Chapter Text
I have a bad feeling about this.
Jedi Knight Barriss Offee kept to the edges of the halls and tucked herself further into her stolen cloak. She was one of the numerous black clothed individuals roving the halls of the Jedi Temple. If this was the Jedi temple which Barriss was starting to officially doubt. The Jedi Temple was a place of tranquility and peace; this place was an uneasy calm wrought with barely contained strife. There were Sith roaming in pairs, master and apprentices no doubt, and it was honestly the most terrifying experience in the young knight's life. From the glimpses that she had caught, there were a few people she recognized. Which made everything much worse. Nothing has prepared her for this.
What would Ahsoka do? What would Master Luminara do?
She should hide and wait for a rescue, if a rescue could be mounted. Given the unique circumstance of her predicament....
Barriss settled on the Archives. It was quiet and secluded. Which could make it a prime location for assassinations, but one must remain positive! The layout here was about the same as in the Temple back home; she made her way to the Archive found it easily enough despite the wrongness of the whole situation. She found a place well away from the main hubbub and pulled a datapad out of one of the cloak's inner pockets. As tempting as the window seat was, she would rather be prepared to flee should her ruse be discovered. Despite how quickly she had cloaked herself away from the Force, her initial arrival had sent ripples. No doubt someone would be looking into it.
The cloak she'd filched also had a encrypted datapad which was easily decoded. It only took a few minutes of study to figure out the key and from there she had unlimited access to the information inside. After a few minutes she realized with frustration that it contained nothing more useful than a shipping manifest. There was little she could do with a list of information regarding cargo, space ports and times.
Despite her increasingly depressing situation, Barriss had to admit there were many striking similarities between the Jedi Temple and this place. Chief among them was the library. Scores of shelves filled with knowledge and technology. A part of her itched to at least take a small peek, see what differed between this world and her own. At the very least she knew the artifact remained the same, and it might be the only way she would be able to get home.
A small tinge of homesickness and hunger radiated through her body. She was just about to have lunch with Ahsoka too!
So preoccupied with her own thoughts, a dangerous thing at the best of times, Barriss didn't notice she was being followed until it was too late.
Suddenly a pair of hands laid across her eyes effectively blinding her. "Barriss," chirped a familiar voice.
Barriss froze. "Ahsoka?" She breathed out, reaching up to gingerly pull those familiar orange hands off her face.
Ahsoka Tano stepped around her, a toothy grin on her face, decked in black. Barriss felt something like a rock plummeting from her stomach to her feet.
"Hey. What's with the getup? Did your master tell you to infiltrate a nunnery?"
"Master Unduli?" Barriss croaked out.
"Yeah. Her." Ahsoka made her opinion quite clear with a slight huff and roll of the eyes.
If there was any thought that nothing could get worse, this possibly refuted that. Master Unduli a Sith? What would that be like? Barriss blanched at the thought. She made a quick note to avoid that person at all costs.
"You okay? You look unwell." Ahsoka approached effectively backing Barriss up against the wall. She lifted a hand to press against Barriss' cheek. "She didn't hurt you did she?"
Barriss wanted very much to retort that her master would never do such a thing and she just didn't like being touched. Especially by someone who seemed to be this....familiar with the other Barriss Offee. It was quite easy to connect the dots in her mind, even without the pad of Ahsoka’s thumb tracing her lips. Quite easy to ascertain the nature of their relationship.
"Come on, relax." Ahsoka towered over the Jedi, having grown into her lanky form. She was a few inches shy of six feet. "It's just you and me."
And everyone else in the Archive. Thankfully, the others seem to be ignoring them.
Barriss swallowed thickly. "I'm just tired."
Ahsoka leaned in, a smile on her lips, one hand on the wall and the other tilting Barriss's head up. "I'll make you tired," She purred.
At this point it was self control and self preservation instincts that guided her hand. She would not survive starting a fight in the heart of the Sith Temple. All she could do was play along until she figured a way out or a way back to the artifact.
