The water in the cup sloshed as she bent to sit, folding herself into a crosslegged position against the wall of the Ghost's cargo hold. Anakin's warmth beside her, a flash of dark robes in her peripheral, the metal cold against her back, and she remembered for a sharp, painful instant all the times they'd played out similar situations in her youth, pressed together, side by side in some corner of the Resolute, unspeaking. When things went wrong, usually, but sometimes just for the sake of companionship. She'd missed that. Other things, too, of course, other things more, but that feeling of knowing someone so well you didn't even have to speak to them to fill the silence was one that she had been hard pressed to replace in the decades since. She'd cared for people since (she'd cared for people then), but with him – it was different. It always had been. They were connected, even still.

"Are you gonna drink that water, or just stare into it sadly?" His voice cut through her thoughts with the subtlety of a lightsaber, the tone teasing, marred with the slightest edge. She turned her head as his lips found the rim of his own cup, trying to smooth out the lines on her face. She'd returned from her discussion with the crew to find him awake and pacing, though he'd done as she'd asked and stayed in the cargo hold. She'd thought refreshment might put the both of them in a better mood. It had worked – marginally. It wouldn't last. There were things she had to ask, things she had to say, but she wasn't sure she had the strength to say them.

"Some of us prefer to savour things," she told him, more primly than she intended, falling back into old patterns with an ease that terrified her.

Don't get used to this, she reminded herself. He's already gone, and he's going to leave.She had to send him back. She had to tell him the truth, tell him and send him back so he could save them, so he could stop himself –

"Water," he said, "shouldn't be savoured. It also shouldn't be wasted." His eyes crinkled slightly with what had the potential to be a smile. There was light, flickering behind the dullness of his eyes. Something different, older and softer than the feverish intensity she'd found earlier. "Wait too long to drink it and it might evaporate."

She whacked him on the arm. "This is a spaceship, not a desert." But she let a smile cross her face, even as his own faded.

"Well. Old habits die hard."

"They do," she conceded, resisting the urge to worry at her lower lip. She leaned her head back against the wall, relishing the coolness. Felt the absence of a running engine, the thrum of hyperspace, ears ringing with the lack of ambient sound, trooper boots and the strident voices of clones (her brothers) that would have brought her back to a better time.

It was funny. Funny and a bit horrible, really, that she should feel such longing for what had been, for all intents and purposes, a war zone. She longed for the Temple too, sometimes, of course (of course, of course, how could she not, when all of it that remained now was –), but it was a different kind of longing. A longing that was threaded through the Force, less tangible, more abstractly painful. Different than the kind of longing that hurt because it was personal. The Temple might have been, objectively, her home – but it had always been out on the front that she'd felt the most among family. That she'd felt connected to something larger, that she had felt allowed to be – to be herself. Just Ahsoka.

She'd liked the action too, of course. Needed it, though she hadn't always been so self aware that she could realize it.

You and me, Skyguy, she thought wryly, water from the cup sliding cooly down her throat. We always had to break things. Break them and then try to put them back together again.

"You said you were on Coruscant," she said finally, cup nestled in both her hands, the comfortable silence broken. She'd returned for a reason. "Before you found yourself here. Not out on the front. Can you give me the details?"

He considered her for a moment. His face was as placid as it ever got, but she could sense the tumult of worry concealed (badly, she thought with a smile that hurt) beneath it, the sharp tug of cold terror that hadn't been completely suppressed. That hadn't been released into the Force like it should have been. He was pleased to see her, had accepted with as much grace she'd expected the reality of his predicament, but his thoughts were still trapped very much in the past he'd been torn from.

She had yet to make a call on exactly how much trouble that fact was sure to eventually cause her.

"It's a bit of a blur," he mustered up, setting his emptied cup on the ground beside him. His voice was flatter, duller than she remembered. He'd always spoken in a way that had struck her as incongruously formal (at least, when he wasn't swearing into an engine in Huttese or good-naturedly berating her saber technique) – what she'd assumed, later in her years, to be a young, uneducated former slave's attempt at mimicking the cultured tone of voice so favoured by Obi-Wan Kenobi and many of Coruscant's upper-class citizens, out of his depth and embarrassed by the distinct Outer Rim accent he'd never been able to shake. Now it sounded almost stilted, with a soft neutrality to it that felt painfully forced. Contrived gentleness, she thought, skin prickling. Fear and anger were smothered underneath it.

Don't forget who you're talking to.

