Chapter Text
I know that ooo-ooh, birds fly, in different directions
Oo-ooh, I hope, to see you again
Sunsets, sunrises,
Livin’ the dream, watchin’ the leaves,
Changin’ the seasons,
Some nights, I think of you,
Relivin’ the past, wishin’ it’d last,
Wishin’ and dreamin’
She awoke with the phantom pain of blaster fire striking her back and shoulders.
The shock of it kept Aayla from moving for a good minute, even as her nerves screamed over injuries there and then gone, the oh so brief brush of death as she’d fallen to the ground. And it wasn’t just her - the entire Force reeled with horror, thousands of Jedi caught up in their own awakenings from nightmares, no mere echo of pain and betrayal but a tidal wave.
It defied explanation.
Eventually, Aayla dragged herself out of bed and to the door, stumbling over the threshold as she always did after an extended period of time away from Coruscant. And this was Coruscant, the Jedi Temple, her own quarters- except, different. No token gifts from her men lined the counter that divided sitting room and kitchen; the holo-stills of her various friends cluttered up the low table by her balcony window, when Aayla remembered quite clearly moving them to an empty shelf the year before.
Rather abruptly, the twi’lek realized she herself was different as well. Once the pain of her phantom blaster injuries faded, no other dull aches made their own presences known. A swift inspection of her arms and legs revealed the utter lack of scars gathered during three years of war. Even the hardened layers of her mental shields, added on for self preservation when constantly surrounded by death and suffering, felt lighter than since she’d still been a newly knighted Jedi. As if- as if the effects of the years in-between were simply-
-gone.
Aayla bolted.
In the corridor beyond her quarters, other Jedi were emerging from their own doors, most of them wide-eyed with shock. A few merely looked blearily concerned, and Aayla heard snatches of questions as she darted past, queries as to whether everyone experienced the same distressing vision. But those who clutched at their chests or throats, their weak points- those Jedi bore a muted horror in their eyes, and Aayla didn’t doubt they’d just suffered their own betrayals from trusted men.
(Force, her men. What happened to them?)
By the time she reached the Great Hall, at least half the Temple’s population seemed to have gathered - the old population, before the war began so devastating their ranks of grown Knights and Masters. It took a bit of insistent nudging with the Force, but Aayla managed to wind her way through the upset crowd, until she nearly tripped over Master Yaddle.
The wizened Jedi looked up at her, frowning sharply. “No good, will rushing do you, young Secura. Answers, not to be found, not as of yet.”
Aayla breathed deeply through her nose. “I apologize, Master. Do you know where- Master Quinlan-”
Yaddle’s frown deepened. “Awakened from something unknown, most of us have. A dark something. But still caught in the vision, a few are.” On the far side of the hall, Aayla saw a flicker of careful movement; a handful of Healers carrying unconscious forms out of the dormitories.
Breathing at all, let alone deeply, became a sudden challenge.
“Come,” Yaddle said, tugging on the loose pants Aayla always slept in. “To the Healing Halls, you will join me.”
Once everyone settled somewhat, and an actual accounting of names and visions took place, they realized the obvious pattern.
A Jedi who perished during the war’s initial battle on Geonosis experienced their death only as a fleeting dream, a brief warning. One who continued on through the galaxy-spanning conflict itself saw flickers of their actions, their struggles, culminating in their own demise. Those who’d survived three years of warfare only to perish in ‘Order Sixty-Six’ suffered the strongest visions, the sharpest clarity; the elder Masters surmised it was likely that sudden sweep of death which triggered whatever event rolled them all back to a point four years prior, before the Confederacy of Independent Systems declared their secession from the Republic.
And yet, such a theory hardly explained the Jedi who remained asleep.
Not quite a full hundred, who slept through the initial midnight mass awaking and all subsequent attempts to rouse them. Master Windu ordered those still affected to be moved to the Healing Halls, and remain under close supervision. The man himself even took up a near permanent post within the halls as well; at first, Aayla half assumed him to be avoiding dealing with the issues of suddenly having a Council with twice the proper number of members.
Then she realized one of those still asleep, a tiny human initiate, was the boy who became Windu’s grand-padawan in the last months of the war. Aayla spent a great deal of time in the hall that housed Quinlan’s unconscious self, and more than half the time when she left him, she saw Windu standing beside or talking quietly with Depa Billaba. Or, late one night, sitting on a bench with his former student dozing against his shoulder, both of them positioned to look through an open door at the hall full of afflicted younglings.
Caleb Dume, Ahsoka Tano, Barriss Offee, Cal Kestis, Trilla Suduri, a dozen more... all of them still initiates or newly chosen padawans, not yet soldiers, not yet commanders.
