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Ahsoka took advantage of what little privacy she had before embarking on the Phantom with Kanan and Ezra for Malachor. She had to let Barriss know what was about to happen and why. Barriss's holographic form was as beautiful as ever though she was clearly tired working for the Rebellion as an emergency search and rescue medic.
"Dearest, it's so good to see you," Barriss smiled at the sight of her wife's face after too long.
"I could say the same for you. You're looking good." Ahsoka responded, mustering as much of her younger spunky self's overly excited expression that made her beloved giggle. It wasn't a voice that came naturally to Ahsoka anymore since she was all grown up now but it was something Barriss always reminisced and laughed about, so Ahsoka could never miss the opportunity. It may be her last in a while after all.
After a small giggle and eyeroll, Barriss said, "Oh Ahsoka… I do love your flattery but I'm afraid I don't have much time if there's something specific you called me for."
Ahsoka cleared her throat, "Right, well, you know the visions I’ve had of… him? I had another one but this one was different.”
Barriss knew who she meant and immediately her expression darkened. Ever since Vader had telepathically spoken to Ahsoka in the Lothal Jedi Temple blaming her for leaving him as well as for his bad choices, she had felt nothing but anger toward him. What she hated the most was how Ahsoka seemed to believe it.
"He was calling for me, he needed help I think, to remove his helmet. He wanted to see me with his own eyes. And I could see his face. His eyes were blue again and he was smiling and I knew he had turned back to the light side," Ahsoka finished.
Barriss frowned, not liking where this was going. "I thought we talked about this Ahsoka. You yourself said there wasn't any hope for him and that you would let go."
"This is different, Barriss. I know this vision will come to pass. I saw Malachor in it too which cannot be a coincidence that this is where Master Yoda told the Jedi of the Ghost unit to go… I plan on joining them."
"You plan on WHAT?!" Barriss exclaimed. "Firstly, Malachor is forbidden, second, you are certainly not going knowing DARTH VADER will be there."
"I have to Barriss-"
"WHY?! After everything we've survived, you'd throw yourself into the akul's mouth? This is suicidal! Ahsoka, you made me a promise!" her voice cracked.
"I won't die. I have every intention of coming back to you alive. I will keep that promise. I just have to do this because if I don't, I'm going to regret it forever. I mean what if it was your Master? What would you do? Could you live with yourself if you didn’t at least try?"
Barriss took a deep breath, “No… I couldn’t.” She thought back to the Jedi teachings that one must confront their demons if they are to truly have peace. Ahsoka may have survived, but Barriss had always felt she was stuck in time, filled with the regret of not telling Anakin all of her thoughts and feelings before everything changed. No matter how much Barriss told Ahsoka that what became of her old Master wasn’t her fault, she knew the Togruta was unable to internalize this. So if this extremely dangerous confrontation would set her free, then so be it. Maybe then, she’d finally be less inclined to put herself on the line for the Rebellion and live a normal life. Cut their losses as it were. But she was damned if she’d let her do it alone.
“Very well, but I’m coming with you, I can be there in a day or so, depending on Imperial traffic,” Barriss said.
Ahsoka bit her lip, “I’m sorry, Barriss, but this mission is already underway. I’m about to board the Phantom with two other Jedi. It can’t be delayed. Also, I cannot and will not risk your life.”
Barriss couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Ahsoka please, I am begging you to wait for me. Don’t let Vader take you,” she said, tears going down her face. Did Ahsoka really care more about saving a lost case than her? She never hated Anakin Skywalker more than she did now. And she hated how selfish she felt in her desire to protect Ahsoka but she couldn’t help it.
Ahsoka shook her head, sensing her wife’s thoughts. Doing her best to not let the tears in her own eyes fall but failing, she answered as calmly as she could, “I’m sorry Barriss. But I promise, I will come back to you. You have always helped me to survive and stay strong no matter the distance between us. Darth Vader may have once been my Master, but you are my life now. Don’t ever believe for one second that he is more important to me than you. That’s why I want to keep you safe and out of this, I need a reason to keep going when it gets too hard. If I ever lost you, I’d lose myself.”
Barriss pulled herself together. She resented this whole situation but she understood at the same time.
“Fine… just please be careful because I couldn’t live without you either.”
“I will. I have to,” Ahsoka said.
