Merry Christmas! ...To those who celebrate it. I don't, but I wish a Happy Holidays to those who have something to celebrate. I am personally celebrating a month out of school while praying that the 25-page paper I wrote in two days gets me a B-... I think it's a month out of school. I'm not really sure.

Anywho... remember how I said I wasn't at all going to start writing this until next year? I played myself. Badly. That said, I'm going to be spending a lot of next year still writing it. But a commenter gave me the wonderful idea to just go ahead and start posting it as a present? And I was like... that's an idea. Also, this will let me channel my anger at The Rise of Skywalker. Yes. I hated it. No shade to those who liked it.

This story is the promised prequel/sequel to Force Distortion. That said, you don't have to read that story to understand this one. The other story was my playing with the time travel trope. So... I mean, it's up to you if you want to read my last story.

Fair warning this story as a whole gets dark. Emotionally that is. Even I was surprised by the depth of this. Also fair warning for future toxic and unhealthy relationship dynamics but that's Star Wars in a nutshell anyway. And the rating is T for now... I'm pretty sure this is going to get a lot more mature but like 30 chapters from now at least. Expect updates once a week or every two weeks. At least until I've got a good chunk of this written ahead and then we'll get more frequent.

Part One
Chapter One: Unknown

She should have been relieved, walking through the halls of the Jedi temple behind her master and back toward their quarters after very nearly being framed and sentenced for a crime she didn't commit and possibly executed. Only possibly because she'd had a few more ideas up her sleeve. Sith. Separatists. Jedi. Republic. Ahsoka wasn't going to let herself be taken out that easily.

Ahsoka resisted the urge to huff. The irony of comparing the Sith and the Separatists to the Jedi and the Republic wasn't lost on her. She'd expect to be framed for a crime, arrested, and tried on flimsy circumstantial evidence at best with no regard for her proclamations of innocence if she'd been captured by the Separatists. But the same treatment from the people she fought and almost died for on a daily basis had blindsided her.

Even now, though the Jedi Council explained it off as passing some grand trial from the Force on the way to becoming a Jedi Knight, Ahsoka was having trouble reconciling everything that had just happened.

She tried unsuccessfully to quiet her mind, to release her feelings and conflict into the Force, but for whatever reason, the Force wouldn't accept it. Almost like it wanted her to take a closer look at where those feelings stemmed from.

As he led them ahead, Anakin was uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative, both physically and in the Force. Like the calm before an ominous storm coming on the horizon. It was hard to be very concerned about it when she was trying to fight her own storm, though.

When they got to their assigned quarters, she practically fell onto the simple couch, belatedly realizing how shaky her legs were. Her entire body was trembling. And she wondered how she'd even made the walk from the Council to get back here; how she was even able to keep her hand clenched around the string of her padawan beads. She'd forgotten they were even in her hand.

Ahsoka stared at the long link of beads that she'd taken back from her master, that she'd refused to put back on in the presence of the Council that not even a day ago condemned her. And the more she looked at them, the more she wondered, did she even want to.

"Ahsoka," Anakin finally said.

Ahsoka didn't respond as she stared at the beads. What did she want right now?

"Ahsoka. Are you okay? Wait a minute. Bad choice of question. Of course, you're not."

Ahsoka looked up at him at that. On any normal occasion—normal for them anyway—she would have shot him a wry look and maybe rolled her eyes because he was so bad at dealing with emotionally charged situations. Same old Anakin. But even that familiarity brought her no comfort. Not when everything else was so unfamiliar to her. Not when the Jedi Temple suddenly didn't feel like home anymore.

"I just…" Anakin groaned and ran a hand through his hair. "Do you want to talk about all this? The last couple of days?"

"Not really," Ahsoka admitted because if she did, she was afraid of what would come out.

"Okay," Anakin said, sounding a little relieved like this wasn't something he felt like unpacking right now either. Ahsoka wished she could smile at that. "When you're ready, I'm here. For now, just get some rest. You're safe now."

That gave her pause. Safe. She supposed she should have felt that way, and a few days ago, she would have agreed with that. But now she felt different about the place that was supposed to be her home. It felt like being on the war front. Always having to be on alert. Not knowing where the next danger was coming from. Skeptical of every stranger with the only ones that could be trusted being the clones and other Jedi. Now, Ahsoka wasn't even sure about that anymore. In that way, it felt worse than being on the war front because this was the one place, the one entity she was supposed to be able to have faith in. And now, she didn't even have that.

"I can't do this," Ahsoka suddenly said as the beads fell out her hand. She would have gotten up to leave right then and there if she wasn't pretty sure her legs were shaking too badly to support her weight.

"Can't do what?" Anakin asked.

"Stay here! Be a Jedi," Ahsoka exclaimed, finding the strength to stand and heading towards the door.

"Wait! Snips!" Anakin maneuvered in front of her and blocked her way. "Ahsoka."

"Get out my way," Ahsoka demanded.

"No. Just… think about this for a minute."

"I have," Ahsoka snapped. "All I've been doing is thinking about this. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop thinking about any of this. Not so long as I'm here. Trapped in these walls."

