Chapter Text
Hermione was walking along the dimly lit corridor on the deepest level of the ministry. She was deep in thought about her newest project, to improve upon the wizarding world. Her head was full of useful things that she needed to get done. In her ten years here they had made a lot of progress in changing things for the better, but there was still a lot to do.
Some part of her thought that was always going to be the case and a happy little shiver ran down her spine, immediately she felt guilty. This shouldn’t be fun, she was righting terrible injustices and paving a way into the future for her people, but…
Suddenly the soft buzzing of the wards around her went silent and her inner monologue was interrupted. In the blink of an eye she drew up a shield. Just in time for a bluish purple spell to crash against it and to try to burn through. Hermione fought it, but she nearly buckled under the power. She frowned, she wasn’t familiar with this one. It didn’t seem like a curse.
She started to hear chanting, a chorus of sorts, not just a single caster and not here but from a far. Not a spell then, a ritual.
Hermione swallowed as she renewed her efforts. She couldn’t hope to win against an entire circle. Her only hope was to call for help and hold out as long as she could.
Her hand closed around the coin on her necklace and gasping with the effort it took to split her focus she send an emergency SOS to Harry. Then she had to put all her power back into renewing her wobbly shield. It was not going well.
She held on as long as she could, but in the end the shield broke and the spell hit her. It was like a wave crushing over her. Her last frantic thought was, that she knew the signature behind that magic.
Then everything went dark as the spell consumed her and She disappeared. Just in time to be witnessed by a horrorstruck Harry Potter. Frantically he checked the coin on his necklace, but the silvery otter patronus on it continued to swim in playful circles around the stag and the little terrier.
She is alive, Harry thought relieved, then clenched his jaw in determination. Within minutes the entire ministry knew what had happened. Aurors and Unspeakables were swarming the corridor to find out what had happened and where Hermione Granger had disappeared to, but they could not locate her.
Chapter Text
When Hermione came to, everything hurt. It felt rather as though she’d hurled herself headlong into an enormous meat grinder, been shredded into pieces, and then haphazardly reassembled by an overenthusiastic preschooler — one with no manual and far too much glue.
She tried to move, then groaned involuntarily. Okay, she amended, maybe not just a preschooler—a preschooler with a learning disorder and perhaps some kind of motor impairment. At least – judging by how everything hurt – all her limbs seemed to still be accounted for. Small mercies.
She blinked her eyes open. She couldn’t see anything. A panicked shutter ran through her and she had to force herself into stillness. To breathe and think.
Then she remembered one of Harry’s Auror stories and summoned Bluebell flames into her hand. Her surroundings became visible and she let out a relieved breath. So far, she couldn’t make out much. Just a stone floor and some columns, covered in a lot of dust. It didn´t matter. Waking up alone in some strange place with no idea how she got there was bad. Being blind on top of that didn't bear thinking about.
She cast a quick wandless spell. It came easier than it should have, she noticed. It worked normally though. There was no sentient life and nothing bigger than a cat within 500 feet around her. No magic either. There could still be non-magical threats though, she supposed. But at least there was nothing trying to creep up on her right now. Remembering the war and what came after, that was better than a lot of other situations she had found herself in.
For the moment, she seemed to be safe here.
Which brought her back to the pressing question: Where exactly was she? And how had she got here?
The last thing she remembered was, that she had been walking down towards the archives in the ministry. Then nothing. She frowned.
That was not much to go on. Had someone triggered the ministries war wards and send everyone out on accident? Or was this done on purpose?
Normally, she would have suspected a blood-purist attack. The more of a fringe movement they became, the more violent they got. However, she seemed to be in one piece, wasn’t bound in any way, and still had access to her magic. It surged through her in a wild current. A current that seemed even stronger than usually, she noticed. It felt bit like she was standing on a leyline cross, actually. With all that energy waiting to be channeled, those added strength to any magical being in there vincinity.
That would have been a good explanation. It was also the only possible explanation she was aware of. Perfectly logical, except there wasn’t a leyline cross here. Odd. But she had no idea what else it could be. So she dismissed it for now.
Still, it was a fairly good indicator that this probably wasn’t some convoluted plot cooked up by the inbreeding brigade. They certainly would not try to make her stronger.
So, back to the matter at hand: where was she?
Frowning, she focused on the feel of the fire in her hand—its warmth, its brightness, the way the spell fed on her magic. She connected with it and used that feeling to shape it. She added a sense of form and mass, transforming it into a sphere. It was now a tiny bright blue sun that no longer needed direct contact with her to exist.
With a small flick of her hand, she sent the light soaring upward, where it hovered overhead.
She pushed herself into a sitting position and lightning shot up her back, but she could move. She was terribly sore, but she wasn´t injured to the point of being hindered, if she had to run or fight for her life.
Looking down at herself, she saw that her wand holder was still on her wrist. Her backup wand was also still in the hidden pocket on her thigh and she was still wearing her dragon hide boots and jacket. Harry always made fun of her secretly wishing to join the Aurors when he saw it, but with its layers of protective enchantments, it was just safer. She looked around. A step away from her on the floor she saw her "bag of holding“, as her mom had dubbed the replacement for her beloved beaded bag.
It had traveled here with her as well.
Good.
She got up of the grey stone floor and looked around. She was in a big stone chamber, made from the same material as the floor. Though parts of it still showed signs of panelling. And there were flecks of color here and there on the huge columns that held the ceiling. There was a slight draft, coming in through the doorway and moving out through a hole in the upper wall of the room.
She couldn’t really say what this place had once been. It reminded her of an ancient tomb or an archaeological site, with its high stone pillars and ceiling. It also had the undisturbed, natural feel of a place that hadn’t seen sentient residents in quite a while.
Though it hadn’t gone completely undisturbed lately, judging by the tracks on the floor.
They weren’t human tracks, but they weren’t made by any species she knew, either. Judging by their size, width, and depth, she suspected a bipedal species. One that was bit smaller than a human, yet quite a bit faster. Probably leaning over forward, the front digits able to reach the ground with ease.
She frowned a little. That was typical for hunters and gatherers, much like humanity had once been. She wished she could learn more, preferably from the safety and comfort of the archives. Alas, it wasn’t to be. So she cast a few preliminary wards to secure the room she was in. They would warn her should anything living move this way. Hoping the natives were friendly was good, but she’d rather not rely on that. Then she drank something and had a snack, while she was at it. Call her paranoid, but somehow she got the feeling that this might take a while.
Best to send a message to Harry, she thought. Even if he wasn’t close by, he had been at the ministry and had to have noticed something was going on.
She summoned her patronus. The little otter swam in funny circles around her. It listened attentively, taking her message like it should. But then it just turned in circles around itself a few times and didn't move to deliver the message.
She tried again, no change.
Okay, no Harry for now. There were some wards that could divert a patronus, maybe this setup was a lot less random than it seemed afterall.
She grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and intoned a spell she had created a few years ago. It generated a map of an unknown environment within half a mile of the spell’s origin. It had come in handy more than once when she or Harry had found themselves kidnapped or needed to locate someone in an unfamiliar place.
Damn, she missed Harry. Not that she’d wish this on him; he just had so much more experience with this kind of thing these days.
And, more than anything, she trusted him to have her back.
She finished the spell, and the dirt rose from her outstretched hand, forming a cloud in the air in front of her. It swirled like a school of fish in the sea, ever so slowly taking shape. But instead of forming the three-dimensional plane of buildings and streets she had expected, the spell revealed a sphere.
She blinked, confused. She let the spell slip and tried again. This time, she tried with a mile radius. The result was... similar. Not the same, as there were more completely black areas in the sphere, but it was still a sphere. She frowned, then tried to pull it apart, concentrating on smaller and smaller areas.
Eventually, structures became visible. But it looked just wrong—like there was one city propped over another, over another, over another. Most of them were somewhat destroyed or even collapsed into each other in places. In the upper area, there seemed to be some larger tunnels built. They looked weirdly organic, but they were huge. Hermione had never heard of any species, even among magical ones, that could do that.
Definitely not the imbreeding brigade then. One could reason that a patronus would not just find it’s way back to London from here, so wards didn’t have to be the reason. Hopefully she would do better than her otter though.
The worst part was that she had no idea where she could be, but she doubted she was still anywhere close to home. The materials needed to stabilise the ground and hold something like this up simply didn’t exist. The base should have long since completely collapsed under the weight and sent everything above tumbling down. Especially with how old her immediate surroundings seemed.
And magic?
She sighed. Organized research into the principles of magic outside the Unspeakables had been basically non-existent in recent centuries. This definitely wasn’t built by magicals. So if not earth, what was this then? The future? An alien world? A different dimension? The Afterlife? She asked herself.
And a voice in the back of her head that sounded remarkably like Harry, answered: does it matter? It’s obviously not the end, get moving.
As usually in situations like this, he was right. From a practical standpoint, it didn’t matter.
And analysis alone wouldn’t change the situation.
She looked again at the by now giant globe around her. Then she blew out a breath—this didn’t help.
On Earth, if you were underground and wanted to get out, up was the way to go in a very basic sense. But here...people, resources, energy, where did you get that in a place like this? What kind of place was it even?
She changed the spell, pulling it in, to show more and more of her surroundings.
It took quite a long time. She started thinking that she was trapped in a kind of unending matryoshka doll. Just one city over another, over another, for all eternity. But eventually, the structures became bigger and bigger, and the spaces between them more and more organised. Until finally, she ended up with a kind of surface. There was an uppermost city on top, far above her and incredibly dense ground not too far beneath her.
Okay, That gave her a direction. Just don´t think about how much stone, earth and steel are packed above you, she thought faintly, and hoped the structures she had to pass on her way out were stable. Magic or not, she would not fare well with the sky literally falling on her.
She could use this though. She made the sphere smaller again.
Then she thought at it, 'How do I get up there?
It showed her a path, but it was hard to see. She concentrated more, turning the cityscapes translucent, then made every layer a different colour, for good measure. Some collapsed areas remained a brownish grey. With her spell unable to distinguish them, they swam like ugly blobs in between the colorful layers of her map.
Hermione marked her point of origin on the map so she could always return, even if she couldn’t Apparate. Then she asked again for a path to the surface.
Damn, not feasible on foot.
Okay, again with a broom. That was doable, though she didn’t like it.
Fucking brooms.
But Apparition without any idea of what her exit point looked like was what Goyle would have done. She nodded to herself—never imitate the unfortunate victims of long-term prejudice if it could be helped.
One more thing came to mind.
Under her breath, she uttered a spell. Suddenly, lots of tiny lights populated the sphere, making her breathe easier with the relief of not being alone, but at the same time, she felt apprehensive at the number of those lights glowing in an unhealthy green. So, not the friendliest of places. Maybe it would be better when she got farther up.
A bit like the deep sea, she supposed: go deep enough down, and close to everything that moves is either a mollusc or has big, big teeth and a willingness to use them—or both. Nothing personal. Without the sun to sustain plant life, there simply was no other choice. She suspected this was the same—riches raining down, then trickling down and then, well... nothing personal.
Scanning for someone she knew, dead or alive, yielded no results. Though, she supposed if they really were dead, that might falsify the results. Though she tended towards this being the future or another world all together.
She groaned with dismay, realising that it would still take her quite some time to reach the surface. Thank Merlin she was well-prepared. Contentedly she patted her moleskin bag. Then, she summoned a glass sphere around her improvised map. That way, it would hold up for at least a week and only show her her immediate surroundings and the path she had to follow.
She ought to do what she could to avoid being surprised by anything with an unfortunate appetite for paranoid bookworms, she thought, while she chewed on the remains of her energy bar.
First step: close down her Occlumency shields. Disappear from the radar of anything or anyone magical around here. She took a deep breath and pulled up the mental walls that kept her energy and thoughts hidden. They formed around her in a wave of cold, sharpening her senses but sending an unpleasant prickling down her spine.
With that done, she added silencing and scent suppression spells. Thankfully, she had one of George’s invisibility cloaks in her bag. While not as perfect as Harry’s, it worked well enough with its added Notice-Me-Not charms. She pulled out the cloak and one of Ginny’s old training brooms—still in good condition.
Now, was there anything else that could help? She glanced down at herself in the bluish glow of her makeshift sun and—right, the light.
Once she was ready to go, she snuffed out the glowing orb and adjusted her vision to work with ambient light. Of course, that didn’t work, so she switched to using magical energy instead. It wasn’t ideal—the energy was everywhere, and someone could potentially hide the same way she did. Plus, it made it hard to distinguish different types of matter. She could easily mistake a nebula of energy for a solid wall and waste hours trying to fly around it.
She would have to use her map to navigate, then.
She made a face. That would slow her down and force her to split her focus.
Still, it was the best she could manage. She’d just have to stay sharp. Frowning, she cast another spell that would warn her if anything alive noticed her presence.
Not perfect, but it would have to do.
With that, she got on the broom and was on her way.
Chapter Text
Quinlan rubbed his hand over his bruised ribs and rolled his shoulder as he walked out of the Halls of Healing. His face pulled involuntarily into a pained grimace. The injury was minor and had healed well. It would be gone by morning. He wished the same could be said for the memory imprint that the club had also left behind.
Skin contact had always been complicated for him, but he usually had a better handle on it. It was only in these last years, with the Order stretched so thin and the darkness in the galaxy growing so thick, that it had become problematic again.
He could handle it, though. He was handling it. And it was certainly worth it. The information he had gained was enough to bring down a subsidiary of the Black Sun syndicate. It could lead to a real hit against the slavers that preyed on the vulnerable population of the lower levels and a number of mining planets in the Mid Rim.
If it was used.
If. That was the problem, wasn’t it? These days, there was no guarantee it would be. In the name of the war effort, too many compromises had been made already. It was disheartening enough to make him question whether the sacrifices were still worth it.
Something needed to be done, and soon, so they could get back to their actual job instead of playing soldiers and Senate lackeys. Otherwise, the spirit of the Order would end up just as decimated as its numbers. One only had to look at what had been happening lately to know that.
He felt a niggling in the Force, an instinctual knowledge that he was right. But not the feeling that was usually meant to spur him on. The Force seemed to tell him to wait, like he was still not in the place he needed to be in to exact change. This feeling stood in direct opposition to his proposal.
As he walked through the silent, empty corridors of the Temple that should be filled with life and warmth, he still didn’t regret his decision. Yet, as he thought about it, he felt the urge to shrug in discomfort. He wasn’t in the habit of going against his feelings. Or against the will of the Force, for that matter. That was a good way to die.
But he had to do something. They were running out of time, he felt that just as clearly. Anyway, there was no point in thinking about it anymore. The proposal was already sent.
He was slowly getting fed up with all the doom and gloom, when he saw Obi-Wan in front of the central tower turbolift. Obes looked all formal and put together. Back ramrod straight, shoulders squared, chin up; he was a perfect display of dignified confidence and strength.
Quinlan winced. That right there was a sure sign that his friend was reaching the end of his tether. The more Obi-Wan hid himself behind his masks, the more desperate his situation was. And right now, he looked like he'd stepped straight out of a Jedi propaganda holo. So more doom and gloom to come, it seemed, if he should be so lucky and Obes actually opened up for once.
Not that anyone would need him to spell it out. With his position on the Council and in the war on one hand, and his ongoing conflict with his lineage on the other, it would take someone far colder than Council Master Kenobi to not feel the strain.
Lineage conflict was putting it mildly as well. Since Ahsoka left, the problems between Obes and his Padawan had escalated to the point where the Temple gossip called it an open feud within the legendary Team.
Skywalker had grown—politely put—unstable, and was flaunting his disdain for the Council and the rules even more openly than before.
And Ahsoka?
He understood her decision. The betrayal had to have cut deep, but he still wished she hadn't left. They had needed her. They still did. She was a touchstone for many. Her Master's stability had rested on her (and shouldn’t that be the other way around?). The younger members of the Order looked up to her. The Clones trusted her — and now she was gone.
Not lost to the war, but betrayed by the Council. That sat right with exactly no one. It had lost them a lot of trust and respect. And the rising fear and revulsion could be felt throughout the Temple. But what were they supposed to do about it now? After they had sold her out for political convenience sake?
Kark, even he felt revulsion.
He shook himself out of his musings. Nothing he could do about that. There was exactly one person he might be able to help right now.
So, in a display that lacked any of the dignity expected of a Jedi Master, he skipped a few steps ahead and slid into the turbolift with his friend just as the doors were closing. It was reminiscent of their younger years, when such behaviour was often the cause for exasperated sighs and shaking heads from the more (stuck-up) formal Masters of the Order.
He grinned as roguishly and unrepentantly as he could manage and greeted his friend: "Hey, Obes!"
Obi-Wan sighed, but the crease between his brows that spoke of a chronic headache lessened. "Quin,..." He drew a deep breath and drew his shoulders back even farther, a pose like he was addressing the Senate, but then just stared at him for a moment.
Quinlan grinned harder.
Obi-Wan’s shoulders slumped to a more natural posture as he relaxed a little. "Hello," was all he added.
His friend looked exhausted, but that he allowed himself to let his guard down enough for it to be noticed was a good sign. It made it a little easier to fake the devil-may-care routine that was getting harder to achieve by the day.
Keeping shields up against the onslaught of pain and death that ricocheted through the Force had long since become a default to preserve his sanity, but it still felt like he had voluntarily blinded himself. The unnerving feeling that he wouldn’t see the next hit coming was constantly grating on him.
It was a widespread problem among the Jedi right now.
He wouldn’t trade places with Obi-Wan for anything. So many were looking to him for reassurance, now that they could no longer perceive the path ahead. And he had no choice but to just stubbornly march on.
To see him like this strengthened Quinlan’s determination to go through with his proposal. Short of a direct intervention of the Force, ending this was the only thing that could help them.
Then, suddenly there was a disturbance in the Force.
Light was crashing over them like a wave. For a moment the entire world was nothing but blinding light and unfathomable strength. From afar he heard voices, but he could not understand what they were saying.
When the world snapped back into place, Obi-Wan was no longer beside him.
The Force seemed to... giggle.
But the oppressive feeling that he had to wait for something was gone; instead, the light tugged at him, wanting him to follow its lead like so many times before.
For the first time in his life he wondered if the Force truly knew what it was doing.
Chapter Text
For the first time in his life, Quinlan wondered if the Force truly knew what it was doing.
Hermione would have seconded that question in a heartbeat.
At this moment, she was fervently wishing for a nice cup of tea and an argument about the merits of innovation with Master Hogsman in the archives.
But she would have taken Quidditch talk with Ron and Seamus at the Leaky.
Or hell, Mclaggen's endless babbling about... Mclaggen.
Instead, she was stuck here. And she didn’t even know where here was yet. But after five hours stuck flying through it, she was fairly certain this had been the inspiration for Muggle hell.
Given the layers, she especially wondered if Dante Alighieri had been a wizard after all.
Granted, there weren’t any sinners, but then she hadn’t exactly stopped to talk to any of the denizens.
It was also incredibly dull to fly around here. After several hours on a broom, flying through this desolate wasteland of ancient ruins—crushed into each other and filled with veritable mountains of trash that left only narrow canyons and tunnels for her to move through—she well and truly wished for a break.
