"In Need of Wings"
Chapter the Thirty-Fourth
Eighty-seven days later, the rebels poured through the Imperial Palace.
Ahsoka spent that time in the safe bunker's hospital facility, beginning her recovery from her wounds. After losing Anakin the way she did, she was relieved to finally have some good news that she would live after all.
Her recovery would be much better than Sidious had let Anakin on to believe. Her hearing and echolocation skills would never be the same again, but she would be able to function relatively normal in a matter of a few months. If she made it that long under rebel captivity, that is.
Of course, the news soon became bittersweet to her. Knowing that Anakin had been tricked into believing that she would never be able to fight again. If it weren't for Sidious' final and cruelest lie, Anakin might have lived.
As for her montrals, they were fitted with makeshift replacements that replicated what she had lost. The medical droids were able to make artificial montrals that, save for the well trained professional eye, looked very real. But whenever she looked at her reflection, she knew the truth. Nothing could really replace what she had lost, and she wondered if she could ever call herself a true Togrutan again.
It was the least of what she deserved.
When the rebels arrived, Ahsoka had no reason to fight back. No means of offing herself. She simply sat up in her bed, raised her hands, and let them take her away. The floor felt like ice against her bare feet as she, with her last ounce of pride, adjusted her hospital gown to hide her scars.
As she was led out of the Palace, rebels poured through and shot down the last guards who had fought until the last minute. Even though she made no resistance, they still handcuffed her. The bright light from outside nearly blinded her, burned her eyes. Holocameras flashed in her face. She gagged on the thick black smoke hovering around the Palace, which as she saw now, must have endured many hours of constant bombing before the surrender.
After weeks of living in a hole underground with so little stimulation, Ahsoka got sick from the overwhelming senses and attention. Little she could do as she was led away.
It seemed like hours later before they finally took her to a small Republic prison. Judging by the Imperial officers she saw being led in along with her, Ahsoka realized the rebels were using it as a temporary location to hold prisoners of war. She was led in and locked in a small but cozy cell, and given a small meal of bread and expired fruit. The artificial montrals felt stiff and unwanted and disregarded. Her eyes still ached from the light.
She hugged her knees, refusing to let herself have the small pleasure of sleeping on the cot. Her kind belonged on the cold floor, where the light could not reach her. Thoughts only rested on the war outside.
It was over. The rebels had won. The Emperor was dead.
Would anyone believe her if she told them Vader had done it?
What do I do now? she asked herself over and over, as night fell over Coruscant, and the still raging fires illuminated the last of the Armies of Twelve pouring in from the skies. She was offered a blanket by the nightly watch, but refused. After everything she had done, she did not deserve warmth. All she had coming to her was whatever sort of trial and execution the rebels could conjure up. Surely Imperial blood would be pouring through the streets in due time.
What do I do now…?
Early that morning, she felt none other than Cad Bane's presence in the Force not far off. She got up and walked up to the bars of her cell door and peered through. Maybe the Force just confused her, since he had to be dead.
Yet, sure enough, there Bane was. Most of his armor gone, his hat charred at the edges, and two large scars splitting his nose and lower lip. But the ugly hat wearing asshole, seemingly because the Force just saw Ahsoka's life as a black comedy at this point, had brought him back into her life yet again.
"Cad?" She stared at him. She wanted to hate him for what he did to her. But she had no more energy nor strength to hate anymore. Three partially disabled montrals for one lost arm didn't seem like a fair trade, though. He had gone too far. "Cad, what are you doing here?"
Bane looked up. Two rebels escorted him down the hall. Bane's hands had been cuffed behind his back.
"You turn on them at the last minute?" she dared ask him. "Too bad you didn't think of that before."
The tired Duros looked in her direction but did not seem to realize she was there. He stared blankly as he shuffled down the hall, leaving a trail of bloody bootprints behind.
"Shell shock," one of the rebels said. "Freaked out and attacked one of his own soldiers. Nearly beat the poor kid to death."
"Cad, hey! It's me. You ruined my life, sleemo!" She banged on the bars. Wanting a reaction out of him. For him to lash out at her too and attack her, just so she could have an excuse to try and hate him all over again. Something, anything to make her feel again.
He did not even seem to hear her. He rolled his neck around, brushing his cheeks against his gaunt shoulders. Flakes of dried blood creased the side of his head where he must have been brutally struck, probably to save the rebel he attacked.
