CH-42

As Ahsoka watched, the young zabrak girl seemed to realize she was conscious and in an unfamiliar place. She snapped up in the cot and looked around wildly trying to get her bearings. Her eyes fixed on Harry and she jerked slightly, her hands coming up to protect herself before realizing that though the environment was unfamiliar, she wasn't presently in any danger. Then she looked at her hands in wonder seeing that she wasn't manacled anymore.

As Ahsoka watched Harry begin the first of what would likely be very uncomfortable and difficult conversations, she realized she didn't want to just seem like she was standing and gawking at the slaves. She looked over to Aayla and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud.

The Jedi Master couldn't seem to decide where to look. Her gaze flicking back and forth between Harry who was leaning back on his hands, his pose seemingly relaxed as he and the Zabrak girl conversed; and the cargo hold which was now much wider than it had been before.

Ahsoka turned her attention from Aayla's expression to the bag in the Twi'lek's hand, one she seemed barely cognizant of holding. She moved forward toward the Twi'lek, her curiosity getting the better of her. She took the bag from Aayla's unresisting grasp, and reached inside, gingerly holding up the first thing her hand touched: an extremely detailed model of a Baudo-class star yacht.

Ahsoka turned the ship over in her hand slowly and her only external reaction was to blink several times as she realized exactly what she was holding. It was one thing to have seen it in action on random bits around the ship, but the realization that she was held an entire starship, fully function in the palm of her hand was quite the jarring experience. If there had ever been a truer example of the power of the Force, and that size ultimately mattered nothing, then it was the tiny object that lay innocently in her hands.

Aayla herself joined Ahsoka as she watched Harry, the young girl he talked to clutched her arms in front of her and Aayla could see that he said something to now freed girl, but for the life of her she couldn't tell what. She watched the person she had, less than an hour earlier, declared as no more than 'bounty hunter scum' now talk to a slave he had apparently liberated like he had absolutely no other concern for anything in the galaxy but the poor girl's well-being. Of course, after his use of the Force, her mind still struggled to come to terms with what she had seen as she glanced around the expanded hold.

She saw the girl look over in the direction of Ahsoka and herself nervously, and then look away quickly when she saw Aayla looking at her. Aayla blushed, looking down, realizing that she had been staring at Harry, and the Zabrak had misinterpreted it as staring at her. In order to distract herself from staring at the unfortunate girls, she mimicked Ahsoka and reached down into the bag as well, extracting the model of an Action V transport ship her hand encountered first.

She held the toy gingerly in her hand, and initially wondered why Harry had said he put the ships he had stole in the bag when it hit her what he had truly meant. It was minutes later, as realization slowly made her mind restart, that she truly began to understand exactly what it was she was holding.

A full-size ship had been shrunk so that, in it's current state, it probably weighed less than a pound. It was too many impossibilities occurring too quickly in a row for Aayla. She simply could not believe that she held a small mint worth of credits in her hands along with something that should weigh several hundred tons, hidden in plain sight under the disguise of an innocuous toy..

"This… this can't be a ship?" was all she could managed to say after she had turned the ship over in her hands half a dozen times.

Ahsoka didn't respond. She merely raised an eyebrow at the Twi'lek Jedi, an amused look on her face.

Aayla examined the craft for any flaw that would give away the illusion that it was a cleverly done model or something of that nature. She could feel the Force acting strangely around it, and she almost wanted to throw the ship back in the bag for fear of undoing whatever it was that Harry did and inadvertently crushing both Ahsoka and herself.

"I… I don't believe it," Aayla finally breathed out as her eyes never wavered from this... thing that should not be possible, sitting right there in her hands.

Ahsoka gave her old friend a half smile, and said, "And that… is why I'm sticking with Harry."

"Ahsoka, what do you really know about him? About who he is?" Aayla asked after a small pause. "How can you possibly trust him after knowing him for only a few days? I don't care what tricks he can do, this is not normal."

Ahsoka frowned a little bit, but she didn't have a response for some of what Aayla was saying. Harry hadn't really talked about where he was from. Though he'd mentioned some facts about his planet of origin in passing, ultimately he hadn't provided all that much detail on his background. He had seemed reluctant to talk about it, and Ahsoka had never really seen a reason to press for more when she was already dealing with trying to understand Harry's impossible way of using the Force.

Sensing the hesitation in Ahsoka, Aayla pressed forward. "You don't know who he is, what his beliefs are, where he is from or where he learned to use the Force like he does." She hesitated and her voice dropped to a whisper, "Or what his intentions are."

Ahsoka's mouth opened for an immediate reply but she paused when her attention was diverted from Aayla back over toward Harry as the girl he was talking to curled up and visibly started to sob.

She watched as he reached out gently and touched her shoulder in a touch she could tell was feather light. The Zabrak girl recoiled from it briefly and hesitated before she turned and threw her arms around his neck and began to sob against Harry instead. Ahsoka saw Harry didn't even look surprised or bothered, instead he lightly rubbed her back and continued to talk to the girl.

Ahsoka didn't look away from the sight in front of her. Didn't glance at Aayla once to see if the Jedi saw the same thing she did. She honestly felt Harry's ultimate intentions couldn't be expressed more fully and genuinely by the scene in front of them. If anyone actually saw what was in front of her now, and still had doubts about Harry...

"There isn't a day that goes by," she quietly said, "which I haven't said at least some of that a half dozen times."

She gestured at the two people across from them, without even a glance to see if Aayla had watched what transpired as well. Harry was stroking his thumbs over the cheeks of the Zabrak girl, and she was actually smiling at something he said. Seeing this vindicated every risk and leap of faith Ahsoka had made over the past week, and she wouldn't hesitate to drive that point home now to the Jedi beside her that was attempting to divert her from the path she knew she had irrevocably chosen.

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