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Barriss walks out of the infirmary and into an argument. It looks one-sided at first, but that’s only because one of the participants is transparent.
She sighs and goes around them. Dooku and Qui-Gon are at it again, this time with Mace as a referee. Though, judging from the tired and exasperated look on his face, Mace is agreeing with Dooku.
“I’m an asshole? You’re like the king of assholes, old man!”
“At least I never forgot to feed you, you ungrateful child,” Dooku is saying with a slight shrill edge to his measured voice.
“When did I ever –” Qui-Gon starts, but Mace cuts him off.
“A lot of the time, Qui. I’m not saying you ever hurt him on purpose, but you know very well that you were a wreck for years after Xanatos and even before that you had the attention span of a housefly. And you’re a walking mass of contradictions, which was hard for him to figure out. Your memories of your time with Obi-Wan as your padawan are very different than his, and he’s not in a good place right now as it is, and I for one don’t want to have the wrath of our men on me if we let you in to talk to him!”
“Are you scared of your own troops, Mace?” Qui-Gon says tauntingly.
“Of course I am,” he snaps. “The only difference between me and them is they’re a lot stronger, a lot faster, and there’s a lot more of them than there are of me. My life would be a living hell if I upset Obi-Wan any more than he is right now.” He shudders. “I’m just lucky that Neyo is still out holding the front line or I’d have my commander and my marshal commander on me all the time. Now I just have to put up with Ponds mothering me.”
Barriss smothers a laugh and walks quickly away from the Qui-Gon versus Dooku argument of the day. So far she’s overheard about fifteen of them and is wondering how either of them survived working together as master and padawan.
“There’s a reason we’re close friends despite our age difference, and it started with me finding your padawan wandering around in the middle of the night because you wouldn’t listen to him when he had problems!” Mace is yelling as she rounds a corner. “I still kriffing carry ration bars in my pockets for him because half the time you kept him too busy for meals and now he thinks that’s how he should be!”
Barriss winces. She knows that Luminara had her own share of difficulties growing up, but at least she had figured herself out before taking her on and was a kind parent to her.
She makes sure to give both of her mothers a hug when she enters the Council chamber to find her good robes and they are both there already. Gree smiles and hugs her back, looking quite nice with the clips in her hair twisting it up into an approximation of the braid it could have when it gets longer. Luminara looks more worried, probably sensing her empathy for Obi-Wan, but lets her go without asking as Barriss gently rebuffs the mental poke and goes to get dressed.
They’re due at the Senate in an hour, along with Yoda and Plo.
It’s been about a month since they defeated Darth Sidious and left the Republic in chaos. Interim Chancellor Chuchi has done her best, but the remnants of Palpatine’s power base have been troublesome and they defeated her proposition to reorganize the Republic with Padmé at its head by a very slim margin only a few days before, disappointing them all. Now they are calling the Jedi in to question them about the Sith.
Or what they thought of as Jedi, anyway.
It’s also Chuchi’s last day as Interim Chancellor.
Barriss sighs. Yoda had been the only one directly summoned, but they had decided to have two more Council members accompany him and they had asked her to go as well. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she’s determined not to let Luminara and the rest of her family down.
Gree, Wolffe, Fox, and Thire are also coming with them. She passed Thire in the hall, his armor polished and his blasters almost aggressively prominent. The short-bladed orange lightsaber he carried now like the rest of his brothers was also on his belt.
They haven’t been out of the Temple, but the clones have, and they’ve been paying more attention to the news than anyone except Padmé and her handmaidens. They’re worried; she can feel it.
~
She stands straight-backed in the Jedi pod in the Senate, arms loose by her side. Yoda is at the front, with Luminara and Fox at either side. Plo stands just behind and slightly to the side of Fox, as the curved side allows, and the other three vod’e are standing in formation in the space left. Barriss has taken up her position by the entrance to the pod.
The way they have arranged themselves is drawing whispers and stares from the senator, for some reason. It’s the most logical arrangement; Yoda was the one summoned and the former Head of the Order, Luminara is well-known as a negotiator, though not to the extent that Obi-Wan is, and Fox is the most politically-minded of all the vod’e on Coruscant. Which is to say, he’s almost as scary as the Chancellor was for deviousness.