They locked Bane in a cell a few doors down, but still within hearing range. As soon as the rebels left Ahsoka called out to him again, as loud as she could, not caring if it got her in trouble. This time, he finally replied.
"'Soka…? You here too?"
"Yeah, asshole, I'm here. Remember? You hurt me? Left me for dead?"
Bane began hitting his cuffs against the bars repeatedly. A sharp clang that echoed up and down the long hallway and through his cell. He did it once every two seconds. It went on like that for a full minute, then five minutes, then even longer. Ahsoka gnashed her teeth but it kept going on and on.
"What's one of those damn songs you always used to play?" Bane asked abruptly in the middle of his cacophonous habit.
"Huh? What the hell are you talking about…?"
"Your apartment, here on Coruscant. Always playing the top forty. That garbage you call music. What's that one song you always sang at the top of your lungs just to annoy me with?"
Dammit. She had not let herself open up that box of memories in a while.
"I don't know. There were several…" She sank to the floor. "I really enjoyed annoying you back then. Maybe I still do."
"Well, when you remember it let me know, because the tune is fucking stuck in my head."
Ahsoka held her head, listening in agony as Bane paced around his cell in perfect, repetitive motion, humming to himself, still banging his cuffs against the bars. A sigh in the back of her throat ached deeply. It was getting harder to hate him, in spite of everything. She knew she could never have hated Vader, either.
They were both so broken. So tossed around and beat down. All because a Dark Lord of the Sith decided he needed the Chosen One to help him take over the galaxy.
Were they beyond any hope of repair?
It was only a matter of time before the trials began.
Ahsoka was not surprised when she saw all the other prisoners of war led out before her. She had the biggest crimes of all, so she would be saved for last.
Eventually, she saw Bane escorted out of his cell, and in spite of herself, she prayed that the rebels would be just. That is, give him exactly what he deserved.
Then the waiting. All the damn waiting for her turn.
She began to lose all track of time. Seconds turned to days, weeks turned to hours. Her only reality became the four walls, a bed, and the hollowness inside her, eating her alive.
The galaxy meant nothing to her. She couldn't care less when they offered her a couple holobooks to pass the time, or even out of some sort of forced pity, tried chatting with her. It didn't matter.
Anakin is gone.
As soon as she could say the words aloud, it hit her. Worse than when she saw the Jedi Temple burning.
"Anakin is gone…"
Ahsoka rubbed her artificial montrals. She eventually got sick from the cheap bread and shitty coffee she had for breakfast, crying at her reflection in the small mirror as she heaved into the toilet. Everyone she had ever loved had been taken away from her. First Barriss, then the Jedi, then saving Anakin for the last one to go, and now with Bane as the extra thrown in for more abuse.
Somehow, she would have to go on without her Skyguy. Without any of her old friends. Without anyone at all.
She was just so tired of fighting alone.
Only a few hours after Bane left, a rebel guard approached her. Sometimes they came by to ask how she was, make light conversation, see if she wanted any small comforts before her trial. But this time he didn't say anything like that.
"Tano? You have a visitor."
She looked up and stared in disbelief.
"Cad? What are you…doing back here?"
Bane wore civilian clothing, save for his hat. He leaned in close so she could see it was him. He had lost a lot of weight since she last saw him. It seemed to be a miracle that he didn't drop dead at any moment. As he looked down at her, his eyes glazed over like he was in a trance, possessed by his own madness.
"They're holding a truth commission," Bane said, speaking so simply that he sounded like a little kid reciting words from memory. "I just got back from testifying there."
"Oh, well in that case I'm sure to be executed," she said bitterly, hugging her knees. "How did it go?"
"Well, I was dishonorably discharged from the army. And I have to report to the psychiatric medbay for long term stay. So, long story short, it could have been better." He shrugged.
"Have fun in there," she muttered.
"I might end it before I get there. I don't know. Been thinking about it. There doesn't seem to be much point in wasting their resources on me, you know…" He looked away and rubbed the back of his neck.
