Fic: Second Wind
Feb. 11th, 2019 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redrikkiTitle: Second Wind
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG
Length: 2,511
Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Shmi Skywalker
Summary: Ahsoka takes the wrong exit from the world between worlds and ends up with a second chance at saving her master. Written for the Past Imperfect Future Unknown exchange.
On A03 or
The dark fire chased Ahsoka down the starlit paths of the world between worlds. Morai flew ahead of her, leading her to safety, or at least back to where Ezra had pulled her from. She caught flickers of movement in the portals as she ran past before they were engulfed by flames. In each portal, she saw herself. There she was, being taken to the Temple by Master Plo, meeting Anakin on Christophsis, abandoning him on the Temple steps, kissing Kaeden, joining the Rebellion, and on and on. Each scene a moment which had changed the course of her life.
“Little Soka.”
“Ahsoka.”
“Commander Tano.”
“Snips.”
“Ahsoka.”
“Ahsoka!”
Voices from her past swirled around her like leaves on the wind. Some were so loud they made her montrals ache. Others she could barely hear over the roaring of the fire.
“Always in motion, the future is,” Master Yoda said, so close behind her she nearly turned to check.
“—Never would have made it as Obi-Wan’s padawan” Anakin said, his voice fading in and out like a faulty holo transmission, “but you might make it as mine.”
It broke her heart, hearing Anakin’s voice. No matter what she told Ezra, there would always be a part of Ahsoka that longed to save her master. The portals were beyond tempting. She could reach through one to yank Anakin from history or leap through herself and kill Palpatine before he’d even thought of his Empire. Except she really couldn’t, not really. There was no way to know the moment it all went wrong and no way fix the past without unmaking the present. She had to let him go.
The fire nipped painfully at her heels. Up ahead, Morai flew through an open portal. That must be the way back. The bird had never lead her wrong before. Ahsoka didn’t even question it. She just put on an extra burst of speed and leapt.
*
*
*
*
She collided, not with the unforgiving stone of Malachor, but with a warm body. They tumbled down together onto well-packed sand. Ahsoka rolled to her feet. Her hands dropped to the hilts of her sabers as she scanned the surrounding area. Everywhere she looked was sand. Sandy streets. Doomed, sand-colored buildings. Even the wind was filled with the stuff. It whipped her face and worked its way into her clothes. Nothing was remotely familiar, but something in the Force whispered that she had been here before. Maybe she had. She’d certainly seen her share of towns like this in the Outer Rim over the years.
The Force felt strange here, Lighter than she’d felt in decades, but heavy with anticipation. Something was coming, something big. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon, but it wasn’t just the storm. What it was, Ahsoka couldn’t tell, but she didn’t want to be here when it arrived.
The woman she’d knocked down still lay sprawled on the ground, clutching her belly. She was human, light skinned, brown haired, and hugely pregnant. Her clothes were worn and shabby, but she had dropped some very nice-looking jogan fruit on the street beside her. Fruit like that didn’t grow in a desert climate like this. A servant, then, out buying groceries for who ever passed for rich in this dust bowl of a town. She groaned as she attempted to sit up and failed.
There was something naggingly familiar about her, about the way the Force flowed around her. Ahsoka couldn’t put her finger on it, but one thing was clear. Servant or not, something about this woman was very, very important.
“Please, let me help you,” Ahsoka said, bending down to scoop up the fallen groceries back into the woman’s basket before reaching for her. Wrapping her hand around the woman’s too-thin wrist, she used a touch of the Force to lever her to her feet. The winds were picking up and the few people still on the street quickly made their way indoors. The sooner they did the same, the better.
Once on her feet, the woman doubled over with a moan. Had she broken something when Ahsoka knocked her down? The front of her dress was damp like she had spilled something or wet herself.
“What’s wrong?”
“The baby,” she groaned. “It’s coming.”
Ahsoka looked frantically for someone who could help, but the street was deserted. The wind whipped around them, lashing them with sand. “Where can I take you?” Ahsoka had to shout to be heard over the incoming storm.
The woman shook her head. “It’s too far!” she shouted back. “We’ll never make it.”
