Chapter Text
Ventress had been telling the truth, not just lying to make Chester move faster. A few moments later found them on the roof, where a small buglike shuttle crouched. Chester needed no urging to climb inside and strap herself into the copilot’s seat; Ventress swatted her hands away from the controls and took them up, merging into the lines of traffic until they came to an ugly, industrial sector.
At that point, Chester just closed her eyes and lay there, enjoying the relative respite of not having to do anything, and not having anything new hurting. She might have fallen asleep; she wasn’t sure, but landing came as a startling jolt that had her flinching upright.
“Home sweet home,” said Ventress, sarcastically. Chester wasn’t sure she was capable of saying anything that wasn’t in a sarcastic tone. She unbuckled herself, groaned as she sat up; they were parked on top of something, and Ventress was opening a hatch in the floor.
Climbing down the ladder was hell, but she made it without assistance, followed Ventress obediently to the small crew quarters. “Fresher first,” Ventress told her, wrinkling her nose; Chester couldn’t disagree. Smell had been the least of her concerns until now, but in this confined space the reek of fear-sweat and other scents associated with a seriously distressed human became apparent. She cleaned off, hissing softly as water hit her bruised skin and the round burn she assumed was from the electrical prod. The side of her ribcage was purpling up in impressive fashion; her right eye was almost swollen shut. “Why do they always go for that one,” she muttered, peering into the small foggy mirror.
She dressed, still wincing, in the clothes that had appeared—she was guessing these had come from the Temple, could see Plo handing them over pointedly—and staggered back out to lie down. Only she didn’t get to lie down for very long before Ventress was there, prodding her upright with a brisk annoyance that was, somehow, not entirely unkind. “Shirt off. If this goes to shit I’m not having your injuries get us captured.”
“Don’t droids usually do medical things?” Chester asked, lifting her shirt. That hurt, too. She looked down at herself once she was down to her bra and made a face. There were even more bruises than she’d thought. She raised a hand to one and winced, dropping it. That hurt more.
“The one that came with this ship is shit,” said Ventress, moving in. “Wouldn’t trust it with a tooka. Especially not one I liked.”
“I rank even with a tooka,” said Chester, raising her eyebrows. “That’s quite a compliment there, Ventress—ow!”
“Don’t squirm,” said Ventress, swabbing bacta over Chester’s ribcage. “Bruised or cracked, this’ll help. The Jedi will no doubt fuss over this more, but I’ve always been fine with just the bacta.” She moved on to the bruises on Chester’s arms, coming up livid with scrapes around the edges. Chester let out a breath through her nose, gritting her teeth against the flaring ache.
But it was nice to have someone touch her in a way that didn’t promise violence, even the friendly violence of sparring. She realized that, aside from Plo, she’d had very little affectionate physical contact with anyone since she’d arrived, and then that she was leaning into the touch and that Ventress was looking at her funny. She met the other woman’s gaze for a moment, unable to entirely discern what was in her eyes, then cleared her throat and straightened up. God, she wanted to go home.
Ventress’s head tilted, evaluating, and then she turned her attention to Chester’s other arm. Chester wondered for a moment what Ventress had seen in her face, then decided she didn’t want to think about it. Her dignity had taken enough of a beating for one day. “You got Plo to help you,” she said, to fill the silence.
“I asked the brat to help me, and I assume she tattled,” said Ventress, annoyed. “I was suddenly neck deep in clones and your damned Jedi. Lean forward.”
Chester did, offering the blackened eye. The bacta stank, going on, but the immediate relief made her let out an involuntary breath.
“I’m charging the Temple extra for this,” muttered Ventress. “This stuff isn’t cheap. What did you do, hit them with your face?”
“Close enough,” said Chester. “I felt like I should put up a bit of a fight. It seemed like a better idea before I got kicked in the ribs.”
“Most things do,” said Ventress. “You’re an idiot.”
“I know. It’s an admission requirement to Starfleet Academy.”
“Hmph,” said Ventress, and leaned back to eye her handiwork.
“You didn’t need to do that,” said Chester. “You could have dumped me back on the Jedi by now, stink and all.”
“Maybe I like you better than I like the Jedi,” said Ventress.
“Good,” said Chester. The bacta was making things feel a hell of a lot better. She wouldn’t say that she felt good— that was several degrees of headache away—but better was pretty spectacular right now. She reached out and put her hand on Ventress’s arm. “Thanks for fixing a terrible day.”
