ANAKIN SKYWALKER KNEW Krie Ortis, but not through the standard Jedi avenues such as shared classes, sparring in Apprentice Tournaments, or even via reputation and Temple gossip. He knew her through his wife, of all people, and from what he'd heard, Krie had one foot in the Senate Rotunda and the other on durasteel ground of the Uscru and Underworld. She was a Jedi only in name.
Anakin often felt that way himself. He still couldn't shake the visage of the Sand People as he cleaved his way through lines of droid forces. Oftentimes he found himself lost in the battle, and it was in those times that he felt like he was betraying his Order, delving into the shadows of darkness when he could be centered in the Light.
He doubted Krie felt that way. He was keeping an eye on her; Padme spoke highly of her, but they were hardly friends. According to her, Krie had a habit of talking her way into Senate holopods across the political spectrum — from militaristic whips like Mee Deechi to pacifists such as herself or Bail Organa. And while Anakin had little knowledge nor taste for politics, he could at least respect her approachability.
Even now, while he fiddled with the wires on the command table with Ahsoka peering over his shoulder, he could hear her making small talk with Artoo on the other end. She was deeply focused on his lengthy, cock-a-hoop retelling of some aerial battle in which he saved the day and Anakin's life. He had half a mind to tell the droid to stop exaggerating, but there were bigger things to worry about.
Or smaller things, considering the size of his Padawan. What exactly she was doing here, he didn't know. He was the last person in the Order who wanted or needed a student. Hell, he'd just been knighted a mere two weeks ago! He'd barely had time to adjust to how his Padawan braid no longer fell against his robes, let alone garner enough knowledge to teach some kid about the ways of the Jedi.
Not that he'd admit it. He could feel the perpetual scowl on his face as he worked the signal through the shuttle that had brought her and Ortis here, repairing on intuition and little else. The girl was clearly too young to be assigned to a Master, which either meant that she was a prodigy, or the Council needed more Jedi on the warfront.
He figured it was the latter. He hadn't seen anything from her that boasted renown or excellence. And he wasn't sure he wanted to. Padawans were little more than dead weight, and if Padme's summary of Krie was true — what could it be, if not that — the older girl would suffer the same gruesome end he feared for Ahsoka. Dead on the battlefield.
He couldn't lose anyone else. His mother was still an open wound, somewhere at the small of his back. Even now as he remembered her face, bloody and brutalized and pained, flame erupted from the base of his spine and raced towards his furnace heart, igniting it and stirring the dragon that curled around his aorta.
All things die, Anakin, it told him.
The clone officer was a savior from on high, quite literally as he flickered into existence atop the command table. Ahsoka's gaze snapped to him, eerily quick, and Krie planted a hand on Artoo's carapace and used it to push to her feet. Artoo wailed angrily, and she patted him contritely.
"Sorry, bud," she said. "I have arthritis. Sixteen whole years of existence takes a toll on my joints."
Artoo let out a whirring grumble of disbelief, and she pretended to hold her back with a groan of pain, seemingly aware that she was out of the projection grid's range and henceforth not making a fool of herself in front of the officer.
She stilled quickly enough, though, and Artoo whirred over to Anakin, speaking to him in binary. Are you okay?
Not really, Artoo, Anakin only nodded, turning to the clone. "We need to speak with Master Yoda. What's your status?"
"We're under attack by Separatist warships," he replied curtly, hands latched behind his back. "But I'll try and make contact with the Jedi Temple for you. Stand by."
Kenobi arrived at the command table, and Krie immediately moved towards him. A beeping noise sounded from the table, a few lights blinking as the four Jedi shared in an awkward silence, eyes shifting left and right. Krie looked like she was about to say something when Yoda finally materialized in a pillar of blue light, hunched over his gnarled cane. Relief flooded Anakin's system, extinguishing the fire and hushing the dragon.
"Master Kenobi," Yoda said almost immediately, "Glad the Padawans found you, I am."