Not yet victims of war.
Aayla didn’t know what anyone planned to do about young Barriss, if anyone held even the first clue of what to do. Or the others who Fell during the war, like Pong Krell. Even just thinking about what he did to his own men, the troopers entrusted to his care- And yet, in this time, the besalisk Master barely held more memory of his horrendous actions than a few, wispish nightmares, full of Darkness and disgust. Many argued, how could he be held accountable for actions not yet committed?
At least Master Windu gave the command for Krell to be monitored closely, along with a handful of other Jedi caught out for misconduct in their previous existence. Aayla fully intended to put herself forward to help with said monitoring... after Quinlan woke up.
Some of the afflicted Jedi awoke within a week. They typically jerked upright with pained gasps, only to stare about with dazed incomprehension until a familiar face appeared: a mentor, a friend, a student. And then, inevitably, without fail, the grief would surge; grief, and overwhelming relief.
Sheer chance allowed Aayla to witness one such reunion, when Sha Koon’s explosive awakening led to several Force-thrown beds before her uncle arrived. “It felt empty,” the younger Kel Dor mourned, clutching onto Plo’s robes with her forehead pressed to his shoulder. “The Force- the screams echoed, but the Order- you were all gone.”
“We’re here now,” Plo murmured, meeting Aayla’s worried gaze from across the hall. He managed, somehow, to project enough reassurance for her and his niece both. “We have all been returned, and this time, we will not be taken by surprise again.”
Stories began to circulate the Temple. Tales of being hunted by clones devoid of their warmth, of an Empire raised from the Republic’s ashes, of the galaxy brought to heel by Palpatine’s successful bid for power.
Of a new Sith Order.
“Inquisitors,” Luminara Unduli explained when she awoke, voice exhausted and body trembling from remembered pain. “They called themselves Inquisitors. Jedi who Fell purely for self preservation, and lashed out with all their fear and rage to avoid punishment falling onto their own heads.”
She named several of the still sleeping Jedi as those who’d turned to the Dark Side, including her own padawan. And yet, as soon as the Healers deemed her able to depart from their supervision, Luminara promptly packed off for the hall where Barriss and the other younglings remained. No one protested her commandeering an empty bed for herself; Aayla started bringing extra food back down from the refectory on her twice-daily trips.
Which was how she managed to be present when Trilla Suduri awoke with a whimper.
At first, the girl thought them to be ghosts, and resisted all efforts to get her to remain lying still. She evaded Aayla and bolted for the open doorway; thankfully, Master Jaro Tapal, visiting his own not-yet-padawan, moved quickly enough to intercept Trilla and tuck her against his massive chest. From that sudden height, she caught sight of the unconscious Cal Kestis, and froze.
Out of all the Healers and Masters who came to speak with the girl, she best responded to Tapal’s gently rumbled questions, eyes never leaving his small student. Eventually, the lasat returned to his earlier seat, Trilla sitting curled in his lap. Aayla very nearly started to offer to check on Master Junda for her, only to fall silent when Luminara grasped her arm in a grip tight enough to bruise.
The mirialan shook her head. Aayla instead offered to fetch the girl something to eat besides bland nutri-mush.
Once they knew where to look, the Order’s Shadows swiftly found hard evidence of Palpatine’s schemes. Deals through proxies with the Trade Federation, Techno Union, and other conglomerates who’d bribed their way into Senate representation. Recorded conversations with members of the Separatist faction, many of them known to be pushing for either drastic reform or dramatic departure from the Republic.
Sith artifacts housed within his home estate on Naboo.
Senator Amidala proved to be a sharp politician and staunch ally when Master Windu approached her directly; she called an emergency session to put the evidence forward and accuse Palpatine of causing the siege that so badly hurt their planet nine years before, purely for his own gain. Considering the Trade Federation’s blockade and subsequent hostile takeover directly led to Valorum’s resignation and the election that made him Chancellor, Palpatine didn’t have much room to protest. And even what little space to deny and protest he did have went out the window when the images of monetary transactions went up, flickering through one after another, painting a clear line between him and a planet called Kamino, where several million clone soldiers were put into production nearly nine years prior.
Six Jedi waited for the Chancellor’s pod to descend. He went upwards, instead, even maneuvering to cut Senator Amidala in half on his way out.
Except, Master Windu jumped up from his disguised position in the back of the Naboo pod, and ensured the Sith Lord failed both the murder and escape attempt.
They went to get the clones. They barely waited for Palpatine’s body to cool before demanding and securing Senate permission.
