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It was easy at first; Luke Skywalker looked nothing like his parents.
He was shorter than his father had ever been at that age, and had fair hair that fell just above his eyebrows. He dressed in dark clothes, but in a more casual manner –gone were the classic tunics, replaced by a shirt and pants, the occasional black cloak on top of it the only indication he followed any Jedi tradition.
In a way, and much later, Ashoka realized that should've been the first clue.
His sister Leia was far too much like her parents –the four of them. Ashoka hadn't known her adoptive as much as she did her biological, but all it had taken was one meeting with their child to see their spirits in her. She fought like Padmé –argued like her too– and had the Organa's moral compass, the signature Skywalker stubbornness as she fiercely sought justice and freedom for the galaxy.
But Luke had a rather peaceful aura about himself, a relaxed smile always plastered on his face, an almost eeriely calm demeanor. More often than not, he reminded her of her old grandmaster Obi-Wan; they both shared that war-hardened posture, that tiredness in the eyes that showed their wisdom had come at the expense of joy.
Of course, the biggest surprise had been the blade. The man’s lightsaber was a vibrant shade of green, much like Yoda or his grandpadawan Jinn. Under the early morning sun, the blade bathed the young Jedi in its light, almost acting like a sort of camouflage in the midst of the lush green plants of the little planet he had chosen to live in.
Ashoka had gotten used to his daily habits pretty easily; it was that mixture of Jedi and war routine that she knew all-too well. He would rise before dawn –not before her, but very early for a Skywalker– to train, and she would watch him move, the Force flowing around him, through him, binding them in a beautiful dance that left her breathless and with an ache in her heart. Familiar moves that belonged to a time now long lost.
The child Luke had under his care, Grogu, would wake in the late morning, and they would have breakfast together. Sometimes, Ashoka joined them, asking about their progress and other pleasantries.
Oftentimes, she didn't.
She preferred to watch them from afar, to meditate in private. Besides the half-built Jedi Academy, Ossus held large forests and clean waters, making it the perfect place to relax and connect with nature. Ashoka liked the planet; it was green all over –the tall trees, the large leaves, the child's skin, the master’s blade.
Sometimes, it managed to make her feel like an outsider. She was orange and white, she wore nothing but black or grey. There was no green on her, no green within her. At times, even Grogu’s father –a Mandalorian clad in full beskar attire– seemed to belong to the environment more than her. His armor would reflect the sunlight, the green around them, his child's smile, the teacher’s warmth.
Ashoka still didn't approve of those visits, but it wasn't her student, nor her school, so she had only voiced her concerns once and then never again. Luke had been reluctant to separate them –to sever their bond– and she didn’t think she’d be able to change his mind.
Though that should have been the second clue, she also noted later.
If she didn’t join them for breakfast, she’d at least try to tag along for lunch. The padawan’s huge appetite never failed to amuse her –she found hilarious the way he’d have his teacher fretting about him as he tried to gorge down anything whether it was edible or not.
Noon on the planet was pleasant, not too hot as the early afternoon, not too humid as the late evening. They'd often eat under the cool shades of trees, enjoying the nice weather.
“Grogu,” Ahsoka chided now in a stern tone as the boy tried to eat a frog while his teacher was distracted prepping him a third plate of food.
The child spit out the creature with a sad pout, making her smile. When Luke joined them again, he had a knowing look on his face –yet he made no comment.
“Your father called,” he said instead, leaving the plate in front of his student. “He’ll come visit today.”
Grogu, as was the usual, screeched in happiness and raised both arms in victory, making them chuckle. Though Ahsoka was surprised to sense a draft of eagerness coming not only from the padawan but from the teacher as well.
“You do know what that means, right?” Luke continued.
The child stiffened, suddenly nervous, and shook his head with feigned innocence. It made her smirk; he had yet to learn his failed attempts at lying to a Jedi would be no more than that –failed attempts.
Still his master didn't admonish him for it. “It means you’ll have to finish your lessons before he arrives,” he explained gently.
His student sagged in his seat, nodding solemnly, but his sour mood was but a passing cloud. Soon he was devouring his last plate and standing up, ready to get on with his classes so he could spend as much time with his father as possible. Ahsoka wondered if that was the reason behind allowing the visits, to motivate the padawan to keep practicing in a world where Jedi were nothing more than an urban legend.
Though she sensed there was more to it than she had been allowed to glimpse.
Luke stood up, sending the dirty dishes back to his hut with his many helping droids. He looked at her before leaving, giving her a small, almost shy, smile.
“You’re welcome to join us any time,” he offered. “We always appreciate your company.”
She bowed her head politely, thanking him. Sometimes she meditated with them; it made her feel like a youngling in the old Temple again, and while the feeling was grounding, it always came with a heavy grief attached to it.
“Perhaps I will,” was her simple reply.
Both master and padawan left to start their lessons, and Ahsoka bid them goodbye with a smile. Then, she moved to higher ground, atop a green hill, to watch them from afar.
