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Chapter Text

Reva gave Crimson Dawn this much: they knew how to pick meeting spots.

It made her skin crawl to realise she’d spent enough time working for the organization to be worth a private room in one of the best restaurants in Canto Bight. The casino town was a good source of work, so long as she didn’t get sucked into gambling, and Reva didn’t just work for Crimson Dawn, but…

There were only so many organizations willing to take a risk on a drifter with no identicard and no marketable skills other than violence. Crimson Dawn had the resources to make her a new identity and the reach to keep her busy as she paid them back for their investment in her.

The spread of food the Crimson Dawn broker—Lady Geier, she’d called herself with an insincere smile—had ordered looked wonderful. Reva thought she preferred the street food she usually bought while staying in Canto Bight.

“What do you want?” Reva asked once the servers were gone.

Lady Geier served herself a cut of meat slathered in red sauce. “Straight to business, hm? I’ve been told you had no patience for small talk.”

One of the things Reva had learned over the last year was how to keep her mouth shut. The Inquisitorious had never managed to beat that into her; living on the edge of society with no backing but what she could provide herself had finally done the job. She waited, plate conspicuously empty, while Lady Geier ate a tiny slice of her meat. Sometimes deals could be sealed simply by eating together, and Reva wasn’t about to agree to a deal she hadn’t even heard.

“It really is quite good,” Lady Geier told her, but she set down her utensils with a sigh. “Very well.” She straightened, and a mask fell off her face. Instead of the indolent lady she’d appeared to be, now she felt like a vibroblade: pale skin, dark hair, a cutting gaze. “You’re a valuable asset,” she said, “and we’ll waive the remainder of your debt and make you a full partner in our business if you agree to this bargain and succeed at the task we set.”

Reva crossed her arms. This was beginning to smell like a trap. “So what’s the task?”

“I’m sending a squad to raid a collector’s stash of old Mandalorian armor.” Calm. Idly cleaning her fingernails with a knife, though; classic Crimson Dawn threats. “You will be stealing a Jedi holocron from the same collection.”

The pretense of calm had never come easily to Reva. Old Jedi training could only do so much to hide the flash of knowing she’d only been chosen for this task because someone knew what she was.

“It’s well-hidden,” Lady Geier continued. “We know the owner has one, but we have not been able to locate it. We trust this will not hinder your efforts.”

Jedi holocrons were Force-locked. As a result, they had a specific resonance in the Force; Reva could easily follow that trace to its source. “What gives you that impression?”

Lady Geier set the knife on the table and leaned forward with a smile. “You’re quite lucky.”

There were two ways out of this room. The door Reva had entered through, which was no doubt protected by at least four guards, or the window balcony. Five stories was nothing to the Force, but Reva hadn’t trusted herself to jump like that for quite some time, and it would also confirm exactly what Lady Geier expected.

The Force whispered in Reva’s heart, urging her to accept Lady Geier’s task. Reva hesitated. This could go bad so easily. The Force couldn’t know everything. And yet—

Trust in the Force, Obi-Wan had said when he sent her away. It will guide you true.

She certainly hadn’t been listening to it when she decided to take up with Crimson Dawn. If the Force was pointing her towards a way out…

Reva reached for a tray of roasted root vegetables. “Tell me about the facility,” she said, and the Force hummed around her as Lady Geier smiled.

If this went well, she’d be able to win her freedom.

If not…

Well, this wouldn’t be the first deadly organization she’d fought her way out of.

Mirial was a beautiful planet and made Ahsoka miss Barriss fiercely. No matter how poorly they’d parted, Barriss had been a good friend, and this was her homeworld; Ahsoka wished she could be here with Barriss instead of simply being haunted by her memory.

She’d lost too many people. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by any of them right now.

“Proctor Kwi,” she said to the middle-aged Mirialian she’d come here to find, “I understand your reluctance to part with the holocron—they’re rare pieces—but would you consider allowing me to see it?”

Lemire Kwi, who was dressed in a starched military uniform and had her plum-dark hair buzzed into a severe cut, frowned at her. “I really don’t know how to be clearer, Ms. Tano. I don’t know why you believe I have such an item in my collection, but even if I did it would be off-limits to all but the most trusted members of my circle.”

Ahsoka wished that Mon Mothma’s agent had been able to come here himself; Luthen Rael might have had the standing to charm his way in. She was merely the Jedi who could confirm that the object Luthen had glimpsed in the back of a holoimage was a Jedi holocron—and, hopefully, be able to retrieve and open it. As Bail often reminded her, the Rebellion’s stock of Force-users was scant, and few of them were fully-trained, and any further insight into the Force would be useful.

“We have a friend in common,” Ahsoka said, as she had upon first arriving at Lemire’s estate. It was halfway to being a fortress, which fit Lemire’s interest in artefacts of the Mandalorian-Jedi War. Discussing the merits of Mandalorian armor and weapons had been easy; Lemire was happy to show off her collection, including wielding items herself. The holocron… Ahsoka shrugged minutely. “He hoped I’d be able to confirm the item’s status, even if I couldn’t acquire it for him.”

Lemire pursed her lips. “Mr. Rael is a fine man,” she allowed. “Stay the night. I’ll consider his request.”

Ahsoka bowed, relief flooding her. “Thank you, Proctor Kwi.” It wasn’t much. Hopefully it’d be enough.

Reva kept her eyes fixed on the approaching planetary surface rather than the Crimson Dawn mercenaries surrounding her. The squad was relaxed, joking with each other, ignoring her—she’d worked with them a few times before, but she was still a contractor, a hired hand to fill out a mission team and not part of their group. Lady Geier had even stressed that their contracts were unrelated to each other.

They were coming down on the night side of Mirial; no point in lingering longer than necessary. Ryndar and his people were good, and Lady Geier had provided excellent blueprints of their target. The Jedi and Inquisitors both trained their disciples’ memory, so Reva hadn’t needed more than a few minutes looking at the plans to have them ingrained in her mind. She’d be able to find any location in the estate, provided they were accurate—and, more importantly, find any inconsistencies that likely spoke of hidden rooms.

“Five minutes to drop,” the pilot said crisply. “Take your positions.”

Reva did a final check of her gear—parachutes were more practical than the Force for this—and crouched down next to the transport’s rear door. Vath Ryndar waited next to her, stony and calm, as his people assembled behind them.

“Don’t get in our way,” Ryndar murmured. “Be at the assembly point when we call; we won’t wait for you.”

“I’m aware.” Reva could find her own way back to Crimson Dawn if she needed to, but it would reflect poorly on her if Ryder’s people came back without her.

“Sixty seconds,” the pilot called. “Door opening now.”

The Force sang around Reva as Mirial’s atmosphere swept around them. Reva breathed out, relaxed into the Force’s guidance, and jumped out of the ship and into Mirial’s green-tinged clouds as the pilot shouted, “Now.”

Wind coiled around her, welcoming her into its realm, ripping at her clothes. Reva laughed, giddy, and listened to the countdown in her earpiece. Thirty seconds until they pulled the cord. Thirty seconds of freefall as they whipped through the clouds and into the night. Thirty seconds and then she pulled the cord and the parachute spread behind her like shadowy wings to turn her fall into a controlled descent.

The snap of other parachutes opening surrounded her. From below, they must look like a flock of crows, black against the overcast sky as they banked towards the castle. Reva was grateful that it wasn’t raining, at least; the clouds had hidden their ship’s approach, but she’d rather not be soaked and tracking water through the facility.

This late in the night, no lights shone from its windows. Good. Eccentric recluses could go either way. Lemire Kwi was too self-assured of her fortress’s strength and the protection of her social standing to bother having a strong guard.

Reva could empathise; she’d grown up in similar places. Unfortunately, that just meant she was aware of the flaws of such smug beliefs. There would always be someone willing to challenge the peace to cause chaos.

Today, she was that person.

They landed on the roof as softly as possible, boots scuffing on stone, and then the parachutes retracted into their packs with a quiet hiss. Reva wished she could ditch the pack; it might not be large, but the extra weight was a distraction. It shouldn’t be a problem, she told herself as Ryndar led them to the attic hatch they’d identified as the best access point. Easy in, easy out. Nothing to worry about.

The Rodian codebreaker crouched over the controls, muttering to herself. According to the briefing, this should be the hardest part; if they could get inside without the alarms going off, they’d be safe. More or less. They’d be able to get what they came for, at least.

A soft hum heralded the hatch retracting. The Rodian gestured them all in, then hit another few buttons and followed them as the hatch closed behind her. Reva appreciated the attention to detail.

The attic was mostly a storage room. Ryndar led the team through neatly stacked boxes and shrouded furniture that had seen better days, down to another trapdoor. This one was only latched with a physical lock, not an alarmed keypad; it was the work of seconds to open it and enter the castle itself.

Reva started towards the stairs without a word, and Ryndar followed with his squad. He’d learned about her skill with memorization on other missions, and was happy to take advantage of it as Reva wove through the halls. She didn’t know exactly where she needed to go, but most collectors would keep all their artefacts close together; starting with the showroom Ryndar’s squad was raiding should give her a solid lead.

The Force hummed around Reva. There were two focal points to its attention, Reva thought as they descended to the main floor and slowed their pace to check for alarms or people still awake in the middle of the night. She hadn’t expected this. Lady Qora’s mission briefing only discussed one holocron, and despite the Mirialian tendency to Force-sensitivity, there should be no trained Force-users in this estate.

An uneasy feeling grew in Reva’s stomach as Ryndar’s crew stole into the showroom.

One Force locus was a living being.

She wasn’t the only one here for the holocron.

Reva swore under her breath and strode off, following the beacon of the holocron’s Force signature, and hoped that she’d be able to reach it first.

Ahsoka woke to the beckoning Force.