“You’re welcome,” said Ventress, returning the smile but also seeming a little taken aback, like she wasn’t sure what to do with the sincerity of Chester’s thanks. After a moment, she reached for the bandages to keep the bacta in place, holding a gauze pad in place while stretching adhesive over it. Her hands were warm on Chester’s chilled skin, and she definitely took a bit more time with it than she strictly needed to.
“You’re pretty good at this, too,” Chester said.
“It’s easier on another person,” said Ventress.
“Still, I’m guessing it’s miles away from what Dooku expected you to do with his training,” said Chester. “Helping, instead of hurting. Rescue, instead of destruction.”
“If you think you’re going to seduce me by sounding like a Jedi, you’ve got another thing coming.” Ventress gave her a glare without venom in it as she straightened up. Chester raised her hands the little bit she could and spread her fingers, wincing as she did as the motion pulled on bloodied, scabbing knuckles. This immediately caught Ventress’s attention, and she caught at Chester’s wrist. “Waste of bacta,” she said, and dabbed more on anyway.
Chester just watched her with a teasing grin. If Ventress found complaining and friendly insults more comfortable, fine. She could be outrageous. “Going to kiss it better?”
Ventress’s head popped up and she fixed Chester with an expression that was somewhere between impressed and outraged. Then she grasped Chester’s face between bacta-sticky fingers and pulled her in for a kiss, not particularly careful of bruises, already-applied bacta, or black eye.
“There,” she said, drawing away. “Better?”
“Hm,” said Chester. “I don’t know, we might need to duplicate the results to see if they’re valid.”
“You ridiculous human,” said Ventress. “They just beat the shit out of you, and all you’re thinking about is hitting on me ? How stupid are you?”
“I have had,” said Chester, with great dignity, “a really, really shit day, and I am in the mood to be extremely stupid, especially if it involves you. Watching you beat the hell out of those assholes was very attractive.”
Ventress looked more flabbergasted than convinced, so she added, “Usually, I’m the one doing the rescuing. I appreciated the different perspective. I especially appreciated the part when you bounced Tarkin off his own desk.”
“Oh,” said Ventress. “ That I can understand.” She hadn’t dropped her hands from Chester’s face. Now she slid her fingers deeper into Chester’s hair—Chester resigned herself to smelling like bacta for a while—and pulled her in again.
It was not quite enough to rescue a horrible day, especially with the inconvenience of the bruises, but it certainly helped.
Ventress spent rather longer than Chester expected luxuriating before she rolled out of the small bunk, grabbed a bottle of something violently purple and tossed at her. “Drink that. I’m gonna move us before CorSec tracks the shuttle.”
Chester sat up rather more slowly, stared at the bottle, unscrewed it. The sheer stupidity of the events that had landed her in Tarkin’s hands replayed, the droids, the gala, onward and she made a face. “Stupid,” she muttered. “Stupid and cocky.” Then sat there and drank her way through the rest of the bottle, which tasted like electrolyte powder in stale water, got to her feet just long enough to get herself dressed and the bunk back in order, then lay down, because things that helped emotionally had not necessarily helped physically . The ship swooped upward, descended a few moments later. By the time they were on the ground again, she was feeling much more steady on her feet.
If she stayed here, she’d just keep going over her mistakes. What she could have said to Tarkin, what she had said, the ways in which it could be used to discern the truth. She’d lied as much as possible, but there was still the possibility that he could glean something of use from between the lies. It had been a risk, and if she hadn’t been as clever as she thought she was…
She’d not had much choice, she reminded herself, and got to her feet. Yeah. She still hurt, a lot.
Still, she made her way up to the cockpit. “So what’s the plan?”
“Rendezvous in four hours at our next set of coordinates,” said Ventress. “They’ll meet you there and take you back to the Temple. After that…” She paused. “Dex made contact with his friend. I’ll be taking you there. The Jedi are giving me the codes to get past the defense grid.”
“Sounds like a weird day for you.”
Ventress snorted. “Never thought I’d be working with the Jedi.”
Chester raised her eyebrows. “All to save my skin. This really about the money, Asajj?”
“Oh, please. You think you’re so charming.”
“I’m immensely charming and I know it,” said Chester, then winced. “Thanks, by the way. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to call that favor in.”
