Chapter Text
Atonement of the Fallen and Fleeing
(A Rise to Rebellion)
Chapter 1: Hunger
The Jedi Temple's detention center was cold. Even colder than usual. Had no one bothered to check the regulations since the day prior? Barriss focused her energy on her annoyance at the so-called “compassion” the Jedi claimed to show its captives rather than the sinking feeling in the Force that had consumed her since the night before. Barriss's stomach growled as she shivered, reflexively reaching to pull her cloak around her. She was reaching for nothing. Her long sleeves and hood were replaced with the orange tunic all captives of the Jedi Temple’s detention center had to wear.
All… if there were others. Currently, it was just Barriss Offee and a series of abandoned containment stalls.
Any article of clothing resembling Jedi culture was taken from Barriss. But that was fine. Their culture was corrupt anyway. What had raised discomfort and indignancy was the pieces of Mirialan culture that had been stolen as well. Even when it wasn’t as cold as it was presently, her ears felt like ice from shame. She was fortunate to have been a Padawan to someone from her own culture. It was customary for Mirialans to take on other Mirialans as their Padawan, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. Because of the culture's strong natural affinity to the Force, few Mirialans saw any point in leaving Mirial for the Jedi. But Barriss had.
She had found a place with one of her own. Someone who ensured she was never made to go without a head covering. Someone who gave her the choice to wear it in the first place, who told her of its meanings. Someone who had given Barriss her first tattoo after becoming a Padawan. The other ones after passing her first assessment and every landmark since. Barriss hated betraying Master Unduli. Luminara had been strict, sometimes even cold, but Barriss had been decidedly lucky.
The cell wasn’t going to get warmer. Barriss closed her eyes and focused inward on herself and the Force. Being trained as a healer, she had a few ways to stay warm; it just felt wrong to use Jedi methods after everything . She felt the warmth from the planet’s core and from her own, then focused on the heat pooling through her body, spreading outward to her limbs and fingers. The fix was only temporary, but someone would come.
She didn’t accept what she had felt until a week had passed. Her hunger was almost as empty as the force around her. She had tried to reach out to someone, anyone. Her old master, her friend. She wasn’t surprised Ahsoka had blocked their connection. What was unnerving was the fact that she couldn’t feel anyone . Barriss had felt alone before—for most of her Padawanhood, honestly—but this was a new feeling. She was utterly alone. Something had happened. Barriss felt sick from entertaining the thought, but she knew: everyone in the temple was dead, and in about a week, with no food or water or heat, she would be too.
“I still don’t trust her.” That voice was familiar. It was one she had heard a million times from many different mouths.
“She is a traitor to the Jedi, not the Emperor. The Empire will be a welcome change for her,” said the same voice again, only echoing from a different clone.
She knew she should be more concerned about the words she was hearing. The “Emperor,” the “Empire”? Not a lick of it made sense. But she didn’t think of that. All she could think or feel was undiluted relief. There was another living being in the temple!
“Offee?” one of the clones said as he halted before the threshold of her cell. Barriss scrambled to her feet, maintaining as much eye contact as possible with the helmeted clone.
“Yes.”
“So, are you a Jedi?”
Barriss scoffed and sat back down. Of course, the Jedi were still here; what was she thinking? They were just ignoring her. Maybe attempting to starve her back into submission.
“No. Sir,” Barriss spat, taking a deliberate pause between the words.
To her surprise, the clone didn’t walk away with some cryptic punishment. Instead, he removed his helmet to reveal brown hair shaved into a cropped mohawk and a kind smile. “Good. Come with us.” The clone typed a security code, and the chamber’s ray shield fell.
Barriss paused for a moment, trying to process his words through the haze of starvation before following. What in the galaxy was going on? “Where?” she asked. She sounded so sheepish, it wasn’t like her.
“To the Emperor.”
Well, that answered nothing.
The mohawked clone kept walking through the halls until he reached the front of the detention center. No one was there. The guards were gone. Barriss tried to convince herself that they had left without a trace, but the faint splatter of blood on the walls suggested blaster fire. The clones escorting Barriss weren’t deserters… at least they weren’t the ones who killed the guards; that blood was at least a week old.
Barriss hadn’t realized that she had come to a halt before the blood stains until the helmeted clone barked, “Keep moving!” She jumped back to consciousness and followed.
“For kriff’s sake, Stix, lay off her!”
“She is a traitor! You’re not at all worried about this?”
“How do you know she wasn’t following the Order before we even knew what it was?”
The clone in the helmet, evidently called Stix, addressed Barriss this time, “Were you following Order 66?”
She stared wide-eyed at the question. All of her sensibilities told her she should lie and say “yes,” but she was too confused and hungry to follow her logic. “I—I do not know what that is.”
That was all Stix needed. He stopped looking at her, instead directing as much “I told you so” energy at the unhelmeted clone as possible. “Hawks, this is in direct violation—”
“This is what the Emperor wants! She isn’t technically a Jedi anymore, so I am fine with it. I don’t want to kill anyone else if I can help it.”
“Sorry, General,” Stix apologized.
Barriss stayed unreadable. She stayed quiet. The way she did when she was a Padawan. Observant and not to be observed.
