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“Master Nu! I was just looking for you in the archives.”
Ahsoka bears a wide smile as the old Master of the archives turns to her. The young Padawan, though not so young now she thinks, bears a couple of datapads, old ones she’d borrowed before her last assignment.
“Ah, Padawan Tano. Apologies, but I’m a bit occupied at the moment.”
She gestures behind her, where a youngling Clan chatters excitedly. At the sight of Ahsoka, one Nautolan girl lights up and turns to her friend, whispering furiously.
Ahsoka smiles and waves a little, getting a few waves back. “Sorry, Master, I didn’t realise. I can come back later,” she offers.
“That’s quite alright.” Master Nu waves her off. “Just leave it on my desk, and I—”
She stops. Her gaze drifts to the far end of the hallway, but when Ahsoka follows it, she finds nothing there. She’s about to ask what’s wrong, but then she feels it, too: a roil of darkness and fear.
“What is that?” she whispers, unmoving.
The younglings finally notice, a long moment after their seniors, and begin speaking frantically.
“Is the Temple under attack?”
“What do we do, Master Nu?”
“What’s happening?”
“I have to go find my Master!”
With a raised hand, Master Nu silences them all. “Quiet.” Quickly glancing around, she spots a meditation room with an open door. “Quickly, into the meditation room. Padawan Tano, watch our backs.”
“Yes, Master.”
The younglings file into the room obediently, still whispering to one another. One girl, a young Kiffar, bursts into tears, so Ahsoka pulls her aside immediately.
“My Master left to go to the Senate Building,” the Initiate blubbers. “She doesn’t know we’re in danger! I have to find her!”
(She’s too young to have a Master, Ahsoka realises, and doesn’t have a Padawan braid. The Master must’ve found her on a Search and bonded with her.)
“See if you can contact her on your comm, but you need to stay here until we know what’s going on, okay?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t leave her!”
“I understand. My Master is out there somewhere, too,” Ahsoka tries to reassure. “But I can’t let you leave alone, either. As soon as it’s safe, we’ll go find her together.”
The Initiate wipes at her eyes and nods, following the rest of her clan into the meditation room. Ahsoka looks back to Master Nu, who is glancing down the hall with wide, horrified eyes. Something has pulled in the Force.
Someone skids to a stop around the corner.
It’s a young human boy, a Padawan that Ahsoka has seen trailing behind Master Drallig for the last few weeks. On his sleeve, a scorch mark has burned through the fabric to his skin: a blaster wound.
At the sight of Master Nu and Ahsoka, his face twists in relief and he runs toward them.
“Zett,” Master Nu breathes out, taking his arm as soon as he’s close. “What’s going on?”
Through panting breaths, he speaks the impossible. “The clones—the clones are killing us!” he cries. “They got Master Drallig and I can’t find the Council—”
“What?” Ahsoka questions fiercely. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you won’t believe me, but I really saw it! It’s the 501st, they have their armour and everything and they’re killing everybody—!”
Master Nu squeezes his uninjured shoulder. “Breathe, Padawan. I believe you.”
“What!?” Ahsoka turns on her. “They would never—!”
“It may be someone else in that armour, but you know he’s telling the truth, Ahsoka. You can feel it,” she says warningly. “Don’t let emotion cloud your instincts.”
She backs down, but her chest tightens. “Yes, Master,” she says quickly.
“How many of them are there?”
“All of them. Master Drallig—” Zett chokes on his name. “—he told me to go to the landing pad, to get out and find help.”
“I’ll go with you!”
Ahsoka jumps when the young Kiffar reappears, running up to Zett.
“I’m a good tracker,” she says quickly, “and I know where my Master’s going! We can find her!”
Zett looks to Master Nu at the same time she does, uncertainty in his bright eyes. The old archivist casts her gaze to the end of the hall, where the chaos is starting to get louder. With a deep breath, she kneels before the younglings, a hand on each of their shoulders.
“Do not stop, especially for anyone in clone armour. Don’t trust anyone you don’t recognise and whatever you do, do not return to the Temple until you are given the all-clear, do you understand?” When they both nod, she reaches for their hands and presses them together, letting Zett take the girl’s. Master Nu gives him a firm look. “Hold onto each other. Do not let go. This is not a game.”
“Yes, Master,” they say at the same time, equally shaky.
She stands. “Go.”
The pair run off, Zett tugging the Kiffar girl closer to him as they dash down the hall. Ahsoka watches them go, waiting until they’re around the corner to turn her attention back to Master Nu, who has apparently done the same. Before she can speak, the archivist puts a hand on her shoulder as well.
“Stay with the younglings. Lock the door behind you and defend them with your life,” she instructs.
