The image of Lux Bonteri had faded, but Ahsoka's anger hadn't waned in the slightest. She found herself questioning this entire endeavor; after all, Vader seemed nothing like the man he'd once been. Many stories had circulated that Anakin Skywalker had died in a final stand at the Jedi temple on Coruscant, and that Vader had been the one that destroyed him. Perhaps that was true, and that the nature of the Dark Side isn't so much a change of heart as a complete recreation of a person. Maybe, Ahsoka reasoned, there really was nothing left of Anakin. Even if that were true, however, Ahsoka knew what she needed to survive, and to protect innocents like Enuma was power, and Vader had it.

She wandered down another seemingly-endless corridor, the cold stone surrendering no indication of where she was. If this was to be a trial of apparitions, Ahsoka couldn't help but wonder what of the many ghosts of her past would be the next to haunt her.

"Ahsoka. I knew one day you would come." Ahsoka's blood turned cold at the familiar voice. She turned and looked into a face she'd hoped she would never see again.

Barriss Offee smiled at her, and Ahsoka's rage began to boil closer to the surface.

"You. You're the one that caused all this misery! I should have killed you when I had the chance," Barriss almost sang, mocking Ahsoka. "Is that what you were going to say? Maybe you're right, maybe you should have." The apparition leaned closer to Ahsoka, their faces nearly touching. "But you didn't. And even though I ultimately confessed to what I did, it was YOU that paid the price, wasn't it, Ahsoka?"

Barriss, her robe flowing around her almost like liquid, walked in a slow circle around Ahsoka, her eyes always hidden in the shadows cast by her hood. The familiar diamond-shaped markings across the bridge of her nose marked the border between light and shadow on the lost Jedi's face. Her mouth was twisted into a cruel grin. "Luminara Unduli, Shaak Ti, so many others, all lost. You could have helped them, Ahsoka. But you ran. You took your hurt feelings and ran. And while you were gone, the clones turned and butchered them all. Even your beloved Anakin. Even me. They found me in my cell, and executed me."

The phantasm of Barriss continued to circle around Ahsoka, clearly seeming to enjoy this opportunity to berate her former friend. "You know what happened after you left, Ahsoka. Everything disintegrated for the Jedi. They were obliterated. Younglings were slaughtered as they practiced in the temple. All throughout the galaxy, where they were found, they were cut down just as easily. Plo Koon. You remember your original mentor, don't you, Ahsoka? Do you know what happened to him? Do you even care?"

Barriss flashed a wicked smile, her eyes concealed beneath the hood she always had on. "Darth Vader, the man who slaughtered everyone you had come to care about and trust, every last one of them, and now you serve him. You believe I betrayed you, but in your heart, Ahsoka dear, you know that YOU are the traitor here. You have known that for some time, haven't you? It's what keeps you awake at night. It's what makes you wake up screaming, isn't it? You might as well have killed them yourself, Ahsoka. It would have been more honest than what you did."

Ahsoka found her anger to be hard to contain, but for some reason she kept her temper under control. She needed to know what Barriss had to say. This was a confrontation that she'd known would have to happen one day. Today was that day, and here, in the Sith temple of Yavin 4, the pair were eye-to-eye once more. Ahsoka's hatred was in no way veiled, but the cold malice in the voice of Barriss, the absence of the person Ahsoka had come to care for, struck Ahsoka hard in her heart.

She could barely hold in her rage at Barriss' mockery. She wanted to lash out, strike the one that was once her best friend, the one who knew so many of her secrets. She wanted to slice her one-time friend in two, but she waited. Perhaps it was the last remnants of her training as a Jedi, but she knew that there were things she needed to know, and only Barriss could tell her.

"You, however, escaped the horror. I find it supremely ironic that the Jedi actually set their own destruction in motion, and I needn't have worried so much about the bombing. Alas, none of us escaped that day, save for you, and maybe one or two others. I'd heard rumors that Master Yoda escaped, but no one knows for sure." Barriss leaned in close once more, looking Ahsoka right in the eyes, a glint of reflection in otherwise dark orbs revealing unadulterated malice. "And yet, you, lowliest of the Padawans, somehow survived. Survived by burying yourself in the grotesque busom of the Hutts."

"Coward."

That was Ahsoka's breaking point. An unseen force seemed to throw Barriss back several meters, impacting into a wall with the sickening sound of bone on stone. Barriss, her mocking smile replaced with panic, struggled aimlessly to escape the grip around her neck. Ahsoka, her eyes flaring with rage, walked over to Barriss, her anger nearly arcing from her skin like electricity. "You secretly plan to murder innocent people, good people, friends of mine, and plot and scheme to have ME blamed for it, but I am the coward? Oh, no, Barriss. I don't think so. I'd wanted to never have this conversation, but since you're here, we might as well have it out. Yes, you DID ruin my life, as it was up to that point, but you didn't break me. I didn't run out of cowardice. I left in disgust. Oddly enough, it was in your carrying out such an act that I got to see what the Jedi really were. In the end, I shared your feelings on the matter. You were right about them, Barriss. Absolutely right."

"But…" Ahsoka flashed that same cruel grin Barriss had worn just minutes before. "That doesn't mean that I forgive you. You still betrayed me, and I take that type of thing VERY personally. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's not for me to take justice into my own hands. A Jedi might get over it, or more likely repress it into oblivion, but as you well know…"

Ahsoka waved her hand, and Barriss' head turned at an unnatural angle, emanating a sickening crunch. Ahsoka released her grip on Barriss, and the Mirialan crumpled to the floor, lifeless. Unlike Lux, the apparition didn't vanish. Instead, the lifeless body merely sat as a testament to the power of rage and the Dark Side. Ahsoka, her wicked smile intact, turned and walked away.

"…I'm no Jedi."