Heyo, human beings from outer space!
Guess what??? This is another 3 +1 fic and I loooooooveee these things for no reason in particular. Also I started watching The Rookie so that's fun.
This isn't a request, but I promise I haven't forgotten about all your lovely ideas! I've just had this little plot bunny inside my head for a fat minute and realllllllyyy wanted to crackpot and thus this is it.
The prompt is "shackles" and here's a link to the audio:
Read on if you dare.
1.
Ahsoka awoke to the smell of mold and something covered by a powerful, sickly-sweet, cinnamony stench. She felt heavy all over, lethargic, and her head was a gas lamp crowded with fog that didn't want to clear.
She'd been drugged, she realized grudgingly. Even with her mind slow, she recognized the feeling immediately.
Ahsoka tried to move but found it even more difficult than she'd anticipated. Her fingers twitched and curled weakly around the sort of bedding covering the floor. Animal bedding. Straw?
The door on the other side of the room banged open and Ahsoka tilted her head to the side to see who it was. Hondo. Hondo Ohnaka.
Oh, it's you, Ahsoka wanted to say, but she couldn't move her lips to say it.
Hondo, on seeing that she was awake, somehow managed to look both dispirited and elated at the same time. "I see you are awake," he said, sounding the same way he looked. "Well good morning, young lady."
Ahsoka managed to roll her eyes at him. He chuckled heartily.
"I'm glad to see that you're waking up okay. I think we could've knocked out a bantha with the amount of-" Hondo saw the sharp look on Ahsoka's face, and quickly said, "And anyway that Skywalker would've killed me if you were dead and then I couldn't be rich so here we are!"
Ahsoka wanted to slug him.
Hondo snapped at two of his men who appeared through the doorway after him and they started advancing towards Ahsoka.
"I was hoping that you wouldn't wake up," Hondo said with a sigh. "You're a lot more cooperative when you aren't awake."
Hondo's men hauled Ahsoka to her feet. She tottered but managed to stand on her own as they bound her hands together. Somehow, being upright cleared her mind and when she began moving her feet, though heavily, she was ready to plot an escape.
"What are you going to do to me?" Ahsoka croaked, making an effort to clear her voice. "You know the Jedi won't pay a ransom and my master will only be here to break me out before you can stop him."
Hondo laughed. "My dear, I am not asking for a ransom. I am selling you to some grubby slave people. Then I'll tip off your master before Skywalker knows it was me and he'll go kill them instead. Those slavers are... how do I say... not very resourceful."
"How long?" Ahsoka asked, ignoring Hondo's cockiness. He shoved Ahsoka into their mess hall with the floor sticky with spilled drinks and other fluids that Ahsoka didn't want to think of.
"Oh, soon, very soon." a sly smile crept across his face. "So in the meantime, I'd like you to entertain us!"
Ahsoka didn't want to do any entertaining, but before she could say so, Hondo's men shoved her up onto a table. Other pirates swarmed around the table immediately, chanting and screaming for her to dance. Ahsoka refused at first, looking around for an escape, but the pirates posed a great obstacle in her way.
Then, calculating how long it would take her to get to the exit, Ahsoka began pretending to dance. As she did so, the pirates cheered, and she began wiggling her thin wrists from the ties binding them together. Once her hands were a bit looser, she kicked high, clocking a large man upside the jaw and he tumbled backward.
"Oops," Ahsoka said as she did it twice more to different pirates, "I'm so clumsy these days."
And then she threw herself over the pirates, knocking several out in the process, and made a break for the door. She whipped her arms free and commed Anakin. As she dashed away, she heard Hondo, who she'd kicked to the floor, whine, "I don't get it. Why doesn't she like me?"
2.
"You're a kriffing idiot, Hondo," Ahsoka said, trying desperately to fight her way out of the net he'd caught her in.
"Such strong words, Tano," Hondo tutted.
"You have no backup."
"Yes, it's unfortunate that all my men were killed," Hondo said, but quickly finished, "but I can be very effective on my own as well!"
