On the Wings of Valkyrie

Chapter XLIV

"....You're joking."

"Nope."

"I told you I'm fine!"

"They want to check. Also you disobeyed a direct order from High Command. You should have known this would happen."

"As if I'm the first person in Galactic History to have done that!" Luna exclaimed. "What are they going to do anyways, court marshal me?"

"Unlikely, you're too valuable of an asset to take out of the war for any length of time. That said, they still want to speak with you face to face and have a med-droid check you out," Ahsoka responded, arms crossed and clearly not about to take the ex-Shadow's side. She was still upset, understandably so, but all the same, there was no way in hell Luna wanted to go to the Rebel fleet.

"They aren't telling Skywalker and company who helped them, right?"

The Torgruta rolled her eyes and sighed, but responded all the same: "As far as I can tell, no. They are as aware as we are that it could compromise your identity. That said, you can't really hide the fact you know Skywalker outside of the Rebellion—they kept most of the information regarding your assistance a secret."

"Then how did they even know I was there?" Luna questioned before her eyes narrowed as she turned on Ahsoka. "You told them?!"

"I had to give them a reason why we'd be unable to make the Kessel Run last week."

"I could have flown!"

"You still had a gaping hole in your side."

"That's irrelevant!"

"You know as well as I do both of us are needed on the ground for it."

"....We could have figured it out."

"You don't know that. What you did was insanely reckless and this is part of the consequences."

"I made a mistake, I get that! I don't need a flippin' lecture!" Luna exclaimed before going off in rapid Huttese for a good minute before reverting back to Basic, "If I hadn't been there the mission would have failed."

"And that'll hopefully prevent anything extreme. Valkyrie's important, but if they think you can't follow directions—"

"I'll follow their blasted orders if they make sense! They nearly sent them to their deaths!"

"Luna, your eyes," Ahsoka cautioned. Luna took a deep breath closing her eyes as she forced her anger to simmer down as she reached for the calming balm of the lightside. Her temper had been a hell lot more voltatal ever since the mission—a side effect of calling on the darkside to such an extreme extent. She knew it would return to normal in time, but until then, she had to be careful to keep her anger in check. Easier said than done.

"Sorry," Luna breathed, opening her eyes again. "Normal?"

Ahsoka nodded, though her expression was concerned. "I know you were trained differently, but couldn't you have tried to...."

"It hurt too much and my head wasn't clear enough. It was instinctive—down to near survival instinct, instinctive."

It was pitch black. Her armor had been torn from her body and she could feel the wounds running up her back from the poison tipped claws of the beasts hiding around her. Fear was in her mind, but it was the heightened pain and agony she minded—she wasn't good at pulling on fear yet, it tended to freeze her up. It honestly was odd she pulled on the pain though, Vader had only briefly touched on the fact pain could give her power, focusing more on fear and anger, but the pain came so easily. The world around her transformed as her eyes saw beyond the physical and through the Force—purely accidental, but it gave her sight enough to see the creature charging towards her. She didn't know where her lightsaber was, so she instead lifted a hand and used the Force to grab the beast and toss it into the air, seeing past the skin and muscle to bone before snapping each leg with the Force as it fell to the ground. The creature let out a pain filled cry that would have normally tore into her heart.

"I almost always call on a mixture, but whenever things get real bad, real dangerous, I always fall back on the dark. Even when I was a child, before I knew of the emotions that lay in the dark's influence, I called on it instinctively."

The creatures had scattered when they realized the small excuse of prey was actually a predator. Luna had wandered through the darkness and the ruins until she finally managed to regroup with Vader. He had been startled when he had first seen her, she could sense it, sense that it wasn't her injuries that had shocked him though she could feel his concern. It had been something else: her Force presence. Shielded as it was, she was not yet advanced enough to hide much of anything from him. Luna didn't know what he saw when he looked at her through the Force that day, just that it had seemed to startle him.

All Luna knew that when she looked into the mirror after visiting the medbay, she had been shocked by her new eye color—it had been the first time her eyes turned gold—and the memory fragment that had accompanied it.

In the following weeks, Vader took a step back from training her with the Force. If she hadn't known any better, she would have said he was scared of what had happened—but Luna did know better. Darth Vader wasn't afraid of his very own apprentice calling down a fragment of the dark power he could wield....

That said, when they did get back to Force training, he did expand on the lightside of the Force and explained that, while it was weak, it was still a form of power she could draw on.

"It's just always been so easy to call on pain. I know it's a bad excuse, but it's always been natural."

When Luna had been a little girl, pain was many things for her. A constant companion. A punishment. A reminder her heart still beat. Pain equaled alive. It was a friend as much as an enemy. That's what being broken at an early age does to you. Even when she'd forgotten, even when the cracks had been painted over, pain had always been her go-to source of strength, even when she didn't remember she harbord pain. It had existed in her subconscious, embers just waiting for her to stoke into a flame.

"Luna?" Ahsoka asked. The girl blinked, finding her friend beside her. "Are you alright? You just went to a really dark place."

"I'm fine. Sorry."

"Are you sure?" the Torgruta asked, concern painted across her face.

"Yeah. Don't worry, I just need a few days to get what's left out of my system. When do they want us?"

"....In a couple days. I could try to push it back—"

"It'll be fine. Veils are allowed, right?" Ahsoka didn't seem convinced, but she nodded. "No one should know what the Illusion looks like, it'll be fine.... They won't know it's me."

"And if your Master showed them a holo of the ship?"

"....Until the possible becomes actual, it is only a distraction."