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    Ahsoka woke up screaming again. The screams of fear quickly became frustrated when she realized that once again she had no idea why she'd been screaming. It had been a week since she'd left the Order, and she was beginning to wish she hadn't.

     Because I seem to have left my sanity at the Temple.

    Every night was the same: she'd fall asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, and awaken at some point in the night, feeling nothing but horror. It would take her a moment to realize where she was, and then she'd be left with nothing but a sense of having seen something she both feared and resented, so deeply that…

     ...that the memory eludes me.

    The desire to see Anakin, to ask him for help, the longing for her Master was a physical pain inside her. Jedi do not dwell on the past, she had been taught. But Ahsoka wasn't a Jedi anymore. She missed Anakin, but she could not go back to the things that came with her Master: the  Council, the Jedi. She shook her head as though by doing so she might wiggle out of the prison her mind seemed intent upon keeping her in. It was less tangible than others she'd been in, but it was a prison nonetheless. 

     Prison.

     The word stirred something in her memory, something important. Darkness. Chained. Something she didn't want to hear, wouldn't believe. And then... nothing. The memory wouldn't come. Sighing, she stood up. Breakfast wouldn't buy itself.

    As she walked out into the business that was Coruscant, wondering how she'd replenish her dwindling pile of credits, she cursed her lack of planning.

     Maybe I'd make a decent mechanic?

    She walked over to a vendor to spend the last of her money on some food; she was beginning to feel lightheaded from hunger. She was handed a paper bag in which she found not only a muja-fruit-filled donut but also a note. Stuffing the donut into her mouth, she nearly choked on her food. Written in an elegant hand she did not recognize were words that made her heart race:

 Ahsoka Tano,

    I have heard of your plight, and am most sympathetic. I have a proposition that may interest you. Proceed to the enclosed coordinates. I will contact you there and you shall hear my proposal. You have my assurances that you will not be harmed.

    The note wasn't signed, but that wasn't what made her breath catch in her throat. She recognized the coordinates written across the bottom of the paper. They would take her straight to Malachor.

    On one hand, she didn't think she wanted anything to do with a proposal from someone who hung out on Malachor, nor was she about to trust such a person, whatever assurances they gave her. On the other hand, she wasn't sure what she planned to do next, and she wasn't particularly content doing nothing. The curiosity was too much. She would go to Malachor, if only for the satisfaction of seeing who was writing to her. She could reject their proposal, whatever it was, and then leave.

    Perhaps not so simple. She would need a ship, which she had no way of obtaining...unless...unless she could find Asajj Ventress.

Chapter Text

    This was what she should have done all along. No Master to take orders from, no fear of betrayal. Being a bounty hunter had given her as much freedom as she could want. Asajj Ventress works alone now, she thought. There is no one to disappoint me anymore except... Ahsoka Tano. 

    How foolish she had been, to believe her enemy’s promise. Ahsoka had said she would advocate for Ventress’s pardon in exchange for her help. The shock of seeing Skywalker’s padawan on the run from the law must have interfered with her judgment.

     I pitied her, and look what it got me. Nothing! What did she think she was getting? My charity?

     She imagined her most recent betrayer begging for her life the next time they met: “ I’m so sorry Ventress…”

     “Ventress!” Her imaginings gave way as the object of her fury called out to her. I wasn’t expecting my revenge so soon. It would have been more enjoyable if I at least had to look for her.

    Igniting her sabers, she ran at the Togruta who had foolishly entered her domain. To her dismay, the Jedi offered no resistance as she pinned her against a wall, crossing her sabers inches away from Ahsoka’s neck. “You. Said. You. Would. Help me!”   Does she expect my mercy?

    “Let me explain. I-”

    She really thinks she’s getting out of this.  “I’m not interested in explanations.”

    “Well you’re getting one: I left the Jedi Order.”

     If she keeps surprising me like this, I don’t think I will be able to kill her, she thought, for she was beginning to feel her dismay overpower her fury, just as it had before. All she could ask was “Why?”

    Ahsoka glanced warily at the lightsabers pinning her to the wall. Ventress deactivated them.

    “I didn’t plan to leave, but after everything, I…”

     I know why you left. I wouldn’t go back to Dooku if he wanted me. “The Jedi betrayed you. Why would you go back to them?” she added aloud. There was no longer any hostility in her voice.

     I hated her. And now I pity her. Again. I’m going to regret this. Abruptly she realized that Ahsoka must have had a reason for coming. She certainly didn’t come for my pity!

    “What do you want?” she asked sharply.

    “Maybe I just came to say hi.”

    Ventress snorted. “In that case, I have things to do,” she said, turning away.

    “Alright! I did come to ask a...a favor.”

    This was becoming an enjoyable conversation. How the mighty have fallen! “I don’t do favors.” How amusing that the Togruta needed something desperately, and she alone had the power to give it to her...or slam the door in her face.

     “You helped me before,” Ahsoka pointed out, “And I think you understand something of my situation.” She said this casually, but there was a noticeable emotion beneath her words. “I need a ship,” she continued.

    “ You’re not an outlaw now,” Ventress said pointedly, not wanting the Jedi- former Jedi- to forget her broken promise, “You can ask anyone for a ship. Your former Master even.” Her voice had become cold again.

    For some reason, Ahsoka just smiled, a wiry smile with no happiness in it. It was that smile more than anything that drove home how much had changed. “No, I definitely can’t ask Anakin.”

    “Oh?” She was legitimately curious now.

    “Well…” she said hesitantly, but still with that smile , “I need it to go to Malachor.”

Who are you and what have you done with Ahsoka? “Why do you really need a ship?”

    “I really need a ship so I can go to Malachor,” she said. “And come back,” she added hastily, no longer smiling.

     Jedi don’t just go to Malachor and come back. “I have a ship,” she said finally. “That doesn’t mean I’m even considering taking you to Malachor. Why the kriff do you want to go to Malachor?”

    “You aren’t taking me, Ahsoka snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of flying there myself, thank you very much.”

     I guess she won’t just tell me why she wants to go, Ventress mused. But she’s not in any position to keep it a secret. “ I’ll fly you to Malachor, and you will tell me why you’re going there,” she told a nettled Ahsoka.

    “Fine, you win. Beggars can’t be choosers I guess,” she sighed.

    The pilot felt a twinge of concern in spite of herself. “Tano, Malachor is dangerous. ” She may as well have said that Yoda was old for all the usefulness of the statement. 

    Evasive again, Ahsoka retorted, “Since when are you concerned for my safety?”

    “I won’t get my ship back if you go alone and die.”

    “Fine.”

     There is no way I am going to wake up screaming in front of my former nemesis, she had thought. She must have fallen asleep while meditating, though, because unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened.

    “Ahsoka! What the kirff-?” demanded Ventress, with all the delicacy of a bounty hunter awoken by the screaming of her former enemy.

   Her mind was still roiling, as though a spear had been driven through it, omitting all potential for coherent thought. A spear? No, a dagger. There was a dagger! She was too elated to have remembered something, anything , to care about her companion.

    “I come in to tell you that we’ve entered hyperspace, and I find you screaming your head off?”

     She wasn’t mad I woke her up. Was she...worried?

     “It was nothing. Just a nightmare.”

    “If you say so.” She started to walk away, then turned back towards Ahsoka. “Are you not going back to sleep?”

    “Not if we’ll be there soon anyway.”

    “Good. You can tell me why we’re going to Malachor.”

    “ We’re going to Malachor because an interfering bounty hunter stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.”

    “Why do you want to go to Malachor then,” Ventress asked impatiently.

    “I don’t want to exactly.” She told the story, but since she wasn’t about to confess her nightmares and half-formed memories to anyone who had previously tried to kill her, it was fairly short.

    “We’re doing this because a note told you to?” was the incredulous reply.

    “Well when you say it like that, it sounds pretty stupid I guess.”

    “It is stupid.”

    “You didn’t have to come!”

    “Can I see the note?” she asked, face softening.

     Why not , Ahsoka thought, producing it. Ventress took it quickly, frown deepening as she looked at it.

    “I can see why you were curious I guess,” she said slowly. “Dooku couldn’t have written this. I actually can’t see who in the galaxy could have.

    “What do you mean?”

    “Come to think of it, how did you translate this?” she asked, sounding slightly suspicious.

    “Translate it?” And I was worried about my own sanity. “Ventress, I can read Basic.” She received a look .

    “I’m staring at a note written in such an old form of Sith that even Dooku wouldn’t be able to translate it. If you don't want to tell me how you did, I don’t care, but don’t insult my intelligence,” she said, thrusting the paper back at Ahsoka.

    “Ventress, I-I’m not lying. I really...it... I....”

     I really what? Can read Sith? Force help me, no I can’t! 

     Ventress’ gaze was making her uneasy, it was no longer angry but thoughtful and calculating. “You really can’t tell?”

    She shook her head, not trusting herself to say anything.

    “Dooku once said something...he was talking about history, so I wasn’t exactly listening . He said...yes, he said that the fallen Jedi, Exar Kun, could read Sith after he embraced the dark side on Korriban.”
    “I’ve never used the dark side! I’m a Jedi- er light-side adept!” she shrieked.

    “Calm down, I’m not accusing you of anything. I was only trying to help.”

     Oh, Anakin I wish you were here. Or do I? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to throw up or cry, wasn’t sure of anything. The universe had been upended and there were no words or thoughts that could fix it. I never should have left. That’s when everything became so wrong.

    “Just take some deep breaths and try not to think too much,” Ventress suggested in her most reassuring voice, which wasn’t all that reassuring.

    Try not to think too much! She needed to think, needed to figure this out. She looked at the note again, willing herself to see what her companion could. “Proposal,” the word was so clear . Or was it? The shape of the word and its letters seemed wriggly, like something fluid that wasn’t quite real. The idea of a proposal was there, but it wasn’t the word “proposal,” because of the letters, but because of the intention behind it. It said “proposal,” only because it meant “ proposal”. The meaning came to her first, and then the word, in a rather backward sort of fashion.

    “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I can see it now like you can, but it’s...it’s...”

     I really don’t want to stammer habitually, she thought, but also, I have so many bigger problems.

     “Why though? Why me?” she asked desperately.

    “How would I know? On the other hand, whoever sent the note must have known you could read it,” Ventress mused.

    “Maybe they’ll just explain it to me and then let me leave,” she joked.

    “I will never understand your humor,” she said for the second time with a resigned air, and then left Ahsoka alone with her thoughts for several minutes before speaking. “Ahsoka?”

    “Yeah?”

    “Are we still doing this?” she asked carefully.

    Ahsoka hesitated a moment, but her thoughts were swirling too fast for her to consider the question properly. She only knew one thing: she wanted explanations, and there was only one way she might get them. She sighed. “I think we have to.”

Chapter Text

    Ahsoka didn't need to be called when they dropped out of hyperspace; the sudden feeling of the dark side made that clear enough. Yet the dark side here was not what she expected. It didn’t drape itself about the planet like a heavy fog, rather it seemed to sit like some clawed creature, a passive and aloof presence. It wasn't peaceful, though, not a chance, it was only waiting. For what? Her? Ugh, no, that was an awful thought. What surprised her the most, however, was the way she felt focus and intention from it-- it wanted something. It seemed to coil itself around their ship as they approached the planet, and the feeling of it made her stomach turn with dread.

    She was glad Ventress was piloting, for she didn't seem perturbed by the dark presence. Then again, she’s a dark side user, so why would she be?  Ahsoka suppressed a shudder. It was an awful thought, the idea of being undisturbed by this cold, cruel Force that was so unlike the one she knew, let alone using it.

    She knew the Force had a will, and Jedi spoke often of the light or dark side seeking certain things, but she had never felt it like this before. As they neared the planet, she almost heard words; it seemed to murmur and whisper, though whether to her or itself Ahsoka wasn't sure. Though she recognized no phrases, the tone was all the more alarming. They were not malevolent whispers, or hissed insults. They were gentle and rhythmic and comforting-- something that might have lulled her to sleep if it had been a real voice, and if she wasn't actively fearing for her life. She shook her head quickly, and rubbed her hands against her montrals to silence it, all the more unnerved. It helped, some. She still didn't like how it didn't push her harshly away as she'd felt when encountering darkness before, but seemed rather to try to pull her to it.

    “We’ve landed,” said Ventress, “Now what?”

    “I get out of the ship and find out some things. I hope.” Seeing Ventress’s expression, she caved. “Alright, fine. We get out of the ship.” At this point, she was apprehensive enough not to mind the company, though more than ever she wished for Anakin.

     I wish we could do this together, Master. It feels so wrong without you.

    They exited the ship tentatively, feeling the cool air. Malachor had been described to her as barren, but this was barren beyond description. There was nothing but the stone ground, and the occasional spire of rock jutting up from it. It was nothingness that made it frightening to move, to breathe, even to have her heart beating in her chest. It seemed as though any life that dared exist on that dark stone expanse would be instantly found and extinguished in some awful manner. She stopped in front of the ship’s ramp, staring.

    “Any day now, Miss Tano."

    Taking a deep breath, she walked a few paces away from the ship. “Hello?” she called. Behind her, Ventress snorted.

    About twelve steps later, she turned around. “You know, I really didn’t plan this out. What if no one comes?” She began walking another few steps forward. “I’m starting to feel kind of ridiculous,” she confessed, half to fill the unnatural silence.

    “You are ridiculous.” The words were grating, and maybe even true and Ahsoka was vaguely tempted to throw something.

    “Asajj Ventress! If I recall correctly, I didn’t ask you to come with me!”

    “So you keep saying,” she said, her voice lighter. Oh. Right. She's teasing, except we're not fighting this time, so it feels really weird and out of context but...okay? Wait, is she implying I want her here?

    "Because it's true!"

    "Did you really think I was going to give you a ship to come here by yours--"

    There was no gasp, no scream, not even a change in the pitch of her words to give warning. The voice behind Ahsoka simply stopped, the sudden silence was broken only by a slight thud.

    “Asajj!” she called, but there was no answer, for the body of the interrupted speaker lay sprawled across the ground. She cried out in her head, and maybe aloud. She wasn't sure; she felt dizzy, and more upset than she'd have ever expected to be about Ventress possibly being dead.

     If she is dead, it’s all my fault.

     It did not occur to Ahsoka to look for a killer. There was no presence, no sound. Just Ventress, unmoving. This was a mistake, I'm sorry-- “Don’t be dead,” she whispered, “Y-you can’t have your ship back if you’re dead.” Why did I let her come with me? It felt wrong for Ventress to just be dead, not killed in battle, but to just die, and lay there as though she was sleeping.

    But her presence was there. She breathed. “Thank the Force,” she said to no one, perhaps herself, or perhaps, in fact the actual Force. Or perhaps part of her did know that someone stood behind her.

    “You’re welcome,” purred a voice that was both venomous and velvety at once, a voice she knew, a voice that had been in her recent dreams, a voice that made her feel prickly and cold and--

    “I suppose there’s no reason she must die. We're only here to talk,” the Son told her, voice overflowing with mock kindness. "Although she's quite a nuisance. We can't even watch petty insignificant villains die-- how wearying." 

    “You!” she hissed.

    He smiled at her fury. “Well, I find it more convenient to appear to you here, where the dark side is stronger. Tell me child: have you remembered it yet? The last time we met?” She seriously considered running back to the ship. But...Ventress.

    “What do you want? How are you here?”

    “No? I will wait.” Her contempt seemed to only delight him, and his manner wouldn’t allow her to retort. His cruel calmness was infuriating. With horror, she realized he had not stopped speaking to wait for her reply. A faint memory stirred in her mind, a vague itch. She paused, briefly struggling against the need to fill the hole in her memory with the missing piece hovering just out of reach... and then she reached for it. At once she knew it was something terrible, something she must not see.

    “No-” she gasped desperately, but her surroundings were fading and she was falling backward into her head…

     Her sabers swung wildly at Anakin with only one goal: the Chosen One must die. The dark side sang inside her, giving purpose and strength to every movement of her blade. Why had she never realized it before? This was the power she was meant to have, and in time she would have more of it just as the Son, the embodiment of darkness, had shown her. This was what Jedi like her Master had hidden from her whole life. The thought fueled her anger, fed the power inside her…

    " Noooo!"

     Anakin, I'm sorry, she thought. Thinking back to her previous desperation to remember the turn of events that had haunted her dreams, she silently cursed her curiosity. Now she wanted nothing more than to bury the memory again, to never have known. It wasn't me, she tried to reassure herself, the Son made me. Anakin wouldn't want me to be upset about it. But she had never been one to listen to Anakin. Tears were threatening to fill her eyes, and it took all her willpower to stop them. She wouldn't let him have the satisfaction of controlling her feelings again .

    "You possessed me on Mortis? That's what I couldn't remember?" She winced at the waver in her voice.

    "Possessed you?" he chuckled, "On no. Only a Sith would do something so crude ." Seeing her expression he added, "You really must stop thinking that all darkness in the galaxy comes from the Sith! I am much more than a blind servant to the darkness. I am the darkness. No, I opened you completely to the dark side of the Force. I allowed you, for a small moment, clarity a Sith would be envious of. You did the rest in a futile effort to recreate it.” His grin widened. "Your master was an obstacle for both of us. Eliminating him was a common interest." He spoke calmly, almost as though he'd rehearsed this narrative just for her.

    “No,” she whispered. I never could have wanted that. He is lying, he is manipulating me. “I wouldn’t. I’d do anything for Anakin! I'd never willingly try to kill him!”

    “Believe what you will. It changes nothing.” His cold voice echoed dangerously.

    “Telling me this changes nothing!” she retorted. “You’re dead ! I didn’t kill my Master. He killed you!”

    She regretted yelling immediately, as again, her fury only seemed to delight him. Of course it did. He had no reason to be afraid of her. "Yes, yes, your Master tried to kill me. But like all of you pathetic Jedi, his compassion was his undoing. His desire to save you eliminated any possibility of my death.”
    Desperate to control any aspect of the situation she could, she restrained herself from yelling again. She would deny him every satisfaction she possibly could. In fact, he’s the one who wants to be having this conversation, not me, she reflected. Maybe she could deny him that pleasure too. “This is all very interesting, but Ventress and I have to-”

    “You will leave,” he said slowly, “when you have heard all I have to say. I will not allow your friend to wake-” he gestured to Ventress - “until you have.”

     So much for that. She crossed her arms in helpless resignation. “What do you mean he tried to kill you?” Calm. Be calm. 

    “Your Master didn’t realize how weak the light on Mortis had already become before my sister died. She had power enough to save your life, but she failed to destroy your memories or the darkness that lingers in them.”

     No. “You’re lying!” She searched desperately for something, anything to prove him wrong. “I would have felt you. Anakin would have known.”

    “There is plenty the Jedi don’t know, fools that they are. A Sith Lord has been hiding under your noses for over a decade, and you haven’t found him yet. It is the nature of darkness to hide, especially from those who do not understand it in the first place. Had she succeeded as planned, I would not be able to speak to you.”

    “The Jedi won’t let you live,” she threatened. “They’ll find a way to undo what happened on Mortis. They’ll fix whatever it is you did.” They have to.

    “Why would you want me gone, when I only want to help you?”

    He’s insane. I detest everything he is. “I don't want your help!"

    “I thought you said you would do anything for your mentor. But perhaps those were empty words from the apprentice who left her Master. Perhaps you would rather leave him to his fate .”

    “What do you mean? What did you do to him?” she asked frantically. Don’t let him have done anything to Anakin. It’s my fault the Son is even still here.

    “ I have done nothing. But a chain of events has been set in motion that, even now, brings your Master ever closer to darkness.”

    Darkness? Anakin? No, that couldn’t be true. Anakin was brave and kind; he would never turn to the dark side. He was a fierce fighter, a little too fierce the  Council might say, but he fought for justice, for peace. “You’re wrong!” The Jedi would know if Anakin were...if he- she pushed the thought away.

    “The vision of the Jedi has become clouded. They do not see their own demise as I can, even as they create the very weapons that will destroy them.”

    “What will-” she hesitated, wondering if she should ask, if she even wanted to know. “What will destroy them?”

    He took a step backward regarding her with an expression that she couldn’t read. He hates the Jedi, she reminded herself. He wanted their destruction, so he surely wouldn’t just tell her how it would happen. “I suppose you won’t tell me,” she said.

    His face took on a look of detached amusement. “Oh, I will! I was simply surprised you asked. After all, you said that you didn’t want my help,” he quipped.

    “I don’t ,” she said with a venom that would have quelled any clone, and perhaps even Anakin. “But if the Jedi...then I have to know.”

    “The fate I showed your Master on Mortis has remained unchanged,” he said, “I can show you too if you’d like.”

    So it had been a vision of the Jedi’s destruction that had been responsible for Anakin’s brief fall on Mortis. But if whatever it was that would happen, if that had convinced Anakin to join the Son, could she know of the future without succumbing to the same fate that Anakin had? Could she use what the Son knew to save the Jedi without becoming his pawn? But I have seen Anakin’s mistake. He went about preventing whatever he saw the wrong way. I won’t do as he did, I’ll be able to tell the  Council what I know. They’ll surely listen even if I left the Order. She looked straight into those gleaming red eyes and nodded. “Show me.”

Chapter Text

    She didn't think they could have kept him out, even if she'd wanted them to, but she lowered her shields as a pleasantry so the future could unfold before her very eyes. The Son's presence was horribly cold and terrifying and alarmingly destructive, and this felt about as safe as letting someone stab her head with an icicle. That was unsettling. It would have been the most unsettling thing she'd ever experienced if it weren’t for the contents of the visions. They were far, far worse.

     Anakin’s saber sliced through Mace Windu’s hand, leaving him defenseless against the barrage of lightning that spelled his instant death.

    “What have I done?!” her Master implored himself aloud.

    “You’re fulfilling your destiny,” replied a rasping voice.

    Anakin kneeled before a hooded figure she couldn’t quite make out, to whom the rasping voice belonged. “Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth Vader,” it said…

    ...That blue saber that had once been seen by her and so many others as a beacon of hope and light now turned on the very Jedi its owner had fought alongside, had fought for. Not even the younglings were spared as every Jedi in the Temple was felled…

    ...The soldiers Ahsoka had trusted with her life so many times turned against the Jedi just like the blue lightsaber had, killing all who had escaped her fallen Master by virtue of their distance from the Temple…

    ...Anakin’s eyes gazed upwards, no longer kind and warm, but a cold, cruel yellow...

    ...Obi-Wan and Anakin dueled furiously across a plane of lava and flames. Their blades moved so quickly, she was often certain one, then the other, would triumph, but both prevailed. Ahsoka didn’t even know who she hoped would be the victor. At last Anakin, in an overconfident leap that allowed her to still think of him as Anakin for one last moment, lost both his legs to Obi-Wan’s saber. For a moment, as one of the last living Jedi left him to die, he was the most pitiable person she’d ever seen. Then before her eyes, he transformed into a figure clad in a gleaming black mask who wielded a saber that was red, just like all of the innocent blood he had spilled, and she knew that this monster...this Darth Vader, had truly killed her Master...

     The visions faded, but the pain they caused did not. Her face was wet with tears, but she was beyond the point of feeling them, beyond the point of caring if the Son saw them. How could she have left Anakin to this fate? “I understand wanting to walk away from the Order,” he had told her. She had felt something from him in that moment, and she had truly and completely understood him and his words. And now they had so much more meaning.

    “Anakin,” she whispered, wanting to hear his voice, to know again who he was, to make the future she had seen feel further away. She had sensed the proximity of the events, the Force was practically crying to her that there was so little time to change them. Or maybe it wasn’t the Force. Maybe it was Ahsoka herself. Either way, the Clone Wars were nearing their end, and it would be an end to so much more. If only she had seen who the Sith Lord was! She glared at the Son, certain that he knew and had deliberately hidden the knowledge from her.

    “Who is the Sith Lord?” she demanded. “Tell me!”

    For the first time, she sensed displeasure from him. “It is not my fault you did not see. It would seem that the dark side refuses to show you his identity because you don’t embrace it. In one way or another, you will acquire the knowledge only when you are willing to use the dark side to get it.”

    “Never! I’m a-” 

    “Former Jedi? Don’t you see? That is why the Jedi will fail, that is why their foresight is so limited. They claim to seek balance in the Force, even as they seek to destroy half of its existence! Balance necessitates darkness, and the Force will guide the Chosen One to achieve it!”

    “How do I stop him? The Sith?” she implored.

    Her question seemed to please him. “There are many ways you could succeed in preventing the Chosen One’s fall. He exists to bring balance to the Force. You will have to make sure he does not have to turn in order to do so.”

    Balance? She had been taught as a youngling that balance would constitute the eradication of evil. Now she was confused. If the Son was the dark side, why was he helping her save Anakin? She thought about Mortis. The Father kept the balance between his children, light and dark alternated there in an intricate sort of dance. The life there grew and renewed itself in the daytime, and withered and died as night fell. The galaxy couldn’t exist like that; the idea of so much death and darkness, even if it was replaced by light again, was intolerable to her. 

    She would discuss the visions with the  Council, as she had originally planned. After all, if they knew what was to be, they’d be able to stop it. They’d finally be able to find and defeat the Sith Lord that had evaded them for so long.

    “The Jedi seek to eliminate the dark, the Sith seek to destroy the light, but when my father died I realized something,” he said.

    “What?”

    “They are both...wrong. They both seek the impossible. The darkness cannot be eliminated, the light cannot die. My mission has changed slightly. I want to rule over the light, for if I attempt to destroy it completely, it will be my undoing. The Sith Lord will be my undoing if he succeeds, for his success will only be temporary and then...”

     “And then the Jedi win again. So you want my help to stop his failure.”

     “You are very perceptive. Will I have it?"

     She too wanted to thwart the Sith’s plan, but not the Son’s way, not for his reasons, and certainly not by his means. “No. Though I thank you for yours,” she added begrudgingly.

    She felt the beginnings of his fury, but it vanished almost faster than she could perceive it. Instead, she saw him smile slowly. “As you wish. But you forget what you are now,” he said.

    “What I am ? I know that better than you do.”

    “You and I are linked now. The Jedi won’t trust you.”

    “I’ve done nothing to make them distrust me.”

    “You left the Order. You can read Sith. Your own memories allow me to cling to existence. They’ll feel it; they will fear our power.”

    “ Yours, not ours!”

    “Come now, you feel it inside of you too. You can’t keep denying that I have given you power. In time, it will grow. It may even eventually equal my own.”

    “I wouldn’t use it.”

    “Do you think they’ll believe that? You’ve changed. You're no Jedi, not anymore. The dark side spoke to you, did it not? You could sense its will from the moment you arrived here. The whispers will grow louder, child and quickly now that you have your memories back. Even now, you can feel how much the dark side would like to give you the power to save your Master. To save everyone you love-”

    “Stop!” she cried. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.”

    “You are making a mistake!”

That’s what Anakin said when I left. He was right, the Son is wrong. “I know what my real mistake was, and if I hadn’t made that one, I wouldn’t be here. I’m leaving, whether you like it or not.”

    He gave a bored nod. “I intend to keep my word. You can go.”

    She hadn’t expected it to be that easy.

    The Son watched her kneel beside Ventress, who was blinking, trying to sit up. “Oh, it won’t be easy. I promise.” He laughed at the worry and dismay betrayed in her eyes. She squeezed them shut, so she couldn’t see him smiling at her, and apparently hearing her thoughts as well. When she opened them again, he had vanished.

Chapter Text

“What happened? Did you--"

Ahsoka shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."

Ventress narrowed her eyes. "How long--"

"I don't know," she answered tersely.

"Can you guess?"

"No! I was-- I was having a vision. I don't know...how long..."

