It isn't until months after the second Death Star is blown up that Ahsoka finally meets him.
Of course, she hears of him long before that. And it hurts, the first time she hears the name whispered between the silences in rebel cells, in soft whispers and coded words: it was some crackshot pilot who made the shot, I've never seen flying like that before. Skywalker, they say his name is, I hear he's from Tatooine, where'd he learn to fly like that out there? It hurts so much because just for an instant, for an impossible moment, it gives her hope. She hopes that everything that had happened on Malachor had just been an awful misunderstanding (Anakin would never try to kill her, he couldn't), that Anakin's alive and Light and out there, fighting the Empire, fighting for freedom, that she can find him again–
It's a short moment. She's lived through far too much to believe in things she knows can't be true. And at first she dismisses the name of the pilot; it's a big galaxy, and Tatooine is a big planet. Even if the name means something - a cousin, a nephew, a distant relation, even a brother - what does it matter? It's not him. Blood ties don't mean much to those raised in the Jedi Order, who leave everything behind for the sake of a family that runs deeper than blood ever could.
When she eventually realizes who the pilot really is, she tries to remind herself of this.
(It doesn't work.)
There's no brilliant moment of insight, just the slow dripping of rumors as they come her way. That Obi-Wan Kenobi had been on the Death Star with the Skywalker boy, that the boy had a lightsaber. Whispers of the word Jedi. She heard the name Luke, and remembered a time when Anakin had gotten a little too drunk with some of the clones and gone on at length about how 'Luke' was the perfect name for a baby boy–not that he'd ever had reason to think about it, of course. She remembers Padme's corpse, beautiful and cold and dead with a swollen belly. And eventually she knows, she knows, in a truth as deep as the Force itself, that this Luke Skywalker is Anakin's son.
All those times Bail Organa warned her to stay away from Tatooine…he must have known. Some days she wants nothing more than to tell him to go fuck himself for never telling her. But of course, like most of her friends, Bail's dead. She'll never be able to tell him anything ever again.
And it's not that she doesn't understand. She suspects that Bail Organa, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and whoever the Skywalker boy's guardians had been were probably the only ones who knew the truth - they were the only ones who needed to know. She's a spy, she knows better than most how dangerous information can be, and how essential it is that this secret stay a secret. If the Emperor had learned about the boy while he was a child….if Anaki–if Vader had known about him, he wouldn't have let the boy live. Not in any way that mattered, at least.
She's forced to admit to herself that if she has heard this boy's name and managed to piece it together, Vader's probably done the same by now. He's not stupid.
But still, she pulls the secret close to her chest and holds it tightly. Maybe she does still believe in hope after all.
It's a few years before more whispers trickle in about Skywalker. They say he's left the Rebellion - to find a missing friend, to train as a Jedi, to hunt down Darth Vader on his own, to kill the Emperor - each rumor is more wild than the last. Ahsoka herself doesn't know which, if any, are true, but more and more murmurs of a lightsaber, a green lightsaber keep reaching her ears. She smiles a bit when she hears it – green always used to be her color, after all. It's nice to see someone else in the family use it.
And then all of a sudden, she's no longer hearing whispers, but roars. The Emperor is dead. Darth Vader is dead. The second Death Star is destroyed. The Rebellion has won. The name Skywalker is mentioned frequently - some say he killed Darth Vader, some say he was working with the team that destroyed the Death Star's shield, some say he was the pilot who fired the final shot yet again. There's no way to tell truth from fiction in times like these, and all she can do is wait.
Slowly the truth starts to filter through the channels she trusts. The Emperor really is gone. Vader really is dead. She feels…she feels something about that. She doesn't know what that feeling is, and she doesn't particularly want to sit in it long enough to find out. She thinks about how Anakin would probably give some "do as I say, not as I do" lecture about releasing those feelings to the Force. She thinks about how Obi-Wan would probably tell her the same thing, albeit with less hypocrisy. She decides she's done with thinking for the moment, and starts running jar'kai drills – the advanced ones, the ones that involve running and heavy, spinning acrobatic movements – until she's so tired she can hardly see straight. It's better than thinking, even if she knows running herself into exhaustion won't help her to actually work through anything.
She still hasn't really processed much when the call comes for her to return to base. It's been so long since anyone called her in, she triple checks that the code is legit, and then checks it again. In the twenty-odd years since the Empire was established, she never really imagined what would happen after it fell. It makes sense that there has to be a shift from a collection of loosely-connected cells to a more centralized structure as the Rebellion becomes a New Republic. But still, as her ship descends on Innton II to the rebel base she's been called back to, she has to fight the urge to panic. This feels like surrender, this feels like a trap, it feels like-
Like flying to Mandalore just before everything went to hell.
