Wakefulness came in a flash, dragging Ahsoka from unconsciousness to reality in the space of a heartbeat.

Her throat felt tight – the product of a murky dream of ominous, repetitive breathing and invisible fingers clenched around her throat. She didn't flinch. She was too careful for that, when it wasn't a flashback stripping all her control away. But even so, the first breath of fresh air was so sweet she nearly sighed in relief.

It was still enough in the room that the sound waves reaching her montrals were too faint to tell her much about her surroundings. Somewhere to her left, Lux's presence was burning softly, a candle over the deep ocean of the Force just bright enough to make the waves below seem darker. Ahsoka resisted dipping her fingers in the waters for the answers. The Force would send a warning if something was wrong, and full awareness would return to her soon either way.

"Alynna, are you awake?" Lux called, his voice warm and teasing.

Ahsoka blinked an eye open, and found herself half-reclined on the futon in his office in the villa. That was it. Lux had been away at dinner with the head of a Lesser House, a woman who oversaw one of the smaller mines Lux had visited recently. Ahsoka had waited up for him, hoping to go over their training schedule for the next few days. Clearly, boredom and the late hour had gotten the better of her.

"What gave it away?" she asked, sitting up and turning to him.

Lux smiled without looking up from his pages of flimsiplast. In the low light, his hair was a honeyed version of its usual brown-black. "Your breathing changed. Not by much, but it's so quiet this time of night you catch every little sound."

Ahsoka nodded absently and rose to her feet, walking over to lean against the side of his desk. "You should've woken me sooner so I could get back to my own bed. I know you keep crazy hours, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to."

"I can give you something to get to sleep faster, if you'd like. On the really bad nights, I take melatonin supplements."

Ahsoka remembered those merciless claws squeezing the life out of her, the cold indifference in that unwavering breath. She stalled halfway through crossing her arms, and her elbows stuck awkwardly out to the sides until she had the presence of mind to tuck them in again. Quickly, she shook her head, shoving the strange dream to the back of her mind with the rest of the trauma.

Lux was still waiting for an answer. Feigning nonchalance, Ahsoka flashed him a smile and said, "I'd prefer to stay up for a bit, actually. Tire myself out."

Lux didn't buy it. "Was the dream a bad one?"

"What?"

"Like I said, it's so quiet I can hear minute changes. A few times, you were hyperventilating... which makes me sound like a creep who's been listening to your breathing all evening." Lux laughed, a soft, broken thing, and hunched down in his chair. His presence in the Force, which had been deceptively calm just moments before, was churning. "I'm sorry. I–I'm a little tired, and not watching my words."

Ahsoka clasped his shoulder, frowning. "Then you should rest, Lux," she said. His name slipped out unbidden instead of the title a slave was meant to call him.

That had been happening more and more lately. Her sense of self – her old self, the younger Ahsoka who'd been as clever as she was cocky – was growing stronger with every Imperial patrol thwarted and every crate of supplies rerouted to those in need. In the past week alone, she'd helped five villages. That Ahsoka hadn't cared much for titles – even with her own Jedi teacher.

Lux put his hand over hers, gripping her fingers like a drifting spacer would an unexpectedly proffered lifeline. "I'd like to stay awake a little longer, too, I think," he said, picking up one of the half-dozen glowing datapads on his desk with his free hand. Only then, in the harsher light, did she see the dark circles under his eyes.

"Was your dream a bad one?" she asked. Lux froze, and it gave her enough courage to push his 'pad away. "You may be spearheading a publicity campaign, but I know your schedule. You have lots of time to sleep, but you're not using it. And I can't imagine why, if you have supplements and the like... unless you're afraid to."

Lux inhaled sharply, his lower lip quivering. He covered it with a fist, and the hand holding hers tightened to a death grip. When he spoke, his voice made her think of an icy river in a thaw – cold, still, but so thinned out by the deluge beneath that it was close to shattering. "Terrified, honestly. I'll probably stay up all night."

"Why?"

