Chapter Text
“It turns out that any person who spends a significant percentage of their time working with and around GAR personnel has, by reason of their involvement in the defense sector of the Republic, consented to searches of their persons and property, up to and including genetic scans,” said Tarkin. “This is of course only a field scan, but far more plausible than one done behind closed doors by the Jedi Order, with no Republic observer admitted. The results are preliminary, but we can further substantiate them with our medical facilities.”
Chester had found herself utterly speechless at first by the sheer audacity of the attack, and of the scan’s results. She knew she wasn’t Tulin. Tarkin had faked it. Which meant he knew she wasn’t Tulin, either.
But by the outrage growing in Anakin’s face, he didn’t .
Denial wasn’t going to work. But she tried anyway. “That’s false,” she said, her voice steady. “I am not Song Tulin, and that scanner is wrong. Tampered, I’d venture to guess.”
“It certainly explains your eagerness to set loose those captured droids, and in fact the ease with which they were captured in the first place.” Tarkin glanced at Anakin, raised an eyebrow. “I believe we were both rather suspicious about that, weren’t we?”
“We were,” said Anakin, his voice rough. He looked back at Chester, and she felt the conflict in him tip in Tarkin’s favor.
Tarkin smiled. “Then with your leave, Master Skywalker, we will take custody of the fugitive.”
Anakin didn’t nod, but he made no move to object, either.
Chester hated how hard it was not to look at Ahsoka for help, but she was just a kid. Chester wasn’t going to be the one to drag her into this ugly little debacle, and she wasn’t putting her in Tarkin’s crosshairs. If she was honest with herself, she’d walked right into this one. She’d gotten cocky, pulled too many tails, upset too many apple carts and afflicted too many of the comfortable. She’d counted on the Jedi to protect her, far too strongly.
She could protest. She could make a run for it, or fight. That would mean Anakin would have to choose between the Jedi and the Republic, and Ahsoka would be dragged into the middle of it as well.
Or she could go quietly, and count on her own planning and her other ally to get her out of this. That was probably going to go pretty badly for her in the short term, but…
She slipped a finger against the one-use transponder in the hem of her sleeve and squeezed to activate it. She was already putting her faith in Ventress to get her home. She was just going to have to trust her for this, too.
Only then did she look at Ahsoka.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just another misunderstanding.” The look she cast at Anakin was sharper, but any Jedi in his place wouldn’t have been able to do much more; his sin here was believing Tarkin.
Then she turned to raise a sardonic eyebrow at Tarkin and his squad. “I believe I find myself at your disposal, gentlemen.”
“What do you mean, she was taken?”
It felt like a minor miracle that Plo’s voice emerged as steadily as it did.
Anakin looked as close to sheepish as he ever did, which was not very—it was definitely tipping over into anger, and fast, and Plo couldn’t say he didn’t sympathize. “Tarkin arrested her. He did a genetic scan on her, which indicated she was Song Tulin.”
“She is not Song Tulin,” Plo said, because there was doubt in Anakin’s eyes and presence, as if he had believed Tarkin. He had never met the real Song Tulin, Plo reminded himself, trying to release his own anger and sense of betrayal. The desire to blame Anakin was strong. I trusted you with her safety, and you let Tarkin do this . No. He would not say that, because it wouldn’t help, it would push Anakin into resentment, it would hurt Ahsoka, it would be of no help. Still.
“So he took her into custody and I wasn’t able to stop him,” Anakin finished, and that resentment was there anyway.
“Not without starting to stab people, at least,” said Ahsoka. She had her arms folded tight across her chest, almost hugging herself.
“Master Plo?” said Anakin after a silent moment that Plo only realized too late he’d let stretch too long.
Fear. That was the rusty taste in the back of his mouth, and though his own was more than sufficient to the occasion, it was not all his. There was a sharper, directed iron tang ghosting around behind it, the feeling of a frightened mind dancing on the edge between staying alert and letting fear make it foolish, and that was not his own, that was like the ghost of…
…no. Not a ghost. The beginning . The beginning of a training bond, and the mind on the other end of it in deadly danger and trying to take refuge in experience and steely control, but scared. So, so very scared—and at the same time, blisteringly angry.
Plo took a deep breath. “My apologies, Knight Skywalker.”