Maybe it was an old sense of duty what compelled her to keep an eye on them –a war-earned habit. Ever since she met the young Skywalker twins, she felt the need to make sure they were safe. Leia had been appreciative of her presence at first, but as a senator and a married woman with a child, she hardly had any time left for Ahsoka’s ‘mother tooka-ing’, as she had grown so fond of calling it.
With Luke it was easier. He had a Jedi Academy and valued her input when it came to old traditions –even if he tended to ignore them– and always made sure to leave a seat open for her to join in his activities, be it imparting a class or a meditation session.
Most importantly, he didn’t look like the living image of a close friend Ahsoka had lost.
She knew she was being unfair to Leia for it was no fault of hers to look like Padmé, no matter how she arranged her hair or how she dressed. She had that same smile, that same amused eyebrow-tilt, that same intensity and fire burning behind her brown eyes.
So Ahsoka called Leia to ease her own worries but stayed with Luke. He was a busy man himself, what with that little green menace keeping him occupied most of his time, and his Mandalorian father stealing even more of it whenever he visited. But that only granted her the solitude she so desperately craved at times, it gave her the opportunity to watch from afar, to make sure he was safe without having to see his eyes –the one feature that resembled the father.
But eyes were easier to avoid, so she stayed nonetheless.
“Keep your guard up,” Luke was saying now as Ahsoka quietly joined them as promised. “It'll help you keep your balance.”
The man gently corrected the padawan’s arm positions, bringing them further from the boy's body and higher. Grogu was standing on one foot atop a boulder, the other leg extended in the air as he stood as still as possible in a kicking stance without falling.
“Much better,” the Jedi master complimented. “You're doing good. Just relax and focus.”
Grogu made a gurgling sound and complained through the Force about opposing commands, making his teacher sigh, a tired smile on his face and hands on his hips as he rolled his eyes when his student wasn't looking.
“He does have a point though,” Ahsoka chimed in, humored by their interaction.
Luke regarded her with a bow of his head, humming in consideration. Then he kneeled beside the boulder next to the child, making eye contact with him.
He gestured to his stomach, saying, “keep these muscles steady, but,” his hands moved to his chest, “relax here. Let the Force flow through you, helping you keep your balance. Don't focus on how tired you feel but rather on how the things around you feel.”
The boy sighed, trying to obey, but soon chirped another complaint.
“Feel the rock under your foot. Is it cold? Maybe a little wet?” Luke continued undeterred. “What about the air? What does it smell like? What does it remind you of?”
Grogu closed his eyes and sent them several images through the Force –him sitting on the seeing stone when he called Luke, him playing with children in a small farming village he visited with his father.
“Good,” the young Jedi murmured. “Now move on to other things, see what else you can pick up around you. Connect with them and then let them go.”
He walked away a few steps and stood beside Ahsoka, cautiously monitoring his student from afar.
“He’s improving very fast,” she told him, voice low so as not to disturb the child.
Luke smiled at her. “He is. He has a lot of energy and is eager to learn, but his mind is too crowded and it distracts him,” he explained in an equally hushed tone.
“So you’re helping him find an anchor,” Ahsoka finished for him, understanding the lesson he was trying to impart. “Clever. Your Masters would be proud.”
That seemed to surprise the other man, a light blush covering his features as his smile turned shy. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I had the same struggle when I was training, my head was always someplace else and I couldn’t concentrate. Master Yoda would make me do a handstand while meditating to focus.”
Ahsoka let out a breathy chuckle. “Of course he did. He always knew how to torture his padawans with the most difficult exercises.”
“Yeah?” Luke asked with a curious expression, never pressuring but always leaving the door open. “Did you train under him?”
“A little. He tried to oversee every youngling in the Temple. We all received observations, critiques and advice,” she answered, and then added with a smirk, “though he always spoke in riddles, so it was hard to tell what he was trying to say most of the time.”
Luke sighed tiredly, a knowing look on his face. “Yeah, tell me about it,” he complained, but he had a fond smile that outshined his annoyance.
And Ahsoka wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly felt the need to reminisce, to tell him about the past –no matter how much pain that caused her.
“Your father could never sit still during meditations either,” she said, earning the man’s full, unwavering attention. “I often had to join Obi-Wan instead because his restlessness was too distracting.”
“Now that I think about it,” Luke commented, “Leia always struggled to quiet her mind for meditation too, so maybe it’s genetic or something.”
It was meant as a joke, but she found it more endearing than amusing. Still, she chuckled, asking, “did she give you too much trouble?”
“Not really,” he replied. “Maybe at first, but she was a very fast learner, even faster than Grogu. I have to admit I was a bit jealous at how naturally it came to her.”
When Ahsoka had learned the man had trained his sister –and that she had been his one and only student before Grogu– she had worried greatly. Leia had abandoned the Jedi way to continue her life as a senator, to marry and have children, and that hadn’t helped Luke’s case either –though the woman had always spoken highly about her brother’s competence as a teacher.
Of course, now Ahsoka knew better, having seen it first hand.
“Except meditation?” she joked, lightly patting him on the back.
