Dreams Of Empire

by DarkPhoenix325

Summary:

A series of one-shots, vignettes, and short stories set in my Empress Ahsoka verse. This focuses mainly on the exploits of supporting, recurring, or minor characters in the other fics.

Notes:

I suggest you read the previous fics to understand this one, but the main gist of this universe is that Ahsoka killed Maul, become the ruler of Mandalore and basically saved the galaxy so the Jedi didn't fall and Sidious died at Anakin's hands, who did not fall to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader.

Chapter 1: A Crownless Princess

Summary:

Qi'ra of Corellia - her story as she joins the Shadow Collective.

Corellians have rocket fuel for blood.

It's an old saying, but one that is accurate seeing as most of her people share Han's predilection for reckless piloting and wanderlust.

Not Qi'ra of Corellia.

She doesn't have rocket fuel for blood. Ice runs through her veins, chilling and hardening her; protecting and isolating her all at once.

She is not like her people.

She suppresses the immediate urge to vomit when she realizes her mistake. She has no people of her own. Her fellow Corellians are too self-obsessed to care about her. Not that she cares about them, of course, but she's sure that would be different if she had been raised by a loving family instead of that vicious matriarch Lady Proxima.

Sometimes, she wishes her life was different.

She never tells Han that, though. Even though she loves him more than anyone. Even though they had grown up seeing each other as siblings. Even though they had begun to feel something more for each other.

Qi'ra of Corellia is not a sentimental child.

Qi'ra of Corellia is thirteen years old, and her heart is as cold as that of a thirteen-hundred-year-old statue.

That's what the other children think of her, and she revels in the image that they view her in.

All except for Han, with his stupid grin and stupider jokes making her heart warm and flutter all the while filling her with the urge to both kiss and kill him.

She has a vicious streak and she knows that even he can't object to that, as much as he cares for her.

It's not something either of them talk about very much, if at all. But it's also not something that she neglects. She nourishes it, lets her hate sit and fester and only brings it out when she needs to appear especially unapproachable. It keeps the darker parts of Corellia's underworld away from her, keeps her safe and warm when Han isn't there to protect her from those bigger than her.

Han. Dear, lovable, adorable Han with his soft eyes and softer heart.

She is not soft. Qi'ra of Corellia is not gentle nor loving nor adorable.

Her heart is as hard as stone and her touch as cold as ice. Growing up on the streets has taught that her any kind of warmth or compassion or gentility is a weakness that will get you killed. That is a fact of her life. And yet it perplexes her how Han has survived for so long. He's got street smarts, that's for sure, but not much else. He's not particularly big or strong for his age - and not very smart, if she's being honest - and yet he has survived for as long as she has, and that stupid grin of his has survived for just as long.

She loves him...

And as strange as it sounds, she hates him almost as much. Hates him for his mercy, for his goodness.

She hates herself for lacking that same goodness.

She tells herself that her experience on the streets had purged her of that love, of that compassion and hope. But a dark part of her whispers in her mind the possibility that she never had it to begin with.

Qi'ra forces herself to take pride in her coldness, lets the others call her "Ice Queen" and projects an image of regality befitting royalty to support the image, and does what Proxima asks of her, becoming the crime-lord's best thief.

She's a queen, a princess, even without a crown.

She thinks her success will be enough to protect her...

She is wrong.

 

>>>

 

Qi'ra of Corellia is fourteen years old when the world reminds her that trust and loyalty are weaknesses.

Qi'ra of Corellia is fourteen years old when she loses what little remains of an innocence she thought she had lost long ago.

Qi'ra of Corellia is fourteen years old when she takes a life for the first time.

He's a Twi'Lek. He's a man over three decades her senior, with skin as blue as the sea, eyes of the same colour, and teeth so sharp they jut from his oversized mouth. His nails are almost as long, and they cut her as they dig into her flesh.

She cries, and screams, and fights, and fights, and fights, and fails...

His name is Vormin, and he's a 'friend' of Proxima.

At least, that's what her 'mother' chooses to introduce him as when she calls her into her sanctum, empty of all save for a line of bodyguards and enforcers and of course, Vormin himself, standing tall over her. She hardens her gaze as the man when she feels his lecherous gaze sweep up and down her developing body. She resists the urge to cover herself.

Statues don't tremble!

She looks back up at her mistress, "You called me?" She asks with a steady voice, careful to keep her eyes away from the towering alien, whose eyes she can still feel studying her, watching her... wanting her.

"Yes..." The oversized worm croons, "This is my friend, Vormin."

Qi'ra doesn't even glance in his direction. Maybe if she pretends for long enough, he will simply disappear. She quietly chides herself for such childish hopefulness.

"He's going to do a favour for me. He wants a very particular kind of payment and only you can help with that."

The countless rings and plates lining Proxima's back clank and clink together as she sloshes about in her filth-ridden pool, but all that noise quickly fades when the realizing slowly but surely seeps into Qi'ra's mind.

She's met men like Vormin before. Not necessarily Twi'leks, but men - and even a few women - who look at her like a piece of meat.

Proxima had always protected her from such people. Never for any moral reason, of course. Qi'ra was never under any such delusion, but she had always understood that so long as she served the White Worms then she would be granted shelter and security. That is the way the world works. It is the way that the world has always worked. She's never had any reason to doubt it.

