Good day all,

Please enjoy this next installment in the Making of Grey. I look forward to your feedback.

Happy Writing,

Eliana

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"So, the word for ball," Ahsoka held up the toy in her hand to illustrate, "is 'bola', right?"

"Yup," the doctor affirmed to her, relinquishing yet another data pad to Kix who scurried off with it like a goblin in possession of a treasure. When the clone had asked to learn as much as he could about Togruta anatomy for Ahsoka's sake, Eddy had been all-in to share everything that he had brought with him.

"Okay, so if I want to say 'Kachi's ball is blue', I would say: 'Kachi's bola est bluy'."

"Exactly right."

He grinned at her over-enthusiastic "yes" of victory, hearing the toddler she was playing with begin to giggle harder at the older female's enthusiasm.

"See? Say: 'Auntie Soka, you got this'," the padawan cooed to the wobbly child, handing the ball back to her and watching her become mesmerized with it again, "You show that ball who's boss, Kachi!"

The happy babbling started again and the youngling sputtered around the open space, dropping the plaything and picking it up again as she went. Eddy finished his sorting of supplies and dropped to the ground next to Ahsoka, breathing in the momentary bit of peace they had all found themselves in. His glance at the teenager told him that she was still stuck on some stray thought that clouded her normally happy mind. She was far from settled.

He had noticed it earlier in the morning when she had left the lesson she had gone through with her master and sought out her old friend, telling him that she 'wanted to keep him company'. He knew that it translated to 'wanting to keep her mind off of what was bothering her', but he had been grateful that she sought him out when she needed that kind of aid. He knew what was eating at her peace.

"She really is a handful," Ahsoka told him happily, gleefully catching the quickly moving two-year-old who was happy to fall into her arms.

Kachina was already looking better, much to the padawan's relief. The few sores that had been on her skin were sealed over and the parlor of her body had slowly started to return – a soft, powdery lilac color had begun to override the ashen grey, revealing the beginnings of birthmarks on her cheeks and forehead. The bursts of energy the toddler was getting were slowly stretching out in duration, and Eddy was more than happy to let someone help him with that armful of energy that now happily spoke to herself on Ahsoka's lap.

"Not as much as you were," he informed her, reaching over to play with the ball that Kachina still had and drawing her into a small bit of play as she sat, "If I recall correctly, you and Dji did quite the number on Tocarra's lab set up the day after we put you in the room together. It took me a bit to smooth that one over."

He had expected her to laugh, or at least to spare a smile, but instead a slight frown marred her face. She tightened her grip slightly on the toddler she held as she stared into the distance for a moment – and then, finally, whispered out:

"That seems like such a long time ago."

"Not so long, Ahsoka," he reminded her, a slight nudge to her knee calling her to meet his eyes, "He's here. So are you. Right?"

She sighed.

"It's just… I had hoped…"

"You wanted him to be just as excited to see you as you are him. You want to use the time you have together to make more memories and to not have to be separated again…and you don't understand why it feels like he's hesitating to be around you."

"He is hesitating to be around me," she told him flatly, "And you. He was more than happy to see us and that's great, but if he isn't training with his master or out running with his clones he's hiding in the woods or just flat dodging us. I just… I don't understand what I –"

She cut herself off, feeling the unwanted emotion bubble up in her throat. She acknowledged it and sent it on its way into the Force before eying him again, curious to his own state.

"It's happening to you, too. Doesn't it bother you?"

She was surprised when he shook his head definitively, the new charm he had been giving jingling softly from where it hung around his neck.

"Nope."

"Really?"

"Really-really. I don't think it has anything to do with us, actually – and he hasn't been avoiding us. He's been watching from a distance… I know when the time is right he'll come to us, and we just have to be patient until that happens."

She seemed to think on that, but appeared startled when he spoke again. This time his voice was softer, more pained, and she began to actually believe that what he was thinking might be completely accurate.

