Her mind reeling in an exhaustive loop of paths to follow, Ahsoka could not eliminate returning to the very core of her issues at hand. The innate fear of falling victim, or even prey, to the dark side energies flowing within her would not allow itself to be evaded. How then would there ever be a concise path forward she mentally argued with herself. With those thoughts, Anakin was the first thing to enter her mind. The anguish she thought that she had extinguished had remained a torturous constant that would not placate. Over and over her head replayed the confrontation on Malachor begging questions within her that could never be followed through to any logical conclusion, yet the anger that would swell itself into a manifestation of utter rage and hatred would not be abated and she sensed Master Yoda could feel it as well. What then was there to be done about Anakin... Vader, she corrected herself. He had confirmed as much in their exchange. Anakin was truly consumed and had ceased to be. Any shred of what had remained was, and would forever be, lost to irrationality. Is this even my path? She posed the question to herself a thousand times since Ezra’s intervention. This line of thought had brought her completely out of any other line of thinking she had found. What was Ezra’s path and how in the universe would she ever decipher her part in it? The thought elicited the true nature of her being, everything she was, could hope to be and stood for. She understood him even when he did not understand himself. She was him; He was her. Although their paths had diverged, it was only at her insistence that they do so. Should she have followed him back to Lothal? How could she possibly answer that? Her logic had seemed sound at the moment as the Emperor's reach would have most certainly consumed them both had they not split up, but would it have? Again, supposition.
There was no wisdom in following paths of thought lost to time, circumstance be damned. It was, however, useful in directing her thoughts to more tangible and practical purposes. Upon doing so, she thought about the third and fourth lightsaber in her possession. Holding the hilt of Master Windu’s blade had brought a renewed sense of confidence and exhilaration she had not felt in a decade. What else was possible with it in her possession, much-less grasp. She knew better than to glean any hope of salvation with it merely being present, but the illogical nature of everything that had transpired since Mortis dissuaded her from disregarding anything out of context. There was meaning in the most minutiae of events and items. By all accounts Master Windu had fallen by the hand of Palpatine, but stories also proclaimed the deaths of Anakin, Master Yoda, and that of Master Obi-wan whom all live in direct contrast. His saber, in her lap, meant nothing to her outwardly, yet sparked that sense of hope within her she thought was lost on Malachor. How was that even to be taken as a path forward she thought, with absolutely nothing from which to base hope? She lacked any sense of Master Vos’ ability of retrocognition. Was that, then, her path? Or at least a starting point? Perhaps he had also survived? He was also thought to have been killed some time before the Jedi purge, but her irrational thinking was shifting into a higher gear. This would be something to bring to Master Yoda most certainly.
Her mind trailed off In thought as she heaved a deep breath. The veil of darkness surrounding her was, in fact, welcome currently as she refused to invite the Force in for any intervention. Ahsoka felt very deeply that this was her conundrum to evaluate, although counsel with Master Yoda was precisely why she was here, she knew he would advise her in the same manner, reminding her that this was her path. She would own her choices and any resulting consequences. Again, she breathed a very deep breath, then felt for the newest addition to her belt and concentrated on the hilt of her saber.
“Of course, you must know that did not escape the notice of Master Yoda.” The voice of Qui-gon had returned. Ahsoka did not look away from the saber hilt in her hand.
“Very few things ever do.” She returned slowly.
“May I ask its purpose? After all, you’ve only two hands.”
“Yet to be determined I’m afraid.” Ahsoka replied with sincerity. “One does not ignore the song of the Kyber however.” She finished with an emotional twinge, reminded of Master Tac Kygo’s Kyber lore teachings.
“Some would consider it reckless to assume a function without design, however, I take your meaning. Master Kygo was quite meticulous in her machinations, moreover, I do agree with taking the initiative in something you believe to be right.”
Ahsoka could not help but look up, identifying immediately Qui-gon’s reference.
“Is there a difference?” She asked, assuming a shared understanding.
There was no immediate response. The stillness of her surroundings began to radiate a warmth she had yet to experience on Dagobah as a spectral form took shape before her. Long hair and an unkempt beard framed a thin-lipped smile and compassionate face. A long flowing brown robe covered the rest of his body, arms folded in upon one another. “Mind if I sit?” The form of Qui-gon said with a smile, taking a ‘seat’ on a rotted stump. “There are a great many similarities as well as differences Ahsoka, but the premise remains the same.”
“Was it him or the Force around him?” She asked.
“Both.” He said without hesitation. “A vergence is truth. Complete and undeniable. He embodied then, and still does, the Force around him.”
Ahsoka did not say anything right away, she thought about the entirety of angles his comment could represent. The intricacies of perspective would always be limitless.
“The fault is not yours you know.” She said finally looking back down at the hilt in her hand. “I would have made the same decision I think.” She hesitated briefly as the words resonated with absolute sincerity and unmistakable truth. “His stubbornness always clouded his actions, there was no way to truly know what path he would have taken.”