He smirked, shrugged. “Could be the teacher’s fault, though. Unfortunately for her, she was my test dummy for pretty much everything.”
“Don’t worry,” she comforted, squeezing his shoulder. “I heard it was like that for every young master. Their first padawan was always a bit like an experiment.”
The man looked at her, carefully asking, “was it like that for you too? With Anakin, I mean.”
Ahsoka recoiled slightly at the mention of the name, looking down and lowering her hand to clasp it behind her back. She took a deep breath and released all her pain in the Force, trying to keep a leash on her tumultuous emotions.
When she looked up again, there was guilt written all over Luke’s taut expression, an apology no doubt ready to leave his lips.
She offered what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “He didn’t even want a padawan,” she said, catching him off guard. “Obi-Wan had requested for one, but Master Yoda had other plans, it seemed.”
It was Luke’s turn to put his hand on her shoulder, returning the comforting gesture. “Of course he did,” he teased lightly. “He just couldn’t resist meddling, could he?”
Ahsoka laughed heartily, the other man joining in, and that earned them an annoyed chirp from the padawan still on his boulder –sitting now, meditation all but forgotten.
“Sorry, Grogu,” they said in unison, making the child huff in irritation.
Luke tsked. “Alright, now with the other leg. We’ll stay quiet.”
The next few gurgles and chirps accompanied a very angry wave in the Force, but his teacher would have none of it.
“No more complaints. You can rest later when your father arrives,” he commanded.
And with one final huff the boy got on his feet and continued his training. Ahsoka was marvelled at how quickly the boy seemed to obey him, fondly thinking back on how big of a pain she was to her own master when she was young.
Though she always did listen when he used that tone with her, and she had to wonder if some of these things could truly be passed down genetically.
Some time later, a familiar ship lowered itself through the planet’s light atmosphere. At first, it only happened every few months or so, but now Ashoka noted she saw that vessel arrive almost every week.
Despite his older age, Grogu still required naps or else he’d become irritable at night, and that allowed his master some much needed free time in the afternoon. Luke liked to join Ahsoka whenever she was meditating, or watch her closely as she did her own forms, studying her moves –and pride bloomed in her chest whenever she catched him replicating them in his morning training.
Sometimes they would spar, though Ahsoka didn’t allow those sessions as much as the man probably would like. He was something else when he fought –someone else– less like the serene Jedi Masters who trained him and more like the father who never did.
However, they hadn't been sparring much as of late, and it wasn't because of her reluctance; Luke was just very occupied in the afternoons now. The Mandalorian always visited when his son was still napping, taking the opportunity to speak to the young Jedi about the boy's progress –though Ashoka had to wonder if it was truly a coincidence each time, or if he did that on purpose to steal the master's time for himself.
Currently the sleek ship could be heard approaching the school, smoothly landing on its designated spot with practiced ease. It wasn't often she did this –never, in fact– but today Ahsoka decided to welcome their visitor herself, maybe to test the Mandalorian’s intentions.
Walking down the stone path she swiftly arrived at the foot of the clear at the same time the hull of the vessel opened. Light glistened and bounced off both the ship and the beskar armor as their owner descended and dropped himself to the ground, offering the helping droid who had come to meet him only a curt nod.
“Mandalorian,” Ahsoka greeted as she approached him. “I hope you had a safe trip.”
He stiffened, startled by her presence, though she didn’t know whether it was because he hadn’t heard her arrive or because she always stayed away when he visited –it was the one way she still let Luke know her disapproval.
Recovering quickly, the man nodded with a strange, almost timid nervousness in the air around him.
“I did,” his modulated voice said. He offered a hand she shook in the Mandalorian way, said, “it’s nice to see you.”
Ahsoka smiled politely. “And you. Your child is asleep right now, but I’ll take you to his master.”
“Thank you.”
As they walked through the green, that uncertainty grew larger and deeper, enveloping the other man fully. There was a confusing fog over it all, one she blamed on the beskar, but underneath she sensed a thrumming she could not recognize.
So she decided to investigate. “Is something the matter?”
“No,” was the apparently calm answer she got –while that feeling thickened in the Force and solidified itself into worry.
Ahsoka stopped walking, facing him fully. “You lie,” she stated plainly, making the Mandalorian stiffen in his place again, icy dread pooling into the air around him. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened,” he answered carefully, modulated voice not betraying any emotion.
“Then what are you worried about?” she pressed.
“I’m not–” the man tried, but seemingly gave up midway. He sighed, muttering something under his breath the modulator didn’t quite catch, and finally spoke plainly. “I know you don't like me being here.”
As the fog cleared in the Force, she understood the root of his fear was intrinsically connected to his child.
“I don't,” she admitted. “I told you once the bond you two shared had the potential for being dangerous to you and many others.”
The Mandalorian casted his visor to the ground, fiery anger flaring around him alongside a deep guilt.
“But,” she continued, resuming their walk, “Grogu is not my padawan, so I have no say in the matter.”
The other man sighed as he walked beside her. “If it’s so dangerous then why does he allow it?” he asked.
