When She Was Gone

Chapter 26

~12 years earlier~

"Come on, Snips," Anakin said, chuckling, as he bent his fingers again to show her. She tried to fold her own orange ones into the same pattern, and again her pinkie slipped out of its position. She groaned.

"Why does it have to be Calamari sign? They're all double-jointed."

Anakin leaned forward and pulled his Padawan's hands together, then folded her fingers into the right configuration, smiling a bit. "It's not about double-jointedness," he said softly. "It's about communicating in a way that people will understand even if they don't know the language. I could sign this to you—" he turned his hands and wiggled his thumbs to look like a flower. "—And you'd know I was trying to tell you something about blooming. It's designed in such a way that the beauty of the language itself always makes its message clear."

He leaned back and motioned for her to try again. Slowly, she placed her index fingers together, pushed her thumbs under them, crossed her middle and ring fingers, and placed her pinkies together.

She looked up at him, and they shared a grin.

The sign meant "Master".

~12 years later~

She veered the ship out from under the Destroyer, nearly tossing the astromech into the window. He beeped angrily, but she paid him no mind and swung around to face a line of windows, glancing at her console. The cloaking devices were still going strong.

From her vantage point, she could see a little of what was going on on the other side of those windows. She sucked in a breath, watching lightsabers move so fast they were blurry.

Her monitor beeped again, and she began to count.

"One. Two. Three."

~

Obi-Wan fiddled with the lock angrily, trying to get it to open wider. Right now the only one who would fit through was Barriss, and she was by far the spindliest one of them all.

He glanced back at the other three and froze.

Kaivo was gaining the upper hand. 

Anakin and Barriss were holding their own, but Ahsoka was failing. He watched as she very nearly lost a montral, then ducked at the last second to avoid a kick in the chest. And as she lost her focus, she gave the Sith an opening.

He pulled her lightsaber out of her hand, now wielding two, one red, one white, and in a moment of confusion, dropped low to the ground, swung--

And Ahsoka lost a leg from the knee down.

She roared in pain, Anakin roared in fury, and as she collapsed to the ground, the Chosen One and Barriss Offee unleashed an attack on Kaivo the likes of which Obi-Wan had never seen before. They swung, parried, ducked, blocked, stabbed, over and over, in perfect form. Kaivo seemed surprised, but held his own.

Suddenly, Obi-Wan remembered what he was doing, reached into the console, yanked a wire, and the door opened the rest of the way. He pulled Barriss' fake cuffs toward him with the Force and pressed the small button on the joint, and began to count.

"One. Two. Three."

~

Barriss was vaguely surprised by Skywalker's rage, but it was a very far-off feeling, since the entirety of her mind and body was focused on staying in the blind spots of the Sith.

Skywalker ducked, and she kicked over his head to deliver a blow to Kaivo's chest. He stumbled and resumed position, barely affected. Her spirits sank. Perhaps this was a suicide mission, after all.

Suddenly, Kenobi's voice penetrated the grunts and lightsaber clashes that had been filling her ears. "Fifteen!" He shouted.

Skywalker made brief eye contact with her, and she nodded. He swerved, twisting the Sith's arm behind his back, giving Barriss an opportunity to drop low to the ground and make a run for the door, where she and Kenobi levitated Ahsoka to themselves.

"Twenty-five!!" Kenobi yelled. "Anakin, move!" 

The next few moments appeared to occur in slow motion. Skywalker leapt over Kaivo's head, and with a little help from the Force, pushed himself through the air to the other three. He swung Ahsoka over his shoulder, and they tumbled out into the hall.

They barely made it five paces before Kenobi cried, "Thirty!" And a huge explosion--opening a hole into space--from the room behind them, of which Kaivo was almost out, yanked them back to the door.

A moment of confusion followed; hands fumbled for places to hold on to, alarms started blaring. After scrambling for handholds, Kenobi jammed his picker into the outer console and the door shut, cutting off the vaccuum. All four dropped to the ground, but there wasn't a moment to lose. Skywalker hefted Ahsoka over his shoulder again and took off running, the other two close behind.

They could only pray that the pilot would be ready to pick them up.

Yikes. ;)