The Climb

"Kenobi."

"Miss Ventress. I'm glad we have this opportunity. I wasted our last time together, and I was afraid I wouldn't have time to rectify my mistake."

Asajj's dream had only just begun, and already it had begun to irritate her. "You can tell I'm not dead. Congratulations."

"No, I'm quite certain you are. Don't fret, it is not the end. I suspect whatever comes next for you will prove a new adventure, one where you might make the right decisions."

After weeks with Ahsoka, Asajj had nearly forgotten why she so despised speaking with Jedi. On some level, she was grateful for the reminder. On most levels, she was just annoyed.

"Charming as I've ever known you to be, Kenobi," she sneered. "Just once, I'd like-"

Kenobi interrupted, "I wanted to say I'm sorry. To you. For everything."

For all his inconsequential niceties and constant meaningless apologetic platitudes, there was something so genuine and agonizingly honest in dream-Kenobi's words that Asajj was utterly taken aback. She turned away before speaking, "What have you done worth apologizing for? We were on opposite sides of a war. We fought. I lost. You even gave me my freedom after Maul. If all you've done is annoy me with your child-like taunts, consider yourself forgiven, and stay out of my dreams."

"No, Ventress. I'm apologizing for everything before that. For not finding you earlier. All the pain in your life is our fault. You could have made a wonderful Jedi."

Ventress woke in a rage, wishing she could scream. How dare he! How dare he take responsibility for her life! As if she hadn't chosen anger, hatred, and revenge. As if she didn't choose Dooku. And Talzin. And Savage.

As if all the pain in her life wasn't her own fault.

Asajj left her room and came upon an oblivious Ahsoka preparing for their departure. The food the Miralukan woman had brought them was both nutritious and palatable, but unsuitable for transportation. Ahsoka was using the limited tools in the kitchen to...do something to it. After a few moments study, Asajj decided that she was dehydrating it. A few moments later, she decided she didn't much care.

Asajj reached out with her mind the way that the Miralukan woman had taught her yesterday, caressing the thoughts surrounding Ahsoka, projecting her words upon it, "How long until we are ready?"

Ahsoka cussed. And cussed rather well, if Asajj were to rate it. Crude, yet creative. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" she pleaded as she picked up the scattered food.

Asajj rolled her eyes and spoke again into Ahsoka's mind, "I wasn't sneaking, you're deaf."

"I don't need my hearing to sense my surroundings. The Force is my ally." Ahsoka had the decency to smirk at herself. Asajj liked her more when she didn't take herself so seriously. "If I didn't sense you, it's because you were sneaking."

"Sure. Fine. I was sneaking. You caught me. What happens to people when they die?"

Asajj hadn't meant to ask it, the question just slipped out of her mouth when she wasn't paying attention. Now that it was out in the open though, she didn't bother to hide her interest in Ahsoka's answer.

An answer that wasn't immediately forthcoming, "Where did that come from? Why the sudden interest?"

Asajj shrugged, "Had a weird dream, got me thinking. I'm curious what the Jedi have to say about it."

Ahsoka again didn't respond with the speed or content Asajj desired, "Wrap up the blankets would you? The mountain might take more than one day to climb, and it might be cold."

Asajj didn't intrude upon Ahsoka's mind. She just glared.

"I'm not evading the question, I'm trying to get my thoughts in order," Ahsoka explained. "That's a big question to just spring on me, and I want to answer it properly."

"Don't," Asajj pushed into her mind. "I don't want the Kenobi-answer or the Skywalker-answer. I want to hear what you think. If the words don't come out right, correct yourself. But every time you delay and think before saying anything makes me think you're telling me what I want to hear, or what you want me to hear, instead of the truth."