Ahsoka either ignored or took Barriss' hesitance as a sign and closed in, kissing Barriss on the lips. Her hands drifted down to Barriss' waist, her fingers pressing against the fabric of her clothes. The Jedi stood there rigidly for a second before deliberately relaxing, forcing her mind to focus on other things, like how she wasn't being kissed by a Sith version of her friend.
There was far too much touching for today.
She had met her quota and would like to be off this ride.
Please.
She let her hands drift up, tentatively resting on Ahsoka's waist. There were a few options she could possibly entertain. One involved fighting her way out of the Sith Temple. Killing Ahsoka might not even make anyone bat an eyelash. From what she had researched about Sith lore, periods in which there were many Sith in the galaxy featured a constant battle between apprentices. One apprentice killing another might not even cause suspicion.
Abruptly, Barriss found her hands above her head, a somewhat bored looking Togruta Sith smirking at her. "Nice try. But you couldn't pretend to be Barriss Offee even if your life depended on it. Which is does, by the way."
She held up the hand not being used to restrain her captive, showing Barriss her own lightsaber. "Got to admit, this is a first. Let's start with an easy question. Who are you?"
I'm going to die thought the Jedi.
There were many things that one Master Luminara Unduli expected when walking into one of many storage rooms for strange but harmless artifacts. For example, an exhausted Barriss Offee curled up for a nap with an equally exhausted Ahsoka Tano. Or Padawan Tano regaling one of her missions to the newly minted knight. She did not expect to see Padawan Tano punching an ancient artifact with her bare hands, surrounded by a fallen tray and scattered food.
"Tano!"
The young Jedi turned around panic written on her face. "The mirror ate Barriss!"
"What?"
For a mere second a tremor of fear raced up her spine. While Barriss may no longer be her padawan, she could still be concerned for her.
"Calm yourself. What happened?"
Ahsoka clenched her fists staring at the artifact. "I was bringing in lunch for Barriss when I heard a scream. I ran in and saw that," she pointed at the innocuous looking mirror. "Swallowing Barriss up. By the time I got over to it, it was just a mirror."
Luminara looked around and found her former padawan's notes. She had no reason to distrust Padawan Tano's account of what has happened, no matter how far-fetched it seemed. Honesty and panic radiated from the padawan's force presence. Whatever her differences of opinion Master Skywalker taught his padawan, Ahsoka Tano was an exemplary student and an excellent Jedi. Skywalker had done with her. Never mind all the bad habits he was passing.
"Perhaps if we go through her notes, we can see what she was doing. We can retrace her steps." Luminara raised a hand. "Peace, Padawan. If we are to save Barriss, then we must do so with a clear head."
And so they sat down and began to read through Barriss's notes. It was a point of pride to see how well Barriss documented her studies and research. It made it so much easier to collate and create a timeline as to what happened and how. It took several hours to read through everything; Luminara was itching to act, but nothing but thorough. She couldn’t afford to be rash in this.
"I found it." Ahsoka said finally, lifting up her stylus. "I think I figured out how she activated it."
"Good. Lets see if it works."
It took three tries before the mirror became opaque. Luminara experimentally tossed a stylus from halfway across the room, and they both watched with interest as it passed through the surface of the mirror. "Fascinating." If only she had more time. If only her only padawan was not sucked into what may be another world or another time.
It wasn't space. There would have been a vacuum effect and everything would have gotten sucked in. A small mercy.
Luminara turned around and began to gather the datapads. "We must bring this to the council at once and gather a team-"
She turned back just in time to see Ahsoka stepping into the mirror. It would be very unlike a Jedi Master to simply drop the datapads in frustration. She merely placed them down and let out a tiny frustrated sigh.
Luminara cradled her head in her hands before muttering one word. "Skywalker."
While Padawan Tano was not her responsibility, she would be remiss in leaving her by herself in what could be hostile territory. There was nothing else she could do, aside from leaving a message to anyone else who might come across the artifact, except jump through.
Still, she had a bad feeling about this.