He stood, folding his hands into his sleeves and bowing toward the rest of the Council. “I apologize, Masters—I must recuse myself from this discussion. I have found myself emotionally invested in Commander Chester’s safe return, and my judgment in this matter is thus clouded. I shall meditate upon the matter.”
Mace inclined his head. “We will continue in your stead.”
Plo bowed again, and turned, and swept out of the chamber.
Mace and Yoda found him far more rapidly than he had expected.
Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. In this case there wasn’t much for the Council to do but authorize a legal challenge—but in all honesty, he’d been hoping to have just a little more time.
“We have to go get her,” he said, his voice sounding far away. “We can’t let them do this to her. We made her a promise. ”
“Plo,” said Mace, disapproving. “We are in no position to force a confrontation with the Senate-appointed leadership of the GAR, or with Republic Intelligence. You know this.”
“We haven’t been in a position to do much of anything for a while now, have we?” Plo said. He sounded very bitter, he realized; it took him a moment to realize he felt that way, too. “How many more good lives are we going to burn on the pyre of political convenience? She didn’t ask to be here, and it is our responsibility that she is here, because we tolerated Krell’s behavior too long, we let it slide because we could not afford a confrontation.” He forced himself to open his eyes, look his fellow Councillors in the face. “Are we going to fail her again? Fail ourselves again?”
Mace returned his gaze, exhausted but steady. Yoda did not; he looked down at the patterned inlay on the floor, his ears drooping.
“She was brought here against her will,” Plo repeated, knowing that what he said was not entirely fair and yet feeling that it had to be said. “And yet, time and again, she’s done her best by her oaths and what she felt was decent and fair, and are we not going to return that? Are we so afraid that we will not return that in kind?”
There was the memory of when Krell had first dragged her in—scared and bedraggled, utterly certain she would die lonely and in pain and yet, the first opportunity she had had, the first indication that the Jedi meant her something other than harm, she had reciprocated. Even before that damned shock collar had come off, she had reciprocated .
He had run out of words; there was nothing more to say. He just looked at them, sick with his own helplessness, and unsettled with the curl of the vestigial training bond, the distant echo of the same courage attenuated from distance and unfamiliarity, as his apprentice faced that same terror again. But this time, there were no unexpected allies to be had, no gesture to return. She was truly among enemies.
And Plo, to his shame, realized he did not know if the colleagues he so respected and esteemed would rise to the occasion as they had then, with the entire Order’s safety on their shoulders, the weight of responsibility holding them back.
“Master Plo,” said Mace again, moderating his tone now to sympathy, “you have formed a training bond with Commander Chester—haven’t you?”
“It is neither intentional nor much developed,” said Plo. “But—yes, it seems I have.”
“Known this for long, have you?” asked Yoda.
“Not at all—I have only begun to feel it since I heard of her arrest. This is why I chose to recuse myself—I was not capable of being objective at that moment.” And possibly not now, Plo thought wryly to himself. “At the very least, its existence reassures me that she is not, at this moment, being tortured, though I doubt Republic Intelligence will stay their hands for long.”
“Abuse of a prisoner would be highly illegal,” said Mace, but he did not say it with much hope. Plo politely refrained from laughing. It wouldn’t have come out terribly composed in any case.
The war had broken something fundamental inside the Order… and now it had broken something deep inside Plo as well. He knew intimately, as every experienced Jedi did, that the potential for Darkness lived inside him, as it did every other living being.
It had been a very long time since he had felt it so close to the surface. And it had been a very long time since its sense had so oppressed him. The worst of it was how righteous it felt.
It felt like a plea. To do the right thing for someone who trusted him. But it was Dark and seething around the edges, with every accreted moral injury lending it vicious power. There was an undercurrent to it whispering of how nice it would be, just this once, to maim and hurt those who’d put him and the whole Galaxy in this position. They’d shown who they were. It would be easy to get to them. It would be easy to make them pay. Tarkin was no Sith, only an aging human man with political power.
Political power was worth very little in the circumstances that mattered , whispered the Darkness.
He didn’t have to let her go. He could train her. He wouldn’t bungle it as Dooku had, because he understood Diane. He’d earned her trust, and giving her the power needed to defeat her enemies would be returning it. He didn’t need to let her go, and he didn’t need to let her die. Not here at Tarkin’s hands. Not when she returned home.