What was it her master had said when they’d crashed on Tatooine? The desert is merciless. It takes everything from you. It would certainly take their skin if they stood out in this sandstorm much longer. The woman tugged a strip of cloth over her face to keep from inhaling sand. Ahsoka wished she had one of her own. She turned her head and spat out a mouthful of mud. They needed to get out of here.
Visibility was becoming an issue. The storm had blotted out the twin suns and each gust of wind blasted her eyes with stinging sand. Ahsoka took an uncertain step towards what she hoped was safety when there was a familiar hoot off to her left. She risked a squint to spot Morai perched atop a nearby door. For a moment, she considered turning away. She wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for Morai. Then again, the bird and the Force she served had never lead her wrong before. If they had brought her here, it must be for a reason.
“Come on,” Ahsoka said, and steered her companion in Morai’s direction.
The trek across the street seemed to take a small eternity as the storm tore at their clothes and threatened to strip the skin from their bones. Ahsoka’s exposed skin was stinging and raw by the time they made it to the door. She opened it with a flick of the Force and ushered the woman inside. Morai and a gust of sand flew in behind them. The door snapped closed and the sound of the storm fell away so abruptly Ahsoka might have thought she’d been struck deaf if it wasn’t for the her companion’s pained little gasps. The woman slumped back against the wall and shook.
Ahsoka fumbled for the light switch. The overhead light popped and ticked in protest before flickering to life, revealing a dusty warehouse. Several of the nearby crates were covered with drop clothes. Ahsoka pulled them off to build a little nest on the floor. It probably wasn’t the most comfortable or sanitary of places to give birth, but it would be better than laying on the ground.
“I’m Ahsoka,” she said, as she eased the woman down and knelt beside her. She probably shouldn’t have given her real name, but it felt right somehow.
“Shmi,” the woman replied, her face tight with pain.
Shmi. The Force sang at the mention of the name. Now that she noticed it, the Force seemed to sing around the woman in general. Born onto a better world, Shmi could have been a Jedi. Obi-Wan would have called her life here a waste, but it was probably for the best considering how the Jedi ended up. From what Ahsoka could sense, the child was just as strong in the Force, if not stronger. Perhaps Morai had sent her here to keep the baby from falling into the hands of the Empire.
Ahsoka rocked back on her heels as she considered what to do next. She had only the foggiest recollections of the sex and reproduction class she’d taken back at the Temple. Some species had it easy, females just laying their eggs somewhere for the males to come and fertilize. Others couldn’t give birth without dying. Like Togrutas, humans fell somewhere in the middle. Giving birth in a Core World med center with a competent doctor they were generally fine. Doing it in an Outer Rim warehouse with an inexperienced midwife? The odds were not with them.
She had no idea what to do. She was usually the person everyone turned to in a crisis. Give her a battle and she could fight it, a bomb and she could defuse it, a ship and she could fly it. Unfortunately, midwifery was not a skill she’d managed to pick up. It had been years since she felt this utterly useless.
“I’ve never delivered a baby before,” she confessed. She’d never even seen one born. “I’m sorry.”
“I have. I’m a midwife,” Shmi said, giving her hand a comforting squeeze which turned bone crushing as she was struck by a wave of pain. She rode it out with gritted teeth. “Together,” she said, panting, once the pain had ebbed. “I’ll talk you through it.”
“Together,” Ahsoka agreed, squeezing her hand back.
*
*
*
*
*
The next few hours were harrowing. Outside, the storm howled and battered at the door. Inside, Shmi screamed and pushed and bled. At the end of it, she lay bloody and exhausted while Ahsoka held her healthy baby boy. For some reason, she’d half expected the tension she’d felt in the Force when she’d first arrived to dissipate with his birth, but, if anything, it seemed to build as she attempted to clean him with a scrap of cloth.
The baby howled in protest as she tried to wipe the blood from his face and left behind a streak of mud instead. Stupid sand got everywhere. She gave him another swipe before giving it up as a bad job.
“Your son, Shmi,” she said, laying him in his mother’s arms. He seemed to like it, or stopped screaming at the very least. “What will you call him?”
