This is Not Our Fate

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man

With my three wishes clutched in her hand

The first that she be spared the pain

That comes from a dark and laughing rain

When she finds love may it always stay true

This I beg for the second wish I made too

But wish no more

My life you can take

To have her please just one day wake

Gaeta's Lament – Battlestar Galactica – Bear McCreary

Chapter 2. Fear is the Mind Killer

She danced.

Around her, humming, an arc of blue brightness flew, each pause marking the deflection of a bolt of red energy. She moved, her muscles filled with the memory of a million practices, of steps she'd learned since a child first able to pick up a training saber. Each step came naturally, fluidly, her thoughts whirling along with her blade. There were worries of how to combat so many when so badly outnumbered, of how best to keep her enemy at bay. There were concerns about Lieutenant Galle, and whether he would be able to reach her in time to send her the backup she needed, and if he could not spare men because casualties were too high.

She had to survive. So she danced. Her lightsaber was a shining disc of destruction, and the more enemies she destroyed, the more, she hoped, of her men would live. Felucia was not a kind world, to anyone. Too many already perished, through battle, through disease, through the sheer violence of Felucia's native flora and fauna. The planet was old, the plants deeply rooted and deeply steeped in the Force. Felucia itself seemed to strike against those who would dare bring war to it, its earth becoming the permanent home to far too many dead. The world was alive, and it was devouring any it deemed its enemies.

Barriss wanted away from Felucia. She wanted the war to be over, and to find time to simply rest. Right now, though, she simply wanted for those in her care to survive. So she fought, slicing through another pair of droids and leaping aside as a heavier blast shot through the clearing, veering close. She swung her lightsaber, hacking off the umbrella of a giant violet mushroom, sending it spinning down into the line of Super Battle Droids clanking towards her. It struck them with a loud, wet smack, sending several caroming off into a cluster of giant pitcher plants. She kept to the higher ground, using the edge of a gulch as a defensive position. They had no Vulture droids with them, and the slow SBD's were made even slower by the fetid, uneven terrain. A stream of B1's continued forward more easily, but they too had to move down into the dip of the little ravine, now heavily cluttered with dismembered droid parts.

Eventually, she feared, she would be pushed back. More and more droids were moving steadily out of the massive fungi forest, and she was simply outnumbered. The forest was steamy, with an earlier rain evaporating up due to a rising heat, giving an almost nightmarish quality to her solitary battle, with shots of red light streaming towards her through the rising miasma.

The ground trembled. Sparing a glance towards the forest again, she could see no new tanks moving out of the brush, nor any of stirring amid the plants. When the ground shook a second time, she could tell it was coming from behind her. She'd either been flanked, or backup was arriving.

A few seconds later, it proved to be backup: an AT-TE walker with an accompaniment of clone troopers swarming around it, their dirty white armor distinctive and welcoming. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Barriss edged back several steps, striking away another blast as she tried to angle herself into a better position. With help, this battle just got easier, though it certainly would not be easy.

She palmed her commlink, activating it and bringing it closer to her mouth, to be better heard over the din of gunfire. "Lieutenant, open fire when you're ready." She paused, waiting for acknowledgement, but heard none. There was only silence over the communication channel. "Lieutenant Galle?"

Barriss spun, blocked again, sweeping low into the weeds, while twisting herself around to see what the problem was. Men were assuming defensive positions, taking cover behind towering mushrooms and dropping to flatten themselves against the ground. The AT-TE, though, was misaimed, the trajectory obviously set too low to provide fire beyond the ravine.

The cold began in the small of her back, along her spine, then spread over her shoulders and down her arms and into her belly. Odd. Wrong.

There was a moment, just before the cannon fired, when she could hear the whine of the weapon warming, gathering itself to send a blast. The world seemed to draw in upon itself, to shrink down to a line drawn between the weapon and its' target.

She swept her lightsaber around. The cannon fired.

Then there were flames.

Nothing moved.

Barriss cracked open her eyes. The world spun dizzily. She closed them, breathed in, tried again. Still, her body did not move. The fuzzy drone of battle whirred overhead. She could see blue and red streaks of light flying in the air above her. The battle was still ongoing. She breathed, mentally running down her body to check for damage.

That was when she screamed. It did not come out loud, like a shriek, but a ragged, dry whisper. Everything was wrong. The slow fade in of pain was beginning, the feeling of little burning needles pricking her from her feet to her face. The shock stirred her, and as she struggled, trying to call for help, the severed limb of a droid rolled down onto her.

