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Ahsoka finds her kyber crystal in the same way thousands of generations of Jedi before her did.
Ilum is beautiful and wild in its pristine cold. She and the other younglings scatter once they exit the ship, giggling as they toss hastily made snowballs at each other. The senior padawan scolds them gently.
“This is serious, younglings,” she says, “You are about to embark on a journey that every Jedi must take."
Ahsoka falls in line with the rest of the younglings, though she can’t help but gaze wonderingly at the blowing snow.
Yoda greets them with his mischievous smile, and they all gasp in unison as the great chandelier above rotates with a wave of Master Yoda’s hands. Golden light spills in droplets upon the cavern walls, and they scramble into the icy depths, almost falling over themselves with eagerness.
Ahsoka tries to stay with the others, but she ends up turning and turning until she is wending along dark tunnels all by herself. She keeps walking on and on, determination burning fiercely in her chest. She will find that kyber crystal if it’s the last thing she does, Ahsoka tells herself with the dramatic finality of a young child. So she wanders and wanders while getting more irritated by the second until the fire in her chest burns so hot that she ends up kicking an icy stalagmite out of sheer frustration.
Her toe throbbing, Ahsoka drops to the ground, tired and confused. The initial excitement has long worn off—being alone and getting wound up by a mystical, sentient cave wasn’t as fun as she thought it would be. Taking several deep breaths, Ahsoka slowly counts backwards from ten, feeling the tension seeping out of her muscles bit by bit. And bit by bit, almost without realizing it, her mind begins to clear.
Time passes interminably, and something begins to tap at the edges of her awareness.
It’s a song, a melody, a call that pulls and tugs at her with quiet insistence. Ahsoka follows it, guided as if by a wayfinder, and soon she’s standing before a shining, pure crystal that she knows is meant for her, and her only.
The crystal is warm, as if lit from within by a star.
She takes it, and her heart sings.
“Filled with life and energy young Ahsoka is. Resolve and courage to achieve your goals, you have,” Yoda tells her afterwards. “But listen, yes—even the strongest of us, listen we must. Only by listening, find your crystal you did.”
And so, when Huyang guides them through constructing their lightsabers, Ahsoka pictures the way the saplings in her favorite temple courtyard would bend in the wind without breaking.
When she opens her eyes, her lightsaber rests in her hands, complete and whole.
“Hm, very curious,” Huyang says, peering over her shoulder as his glowing eyes open and shutter. “A double shrouded emitter and solid plating, oh yes—very good for aggressive saber forms, but I see you’ve incorporated some lightness with the grooved sides. And you’ve chosen a rhodium-platinum alloy as well. A balanced design—well done, young one.”
And when she turns her lightsaber on for the first time, it shines with a vibrant, spirited green.
Ahsoka excels at saber combat, and when her instructors tell her to jump, she skips over the trouble of asking “how high” and just decides for herself how high and far she wants to go.
“Humility and restraint are valuable qualities of a Jedi, one you appear to lack,” a master finally says to her one day.
“But you’re always telling us to listen to our instincts—isn’t that also good?” Ahsoka asks eagerly. “How do I know when to stop?”
The master closes their eyes, takes a deep breath, and just loudly says, “Take your form stances again, initiates.”
Ahsoka makes a face when the master turns their back. But she assumes a stance regardless, a million and one questions burning her throat.
That night, like every night before, she cleans her saber. In a rhythm, she rubs in the polish, and wipes the cloth back and forth, back and forth until the metal is gleaming. Closing her eyes, she focuses, and the clinking of the lightsaber pieces floating apart reaches her ears. Taking ahold of them, she inspects each part of them, checking for rust, chinks, and notches, and reassembles her saber again, rotating and counterrotating each piece before they back settle into their rightful places.
She holds her lightsaber closely, feeling the warm thrum of its kyber heart beating along with her own, and smiles.
A year passes, then another, and yet another again, and Ahsoka lingers, watching her fellow crèchemates become padawans one after another. She knows her big mouth and tendency to be unpredictable is the reason she hasn’t been chosen yet, no matter how much Master Plo reassures her that this is not the case.
“Why can’t you take me as your padawan?” she asks Master Plo one day, kicking at a stray leaf dejectedly.
