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Ahsoka emerged from her meditative trance slowly. It felt like coming up from deep underwater, struggling to reach the surface. Every part of her body ached, the only sign she must’ve been sitting there a long, long time. She felt sluggish, weakened by the influence of the Sith Temple.
She stretched her legs out from under her, trying to regain some kind of alert state. Whatever had disturbed her would appear sooner or later, and it would almost certainly be unfriendly.
Nothing in the Sith Temple was friendly.
She should walk away, she thought absently, before it decided it wanted to keep her. Except she knew if she did she would not be able to bring herself to come back and there was still so much she didn’t know.
She wondered if the distinct glow of white lightsabers was a trick, at first, as she clambered to her feet and tried to regain her balance. She instinctively reached for hers, the one she’d been able to find in the rubble after the explosion, but didn’t turn it on. The last time she’d used its light to read an inscription it had flickered red.
It wouldn’t have been the first the temple had played on her.
But –
A figure had emerged from the darkness, coming to a halt a few steps away from her, wary.
“Ahsoka? Ahsoka. Are you alright?”
“…Barriss?”
With the Force clouded as it was and the low but persistent ache in her head, she couldn’t decipher the signature at all. Couldn’t tell if it was really her.
But Barriss, if it was Barriss, just seemed mildly concerned and –
Why was she there?
Ahsoka ran a hand over her face, trying to clear her head.
Barriss shouldn’t be there. They’d agreed she shouldn’t go to Malachor, hadn’t they? Not unless it was necessary. She was too close the Dark Side still even though she didn’t – dabble in it much, anymore.
Not unless it was necessary.
“I take it the mission went badly?” Barriss prodded, still from a distance and weapons drawn.
It was her. It made sense. She was supposed to come, if things didn’t go as planned. Ahsoka had forgotten. Or she hadn’t dared hope.
“You came,” Ahsoka said after a moment, voice hoarse with disuse. Force, she was thirsty “I wasn’t sure you would.”
She remembered now, the tense conversation over the holocomm. Barriss had said coming to Malachor would lead to nothing but pain.
Barriss gave her a careful once-over, as if to make sure she was still in one piece and in possession of her sanity. She lingered on her eyes a long moment before she stepped closer, one lightsaber back at her belt and the other casting a soft light around her.
“We had an agreement.” They did, if only because Barriss had a debt to pay off. For that long-ago betrayal and so many things since. This, Ahsoka thought, might even the scales, and then what?
Barriss laid a hand on her shoulder and Ahsoka felt the warm rush of Force healing. The familiarity of it was almost painful.
She hadn’t noticed how cold she was until then, until she was more herself. She could do nothing but shiver helplessly for a moment. Then she found her voice again:
“We did. But I wasn’t sure what you might’ve heard. Rumours of my demise, and all that.”
Barriss shook her head.
“I would’ve come either way.”
Ahsoka closed her eyes.
The relief was almost overwhelming now that she could believe that there would be a way off Malachor for her.
“Thank you. How long has it been? This place—it distorts everything.”
“I don’t know. I waited a week before I came and -- I’ve been looking for you for some time now.”
Some time. So she didn’t know, either. How long had she searched in the labyrinth that was the Temple on the off chance that Ahsoka was still alive?
“Do you – can I have water?”
“Of course.”
She drank as Barriss studied the writing on the wall she’d settled next to, looking mostly unaffected by their surroundings. Ahsoka had been too, at first. Then she’d run out of supplies and drunk the water and eaten the wildlife and the darkness had seeped into her.
“Did you find the answers you were looking for?”
Ahsoka sagged against the nearest pillar, the cautious optimism she’d been building up shattering.
“No. Yes. Not what I meant to find here but – It was him. Anakin. He’s the Sith Lord.”
Barriss was unmoved.
“You knew that already.”
“I suspected. But I saw him. My Master, Barriss – My – “
Her voice broke, and Barriss stepped closer again, did not touch her this time.
“I know.” Barriss couldn’t possibly know. Couldn’t know what it was like to be confronted with the shell of someone she’d loved and admired, someone she’d let down and abandoned –
Ahsoka thought of what the Empire had made of Luminara.
Maybe Barriss did know. Except –
“He tried to kill me.”
“Not very hard, it seems.”
In other circumstances Ahsoka would’ve laughed.
“Hard enough. He’s – the Dark Side. It’s consumed him.” She added, softly. “He needs my help.”
“There may be nothing you can do for him now.”
“If there was anything, anything you could’ve done for Master Luminara, wouldn’t you have?”
Barriss made a low sound and didn’t answer. It wasn’t something they talked about.
