Shaak Ti and Ahsoka Tano

Chapter 8

In this chapter, the focus will be on Ahsoka, since Ahsoka is Shaak's daughter and some of you may wonder what happened to her. So... yea, let's start!

Did she always hurt this much when she woke up? That was the first question that came to Ahsoka's mind as her eyes opened. She scanned around and her head dropped. For a few seconds, she had forgotten, and she almost expected to see the quarters that she used to share with her former master, but no. Coruscant was not the best planet to sleep rough on; not that sleeping in the street was particularly good anywhere, but nowhere was as bad as Coruscant. She had spent the night under a walkway between buildings and the late morning sun flashed in her eyes as she moved her head in and out of the shadows cast by the steps that were next to her. Even though the walkway had provided her with some degree of shelter, she was still cold, wet, hungry and thirsty, and the desperateness of her situation became all too evident to her mind. Her stiff limbs clicked in defiance as she forced herself to sit up and her rear lekku was throbbing from having to scrape against the floor as she slept, not to mention the ringing in her montrals from the noise of the morning aerial traffic. Tears appeared in her crystal blue eyes as the events of the last week and the decision she had made the day before again came to her mind. It was a week where she had gone from a successful Padawan and commander to.....well, what was she now? Ahsoka didn't truly know but the best guess she could come up with was; nothing. Yes, she was nothing now, but at least she no longer had to devote her life to the Jedi council that were more concerned with the war and their standing within it than their own people. At least she no longer had to fight in a war where the only true winner was the Dark Side of the Force. 

She glanced up. From where she had spent the night, she could still see the temple in the near distance. She could almost see the tendrils of darkness hold the temple in its grasp almost as if the Jedi Order was now serving as the Dark Side's own personal lightsaber. Ahsoka sighed; there was truth in Barriss' words and her former best friend was right; it was only a matter of time. Because of that, she knew that she couldn't trust the council anymore; how long before they turned on her again? She couldn't stand to go through that again and what would she have done if she had have found herself in that situation again? That was the real reason she had left. As she told Anakin; how could she trust herself anymore? After all, she now knew, without doubt, that the Republic was corrupt; that the Jedi Order itself was corrupt. Would that knowledge do to her what it had done to Barriss? No, she wasn't going to let it and leaving the situation was the only way to guarantee that she wouldn't fall. Ahsoka may have left the Jedi Order, but she made a promise to both herself and the Force that she would not fall into darkness. She had to leave the only life she had ever known to guarantee it, but she would not fall. She hoped Anakin would find a way to move on. Ahsoka hoped that he had listened to her when she said that it wasn't about him. She wished that there was a way to have left the council to their fate without having to leave Anakin, but there wasn't. As she said, she needed to sort this out and answer the questions within her alone and, as unfortunate as it was, that meant without him too. She would have been lying if she had said that there wasn't a part of her that wanted to run back to him and tell him that she'd made a mistake since there definitely was, but no, to do that would be unfair to herself and unfair to everyone else. 

She sniffed her tears away. She wasn't a fugitive anymore at least; she didn't have worry about being executed or hunted by former friends but she knew that she was still in trouble. As a Jedi, she had food, clothing, shelter and companionship but now, she had nothing. She didn't even have enough credits to buy herself some breakfast. More important than any of that, however; she had no purpose now and she had no role or employment. There was one thing that she was certain of, however. She had to get off Coruscant. This planet had been her home and she had always associated it with the temple and her friends; her purpose in life, but now, she could only associate the central planet of the Republic with betrayal, death, pain and darkness. There was only one place that she wanted to go to really: Shili; her planet of birth. Perhaps she had family there that she could return to. Ahsoka knew that her father was, unfortunately, dead. Although she mercifully couldn't remember, she was with him when he was killed. However, she had a mother somewhere, didn't she? Ahsoka had no idea who she was, but she vaguely remembered her father saying that her mother was a wise, strong and wonderful women and that it hurt her a great deal to have to leave Ahsoka and her father. She was quite certain, however, that her father never said anything about why her mother had to leave. Ahsoka wondered if she could be found and even she could, first, Ahsoka had to get to Shili and without credits that wasn't going to be easy.