She stood, lightsaber in hand, and listened. The Force’s urgings were rarely precise, but Jedi were supposed to be able to interpret its quietest whispers. It was, Obi-Wan had told her, an art that his own master had bemoaned was being lost even before the Clone Wars began. In these eras of war and empire, the Force’s warnings were screams of danger, not subtle hints at what may soon come to pass.

Even so, Obi-Wan had taught her to find stillness, and Anakin had taught her to listen when the Force spoke in her dreams. Now Ahsoka used both those lessons to determine why the Force had called her out of sleep at this hour.

A threat, of course, but not to her—Ahsoka was intimately familiar with the difference—and a Force-signature that felt…

Ahsoka frowned. Whatever the Force wanted from her was tangled up in that person. Whoever they were, they’d been trained; their presence was honed and focused, and Ahsoka had the uneasy sense that they could feel her too.

They were also moving, and not towards her. In which case, there was only one object a Force-user would care about: the holocron.

Ahsoka sighed and took the time to dress properly. If this went the way she expected, she wasn’t going to have the chance to return to this guest room; she’d be too busy running for her life.

Again.

The passage was hidden behind an elaborate tapestry supposedly depicting the fall of Mandalore, an affectation Reva summarily dismissed by virtue of tearing the tapestry off the wall and throwing it aside. It fell heavily to the floor, surprisingly little dust wafting up from it—Lemine Kwi took good care of her collection—and revealed a keypad-locked door.

Reva scowled at it. She had some technical ability, but the most expedient method for getting through doors like this had always been using a lightsaber. She didn’t have one of those anymore; she’d thrown it away when she left the Inquisitors and she’d never managed to find the right crystal to build a new one.

She’d also never quite found a reason that didn’t feel like “it would be a convenient weapon,” which was perhaps more the issue.

Even without a lightsaber, the Force could still solve many problems. Reva placed her palm on the keypad and concentrated. The door knew what it was made for; she could wrench it open with pure strength if she needed to, but if the keypad shorted out in just the right way…

The door opened with a soft chime.

Reva grinned and strode forward, exultant. This passage was short and severe, nothing like the showy opulence of the rest of the castle; this was not meant to be seen or impress anyone. Another door stood at the other end of the passage, thicker but closed by a wheel.

As Reva reached for it, she heard footsteps behind her.

She spun, reaching for where her lightsaber once hung, an instinctive motion she’d tried to train out of herself by carrying a blaster there instead. The grips were different, and so Reva’s fingers slid off the blaster as she kept a wary eye on the hooded figure in front of her.

The silhouetted person was tall, but some of that height was horns or the like, and they stood with confidence in the doorway. Reva would have scoffed at that confidence in many circumstances, but the Force tolled in recognition: whoever this was, they were the other Force user.

“I know why you’re here,” the hooded figure said in a light, clear voice. “We have the same goal.”

“I doubt that.” Reva didn’t need the holocron for herself; it was a paycheck and way out of Crimson Dawn’s grasp. This person almost certainly wanted to take it themself.

They advanced, hands open at their sides. “We’re both here for the holocron.”

Reva drew her blaster and pointed it at them, holding steady on their torso. A lack of visible weapons meant nothing when one wielded the Force. “I’m contracted to take it back to a particular buyer, and I doubt she hired another specialist to do the job.”

“I don’t want to fight you.” They pulled back their hood, revealing orange skin, white montrals, and sky-blue eyes. “Put the blaster down.”

“Only one of us can take it.” Reva needed to pull the trigger if she was going to. She took a deep breath and tightened her finger. “It’s not going to be you.”

The shot rang out.

It was met, quick as thought, by a beam of white light. The Togruta’s lightsaber swept across the tight corridor, deflecting the blaster bolt into the wall and continuing the blade’s arc forward to point at Reva’s throat.

Or, where Reva’s throat had been.

Reva dodged inside the Togruta’s reach, and grabbed their wrist at the same time as she jabbed backwards with her elbow. She didn’t have the right weapon to match them, but if she could turn this into a fist-fight, she’d be on even ground again.

The Togruta grunted at the impact, but didn’t stumble, so Reva couldn’t continue her motion and try to throw them and disarm them.

Instead, they drew a second lightsaber.

“Unfair,” Reva muttered. She released the Togruta’s arm and ducked out of their embrace. “Want to share?”

The Togruta laughed, an obnoxiously nice sound. “Not with someone so determined to fight me, especially since I don’t even know your name.”

The twin lightsabers blazed in the dark corridor. Reva remembered Darth Vader catching her lightsaber in the Force when they’d fought; she doubted she could do the same. (And that is why you will fail, he whispered in her mind.) The Togruta was between her and her target now, so…

Trust in the Force, the masters always said. Believe that it will guide you to the proper path. Listen to your instincts, since they’re often the Force speaking through what channels it can find.

Right now, Reva’s instincts said that this fight was meaningless at best. She took a breath and straightened from a fighter’s crouch. “Reva,” she said, and hoped she was right. “My name is Reva Sevander.”

A beat of stillness, the crackling lightsabers the only sound, and then the Togruta shut them off and said, “I am Ahsoka Tano.”

“You left,” Reva blurted out, the old memory resurfacing faster than she could keep herself from speaking. “After the bombing— So you weren’t there when—” Order 66 withered on her tongue. Ahsoka had been Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice; Reva couldn’t say the words to her face, not with the memory of him sweeping through the Temple burned into her nightmares.

Ahsoka had been the greatest padawan of her generation. She’d been someone to look up to. Some of Reva’s friends a year ahead of her had gotten to travel to Ilum with Ahsoka to gather their lightsaber crystals and had been so excited about that experience.

And then, after a trial the likes of which all the masters said had never happened before, she’d left.

Reva hadn’t expected her to still be alive. Practically everyone had died in Order 66. The few who had survived had been swept up by the Inquisitors—either joining their ranks or falling to their blades. Only masters like Obi-Wan could have lived through that experience.

Yet here was Ahsoka, her face vulnerable with shock, staring at her like Reva had stabbed her in the gut.

“I didn’t think you’d still be alive,” Reva added quietly, trying to salvage something. “It’s been so long.”

Distantly, an alarm started blaring.

Ahsoka shook her head sharply. “We can talk about this later.” She stepped aside and gestured at the door. “Finish retrieving it. I have a ship; you can come with me, unless you’d rather return to whoever’s paying you…”

“No.” Reva strode forward, practically spitting the word out as she began turning the wheel. “I’d been looking for an excuse to leave her service anyway.”

Besides, this kind of chance encounter would never come so easily again.

Ahsoka wished she could leave a message along the lines of “Sorry about the break-in, but that would’ve happened even if I weren’t here” for Lemire Kwi, but there was no time for it. Besides, she probably wouldn’t believe it herself in the Mirialian’s place; the coincidence was simply too great. She’d need to apologise to Luthen Rael for losing this contact and besmirching his name, but that was a problem for later.

Right now, her attention was on Reva Sevander. She was a lost youngling, no doubt about it—the uncontrolled burst of jagged emotion and the memory of the burning Jedi Temple thrown at her in the Force could mean nothing else.

But if Reva was so surprised that Ahsoka was alive, where had Reva been all these years?

Ahsoka didn’t want to ask until they were in a more secure position; Lemire Kwi’s guards would be here any second. Fortunately, Reva dogged the door open in seconds, and swept in to grab the holocron immediately after. The blue-and-silver pyramid looked fragile in her hands for a moment, but then Reva turned back to Ahsoka and said, “Let’s go.”

They ran through the halls, feet striking the floor with the uncanny synchrony of Force-users attuned to each other, not sparing a glance to ensure they kept pace; the Force would keep them aligned.

Ahsoka took the lead as they leapt out a window—the doors were locked down, but glass could be broken—and led Reva through the rocky plains to the little valley hiding her ship. A rich aquifer must once have stood there, because the wizened arms of an old tree still shrouded the dip in the tall grasses.

Reva made a considering noise as the Raptor-class fighter came into view, but she didn’t say anything. The starfighter wasn’t meant for long-distance travel—or for multiple passengers—but Ahsoka had left her modified HWK-310, Gyrfalcon, on the moon; Kestrel could easily get them back there.

Ahsoka popped the hatch and gestured for Reva to follow her into the cockpit. “Contrary to what it might look like, there is space for both of us.” It would be a tight fit, but Ahsoka had flown in worse circumstances.

Reva likely had too, from how she tucked herself in behind Ahsoka’s pilot seat without complaint. “Is this thing hyperspace-capable?” she asked, eyes darting across the controls.

“I didn’t bring the big ship into atmo,” Ahsoka said, rather than actually answer the question. She could take Kestrel into hyperspace for short jumps, but she wasn’t going to tell Reva that until they’d had a proper talk about what Reva’s plans were now that she was breaking out of whatever shitty deal she had with a crime syndicate. “Brace yourself.”

Kestrel didn’t have too much of a kick for the pilot, but the straps on her seat helped. Reva cursed as Ahsoka hit the engines and blazed through Mirial’s sky, ripping a hole in the clouds from the speed of their passage and breaking through to the dark silence of space.

There was enough traffic around Mirial that one single-person ship shouldn’t draw too much attention, but Ahsoka still made sure to set a course that would leave Mirial’s moon between them and most planetary sensors before turning back for Gyrfalcon. She’d hidden the light freighter beneath an outcropping. From Reva’s hissed “Are you crazy?” as she dove for it, Ahsoka assumed she’d done well making it seem like there was nothing there but more rock.

Kestrel’s lights revealed Gyrfalcon seconds before Ahsoka slid into the retrofitted cargo hold. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary freighter: rectangular, scuffed, and bearing only a pair of light canons bolted onto the sides as a precautionary measure.

