This is an Ahsoka fanfiction. It kicks off before the show, will extend through the end of season one, and may conclude with post-show content before season two of the real thing airs. Let me know how I’m doing in the comments!
I’ve started loading chapters into Archive of Our Own. Let me know if you follow over there!
Rating: General, Spice Level: None
Characters/Tags: Original Character, Master and Apprentice Relationships, Original Female Character, Original Jedi Character, Ahsoka Tano, Huyang
Read Chapter 27 here.
Why we Fight
Kendra settled on the training room floor to meditate, unsure of what else she might do to prepare. Ezra and Huyang were in the droid’s workshop, making Ezra a lightsaber. She’d have to ask to make her own later; if Ezra could show up and make one, surely they’d let her do the same.
Even as she thought it, she realized she’d mostly lost interest. Master Edith’s weapon worked well enough. She set it on the floor in front of her and studied it. It hadn’t changed since she first took possession of it, but she had. She felt like a real Jedi but had learned it didn’t mean what she thought it meant.
Ahsoka approached and sat next to her. “You weren’t fine earlier, were you?”
Kendra took a deep breath in and then exhaled. “Mostly I was. I wasn’t injured. I did what I needed to do.”
“You just weren’t expecting what you felt after.”
“Master Edith said it had to be life or death. Not to even pull it out unless I was prepared to use it. I was prepared to use it.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” Kendra said. “I know it was the right thing to do. I just don’t like it.”
“I’d be concerned if you did.” Ahsoka straightened her tunic. “We should never seek to take life. We should try to avoid it. But if we can’t avoid it, we should do it quickly.”
“She told me that, too.”
“You’re not going to feel better about taking life, Kendra, and that’s okay. Focus on the why, which is protecting others.”
Kendra nodded.
“If it ever gets easy,” Ahsoka paused, “something is wrong.”
“Has it ever gotten easier for you?”
“I think I had to make it easy. There was so much of it. I was very young when I entered the war. I don’t recommend it.”
Kendra picked the lightsaber back up and returned it to its place on her hip.
“I’m glad you don’t find it easy,” Ahsoka offered as she stood. “We’ll be ready soon, hopefully.”
“I’ll be ready,” Kendra said.
~~~
She wasn’t sure how long it took to build a lightsaber, but it wasn’t as fast as Ahsoka’s “soon” seemed to imply. Kendra had stopped meditating and began a slow, stretching form to remain warm for whatever happened next.
Sabine entered and started to walk toward the workshop but slowed next to Kendra. “Thank you for coming.”
Kendra paused. The other woman looked exhausted, and they still had work to do. “You’re welcome.”
Sabine looked at the floor, made a fist, released it, and then made it again. “I’m sorry… sorry that this all happened. I don’t regret coming to find Ezra, but I’m still sorry, if that makes sense.”
“You didn’t want me here?” Kendra joked.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Kendra tried to smile. Getting mad at Sabine would have been like being mad at Evan for falling near the Nexu. “He would have killed you, you know.”
“What?”
“I mean, if you didn’t give him the map, he just would have taken it. I don’t think your blaster would have been able to destroy the map.” It looked like it had taken Baylan’s lightsaber quite a bit to cut it in half.
“You’re saying this would have all happened anyway?”
“Yeah,” Kendra said, “only you’d probably be dead. We wouldn’t be here. Nobody would have found Ezra.”
“And Morgan would pick up Thrawn and return.”
“Right. At least we’ve been able to annoy them some.”
“Yeah.” Sabine kicked at the ground. “Are you doing okay?”
“Yes.” This wasn’t a lie. Kendra still didn’t feel great about needing to kill people, but she’d started focusing on who she had protected in the process.
“Battles are hard. We’ll talk later about it,” Sabine said.
“If I don’t need to?”
“Especially if you think you don’t need to.” Sabine nodded and walked to the workshop to join Ezra and Huyang.
The door opened to an argument. “Stop that,” Huyang said. “Everything in here is organized!”
Kendra chuckled and resumed her form while Sabine leaned against the doorframe. She might ask Huyang about making a lightsaber just so she could mess up his organization. The sounds of their discussion carried into her moving meditation, and bit by bit, she felt more at peace following the battle.
Emotion, yet peace.
Ignorance, yet knowledge.
Passion, yet serenity.
Chaos, yet harmony.
Death, yet the Force.
Death, yet the Force. Although the troopers had died, they returned to the Force. She wasn’t sure what that meant for them, but their lives were not without purpose, even if it was not in line with her own.
The sound of Sabine exiting the shuttle drew Kendra from her meditation, in time to hear a question she’d wanted to know since she’d learned of Sabine.
Ezra asked, “What happened between those two What’d I miss?”
Huyang did not give Ezra the diplomatic answer he’d given Kendra on Lothal. “Ahsoka became afraid that Sabine was training to become a Jedi for the wrong reasons after what happened on Mandalore.”
“Which was?” Ezra asked.
“At the end of the war, the Empire purged the entire surface of the planet, killing hundreds of thousands.”
“Her family?”
“All lost, sadly. At the time, Ahsoka felt if Sabine unlocked her potential, she would become dangerous.”
Kendra came to a full stop in the training room.
She recalled her conversation with Ahsoka just days before.
“He said Anakin was a Sith.”
“He became one, yes. He helped destroy the Jedi Order and abandoned the Republic to build the Empire.”
“Why?”
“Fear. Fear is the path to the Dark Side.”
Ahsoka’s own master had a hand in the destruction of both the Republic and Jedi Order, all due to fear. Sabine’s family had died and Ahsoka left her padawan out of fear of what she might become. She had been afraid of Sabine’s fear and anger. She’d said as much to Kendra, but Huyang’s use of the word “potential” connected to one of the other thoughts in that conversation.
