OOO
Chapter Twenty-Two.
OOO
Bloodlight spilled from the onyx ring standing like a crimson eye in the center of the room. Sparks cracked from the universal cable hanging limp from its side.
Bane clamped his lips together and shoved a hand into a pouch on his utility belt, yanking out a bacta-hypo and dragging himself to the nearest console, planting his fingers on the hot edges.
A creak of sliding steel behind him, and light poured into the room along with the pounding of armored boots.
And Tarkin.
The admiral halted inside the door frame, and swept his gaze across the black ring, the sparking cable, and finally the gold-charred hole in Bane's shoulder. He never bothered looking Bane in the eye.
"Bested by a child," he said as Bane braced himself against the console and pulled himself up, blue hand clutching the hypo in a vein-popped grip. "And you were the hinge our lord hung his plans on?"
Bane jabbed the needle into his shoulder and depressed the plunger, but the snarl on his lip had nothing to do with the pain.
Tarkin jerked his head at a white-armored corporal. "Contact the perimeter guard immediately, he can't have gotten far."
Bane tossed away the empty hypo, letting it skitter across the floor. "Troopers aren't gonna catch that little bastard." He rolled his shoulder with a wrinkle of the lip and shoved past Tarkin. "I know where he's goin'. He'll be dead before this day is over."
Tarkin tensed his jaw and watched him leave. "And what shall I say when His Excellency asks for our status?"
Bane didn't look back as he rounded the corner. "Tell him whatever you want—it's your head too if I don't catch him."
OOO
The purple swirled. Palpatine stood above her. Or… around her?
An electronic chirp and a flash of indigo cut the darkness. "My lord." Tarkin's voice.
"Report, Admiral."
"The files… have been successfully added to the Archives."
A glint of yellow. "And the slicer?"
A pause. Hesitation? "The bounty hunter is taking care of him. My men are sealing off the Temple."
Aiden…
"Then it is completed. I will make the announcement within the hour."
"…Yes, my lord."
The indigo disappeared.
Yellow eyes met hers, and he smiled. With a swish of black robes, he waved a hand, and a section of wall slid away into a darkened tunnel fading deeper and deeper through the purple haze.
"Your time has run out." He pulled the robe from his shoulders, and the onyx cascaded to the floor, leaving him draped in the gold of Senatorial dress once more, even as the gold of his eyes faded to a grey colder than she remembered.
"The galaxy will learn the treachery of the Order." Another wave of the hand, and the screens burning against the darkness shifted—the arches of the Senate curving across the displays. "And the very people who set you in power will stand aside and watch as your own soldiers march on you."
He stepped into the blackness of the tunnel, and disappeared, leaving her to shiver against the bite of durasteel.
This couldn't be the end of everything she'd done. Everything she'd sacrificed. All just to watch the Order crumble anyway.
Her eyelids grew heavier with each breath she struggled to draw, sinking nearer and nearer to closing and never opening again, and she curled her fingers into charred fabric. No. There was still something she could do. A choice.
Her fingers tingled. It was not always a Sith technique…
A numb lance of pain twitched in her stomach, and she gave a heavy blink, and pulled her hand from the fabric, planting her touch against the cold beneath her. Did it truly matter? Would it make a difference in the end if she could claim Jedi history as her justification?
Leave it alone, padawan. It's not your place.
No. It no longer mattered. She was deluding herself if she thought she still had a place in the Order. A stolen prisoner… A padawan on the run… A duel with her own master…
She was already lost to them. And she would be forgotten. A cautionary tale masters told to misbehaving padawans. 'The girl who thought she knew better than the Council.' She grit her teeth, and with an arm that shook under her weight, pushed herself to a sitting position, a strand of purple falling across her vision.
But they would exist. They would be alive.
She breathed in deep and hesitated a few heartbeats, and then brought up her hand, the icy bite of the collar settling against her touch. If she didn't, everything would be lost. If she did… only she would be lost.
A padawan for a Sith lord…
I'll make it worth it, Barriss, I swear.
She closed her eyes.
Silence filled the haze of the room. The darkness breathed around her, an invisible heartbeat pulsing, surging near, then far. And for a long time, nothing happened.
Then, a single arc sparked across her skin. Then another. Then another. The anger, the outrage, the fire… everything she had spent a lifetime burying under her training and denying. I'm sorry, Master.
She let go.
Her arm ignited in light. Paths of goosebumps raced down her skin, her fingers, trailing tingles that burned and cooled at the same time. Shards of light entwined and carved down her wrist, crackling through her fingers, into the steel around her throat. A flash and a sharp whine spat.
Clunk. The ring fell from her neck, clanging open against the floor.
The hollow inside her surged, and she gasped and collapsed onto tingling palms, clamping it shut fully before anything could filter through. A death-severed bond would be the end of her in this state.
Days' worth of unreleased anger trembled raw inside her until her hands jittered against the floor, small arcs of lightning cracking along her fingers like aftershocks. But she just breathed and sunk deeper. Time wouldn't allow her to heal herself fully, but that no longer mattered. She would live long enough to do what needed to be done.
The only thing I can do.
With a final breath, what couldn't be healed, she numbed. The purple-tinged darkness still pressed in around her, but it no longer swirled. The arches of the Senate burned her eyes from the screens across the room, and the flashes arcing across her tensed fingers flared brighter for a brief moment.
She couldn't defeat him. Even if she wasn't weakened. Even if she had her saber.
The crackling arcs faded as if retreating into her palm, disappearing into olive skin, and she closed her fingers and slowly lifted herself to her feet, running a thumb over the ink diamonds that now hummed in her skin like a static charge. It didn't matter. He would defeat her, and so he would defeat himself.
Her communicator glowed next to Aiden's backpack beneath the screens, and she lifted a hand and pulled it to her. Her gaze lingered on the sad straps of his bag hanging limp from ripped stitching, and a faint twinge soured through her.
The Order would not act without proof. They would not believe her. And they would not cut through their own troopers to escape the Temple and arrest Palpatine just on her word. They would just as soon send a battalion of troopers to arrest me.
