Chapter Text
Ahsoka held up a silent hand to halt her troops. Holding up her index and middle fingers, she flicked her hands out to either side, indicating that they were to split up and surround the crashed ship they had been sent out to scout. The planet Moran was rich in natural resources and well positioned along critical space routes, but the Morans largely kept themselves to a few major metropolitan areas and small mining outposts. The jungles where Ahsoka and her squad now prowled were a vast wilderness, supposedly untouched by civilization.
Though loyal enough to the Republic, the Morans were not able to prevent the theft of their land and resources by separatist colonies, who utilized the planet’s wealth of resources for droid production and seized the space routes connected to it. Retaking the planet was the current strategic focal point of the Republic’s offensive strategies, but the droid armies were deeply ensconced in nearly every continent. Their entrenchment was supported by self-sufficient factories immune to planetary blockade due to independent planetary supply lines.
Three days ago, Master Anakin had prevailed in securing the orbital and solar space of the planet and had taken Ahsoka to the surface to aid the other Jedi generals in a brutal ground campaign. Three days ago, the planet’s space was put under Republic lock-down, no ships permitted in or out without the Grand Republic Army’s knowledge. Six hours ago, an unknown and unregistered ship somehow slipped past the barricade and made an aggressive descent not too far from General Skywalker’s front.
Ahsoka was a gifted scout; she loved the opportunity to slip seamlessly into the natural landscape and move through unsecured and hostile territories. She’d sent her men on a wide circle around the target site and crept closer in a direct path. There was a gouge of fallen trees where the craft had made its hurried landing (a necessary crash, perhaps–there was no clearing for a landing strip for hundreds of miles). Either this vessel was deliberately directed toward Skyguy’s position, or it was sufficiently out of control to not direct itself towards the open plains that existed further north of these equatorial rain forests.
No longer leading her troopers, Ahsoka took to the trees and lightly jumped from branch to branch until she caught eyes on the spacecraft.
It was a piece of junk.
It looked like a small freight craft, a model she’d never seen before, with its bulwark blackened from years of carbon scoring and its rough edges dulled from ionic solar winds blowing off its rusted corners. It was smoking and looked entirely burned out from reentry. This was either a very clever ruse, or the ship was genuinely never going to lift off the ground again. There was a little camp made beside the wreckage—a fire burning heartily, and a lean-to to chase off the heat of the sun. Supplies, blankets and tools were neatly laid out, and there—
Under the craft’s left propulsor engine was a man, pulling out wires like he was weeding a garden and cutting them away with the multi-tool he kept clenched in his teeth. He wore a simple tunic and soft leather boots, knee high, and had long, slightly graying hair tied back. After a few minutes he pulled himself out from under the engine and slowly stood up, propping his hands on his stiff back.
Ahsoka caught her breath when she spotted a lightsaber on his hip. He looked the part of a Jedi, but Ahsoka had never seen him before—and she’d met most of the Jedi involved with the war by now.
And anyways—anyways he was looking at her with his eyebrows raised expectantly. Ahsoka mumbled a huttese curse (one she’d picked up from Anakin when he was too distracted to recall her presence and censor himself) and hopped down. If it was a trap, she’d learned from the best on how to spring it, and anyways, her men were keeping their distance and would have kept their cover. They could always back her up at the first moment of trouble.
“Well met Padawan.” The man says as he wipes engine grease on his breeches. “Where’s your master? Also, what planet are we on?”
“You don’t know where you are?” Ahsoka asked suspiciously. If he was pretending to be a Jedi, he was doing it strangely. She could feel the force humming happily around him, though, and she was confident at least that he was not another apprentice of Dooku’s.
“I am where the force has led me.” He said simply. “But do not evade my questions, young one. What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere without your master?”
Ahsoka rankled at the apparent lack of confidence in her abilities. She was following orders and where she was supposed to be. This man had crash landed on a planet he didn’t even know without so much as contacting the very obvious republic fleet in orbit with an SOS or hail.
She decided to simply comm Skyguy instead of answering the man’s questions. His grainy holo popped up on her wrist comm and he barked out an order for a report. Ahsoka gave the maybe Jedi a sideways glance as she replied, “Old transport freighter of some kind; I don’t recognize the make, but looks like it’ll never fly again—No don’t give me that, Master, this one really is a lost cause. There’s a guy with a lightsaber I’m talking to now. Says he doesn’t know where he is, and I can’t tell if he’s Jedi or not.”