"To be honest, the past couple of weeks have – " He broke off. "I haven't been at my best," he admitted, with what she assumed was the patented Skywalker brand of understatement. "I've been grounded ever since we rescued the Chancellor. I may have – " the slight grimace jarred against the touch of pride in his voice " – killed Count Dooku and then – crashed his ship. Into Coruscant. Obi-Wan helped."

"Why am I not surprised," she said dryly, though her heart pounded against her ribcage. It all matched up with accounts she'd heard of the last days of the Republic. On Mandalore, where she'd been during the initial attack on Coruscant, news had been scarce. What she knew, she'd learned second hand, long after the fact.

"There were no major casualties!" he protested. "But we've been waiting to hear about Grievous' whereabouts ever since," he continued. "They finally located him on Utapau this morning – or, that morning, I guess. I was – I was on my way to inform the Chancellor, when – "

"When you got sucked into the future," she finished, settling back against the wall with a sigh. "What a mess. Accounts of the Republic's fall are so spotty, it's going to be hard to fill in the blanks. Was the Council going to send you to Utapau?" It would have made sense, to send him and Obi-Wan. If she could at least figure out where he'd been during all of it, then maybe –

But the Force grew chilled, the air twisting with tension that hadn't been there a moment ago.

"They should," he said, alarmingly vehement. He swallowed. "But I'm not sure they will. The Council has been making a lot of questionable decisions lately."

Wouldn't be the first time, she wanted to say, something old and slightly bitter coiling in the pit of her stomach agreeing with him, but there was something slightly – off about it all. She didn't want to contradict him – but she wasn't sure encouraging him would be a good idea either. She pressed her lips together instead, one eyebrow raised at him subtly. He took the eyebrow for the unspoken question that it was and continued, jaw clenching.

"Even Obi-Wan admits their view has been clouded by the dark side. The Chancellor agrees with me. He thinks the war has changed them. He asked me personally if I would represent him on the Council, to make sure – well, to make sure they don't do anything he doesn't approve of." His face grew tight. Ahsoka's blood ran cold. "And he's right to suspect. Ahsoka, they – they asked me to spy on him."

How had they not noticed all of the cracks in him, thought to follow them back to their source? Ahsoka kept her face neutral through a force of will she didn't know she'd had, feeling ill. She was reminded, sickeningly, of a glazed bowl she'd seen once, in the hall of some senator. It had been repaired improperly, too delicately. Beautiful but marred by fault lines. The slightest impact and it had shattered all over the ground, splintering in the same places it had before.

"I told you before," she said, quietly, willing her voice to steady, "that the Chancellor – that the Chancellor took control over the Republic undemocratically."

"He must have had a good reason," her master insisted, looking to her desperately, even as her hackles rose in grief-fuelled frustration. "He's a good man, Ahsoka. He just wants to end the war. He's looked out for me all my life, and they – they wanted to use that. Use me against him." The temperature dropped further, the Force thick like a cloud, heavy. "But it's not only that. They put me on the Council, but they refused to grant me the rank of master. They don't trust me, even after everything I've – "

He stopped, a muscle in his jaw jumping with swallowed tension. The Force broiled for a brief, sickening moment. "And I'm sure they'll send someone else after Grievous," he continued, tone flattened again. "They're holding me back."

Bile rose in her throat, the Force feeling viscous and cold. The feverish glint in his eyes had returned. "You never told me you wanted to be on the Council," she ventured, treading cautiously and hating every second of it, hating that she felt she had to.

That paused him in his tracks.

"I –" I don't, she thought he almost said. "It's not that. It's just – becoming clear to me that nothing I do will ever be good enough for them," he said, tone dripping with scorn, and something that was more desperate, more dangerous. "And I know that there's – that there's things they're not telling me. If I was granted the rank of master, I'd have access to the forbidden section of the Archives. There's knowledge in there, things I could learn, things I could save her with –"

He broke off, lips pressing together, anguished. The missing piece, Ahsoka thought with a dull kind of ache. Somehow, all of it came back to Padmé. Something in her gut told her it always would.

"I told her once that I would become more powerful than any Jedi. That I would learn to keep people from death." That voice wasn't his – or it was, but that was worse. It was like listening to an entirely different person. For a moment, before, she'd almost forgotten his fate. It was so easy – he hadn't been tipped over the edge yet, hadn't lost whatever kindness still remained in him. But he looked half-mad, pale and gaunt and utterly consumed. Like a man being eaten alive. "I promised."

Ahsoka closed her eyes.

"You've changed," she whispered. She hoped. Wondered for a fleeting, awful moment if the man she'd come to know and love had ever really existed. Or if he had been slowly being eaten alive all these years, the real, kind pieces of him shredded and consumed bit by bit by something she couldn't understand, had never thought to look for.