She looked at him with curious eyes. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him,” she replied, puzzled as to why Luke hadn’t offered him an explanation already.
“Right.”
The anger subsided behind the armored barrier, but a blinding concern remained, laced with the strong and warm love he felt for his son. Ahsoka was almost blinded by its intensity.
“Worry not, Mandalorian,” she tried to comfort with a gentle smile. “I have full trust in his capabilities as a Jedi and a teacher. He wouldn’t allow anything he thought could harm your child.”
The man hummed, reining in his emotions and concealing them inside the beskar fog. However –and much to her surprise– before he could hide them all a fleeting, warm thing surrounded him at the mention of the boy's master. It was something she recognized immediately, but she wasn’t allowed the time to analyze its implications as they were interrupted by a series of beepings.
Ahsoka smiled at the blue astromech droid, yet another familiar sight that both hurt and delighted her. Though she had gotten used to him the fastest. R2D2 beeped some more and beside her the Mandalorian bristled with a new wave of uneasiness.
“You’re jumpy today,” she commented, a slight jab meant to break the ice as she patted the domed head of the droid. “Hello R2. Did Luke send you?”
The binary answer was affirmative, pleased with the joy of an inside joke he refused to share with her. He turned around and impatiently led them back to the school.
They found the young Jedi kneeling next to one of his many gardens, dirt on his brown gloves as he inspected his crops. When he noticed their presence he offered them a radiant smile, the one that made his eyes lit up with a brightness that made Ahsoka’s chest ache painfully– some sort of phantom sensation gripping her.
As she released those feelings into the Force, she picked up some interesting ones from the Mandalorian next to her that bemused her greatly.
“Hello, Mando,” Luke greeted as he stood up and dusted off his pants, removing his gardening gloves. “It’s good to see you well.”
“Master Skywalker,” the other man replied politely.
The title gave Ahsoka whiplash, unexpected and unbidden, though she recovered quickly and didn't allow any emotion to reach her face. Luke eyed her carefully, an odd expression she was unable to read nor sense through the Force –if he had noticed her sudden uneasiness, he didn't show it.
“Grogu is still napping, but feel free to make yourself comfortable while you wait,” he spoke to the other man with a pretty grin. “Would you like to hear about his latest progress?”
The Mandalorian nodded eagerly, and it was amusing enough to distract Ahsoka from unwelcoming thoughts. She wondered if he had been rendered silent by her presence there or by the young Jedi’s Kenobi-like charms, and was considering interrogating Luke later to find out whether Obi-Wan had somehow taught him his winning smile in the middle of a war.
For now she let it slide. The one thing she knew for certain was he hadn’t inherited that from his father, even if the features looked exactly alike on his face when he smiled.
Soft rain would fall gently as the sun neared the horizon, a warm drizzle that lasted all evening and stopped at night. It happened almost every day like clockwork, watering the green and making Luke's droids scatter for refuge –they were mostly waterproof, but the thin raindrops managed to slip inside their metallic husks and onto their delicate machinery, requiring repairs the next day.
R2D2 was the only droid who ventured outside during the storm, not without a plethora of complaints –though Ahsoka didn't think he hated it half as much as he liked to claim.
“R2, be careful,” Luke reminded him now. “You don't want to slip and fall again.”
The droid beeped a snarky comment that made the young Jedi blush to his ears, and while Ahsoka wasn't privy to the meaning behind their inside joke, it still made her chuckle a little.
“What it'd say?” the Mandalorian asked, curiosity bleeding through his modulator, the child sitting on his arms also staring at his teacher.
“Nothing important,” the other man replied, bringing the hood of his cloak up to cover his face.
His embarrassment flooded the air around him as he released the feelings into the Force, and Ahsoka stretched her legs, deciding to finish her meditation early today. She had been fully immersed for a while, her mind and self flowing peacefully through every living thing that surrounded her, taking Luke’s advice to Grogu into account, interestingly enough, to ground herself. Then footsteps had approached her spot as the four other inhabitants of the planet had bumped into her.
An evening stroll, Luke liked to call it. To connect with nature and enjoy the warm rain.
Ashoka joined them sometimes, when she craved silent company and a distraction. The young Jedi's peaceful aura was comfortable and helped ease her mind, his unwavering fascination for something as simple as falling water and green plants. It had been on the second stroll that she had dared ask him what excited him so much about rain and trees, only to learn about his upbringing in the sand–filled, dustball of a planet that was Tatooine. That had opened the door for a conversation about his father and his own childhood –something Ahsoka had only heard about in fleeting comments in the Temple and in the man's own occasional tales for her. She had been left wondering if her master had liked rain as much as his son did –if he did, then she had never noticed.
But then again, there had been many things she had never noticed. Things she had brushed aside, too preoccupied with her own problems and the war she had been thrown into –things that only clicked into place much later, that only made sense after losing him.
After meeting his children.
“I think it's time we head back,” Luke commented now, looking at his wrist. His resolve didn't falter when he was met with a pouting green child. “I should get dinner started.”
That was enough to convince his padawan to return.