Until now...

For the first time in a long time, she finds herself speechless. Her mind reels in shock when she feels a large hand grab her bicep and pull her backwards. She fights him. She kicks and punches and scratches and screams.

He slaps her in response. Proxima and her enforcers ignore her, the great worm herself disappearing in her pool once more as Vormin drags the girl into a backroom.

Han is elsewhere, like most of the other kids, no doubt away on one of Proxima's errands.

Qi'ra hates herself for wishing he was here. She shouldn't need him to protect her. She lets her anger and hate at herself - at Han for not being with her - fuel her strength, lets it take over until she's yelling and slashing like a wild animal.

Vormin only hits her harder, and begins to laugh and salivate as he tares at her clothes.

Qi'ra isn't exactly sure what happens next.

She feels the cold air of Proxima's lair envelop her skin, biting deeper and deeper into her flesh with each laboured breath she takes, but it's nothing compared to the spidery, savage gripping of Vormin's disgusting hands pulling and probing her.

And then there's light... and heat... and warmth... and power...

So, so much power. She wonders, absently, if this is what a hyperdrive would feel like if it was alive. It's like a door suddenly bursts open from deep inside her chest, and out floods a surge of starlight, illuminating her veins and wrenching free from her outstretched fingertips.

Lightning! Blue and beautiful, as bring as the sun.

Time seems to freeze, and in that fleeting moment she catches sight of Vormin's terrified expression. She commits the image to memory, stores it away in the deepest part of her mind where it shall remain for all time.

And then she watches as it forces him up through the air and against the dusty, stone ceiling.

She collapses when the last of her energy leaves her, and the smell of Vormin's dead, sizzled black flesh fills her nostrils as she succumbs to the dark embrace of sleep.

 

>>>

 

She never learns the nature of Vormin's favour to Proxima. But she learns that it was clearly very important to the Grindalid, otherwise the punishment she receives in the aftermath of the Twi'lek's death wouldn't have been so severe.

Proxima makes an example of her.

She has her enforcers haul the girl up, naked and bruised before the assembled White Worms... before Han, whose confused, teary-eyed gaze makes her want to comfort and criticize him at the same time.

Han is the one to do it.

Proxima leaves him with no choice and Qi'ra makes sure to use what little strength she has in her to tell him that it's alright. They all know that Proxima will kill her if Han doesn't do what he is told to do.

And so he does it, screaming and crying as he takes the bladed whip in his hand and whips her back bloody.

It's only when she loses consciousness does Proxima finally tell the boy to cease the attack. She ensures that the girl receives only what minimal medical attention she needs in order to make it through the ordeal before leaving her in the slums to recover on her own.

The princess loses her makeshift throne of rags and rocks, and everyone witnesses her fall.

"It's not your fault." She forces herself to say when Han finds her a few nights later, having finally managed to make it out of the White Worms lair to search for her. She manages to suppress the urge to protest when he insists on feeding her from a bowl of soup like a child.

"If it's not my fault, then whose is it?"

It's Proxima's, she thinks. She doesn't say it, barely any has strength to, but she hopes he understands it - if not yet, then one day. She isn't sure what it is that compels her to do what she does next, but she pulls him forward and kisses him. She locks their lips together and for a very brief moment, the pain in her back sizzles down. He is even more shocked than she is when they pull away from each other, but eventually that stupid grin of his returns and for the first time in a long time, her stone heart trembles and she smiles herself.

 

>>>

 

Qi'ra of Corellia is fifteen years old and she's finally returned to the nest.

Proxima acts as though Qi'ra has been on vacation rather than being almost whipped to death because she dared to resist a rape attempt. Qi'ra has never hated Proxima. She's never liked her, but she's never hated her.

Until this moment, when she stands before the sickeningly disgusting worm and practically tastes her arrogance.

For a brief moment, Qi'ra can feel a familiar flicker of power spark at her fingertips. But as she looks down at her hands, she sees no lightning. She still wonders where it came from, and as she looks back up at Proxima she can... feel something else.

Fear, she realizes after a moment of consideration.

She can practically taste it.

Proxima is afraid of her and rightly so. Qi'ra wields a power that neither of them understand. But something inside Qi'ra tells her that she's meant for more than this, meant for more than a life as a petty pickpocket, more than a life spent as someone's slave, more than a life spent as a simple Corellian.

But she doesn't understand, and so she waits. Weeks pass and Proxima foolishly believes that Qi'ra has been adequately 'housebroken'.

And then a man comes. A Besalisk named Murok Zarl who somehow gains an audience with Proxima and declares the birth of a new order, an order that Proxima can either join or be crushed by. The White Worms are nothing compared to the larger syndicates like the Black Sun or the Hutt Cartel, but they have immense influence on Corellia, influence that goes back centuries, if not longer.

Proxima resists, of course.

But the Besalisk is not surprised, and when he leaves that night Qi'ra's curiosity gets the better of her and follows him back to his ship, guided by some 'will' that seemed to be watching over her.

She wasn't sure what she was expecting to find on that ship. But a witch certainly wasn't it.

 

>>>

 

Her name is Asajj Ventress, and something about her feels so right that Qi'ra aches to be in her presence.

She finally feels like she belongs and so she listens to Asajj, helps her even. Helps her infiltrate the White Worms and personally rips Proxima apart with her powers before restructuring the group to serve the Shadow Collective.