Outside, the winds died as though the whole world was holding its breath. The Force crested like a wave as Ahsoka realized she already knew the answer.
“Anakin,” she and Shmi said together.
Morai alighted on Ahsoka’s shoulder and looked down at the baby. Her hoot sounded downright smug and Ahsoka thought she might be sick. When she’d wished she could save Anakin, this wasn’t what she had in mind. She felt as if she were falling off a cliff with the ground rushing up to meet her. The helplessness she’d felt at the prospect of delivering a child was nothing to this. Her very presence here, in this place and in this time, could destroy the galaxy as she knew it. What had Morai been thinking bringing her here?
Shmi gasped. “How did you know his name?” she asked, hugging her son closer.
“I—” Ahsoka shook her head “—I can’t explain it.”
What was she supposed to say? I know his name because he raised me. I know it because I traveled through time. Just thinking about it sounded crazy. How could she expect Shmi to believe her? She was living it and could barely get her head around what had happened.
“You are a Jedi here to claim my son,” Shmi said in tones of absolute certainty, her face strangely devoid of expression.
“I’m no Jedi,” Ahsoka denied with more force than she intended. A true Jedi wouldn’t be in this mess. A true Jedi would have been able to accept what Anakin had become instead of wishing to fix it. Like Anakin himself, Ahsoka had never quite mastered the art of letting go of those she loved.
Shmi’s gazed flicked from Ahsoka’s lightsabers to her face. She shook her head. “You’re better than a Jedi then. You’re here and you helped.” She stroked her son’s face, her own both tender and strangely sad. “I need you to help me again.”
“With what?” Did she want Ahsoka to contact the Jedi? Is that why Morai had brought her here? To ensure that Anakin was raised as a proper Jedi should be? It made sense, but something in the Force said otherwise.
“Do you know what I am?”
Ahsoka frowned, uncertain of what she meant. Human? Force sensitive? Poor? No, not that, she realized with a start. She remembered Anakin’s rant in a market in Zygerria. His mother had been sold. They both had been.
“You’re a slave, aren’t you?” Ahsoka said, her heart sinking. “You want me to free you.”
She didn’t have the funds to buy the two of them, but it wasn’t as though she’d never stolen slaves before. The lack of a ship to get them off world was going to be an issue, but it wasn’t like she’d never stolen a ship before either. The biggest issue was going to be the repercussions. Padmé had told Ahsoka how she and Anakin had met. She could spare Shmi and her son years of slavery and hardship, but what would it mean for the Naboo?
Shmi shook her head. “There is a bomb under my skin that will go off if I try to leave. You can’t free me.”
Her tone was more resigned than angry and Ahsoka didn’t understand it. During the war, she had been captured, collared, caged, hunted, and sold, but she’d never just accepted her own powerless in the face of it. She never once stopped fighting. Shmi had been so strong and so brave bringing her son into the world. How could she give up on her freedom so easily?
“What do you need from me then?”
“My place is here, but his is among the stars. I saw it,” Shmi insisted, a manic sort of light in her eyes. “I need—” she swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “When you take him, I need you make sure he knows my name and how much I love him.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at Ahsoka with newfound resolve.
Ahsoka shook her head. How could she have ever thought this woman weak? “I can’t take your son.” She wasn’t Kanan or Anakin. She didn’t have what it took to raise a child and keep him from Darkness. Bringing him to the Order was unthinkable after just how badly they had failed them both the last go around, but she didn’t have the strength to just leave him here.
“You can and you will.” The Force gave extra strength to the power of Shmi’s words. Ahsoka could raise him. She would.
A tear slipped past Shmi’s resolved and streamed down her face as she gazed longingly at her son. She planted a gentle kiss on Anakin’s forehead and held him out to Ahsoka.
He was still smeared with the blood of his birth and Ahsoka hesitated to reach for him. In a way, she had asked for this, but, if she did this there would be no going back. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could do this and she would, but the sense of falling was back with a vengeance. She took Anakin into her arms and felt the fate of the galaxy rearrange around her. She could only hope it was for the best.
