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Chapter Text

27

You Gotta Fall Down Before You Fight Back 

As the cold wind cut through the air, coming from the choppy gray ocean and making Peren’s black cloak snap, he saw him. The clone with white hair, standing out amidst the shivering ranks of other clones like a single flake of snow in the middle of a field of mud. Peren’s breath stalled; this was the clone command had been warning about for months, ever since the first prison camp had fallen to a surprise attack from the GAR. Intel had been sparse, but there had been enough for their spies and slicers to ascertain that the new battalion was tasked with emptying out prison camps and depriving the Confederacy of their hard-won labor force. The battalion was led by General Obi-Wan Kenobi and the one called Anakin Skywalker — or, as the holonet had begun to call him, the Hero With No Fear. 

It was those two that command feared the most, but Peren knew better. Once the Negotiator and his ever-present shadow descended from the sky, the battle was long lost. The clones — the white haired one, the one with the 5 tattooed on his temple, and the one with the Republic’s cog over one eye… It was they who were the gathering clouds, warning of the coming storm. 

And from his vantage point on the battlements of the floating prison, beneath the slate-gray winter sky, Peren saw him. The white haired clone tipped his head back and met Peren’s gaze. Lightning flashed in his eyes, and Peren knew. 

“Bring that one to me,” he yelled from high on the battlements, pointing, and the droids obeyed instantly. 

Now the white-haired clone is at his feet, but he’s smiling at him. Peren hates the expression; it’s unnatural. Here, where clones come to die, deep in the underwater mines where durasteel ore is hewn from the seabed. 

As the wind cuts across the high seawall, bringing with it the sting of salt and faint whisper of spray, Peren pulls out his blaster and levels it at the clone’s head. “Tell me the plan,” he says. “Tell me how your masters intend to attack.” 

The clone eyes the blaster with more interest than fear. “I don’t have any masters.”

Anger twisting a knot in his gut, Peren nods to one of the droids holding the clone. A durasteel fist flashes; the clone ends up on his side, just barely catching himself with his elbow. When he lifts his head, there is blood on his teeth. It stains his lips as he bares his teeth. 

Peren crouches down in front of the clone, resting his blaster on one knee. “You have me,” he says, quiet and cold. Below, in the main prison complex, lockdown alarms sound and the guards — droids and organic — hustle the clones out of the muddy yard and back toward their cells. Heavy security doors slam into place over all the complex’s exterior doors. On the landing pad outside the walls and on the battlements that edge the sea, the antiaircraft guns whir to life and tilt their mouths upward, toward the monochrome sky. “So tell me.” He lifts the gun again and presses it against the clone’s forehead. “Or tell your god.” 

The clone lets out a long breath, coughing a little. “I asked to come here, you know,” he said, still not sounding afraid. “In every camp we’ve liberated, we’ve heard stories of this place. Of you. Coming to the other camps, taking the strongest clones and never bringing them back. There’s not much in this galaxy that frightens my brothers, but you do.” The clone narrows his eyes, taking Peren in. “I expected a monster, but you’re just a man. Just like all the rest.” He shakes his head, scattering flecks of blood. “Here for a paycheck, written in my brothers’ blood.” 

Peren powers up the blaster. “Their plan. Their plan, and I let you live. You’ve failed. Save yourself.” 

The clone furrows his brow. “Major Peren,” he says, “what makes you think I was the first to come?” 

As the last of the clones are locked inside the complex down below, his red teeth flash in another grin. “A little bird told me that Mandalore’s claimed the clones as their own.” 

Cold spikes through Peren. He jerks his head up to look at one of the battlement guards — an organic, shipped in by the Confederacy when he called for an increase in security. 

None of his guards ever take off their helmets, lest the clone prisoners think them softer and more easily swayed than droids. 

“Oh, not that one,” says the clone, his grin widening. 

Down below, a spasmodic flash of light breaks through the gloom. Peren snaps his head toward it in time to see another helmeted guard holding a device gripped in one upraised fist. With the flash of light comes the descending whir of every droid in the entire camp powering down as sparks fly from their casings. 

“Anakin came up with that one,” says the clone. “He can fix anything, but it goes the other way too.” 

As he speaks, shooting breaks out below as several squads of organic guards turn on their compatriots, gunning them down in ranks before the remnants catch on and dive for cover. Amidst the noise, the antiaircraft guns outside the walls turn around in a cacophony of clicking gears and point themselves backwards, over the walls and at the prison camp. Peren’s breath stalls in his throat once more.  

“I’ll have to thank you for locking all my brothers up,” says the clone, pushing to his feet and knocking the dead droids aside. The nearest sentient guard turns his blaster on him, but the clone doesn’t even flinch. “In that nice explosion-proof building. Now we don’t even have to aim when we start firing.” 

From high above, the roar of thrusters fills the air. In another second, a great destroyer pierces the low-lying clouds, tearing a hole through them and casting a massive shadow over the entire camp. The clone tips his head toward the ship, still grinning. 

Peren stares. It’s impossible. No ship that big could hide from their radar. No ship that big could — 

“D’you know Commander Skywalker once hid an entire town full of freed slaves from Hutt ships?” says the clone. “I didn’t think he could do it to a whole destroyer, but I guess it’s all the same in the end. He’s right — slavers never do use their eyes.” 

Heart thudding in his ears, Peren whirls around and lurches forward, too fast for the clone to dodge. Grabbing him by the throat, he shoves him up against the battlement wall as the titanic roar of the ship up above drowns out everything else, even the thunder of waves against the seawalls. Shoving his blaster against the clone’s temple, he spits, “But even with all this, you’re still dead. You’ve been sacrificed — they’re here for the others, but they must know that you’ll never make it out alive. You’re expendable to them. Another piece on their board. You have no savior.” 

The clone stares into his eyes, grin melting away. In a voice as steady as a rock, he says, “I don’t need a savior. I have an angel in the sky.” 

As the words leave his mouth, there’s something like a sharp, pinpoint impact against Peren’s back, spearing between his shoulder blades and out through his stomach. A horrible coldness spreads through him. His breath turns to fire inside him, caught halfway between his mouth and his lungs. Frozen in place, his gaze tracks downward to see a tiny hole burned into the ground between the clone’s feet. 

Lifting his eyes to the clone’s impassive face again, Peren draws in a single spasmodic breath and chokes on copper. Blood sprays from his mouth and spatters the clone’s face. As he flinches back, Peren loses his grip, hand falling back limp to his side. His blaster follows, tumbling from a hand disinterested in listening to his fogging mind. What little color there was in the wintery world around him drains away. 

His vision tilts. The hard floor of the battlements slams into his side. His chest spasms, lungs screaming for air, but there’s nothing in his mouth or lungs except bubbling blood, choking him.

As blackness wells up, he sees the clone crouch in front of him and scoop up his fallen blaster. In a whisper, he says, “As you had no honor in life, may the Light give you no honor in death.”

# # # 

The second Rex’s signal — her callsign: Angel in the Sky — reaches Padme’s ears through the short-range comm hidden inside the enamel of his tooth, she fires her rifle, sending a superheated blaster bolt through Major Peren’s back and out through his stomach. The angle is steep, and she’s high, high above Rex — lying on the very edge of the opening to the destroyer’s auxiliary hangar, in fact, with the shield powered down — but over the past six months, she’s perfected her aim, which Sabe already called terrifying. 

And nothing terrifies Sabe. 

Through her rifle sight, she sees Rex give her a two fingered salute as he retrieves Peren’s fallen blaster and stands. In spite of everything, Padme manages a thin smile at the sight. Rex is safe. She’s his angel — he trusts her. 

It makes all the killing worth it. 

Powering her rifle down and sliding it into its sling across her shoulders, she says into her own comms, “Peren’s down. Ani, Obi-Wan, you’re clear to go in.” Turning around, she lifts her eyebrows at Bo-Katan, who is standing behind her. “Carry me down?” 

Bo-Katan shakes her head. “Is it not enough that I lend you my soldiers?” 

“I heard Mandalore is allies with the Republic,” says Padme with a little shrug. “I think you have to help me.” 

Bo-Katan shakes her head once and sighs. “Hang on.” 

Padme braces herself meres seconds before Bo-Katan breaks into a sprint and slams into her, knocking them both into open air. Six months on the frontlines kills Padme’s instinctive scream before it leaves her throat. Instead, she does as Bo-Katan said: she hangs on tight, keeping her eyes on the horizon as Bo-Katan activates her jetpack, lowering them toward the ground at a pace slightly more controlled than a freefall. Within a minute, Padme’s boots hit the churned up, muddy ground, and she finds herself in the center of a circle of Bo-Katan’s soldiers, who spent the past month infiltrating the prison. 

From up above on the dreadnought come more reinforcements — clones from the 501st and 212th, flying down on the jetpacks. They look more Mandalorian than ever, weaving through the air on the jetpacks’ flaming wings, and if not for their distinctive GAR armor, Padme would have mistaken them for Bo-Katan’s own soldiers as they landed on the battlements and about the edges of the prison yard. 

Last of all, Obi-Wan and Anakin make their appearance. They don’t have jetpacks, but that’s the normal course of things. Heights of any kind don’t faze Anakin, and the destroyer is close enough to the ground that Obi-Wan, more earthbound than Anakin tends to be, also has nothing to fear from the drop. 

And drop they do, arrowing down from another auxiliary hangar like stones falling from the sky. They land with twin thumps, kicking up sprays of mud. As is typical, they land right in the center of the yard, beneath the eyes of all the enemies’ guns. 

Padme’s lips twitch into another smile, and she catches Rex’s eye as he stands on the battlements, helping his brothers keep the guards up there in check. This is how it always goes. Anakin and Obi-Wan haven’t gotten shot yet. With Anakin around, she’s not even certain the shots would hit them. He’s pulled off miracles like that before, after all. 

As all the remaining guards pin their focus on Anakin and Obi-Wan, the pair slip into the roles that have grown up around them over the past six months — like seals sliding into water. Obi-Wan is the Negotiator, all charismatic certainty and deadly wit. Anakin is the Hero With No Fear, the one who can stop ships in midair and who runs into the middle of a firefight and comes out on the other side unscathed. Obi-Wan is the earthquake; Anakin is the tsunami that follows. 

Padme holds herself at ready, as does everyone else. Obi-Wan and Anakin have enough of a reputation now that these plays rarely go wrong, but that’s hardly a guarantee.  

“Hello there,” Obi-Wan says. His Coruscanti accent is thick; it always is when he is playing the Negotiator. “How lovely to meet all of you. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

A man with lieutenant bars shifts forward. His voice is tightly controlled, and his face — already square and thick to begin with — seems like it is made of stone. “Stand down,” he says, “and let us go.” 

“Oh?” Obi-Wan raises both eyebrows in an expression of polite confusion. “I fail to see why we would do that.” 

“You made a mistake,” the lieutenant says. “You gave us your clones — your boys.” With the hand not locked around his blaster, he gestures to the complex in the center of the yard. It seems small from up here, but Padme’s seen this place’s schematics — it stretches downward, below sea level. 

It’s more coffin than prison. 

Obi-Wan’s polite expression doesn’t slip. “Gave? I was under the impression you took them.” 

The lieutenant ignores him. “They’re all in there, all right? With more of us, and if you don’t let us go, I’ll give the order. Have my men shoot your pet freaks in their cages, like dogs.” 

As Padme’s stomach knots and she reaches behind her to lay one hand on the butt of her gun, Obi-Wan says, “Friend, you seem to be laboring under the impression that this is a negotiation.” 

“What else could it be? You might have all your guns on us, but we’ve got your boys’ lives. I’ve got something that you want. ” 

“No, you don’t.” Anakin speaks for the first time, in a clear, remote voice that is about a disinterested in the lieutenant as a storm is in the land it tears across. He smiles a little. In the past six months, he’s made his GAR armor and Jedi robes more his own than Padme thought possible. The white painted armor, scuffed and worn now, and the scarlet bird on his pauldron stand out brightly against the dreary landscape, and his dark cloak snaps in the wind. “You’re standing in his way. That’s all.” 