Ventress welcomes her into her ranks, and even allows Han and their fellow orphans to join in a variety of roles.

Her greatest gift comes with a ship and an invitation to her homeworld.

And so, with Han at her side, the two leave Corellia behind and find their way to Dathomir. Ventress is there, at the peak of a great cliff, surrounded by armoured warriors and red-robed women, waiting for them as their ship touches down. "Welcome." The Witch-Queen says with a silky voice and a fanged smile.

Qi'ra can feel Han cringe at her side, but something inside her warms at the sight of her friend.

The months that follow are the fastest and strangest of Qi'ra's life.

Qi'ra of Corellia dies there, and Qi'ra of Dathomir is born.

Qi'ra of Corellia had no family, but Qi'ra of Dathomir has a thousand sisters, both dead, alive, and... something else.

Qi'ra of Dathomir doesn't tattoo herself with the white and black markings of her new people.

But she learns of their culture, of the Force, of magick. She learns how to cast curses that singe the flesh and animate the bone, how to cast illusions and deceive the stars themselves. She summons the ancient Sleeper from Dathomir's depths and invokes its power, and feels her body erupt with orange flame instead of the green common to her sisters. It's a unique quirk of hers that Asajj comments on, announcing it as a sign of her potential.

Han doesn't like it. He doesn't like the Force or the magick she can summon from it. But she does, and that's all the reason she needs to keep doing it.

Despite his reservations, Han serves the Collective alongside her, and even shares her feelings for the young Clone bounty hunter that draws their attention. The money definitely helps, she supposes, perhaps as much as Boba's comforting presence for them both does. They never want for anything as agents of the dreaded Witch-Queen, of the enigmatic Dark Hand of Mand'alor. Not that the Collective's true, secret affiliations with the increasingly powerful and ever-expanding Mandalorian Empire are ever talked about.

It's only a year later when she finally comes face to face with the woman behind it all.

Qi'ra of Dathomir is sixteen years old when she meets the Empress of Mandalore for the first time.

Qi'ra of Dathomir is sixteen years old when she meets Ahsoka Tano.

 

>>>

 

The Togruta is only a few years older than herself. Qi'ra is sure of it. But she is so much more powerful. She could feel it even before they dropped out of Hyperspace, before they even boarded the remote space station in Imperial territory that had been chosen for their meeting.

She keeps herself tall and still as the Empress studies her closely. "She's powerful." The Empress declares with a tone that Qi'ra can only interpret as approval. Her senses are usually flawless but she can't feel anything from the Mandalorian across from her. She isn't sure if it's just the Aurodium-gilded Beskar she's wearing or if it's the woman's own prodigious abilities blocking her. It's probably both, she reasons.

"She is indeed." Asajj agrees with a smirk. "Not the strongest, but definitely among the most skilled."

Ahsoka smiles at them both, "I'm sure she'll prove to be incredibly useful to us both, Asajj." She then speaks to her directly, "I foresee you achieving great things in the future, Qi'ra. Don't doubt yourself and nothing will be able to stop you."

She takes the Empress's words to heart, and remembers them when she's on Dantooine eight months later.

She's helping the Collective establish a secret network of bases and outposts on the planet. It's proving quite a fortuitous endeavour when she suddenly feels an inescapable pull to an old mining shaft. At its base, she finds a glimmering Kyber crystal that's all but calling her name and returns with it to Dathomir.

Under Asajj's guidance, she crafts a black and red hilt around it, adorned with runes from the Nightsisters and the logo of the Crimson Dawn, having just been appointed the syndicate's leader. She wears a medallion with the same symbol, but on the other side rests the twisting sigil of the Collective.

Asajj hides her surprise well when she sees the completed weapon, and Ahsoka smirks when she lays eyes on the golden-yellow beam herself. Qi'ra of Dathomir is the only Nightsister, aside from Ventress herself, to wield a saber of her own. She becomes quite proficient with it, training with Ventress, a few of the Chevaliers, some Mandalorians, and occasionally even the Empress herself.

Even without it, she's more than capable of using the Force to set a person's blood aflame by igniting the oxygen, burning them from the inside out; or tearing them limb from limb at a distance; or turning them to ash with a well-directed bolt of lightning. Her true power lies in her manipulation of the mind, a skill that proves incredibly useful in her role as head of the Crimson Dawn.

Qi'ra of Dathomir is eighteen years old, and she sits in her chair in her office aboard the First Light.

Qi'ra of Dathomir is eighteen years old, and she turns to a holo-picture of her lovers; a grinning Han with his arms flung around the shoulders of their ever-stoic Boba.

Qi'ra of Dathomir is eighteen years old, and she realizes that she is finally - truly and utterly - a queen, and she needs no crown to prove it.

Chapter 2: The Sum Of Our Parts

Summary:

Barriss Offee - Character study/alternate story

Barriss Offee is like the rest of her kind. She does not remember her parents, but imagines them all the same.

She does not tell the other Jedi that she does so, fearing the reprimand she will receive at the prospect of an attachment forming.

Barriss Offee learns of fear early in her life. It is a lesson that stays with her as the years pass.

And yet, she imagines her parents all the same.

She looks in the mirror, and can't decide whether her skin is yellow or green.