To her surprise, Ventress didn't question her any further, and they flew in silence back to Coruscant. Ahsoka almost wished she could confide in the bounty hunter. But no, she was leaving anyway. She had to tell the Council. Jedi or not, that was her duty.

"Thanks. For letting me use your ship. You really didn't have any reason to," she said at last.

“If you aren’t too preoccupied,” she gave Ahsoka a knowing look, “I really would like to be pardoned by the Republic.”

“I’ll try,” Ahsoka said, and she meant it. She smiled, a real smile, as she turned to depart.

“Ahsoka?”

“Yes?” She said, turning back a little nervously.

“May the Force be with you,” said Ventress, and it was she who walked away.

Ahsoka almost wanted to follow her.

Anakin thought he had decided to walk with Obi-Wan out of pure restlessness that afternoon, but he soon realized it was something much more.

Ahsoka is here. The awareness opened inside him like a blossom, sending him sprinting down the steps of the Temple. His heart soared. She stood a little below him, gazing up at the spires intently as though they were some insurmountable problem.

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan called from behind him, confused.

“Snips?” he asked a little tentatively. Something about her felt fragile, like she might startle easily. He could tell that she was emotionally on edge: fear whirled through her thoughts, tempered with defiance of that fear, and something else he couldn’t name.

Sure enough, she gave a start when she heard him, but quickly composed herself. Outwardly at least. He couldn’t tell what her mind was doing.

“Ahsoka!” Obi-Wan’s voice was both happy and confused.

“Obi-Wan,” she stepped forwards without a look at Anakin, “I have urgent information for the Council.”

Hurt by her lack of acknowledgment, Anakin stepped in front of Obi-Wan. “I missed you Snips,” he murmured.

She finally met his eyes. “I missed you too Anakin,” she whispered. Why did she leave then, if she’d missed him?

She’s so...I don’t know what. Solemn? Melancholy? Where was his padawan who smiled at him, who was so brave and so...so Ahsoka? “Are you alright, Ahsoka?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said softly, and she sounded fine, but she'd averted her gaze again.

“The Council is meeting in about an hour. I can take you,” Obi-Wan assured her. She brightened and actually smiled. Maybe she’d just been unsure how to reconcile being with them when she was no longer a Jedi. Maybe she had regrets? (Maybe she'd come back?)

“How’s it been? I mean, what have you been doing?” he asked her in an attempt at conversation.

“Not much…”

“Snips! You must have been doing something if you have urgent information for the Council,” he said, half teasing. For some reason, this prompted a discreet warning look from Obi-Wan.

“Well...I talked to Ventress,” her face did an awkward combination of a wince and a genuine smile that he wasn’t even going to try to comprehend, “and we found out something...important, but I really- I mean I probably should wait to-”

“Of course,” said Obi-Wan quickly, giving Anakin another meaningful look. What was up with Obi-Wan? Why was he being so cautious? It was Ahsoka they were talking to, and Obi-Wan was giving her so much deference he might have been talking to the Chancellor. “Anakin and I will go and inform Master Yoda that you’re here.”

“You can go,” Anakin said, irritated, “I’d like to-”

“Master Yoda wanted to see you earlier. So you should come,” he said with an intent expression. He and Ahsoka locked eyes again, and he felt the Force around her, really felt it for the first time. He was taken aback by the complexity of it. Too much for him to compile next to his own emotion at seeing her again, he made a note to meditate on it later. Being away from the Order had changed something, he was sure, only he couldn’t work out what.

Anakin hastily followed Obi-Wan back up the steps. Once they were out of ear-shot, their conversation became worried.

“Do you sense it?”

He nodded. “She was agitated. I don’t think her news for the Council is good.”

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan said, sounding unconvinced, “But something more is wrong. The Force is...I’m not quite sure. You’re able to sense her better than I am, perhaps you could find out more.”

 “I’ll try...” Anakin trailed off, concern in his voice.

“Do or do not...”

“...There is no try, I know. It just feels wrong to use our Force-bond like that. Ahsoka trusts me, and she isn’t my padawan anymore. She has a right to keep secrets.”

“Anakin, I want to help her.”

 Ahsoka, I don’t want anything to happen to you, he thought. It hurt knowing he couldn’t protect her, that after she told the Council whatever it was that had brought her back here when even he couldn’t do it, she would leave and he wouldn’t see her, maybe for years. Begrudgingly he closed his eyes, trying to understand what he had felt from her.

He knew what he had felt, but as was often his problem, he had a hard time explaining to himself, let alone Obi-Wan . He visualized it, her standing on the steps, she looked upwards towards the spires of the Temple…

Nervous. She'd been nervous. About...him. And...

Something fluttered around the edges of that feeling, and he knew that was the strange, out of place something that he'd sensed. Focus, Anakin. What was it? Something to do with Ventress? He didn’t like the idea of Ahsoka hanging out with Ventress, of all people, but Ahsoka could handle herself. Mostly.

He mustn’t get distracted. His feelings were telling him that Ventress wasn’t the problem. It had nothing to do with the bounty hunter, this was just Ahsoka, but not. The new whirling thing was a bit like an echo, kind of. An odd sort of echo that twisted the feelings it mirrored into something else. Or was it new? He felt like it had been there before some other time, only further away from her or maybe…

His eyes opened. “There’s something else,” he said slowly, “but I don’t know what it is.” He sighed. “If I didn’t know better I’d…”

“You’d what?”

“I’d say she wasn’t...there’s suddenly so much there I can’t see. It’s like looking at a hologram of someone versus talking to them in person.”

“You mean you think she’s being controlled?” Obi-Wan asked warily.

"No, her presence is just more complicated. It’s Ahsoka, really and truly, but I’m not sure if it’s just Ahsoka.”

Obi-Wan’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t sense any hostility from her.”

Startled, Anakin quickly chimed in, “No. It’s not like that. I’m certain she’s controlling her actions and everything. Whatever it was was just there, not doing anything. Just...” he trailed off. Echo? Was that the word? It really felt like there was something it resembled more closely, a-- a-- "It's like her presence has a shadow."

“We should be wary all the same. Frightened people become dangerous."

Dangerous? Not this again! The Council had already accused her of that once, and it hadn't been true then. It wasn't true now. “Ahsoka can’t even win a sparring match with me,” he said fondly.

“Your former padawan has a reputation for being fearless to a fault. If something’s scaring her that much, then it’s dangerous,” Obi-Wan said darkly. They walked the rest of the way in silence.

She should have felt relieved to be in front of the Council at last, but she was more uneasy than ever. Too many eyes, and too much like when I was framed for bombing the Temple, she fretted. Why had she come back? For Anakin. This is to save Anakin. It’s not about me.

“Ahsoka Tano. Something to share with us, you have?”

She took a deep breath. How much did she tell them? “I’ve had a vision of-” her voice cracked. Thank goodness Anakin wasn’t here. “I’ve had a vision of the destruction of the Jedi Order.”

She had seen the discipline that the Jedi Masters cultivated; it amazed her, but even they reacted visibly to this. Eyebrows, or their equivalents, raised all around the room. Well, there might have been a better way to ease into the subject but…

“How did you see this?” Mace Windu asked, his scrutinizing gaze prodding her just as much as his words.

“I--” How? “I don’t know how exactly,” she said, walking a tightrope of trying not to tell an overt lie. “I can’t claim to understand how the Force…” Why was she even answering this question? She needed to tell them about Anakin! Her heart raced, faster in a drumming rhythm. Just say it, now you have to!

Before she could, Master Yoda spoke again. “Interpreted literally, visions should not always be. Consider this, we must.”

“No!” she cried more loudly than she intended. Too loud in the quiet circular chamber. “It-- this one was! I know it was!”

“You have no way to be sure,” said Ki-Adi-Mundi. Why were they all so determined to ignore the danger? They must believe her, they had to believe her.

“I believe that’s what the Force is telling me, Master,” she said, as calmly as she should manage.

“Keep your warning in mind we will, young Tano,” Yoda told her. “Take drastic measures, we must not. Clearer, things may become. In time."

No. Not this. “You don't have time! Anakin doesn’t have time. Don’t you get it? I don’t know who is planning this, but it’s been planned for years, and now the Sith Lord behind it is just waiting for all of his plans to come into fruition! He wants you not to take drastic measures!” This was disrespectful, and she didn’t care. What is wrong with them? Do they want to die? She was definitely getting too emotional, but what was she supposed to do. If she couldn't make them listen, if they wer going to just watch her vision come true--

"They'd rather die than trust you," sang a voice, or maybe voices, in the back of her head somewhere. "You, the padawan who left their Order."

They have to trust me! she protested. It wasn't as if it was only their own fate in their hands; it was the whole galaxy that would suffer, children and families--

"They never will," the voice insisted.

But I’m trying to help them! What was wrong with her?

"They don't want our help," it declared with an air of finality that didn't bode well.

Mace Windu had said something, she didn’t know what. Probably criticizing her manners. Nonetheless, she pushed away the voice and tried to listen again.

Plo Koon spoke for the first time. “The Force works in mysterious ways, but why it should gift a former Jedi with these visions…”

That’s it, isn’t it? I’m a former Jedi, and they won’t believe what I’ve seen. The Son’s words came back to her. Were they blinding themselves to the future by refusing the dark side? Hours ago, she would have said no, but now…

Now she was beginning to think that the light wouldn’t let them believe her. Why then, was the light so inadequate when it came to saving its own servants? Why was everything she cared about was so determined to destroy itself? “Please. You have to trust me. The Jedi are going to fall if you don’t.”

She said the wrong thing. “Is that a threat, Tano?” Mace Windu asked coldly.

“No! It’s the truth.”

“Ahsoka, perhaps you-” Obi-Wan’s voice was gentle, but to be betrayed by him too… The tiny flutter of hope faded, replaced by the realization that she was alone. She felt it: everything broke completely and utterly. There was only her, a precipice, and a very long way to fall. The moment lasted, held itself, pressing her tightly. She felt as though she was frozen in ice. And then she flung it away as hard as she possibly could, with the Force, with her mind, there was no difference. She only wanted to be gone from the crushing futility of the Council that had never, would never, listen to anything they didn't want to hear.

“You are all going to die!” She ran from the room. The Temple steps may as well have crumbled behind her, she would never be able to go back up them now. She knew she’d never want to.

Running gave her something to do. She wanted to be away from the Temple, but that left the voice and the darkness (unless the voice was the darkness), and she didn't want that either.

"Why?" it implored. "We can't help them, but we can help you."

It wrapped her in its cold embrace, waiting. No, she thought. But it was surprisingly peaceful, surprisingly welcome. It would be easy. To let go for just a moment-- didn't the Jedi always talk about letting go?  And the Son had said it would be there forever, that it would get worse. She suddenly had a nagging fear that 'no' only meant 'not yet.'

She shifted her focus away from the Force altogether.

Anakin, I will not let this vision come true. I promise. She hadn’t been aware of stopping, of sitting, but she was sitting. She realized this just before something cold, a more tangible cold, pressed into the back of her neck. A blaster.

A voice, not the dark side, but icy nonetheless spoke behind her. “If you want to live, you’ll cooperate. Now come with me.”

Chapter Text

She whirled around, letting the Force guide her hand as she tried to knock the blaster out of her assailant's hand. Unfortunately...she didn't have her lightsabers.

The woman fired her blaster three times, and on the third, Ahsoka fell limply to the ground, the world fading away. Fortunately for her, the weapon was set to stun.

Ahsoka chased a bird through the snow, fingers almost closing around its tail. The snow was so hard to run through, and the cold made her ache all over. 

Just... a little bit…further...and… She flung herself upward, catching it between her hands. It twittered pitifully. Ignoring its protests, she ran her fingers across its back, examining her prize. “Now what are we going to do with-”

It shuddered in her hands, and grew: too big to hold in one hand, then too big to hold at all. She took a step back, releasing it in dismay. But it didn’t fall into the knee-deep snowbank. Instead, it stood up, no longer a bird at all.

She was standing in front of herself . At least it looked like her, only a little taller and with two lightsabers at her hip. Probably only a few years older than her. And somehow, it seemed, a Jedi.

“I told you your Master would cause you trouble,” it said.

“Who are you?” she asked, already suspecting the answer.

“I’m your future self. Your potential .”

“You were literally just a bird,” she replied irritably. She’d had a vision of her so-called-potential before, and having another Ahsoka patronizing her bothered her just as much as it had then. “I already know Anakin’s in trouble, and I’m trying to do something about it.”

“I’m not here to talk about Anakin. He is beyond your help. It is you I came to discuss.”

“I’m fine. Anakin’s the one who-”

“Your destiny lies apart from his. You have formally abandoned your apprenticeship, but you must let go of your Master as well.”

“How could I? Anakin is like a brother to me. I won’t leave him!”

“You must . You must preserve your future. Your former Master may yet save himself, but he will do so without your help.”

“A rather selfish thing, for my future self to be so self-preserving , ” she remarked furiously. How could she suggest that I ignore what I’ve seen? 

Her future self looked forlorn. “That is what this kind of knowledge does. You think you know the future so well now, but it is only his path you see. This makes you slightly more insightful than others, but far less so than you believe.”

“Slightly more insightful? I’m the only person in the galaxy who even knows the Jedi Order needs saving! And I will save them. I have to.”

Her future self doubled over, crying out in pain, and Ahsoka's fury evaporated. There was something unbearable at seeing her own self in pain. “Are you alright?” she asked, reaching out her hand in a vague attempt to help, though she didn't know how.

Their surroundings changed. The air became hot and suffocating, and rivulets of lava encircled them, ropes of light in the heavy darkness. “What the-?

Ahsoka’s ‘potential’ opened a pair of now piercing amber eyes. “I know how to save Skyguy,” she intoned in a new voice. It was soft and lilting, but there was danger in it.

Some voice in the back of her head suggested that she should maybe be scared right now, but her mind had become too foggy and sleepy to comply. Instead, she took a step closer to her darkened self, who took her hand gently. Then, igniting one of her crimson blades, dark Ahsoka sliced the hand off.

At least, that’s what ought to have happened. Instead, the blade refused to cut through her wrist, it only burned the outside of her limb endlessly, until she was sure the agony would be the end of her...

...She awoke to a different kind of agony: she must have been lying on this cold metal floor for hours because she ached all over. Sitting up, she realized someone had placed a pair of stun cuffs on her wrists. The bounty hunters, no doubt.

Where was she now? It seemed likely that she was on their ship, being taken to whoever had paid for her capture. She tugged at her restraints and found that they didn’t give at all, even when she called on the Force to aid her. She sighed, defeated. At least she was being brought...wherever When I thought this was going to be a hard day...in no way did I expect this. Next time I won’t let Ventress give me any well-wishes.  

Without any feasible means of escape at present, her thoughts turned to her dream. She’d forgotten about her encounter with her future self on Mortis when she’d decided to leave the Order. Shouldn’t her decisions have satisfied her “potential?” After all, she hadn’t remained Anakin’s student, although she was now wishing desperately that she had.

There was someone standing outside her cell-- the same person who had stunned her. She had sky-blue and silver hair in a messy knot atop her head and wide turquoise eyes. In fact, she looked a good deal younger than Ahsoka, maybe four or so years.. About fourteen or so.

“Oh good . I was beginning to think I’d killed you by accident. ”

She hadn’t been angry before, but now that there was something easily definable for her to be mad at…

“You’re going to wish you had when I get out of…” she tugged fruitlessly at her wrists again.

“ When ? Because you look pretty stuck to me.” She was shaking, slightly however. "Look, I don't want to be doing this."

“Then you shouldn’t be,” Ahsoka said angrily, though she began to try to collect herself. This was a child.

“Probably not.” She tried to smile. “I’m Kalei by the way.”

Ahsoka frowned. “Do you tell your name to all of your prisoners?”

“You’re my first one," she admitted. "I-- I ran away three weeks ago. From my family. I wanted my sister to come, but... Anyway, I need the credits." she looked guiltily at Ahsoka. "You're worth a lot."

“You have siblings?” Ahsoka asked, thinking.

“Five. They live on Dennogra. A desert planet, Outer Rim. Nothing much else to say. What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka admitted. “I don’t remember my family. I know I’m from Shili though.”

Kalei looked horrified, “You don’t?”

“I was a Jedi. I was only three when I was brought to the Temple to begin my training.”

“That’s...sad. I’m sorry. I mean...I like Anori a lot. I can't imagine not knowing her. Even if the rest of my family is...” she winced. "You know."

Honestly, as full of regrets as Ahsoka was, not knowing her birth family was never really one of them. “I had people I cared about. They were my family,” she tried to explain.

“Were?” Kalei asked, questioning her past tense.

“I left the Jedi Order.”

“Oh.”

They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment. Kalei looked shyer than ever. It was an odd dynamic: the captor and the imprisoned, both helpless to change their position. Ahsoka studied the younger bounty hunter. There was something in her eyes that was more than kindness: admiration. Kalei admired her, the former Jedi who was desperately trying to save various pieces of her former life. Ahsoka sighed.

“I’m Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano,” she said, though it was probably unnecessary. Probably, she knew who she'd captured.

The ship shuddered abruptly and Kalei rolled her eyes. “ I couldn't even steal a decent ship. This one," she said, "is called the Falling Star and it’s falling apart . ”

Ahsoka laughed in spite of herself. “Who names their ship the Falling Star ?”

“I don’t know, but I admire their sense of humor. Whoever it was is probably already dead though; this thing is ancient.”

If Anakin were here, he’d have something to say about the Falling Star . Or a ready-made excuse if he crashed it.

The girl gave her a last sad smile. “We’re dropping out of hyperspace soon,” she looked as though the guilt was going to tear her apart. A relatable feeling; it was what she felt every time she thought about how she’d left Anakin. "I-- I should go."

“It’s alright. I’ll get out of this eventually. I’m good at that,” Ahsoka reassured her.

Kalei brightened a little. “I hope you’re right,” she said as she left.

She’s important,  Ahsoka thought. That was just the feeling the Force was giving her.

Important how? In a different galaxy, she and Kalei might have even been friends. But she was about to deliver Ahsoka to whoever her client was, and they likely wouldn’t ever meet again.

She reached out with the Force to feel the girl's presence. It was so bright. Kalei was Force-sensitive! Of course-- that made sense. Regular fourteen-year-olds didn't run away from home, steal starships, and incapacitate Jedi, even Jedi without their lightsabers. Maybe her Force-sensitivity had something to do with why she'd run away, too, Ahsoka thought sadly.

But she’s way too old to be taught, she considered. At least, according to the Jedi.

She would’ve mulled over this for a long time, if not for the realization that Kalei had been distracting enough that she'd forgotten to wonder who had even put a bounty on her head. As the ship dropped out of hyperspace and Ahsoka looked out of the viewport, her stomach turned in dread. She was definitely in bigger trouble than she'd assumed. She had no lightsabers, her wrists were cuffed, and it was going to be very difficult to escape from a Separatist battleship.

Chapter Text

The Count was actually standing there waiting.

Which, aside from being surprising, was also a large problem. Ahsoka sighed internally. Her escape had just gotten even harder. She was fearless, absolutely, but even she knew she didn't stand a chance against him without her lightsabers.

If Ahsoka was unnerved though, that was nothing compared to Kalei. The hand with which she held her blaster shook so that it almost seemed likely she would stun Ahsoka again by accident. Right, for a Force-sensitive, and one who didn't know how to shield at that, being in the presence of a Sith Lord had to feel horribly, unexplainably awful. Even Ahsoka tilted her head uncomfortably, an unpleasant ringing feeling in her montrals. Her apprehension, however stemmed more from just standing here. She refuesd to be scared of Dooku, but waiting just wasn't really her thing.

She didn't have to wait all that long though; Kalei didn't even count her credits, just walked quickly back to her ship, her presence a confused tangle of guilt and relief. Hopefully she was all right, Ahsoka thought. At least now that Kalei was safe, or at least, as safe as she could be, Ahsoka could focus on getting out of here. Somehow.

"There is no need to look so desperate to escape, Lady Tano. You are a guest."

She turned her head to glare at him. "If I'm a guest," she held up her bound wrists, "explain these. Or the fact that you just paid--"

He waved a hand and the cuffs around her wrists clattered to the floor. "I apologize for whatever events may have led to your arrival here. I'm afraid it was necessary, as I hardly think you'd have come had I simply sent you a note."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "You know," she said in mock thought, "I really think I've already had enough entertaining lie-riddled monologues of darksiders for one week, so yeah no, you're probably right."

He frowned, appearing genuinely confused. Wait, the phrasing had been an actual coincidence? He didn't-- Yeah, that made more sense. He couldn't have known about her going to Malachor, unless Ventress was spying for him or something. It was just that that arrogant voice of his made everything sound like a pointed remark. Good to know.

"Look, you're not going to convince me I want to be here talking to you, so why don't you just drop whatever act this is?" she said tersely.

"There is no act, Lady Tano. You truly have nothing to fear. Unless, of course, you are not as confident in your convictions as you make yourself out to be."

She stared at the ground, hands curled into fists, wishing she had her lightsabers.

"Now, it has come to my attention that you left the Jedi Order," he told her.

She lifted her head. "Don't. Even. Try it. I'm not like you."

"Perhaps not, but we both know how this war is going to end. You told the Council yourself."

"You know because you're working for the person who's going to make sure it ends that way! How would that make us allies?" Ahsoka asked.

He nodded. "So are the Jedi. And so were you. This entire war is his game, Lady Tano. You can continue to be a pawn," he said calmly, "or you can understand as I have that there is only one avenue through which to change the outcome."

She shook her head. "But the dark side is..." She trailed off. As if summoned by the conversation, its voice was back, murmuring and whispering. It made it so hard to concentrate.

"How many of the sentient beings you could save would care what side of the Force you used to do it? A life is a life. Just as a death is a death, whether it is caused by a dark side adept or by the blind arrogance of the Jedi."

"Becoming a Sith wouldn't save anyone!" she cried.

"How can you fight an enemy you fail to understand?"

She closed her eyes, fighting tears. She didn't want to understand!

Wasn't that the exact mistake the Council had made? Wasn't that the very reason she'd been nearly sentenced to execution, and the reason every plea she'd made afterward had fallen on deaf ears? "What," she choked out, "do you get out of it?"

"I thought I had already been quite clear. I do not trust my master. He does not intend for me to ever surpass him in power, and it is not a feat I can achieve alone."

"Who is he?" Ahsoka asked desperately, but she knew he wouldn't tell her. Not unless she agreed to this insanity. Then he'd have to.

Then she could leave. That was all she really needed. But there had to be a reason the Jedi had never tried infiltrating the Sith order!

Their fear of the dark side.

How many of the sentient beings you could save...

"Could I really...still help people?" she whispered. "I thought the dark side was about selfishness and hatred."

"The dark side is about the power to accomplish an end."

"Like saving Anakin."

"Like saving the galaxy." To Ahsoka's horror, she could feel it gather all the fear and frustration she'd been feeling throughout this conversation--

It echoed it all back to her, like an offering. Calm. I'm calm, she thought, trying to breathe. Go away.

But what would calm solve? How could she defeat a Sith Lord with calm? 

"Will you learn to wield it as my apprentice?"

She looked up, pushing tears out of her eyes. She felt quite dizzy, the power she could feel inside her was dizzying. She didn't know where she could run where it wouldn't follow.

"No," she choked out, but it was such a feeble, tiny little word.

"For whom it is that you cling to the light so desperately? For the Council? They would rather forget the catastrophe that you turned out to be. They were going to condemn you to die whether you followed their code or not. Is it for the galaxy? For them that you would watch a Sith become Emperor and remain a good person?"

She shook her head. No. No.

"Or is it for you and you alone, so you can become one with the Force when you die, so you can tell yourself you are noble and pure?"

Ahsoka fell to her knees, tears threatening to come again.

This isn't so hard, she thought with morbid amusement. She was already kneeling. She could pretend. She would find out what mask the Sith Lord was wearing. Then she would know what to do.

"I am yours to teach," she whispered.

Chapter Text

The Force was unsettled.

Maybe it was just him. Except Anakin knew it wasn't that at all. It was her, and what Obi-Wan had told him: she'd said the Order was in danger and then stormed out of the Temple. It hurt that Obi-Wan had had to tell him, that she hadn't said anything to Anakin at all. She hadn't even seemed to want to look at him.

His master was being patient with him too, while Anakin resented him and the Council for somehow having become Ahsoka's confidant of choice. Obi-Wan was always patient, and it made him feel guilty. He almost wished his master would just...yell at him, or lose his temper. He sighed, head in his hands, a dull ache pressing against his temples, a sense of despair overcoming him and he had to close his eyes to hold back tears.

No. No. "No," Ahsoka's voice whimpered, her presence suddenly quite close, as though she was standing beside him. 

"Snips? What's wrong?" he cried, looking up, and she wasn't there; of course she wasn't there; what had he been thinking? But the ache in his head flared in a wave of sharp pain--

And then it was gone, as if it had never been there at all. Ahsoka's presence was back in the faintest reaches of his awareness, the way it always was if she wasn't near him, nothing more or less than a vague sense that she was there, somewhere.

Somewhere far out of reach.

Dooku studied her for a moment. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he planning? Or just enjoying the sight of her kneeling before him? Calm, Ahsoka. Calm. "I can feel your fear," he said quietly. "You can't dismiss it, so you try your best to hold it, and hide it, but the only person you're fooling--"

Ahsoka winced, knees aching from being pressed against the metal floor.

"--is yourself." He was silent, for a long moment, before she realized he was expecting her to answer.

"Yes, master," she said meekly, both words heavy with guilt, their weight the only thing holding her in her agonizing kneeling pose.

"So long as you continue to do so, it is a tool at my disposal, and not yours. That is your first lesson. Until we reach Serenno, you will meditate on your fear, and teach yourself to embrace it."

He motioned for her to stand, and she did so nervously. "If I embraced my fear, I wouldn't be on a battleship with a Sith Lord," she protested.

"Yet is it not fear for the galaxy's fate that keeps you here?" She stared at him, searching for a retort and finding none, to her frustration and his satisfaction. He motioned to a droid that had been waiting, unnoticed by Ahsoka until now, in the doorway. It wasn't a battle droid; it had a base with four wheels instead of spindly legs, and otherwise looked somewhat like a protocol droid, with a humanoid torso, manipulator arms, and head. "Escort Lady Tano to her quarters."

"Are there any other organic lifeforms here?" Ahsoka asked, rather unnerved.

"No," he replied calmly. "The droids more than serve their purpose. I do expect you to do as I ordered," he added, before she could turn to leave. "Don't delude yourself; I will know."

Am I sure it's too late to run away? "How long am I supposed to--"

He held up a hand. "Until you have completed the task."

The task. Her fear. She wanted to cover her ears and scream. "Let's go," she told the droid tersely. She made it a point to pay attention to where they were going, too, to try to figure out they layout of the ship. She did so just as much to giver herself something to do as for strategic reasons-- to quell the flow of racing thoughts, the thoughts that were telling her this was a mistake, and although they pointed back to the Jedi Code, they were paradoxically, anything but peaceful.

In the end they all blurred together into a rushing stream, individual thoughts lost. Just fear. That was what she was supposed to understand? She closed her eyes, trying to let herself connect with it--

She withdrew, a small hiss escaping her. It was like trying to stand at the bottom of a waterfall, and freezing cold water at that.

"Here, Lady Tano," the droid led her into a small room, but considering this was a dreadnought, it was actually a generous amount of space. Aside from the bed, which looked like it might even be somewhat comfortable, it even had a small desk, and the floor was carpeted.

"Oh," she couldn't help saying.

"I will bring you dinner in approximately two hours. If there is anything else you require, you need only to call me."

"Um, thank you," Ahsoka replied nervously. It was so weird, to have a Separatist droid tell her it was going to bring her dinner.

It paused, as though surprised. "Of course, Lady Tano."