The lieutenant doesn’t flinch outwardly, but fear — real fear — blooms in hs eyes for the first time. 

“As I said,” continues Obi-Wan, in the same relaxed and friendly voice as before, “this is not a negotiation.” 

“Then what is it?” asks the lieutenant. 

“A mercy,” replies Obi-Wan. “Grace, extended from me to you. I advise you to accept it.” 

“Why?” The lieutenant’s voice is almost the exact opposite of Obi-Wan’s — gruff and anything but in control. “You shoot us, and all you get to bring home are lots and lots of body bags. Doesn’t sound like a win to me.” 

“Mm.” Obi-Wan presses his lips into a thin smile. “Allow me to explain something to you. There is only one way you walk off this station alive, and it’s if you surrender — completely and without condition. As you ask of the clones, if you’ll recall. There is a pleasing symmetry to that, don’t you think?” 

“If you want your clones —” 

“No, Lieutenant.” Obi-Wan’s smile drops. “The question is not, ‘Do we want the clones returned?’ Rather, the question is, ‘How badly do you want to live?’” He glances at Anakin. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him by now. The Separatists do love their gossip, after all. You see, he’s from Tatooine. I’m sure you’ve heard of it too after all these months. On Tatooine, there’s a saying: do not fear the sandstorm, fear the krayt dragon that comes on its heels.” He chuckles to himself a little. “An ominous sentence to hear, but did you know it’s based on a very real phenomenon? The great krayt dragons of Tatooine travel just beneath the dunes, and their passing stirs up the sands so much that the winds catches it up and triggers a sandstorm. As a result, the natives of Tatooine that live in krayt territory have long learned to flee from the path of an oncoming sandstorm — not out of fear of the storm but out of fear of the krayt dragon that will come shortly after it passes. 

“So, allow me to spell it out for you clearly, as you seem to be somewhat slow on the uptake.” Obi-Wan takes a step forward. “I am the sandstorm — the first and only warning you will get.” He points to Anakin. “He is the krayt dragon. Your death, if you’re foolish.” 

Anakin speaks again. “Do you remember the first prison camp that was liberated? The one that burned down, all the way to its bones? Have you have wondered how the first fire started?” His blue eyes are inscrutable. If Padme didn’t know him, she would be trembling. “I found a laboratory in the prison, where Separatist scientists came to study clones and try to find any weaknesses that could be exploited. They hoped to take their discoveries and weaponize them against the rest of the GAR. They dissected men — sometimes alive.” A slow, cold smile spreads across his face. “And I saw it, and would you like to hear what I did? I used the Force to ignite the oxygen inside the scientists’ lungs as they tried to tell me to stand down, else they'd cut up the few of our boys in that lab that were still alive. They burned, from the inside out. Can you imagine what sort of death that is?” At that, he takes a jerking step forward, and the lieutenant scrambles back, breath coming in fits and starts. 

“Do you see where you stand now?” asks Obi-Wan. “If you or any of your men makes a single scrap of trouble, we’ll rain fire down on you — and we won’t even need to use our destroyer to do it. If a single clone dies, then we don’t even use the guns. We’ll just let the Huttslayer do what he does best. Understand?” 

 Slowly, the lieutenant nods. 

Obi-Wan smiles once more. “Good. Then drop your weapons and tell your men inside the complex to do the same. And if they happen to think they’re safe behind those security doors…” He draws his lightsaber and ignites it. It burns through the air, melting the flakes of snow that drift lazily down from the sky and touch its blade. “Remind them who they’re up against.” 

It only takes the lieutenant a few moments to do as Obi-Wan asks, but Padme holds her breath anyway — she always does, no matter how many times they play out this same scenario and win. Only when the thumps of the guards’ guns sound out on the muddy ground and the main door of the complex rumbles open does she release it. She holds it again when a squad of clones, led by Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Rex moves into the complex while the other clones and Mandalorians secure the guards outside. When the first captured clone emerges into the wane, wintery light — thin and weak and exhausted but alive — she exhales once more. 

Anakin catches her eyes as she does, a bright grin rising on his face. “Comm Snips,” he calls to her from across the yard. “Tell her it’s finally safe to come down.” He glances at the ever-growing group of freed clones, who have automatically fallen into squads. “Rex says they need a little padawan.” 

# # # 

The Temple feels as frayed as the worn hem of Qui-Gon’s tabard — just barely held together. If it’s plucked at all, it will unravel. It’s quiet too. Qui-Gon has lived in the Temple for as long as he can remember, and the Force, weaving in and out of its endless corridors, has always buzzed with the thoughts, feelings, and mental conversations of thousands of Jedi. It’s the background noise of his life. 

But it is muted now, as though cotton has been crammed in his ears. It puts him off balance. 

Lying to members of the Council is surely not the answer. It tears more holes in the already fragile fabric of the Temple’s atmosphere. 

Qui-Gon does it anyway. 

“I don’t know where Tholme is,” he says as he sits crosslegged on one of the hassocks scattered about Yoda’s apartment in the Temple. Yoda is rarely in it nowadays, so often is he called away by the war or by the continuing relief efforts going on throughout the city, but today, he found time to retire to it and summon Qui-Gon. 

Yoda gives him a look that conveys volumes of doubt. In spite of the fact that Qui-Gon has earned it a thousand times over, though Yoda doesn’t know this, it stings. “Hard to believe, I find that.” 

Qui-Gon throws down his metaphorical idiot’s array. “Since when have I lied to you, Grandmaster?” 

Yoda’s ears twitch. “Wondering about that, I find myself.” 

Yes, Qui-Gon supposes the scene Yoda witnessed in the Council Room — his secret family, which had built itself up around Tahl and Qui-Gon himself, if only incidentally, and shattered following her death, reforming the instant crisis struck — had been telling. With them, Qui-Gon has always been an entirely different person, and that day was the first time Yoda met that man. It is as good a reason as any for Yoda to doubt him.

Even so, a spike of anger cuts through Qui-Gon. “With all due respect, Grandmaster, that is beyond my control. I can assure you I haven’t changed.” I am just as big a liar as I have ever been. “And I can assure you that if I knew where he was, I would tell you. I was just as worried as you were when he didn’t return with the other Shadows that were sent out.” Another lie, but this one at least is amusing — to Qui-Gon, if no one else. He wasn’t at worried when Tholme didn’t come home because Tholme had told him, back when the smoke from the bombs was still rising in the air, that he wouldn’t be returning unless it was with Quinlan. 

And the implicit demand in that statement was that Qui-Gon, as a member of the Council, would prevent the powers that be from dragging him back home. 

Yoda tips his head to one side. “Approve the initial mission, I did not.” 

“Of course you didn’t.” Qui-Gon drums his fingers on his knees. He has other duties to complete. Unlike Yoda, he’s stealing time from other things to be here. “I did. I’m a Council member. I’ve the authority.” 

“Yes,” agrees Yoda. “But have the authority to extend Shadow missions without Council approval, you do not.” 

The hot spike of anger sinks deeper into Qui-Gon’s chest. He pulls in a slow breath to steady himself. He does not break in front of Yoda. There are things Yoda can manage — the Order being one of them — and things he cannot, such as the truth. “I didn’t extend anything. Why —” 

“If true, that is,” says Yoda quietly, “why send encrypted transmission to Master Tholme, did you? Contain, what did it?” 

Qui-Gon’s next deep breath dies in his throat. “You…” He exhales a trembling laugh. A time nearly five full decades past rises up and seizes him — Dooku, having all his passcodes, searching through his things, barging into his rooms whenever he wished, inserting himself into every area of Qui-Gon’s life that he didn’t guard like a rabid akul. “You hacked my datapad?” 

“Know the passcode, I do,” replies Yoda. He at least has the decency to look away when he speaks next. “Know you well, I do. Hard to guess, it was not.” 

Qui-Gon makes fists on his knees. “Grandmaster — Yoda, why —” 

“Sent a transmission to Tholme, you did. Friends, you are. Out of contact with the Council, he is. Say to him, what did you?” 

“I told him to be careful.” 

Yoda’s eyes narrow. “Lie, that was.” 

Every muscle in Qui-Gon’s body turns rigid. This is a game Dooku played with him a hundred thousand times. He would pretend ignorance, pretend the conversation was about something else, and catch Qui-Gon in a lie or a misstep. And then — then the game changed, and there was only ever one winner. 

Yoda’s version of the game never left bruises behind. He wasn’t that sort of person. But Qui-Gon supposes Dooku must have learned at least the rudiments of the game from someone. 

Qui-Gon takes another deep, steadying breath. The best way to play the game — never win it, that was impossible — was to never give up information you didn’t have to. Of course, being cagey was a sure way to lose the game. An impossible balance had to be struck. 

And Qui-Gon finds he doesn’t have the energy today. “If you know what I said, then tell me.” 

“Not to worry about returning to the Temple with the other Shadows, you told him. Handle the Council, you said you would.”

Qui-Gon clenches his jaw. “And?” 

Yoda’s hoary eyebrows climb up his forehead. “‘And’? All you have to say, that is?” His clawed hands knit together in his lap. “How often, lied to me have you? How often handled the Council, have you?” 

A choked laugh surprises Qui-Gon. It takes him a moment to realize it came from his own mouth. “You realize that’s a purposeless question, don’t you? You’ve caught me in a lie, just now, but you still expect me to tell you the truth about how many lies I’ve told you in the past?” 

“Little one —” 

Qui-Gon stands up sharply. All at once, the entire thing is absurd. Little one. As though Qui-Gon hadn’t left boyhood behind more decades ago than he cares to admit. For a being so old, Yoda has never grasped the unstoppable march of time. “All that tells me is you still trust me. So unless you want to take this to the Council —” and Obi-Wan’s challenge from months previously echoes through his mind like a rung bell “— then we have nothing more to say to each other.” 

Yoda tips his head back to look at Qui-Gon. “Their birthdays, your passcode was,” he says. “Obi-Wan’s, Siri’s, Bant’s, Sian’s, Quinlan’s, and…” He looks down at his hands. “Xanatos’s.” 

Qui-Gon just stares at him. It is strange to think Yoda knows all their birthdates too. It isn’t the sort of thing Jedi are encouraged to remember — not about particular people. It is less strange to think Yoda guessed the passcode so easily. When he chooses to, he knows Qui-Gon very well. “What of it?” 

“Of Adi, I keep thinking,” replies Yoda. “Of how you spoke to her.” His eyes, not yet fogged with cataracts despite his age, rise to meet Qui-Gon’s. “Of how you spoke to Mace. To the padawans.” He calls the girls padawans still, though they haven’t been so for years now. “Recognize you, I did not. Understand any of it, I did not. Stranger, you were.” 

If only Yoda knew. “I comforted a dying woman.” 

“Tried to die with her, you did.” 

“Sacrifice is the Jedi way.” 

“In that way, it is not.” 

“No.” Qui-Gon turns and makes his way to the door. As it slides open at his approach, he pauses, wondering if Yoda will stop him. With the Force, he could. With words, he also could. Qui-Gon thinks he would still listen. “No, the Jedi way rarely involves sacrificing yourself.” He looks back over his shoulder. “It’s always someone else.” 

And then he walks out, letting the door whoosh shut behind him. 

For so long, he’s been afraid of Yoda discovering a truth — not the truth, just any truth Qui-Gon has hidden away — but it turns out he needn’t have been. Yoda just held a lie he told him in both hands and let it go. Nothing will come of this. Tholme will come home when he pleases and not a second earlier. Perhaps he will even have caught Quinlan, as he plans to. 

And through it all, Yoda will close his ears and eyes to everything, until it is too late to do anything.

As he always has. 