He is silent for a moment, his expression unreadable behind his mask. “A master and a padawan are like twin sabers—if not well-matched, the balance is upset,” he replies in his slow, deliberate way. “And you, little ‘Soka, must have a master who is right for you and for them.”
Sudden tears rise to her eyes. “So I’m not the right person to be your padawan?”
“Do not misunderstand me,” Master Plo assures, “I simply believe you are destined for someone who will raise you to far greater heights than I could ever.”
“But what if there’s no one out there for me?”
Master Plo places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Trust in the Force, little ‘Soka.”
Nonetheless, Ahsoka throws herself into training. If they don’t like her attitude, she thinks fiercely, she’ll impress them with her skills so much that someone will have to take her on as their apprentice, destiny and fate be damned.
And so, her daily ritual of train, study, lightsaber cleaning, and sleep continues. Even when the Clone Wars begin and the temple becomes much quieter as padawans, knights, and masters alike are deployed throughout the galaxy, her ritual goes on uninterrupted.
One day, as she’s running through some basic Form V katas, a figure quietly slips into her training room. Glancing over, she does a double take—it’s Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. He smiles, but nods at her to continue.
Heart racing, Ahsoka looks down at her lightsaber. She knows Master Kenobi a little bit—she vaguely remembers him guest teaching some saber classes when she was younger. But he is a Master, and with the war underway, he surely wouldn't have time to oversee initiates like her without warning. And if she recalls correctly from the rumor mill, his own padawan had recently been knighted as part of the emergency war order. There can only be one reason he’s here watching you train, Ahsoka thinks with desperate hope.
She finishes the rest of her basic Form V exercises with ease, and even feels the confidence to add her own flourish at the end. Relaxing her stance, she proudly smiles to herself, before suddenly remembering that Master Kenobi is still there. She chances a nervous glance at him.
He’s stroking his beard. “Well done,” he says kindly. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you demonstrate some advanced Form V techniques for me?”
She has one shot at this. One more chance to blow Master Kenobi away.
Trust in the Force, Master Plo had told her. Ahsoka grips her lightsaber tight, the heat of the kyber crystal seeping into her hand, and trusts in herself.
She throws herself into classic Shien forms, leaping and slashing at imaginary enemies, the green glow of her lightsaber humming with every swipe. At the end of the sequence, she hesitates for a split second—she could stop now, she’s done enough—but her blood is pumping, and Ahsoka instead throws caution to the wind. Decisively, she flips her lightsaber around.
Her lightsaber cuts through the air sharply, swinging back as Ahsoka regrasps it again in a reverse grip. Oh, her instructors would hate it if they saw her right now, but she can’t bring herself to care in this moment. Everything seems right, and something in her sings out with joy as she dances and whirls through the reverse Shien forms. The adrenaline is pounding through her body, and buoyed by her success of completing the reverse forms, Ahsoka starts to shift into the other Form V variant—Djem So.
It turns out to be a mistake. She manages to make it through a few steps of Djem So before her feet suddenly tangle by accident and arrogance, and Ahsoka stumbles out of the kata.
Face burning, Ahsoka straightens, makes a move towards the changing rooms before stopping dead in her tracks, remembering her manners, and wheeling abruptly around to jerk into a short, clumsy bow towards Master Kenobi.
“Thank you for observing me today, Master,” she mumbles to Master Kenobi’s boots.
“No,” he replies with a restrained tilt in his voice she can’t quite figure out, “Thank you, little one.”
When she sneaks a look at him, there’s an inexplicable twinkle in his eye.
The next day, Master Kenobi leaves for the warfront again, and Ahsoka’s shoulders slump down in disappointment.
Two weeks later, Master Yoda summons her before the Council and tells her to pack her things, because she has finally, finally been assigned a master to supervise her Jedi training.
“Who?” she asks excitedly. She doesn’t know how or why after her embarrassing display, but Master Kenobi must have—
“Anakin Skywalker,” replies Yoda.
That night, her things already packed in a box, Ahsoka sits in her room and tries to meditate.
It doesn’t work.
With a groan, she instead turns to her nightly ritual, placing her lightsaber before her. As it comes apart, floating in the air, Ahsoka thinks.