“You’re lucky you pay well,” said Ventress. “It’s not like it was a favor.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” said Chester, giving her a sidelong look, then wincing as her aching eye protested. Her whole face hurt, actually. “Ugh. Sorry. I’d be better at flirting, but frankly I hurt too much right now.”
“You’re terrible at flirting in the most optimal state as it is,” said Ventress.
“Excuse you,” said Chester, almost chuckling and then stopping when it made everything ache too much. “What’s that say about you at our first meeting, then? Was it really just the drinks?”
“Mostly the drinks,” said Ventress, with what was probably as close to a fond look as Chester was going to get from her. “They were good drinks.”
“I think they killed every cell in my throat, actually.”
“You poor delicate little human.” Ventress made a few adjustments to the controls, then leaned back and really looked at Chester. “Your Jedi and his attack dog came to me to make sure I’d rescue you,” she said. “Gave me all kinds of help, even given our history. He cares about you.”
Chester looked down. Yes, and she’d repaid that with this mess. Hopefully the Jedi wouldn’t be implicated in her escape, but Tarkin would suspect, and as she could testify just now, he could do a great deal of damage by just suspecting. She closed her eyes briefly. “I know,” she said softly. “But I have to go home. And he won’t come with me.”
“And the clones? I’m certain I recognised the mouthy young one with the hair.”
“Joyride,” said Chester, and smiled entirely involuntarily at the thought of him, even though the state of her face made that a bad idea. “Haven’t asked them yet, but I intend to. They deserve better. They trust me. I have to at least try. ”
“Ugh. I’m going to be overrun,” said Ventress, but that wasn’t a no.
“Also I should tell you that I adopted a padawan,” said Chester, because fuck it, and also Ventress should be warned, because her reactions might be… unpredictable, otherwise. “Barriss Offee. Kid really needs out of the war.”
Ventress groaned. “It is far too early in this relationship to be talking about children,” she grumbled. “Actually, this isn’t a children kind of relationship.”
Chester just gave her an amused look. “I’m taking her back to the Federation. I didn’t realize this was a taking you to the Federation kind of relationship. You hoping to meet my parents?”
Ventress folded her arms. “Absolutely not. No interest in meeting people who could produce such a saccharine individual. No interest in your Federation, either.”
“There you go,” said Chester, cheerfully.
“One day, someone is going to kill you for your loathsome attitude.”
“They’re welcome to try.” Chester stood up and winced, hand going to her black eye and aching head. “Actually, they probably just did. Pretty sure Tarkin didn’t intend me to walk away from that interrogation.”
Ventress's face softened, as much as it ever did—not much. “He wouldn’t have. This galaxy isn’t as soft or merciful as your own. Remember that next time you are tempted to make a new enemy.”
Punchy and tired, Chester couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh it’s cute how you think this is scarier than my galaxy. When Aurra grabbed me, I thought I was dead, and believe me, Tarkin was probably nicer than what they would have done to me. There’s more than one way to skin a Starfleet officer.”
“So you’re insane, not naive?”
Chester’s mouth went tight. “I choose to have hope,” she said, and even right now, especially right now, it rang true, a much needed reminder to herself as much as an assertion to Ventress, “and that means taking action to bring about the things I hope for. Life isn’t worth living if you’re ruled by the fear of others. Because that fear will continue taking forever, every scrap of you it can get. We can always choose to be better than people like Tarkin and Dooku think we are, even in the smallest of ways.”
Ventress’s turn to laugh. “Oh, you don’t do small.”
“No,” Chester admitted. “I do not. I’m lucky that way. One day, I might stop being lucky enough to do things big, and then I’ll be glad of having taken full advantage of the privilege to make these kinds of problems while I could.”
“And your own life and fears matter not at all, do they?”
There was a challenge in Ventress’s voice. She didn’t exactly seem like someone for whom life and fear would matter, either.
“There are a lot of things that matter in the universe,” Chester said. “My life and my fears are among them. But I get to choose how I spend them.” She felt the wryness of her expression as she added, “Though if you were to accuse me of holding my pride a little too dear in comparison to my life, I’m not sure I could deny it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go lie down and nurse said aching pride.”
Ventress’s confirmation that she and Chester were safe and clear came an hour or so after they’d shut down the power. Lingo and Lens had made sure their activities looked like a random overload in the ship’s communications system, and Lens had wiped and replaced the security recordings—just in case the incident was traced back to the Triumphant, which was unlikely.
