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Ahsoka wakes to Morai’s cooing.
The sound reaches her before the light does, soft and low near her right montral. It winds through the pressure behind her eyes and pulls her upward from a dream she can’t remember except for running.
Her body feels heavy.
Not restrained.
She checks before she’s fully awake, jerking one wrist and finding tape, an intravenous line, and a pulse monitor instead of binders. Her other hand lies beneath warm feathers.
Morai coos again and presses her head against Ahsoka’s palm.
Safe.
The reassurance comes through the Force as a wash of green light and protective fury.
Ahsoka opens her eyes.
The ceiling above her is white, segmented, and unfamiliar. Medical equipment hums on both sides of the cot. The room smells of bacta, disinfectant, and the particular industrial cleaner favored by the Coruscant Guard.
Not the Temple.
Her breath catches anyway.
A woman in red-and-white medical armor stands beside the cot, checking the intravenous bag. Blonde hair is twisted into a tight knot behind her head, and a small black medic’s sigil marks one cheek.
Ahsoka doesn’t know her.
The medic notices she’s awake.
“Easy, Commander.”
Commander.
Not Padawan.
Not prisoner.
Ahsoka tries to push herself upright.
Pain slices through her ribs, and the room immediately rolls to one side. Her montrals pick up too many sounds at once: the medical pump, ventilation, boots in the corridor, Rex’s heartbeat near the far wall.
Rex.
Ahsoka turns too quickly.
The room tips harder.
The medic presses one hand against her shoulder. “Don’t do that unless you’d like to meet the floor.”
“I’ve met it.”
“Then preserve the mystery.”
Morai spreads her wings at the medic.
The woman raises her free hand.
“I’m helping.”
Morai settles reluctantly.
Ahsoka finds Rex sitting beside the foot of the cot.
He’s still wearing his armor, though his helmet rests beneath his chair. His hair is flattened where he’s been dragging his hands through it, and shadows sit beneath his eyes.
He looks like he hasn’t slept.
Relief hits so hard that Ahsoka almost chokes on it.
“Rex.”
He’s on his feet immediately.
“I’m here.”
“How long?”
“Two days.”
The answer slips through her head without finding anywhere to stay.
Two days.
Her last clear memory is a warehouse roof exploding above her.
No, not exploding.
A stun bolt.
A flash of blue through the rain, followed by the sensation of the entire world punching her in the spine.
She remembers falling.
She remembers red armor reaching her before the pavement did.
Then nothing.
Ahsoka grips the blanket.
“Where am I?”
“Guard medical station,” Rex says. “Secure wing.”
The medic adjusts the flow on the intravenous line.
“You were severely dehydrated, running a fever, and carrying enough untreated injuries to keep three medics employed for most of the night.”
“I need to leave.”
“No,” the medic says.
Ahsoka looks at Rex.
His expression tightens.
“You’re safe here.”
“Where’s Anakin?”
Rex’s gaze flicks toward the other person in the room.
Ahsoka hadn’t registered him yet.
Marshal Commander Thorn sits in a chair near the closed door.
He wears his formal whites rather than armor, Guard-red piping cutting across the immaculate uniform. His cap rests on one knee, leaving the burn scar along his jaw visible. A datapad lies in his gloved hands.
The second-highest-ranking man in the Grand Army of the Republic has apparently spent part of the last two days watching her sleep.
Of all the people Ahsoka imagined standing on her side, a Guardsman hadn’t been one of them.
Even with Rex’s input.
Thorn rises.
“General Skywalker isn’t authorized to enter this wing.”
Ahsoka’s stomach drops.
“What did you do to him?”
“Nothing.”
Morai sends a dark pulse of disbelief.
Thorn rolls his eyes at the convor.
“Nothing permanent.”
Rex rubs one hand over his face.
“Skywalker attempted to force information out of Chief Fox.”
Ahsoka stares.
“How?”
Neither man answers immediately.
Her chest tightens.
“Rex.”
“He threw Fox through his office door and Force-choked him in the War Room.”
The words refuse to make sense.
Anakin had attacked Fox.
Fox, who was overseeing the investigation. Fox, whose officers had been chasing Ahsoka across Coruscant. Fox, whom Rex had told her to find if she couldn’t reach anyone else.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes,” Thorn says. “Boba Fett stunned General Skywalker before the damage became fatal.”
Ahsoka blinks.
There are several parts of that sentence she needs explained, but her head is beginning to pound.
The medic notices and adjusts something on the line.
Warmth travels into Ahsoka’s arm.
“No more sedatives,” she says quickly.
“Pain relief.”
“I need to think.”
“You’ll do that better if your brain isn’t trying to crawl out through your montrals.”
Ahsoka looks toward Rex.
He nods.
She lets the medic continue.
Thorn steps closer but stays outside grabbing distance.
“Commander Tano, before I provide information regarding the investigation, I’m required to read you your current status and protections.”
Ahsoka’s lekku curl tensely against the pillow.
“Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“Then why do I need rights?”
“Because the Republic has spent several days violating most of them.”
The answer is so blunt that she goes quiet.
Thorn activates his datapad.