# # # 

Quinlan leaps through a plume of fire, calling on the Force to stifle the flames that lick at the parts of his robes not protected by his black armor. On the other side of the fire, the remnants of the temporary camp set up to hold a complement of captured clones until they could be divvied up among the mining stations and droid factories who needed more labor is visible. The retaining walls have been shattered — mostly by charges Quinlan didn’t clock. 

There’s only two people in the whole galaxy who can slip something past him: Tholme or Aayla. 

And Tholme’s plans — they’re elegant. A knife wound that isn’t seen or felt until blood is already pouring out. 

Aayla doesn’t plan. She’s told him so a thousand times, and he spent the vast majority of her childhood hoping and praying she turned out like Tholme in the end. 

She hadn’t. As a result, her actions as a Shadow resemble a skilled jazz artist. She can play the field like no one else. She can make the impossible happen. But she never knows what’s coming next, and she can never replicate it when asked. 

His working theory is she’s unkillable — immortal, perhaps — but that didn’t stop his heart from almost stalling in his chest every time she went out on a mission. It’s better now. Now that she has Bly — and she thought she hid that little development in her life from him, just like she thought she hid the fact that she changed everything about herself solely to ensure the Council would never take her from him — his heart beats at a more even rhythm. 

Bly plans. 

And Bly’s handiwork is evident in the way the charges have also crippled the transport ship he and Ventress arrived on, as well as the two cargo ships that brought the clones. He’s cut off their escape route; he probably decided to do it that moment he realized that two of the most valuable fighters in the Separatist Alliance were on-world. 

How Quinlan wishes Bly weren’t quite so quick on the uptake. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He leaked the location of this camp — carefully, in a way that couldn’t be traced back to him — in the hopes that Obi-Wan’s specialized battalion would come for them. Before they were spread out across Separatist space, but ideally after he and Ventress left. 

Aayla and her battalion weren’t even supposed to be here.

But now Aayla is thirty feet from him, locked in combat with Ventress as flames roar all around them, the retaining walls of the camp crumble, and knots of clones — mixed freed captives and 327th rescuers — rush toward the evac ships that Bly had arranged in a radar blindspot outside the camp, caused by interference generated by flora native to the nondescript moon the Separatists thought was outside of the Republic’s notice.

The Republic’s, maybe. 

Not Aayla’s. 

For a horrible second, Quinlan freezes. He freezes in place as the chaotic scrum of a battle wheels around him and droids jostle around him and clones rush past him, some casting wide eyes in his direction like they can’t believe an enemy Force user is just standing there, letting them. 

Ventress’s dual lightsabers are scarlet blurs as she fights, but in the past six months, Quinlan has grown adept at reading her movements. They’ve sparred often enough and fought side by side often enough that he can tell when she’s fighting to kill. 

At the moment, she is not fighting to kill.

Four months previously, she had propped herself up on one elbow on her berth in the quarters they’d come to share on her flagship and asked, “Your padawan. Aayla Secura. What’s she like?” 

Ventress so rarely asked personal questions — or indeed, questions at all — that it pulled Quinlan from his almost doze as he lay on his bedroll on the floor beside her berth. He didn’t bother to probe at why Ventress had asked the question; she wouldn’t answer. It was easier to just give her the information she was looking for. “She’s… She’s this fierce little — well, she’s not little anymore, she shot up, a few years ago — twi’lek. Best person you’ll ever meet. A lot like me, unfortunately, but kinder. Gentler.” He gave a little half-smile. “Soft, you know? She tries to hide it, but…” But she couldn’t, which stopped being endearing when the war began and became a liability that made him sick to his stomach. “Most prideful little beast you’ll ever meet, though. Sometimes, I’d tell her a skill she needed to practice or call her out when she kriffed up, and she’d not speak to me for days. Can’t stand to be wrong.” 

Ventress took the information in with the same quiet unreadability — which had been slowly shifting into something he could read the longer he spent with her, though he didn’t think she was aware of the shift — as she always did. Then she said, “I meant, what does she look like?” 

That made Quinlan smile. Trust Ventress to only seek out of the most practical of information. “Why, ‘Tress?” 

She gave him a flat look. “Guess.” 

And then he had. She wanted to know, if she ever met Aayla in battle. 

She wanted to know if she ever crossed blades with someone Quinlan cared about. 

Ventress didn’t talk about her feelings much, but it wasn’t hard to see them if you bothered to look past the surface. In the end, she was quite a lot like Sian: how much she cared was exceedingly obvious in her every action. 

So he told her. And then he told her what Sian, Bant, and Siri looked like, though he doubted — hoped, prayed — she would never meet them in battle. Ventress already knew what Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan looked like, but he described Tholme. Just in case. 

And as an afterthought, he described Mace, who Ventress already knew of vaguely from his role in the Battle of Geonosis. The Separatists weren’t liable to forget the man who had beheaded Jango Fett, but she had never seen him personally. 

He almost described Adi, on pure instinct, before he remembered. 

So Ventress knows, at this moment, exactly who she’s fighting. 

And — oh Light — she’s trying so hard not to hurt Aayla. It’s written in every move she makes, in the same way that Aayla’s haste and fury are written in her every move. She’s lost all discipline since Quinlan saw her last. Six months ago, she was a picture of precision. Perfect Jedi detachment, perfect Jedi technique. 

And now — now, Quinlan has already seen five openings where Ventress could have killed her in a single strike and chose not to. 

How often had he drilled into her head that a battle was not a place for emotion? 

How often had he told her to leave her grief or anger in the salles where it belonged and bring only her will to survive into a real fight? 

This. This is why he begged Tholme to make her a Shadow. She is not built for a straightforward battle. She is not a duelist. She is not a soldier. 

But the Jedi Order has made her a general. 

And here she is, stealing ground from Ventress until she is all but trapped against one of the plasteel shanties where the clones were being held. 

There is a field of fire between him and Ventress and Aayla — too thick and varied to run through without his clothes catching. It’s hot and fierce: borne from the spilled fuel reserves meant to feed the camp generators. 

It’s separating him from them. 

And did it even matter, in the end? He couldn’t fight Aayla. He already knew that. 

He’d let her kill him first. 

As the fire rages, Aayla closes the last of the distance between her and Ventress. Ventress jerks back, lurching toward the shanty behind her, surely intending to jump to the roof to escape, but Aayla is faster. Her boot comes up and slams into the side of Ventress’s knee. Ventress stumbles but keeps her footing; she is too much a duelist to fall from a single kick. 

But Aayla is too much of a brawler — courtesy of Quinlan — to stop at one kick. In the split second before Ventress fully recovers her balance, Aayla drives her boot into Ventress’s other knee. Another stagger sideways, a snarl of pain, and a sloppy swipe of her lightsaber from Ventress. Aayla twists beneath the red blade, getting behind Ventress’s failing guard. Her elbow flashes and thrusts backward into Ventress’s ribs. Another twist, lekku flying, and Aayla thrusts the heel of her hand into Ventress’s throat. 

Quinlan’s own breath spasms. 

Ventress stumbles away from Aayla, back hitting the shanty behind her. Then Aayla’s moving again, hooking one foot behind Ventress’s unguarded right leg and yanking it back hard enough to sweep Ventress’s feet out from under her. She falls in a single, horrible moment, cracking her head against the shanty wall and ending up on her back on the gravelly ground. 

Ever the warrior, she still has her lightsabers, gripped tightly in both hands. She brings them up, crossing over her midsection for defense, but Aayla learned to fight dirty. 

Because of Quinlan, once again. 

She never even looks at Ventress’s neck or even her middle. Instead, she lays the blade of her saber near Ventress’s hip and waits. Vividly, Quinlan recalls teaching her how to subdue an enemy. 

Everyone’ll always worry about their middle — hearts, lungs, and such — but the funny thing about the spinal cord, Short Stuff, is it goes all the way down, head to tail. 

With a lightsaber, you can get real creative. 

There isn’t time to wait and see if Aayla really would kill Ventress out of hand. Besides, Quinlan doesn’t need to wait to know the truth. This is Aayla. Adi is dead. Coruscant is cratered with bombs scars. 

Of course she would kill Ventress — twisted Separatist, acolyte of Dooku. 

The blood Aayla imagines is on Ventress’s hands will be all she can see. 

“Aayla!” He screams her name across the fire and through the smoke. He screams it through the Force as well, and it is enough. 

It’s always enough. Aayla, for all she likes to pretend she’s outgrown him, doesn’t know how to ignore him. 

Blade still pressed close enough to Ventress’s clothes that she doesn’t dare move, Aayla turns to look at him. Even this far away, Quinlan can see the flames reflected in her angular eyes. He can see the other flames — the ones she lit within herself — in them too. 

There is a moment of pure silence.

Then there is a moment that is like an explosion — Aayla, launching herself at him in a blur of movement and with a howl of fury. In the seconds before she hits him, Quinlan has time to think that it’s a good thing he’s on this battlefield, rather than anyone else. At this moment, Aayla is not someone who will survive a real fight of any kind. 

Too young. She’s too young. He knew that when he cut the string of silka beads that stood in for her padawan braid. Twenty was too young. Twenty-one was still too young. 

Light, when I put her through the trials, I was sending her to her death and didn’t even know it. 

How many of Aayla’s generation of Jedi would survive the war? Not many. Maybe not any. 

Maybe most, if Quinlan has anything to say about it. 

Aayla crashes into him, headlong and heedless. It is almost funny, how much her attack resembles the hugs she used to give him — before the Jedi Council forced her to cut away all the parts of herself he loved best, like she was a rosebush pruning off all her most beautiful blooms. 

If Quinlan wanted to hurt her, he could drive his lightsaber into her unguarded side then and there, as they collide, ribcage to ribcage. He doesn’t. Instead, he lets himself tumble away from her and lands on his back. Gravel digs into his spine. There is bare second to pull air back into his aching, burning lungs before Aayla’s lightsaber is under his chin and her boot is pressing down on his wrist, preventing him from lifting his saber arm. 

“Master,” she spits out through clenched teeth. 

He tips his head back to look at her. What possessed him to train her from padawan to knight? He should have taken her from the Temple years ago. And if Obi-Wan and the others had refused to come, then he should have left them. Wasn’t Aayla supposed to be his priority? He had failed her.

Of course, Tholme had never left for him. 

The idea that Tholme might have failed him isn’t one Quinlan can face at the moment. 

“‘La,” he replies. She’s put her back to Ventress now. Holy Light above, she’s going to get herself killed. This is not what he taught her. Peering around her, he catches Ventress’s eye. She’s picking herself back up, a wet redness spreading across the taut skin of her scalp as it seeps out from a split in her temple. Her sabers are held in both hands, and she is a humming string of tension as she lays her gaze on him and Aayla. Don’t, ‘Tress, he thinks. Don’t save me. 

If he dies, it’s here and now, by Aayla’s hand. The other option is to fight her, and that’s something he’ll just never do. 

There is one thing Ventress could do to make him kill her without thought or warning, and that’s attack Aayla. 

Judging by her stillness, she knows that. 

Oh, ‘Tress. You’re going to get yourself killed out here too. 

“That’s it?” Aayla’s voice cracks like a rotten board under his feet, threatening to thrust him into an abyss. “That’s all you have to say?” 

“You kind of knocked the wind out of me.” 

She hisses out a swear in Huttese. “You — you let me. You’re not this bad. You let me push —” 

“‘Course I did.” 

She hisses again. “Why? You attacked Obi, so why —” 

“You’re not him.” 

“Sith-bedder, he’s mine. All of them are mine, and you betrayed them, so you betrayed me, and I —” She shoves the blade of her saber closer to his neck. It burns. “I should kill you.” 

It makes something warm and painful unfold behind his ribs to hear her describe family in the same was he always did when she was growing up. Mine. Touch them, and deal with me. “Then do it.” 

Her lips tremble. “Why? Why did you do it?” 

The truth is the only recourse. “To save you.” 

“To — you bombed Coruscant!” 

“You weren’t there.” 

