Chapter Text
The glowing embers of their campfire kept them from total darkness. Breathable air was all this moon offered by way of life sustainability. It was a rocky, barren wasteland that they wouldn’t survive on long. A fitting place, then, for a graveyard.
Ahsoka looked over at Rex, who poked at the fire with a forlorn expression on his face. In the morning, they’d leave this place and from there, their destination was unknown. Questions still hung in the air. What, if anything, remained of their old lives? Would it be too risky to go back to find out? Should they bunker down and hide or keep on the move? And whatever they chose, should they split up or stay together?
Neither of them wanted to answer these questions. It was hard enough to digest how much they’d already lost. The graveyard full of their friends and brothers only a few feet away attested to that. There’d be time enough to make plans later, when they were away from this. At present, there was nothing left to do, nothing left to say. For Ahsoka, it was enough for her to sit beside Rex, stare into the fire, and feel her friend’s presence in the Force, ensuring her that at least one person she loved was alive.
The screech of a passing ship overhead disturbed their silence and snapped them both back into soldiers. “Think someone’s here to finish the job?” Ahsoka said, watching the ship’s light streak across the sky.
“Possibly, though I doubt it,” Rex answered. “If they even got an alert about the crash, we’re probably the last thing on their minds. Then again, I don’t know who else would have a reason to be here.” The ship’s lights went dark as they heard the familiar sound of a shuttle landing. “Better check it out before they can get the jump on us.”
They prowled in the dark, using the rocky terrain as cover. When they found the black silhouette of a shuttle against the deep violet night, Rex turned on a flashlight on the side of his helmet, offering some clarity in the dark. They couldn’t make out any details, but from the shadows, they could see that the shuttle’s door had been left lowered.
“Looks like they’re gone,” Ahsoka observed. She leapt down from the rocks and landed in front of the shuttle’s open door. When Rex climbed down as well, he shined a light on what appeared to be footprints in the dirt, the shape and tread suggesting combat boots. “Clone trooper?” Ahsoka guessed.
“No, tread’s all wrong for our gear.” He stomped down next to it, leaving a footprint of his own to compare. “And besides, wrong size.”
“Let’s follow them and see where they lead,” Ahsoka said. “Maybe we can give our friend a little surprise greeting.”
Rex nodded and unholstered his blasters. He kept his helmet tilted low enough to keep the light on the tracks but still high enough he could still see potential danger ahead. Soon, they found themselves back at their makeshift camp, with a dark figure standing in front of their fire. At their approach, he turned his head, revealing the red face of Maul.
Rex locked his blasters on Maul while Ahsoka sunk into a fighting stance, feeling the Force crackling in her fingertips. They waited for him to make a move, not even allowing a breath to disturb the air. He turned to them as his yellow eyes scanned them over with a neutral look on his face. Finally, he brought one hand out from behind his back and held it out. The silver hilt of her lightsaber glinted in the light from Rex’ helmet.
“Lose something?” he asked as casually as if a mundane item had simply fallen out of her pocket.
Neither of them broke their formation. Ahsoka’s eyes scanned him as well. He wasn’t in a fighting stance, yet, and his muscles weren’t tensed in preparation to pounce. He simply stood there, holding the hilt of her lightsaber out to her like it were anything else in the galaxy. “You’ll need this to survive what’s to come,” his deep voice rumbled.
“Seems dangerous to be carrying jedi artifacts in this climate,” she finally answered.
He jerked his hand out insistently. “Only if you are unwilling to use them to defend yourself.”
She examined the hilt in his hand as she considered his motives. Surely he was not here just to return her lightsaber. Perhaps he was here for a rematch? But if that was the case, offering a fair fight did not seem to be the Sith way. There was something else he wanted from her, and she suspected she knew what. Still, she wanted to hear his words. “Why are you here?”
“I have come to offer you one last chance.”
So, she was right. “You’re offering me a lot of last chances.”
Frustration began to crackle off of him, just as it did in the throne room. “As I’m sure you felt, everything I warned you about has come to pass. Sidious has risen to his full power and, if my calculations are correct, which I’m certain they are, he has taken your former master as his apprentice.”
“Warnings? Former master? What’s he talking about?” Rex’s words came out in a dangerous rumble, but she could almost taste the dawning fear radiating from him.
Ahsoka’s heart sunk. She didn’t want to put it to words, but when she felt the sickening unbalance in the Force, she also felt a shift in another way. Ever since she spoke to Maul in the throne room, a nagging doubt crept into the back of her mind. After the attack, it turned to fear. And now, speaking to him again, a dark certainty. “It’s Anakin,” she said. “He’s joined Sidious and fallen to the Dark Side.”