“I'll help you,” the Mandalorian offered politely, making the other man grin.
“I'll join you too,” Ahsoka commented, and the smile she got was radiant.
She almost never did this now –Luke always had dinner with Grogu and his father, and she didn't like to intrude– but tonight she felt like she could use a distraction from her thoughts.
They returned to Luke's hut and with all of them the small kitchen was crowded like never before; three adults plus a child and a droid, packed like Nabooian sardines in a tin box. Ahsoka stayed by the door as Luke chuckled, mirth in his eyes when the Mandalorian bumped into him and then into R2, earning an array of indignant beepings.
Annoyed, the armored man bit back. “Sorry,” he said, but be it his modulator or the lack of truth, he didn't sound honest. “There's no more room. If it bothers you so much then wait outside.”
That unleashed a beeping storm, the droid more than angry now, curses that only an old machine like him would know of.
“Stop,” Luke admonished sternly, amusement barely contained behind a curtain of exasperation. “The both of you.”
The Mandalorian lowered his head and the droid rotated its dome, sharing the silent indignation. Ahsoka couldn't help but chuckle to see them like that.
“Come,” she told R2, patting him gently. “Let us wait outside, lest we want to bump into anything else and make a mess.”
Luke smiled at her, grateful. His face denoted relief mixed with guilt, yet Ahsoka realized she didn't feel any of it in the Force –he was blocking her yet again, though she didn't know why.
Grogu tagged along with them, climbing atop the droid and opening his mouth to catch the small droplets that still fell from above. Ahsoka stood under a tree with thick leaves to simply observe and think. Inside the hut, Luke seemed to be chiding the Mandalorian as well, a soft argument she wasn't privy to that bemused her greatly.
In truth, Luke himself intrigued her.
Simply put, Skywalkers were hard to read –had always been. She had thought her master always wore his emotions on his sleeve only to be terribly wrong; the man had known how to keep secrets, and quite the secrets he had kept.
That too seemed to have been passed down to his children; Leia was impossibly puzzling, expressions that betrayed nothing of what was going down inside her head, that surrounded her in the Force. Sometimes Ahsoka found it hard to discern what those feelings were, unable to tell them apart even with her training and years of experience.
But if Leia was like a maze, Luke was more like a void. His Force shields were impenetrable, unshakable inside his mind, sensitive to any sort of prodding from the outside. Whenever Ahsoka tried to get a reading for herself he would notice, slamming the door shut with a disappointed wave –as if he were her master and had caught her cheating.
Master Yoda had truly done a remarkable job in teaching him how to protect his mind from invaders, yet that only depressed her –it served as a reminder that he had been trained in an era where the biggest danger was a Darksider’s harmful mental fist. The young Skywalker had been given survival skills for war rather than an actual Jedi training, and in a way Ahsoka saw her own youth reflected there.
So she made a point of never trying to enter his mind uninvited. Whenever they meditated and their thoughts mingled in the Force, he only ever allowed glimpses of the mundane that left her craving for the more intimate sessions she'd have with her masters or the other padawans at the Temple.
Yet Ahsoka never dared to ask for more.
Footsteps approached now and when she turned she found the Mandalorian had joined her under the tree outside.
Under her curious eyes he explained, “he kicked me out.”
“Did something happen?” she asked, surprised.
The man sighed, and his posture screamed of embarrassment. “I screwed up,” he admitted in a low voice. “Mixed up some condiments or some shit like that.”
A chuckle escaped her before she could help it. “I see. He tends to overreact in the kitchen though, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.”
He shrugged, something akin to fond exasperation on his tone as he replied, “yeah well, none of his stuff is labeled so how was I supposed to know?”
Ahsoka offered him a comforting smile, seeing the perfect opportunity for a quick interrogation.
“Your visits have become a more regular occurrence lately,” she commented lightly, carefully examining his reaction.
The air around the man shifted, not quite afraid but rather guarded. “I guess they have,” he replied simply.
“Are you still bounty-hunting?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Though it's not as good as it used to.”
“Was it ever good?”
“Productive,” he clarified.
She nodded in understanding. “Times are changing. I imagine the New Republic isn't very fond of the Guild.”
“They aren't,” he replied, and his modulator picked up his exhausted sigh. “There’s been rumors that they want to dissolve it, even if they don't really have the power to do that.”
“Maybe not yet,” she reminded gently. “Doesn't mean they won't try in the future.”
He simply shrugged again.
She continued, asking, “have you thought about changing professions?”
That prompted a full-body reaction from the other man, uncertainty growing around him as he straightened. “Did he ask you to convince me to leave it?” he accused, suddenly irritated.
“Who? Luke?” she answered with surprise. “No. Why? Has he asked you to?”
The visor quickly faced the ground, and Ahsoka didn't need the Force to know he regretted his words.
He struggled for a moment before giving up. “Not directly,” he confessed in a murmur.
And it was a surprise to hear that, to learn that the young Jedi had been pressing him to change his job; she didn't think he'd care about something like that.
“Did he say why?” she inquired, beyond curious.