It was uncomfortable. She was cold despite the heat, and the endless noise grated on her nerves.
On top of that, she felt sweaty and grimy and absolutely disgusting, even though she hadn’t touched anything. Flying through this nightmare landscape felt the same as she imagined wading through sewage would.
And hours on a broom didn’t help her sore muscles, either.
She had, of course, noticed how fortunate she had been to appear where she had. She hadn’t properly appreciated it at the time, but as soon as she got on the broom and out of that room, it became clear that it had been the lap of luxury and comfort in this underworld.
She was even grateful for the broom, if only because it meant she didn’t have to get too close to the ground.
She flew in a steep curve upward through a narrow tunnel, randomly bisected by steel beams and thick, snaking cables she had to dodge—a task that would have been much easier if she could properly see.
In front of her, the space opened into another deep canyon.
And yes, another herd of those giant stone-eating slugs.
Crawling on the ground, the walls—emerging even from within the walls.
Hermione shuddered.
They were cow-sized and stank to high heaven.
And every once in a while, they were preyed on by some kind of even more enormous flesh-eating worms. Or packs of spiky, horse-sized rat-things. Or creatures that might, in the distant past, have had human ancestors but now looked just wrong...and had caught up in tooth size with everything else down here.
Seeing them glow with psychedelic magical auras through her mage vision didn’t help. Neither did the earsplitting screeching, or the slime and ichor that got splattered far and wide.
Needless to say, Hermione now stayed as far from the ground as she could.
Thankfully, at least, her methods of hiding herself seemed effective so far. None of the things had reacted to her presence in the slightest.
But now she had finally reached the hole in the ceiling that would allow her to reach yet another level—hopefully, one that was slug-free.
Hermione flew in and corkscrewed in narrow circles upward as fast as she dared. She swallowed against the rising nausea. She really wasn’t made for flying.
Only a couple of minutes later, a chime rang—the alarm on the amulet sewn into her protective gear, meant to alert her if something harmful was getting through. So, there was some kind of danger that could bypass her charmwork, but she didn’t sense anything. Great.
She stopped and wobbled a bit in the air as she pulled out her wand. She cast a standard diagnostic spell and two more obscure ones. Nothing came up. Not for airborne poisons or viruses, either. Not good.
She frowned. She couldn’t afford to stop right now to figure it out.
Given where she was, chances were the spells didn’t detect anything because it was completely unknown. So she grudgingly cast a shield charm that also trapped the air around her in a bubble, followed by a cleansing spell.
The chiming stopped, but she knew that would only work for so long.
She shook her head. She couldn’t keep going like this forever— not if she needed to maintain the shield as well.
Her best bet was to keep moving as fast as possible and hope she got away from whatever had activated the amulet. And ideally, away from any ground-destabilizing slugs or predatory worms. She was fairly certain her warding could keep them away, but she still didn’t think she could sleep anywhere close to them. Hagrid’s lecture on flesh-eating slugs—and how one needed to be careful not to fall into a basin full of them lest one be slowly devoured—had left too vivid a picture in her mind for that.
She leaned forward over the broom handle and pressed down to gain speed. Her hands were cramping and shivering despite the heat. For now, she could ignore that, she decided, as the tunnel walls began to blur past faster and faster. Praise Ginny and her need to hurl herself through the air at neck-breaking speeds on a wooden stick.
She idly wondered if this could count as the monthly broom training her friend still insisted she…
Suddenly, an invisible force slammed into her from the side. Her broom spun wildly out of control.
Hermione screamed as she lost hold of it for a moment and went into free fall. She crashed into the wall. The breath was forced out of her lungs, and for a moment, her mage sight blinked out.
On instinct, she cast a shield in front of her even as she slid down the tunnel wall. She scrambled for purchase lest she fall into the abyss beneath.
Something hit her shield with power.
Once,
twice,
three times.
It held, but she felt the strain.
She grabbed a cable that jutted from the wall and came to a stop on the steep slope. She tried to find a foothold, but the tail of the thing slashed the wall above her.
It rained metal, stone, and dust down on her—some of the debris clipped her shoulder, and the impact nearly knocked her out as she lost her grip. She went sliding towards the holes that opened to the ceiling of the next lower level again.
She was horror-struck for a moment—she couldn’t fall. The icy panic she’d become numb to after hours on the broom shot through her, freezing her for a moment.
Then her training kicked in. She cast a wandless Fire Whip curse in an arc in front of her.
The sudden light hurt her eyes, even as the image of a giant beast burned itself into her retinas. It had the body of a snake, coiled in rippling scales that glinted between black and copper in the spell’s light. Its tail split into three cord-thin, whip-like appendages with a single scorpions stinger at the end. Around its neck was a collar of spiked tentacles that retracted and slashed outward to pull food into its maw.
Rows upon rows of huge shark teeth.
She wasn’t even surprised there were no eyes. But how did it sense her?
Her whip cracked and hit the flank of the thing. An inhuman screech filled the tunnel as it reared back, away from the fire. But it gathered itself quickly, barely slowed down by the scorch mark the whip had left.
She wanted to curse at that.
Little reaction to dark magic—and it was invisible to her mage sight. That hadn’t been a mistake.
This had to be a magical creature. 4X at least. Anything else would have been ripped to pieces by a Fire Whip.
Then she hit a thick beam and nearly blacked out from the impact. Her ankle twisted, and with a sharp crunch and a flash of pain, she knew she had broken something.
She clung to it and hauled herself back up. It hurt, but she managed to scrabble on top of the beam and sat back, leaning against the rough wall behind her.
She was grateful her fall had stopped. But she was a sitting duck. No cover in sight. She took a choking breath and cast half a dozen bright lights around her.
Fuck not being seen. If she couldn’t see, she was going to be toast anyway.
The beast reacted to it, despite the absence of eyes. It followed the spellfire like a dog chasing a stick.
She frowned. It couldn’t be following the light, so… magic. It had to be following the magic.
But how had it followed her with her Occlumency shields up? She…
It splashed its tails through the lights. Hermione ducked and...was momentarily distracted by the sight of her broom. It had landed not too far away from her on a ledge. It wasn’t lost then, she thought in relief.
In her short distraction, the beast had coiled up and now sprang forward across the tunnel. Its giant jaws opened and all she could see were reaching tentacles and rows upon rows of arm-length shark teeth.
Without a second thought, she let herself fall off the beam. But even as she fell, a tentacle shot out and wrapped around her leg.
It started reeling her back in.
SECTUMSEMPRA.
No result.
Right—little reaction to dark magic. But the regular shield spell had worked.
DIFFINDO.
She poured everything into the spell and cast with all her strength.
She was cut free immediately. As the beast screeched again and drew back, she twisted in the air and Apparated without hesitation.
She landed with an oomph on top of her broom and slid into a nook behind the hunk of metal scrap it rested on.
She took a quick look around. It was a small side tunnel—more of a nook, really—just four feet high and half as wide. It had probably been left behind by one of those disgusting snails, but that was long gone now, and right now she would have kissed it for providing her with some much-needed shelter.
Hermione grabbed the broom and began to shoulder her way backwards, as far from the tunnel opening as she could. Then she recast her shield at the front of her nook. With her other hand, she cast a Flagrante and painted a basic blood ward into the air.
Once she was done, she used the spell to burn the warding pattern in a ring into the floor and walls in front of her.
The snake-thing hissed loudly and began gathering itself again. It would be here in a moment.
Hermione finished the ward and pressed her bloody hand to the stone.
Magic rushed through the pattern and formed a shield before the flames could burn her.
The beast crashed against the ward. It was stopped.
It snarled and struck at her with the spikes of its tail—but those couldn’t penetrate the magical barrier either.
Still, it attacked again in a frenzy, trying with all its might to get at her.
…or rather, she realized after a moment, it was trying to devour the ward itself.
She frowned. Magic again. It was attracted to magic.
She pulled her Occlumency shields up tight—no magic leaking out. She was now just a black void in the world.
But she had already done that before. How had it found her?
She looked at the broom. No—those were designed to simulate natural magic, so they didn’t constantly attract magical pests.
Still, she stuffed it into her moleskin bag. That would hide the signature.
She cast a Patronus.
Her little otter burst from her wand and darted into the air in front of the beast. She’d never used it to distract anything, but it seemed to work. The creature reacted to it, like Crookshanks would react to a laser pointer.
The tiny otter flitted around it, impossible to catch—but the beast didn’t give up. It kept lunging, biting, and whipping its tails and tentacles at it.
Hermione used the distraction to work a steel plate free from the wall in front of her. Once she had it in place and was hidden as best she could be, she dropped the ward and let the energy fade.
Now all that stood between her and the thing was a slab of old metal.
She sent a short prayer to Merlin and Morgana that this would work.
Then she cast a powerful Depulso at the beast and sent her Patronus racing downward into the tunnel and abyss.
She thought of a canyon three levels below and directed her otter there.
All she could do was hope the creature followed.
It screeched. She could hear it slithering and sliding along the tunnel walls in pursuit.
Then—silence.
It was gone.
The tunnel must have ended. It had likely fallen through to the city level below.
Nothing remained but the flickering glow of her magical lights.
Hermione slumped back and exhaled. Relief flooded her system like cold water.
She hoped it wouldn’t find its way back any time soon.
After a moment of contemplation, she raised the ward again.
She needed to heal. She needed rest. She had been at this for hours.
She needed a safe place. Somewhere inaccessible, with steel walls and nothing alive nearby. Somewhere she could ward until it resembled a Gringotts vault.
Chapter Text
Quinlan stood in the center of the High Council Chamber, hands clasped loosely behind his back. The pain in his ribs had dulled to a background thrum, a quiet echo of the mission gone sideways. But that wasn’t what brought him here.
The Council ringed him in silence — Windu, Tiin, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia. Yoda sat as still as ancient stone, ears slightly lowered in thought. Even Anakin was present, seated off to the side, his presence heavy with tension and impatience.
Quinlan bowed his head respectfully. “Masters.”
He glanced once around the circle. He could feel their minds already brushing the surface of his own in a gentle greeting. He kept himself open. Calm. He let his worry and confusion show, but also his certainty that Obi-wan was alright, where ever he was..
“I was with Master Kenobi at the time of his disappearance,” he said simply. “We were in the central tower lift, just talking.”
He hesitated. The words weren’t hard — it was the truth that was. It still made no sense.
“One moment he was beside me. The next… he was gone.” He let that sit for a moment and gathered his thoughts. Then he pressed on and his words came out strained as he contiuned: “I called for the Guard immediately. The sector was locked down. No malfunction in the lift. No tampering. No surveillance glitch. We found nothing. No trace.”
He shifted his stance slightly, fingers curling once at his side.
“But I felt it,” he added. “There was something in the Force.”
Yoda stirred slightly. “in the Force you felt Obi-wans disappearance?”
Quinlan drew a breath. Let it out slow.
“It was like…” He shook his head once. “Like light crashing over me. Not just bright — total. For a moment the world dropped away. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. There was power, and presence — vast, ancient, gentle. Voices, far away. Too far to understand.”
He looked around the chamber, meeting no one's gaze for a long moment. “When it passed, Obi-Wan was gone. Just… gone. No sense of danger. No residue. Only the feeling that the Force had moved him.”
Plo Koon leaned forward. “Moved him where?”
“I don’t know,” Quinlan said. “But it didn’t feel like death. I can still feel him. Just distant.”
He took a careful step forward. “I know it sounds like a vision. But this was real. It happened in real time. In this world.”
Windu folded his arms. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.” His voice dropped lower. “The Force didn’t warn me. It acted. It… laughed.”
That drew a flicker from Adi Gallia.
“It wasn’t malice,” Quinlan clarified. “Just… delight. Like a child playing a trick.”
He paused again.
“I can show you.”
He raised his hand slightly, inviting them in.
“I kept the memory clear. I’ve already prepared it for projection.”
When the Masters nodded in agreement, he closed his eyes, centered himself, and lifted the moment from his mind. The sensation of light, of power. The thunderous silence of the Force moving — doing something — far beyond his understanding. He let it play across the surface of his consciousness, open to their insight.
The chamber grew still. Several Masters leaned forward, eyes distant, connected. For a moment, Quinlan felt it ripple through them — the same awe, the same shiver of deep current.
Then the link broke.
Silence.
Windu spoke first. “It wasn’t Sith. Or Jedi for that matter.”
“No,” Plo agreed. “It wasn’t dark at all. But it wasn’t passive, either. The Force acted.”
Master Ti looked toward Yoda. “Have you ever encountered anything like this?”
Yoda’s eyes were half-closed. “Once. Long ago. But familiar, this is not.” Then he shook his head, his ears dropping in contemplation. " Vast the Force is, many Force traditions there are."
Anakin stood abruptly. “Then let me track it. If Obi-Wan’s alive, I can find him. I should be the one to go.”
Quinlan watched him carefully — the tension in his shoulders, the fire behind his eyes.
Windu didn’t waver. “You’re needed on the front. The war does not pause because a single Knight is missing.”
“He’s not just—” Anakin stopped himself, jaw clenching. “I won’t waste time when we could be doing something.”
“You have your assignment,” Windu said.
Yoda added softly, “Attached, you are. Cloud your judgment, it will.”
Anakin’s fists curled, but he said nothing more. He turned and left, boots striking the floor hard with each step.
Quinlan stood in the silence that followed. The sense of that moment still shimmered at the edge of his thoughts — that wave of blinding light, that impossible presence, and the pull still lingering beneath his skin.
“The trail is faint,” he said. “But I can still feel it. It’s leading somewhere.”
Yoda nodded slowly. “Permission, you have. Follow it, you must.”
Mace nodded his consent as well.
Quinlan bowed again. “Yes, Masters.”
He turned and walked out, the echo of his memory still humming like starlight behind his eyes. The Force had moved. Obi-Wan was caught in something bigger. And Quinlan was going to find out what.
Obi-Wan Kenobi's senses stirred before his eyes opened. A dull ache pulsed through his limbs, and the air around him felt dense, almost charged. As he regained consciousness, the cold, hard surface beneath him registered—stone, perhaps, or something akin to it. The environment was unfamiliar, yet he remained calm, drawing upon his Jedi training to assess the situation.
He sat up slowly, taking in his surroundings. The corridor was dimly lit, with flickering lights casting elongated shadows on the walls. The architecture was unlike anything he had encountered in the Republic. Intricate patterns adorned the walls, and the very atmosphere seemed to hum with energy. He reached for his lightsaber instinctively; it was still clipped to his belt, a reassuring presence.
The last memory he could recall was conversing with Quinlan Vos in the turbolift. His friends light hearted antics that where so cleary designed to hide his worry and draw Obi-wan out, that he couldn’t help but react in kind. Then, a sudden surge in the Force—a blinding light, a sensation of being pulled—and now, this place.
Obi-Wan stood, his movements cautious. The Force felt different here. It was present, certainly, but it resonated in unfamiliar ways. There were currents he couldn't quite grasp, energies that didn't align with his understanding. It was as if the very fabric of this place was interwoven with a different kind of power.
He moved silently, his footsteps echoing softly. The corridor branched ahead, and as he considered his options, he sensed multiple presences approaching. They were coordinated, purposeful. He retreated into a shadowed alcove, observing as a group of individuals in dark robes advanced. They held slender wooden objects, which they pointed ahead as they moved.
Their language was foreign, sharp syllables exchanged in hushed tones. Obi-Wan remained still, hoping to avoid confrontation. However, one of them gestured, and a pulse of energy shot towards him. The Force reacted instinctively, and he ignited his lightsaber, deflecting the bolt. The group responded with alarm, more energy pulses following.
He managed to deflect several, but one struck him from behind. A sharp pain, then darkness.
Consciousness returned slowly. Obi-Wan found himself in a confined space, the walls smooth and unyielding. A soft light illuminated the room, but there were no visible fixtures. He attempted to reach out with the Force, but it was muted, as if a veil had been placed over his senses.
A metallic collar encircled his neck, and he surmised it was the source of the suppression. His lightsaber was absent, and his belongings had been removed. The room was silent, save for the faint hum of energy.
He sat cross-legged, focusing inward. The situation was precarious, but panic would serve no purpose. He needed to understand where he was, who had brought him here, and what their intentions were. The Force had guided him to this place for a reason, and he intended to uncover it.
Chapter Text
After a moment of contemplation, she raised the ward again.
She needed to heal. She needed rest. She had been at this for hours.
She needed a safe place. Somewhere inaccessible, with steel walls and nothing alive nearby. Somewhere she could ward until it resembled a Gringotts vault.
She took a deep breath, gave herself a moment, and then got back to work.
Hermione’s ankle throbbed with every heartbeat. A diagnostic spell told her that her tibia was fractured just above the ankle—a clean break, and a handful of tendons torn. Not good, but better than if it had been the ankle joint or the foot itself. She couldn’t risk Skele-Gro until she could rest properly; otherwise the bone might regrow crooked. So: a splint and an episky would have to do for now.
Now that the adrenaline of the fight was fading, she felt the sweat stinging the raw scrapes across her palms, and every single place where her back had hit the wall. The dragon-hide jacket had really done its job—she doubted she’d have a single scrap of skin left back there without it. But it couldn’t protect her from the blunt trauma of impact. Something to think about and improve later, she thought tiredly.
Around here, gloves would help too, she decided, wincing as she slathered dittany across her scraped hands. The sting was sharp at first, but quickly faded as the salve sank in. As her hands began to mend, she leaned back against the wall with a quiet groan.
Her exhaustion lay over her like a wet, heavy blanket, pressing her down. She felt it in the cold of her limbs, the heaviness in her bones, and the numbness of her lips and skin. She blinked, and suddenly every horizontal surface started to look good to her.
She shook herself out of it. She knew she hadn’t been in the best state to begin with—not after being thrown into this world and traveling the underworld for hours on broomstick. The fight hadn’t helped. But she couldn’t stay here. She needed to find somewhere defensible.
Whatever that hulking thing had been, she didn’t fancy her chances in another round. But she wouldn’t manage much more at all once she lost focus.
She made a face and summoned a vial of extra-strong Pepper-Up. It wasn’t meant for exhaustion—more of a last resort—but it would keep her going a little longer. Long enough to find a safe place and ward it thoroughly. After that, she’d crash, and no charm would wake her until her body and magic were ready.
She swallowed it down with a grimace, then exhaled slowly, clutching her wand in one hand, the other gripping her thigh as she pushed herself into a half-leaning stand. She moved carefully outside her nook, taking care not to put weight on her ankle and staying well back from the tunnel’s edge.
Still, she didn’t have the luxury of rest.
She tugged the crystal orb from the pouch on her belt and tapped it with her wand. The soft hum of the crystal’s magic pulsed through her fingers, and the miniature three-dimensional projection of the surrounding undercity flared into view—delicate layers of light and geometry floating just above the orb’s surface. There were far more details now that the spell had had time to settle.
It showed dozens of floors and shafts, old service corridors, forgotten rail lines, utility tunnels, and collapsed sectors. A few areas shimmered with danger markers—unstable, unpredictable. One zone warned her away with its stark, complete absence of life signs.
Her path curled upward like a twisted vine around the edges of those places.
