Chapter Text
Have I fallen? Am I lost to the dark side?
Those are the only real questions of importance to me now that I have utterly failed. As I await my execution. It’s been suspiciously long. I have confessed after all. I don’t know how long I have been waiting in this cell.
There are no day and night cycles to the lighting. They shuffle the guard rotation randomly to keep me off balance. May have something to do with interrogation but I’ve told them everything I know. They must know that. But enough of my frustrations with the military back to the questions.
Have I fallen? Yes! Of course! I’ve fallen because the whole of the Jedi Order has fallen. But still. The others fell and I flexed my shoulders, tipped my wings, ducked my head, and dove. I went much, much further. So then establishing that am I irrevocably lost to the dark side, forever will it dominate my destiny?
Time to test that out again. I can’t really meditate like I used to. I just sit on my cot and feel these four walls, the grated floor, the red door around me. But I can open myself up to the force. I close my eyes and slowly exhale all my breath, then gradually inhale allowing the force to flow through me. I read once some surviving work of Avar Kriss, how she experienced the force in the form of music. As a youngling that sounded grand, but I am glad I don’t have that form of perception now. What a discordant mess I would be. No, lately I experience colors and tastes and smells.
“There it is…”
The moment I open myself to the force there it is all reddish-brown. It is cinnamon and clove, maybe a hint of anis and sorghum. It is inviting and warm just there within easy reach.
Like drawing a death stick under your nose before lighting it up, like knowing there is a tumbler of your favorite intoxicating beverage right there by your seat, cold and sweating condensation, on a trivet as not to warp the wood.
It is like the hint of glitterstim in your nostrils when you first open your stash. Am I lost to the dark side? For certain I was for a long time, and I could so easily be again.
It is just within arm’s reach tempting me. It would feel so good to indulge. To feel that justification for my actions. That anger! That righteous fury. I feel as if my soul is a dry grassland freshly burned over after a thunder-struck wildfire. It would be so easy to light the still-existent patches and just let it all burn down.
I open my eyes.
Alright, I’m a scholar. Add complexity, nuance, specificity. When did I fall? Well, I know when the Order fell. The moment Master Yoda showed up in those gunships with the clones. That sealed our fate.
Maybe it was just before, when Master Windu gathered us up, everyone who he could find at the Temple who could fit into ships available, off to Geonosis? All the students and the academics in the library. Whomever were just around. Two Jedi (and a political ally) were facing danger and death.
Two hundred of us made the trip. Twenty survived. And then all those thousands of clones came to save the twenty-three. And hundreds of them died. Then the war was on, and many millions died. Just looking at it via cold calculus of amplifying death is astonishing.
Intellectually seen with hindsight the Battle of Geonosis was the start of the Order’s decline but personally I can pinpoint where I fell. Someone who knew my story would guess the brain worm, I wish I could, but I honestly cannot blame the brain worm.
It was in that experimental CIS tank with Ahsoka. Ordered to bomb the factory to stem the production of said tanks we made our way to the central power core. But we lost. They took away all our explosive charges. The only winning move was to use one of the tanks to destroy the factory from the inside. And we did, without much hesitation. We did it to please out masters.
I was so glad Ahsoka was with me. The fear would have overtaken me alone. But as I sat there next to her, a volley of mortars rocketing out to begin the cascade of explosions that would destroy our target, her focus and attention were away outside of the factory towards her master and the 501st who were counting on us with their lives. Yoda would have chided her for attachments, but I should have done the same.
No, my attention went downwards. I remembered all the sudden the dozen and dozen rows of sleeping Geonosians in the floors beneath us. I reached out instinctively and could feel them. Most were still asleep when the ceiling above pancaked down on top of them. Death swept hive and it felt like vile black tar though the force. I could feel their mass of extinguished life. The others woke with alacrity only to experience the pain of a crushing death. Then there were those spared but mangled, not long for this world. They died of shock. A select few faced our own fate.
Through luck of floor geometry, they did not die but would eventually of a lingering suffocation. That was when I began my fall to the dark side, at the horror of becoming a mass murderer. I know they were technically war combatants but combatants in an unjust war I should not have been fighting. I was a mad bomber long before the crime for which I am facing punishment.
But pegging the fall to the war is too simple. It seems to me the Order has been in decline for longer than that. I can tell just form my lifetime.
