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They find the Jedi through one of their…less reputable contacts, a Weequay pirate, and self-proclaimed Pirate King. Saw, bless his heart, and the rocks Steela sometimes thinks he has instead of brains, doesn’t trust him, not at first. He’s been getting worse and worse about that lately. But Hondo, for all his faults, is usually at least semi-trust-worthy, and there is a light in his eyes Steela hasn’t seen before, visible even over the heavily encrypted holo-message he sends. It’s enough that Steela decides to trust him.
“She was one of the ones who helped us,” she tells her brother. Saw scowls and crosses his arms over his chest.
“More Jedi are dead than aren’t,” he growls. “It’s probably a trap.”
“But it might not be,” Steela urges. It’s a weak response, and one would she would normally never employ. Say what she might about Saw’s paranoia, she will never deny that it has kept them alive this long. This time though, she knows, can feel it in her bones that this isn’t a trap; that this is something they need to do.
In the end they go, both covered in as many weapons as they can carry on their persons, plus a few extra, just in case things go seriously south. Steela leads, more than happy to play the face of their little splinter operation, while Saw lingers in the shadows as an imposing, faceless wall at her shoulder. She’s got a better temper than her brother, and she knows how to take advantage of the assumptions people make when they see her, how to use her gender, and all the bantha shit that comes with it, to make people underestimate her. It’s usually the last thing they do.
Hondo’s ship is a patched up, rag-tag, mess of a piece of machinery, and Steela has no idea how it’s still space-worthy. He greets them without his usual flourish. Instead, he’s quiet, eyes dancing around like a man with a secret, and Steela wonders how on earth he survived as long as he did with such an awful sabbac face. Though perhaps, she thinks, perhaps this is a special case.
Once they’ve been sequestered away in the safety (not a word Steela would ever normally assign to this hunk of junk) of Hondo’s ship, Steela asks, “So? Where is she?”
Hondo sighs, and rubs a hand over his face. “Sleeping,” he says, words as subdued as his body language. It occurs to Steela that the pirate is old, would have been in his prime during the Clone Wars. He never shows it, but she can see it now, in his eyes, and the slump of his shoulders.
“It was pure luck I found her,” Hondo goes on. “I contacted you lot as soon as it was safe to.”
“Why us?” Saw asks, voice low and heavy with suspicion.
Hondo gives him a look, all his years and experiences suddenly packed into that one flick of his eyes. “Because you two specialize in keeping out of the spotlight. You are shadows, and that,” he pointed a sharp finger at Saw’s chest, then moved to Steela, “Is what she needs.”
“You care about her,” Steela says, and it’s not a question. Hondo nods.
“I do, in my own way. I encountered her many times, in the war, and her teacher, and his teacher. I helped her too, when her Order cast her out, a few years before…” he trails off, but Steela can hear the unspoken words in the air between them. Before things went from bad to worse. She nods.
“Alright. Take us to her.”
The Jedi is indeed sleeping when they enter the ship’s single, tiny sleeping quarters, but she opens her eyes and sits up slowly when Steela takes a step towards her. She’s taller than she was when they met on Onderon, older; one arm bandaged and held close to her chest, and bruising on the side of her face. There are bandages on one lekku too, and Steela feels a pang of sympathy. She knows from…personal experience with them, just how sensitive lekku can be, and it must make injury that much worse. She steps forwards.
“Padawan Tano. Or, is it Knight Tano now?”
Ahsoka eyes her suspiciously. “Neither. Just Ahsoka. Steela, right? And Saw. From Onderon?”
Steela nods, and watches as Ahsoka glances at Hondo, and then back at them.
“Why are you here?”
“I called them.” Hondo steps forwards. “You know I’d let you stay here as long as you need, but my ship is hardly safe, Youngling.” Ahsoka frowns at the diminutive, but she lets it slide, and Steela gets the sense that’s more fondness than anything else by now. The Togruta woman turns her gaze back to the siblings.
“Are you with the Rebellion?”
Saw snorts, and Steela makes a so-so motion with her hand. “Technically. Sometimes. But we’re never against them.”
Ahsoka nods, short and sharp. “Alright.” She pushes herself up off the tiny bed, and Steela is quick to move in and support her when her knees buckle, wrapping an arm around Ahsoka’s waist and urging her to wrap one of hers around Steela’s shoulders. Ahsoka is warm against her side, and she offers Steela a tiny, grateful smile, but shakes her head and refuses to sit down again when Steela tries to move her back to the bed.
“I need to get back to the Rebellion,” she says, insistent.
“You need to heal!” Hondo argues, a frown creasing his face. “You crazy Jedi, never knowing when to stop and breathe. You can barely walk; what are you going to do if the Empire finds out you’re alive?”
Ahsoka opens her mouth to argue, but stops when Steela raises a hand. “We can take you back to the Rebellion,” she says. “But the pirate’s right. You need to heal before you do anything else. My brother and I can take you somewhere safe.”
Ahsoka frowns, looking from Hondo, to Steela, to Saw, still scowling in the corner by the door, and the back to Steela. “Why should I trust you?”
Steela gently pushes her down to sit on the bed, and then dips her head in a tiny bow. “You helped us, once. You helped us free our people and our planet. If nothing else, we owe you that.” She smiles. “And besides, the galaxy needs all the Jedi it can get right now, and having you running around would seriously piss off the Empire.”
They both ignore Saw’s snort at that. Ahsoka holds Steela’s gaze, searching her face for a long moment. Then, slowly, she smiles, and lets out a burst of bright laughter― a little ragged, a little pained, but still warm. “It would wouldn’t it?”
(“I,” Saw growls, later, as he stands in the doorway of Steela and Ahsoka’s tiny bedchamber, “I am not going back to the Rebellion.”
Steela sighs, and rolls her eyes. Setting down the blaster she’s been checking over, she turns to look at her bother. “Fine. You can stay on Jedha.”
Saw scowls. Steela scowls right back. “They’re fools.” Saw growls. “They’ll sooner kill us.”
His paranoia has long since passed reasonable levels.
“I really doubt that,” Ahsoka says from behind him, and grins when Saw jumps and snarls at her. Almost two years since they found her, and the former Jedi has long since fully healed and moves with a cat-like grace and silence. She’s currently the only one still able to sneak up on Saw, and it makes Steela love her that much more.
Ahsoka ducks the (light, for him) punch Saw aims at her, and strides over to Steela, sliding an arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I’m home.”
Steela grins, and brushes her finger over the dark swirls of the tattooed text running down the side of Ahsoka’s left lekku, the words of her marriage vows as familiar as Steela’s own heart-beat. The same text engraved into the metal of the ring she wears on her left hand.
“Welcome back.”)