"Master Yoda," greeted Obi-Wan, his brows knit tight. Anakin found himself mimicking the expression. "We are trapped here and vastly outnumbered. We are in no position to leave Christophsis, even under such urgent circumstances. Our support ships have all been destroyed."
Obi-Wan had this unique way of injecting frustration into his voice without ever looking more than mildly inconvenienced. Maybe it was his clipped Coruscanti accent or simply the beard obscuring how his lips pursed in irritation, but Anakin was never unimpressed by his Master's diplomatic capabilities.
Former Master, he chided himself.
Yoda seemed unbothered by the undertones of Kenobi's voice, perhaps attributing it to the difficulties of war or deliberately ignoring it. "Send reinforcements to you, we will." His form began to waver, and whatever he said next was warped and made unintelligible by atmospheric interference and commline static.
The clone officer reappeared. "We've lost the transmission, sir."
"We have to leave orbit immediately," another said, stepping into view. "More enemy ships have just arrived. We'll get back to you as soon as we can. Good luck, Generals."
And then they were gone.
Krie glanced up at the sky like the atmosphere might peel away and display the aerial battle occurring overhead: Venators and Munificents engaging each other in flashes of blue and red on the star-scattered backdrop of space. Anakin didn't miss how Ahsoka shot her an uneasy glance, like the gravity of their situation was settling in and Krie still had her head in the clouds.
"Well, I guess we'll have to hold out a little longer," Anakin found himself saying. Ahsoka jerked to attention, and Anakin swallowed a groan as he was reminded of the responsibilities thrust upon him. "Which means we have time to figure this whole Padawan thing out."
"It's quite simple," Kenobi said, meeting his eyes with a half-lidded gaze. "Krie is my Padawan, and Ahsoka is yours."
The words were out before Anakin could filter them. "It's not simple, because I didn't ask for a Padawan!"
Ahsoka's fist curled into the ample fabric of her skirt, and Krie leaned over the combat table, her bangs sweeping in the breeze. "No need to foster any Master-Padawan resentments before the first mission starts, right? It's hardly productive."
"I concur," Kenobi said cheerily. "It won't be long before those droids figure a way around our cannons, and I can't imagine the embarrassment we'll feel if we're caught bickering as our camp is blown to smithereens."
Anakin caught their barely-veiled sarcasm, and got the sense that this would be a recurring situation — Kenobi and Krie double-teaming him until he managed to befriend Ahsoka. He turned to the young Togruta, his lips pressed into a thin line. "Alright, fine. I'm going to check on Rex at the lookout post."
"You better take her with you," Kenobi said, walking around the table and squeezing Ahsoka on the shoulder.
A twitch of Anakin's eye was the only visible acknowledgement he gave, but to his credit, Ahsoka hid her disappointment well. She tried for a respectful smile and then followed him, still uncannily lithe and nimble. At the back of Anakin's mind, he registered her agility and filed it away, this information quickly overwritten by vexation.
He could feel Krie watching him as they left the camp. He didn't sense any confusion or judgment in her presence, only muted curiosity and a strange amount of respect that he hadn't been expecting, given her debut wisecracks.
And Ahsoka seemed to harbor the same sense of reverence, though it was dampened now by doubt. She was starting to realize that Anakin hadn't chosen her, he hadn't even wanted her, and now she felt lost.
Anakin was surprised that he could read her so well, only to realize that it was a feeling he had once experienced, and perhaps still did. Him and Obi-Wan had been an unusual pair, and Anakin had never quite shaken the notion that Obi-Wan only mentored him because it was Qui-Gon's dying wish.
So maybe he knew a few things about being unwanted. She still needed to prove her worth and carry her weight. As he did his.
Krie thought there was something wrong with her.
She'd researched it — survivor's guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder, all the other issues that could follow and linger long after the so-called tragedy she'd faced — and she had yet to manifest the expected symptoms.
