STAR WARS REBELS || Her Wings Of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Complexities In The Force

Nearly a week had passed by the time Lux had finally worked up the courage to go see Ahsoka – Sorena – again, and he was still no closer to reaching a decision for what they were going to do with her.

Although Lux refused to say it to his face, he couldn't help but think that Kanan was right. Had Sorena been any other Inquisitor, he would have charged the Empire a ransom for her safe return, or perhaps even killed her altogether. But fate was a tricky thing, and now the instrument that forged from the ruins of Norolan Plains to exact his enemies' vengeance wore the face of the woman he loved.

He stared at the door into the basement room where they were keeping Sorena for a long moment, his feet frozen in place on the floor and his hand hovering above the control panel on the door. In any other context, such reluctance to go see her would have been silly. Ahsoka had always been the most approachable person in the whole of the Onderonian rebel cell, as far as he had been concerned. But seeing her twisted into something so foreign, whose outer shell was designed to repulse rather than to welcome... it felt like opening the stitches on a wound that wasn't fully healed.

But Lux still had hope. He knew there was good in her, and he wouldn't stop believing that until the day he became one with the Force.

His courage renewed, he pushed the button and walked inside. His eyes found Sorena immediately where she was draped across the bed, and despite how on edge he was, he forced his posture to remain relaxed. One of the most fundamental things he had learned during his time as a politician was that wherever you found yourself, you had to make it look like you belonged there.

Sorena looked bored. "Are you here to yell at me too?"

"Why would I want to yell at you?" Lux asked, confused.

"You've got more reasons than Caleb – sorry, you know him as Kanan – does. He came in here about an hour or two ago. I think it was supposed to be an interrogation in the beginning, but, really, he's quite pathetic. He practically tells me which buttons to push."

"Leave him alone. He's done nothing to you."

Sorena inspected the tips of her fingers for a moment, then held them up to show him. "He broke my nail."

"Gods, no way are you this petty."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Teri." She smiled languidly, but soon, her eyes narrowed. "Now what is it you want? Be quick about it so I can take a nap. There's nothing better to do in here than sleep, seeing as I can't meditate." She waved her cuffed wrists at him.

Lux didn't reply.

"I never told them, in case you were wondering."

"Never told them what?"

"That you're Force-sensitive." For a second, Lux could have sworn he saw the tiniest hint of compassion in her eyes, but it was gone a moment later, overshadowed by her usual demeaning smirk. "I didn't consider you to be enough of a threat to myself and the other Inquisitors, with how little training you've had."

"You taught me more than you give yourself credit for," Lux said. "You taught me to never give up. Even if you've given up on yourself, I'll keep believing in you."

"I haven't given up," Sorena hissed. "I just chose a new path for myself. There's a difference; one you never seem to learn. You keep running in the same circles over and over again, oblivious to the fact that you're just repeating the past."