Ahsoka considered Asajj for a moment. She acquiesced with a tiny nod, "It was actually before I'd ever met Masters Anakin or Obi-Wan that one of my peers asked that question. We were in Yoda's class, and he said that life is eternal, that there is no death, just a change in the form life takes. He called us 'luminous beings,' each of us a great gathering of infinitely many points of light. When we die, that light is scattered, absorbed back into the force, cast across the universe, until it converges into new life.

"Might be true," Ahsoka continued, "Yoda is powerful enough to sense things we can't. But I never really bought the whole 'there is no death, there is only the force' line. Once I die, I, Ahsoka Tano, my identity, will be lost forever. There will never be anything in the universe that thinks, feels, acts, and remembers the way that I do. I like being me. So I try to avoid death."

Asajj would have laughed if she could. "You avoid death? You, who went blade to blade with General Grievous, who picked a fight with nine of the deadliest bounty hunters in the galaxy, who picked me as a business partner, you try to avoid death?"

Ahsoka shrugged, "I try to avoid the death of me. I'm the sort of person who would do all those things. If I didn't do those things, then I'd already be dead."

Asajj shook her head at her partner's odd logic, and contented herself with rolling up the blankets.

The journey across the grasslands towards the mountain was quiet. Even peaceful. A breeze too faint to feel coaxed the light grasses into simple dances.

Yet the mountain loomed, dark and ominous even under the brilliant blue of the morning sun.

"What about you?" Ahsoka asked, as if their last conversation had ended seconds ago, rather than hours.

"What about me?" Asajj thought aloud.

"What do you think happens to us after we die?"

"For you, no idea." Asajj made an effort to answer without preamble, without thinking too much, since she just lectured Ahsoka on it earlier. "Probably whatever your Yoda said. Can't figure out grammar, but he knows the force, I have the humiliating memories to prove it."

"You fought with Master Yoda?" Ahsoka stopped to stare at Asajj, an uncomfortable amount of awe seeping into her voice. "And you're alive?"

Asajj stepped past Ahsoka, "'Fighting' is generous. And wrong. He ripped the sabers from my hand the second I thought to attack. And then he gave them back, just to make sure the message sank in, but that's besides the point. If he says Jedi shatter into beams of Force-light when they die, I won't argue with him. But he doesn't know the nightsisters and their ways.

"Long ago, my mother's ancestors found ways to capture a life in the moments after death, contain it, enslave it, body and spirit. The dead serve the living, that was their way. When Grievous came for us, the old magicks were invoked, and the dead rose against him. Not that it did much good; a good blaster destroys dead sinew as easily as it does the living.

"Point is, I might die halfway across the galaxy, but I'll never move on. In death, I'll be bound to serve the nightsisters who live. Body will separate from spirit, but both will serve the purposes of those who come after. And since I'm probably the last...either the magick will break with me, or I'll have a very dull eternity waiting for me."

Ahsoka didn't hide her disgust, "That sounds horrible! Sorry, I know they were your people, but who would want to spend their death like that? You signed on for this? Why?"

Asajj was grateful for the straightforward response, "Nobody signs on for it. The rituals that bound me were performed when I was very young. Might be horrible. Doesn't matter. It's reality. That's my fate."

"Fuck fate."

Asajj turned to look at Ahsoka, floored at her sudden outburst. She didn't think she'd ever heard her partner swear before, and certainly not that aggressively.

A cold fire burned behind Ahsoka's eyes. She spoke without anger, but Asajj didn't think she'd have dared disagree even if she didn't find the next words from Ahsoka's mouth to be the most wonderful thing she'd ever heard, "We'll find some way to fix that. Nothing in the future is set. Not for us. We'll go to Dathomir, study the magicks, find a ritual to undo them, or invent one for ourselves. They don't get to control you."

Ahsoka's form blurred slightly, smudged along the edges, flickering despite the steady starlight in the cloudless sky. With a stab of horror, Asajj realized that the problem wasn't with the light, or the atmosphere, or Ahsoka, but with her own eyes. They were wet. She was crying.