She brushed her thumb over the communicator. But if they saw the proof standing right in front of them… They would have to act. Nothing would stop them. And all of this will be worth it.
The hard edges of the communicator dug into her palm as she squeezed, and with a final, slow exhale, she tore her gaze from Aiden's bag and pulled the hood of her robe low over her head until familiar onyx settled into place along the top of her vision.
The shadows of the hidden passage sunk ever inward through the haze, the dark tendrils beckoning her like curling fingers, and she set her jaw. Make it worth it.
She squared her shoulders, and walked steady into the black.
OOO
Aiden urged the speeder faster through the rain, squinting against the droplets that slapped his face, and a familiar landing pad loomed in the mist, jutting from the top of the dark tower standing like a shadow over Coruscant.
He wrenched the speeder to a scraping stop over the platform, and hopped out onto wet durasteel, tucking his pad into his waistband with his bloodied hand, and gripping Bane's blaster with the other as he hurried to the plain section of wall stretching above him. Guess that outing with Aurra was worth something after all.
He dropped to his knees at the panel he remembered, and ran his finger along the thin gaps separating the steel. Come on, where is it… Something in the gap gave slightly under his touch, and he jabbed hard.
Clunk. The panel swung open.
Red emergency luminators bled, lighting the tunnel one by one deeper into the tower, and he licked his lips and followed the crimson trail through the passage to the hatch embedded in the floor above Palpatine's hallway.
He twisted the hatch's lever, and dropped through the gap, landing with a muted thud and a jolt through the legs as he pointed the blaster to one end of the empty hallway, then the other. He wasn't dumb enough to think there would be no guards this time. He just hoped he saw them before they saw him.
A strange sort of tension prickled the emptiness of the corridor, like the air was about to snap against his skin, and he came to the corner of the hall leading to Palpatine's loft, and peeked around the edge.
Two senatorial guards flanked the door, blaster-staves clutched like spears across their chests.
Two guards, two shots… He pulled back from the edge and breathed, flicking Bane's blaster to stun. Point-click, point-click.
His stomach turned over on itself, and he squeezed the steel in his hand. You're either here, or you're not.
He stepped around the corner without another thought, and lined the barrel with the first guard. Two helmeted heads locked on him. He pulled the trigger.
Blue light flashed like a ring through the air and smacked the guard in the chest. He crumpled.
Aiden shifted his aim as the second guard raised his blaster-staff. Another blue flash. The blaster-staff clattered to the floor.
Move. He rushed forward and yanked the key-card from the second guard's belt, swiping it across the door panel, and polished steel slid away into familiar crimson. Security system would have registered those shots, probably less than two minutes before a bad attitude with a blaster comes runnin'.
He thumbed the pistol back to kill as he moved into the main living room, and blasted the inside door panel behind him in burst of sparks. He glanced at the vase-shrouded alcove hiding the closed turbo-lift for a few moments, and then turned his gaze to the life-sized muun portrait hanging above the stone-cradled dagger. Maybe I can sneak a peek and see if the Bastard is still down there…
He snatched the dagger from its cradle and pushed it into the muun's heart, and as red eyes fizzled away into monitor screens, the feeling of eyes watching him sprouted. He pinched his brow and tossed a look over his shoulder toward the blaster-jammed door before shaking his head and returning to the console in front of him, navigating the buttons of the console until he found the turbo-lift door control. First things first.
He pressed the button, and across the room, the alcove slid open, a circle of luminators igniting around the base of the lift.
The feeling of eyes on him only increased, and a strange, high-pitched whine faded into existence, growing rapidly louder outside the floor-to-ceiling glass rippling with rain drops. What the blazes...
A shadow fell across the glass like a blotch of ink, expanding quickly as the whine reached a fever-pitch, and the tension filling the air shifted as a speeder appeared through the mist—rocketing straight at the loft.
A set of red eyes locked on him through the windscreen.
His veins iced. "You have got to be—"
The front end of the speeder smashed through the glass like a screaming wrecking ball. Shards exploded through the air, slivers of flashing razors cutting through crimson.
Blast! He dove out of the way, elbows digging into red carpet as he pressed his head down and covered his neck against the hail of slicing edges splashing to pieces around him.
Warped durasteel plowed through furniture and relic alike, billowing smoke and sparks until it smashed against the back wall of the loft with a skull-rattling crunch.
Bane jumped out of the pilot's seat, and eyes of blood settled on Aiden.
Not good. The adrenaline numbed in his veins, and he scrambled to his feet and lifted the blaster.
A burst of fire spat from Bane's boots, and he shot across the room faster than Aiden could think. A swipe of blue crashed against the inside of his forearm as he pulled the trigger, batting his shot wide, and all the nerves in his hand prickled dead for a split-second.
The blaster flew from his pain-shocked grip and clattered end-over-end across the carpet.
Another flash of blue and something slammed into his jaw. His vision flashed white. A snarl of razor-sharp teeth and a nasally yell. A boot rocketed into his chest.
He crashed into the computer console behind him, knobs and switches burrowing into his back like spears, and he gasped.
Bane walked toward him, red glinting, fingers tapping buttons on his wrist-gauntlet.
Barriss… He couldn't bust out of the game yet. Not this close to the end.
Bane tapped a final button and then clamped his fingers around Aiden's throat and yanked him up. "I'll give ya one thing—Ya caused me more trouble than anyone has in a long time."
Pressure collapsed inward on his windpipe, and he grabbed Bane's wrist with his bloodied hand, and blindly groped the console behind him with the other for anything that might get him out of this. Anything that might give him a chance.
Bane lifted his other arm, jabbing his wrist-gauntlet into Aiden's cheek, and something cold and metallic bumped into Aiden's blindly groping hand.
"But yer luck just ran out."
Aiden wrapped his fingers around the cold steel, and the shape of a handle filled his grip. The dagger.
"See ya 'round, slicer."