“But Tholme and the others —” 

“They’re not you. They made their choice.” This is also true. Over and over, he, Tholme, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and all of them made their choice: stay with the Order. Train their padawans and their initiates. Keep the cycle going. 

Watch me now, Yoda. Watch me shatter it. Quinlan studies Aayla, taking in the line of her jaw, which has sharpened since the start of the war. She’s not eating enough. At least Bly has persuaded her to wear more armor than she once did, but more of her skin is visible than he ever wanted the galaxy at large to be privy to. He knows why she wears the clothes she does. Being a free twi’lek weighs heavily on her. It always has. 

Aayla’s shoulders heave as she breathes heavily. Behind her, Ventress still doesn’t move, and the fires keep raging. By now, most of the clone prisoners have evacuated. Aayla’s battalion has done their job, and very soon, they will turn their focus on retrieving their general. Whether or not they’ll also be retrieving Quinlan’s own body still remains to be seen. 

With a sharp jerk, Aayla steps back, taking her boot off Quinlan’s wrist and giving him space to rise. “Get up,” she snaps. Her sharp canine teeth show as she speaks. “Fight me.” 

My stupid, stupid girl. She thinks he’s a traitor to everything she has ever known, to the family he folded around her, and still she feels safe enough with him to believe he will give her a fair fight. 

The worst thing is he is a better duelist than she is, and she knows it. She just refuses to believe it. 

Do you think your anger will save you, little one? It’s going to kill you. I taught you better than this. 

“No.” He climbs slowly to his feet, back aching from a dozen pinpoint bruises the gravel left behind. “I’m not going to fight you, ‘La. If you’re going to kill me, do it now.” 

She gives a raw, furious howl in response, and for a split second, he is unmoored from the present, thrown back in time to an era when Aayla was four and he was sixteen and trying to manage one of her tantrums. Tantruming was still so new to her back then, and like she did with everything else, she threw herself into learning the new skill. 

“I won’t kill you like this,” she hisses when her howl dies away. “I’ll fight you honorably. I’m not you.” 

Quinlan restrains a snort at this. Honorable battle. There is no such thing. He certainly didn’t teach her that there was. This — this is Obi-Wan’s influence. Mandalore taught him a good many things, but the idea that a woman Aayla’s size could engage in so-called honorable combat was the stupidest of them all. 

“I’m not going to fight you,” he repeats. “That would sort of defeat the point of everything, wouldn’t it?” 

“Stop.” Her voice is hoarse. “Stop pretending that everything’s the same. Stop pretending —” Her eyes dance sideways, toward some point behind Quinlan and off to the side. They betray her, at the same time as Ventress, one hand pressed to her bleeding temple, cries, “Vos, behind you!” 

Before she even has time to inhale to shout again, a blaster shot rings out. The bolt catches her in the side and spins her around, dumping her onto the hard ground again. Quinlan whirls around, trusting Aayla won’t take the opportunity to sever his spine — though she should, and if she had been listening when he trained her, she probably would have. 

As he turns, Bly meets his gaze, close enough for his blaster arm to stretch past Quinlan’s guard. The muzzle of his gun touches Quinlan’s forehead, and behind it, Bly’s face is harder than durasteel. “She won’t kill you,” he says in a steady voice, “but I will. Drop your weapon.” 

Behind Quinlan, gravel shifts as Aayla moves from behind him and flanks Bly on the side opposite to his gun arm. Her thin blue fingers find the crook of his elbow and curl into it. There is an intimacy laced in the movement that Quinlan recognizes from his memories of Qui-Gon and Tahl. They were discreet when outside their respective apartments or Tholme’s own apartment, but Quinlan saw them in those unguarded moments often enough to know what it looked like when two people shared the same bed. 

Oh, ‘La. What had happened to her curling her lip at the very thought of trusting someone who wasn’t in the family? What happened to her disdain of all the boy padawans she grew up with? 

Apparently she was just waiting for a Mandalorian.

But marriage — and it could only be marriage because that was how Aayla worked — now? ‘La, ‘La, you stopped being smart. 

The only thing that makes Aayla stupid is family. Is love. And Quinlan knows exactly what prompted this particular leap into the dark: him, leaving. 

So in a way, it’s all his fault, which, he has to admit, is a comfortingly familiar arrangement. 

What was it Tholme had said about parenting once? One way or another, you will always find a way to blame yourself. 

“So that’s how it is, hey?” He aches to look over his shoulder and check on Ventress, but he doesn’t dare take his eyes off Bly. “You move fast, trooper,” he tells Bly. “Barely a year off Kamino, and you’ve already got yourself the loveliest scion of the Order. I’m sure all your brothers are very jealous.” 

“Don’t talk about her like that,” snaps Bly, which is how Quinlan hoped he would react. He knows so little of the clones, given his role in the war, and he knows even less about Bly. Will you protect Aayla? Quinlan wonders. Will you die for her? “In fact, don’t talk at all.” 

“I’m not coming quietly.” Bly, Quinlan can fight. A clone isn’t hard to put down nonlethally — not in the way another Jedi is. He lifts his lightsaber. “I’m not coming at all. My work here’s not done.” 

Before Bly can respond, Ventress manages to drag herself to her feet and take a few staggering steps forward. Her blaster wound seems mostly sealed, judging by the lack of blood, but she holds one hand pressed against her side. 

Her movement finally draws Aayla’s eye, and if she were still a padawan and he were still part of the Order, Quinlan would lay into her for her lack of awareness. You could die out here, ‘La. You could die in a moment. Light, you don’t even realize it, do you? 

Of all the qualities Quinlan hadn’t wanted to pass down to her, utter disbelief in her own mortality was right near the top of the list. 

“You’re not going to take him,” says Ventress. There is blood on her teeth; Quinlan’s stomach twists at the sight. On balance, he would much prefer that blood be spilling out of her, rather than finding places inside her where it shouldn’t be, but apparently today is not a day for getting what he wants. 

Aayla shakes her head. “You are in no condition to —” 

“Not me.” Ventress lifts a finger and points towards the bronze sky. “My master.” 

And that is when Quinlan goes cold. No. Surely, Ventress didn’t — she wouldn’t make that kind of gamble. 

Oh, who is he kidding? She would. Her life is a gamble, and she’s used to losing. 

“I activated my beacon,” she says. “When I started fighting you.” 

When she knew she wouldn’t be able to win because she would refuse to do so. 

For Quinlan’s sake. 

Loyalty in Ventress doesn’t grow like a tree — it grows like a kriffing weed. 

“He wasn’t far,” says Ventress. “He likes to interrogate the clone commanders himself.” 

And keep watch over us, she doesn’t add. 

“And you won’t execute Vos,” she goes on, “because the twi’lek won’t let you. And if you fight him, you’ll lose. And in the time it takes, my master will be here, and he will rain fire on your battalion from above. While he’s at it, I’m sure he’ll be glad to snatch another clone commander. And,” she adds, looking straight at Bly, “a Jedi Shadow, privy to who knows how much classified information. Aayla Secura, the Shadow with a foot in every battalion in the army — that’s what I’ve heard.” She flashes bloody teeth again. “You can have us, or you can have your lives. You can’t have both.” 

High in the sky, a bright dot appears, flaming and growing brighter by the second. 

Dooku’s flagship. 

“Aayla.” Her full name is strange in Quinlan’s mouth. “You need to leave. You need to leave now.” 

Aayla just stares at him. Tears — of grief or fury, Quinlan can’t tell — shine in her slanting eyes. “You have no loyalty left for anything. Not even the Separatists. You are not the person who raised —” 

“All the loyalty I have left,” says Quinlan, “goes to you. It all goes to you, Aayla.” 

She leans forward, all but spitting the words. “I don’t want it.” 

“The Republic is going to lose.” He’s never known those words to be more true than right now. “One way or another, Aayla, the Republic is going to lose. And the Order will be caught in the middle. I’m trying to save you. Please believe me.” 

“That’s the thing.” Aayla steps close to him — close enough for him to touch her, though he doesn’t. Heedless of Bly’s sudden intake of breath and his sharp, “Aayla, take care,” she reaches up and hooks her hand over the top of his breastplate, tugging him closer. Through bared teeth, she says, “I do believe you. I do believe you betrayed everyone to save me. That’s what is killing me.” She gives a wet laugh. “I wish you had never brought me to the Temple, if this was always going to be the ending. Light, I wish I were dead.” She steps back, letting him go. “I wish I were dead.” 

“Don’t say stupid things,” Quinlan says. He makes his voice harsh — maybe that will force her to listen. 

“Fine.” Aayla lifts her chin. “I wish you were dead.” 

Quinlan’s stomach sinks. “There. That’s better.” He steps back from her. “You’re out of time. You need to make a decision. Kill me and run, or just run.” He glances over Aayla’s shoulder at Ventress. “Only me, though. If you touch ‘Tress, I…” He honestly doesn’t know what he will do. 

This — this is why he fought so hard to keep everyone he cared about under one roof. The Temple wasn’t welcoming to families, but at the very least it kept them contained. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows Tahl would be shaking her head at him caring for Ventress. There are dangerous people in the galaxy — ones Tahl had never wanted him to keep company with — and Ventress is one of them. 

But Tahl had loved Qui-Gon, and Quinlan is starting to understand that perhaps Ventress is not so different from him. At the very least, both Qui-Gon and Ventress are dangerous, if only in different ways. He thinks — he isn’t sure, but he thinks — they could be equally ruthless, however. 

Sorry, Mama, he thinks. It’s your fault, in a way. All I ever saw you do was rescue people. 

Aayla takes a few steps back. “Bly,” she says. “Comm the our pilots. We’re pulling out. Emergency protocols.” 

To his credit, Bly only hesitates a second before he does as she asks. Quinlan doubts much, if any, of the idea of chain of command has survived between them, but Bly still has the good sense to know when not to argue with her. 

“This is Commander Bly,” he says into his comm. “Slavers in the sky. Scatter, scatter, scatter. Meet at the rendezvous point.” 

Quinlan smiles a little. Slavers in the sky. It is so very Aayla, but he suspects it is a new code, born from a Tatooian’s involvement in the GAR.

Anakin Skywalker has been whispering in the clones’ ears. Quinlan hears it everywhere, in the strange stories that fly around the prison camps — with a particular rhythm to them that is not Mandalorian and not Coruscanti and certainly not Kaminoan — and in the codenames that have shown up in the chatter the Separatists’ droids monitor. 

Tena. Ekkreth. Leia.  

Dropping his hand from the comm hooked around his ear, Bly adds, “Aayla. That means you too. If we’re going, we need to —” 

“I know.” Aayla lifts her chin and backs further away. “Next time I see you,” she says, “next time, I’ll —” She never finishes. Far above, the titanic noise of the thrusters on Dooku’s flagship grow louder. Beneath it, there’s the more muted sound of a gunship approached. Dust and smoke turn into a storm around Quinlan as a GAR gunship with a snarling mythosaur painted across its nose emerges from the smoke and lands not far from Bly and Aayla. The doors on the side closest to the two of them rattles open, revealing several other clones. They snap their blasters up at the sight of Quinlan and Ventress, but Aayla’s staying hand stops them from firing.

“I don’t understand,” she says in a cracked, broken voice that Quinlan can barely hear over the roar of the gunship’s engines. “I don’t understand. Just come home. Come home with me —” She cuts off as her mouth forms the shape of a word that isn’t Master, and Quinlan jerks his gaze sideways before he can read the word that is there. 

Because he thinks it would kill him.

Light, he can’t breathe. It is as though someone is standing on his chest, driving the heels of their boots through his ribs and toward his spine. “No.” 

And he might as well have stabbed her through the heart. 

When this is over — Light, when this is over, I’ll pick you up, I’ll never let you go, I’ll never stop saying I’m sorry — 

I will end this war for you, La-La. I will. 

“I hope you die,” spits Aayla. Bly pulls her toward the gunship; she lets him. “I hope you die screaming.” 