He eyed her carefully –or, at least, her time spent with Mandalorians told her that’s what the tilt of his helmet meant. She was unable to read anything else in the Force, complex emotions covered by that thick, beskar-induced fog.
“Yeah, but you won't like the answer,” he said, maybe trying to play mysterious, maybe reluctant to tell the truth.
Ahsoka stared at him for a moment, thinking back to their short conversations, to Luke's behavior, working her mind to put the pieces together. The solution –perhaps nudged by the Force– came in the shape of a worker droid rushing to find cover from the rain inside one of the many empty and half-built huts.
“He wants you to stay here,” she stated, knowing immediately she was right. “Doesn’t he? To live with your child.”
The man nodded solemnly. “Work's been slow. It barely even covers fuel anymore,” he said in lieu of an explanation. “He offered me a place to stay.”
But Luke had already done that, she knew. Whenever he visited, the Mandalorian would stay for a few days before leaving again.
“He meant a permanent stay, though, correct?” she pressed.
“...Yes.”
“I see,” she murmured.
She had to admit the news disturbed her a little, even if they didn't really surprise her. She considered maybe it was the fact she hadn't seen it coming –Luke hadn't mentioned anything about it, not even in passing.
Now, she looked at the Mandalorian again, trying to read him as best as she could.
She asked, “did you accept?”
He seemed to hesitate before answering. “Not yet... I like working.”
Not yet, repeated in her mind. Not yet. Ahsoka realized he was probably planning on saying yes –and wondered why he hadn't.
It was odd seeing such a strong warrior suddenly so shy around her; it felt like he was expecting her to kick him out, to banish him from the planet or anywhere near his son. Ahsoka realized he must believe she could convince Luke of doing so, otherwise he wouldn't be so concerned.
“Are you worried about me?” she inquired. “Do you think I'll oppose?”
“You won't?” he replied, doubt in his voice.
“It's not my school,” she explained. “I have no say in the matter.”
He didn’t seem to like her answer however. “Yeah right,” he muttered dryly.
“It’s the truth,” she insisted, a little surprised by the remark.
Whatever the man could have said got drowned behind Luke's voice as he announced dinner was ready. R2 and Grogu were the first to return, and when the other two joined them the hut was filled with baby laughter coming from another room. Ahsoka peeked inside and saw Luke drying the child with a towel, tickling him and making silly noises that drew those thrilled sounds from his student.
A wave of affection seeped into the Force, but Ahsoka couldn't tell if it belonged to the Mandalorian beside her watching the same scene, the happy child, his master –or herself. It was a strange bubbly feeling, the kind she hadn't felt since her old padawan days, and it left her breathless and almost dizzy.
She stood outside for a moment to recover, heart speeding up beyond her control. It was as if she had been splashed in the face with cold, salty water, making her lose her balance as her wounds burned. Suddenly her wet clothes felt too tight around her body, the lights were too blinding, the sounds too loud.
Feeling sick, she ran away from it all.
And only stopped when she was atop a hill, a half moon illuminating the ground. Her emotions were like tangled yarn inside her mind, and she found she couldn't separate one from the other no matter how hard she tried.
Letting go, she dropped to her knees, taking deep breaths, trying to center herself.
“Relax and focus,” she whispered to herself, but the voice inside herself echoing the phrase belonged to the wrong Skywalker. “Relax and focus.”
She repeated it like a mantra a few times, evening her breaths, willing her heart to relax, her mind to focus on the sensations around her –the grass beneath her knees, the soft night air, the few droplets of rain from a passing cloud that refused to leave.
Slowly, she picked one of the threads inside her mind –the brightest one, the thickest one– and followed it. It led her upward and downward and through many turns all the way to the deepest place of her being, a dark cave that seemed to absorb all light. Holding tightly to the thread, she closed her mind's eye and blindly followed it.
Then she felt something –a warmth, a familiar smell she couldn't place, a soft sensation– and opened her eyes.
A memory flooded her.
She was in the Jedi Temple in Coruscant; she couldn't quite see much due to how bright the sunlight was, but she knew she was there –and she was very young, so young her lekkus barely reached her shoulders. As the brightness subsided, she realized she was in a training room surrounded by many Masters and padawans, though she wasn't training.
Voices were speaking but she couldn't make any words; before her a man was offering a hand she took to stand up, only then noticing she had been on the ground. His face was obscured, blurred, but a feeling of joy and love and familiarity filled her when their hands touched; the Force told her these were sensations from the future.
The rest of the memory faded to black, and Ahsoka truly opened her eyes to find herself back to the present, kneeling on the grass beneath the stars.
She sobbed.
Tears ran down her cheeks and gasps escaped her through a constricted throat, chest tight and in pain. She cried from the grief the memory brought back, from the happiness it was enveloped in, from the guilt it made her feel to have forgotten it in the first place.
But she remembered now, and along the sadness there was immense relief. She had met her master many years before he had become just that; she had been training her saber forms in the Temple when she had slipped and twisted her ankle, and a kind man had helped her up, had accompanied her to see a healer.