“Truer words have never been spoken.” Qui-gon replied. “The sins of the past will always segue to the crimes of the future when perspective is not firmly established. But that is the way of the Force, and that of life.” He drifted off in apparent contemplation.
Ahsoka chuckled at the mental projection her immediate thought produced. “Interesting how stubbornness seems to have always followed your apprentices. Obi-wan is much the same way. For all his logic and wisdom, he can become trapped in his own mind.” She paused. “Truly like brothers.” She felt tears welling at the corners of her eyes upon voicing the thought, and the familiar pull of anguish at how far the polar extremes regarding personality and emotion both guided and hindered them.
A subtle smile spread across the visage of Qui-gon, pulling his lips even tighter. “You would be the only one to know the particulars of that statement in its entirety Ahsoka.”
To that, she could not argue, the three of them having been inseparable for so many years. She closed her eyes tight to keep the tears at bay. She understood the compassion and intention of his words, but her emotions immediately associated a myriad of those ‘shared experiences’ in the span of mere seconds as they pulled at her core longingly for days gone by. She gripped the hilt of Master Windu’s lightsaber tightly as those emotional waves washed over her. She slipped to the ground curling her arms around her knees and rested her head upon them as her body racked from unspent grief she kept locked safely away for years. All the unforgettable moments, good and bad, from decades of interaction between them. Risking their own lives for one another countless times. The peace and calm felt by them when they would share intimate knowledge or when it would become apparent through action. The commitment they had to one another. The trust that bonded them. They were both like brothers, even fathers at times, to her. Yet, they would also listen when she had something to say. They were home to her. A home she had willingly walked away from.
Qui-gon gave her all the time she needed to work through this process. He remembered, clearly, his own need to acknowledge all that he needed to let go as he lay, dying, in the arms of Obi-wan. Decades of self-awareness tucked safely away so that none could penetrate their cage. Fortress walls were erected to protect all the emotions that could never be meditated away. She was in similar throes, he knew, but she was becoming something he could never have. A true gift he mentally conceded, at what her future held for her, and any that would follow in her footsteps.
Ahsoka blew out a breath as she raised her head from the cocoon she had made of herself. She closed her eyes slowly and drew in a deep breath as she flattened her knees and crossed them before her. Again, she exhaled in a long and deliberate breath as she opened her eyes just as slowly.
“Ahsoka, why are you here?” He asked in a whisper.
“Direction Master.” Came her immediate reply. “I came with other intentions initially, but it is my path forward that eludes me.”
“So then, the mysteries of the Force are at your command?”
She looked at him puzzled for a moment but then understood the question that sounded more like a statement. “I was afraid but have found clarity.” “So then Ahsoka Tano, what is the Force.” Again, in a whisper.
She looked directly into his eyes, “The intangible manifestation of the will of all life” she said without hesitation.
The look of profound surprise spread across his face. “I have never heard it described as such, but a better definition I have yet to hear. Malachor has had its effect and the fears Master Yoda had in directing you there seem to have been unfounded.”
“That isn’t entirely true Master. She interjected. He knew the past would come to find me there and that I had a decision to make. What happened after that no one could have foreseen.”
Qui-gon could not help but chuckle. “Never underestimate Master Yoda’s foresight Ahsoka. What he saw was the path you sought after, in its entirety. The only thing left for you here is to acknowledge that.”
“Ezra” She said quickly.
“Yes Ahsoka. I have no doubt that your path will lead you in myriad directions, but he is the reason you are here, and his path is yet to be determined.”
She recoiled at the last part of his statement, immediately drawing a comparison to Anakin but then relaxed somewhat as the nature of her revelations sank in for full effect.
“Ahsoka, Anakin was drawn in by the power of love. It is still what drives him. This is the lesson, one which young Bridger has already learned, that was, and still is in some cases, the heart of the matter. It is emotion that gives everything power. You act and react based not on instinct but feeling. Include that in your knowledge of the Force and greater than a Jedi ever could you will be. Embrace emotion in its entirety, not just aspects. Balance anger with patience, grief with delight, hatred with adoration. Balance them all, never replace. This is the balance I’ve come to understand, not between Dark and Light because they, in truth, do not exist. There is only the Force.”
“And what we do with it.” She finished for him. Smiling, she knew his words were true as she had been living by them for the last several years. Identifying the hubris in disassociating the negative elements of emotion would, and did, cut the Jedi off from the very thing from which they believed they drew their power, never once acknowledging the effectiveness of embracing that emotion instead of rejecting it for fear of attachment to it. How many lives would not have been lost by one simple change in thinking? How much pain could have been evaded by simply feeling pain? She feared the line of thought taking her to mental venues she had no time at present to contemplate and began working out some of the details from her more recent events.
“Master, I would not expect you to have all these answers, but may a lay out the entirety of my concerns?” She asked after much contemplation.
