Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Academy Classroom (21.9 BBY)
Watching Ahsoka as she walked into the classroom and took a seat on the edge of the instructor's desk, I had to respect the way she'd just strode in and picked her spot. For someone so worried about not gaining a Master before she aged out into one of the Service Corps, it took real courage to choose to present herself as she really was, rather than trying to appear to be whatever the Togruta Initiate thought I was looking for in an apprentice.
"Alternatively, she simply isn't interested in becoming my Padawan, so she's trying to put me off with what might be construed as an unseemly lack of respect for my position. She is, after all, more than intelligent enough to recognize some Jedi are bound to be prickly about this sort of thing." The thought slithered through the forefront of my brain, before I squashed it ruthlessly. Still, it just went to show that Ahsoka wasn't the only one who struggled with insecurities. Even if I had learned to deal with them, mostly.
Stopping opposite her position atop the desk, I kept my stance as relaxed as my expression, and waited. We weren't going to accomplish anything meaningful until the two-ton Rancor in the room had been addressed, so I put my own Master's lessons in patience to work.
"You asked to speak with me, but you're not going to say anything?" When she finally broke the silence almost a minute later, her question was asked in an uncertain tone that contained a hint of exasperation. I didn't miss she was flustered enough to have left off any of the forms of address which had been drilled into her since she was a toddler.
"Sorry, I was just asking myself why the answer hasn't yet occurred to a young woman as intelligent and perceptive as you. The reason that no one aside from Master Ti has approached you about becoming their Padawan learner, I mean. It's your unresolved fear of not measuring up. They're all waiting to see how you deal with it."
I waited a beat, then concluded "Which makes me wonder if this is where I should take my leave of you. After all, now that you know what you need to do, you're going to have all the options you could ever want."
Her mauve lips pursed as she considered my words, then the obvious question finally occurred to her. In a much quieter voice, she inquired "Are you reading my mind, Knight Skywalker?"
Allowing a mysterious smile to quirk the corners of my mouth upward for a couple moments, I let her sweat a second longer, then finally shook my head. "I don't need the Force to know your deepest fear is being told you don't have what it takes to become a Jedi Knight. It's a completely irrational fear, with your power, stellar marks, and strong tourney showings, but then, all fears are. Irrational, I mean."
Crossing her arms over her chest, Ahsoka's voice sounded rather sulky, as she answered "That's easy for you to say. You've never laid awake a night in your life, wondering if you were going to be forced to choose between a life spent communing with the Force-presence of grain, or leaving the Order entirely."
Understanding that a certain amount of self-centered thinking was an inescapable part of adolescence, and feeling a degree of sympathy for how stressed out the young Togruta had become, (In large part due to "help" from her Zabrak friend I'd finally remembered was an older Padawan named Maris Brood) I let the remark pass with nothing more than a long significant look her way. When she showed the good grace to blush with embarrassment a few moments later, I smoothly backed the pressure off.
"You're free to take some time and consider my offer at length, you know. This is an extremely important decision, that's going to have a major impact on your future. If you would like to wait and reflect on the choices available to you, I am more than happy to revisit this conversation after I return from my upcoming mission." I said this with a calm concern that came to me with surprising ease, considering I'd never gotten along particularly well with children and teens in my first life. There was something about the normally vivacious but presently troubled young woman which evoked a strong impulse to help her past this rough and tumultuous stretch in her path.
Instead of answering me, Ahsoka's big blue eyes unfocused suddenly, and the subtle tension carried by the muscles in her face vanished just as abruptly. These were small tells that would hardly have been noticeable to most, but I'd seen Master Windu look just that way many times, while he'd been teaching me about Shatterpoints. It was harder to see in Master Yoda's and Yaddle's faces, but I'd seen both of them look the same way when the Force was revealing something beyond a vague impression. My experiences with them meant I wasn't caught completely out, when the young woman's reply proved considerably more insightful than it had any right to be.
"It's not my performance as an Initiate that convinced you to approach me about becoming your apprentice. There's something else to it. Something you don't want to tell me." It might have been a question, but the certainty in her voice made it a statement of fact.
My gaze kept trying to drift downward to the crystalline latticework fractal of the Shatterpoint surrounding her, but I resolutely ignored it, as I looked directly into her eyes, and quietly replied "Your insight does you credit, but did you stop to ask yourself if you really want an answer I didn't want to provide? I'll give it to you, because I can't do anything else without appearing deceptive, or at least manipulative, but only if you ask."