She agreed with that. Whatever it was that caused even the native fauna to avoid that sector like a curse was notsomething she intended to investigate.
She frowned. With a flick, she rotated the map, scanning east and slightly upward. Just a few levels off her current vector to the surface. A cluster of erratic structures caught her eye: jagged, metallic, overgrown with intersecting hallways and debris. Life signs—faint and scattered. No massive signatures.
That might work.
She tapped the area to get a closer look. The map pulsed softly and cast a web of faint magical activity. It was a mess, structurally, and a little off course. She had no idea what purpose it had once served—but there were dozens of tight corridors and overlapping bulkheads.
That meant cover. Narrow entrances. Defensibility.
She made her decision quickly, slinging her bag over her shoulder. There could, of course, be threats she couldn’t detect—but better to risk mundane dangers than step into an unnatural dead zone.
And it looked like a fairly good candidate for her Gringotts vault.
It was nearly another hour’s travel—most of it on broomstick, with careful navigation through torn ventilation ducts and cracked megastructures. More than once, she had to descend into shadow and levitate silently while massive creatures, drawn to the echo of her light, slithered past.
The metal began before she saw it.
First as scattered debris. Then twisted hulks of machinery. And then suddenly—ships.
Spaceships, Hermione thought with a rush of disbelief and curiosity—because that’s what they had to be.
Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Layered atop one another, embedded in crumbling ferrocrete walls, crushed into jagged mountains of rust and steel. Hermione landed carefully near the edge on top of one and stared in awe.
It was a graveyard of machines—vessels unlike anything she’d seen outside of science fiction films. Long, narrow transports. Wide-winged, circular ships. Shuttles half-melted from old atmospheric burns. All of it fused into an industrial corpse field.
“Sweet Merlin...” she whispered.
There were creatures here, yes. She felt them watching—eyes glinting from behind grates and broken doors. Nothing large. The ground probably wasn’t stable enough to support something like the beast she’d fought earlier. No magical presences, either. No direct hostility.
They were afraid of her light, she thought.
She kept her wand out, Lumos casting long shadows between wrecks, and flew carefully into the graveyard, constantly checking and rechecking her map to find a place she could ward. Somewhere dry. Quiet. Hidden.
Eventually, she found one.
A shuttle—sleek, scorched, but whole. Tucked between two broken carriers like a pearl caught in a giant’s teeth. The access ramp had collapsed at an angle but not completely. Hermione limped forward and cast a series of detection charms—no power, no defense systems, no magical residue. No life signs inside.
Nothing she could detect, at least.
Still...
As she stepped through the threshold, her amulet flared.
Then went still.
Hermione froze.
It had been thrumming constantly ever since her shield blinked out at the beginning of the fight—some dull, rhythmic warning she hadn’t been able to identify, and had started to tune out. But now, just inside the ship’s hull, it had stopped. Not died—just quieted.
Like a silent alarm had been shut off.
She looked around. The shuttle was dead. No filtration. No active protection. But her body... felt better. The pounding headache eased. The edge of nausea she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying—it was just gone, ever since she set foot into the… spaceship.
Realization bloomed slowly.
Spaceships, reactors, …Radiation.
That was an issue in every sci-fi movie she had ever seen. Maybe those were closer to the truth than she had expected.
If so, the amulet had been reacting to radiation this entire time. Not a magical threat—a muggle one. The shuttle’s hull—though decommissioned—was thick enough to shield its occupants. And still doing so, it seemed.
Hermione rubbed her forehead. She’d read about radiation, of course—wizardkind often ignored it as a non-magical concern, but she hadn’t accounted for something like this bleeding from the deep infrastructure of an alien city.
She dismounted, limped farther inside, and shut the cracked hatch behind her with a wave of her wand. It stuck halfway. She forced it closed, then sealed it with a charm and whispered, “Colloportus.” She was done with company for tonight.
The cockpit was small but dry. Dust lay thick over every surface. Some of the controls blinked faintly—emergency backups, maybe—but nothing functional. She scanned for toxins, bacteria, contamination—nothing.
So far, so good.
She set her bag down with a long exhale.
Wards first. Then rest. Then a proper scan for the radiation’s source—and maybe, just maybe, a way to protect herself or detect it in time.
Beyond the viewport—near the edge of the ship graveyard—a vast shaft stretched vertically through the substructure like a wound into the planet’s bones. It rose for miles, vanishing into the gloom. If she squinted, she could just make out glimmers far above.
That would be her next step. Her path to the surface.
But not tonight.
Time to put up wards and make camp.
She stepped back outside the shuttle for a moment, her wand gripped tight. Layer by layer, she wove the magic outward in a dense lattice: anti-intrusion, muggle-repelling, magical detection, species-specific repulsion, silent alarms, muffling fields, temperature cloaks. She grounded the edges of the charms directly into the metal hull beneath her, anchoring them like she would on a goblin vault’s lockplate. The shuttle’s dense construction took the enchantments better than most surfaces—it wanted to be sealed.
When she was done, she walked the perimeter one last time and cast a few of the old, slightly darker monitoring wards Kingsley had given her access to during her time helping the DMLE. Just in case.
Only then did she exhale and reach for her bag.
From within the enchanted moleskin pouch, she withdrew a small object, no larger than a child’s toy—a tiny wooden armoire, shaped a bit like an old-fashioned phone booth, its surface etched and carved until the grain of the wood was almost invisible beneath layers of runework. The charm inscriptions shimmered faintly even without direct magical prompting. Ancient protection sigils wound around the tiny brass hinges. Delicate in appearance, but she knew better.
With a tap of her wand and a murmured “Engorgio,” the armoire expanded—first to full size, then just slightly beyond, until it loomed a little taller than she was. The humming deepened. The magic within it stirred to life.
Hermione placed it against the rear bulkhead of the cockpit, angled slightly to fit the curvature of the interior wall. As soon as it touched the surface, it shimmered—and then shifted. The back of the cabinet melted outward, folding into the hull with a quiet click, as if it had always been part of the ship.
A seam blinked out of existence. The cabinet was gone. In its place stood a narrow, unassuming door, matte metal and perfectly color-matched to the shuttle walls. A barely noticeable symbol marked its center—an old protection rune hidden in plain sight. It looked very much like it had always been there and was charmed to be overlooked by anyone, who wasn’t keyed in.
Hermione stepped forward and opened it.
The doorway yawned wider, and she passed through the threshold into her travel shelter.
The interior space was nothing like the cramped shuttle. It unfolded around her with the stillness of long-standing magic: solid, silent, secure. Unlike a magical tent, it had actual walls—thick ones—and enchanted stone floors. The air inside was crisp and perfectly clean, temperature-and shielded. Light filtered in from sconces charmed to resemble fire, flickering with warmth.The enchanted windows shimmered with an illusion of the night sky—stars gently wheeling overhead, untouched by the ruin outside. A proper hearth sat nestled in one corner, already kindled.
There was a sitting room, a library, a kitchen, two small bedrooms — one of which had been transformed into a potions lab and a bathing chamber. The wards here were ancient, they shimmered faintly across the walls in threads only she could see.
She was safe.
Hermione shut the door behind her with a soft sigh and leaned her back against it. The silence in the shelter was complete—utterly insulating. The chaotic weight of the underworld outside dimmed to a low, distant murmur beyond the spells.
She didn’t even bother to undress.
She made it as far as the bedroom. Kicked off one boot. Half-fell onto the mattress.
And was asleep before her head touched the pillow.
Chapter Text
The air in Fox’s office was dense with recycled heat and the stale scent of fatigue, clinging to plastoid and sweat-dried undersuits. The lighting overhead flickered once, then steadied—a minor fault, like everything else in this ramshackle excuse for a command post.
Fox pulled off his gloves as he stepped inside. Thire was already waiting, perched on the edge of the battered desk with his arms crossed, expression grim. Thorn leaned in the doorway behind him, silent but alert, a datapad in hand.
“Report,” Fox said.
Thire pushed off the desk. “Zone 9 patrol missed their check-in. Last contact was nearly two hours ago, near the breach perimeter above 1313. Static feed dropped mid-transmission. No visuals. No distress beacon.”
Fox’s brow furrowed. “They weren’t authorized to get close.”
“They didn’t. All signs show they were topside—still well above the drop zones. We think the contact came to them.”
Thorn passed the datapad forward. “Power surge hit about three blocks out. Tight radius. Could’ve masked a field device or a trap.”
Fox glanced at the readings, then gave a low grunt. “Always something with that stretch of levels.”
They all knew what lay beneath. 1313 was a pit, an open grave for the city’s forgotten. Even Black Sun only held the edges. No one patrolled the levels below—not Guard, not Senate, not anyone who wanted to keep breathing. Whatever had reached up from that far down… it wasn’t their problem.
Not yet.
“And above?” Fox asked.
“Not great,” Thire said. “Civvies are tense. Hostile, even. One of red patrol got jumped—broken ribs, helmet cracked. Locals are getting bold. Some senator made noise this morning about ‘the need for accountability in uniformed operations.’ No names, but you know who they’re pointing at.”
Fox muttered a curse under his breath.
“In the Senate itself?” he asked.
Thorn answered, voice flat. “Quiet. As secure as we can make it. Still no new allocation approvals, though. Medbay’s short on stim packs again. Rationing started yesterday.”
Fox sighed through his teeth, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Let the medics pull from training stores. They’ll scream, but the active roster comes first. If any of those karking politicians want to complain, they can swap shifts with red squad in the mid-level sectors and see how fast they burn through a medkit.”
He dropped into his chair with a soft clatter of plastoid, elbows on his desk, eyes narrowed at nothing in particular.
“They’re disappearing now,” he said.
Thire blinked. “Sir?”
“Jedi,” Fox said. “Kenobi this time. Gone. Thin air. No warning.”
There was a pause. Thorn shifted, clearly uneasy.
“What are we supposed to do with that?” Fox asked, voice quiet. “How do I protect anyone from that?”
Before the others could answer, the door slid open. Cody stepped through, helmet under one arm, armor dusted with grime. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a cycle and had stopped trying to fake it.
Fox’s attention snapped up. “Commander.”
“Fox,” Cody said shortly. “I need a favor.”
Fox studied him. Cody’s face was unreadable, but his posture was rigid. Tired. Not just tired—frayed.
“You’ve got your orders,” Fox said. „And you can’t go after Kenobi. Come on Cody I know he’s your Jedi, but this is a Force thing. You gotta let them handle that.“
“I know. I need something else.”
Fox didn’t move. “Go on.”
“I need to find Tano.”
Fox’s expression darkened. “You’re serious.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“She walked out, Cody.”
“I know.”
“She didn’t just walk away from the Order—she walked from the vode. From Rex. From all of us.” And Codys little CT had considered her his vodika too. Fucking Natborns.
“I know.” Cody’s tone didn’t change. “But she still might listen to General Skywalker. And if she talks to him, maybe she’ll talk to Rex.”
Fox leaned back slowly, arms crossed, helmeted gaze locked onto Cody. “This the plan now? Drag ghosts back into the war?”
Cody’s jaw tightened. “You think I like this? I don’t. But General Kenobi’s gone, and I don’t trust Skywalker not to snap the leash without someone holding the chain. Tano could do that. I think she still might care enough to try.”
Fox was quiet for a long beat. He could see the toll this situation was taking. His brother was desperate. He had to be, to try something like this.
“She’s not in Temple records,” he said at last. “They’ve got no idea where she went after she left. No one does.”
Cody gave a short nod. “I figured.”
“But I’ve got access to grid surveillance. Unregistered motion traces. Heat signatures. Faces that don’t ping the network.” Fox’s mouth twisted. “It’s not legal. But I can look.”
“That’s all I need.”
Another pause. Fox tapped one glove against the edge of his desk, thinking.
“Last time was a shit show though,” he said finally, “If she even looks like she might help... you’ll have to look after her.”
Cody didn’t answer for a second. Then he said, quietly, “I know.”
Then he turned and left, the door hissing closed behind him.
Fox sat back, jaw set, gaze distant.
Thire muttered, “That’s going to stir things.”
“It always does,” Fox murmured. “Now let’s get back to the part where I’ve still got ten vode missing and a city ready to burn itself from the middle out.”
“So. Obi-Wan Kenobi, is it?”
The man speaking stood rigidly, arms folded over bureaucratic robes, voice sharp with irritation. “Won’t you say anything else?”
Obi-Wan remained silent. Not out of defiance, but necessity. They were clearly speaking Basic—or something almost indistinguishable from it. Yet whenever he tried to speak in return, the words that emerged from his mouth bore no resemblance to anything he knew. The sound was mangled, guttural. As though the air itself distorted his intent. And he felt something in the Force tingle along his throat, even through the muffling devise.
Communication had broken down before the first word was exchanged.
Across the table, the tall red-haired man—Ron, as he'd gathered—was growing restless. The Force surrounding him was turbulent, jagged with frustration and unspoken things.
“Hermione’s missing, and we’re still playing guessing games?” he growled. “This man’s the only connection we’ve got, and he just sits there.”
“Ron,” said the dark-haired man beside him—composed, deliberate. “We're doing everything we can.”
Ron rounded on him. “And that includes interrogating statues, does it?”
Obi-Wan remained still under the pointed gesture directed his way. The accusation wasn’t personal. It was grief worn as anger. He recognized it well.
“If he’s responsible,” Ron continued, voice hardening, “we don’t have time for polite waiting.”
A younger woman—red-haired as well—leaned back with a scoff. “And what, exactly, do you suggest? Yell until he understands you?”
“Better than just sitting here—”
“He can’t talk to us, Ron,” Potter said. “Not like this.”
“I know what it looks like. That doesn’t mean I trust it.”
The air shifted, subtly and someone entered the room. Obi-Wan straightened.
The newcomer’s presence pressed down like a curtain being drawn—quiet, heavy, precise. The man who stepped in was lean and sharp-featured, clothed in layers of black that hung off him like a shadow. His expression was unreadable.
But it was his presence in the Force that struck Obi-Wan most.
Stillness. A perfect silence in the weave of life and energy around him. Not a void—not darkness—but absence. It reminded Obi-Wan of a technique some Jedi researchers used when investigating Sith temples: burying themselves so deeply behind shields that their thoughts, their very presence in the Force, vanished. They became ghosts.
But this was different. More complete. If Obi-Wan hadn’t seen the man, he wouldn’t have known anyone was there.
It was deeply disconcerting.
He’d only encountered something like it once before—and that had been a natural phenomenon.
He had the distinct impression this was not.
Their eyes met, and Obi-Wan found... nothing. A wall. Yet he sensed at once that his cursory glance at the man’s signature had not gone unnoticed. Judging by the faint displeasure on the man’s face, it had been considered impolite.
Curious.
Obi-Wan lowered his outer shields slightly, just enough to convey his meaning: no offense intended, no harm meant.
The man’s eyes swept across the room before settling on Potter. “I was summoned. Let’s make this brief.”
Then he turned to Obi-Wan, studying him like an ancient text. Unblinking. Scrutiny without aggression, yet without pretense of civility either.
Obi-Wan could tell he’d been understood.
The man drew a slender wooden stick—not unlike the ones others here had used. A focus of some kind, clearly common in this place.
He pointed it at Obi-Wan and murmured something under his breath.
Obi-Wan didn’t expect much from such a primitive gesture—but was surprised when intricate currents of the Force gathered and shaped themselves around him. A matrix unfolded in the air, wrapping him in delicate, precise layers. The man studied it with practiced familiarity.
“Curious,” he murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. “Potter, has anyone actually checked the translation charm used on him?”
“Probably one of the Aurors,” Potter said, low and uncertain. “Standard protocol. We always double-check.”
The man—still unnamed, but clearly known to the others—didn’t answer. “And yet someone botched it.”
He raised his hand.
Obi-Wan tensed.
The Force moved like a blade through water.
He braced himself.
But the sensation that followed wasn’t hostile. The man’s power swept through the remnants of the earlier spellwork, unraveling threads and aligning them anew. It was strange—alien—but exacting. Obi-Wan let it happen.
He wanted to speak. And something about this strange practitioner told him he wouldn’t be harmed. At least, not yet.
There was pressure behind his eyes. Not pain—just something shifting. A barrier lifting.
Then silence.
The tension in his throat faded.
The man stepped back. “Try again.”
Obi-Wan studied him for a moment, then said carefully:
“My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I would like to know where I am.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
The room had gone still.
Ron leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “You understand us now?”
“I always did,” Obi-Wan replied. “You simply couldn’t understand me.”
“Convenient,” Ron muttered.
“Not convenient,” the dark figure said. “I corrected the spell. That’s all.”
“And what about Hermione?” Ron demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Obi-Wan said, calm but firm. “I did nothing. One moment I was walking beside a friend. The next—I was... drawn away. By something in the Force. I lost consciousness. I woke up here.”
His words hung in the air.
Unadorned. And yet, they seemed to echo.
Anakin moved fast through the half-lit corridors, shadows hugging the hem of his cloak. The temple's sublevels weren’t heavily patrolled—barely remembered by most—but he'd found them years ago, wandering alone when the other Initiates gave him too wide a berth. He hadn’t grown up in the creche, didn’t belong to any of their little circles. So he had explored, memorized every blind spot and maintenance shaft.
It came in handy now.
He wasn’t supposed to be here.
Officially, he was on board the Resolute, preparing for deployment. His life signs showed in his quarters aboard the destroyer, and his commlink had been left behind, rigged to auto-respond in his voice. The override in the signal tracking system had taken time to perfect—but it worked. No one would question it unless they looked too closely. Unless they had a reason.
He slipped into one of the older storage rooms and pulled down a satchel from the high shelves. Utility droids still drifted in and out of this section, unaware—or uncaring—of his presence. Something in the way they paused, lingered a second too long, prickled at the edge of his awareness. He ignored it.
Quick hands moved. Rations. A medkit. Spare credits from a hidden stash. Simple tunics. A portable scanner. Things he shouldn't need, but did.
He worked fast. Efficient. Focused.
Because he had to be.
The Council said no. Padmé had said she understood, that she cared, but still—she thought he should listen. Said Vos had already been assigned. That his place was with the fleet. That Obi-Wan would want him to stay.
They didn’t understand. None of them did.
Obi-Wan wasn’t just a casualty to be filed in some report. He wasn’t a name to be mourned, or a hollow place at the Council table. He was—
Anakin’s chest tightened, breath catching for a moment. He set his jaw and shoved the satchel closed.
He wasn’t going to sit still while Quinlan kriffing Vos fumbled around in the dark.
Even the Chancellor—apologetic, restrained—had said his hands were tied. “The Council has barred investigation. My influence doesn’t extend that far,” he’d said, with regret in his voice and sympathy in his eyes.
It hadn’t mattered.
This was Anakin’s to resolve. His responsibility. The Force had drawn them together from the beginning. He felt the absence of Obi-Wan like a blade under the skin—constant, unbearable.
He should have known the second something went wrong. Should have stopped it.
Now he would fix it.
The satchel slung over his shoulder, he slipped out again, footsteps soft and silent. The corridor was quiet—seemingly empty. But the utility droids were still watching. One of them blinked a signal light, low and brief.