The pressure in the air lessened, perhaps as he gained some modicum of self-realization. With the lessening of pressure came a gust of heated shame, scathing self-loathing, somehow managing to carry with it a tinge of indignation.

"I made that promise long before I ever met you, Snips," he said, more gently. Her eyes stung.

'Then that's worse," she said quietly, almost to herself. She opened her eyes and unfurled herself from the ground. "Whatever you do," she said to him, voice dull. "Whatever you try to save her with, it doesn't work."

He flinched.

"Then I'll – I'll try something different. I'll find another way. Maybe that's why I was sent here." He paused, swallowing. "Although – although if the visions of her dying are from the Force, then why would the Force try to – maybe – maybe – I feel like I'm missing something here, Snips. I need to – do you think – ?"

Tell him, something in her whispered. Tell him, you coward.

I'm not a coward, she insisted (to herself, and maybe her master wasn't in such bad company after all, slowly driven mad, strangled by the flaw of attachment). But the words dried up in the back of her throat.

"Do you think –" He continued. Paused, grimacing. "Not that I've ever been one to obey the rules or anything, but – do you think we're breaking something here, by telling each other about the future and the past? By trying to change things? Should you be telling me everything?"

"All is as the Force wills it," she replied, looking down at him, heart twisting. "I have to believe that everything happens for a reason."

He shook his head, scowling briefly in disagreement.

"Come on, Skyguy," she said, offering a hand, dread gathering in the pit of her stomach, heavy like stone. "We're going on a trip. On the way, I'll tell you what I know about the fall of the Republic."

"A VCX-series auxiliary star fighter," her old master said admiringly as he hauled himself up and into the Phantom. "She's beautiful." He bent to give Ahsoka a hand up, ignoring her dry look of amusement at the unnecessary gesture.

"I'll tell Hera you said so," Kanan called up, as he and Ezra joined them in the cockpit. They'd said their goodbyes already. "She takes good care of her."

"This is just a star fighter though," Anakin said, fingers running over the controls. "How are we supposed to get to – where did you say we were going?"

"Malachor," Ahsoka said, sliding into the pilot's seat with a pointed look of deterrence as she batted his hands away from the controls. "It's strong in the dark side, but we think it might hold the answers to a number of our questions. It might provide an answer to getting you home as well." She ignored Kanan's gaze, boring into the back of her head. He didn't understand her need to send her old master home so quickly, wouldn't, couldn't understand why she was so insistent that his arrival in their time wasn't simply the Force providing them with a seasoned military genius. She'd bypassed the rebellion's high command entirely, hadn't even told them of her master's arrival. She was a founding member, high enough in the ranks and a Jedi to boot – they might not have believed her claim that the proximity alarm going off was the work of some random disturbance in the Force, but they wouldn't question her overtly. And if the truth ever did get out –

Well. She could always claim it was a personal matter. Lies that weren't technically lies had become her specialty, as of late.

"And as for the ship –"

Kanan raised his eyebrows innocently, dropping the matter, for now.

"Well," he said, settling himself against the corner wall of the cockpit. "We might have had some off the market...alterations done."

The disapproval he might have expected never came.

"An aftermarket hyperdrive?" Anakin asked, grinning. He looked to Ahsoka. "You have good taste in friends, Snips."

"That remains to be seen," she muttered softly. "Is Chopper where he needs to be? He can pilot us once I've calculated the jump to Malachor, but I think we should jump closer to the Mid-Rim first, in case we're being tracked. The more jumps we make, the harder it'll be for them to track us back to the base."

Chopper blatted something that sounded rude, but settled himself into the astromech socket with less complaining than usual.

"Good taste in droids, too," her master said, laughing. "He's got a mouth on him that would rival R-2."

"You think he's funny now, try living with him," Ezra muttered, settling himself against the wall beside Kanan. "Were the droids you had back in the Temple this sociopathic?"

She felt, rather than saw, Anakin's puzzled frown. She busied herself with the preflight adjustments.

"Your – master grew up in the Temple too, right?" They hadn't mentioned it ('it's a long story,' she had said and that barely began to cover it), but he'd come to the conclusion on his own, apparently.

The air stilled with a quiet tension, though it wasn't dangerous, just – uncomfortable.