For the past three weeks, she'd treated herself the way she treated the patients at Talia's backwater clinic in the Coruscant Underworld: carefully monitoring their physical and mental states, running diagnostics, filling out questionnaires, administering medicine and reassurances where necessary. She, who had always prided herself on being in control of her body, was suddenly at a loss for what to expect from her own mind.
Would she close up and become a husk of her former self when faced with blasterfire and death? Not that she could tell — she'd made sure to consume a questionable amount of graphic war holofilms just to double-check. Would she lash out in times of crisis instead of maintaining her cool? She was less sure of this one; it was difficult to manufacture a scenario and accurately gauge her reactions, but she'd tried. She had Cohrro go all out against her in hand-to-hand sparring, and she didn't feel any different.
That was what worried her. She should've been bothered by this. Devastated. Shattered. Hesitant, maybe, like her fellow Padawans who acted like everything was fine but still unintentionally broadcasted their turmoil during meditation. Like miniature storms, fighting with their frustration, grief and inner darkness.
Nothing. She felt… calm. Devoted. Reinvigorated.
Maybe it was because she'd lied to the Council about how Master Du lost her life. Krie had always been good at lying, twisting her own words into something that was only truthful from a certain point of view. But she'd never done it with intent to harm before. This time felt different.
There was no body to bury, so Krie's recount of her experience was all anyone had. And there was freedom there, allowing her to review the situation in her head without anyone worrying about her. She was just another Padawan who lost her Master to the droids.
Just like everyone else.
She pulled her saber off of her belt and turned it over in her hand. Haysian smelt with leather wrapping, it was flashier than she'd intended but, supposedly, it fit her well. Whatever that meant. The old steel trap Huyang had been frustrated with her throughout the entire trial on Ilum, nettled in the only way that a droid could be. Lightsabers were a form of self-expression, he preached, and she'd purposely fought against the notion with every step.
She glanced around. Kenobi had gone off to brief the troopers, and assigned Krie to preparatory meditation and katas review until a plan of attack was formulated. She stood inside the ruins of a skyscraper, repurposed into a training center. It was dark with slim, rectangular lights mounted sparingly on the walls. There were scorch marks from blaster fire and divots from lightsaber slashes on the floor. The ceiling was far above, but there clearly had been some ricochet. Half of it was caved in on the far side, a few rocks piled up to support droid heads that were probably meant to be targets.
So she was all alone. And that was fine. That was how she preferred it.
Her eyes scanned the room again, and with the flick of a finger, she disabled the lights and settled herself into the darkness. She reached out through the Force, feeling along the edges of the room, stretching along the walls and finding the weak points, the indents left by blaster bolts and saber blades. Each speck of dust floating in the air, each piece of rubble scattered against the ground beneath her feet.
Everything.
Her blade ignited right as her eyes shut. She didn't need to see the color with her eyes — the indigo blade thrummed with power before her, lighting the space behind her eyelids and illuminating memories like a search lantern in a murky swamp.
On Ilum, when she'd first found her kyber crystal, it hadn't been indigo. It had been a vibrant purple, the likes of which were few and far between within the Order. The only Master she knew with the color was Mace Windu, and he was probably the only Jedi that didn't like her. He'd never liked her. Even then, three years ago, she'd felt disappointed at her inability to figure him out, to cater to his priorities and earn his respect. But that wasn't the real reason she'd been so frustrated — it was something else, something she didn't want to admit to herself.
I don't want to be like him, she had thought, then, so incorrectly. Aggressive, unrelenting in his views, so stern and unforgiving. That's not me. It won't ever be me.
She'd clutched the crystal in her hand and felt its energy pulsate between her fingers, the frigid coldness of the caves warded off momentarily. She remembered it now as she moved her way around the room, swinging her blade with precision, rehearsing and reminiscing.
They'll think I'm a liability, vulnerable to the pull of the Darkside when I'm not. My friends will be worried for me — they'll think of me differently, see me differently, treat me differently and they'll… they'll see me as something I'm not. Dangerous. Volatile. Unreliable. I can't have that.