The Shadows would find that soon enough.
But by then, Anakin Skywalker would be long gone.
Chapter Text
Hermione woke stiff and sore, the ache in her limbs a sharp reminder of why she still loathed broom travel. Her ankle and hands, thankfully, had been mostly healed—potions and sleep, to let them work their magic. A hot shower and one of the many English breakfasts she’d packed in her stasis cupboard helped push her a little closer to normal.
After double-checking her wards—nothing larger than dust motes had come near during the night—she finally allowed herself to sit down and plan.
First priority: figure out where she was.
Second: find a safer location. Radiation shielding was not something her Hogwarts education had prepared her for, and while this ship-like structure made for decent shelter, she didn’t fancy glowing in the dark.
She needed protection. Real protection.
Her eyes flicked to the hull. The metal was alien—clearly manufactured, but unlike anything she’d ever seen. It had shielding properties, obviously engineered for environments that would kill most living things. She wondered how much good something like this could do on Earth. For now though, she could use it to stay alive.
She scanned the area magically, searching for fragments of the same alloy, preferably something loose, not part of her hideout’s structural integrity.
It took a few minutes, but eventually she summoned a jagged chunk no bigger than her fist. She carefully stowed most of it for future analysis, and kept one piece to work with now.
The spellwork would be rough, but the principle was sound. Luna had been onto something with those bizarre butterbeer cork necklaces—intent mattered, but so did sympathetic magic. If the amulet could mimic the function of the metal it was made from, it should at least ward off the worst of the radiation.
It was crude work, enchantment stitched hastily across the alloy surface, but Hermione had learned to work under pressure.
The first amulet—a flat, thumbnail-sized disk on a leather string—was done quickly. She slipped it over her head, warded the string to be unbreakable, and tested it outside. Her readings came back clean. She grinned.
It worked.
Back inside, she returned to her desk and began making more. One was insurance. Four were survival.
She was nearly done with the fourth when her wards flared like a scream in her mind—urgent, blaring danger.
Hermione shot to her feet, half-knocking over her supplies, and sprinted to the cockpit. Her heart seized.
A human-shaped figure was plummeting down the vertical shaft from a mile above—no safety rig, no propulsion. Just free-falling and screaming.
Then another. And another.
Her wand was already up.
“Arresto Momentum!” she shouted, again, and again, and again. Magic surged from her like a reflex. She couldn’t tell if she caught them all—she didn’t have the time to count, only to cast.
When the screaming stopped, she grabbed her broom and kicked off, out of the shuttle and into the shaft.
As she emerged into the open, the lights she cast around her seemed too bright in this strange environment, but they had so far kept the denizens of the ship graveyard away. She squinted into them as she reached the ground directly below the shaft. She hadn’t been here during her cursory investigation —there hadn’t been anything interesting. But now she looked.
Below her, the fallen forms were sprawled in a loose cluster at the shaft’s base—humanoid, yes, but covered in metal. Some bled. Others sparked.
They weren’t alone.
Ratlike creatures the size of small horses were circling fast—drawn to blood, perhaps, or just the noise.
Hermione aimed her wand. “Flammarius Plex!” A net of flame erupted from her wand and twisted in midair. She cast another—“Incendio Spiralis!”—a searing spiral that wove between the creatures and the fallen ones, forming a safe area where the creatures wouldn’t reach and where she could land if she wanted.
The things screeched, enraged more than anything, but they stayed away.
For now.
She hovered above, wand drawn, breath sharp in her lungs.
Blood. Screaming. Metal-covered humans—or maybe they were not human at all. Hermione had no idea who—or what—they were yet.
But she couldn’t just leave them to die.
Decision made, she straightened her spine and directed her broom downward.
The clang of a sliding durasteel door broke the quiet of the Martez sisters’ cluttered repair shop. The air was thick with engine grease and ozone, and the old glowpanels cast a flat, jaundiced light over the scrap-strewn floor.
Ahsoka Tano didn’t need to look up to know who had walked in. She had felt his presence approaching through the Force for a while now. She’d hoped he’d walk by.
No such luck.
“Hello, Cody,” she said, turning around to face him.
Cody stood in the doorway, dressed in civvies that didn’t quite disguise the soldier underneath. His posture was too precise, his gaze too sharp as he scanned the corners of the shop like he was still on patrol. He looked tired. Bone-deep, war-scarred tired.
“Commander Tano,” he said.
Ahsoka blinked, then slowly stood from where she’d been crouched beside a disassembled speeder bike. “You shouldn’t be down here,” she said, brushing her hands off on a rag. “People in this part of the city see a vod walking around alone—they see a target.”
He didn’t react. Just waited. Patient, steady. One might as well argue with a stone.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Come on. There’s a caf vendor a few levels up. Safer for both of us.”
He nodded, and they left together without another word. They climbed rickety maintenance stairs and crossed cracked permacrete walkways lit by sputtering blue streetlamps. The undercity whispered around them—muffled voices, the buzz of half-dead wiring, and the distant thrum of repulsorlifts overhead.
At the vendor, Ahsoka ordered two strong cups of caf from a battered droid and they sat at a bolted-down table near the edge of the walkway, half-shielded from wind and noise.
Cody took a breath. “General Kenobi’s gone.”
Ahsoka stilled.
“Gone,” she repeated.
“Disappeared. No trace. Vanished from a turbolift in the Temple while he was talking to Vos. There’s even a vid. One second he’s there, and then—puff. Gone.”
She looked down into her cup. The scent of cheap caf curled up toward her, comforting in its bitterness. “Okay. And what am I supposed to do about that? I’m no Jedi, in case you forgot. And I don’t have a bond with Obi-Wan. Not anymore.”
She took a sip.
Cody’s jaw tightened. “I doubt anyone’s forgotten that. And I’m not here for the Council.”
She looked at him—sharp, defensive. “You might as well be.”
“I’m here because you’re the Commander of the 501st. And right now, they need you. Kriff the optics.”
She stared at him. “That’s asking quite a lot, Cody.”
“That it is,” he said, unflinching. “Then the question is: what’s more important, Commander?”
Ahsoka looked away first.
“The Council handed me over without hesitation. No questions. No defense. Just... done. And then they tried to throw a knighthood at me like it would fix everything. Like I should thank them for it.”
“You think I don’t know that was wrong?” Cody asked, voice rising. “But what about Rex? What about the rest of your men? Did we mean nothing to you?”
Her head snapped toward him, lekku twitching with sudden heat. “Don’t you dare,” she said, voice low and shaking.
“You didn’t come back. Didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” There was a suppressed tremor in his voice—anger, but not for himself.
Her shoulders hunched, raw and defensive. “Because I couldn’t think straight. I had just survived a rigged trial. I’d been hunted by people I’d trained beside. Sentenced to death by the Republic. And then it turned out it was a friend who set me up. And after all that, they offered me a title and expected me to fall in line like that made it alright. And I just…I couldn’t”
She was shaking now, voice thick.
“So I left. Just ran off. I didn’t have credits. Or a comm. Or a plan. I was still being hunted, even after the trial. There are people still looking for me right now. And most of the upper levels are locked off to anyone without clearance. I didn’t have that either. I had nothing.”
Cody was silent. His anger folded into itself, replaced by quiet, stunned guilt.
“I didn’t know,” he said at last.
“I didn’t expect you to,” she replied. “No one did.”
He leaned back and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Come back,” he said eventually. “Not to them. To us.”
She didn’t answer immediately. The wind tugged at her cloak. Her eyes were far away.
“I’m not sure I should.”
Cody frowned. “Why not? Skywalker’s losing it. Ever since you walked out, he’s been slipping. Now Obi-Wan’s gone too. You know he needs someone, or this is gonna get ugly. Or do I have to remind you of Rako Hardeen?”
She hesitated, then said softly, “Krell used to play with the younglings.”
He blinked. “What?”
“In the creche,” she said. “He wasn’t always the way he became. Something changed him.”
She looked at Cody, her expression unreadable.
“I’m sure he didn’t see his fall coming.”
Cody opened his mouth. Closed it. Wrong-footed.
“I didn’t think I would fall either,” she said quietly. “But the Council clearly did. They threw me out like I was dangerous. Like it was absolutely believable that I should bomb the temple. No need for an investigation. No need to take more than a minute to discuss. And maybe they were right. Maybe they saw something I didn’t.”
He stared at her, then let out a short, bitter snort. “You really believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
He shook his head, exasperated. “I’ve spent a lot of time with you, Ahsoka. Saw you on the worst days of the war. And I don’t know what the Council saw—but that wasn’t it.”
She looked down. Her expression twisted into something like pain.
“They didn’t blame you for leaving, you know,” Cody said. “The 501st... they thought you blamed them. They thought they’d done something wrong. You broke something in them.”
She swallowed. Could he lay it on any thicker?
“Rex hasn’t been the same since,” Cody added. For a moment, the mask of calm cracked—and she saw the helpless fury behind it. So, apparently, he could.
“You’re still their Commander,” he said, voice low. “They used to rely on you. That you’d come back for them. As they would for you. They need that now.”
He looked at her steadily.
“I don’t give a kriff about the Council, and I’m not asking you as a Jedi.”
He hesitated.
Then stood.
“You were one of us too. They miss you, kid. We all do.”
Ahsoka’s hands tightened around the warm cup. She watched him walk away. Then turned her gaze outward—over the undercity, full of lights and shadows and lives she’d lived among. She drew a deep breath, tried to find the Force’s guidance... and gave it up as a bad job.
Because it didn’t matter.
Her heart had already made the decision.
She pushed away from the table and hurried to catch up with him before he reached the turbolift.
“Say, Commander,” she called. “As a Marshal, do you still get to hire civilian consultants?”
He looked surprised for a moment, then grinned. Reached into his belt pouch and handed her an ident chip.
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Must be great to be you.”
Notes:
I would love to know what you think!
Chapter Text
Hermione landed lightly, her boots sinking an inch into the soft ground. She didn't want to think too hard about the consistency—didn’t want to guess what this soil was made from. This was a world made of concrete and metal; it was not supposed to be soft.
The detritus scattered across the area told her enough though: fragments of armor, twisted metal, and here and there, the unmistakable shapes of bones. Not whole skeletons—no, these were remains. Picked clean. Torn fabric and shredded body plating clung to what was left, mute evidence of other landings that had not been so lucky.
The air was thick with tension, alive with snarls and hissing. Her fires still burned—brilliant, magical barriers that kept the predators at bay—but the rat-horses were testing them. One lunged too close and shrieked as the flames lashed its flank. Another two began fighting, rolling over each other in a frenzied tangle of claws and snapping teeth. They were growing more agitated by the minute, and Hermione didn’t know how long they’d be deterred.
She pushed the awareness aside, compartmentalizing it the way she had long since learned life-and-death situations demanded, and turned to the fallen figures.
Nine.
There were nine of them, crumpled in broken heaps, limbs bent wrong, armor cracked or crushed. Blood pooled beneath several, dark against the sickeningly soft ground. They’d been through something before the fall. Scorch marks marred some of their armor. She could see slashes, gouges, signs of great heat or blades or both. Some of them had still been fighting before they dropped. But the impact had done its own damage. Even slowed, even with her spells, the distance had been nearly a mile.
And despite the heavy plating that wrapped their bodies—dented and burned though it was—blood oozed from between seams and splits. She hadn’t seen their faces, but they bled, and her diagnostic charms came back with biofeedback. Vital signs. Weak. Fading.
Men, then. Not machines or constructs. Maybe not Humans either, but they were sentient and alive and for now that was enough for her.
And in terrible condition.
Even with her spells slowing their descent, they had hit hard. Several had broken bones—ribs, femurs, arms. It was lighting up her diagnostics like a macabre christmas tree. One man's leg was mangled beyond what mundane medicine could fix. She was already moving between them, casting stasis charms over five of the worst. She didn’t have time to debate ethics—these spells froze them at the brink of death, gave her time to decide what could be done.
One was already nearly gone. His vitals flickered beneath her spellwork like a candle struggling for air. She pressed a glowing hand to his chest, reinforcing the charm, whispering encouragement to her own magic as much as to him. Hold on. Just hold on.
Two more were unconscious but stable—enough that she could leave them be for the moment.
That left one.
He wasn’t still. Wasn’t passive.
He was crawling. One arm dragging behind, useless. The other clawing at the ground, trying to get to another figure beside him—a man in similar armor, facedown and unmoving. When he saw her, he turned, every movement a wince, every breath a struggle. Hermione froze as he tried—absurdly, valiantly—to raise his body, to shield his companion. To fight, somehow, though he could barely lift his arm.
“No, no, stop—don’t move,” she said quickly, hands out. “You’ll make it worse.”
He didn’t seem to understand her. But when she knelt beside him and pressed her bare hand to a bleeding gash on his upper arm, whispering a healing spell under her breath, he did not try to stop her.
The wound closed. Slowly, incompletely—but it closed. Her weirdly strengthened wandless magic came to her aid once more.
His breath hitched. He looked at her again, then reached up with a trembling hand and pulled his helmet free.
Hermione's breath caught.
He looked young—twenties, maybe. Dark hair plastered to his brow, blood running down from a shallow wound near the hairline. His skin was a rich brown, his eyes dark and wide with pain and confusion. Dirt, blood, and exhaustion lined his features.
A human. She hadn’t seen any other humans in this world—but then she hadn’t gone looking. She’d avoided seeking out any of the denizens of this place. This hell dimension or whatever it was had been far too dangerous to linger in, and what people might have lived there didn’t advertise themselves.
These men…what could they possibly be doing here? They where in some kind of uniform. Maybe there was more of a civilization farther up. Had she not hoped for that to begin with? Though truthfully the longer she was here, the more doubts crept into that hopeful hypothesis. She had had to fly through absolute horror, to get this far. If she was living in a city, she certainly would not want that below her basement.
But then she had been accused of being a nitpicker before, so who knew.
Anyway. The armor was bulkier than anything she’d glimpsed on the skeletal remains around the wrecks. Blackened, scarred, clearly built for combat in close quarters. Military, maybe. Paramilitary.
She had no reference for it.
It didn’t matter right now. He was alive. So where his friends.
And they all needed help.
The rat-horses screamed again, a louder one than before. A few of them had begun circling closer, watching with too much focus.
Hermione gritted her teeth and stood.
“All right,” she muttered to herself. “One thing at a time.”
She raised her wand.
And her free hand.
The rats were the more immediate threat. She turned toward the closest one and flicked her wand sharply. “Diminuendo!”
The beam of magic hit the snarling beast mid-lunge—and in an instant, it shrank. One moment it was the size of a small horse; the next it was rat-sized in truth, landing with a surprised squeak on the filthy ground. Another. And another. She cast in quick succession, shrinking the predators one by one until the snarls and shrieks diminished into squeals and then silence as the pack scattered in confusion.
It wouldn’t hold forever. But for now, they were small enough to ignore. Or crush, if it came to that.
She didn’t want to crush them.
She turned her focus inward, let go of her breath, and centered herself.
Then she imagined a field of concealment—something more than a disillusionment charm, something that masked scent and presence and even mass. Her left hand glowed faintly as she wove the idea into the world: We are not prey. We are not here. Then with her wand she traced a wide arc and whispered, “Sileo Aeternum.”
The spell surged out from her like a wave.
The air rippled—and then, silence. The fires burned still, her magic steady and hot, but no sound or scent leaked past the invisible shell that now cloaked her and the nine wounded men. She could feel it—how they were hidden now, folded slightly out of phase with the world. This would travel with them. Good no more predators for a while and this way they would not be drawn to her shuttle either.
The conscious man gasped, wide-eyed, and stared as the shrunken predators scattered and vanished into the shadows beyond the firelight.
Then, with a low exhale, he let himself sink back onto the ground. Seemingly contend that there were no more rats for the moment.
Hermione moved quickly, wand sweeping in practiced motions. “Levicorpus,” she said, again and again, gently lifting each unconscious body into the air. Her thoughts shaped the motion—she imagined them strung together, like pearls on a thread. She felt the pull of their weight against her magic but bore it with grim focus.
The last levitated figure hovered beside the man who was still conscious. Then Hermionegave him a short — and hopefully comforting — smile and levitated him up as well.
“All right,” she said, quieter this time. “Time to go.”
He blinked at her, obviously not understanding her words but able to read the situation.
She straddled her broom, rising into a low hover. The string of floating men rose with her like a constellation of wounded fireflies. She leaned in and took the man's hand, guiding it toward the shaft of the broom.
“Hold on,” she said, and then, because she remembered what it felt like to need control, added, “You’ve got this. Just hang on.”
She reinforced the charm subtly, pulling him along whether he held tightly or not—but he nodded, face pale but determined, and gripped the broom.
Together, they rose up into the air.
Back through the stench, the ruined shaft, and the watching shadows, toward the faint blue shimmer of Hermione’s wards—and the shelter of her ruined shuttle.
The undercity stank of things that had never seen daylight. As it always did. As slums all over the galaxy always did.
It reminded him of Tatooine, in its hopeless devastation.
Anakin moved through it all without hesitation, the Force coiled tight in his gut, ready to rise at his command.
But it didn't help.
All it would whisper was to be patient. To wait.
Not to try to force the result he wanted.
Instead it tried to pull him into a different direction, away from Obi-wan and towards something else.
Anakin didn’t want that. He couldn’t accept it. So he tried anyway, but no matter what he did, no matter how far he reached, there was no echo of Obi-Wan.
He pressed deeper, past broken durasteel grates and the distant scrape of something hunting on too many legs. His boots splashed through water that wasn’t clean enough to be called that. The scanner in his hand blinked with false positives—metal and heat signatures, flickers of old wiring.
Nothing alive. Nothing real.
Still the Force remained mute. The message was clear. The light would not help. At least, not him.
His jaw tightened until his teeth ached.
Vos had said Obi-Wan was here. Had insisted the Force had spoken to him.
He paused beneath a collapsed skywalk and flung his hand out, slamming the metal debris aside with a snarl of telekinetic energy. The pieces clattered against the tunnel walls, loud and sharp. Vermin scattered in the darkness.
His breathing was heavy. Not from exertion. From fury.
The Council had trusted Vos. Vos, with his visions. His certainty.
Vos, who was so sure the bond he shared with Obi-Wan meant something. Like it mattered.
Like it mattered more than what he and Obi-Wan had.
Anakin’s hands curled into fists at his sides. His breath caught on a sharp edge of grief. Of guilt. Of fear.
Why didn’t I feel it when he disappeared? Why didn’t I know?
His eyes burned.
He hated this place. Hated the Council. Hated the silence.
And underneath it all—he hated Obi-Wan, too.
Just a flicker. A buried, twisting thread.
He should have been here beside him.
He never should have done the things that tore at their bond. First pretending to be dead. Then casting Ahsoka out of the Order. Lying to Anakin. Always finding fault in him. Always standing on the other side.
It was his fault—his—that they were so estranged now.
His fault Anakin couldn’t find him.
Not that he should have to, if Obi-Wan hadn’t—
—done all of that.
Boots scraped on metal behind him.
Anakin turned fast, already coiled for violence.
Five clones in Coruscant Guard red stood at the mouth of the tunnel.