She'd fought. Galle had come; she thought she was saved. Now she was lying in a ditch with dead droids. The half gasped scream came again with a more frantic struggle to move. Those were her men. These were the droids she'd destroyed. The clones were her men, her allies.

They shot her. They shot her with a cannon. It hurt. It hurt everywhere.

The mound of droids around her seethed, bucked, lifted as she freed herself, the pricking sensation roaring up into a scalding burn. She flailed, droid bits sliding under her weight as she tried to fling herself forward. She was drowning in scraps of metal. Barriss kicked her legs, scrabbling with her hands, trying to find more solid purchase. She felt two streaks of fresh pain course down her face, and realized she was crying, the tears cutting into raw flesh. It hurt, everything hurt, and she was drowning in dead droids, and her men had turned against her and she hurt. "Master Luminara?" she managed, rasping. "Master Secura?"

She fell again. Floundered for a minute. Lay still. Her head lay turned on one side. The battle was still raging. It was close, but the tide had begun to spin further north, following the ravine. Mutiny, it was mutiny, but why? Master Secura. Master Secura was on Felucia too. Someone had to tell her. She and Bly could put it right.

She thrashed, wriggling herself up and freeing herself from the mound of droids. Her legs refused to gather themselves under her, and so she crawled. She kept her head low, eyes on the ground, watching one burnt hand follow the other, her olive skin mottled a charred purple.

Crawling into a thicket of towering pitcher plants, Barriss collapsed. The ground here was cool, moist with recent rain. The pitchers glowed iridescently, veins of gold running through their lavender leaves. She closed her eyes, feeling her head pound and her vision swim. She could ill afford a concussion. She forced her eyes back open, tried again to focus.

As it had always been, the Force was a soothing pool of calm. She immersed herself in it, let it fill her. The fire raging across her skin began to cool, and the more she brought her mind to attention, the more soothing it began to feel.

It gave her a bit of strength; she used it to reach out.

It was then that she felt the absence. It was the same feeling of the Force in the blackness between stars, of sheer emptiness, of lack of life. "No," she said aloud, croaking. "No." She tried again, stubbornly reaching out and closing her eyes, seeking out the one bond she could always feel, matter how far away.

It flowed strongly, as it always had. Once a small stream, it was fed by tributaries of respect and admiration, even friendship, widening into a shining river, always moving forward, rushing back and forth between herself and the Master who taught her so well. She followed that river, let its current carry her back to its source. But where there was once a great lake of strength and trust, the river's end now seemed to only fade away, streaming off into the absence.

Her hoarse scream sounded again, heard only by the plants surrounding her. She dug her fingers into the moss, tore it up, then dug in again. "Please, Master. Please. Luminara?"

For a moment, the absence abated. The plants shivered around her, rustling as they slowly knitted themselves thicker, denser. Deep welled pitcher plants and enormous fungi spread their many colored leaves, growing almost shimmering in the dawning sun. The thicket became impenetrable, and impenetrable, it became a haven.

As she wept, she could, however faintly, hear a whisper say, "Sleep."

Exhausted, she did.

The world shone like stained glass.

Barriss immersed herself in the light. Her consciousness flickered and danced down pathways of tendon and muscle, blood and bone. She traced the surfaces of bruises and fractures, cuts and burns, passing slowly from sleep into a deep trance of healing, plunging her mind down into the Force and drawing upon it.

Felucia teemed with life; so deeply steeped in the Force, she drew upon its abundance, fed that raw energy into her body, and pressed forward with the process of mending.

So very slowly, bones knit, tendons and muscles untwisted and regenerated, blood began to strengthen and to pump more strongly. Her lungs pushed out smoke, and she coughed out black bile from her stomach. Blistered skin calmed, faded from purple into puce, then paled into puckered traceries of olive green.

Burning infections were cooled by focused energies. Tender new muscles moved spasmodically, then tentatively, steadily. Bones shifted and popped beneath her skin, but held their places.

She breathed, and each breath grew less painful.

Her eyes opened, and she began to move.

Two Felucians found her, a ruined ghost of a woman, wandering a blackened battlefield. They had seen off-worlders before, waging their endless battles across the surface of the planet with utter disregard for the life they destroyed in their path. This one though, burned with the Force, though her body often stumbled and fell.

They fed her, found clothes for her, directed her towards the off-worlder city of Niango.

She thanked them, and when she left, she took with her a blaster from the ruins of a droid.

The city was silent.

No one walked through the outskirts of Niango, save for Barriss, who kept her head down and walked deep in the evening's shadows. The outskirts narrowed into the city proper, the grid-like pattern of streets fading into a jumble of twisting alleys and blind ends, evidence of natural growth and poor planning in earlier centuries. Deeper in, there were a few who braved the streets; those people she saw walked much as she did, with their heads down, shoulders hunched, and their desire to be left alone obvious.