Asajj whipped around and stalked off towards the mountain, heart racing. A part of her mind, the one that spoke in Dooku's voice, the one she hated and strove to ignore, the one that, deep down, she trusted most, sprang to life, "You shouldn't be feeling this way. Allegiance leads to attachment, attachment to dependence, dependence to weakness. You know this to be true. You've seen it. You've felt it. The life of a Sith has no room for allies, save those of convenience, no use for love save to exploit it."

That word made Asajj lengthen her stride. Love. Did she love Ahsoka? Was she capable of love after all this time? Did she want to be? The word was an abomination in and of itself, an amalgamation of a thousand kinds of emotions expressed in a thousand more ways.

And the subject of the whirlwind of confused and terrified emotions was trailing three paces behind her. Asajj took all her questions and emotions and shoved them down, down, and away, to be examined much later if at all, and then far from anywhere Ahsoka might be able to sense her.

Emotions shelved, Asajj raised her shield of scorn, apathy, and deflection, "I've never heard you swear like that before. What, did fate bully you as a child?"

Ahsoka took her unstable emotions in stride. "Not me. Anakin. You've seen him, you've fought him. You know how powerful he is, how unrelenting, how uncompromising. That isn't just him in a fight, that's just him. Nobody, not a single Jedi works harder than Anakin. I used to think it was admirable, but now I can't help but wonder what drove him that hard, day after day, year after year. Did you know that I actually came to the Jedi Temple before Anakin did? He was born in the outer rim, wasn't identified as force sensitive until he was nine years old. Kind of like you, now that I think about it. I've been training as a Jedi a year longer than he has. Master Obi-Wan has been training almost three times as long, and the two practically fight as equals.

"There was this Jedi prophecy that said a 'chosen one' would have this great, galaxy-altering destiny, and a lot of the masters say that it's about Anakin. He says he doesn't believe it, but with a little perspective, I think it really screwed him up. Huh…" Ahsoka trailed off, mumbling.

"What was that?" Asajj asked.

"Nothing. Well," she amended, trying to be open and honest, "nothing on topic. Just something I noticed. When I originally left the temple, I told myself it was because I needed to get some perspective, look at things objectively, figure some things out. I just realized that I've done that without even trying, at least where Anakin is concerned."

"You really care that much about him, don't you?" Asajj asked, slowing enough to let Ahsoka catch up.

"He was my master, my mentor, of course I-" Ahsoka bit her sentence off, seeming to realize who was listening. "Sorry, I know things were different for you with Dooku, even if you don't like talking about-"

"Don't worry about it," Asajj said, perhaps a bit too quickly. "Actually, I kind of get it; I think I feel the same way about my most recent mentor."

"You never really talk about Mother Talzin; what was she like?" Ahsoka asked.

"She was a skin-sack filled to the brim with ambition and manipulation. And she wasn't who I was talking about."

"Oh." Ahsoka looked puzzled. "Then, did you have someone teach you about bounty hunting, or…?"

"I'm talking about you, little pest."

"Oh!" Ahsoka looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think that's the nicest thing you've said to me. Thank you."

"If you ever want it to happen again, you won't make a big deal of it," Asajj said, adding some extra aloofness to her tone to hide her embarrassment. She moved the conversation along just to make sure. "So you don't think that Anakin is this 'Chosen One' even though the prophecy says so. Do you not trust prophecies at all, or do you just not think that this one is right?"

"Well, I kind of...have to believe in prophecies," Ahsoka admitted. "I made one."

"You did?"

Ahsoka nodded. "I foresaw an assassination on Senator Amidala. She died in the middle of an important speech."

"But she's alive."

Ahsoka nodded again, "After I had the prophecy, I changed the future. Stayed near the senator. Stopped the assassin. Got shot. If I hadn't had the prophecy, the prophecy would have come true. But since I had it, it wasn't. Same thing with Anakin. Maybe he's the Chosen One. Maybe he would have been if he wasn't trying so hard to be the Chosen One, but now he can't be. Maybe prophecies are a pile of poodoo and we make our future."

