Chapter Text
Depa knew even before Grey aimed that his shot would be the one that she couldn’t deflect. She could feel the certainty in the Force, the acknowledgement that her time had come. But still, she stole one final moment for herself: the sight of Caleb, safe, turning back to look at her, reaching out for her in the Force. She closed her mind tightly against him, so he would not have to feel it.
Grey pulled the trigger.
The shot slammed into her exposed back. Pain seared through her, and Depa fell—
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—to her knees.
She threw up a hand to brace her fall. Her palm impacted with the ground, but she didn’t encounter the dirt and brittle grass of their campground. Instead, she only felt cold stone, smooth against her fingers. She sucked in a breath, but there was no flare of pain from the wound to her back; no smoke from the campfire, no scent of charred flesh—from her wounds or the clones she had killed with her lightsaber.
Her head jerked up, and she found herself—somehow, inexplicably—in the Jedi High Council chamber.
What?
She hadn’t been here in person in nearly a year, not since she officially took Caleb as her padawan and stepped down from her council seat. The room was utterly unchanged: quiet, calm, the light of the setting sun gilding the duracrete with gold. She could see speeders in the far distance through the panoramic window, and closer, a Jedi starfighter taking off and veering toward atmo. It was only the Force that was wrong: not muddled with the Dark as it had become in the past months, but confused and opaque all the same. She strained against the feeling of it, the way it dulled her other senses like linen wrapped over her eyes—pushed against it again, and again.
After a long moment, she gave up. No matter what she tried, she could not break through the chaotic mess of feelings to find clarity.
Someone groaned and she jerked again, pulling herself away from the sound and reaching for her saber in the same motion. She didn’t know how she had come here, or why, but she would not give in without a fight.
When reason found her again, she was standing in the center of the council chamber, lightsaber ignited and held before her—
With Mace at the other end of it, sprawled on the floor with a forearm flung up in front of his face, as if still waiting for the blow to fall.
No.
Hands shaking, Depa disengaged the saber and clipped it back to her belt, then knelt by Mace’s side. None of this made any sense—how she could’ve possibly survived Grey’s shot, how she had ended up here on Coruscant without any memory of the journey—but this, at least, was familiar. Mace had been her touchstone for nearly as long as she had been alive, and that hadn’t changed just because she was sort-of-maybe-dead.
“Master?” she asked. Something in her felt as young and scared as she had on their first mission together. Mace lowered his hand, eyes cracking open to squint at her. “What just happened?”
Mace sighed, a sound that slid into a groan at the end, and pushed himself upright. Depa reached out a hand to steady him, and found that they were both trembling.
He didn’t look at her again, left hand holding his right elbow so tightly she didn’t know how it couldn’t hurt. Then he said, “I don’t know, Depa. I can’t—” another sigh. “If this is some trick of Sidious’s...”
Sidious?
When it became clear that he wouldn’t say more, Depa reached out and grabbed hold of his free hand, gripping it tightly. “The Sith Lord? You’ve found him?”
Mace looked up from their clasped hands, eyes blazing.
“Sidious is Chancellor Palpatine,” he said, with absolute conviction. “And he has some plan to destroy the Jedi and take over the Republic.” His grip on her hand tightened to the point of pain, but she didn’t flinch. “Depa—”
Another groan came from behind her and Depa did flinch, still remembering that moment of clarity the Force had granted her, the absolute certainty that her death would come from behind, delivered by a man she trusted. Mace’s hand shot up as she lurched into him, trying desperately to escape whatever was behind them. He cupped the back of her head, fingers catching and pulling on her braids, and allowed her to rest her forehead against his. He held her there without speaking a word, until the shuddering stopped.
When she felt she had better control of herself, Depa checked over her shoulder and saw Saesee Tiin there, huddled just inside the doorway as if he had simply collapsed while entering the room.
Her tunnel vision widened, and Depa realized that all of the council was present, except—it was all wrong. Even Piell was here, though he had died around the same time she had taken on Caleb, and Eeth Koth, who had left the Order several months earlier. And there was Yarael Poof, who had died years ago, so many years before even the first battle of Geonosis, his head swaying as he tried to orient himself.
Mace’s hand was still tangled in her hair, and when she turned to survey the room, strands were yanked out of her scalp making her eyes water. Mace pulled his hand away a heartbeat later, sensing that her need for comfort had subsided.
The only person who seemed unaffected, when her eyes finally landed on him, was Yoda. He was seated in his chair, hands braced on the gimer stick laid across his lap, and was watching them all with a sad droop to his ears.
