It took longer than Asajj had expected for them to find another body that wasn't a clone. Apparently most of the Jedi had been away from their home when it was destroyed. Ahsoka was kneeling over the Jedi in question, who looked rather a lot like the maintenance worker they'd found in the hangar: light blue skin with yellow facial markings and close-cropped dark hair with a Padawan's braid on one side. Asajj guessed that he was about the same age as Ahsoka.

"His name was Tatsu Li," Ahsoka said. "He was in the same youngling clan as me, we used to study together..."

I don't need his life story, Asajj thought. We don't have time for this. But for some reason she kept quiet and watched Ahsoka close the boy's vacant eyes. Tano looked like she was about to stand up, but she seemed to change her mind at the last second. Instead she reached over and pried the lightsaber out of his right hand - which appeared to be a mechanical replacement. Tano turned the lightsaber over in her hands, studying its every detail.

"He was the first one in our group to find his lightsaber crystal," she said hoarsely. "We thought he was lucky. I was so...jealous. I thought it should have been me." Tano cringed slightly at the memory. She finally looked up and made eye contact with Asajj. "Your friend Savage took his hand off and his brother killed Tatsu's Master." She stood up, still holding the fallen Jedi's lightsaber. "And now he's dead," she said bitterly. "I think now I know what they meant when they said there was no such thing as luck."

Asajj wasn't sure if Tano expected her to say something or just listen. She didn't give a kark either way; Tatsu Li meant nothing to her. Even though she couldn't help but picture another corpse in the Jedi's place: a woman crushed beneath a Dathomirian statue.

"We should move," Asajj snapped, forcing the image out of her mind.

Ahsoka glared at her, and her free hand twitched like it had instinctively tried to curl into a fist. "Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to." Tano turned away from her and stalked down the rubble-strewn hallway, stepping around her friend's body. She kept his lightsaber in her hand.

Asajj moved to follow, but something about the body gave her pause. She crouched down to get a better look. With Tano partially blocking her vision before, Asajj had assumed the wound on his upper chest was a simple blaster shot, but this was the strangest blaster wound she'd ever seen. It was less a hole and more of a gash, a deep chasm that spread across his heart. He must have been shot at from the side...but in this corridor, how would he have had his side to the enemy? They could only have been at his front or his back, unless he had been facing the wall like a complete moron. It didn't make any sense...

"I thought you were in a hurry?" Tano called back at her acidly.

Ventress returned the Togruta's equally-acidic glare. "I was just coming."

As they continued through the rubble and corpse-strewn passage. Asajj's thoughts drifted back to that wound. There was something wrong about it, she just knew it. But for the life of her, she couldn't place it. It was maddening, so she tried focusing on something else. The Jedi were gone. Finished. Dead! She should be celebrating, like she had the day Dooku died. She should be happy, or as close as she ever got to it. But everything about it just felt wrong. This place was meant to house ten thousand beings, and now it was utterly silent. Instead of smug satisfaction, she felt downright anxious. Everything about it had her on edge. Wind mournfully whistling through a shattered window sent a chill down her spine, the distant sound of rubble hitting the stone floor made her every muscle tense, even Tano's uneven breathing grated on her nerves. Asajj wasn't one for superstition - she had inwardly scoffed at some of the Nightsisters' more arcane rituals - but despite that one thing was growing clear.

The Jedi Temple felt downright haunted.

She couldn't celebrate this, she realized as she followed Tano around an intersection and spotted another dead Jedi. Watching the ex-Jedi react to her horrifying loss just made it hit way too close to home.

She would have laughed at the irony, except she suspected Tano would try to murder her for it. As she got closer she noticed a glimpse of brown robes and reddish skin; there was a second Jedi. The body had been buried under so many dead clones that they had made a morbid plastoid-armored cairn concealing it from view. Tano had knelt over the other, a woman of a green-skinned humanoid species that Asajj didn't recognize. Ahsoka was visibly trembling this time, and Ventress almost thought she was about to lose it.

But it turned out she was tougher than Asajj gave her credit for. Without another word she picked up the Jedi's lightsaber, pulled her free arm out of her backpack's strap, swung it around, and deliberately placed the weapon inside it. Asajj assumed the first Jedi's blade was already inside.

Asajj raised an eyebrow. "Starting a collection?"

Ahsoka glared at her again, but it seemed weaker, like some of the fire had gone out of her. "Palpatine will probably melt them down for scrap or something if I left them here," she said glumly. "I'd burn the bodies too if we had time."

Asajj bent over and reached between the armored bodies, feeling around for a few seconds until her fingers closed around a familiarly-sized cylinder. She pulled the lightsaber free and offered it to Ahsoka.