“The Commander is pretty firm about being thorough, sir,” said Garter, who’d been overseeing all of this. “She’ll ask, trust me.”
Plo was very glad that Chester would be alive to ask. She was sleeping now; the vestigial training bond had settled, with no attenuated horror echoing down it, no firmly-ignored pain. He could only remember too clearly her certainty that Tarkin did not mean her to survive, and her determination to mislead him as completely as possible before she died.
The memory still made him sick to his stomach. Had the Jedi Council been the only source of help she could fall back on, she would still be there in that interrogation cell. Tarkin had been vanishingly unlikely to release her, even if she had told him what he wanted and expected to hear.
But Chester had made her own plans, Ventress key among them. It was not his work, or even the efforts of her squad that had saved her; it had been her own foresight. She had met Ventress, and not only persuaded her to stay her blade, but turned her into an ally in the process.
In one way, one might see the lack of trust in the Republic and the Jedi as a reason Chester was so dangerous. Tarkin certainly would, and Plo had a sneaking suspicion his own admiration for her foresight was not going to be shared by all of his colleagues.
He took a rented speeder back to the Temple, passed it off to a Knight going the other way out of the hangar, and hurried inward.
Here came two of those colleagues.
“More settled, you seem, Master,” said Yoda. He smiled, and his ears turned forward a little, amusement in his Force presence like sunlight through mangroves. “Your trust in others—rewarded, it was?”
Plo inclined his head. “Mine, and the Commander’s,” he said, and ushered them both off the main corridor into a sunlit but otherwise empty little travel room.
Mace folded his arms with a barely perceptible sigh. “Master Yoda has been being cryptic enough, but some of us do have to concern ourselves with the political fallout. Would one of you care to give me a description of whatever unwise thing you’ve trusted in others to do so I know what I will have to deny when CorSec and the Senate begin asking questions?”
Plo folded his hands in his robes, considering. “The Commander’s contact with Ventress on Chenowei was not merely a distraction,” he settled on. “It seems she engaged Ventress’s services as a bounty hunter to rescue her from CorSec as a precaution. Once she was captured, Ventress followed through on the terms of their agreement. She is now safe, and without Republic involvement.”
Mace gave him a dubious look while Yoda radiated amusement. “You sure about the Republic involvement?”
“I am given to understand that there may have been a relevant power outage,” said Plo, blandly. “We’ve had a great deal of trouble with that portion of the grid since the Separatist sabotage a few months back.”
“I hope you were as careful as you seem to think you were,” said Mace. “Regardless, it is good to know that the Commander is safe. It would be prudent, however, to ensure her return as soon as possible, with the minimum Jedi involvement.”
In other words, do not bring Chester back to the Temple. It was a reasonable precaution, and still, Plo felt a stirring of unease at the idea. “I understand.”
“Resolved to accompany the Commander, Padawan Offee has,” said Yoda. “Collect her, you should. With her, Master Unduli is.”
Plo inclined his head.
“Waiting, they are,” said Yoda, his eyes twinkling. “Wise to pack it may be, someone has told them. Help with the Commander’s things, they might, perhaps?”
“I am glad someone saw fit to suggest that,” said Plo, as naturally as he could. Yoda was all but sparkling with mischief.
Mace sighed heavily. “The sooner Commander Chester leaves, the more at ease I will feel,” he said. “Political considerations aside—and they are considerable—half the Temple has had shatterpoints hanging over them all week.” Plo realized then that Mace had only been looking at him sidelong throughout the conversation. It was likely he was included in that number.
“Have you still not seen one over her?” he wondered.
“Not a single one,” Mace confirmed. “How someone can create such disruption and remain untouched by it herself is… disturbing.”
Plo tried not to look too amused. “I will keep that in mind.”
He bowed and began to take his leave. As he turned away, Yoda called, “Know, Commander Chester should, that appreciated her efforts have been. Even if disruptive they are.”
Plo found Barriss and Luminara in Barriss’s quarters, sitting quietly. The air in the room made it easy to guess the conversation that had just concluded. Luminara must have asked Barriss to reconsider. Barriss had almost certainly refused. Now, it was very quiet, both of them looking steadily at the table in front of them.