She doesn’t know much about Anakin Skywalker. He came to the Temple much older than any normal youngling in the wake of the Naboo incident, creating a wildfire of rumors regarding his involvement. (Ahsoka’s personal favorite was that he had challenged a Sith Lord to a podrace.) At the Temple, he rarely taught classes or mentored younglings like some of the other padawans—in fact, thinking back, Ahsoka probably only saw him only a few times in passing—a tall, serious-faced boy trailing after Master Kenobi. In spite of that though, she’s heard all the stories of the unrivaled skill and talent of this prodigy with a mysterious past.
And now, this mysterious person is going to be her master. She wonders what he’ll be like, tries to piece together the scattered, incomplete puzzle of Anakin Skywalker in her head, and fails. Intense, taciturn, with the utmost highest standards, she guesses wildly.
Looking back down at her now discombobulated lightsaber, Ahsoka sighs. No use wondering about the unknown. She shuts her eyes and wills the pieces to slot together. The parts click and clack against each other softly, their endless, moving rhythm finally lulling her into a quiet calm.
Later, after their first official training session together, she asks Master Skywalker the same petulant question about humility and restraint that she did as an initiate. He looks startled, but lets out his distinct, wry laugh that Ahsoka already thinks of as familiar.
The galaxy’s too big to fit in a book of sayings, he says, amused, Some things you have to figure out on your own.
She meant the question as a joke, but at his response, something clicks into place within her. Opening her mouth, a smile on her face, she prepares to bombard him with everything she has.
They get into a heated argument. It’s the most fun Ahsoka has had in years.
Ahsoka doesn’t think she’ll ever forget what it’s like for someone to ask for their death.
Fiddling with her lightsaber, Ahsoka bounces her leg with nervous energy as she watches Barriss slowly stir from her slumber. The heartbeat monitor beeps steadily in the background while Barriss blinks her eyes blearily at Ahsoka. “I’m alive.”
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Ahsoka says in a rush, smiling, resting her hand on Barriss’ wrist. “For a second I thought—”
Barriss interrupts. “You—you didn’t listen to me,” she says, wonderingly.
“I know, I know, but I knew we could pull through, and when you asked me to—I just—I couldn’t—” Ahsoka stops, tears rising to her eyes. Throat tight, she looks down, clutching her lightsaber tighter. If she’d chosen differently, if she’d flipped the switch on her lightsaber, Barriss wouldn’t be here, alive and breathing.
Barriss reaches out and gently covers Ahsoka’s tightened hands with her own. “I’m sorry for asking you to do such a thing,” she whispers, tapping Ahsoka’s lightsaber lightly with one finger. Clink, clink, clink. “It’s not a burden anyone should carry. I see that now.”
It’s quiet, with just the sounds of the hallway outside echoing dimly. Barriss speaks again hesitantly. “The troopers… they’re alright as well?”
Ahsoka nods. “On the mend, just like you. Only Trap—” Clearing her throat, Ahsoka struggles to finish. “Well, you—you know.”
Barriss’ eyes slide away at that, and she doesn’t speak for a moment. “Yes,” Barriss finally replies, voice distant, “I suppose I do know.”
When Ahsoka follows Barriss’ gaze, she realizes she’s looking at Barriss’ own lightsaber lying on a table across the room, a stain of dark metal against the white walls.
It’s Obi-Wan who slyly suggests she try out dual wielding.
Anakin is off on a meditative retreat, though Ahsoka is pretty sure that whatever he’s doing, it’s probably not meditation. Either way, it gives Ahsoka an opportunity to spend time with Obi-Wan.
“You are a bit open on your other side,” Obi-Wan observes after their sparring session. He looks unfairly put together compared to her, Ahsoka notices with some disgruntlement. “It does make you vulnerable against close combat opponents, unfortunately.”
“I know,” she sighs, wiping away sweat. “Master Skywalker’s pointed it out and we’ve tried to work on it, but I’ve just been hitting a wall. It’s not a problem of my dominant or non-dominant hand either, and reverse grip is too useful against blasterfire to give up…”
Obi-Wan hums, leaning back in thought. “Let’s think of a scenario to work through, then. When you spar against someone like Anakin, what strategy would you approach him with?”
