Chapter Six

Five. She was sure of that, and it meant it was time to make her move.

She lashed out, grabbing the exposed arm by the triceps and wrapped her own arm around the offending limb. Placing her foot behind her opponent, she twisted her body, using the trapped arm to bring the man over her leg and backward onto the mat. He went down hard, stunning him long enough that she could bring her leg over him and drop down to…

To feel a blunt point jabbing her in the stomach.

Ahsoka let out a groan of frustration.

"Where'd that come from?" She asked as she rolled off Ghes. She was sure she'd disarmed him five times, the same as the number of training knives she'd seen on him when they'd started.

"Are you sure you counted right?" Ghes said, tossing the over-sized plastoid blade aside and propping himself up on his elbows.

Ahsoka was sure she had. One knife had started in his hand, and she'd disposed of it quite quickly. The two that had been on his belt had given her more trouble, but they too had eventually been thrown aside as well. The final two she'd accounted for had been tucked into the outer side of Ghes's boots, and she distinctly remembered having hands on both before she'd discarded them. She looked around the ring, counting discarded blades just to be sure. There were six, the five she'd accounted for and the one which had "killed" her.

Then she looked at Ghes, who'd moved from leaning back on his elbows into a seated position. Unlike during most of their training sessions, he wasn't wearing armor. Instead, he wore the grey fleet fatigues she'd often seen him wear off duty, except that he'd ditched the jacket by the side of the ring and wore only an undershirt. Ahsoka counted the sheaths on his belt, still just two, but she did notice one difference from when they'd started. The back of Ghes's shirt had been pulled out of his pants, and she hadn't done it, so…

Her eyes narrowed as she put together what had happened.

Ghes, following her gaze, looked down at the untucked shirt tail and grinned.

"You figure it out then?" He said. Still grinning, he reached behind himself, up under his shirt, and drew another of the blue blades.

"Seven." She counted aloud, more than a little annoyed.

"Never assume you've completely disarmed an enemy." Ghes said, standing up. "There's always another place they could be hiding a weapon."

"So, everyone's going to have two knives hidden under their shirt?" She asked sarcastically.

In response, Ghes pulled out the front of his shirt and lifted it to reveal a black strap across his stomach. He then turned to the side, showing her the two sheaths attached to the back of the strap.

"Itches like hell." He said, surprisingly keeping a straight face. "But if I'm not in armor…"

Ahsoka tried, and failed, to stifle a laugh. She was getting to know Ghes quite well, but once in a while she still managed to find a new… quirk

"What's so funny?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You." She said through her laughter. "Why do you even have that?"

"To carry more knives." He replied, acting as if the answer was obvious.

"Who needs to carry seven knives?"

"Someone who wants to teach an overconfident Jedi a lesson." He said smugly, returning the seventh knife to its place.

"Oh really?"

Ahsoka grabbed one of the discarded knives with the Force and quickly flicked it toward the side of Ghes's head. He caught it, of course, but he did so by wrapping his had around the blade. If that had been a real vibro-knife, he wouldn't have any fingers left, and, from his scowl, she could tell Ghes was distinctly aware of that.

"How's that for overconfident?" She taunted.

Ghes sighed.

"I think you're missing the point..." He said.

"That you can carry a lot of knives?"

"No..." Ghes started, then hesitated. "Well, yes, I guess that is sort of the point."

Ahsoka smiled smugly as she stood.

"It's still important though." Ghes continued. "If I can do it…"

"…than anyone else with at least two brain cells can." Ahsoka finished for him. "So I should always assume there's another weapon."

"That's all I ask." Ghes said, taking the knife she'd thrown at him and slipping it into a sheath at his belt.

"You know," Ahsoka said, crouching to pick up another of the discarded training blades. "I think you just don't like losing."

"Sure…" Ghes said sarcastically, turning away from her and bending to retrieve a third knife.

As he stood, Ahsoka noticed, not for the first time, the impressive figure Ghes cut, even without his armor. Broad-shouldered, his muscular neck and back were very obvious from this angle, especially when he lifted his shirt to replace a knife…

Ahsoka caught herself before Ghes could turn around, forcing herself to look away so he wouldn't notice her staring. It wasn't the first time this had happened, and it had happened with other guys before she'd met Ghes, but she caught her gaze lingering on him far more often than she'd like. Ahsoka silently chastised herself for her lack of discipline in this regard, and dreaded the embarrassment she'd experience if Ghes ever caught her.

"Ahsoka?"

Ghes's voice startled Ahsoka, as her efforts to avoid looking at him had caused her to lose track of the man. She turned back to find him standing a half meter away with his hand held out to her, an expectant look on his face. It took Ahsoka longer than she'd like to admit to realize he was waiting for her to hand him the knife she'd retrieved.