The crystal's light had shone from behind her fingers, and she'd clenched it tighter, face scrunched. It's not me. I'm just like every other Jedi and I'm not susceptible to my emotions. I know that better than anyone. Dammit, Veza gets angry more often than I do, and her saber's blue as the sky. Why can't mine be, huh? Kriff that.
Krie swept her leg back into a wide stance, dipping low and sweeping from foot to shoulder, then shoulder to foot. Her footwork avoided every pebble on the ground, channeling the Force through her soles to guide her and to redirect as she danced across the ground against the blackness.
I have self-control, she'd told herself then. I am in control. And why would I let a stupid crystal tell them any different? I've seen the way Windu fights, the way he barely keeps his frustrations at bay when speaking to others. I can see it in him, that coiling, slippery serpent injecting strength and poison into their veins.
I'll kill my serpent right now. Defang it and wring its pitiful neck. I'll bury it.
It had been immature, she knew now. Immature and un-Jedi-like to beg the Force and the galaxy at large to give her a crystal that looked as run-of-the-mill as she wanted to be. Huyang knew from the moment she'd returned to the ship, and she'd never known that a droid could portray such disapproval.
She switched to her right hand, rolling her wrist and shoulders, flexing her fingers and twirling her saber with a flourish.
She'd changed the color of her crystal, ever so slightly and incompletely. Huyang had the honesty of a machine and the knowledge of an archivist, so he told her nothing but the truth.
In her attempts to seem more like a Jedi, she'd done something that was uniquely Sith. Only they poured their emotions into their crystals strong enough to alter their appearance. He'd pulled her aside when her fellow clanmates were constructing their hilts, and he'd spoken softly, perhaps for the sake of her dignity.
Child, it is true that the Jedi focus on being modest and unassuming, but one's lightsaber is the only way by which they can show their truest self. As I understand it, you have people you want to appease, but you also have a darkness within you that scares you more than anything. And perhaps the Council thinks differently, but darkness is natural if you can resist it. And I believe you can.
So who are you exactly? Not who you pretend to be, but who you are in your heart of hearts.
Krie disengaged her saber and smoothly moved into bladeless katas, her hands open and her thumbs over her palms, or clenched into fists as she jabbed at nothingness, feeling dust and air swirling at her every movement in the lightless chamber.
Darkness.
Her response to Huyang had been a susurration, barely a breath: I don't know who I am.
It was ridiculous, how the droid had expected her to know exactly who she was at the tender age of thirteen. So the Force was supposed to guide her through the process, and her crystal was meant to represent "her truest self." She wasn't the most rational person, but Huyang's choice of words smacked of semantics. She couldn't adhere to that. She had a reputation to uphold.
And as for her inner struggles… he'd struck a raw nerve. Deep inside, she knew she was worlds apart from the people she surrounded herself with. A flashy, bright exterior and an inside that was a bit darker than it should be — so perhaps her weapon did suit her well. She knew he was right, and every time she looked at her saber she was reminded of how she'd answered him that day.
I don't know.
And still, she had no clue what was going on with her. She could understand another person in an instant, but she couldn't comprehend herself.
Light.
The door swung open, the creaking sound of it making Krie still. The identifiable figure of a trooper stood in the incandescence, little more than a black silhouette against the blinding sun. Krie felt her presence retreating from the room, her awareness diminishing and reconsolidating into her body.
Heart rate even, blood flow normal. Eyesight… adjusting. No ringing in my ears and… She clenched and unclenched her fist. Joints are functional. My rib's healed up from Cohrro's sparring match. Good. At the very least, I know that.
"Commander," the clone said. "Something's happened. General Kenobi told me to find you."
Krie paused and reached out again, past the confines of her training area. It felt like pouring water over cloth and watching it seep through the fabric as she sensed the city, and the sudden unspooling of energy from the Separatist base. It felt vaguely familiar, and not in a good way.