Barriss herself is not bad at negotiations thanks to her Master’s training, but she prefers the cold logic of field command or missions. So she will stand lookout and guard against any surprises. There shouldn’t be any immediate danger, but the former Chancellor had turned out to be a Sith Lord.
They all wait as silent observers until the session is called to order and Interim Chancellor Chuchi opens the floor. The first matter they address is voting on a bill.
Barriss’ hands tighten slightly around the folds of her robes at her side as she feels the tension rise as the senators vote, and then the despair coming off of Chuchi when it passes. They don’t discuss the contents of the bill, which seems strange to her.
Perhaps they had already done so at a previous session. But why would the voting have been delayed like this?
Then a senator she only knows vaguely as one of Palpatine’s supporters rises and addresses them.
“Per the contents of the bill just passed, the Jedi Order has one rotation to surrender in your entirely to the Coruscant Guard and turn over all immovable property, or you will be taken into custody and charged with treason against the Republic.”
Barriss looks over at Chuchi, who is holding a hand over her eyes.
“Excuse me?” Luminara says frostily as Yoda is merely looking thoughtful.
“We have decided that you acted without proper authorization when you attacked former Chancellor Palpatine and that the Jedi can no longer be trusted to act in the best interests of the Republic.”
Barriss looks at the clones. They flinch a little when they hear the word ‘Jedi’, but it’s nothing like the seizures they’d had at first.
“And we are to surrender to who, exactly?”
“The Coruscant Guard,” the senator repeats smugly.
“I think you will find that we have already done so. Some more thoroughly than others, according to personal preference, of course,” Luminara says, and it takes all of Barriss’ poise to not burst out in highly inappropriate giggles.
Gree’s ears are pink. So are Fox’s, suspiciously.
Really, Master? she sends. Now?
Why not? she gets in response, and a mental snort of amusement.
“I doubt that, since you are standing here and not in a holding cell where you belong,” the senator snarls, and that gets their attention.
“First of all, we do not exist to serve at the Republic’s whim. We were in place long before the Republic and we will be here long after it falls, either to time or to corruption. Second, you have no such authority over us to order us to do anything of the sort,” Luminara says coldly. “And third, I should like to see you try.”
“It is wartime, and you are in the army,” the senator retorts. “You assassinated the Supreme High Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. That is treason.”
“We did what the Jedi Order was formed to do,” Luminara retorts, hands gripping the rail of the pod. Barriss can tell that she is longing to reach for her lightsaber. “We tracked down and killed a corrupted man who was misusing the Force to bring suffering and war to the galaxy. That is our original purpose. That is written into the contract we signed long ago with the infant Republic. You cannot touch us for hunting down Sith Lords, regardless of who they turn out to be.”
“We don’t care which side of your politics the Chancellor supported!” the senator shouts, and Barriss blinks. The Light and the Dark are not politics. “You assassinated him, you committed treason, and you must be punished.”
“Ah yes, by surrendering to the Coruscant Guard,” Plo says. “Which part of it? The dead ones that were acting under orders from ex-Chancellor Sidious to commit genocide against us, or the ones who are in this pod with us right now?”
The senator looks startled for a moment but recovers quickly. “Clones! Arrest them!”
Fox and Thire exchange tired glances and then ignore him.
“I said—”
“With respect, senator, you are not a member of the military and as such have no authority to give us orders of any kind,” Fox says, still staring off into the distance.
Yoda forestalls the senator’s next outburst by slamming his hands down on the railing of the pod, using the Force to amplify the sound. “Enough! With this ridiculous bill, cooperate we will not.”
The senator’s eyes light up and his appendages tense slightly. “You dare resist an order from the Senate?”
Yoda hums and nods, ears perked. “Not such a problem to me, it is. Stand with me on this matter, the Council will. Our children we must protect.”
Barriss can see Wolffe slowly and carefully extending his hand to rest on Plo’s back, gripping his belt. Whether it’s to keep Plo from launching himself at the senator who is threatening them, or for his own comfort, she has no idea.
“Then you have one rotation to get every last one of you off Coruscant and never return, forfeiting all immovable property therein,” the senator says, triumphantly waving the holopad that presumably contains the details of the bill he is so proud of. “The Republic has no further need of traitors and freaks.”
