Chapter Text
“Please, can’t we get just one competent government?” a man sighed as he received his fifth funding request back, unopened.
There was nothing special about this man. His name was Irdo Gyrk, originally hailing from Chandrila before his need to “see the galaxy” sent him rushing off to the nearest spaceport, and then his need to eat sent him into the arms of the first steady job he could find. In all, Irdo Gyrk was a plain, unassuming, and altogether unimportant man, who worked as a minor assistant to some equally unimportant bureaucrat.
This man was just like any other man, this day just like any other day, and his words just like any other low-level government employee frustrated with the slow-turning cogs of bureaucracy. The difference, of course, is that this time, someone was listening.
That someone was the Force, and it was an asshole.
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Ahsoka Tano was falling.
As far as she could tell, she was dead. Ahsoka Tano was dead, and she was falling in a darkness so complete it felt as if she was the only thing in existence.
She frowned. This isn’t how she remembered the Force being last time she joined it. She remembered Mortis, even after all these years. Her memories were vague, confusing and more like a dream than anything else, but, unlike what she told Anakin and Master Obi-Wan, she knew what it felt like to die. It had been distinctly more peaceful than this.
Still at Malachor, then. Hmm… she had been sure she was dead. Being cut in half with a lightsaber didn’t seem good for one’s health. Was she falling from the temple? She must have succeeded in bringing it down. Good. It was tacky.
(There was a small voice in the back of her mind that whispered of golden eyes, of a damaged respirator and a voice she knew better than her own, even after all these years, that she promptly ignored. Not now. Later.)
The ground was getting closer. Force knows how she could tell, in this place of nothing, but she could all the same.
Death wouldn’t be so bad. She had been prepared to die at fourteen as a Jedi padawan thrust into a warzone, and again at seventeen not as a Jedi, but as a General. She had been prepared to die at nineteen when she joined the Rebellion. At thirty-two, she was no less ready. She did not, necessarily, want to die. She still had responsibilities. Still had people she couldn’t leave behind, as few as that number was these days. She supposed she didn’t really have much of a choice. She just hoped Rex would forgive her, and maybe take down some Imps in her name. That would be nice.
The ground rose to meet her faster than she expected, and she braced for pain that never came.
Ahsoka Tano woke up. That, itself, should have been a sign. As Ahsoka understood it, once one joined the Force, you no longer experienced such things. There was a face above hers, one that looked vaguely familiar, but Ahsoka couldn’t place where, exactly, she’d seen it before.
“Youngling, are you alright?” the face asked.
Ahsoka stared. Youngling? It had been years since someone had called her that. A decade, at least.
“Youngling?”
Master Hen’nona, her mind supplied. She was… she was a crèchemaster, wasn’t she? Er— had been, that is. A bothan, kind and more lax than most when it came to staying up past lights out. Why was she here?
A hand brushed against her forehead, and Ahsoka jerked away at the touch. What— why was she able to touch her? That wasn’t— that wasn’t supposed to happen. Anakin had— she shut off that train of thought. The fall. The fall, if nothing else, had killed her. She was supposed to be one with the Force now, wasn’t she?
She vaguely registered Master Hen’nona asking her something. She sounded worried. Ahsoka should reassure her, tell her everything was fine. But it wasn’t, was it? Because Master Hen’nona shouldn’t be here, and she shouldn’t be able to touch her.
Ahsoka reached out to the Force for some sort of answer, and froze. There were so many lights surrounding her, each one burning bright and unique and alive. No. No. That wasn’t possible. She was dead. No, now she was finally allowed to rest. To put down her ‘sabers, let the next person take up the fight. She had done it for countless others, had stepped up among the ashes of a pyre and continued on, shoving the grief down until she had enough was time to acknowledge it, to grieve for those lost to her.
There had never been enough time.
But the Force was very clear, and the Force hadn’t felt this light since… since she was twelve years old and war had been a distant thing, just a concept they were taught in class. And then there hadn’t been nearly any light left under the Empire, when the Jedi’s blood had long dried on the walls of the Temple.
The Temple. She knew its signature like she knew her own. It was a part of her, even if it had ceased being her home long before it was destroyed. That same signature curled around her now, as if trying to offer comfort.
She was in the Temple. She finally tore her gaze from the near-frantic face above her and cast her gaze around. There was the soft tickle of grass against her back, grounding in a way. The sun shone bright above— but, no, that wasn’t real sunshine, just a very clever imitation.
She was in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.
Ahsoka Tano was in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, with crèchemaster Hen’nona standing over her, and she was not dead.
No. No. Nonononono. It was supposed to be over. She was— had she not earned the right to peace? Hadn’t she done enough? Had she not fought hard enough, lost enough people? There was an aching grief in her chest that she wasn't entirely sure was her own.
Ahsoka sat up slowly and dared to look at her hands. Hands that were too small, that had never wielded a lightsaber, that had never known what it felt like to take a life. Had never clawed their way back to life with nothing except determination and the wild, desperate fear of death to drive her. Even if she had been prepared to die, there was always some part of her that fought desperately to live. Funny, that death would choose now to abandon her, when she no longer fought it.
She touched a hand to her face, just to see if she could, really, and was startled to feel the moisture there. She was crying. Not really surprising, all things considered. She vaguely registered a person coming to crouch beside her, but couldn't find it in herself to care much.
“Little ‘Soka?” a very familiar voice asked.
No, not him. Not him, please, Ahsoka begged. There was a limit to how much she could take at once, and he was it.
If anyone was listening, they didn’t care, and so Ahsoka forced herself to turn her head and meet Plo Koon’s worried gaze.
“Master Plo,” Ahsoka forced out from a throat that felt like sandpaper.