She decides her father is the green one, and her mother is yellow.

She learns quickly that people are the sum of their parts, both in body and in mind.

People are the result of their parents uniting as one, pieces of each coming together to form a new whole.

The war comes and the fire burns, and she learns that people are also the result of their experiences.

She learns that they are - that she is - the coming together of all their pain, fears, traumas, and anger.

Barriss Offee cannot decide if she is more, or less, or equal parts pain or fear, trauma or anger...?

The thought haunts her. Haunts her in her sleep as it haunts her in battle, giving no thought on whether she is at peace or in combat. It digs at her and takes root, hooking its cold, grasping fingers under her green-yellow flesh and sowing it black seeds.

She doesn't know what she is, but she looks in the mirror and settles on the green for now.

 

>>>

 

She has a natural gift for healing. Or so the masters say.

It is a common theme. Most individuals among their Order have their talents, their fields of expertise. Of course, it is all refined through years of discipline and endless hours of practice. Yet, an element of chaos clearly exists because some of them have a natural leaning towards certain aspects of the Force over others.

There's a boy in her clan, a Nautolan as blue as the sky, who can make others see things that aren't there.

There's a human girl, flesh pale as snow and hair red as blood, who can lift a speeder before she can even spell her name.

There's Tutso Mara, another boy, who can make himself fade into a black shadow.

There's Lyn Rakish, whose emotions burn brighter than the fiery colours that plaster her alien skin, causing glass to shatter and flames to burn hotter with a single tantrum.

And then there's little Barriss Offee, flesh neither yellow nor green, and a spirit as muddled and confusing as her appearance.

She's good with the body, her masters say. She who sees things as they are. She's good with the living, apparently. It's all just matter, she learns quickly. People are the product of their parents. They are an assemblage of millions of cells working in unison. They are blood, and bone, and skin, and muscle. A clot here, a fracture there, a tear here, and a strain there. It's all so easy to use the Force to spurn into action.

Lyn likes dominoes. And Barriss comes to see life as a set of them; she kicks one and a whole biological process is set into motion.

She takes pride in it, takes pride in her power and the smiles she sees on the faces of those she helps.

Perhaps it's that pride that sees her taken as the Padawan of Master Luminara Unduli, one of the greatest of their order. She's not entirely surprised by it. It's an ancient tradition for Mirialan Jedi to take others of their species as their apprentices. She isn't sure why. Why their kind gets special treatment.

But she doesn't ask.

Luminara doesn't have the same aura of confusion and complexity that Barriss sees every time she looks in the mirror. Good, wise, powerful Luminara - whose skin is as green as forest leaves and whose eyes are a far more confident blue than hers could ever hope to be.

She finally gains some form of understanding when she returns to Mirial and receives the black diamond tattoos of their people.

Luminara beams at her and for the first time in her apprenticeship, her master doesn't shy away from showing affection to her young Padawan. Barriss soaks it up like a sponge in a bath. For the first time in as long as she can remember, Barriss Offee is happy...

And then the war begins.

 

>>>

 

Luminara becomes a general. She goes to war, to a hundred different battlefields and leads a hundred thousand men that each wear the same face.

Barriss Offee does go not with her. Not at first, anyway. She lingers in the Temple, and remembers the days when the corridors were once full of life and not the broken ghostly half-things that were once Jedi, crippled by trauma and suffering. She remembers the days before the war, all the while tending to the broken Jedi that return from the front.

She grows used to seeing severed limbs, missing eyes, shattered ribs, scorched flesh, and a hundred other injuries that sear into her memory.

Her sleep becomes decidedly less peaceful when she actually manages to get some, brief and haunted as it is. But she becomes used to it.

Barriss Offee gets used to seeing her yellow-green skin marred in red.

The blood becomes the only constant as the war rages on. The days into weeks, and the weeks turn into months, and one planet falls after the other and at the end of the day, Barriss must wash the blood from her hands and try to forget the patient that didn't make it off the table.

She channels as much power into the Force as she can, she meditates as much as possible to deepen her connection, and the results are the same.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many dominoes she topples and however many cuts she seals, the deaths continue to mount and Barriss Offee can never quite seem to get rid of all the red on her hands.

The fires of war burn hotter with each passing day, consuming yet another world and another life in their endless rampage across the galaxy.

Barriss looks in the mirror, and sees herself burning piece by piece as well. With each patient that fails to recover, with each torn ligament she must heal and each life fade before her eyes, she fades away until she is gone, until the black diamond markings and the yellow-green beneath slowly chips away at the flames of combat...

Until all that is left is red.

 

>>>

 

Her natural talent erodes under all that blood. Her inner turmoil building a black barrier around that source of light from which she draws her healing warmth.

She learns that fixing a person's mind is a thousand times more difficult than fixing their body, and even that skill of hers dies with every Padawan she fails to save. She cannot heal anymore. She cannot help. And so she must hurt.

She joins Luminara on the battlefield, dancing in the flames of carnage and cutting a bloody swathe across one nameless planet after another.

"You're a fearsome warrior, Barriss." Luminara says with as much pride as her devout Jedi spirit allows, and Barriss takes what little praise she can. Anything to soften the pain she feels. She repeats in her mind over and over as the campaigns drag on and on.