"Alright," she said, walking towards him. Her gloved finger twitched again and the lights turned on behind her. "What's your name, trooper?"
"Convex, sir," the trooper said as she got to his side. He saluted her, and she managed to suppress a frown at the motion. "I'm part of the squad you'll be commanding, along with ten others."
Of course. How could she forget that she was a military leader now? She had men at her command, lives in her hands. Now wasn't the time to fret over identity and self-perception.
"I'm not sure if this is right for me to say, but I'm not exactly experienced," she confessed from beside him, running a hand through her hair. "I'd appreciate any suggestions that you have."
She understood that Convex might be surprised by her admission, even more so by her readiness to hear counsel from her men, but she couldn't discern whether he'd find it irresponsible or very responsible.
So she followed up. "I'll be sure to do my due diligence by way of researching stratagems and battle tactics. But you are the soldiers, and I'm not quite a commander yet."
"Of course, sir," Convex said with a visible nod.
They approached an airspeeder, and Krie's eyes found the horizon. A scarlet shield expanded over the far side of the city, crackling with energy as it crawled cloudward.
"So that's the something," she said mildly, jumping over the side of the speeder into the pilot's seat. Convex looked blankly at her, and she frowned. "I'm sorry, do I fly or do you?"
"Whatever suits you best, sir," he said, before vaulting over and landing beside her, his blue and yellow armor clanking against the steel seating. "General Skywalker prefers piloting, but General Kenobi never lets him."
"I promise I'm a safe flier," she said as she twisted the ignition knob, hearing the engine purr beneath her. "The ray shield's going to disable our cannons, isn't it?"
"Yessir."
A noise of hesitance escaped her lips. She drew the controls back as Convex punched in the coordinates. "Well, I'm not sure how to stop that. You?"
"Not a clue, sir," Convex admitted, the truth coming easily as they took off towards their upper strongholds at the base of the skyscraper clusters. "They don't teach it in the simulations."
Krie debated on pursuing that topic with Convex. She'd been interested in how their army was created ever since the issue was raised in the Senate, but she also wondered if it was a sore spot for the clones. The Kaminoans she'd met weren't the most amicable, and men bred solely for fighting might have or lack the self-awareness necessary to resent such a purpose.
The irony wasn't lost on her: a being trained to keep the peace and a being created to fight a war sharing a common goal.
She decided against it. "Ah, well. Want to brainstorm?"
Convex seemed to relax into his seat. "Where do you want to start?"
"The same place anyone else would," Krie said, turning to look at him as the wind blew her hair back. "Can we blow it up?"
Ahsoka missed Krie in a normal way.
Normal meaning that it was a sentiment that many Jedi reciprocated when Ortis was away from the Temple: missing her witty jokes and unreasonably wise advice, her effulgent confidence and easy-going nature that made everyone want to waste hours talking to her.
She was popular, no doubt about it. Ahsoka had yet to find someone with something bad to say about her. She was secure but not too secure, skilled but not too skilled, smart but not too smart. Good, but never good enough to invite anything other than mild envy.
Ahsoka also wanted Krie here because nothing was familiar here, and Ahsoka couldn't tell if Anakin was warming up to her or if he was just pretending to tolerate her for the sake of the mission. Krie would be able to tell, and Ahsoka badly wanted to ask.
But she'd been stuck with Anakin and Rex, who was definitely growing on her. She'd already learned a valuable lesson from the clone captain about experience and respect while getting a feel for their stronghold and how war really worked. There was only so much that Master Honall could explain in their battle tactics classes. Ahsoka had a hard time paying attention to his lectures as it were, so a hands-on experience like this, though short of the thrill of a fight, was useful to her.
Her fingers brushed the hilt of her saber, her cerulean eyes settling on the holomap before them. A cobalt blueprint of the city, and a near-opaque dome far behind the Separatist lines, still expanding.
