Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex are Dead
"…but when you come to the end of one time and the beginning of a new one,
it's a period of tremendous pain and turmoil.
The threat we feel, and everybody feels –
well, there is this notion of Armageddon coming…."
– Joseph Cambell, The Power of Myth
Chapter 28. The Dark Side of Democracy
The foul feel of rot rolled through the room like a cold fog.
It was not the first time Ahsoka had felt the fetid presence of the Dark Side; but it was rarely so concentrated as it was now, so potent and so putrid. It swept through the room like a poisoned tide, swirling, caressing, soft as water and just as easy to drown in. It was not an unfamiliar sensation, that particular compound of hate and fear and corruption, and as the smoke-grey face of the Son emerged from the darkness, she did not feel surprise, only a grim resignation. Of course he was here, at the Sith's moment of triumph, at the victory of the Dark over the Light. Where else would the embodiment of all that was Dark be?
The sound of blasters readying was usually a comforting one, of men around and behind her preparing themselves for a fight. She's spent three years learning the tiny clicking tune they made as they were hefted into the air and fingers tensed around triggers. There was a short, muffled sound of surprise from behind her, and she hoped that was the sound of Chopper getting Ashla out of the way. Putting himself before her was a meager defense, considering what the Son was capable of, but it was one that needed to be taken.
The shift in positions also gave one final signal; Chopper, Jesse, Gus and Tup had allied themselves with Rex and herself, and they'd chosen to defend Ashla. For a moment, everything felt right again. It wasn't perfect, not exactly, but it was so close. Rex was beside her, her men were behind her, and they were fighting for something that was right, even against overwhelming odds. She almost wanted to smile in defiance.
There was no smile on the Son's face, but rather a curious little smirk. "Interesting," he said mildly, and then flowed forward, the shadows and smoke of his aura rushing around him like a stream of fog.
By every appearance, it was an attack, his sudden rush forward, and the four armed clones reacted as such. The room erupted into blaster fire, the electric blue of each bolt flying through the air and flashing bright and short against the walls of the communication room.
The Son, though, was unintimidated by the display of firepower. Even before he'd died, such weapons would have no real effect on him, a creature capable of extinguishing lightsabers with a gesture. Now, he did not even need to make even that motion. The bolts simply sank into him, piercing the miasma of his body, and disappearing into the dark.
Though there was nothing that could threaten the Son, there was also nothing that could threaten her. Not really. She no longer had a life to lose, and it was impossible to kill someone twice. As the Son approached, it wasn't fear for herself she experienced, but fear for the men around her and the little girl she one day thought to make her apprentice. His charge was meant to intimidate, to frighten, just as he'd tried to frighten and intimidate the last time they'd met, so long ago now, in that interrogation room. But this time was not like last time, and there were living men and a little girl in the room, who were out of their depth and thick in the middle of a massacre. He couldn't be allowed to spirit one of them away, bite one of them, infect one of them, speak enough words of uncertainty to change the minds of the four men and turn them back against the little girl.
Ahsoka was armed only with a theory, sparked off by watching Master Windu walk beside Chancellor Palpatine outside the Senate building only the other day. Their auras seemed to spar with each other, seeking openings, weaknesses – and all too often, finding only strengths and walls. The Chancellor's rotten, smoky red-yellow aura was deflected by the bright steel and amethyst of the Jedi Master.
It was just a theory, but wasn't it always the way? For even a little bit of light to ward off the dark?
With that truth in mind, she lifted a hand, stretched it out, and let herself glow. Silvery-blue in reality, the luminosity around her grew, expanded, hardened, became a wall of solid light. Even though the Force felt so cold, so empty and hollow, there was more to it than death and darkness. It never was meant to be this way, a thing that echoed only death and pain. Life created it, bound it together and made it grow. Four living men, one little girl and two ghosts were such small things in comparison to the vastness of it, but it was from them that the Force was meant to come. It came from the courage of Ashla, from the determination of the four soldiers, from the utter and complete love-tinged-strength she felt from the man holding her hand.