Fandom: Star Wars
Rating: PG
Length: 2,511
Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Shmi Skywalker
Summary: Ahsoka takes the wrong exit from the world between worlds and ends up with a second chance at saving her master. Written for the Past Imperfect Future Unknown exchange.
On A03 or
The dark fire chased Ahsoka down the starlit paths of the world between worlds. Morai flew ahead of her, leading her to safety, or at least back to where Ezra had pulled her from. She caught flickers of movement in the portals as she ran past before they were engulfed by flames. In each portal, she saw herself. There she was, being taken to the Temple by Master Plo, meeting Anakin on Christophsis, abandoning him on the Temple steps, kissing Kaeden, joining the Rebellion, and on and on. Each scene a moment which had changed the course of her life.
“Little Soka.”
“Ahsoka.”
“Commander Tano.”
“Snips.”
“Ahsoka.”
“Ahsoka!”
Voices from her past swirled around her like leaves on the wind. Some were so loud they made her montrals ache. Others she could barely hear over the roaring of the fire.
“Always in motion, the future is,” Master Yoda said, so close behind her she nearly turned to check.
“—Never would have made it as Obi-Wan’s padawan” Anakin said, his voice fading in and out like a faulty holo transmission, “but you might make it as mine.”
It broke her heart, hearing Anakin’s voice. No matter what she told Ezra, there would always be a part of Ahsoka that longed to save her master. The portals were beyond tempting. She could reach through one to yank Anakin from history or leap through herself and kill Palpatine before he’d even thought of his Empire. Except she really couldn’t, not really. There was no way to know the moment it all went wrong and no way fix the past without unmaking the present. She had to let him go.
The fire nipped painfully at her heels. Up ahead, Morai flew through an open portal. That must be the way back. The bird had never lead her wrong before. Ahsoka didn’t even question it. She just put on an extra burst of speed and leapt.
*
*
*
*
She collided, not with the unforgiving stone of Malachor, but with a warm body. They tumbled down together onto well-packed sand. Ahsoka rolled to her feet. Her hands dropped to the hilts of her sabers as she scanned the surrounding area. Everywhere she looked was sand. Sandy streets. Doomed, sand-colored buildings. Even the wind was filled with the stuff. It whipped her face and worked its way into her clothes. Nothing was remotely familiar, but something in the Force whispered that she had been here before. Maybe she had. She’d certainly seen her share of towns like this in the Outer Rim over the years.
The Force felt strange here, Lighter than she’d felt in decades, but heavy with anticipation. Something was coming, something big. Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon, but it wasn’t just the storm. What it was, Ahsoka couldn’t tell, but she didn’t want to be here when it arrived.
The woman she’d knocked down still lay sprawled on the ground, clutching her belly. She was human, light skinned, brown haired, and hugely pregnant. Her clothes were worn and shabby, but she had dropped some very nice-looking jogan fruit on the street beside her. Fruit like that didn’t grow in a desert climate like this. A servant, then, out buying groceries for who ever passed for rich in this dust bowl of a town. She groaned as she attempted to sit up and failed.
There was something naggingly familiar about her, about the way the Force flowed around her. Ahsoka couldn’t put her finger on it, but one thing was clear. Servant or not, something about this woman was very, very important.
“Please, let me help you,” Ahsoka said, bending down to scoop up the fallen groceries back into the woman’s basket before reaching for her. Wrapping her hand around the woman’s too-thin wrist, she used a touch of the Force to lever her to her feet. The winds were picking up and the few people still on the street quickly made their way indoors. The sooner they did the same, the better.
Once on her feet, the woman doubled over with a moan. Had she broken something when Ahsoka knocked her down? The front of her dress was damp like she had spilled something or wet herself.
“What’s wrong?”
“The baby,” she groaned. “It’s coming.”
Ahsoka looked frantically for someone who could help, but the street was deserted. The wind whipped around them, lashing them with sand. “Where can I take you?” Ahsoka had to shout to be heard over the incoming storm.
The woman shook her head. “It’s too far!” she shouted back. “We’ll never make it.”
