Full disclaimer, Ahsoka was inherently very grateful to be picked up off of the street (even if it was like some stray), no matter how utimately demeaning it really was... but that desperate thankfulness really did nothing to stop both the pang of guilt from her feeling like a burden, nor the slight throbbing of shame from being helpless.

Now that she was relatively safe for the moment, things were really starting to catch up to her no matter how hard she attempted to shove the reminder of the unfortunate train wreck of events that at utterly and completely derailed her life in a matter of hours.

She was almost thankful for the sharp noise and ringing laughter that made her jump, breaking her out of her painful reverie. The metallic laughter met her montrals and she blinked, refocusing on her present self: her spoon absentmindedly swirling her nearly untouched soup around her bowl; her unconsciously clenched fist sitting in her lap; and the aching, smarting pains that she had been doing her best to ignore.

Bringing her splaying attention to the echoing of clanking silverware and laughter, Ahsoka was met with a scowling Darra and two mirth-filled teenagers across from her. Ahsoka didn't know what the sound had been, but she assumed it had something to do with the dripping water Darra was swiping out of her eyes, only half-mad in reality, no matter how hard she tried to school her expression into one of annoyance.

Ahsoka, still slightly dazed and almost feeling dissociated from reality (whether from pain, exhaustion, shock, or all three, she didn't know), could do nothing more than monotonously watch the events play out, and she almost didn't notice the shift in conversation, as she had peacefully gone back to staring intently into her bowl.

Though that dazed and distracted feeling didn't last very long, as a single word from a seemingly murmured conversation (like she was hearing everything from the end of a dark hallway), met her montrals; and it wasn't her name (or rather, alias).

"... Jedi..."

Ahsoka couldn't help it: she flinched. Head snapping up, her eyes no longer downcast and weary, but almost shocked and alert, and she found that the fateful utterance had come from the girl

Elena, Ahsoka reminded herself. She couldn't help but listen intently as the girl said her piece, and was oddly reminiscent of her first encounter with the now-senator of Onderon, Lux Bonteri.

"... I've got a lot of people telling me they're bad, but they don't exactly seem as bad as some people are saying ... though I haven't exactly met one, so who am I to talk, I guess." She shrugged, and her brother snorted, picking up her trailed-off line of thought.

"It does seem a little hard to believe that a switch was flipped and now Jedi are all bad because some anti-war activist says so, but I haven't actually met one either."

Ahsoka could tangibly feel her conflicting emotions writhing through the Force. Now, both wary, and weary at the mention of her old... normal, Ahsoka was trying desperately to organize her storming thoughts and feelings, and so she was utterly caught off guard by the calling of her own person.

"... Ana?"

She blinked, shaking her head and turning to look at the boy. Arodi, her subconscious supplied.

"I'm sorry, say that again?" She asked, furrowing her brows and meeting his eyes across the table.

"Sure," he told her, suddenly shifting his body to lean forward earnestly. "What about you? You ever meet a Jedi?"

Ahsoka almost dropped her spoon. She had to refrain from giving a sardonic snort of cynicism, but, ironically, thanks to her Jedi upbringing, was able to force out a strangled cough instead.

"Yes," she inwardly winced at the derision she couldn't quite keep from her tone. "I guess you could say I have." Her knuckles were white against her spoon, and she couldn't quite keep the sour twist of her mouth from gracing her features.

Ahsoka hadn't meant to sound so bitter. Honestly, she really hadn't. Wryly, almost with an air of petulance, she thought, if only the Council could see me now... I'd no doubt get a reprimand for being 'too emotional.'

The thought alone was cause for ironic, acerbic laughter, but the bubbles of acrid humor died in her throat, and she cleared it awkwardly again.

Still at war with her inner self, she almost missed the wide-eyed attention of the two teens across from her, leaning forward eagerly in their seats, and she realized with a slight sense of horror that they were waiting for more.

"What are they like?"

Oh. Her breath caught in her throat. She wasn't even sure which of the siblings had asked the question, because she was too preoccupied from having to control her horror and refrain from choking on her dry mouth.

Ahsoka felt a kind of panic rising in her chest, but like the laughter, she didn't want to give it purchase, and so she gave another awkward cough instead. "Oh, um..."

She faltered. As much as she wanted to speak highly of her old home, the words died in her throat almost immediately. She could feel her fingernails digging painfully into her clenched fist, and her knuckles cramping from how tightly she was gripping her spoon. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, desperately grasping at any unbiased thing to say about the Jedi, but her mind was unhelpfully (though unsurprisingly) blank.

"Well," she tried again after a few painfully awkward moments of pressuring and anticipatory silence. "They're keepers of the peace."

It was a lame excuse for an answer, and she knew it. She was fairly sure her disappointed audience knew it, too, but she digressed. She wasn't entirely sure if she would be able to speak about the Jedi without disparaging the Order at the moment, and no matter how satisfying the petulancy would have felt, Ahsoka knew better.

She might not have been a Jedi anymore, but she still knew right from wrong... At least she hoped she did.

Just another thing to add to my never ending list of things to figure out, she thought pungently.

She caught Arodi's frown from the corner of her eye, and braced herself again for yet more stinging questions.

"Well, we know that, but what are they like?"

