“Get up Ahsoka.” A crisp and even voice raced through her mind, a depth to it that spoke of authority over dominion. She wasn’t even sure she was alive, much less capable of carrying out the task the voice was demanding. “You’re closer than you realize Ahsoka, but you have to get up.” It continued through her haze of twisted thoughts and the hollow of dormant emotion. It was congenial but direct, an openness to it that she found compelling, and at the same time, familiar.
“Master Windu?” Ahsoka knew she wasn’t wrong despite the aridness her own voice carried. It sounded raspy within her montral, dry and cracked, the simplicity of the question lost to the effort it took to voice it. She could feel internal pains throughout her body as she lie prone, pinned to the ground below her through an outside force.
“Indeed.” The voice replied.
“Am I dead?” Ahsoka asked in return, working to lift heavy eyelids that would not respond, relegating her vision to an internal darkness that felt fitting above all else.
“Are you Ahsoka Tano, are you dead?” Windu’s voice carried through the vastness of her own mind as she toyed with a rebuttal. She felt she should be more concerned with the answer to that question rather than involuntarily returning to the probabilities of its source.
“Are you dead?” Ahsoka asked as she returned to the task of opening an eye, again finding it unresponsive.
“Through diversion you wish to find a common thread young lady, a passive way forth toward the answer to your initial question. Do you seek death Ahsoka Tano?” Windu’s voice carried through a series of echoes, smooth in its delivery with a hint of his native accent hiding within.
Ahsoka took a moment to think through the question, finding certain paths that could end with a simple ‘yes,’ all having nothing to do with her physical self. She thought about the implications of her actions in the past, both recent and old, how they could have contributed to the deaths of others in unforeseen ways.
“I did not ask if you seek to avoid death Ahsoka, nor did I ask if you regret the deaths of others.” Windu pierced her very thoughts. “Do you seek death Ahsoka?”
“No.” She answered quickly, “I do not seek death.”
“Then ask the question you should have to begin with.” Windu responded, his voice and inflection unchanging from the onset.
“Am I alive Master Windu?” Ahsoka asked immediately, understanding the importance the man was placing on intent. She could not help herself as her thoughts instantly raced toward those of Kowani and of Sabine, how she would impose the same standards upon them that Windu was currently upon her.
The man laughed from the deepest reaches of his chest and abdomen, echoing through her mind with an infectious caress that she couldn’t ignore as she began to chuckle astride the echoes without thought. Ahsoka felt the divide within her psyche as she involuntarily laughed through the experience, any grip of rationale or reason pleading with the encroaching insanity in some vain effort to assert a reality before giving in completely to dream and fantasy.
Through valiant effort, Windu finally ceased the thunderous laugh long enough to entertain the response that had been impossible only seconds before, “only if it is your will Ahsoka Tano.”
She did not need any amount of time to process the poetic response, “It is my will Master.”
“Then open your eyes. Open your eyes and live Ahsoka Tano.” Windu responded. A fluttering of wings punctuating the fading echo with a transition Ahsoka found odd. She felt a gentle touch upon her forehead, a warmth emanate from an outside source as it brushed softly across the flesh between her eyes. Ahsoka slowly worked an eye open through intense protest, filling her view with the canted tilt of Morai’s own head staring back at her. She opened her beak slightly only to sing her solitary notes of companionship and loyalty, although Ahsoka was never quite sure to whom those traits applied directly.
Attempting to look beyond the white of down and feathers and the soul piercing glare from the Convor as it blinked its eye into further focus, Ahsoka could see nothing at all. A darkness accented by vibrant blue auras she couldn’t locate in her current state. She attempted to move a leg or an arm to assist her gentle rise finding both restricted from unknown sources. Ahsoka pinned her chin to her throat to look down her body, relieved to find it as it should be before focusing on the bald head of the man currently lying on his side, draped fully over both of her ankles. She froze momentarily as she forgot about her own predicament and looked for any signs of life from her oldest friend. Fearing the worst after a few tension-filled seconds she noted the gentle rise of his rib cage around the left side of his body. She waited until she saw him exhale the involuntary breath before gently lifting a knee to dislodge the old clone. The pangs of protest rocketed through her limbs as they fought for every millimeter of progress made, each muscle, tendon and ligament firing back angry reports of objection in their own methodical duty to protect the heavily bruised bone beneath them. Ahsoka grunted through the pain, squelching the effort with a tight-lipped chirp as she pushed beyond her ever-increasing tolerance for pain, holding the pose long enough with her right leg to slip her left ankle free of its encumbrance.