"This is the night my– my mother died. And, listen, I know it isn't rational to think the nightmares will be worse tonight than any other night. But it's like– it's like tonight they'll be real. Like the fact that it happened on this day three years ago, at about this time of night, give it more power. And that makes it worse."

He was crying a little. Ahsoka ached to hold him, to tell him it would be all right, to kiss his tears away – anything to make him smile again.

She'd wanted that for Master Plo after the Malevolence had killed thousands of his men and destroyed his entire fleet. She'd wanted that for Obi-Wan after the death of Duchess Satine. She'd wanted that when Anakin had lost his friend and mentor Chancellor Palpatine, and when he'd lost Padmé and their unborn child.

She was starting to remember how much power giving yourself to someone else really had. All that emotion was condensed into this single moment, drawn back in on itself to give to a single person. And the devotion and determination to protect Lux as one of her own scared her – but not as much as letting him succumb to grief.

"Then make it your own."

"How do you mean?"

"You're strong, Lux," Ahsoka said. "Fight this! If pushing it aside year after year isn't working, bend it to your will. Remember it on your own terms."

Lux looked up in shock, his eyes wide and glassy. The pressure to look away, to slip back into what was expected of her as the slave girl Alynna Taari, weighed down on her. Ahsoka didn't give in to it. She held his gaze without wavering, thrumming with her own boldness.

"I can't ask you to bear this for my sake alone when you're already carrying so much," he whispered, wiping his eyes dry. His hand slipped from hers.

"I never said you had to tell me. But if you assumed that, I think you want to."

Lux looked unconvinced. Ahsoka sighed and found his hand again. "The Lord Imperator is so concerned with his family's strength and security I doubt he'd be willing to find you a good therapist. But we're roughing it for your training, and in two weeks you've already made a ton of progress. We can do the same with this. What was it you said, before? About how we could make a good team?"

Dangerous words, Anakin's voice whispered in the back of her mind. Ahsoka ignored it. Even when she was the one conjuring him, he was still one to talk.

"You can trust me with this, Lux."

"I thought you said I couldn't trust you."

"You can't trust my political stance and choice of allies, with the times we're living in. But I swore I'd protect you. Granted, your own demons aren't the most conventional things to protect you from, but it still counts if they're hurting you."

Lux glanced down. He worried at his lower lip in silence for a long moment before addressing her. "I'll have to borrow your strength and conviction, Alynna."

Ahsoka squeezed his hand in response.

"Senator Amidala took every precaution available to her while travelling, but a contact with diplomatic immunity she'd hoped would get her to Mandalore fell through shortly before her departure," Lux began. "Even before they'd exchanged greetings, she told my mother there was a chance someone tracked her to Raxus."

The same sick, tense feeling she'd felt last time Lux had told her about Padmé's excursion curled in the pit of Ahsoka's stomach. Ahsoka herself had been the contact Lux spoke of. The irony might've made her snicker, once, but Lux's side of the story had implications that killed the laughter halfway up her throat.

As a Jedi, Ahsoka had had the rare clearance to travel to neutral worlds without completing reams of dull (and highly traceable) paperwork, and Padmé had sought to make use of this for a covert peace initiative with Mina Bonteri. Ahsoka had initially been keen to help, curiosity about how the other half lived getting the better of her. But the memory of how quickly Anakin had sprung to Padmé's rescue on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan just a week before had been fresh in her mind. Anakin's deep relief in the Force as he'd embraced Padmé had confirmed that not all his unexplained absences on Coruscant had been spent in the Temple hangar.

She'd backed out quickly after factoring the remaining variables into the equation. Her curiosity, she'd decided, wasn't worth risking the life of Anakin's lover and a critical voice of support for the Jedi Order in the Senate. Neither was a peace initiative Padmé could always broach through more official channels.

Now she knew better. If Padmé hadn't been caught and her initiative with Mina Bonteri shut down, might the efforts of heroes from both sides turned into rallying points? Might it have been enough to stop the war? Ahsoka hadn't chosen to facilitate it, and that misstep weighed heavily on her.