"You're not trapped."

"Then move," she yelled, trying to push him out of her way, but Anakin stayed as unyielding as ever.

"Ahsoka! It's me," Anakin yelled back.

That gave Ahsoka pause. To an onlooker, she imagined that wouldn't have made any sense, but that accompanied by the soft nudge against their bond meant everything to Ahsoka. This was Skyguy. Skyguy, who had trusted her. Skyguy, who led his own investigation to find out who was behind the temple bombing and framing her after everyone else had abandoned her.

"Ahsoka," Anakin began again, this time quieter and softer, "It's me."

That broke whatever pretense of being rational and in control of her emotions that she was putting on as tears that she'd swallowed over the last few days and that she'd hope she could continue to swallow until she was alone fell from her eyes.

"Hey," Anakin said, immediately pulling her to his chest. "I got you. It's okay."

"It's not okay," Ahsoka snatching away from him. "I can't stay here."

"Ahsoka."

"The Council didn't trust me, so how can I trust myself?"

"What about me? I believe in you."

"I know that. But this isn't about you. I can't stay here any—"

"Then don't stay," Anakin blurted out, causing Ahsoka to stop and momentarily feel like her old self because leave it to her master to be contradictory. Seeming to realize this, he backtracked and added, "At least not permanently. Just hear me out."

Ahsoka really didn't want to, but she supposed she owed him that.

"I'm listening."

He obviously didn't expect that because he floundered, opening and closing his mouth to find the right words now that he had her attention and wasn't trying to stop her from leaving.

"I just… I understand. More than you realize, I understand wanting to walk away from the Order."

"I know," she replied simply. There were a lot of reasons for him to want to leave the Order, but the number one probably had everything to do with a certain Naboo Senator. Neither Padmé nor Anakin was as good at hiding their feelings for each other as they thought. All their close friends knew it.

"But the war needs us. The war needs you. And I get what it feels like to be constantly asked to put your wants and needs aside for everyone else, but when you have powers like we do, it comes with the territory," Anakin said in a bitter tone. "But with you at the war front, we can find Dooku and Grievous and end this war faster. And after that, when we're not fighting a war… I don't know. Maybe… Maybe we can change things in the Order, so what happened to you won't happen to anyone else."

Ahsoka raised an eye marking at Anakin's optimism. If she wasn't buying that idea, there was no way he actually bought that idea. But again, her master was a strange mix of contradictions, holding out hope that he could be a part of the Order and still get everything he wanted outside of it.

"And if nothing changes? If the war ends and I don't want to stick around to see if anything will change?"

"Then leave."

"And you won't try to convince me otherwise. You'll trust that I've thought about it and am making the best decision for me, regardless of what I decide to do. Even if leaving means leaving you too?"

His lack of an immediate answer told Ahsoka exactly what she needed to know. This wasn't about the war. This wasn't about changing the Jedi. This was about him, even though she'd told him it wasn't.

"I…" he trailed off when she narrowed her eyes at him, and he swallowed whatever lie was about to come out his mouth to pacify her. Finally, he admitted, "I can't say I wouldn't be upset about it. But I won't try to convince you otherwise."

She gave him a hard look.

"Much," he added.

She didn't immediately answer, probing the Force for guidance. But her inquiry went unanswered. Whichever way she chose, she'd be walking into the unknown. An unknown future with the Order or an unknown future outside of it. And when faced with silence from the Force and those two unknowns, Ahsoka decided to go with the one thing she did know. Or rather, the one person.

"Fine," Ahsoka finally said. "I'll stay." At Anakin's obvious relief in the Force and in his stance at a crisis averted, Ahsoka said, "But this is only temporary. I need to figure some things out. And if this war or the Order or you stand in my way of doing it, I'm out."

"Ok. That's… fair," Anakin settled on.

Ahsoka picked her beads up off the floor but didn't put it back on yet. She might have decided to stay, but it was going to take a couple of days for her to really accept that.

"Now what?" Ahsoka asked as she looked at the chain of beads, more to herself than to her master, but he answered all the same.

"Now, you're going to go rest. And then after that, we're fast-tracking your Jedi training," her master said with a steel edge in his tone that he normally only reserved when they were headed to or on the battlefield.

"Fast-tracking?"

"Well, this was your great trial, wasn't it?" he replied in a cynical, mocking tone. "The Council was practically handing you knighthood on a silver platter back there out of guilt they don't want to admit to having. I'll be notifying them that we plan to take them up on that."

Where the Force had been silent before, it now began to stir with the promise of… something. Ahsoka wasn't sure what, nor was she sure that it was good or bad, but what she did know is that she'd made a choice. And the Force warned her that if she stayed true to that choice, there was no going back. If she wanted to change her mind, now was the time.

Ahsoka pushed the thought out of her mind. Indecisiveness was what got you killed in battle. And while this wasn't as grave as the war front, Ahsoka wasn't turning back now that she'd made a decision.

"And after that?" she asked.

Her master crossed his arms and smirked, his entire demeanor promising trouble on the horizon.

"You're gonna give the Separatists and the Jedi Council hell, Snips."