Asajj spent a few miles trying to wrap her head around that idea, shooting incidental questions into Ahsoka's mind from time to time. She was surprised how easy it had become to just talk with the girl. Ironic, given that she couldn't talk at all at the moment. But out here, in this sliver of the galaxy untouched by war, they weren't old enemies any more. It was almost possible to believe that the rest of the galaxy didn't exist, that all there was any more was the two of them, the grass beneath their feet, and the ever-growing mountain.

They ground beneath their feet was really rising now.

"So tell me," Asajj asked, leaning back and trying to find the peak against the mid-morning sky, "what is a 'vergence?' What is it that we're looking for on this mountain?"

Ahsoka cringed minutely at the question, "The simple version is that it's a place that's abnormally strong in the Force. Abnormal as in 'off every chart mortal minds can conceive.' The Force is generally strongest where there is the most life; city planets like Coruscant, great jungles like on Felucia, that sort of thing. Using the Force there is easier than it would be in space, or on Tatooine. Easier for powerful Force users to hide as well.

"But a Vergence is something else entirely. The amount of potential power in the air is enough to scramble a normal person's mind, but for Force users, it's something else entirely. I'd be more specific if I could, but everything I've read and heard about them and what I've seen myself says that every one is different, and often different to different people. There's no consistent answer on where they come from, what causes them to form. Most often, force users will see some kind of vision. Usually not at all dangerous, and it can actually be really helpful, if you can work out what the vision means."

"What did you see?" Asajj asked. When Ahsoka gaped at her, she went on, "You said you've seen some stuff yourself, besides what you've heard and researched. That means you've been to one of these things yourself, right?"

Ahsoka nodded reluctantly, "Yeah. I said that most reports are of people having visions. Mine...wasn't like that."

As Asajj and Ahsoka approached the mountain's base, Ahsoka spoke of her time on Mortis, of the Father, Daughter, and Son, of the Son's corrupting touch, her own death, the Daughter's sacrifice.

"And you don't think that was a vision? You say that no time passed while all this happened, not for anyone else. Was this vergence powerful enough to send you back through time, or did you somehow pass through a vergence in the dead of space, and it gave you, Kenobi, and Skywalker a shared vision?"

Ahsoka shrugged helplessly. I tried to do some research on it afterwards, but I'm a terrible scholar, and there was a war happening, and I really have no idea."

"So we'll either be facing nothing at all, or shards of the Force itself of such incomprehensible age and power that we'll be utterly helpless before its whims."

"Pretty much," Ahsoka said. "That's the essence of the Jedi code, I think. Trusting the Force is with you, letting it guide your actions."

"I'm not good with trust. Sith methods give me control. Security." Asajj argued, more for the chance to delay their task than because she really felt any loyalty to her mentor's philosophies.

"You trusted me enough to come this far without even knowing what a vergence is," Ahsoka pointed out. "There's a security in trusting that someone else knows what's going on, that they'll make the right decisions even if you can't."

"Yeah, well, you're a bad influence on me." Asajj began trudging forward, grass and dirt giving way to stone and gravel. "And look how well trusting you worked out? You've got no idea what we're facing either! How can I trust that you'll make the right decision when you don't even know the right question?"

"Because the Force will guide me." Ahsoka's satisfied smile fell. "At least, that's supposed to be the right answer. Honestly, some control right now sounds pretty good."

Silence both auditory and mental fell between the two as they made their way across the barren ground surrounding the base of the mountain. A sandstone archway stood at the tail of path that Asajj could see slithering up the mountain and out of sight. Asajj caught Ahsoka's eye, and they nodded their determination to each other. They passed under the arch.