"He just watched his grandmaster die, Ahsoka. I know grief isn't a Jedi thing but it's a mortal thing… and the wound he has healing on his back lekku tells me that the pain runs deep. He has plenty of scars that he didn't have the last time we saw him, and I'm sure in time he'll be willing to share some of those stories," he delicately tapped her own scarred shoulder beneath her shirt, as if to remind her that the wound had been there, "probably about the time that you're willing to tell him the whole story of that."

Eddy was amazingly perceptive, she was coming to realize.

"You two have parallel lives, you know… I noticed it when you were much younger. If something happened to one of you it either happened to the other soon after or the opposite happened – he got worse, you got worse. You made it through your operation unscathed, he crashed. You started to walk, he started to walk. You walked away unscathed, he ended up diabetic – even though he has the implant, there will always be the risk of it failing. Now, you both are apprentices under a couple of pretty amazing Jedi and are doing incredible things… and I'm quite proud of both of you."

Her lekku darkened at his statement, the affectionate gaze he settled on her filling her body with warmth.

"Just give it time, Ahsoka. You'll know when the right time is to push him – he'll need a friend. If he wants to keep you at a safe distance until then, I say we let him. We owe him that much for getting us here."

He stood then, reaching down to collect the happily chewing youngling from her arms. She needed her checkup he told her, and if she preferred to not hear an upset toddler she should probably consider going for a bit of a walk – and she heeded his advice, choosing to hike down the path that she had watched Djibourdi take every evening since they had gathered here.

It was a calm afternoon, the air slightly crisp with a soft breeze that rustled the leaves and plants around her as she wandered. In any other scenario she would have tried to enjoy the peace and the calm, but that darkened whisper that had spoken to her at the hospital was back in her ears… before, it had hissed of a danger that approached. Now, it harshly spit of one that was closer than she would want to admit. She had been dismissing it as her own mind struggling to keep a hold of the Force in her moments of juggling chaos.

She couldn't dismiss it any more as a thing that would simply go away, and the only thing that she knew for sure was that it wasn't coming from anyone at the camp. It was a dark something, a deeply disturbed something that was toying with them like a loth-cat that had gotten ahold of a fat mouse. She didn't know if that something was coming for them out here, or if that something hunted for a different reason – but something was definitely there. And she was so filled with concern around it that the emotion bled through her bond without her intention.

Suddenly Anakin's presence was with her, reaching out to make sure she was alright and guiding her to release the tension as best as he could – such a mother hen, she smiled to herself but sent a thrum of gratitude for his aid. Her attention was drawn to a sound she heard echoing in the distance, one that wasn't suited to out here…so she decided to follow it through the dense tree cover.

She found the group at the bottom of the hill where the trees thinned and, unsure if she should even be watching, she made herself scarce to take in the goings-on.

She had seen these odd clones before, she recalled. They were all very stoic and silent, all fourteen of them never cracking a smile or joking with the other clones around the camp. They had the oddest body armor of any clone she had seen before then, noting their lack of blaster-resistant shielding and the replacement of blasters with vibroswords.

Reapers, Sam had called them, but never told her exactly why they were so different than the other Chargers around them. They shared the same assortment of weaponry but that seemed to be where their similarity ended. He wouldn't tell her why they were armed differently or why they seemed to guard her friend from a distance wherever he went – but he had given her the warning that she would do well to not put herself in a situation where she was mistaken as an enemy on a battlefield around them. She had scoffed then.

Not now. Now she watched the fourteen of them as they surrounded her friend, Tombur slowly circling them as Djibourdi steadied himself in the middle of their cage. He stood on raised rocks, Ahsoka noted, his legs balancing on the uneven surface as shaking arms moved to fall into a practiced stance. Eddy hadn't been lying about the scars he mentioned – she could see old and new alike raised on his arms and the thickest peaking from beneath his sleeveless shirt on his back that was gleaned in sweat. He seemed to be thoroughly exhausted from this practice, and it gave her a glimmer of worry. It hardly seemed fair that the clones stood on even ground and he did not.