The pain flared in both legs after the deadening weight of Rex was lifted from them to the point of near exhaustion. Ahsoka could feel her heart hammer in her chest as she then worked to free her arms from whatever was pinning them to the ground above her head. The pain began to overwhelm her senses as she freed her right arm, rolling the warm body above it off the left and her Lek’ku. Her body free and her own once again, she rolled to her back as the pain overtook her senses completely, the darkness within her peripheral threatening to close in altogether. She saw a field of stars above her glimmer in the wake of her diminishing sight and felt a strange sense of ease encase the remainder of her soul in a cocoon of familiarity as the darkness finally won, a solitary ‘hoot’ punctuating the action as she drifted back into unconsciousness.
✦
Visions spanned the entirety of her view, from memories long past and voices long since deceased. Ahsoka was at the mercy of each of their messages as they flared to a renewed life with each passing second. Most were familiar, some very much so as a shadowy version of Master Yoda flittered just beyond her scope of sight yet pronounced his presence with an addendum to a simple training exercise carried out on Coruscant years prior. Ahsoka knew she was viewing glimpses from her past and raced to connect the scenes actively playing out with the feverish strings of dialogue that seemed to have nothing to do with one another. She heard whispers from Master Plo Koon, admonishment from Master Obi-wan, praise from Master Skywalker and a dejected melancholy from Master Windu. The scenes displaying archaic versions of sporadic depictions of her involvement in the clone wars specifically, but nothing lasting long enough for her to place with precision. She listened as Asajj Ventress questioned her very morals, asking with impunity repeatedly the very question she thought herself free of on Ambria. “Why would you abandon your Master Tano?” The visions that had been racing at a frantic pace stopped completely, as had the whispered jumble of familiar voices after reaching an almost deafening crescendo.
‘The vision is waiting for an answer?’ Ahsoka thought, affirming that it was indeed as crazy as it sounded. ‘Is it even a vision?’ The unasked question silenced everything completely the moment she thought it, the halted visions erasing themselves from her view entirely, sweeping the span of her view into a field of absolute darkness. Ahsoka waited patiently, hearing only her quaint inhales and exhales as they transpired every few seconds. She could feel her heart beat as it began to slow from the frenzy of visual display. She could feel nothing, taste nothing nor smell anything. It was just herself in the silent darkness of her own mind.
Without warning, Asajj burst across her field of view, a startling scream escaping her pout lips as her expression stole the beauty of her features into one of extreme terror. Silvery locks of hair falling across her forehead as the Dathormiri’s irises swallowed themselves completely and whitened her eyes into marblesque orbs that conveyed nothing but dread. “WHY WOULD YOU ABANDON YOUR MASTER?” She yelled as drips of saliva worked at her mouths edges, Ahsoka spiking her heart rate in response as she gasped in her breath.
“I did not!” Ahsoka tried to shout in response, her voice as silent to her own montral as the whispered voices had descended into as the vision before her snapped from existence, leaving her once again to the impenetrable darkness.
“Why would you bring your war here Ahsoka?” Kaeden Larte asked, her voice serene and full of remorse, befuddling Ahsoka’s mind further with its untimeliness.
“I didn’t Kaeden...I...was just escaping it.” Again, the response was silent as Ahsoka fought back ethereal tears.
“We are only farmers Ahsoka, not warriors.” Kaeden followed, Ahsoka certain she could hear the approach of scores of TIE/sa flying low over rocky terrain, ready to extinguish the small settlement on Raada outright.
“You have to leave Kaeden….RUN!” She tried to say but her montral only filled with the roaring push of Ion engines and the repeating barrage of exploding ordinance, “Kaeden? KAEDEN?”
“Don’t you think your warning came a little too late?” The voice was new with an abrasive accent Ahsoka couldn’t place immediately, her heart slamming the inside of her rib cage with renewed fury as her mind remained behind, processing Kaeden’s fate. “But then, you brought your war to them didn’t you. You killed them all Ahsoka.” The voice continued, offering Ahsoka a simple favor by relaying her name which the voice rolled over with some difficulty. She had heard the accent before, on Tatooine with Kowani, although this voice was female. Iktochi.
“I didn’t kill anyone Iktochi.” Ahsoka thought in response as she pushed her memories to their limits in a dying hope to link the voice to familiarity.
“No?” The Iktochi laughed with a bemusement Ahsoka found out of place. “Their blood was on your hands the moment you left the Fardi residence Togruta, as will be the blood of the galaxy after you unlocked the doors on Conum Arnia.”
