She turned them on and told herself that it was their incandescent green glow in the dark night that made her eyes water. How many Jedi were buried with their lightsabers today? How many weren’t buried at all but left behind like so much garbage, their weapons taken as trophies? The younglings, had they known what to do? Who could they ask once their teachers had been cut down? Surely, there had been some mercy for—
She knelt, extinguishing the energy, and planted the hilts of both her weapons in the freshly turned dirt.
She stood quickly and resisted the urge to call the lightsabers back into her hands. They must be left there, memorializing the man they were recorded as having killed, a trophy for the coming Imperials to find.
And they were coming. Ahsoka could feel it in her bones. She had a ship, unremarkable and well built. Rex was already gone, his false death inscribed on the marker in front of her and the false report of her death at his hands credited there as well. When they were digging the grave, they had agreed to separate and head for the Outer Rim. It was chaotic there, but it was the sort of chaos where a person could get lost. The chaos on the Core worlds was motivated by Palpatine’s new peace, and if Ahsoka tried to hide herself there, it would be only a matter of time until she was found.
She placed a hand on the grave marker and allowed herself one more moment to think about the man who was buried there and about the man who wasn’t. She thought about her master, whom she could no longer sense, and the other Jedi, whose absence was like an open airlock in her lungs. With determination, she shut it. She stopped looking for Anakin through the connection they shared. She stopped remembering the clones, alive and dead.
She turned and walked to her ship. She wondered what she would say when she got to a new planet and someone asked her who she was. She knew her name was on a list of supposed criminals. She couldn’t safely use it anymore. She couldn’t say she was a Jedi, not that she ever could have said that in good conscience anyway. She’d given up that right. Now she paid the price, doubly, for her abandonment. At least the pilot’s seat made sense. She knew what to do when she was sitting in it.
The ship hummed to life around her, and she focused on the things she knew for certain: she was Ahsoka Tano, at least for a little bit longer, and it was time to go.
Chapter 06
AFTER THAT FIRST NIGHT at Selda’s, Ahsoka settled into the rhythms of life on Raada without incident. Her acceptance by Kaeden and, more important, by Selda made everyone else treat her like she’d always lived there. The farmers brought her broken threshers and other pieces of equipment to fix, and the vendors and shopkeepers acted like she was one of their own. In the Core, Ahsoka had seen guilds and crime syndicates protect their members, but this was different. There was none of the fear or manipulation—except in the case of Tibbola, whom nobody really liked. But even he paid on time and did his job.
It was kind of nice—when it wasn’t excruciatingly boring.
“It’s a family,” said Miara. She had stopped by to install the lock on Ahsoka’s door.
“But we’re not family,” Ahsoka protested.
Miara looked at her, an expression on her face that was almost hurt. Ahsoka had seen families before. She had saved families before. But it had been a while since she’d had one. It wasn’t the Jedi way. She had been deeply loved on her home planet, but that was so long ago that all she could remember was the feeling of it, not the practical results.
“There’s two kinds of family,” Miara said after a moment. “There’s the kind like me and Kaeden, where you get born in the right place to the right people and you’re stuck with one another. If you’re lucky, it turns out okay. The other kind of family is the kind you find.”
Ahsoka thought about how the clones, even ones who had never met, defaulted to calling each other “brother.” She had thought it was because of their genetics and military connection, but maybe it was something else.
“Kaeden and me, we were alone,” Miara continued. “But then Vartan hired Kaeden. He didn’t have to. He didn’t have to pay her full wage, either. But he did. All sorts of bad things could have happened to us when our parents died, but instead we got a new family.”
Ahsoka considered this.
“Now, I don’t expect you to tell me who died,” Miara went on. “But clearly someone did. Kaeden said you were adopted, which means you lost family twice. So now you get us.”
The younger girl was so determined that Ahsoka couldn’t bring herself to correct her. She wasn’t looking for a family, but Master Yoda had taught her that sometimes you found things you weren’t expecting, and it only made sense to use them when you did. The people on Raada protected their own, with none of the violence or cruelty or cold-blooded calculation Ahsoka had seen at work in the Core. Maybe it was a good idea to take advantage of it, even though thinking about using her new friends on those terms made her a little uncomfortable. She looked at Miara, who was installing the final part of the lock.
“Isn’t that sort of, I don’t know, unfair?” Ahsoka asked, with exaggerated care. They didn’t even know her real name, after all. “I mean, I just show up and you guys take me on?”
“Well,” Miara said, “it’s not like you aren’t useful to have around. Everyone’s tech works better after you finish with it, and that keeps Hoban’s head from getting too big.”
Ahsoka laughed. She supposed that was true.
In the distance, the horn sounded. Miara started to pack up her things.
“I’ve got to run,” she said. “We’re on the evening shift this week, so you’re on your own for dinner for a bit. The lock’s ready though. You just need to set the key. Tap your finger here.”
Ahsoka did as she was told, and the lock turned green.
“Excellent,” said Miara. “I mean, it won’t keep out anyone who is really determined, but you’ll know someone broke in, and they’ll get quite the shock when they do.” Miara’s locks, it turned out, could be a little vindictive.
“Thanks,” Ahsoka said.
Miara finished packing up and went on her way, leaving Ahsoka alone with a new lock and a host of new thoughts to tumble around in her head. She looked at the vaporator she was supposed to fix that afternoon and decided that she had spent too much time indoors during the past week. The tedium of an agricultural community was starting to wear on her. Oh, the Jedi had their rituals and obscure traditions, too, but Ahsoka was accustomed to those. Raada was a new kind of boredom, and Ahsoka never did well when she was bored. It was time to check on her cave and see what else she might find in the area.
She packed everything she would need for the day in the new bag Neera had given her when Ahsoka fixed the caf maker in the house Neera shared with her brother. She put in a ration pack, even though she had fresh food, too, and attached her water canteen to her hip, right beside where one of her lightsabers used to hang. She wrapped up all the metal pieces she’d collected since the last time she went out to the cave and put them in the bag, as well, then hoisted it onto her shoulders. It was much more comfortable than her last bag. Neera had altered it so it wouldn’t rub against her lekku.