Though she was keeping her eyes on Maul, she could feel Rex’s shift in mood and could imagine the way his face fell beneath his helmet. “That can’t be true,” he insisted, though with the hint of doubt in his voice.
“It is,” she answered, her voice grave. “I could feel it.” Part of her wanted to sink into the pit of questions in her mind, the hows, the whys, the could-haves and should haves. But there was no time for that now, not with an enemy standing ten feet away. If he still considers himself an enemy. “What’s the point of asking for me to join you now?” she said, turning her questioning back to Maul.
“Sidious rules the galaxy now. He has reached the height of his power. But, if this is true, then the only thing left for him to do is fall. No matter what he thinks, he is not a god. He is mortal, and if he is mortal, he can be killed. It’s too late to stop his rise to power, but we can shorten his reign.”
“And as I said before, you will try to take his place.”
His frustration grew, but she could clearly feel his efforts to keep his temper in check. “You can feel me in the Force, can you not?” His voice came close to shouting, but still under firm control. “I have opened myself completely. If this were a deception, you would feel it.”
At his words, she realized she could sense more of his presence than she previously could, and with little effort on her part. She’d learned in her training that Sith are able to mask themselves in the Force, and a powerful one knew how to hide themselves just enough that their darkness and power wouldn’t be detected, but left their presence as known to a Jedi as any average person. This was not like it was in the throne room. He was not just unmasking himself, but projecting his presence in the Force.
She reached out to see what else she could sense. She found him, a tempest of anger, pain, and darkness. And so much raw power in the Force, she couldn’t help but wonder about all he could do, whether in the light or the dark, if he really wanted. But in all this, she also detected a truth in his words. He feared a galaxy ruled by Sidious, that much she knew already from their battle on the high beams, and she sensed a true desire to stop him.
Maul stepped toward her, and she could hear Rex’s armor clink together as he straightened his aim. Maul paid the blasters no mind as he held up her lightsaber’s hilt. “Not more than a few hours ago, you used this very weapon to nearly take off my head. Now, I offer it back to you. What greater gesture of trust could I possibly make?”
He held it out to her, and she could feel her hand instinctively reach for it, but she stopped herself in time. “Hold on. I’m not the only one you need to convince. Rex and I are a team. I need to discuss this with him.”
Maul’s lips curled in annoyance, but he backed down. “Very well.”
Ahsoka gestured for Rex to come with her as she put space between them and Maul. He hesitated to lower his blasters, but soon joined her to talk in relative private. “You can’t seriously be considering this,” he finally said, once they were out of earshot.
The very idea sounded ridiculous to her too. Maul was one of the most feared scourges in the galaxy. Even as a free agent, aligned with no side but his own, he managed to cause irreparable damage. But, the galaxy was no longer the same as it was the day before. They were alone and adrift in hostile territory, and Maul was drifting along with them. “We don’t have many options. The Jedi have fallen. Your brothers are brainwashed. Allies will be difficult to find. I’m not sure we can afford to turn one away.”
“That’s it? Beggars can’t be choosers?” Rex sounded aghast, as if she was suggesting… well, exactly what she was suggesting. “Maul can’t be trusted. That’s the simple truth of it.”
“He opened himself up completely. I could feel it. When he denied wanting Sidious’ power for himself, he wasn’t lying.”
“Except he didn’t deny it,” Rex countered. “He changed the subject.”
“I’m not saying we take him at his word, but Sidious is too great a threat, one Maul fears. That much I’m certain of. After our fight on the high beams, when I was holding Maul aloft in the air, we were connected through the Force. I could sense his true feelings. He was terrified of facing a galaxy ruled by Sidious, enough to beg me to let him die.”
Rex’s body language changed, his defensive stance relaxing a little as a thread of reluctant sympathy wove through his heart. But she could also feel his fear growing as a dreadful question hung in the air. What sort of evil could terrify Maul?
“There is truth to what he’s saying,” Ahsoka went on. “He has his own motives, I’m sure, but I believe his offer is sincere.”
“He mixes truth with lies. That’s where the danger is,” Rex argued. “You’re right, we don’t have many allies, but if we stick together, we can get by. He will only be a detriment. Even if he helps us take down Sidious, we’ll still have to deal with him when the dust settles.”
Ahsoka considered this. She did initially assume Maul’s true motive was to achieve Sidious’ power for himself. It would be the Sith thing to do, afterall. And yet, something about that didn’t quite fit. If he was only after power, would he lower himself to begging for death from an enemy? Screaming desperate warnings of doom like a lunatic? Could that all have been an act? If he believed the ends justified the means, maybe. But the pure terror and despair she felt through their connection in the Force couldn’t be faked.