“Who are you?” Ahsoka responded, assuring herself that the level of prognostication could not be justified, even for the Iktochi and their penchant for premonition.
“I was a Huntress Ahsoka Tano but swore credence to another name.” The Iktochi grumbled as a dimly lit vision interceded upon the darkness surrounding Ahsoka. A thickly built human male stood over an Iktochi woman, his sun-soaked olive skin a stark contrast to her maroon pigmentation. His arms burst from the simple jerkin wrapped around his massive chest, thick cords of muscle rippling as his fingers teased the hooked hilt of the light saber in his palm.
“My existence has no meaning. You can give my life purpose. You can guide me to my destiny.” The woman said, her expression stoic in the face of certain doom.
“What can you offer me in return?” The man said in return as he toyed with the idea of clipping the saber at his waist, the voice deep and rumbling. Ahsoka herself could feel the resonance within her own chest as he spoke.
“Loyalty. Devotion….” Ahsoka found herself mumbling as the man suddenly wheeled from his perch over the Iktochi and bore his horrific gaze straight into her widened eyes. Black spiked tattoos bisecting each eye from forehead to cheek, narrowed in strategic contemplation before the image vanished back into the concealing darkness. “I am Darth Cognus Togruta. Apprentice to Darth Zannah and apprentice to Darth Bane before her.”
“This is impossible.” Ahsoka said without words, shaking her head in the process.
“I warned the Mirialan Ahsoka Tano. She made her choice, as you have made yours.”
“Zannah is of the Bendu….” Ahsoka thought her reply as her mind caught up with the facts presented.
“Is she now? And what are the Bendu?” Cognus replied, a narrow gap pulling between both lips as the accent dripped with condescension, the wink of her left eye allowing Ahsoka all the reason she needed to allow the growing dread within direct access to the sum of herself.
“Nara….what have you done.” Ahsoka whispered, the words finally finding voice as the air scraped across her vocal chords with a renewed flare of pain.
“Oh..no, no Miss Tano. What have you done?” Cognus returned with a simmering chuckle that redefined Ahsoka’s interpretation of ‘disturbing.’ “There is no one left with which to place blame Togruta, you’ve managed to kill or turn every last option you’ve had.”
Ahsoka had no response as the Iktochi’s statement whirled through her mind. Didn’t she though? She asked herself the same question repeatedly, justifying her past actions through a prismatic lens of subjectivity, yet how many times could she claim, ‘wrong place and time’? She did have to agree with the Cognus on a singular point, she did manage to leave death in her wake regardless of her intent, but how could the fate of the galaxy possibly tie in with her current state, wherever she was. She could not fathom her importance on a scale so large without causing herself severe mental distress. “It’s impossible Iktochi.” She managed to wheeze, the act forcing her throat to respond in ways it was ill prepared.
“The Dark Side will only begin to take interest when one realizes the potential they themselves are capable.” Cognus supplied another avenue of manipulation as she continued to skew Ahsoka’s train of thought.
Ahsoka felt prepared for the attempt, “there is no Dark Cognus, there is no light. There is only the Force.” The sentence was difficult to utter but eased her heart to hear.
“Is that what you told yourself on Malachor too?” Cognus replied, the sickly yellow of her eyes flaring wide in a pronunciation of her intent. Ahsoka could not respond as she narrowed her own eyes in accepted defeat, lowering her gaze to the sharp pointed black tattoos cut into the thick maroon flesh of the woman’s arms.
“Ahsoka Tano, you’ve been a truly useful asset, but I am afraid that usefulness has run its course.” A familiar voice joined the duo, its elegant inflection almost betrayed itself with a staggered emotional jilt.
“T’zar…..” Ahsoka said without looking up, her mind certain she would see the purple skinned Zeltran standing beside the Iktochi. “But of course you’ve already met, forgive my ignorance.” Cognus intervened, her voice unchanging as if to convey some form of impartiality in the matter.
“I should have finished what I had started….” Ahsoka admitted to her folded hands as she squeezed her eyes tight in exhaustion.
“Yes, you should have.” Cognus returned, “you chose weakness over practicality and reason.” She continued, “and because of that choice, Sidious is free to rain doom upon this galaxy.”
“NO!” Ahsoka shouted with ferocity, her eyes snapping open with the deluge of adrenaline that immediately flooded her body, “I will not accept that!” She continued as she worked to minimize the anger that was taking a firm root within the bowels of her soul. Her lungs pressed hard against her rib cage with each forced breath, the pain only contributing to the rising fury that internally obliterated any form of righteousness. “Sidious is a sadistic murderer. A cowardly predator that takes indiscriminate pleasure in playing with its ‘food’ before it devours it whole.”