The lack of people chilled her. It was from the district of Niango that a toxin was being spread into the water supply, and had been her mission to locate the cause and eliminate it. She was unsure of exactly how long she drifted in her trance, but it could not have been more than a few days, then another two to walk from the battlefield into the city. It seemed, that from the last report she received on the day of the battle to today, the city had emptied. It was a Separatist stronghold, or had been; what had changed, and why? Surely everyone couldn't be dead of poison? No, there would be bodies, and the battlefield smell of festering flesh. Niango did not reek of death. Only emptiness and fear.

She needed information. Nothing seemed to make sense. Her stomach growled, loudly, and she clutched at her belly with a hand, grimacing as she leaned heavily against the wall of a nearby building as a wave of dizziness washed over her. The Felucian scavengers she'd met on the battlefield had given her a spare bit of food, some sort of leaves that had been ground into paste and then dried into wedges. It was not enough to last her long, her body still healing and craving the energy calories provided. She felt dry, wrung out, hungry and exhausted. As she had many times in the last several days, she closed her eyes, breathed out pain and breathed in strength. She felt it so keenly now, the slow, grinding energy that was omnipresent on Felucia. She drew it upward from the ground, feeling it seep upward through her feet and her legs, spreading out through her chest after it reached her belly, lending her strength.

There was, however, only so much the Force could provide. She needed food, and water. Resolute, she pushed herself off the wall and staggered forward a few steps before she was able to take more stable strides. Still, she stayed close to buildings, ready to reach out and steady herself if needed.

She found, eventually, a square. It smelled of rotting garbage, and the sound Felucian birds squabbling filled the air, chasing each other around as they fought over choice pieces of refuse. It looked as though some kind of riot had occurred here, with shattered storefronts and goods strewn across the space. She swept her attention across the plaza, and decided it was not only a riot, but looters. She edged her way carefully in, pulling her blaster up into a ready position as she crept forward.

Most of the businesses appeared to be offices, with a couple of cafés between them. She made for the nearest, and shooed birds out of her way as she moved carefully inside. Tables and chairs were all overturned, and someone had upended the caf machine and smashed the display cases with now-stale pastries. The register was on the floor, cracked open and with a couple of credit chips lying idly beside it, forgotten in the rush.

She cased the café, slipping into the back room and looking for people. Once she was convinced the place was truly empty, she lowered her weapon and took a fresh look around. The back room was mostly untouched, whatever looters that had ransacked it caring little for office supplies and storage. There was a desk, where a manager could conduct business, and on the back of the chair was a rain slicker. She grabbed it and slung it around her shoulders, thrusting her arms through the sleeves and pulling the hood up around her head. She shivered once as she pulled it tightly around her. It was several sizes too big, obviously meant for a much larger, probably male frame, but it was wonderfully warm and anonymous. She did not know where the Felucians had found her clothes, but judging by their fit and design, they once belonged to one of the Gossam scouts that the Separatists recruited to spy out Republic troop movements. They were a poor fit for a Mirialan, and things clung to her in places they shouldn't, while they hung awkwardly in others. The raincoat felt, somehow, safer, its' hood and dark color vaguely reminiscent of her own preferred clothing. It was a tiny comfort, and though she despised the thought of stealing it, she desperately needed to conceal herself. It was only a coat, and not a very fancy one, either. Compared to the rest of the damage in the café, she told herself, the theft of a coat was a very small thing.

She moved into the kitchen area of the café, a narrow little passage off the front where a barista would make drinks. Various condiment containers were knocked around, but the kitchen, like the back room, was left mostly intact. She opened cabinets, and found bottled drinks in one, and in a roll top on the counter, bags of bread. Taking one of each, she retreated to the back room and quickly began to stuff herself, ripping chunks of bread out of the loaf to cram them into her mouth, washing each bite down with a syrupy sweet, fizzy drink.

Her stomach growled, then ached. She forced herself to slow, to breathe deeply and let the food settle. Her stomach had spent too much time empty, and now stuffing herself could easily result in her becoming sick. She needed the food to stay inside her.

She tried again, ate slowly. Halfway through the loaf, her stomach was aching from its fullness. She wrapped up the bread and stuffed the remainder into one of the raincoat's pockets. She took another drink from the cabinet and put it in the other pocket before venturing back into the main area of the café.