The inside, as Ahsoka released them from Kestrel, was in much better repair. “Are there any sectors we need to avoid?” Ahsoka asked as she made her way to the freighter’s cockpit. “You didn’t say who you were working for.”

“Crimson Dawn,” Reva bit out. Her boots were loud on the floor; her emotions filled the Force with resentment. “There aren’t many good places to avoid them.”

The Core worlds tended to be safer from criminal organizations, even if they also tended to be thicker with the Imperial forces Ahsoka would rather avoid. Still, since Mirial was deep in the Outer Rim as it was, Ahsoka said, “We’ll take the Hydian Way Coreward to start. Perhaps that holocron will give us a direction.”

Reva scoffed, and Ahsoka glanced back to see her face twisted up in a scowl. “What makes you think it has any useful information? It could just be old training manuals.”

“Training manuals are useful,” Ahsoka said mildly. “Neither of us achieved Knighthood before leaving the Order; there is always more to learn.”

Reva’s expression went blank. A moment later, incredulous, she said, “You don’t—”

“We’ll talk in hyperspace,” Ahsoka said firmly, and refocused her attention on easing Gyrfalcon out of its hiding place.

The hero worship Reva clearly had for her, no matter how buried it might have been after so many years, was a burden Ahsoka didn’t want to bear. She already bore the weight of Bail’s expectations; whether or not he said it out loud, Bail absolutely expected her to act as a Jedi when it came down to it.

Reva sat in the copilot’s chair, taut and focused on the view. It felt like she was counting down the seconds until their nose cleared Mirial’s moon and they could make the jump into hyperspace. Ahsoka couldn’t precisely blame her, but the tension in her body echoed in the Force, which was highly distracting. It had been years since Ahsoka had been around another Force-user for any length of time; she’d forgotten how their presence was either locked down or blaring.

It seemed Reva, unfortunately, was the latter.

Ahsoka escaped Mirial’s gravity well, found the proper alignment, and set the coordinates for the Hylian Way into the navicomputer. As the stars stretched into blue oblivion, she said, “You’re going to give me a headache.”

All at once, Reva snapped closed. “Can’t have that, can we?” she said, biting. “Not when you’re doing me so many favors.”

“I can drop you off at Listehol instead,” Ahsoka said wearily. She’d met plenty of new recruits this tense, this used to betrayal, this suspicious of kindness. There wasn’t anything to do except keep proving that she wasn’t going to be an asshole. She swiveled the pilot’s chair until she could look directly at Reva. Sweat shone on her dark skin, and everything about her was tense, even if she’d closed herself off to Ahsoka’s Force senses. “I’m not going to trap you on this ship if you don’t want to be here.”

Reva studied her, eyes sharp and haunted. When Ahsoka met her gaze, she looked away first, down at the holocron still cradled in her hands. “They would punish me for a lack of control.”

They. An ice-cold certainty pierced Ahsoka’s chest. Reva was running from Crimson Dawn right now, and that was one of the harshest organizations in the galaxy, but there was one distinctly worse for Jedi younglings. “The Inquisitors.”

Reva nodded, eyes still fixed on the holocron. Its blue glow matched the dizzying rush of stars outside the viewscreen. “They used to be Jedi.” She took a deep breath. “Just like us.”

Ahsoka had suspected as much. It was difficult to raise adepts to the level the Inquisitors displayed; they would need to be apprentices of the Sith or Jedi traditions. Most of the Sith were dead, and none of the ones who survived were Inquisitors, which left the Jedi. Order 66 had decimated them, of course, but there were always those who slipped through the cracks.

That so many had turned from following the Order’s path to hunting them—

Ahsoka hoped that Barriss had not gone so far. Her cynicism had cost them both dearly; Ahsoka didn’t want to face her on opposite sides of a lightsaber duel once more.

But Barriss was not the woman sitting in front of her right now, scared and desperate and alone in a way that Ahsoka remembered from the days after she’d walked away from the Jedi Temple and the only life she’d ever known. It couldn’t be the same to have left the Inquisitorius, especially since Reva had taken up with Crimson Dawn for some time, but there were echoes. Ahsoka’s heart ached in sympathy, and she reached out to cup Reva’s hands in hers.

“Their path is not ours,” Ahsoka said firmly.

Reva looked up at her. “What is your path? You left the Jedi, but that was before… everything. You could return to it. Help rebuild the Order.”

“I am not a Jedi.” There were too many memories caught up in the Temple and the tenets of the Order. Ahsoka sighed. “There are many ways to help people, Reva. The Jedi Order has fallen; it doesn’t need to return.”

“Why not?” Reva grabbed Ahsoka’s wrist, quick and firm, eyes blazing as her fingers dug into Ahsoka’s skin. “The Jedi are a symbol of peace and order in the galaxy. People need that.”

The faith in Reva’s voice startled Ahsoka. Someone had awoken this fervor in her; there was no way it could have survived life in the Inquisitorius without getting Reva killed. Ahsoka narrowed her eyes. “Who told you that?”

The fire dimmed as quickly as it had bloomed. “A master,” she muttered. “I promised I wouldn’t reveal who he is or where he is.”

There were techniques to draw memories from another’s mind. Ahsoka had learned them from Anakin and Mace Windu during the Clone Wars as an interrogation technique to be used as a last resort or speedy recourse.

(“Are we touching the Dark Side?” Ahsoka had asked, nauseated, after they’d extracted the necessary intelligence.

Anakin had shrugged. “You do what you must during war,” he’d said, weary. He hadn’t looked at her as he said it. “It isn’t pleasant, but it’s better than hundreds of people dying.”

Mace Windu had patted her shoulder. “Techniques are tools,” he’d told her. “A scalpel is a surgeon’s tool, but it is also a very sharp knife; it can slit a throat or save a life. Lightning is a Sith’s power, yet I have seen my fellow Jedi Masters wield it to great effect. Reaching into another’s mind can easily cause grave harm, yet—as your Master Skywalker said—it can be a powerful tool for protection.”

At the time, Ahsoka had nodded at the Master’s wisdom and thanked them for explaining. She hadn’t noticed that they hadn’t addressed the question of if it was Dark to pluck knowledge from a being who didn’t want them to gain it.

Years later, after Order 66, she remembered how worn out they had looked, and how easily Anakin turned to anger, and she wondered how much Darkness had already infected the Jedi Order by then. It did no good to look back, and yet…

Ahsoka couldn’t help wondering how many signs of the oncoming fall they had missed because they’d been too busy fighting a war.)

“Then I shall hope he remains safe.” Ahsoka wished she could know which master had helped free Reva from the Inquisitorius; she missed having more senior Jedi to look to, though the Order itself was no longer her home.

Reva smiled, and it brightened her face, turning her beautiful in a way Ahsoka hadn’t expected. “Oh, I’m sure he will. He’d be glad to know you survived. I wish I could tell him, but contacting him would draw too much attention.”

Someone she knew. Ahsoka bit back the questions hovering on her tongue. “Then once the Empire falls he can return and help restore the mantle of the Jedi Order if he desires,” she said instead. “It is not my place to do so.”

“But you wanted the holocron.” Reva released Ahsoka’s wrist—shocking, how cold her skin felt at the absence of her hand—and raised it between them. “It’s a Jedi Holocron. I remember learning that only a Jedi can open it.”

That was theoretically true. While Ahsoka doubted it would be able to tell the difference between a true member of the Jedi Order and an ex-disciple who touched the Force through the lens of Jedi training, she hadn’t had the chance to test that theory herself. “Then you should open it,” Ahsoka said. When Reva’s mouth fell open in surprise, Ahsoka smirked. “You were a youngling once and wish to return to the Order. That’s closer to being a Jedi than I am.”

“But you were practically a Knight before you left,” Reva protested.

“But I left.” Ahsoka stood. She couldn’t keep having this conversation while sitting still and trapped in the cockpit. She paced down the freighter’s hall, footsteps echoing, Reva’s following in syncopated disconnect. “I chose to leave; you were taken. There’s a difference.”

“Why?”

How can there not be? Ahsoka wanted to demand.

But then Reva followed up, plaintive, with, “Why leave?”

The lounge was not a better place for this conversation, but at least there was space and more comfortable chairs. Ahsoka made use of neither as she crossed her arms and reminded herself that Reva had been a youngling when everything had happened. “Sometimes people you love betray you,” she told the empty door leading towards the hangar. “Sometimes the Order you grew up in loses sight of its ideals. Sometimes you cannot go home again.”

Reva was very quiet behind her for long enough that Ahsoka almost thought she’d left. Then, with a sigh, Reva said, “Fine. If you won’t open it, then I will.”

Ahsoka spun to face her. She’d expected—

She had no idea what she expected. The things Reva argued with her about kept surprising her; this capitulation was no more, or less, arbitrary. If Reva stayed long enough, perhaps Ahsoka could begin to understand her, but for now…

The holocron glowed as Reva held it in the Force. It hovered between her hands, crystal-bright, a perfect pyramid of light splitting apart at the tips in response to Reva. Ahsoka reached out instinctively, wanting to help, but the power emanating from Reva and the holocron blocked her; this was something Reva must do on her own or not at all.

Ahsoka breathed, slow and deep, and watched.

Whatever Reva thought of herself, however much she might believe that her decade with the Inquisitors had tainted her, right now she looked like a Jedi. Not the Jedi of Ahsoka’s childhood, the memories of masters sweeping through the peaceful Temple accompanied by the sounds of windchimes and waterfalls, but the Jedi of the war. Jedi who dressed in fatigues and slept curled up with their men, heedless of their status. Jedi who were covered with ashes and never looked rested no matter how well they slept.

The war had left its marks on everyone, even those who had still been children when it ended. Ahsoka had barely been more than a child herself when it started; she had been forged in its fires and come out the other side changed. Reva’s crucible had instead been the Empire’s rise, but the scars rhymed nonetheless.