“We will need to collect Commander Chester’s belongings before we go to meet her,” he said. “I can return after I’ve finished that task, or we might go together.” He did not want Barriss and Luminara to leave their relationship on this note; there was a tension in the air of unspoken affection, for the moment occluded by regret. Jedi could be just as bad as everyone else about separation anxiety.
They looked at each other.
“I would be glad to offer assistance,” said Luminara, after a moment that made it very clear Barriss had been waiting for her to make the decision.
Chester’s quarters looked very much the way they had when she’d arrived. There might not have been anyone living there at all, save for the datapad on the table, the shoes she’d worn to the gala set neatly to the side of the entryway, and some clawmarks on the couch—evidently she’d been involved in the game of keeping the tooka out of the sight of various GAR senior officers. There was a small stuffed tooka toy there, too.
Her lightsaber was set neatly on the counter. Keeping it with her was not the instinct it should have been—Plo saw the disapproval flit across Luminara’s face at this carelessness—but in this case the omission meant that the lightsaber was not in Tarkin’s hands, which was a mercy. He reached out and took it, clipped it to his belt near his own. Perhaps it objected a little less than it had in the past.
They found the carryall she’d been using. Plo re-equipped it with a standard Jedi field kit, just in case she found further adventures between here and her home. It seemed like her style. They put her uniform into it, and then the box she’d been keeping the decorations for the collar in, and on a whim Plo put the tooka toy in as well. A few changes of practical clothes, human-standard grooming supplies.
There was precious little else to pack. The formal outfits were too bulky. Somehow, Plo suspected she would not object to their absence.
It was then—the decision of what not to take—that Plo realized why this was so dreadfully familiar. He’d done this before, many times, all too frequently in the last years. It was terribly like the clearing of a dead colleague’s room.
It was a morbid thought, and an unwelcome one given the dangers to which she would be returning. Plo put it firmly from his mind. It was not the same. It was most akin to packing materials for a friend who would not be able to return to the Temple for longer than anticipated. It was not at all the same, and the muted grief in his heart, mingling strangely with his relief, was on his own behalf and nothing further.
“New plan,” said Ventress, sticking her head into the tiny cabin Chester had curled up in. “They’re meeting us here. We’re not taking you back to the Temple. Apparently too much risk of being caught. They’re about ten minutes out.”
Chester groaned as she sat up. “Got it,” she said, running a sleeve over her face. She still felt like shit, and actually contemplating Ventress’s words made her feel more like shit.
She wasn’t going back to the Temple. She wasn’t going to say goodbye to many, and probably most, of the people who’d helped her. And suddenly, that mattered.
She’d spent entirely too much time looking into Tarkin’s face and the utter lack of mercy or even basic recognition of fellow sentients in it. There was no doubt in her mind that what he had done to her was what he wanted to do to this galaxy; threaten and torment and twist them to serving his ends, his vision of the future, his idea of how the world worked. And worse, she now had little doubt he could follow through with it.
She drew a long, unsteady breath. Even if she escaped, she would be leaving them. She’d be leaving them to him, worse still.
She would not even be able to say goodbye, to say thank you, to all these people in terrible danger. She would not be able to offer most of them the way out she’d been able to offer Barriss.
At least Barriss would be coming, she hoped.
“All right,” she said aloud, swinging her feet to the floor. The bacta had helped, she ached less, but she was still pretty stiff. Her pride was bouncing back; now with a few hours of sleep, she was as satisfied as she was going to get with how she’d misled Tarkin, but leaving like this? It felt like running away, and it probably wasn’t going to stop feeling like running away, especially without proper goodbyes.
She stood the rest of the way up, then, after a moment, lifted the hem of her shirt to check on her bruises. Already fading, that was good, but her eye still felt swollen and hot. What she’d give for a dermal regenerator about now…
She tugged her clothes back into order, ran fingers through her hair, and stepped out of the cabin and into the cramped corridor. There was a little living space ahead of her, another cabin further down to the left, the cockpit to the right, and a ladder heading down to, presumably, the engines and the hatch on the far side of the other cabin. She headed for the hatch.
She found Ventress there, who just looked at her and opened the hatch. They were on a roof somewhere, a blocky industrial building tucked in amongst a thousand others, insulated from the brilliance of the Coruscant night. Far above them, one of the many lights in the sky had broken off and was descending. “A little early,” Ventress said, as if this were a cardinal sin.
Chester just watched it intently. “We sure they’re friendly?” she asked.
