Aluxsidrian (or Lux, as he preferred to be called, and it made a nice mental substitute for 'Master') Noreino was by no means the stupidest person Ahsoka had ever met, but one could certainly make a compelling case against his perception.

It had been three days since she and the others were sold to his family. Three days she'd spent in his apartments sitting prettily or offering to serve him, and not a single minute in his bed. At night, when most came searching for companionship, he bade her farewell and sent her back to the slave quarters to sleep.

Not that she hadn't been dropping hints, of course – that was what was expected of her – but he'd taken none of them. And that, Ahsoka was beginning to realize, had the potential to become seriously problematic. She had no weapons, no backup, and calling on the Force as much as she had to get herself here had been taking a huge risk of being discovered. Her one bargaining chip was her body.

Had Lux no sense for how Onderonian society had been made to operate under his father's rule? Gaining a real foothold here in the palace would've been ten times easier had Lux been your average sleemo, easily bedded and charmed into giving her what she wanted – even more so with the Force to persuade him.

Ahsoka shouldn't have been so hopeful. She'd learned the hard way that life was never fair or easy in the thick of the Clone Wars, and everything that had followed had only hammered the lesson home. Lux Noreino was just the latest – and perhaps most elusive – addition in the series of unfortunate circumstances to befall her. In fact, she'd barely seen him since she'd arrived.

By day, Lux used his quarters only as a stopping off point to change clothes or collect documents for the functions that required his presence. At night, he sat at his desk for hours with only a single lamp to guide him, finishing paperwork or doing research on the HoloNet. Despite the intense concentration she felt from him in the Force, she could never glean from his thoughts exactly what he was studying.

Ahsoka forced herself not to look up as the door opened, instead folding her hands in her lap and angling her gaze toward the window and the city beyond it. She could tell from the stride it was Lux arriving, and she knew a proper slave would already have jumped to her feet and gone to help him take off his coat, offer him refreshments, offer him their body, if necessary. But if conventional tactics had her hitting a wall without so much as rattling what lay on the other side, perhaps it was time to try something else.

She had thrown herself into this situation on a whim in the midst of a sudden bout of weakness. Only careful planning would get her out with intel she could use.

Out. The concept threatened to swallow her whole until she'd laid out every last detail of her escape, but in a place where even her own thoughts could betray her, she couldn't start dreaming just yet. She had to take it one step at a time; live in the moment as she'd been taught to.

Ahsoka called up a bored, distant expression when he came over, and only glanced up once she was sure his eyes were on her. If it took a show to get his attention, she'd give him one. She had nearly a year of practice at it already.

Though she was nowhere near as fit and flexible as she'd once been, it was still easy to give a graceful roll her neck and move the rest of her torso after it as she rose to her feet. It could've passed for an absentminded stretch had it not made the flimsy straps of the absurd blue thing she'd been given to wear that morning slip off. The gesture was not lost on Lux: he barely moved, but his big grey-green eyes had suddenly gone considerably wider.

That was a relief. She had started to worry he was too set on another gender, or another species altogether for her charms to take effect.

Ahsoka strode toward him slowly, giving him ample time to read how her body moved in a perfect visual counterpoint between careful steps and answering swivels of her hips. But when she finally stood before him and was reaching out for his chest, searching for the resonance of his heartbeat with a clever metaphor at the ready, he shrank away. That she hadn't been expecting, and she quickly let her hand drop. It wouldn't do to scare him off before he was securely in her net.

"Can I be of assistance, Master?" she murmured instead, gazing up at him with soft eyes. He abruptly looked away, but there was still enough control in the way he held himself to make it obvious he was fighting her.

And losing, perhaps. He only managed to breathe her name in answer.

"Let me help you relax. I'm sure you've had a long, tiring day." She closed the distance between them again to press a lasting kiss into the corner of his mouth. Under the sandpaper roughness of the day's stubble, his skin was smooth and flushed a delicate pink – but when she felt him take a calming breath and relax again beneath her, she knew he'd found a second wind.

Undeterred, Ahsoka moved back and flashed him an inviting smile, reaching up for the clasp holding his stiff high neckline in place. Unaffected, he caught her hands halfway there and carefully lowered them back down to her sides.

Damn his ethics. Any other person would already have surrendered. Clearly, he had more strength in him than she'd foreseen – and in a mind as full of conflict and emotional baggage as she'd sensed his was, that was a rare thing indeed. It was probably a miracle her power had slipped through the cracks and held its grip on him as long as they had during their first meeting. But if she could figure out exactly what had lowered his defenses and drawn him to her, maybe she could do it again.

Ahsoka could tell just by looking up at that gently smiling face that she'd get no answers on that point now. Her only two options were asking him directly or using the Force to find out. Both were bound to give her away, with words or the phenomenal amount of mental energy it would take to overpower and ensnare his mind. Either way, her enemies would know her position within minutes.