It had been Anakin, but she hadn't known at the time, and the revelation that she still had that memory brought delighted tears to her eyes.
Invigorated, she picked up another thread and followed it; one by one, they led her to a different part of her mind where a bit of her past lay dormant, waiting for her to return.
Maybe the yarn was beyond untangling, but she found she didn't care anymore. Each and every string was cherished to her, and no matter how long it would take her she'd touch them all.
Only after the sun had fully set behind the horizon did the rain stop completely. Ahsoka walked dizzily, tiredly under the stars to her own hut to take off her wet and mud-stained clothes and shower, letting the warm water wash the dirt and tears away.
Despite the pain that lingered in her chest she felt lighter –as if a heavy boulder on her back had somehow grown smaller in size.
Slowly she dried herself up, the softness of the towels a caressing, comforting touch on her skin. She put on fresh, clean clothes and sighed, feeling more exhausted than after an intensive training session. She put her boots back on and tightened the laces, building mental walls around her thoughts and emotions to keep them at bay. She left her hut only when she felt confident in the thickness and durability of the Force barrier in her mind.
As always, the storm had passed and only the clear sky remained, the smells of wet vegetation all around. Droplets fell from tree leaves, making a curt plop sound when it hit branches, cold water that occasionally found her when she walked underneath. Though she hadn't come up with an excuse for her disappearance yet, she went back to Luke's, at the very least to offer an apology.
She stopped dead in her tracks before she could get too close however, for the image that she found shocked her to her very core.
Sitting impossibly close to each other, the Mandalorian and Luke were outside his hut, speaking softly in a conversation Ahsoka couldn't hear from that distance. The armored man had a hand behind Luke, the other ungloved and on his face, cradling his cheek in an affectionate gesture –but what surprised her most was that the other man was comfortably allowing it.
A night of revelations, she thought as Luke covered the other man's hand with his own and kissed it, a loving smile on his lips. As they touched foreheads in a Mandalorian tradition Ahsoka knew the meaning of, suddenly the puzzle pieces that formed the young Jedi aligned in her head and she thought she could see the beginning of a full picture –though what it depicted she still wasn't sure.
Curious, she took a step closer where she felt emotions dancing in the Force, not just the Mandalorian’s but Luke's as well, his walls down for the first time since she had ever moved into the planet. Dazzled, all she could do was stand there and let the feelings flow around her, like walking through a museum full of stunning, intimate works of art; beautiful, warm and tender.
Then the door was violently shut on her face.
When she recovered she found the other man was standing and staring at her with wide, panicked eyes. Nothing escaped his perfectly built walls now, that peaceful aura acting like a mist around his mind. Though his expression was that of terror.
“Ahsoka?” Luke looked so much like his father that it felt like déjà vu. “What did you–? I thought we– were you–? I–” he stammered.
Walking closer to finally face him, she found herself hesitating; she had never seen him like this.
“I wanted to apologize for leaving without notice earlier…” she started with what she had planned on saying. “May we talk?”
The Mandalorian –who had stood up the moment they had noticed her, a guarded posture full of uneasiness around him– gently tapped the other man on the arm and they both locked eyes for a split second.
Then he took a step back, mumbled, “'m gonna go check on Grogu,” and reluctantly left the scene, looking back twice before disappearing inside the hut.
Luke walked closer to her –cautiously, carefully as if she were an enraged animal. He motioned with his head for her to follow, and they took the stone path of the evening strolls. Ahsoka absolutely hated how scared of her he seemed.
“Don’t try talking me out of it,” he blurted out when they were at a reasonable distance. “I don't know what you saw but I know it was enough and I know it’s against the Code but I won't–”
“Luke,” she interrupted when his words were uttered so quickly she could barely understand him. “Stop.”
He stopped, huffing like a youngling caught misbehaving.
“Let’s try again, okay?” she offered. “I couldn't understand a thing you said.”
But he seemed to hesitate, apparently at a loss for words now.
“I just want to understand,” she said, and it sounded so condescending it made her grimace.
“I… don't know what to say.”
Ahsoka sighed, looking intently at him. She asked, “are you two… romantically involved?” though she absolutely hated the phrasing; it felt like something Master Windu would say.
Luke didn't answer right away; he seemed to be considering it for a moment. “I guess we are,” he said finally.
“Why didn't you say anything?” she inquired, no longer able to withstand it.
“I know what you think about attachments,” he replied tiredly. “I didn't want you to be mad at me.”
“Of course I'll be mad!” she parroted, bewildered. “Luke, what you're doing is dangerous!”
Twice had the Skywalkers hid something like this from her, and twice she hadn't seen a thing –she had bowed to do better, to make sure the children didn't follow the father's footsteps, but it seemed she could never learn her lesson.
The other man furrowed his brow the way he did when he vehemently disagreed with something, and she knew there was an argument coming.
“I know you value Jedi traditions, and I'm not trying to purposely go against them, I just don't think forbidding bonds is healthy for a person,” he said defiantly.