“They’d better hope they’re friendly,” said Ventress.
Sometimes it was very reassuring to have a Sithly murder machine right next to her. This was one of those times. “May we avoid any misunderstandings,” she said dryly, realizing she’d feel a hell of a lot better if she too were armed.
The shuttle came to a rest some distance from them, opened up and—and that was Plo. Chester let out a breath of huge relief, and was amused the next moment—when had Plo started to mean safety to her? But he did, oh, how he did, and with him was the small upright figure of Barriss, who she suddenly deeply wished she’d been able to take more time to talk to, tell her what she was getting into. But there was no further time, it was do or die, time to leap.
Wolffe and her squad were there too. She was so grateful for that for a moment that she couldn’t have spoken if she’d tried. She just let herself stand there and stare, realizing just how very afraid she’d been her capture had lost her the opportunity to say goodbye. It wasn’t going to make everything all right, but it meant it wouldn’t be quite so bad. She could be glad of that.
“Diane,” said Plo, and he was hurrying toward her. She could feel the concern coming from him, taste something that felt like pain. “I am sorry. We owed you protection. Ventress, I am most grateful you have retrieved Commander Chester safely.”
“Hmph,” said Ventress. “I’ll be in the ship. Is this the kid you’re saddling me with, Chester?”
“Barriss will be coming with us, yes,” said Chester, giving Barriss a smile; she looked pretty worried. “I’ve had worse, Barriss. I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Barriss crisply. “I am trained as a healer, Commander.”
She looked at Chester’s expression, and her own gentled. “Perhaps you’d like to say goodbye first,” she offered. “I’ll get settled, and put your things by your bunk.” She gestured to the second carryall she had, presumably filled with Chester’s effects. “We thought you might like your uniform back.”
“I think I had better,” said Chester. Her squad was there, waiting. Barriss gave her a small smile,then stepped past her and up the ramp. Plo, too, moved aside.
“Hey guys,” she managed, looking at the little group she’d been thinking of as her squad—and wasn’t that treacherous territory, given their lack of rights—all lined up like they were ready for inspection. Lingo was in the lead, even though he wasn’t the senior officer there, but the others had rearranged themselves around him anyway. He’d been the one to trust her first, and take out Dooku, after all.
And then Garter, tired, always suspicious Garter, and Chert, who was much the same but a little slower to provoke, and Fin and Lens and the irrepressible Joyride, all looking solemnly at her, and if her eyes weren’t entirely dry, well theirs weren’t either.
“Good to see you on your feet, Commander,” said Lingo, except he was lying. From the concerned look he swept over her, she wasn’t good to see at all. All their fears about her wellbeing confirmed, all their warnings that sooner or later she’d find something just too big and costly to annoy come home to roost.
“It’s good to be on my feet,” she said, because it wasn’t a lie. “Thanks for coming.”
“We’re not just going to let you go back to your own galaxy without a proper goodbye,” said Lingo.
She managed a sore and crooked smile. “Thanks—and at ease, gentlemen. I think, now of all times, there’s no need for formality. I was never actually your commanding officer in any case. And less so than ever under present circumstances.”
They relaxed a little, and Joyride, the only one with a full pack, slung it down off his shoulders. “I brought Dandelion,” he announced. “So she could say goodbye, too.”
There were horrified stares, not least from Wolffe, though Plo looked quietly amused as Joyride hauled out the patient mass of tooka and handed her over. Chester accepted the warm purring weight, and just like one of her parents’ cats, it made her feel better immediately. What an idiotic thing to do. What a perfectly Joyride thing to do.
She wanted to believe he’d go on doing things like this long after she’d gotten home.
And she couldn’t.
Not after Tarkin and the cool reptilian glitter in his eyes. If this Republic won the war, there were a couple million unnecessary people— who legally weren’t even people —hanging around needing jobs and food and pay. If the whole thing didn’t spiral into a military dictatorship with these men to enforce it—and her heart hurt at the very thought, them turned into oppressors just like the people they’d fought—they were shortly going to become superfluous. Oh, the Jedi were in danger too, but these men would make much, much easier targets.
No one wanted soldiers idle in the streets. History had a lot to say on the subject. Soldiers idle on the streets shortly found things to do, and governments rarely liked the things they found to do.
That’s why the clones were the perfect army to people like Tarkin. They were most eminently disposable.