“May the Force be with you,” Barriss wished her. Ahsoka replied the same and then the holo call ended.
Malachor: After the Duel
Battered and bloody, Ahsoka limped through the Sith Temple. The place was a nightmare. The shadows moved in such a way that Ahsoka had more than once been startled believing Vader had returned to finish her off. Though, she was probably hallucinating given her current condition.
What a fool she had been. Barriss had told her about her encounters with Vader and how the dark side completely consumed him. Ahsoka believed her but a nagging voice in her head always had that "what if" question that maybe she could have saved Anakin had she stayed with him and been at the right place at the right time. Then maybe her Jedi family might have lived… She tried not let her memories and doubts consume her but there was something about the Sith Temple that made compartmentalizing so much harder. Her guilt only grew with each passing memory.
Vader telepathically throwing the blame on her back in the Jedi Temple on Lothal had only made that feeling grow. A few weeks after that, she'd had that vision of Anakin turning back to the light side. And despite all the resentment she held for him, she felt it was her chance to redeem herself and save countless others by saving him. This vision had to mean she would be able to bring him back. Why else would the Force let her see such an unlikely event? She had convinced herself it was the will of the Force that she save Anakin from himself.
Seeing his eye through the crack of his helmet and hearing his voice call her name solidified this to her. It was why she didn't escape to the Phantom. She promised him she wouldn't leave him this time. Not even his threat to kill her could disway her from staying. It was only right before the Temple weapon activated when he telepathically spoke to her as they locked sabers, did she realize that her vision would not come to pass and that she would die for nothing.
"Everything I have done, all the blood that I've spilt…. You could have stopped it all. Unlike Kenobi, perhaps you would have spared me from living. But no, as you have said, you are no Jedi. You can’t let go, you never could. Now, your failure is complete. You will die, abandoning your precious Barriss as you have abandoned me. And she will suffer as I have suffered. The perfect punishment. Goodbye, my old Padawan." He sneered into her mind.
Ahsoka screamed in rage and used all her might to push him off and stabbed her sabers into the ground since the Temple weapon was about to activate and kill them both. But this left her vulnerable and Vader swung his final blow. Ahsoka finally realized how foolish she was. Her vision would not come to pass. And if it did, she would not be the one to bring it to life. So here she was, about to break her promise to Barriss. She was about to die at the hands of her former Master after being beaten down by him. Regret and desperation filled her knowing her stupidity would condemn Barriss to a life of sorrow. Ahsoka had a whole life ahead of her. She wanted to spend it with Barriss, she wanted to finally find peace and live to see the fall of the Empire. There was so much she still had to live for. It was all about to be cut short. She reached out to Barriss through the Force, "I love you." That was when she felt the hand on her shoulder pull her back.
Ahsoka finally shook herself from her thoughts, an effort that felt like lifting a starcruiser. She walked on until she found a triangular arch with steps going downward. She felt what she could only describe as a wave of despair emanating from the path before her. But it was the only one she could go through so she had no choice but to limp down until she felt her feet land in water… There was now a hallway flooded to her waist with… Water? In this desolate place? It’s not possible, she thought, but had no energy to figure it out. She waded through it which was difficult with her injured leg. The effort was exhausting but she had to. Despite her desire to collapse and sleep, she had to get back to Barriss.
A faint noise she couldn’t make out began to sound through the narrow flooded hallway. It almost sounded like distant crying? No… laughter? Whatever it was, it was getting louder the more she continued on. Until she realized it was laughter. A familiar old cackle that sent a chill through her body.
Ahsoka stopped and looked around frantically, hands on her lightsabers. The cackle got quieter and more distant. “I must be so tired I’m hearing things,” Ahsoka thought. It wasn’t as though nightmares and hallucinations hadn’t plagued her right after life and death situations before. She forced herself to take a breath and relax her shoulders. There was nothing here.
She suddenly felt warmth at her right ear -
“I win!” the voice of Palpatine whispered harshly. Ahsoka’s eyes widened and she grabbed one of her lightsabers swung at her side, slashing him across the chest causing him to fall to his knees.
… Only it wasn’t Palpatine.
Ahsoka’s pounded out of her chest. “Barriss?!” She cried out. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening… this couldn’t be real but there she was, on the ground, water to her chin. A lightsaber slash across her chest.