Five steps forward revealed another world. The winds tore at their clothes, pelting their skin with dust and debris. The noonday sun was nowhere to be seen, the sky a moonless black night marred with blood-red nebula clouds. The scent of plant life, so constant across the fields was erased, replaced with a crystalline nothingness that grated on Asajj's nerves by its unrelenting nonexistence. The path and the mountain itself had changed as well, branching from the lonely mountain and straight path to a great misshapen divergence, two trails leading up two mounts which seemed to lead to a single peak.

"Seems like this vergence wants us to split up," Asajj noted. "Maybe it has different trials for each of us?"

"Seems like," Ahsoka agreed, voice raised against the wind. "Good thing we've both gotten pretty good at breaking the rules."

"You want to defy the Force itself?" Asajj asked, surprised, impressed, and a little pleased. "Weren't you saying that the Jedi way is all about trusting the Will of the Force?"

"And I've told you before, I'm no Jedi. We stick together. Bad things happen when we're alone. Got a problem with that?"

Asajj shook her head and tried to hide her smile. "So, left or right?"

The Mountain didn't give them a chance to decide. The stone split from the point where the two paths split and cracked the ground directly between Ahsoka and Asajj. As the crack grew from crevice to fissure, hot air burst from the gap in a raging torrent, pushing the women away from each other.

Reflexively, Asajj reached across the gap, grasping Ahsoka's hand as she made a mirrored gesture. The steaming air burned their joined hands, but their grip didn't slacken. Ahsoka's battle-coarse fingers tightened painfully around Asajj's hand, and for reasons Asajj wasn't sure she could explain to herself, her own hands held all the tighter as well.

Asajj tried to pull Ahsoka to her side, or to leap across the gap to join her on the other side, she wasn't entirely sure which, but the stone crumbled to dust beneath her feet. The winds from below were throwing her away from earth, so desperate were they to separate her from her partner.

The stars began winking out of the sky, and in the last seconds of light, Asajj saw Ahsoka's mouth working furiously, the three repeated words whipped out of her mouth by the furious winds before they could reach Asajj's ears.

Even so, Asajj recognized them and chanted them back into Ahsoka's mind:

Don't let go. Don't let go. Whatever happens, don't let go.

And then everything disappeared. There was no light. There was no sound. Neither smell nor taste. No sensation on her skin, even wear Asajj knew she should be able to feel the fabric of her own clothing. Even her sensations through the Force were gone, no glimpses of the future, none of Ahsoka's unreadable thoughts to communicate with.

But try though she might, Asajj could not close her hand. The Mountain had stripped her of her senses, but it hadn't been able to physically separate them. Whatever might be happening outside the void her mind had created, Ahsoka was still by her side. She hadn't let go.

Neither would Asajj.

Light appeared, from everywhere and nowhere, and Asajj found she could see her own arms, legs, and the bridge of her own nose, but Ahsoka and the mountain had disappeared. Asajj squeezed extra tight on the immovable nothingness between her fingers and felt her palm lightly crushed in return. She was still there.

There was a mirror, wider than it was tall, but still large enough to tower over Asajj. With nothing else in existence save the pressure in her hand, Asajj walked across nothing to stand before it. Within its reflected depths was an infinite blackness, and her own self, stiff, and scared.

Standing behind her was Count Dooku.

Asajj whipped around, nearly ripping her hand free from Ahsoka's grip. There was nobody behind her. The Sith of Serenno was with her only in reflection.

He was not alone. A Kel Dor, head disgustingly mishaped with bits of metal covering eyes and jaw, gender hidden by wide, loose robes, stood to Dooku's side. The same side as Asajj's tightly clenched hand.

Though she couldn't see her friend, their trial would be fought together.

"You disappoint me, Ahsoka." The Kel Dor's voice was nothing like his appearance: deep and level, if distorted slightly by whatever device masked his mouth. "We have given you so much. Everything that you are. Why have you abandoned us?"

Dooku didn't wait for silence before beginning his own tirade, "I always hoped you'd grow weary of me, try to force my hand, either to kill me or learn more from me, find the power within yourself to become a true Sith. But that was never you. You were always weak."

