Coruscant
19.3 BBY (16:03:20 GrS)
Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine was not having a very good day today. At first he'd been elated to see and sense Ahsoka Tano's untimely death in the middle of the opening arguments in her own courtroom trial—a freak accident not even the Dark Lord could have foreseen. Sidious could easily imagine that Anakin would blame Tano's death on the military's treatment of her and the Jedi Council transferring her into Tarkin's custody in the first place.
That she had been resuscitated did not concern him, no, it was a matter of how it had happened. The Togruta had mysteriously gotten back up as if she hadn't just suffered a severe brain hemorrhage mere minutes prior. Her Force signature felt quite different in the brief moments she took to come to.
Even still, he had expected her to wish to depart from the Order after being found innocent once Anakin had brought Barris Offee in…
And yet… According to the security footage Isard forwarded at my request, she seemed intent on rejoining the order based on her response to Anakin's suggestion that he get her reinstated… Nor did she react all that much to the revelation that Offee had betrayed her. It is almost as if Tano knew.
He tapped his finger on the arm of his chair as he contemplated the matter further, zooming in on security footage of the Togruta sharing a table with an Ardennian and Chelidae.
More interestingly she acts as if she is somewhat familiar with several individuals that my sources indicated she and Anakin should've only ever had brief encounters with at best. While the first oddity may not mean much, the latter are most curious and concerning developments.
Indeed, Tano's recent return to the Temple had confirmed that she wished to remain a Jedi, and perhaps had even been knighted… While not a death knell for his plans, it frustrated his ability to manipulate Anakin.
On a whim, Palpatine's mind drifted off to the Bothan essence transfer technology that had almost taken his life earlier in the year, but he dismissed the thought. Tano had shown no signs of having had her mind replaced by another's at this juncture, even if her behavior had become somewhat odd.
Reviewing the footage further quickly grew boring as it revealed nothing new about Tano that he didn't already know. Thus, he was reduced to reclining and watching the traffic pass outside his lounge window while waiting for Captain Kagi to return from the COMPOR hospital with Tano's medical reports.
As if summoned by the thought, the Clone Captain, clad in his usual red-marked Coruscant Guard armor with helmet-linked pilot's life support pack and officer's pauldron and kama, entered the Chancellor's suite at that moment.
"My Lord," Kagi stated, a datapad in his hands.
"Ah, Captain," Palpatine greeted as he stood up and turned to face the man, the Red Guards at the door standing impassively. "You have the reports?"
"Yes, they don't paint much of a picture but…"
Palpatine raised an eyebrow. "But what?"
The Clone glanced down at the screen of his datapad before turning it to show Palpatine, who learned in and inspected it with carefully constrained interest. "There's several anomalies on the brain scans that the doctors noted during testing. My apologies but I'm no expert on this subject so I cannot even begin to say what these differences mean."
Curious… Was this related to her unusual Force presence? And if so, then how? I shall have Doriana look into this as a side-project. More important matters lie ahead in the short-term.
"Captain," Palpatine stated in a cold manner as he clasped his hands together, standing straight up as he turned back to the window. "I do feel that it is in our interest to keep an eye on Ahsoka Tano for the time being. This close to the final phases of our plan, we can't have an outlier undermining everything, now can we?"
Kagi nodded in immediate understanding. "Understood, My Lord. I'll detail a Covert Ops unit to keep an eye on Tano whenever she leaves the Temple, but unfortunately we have no access to the interior."
"I shall handle that…" Palpatine chuckled darkly as he walked over to one of his statues, casting his hand out and chanting in ancient Sith. "Dzworokka yun; nyâshqûwai, nwiqûwai. Wotok tsawakmidwanottoi, yuntok hyarutmidwanottoi." ["Two there should be; no more, no less. One to embody power, the other to crave it."]
At the ancient phrase and with a touch of the Force, the statue's head bowed and it slid aside, revealing one of several entrances to the turbolift that would take him to his private ritual chamber.
Kagi snapped to attention as Palpatine returned his attention to the Clone. "You are dismissed Captain, return to your regular duties."
"Until the day the New Order rises," Kagi replied in acknowledgement as he bowed his head and turned to leave.
Useful man, six times smarter than that clueless peon Fox and twice as loyal. If only more of my inner circle were as competent as him, Doriana, Greejatus, Moore, and Pestage, he thought as he stepped into the lift and descended with a wave of his hand.
o.o.o.o.o
Ahsoka Tano
Coruscant, the Jedi Temple
"This was actually your Great Trial," Mace Windu said confidently the next day. He wore a smile of admiration on his face that Ahsoka found completely disgusting, especially after Master Plo's deeply heartfelt apology.