She winced. "Ahsoka," she said firmly. "Do you have a name?"

She bent over to straighten an edge of the carpet that had gotten folded before replying, "I am AD-7907. You can call me Addie, if you wish." 

"What do you usually do here, Addie?" Ahsoka asked. It wasn't as though battle droids needed to be served meals, and she found herself genuinely curious. She supposed it wasn't as though Separatist droids were Separatists by choice.

"I was originally tasked with serving Asajj Ventress."

She froze, startled. "Ventress?" Right. She had been Dooku's apprentice. Ahsoka actually...kind of forgotten, at this point, or at least conveniently not considered it. What would Ventress have to say about her being here now? Nothing supportive, probably. And really, that role reversal was just painfully ironic, and probably better not to think about.

She hadn't gotten anywhere in her meditation when Addie brought her dinner, nor was she particularly hungry for the plate's contents: a rare nerf steak, its accompanying sauce, and a pile of sautéed vegetables.

It reminded her too much of one of her last conversations with Rex, where she'd joked that she would give her soul for a properly cooked nerf steak. He'd laughed playfully that her definition of properly cooked was barely cooked at all, and she'd rolled her eyes, because people so rarely cooked with Togrutas' tastes in mind and--

Well, it wasn't remotely funny now.

Neither was the headdress Addie had delivered, along with the set of black robes.

The outfit was fine; she could think of it as a costume, but she didn't want to replace her akul tooth headpiece.

Probably, he knew that. Probably, this was a test.

You're never going to save Anakin if you're scared of a piece of jewelry, she told herself.

She lifted the headpiece off her montrals, feeling immediately the unnerving absence of its weight, but the metal would be heavier, she reminded herself. It was similarly arranged into a series of sharp triangular points, except they were longer, and crueler: discordant and punctuating where her old headdress had gently framed her face. The thin metal spears reminded her of scaffolding. They were not meant to complement what was already there, they were meant to make something entirely new.

It certainly worked. The reflection staring back at her was that of a stranger.

"Alright,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It's okay. This isn't really you."

Ahsoka did two childish things before she went to sleep, though she felt less of a child than she ever had in her life; she shoved her new clothes underneath her bed so she wouldn’t be able to see them, and then she picked up the untouched dinner plate and hurled it at the wall as hard as she could. Neither one made her feel the slightest bit better.

Kneeling was easier the second time. She was too lightheaded to stand easily, anyway.

"You did not do as I asked," Dooku said icily.

"No," she agreed.

"Why?"

She said nothing. She felt hollow, empty.

"I see. You are afraid to be here and afraid to leave, and so you do nothing."

He was explaining her again. She hated that.

"Then learn to do it yourself, apprentice." He studied her, his eyes narrowing. "Have you eaten anything in the past three days?"

"No," Addie provided for her.

"And what do you hope to accomplish by starving yourself?"

"Nothing," Ahsoka answered dully. She just couldn't eat.

"Very well." He gave a small sigh of apparent disappointment. "Let us see how you have done." He nodded to Addie, who held out two silver objects. Lightsabers. They were lightsabers. The droid whirled away, but Ahsoka wasn't paying much attention anyway. She squeezed her eyes nearly closed as she ignited them, shuddering in poorly concealed horror. She knew immediately what color they were; they felt wrong in her hands.

She missed her own sabers, though she missed the feeling of them more than the actual color, for they had always been comfortable in her hands, familiar and very much a part of her; there existed a sort of song between her head, her heart, her hands, her blades. The red, like her outfit, could be ignored, the absence of the song could not, and her dizzying uncertainty could not.

Darth Tyranus ignited his weapon, and she darted forward only to find he wasn’t there once, twice, again. He wasn’t even using his lightsaber, he was merely evading her strikes. She increased the speed of her blows, and he actually began parrying them, but still lazily.

“Do you think you can defeat me as a Jedi ?”

“I’m no longer a Jedi,” she told him. It wasn’t a lie.

"But you lack the strength of will to choose to be something else. Instead you are nothing."

She stumbled backward, barely bringing her saber back up in time to stop him from cutting her head cleanly off. I can't learn if you kill me! she thought.

"Then show me you are a worthy student."

Her eyes met his and she understood the ultimatum. I'm going to die and I'm afraid. She reached clumsily for the feeling, and felt its icy cold spread out inside her. It was endless; it was a thought, an idea that brought other things into existence. Things she could use--

Wait. That wasn't-- she wasn't--

There is no emotion, there is...

(Oh please, not this again.)

She-- she was (being stubborn; we're) trying to (save your life ) -- trying to--

She screamed as his lightsaber met the side of her face.

Chapter Text

Darth Tyranus sighed, looking down at her charred face. She had touched the dark side for the tiniest of moments, but her apparent authority over it had been startling, enough to unbalance him and put his lightsaber about a half centimeter closer to her head than he had wanted.

Which had meant touching it.

Her stubborn clinginess to her Jedi ideals was pitiful. Her potential, contrastingly, was astounding. It was a rather interesting dilemma.

In the end, he settled on the fact that she had betrayed those ideals. The tiny steps, small as they were, would add up. The injury might even help-- really, loss could do wonders.

"Your orders?" the droid asked.

"Do whatever you can to keep her eye and her montral intact and functional. As for whatever else is left...I would like to hand Lady Tano her new self on a silver platter."

"I'm dead," she whispered. "This is how it all ends."

Ahsoka looked around slowly, at the world faded into emptiness, tears dotting her face, a trembling sound halfway between a sob and a giggle escaping her. "I don't even get to become one with the Force. There's just...nothing."

"No."

She whirled around. A pair of red eyes had blinked themselves into existence-- why was he here? Was he going to torment her even in death?

"Death? But there is no death," the figure said seriously, and she realized she'd been mistaken. The person wasn't the Son at all; she was a tall Human woman with a head of brown curls. Her eyes dimmed to a soft amber. "There is the Force." 

"That's...the Jedi Code," Ahsoka said, confused. "Anyway, I used the dark side. I can't become..." 

"All become a part of the Force. The ending is the same, and the stories are different. That is the way of things."

She frowned. That didn't sound very darksider-ish. "Who...are you?"

"I am Yarrow." She spoke quite solemnly; she actually sounded more like a Jedi. Except she had amber eyes, and now she was saying, "I was the dark side's fourth intermediary, and the Force's twenty-third." She crossed her arms. "You are not supposed to be a Sith apprentice."

Ahsoka blinked several times. "You were...what now?"

"An intermediary, an incarnate, a vessel. Whatever word you wish to use. A link between the Force and corporeal reality," she said impatiently. "It is improper to make such an allegiance; it lends them undue power. You, perhaps, are new, and your predecessor, perhaps, was very messy about the endeavor of choosing you, but there are rules."

"Wait, choosing me?"

Yarrow scowled. "We used to put planning and preparation into such things. You are meant to be an intermediary. What you actually are is a poorly put together afterthought with a particularly unwieldly presence. Though I suppose you are not the one who is to blame for it."

"Wait, I'm supposed to link the dark side to reality?" she said, panicked. "I don't want to be a darksider; I'm only--"

"Oh, 'Wait', she says," Yarrow clicked her tongue. "But the galaxy is ever in motion. Nothing waits. Ever. Especially not your destiny."

"I won't become your emissary or intermediary or whatever!" she shouted.

This was met with a deep frown. "This has never happened before. We used to choose our successors carefully; willing successors, and spend years preparing them." She blinked. "But then, we were not immortal either. Evidently, that changed...other things as well." She lifted her head, her tone one of utter finality. "I am afraid there is nothing to be done. You will indeed Become." Her form wavered slightly, fading.

"Wait!" Oh, no, she wasn't supposed to say that, was she?

Yarrow shook her head. "You cannot dream forever, little one."

Ahsoka focused, trying to keep her there as long as she could. Yarrow was right though; this dream, if that was what it was, was trying very hard to end, and Ahsoka could actively feel herself waking up. "I-- If I have to talk to you again..."

"The Son, as you call him, will be the easiest to speak to, by far," she explained. "Your Force-bond with him is built out of memories, and very strong-- it must be, to transfer his power to you. Ours will be quite faint by comparison. You will have to fall into a deep enough meditation to distance yourself from your memories in order to access our connection, which is purely spiritual."

It felt so enthralling to finally receive specific instructions for something that Ahsoka all but forgot everything else for a moment, and with that feeling of relief, her eyes fluttered open.

"Lady Tano, can you hear me?" The droid regarded her with its photoreceptors, patient and waiting.

"Yes." She nodded. There was a soft feeling of pressure against her head-tail, but she wasn't really paying attention, still absorbed in everything Yarrow had said. The Jedi will know how to fix it when I go back to them, she comforted herself.

"Your left montral was severely damaged and required surgery. We were uncertain as to whether we would be able to restore your hearing and echolocation."

She tilted her head, listening to the sounds of the room: droids' wheels, whirring machinery. No hum of ship's engines; perhaps they'd arrived on Serenno. "I wouldn't have known."

"Your left eye also experienced damage, but it was less impacted. We do not expect any adverse effects, however, we will need to test your vision."

She nodded again. She felt fine, and frankly, she had other, more pressing worries. She furrowed her eyebrows, or she tried to, finding that part of her face frozen. She lifted her hand and felt a cool, hard, smooth surface that was definitely not skin. Evidently, she could still glare, because the droid seemed nervous under her silently demanding gaze. "Ah-- Lady Tano?" It offered her a mirror.

Ahsoka stared, and stared some more.

Half of her face was masked: gold metal covered the entire upper left part of her face above and around her eye. Below that, it switched from solid to a grate consisting of lines curving upward toward the center of her face. The mask tapered at the hollow of her cheek to frame the side of her face down most of her chin, ending just below her lips. 

If anyone had asked her what she would do in this context, she'd have said she might scream. Or draw her lightsabers and demand an explanation. In reality, Ahsoka just stared.

"Parts of your face suffered fourth degree burns," the droid explained tentatively.

Deep breaths. Calm. At least she wasn't wearing that headdress now, she thought, and almost laughed. I, she decided, have an unfortunate talent for getting what I want in the worst possible way. 

"And this was...necessary?" The iciness of her own voice frightened her.

"We deemed it the best option given the circumstances," it replied, seemingly rather offended.

She tilted her head so the mirror reflected her nose and the right side of her face: the normal parts, and turned it slowly back, the metalwork coming into view. She reached up to touch it again. The lower tip was not attached, sitting like a normal mask would, so she could move her jaw. The upper part was decidedly immovable, anchored to whatever had been left of her face; which probably hadn't been anything particularly recognizable.

She wished it hadn't been gold. It had a false valiance about it, bright and loud.

The best option...

She needed to know who he was, the Sith Lord. Soon. And for that, she needed--

...given the circumstances.

She need Dooku's trust, she needed to be a faithful student, but not so much he'd know it was an act. She curled her hand into a fist, drawing on a tiny spark of anger that Dooku had done this to her--

--the droid fell to the ground, a pile of smoldering metal.

She shivered, cold and unsettled, but she focused on the spark again, turning her attention to the rest of the room: the tables and instruments and... she felt herself slipping, felt the destruction becoming too rhythmic, too seamless, and she pulled herself away. Calm. Calm.

She looked around at the room. She'd forgotten something, something important. A final time, she summoned that whisper of anger, and this time, she made it louder and louder until it was a scream, grating and obvious. Something meant to be heard and felt by whoever was listening. And she was certain he was.

She didn't feel cold anymore; the anger was a burning fire, and she gathered herself, trying to quell it. She searched for something serene; Anakin and Obi-Wan and their love and laughter and belonging. Everything she was going to lose--

No.

The anger took everything, every peaceful thought she called forth.

“If you aren’t too preoccupied, I really would like to be pardoned by the Republic.” She paused. Ventress, who had used these same terrible feelings, been served dinner by the same Separatist droid--

Ventress wanted to be pardoned by the Republic. Ahsoka was in no position to do that now, but the thought brought her calm nonetheless.

There is a way out when you're ready to take it. The dark quieted. The anger faded. Ahsoka's legs trembled, and she realized she'd been standing.

"Lady Tano?" Addie wheeled into the room, stopping abruptly, taking in the wreckage.

"You can call me Ahsoka," she said softly.

Droids didn't project emotion in the Force, but Addie seemed relieved by the offer, despite the fact that they both knew she couldn't take it. "Lady Tano, the Count wishes to see you."

"Master?"

He could sense it at once: her conviction. If the anger he'd felt from her hadn't been enough, he could sense that although her reservations were still there, she was certain of her path, pushing herself forward. She was no longer frozen, and her motion was based mostly on momentum, but it was towards Falling. He smiled.

"I have an assignment for you, apprentice."

She was definitely on edge, uneasy. However, she nodded. "An assignment, or a test?" she asked, projecting an impressive amount of false confidence into her voice, so that the question was almost a warning: I'm not a fool; don't lie to me.

"There is no difference. The lightsabers you wielded felt wrong, did they not? You will construct your own."

She frowned, clearly uneasy. "Where will I get the crystals?"

"From a Jedi, I daresay," he answered her calmly.

"A Jedi isn't going to just give me a crystal," she fretted, and really she was being annoyingly dimwitted.

"No," he agreed. "You will have to take them."

"There aren't that many dual wielders. You expect me to fight two Jedi without any lightsabers?"

"I expect you," he said, letting a hint of displeasure creep into his voice, "to display the same resourcefulness you have demonstrated at being a thorn in my side. I'm sure you'll think of something."

Chapter Text

So much for not wearing the headdress. Like the mask wasn't enough. It pressed into her montrals as she laid her head in her arms atop the ship's console. She was so tired. The last thing she wanted to do was look for anything, let alone two kyber crystals.

All she had so far was a single sentence plan:

She had no intention of killing anyone.

Ahsoka was wary of herself, after what she'd felt in the medical bay, and what she'd done with those feelings. More than ever, she was certain of what she needed to do, but she had been pretentious before. She wasn't infallible, she knew that now. The dark side would turn her into a murderer if she asked it to.

So she focused her energy elsewhere. Fight a Jedi for their crystal or let Sidious destroy her master, was the apparent ultimatum. But if Anakin had taught her anything, it was his dislike for rules. When given a choice between two unpleasant outcomes, she would choose neither. There was another option, she just had to find it.

Anakin might still have her old sabers. She'd have to get a civilian shuttle, though, to go to Coruscant. Then she'd have to talk Anakin into giving them to her without asking any questions, which wasn't going to happen. Anakin would want to know what her quarrel with the Council had been. Force, that felt like a lifetime ago, not a week.

He'd want to know what she planned on doing, too, and she couldn't tell him. That was definitely out of the question.

Ahsoka plugged in the coordinates for Ilum, and waited.

(This is not a good idea.)

"You don't want to go to a Jedi planet?" she challenged. "Hm, too bad I'm flying the ship."

( You are being reckless.)

Ahsoka recited the code, trying to silence it. "There is no emotion, there is (peace--"

is a lie.)

Ahsoka shook her head. "There is no ignorance," she was barely even sure of who was talking. "(There is--

"--only)

"--knowledge. There is no--" 

"passion"

"--serenity," she countered furiously.

It laughed and wordlessly curled up inside her mind, lazy and innocuous as a snake that had just eaten; satisfied. Ahsoka seethed. They were just words. Messing them up didn't mean anything. Other Jedi didn't have a voice in their head trying to confuse them while they recited the Code.

At least it was quiet now. The dark side wouldn't help her on Ilum; she'd need to be a Jedi again if she was going to pass whatever test the crystal caves would have for her, and she'd fair better without anything distracting her from the light.

She closed her eyes, trying to center herself in her calm. The light was harder to reach but she could control it. That was better, the light was better. The light was clarity, and the light did not make her mind heavy and fuzzy like the air before a summer storm, a sacrifice in the name of making lightning spark between her fingertips. She knew that.

She also knew the snake would be back.

She felt injured by the way the light danced out of her reach. Was it going to abandon her? All because the Son had chosen her for a destiny she didn't want? Just because there was an unwelcome darkness in her head that she was loud enough to make the light a faint and distant memory by comparison? Was it angry with her? Was this destiny a punishment of some sort?

What had she done that the Son had gotten it in his head it should be her who should replace him? "Whatever it was," she whispered to the light, "forgive me. Please."

Ahsoka had immersed herself in the light on the way there enough that Ilum didn't feel too jarring. Not to say she felt welcome there or her head didn't spin a bit when she stepped out of the ship wrapped up in the fur coat that barely fit over her montrals. The fact that half of her face was covered in metal didn't help with the cold at all, and she had to draw on the Force to keep it from becoming a serious issue.

She hated it, and his madness, hated the way he was trying to mold her into a puppet, her face merely another chance to display his delicate and artful skill at intimidation. There was the beginning of a conviction there: that Dooku's days were numbered, that would probably nestle itself in the place where her darkness lived and make trouble at some point. But she didn't have time for it right now, she really didn't.

Anyway, she was following the light now, such thought had no place in that.

She'd scanned for life signs before landing the ship and found none, to her relief. She hardly wanted to encounter another Jedi; it would raise too many questions, and she didn't need anymore enemies. For the first time since leaving the Order, really, she'd gotten lucky, and she encountered no one as she walked through the cave entrance.

The crystal caves were beautiful, they really were: long passages of glittering ice, and the Force's song all through them. Her palms however, were sweating. One never just walked in and got a crystal. There'd be a vision, of some sort. A trial.

For the first time, Ahsoka wasn't confident. She'd left-- what if...the caves...

No. That isn't an option.

She hummed, and then was silent, listening to the vibrations echo off the walls, tilting her head. The echo down a tunnel on her left had a sound within it, like the tolling of a bell. She hesitated for a moment and then followed it.

It was a long and straight passage, seemingly without end. How, then had she heard an echo so prominently? Her echolocation seemed off; she kept feeling walls where there were none, her heartrate rising each time her montrals momentarily convinced her she was trapped. Had her injury affected her hearing in some way she hadn't noticed?

Then, a new sound rang through the air. It was not light and surreal like the tinkling of a bell. It was the unmistakable broken sound of someone sobbing.

With new urgency, Ahsoka walked forward and rounded a corner--

"She left!" a Togruta was wailing. He knelt in the tall grass, face stained with tears, looking to the sky as if in imploring prayer. "She left the Order! We'll never know what happens to her now!"

"Hush, Naale," said another, shorter Togruta, who held him. Her voice struck a familiar cord in her mind. Her mother. "She survived a war, didn't she? Your little sister," her voice trembled for a moment and he took a deep breath. "Your little sister isn't a baby anymore. She was strong enough to fight for the Republic and she's strong enough to take care of herself now."

"But we won't know! Before, I could look for her on the casualty reports, now--" Naale's voice cracked, extinguished into a moment silence. "And what if she doesn't know what to do all by herself? Without her lightsabers? Without the Hero with No Fear by her side? She's been Jehdai nearly her whole life. It's different just being a regular Togruta."

"You don't remember her like I do. She's anything but regular. Our Ahsoka has a strong spirit; it will guide her.

I have a brother? Ahsoka thought in wonderment. She didn't remember a brother, only the most fleeting image of a mother. Had he been there all those years, thinking of her, and later frantically searching casualty reports and footage and news articles? Sending love for her out into the emptiness, never receiving an answer?

Missing her when she didn't even remember him? It was wonderful and terrible and sad all at once, to think of such a thing.

She was back in the icy cave now, the grass and her mother gone like a dream. But her brother was still there, the tips of his montrals a good fifteen centimeters above hers.

"Naale?" she whispered. Could he see her? "It's me! Ahsoka! I'm alr--"

He stared at her, eyes wide and angry. "The Separatists wanted to tear our planet open, to mine for precious metals. And now he has a pet Togruta by his side?"

She shook her head. "It's not like that! I'm a spy! I'm trying to--"

"Trying to betray your people?" he hissed. "Our mother is wrong about you, Ahsoka. I think you lost most of your spirit the second we let them take you away from your family, and the rest when you left the Order."

"No!"

"And now you want to steal crystals from the Jedi too!"

She had no right to be here.

"Is that what your new master taught you? That you can take what you want from anyone?"

"I didn't-- I meant to--" the words got caught in her throat. I never meant to hurt anyone.

"Maybe that's why the Council got rid of you, they knew you were going to become a monster!"

"I--" she took a deep breath. "You're a vision. You wouldn't say these things." Calm, Ahsoka. Calm. 

His lip curled. "How would you know? You don't even remember me."

She closed her eyes, reaching out to the Force. "I'm loved. I've always felt that, my whole life, even if I didn't remember you. You and Anakin and Padme and Rex and Jesse and Fives and Echo and so many other people all love me. And I love all of you."

"Jedi don't love."

She took a deep breath. No, and yet... "But you said it, Naale." She smiled. "I don't know what to do all alone."

He stepped toward her, and his entire face was changed. She wondered how she could have ever confused the stranger before with her brother. "I want you to promise me two things."

"Alright," she said.

"I want you to promise that you won't let anyone make you believe you're all alone. Never let anyone weaken your spirit like that."

She nodded solemnly. "What's the other thing?"

He grinned. "That you'll take of that ridiculous thing," he pointed to the spiky headdress, "and get your akul teeth back."

"I will," she vowed emphatically, and he held out his hands, still smiling. Ahsoka picked up the crystals, feeling their warmth in her palms.

"Now go, Ahsoka. Go make us proud."

Chapter Text

Dooku welcomed her back to Serenno with a thinly vailed threat. "I trust you were wise enough not to disappoint me."

Ahsoka presented her new kyber crystals, one ice blue, the other a deeper sapphire. Joy bubbled up inside her, though it had nothing to do with him. "Yes, master."

He smiled, and resentment burned inside her. I can see him dead at my feet, head severed from body, not smiling.

"Well done, apprentice. But it will not do for a Sith to fight with Jedi weapons."

The statement snapped her out of her reverie. "What do you mean?"

"Red. You must bleed the crystals red, the color of hate and anger and darkness," he told her. "You must prove yourself worthy to be at my side, and capable of defeating my master."

The joy evaporated. How hadn't she seen this coming? Of course he wanted her to corrupt the kyber crystals. She stared at them sadly.

"As a Jedi," he began, and she knew she was about to hear another lecture, "you believed that by abstaining from using your emotions, you could protect the galaxy from their power. That it would cease to be a danger. But emotions have power, Lady Tano. This is an inescapable fact. That power cannot be willed away, and it does not vanish from existence when you choose not to use it. Instead, it merely becomes available for others to wield, others who don't share your moral constraints."

She bit her lip.

"Now, you will claim it as your own, along with your crystals. Embrace your fear and anger, and use them to bend the crystals to your will."

Her brother's smiling face-- "I don't want to." It came out a faint whimper.

"You are angry that you must," he corrected. "Are you not?"

She didn't answer. She wasn't. She just felt broken sorrow.

He held up a hand, and lightning arced from her fingers, coiling around her like a thousand serpents that bit each time they touched her skin. The muscles in her legs cramped and she fell into a kneel, barely managing not to drop the crystals. "You are angry," he repeated.

The sharp smell of ozone filled the air. She whimpered again, a wordless sound this time. The lightning left a dull ache behind under ever inch of her skin. She wanted to lie on the floor and cry like a child. She wanted more than anything to be angry, to offer the emotion like a desperate pleading child, but all she felt was dizzy and ill.

She'd taken to long to agree. He raised his hand again, more lightning, more serpents, more pain. She barely registered the crystals falling to the floor. What do you feel? What do you--

"I--I--ah--"

The lightning tore into her, splitting cracks into her resolve. Her Jedi training wanted to become numb, to make the stream of pain utterly meaningless, but Ahsoka felt it more keenly each time; a whiplash of pain, convulsing muscles, the dull ache he paused just long enough to let her experience to its fullest.

How many people was the Sith responsible for hurting like this, or worse? Thousands. Millions. She could feel their spirits screaming around and inside her, all of the agony past and future. The pain she was about to inflict on the kyber crystals given to her with nothing but love.

"I'm--" she whispered, her throat barely working. "I'm angry."

She could see herself from outside her own head, a smoking heap on the ground. Something broken like the crystals were going to be.

"Get up," he said sharply.

She coughed, her aching cramping body feeling foreign and incomprehensible. She was quite certain she'd forgotten how to move her legs. "I can't--"

"Up." He raised a hand again.

"I'm angry at you!" she snarled, struggling back to a sitting position, picking up the crystals off the floor. Ahsoka closed her eyes. The galaxy comes before your wants, the galaxy needs you to be angry, the galaxy needs you to be a good actress, the galaxy needs you to turn red, she told the crystals in her hand. And my duty is to the galaxy.

She reached out and shared her anger over the war. All the pointless suffering, all the death, all the pain endured by pawns in Sidious' game. Her own foolishness for not seeing it sooner.

Her resentment for everything she had to do to save the Jedi while they refused to do their job.

"Sometimes," Ahsoka says to the padawan, looking at him and seeing hope, "just when you think you understand the Force, you realize just how little you know."

He looks back up at her and sees the mentor she never got to be.

Ahsoka shook her head. She was supposed to celebrate the idea of their only being one padawan left in the whole galaxy if it meant she got to be a mentor? No, this was more important than--

you realize how little you actually know.

But she knew what she was doing. She did.

There's the temple, built anew. There's peace, fought for and won. There's a new Jedi, a new youngling. Tiny, green wrinkling ears and eyes looking up at her inquiringly.

How many people would have to die to make that happen? It occurred to her suddenly how selfish the crystals were being. Acting out of self-preservation, trying to convince her that the entire galaxy should be sacrificed in the name of a distant future peace so many wouldn't live to see. When they could help her preserve this one, prevent all of it, if they would just--

Fury intensifying, Ahsoka showed them Anakin, gone, dead, lost, merely a weapon.

Obi-Wan takes in the gold mask that matches her eyes, the ignited crimson sabers. He sees the padawan he failed. The padawan he has to save the galaxy from.

Ahsoka duels Anakin furiously, her gold mask reflecting the fiery glow around them, a crimson saber flashing, poised to cut through his neck.

Katooni stares at her, stepping backward, terror and dismay painted across her face.

No, Ahsoka thought, running out of protests but knowing she couldn't waver, she couldn't change her mind, she couldn't cease for a moment the anger and fear. This is about the galaxy, the galaxy, not me, and what is a pair of kyber crystals next to all those lives-- She thought of Cody trying to kill Obi-Wan, Vader's blade swinging at

Her. Obi-Wan. The Jedi from before. Children. Terrified face after terrified face.

The crystals in her palms screamed, and she felt it within herself, a deep tearing agony that made the lightning seem superficial by comparison. Ahsoka's very soul screamed. Maybe it was worse, this one crime. Unlike the galaxy, this was her doing and hers alone. The crystals, their sweet song forever silenced and their cry unending...

'It ends. We will end it. There will be a new song.'

Years of darkness or one fleeting moment. There was only one choice to make, only one she could make.

Ahsoka showed them everything that was taken from her: Barriss' betrayal. How the Sith's war had stolen away her friend.

Turned children into murderers.

Turned peacekeepers into weapons.

Turned living breathing people into sacrifices at Sidious' feet. People she loved--

Then she gave. She reached inside herself and gave them everything she found there. All of it, until they wanted it, pulling energy from her hands almost of their own accord. They weren't screaming anymore. They were bathed in darkness, and yet...

Ahsoka stood, opening her eyes, and realized that her lips were curled in a smile. The crystals she held were garnet red, a darker color than Dooku's. She held them out, and looked up at him questioningly.

He looked almost startled.

"I took the light from them," she said, puzzled. "And gave them darkness. Was that not what you wanted?"

"Kyber crystals are inherently light. We must break their will in order to make them usable."

A feeling of dread uncurled inside her. She couldn't believe she'd been smiling. "I didn't do that," she realized slowly. "I...I didn't bleed them."