The power of the Force came from the people who created it, and those people had enough courage, determination, love, strength and goodness within them to ignite the stars.
The brightness became incandescent, flickering but potent against the shadows of the room, like stars against the black of night, and it was enough. The Son slowed, stopped short of the barrier she built, and looked at it, the smoky body around him growing still enough to begin to coalesce, the high ruff around his neck taking shape, then a pair of shoulders and an arm and a hand and fingers that were lifting.
She felt his touch when he placed fingertips onto the surface of her light barrier. His flesh was cold, and the caress so gentle it was eerie, and she felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. As his fingers slid over the surface of her luminosity, it rippled, pooled, and left trails where his hand passed by. He tilted his head and looked at her, and she glared in response. The smirk on his lips broadened slightly. "Clever. You've learned something."
Disgust warred with the determination to protect at least these few living people around her. She watched him for any sign her wall of light was susceptible to him, for any fresh attack, and her voice was clipped when she ordered, "Chopper, get Ashla out of here. All of you, get out."
They hesitated. This battle was strange, and brothers or commanders were not left on the field to fight alone. Desire to stay, to help, made them waver, and she commanded again, "Now!"
This time, they obeyed. At first their movements were slow, but they grew faster, each man moving towards the exit, covering the other though they all knew by now that their blasters would have no real effect on this enemy. The Son watched them retreat only with amusement, lips curving upward into a near smile.
She heard feet on the marble steps leading from the room. Most were heavy; one pair was soft, barely audible. Though there was reluctance and worry, fear and regret trailing in the wake of the men, there was a different kind of sadness mingling with those emotions. It was softer, older, a feeling of lingering remorse, of hope faded and tattered, but mixed with the oddest feeling of pride, even happiness.
Ahsoka turned her head slightly, just enough to look beyond the shadowy form of the Son, and on to the stricken face of Ashla of the Bear Clan.
She'd always thought well of the girl.
They were never friends, not quite, but Ashla always seemed to be around. Ahsoka would see her dancing at Ullambana gatherings, the patterns of her steps measured and controlled, though there was always a spark of excitement in her dark eyes that spoke of her love for the rhythm and the movement of the ceremony around the fire. Her bare feet would twirl her across the ground, lift into the air and then come down onto the earth. Her silhouette against the group of Ullambana candles would be small and a little awkward beside those who were older, more skilled, better trained. But that was always the way of the learner beside her teachers.
Ashla was sometimes awkward with her training saber, but she could be elegant too, and Ahsoka would sometimes see her in the training arenas and wonder if she looked like that when she was Ashla's age, more excitement and determination than skill or finesse. In the moments when Ashla found her balance, there was a grace to her spins, and a resonating hum to the path of her training saber when she succeeded in a block, a strike, or a leap. Ahsoka could remember her own joy in moments like that, when everything came together and simply felt right, like the Force was singing in her veins and carrying her though the air.
She told Rex the truth, a few days ago on Saleucami. She'd wanted a Padawan, and she'd hoped it would have been Ashla. This was probably the only thing she could do for the girl, now. Give her a chance to survive, and hopefully to live, too. She couldn't be there to train her, to watch her grow, to see her montrals gain height and her lekku gain length, and her skills gain sharpness and power. Having a Padawan had always seemed like a matter of course, an eventuality she expected and looked forward to. Perhaps until now she hadn't realized how much she wanted that. Ashla would have no Master at all now. She, and any other survivors like her, were all that was left of the Jedi Order. Little lights meant to float through the oncoming dark.
Ashla was being led away by Chopper, her lightsaber still lit in her hand.
Ahsoka smiled, and briefly it was returned. Then, as the blue pillar of light in Ashla's hand was doused, there were only shadows before the girl was gone.
