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Even the neon extravagance of Nar Shaddaa had a hard time penetrating the back alleys through which Ahsoka skirted, weaving well out of sight of both the different Hutt Cartel security forces and ambitious informants looking to make a quick credit. It was scenery Ahsoka had acclimated to since the fall of the Empire: sparsely populated alleys, dripping pipes, scattered trash crunching underfoot. And of course she wore a cloak in case anyone was looking for an orange Togruta.
She pulled a small device out of her pocket and projected a blue map with a blinking dot pinpointing her destination in the mess of overlapping buildings. She was a block away now, and trying to ignore that feeling of something dark in the Force. Sensing something untoward wasn’t a shock in a den of scum and villainy like Nar Shaddaa, especially when the birth of the Empire had caused a galactic shift in the balance of the Force towards the dark. Warily, Ahsoka realized it also could be the presence of an Inquisitor. Ahsoka felt for her thin lightsaber hilts as she stepped into the cantina that served as her meeting location, despite knowing by the weight on her belt that they were there.
This cantina wasn’t as affluent as the multi-level saloons on the main promenade. In stark contrast, very few lights hung in this establishment, and none of them were colored… or very bright. The only moving hologram here was the projected holonet feed on one wall which commanded no one’s attention. Even the customers seemed better suited for a morose atmosphere than the flashy gaudiness the moon was known for. Perfect for meeting her Crimson Dawn contact.
Her fists tightened around her saber hilts the closer she drew to her appointed meeting spot—the alcove in the far back corner—because that underlying feeling of the dark side was growing more concentrated in proportion. She stopped once she found her contact. Ahsoka stifled a gasp at a pair of intense yellow eyes over a toothy grin.
There, lounging in the booth, sat Maul cloaked in black. Half a second later both her hilts were off her belt, pointed in Maul’s direction despite her not engaging the blades. The only thing she could accomplish by making a scene would be alerting a moon of greedy denizens that a Force user with a bounty on her head was in their midst.
Maul must have thought the same thing because her hilts—mere threats of weapons—coaxed a smile from him.
“Lady Tano, how good of you to condescend to meet me here. I take it you’re happy to see me, but let’s not be indecent so soon. Perhaps we start with talking?”
Ahsoka had half the mind to turn around right there and walk away, but what a waste of a trip. Against her better judgment, she hid her lightsabers beneath her poncho and joined his table. The few glances she spared for the rest of the cantina assured her no one was taking particular interest in their corner.
“What did you do to my contact?” she demanded. She was supposed to rendezvous with a known source, someone who worked out of Nar Shaddaa and had passed along verified information to the Rebel Alliance in the past.
“I gave him a job to do and came in his stead. If you wanted to keep tabs on me, why go to the trouble of recruiting one of my men when you could’ve contacted me directly? After everything we’ve been through, I thought you’d be thrilled to see me.”
Ahsoka bit the inside of her cheek to keep from scowling. Her releasing Maul when… everything happened… haunted her thoughts more often than she cared to admit—when she could separate that sole action from everything else cascading from Order 66. Once the Republic fell, there was no use in capturing Maul again. Who would incarcerate him in the name of justice? Who would care? So, as Fulcrum, she recruited a man who worked within the Crimson Dawn Syndicate and could keep Ahsoka updated on his leader’s movements. She told the Rebel Alliance that this contact knew of Imperial information, but no. This was solely to ease her own conscience.
“I didn’t think you’d be thrilled to see me, considering the last time we… worked together.”
“How glad I am you evaded the purge,” Maul said, sarcasm—strangely—lacking. “I’d like to take a moment to say: did I not tell you?” Maul’s horns were only a vague suggestion under the hood of his cloak as he nodded in the direction of the muted holoscreen running a news segment, a small Imperial emblem in the corner. The only news channel allowed by the Empire.
Ahsoka clenched her fists. The distance of barely two years since the galaxy fell to shambles did little to numb her pain; the memory of that night was still raw in her mind. In her heart. She had lost nearly everyone she had ever known and loved in one fell swoop… and yet here was Maul, sitting across from her no worse for the wear. Perversely, involuntarily, a spark of kinship flickered in her chest. And then Maul smiled at her with his tongue between his teeth and she tried to erase that feeling from her mind.
“So, how long have you known about these meetings?” Ahsoka asked.
“Since the beginning. It was also in my best interest to be able to contact you if I needed to.”
“And I take it this means you needed to?”
“Getting to the point so soon when we haven’t seen each other in an age is insulting. Why not slow down? Engage in a little foreplay, first.”
“You explain everything right now and maybe I don’t cut off more than Kenobi did,” Ahsoka hissed, planting her hands on the table like she would climb over and strangle him if provoked.
The smile on Maul’s face only widened. Ahsoka couldn’t remember the last time someone had actively appreciated her snippy remarks. Unlike the Jedi who tolerated them by varying degrees, Maul seemed to savor her attitude.