Barriss Offee is a fearsome warrior. It doesn't sound right when she thinks about it too long. She doesn't feel like she should be a warrior. But even worse is that she doesn't know what she should be instead.

She can no longer heal, and hurting is the only thing she seems to be good at, be it herself or others.

And so she loses herself in the pain. She lets the Force guide her blade to cut down another opponent as she once let it guide her to heal another limbless Knight. She is still Barriss Offee when she meets a girl unlike any other she had ever met before in her life. A girl so unlike herself.

She is still Barriss Offee when she meets Ahsoka Tano.

Ahsoka, whose skin is the colour of a fire-drenched horizon and whose heart harbours a fire as glaringly bright as her supernova of a master. Ahsoka, kind and compassionate with a feral grin and a knack for savage brutality. Ahsoka, as traumatized as she is by the endless death and yet - unlike her - she still knows who she is.

Ahsoka Tano looks in the mirror and still sees Ahsoka Tano.

Barriss Offee is greener than ever in her presence; green with envy.

She never forgets her days with Ahsoka Tano, the Child of Fire.

"I'm Ahsoka." The younger girl says with a smile, offering her hand.

"I know the way." Barriss tells her in those Geonosian tunnels where their bond is born. She really doesn't. She can memorize as many junctions, and corridors, and pitfalls, as she wishes - but Barriss Offee knows she is lost in the darkness.

But then the girl with the firelight of a hundred sunsets embedded in her skin shines and shows her the way.

"This tank could destroy the power generator..." Ahsoka muses as they look around the Geonosian super-tank they're trapped in, "and probably us along with it."

It's an ending that Barriss isn't surprised by, and neither is Ahsoka judging by her resigned expression. "I guess that's our only choice."

She watches and listens with rapt interest as Ahsoka says her final farewell to her master. Even through her comm, Barriss can taste his confusion, his fear, his panic. She wonders momentarily if that's what love is. And then Ahsoka looks at her, and in the sky-blue eyes of the girl with the sunset skin, the girl she barely even knows, she sees herself. For the first time since the war began, she sees Barriss Offee.

She is at peace when Ahsoka presses the button, and imagines the sunset before the darkness takes them.

 

>>>

 

Fate decides that the Force will not have these particular children back just yet. It must wait longer for them.

They awake in darkness, buried deep under the rubble of the factory they had just destroyed. Their blades hiss into life, Barriss' blue clashes well with Ahsoka's green. They may yet draw breath, but Barriss doesn't particularly mind if her end is nigh. She is content to lie and wait with the sunset girl. "Whatever happens to us now, doesn't matter." She is content to wait for the fire to finally go out. "By destroying this factory, we've saved countless lives elsewhere."

But Ahsoka is stubborn. "Well, I'm about to save two more."

Something in this strange sunset girl she's only just met sends her own inner fires roaring to the surface. She dares to hope and finds herself clasping hands with her new... friend. She smiles at the thought. She had lost so many since the war began, she didn't even think she had anything left inside of her that was worth befriending.

Ahsoka's resourcefulness saves their lives, and as the two climb from their hole in the ground and into their masters' embrace; Barriss sees a flicker of the affection that Skywalker so brazenly showers Ahsoka with reflected in Luminara's eyes.

It isn't a hug... but it's more than enough for her.

Ahsoka shares her light with Barriss, even if she doesn't know it. She shares it with her as they leave Geonosis together and take the time to get to know each other. "My favourite colour is green." She says, clearly at a loss of what else to say.

"Mine is orange." She isn't sure what it is that compels her to reply with that, but she doesn't regret it as she sees Ahsoka's cheeks tinge red in embarrassment.

It's an easy, comfortable camaraderie they fall into one. One that Barriss can tell that Ahsoka is in as much need of as she herself is. And then Ahsoka says, "I was just thinking about what you said earlier: about enjoying the peace while it lasts. As a Jedi, I'm not sure if I know how to do that."

It's so casual; how Ahsoka gives word to Barriss's thoughts. "Master Windu has said that we're keepers of the peace... not warriors." She repeats the words she had heard a hundred times from the Councillor, hoping that her voice doesn't betray her true thoughts. And then curiosity grips her, "What does your master tell you?"

Barriss isn't sure what to make of Ahsoka's face when she asks that question, "Anakin? Oh, uh, you might find some of his thoughts on the future a bit radical."

She blinks, "Really? Why?"

"Let's just say that my master will always do what needs to be done."

The Barriss before the war would've opposed such a mindset with every fibre of her being. But that Barriss was gone, dying if not dead, and this new one had been baptized in the blood of her fellows and forged in the fires of a thousand battlefields. If a ruthless action put an end to the seemingly never-ending line of broken-bodied Knights and Padawans that fill the Halls of Healing day in and day out, then she couldn't find it in her heart to go against such an action.

That belief only cements itself when their clone comrades turn against them, their bodies puppeteered by the parasitic larvae of the Geonosian Queen, somehow having infiltrated their ship before they left the planet.

Ahsoka's light is drowned out in the darkness that follows when their own men are forced to fight them. She keeps to herself the constant sight of her hands covered in blood, the blood of the men they had spent the war fighting alongside.

"I think we should stay together." Ahsoka says when she suggests splitting up, a tactic they both know will maximise their chances of success.

