Log:Rey meets Ahsoka

Rey Meets Ahsoka

Location: Lars' Farm, Tatooine
Participants: Ahsoka Tano, Rey

Rey had come to Tatooine to check in on the few people who they had setup at the Farmhouse who needed a safe place to live. They had refurbished the farmstead and had it in good working order once more. She'd read about in Luke's journal and been eager to get the place back to the way he fondly described it in his musings the older he got. That's how it works, right? Even Rey had growing nostalgia for her AT-AT back on Jakku, which was utterly befuddling to her...

How could she have fond memories of that place? She hated it there, but she does. It was a simple life, a quiet life. She sure didn't miss ALL of Jakku, just that one part, the only part that felt like hers.

Here and now, the twin suns are setting and Rey has been helping on the farm with the family that lives here now, checking on them and happily interacting with their three kids (two of which are Force sensitive, but haven't been brought in to the Order yet)

The young Rey is packing up some tools and slinging them in a case over her shoulder by a strap. "I'll be in there in a moment." She shouts after one of the little kids who runs down the stairs to the house in the pit. "I just need to put these away." She adds as she walks toward the tech dome.

It had been quite some time since Ahsoka had come to Tatooine. Almost fifty years, but it felt like longer. The memories she holds of this place are never that good if she's honest. So much hardship in those days. Death, but even then she'd never really found herself on the desert world often.

If she were completely honest..

It's because it reminds her of one particular desert on Mandalore.

She'd taken one of the Jedi Fighters to come find Rey. Whether sent or on a personal errand, it didn't matter, and it certainly wasn't like finding a needle in a hay stack. Cutting across the sand dunes towards the refurbished moisture farm on the back of a speeder, cloak bellowing out behind her. She has enough manners to cut the speed down considerably once she's within the farm proper, so as not to kick up dust all over their property.

Rey had reached the tech dome building prior to the speeder being heard on the horizon. She'd gone in there and set the tools down with the other parts she had in there. R2-D2 was in there too and he was happily working on some farm equipment, beeping quietly to himself as he talks about his work, which has Rey quietly smiling at the droid's odd behavior in a very uniquely Artoo sort've way.

She comes to hear the engine noise though and sets some of the tools aside before she grabs for her blaster holster and walks toward the doorway. Tuskens dont' use speeders, but others do who are just as much of a threat, or more.

So from the dusty tech dome entryway, a woman in white emerges, holding her holster at her side as she steps out in to the desert and the evening glow of the lowering suns.

Ahsoka Tano is by no means a small woman. Even by Togruta standards, she's tall, but she has a slight frame at 6'2". And the white horns extending from the top of her head raise her height a bit further, giving the tent of her hood a unique appearance as she slides off the speeder and starts towards the woman in white.

Each step is sure, confident, but nonthreatening. Hands turned out so her palms are visible, but down at her side. An attempt to defuse any confusion of her intent. As is her smile hidden partially by the dark material of her cloak. "I was told I might fi-.."

Artoo.

Blue eyes fix on the blue and white dome of the droid. While there are any number of such droids in the galaxy, she could recognize this particular droid anywhere. "Artoo?" She asks, blinking several times with a look as if she'd been struck.

Rey is raising up one of her hands to block out the sun to look in Ahsoka's direction as she is making her way toward them, something about this woman doesn't feel remotely threatening so it is calming to the young Jedi. She offers a faint, unfamiliar smile to Ahsoka and is about to speak to her when the exchange with ARtoo happens.

The blue and silver astro droid had started to wheel out of the tech dome to follow Rey, and he'd been spotted by the Togruta?

The droid hadn't been looking at Ahsoka, he'd been on his way to the farm house stairs. But he stopped and swiveled his head over to look at her, then began to beep repeatedly, rapidly and wheel toward her at high speeds!

He knew her, he was very happy to see her too!

Rey looks confused by this, or really just surprised. She steps after the droid and looks up to the woman. "You know one another?" Rey asks, and Artoo looks back at her to acknowledge this with a happy happy beep string.

Rey looks toward Ahsoka then, the dying sunlight shining on them all now. She offers the woman a smile. "A friend of Artoo's is a friend of mine." She offers a hand then to her. "I'm Rey, Rey Skywalker."

