him Asajj said hello."
"Don't count on it," Bane muttered.
With not much better to do, Ventress watched him pack out of the corner of her eye, while glancing at the holovision to catch up on any recent news. Seemed to be nothing but Imperial propaganda these days, encouraging students to enlist in the army. Pathetic. Even depressing. Before Bane slipped out the door with his pack, he glanced over his shoulder at Ventress.
"Keep in contact if you leave the system," he said.
"Of course. Good luck on tracking down a twelve year old, by the way."
"Thirteen." He stormed out, his techno service droid following behind.
Just too predictable, Ventress thought smugly to herself.