Focus on the present, she tells herself, and refuses to think of any of the Jedi who'd given her that advice more than two decades ago. She lands the ship, and steps out into Innton II's warm sunlight, for the first time in years making no effort to conceal the lightsabers on her hips. It's a start.
There are people all around her, and she doesn't know who any of them are. She knows Mon Mothma was the one who called her here, and she could make a guess at a few of the high ranking rebel generals who are probably around here somewhere. She wonders if Hera and Sabine are here. She wonders if Rex is here.
She knows that Skywalker is here. She can feel a few presences on the planet that are bright in the Force, and she's sure one of them must be him. Sooner or later, she knows she'll have to face him - and with him, the truth about whatever happened in Vader's final moments.
A Jedi knows no fear, but Ahsoka Tano is no longer a Jedi, and she's plenty afraid.
In the end, Skywalker ends up finding her when she least expects it – at random, in the mess hall of the base. She's ventured out for the first time to get some food when she senses a bright presence enter the room, and before she even sees him she knows who he is. She's never known what Luke looked like before – it's not like the Rebellion posts pictures of their pilots on the holonet. When she lays eyes on him for the first time – well, she expected to see Anakin in him, and she does, but what she didn't expect was how much of Padme she can see in the boy. Maybe not directly in his looks, but something in his eyes, in the way he carries himself….
He's spotted her, and more importantly he's spotted the lightsabers on her hips. He's walking over, and she's frozen in place, unable to process the phantoms of the past she sees in him.
He sticks out his hand to her. "Luke Skywalker," he says, earnestly, hopefully.
"Uh, hi." Ahsoka says, completely unprepared for anything about this moment. "Ahsoka Tano. I'm…I was….well uhh…your father trained me."
After the first Death Star explodes, after Obi-Wan dies, Luke asks Leia if she knows of any other Jedi in the Rebellion. She hesitates, and he can tell that these are secrets she isn't supposed to speak of. He tries to backtrack, but she waves his concerns away.
"No, it's all right." she says. She tells him about a Jedi and his apprentice whom she'd met on a mission once, a few years ago. "You remind me a lot of Ezra. I don't know much, but I know they're both dead now – something happened to them before the Battle of Yavin. There are a few people left from their rebel cell who might be able to tell you more, but I'd have to get clearance to give you their names. And then….there was an operative codenamed Fulcrum. I didn't know much about them, but they were one of my father's most trusted field agents. From the way he spoke of them…I think they might have been a Jedi, or at least worked with the Jedi. But they dropped off the radar a few years ago - I don't think my father ever found out what happened to them." Luke's heart sinks. He so desperately wants help - how does one rebuild an order of ancient wizard-soldiers on one's own? All he knows of the Jedi is what Ben told him, and that's not much. Not enough. He asks Leia to see what she can do about getting him clearance to find out more about the other two Jedi, but they both know it's a longshot. It's not exactly the type of conversation you can trust over a comm, and the Rebellion is so spread out he doubts he'd be on the same planet as these people anytime soon.
In the end it doesn't matter, because the Rebellion doesn't need him as a Jedi, they need him as a pilot. And there's so much work that has to be done that he just doesn't have time to think about the two dead Jedi or the mysterious Fulcrum for a long, long time.
When he's building his lightsaber from scraps and Obi-Wan's roughly scribbled notes, he thinks again about Fulcrum and who they might be. He wonders if they could help him, because he sure as hell doesn't know what he's doing on his own. He's disappointed Yoda, and Ben's ghost is silent - not that he's really willing to listen to him now anyway. But thinking about Fulcrum is a useless train of thought. He needs a weapon, and he needs to save Han. He doesn't have the time to track down someone who probably died years ago anyway, and might not have ever been a Jedi in the first place. So he squares his shoulders, pushes the name 'Fulcrum' out of his thoughts, and goes back to trying to decipher Obi-Wan's handwriting.
When he spots the tall Togruta woman in the Innton II base mess hall with a lightsaber on each hip, the name "Fulcrum" floats to the front of his mind. But after she starts speaking…it's the last thing he can think of.
"You…you were my father's apprentice?" he asks, not knowing how much hope fills his eyes. "You're a Jedi?" He doesn't understand the grief and pain that fill her eyes at the question.
"Not anymore," she says. "Not for a long time. But I was." He doesn't understand. The way Ben had talked.. he thought the only way you could stop being a Jedi was by going to the Dark Side. She sighs - he thinks she can sense his confusion.
"It's a long story, kid," she says. "I'll buy you a drink, and we can talk."