A/n : This story doesn't feature Usaki, although it does take place in a universe where she exists (although you might not notice!) It is a short one-shot which came to me out of the blue, based on material in the books The Revenge of the Sith, Shatterpoint and Dark Lord (although reading those books isn't necessary to understand this story). The idea of the Jedi being defeated by the Clone Wars was explored in the first two books mentioned – and I really liked that.
I was also inspired by the fact that the fall of Anakin is pretty obvious with hindsight. I thought that it would be fun to explore the idea that someone might have worked it out before it happened – even if that was just a minute before it happened! Additionally, the various "deaths of Shaak Ti" mentioned and alluded to on the DVD extras of RotS were an inspiration for this.
Finally, this story is inspired by Tierney Becket's story Storm Clouds May Gather (available on this fine website – check it out!) - she has Shaak Ti in a post-RotS story and she never says how she survives. Well, here is ONE possible answer!
Shaak Ti's views in this story are brought to completion in the philosophical discussions in Compassion.
If you like this story, please review and check out my other stories.
Knightfall
Jedi do not indulge in regret.
Regret, like grief and anger and so many of the other things which Jedi have denied themselves, is an attachment. It is an anchor to the then rather than a lodestone for the now and a guide to the immediate. While all Jedi made mistakes and while a Youngling or a Padawan or perhaps even a Knight might sometimes look back on them with a desire to change the past, both were rare events. Rarer still was it for a Master or a Member of the Jedi Council to regret an action, to dwell on past actions or inactions.
But, for the moment, Jedi Master and Council Member Shaak Ti regretted.
She regretted letting Knight Skywalker – the Chosen One, Anakin – leave the Jedi Temple. Master Mace Windu, the most senior member of the Council left on Coruscant now that Yoda was on Kashyyyk, had ordered the Temple sealed and code-locked. He had given her clear orders to defend the Temple – as was typical for Mace when giving orders to his colleagues rather that subordinates, he had delegated authority not a task.
And he had ordered that Chosen One stay in the Temple.
And now Shaak Ti knelt cross-legged in her meditation chamber and let thoughts swirl though her mind like the echoes of her heartbeat through her montrals. She sifted through her memories of a few minutes before.
Code-lock the outer doors, arm the older Padawans.
Anakin, should your place not be here, to help with our forces, if Palpatine retaliates?
The Temple is sealed, Anakin. The door is code-locked.
And then Anakin's voice – which to her Togruta senses took on a shape and a color, his breathing as ragged as gravel, his heartbeat spiking like a Zabrak's head – drifted back into her consciousness.
And you're in the way of the pad.
Shaak Ti was not a seer – she did not possess precognition, although those who had fought her (and remained alive) might disagree. They might have questioned her assertion simply because she was right about what was about to happen more often than not. There was no trick to it, no magic, no enchantment.
There was simply who she was.
And who she was was a senior Member of the Jedi Council, a Jedi Master, a Togruta, a woman no longer young and callow. She had known – better than Mace did – that Anakin needed a kind word. She had lived with the Force as her ally for so long that she could not even begin to imagine what her life would be like without it – even if she thought that engaging in such pointless speculation was worth the time it would take. Her natural Togruta advantages – and those were more than the words Mace said of her that she was as beautiful as a flower, yet deadly as a viper – afforded her a form of passive echo-location which allowed her to see combat in a way beings who relied purely on sight could not.
Now, the hollow, air-filled montrals which rose serenely on either side of her rubicund face, drawing attention to the bold white patches which surrounded her dark eyes, brought knowledge of the Temple's activity to her brain which lay, heavy and immobile, in her rear lekku. The noise of weapons' lockers being opened, the hum of 'sabers being tested by those Padawans too-young to have learned trust and those too-old to have retained it, the thump of (to her senses) heavy feet, the crackling whir of ray shields. And, under it all, the pounding heartbeats of the inhabitants of the Temple – controlled fear and panic and adrenaline.
They were her family, her tribe, her pack, her community. She was unusual among her species – she preferred her solitude and to operate alone – which was, of course, why she was seated in her meditation chamber while her subordinates and colleagues readied the defense of the Temple. And yet, her genetic heritage could not be denied.
