Lost and Longing.

She had to report into the Council but she didn't know what to say. She knew that the Force wasn't telling her to just stick around for the trip. And she certainly couldn't just ignore the deepest connection she had felt to the Force … ever. How to explain that to the Council? What would their reaction be?

She turned to look at Ahsoka, surprised that in her musing that the normally talkative girl hadn't spoken a single word. In fact she was still staring out into space without seeing anything.

"Ahsoka?" Aayla asked quietly somewhat disturbed by her friend's silence.

Ahsoka blinked several times before she seemed to snap awake and turned toward Aayla with a raised eyebrow. "Yes?" "Are you okay? You… were out of it." Aayla asked cautiously.

Ahsoka shook her head slightly, "No, I was aware, I was just… working on something."

At Aayla's confused expression Ahsoka shook her head and shrugged, "Sorry, I can't talk about it."

Aayla sighed slightly, but she could hardly be upset, if what the girl had said about the contract was true. That didn't stop her from asking the followup question. "Why did you do it?"

At Ahsoka's puzzled look Aayla elaborated, "Why did you give him an oath that might see your connection to the Force stripped away from you?" Ahsoka frowned and glanced out the cockpit at the streaks of stars before looking back to Aayla and searching her expression. Harry had said that the oath wouldn't let her accidentally say something that would violate it. So she wasn't worried about that. But she was still wary, she still didn't trust the Council, and Harry definitely didn't. Finally after several minutes of silent contemplation and consideration she relented a little bit.

"I had several reasons." She said, making sure to choose her words carefully, not wanting there to be any misunderstanding. "First, he stepped in to help me when he didn't have to. He didn't show any fear of half a dozen bounty hunters with guns pointed at him. He didn't show any fear of those Jedi Masters, even when they were overstepping their bounds. Bounds I am well aware of." Ahsoka said with a bit of sharpness and a hard, quick glance.

When Aayla just nodded in agreement, Ahsoka continued. "He knows uses of the Force… of Magic that I'm still struggling to comprehend."

"Magic?" Aayla said scoffing a little bit. "You know as well as I do that what he performed was anything but magic." Though her words rang a little bit hollow given the fact that there had been things that Aayla had no comprehension of how to deal with.

She noticed Ahsoka look at her, but her eyes drifted off, like what she had just stated made her think of something.

Ahsoka's mouth quirked a bit, then she turned back to Aayla "Does it make one bit of difference if I call it Magic, or if I call it the Force?" Before Aayla could respond, Ahsoka continued. "Someone, a long time ago, in some far far away place, named it, 'the Force'."

"In a hundred different places, where people also learned how to feel it, use it, understand it, manipulate it, they called it something else. Why do the Jedi," she then snorted, "as well as the Sith, hold the monopoly on what to call it?" Ahsoka bit her lip as she debated whether to continue talking.

Aayla frowned, recognizing that her friend was holding something back. "What is it?"

Ahsoka hesitated, clearly having an internal debate with herself before she looked around nervously. Her voice dropped a little bit as she stroked her fingers up and down one of her lekku. "Aayla, after he agreed that I could come with him, but… before he really taught me anything… that first night on the ship. I was sleeping, or at least trying to. I.. had a vision."

Aayla raised her brow at that, but otherwise kept her expression neutral.

Ahsoka nodded, "I have… only experienced a vision once before. But this… " she stopped, and swallowed deeply before she stared out at the mottled colors of hyperspace that flew by the ship once more. "I saw several things, all of them connected by a common thread."

Her voice dropped again and there was an element of … something in it, but Aayla couldn't quite identify the emotion.

"I saw what happened if I had chosen another bar to go to. Or decided to leave the one I was in a few minutes earlier. Or if I had left the ship when Harry said I could before we left Coruscant."

Aayla just listened to her friend letting her talk, it was clear whatever it was was emotional as the girl was struggling a bit to contain a well of emotions.

"In every case, no matter what decision I made afterwards…" Ahsoka swallowed thickly. "Every time I was captured by bounty hunters, and taken. Every time I attempted escape only to be shot and killed. My severed head turned in for a 'Or-Dead' bounty to someone I don't even know and couldn't see, but was certainly pleased I was dead."

Her eyes welled up with tears that she was only partially successful in blinking back. "No one would ever find out what happened to Ahsoka Tano. Not even SkyGuy ever turned up anything about me. I was merely lost, and forgotten before darkness consumed the vision."

Ahsoka's shoulders shook a little bit as she clearly struggled with the onslaught of emotions from the visions. Aayla was surprised by the display. While Ahsoka had never been the most stoic of individuals, and never seemed to have the peace attributed to so many Jedi, this was a much more powerful display of emotions than she had ever displayed before. Neither Jedi recognized the slight shaking of items in the area, mostly because there were no loose items around, and the slight vibration of the entire cockpit was chalked up by both of them to simple movement of the ship, that happened in all vessels. Only Hedwig opened one eye and fixed it upon Ahsoka while she shook a little bit to steady herself.

Ahsoka took a steadying breath followed by another as she calmed herself. "But then I saw a vision of what did happen, and that Harry had remembered that he'd not been by that bar on Coruscant in a while and stopped in to check for mail. He did it on an impulse. He was delivering a package elsewhere and hadn't actually intended to swing by the bar until he was on his way back. It was merely a whim of his." "A whim." Ahsoka laughed without any trace of humor. It was a sound that almost bordered upon despair instead. "He wanted to see those messages as much as he wanted to flirt with the Zeltron bartender just so he could have the childish excuse to make comments about her breasts in some long-standing game the two of them have. But...it was like… that decision changed something."

"My vision gave me a view of what joining him would entail." She shook her head slightly, "Overall it was just… just… feelings really. But it felt right."

Ahsoka lifted her head to look at Aayla, clear excitement in her eyes, "I've never felt the Force's guidance so strongly as when I've been around him. It's like, it was foggy, muted, or clouded before I met him. All the exercises I struggled with at the Temple, or even with SkyGuy."

She shook her head slightly, before she found the words to convey her thoughts, "They feel so much easier when I'm near him. It's like, whatever is blocking me isn't able to block or affect what's around him."

.

.

.

🧿Visit my site at tiendup for more advanced content...🧿

🧿Read the complete novel in PDF, available at my Store!…🧿

https://fictiontopia.tiendup.com/