With a wrench of the shoulder that screamed at the awkward angle, he ripped the dagger from the wall and drove it forward with all his strength.
A wet squelch. A jolt. Bane's body. Through the handle, into his hand, up his arm. A spray of warm drops.
Widened crimson stared into him. Creasing, then un-creasing. The fingers around his throat slackened.
Bane slid to the floor, and Aiden hit the ground with him, gasping as air rushed back into his lungs and glass crunched under him.
A silver handle jutted from Bane's chest above the heart.
He didn't move anymore.
Aiden coughed and kicked away from Bane, scrambling backward on his elbows and scattering shards of glass as he went. "Son of a…" He was dead. The blue creep was dead.
Barriss. The thought slapped him. He shook his head and spotted the dropped blaster in a pile of shattered vase-work. Get to Barriss. Nothing else mattered.
He snatched up the blaster, and squeezed it with a shaky grip, glancing one last time at Bane's still form before crunching his way through the shattered glass to the turbo-lift and stepping inside.
OOO
Barriss followed the trail of darkness left behind by Palpatine like a thread through the pitch of the tunnels. He no longer concealed his nature, and the darkness spilling from him tainted the air in his wake along the path he walked, leading her ever deeper into the shadows until she came to a dead end. What looked like a dead end.
The dark thread pierced straight through the slab of polished steel looming in front of her.
Another secret doorway.
She waved her hand, and a clunk reverberated through the passage. The steel lifted ponderously like a curtain rising, and rather than a continuation of the tunnel, baroque light flooded under the rising steel—a hallway appearing through the opening, running left-to-right.
A hallway she had walked before under the guidance of her master.
The Senate hallway leading to Chancellor Palpatine's private office.
She shook her head and stepped into light that felt sour against her skin, and the dark thread weaved left toward his office at the end of the hall—piercing through the closed door between two crimson-draped elite guards flanking the entrance.
Their visored gazes locked with hers, and energy-pikes raised. "Halt—"
She shoved her hands forward, and their heads cracked against the wall behind them.
They crumpled to the floor, and she moved between them, clutching her communicator in her palm and thumbing the volume all the way down. She couldn't afford to hear what might be said.
And she couldn't afford to be given away by a careless sound.
One chance… She drew in a steadying breath, and pressed in a comm code she knew by heart. One that almost brought a sense of comfort in the familiar sequence.
A fizzle of blue cut her communicator immediately, and Luminara—the real one—appeared in her palm, lips already moving in unheard words.
I should have called you from the beginning. "I can't hear you, Master." A sad, but determined tilt touched her words, and Luminara paused. "But now you need to hear me."
A padawan for a Sith lord. "Something was just added to the Archives. Something bad. You need to find it and destroy it before Palpatine does what he's planning to do. Tarkin and his troopers will try to stop you. Subdue them if you have to."
Luminara's brow creased, and her lips moved again.
Make it worth it. "You need to see the truth, Master. And this is the only way I can show you." She swallowed. "Goodbye, Master."
Before Luminara could respond, she tucked the communicator in her robes, but left the line open, still transmitting video. One final plunge…
And then freedom.
She faced the door looming over her, and pressed her palm against the panel like sealing an oath, setting her jaw as the barrier hissed at her and slid away.
An office that once sat docile and silent in her presence now roared at her as the door opened like a Krayt Dragon's mouth gaping to swallow her. Crimson stretched and darkened the further inside she stepped, leading her, drawing her, taunting her. And a strange electric jolt shot through her, weaving this way and that inside her like a current trapped in a bottle until the communicator in her pocket seemed to hum in resonance with it.
She clenched her jaw against the chill that snaked up her arms, and continued forward as steadily as she could make herself walk.
And in the water-strangled shadows drenching through the glass behind him, Palpatine stood a dark silhouette in the center of the emptied room, hands folded in front of him, and Coruscant drowning behind him. What little of Coruscant that didn't distort in the rain-beaten glass.
The pleasant mask that rested over his features mocked with the clap of thunder that rumbled in the distance. "Welcome, young one." His voice caressed. Or maybe slithered. "What kept you?"
The war… The deaths… Aiden… He would pay for it all. And they would see.
The old fire she had spent a lifetime learning to suppress bloomed the first of its embers inside her, and this time, she did not stand in its way. Sparks ignited across her fingers as she moved with the flame in her heart, and she settled her gaze into those yellow orbs.
His smile stretched. "This won't end the way you're expecting, young one."
The embers surged, and the crackling arcs gathered in her palms. "It already hasn't."
She let go.
The fire burst. The burning chill raced down her arms. And she tensed her fingers like talons and pushed her arms forward with a cry. Light exploded from her palms. Arcs pierced the air like blinding daggers.
He lifted an easy hand and caught the storm in his palm, and orbs of yellow gleamed through the flashing arcs.
It is done. Nothing he could say, no explanation he could conjure would change anything now. She had thrown lightning. And he had caught it.
And so our fates are sealed.
She poured the last of her fire into the light, and then her strength left her. The arcs fell away into the darkness and silence of the rain, and a different fire burned in her core as unhealed skin pulled.
"Kill me now, Sith." She grit her teeth against the sting and pressed her tingling hand to her belly. "You won't get another chance."
She would be avenged. They would come.
His chuckle echoed in the silence, and those yellow eyes glowed. "It would truly be a waste to kill you, young one. Most struggle for days to produce such a display. You must truly hate me."
He stepped toward her, moving between two statues that stared down at her right along with him, and a familiar pain bloomed between her temples. "How unfortunate the communicator hidden so cleverly within your robes did not allow your master to witness it."
It shot through her like a gasp, and she snapped her gaze up to meet his.
"A word of advice, young one," he spoke gently. "If a strange sensation travels as you step into your enemy's threshold, you would be wise to reconsider your approach."
No… Her stomach soured, and she fumbled the communicator out of her robe and into her hand. It sat dead in her palm.
"Especially when that sensation resonates through the hidden key to your victory." She looked at him, and his smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I told you this wouldn't end how you expect."