“She must be serious! In that case, I come bearing a proposition. I want revenge against my former master; you want him removed from power. Why not work together?”
“Isn’t this the same pitch you used last time?”
“Back when you didn’t believe me? Yes. But instead of preventing that threat, it is now our reality and all we can do is attempt belated damage control.”
“Well, luckily for you, I already am working towards that goal. No assistance required.”
“Ah, yes, your plucky rebellion.”
Ahsoka’s gaze zipped to the nearest customers to make sure no one was interested in their conversation. No one was. Her paranoia simmered and her glare was free to fly back to Maul.
“My organization is also fighting back in our own way,” Maul said. “And the galaxy remains untransformed as the two of us continue our separate ventures. But don’t you think that, being gifted with the Force as we are, it is our duty to challenge those similarly powerful? Your rebellion may have the tenacity to take on the Empire, but could they stand against an Inquisitor? Against a Sith? I don’t doubt you have devotees, but it would be morally reprehensible for you to let others die in your place when you, solely, are equipped to handle the threat.”
“Right,” Ahsoka bit out, “because when I think of some of the great moral philosophers of our time, I think of you.” But the chevrons of her lekku were already darkening with heat. His ethical quandary wasn’t foreign to her. She was keenly aware of her position as the only Force user in the entire rebellion, while the Empire was building an organization of dark siders. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. “You want revenge against Palpatine, fine. But what are the Inquisitors to you? I’d expect you’d sooner help them than fight them, since you are… similar.”
“They are a product of my former master and I want them destroyed as much as anything else that man has orchestrated.”
The silent rage radiating from Maul reminded Ahsoka of her time under the Tatooine suns. For a second, she entertained the absurd thought of them teaming up together. But it evaporated as quickly as it formed.
“Unless you can’t hold your own in a fight against a measly Inquisitor, I don’t know why you’re suddenly seeking me out.”
“And now we come to the interesting part of the conversation.” It was Maul’s turn to glance around the cantina. “Let us go upstairs where we won’t be observed.” Upstairs, where patrons could rent rooms for a night or two.
“Is that really necessary?”
Maul was already halfway out of the booth. “Trust me—you will want to see this.”
Considering his earlier innuendo, Ahsoka remained where she was, watching him with uncertainty. Maul stopped at the edge of the table and withdrew something from his many folds of black fabric. It was a bulky device, red and sharp, and it felt… oily in the Force. That was what the concentrated dark was coming from, not Maul.
Skin prickling, Ahsoka got to her feet. “After you.” Two steps later she found her arm locked with Maul’s.
“The more obvious we look, the less anyone suspects,” he intoned.
“If you wanted to hold my hand that badly, you should’ve just asked,” Ahsoka said, and they headed upstairs arm in arm.
With a wave of his hand, Maul unlocked the first room they came to. They stopped just inside the door, ignoring the lackluster amenities offered by the cheap room. Faint lights glowed along the line where the walls met the ceiling, only to be washed out by the intense red of the holocron the moment Maul held it up between them. The device floated out of his hand. Its corners spun apart and orbited the main device in a hypnotic fashion. Filmy whispers flooded the room and swirled around Ahsoka’s montrals, offering to grant her power, promising passion and strength if she would just—
“How’d you get your hands on a Sith holocron?” she asked, her voice low despite them being alone.
“You’d be surprised what one can find on the black market if one knows where to search. But look at this map.” A red-edged hologram flickered to life above the holocron, a blueprint of a Sith temple, its hallways visible like veins branching throughout the many levels of the structure.
“Okay?”
The map panned out to show the entire planet, all its identifying information listed in a language Ahsoka didn’t recognize. The map panned out further to show the system in which it resided. The shape of the planets clicked in Ahsoka’s mind, a pattern that used to mean home to her.
“Coruscant?!” The air froze in her lungs. Despite the heat she felt from the dark spectrum of the Force, a chill racked her body.
This hadn’t come up in any of her Jedi classes—not once. A Sith temple on the planet where she’d grown up? Her breathing grew shallow as she tried to process a conclusion her mind did not want to acknowledge.
“Temples are only built atop the strongest planetary Force nexuses,” Maul said, enunciating carefully as if he were teaching her a subject she didn’t already know. “For your Jedi Temple to rise levels above the planet to dominate the sky? Just what must it be built upon, if not the bones of its predecessors?”
Having broken from the Jedi long ago, Ahsoka didn’t know why this revelation felt earth-shattering. She found it hard to breathe all the same as the achingly familiar Core Worlds rotated between the two of them.
“Is your interest not piqued?” Maul asked, his voice overlapped by the holocron whispers. The red light lit both their faces as Maul stalked closer, and Ahsoka wasn’t sure if it was the man himself or the holocron which gave off such a suggestive aura. “You don’t find yourself… titillated?”
“Why are you sharing this with me?” Ahsoka cut in, balling her fists to not react to the dark side influence. Maul attempted to circle her, but Ahsoka never let him get behind her back; they moved around each other like binary stars, the holocron always between them.