She hated this man. Hated his war, hated his ways, hated his cruelty, hated every moment of her life she'd spent near him. So why did it hurt so much to hear these words. She knew anything she could do that would earn his approval would be repulsive, reprehensible. So why did she want it so much?

"Nothing in you but darkness, and still you could not do what must be done. Wrath and revenge; it's all you ever were. You could never see the end of the game, the purpose of the war. Blind. Stupid. A rabid animal, only able to see what's before it. Never Sith. Never even human."

The Kel Dor hadn't stopped either, "This quest of yours is well-meaning, but hopeless. Whatever light you kindle in her is matched in equal measure by the darkness she fosters in you. And meanwhile, the galaxy is in turmoil. Persisting is selfishness. Return. Your place is here."

The Kel Dor made a motion with his hands, and Asajj felt herself jerked forward by the grip on her wrist. A snap of breaking glass cut through their words as cracks splintered out from a place right in front of the Kel Dor. The once flawless mirror was now divided, and two new figures stood reflected within the nothingness, separated from Dooku and the Keldor by the new flaws in the glass. Beside the Kel Dor stood a clone trooper with close cropped blond hair. And next to Dooku was Talzin.

"We are dead because of you girl. You family, your sisters, your mother, all dead because you couldn't kill Grievous, because you couldn't protect anyone, because you brought their fury to our door."

"The war isn't going well, Commander. Jedi aren't supposed to be able to leave the order. When you did, others followed. We clones are standing our ground as well as we can, but it was always the Jedi who brought us real victory.

The clone trooper wasn't speaking condemnations, but Asajj knew Ahsoka well enough to know the guilt he was piling upon her would be far more terrible than any of the accusations Talzin was leveling her way.

"The 501st has had the worst of it though. You always knew how to keep us smiling and fighting, no matter who fell. And a lot have fallen. Tup, Fives, don't even know what happened to Kix. And General Skywalker is only getting more reckless. I don't think we're going to win this war Commander. We're all missing you."

"But even you must know this isn't the end. We are the daughters of the night. Death is not the end for them. And I will be the end of you!" A sickly green sword materialized in her hands. With a darkly echoed scream, she thrust it toward the mirror. Talzin pressed on with all the strength she could muster, and the flaming green tip pierced through the mirror.

Asajj panicked, throwing up her free hand to push the sword back through. Eyes wide in fear, she didn't immediately notice that two more figures had joined the crowd on the far side of the mirror. There was a young Mirialan woman wearing the armor of a clone trooper. And there was Maul.

"I remember you, sister. I know what you are. I know what you did to my brother. What you made of him. What you made him do."

"You've fallen so far Ahsoka. Did you never listen to the histories I told you of? You should know what power like ours does without the Jedi code to guide it. The rest of the Order have fallen as well, but at least they're trying. But you? This kind of betrayal...could it be?"

"He's dead now, because you betrayed him. Because you weren't there to fight with us." Maul was raging, his arguments making less sense, "It should have been you! You should have been by my side! You should be with me to take revenge against my master! Instead you ally yourself with Kenobi! With Jedi filth!"

Maul lurched forward and punched the mirror. In the web of fractures around the impact, Asajj could see rotting, golden stripes overlaid with Maul's red.

"...Perhaps there really must always be a Darth Traya."

Asajj felt the hand twist in her own, and she mirrored the movement, bracing herself against nothing and force pushing the glass as hard as she could.

The glass shattered, and the vergence's illusion shattered with it. Asajj still held Ahsoka's hand. They stood at the mountain's peak, the azure sun approaching the horizon. A small pedestal of uncarved stone sat before them. And on it were two glittering kyber crystals.

Asajj looked at Ahsoka, something like triumph welling within her.

Tano wouldn't meet her eyes.

With dawning horror, Ventress understood.

She heard. She knows.