Her mind swam. She couldn't think. Couldn't feel. And that familiar pain between her temples swelled. "This… This is a trick. An illusion." Like appearing as her master in that alley. It had to be.
A sick feeling settled in her gut, and he chuckled. "Did you think I did not know what you would do? That I have not been in your mind from the moment you awoke? And watched your thoughts and intentions unfold?"
She swallowed. "The cameras are recording everything you're saying."
A casual blink. "The cameras have not been active since they recorded a young, hooded Jedi assault my personal guard to gain access to this room and assassinate me."
Her stomach dropped.
"No, young one. You have played your part perfectly, but this is no illusion." The gold veins streaking his irises pulsed, and he took a step toward her. "No, young one… This is an illusion."
He took another step.
And yet he did not.
He stepped again. And yet he still stood motionless between the statues. He stepped out of himself like an image leaving an image. And then there were two sets of yellow-veined eyes looking at her.
The sick weight that had been slowly building inside her now sunk like a dark stone, and she stared back with widened violet. "What is this?"
Two voices laughed, echoing through the rain-darkened room, off the statues, and he stepped again. A third set of eyes. A third voice laughing. And again. And again.
One by one, they emerged from within himself like shadows stepping out of a shadow. They all looked at her. All surrounded her. Yellow eyes laughing. Voices murmuring.
Her heart beat against her sternum, and she turned in place, looking around herself as every Palpatine encircled her. "Stop this."
"I know your thoughts." Every Palpatine spoke at once like a chant piercing into her skull, and the pain flared. "You came here to expose me. And now that you have failed, your only hope is to kill me."
She pinched her eyes and grabbed her head. Calm yourself. It isn't real. He stood alone just as she did, between the statues. No, the space between the statues was empty. Where did he go?
Her stomach lurched, and she spun around, looking frantically beyond the circle of yellow eyes glowing brighter by the second. "Where are you?" She clenched her fists, and arcs of electricity sparked across her knuckles.
Their laughter pitched like a chill. "Good, Barriss, good… Find the truth, young one. Find me and kill me."
Tingles raced up and down her arms, her heart fluttered like bat wings trying to escape her chest, and one of the Palpatines took a step toward her.
Adrenaline flooded, her vision tunneled, and she threw her hands forward with a cry. Lighting burst through the air and engulfed him. And as the blinding tendrils ensnared and cracked around him, his obscured form morphed and divided.
Her strength drained, and the storm broke. And in the place he had been standing, two now stood before her.
"You guessed wrong," they spoke at the same time. "Would you like to try again?"
The pain in her mind flared, and a cry scraped her throat before she knew her mouth had opened.
Many voices laughed.
OOO
The turbo lift shuddered around him as it halted its descent through the bowels of the tower, and the jigsaw panels hiding Palpatine's secret room pulled apart, that blasted purple tinge spilling through the expanding gaps.
Aiden squeezed the blaster and shouldered through the jagged opening before it had finished breaking away.
The darkness surrounded him, empty. A passage sunk inward against the far wall, and Barriss' collar glinted on the floor next to Palpatine's Sith robes, a broken half-circle reflecting the purple shards.
What? He stopped short. If she was out of the collar, why hadn't he heard anything from her? Why did the bond still feel empty?
He touched the hollow. 'Barriss?'
His own voice just echoed back at him, and the bond gaped silent inside him. What the blazes happened? Where were they?
The dark passage stood silent across the way, and he ran the back of his hand across his forehead. That thing could lead anywhere. Was he supposed to find her in a pitch-black maze? "Blast it, Barriss, where are you?"
Calm yourself and focus. The thought that wasn't quite his own echoed in his memory like a slap, and then shifted: Focus on our bond, Aiden… Focus on me. And you'll know. You'll know which way I'm coming from.
The bond isn't working, Barriss, he wanted to say back, but then figured he was crazy enough already without adding conversations with his own memory to the mix. He wanted to kick something.
Look. He wasn't sure if he heard it or felt it, but his gaze fell on the screens burning against the wall above the consoles, and the images of the Senate curving across their displays. And the silenced bond turned over on itself.
The Senate. The Bastard wouldn't be that obvious, would he?
His backpack slumped on the table beneath the screens.
Guess there's a way to find out… He shoved the blaster into his waistband and pulled out his data pad, and hurried to his bag, rummaging a hand inside until a familiar small cable filled his grip. He took the cable and plugged his pad into the consoles. Not like he could get into anymore trouble by slicing into the Senate a second time.
He shook his head and trailed familiar pathways and directories, and with a final tap of the screen, a live video feed from within the Senate Hall morphed across the display.
Hurry. The darkness surrounded him as he cycled through the feeds, and a drop of sweat threatened to find his eye.
The screen went black.
What? He pinched his brow and tapped the screen again, and the feed reappeared. A different room. He swiped back to the previous feed. The screen cut out.
No, the screen wasn't cutting out, the cameras in the Chancellor's office were disabled. The bond thrummed inside him, and he brought up the camera's menu and toggled the status to 'active'.
And on the screen, a burst of static fizzled away until the crimson-choked room filled the display. And there in the center, between two statues that raised the hair on the back of his neck, Palpatine and Barriss stood. The Bastard watched smiling as she turned around in place like she was lost, and then raised her hand and hurled a blast of lightning into empty air in front of her.
What the! 'Barriss, what are you doing?' Damn the fact he wasn't hearing anything from her, he seized the bond anyway.
It hummed back silent as ever. She was blocking him.
This time, he did kick the console. "Blast it, Barriss!" She was gonna get herself killed. What in the blazes was she thinking? Why had she shut the bond so hard he couldn't get anything through? He could have done something. Hell, even the Council could have—
He froze. The Council…
The open holonet gate.
He could do something. He could call them. Show them. Get them there before Barriss died. He gripped his data pad in slippery palms, and rushed to establish a connection to the Temple.
But just before he pressed the final button, another thought brought him up short: Show them what?