They only found empty cities and dead Kaminoans.
“No one feels certain if we should look for them or not,” Aayla murmured, curled into a chair at Quinlan’s bedside. “If we could truly help this time, or only drag them into strife all over again. Whether it would be better to let them find their own path.”
And the clones were, undeniably, setting out on a path all their own. The armories on Kamino were just as empty as the dormitories, and not a single space-worthy ship remained anywhere on the planet. Aayla knew there wouldn’t have been enough for the original three million battle-ready troopers, let alone Force knew how many cadets and younglings and infants still in their growth tubes, but- if anyone in the galaxy could be capable of finding a way to evacuate millions of lifeforms without attracting the Republic’s attention, it would be her men and their brothers.
From the available records, the Jedi assumed every single Kaminoan cloner to be either dead or gone with the troopers. Same for the trainers hired to shape them into soldiers; some of the bodies left behind looked to have been killed swiftly, cleanly, while others... Well. Aayla knew a few stories from Bly, of cruelty masked as practicality, amusement in the form of harassment. She could understand some trainers being brought down with extreme prejudice, even if she didn’t like the viciousness of it.
Only a few remained unaccounted for, names that Shaak Ti assured them belonged to hard yet decent people. They’d likely gone with the clones gladly, or else been allowed to leave on their own terms unharmed.
No one could say for certain which had been Jango Fett’s fate. Or young Boba’s for that matter.
Force, no one could even say what prompted the clones to so violently rebel in the first place, eliminating their creators and abandoning Kamino completely. Aayla suspected - hoped - something of the event that restored the Jedi Order also affected their closest allies, inciting them to reach for freedom en masse. But without so much as a single message, or even a whisper of rumor, they couldn’t possibly begin to guess where the clones had disappeared to.
(Some, Aayla knew, felt perfectly willing to write off the whole matter with an attitude of good riddance. She did her best to avoid such Jedi, and the temptation of introducing her fist to their most sensitive facial features.)
“I miss Bly,” she admitted, in the quiet of the Healing Halls. “I miss all of them. And you, Quinlan. Please wake up soon.”
Before Quinlan, Cal Kestis and Cere Junda were restored to the Order.
The boy burst into tears the instant he awoke and saw his Master, still sitting in the youngling hall after two months. And Junda, when she stumbled in despite a fussing Healer at her back, very nearly did the same when she laid eyes on Trilla perched by Tapal’s side. Awkwardness abounded at first, of course, but the four of them eventually reached a stable enough state. Trilla had all but moved into the lasat Master’s quarters after attaching herself to him, and Junda didn’t hesitate to request a room transfer, putting herself next door, so that both younglings could be close to the other’s teacher.
Barriss Offee awoke next.
Alone of all the slumbering Jedi Aayla knew of, the young mirialan didn’t gasp or scream or exhibit any other sort of dramatic reaction. Rather, the girl blinked open her eyes, peered around the hall, and slowly sat up. Then she stood and walked towards the nearest medkit, and very nearly managed to stab herself with a vibro-scalpel before Luminara caught her wrists. Then the hysterics started, and didn’t end until well after both mirialans were sitting on the floor where they’d collapsed, clinging to one another, their tears mingling in a great outpouring of anger and sorrow.
Not until Aayla finally helped them up, and Barriss caught sight of Ahsoka still unconscious on another bed, did the realness of it all seem to click. She promptly began swearing up and down to do better, that she wouldn’t turn, she wouldn’t Fall, she’d avoid the same mistakes and the same wrongs and the same horrors-
“I believe you, padawan-mine,” Luminara whispered, arms still wrapped around the girl’s shoulders. “We will both do better, the two of us.”
The scalpel, half sunk into a wall, remained ignored.
Quinlan, the utter bastard, managed to wake up while Aayla was gone on a trip to the refectory to fetch dinner. She arrived back in time to find him out of bed, out of his hall, and pressing a Healer up against the wall via an arm to their throat and demanding to know where someone named ‘Korto’ was being kept.
Aayla didn’t hesitate to pick up the meiloorun off her tray and lob it at her former master’s head.
He ducked, of course, but in the process released the alarmed Healer. Quinlan spun with the clear intention of charging at her, but froze as soon as his mind made the switch from ‘unknown hostile’ to ‘that’s my padawan’.
One hand placed against her hip and the other holding her dinner tray aloft, Aayla scowled at him. “Are you going to get back into bed, or do I need to waste more of my food aiming at your thick skull?”