Jesse was last from the room. He hesitated as Gus, then Tup, followed Chopper and Ashla through the doorway, but that pause lingered, as though he was wondering if maybe, in the end, he should stay. He didn't. His exit was slow, and when the Galactic Roundel patterned on his helmet also slipped through the door, the room seemed so much emptier. They had few choices available to them. Who would listen to a few clones and a kid, shouting about monsters and ghosts in the dark? The Jedi had already lost this battle. The tide was turned against them, and any allies they had. Survival was up to those four men and that little girl, now.
She could only hope they would think to run.
The Son moved, slowly. He'd watched them as they slipped out through the doorway, and how he turned back to herself and to Rex beside her. The black miasma around him writhed slowly, curling and fading out into the air as it roiled. The amusement on his face was still present, and there was a deep kind of satisfaction around him.
Jedi were not supposed to feel anger. Or, at least, they were not supposed to let it control them. There were moments like this, though, when it was hard. The home of her childhood was in ruins, men she trusted were the ones to make it that way, the Order to which she belonged was being annihilated, and one of the most terrifying creatures she'd ever met was standing so close to her and smiling comfortably with his triumph. It hurt, seeing someone enjoying the suffering of others, the ruin of so much of what she held dear. But if it was anger she felt, it was righteous anger. The Jedi did not deserve this. No one did. No little girls deserved to see their friends and teachers slaughtered and their homes invaded. No men who trusted their leaders implicitly deserved to be used to enact crimes against sentients, to be reduced to nothing more than tools by evil men, to be made into the machines which they sometimes feared they were.
Rex's hand was crushing hers, his grip was so tight, and that pain helped to bring her attention back to the moment. The Son was backlit by her wall of light, rendering him into little more than a profile, a blend of solidity and smoke. Ahsoka grit her teeth and ground out, "What have you done?"
He turned away from her barrier and slipped a little away from it, back into the deeper shadows of the room. The smile on his face was a constant. "Far less than you would think." The smile broadened momentarily, then faded into something more thoughtful. "Three words. In the end, three words was all it took to make it all come toppling down. Far less work than I expected. But then, it was always meant to be this way."
Three words? Execute Order Sixty-six? Silvery light seemed to brighten, then contract, grow closer to her and denser as the barrier retracted and returned to her halo of her aura. The flickering lights in the room shifted and danced at the change, and the Son scowled momentarily as he skirted the almost watery brightness that surrounded the two ghosts opposing him. Smoke and shadows thickened around him even as the luminosity around the ghosts condensed and began to glitter. Ahsoka grimaced at the sight of him. He'd already won, but seeing him so reluctant to engage her was at least a paltry bit of victory.
"So you're behind this?"
The Son chuckled, the irritation sweeping off his face with the return of his amusement. Was it the Son all this time? It didn't quite fit, though. He was stuck on Mortis, before. Then he was dead. The Sith were a more mortal threat, less smoke and shadows and more manipulation and violence. "Hardly," the Son replied, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. "This was always Palpatine's clever little idea. Insidious, that one."
His tone was so casual, she almost dismissed it, but there was a catch in his words, something that alerted her and gave her pause. There was no reason to trust anything the Son said, but they already knew the Chancellor was working for the Sith. The Son was essentially only stating what they already knew, that he was involved. But there was a slightly different implication in the phrase. The Son wasn't just saying the Chancellor went along with the idea, but actually came up with it himself.
She felt it in her belly before it registered in her mind. Something cold began to spread from her center and out through her limbs. The clones enacted Order 66. It would have to have been in their training for years, since even before the war began. If the Chancellor was the one to ensure that was in their training, he'd have been working with the Sith for just as long. Ahsoka did not move her gaze from the Son, but she felt Rex's hand in hers. Rex was what, twelve? when he was killed. Twelve years. Not three, or less than three, but at least twelve years, back to when the Republic placed an order with the Kaminoans for a clone army. That was before Dooku revealed himself as a Sith. Dooku, who had a spirit-light so remarkably similar to Palpatine's – and, really, so similar to the Son's. Corrupt, clouded, foul.
