An Unlikely Pair || Mandalorian

Chapter 1: The Beginning

So Zel is the Oc, and she is the daughter of Ahsoka Tano. Her father is Captain Rex, but if you want to imagine it was someone else, go for it, but Rex does raise her and considers him her father. 

Anyways, enjoy!

Experience outranks everything, her father told her. It was always what he said to her growing up, when she messed up, or when she did something good, and it was his form of goodbye. When she and her mother left him and her two uncles, that was what he told her. At the time, she didn't understand why they were leaving, she thought it was because of what she did- But it was for the best, as she found out years later.

All of them were survivors of the Clone Wars and the Jedi-Purge. Something one of her uncles, Wolfe, couldn't quite forget. She saw the way he stared at her when she was young, first discovering her gifts.

She was 5 at the time and had been so excited, finding out she would be just like her mom. It had been a normal day, her playing in the fields around their home while the adults talked about adults things- probably backup plans, now that she looked back on the memory with a mature mind- she wasn't quite sure why she did it, perhaps she was playing and pretending to be her mother, reenacting the stories the adults in her life had told her of the world before. Her tiny hand was out and she looked at a small pebble and sporadically jerked her arm in the opposite direction. The small togruta nearly shrieked in terror when the rock flew over her head- her golden eyes darting around to see if her mother was there, messing with her.

No one was there. Out of curiosity, she went searching through the field for the rock; after she found it she concentrated very hard, cheeks puffed with air as she focused as much as a small child her age could and repeated her actions. The result was the same as well, and a joy she had never felt in her short life filled her tiny body, almost enough to make her explode.

She had scooped the rock up in her hand and dashed back home, calling for her parents and uncles. The stories she heard from them made her believe these abilities were a gift, something to be proud of and to not hide. However, when she told them, a wave of fear had filled the room, for various reasons. It was then that she was told more, albeit vaguely considering her young age. The fall of the Jedi, how they were betrayed, the world wasn't like it was in the stories anymore. She would have to hide her gifts, instead of using them freely as she had thought.

Her small self didn't understand it. She was given a gift few had- but she was told to hide it? And then to hide it she would have to train and grow her powers? It didn't make any sense. A part of it still didn't to her today, but she was grateful she learned what she did. 

For the next year, her mother had been trying to teach her how to control her abilities, how to hide them, to sense others. To be safe, she said. The state of the galaxy demanded that she hide or be a target.

Much like her mother, she was quick to learn. She was not as powerful and by no means as close of a natural, but that was okay. Her mother seemed relieved she wasn't as strong. At the time she felt weak. 

Other things happened over the course of the year. Wolfe distanced himself from her, both figuratively and physically. Their daily games of chess thinned out, and eventually, he stopped playing all together. He would hide from her, not in a game way, but whenever she'd enter a room he'd leave. 

It hurt, felt like she was doing something wrong, or that she said something mean and he didn't want to play with her anymore. Her father sat her down in the room he shared with her mother, and pulled out his armor from the war. It was dusty and the paint was chipped and faded. He told her more about the war, from the perspective of the clones. The horrors of serving in a war where your service is not appreciated, where people would treat you differently because you weren't born but created. And knowing that you were made to be cannon fodder.