It seemed odd to her that her friend's saber belt was strung over his master's on the toned waist – odd that he was armed with flashing twin blades of reinforced steel instead of the Jedi's standard weapon.

"Set," his master called to him, nodding at the form he fell into. He began to slowly count down in Echani.

Ahsoka watched her fellow padawan move to tap the twin swords he held against each of the Reapers' blades around him with a light clanking of steel in rhythm to Tombur's count, the form evolving into a faster formation of blocks as each man moved to give a strike at different points. Tombur gave one more call and then fell silent, allowing the chaos of the maneuver to reign. Djibourdi held his own for a solid ten seconds or so, feet shifting evenly on the bumpy surface he stood on as he forced every sense to work to his advantage –

Until he didn't anymore, one boot sliding on one of the rocks he stepped on. He was on the ground rapidly after that, catching himself heavily on one knee and surprisingly holding the blades steady and away from him as he struggled for breath. He fell back on his rump with a gulped breath of air, staring at the ground as his master called the clones around him to attention.

They parted and allowed the Echani to pass. He did, crouching in front of his gasping padawan, observing the top of his head and the struggling of his breath before he simply questioned:

"What made you fall, Red?"

Ahsoka wanted nothing more than to scream out to him what she thought the answer was by simply watching, but somehow found it within herself to hold her tongue. She instead watched her friend try to slow his breathing before looking up to his master – then looked down with a slight shake of his head before trying to find the confidence to look up again.

"It's too much."

That's all that he offered, and he offered it on a fleeting breath that slipped from his lips almost like a request for help. Tombur obviously didn't buy that answer by the fact that his lips twitched in an ironic smile.

"So, you're trying to tell me that I can put a blindfold on you and you can run records across obstacle courses and beat these men in a sword fight – yet I give you your sight back and suddenly the ability to operate is too overwhelming? Do you really believe that?"

He didn't get an answer, so he pushed a bit harder.

"Or is it that without someone explicitly telling you what to do you suddenly lack the self-confidence to trust yourself on what move to make next?"

Djibourdi lowered his eyes and face back to the ground, his breathing now calm – the only sign that he had felt the pain of exposure was the tightening of his hands on the hilts of the twin swords. Tombur leaned in closer to him, his face only inches from where his padawan's was not a moment ago.

"But if Sam or Skywalker or I ordered you to do it, magically you could – right?"

Ahsoka watched her friend's head snap up and his eyes widen, startled when his master's point dawned on him. Tombur matched his expression for a long moment, staring back at his apprentice with falsely owlish eyes and startled features as though he was waiting on him to say something else. When he didn't the Echani hummed, standing and beginning to walk back out of the ring the Reapers had formed.

"Up," he beckoned back to his padawan, watching with careful eyes as he complied, "Again. Set."

Ahsoka watched Djibourdi take a steadying breath and twirl the blades in his hands before falling back into stance he had before. The circle continued this deadly dance four or five more times, each time Djibourdi would go falling to the raised rockbed below him Ahsoka found it harder and harder to not step in – she didn't want him to get hurt, and she could only imagine that smacking those stones with your legs or hands was far from comfortable.

It was the look he had that kept her from interfering… she knew that look. She knew that emotion. So did Tombur, she noted, because he was suddenly letting off a small smile as they set out on their task again. Tombur believed in him even when he lost – again and again and again – because that sudden change on Djibourdi's face told him exactly what he had been hoping to bring out in the normally timid teenager. It wasn't going to be over until Red won.

And he finally did, that last round proving to be the deciding one as he managed to block every blow while dodging every strike while landing 'kill' blows to the men around him – and the moment his twin sword 'struck' down his last opponent he had felt his body go to jelly. This time he didn't impact the ground but instead fell into the waiting arms of his master, the swords taken from him by two of the men who congratulated him at the same time.