“Master Yoda?” Depa asked. He raised his gaze to meet hers. “Do you understand what just happened?”
His ears drooped further.
“Traveled we have, I fear, through time itself,” he said. The Force rang with the truth of his words, and Depa swallowed down the instinct to shy away from it. “Returned, we have, to before the Liberation of Naboo.”
The Liberation of Naboo? But that was thirteen years ago. Caleb—
Her heart sank. Her padawan hadn’t even been brought to the Jedi yet. She had grown so used to having his bright, inquisitive eyes turned up to stare at her, and now she was without him.
“Impossible!” That was Ki-Adi-Mundi, or she’d eat her tabards. So many of them had died, and here were now, alive, and still he rebelled against it. The man never could believe what was right in front of his nose. “How do you know it was not simply a vision? There is no precedent—”
“Search your feelings, Master Mundi,” Plo Koon said. He was seated upright, but only by the most generous definition of upright. There was a grief-stricken curl to his spine that Depa had never seen on the old master before. “I think you will find that, however implausible, Master Yoda speaks the truth.”
Adi Gallia was also upright, but only by virtue of the iron grip she had on the back of her chair. She said, “I’m not prone to visions. But the last thing I remember is the mission to Florrum—the Zabrak who attacked me—”
She stopped, and visibly took a moment to collect herself.
“I was on Kaller,” Depa offered, drawing the attention from her friend. “Caleb and I were meditating, and I felt…”
Death. So much death, as, across the galaxy, the men they had fought, bled, and died with for years turned against them. How could it have happened?
“Palpatine is the Sith lord we seek,” Mace interjected. Under the disbelieving eyes of the rest of the council, he levered himself upright and offered his hand to Depa, which she took. She smothered a wince at the pop in her knee.
“Emperor Palpatine, he styled himself,” Yoda said, “once destroyed, the Jedi were. Ordered it, he did. Survived, I did. Survived, many others did not.”
“Anakin Skywalker did.”
The words were quiet, but all eyes in the room flew to the speaker.
Eeth Koth sat in his chair, shoulders hunched in on themselves. There was something dangerous about him, despite his vulnerable posture; something that curled, dark and sickly, around him in the Force. Depa opened herself up to the feeling, trying to understand, and recoiled from the hatred-anger-fear-love-pain-horror- NO! she encountered.
“He survived, only to bring death to those who escaped the initial purge.” Eeth’s eyes were red rimmed, and he was still leaking ugly emotions into the Force. “He stole my family—”
“Attached, you are,” Yaddle said. Her voice was soft, sad, but she cut through his anger easily. “Abandoned our teachings, you have.”
Eeth scoffed, but there was no energy behind it now. “As though you have not done the same, Master Yaddle. You distanced yourself from this council long before I was removed.”
“A Jedi, I still am,” she said firmly. “A Jedi, you are not, I think.”
He bristled. “If Master Yoda is correct, then we have an opportunity to stop him from betraying us. This only proves that we should’ve never accepted him into the Order in the first place—”
“That’s what I’ve been saying—!”
“What makes you think that—”
“He’s a child!”
“The Dark side—”
“Palpatine was to blame—”
Yoda held up one clawed hand, and the councilors fell silent, eyeing one another warily.
“Meditate on this, we must. Rush to a decision, we cannot.”
“I agree.” Mace stepped away from her, moving back toward his chair. Depa fought down the instantaneous urge to follow him like a youngling clinging to her creche master's robes, and instead retreated to her own seat. The rest of the council followed suit, returning themselves to some semblance of dignity. Mace continued, “Considering what we have all experienced, it would be foolish to jump the blaster before we understand more.”
The Force relaxed minutely as the Jedi accepted his words. Several started to rise from their chairs, but were halted by Plo’s voice. He had finally straightened from his slump and was regarding the room, inscrutable through his protective goggles.
“I believe it is best to keep this information contained within this room for the time being.” His head tilted as he glanced around. “We do not wish to create any undue panic.”
“But how are we certain that we are the only ones to experience this vision?” Ki-Adi asked, the word vision sounding as though it left a bad taste in his mouth. He always was too focused on the logical to accept the extraordinary.
“We don’t,” Even Piell said, voice as gentle as a hammer. He ignored the glare that Ki-Adi sent his way, his eye fixed on the great doors of the council chamber. “But unless we are to become paralyzed with indecision as we wait for someone else to appear with the information we are missing, we must operate under the assumption that we are the only ones.”