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. Her fingers found the edge of the net and she began tying to thin and unwind it. "You don't stand a chance and you know it."
"I think I do have a chance," Hondo said. Ahsoka ripped the plies of rope that she'd thinned out enough to break.
"Not now." She threw off the net and sprang to her feet, whirling her lightsabers from her belt and flaunting them to intimidate Hondo.
She made a quick glance back to see the entrance of the cave in which he'd cornered her. Ahsoka could fight Hondo, capture him, and bring him down, or she could run and help her Master and the troopers finish the battle.
Ahsoka shoved her lightsabers back on her belt and dashed to the entrance of the cave.
"Running, Jedi?" Hondo called after her, shooting a stun in her direction. Ahsoka snapped out her shoto and deflected the stun blast, then shoved him against the rocky wall hard. He thudded to the ground, groaning.
And then he watched her leave, whining to no one in particular, "I don't get it. Why doesn't she like me?"
3.
The events leading up to Ahsoka's capture were foggy, but she felt very dirty at the remembrance of how many pirate hands had clamped her down.
Now, she sat upright in a containment field, having every ounce of energy drained from her. Everything ached as the field strained her core. Her breaths came unevenly and felt like fire down her throat.
"If you had half a brain cell, you would let me go," Ahsoka hissed, more from pain than intimidation, but Hondo didn't have to know that.
Hondo, however, for all his pirate-ness, wasn't always as dumb as he appeared. He tutted at her. "The good thing is, Tano, that I have several brain cells. And those brain cells all tell me that it would not be wise to let you go. I'll be rich, selling a Jedi!"
"You know how this always goes," Ahsoka said, rolling her eyes and forcing her voice to sound much brighter than she felt.
"But this time I have you in something you can't get out of," Hondo said.
"You forget that Anakin Skywalker is my master," Ahsoka said. "He'll kill you if you hand me off to some dirty slavers or whatever you're planning this time."
"I'll sell you before that happens," Hondo waved a hand dismissively through the air. "Besides, usually Kenobi is babysitting and Kenobi wouldn't-"
A sudden bang from the door cut Hondo off. As if cued to do so, Anakin burst into the room, anger burning in his eyes and signature as Hondo's men crashed to the ground. And after him, Obi-Wan raced in, allowing Anakin to make a beeline straight for Ahsoka.
And then she was falling from the containment field, right into Anakin's arms, and she could've cried from relief. Hondo, meters away did cry, but not from relief. Ahsoka shot him a nasty look before throwing a glass cup at his head. She felt too much like jello to attempt slugging him or kicking him, so it was the best she could do.
Hondo dodged it easily but Anakin shoved him to the ground with the Force. Then Anakin, wrapping an arm firmly around Ahsoka, pivoted and guided her to the door. Ahsoka could feel his anger still aflame, but Ob-Wan was giving him a look so he didn't touch Hondo.
"I don't get it," Hondo cried from the floor where he sat, defeated. "Why doesn't she like me?"
+1
Ahsoka Tano had been captured and thrown into a dingy cell that smelled like mold and a bunch of other things she didn't want to think about. Things didn't change so much, Ahsoka thought miserably. Being Fulcrum didn't mean she was granted the luxury of not being captured every other day, the same as it had been when she was fighting in the Clone War as a teenager. With age did not come get-out-of-enemy-prison-free cards.
How annoying.
She was supposed to be a leader, at least more than she was during the Clone Wars. And yet here she was, humbled inside a cell yet again.
Ahsoka looked around the dark cell. The darkness loomed around her, making it difficult for even her razor-sharp Togruta vision to make out anything more than a few meters ahead of her. No openings to let in light, Ahsoka noted. She tried to crawl across the frigid floor but her shackles held her back, scraping and clattering deafeningly as she tried to yank them further.
"Hello?" a voice said after the sound died. "I can't see. Is anyone there."