Her Togruta eyebrow markings shot up in surprise, and Ahsoka seemed hesitant to take it from her.

"Just take it already," Asajj snapped at her. This was why she didn't do nice things.

Tano listened, practically grabbing it from her. She looked it over briefly before placing it in the bag. "Thanks. Do you think you could help me move some of these?" She gestured at the pile that the lightsaber had come from. "I couldn't tell whose it was."

Asajj shrugged and started lifting bodies - and parts of bodies - off with the Force, tossing them off to the side. With the two of them working together - Ahsoka taking much more care with the clone bodies than Asajj - it took less than a minute to uncover the Jedi. She was a Mon Calamari, beyond that Asajj had no idea who she was.

Ahsoka on the other hand was wincing painfully. "She was Jinx's master."

Asajj's confusion must have showed, because after a moment Ahsoka added: "The Twi'lek that came with me."

Ah. The kid had said something about losing his master, she remembered. Before she could help herself, the image of Ky's body leaped into her mind's eye. The Mon Cal Jedi even had a blaster wound through the heart, the same way he had…

Blaster wound.

How could she have been so blind? A quick check over the Clone bodies confirmed her realization. One of them had been slashed through the heart by a lightsaber; the wound was exactly the same as the one on Tatsu Li that had vexed her so.

She'd expected to see these sorts of wounds on the clones. But when she'd seen one on a Jedi, it hadn't even registered that she was looking at a lightsaber wound.

Tatsu Li had been killed by a lightsaber.

She looked up at Tano, who had begun moving again. Asajj's mind was reeling with the implications as she followed. Someone with a lightsaber had led this attack, she was sure of it. But who could it have been? Palpatine himself? That idea was ludicrous. Dooku was dead, but maybe Sidious had a new apprentice? Perhaps His old one, that half-dead animal Maul? She dismissed the idea as soon as she thought of it. He wasn't likely to follow his old master after he'd left him for dead. Savage Opress was dead on Mandalore, Sora Bulq was dead on Boz Pity, and she couldn't think of a single dark-side user other than those three who was powerful enough to fill Dooku's position.

Ahsoka stopped over another Jedi, some kind of reptilian species that Asajj couldn't begin to recognize. Ahsoka said something identifying him, but Asajj was too busy checking his wounds for it to register. There was absolutely no mistaking this one; someone had brutally stabbed him in the abdomen. Tano didn't seem to notice at all. She probably didn't want to; if she paid attention to it then she would come to the same conclusion that Asajj had.

One of the Jedi had turned traitor.

Someone powerful that Palpatine had contact with before this attack. One of the masters sent to kill him? That idea was ludicrous. Sith Apprentice Windu? Fisto? Tiin? It was more likely that the attack had been led by Asajj herself while sleepwalking than one of those hardasses joining with Sidious. She didn't know much about Kolar, but that meant he was probably not worthy of notice. Sidious would want someone powerful, someone more powerful than Dooku had been. Some Jedi she didn't even know the species of couldn't fit that bill. Quinlan Vos seemed a good candidate; he'd been on the Separatist side for a good part of the war anyway, not all of that darkness could have been faked…

Another dead Jedi; killed by clones, this time. This one was a Cerean - just a kid, really - who had been shot through the chest far more times than were necessary to kill him. Ahsoka paid no more attention to his wounds than she had to the others. He was dead, and she didn't need to look at the details. It was just like Shaak Ti's blatant lies about Skywalker, she would see what she wanted to-

Asajj froze mid-thought.

Oh hell.


Ahsoka knew she had to do this, was absolutely certain of it. The lives of however few Jedi remained depended on her success. But as she knelt over the body of O-Mer, she was beginning to wish that she'd listened to Shaak Ti and Jinx. Every time she had found one of her friends lying dead in the defiled ruins of a place she had considered sacred - still considered sacred - she felt like a part of her was ripped away forever. Part of her was back there with the body of Tatsu, with Rig Nema, with Bant Eerin, with Coleman Kcaj. Now, was leaving part of herself with O-Mer. He'd survived so much; three years in the jungles of Wasskah, hunted every single day of it. Even though Jinx had told her already that he was dead, seeing it herself was too painful for words. And looking at his inert form reminded her of when she had looked at Khalifa the same way. She'd made the girl a promise: keep the others safe. And she hadn't kept it. Jinx lived, but O-Mer, the one who had recovered a little optimism by the time they got out of there, was as dead as Khalifa herself.