Barriss looks at Chuchi again. She is leaning back in her chair, looking exhausted.
Rescue mission? she taps out in dadita on Gree’s thigh. For Chuchi.
She gets a tilt of the head, and then after a few moments, the barest hint of a nod and the battle-sign for yes from Thire.
“Very well,” Yoda says, smiling. That seems to give the senator pause for a moment, but he rallies quickly.
“And you’ll be going alone,” he snarls. “We’ll find new generals for our army.”
The air around her goes cold with fury, and Barriss quickly looks down to avoid letting anyone see the yellow tint that she knows is washing over her own eyes.
Like hell they’re not taking the vod’e with them.
Surprisingly, it’s Gree who speaks up, gently moving Luminara away from the microphone with her hands on her hips. They don’t leave as she stares down the Senate.
“We are not yours,” she says. “We belong to our jetii, and where they go, we follow.”
Yoda abandons the really rather undignified perch that was put by the edge so he could see over the railing and hops onto Thire’s shoulder. Thire doesn’t even look up from the datapad he is typing on as he shifts his weight to accommodate him.
“You don’t have a choice,” the senator says dismissively.
Another senator sitting beside him nods. “The Senate ordered and paid for you, you’re Republic property. Get back to standing in doorways or whatever it is you do, not sticking your heads in where your kind don’t belong.”
Barriss sends out a tendril of the Force to hug Gree as she refuses to back down.
“Look at them,” another senator says. “They’re not even in proper uniform. Paint and baubles and who knows what else. How many credits have the Jedi been embezzling from us for their toys?”
Barriss glances at the commanders out of the corner of her eye. They’re all wearing their normal armor, and maybe it’s a bit more painted and decorated than it was a few months ago, but they just defeated a Sith Lord, there’s no reason to not celebrate by adding some new colors and symbols to their armor. And Gree’s hair looks beautiful with the subtly shining green and black square clips that mimic Luminara’s tattoos tucked into it. Fox has red ribbons worked into his hair that he’s let grow out, but they’re not obvious. Thire looks pretty much the same as he always does, except he’s polished his armor very well and it’s recently had the paint touched up. Wolffe has a necklace of teeth and droid parts of some kind around his neck and it hangs over the edge of his chestplate, but other than that he looks absolutely ready to tear someone apart with his bare hands, so, normal.
How petty are the senators?
Yoda once again uses the Force to amplify the crack his stick makes against the railing. “Your clones, the hell these are not!” he shouts, and some of the nearby senators step back in their pods, probably feeling his anger. “A Jedi Master it was that went to Kamino to create them. A Jedi Master it was that delivered the full payment from the Jedi. My own grandpadawan it was that brought them to us. To us, the Kaminoans gave them. This the contract states. Say in their lives, the Republic does not have. Say in their choices, we do not give ourselves. Free they are.”
He’s standing on Thire’s pauldron, which is wide and flat for exactly that reason, Barriss suddenly realizes, and has a casual claw wound in his hair, keeping him balanced. Thire isn’t even looking up from his datapad.
“Understand this you must,” he continues, lowering his voice but still speaking with the cold edge of anger that Barriss thinks none of the Senate thought him capable of. “If leave Coruscant we do, to the Republic we will no longer answer. The Republic we will no longer aid. The Republic we will no longer contribute to. The Coruscant Jedi Temple no longer available for shelter will be.”
Barris glances at Chuchi again and sees her slowly begin to grin through the miserable look she has had, as though watching a ship crash in slow motion.
“Our services the Republic will no longer ask for. Individual worlds we may assist, if requested privately, but no mandate on our conduct will anyone hold.” Yoda thumps his stick again and glares right back at the Senate alongside Gree, who still has an arm around Luminara’s shoulders. Luminara has returned the embrace and has an arm around Gree’s waist.
Thire moves his hands behind his back and signs to her and Plo. Brothers ready to move out. All ships secure. Evacuation started.
Barriss slowly unclenches her fists, using a breathing exercise to calm down. They had hoped that the Senate wouldn’t fuck them over again, but at some level they’d all accepted that it probably would happen; there were too many of Sidious’ pawns left in it. That was why they had hoped so much that Padmé would be able to take over quietly and change things before anyone realized it was happening.
