Chapter Text
Ahsoka didn’t know what to do. She'd been innocent this morning, investigating a brutal, heartless attack, and now she was suspect number one. Because someone had murdered Letta, because someone had murdered clones, and made it look like it was her.
Someone was targeting her, framing her.
Framing her for an attack on her home and her people and innocent people and clones.
Things she’d never every do.
The clones were her siblings, her vode, 501 st or otherwise. She would never hurt them.
Her mind flashed back to the medical frigate and she shuddered. It had been hell, the troopers on that ship turning on her and Barriss like that, totally against their will under the control of that parasite. She'd been forced to fight them then. They'd tried to save as many of them as possible, keep as many of them alive as she’d been able... and every death had weighed on her since. Barriss said the same, Trap...
They’d been her friends, her vode, and she’d done everything she’d been able to disarm and not kill.
Disarm and not kill. Not with her vode.
She'd never harm her vode if there was another option, definitely not kill them, even when breaking out of prison. Someone else had murdered them, murdered her vode, left their still smoking bodies for her to find, to be caught crouching over.
But now she was being hunted, now Commander Fox believed she’d murdered vode and was being forced to hunt her down.
Forced to label her shoot on site, because vode were dead by lightsabre and she was the suspect.
Someone was framing her.
But why.
Water splashed up her legs, freezing, and she flung herself around another corner.
Anakin was following her too, and Rex.
She couldn’t stop.
Why was someone trying to frame her? Was it targeted or simply because she’d been there at the right time.
With the lengths they were going to, she just wasn’t sure?
Whoever was framing her was willing to murder clones, willing to murder Letta, willing to bomb the Jedi Temple, her home . They were ruthless, and if she surrendered and went back, she knew she’d pay the price.
She'd be killed.
Whoever was doing this, they would make sure of it. Be it execution or in her cell, if she was caught, she would need a miracle to survive this, no matter what Anakin tried.
She could feel it in the Force, she could feel it.
If she surrendered, she’d be killed, and there was darkness growing.
It was arrogance to believe her dying would set the entire galaxy on a darker path, she knew, arrogance to believe her surviving, her alone, would somehow bring people back to the light. She was only one person. But it was foolishness to ignore the call of the Force.
It would not be because she lived or died that the light or dark prevailed, she was only one person, but she had stumbled onto the path of uncovering of who was doing this, and anything beyond that. Because something was beyond this. It wasn’t just an attack on her home and her family, there was something deeper. It was like she’d stumbled on a trap door and if she went deeper, she’d fine an entire underground city, but only if she looked, only if she survived the decent into the city itself.
Whoever attacked the Jedi Temple, whoever was trying to turn people and public opinion against the Jedi, there was more to it.
None of this was about the attack on her home, it was about what lay beyond. And she’d been dragged into it, thrown by timing and circumstance into the thick of whatever this was.
So, she had to find out.
Because people were going to die.
Because darkness was coming and it could destroy everything.
This was a hinge, she had to do something.
Right now, that was survive.
She threw herself through the gap in the fan, feeling Anakin right on her tale, and let the Force guide her forwards, let it guide her past patrols and towards safety.
Or... an outflow?
She looked down to the Pipeline below, water tricking around her feet into the open air, ships moving up and down slowly between the surface and levels below, and then back at the tunnels she’d been running through.
It was a long way down.
And she couldn’t go back.
Kriff.
If she was supposed to be caught, surely she could have done that without the wet cold sewer run.
She gripped the side edge and looked down.
She couldn’t surrender, couldn’t be executed for a crime she didn’t commit. She wouldn’t die for crimes that weren’t her.
Besides, there was some Sith running around murdering clones and anyone who knew too much.
A darksider on Coruscant.
Or a Jedi.
It couldn’t be a Jedi.
Jedi like Krell, they were the exception, monsters.
They weren’t what her people were supposed to be, what they were supposed to embody. She'd never believed her any of people could be like that. The stories her vode had told her after that campaign, what Krell had done while she was in the atmosphere... so close and completely unable to do anything to help.
She could never be like that. Never!
“Ahsoka!”
Anakin.
He was trying to convince her to come back with him, to surrender.
Everything in her heart said no.
Every fibre of her body said that it was the wrong choice, no matter how guilty it made her look.
There was a ship descending down the Pipeline shaft.
She could make that jump.
She had to.
The clones were coming, and they didn’t know she wasn’t the monster who’d murdered their vode. They didn’t know and they had orders.
So she asked her Master to trust her, and she jumped.
The air whipped around her as she fell, the Force thrummed, and she landed soundlessly, the metal under her feet barely registering her, and turned.
Anakin was leaning out looking at her, too far away for her to really see his face, and Commander Fox right behind him, one hand braced on the top of the tunnel as he looked down.
She looked away, checking other ships, hoping no dropships or gunships would be coming from above, and she almost didn’t look back.
She knew how she looked, how guilty she looked. She'd been the only person in with Letta, she’d been let out of her cell, she had assumed by Anakin but clearly not, only to then be found knelt over the bodies of Corries who’d been murdered by lightsabres, with her own sabres on her hips. It hadn’t been her, but they didn’t know that, and now she was running.
Once she’d found out who did this, once she was proven innocent, she’d apologise to Fox for all the chaos this had caused.
She'd help him get justice for his vode.
Ahsoka froze.
Commander Fox was floating.
Floating out the edge of the outflow pipe, hanging over the Pipeline, hands grasping at his neck, legs kicking in the air.
Anakin... no!
Commander Fox dropped.
Ahsoka jumped.