"These two don't talk about it much," Ezra said after a moment, tone vaguely apologetic, though he hadn't backpedalled quite fast enough to remove the foot from his mouth. She got the distinct sense that her master found that particular tendency of his endearing – or relatable. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking – "

"I was Depa Billaba's padawan," Kanan said, shortly, though his tone was soft. Ezra was right. Kanan, especially, was hard-pressed to speak lengthily about his past, though his delivery now was calmer than she might have expected. The temple on Lothal had changed them, she thought. She wondered what he'd seen. "She was killed in the initial purge of Jedi."

"I'm sorry," Anakin said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "I didn't know her personally, but she was a fine warrior."

"I always thought so," came the reply, tone tinged with gratitude. Ahsoka felt her heart twist. They might not have known Anakin like she did, but that, in a way, was almost worse. They believed in him, admired him. His approval meant something (to all three of them, she admitted grimly). More than that, they believed that he might be able to save them.

Her brief discussion with Kanan on the subject clearly hadn't changed his opinion in that respect at all.

Gritting her teeth and trying not to dwell on the inevitable fallout, she took them into the atmosphere, sinking into the action of piloting, somewhat soothed as Atollon's craggy plateau, red and dusty in the late evening sun, grew smaller underneath them.

"To answer your question," Anakin said, speaking to Ezra but drawn, inevitably, to the viewscreen, a hand coming to rest on the back of the pilot's seat, "most droids in the Temple were programmed very efficiently. They don't – didn't – tend to have much personality. My own astromech was a gift from my – from the Naboo." The briefest twist of the Force. Ahsoka kept her gaze forward. "He's much more of a," her master paused as Chopper bleeped obscenely, crackling through the comm connecting him to the cockpit, "kindred spirit."

"Making the jump," Ahsoka said as they cleared the planet's atmosphere, hoping Chopper had decided to actually follow the course she'd set today. It was never an entirely sure thing. "The first one should just be a few seconds. We're not going far."

Empty space gave way to blue, streaking past them in the viewscreen.

"She handles well," Anakin said. "Are you sure I can't – "

"No," Ahsoka said, a grin tugging at her lips despite herself. "I've flown with you before, remember? If we don't return the Phantom in one piece, Hera will tear us apart."

"I don't crash every ship I've ever flown," he insisted.

"You literally just told me the story of how you recently crashed Count Dooku's entire flagship into Coruscant."

("I remember hearing about that," Kanan interjected. "I was off-planet when it happened. That was you?")

"I would have classified it as more of a difficult landing."

"Crashed a flagship. Into a planet."

"I didn't make it crash, it was on fire when I got there! If anything, I made it crash less."

Ahsoka shook her head, smiling, tuning out the spirited conversation as it continued behind her. If she ignored the discrepancies just enough, sunk into the chair so that the controls sat at an angle closer to that like she might have seen as a teenager, imagined the distant hum of clone voices, it was almost like –

Stay focused, Tano. Stay in the now.

"Hold on," she said, quieter. "Realspace in three, two, one – "

Chopper dropped them out of hyperspace with a soft jolt, the violet blur of a planet filling the viewscreen. Ahsoka scrambled to reverse them, the tug of the planet's gravity already pulling them in.

"Too close, Chopper!" she snapped, yanking them backwards, hearing Ezra stumble into the wall with a muffled clang and an equally muffled yelp of alarm. She bit back a slew of unflattering Huttese curses she'd picked up from Anakin, all those years ago. Now, more than ever, she needed to keep in control. Of herself, and of their situation.

At least, as best she could.

"This planet's a gas giant, Snips, it's gravity – "

"Is greater than most standard habitable planets, I know," she said, knuckles whitening around the controls. "I'll get us out of its reach, hold on – "

But as she laboriously turned the ship around, the scope of their immediate surroundings becoming clearer, the glint of two small moons in the distance, a squadron of TIE fighters dropped out of hyperspace, filling the viewscreen. Her heart dropped into her stomach, fingers flying over the controls out of unfortunate habit, trying to steer them into a defensible position while drifting ever further out of the reach of the gas giant's gravity. If they had to make a quick exit –

"TIE fighters," Ezra said, panic edging into his voice. "How did they – ?"

"Were they following us?" Anakin asked, leaning forward, more interested in the unfamiliar ship design, she knew from experience, than worried about the unfamiliar threat. The Force warped around them, cold breath on the back of her neck. Inquisitors. It had to be. But, at the top of their formation –

"No," she said, blood running cold. "The location of the base is well-guarded, we'd know if they knew. I think they're following you."

"That's impossible," he snapped. "If that kind of tracking through the Force was the norm, then the entire Jedi Order would have lasted two entire seconds into the Clone War."