There was the briefest hesitation on her part, then the Togruta's chin came up, and she said "I think I need to know. You pointed out what an important decision this is. How can I make the right choice without all the information?"
For a moment, I wondered if this was what it was like to be Master Yoda. Faced with someone young enough, naive enough, to believe possession of all pertinent information guaranteed making the right decision, I felt every one of the sixty years making up two lifetimes.
Still, she'd asked, and it wasn't as if she didn't have a right to know. "My Master does not intend to take another Padawan, and I am the last of those Jedi trained entirely by her. If I should die before training another as I was trained, either she will be forced to go back on her resolution, or more likely, Dark Woman's methods will die with her."
There, it was a truth, and all of a truth, but by no means all the truth. "I just wish I knew whether this diversion is for her sake, or mine." The thought troubled me, but the furrowing of Ahsoka's brow, and the slight parting of her lips told me she was almost ready with a reply, so I tabled a question very much like self-doubt, and waited for her response.
"I thought the training of one Padawan was very much like another. You're all preparing us to face the Trials, so how much difference can there really be?" It was a fair question from her perspective, but the limits of that perspective were exactly what Dark Woman and I had petitioned the Council of First Knowledge to address. Since it wasn't appropriate to badmouth some of the Powers That Be to an Initiate, I merely smiled, shook my head, then pointed out the flaw in her thinking.
"If that were true, you would have accepted Master Ti and gotten on with it. That you did not means you understand, at least subconsciously, that the Master shapes the Padawan. Just as the Padawan teaches the Master. Why else do you think training an apprentice to Knighthood is the accepted prerequisite to becoming a Jedi Master?" Again, true, but not the troubling indictment of modern Jedi methods she wasn't ready to hear.
I checked my chronometer, then frowned. Where had all the time gone?
"I'm afraid I really do have to cut our discussion short, Ahsoka. If I leave now, I'll just have time to relieve Master Jinn." I meant it as a simple statement of fact, and wrap up to our conversation, but the words seemed to galvanize the young woman. Drawing herself up straight, there was none of the previous ambivalence or anxiety in her body language, as she suddenly answered me.
"I'll do it. I mean, I accept your offer, Master." There was a sudden confidence in the young Jedi. The source of which I didn't immediately understand.
Pressed for time, I simply asked for an explanation, rather than try and work it out for myself. "Would you care to explain the reason for this sudden decision?"
With a small shrug, and her arms crossed over her chest, she quietly answered "When you talk to me, your manner is like Master Honoran's. Which is weird, because the two of you couldn't seem more different."
I waited for her to elaborate, and was rewarded with "You make it clear you have high expectations for me, but also that you're confident I can meet those expectations with enough effort. You seem to believe in me, and that makes all the difference."
At a loss for words for a few moments, I finally found myself smiling, as I replied "Well, then, Padawan Tano, let's go see Caretaker Vilbum. The way he tells it, issuing the necessaries for an apprentice's braid is the best part of being the Academy's head."
I was about to begin explaining that her first task as my apprentice would be to camp out in the Archives while running a VI I'd written to try and locate one or more of the Ghost Prison fugitives, when a wave of sheer wrongness overtook me before I could finish fashioning that intention into words. It was such a sharply visceral instant of intuition, I didn't even consider second-guessing the experience.
Changing the plan entirely on the fly, I answered Ahsoka's concerned look at the too long hesitation after my last statement with a confident smile, then continued by saying "Afterwards, you'll need to collect your things with some haste, because we have a Senator to protect."
The uneasy queasiness caused by the prospect of taking her into the path of Nikkos Tyris began to become something akin to dread, when I noticed the Shatterpoint surrounding her hadn't resolved itself as I'd anticipated it would once she either accepted or rejected the offer to become my apprentice. For all my lessons with Master Windu, I could discern nothing beyond a subtle loosening of the cold knot in my chest when I'd resolved to take her along on my present mission. Something which could just as easily be a projection of my belief the young Togruta would be safer in my company, as a genuine insight derived from the Force-phenomena.
Following my excited new apprentice from the room in search of the kindly Baragwin Jedi Master, I hid my disquiet behind the discipline learned through years of maintaining a Thought Shield day and night. It was Ahsoka's moment, and nothing would be served by marring it with nebulous fears which could not be determined to possess the slightest substance.
Still, I couldn't help but wonder at the now fairly lengthy chain of bad feelings and grim intuitions I'd had since returning to Coruscant. There was nothing I could grasp and drag into the light to be examined, but neither could I dismiss what I'd felt, however amorphous those feelings were. It was a maddeningly frustrating situation to be in, but I could think of no more productive path than the one I was already treading.