The seething anger in that darkness occluded everything that mattered. He couldn’t tell how much of it was a clear desire to help someone who trusted him, where the Dark ended and his compassion began.
“Perhaps,” said Yoda, and put out a gnarled hand to him, “in others you should trust, when see clearly you cannot.”
Others? The Council, who would leave her to die? Skywalker, who had let this happen? Who was there to trust?
No. That at least was clearly Dark, which gnawed at the foundations of trust to gain its own foothold. Plo drew a ragged breath. “Perhaps I should,” he said, his voice rough. “But leaving her is still wrong. She put her trust in us , though we did not leave her much choice. As we prevented her from finding her own way home, we are responsible for her wellbeing.”
“No one is arguing that,” said Mace. “It is a question of method.”
And the method available without great risk was utterly ineffective. Plo let that fact sit unspoken between them.
“Fond, the Commander is, of saying, always a third option there is,” said Yoda. “Meditate on that, I shall. Do likewise, you should.” He cast a sharp look at Plo. “But trust in others, you should. Steadying, they are, in times of turmoil.”
Ahsoka and Barriss had been planning a movie night with Chester that evening, a Mirialan drama that was incredibly overdramatic and so culturally specific that Barriss was going to have to pause it every five minutes to explain the context. Ahsoka had been really looking forward to it, especially since it seemed like there might not be too many movie nights with Barriss in the future. She’d been sad about that.
This was so much worse.
Barriss deserved to know.
Barriss met her at the door. “Ahsoka, what is it?”
“Can I come in? I think we’d better close the door.” Barriss stepped aside to admit her, and Ahsoka waited until the door closed before telling her about the arrest. She found herself faltering as she spoke; her sense of Barriss in the Force was changing, twisting with rage.
Which she was not releasing. “And Master Skywalker just stood there?” she asked, and it was bleeding through to her voice, too.
“Uh, Barriss,” Ahsoka started, and paused, because Barriss turned to look over her shoulder and saying something like hey, feeling a little Dark there, Barriss, wasn’t going to do anything to deescalate the situation.
“Of course he did,” said Barriss, turning away. “And you did, too.”
Ahsoka almost protested, raising a hand, but the words died in her throat. She looked down, folding her arms in close to her body. “Yeah,” she said in a small voice.
“I’d been afraid we were lost,” said Barriss to the window, “but this—this makes it certain. We’re too afraid to protect the people who trust us. The Jedi don’t deserve any of this.”
“The Council is lodging an official complaint and appeal,” said Ahsoka. It sounded weak even to her.
“Oh, that will fix everything,” said Barriss. She started to move, gathering her lightsaber and reaching for other supplies.
“You’re going after her?” said Ahsoka, shocked. Barriss was always the steady one, the level head, keeping her from running off exactly like this.
Barriss didn’t stop. “It seems no one else will,” she said. “And I’m tired of biting my tongue and just ignoring the right thing to do.”
Ahsoka hesitated. Doing this—it was going against the Republic, and the Senate, and also, probably, the Jedi Council. It could very likely make things worse.
All the same, Barriss wasn’t wrong.
And she wasn’t letting her friend go off into danger alone. At the very least, maybe she could stop her before trouble became a LOT of trouble . “I’m coming with you,” she decided.
Barriss gave her a quick, surprised smile, still very angry around the edges, and went back to preparing. “Thank you, Ahsoka. That means a lot.”
“But we can’t do this all by ourselves,” Ahsoka started, and then her comm chimed. Barriss froze as Ahsoka drew it out and answered.
“Hey kid,” said Dex, and Ahsoka let out a huge breath of relief, not entirely knowing why. “Look, I got wind of what happened to Chester, and I got someone who’s already here to help. You somewhere safe? Got other people you can trust?”
“Yeah,” said Ahsoka, suddenly feeling better. “Yeah, Barriss is here. We can trust her. Especially about this.”
“Good. We’ll see how other people feel about that.”
Other people almost definitely meant Ventress, and Ventress herself proved it by elbowing her way into the pickup—evidently perfectly willing to trust Barriss. “I can help you save your idealistic friend, ” she said. “But it will be a lot easier—and she’ll be in a lot better shape—if you get off your asses and make yourself useful. Get me a location and a schematic of where she’s being held. Comm and door codes, watch schedules, anything you can get your grubby little hands on. A good distraction would help, too. You’re loud and obnoxious enough, you should be a natural.”