He glanced at the Senate feed as Barriss unleashed another flash of lightning that washed out the screen, and a slow, grim reality soured in his gut: If he showed them this, they would call the Senatorial Guard to converge on the Bastard's office.
And Barriss would get killed.
They wouldn't take his word for anything. They didn't believe him when he told them every blasted detail before, why would they ever believe him now that the truth was even more ridiculous? That Palpatine was a Sith lord.
They wouldn't play this right until the truth about the Bastard spat in their faces. And this video feed wasn't proving Palpatine was a Sith… it was proving Barriss was.
He ran a hand down his face, and glared at the dark silhouette of Palpatine. Come on, you bastard, pull your red saber, throw some lightning, do anything!
Barriss hunched over and grabbed her abdomen, and the edges of the data pad bit into his fingers. She was running out of time.
And the sentry program was about to hit through the system.
He grit his teeth. There was only one way this would ever be over. They needed to see. The galaxy needed to see. And there was only one way he could show them.
Only one way Barriss had a chance to live.
"Fine," he said out loud, and yanked his pad from the console. "Fine. I get it. I'm not allowed to get away clean." It was his fault she was in this. His fault she was about to die.
His responsibility to fix it.
He grabbed the strap of his bag with his good hand, and slung it on his shoulder as he clutched the pad in the other. A red droplet slid down the screen.
Five minutes. Five minutes to live or die.
The dark passage loomed as the bond resonated inside him like a compass pointing her path through the shadows.
He gripped the pad and started running.
OOO
Luminara stood in the center of the Council chamber, and focused on not letting her fingers tense as Ki-Adi Mundi spoke:
"The fact is, we don't know what Barriss intends to do, where she is, or where she's going. We cannot fight our way through our own troopers based on a what-if."
She was only partially successful. "I know my padawan. She will be on her way to confront the Chancellor. We must intercept her before she digs herself in deeper trouble."
"If you believe she is there, we can alert the Senatorial Guard—"
"No. That would only make things worse."
"Then what do you propose we do? Commit treason? You are placing too much faith in the beliefs of one padawan."
The bottom of Yoda's walking stick cracked against the floor, and the room flinched. He gazed at Luminara.
"Do what you feel is right, you must, Luminara Unduli… And do what we feel is right, the Council also must."
She furrowed her brow. "If we feel differently of what is right, is not one of us wrong?"
He ran the claw of his finger over the long-worn groove. "Perhaps what is right for the Council to do, is not what is right for a padawan's master to do."
He peered at her from over the handle of the stick. "If go to the Senate, you do, know of it, the Council must not. Harm troopers escaping the Temple, you must not. Be seen by the public, you must not. Act in the name of the Jedi, you must not."
Silence filled the chamber as the gathered masters looked at each other.
Luminara held his gaze. Then, she ran.
OOO
The shadows of the tunnel broke, and the bond nudged Aiden into the light of the Senate Hall. Palpatine's door loomed between two crimson-draped bodies lying to the left and right. The access-panel blinked at him from the door-frame.
Five minutes. He slid his backpack from his shoulder, and pulled the small knife he used for stripping wires. The handle sat in his palm like a promise.
You're either here, or you're not.
He stepped to the door-panel, stabbed the point of the knife between the casing and the wall, and twisted the blade until the panel broke away from the wall with a crack.
He pulled the panel fully out of the wall until it hung from the twisting wires connected to the back, and he traced his finger over the wires that would open the door. They curved deeper into the wall until the wire he was looking for emerged from within the twist.
They wouldn't believe the truth. He knew that now.
He dragged the edge of the blade through the composite coating of the wire until the silver thread within gleamed at him, and he pulled his data pad from his waistband.
If he ran and hid, Barriss would die.
He tapped old commands into the screen of his pad, and the crimson of the Chancellor's office bled to life on the display. The sentry program had last hit two minutes ago.
Three minutes.
He forced every connection he could find. Every connection he could remember. Every address he had ever left his mark and an open door.
And finally, the authorization for the Council chamber holo-comm blinked on the screen.
Two minutes.
He took a breath, and connected to the Temple. And on the screen, a circular room of polished marble shown, a ghostly-blue hologram of himself fizzling to life in the center of the circle.
Twelve Jedi froze in their seats and locked eyes on him.
For Barriss. "Hello. My name is Aiden Stari." He addressed them all, but kept his eyes on Yoda. "I'm about to die. But maybe afterward, you'll finally believe Barriss like she believed me." Another drop of red beaded down the screen, and he tightened his fingers until the image distorted around his thumb.
"When you finally do believe her, nail the Bastard to the wall like the rat he is."
Without waiting for them to respond, he pushed the data pad into the gap in the wall until it rested on the twist of wires, and left it fully connected.
One minute.
He lifted the door-panel from where it hung by the cables, and activated the door control. The steel hissed away and he pulled his blaster from his waistband and stepped into the crimson.
A sound like rushing air exploded, and flashes of blue crashed like whips of light from one end of the room to the other, engulfing statues that watched him as he neared.
Palpatine stood beneath the right-most statue with hands folded, a dark silhouette smiling in the rain-beaten shadows of the window.
Barriss stood beneath the left statue with hands outstretched, lightning bursting from her fingertips as the diamonds in the backs of her hands glowed.
Time's up. He forced a thin quirk onto his lip, and pointed the blaster at Palpatine's head. "You're a little scary, you know that, Barriss?"
Yellow and violet snapped to him. The yellow locked on the blaster. The violet locked on him.
Barriss spoke, "Aiden?" Her voice was a disbelieving exhale as she dropped the assault, letting her hands fall back to her sides as the whips of light retreated into her palms. Her diamonds still glowed.
Aiden stared at Palpatine down the barrel of the blaster. "Reopen it, Barriss. Now." She would know what he meant. And this would all be for nothing if she didn't do it.
Palpatine started a small motion of his fingers, and Aiden's heart jumped and he jabbed the blaster at him. "Not so fast, Bastard." He jerked his head toward Palpatine's desk, where that blasted, familiar light now flashed like a fading heartbeat in the shadows of the room. "You're on camera, buddy."
