Chapter Text
Relief
This was the first thing Mace felt when he was flung out the window. Relief that the blinding pain of Palpatine’s lightning had finally ceased. He felt weightless, plummeting 5127 levels down towards Coruscant’s floor. The ringing in his ears was ceaseless. The only painkiller permitted to him were his damaged nerves, and though his body was battered and maimed, nothing caved his chest quite like the weight of failure. He had been so close to ending Palpatine; to ending this wretched war. His friends, Agen Saesee and Kit, had sacrificed their lives to get him close to the Chancellor, and Mace had been so, so close. Then, Skywalker had stepped in. The so-called “Chosen One” had swung his blade, and he had not swung it against the Sith. Mace’s wrist, where his dominant hand had once been, felt like it was on fire.
In a way, Mace thought, I did end the war… in the worst possible way.
Panic
This was the second thing that Mace felt when he was flung out the window. Palpatine had won. The Sith had won. Mace could, theoretically, die here, but his failure would not die with him. Tethered to nothing but rushing wind as he fell, Mace saw lines in the Force. Like scratches on glass, these lines of the future were finer than any he’d seen before. This moment had not yet fissured.
Mace thought of his fellow council members who were offworld; the younglings in the crèche; the Jedi and padawans still at the temple or on the battlefield. All of them were oblivious to the greater, terrible danger they were in. Mace had to warn them before it was too late. He had to live.
The point shattered.
Mace Windu searched for a way to break his fall. He was falling fast. Too fast. He couldn't find anything, he couldn’t-
There!
A cluster of loose wires attached to an electrical pole, some meters below him. Mace took a deep breath, calming his racing heart. He reached out with the Force…
The wires were mercifully inactive. Mace did not have to suffer another electrocution. Alas, nothing could prevent the burn of friction on his palm as he slid down the wires. Palpatine’s lightning had weakened him severely, and he only had his non-dominant hand. Unable to get a strong enough grip to stabilize himself, Mace fell into the traffic below.
The wires had not broken his fall, but they slowed it down considerably. So, when Mace landed in the back of a random civilian’s vehicle, he earned himself nothing more than a light bruising.
“What the-”
“Eyes on the road.” Mace told the startled driver.
“Can I help you?” The woman at the wheel asked him.
“As a matter of fact, you can. I need to get to the Jedi Temple as fast as possible.”
The woman eyed his brown robes and bald head.
“I’ll do my best.” She said. After all, it’s not every day that a random Jedi falls into your speeder “Buckle up.”
Mace hopped into the passenger seat just in time for the driver to drift away from the neat line of vehicles and zoom towards the temple. Several traffic laws were broken that day.
As the woman zipped around starships and speeders alike, Mace took a moment to collect his thoughts. His body ached from the severe amount of lighting Palpatine had directed at him. The stump of his wrist burnt like the fires of Mustafar, and his remaining hand was chafed and raw. His lightsaber was lost to the streets of Coruscant, but even if he still had it, he doubted that he would be able to wield it properly. Between the lighting and the fall, Mace had probably gathered himself a good collection of bruises and first to third-degree burns. The fight against Palpatine had left him exhausted, both mentally and physically, and now that he was safely in a vehicle, he was starting to feel the adrenaline leave his body. Mace was in very rough shape. He most likely wouldn’t be able to defend the temple in his current state, but he could at least warn them and help them prepare for what was to come-
It hit him.
It hit him like a tsunami in the force. It was like a barrier had been shattered: it’d been a long time since he had felt such clarity in the force.
Death.
Jedi were dying everywhere. Mace felt everything: the shock, the despair… the betrayal…
“..ir? Sir! Are you alright?” Concern was etched into the woman’s face.
“Keep going! We have to get to the Jedi temple! We have to get there now!” Mace heard the panic in his own voice, and thought he must seem demented; worrying a civilian when a Jedi should be doing the opposite. He couldn’t bring himself to care. All he could hear were the cries of his old crechemates, his friends, Jedi he’d only ever passed by in the halls or seen in the archives, Jedi whose names he’d never known, would never know, and they wouldn’t stop dying-
He had to reach the temple.