Outwardly she was blank, as emotionless as a Jedi Master. It was like her body had separated itself from her mind - or even that each death numbed her to the next, until by the time she got out of here she would be an emotionless husk. Maybe it wasn't as morbid as that, maybe the Jedi in her was just coming out in force, no pun intended. They weren't dead, they were one with the Force, right? Or perhaps part of her just didn't want to show that much emotion in front of Asajj Ventress. No, that was just absurd; she cared nothing for what Ventress thought of her. Especially when Ventress herself was probably beside herself with joy at the sight of so many dead Jedi. The idea made her blood boil. At least the bog-witch was keeping it to herself now…

Keep your focus on the here and now, she heard Anakin's voice remind her from long ago. She had to move on. She gave one last, lingering touch on O-Mer's tall forehead, then with her other hand she picked up the lightsaber that lay beside him. It wasn't even his, she knew. O-Mer had never built his own and now he never would. But it was still something to remember him by, and a trophy she denied Palpatine.

She left O-Mer behind, and Ventress followed her silently. The temple corridors were in a terrible state. Blaster burns covered the walls, columns and entire hallways had collapsed, the stone floors were a maze of rubble. In her memories a skinny Togruta youngling ran through these halls when they were spotless, racing against her friends to see who could circuit the Temple the fastest. She envied that girl. That youngling thought she knew everything. One day she would be a Jedi Knight. The Jedi always stood by each other as they defended the weak. The Republic they served was a beacon of civilization in the galaxy. And both of them, the Jedi and the Republic, would always be there. She remembered something one of her instructors had said to her initiate class years ago: "Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart." She had dismissed it entirely then. Now she thought she understood it all too well…

Ahsoka almost tripped on a piece of the partially collapsed ceiling, jarring her out of the recollection. She mentally kicked herself for wallowing in self-pity. Those memories were even more bittersweet now than they had been after she left the Order; dwelling on them would lead to to worse things. She cleared the thoughts from her mind as best as she could. Here and now. Left at the next junction to get to the archives. Through the archives to get to communications. Modify the signal to warn everyone away.

At the next juncture she turned left, and stopped in her tracks. The corridor in front of her, the smashed windows along the left side, the rubble and smoke…

She'd seen it before. Ahsoka had seen the exact hallway before, in exactly the same state of ruin.

On Ilum.

Ahsoka felt weak at the knees. She quickly went over to one of the columns separating the windows, leaning against it for support. She had let herself forget much of that vision, she'd tried to forget it. It had seemed needlessly cruel, making her think that Barriss could be saved when she was dying at that same moment. But now she realized it had been so much more than that. The Force had shown her the future, and she was too blind to see it. Her mind added the bodies of the masters and Barriss' chained form, along with the ice and snow that had covered the dream-version, everything the real thing lacked. Everything except for the disturbing, terrifying vision of Anakin that had been part of the vision, the part that made no sense at all. She thought that the Force must hate her, to show her that. She must have defied its will by leaving the Jedi; she had been meant to die here, beside her master…

No! Anakin was not dead! She would have felt it, she hadn't felt it, he was still alive somewhere! She shoved aside the doubt that plagued her, the whisper that maybe she had felt his death when she had collapsed helplessly in Chuchi's apartment. He was not dead, and wherever he was in the galaxy, she would find him!

"What's wrong?" Ventress asked beside her. The way she looked at Ahsoka, she was almost convinced that Ventress was actually worried about her. Like that could ever happen.

"Nothing," Ahsoka lied. "I just needed a moment. It's not much farther."

Ventress looked highly skeptical, but rather than argue she nodded. "If you say so."

Ahsoka took a steadying breath, and as she stood up straight and began moving forward again, she couldn't help but glance out of the window. Outside and down a level was the meditation area that had been one of her favorite spots in the Temple. The enclosed courtyard and the ancient tree that dominated it was surprisingly untouched by the destruction. She paid it no mind, and continued down the corridor. But something drew her gaze back to it, but she looked away again too quickly to see anything else. Focus on the task at hand.

Just put one foot in front of the other.

The corridor was quite long, and she couldn't run down it for fear of tripping or attracting attention. Ventress' clone communicator was still silent, but that could change at any moment.

She glanced out the window, again looking away before she saw anything else.

Task at hand. Here and now.

Her willpower failed her; she looked again. This time she couldn't have torn her gaze away if her life depended on it.

There were bodies down there.

She had stopped walking completely now, and her body moved closer to the shattered window even as her mind screamed at her to run away.

They weren't very large bodies.

She was dimly aware of Ventress asking her something, but all of her attention was focused on one of the bodies, one that lay completely out in the open, face down.