What was it her master had said when they’d crashed on Tatooine? The desert is merciless. It takes everything from you. It would certainly take their skin if they stood out in this sandstorm much longer. The woman tugged a strip of cloth over her face to keep from inhaling sand. Ahsoka wished she had one of her own. She turned her head and spat out a mouthful of mud. They needed to get out of here.
Visibility was becoming an issue. The storm had blotted out the twin suns and each gust of wind blasted her eyes with stinging sand. Ahsoka took an uncertain step towards what she hoped was safety when there was a familiar hoot off to her left. She risked a squint to spot Morai perched atop a nearby door. For a moment, she considered turning away. She wouldn’t even be in this mess if it wasn’t for Morai. Then again, the bird and the Force she served had never lead her wrong before. If they had brought her here, it must be for a reason.
“Come on,” Ahsoka said, and steered her companion in Morai’s direction.
The trek across the street seemed to take a small eternity as the storm tore at their clothes and threatened to strip the skin from their bones. Ahsoka’s exposed skin was stinging and raw by the time they made it to the door. She opened it with a flick of the Force and ushered the woman inside. Morai and a gust of sand flew in behind them. The door snapped closed and the sound of the storm fell away so abruptly Ahsoka might have thought she’d been struck deaf if it wasn’t for the her companion’s pained little gasps. The woman slumped back against the wall and shook.
Ahsoka fumbled for the light switch. The overhead light popped and ticked in protest before flickering to life, revealing a dusty warehouse. Several of the nearby crates were covered with drop clothes. Ahsoka pulled them off to build a little nest on the floor. It probably wasn’t the most comfortable or sanitary of places to give birth, but it would be better than laying on the ground.
“I’m Ahsoka,” she said, as she eased the woman down and knelt beside her. She probably shouldn’t have given her real name, but it felt right somehow.
“Shmi,” the woman replied, her face tight with pain.
Shmi. The Force sang at the mention of the name. Now that she noticed it, the Force seemed to sing around the woman in general. Born onto a better world, Shmi could have been a Jedi. Obi-Wan would have called her life here a waste, but it was probably for the best considering how the Jedi ended up. From what Ahsoka could sense, the child was just as strong in the Force, if not stronger. Perhaps Morai had sent her here to keep the baby from falling into the hands of the Empire.
Ahsoka rocked back on her heels as she considered what to do next. She had only the foggiest recollections of the sex and reproduction class she’d taken back at the Temple. Some species had it easy, females just laying their eggs somewhere for the males to come and fertilize. Others couldn’t give birth without dying. Like Togrutas, humans fell somewhere in the middle. Giving birth in a Core World med center with a competent doctor they were generally fine. Doing it in an Outer Rim warehouse with an inexperienced midwife? The odds were not with them.
She had no idea what to do. She was usually the person everyone turned to in a crisis. Give her a battle and she could fight it, a bomb and she could defuse it, a ship and she could fly it. Unfortunately, midwifery was not a skill she’d managed to pick up. It had been years since she felt this utterly useless.
“I’ve never delivered a baby before,” she confessed. She’d never even seen one born. “I’m sorry.”
“I have. I’m a midwife,” Shmi said, giving her hand a comforting squeeze which turned bone crushing as she was struck by a wave of pain. She rode it out with gritted teeth. “Together,” she said, panting, once the pain had ebbed. “I’ll talk you through it.”
“Together,” Ahsoka agreed, squeezing her hand back.
*
*
*
*
*
The next few hours were harrowing. Outside, the storm howled and battered at the door. Inside, Shmi screamed and pushed and bled. At the end of it, she lay bloody and exhausted while Ahsoka held her healthy baby boy. For some reason, she’d half expected the tension she’d felt in the Force when she’d first arrived to dissipate with his birth, but, if anything, it seemed to build as she attempted to clean him with a scrap of cloth.
The baby howled in protest as she tried to wipe the blood from his face and left behind a streak of mud instead. Stupid sand got everywhere. She gave him another swipe before giving it up as a bad job.
“Your son, Shmi,” she said, laying him in his mother’s arms. He seemed to like it, or stopped screaming at the very least. “What will you call him?”