Now they’re going to have to do it the hard way.
It’s a good thing that Shaak and Obi-Wan have been stuck together in the infirmary to plot together for the better part of a month, with Cody and Padmé there to supply constructive criticism.
Her fingers twitch towards her lightsaber, and she carefully keeps the grin off her face. She can’t wait until they take their new base; it will feel so very satisfying to repay some of the misery inflicted on her extended family.
~
It’s controlled chaos when they arrive back at the Temple. Everyone is hurrying everywhere, packing up their most precious belongings, and there are three troop transports squashed into the courtyard.
Only the 212th seems to still be in the Temple.
Barriss goes straight to the Council chamber to begin shoving her clothes and personal items into the pack she still hasn’t really unpacked from being on the front lines. Feral is there too.
“What’s going on?” she asks as she folds her robes and kneels on them to make them even smaller with practiced ease.
“We’re leaving, I guess?” Feral says. “Commander Ponds got some kind of message from his brothers at the Senate and then said we have a rotation to get out of Coruscant. But you know that, don’t you, you were there?”
“ ‘lek, the Senate passed some stupid bill saying we were traitors for killing Sidious.” Barriss snorts. “Poor Senator Chuchi looked really unhappy and stressed. I think Fox and Thire went to rescue her, so she’ll probably be coming with us. At least Padmé’ll probably like that. We have to leave behind all immovable property.”
“They want the Temple?” Feral says incredulously. “But most of it’s not even usable to Force-nulls.”
“I think they want the things we don’t have time to take out of the Temple. The holocrons, the artifacts, the resources. Probably the money and land deeds too.”
“Oh no.”
“But Master Yoda was cackling all the way back here, so I think he has a plan,” she adds, trying to cheer up her . . . friend.
They pack up the rest of their things in hurried, nervous silence and take their packs out to the shuttle that belongs to Luminara’s 41st. The other shuttles have nose art that proclaims them the property of Plo’s 104th and the 212th.
There’s an entire division of the men patrolling the entrance, heavily armed.
The sergeant in charge of them waves at them as they leave their things and hurry back into the Temple. Barriss waves back, trying to smile.
“I don’t know where we’d be without them,” she says to Feral.
On the way back in, they pass Kit, walking slowly with the aid of his droid, and Rabé and Sabé, each carrying suitcases. Anakin and Padmé are right behind them. Padmé has their baby and also a very, very angry expression. Anakin seems to be trying to calm her down.
“I cannot believe those idiots would do this!” she’s hissing as they pass. “Do they even know what they’re doing to the kriffing economy? The security of the Republic? The aid programs? The –”
“Yes, angel, they’re all a bunch of morons, but you’re upsetting Padma,” Anakin says, taking her hand and kissing it. “We can come back and fix this later, for now we just have to go.”
Barriss and Feral exchange slightly embarrassed glances and move on quickly.
Back in the Council chambers, Yoda is waiting for them with a slightly unhinged gleam in his eyes and an amused smile spreading wider and wider across his face.
“Your assistance we require, Knight Offee,” he says, and then turns to Feral. “Yours as well if willing you are, young Feral.”
“Of course, Master Yoda,” Barriss says, and bows slightly on reflex. “How can we help?”
“Take your places in the circle outside, you should,” Yoda says, cackles, and then zips out of the door with surprising speed.
~
There is indeed a ragged circle forming in the courtyard outside when they go out again, helping Shaak carry her things. A trooper takes the bags from them and stows them away in the 104th’s shuttle, and they help Shaak sit down on the ground. She’s breathing hard and shaking a little with the exertion, but she crosses her legs and closes her eyes, as serene as ever.
Yoda is already sitting, along with Depa, Agen, Kit, and Anakin. Obi-Wan is helped out of the Temple right behind them, one arm looped over Cody’s shoulders. Even Qui-Gon is there, floating beside Dooku and occasionally poking an incorporeal hand through his head. Dooku seems to be ignoring it.
“Sit, sit,” Yoda chortles. “Sit with us, Cody. You as well!” he calls, beckoning to the vod’e hanging anxiously around on the sides of the circle.