That is the Aayla he remembers. The one who spoke without thought, who said everything that came to her mind — whether or not she meant it or not. 

The one comfort he has is that he can still tell which is which, and that — that she did not mean. 

In another second, she’s on the gunship, and the doors have shunted shut. It takes off, arrowing up past the growing shape of Dooku’s flagship. Other gunships leave too, and true to Bly’s orders, they scatter. A few flights of fighters and gunships from Dooku’s dreadnought give chase, but Quinlan can already tell they won’t be successful. 

Aayla’s boys are adept at disappearing. She’s taught them well. 

In the relative quiet their departure left behind, there is just enough time to catch Ventress before she hits the ground. Wrapping both arms around her, Quinlan lowers himself into a kneeling position, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow. 

“Why’d you go and do that?” he asks around his tightening lungs. “Why’d you go and —” 

“You should stay away from her,” says Ventress, eyes going half-lidded as she slips toward unconsciousness. “She makes you lose your head.” 

“You’re going to make me lose my head, you infernal —” Quinlan cuts himself off and focuses on pulling a stim shot out of the belt at his waist. He jabs it in her neck, but it doesn’t stop her eyes from drifting shut and her body from going limp. It does steady her shallow breathing somewhat. Holding her close, he presses his forehead against hers. “Thank you.” 

And thank the Light you’re still alive. 

Being alone out here, in Dooku’s clutches, is a nightmare Quinlan doesn’t particularly want to contemplate. 

As for Dooku himself, it takes less than fifteen minutes for his personal transport to emerge from the flagship and land at the edge of the scene of devastation. Quinlan doesn’t bother looking up as Dooku crunches his way over gravel and rubble to his and Ventress’s side; he just tracks him by sound and by the simmering volcano that is his presence in the force. Over the past months, Quinlan’s memorized it. 

It hasn’t been a pleasant experience. 

Only when Dooku’s footsteps stop next to him does he look up, hunching low over Ventress to hide her from Dooku. He is watching them both with the particular curl to his lips that usually spells the sort of trouble Quinlan doesn’t think Ventress would survive at the moment. 

“You’re not going to believe me,” he says, forcing a lopsided smile to his face — because if there’s one thing Dooku hates, it’s crawling. “But this one really was all my fault.” When Dooku doesn’t respond and keeps staring down at them, he adds, “If you don’t want to lose your apprentice, you need to —” 

“She will recover on my flagship,” interrupts Dooku. 

Quinlan braces himself. “And where will I be?” 

“I have a job for you. A bounty hunter named Cade Bane — he’s set to bring me a package. You’re going to meet him on Corellia and pick it up.” 

Leaving Ventress alone is not an option, but this is not a world where Quinlan has choices. “That’s it?”  

“Would you like it not to be?” 

Not particularly. Quinlan manages to get to his feet, lifting Ventress with him. She’s a wiry creature but still light enough that carrying her isn’t too difficult. She’s limp in his arms, an uncharacteristically soft expression on her face. Even Ventress can’t be suspicious in her sleep. “You’ll take care of her?” 

The look Dooku gives him is equal parts cold and exasperated. “That is none of your concern.” 

“I’m making it mine.” A little half-laugh finds its way out of his throat. “It’s not like the ice I’m on can get any thinner, yeah? I just lost you a whole lot of credits and a whole lot of prisoners, all at once. So I’m asking. You’ll take care of her?” 

Now Dooku is pitying. “Attachments will not serve you, apprentice. They will not save the Jedi you care about. They will only lead you to failure.” 

Quinlan clenches his jaw, until his molars all but crack under the pressure. “You should be telling yourself that. I was there, when you sent the Death Watch to attack Satine Kryze’s ship. You told your master you were only getting the clones back and wiping Duchess Satine off the board, but really, it was all about snatching Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Wasn’t it?” 

Dooku actually laughs, and it’s the sort of sound that makes the little hairs on the back of Quinlan’s neck stand straight up. “You get one chance,” he says. “Just one. That was it. Say something like that again, and I’ll find your padawan — your little Aayla — and I’ll kill her right in front of you.” He leans closer. “See, I know your weaknesses too, apprentice. And unlike you, I’m actually able to do something about them.” 

Quinlan draws in a short, sharp breath and doesn’t let his eyes leave Dooku’s face. “So I guess I’m going to Corellia.” 

Dooku smiles. “I suppose you are.” 

# # # 

Most nights — long after much of the rest of the Temple has retired — Jocasta finds herself in her Archive. Technically, it is the Temple’s Archive. The grand repository of all known Jedi knowledge and history, the Archive is a sprawling warren of a place, located almost in the exact center of the Temple. It dates back to when the Temple was built; in fact, much of the Temple grew up around it. 

Sometimes, Jocasta feels as though much of the Temple grew up around her. That isn’t true, of course, but something about being head archivist has made everyone except perhaps Yoda forget that she was once young, was once a padawan, was once just another Jedi Knight among thousands. 

But now — now she is the Archivist. She is Madame Jocasta Nu, and nothing touches her. 

Perhaps the reason for all this is that she began to believe her own myth. Perhaps it led her to let her guard down at a crucial moment, to not be watching her back for just long enough for a changeling to slip past her. 

The changeling only fooled her for a moment — just long enough for Jocasta to let her unlock the restricted section of the archives, using the face she had stolen. It was that of a male Jedi Master that Jocasta knew relatively well. 

That is what gave the changeling away, in the end. The wrongness in how she held her facsimile body. The way she didn’t smile right when Jocasta called out to her. 

If it had just been her, Jocasta could have stopped what happened next. 

How many times, in decades long past, had her, Yan’s, and Sifo-Dyas’s respective masters told the three of them to always mind their blind spots? There was nothing more dangerous than something that could not be seen. 

Never keep your back turned, her master had told her. Always be watching. Always have Yan or Sifo-Dyas at your back. This was before the Clone Wars, but it was not a safe galaxy — not remotely. It was a galaxy rife with the tensions that had exploded into Galidraan and the ensuing Mandalorian civil war, and it was a galaxy slowly being poisoned by the Hutts’s rise to power on the Outer Rim, spreading out from their long-standing bases on Nal Hutta and Tatooine. It was a galaxy full of bounty hunters realizing that a Jedi — well, a Jedi was a good pay day. 

It has been over fifty years since Jocasta was an apprentice, but nothing at all has changed, except for the fact that Sifo-Dyas is dead and Yan is beyond her reach. 

Which is why the stun blast takes her in the back while she has the changeling cornered just inside the restricted archives. It’s why, when she spins around with blurred vision and slashes her saber in the direction of the blast, another shot — this time from the changeling — sends her to her knees. It’s why when it finally occurs to her to call out, in a faint and breathless voice that would not have been heard even if she had (like Yoda has been telling her to do for years) taken on an apprentice to help her with her duties, no one hears. 

As Jocasta slumps back against one of the tall holocron banks that form the warren of the restricted section, a tall Duros man steps into view. A long leather duster sweeps about his legs, and a broad-brimmed hat shadows his bulging red eyes. Spurs chink gently as he moves to stand over her. “She’s down,” he says to the changeling in a thick, twanging accent that sounds like it was grown out of the Rim. “No thanks to you. Get the holocron.” 

The changeling melts back into her original form and gifts the Duros a snarl. “I could’ve handled her on my own, Cad, if you’d only let me —” 

The Duros — Cad — drops into a crouch beside Jocasta, keeping his blaster trained on her. “Killing her ain’t the job, schutta,” he said. “It’s the opposite. Now, go. ‘Fore some Jedi finds out we’re here and sounds the alarm.” 

The changeling hisses at him before stalking off into the depths of the restricted section. Adrenaline pierces the fog of the stun blasts. 

Her archive. Interlopers in her archive. Jocasta surges to her feet — or almost does. A blaster ends up beneath her chin before she can, and a stun blast hits her in the face point blank. It almost does her in; it’s only years of training (she, Sifo-Dyas, and Yan ran so many stun blast drills together, hoping to become as impervious to them as was possible to be) that keeps her awake. Even so, everything turns blurred and indistinct, like chalk dust in the rain. 

“That’s right,” says Cad in a low voice. “Just stay down, m’lady. If you die, I ain’t gon’ get paid.”

Jocasta draws in a deep breath, trying to wake herself up. “I don’t understand.” 

“Somebody up there’s lookin’ out for you.” Cad grins out from beneath the brim of his hat. “I wouldn’t’ve thought you were his type, but hell, I guess love’s blind.” He leans closer and whispers, “What did you do to catch Count Dooku’s eye, then?” 

Jocasta’s stomach drops. Of course. Of course. Just because Yan left the Temple doesn’t mean anything’s over. Nothing with him has ever ended; he is something that keeps happening to her, to Qui-Gon, to the Temple at large. “What does he want?” 

Cad shrugs. “Some holocron. I didn’t ask. I don’t care.” He settles her back more comfortably against the wall. “There — better, ain’t it? Old bird like you, shouldn’t even be workin’ at this hour.” 

Swallowing to wet her paper-dry throat, Jocasta says, “Please. The Order can pay you far more than —” 

“I fill my contracts,” replies Cad. “That’s why people keep hirin’ me. And I promise that whoever’s bankrolling the old Count is more solvent than the Order.” Movement to Jocasta’s left tells her the changeling has returned, even before Cad shifts his attention to her. “You get it?” 

“What do you take me for?” says the changeling coolly. “What about her?” 

“We leave her.” Cad stands up. “Just like we was paid to do. You set the charges?” 

“I did.” 

“Good.” Without warning, Cad swoops Jocasta up into his arms. Adrenaline spikes again; she pounds her fists against his chest and tries to twist free, but the stun blasts are still doing their good work, freezing up her muscles and making her movements sluggish. 

Cad doesn’t carry her far — just out into the main part of the quiet archive. He lays her in the shelter of one of the tables where visitors to the Archive can do research. This table in particular is a favorite of padawans, since it is near one of the Archive’s few windows and is drenched in sunlight during the day. Jocasta lost count of the times she, Yan, and Sifo-Dyas fell asleep at this same table during their frenetic two years as senior padawans, and then, because the Light saw fit to let her witness history’s tendency to repeat itself, she had often found Qui-Gon, Tahl, and Tholme likewise asleep at this same table, research scattered all around them. 

With a lurch, Jocasta manages to reach up and snatch hold of the front of Cad’s duster. He gives her fist a single, disinterested look before stunning her again. As the blast washes over her, she tightens her grip, using the way her body seizes up to her advantage. “Leave —” she forces breath into her half-paralyzed chest. “Leave my archive alone.” 

Cad untwists her hand from his duster and drops it back at her side. With a half-incredulous look on his face, he says, “No. Now, I’d stay here, if I was you.” To the changeling, he adds, “Move out.” 

Jocasta doesn’t see them go, but then again, she didn’t really see them enter. Probably, they used the ventilation shafts; with how catastrophic it would be if the Archive servers overheated, this part of the Temple is extremely well-ventilated. 

A hole in security. But who would rob a glorified library? 

Who would order — and pay — two mercenaries not to kill her? 

Only one name comes to her mind because there is indeed only one man who would do both those things. 

“Yan.” Jocasta drags in another breath. “You —” 

The restricted section explodes. The titanic noise of it all rolls through the Archive like a breaking wave. Melted plasteel and dust billow through the section’s narrow archway and send debris raining down on Jocasta as she hunches behind the table. At the same time as the thunder of the explosion dies away, alarms begin screaming out all over the Temple. The lights in the Archive flare red all at once. 

In the bloodstained light, Jocasta drags herself onto her knees and peers over the edge of the table at the restricted section. It’s all but destroyed. Even the archway is hardly recognizable. 

A trembling exhale falls from Jocasta’s mouth. Her knuckles turn white as she grips the table for support. 

Her Archive. Her home. 

All that Yan had left her when he abandoned the Temple and then murdered Sifo-Dyas (no one had believed he could have done that; Jocasta had always known, if only because there was no one else in the galaxy who could get past Sifo-Dyas’s guard long enough to kill him). 