The girl’s eyes widen. “What? You’re leaving? ”
“If the Temple is being attacked, there are things I have to do,” is her grim reply. “No one can get their hands on the archives, Padawan, no one. I’ll come find you when I get the chance.”
If I get the chance. The thought is there, though unspoken.
Steeling herself, Ahsoka swallows roughly but nods. “Yes, Master.”
With a glance over the Padawan’s shoulder, Master Nu lowers her voice. “Above all, make sure they make it out.”
“May the Force be with you,” she says quietly, a hope more than a comfort.
Master Nu smiles, a little sad, a little proud. “It is always with us, Ahsoka. It is always with you. Be brave.”
Her words echo in the young Togruta’s mind even as she departs. When she finally pulls herself together, she rushes into the meditation room, counting heads and closing the door behind her. She enters a code to lock it down completely before turning back to her charges.
“I need you all to listen carefully and do exactly as I say, okay?”
There are scattered nods and ‘yes, Padawan Tano’s, so she gives out instructions.
They build barricades throughout the room, providing cover for themselves. Initiates with lightsabers pair up with those without and the latter group gets a few weapons from Ahsoka. Her clone troopers—the ones killing Jedi—gave her quite a few vibroblades and pocket blasters over the years and she’s kept them all. It’s more than a little useful right now, she thinks as she hands them to the younglings.
“Keep your heads down and trust in the Force,” Ahsoka orders, ducking behind a gathering of meditation chairs and tables with three Initiates. She places a hand on the shoulder of the youngest, a small Mirialan with teary eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”
Footsteps thunder from the hallway outside. The younglings fall silent in an instant, poised for battle.
Something catches in Ahsoka’s chest. They’re ready for this. They’re children and terrified but they’re ready for a fight. Is this what her Master used to feel when he looked at her, 14 standard and standing on the front lines? Like something was desperately wrong with this picture?
“The scanners indicate life forms in this room, sir.”
Ahsoka freezes.
It sounds like a clone, though she can't place who. Could Zett have been right? Are the clones—the 501st, of all battalions—turning against them? What in the Force would make them do that? Something here is horribly, horribly wrong.
There's some beeping on the other side of the wall and someone out there must have the codes, because the door starts to slide open.
Ahsoka motions for the younglings to stay behind what little cover she was able to provide as the door wheezes open. She pokes her head out just enough to see and—
“Master!” she cries, leaping up.
Anakin is at the door, his lightsaber in his hand but unlit. He looks mildly surprised to see her, but takes her hug without hesitation.
“Thank the Force,” she breathes out. “We heard blasters and then Master Nu told us to hide. What’s happening?”
In her embrace, Anakin is unmoved.
She frowns, looking up at him. “Master?”
Light washes over her, the stark blue of his lightsaber being lit. She glances down to get a look at where he’s pointing it, what he could possibly be defending her from in a room of younglings. But then pain strikes her abdomen, squeezing her lungs. A choked gasp drags itself from her lips and she finally sees it.
The saber in her chest. Anakin’s saber in her chest.
A youngling screams and blaster fire echoes throughout the room, but Ahsoka can’t see what happens. She can’t even cry out for the Initiates she was meant to protect. All she can do is look back up at him.
His expression is blank, untouched by her apparent agony. He stares down at her with those yellow eyes—
Yellow eyes?
Her mouth falls open a little, her legs wobbling. She loses her balance, falling into him. And he catches her. There isn’t any sort of purpose to the movement, but he catches her.
He has yellow eyes.
Ahsoka thinks of Dooku, of his last moments spent glaring at her and her Master, those burning yellow eyes. She thinks of his red lightsaber fitting perfectly into Anakin’s hand and how nauseous she’d become at the sight.
“Anakin?”
It’s weak, hardly there. She doesn’t even know if he hears it.
And then she’s falling, falling to the floor. He drops her, lets her crumble underneath him, unable to hold herself up.
He walks away.
Breathing raggedly, Ahsoka wants to reach out, wants to grab the bottom of his robe before he can leave her. But her hands won’t cooperate, her entire body screaming at the scorched wound she bears.
The meditation room has fallen silent, leaving the troopers to follow after Anakin. They start to leave, but one notices she’s still breathing, still trying to move.
He lifts his blaster and she finally sees him.
“Rex,” she breathes out.
The jaig eyes on his helmet, carefully painted, give him away instantly. He lifts his pistols and she wants to cry. She doesn’t have the strength for even that. But she doesn’t need any strength to see that his hands are shaking. Ahsoka will never know what’s going on in his head, what’s driving him to lift his blasters in her direction. All she knows is that his hands are shaking.
“It’s okay, Rex,” she says, sounding far from it. “It’s okay.”
He fires.