"You made them dark. It was no longer necessary." He looked pleased now, almost childishly delighted. "You may rest, and construct your lightsabers."

You made them dark.

You made them dark.

The words echoed in her head, a never-ending accusation. She didn't think she'd be getting very much rest.

Ahsoka haunted her.

Kalei could picture her vividly: standing in that hangar, her face half in shadow, the easy confidence hiding a deeper uncertainty and fear, the thinnest ribbons of yellow brushed across the blue of her eyes like errant brush strokes--

Wait. What? That's not what she looked like, she dismissed.

Standing in front of Dooku had been horrifying in a way she couldn't place. Unsettling. Wrong. Before that, Kalei had hardly had an opinion of the Count at all. Dennogra was a Separatist world, but she wasn't the biggest fan of the war. She'd thought maybe he was misguided-- but when she'd looked at him, all she'd felt was cold and empty. She'd been reminded quite suddenly of being back at home, had wanted to leave that ship as fast as the Falling Star would carry her.

She'd gotten to. And Ahsoka had been left at his mercy.

Don't worry, I'll escape, she'd said. Maybe she had. Maybe Kalei was just worrying too much.

Or maybe Ahsoka had been lying the way older people so often lied to her: sometimes well-meaning, other times not, but always casually. Kalei hated that, the nonchalant assumption of control over her thoughts.

She was a Jedi, Kalei reminded herself. Jedi were either very skilled and clever warriors whose feats were exaggerated, or they were actually magical. She was never actually clear on which interpretation of the stories she heard was correct, but either way that gave the Togruta a better chance of escaping, didn't it?

Unless that was why Dooku had wanted her in the first place. To kill a skilled Republic warrior, or interrogate her, or just...hurt her.

Kalei hadn't spent a single credit of what the Count had given her.

She would today, she told herself firmly. She needed food. She would go to the market and buy a loaf of bread. It wasn't that hard to do.

"Watch where you're going!" snapped a Devaronian as she stumbled into him and tripped, landing sprawled on the ground, and saw, out of the corner of her eye--

A humanoid woman of a species she'd never seen before, with a pale grey-white face, and two lightsabers at her hip. She stood at a corner of the square, as if surveying it, though there was something about her gaze that wasn't terribly purposeful.

Kalei leapt to her feet before she was even aware of deciding to, careening through the crowd of people, pushing past a human woman shepherding a trio of children and a tall Twi'lek. "Ma'am, miss, excuse me!"

The woman turned her head sharply, eyes narrowing, and Kalei felt a faint chill ripple through the air. "What do you want?"

"Miss, there's-- one of your fellow Jedi-- I mean a former Jedi, Ahsoka Tano, she said her name was," Kalei paused for a fraction of a second, trying to formulate a coherent statement. "She's been captured by Count Dooku."

Chapter Text

"It's a pity I'm not a Jedi," came the flat reply.

"Wha-- oh, sorry." Kalei stepped backward. "I'm-- I didn't--" She winced. The apparently-non-Jedi fell decidedly into the category of people Kalei wasn't sure whether to talk to as adults or not. She didn't look all that much older than Kalei herself, but then, she was the one with lightsabers. "I didn't mean to bother you, miss."

"Ahsoka was captured? How do you know?" She wasn't happy, that was for sure. But Kalei couldn't tell if it had anything to do with Ahsoka or if she was just annoyed at being mistaken for a Jedi.

Kalei remained silent as long as she dared, but there was something about the pale blue eyes that allowed no consideration of lying. She felt her cheeks grow warm. "I...may have done the capturing. But I wish I hadn't," she added quickly. "I really wish..." A lump formed in her throat. No, she wouldn't cry. She wasn't the one who should be crying.

"What's done is done. It hardly matters what you wish," the not-Jedi person replied, but it sounded more like advice than an accusation. "You'd do better to forget the whole thing."

"Do you know her?"

The question seemed to puzzle her for some reason. "Yes," she decided at last.

"Do you think...she'll be alright?"

"How would I know?" she snapped with sudden frustration.

Kalei hung her head. "I'm sorry. I'll leave you alone now."

She stared at Kalei, as though she wanted to say something, and Kalei waited. "The Count is dangerous. There's really nothing you can do," she advised at last.

What had Kalei thought would happen? She didn't even know where Ahsoka was now. "I can't stop seeing her. Her eyes are the wrong color-- I mean... I don't know. Maybe it's not her. Maybe there's something wrong with me."

"Her eyes?" her voice sounded suddenly sharp, attentive. "Her eyes are a different color?"

"Not really. I mean, I know they're blue. But when I picture her, they're yellow."

Ahsoka stared at the collection of potentially useful lightsaber parts. Unlike when she'd built her first set, no clear image came into her mind. She had no idea what she wanted, or even what the Force wanted. Meditation didn't help, so at last, she was forced to set the task aside, pocketing the pair of red crystals.

Then, she set about her next task, a seemingly simple one. But the akul tooth headdress didn't fit over her mask, now resting on her head at the wrong angle and at risk of cutting her. Ahsoka struggled with it for a moment before shame and frustration overcame her and she placed that in her pocket as well.

She couldn't do this.

The hopelessness and shame made her face burn and her stomach sink. It was apart from the light or dark, burying both and leaving her hollow and empty.

I want to go home.

But where even was that? The Temple wasn't her home anymore; she'd left, but more than ever she needed a Jedi. The darkness she'd felt inside herself when she'd drawn upon it to corrupt the kyber crystals had been alarming. There was definitely more, the voice was definitely louder, she was definitely getting worse.

How much worse? It was hard to guess; even when she was drawing on it, most of it was held in place where it was, buried, as out of reach as she could manage. But she needed to know, as dangerous as it felt to free it. She needed to know what she would have to overcome.

Ahsoka reached inside herself, to the place where she'd pushed the darkness away, and hesitated for a moment. Then, she let go, and in the blink of an eye, the dark side uncurled inside her: a wingbeat, a brush of cold beneath her skin, and then a thousand more, crowded and unceasing. The flurry of motion and fight and feathers all blurred into nauseating chaos. She was supposed to command this? Her mind buckled under the strain of trying to give it anything resembling a direction.

The mirror on the wall shattered and all she could think was better it than me because it could just as easily have been her.

The wings stilled and folded, organized and dissolved, a nondescript hum of energy, a singular motion. Not exactly comfortable, but bearable. She gasped, already dreading what it would take to bury this back inside herself. How? Only a few short weeks ago it had barely been there at all. What if the Jedi thought she was beyond helping? She had to leave, now.

But the Sith. I don't know who the Sith is. 

"Don't you?" The Son stood opposite her, his expression surprisingly calm.

"I--"

"Close your eyes. Focus. Let the Force guide your thoughts."

"There's no way-- the Jedi Council doesn't know," she protested. "And you think I can guess?"

His eyes narrowed. "Guess? You are capable of more than idly wanting to know." His voice rose dangerously.

Ahsoka closed her eyes. "It could be anyone."

"No!" he exclaimed in fury, and she could hear his footsteps pacing back and forth.

This wasn't fair! Why was she being asked to solve a mystery that no one-- She sighed, focusing on the dark side as much as she dared. Okay, maybe not anyone. Taking over the galaxy-- that would have been something he'd been plotting, for years, decades. So. He'd made a plan. If his actions were calculated, the mask he wore would be, too. Anakin's Fall was an integral part of his goals. He'd have planned that too... how would Anakin Fall?

No, it really couldn't be just anyone, she realized. Not just anyone who could successfully turn her master. Anakin wouldn't become the apprentice of someone who just showed up out of nowhere, and that would be an enormous risk for Sidious to take. He had to be certain...he was someone of influence...someone Anakin would listen to.

Who does Anakin listen to?

Not that many people, actually. He didn't trust or respect easily. It was really a short list, and most of them... most of them-- all of them actively tried to encourage Anakin to act more like a Jedi. She shook her head. Think, Ahsoka. How do people Fall? The dark side was about emotions. Anger. Fear.

Who does Anakin go to...

Oh Force. She froze. No.

Who does Anakin go to when he's angry?

"What do you want?" Skywalker demanded, saber drawn, and Asajj internally sighed.

If only Ahsoka had gotten her that pardon. Like she was supposed to. 

"I'm here to tell you that Ahsoka Tano was brought to a Separatist dreadnought by a bounty hunter-- not me," she added emphatically as anger twisted his face. "You think I want anything to do with the Separatists?" It was a good thing she hadn't brought Kalei; she had an uncanny feeling the girl's admission would not have been well received.

It was somewhat troubling. Kalei was a child. Skywalker was a Jedi. Or he was supposed to be.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he demanded.

"I don't know. You have a Force-bond with her, don't you?" By the sound of it, Kalei might too, a faint one.

His eyes widened. "I felt..." he trailed off. "Don't think this means we're friends, Ventress."

"Like I want to be friends with you," she muttered as he departed. As annoying as he was, Skywalker would do something, anything to protect his padawan.

Which was good. Because otherwise...otherwise, Asajj was a little worried the turquoise-haired nuisance might talk her into doing something herself.

No. Surely not--

But it made a terrible sort of sense, it painted the distant possibility of her vision with the vivid colors of something imminent. She had thought learning who the Sith was would be reassuring, that a plan would stem from the realization, but the Sith was the Chancellor of the Republic-- 

'Snips?' Anakin's voice called. 'What's going on? What's wrong?'

"Kriff." Of course. They had a bond. He'd have felt all that. She paused for a moment, fighting to push the darkness back into something that didn't fill her entirely. Calm. I am calm. I'm serene. With enormous effort, she managed to press it into a tiny and dismissible pinprick.

(This is how you repay us for the help we just gave--?)

She ignored it, burying it as well as she could. 'I'm--' she hesitated. 'I can't talk now; I'm in the middle of escaping from Dooku,' she told him, opening her eyes. The Son had decided to disappear again. Great. One less thing to worry about.

'Escaping? Without lightsabers? Be careful Ahsoka, I'm on my way.'

'To Serenno?' she asked, cautiously stepping out of her room. She could get pretty far as long as she acted normal; she was allowed to walk around the palace. At least, she was pretty sure she was.

'Ventress told me he sent a bounty hunter to capture you. Ahsoka, who was it? When I find them--' 

Kalei! Ahsoka stopped mid-step. 'No! No, Master, please don't!'

'Ahsoka, don't you want--'

'I just told you what I want! Stop pretending your desire for revenge is for anyone other than yourself!'

He didn't answer for one long and terrible moment. What did I just say? She wanted to wish she hadn't said it, but... but he was lying to himself! Pretending selflessness where there was none, just as she had been lying to herself about her fear.

'You're right. We should focus on getting you to safety.'

Right. The Republic. Was supposed to be safe. It was so strange to hear him talk about it so normally, like it wasn't all falling apart, wasn't all a bomb waiting to explode, like he wasn't--

She shook her head. Focus, Ahsoka. 

She was nearing the hangar now, so she broke into a run.

"Lady Tano. Where are you going?"

As a Togruta, her fight or flight reaction leaned heavily toward the former, and it actually took a moment to overcome the startled fear and make herself keep running; a moment Dooku took advantage of. She felt the Force wrap around her, lifting her into the air as it constricted her throat.

"I'm," she rasped, "leaving."

He sighed. "I confess myself disappointed. Unfortunately, I cannot allow that."

"Why? The Republic's under the jurisdiction of a Sith too, so what's the kriffing difference?"

She'd hoped the remark would unbalance him, at least a little, but his face remained expressionless. "So you understand why your training is of the utmost importance. I will next test how long it takes you to escape from a prison cell."

She kicked her legs wildly, vision blurring. Desperately, Ahsoka focused on the energy holding her. No, not desperately. It was going to do her bidding. I am going to my master and he is not going to stop me. Slowly but surely, she pried apart the invisible grip around her throat. Dooku's eyes widened ever so slightly. Ahsoka drew in a deep breath, drawing the energy inward.

Then she released it, and he stumbled backward. The ground rose to meet her face and a sharp pain stabbed her arm as she landed, but it was nothing compared to the lightning that followed. It was pain that blotted out all thought and intent, the concept of what it even was.

I'm going to die, was her last real thought.

Then. There was no time, no before or after or order of things. There was no one to realize these things did not exist. There was. Only.

...

She reached, searching for anything, any way to get away from it. There was a place, a quiet place, and she clung to it and huddled herself there, removed from it. The pain. She could see herself, lying still on the floor. Was she dead?

She felt a scream that did not belong to her, torn from a throat that did not belong to someone lying upon the floor, and the place in which she'd sought refuge tilted and nearly sent her tumbling away. She held tighter, treasuring the quiet, the space for thought in the absence of the pain.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she felt the words on lips that were not hers--

Ahsoka fell back into herself in time to see Dooku's face contorted in pain and fury, as he fell limp to the ground.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka sat up, frozen and staring.

Tentatively, she touched a finger to his wrist.

Alive. The tiny rising and falling pressure was strange to her; that something as mechanical as the ticking of a chrono could be indicative of aliveness. There was something uncomfortable about that thought, though she wasn't sure what. She pressed her fingers against her own wrist. Maybe it was the sameness of it, the thought that it was the same thing that kept Dooku alive as Anakin or Rex or Darth Sidious or her. How did she know, for certain, she was different from any given one of them? Her pulse grew faster with her fear, and fear was the same as being alive, she thought. I'm too alive.

She was feeling blood move under her skin-- that was what a pulse was, and it was dizzying and wrong to think about, but the more she wanted to stop, the more the thought stuck.

What, oh what had she done?

The light would help her, if she could let go of her fear. But that wasn't a particularly simple endeavor; it was as though the perception of calm as an island or anchor within an ocean had been inverted. Ahsoka felt safe with her feelings. It was her fear she could feel in her wrist's pulse and it was that which held her, and propelled her forward. She wrestled with herself, to let go and sink into calm, but it was like trying not to blink. It was counter-intuitive: what she knew of the light against how it made sense, now. That part of her fought, as though peace was the thing she would drown in, to stay afloat in the sharp, vivid assurance of her terror.

She didn't understand how to let go of all these feelings without avoiding the reality of what she'd done, which would surely be just as wrong and just as selfish.

"You must be careful with your guilt. It is, in its actuality, a selfish need to inflict punishment. But the Force does not punish nor seek retribution, and anger and vengeance towards one's self is just as destructive as anger and vengeance in any other form. It must never be confused with true repentance," Ahsoka recalled reading as a youngling, which was helpful, but it didn't really explain what repentance actually was supposed to be.

Repentance was...fixing things through one's actions, not claiming feelings could somehow fix them.

Ahsoka forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. Then another.

Her mask.

It was all Anakin could think about, it superseded the relief he'd felt when a Separatist shuttle had dropped out of hyperspace with her presence glowing inside, the way she'd run up to him and hugged him, or the deep ache in her voice as she told him she'd missed him, and asked if he was alright.

If he was alright.

And all he could do was stare and and note the way it matched her whole outfit: grey top with gold at its neck and sleeves, black skirt with gold embroidery, gold boots. That made it worse, gave her a sort of ownership over the whole thing. Certainly, none of it suggested 'prisoner'.

"Ahsoka, what did he want?" he asked at last.

"He heard I left the Order, thought I might want to follow in his footsteps," she said ruefully. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Are you hurt?"

"The mask isn't for decoration," she said flatly, like he might not have noticed it.

How could he have let this happen? What kind of master was he?

"Anakin. Anakin, I don't know what to do." There was a tremble in her voice, and tears trailed down her face.

“Uh, don’t cry Snips," he said uncomfortably. "I’ll help you, just tell me what’s wrong.”

She barely seemed to hear him, choking on sounds that slowly became distinguished words. “The Sith Lord! He o-orchestrated the ent-t-tire war!”

“Ahsoka…? Dooku started the war, but--”

“The other Sith Lord! You have to believe me!” she was sobbing now, her arms wrapped around him, her head buried in his robes.

“Okay," he said, rubbing her back gently like he'd seen creche masters do with younglings when they were upset. "Just try to calm down and explain."

“Chancellor Palpatine is the Sith Lord.”

The Chancellor was his friend! He was no Sith. Fury welled up inside him. Something was definitely wrong with Ahsoka, or she wouldn't say such a thing! Whoever had hurt her like this…

"The Chancellor is a good person, Ahsoka," he said, reaching out to send calm across their bond. "We're going to fix this, I promise. A healer will be able to--"

"I don't need a healer! I need you to listen to me!"

“Ahsoka, you're not well.”

“No!” she wailed. "No, you're--"

He took her hand and tried to use the Force to help calm her, but she was too agitated for him to reach her. “I’m going to bring you back to the Temple, and we’ll figure out how to help you.” But Ahsoka pulled away from him, her presence walled off from the calm he was trying to project; for the way she reacted, he might have been pouring cold water on her head. She did not want any of it: the embrace, the calm, or his help and she glared.

And he felt it.

“Ahsoka!” His voice cracked in anguish, because no, there it was: everything he'd feared in the responsibility of training a padawan, the real reason he hadn't wanted it, always hidden under a dozen other excuses. All but forgotten only to now be realized. “Ahsoka," he repeated, almost a whimper, waiting for her to hit him or kick him, or use her sharp Togrutan teeth she'd warn away enemies with. He waited for her to hurt him, because he deserved it.

She just stared. Emotions simmered, and circled and spiraled. They twisted her expression into something as unfamilliar as her outfit. They burned, directionless, and with that he realized how wrong he'd just been. Ahsoka wasn't going to do anything. She was frozen and drowning, and the only person she was hurting was herself.

"Sleep," he said, letting the Force fill his words. There was so much emotion in his padawan's presence, but barely any intention at all. So little that it actually worked: she blinked slowly, growing quiet and still.

"...Anakin?" she murmured.

"I'm here."

Her eyes closed, but the pained look on her face stayed.

“Can you hear me, Padawan Tano?” a soft voice asked. Ahsoka opened her eyes to see a Twi’lek peering at her. She had a calming voice and demeanor which was probably the only reason Ahsoka didn't Force push her away.

“Where am I?” she demanded instead, working on piecing together the fragmented and fuzzy memories.

“You’re in the Jedi Temple,” she said, clearly expecting the statement to be comforting, “Specifically in the Halls of Healing.”

That jogged her memory. Anakin! Why!? She stood up.

“Please sit back down. I’ll be in trouble with Knight Skywalker and Master Vokara Che if you leave!” the healer said anxiously. Ahsoka closed her eyes and exhaled in exasperation. She didn’t have time for this!

She frowned. “Was that a request?”

The Twi’lek looked confused. “Of course it was. You aren’t a prisoner!”

“Sorry. That’s kind of my assumption when I wake up somewhere different than where I fell asleep.”

This seemed to have been a disconcerting statement, because she made a face before shaking her head. “Padawan T-” 

“Please call me Ahsoka. I’m not a padawan anymore.”

“My apologies. Ahsoka, I see the injury to your face was treated. With regards to the...armor, we could look at removing it, but that would potentially be quite risky. We'd then have to use synthskin as an alternative to protect the damaged area--"

“Ahsoka! Are you alright?” Anakin came rushing into the room, scanning her face worriedly.

Oh right, he thinks I’m insane. She was also fairly certain she’d slipped and lost control of the dark side, so he was probably worried about that too. She sighed, searching for a reason to not want to slap him across the face. He hadn't thrown her in a prison cell, she supposed. That was something.

The healer nodded. "I'll give you two a moment to talk. We can continue to discuss your treatment later.

“Ahsoka. Talk to me,” he said the second she left the room.

“That’s what I tried to do before,” Ahsoka snapped. “You didn’t believe me then.”

“Ahsoka-”

“But I’ll tell you again . I’m not alright, because a Sith Lord is going to eradicate the entire Jedi Order, and the galaxy is going to suffer under his rule for DECADES! Of course, all of my former friends and confidants are too wrapped up in their own hypocrisy to believe me because it’s just too inconvenient for the perfect reality they’ve constructed, no matter what I say, or how many ways of delicately wording the truth I try to find! And I thought you'd be different, because you used to talk about the same thing, but you're just as guilty of it as the Council is!”

Anakin stared at her.

“I’m sorry," she said. "I just don’t know what to do! I’m so trapped, and…”

“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it.” She’d meant every word of it, but she was touched that he’d said that because she knew how much willpower it had taken for him to do so. There was a long silence, and she felt him reach out to her with the Force to feel her presence. She let him, hoping he would see what she couldn't get across with words. "What happened? Earlier?

“What do you mean?” she asked, still fixated on the fact that he hadn't said he believed her.

“I felt the dark side from you . If something’s going on, I need you to talk about it.”

“Just like how you talk about things?” she asked, feeling a prickle of irritation.

"I know," he conceded. "But please?"

"It's like my framing all over again. Having these visions and then not being believed. I felt so helpless and scared...and Dooku would...he made it worse. It's so hard to let go."

"You're safe now. And I believe you."

I believe you. Those words meant everything. Meant the galaxy, quite literally. "Thank you."

Ahsoka let her emotions go into the Force like she hadn't been able to all week. She was not afraid, not with her master by her side, believing her.

No more darkness. She had no need for it.

(Even if it was still there.)

Chapter Text

"So...the plan?" Anakin asked.

Ahsoka looked at him blankly. A plan. Right. "You need to act normal."

"Ahsoka! We know who the Sith Lord is; what more could we possibly--"

The clones had been the ones to kill the Jedi. "We have to assume he has a failsafe. Or several. He didn't become Chancellor by being a fool," she said cautiously. She still wasn't sure how much she could tell him. If she said too much...he might end up Falling like he had before. Anyway, if Sidious were to become suspicious, it would be better if he underestimated how much she knew. Which meant she should hide as much of that as she could.

He frowned. "I guess. I hadn't thought of that."

"That means that right now the plan is a work in progress," she admitted. "For now, act normal. Especially with the Chancellor."

"Since when are you in charge? I'm the master," he said indignantly.

"I haven't rejoined the Order," she said playfully. "Anyway, I might know someone who can help us."

"Who?" Anakin asked.

She grinned in spite of herself.

Asajj tipped her head slightly, reaching out to the Force to try to listen to the conversation at the table next to her.

"--escaped. They put a bounty on her head; someone'll find her."

"That's what happens when you make children fight in a war."

"Jedi children aren't real children, or they don't act like it. Have you ever talked to one? Those padawans talk like they're grown ups, all noble and stoic. It's not natural."

So that's how they justify all the children fighting. By saying we don't have feelings, she thought ruefully.

"Mind if I join you?" said a familiar voice. Without waiting for an answer, Ahsoka sat down.

Asajj studied her face for a moment, mostly so that she could take a moment to quell any emotions that might creep into her voice. "You're alive. And blue-eyed as ever which is more than I expected. Was the rescue mission really necessary?"

She frowned, although the expression didn't come across as clearly with only one visible eyebrow. "First of all, what's that supposed to mean? Second of all, how do you know I was captured? And third of all, all Anakin did was come and pick up my shuttle, which was admittedly floating aimlessly in space with damaged life support, but still. I did at least ninety percent of my own rescuing."

"I'm the one who told Skywalker you were captured," she said, indignantly. "Or did he neglect to mention that part."

Ahsoka bit her lip, her frown deepening. Her presence was hard to read. "Yeah, actually he did. But my question still stands."

"Well, I ran into a little bounty hunter who said she couldn't stop seeing you with yellow eyes."

"Kalei," Ahsoka said quietly. "Was she alright?" But Asajj didn't miss the flicker of fear on her face or the way glanced down at her reflection in the glass table.

"Oh, no. I'm sure the memory of you haunted her worse than any restless spirit."

She rested her elbows on the table and buried her head in her hands. "Speaking of being haunted...how would you feel about exacting revenge on Dooku's master?" she asked lightly.

Asajj cut a piece of fish from her plate and chewed thoughtfully. It was kind of a nice idea but...contrary to what Ahsoka had said, she didn't really think much of revenge now. "How?" she asked instead, wanting to hear a specific plan before she gave anything resembling an answer.

"Well, Ventress," there was a note of all too familiar arrogance in her voice. "I know who he is." Asajj waited, but Ahsoka apparently knew the knowledge was the only leverage she had in this conversation, and was unwilling to offer it lightly.

"So what you're saying is we have a common enemy and you want my help."

A waitress came by, an Ithorian. “Something chocolate, please,” Ahsoka said absently. “Well, yes,” she told Asajj, “if that’s how you want to think of it. On Malachor…I had a vision of the Empire he plans to create, one where Force-sensitives are killed or made to serve him. And my master is his apprentice.”

“That’s all very troubling.” Troubling, if she allowed herself to feel fear, which she didn’t, but it was the most appropriate word in this context. “But if that was the whole story, you’d be arresting him with a handful of Councilmembers by your side, not talking to me.”

“I haven’t been an exemplary Jedi in the past month and I’m not on the best terms with the Council. And I’m worried he can outwit them in a confrontation. The Jedi are just too cozy with the Senate for it to be safe--”

“So it’s a senator.”

Her face was like stone. 

“I’ll help you,” she decided. “But don’t expect me to risk my life for yours.”

The waitress came back with a large slice of chocolate cake. “Seven credits.”

Ahsoka fished through the pockets of her robe. “Great,” she muttered. “I just spent my entire life’s savings on cake. It’s the Chancellor,” she added. “And I’m glad you told Anakin I was captured; maybe he’ll tolerate you better.”

Oh Force.

“Anakin, please!” Ahsoka stood between Ventress and a furious Anakin who held his blue lightsaber aggressively in front of him. How she hadn't predicted this... well maybe she'd been a little too optimistic in the wake of convincing people to help her. In her pocket, her hand curled around her two kyber crystals which glowed brightly in the Force as if they could sense that a lightsaber would be useful right about now.

“This is Dooku’s former assassin we’re talking about!” he cried.

“She’s not going to fight you!”

“Actually, you’re tempting me,” Ventress said unhelpfully.

Patience spent, Ahsoka flung her arms outward to push them away from each other. "Both of you stop it!"

Anakin winced as he stood up. "That's going to bruise! Unwarranted much?"

"You'll live," Ahsoka said, doing her best to project an air of unconcern, but curling her toes in private discomfort. She hadn't meant to push that hard. She stuck her hand back into her pocket, wondering if she wanted lightsabers badly enough to make them with these particular crystals. She'd made the crystals as they were. It seemed almost unfair to then cast them aside after what she'd subjected them to.

Anakin crossed his arms. “Do you really trust her?”

“I do,” she replied. “She’s helped me before, and she has plenty of reasons to help us now.”

He didn't look convinced, but he was quiet, which was something.

“So,” she began, “I have a sort of plan, but I’m open to suggestions.”

“I was going to ask because it’s not exactly easy to leave the Temple on a regular basis,” he pointed out.

“About that, I think you need to leave the Jedi Order,” she said “But if you just leave,” she continued, “it will look suspicious.”

He had to stare at her for a moment  “Wouldn’t it be better if I stayed in the Order? I’d have more access to the Senate.”

“He should stay,” Ventress agreed. "He's close to the Chancellor now; that's not an asset we can just give up." Ahsoka had forgotten she was there. Her face grew warm. Anakin would wind up exposing them if he stayed! The Chancellor would sense his anger, just as she could.

“You don’t trust me not to get caught!” he said indignantly.

Pretty much. “I do trust you!” she lied “But…”

“Ahsoka. You don't have an actual plan, so why don't you stop pretending you do. We can figure this out together.”

“Oh, alright! But I have a bad feeling about this.” He wasn't wrong, only... It didn't exactly feel fair that after all of this, he was the one who still got to be a Jedi, and all he had to do was act normal while Ahsoka tried to figure out what normal was even supposed to be outside of the Order. And anyway, she may not have had a plan, but at least she wasn't going to become a Sith and--

Oh, hush, that's not going to happen.

"I see you’ve become more optimistic since you left.”