“Ahsoka… why did you leave? How could you do this to me?”
She dropped her lightsaber and immediately knelt down to hold her wife but Barriss turned to smoke in her arms.
Palpatine’s cackle once again rang through the hall.
This had to be a hallucination, it just had to. She grabbed her lightsaber and made a run for it as best she could with the water. But it was as though his voice chased her. She covered her montrals trying to block it out but it was too loud. Her injured leg surged with pain and she fell beneath the water, the image of Barriss cut across the chest by her own hand burned into her mind. She knew it wasn’t real in itself but she could sense that the most evil being she’d ever known somehow had Barriss’s life in his hands. Her arrogance in believing she could redeem had Vader compromised her wife. Ahsoka left her alone and now she was in danger. Her mind now tortured her with all her past failings that had led up to this. Images of the Clone Wars, Barriss trying to talk to her before the Temple bombing, leading good men to their deaths at Felucia, Ryloth, Umbara, and countless systems, the way she treated Obi Wan and Anakin at Mandalore, the graves of hundreds of clones markes with their helmets all staring back at her…. Her broken promise to Barriss that they'd live a normal happy life and that she would return alive. Her breath was beginning to run out but all the images of everything she’d done wrong held her down as though a certain old wrinkled hand was pressing down on her head.
“You wanted chaos!” Maul yelled as he crashed the Venator filled with her clone brothers. She could still see the look of fear and pain on Rex’s face knowing what they were doing.
The image of the clone graves flashed in her mind and then shifted into the Jedi Temple on Lothal.
“You abandoned me! You FAILED me!” Anakin roared, haunting her ever since. He’d always been there for her in the Clone Wars… if only she had been there for him.
The image swirled to her and Barriss’s one anniversary.
“I just don’t ever want to lose you,” Barriss had said.
Ahsoka placed her hand on Barriss' heart.
“And I never want to lose you either. I promise that my wifely duties come first.”
“You promise?” Barriss’ voice echoed.
The image turned dark and she was again in the Sith Temple.
“Ahsoka?”
“I won’t leave you! Not this time,” Ahsoka cried.
“Then you will die,” Anakin had said, not an ounce of regret in his voice.
Barriss appeared to her in the dark in Anakin’s place.
“After everything we’ve survived…” Barriss pleaded exactly as she did over their last transmission.
“You promised…” Barriss said, silent tears on her face as she faded away, leaving Ahsoka in the darkness.
Until, she heard a distant, familiar voice.
“Take care of her Ahsoka,” Force ghost Luminara whispered. She had spoken those words not long before the wedding.
She had disappointed and let down everyone who had ever cared about her. Barriss, Plo Koon, Luminara, Rex and her other clone brothers, Anakin, Obi Wan, all of them. It was over. She was dying and Barriss would soon belong to Palpatine.
As her life flashed before her eyes, she remembered a moment she had also believed she was dying. On Geonosis, inside a Separatist tank. Much like now, she had been running out of air. She saw a green skinned hand with diamond tattoos reach out to her. They had clasped hands. Had their Masters not found them, they would have died that way.
Another memory rushed forward. When there was no other way, Ahsoka somehow found one and saved Barriss from the Geonosian worm. She had held Barriss in her arms as she passed out.
Umbara. Ahsoka’s starfighter had been hit… Badly. She had been too close to the planet and was tumbling down to her death. She was beginning to burn up in the atmosphere until a grapple attached to her ship. It was Barriss in her own starfighter. She had towed her back to safety when it seemed impossible.
The prison. Ahsoka had broken Barriss loose from the stronghold on Nur. That feeling of Barriss grasping her hand as they swam hastily to the ship. The relief knowing she survived after Order 66 and now was free from the Empire…
Their final stand on Dantooine. Seeing Barriss’s lifeless body awaken suddenly. Ahsoka tried to block out Trilla’s involvement in that. But her relief in seeing her beloved outweighed any grievance though she’d never admit that to the Inquisitor.
… Ahsoka had many regrets in her life, but Barriss could never be one of them. They had achieved the impossible together, survived the impossible. And she was damned if she was going to let the Emperor drown her and use her beloved for whatever nefarious plan he had in store. She made the wrong choice and failed today. But it wasn’t over no matter how he tried to make her feel that way. She wasn’t Anakin. She wasn’t Dooku. She wasn’t Trilla. She knew her vision would come to pass. Anakin would be redeemed, the Empire would be defeated, but not by her hand. It just wasn’t her destiny. She finally let go.