Yellow and violet looked to the flashing light.
"That sentry program is a real killer, isn't it?" He took a step toward Palpatine, keeping the blaster leveled squarely at his forehead. "Bane failed, by the way. I'm still alive. And half of Coruscant, including the Council, is watching right now."
Palpatine froze, and the yellow instantly vanished from his eyes. The cold calculation still watched from behind the mask of a wary politician that slid into place over his features. "Another assassin of the Jedi come to kill me, is it?"
"Ever the illusionist." Aiden glanced at Barriss. "You're seeing stuff that isn't there, aren't you?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I think you're not really there. This is another trick."
"Thought so." He refocused on Palpatine. "Drop whatever con you're running on her right now, or I'll shoot and force you to pull that shiny red saber of yours in front of the watching galaxy."
Palpatine's jaw creaked and his natural grey bore into Aiden. But finally, the fog left Barriss' eyes and she settled her gaze on Palpatine as if seeing him for the first time.
"Reopen it now, Barriss."
She looked at him, and the storm outside reflected in her violet.
He squeezed the blaster. "Barriss, trust me. Please."
Something silent passed behind her eyes. Once. Twice. Slowly, the glow of her diamonds faded. And a pinhole opening breathed through the bond: 'Aiden?'
His gut unclenched. 'Thank you…' He continued stepping toward Palpatine, herding him backward toward the drenched glass. "I could have played this clever… Not let you know the galaxy was watching. Trick you into revealing yourself to them all. Had my big 'Aha!' moment… And then you would have killed Barriss."
He touched the bond, the pinhole opening Barriss made for him, and it opened fully inside him like uncoiling petals. 'Do you remember which pocket he put Dak's data pad in?' he asked her within himself.
"Do you know how your first attempt to kill me failed?" he asked out loud to Palpatine as he continued pushing him back toward the storm.
Palpatine's lip twisted too subtly for the cameras as his back hit the glass. A flash struck a spire behind him.
Barriss looked between them from where she stood, and her voice carried through strained inside him: 'What… Do I remember which pocket… yes, but—'
Aiden shifted his aim to the glass beside Palpatine's shoulder and squeezed the trigger. And again. And again. He blasted bolt after bolt through the glass until spider-lines cracked and weaved, and blackened craters outlined Palpatine's flinching silhouette in the glass, bleeding rain into the room.
"Aiden, what are you doing?" Barriss stepped toward him as wind shrieked through the jagged glass punctures.
Palpatine's gaze narrowed, and the mask fell away. He was done playing the part of the frightened Chancellor.
'This is the only way you live, Barriss. I'm sorry.' "My data pad is connected live with the Council just outside the door." He pushed the image of it through the bond to her—along with knowledge of how to connect a pad to a pad.
"Show them everything."
Something shifted behind Palpatine's gaze, and his irises contracted.
The Bastard had decided, and Aiden's chest numbed as he squeezed the slickened handle of the blaster. 'Pull Dak's pad from his robes now, Barriss.'
"Aiden?"
Palpatine lifted a hand.
And the time for thought was over. "Pull it now!" He lunged.
Before whatever Palpatine intended to conjure could happen, Aiden threw himself forward. He dropped his shoulder into Palpatine's sternum. Silken gold whipped as his momentum drove them into the spider-lined window. Glass shattered. Barriss yelled.
Something hard scraped out of Palpatine's robes and across Aiden's stomach.
And then they were falling.
OOO
"Aiden!" Her throat burned as she threw her hands forward. She strained a desperate invisible grip on Aiden as he crashed through the window with his arms locked around Palpatine. She could pull him back. Let Palpatine fall alone.
But as shards flashed silver against the grey and they tumbled out the window, Aiden slipped helplessly through her reaching grasp. And horrible reality fell along with them:
She had bled too much strength to lift him.
And in the split-second of time their shadows still hung within sight, instinct, or maybe her bond with him took over, and she whipped her focus and her grasp to Dak's pad hidden in golden folds. She pulled with all her strength.
It ripped free, streaked through the shattered daggers of the window, and smacked into her palms.
'Aiden!' She rushed to the break in the glass and looked.
Their writhing form fell like a darkening blur into the misty grey below.
OOO
The wind howled in his ears. Palpatine shrieked in his face as his eyes lit in gold, and ashen hands clamped his throat with inhuman strength as they fell.
'Aiden!'
The steel of the blaster bit into his palm and he raised it to Palpatine's temple, but a flash of gold and ash struck out and clawed the barrel away. 'Barriss, the Senate Guard will be there any second, transfer the files to the Council now!'
OOO
The bond surged painfully, and she smacked her palm against the window sill. "Damn you, Aiden!"
He had made his choice. She couldn't let it be for nothing. She turned and sprinted through the door and slid to a stop in front of the pried-open access panel swinging from a twist of cables. His data pad lie on top. The Council sat horrified on the screen.
"You wouldn't believe us?" She reached down into Aiden's backpack where he had dropped it, and pulled out a cable the bond told her would link one data pad to another. "Fine. Don't believe. See it." She transferred it all. Every file, image, video.
The video of Palpatine contacting Dooku as Sidious.
But it didn't stop at the Council. As the transfer completed, it continued on to locations all across Coruscant. Connections Aiden had made before slicing into the Temple.
And then it happened. The bond turned over on itself. Aiden's heartbeat fluttered inside her with a quiet, 'Sorry, Barriss'.
And then his heartbeat stopped.
OOO
The ground rushed to meet them. Piercing yellow filled his darkening vision as ash squeezed the life out of him. He clawed at the wrists. Unnatural strength held firm.
The yellow flashed. Their descent slowed. And just as their feet touched wet duracrete, the yellow flashed one more time.
Pressure collapsed in his throat. A wet crack. The worst pain and then nothing. His vision faded white.
'Sorry, Barriss…'
He stopped fighting.