“I see you still don’t like taking orders from anyone.”

“Just because you’ve gotten taller, doesn’t mean you get to boss me around!”

“Enough. How did you ever win any battles, either of you?" Ventress asked, an uncharacteristic note of weariness in her voice.

Ahsoka wasn't sure. The bickering felt wrong to her, not joyous and playful. She wanted to be alone, she found. Anakin made her miss everything, made her feel sorrier for herself than she meant to. But she walked with him back to the Temple, or to the Temple steps anyway, and she reassured him about Ventress at least five more times.

She had no idea where exactly she was going after that. She stood for a moment and stared at the Senate Building.

Then, she had an idea.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka's gaze held a surprising amount of intensity. She hadn't changed at all, Padme thought. She was very much still a Jedi in spirit, and in the way she held herself, even without the title. There was only a small difference, and that was not the absence of something nominal, but of her family. 

A lone Jedi, maybe. But still a Jedi.

"I'm alright," Ahsoka answered. "Thank you. I mean for-- I never got to say so, after the trial, but..."

"You didn't have to. It was the right thing to do," Padme said firmly.

She didn't seem to know what to say, and was silent for a moment. "I had something to ask you, if you don't mind."

"Of course not, Ahsoka."

"Well," she began. "I was looking for a job. I thought maybe..."

"You'd like a job at the Senate?" That was genuinely surprising. Ahsoka was very much a warrior. As much as she never should have had to be, it was all she knew. She'd never showed any interest in politics. And after her trial,Padme would have guessed she'd have wanted to stay as far away as possible.

Ahsoka looked out the window for a minute, sadness creeping into her expression. "I guess...I need a salary. And-- and it feels like the closest I can be to everything from before."

Padme followed her stare. She was looking at the Temple. "Oh, Ahsoka. I'll see what I can do."

Ahsoka studied the array of parts in front of her.

Maybe she was making a mistake. But she couldn't fight a Sith without sabers. Cautiously, she placed the crystals in her palms and closed her eyes.

They flickered with recognition and familiar warmth. So far, so good.

Ahsoka called upon the light, gathering it and wrapping it around the kybers the same way she would reach out through the Force to calm someone. She focused calm and hopeful determination.

The crystals answered with an echo: determined confidence, and warmth and purpose. They didn't feel the way corrupted crystals felt, didn't cry out in agonized hatred or pain. She cold have mistaken it for something benign, if it didn't hum with the offer of power. The light didn't do that.

She reached out, trying again, and again the crystals responded with their dark version of the feeling she shared with them.

Ahsoka sighed. Clearly they weren't going to acccept the light side energy if she just offered it. Concentrating all of her willpower, she wrapped them in bubbles of light side energy, held them there, and pushed.

The crystals fought her, much in the same way they had when she'd sought to turn them red in the first place. Their song in the Force became a dissonant shriek, and the energy in her hands exploded, flares of white light emanating from inside her closed fists, and white hot pain burning her palms. With difficulty, she unclasped her hands.

They looked like shards of fire, glowing and flickering between yellow and orange and red.

Not quite what she'd been going for.

They settled on yellow with orange along the edges.

She reached out experimentally, finding it quite easy. There was a path there. A bond.

A theory occurred to her. Ahsoka calmed herself, taking deep breaths, letting her feelings vanish into the Force. The crystals turned a yellow-green much like her old shoto saber. She called forth the memory of Dooku, the sound of his voice, the way he'd scrutinized her every feeling and tortured her when it hadn't been what he wanted.

The green faded as if driven away by her anger.

She reached out to the dark side ever so briefly--

The crystals turned orange, red creeping along their edges before it faded and the orange turned slowly back to yellow.

"That will have to do," she said to herself. She'd never heard of crystals actively responding to their owner like that, but maybe that was what happened when a kyber had received both light and dark side energy. As long as she didn't use the dark side, they'd pass for ordinary kyber crystals.

Then there was building the sabers themselves. She definitely wanted a shoto saber again rather than a full length second saber, she decided. It felt good to finally have something concrete to work on, a step forward. It wasn't something she did thoughtlessly, but she rather lost track of her thoughts in the intensity of her focus.

She designed the first saber with a curved but rounded hilt. Above and below the grip she engraved a pattern reminiscent of krayt dragon scales. The uppermost part that surrounded the blade emitter was a ring of copper, and she set some of the smaller akul teeth from the headdress she could no longer wear around the ring, pointing in the direction of the blade. The pommel, she made the same copper.

It bothered Ahsoka slightly how identical the two crystals felt. For her first set of lightsabers, they'd been different: acquired at different times, under different circumstances, and holding different meaning. Wanting to differentiate the two she was using now, she changed a few things about the design of her shoto, rather than making it an identical but smaller version. She gave it a larger grip area, omitting the dragon scales. Only two akul teeth were left for the second saber, but they were larger and more obvious anyway.

The pommel however...she frowned finding that it wasn't finished. There was a gap there, awaiting something else.

She studied what remained of the parts she'd collected and raised her eyebrows slightly at the idea that occurred to her.

All in all, the task took her the better part of two days, but she was quite satisfied with the end result. She hadn't really realized how helpless she'd felt without lightsabers until she had them back.

Not only that, but not being able to wear her headdress atop the mask had been nagging at her, given her vision, and the promise she'd made, but it felt right to use the teeth in her sabers. Your lightsaber is your life, the Jedi said, and that was close enough to wearing them herself.

Chapter Text

"New lightsabers?" said Anakin in dismay. "But...Ahsoka, I kept your old ones."

She frowned. "Oh," she said quietly. "I hadn't thought of that."

How could she just forget? About her lightsabers? "Where did you even get the crystals, anyway?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Ilum," she said elusively, which felt true enough, but what had she been doing there? When would she have gone? Surely not well she was Dooku's prisoner.

"I could bring them to you," he said, finding himself almost pleading for some reason. "They're just like you left them--" He winced. "Okay, I may have made some improvements..." she raised her visible eyebrow. "They may be...a better color."

"Oh," she said again. "Thank you, Master; I'm really touched, but... I think I'll keep these ones."

He could understand that, he supposed. The new ones were more intricately designed, and she must have spent a lot of time on them. He just wished...he wished things could go back to how they'd been; that she could be a padawan again-- his padawan, and the new lightsabers were just one more reminder that it couldn't be so. He frowned. "So is the gold just...a thing now?"

"What?" She blinked at him, confused.

"I mean it just seems to be a recurring theme. Your lightsabers, your--"

"Don't you dare bring up the mask like it was a decision! I hate it; the feeling that part of me is hidden away behind a lifeless piece of metal; you of all people should understand th--" She stopped. "No, wait. I didn't-- That's. Not what I meant. What am I talking about? You wouldn't understand at all; I don't want you to understand."

"Snips?" He didn't even think she was talking to him anymore as much as talking to herself. 

A small sound of dismay escaped her as she seemed to realize the same thing. She sighed. "Yeah?"

"You...okay? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that like that. About your--"

He stopped as her words caught up with him. I don't want you to understand. What? "What don't I understand?"

"I just meant...people stare and-- you know, it hurts. I get frustrated with you for not understanding, but...it's selfish of me. I wouldn't want you to go through something like that. I'm sorry. You should probably get back to the Temple, Skyguy. Did you get the comlinks secured?"

He nodded, handing her one.

She frowned. "Ventress needs one too."

"Ahsoka, I don't-- fine. I'll get another one when I can." She crossed her arms, but nodded, and as Anakin watched her walk away, he suddenly realized-- "Where are you going?" he called out to her. "I mean, where would I find you? If I ever needed to?"

She froze, and slowly turned, avoiding his gaze. The tips of her head-tails darkened. "Well. So, it turns out there are apartment owners that don't consider having been kidnapped a valid reason for not paying rent. Um, I've been staying with Ventress actually. Temporarily, until I can get paid for my job at the end of the month."

"You what?" he cried. "Ahsoka, why didn't you just ask me? I'd have--"

"What? What would you have done? You don't have any credits aside from what the Jedi give you for emergencies on missions. It's fine; I mean, the living room floor isn't comfortable but--" 

He sighed. "Look, maybe anything seems better than being in a Separatist prison cell like you were, but... the Coruscant underworld is dangerous. And Ventress is a Sith--"

"Was."

"Does anyone ever really come back from that?" She looked at him as though he'd slapped her in the face. "Ahsoka, of course I don't mean what happened after I rescued you. That's different."

Her expression was grim. "I think they all tell themselves that, Master," she replied quietly.

Ahsoka relived the conversation several times, thinking about all the things she hadn't mentioned.

Too many things. It was exhausting, lying. And all the more exhausting, really, to wonder how she'd ended up doing so much of it. 

(And pointless too,) but she felt a need to catalogue all of it, like that might somehow make it less wrong.

Ventress was away somewhere. It was odd, to be in someone else's home all by herself. She closed her eyes, hoping to pass the time meditating. She closed her eyes...and found herself in darkness. It was inky grey-violet and blue-black and swirling; velvet, warmth, bitterness and sweetness. It was sound too, deep and reassuring, and ever so slightly melodic.

It wasn't whispering, wasn't tempting, it only was, all around her. She wasn't using it, only feeling it, and in that moment, the darkness accepted the fact, and Ahsoka in turn accepted its presence, and let herself look from where she sat within it.

Mostly they were Jedi, which she could tell because they were furiously bright and sang of tranquility like birds or a stream. There were, however, a few that were different.

There was Anakin’s presence, with more depth to it than the brightest Jedi presences, a cool flow of water with a whisper of dark beneath which the light resolutely squashed. And oh, it was practically blinding in its brilliance. He was the Chosen One after all, though she didn’t often think about the fact. Through their Force-bond, she could feel anxiety, which wasn’t unusual , but she hoped he was alright.

She could feel Sidious’s presence too, in startling contrast to the Jedi: cold fury, fiery rage, and the whirl of cruel calculations that kindled it. It fluctuated, sparks flung outward from the ever-present inferno, a rhythm of evil thoughts that sought to consume all that was around them.

There were only two other beings she could readily identify. The first was Ventress. From her came a surprising pool of swirling light and dark that seemed perfectly happy to coexist, despite their conflictive nature.

The second was duller and full of its owner’s sorrow. It seemed that Kalei was still on Coruscant, and very unhappy. The fact that she was untrained gave her presence an unusually spread out and listless quality, as though the Force wanted its potential to be discovered, and used. Perhaps it did. She knew, after all, that the Force had a will; this was one of the few things the Jedi and Sith agreed on, though they had different views on upholding it.

There’s nothing I can do, Ahsoka thought, opening her eyes, about the fact that the Jedi never found her. The end.

(You could teach her yourself.) And the spell was broken. It was back to its plans for her, back to its perpetual insistence in her head.

'First of all, I did not ask for your opinion. And second of all, why do you care? Why are you even suggesting that?’’

(You care. And we got bored of waiting for you to think of it yourself.)

' I’m not even a Jedi! I can’t teach her.’

(One doesn't have to be a Jedi to teach.) it declared.

' She’s too old.’

( According to the Jedi.)

Ahsoka stood up and wandered into the kitchen. She wasn't even sure what she was doing, but, she thought, it might be nice to make something. She took a quick inventory of what was there, and trying to think of something easy, something she wouldn't have to think about. The dark side shifted in apparent agitation, not liking that the conversation was unresolved. Neither did she; if she had an answer, she'd have given it.

"Iyahttas," she decided. Presents, was the literal translation. She measured out some flour and began mixing the sweet bread dough, leaving it to rise while she made the meat filling that would go inside it. Nerf meat wasn't ideal, but it would work. Iyahttas were made from the meat of Inyahs, usually, large four-legged animals that grazed in the grasslands of Shili. While her people hunted smaller animals to be eaten by themselves or their immediate family, larger amounts of meat were shared. Iyahttas, small sweet pastries that were filled with meat served as one useful way to parcel it out evenly and distribute it.

Ahsoka had to search for a minute, but there was a container of honey; she would use it to cook the meat in.

When she'd finished that she tidied the kitchen so as not to annoy Asajj, placed most of the finished pastries in a bowl and wrote a note listing what she'd used to make them so that she had notice of what she might want to go shopping for, rather than unexpectedly not having enough of something she didn't know had been used.

Then she taste-tested one to make sure they'd come out; it was pleasantly sweet and salty, the bread neither too soft or too flaky in texture. She wrapped up six of them and placed them in a basket she found, and walked out the door.

Kalei was easy enough to find, since Ahsoka was looking. The girl was sitting not far from the Jedi Temple, her hands wrapped around her knees, staring up at the spires. "Hi," Ahsoka said.

The girl reacted alarmingly slowly, her head taking several seconds to turn, her eyes lacking their bright spark. Her face was pale and her cheeks were hollow. "Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka sat down next to her, pulling a pastry out of the basket, and offering it to her. Kalei stared at it with a moment's hesitation before she snatched it. Ahsoka had never seen anyone eat so fast. She's starving, Ahsoka realized. That's why I made the pastries. 

"When's the last time you ate?" Ahsoka asked.

"Three days ago," she said softly, "I stole a pear. I haven't spent your credits. The ones Dooku gave me. I left them at the Temple. I thought maybe the Jedi would use them for something...good."

Kalei licked her fingers meticulously. Ahsoka waited a long moment, thinking about what to say, until Kalei's hands returned to hugging her knees and she resumed her morose staring off into the distance. Ahsoka realized she didn't want to invalidate the feeling. Then she said, "I'm sorry you felt that you had to do that."

"I deserved it."

"No," she said. "Suffering is not deserved, anymore than any other evil is. Least of all by you."

Tears filled Kalei's eyes. She nodded, brushing them aside, and again they sat in silence, but a more comfortable one. At last Kalei looked up at her. "You're alright."

"I try to keep my promises." 

"Why are you being nice to me?" she asked. "I hurt you."

"I think you're hurting enough already, little one," Ahsoka said softly.

Kalei looked at Ahsoka, and then away. She could feel herself on the precipice of something, but she didn't choose her words carefully. Instead, she let herself sit on that edge, let the words fall with the weight of stone, unchosen, and yet the lack of decision was a choice in and of itself. She'd gifted that choice, the same way she'd gifted the credits. She'd gifted it to whatever governed the universe, and she knew not whether it was something cold and unfeeling or something that loved her dearly. "It's lucky you found me," she said, the words hollow as the hunger she'd felt for days. That hollowness had been filled, now. She wondered, for the first time, if this one might be as well.

Ahsoka tipped her head. "Most Jedi don't believe in luck, you know," she said.

“What do they believe in then?”

“The Force.” Oh, those two words. She heard them, everyone heard them, but coming from Ahsoka she knew they were important. She lifted her gaze.

“You were a Jedi,” she almost-asked.

“I was.”

“What is it?" Kalei cried. "People talk about the Jedi, and about the Force." People said those words and she wanted to hold on to them and never let go, but more often that not they were accompanied by a dismissive laugh. "But no one's ever explained them to me. Could you?"

She shook her head slowly. "I can't explain it to you," she said, and Kalei's heart sank. "Not the way you can explain other things. No one truly understands the Force, not really. But what we know-- The Force is an energy that flows through and connects everything,” she told Kalei. “It's a balance, a pull, a tension that holds the galaxy together.”

"And it sent you to me with a basket of food?" she questioned eagerly.

Ahsoka laughed slightly. "Yes," she said, "I do believe it did."

"And is it magic, like people say it is? Can Jedi make things float? And read minds? And--"

"It isn't magic, Kalei," she said sternly. "But yes, many things are possible with the Force, for those who can sense it."

"Like the Jedi," she guessed.

She looked slightly sad for a moment. "Yes. Like the Jedi."

"Do you have to be a Jedi? To use it? Do you still have powers?"

Ahsoka's expression became one of concentration. Kalei watched her for a moment before she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. A second pastry lifted out of the basket, as though held by an invisible hand, and floated toward Kalei. She caught it, or rather, it landed gently in her outstretched palm and she closed her hand around it, unwrapping it and biting into it. She ate more slowly, not as hungry, and found that she actually tasted it. It was delicious; sweet and salty and glazed with honey. "This is good!" she exclaimed.

She smiled. "I'm glad; I haven't done any cooking in a while. There aren't really many things I now how to make. But Master Ti-- she was another Togruta, back at the Temple, taught me how to make some of our foods."

"Do you remember Shili?" she asked curiously.

"Only little bits," said Ahsoka. 

"Ahsoka?" she asked. "What does the Force feel like?"

She seemed to consider this. "What would you imagine it would feel like?"

"Like...how importance feels," she decided. "Like the feeling things have when they matter. Like...the feeling of reaching for a breath of air, and the way it feels when your chest puffs out and you're holding yourself differently because you can feel the thing pulling on you and the warmth coming from inside you."

"Huh," she said softly.

"I guess that didn't make sense."

Ahsoka looked at her for a moment. "Did it make sense to you?"

She nodded, feeling warmth, not the kind she'd just described, in her cheeks, embarassed.

"Then," she said with utter finality and authority. "That is what the Force feels like."

Chapter Text

Ahsoka seemed to have lost her optimism: one thing or another was not going to work, she was still having the same visions, they weren't doing enough.

She didn't seem to like any of the ideas for doing anything, either, though.

"He's too powerful for a direct confrontation. We could expose him as a darksider, and then--"

Ahsoka shook her head.

Asajj sighed. "It may not be possible to save all the Jedi."

"We can do better," Ahsoka maintained.

She'd prepared for this, expected it. Ahsoka was stubborn. Ever a Jedi, she didn't want revenge, she wanted to save people. "We could poison him, but Ahsoka, they'll know in a heartbeat it was you. Fingerprints, and DNA evidence, and surveillance--"

Ahsoka held up a hand. "I could use the Force to lift a vial."

"It would still be on the security recording."

She closed her eyes, thinking. "I'll figure out a way to disable the cameras," she declared. "About the actual...poison, where--"

"I'll take care of that."

Ahsoka nodded and looked away, fidgeting with a lose thread on the hem of her robe. She had reservations. It was understandable; she was a warrior, not an assassin. Poison wouldn't sit well with her. She didn't say anything, however; she knew that they stood no chance in a fair fight.

"If you make a mistake and get caught..." Asajj warned.

"I know."

"You can't be nervous."

"I know, Asajj." She wasn't seriously irritated, just not happy about being patronized. That was fair, Asajj supposed. She should trust Ahsoka to do her job, although trust was not something that came naturally to her anymore.

“I feel stupid,” Kalei muttered. She sat with her legs crossed, and her eyes closed. Ahsoka stood behind her, watching.

"That's okay. Just acknowledge the feeling and then let it go. Visualize, if it helps."

She pushed past the squirmy, self-conscious feeling and tried to focus on the pebble. She willed it to float, trying to mentally push it upwards.

“No, you’re trying too hard,” Ahsoka told her. "You're pushing with your mind, but that isn't where strength comes from. it is the Force that will lift the pebble."

“I thought I’m supposed to make it happen.”

“You are to the extent that you visualize it, and intend it. But the intention will be enough.”

A cryptic statement, to be sure. She stopped pushing with her mind and felt the pebble in her mind, a more passive sort of reaching. It was smooth, and round, and a little cool. It was grey with little sparkles that caught in the light. She forgot that her eyes were closed, and the tension left her neck and shoulders. She felt as though she had dipped her fingers in a cool stream of water.

The pebble rises, slowly, as though it were floating in a gentle current of water , she thought. And there is a current that holds it up, and it is real.

“Good!” called Ahsoka. She opened her eyes. The pebble sat in the air, about a foot above her outstretched hand, and her eyes opened wider. In the tiny moment of disbelief, the gentle feeling vanished and the pebble fell.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

“You’re a fast learner.” Rejecting the praise, she blinked at Ahsoka, still processing what she'd just felt.

“Why did it fall?”

Ahsoka smiled gently. “Your surprise made you lose focus. That’s not uncommon when you’re learning.”

“You should teach her to use a lightsaber,” said Asajj out of nowhere.

“Really?” Kalei asked. Learn how to use a lightsaber like Ahsoka did? It took all her restraint not to beg, to stay quiet, waiting.

Ahsoka looked thoughtful, and though she could never quite guess what was going through the Togruta’s head, she was probably fretting about Kalei hurting herself.

“Well, I suppose that’s a good idea. I’ll feel better if you can defend yourself, but I’m going to have to find a lightsaber for you to use, which is going to be hard.”

"I couldn't use yours?"

 She shook her head. "No, they're very responsive to my Force energy. They wouldn't work for you very well. And Asajj--"

"No," she said flatly. "Not a chance anyone is touching my sabers."

 “I’ll see if I can have Anakin steal a training saber for you at least, but then I don’t know what he’ll think of me teaching you in the first place.”

 “Why would he be upset about that?”

She hesitated. “Well, we’re supposed to be saving the galaxy. Or we were till you came along. Lucky me.” Kalei could tell she was joking. Ahsoka had explained to her about Sidious, but as far as she could tell, training her was a welcome distraction for Ahsoka.

 “I thought there was no such thing as luck,” she said cheerfully.

Oddly enough, it was Asajj who laughed at that.

Ahsoka stood at the top of the flight of steps and looked vaguely as though she might leap from them and sprout wings. At the Temple, he got the sense that she was fluttery, restless. It reminded him of the way padawans sometimes played tag: quickly darting towards, even taunting the person who had been deemed the chaser, but fleeing the second they got too close.

He didn't know why he would think that, really. Ahsoka had never seemed less like a child. There was a weight, a depth, to her voice. And when she looked at him, he saw himself as though her gaze were a mirror, reflecting his own image back at him. He told himself that the feeling came because she was grown up and had acquired more wisdom than she'd once had, but he couldn't help thinking What could hide behind a mirror?

Anakin frowned. Unbidden thoughts and imagery of that kind kept surfacing pertaining to Ahsoka.

But she looked so glad to see him. He pushed the thoughts away.

"I've changed my mind," she said. "About the lightsabers. I will take them back after all."

"Really?" he said excitedly, and she looked slightly guilty.

"They're not for me," she admitted after a moment.

He frowned. "You don't just give someone your--"

"I'm training a pa-- an apprentice," she explained.

What? How had that happened? "What do you mean?"

"She's from the outer rim, from a Separatist planet. The Order never found her. I thought she was too old, but she's learning really well."

"I'd love to meet her," Anakin said, still trying wrap his head around the idea of Ahsoka teaching. Hadn't she just been his student? Had Obi-Wan felt this way when Anakin had taken on a padawan?

A brief frown crossed her face. "Definitely," she said, "I'd love for her to meet you."

He paused, for a brief moment, unsure of what he had just felt and of whether or not to confront her. "You don't mean it," he observed. "What are you hiding?"

She looked hurt. "I'm not hiding anything. Sure. You can meet her. Of course."

"But...you don't want me to?"

She looked away. "Sorry. Sorry, it's just-- I'm afraid...she'll wish it was a real Jedi training her."

"Ahsoka!"

"I know. It's stupid."

He shook his head. "I don't care what happened with the Council. You're as good a Jedi as anyone else. She's lucky to have you."

Ahsoka gave a soft smile. "Thank you, Master."

Another vague impression of an out of place thought: The word 'Master' hadn't reminded him of Tatooine, not in years, but for some reason, something about the look on her face, it did just then.

Despite her assertions to the contrary, Ahsoka was nervous. She was terrified.

She was sure Sidious could feel it, was delighting in it. The small vial of poison lent a greater weight to her pocket than its size would have suggested. She wanted to throw it as far away from her as she could.

But her task was incumbent upon her. She strolled through the hallway carrying a stack of holopads, and at last, when she felt she could not possibly put it off another moment, she reached out, calling upon the Force--

--and was felt a sharp jolt of pain that would have made her cry out, but for her years of training. She tried again, bracing herself. The result was the same.

No. No. Again she attempted it, utterly in denial. She wasn't sure what she believed; that this was a daydream she might awake from?

She wanted to throw back her head and scream. They had done something, some kind of fancy new technology to make them resistant to tampering on the part of Force-users. She seethed. How could she have come this far and still be so far away. Her thoughts swirled. She was half tempted to do it anyway, never mind the cameras. His death would be worth her arrest, her execution even...

But what if she failed? If she were thrown in a prison cell and he lived? The thought stayed her. It wasn't worth the risk.

But-- but all she had to do... and he could be defeated. Desperately, she searched for loopholes. If she could move the vial telekinetically from far enough away...from outside of the room.

But she couldn't do that.

(Couldn't we?)

Not again. Not this again.

This was not the kind of temptation she'd trained for years to defend against.

She let it in. Again.

Now...all she had to do--

Chapter Text

Ahsoka was singularly focused. Distantly, she felt a fleeting sense of the concerns she'd been entertaining, but her resolve outweighed them. There was nothing else to do but set them aside.

She paused, considering the impossibilities she'd been trying to play out in her mind. How to get the poison in the Chancellor's office, without the cameras seeing it...

Seeing her?

She paused. Slowly she turned her head to stare at an advisor departing down the hallway towards the Chancellor's office.

Anakin stopped mid-sentence, the report he was writing seeming suddenly unimportant.

He set down the holopad, frowning.

The room seemed suddenly cold.

"Excuse me? Sorry, I'm new here, could you--"

He didn't notice the vial of poison slipped into his pocket.

And the cold came from

'Ahsoka?'

But it was colder still as he reached for her; their bond was frozen and lifeless.

"Ahsoka!"

Ahsoka closed her eyes and reached out. With a small flicker of uncertainty, she remembered Dooku, but this time wouldn't be like that. She would be careful.

She wouldn't hurt anyone, just--

She reached out, focusing, letting her own presence follow after the one that carried the vial of poison down the hallway. She wasn't in his head, she was only borrowing vague impressions of the room, enough to reach out with her own power, to lift the stopper from the bottle, to gather up a drop of it...letting it fall into the glass on the desk.

Now all she had to do was get rid of the vial so as not to incriminate an innocent person.

She waited for him to leave the room; he was walking down the hall now. It was a solid five minutes before she even saw an opportunity to discard it without anyone noticing, and she lifted it quickly from his pocket, meaning to drop it in the trash compactor--

"Ahsoka!"

Anakin's voice startled her out of her trance. Distantly, she felt the vial slip through her invisible fingers-- and she tried to refocus, but too late. The startled aide caught it before it hit the ground, staring at it in puzzlement.

"What are you doing?"

She felt him turn his head, and saw again from her strange and removed perspective, the security officer standing in the hallway.

"I'd just-- been dropping off some reports. I found..." he held up the bottle.

Ahsoka's concentration slipped again, this time with the opposite consequence, the thing she'd been afraid of. The tight restraint with which she focused her presence wavered. The scene in the hallway grew much less distant. The advisor lifted a hand to his head, and she struggled to remind herself it wasn't her. He frowned. And then he saw her. Not literally, but in the Force he stared at her, aware of her presence. What are you? What do you want?

All she could feel was fear. His. Her own. Anakin's. Terror surrounded her from all sides.

"Ahsoka! Answer me!"

The numbness from the cold abated, and Anakin could faintly feel her. She was terrified, the kind of fear that came from being cornered.

Ahsoka hugged her knees to her chest.

The aide dropped the bottle and ran.

Anakin sprinted through the halls of the Temple.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

The stunbolt flew through the air and the aide's eyes fluttered closed.

There was a dull ache in Anakin's head and that was the last thing he knew.

And suddenly, Ahsoka was utterly alone. Her master and the senator's advisor vanished in the Force. The dark side itself fell silent in an instant.

For one small moment, all was quiet.

And then the Coruscant guard arrived.

Ahsoka wasn't back from the Senate at dinnertime like she usually was. They didn't say anything about it, hoping she was just a bit late.

Kalei saw the HoloNet first. Her face fell. "They arrested a senatorial aide, who was found carrying a vial of poison. It doesn't-- it doesn't say the name, but..."