It was comforting that she was surrounded by those she had chosen to be her family.
And yet, a Jedi eschewed comfort.
She did not regret disobeying Mace's orders – because she had not. She had been ordered to defend the Temple, and that was what she was doing. If Anakin chose to disobey Mace's orders, well . . . it would not be the first time.
No, what she regretted was, quite simply, the inaction she had taken. She had not tried to stop him leaving.
And that was why she was mediating – because she wanted to know why she regretted this action. Although not a precognitive, she knew better than to ignore the promptings of her own instincts.
Instincts which, since she was a montralless Youngling with stubby lekku, she had honed so that they were quite unlike the instincts of any non-Jedi being the whole galaxy over. Instincts which existed simply as a conduit for the Force.
And so she sat, cross-legged and with her lightsaber lying on her lap in front of her, casting her mind over the events that had lead up to this moment.
There were too many for her consciousness to absorb and assimilate – but her consciousness did not need to be involved. She let her meditative mind sift though them, letting the Force select and order her memories. The young boy that the entire Temple had chattered with news of, the reappearance of the Sith, Obi-Wan taking Anakin as his Padawan, Dooku's treachery, the Clone Wars, the battle of Coruscant, her own humbling at the hands of Grievous, the death of Dooku.
And now this.
Palpatine is Sidious. The Chancellor is the Sith Lord.
She regretted letting Anakin leave the Temple. But Jedi did not indulge in regret – and so what did that mean? Letting Anakin leave the Temple was a mistake. She had made them before – admitting that she had erred was not hard or horrible for her. Where was she now? What could she do now – not to undo the mistake (for that could never be, and thinking so was dangerous) but rather to move from where the universe was now to where it should be?
What could she have done?
That was an alien thought to her – it was still regret. It was still dwelling in the past. Yet she indulged in it – because something told her that she should.
She could have tried to stop him. She could have remained standing in front of the pad.
I'll do what I'm supposed to do.
As if her montrals had been struck with a seismic charge, Anakin's words came back to her with transparisteel-clear clarity. I'll do what I'm supposed to do. And what he was supposed to do lay outside the Temple – in more ways than one.
Mace and Yoda had both opposed the training of Anakin. And she herself had seen how he acted in the Council chamber. He lacks traditional Jedi reserve was how she had put it, tactfully, to Obi-Wan. The human had smiled gently behind his beard and told her he wore his emotions like a holonet banner. Now she considered this, in the regretful nonspace of magnocular hindsight, she realized the boy should never have been trained as a Jedi, should never have been taught, by Obi-Wan or anyone. Mace and Yoda had been right.
The two shocks – that she had thought, until now, they might have been wrong and the realization her own realization was wrong – were simultaneous.
To say Anakin should never have been trained was flawed – because never was an absolute, and Jedi did not deal in absolutes. Which itself was, she reflected, an absolute. Would it have been better to leave Anakin – more powerful than any other Jedi in living memory, or even holocron memory – alone and untrained on Tattooine? Would it have been better to perhaps have given Sidious the chance to find and corrupt Anakin earlier?
Of course.
There were layers of deceit and deception here. The Clone Wars – as any war would, as Mace had discovered on his homeworld of Haruun Kal – were breaking and destroying the Jedi, turning keepers of the peace into soldiers. Bringing the darkness of war to their ordered lives, where every decision to save these innocents meant that those innocents would die. And now the Clone Wars were revealed to have been a ploy, a trick – the perfect Jedi trap.
Not merely because the Jedi were having to fight and become warriors, but because the whole thing had been orchestrated by a Sith Lord. It did not matter who won the Clone Wars, because the Jedi would lose. The guardians of peace and justice would become soldiers and warriors, and in doing so cease to be what they were.
The Jedi would cease to exist. Palpatine's retaliation – if, indeed, it ever came - would merely be the electro-sealing on the document. The war itself would defeat the Jedi, even if the Republic won.
And now, seated in her meditation chamber, Shaak Ti realized the truth of the matter was far greater, and yet far smaller, than that.
Anakin had discovered the Chancellor was the Sith Lord. He had come to know that Palpatine was Sidious. And then he had returned to the Temple to inform Mace of that. No, to inform Obi-Wan of that. He had wanted to tell Obi-Wan, not Mace. He had wanted to go to his friend.