That voice... it was familiar. She couldn't ever mistake that voice for anything else. "Hondo Ohnaka?"
"What?" Hondo's voice said in alarm. "Who are you? How did you know?"
"Long time no see," Ahsoka said.
"No, there isn't any see at all," Hondo said. "I can't see. Tell me who you are."
"Huh," Ahsoka hummed. "I would've thought you'd remember from all the times you tried to capture and sell me off to slavers."
Hondo scoffed. "I captured a lot of-" he gasped. "Skywalkers little Togruta pet?"
"Yep," Ahsoka said. "In the flesh."
"How have you been, my dear?" Hondo said. "We should've met up a long time ago and-"
"Oh, hush up, Hondo, will you?" Ahsoka groaned, rolling her eyes. "You're only after money."
"Aw, you would take our friendship for granted? Well I- uh, you aren't wrong. But that is not important!" Hondo corrected himself quickly. "Where are you? I can't see you."
"Can't tell you that. I can't really see anything, either," Ahsoka said. She kicked at her shackles a few times.
Suddenly, something smacked into her and she rolled, planting herself in as much of a defensive position as she could muster with shackles binding her wrists.
"Don't worry, it's just me," Hondo said. "Now give me your hands."
Ahsoka, resisting the urge to roll her eyes again, allowed Hondo to take her hands. That's when it registered that Hondo wasn't wearing shackles like she was.
But before Ahsoka could ask how he managed to get out of his, the heavy metal fell from her wrists and clattered to the ground.
"Well, that's taken care of," Hondo said, and Ahsoka could practically hear his chest swelling with pride. "Now I just haven't found a way out of this cell yet."
"I might be able to help with that one," Ahsoka told him. She stood up slowly, her knees cracking from being bent up so long. Since when was she this old? Nevermind. It'd be better not to think about that.
Thankfully, she was still as agile as ever. Ahsoka, with the help of the Force, leaped up to the ceiling and tapped around, trying to find where the air current came from. It took her several tries but she eventually found it, a ventilation shaft, and she ripped away the grate.
"Found it," Ahsoka called down to Hondo. "There's a vent up here that we can go through."
"How high is it?" Hondo said. "I don't have your Jedi powers."
Right. Ahsoka dropped from the vent and found her way to Hondo. He was taller than her still, but thinner than he used to be. She couldn't jump with him, but even if she could, she probably wouldn't.
"Just don't scream, okay?" Ahsoka said.
"Why would I-" Hondo yelped as Ahsoka used the Force to lift him from the floor and raise him into the vents.
"I said shush," Ahsoka hissed, and Hondo fell silent. She hopped up after him.
"I do not know where to go," Hondo said once they were both inside.
Ahsoka used the Force to navigate through the ventilation system. She found the exit fairly quickly and surprisingly ran into no complications or people who wanted to kill her on the way. Ahsoka even managed to snatch her lightsabers and commlink back without anyone noticing.
"Now that that's over," Hondo said, dusting himself off as Ahsoka attempted to comm someone, "I expect a payment-"
"Oh, shush," Ahsoka said, rolling her eyes. "No one's paying you."
"But I did free you and-"
"And your payment can be walking free. I got you out."
"But I-
"Alright, how about this?" Ahsoka said. "How about you pay me? I let you walk free when I could've run off on my own."
"But you couldn't have done that if I-"
"So then your payment can be the sweet bliss of death."
"You won't kill me. Jedi don't kill."
"Not a Jedi anymore."
Hondo tried to protest again, insisting on payment and Ahsoka heard enough. She used the Force to tangle him in the nearest vine-laced tree she could find and walked several miles in the direction she hoped was North, calling for a pickup.
The Ghost arrived half an hour later.
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Word Count: 2266
Published: 16 May 2023
I just think it's so hilarious with Hondo being clueless as to why Ahsoka doesn't like him and then kidnapping her seven and a half times every other day.
Requests are open, feel free to message me or make a comment if you have an idea!
Bye, peoples!