Not blasters raised—yet—but their posture was alert. Controlled.
The lead one stepped forward. “General Skywalker, you're ordered to return to the Temple immediately.”
His grip tightened on his saber hilt. “I’m busy.”
“The Council requires your presence.”
“They can wait.”
“Sir,” the clone said, just a hair more forceful now. “This isn’t a request.”
Something snapped.
Anakin’s hand lashed out. The Force erupted from him like a thunderclap.
The clones were ripped off their feet and slammed against the far wall with a sickening clang of armor and crushed breath.
They didn’t get back up.
Anakin didn’t stay to check if they would.
He spun and walked away.
Chapter 10
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The shuttle touched down on the Resolute with the familiar jolt and hiss of pressurized docking clamps. Ahsoka stood at the top of the ramp, barely breathing.
As they had walked through the barracks, she’d told herself the sudden silence wasn’t real—just in her head. But the shift in attention had been immediate. The Force had rippled around her—signatures flaring, freezing, flickering with recognition. Shock. Disbelief.
Is that—?
She’s back?
A hydrospanner had clattered to the floor somewhere off to the side. Someone whispered something behind a stack of crates. No one had approached, but she could feel their attention like a weight on her skin.
Cody’s presence at her side had been steady—a quiet sentry, that was more effective in keeping any reactions at bay, than a screamed order could have been. At least until they were out of sight. Then the clones gossip circles would have taken over.
Ahsoka had kept walking and done her best to ignore the attention of brothers and base personnel who didn’t even know her. Still, the storm of anxiety in her chest had pressed against her ribs with every step.
This had been her goal—to get back to the 501st. Only now that she was here, she wanted nothing more than to run away.
The ramp lowered. No choice now. She straightened her spine, chin up, shoulders square. And took one last, long breath. In for four. Out for eight.
Then she stepped out—and the world came rushing back in.
The hangar bay rose around her, exactly as she remembered. Dark grey durasteel to one side, the glowing blue shimmer of the atmospheric force field on the other. The air was dry and cool, sharp with the scent of machines, humans, and recycling systems. The steady hum of the ship’s engines underlay the clatter of plastoid boots and shouted orders. Troopers were moving equipment, prepping for hyperspace. Vode talked while they worked—routine, familiar, alive.
In the Force, the ship felt like home. The feeling of belonging hit her all at once, like a wave crashing over her and forcing the air from her lungs. It was crowded and warm, dense with life. A few thousand presences moving through the decks, their emotions and energy woven together in a tapestry of purpose, familiarity, and the quiet comfort of shared burdens. The direction and unity of a common goal.
But it was their kindness and warmth that wrapped around her like armor.
There was something instinctive in Togrutas that always made them seek a tribe. Like even now, millennia into civilization, they were still pack predators at heart—some part of them constantly looking for company, for people to call their own. It was why there were so few Togrutan Jedi Knights, despite there being so many Force-sensitive Togrutas.
Here, among this army of overgrown cloned humans, had been the first time in her life that instinct had been nurtured instead of suppressed. Not very Jedi of her, maybe—but she was done worrying about that. She was no Jedi anymore, and she didn’t have to care about the Council’s mandates.
They were her brothers. They had made themselves that. And maybe that just meant they had terrible standards—but they’d always made room for her.
Now she just had to hope they still would.
She risked a glance at Cody. His face remained impassive. But she understood. If he had come to find her in person, it meant things were worse than she’d imagined. Whatever words they had exchanged before didn’t matter. They were meant to get her here. Nothing more.
Suddenly the men became aware of her. First one, then another and another.
Their presence gathered in the Force ahead of her, like a wall. So many voices. So many minds. Worn thin. Strained. Waiting.
And then… something shifted.
Not because she said anything. Not because she asked for it.
Just because she was there.
The tension in them didn’t vanish—but it softened. A steadying warmth began to bleed through the unease. Hesitant sparks of joy. Stunned relief. A low, unspoken hum of something like belonging rising to the surface of their minds. Reflecting her own thoughts back at her.
It hit a place in her she hadn’t known was broken—splintered the day they turned their blasters on her—and somehow, just with that reaction, they were putting it back together.
It doesn’t matter what they think of me. She understood then. If they need me—if they’re hurting—then there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
She held on to that. Let it anchor her.
Finally, a figure emerged around the corner, stepping into the light with quiet precision. Broad shoulders. Straight spine. Looking at a report in his hand while giving orders and already walking toward the next task on his list. He looked tired to her. Stressed. But to the shinies following in his wake, he would seem like the epitome of control and command—the Captain Rex.
When he saw her, he stopped cold.
If she hadn’t been so focused on trying to gauge his reaction, she might’ve noticed how funny it looked when all the shinies behind him came to a crashing halt too. Uncoordinated, like a bunch of baby nunas around their mother—nearly tripping over each other trying not to run him over.
Their eyes locked.
No words. Just the sudden surge of a bond reigniting. Familiar. Painful. Fiercely alive.
You’re here.
You’re safe.
You came back.
Her throat tightened.
She stepped toward him, her movements halting. Unsure. Like her body didn’t quite remember how to do this.
“Hey, Rex,” she said softly, voice almost lost in the distance between them.
He blinked. Took one breath. And stepped forward.
“Commander,” he said.
Ahsoka tried for a smile. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”
He gave her a look that said everything. “Sure thing, Commander.”
And that did it.
She hadn’t meant to close the distance between them, but suddenly she was in his arms, holding on tightly enough the plastid of his armor creaked.
She tried to step back. “I—I didn’t know if I could come back. If I should.”
He didn’t let go.
“You don’t have to explain,” he murmured into her montrals. Quiet. Unshakably kind.
“I do,” she whispered. “You don’t know how sorry I am.”
“I think I do. I shot at you.” His grip tightened at the memory. “And you’re here now.”
She nodded once. Swallowed.
"Yeah, but you were shooting like a natborn grandma," was all she could finally manage.
"Was not," he said, trying for scandalized—but it came out more amused than anything.
"Did too." She sniffed. "Actually, I’ve been to the Undercity now. There are some pretty dangerous grandmas down there, so… maybe you’re right."
He groaned. „The Undercity, really? That’s where you’ve been?“
She stepped back, but she stayed close. Too close for formality. They’d never been formal—not since they nearly died together back on Naboo. A tension she hadn’t even known she carried lifted from her shoulders just with his presence at her side.
She swore to herself she wouldn’t leave again. No matter what.
Behind her, Cody shifted, arms crossed, watching their interaction with the barest flicker of satisfaction visible in his eyes. Yet he interrupted them anyway.
“Well,” he muttered, dry as desert stone, “guess I’ll go find us a kriffing war council room.”
Rex gave a short bark of laughter. Ahsoka smiled—small, but real.
“And someone better find General Skywalker,” Cody added, louder now, to the shinies still gathered around them, staring and whispering excitedly. “We’re already late.”
Notes:
So this scene really fought me... I'm still not completely happy with how it turned out.
What do you think?
Chapter 11
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The Force had led him into the Undercity, and against all reason, Quinlan Vos felt at peace.
The deeper he went, the calmer he became—not because of the place, but the presence. The Force moved through him like water over stone: steady, certain, whispering not warnings, but encouragement. Despite the chaos and rot around him, it told him this was right. Necessary. A knot that could finally be untangled.
He didn’t understand it. Not really.
But how had Obi-Wan’s old Master always insisted? The Force works in mysterious ways.
All Quinlan could do was trust its guidance.
Still, peace didn’t mean safe.
The farther he descended, the more cautious he became. His steps lightened. His breath slowed. Shadow training folded around him like a second skin. He knew these streets—or what passed for streets down here. He knew how to vanish in them.
Level 1313 was dangerous to anyone, though.
The name alone was usually spat like a curse. Black Sun territory—predatory, and proud of it.
Slavers operated openly here. No masks. No shame. No one came to stop them. The planetary government had long ago declared the lower levels “non-essential.” What that meant in practice was: abandoned.
And the Jedi?
Spreading themselves thinner by the day. Fighting a thousand brushfires across the stars while the core of the Republic decayed under their feet.
Sometimes Quinlan wondered how they had let it come to this. When the rot had first taken hold. How it had spread so far.
But Coruscant was old—had been old even at the time of the Ruusan Reformation. Had there ever even been a chance to stop it?
There was no time for that now.
The Force was moving again, pushing gently—down.
He followed.
The path led him to a maintenance stairwell—old, half-buried in the grime of the level, tucked behind collapsed storefronts and a half-dead neon sign.
Nobody went down from 1313. Not voluntarily.
But the Force insisted. So he obeyed.
He moved slowly. Carefully. His senses were wide open as he skimmed the walls with his fingertips. Memories clung to the surface—so many, overlaid and tangled—it was hard to make anything out clearly. All he got was a sick sense of greed and eagerness, and neither of those boded well.
The stairs were too clean. Maintained. Not crumbling like they should be.
From downstairs came a whomming—a deep, rhythmic sound that was both eerie and hauntingly reminiscent of a beating heart.
It set his nerves alight.
Someone was using this place. And not for anything good.
But trying to read memories from a place that had been in use for over 10,000 years was like walking into a mire—if he didn’t do it properly, it could swallow him whole.
Ten levels down, the air had turned sour and the light dimmer. What had once sounded like a distant heartbeat had become the rhythmic thundering of a crowd—stomping and screaming in a frenzied cadence.
He left the stairwell and emerged into what might’ve once been a transit platform, long since gutted. Rusted beams. Collapsed panels. The stink of mold and rotting plastic.
But it held.
And it wasn’t empty.
Figures moved through the muck—people, or what was left of them—crawling through filth for scraps. Shelter. Anything.
The Force pressed in again. Urgent now.
Quinlan moved.
The greed had turned to hunger. Dark and Destructive.
He didn’t need his psychometric abilities to feel it anymore.
Where had the Force led him?
He followed the pull toward the edge of the station, where a wide gorge yawned in the middle of the floor. A waste shaft. Ancient and enormous—a vertical scar drilled deep into Coruscant’s layers, once used to drop industrial waste down into processing caverns far below.
They should have been sealed millennia ago.
This one had been reopened.
He crouched behind a twisted support strut, eyes locked on the spectacle beyond.
A metal platform jutted out over the abyss, welded onto ancient girders and pulsing under the weight of a crowd.
They were chanting. Screaming. Clothed in torn silks, half-masks, body paint—some grotesque parody of ritual. Cultists.
Quinlan’s gut turned. He’d seen things like this before. Not often. But enough.
At the center of the platform, they shoved someone forward with spears.
A clone.
Battered. Bleeding. Out of his armor.
A sacrifice.
He couldn’t let this happen.
Yet over the course of his long and not-so-illustrious career, he had had to watch a lot of dark deeds happen. For the greater good, sometimes that was necessary. He had accepted this a long time ago.
But just now, something inside him came to a screeching halt.
It felt like standing at the edge of a precipice.
Sick, cold dread twisted his stomach.
The Force was leading him. He had no time for this.
He swallowed.
This mission was so much more important than a single life.
He clenched his teeth, readying himself. Not long now.
All his muscles tensed as cold sweat broke out over his skin.
The chanting reached a crescendo, building toward a climax.
Quinlan ignited his lightsaber even as he leapt.
He landed in front of the trooper and drove the mob back, cutting off spears—and one unfortunate cultist too eager to gorge themselves on death.
The Force behind Quinlan surged—eager, expectant. Almost… delighted?
He turned to the void.
And then—
BOOM.
Fireworks erupted from the gorge below. Loud, chaotic, unmistakably theatrical. A massive explosion of bright, purple glitter shot into the air above the pit, forming one enormous, sparkling word, declaring to the world and the stunned crowd below:
ΩEøª
… something, in a script he had never seen before.
Smaller charges followed, bursting into showers of colored light all across the crowd.
Some screamed and dropped. A few ran.
The whole platform rocked with confusion and panic.
And out of the gorge—
A shape launched upward, fast as a missile.
A small figure on a flying… stick, shot through the air, grabbed the clone with one arm mid-flight, and dove straight back into the darkness below.
Quin jumped after and grabbed hold—before he even knew what he was doing.
Quinlan blinked, stunned—and the Force had just grabbed him by the collar, metaphorically speaking, and yanked.
Above him, someone was very clearly cursing in a language he didn’t recognize—a woman’s voice, sharp and irritated—as the stick sagged downward, faster than she seemed comfortable with.
A small, strong hand caught his arm. Then the Force flowed over him in a wave, lifting him. Suddenly, he felt light as air—yet he just knew he wouldn’t be able to let go of the stick even if he tried.
He looked past the hand clasped around his forearm and found himself staring into a pair of sharp, dark brown eyes.
Suddenly, he saw himself again: standing in front of the clone, saber lit, driving back the cultists. His stunned disbelief as the unknown word shimmered above him in the stone sky, declaring… something.
POOH, he realized.
And when he looked again, the eyes had softened. The face had turned suspiciously pink.
He suddenly had the urge to grin.
The Force was unabashedly giggling again.
Just then, his comm lit up with a message from the Council.
He sent a signal back: All clear. But occupied.
It seemed he’d found what he had been guided toward.
Notes:
So Quinlan, Hermione and the Corries are now all together...
What could go wrong?
Chapter 12
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The city writhed below.
Lights pulsed and shimmered across the endless towers—a glittering, gleaming surface, all the better to conceal the rot festering beneath. The Republic had long since fallen, no matter how fervently they clung to it—parading its bloated, hollow corpse like a sacred idol.
Palpatine sat alone in his high office, cloaked in shadow.
His fingers curled against the polished stone armrest of his chair. The air was still around him—but no longer the stillness of complacency. Not the smug, overfed silence of those who had gorged themselves on riches they had never earned. This stillness pricked at the fine hairs on his neck. It stirred something old, something buried deep—the raw, instinctive urge to flinch, to curl inward before the storm struck.
An urge he had thought long dead, entombed with his master.
But there it was again.
The Force was moving.
Subtle. A whisper through the walls. Wrong.
It was not a threat. Not yet. But it was not part of his careful design either.
He closed his eyes and reached—quietly, precisely—into the currents of the Force. Beneath the usual chorus of suffering and decay, something foreign vibrated. Thin. Sharp. A taut wire, trembling just beyond reach.
Disruption.
His jaw clenched.
Nothing had changed. Not outwardly. The Senate still bled itself dry with infighting. The Jedi staggered on, blind and overstretched, rotting from within. And the people—their minds softened by fear and propaganda—could not even perceive the cage that bound them.
Everything was proceeding as it should. The Great Plan was nearly whole. Beautifully, inevitably whole.
And yet the Force trembled.
Kenobi had vanished. Not slain. Not captured. Gone.
And the Council, in their self-righteous arrogance, thought to keep the details from him.
Fools.
He had pried the recordings from them regardless. But there was no clarity to be found—only unease. They circled something they could not name.
That kind of blind, impotent flailing usually served him well.
This time, it infuriated him.
Kenobi’s purpose had been simple: keep Skywalker tethered. Chained. Predictable.
Without him, the boy was shaking off the last restraints of knighthood far too early—and far too publicly. Drawing attention. Stirring ripples even the Council couldn’t ignore, not from their vaunted Chosen One.
Unbalanced, as ever.
But now he had gone silent—plunged into the Undercity, chasing shadows, ignoring summons, severing contact.
Palpatine’s lip curled. He exhaled—slow, measured. Rage simmered beneath his skin like a dormant volcano. The leash of the Council wasn’t the only one Skywalker had shaken loose.
He is mine.
He is not ready to be out of reach.
Not yet.
Not when the transformation was so close. Not when every piece had been placed with surgical precision. Not after years of molding the boy’s soul—hollowing it with love and loss, sharpening it through pain, sculpting it around power.
And now he was flailing into the dark. Chasing ghosts.
Still, it was only a matter of time. The Jedi would find him. Censure him. Palpatine would twist their response to suit his ends, as he always did.
One way or another, his wayward apprentice would return.
For now he need not act.
He rose and crossed to the window. The transparisteel thrummed faintly with the deep, electric murmur of the city. Far below, Coruscant blinked and glittered, as if celebrating its own ruin.
Let them.
Palpatine smiled.
Cold filled him once more, the dread of the anomaly forgotten in the face of his masterpiece.
The Dark Side was watching.
And so was he.
Obi-Wan had a headache.
It wasn’t the worst he’d had—though it was certainly in the running. After his initial interrogation, the dark-robed man had led him deeper into the building, where a series of strange Force measurements had been taken. He wasn’t entirely sure what they’d discovered. Something about where he came from. How he got here. And the mysterious disappearance of the woman they all seemed terribly concerned about: Hermione Granger.
They’d shown him her image. He didn’t recognize her.
Still, that part hadn’t been unpleasant. They were, after all, trying to help him return home. And though they didn’t trust him with the Force—understandably—he had been allowed to assist. That was progress.
Then Harry Potter had returned.
The man had apologized, quite sincerely, and insisted Obi-Wan accompany him. Apparently, there were protocols for the treatment of... guests. One of which involved a mandatory visit to a healer for a general health check. Something about ensuring prisoners—or “guests”—weren’t accidentally mistreated.
Obi-Wan had not argued. The opportunity to observe more of this world was worth the inconvenience.
They brought him to a strange medical facility—more homey than sterile—and introduced him to a pleasant woman named Bones. She was polite, sharp-eyed, and far too perceptive for comfort.
Still, he’d enjoyed seeing more of their architecture. The way they used the Force—magic, as they called it—was unlike anything he had ever seen. Powerful, fluid, chaotic. Entirely divorced from Jedi tradition, yet undeniably effective. They cast spells with wands instead of channeling intent through meditation and will. Absurd. Dangerous. Fascinating.
He’d confessed as much aloud, prompting laughter from both Bones and Potter.
“If you think this is chaotic,” Harry had grinned, “wait until you see Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.”
The man was... disarmingly kind. He carried himself with a steady power, like a quiet star—bright but controlled. Not unlike Anakin, if Anakin had ever learned to temper his wildfire into something that warmed rather than burned.
He will get there, Obi-Wan thought, in time. The war had scarred them all. Anakin reacted harshly, but so much had been asked of him.
Still, there was a current in the Force, whispering at the edges of Obi-Wan’s awareness. He crushed it every time it stirred. Now was not the moment for that particular knowing.
Unfortunately, the healer's examination had gone... poorly.
She’d begun with a simple spell. Her expression shifted immediately—concern, confusion, then alarm. She cast another, and another. Lights blinked and flared before her, and her concern turned to something closer to panic.
Harry asked what was wrong. The healer hushed him and began asking questions—pointed ones.
When had he been injured? How had he been treated? What had they done?
He answered honestly. As the list grew, their faces paled. Apparently, accumulated injuries, untreated trauma, and chronic deprivation did not impress this world's medical professionals.
Healers, Obi-Wan thought dryly, are apparently the same everywhere—incapable of listening to reason when there’s a diagnosis to be made.
By the end, he’d been prescribed potions, placed under observation, and scheduled to meet with what felt like half the medical personal this world had to offer. All to “correct his abysmal condition.” He was informed, politely but firmly, that he would not be permitted to assist in finding a way home until his “health” had been adequately addressed.