Ahsoka is down with one knee in the sand, putting herself at eye level with Artoo before he's closed the distance and is grinning from ear to ear, "It's really you! Artoo! This is incredible... How!" Beep boop beep beep beep, "Slow down! HAHA..." Hand out to rest atop his domed head as he barrages her with rapid fire binary, "My binary is a little rusty. Chopper hasn't been able to speak vocally in fifty years." This is said to both of them, glancing up at Rey so she doesn't feel left out.

It's a bitter sweet reunion, but a happy one at least.

Especially when Rey give her full name.

Ahsoka blinks several times, "Skywalker? That... makes sense. Why you would have Artoo." Pushing up to her feet, she brushes her palm across her black pants to wipe away the sand before resting it atop Artoo's dome.

"I'm Ahsoka Tano... Artoo and I served in the Clone Wars together.~

"I was Anakin Skywalker's Padawan."

Rey's eyes are down upon the Togruta and Artoo as they reunite after... who knows how long. Rey sure doens't know, but she assumes its been a looong time. She has a more open smile on her lips as she watches the woman and Artoo, but when the Togruta woman speaks to her and reveals her name, Rey tilts her head ever so slightly. "I've read your name." She tells her. "I have.. some journals that I believe you left notations inside of."

The impact of it all takes a moment for it to hit Rey and she starts to take in all the meaning behind this woman's arrival. "It's... really great to meet you." She says with a soft shake of her head. "I had no idea you, that you were... still--" She pauses. "Wait, I've heard your voice, I've felt your presence before..." She stares a second more before continuing. "You were with me, on Exegol. I thought everyone, the Jedi, were gone.... they never said you were alive."

The father of the family that stays here has come up the stairs and is standing off in the backdrop, his Lars-family-style robes blowing in the wind as he watches the two women.

"Everything okay, Rey?" He asks, but Rey just takes a second to stare at Ahsoka before she looks back at him. "Yes, I believe so." She says to him with a smile to reassure him.

The hand on Artoo's dome pats a bit of sand from one of the joints around his scanner eye, smiles, and looks back up to Rey when she mentions the journal and the possibility that she made notations in it. "Huh..." The smile doesn't fade, but it's surprising to hear about these journals for sure. "I would love to see those."

The impact of the second part, however... "Yeah." She remembers that as well, "I felt a call through the Force and heard voices that I knew to be long dead, so I lent my strength to make sure they could reach you when you needed them... When you needed all of us." There's no real explanation for what happened that day, not any that Ahsoka knows anyways.

The last part causes a smile to crease the corners of her mouth, head tilting with the raise of one brow. "Not all of us. Just most. Those of us who are still alive have turned our attention elsewhere. The conflict you see isn't always the only conflict."

She too turns towards the father, offering him a warm smile and a hand raised in greeting. "I mean no one here any harm. I can assure you that."

Ahsoka is a show-woman, even if it's not immediately obvious. Recounting stories from the clone wars for the family, lighter hearted stories of course. Smiling and laughing as they eat until they retire to the pit area where they can talk abit more candidly once they're alone.

She finds herself a seat, smoothing her cloak down behind her legs before settling down onto the bench with her palms resting flat against her thighs, fingers turned outward so her arms are flexed a little. "I was never actually a Jedi." She confesses to Rey. Canting her head a little, sardonic smile. "Before I became a Knight, I was exiled from the Jedi Order." By way of a simplistic explanation.

"Nothing that I actually did, but it was a very complicated time. Anakin said he was going to try and change their minds... and they did.. but I never returned. Even once they welcomed me back. The die had been cast. I went on a different mission."

Her blue eyes look off to the lights glowing inside the pit area. "Luke. He looked so much like Anakin.. At least when I met him. He was a lot older than most of the holovids and probably a lot younger than when ..." Motioning with a hand raised off her leg.

Rey is seated on one of the nice handmade benches that they have down in the pit area. She looks over to Ahsoka when the woman begins to reply to her. She takes in the subtle elements of what the other is saying, not just the words itself but how Ahsoka reacts to them while saying them.

"I can only imagine." She softly says in her soothing voice to the Togruta. "A ... time with that many Jedi, a fully functioning council, and all of the issues that they were facing on a daily basis..." She shakes her head lightly. "I've been in this for, three years now? It all happened so fast. From where I started, to where we are now."