But Rex still made a very pertinent point. “Maul,” she called, turning her head toward him. “Say we do defeat Sidious together. What happens then?”
He sighed as he began to explain. “Chaos will follow, as it always does when a power vacuum opens up. The ambitious will rush to fill the void.”
“And you?” She asked.
He hesitated and his lips pursed together before answering. “That remains to be seen.”
As she could still feel him open and vulnerable in the Force, she expected some clarity to come out of the cloud of turmoil, but there was nothing. Interesting…
“He’s dodging the question,” Rex snapped, his muscles tensing up again.
“No,” Ahsoka said, keeping her voice low, “I think he truly doesn’t know.”
They turned away again, but Ahsoka could feel Maul’s eyes on them. “From what I know of Maul, I don’t think he’d come to us if he had a better plan. If we want to take down Sidious, we are going to need to know everything we can about him, and Maul seems to know him well. Well enough to fear him above all else. He might be the only being in the galaxy with even the slightest chance of helping us.”
She could tell from Rex’s downward-tilted helmet that he was carefully thinking everything over. “Well, between the two of us, you’re the expert on this Force stuff.”
“And you are an excellent strategist,” Ahsoka countered. “From a tactical point of view, what’s your assessment?”
Rex gave one more glance to Maul before answering. “Against whatever’s out there, the numbers aren’t on our side. On the one hand, we could use every man we can get, and a Force user is an invaluable asset in battle. However, that’s only if we can trust him. One loyal man is worth more than a hundred out for themselves. He’ll be running his own agenda. We already know that. But his agenda must need us or else he wouldn’t have bothered seeking us out. He knows Sidious. He knew when the plan would strike, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was…” He took a ponderous pause. “Are you sure he really is against Sidious?”
“Yes,” Ahsoka answered firmly. “That’s the one thing I know he’s telling the truth about.”
Rex paused again, took a deep breath in like he was bracing himself for something painful, and answered. “Okay, then. If you’re in, I’m in. But, I have an idea for a counter offer.”
After a few more minutes of consulting, they turned back to Maul and approached him, a united front. “Alright,” Ahsoka declared, “we decided. We won’t join you.”
Maul’s face fell into a scowl much like it did in the Mandalorian throne room.
“But…” Ahsoka continued, watching some intrigue come back to Maul’s eyes, “you can join us.”
“That hardly makes a difference,” Maul scoffed, but that wasn’t a ‘no.’
“It does,” Ahsoka countered. “Rex and I are a team. If you want our help, you will do things our way.”
“Such as?”
“For a start, no hurting civilians and no attacking surviving Jedi.”
“Done.” He agreed much faster than expected.
But that was the easy part. Maul didn’t seem to care if civilians lived or died, so he might as well let them live. He may even spare Jedi to meet his own ends. The real test came now.
“And if Master Kenobi is alive,” Ahsoka said, approaching Maul and staring him directly in the eyes, “we’re going to keep it that way.”
Maul’s fists clenched and she felt his rage seeping into the Force. His blood-shot, Sith-yellow eyes glared into hers. There was a pulse. He tightened his fists, breathed in, and his rage retreated back. Through gritted teeth, he gave his answer. “You have my word.”
“Whatever that’s worth,” Rex muttered under his breath.
If Maul heard it, he didn’t react to it. Instead, he simply offered her lightsaber again.
This time, she accepted. “Alright then,” she said, taking the hilt with her left hand and holding out her right. “Do we have a deal?”
Maul didn’t grin menacingly, or even wear that sorrowful look he did in the throne room. He kept his face neutral and stoic. But as he reached out, his Force signature didn’t lie. In that moment, he had hope.
Their hands passed each other’s and they clasped wrists in a warrior’s handshake. “Deal.”
[-]
Though he offered his ship as a more protected place of respite, his new sentimental comrades insisted on sleeping out in the open, keeping vigil over their graveyard of fallen brothers. As Maul looked over the rows on helmets, marking the burial places, an unexpected pang came to his hearts.
He hadn’t had the opportunity to build a pyre for his brother. Yet another thing his master robbed him of. His near immediate capture and imprisonment, however, gave him ample time to wonder about Savage’s final moments.
The cleared eyes. The remnants of Mother Talzin’s magic swirling around them. His brother’s last words. I’m not like you. I never was.
