Chapter 34.5 - Everyone I

"I mean no disrespect, Lord Vader, I am merely curious as to how the rebels escaped through your office window with you present."

"Your failure is what allowed these rebels to infiltrate this facility beneath your watch. I suggest you double-check all of our defenses before THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES!"

The Grand Inquisitor has never run so fast in his life.

**w**

"An apprentice, he seeks," Yoda murmurs, frowning.

Qui-Gon's ghost is seated on the log across from him, even as a shimmering ghost. Even dead, lost his flare for dramatics, he has not. "Yes," he agrees, "He does. That's the natural way of life for a Sith and all Force-users. We all eventually move on and try to find someone to pass on our knowledge to."

"Concerning, it is, if another Sith, there will be." Yoda sighs, waddling closer and sitting. Meant the end to the Jedi Order, Darth Vader and Darth Sidious have already. What another Sith could cause, know, he does not.

"We don't need to worry about that," Qui-Gon replies. "Trust me. The child he has eyes on could never be a true Lord of the Sith."

"Hoped the same, we did, once, about young Skywalker." Speaking of him, difficult, it is, A friend, he was, until consumed by the Dark Side. Far, he had fallen. Manipulated by Darth Sidious while notice, the Jedi did not. In front of them, it happened. Seen, any of them could have. But blind they were, until too late, it was. Until gone, he was.

"She has a wildness in her that Anakin never has."

"Hmm. Then hurt her, the Sith could."

"I wouldn't be concerned with that."

"Oddly calm with this all, you are."

"Anakin broke all of our expectations. Even mine. This child is much the same. The Dark Side may be strong with her, but she is neither Jedi nor Sith. Neither is truly a part of her destiny."

"Then believe, do you, that help Skywalker, she could?"

"The Darkness in the galaxy never lasts forever." Qui-Gon's ghost fades away, leaving his cryptic statement hanging in the air.

Yoda huffs in his friend's absence'. "Hmm. Hiding, you are. Know what will happen, you do. Wait to find out, I must. Unfair, that is." The Jedi Master hobbles back into his hut, grumbling.

**w**

"Grand Inquisitor, shouldn't we inform the Emperor of this breach?"

"Are offering to speak to him of your failure, Sixth Brother?"

"...no."

**w**

There's something about a breach in some top-secret Imperial facility. Crosshair overhears the whispers, checks the files, stares blankly at the fleeting images caught of it.

A blur of gray and orange, but the dark-haired girl, well...

Idiots.

All of his siblings are idiots, Crosshair decides despairingly.

Maybe Hunter was right that he doesn't know what they are, and Vision that he was never one of them. But still, for all that he hates it, Crosshair misses them. He's just... empty. He's serving the Empire, because that's all he has left anymore, but this isn't where his heart is. He knows that.

He thinks the Empire does, too.

Though Hunter promised they wouldn't fight him, and Crosshair took that. They broke that promise though, by coming here and breaking into this place. They ousted themselves. Again. (His heart aches when he thinks of them. When he remembers what he lost. Vision, Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Echo... Omega. His family. The one he left.)

But still, for reasons he can't determine, he says nothing.

**w**

There is nothing to see on Tatooine. Obi-Wan has only been here eight months, and he is already driving himself to the brink of insanity. Anakin survived here for nine years. Oh – was it six years? He came when he was three. But still, six years is a whole lot longer than eight months, and he is going to lose his mind.

If he hasn't already.

There's nothing in this cave of misery but himself, a lot of sand, and a bunch of ghosts that only live in his own mind. In short, when he sensed some sort of shifting in the Force, he doesn't care what it means. Anakin is gone, and the Jedi are gone, and the world is close to ending, anyway.

A tiny little flicker of light somewhere in the galaxy isn't going to change anything about his life. Obi-Wan really wishes he could just stop thinking about it.

**w**

Far across the galaxy, Ahsoka senses some sort of... shift. She's sprawled on her workbench on Raada when she feels it, waiting, forever for something to shift and change, begging the Force that she feels a flicker of Anakin again, that there be some reassurance for him to be alive.

Waiting until the day she dies.

She feels something... rippling. It's a shift in the Force, and Ahsoka slowly lifts herself from the bench, seating upright. It's like dropping a pebble in water, were water ripples outwards, running to and back, splashing – but this is different. It feels like fire. Like rushing fire.

Ahsoka knows that feel.

Anakin, just a flash and fleeting moment, but that was him, and she just feels something... changing. Getting lighter.

Tears fill her eyes, and she exhales. "I'm gonna find you, Skyguy," Ahsoka whispers to the empty room. "Unless... you find me first."

But there is one thing she does know – her time on Raada is coming to a sharp close, and she won't ever come back here. There's a place for her elsewhere, even if she's not nearly ready yet to think about fighting, about taking the risks and leading more people to their deaths, to kill – any of it, but for better or worse, she knows a storm is coming.

(Ahsoka also, resolutely, refuses to think about how she feels a sparking bright light ahead of the storm.)

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