"As do I..." There isn't time enough to pour all of her sincerity into those three simple words. She wishes nothing more than to stay by Ahsoka's side, to bathe in her light and fight the ever encroaching darkness together. "Unfortunately, that's not a luxury we have right now. One of us must succeed, Ahsoka. If you need to, you'll do what must be done. I know it."

They go their separate ways, and it hurts Barriss more than it should be apart from a girl she had only just met.

It doesn't hurt long though, as a parasite worms its way into her and the darkness consumes her. It's bliss. She isn't Barriss anymore, and in those moments as her muscles fall to the will of the mind within her own, she doesn't mind it as much as she thought she would.

And then the cloud of dark recedes for a moment and she sees Ahsoka. It is her light she sees breaching the black veil that envelops her, a sunset that makes her remember a girl she once knew. A girl she once was by the name of Barriss Offee, and that girl doesn't like what the parasite is doing, doesn't like the fact that its making her attack Ahsoka Tano. The sunset girl. Her child of fire. Her one and only friend. "Kill me..." she forces out, preferring death over the darkness in which she is no longer herself. "Please..."

The sunset somehow manages to find its way through the darkness once again, and Barriss Offee is herself again.

But as she awakens in Ahsoka's frozen arms, about to be carted away to a medical bed, she realizes that another part of her was lost along the way.

 

>>>

 

The days drag on once again. Each sunrise and sundown takes with it another piece of herself.

The broken Jedi don't stop coming into the Halls of Healing, the battles don't seem to ever cease or settle, and the fire continues to burn the galaxy away until all that is left is ash. Ahsoka Tano is her friend, always has been, but she is fire. And what is left of Barriss Offee eventually has enough of choking on ashes.

She is water, cool and cold, but is a twisted inversion of the liquid. She is calm on the surface, and a raging tempest beneath.

The dark is comforting, cold yet soothing compared to the blinding light. She lets herself sink into its depths and allows the currents to pull her left, right, down, and every which way but up. She lets it tear away what's left of Barriss Offee, that yellow-green girl with black diamond tattoos and healing hands.

She lets it guide her as she conspires with a terrorist and together they set fire to her home. That boy who was able to fade into a black shadow, Tutso Mara, dies in the explosion. But Barriss Offee was his friend. And Barriss Offee is gone.

She lets the sunset girl take the blame, lets the council of light judge and condemn her. She hopes the sunset girl goes dark from the experience, but her light shines all the same.

It shines a path straight to her, and Skywalker follows; he discovers the truth and takes her before the Senate of fools and the council of light, both blinded by their own brilliance. She makes her speech and her own condemnations, lets her heart scream its truth and ignores the sudden breaking sensation it feels as she catches sight of the sunset girl's betrayed expression, sky-blue eyes hazy through a veil of unshed tears.

That face sears itself into her memory as she is confined to a jail cell.

Her illusion of water is shattered, and now her own inner fire has consumed her.

 

>>>

 

She isn't sure how long she spends in prison before Luminara comes to see her, face as broken as Ahsoka's was. "I am so sorry, Barriss."

She doesn't answer. There is no one in the galaxy with that name. She ignores the forest-green Jedi until she leaves, and she is suddenly struck with the realization that all she is left with is ash. She is left with the knowledge that she had burned what little good she had left in her life.

It's weeks, or maybe months, before she looks into her reflection in a bucket of water given to her by the guards to wash herself; and sees a woman she does not recognize staring back at her.

It's another few months until the galaxy screams in pain. A Great Burn scorches itself upon reality and the Republic nearly dies. The Jedi nearly die. A deception greater than her own is brought to light, and the capital is aflame with the chaos of confusion, and in that chaos, she makes her escape.

She wanders in the new galaxy that follows the fall of Palpatine and the end of the Clone Wars. She loses herself as she did before, letting her anger and her pain guide her into battle against a score of nameless warlords and wannabe world conquerors.

She's a good fighter. A fearsome warrior, she remembers being told in another life.

The weeks become months, and the months become years. The galaxy is as dangerous as ever, the future never more uncertain with the rise of the new Mandalorian Empire and its enigmatic emperor. She wonders if the fire they start will be the one to finally consume her entirely.

She's on a planet, a nameless rock in the Outer Rim, somewhere between Hutt Space and the Colonies, where a five-year-old boy falls from a tree and splits his head open on the ground.

His parents screech and cry and scramble to save their son. And the sight does something to her. She feels her body lose control of itself, as it had with that parasite, and before she knows it, she's hovering over the boy, hands placed gently on his bleeding scalp as light drips from her fingers and into the wound. Her entire body is alight with an energy that she never knew she had.

The boy groans as the cut stiches itself closed at her command, and the parents sing her praises for five weeks straight until she takes her leave. The boy bounces over to her and offers up a small lily as a thank you and goodbye present before she leaves.

She isn't sure what to do with it, but she doesn't crush it or throw it away. It keeps her company as she finds her way to another irrelevant world on the edge of Imperial territory.

She finds herself healing another person, and then another, and then another, and another. She's on the edge of the town, staring at her reflection on the crystal surface of a mountain lake. Her skin is yellow and green and covered in black diamonds. She looks down at her hands, and they are covered in red. She forces down a surge of bile, and realizes that she was the one who put that blood there. She remembers a boy who could fade like a black shadow. She remembers a boy named Tutso Mara.

She remembers a girl named Barriss Offee.