A speeder's engine sang its arrival a few meters away, and Ahsoka felt relief as Krie and a clone trooper hopped out. Krie's lightsaber seemed to glint like solid gold in the setting light, dangling on her belt haphazardly. She seemed to notice this, and shifted her indigo sash to cover it.
"Come here, Krie," Kenobi said from Rex's left, beckoning with two fingers.
"You're a little late," Anakin commented, his arms still crossed. Ahsoka glanced over at him in disbelief — Krie wasn't even his Padawan to scold. But there was something about his expression, a latent helplessness that he was trying to fight by doing something, anything. He couldn't take down the shield generator, so maybe he could remonstrate Krie's tardiness instead of recognizing his own conflict. He was good at that. She was good at that. Maybe they'd get along after all.
The older Padawan opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again. "Well, I hope I didn't miss anything important."
Ahsoka could tell she'd just bit back a retort for the sake of respecting her military superior. Krie had more restraint than her, but what else was new?
Krie wrapped the table and stood on Ahsoka's right. Her eyes darted over the blueprint and flicked towards the sky as the shield continued to grow in size, incrementally and inevitably.
"The shield generator should be somewhere within this radius, though it's hard to pinpoint its precise location," continued Kenobi, gesturing at the center of the dome on the map. "They're slowly increasing the diameter, keeping it just ahead of their troops. I'd say we save our ordnance for later… we're not gonna make a dent in that."
"We'll draw them into the buildings," Rex proffered, his helmet under his arm. "They'll have to find us to fight us. They can't fire their own cannons within the shield, so let's make their defenses work against them."
Krie met Ahsoka's gaze, silently checking her through the Force, sort of like a telepathic shoulder-nudge. Ahsoka met her eyes, and Krie nodded, sensing her line of thought and encouraging it.
"Why don't we just take out the generator?" Her question was met with Skywalker pinching the bridge of his nose, like he'd been hoping she wouldn't speak up. Krie's head swiveled to face him, her eyes narrowed, and Ahsoka decided to add something else. "Or is it not that simple?"
"Correct," her new master replied. "It's not that simple."
"Suicide mission," Rex supplemented, still looking at the map. "Not that I couldn't get plenty of volunteers from the ranks, but we'd probably waste a lot of time getting nowhere, and at least we know we stand a chance if we can pin down the tinnies inside the buildings. They're not good at fighting house-to-house."
"I could do it," Ahsoka said, bolstered by Krie's second reassuring nod. "Let me try, Skyguy."
It was Rex who responded to Ahsoka's suggestion with a voice that was low and soft. "You don't have to prove anything, littl'un."
"I can do it. I know I can. I'm small and I'm fast." She tipped her head down in respect, as if trying to lessen her self-assured statements. "And where better to use Jedi skills?"
Kenobi turned to Krie, who spoke up almost immediately. "She's not lying. If there's anyone who can do it, it's her."
The bearded Jedi nodded, exhaled through the nose, and turned to Anakin. "Very well. Take Ahsoka and penetrate the Sep lines." He jabbed at the holochart towards the location radius. "Rex, Krie and I can stage a diversion here, and that should make it easier for you to slip through."
Krie's face underwent the same strange motions — a grimace, like a fly had just flown too close to her eye. Ahsoka had seen it often on her friend, almost every time she'd speak to a Jedi Master with a chip on their shoulder, or whenever someone said something especially inane or dubious. "What's the venue for this distraction, Master?"
"That remains to be seen," Kenobi said vaguely, and Krie passed her tongue along her teeth — subtle apprehension. "Why do you ask?"
"It's nothing," she dismissed, shrugging and glancing at the horizon. "But I'd assume we need to defend our emplacements."
"That's right," said Rex. "If we can't draw them into the buildings, they'll just roll right down the street into the square and take out our arty pieces, and there'll be very little we can do about it. And then it'll be endex for all of us."
"I can do it," Ahsoka found herself saying stubbornly, planting her hands on her hips as she turned her gaze to Anakin. "We can do it."