Her stomach turned to lead. That wasn't who she thought it was, it couldn't be.

No.

She was outside on the terrace now, running towards it.

Oh Force, no.

Ventress' swearing and footsteps behind her went completely over her head, all she heard was her own heart racing.

No no no no no no!

She jumped down into the courtyard and the edges of her vision blurred as she sprinted towards the center where the body lay, heedless of the risk a patrol would spot her.

No no no no no no!

The back of his head was covered by short, black hair, and his skin was the color of light copper.

Please don't please don't please don't!

She reached the body and turned it over, staring into the lifeless green eyes.

Ahsoka wanted to scream to the sky above, she wanted to scream so loud that they would hear her on the other side of Coruscant.

It was Petro.

She looked around frantically, and everything she saw only made it worse.

Zatt was lying against the tree itself, his solid black eyes drilling into her. She looked away, only to see Ganodi lying only a few meters from her, head turned away. She turned away, and saw Byph's corpse near the entrance into the Temple. In the doorway itself was a figure that took her far too long to recognize in her gut-wrenching terror.

Tera Sinube.

Now she found herself staring down at Petro again. She was petrified, she couldn't move.

Why?

The simple thought appeared in her head, its small voice echoing through her. Why?

"Tano!" Asajj hissed from behind her. "What the hell are you doing?!"

She didn't answer. She couldn't make her mouth work. She was just...empty. She wasn't angry, she wasn't sad. She was empty.

"Tano!"

There was nothing left for her to give, nothing left of her that the Sith's triumph over the galaxy could take away. She felt as dead on the inside as any of the bodies around her.

"We can't stay in the open like this!"

They were just kids…

"If you don't snap out of it, I'm leaving you here!"

She should have been here.

"Ahsoka!"

She should have died with the rest of them, she had abandoned them, she was the worst Jedi, the worst person in the galaxy-

"I'm...sorry," Ventress said uncertainly.

That got Ahsoka's attention. She stared at her, her mind gone blank with shock.

"No you're not," Ahsoka said. It wasn't accusing or angry, she was just stating a fact. "You don't care." This time there was some venom in her words, but she still felt oddly calm. The words came out of her on their own accord, she had no control of them. "You came with me so you could laugh at this. That's the only reason you're helping any of us. You want to watch us suffer. You might as well still be a Sith, you're no better than them."

She felt a sharp pain on her cheek and the next thing she knew she was on the ground. Her side smacked heavily against the granite floor. She sat up quickly, turning around to stare at Ventress. One of her hands went up to where Ventress had hit her, she could feel the skin inflaming beneath her touch.

"You know nothing!" Ventress looked almost as shocked at her own sincerity as Ahsoka was. "You don't know anything about me, Tano! I know what you're going through! I know exactly what you're thinking right now! Because that's my life, Ahsoka! I get ripped away from the people I care about, and they all die! Every single Force-damned time! That's what I do, I lose people! That's who I am! You'll find out someday now, that when you've gone through that, watching it happen to other people," she hesitated, like she wanted to say something but couldn't.

After a moment she forced it out. "It's like it's happening to you all over again. Even if I despise the Jedi, even if they were a bunch of self-righteous, hypocritical bastards, this-" she gestured around them, "-is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen, and I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I'd let you sit here grieving for the Jedi all damn day, but if you do that then you're going to join them by the end of it, and for some Force-forsaken reason that I don't even know I actually care about it!"

Ahsoka didn't know what to say. What was someone supposed to say when Asajj Ventress showed you inside herself? What had happened to the galaxy, that this situation was even possible?

Ventress plainly couldn't believe what she'd said either. "Look," she said uncomfortably, trying to regain her usual attitude. "Let's go reset this beacon of yours." She awkwardly extended her hand. Ahsoka stared at it for a moment before she realized that Ventress was trying to help her up.

Ahsoka took the hand, and Ventress pulled her up. "I'm sorry," Ahsoka said, but Ventress cut her off.

"Don't." Just like that, the window was closed.

Ahsoka reached down and closed Petro's eyes, taking his lightsaber and holding it in front of her. He had wanted to accomplish so much with it…

"Goodbye, Petro," she said, dropping her backpack on the ground and placing it inside. She carried it with her over to Ganodi, picking up the Rodian girl's weapon.

"Goodbye, Ganodi."

She went around to each of them, repeating the process.

"Goodbye, Zatt."

"Goodbye, Byph."

"Goodbye, Master Sinube."

She would remember them all, it was the only thing that she could do now. The backpack was heavy when she put it back on.

"Let's finish this," Ahsoka said. She didn't look back.