She is fire, and she is water, and she is ice.

She is light, and she is shadow, and she is darkness.

She remembers a girl made of flame and the sunset embedded in her flesh. She remembers that girl as the only person whose outward appearance mirrored the hidden heart within. She remembers a savage grin in the heat of combat and a loving glance of reassurance in the hallway of a grand temple.

She realizes that she is a monster, and that Ahsoka Tano was not. She realizes that she has hurt people... and that she has helped them too.

She realizes, finally, that she is more than she is; and as she looks down once more at her reflection, she hopes she will be Barriss Offee again.

Chapter 3: The Children Of Light

Summary:

Ahsoka's younglings - Katooni, Byph, Ganodi, Gungi, Zatt, and Petro.

They are the Krayt Clan, and sometimes they feel they are closer than the Jedi Code would prefer.

It doesn't bother them, though. They keep on caring for each other even when they sit and listen to lectures of the risk that comes with attachment. None of them even consider it, because the idea of losing one of them is unthinkable.

And then the war starts...

It's such an exciting time to be a Jedi, and they are the next generation. They are the ones who must carry the fire and never let go. They are the ones who must lead the rest from the front lines and defend the helpless.

The future glory of battles yet to come blinds ever-confident Petro. He does not yet know how cherished peace must be.

Self-doubt wracks the mind of shy Katooni, who will be the only one of them lucky enough not to see one of their friends die.

Fear paralyzes the frightened Byph, whose terror only heightens with each Padawan that fails to return from a campaign.

Strong Gungi doesn't learn patience until he's in the gap between the battles, the place where time seems to freeze and all the stars wait for the world to burn.

Smart Zatt can fix anything with wires and bolts. "You can fix anything." Katooni tells him, but something in him says that nothing can ever truly be fixed.

Fiery Ganodi thinks her fire will keep her safe from harm, thinks nothing can hurt her so long as her attitude encases her in a protective cocoon. She's rude to everyone but her family and doesn't realize how kind she must be until the end comes.

But their flaws mean nothing when they have each other. They are proven right when Ahsoka - brave, powerful Ahsoka - takes them to Ilum to find their Kyber crystals and forge their own lightsabers. It's proven right when they rescue her from a gang of pirates and the dreaded General Grievous, and that strength is what inspires them to back the Padawan, despite their fear and their doubt and their impatience, their blades hiss to life as they prepare themselves.

But they don't have to fight. They are saved and they return home to begin the next step on their Jedi journey.

There aren't words enough for them to tell Ahsoka how she will always be with them every step of the way, how her light has shone a path for them, how she has served and will always serve as an example for them to follow.

They make a vow that night, a secret promise, that when each of them is chosen by a Knight that they will find the words then. They vow that Ahsoka will know how much she means to them.

And then Barriss Offee burns it all down.

 

>>>

 

The war continues and one by one, they are taken as Padawans.

Zatt is chosen by Falon Grey, himself the former apprentice of the intense and polarizing Rahm Kota, whose dislike and distrust for the clones was well known throughout the Order and the GAR. Zatt meets his grandmaster only once before the older Jedi returns to the Outer Rim Sieges with his personal militia.

Petro falls under the tutelage of the equally impulsive Agen Kolar, and somehow their fires cool each other. With Agen, Petro doesn't feel bad for leaping without looking.

Byph is trained by Jayden Veila, a man whose kindness and compassion helps the Ithorian find his own courage, jumping to his master's defence when the latter lies wounded on yet another blood soaked battlefield, and takes pride when he successfully repels the Separatist legion.

Ganodi never says her master's name, her tongue snapping a sharp barb whenever he is brought up. The wound of his loss still feels fresh five years on.

Gungi is selected by the one and only Kit Fisto, whose easy smile and easier demeanour never tries his patience and always keeps him on his feet. In return, Gungi helps Kit overcome the loss of Nahdar at the hands of Grievous, and day by day, Gungi can see that his master feels a little less like a failure as his new Padawan grows to surpass the old.

Katooni chastises herself when she is finally chosen. She is the last of her clan, her family, to be taken as a Padawan.

It's a moment of immense pride for her, as it is for all of them. Even more so than it was the second she ignited her lightsaber for the first time, and its sapphire glow had lit up the face of that meddlesome pirate whom she will never forget.

And yet there is something missing. The puzzle is complete save for a single piece.

She cannot fulfil the vow she and the others had made. Ahsoka was gone. She had left the Jedi, had refused the council's offer to return and be immediately risen to the rank of Knight. She would've been the youngest to achieve the title in years. And yet, she still chose to walk away.

Katooni and the others had struggled with the thought ever since they heard the news.

And now here she is, sitting in the cockpit of her master's shuttle, thinking of her. "I miss her, too." Master Koon says suddenly and Katooni doesn't doubt it. She can feel the Force ring with truth and no small amount of sorrow. He looks at her then, and even though he doesn't have eyes as she would call them, she can see why he chose her. It is because he sees her when he looks at her. He sees a little Togruta, fearless and full of life and potential, and decides that he won't let what happened to Ahsoka happen to her.

Katooni misses Ahsoka more than anything, and yet her new master - the legendary Plo Koon - assures her that she has within her that same spark he had seen in her eyes the moment she took his hand all those years ago.

 

>>>

 

They are children, they quickly come to realize.