There were small holoscreens in each corner of the dining space. Two lay smashed on the ground, electrical bits shattered on the floor. One was hanging from its' mount, cracked down the middle and dark from an earlier electrical surge. The last was still on its mount, off. Several minutes of searching through cabinets later, she found a remote.

The holoscreen switched on. She kept the volume low, casting nervous glances towards the door and shattered storefront as she crouched down beside the counter. She could not stay much longer. There was a backdoor, presumably leading to a back alley and a loading dock. She could exit that way, if necessary. Pressing her lips together firmly, she turned her attention to the screen.

A Gossam appeared, his face neatly composed and hands folded as he spoke, the cadence of his voice calming, almost bored, as though he had repeated this same bit of information many times already. "…citizens are required to remain indoors, for their own safety. Curfew remains set at dusk. Do not leave your homes. Imperial Corps are still putting down rioting in isolated areas of the city. Toxins are being cleared from the city's water distribution systems, though it is recommended that citizens do not drink city water until purification is complete."

Her brows puckered in confusion. Imperial Corps? Though if someone had managed to shut down the biomolecule plant that was distributing the toxin, she would hardly complain. Still, it made no sense. She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, resettling herself on the floor and leaning against the base of the counter for support. She was so tired. Now that she was full, she was growing sleepy. She'd need to find somewhere safe for the night, and soon.

"The galaxy-wide manhunt is continuing," the anchor continued blandly, though Barriss's head snapped up. "We will now be returning to the latest updates."

The screen split, and one half was filled with the image of Aayla Secura. Barriss sucked in a breath and jerked backward, as the words under the shot of her face registered. Name: Aayla Secura. Gender: Female. Species: Twi'lek. Status: Terminated.

She grew still.

It was risky, heading to Niango. It was a Separatist city, but it was where Master Secura and the 327th were headed. She hoped to rejoin them. Find some explanation for the great, aching emptiness yawning in the Force, to be able to tell herself the absence was merely the result of severe trauma, of a concussion, of a murkily remembered betrayal by men who should have been her allies.

The image on the screen changed. Name: Barriss Offee. Gender: Female. Species: Mirialan. Status: Terminated.

She was dead.

A man was speaking, from the left side of the screen, poised in the Senate chamber. Robed in dark red, his face was warped and his flesh melted, his thin, spidery hands rising in supplication to the crowd as he declared:

"Our loyal clone troopers contained the insurrection within the Jedi Temple and quelled uprisings on a thousand worlds. The remaining Jedi will be hunted down and defeated!"

The absence was real. Everyone was dead.

She keened. Doubling over, she pressed her forehead against the sticky floor, wrapped her arms around her head and clutched what remained of her charred hair in her hands. The man in the robes was the Chancellor. Clone troopers contained the insurrection. Galle. She barely knew Galle, having been assigned him only a few weeks ago. Bly, though. Bly had served with Master Secura almost the entire war. Surely he hadn't turned against her the way Galle did? That would be like…like Gree, trying to shoot her or Master Unduli. Gree, who she used to talk to between battles about the physiology of rare species. Dear Gree, who got so excited over biology and anatomy and culture. The mere concept was ridiculous. She laughed once, harshly, pushing herself up enough to cover her face with her hands, wincing as her palms came into contact with the tender new flesh of her cheeks.

Terminated. Master Secura was terminated. Master Unduli was gone, swept away into the absence. Everyone was dead.

"In order to ensure our security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire, for a safe and secure society, which I assure you will last for ten thousand years. An Empire that will continue to be ruled by this august body and a sovereign ruler chosen for life. An Empire ruled by the majority, ruled by a new constitution!"

The right side of the screen flickered with names and the status of other Jedi: friends, acquaintances, allies, co-workers, teachers. Terminated, terminated, at large, terminated. The left side of the screen was dominated by the visage of the withered Chancellor declaring himself Emperor. His eyes were yellow, rimmed in red.

Everything was a lie. Sith. The leader of the Republic was a Sith. It was all lies.

"Become the eyes of the Empire by reporting suspected insurrectionists. Travel to the corners of the galaxy to spread the principles of the New Order to barbarians."

Everything they'd fought for the last few years was a lie. The Chancellor was a lie. How much of the war had been deception? How many people died for this moment to happen? How much was useless fighting so that Palpatine could crown himself Emperor? For a moment, her vision blackened, and when the wave of dizziness passed, she found the remote lodged in the dead center of the holoscreen, now erupting in sparks as it screeched, sputtered, and died.

Palpatine was a Sith. The clones were his tools, weapons to turn against the Jedi. She would be hunted.