She stayed with him through the following check-up and debrief, and remained even when all others left her old master alone. To Aayla, and Aayla alone, he spoke of Khaleen Hentz and Korto Vos - a spy met during the war, and the son she birthed only shortly before the Jedi Order perished.
“We changed planets constantly,” Quinlan told her in a blank voice. “Kept ahead of the Purge troopers and Inquisitors for years. Then, I- I slipped up. Felt sentimental. Gave a lift to an old contact from the war and his family - they wanted to go join the Rebellion that was brewing in the Outer Rim. Turned out the grandson was sending everything back to his Imperial handler along the way.”
Aayla gripped his hand a bit tighter, and Quinlan allowed a few silent tears to spill from his eyes. “They caught you.”
“Killed, probably. I just assumed I’d been captured when I woke up here. Khaleen died right before I did, I felt her go, but Korto- I don’t know. I don’t know, Aayla.”
She made no comment on his further tears, simply sitting with her teacher and brother, both of them mourning long into the night.
Eventually, there were few enough Jedi still sleeping that the Healers placed them all within the same hall together. Despite her main reason for visiting presently up and moving on his own, Aayla still went nearly every day, Quinlan constantly by her side.
Obi-wan Kenobi. Anakin Skywalker. Ahsoka Tano. Caleb Dume. Master Yoda, and a tiny youngling named Grogu of the same species. A few Masters with the skill to escape their clone troopers. A larger group of young knights and padawans who did not.
Many Jedi would come and go throughout the day to check them, including Master Windu. He continued to sit at little Dume’s bedside with a datapad for an hour or two at a time, usually while Billaba needed to deal with other matters. But, Aayla felt surprised to notice, Windu also often stood by the foot of Anakin’s bed, watching him with a contemplative expression she didn’t much care for.
“I admit, I’m surprised he’s still here,” Quinlan told her one morning, when he sat on one side of Kenobi’s bed, Aayla on the other with Anakin to her left. “Kid was on the list of dead Jedi, right from the start. I figured he must have gone down trying to protect Amidala from whoever killed her.”
An unpleasant sensation of cold crept up the back of Aayla’s neck. “She died too?”
“Day or two behind the Purge. Lots of news sites on the holonet showed clips from the funeral for weeks afterward.” The man stared silently at the far wall for a long moment. “...she was pregnant, at the time. Apparently no one knew, until after.”
Aayla closed her eyes, and breathed through yet more grief for life cut short.
Three of the younglings turned Inquisitors awoke together late one morning, just as Aayla and Quinlan were about to leave to fetch some lunch. They ended up staying for a good long while instead; first to help with the initial reactions of shock and fear, then the scrambled apologies, and finally-
-a bit of an explanation, concerning some of the remaining sleepers.
“Ahsoka Tano,” one of the trio said, a mirialan girl with skin more yellow than green, who spoke of the older initiate with mixed awe and wariness. “She’s- a leader of the rebellion. A founder. There’s been a bounty out on her head for years, but no one’s ever- she’s impossible to catch. And Lord Vader- he made it clear, Tano and Kenobi were only to be captured, so he could kill them himself.”
A dark suspicion crept into the back of Aayla’s mind. They’d heard the name ‘Vader’ before, but none of the Jedi who’d become Inquisitors could say who he was, where he came from; not even what species wore the intimidating suit of black armor. But this was the first Aayla heard of his focus on Obi-wan and Ahsoka, and it didn’t sit well.
“We pursued them to Malachor,” the girl whispered, huddled at the head of her bed. “Tano and Jarrus; they were both Purge survivors. And the boy, Bridger, a new padawan. But it wasn’t just them - the old Sith, the red Zabrak, he cut us down like we were nothing-” A broken sob cut through her words, and the small mirialan buried her head behind folder arms. “We’re nothing, we’re less than nothing, we failed-”
None of them were old enough to have been padawans yet when the Purge took place. Rather than Masters, Trilla Suduri skidded into the hall, Cere Junda not far behind her. They took over comforting the younglings, providing reassurance, beginning the long road to overcoming remembered years of fear and pain. Soon enough, all three were moved away to their own room where the Mind Healers could work with some privacy, and the hall fell quiet once more.
Quinlan finally rose, from his deceptively casual slouch against one wall. He wandered past Aayla, to the chair on the far side of Obi-wan’s bed, and dropped into it with a deep sigh. “What did you get yourself into, Kenobi? And where the sithing hells did you end up?”
Aayla sat down next to Ahsoka, and wondered the same questions.
The matter of too many Council members eventually sorted itself out, with a few Masters deciding to gracefully step down, while others settled on an exchange; three seats became rotation positions, with one each month switching to a different Jedi. Some in the temple grumbled over such a break in tradition - others, like Aayla, applauded the more adaptable method. They could only become stronger by listening to differing opinions, after all.