Frowning, Ahsoka ponders his words. “Well, he’s more aggressive, bigger, and stronger than me, so I can’t beat him head on,” she starts slowly, “Master Skywalker always tells me to take advantage of my size and speed, so I guess I would try to distract him with quick flurries and create my chance to land a real blow. But I’d tire out faster, and I’d have the problem of defending against his heavier strikes at the same time, which would cut into my counterstrike ability. It’s almost as if I would need more than one weapon—"
She stops abruptly, stunned at the glaring solution.
“Indeed, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says, mirth dancing in his eyes, “What an interesting observation you’ve made.”
When she eagerly raises her solution to him, Anakin agrees quite readily, and they set off for Ilum, together.
(Are you sure the Twilight can make it? Like, actually sure?
I wouldn’t fly her if she couldn’t, he replies through gritted teeth as another ominous groan echoes through the hull.)
Anakin stays outside, and she goes into the caves once again, alone.
It’s much less ceremonious this time. She knows what to do—Ahsoka closes her eyes, quiets her mind, and listens for the singing of kyber crystals. It’s straightforward enough to follow the sound and find her second kyber crystal, twinkling serenely in the gloom.
She’s just reaching out, thinking how easy this has been compared to the first time, before her stomach drops without warning and the world is turned upside down.
Sights and sounds whirl around her too fast to process. She sees a familiar lightsaber, discolored with rust, and she reaches out but drops it with a gasp when the icy hilt burns her hand. It disappears into the darkness, lost, and she is completely alone, and she can’t even sense Anakin anymore—
Crackling crimson and violet surrounds her, and there’s something horrible and awful in here with her, a death rattle-like breathing just behind her, and she can’t, won’t turn around because she doesn’t want to know—
So she runs away, runs and runs and runs until she bursts out of the caverns straight into a waiting Anakin’s arms.
“Whoa, whoa, Snips, slow down,” he says, completely bewildered, “hey, it’s okay, you’re okay—you’re safe.”
Ahsoka just shakes her head, face still buried in the comforting scent of his robes. Anakin breathes out, and cautiously rests his hand between her montrals.
“What did you see?” he asks after a moment.
Ahsoka struggles to know how to even begin. “I don’t know,” she mumbles, giving up.
“Did you find your crystal?”
She finally pulls back a bit, and uncurls her fingers to reveal the crystal, glowing innocently in her palm.
“Okay,” he says, “Okay.”
Life goes on. She trains hard with Anakin, caught up in her dreams to become the best Jedi she can be, and the memory of the vision fades.
Bad luck strikes, and her sabers tumble out of her hands when the Trandoshan hunter snares her with his trap. Against the odds, despite the fear racing through her veins, she survives with only her bare hands and wits, and that in of itself feels like a triumph.
After she washes the dust and grime off from the nightmarish game on Wasskah, Anakin returns her sabers to her with slightly shaking hands. She feels a measure of relief when she clips them back on, but to her surprise, she realizes she hasn’t missed their presence as much as she expected.
“I held onto them,” he tells her, “I don’t know what I would’ve done if—”
“It’s fine,” she says, stopping him. “Honestly, I’m okay. I’m alive, I’m here.”
Anakin just shakes his head, expression stormy. He’s still tense despite their talk on the landing platform, and Ahsoka is realizing with every passing day she spends with him that Anakin is different—different from her, from Obi-Wan, from any other Jedi. But she remembers to Master Plo’s words from years ago about twin sabers, and she thinks she understands her role in it in this moment.
“Just glad I wasn’t gone longer,” she says, “who knows what you would’ve done to my sabers with your tinkering.”
He cracks a crooked smile at that. “I would’ve improved them, that’s what. If you adjusted your focusing lens just few millidegrees—”
“Alright, slow down,” she teases.
They lapse into silence again, but the air feels a bit lighter. They sit together, just drinking in each other’s much missed presences.
“It’s true, you know,” she finally says, breaking the silence. “Even without my lightsabers, I had my skills, my instincts, everything I’ve learned from you. I had myself. And I was all I needed.”
Anakin looks down. “I’m sorry,” he says again.
Ahsoka doesn’t ask what he’s apologizing for.
As she marches forward on her path, she finally feels at home with two powerful lances of light dancing around her.