Slowly the circle closes, the Grey Sith in the middle, the vod’e crowded around the outside. It’s mostly the 212th, though Barriss can pick out at least a few men from each company assigned to someone there. Rex is sitting beside Anakin, Wolffe beside Plo, Gree beside Luminara, and Cody practically has Obi-Wan in his lap, he’s listing sideways so heavily.
Barriss feels ashamed of how they all treated him during the last few months of the war; the man is so tired that he can barely keep his eyes open for longer than two hours even though he’s been doing almost nothing but sleeping since they defeated Sidious. She’s never seen such an extreme case of Force exhaustion.
Suddenly all the reminders she got all through her time as a padawan to stop using the Force to replace sleep and regular meals from Luminara seem less like unnecessary irritation and more like genuine worry and care.
She edges a little closer to Shaak and takes some of her weight. Shaak makes a small grateful noise in the back of her throat and stiffly moves an arm to rest across Barriss’ shoulders. On the other side of her, Fox presses his shoulder into her side to also help her stay upright.
When they’re all there and no one is left inside the Temple, Yoda stands up and thumps his stick on the ground, sending up a small plume of dust.
“All immovable property, the Senate has claimed.” He stops to cackle again. “Nothing they shall have, then. To be moved, this Temple was built. The reason for placing it upon a nexus this is. Moved, it was once when but a youngling I was. Moved it shall be again.”
“How?” Anakin demands, and then winces in embarrassment.
“A good question you have, young Anakin,” Yoda says. “Agreed upon together in the Force we must be, and ask we must. Respond if it judges our need enough, the Temple shall.”
He sits down again and reaches out a hand towards the middle of the circle. “Focus,” he instructs. “Feel the Temple. All of it we must take. Remember your favorite places. Remember your life cradled in the walls. To accompany us on our journey, stay to protect us, ask. Do not deceive.”
Barriss closes her eyes, reaches out with her hands and her mind to feel the Temple. She grew up inside it; she knows no other home. Leaving it behind hurts almost as much as leaving behind Luminara or Gree or Feral, now that she stops to consider what it would mean.
She feels herself sinking deeper and deeper into the slow rhythm of the Force that swells and ebbs around the stones, until she has been there for centuries and each year that passes is barely a flicker. She feels the births and deaths and bursts of life that come and go. They mean more to her than a mere physical place. There are Force nexuses all over the galaxy. She can place herself in any one of them and draw in the power she needs to thrive. The important things are the glowing sparks of life that she shelters in her embrace.
Barriss rises to the surface and blinks her eyes open to find her arms screaming with reaching forward for so long. She drops them, shaking them to bring some of the blood back.
In the middle of the circle, a perfect replica of the Temple sits, about the size of a large munitions crate. Where the Temple was once, there is nothing but a cavernous hole in the ground. Even the courtyard walls are gone, and they sit on bare earth where there were paving stones. It’s open to the street, which is rapidly filling with gawkers.
Senator Chuchi and Senator Amidala are standing in the doorway to the 212th’s transport, eyes wide. There are vod’e in the Coruscant Guard armor clustered around them, blasters raised, clearly on edge.
The vod’e that were standing guard are closing in, making a wall between them and the street with their bodies. They aren’t holding their blasters ready to fire, but they are in their hands. The crowd is muttering.
“Time to go, it is,” Yoda says chirpily, hoisting up the Temple with the Force and levitating it in front of him as he waddles towards Plo’s transport.
Barriss helps Shaak stand; she’s pale and trembling with effort. Fox scoops her up into his arms after it’s clear she can barely walk and runs to the 212th transport. As Barriss runs for her own, grabbing Feral’s hand, she sees Cody and Anakin carrying Obi-Wan between them.
The vod’e who were protecting them jump in at random and then the doors slam shut, the transports lifting off as the last ones reach them. Barriss edges back until she’s pressed up against a wall piled with bags, Feral close beside her. It’s crowded but they’ll survive for a few minutes until they make it to the star destroyers.
Because those technically also belong to the Jedi Order, by means of some small print that the Council put in the contract to keep them safe during battle, they’re taking as many of them as possible too. Some of them will be necessary for them to hunt down Darth Vader and stop the Sith, but most of them, they’re just taking for spite.
Her last view of Coruscant is of the place where the Temple once stood, the massive cavern into the lower levels like a jagged wound.