Cognus narrowed her eyes to miniscule slits as she growled deeply, baring her teeth, “says the woman that refuses to confront her Master. Refuses to embrace her own destiny. You are a coward Ahsoka Tano, a selfish coward.”
“And you, Darth Cognus, apparently have much to learn about the Dark Side of the Force!” Ahsoka fired back, the blood in her veins like the molten rivers of Mustafar, the Force ready at her call to unleash itself upon the vision.
“So stated, Ahsoka Tano. Despite the words spoken to your own apprentice, you do acknowledge the differentiating factors of truth. Perhaps the naivety can be purged after all.” T’zar spoke up, although the glare from the furious Togruta made him wish he hadn’t. Something about the worrisome glimmer deep within the Zeltran’s eyes, the eyelids quaking from an involuntary spasm or loss of internal control, caused Ahsoka to let the entirety of the loathing, fury, and rage to simply release itself from her. She drained herself of intent, a longing borne deep within her to shred these two from limb to limb and simply closed her eyes with a gentle resolve.
“Sidious is your nightmare.” Ahsoka began as she felt her heart rate return its normal beat, her adrenaline subside and the burning within her veins cool, “not mine.” She exclaimed with calming authority. “I may have been nothing more than a tool, catering to your agenda, but no longer T’zar.” Ahsoka felt a yearning urge to usher the spirit deep unto the tides of the Force and finish the job he had intended for himself centuries earlier, but something stopped her, a feeling welling of heartfelt compassion and undying sympathy. She could see him traveling that expanse of his own accord, without any assistance from her at all, and knew it had everything to do with what this Iktochi was intending. “Cognus, you’ve lived your life. Life is for the living.” She said slowly, opening her eyes to whatever reality she had landed in.
Gone were the spirit forms and in their place stood the sanctuary she had feared all along. Long curving paths, limbed with blue aura meandered in every imaginable direction, offsetting paths branching out to various geometric anomalies that were indistinguishable from her present position. A dulcet percussion that had no source seemed to vibrate as Ahsoka focused on the view beyond, the expansive perspective of billions of white pinpricks against the blackness of space. Swirling purples and blues, hints of reds and pinks, seemed close, almost in arms reach, yet light years distant in reality. ‘Or are they?’ She thought to herself, wondering why that particular idea had formed itself. Ahsoka raised a hand toward a swirling mass of purples and red’s, tiny flares within bursting as her fingers stretched toward its center. Her mouth fell open in genuine awe as she saw the flesh of her palm on the other side of the oddity, the orange pigmentation providing a backdrop that allowed her to see the conglomeration of blues within the purple. Ahsoka squinted her eyes to look deeper, her mouth growing wider as the bursting continued, exposing tiny swirling masses of white vapor. “This is impossible.” She stammered as she let her hand drop, the oddity within her inspection suddenly looking light years away again. “By the stars, I hate this place.”
✦
“Why won’t she wake?” Nara continued asking, despite Rex’s third attempt to answer the question in the same way he had the first time.
“I don’t know, Nara.” Rex huffed the statement as he brushed at granules of sand behind his ears, loosening more with each swipe. He sidled closer to the Mirialan as she patted at the Togruta’s cheek in her lap, Rex pushing at Ahsoka’s shoulder in another vain attempt to rouse the woman. “She seems to be breathing fine at least, and her pulse is firm.” He added, lifting the fingers of his right hand away from Ahsoka’s wrist.
“Well, this isn’t coma then.” Nara replied as she brushed more sand particles away from Ahsoka’s lips.
“There’s that, at least.” Rex offered, turning his gaze to span the view before them both, daring not leave his backside as his head began to spin lightly again.
“What is this place?” Rex couldn’t help the question. Nara responded with a simple shrug as she panned the view herself, simple pathways set upon nothing but space itself, illuminated in the same fashion as the night skies over Ambria. “I am sure this is what we were never meant to find Rex. What Zannah had warned me about.” Nara was certain that was the intended message anyway, ‘Zannah hadn’t been particularly clear,’ she reminded herself. She turned again toward Ahsoka, finding the expansive view stomach churning, and dizzying at best. “I would suggest we stay here, together.”
“Well, we aren’t going anywhere until we can wake her in any case Nara.” Rex agreed. “Besides, I don’t think I would make it ten steps before getting sick.”
Nara raised her head to study the old clone, noting a puffiness about his cheeks and the deep wrinkles spanning his forehead, “you two have become quite close, haven’t you.”