When the Jedi Guardians outside the Archive rush inside on the heels of the explosion, they find her first, picking their way through the wreckage to pull her to her feet. One gets in front of her, and his voice — young, so young, was she ever that young? — emanates from his mask, full of tightly controlled worry. 

“Madame Jocasta!” He grips her by the shoulders. Dust falls from her like powder and drifts down from above like snow. “Madame Jocasta, are you all right? Are you hurt?” 

Feeling like a woman in a dream, Jocasta pulls her attention from her burning library and puts it on the Guardian. “Qui-Gon,” she says. “Get me Qui-Gon Jinn.” 

# # # 

The stench of burned holocrons and melted plasteel is thick in Qui-Gon’s nose as he strides into the Archive, pushing past the Guardians and Knights that are picking through the wreckage of the restricted section. He only allows himself a split second to stare at it, to stare at the banks of holocrons closest to it that are also damaged, to stare at the smoke stained walls and blown out windows. A cold wind rolls in front of the window closest to him, which overlooks a research table he remembers being a favorite of his, Tahl’s, and Tholme’s. 

There is rubble scattered across it now, and gouges torn in its surface. 

Qui-Gon tears himself away from all of it and finds Jocasta amid the chaos. She is an island of stillness, sitting atop one of the intact tables. Her elaborate robes are only barely smokestained, and her hair, pulled into its usual severe bun is still smooth. If not for the fact that she is surrounded by three Jedi healers, he would believe she hadn’t been here for the explosion at all. 

“Madame Jocasta?” He stops in front of her, heart beating unevenly against his ribs. Perhaps unconsciously, he has been avoiding her since the Battle of Geonosis. He had the feeling — one he didn’t want to confirm — that she too had been unsurprised to find that Dooku was far from the harmless ex-Jedi the Council had at the time believed him to be. “Are you all right?” 

With a sharp movement of her hand, Jocasta waves away from the healers. They listen immediately; she tends to have that effect on people, even healers. “This was Yan — Count Dooku. This was him.” 

Qui-Gon presses his lips together, unsurprised. “How do you know?” 

“Because.” Jocasta stands up sharply. For a split second, she sways, and the healers jerk forward to steady her — Qui-Gon knows better than to try — and receive a shove backward with the Force for their troubles. As she straightens up, she smoothes her robes and lifts her chin. “Because I am alive. Because the Duros and changeling who did this were paid to keep me that way. Because there is only one man who has enough power to do this and enough hatred for the Jedi Order to want to. It’s him, child.” 

Perhaps Jocasta calling him child, as she used to, is deliberate or perhaps it is a slip of the tongue — like it is every time Yoda calls him young one. “Do you know what he took?” 

Jocasta stares him right in the eye. “Of course I do. He can’t hide it. What do Sith always want, Qui-Gon?” 

Despite the heat leftover from the explosion, Qui-Gon goes cold. “Hearts and minds.” 

“And what is the best way for a Sith to capture them?” 

“Starting at the beginning.” Oh stars. Oh Light. Oh — “The holocron with the hopefuls,” he says. “With all the Force sensitive children. He —” 

“And forty years ago, when Tahl became the master of the creche, she had the children’s names and their locations separated into two holocrons.” Jocasta steps closer to him. “The names went into the restricted section. The location holocron was coded to someone she trusted, and that someone was given the responsibility to hide it. She never told anyone who she gave it to.” She reaches out and grips his hand. Contact is not something Jocasta gives away lightly; the sensation of her wrinkled hand in his only makes Qui-Gon go colder. “But I can think of only one person she trusted enough.” 

Qui-Gon can’t breathe. “You’re wrong. There’s two.” He jerks away from her and starts toward the door, yanking out his comm as he does. Who is closest to Tholme? Who that he trusts? 

Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, deployed to the Rim. 

“Qui-Gon!” Mace all but runs into him as he bursts through the Archive’s main doors at the same time as Mace tries to go through. “What —” 

Qui-Gon grabs him by both shoulders and holds him in place. “Dooku’s stolen the first holocron — the one that has the records of the Jedi hopefuls.” 

Mace’s face goes waxy. “Who did Tahl —” 

“You know who.” To Mace, more than anyone else on the Council, it will be obvious. Qui-Gon would like to think the trio that was him, Tahl, and Tholme wasn’t as obvious as it probably had been, but what they had all been to each other was something closer to an open secret than anything else. The Council didn’t want to look deeper — and risk having to remove Qui-Gon from the Council, pick a new leader of the Jedi Shadows, and find a master of the creche who could somehow do a better job than Tahl did — so they didn’t. “And Dooku knows about us both.” 

“Tholme.” Mace swallows hard. “We have to bring —” 

Qui-Gon is already comming Obi-Wan. “Way ahead of you.” 

# # # 

Tholme’s world once encompassed the entire Republic. A galaxy of vibrant worlds, shifting allegiances, political movements, burgeoning conflicts, and multitudinous priorities. He held it all in both hands and made sense of the madness. The galaxy — from Core to Rim — was his backyard, and he knew each and every inch of it. He could follow the thread of a gang war on Corellia all the way to spice shortage caused by Tatooine’s sudden liberation. He could see how an arranged marriage between the scions of rival Hutt clans seeking an alliance had led directly to a raid on an isolated Rylothian town as the newlyweds sought to fill out their household with shiny new slaves and carve out a place for themselves in the ever-shifting political landscape of the Hutts’s empire. 

Once, the galaxy was a thing that fit in Tholme’s cupped hands. 

Now it is too big, too vast, for him to even think about holding. His world — his universe — shrank sharply with Quinlan’s departure. A galaxy of priorities imploded inward, until everything in Tholme focused itself on a tiny clump of people that nonetheless managed to scatter themselves to the four winds. 

Qui-Gon. Mace. Adi. Obi-Wan. Bant. Sian. Siri. Aayla. Ahsoka. 

And then Adi — and then he couldn’t stop it. The very thing a Shadow was supposed to know was coming, and he’d been blindsided. A city full of bombs, a city full of dead people, and he’d never known it was happening. 

What was left to do after that? Cling to his people — the ones he had sworn to protect — and pretend the group wasn’t missing two, one of whom could never return? 

No. 

And so Tholme’s world shrank again, until it was made up entirely of Quinlan. Get him back. Get him home. Then — and only then — get the others and disappear. 

The mechanics of convincing Qui-Gon, Mace, and the younglings to disappear do not concern Tholme. If he wants something to happen, it does. With all that has happened, leaving the Jedi Order is, to Tholme, comparable to being yanked away from the edge of a cliff. He doesn’t feel the need to obtain consent to stop Qui-Gon, Mace, and the others from stepping into oblivion. 

Adi is dead. Tholme has no intention of allowing anyone else close to him to die. Tahl left them in his hands; he is supposed to be sword and shield in equal measure. 

Anything less is failure. 

But the problem with having a world made up of only a few people — all scattered across the galaxy — is that Tholme’s senses are always cast abroad. When Obi-Wan was young, Qui-Gon’s favorite thing to tell him was to remain in the moment, and that was something he had learned from Tholme, who had learned it from his own master.

The future could kill you, Tholme’s master told him again and again. The present could. Eyes on the enemy — always. 

But Tholme’s master had never explained to him how to keep his focus on what was in front of him when everyone who mattered was scattered abroad. How could Tholme bother with his current surroundings when he was focusing on the spike in Aayla’s heart rate he had felt from light years away, making sure that — at all costs — her heart kept beating and bracing his presence in the Force against hers, shoring her up as he felt her stagger? How could he pay attention to where his feet were taking him when there was an empty ache in his chest that matched what Qui-Gon felt every time he came home to an empty apartment and realized that drowning his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle wasn’t allowed? 

How was Tholme supposed to realize when someone was sneaking up on him when every part of his focus had been stolen by Bant’s sudden, howling ferocity as she locked down the creche — for reasons Tholme didn’t know and wouldn’t know until Qui-Gon saw fit to send him a message? 

As it is, Tholme, meditating in the desperate hope of hearing news from Bant about what had happened in the Temple, doesn’t notice that Dooku has invaded the ramshackle lodgings he is renting on a backwater moon with no name until the thrum of a lightsaber fills the room, chased by the squeal of the rusted hinges of his one-room apartment’s door as it slams. 

Tholme opens his eyes, yanking his soul back into his body. Belatedly, the Force screams out a warning, and he tastes an all-to-familiar presence. It burns the back of his throat like vodka and settles in his stomach like acid. 

Dooku is in the center of the room, caught between the door and the moth-eaten bed where Tholme is sitting crosslegged. It’s just him — not even a pair of droids accompanying him as guards. But just him is enough to send a thrill of adrenaline through Tholme. 

Fear has never been one of Tholme’s habits. He shook it off many years ago, but there are some things — some people — that bring it rushing back, sinking its needle-sharp claws into his back and making his heart jackrabbit against his ribs. 

Dooku is one of those people. Dooku, who saw Tholme unformed. Dooku, who used to correct his lightsaber form. Dooku, who always told Tholme’s master how much Tholme’s focus impressed him. Dooku, who could always manage to wrap contempt for Qui-Gon in a compliment for Tholme. Dooku, who had spent Tholme and Tahl’s entire childhood unsuccessfully trying to drive a wedge between them and Qui-Gon. 

And Tholme, who prided himself on noticing everything, hadn’t seen because those were the days before he forced himself to learn how people worked. Achingly, each step uncertain and against his nature, he had taught himself how to read people, to do what Tahl did instinctively. 

It hadn’t mattered, of course. By the time he saw through Dooku, Dooku was already gone, and the damage to Qui-Gon was already done. And as far as Tholme could tell, Tahl had seen the truth first and handled it on her own. She had faced the danger head on, protected their family — even though that was Tholme’s job, had always been his job, was the only thing he was good at. 

Except for the time it had mattered, when the danger had been in their own Temple, among their own family, around Xanatos. And that time — that time, Tholme had failed. 

And Xanatos had died, and Dooku had lived. He had lived to see Tahl killed, to almost murder Obi-Wan, to torment Qui-Gon all over again. He lived. He lived because Tholme hadn’t seen until it was too late, and now he is here, in front of Tholme and still alive, because Tholme is still a failure. 

On instinct rather than thought, Tholme starts to jerk to his feet, but Dooku’s scarlet lightsaber beneath his chin stops him. 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” says Dooku. The years he has been away from Coruscant haven’t diminished his Core accent at all; he still sounds like every Jedi Master Tholme grew up respecting. 

The generations have shifted and the lines of time have fallen on Tholme, carving furrows in his face and tracing silver through his dark hair, so he rarely feels young in the Temple any longer. 

But a single second in Dooku’s presence, and all the hard-won years of his life fall away. 

Voice as tight as his lungs, Tholme asks, “Are you here to kill me?” 

Dooku’s lips twitch. “As I said, I’d rather not.” 

“I have difficulty believing that.” 

“That’s not my concern.” Dooku takes a moment to study him, head tipped to one side. “You’re frightened of me. I suspected so, but it’s gratifying to have it confirmed. Tahl, now… She wasn’t. More fool her, I suppose.” 

That is almost too much. Lightsaber or no, Tholme almost lurches up off the bed, but the image of Qui-Gon facing Dooku alone — with Tholme at his side — holds him in place. 

“She’s the one who made me leave the Temple, you know,” says Dooku, almost conversationally. “I imagine you’ve guessed that, though. Over the years. I had a grandpadawan, after all. I wouldn’t have left if —” 

“If she hadn’t scared you off.” Most people who remembered Tahl remembered the crechemaster who seemed utterly unable to ever raise her voice, who could be most often found rocking a baby to sleep or teaching a toddler to read. Tholme was probably one of the few people who remembered her truthfully — as a woman of contradictions. Tahl, Tholme knew, was someone infinitely capable of violence. Not the harsh and sudden kind that haunted Qui-Gon or even the learned kind that Tholme used. No, violence on her was a cool, calculated thing. She had always picked up her chosen weapon quite deliberately, examining it from every angle as she decided how best to unleash it. 