Just as her sabers fall into place in her hands like puzzle pieces, things settle in her life too. She and Anakin feel more and more like equals with each day, and she starts taking more assignments on her own. She even leads her own group of younglings for their Gathering, and she fondly reminsces on her own trial as she watches them. Secretly, Ahsoka wonders if her future padawan is among them, but then she shakes her head, smiling—she’s getting ahead of herself. If anything, Anakin will want to keep her as his apprentice for a while longer, and she’s not complaining.
There is tragedy of course, as Ahsoka thinks of all those lost at the Citadel, of the Kiros colonists they were too late to save, of the clones who died in the mists of Umbara while she battled in the sky, and of Steela Gerrera—but she learns to accept the past and she grows stronger every day, like a young tree stretching upward.
Sometimes, she still does her ritual of lightsaber upkeep—cleaning her sabers meticulously and disassembling and reassembling them, sliding her eyes shut as the comforting and familiar sound of the pieces fitting together washes over her. Anakin still thinks it’s funny she goes through all that only to put her sabers back together the same way they were before. He doesn’t quite get the point of tinkering if something isn’t changed or fixed (as evidenced by some of the unholy creations on his tool bench), but he does understand what her ritual provides for her mind. They are the same, after all, in that regard.
Ahsoka occasionally feels a pang at how she doesn’t have the time for her ritual every night like she did when she was younger, but really, she doesn’t need to these days. Where she is now, she’s happy.
Things fall apart, and Ahsoka runs.
The first saber she barely remembers losing in a rainy haze, too disoriented and panicked to think about much at all except to run run runrunrun.
As she’s skulking through the underworld alleyways, Ahsoka can’t help but constantly reach for her remaining saber, as if reminding herself it was still there. The cool metal is comforting in its familiarity, and she holds that feeling in her heart, that sole piece of reassurance and stability grounding her to this reality.
When Ventress attacks her in the warehouse, Ahsoka is ill-prepared—she’s grown used to having her second saber, and she—she is tired. The knowing that once came so easily to her, the instincts that got her through Wasskah and everything before and after, have somehow suddenly fled, leaving her floundering with her lone lightsaber. Her saber is heavy and awkward in her hand, and Ahsoka makes mistake after mistake as Ventress bears down upon her with twin reds, until her lightsaber is easily knocked out of her hand and disappears into the darkness. She falls, plummeting down below to the warehouse and into a grave that someone else made for her.
Then, she's waiting to be brought before the Council, Anakin pacing in front of her like a caged animal, and all Ahsoka wishes for is to have her lightsabers, to float them apart with her mind and hear the nuts and bolts and screws click-clack against each other in the same way as they always do, unchanged.
The Council convenes, she puts on a brave front even though she’s shaking inside, and she is all alone when the Council exiles her.
Everything takes on a surreal sheen after that. She doesn’t have the mind to ask where her lightsabers are, because this can’t be real, none of this can be real. She doesn’t ask because she can’t imagine a world where they are really, truly gone from her.
The only thing she remembers with crystal clarity during the trial is when Barriss glances back one last time at Ahsoka, a look on her face that sends a thorn through Ahsoka’s heart. She thinks back to Barriss’ far away expression in that long ago medbay and wonders. Wonders when the hurt started and when it grew too great, and how much pain Barriss must've carried for things to come to this.
The world used to make sense, but they took it all away from her, and so Ahsoka wraps the crumbling pieces of her own self tight to her chest and takes herself away from them, too.
Outside the Temple, she listens to Anakin’s pleading. In the distance, she imagines that she can hear the song of her kyber crystals, calling out to her as desperately as Anakin is.
I know, she tells him. She hopes he understands—understands everything she can’t say to him held within those two words.
She turns away from Anakin, from the imagined song in the wind.
This weapon is your life. Don’t lose it.
As she walks down the sun-bathed steps, her heart breaking into a thousand pieces, she thinks she finally understands.
Anakin volunteers to retrieve Ahsoka’s lightsaber. There is a brief pause from the Council, as if deliberating the wisdom of sending him, but in the end they acquiesce. Her lightsaber needs to be found—the alternative of it being sold on the black market is far too dangerous.
Before he sets out, Obi-Wan approaches him, places a tentative hand on his shoulder, and gently says that he’s here if Anakin needs any help with looking. Anakin knows Obi-Wan isn’t just talking about the issue of a lost lightsaber, but he plays dumb. He airily replies that he’d have to hand in his resignation if he couldn’t track down one wayward lightsaber by himself.