She forced herself up from the water, coughing and gasping for air. She sat for a moment, water to her neck, recovering. She could no longer feel the dark presence of the Emperor. Somehow, she must have warded him off when she let go of Anakin. In fact, she could feel that she actually severed her connection to her former Master.
She still loved Anakin… she couldn’t help it. It was hard for her mind to consolidate who he was before with who he was now. But he was no longer an attachment. He had hurt her in the worst ways imaginable and it was going to take time for her to process it all. But she now understood that he was not her responsibility. That lay in someone else’s hands. Someone without the baggage of having known him.
Her attachment to Anakin was probably how Palpatine found her to begin with and whatever he wanted with Barriss, he needed Ahsoka out of the way. She got up, and limped as fast as she could trying not to let her fear for Barriss overwhelm her. This place was a maze though.
A screech sounded above her and Ahsoka smiled.
“Mori, I was wondering where you were. Couldn’t have helped me earlier could ya?”
The convor made an indignant hoot.
“Oh… that’s right, you did save my life. Guess what just happened had to be my battle, huh,” Ahsoka stroked Mori’s head.
“I do need your help again. Barriss is in danger. Can you lead me out of this place?” She tried to hold the shake in her voice.
Mori hooted affirmatively and took flight. Ahsoka followed until she saw a new staircase with light coming from top. She tried not to collapse as she crawled up them.
The stairway led to an exit from the Sith Temple and she was back in the ashy ruins of Malachor. The effort however, between her mental battle with the Emperor and having to wade through water and go up a very long set of stairs with injuries had exhausted her.
“Thank you, Mori,” Ahsoka said weakly, but her companion was gone. Kriffing bird had a habit of doing that.
Suddenly she sensed a warm and familiar presence just ahead. It wasn’t Barriss, but she trusted him with her life. She hobbled as fast as she could toward him. She could see the glow of a flashlight and the outline of shoulder armor. Anyone else might have thought it was a Stormtrooper but she knew better.
“Rex!” She yelled his name with the last of her strength and collapsed on the hard ground.
She could feel the light of the flashlight turn sharply in her direction.
“Ahsoka!” His warm accented voice yelled back. As she passed out she felt his hands feel for a pulse and suddenly she was being lifted up…
When she awoke, she lay in what looked like a small shuttlecraft medbay with bacta patches on her injuries.
“Don’t scare me like that again, Commander. I’ve had enough of those for twice my lifetime,” Rex said, his gruff voice was serious but full of care.
“Rex,” Ahsoka smiled. Then it all came flooding back. Her smile faded.
“Barriss is in danger, we have to -”
“Oh I know. She sent me a distress signal before her transponder went out. She left me coordinates which is where we’re heading so yes we’re on our way to rescue her… She got caught on her way to Malachor…”
Ahsoka shut her eyes tight.
“I told her not to come.”
“And you expected her to listen? Hell, I wouldn’t have listened had I known you were on a SUICIDE MISSION!” Rex said bitterly.
“She told you…”
“Yeah, we were going to meet up to find you but she got there first. They were ready for her. Expecting her, it seemed.”
Ahsoka put her face in her hands.
“What have I done…” She thought back to the dreams she used to have on Battu of Palpatine telling her to choose between Anakin or Barriss. How could she have been so stupid?
“I’m so sorry,” Ahsoka whispered.
His face softened.
“She told me everything. About… General Skywalker too. There was nothing you could have done to help him, Ahsoka,” he rarely used her name.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“I know that now… I just wish it hadn’t possibly cost my wife to learn that.”
“It won’t,” he said confidently. “We know where she is. We just need a plan.”
Ahsoka perked up.
“Rex, what kind of shuttle is this?”
“It’s a Nu-class attack shuttle. Not so “nu” these days, mind you. Why?”
“I think I have an idea…” Ahsoka stroked her chin, a new plan coming to light.
Rex smiled and shook his head affectionately.
“Just like the good ol’ days. What’s the order, Commander?”
“First we have to stop on Koboh. There’s a couple of friends we’re going to need...”