The holocron trembled. Sweat beaded on Reva’s forehead as her braids flared out and haloed her head. The light grew, blazing, almost blinding, and then burst.

For a moment, Ahsoka couldn’t see.

She heard Reva breathe, “Oh, it’s beautiful,” in wonder. Apparently opening it had a protective effect. Or maybe it truly was able to sense who considered themself a Jedi, and cared only for the safety of its chosen.

Ahsoka concentrated, willing the Force to soothe her eyes and shield her from the holocron’s effects, and then opened her eyes once more.

This time, she could see the image it projected: a Temple blueprint filling the room, blue-silver and perfect down to the last detail. “Where is it?” Ahsoka asked; she didn’t recognise the layout.

“I’m not sure.” Reva twitched her fingers, the Force guiding her, and a voice echoed from the holocron.

It spoke an old dialect, mostly comprehensible but not easy to follow, especially through the thick accent. It sounded like a guidebook, something given to new padawans or Jedi transferred from other Temples.

It named a planet: Dantooine.

“There hasn’t been a Temple there in thousands of years.” Ahsoka looked at the pristine holocron hovering gently over Reva’s palms with even greater reverence. “There’s no telling if it’s still accessible, let alone if anything remains there.”

“You’re the one who said anything could be useful.” Reva grinned at Ahsoka, fierce and bright in challenge. “Are you turning back now?”

“No.” Ahsoka met Reva’s eyes. “Are you?”

Reva closed her hand around the holocron, shutting it off, and raised it in the air. “You need this,” she said, “so you need me.”

“It’s not a matter of need.” Ahsoka closed the distance between them and set her hands on Reva’s shoulders. She smoothed her fingers across them, trying to relax Reva’s bristling posture. “It’s a matter of want.”

Reva licked her lips. “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I want to come with you.”

Ahsoka smiled. “Then let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Nightmares haunted Reva’s sleep more often than not, and tonight was no exception.

The images being familiar did nothing to mute their effect. The burning Temple, the way Darth Vader strode through it—not Anakin Skywalker, not after so long in the Inquisitorius; her dreams had him masked the whole time now—the dying screams of her clan-siblings and teachers. The suffocating stench of burning flesh. The taste of blood in her mouth.

Reva woke silently, drenched in sweat, and with her tongue bitten raw. She stared up at the ceiling, panting, trying to remember why she was in an unfamiliar bunk on an unfamiliar spaceship.

It came back to her slowly: a series of questionable decisions, each urged on by the Force. Following Ahsoka. Opening the holocron. Agreeing to go to Dantooine. Fuck, Ahsoka had said that the Temple there had been lost thousands of years ago and they’d never returned; why had Reva argued that they might find something there anyway?

Hope, she supposed. The Jedi were fueled by it, and opening the holocron had meant opening herself to it as well.

No wonder her sleep had been troubled by reminders of those hopes being stolen from her.

There was no point in trying to sleep again right now, and Ahsoka had told her that Gyrfalcon was well-stocked. Reva rose and made her way to the head. Water was a luxury she had only grown to appreciate after leaving the Inquisitors; their headquarters being in the midst of an ocean, as well as the fear they generated, had meant she’d never worried about water rations until last year. Having access to a proper water shower again was a gift, and Reva took advantage of it with a will.

Scouring herself with hot water helped. Even after she finished scrubbing away the sweat, Reva stood under the stream until the ship’s automatic cutoff turned it off, leaving her naked in the swiftly-evaporating steam. A moment later, the sonic turned on instead, humming around her and drying off the moisture on her skin so that only the droplets hidden in the tight weave of her braids remained.

Pulling on a spare set of Ahsoka’s clothes—Reva hadn’t carried any extras with her, not that she’d had many to begin with—grounded her once more in the present. It was luck that they were practically the same height, if one discounted Ahsoka’s montrals, and had similarly athletic builds. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was more than Reva ever would have expected. She liked the practicality of Ahsoka’s clothing choices, too; simple, sturdy, but still soft against her skin.

Reva paused in the darkened lounge. She couldn’t say what she’d sensed that alerted her to Ahsoka’s presence, but the Togruta was certainly here. “Why are you awake?” she asked the shadows.

“I sensed your distress.” Ahsoka shifted, and now Reva could see her slouched into a chair. “I wanted to make sure you knew you didn’t need to suffer through nightmares alone.”

Reva sighed and curled into a chair herself. Ahsoka could likely see her perfectly in the dim light, but Reva could barely see more than her outline. “Do you have nightmares?” she asked after a moment.

“Of course.” No hesitation. No fear of judgment. “I think everyone who fought in the Clone Wars has them.”

“Turn the lights up a little,” Reva said, and waited until she could see more than the shine of Ahsoka’s eyes. “What about Order 66?”

Ahsoka’s eyes dropped; for once, she looked uncomfortable. “That too.”

“How much do you know about what happened to the Jedi Temple?” Reva asked, because if she was going to be haunted by that night and Ahsoka wanted to help lance this wound, she should hear about the worst night of Reva’s life.

“I heard Obi-Wan’s message. I’ve seen the official news reports. I’ve never heard from a survivor.” Ahsoka didn’t need to point out that there weren’t many; Reva herself had only met two others, and they’d died during Inquisitorial training. “You were there.”

“I was.” Reva swallowed. “Do you want to know?” She didn’t know what answer she wanted. Talking about it was worse than not talking about it, but now that she’d begun the idea of closing the floodgates felt impossible.

“No,” Ahsoka said, “but I think I need to.”

Reva took a breath, as deep as her hammering heart allowed, and said, “Anakin—” Her throat closed, and she tried again. “Darth Vader led the Clone Troopers into the Jedi Temple.”

“He killed Master Skywalker,” Ahsoka said, her voice flat, which was the best interpretation of what Reva had said that she could ask for.

Besides, it was true. Obi-Wan had said as much, by the end, voice thick with grief. “He did.” Reva’s fingernails bit into her palms. “And everyone else. I survived because the bodies of my friends buried me, and I dampened my Force presence as much as I could, and he didn’t care enough to look more closely.”

Ahsoka’s shock washed over her, followed by grief, and then a fury powerful enough to make an Inquisitor proud. Reva leaned into the sensation, eased by the familiarity of Ahsoka’s emotions, letting her own fear and rage blossom in the space between them.

These were not a Jedi’s emotions. But then, they were not Jedi.

“I joined the Inquisitors to kill him,” Reva told Ahsoka. “He nearly killed me instead.” Her fingers pressed against the scar on her stomach. Lightsabers cut cleanly, cauterized the wounds as they were made, but then she’d kept moving despite the injury. Desert hermits didn’t have much in the way of medical supplies; it was only the grace of the Force and Obi-Wan’s knowledge of Jedi healing meditation which had allowed her to survive with nothing more than a gut that ached in the cold and a new intolerance for spicy foods.

Ahsoka breathed, slow and deep, and Reva felt her pulling away from the pain they shared. It hurt to feel her retreating into the Jedi way so easily when she said she didn’t follow their path anymore, and so Reva chased her, letting emotions spill over, hot and undeniable, a source of power the Grand Inquisitor had taught her to use for far longer than the Jedi had ever made her meditate.

“Reva,” Ahsoka said, gentle despite the tears in her eyes. “Is this what you want to be?”

Her question, neutral as it was, felt like cold water. Reva hissed and curled back around herself. “I am what they made me,” she said, tasting acid on her tongue. “Even if I want to be something else.”

Ahsoka slipped forward, knelt on the floor in front of Reva, and laid her hands on Reva’s forearms where they crossed over her shins. Her fingers were soft despite the calluses covering them. “You make yourself,” Ahsoka said. “You chose the Jedi way. Keep choosing it, even when it’s hard, and one day you’ll find it coming more easily than any other path you could walk.”

Reva dropped her feet to the floor, leaning into Ahsoka’s space, and found herself unsurprised when Ahsoka didn’t flinch. She dug her fingers into Ahsoka’s shoulders—thick with muscle, yet softly relaxed—and asked, “Was it ever easy for you?”

“It was the only path I knew.” Ahsoka met her eyes, unblinking, a bastion of certainty in the swirling night. “It took me years to come to terms with choosing another. No, Reva, it’s not easy. But that doesn’t stop it from being the right thing to do.” Her hands moved gently across Reva’s arms, stroking her, soothing her. It made Reva want to scream or tear her apart.

She didn’t. She bit her lip, saw Ahsoka’s gaze flicker at the motion, and slowly sat back. Her fingers dragged down Ahsoka’s arms, off her sleeveless shirt and onto the orange skin. Ahsoka ran hotter than she did, Reva realised as Ahsoka took her hands. A fire she kept moving towards in the cold.

“You’ll make mistakes,” Ahsoka said softly. “We all fall sometimes. What matters is standing up and trying again.”

Reva blinked, a lump filling her throat, and then started crying.

Ahsoka stayed there, holding her hands, until Reva tugged her closer and clung to her in something that was almost a hug.

After the dramatic emotions of the first day, the rest of the week-long journey to Dantooine was almost anticlimactic.

Reva spent a lot of time meditating. At first, Ahsoka wondered if it was to avoid her—it certainly gave her plenty of time to report to the Rebellion and read the notes Bail could provide about Reva—but Reva looked pleased any time Ahsoka asked to join her, so it couldn’t be that. By the end of the trip, Ahsoka instead suspected it was related to Reva’s inability to sleep through the night. Ahsoka felt the edges of her nightmares, but never as badly as the first night, and so she didn’t go looking for Reva again.