Even after somewhat preparing herself, the words still hit her like a ton of duracrete; not exactly surprising if she knew it was coming, but still painful nonetheless, once she figured out it was unavoidable.

Ahsoka frowned, opening her mouth before shutting it sharply with all of her self control to prevent her no doubt biting and astringent words from disgracing the only thing she had known since she was three.

Though at the same time, she half-wondered if the disdainful words were really what would have come out of her mouth had she not bitten her tongue until the metallic taste of blood took the place of her words instead.

What she wanted to say and what she thought she should say were among the most confusing realizations she had ever had in her life, the most conflicting and warring notions of beliefs, and she struggled to put it into appropriate wording. Any notion of sensical speaking was beyond her at that point, and the only thing she could really sort out of her cryptic emotions was confusion.

She couldn't even decide which side of the argument on Jedi she was taking.

They are fair and just; unbiased and calm and they are compassionate.

They are biased and arrogant; they are emotionless to the point of being coldly unfeeling and harsh, and they are just political puppets of the senate.

And the problem was, she felt both statements with equal fervor. They were both the truth to her, but at the same time, they were both lies.

And the worst part of it all, after having such polarized and extremely adversing thoughts, the first semblance of the path to sanity once more that she could entertain was to go and talk to Master Yoda.

I really have gone crazy, haven't I?

She cleared her throat painfully. Opening her mouth to try and go with her first thought, she found that she simply couldn't. She briefly wondered if it was her pride or ego getting in the way of her intent, but those had almost nothing to do with the tight band squeezing her chest, suffocating her lungs and pressing down on her vocal cords at the mere thought of expressing such positive reinforcements of the Order that had been anything but when push came to shove.

The problem was that one statement wasn't true without the other. She was at an impasse, because she couldn't bring herself to speak highly of them without bringing reality crashing down around her with a balancing force to equivocate it.

Ahsoka couldn't bring herself to speak highly of them quite yet; not when her body was aching and her mind was still reeling. Just not yet.

And so she then had to turn and ward off the temptation of disparaging them.

Two wrongs don't make a right, young one.

Master Obi-Wan's voice ringing in her montrals certainly made it much harder to school her features from the sharp, bitter twist that she could feel her mouth taking, but she desperately managed it.

No, no matter how much she wanted to speak poorly of them, she wouldn't.

It was much different from the fact that she simply couldn't speak assuredly on behalf of the Jedi; now, she wouldn't speak severely of them.

Not because she wasn't able to, (believe her, she was), but because she refused to. Even if it took most of her remaining will power to overcome the crippling suffocation in her chest.

She decided to compromise. If she couldn't easily vouch for the righteousness of the Jedi Order as a whole, and wouldn't give into the petulance of defaming them, either, then she would take the question not as an average assumption of the Jedi Order, but as a personalized description of the individual Jedi she knew... had known, anyway.

"Well," she began again after another crippling moment of awkwardness. "They're more... mortal... than you would think," she tried slowly.

At the furrowed brow of Elena, Ahsoka tried again. "No two Jedi are the same... Some are more normal than you'd expect..."

She'd let them make their own assumptions of normal... whether she meant they could have a sense of humor, or whether they were just as fallible as the normal citizen, Ahsoka wasn't even sure what she meant herself.

"Normal?" Arodi snorted. "Yeah, sure. Normal, until they can throw you across the room with their minds."

Ahsoka felt the corner of her mouth twitching up slightly in wry, reluctant amusement.

"True enough," she said, "but you'd be surprised at how similar they are to you and me..." She trailed off, her smile melting as she felt a pit forming in her stomach. She suddenly felt very nauseous, and it had nothing to do with the food. She swallowed down the bile building in the back of her throat, and the painfully, bitterly happy memories creeping into the center of her conscious.

You'd be surprised about how similar they are to you and me...

And then, at the forefront of her mind was Anakin. Anakin laughing, making her laugh, and then making the troopers laugh as well. Anakin feeling so much, so violently, but also softly at the same time. Bantering with Anakin, Anakin making up games to keep Ahsoka occupied and her mind off of the war raging around them. Anakin holding her hand as she recovered in medbay, and Anakin smiling proudly down at her, eyes sparkling. Anakin's steady hand on her shoulder, his humorous wink as he managed to barely scrape them out of another impossibly disastrous situation. Anakin's bright blue blade swinging elegantly through the air, his playful eyes and eager taunts: try and keep up, Snips! Anakin's fierce determination making her never doubt him. For as long as Ahsoka had known him (which, admittedly, felt much longer then she'd actually had), he had never once let her down. Never. Not even during her trial.

Never once abandoned me.

And then, she felt the bile build up again and the pit eat away a bit more of her stomach and the stifling aching make her body numb and her mind hurt, and her last fleeting thought before she felt her chair scraping back and her maybe excusing herself before desperately making her way to the 'fresher was how she supposed that was why they called it home sickness.

:::

Well, hello there again. I'm sorry that I've been M.I.A. for like a month. Life's a lot, as you all know. Anyway, I'll keep this short and sweet.

Hope you enjoyed! I won't make any promises on updates, but I'll try my best. I have like a 3000 word document with little snippets of ideas and plot points that I'm piecing together, so stay tuned for that I guess.

Anyway, have a GREAT day! Bye!

*unedited

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