I grew up in it from infancy. Born on a starliner and left at their steps. Growing up I ate up all the annals of the Golden Age of the Jedi. I wanted to be like them so, so much. I threw myself into study. The lessons and catechisms are many and the Order has changed as the eras passed but when you boil everything away the core of what it means to be a Jedi it means to serve the Light and the Life meaning the Living Force.
This war. This does the opposite.
The Order has fallen, and I have fallen farther lashing out against it. I wonder if there is hope for the Jedi. There is certainly no hope for me. I am a damned thing. I am a wicked apostate. Is there any logic or any morality to repent and reform in my final moments? Perhaps I owe it to the youngling I was. Surely, she lives somewhere deep inside me. And she would not want me to bathe in that dark power any longer.
Besides, what would I do? I broke into and out of this very military prison once before, but I was on the outside of the cells at the time. And what cause would have me? Traitor and terrorist is a bit of a red flag to have on one’s resume. What willpower do I dare cultivate to move on when my best attempt was such a disaster? I will await my fate and ponder my nature.
“You admit to contact with the known Separatist agent Asajj Ventress during the conduct of your terrorist plot. What was the nature of your contact and was there wider enemy involvement?”
I’m tired of this. This is tedious. “I have already told you; the sum of my contact is I hit her over the head with a pipe and burgled her. Would you like to add that to my list of charges?”
“Was there wider Separatist involvement in your schemes?”
The Admiral is insistent on pestering me. This is getting me nowhere. Is that why they are keeping me alive?
I sigh and slump my head causing my bangs to flop across my forehead. This annoys me more. They took away my head covering I suppose to eliminate the possibility of my strangling myself. What would I hang it on? Why would they care if they just plan on executing me? After years of wrapping my hair now that it’s free it’s gone all wavy and stiff; it’s driving me to distraction. This standard issue orange prison jumpsuit has me really missing Mirialan gowns.
I meet his eyes again and roll my shoulders. “Look, I’ll tell you everything, but I want to tell it to CC-1010.” I see the clone commander tense up in surprise behind Tarkin. He shifts his grip on the stun baton.
The admiral just gives me a wry look. “Alright.” He steps back and has Commander Fox take his place.
“I wish to speak to CC-1010 alone. Please.” His previous mirth dissipates into a predatory stare, but I guess he considers it a gamble worth taking because he nods to my guards and steps out.
It’s relatively pointless I know. They’ll still record everything I say but it does give me a hint of pleasure having the small power to send him out of my presence.
“Say your piece.” Fox says, his expression unreadable behind his helmet.
“You are from the first batch of clones. You were there at the Battle of Geonosis. I was at the Battle of Geonosis, but I’m sure you know that. I do my homework before acting and read your file before breaking in here and I bet you did too, for me.” He gives me a nearly imperceptible nod. “That’s two things we have in common. Commander Fox, I wish would tell you some things and I would like you to listen. I don’t expect you to believe me but please. Please listen and remember.”
“Then get to it.” I can hear him though his grit teeth.
“You’re quite unique amongst commanders, you’ve never had a Jedi general and few deployments off Courscant besides some summits and senator security operations. You haven’t been to a forward firing base. I don’t say that to downplay your experience. Your record and decorations speak for themselves. But it’s different at the front. I was a healer at rimsoos as you know. The sound of the lifters really sends a chill down your spine. Sometimes it would be only a handful of clone casualties, sometimes dozens and dozens. I’ve treated so many injuries, transplanted so many organs. I know clones inside and out you could say. I’ve seen your brothers, Fox. I’ve seen how you act differently when you think nat-borns aren’t around. The Jedi assumed you had genetic alterations that lessen the effects of post-traumatic stress, but I know better.
“I’ve seen how you greet each other and embrace after a battle. Barracks inspection time comes around and you’re all sleeping that night in your individual bunks in proper military shape, but I once dropped in unexpected and found eight clones all piled up in a corner dozing away in their blacks. I’m sure that kind of thing happens here as well.”
“What’s your point?” I sense annoyance and maybe a little embarrassment, Fox doesn’t like the fact I’ve seen some private moments.
“Are you listening to me, commander.”
He shifts his posture.