Her chest ached, as if someone had run her through and left her to bleed. Which, she supposed, they had. She couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her throat, the hysterical edge apparent even to her own ears, which were filled with a strange rushing noise.
“Little one, what’s wrong?” Master Plo asked gently, two clawed hands coming to rest gently on her shoulders.
What wasn’t? She wanted to answer him, to tell him everything that had happened, about the ache in her chest and the pounding in her head. The rushing in her ears grew louder. Someone was shaking her, saying her name with an urgency that she ached to soothe, but the darkness keeping over her vision had other plans.
Ahsoka Tano fell back into the welcoming folds of unconsciousness.
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Bail Organa was not Force-sensitive. As a boy, he had briefly fantasized about becoming a Jedi when he was older, but the reality of his position as the future head of the House of Organa and a midichlorian count of 2,839 made it little more than that: a brief fantasy.
However, one did not need to be Force-sensitive to recognize the signs of—as one clone trooper had once so eloquently put it—”Jedi Force-bullshit”.
And waking up in the middle of a Senate session that was decidedly not Imperial, with Senator Tikkes in the middle of a proposal about trade route regulations, was decidedly a large sign.
Senator Tikkes hadn’t been a part of the Republic since just before the Clone Wars. (Former) Senator of the Mon Calamari star system, a bit of an asshole when drunk, more than a little corrupt, and—most importantly—dead. Killed by Skywalker along with the rest of the Separatist Council on Mustafar. But here he was, alive and well, talking about trade routes. Tikkes had rarely talked about anything else, so it was not much of a surprise that, even dead, he was determined to squeeze out the most money as possible from the venture.
Bail hadn’t even been on Coruscant. He’d been on Alderaan, desperately trying to contact any allies that could lend assistance to—
Oh, Force.
Leia. Leia was captured, in more danger than she could possibly know, and he couldn’t do anything. Not without compromising the Rebellion. Duty came first, even if it broke his heart. (The part of him that was not the Viceroy of Alderaan nor the leader of the Rebellion, but Bail Organa, the man who had raised Leia through her teenage rebellion phase that was less a phase and more a state of being, quietly wondered if it was really Leia he should worry about the safety of.)
But he wasn’t on Alderaan. He was on Coruscant. Senator Tikkes was speaking. And, now that he looked closer, he could see several faces that either died during the Clone Wars on one side or another, or disappeared under the Empire. Faces that shouldn’t be here.
But Bail was nothing if not a practical man, so shoved everything, all thirty-plus years that screamed notrightnotrightnotright, into a small box and imagined drop-kicking it out of an airlock.
He tried his best to focus on what was being debated, but that was easier said than done, so he mostly just tried to keep his face neutral and look as if he was paying attention. As a politician, he was practically an expert at it.
He couldn’t tell if it was years or mere seconds before the Senate session was called to an end, and he was able to flee back to his office with a few vague excuses to his colleagues.
Once there, he tried to ignore all the little things that had changed—that chair had been ruined nearly two decades ago by one over-eager Senator who had forgotten to mind their claws, the vase Breha’s mother had given him one Life Day was missing, he had replaced that bookshelf once he realized just how horrendous the color was—and did what he always did when he didn’t know what to do: he commed Breha.
He couldn’t help but pace as the dial tone rang. She might be in the middle of something. It appeared to be in the middle of the day, and the Queen was in high demand. Hell, he had no idea what time it was on Alderaan right now—a sign of just how shaken he was.
But the comm connected, and Bail almost felt his legs give out as Breha’s face came into view.
“Breha,” he breathed, stepping closer, eyes fixed on his wife’s face. “This is going to sound mad—”
“We were on Alderaan,” she interrupted, and Bail felt his eyes widen. “How secure is this comm?”
Bail opened his mouth to assure her that it was his personal comm, not the Senate-issued, before he suddenly recalled just who, exactly, was in this very building. Even as a mere Senator, Palpatine must have had ears everywhere. Intercepting a personal comm, even one as encrypted as the Viceroy of Alderaan’s, would be child’s play.
He sighed. “Not secure enough.”
Breha nodded, expecting no different. “Comm me again in an hour. Use code E.”
Bail felt the corner of his mouth twitch. It was a code from the Clone Wars, a standard one, developed for communications between Alderaanian ships involved in the War and Queen Breha herself. Obi-Wan had been there when he’d finalized it and, a bit drunk, the man had insisted on naming it after his commander.
“It’s the perfect retribution,” he had claimed, still somehow standing upright despite the sixth glass of wine in his hand. Bail was only on his second. Damn Jedi metabolisms. “He’d hate it, but there’s absolutely no reason he should ever discover it. Thus, I get to continue living, and have my petty revenge, all at once.”
Bail never did discover what, exactly, the good Commander Cody had done to earn Obi-Wan’s ire, but he suspected it had to do with sedative laced tea. He counted his lucky stars that Obi-Wan never discovered who gave the Commander the idea in the first place.
“Breha,” Bail said, desperate to know he wasn’t alone, that this was real, that she was here. But what to say? There were plenty of things to ask, but only one really mattered. “Leia. Do you—”
“A spitfire of a young woman. Takes after her mother,” Breha said with a smile. “Both of them.”
Something in his chest eased. Yes, the two of them would figure it out. They would adapt. It was what they did.
“Thank you, my dear.”
Breha’s eyes shone with amusement. “That hardly required thanking.”
Bail resisted the urge to roll his eyes, because Viceroys and Senators didn’t do such things, and Breha would undoubtedly use it to tease him. “I know.”
“One hour. Code E,” Breha reminded him sternly.
He nodded, and watched the image of his wife flicker out.
“I’m too old for this,” Bail lamented, sitting down in the nearest chair and resting his face in his palms.
The empty room did not offer any response.