“Anakin hid his relationship with your mother for years and it did not end well,” she bit back, still hurt about being kept in the dark even if she was passing the sins of the father on to the son. “Secrecy, jealousy, desiring one person above everyone and everything else to the point of one's destruction.”
“I'm not doing any of that,” Luke argued. “I'm not going to fall because of this.”
“How can you be so sure? I bet your father thought the same thing.”
They scowled at each other angrily for a moment. Then Luke huffed and finally seemed to break away from it, a grimace on his face as he sat down in one of his bamboo benches with a long, tired sigh.
There was silence, and then he spoke clearly and deliberately. “Each day I wake up and I choose to stay in the Light because I know the damage the Dark can cause. Because I've felt its cold tendrils tempting my mind when my loved ones were suffering and I could only watch, and I almost struck the deal out of fear.”
“Luke…” she whispered, coming to sit beside him.
He took her hands in his. “I know my father's grief led him to the Dark, but it was also his love for me what brought him back. In his final moments he saved me, and I cling to that every time the cold tries to take me away.”
Ahsoka embraced him, hands caressing his hair. “I just don't want to lose you too,” she whispered, and he hugged her back.
“I know,” he said, and squeezed her. “But it's not going to be like that. I have people around me like you that will help me if things get bad. I'm a Jedi like my father, but I won't make the same mistakes he did.”
They broke apart and she gingerly touched his face, staring into the familiar blue of his eyes. “You are so different and yet so much alike,” she murmured. “It's beautiful and frightening at the same time.”
Luke squeezed her shoulder, offering a gentle smile. “It's going to be alright,” he reassured.
And she nodded, hoping one day she'll feel that way too.
While they walked back to his hut, she told him part of what had kept her at dinnertime.
“You unlocked all these memories just like that?” Luke asked, fascinated by her discovery.
“Yes. Though I found many worrying dead ends as well,” she admitted.
He hummed in thought. “Maybe you managed to repair some sort of connection within yourself? Like a bridge, but there's others you haven't rebuilt yet so they remain obscured.”
She considered it. “Perhaps you're right.”
They continued quietly, stars blinking above them, the sounds of night critters filling the silence. Then Ahsoka spoke again.
“You're threading a dangerous path,” she warned, unable to stop worrying.
“I know,” Luke answered, but despite that he smiled. “I firmly believe Anakin fell to the Darkside because of the Emperor's influence, rather than his love for my mother. His fears isolated him and I think he felt he had no other choice.”
Ahsoka looked at him with surprise, agreeing with the explanation even if it made no sense for him to know any of that.
“Your father kept the relationship from us,” she reminded sadly. “In the end he was alone because he didn't trust us, he didn't let us help him.”
The other man nodded solemnly. “I was planning on telling you eventually,” he admitted with an embarrassed grimace. “But I guess I kept avoiding the confrontation.”
She sighed, patting his back gently. “Does anybody else know?”
“Well…” he hesitated, a guilty grin on his face now.
Ahsoka deadpanned, lips sealed in one straight line. “Leia knows, doesn't she?”
“I didn't even tell her,” Luke admitted with exasperation. “She called and somehow she knew. I know I can't lie to her but that was a little frightening.”
“Of course she did,” she muttered and then couldn't help but laugh. “She's on the other end of the galaxy and yet she found out before I did.”
The other man chuckled too. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
She sighed; in a way it comforted her to know he’d at least been honest with his sister. It proved he might've actually told her too at some point –that he didn't intend to keep it a secret, that he truly was being careful.
That she hadn't failed yet.
When they reached the hut, Luke gently touched her arm. “We left some dinner for you if you'd like to take it now,” he offered.
“That's very kind of you. Thank you.”
Inside and as he poured her a bowl of still steaming stew, the Mandalorian reappeared, worried and careful as he stared at them both.
Luke was already smiling before turning around to face him, a sweet expression on his face. “It's okay, Mando. We're good,” he said.
The other man visibly relaxed, body deflating as the concern receded. Ahsoka was suddenly reminded of something that made her giggle.
“What is it?” Luke asked curiously.
“I just remembered,” she said slowly. “That you're not the first one in our lineage to date a Mandalorian.”
The young Jedi looked at her with something akin to bewilderment, eyebrows knitted together as he stared intently at her. “What do you mean?”
Ahsoka smirked in anticipation. “Many years ago, before I was even born, Obi-Wan spent some time in Mandalore and met someone.”
The bowl almost fell from Luke's hands in surprise. “Wh-what? He– what?”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I don't know the full story, but I did meet her. She was a Duchess.” Then she added, looking at the Mandalorian next, “I'm still friends with her sister.”
The man stiffened, and the air was suddenly so charged with the mixed shocked-confusion of them both that it made her laugh heartily.
Maybe, she thought now under this new realization, she couldn't really blame Luke –he did have terrible role models after all. Yet somehow it brought her peace, letting the hurt from the secrets held from her go through the Force.
She bowed to support the children, to be there for them the way she should've been for the father –and perhaps, along the way, she'll be able to rebuild some of those burned bridges in her mind.