And now here he sat—on a bench by the sea, surrounded by beauty and healing and Force-laced wards designed to ensure he ate, slept, and, presumably, didn’t fall into a black hole.
It was… lovely.
Frustratingly lovely.
The small house was quiet. Its garden bloomed with medicinal herbs and wildflowers. The sea breeze was crisp and fresh. Layers of protection wrapped the place—wards to cleanse, to shield, to soothe. They were subtle, powerful, and maddeningly effective.
He should be grateful.
He was grateful.
He told himself that often.
He could have ended up dead or imprisoned. Instead, they treated him with kindness and courtesy. And yet… this place gave him too much time to think. The mind healer had been a particular ordeal. Direct. Sharp. Incisive. She’d made disturbing observations about his self-worth, about indoctrination, about neglect masquerading as discipline.
Ridiculous, of course. Well-meaning, but wrong.
Still, she had a way of asking questions that made evasion difficult. Annoying woman.
He sighed, watching the sun flicker on the waves, and—
Pop.
The air snapped beside him, and a small, round man in swirling robes appeared mid-step. Teleportation. He really needed to learn how they did that.
It was Saul Croaker—head of the Department of Mysteries. One of the few people who had examined his Force signature during their early tests. A brilliant man, eccentric, and—like everyone else he met—very fond of Hermione Granger.
That seemed to be her effect on people.
Croaker’s eyes were wide with excitement, papers fluttering in his hand. He barely greeted Obi-Wan before launching into a breathless ramble about dimensional signatures and trans-universal resonance.
Then he grabbed Obi-Wan by the arm.
There was no time to protest. No time to question.
The world twisted.
The Force—magic—rushed in around him like a vacuum. He felt himself being pulled through something narrow and vast, a straw the size of a star system, stretched thin and reformed molecule by molecule.
And then—
He vanished.
Notes:
So, this is more of an interlude, but steps need to be taken on Obi-wans side to eventually find out what happened and how to handle it... and Palpatine...if he's gonna die here he had to show up first.
I would love to know what you think :)
Chapter Text
Coruscant Guard Medbay
Night Cycle – Temple District, Sublevel 17
The antiseptic bite of the medbay clung to the air—sharper than blood. Sharper than grief. Too clean for what had happened.
Fox stood still.
Four beds. Four bodies. One already taken to the morgue. CT-7745, Callix. Fox had helped to pull him off the pole he had been speared on and load him up. He hadn’t made it past the loading ramp. His blood had been everywhere. It still clung to Fox armor and blacks. To Fox himself. It had been a hot mess, but it was cold and sticky now.
Fox swallowed.
Beds Two and Three held ’73 and ’69—both shinies. New armor. Too new to know how fast trust could kill them. Still so very optimistic. One of them—’69—was unconscious, his chest rising in a shallow, artificial rhythm. Vitals piped into the monitor above his bed, steady but fragile.
The other beds were no better.
Jek was in Bed One. Bandaged, wrapped, unresponsive. Monitors read unstable. They hadn’t turned off the red light yet.
Boomer was the only one who might make it. If he did, he’d wake up to his squad dying all around him.
Needles stood at the foot of the row, arms crossed. Not looking at the troopers. Looking at Fox.
“They’re not coming back from this.”
Fox didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on ’69. The kid’s helmet sat on the table beside him, the red still scratched from the standard training exercises he went through yesterday. He had bemoaned his paint job, like a loved one. It had been his first one. All new, just like him. A marker-streaked little sunburst symbol near the back, were it wasn’t easy to see. A joke, maybe. A good-luck charm.
“Jek’s got maybe a day,” Needles said. “We’re keeping his body viable, in case the Kaminoans want a postmortem. Not for him.”
Fox didn’t blink. “I know.”
Needles sighed through his teeth. “’73’s brain activity’s dropping. Might stabilize. But even if he wakes up, he’s never field-worthy again.”
Fox’s jaw worked. He didn’t speak. He knew what wasn’t said. Decommission. Dying might just be nicer.
“And this one?” Needles gestured to the shiny. “’69’s lucky, if you want to call it that. Spinal cord damage, severe. Might walk again. If we had the proper tanks. He should be responding to the bacta. He should be showing improvement.”
That made Fox turn.
“But he’s not,” Needles said, voice low. “None of them are.”
Fox stared at him, sharp. “You think it’s sabotage?”
“No.” Needles scrubbed a hand down his face. “We triple-checked the batch. It’s not bad bacta. Not degraded. All the scans are clean.”
“Then what?”
Needles hesitated. “That’s what’s killing me. These wounds—they’re textbook, Fox. Ruptures, fractures, contusions. Nothing new. Should be responding. But they’re just... stagnating. Like their cells are refusing to regenerate. Like something’s blocking the healing response.”
Fox’s voice dropped. “Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Needles admitted. “I've seen slugs bounce back from plasma burns, Fox. But this? The bacta's there. It's doing nothing.”
He stepped away from the beds, toward a nearby terminal. He braced his hands on the edge like he was holding himself back from punching through it.
“If I had the right kit,” he muttered, “I could still try something. Deeper scans. Maybe tailored neural regen for the spinal injuries. But we’re stocked for blaster wounds and routine concussions. That spinal work? Fixable with the proper tools. Not in our stock. It’s Republic budget priority again. And we’re not on it.”
Fox didn’t look away from the bed.
“We were told we didn’t need more.”
“Because you’re not supposed to get injured delivering a message to a Jedi Knight.”
Fox’s voice was clipped now. Bitter.
Needles stared at him wide eyed. „They drew weapons on a General?“
“No.”
“So they were just.…”
“Yes.”
Needles’ voice cracked with something deeper than rage—helpless fury, a medic’s kind, made worse by memory.
“I’ve patched up blaster wounds,” he muttered. “Shrapnel. Lightsaber strikes. I’ve never had to dig bone out of a brother’s lungs because a Jedi decided he was in the way.”
The quiet after that was ugly. Alive.
Fox turned from the bed. His voice was raw steel.
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“The Chancellor requested a report. In person.”
Needles raised an eyebrow. “And you’re going?”
“It,s not like I have another option. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Needles stepped back, nodded once. “Good.”
Fox paused at the door. His voice came low, almost reluctant.
“Thorn’s briefing the Council. Sending them the vid. Starting the investigation.”
Needles didn’t smile. “Think they’ll do something about this?”
Fox didn’t answer. He stepped into the corridor.
Behind him, the heart monitors kept beeping.
Ahead, Coruscant’s towers loomed, indifferent.
212th Legion Flagship Endurance
Marshal Commander’s Office | Hyperspace Transit, Pre-Deployment
The stars outside the viewport blurred in ribbons of light, streaking endlessly toward nowhere.
Cody sat at his desk, legs braced, spine straight—but his thoughts had scattered halfway through the latest field readiness report. He hadn’t turned the datapage in five minutes.
They’d gone looking for Skywalker.
Not because of an order—because of Ahsoka.
She’d tried to wait, to be patient, but after an hour of pacing the war room and another mumbling about Force signatures and sleep, she’d simply looked at Cody and said, “He’s not here.”
They’d checked his quarters. Sent a ping to his beacon. Looked up a clearance trail that clearly stated that he was onboard the Resolute.
He wasn’t.
Neither was he on the Endurance. They’d walked the halls of both cruisers with security clearances and a creeping sense of dread. The kind you only get after years of fighting alongside Jedi.
People who would go of plan and lead you straight into a swamp with heavy machinery and without a map, because they had felt it in the Force.
Or would gleefully jump out of a cruiser halfway through the atmosphere with barely more than a Ta as a warning, for shits and giggles.
Cody knew the signs. This was far from the weirdest thing he had caught one of the Generals doing. Even if it was ill-timed. So he had send notice to the council and let Rex and the idiots in Torrent distract Ahsoka, so she wouldn’t wind herself up into knots over this, until it resolved itself.
And now he had Fox’s report sitting in front of him. And yeah, things wouldn’t resolve themselves.
“One KIA. Three critical. Jedi responsible. Skywalker confirmed.”
It hadn’t even been sent to the Council yet. Fox had forwarded it directly, tagged:
“You’ll want to tell Rex yourself.”
Cody sighed and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling for a long second.
“Of course you’d go rogue the second she gets back,” he muttered.
Because of course Anakin Skywalker would disappear on the one day his old Padawan returned to the front. Because of course, the second the 501st started to feel whole again, Skywalker would make a mess of it.
Because of course Cody would be the one who’d seen it coming.
He opened the next file. Fox’s holorecording.
The Guard briefing room. The Council's shimmering projections in a blue circle around the table. Fox, standing like a pillar made of spite and discipline, arms clasped behind his back. Cody watched in silence.
Words passed like thunder:
“Crisis of the highest order.”
“Do not engage.”
“He is not what he was.”
And then, the moment.
Fox’s voice: “No need, General. We know where she is.”
Cody smirked before it even landed.
The Council’s reaction—pure holopaint comedy.
Yoda blinked. Windu’s frown doubled like he couldn’t compute the concept. Plo Koon’s head tilted ten degrees to the left like someone had unplugged a very important thought. Oppo Rancisis straight-up froze, mouth half-open, as if his processor buffer hit max.
Fox didn’t flinch. Just rolled through it with that same iron-core calm:
“Civilian consultant. Requisitioned by Marshal Commander Cody.”
Even Cody had to admit: the man had style.
He opened the attached stills and barked a quiet laugh. Frame by frame, the Jedi Council looked like a lineup of people who had just been told their favorite pub was closed and also on fire.
“Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, vod,” Cody muttered, grinning.
He pinged back a single message.
TO: Commander Fox
RE: Heads Up
NOTE: Drinks are on me. Still got those photos? Might need them to cheer Rex up.
The smile faded soon enough.
Because after the stills, came the rest.
The Council had decided: they wouldn’t retrieve Ahsoka. Not yet. Not while she was with Cody and Rex. Not while she could be useful to them. Useful. One of the only known quantities left in this entire disaster.
“Let her stay.”
“Support her, if she supports you.”
“We deal with Skywalker first.”
Resolve grew in him with every word they said. They were right, she was useful. But if that was all they saw, then they wouldn’t get her back.
He closed the file.
There was a heaviness to the quiet that followed. The hum of hyperspace. The faint chirp of a console on standby. Even the air itself felt like it was bracing.
Cody stood.
He glanced once more at the holostills—Council members blinking like they’d been hit with a stun round of sheer unexpected competence—and shook his head.
“Hope you’re ready to be even more ‘useful’ now, Commander Tano.”
A soft knock came at his office door. Lieutenant Haller peeked in.
“Sir? Commander Tano and Captain Rex are waiting for you in the briefing room.”
Cody clipped his helmet to his belt.
“Thanks, Lieutenant. Be there in five.”
He watched the door slide shut again, then gave himself just one more beat—one more quiet second before everything that came next.
Ahsoka was about to hear that the man she came back to help had thrown five troopers like garbage. And killed some of them in the process.
And Rex—Rex, who had followed Skywalker through hell and back—was about to learn that his General had turned on his own.
They’d need each other.
And Cody? Cody would need every ounce of command he’d ever learned to hold them together.
He headed for the door.
Time to break the news.
Chapter 14
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Mace’s Quarters – Jedi Temple, Upper Spire
Tea cooling. Lights dimmed. No words spoken.
Yoda, Mace Windu, and Plo Koon sat in silence.
Mace Windu hadn’t spoken since the last Council member signed off. He wasn’t going to break the silence now. There was nothing new to say.
He had watched the footage twice. That was enough. Skywalker’s intent had been plain—control, shattered like brittle glass. And underneath: not grief, not confusion, but the precise, focused violence of someone who believed they were right. That was the part that stuck. It wasn’t a slip. It was a choice.
And Mace couldn’t afford to be surprised.
The Order had bent for Skywalker. Too many times. Rules blurred, traditions set aside. All of it done in the name of balance, of trust. And what had it bought them? A fractured war. A vanished General. A Jedi who thought instinct outvoted discipline.
He had never trusted the boy. Tried to. Tried to be fair. But the Force always rang wrong around him—loud, sharp, unstable. Still, they had trained him. Promoted him. Given him a trusted position.
The Council had chosen poorly. He had chosen poorly.
And now, they faced a danger none of them could confront without loss. Skywalker was too powerful to be contained quietly, and too volatile to be left alone. If there was any path back for him, it would be paved with casualties.
Mace didn’t know if he could let that happen. He wasn’t sure he should. He looked down at the teacup, untouched. His reflection stared back, distorted in the surface.
We’ve lost him, he thought.
Plo Koon stood at the window, arms behind his back, watching the lights crawl through the night. He didn’t need to see Mace to feel the tension in his stillness, or hear Yoda to know he was listening deeper than sound.
His thoughts kept circling back to Ahsoka. The last time he had seen her—quiet, steady, walking away from the Order—she had not looked back. And Skywalker had let her go, though it had broken him. His presence in the Force had flared with pain and confusion, but beneath it all was something worse: the sense that he didn’t know how to stay without her.
No one had apologized. Not one of them. Not to her. And when she left, the Order folded the moment into silence, like it meant nothing.
But she hadn’t turned away from everything. She’d gone back to the front. Not for them—for the clones. For Cody, for Rex. For those who had followed her, not by rank but by choice. That still mattered.
She wasn’t lost. Not to everyone.
Plo could still see it in her—the fire, the care, the sheer stubborn compassion that would have made her one of the best Jedi they had, if they'd only seen her more clearly. That same bond extended to Anakin, too. Amidala aside, no one might reach him more than Ahsoka and the men who served with him. But if he reached for her now, if he tried to drag her down with him, Plo already knew how she would answer.
He feared what Anakin would do when she did. She might be safer at the front, he thought.
And the part of him that had lifted a tiny girl up, as she waved her family goodbye and snuggled into him, was glad that she was simply too far away to be of use in raining Skywalker in.
He did not want her shining light to be lost after all. Something told him that the galaxy still needed it.
Yoda did not drink his tea either. His hands were folded on the cane in his lap, but his weight did not lean into it. His gaze was settled on the space between them, where nothing had been said, but so much had passed.
The silence here was welcome, and full.
He remembered the boy, small and watchful on the Temple floor, shadowed by the Tatooine sun. Too old, too angry, too loving. He had not belonged, not because he was lacking, but because he carried too much. Too full of need. Longing. Fury. Compassion. All the things the Jedi taught to let go—and all the things he had clung to with every part of himself.
Still, Yoda had taken him.
The Force had not given assurance. Only warnings. Danger. Darkness. But leaving him where he was—alone in the chaos of the galaxy—had felt like a cruelty the Jedi could not afford. He had hoped that within the Temple, within their guidance, Skywalker could learn control. Could find a shape for all that power.
His would not have been the first path after all, that once seemed rife with danger and darkness, only to turn towards the light and prosper, shadows long forgotten.
But the boy had never understood letting go. Had never wanted peace—only to protect. To hold on. To keep what he loved from harm, no matter the cost. But during a war was not an easy time for that.
Now Obi-Wan was gone. Not dead—gone. The Force had not whispered of death. But in the hollow where his presence should have been, something new had moved.
It was quiet. Barely there. But bright. A gentle, persistent current, threading through the noise. Not fire. Not yet. But light. Rejoicing. Unmistakable.
Yet as foreign to the Jedi as Anakin was.
It meant something though. He did not yet know what.
Skywalker was not the only one the Force watched now. And that changed things. Not the danger. Not the grief. But something fundamental beneath it all.
Yoda closed his eyes. Not in defeat. Not in hope. Simply in recognition.
Notes:
So here is another interlude I'm not quite certain about. And as always, I would love to hear what you think!
Chapter Text
Location: Hermione’s magically hidden travel shelter inside the derelict shuttle
CT-2939—39 to his friends—looked around the room that shouldn't exist.
He’d seen all kinds of weird during his time in the Guard. Holos twisted by spice. The sunless horror of the lower-level slums. Even crazed Dathomirian cultists carving blood symbols into walls that pulsed with a sickly green light. He’d seen a senator’s aide dissolve into plasma because someone sneezed near the wrong security trigger. He’d watched brothers die more ways than… were quite imaginable.
He hadn’t thought anything could still surprise him.
But this?
This was new.
This was weird.
And for the first time in a long time, weird didn’t come with screaming.
The room was quiet. Soft. It even smelled nice—woodsmoke and tea and something like old leather warmed by sun. Which didn’t make sense, because he’d watched them all get floated into the rusted corpse of a shuttle that barely had floors left—never mind working lights or life support. And he was closer to becoming a Senator than this thing was to seeing the sun.
Yet here he was. Sitting on a sturdy wooden bench beside a low table. His left pinky finger was currently growing back in front of his eyes. Literally growing—flesh reweaving, nail curling into place—like he was a Raymondian sand lizard shedding its tail.
He’d been staring at it for ten minutes. Not because it hurt—it didn’t. But because the moment he looked away, he half expected it to vanish. It was still tiny—looked like a second-year cadet’s finger had been misplaced on his hand. Like this, his hand was even less useful than with the missing finger. But he wasn’t worried. Just twenty minutes ago, it had still looked like a tubie’s finger, after all.
Still, for all he couldn’t make himself look away, looking at it also felt a bit like breaking his mind. Everything in this place was like that. The longer you looked, the less sense it made. The more real it felt.
The ceiling curved above him like the inside of a dome—painted, or projected, or just there—full of slow-turning constellations that didn’t match any star map he knew. A kettle in the corner let out a puff of steam, even though there was no heat source he could see. And there was an apron hanging by the kitchen door that… winked at him?
Nope. Not doing that.
He looked away fast.
Across the room, his brothers rested inside blue-glowing fields that hovered above low cots. Medcocoons, maybe—though not any Republic model. They were badly hurt. The Jedi had stormed out of here before she could do anything about that.
One of the shinies twitched in his sleep, then stilled. The floating bird—wooden-looking, with too-bright eyes—fluttered over and perched near his head, like it was checking vitals.
Med droid? Force construct? He hadn’t known Jedi could do that. If they could, why weren’t more of those around? It seemed awfully useful. Just like shrinking your enemies until they were the size of hand puppets.
He didn’t know. Knowing wouldn’t do any good right now.
He just wanted Pax back. He was part of his squad, and 39 was supposed to protect his squad. He was their sergeant.
The Jedi had said something like that before she left. Not in Basic, but he’d felt it. That was why she’d rushed out of here.
She had stared into his eyes for just a moment, and he thought she might have read his mind. He didn’t know how to feel about that—but if it meant she saved his brother, he was all for it.
And really, how else could she know about Pax? They hadn’t talked. And Pax had been separated from them above the shaft—a few hundred derelict levels up. So she couldn’t have known.
But the moment she did, she rushed out of here like the place was on fire.
She was going after him. Alone.
Of course she was. She was that kind of Jedi.
It didn’t sit right with 39. He had thought he’d long since gotten over the deeply ingrained impulse to want to protect his Jedi. The way General Revala had looked straight through him like he was just a tool, not a person—the one time she had given him an order herself had started that process.
Being stationed less than a mile from the Jedi Temple and still having to suffer food shortages, watching brothers not heal right because there was no bacta and no help… having a Jedi walk right past his squad as a senator was screaming at him for merely doing his job—that had finished the process.