The realization was so cold. "The Chancellor isn't working for the Sith. The Chancellor is the Sith."
The Son smiled.
She couldn't look at that smile. Her eyes lowered. Rex's hand was firm in hers, but she felt the rising tide of alarm building within him, the sick feeling of his own understanding only a heartbeat behind hers. Twelve years since Rex was born. A year, perhaps, before that, for the Kaminoans to set up the cloning program, find and recruit Jango Fett, and get production under way. Thirteen, perhaps fourteen years ago. How far back did this go? Palpatine was a politician for a living. His history went back years, decades. He was a Senator of Naboo before Chancellor, and for Padme when she was queen. He spent years in the Senate, as both a Senator and as Chancellor. He was friends with Anakin, who always spoke so highly of him, as a friend and benefactor.
Anakin. Her head snapped back up so she could once again look at the Son. The Son who had an unhealthy interest in Anakin on Mortis, even managed recruiting him for a time – just like he did her. Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, who was supposed to put an end to the Sith and bring balance to the Force. Her lips curled back, baring her teeth in some primal display of warning. "Where is Anakin? Where is Master Skywalker?"
The Son seemed disinclined to taking her warning, and in fact seemed to be becoming a bit bored. "Dead." He shrugged idly, and chuckled once, slightly, at her look of horror. "Or consumed, depending on your point of view." The easy smile slipped back onto his face, and the shadows climbed up from below him, curling silkily up his body as he spoke, until he was little more than a pale face and red eyes. "It's strange. It always seemed the Prophecy of the Chosen One would involve balance. Of standing between the Dark and the Light and forcing them to play counterpoint to each other. Father always sought to control us. Strange instead that it should be a choice." He raised one smoke-shrouded hand, then the other, as though weighing something vast between them. "Good or evil. Love…or hate." His hands faded away and he seemed to step back further into the darkness offered by the shadows in the far side of the room, and the smile slipped again from his face, which turned cold and hard. "It's the dark side of democracy, you know. The freedom to choose wrong."
The Chosen One, and the freedom to choose wrong. Not a balance, but a choice, and a wrong one. If Anakin truly was the Chosen One, and he chose right, restored balance to the Force and destroyed the Sith, then the Jedi Temple would not be in ruins right now.
It couldn't be true. "He'd never join you."
The hard expression on the Son's face softened into amusement once more. "Believe what you will. The evidence surrounds you. You already feel it in your heart." There was no expression on his face, only a mildness that came with stating an obvious fact. His tone was almost gentle, pitying, if such a man had anything like gentleness or pity about him. "You already know that it is true." The calmness on his face twisted then, back into a more sinister expression. "And it will continue to be true, until the end of this time."
With those words, the shadows converged, and there was a roar as the Son flung his head back and his body changed shape. The darkness of his being stretched outward, reformed into a pair of leathery wings and a red-striped, flattened head. Jagged teeth crowned his mouth, from which a reverberating roar came. His wings lifted, cupped air and then beat downwards, propelling him upward and through the ceiling, sleek streams of smoke trailing after until they too disappeared, fading away into the shadows of the communication room.
Little by little, the silvery-blue light of two visible ghosts changed. The pale blue deepened in tone, taking on richer cerulean hues. Threads the color of sunlight or of emeralds began to weave themselves into the cobalt colors, giving the spirit-lights of Ahsoka and Rex complexity and variation as they faded out of sight.
Rex moved, placing his free hand on her shoulder as he stood across from her. His voice was low, pitched to be comforting as much as to catch her attention. "Ahsoka. He's just trying to gloat."
The Son was everything Dark, everything hate and anger and lies, but the truth could hurt, too. For a bitter moment, she squeezed her eyes shut, seeing stars behind her eyelids. "You don't gloat over a lie."