Besides, she was a Jedi in tune with the Force and highly skilled in combat. Even if things had always been destined to go sour, had Ahsoka gotten involved, perhaps she could've done something to rescue Lux and his mother.

"My mother dismissed her concerns, because we both knew just how capable Padmé was," Lux continued, snapping Ahsoka back to the present. "Once they began laying the groundwork for the peace initiative, they were too busy to speak more of it. Then, three days later..." He paused to still his trembling lip, and Ahsoka sent him as much comfort and warmth as she could muster through the Force.

"Three days later, past midnight, Padmé was hyperspace-lagged and Mother was high on adrenaline, so they went for a walk on the grounds. I was on a school vacation, and I suppose I kept late hours out of spite. But by the time I realized the house proximity alarms had been activated, the comms were already being jammed.

"I ran to them. They were surrounded by battle droids, but I didn't know what else to do. Everything happened so fast." Lux curled his free hand through his hair, catching a few locks and digging in. Ahsoka hummed reassuringly and stroked his hand. He was near to tears again, but he seemed determined to push on.

"The distraction was enough for Padmé to grab her blaster and shoot her way through the droids," he said. "They turned to stop her before she reached the tree line, and Mother ran to me. I'd grown tall enough to match her height by then, but I felt so small next to her. So impossibly small. She had to reach up to touch my face, but she was still a giant, somehow."

Lux's free hand found her cheek. His fingers curled under themselves, each nail a smooth caress that glided against her skin. She nearly retreated back when his thumb traced the innermost angle of the marking there, but stopped herself. The intimacy he was showing her now was only a product of his recollections.

"She told me if I loved her, I would leave. Padmé knew to head to the shuttle we kept hidden on the grounds in case of emergencies, so that their dream of peace wouldn't die here with them. I told her I couldn't, so she nodded and turned away. She straightened her skirt like she always did when she was collecting her thoughts to negotiate." The hand on her cheek dropped away, and Lux's tears spilled over. "They shot her four times in the back before she could even turn around."

The angle was odd to embrace him when he was sitting down, but Ahsoka made it work. She let go of his hand and hugged him tightly. He wasn't her master, now. He was just a frightened boy who needed comfort, and, shaken as she was by his narrative, she would give it to him.

Lux sagged against her with a sigh of relief, but only stayed there a moment before pulling away again. "I– But I wasn't done," he said, drying his face with the back of one hand.

Ahsoka smiled, leaning back against the desk. "It feels good to talk, huh? I bet you can feel the change even now."

The corners of Lux's mouth gave a noncommittal twitch. He didn't meet her gaze, keeping his eyes firmly on his hands where they hung absently over his thighs. "There was a tactical droid with the rest of them," he said. "It asked me if I would remain loyal to the Separatist Alliance where my mother had faltered. I could barely think, but I knew what would happen if I said no: they'd condemn the entire Bonteri family as rebels, and our home planet along with us.

"With Rash in their pocket, they could find a Senator to serve their interests over Onderon's easily enough. But I had my mother's support, and I was the way to make the most of the inevitable scandal. One bad jogun on an otherwise healthy tree, so to speak. So I looked at my mother's body with disgust, gave the droids my best smile... and said if they were willing to overlook her disgrace, I would lead such a distinguished career no one would even remember who'd preceded me."

Ahsoka resisted the impulse to take his hand again and fidget with it; he needed a moment to center himself, first. But stars, was she ever tempted. Motion gave her something else to do than look on with a soothing expression, gave her another thing to focus on so she didn't blurt out that she was the cause of all this.

"That's..." Lux trailed off, blinking away fresh tears. "That's what I relive, year after year. I've seen death before. I've taken life, a few times. I can blot that out. But I betrayed her. I blame Padmé for putting me in that position, but that doesn't change that my mother lay dead at my feet, and I cursed her name. I went along with every lie they told about her, about what she and Padmé were trying to do."

"Lux, no, that's not–"

Lux scoffed. "Who did I end up protecting? My people starve in the cities and mining villages alike while the rich and the nobility grow fat off their toils." His hands closed into white-knuckled fists. "I've gone along with this blasted sham for three years – first under the Confederacy, now under the Empire. I fought back, and I was defeated. I survived, but I stayed down. Why did I karking stay down?"