Kenobi didn't say anything, but Krie gave them both two thumbs-up. "By the way, I definitely had a dream last night about you guys blowing that thing to pieces."
She paused, scanning Ahsoka and Anakin with her eyes and the Force. Ahsoka felt her presence navigating the currents of the Force with a practiced ease, discovering something only she could see.
Krie then tossed something in the air and Ahsoka caught it reflexively. Her hand opened to reveal a thin steel cylinder with a single button on the top.
"What's this?" Ahsoka inquired, raising a marked brow.
"Your way in," she said. "I know a guy who knows a guy who's got a real penchant for sneaking into places he isn't supposed to be."
Ahsoka pressed the button, and a tiny pole emerged, scanning her in a triangle of shimmering blue light. Anakin's reaction did the rest. He blinked, widened his eyes slightly, and then blinked again, swinging to face Krie.
"So you just keep portable cloaking tech with you?" Anakin asked, genuinely intrigued. "That's a seriously streamlined design."
"Only problem is it's only for one humanoid, not two," Krie said, holding up her fingers to prove her point.
"Give it here," Anakin beckoned. Ahsoka deactivated the device and tossed it to him, and he turned it over in his flesh hand. He nodded slowly. "Yeah, I think I can do something about that."
"Anything you can't do?" Krie asked with a joking sort of exhaustion. "So Ahsoka and I know what to brush up on, of course."
She managed to wrestle a grin from his otherwise sour expression, and Ahsoka felt tangible relief as she returned her focus to the map before her. She examined the vein-like path indicators, plotting a route and execution, examining the clusters of clone and droid forces to find the optimal way through.
Anakin headed off to modify the device, and Krie leaned over the table conspiratorially. Ahsoka was still boring holes into the map, so her friend was just a blur in the periphery behind the ghostly skyscrapers.
"Listen," Krie said, propping her elbows up on the holoprojector, her hand wandering through the edges of the map. "From what I can tell, Soka, you're not the problem. Anakin's got something he's working through that's got nothing to do with getting a new Padawan. So just keep doing what you do best, and eventually he'll see what everyone else sees."
Gratitude blossomed in Ahsoka's chest, and she took a moment to look up at Krie, smiling. "Thanks. I'm so glad you said that, honestly." She cocked her head to the side, montral brushing against her shoulder. "How are you holding up?"
"Like a Coruscantian pillar-plat," she said, flexing both of her arms with a winning grin. "By the way… once we get back to Coruscant, I'm gonna find a way to smuggle you into Au Ves De'a Saille. We'll finally try that Bivoli Tempari I was telling you about, and then I'll show you how to always win at sabacc."
"You suck at sabacc."
"That's just what I want you to think. Master manipulator that I definitely am." Krie tapped her temple with a devilish smirk, before backing away. "Don't let me stop you from strategizing, Commander."
As Ahsoka turned to the map again, she realized that she didn't feel half as worried anymore. She hadn't even needed to ask Krie about Anakin. She just knew. Most Jedi had singular defining traits that made them special, unique and strong. Ahsoka's was her agility; Skywalker's was probably his Force prowess; Yoda's was his wisdom and Plo Koon's was his compassion.
Krie, if Ahsoka had to guess, was probably known for her awareness. Nothing got by her, and while Krie often made light of it, Ahsoka was pretty sure that Krie had some kind of premonitive ability, seeing into the future as easily as she saw into other people.
Ahsoka pushed the thought aside — visions could wait. For now… she had a shield generator to destroy.
A/N: I'm a lot more of a character-focused writer, and I like delving into their psychologies and the like. That being said, I won't skimp on the battles and the classic Star War sarcastic banter. Krie's a complicated character and I can't imagine you guys will always like what she decides to do, but the best protagonists throw their readers a curveball every now and then.
To those of you with extensive knowledge of obscure Star Wars lore, you probably know what happened to Krie's Master. If her reaction seems muted, well... it should, haha. She's got some problems.