“My point is you’re all people. I know the prejudices some have against your kind. I remember Pong Krell. I-I wanted to make sure, before this is all over, I had a chance to apologize for killing three under your command. I’m sure they were good men. They were all good men in my experience. I would have knocked them out like those other six. They caught me by surprise.” Foxe’s gloves tighten their grip around his baton. “You must care a great deal about your men. I do as well. I did what I did not only to wake up the Jedi Order to their own inequities but for the clones as well.”
“Help us, by committing sedition? And killing my men?”
“What we did to you was wrong, commander. I hope you can come to see that someday. Did you ever have opportunity to not joint the GAR in your youth?”
“No.”
“Do they pay you?”
“No.”
“What’s going to happen to you after the war is over? Is there a retirement plan? Resettlement? Opportunities for education?”
“That’s all a moot point as long as the war continues.” Oh, the tenacity of the clone mind.
“Please just listen! Do you attend me, commander?” He gives no response this time. “It’s slavery, commander! The Jedi ordered up and leads an army of slaves and I couldn’t participate in that anymore. Did you know the Republic doesn’t even own you? You are leased. I looked it up. Every being carrying iterations of the genetic information of Jango Fett are legal intellectual property of the Kamino cloners. They could lease you out to the highest bidder as soon as the Republic deems not to pay them anymore. How would you like working for some Separatist successor state? You deserve more than that, you all do! You paid with your blood.”
“You have no intention of answering Admiral Tarkin’s questions, do you?”
“I’ve already answered his questions he just doesn’t care for my answers.”
“Then we are done here.”
I shout after him as he turns to leave me. “Listen and remember, commander! The Republic doesn’t care for you! Most Jedi neither! When they ask to raise your weapons lay them down! If they come after you for that raise them against them! Free your men, Commander Fox! Before it’s too late!”
Alright. Now that we have established the actions of the Jedi fell far short of their teaching and ethos, and given that I am now an apostate form the Order, what now? Do I abandon all and revel in evil?
No, it meant so much to me I cannot just walk away. There must be a way to tease out and isolate the bits that are good and contain grace.
The warp and weft of the tapestry forms a beautiful work. It’s the snags and tears that are a problem. The injuries certain Jedi inflicted. If all current Jedi were wiped away, is it inevitable that a new Order following teachings ancient and modern would arrive the state it is now, a politically captured institution doing the bloody bidding of a massive federal state? I need to contextualize, take it back to first principles and work toward complexity again.
Forgetting everything the masters told me and going only by my direct experience is the light side of the force inherently good? I have no reservations about saying yes.
The tranquility and connections to all things just feels like grace, it feels right. Well then is the dark side then inherently bad on all occasions and situations? The whole appeal of the dark side is it feels good in the moment, it tempts to solve immediate problems.
But how did it feel these past few months? How does the aftereffects feel? Plotting to murder my compatriots? It takes effort and a clearing of mind to find focus through the light, but the dark is an overwhelming laser focus which tunnels though everything else. Makes bad choices seem right. Makes it seem the only path. A vital path. But consider problem reaction solution.
Where did it leave me? In a small cell awaiting public execution. Leaving dogma aside I cannot say for sure without more experience if the dark is inherently bad, but it clearly led me to doom and damnation.
So, what is an apostate to do? Where to take a lost soul? I cannot fight the entire Republic and Jedi Order single handed so the gallows is where I should go I suppose, and it would be just and earned.
If I were free, what would I do? That is a valid inquiry even just as an intellectual exercise. How else am I to spend this remaining time? Maybe another student will come to this fate. When I die and rejoin the living force what guidance would I give them?
‘Abandon not your emotions’ I would say. ‘Speak up with a louder voice against injustice even within your own creed against those holding the power. Leaving is far more just than sabotage and vengeance.’
I cannot believe her. This is a farce! She’s back? A third time?
On her first visit (and she has been my only visitor) Master Unduli had a lot of questions to ask. I was far too taciturn then and just snapped at her to watch a recording of the trail. That’s all I had to say. On her second she tried a more personal touch trying to connect with me and appeal to our long history together. That put me in a melancholy and not receptive mood. I disassociated. Too late for that.
But now? Now she is just serenely sitting at the entrance to my cell, meditation stance, her hands above her knees. She just looks at me. For some reason this just amps me up and I pace back and forth like a recently captured nexu. I’m laughing, I don’t mean to but I can’t help it and I must admit it sounds a bit maniacal.