And most of the time, Tholme was that weapon. He knew it. He liked it. Life was better with a function, and before Tahl made space for him in her heart, he was a lonely creature who didn’t talk enough and stared a bit too intently and generally put off every Jedi around him. After she came into his life, he learned how to talk and when not to stare and most of the time, Tahl took the lead in interactions, letting her natural charisma bleed off onto him until everyone in the Temple had coupled them together in their minds. If Tahl was delightful — and she was — so was Tholme. If Tahl was trustworthy — and she was — so was he. If Tahl had a bright future — and she did — so did he. 

And on top of all that, Tholme got to be her sword. She was a gentle wielder. She would never have done it if she hadn’t known it was all he wanted. To be the thing with which she protected herself and those she loved? Tholme could think of nothing better. 

If she had brought him with her to Mandalore, if she hadn’t begged him to watch over the children in her and Qui-Gon’s absence and prepare them for what they all thought was going to be a final exit from the Order, she would be alive today. 

Dooku smiles at Tholme. “I suppose I’m man enough to admit that she did, yes. She used you to do it. Did you know that?” 

Tholme guessed years ago. He says nothing. 

“She made you sound more like a machine than a man,” Dooku goes on, still not shifting his lightsaber from its place under Tholme’s chin. “A relentless killer. Someone who wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t rest, until my blood was on his hands.” He laughs a little. “And you are unnerving, young one. Terribly so, especially back then. It wasn’t difficult to believe her. Tahl was, after all, a woman gifted at getting people to listen to her. I suppose that’s why you followed her around like a dog.” 

“No,” says Tholme. It’s worth it to break his silence for that. “That’s not why.” 

“Needless to say,” Dooku continues, as though Tholme didn’t speak, “I believed her. And for so long, I was frightened of you.” He laughs again. “The shadow in the night. The person lurking just out of my view. The silent hunter, who she’d send out after me if I so much as looked Qui-Gon’s or Xanatos’s way again. It’s why she had to die, you know.” His teeth show in something that isn’t quite a smile. “I don’t like to be caged, especially not by a woman who I watched stumble through her lightsaber forms as a little girl.” 

Tholme breathes in and out, slowly. “If you’re so frightened of me, then why do you think that was an intelligent thing to tell me?” 

“Oh, because.” Dooku steps back a little, though he doesn’t lower his lightsaber. “Don’t you understand? I thought I made it quite evident, coming here alone. My eyes have been opened. I have your padawan, Tholme. Your beating heart, held in both my hands.” His voice turns colder, more mocking. “All these years, thinking of you as the one challenge I didn’t rise to meet, and it was this easy to dismantle you? A single point of failure, young one. A strategic weakness — that’s what Quinlan is to you. He’s your linchpin. I would have thought a Shadow would know better.” 

Tholme keeps his hands open and relaxed as they rest on his knees. Again, he says nothing. There is nothing to say. Qui-Gon has always made that mistake; with every word that is said to Dooku, he gains another weapon. Of course, his history with Qui-Gon is its own weapon, so perhaps staying quiet or not doesn’t matter in Qui-Gon’s case. 

“In the end,” says Dooku with a shrug, “you’re nothing. I walked in here. And I own you. Without even a fight.” 

Something inside Tholme burns, but he keeps it off his face. The worst thing is that none of what Dooku’s said so far is a lie. 

“You weren’t even hiding,” he says. “Did you hope Quinlan would come looking? Did you hope he’d come crawling back? Take it from me, Tholme. Padawans don’t come home. You have to drag them back, and you — you don’t have the strength. That much is clear to me.” 

Tholme risks speaking, giving Dooku an even look as he does. “If you’re not here to kill me, then what do you want? If you’re hoping for a bargaining chip, you should know that Qui-Gon would let me die.” 

“Oh, would he, now?” 

“Yes. And I would let him die.” That is an agreement he and Qui-Gon made years ago, when Tholme became a Shadow and Qui-Gon was sent on more and more dangerous missions. At least one of them needed to come home, needed to stay alive, even if it meant the other died. It wasn’t the first option; a rescue was to be mounted if at all possible. That had been necessary several times — more often for Qui-Gon than Tholme — but to fall into Dooku’s clutches was essentially a death sentence because Dooku would want everything Qui-Gon couldn’t give. 

“How brave of you,” says Dooku. “It’s gratifying to see that you and Qui-Gon did retain at least a few of the ideas I tried to teach you. But you see, Tholme, all that pragmatism gives you exactly nothing because I know why you and Qui-Gon both muster it up.” With his free hand, he reaches inside his cloak and draws out a datapad, which shows a live feed of a seedy bar. At the long counter is Quinlan — not drinking, just waiting for someone. Someone he doesn’t trust, judging by his posture. 

Tholme stares at the datapad, drinking in the sight of Quinlan. He is a bit thinner than he was when he left the Temple, but otherwise he looks mostly healthy and uninjured — a relief, after Tholme has spent too many nights imagining what Dooku or the mysterious Sith who holds his leash might have done to Quinlan, either for enjoyment or as a sort of revenge against the Order as a whole. 

“See him?” Dooku holds the datapad higher. “That’s your open wound, Tholme. And it’s bleeding all over. Everyone can see it. Your heart in my hand. One squeeze, one cut, and I end you. It’s worse than death, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve heard. Losing a child. A nightmare.” 

Tholme’s lungs stop working. Against his will, his hands curl into fists. Words, strained and strangled, fall from his lips of their own accord. “If you lay one finger on him —” 

“Oh, please.” Dooku snorts. “He’s my apprentice. You think I haven’t already had to manage all the insubordinate tendencies you left him with? No, we’re not talking about hurting him. We’re talking about killing him. You see, he thinks he’s waiting for Cad Bane — the mercenary I hired to acquire something for me. Or rather, for the cause. And he is. He is waiting for Cad. But he doesn’t know that Cad has a second job.” He lowers the datapad, and Tholme’s heart drops with it. “Cad’s pet sniper has Quinlan’s head in her crosshairs while she sits up in a lovely nest across the street from him. One word from me, and Cad orders her to blow his head off. And she will. And the beautiful thing is the boy is in so far out of his depth that he’ll never see it coming.” Dooku taps the side of his head. “He’s not listening to the Force. A lot like you. It’s painful, isn’t it? When our padawans leave us yet still take after us?” 

Tholme holds himself stiller than death. “What do you want me to do?” 

Dooku tucks the datapad away and spreads his hand in a pleased sort of gesture. “You see, that’s the kind of cooperation I’m always looking for. Everyone’s so stubborn. You, Tholme — you have always been so wonderfully straightforward. So different from all the rest. At the moment, I merely require your comm and your cooperation. I’m sure neither will be difficult for you to provide, given what I have.” 

Tholme would love to tell himself that Dooku wouldn’t waste a resource like Quinlan. An accomplished Shadow turning to his side and bringing with him all sorts of insider information on the Jedi Order and the GAR is certainly a boon for Dooku, that much is true. But whatever higher goals Dooku has, Tholme isn’t stupid enough to think that he will put Quinlan’s life above them. The way of the Sith is this: absolutely everyone — except oneself — is expendable. 

The Jedi Order, he has found, will allow people to die for the cause. The Sith take it a step further and kill for the cause. 

“My comm’s on the table,” says Tholme, jerking his chin toward the ramshackle table by his bed. “Over there.” 

Dooku picks it up, and for a moment, Tholme thinks he’ll have to tell him the passcode to open it, but Dooku hesitates only a moment before typing it in. “That’s the thing about using a date no one else knows the significance of for your passcode,” he says, as the blue-white glow of the comm’s screen competes with the red light of his saber. “You need to make perfectly sure you’re right that no one else knows it.” He snorts. “You think I don’t know the day my own padawan got married? It happened beneath my nose, after all.” He scrolls through the messages on Tholme’s comm — and isn’t that a strange feeling: Dooku knowing what is being said while Tholme is in the dark. “You shape your life around Tahl, even now. Grand Jedi Shadow Tholme. The man made of durasteel, but once someone realizes that Tahl is the center of everything, well… The facade crumbles, doesn’t it? In the end, you are a man made of weaknesses. One tug, and you come undone.” He sends a message through Tholme’s comm and slips it into the pocket of his tailored robes. “Now, your cooperation. Not long after I left the Temple, Tahl led an initiative that revamped the security protocols surrounding the Jedi hopefuls personal information. The names and locations were recorded into two separate holocrons. The holocron with the names was placed in the restricted section of the Archive. The holocron with their locations was coded to an individual of Tahl’s choosing and given to that same person for safekeeping. The agreement was that whoever it was would hide it. Would die to protect it, if necessary.” 

“I think I know how the security protocols in my own Temple work.” 

“That’s my point.” Dooku takes a moment to look pleased with himself. “My master, he thought he had the answer. Who would Crechemaster Tahl trust with such an important holocron? Surely none other than Qui-Gon Jinn, yes? But he didn’t know her. I did. I knew all of you, and for everything else that schutta was, she was clever, and she loved to put one over on the Order. So if they told her to trust the holocron to one person, I can say with a high degree of certainty that she decided to do some judicious disobeying. After all, she didn’t just trust one person with her life.” Dooku holds up two fingers. “She trusted two. Qui-Gon… and you.” 

Tholme presses his lips together. He could deny it, but there’s little point. Dooku will see through any lie, and denying what he’s saying will only make him move in for the kill. 

“She was a romantic creature,” says Dooku, “so I know she coded the holocron to Qui-Gon. But she also knew that I knew him, so if he knew its location, there was a fair chance I could figure it out. I do know him, after all. But you? Not perfectly secure but better. Safer. So I’m willing to wager she told you the location. And now you’re going to tell me. Or you can watch Quinlan die. Whatever use he is to me, I can assure you the holocron is worth more, meaning I have far less to lose than you do.” 

It should be a struggle. Thousands of innocent Force sensitive children weighed against Quinlan’s life should be a difficult equation. But it isn’t. Invariably, the answer Tholme reaches is this: he cannot let Quinlan die. 

The Jedi hopefuls across the galaxy are not his responsibility. 

Quinlan, whatever he has done, is. 

But so is Qui-Gon, and letting Dooku find the holocron will inevitably bring Qui-Gon’s worst nightmare to his doorstep. Yet the war has already done that, many times over, and if positions were reversed — if it were Obi-Wan’s life weighed against Tholme’s safety, Tholme knows what Qui-Gon would choose, knows what he would want Qui-Gon to choose. 

They both agreed — years and years ago — that the younglings come first. 

“Jakku,” he says. “It’s hidden in a ghost town on Jakku, one that was abandoned when the sinking sands shifted and cut it off from the rest of the planet. Inside a locked box, under the floorboards in the town’s temple. The box’s lock is coded to Qui’s biosignature.” 

“You see, Tholme?” Dooku’s shoulders drop a bit as he relaxes. “This — this is why you were always my favorite. You’re so much easier than all the rest. A straight line to a simple conclusion. Manageable.” 

Tholme watches him. “A simple conclusion. Yes. Do you know what that conclusion is now, Dooku?” 

“Me, dead,” he answers, with little hesitation. “Yes, I’m not dense — for all I’m sure Tahl tried to make you think I am. I know I’ve made an enemy for life, young one, but that’s the beauty of all of this. I don’t care. Perhaps when you had fewer weak spots, all those years ago, you were a threat, but now?” He shrugs again. “You’ve gotten old, and you’ve come undone. But just in case you decide to make yourself a problem, I’ve the solution already in hand.” Without warning, he sheathes his lightsaber. As Tholme tenses, trying to assess if he could snatch the datapad before Dooku could transmit the order to Cad, the Force swells — a suffocating mass of darkness that centers on Dooku. Tholme throws up a shield, but it’s already too late. 

