How to Take an Empire

Chapter Thirteen: Potential

There was a shortlist of planets that Ahsoka never wanted to step foot on again. That if they up and suddenly disappeared from the face of the galaxy, Ahsoka couldn't say she'd count as a loss. Mustafar was at the very top of the list. And she would have thought, all things considered, that it would be at the top of Vader's as a close second behind Tatooine.

"Now, will you explain to me what we're doing here?" Ahsoka asked as they stood on the landing pad of the hot planet.

"This is the last part of your training."

"The last part?" Ahsoka echoed.

Vader didn't answer and just started walking. Ahsoka followed, tugging on the hood of her cloak to attempt to shield herself from the blistering heat and to distract herself from the long-buried negative emotions her experience on the planet dredged to the surface. Her world was already shattered by the time she came here to confront Anakin a little over two years ago, but it was on this planet that she realized it had been shattered after she figured out her former master had pledged himself to the Sith. Where he'd almost killed his wife and unborn children in his temporary dark side insanity, and then forced her to injure him to the point of needing a life support suit.

The darkness beckoned to her, promising to soothe the pain and ache that came with the anger and hate welling up within, but Ahsoka took a calming breath and forced it aside. That day had been pretty kriffed up, but the outcome wasn't all bad. Ahsoka had gotten Luke and Leia out of it, as much as two years ago she'd never wanted children or dreamed of having them. She'd been a Jedi and eighteen at the time with a thirst for action and adventure thrumming in her blood. She still had that thirst, but two years of not being able to indulge in it to take care of the children left in her care had tempered it some. She smiled to herself. Amazing how things changed and yet stayed the same.

They didn't stop until they got to a cave in the hot rocky formations of the planet, a place where she could no longer ignore or cast aside the darkness that beckoned to her as it threatened to overwhelm her if she weren't vigilant. And that was saying something considering the man standing next to her could be a drowning sea of darkness when he wasn't restraining his power.

"What's this?" Ahsoka asked, though she already had an idea.

"A dark side locus," Vader replied. They both peered at the cave together in silence for a while before Vader finally said, "Ahsoka, I've done everything I know to do to turn you."

Ahsoka wasn't going to argue with that. She'd thought her Jedi training could be intense during the war, but she'd come to find out that Anakin had been holding back his raw power a lot more than she'd originally assumed he had. That or the dark side just artificially amplified his power. Regardless, Vader was a ruthless taskmaster. There was no weakness that he overlooked or didn't dangle over her head and taunt her with. No mistake she made that went uncriticized. No mental or physical boundary or limit that he would not push her past. Nothing he wouldn't say or do to get a rise out of her.

But Ahsoka was stubborn and determined if nothing else. And Anakin had never taught her to back down from a challenge, something that had come back to haunt him in the latter part of the Clone Wars when she determined he was challenging her. And she would make sure it haunted Vader.

There had been a lot of days where she wanted to throw a tantrum (She did, once, when he pulled a dirty trick during one of their sparring matches that cost her a fight she probably would have lost anyway. But she blamed it on being up all night with a sick Luke and lack of sleep), scream (She had when Vader dropped her in some jungle with only her lightsabers. The experience of continually defending herself from monsters and the sentient rat species with a horde mentality that she'd stumbled across made her experience with the Trandoshan hunters as a padawan seem like a kriffing vacation. When Vader finally retrieved her after three days, she'd screamed at him and had to resist the urge to impale him with the lightsaber she hadn't lost for his cruel smirk and dark amusement), and cry (On that one, she'd never give Vader the satisfaction no matter how cruel he was. She just hurled cruel accusations right back at him). But she'd resisted every attempt he'd come at her with to push her to the dark side, and she had to admit the training was, while cruel, effective.