Rex turned his head slowly to look at her, a gentle smile turning his features upward somewhat, “that would be an understatement. Ahsoka...well, Ahsoka is my best friend to be honest about it. We’ve been through a lot together.” He said with a soft laugh that died on his lips, his gaze dropping to the unconscious woman in Nara’s lap, batting at his eyelashes lightly, mumbling something unintelligible about sand.
“I’m sure that you have Rex. I don’t mean to pry mind you, it’s just a powerful connection that you two seem to have.” Nara continued as she attempted to flag the dust from empathy.
“She saved my life Nara, many times over.” Rex said, stumbling through the statement with a slight cough Nara knew was only cover.
Nara smiled slightly, “as I am sure you’ve saved hers.”
Rex lifted his gaze again and broadened his own smile, “I’ve lost count.” He said, bursting into lighthearted laughter.
Ahsoka’s head shook for an instant within Nara’s lap, returning the light moment between her and Rex back into the reality of the situation they were in. She watched Ahsoka with intent, involuntary cheek muscles tweaking the corners of the Togrutan’s lips sporadically and the flutter of the woman’s eyelashes were only precursor to a slackening of her body once again, Nara placing both hands about Ahsoka’s cheeks in support.
“That must be one hell of a dream.” Rex said, his expression conveying the worry spreading rapidly through his body, “what do you suppose she’s seeing?”
“She’s been here before. I don’t know why, but I can sense it.” Nara responded redirecting the clone’s question into something she could use to understand their situation.
Ahsoka breathed in deeply before both Nara and Rex, surprising them with its suddenness as her body began to convulse slightly, her lips moving as if to speak. “What is she saying Nara?” Rex said, pushing himself onto his knees to get a better view.
“It’s incoherent...a whisper.” Nara responded, leaning in closer to Ahsoka’s working lips. “I think she is thought forming. She is repeating the same thing.” She added quietly, the Togrutan’s whisper so light on the air it was hard to decipher. Nara sprang back from her crouching position to look straight into Rex’s eyes with a quickness that surprised the old clone, “Cognus….”
Rex waited for more information but only found Nara’s expression shocked to the core, “Cognus, what?” Rex asked, almost pleading for elaboration, “what is a Cognus?”
“It’s a who…” Nara responded immediately, her mind instantly flung to the holo image in the cave, ‘the tomb.’ She corrected herself internally, lightly grazing several body parts with her fingers that still ached from the ordeal. “She was a Sith Master centuries ago.”
“Sith?” Rex turned his face inward, screwing his features into a mask of revulsion, “Like Vader?”
“More or less, yes.” Nara said, her eyes conveying nothing but an internal absence, her mind clearly elsewhere as her hands fidgeted wildly within the coat she adorned, Rex under the assumption that she was looking for something important. Seconds later her hand emerged from one of the many internal pockets, a short black cylinder resting gently within her palm. “Darth Cognus, called to me.”
Rex simply stared at her, waiting for a punchline that would never come, “Uh...well, not really called, but she left this for me.” Nara said in response to the dumbfounded stare. Again, Rex only looked down at her palm and the item then back into her eyes, his expression turning considerably more hesitant in those few seconds.
“I am sure there is a story there.” He said, the comment rife with sarcasm.
“It is a long story, but the point is the name. Cognus.” Nara continued with her explanation, “more importantly, one of the last things she said, ‘HE remains and will forever be a part of her’.” Nara spoke the words softly to the air before her, more concerned with her own survival when she heard them the first time than the actual meaning behind them. “Cognus….Zannah...he….” She rolled the names off her lips as her eyes began to widen in familiarity. Her mind tracing the paths of lineage Sidious had insisted she learn but had never thought Zannah’s Master relevant after his recorded death. A death inscribed through Sith lore and documentation by the two women she did know quite thoroughly. “Bane.”
“Bane?” Rex repeated.
Without warning, Ahsoka’s hand shot into the air wrapping tightly around Nara’s wrist, her grip like a manacle as it latched onto the synthleather sleeve, Nara almost dropping the cylinder as she expended her breath in a massive exhale of complete surprise.
“Ahsoka?” Rex questioned the action through his shocked elation.
“Nara, what have you done?” Ahsoka said as she swiveled her own aching body around to face the Mirialan, Rex’s mind askew with the brashness of her voice and the eccentric demeanor, “what have you unleashed?”
“The Dark Side does not favor evil, death for the sake of death and never mercy. It favors obedience to your instincts and a willingness to be its vessel, nothing more, nothing less.”