She looks away and exhales before looking back to Ahsoka. "I'm not a Skywalker by blood." She admits. "I'm sure you've come to realize that already. Luke, and his sister, Leia, took me as one of their own. Leia was the closest thing I've ever had to a mother. I'm honored to use their name."

She flashes the other woman a smile, whether she can admit to Ahsoka who she actually is the blood relative of or not, is yet to be seen.

"It seems you made the right choice though." Rey continues, her eyes on the other again. "You're still here, and they're all gone." After saying that though, she felt a bit of remorse. "We're trying to change that though, as I'm sure you've gathered..."

"We were fighting a war." Which isn't terribly different than what Rey was called upon to do, what Luke had done, but... different. "The strings of which were being pulled by Palpatine. Manipulating Anakin.. Manipulating the whole council." It's almost absurd now that she really thinks about it. Ahsoka had sat next to the Chancilor so many times and never suspect a thing.

In the moment of thinking about it, her brow furrows. Showing the wrinkles of age that the Force has, thusfar, kept at bay. "The problem with the Council was that they thought they were without faults. They never thought to consider they could be wrong, that the real enemy could be right there in front of them. Not until it was too late to do anything." And is she any less guilty?

"Hubris. That was our problem. That was why we failed." Her blue eyes turn downward, "I saw the darkness in Anakin. I knew that he was falling, but it was so easy to look the other way because I was close to him. Because we laughed and joked... all the while he was falling."

Did she know that Rey wasn't a blood Skywalker? Her smile says so, but she doesn't voice it. "You're not old enough to be one of Anakin's and I kept track of Luke and Leia once it was revealed they were Anakin's children. Like Ben." She is aware of him. Her expression says little about her thought on that.

"But... What you've done?" To that she nods, genuinely. "I don't think I could have done it.... I don't think I /would/ have done it."

Rey is quiet through all of what Ahsoka says there, her eyes on the woman for most of it, though she does look away for part of it. The cool night air blows down from the open air above their heads, and it casts the loose strands of hair around Rey's face to gently stroke at the sides of her face.

She looks back to Ahsoka and levels her stare upon the woman. "I'm the grand daughter of Emperor Palpatine." She just throws it out there. She does slowly shake her head side to side then. "I didn't know, my entire life. Not until, not until just after he revealed himself to the galaxy, to being still alive. He was a monster, the kind that haunt a child's worst nightmares. I feared that same monster was in me, and maybe part of it is. But, what I'm doing now, is-- I hope --all about undoing what he did to this galaxy. "

Rey glances down at the dusty cobblestone in front of them before she exhales. "Part of why I took the name Skywalker, was because I knew how much he'd loathe the very notion. But, really I just needed to not be associated with that much evil. I felt it would forever distract me from what I really wanted to be."

She looks back to Ahsoka then. "Not, at all, like him."

That's a pretty big revelation.

Ahsoka nods slowly, a very exagerated gesture for sure. Lifting her chin and dropping it into a single nod. "The irony of that is not lost on me." Whether she means Rey defeating Palpatine or the fact that she's taken the name of Skywalker... "The last time I saw Anakin, he had completely given into his darkness. He tried to get me to join him, to come to the Dark Side and help him and the Emperors plans."

Her lips pulls between her teeth, a thoughtful silence for a second, "He said that Anakin Skywalker was dead. Which was Palpatine's plan all along, to kill Anakin and raise a monster from the ashes. That you reserected that name, his own daughter, probably was a slap in the face." Which, CLEARLY, amuses her.

There is no love lost for the Emperor.

"I don't think you've anything to worry about with anyone confusing you for him. I certainly wouldn't have lent you my power if I thought you were at all like him.. but more over, I don't think any of those other Jedi would have either." SHe turns to Rey then, "But be careful that your intentions aren't spiteful. I don't think that's what you meant by what you said, to be clear, but if you strive to do good, simply for the sake of not being like your father.. there's no telling what lengths you'll go to."

She waves her hand, tilting her head into that cool breeze, "And that's the actual path to the dark side. You'd be surprised how easy it is to see what you're doing as good, until it's too late to realize how much evil you've done."