Obi-Wan isn’t fooled. A look of disappointment briefly crosses Obi-Wan’s face before it smooths out, but he nods and lets him go. Anakin feels bad for a moment—Obi-Wan is just looking out for him like he always does. But then he remembers the way Obi-Wan looked away from him in the Chamber of Judgement as Ahsoka stood there, alone and so small—and an ugly, messy knot of emotion twists his insides and turns him bitter.
Like always though, Anakin pushes the feeling away into the same corner of his heart that he pushes all such things away to. And deep down, he knows it will take root there, not dust-covered and forgotten, but smoldering and alive.
Finding Ahsoka’s lightsaber is easy—much easier than it was to find Ahsoka. With the mounted cameras and location tracking of the LAATs and his own memory, it’s a simple enough task to pin down the exact section of pipes where Ahsoka dropped her lightsaber.
When he arrives, Anakin pauses at the large pipe Ahsoka cut through to escape. The hole has already been covered up temporarily with a metal sheet by the repair crew, ready to be patched over as if nothing happened.
Throat tight, he turns away and casts his eyes across the dull, gray landscape, searching. Out of the corner of his eye, something glints in the harsh sunlight, and he is pulled towards it. It’s her lightsaber, laying there innocuously, dropped and forgotten.
Against his will, the smallest smile tugs at his mouth as he remembers another time Ahsoka lost her lightsaber. He only found out after the fact when Ahsoka approached him, a little shamefacedly, with the whole sordid tale as Master Sinube suppressed a smile from behind her. He’d always liked the part about the love triangle between the thief, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s girlfriend—it was better than any holodrama he’d ever watched. For a moment, Anakin stands there, lost in his memories.
The whining hum of a passing ship startles him out of his reverie, and he goes to reach for the lightsaber.
The hilt is cool to the touch, but he can feel the warmth of the kyber crystal within, still pulsing softly. He considers it, hesitates, before closing his eyes and concentrating. He doesn’t have an innate affinity for psychometry, so he doesn’t expect much to come out this—that is, until the thick grip of fear slams into him like a tidal wave. Anakin recoils, snapping his eyes open. Heart racing, he stares down at the lightsaber in his hand with a sick feeling to his gut. The initial, visceral feeling is gone, but residual tendrils of Ahsoka’s viscous terror still cling to him.
They should’ve never made her that scared.
He should’ve been better, should’ve protected her more.
She wouldn’t have needed to be scared if she had just trusted him instead of going off on her own.
The thoughts swirl in his head faster and faster, until again he shoves it all away into that smoldering corner of his heart.
Her lightsaber is dirty, he notices dimly. It must have spent several days out here in the rain and sun, he thinks. Ahsoka had always taken the utmost care to keep her sabers in mint condition, better than him or Obi-Wan, really. As his fingers curl tightly around the hilt with resolve, he thinks of its other half, still sitting in his room. In that moment, Anakin decides he will scrape away the rust, clean the dirt from the grooves, and wipe away the dust until the sabers gleam in the light as they did before.
He will eradicate the pains and fears etched into this lightsaber’s kyber heart, so that when Ahsoka returns for them, the hurts of the past will be erased as well.
For a while, Ahsoka feels naked without the reassuring weight of her lightsabers. She is more than a little startled at how much she had grown to rely on them, especially knowing that they are gone from her permanently this time.
She vaguely wonders what became of them—the Order would have retrieved them lest they fell in less savory hands. Surely, they must be in storage deep within the temple, far away from the sun, collecting dust. The thought of that pains her, but then she remembers that she was the one who turned away from the crystals’ song, who left them behind like that, and she angrily tells herself that she doesn’t deserve to miss them.
She’s made her own bed and she’ll sleep in it, no matter how much her heart aches.
As the days and weeks and months fly by, she grows used to the empty space around her hips and in her heart. She stops reaching for a lightsaber every time she’s startled or surprised. She adapts. Coruscant proper is a tangled mess of metal and grime with a droning meter, not at all like the whispered cadence and tree-filled courtyards of the Temple. Eventually, civilian life lulls her into that same mundane, hollow rhythm, and she runs and runs to that beat.