OOO
The bond folded empty. The cease of a heartbeat shuddered through her, and her knees hit marble. "Aiden!"
The pounding of boots faded into hearing down the hall, and she swallowed. It was done. Nothing remained now but a choice.
And a single, foolish street rat.
She picked herself up against the shudders of a stopped heart still racking through her, and stumbled back to the shattered window, planting a foot on the rain-slickened sill and gazing down into the grey.
She would survive the fall. There wasn't time to consider anything further than that.
She closed her eyes, gathered everything she had left, and lept.
OOO
Rain pooled at the silken hem of his robes as the slicer lie dead at his feet. The murmur of Coruscant shifted like a jagged stab above him, and he looked up into the grey.
A rippling form of onyx fell with the rain, and ink diamonds crackled with light as she fell straight toward him.
A stronger presence in the distance, beyond the haze. Racing nearer.
A decision to be made.
The murmur of Coruscant shifted fully. The currents, the echoes of the galaxy warbled. Altered course. And finally leveled themselves at him. The hate of dozens. Then hundreds. Then more. The wound of the slicer bleeding throughout the galaxy. And it was a fatal blow.
Chancellor Palpatine's time was ended.
Darth Sidious looked at Aiden lying limp in a silver puddle as the echoes of the galaxy tossed and turned around him, and his hatred gathered deep as the shadow of Barriss loomed.
The decision was made for him.
With a motion of his thumb and forefinger pressed together, he shrouded himself from sight, and walked with quickened steps into the vanishing mist.
OOO
The damp air fractured around Palpatine's golden form like threads of a realm breaking apart and then weaving themselves back together again. And when they did, Palpatine no longer stood over Aiden. No longer stood anywhere.
Her heart fluttered and she slowed her descent until her feet slapped against the wet duracrete hard enough to prickle her shins, and her core pulled like fire.
Aiden lie unmoving in the rain.
"Aiden!" She stumbled to his side and dropped to her knees even as she watched the surrounding grey for the slightest ripple in the air. She laid a hand on his forehead and stretched her focus within him. Please.
No familiar, mischievous presence greeted her. No heartbeat pulsed under her touch. The folded bond ached.
What had Palpatine done to him? She clamped her teeth together and looked deeper inside him, and there in his throat, a stress-crack ran the length of his trachea. Inhuman force.
Palpatine had strangled him.
Her vision blurred, and a shadow appeared in the grey above, growing larger. A familiar presence drawing nearer. Luminara.
Barriss didn't look up. She kept her hand on Aiden, and closed her eyes. One more time. Please, I just need the strength for one more time.
Her core ached. Darkness teased the edges of her mind, threatening to consume her. She sunk deep. The world fell away. Then her own thoughts. Then the galaxy.
Until he lie alone before her in a void. Her void.
She poured herself into him. The last of her strength. The last of her everything.
The crimson line in his palm slowly disappeared, separated flesh meeting together once more. The old mark of a blaster wound on his chest faded, leaving smooth skin it its place. A broken throat became whole.
Still his heart did not move. He lie whole, but dead. And nothing the Jedi had taught her could change that.
She returned to herself and gasped into the rain-chilled air as the darkness clouding her mind began claiming the edges of her vision, and a speeder swept down from the grey, landing ten paces from her.
Violet locked with violet. And then Luminara stepped out into the rain.
She would be imprisoned. Possibly executed as a darksider. It didn't matter. She had no time left. And neither did he.
Barriss lifted a hand, and arcs of light ignited across her fingertips.
Luminara froze with widened eyes, and drew her saber, gripping the silver of her hilt as rain droplets struck the blade with sad puffs of smoke.
It is worth it. Barriss gazed at her with rapidly-fading vision, and slowly gathered the lightning in her palm. "I'm sorry, Master. This is the only way. Do what you must."
Luminara raised the saber.
Barriss looked down at Aiden, placed her glowing hand on his chest above his heart, and then released the strongest burst of lightning she could.
Flashing tendrils carved into his body. His back arched. A spasm rocked through him. His eyes flew open with a ragged inhale.
"Barriss!"
The darkness overtook her vision.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Aiden…
Her voice asked, and the darkness shifted.
Wake up now.
He did.
Light stabbed through the murky darkness, and he pinched his eyes shut tighter, a small moan escaping his throat. 'Barriss?'
I'm here, Aiden. The bond felt odd.
He cracked his eyes, blinking away the blur.
Darkness surrounded him. Not the kind of darkness that spilled from Palpatine and made it hard to breathe, but a clear darkness that opened more and more the further beyond him it stretched.
What the blazes… He pinched his brow at the onyx horizon expanding before him. 'Barriss, what's going on? Where are you? Where am I?'
Her voice broke behind him. "Our bond."
He flinched. And there behind him, Barriss stood with hands folded. A slight smile touched her lips. "Hello, Aiden."
He reached a hand up and felt his throat, and took a step toward her. "Barriss, I… How is this possible? I remember dying. I felt it happen… I was okay with it."
"I wasn't." Her voice was quiet, and the darkness shifted with it. An undercurrent of pain. A hidden grimace creasing her eyes.
He pinched his brow harder, and took another step. It echoed in the darkness. "Barriss? What's wrong?"
Her smile remained, but quivered at the edges. "It took everything I had." She looked deep into his eyes, in that way she did whenever she looked for something within him, and finally, she nodded. "But it was worth it."
Cracks began forming in the onyx around them, in their bond, and light bled through the gaps like falling stars, glowing flicks of amber.
His pulse quickened, and a feeling like ink sunk through him. "Barriss, what did you do? Why are you in pain? Why is the bond breaking apart?" This didn't make any sense.
She held his gaze and her faltering smile. "I'm glad I met you, Aiden."
The onyx began crumbling like falling ruins around them and everything shook. And realization stuck in his healed throat like a lump. He shot forward and grabbed her arms, eyes wide. "Barriss, you are not throwing your life away to save me. I'm… I'm a bastard." He had proven that many times over. Most of all to her.