Promise me it'll be an arrest, promise me you're not going to hurt him.
What was Anakin supposed to do? He was supposed to bring balance to the Force – although what that meant was open to debate, at least in the more peaceful days of the Jedi Temple. Now, the horrors of war had sponged away such academic pleasantries.
And Anakin would bring balance to the Force, for such a thing was a prophecy and would come to pass. Yet, what did that mean? Shaak Ti did not know – and she was certain Anakin did not either.
But Anakin knew what he thought he was supposed to do. And he was going to do it. The prophecy did not enter into it – he used it as an excuse to justify his own actions. I'm the Chosen One, My place is there.
And that was the source of her regret – because this boy who sat on the Council and yet who did not have the Jedi discipline of the youngest Padawan – thought he knew what the Chosen One must do, and was using it to justify something else.
Anakin had come, ragged and terrified, to the Temple, begging Mace not to kill the Chancellor. Anakin, one of only two Jedi in a thousand years to have killed a Sith Lord, was begging another Jedi to not kill the Sith Lord who had been behind millions and millions of deaths, entire planetary depopulations, the loss of Anakin's own hand . . .
Shaak Ti could – and could have, even if that hand had been one of her lekku and one of those planets been Shili – treat those facts as simple statistics. She knew Anakin Skywalker could not.
And yet he still begged for mercy. He did not come back crisped with Force Lightning after an abortive attempt on the Chancellor's life.
And the Sith Lord – a being who had murdered trillions; if not with his bare hands and lightsaber, but who certainly through his proxies – had let Anakin go. Unmolested. Unchallenged. He knew Anakin was not a danger to him, that Anakin would not threaten him.
He needed Anakin.
The Clone Wars had, at their heart, as their kernel, not been about the acquisition of political power by a Sith Lord, not been about the amassing of a grand army, not been about the destruction of the ancient Jedi Order – but had rather been about the seduction of a single Jedi. A single Force user. To find a being of Anakin's power – perhaps even to find Anakin himself, the virgin-born savior of the Jedi's prophecies – and corrupt him.
Like pebbles dropping into a still pond, the facts had fallen into place. And the expanding rings of waves crossed and mixed and reflected off each other and formed a clear picture. Right now, because of her inaction, the plans of a Sith Lord were going ahead entirely according to plan. Even now, at this very moment, events were unfolding as a lord of the Dark Side wanted them to.
Masters of the Jedi Council were going to arrest the Chancellor of the Republic, on charges of treason. The leaders of the Jedi who answered to the Senate were moving against the Chancellor.
Mace had used the word treason – and only now did she realize just what how horrible a word that was. Insulated, the Jedi had treated it as a word, simply as a concept, an idea, a notion to consider as an academic possibility. But now it was real, and the actual implications and consequences were immediate and clear.
The Jedi and the Senate were moving against the Chancellor.
No matter how this ended, it would not be good – for democracy, for the Republic, for the Jedi Council. No matter how this ended, all three of those institutions would die.
Shaak Ti could see this as clearly as if it stood in front of her, as clearly as if it had already happened. Whatever happened in the Chancellor's office, things would never be the same again.
Night was falling on civilization. This was the twilight of the Republic and the last hours of the Jedi Order.
And why not? Shaak Ti thought. We have fought for a Republic which no longer exists. We have fought to uphold democracy by not practicing it. We have kept the peace by making war. We have preserved freedom by adherence to the Code.
Jedi Master Shaak Ti, the highest ranking Jedi Master in the Temple – and perhaps on Coruscant, for she did not know who, if anyone, would survive the arrest of Darth Sidious – looked at the Jedi Order, the Order to which she had given her whole life – in every sense of the phrase – and found it . . . wanting.
Her epiphany was not as shocking as it might have been to another being, or to a being who was not a Jedi. She was used to the notion of her decisions taking her places where emotions might have smarted and she might have been uncomfortable. The trick, as she had said to so many of those she had trained, was not to mind that it hurts.