What was worse was that he genuinely believed what he was saying. "Now we see that. We understand that the Force works in mysterious ways, and because of this trial, you have become a greater Jedi than you would have otherwise."
In the Jedi Council Chamber, Ahsoka stood in semicircle amongst the majority of the High Council, having only recently been released from the hospital. She frowned angrily at the Master of the Order. His tortured logic, whether an attempt to soothe his own conscience or not, sounding even more twisted and stale the second time around. It was the worst type of déjà vu bar having to suffer through Order 66 on the Tribunal again.
She could almost sympathize with how Anakin must have felt before he fragged Windu in Palpatine's office. Almost.
Yoda piped up. "Back into the order you—"
"I accept!" she yelled, unable to hide her anger. She then stammered nervously, "I mean—I accept your offer to make me a Jedi Knight, respectfully, Grand Master."
"Ahsoka…" Anakin grunted through gritted teeth. "I know you went through—"
"Curious," Yoda muttered. "An offer of knighthood, we did not mention. Most curious indeed."
"I—I had a Force vision," Ahsoka lied hastily. "Uh, well… More of a feeling anyways. And anyways, thank you for your support," she added in an insincere tone.
Yoda hmm'd to himself, blinking as he stared at her. "Most curious."
Damn, he suspects something, she realized. Thankfully the other Jedi seemed off-put but not disbelieving, though Obi-Wan had raised an eyebrow at her statements.
Master Plo visibly relaxed in relief. "I am glad you can forgive us for our failure. Little 'Soka."
Anakin seemed conflicted, though happy.
"Me too," Ahsoka sighed unhappily. The last time around, leaving the Jedi Order had given the Togruta her independence. Her own purpose. She was no longer fighting a war for—
Fighting a war, Ahsoka thought. Palpatine… Now that Anakin is less likely to turn, he'll need a new acolyte, she reasoned. And most of his acolytes, that I know of at least—Prosset Dibs, Jan-Ca Suldor, Bil Valen, and Masana Tide, are in the detention block… Either guarding it or locked away themselves. She furrowed her brow ridge, aside from Trilla Suduri, that is, who was broken by the Inquisitorious after being captured following Order 66… As for the others, Vader and the Grand Inquisitor broke them out in exchange for loyalty, and Palpatine could easily recruit them.
Or he could easily pick any number of already disaffected Jedi… Rex told me about Krell, he can't be the only member of the Order who's managed to slip past the Council. But I can't worry about them right now.
"Respectfully, Masters," Ahsoka stammered breathlessly, a new disorganized plan formulating itself in her head. She wished Kelia had come along just to get someone she could plan with at the least, but the Bothan had made her choice. "I would like to request an assignment."
"Request an assignment?!" Obi-Wan asked incredulously.
"The Jedi Temple prison block," Ahsoka said firmly. "I would like to help out in the prison block."
"You want to be a Temple Guard?" Anakin snorted. "Snips, I feel like that's a waste of your talents."
"Any path a Sentinel may take is an honorable career for a Jedi, young… Master Skywalker," Mace Windu said warningly after catching himself. "But, Knight Tano, I do not think you have the emotional control necessary to be a Temple Guard."
"Perhaps Ahsoka could become an Artisan given Anakin's own propensity towards tinkering? The Order's technical division has been severely short-staffed since the war began," Obi-Wan suggested, running a hand through his beard, with Plo Koon nodding sagely in agreement at the latter statement.
Ahsoka forced herself to relax even as Obi-Wan spoke, fighting the urge to scream at Mace Windu for his blindness to the order's internal decay. If it weren't bad enough that he was praising the Temple guards—all of whom treated her quite poorly during the trial, and some of whom later became Palpatine's acolytes, Windu was insulting her emotional control when in reality she had been far more composed than many other Jedi her age would be. It was a reminder of how young her body was.
The council was desperate to replace the Knights and Masters lost at Geonosis and elsewhere. They were filling gaps with Jedi who weren't even close to being fully trained in the use of the Force, a desperation that had cost the Order dearly over the following three years.
For kriff's sake, Master Obi-Wan was in his mid-twenties when he became a Knight thirteen years ago, and now I get knighted at seventeen.
It was then that the new and unfamiliar term that Mace had used for Anakin set in.
Master Skywalker.
He was a proper Jedi Master now that she reached Knighthood. This was not going to make things easier with his ego, but at least it removed a potential vector for Palpatine to manipulate him, a lack of recognition for his abilities.
One relief at a time, she assured herself, then took a deep breath before speaking again. "I agree Master Windu, I am not fit to be a Temple Guard. While I thank you for your suggestion Master Kenobi, I already have a path in mind other than a guard. I want to become a counselor."