"Are you all right?" Ghes asked after she'd finally handed him the blade.

"Yes." She said quickly, feeling her face flush. "I'm just… tired."

It wasn't a good excuse, probably more of a deflection, in fact. Ghes seemed acutely aware of this, but he chose not to press the issue.

"All right then." He said, moving to retrieve his discarded jacket. "I guess we're done for today."

Ahsoka's duty shift still wasn't for another few hours when their training session had ended, and she was grateful for this. She found herself fixating, perhaps unnecessarily, on the possibility that Ghes had guessed the real reason for her odd behavior. No, returning to her room to meditate was definitely the best thing for her right now.

As time went on, Ahsoka found meditation had grown both easier and more effective. She chalked this up to practice and, she'd like to believe, her maturing significantly over the past couple of years. Not for the first time, she wondered how non-Jedi went through life without this way of coping with the difficulties of life. So many of the people around her seemed so keyed up all of the time, and, though she understood why they were like this, she felt bad for the effect it must have on them.

Even Ghes, who appeared so outwardly together, she suspected of suffering in this way. Though, as she could not read him the way she could most people, this suspicion was more conjecture than anything…

And there she went again. Ahsoka was actively trying to avoid thinking about Ghes, but he snuck his way into her thoughts anyway. It annoyed Ahsoka to no end that all of her mental discipline seemed unable to prevent these slip-ups, and she tried to ignore the more uncomfortable implications of her failings.

Thankfully, her commlink beeping prevented her from going any further down this dangerous line of thought. She grabbed it off the ground next to her and clicked it on.

"Commander Tano." She said into the device.

"Commander," A clone's voice responded. "You have an oncoming transmission. ID code; CC-7567."

Rex, Ahsoka thought. She hadn't spoken directly to her friend since she'd left the main element of the 501st a few weeks ago, something she hadn't realized how much she regretted until now.

"Can you put it through to my cabin?" She asked, not wanting to venture all the way to the com center at the rear of the bridge unless she absolutely had to.

"Of course, ma'am." The com officer responded. "Patching it through now."

Ahsoka had to move to the room's desk to answer what was apparently a holo-com call, as a one-fourth scale version of Rex's upper body appeared floating over the desk's surface.

"Ahsoka," The captain said, his hologram smiling up at her.

"Hey Rex," She said, returning his smile. "How was your leave?"

"Dull." Rex said with a shrug. "Not much to do but refit and work in replacements."

"Glad to see you're not having too much fun without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He said, laughing. "How are you getting along with recon?"

"It's… interesting." Ahsoka said. There really wasn't any other way to describe her time with the ARFs. "I'm learning some useful things."

"I'm sure you are." Rex said, his tone implying he knew exactly what she'd been doing. "Col. Marczak putting you through your paces then?"

"Yeah, we've been sparring." She said. "How'd you know."

"He's Mandalorian." He said matter-of-factly.

From what Ahsoka knew about traditional Mandalorians, it was reasonable for Rex to assume that, as a Mando, Ghes would enjoy fighting. Of course, that knowledge was based on a the very generalized view of the warrior culture that existed in the public mind, and Rex's own picture of them would be heavily shaped by his training sergeants.

"Did you know he's a mercenary?" She asked.

Rex shrugged.

"Not my place to ask about something like that." He said, and she had to agree. In the end it didn't really matter much how Ghes had come to be in the GAR, as long as he was good at his job. "Do you like him?"

For a moment, Ahsoka felt uncomfortably flush as she was reminded of her earlier discomfort.

"He's unique." She said, not trusting herself to say more. It was good a way as any to describe Ghes anyway, or, at least, it was better than eccentric.

Rex nodded, apparently ignorant of Ahsoka's discomfort. But did she want him to be? Rex was one of her oldest and closest friends, and part of her wanted to tell him about the confusing feelings she'd been struggling with. She'd tried to deal with it herself; mostly by ignoring them, but that clearly wasn't working. What she needed right now was someone to talk through her what she was thinking with.

"Rex, can I ask you something." Ahsoka asked cautiously.

"Sure." Rex said, suddenly looking concerned. "What's on your mind?"

"Do you ever think that, maybe, the way you were taught to do things isn't the only way to do them?"

It was a very roundabout way to ask that question, but it was as direct as she was willing to be.

"What?" Rex responded, clearly confused.

"Like how you're a soldier," Ahsoka began, trying to be clearer without giving away her true motive. "and you were taught a certain way to be a soldier; how to fight, what you should and shouldn't do. Do you ever question any of it?"

