Ahsoka heard words. They were muffled and indecipherable. She felt her form lying prone with her head up. She was on her back. Her head was throbbing with cutting stabs of flashing pain. She felt herself take in air and then subsequently breathe it out. She felt her heartbeat. She attempted to wiggle a toe, feeling the restraint of a boot around it. She felt her hands, folded in upon themselves across her chest and wiggled a finger slightly, feeling it brush over an opposing wrist. She was alive, she thought. She attempted to open an eye and the light streaming in stabbed at her perception and forced her to close it quickly.
“Can someone get the lights.” She mumbled in the best basic she could manage. She heard two distinct but slight intakes of breath and flurry of motion as someone carried out her request. The color shift already made her feel at ease as the backlight against her eyelids subsided. She attempted to open her left eye again, this time to a subdued darkness that felt soothing if nothing else.
“Shh...Shhh. Ek vha Tah. Sa oneh Sa’mahr.” A voice said. ‘Be at peace. You’re among sisters,’ the phrase resonated within her very soul. The voice was soothing, compassionate, and genuine.
“Ashla, it is very good to see you.” The voice said again, in basic this time, with a heavy upward inflection on the vowels. ‘Ashla’ she thought. It was familiar. She had used it before. Many years before. She opened her right eye and tried focusing on the source of the voice. A bald ebony head ringed with a black neural implant faced her. White eyes glowed with an intense familiarity that she couldn’t place. A dark complected hand stretched out and stroked her cheek, the skin soft and warm.
“It has been many years my Ashla.” The voice said again.
“Wher…. where am I?” Ahsoka struggled to voice the words. Feeling the dryness of her mouth and a scratch in her throat.
“You are with friends Ashla, allies…. sista’s. You are safe.”
Ahsoka’s mind was zeroing in on the voice, piecing together the form before her, the name she kept using and the accent. “Far…. Hedala?” She was sure she was right, ‘but how.’
“Yes sa’mahr, it is I…. I prefer N’dali dese days though.”
Ahsoka forgot her pain, didn’t care about it in fact and fighting the welling nausea and vertigo assailing her she sat up and wrapped her arms around the woman. “Hedal…. sorry, N’dali.” She said slowly. She felt N’dali’s arms wrap around her body as well, complete with the warmth her hand had held. Ahsoka also felt hands at her shoulders, knowing full well whom they belonged too she clapped a hand over the one on her right. “My sa’mahr.” She said with more intensity than she thought herself capable at the moment and burst into tears at the sound of the Togrutan word she never thought she would ever hear again in her native tongue. She felt the meaning behind the word and how everyone in the room defined it through their own action. “I don’t even know what to say.” N’dali laughed cheerfully, “They be time for words later, for now, you just be at peace Ashla. You rest.”
Kowani sat at Ahsoka’s side, her arm still around her shoulder, “Miara suggested we lay low on Raada for a little while. The Empire thinks were dead by all accounts, and we can’t risk exposing other elements of the Rebellion until we have more data.”
“Miara…. Miara Larte?” Ahsoka asked as if in a fog.
“Da very same Ashla.” N’dali answered. “I reached out to base one after leaving the Mustafar system and it was her recommendation. She said there isn’t much there, but the caves remain a good place to avoid detection for a while until we figure out what to do next.”
“R3 will meet us there with the Liberator.” Kowani spoke up. She cast her head down as the three paused briefly. “Ahsoka, Thana...Barriss was right about one thing I am afraid.”
Ahsoka had an inkling where Kowani was headed with the comment, “We really don’t have any idea what we are up against.” She said what they were all thinking. She knew it was true. She had known it since Dagobah. She thought she had found clarity while with the Grand Master, but it had only presented an abundance of paths that all claimed a high priority. Something struck her. “If R3 has the Liberator, where are we?”
N’dali laughed again, an infectious chuckle that lit the dower room. She removed herself from the embrace and opened her palms to the ceiling with her arms outstretched. “Welcome to the Shadow Hunter.”
Ahsoka couldn’t hide her amusement, “Very fitting...N’dali.” Remembering vividly the uncommon description a much younger Hedala had given her of the appearance of Inquisitors on Thebeska many years ago.
“I decided to start doing the hunting once I realized I could.” N’dali said with a wink. The move caused a slight downturn of her head exposing the side of her implant to the slight bit of light entering the room, exposing a cluster of small blue butterflies etched into the casing of the device right above her left ear.
Ahsoka drew in a slight breath upon seeing them, unnoticed by either N’dali or Kowani. She understood their place upon the Thebasken but looked deeper into the reality of the revelation at this moment in time. She may not have known where her path was destined but had all the certainty, she would need that she was currently walking it.