"A counselor?!" the entire High Council, excluding Yoda, exclaimed in shock.
Anakin stared dumbfounded at her, seeming to be unsure as to what he should be feeling right now.
Yoda, in contrast to everyone else, chuckled mirthfully. "So many surprises and curiosities, I sense you have in store for us, young Knight!"
If only you knew even a tenth of it, Master.
o.o.o.o.o
"You know," Ahsoka said earnestly. "What you say between these walls is just between you and me."
In the Temple rehabilitation block's counseling chamber, the Togruta sat on an easy chair in front of Masana Tide, a Dowutin seated on a couch. Near the doorway, sat an elderly orange Twi'lek male, one of the Order's oldest Counselors, Master Depo Sahta. He was taking notes of Ahsoka's performance on a datapad.
"That's a lie, and we both know it. I've hashed those same words countless times when I was in your position," Masana Tide growled, folding her arms as she glowered at the Togruta, the hulking Dowutin was nearly as tall sitting down as Ahsoka was standing up.
She couldn't even imagine how Cal Kestis managed to bring her down in a duel.
Formerly a Counselor herself, Masana Tide had been locked away after strangling one of her patients—Banking Clan Admiral Pors Tonith, an unrepentant murderer who had executed hundreds of hostages before being captured by Anakin Skywalker during the battle of Praesitlyn.
Ahsoka hadn't been directly involved in Tonith's capture, but she and Vaughn, a lieutenant at the time, had become acquainted with his handiwork when they liberated some of the sadistic Muun's victims following a flanking attack on his lines. She could empathize somewhat with Masana's actions. The survivors of Tonith's cruelty were badly mutilated, and it was the Dowutin's first time in a combat zone.
"Yeah," Ahsoka admitted, looking nervously to Depo Sahta, who frowned.
Admitting to lying to a patient… Off to a great start already.
"The Temple Guards listen to everything you say," Ahsoka gulped, then began stammering, "and this is a prison, so I'm not even required to tell you that."
"No, young one," Masana grunted in a sarcastic tone, glowering at both Ashoka and Depo Sahta. "This is rehabilitation. That's what I told my patients for the last five years at least. Looks like I'm eating my words now..."
"So uh," Ahsoka said nervously, looking at Masana's chart on her datapad. "You told Stass Allie you were worried about losing your Force powers?"
"Yes," Masana explained. Leaning back on the couch, she looked up at the ceiling. "Every day, I've been feeling weaker and weaker for the past few months. At first it was minor things. I could no longer sense the emotions of people beyond the walls as easily. Now I sometimes even have trouble sensing them from people in the same room as me."
"Huh," Ahsoka said interestedly, furiously typing notes.
o.o.o.o.o
"I am going blind," the Miraluka sighed.
Ahsoka sat back in her chair, reading over her next patient's notes. Another temple detention bloc detainee, Jazal. Unlike Masana Tide, Jazal was in for a nonviolent crime. Technically, she was still awaiting judgment. Shortly after the Battle of Murkhana, she was convicted of misappropriating tens of millions of credits, using them to buy herself a secret lavish apartment in the Central District of Coruscant, a 30 minute maglev ride from the Jedi Temple. She had also laundered money through shell companies to support her very un-Jedi lifestyle.
After being charged, as the High Council met to pass down its judgment Jazal exploited a legal loophole and invoked her Right of Denial. Yoda had asked what she was denying. Her answer was the High Council's judgment. This put her in a two year legal stalemate, where she was technically not sentenced, but legally in the right to deny the High Council the ability to sentence her. The council could not excommunicate her given their prior judgment. In Ahsoka's timeline, she languished in the Jedi Temple Detention Block until the eve of Order 66, after which Ahsoka assumed the worst.
Her former lover, a Republic Naval officer—a Bothan by the name of Itoll Oc'skar, formerly Oc'nel, fled the Republic to the Dressel Asteroid Belt after the Treasury put out a warrant for his arrest, leaving her to sit in prison alone.
Of course, Ahsoka knew that in less than a year, 'justice' would catch up to Itoll Oc'skar when the Empire annexed Bothan Space.
"I take it you're feeling weaker too?" Ahsoka asked concernedly.
"Is this a joke?" Jazal snapped. "You, a counselor? Did Anakin put you up to this? It is not funny."
"No," Ahsoka answered firmly. "I want to be a counselor. I want to save you all."
o.o.o.o.o
After two weeks, Depo Sahta decided Ahsoka was ready to do her job without supervision. She was now a registered counselor, which meant she could talk to people, but she could not prescribe any medications—Not that she wanted to.