Through the haze of despair and death, and his own consciousness beginning to fail, Mace noticed a strikingly familiar ship. A clone transport!
“Get us close to that transport!” He directed. “The clones will help us.”
The woman did as he bade, and Mace’s shoulders slumped in relief. With so many Jedi dying offworld, he would need all the help he could get defending the temple. He caught the attention of one of the clones; a Captain, by the looks of his armour. Something felt wrong…
Suddenly, the clones were shooting at them.
“Kriff!” The woman swerved, blaster shots missing them by a hair’s breadth. “I thought you said they would help us!”
The force reeked with betrayal, and Mace now realized why.
“They’ve turned on us…” Mace murmured, death still ringing in his ears. Would it ever stop? Only when all of the Jedi were dead would it ever stop. The Sith had won. They had well and truly won-
“Huh?”
“The clones have turned on us.” He repeated, louder this time. The speeder jerked to-and fro, up and down, as the inexperienced woman frantically evaded the clones’ blaster fire.
“I don’t know how long I can do this for.” The woman cried.
The force bled with the murder of Mace’s people, oozing with darkness, yet still, he reached out. He strove to take down the entire clone transport. Knocking it off balance was the best he could do, and even that effort left his head spinning. Kriff. The transport swivelled wildly, and the clones inside grappled for control. Mace had inconvenienced their pursuers and put some distance between them, but it wouldn’t be difficult for the troopers to regain control.
“Do you have a weapon with you?” Mace asked. “If you do, I can fight them head on and use their ship to get to the temple.”
The woman shook her head.
“Not a chance, sir.” She gave the steering wheel a sharp whirl, veering the ship through what was likely a very unlawful shortcut. Sweat beaded at her brow, and her dilated eyes were glued to the road. Veins popped out of the skin on her hands from how tightly she was gripping the wheel. “No offense, but you’re not in any state to be fighting.”
The urgency of the situation had originally squashed any qualms about civilian involvement, but now that there was an active threat hunting Mace down…
“I won’t put a civilian in harm’s way.”
“I’ll get you to your temple.” The woman declared. “Just keep up the magic mumbo jumbo.”
A blaster shot grazed the speeder’s side. The clones were back, and utterly relentless. Mace gave the fiendish transport another shove with the force. It was, once again, weaker than he would have liked, but it still threw the clones off-course.
“Miss, I don’t think-”
“We’re five minutes away.” She said, taking another pearl-clutchingly sharp turn. “You Jedi have kept us safe during the war. Let me do this for you.”
Mace wanted to argue further, but could not formulate the words. He contemplated simply jumping out of the speeder and luring the clone away from the civilian woman, but she was driving too fast for him to do so safely. Mace realized that she would not let him out of the speeder until they were at the Jedi Temple.
“Four minutes away.” She said. Mace chucked a random sign at the clones using the force. They evaded it with ease, blaster fire unrelenting.
“Do you have a blaster?”
“I wish I did.”
Other vehicles honked at them. The drivers were probably cursing them, but Mace could hear nothing over the death in the Force and the throbbing of his head.
“Three minutes.”
The clones were getting dangerously close. The only thing keeping them from being shot down was the inexperienced woman’s unpredictable veering. Once the clones were close enough, Mace used the Force to yank the blasters out of some their hands. One landed in his hand, while the rest clattered down Coruscant's levels. The clones who lost their blasters kept firing using their ship’s cannons, and though it pained him to do so, Mace fired back.
“Two minutes” The woman yelled, seemingly more for herself than for Mace. By then, Mace had killed three clones and injured another. Familiar buildings zipped by. They were, indeed, close to the temple.
“One mi-”
An explosion knocked them out of the air. The speeder hurled towards a spacious plaza many levels down. Mace barely had time to grab the woman and leap out. The collision with the ground had Mace seeing black, and his stump flared up. Of course, he just had to land on his bad wrist!
Despite his nerves screaming at him, Mace was on his feet in an instant.
And then he was back on the ground.