Anakin Skywalker would fall to the Dark Side – it was a matter of time. And the Jedi Order would collapse. Individual Jedi might die, but that would be a secondary effect of the collapse and fall of the Order itself. Sidious and his new apprentice – the man who had killed his old apprentice – would not be concerned with individual Jedi. The breaking and destruction of the Order was what would matter to them. The breaking of the Order, the seizing of the Republic, the acquisition of power.
Mace had given his life to the Republic – and would give his life to defend it. Yoda would never understand the Order might have outlived its usefulness, that the Jedi must change, must adapt, must move on. And Obi-Wan . . .
. . . Obi-Wan would bleed for the fall of his brother.
What could she have done?
Still her mind returned to the past, to regrets, and had she been any other woman she might have been annoyed with herself for this. But she was not – and yet neither did she not dwell on regret.
Very well, what could I have done?
She replayed the scene in her mind – Anakin standing in front of her, telling her to stand aside. This time, she did not move. She shook her head – no. Anakin's face darkened and she had an instant's warning from the whine of servo motors in his artificial hand. His 'saber flashed to life and he lunged for her – not wanting to strike her down, not wanting to kill, but simply wanting to get her out of the way so that he could exit the Temple.
She fought him, in the confined space with her back to the wall. She knew how he fought – he had been trained by Obi-Wan and Cin Drallig among others. He was formidable, powerful. Her style was elegant and expansive – Ataru and Makashi. It was not suitable for a confined space such as this. It did not generate enough power to meet the force of Djem So head on, and certainly not the physical strength of Anakin Skywalker.
She had nowhere to run to. Even if she had wanted to surrender, she could not have done. There was no room.
She died.
What could she have done?
This time, she stepped to the side, and then ignited her own blade, laying it against his neck. Halt. Anakin snap-jumped and pinwheeled faster than she would have thought possible – had she not known he was capable of that – and then his blade was leering for her in a oblate sphere of azure energy. She gave ground – he advanced. By the time she had the measure of his style, her back was to the wall again.
She died.
What could she have done?
She asked him to pause, to wait. She tried to reason with him. But he would not be denied and, in the end, she had no choice but to tell him she would not let him leave. He had snarled at her – Try and stop me. And she had not wanted to, but he had pressed the issue.
She died.
What could she have done?
She played the scenario over and over in her head again and again and again, faster than she thought thought was possible. Each and every time it ended the same way – it ended in a duel between her and Anakin. She would have either had to let him go, or she would have had to fight him. And if she had fought him, at best she would have delayed him for a few moments, a few minutes.
And she would be dead.
What difference would that have made?
Perhaps everything, perhaps nothing. But that did not hurt her – she was a Jedi, and she knew her choice to let him leave had not been informed by physical cowardice.
Why then, she asked herself, do I regret what I did not do?
All her regret had succeeded in doing was playing over and over and over imaginary duels with Anakin Skywalker, meditative Force-dreams of how he would fight based on barely-remembered and deep-buried memories of watching him practice and those who had trained him. She now knew how he would fight and that if she tried to stop him leaving she would lie dead.
Of course.
She stood with a smooth motion, the Force pulling her 'saber to her hand and her thumb pressing the activation plate. A bar of azure plasma extended from the hilt with a snap-hum as she spun around, flicking away the thrust Anakin had been aiming at her back. She flipped, vaulting over his head, their blades sparking off each other again, and landed behind him in the center of the room. "Anakin, Anakin," she chided as if she were correcting a wayward Padawan. "I can feel the footsteps of the clones you've lead here, I can taste your heartbeats. Accord me a little more respect than that – don't think you can sneak up on me."
The hilt of Anakin's lightsaber groaned under his durasteel caress. His teeth were gritted, his yellow eyes underlit by the harsh light of his weapon. "Very well, Shaak Ti," he snarled. He snapped his blade to salute. "You've been against the Republic from the beginning – all of you. Don't think that you can sneak up on the Chancellor either."
Shaak Ti inclined her head politely. She could feel the noise of blasterfire, the screams and panicked cries as the clones of 501st Legion stormed though the Temple. Jedi were dying. She knew if she tried to prevent him leaving, from going away to lead the slaughter, she would join them.
But she had no intention of trying to stop him leaving. That would never work. She had already fought this duel a thousand times today.
Time to try something different.