“Stix,” the clone named Hawks broke the silence before they left the detention center for good. “Find the girl's things or some of the detention tunics, it's an eight-day trip. She’ll need a change of clothes, and we only have the one.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barriss waited until Stix had gone behind sealed doors to ask, “Eight days? Does your ship not have hyperspace?” The only off-world prisons she knew of that she would be logically relocated to were, at the most, just a day of lightspeed travel.
“Of course it does. The Mustafar system is 50,000 lightyears away.”
“Mustafar?”
The clone looked genuinely sympathetic. He must have known how vague he was, how confusing it must be for her. He eyed the floor and said, “I know this is a lot; we will explain as much as we can on the way.” He looked back up at Barris, meeting her confused eyes. Then, as if reciting some practiced campaign, “The Republic has failed. You can be a part of building something better. You can help the peaceful creation of the Empire.”
For the first time, she smiled. She hadn’t fought a losing battle before. The corruption had finally ended. Hawks smiled back. She could hug him. But she didn’t. She’d known a “Hawk” once. He was a pilot. She’d traveled with him during her missions with Ahsoka as a Padawan.
Ahsoka . She had failed to keep her safe, instead, Barriss was the one in a padded cell, safe from whatever destruction she was leaving behind on Coruscant. And this Hawk wasn’t the same clone. Everything was different. Different from her memories, different from her plan. But the familiar name ever so slightly put her at ease.
Like everything, the starship was different. While still built for war, the spacecraft was darker and more closed off than what the Jedi would travel in. Once boarded, she was allowed to roam wherever, but Barriss spent her time in the spare quarters. Such a large ship, but only she, Hawks, and Stix inhabited it.
Stix, much to Barriss's relief, spent all his time in the cockpit. Even when the ship was on autopilot, he stayed. The man didn’t seem to trust anything, especially Barriss. She didn’t trust him either.
Barriss jumped at the knock at her door. She used to be so good at sensing when someone was approaching.
“Come in.”
Hawks came into the small room, folded black fabric in his arms. “I found this for you. We’re almost there; just a few more hours.”
Barriss smiled kindly at the clone and reached out to take the clothing. Black tunic and pants. She had expected him to leave, but instead, he took a seat next to her on the cot.
“Did you know him?” she blurted before Hawks could speak.
He responded by looking at her questioningly.
“Hawk. he was—or is, I'm not sure—a pilot in the 501st,” she mumbled. He chuckled but tried not to make his amusement pointed at her.
“There's about 5 billion of us, I wouldn't know most of my brothers if I wanted to.”
There was a pause. It was uncomfortable.
“Listen,” he said, his voice sympathetic, almost familial, “I know we haven't told you much. The truth is that we don’t know much ourselves. This is all new.”
She nodded, looking down where her fingers fiddled with the sleeves of the tunic in her hands.
“But we— I do want to help. What you did was brave,” said Hawks.
“They were using you,” she said simply. She brought her eyes to meet his—a pair identical to thousands of friends she had lost. “How can someone claim to be just and then use living beings as expendable weapons?”
Hawks took a saddened moment before he cleared his throat. “Listen, when you get there… don’t show all your cards.”
Barriss gave a confused look.
“What I mean is, don’t seem weak because then you’ll be a target, but don’t show all of your power right away. What I do know is that this place can be cutthroat. Don’t let them plan for what you can do. The more the surprise, the further you’ll go.”
By now, he must have seen how her confusion melted into fear.
“But don’t worry. You’ll not be killed or anything. You're an asset to the Empire, they won’t let anything happen to you.”
With that, he stood up, gave her a final pat on the shoulder, and left. His tone made it seem like he had just given her the key to everything, but all he did was make Barriss more nervous than before. She felt a heavy lump in her throat and tried to push back her anxiety. But it was no use. Her nerves were getting the better of her.
* * *
Her hands were shaking in front of her. She stared them down, begging them to stop. Breathe in, breathe out . Did the shaking just get worse? Her hands were covered by soft orange ones, willing the shaking to slow.
“Hey, the hard part’s over.”
Barriss scoffed, “I guarantee you the hard part will be the Trial of Skill.”
“Maybe,” Ahsoka said, shrugging. “But I think the hard part was going through Padawanhood in a war. You're more than prepared.”
“Force, I hope so. How’d you get back here?” Barriss said, releasing a breath more steadily than before.
Ahsoka shrugged again. “Master Unduli let me in.”
Barriss’s eyes widened. “She did?”
“She could sense your stress as well. She wants you to do well. We all do.” Lifting a hand from Barriss’s, Ahsoka brought it to her cheek before thinking better of it and returning it to its previous position. A soft smile curled at Barriss’s lips. It was amazing how Ahsoka still supported her and came to her. No matter how much she pushed Ahsoka away, she always knew exactly when to return.
“Thank you so much, my dear friend.” She emphasized her last words with all the meaning and care she could. Finally letting go of Ahsoka's hands, Barriss pulled her into a hug. “I hope you’ll still hang out with me when you're a cool Jedi Knight,” Ahsoka joked once the two released themselves from their embrace.
Barriss laughed, “Well, I’m sure I will. You know, to help with your training.” She forced her face into a look of smug confidence. “Of course, you couldn’t call me Barriss anymore.”
Ahsoka crossed her arms, giving her signature smirk. “Oh really?”
“Well, obviously. It’s Master Offee to you, Padawan.”