“What are you doing Master? Is this a Yoda trick? Seems like something that little goblin would think up. Did he put you up to this or did you remember him using this on you in the past? Really? The silent treatment? You really expect this to work on me, now?”
She just looks at me impassively.
“Look, Master Unduli, can I just be casual and call you Luminara now? I don’t want your time to be wasted. Thank you for making the trip. I know you cannot tell me anything of what’s going on regarding Ahsoka, the war, or that kind of thing. But there is something I would like to know. Are you going to take another Padawan? There are other Mirialan younglings out there.”
“It is yet too early to consider.” She speaks!
“Ah! I suppose so. But you will have chances to rotate though and teach some courses to the youngling clans, I am sure. Every master must, even those on the High Council. Maybe they’ll make special dispensation for you releasing you. The poor master of wayward terrorist. They’ll still whisper though. You’ll have to deal with all the sideways glances of your fellow masters and tittering of the younglings. Saying ‘That’s the one, her Padawan went insane, did you hear?’”
I walk to the small staircase which leads to my cell door. I can feel my crazed grin against my cheeks. “What if there was one special Mirialan student to touches your heart? There aren’t many of us available to train our own kind. What if one comes along whom you just cannot forsake? What I want to know is what will you tell them about me? How will you bring me up in your lessons? You were always so good with that. Knowing just the right life lesson at the right time, Master.”
“You can’t avoid teaching them about poor Barriss Offee forever. They’ll find out though the rumor mill in the creche. What will you teach them, about me? What will you call me? Barriss the criminal? Barriss the heretic? I prefer Barriss the revolutionary or radical originalist perhaps! Barriss the seditionist? The murderer? The oath breaker? That’s a bit baroque don’t you think?”
She remains passive and serene, and it ceases to be amusing and begins to really stoke the anger within my breast. “Barriss the Monster, then?! That will really make an impression on a youngling as they go tough COMMANDER training on their way to take the GENERAL trials! What fourteen-year-old doesn’t need myth of a bogey-woman to keep them on the righteous path as they learn the valuable lessons of how to command larger and larger squads and platoons of soldiers? Is that what you’ll tell them?”
I don’t mean to but I’m shrieking at her. Plus I’m right next to the red glow of the energy field. It’s just coming over me. I say these words. The frustrations that I tramped down for so many years bubbling up into my being and stumbling out my mouth.
“What? Will! You! Tell? Them?” I pound the bottom of my fists against the barrier with each word. The frustration boils over, it is kerosene. It is hyperfuel. It erupts out of me and all I see is this white light for a time.
When I become aware of myself again I am splayed across the stairs and my hands are burnt. I am weeping. I expect Master Unduli left after all that abuse, but I look up and when my vision clears she hasn’t moved at all. She is still looking at me, though her expression is not placid anymore. It is open and understanding. It is a look of empathy.
She slowly moves her hand, palm down, with her fingertips as close as she can to the field without being injured. I shakily do the same. We just… stay there for a while and commune. We dwell in these complicated feelings and messy yet unchangeable history we have together. We stay like this for a long while without exchanging words. The guards eventually lead her away. I wonder if that’s the last time I will see her.
Am I fallen? Am I lost? I can’t answer anything but yes.
The joke is on them because both my Jedi training and the mandatory GAR anti-interrogation courses taught me valuable skills for my situation.
Eat everything offered to you. Got that covered. Sleep when tired, stay active when you feel awake. My cell is just large enough to accommodate Jedi stretching exercises. I can put myself into stress positions against a wall to really exercise muscle groups.
In the middle of a salutation pose I feel something strange, though far away. Something is happening. It is a familiar feeling I have experienced so many times before on worlds under Separatist occupation. It’s the panic of the masses. There is a faint rumble across the building followed in a few seconds by a distant boom. Is Coruscant really under droid attack?
Would the Count dare? The Outer Rim Sieges must be going poorly to account for such a brazen move.
I reach out with the force and attempt to monitor the battle, but it is too far away and I am too out of practice. Fox’s command is easier to read. They are all abuzz and departing across the district, likely to protect VIPs. After what feels like a few hours the generalized anxiety dies down considerably.