"He certainly managed to sneak up on us," she said lightly. She could have kept him talking, but she chose not to. He wanted to be deal with her, to strike her down and move on. Destroy the woman tasked with the defense of the Temple and then carry out his orders. Destroy the Jedi.
The Order was dead. He was here simply to kill its former members.
She could not save the Order. She could not save him. She could save herself and perhaps some others. And so, without fear, without desire, without regret, she went to war.
Anakin was vastly more powerful than she was, stronger, younger, fitter, and simply a better swordsman. But he had not fought this duel before, and she had. And he had only fought a single user of Makashi, while she had dueled users of Djem So and Shien all her life.
Admittedly, that user of Makashi had been the finest duelist the Jedi Order had produced and he had killed him, but that was not the point. In fact, it could even work to her advantage.
She had dueled Dooku, she knew his style, his technique. And she knew Anakin's. She knew how they would fit together, she could see how Anakin would have defeated him – raw power, strength smashing through the elegant defense of Makashi. Natural speed and ferocity and pure, unadulterated skill.
She could not hope to win this fight on her best day – but she did not intend to win the fight he thought he was fighting.
He was thinking she was trying to put a stop to him, was trying to prevent him from leaving – to stop him in his tracks and save the Order that way. To save lives.
What he didn't realize was what she knew and what his Master knew but could not afford to tell him lest he did not carry out these orders which would cement his fall to the Dark Side; that the Order was dead and the Jedi here would die to the blasters of the 501st whether or not Anakin was leading them.
She wasn't fighting to stop him – it couldn't be done and there was no point. She wasn't fighting to prevent something that had already happened or was inevitable. She was fighting to escape and protect her life.
She feinted in, lunging at him without warning or pretense or preamble; a blow designed to strike at his heart, to slay him with a single strike. His options were few – and the most attractive, the most effective, the one which would achieve most of his aims, was clear. He batted her blow contemptuously aside, slashing at her. His blow would slice her leg off at the knee – he did not have time to kill her, but he did not need to. He just needed to get past her so he could do what he came here to do.
And she was ready for that, and jumped over the blow. He had expected that, or at least half-expected it, and so he had been guarding himself, protecting himself from the expected attacks. There was nowhere she could land a decent blow. She could strike nowhere but a glancing blow on the back of his artificial right wrist – a stab which would do nothing but burn through the leather and dent the armor beneath with the very tip of the blade.
And then she let go of her weapon and it fell straight down, the blade itself burning through the durasteel and servo-motors even as it shrank away to nothingness. The hilt clattered to the floor as she landed on the balls of her feet. The howl of the servo-motors spinning impotently filled her montrals – her blade had cut important cable-tendons, and no force in the universe could make his fingers move.
No force, that is, except the Force.
But it took even the Chosen One an instant to bring his powers to bear, an instant to tighten the artificial muscles and bones around the hilt of his blade. And by then she was dashing out of the door, her lightsaber lying on the floor at his feet. She felt his own blade slash hers in twain – feeling it in the sound which echoed in her montrals and feeling it through the Force. It pained her, causing a limp in her stride and a hitch in her breath – but it did not stop her escaping a few precious moments before Anakin was able to turn to face her unprotected back.
She ran down the corridor, slamming a clone trooper into the wall and unconscious with a shout of the Force.
And then, as Anakin burst out of her meditation chamber, his blade gripped tightly in his left hand, she vanished in a burst of Ataru.
"Lord Vader?" The question came from a lieutenant of the 501st. "Shall we pursue her?" Anakin, already stripping the glove and armor from his mechanical hand so he could effect repairs, nodded firmly.
"Find her," he snarled, "and kill her." The clone nodded smartly.
"As you wish, Lord Vader."
But, of course, Shaak Ti was not found – because the 501st, and Vader himself, were looking for a Jedi. A Dark Jedi, a washed-up Jedi, a broken-down and defeated Jedi – any sort of Jedi, really. But they were still looking for a Jedi. And Shaak Ti – despite the fact she had forgotten nothing of what she had learned and renounced even less – was not a Jedi any longer.
The Order no longer existed. She was perhaps the first being in the galaxy to realize this.
Shaak Ti does not indulge in regret.