The logic she'd fallen back upon to take apart the situation apart and put it back together again was so cold it bordered on ruthlessness, but that hardly fazed her. Ahsoka knew this course of action was necessary if she wanted to get the information she was after, which was why she barely understood it when Anakin's voice whispered from some distant memory that this was not the Jedi way. All she knew was the wrongness of it all had her feeling like she'd just been hit with a freight tram. Forcing herself on Lux made her no better than a slave owner.

"You don't have to dress up in pretty illusions just to please me. You should know by now that I don't want anything of the sort from you," Lux was saying. She could only stare at him blankly – she hadn't even realized he was speaking to her.

"You're supposed to want me," Ahsoka retorted, indulging in a moment of childish petulance. He knew too little about her to catch the double meaning.

"I freely admit that you're beautiful, Alynna, and with how easily you adapt yourself to every situation you find yourself in, I know you're much smarter than you try to let on. But that's not how I want to do things."

Perhaps it was the sincerity in his eyes, or the way one side of his smile lifted higher than the other, off-kilter, when he spoke. Perhaps it was even something she was catching in the Force unconsciously. Whatever the cause, there was warmth thrumming deep inside her that hadn't been there before.

"Then why did you choose me?" she asked slowly.

"You... brought back memories."

"We only met three days ago."

"That's true. But I've learned the hard way – and still am learning – that when the universe sends me a good thing, it's best to take it and ask questions later."

I've learned the opposite, Ahsoka wanted to say. Instead, she let curiosity get the better of her and shot back, "What kind of memories?"

"Experiences with someone I once knew." His gaze flicked up to meet hers, then fell again, guarded less against her pressuring and more against something that came from within. "You remind me of her, a little – at least in terms of countenance."

Ahsoka pursed her lips. Lux had an uncanny way of answering her questions while only volunteering the minimum amount of information. However, just as she was opening her mouth to ask what he meant, to seize a new chance at learning what he had found so interesting about her, he cut her off by speaking again.

"For example, neither of you back down unless it suits you. For her, it was always obvious what her reasons were: moving to a safe distance to regroup when conditions were less than ideal, so to speak. But with you... I can't make out what decides whether or not you stand your ground."

Belatedly, Ahsoka realized she was being outmaneuvered, baited on by his vague comments into showing how far she would press him for answers. He had been gathering information on her the same way she had been him, and she'd never suspected it until he told her outright what was puzzling him.

Everything you say can and will be used against you, she thought bitterly. What he wanted to use the profile he had to be building on her for, she could only guess at – and clamp her mouth shut to avoid giving him any further insight.

Damn his ethics, damn his cleverness at manipulating conversations, and damn that she couldn't use the Force to help her see through it. If bandying words like this was to be a regular thing, she'd have to be more careful than ever to keep her past as Ahsoka Tano from eclipsing her new identity as Alynna Taari.

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Master," Ahsoka said, pairing a demure expression with the same tone she had used while questioning him as she glanced down at her lap. Perhaps if she eased through the transition gradually, he wouldn't catch on that there was a huge separation between the person she was and the persona she had to–

"And she's gone again."

Busted. "Who is?"

"The side of you that I saw when I first laid eyes on you – the one I think I saw again just now." He licked his lips and angled his chin to look over her shoulder and out the window in feigned absentmindedness. Now that she knew to watch him more closely, it was clear he'd had training to control of his body language, and was using it here to buy himself a few more seconds to plan out his next move. "Someone who's less... muted," he finished after a moment. "It's a welcome change from what I'm used to, really."

Then, Ahsoka understood why he'd been drawn to her – or at least part of the reason: "So, you prefer the company of equals. I hope you're not searching for it in a lowly slave girl. Equality is never possible when one person holds all the power."

"Right," he said, turning away. He looked almost distressed. Something she'd said must have gotten to him. "But I've been around long enough to remember when it was possible, at least on Onderon."

Ahsoka had tried playing the scared slave and then the obedient one, only to have him cheerfully reassert he and the paid staff could take care of everything. Then she'd tried playing the seducer, and only found him even more determined to hold her at arm's length. If he was most comfortable regarding his fellow beings as equals, and more drawn to the strength of Ahsoka Tano than the wiles of Alynna Taari, perhaps she could get further with him by being his friend.

This would just be another part to play. The only difference was that her new role had a bit more in common with the person she was underneath.

"Credit for your thoughts?"

Ahsoka met his gaze once he was facing her once more, selecting a partial truth for his benefit. "I'm trying to figure out who I should be for you."

Calmly, though he seemed to have sensed she wasn't finished speaking, he interjected, "I already said I you don't have to do that."

"No, that's not what I meant. You won't let me serve you, or even give you pleasure. Those are the only things I've been made to do for the past year. I don't know what else I can do for you." It wasn't a total lie, and it was best to let him define the parameters of her new role if he was the one she was catering it to.