And then he was on his feet again!
The woman had landed a few feet away, and was shakily lifting herself off the ground. She was dazed but thankfully unharmed. Pulling her by the wrist, Mace limped toward the plaza’s edge. If he could find a speeder… a ship… a kriffing pair of wings…something… anything to get this woman out of there…
“Get down!” Mace pushed the woman to the ground.
Guns ablazing, their pursuers emerged from behind the woman’s speeder, which was now nothing more than a flaming ball of rubble. Mace lifted a smoldering passenger door to shield them from the rain of blasterfire. A wave of his hand sent the rest of the wreckage flying towards the clones.
Those who weren’t crushed were slow to regain their senses. Before they knew it, Mace was firing a stolen blaster. The clone fired back, but the thing about Jedi, even injured ones, is that they are notoriously difficult to hit.
The Jedi Master somersaulted, flipped, and twisted midair, grappling clones out of their blasters and knocking them to the ground. Though his antics lacked their usual grace, they would make any circus performer green with envy. It wasn’t long before the last clone standing was the Captain.
Mace lunged at him with a clean punch to his helmeted head. The clone reeled backwards, and Mace was prompt in aiming the stolen blaster-
He felt her death before she had even hit the ground, betrayed by her own troops. At first, it did not feel real. Rather, it was more akin to a bad dream; an unpleasant thought.
Suddenly, he was back at the Jedi Temple, surrounded by people he knew. The toll of age and war was not yet etched onto their faces, and their shoulders didn’t slump under the weight of the Republic. The figure kneeling before him was bathed in violet light. The light, Mace realized, was coming from his saber. Vows were said, and with one swift, careful motion, a black beaded braid fell to the floor. His chest swelled with pride, and the newly knighted Depa Billaba smiled.
Then, it tore through him, and the Jedi halls faded away. His chest was crushed. His throat constricted. Depa was his apprentice, his greatest pride, and the closest he would ever come to having a daughter. Depa was dead.
Mace didn’t feel himself pull the trigger, nor did he realize that his aim was off. The clone cried out clutching his busted arm. His blaster hit the ground at the same time as Mace’s.
The world was spinning, and nausea clawed its way up his throat. Mace couldn't breathe. He didn’t feel himself fall, but the first thing he saw when he regained a semblance of sense was the grubby floor. The second thing he saw was the clone Captain shakily reaching towards his blaster. Mace knew that he could not react on time. He would die here.
The blaster was aimed to the dead center of Mace’s forehead, with precision characteristic of clone troopers, even injured ones.
However, though the clone was precise, the pain in his arm muddied his mind and dulled his senses. He noticed the frantic figure too late.
The woman, who had been, until that point, smart enough to steer clear from the battle, lunged for Mace’s discarded blaster. She aimed it at the clone Captain just as he registered her presence.
The triggers were pulled in unison.
Her death was instant in the Force. Mace barely found the strength to catch the woman before she hit the ground. The smoldering hole between her brow had meant to be Mace’s end, not hers. He stared at it, because what else could he do? A few feet away, the clone Captain was slow to expire, the blaster wound in his chest not nearly as clean or painless, for the woman who shot him had neither the training nor the experience of a soldier. She was an ordinary citizen. She was never meant to wield a blaster. She was never meant to fight. She probably had family who would wait for her; co-workers, who would believe that she had deserted them; friends, who would wonder why she had stopped reaching out. How could Mace have ever thought he could bring down Sidious, when he failed to protect a single civilian? How could he have ever called himself a Jedi, when he dragged a civilian into the zone of danger?
His life had come at the cost of hers.
And I never even learned her name…
…
He should have let himself fall.
Then, amidst the oozing dark side and endless death, the Force blared with warning: the Temple! Evil forces were closing in, and Mace had to reach the Jedi Temple before they did. He was swift but gentle when prying the blaster from the woman’s not-yet-cold fingers. He had to warn the Temple, and defend it. Nothing else mattered now.
When Mace Windu fled the scene, the blaster wound in the woman's forehead hadn’t yet ceased to smolder.