Back in the Game (COMPLETE)

9.5.3

He glared at her, amused. "It's not my fault Changelings invaded the Temple, and yet here we are. I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I'm asleep."

"Not get kidnapped?" She suggested.

"Very funny, Snips."

Obi-Wan stared at the two of them, absolutely bewildered. "I see not much has changed in the past year," he commented, but Yoda stirred from across the room.

"Changed?" His weary voice asked, sending Ahsoka into flashbacks of her childhood. "Hmm, I'm afraid so." He made eye contact with Ahsoka, staring not only at her form, but looking through the Force as well. "Yes, indeed, I am afraid so."

Ahsoka could tell that he was not speaking as the Grandmaster at that moment, but as a mentor, an old friend, so she let some of her guards down (not all of them), and tried to be honest. "Does that bother you?"

She could tell by the looks of others' faces that it certainly bothered them. They too looked into the Force, and undoubtedly saw the Darkness that she had nurtured over the past two months, as well as the Light. Her Force signature was probably radically different from anything they had seen before, except maybe for Yoda.

He took a long time to respond. "Arrives uninvited, change does," he finally said, quite vaguely. "One cannot stop a river, as one cannot stop change." After a moment longer, he realized, "Accepted it, you have."

"The Force works differently than I thought it did," she explained, remembering the day she had chosen balance over chaos. "As my understanding changed, I tried to change with it."

"Regret it, do you?" Yoda asked, and Ahsoka felt like he was staring into her by the way he looked at her.

She hesitated before answering. Looking back, did she regret leaving the Order? Did she regret swearing loyalty to Sideous, only to betray it a year later? Did she regret choosing to start over, to make something of herself without the Jedi Order, the only life she had ever known?

"No," she answered, "I don't."

It was then that the Council really began to see her as the person she now was. They saw her civilian attire, how personalized and individual it was, and saw that her identity no longer lied in the rules of her past. They saw her blaster and realized that she had made compromises to the ethics and morals she had been taught as a child. They saw her eyes, hardened with betrayal and pain, and were dumbstruck by the fact that she no longer cared for their rules, their Code, their lifestyle, or their beliefs. They had made her a civilian, and yet, they never expected her to become one. It came as a shock when the person they had let go of, let go of them. It was the biggest slap in the face she could have given them.

None of the Masters had figured out what to say in response by the time Kix came back in. "I apologize for interrupting, but I'm going to have to ask all of the commanders to leave the recovery room. We need to run vital tests again."

Ahsoka nodded, completely disregarding the weight of the previous conversation. "Thanks, Kix," she told him and beckoned for Caleb, Jinx, and O-Mer to follow her out.

As soon as the doors sealed behind them, Caleb breathed out a sigh of relief. "That was interesting," he remarked, running a hand through his short hair. "That's not how I expected that to go."

"No kidding," Jinx agreed, crossing his arms. "I'm going to need a minute to process that."

"You do that, but I'm going to need to sleep," O-Mer announced. "I haven't slept since we left Coruscant. Anyone else coming with me?"

The other two Jedi nodded, but Ahsoka denied the offer. "I doubt the Council has run out of things to say to me, and until one of them gets cleared I need to stay awake in case of an emergency. You guys go on."

"If you say so," O-Mer replied, walking off towards his quarters. Ahsoka was left standing in the hallway, watching them, until the doors to the recovery room opened again. She turned to see if Kix had come back, but he was still in running tests. Someone else had come out instead. Anakin.

"Well, I think you made a good first impression on the Council," he joked, limping just a little bit as he walked, but otherwise okay. "Nothing like a little passive-aggressive conversation to start the morning."

Ahsoka laughed. "For once in my life, I couldn't care less." She smiled up at him. "It's good to see you, Skyguy."

He grinned, cocking his head down the hall. "What do you say we go find somewhere to chat?"