“Your rebels – they left you here?”
The shift in topic was not subtle, but it was necessary one. There would be time to mourn later. Ahsoka pulled herself back together, gathering what was left of her composure. A lot of the quiet confidence she liked to project she’d learned from Barriss, through the years. Having her near was a comfort.
Just as it had been, in the early days of the Purge, to know that there was someone else left, anyone, even a traitor.
Somehow Barriss always seemed there to witness the worst moments of her life, or at least their aftermath.
“I didn’t give them much of a choice.”
Barriss hummed, dubious, and Ahsoka almost smiled. Ahsoka had thought, when she’d involved herself with the Rebellion, that it might’ve been something that would interest her – friend. Occasional ally. She’d been the first, after all, to fight back, however misguided the attempt had been.
But while Barriss had no love for the Empire, she was equally wary of those who wanted to resurrect the Republic and, as far as Ahsoka knew, kept to herself whenever she wasn’t working as a healer for refugees of one System or another.
“There was a Sith holocron. I don’t have it, but neither does Vader – Anakin” she amended, because it was an idea she would have to get used to, something she could no longer deny “or Maul. The Spectre crew has it and they can be trusted to keep it safe.”
Barriss finally seemed surprised.
“Maul? The Sith? He was here?”
“And three Inquisitors. All dead now. It was quite the party.”
“I’m not sorry I missed it. Are you certain we shouldn’t retrieve the holocron?”
“Well, neither of us are Sith, no matter how much you tried to pretend, so there is nothing we could do about it anyhow.”
Barriss folded her arms over her chest but did not otherwise address the accusation. Her still blue eyes were proof enough.
“Is there anything you do have?”
“Plenty of old writings I could half-decipher. No way to tell if they’ll be useful.” She heaved a frustrated sigh. “Why would Master Yoda tell us to come here?”
“You know my thoughts on Master Yoda.”
“I do indeed. But there must’ve been some reason…”
“Are we to wander here aimlessly forever then?”
“No. No, I just really don’t want to have to come back because I missed something.”
“I’m afraid that might be inevitable. What good would it do to stay now, without anything else to go on, when you can barely stand?”
Ahsoka hated it when Barriss was right. It was never a good sign.
She gathered up her meagre belongings and gave the temple one last sweeping glance. Her gaze landed on a long-dead Jedi, falling to dust. She wondered how long it would’ve taken for her to look that way.
“What will you do now?” Barriss asked, curious or perhaps only trying to keep Ahsoka’s attention from wandering. “With what you’ve found?”
“I don’t know. They think I’m dead. The Empire. The rebels.”
And Rex.
She briefly entertained the idea of getting a message to her old friend somehow, but it would mean she had to tell him about Anakin and – no. Ignorance would be kinder. If he knew he’d insist on helping her with whatever it was she was going to do.
Whatever was she going to do?
“Maul must’ve made it out. He’s too slippery not to have. If we can track him down, then…”
“We?”
“I.” She added, feeling caught out, off-balance. She’d been on her own long enough, there was no reason for the slip. “I’ll track him down. He was in this place a long time; he must’ve learned something.”
She and Barriss, they weren’t partners. Their paths crossed on occasion, and their interests sometimes intersected, but that was all. They had never let themselves be anything else.
No, Ahsoka worked alone. Was alone. She felt it more acutely than ever in this place, which friends and enemies alike would believe to be her tomb.
She felt cold.
“I never want to set foot in this place again,” she said. Wishful thinking, of course. In some ways, she knew, she might never leave. Not while her thoughts were plagued by the sight of Anakin’s golden, hateful eye.
Barriss was silent for a minute, just looking at her. Ahsoka wished she would say something. Eventually, she did:
“Let’s go. You could – you could stay with me for a while, as you recover.”
Barriss held out a careful hand and Ahsoka gripped it, too fast, too hard, but so grateful for the point of contact.
“Ahsoka…”
Overtaken by a sudden impulse, Ahsoka reeled her into an embrace, pressing their foreheads together for a moment, just a moment until she could deal with the horror of it all. Barriss allowed it.
She thought of Geonosis, suddenly. A lifetime ago, the two of them huddled together in the dark.
They’d been so ready to live and die by the Jedi Code, for the Order, for something bigger than themselves.
They were neither of them Jedi now, but they were, and that would have to be enough.
“I’m fine. I’ll live. I always do.”
“I never doubted it.” Barriss said, voice soft. She waited patiently for Ahsoka to release her, then tugged her forward so softly she barely felt it.
Her lightsaber burned white, lighting their way.
And Ahsoka let herself be led out of the darkness.