The sound of feet pounding against pavement caught her attention. It was the heavy, fast tread of a trooper at full run. No, two of them, the sound of one man running overlaid with the sound of a second. Then, with the electronic, amplified resonance of a man shouting through a helmet's speakers, came a challenge. "Who's in there?"

They were still looking for rioters. She moved, low to the ground, sweeping towards the back as a second shout sounded behind her. The blue flash of a stunner round whizzed past her head and sizzled into the doorframe between the counter and the kitchen. She was out the back door in seconds, pulling the rain slicker's hood around her face as tightly as she could.

The back door led to a loading dock, which ran along the whole of the building's back alley. She sprinted down it, gathering her strength together and summoning a fresh burst of energy from Felucia's almost endless supply of power. At the end of the loading dock, she propelled herself upward, tucking her body close as she leapt through the air.

She landed on top of a nearby building, her legs wobbling, then collapsing beneath her. She scrambled upward as confused shouts echoed below and behind her. The troopers had reached the back alley, and did not see her there.

She ran, and she did not stop.

Nar Shaddaa was dead to the Force, in so many ways, and yet also so vibrantly alive with it.

The moon was all but dead, covered from pole to pole in writhing, filthy humanity. There was little beauty in this place, excepting the many colored neon lights that filled the streets at night and set the world to shining.

Barriss had called it home for a little over a year, now. It was the first place she stayed longer than a few months, always running. She was tired of running, tired of covering her face with either cake makeup or scarves, unable to relax, to live in peace.

Half the population of Nar Shaddaa was hiding, or on the run, or wanted somewhere for some illegal activity or another. No one cared about another, so long as she didn't cross them the wrong way.

She gambled, losing often to avoid suspicion, but winning often enough to pay for a tiny flat in an inexcusably filthy tenement, and enough food to eat. The Force easily influenced weak minds, and those weak minds were made even weaker by heavy drink and spice and stims. She took advantage, and she survived.

That was all gone now. Sitting on the cold rooftop, she glared at the clone sitting across from her. Once, a lifetime ago, she knew Cody. They were not friends, but she'd respected the man, much as she had any of the clones, especially the officers who were responsible for keeping others alive. Now he was sitting on the roof across from her, cradling his injured arm and dozing.

Ahsoka was alive. He believed it, anyway. In seven years, she'd heard of no one. Oh, a few had survived, after the initial purge, for awhile. Master Ti was on the holonews for a long time, and she'd spent a month desperately trying to find her, only to discover she'd arrived on Felucia not long after Barriss had finally escaped it. Shortly after that, Master Ti was also listed among the dead.

She grieved. For so long, she grieved. To hear someone was alive, and a friend at that, was almost ludicrous. A farce. Everyone was dead. There was no hope, only survival. If powerful Masters like Luminara, Ti, Kenobi, Windu and Yoda all fell to the Sith Lord Palpatine and his watchdog Vader, then what chance had she?

Everyone was dead, and she was alone.

Cody offering her a spark of hope was a joke. She blinked hard, several times, reassuring herself he was asleep. She would not cry in front of the man. If this was a trick, she would not give him something to laugh about later - the Jedi's weakness before she died, how easily he could tease her with hope.

He was a clone, a tool of the Empire. This had to be a trick. Some kind of trick. Ahsoka could not be alive. Neither could Master Kenobi. She scoured the news for months, seeing their names appear again and again. Her own survival was a fluke, the result of getting her lightsaber between herself and the blast, of being left for dead, and years of training as a healer focused on her own recovery.

She touched her left hip. She'd wandered that battlefield for hours, before the Felucians came. Her lightsaber, if it survived the blast, was now someone's trophy.

If it was a trick, she would kill him. It was very likely she would die seconds later.

She was so very tired.

His head bobbed up and down as he slept, his knees tucked up against his chest, his mouth slightly parted as he breathed. Messy dark hair flopped down into his closed eyes.

She clutched her blaster pistol tighter, and she waited.

This. Chapter. Was. Such. A. Pain! I don't know why it was so darn difficult to get out. Barriss, obviously, is one of the victims of Order 66 in canon. I've tried to align what I've written with canon as much as possible, only with Barriss just barely surviving instead of dying. She was also on Felucia with Aayla Secura when Aayla was killed, only in a different location. According to the Wookieepedia, Barriss also had a padawan, and there were several other characters involved in her mission – I've pretty well removed them from this tale because I'm not familiar with them.

I had a lot of other ideas as to what could be included in this chapter – initially there was going to be a scene including one of the riots, and more about Felucia and the Force and healing, but it all seemed so superfluous, I trimmed things down to make the chapter a bit more streamlined.

Til next time,

~Queen