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I was waiting for Ahsoka to return with her belongings, when a young female Cathar rounded a corner and began running toward my position near the gate. Noticing the Padawan braid woven into tall, lean teen's burnished bronze-colored mane, I felt a spark of interest, because as a rule, apprentices were considered to be above running messages throughout the Temple. That was a task generally left to the older Initiates, unless it was something important.
Only then did I remember my former Master's disquiet, and her eagerness to return to the Temple due to the vision she'd had while waiting for our contingent to make our escape from the surface of Cato Neimoidia. In the aftermath of the attempt on Padme's life, the Dark Sider assassin's assault upon my mind, being subsequently grilled by the High Council, and my worries concerning Ahsoka, I'd become oblivious to Dark Woman's continued absence. Now, seized by guilt that I'd actually forgotten all about her concerns, I looked on the messenger's approach with more than a little apprehension.
Had my inattentiveness brought someone I cared for deeply to grief?
"Knight Skywalker! There you are!" The young feline-featured apprentice called out. Turning my back to the Temple's main gate in order to meet the young apprentice, I couldn't help but notice her gasping, nearly out of breath state meant the Cathar had been running flat-out for some time to catch up with me. When she finally stopped short a half pace from me, I waited patiently for the teen to catch her breath, rather than inquire after whatever message she carried immediately.
"Take a minute to collect yourself, Padawan. That must have been quite the run" I remarked with all the kindness I could muster while wrestling with self-recriminations.
A bare minute later, a flimsi was being thrust into my hands, with the explanation "Master Dark Woman left strict instructions her message shouldn't be delivered until an hour after midday, but when I asked around after finding you weren't in your quarters or the refectory, I was told you'd gone to the Academy. When I got there, I found you'd already been and gone, but I ran into Master Koon on my way back. Since he'd already divined the general location of your Force-presence, he was kind enough to point me in the right direction. I sprinted all the way here, trying to catch you before you left, but he should only be a couple of minutes behind me."
I removed the piece of flimsi from its opaque privacy-sheath, and, marveling at how fast word of anything interesting traveled in the Temple, very deliberately suppressed the urge to wince at the news the generally friendly Jedi Master was headed my way. It was only now occurring to me it would have been considerably more diplomatic to broach the subject of my taking Ahsoka as an apprentice with him before I approached her.
It was one concern too many, at that moment. I was forgetting things, and allowing details to slip my mind. Standing there with the exposed flimsi in my hand, I thought one thing was clear. "I have to do better, be better, than this."
Inclining my head to the young Cathar, I thanked her for delivering the message, then paused. Indecision momentarily pinning me in place, until I suppressed the impulse to sigh aloud. Recognizing the futility of trying to duck the Kel Dor Jedi Master.
"Master Koon can find me just as easily when I return for Seraph in a little while, so I may as well get this over with. Besides, I might be worrying over nothing. I misjudged Master Honoran's reaction completely, and I might be doing the same thing, here. If worse comes to worst, I can always plead a need to relieve Master Jinn as soon as possible." My silent considerations persuaded me I needed to remain and face up to my decision now rather than later.
Rather than continue to focus on an immediate future beyond my control, I turned my attention back to the present, and began reading the message my Master had left for me.
Anakin,
Gone to prevent the disaster I have foreseen, if possible.
Under no circumstances are you to follow me.
Take Seraph, that droid of yours, and your new apprentice. (Of course she said yes)
Protect the Senator, leave immediately. Confident you can stop the assassin(s).
Do not return to Coruscant in the next 48-72 hours.
Destroy this flimsi after reading!
May the Force be with you, always,
Dark Woman
My teacher's words intensified the chill I'd been feeling, yet still no knowledge of what this "disaster" could be sprung to mind. I remembered my Master telling me about a crazy Nightsister trying to use some piece of alien super-tech to destroy Coruscant, but that was more than a decade ago, and the weapon had been destroyed in the attempt. Other than that, I was drawing a complete blank on potential existential threats to the Republic's capitol. My ignorance gnawed at me, but what could I do?
Crushing the flimsi into a highly compressed wad of silicates and binding agents, I did the only thing I could.
I continued to wait right where I was. I waited for Ahsoka, and Plo Koon, but most of all, I waited to react until I'd reclaimed my center and I could make a decision untainted by the sickening guilt that was irrationally weighing me down.
A/N: Sorry this chapter is so short, but this felt like a good stopping-place. This stuff didn't really feel like it fit with the next chapter, plus I wanted to get something up after so long.