That last one had nearly gotten them all decommissioned.
Of course he knew there were some Jedi who were different—those who genuinely cared for their troops and were beloved beyond reason.
He thought he had stopped understanding that devotion a while ago.
It seemed he was wrong.
Weird. Eccentric. Unpredictable.
But she’d saved them.
That counted.
She wasn’t even his Jedi, but that counted more than he knew how to put into words.
The battered hull of the shuttle groaned as the Force replaced the warped mechanisms and forced the twisted ramp shut. Bent metal ground into place, sealed against intrusion—not properly repaired, just made obedient. There was no hatch anymore, only stubborn steel shaped by raw power and will.
It was an ugly, effective fix.
Quinlan felt it in the Force: emotion, yes—burning frustration, bone-deep resolve—but executed with flawless control. A Jedi would have been cautioned for the anger, but here… it was shaped into discipline. Darkness did not go into it. Interesting.
The air inside was stale, heavy with the tang of scorched wires and dried coolant. Just a carcass of a ship clinging to the pretense of shelter. No true base camp, not for any real operation. And yet, somehow, it was holding.
She must have come from far away. Very far. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’d fallen through the Force, just like Obi-Wan had. And if that were true… then he could only hope his old friend had ended up somewhere kinder.
This was the Coruscant underworld—by now they’d crossed its threshold in truth—and Quinlan knew what that meant. A hundred years ago, a full Jedi expedition had tried to map it. ExplorCorps experts, Guardians, droids. Twenty-four vanished into the shadows. Only four returned.
They’d walked out half a year later, emaciated and shaken. Their stories still lingered in the initiate dorms as ghost tales—stripped of detail, scrubbed for younglings. Quinlan had read the originals. Filed under sealed mission logs. He’d once promised himself he’d find another way, should a mission ever take him here.
And yet here she was. Hitting the ground running.
She did not know Basic, either.
That said uncomfortable things about how far she had come—and how far away Obi-Wan must have ended up.
A pulse through the Force drew his attention. Gleeful, like a reveal.
He turned, expecting a hidden storage unit. More wreckage.
Instead, there was a door.
It hadn’t been there before. Seamless. Smooth. Embedded in the cockpit wall where logic and blueprint said nothing should exist. The Force hummed around it—tightly coiled, vibrating with intent. Like the entrance of a temple. Old, quiet, and strange.
Hermione didn’t hesitate. She opened it and stepped through.
Quinlan followed—and stopped short.
The space beyond defied reason. Not vast, exactly, but wrong in the way temples sometimes were. Dimensions folded oddly. He should have stepped into open air, or maybe the wall of the wreckage next door. But here, the Force wove space into something new.
He stayed at the threshold, senses stretched.
Inside, the shuttle became something else. Stone walls edged in warm wood paneling. A high ceiling lined with sconces that glowed like captured starlight. Above, a slow-turning model of a galaxy—not one he recognized—hung in midair, rendered in Force-imbued light.
The air smelled clean, herbal, alive.
A hearth glowed low in one corner. Along the far wall, beds lined up neatly—real beds, with crisp linens, conjured blankets, and glowing runic circles floating above them in soft blue hues. Stasis fields, of a kind. Not technology. But the Force moved through them—clear in intent, solid in design.
A sanctum. A shelter. Not Jedi, not Sith. Something else. Something parallel. This happened sometimes. They were often so focused on those two Force traditions that they forgot there were others. And that the disciples of those others could be imminently capable just as well.
The Force here felt denser than any place he had known. Like every object, every wall, had been created with the Force, in the Force. Not shaped by it as Jedi do, but woven from it like thread spun into form.
He wondered where she came from. From what he saw, there did not seem to be any great amount of technology involved in anything she had done here. Was that because she had come unprepared? Or did she really just use the Force for everything she needed?
What would a place like that look like? She could not have made this place. It felt too old, there were lots of materials that were not easily found in the underworld used here.
The strangest thing of all? She didn’t hide her intent. Or her emotion. She wore them like colors in the air—no shields, no pretense. Whenever she used the Force it was teeming with them. Yet, it did not seem to influence whether light or dark energy was used.
At the same time, her thoughts were locked away. A shadow in the current. She could have walked through the Temple archives unnoticed. But the moment she used the Force, she let it shout for her.
He wanted to explore. To trace the lines of power humming through the floor, the symbols half-hidden in the ceiling beams. To taste the Force in the air. Get rid of the gloves and slide his fingers across the wall, hear what they whispered of.
But he knew better than to do that in place this saturated with the Force.
The Force whispered to be patient. In time he would get his answers. It had hummed in contentment ever since it had strongly motivated him to jump into the void after her.
She knelt beside the injured trooper they’d brought, her Focus—a wand of some sort—already in hand. Her movements were efficient, practiced. Brisk with exhaustion, but not sloppy. Focused.
A gold stasis field snapped into place with a shimmer of rune-locks.
“Stabilizing,” she muttered. “Circulation. Trauma seals. Nerve stasis… good.”
She leaned back, brushing damp curls from her brow. The field turned blue, locking in.
Time, Quinlan realized. She’d bought herself time. No pain. No degradation. Just suspended healing—safe and quiet. They could wait now, and she could treat them one by one.
Above the trooper, a tiny bird zipped by. Carved from wood, but lit like a star in the Force. He blinked—he’d thought it real.
Hermione murmured to it, and it chirped back before taking up silent vigil at the foot of the bed.
“Thank Merlin I keep these keyed,” she sighed. “I’ll have to make more.”
He stepped forward, she finally looked up. Dark brown eyes, sharp clear. No mental contact this time though.
“I have ten injured,” she said flatly. “I’m going to heal them now. If you need something, you’ll have to wait.”
Quinlan inclined his head. She felt like someone who had spend a lot of energy in very little time. She was running on willpower and ritual now. Still standing, but the toll was climbing.
He backed away. He knew better than to interrupt a healer at work.Though he'd really like to know how she made herself understood, when he really did not know the language she spoke. Among other things.
Across the room, a lone clone sat upright on a conjured bench, helmet in his lap. Armor scorched. Dust clinging to every seam. He was staring at his hand, frowning. One finger—Quinlan blinked—was child-sized. It stretched even as he watched, aging rapidly.
Fascinating.
He crossed to him and took a seat beside the man.
“Sir,” the clone said at once, straightening.
Quinlan winced inwardly. He hated that word. He wasn’t their commander. Not a general. Just a Jedi—barely that, by some standards.
But he didn’t correct it.
“Relax,” he said instead. “I want your read on what happened. I’m Jedi Master Quinlan Vos.”
The clone nodded. “Yes, sir. CT-2939.”
There was respect in his voice. Not just duty. Something more. Reverence? But not for him, curious. But good.
It made him feel better already.
He hated how the clones looked at them, when the Jedi really had not done anything to deserve that devotion.To think how it came to be, twisted his insides and made him want to howl in helpless rage. To think that the Order was forced to go along with it, to participate… best not to think about that for too long.
“Cultists grabbed us on our patrol. Ten levels above 1313. Dragged us lower. Way lower. They dumped us on some industrial platform over a waste shaft. Then forced us to fight them. Ten to one, no weapons for us.”
He paused. His tone didn’t waver, but the memory lingered in the Force. Brutal. Helpless. Even as a worldweary smile tucked his mouth at his last words.
“They kept Pax. CT-1789. The rest of us—they threw us in.”
Quinlan stiffened.
“Then… we slowed. Mid-fall. It was still a hard landing, but not enough to kill. We were down. I was the only one concious. Rats moved in fast.”
His voice darkened. Quinlan understood. He’d seen what rats could do in the underworld. Not a good way to go.
“Then the General showed up,” 39 said, a note of wonder entering his voice. “She flew in. Fire erupted around us—like a wall. The rats couldn’t get at us. She shrank them.“
When Quin raised a brow at that. He elaborated. „Like, shrunk them. To nuna size.”
A short laugh escaped him. “I don’t even know how to explain it.”
Quinlan stayed silent. He’d learned to listen.
“Then she levitated us all. Just… picked us up. And flew us here.”
He shook his head.
“She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t panic. Like she’d already fought the battle in her head and knew how it ended. No lightsaber. Just… a stick. I don’t know what it’s called. But it worked. When she spoke—things happened.”
His eyes drifted toward her again, now at work on her second patient.
“The General hasn’t said who she is yet, sir. Do you know?”
That reverence again, Quinlan thought.
Quinlan felt the Force move—gently—against his mind. A whisper of thought. Let it stand.
So he did.
“She’s not someone I know personally,” he said at last. “We met during the rescue.”
The clone gave a small, crooked smile.
“Lucky day then,” he said. “Two Jedi in one day to save our sorry shebs.”
Chapter Text
Hermione was bone-deep tired.
The kind of tired that lived in your marrow, in your joints, in the tight line of your shoulders and the fog at the back of your eyes. The kind of tired that whispered you’ve done enough, even when you knew you hadn’t. And made every horizontal surface appear weirdly comfortable.
But alongside the exhaustion was an equal, weighty relief. They were all still alive.
She had counted the moments—breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat—as she worked, wondering if any of them would slip away before she could stop the bleeding or stabilize the organs or clear a clot. Magic could do a lot, but triage was still triage, and even with potions to do the heavy lifting, she had to push her skills as far as they could go.
And she wasn’t a healer. Not really. A field medic, yes. She’d earned that during the war and after. But this? This was Susan’s wheelhouse, not hers. Susan would’ve had most of them up and chatting by now. Hermione had stabilized them. And thanks to the potions, most of them would be better by tomorrow. Not healed, but better. That was all she could do.
Still. They were alive.
It was enough for tonight.
She moved slowly through the field of healing arrays she had laid and activated on the floor of the travel shelter—half runes, half spell-stitched bands of power—checking stasis spells, reapplying charms where needed. Soft glows pulsed from beneath each injured man—clone, she supposed, although the word sat uneasily with her. None of the men had said as much, but… they looked identical. Exactly identical. Same face. Same hair. Same build. The only differences she could spot were obviously deliberate.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Clones? That was the obvious answer. But how?... Curses? Ritual procreation? A magically-bred brotherhood? Or was it technology? Given that she was currently camping in ancient spaceship ruins, that was a possibility as well.
Yet, no one had blinked at her appearance. No strange glances. No questions. Neither did the wizard she found belong to their group. So this level of uniformity couldn’t be normal, could it? Or maybe it was. Maybe she was the oddity here, and all wizarding folk around here looked like space monks in ponchos with black dreads? How should she know? Maybe they were all just too polite—or too disciplined—to comment.
Well, she thought, adjusting a spell that stabilized one trooper’s shattered ribs until the Skelegro could put them back together, I’ll find out eventually.
There was time.
She had saved their lives. And if she could earn their trust—or at least some goodwill—she could ask the questions she needed to. Because she had questions. Dozens. Hundreds.
But tonight—tonight she had only one focus: keep them breathing until morning.
She paused beside the worst of them—the one whose legs had taken the brunt of the landing. Even Arresto Momentum couldn’t undo the sheer physics of a fall from over a mile up. The armor had crushed on impact, collapsing in on itself and taking everything below the hips with it.
Hermione had seen a lot of horrific injuries. She wasn’t squeamish. But this... this had made her stomach turn.
His legs had been nothing more than pulp held together by metal. But he had survived, barely, thanks to the armor pinching the arteries shut. No blood loss. No shock. And she’d gotten him into stasis just in time.
She had had to vanish the ruined legs entirely.
Clean, precise vanishments—right at the hip joint. She’d saved the nerves, laid the regrowth spells, cast the binding charms. Tomorrow she’d begin rebuilding, one layer at a time. The potions had already started triggering cell replication. But the process would be hell. Regrowing limbs was slow, excruciating work. Even if he stayed unconscious for most of it, eventually he’d wake up to that maddening, unreachable itch deep inside his bones.
Hermione grimaced in sympathy.
There was no spell for that. Just endurance.
She moved on, checking the bindings of another man with a shattered clavicle and a cracked skull. She adjusted a charm on his stasis circle and winced as she knelt. Her day was far from over, she reminded herself. She could take another Pepper-Up, but no. Not a good habit to gain.
She exhaled and looked around.
Tomorrow, some of them would wake. And then… what? She didn’t know who they were, what this place was, or even how she had ended up in a ruined spaceship buried under a dead city. They might be soldiers. They might be prisoners. All she knew was that they were hers now—at least until they could walk on their own.
She’d have to expand the shelter, conjure more space, set up rest areas and meal zones, maybe even temporary sleeping quarters. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but she could make it functional.
And then she needed to create a way to transport them. They were Muggles. Saturating them with enough magic for a Portkey after this much extensive healing was a bad idea. And she could hardly travel around with all of them lodged on the broom with her. Even if they were all healthy. No, she needed something better.
And she needed to speak to them. All of them. As soon as she could—tomorrow at the latest. Because she needed to understand this world. Fast.
Knowledge is power, she reminded herself. It always had been, for her.
Her friends used to joke that she could overprepare for a nap. Paranoid, they called her. Dramatic and unable to move on. But how many times had that saved their lives? When spells backfired, the system failed them, when everything was crumbling around them—it was knowledge that kept them alive. It even kept her alive now, because if she did not study and overprepare, how exactly would she have found her way out of that hellscape she had been transported into?
But here, now—she knew nothing about the path ahead. True, her skills were hers and so were her preparations. But if she could know more… she wanted it.
There was another reason.
Since she had come here she had noticed a shift inside her. Like her wandless magic working better, her instincts had suddenly started going haywire. Or rather, they had become loud. Very loud.
She was not the one who usually had spontaneous insights—that was Harry’s thing. She worked for what she knew. Most of her results were based on deductions. Logical and straightforward. It was why she had had a hell of a time learning to fight. You couldn’t reason your way through a fight—you had to just act. Harry had had to pull her out of the way of at least half a dozen spells before that finally sunk in.
It took her even longer to learn to listen to her instinct. But she did. It was usually right. And had its place just as much as her more often used logic. But here and now, all of a sudden, it was like a constant companion, trying to show her in this direction or that. And she did not know what that meant. Why it was happening.
It was disconcerting.
What was she walking into at all? It felt like she was blind. She had no knowledge of this world whatsoever.
Nothing.
Well… almost nothing. She had started to gather threads.
The wizard—the one with the dreads and the smile too sharp to trust—was one of those threads. He was like no one she had ever met. Like a mixture of a Far Eastern monk and a hit wizard. He moved like a dancer. Silent, deliberate, calculating. There was steel under the ease in his posture, the calm readiness of someone who knew how to kill and chose not to.
At the same time there was that… aura. The same fizzing, spark-warm trouble that followed in the wake of the Weasley twins. That same madcap cleverness. The need to duck away from him in case something was already exploding. It made her a bit homesick, to be honest.
But with Fred and George, the sharp edges had only ever shown up in battle. With this man, they were always visible.
But he hadn’t done anything that warranted mistrust. And she was not in a position to throw the first stone. He had protected that other man—Pax, she remembered—and now he was here, helping her tend to the injured. Silent but observant. Taking everything in. Obviously curious, but not threatened or dismissive.
And that was something.
She adjusted the runic array that kept a man from suffocating in his sleep, ran one more scan with her wand, and stood slowly. Her knees cracked. Her hands ached. But she had now done everything she could. She wondered if she should take a break after all. Cramped lodgings for a few hours tomorrow while she sorted things out weren’t really that bad, were they?
But she knew her own nature stood in her way for that. She would not rest easily until she at least made some inroads into her tasks and had a proper plan, rather than a half-baked idea. So she would have to at least start to sort out the transport right now. She could open the farm for them tomorrow, if they were bored and unable to stay in one place.
When she turned, the wizard was there. Watching her.
Waiting. His stance neutral.
Right, they needed to talk. The sooner the better, his eyes seemed to say.
He was right. And questions burned beneath her skin. Itchy like she was the one who had imbibed the Skelegro. So she nodded once, curtly, and gestured toward the cockpit. Since there really was no place anywhere else.
Twenty minutes later found Hermione alone outside—on a mission to regain her nerves before she committed murder, among other things. Giving him the benefit of the doubt didn’t seem like such a great idea anymore.
The air was still and sharp in the ship graveyard, the thick silence broken only by the occasional groan of settling metal, the distant cries of things being hunted, and the hurried withdrawal of small, skittering creatures wary of the pale blue flames swirling around her.
Hermione stood with her boots half-buried in soot and grit, hands on her hips, breathing hard and trying to force the tension out of her shoulders. Her irritation hadn’t faded—not exactly—but it had settled into something more focused now: a kind of cold clarity that she knew well from the war. Her thoughts—once tangled in a knot of indignation and exhaustion—had begun to unwind. The wizard’s strange trick, the gentle siphon of energy through skin contact, was exactly the kind of manipulation she hated most: subtle, clever, and framed as a kindness.
Her bluebell flames drifted in an arc ahead of her, lighting up the hulk of a derelict cruiser like tiny will-o’-the-wisps dancing through the carcass of a fallen beast. The graveyard was massive, endless rows of broken, rust-stained ships tilting at odd angles like half-sunken bones in a desert sea. Most were dead in every sense—magicless, lifeless, reluctant even to echo back her probing spells.
But not all.
And she needed a reaction. The thing about creating a magical artifact—not just any material would do. It had to be a magical conductor without burning out. It was a hard balance to hit. There was a reason goblin metal was so prized. Wizards usually fell back on organic materials—preferably parts of a magical creature. However, in a bind, anything that had once carried life would do for a while. There was no chance of finding that kind of source material around here, though. Not unless she wanted to go monster hunting.
She really hoped she could find something among the shipwrecks instead.
She let out a breath and cast a modified Revelare Residua into the ash-laden air, lacing it with a feedback loop to track the echo. Then she waited.
Four pulses. Five.
Then—there. A shimmer just at the edge of her field. Something old. Very old. But strong.
She moved toward it without hesitation.
The ship was buried beneath two others and half-crushed under what had probably once been a communications tower, but Hermione could still feel the hum of its material. It responded to her presence like a cat stretching after a long nap—drowsy, tentative, but curious.
She conjured a glowing sigil into the air, an archaic invitation circle adapted from a Celtic design for awakened stone. A peace offering. Consent was everything when working with entities like this—even half-sentient wrecks.
The reaction was immediate. Not hostile—never that—but attentive. Something old and tired opened one metaphorical eye to look at her.
“You’re still alive in there,” she murmured, brushing one soot-streaked palm along the cold, dark hull. It was surprisingly smooth, like obsidian—but far tougher. Her magic soaked into it like rain into thirsty soil.
The resonance that met her hand was complex—layered, ancient, and steeped in history. She recognized the sensation. It reminded her of Hogwarts. Old magic. Saturated. Laced into the very structure of the ship.
This thing had memory. Purpose. And a name she couldn’t quite parse—but it thrummed through her mind like a whisper through stone.
She sat cross-legged in front of the remaining structure, lit her wand tip with a pale silver glow, and began to work.