A Sith’s eyes do not clear upon their death, and concealing them required such advanced mastery over the Dark Side, even Maul was unable to do it, let alone his apprentice. Mother Talzin’s magick had done something to him. Changed him somehow.
Who was his brother, really? What did he mean by saying he was ‘unworthy?’ Would he have been so loyal if not for Mother Talzin’s Magick? Questions he’d never get the answers to, and thus, were not worth thinking about.
He banished them, once again, to some unused corner of his mind and turned his attention to more pertinent matters.
Both his companions slept uneasily with weapons clutched in their hands, as if they expected him to attack them in their sleep. A ridiculous notion. There would be no point in him accepting their terms only to kill them hours later. Though, of course, he was not the only danger about.
Gazing at the stars, he reached out for some inkling of what lay beyond the desolate planet. What he told Lady Tano in the throne room was correct. The balance in the Force had been destroyed, doubtless by Sidious and his new apprentice, Skywalker. Throughout the Clone Wars, it was always in flux. The Darkside now greatly overpowered the Light. It was something he’d wanted, something he’d been told he wanted, for as long as he could remember.
He wielded the Darkside. This kind of imbalance should only bring him strength, and yet when the shift happened, it did not feel like a victory. He recalled a time during his training when his master forced him to relive the deaths of the Sith lost in their war against the Jedi. It felt the same. That’s what struck him most. Though this time it was the Jedi who fell, it felt the same.
Now dust settled, he felt the same way he did falling from that scaffolding only a day ago. Or worse, how he felt after his first duel with Kenobi. Falling, falling into darkness, rent asunder, nothing to grab onto, only despair waiting for him.
He could only guess as to why he felt so untethered in the Force. It must be Sidious’ doing. No doubt Sidious and his new apprentice would hoard all the power to themselves, and he didn’t fit into their plans any longer.
So, Maul had to adjust his plans accordingly. What providence, then, that fate should bring him a new apprentice of his own. Ahsoka Tano was strong in the Force, strong in the Light. Though, that could be changed. They shared some important commonalities, both skilled Force users without an Order to belong to, used at tools in the ultimate plan. That they should meet in this critical hour, it felt like destiny.
And he was so close to convincing her to join him in that throne room. The only factor he hadn’t accounted for was her blind devotion to her former master, Anakin Skywalker. If he’d known, he’d have phrased his plans more delicately, but some wild notion convinced him honesty would be more persuasive.
Although, now that Skywalker has proven his predictions correct, perhaps Lady Tano would be more inclined to listen to him. He could teach her things the Jedi never would. And who else did this padawan have anymore besides him?
A snore, however, reminded him that this was not necessarily the case. Captain Rex, recently promoted to Commander, as that trooper, Jesse, so generously informed him. The Commander and Lady Tano’s loyalty to each other was evident by the way they secured their escape together. Lady Tano even named him specifically when lamenting how the clones turned on her. They shared a bond that could only be broken through mind control, and even then only temporarily.
Maul’s influence over Lady Tano would have to contend with that of the Commander’s, and he must not underestimate his opponent. That’s where he always went wrong in the past, and his first, most grievous error cost him his legs along with his destiny. He would not make the same mistake here. As long as the Commander was around, he was an obstacle at the very least.
But only as long as the Commander was around. There were obstacles to that as well. He could not meet his end by Maul’s own hand. Any death that could be traced back to Maul, whether direct or indirect, would break Lady Tano’s trust and make her his enemy once again. That did not mean there were no opportunities.
Their little party would surely be hunted. They would fight many battles together. And if the Commander were to fall in one of those battles, and Maul was tragically unable to save him, well, he could hardly be blamed. And, of course, Lady Tano would need someone there to pick up the pieces after such a devastating loss.
Considering scattered pieces, he would need to check in with the Shadow Collective at times and see what remained of it. Surely, news of his defeat on Mandalore would likely send them into a frenzy. Crime lords very rarely contented themselves with only the second highest rank, and, as he explained to Lady Tano, at least a few ambitious would rush to fill the void. At some point, he’d need to drop in and remind them who brought them to power in the first place.
Once that was reestablished, The Shadow Collective would prove useful, so long as it remained under his guidance. A changing of power at the top did little to stop the criminal underworld below. At most, they would be forced to change its shape. Whatever Sidious chose to rebuild the galaxy into, the Shadow Collective would continue on, destabilizing the foundation.
Yes, he could almost see the plan beginning to form. Not the full picture yet, but the elements were coming together. With the Shadow Collective at his back and a new apprentice by his side, he may not be able to stop Sidious, not yet, but Maul could make himself a thorn in his former master’s side.