When they were both awake, they spent time studying the holocron. Reva kept it with her, so Ahsoka hadn’t had a chance to attempt opening it herself, but—even if she could—it seemed important to Reva that she have this symbol of her Jedi lineage. Reva felt calmer when she had the holocron hovering before her, more settled in herself and more confident in her abilities. Ahsoka couldn’t tell if Reva realised this herself, but it was certainly one reason to encourage her to look at the holocron whenever possible.

Plus, the ancient knowledge of the holocron—no matter how mundane—was interesting.

They learned the names of the Temple’s masters, the fact that a crystal cavern had once been nearby—“We should look for that too,” Ahsoka told Reva, only to get a grimace in return—and standard courses the Temple taught its new disciples.

“Do you remember why we lost this Temple?” Reva asked Ahsoka, three days into the journey.

“History was never my strong suit.” Ahsoka had been more interested in lightsaber combat and using the Force for acrobatics, which had been fun to learn. Her skill in those arts had been the reason she had been assigned as a Padawan so young and early in the war effort. “Master Nu drilled us on all the Temples we’ve lost. Do you remember her chants?”

Reva frowned. “No.”

Maybe that had been yet another class sacrificed because of the Jedi’s focus on the Clone Wars. Ahsoka sighed. “I can’t recite it anymore, but Master Nu had a litany, in order, of the old Temples and how they were lost to the Order. I don’t remember the details, but I know it was around the Sith Wars.”

“The holocron doesn’t sound concerned about the Sith at all.”

Ahsoka squeezed Reva’s shoulder. “Neither did we, before the Clone Wars.”

Reva looked at her like she was about to say something biting, but then shook her head and turned back to the Temple map. “Hopefully there’s still a passage after all these years. I don’t want to dig our way in.”

“The Force will be our guide,” Ahsoka said. “And if not, it’ll help us lift a lot of rocks.”

By the time they reached Dantooine, Ahsoka and Reva had cross-referenced current planetary maps, what old records they had access to on Gyrfalcon, and locations mentioned in the holocron to search out a rough location of the Temple. They’d narrowed it down to the south-eastern reach of the smaller continent, which wasn’t nearly as helpful as Reva had hoped, but it was a start.

As Ahsoka took Gyrfalcon into the atmosphere, the Force began humming across Reva’s skin, akin to what she’d felt when dropping down to Mirial. She grabbed the back of Ahsoka’s chair. “Can you feel the ripples in the Force?”

“No.” Ahsoka tilted Gyrfalcon’s nose up into a stable orbit. “Is it guiding you somewhere?”

Reva rubbed her thumb over the holocron’s rounded edges and the Force’s hum strengthened. “I think so.”

“Then this truly is your path.” Ahsoka stood and gestured at the pilot’s controls. “Take us down.”

“You’re a better pilot than I am,” Reva protested. Ahsoka had never offered this before; during the periods they’d dipped out of hyperspace, it had always been Ahsoka entering coordinates and adjusting their alignment.

Ahsoka crossed her arms. “But you can pilot the ship, and it’s not like we’re flying a combat mission,” she pointed out. “Take your time. Follow your gut.”

Reva’s gut, as she took the controls, mostly just told her that she was terrified.

Still, as she sank into the Force—her meditation hadn’t all been naps, no matter how Ahsoka teased—Reva felt a tug leading her towards an otherwise unremarkable stretch of land. She turned into the tension and felt it ease as she came into alignment with the Force’s will.

Gyrfalcon settled onto a flat plain, disturbing the herd of iriaz grazing there and scattering them to the hills. Reva sank back into the pilot’s chair, exhausted from the effort of channeling the Force and thrilled by her success, then looked up at Ahsoka with a smile.

“Part one done,” Ahsoka said. “Now to find the Temple’s remains.”

Reva pulled out the holocron as they exited into the warm sunshine and took a deep breath, attuning herself to the Force’s continued pull. The holocron thrummed in her hands, a lens for the Force’s guidance, and Reva began following it towards their destination.

They saw no signs of settlements; only a few hillocks that might once have been buildings, centuries ago, but which had long since been reclaimed by the land. It was the opposite of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, which was surrounded by endless towers of humanity. It wasn’t even like the Fortress Inquisitorius; that sea-wracked isolation was a prison as much as a safehouse, while Dantooine spread wide and welcoming around them.

Reva paused at the top of a ridge and looked down at an oddly sandy valley covered in piles of large moss-covered rocks. The holocron flared, then went dormant. Reva sighed, then remembered something and turned to Ahsoka, fighting a grin. “There’s the rocks you wanted.”

Ahsoka rolled her eyes and glared at the stony rift in Dantooine’s rolling grasses. “I can see them, thanks.” She kicked at one. It barely moved. “Well. Time to use the Force.”

Reva nodded, and they set to work.

It was slow going, even with the Force and hand-held scanners helping identify where open spaces—passages—existed beneath the layer of soil. As the afternoon wore on and the sun beat down on them, Reva stripped away all her excess layers until she was just wearing boots, loose pants, and a tight wrap around her chest. She’d spent years wearing thick leather uniforms; the ability to suit her clothing to the weather was still a delight.

Ahsoka seemed unaffected by the heat and the effort of their work beyond a thin layer of sweat from the exertion. Still, she was the one to glance at the sun and say, “We need a break.”

“We’re almost there.” Reva tossed another boulder out of the way. Old metal gleamed from beneath the dirt, a promise of what they had come to find. If they could get inside and rest in the underground tunnels, that would be much more satisfying for several reasons.

“It’s waited thousands of years,” Ahsoka said. “It can wait thirty minutes for us to drink some water.”

In thirty minutes they might be inside. Reva reached out and grabbed another chunk of stone, throwing it aside with a grunt. Ahsoka sighed loudly and came over to shove a water bottle in her face. Reva grabbed it, half to get it out of the way, and half because obviously Ahsoka wasn’t going to stop until she gave in.

Ahsoka’s fingers were firm beneath hers as she drank. The water was cool, metallic, and more invigorating than she’d expected; Reva hadn’t realised how thirsty she’d been. As she lowered the water bottle and Ahsoka retrieved her hand with a bit of a smirk, Reva said, “Fine. We can take a break.”

They sat in the shade of one of the stones they’d moved, its cool solidity a relief after the sun, and they didn’t talk. It was a companionable quiet, at least; their minds were equally taxed from the focus on their task, and they had said all that needed to be said back on Gyrfalcon. Anything else could come after they entered the Temple halls.

That quiet was, perhaps, what allowed them to hear the muffled buzz.

Reva frowned; the sound was familiar, but she wasn’t sure what it was until Ahsoka sat up and turned to look over the stone, one hand on a lightsaber hilt. “Someone’s coming,” she said. “Speeder bikes. Modded, by the sound of it; they usually scream.”

“Crimson Dawn.” Reva peered over the stone, her shoulder pressed against Ahsoka’s. She recognised the bikes, too; Ryndar and his crew. They must have followed her somehow. “Fuck,” she said, and Ahsoka glanced at her in question. “I’m an idiot. The gear they lent me—they put trackers in it. Of course they did. It’s still on Gyrfalcon.”

She should have seen it coming. Anyone good enough to steal the holocron was good enough to slip away and sell it to another bidder. If she hadn’t been so focused on Ahsoka and the lure of the Jedi, maybe she could have found the trackers, or at least trashed her borrowed gear. But everything else had been Ahsoka’s, and Reva had wanted some ability to leave if she wanted to, and so…

Now it had gotten them both in trouble.

Ahsoka leaned into her, the Force pulsing between them in reassurance. “You thought you were safe,” she said quietly, with a trace of bitter self-recrimination. “So did I.”

It wasn’t Ahsoka’s fault, and assigning blame wouldn’t solve the current problem. Reva sucked in a breath and drew her blaster. A lightsaber would be better, but she didn’t have one. Fortunately, Reva wasn’t alone and Ahsoka did have lightsabers. Reva grinned at Ahsoka, teeth bared in anticipation. “If we kill them, it will send a message.” Crimson Dawn was powerful, but their resources were not infinite. “Are you going to tell me that’s not the Jedi way?”

“I was a Jedi in the Clone Wars,” Ahsoka said as the speeder bikes came to a halt on the ridge. “Violence was, unfortunately, often the only solution we could provide.”

The sun was low on the horizon; the bikes were perfectly positioned so that it blinded Ahsoka and Reva.

A rifle shot split the air.

It hit the ground between them as Ahsoka and Reva both dodged, the Force inciting them to move before the bolt left the gun. “I’ll distract them,” Reva said, already moving out of cover to prevent Ahsoka from telling her to stop. “Take them out.”

Ahsoka hissed behind her. “Be careful,” she said.“I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Reva paused in surprise; nobody had bothered caring about her well-being for a long time.

If she hadn’t been a Jedi, the next blast would have hit her, but the Force screamed at Reva to move and so she did, flattening herself against a rock as she looked back at Ahsoka. Reva smirked, hiding the tightening of her chest, and said, “Ryndar and his crew are good, but they’re no match for us.”

That proved eminently true.

Reva darted between stones, taking shots when she could, slowly working her way up the ridge while being as obvious as she could. Ahsoka darted through cover, never stopping, the Force lending speed to her feet and height to her jumps.

Once Ahsoka reached Ryndar’s crew, the battle was over. Two white lightsabers sliced through the air with deadly efficiency. Reva stopped in the open to stare, stunned by the beauty of Ahsoka’s violence; even the Grand Inquisitor rarely moved with such grace in battle. This was what Ahsoka had meant about coming of age in war: she had become a weapon just as surely as Reva had, though for a different master and for a different goal.

(Though, perhaps not as different as Reva might like: Darth Vader’s unthinking ease in combat more than matched Ahsoka’s fluidity. Anakin Skywalker truly had taught her everything he knew, before he had become a Sith Lord.)

Eight bodies dropped to the ground. Ahsoka stood in the midst of them, not even breathing hard, and shut her lightsabers down.