Even through the shields that kept her closed off from all but the barest impulses, Ahsoka felt the Force swirl ominously. This moment was a nexus. Lux's emotions still wavered, uncertain, but she could read the signs that he was trying to trade the inaction of sadness for the vitality of anger. If he did, it would take only the right words from Ahsoka pressing the right lever to spurn him into open rebellion.

When she snatched for it, the Force even granted her the words themselves: Is that what Steela would have wanted?

The path opened before her, and the turns she'd have to take to bring Lux into the fold with Rebel Command were easy to predict. There, with resources at her disposal, she could find out what had happened to Anakin. She could make good on her promise to protect Lux, and train him to protect himself openly – as his equal.

It astounded her how much she wanted that.

Ahsoka hesitated for a second that seemed an age, her mouth half-open. She shut it when she recognized the tight feeling in her stomach. It wasn't excitement; it was the creature from the auction house pacing in its cage now that it sensed an opening. No. This path was the quicker one, paved with stones so treacherously slick it would be too easy to slip and fall. She'd barely come back the last time.

She turned from it, offering Lux a smile as she said, "You did what any sane person would've done, after an ordeal like that. You'll succeed your father someday, and then you can start making real changes. The past has no power over you."

"I wish that were true."

"The nightmares will pass in time. It doesn't seem to me that your mother would care how you lived your life so long as you lived."

He took a breath, but Ahsoka held up a hand. "No. Listen to me, Lux. She tried to get you to go even if you'd be branded a traitor and a defector, and live out your days being watched by Republic authorities. When you refused, she turned to save your life by talking it out. She'd never hate you for tainting her legacy if it meant you got to live. She loved you. That's what people do when they... love someone..."

Ahsoka faltered, taken aback by the adoring look in his eyes. She thought of the grateful miners and shopkeepers she'd helped over the past few days, but this wasn't the blind reverence of the rescued to their savior. This ran much deeper.

She'd tried to hide away behind Alynna Taari, but her old self was breaking through. Lux was getting to know her, and growing to like what he found. Kriff.

"It's late," she said, hoping to escape before she did something she'd regret.

"I don't think either of us want to go to bed just yet," Lux replied. His voice was lower and rougher than she'd ever heard it.

The nexus in the Force shifted, coalescing around this moment instead of the trap she'd avoided, and panic washed down Ahsoka's spine. She hardly flinched when it doused the rich burn of desire that had been rising up below, too focused on retreating back to one of the plush chairs on the other side of his desk.

Lux watched her curiously for a few seconds, then glanced down in shame. Hoping to circumvent his apology before he spoke it, she grabbed the datapad she'd made him drop what seemed like a lifetime ago now. "Then I'll help you with your paperwork, if it's nothing too sensitive for lowborn eyes."

"Of course, thank you. It'll, uh... go faster with two, I suppose."

"So what are you doing?"

"The comm code I'm using for testimonials from the miners was leaked on the Holonet, and Dakharen has the night off, so I've been classifying the messages by sector," Lux said. "That way, if I go through them later and find something promising whose origin is flagged as a sector too out of the way, I'll know not to use it."

It was a testament to his embarrassment that he didn't make a fuss about her taking on extra work when she owed him nothing of the sort, despite his higher social rank. With a quiet word about fetching some refreshments, he fled the room.

It was simple work, cross-referencing a list of sectors on Onderon – roughly square areas created by the planet's latitudinal and longitudinal lies – with the point of origin of each message in the inbox, and a great way to take her mind off things. Still, Ahsoka had to admit it was tedious. She wasn't surprised Lux that normally delegated this to one of his staff, or only did it himself when it was late at night.

She inputted sector S-53 – the one that held the valley of Kyzeron – into the search function. The number of entries reached the thousands. Her heart sank. So many people were latching onto Lux, onto the hope he represented, desperate to be heard. Most of the audio messages had blurbs that detailed woes at the hands of the Empire and the Noreinos, begging him to listen to their full accounts.