And the Jedi defending them would offer a very nice excuse to get rid of the generals along with the soldiers.
God , she hoped she was just a paranoid misanthrope. But she had bruises and aching bones that argued otherwise.
“Commander? Do you need to sit down?”
They were all looking at her, and the tooka was frantically washing her face, a worried note to its purrs.
“No,” she said. Her voice was a little thick. “No, I’m fine. I’ll miss you, though.”
A pause, a break in their professional concern that let anger and a much deeper worry shine through, just for a moment. “We’ll miss you too, Commander,” said Garter, his voice just a little rougher than usual. “Try not to do anything too crazy without us to watch your back, will you? Those ensigns of yours don’t sound very helpful.”
She dredged up a grin, the tension easing out of the air even if the tooka was still peering into her eyes, an expression of great concern on its broad toothy face. “Yeah, they’re all as shiny as Joyride here.”
She watched them, and she wasn’t sure if she could stand it, just leaving them. “Look,” she said, knowing what the answer would be. “You know I’m taking Barriss with me when I go. You want to come with, cover my back from the ensigns’ incompetence, I’ll take you too.” Please , she wanted to add. If Tarkin was feeling bold enough to grab her, to torture her, there was nothing to stop him from doing the same to them.
She wanted them to understand. She wanted to offer something better. But even as she spoke she knew it was impossible. They’d been made for this war, them and all their brothers, and escaping it meant leaving their brothers. “This war is going nowhere good, fast. I’m worried that when the dust settles, you and your brothers are going to be in the crosshairs—and maybe the Jedi, too. You’ll need each other if you stay, clones and Jedi, but if you want to leave—if you find yourself in a position to leave—we could take you. If you come later, Ventress and Dex know the way. The Federation will take you in, and you will be full citizens there. If it goes to hell and you need to run…” She realized how grim she sounded, like she was reading a death sentence rather than offering asylum. “You’re my people,” she said, “just like the ensigns, and trust me, leaving you here goes against every instinct I have as a Starfleet officer. Starfleet is a promise—we don’t leave each other behind.”
It was more of a plea than she meant it to be; the tooka murmured unhappily and started grooming her hair out of its ponytail, in hopes that would fix what washing her face had not.
“We can take care of ourselves, commander,” said Garter, though it fell a little flat. “Not that we don't appreciate it. But we need to be here. With our brothers.”
“Yeah,” she said. It felt like… it felt like sitting down to start filling out a casualty report, no surprise but still deep grief. “I thought you’d say that. Wish I could have brought some booze, made it a proper goodbye. But if you need help, if this does go to hell…”
“We’ll head for you,” said Lingo. “Now come on, enough moping from all of you, we owe the Commander a good sendoff.”
They took turns saying goodbye. The tooka purred. Chester spent the whole time feeling like shit. She watched all of them, wincing inwardly—they’d really become like her crew.
She needed to get home. That was her primary duty. But this hurt, this felt like cutting pieces out of herself.
“You really think this is going to go to shit?” Lingo muttered to her, when it came to his turn.
“I’d lay my entire month’s pay on it,” she said, “if Starfleet got paid.”
“Little gods, you people are weird,” he said, and relieved her of the weight of the tooka. “Look, if you’re somehow right, we’ll do it. We’ll bring the General too. So you just worry about your own crazy self in your weird galaxy, all right?”
“I’ll do that,” she said, and they clasped arms and she said goodbye to all of them again and then they were gone, headed back to their own ship, and Plo and Wolffe had ducked out of Ventress’s ship and were looking at her.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” said Wolffe after a moment. “Commander. Try not to die. At least give it a week or two.”
“Understood,” she said. “Thanks, Wolffe.”
And then it was just her and Plo.
Chester stood in front of him, her arms folded across her chest, protecting healing injuries, just looking at him sadly. But she was alive and more or less well, and that was all he should be focused on—yet the grief and pain clung in Plo’s heart. This was a goodbye, and a goodbye under dreadful circumstances, too, and the fact remained she had been hurt because the Jedi had been unable to keep their promise of protection due their guest.
“It’s all right,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I’ve had worse. And I understand. I wasn’t sure you’d be able to help at all. I,” she paused, looking intently into his face—she was nearly on a level with him, a big reassuring presence that once again reminded him painfully of Qui-Gon, “The last thing I wanted to do was put you or the Jedi in further danger if Tarkin did succeed. That’s why I hired Ventress back on Chenowei.”