“Ahsoka Tano, Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, you’re currently under protective military custody pending the investigation into the bombing of the Jedi Temple, the deaths at the Republic military complex, and subsequent attacks upon Guard personnel.”
He speaks formally, but he doesn’t speak to her like she’s already guilty.
“You have the right to medical care, legal representation, access to all nonclassified evidence entered against you, and the presence of a Guard liaison during any interview conducted by the Jedi Order, Senate authorities, or Republic military.”
Ahsoka looks at Rex.
He stands close enough now that she could reach him if she tried.
Thorn continues.
“You cannot contact anyone outside this facility without a Guard liaison. Nobody can contact you without the same. This includes Jedi, senators, military officers, civilians, and General Skywalker.”
“He’s my Master.”
Thorn’s expression doesn’t change.
“No. He isn’t.”
The medical wing seems to go silent.
Ahsoka hears the pump click beside her.
Once.
Twice.
“What?”
“The Jedi Council excommunicated you from the Temple while you were unconscious.”
Her fingers go cold beneath Morai’s feathers.
Rex moves closer.
Ahsoka looks at him, waiting for the correction.
None comes.
“They can’t,” she whispers.
“They did,” Thorn says. “They stripped your Padawan status and barred you from Jedi facilities pending a Republic tribunal.”
The words press down on her chest.
She should feel something enormous.
Grief. Rage. Betrayal.
Instead, there is only a hollow space where the Temple used to be.
Her home is gone, and she wasn’t even awake when they took it.
Morai’s anger pours through their bond like sunlight through a blade.
Not home.
Ahsoka closes her hand around the convor’s feathers.
Thorn waits until she looks at him again.
“The Council doesn’t control your GAR commission.”
That reaches her.
“What?”
“You haven’t resigned your military status, and the Senate hasn’t removed it. You remain Commander Tano.”
Despite all of it, Thorn gives the title its full weight.
Not former Commander.
Not accused terrorist.
Commander.
“All military tribunals pass through the Coruscant Guard,” he says. “We’re the military police of the GAR. The Jedi Council can expel you from the Order. It can’t order us to ignore evidence or surrender a commissioned officer without due process.”
Ahsoka stares at him.
“You believe me?”
“I believe the case against you has been tampered with.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” Thorn says. “It’s what I can prove.”
It should feel cold.
Instead, it’s the first honest answer anyone has given her in days.
Thorn moves the datapad where she can see it.
Her lightsabers appear on the display.
Both hilts.
Her heart lurches.
“Where are they?”
“We don’t know.”
Ahsoka pushes herself higher despite the vertigo.
The medic swears beneath her breath and catches the intravenous line before Ahsoka pulls it loose.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Your sabers were removed from the Guard evidence locker around the same time you escaped the prison complex.”
“I didn’t take them.”
“We know.”
The certainty in Thorn’s voice stops her.
He changes the image.
Security footage shows a corridor outside her cell. The recording is distorted, jumping between missing frames. A figure moves through the static, too blurred to identify.
Then one of Ahsoka’s hilts appears on the floor outside her cell.
Placed there.
Waiting.
Ahsoka remembers hearing the alarms. The explosions. Doors unlocking in the confusion.
She had thought Anakin was creating a distraction. But she never saw her saber in the chaos.
“I didn’t pick it up,” she says.
“We know that too.”
Thorn brings up another image.
A Guardsman lies dead in a service corridor. The burn through the trooper’s chest is unmistakable.
Ahsoka cannot breathe for a moment.
Someone used her crystal to kill him.
Not merely her weapon.
Her crystal.
The kyber that had sung to her on Ilum. The living heart she had carried since childhood.
Morai feels the panic and climbs fully onto her chest, cooing against her chin.
Ahsoka’s vision blurs.
“I didn’t know they were gone.”
Thorn studies her face.
“That was one of the details that bothered us.”
“The cameras?”
“Rigged. Not erased. Altered to create a specific timeline.”
“Someone wanted me to escape.”
“Yes.”
“And wanted everyone to think I killed the Guards.”
“Yes.”
Rex’s hand settles beside hers on the blanket.
Ahsoka grabs it.
His fingers close around hers immediately.
She had spent days believing the Guard wanted her dead. She had run from red armor, avoided patrols, and treated every order to surrender as another trap.
All the while, the Guard had been collecting the pieces someone else moved around the board.
Thorn scrolls to a laboratory report.
“We found nanobomb packaging in a warehouse connected to the attack. We also recovered biological material from one of your sabers. The one left behind.”
Ahsoka’s stomach twists.
“Mine?”
“No. Mirialan.”
The word hangs between them.
Ahsoka looks at Rex.
His face has gone hard.
Thorn watches her carefully.
“We also have witness descriptions of a green-skinned Force-sensitive woman who assaulted Asajj Ventress and took her equipment. The same woman appears to have had access to Temple security protocols.”
A face rises in Ahsoka’s mind.
Barriss sitting beside her after Geonosis.
Barriss helping her through the brain-worm infection.
Barriss listening when Ahsoka questioned the war, the Council, and everything they had become.
No.
Ahsoka shakes her head.
The movement sends the room spinning, but she barely notices.
Thorn lowers the datapad.
His voice remains level.
“Commander, do you know why Barriss Offee would hold a grudge against you?”