Ahsoka froze when she spotted a blurb respectfully requesting that the esteemed Lord Bonteri pass the audio message attached on to one Alynna Taari.

Furtively she reached for Lux in the Force. He was still in the kitchens, his presence heavy with indecision about what to bring her to make up for his blunder. Hardly daring to breathe, Ahsoka tapped on the blurb and started the message.

"Hello, Alynna. I pray this finds you well – and that it finds you in general."

Tears prickled at the corners of Ahsoka's eyes. That was Ashalla's voice.

"I... to be fully honest, I don't quite know where to start, but–" Ashalla broke off in a soft laugh. "My cousin just glared at me. I'm calling him, and he's recording this to send to you, but I have to be brief. The rates... well, I think that's a good place to start.

"I know how you always checked the news broadcasts the second someone left a datapad lying around, Alynna, but you won't have seen any of what I'm about to tell you there. The costs of long-distance comm calls have skyrocketed to keep information from spreading. K– my cousin and I have to spend all our savings just to get this to you.

"There was an attack on one of the auction houses two weeks ago. Someone called Lord Vader showed up soon after to find the person who did it, and he's put Kyzeron under martial law. The spaceports are all locked down, and no one can leave town except on Imperial business. Oh, Alynna, people can't even leave their homes past a certain hour of night! Not to mention the ID checks and all the beatings, and the food and water rationing when it's the height of the growing season..."

Ashalla was quiet for a long time before she spoke again. When she did, it was with the forced calmness of someone trying not to cry. "Yesterday Tira – the freeborn girl who works at the baker's, you remember her – she was beaten to within an inch of her life because she tried to sneak some old bread to her family. They were starving, Alynna, and those cursed Imperial soldiers beat her for trying to help!

She was silent for a moment before sighing quietly. "My cousin says if I take much longer we won't be able to afford to send this; they charge for message size, too. When we found out about this comm code, we knew we had to try it. You were sold to the Imperator's son, he tells me, and that young lord is a rare bit of hope in all this. Tell him what's going on here. My cousin doesn't believe he'd go along with it if he knew.

"I... I shouldn't say this, but a few days after you left, I put everything together. I know what you did for my people during the war – and if not you, then others like you."

The scope of Ahsoka's recklessness struck her like a physical blow. She had no way to know if the room was equipped with listening devices, and Ashalla was speaking of things far beyond her. Slaves had been killed for much less.

Ahsoka calmed herself with difficulty. Ashalla hadn't said anything that could convict Ahsoka or herself; she hadn't mentioned her or Kuro's names, or even the town where Ahsoka's last master lived. Granted, all these things could be inferred with a little guesswork, but Ahsoka had to hope for the best.

"I know I'm already in your debt, and this is an enormous thing to ask, but... this is already our most desperate hour, and I think Lord Vader will only make it worse on us if the attacker doesn't turn up." Ashalla fell silent for a moment before clearing her throat. "My cousin says our time is up for the call. Help us, Alynna. If Lord Bonteri can't do something or won't, you may be our only hope."

Ashalla's voice faded away, but the last word she'd spoken lingered. It was as though she'd summoned a spirit, the very essence of her belief in a brighter future. The Twi'lek girl was battered and scarred by what had happened to her – she and Ahsoka both were – but she wasn't broken yet. Like the townspeople, Ashalla had latched onto Ahsoka as a pivot that could tip the scale out of their enemies' favor.

Ahsoka didn't notice a memo had appeared asking if she wanted to send a reply until she'd spent a few long minutes staring blankly at the screen.

She bit her lip until she tasted blood. Her vigilante justice stealing from the Empire and giving to the poor was her apology for failing Barriss, and her way of carrying on her departed friend's work helping those in need. It kept the pain of loss hidden under a haze of righteous atonement, for the most part, and it reminded her of the freedom of her apprenticeship – or at least the early days, when Anakin could still afford to shield her from the full weight of command.