"You can talk to me."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What?"

"Look, I– I'll be honest with you, Alynna," he said, and at his confessional tone of voice her lekku pricked up. "I didn't want to be put in this situation. The idea of owning a sentient being makes my skin crawl. Despite the technicalities, I want you to know that you owe me nothing. But if we're in this together, and you still feel you have to do something for me, the only thing I can think of is talking to me."

Talking? Ahsoka bit back a wince. There's a thousand ways I could trip up and get caught if all we're doing is talking! Damn him, damn him, damn him...

"I'm... not much of a conversationalist. You'd get bored pretty quickly."

"I don't mean empty small talk – gods know I have enough of that here at the palace, with all the bureaucrats and airheaded gentry I have to deal with on a daily basis. I mean telling me about your experiences, your life before coming here..."

"I know my way around tech and computers, too," Ahsoka said too quickly as desperation got the better of her. Lux was smiling at her in a brilliant way that made her think he'd missed it, and when he nodded eagerly for her to go on, she added, "My... family taught me. But it's been awhile, so I'd be really out of practice."

"That's fine," he said through a gleeful laugh. Even the mere hint of it was infectious, and before long she was beginning to smile too as she stared up into his big, expressive eyes.

Now that she really looked at them, really looked at them, they were more green than grey. They simply changed with the light to make him seem a lot more muted than he actually was. They were really quite beautiful.

"Is there something I can do, then?" she asked, shaking the thought away.

"Well, I'm upgrading security on my computer terminal. It's straightforward work, but slow, and I haven't had time to move forward significantly. If you could help out, maybe work on it an hour or two a day, it would be done in no time at all."

Ahsoka opened her mouth to say a wholehearted yes, but a little voice at the back of her mind reminded her she was still in enemy territory. Unlike him, she had to question absolutely everything. "Why not just hire a mechanic or a programmer for this? It's well within your means, and they could finish the job in even less time."

"I have my reasons. I like researching things the Imperial databases like to call 'the less desirable parts of recent history'. Most people are easily bribed, and there are many who might wish to use an opportunity like this against me."

There was a clear warning in his words, but Ahsoka paid it no mind. As far as she was concerned, this sudden bout of skepticism was the sanest thing he'd displayed since walking through the door a few minutes before.

Ahsoka raised a brow marking and crossed her arms. "So instead you're choosing to trust someone you met three days ago."

"It's better than the alternative. Besides, something tells me you won't betray me as quickly as most people in this gods-forsaken city."

Caught somewhere between offence and relief, she shot back, "And why not?"

"Because I've caught your interest," he said with a knowing smile. "I don't make sense to you. Until you've figured me out, and made a decision based on that conclusion, I have a feeling you'll play nice."

Ahsoka opened her mouth then shut it again. Lux's smile grew, and she had to concede he'd won this round.

"The terminal is on my desk. With the amount of tinkering I've done to it, it probably has the fastest connection in the palace. Here's my proposal, if you want me to give you something to do. You work an hour or two a day upgrading the system, and then, provided I'm not using it for work, it's yours the rest of the time. You can do whatever you like – I want you to be comfortable and entertained, too."

Though she gave no outward sign of it, Ahsoka's heart soared. Willingly, Lux was offering her near unlimited access to reports on the outside galaxy untainted by Imperial propaganda, and perhaps, if she got lucky, news of the Rebellion. Not to mention with his wealth of resources she was bound to find information she could get to the right people, as soon as she could think up a way out of here.

As she smiled sweetly up at him, there was a niggling whisper at the back of her mind that she was preparing to betray the first free sentient in ages to show her genuine, helpful kindness. But she would not let the same shame she'd felt when Anakin's voice had reminded her of her values rise up to stand in her way again.

"As ever," she said, uncrossing her arms, "Your wish is my command."

Ahsoka has learned the hard way that she can't underestimate Lux – though it didn't go as badly as it could have. Already an opportunity to find out what happened to Anakin and the rest of the Rebellion has presented itself, but can she exploit it without making Lux suspicious? She dodged a bullet by making her move for someone gentle and honorable, but Noreino House is by no means a safe place. What secrets and dangers will she uncover next? Only time will tell...

SHIPPY MOMENTS EVEN IF THEY'RE BOTH BEING A LIL MANIPULATIVE THATS OKAAAAYYYY LMAO

You guys may find that I cut a lot of the fluff (sorry) from the original fic, but for the second go I think a slower burn is more in character for them. If Ahsoka is too forward and takes the swiftest path to getting what she wants, she might scare Lux off before he's served his purpose – and there's no way she'd be able to make it meaningful on her end that way, either.

Lucky for us shippers, these two sweet idiots are gonna be spending a LOT of time together in the near future.