Depa glanced around; caught Adi’s gaze as she did the same. Even was right, and anyone attuned to the Force knew it.
Without another word, she stood from her chair and sat, legs crossed beneath her, hands resting on her thighs. It wasn’t particularly comfortable without a mat beneath her, but she had certainly dealt with worse.
Depa closed her eyes as, around her, the others followed suit. She heard the rustling of robes, the soft exhales some made as they sat. Someone began murmuring under their breath; she extended her awareness slightly, and found that it was Yaddle, speaking softly to Yarael Poof. In all of the excitement, she had almost forgotten that, if he had knowledge of events only up to the point of his death, there would be much of what they discussed that he did not understand.
The distinct tap of Yoda’s gimer stick never came, but she let that thought flow through her and then away as soon as it arrose.
It had been many years since she’d meditated in such a large group; her initiate days were the last she could remember of doing anything like this. It was, in a way, harder, because she had to release her own emotions and resist the distraction of the others’ efforts. In the creche, group meditation was a tool masters used to teach patience and cooperation. By the time an initiate was chosen as a padawan, they had usually moved beyond the need for such practices.
But still, there was something soothing about the feeling of each Jedi around her calming themselves as they slipped into their meditations.
She sank into the Force, allowing its vast expanse to wash over her. She knew that everyone visualized the Force in different ways; Mace preferred to imagine a galaxy, where he was simply one star among trillions, and Yoda’s had something to do with the intricately interconnected ecosystem of a swamp. Caleb, she remembered with a pang that the Force quickly soothed, had not yet had time to perfect his own visualization technique.
But for Depa, the Force had always been an ocean, in which she could be an island rooted to one spot, or a boat set adrift, or a single woman diving beneath the waves. She sank into its currents, letting it flow through her as it willed.
Immediately, grief sunk its sharp claws into her. She fought against it blindly, not wanting to face what it meant, but the Force held her, gently, as a creche master might hold a youngling fighting against something that was in fact good for them, and she surrendered to it.
Caleb.
Depa had not expected losing him to hurt as much as it did, but the pain had torn her open and left her bared to the galaxy. She saw him again, standing on that ridge and watching her die. She hoped he had run, that, wherever he was—if her Caleb even existed, anymore—he was safe. There was nothing she could do now but move forward and hope that things would be better for everyone.
The Force did not speak to her as it did to others, but she felt its warmth and approval as her grief subsided into something recognizable, manageable. It was not gone, but it would not overwhelm her, and she could return to it when the time was right. Depa set it aside and moved beyond it.
Unclouded by her pain, the Force settled around her and allowed her to better consider the matter at hand.
There was much she did not understand; even now, after she had died and caught a glimpse of the moments before some of the others’ deaths, she knew she saw only the smallest corner of the big picture. But the longer she drifted, the more certain she became: no matter what else occurred, Anakin Skywalker was the linchpin. Yes, dealing with the Sith and the Separatists were critically important to the continued safety of the galaxy, but the fate of the Jedi Order had always laid at Anakin Skywalker’s feet, and it still did.
Eeth was right, that Anakin had (would?) do terrible things. But…
Before any of that, they, the Jedi, had wronged him. And in the process, they had wronged the entire Order. They had mistreated a child because he was different, had not sought to understand him or the foundation upon which he stood, and it had spelled disaster. If anything was to change, she knew, it had to center on Skywalker. Sidious, Dooku, Grievous, Ventress—they could all be dealt with when the time came. But Anakin Skywalker would take patience, and understanding, and all the things they had failed to provide him the first time.
Depa meditated, and understood what needed to be done.
It soon became apparent that not everyone agreed with her.
Depa gritted her teeth as Ki-Adi-Mundi and Saesee Tiin argued a point around in circles, uncaring that it was the same point that Even Piell had only just abandoned. Contingency plans for Skywalker’s eventual, inevitable Fall to the Dark; ideas for what they could do if his Fall took this path, or that one… Things that were not certainties, things that would only become certainties if the council insisted on treating him like a war criminal at nine years old.
Finally, she could take no more.
“We are focusing on the wrong thing,” she snapped. Saesee subsided, but Ki-Adi slid his glare over to rest on her instead. “Whatever he did—or will do, that doesn’t change the fact that he is a child who has done none of those things. We were ill-equipped to support him in the ways he, as a newly freed slave, needed. Yes, he Fell, and that was a choice, but we also had a role to play in this, and the Force has provided us with an opportunity to learn from our mistakes.