The Togruta had met every Jedi on the detention block. Most were prisoners who were locked away for wrongdoing. Some were locked away for set terms, able to be re-evaluated for probationary reinstatement, others were lifers. A few though, were not criminals at all but dangerously imbalanced individuals who had simply become a threat to everyone around them.
Before the Citadel had fallen into Separatist hands, the Jedi Order mostly interred non-violent individuals on the Coruscant Temple detention block, the ancient prisons meant for Sith and other dark siders falling into disuse, and shipped the worst of the worst to Lola Sayu in the Outer Rim. Now, with that option no longer on the table, it was standard policy for the Jedi Order to inter them all in the Temple detention block.
Standard policy for everyone but me, Ahsoka often bitterly thought. Those Jedi weren't expelled and turned over to the Republic for 'justice' at the hands of Tarkin. Not even Prosset Dibs was. He tried to literally stab Mace Windu in the back in the middle of a still-cooling battlefield and he was treated better than me. I bet if Dogma hadn't shot Pong Krell he'd probably be there too despite killing or causing the deaths of dozens of Clones from two different units and openly sabotaging the war effort.
From murderers to Jedi who had become dangerous due to mental disorders that were no fault of their own, however, all of the detainees had one thing in common: Locked in the lower levels of the Temple, their Force powers were growing weaker. A trend she noticed was also affecting many of the Order's initiates in the higher levels.
For the Jedi with eyes, this was not too big of a deal beyond the disconcerting nature of their abilities fading. For Prosset Dibs and Jazal (both of whom lacked eyes) on the other hand, life was becoming very difficult. This was something the other counselors were noting, but no one had bothered to do anything about it.
Ahsoka could only imagine this was one of the things that caused Prosset Dibs to become Tenth Brother and likely contributed to Masana Tide becoming Ninth Sister. It may have even contributed to some of the Temple Guards ultimately joining Palpatine. In any case, the Togruta was determined to get to the bottom of it.
"Master Windu," Ahsoka said with a polite bow—one quite uncharacteristic of her 17 year old self. "I was hoping to catch you before you left for Anaxes."
In the hangar, Mace Windu's robes blew in the wind as he stood in front of an LAAT, a number of Clones with maroon markings on their armor, the 187th Battalion if she was correct, already aboard the gunship. "Make this quick Ahsoka, I don't have much time."
"Something is happening to the prisoners," Ahsoka said with certainty in her voice. "They are all becoming weaker with the Force. They—"
"That isn't your job, Ahsoka," Windu said gruffly, frowning at her. "Your job is to reach out to them and make them feel better about themselves, maybe even turn their lives around. It's not to make them stronger."
"Jazal and Prosset Dibs are losing their Force sight," Ahsoka continued, speaking as formally as she could. "It has reached the point where they need help walking around the detention block. They are regularly presenting with injuries from falls, bumping into things."
"This is not our problem," Mace Windu sighed.
Ahsoka snorted angrily. With that attitude, Mace Windu was flying headlong into the possibility of more Jedi trying to kill him; driving them all into Order 66 with his foot on the accelerator. In hindsight, it was amazing that there was only one attempt on his life by a Jedi before Anakin and Sidious ultimately killed him.
"And what if whatever's affecting them is also affecting the rest of us, and they're just the first ones to notice it?" She offered, trying to change tact to presenting the possibility of a greater threat to the Order.
That Sidious and his ilk had gone unnoticed for so long, to say nothing of how the Jedi were caught totally off-guard by Dooku's fall implied something greater was at work here, and it may very well be related to whatever was happening in the Temple prison.
Master Windu seemed off-put by the suggestion, as if something was occurring to him for the first time. "I will have others look into the matter, but this is none of your concern Knight Tano," he informed her almost begrudgingly.
You win one you lose one, she thought as Windu stonewalled her yet again despite also conceding to her argument. "Very well, may the Force be with you."
"May the Force be with you, Ahsoka," Windu said, taking a step onto the LAAT.
The transport lifted off, billowing Ahsoka's robes in the wind as it flew off into the cityscape.
o.o.o.o.o
That night, Morai appeared once again. She looked exactly the same as she always did, her feathers green without aging a day.
"What am I doing wrong Morai?" Ahsoka asked her feathered friend.
Sitting at the foot of Ahsoka's bed, the Convor sat staring into the Togruta's soul with her beady green eyes. "Hoot. Hoot."
Ahsoka frowned, scoffing as she pulled the sheets over her. Out the window, the night-time cityscape of Coruscant shined brightly, blotting out all but the brightest of stars from the night sky.
And yet… She still somehow felt as if she was in the heart of darkness…