Each of them learns that lesson in the hardest of ways, alone and separated, scattered across the galaxy but each of them in the same position as each other: an activated lightsaber in their hands, blood on their brow, fear in their veins, and a mountain of corpses at their feet.

They rarely see each other now, split apart by war and duty.

The battles only get harder, the ocean of blood drowning the galaxy only gets deeper, and their yearning for each other only gets stronger. And yet, they fight on. They are Jedi, and this is their purpose, even if they come to hate it.

Petro - the one who hungered for glory and carnage more than the rest of them combined - comes to grab for fleeting moments of peace and quiet, thriving in the silence until it is broken by another explosion.

Katooni - guided onward by a fire mirroring that of her idol - comes to realize that fire only burns, and that she is sick of choking on ashes.

Byph - the frightened Ithorian whose courageous dares in battle become storied among the younger generation of the Order - realizes that courage is a well that only runs so deep, and that he is nearing its bottom.

Gungi - who masters the art of patience and learns to wait for one's moment - comes to the conclusion that no matter how long he waits, the death will never stop.

Zatt - who learns to rely on himself and others rather than the trusted programming of the mechanical - learns that broken droids don't hurt as much as broken men do, the screams of his dying comrades echoing in his dreams for years to come.

Ganodi - who tries and tries to be kind, and understanding, and compassionate - discovers that betrayal never comes from those you hate.

These lessons both divide and bind them together. It's a contradiction that none of them understand, and so when the fires of the war give one last final blaze that consumes their masters one by one in the form of their twisted clone subordinates - they go back to the only thing they can understand: each other.

 

>>>

 

The Order comes suddenly and without warning. They suppose that is by design. If they learned anything in their history classes, it is that the Sith are devious and cunning. All the galaxy is nothing more than a tool to those dark lords of old.

One by one, their masters fall, and they are alone.

One by one, they are drawn back together again. Zatt and Byph find each other on Bespin, Ganodi and Gungi meet up on Kashyyyk, and they all reunite on the silver shores of the Outer Rim planet of Albion.

Petro is the first to go running into the crowd, somehow managing to bring them all into a crushing hug at the same time.

And then they turn, and see Katooni's silhouette approaching on the horizon.

They smile and break out into a run for their friend, their sister. And then they see the blood, the gaping hole in her abdomen that she's trying to hold shut with her broken hand. "I thought I lost them when I left Cato Neimoidia..." She rasps out in a broken chuckle, "Guess not." She gasps and falls, and Petro is the one to catch her.

She lets him cradle her in his arms, lets her friends - her family - gather round and watch her with tearful, pleading eyes. "Please, don't go!" Ganodi sobs. "Please, don't leave us!"

Katooni can see the same request in each of their faces. And no matter how much she may wish to, she cannot defy the call of the Force. "I have to go now..." She whispers sadly, but manages a small smile all the same. "Don't worry. A piece of me will always remain."

And she fades away, and Petro shakes her, and Gungi roars, and Byph screeches, and Zatt cries, and Ganodi screams... and yet she does not wake.

They bury her on the shore, and then leave with the sun, the memory of her entrenched in their bones and pulling at their hearts.

They remember their lessons on attachment, and finally understand why the Jedi warned against it. They learn that without Katooni, they are no longer whole. They are but shadows, the children of light...

And they are lost in the darkness.

 

>>>

 

The war is over, at least in name.

The galaxy has been reforged in fire, and all the worlds within it teeter on the edge of either collapse or prosperity. At this point, it can go either way. Hundreds of nameless warlords seeking to carve out an empire from the remnants of the Confederacy and in the absence of an actual Republic rise to exploit the chaos that follows the Burn.

A year on, and the shadows that were once the Krayt Clan are drawn once more into the fire, helping where they can.

They're not sure if its the Force or their inner darkness that brings them to what were once the Neutral Systems, now consumed by an internal war that threatens to spill out into the greater galaxy, but they're not sure if they care or not when it leads them to a masked Mandalorian Togruta wielding two dazzling white lightsabers with a ferocity and mastery they had only ever seen performed by one other.

They lost Katooni, but in the darkness, they once again find the light - they find Ahsoka Tano.

And Ahsoka, now Mand'alor, adopts them into her Clan - the newly formed Royal House - and they are named the first of her Chevaliers. It's a moment that makes them as proud as they were when they made their lightsabers, even if they're not completely sure what it means.

Ahsoka explains it all. She tells them that there are many Force-sensitive Mandalorians who have been untrained, and that she plans on changing. She oversees their training personally, but makes sure to have their fellow Mandalorians pitch in every now and again.

They participate in the Unification Wars that see Ahsoka reform the Neutral Systems into the Mandalorian Empire, and even though they find themselves on the front lines more often than not, they have a belonging they didn't feel with the Jedi. Something about Ahsoka tethers them to each other in ways the Order had warned against, something about the Mandalorians that make them feel like they will always be part of a family.

And as the years pass, and they settle into their role as the first generation of the order of Chevaliers - they realize that the shadows aren't the worst place to be, and that even thought Katooni is dead, they can still feel her light, and they follow it all the way down whichever path Ahsoka leads them on.

They are no Jedi, they accept finally five years after the Burn, but they are Mandalorian - and they're fine with that.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Empress Ahsoka