How to Take an Empire

Part 1: Chapter One: Unknown

She should have been relieved, walking through the halls of the Jedi temple behind her master and back toward their quarters after very nearly being framed and sentenced for a crime she didn't commit and possibly executed. Only possibly because she'd had a few more ideas up her sleeve. Sith. Separatists. Jedi. Republic. Ahsoka wasn't going to let herself be taken out that easily.

Ahsoka resisted the urge to huff. The irony of comparing the Sith and the Separatists to the Jedi and the Republic wasn't lost on her. She'd expect to be framed for a crime, arrested, and tried on flimsy circumstantial evidence at best with no regard for her proclamations of innocence if she'd been captured by the Separatists. But the same treatment from the people she fought and almost died for on a daily basis had blindsided her.

Even now, though the Jedi Council explained it off as passing some grand trial from the Force on the way to becoming a Jedi Knight, Ahsoka was having trouble reconciling everything that had just happened.

She tried unsuccessfully to quiet her mind, to release her feelings and conflict into the Force, but for whatever reason, the Force wouldn't accept it. Almost like it wanted her to take a closer look at where those feelings stemmed from.

As he led them ahead, Anakin was uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative, both physically and in the Force. Like the calm before an ominous storm coming on the horizon. It was hard to be very concerned about it when she was trying to fight her own storm, though.

When they got to their assigned quarters, she practically fell onto the simple couch, belatedly realizing how shaky her legs were. Her entire body was trembling. And she wondered how she'd even made the walk from the Council to get back here; how she was even able to keep her hand clenched around the string of her padawan beads. She'd forgotten they were even in her hand.

Ahsoka stared at the long link of beads that she'd taken back from her master, that she'd refused to put back on in the presence of the Council that not even a day ago condemned her. And the more she looked at them, the more she wondered, did she even want to.

"Ahsoka," Anakin finally said.

Ahsoka didn't respond as she stared at the beads. What did she want right now?

"Ahsoka. Are you okay? Wait a minute. Bad choice of question. Of course, you're not."

Ahsoka looked up at him at that. On any normal occasion—normal for them anyway—she would have shot him a wry look and maybe rolled her eyes because he was so bad at dealing with emotionally charged situations. Same old Anakin. But even that familiarity brought her no comfort. Not when everything else was so unfamiliar to her. Not when the Jedi Temple suddenly didn't feel like home anymore.

"I just..." Anakin groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you want to talk about all this? The last couple of days?"

"Not really," Ahsoka admitted because if she did, she was afraid of what would come out.

"Okay," Anakin said, sounding a little relieved like this wasn't something he felt like unpacking right now either. Ahsoka wished she could smile at that. "When you're ready, I'm here. For now, just get some rest. You're safe now."

That gave her pause. Safe. She supposed she should have felt that way, and a few days ago, she would have agreed with that. But now she felt different about the place that was supposed to be her home. It felt like being on the war front. Always having to be on alert. Not knowing where the next danger was coming from. Skeptical of every stranger with the only ones that could be trusted being the clones and other Jedi. Now, Ahsoka wasn't even sure about that anymore. In that way, it felt worse than being on the war front because this was the one place, the one entity she was supposed to be able to have faith in. And now, she didn't even have that.