“ That makes me feel great about helping you,” said Ahsoka, glaring down at the smirking holo. “Also, why should we trust you?”
Ventress rolled her eyes. “Because she paid me a lot of money. And breaking her out of a CorSec facility certainly won’t hurt my reputation.”
“Wait,” said Ahsoka, feeling a malicious grin spread across her face. It was very much not the time, but she couldn’t resist. “Wait. Ventress, you really do like her.”
Another eyeroll, so hard Ahsoka hoped Ventress was going to sprain something. “She pisses the rest of you off enough,” she said, which very much wasn’t a no. “Use this comm code in two hours. I’ll be waiting. And so will Diane.”
Ahsoka nodded and cut the connection. Then she looked back at Barris, whose turn it was to stand there looking very wide-eyed.
“We’re working with Ventress?”
“Apparently Chester paid her to rescue her if Intelligence got ahold of her on their date,” Ahsoka explained. “And Ventress is following through, I guess.”
She thought about telling Skyguy, decided against it. This felt stupid, and dangerous, but it also felt right. Maybe this was how Chester felt all the time, she thought, and then couldn’t help but smile. “I think I know who we need to talk to next.”
Wolffe knew exactly who he needed to go find as soon as he got the news about Chester’s arrest—a miracle it hadn’t been sooner, really—and he wasn’t surprised at all at what he found. He was just glad he’d caught Dulcet in time. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Dulcet turned to look at Wolffe with his signature dead-eyed stare. Notably, he did not stop what he was doing, which was deftly prepping his gear. Gear he wasn’t supposed to have access to, the 257th having been placed on temporary leave after the depth of Krell’s abuse was uncovered. Prepping, for what looked to be an extended mission into very hostile territory.
Unfortunately, Wolffe was pretty sure exactly where that hostile territory was.
Evidently determining that Wolffe had a pretty good idea of what he was up to, regardless of what he actually said, Dulcet went back to field-stripping his blaster.
“You looking to get decomm’d, brother?” said Wolffe, propping his hip on the shelf next to Dulcet’s rack. “For a natborn without the common sense of a womprat?”
Dulcet stopped, and looked at him. He wasn’t as dead-eyed this time. It was a twin of the inimical stare that Wolffe usually freaked people out for being stupid with.
“She’s not worth your neck, vod,” said Wolffe. “You’ve seen her. You throw yourself on a grenade to save her now, and she’ll thank you nicely and find another noose to run her head into within the tenday.”
“Like she did with Krell,” said Dulcet, and not a lot of his face moved but Wolffe smiled his satisfaction—Dulcet was pissed, no longer doing his iceberg impersonation.
“And with Dooku, and that asshole in the Senate, and with Tarkin,” Wolffe said. “It was going to bite her sooner or later, vod. She pulled just one too many tails.”
All right, Plo was… really upset, and Wolffe suspected he’d gone a bit too far with that one. But still. “They’re going to try to get her out,” he told Dulcet. “The right way. The way that doesn’t get our brothers killed.”
Dulcet gave him a repeat of the death stare, and went back to work. “Like they got me out?” he said, with a nasty note that Wolffe hadn’t heard from him before.
“Dulcet—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Well, I don’t want you to commit treason,” snapped Wolffe, “so stop with the tough-guy act, Dulcet, because so help me I will arrest you if you keep this up.”
“You’re welcome to try,” said Dulcet, staring right back at him. “If you want to waste time talking, Wolffe, here it is. The Commander saved my life when all of the rest of you had failed me. Now the rest of you are failing her . I’m doing something about it. That make things clear enough for you, vod , or am I going to have to go through you , too?”
“Now who’s being dramatic,” muttered Wolffe, and it was a wonder that Dulcet didn’t slap him, from his expression. “All right. Look. I’m not gonna get in your way.” Because Dulcet had always been the sort of person to hold grudges, and he wouldn’t stop at making good on his threat to go out through Wolffe. “But do me one favor, all right? Talk to General Plo. If he’s planning something more direct, you don’t want to get in the way.”
Dulcet stared at him some more.
“I’ll call him right now,” Wolffe offered. He felt pretty stupid about all of this, especially playing along, but maybe Plo would mind trick him, or hit him really hard over the head, or something .