Dooku twists his wrist, and with it twist the bones in Tholme’s calf and knee. 

Tholme screams. His mind whites out. The Force is a shriek, and he is lost to it. A great weight slams against his mind, shoving past the tattered remains of his shields, and he finds himself slumping back against the bed as darkness crawls at the edges of his vision. A numbness spreads through him, chewing at the edge of the torrent of pain rushing up from his leg until it is strangely dulled. Life is a slippery thing that Tholme can’t keep his grip on.

Dooku appears above him, dropping Tholme’s comm beside him. “I could have killed you,” he says. “Remember that. I could have cut you down, and it would’ve made my life easier. Instead, I’ve made you someone who will fit in the new galaxy I’m trying to build — not for myself but for all the Jedi the Council abuses. This is mercy, Tholme. I mean what I say. Everything I have done is for the sake of the Jedi Order. Even this.” 

The darkness is a side. It’s swallowing Tholme up. 

“The leg won’t heal right,” says Dooku, in almost conversational tones. “No matter how many surgeries they do. And if you want to see it replaced, you’d have to replace it from the hip down to really fix the problem, and I hear that affects agility just the same. So one way or another, your days of fighting are over. Your life, however, isn’t. I’ve commed your little Aayla. We can hope she’ll get here before the internal bleeding becomes a problem. I’ve slowed it for you, so it should be all right. You’re welcome. Again. Leaving you alive, even like this, is like leaving a loaded blaster around for my enemy to pick up. But still I’m doing it. Principles — I suppose they’ll get me killed someday” He straightens up. “And while you sleep, I’ll go meet Obi-Wan. Going by his response to the message I sent him through your comm, he expects you to be waiting for him at the local spaceport. Reunions. They’re never what you hope them to be, are they? Perhaps he will feel differently about me than Qui-Gon does, though somehow I doubt it. Ah, well. I am gifted with persuasiveness.” 

Before this moment, Tholme thought the worst thing — the greatest nightmare — was feeling Tahl be tortured through his bond with her and being utterly powerless to do anything about it. 

But lying here, knowing he has lost one youngling to Dooku and is about to lose another, and being unable to even beg — because he would, if he could — is perhaps even worse. 

Obi-Wan. Tahl’s baby. The initiate she saw, even when no one else did. 

Protecting him — and all the others — was the last promise Tholme could keep to her. 

And even in that, he is failing. 

A wheezing exhale slips from his mouth. Dooku vanishes from his field of vision, and Tholme slips into unconsciousness. 

# # # 

“You’re late,” Quinlan tells Cad Bane as he comes up to him. The bar — a dive that has more in common with a public fresher than with anything else — is quiet, since most everyone who frequents it is still working ten hour shifts at the nearby factory, so the only person listening in on them is the bartender. Quinlan imagines he has long since learned to tune out just about everything said to him that isn’t related to what drink someone wants. 

Cad tips his hat to him in greeting. In the same movement, he reaches into his pocket and tosses a holocron onto the bar. It skitters across the dinged up surface, juddering to a stop just in front of Quinlan. “Tell your master that I kept the old lady alive.” 

Quinlan picks up the holocron. It’s from the Coruscant Temple — he can tell that from the make. And the old lady — “You stole this from the Archive?” He can’t keep the incredulity from his voice. 

I kept the old lady alive. 

Madame Jocasta. A delayed sort of terror floods Quinlan, but he shoves it away. She’s alive. That’s what matters. 

Dooku kept her alive. 

“I did what I was paid to do,” replies Cad. For some reason, he smiles at Quinlan again. “And then I got paid again, for not doing something. Funny old galaxy, ain’t it?” 

Quinlan curls his hand over the holocron. What holocron would possibly be worth Dooku sending someone into the Archive? “What do you mean?” 

Cad pushes away from the bar. “Ask your master. I don’t kiss an’ tell, so to speak. I’d be getting him that holocron soon. He seemed to want it somethin’ fierce.” 

And then Cad is gone, slipping out of the bar. A speeder picks him up just outside it, piloted by a slender woman with grayish skin and a sniper rifle slung across her back. 

After they disappear in a cloud of dust and rubbish kicked up by the speeder’s wake, Quinlan turns his attention to the holocron in his hand. It’s a small, innocent thing, but it still steals the breath from his lungs. 

There is only one holocron Quinlan can think of that Dooku — much less Sidious himself — would possibly want. 

His hand tightens around the holocron until the edges of it cut into his palm. “Oh stars. Qui-Gon.” 

# # # 

It’s the night cycle on the Resolute, and things are quiet. 

This ship — this hulking monster of a ship — has been Anakin’s for long enough that it has begun to feel like home. He never gets lost any more, and he’s made a corner of the hangar, occupied by a sleek yellow starfighter that he’s been steadily modifying with podracer parts imported from the Rim, his own. He’s made a corner of the main clone barracks — with approval from Rex, easily given — his own too, covering his berth over with a woven blanket from Shili that reminds him of home. The inside of his berth is papered with some of his favorite drawings because here, on the Resolute and among friends, he can afford to let that little bit of vulnerability show. 

In the end, he’s still dressing up a cell, but at least his cellmates are people he cares about. He’s been in far worse prisons before. 

At the moment, Padme is bunking on the Resolute again. She switches back and forth between the Resolute and the Negotiator, and this cycle, she was meant to be sleeping on the Negotiator. She would have been, if Obi-Wan hadn’t been called away on some mission he refused to tell Anakin about — irritating but unsurprising — and also refused to tell Padme about — unusual and thus concerning. He’d insisted she go to the Resolute while he was gone, which is something else Anakin doesn’t like. He liked it even less when Obi-Wan also sent Ahsoka over to the Resolute before he left.

The 212th would do anything for Padme and Ahsoka; there should be no reason Obi-Wan wouldn’t trust them to watch over the pair in his absence. 

The only thing Anakin can think is that Obi-Wan wants them near him, a Force user, and near Rex, another Force user. 

And that says nothing good. 

Which is why Anakin is lying awake — bracing himself, waiting — when Rex jerks out of sleep and shoves up onto his elbows on his berth, which is across from Anakin’s. The clone sleeping quarters on the resolute is a long and narrow space, with berths lining either side of it. Anakin much prefers it to the Negotiator’s scattered ranks of bunks. This way, he can arrange things so Rex is within his sight, and Padme is sleeping in the bunk above him, with Ahsoka in the bunk above Rex’s. 

And that means he knows every time they have a nightmare, which is often. Padme’s are quiet, noticeable only by the way her breathing suddenly picks up in the seconds before she wakes with a start, but Rex’s are anything but. Given how most of the battalion manages to sleep through all but his loudest ones, Anakin doesn’t think they ever have been. 

Tonight, however, it’s different. Tonight, Rex wakes with the same coiled readiness that comes over him at the start of a mission. 

As his breaths even out, Anakin levers himself up onto his elbow and levels an intent look Rex’s way. “What is it?” 

“I don’t know.” Rex wets his lips. He’s trembling. “I didn’t… It’s different. I don’t… I’m not sure what it’s trying to tell me.” 

The Force hums around Anakin, in the same ominous way that glass does directly before it shatters. He gives Rex tight smile, wincing as the humming intensifies. “Well, it’s trying to tell you something.” 

“There weren’t images,” says Rex. “Just… just a feeling.” 

“What sort of feeling?” It’s Padme who speaks this time. Anakin can never tell when she’s woken up until her presence slips into his awareness all at once, like a knife cutting into him. For all she is lit torch in how she speaks and what she does, her presence in the Force is a tightly controlled thing, honed to a deadly edge. 

Rex just shakes his head. “I just felt —” 

“Cold.” Ahsoka sits up in her bed. Unlike Padme, Anakin can always sense when she’s not sleeping, and she’s been lying awake just like he has. “Cold and sick.” She flicks a thin-lipped look toward Anakin and hugs herself. “I thought I was imagining it.” 

Somehow, Anakin doesn’t think they’re that fortunate. “Did you see anything, Snips?” 

“I haven’t gone to sleep.” 

“That doesn’t mean much.” 

“I haven’t.” She ducks her head. “I’m sorry.” 

Anakin swings his legs out of bed. “Nothing to be sorry for, Snips.” He tips his head back to exchange a look with Padme as she leans out of her berth, wearing the set of blacks she traded her old nightgown for months ago. 

Padme’s expression matches his. She’s put the pieces together too — caught hold of the common thread between Ahsoka and Rex, who also happens to be the same person who isn’t with them at the moment. 

Obi-Wan. 

Padme moves first, stretching up to the little shelf inside her berth and picking up her comm. “I’m calling him.” 

He won’t pick up, Anakin thinks. Something like a cold hand comes down like a weight on the back of his neck. It’s late, but it’s undeniable. 

Kriff, he does care about Obi-Wan. Kitster would be furious. 

Before Padme can make the call, Anakin’s own comm goes off. The sound is somehow titanic in the enclosed barracks, and that — rather than the conversation — wakes the closest members of the 501st. Beneath their questioning stares, Anakin takes his comm off the shelf of his berth. 

“It’s not him,” Anakin says. “It’s Master Jinn.” 

Ahsoka fists her hands in her blankets, looking very small. “Why would he be coming you all of the sudden?” 

Anakin tries for a lopsided grin, even as the cold hand on his spine begins to dig icicle tipped nails into his skin. “Probably to lament my existence. You know how he is.” Holding up his hand to forestall whatever else Ahsoka might’ve been about to stay, he answers the comm. “You know, it’s the middle of the night where I am.” 

“I don’t care.” Qui-Gon’s normally controlled voice trembles like a beaten dog. “I — I need help.” 

Anakin draws in a slow breath as the spike of Ahsoka’s anxiety stabs him through the Force. In contrast, Padme’s presence in the Force goes very, very still, until she suddenly seems like a predator lying in wait. “I’m sort of busy with the last thing you asked me to do.” 

“Please.” 

When that word leaves Qui-Gon’s mouth, that is when Padme’s presence in the Force explodes. It washes over Anakin in a tidal wave of fire and fear that leaves him breathless. With his free hand, he reaches up toward her. In a second, she snatches hold of his offered hand, squeezing tightly. 

“Please,” Qui-Gon goes on, words falling on top of each other in a rush. “It’s Obi-Wan — he — I need you to swear to me, swear to me you’ll get him to safety.” 

“What’s happened him?” cries Ahsoka from her bunk. “Why isn’t he safe?” 

Anakin silences her with a sharp wave of his hand. “I swear.” That’s the important thing. Questions come next. “What’s going on, Master Jinn?” 

Qui-Gon gives a little laugh. “Oh, I’m not allowed to tell you. But you’ll find out soon enough. And when you do — Obi-Wan. You have to get to him, do you understand? He’s all that matters.” 

Not words Anakin ever expected to hear Qui-Gon admit out loud. “What about you?” 

“I’ve it handled.” 

Anakin tightens his grip on his comm. “Don’t lie to a liar.” 

“Obi-Wan,” repeats Qui-Gon. “He trusts you, so I… Get him home.” 

“What are you doing?” 

There’s a short pause, during which Qui-Gon’s labored breaths — sounding almost pained, like he’s been injured — come through the comm’s speakers. Then he says, “My job.” 

And then he’s gone. The comm in Anakin’s hand goes dead. 

Padme’s grip on Anakin’s hand is bruising. “What’s he going to do?” 

Anakin gets to his feet, shaking his hand free of hers and reaching for his armor. His heart thumps hard against his ribs. “Something kriffing stupid, I’ll wager.” 

“And what are you going to do?” Rex is on his feet too, pausing only for a moment to help a shaking Ahsoka down from her bunk. All around them, the rest of the 501st wakes up and springs into action, doing up their armor. They are a well-oiled machine, and it’s a beautiful sight to behold. 

Anakin fastens his chestplate on with a few angry jerks of the straps. “Disappoint my amu and go save him.”