Outside, the winds died as though the whole world was holding its breath. The Force crested like a wave as Ahsoka realized she already knew the answer.
“Anakin,” she and Shmi said together.
Morai alighted on Ahsoka’s shoulder and looked down at the baby. Her hoot sounded downright smug and Ahsoka thought she might be sick. When she’d wished she could save Anakin, this wasn’t what she had in mind. She felt as if she were falling off a cliff with the ground rushing up to meet her. The helplessness she’d felt at the prospect of delivering a child was nothing to this. Her very presence here, in this place and in this time, could destroy the galaxy as she knew it. What had Morai been thinking bringing her here?
Shmi gasped. “How did you know his name?” she asked, hugging her son closer.
“I—” Ahsoka shook her head “—I can’t explain it.”
What was she supposed to say? I know his name because he raised me. I know it because I traveled through time. Just thinking about it sounded crazy. How could she expect Shmi to believe her? She was living it and could barely get her head around what had happened.
“You are a Jedi here to claim my son,” Shmi said in tones of absolute certainty, her face strangely devoid of expression.
“I’m no Jedi,” Ahsoka denied with more force than she intended. A true Jedi wouldn’t be in this mess. A true Jedi would have been able to accept what Anakin had become instead of wishing to fix it. Like Anakin himself, Ahsoka had never quite mastered the art of letting go of those she loved.
Shmi’s gazed flicked from Ahsoka’s lightsabers to her face. She shook her head. “You’re better than a Jedi then. You’re here and you helped.” She stroked her son’s face, her own both tender and strangely sad. “I need you to help me again.”
“With what?” Did she want Ahsoka to contact the Jedi? Is that why Morai had brought her here? To ensure that Anakin was raised as a proper Jedi should be? It made sense, but something in the Force said otherwise.
“Do you know what I am?”
Ahsoka frowned, uncertain of what she meant. Human? Force sensitive? Poor? No, not that, she realized with a start. She remembered Anakin’s rant in a market in Zygerria. His mother had been sold. They both had been.
“You’re a slave, aren’t you?” Ahsoka said, her heart sinking. “You want me to free you.”
She didn’t have the funds to buy the two of them, but it wasn’t as though she’d never stolen slaves before. The lack of a ship to get them off world was going to be an issue, but it wasn’t like she’d never stolen a ship before either. The biggest issue was going to be the repercussions. Padmé had told Ahsoka how she and Anakin had met. She could spare Shmi and her son years of slavery and hardship, but what would it mean for the Naboo?
Shmi shook her head. “There is a bomb under my skin that will go off if I try to leave. You can’t free me.”
Her tone was more resigned than angry and Ahsoka didn’t understand it. During the war, she had been captured, collared, caged, hunted, and sold, but she’d never just accepted her own powerless in the face of it. She never once stopped fighting. Shmi had been so strong and so brave bringing her son into the world. How could she give up on her freedom so easily?
“What do you need from me then?”
“My place is here, but his is among the stars. I saw it,” Shmi insisted, a manic sort of light in her eyes. “I need—” she swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “When you take him, I need you make sure he knows my name and how much I love him.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at Ahsoka with newfound resolve.
Ahsoka shook her head. How could she have ever thought this woman weak? “I can’t take your son.” She wasn’t Kanan or Anakin. She didn’t have what it took to raise a child and keep him from Darkness. Bringing him to the Order was unthinkable after just how badly they had failed them both the last go around, but she didn’t have the strength to just leave him here.
“You can and you will.” The Force gave extra strength to the power of Shmi’s words. Ahsoka could raise him. She would.
A tear slipped past Shmi’s resolved and streamed down her face as she gazed longingly at her son. She planted a gentle kiss on Anakin’s forehead and held him out to Ahsoka.
He was still smeared with the blood of his birth and Ahsoka hesitated to reach for him. In a way, she had asked for this, but, if she did this there would be no going back. Her heart pounded in her chest. She could do this and she would, but the sense of falling was back with a vengeance. She took Anakin into her arms and felt the fate of the galaxy rearrange around her. She could only hope it was for the best.