Which was when the door opened again. Wolffe turned to see who was there, recognized the first faces through, and glared.
Ahsoka and Barriss winced back, but Joyride—of course he was involved in this—didn’t. He raised his hand like he was in a briefing, or a cadet in class. “Hey, Commander Dulcet? We needed your help in inspecting the, uh. The launch bay.”
“Don’t even try it,” snarled Wolffe. He elected not to give a single shit that both the Padawans technically outranked him. “In here. All of you. Close the karking door.”
They stood, a mix of sheepish and defiant under Wolffe’s glare. Ahsoka’s chin was set stubbornly, though Barriss wasn’t meeting his eyes. She was angry in a way you didn’t have to be a Jedi to notice, the air practically crackling around her. The little squad of troublemakers Commander Chester had accumulated seemed cheerily oblivious, and wasn’t that evidence of what a corrosive kriffing influence she was on morale. Fuck , he had almost every rank in the GAR in front of him. All he needed was a Marshall Commander and one of the Jedi to go abruptly mad on him, and he’d have the whole set.
“What are you all thinking? ” he snarled. “How are all of you, together, this karking stupid?!” He pointed to Joyride. “You, I guess I expect this shit from. The Commanders…” he’d almost said kids , but even this mad he wasn’t going to be quite that rude to the Padawans, “...they’re young.” His finger moved to Lingo. “You, I expect better of.” Onward to Garter—“You’re an officer. Karking act like it—” and Fin and Lens. “You don’t have to follow Joyride everywhere, you know that, right? I don’t care what kind of footage you’re getting out of it, you can’t upload it if you’re karking dead. Chert, you’re old enough to know better .” The finger of accusation came to rest a few centimeters from Dulcet’s unimpressed nose. “And you? Don’t get me started on you. What do you expect is going to happen here, you idiots? You’re going to storm an Intelligence black site to rescue one solitary idiot who’s not even from our galaxy? She’s spent most of her time here looking down her nose at us and setting things on fire! You want to start another civil war, vod? That’s how you start a civil war—for a woman who’s so fixed on her precious regulations from her far away galaxy she won’t even give us the code she used to fry those droids.”
Joyride raised his hand again. This time, it was Dulcet who batted it down.
Wolffe met the range of stubborn, unapologetic stares. He’d been using the tone that had all but made shinies shit themselves. It had had no effect.
Slowly, he lowered his finger.
“I trust her,” said Dulcet, his voice grating and rusty.
“We trust her,” said Joyride.
“We’re not asking you to help us,” said Lingo. “But we’re not leaving her. Yeah, she’s spent a lot of time angry at the Republic, and us, and the Jedi, and she doesn’t hide it, but she also faced down Count fucking Dooku to save our lives. You wanna name another natborn who might do that? You wanna name a Jedi who was willing to take out the trash like she did,” he tilted his head at Dulcet, not even naming Krell, “even though she knew she didn’t stand a chance against him?”
“Commander Fox is helping us with security,” chirped Joyride, helpfully.
“That genuinely does not surprise me,” sighed Wolffe. Insane Marshal Commander: tick. He shouldn’t have expected otherwise.
Garter broke his defiant stare to close his eyes and sigh. “Operational security, Joyride.”
“Yeah but he’s more likely to support us if he thinks we can do it,” Joyride pointed out.
Wolffe brought his hands to his face, pressed them over his eyes, and dragged his palms down over his cheeks with a heartfelt groan.
“I don’t care if you’re asking for help or not. I’m still responsible for you.” He eyeballed Dulcet and the Padawans. “Half of you at least. This ends here. I’m calling the General, and if you won’t listen to me, you will listen to him. ”
Plo arrived a few minutes later, looked over the group and then at Wolffe’s stern—not desperate, definitely not pleading, certainly, certainly not pleading—face and said, “Ah. I suppose I should have expected this.”
“Tell them to give this up and go back to bed,” said Wolffe in a very stern and professional tone that also was definitely not pleading.
“I…” Plo paused, ominously, and his tusks twitched in his mask. “I may not be able to do that, Commander.”
Wolffe rounded on him, betrayed. “What do you mean , sir?!”
“I think,” said his fucking traitor of a general , sitting down with a weary stoop to his shoulders, “you had better tell me what this plan is, and perhaps also whether I can be of assistance.”