At the last sentence both Anakin and the stranger opened their mouths in protest—Anakin no doubt because she gave up her explicit instructions to use stealth and return unseen and is now conversing with a stranger with a lightsaber, and the stranger in protest that of course he is a Jedi.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes and was preparing a sarcastic comeback when the hatch of the space craft suddenly screeched open with the tortured sound of rusty hydraulics and a loud clang as the hatch fell to the ground with the dismount steps. Ahsoka leaped back and drew her lightsaber at the unexpected entrance of an unknown element, and instantly her troopers stepped out of their cover, surrounding the ship and shouting for hands up and quick surrender.
In a blink, the strange man claiming to be a Jedi had drawn his own green saber and yanked Ahsoka behind him with the force like a cat grabbing a kitten by the scruff. Ahsoka squeaked in surprise and indignation but landed in a crouch with her knee to the ground and sabers at a ready. She had to get her bearings and regain control of the situation now. Shots were already fired in response to his manhandling of their commander and deflected—by two sabers.
The newcomer was a small human boy. A padawan by his looks. Ahsoka was a poor judge of human ages, but the beads on his braid and lightsaber form he was using suggested he was about her age. Why had she never seen him or his master before?
The clones hesitated upon recognizing the familiar traits of a Jedi/padawan pair, and Ahsoka took the opportunity to regain control, ordering her men and the Jedi to stand down.
“Fives and Trucker! Continue to scout the perimeter. Shooter and Pips, search the ship and cargo. The rest of you, we’re escorting our guests back to camp. Move out!”
The older Jedi frowned thoughtfully as the clones hurried to their tasks. The padawan, who looks disheveled as if he’d just been sleeping when he stepped out cluelessly into a firefight, looked at her and her men with a skeptical look that made her instinctively squirm. That judgment was uncalled for from the padawan, since he was the one who was clearly clueless.
“Who are these people?” the boy asks his master at last, deciding to ignore her and her troops for now.
“I was hoping you would recognize your own peer, padawan. I’ve not been around the temple enough to recognize all the children and the young padawan here is not forthcoming.”
“How could I have met her before? I told you—” he said anxiously before glancing at Ahsoka and shutting his mouth. Interesting.
“Well, you have your theories.” The master hummed noncommittally as he strolled along after Ahsoka with a casual, relaxed air. “Why don’t you put them to the test?” he challenged.
The boy’s lips thinned and he walked in silence for a few moments. Something about his demeanor was truly uncanny, but Ahsoka couldn’t put her finger on it. Master Skywalker would tell her to meditate on it as if he ever found answers that way.
At last the boy asked carefully, “What’s the date?”
Ahsoka wasn’t sure what to say to that, but her right hand man answered promptly—bless the clones; they had no sense for what was weird.
Upon hearing the full date the master started coughing, and the padawan had a distinct look of vindication cross his eyes before carefully affecting a stoic but mildly interested expression.
Ahsoka turned around and started marching backwards as she faced the pair with her arms crossed on her chest. “Okay, what’s your guys’ deal?” She put just enough teeth into the demand to emphasize she wasn’t going to take any more evasions or vagaries.
“You must forgive us, young one. I entered a force anomaly that appeared during a series of rather extenuating circumstances. It appears to have warped our location in spacetime, but I trust the force has a reason for us to be here.”
“We’re almost twenty years into the future.” The padawan explained, still maintaining his carefully neutral tone. “So that’s why we haven’t seen each other in our classes, obviously.”
Ahsoka couldn’t believe this.
Not because it was so improbable that such time skipping was possible—that she believed. But that such a massive proportion of the universe’s strangest happenstances should always happen to her and her master alone? Impossible.
She looked at the pair carefully. The master had settled back into a relaxed stance, nothing about him suggested the constant tension and stress that dogged the postures of all the Jedi generals she had ever met. If it weren’t for his keenly aware eyes canvasing the surrounding foliage, alert to the slightest flit of a bird or beast in the forest, Ahsoka would have guessed that he’d managed to slip into a meditation while walking. The padawan was struggling to keep his mask up. The corners of his mouth twitched unhappily—any joy at being proven right in the wildest of theories had obviously faded in light of his fears being confirmed. He kept glancing discretely at the clone troopers, and Ahsoka could feel the distrust and trepidation seeping through the force.
Such a strange pair—the master who seemed entirely open and guileless was in truth deeply guarded and carefully controlled while the apprentice who clearly strove for a guarded and contained demeanor was an open book.
“My Name’s Ahsoka Tano,” she said at last, introducing herself to both but specifically addressing the padawan, hoping to put him at ease.
He smiled faintly, familiarly, and stuck out his hand. “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Ahsoka lost focus.
She tripped on a branch in her backwards march, tumbled down the incline of a little ravine several times and struggled to get a grip on the force to stop her fall. Covered in mud and leaves and wincing at the noise she made on her way down, Ahsoka had just a few seconds to gape at the baby-faced boy in mortification–before the droid army’s ambush was sprung and all hell broke loose.