Our brave clones and ‘wise’ warrior-monks must have saved the day as usual. I find myself too wound up to sleep. I stand guard over my own guards. Maybe with a quick light nap every now and then.
Visualization is a fine way to combat the tedium of incarceration. I close my mind and imagine myself on Miral drawing on memories of the handful of times I have visited. I envision myself resting in a courtyard in some forsaken temple district. Cold wind and sleet blow past, whisking away the faint sent of the incense burners high in the towers ahead of me.
Suddenly something is not right. I drop back down to the here and now. I try to concentrate. Something terrible is happening or about to happen. Then it hits me like a kick to the gut and I feel so delirious with an all-encompassing feeling of doom. I nearly fall off the bed. Struggle out of it, Offee. Stay sharp.
Voices. The two guards outside deactivate my cell door. One of them descends with his rifle leveled. That’s sobering enough to bring me focus. It’s finally my time, I guess.
“I don’t think so.” I gesture to the right using the force to pull on the muzzle and the shot goes wide. I beckon him towards me and pull on his ribcage, so he smacks unceremoniously into my body.
“Hi.” I say quiet and breathy into his helmet receiver. Clones are so squeamish with close contact with nat-borns. He tries to aim at my head but I’m too close and the grip is awkward. Enough so that I can grasp the rife and jerk it inwards and upwards. It’s in my hand now.
He tries to toss me off, but I just slither against his armor. I’m a dancer, didn’t you know that dear? His partner at the top of the stairs fires off a few shots trying to wing me but I’m a wee little thing and his bolts just hit wall.
He tries boxing my ears and while this would be very distracting under other circumstances pain just fuels the fire these days. I just laugh. It gives me focus to flip the toggle on his rifle and I casually hurl him up and across the room towards his friend. Hit them both with stun blasts before they clatter to the ground. There you go, Fox. Relatively unharmed just for you.
Let’s see what else the night (day?) has in store. I cautiously poke my head out the cell and sure enough five more white-and-burgundy-armored clones have set up a regulation firing line down the hall. I would commend them for their discipline if they were under my command and not trying to kill me. Unfortunately, those stun rings grow exponentially upon leaving the barrel and hip-firing with two of them really levels the playing field. I sneak down the hallway tense and ready for the next attack.
But none appears.
Reaching out with all my senses it appears the whole complex is nearly empty…
I pause by the bodies to briefly check their vitals and notice his commlink is blinking. Wouldn’t hurt to get some answers.
“Damnit, Thire, do you have eyes on the Chancellor yet?”
“Sir, not yet sir!”
“I want a full perimeter around the entirety of Core Square! Stone! Push in from the East. Hound, take the South. Call up all Guard units. This is number one priority. Once we establish a cordon we push in block-by-block to the Senate Building. If you sight any Jedi you are to engage center mass, lethal force authorized!”
Oh my.
I drop the trooper’s arm and push further into the complex. In the mess hall there are abandoned meals and trays laying on the ground where they fell. Did Fox go rogue because of our conversation? Seems unlikely. I can’t shake this icy dread. Stay in the moment. What do I need to do?
I stop by the barracks and curse the lack of civilian clothing. I’m swimming around in a clone’s black bodysuit, but it will attract less attention than a prison uniform. Helps to trim off the excess around the ankles and wrists. I find a pair of clippers and buzz off this infernal frizzy hair. We’re really starting over now, Offee.
It’s eerie and almost scarier prowling through the abandoned garrison than moving around though the vents and access ways. At least it’s faster. You can do this. You memorized the layout. The motor pool is right outside the main entrance. After I weeks in that cell hitting the open air is downright oppressive. Even worse with the huge statues lining the parade field. It is night after all.
The vehicles are right there. I have a decision to make: a single person starship to flee up and out amongst billions of planets or a speeder bike to flee down amongst the trillions of beings below me.
I empty my mind and let the force guide my actions. Speeder it is. Up hurling over the city. No one watches me leave. No one cares. I hardly care. I accelerate fast as I can towards the nearest ventilation shaft. So cavernous and deep.
Now fly as casually as you can manage. If you get down far enough the surface life holds less and less sway. Further than that they enforce their own laws and justice. Whole ecosystems of beings living out their lives fully divorced form the capitol of the Galaxy. I just need to get down there. I just need to roll my shoulders, dip my head, tip my wings, and dive.