No, no, no, this isn't how I wanted to do this, the back of her mind gibbered, ice forming in the pit of her stomach. She reached for calm.

"Things are different now," she said urgently. "The Empire has – has powerful dark side users at its side. They're called Inquisitors."And they weren't alone this time.

"We think they've been tracking us like this for a while now too," Ezra chimed in, knuckles white against the back of the pilot's seat, which he'd grabbed onto for balance. "It's partly why we're trying to get to Malachor. They haven't ever found us this quickly before. But your presence in the Force, it's – "

"Unmistakeable," Ahsoka ground out, lips pressing together, ignoring the puzzled looks she was getting from behind. There wasn't going to be time to soften the blow, she could feel him, the real him, the oppressive sense of him in the Force, he was reaching –

"Who's taking the lead?" Anakin asked, leaning forward, knuckles clenched, still clearly itching to be the one in the pilot seat. Well, tough, Ahsoka thought, almost giddily, jerking them out of the line of fire, pressing forward. If they could get far enough away from the planet –

"That pilot," he continued, "in the main – what did you call them? TIE fighters? They're –"

"Laser cannons would be a great idea right about now!" she interrupted, moving them into a firing position. Chopper blatted in alarm, staticky through the comm unit. Kanan complied, twin lines of fire shooting out in front of them. The TIEs dispersed to avoid it, but the one in the lead –

Vader, Ahsoka thought. She was almost certain now, dread pooling in her gut, and her suspicions were confirmed utterly as his TIE twisted instead into an unmistakeably skilled roll instead of a panicked dart, unnaturally precise, firing back at them even before his ship had fully righted.

She felt Anakin tense beside her, the Force roiling as she pushed forward and away, the spread of TIE fighters reforming behind them in rapid pursuit through the viewscreen. Chopper wailed through the comm, the display beeping reassuringly as they finally neared a safe distance from the planet's gravity.

"Ahsoka, I think that's Vader leading the charge," Kanan said through gritted teeth, hands clenched around the controls of the laser cannon. "We have to get out of here, we can't –"

"We've been pushed off course. There's no time to recalculate the jump to Malachor," she said shortly. "I'm taking us into a hyperspace lane, we can lose them there."

"Ahsoka," Anakin said. "Ahsoka, that pilot –"

She felt him reach out with the Force, prodding the darkness.

"Don't!" she snapped. "You won't like what you find, don't – Ezra, I need that dorsal cannon!"

His smaller footsteps clanged against the metal floor as he rushed to the back controls, the cockpit clearing marginally, confusion filtering through the Force, his and Kanan's, but she couldn't address it, couldn't stop it, could only tighten her knuckles around the controls of the Phantom as answering laser fire missed them by a human hair's breadth.

"I invented that manoeuvre," Anakin breathed, almost to himself, the Force still reaching out in horrified curiosity.

"Sith hell, Master, don't look!" she cried, jerking them out of the way a final time. "We're almost clear, just a few thousand kilometres – "

Not enough time. Her master's vaguely horrified investigation had been noticed. The Force around them grew cold and heavy, the connection between them sparking to life, slow and sluggish, almost painful, as Vader –

– as Vader prodded back.

Stabbing pain spiked through her forehead, ice dripping down her spine, and she saw Kanan wince in her periphery, heard Ezra's muffled cry behind her, but she ground her teeth and punched them into hyperspace, the black emptiness of their surroundings melting into an iridescent glow, pulling them from the punishment of Vader's full attention.

She wasn't even sure what direction they were headed in, but they had no destination. In hyperspace, at least, they wouldn't be followed.

The coldness in the Force hadn't vanished completely. She felt Anakin's gaze on her, a wild, unrestrained panic – fury? – winding its way around them all, seeping into the air. She kept her head forward, mouth dry, heart pounding against her chest. Unmistakeable, she had said.

"But," he said, voice cracking. Too late, the Force sang. "But that was – me."

can i just shoutout to wookiepedia real quick because holy crap star wars canon is hard to keep track of (especially when you're breaking it) and where else on the internet could a girl find herself a wonderfully detailed map of the Ghost and of the galaxy's major hyperspace lanes? so blessed, truly.

moving along here a little fast, but I don't want this to turn into a spiralling monster of a fic and I'm trying to keep the pacing in line with the editing style of the episodes - shorter, impactful scenes without much exposition. let me know how that's working for you guys!

as always, thank you for reading (and for your lovely comments!), and please let me know what you thought! this week is a bit cray, but the next update shouldn't be too far along.

best,

- W

(cross-posted to ao3)