“But,” she said, forestalling the eruption she sensed building in several masters. “That is also beside the point. Anakin is a child, and children can be manipulated or guided, depending on how they are treated. Palpatine is about to manipulate his way into the highest office in the known galaxy.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop as realization crept over them.
“Before we attempt to address the issue of Palpatine, what would you suggest we do with the boy?”
Depa shifted to look her old master in the eye. He was relaxed, fingers steepled in front of his face as he leaned back in his chair.
She wasn’t often reminded that she was the youngest member of the council by a wide margin, but now, under the expectant stares of eleven beings with significantly more experience and wisdom than herself, she felt that margin.
All was as the Force willed it. She held that firmly in her mind, and took a deep breath.
“I believe that we made a mistake by allowing Obi-Wan Kenobi to take Anakin as a padawan immediately.” She tried to recall the way events had unspooled before her during her meditation. It had seemed much simpler with the Force guiding her thoughts. “Anakin is different, yes, but he should have been allowed time to learn among his peers as an initiate. He would have been given an opportunity to forge bonds with his fellow Jedi. Instead, we isolated him from the beginning, and made it worse by calling him the Chosen One.”
Ki-Adi-Mundi frowned at her. “Do you not think that his peers would ostracize him for being so far behind in his lessons?”
“If you truly believe that to be a concern,” Depa told him, meeting his eyes levelly, “then we have already failed as Jedi.”
Ki-Adi recoiled, and didn’t respond.
Depa looked back to Mace, with a brief glance spared for Yoda beside him. Yoda inclined his head in subtle encouragement.
“Anakin should be allowed to be an initiate until he feels ready to choose a master.” Another breath. If what she had already said wasn’t considered heresy, this certainly would be. Well, at least she could continue to live up to her reputation of being too glib for a Jedi master. “And whoever he chooses will likely be required to utilize… unorthodox methods of training.”
Uproar.
“Unheard of—”
“Never should have considered—”
“There is precedent—”
“The Code is very clear—”
Depa kept her chin raised under the onslaught, weathering the accusations and exclamations of support alike.
“Enough.” Mace’s voice cut across the din, and Eeth and Yarael fell quiet mid word. “The Force showed this to you?”
“Yes, Master.” Breath. “We took a child newly freed from slavery, and asked him to call us Master.”
Silence.
Then, Yoda, with a twinkle in his eye: “Hmm, much to meditate on, given us, you have, Master Billaba. A good many points, you have made. But now, a Sith Lord, stop we must, from taking over the Senate, yes?”
Right.
Because it could not reasonably be delayed and the vote, as Plo recalled thoughtfully, was not set to take place until the following day anyway, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi were called before the Jedi High Council. After the mission debrief, the council allowed—some of them grudgingly—for Jinn to present the boy.
After being exposed to her fellow councilors who had died some time ago, and now Qui-Gon Jinn, who was meant to die within a week, it was not so much of a shock to come face to face with Anakin Skywalker.
There was still some bickering after he was tested, because that could not be avoided with a group as large and diverse in opinions as their own, but eventually it was decided that the boy would stay in the initiate dorms until there was time enough to discuss his path in earnest. Depa flashed a small smile at Anakin when he snuck a glance at her, and was gratified to receive an impish grin in return that reminded her both of the Knight that Anakin might someday grow to become, and of her own padawan.
Qui-Gon, full of far more self-righteousness than she remembered him being, bristled when they told him, quite firmly, that he would not be taking the boy as his apprentice right that very instant. He bristled even further when Mace informed him that, should the queen of Naboo wish to return to her planet, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan would accompany her. And several council members, Mace and Plo included, would accompany them.
Anakin himself looked, well. Confused and tired and cold, as she would expect of any young child taken from his world. She tried—and failed—not to imagine her Caleb after she died, alone on an unfamiliar planet, with the men he had called his friends hunting him down. What would happen to him now? Had his future been overwritten by their return to the past? Or was he still out there, alone and afraid, and her path had diverged from his forever? Even if they were someday reunited, it would never be exactly the same, and it pained her greatly despite her earlier meditation.
Faced with her sudden and inexplicable grief-fueled impatience, Qui-Gon submitted to their judgement.
And after the council had dismissed the three, tasking Obi-Wan with escorting Anakin to the dorms, they soon dispersed to ready themselves for the Senate session.
If all went well, by this time tomorrow they would be one step closer to derailing the Sith’s plans. Something told Depa that it wouldn’t be that easy, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t try, and keep trying until they had succeeded, or were dead—again.
In the end, it was all they could do.