Asajj felt something she could not name, and she held the words inside herself for fear they would come out wrong. "Is Palpatine dead?"

"Mas Amedda, it says. They found him in Palpatine's office. Poisoned."

So Ahsoka had gotten herself captured, and the Sith still lived. They'd execute her, no doubt. Would they interrogate her first? Yes, they'd want to make sure there were no accomplices. But she didn't worry for a moment that Ahsoka would offer their names, not even in exchange for a less severe sentence. She wasn't like Asajj. She was a better person.

That, or she was foolishly stubborn and idealistic. Asajj chose to tell herself that it was the latter.

She didn't want to be left with Kalei. The alliance with Skywalker would fall apart too, without Ahsoka there to mediate. Asajj frowned as she considered this and realized that somehow, in the past month, Ahsoka had ended up holding an alarming number of pieces of her life together. How had that happened?

And how could she--

--be standing in the doorway?

Ahsoka's eyes scanned the room and settled on Kalei. "I can't train you," she said softly. Her voice was heavy with guilt and the misery that came with it. "I--"

"What?" Kalei stared at her wide-eyed. "Wait. I'm glad you're back! We thought they'd arrested you."

She closed her eyes as if the room hurt to look at. "That's what should have happened. I--" her voice caught in her throat, "made a mistake."

Kalei didn't understand. Her eyes became glassy.

Asajj understood. "You and Ahsoka can talk about it tomorrow. You should get some sleep, Kalei."

"But--" Kalei protested.

"She'll still be here."

Ahsoka opened her mouth as if to contradict this, and then changed her mind. She fell into a morose silence.

Kalei gave her a tentative hug, and Ahsoka returned it. It wasn't Kalei's fault; nothing could ever be Kalei's fault-- Asajj could sense this thought, and others like it underneath the stillness of Ahsoka's gaze. The galaxy took on strange sharp-edged shapes and contrasts, and Ahsoka was inept at navigating them. They startled her still; even having stepped out of the darkness, she wondered whether it was really alright. She wondered if she ever would be. If the wrongness was her or if it was the galaxy and she was only just now seeing it.

Asajj knew these thoughts because she had had them.

With one last look over her shoulder, Kalei went off to her room. Room being a subjective term; Kalei slept in the walk-in closet in the hall. She didn't mind. The apartment was really only meant for one person, and Ahsoka slept in the living room. But they made do and everyone was happy. Except--

"You're making a mistake. It helps you, to train her. You find peace and joy in it."

Ahsoka stood and walked to the window, peering out into the alley below. For a long moment the silence extended. She waited.

"At the Senate," she began. "At the Senate, I--"

Sometimes, when Asajj was being told a story, she lost herself in it. She saw it in her mind, barely registering the spoken words. It had been happening more vividly since she'd left Dooku. She wondered if it might have to do with being Dathomirian. Not that she'd ever get the chance to ask now.

She saw Ahsoka, walking down the Senate hall, the advisor, but when Ahsoka described how she'd used the Force, Asajj was jolted out of her vision, stuck. "You did what?"

She attempted more incoherent explanations. "When Dooku captured me," she said, meaning when Kalei brought me to Dooku, but she probably refused to even think of it that way at this point. "When Dooku captured me, I-- I didn't escape as soon as I could. I-- I thought I might find out who the Sith Lord was if I agreed to be his apprentice."

Asajj snorted. "Like I did?" She regretted saying it immediately. The tips of Ahsoka's head-tails darkened and she looked away as if she might stop talking.

"So-- so that's what I did. It-- well I did, not with his help, but from my visions I guessed. So then I had to escape."

Then she described the battle, and that unfolded before Asajj's eyes too, and she understood well enough. Though it seemed improbable and it certainly raised some questions. She kept them to herself for the time being. "So what I did-- today." She swallowed. "It was like that only less. I just was sort of near, without actually...you know. Being in his head. But Anakin felt-- and I got distracted before I could get rid of the bottle and-- he caught it and he realized I was there and the security guard got a call to say Mas Amedda was dead, or dying maybe. And he stunned him, and..."

She trailed off.

And Asajj found herself at a loss. She'd been expecting to tell Ahsoka she hadn't done anything that terrible. To tell her--

"I thought about turning myself in but then Anakin...I don't know what he'd have done."

Anakin. Ahsoka was quiet again, lost in thought about Anakin, which brought a heaviness to her face. She rubbed at the bottom of her mask. The gold was dulled. She should polish it or something.

This and other impressions of thoughts passed like clouds overhead. Asajj checked her own shields and found them somewhat lowered. But neither of them was thinking anything important. Of course the second that thought crossed her mind she began to think of important things, and the almost conversational exchange of inner-monologue ended.

"Polish-- is that what one does?"

"For a mask...I don't know." But out loud it felt contrived. Asajj returned to the pile of uncomfortable questions she'd set aside. "So...have you been using a holocron?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Projecting a presence is a skill. Or is it like the Sith note you read to me?"

There was a long moment of silence. At small drop of blood blossomed on the edge of Ahsoka's lip. She was biting it. "It's like that. It's-- There was a distress call my master and grandmaster and I were assigned to investigate. We showed up and there was a sort of...not a planet, out of time and space. It was really weird-- we all thought it was a dream afterward."

She told Asajj the dream. She detailed the planet and its three immortal inhabitants. Her voice cracked at certain parts. Once she paused for so long that Asajj wondered if she would ever speak again. But she got through it.

"He means for me to replace him."

Asajj laughed. She couldn't help it. "You? That's a stupid choice. You're..."

Ahsoka stared hollowly.

"You'll ruin it. Make it into something virtuous and moral."

"I framed someone for my crime! I did exactly what Barriss did to me. That's why I have to leave; I can't train Kalei to be a good Force user!"

She shook her head. "Listen. No, listen. Training her is one of the only things making you happy. Don't give that up. You did something terrible, and you want to punish yourself, I get it. I do. I've been there. But it makes it worse. Training her is the one thing you do because you want to. It's the only selfish thing you're doing right now. It's better than something else, and it would be something else if it wasn't this."

"Training Kalei is not self--"

"Please. She has zero practical use. If anything, she's a hinderance. You like making pastries for her and taking her clothes shopping and seeing her happy. You're absolutely attached to her; you treat her like your little sister, and it's a victimless crime and you need to keep doing it."

Ahsoka buried her head in her hands. "You're right. Probably."

She grinned. "Of course I'm right. I've done Falling. I'm an expert."

"Right." Ahsoka's voice was removed. Distant. She shouldn't have said that. It was too much, to make light of Falling. "I'd like to go to sleep now. If you don't mind."

Definitely. Shouldn't have joked about Falling. Ahsoka wanted to not end up like her. There wasn't anything amusing--

You think you're so sarcastic and funny. Look, you made her upset.

She stepped out of the living room, but not before she heard a patter of feet and saw a the head of turquoise hair disappear around the corner.

Chapter Text

Nothing could have prepared Kalei to watch them sparring. Ahsoka had demonstrated katas to her; she'd even watched Ahsoka take on a training droid. It didn't compare to watching her fight.

No wonder Asajj said there's no point in training me. I could never do that, she thought wearily, regretting that she'd even agreed to come watch them.

They'd found an abandoned factory for their mock duel, and being the rule-adverse people that they were had made none, which had led them to be perched precariously on a balcony overlooking the factory floor below. 

Asajj seemed to be winning. She'd backed Ahsoka into a corner, constraining the amount of space she had to parry.

Then, she knocked Ahsoka's shoto saber from her hand. It clattered to the floor below. "What now?" she taunted.

Ahsoka's reply was too quiet for Kalei to hear, but Asajj looked unconcerned by whatever she'd said.

Ahsoka leapt, her arms out as if she were a bird in flight and sailed over Asajj's head, landing neatly on her feet and calling her saber back into her hand.

Asajj sighed. "Sometimes I forget you're Skywalker's apprentice."

"Formerly."

Asajj leapt after her. Force, they really didn't mind falling enormous distances. That...might actually be a useful skill.

At last, Asajj managed to knock Ahsoka's saber aside again, this time finding an opening for her saber to reach Ahsoka's neck.

"I yield," Ahsoka sighed. 

"Alright?" Despite having won, Asajj seemed more tired than her. Or perhaps Ahsoka just hid it better. Her face, for one, didn't turn red from exertion. "You seem distracted."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "Like you weren't the one trying to distract me."

"Well, it doesn't usually work."

Kalei sighed. They both looked at her.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing. That was really...impressive. I couldn't..."

"Kalei. I've been practicing since as long as I can remember," Ahsoka said quickly. "You've just started learning how to use a lightsaber. You're doing really well."

It was nice of her to say that, Kalei thought miserably. "It doesn't do anyone any good. Don't you have..." she glanced at Asajj. Ahsoka followed her gaze, confused. "Don't you have better things to do? Than teach me stupid katas?"

She shook her head. "I still practice katas, Kalei. And what things?"

"I don't know, defeating Sidious?"

She shook her head. "Sidious has too much power already without me letting that dictate every waking second of the day."

"Well," said Kalei. "Well, you have...her." Ahsoka stared at her blankly, and she looked over at Asajj who had wandered off, giving them time to talk. "I thought-- you know, if you weren't training me..."

Ahsoka frowned. "What are you trying to say?"

It occurred to her suddenly that perhaps, as talented as she was, Ahsoka did not share Kalei's gift for divining emotions. "Nothing." Asajj tolerated Kalei because Ahsoka liked her. It wasn't the best feeling, to be merely tolerated. "She thinks I'm useless. She told you that. I heard her."

"You don't train an apprentice because they're useful! Or if you are then you shouldn't be," she added. "Asajj doesn't always say things in a way that sounds nice, but she was trying to remind me that I care about you."

"Oh," Kalei said slowly. She supposed she understood that. If Jedi were supposed to be emotionless, Ahsoka might need reminding. But, "She doesn't like me," Kalei told her.

"That's her problem," Ahsoka said. "She knows that. Look, she didn't know you were listening, and she didn't do a good job saying what she actually meant. She was talking to me, and she knew I would understand what she was trying to say. I'm not saying you're wrong that she...isn't the happiest about having you around. But part of being able to sense people's emotions means understanding that emotions aren't always something we can control. Actions are what we choose."

Kalei shook her head. "She acts nice. But I always feel like it's hard for her. Like she has to try."

"She does have to try. I think you remind her of her. And there are a lot of things about her she doesn't want to be reminded of. But she makes a choice to try." For you, Kalei wanted to say. "Doesn't that mean something?"

"I guess."

"I'll talk to her about shielding. Actually, I need to teach you how to shield. I noticed you've been avoiding going to the market. It's because of all the people, isn't it?"

Okay, as much as she missed, Ahsoka was very perceptive in some ways. "It's kind of...loud, in my head. All the presences," Kalei admitted. "I didn't want to ask--"

"Never be afraid to ask me about something. If you can't ask questions, I'm not doing my job," she said firmly.

"It isn't your job to ask questions, Kalei!"

She winced. "I'm fine," she said when Ahsoka looked concerned. "Just...a memory."

"If you want to talk about it--" she began.

Ahsoka didn't need to know what she'd used her untrained Force abilities for. "I'd rather not."

She felt a sense of guilt when Ahsoka nodded, directing her attention elsewhere without comment. She hadn't afforded Ahsoka the same courtesy, she realized. "I'm sorry. For eavesdropping. A real Jedi padawan would probably--"

She was stopped by Ahsoka's laughter. "You're Anakin's grandpadawan. No, Kalei, my entire lineage," she said when she'd managed to stop laughing, "Jedi or not, we excel at getting into trouble. You fit right in, I promise."

Kalei stared at the ground for a moment. "Then maybe I could have a saber lesson before we go?"

Ahsoka clipped her shoto saber to her belt, and had Kalei do the same. It was kind of frustrating; she knew she wanted to use both, but Ahsoka maintained that it would be better to learn to use just the one first. Ahsoka's saber met hers three times before she stumbled. Part of it was simply how much power Ahsoka could put into her lightsaber swings, Kalei realized-- enough to unbalance her without even giving it much effort. 

You're new at this, she reminded herself. Your arms will get stronger.

She focused on parrying in time with Ahsoka's counting. So this was why you practiced katas.

She found it was actually easier when she was blocking a real lightsaber. Ahsoka had depowered hers, of course, but it would still probably hurt if--

And the second she thought about this, she lost the sense of rhythm, and her blade faltered, Ahsoka's saber swinging, unchallenged, at her arm. She winced in anticipation, stepping backward and closing her eyes, and her mind caught hold of something. Something bright and alive, something that wanted to help. Instinctively, she fed the spark, and the light matched her thoughts, growing and branching.

Ahsoka gave a startled cry as she attempted to step forward and found herself unable to complete the motion. Her balance was good enough that she didn't trip, but her saber missed the arm she'd been aiming for, and she paused, staring down at her foot. A vine had entangled it and curled tightly around her ankle.

Ahsoka stared at her. "I've heard of Jedi influencing plants, but I didn't know anything grew down here."

"Me...neither."

She gave Kalei a smile. "I'm afraid I don't know enough about this to teach you very well. It's not a skill most Jedi learn. You'll have to experiment." She stared around them at the desolate landscape of concrete and metal. "In a park or something. Or we can get some potted plants and a light for them."

Kalei felt delighted. The feeling of connection was still there; the vine had been desperately vying to stay alive down here and was happy to help Kalei in exchange for the lifeforce she'd shared with it. She carefully coaxed it to unwind from around Ahsoka's leg and pulled it up from the ground, trying her best to keep its roots intact. "You've never done that?" she asked carefully.

Ahsoka shook her head. "Nope."

She grinned. Then, realizing how childish she was being, tried to return her face to a neutral expression. She couldn't help it. She smiled again.

"Oh," Ahsoka added knowingly, "and connecting with plants is definitely a light side thing. So neither has Asajj."

No one had actually remembered to eat breakfast that morning, what with sparring and all of that, so that afternoon they decided to make up for it, with Ahsoka making Alderaanian toast for Kalei.

"Don't use the lizard eggs, please," Kalei said.

"They're crocodile eggs," Ahsoka corrected.

She wrinkled her nose. "They taste like fish."

Ahsoka shrugged. She didn't think they tasted fishy, Then again, unlike her hearing, her sense of taste was not as acute as a human's. Nor did she have a frame of reference; bird eggs were a foreign mystery to her. Togrutas didn't eat birds, or anything with wings for that matter, as sky creatures were believed to be messengers of their ancestors, and harming them was an abhorrent act. Ahsoka, for her part, didn't really believe them to be sacred beyond the extent to which all life was sacred, but she didn't want to be that Togruta who ate birds. She was disconnected enough from her culture as it was.

Besides, she didn't need anything else designating her as evil.

"I'm not using them for your toast," she assured Kalei. "Asajj? Do you want anything?"

"Whatever you're making for yourself," she said, looking up from the blaster she was repairing. "As long as it's not some dessert you're pretending is a meal."

"What do you have against dessert?" Kalei demanded.

"Nothing. I just like things to be called what they are."

"Eggs and sausage then," Ahsoka decided.

"Really I don't want to eat anything that comes out of the water," Kalei observed.

"Understandable. You grew up on a desert world," Ahsoka said, flipping the first piece of toast. Her comlink beeped. "That's the Senator," she frowned. "Can you-- just don't let anything burn. I'll try and be quick," she told Kalei.

She picked up the comlink and stepped out of the kitchen.

"Ahsoka," came Padme's voice. She sounded relieved. "I wasn't sure if I'd be able to reach you. I'm sorry to interrupt, but the Chancellor wants to speak with you."

She froze. 

"Ahsoka? Are you there?"

"Yes," she managed. "Yes, I'm there. The-- the Chancellor? Why?"

"He wants to know if you sensed anything. About the attack."

He knows. He knows, and I can't bring my lightsabers to the Senate. What am I going to do?

She swallowed. "When should I..." He's the Chancellor. "I'll be there as soon as possible," she said faintly.

But she didn't leave for another half an hour, finishing Kalei's Alderaanian toast, and even went so far as to top it with whipped cream, and berries before she left. She cooked the breakfast for herself and Asajj, putting her own eggs and sausage into a sandwich to take with her.

Part of it was fear, part of it was a vindictive desire to make him wait, and part of it was a feeling she couldn't quite name. She barely recognized it even as a feeling. The darkness unearthed a lot of feelings she wasn't used to being consciously present, and they were varied, but they were all unpleasant. The feeling she had now was categorically so different she couldn't place it.

It was warm. It was quieter than joy, and more external. It was a feeling she felt around herself rather than inside her. But she didn't want to leave and shatter it.

But in her fretting over it, it dissolved anyway, and she found her memory did not do it justice. Well, that was it then. Time to leave. "The Chancellor wants to see me."

Kalei and Asajj both looked up, alarmed.

"I'll be back. I'm certain, or I wouldn't go."

Asajj gave her a doubtful look.

"I wouldn't lie," she said quietly. "Not about that. The Force isn't warning me."

"Maybe because it expects you'd realize the danger on your own!"

"Don't be stupid!"

"I don't care what the Force says!"

The chorus of protests was expected. "I'll be back," she repeated, turned, and walked out the door.

The dark side hung in the air between them, its two would-be masters, like an insect imprisoned in amber, still and dead. It balanced on an edge as fine as a blade, Sidious thought.

Ahsoka, contrastingly felt her smallness, and the vast expanse of darkness in the room. She felt it reaching, felt its influence. They were the insects imprisoned in amber. They were two pawns with which it played a game against itself.

She mounted a challenge to his authority, arriving one and a quarter hours later than she could have, had she been trying, and going so far as to pull a wrapped sandwich from her pocket and sit there in front of him, eating, crumbs of bread and bits of egg falling into the carpet. She was enjoying herself, to some small extent, and not allowing him to. She offered him no fear.

Dooku had been a useful teacher for her. It had planned to use him longer.

That had been Before. It was her job to plan now.

But at present it was the Sith who planned, the Sith who called it to his service.

And She sat there believing Herself a puppet.

"Good afternoon." He did not comment on her lateness, sensing it would only please her.

"Chancellor," she inclined her head. "You wished to speak with me?"

Sidious ceased his act first. "To whom am I speaking?"

"What?" Ahsoka had not prepared for the question, nor did she understand it. The dark side did not offer her any hint. It waited.

"We both know Skywalker's padawan is not capable of the feats you've displayed, morally or in the Force. Tano could not and would not outmatch my apprentice's will, nor could she influence a mind to attempt to poison me and then forget having done so."

She realized. He thinks I've been possessed. She laughed, her reservations forgotten in the enjoyment of knowing something her enemy did not. "You really don't have to talk about me like I'm not here. It's rude"

His eyes widened.

"You won't turn Anakin."

This time, it was he who laughed. "True. Not while he lies unconscious in the Halls of Healing."

"What?" she said sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Crying out for his lost apprentice," he continued.

She wanted more than anything to run out the door to the Temple. 

"You seem troubled. I will be merciful: he need not become my servant."

The dark side gathered itself in anticipation.

She unwittingly called to it in her sudden fear of his mercy. She closed her eyes to calm herself and sat on them until the pins and needles camouflaged the feeling of the energy building in them, and collected herself in time to hear the price he asked.

"If you will take his place."

Her eyes widened.

"Go, comfort your master with whatever lies you've been telling him. I await your decision, Padawan."

Chapter Text

"Here's a thought," the Son said. "Why don't you forget about all these mortals, and find yourself a nice dark corner of the galaxy to hide in until you're ready to defeat him?"

"That sounds miserable," Ahsoka said shortly.

"Well, I tried," he muttered to himself. "What part of this is worth saving? It's all supposed to be temporary, anyway: the alliance with the Nightsister, plotting to defeat the Sith, even your apprentice will one day finish her training."

She didn't even look at him, continuing to walk towards the Temple. Though she never heard his footsteps, his voice continued to come from next to her. "There's a difference between a temporary set of circumstances, and people's lives--" 

"Circumstances make people who they are. People change with their circumstances. The Chosen One, for instance. As much as you would pretend otherwise, what he once was to you no longer exists. There is not a person alive who has not died a thousand times over."

"But there's a difference between dying and becoming something else!"

"Is there?" There was laughter in his voice. This was all too much like her conversation with Dooku, where he always managed to philosophically corner her.

According to the Jedi, death was literally becoming something else. "They feel different. I'm happy with..." And she realized what she was saying. Happy? Why exactly would she be happy? Her mind went back to that morning: saber lessons, and Alderaanian Toast.

"Happiness is not a useful emotion," the Son declared, interrupting her train of thought.

Ahsoka made the mistake of turning to stare at him in dismay. "I don't...but isn't it...people want to be happy."

"People want power. Or better yet more power than someone else. People want to cling to existence for as long as they possibly can. But they don't want to be happy."

She looked away again, uncertain. "I really don't think that's true."

"Look around at the galaxy you live in! Sentient beings don't want peace-- you thrive on conflict. Look at your literature, your stories. Peace exhausts you. You dismiss it, again and again. The truth, Ahsoka Tano, is that the mortal mind doesn't know what to do with happiness. In the absence of a foe, it creates its own demons to do battle with, because battle is a need the mind recognizes as surely as the need to breathe. Do you not see? War is the pursuit of every sentient creature. Battle drums are the heartbeat of consciousness."

There had to be a way to prove him wrong. If she was still at the Temple, if she had guidance, if she didn't have the dark side incessantly prickling in the back of her mind, she would be able to find it. Ahsoka should have been able to convince herself he was lying. If she were still--

Herself.

"Hi Master.

Sorry I didn't answer my com yesterday. I was a bit...well, yesterday was hard. I tried to come see you today, but they said you'd gone on a mission again. I hope you're okay. I hope--

I was pretty scared. I probably wasn't shielding very well. I'm sorry you had to feel that.

Anyway, I miss you. Let me know when you're back. Stay safe."

The holo flickered and disappeared. Anakin played the message again, relieved to hear she was alright, that what he'd felt from her had just been fear.

(If he had a nagging certainty that it hadn't been, he pushed it aside.)

He didn't pause to remind himself the war was all a distraction either. It didn't constantly bother him the way it did Ahsoka.

(What would he do if he wasn't fighting?)

In the midst of battle, he had to stay focused. If everything went well, Ringo Vinda would be theirs by the end of the month.

Asajj waited, tried to cook dinner, and tried not to worry. Neither endeavor was terribly successful, and when she sensed Ahsoka's presence, she leapt from the table and abandoned the stewed vegetables she'd been eating which were slightly burnt on the bottom.

Ahsoka was carrying a bag of chocolates, crisps, and a package of dried nerf meat.

Asajj eyed the bag doubtfully. "What did you get that for?"

"Watching a holodrama," she declared in her 'don't-argue-with-me' voice.

Asajj sighed. "With Kalei?"

She shrugged. "You're invited too."

"You're a Togruta. Isn't chocolate not good for you?"

"It's not good for humans either," she said lightly. "Watch with us, will you? I'll make you a nice salad or whatever other boring food you want."

"Fine."

Some fifteen minutes later, the three of them sat on the sofa: Asajj on one side of Ahsoka and Kalei on the other. The problem with holodramas was that she and Ahsoka had experienced nearly everything that appeared in them: pirates, battles, explosions and the like. The one they chose was about an archeologist hoping to keep an archaic artifact out of the hands of an enemy government.

"He reminds me of Anakin," Ahsoka said, rolling her eyes.

"No, even Skywalker would destroy the ark instead of endangering everyone's lives," Asajj argued.

"You'd be surprised. His arrogance gets the better of him."

"Would you two stop it? I'm trying to watch," Kalei complained.

Asajj absently reached into the box of chocolates, her hand brushing against Ahsoka's. "Sorry."

She turned her head. Her eyes looked different in the darkness-- though they were still resolutely blue, they had the slightest glow to them. No actual light came from them, but their color didn't disappear in the dark the way everything else did, didn't fade to a nondescript grey.

It was one thing to hear her talk about mystical planets and Force deities, but to be confronted with evidence that what was happening to her was more than simply Falling... it was startling.

She was sitting there watching a holofilm with the two of them, and suddenly none of it could be taken for granted. Asajj found she wanted to reach for Ahsoka's hand again, as if that might keep her here, like this.

It was a good thing no one really talked about the movie afterward. Asajj couldn't have recalled any of the ending to save her life.

Ahsoka lay staring at the ceiling.

There was an itch inside her. Her power burned in her fingertips and sang in her montrals and sleep would not come.

The darkness blanketed the world like snow as she took one tentative step outside, and another, and another. It was cold like snow, and swirled around her like snow. She did not steel herself against the cold, but rather spread her arms wide, closing her eyes until it began not to feel like cold at all.

"Not yet, child."

Ahsoka squeezed her eyes more tightly closed against the sudden brightness. She recognized the voice, and she stepped nervously backward.

"Open your eyes and look upon me, child."

Ahsoka struggled to obey her, a cry of pain escaping her as she thought the Daughter's blinding image practically burned into the back of her eyeballs, but she kept her eyes open.

"You must yet wait longer. The time to accept the darkness is not yet at hand. You must continue to do battle with it."

The words felt like duracrete bricks falling on her montrals. Ahsoka sank to her knees. "I can't. Please-- I'm sorry, I can't."

"You do not kneel before me." Her voice wavered with sudden intensity, so that she sounded almost angry.

Trembling, Ahsoka managed to stand again.

The Daughter's brightness waned slightly. She tilted her head, her expression sympathetic. "Did I not save you from death? I will help you again, but you must be resolute. My brother would have you accept the darkness, but he is deceiving you in speaking this way. You have more power than you think; you have no real need of the darkness, but it requires an emissary. If you are resolute, you can choose not to accept its influence, and it will have to accept yours."

"You mean...be less evil?" Obi-Wan could have done it, with his calm and unending patience. Ahsoka...Ahsoka was the wrong person to try to change such a fundamental fact of the universe as the dark side being evil.

Her expression was grave. "It will require great strength of will. But you chose this moment. You sat next to them first," she gestured back at the apartment, "eating chocolate, trying to be happy one last time before you embraced my brother's reality. You can choose another moment just as surely as you chose this one."

Ahsoka thought about that. The Daughter wasn't wrong. She took a deep breath and withdrew herself from the darkness. She fought against the cold, and she shivered.

She stepped back inside.

She would feel the cold for as long as she had to, if it meant she would still be able to feel, would still be Ahsoka.

Chapter Text

The next week was busy, although the Senate remained adjourned and Ahsoka didn't actually have work.

Kalei started learning Jar'Kai. Ahsoka assured her she didn't have to, but as far as Kalei was concerned two lightsabers must logically be better than one. Asajj had actually found that she was starting to enjoy Kalei's presence-- her optimism and joy. The things Kalei reminded her of had bothered her at first, but more and more, as much as she struggled to admit it to herself, Kalei made her wonder if happiness and hope were more than delusions.

But just as she began to really consider this, the galaxy once again proved itself to be unkind. She and Ahsoka were sitting at the table, eating breakfast. Kalei wasn't awake yet-- she was fifteen after all, so it was just the two of them sitting across from each other in silence. It was not an uncomfortable sort of silence. At least, Asajj didn't think so. The dining room even looked uncharacteristically bright that morning. She looked around, trying to identify the source of the change, and noticed that Kalei's collection of potted plants now spanned the entire shelf.

"Well," Ahsoka said, breaking the silence, "I'm thinking my salary for this month should be enough for my own apartment."

Asajj stared at her blankly for several seconds. She'd actually forgotten Ahsoka was supposed to leave. And take Kalei with her too, presumably, and her plants and her holofilms.

She continued, seeming not to notice. "You've been very kind; I've taken advantage of your hospitality long enough."

For once, Asajj found herself at a loss for words. "That's good," she heard herself say. "I suppose you're tired of sleeping on the sofa."

