Chapter Text
Ahsoka had been warned about the freezing temperatures of Ando Prime, and yet somehow the force of the icy blast that met her when the door of her ship slid open was still a shock. She shivered, and pulled her hood further up. She had always been sensitive to the cold – Togruta, as a species, were evolved for temperate to tropical grasslands – and yet she always managed to forget this fact when not faced with it. Oh well. It wouldn’t be so bad once she had acclimatised to it in a few minutes.
Still, looking around the snow-covered ground before her, dotted with low-growing plant life, it was difficult to believe that she wasn’t all that far from the planet’s equator. And yet, the planet was still fairly well-populated, not just by the native Talid inhabitants, but also by other species who had come in with the boom of the mining corporations. It was the mining that had brought her here – Rebel informants had received intel that not long ago, one of these operations had unearthed what they had described, rather agitatedly, as a “haunted temple.” The mining site had quickly been abandoned, leaving the area devoid of people or sound.
The temple wasn’t haunted, though. Probably not. By the reports, it sounded more likely that the miners had set off the defence mechanisms of an ancient holocron – a very powerful and well-guarded one, at that. And so Rebel Agent “Fulcrum” had been dispatched post-haste to recover it before the Empire got its hands on it.
She didn’t have much time. Intel reported that the area surrounding the site for several kilometres brought about technological malfunctions, and so she would have to cover the area on foot. With luck, the malfunctions were limited to transport vehicles, and her holographic locator would be unaffected. She couldn’t afford to spend any more time out here than she needed to.
There was a light snow beginning to fall as she set off. Hopefully, it would hide her tracks from enemies.
*
The Force was strong here. There was no doubt about that. While this definitely supported the holocron theory, it revealed little else about the situation. Was it a Jedi holocron or a Sith holocron? Most likely, that would become clearer as she got closer, but for the time being it was still a mystery.
There was something else here, too. Something familiar and shrouded in the Dark Side. She couldn’t pinpoint where she knew it from, but she was on her guard.
It turned out to be a good instinct. Up ahead, something was coming into view through the snow. She moved silently towards it, ducking behind bushes, boulders and rises, until she could get a good view.
It was a private imperial vessel, and from the looks of it, it had narrowly avoided a crash landing. Ahsoka smirked, thinking smugly back to her own careful landing outside of the holocron’s danger zone. Then she caught sight of who had disembarked from the ship, and her blood ran cold.
Darth Vader was standing in the snow, flanked by two Inquisitors. The Sith Lord who had helped bring down the Republic, on that fateful day when nearly everyone she had ever loved had died – who had killed so many Jedi and Rebels – was standing a matter of meters away from her. Her head swam and there was a sickly feeling in her stomach, as she crouched down, gasping for breath. After a moment, she gained control of herself again, and realised that he was speaking. Cautiously, she peered back out, listening intently.
“There’s no obvious explanation for the malfunction,” Vader said, his voice weirdly distorted by his helmet. “I suspect it is the influence of the holocron.”
“We’ve never come across a holocron that could do something like that,” one of the Inquisitors said, glancing at the other. “What makes you say so, Lord Vader?”
“The Force feels strange here,” Darth Vader said. “I’ve never–”
He stopped suddenly, and Ahsoka felt a chill run through her.
“Someone is here,” he said, and then he turned to look directly at her.
She jumped to her feet and drew her sabres, scanning the terrain for an escape. The Inquisitors were on her, however – there wasn’t enough time to run. So she blocked their strikes, parried, darted, lunged – one of them made a swipe at her head, and she ducked out of the way of the blade, moved again. They were good – warriors trained in the Dark Side of the Force; trained to use lightsabres; trained to kill Jedi – but Ahsoka was better. Eventually, one of them made a misstep, slipped on a patch of ice hidden beneath the snow – and in a flash, they went down. Now there was only one of them, and Ahsoka moved forward, driving them backwards, until they met with the side of the ship. A slash, and they were disarmed. Another, and they dropped to the ground dead.
She turned then, to face her final assailant. All through her fight with the Inquisitors, Darth Vader had remained strangely distant, watching but never once coming in for an attack. Now, he continued to regard her, silent except for the sound of his heavy breathing. She kept her gaze on him, ready to receive an attack. Finally, his sabre unsheathed in a flash of red, and he approached her slowly, with purpose.
He was better than the Inquisitors – better than her, too. Fortunately, she retained one advantage – his movements, though powerful, were slower and less flexible, thanks to his rigid body suit. Ahsoka, on the other hand, was fast and agile, and so the fight was evenly matched. All the same, Ahsoka found herself being pushed backwards, away from the ship.
There was something strangely familiar about the experience as well. It occurred to Ahsoka then, in the middle of that fight, that it was Vader’s presence she had recognised earlier. How? Though she recognised him well enough, she had certainly never met him before, had she?