“Of course you can, but may I advise the counsel of Master Yoda be included? More heads and all.” He finished with a smile.
She understood the wisdom in that yet did not make a move to get up. She sat cross legged letting her surroundings penetrate her thoughts. How each one moved in concert with those around them. The beating of wings high above coupled with the croaking of amphibious creatures on the ground. How the dense foliage above trapped heat within its canopy causing the ever-present mists, hovering through everything, connecting each point of life to another. The smells of fermentation and germination peacefully coinciding with those of detritus and decay. Life and death. Life feeding death and death feeding life. One cannot exist without the other. Dagobah’s moons playfully illuminating those mists to give them substance and delineate between absolute light and absolute darkness. That in a galaxy full of conflict, oppression and aggressiveness, this small planet stood defiant in stark contrast. Understanding the Empire could not determine any direct usefulness for the place is precisely what kept it in its current state. Until it did of course. She shook her head quickly to banish the truth in that, and how many other worlds that could be true of.
“Thank you Master. For everything.” She finally posited, not knowing exactly how to phrase the vastness of her gratitude, but she had an inkling he knew what she was trying to say.
“I did as I felt I must and would do the same again.” Qui-gon said without embellishment and with another thin-lipped smile he faded into darkness.
Ahsoka blinked absently and drew herself up from the ground, walking back the way she had come.
The premonition hit him full force and Palpatine was not prepared for it. Research into the arcane arts of the Sith was proving daunting, even for his skilled and tested patience, and as such required his full attention. Being struck by visions and premonitions with the magnitude this one had caused severe disorientation and mental anguish, yet he welcomed them both as a mother would her child. He saw Mustafar. He saw the Togruta on Mustafar. She was alone but held the power he so desperately craved as she walked right into Vader’s manse. She uttered not a word as she dispassionately cut down the entire security force garrisoned there. The loss of life was an afterthought, if even that, to him, it was the strength of her footfalls, the speed of her blade. The blade! He had known her to dual wield twin white sabers. In her hands now were a fierce purple blade and one of red. The play of color was not lost on Palpatine. The blades danced in ferocious arcs and with blinding speed. She mesmerized her opponents into a trance of whirring color and clashing electrical discharge. The authority and purpose in her every move presented a path forward that she would not be denied. Her passion was unmistakable, intoxicating in fact. A point he had made to himself while watching cam footage of her carnage on Nar Shaddaa. The vision itself began to fade even while she was canvassing the fortress’s many halls without any clear direction of her purpose there, only that she was present, and clearly looking for something.
He closed the tome before him without hesitation and closed his eyes to meditate on what he had just seen. He forced his will upon the Force, yet there was no answer to his call. He put the entirety of his power into his will and was rejected in receiving anything in return. Panting slightly from the effort, he glanced over at the droid,11-4D, ever in his presence within this temple and was greeted only with the vacant stare of two red photoreceptors glaring back at him. Agitated, if anything, he decided on another approach and forced a recall of his vision. Noting again the ferocity in her demeanor, his attention was brought yet again to the red saber she was wielding. It had caught his attention initially but he, himself, had become lost to the flurry of motion and had lost his focus. Now, however, he could simply view it and pause to reflect. The blade was indeed red, yet it lacked vibrancy. It was not the bled crimson he had come to cherish, but something almost sickly in nature as if the blade itself were an infection. A deep red, the color of un-oxygenated blood but something more. Thin lines of black arcs passed through the blade from hilt to tip spreading out as they moved along its length like corporeal veins. There was no resonating glow to mirror that of the purple saber in her opposing hand, there was simply death. Each stroke of its lethal edges stoked the black lightning within it as if it were feeding off the death it was dealing. Each time she used that blade solely Palpatine could see the muscles on her arms swell and tighten. Through his own will he could pause his memory of this vision and dissect what he had seen. Each kill only strengthened not only the Togruta but the effectiveness of the nightmarish blade she was cutting her foes down with. They were in symbiosis. He reveled in the vision, wondering, yet again if she was claimable. He would need to deal with the elusive conclusion of that thought, find a way to own her. Quickly he thought of Vader but bypassed it, dismissing it outright. ‘He is already occupied with thoughts of his former apprentice, involving him would only complicate the order of things.’ That only spurred further mental debate on how to proceed since the vision was clearly that of Mustafar. ‘Why there Ashoka, what could you possibly hope to gain?’ His thoughts coming more quickly than answers to the questions they posed, he ceased the process lest they consume him completely.
“Droid, find out all you can about Ahsoka Tano. Leave no stone unturned and report to me.”
The deep resonant response of electronic affirmation assured him 11-4D complied, as was the whirring of ambulatory struts it had engaged to connect with the Imperial network via the secure connection terminal Palpatine himself had installed into the temple wall.
He opened the tome before him once more, ‘The treatise of spectral resonance’ and continued from precisely where he had left off, assured he would locate a second entrance point.