And even that was too much to have said; Ahsoka stared at her hands awkwardly. Asajj shouldn't have said that, let alone "I'd really like if you stayed," or "I haven't been this happy in a long time and I thought maybe you were happy too and we could try to keep things this way as long as possible."

Ahsoka's gaze flickered slightly. Perhaps she sensed some of Asajj's sorrow, and she raised a questioning eyebrow. Asajj had a sudden hope that she might ask what was wrong. If she does, Asajj decided, I'll tell her I'm going to miss her, consequences be damned. I'll ask her to stay.

It felt better that way; the matter of whether or not to speak no longer rested with her when she framed the decision as Ahsoka's.

"Asajj?" she said said at last, "There's something I want to tell you."

Her comlink beeped and she answered it automatically. Anakin's voice spoke in urgent sentence fragments: "Ahsoka. Level 1325. Fives. He tried to kill Palpatine--"

Ahsoka stood. "He what?"

"A clone on Ringo Vinda killed a Jedi-- they all have biochips in their heads-- Fives says-- but the Guard is looking for him--"

"Can you send me the coordinates?"

"I am. Don't bring--"

"Asajj, yeah got it, thanks." Ahsoka rolled her eyes, which Asajj appreciated. Anakin could be so patronizing sometimes. She wasn't an idiot; she knew better than to show up in front of the Coruscant Guard.

Anakin, however, had noticed something else, and his voice was comically horrified as he echoed, "Asajj?"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes again. "That's her name." She clicked off the comlink. "Don't know how he thinks I'm going to go anywhere if he makes me stand here talking... Can you help Kalei practice her saberwork while I'm gone?" she added to Asajj, as calmly as if she was leaving on a vacation, or perhaps merely going to the grocery store.

And before Asajj could even answer, she was gone.

Well, there was the normal way to travel up a few levels, and then there was the quick way.

Revisiting the route she'd taken through Coruscant's ventilation system and pipes while running away from Anakin didn't exactly bring back nice memories, but it was faster than trying to rent a vehicle, or finding an elevator, so she took it.

Anyway, it seemed if the Force was preoccupied with helping her leap atop a ship without falling to her death, it couldn't simultaneously battle with her over her own soul.

So. That was good.

Anakin's coordinates led her to a warehouse of some sort. She walked in, following the sound of Anakin's voice, and two clones she couldn't quite recognize yet-- too far away.

"I'm listening, Fives. I'm just trying to understand. How do you know all this?"

"The evidence is in here! In all of us! Organic chips in our genetic code-- to make us do what someone wants! Even kill the Jedi."

That was Fives. There was something off about his voice, though. His presence too was flickering in a way that didn't bode well. Had he been hurt?

"What are you saying?" Rex's voice was distraught. "Who would--"

Distantly, Ahsoka heard another sound. One of the gunships used by the Coruscant Guard.

She bolted into the room, knowing they were running out of time, but what she saw momentarily stopped her in her tracks. Fives had Anakin and Rex trapped in a forcefield. He was visibly unwell-- some sort of poison? she thought, concerned. That above all else made her believe him. Why would he have been poisoned, except to keep anyone from finding out what he'd discovered?

And if he had figured out something they could prove...perhaps Ahsoka could talk to the Council again, this time with more evidence than a vision. But first, she needed to get Fives to safety.

"They're almost here," she said softly, but all three of them jumped, whirling around to stare at her.

"Force, Ahsoka! Did you have to hide your presence like that?"

"Sidious," she pointed out. "Can't be too careful."

He seemed to accept this. Rex and Fives, however, looked at her, perplexed.

"Commander?" Fives' voice was wary. "Drop your lightsabers."

"I'm not here to hurt you," Ahsoka tried to reassure him. "I believe you--" But he held up his blaster. The ship was close now-- less than a minute away.

What to do?

"Fives. The Guard will be here any second. We need to get you out of here. Where Palpatine can't find you."

That seemed to convince him. He took a step toward her.

"Go with Ahsoka," Anakin affirmed.

The ship appeared overhead, light shining on her face.

Ahsoka took a fraction of a second to curse her own foolishness. Coming here through the pipes? Really? She wasn't superstitious, but in retrospect it seemed like she'd been tempting fate. Running from the Republic?

She was about to do it again.

She allowed herself this thought for the smallest of moments, took Fives by the arm, and ran, quickly finding he could not keep up with her. That also didn't bode well. She used the Force to help him a little, catching his shaky footsteps.

The Force sang a warning and she barely managed to draw a lightsaber to stop the stunbolt that whizzed toward her. She deflected a second, but the third hit Fives, and now she was full-on carrying him.

Jedi Ahsoka would not have stood a chance, not with an unconscious clone in tow, but she was a Jedi no longer.

Blasters still set to stun, someone hit the back of her head, and Ahsoka felt the jolt of energy, felt her eyes close...

Her darkness uncoiled, a serpent rearing its head, its own energy countering, holding her eyes open. Gasping, she flung out a hand, letting some of it out... though somewhere in the back of her mind she thought of the Daughter's words. Wait, no-- she wrestled with it for a moment that felt like an eternity, struggling to keep it inside her--

Her hand burned as it poured out of her.

The energy met eight Force-presences, and where it had kept her eyes open, eight pairs now fluttered closed.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka had to check that the eight presences were still there, where they belonged, not displaced, not drifting off to join the Cosmic Force.

The confluence of light and dark had been altogether too much. Her hands were were burned and blistered and her head ached. Ahsoka blinked in disbelief; using the Force had never hurt her.

There were stories, she remembered, of what using the dark side did to Sith: yellow eyes, pale and mottled skin, unnatural aging. Stories of Sith that crumbled like living statues, withering flesh eroding like stone.

Stories to frighten padawans, she tried to assure herself.

Dooku looked ordinary. Asajj was--

Well. There was nothing to be afraid of.

And if there was, it wouldn't be for her to fear. If she really and truly did Fall, if she did become what the Son had said she would, she'd be immortal. She wasn't just some Fallen Jedi-- the dark side had chosen her, and it probably wouldn't want to destroy her. Certainly, if it did destroy...the Son and Yarrow too would have suffered more than just red eyes from being one with it for...

Well she wasn't really sure how long. Was she really grateful for the idea of immortality? No, no she wasn't.

Red eyes. Were her eyes going to change color? No, she decided firmly. They were not.

Remember when Kalei brought you to Dooku? And you knelt before him and let the darkness in and thought 'just a little, just this one?' Remember after that when you said, 'to defeat Sidious, and then I'll go to a Jedi healer and fix this? Look at yourself, grimly accepting everything but the glowing fiery eyes and calling it defiance. Does it make you feel better, Ahsoka? "I'll become your emissary, if you let me keep my lovely sapphire eyes?"

"Snips!"

Ahsoka looked up. "Nice of you to show up after I did all the work," she quipped.

"You're the one who lectured me about making sure no one thinks I know anything. If Sidious thinks I believed Fives--"

A brightness in the periphery of her awareness dimmed, and Ahsoka felt the Force cry out. Anakin felt it too, stopping abruptly. Fives! His face was almost as white as a shiny's armor.

"Get him to Kix," Anakin ordered. Ahsoka didn't need telling twice; she was already bending down to pick him up again. If she hadn't been fretting over her eyes, she might have--

"Ow!" she hissed, as her blistered palms touched his armor. She'd forgotten--

Anakin stared. "Force! What happened to your hands?"

"Never mind that. I'll be fine." She used the Force to lift him instead. Please be alright, Fives.

If he wasn't...

He would be. He had to be.

Ahsoka had always been able to find people.

Her Force-sensitivity, coupled with her acute hearing, meant she could instantly turn her head towards someone in the mess hall, and call out a friendly greeting.

On the battle field, she always knew where to find Kix, where to run to with a wounded soldier.

She'd gotten too good at carrying people. At first those lucky enough to have been carried by her with the Force and recover from their injuries had described it as being every bit as bumpy as sitting in a ship when she was landing it.

A year fighting by their side, and it was like floating on a cloud. She would lift soldiers with wounds that made it otherwise dangerous to move them, carrying them safely to a medic. Some of it was just her Jedi training. Ahsoka could wield the Force with more precision. A lot of it was terrible and specific practice she never should have gotten.

More terribly still, it often wasn't enough.

Ahsoka had left the Order, and she'd earned that, and it was cruel, Kix thought, that she was still running to him, a soldier supported in the air through sheer force of will. 

Kix sometimes wondered how she sustained that will. How he did. How anyone did.

"I'm sorry, Ahsoka..."

She would mourn with everyone else when someone didn't make it. Sometimes, after particularly heavy casualties, or if it was someone she knew well, she had cried. Now, though, something was different. As she stared at Fives lying motionless on the bed, and watched Kix step back in defeat, somehow, he knew with profound certainty, that this time something in her was going to break.

"I don't understand. He was only stunned," she whispered.

"It looks like there was a toxin present that was already affecting the function of his nervous system. The energy was more than he could handle in that state."

"No," she whispered, and that most of all wasn't like her, to be in denial of death.

There was a moment of calm, and he wasn't Force-sensitive, but he could feel the hum of energy building in the air...

The silence was murdered by a screech of bending metal and the sound of shattering glass.

Chapter Text

Silence. That was always what came after, but this hadn't been...

This hadn't been fear that had escaped from her grasp.

This had been anger. This had been senseless, vengeful destruction.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Kix nodded. "It was an accident. You were upset."

He didn't understand. Didn't understand that she hadn't been talking to him, didn't understand that it wasn't an accident.

That was okay. She didn't need him to. Even when she'd been a Jedi, she'd appreciated how removed the clones were from the Jedi Code. It was realism, and balance between pragmatism and fierce protectiveness that, even then, had made more sense, had felt like a normal expression of sentience.

Even then.

She thought about the Council's disapproval of Anakin, time after time. Reckless. Too emotional. Too aggressive. "You need to learn control, young Skywalker."

Could he ever have taught her something he hadn't even learned?

The dark side amplified her emotions...

But they had to come from her. Her mind went back to that vision she'd had, in the cave on Mortis.

"There is a wildness to you, young one. Seeds of the dark side planted by your master. Do you feel it?"

"No. He is like no other Jedi. Passionate, impulsive... But I trust him with my life."

But that was the point. Ahsoka saw that now. Perhaps trusted him...more than I should have?

Her thoughts twisted in circles. What, really, has changed? I'm more powerful. That's all. I could do anything with that power. I could refuse to even touch it. But here I am, making the wrong choice again and again. Doesn't that say more about me than it does the dark side?

It can't choose to be good. That's supposed to be my job. And I'm failing.

Maybe, safe under the guidance of the Order, she'd never really been good at all, only following along, pretending. And the second she was given the opportunity...

Was that why Anakin would Fall too?

A heavy bitterness settled on her shoulders. He was the master. She shouldn't have to save him from problems she'd created in the first place!

"But let's try to not to have your face any more injured."

What-- oh, she realized dully as she felt a sharp pain in the side of her face, near her mask. She hadn't even noticed. How had she not noticed? She bit her lip. There is no emotion, there is peace.

Peace.

Peace.

"While you're here..." Oh no. Typical Kix. He must have seen the look on her face. "I just want to run some quick scans. Especially with you spending so much time in the Undercity; the air quality is bad, and there's a potential for heavy metal exposure--"

"Whatever makes you worry less," she said.

He frowned at his scanner. "Your resting heart rate is a little low, but it's probably just the amount of exercise you get."

She nodded. "Yes, I--" she barely caught herself before she finished the sentence she'd been going to utter about sparring with Asajj.

Kix frowned again, this time more deeply. "Ahsoka?" he asked after a moment. "Do you remember what your midi-chlorian count is?"

Oh. She had an inkling about where this was going. "Yes. It's...around fourteen thousand, I think." The actual number was more like 13,500 but it would be nice to give herself a little more cushion to explain why--

"I'm reading significantly less than that."

"Well--" Wait. Less? Now that didn't make any sense at all. "Define significantly?" she said doubtfully.

"I'm reading a little over ten thousand."

Ahsoka startled. There was no reason for that. No reason so many should just disappear like that. She hugged her knees to her chest. "I don't understand," she said softly.

Kix frowned. "This is beyond my qualifications as a medic. You probably know more about them than I do. Could that explain...your outburst?"

She shook her head. "I was overwhelmed by the Force interacting with my emotions. It should be the opposite-- with a lot of missing midi-chlorians, I'd be trying to call on power that wasn't there. Normal things that don't usually pose a challenge would be draining."

"They're not?"

She shook her head. "I can use the Force just as well as ever." Understatement.

He was looking at her like he didn't believe her. She was still unsure herself. Any Force-user would be profoundly disturbed by the idea of some sort of injury to their midi-chlorians-- it was one understanding that Jedi and Sith alike shared. And if she was supposed to be becoming a goddess, not that she wanted to become a goddess, but if that was hypothetically supposed to be what was happening to her, why would her midi-chlorian count have plummeted like that?

"You should see a Force Healer about this."

"My connection with the Force is fine. Kix is wrong. Wrong."

(Of course it is. We're here. We are a part of you. You will no longer need intermediaries to be able to reach us.)

Ahsoka stared into her own sapphire eyes in the mirror, willing herself not to cry. "Don't need them?" she whispered in disbelief. "I'm a living being." 

Wait. The implied meaning of those words sank in. To be able to reach...

Panicked, Ahsoka tried to calm herself and reach out to the light. The sense of peace was there. She relaxed slightly, and then focused, lifting the pair of shoes sitting by the door.

I am one with the Force and the Force is wi--

She gasped, head throbbing, and the pair of shoes that should have floated easily into the air fell.

"I can use the Force just as well as ever."

Ahsoka sank to her knees, a sob escaping her. "ASAJJ!"

Chapter Text

Tano had been a problem for a long time. Skywalker was protective of her, but not in a way that could be spun into possessiveness the way his affection for the Senator could. No, Tano was an obstacle in his descent into darkness, and Sidious had puzzled fruitlessly for some time over how to make her a tool.

In the end, he'd been expecting to have to get her out of the way. But then Offee had been kind enough to Fall and do that for him, and Tano had left the Order. Gone, dead. It didn't really matter. She left an emptiness the darkness could fill, and he'd thought the matter over and done with.

And now, Falling. A darksider with no ties to dictate her allegiance, who happened to have a specific and personal resentment toward him. She could easily have been Maul all over again: a thorn in his side. As intriguing as her power was, as tantalizing a servant as she was, there could only be one apprentice. And Anakin's loyalty was much less difficult to secure.

He'd been moments away from picking up his comlink and arranging an end for the Togruta, when Skywalker had come into his office.

Sidious immediately knew that Tano had revealed the truth to her master. As much as he tried to hide it, Anakin's resentment was palpable.

He would need to act carefully if the plan was to be salvaged, he thought. Tano should believe he had no idea Skywalker knew, for starters. It would give her the illusion of having the advantage, and that would make her complacent. A theory occurred to him. "I was just speaking to your former padawan."

"Oh?" Anakin frowned slightly. And there it was: he had no idea she'd Fallen.

A plan began to formulate itself in his mind. "Yes, she seems to be adjusting quite well to life outside the Order, doesn't she? You must be proud."

Little pieces at a time. Tano had made the mistake of lying to her master, and if that trust had been broken...there was still room to sow doubt.

"I'm here."

Ahsoka didn't listen to the words so much as the sound of the voice, as if she were listening to someone in a language she didn't understand. Asajj had such a distinctive voice, and it was some small relief to hear it, but-- "I'm here." She wasn't. She sounded so far away.

"Ahsoka, look at me please."

So very far away-- the meaning of the words faded before it could reach her. It was just a sound, like any other nice sound. Like an ocean or a bird or a bell.

So she didn't try to look at Asajj, and she didn't think about how she couldn't actually see at all-- how there was nothing around her but emptiness.

"Ahsoka." A figure appeared in front of her. It was a shadow, only light instead of its absence, appeared in front of her. The glowing form of a humanoid without any features. "It's time to go now." the Daughter declared.

Those words had more meaning. She wanted to protest them, to argue that she was still fighting against the darkness, only there was nothing else left with which to fight it, when all her power came from it.

"You said...before..." she frowned vaguely.

"It was exacting of me to ask such a thing. You will be as we were, and that is enough. I will bring you home to Mortis, and then I will find a light side emissary to join you--"

She'd resented the idea of being a goddess, yes. She resented the idea of the Daughter plucking some other Jedi from the Temple for her to spend the rest of eternity engaged in spiritual battle with. But it was the word 'home' applied to that place that was irreconcilable.

That meaning of that word wasn't her meaning.

That meant there was something else, something in the back of her mind--

"I know you're there. Come back, Ahsoka."

Not my home, not a goddess, not the darkness.

I. Will. NOT!

Confidence returning with each refusal, Ahsoka gathered her strength of will, reached for the nothingness around her, and pushed. Darkness shattered like glass, and she fell...and in the literal sense it felt so safe: falling instead of Falling, falling when there was a pair of arms waiting to catch her.

Ahsoka's eyes felt dry, like they'd been held open for too long, like they were unaccustomed to sentient seeing; Asajj's face peering down at her was blurred.

She managed a small smile all the same, before gloriously literal darkness overcame her.

Chapter Text

You've got to confide in him. Act like you still trust him, Anakin reminded himself, sitting in the Chancellor's office. "I keep thinking about Maul. How he hurt Obi-Wan...Obi-Wan thinks about it too. It haunts him; I can see it in his eyes sometimes."

"His independence makes him perhaps more dangerous than Dooku. There are many worshippers of the dark side aside from the Sith," Sidious observed. "Many rival sects, and still many more rogues who act on their own whims. Yet the light side is surprisingly confined to the Jedi Order-- it's quite fascinating. One might argue that a Force-adept's natural tendency is towards the dark, and it requires the guidance of a group like the Order to overcome."

Ahsoka's anger. The darkness she'd shown him, twice now.

Anakin frowned, and reached automatically for his bond with Ahsoka.

There was something else there. Another presence. Another bond.

"I have to go."

Ahsoka's face was wrinkled with uncertainty and concentrated thought.

It was a sharp contrast to before, when her eyes had stared blankly at nothing, or even after, when they'd fluttered open and closed.

"Are you okay?" Asajj asked her.

Kalei, who had been sitting on the floor, playing with a puzzle of some sort that Ahsoka had gotten her, gave the two of them a look, muttered something about being hungry and going out to get food.

Ahsoka looked up. "Take your lightsabers. But keep them under your cloak. Don't--"

"I know, I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "I was fine for two months without your lecturing."

Ahsoka watched her leave somewhat helplessly.

"She'll be okay," Asajj tried to reassure her.

"I know." She stared at her hands. "I didn't used to worry about people like this."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." And she honestly did. She hadn't let herself care about anyone, ironically, for the exact opposite reason as Ahsoka.

"Asajj, I don't know if I want things to go back to the way they were before."

What do you say to that? "It's okay not to know."

"What about you?" she asked abruptly, her eyes searching Asajj's face. "What do you want?"

"What do you mean?" she said, because how could she begin to answer a question like that?

Ahsoka gave a small smile. "I mean if Sidious was gone and you were pardoned by the Republic, what would you want to do?"

"I don't deserve to be pardoned."

Her face fell. "Asajj--"

"No, I don't!" she said, suddenly feeling an anger she couldn't explain. "I don't know if the dark side has made you conveniently forget--"

"Forget? Is it so hard to believe that I just forgive you?"

"Yeah, because the dark side--"

"No! Because you let me use your ship to go to Malachor without a reason. Because you told Anakin when I was in trouble. Because you let me stay here, even when I decided I was going to train Kalei. And I've been really happy here with you."

I've been really happy here with you. She'd never wanted to hear anything more, but this was like a nightmare. "You said it yourself: you wouldn't feel that way if--"

"Stop talking about me like my feelings are just manifestations of the Force! Maybe it amplifies them, but they're my feelings! I'm so sick of talking about doing everything for some idealized version of my past Jedi self who probably never existed and certainly isn't going to magically start existing. How would you feel if I said you've only been a good person because you've used the light side? Or if I said that you aren't yourself just because you--" She cut off abruptly, freezing and staring at the door.

A moment later, the doorbell chimed.

Ahsoka waved a hand, using the Force unnecessarily the way she tended to do when she was agitated, as a release of emotional energy more than anything, and the door opened. Anakin stepped through it, confused for a moment that no one was there before he peered down the hallway into the living room.

"Master?"

"Couldn't get up to answer the door, Snips?"

Asajj had a sudden feeling of dread she couldn't explain. Skywalker didn't seem angry exactly, but something she could sense from him put her on edge.

"I was just...just a bit preoccupied."

He frowned. "With her?"

Ahsoka simultaneously moved away from her in panic and took her hand and clung to it tightly. "You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here," Asajj said, reaching out to try and understand the meaning of that contradictory gesture, and sensing nervousness and anxiety, but also a sense of protectiveness.

He stared at her with narrowed eyes. "Okay then. Why. Do you have a Force-bond with my padawan?"

"I--"

He was crazy. He was absolutely--

Couldn't she sense Ahsoka's thoughts sometimes recently?

Couldn't she feel echoes of Ahsoka's emotions?

She'd been able to write it off as just the result of physical proximity, but now that she looked--

Oh Force. Oh no. No, a bond with her would make Ahsoka's struggles with the darkness worse! A bond with her--

"I didn't know! I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, Ahsoka--"

Ahsoka was equally shocked, evident on her face and in the Force. But what struck Asajj more than that was apologetic guilt. Then a tentative questioning feeling, accompanied by the faintest sense of comfortcontentmentpeace.

"It's not her fault. It was probably--" Her head-tails turned a slightly deeper blue. "It was probably me. I-- Asajj, can we have a minute?"

"Yes. Yes of course you can," she said, feeling slightly dizzy. She stood and walked away into the dining room, but she couldn't get the closeness of Ahsoka's presence out of her head.

Chapter Text

She wasn't sure what had happened, exactly, with the darkness. It wasn't gone after her fight against it, it was still incessantly present, but something had changed. Something subtle she couldn't quite pinpoint. However Ahsoka understood herself better, now; something about almost losing herself made everything that had nearly been taken away stand out with sharp clarity.

She understood the sense of warmth and light and belonging, and she understood that the Force-bond Anakin was talking about had come from those feelings. That place inside her. 

Asajj's words rang in her ears: You wouldn't feel that way if not for the dark side.

But she knew what the dark side felt like whispering in her ear, and this wasn't that. She was sure it wasn't. It was the opposite of dark-- Why didn't Asajj believe her capable of having any of her own emotions?

She bit her lip. She was getting upset, and Anakin was looking at her with increasing concern, waiting for her to say something--

"The Force did this, and I trust the Force."

That was a lie. The same way the Council said it when they didn't have an answer and they wanted you to leave them alone. This didn't entirely escape Anakin, she knew it didn't; she had a Force-bond with him, too, after all.

His lips pursed into a thin line. "Okay, Snips."

"Master--"

"I've missed you a lot. Is there somewhere down here where we could have a sparring match," he said, obviously trying to cheer himself up.

She shivered with unease. Sparring? She would have to use the Force for that, and it would be harder to shield. She wasn't sure if she could hide her darkness, especially when fighting: the adrenaline, the need to make quick decisions, the reliance on impulse and instinct-- He would see it in the misdirection that had shifted from something calculated and pragmatic to an art of cruel deceit, and he would feel it in the energy of her blades, and it would show in their shifting yellow-orange-crimson.

But his expression was so pleading. He needed this. They needed this.

She nodded. "I'll show you where I bring Kalei to practice katas," she suggested, trying to hide her nervousness. She'd just proven she could fight the darkness. She could do it again.

As time had a habit of doing, it seemed to speed up even as Ahsoka stalled, even as she walked as slowly as possible, trying to delay their arrival. The abandoned factory loomed in front of them. The derelict industrial buildings on Coruscant were all dangerous in varying degrees; they frequented this one for its relative quietness and lack of broken glass and debris. Beyond a healthy amount of caution, Ahsoka was never troubled about coming here with Asajj and Kalei, but now, being with Anakin, it seemed an uncomfortable and foreboding place, and she wondered what Anakin must be thinking.

If he was disconcerted by the place itself, though, he didn't show it. Instead he said, "I've never been here before. That gives you an unfair advantage, you know."

"I seem to recall you telling Obi-Wan you could beat me with your eyes closed."

He leapt at her, his blade at a lower power level, but enough to sting as it brushed the tip of her head-tail.

She drew her lightsabers reflexively, and willed the suggestion of orange away, barely bringing them up in time to guard the next strike he aimed at her torso.

The dark side shifted, a snake lifting its head. Waiting to see what she would do.

Another stinging pain blossomed, this time in her shoulder. "C'mon Snips. I'm not even trying."

Ahsoka couldn't channel too much aggressive energy into her blades without the color betraying her. She focused on a leap instead, onto the walkway above.

"Are you running away?"

She tipped her head, expression impassive, waiting. At last, he gathered the strength in his legs--

She leapt back down, while he focused on jumping, and his arm buckled at the force of her saber as it slammed into his, which he held in a weak position, above his head. "Snips!"

It was an unfair trick, and not one Jedi Ahsoka would have used. He didn't like it. Well. At least she had him distracted now--

She yelped as Anakin Force-pushed her backward putting a sudden pressure on the foot behind her, and she felt a slight crack! She forced herself to breathe, trying to let go of the pain.

The dark side twisted, angry at being cut off from her feelings, protective. She felt the pressure in her montrals, the cold fiery burning spreading through her-- all the sense of trapped energy that needed to go somewhere, that would surely spill out of her, and make her sabers burn the color of blood--

What was she going to tell Anakin?

Something snapped, in an echo of the way her ankle had, and it all condensed into one burst of power, and for a terrible moment she thought that it felt like it wanted to be lightning, but no, it didn't leap from her hands, but rather to her injured ankle, enough to surpass the agony that had already been there. Several times over.

She whimpered.

What's happening to me?

A chill as cold as the depths of space sent goosebumps across her skin, and lasted in her leg long enough to be numb so that she couldn't feel the pain that surely would have accompanied the feeling of something in her foot clicking back into place. Unfortunately, it didn't last long enough to disguise the pulling, itching feeling of everything else knitting back together around it far, far more quickly than it should have, in what could have been ten seconds or a full minute. She wasn't sure. And then--

She realized all that was left was a gentle warmth.

Luckily shock didn't look all that different from pain in her facial expression, and Anakin couldn't tell her discomfort was no longer physical.

Because her thoughts were screaming that no, this wasn't possible-- you couldn't use Force-healing on yourself, that's not the way the universe works, and healing with the dark side is wrong to begin with. And she started thinking about the horror stories again, Sith Lords not quite healing properly so that they were left eternally with open wounds that wouldn't kill them but would never heal either, people corrupted into abominations by their twisted alchemy-- and now she was breathing too fast and Anakin was looking at her funny-- Could he sense something?

"Are you hurt?"

"My ankle," she said, dazed and breathless. "I think I pulled a muscle. Probably just needs rest."

Anakin frowned. "This isn't like that time where you said you'd just pulled a muscle and you actually had a fracture, is it?"

"No. I can even walk myself back. Thanks for doing this. I enjoyed it."

She was so tired of lying to him, but what was worse was that if she wasn't careful, she'd catch herself forgetting the first part, thinking that maybe she was just tired of him.

Kalei wanted to know what had happened while she'd been gone. She could tell Asajj and Ahsoka had argued-- there was a leftover frozenness between them. It was a subtle thing, but it wasn't nothing, and knowing them, they were probably making it look like less than it was.

"We had a conversation, Kalei. Not an argument." Yeah, right. She wasn't stupid.

The morning Ahsoka was supposed to go tour an apartment she was hoping to rent, Kalei turned off her alarm so the chronometer wouldn't wake her up. By the time she was out of bed, her appointment was an hour past.