That should have been the end of it, but then, from behind her, Reva heard the snap-hiss of a lightsaber activating.

Only a lifetime of training allowed Reva to jump over the red blade aimed at her chest.

Reva landed on top of a boulder and stared down at Twelfth Brother, easily identifiable by his snarling mask and thick robes. “You want what I’m here for,” Reva said, the Force lending her certainty. “You will not have it.”

“Imagine my surprise when I followed those thieves and found a fallen Sister holding the holocron.” Twelfth Brother’s voice echoed in his metal mask. Reva imagined it was supposed to be intimidating, but the effect had nothing on the eerie power of Darth Vader’s speech. Twelfth Brother set his lightsaber spinning as he advanced. “I will make my mark on the Inquisitorius by bringing your body home!”

For a moment, Reva froze. She was defenseless, vulnerable, and tired after a day of working. The only weapon she held was a blaster, which wasn’t enough against a trained lightsaber combatant—even with the Force’s aid.

But she wanted to live, and so she had no choice but to fight anyway.

Reva pressed her hands forward and called upon the Force to protect her, to thicken the air and slow Twelfth Brother’s leap. He slowed, eyes wide beneath his mask, and then screamed as the Force threw him back to the ground.

There had been another person’s will in the Force, Reva realised, one that blazed like the sun. She turned to grin fiercely at Ahsoka and stretched out a hand. “Let me fight him!” she shouted, and trusted Ahsoka would understand.

There was a moment, as Twelfth Brother shoved himself upright and leapt at her once more, when Reva worried that Ahsoka wouldn’t agree. Then metal smacked into her palm, still warm from Ahsoka’s grasp, and Reva ignited Ahsoka’s lightsaber.

White light burst forth in front of her to deflect Twelfth Brother’s first wild blow. He’d never been good at control; it made him a perfect Inquisitor, but it meant that Reva had usually been able to beat him in sparring matches.

Ahsoka’s lightsaber felt nearly weightless in her hands, compared to an Inquisitorial lightsaber, and it could only produce one beam. Reva ducked and wove around Twelfth Brother’s unrelenting assault, her instincts thrown off by the difference in the blade she held, the exhaustion of the day catching up to her.

She refused to give up. She could not lose here; it would undermine everything she had been working so hard to reclaim.

Reva shouted wordlessly as she pushed Twelfth Brother back, following up with a flurry of blows that bought her some space to breathe. They circled each other, eyes fixed on each other, but in the dying light of the day—

Ahsoka stood on the ridge, her lightsaber turning her into a star.

Reva locked eyes with her over Twelfth Brother’s head, heedless of the opening it would give him.

She didn’t need to defeat Twelfth Brother by herself. “Ahsoka!” Reva shouted as she ducked Twelfth Brother’s next strike. “Do Jedi fight alone?”

Reva heard Ahsoka laugh, bright and easy, as she turned her attention back to their foe. “I thought you’d never ask,” Ahsoka said, and suddenly she was there, as beautiful with one lightsaber as with two. She thrust at Twelfth Brother’s back, slashed at his knees, casually leaned out of the way of his frantic retaliation.

Twelfth Brother cursed, spinning to try and keep both of them in his sight. He couldn’t. It was impossible, Reva realised, so long as she and Ahsoka opened themselves to each other in the Force.

Reva had fought alongside other Inquisitors in the past, and thought she’d known what a comrade was. But Ahsoka allowed Reva to feel each motion before she made it, and Reva couldn’t help but reciprocate. The Force wove between them, and Twelfth Brother felt like a discordant note, a tangle in the weave, and it was easy to corral him as a result.

There was an opening before her. Reva knew Ahsoka could see it too, but Ahsoka turned to Reva instead. It was not expectation; it was a question.

Reva looked at Twelfth Brother and remembered what he’d been like in the Inquisitorius. A rival for power, for they were all rivals to each other. It should push them to be better. It mostly led to petty betrayals and undercutting of power. Some of the Inquisitors had been lazy, preferring threats to violence, but Twelfth Brother had enjoyed hurting civilians; any mission he’d gone on would inevitably be marked by spilled blood.

They couldn’t afford to let him live and tell the Inquisitorius about them. If Reva didn’t kill him, Ahsoka would; the Force was clear about her intentions. She had killed Inquisitors before.

But then, so had Reva.

“Here’s something I’ve learned,” Reva said as the Force sang through her. “Friends will do more for you than rivals ever could.”

Before Twelfth Brother could respond, she slipped past his defenses and cut through first his lightsaber and then his chest with one long sweep of Ahsoka’s blade. He stared at her, faceless behind his mask, and slowly slumped to the ground, lifeless.

Reva looked at his corpse, breathing hard. She expected to feel something. Satisfaction. Relief. Mostly, she just felt numb.

Ahsoka’s hand closed over hers and gently turned the lightsaber off. “It’s over,” she said as she retrieved her lightsaber hilt from Reva’s fingers. “Perhaps they will come for us again, but it will take some time to realise how much they’ve lost.”

Reva knelt and pulled off Twelfth Brother’s mask. She’d never seen him without it before, and didn’t recognise anything about him save his youth; she doubted he had been any older than her when the Jedi Temple fell. A child raised in the Inquisitors who had thrown himself into becoming exactly what they wanted from him. Reva sighed, closed his eyes so that he might have some respect in death, and stood. “We should bury them,” she said. “They didn’t need to die today.”

“Lightsabers aren’t much use for digging,” Ahsoka said. “But we can build some cairns.”

Night fell across Dantooine as they worked. The rocks they removed from the ground settled into place—over dead bodies, first, but then in disorganized heaps wherever there was space—and the earth opened up beneath them. When the Temple halls were at last revealed, dark and overgrown with lichen and full of scurrying insects, Ahsoka glanced at Reva.

Reva looked back at her, still as silent as when they’d started hours ago. The fight had unsettled her far more than she wanted to admit, but her presence in the Force seemed calmer now—or at least, Reva was exhausted enough to pass for calm. “Tomorrow,” Reva said. “We’ll enter the Temple tomorrow.”

Ahsoka breathed out in relief; she hadn’t wanted to argue for this. “We’ll go back to Gyrfalcon. It’d do us both good to clean off.”

Reva nodded and turned without another word.

The trip back to Gyrfalcon was quiet. Ahsoka didn’t push Reva, but she felt the weight of Twelfth Brother’s broken lightsaber in her pocket; she’d taken only the pieces containing the still-intact crystals, in case Reva wished to do as Ahsoka herself had done and build new lightsabers of her own out of the remains. She’d thought of talking to Reva about that option tonight, but as it was…

There would be plenty of time after they explored the Temple.

“I’m going to burn them,” Reva said abruptly as they entered Gyrfalcon. “You can shower first.”

“Burn—” Ahsoka blinked, trying to remember. “Your Crimson Dawn gear?”

Reva gave her a withering look. “What else?”

Ahsoka shrugged. There were many things that could burn. “Don’t set the plains on fire.”

The words didn’t deserve the laugh they provoked, but Ahsoka was simply glad to see Reva smile again.

Chapter Text

Reva woke at dawn after a surprisingly dreamless sleep to find that Ahsoka was already awake too. She could hear Ahsoka in the kitchen, making noise in a way that Reva didn’t need the Force to tell her meant Ahsoka was ruminating on something that was eating at her.

They didn’t even have that many interesting food supplies; Ahsoka had been muttering about needing to stop off at an actual city or space station sometime soon so that they would have more to eat than hard rations. Reva had no idea when or how Ahsoka had learned to cook—it wasn’t a skill taught at the Jedi Temple—but it seemed like a useful skill to pick up when moving through the galaxy on her own. Maybe Reva would make an effort after this.

Interrupting her might lead to her burning whatever she was cooking. Reva weighed the pros and cons, decided that waiting for Ahsoka to say whatever she was thinking about would be more of an itch beneath her skin than eating bland rations, and leaned against the door. “Out with it,” she said conversationally.

Ahsoka flipped her off without turning from the pan she was watching.

Reva snorted. “Do you want me to be polite and say something like ‘Want to talk about it’?” she asked, arms crossed. “Because you don’t, or else you would’ve said something already.”

The foodstuffs—some kind of meat, from the smell—sizzled. Then Ahsoka sighed and turned to face Reva. “I’d thought that you didn’t carry a lightsaber because you didn’t want to fight with one anymore,” she said, forehead furrowed. “But yesterday, you fought like you’d missed the sensation. You could have rebuilt your Inquisitorial lightsaber.”

Reva grimaced; the idea felt like anathema. “I couldn’t have.” She drew in a slow, deep breath and reminded herself not to dig her fingernails into her arms. “They were corrupted.”

“I purged an Inquisitorial lightsaber to build my blades.” Ahsoka touched them, absently, like old friends. “You could do the same with Twelfth Brother’s crystals.”

“I will not.” Reva scowled at Ahsoka. “What’s the point of coming to an old Temple with a crystal cave if I don’t try to find something here?”

She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d barely admitted it to herself.

Ahsoka smiled at her. “I hope the Temple holds what you seek,” she said, achingly sincere.

“Your meat’s burning,” Reva said, pointing at the smoke, and then fled when Ahsoka cursed and turned back to the stove.

The Jedi Temple on Dantooine felt nothing like the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, or any of the handful of other Jedi Temples that Ahsoka had encountered in the years since she’d left the Order.

(Funny to think of how many more she’d stood in or defended since renouncing her position as a Jedi. They had all been abandoned, though Ahsoka couldn’t tell for how long—and rarely wanted to know.)