That is, until she meets the Martez sisters.
It’s like a lighthouse in a vast sea for Ahsoka, and all of a sudden, the path forward is illuminated. Wanting to protect people, wanting to fight for the people—these things haven’t changed at all, she realizes.
She’s not a Jedi anymore. She knows that. Even so, every night Ahsoka dreams of those familiar weights at her side. Every night, she thinks she is maybe a bit more worthy of them than the night before. Slowly but surely, Ahsoka learns to stop running.
One day, she’s slowed from a run to a walk. Though she’s not quite ready to stop all the way, she nonetheless enters a subspace frequency number she knows like the back of her hand, and waits for the other end to pick up.
Anakin gives back her lightsabers, and she doesn’t think she’s smiled this widely for months. They’re blue now, and she gives him a look—he really did take his chance to adjust her focusing lenses. They vibrate with a power she’d almost forgotten, and the crystals sing as loudly as before as she swings them experimentally. If she concentrates, she thinks she can hear a second harmony woven in, one that sounds like a warm hand settling on her shoulder and the scent of engine oiled robes.
The twin sabers are perfectly balanced. They settle against her sides like they never left, and she thinks that maybe she is finally worthy of them again.
As Anakin walks away from her, Ahsoka decides to stop running for good.
Good luck, she says, and she hopes with all her heart that Anakin understands everything she can’t say yet within those two words.
She will remember his answering smile forever.
Only a few days later, her world shatters forever, too.
Her shoto is already gone, tumbled down somewhere in the tangled mess of wreckage when she threw it away in a fit of fury and despair at what she and Rex found in the wake of destruction.
But this lightsaber, the one she holds in her hand, is the first. The one with the beating kyber heart that called out to her all those years ago as a youngling in Ilum. The one that has seen and been through every trial and tribulation with her. The one Anakin had so clearly labored over with love. So many times she thought it had been lost, but it made its way back to her every time.
This weapon is your life.
But even the strongest stars must die, eventually.
The lightsaber slips out of her hand, falling down, down, down onto the scorched earth, and a part of Ahsoka is lost forever.
Against all odds though, he finds the lightsaber. It’s rusted, scratched, dirtied, a far cry from the pristine condition she liked to keep them in, but its power is undiminished.
The lightsaber feels impossibly alive in his cold machine hands. Above, a convor cries out.
He keeps it. For whom, he doesn’t quite know.
Years pass, and an empire falls.
She knows Anakin watches her, sometimes. He’s at the edges of her awareness, flitting out of sight when she turns, like an imagined light out the corner of her eyes. But he’s never truly appeared, never spoken to her, and Ahsoka is relieved at that. She doesn’t want to think about all the unspoken words between them. She doesn’t want to think about whether she wants to cry, scream, or give him a second death if she sees him again.
Still, she doesn’t tell him to leave her alone. She wonders why.
They exist like that in tandem, a fragile balance hanging by a thread.
One day, Anakin’s presence flares behind her, and he murmurs only a few words before fading just as suddenly as he appeared.
Mustafar. The fortress on Mustafar.
Still as unpredictable as ever, she thinks wryly to herself.
Ahsoka journeys to Mustafar, to the black, obsidian home of the late Darth Vader. It’s deserted, and her footsteps echo hollowly off the foreboding walls. Despite the emptiness, darkness lingers, and Ahsoka shivers at it.
She wanders for a bit, and just as she starts to wonder why she’s here at all, something tugs at her.
She listens.
It’s a song, a melody, a call.
Trance-like, her feet turn and walk, guided as if by a wayfinder. On and on she goes, until finally, she is standing before a pitch-black chest. A nudge with the Force, and she easily unlocks it, the song growing louder all the while.
With trembling hands, she lifts out a small, worn, wooden box.
The kyber heart of her old lightsaber sings to her, as clear and radiant as that long-ago day when she was a bright-eyed child on Ilum.
She takes the lightsaber with her and leaves the fires of Mustafar behind her. She enters the coordinates for a distant forest moon, and breathes.
Standing before an unmarked and already-forgotten grave, she kneels down, and with her own two hands, digs a small hole, places the lightsaber within, and buries it. The soil is rich, and sprouts of verdant green are already blooming over the once disturbed earth.
Ahsoka rests.