For a moment, Rex just looked at her, still confused, as he worked over the revised question in his mind. It appeared, at least to Ahsoka, that he'd never really thought much about it. Why should he? Like many Jedi, clones took comfort in the rules that governed and regulated their lives, it was all they'd ever known after all. Unlike Jedi, however, Rex was far less likely to encounter a situation that would seriously challenge what he'd been taught.

"When I was retrained," Rex said, starting slowly, as if he was still working out what he wanted to say. "most of the SOP we'd been using since the beginning where thrown out to encourage us to be more creative."

"How'd you deal with that?" She asked. "Wasn't it hard?"

"It was, at first." He admitted. "But, once I started thinking for myself instead of just reacting how I'd been trained to, I realized that it wasn't about the way I'd been trained being wrong. There was just another way to do it, and that way was better for the job I had to do."

"Ok…" Ahsoka said, though, privately, she was a little confused.

"Let me put it a different way." Rex continued, perhaps picking up on her confusion. "do you remember Master Altis?"

"Yes."

Master Djinn Altis was what many Jedi might call a "heretic". He and his sect rejected orthodox Jedi teaching about attachment, among other things, encouraging close relationships and even marriage amongst members. They were outcasts from the rest of the Jedi Order, living as nomads and doing humanitarian work on planets affected by the war. Ahsoka had met Altis and two of his followers once, during the first year of the war immediately after the mission to rescue Rotta the Hutt. Her, Rex, and five other troopers from the 501st had been training aboard the Acclamator-class cruiser Leveler when the outcast Jedi had joined with them to rescue a Rep Intel agent out of the middle of a CIS-backed planetary revolution. Looking back, it was hard for Ahsoka to understand the naïve fanaticism that had led her to be so immediately suspicious and hostile toward Altis's people, but she had been. Some of what she'd said to them seemed almost laughable in hindsight.

"It's like that." Rex said. "A different approach. Not wrong, just different."

If Rex had said that to any other Jedi, he would have been subjected to a lengthy rant about how there was only one right way to be a Jedi, and that any deviation from that path would lead inevitably toward the dark side. Ahsoka wasn't like that, at least not anymore. She'd seen and done too much during the past two years of war to believe anything could be so clear cut.

"Thanks, Rex." Ahsoka said, beginning to grasp his point. "That actually helps a lot."

"So, are you going to tell me what's going on with you?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Nothing." She quickly insisted. "It's just something I've been thinking about."

It was obvious Rex didn't believe her, she could see it in his eyes, but, thankfully, he choose not to press her.

"All right then, little'un." He said, smiling gently. "I'll let you get back to it then"

"I'm not doing anything right now," She protested. "I can still…"

"No," Rex interrupted, his hologram holding up a translucent hand. "I have to go. There's something big coming, and General Skywalker wants us to be ready for it."

"Okay then," Ahsoka said, a little upset at the abrupt end this call was coming to. "talk to you later."

Rex smiled at her once more before his image faded out and Ahsoka was left staring at the durasteel desktop.

She sat there for a while after that, thinking more about what Rex had said. Specifically, she thought more about Master Altis. Ahsoka had spared little thought on the elderly Jedi and his followers since she'd encountered them almost two years prior. She'd had little reason to, having decided near the end of that adventure that their path, while not inherently wrong or dark as she'd first thought, wasn't for her.

But was that still true? When she'd made that decision, Ahsoka had been out of the Temple for less than a month, and a lot had changed since then. Being Master Skywalker's Padawan had taught her a… healthy skepticism of rules, especially those set by the Jedi Council. In fact, by this point, defying the Council's orders was practically a hobby for her and Anakin.

Ahsoka groaned aloud in frustration. She didn't even know why she was thinking so hard about this. Any feelings beyond friendship which she may or may not be developing for Ghes, and the question of whether or not she should act on them, were ultimately pointless. The fact of the matter was that she could not and would not act on any such theoretical feelings unless she was certain that Ghes reciprocated. It wasn't just a matter of pride, it was also a matter of fear, not of rejection, but of ruining a new friendship, not to mention their professional relationship. Therefore, because of Ghes's frustratingly blank presence in the Force that ensured she could never know how he felt without him telling her directly, this line of thought was purely academic.

Something Ahsoka did know was that this mental blackout was voluntary, Ghes had admitted as much. While he had apparently been doing it for long enough that it had become his default state, there was no reason for her to think that he would not be able to stop if he wanted to. If she really wanted to read him, she would just have to convince him to drop his guard and "open up" to her.

And now that little hypothetical nagging at her was going to stop her from focusing on anything else, especially meditation.

Retrieving her datapad, Ahsoka checked to see if Ghes was on duty, and he was, on the bridge. She didn't want to confront him about her little idea right now, in fact, she was hoping to avoid him. If Ghes was on duty, that meant she could go work out without him distracting her again.