Unless, perhaps, he was someone she had known before. The possibility that the Jedi Killer had once been someone known to her within the Order had passed her mind before, but it was so distressing to her that she had refused to ponder it in depth. She remembered Maul’s warning, regarding her old master, that Darth Sidius intended to use him as his weapon. She had dismissed them, of course – Anakin would never have turned to the Dark Side, would he?
Anakin…
Ahsoka took a few steps back, sabres still drawn and at the defensive, but her eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavily, a growing horror inside of her.
“Anakin?” she asked quietly.
Darth Vader stopped in his tracks, as though he too was only now having the same realisation.
“Ahsoka,” he said.
Ahsoka looked inside herself, reaching deep down to try and makes sense of the emotional response she was having to the situation, and what she found was fury.
With a cry, she lunged at Vader, slashing and stabbing with reckless abandon. Vader actually stumbled backwards for a moment, before moving to block her attacks. There were tears in Ahsoka’s eyes – fortunately, she didn’t need to see. She did need a clear head, though, and so after several minutes she moved out of combat again, and stopped, taking in deep breaths to calm herself while she blinked the tears out of her eyes, and waited for Vader’s next move.
A cracking sound was the only warning Ahsoka got. One instant, she and her former master were locked eye to eye, and the next, the ground gave out beneath them, and they both went tumbling into darkness.
*
Ahsoka’s head was pounding, and her body ached. She forced her eyes open, and tried to make sense of her surroundings.
She was in a stone tunnel, lying amidst a pile of rubble. High above her she could see the distant glimmer of daylight from the hole she had fallen through. There was no way she would be able to get back out the way she came. As she gathered her senses, however, she realised she wouldn’t need to. This tunnel must have been part of the abandoned mine she had come to investigate. All she would have to do was follow it until she found the temple.
Slowly, she got to her feet. Nothing felt broken – only sore from the fall. It was a miracle she wasn’t more badly hurt. Looking around, she spotted her lightsabres lying on the ground. She also saw–
“Vader,” Ahsoka said quietly.
He was lying on the ground too, not far away. For a split second, Ahsoka wondered with horror if he were dead – but she could hear that steady, rhythmic breathing fill the darkness. She retrieved her lightsabres, and drew them, pointing one of them at the Sith Lord.
And there she stood, for several long minutes, before finally accepting that she couldn’t deliver the blow, and lowered her hand. Instead, she moved to walk down the stone hallway, in the direction she felt the Force strongest. But she only made a few steps before she stopped, let out a sigh, and looked back towards where Vader lay on the ground.
It was Anakin, then. She knew it was. Now that she’d accepted it, she recognised the feel of him perfectly, however twisted with rage and darkness it might be. She had assumed he had died. She had hoped he had died. For all the times she’d missed him, yearned so desperately for the chance to have him back, she wished now that he had died. This was so much worse, so much worse.
And yet, she found she couldn’t leave him. It was stupid. Once he returned to consciousness, he would likely strike her down where she stood. But this was Anakin. Her master. Her companion. Her dearest friend. She loved him fiercely – or she had, once. She didn’t know now. But she had to at least talk to him, try to make sense of what had happened.
And so, she waited there in the darkness of the Ando Prime mines for Darth Vader to wake up.
It was a few more minutes before he stirred. He sat up, and looked over at her, twin sabres still drawn at her sides.
“Are you going to strike me down?” he asked. It was hard to tell through the mask, but he might have been teasing her.
“I might yet,” Ahsoka said. Her voice was devoid of humour. She wanted him to know she meant business. “Are you?”
“I might yet,” he said. She almost killed him on the spot.
Now that she had him there, she found she had no idea what to say to him. So many questions swarmed in her head. A simple “why?” or “how could you?” probably wouldn’t cut it.
“You’re here for the holocron,” was all that came out after several seconds of silence.
“I take it you are as well,” Darth Vader said. “And I suppose you won’t simply let me have it?”
“So you can use its power to increase the might of your empire?” Ahsoka said in disgust. “You’ll have to kill me.”
He contemplated that in silence for a moment. Ahsoka refused to be intimidated.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that we are both looking for the same thing, and until we find it, we share a common goal.”
Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at that. There was a trick in here, somewhere. He wanted to use her for something.
“It will do us no good to kill the other if we cannot survive the holocron’s defences alone,” Darth Vader continued. “And since this one is clearly unlike any others we have found before, it is a distinct possibility that alone, we won’t.”
There was more to it than that, she knew it. But more time with Vader would allow her more time to get answers. So, ever on her guard, she nodded, returned her right lightsabre to her belt, and extended her hand. He regarded it cautiously, then accepted it, and she pulled him to his feet.