"I'm sorry. I'll ask her if I can reschedule," she told Asajj at breakfast.

"It's like you want to stay here," Asajj said rolling her eyes, but Kalei could sense how a tentative hope sprung up--

Ahsoka's head-tails darkened slightly, but she said nothing.

--the hope wilted.

Kalei sighed. Adults were really good at keeping themselves miserable, she thought.

Chapter Text

The Temple was still, the worship of quiet finally realized in a terrible mockery of peace.

Because the silence wasn't peace. Ahsoka's montrals didn't like it-- her echolocation only worked if there was sound to bounce off of the objects around her. Her own footsteps were far louder than they should have been.

Master Nu was in the main hall, near the lift, her eyes wide. Although the surprised betrayal was frozen on her face, there was something there that made her look as though she might stand up at any moment and scold Ahsoka for staring.

As she stood still, her montrals picked up another sound. A heartbeat.

The dark side gathered itself, waiting to see what she would do, not advising, not whispering. Just observing. She followed the sound down a set of stairs into an alcove with an empty fountain. The heartbeat came from behind it. Stepping forward, Ahsoka saw a pair of legs, a robe--

Her own pained face stared desperately up at her. 

Ahsoka sat up, gasping. Something was terribly wrong--it was like being scared to move only with her mind instead of her body; something was wrong and she was afraid to try to find out what. She wrapped her hands tightly around her pillow and closed her eyes.

She tried to ease into wakefulness gently, so as not to provoke whatever dreadful thing was waiting for her in the parts of her awareness she wasn't tuned into, but there was no way to gently step into full-on sensory overload. The dark side, usually a voice, was fragmented. There was a whirl of emotion and intention outside of herself, and her own darkness which wasn't really helping because it responded to her, and she couldn't ground herself enough to figure out what she felt.

So. There was nothing to shield her from everything else.

Bloodlust flashed through her mind, distant and removed, thank the stars. Much more clearly than she could feel the emotion itself, though, she could feel the way it pulled at the dark. It was something in direct conflict with her own influence over it-- someone was calling it, gathering it.

If she didn't know better, she would think this was some kind of Force-bond. But it was no person whose actions and energy she cold sense. It was the overall landscape of the dark side itself. Did she dare try to examine it further? Ahsoka directed her focus more outside herself.

Death. Destruction. End.

Ahsoka stifled a cry.

The sense of fear pressing upon her was so real that it took her a moment to realize she wasn't feeling real fear, but only the anticipation of fear.

Coruscant, in all her shining glory. She looked at the planet from above-- from above--

Oh, her head hurt.

A hand moved in front of her eyes. Ahsoka blinked, for a second wondering if it was her hand-- she couldn't quite feel herself, didn't quite feel like she was actually in her own body. But no, it wasn't--

"Ahsoka?"

Kalei's face was more recognizable as she stared anxiously at Ahsoka, even if Ahsoka couldn't quite focus on it; her turquoise hair was unmistakable, hanging over her shoulders, because she had it down because it was the middle of the night

so they'll be caught completely by surprise.

No. "Kalei." Not safe to lose herself like this in front of Kalei.

"I'm sorry to wake you up," Kalei said doubtfully. "But I had a really bad dream."

"I know. You need to go wake up Asajj--"

"Already awake," Asajj said, stifling a yawn. "Mostly. What's going on? I sense..."

"Dooku is attacking Coruscant," Ahsoka told them.

"What!?"

Kalei looked startled. "How do you know?"

"I can sense him using the dark side," she said honestly.

Kalei opened her mouth as if to say something, then seemed to change her mind. Asajj closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head. "You can sense Dooku? Since when?" 

"Since now. And it's not Dooku, it's the way he's using the Force. And--" she rubbed a hand against her aching head. "It's angry."

"Angry that he's attacking Coruscant? Why?"

"Because I'm here," Ahsoka said simply and honestly, seeing no point in trying to obscure the truth.

Kalei glanced up at the ceiling, and Ahsoka knew she was imagining the battle that would take place in the sky so very far above them. "Won't we be safe all the way down here?"

Ahsoka wished she knew. What she could feel didn't seem like it was meant to be intentionally helpful-- it was something she was inconveniently connected to in a very particular way that didn't tell her much about how it actually affected them.

The ground shook. Not so hard that they lost their balance, but certainly noticeable. And for that to happen all the way down here...things on the surface must be bad. She hoped Obi-Wan and Anakin were alright.

"It's not as if we really have anywhere to go," Asajj pointed out.

The building shook again, and this time the chandelier fell from the ceiling. Asajj had to catch it with the Force before it landed on them. "I hated that thing anyway. It's so tacky."

Ahsoka shrugged. "Yeah, well, your interior design skills in general are a little--"

"It was like this when I bought it-- I didn't pick the krffing light fixtures!"

Arguing with Asajj wasn't quite enough to distract her from the thought of what would happen to them if the power went out down here. Coruscant's underworld was heavily polluted; without the system of vents and climate control functioning it wouldn't be habitable. Heck, the very lowest part of it wasn't habitable even as it was. Supposedly. Not that she'd ever been down there to check. "You know what?" she began.

Ahsoka hesitated. There was a prickling in the back of her mind. A new feeling... "Anakin," she whispered.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka was at the center of a whirlpool.

It was like trying to adjust to a second pair of eyes. She wanted to have her head back to herself please, she wanted this to stop, oh what wouldn't she do for quiet?

"What happened to Anakin?" Asajj prompted gently.

Ahsoka didn't want to look-- it was hard to fathom stretching her mind any further than it already was.

She must have said something aloud because Asajj answered her. "You two have a bond, don't you? Maybe you could use that as a shortcut?"

He'd feel her presence, if she did that. Her bond with him was like a tripwire. If she touched it while she was using the dark side and when was she ever not using the dark side, of late?

"Just try, Ahsoka."

Try to reach out further...

...into the darkness...

Anakin in the throne room, furiously dueling Dooku...someone limp on the floor, someone light, that makes him angry I-- it all hates him and she says no and some of the hatred curls away so he can breathe better and she hopes that helps, but she's not sure if she's even now or meddling in things that haven't become true yet and does it matter?

Sidious is laughing, pleased, can he see her? Yes, his yellow eyes turn and laugh even harder at what a foolish little girl she is and she cannot save him and she will fail and she will suffer and the galaxy will

bow

before

him,

like the head of a dying flower

because she is trying to play a game

she cannot win.

From the moment Dooku's head falls

to the ground, it is a certainty

that she will be

next.

Ahsoka was too stunned to process what she'd just heard, but the dark side reacted to the intention it had just felt with resounding fury.

No!

She'd learned in her classes at the Temple that an object falling into a black hole would be torn apart into its atoms-- what she felt now was the closest she had ever come to being able to imagine what that would be like-- it felt like getting hit by a stun-bolt, times a thousand. So that was why she'd stopped being able to reach out; all that power had been focused inward... but for what?

And then the side of her face was on fire, somehow, despite the fact that the lightsaber injury hadn't left any nerves intact-- She would have screamed, but Kalei... Can't frighten Kalei. Abruptly she realized the burning came from cold, not warmth-- strange how they could feel the same, one sensation shifting fluidly into the other, and she wasn't going to frighten Kalei by yelling, but she did squeeze her eyes shut and bit her lip...

Ahsoka recognized the feeling from her sparring match with Anakin. The same as what she'd felt in her ankle. Healing.

And she knew what this meant. Like eleven bell tolls in a fairy story. But--

(No...)

"I didn't know you read those." The Son stood across from her in the void of starless space.

"The crèche masters read them to us as younglings sometimes. Usually as a basis for rejecting the idea of 'magic'."

"If only they could see you now." There was something uneasy in his voice. And it felt...more distant? Ahsoka reached up to touch her face, only to find the mask was still there, and her injury feeling like it usually did: nothing at all.

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes. "Why are you here?"

"There is a matter that needs settling," came the Daughter's voice from behind her-- she would be behind, damned symbolism and all that. Ahsoka inhaled sharply.

"See my sister," he continued, "also has laid claim to you as her successor."

She had the Daughter's light, too? "Then how come--"

"Because it was only watching you do battle against my darkness that convinced her you were worthwhile," the Son said furiously. "She made her declaration only now."

"And yet it is a legitimate one. I transferred lifeforce to the girl. And she is not the dark's fully yet."

Ahsoka didn't care what had convinced her. If she could be saved from Falling, there was no insult that could convince her to refuse.

"Oh please, only a few trifles remain," he replied contemptuously.

The Daughter addressed her, voice clear as a bell. "Accept my offer, and you shall be the light side's vessel. I cannot promise the Sith will not succeed in his plan, but you will have the power to oppose him."

"I--" Ahsoka began.

"But you forgot to mention that she'll lose all of her memories," the Son said.

"Not all," the Daughter said, like that was supposed to be reassuring. "Only the ones the dark side has touched."

But it wasn't reassuring at all, because that would mean everything after Mortis, or at the very least, everything after she'd gone to Malachor with Asajj. That would mean forgetting Kalei. Forgetting her family. 

"Ahsoka, it matters not. If you Fall, your goddess-hood will haunt them and their mortality will terrify you."

You're terrifying me, Ahsoka thought, but she knew the Daughter was right. The Jedi had been right. She'd looked at the dark side with the presumption that she could use it for good without understanding that from the moment she touched it, it woul rob her of the capacity to even know what that was.

She hadn't listened to Jedi teachings the first time, and look where it had got her.

She would listen now. Even if it meant--

Force, she wished she could say goodbye to them. "Does it have to be now?"

"Time is short," she said solemnly.

"No," said the Son at the same time. "You needn't become immortal yet. You could have time to-- what, remain with your...do you imagine them family? How fanciful."

Ignore him.

"I could?" her voice said, as if of its own volition.

"You may remain exactly as you are now, for as long as your purported family lasts."

"What...what does that mean exactly?" Was she stalling? Yes, she was. But the Force could deal with it-- it was being terribly unfair by asking her to make this choice. Between the Jedi she cared about and Kalei and Asajj.

The Daughter's eyes sparked with the closest thing to fury she could express. "It means you will be trapped in the perpetual fear of losing them, knowing what will happen when you do. He is tempting you with lies, Ahsoka."

"Until something breaks, you remain un-whole. Your transformation remains incomplete." She should ask another question; agreeing to something this cryptic would prove those stories from the crèche masters had taught her nothing. But no amount of clarification really changed the decision, did it?

The Daughter was right. He was offering a prison.

The Daughter was right.

The Daughter was right.

The Daughter was right.

"Whoever you don't choose will have to find another vessel. Perhaps I'll choose a Jedi and make them suffer as you have. Or perhaps, I'll simply give Sidious the power to--"

The selfish part of her wanted her memories. The selfless part of her couldn't bear the idea of someone else in torment.

The Daughter was right, but the Son had her cornered, two opposing parts of her conspiring to make a common enemy of reason-- using morality against itself, and she couldn't-- She was going to have the power of a goddess, and yet nothing that came after this could rival the weight of the decision she made now, powerless. How ironic.

"What's truly ironic is all that time you spent lamenting 'if only I had a choice', and it turns out choosing is oh so much harder."

"This wasn't the choice I wanted!" Even she was aware of how petulant she sounded.

The Son laughed.

"Power, beyond a certain point, becomes cumbersome. Mortals decide more than we." The Daughter sounded resigned. Like she already knew.

I want to prove you wrong. A goddess of the light wouldn't want to prove anyone wrong. Suddenly, Ahsoka wasn't sure which choice would constitute more of an erasure of the person she was. The cruel, selfish dark? The flawlessly moral light?

"Poor child. To want to walk a middle path and be forced to become an absolute. Wouldn't it be less painful to forget? Gentler?"

The Daughter was right.

The Daughter--

"There's one thing I've known, from the moment this war started." Ahsoka said. "I am not destined for a gentle death."

The Son smiled, but Ahsoka looked at the Daughter, hoping desperately for something-- some show of forgiveness, perhaps, but she merely vanished.

"So it shall be."

Ahsoka blinked, tensing slightly, before she looked around, as if... "How long was I gone?" she asked, sounding dazed.

"Gone? You...weren't," Kalei told her.

Asajj knew better, having sensed the slight flicker in her presence. But only slight. "Seconds. Why, did you see something?"

She absently touched the top of her mask. "Asajj. We need to talk."

Chapter Text

"What do you mean you're not leaving?"

Skywalker's voice was audible even from outside, though Ahsoka's reply was too quiet to make out.

Asajj picked at the paint peeling from the table.

"Ahsoka, if this is about money, I will find you the credits to--"

"Kalei would feel like she had to choose who to stay with-- Asajj teaches her too," Ahsoka's voice rose.

"Training her? To use the dark side?"

"No! Asajj--"

"Stop calling her that!" Anakin cried.

There was a pause, in which Ahsoka must have said something very quietly.

"Snips!" he cried, shocked and reproachful of whatever it had been.

One of them stomped a foot. "Listen, killing Dooku--" Ahsoka began.

"Don't change the subject."

"--was exactly what Sidious wanted."

There was no debating that, so he dug his heels in. "Ahsoka!"

"And you knew it. So if you're going to play into the Sith Lord's hands, you might as well just--"

"What was I supposed to do?"

"I dunno, maybe take Dooku prisoner so he could betray Sidious to the Council?"

"Why don't you talk to the Council?"

One of them, Ahsoka probably, stomped a foot. "You know I can't explain how I know who Sidious is without talking about--"

Me, Asajj thought, having heard enough. She stepped away from the balcony door (She shouldn't have left it open; Ahsoka had gone outside for a reason. What was wrong with her?), went into her own room and shut the door, letting herself fall onto her bed.

She called us a family.

No, she said He called us a family. There's a difference.

He's a god.

He's lying.

She sighed, her arguing inner monologue leaving her exhausted and panicky. Clenching one hand tightly in a fist, she absently tugged on her ear with the other, noticing that it brushed against the prickliness of her hair beginning to grow out-- she hadn't shaved her head in a while. Maybe I won't.

Maybe she'll stare at it if I let it grow, and then I can glare at her for staring, she hated the thought as soon as she caught herself thinking it; it was like something she would have done as a Sith. Ahsoka thought, somehow, that she was so different, but how can I be different if I still have the same thoughts?

Asajj closed her eyes. Let go. Like you've been practicing.

The light expanded around her. She felt warmth, and maybe something resembling peace, but imperfect and fragile, disintegrating and reforming with every passing thought she struggled to push aside. She felt the presences around her; Kalei's fiercely bright presence, and beyond that darkness, oh--

From this perspective, it felt blurred and undefined; the feeling without the specific awareness. It skirted the edges of her vision, eluding her. And for the first time in months, on her path away from the darkness, Asajj wondered if she was losing something.

Anakin sat in the Council meeting, not even trying to listen.

Sidious had put him here, for some reason.

The Council had put up with it so he could be their spy. They were suspicious-- that would please Ahsoka-- only he hadn't told her. He didn't know why. He felt numb, frozen. The nightmares haunted him even in the day: Padme's pleading cries rang in his ears even now.

Ahsoka wouldn't understand that.

Ahsoka was unreachable, content to share thoughts with Ventress across a bond. Ahsoka had stood in front of the door to that apartment like she was guarding a world that had no place for him in it.

He didn't think he would be meeting Kalei.

So he answered when Palpatine called asking to see him, and let himself be thanked for ridding the galaxy of Dooku's tyranny, and the words sounded so much better than Ahsoka's what were you thinking? even when he knew they weren't true.

And after that, he stood outside of Obi-Wan's door, thinking, I will tell him who Palpatine is, because he'll believe me, without Ahsoka even having to be a part of it.

He reached for the doorbell.

I could have done this before. I didn't need to wait for an assignment; I'm close enough with the Chancellor that they would have believed me. 

So why didn't I? Why did I go along with her insistence that the Council can't be trusted?

Anakin reached out along their bond. It was odd, how strongly she seemed to believe that. Even considering that they'd wronged her, she could have trusted them with something they'd trained their whole lives to handle, couldn't she?

Anakin narrowed his eyes, turning away from his master's door.

Why didn't I?

It wasn't ever really about trust, was it? It was something else, a coiled feeling in his chest like a serpent, a deep and profound sense of spite-- yes, this was what she felt, and he felt it too.

The Council didn't get to save the galaxy, using him to prove their hypocritical convictions. He wasn't their pet.

This battle was his to win.

Then, maybe, she'll be grateful enough to come back.

"You can do it!"

"Don't distract her."

The rock lifted another centimeter from the ground, as Ahsoka commanded-- no, connected with the light.

She didn't feel herself stumble, rather the ground seemed to fall out from under her, and she fell forward, her hand stinging, and the taste of blood filling her mouth a moment later. She closed her eyes, waiting for the wave of dizziness to pass. The cut on her lip did not mend itself. Or rather, the dark side did not mend it.

"You're getting better," Kalei said.

"I'm supposed to be the teacher," she muttered.

Her connection to the light was no longer actively fading, but it hadn't been restored either, and she was struggling to adjust to how little there was for her to draw on. The opposite was true of the dark: though it no longer offered its constant input, it answered when she gathered the emotion to call to it. The amount of dark side energy in her presence remained as impressive as it had been. The problem was that without it actively talking her through what to do with it, Ahsoka's lack of formal training caught up with her.

"You are. You can still explain how to do things; I'm okay without having a demonstration all the time," Kalei assured her.

She didn't want to have the dark side twining its thoughts with hers, but she did feel slightly...crippled.

She replayed the conversation with Kix in her head again, and the dark side's explanation.

How many more midi-chlorians had she lost since then? And what exactly did 'lost' mean? Had they died? Or simply winked out of existence like they'd never been there?

She paused, automatically waiting for a response, but of course there wasn't. There was no futile attempt to reassure her, nor an answer to her question.

Asajj took her uninjured hand and helped her to her feet. "You okay?"

"Yeah." She pursed her lips to keep blood from dripping down her chin. "'m fine."

"Kalei's right. That was better than yesterday."

"Sparring," Ahsoka said, dismissing the encouragement.

Kalei frowned. "But you're--"

Exhausted? Sidious wouldn't just let her take a nap. Hurt? What, a scraped hand and a bloody lip?

Asajj shook her head slightly, silencing her, drawing her lightsabers. 'Don't take it so personally. She's worried about you.'

Kalei had already known about Ahsoka's struggles to some extent through a combination of eavesdropping and how perceptive she tended to be, but they'd actually explained to her properly, at least that Ahsoka's connection to the light was damaged. She was understanding, sympathetic even; she was still learning herself, and things were hard for her, sometimes. But Ahsoka didn't want to be looked upon with pity, especially by her own apprentice.

"Maybe be...nice, then?" Kalei told Asajj.

'Don't you dare,' Ahsoka told her.

'Not a chance,' she responded.

Asajj attacked, a flurry of fast strikes. Ahsoka settled into Form I, conserving her movement and energy.

Her arms trembled.

Asajj aimed a strike at her torso, and Ahsoka barely blocked it. She leapt backward, energy drained, and reluctantly called upon her fear and anger. She immediately felt a burst of energy, but her strikes became more reckless, clumsy. She was leaving openings, and she kept barely realizing in time--

Nor did the usual dual-wielding tricks work against her. She wouldn't forget the shoto and lower her guard if Ahsoka deactivated it.

She would have to come up with something else.

Ahsoka imagined fighting Anakin. Jedi training, and the dark not to guide, but just to put enough speed and power behind a strike that--

"I win," Asajj said, as Ahsoka felt the warmth of the blade near her head-tail.

Ahsoka shook her head.

Asajj glanced down at Ahsoka's longer saber, which was beside her waist. "Kriff," she said, but smiled. "You don't give yourself enough credit."

Ahsoka felt her head-tails darken, and it wasn't from the warmth of the now deactivated lightsaber.

A thought occurred to her-- a thought that almost made her fall over again, and she waited for a moment for a condescending reply in her mind.

And then she remembered that none would come. It was just her. Her thought. She smiled at the sureness of it on the walk back home, and turned to Asajj as they stood on the doorstep. "You know, I don't really feel like cooking tonight. What do you think," she said, "about going out for dinner?"

Chapter Text

Padme sat down on the bed with a sigh.

"You look tired," he said anxiously, thinking of his nightmares.

"Long day," she replied with a small laugh. "Besides, tiredness is normal when you're pregnant."

It still felt so strange to hear her say that, Anakin thought, smiling in spite of himself.

"People are going to start asking," she said doubtfully. "Even wearing loser gowns--"

"It's none of their business. You don't have to answer questions you don't want to."

She bit her lip. "Can you sense him at all?" she asked, changing the subject.

"The baby?" He hadn't thought of that. "I guess there's something. It doesn't feel-- it's just light. Just..." he searched for a better way of phrasing it. "A sense of thereness."

She reached for his hand. "Will he be a Jedi?"

Anakin frowned slightly. She meant, will he have the Force. But that wasn't what gave him pause. Would he wish being a Jedi on his child? Could he watch them stand before the Jedi Council, ordered not to feel attachment to him? To Padme?

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, hoping the gesture would be reassuring, at least, because all he could say was, "I don't know."

"Is it alright?" Asajj asked a little nervously.

"It's great," Ahsoka said, her voice bright and cheerful. The diner was as close to the surface as they dared go, which was not very close at all. The quality of the food matched accordingly.

Ahsoka seemed to be enjoying herself, though. She was eating her dinner with enthusiasm befitting of a much better meal than what was in front of her, which was supposed to be a bantha burger, only she'd asked for it without bread so it actually consisted of the meat patty with a few wilted greens and some sauce atop it.

"I highly doubt that," Asajj replied. "Are you alright?"

She blinked, her expression puzzled. "I'm fine."

"You seem so...happy."

"You're asking if I'm alright because I seem happy," she clarified.

Asajj cringed, becoming self-aware of how ridiculous she sounded. She tried to understand the source of her worry, to explain better. "I can feel your presence so clearly. Your feelings."

Ahsoka sat up, listening with new attentiveness, a slight look of concern on her face. "If our Force-bond bothers you--"

"It doesn't. I'm just not used to it is all. I've never had one before," she admitted.

"They're all different anyway," Ahsoka assured her.

Asajj nodded. "I guess it's odd, feeling feelings out of context, without the thoughts that go with them. Care to share what's made you so happy?"

She retreated behind shields-- I must have made her uncomfortable by bringing up our connection. "Having dinner with my friend," she said, and she sounded so sincere, but somehow that didn't seem quite right.

Asajj frowned at her plate, as a strange desire occurred to her to dispose of the remainder of her dinner by throwing it at the wall.

It was a very quiet walk home.

Kalei was there to greet them at the door, her expression bright and hopeful-- kriff; we should have brought her back a dessert or something, Ahsoka thought. As they all stood there for a moment, her turquoise hair itself seemed to droop in disappointment and she wandered off to bed.

"Well, good night," Asajj said. She paused, as if there was something else she wanted to say, but whatever it was, she decided against it.

After they both went to bed, Ahsoka sat on the sofa and tried to meditate, to let go of her emotions into the Force. She wasn't sure it would have worked even if the light wasn't precariously distant. It felt as though everyone was upset with her, and she honest to goodness didn't know why. Everything had been fine-- better than fine, until suddenly it hadn't.

Cautiously, she rose to her feet.

Ahsoka stepped out the door. She didn't know where she was trying to go, only that she couldn't keep sitting there.

The streets were mostly quiet at this hour, in this part of the city. She drew her cloak tightly around herself, the comforting weight of her lightsabers at her hip alleviating any fear of encountering any trouble.

Ahsoka didn't think. She just walked.

And when a sound finally did disturb the peace, it wasn't the sound of a blaster, or a threat hissed through a helmet. From a corner behind a stack of long abandoned crates came a quiet whimpering that grated against her montrals.

Frowning, she stepped forward.

At first, in the dim lighting, it just looked like a grey mass of fur. But then it moved, and she made out a head and feet. It was a baby tooka cat, laying there half-asleep.

"Hey," Ahsoka said softly. "Where's your family?"

She reached out, calling on the force to amplify any sounds, but she neither heard nor sensed anything nearby.

"Well--"

It whimpered again, and she carefully picked it up to see it better. She could feel its ribs jutting out beneath its skin. Gingerly, she set it down on the ground. "What do tooka kittens eat?" she wondered aloud. "Maybe I can bring it something."

It struggled back towards the crates it had been hiding behind, but it couldn't seem to walk. Its back right leg dragged behind it at the wrong angle, paw twisted, and fur matted with blood.

A flicker of anger burned inside her. What hurt you like that?

Acting more on impulse than premeditation, she closed her eyes. 

The darkness was there when she reached-- within her it was still and asleep, but around her it moved, flowed like water. The feeling of it wasn't unfamiliar, and her breathing remained even as she experienced the cold she had as a Jedi, but also that the cold was illusory. Cold was stillness. The dark was aflame.

If the darkness inside her had been awake, it would have shaped itself around her, blossoming new images at her every thought. It would have made motion inside her to match what surrounded her; the state of being changed by it would have mirrored the change she sought to influence around her. But inside, she was still. She needed to create movement.

Ahsoka thought about pain. About being cast out. The tendrils of fire deepened and curled upwards around her. She exhaled, and the mosaic of cold and flame shifted around her, the gravity of her emotions drawing it into orbit around her.

She moved the darkness with her mind, not effortlessly calling into being but concentrating, focusing. The strands of fiery power unfurled before her, a path that guided her to the place in her mind that she was trying to reach. She rekindled her anger, summoning more tendrils of power to construct the path forward until she found the creature's presence.

She let the fire curl in her hand, a growing thing, until she could almost imagine holding it like water in cupped palms. She offered it to the tooka cat, her hand coming to rest on its tiny head. She tried to channel the same force that made the darkness heal her and protect her when it was awake inside her, tried to bolster its fragile mortal frame against the cruelty of Coruscant's streets.

It tried to wriggle out of her hands, but she held it resolutely.

It gave a single cry, a sharp squeak, and Ahsoka finally let go, startled. What was she doing? What was she thinking? The dark side didn't do good things-- she'd hurt it more--

The kitten slowly pulled its injured leg forward, into the proper position. It licked itself before standing on all fours.

Ahsoka gave a sigh of relief.

Tilting its head up at her quizzically, opening brilliant, red eyes.

"Shit."

Asajj rubbed her eyes. "So you...tried to heal it and you...?"

"I did heal him," she corrected.

"Right and gave him glowing red eyes."

"Maybe they were like that before I healed him," she said limply.

"Tooka cats don't have red eyes."

Ahsoka wrung her hands.

"He seems happy enough," Asajj pointed out in what she hoped was a consoling tone, but then, it was like three o'clock in the morning. "Look, we'll give him a bowl of milk or whatever and he can stay at least for a little while so we can make sure he's fine, okay?"

"It's because I have so much darkness already. Even though it's not getting worse. There's already so much that when I reached out to him, it..."

"Ahsoka--"

"We have a Force-bond! What if--"

She inhaled. "Please. I was a Sith assassin before I met you and now I use the light side sometimes; you haven't corrupted me."

Ahsoka relaxed slightly.

"I'll have Kalei practice her shielding, just in case, okay? Will you try to get some sleep now? What were you even doing out there in the middle of the night?"

"I don't know." Ahsoka laid herself down on the sofa.

I should go, Asajj thought, but as several minutes passed by, she found she didn't move.

Ahsoka rolled over sleepily. "Will you give him something to eat?"

"Okay. Doing that now," she said, standing up and walking into the kitchen.

"I love you," Ahsoka murmured.

Asajj froze. "What?" she called into the darkness.

A quiet snore answered her.

The kitten pressed against her legs and meowed urgently.

"Yes, yes, I'm getting you food," she sighed.