Ahsoka lifted up her right hand, just enough so that she could expose the inside of her forearm. The flesh there was soft, sienna, unmarred. There was no scar. Everything about Mortis seemed like a dream, and dreams did not leave marks on the skin. There were no puncture holes where the Son bit her, infected her with a darkness that was not of her choosing. She shuddered, her shoulders tensing together and she shook her head and her lekku swayed in defiance. It couldn't have been a choice. What could possibly make Master Skywalker choose wrong? Choose the Son? Choose the Sith? Did Palpatine truly have that kind of hold over him? Her hand became a fist, and she saw muscles and tendons move underneath the surface of her skin.
It couldn't be true. She looked up at Rex. The expression of his helmet was blank, as always, but his spirit-light was flowing from him like water, sliding down the surface of hers in waves of reassurance and companionship. Part of her wanted to simply step forward, wrap her arms around Rex's waist, hold and be held, and let the Son's words be just words, and lying words too.
It couldn't be true. Not entirely. Maybe he was lying about it being a choice, even if it were true Anakin had gone over to the Dark. Maybe Anakin just needed to be woken up, as she had. Maybe it could still be fixed, somehow. At least a part of it. She and Rex could help. And Obi-Wan. And Padme. Anakin would listen to them, wouldn't he? Surely all of them, together, could find some way to get through to him?
"We have to find him."
She hoped Rex didn't recognize her newfound sense of uncertainty. The Dark Side was a choice, not a disease, whatever happened to her on Mortis. Had the Son bitten him, too? Infected Anakin like a virus? Or in his victory, did the Son tell the truth? That Anakin had changed willingly? Three words. What three words had the Son spoken to change everything?
Rex nodded once, and took her other hand, so both of hers were enveloped in his. "Ready."
Ahsoka closed her eyes, and reached out, seeking the Force signature she knew so well…and could not find. She frowned a little, looking down at her hands, joined with Rex's. Her aurora colors pooled into his colors of sky and sun, circling hands and wrists. Closing her eyes again, she fixed the image of Master Skywalker firmly in her mind, of his familiar face, head tilted slightly to the side as he gave a wry grin and an arched brow. She pushed forward, reached, propelled herself towards him, towards that memory of an amused smile and reassuring presence.
She found only a void. There was no reassuring presence, no amused smile, no happiness. This was not the man she called teacher, friend, brother-of-her-heart. She could not reach him, though she tried. Her fingers grasped only air and darkness. The blue-green of her spirit light bent, folded, grew slow from a gravity that weighted him and blackened him and consumed all that was around him. There was only a fragile thread of familiarity to his presence, a limitless power that she recognized in him in moments of desperation. The rest was mutilated, wrong, consumed by dark when there should have been an equal portion of light.
When she opened her mouth to cry out to him, the sound, too, was swallowed by black silence.
Somewhere in the distance, there was a pinpoint of light pulling her as well, and she stretched towards it. Her outstretched hand did not meet emptiness, but something solid, firm, and the prick of light that was a moment ago so far grew closer, warmer, brighter, until it filled her vision with the blue of a sky with the sun centered within it, and she realized she was lying on the floor with Rex hovering over her, squeezing her hand in his and calling her name.
He helped her sit upright, slowly, and the world seemed to tilt for several seconds. Rex adjusted his grip on her, and she found her head wedged into the crook of his neck as he tucked her closer. The motion was steadying, almost soothing, and she shook her head minutely to clear it from the sickening pull of the Dark Side and the understanding that it was coming from Anakin Skywalker.
Was it his choice? Or was he forced into it? Ahsoka knew which she wanted to believe, which she hoped was true.
But deep in her heart, she knew. It was only that she didn't understand why.
This chapter drove me more than a little crazy. I hope it came out alright. Music for this chapter (and the last!) is Time from the soundtrack to Inception, by Hans Zimmer.
~Queen