This was also the oldest Temple she’d encountered. The weight of its age pressed upon Ahsoka more solidly than the earth surrounding them. From the holocron’s images, it hadn’t always been completely underground, though it had certainly extended further beneath the surface than above. Something had broken it before time had buried it, Ahsoka was certain; horrific violence left a scar in the Force, especially when so many Force users screamed in unison as they died. Ahsoka could still feel the fear

Reva seemed entirely unfazed by the faint echoes. Ahsoka didn’t want to ask if it was because she didn’t feel them or if she was simply inured to such lingering emotions after so long in the Inquisitorious.

Instead, Reva moved through the Temple with purpose and determination Ahsoka felt sorely lacking in. Bail Organa supported her mission here, but more because he wanted her to recruit Reva than because he expected her to find anything useful in the lost Temple. “It’s been three thousand years,” he’d told her. “Anything that survived the initial fall will have long since been looted. But if you think it will help her…”

“It will,” Ahsoka had assured him. She’d been hiding doubt then; now, she was certain. Even if Ahsoka wasn’t getting much from the musty halls, Reva was looking around with avid delight.

The Temple’s remains were beautiful, Ahsoka acknowledged. Being buried had preserved the carvings and mosaics covering the walls. Even without knowing the Temple’s precise history, Ahsoka could see Jedi in the images, their lightsabers bright brands standing against the darkness.

Reva trailed her fingers along the images as they walked. The holocron in her other hand murmured as she touched each image, naming the figures and events they depicted. The litany meant nothing to Ahsoka; what need was there to learn yet more names of the dead?

But this was the history of the Jedi at one of their heights, when their Order had spread across the galaxy and been revered, and Reva wanted to be part of that, and so Ahsoka trailed behind her as they walked through musty halls.

Still, as the days wore on and they continued finding nothing but empty halls and fragmented murals, Ahsoka’s patience began wearing thin. “How long do you want to wander here?” she asked as they passed yet another set of empty rooms the map said had once been padawan dormitories. “There’s nothing to find.”

“Aren’t you the one who should be lecturing me about patience?” Reva glanced at her, a laugh tucked into her cheek. “Why are you in such a hurry to move on?”

“If we stay too long, someone else will come seeking the people we killed.” Their footsteps were too loud in the tomblike silence.

“And then they will die too,” Reva said with a shrug. “So?”

Ahsoka shook her head. “There has already been too much death here. It is a Jedi Temple, but… Temples should not stink of death.”

Reva paused in a circular hub. Roots wound throughout the room, taking the place of benches that must once have been here. In the distance, little rodents scurried through their holes and insects buzzed. “If people live somewhere, there is death there too,” she said after a moment. “This place is alive, Ahsoka; can you feel it? Yes, there is pain in the stones, but I had to learn to listen past the screams seared into my soul to touch the Force again after Order 66.” Her dark eyes bored into Ahsoka’s, steady in the holocron’s blue glow. “Have you ever learned that skill?”

Ahsoka looked away, gut churning, throat hot with bile. She had been too busy saving her own life when Order 66 happened to do more than flinch at the outpouring of death resonating through the Force. She had spent years trying to minimize her use of the Force after horrific day, mostly because she hadn’t want the Empire to find her, and the dying Jedi’s pain had quieted by the time she’d begun touching the Force regularly again.

“You haven’t, have you?” Reva’s voice turned hard. “Then try it now. You’ve had more training than I had when I learned. If you can feel the death of these Jedi, then you should be equally able to feel their life.”

Reva spoke with the power and certainty of any Jedi Knight. Ahsoka took a breath, almost coughed on dust, and then closed her eyes to better feel what the Force could show her.

Death first: the Jedi screaming as they were engulfed in fire and light. Their bodies were long gone, turned to dust and soil, taken into animals’ bodies, wherein they became life once more. And that life, the flourishing of Dantooine’s little creatures beneath the surface where they were hidden from large predators, was indeed vibrant to Ahsoka’s senses now that she sought to find it.

Sap pulsed along tree roots. Insects glittered in their humming clouds. Rats and snakes and spiders lurked at the edges of light, watching each other with hungry eyes. Death, yes, but Reva was right: there was life too, always following in death’s wake.

Ahsoka opened her eyes to find Reva smiling broadly at her. She shone in the Force, warm as embers, steady as the moon. “Well?” Reva said. “Can you feel it?”

“Yes.” Ahsoka laid her hand on a root. “I can.”

“If it can teach you something, then there’s going to be something here for me too.” Reva brushed past Ahsoka, a burning brand, and continued into the Temple’s depths. “Even if it’s just a lightsaber crystal.”

“There’s the crystal cave,” Ahsoka said as she followed Reva. “If we can find it.”

“We will,” Reva said, determination in every syllable and step. “So long as we don’t stop looking.”

The Jedi had once been very good at not looking. How had they missed Chancellor Palpatine right beneath their noses? How had they not seen their own Order’s fall? But the Sith had never stopped, nor the Inquisitors, and if Reva took their drive and channeled it for the Jedi Order’s goals…

Ahsoka might not return to the Order, but she wanted to see what Reva would do.

Reva was still delving into the buried Temple when Ahsoka found the crystal cave.

“It’s about three klicks away,” Ahsoka said over the commlink as Reva dashed up the Temple stairs, vaulting roots and rubble without a thought. “It won’t take you long to get here.”

She was right. Reva made it out of the Temple in five minutes and joined Ahsoka in another ten, the Force giving her speed and Ahsoka’s presence giving her a guiding star. Soon she stood next to Ahsoka, gazing at the entrance to a perfectly ordinary cave. It wasn’t overgrown, it didn’t have any special resonance in the Force, and Reva gave Ahsoka a sidelong look of confusion as they approached it.

“You’ll feel it once you’re inside,” Ahsoka said. “It’s smaller than Ilum, and hasn’t been actively attuned to the Force recently, so it’s much quieter.”

“Why weren’t you waiting inside, then?” Reva ducked beneath the hanging vines which covered the shadowed opening.

Ahsoka lit a glowrod as she followed. “Oh, because of them.”

Reva stared at the chitinous creature standing dormant in front of her. Its thick legs could clearly be used as weapons, and raised the arachnid’s spade-shaped head and sharp pincers to the height of her face. Reva remembered seeing them in the holocron, but she’d thought the kinrath were rather smaller. Perhaps they’d grown in the centuries since. “Ah,” Reva said, keeping her breath and voice steady even as adrenaline set her heart racing. “I see.”

“You wanted a crystal.” Ahsoka pressed the glowrod into Reve’s hand. “They’re down there somewhere. Have fun.”

“Wait, Ahsoka, you aren’t—” Reva spun as Ahsoka retreated from the cave.

She paused, silhouetted at the entrance. “It’s traditional for a Jedi to do this alone,” she pointed out. “You know that. This is not the traditional challenge of Ilum, but”—Ahsoka’s teeth gleamed in a quick smile—“it seems fitting for you.”

Reva flipped Ahsoka off, to which Ahsoka only laughed.

“Fitting, my ass,” Reva muttered as she glared at the sessile kinrath dozing in the shadowed cave. They were venomous predators, the holocron had said. Do not engage them carelessly or needlessly. The Jedi worked to ensure they were properly managed, but they were an important part of the Dantooine ecosystem and thus should not be fully eliminated.

Any management the Jedi had done was long gone. The kinrath hive covered much of the cave, from what Reva could see in the warm light of her glowrod. Any movement she made past the entrance would involve stepping around—or, potentially, on—one of the arachnids.

Reva’s hand itched. If she had a weapon—

If she had a weapon, she wouldn’t be here seeking a lightsaber crystal.

It wasn’t a Jedi thought, anyway; the oldest lessons Reva remembered being taught were of the Jedi as peacekeepers. Violence should be their last resort, not their first.

Not that it had mattered much with the war on. Even as a youngling, Reva had participated in philosophical debates about how that element of the Jedi way interacted with their participation in the war as commanders and generals of an army. There had never been any good answer. At the time, even the Masters had admitted as much; now, Ahsoka acknowledged that as one reason she’d left the Jedi and didn’t intend to return to them.

As an Inquisitor, of course, violence was often the quickest—if not the only—answer.

But she wasn’t an Inquisitor anymore, and she wanted to be a Jedi again, and so the solution to the problem in front of her should be a Jedi solution.

Reva closed her eyes and sank into the Force. She’d rarely had time for deep meditation before meeting Ahsoka, but Ahsoka had reminded her of its importance. Now, the Force flowed over her and through her like a clear stream. The kinrath might surround her, but they were one with the Force just as she was, and Reva knew that so long as she moved slowly and confidently, trusting her footing to the Force, she could pass them.

She didn’t think about how long it took. It didn’t matter. The trial was the passage. The reward was the crystal. It had been waiting for years; minutes or even hours more would not matter. Reva breathed, and moved with her breath, and danced through the kinrath with patient grace.

When she finally opened her eyes, there were no kinrath around her, just a wealth of crystals reflecting her glowrod’s light.

Reva reached forward, still deep in the Force, and wrapped her fingers around a shard. It parted from the wall at her touch and dropped into her palm, resting there almost weightless despite the immensity of meaning it represented.

“Thank you,” Reva said, and turned back to the passage she had walked blindly down.

The Force had guided her here; it would bring her out safely once more.

When Reva stepped out of the cave and into Dantooine’s golden sunset, Ahsoka was waiting for her. Reva grinned at her, light filling her heart, and opened her hand to reveal the crystal waiting there.

Ahsoka wrapped Reva up in a hug, relief and delight crashing into Reva along with her strong body. “I knew you’d make it,” Ahsoka told her, breath gusting across Reva’s ear. Her hand rested firmly on the nape of Reva’s neck, which Reva would’ve thought would make her tense with worry but really just made her feel safe. “Congratulations, Reva.”