*
They walked together in tense silence for what felt like hours, following the twists and turns of the tunnels, the only light coming from the white glow of Ahsoka’s sabres. Whenever they came to a fork or a crossroads, they felt for the direction where the force was strongest, and took it. Even so, the mines felt labyrinth-like, and the directions were guesses more often than Ahsoka would like to admit.
It was then that things began to get weird. Just when the silence was beginning to become unbearable, Ahsoka heard it: a voice from somewhere within the tunnels calling her name.
“Ahsoka?”
She froze in her tracks. Her eyes darted around her surroundings, but the tunnels were just as empty as before, deserted except for herself and Darth Vader, who was regarding her quizzically.
“Did… did you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” Vader asked.
Ahsoka listened intently, straining her ears against the oppressive silence of the caves. For a long moment, she heard nothing more. But then, there it was again.
“Ahsoka!”
The voice echoed down the tunnel, clearer and louder than before, but more desperate. And she trembled. She knew that voice. It was Anakin’s voice.
“It’s just the holocron,” she said shakily. “It’s trying to distract me.”
She started walking again, and once Vader accepted that he would be getting nothing else out of her, he followed.
They had only taken a few more steps when Vader turned his head sharply towards her and said, “Yes?”
“Huh?” Ahsoka replied involuntarily.
“Did you say something?” Vader asked.
“No?”
“I could have sworn I heard you–” he began, and then cut off. “Ah.”
“What did you hear?” Ahsoka asked. She had a sinking feeling she already knew.
“Your voice,” he said, “calling my name.”
Ahsoka clenched her fists around the hilt of her lightsabres, avoiding his gaze and picking up her pace. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t want to spend any more time in here than I have to.”
“You refuse to speak to me,” Vader said.
“What is there to say?” she said bitterly.
“I thought you were dead,” he said.
“Disappointed you missed one?”
“No. It’s a relief to know that you survived. I should have expected it – if anyone could have survived, it would be you.”
“No thanks to the efforts of your Inquisitorius.”
“If you won’t have a conversation with me,” Vader said, “will you at least let me speak?”
“Why should I? You killed innocent people! You aided the rise to power of a tyrant! The galaxy lives in fear of you, and the regime you implemented! You can’t possibly believe you’re on the right side in this, can you?”
“There’s no more war,” Vader said. “Politicians are cooperating with one another. Is this not better than the world we left behind?”
“To live in fear is no life at all,” Ahsoka said. “And I feel like you’re still avoiding the subject of all the people who, you know, died.”
“Sacrifices have to be made for the greater good,” Vader said. “Your rebel insurgence is the one disrupting the peace, not us.”
“My rebel insurgence is the one protecting the rights of the people from your dictatorship. Your threat of conformity or death.”
“Allow me one opportunity to make my case to you,” Vader said.
“Oh, I see now,” Ahsoka said, laughing humourlessly. “That’s why you really agreed to accompany me. So you could have the opportunity to recruit me for the Empire.”
“I could be your master again.”
“What, you want the honour of being assassinated by me in the grand tradition of Sith apprentices killing their masters?” Ahsoka said sarcastically.
“I want you to realise your full potential,” Vader said. “To embrace the Dark Side. And… I want you back at my side. The Jedi Order never understood you. They shunned you, just as they shunned me. But you don’t need them. They were holding you back. I know you, Ahsoka. You belong somewhere your power can truly grow. Somewhere you can embrace your passions, use them to enhance your skill. I can feel your rage. I’ve seen firsthand what you can do when you’re driven by it. I’m… sorry it’s directed at me, but if that is how it must be for you to understand, then so be it.
“Join me. Become the force user you were always destined to be. The Sith can provide you with what you need, as can the Empire.”
A long moment of silence hung between them, as Ahsoka stood there, ordering her thoughts. She knew she would only get one chance to answer this, and when she did, she wanted to say as much as she could.
“You’re right,” she said at last, evenly. “I had no place among the Jedi. Their philosophy of complete detachment was something I could never reconcile with their values of love and justice. My only regret in leaving the Order was abandoning you, since clearly you lost all your marbles in my absence.” She allowed a small, sad smile to touch her lips at that. “I’m – I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you needed me most. Really, truly I am. I love you, Anakin, and I miss you terribly. These last few years have been hell without you. And I want you to know, most sincerely, that I would do almost anything in the world to have you back in my life.”
She took a deep breath, and continued.
“But there is nothing – nothing – that you, or anyone, can do that will make me join the Empire.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Darth Vader said – and to his credit, he really sounded it – as he drew his lightsabre.
It was then that the earth around them began shaking. There was no warning – the tremor was sudden and powerful. Ahsoka stumbled backwards as large chunks of the passageway began to cave in, sealing the space between the two of them. It was short. Intense. Deliberate. Ahsoka didn’t wait around for Vader to make his way through to her, or to consider the unnatural specifics of the quake. She turned and sprinted down the tunnel.