Stowing the datapad back in her desk, she rose from her chair. If she couldn't focus on meditating, she'd just have to go with a more… crude method of relaxation.

Ahsoka needed to hit something.

Author's Notes:

Another two-review week, so I'll just get right into things;

Hybrid301, I continue to thank you for your comments. Hope you enjoyed this week's chapter!

8th (reviewing Ch. Four), thank you so much! When I wrote that originally, I thought that it was based on something I'd read, but I checked the wiki and couldn't find anything. It didn't click until you reminded me about that part of the Republic Commando novels (which I absolutely love but haven't re-read in a while). As much as I've always been hesitant to change any scene that's been depicted on screen (something I'm trying to get over while writing Pt II), I do like experimenting when it comes to crafting my own scenes and using lore to justify some of my more… complicated ideas. I'm not sure how I feel about the new season of TCW. On the one hand, we've likely seen half of the "new" episodes between the two unfinished arcs that have been released over the past few years, and they were pretty good. On the other, I wasn't the biggest fan of the "Lost Missions" episodes that came out on Netflix (for my purposes, I'm likely to reference most of the arcs in that "season" and will out right ignore the whole bio-chip conspiracy because I think it's dumb), so I'm not especially confident that the remaining six episodes we haven't seen will be any good. And, on a more selfish note, the Siege of Mandalore was something I want to do towards the end of Part II, and I doubt my version of events will resemble Filoni's very much. I hated basically everything Filoni did with Mandalore over the course of TCW (and how it made Karen Traviss quite writing Star Wars novels), so I'm not going to hold my breath over this.

Transitioning into this week's chapter, this is the first part of the story entirely original to the rewrite, and once again something I'm rather proud of (of course, if I wasn't I probably wouldn't be posting it).

The biggest hurdle I encountered writing this should be rather obvious. For anyone not aware, I am a man (and a straight man at that), so the prospect of representing, even partially, the thoughts of a female character regarding her attraction to a member of the opposite sex was a little intimidating. After all, isn't it a well-known cliché that no man can ever understand how women think? Not currently having a girlfriend or any close female friends (my high school was unisex and there aren't many women even in combat arms jobs that have been open to them for years), I had no one to run any of this by to verify its "authenticity". I was afraid that whatever I ended up writing would come across as… wrong in some intangible way that I'd never be able to understand.

It took a frankly embarrassing amount of time for me to realize that the answer my "problem" was right in front of my face the whole time; don't worry about it. A mistake I've heard is common among writers (of both genders) is to worry about a character's gender before worrying about their character, and I'd like to think that's not a mistake I've ever really made. Looking back at my work, I've written far more from the POV of female characters than male ones, something I never even thought that much about until one of my professors praised a short story I wrote (unrelated to any of this, obviously) for having a female main character, something I think is a weird point of praise, but whatever. So yeah, just an anecdote I thought was an interesting window into my creative process.

So now I'll finally get to what made me excited to talk about this chapter, the not so subtle reference to the second TCW tie-in novel, No Prisoners (by Karen Traviss). That relatively short novel is, without a doubt, my favorite TCW story. Why, you may ask? Because, in it, Traviss did what Filoni either couldn't or wouldn't most of the time; tie this new series and it's characters into the larger Star Wars universe (what would become the Legends EU). Starring in this story alongside Anakin, Ahsoka, and Rex, are two Post-ROTJ characters who have established connections to the Clone Wars (event) that, since they were both created before Attack of the Clones was released, hadn't really been explored; Captain Gilad Pellaeon (Thrawn's right hand man and future leader of the Imperial Remnant) and Callista Masana (also known as Callista Ming, one of Luke's weirder major love interests with an ultimately tragic faith). Add on to that some really good military sci-fi writing and critical analysis of Jedi philosophy and you get one hell of a story that is, in my humble opinion, sorely underappreciated.

All of the TCW tie-in novels are pretty great really, even the novelization of the movie (also by Karen Traviss). I think the weakest one was Wild Space (Karen Miller), which you could jokingly refer to as Obi Wan and Bail's Excellent Adventure, but even that filled the role of showing how Obi Wan became friends with Bail Organa despite his stated hatred of politicians.

That being said, how come my original story didn't reference it at all, instead just having Ahsoka just kind of decide to violate the Jedi Code out of nowhere? Well, that's simple, I didn't read any of theses books until last November, about three months after I wrote Marczak.

This has gotten way too long already, so I'm just going to end this here. As always, follow and/or favorite if you enjoyed, and feel free to leave a review. I really do enjoy reading reviews and responding to them in these author's notes sections.