She cringed a little at hearing him discuss the topic of suicide so casually. She once spilled her own feelings on it out to him one night in his apartment when she drank too much by accident. It ended up that Ahsoka vomited vodka and takeout all over his kitchen floor, crying about Zygerria all the while. Bane finally got her to sleep on his couch with a bucket and a glass of water beside her head. When she awoke, a pink blanket was tucked over her to keep her warm, and Todo brought her a hot cup of caf. The memory stung.
"Just go away," Ahsoka whispered. "Please just go."
He was about to turn away, but stopped just as his back was turned to her.
"Off the record…is it true what you told them?"
"I told them a lot of things when they questioned me…"
"They read them off at the commission. Said that Darth Vader betrayed and killed the Emperor. Is that true?"
She nodded.
Bane looked down at the floor, not quite believing what she said, but saying nothing of it.
"Never thought Skywalker boy still had it in him," he said quietly. "Then again…he was always full of surprises."
Before she could ask him what he meant, Bane began to shuffle away, and suddenly acted if Ahsoka wasn't there or that they had not been talking at all.
Dismissing him for good, Ahsoka turned away and whispered a silent goodbye to a former friend.
Padmé thought of the babies and now the ex-husband she had lost to the Emperor, as she listened to testimony after testimony of how many others had suffered because of him. Most were non-Human…that seemed to be a common denominator. The strict laws against them had already separated many families, killed the old and the sick. But plenty of others had faced persecution for defying even the most trivial Imperial laws, or defying orders. The reasons were countless. The stories even more so.
By the third week into the commission, Padmé and Sabé had to request a short break for the sake of their own recuperation. You could only hear so many stories about parents watching their children starve to death and siblings forced to kill each other before you just could not take it anymore. She vowed to return to the babies' graves on Naboo as soon as she could.
The Empire had reigned for exactly one standard year and thirteen days. In that time, over two billion individual citizens under the Empire had been oppressed severely. Millions had been killed.
Padmé was the only one at the truth commission who believed that Ahsoka was one of those two billion.
Maybe it was because she had known the real Ahsoka Tano. The Ahsoka who was only fourteen and swore to protect everyone around her even at the cost of her own life. The Ahsoka who could smile and laugh one moment but bared her fangs at the enemy without fear the next. The Ahsoka who taught Anakin how to love and nurture in a way he had never known before.
Maybe it was because she was reminded of Anakin when she looked at his Padawan.
But she could not change the past. She could never get him or the old Ahsoka back. All she could do was move ahead, even if it meant one step and one minute at a time.
As she stepped into the room, Ahsoka looked like a mere shadow of herself. She kept her eyes cast down, her chains dragging against the ground, shoulders hunched down and defeated. The life had been drained out of her, leaving only a shell covered in bones and pale skin. The artificial montrals had not been taken care of well during her captivity, and as a result, the edges had become infected. Dark purple veins trailed up her montrals and into her neck.
Padmé stared at her and her heart, which she had long forgotten was there, broke all over again. She had to look away, silently listening to the gasps and mutters and grumbles filling the room.
I can't let them kill her.
Enough bloodshed. Enough lost ones who had been close to Anakin.
The former Queen of Naboo could not watch one more death happen because of her, and she decided to herself, No more.
Five days later, her verdict was announced. Guilty of treason, assisting the enemy, and for the murder of Barriss Offee.
"One year in maximum security prison, followed by five years of rehabilitation in a psychiatric center."
Ahsoka frowned and looked up.
Whatever happened to being executed? To getting what she deserved?
"While Tano is guilty for treason to the Republic, and other crimes, she was also subjected to intensive abuse and brainwashing under the Emperor as well as Darth Vader. A plead for insanity means she cannot be put to death. At the end of five years, she will undergo intensive psychiatric evaluation and possibly released."
No…no…I want to die. Ahsoka wanted to scream but she found no voice left in her anymore. Her throat was hollow. I want to die!
She watched Padmé breathe a small sigh, as if of relief. It made no sense. Everybody wanted Ahsoka to die. No one would want to see her face again, and it would be right that way.
I want to die.
Could she beg for them to execute her anyway? What about Bane? Wouldn't his testimony alone, which included attempted murder, be enough to convict her and send her away forever? At the least, solitary confinement forever. She deserved far more.
The guards gently took her by the arms and she tensed, not liking the physical contact. Her eyes closed. And the last of herself gave up.
This was her life now. No love and no reason to keep going. Just chains and white walls, and the false hope that someday she would get better.
What do I do now?