“Most people don’t… get as bad as him. He was very powerful in the Force.”
If Sabine had no potential in the Force as Huyang claimed, then Ahsoka would have had no reason to worry about her unlocking her potential as a Jedi. There would be no worry she’d be so good with a lightsaber she could take lives with the ease Kendra found earlier. An angry Mandalorian without the Force was no more and no less dangerous than an angry Mandalorian generally. Plenty dangerous of course, but not as dangerous as a Mandalorian with the Force.
Kendra had sensed the connection between Ahsoka and Sabine during her healing on Lothal. The connection was not one sided then, or when Ahsoka reached out to find Sabine on this planet. Sabine was able to use the Force somewhat in the blind sparring.
Huyang must be wrong. Whatever tools or rules the Jedi Order might have had to identify Jedi would not have identified Sabine, yet Ahsoka found her potential high enough to be worried after her family died. Something inside Sabine must be blocking that potential, but it was there.
Ezra emerged from the workshop, lightsaber in hand. He grinned at Kendra and headed out the door to join Sabine and Ahsoka. “Hey! Let’s go, just finished…”
Kendra felt the tension before she heard the blasters and the terrifying whine of incoming aircraft. She headed toward the door and stumbled through as the first bolts hit the engine at the back of Ahsoka’s shuttle. Sabine collided with her on her way into the ship, and Kendra rolled off the back of the wing to the ground below.
The engines sputtered and the craft began to drift down while it hovered. Several Noti were below in their pods and would be crushed by the ship. Ezra and Ahsoka also jumped down and held it aloft with the Force while the two fighters circled for another strafing run. Kendra joined them.
Ezra yelled at the Noti. “Get out of here, go go!”
The Noti started to move, but the fighters opened fire. The only safe place from the blasters was under the ship, but the Jedi would not be able to keep it off the tiny creatures for long, especially with the fighters continuing the attack.
“Sabine?” Ahsoka yelled.
“I have an idea!” Sabine yelled back. “I just need a minute.”
“We do not have a minute!” Ahsoka looked under the wing at the fighters.
Kendra looked at the Noti, the other Jedi, and the fighters. The Jedi couldn’t do much unless the Noti moved, and anything Sabine might do with the ship risked them as well. How could she defend them? “I have an idea. Tell them to move again, Ezra.”
She let go of her upward push on the ship, slowly to make sure that Ahsoka and Ezra could manage. They did, but barely. Kendra stepped out in front of the shuttle and ignited her lightsaber, somewhat surprised Ahsoka didn’t stop her.
The fighters strafed again, but this time, Kendra blocked any of the bolts that would hit the Noti if they left the cover of the ship. It wasn’t pretty, and each shot she blocked knocked Kendra back by several feet. But it worked.
“Go, now!” Ezra yelled. The Noti started moving. “They want the ship, not you, get as far away as you can.”
Kendra moved to the side with them, providing cover until they were far enough away from the shuttle the fighters wouldn’t inadvertently hit them instead. Her arms ached from the impacts.
“Any time Sabine!” Ezra said.
“Almost got it!” Sabine replied from the cockpit.
Satisfied the Noti were safe, Kendra moved toward the ship to help Ahsoka and Ezra, blocking bolts as she went. As she reached the edge of the wingspan, a stray bolt hit nearby. She didn’t need to block it and couldn’t have if she wanted to, but it dislodged a large rock and sent it hurtling under the shuttle. At the two Jedi who couldn’t defend themselves without losing control of the ship.
Without thinking, Kendra stepped in front of the stone. Unable to bring her lightsaber down in time, the weight of the flying object slammed into her left thigh. She used the Force to somewhat reduce the impact, but at once she found herself face down in the dirt.
“Kendra!” Ahsoka’s voice was barely audible over the roar of the engines.
Sabine had managed to give the ship one last push, and it sped forward toward the unprepared fighters, slamming one on each side wing the shuttle’s wings. The fighters exploded and fell, but Ahsoka’s ship also dove into the ground ahead.
“Kendra!” Ahsoka was standing over her then.
“Mmmgmm…” Kendra rolled over and let out a squeal at the searing pain in her upper thigh. Between breaths, she said, “I’m fine. Well. Probably not fine. Not dead?”
Smoke drifted up from their shuttle, but Sabine and Huyang emerged and began the slow walk back.
“That was amazing,” Ezra said. “Not the part where you got hit with a flying rock. Everything else.”
“Okay, well,” Kendra pulled herself up to sit, decided it hurt too much, and dropped back to her elbows. “I do not think I am ready to go now.”
“No, I think not,” Ahsoka said. “Okay. New plan. Somebody needs to fix the ship, and somebody needs to go stop Thrawn.”
“I’ll stay with the ship,” Kendra said. “I can push any buttons Huyang needs.”
“Should more than one of us stay?” Ezra asked. “To guard the ship while they work on it?”
“I think we’ll need three of us to attack Thrawn’s forces,” Ahsoka said. Her eyes scanned the damage, the pods, and the other Jedi.
“I’ll be fine,” Kendra said. When Ezra and Ahsoka glared at her, she added, “not fine in the my leg isn’t hurt fine. But fine in the sense I can probably hold off any other attacks. I’ll start meditating and healing myself immediately. I don’t think it is broken.”
Also a lie, as it was definitely broken. But a fracture, not a full break. She relaxed and measured her breathing before rolling to a knee and standing up. She limped some but could walk if she focused.
“If we separate, and some of us make it…” Ahsoka looked at the sky.
“Ahsoka,” Kendra said, “you have to stop Thrawn. That’s what we’ve been trying to do for months, you for years.”
Ahsoka nodded. “The Force will be with us. I have an idea.”
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