Her smile pulled slightly, but her eyes remained gentle. "A bastard wouldn't have come back for me."
The bond was mostly light now, with just a few bits of onyx holding fast. Too bright. Too loud. It was overtaking her. And he couldn't make out her form any longer. "Barriss!"
Wake up now, Aiden… Her voice no longer spoke in his physical ears, but resounded around him, within him. Wake up…
He did.
The light faded.
And he found himself lying in a painfully familiar bed in a painfully familiar room.
A small luminator in the wall beside him sent shards of light piercing through the dark room, making instruments of polished durasteel glint like constellations around him. The Temple. He was in the Jedi Temple.
Barriss! He dug his elbows into the mattress and shoved himself up, and pain lanced through his core. Through the bond. He sucked in a breath and collapsed into the sheets again. 'Barriss? Barriss!'
She didn't respond.
The bond echoed empty. Folded, pulsing oddly, yet not severed.
What was happening? Had it just been a dream? He pressed in harder. 'Barriss?'
The door across the room opened.
The silhouette that could only be Luminara stood in the doorway. And a moment of hesitation passed. "I thought I felt you stir." She entered, slowly and finally.
His heart fluttered, and he pressed his elbows into the mattress once more, keeping his eyes open against the urge to blink. "What's happened? Where is Barriss? How long have I been out? Where is she?"
Luminara raised a hand. "Peace, Aiden." Her voice was soft, even as she returned his gaze unflinching. "I know. We know."
They know? What did they know? And then his heart fluttered again as the only possible answer brought the question of fear and hope: "Palpatine?"
"Stripped of his power. He is charged with treason."
His breath left him, and he collapsed back into the sheets a second time. Over. It was over.
But then a foggy image of disappearing gold and fractures in damp air flashed through his mind. And suddenly, the look she was giving him made sense.
"He escaped Coruscant, didn't he?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
She nodded.
It shouldn't have been a surprise. It didn't matter. He only cared about one thing. "Where is Barriss?"
Silence.
That strange gaze still watched behind her eyes.
The feeling of ink returned, and he slowly pushed himself up until he sat level with her, never breaking eye contact. "Master Unduli… Where is Barriss?"
Her look remained, and she spoke softly, "I'm sorry, Aiden."
The words fell through him like sinking weight, and he curled his fingers into the sheets until they bunched in his grasp. That look… No. It couldn't be.
The bond still lie oddly folded within him. Silent, pulsing, but there. And he shook his head. "I heard her."
She was alive. He knew it. He felt it. Dead people don't tell you to wake up. He pressed into the bond desperately even as the finality of Luminara's words sunk through him, but it lie quiet and thrumming within him. No familiar, calming presence greeted him. No faint smile of green lips echoed through him.
'Barriss, where are you?'
"I can take you to her, if it would… help you."
He did have Luminara take him to her. Luminara led him to the isolation room of the Halls of Healing, where those not expected to survive lie and wait.
Where Barriss lie floating in a bacta tank, drawing no breath that he could see as she hung suspended within the faint light of the glass. Her diamonds contrasted harshly with the faded paling of her skin. Burned marks of lightning veined her right hand.
A hand that matched perfectly with the lightning-burned handprint he would find on his chest when he lie down for a sleepless night that evening.
OOO
The Council wanted to see him as soon as he woke. He just wanted to sit with Barriss and wait for her to wake up. They assured him they were doing all they could for her. He could read between the lines.
She wasn't expected to recover. Too much strength lost, they said.
He asked how she lost it.
They just looked at the handprint on his chest.
He stood in the center of the marble chamber and they asked him to recount everything that happened. He told them everything.
He didn't tell them about the bond.
He asked them what had happened while he was unconscious.
Palpatine and Dooku were gone, they said. Palpatine in hiding from the Republic. Dooku in hiding from Palpatine. No one believed they would stay gone forever.
The Order continued looking.
"I'll help," he said, and kept his gaze on Yoda. "I can do things your techs can't. And search in places they won't know about."
Looks passed across the room.
Yoda peered back at him. "Why put yourself at further risk, would you?"
He set his jaw, and didn't look away. "It's the duty of a slicer to find the truth."
Yoda's eyes softened.
They didn't ask him any more questions.
OOO
The last night came. What they said would likely be her last night.
Her vitals had been gradually lowering.
He couldn't sleep. Instead, he stood in the faint glow of her bacta tank. The bond pulsed and fluctuated stronger the nearer to her he was.
They told him visitors weren't permitted during night hours.
Bangs and muffled voices called at him through the locked door behind him. His data pad lie on the ground next to it, a cable running up to the pried-open panel.
He blocked out the voices, blocked out the noise, blocked out the darkness. Until nothing existed before him but her. And he pressed into the bond.
'I know you can hear me, Barriss. I know you can.' The glass of the bacta tank whispered cold under his touch, and the blue glow silhouetted his hand.
She twitched.
'I need you to wake up, Barriss.' He blinked his vision clear. 'I woke up for you. Now I need you to wake up for me.'
The bond rolled.
He pressed in harder. With everything. Like he knew she had for him.
'Wake up, Barriss.'
The crackling hiss of a saber stabbing through durasteel broke behind him, and he pinched his eyes.
'Wake up.'
The bond pulsed once. Her heartbeat monitor pulsed with it.
'Wake up.'
The bond swelled. Cracks forming through like veins in a stone. Light spilling out. Flicks of amber.
'Wake up.'
The sound of a door opening. "Halt!"
'Wake up.'
Footsteps rushing. Hands grabbing him. Pulling him backward.
A ripple of onyx within a blue glow. A blink. Twin beacons of violet. A breath of hope.
"Look! The monitors!"
'Wake up.'
"Padawan, can you hear me?"
'Aiden?'
'I'm here, Barriss.' The bond opened. Violet focused on him.
He smiled. 'I'm here.'
THE END
The end. And at last, the first draft is complete. Thank you very much to everyone who took the time to read this story, and to everyone who followed/faved/reviewed. I appreciate it very much.