“Sith temples are riddled with obstacles meant to be overcome by two: a master and an apprentice.”
“Too bad we have neither of those things here.”
Maul’s relaxed smile felt far too companionable for just the two of them in such a dark room. “This isn’t the only Sith temple in the galaxy, you know. And when all of them are constructed to be navigated by two, you can imagine how many have lain undisturbed for centuries. Think of all the knowledge still hidden in them—of the boon that would be to our goals!” His next words slid almost intimately across her lekku: “Imagine how exquisite our combined power could be.”
“I’m not doing this for power, Maul.”
“Call it whatever you want: altruism, your hero complex, it doesn’t matter to me. But as I hear it, the Emperor is increasingly dabbling in the ancient and arcane. He is up to something, and there are powerful secrets long lost to time that we would do well to ensure he does not discover.”
The image of working alongside Maul, traveling the galaxy and investigating Sith temples, felt too incongruous to truly picture. And yet… time had a strange way of changing relationships, eroding the past into something less starkly defined. Looking at Maul, Ahsoka didn’t see an enemy as she once did. They were more similar now than they had ever been: two Force users on the wrong side of the Empire.
Their slow rotations had grown so tight that they brushed against one another.
“And you trust me to help you?” Ahsoka asked, trying to keep her voice from wavering.
“Well, the talent pool isn't exactly deep anymore, is it?” he shot back. The hologram of the Coruscant System evaporated and the pieces of the holocron collapsed into one pyramidal shape again, leaving the two of them in darkness barely softened by the glowing ceiling edge. “What I trust is that you want to see the Emperor removed from power as much as I do, and luckily for you, I want him dead.”
Ahsoka knew passion was a core tenet of the dark side, yet to feel it so freely radiating from Maul was borderline intoxicating. Ahsoka took a step back just to try to clear her mind, breaking the circling they both had so easily agreed to.
A sobering thought clicked into her mind then and she immediately voiced it. “Or maybe this is all an elaborate ploy to bring me to the Empire? You get my bounty in addition to whatever immunity you can bargain for.”
“I… unfortunately… owe you my life. Don’t think I can just forget that, despite how much I wish I could. No, I am not trying to trick you or trap you. I need a second Force user to enter temples. You need someone to open the most precious of resources.” She felt his gloved hand trail down her arm with the same presumed familiarity that affected his entire manner. Her half-formed protest got lodged in her throat when her immediate response was to enjoy a sensation she had until now denied herself. Against her ingrained propriety, she savored his touch the way he had savored her hostility.
He reached her hand and drew it up, all sensual thoughts blinking out of existence as the cold holocron bit into her palm.
“Go on,” he whispered, leaning so close that he could’ve placed a kiss on one lek if he’d just pursed his lips, “open it.”
Unlike the previous Jedi holocrons she’d interacted with in the temple, this one did not respond to her at all. It was no different than holding a rock. She could feel Maul, though, in the murky dimness. She could sense the Force in him, and how close he was. Intimately close. Appropriately close for the dark room, and for secrets that couldn’t leave it. And it made her shiver. She tried to steer her thoughts to the topic at hand and away from her feelings—an increasingly demanding feat.
“Isn’t Coruscant the last place we should investigate? Start somewhere that isn’t directly under the Emperor’s palace.”
“We have a chance of discovering his plans by going to the source.”
She held his yellow-eyed stare for as long as she could, but when his intensity ebbed out of his fervor for the plan and seamlessly into something else, Ahsoka averted her gaze. Something charged existed in the proximity between them. Hiding her true nature from the galaxy—from others even within the rebellion—Ahsoka hadn’t experienced the heightened sensation of another Force user in…
Once more, she wrangled her thoughts into line. The progress she’d made trying to investigate the Inquisitors over the past couple years was scant at best; having someone like Maul helping her, with his Syndicate at his fingertips, would truly be an advantage. If what he said was true about the Emperor seeking out forgotten power, she was not equipped to deal with that alone, and neither was the rebellion.
Steeling her nerves, Ahsoka met Maul’s gaze once more. “Never thought I’d be helping a Sith take down a Sith.”
Maul’s hand fell across the holocron, covering what Ahsoka’s hand did not. “We are both no longer what we once were,” he intoned. “And these are strange times.”
She didn’t know why she felt the chevrons on her lekku darkening, but she also didn’t know why Maul was staring at her quite like that.
“Are we gonna get out of here?” Ahsoka asked.
“As soon as you’re done fondling my holocron.”
Ahsoka released it immediately. She took a large step back from Maul but the air that met her wasn’t any cooler.
Maul tucked the device back inside his garments. His pace was casual as he exited the room. “It has been too long since I had an apprentice.”
“I’m not your apprentice,” scoffed Ahsoka, following. Force help her if this was always what it was going to be like around Maul.
“But I have so much to pass on!”
“Keep it to yourself.”