“You thought it was a risk even then.”
Chester huffed a small sound of dry amusement, then winced, a hand going to her side. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. The writing on the wall was pretty clear, and it got clearer the longer Tarkin spent sniffing around me. Our previous conversations weren’t at all about Song Tulin—he knew who and what I was. He’s not thinking too much about this war. He’s thinking about the next one. About what he’s going to do with this custom-ordered army of yours, and who he’s going to aim them at. I played the total sniveling coward for him today, so if you could do anything to bolster that impression, I’d appreciate it.”
Plo pushed away another jolt of rage, doing his best to release it into the Force. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Plo…”
A pause.
“I can hardly ask you to stay now, Diane,” he said.
Another one of those grim half-laughs, too tired to be anywhere near real. She looked tired, too, in a way he’d never seen her look tired before, even after the escape from Dooku. Not quite defeated, but the heartsick bone weariness that matched his own feelings. “I suppose I’ve worn out my welcome, yes.”
He and the rest of the Council had spent so much time cautioning her, but just now he could not bear to see her blame herself. “You fought for us,” he said. “And for those we protect, without asking for return, even after we’d wronged you by bringing you here, even after you were stranded here. You refused to put Anakin or Ahsoka in harm’s way to save yourself when it came to it, even though they were supposed to be your protectors—and I suspect that was because you knew the ramifications for the Jedi. You have done the right thing every time such a choice has been presented, no matter how inconvenient it was or how dangerous.” He paused. She was looking at him with some confusion. “There is part of me that would like to admonish you for being so reckless with your own safety, but that would be wrong. That springs from my own attachment to you, and my own fears for your wellbeing, which have run very close to the surface over the last hours. No, the truth of the matter is this: in your time here, you have exemplified the dedication and selflessness that the Order expected of its Jedi in happier times, and I can only hope that we will find our way to that standard once again, even beaten down by this war as we are. And—I hope—that you can bring that spirit back to your own galaxy, where it might be properly appreciated.”
She looked down, her presence rippling with a stunned kind of gratitude.
“It is easy to feel as if this is a failure,” Plo said. “But if you have acted selflessly, and with compassion, even a defeat is not failure. You have achieved much, and I suspect a great deal of the result is still to be seen. Even if this is a bitter conclusion to your time here, efforts such as yours are never wasted.”
She closed her eyes, drawing in a ragged breath. “Thank you,” she said. “I needed to hear that. It makes this feel less like running away.”
“It is not running away,” he said, certain of every word he spoke. “Your home needs you, more even than we do.”
He drew out her lightsaber then—and it was hers by now, not Dooku’s—and held it out to her, flat across his palms. For a moment, the full litany of a Knighting came to his mind, but no, it would not be right. As she had said so many times, she was a Starfleet officer, not a Jedi. Instead, what he said was, “The lightsaber is the heart of a Jedi, an extension of you. Your lightsaber is your life.” He put it into her hands, her fingers closing around the grip as if they belonged there. “Give it a better purpose than it otherwise would have known.”
She blinked down at it, swallowed hard, nodded. Held onto it longer than she needed to, before she clipped it to her belt. “Maybe… one of the results of this will be that we’ll meet again. Perhaps in the context of diplomatic relations between the Republic and Federation.”
“I would like that,” said Plo, though they both knew it was a distant prospect.
She nodded, hesitated. Then, “Do you do hugs?”
Plo felt a certain grave amusement at the phrasing. “Yes,” he said. “I do in fact do hugs.”
She stepped in quickly and folded him into a tight embrace. It was a very good hug, full of unspoken affection, her presence in the Force billowing in comforting eddies around him, even though she was still tired and sad. “We’ll meet again,” she said, quiet but fierce. “In happier times.”
“In happier times,” he said, and there was no more to say after that. She stepped back, and up the ramp into Ventress’s ship. At the hatch she paused and turned, waved to him, and disappeared within. The hatch closed.
There was no point to waiting around, but he did, at least until he saw the ship lift off and vanish into the myriad of lights of the Coruscanti night.
Then, Jedi Master Plo Koon gathered his robes around him, turned, and slowly walked back to the shuttle and his men, who would take him back to the Jedi Temple, and from there to the war and into hell, and with him he took a renewed determination—to make the Galaxy a better place whether it liked it or not.