Tombur waited for him to catch some semblance of a breath and then walked them both to one of the jutting tree roots nearby, sitting his padawan on it and allowing one of the Reapers to pass him a small flask of what she assumed was water. That assumption turned out to be incorrect she gathered when, even with his back to her, Ahsoka could feel her friend twist his features and let out a disgusted "ugh!" from his throat. All of the men around him laughed, and from where she hid Ahsoka covered her own mouth to stifle a giggle.

Tombur had called a command out to the clones and they all split into their own training pairs, leaving him with Djibourdi. Whatever he had been feeling before was gone, Ahsoka noted, watching the caring side of the Echani re-emerge. Despite his apprentice's half-hearted protests he had set about washing some of the sweat and dirt from his face and arms with one of the actual water canteens, looking across the red skin for any indication of bruising or blood. He found some but didn't seem too concerned.

She could tell Djibourdi called his attention when his master crouched in front of him, but whatever left his lips next escaped her. It was enough to entice the older male to reach forward and cup the smaller face with his palms, guaranteeing a focus of attention on whatever message he was trying to land with him. Ahsoka suddenly felt as though she was truly invading on some private moment and willed herself to move – but her body wouldn't allow it until she watched Tombur drop his hands and Djibourdi's head bob in acknowledgement.

The porcelain lips phrased out a simple 'We'll talk about it later' before he tapped the canteen his padawan still held, an expectant expression painted on his face until Djibourdi complied with the silent order to drink. Despite his no-nonsense behavior Tombur's eyes were warm with care as he stood – and when those eyes suddenly looked right into hers in her hiding place, Ahsoka swore her heart stopped. He afforded her a wink and a chuckle when she slinked off, feeling his amusement tickle her through the Force as she went.

Her lekku must have been darker than a scorched piece of wood – she should have known if Djibourdi was too exhausted to sense her that he would! She could only hope he didn't take her intrusion as offense…. She almost preferred to have him tell Sky Guy so she could avoid any kind of correction he offered. The thought made her shudder.

Anakin tapped at their bond at her embarrassment, echoing a feeling that he had gotten from his fellow knight, and she groaned. Well….that was her cover blown. At least he didn't seem angry, she bargained with herself. She could take a lecture.

Instead, she had gotten a half-hearted 'knock it off' mumbling from her master as they made their way back to their tiny temporary room from the meal tent after sunset. She was happy to take the light reprimand and was grateful that Obi-Wan hadn't made it yet –

Or she thought she was, until she really needed his advice. Not on anything concerning her, mind you, but concerning her friend that she had spotted on her trek back. He paid her no mind from where he was perched at the very top of one of the ancient trees that the camp surrounded, body silhouetted in the light of three of Shili's moons. She wasn't so concerned that he was up there alone, but more concerned with the thrum of the Force that echoed from him. She knew relatively little about Djibourdi, but the things she knew for sure was that:

He was attentive.

He was sharp witted.

He was selfless yet self-sufficient.

So, it would have made sense that whoever was in that tree wasn't him, but it was. This other side of him was running loose fingers through the brindle-colored fur of his headdress absently, usually bright, intelligent golden eyes suddenly dulled in thought as they bore straight beyond the walls of the camp and into the distance. The Force was hissing around him as though it was trying to speak, and Ahsoka's concern only grew when she realized that he seemed to be unaware of it. Wherever his mind was, it was far from here. It was occupied and heavy.

Her shoulder gave a sudden twinge, and she rotated it to soothe the tense muscles. It was then that she made up her mind: if he wasn't going to break his silence, she would break hers. Whatever he was staring down she wouldn't allow him to face alone. Whether he wanted her by his side or not, she was going to be there.

So, she would allow him to have the night. Tomorrow, she would pull him to her side.

As she turned in that night, she acknowledged the shadow that nipped at the Force. It had never left…and a glance at Anakin told her that it wasn't her imagination. Something was watching.

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To the future, my friends.

Happy Writing,

Eliana