Unfortunately, Caleb Dume managed to pick the first Council meeting when both Masters Billaba and Windu were attending to wake up.
“...huh.”
The faint rasp drew Aayla’s attention, and she blinked. It took a moment to place the unfamiliar voice; not until she spotted young Dume staring at the ceiling did the twi’lek realize who’d awoken. She rolled smoothly to her feet and approached. The boy didn’t appear to be in distress, unlike so many others - if anything, his expression spoke of bemusement more than anything else. When blue-green eyes caught sight of her, Dume shifted his attention. “Master Secura?”
“Hello, young one,” Aayla murmured, settling to perch on the side of his bed. “You don’t seem very surprised to see me.”
A slight shrug. “Well, a little, I guess. Would’ve thought my Master would be the one to meet me first.”
“Meet you?”
“In the Force.” Dume’s gaze drifted back towards the ceiling. “It- doesn’t feel quite like what I was expecting. No offense, Master.”
“None taken, because we are not one with the Force, youngling.”
“...what?”
It took a good half hour for the boy to truly grasp the reality of their situation, and in that time Aayla learned that not only was young Dume the ‘Kanan Jarrus’ spoken of by others who’d awoken, he’d apparently lost his sight to the Sith lord Maul on Malachor, thought Ahsoka died there fighting Darth Vader, and sacrificed his life sometime later to save his loved ones. For someone who’d awoken so casually, so at peace with his prior death, Dume very swiftly became anxious and borderline hysterical, too many memories and emotions crowding his physically under-developed mind for space.
Aayla had seen the same effect on other younglings who awoke with years of experience abruptly thrust back into younger bodies. Outbursts came to be expected; they were, after all, suffering the equivalent of a protocol droid’s vast databanks of languages and cultural etiquette suddenly downloaded into a mouse droid with limited processor space. There simply wasn’t room to deal with it all, not right away.
Thankfully, once the healer on duty realized he and Aayla alone wouldn’t be able to calm the boy down, he sent an emergency call up to the Council chambers. Not ten minutes later, Depa Billaba strode into the hall at breakneck pace, robes billowing behind her, expression tight with concern.
Dume choked on a gasp, before throwing himself out of the bed in order to reach her that much faster.
Once assured the boy was in good hands, Aayla excused herself to fetch some food from the refectory; by the time she returned, Master Windu had also arrived, and situated himself on the floor, leaning back against Dume’s bed with the youngling snugly secure in-between him and Billaba. All three of them accepted at least one piece of fruit off the tray Aayla offered, though Dume did hesitate before taking the meiloorun his hand automatically reached for.
And then, at last, they received the final piece of a puzzle named Anakin.
“He became Darth Vader,” Dume murmured, gaze glued to the floor as he picked at the meiloorun in his lap. “Shook Ahsoka really badly, when we found out. I think- I think it’s part of why she stayed behind, on Malachor, when the Sith temple was about to blow up. Not just to hold him off so Ezra and I could escape, but- she couldn’t leave him. Not again. Rex almost broke when we came back without her.”
Aayla frowned, her mind sorting through the details, the implications, but first- “Captain Rex? The clone trooper?”
Dume nodded at her. “Him, Commander Wolffe, and a commando named Gregor - they didn’t have their inhibitor chips anymore. Ahsoka sent us to find them, after our crew officially joined the rebellion. They usually worked with her, but Rex came with us on plenty of missions, especially after- after Malachor.”
“What were you even doing there in the first place, padawan-mine?” Master Billaba asked, tucking a stray strand of hair back behind her boy’s ear.
“Trying to find something, anything, that might give us an edge over the Sith.” Dume sounded downright exhausted as he explained. “The Inquisitors were running us ragged, and the first time Vader came around we barely got away. Ezra and I dropped a whole Walker on top of the guy, and he just got back up.”
Almost against her will, Aayla’s gaze dragged over towards Anakin, lying still on his bed across the hall. Dume’s story almost seemed too extreme to be true, and yet- there were moments, during the war. Stray words. Wavering control. If Aayla truly looked, she supposed the shape of a Sith Lord could, perhaps, be seen hiding in Anakin’s shadow.
Master Billaba seemed similarly caught on the edge of barely believing it. Windu, on the other hand... he hardly looked surprised at all.
Three mornings later, Quinlan woke her up with a call through the Force. When Aayla met him at the door of her quarters, her former master looked downright grim. “Obi-wan’s awake.”