Reva rested her forehead on Ahsoka’s shoulder, eyes closed, breathing in Ahsoka’s warmth. “Thanks.” She leaned onto Ahsoka, muscles trembling, as the Force quietly drained from her limbs. Walking through the cave while so entrenched in the Force had taken more out of her than she’d expected. Reva took a breath, gauging her body and her strength. She could make it, but…

She grimaced, since Ahsoka wouldn’t be able to see her expression, and mumbled, “I think I’m going to need your help to get back to Gyrfalcon.” She’d expected the admission to feel like a weight around her neck, but instead it felt like freedom.

Ahsoka stroked her hair. “Of course I’ll help,” she said, because she had been a Jedi once and compassion was inscribed upon her heart. “Let’s get you to a bed.”

She turned, and Reva slung an arm around Ahsoka’s shoulders and let Ahsoka carry more of her weight as they walked across the plains together.

Ahsoka waited until Reva was solidly asleep before shutting herself in her room and opening a line to Bail Organa. She hadn’t precisely been hiding her involvement with Rebel business from Reva, but protocols meant that she couldn’t be too open about it when Reva wasn’t part of the Rebellion. Hopefully she’d join them, but Ahsoka hadn’t wanted to have that conversation until after they’d finished at the Temple.

The call connected, audio-only, and Ahsoka said, “I don’t think we’ll be staying here much longer.”

“She found what she was looking for?”

“Yes.” Ahsoka had felt it in Reva’s calm upon exiting the cave and the way in which she’d so easily asked for help.

“And you?”

Ahsoka stared at the commlink. She had come here to learn what information the holocron held and to learn who Reva would become. She hadn’t been looking for something the way Reva had been. “There’s nothing in the Temple,” Ahsoka said slowly. “Unless you’re interested in history. Reva will become a Jedi. I am certain of that now.”

Bail sighed. “You’ve been alone for so long,” he said gently, the same way he spoke to new recruits or his daughter. “Don’t think I’ve missed the way you hold yourself apart from the rest of the Rebellion. Have you found a companion at last?”

It wasn’t safe for her to get close to anyone. Ahsoka had told Bail that, time and time again; the Force tended to lead those who could wield it on intersecting paths. Her presence was a danger, and she couldn’t put others at risk.

But Reva…

Ahsoka bit the inside of her cheek. Reva was a Jedi. Reva could take care of herself, and she was a beacon in the Force as well; it wouldn’t be that much riskier to travel together.

Bail’s waiting silence felt smug, somehow, as Ahsoka sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, feeling like a child again. “I’ll ask.”

“See that you do,” Bail said, turning from caring father to brisk Rebel leader in a moment. “The missions you can do for us will change if you’re working together.”

The rest of the call turned into a briefing for where Bail wanted Ahsoka to fly once they left Dantooine. The librarians of Obroa-skai were under pressure to give up their neutrality and officially join the Empire. As the archives had been built with the aid of ancient Jedi, Bail thought that Ahsoka—and Reva, if she agreed to accompany Ahsoka—would be good ambassadors to ask them to stand strong.

Ahsoka bit her tongue about how Bail still considered her a Jedi, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. He wouldn’t understand, and even if he did he’d still call her one because it was politically expedient for the Rebellion to view her as a Jedi.

They were, as Reva had said, a symbol of hope.

All this was swirling through Ahsoka’s mind as she tried to settle her mind enough to sleep. She hadn’t let herself hope that Reva might continue travelling with her past this expedition to Dantooine. She’d lost too many friends to dare allow herself to believe she could have another so long as she was fighting against the Empire. Comrades-in-arms, yes, but friends? Someone she could count on to be at her side, to shelter and support her, and to understand what she meant when she spoke of the Jedi and the Force?

It felt like too much to ask for.

And yet…

Ahsoka heard footsteps in the galley. Reva must have woken up. Maybe she’d go back to sleep, and then Ahsoka would too, and then tomorrow they could just talk about building Reva’s lightsaber and Ahsoka wouldn’t need to think about this at all.

Reva knocked on her door, dispelling that thought. “Ahsoka?” she said, sounding concerned. “I can feel your disquiet. What’s wrong?”

Ahsoka’s instinct was to deny that anything was wrong. If something was wrong, it had been wrong for years and she had simply made an art of ignoring it.

“I’ll leave if you don’t want company,” Reva continued, “but you’ve offered me so much. I thought…”

She trailed off, and Ahsoka cursed herself. Reva had been so prickly. She’d changed so much. “The door’s unlocked,” Ahsoka called, pushing herself into a seated position but not uncurling from her blankets. “You can come in.”

“Trusting of you,” Reva commented as she entered. She was wearing a loose shirt over underwear, a blanket still wrapped around her shoulders; she didn’t seem like she’d intended to be awake for long.

Ahsoka tried not to look at the shadow between Reva’s breasts. Even if she did ask Reva to travel with her, that wasn’t why. “I’m usually the only one on this ship. No need to lock any doors.” She leaned against the wall as Reva sat next to her, their shoulders brushing between layers of blanket, and added, “Also, I trust you.”

Reva made a small noise, then reached for her hand. Their fingers intertwined on Ahsoka’s thigh. “Do I deserve that?” Reva asked quietly.

“Of course.” Ahsoka squeezed her hand. In the darkness, Reva warm at her side, it was surprisingly easy to say, “If you didn’t, I wouldn’t be keeping myself awake wondering if you’ll keep travelling with me after this.”

“You work with the Rebels, don’t you.” It wasn’t really a question, but Ahsoka nodded anyway. Reva hesitated again. “I killed a number of them.”

“I know.” Ahsoka shrugged. Bail had sent her a report on Reva after they’d begun travelling to Dantooine; it had mostly been about how she’d kidnapped Leia and he’d had to reach out to non-Rebel contacts to retrieve her. Something had happened to Reva after that, but the Rebellion didn’t know what. Bail seemed entirely unphased by her complete turn away from the Dark Side, however, even if he didn’t tell her why. “You wouldn’t be the first Imperial defector to join our cause, nor would you be the last.”

Reva sighed and slumped against Ahsoka. “Have you really just been stewing over whether I’d travel with you?” she asked as Ahsoka adjusted to her weight. “I don’t know where else I’d go. After— After I tried to kill Darth Vader and failed”—Bail’s report had mentioned that as an unconfirmed rumour; Ahsoka wanted to know how Reva had survived now that she knew it was true—“I know the Empire will kill me as soon as they realise who I am, but I didn’t think I could find your people, let alone convince them to take me in. So. Crimson Dawn. And now…”

Hearing your people and knowing Reva meant the Rebellion instead of the Jedi made Ahsoka blink hard against tears. “You’ve found me now,” she said, resting her head against Reva’s. “And I will vouch for you should any of my people doubt your commitment.”

Reva’s fingers tightened, almost painfully, around Ahsoka’s. “You mean it?”

“I can’t give you a Jedi’s word”—whatever that would be worth these days—“but I can give you my word as a friend. I’d like it if you kept travelling with me. I’d like it if you helped the Rebellion with me.” Ahsoka took a breath and met Reva’s eyes; they glistened wetly in the dark as Ahsoka kept talking. “If anyone dares say that you shouldn’t be part of the Rebellion, I’ll remind them that you’re a Jedi and that all Imperial defectors are welcome here.”

“Yes.” Reva grabbed Ahsoka in a hug, their cheeks pressed together so that Ahsoka could feel every word she spoke. “I’ll come with you. I want— Maybe together we can find a way to defeat Darth Vader.”

“I’d like that,” Ahsoka said, which were very mild words for how good it felt to know that Reva wanted to stay with her as long as the Force allowed their paths to align.

Gyrfalcon soared through hyperspace to Obroa-Skai as Reva assembled all the pieces she needed. Ahsoka had enough spare parts for her own lightsabers that they hadn’t needed to go searching for anything. When she finished, the floor was covered with tiny bits of electronics, as well as some larger plates of metal, and the gleaming crystal Reva had spent so much time looking for rested right in front of her.

“If you need help, I’m here,” Ahsoka said from where she was curled up on a couch. “But you’ve built one before, haven’t you?”

“Not for a very long time.” Reva straightened her back and settled her hands on her knees. Confidence, she reminded herself. The Force would help her so long as she believed in it. “It’ll come back to me.”

Ahsoka’s faith in her radiated through the Force, bolstering Reva as she settled into meditation. The crystal was her lightsaber’s heart; everything else was merely a support. Reva breathed out, turned her hands palm-up, and lifted every piece of her lightsaber-to-be into the air.

They danced around each other in orbits as complex as stars in a galaxy, but moving much more quickly towards the gravity well at their center. The crystal remained nearly stationary as the lightsaber hilt took shape around it, and Reva couldn’t take her eyes away from its steady glow. Even when metal wrapped around it, Reva could still feel its pulse, could still see its luminous form guiding her onwards.

When the thousands of pieces had turned into one, Reva reached up and plucked the hilt from the air.

Now was the moment of truth.

Reva stood and held the lightsaber horizontally in front of her. She thumbed the power button and felt the lightsaber wake beneath her hand. Then she pressed the activation keys, both at once, and watched her lightsaber’s blades extend to her sides. They were a delicate periwinkle, shading into a deeper violet at the edges and a paler ice-blue near the core. Reva let out her breath upon seeing them, a smile splitting her face.

She’d known that it wouldn’t be red, but she’d still been afraid.

“Beautiful,” Ahsoka said, but her eyes were on Reva, not the lightsaber she held. “I can’t wait to see what you do next, Reva.”

Reva blushed and turned her lightsaber off. She hung it on her belt and, at last, felt like the Jedi she had always hoped to be. “Yeah,” she said, feeling possibilities settle around her shoulders like dew before the dawn. “I can’t wait to see what we do together.”

After how much they’d already learned and done, whatever their future brought was bound to be something great.