Ahsoka hadn't gone into any of the major decisions she'd made in the last few weeks with a plan. She'd given a lot of thought to her two major objectives – finding information about Anakin and finding a transmitter to contact the Rebellion – but not to the specifics of attaining them. Now, when confronted with responsibility, with choices where lives hung in the balance, she found herself hesitating.

Taking action for the first time in months wasn't the same as decisiveness, she realized. If her duty as a Jedi were to swim across a river, this was the equivalent of splashing around in the shallows and calling it progress.

Duty. One upon a time, nothing had been more sacred to Ahsoka than the Jedi Code and the way of life she'd been raised into. But she also had a duty to Barriss, and a duty to Anakin. Her Jedi morals had stopped her from using the Force to trick the pawnbroker into buying her gems. In return, her atonement had kept her from buying a transmitter to get back to the Rebellion. They conflicted. If she extended herself to cover Kyzeron, too, when things were as dangerous as Ashalla said...

Well, at the very least, Ashalla deserved to hear Ahsoka's verdict instead of waiting for an answer forever. She wrote and discarded several text-only replies before settling on one: Keep quiet about any Clone Wars connections. I'm too far away from Kyzeron right now to change things, but I'll do what I can when I get back.

She was too caught up in the weight of what she was or wasn't about to do, the pad of her thumb hovering an inch above the screen, that she completely missed Lux's return until he set a tray of sweet breads and fruit down in front of her.

Ahsoka jumped, and her thumb grazed the 'send' icon with just enough pressure to activate it. She narrowly disguised the curse that snuck up her throat as a cough, and quickly deleted any trace of Ashalla's message and her reply.

Lux glanced at her across the tray, pausing halfway to a particularly tasty-looking slice of meiloorun fruit. Compared to before, he looked quite composed – but Ahsoka didn't dare probe his presence in the Force to find out if that was the truth or merely a front. "Did you say something?"

"I– no. Well, yes. But nothing important." Thinking quickly, Ahsoka laughed and said, "You got a weird prank comm from a cult claiming they were led by, uh..." She spat out the first name that came to mind. "Someone called Lord Vader."

"Lord Vader?" Lux echoed, his eyes widening. The rims were still slightly pink from crying. "But he's Emperor Serenno's head enforcer."

"I've never heard of him before today," she said, shrugging. This Lord Vader must have climbed the ranks recently; Anakin had had a personal vendetta against Dooku in their ten months on the run, and people that close to the Emperor were the sort he'd made it his business to know about.

"I'm not surprised. I only know that much about him because I overheard my father speak of him with his aides a few months ago. Information about him is... very elusive." Lux blinked. "But surely he's far from here. What could the Emperor's man possibly want with Onderon? Our value is in trade, not as a military stronghold."

He doesn't know. Ahsoka sighed quietly, relieved. She hadn't thought Lux could go along with the kind of conditions Ashalla described – not after what he'd told her tonight. But he was still a politician, trained to lie for his causes even when he hated himself for it. His upbringing had shaped him as much as hers had.

"Nothing, I'm sure," Ahsoka said. It would look suspicious if she had inexplicable access to information he didn't. And, more pressingly, she didn't want to throw this at him when he was still working through his grief; he'd only blame himself for the whole thing and think he was an even greater failure to his people.

She wanted to protect him from that while she could. He needed to heal, even if the healing process made him... a bit of a loose canon.

(But starting now she was putting his half-baked attempt to forget his grief by propositioning her out of her mind. She didn't take it personally, because pain did strange things to people, but she wouldn't let him try again. That was the end of it.)

"But," Lux began thoughtfully.

Ahsoka cut him off before he could say what was on his mind. "It was a prank, Master. I already deleted the message; I figured it isn't worth your time." She reached across the desk to pass him another datapad. "The sooner we get to this, the sooner we'll be tired enough to sleep."

Lux flinched at the word 'master', but did as she asked, siting down and starting to review the contents of the 'pad. She'd dropped her walls this night, so caught up in his gravity she couldn't help but slip into a closer orbit around him. He'd definitely done the same in more ways than one, or he wouldn't have–

Warmth blossomed in Ahsoka's chest as she remembered that look in his eyes. She felt like she was fourteen again, not yet apprenticed herself but taken with some nameless older Padawans whose status she admired as much as their looks.

