Work Text:
They landed outside the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant. She hadn’t wanted to do this, she never wanted to come back here. Rex didn’t want her too either, she didn’t like talking about it, the very end of the clone wars, Order 66, he’d almost killed her… he was so ready to… but she’d been waking up with nightmares ever since they’d gotten word Vader had died. It was getting harder for her to focus, the guilt she felt, it was tearing her apart.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Rex asked Ahsoka looked at him with a saddened expression.
“I have to, I wasn’t there, I need to know what happened.” Her voice was quiet as they walked up the crumbling stone steps.
“Do you think there’s anything here?” Rex asked as Ahsoka easily broke through the locks on the sealed doors.
“I’m not sure, I doubt it but you never know…” she paused for several moments, using the force to open the main doors to the temple. Their opening of the doors let in light into the main hall.
“Probably nothing but ghosts,” she added looking down the hall, dust floated through the air as the light finally caught it and a breeze kicked it up. Windows long since boarded up, the air was stuffy from being trapped for so long.
Ahsoka took in a deep breath before crossing the threshold. Ash and burned scars from the attempts to destroy the temple in a fire, scarred the walls. She walked in almost silence, Rex trailing behind her, the place felt eerie. Ahsoka focused as she walked, she wished she blocked out the force instead. Echos rang out as if they were deafening sounds happening at that moment. Cries, screams, begs of mercy. The sound of blaster fire, orders between helmets, orders she knew, orders she’d heard herself. Sabers deflecting bolts, slashing into flesh targets. Her eyes followed every blaster scar, every step brought her deeper into reliving the purge. She kept going, each breath was a forced reminder that she had to breathe, each breath felt forced, it hurt, she felt like each breath was lava from Mustafar coursing down into her lungs. The library was worse, empty shelves, the echo of a cold laugh, the Holocron vault cracked open. She put a hand up motioning for Rex to stay as she entered, she looked around the shelves, all empty, gone, the holocrons stolen, scattered, destroyed.
“This is Master Obi-wan Kenobi-” The well-remembered warning recorded echoed in her mind. The vault was empty, no Holocrons in their housings only dust where their blue lights should have been. She pressed a few buttons on the security playbacks but nothing happened, there was a flicker but the wires too damaged from time and fire.
She left the vault, walking numbly through the building, reliving the night Order 66 was given as though she was there. Rex never said anything, walking a few steps behind her, taking in the building. He was there, if she needed him, there to hold her like when she awoke from her terrors, cold sweat clinging to her skin, a painful whimper, he’d be there now.
“Killed not by clones this Padawan, by a lightsaber he was…” Yoda’s voice in her head. She looked haunted, he wanted to ask if they should go, but he felt as though any sound he made would break the trance she was in. A trance of barely holding together composure, he didn’t know what was affecting her so much, but he could assume it was bad from the stories he’d heard of what happened to the temple during the purge, he couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was going through.
The lift still worked, though it stalled once, taking them up to the tower, her hand waved over a door forcing it open with a scrape on the floor below, a room with chairs aligned on a circle, a symbol on the floor below. Ahsoka stood at its center, looking around, her composed face cracked, her eyes widening. Rex looked around, he’d never been to this part of the temple before. Her whisper called his attention back to her.
“Anakin…” her word broke the silence as nothing over a whisper, but it broke her. Her knees buckled, the sound of Beskar hitting hard floor beneath her, her hands coming up to press against the side of her montrals. Her eyes stuck wide open, mouth agape, tears spilling down over her cheeks, unhindered by barely composed emotions any longer.
“Master Skywalker, there are too many of them, what are we going to do?” A tiny voice said into her mind, sounding as though he were mere feet in front of her, the sound of a saber igniting followed, a scream of a child, then more of them, cries, questions of why, echoed with her own pained sound that escaped her lips her body curling in on itself, nails digging into her head threatening to break the skin. Rex was in front of her seizing her wrists and pulling them away. The action made her look at him.
“It’s not real!” he snapped as she looked up at him. Her eyes were haunted, blown wide, and full of terror.
“But it is…” she sobbed looking at him her body trembling. “He killed them, he slaughtered them like wamp rats!” She was screaming between shakes and sobs “He killed so many of them! They were children! They were innocent!” She was standing suddenly, her sabers ignited at something behind her Rex couldn’t see.
“You monster!” She was screaming, a low dangerous growl of rage filling her voice with the terror, but Rex saw nothing there. “How could you, they didn’t deserve it…” each sob choked out through her.
“I know Ahsoka, I know.” She saw Anakin’s force ghost standing there looking remorseful. “It wasn’t me, it was Vader, I couldn’t stop it.” she let out an enraged scream launching with both sabers and slashing at his ghost, she, of course, hit nothing but into the floor beyond, the sound of plasma burying into stone echoing in the room with her pants.
“Ahsoka, I’m so sorry,” he said “I’m so so sorry…” he repeated as she crouched into the ground deactivating her sabers. “It wasn’t me... I didn’t know… I don’t even remember it happening…”
“Please Ahsoka, forgive me…”
“I’m trying, I can forgive you, I can’t forgive that monster Sideous, or the monster he turned you into.” Rex stood on the sidelines, listening to a one-sided conversation.
“I won’t ask you too…” She stayed kneeling on the ground, Rex was again in front of her, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Ahsoka… are you okay?” he asked
“You don’t see him…” she looked at him slightly confused and Rex shook his head.
“I take it Anakin killed the children here?” Ahsoka nodded slowly
“Well, it was Vader, not Anakin… they’re not the same person.”
“No, they’re not…” He assured her. “Come on, we should leave,” she nodded as he helped her to stand. They left the Temple, sealing back up the door, sealing back away the pain and death that had happened. Ahsoka looked at the long-neglected garden half-dead and overgrown with weeds. She saw more Masters there and nodded softly at them as their ghosts smiled gently back at her, at peace with the force, at peace, finally, in her. They went back onto the ship taking off and heading back to their temporary apartment Leia had set up for them.
“I don’t know what that was like… but I imagine it was like reliving a nightmare…”
“Only you feel everything too.” he pressed a cup of tea into her hand which she sipped.
“I’m sorry, if I had known, I would have said we don’t go.” He paused “I would have insisted,”
“I had to do this, I had to know what happened, I had to see it for myself…” she looked at him with tears still streaming down her cheeks.
“Why?” Rex asked softly “Why put yourself through that?”
“Luke has asked me to advise him on a new era of Jedi, I can’t do that holding onto ghosts of the past filled with guilt.”
“Guilt?”
“I wasn’t there, if I was here, I could have done something…”
“Or you could be another ghost in those walls,” He opened his arms and she climbed into them, gentle kisses between montrals. “I’m happy you made it out,”
“Only because of you,” she whispered back leaning into his comforting embrace.