Don't rope Lux in with them, she chastened herself. Don't give this more power.

Their closeness had been nice, while it lasted, but it was time to step back. Her mission to save Anakin came first, and between her mistakes at the auction house and her conflicting promises, she could feel the man who was like her brother drifting further away from her with each day that passed.

She couldn't allow that. She wouldn't let indecision hamper her any longer. And, for better or for worse, Lux was fast becoming a big part of why she stayed put. 

Lux has told Ahsoka before that he struggles between his emotion and his upbringing, and now, Ahsoka is starting to realize what he meant. Caught between different duties to her head and heart and only about to embroil herself in more, which will take priority? She's resolved to cut her growing feelings for Lux out of the equation to lighten the load, but such easier said than done. How many different directions can Ahsoka push herself in before she finally bows out or breaks? Only time will tell...

Me waiting for people to start screaming about the romantic tension knowing full well what's coming:

Okay but jokes aside, this chapter was a BIG one – both in terms of length and in terms of content. (Apologies in advance for the wall of text.) With the help of a few snazzy references, Vader's actions in Kyzeron and Ahsoka's actions in the distant mining towns are a little more contextualized, and you guys finally have some answers about why a lot of things are different in this universe: Ahsoka didn't go with Padmé to Raxus. Honestly, you can trace pretty much every change in SOTE back to that one divergence from canon.

Writing her decision not to endanger Padmé was actually enabled by the Forces of Destiny short "Unexpected Company" (which I referenced as the mission to Alderaan) where it's CLEARLY IMPLIED that Ahsoka knows what's going on with Padmé and Anakin. According to Wookieepedia, it's set just before Heroes on Both Sides, and it pretty neatly explains why Ahsoka is digging for info on the couple at the beginning of the episode. So, really, this is the new Disney canon's fault above all else.

I also took a lot of inspiration from Frank Herbert's Dune about Ahsoka sometimes having a vision-like sense of how her decisions will affect the future. The protagonist, Paul Atreides, has an ability to look at time as a sort of spatial map, allowing him to see into the future or the past at will. Except, instead of foreseeing and trying to prevent a holy war, Ahsoka is trying to prevent herself from turning to the dark side and fighting back the wrong way.

I remember a really interesting line from TCW about the way Jedi waged war being what separated them from others. Anakin and Tarkin discussed it during the Citadel arc, having a little back and forth about how Jedi ethics sometimes prevent them from doing what needs to be done. It was fun to address Ahsoka's morality in this chapter, because while she's broken from some of her old teachings in this story, she's clinging fervently to others. It's interesting trying to figure out where the Jedi ends and Ahsoka begins.

For one, she feels the Jedi commander who's intent on helping people coming back to the surface, but she's also changed in other ways since then. She has trouble looking at the big picture when she's so pinned down by the smaller details – a few villages suffering on one world among thousands – and because she's so close to them, and has experienced some of the same things, she can't push herself back into the 'needs of the many' mindset the Jedi preach.

The title of the Two Steps From Hell song above, 'His Brightest Star Wars You', is fitting to me because Lux and his father look at reaching one's potential of a 'star rising'. But Lux is rising differently than his father intended, and because he's diverging from the beaten path, he still needs support and role models to show him the way. For the longest time, Lux's brightest star was his mother... but now, a new star is rising on a journey of her own. Perhaps she'll capture his heart along the way.

Next chapter, we'll see the return of a recent addition to the SOTE cast, and learn a bit more about the repercussions of what Ahsoka and Lux are doing in the villages.

I hate to get political about anything unless it's Star Wars, and I trust that you guys are responsible and know your rights. But I won't lie, I'm a little scared about the state of the world right now, and this is something people can do to make a difference – so for all the Americans over 18 reading this, I'm gonna let this animated video and image speak for me.

https://youtu.be/Kmltdbka7fc

I'll talk to you guys in the next chapter!