The integration spell wasn’t meant for this. Not really. It was a diagnostic enchantment for wandmakers, tweaked into something more invasive, exploratory. She layered it with components from a sentience-stabilization matrix used in portrait charms, and several of the deeper mental interface spells that Artificers used regularly. She’d studied them back in her seventh year—on a whim.
It took concentration and finesse, but she found the rhythms. The spell took.
And then—connection.
The ship wasn’t merely magic-conductive. It had magic. Or had carried it so long that it had grown a spirit in the process. Not fully conscious in the human sense—but aware. Aware enough to recognize her as someone who could help it fly again. Fulfill its purpose.
It missed space.
The flash of memory that echoed through the link made her flinch. Images—not fully visual, more impressions—of silent, elegant figures that drifted more than walked. A race that had built the ship not with metal and wires, but with will and light, shaping the hull with their minds and hearts. Blind, but gifted. Magic their birthright.
She felt a brief pang of yearning from the ship itself: it missed its creators. Mourned them.
“I can’t give you them back,” she whispered, brushing her fingers along a seam that pulsed faintly in response. “But if you want to fly again... I can help.”
And it did. It wanted to fly.
That was the spark she needed.
Negotiation was strange. Less like talking and more like dream-sharing—exchanging impressions. The ship understood the concept of transformation and seemed willing—eager, even—to become something new. Something that could live again. Fly again. It gave her suggestions. Preferences: compact shape, modularity, strength.
The idea of being able to change size caused confusion and took some negotiating. But in the end, it agreed—after seeing and understanding the concept of the travel shelter—that this would also mean not being left behind again. With its heart and brain stolen away.
She wondered if spaceships could have trauma reactions.
“I’ll need to extract your materials,” she told it gently. “Piece by piece. I’ll rebuild you. Not the same—but not lesser, either.”
The hum that met her ears in response was one of agreement.
Hermione cast a gathering spell next—carefully designed to target only the specific material the ship was composed of. Resonance-based, rather than structural. It shimmered through the field like a low wave, peeling pieces free of the wreck and guiding them toward her in slow, floating clusters.
The metal was surprisingly cooperative. Almost joyful.
It wanted to be useful again.
Halfway through the second cluster, her proximity ward flared in the back of her mind—a gentle mental tap, the way she’d built it. Magical presence. Familiar.
She didn’t look up.
Instead, she silently re-cast the inner perimeter alert and left the intention trap primed and waiting. If he meant harm, he’d find himself twirling and warbling through an improvised dance routine with magical ribbons tied to his ears.
Until then—she didn’t care.
Her hands moved quickly now, movements crisp and practiced. The material was better than anything she’d worked with before—stronger than goblin steel, more receptive than leviathan bone. It remembered being shaped by will, and her magic slid into it like a well-worn wand into a holster.
She was already thinking ahead, sorting pieces by function: structural, shielding, interface. She could build a vessel—not just a transport box. Something worthy of this place. Something that would serve her well. Something she could take home. Something she could learn so much from.
Her humming picked up again—something half-forgotten and wordless from her childhood. A tune she used to sing while building model dragons in her room.
She was happy. Genuinely, bone-deep happy, for the first time in days.
She had always liked being industrious. Able to show something great and useful in return for her work.
Just right.
When she finally turned, she found the wizard standing at a respectful distance, hands tucked behind his back, expression unreadable. He made no move to interrupt her work. Her wards hadn’t activated.
So he hadn’t come to harm her.
She met his eyes for a long moment.
Then turned away again.
Chapter 17
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Quinlan stood before the intricate barrier, its pattern like a web of emotion, intention, and structure—each strand thrumming in the Force like the strings of some unfathomable instrument. He didn’t try to push through. He just stepped—and trusted.
It was like walking through water. Or a memory. The field shimmered, resisted for the briefest second, then rolled off him in a cool wave. A test, then. And apparently, he’d passed.
He exhaled slowly—and saw her.
The wondrous, foreign Force user. Shoulders hunched with focus, hands moving through the air in the slow, precise gestures of someone shaping something too large to see all at once. She was surrounded by blue balls of flame that circled her like tiny stars, and floating pieces of sleek, dark metal—some humming with the Force, others already bending to new shapes. Whatever she was doing, interfering seemed like a very bad idea.
She didn’t look at him, but he felt her awareness shift. She knew he was there.
Her entire presence sang through the Force now—no longer masked, no longer shielded. It was raw, vibrant, crackling with intent, with deep, quiet grief beneath the purpose. He had realized how muted she’d been before when her emotions sang in the force, but now she had dropped all pretense and it was an entirely different thing. Standing there, it felt like stepping into a sunbeam after a winter of overcast skies. It filled his bones.
She still let the Force do her talking—she was just so immersed in it now that she could barely keep anything hidden.
“I’m sorry,” he said, once he was close enough to speak without raising his voice.
She didn’t turn. Her fingers flicked, sending a twisting curl of metal into a slow orbit above her. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
He winced. Fair.
“I didn’t mean to cause offense—” He stopped when she did finally look at him, one eyebrow raised, unimpressed. Right. Half-truths. Bad habit when not spying. “Okay. I hoped I wouldn’t get caught. And if I did, that it wouldn’t piss you off this much.”
Hermione snorted. Not kindly. But not coldly, either. Her eyes flicked over him, and her expression shifted.
“What happened to you?” she asked, frowning at the scratches on his arms, the tear in his tunic, the thick, sticky trail of dried blood down his shoulder. “Did you fight a kraken on the way here?”
“I ran.”
“You… ran?” Her voice pitched up incredulously. “All the way here?”
“I felt you. Through the Force. It was… loud. Too loud to ignore.” He gestured vaguely to the metallic wreckage surrounding them. “You weren’t exactly subtle.”
Something in her expression softened at that. The frown remained, but the tension in her jaw eased.
“I wasn’t trying to be. Not really. I needed something to resonate.”
“I figured. Either you had to be doing it on purpose, or there was a fight.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to sit next to the shelter and twiddle my thumbs if you were broadcasting like a beacon.”
She huffed again, but the ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
She tilted her head. “You could have been seriously hurt.”
He gave a small bow. “And yet, here I am. Bloodied, but unbowed.”
“You're so dramatic.”
“Says the woman currently turning a spaceship corpse into a Force chariot.”
That actually earned him a grin. A real one—warm and bright and alive. It transformed her whole face.
But it vanished a moment later. She sighed, turning back to the rising structure at her side. “Still doesn’t change what you did.”
He nodded, sobering. “No. It doesn’t. And I’m not trying to excuse it. I just…” He hesitated. “I use my abilities—my touch—all the time. It’s like breathing. I didn’t think. But I should have. You have every right to be furious.”
There was silence for a long moment. She didn’t answer right away. She crouched beside a sheet of folded hull metal and tapped it lightly with her wand. A series of sigils glowed to life.
Then, softly: “You can’t do it anymore.”
Quinlan blinked. “What?”
“The psychometry. You’ve been cut off.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You realized that, didn’t you?”
He rubbed his palms together unconsciously. “Yeah. Felt like I lost a limb. Strange, really. There were so many times in my life I wished it would just stop. And now…”
She nodded. “I put an Impervious Charm on your skin when I left. You could still do it, but unless you started rubbing really impractical parts of your body against surfaces, you were out of luck.”
He had a sudden image of rubbing his ass against something to get a read. Judging by the spark in her eyes, that was probably close to what she imagined, too. Traumatic as the experience had been, there was a certain entertainment value to it. He cracked a grin at the thought of asking Master Windu to hold something for him—just for a second.
“How did you do that?”
Her wand flicked again. Another sheet of metal rose into the air, humming faintly. “It’s a shield of sorts, with just enough holes not to hurt you. It prevents contact, but not sensation. Originally developed to stay dry in heavy rain. Fairly harmless.”
He nodded slowly. “Still—cutting me off like that…”
“It only lasts about thirty minutes.” She looked at him sidelong. “You’ve had it back since we started talking.”
He blinked, pulled off his glove again, and extended his hand toward a nearby scrap of metal. Nothing… Then—a faint impression. A man bleeding. Another laughing. Nothing clear. But it was there.
“I didn’t even notice,” he said, startled.
“You can’t stop?” she asked, voice carefully neutral.
He nodded and waved the gloves. “It’s an old injury that keeps my senses open like this. Not natural. But I’ve long since learned to navigate it.”
“I can teach you the full version of the impervious. If you want.” She suddenly flushed at his look. “I mean—it could help and it’s not hard to do. If you can do it on purpose, it’s yours to control.” She smiled ruefully. “might ad another layer of protection, if you ever run out of gloves.”
He looked at her. “You’d do that?”
“I wouldn’t have interfered in the first place if I’d known you couldn’t turn it off,” she said bluntly. “That wasn’t fair to you.”
He gave a low laugh, half in disbelief. “You’re still being nicer about this than I deserve.”
“I’m also going to keep calling you an idiot,” she added, straight-faced.
“Fair.”
“But… yeah. I can help.” She stood, brushed soot off her knees, and looked up at the vast skeleton of the ship surrounding them. “I just… need your help too.”
He followed her gaze, eyes widening. “You’re rebuilding this?”
“I’m going to try. It’s not just metal. It wants to fly again.”
He felt a flicker of awe. “You bonded with it.”
She nodded slowly. “Not directly. But it’s sentient. I created an interface—asked for consent, of sorts. Or close enough. It’s soaked in so much magic and memory, it became something. It talked to me.”
“That’s…” He shook his head. “Incredible. Impossible. Dangerous.”
“All true,” she agreed, then added more quietly, “But it needs to fly again. And we need it to fly.”
He looked back at her. “Why?”
She hesitated. For the first time, uncertainty crept into her posture. She looked down, then back up at him—eyes clearer than he’d ever seen them.
“I don’t know,” she said. Then, shaking herself out of the mood, added, “Though ostensibly to get us back up there.” She met his eyes. “Assuming it’s nicer up there than down here.”
“You don’t know?” He’d suspected as much, but hearing her say it was another thing entirely.
“I’m not from around here,” she said.
He blinked. “You’re…?”
“Another world. Another dimension. Universe. Whatever.” She spread her hands. “I don’t belong here. I was pulled in—violently—and I want to go home. But I need somewhere stable to work from. And I can’t leave the others behind.”
“The others?”
“The people I—we—saved. They’re non-magical. Wounded. And saturated with magic from the healing. Anything more could hurt them. And any kind of mass transport I know would rely on magic.”
He whistled low. “And this?” He gestured around them. “This is your answer?”
She nodded. “I hope.” She raised an eyebrow. “Unless you have a better idea?”
He shook his head. “I told them you were a member of my Order,” he announced suddenly.
“What?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“It’s safer,” he insisted. “There are things you need to know. There’s a war going on. It’s better to draw as little attention as possible. And… well, it was the will of the Force.”
“The will of the Force?” She sounded suspicious, cautious—like she was wondering if he was, in fact, sane.
He nodded. “It’s a skill my people have. With what you call magic.”
She raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“It’s hard to explain. But it guides us.”
She seemed to think that over for a moment, then reached a conclusion. “Okay,” she said simply.
“Okay?” he asked incredulously.
She nodded. “Yes. But then maybe I should learn your language—unless translation spells are common here. And the basics of this world, if you wouldn’t mind helping me.”
“Wait, just like that? Why?”
Her answer was dry, but her mouth pulled up a little into the beginnings of a smile, “Because you came running when you thought I was in danger. Because you haven’t lied to me since. So far, you make a horrible dark wizard. And I know I need help.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. Not right away. So he stepped closer, reached out to one of the floating pieces of metal, and felt. The hum of energy welcomed him. Subtle. But alive.
“I want to help,” he said at last. “I’m supposed to help. The Force… wants me to.”
She looked at him, long and searching. Then she said again, “Okay.”
“But more than that—I have to tell you. I had a purpose when we met. I was seeking you. Because something similar to what you described happened to my friend. Right in front of me. And I have no idea where he ended up.”
She raised a surprised eyebrow.
“When I asked for the guidance of the Force—it led me to you.” He made a gesture of appeasement.
She fell silent, deep in thought. Then suddenly pressed her lips together, and her hair began to rise and move around her head like it had become sentient.
“You thought of something,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” she said.
He knew better than to ask. So he simply nodded. “Okay.”
She quirked her lips a bit, shadows receding from her eyes. Then she looked at him—searching for something, he thought. “Alright, together then,” she said at last, with a resolute nod.
They stood in silence for a while after that, side by side, as the ship’s bones groaned above them and the bluebell flames danced in lazy spirals through the air.
Then she asked, “You really ran all that way through the graveyard?”
He nodded solemnly. “There was a tentacle plant. It tried to eat me.”
Hermione laughed. “You are an idiot.”
But she was smiling when she said it.
Notes:
So, two chapters today because they really belong together.
And because I'm moving this week, so I probably won't be around much until next week.
I would still love to know what you make of this. Personally I'm not all that certain...
Chapter 18
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The sharp clang of the training staffs she’d borrowed from the 501st locker echoed off the walls of the Resolute’s combat simulation deck, punctuated by the low buzz of impact fields and the occasional shouted taunt.
She had her sabers back — the crystals’ soft humming in the back of her mind was more of a relief than she had thought possible. But using them to train with her brothers felt unfair. And Anakin…
She did not want to think about Anakin.
She didn’t know what to think.
Ahsoka ducked under a lazy swing from Jesse, spun low, and jabbed his ribs with the training staff. He let out an exaggerated “Oof!” and flopped to the floor like she’d impaled him.
Rex groaned from the sidelines, arms crossed. “He’s faking. He’s always faking.”
“I’m dying!” Jesse called from the ground, one hand clutching his chest. “Tell my bunk… I loved her.”
Kix rolled his eyes as he stepped over the ‘body’ to hand Ahsoka a bottle of water. “You’re not dying. She just tapped you.”
“He’s always been a drama queen,” Rex added, leaning back against a stacked wall console with one ankle hooked over the other.
Ahsoka let herself laugh — short, sharp, a little louder than she meant it to be. The truth was, it helped. A little. The sparring. The jokes. The noise.
Even if it took more effort than she wanted to admit.
It had been a hard decision not to jump into the next shuttle at the first hyperspace break and head back to Coruscant — to try and find Anakin when Cody first told her what was going on. She’d made it as far as the flight deck before she stopped, looked around.
So many brothers. No Jedi. No one to fight with them. To protect them.
Hadn’t she just promised herself she wouldn’t leave them behind again?
Rex found her leaning against one of the transports half an hour later. After the hyperspace break. He looked both relieved and regretful, and she understood then — he hadn’t known if she’d still be here. He wanted her to be. But he hadn’t come sooner because Anakin was his friend too.
And maybe because he didn’t want to watch her leave again either.
So instead, she was sparring.
Had been for the last day.
She took a long drink, only half-listening as Jesse revived himself with a groan and started pacing dramatically, recounting his “heroic” last words.
It was warm here. Familiar. The clang of boots, the subtle scent of engine oil and plastoid armor, the echo of laughter that never quite drowned out the edge of war — but softened it. In the corner, a bunch of shinies were talking excitedly and pointing in their direction every so often. They’d come over sooner or later. A lot of the new brothers already had. Others had shown up in the barracks, reintroducing themselves.
It didn’t take much. A short touch. A laugh. But every time it happened, a connection reignited. Like a thousand tiny strings coming together to form a thick rope. A web of souls, tying her to them once more.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. Missed them.
And they could see it in her face, too.
“So, the third training session in one day?” she said, turning to Kix and Rex with a raised brow. “Was this your clever plan to distract me from brooding?”
Kix didn’t miss a beat. “Absolutely.”
Jesse nodded, throwing himself back onto the mat. “We took a vote and everything.”
“And I lost the coin toss,” Rex muttered, his tone dry as he shifted his weight.
Ahsoka arched a brow. “Didn’t know you boys had resorted to organized intervention.”
Rex’s expression softened. “You’ve had a lot dropped on you. Figured it wouldn’t hurt.”
The silence that followed was easy, not heavy. Comfortable.
Ahsoka let her gaze drift over the room again — the little scuffs on the walls, the spot where the floor squeaked, the place someone had carved 501st rules into the durasteel years ago.
She hadn’t been here in so long. Hadn’t realized how much of her still lived in these halls.
“How’s the rest of the 501st holding up?” she asked finally.
Kix didn’t hesitate. “Better with you back. You’d be surprised how much a familiar face helps.”
Her throat tightened. “What about… the 212th? You said General Kenobi’s off the grid?”
“Yeah.” Rex folded his arms. “Still haven’t heard anything new. Cody’s holding the line.”
“Mm.” Ahsoka murmured, “I thought I picked up on something between you two. He’s not talking to you much, is he?”
Rex hesitated, exchanging a glance with Jesse and Kix. The shift in the air was subtle — but definite.
“Not really.”
Ahsoka narrowed her eyes slightly. “Something going on?”
The lightness in the room dimmed, replaced by a quiet tension. Jesse sat upright. Kix rubbed the back of his neck.
Finally, Rex said, “You… remember Fives?”
Ahsoka blinked. “Of course I remember Fives. He’s on ARC assignment, right? Gotta say, we could’ve used him for this. I hoped I’d see him here.”
Rex nodded once. “Yeah. Ahsoka… Fives is dead.”
For a moment, the world stilled.
“…What?” she asked.
She knew, of course, that troopers died every day. That was war. But Fives…
A part of her wanted to curl up and howl at the hole that suddenly opened inside her. The rest of her knew she couldn’t. That there was something more here.
“What happened?”
Kix sat down beside Jesse. They shared a look. Hesitant. Like they weren’t sure if they should say anything.
“It happened pretty soon after you left the Order,” Kix began, voice quieter now.
Ahsoka leaned back against the console, arms crossed. “Tell me.”
So they did.
They told her about Tup. The sudden breakdown. The death of a Jedi without warning or cause. How Tup’s body had been rushed back to Kamino. How Fives followed. The tests. The anomalies.
The chip.
“That was the first time we heard about them,” Jesse said quietly. “Inhibitor chips. Kaminoans claimed they were for behavioral regulation. To make us more stable.”
“But Fives didn’t buy it.” Kix’s hands flexed as he spoke. “He said it was something else. Dangerous. That it had a purpose no one was telling us about.”
“He got one out,” Rex added. “Removed his own chip. Started digging. But by the time he reached Coruscant to tell someone… things went bad.”
Ahsoka’s brow furrowed. “What happened?”
“He was… agitated.” Kix looked away. “Said the Chancellor was behind it. That there was a plan. Something big. He tried to warn General Skywalker and Rex—”
“I was there.” Rex’s jaw tightened. “He was scared. Confused. But he wasn’t lying.”
“He died in Rex’s arms,” Jesse finished. “Shot by the Corries. Branded a traitor.”
Ahsoka felt a cold weight settle in her chest. “And the Jedi?”
“Brushed it off.” Bitterness crept into Rex’s voice. “Said the chip was a biological implant for aggression suppression. Claimed Fives had gone delusional under stress. That was that.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
Rex met her gaze. “No. I don’t.”
“None of us do,” Kix added. “There’s too much that doesn’t add up. Fives was a damn good trooper. He wouldn’t invent something like this.”
“And Cody?”
Rex’s lips pressed into a line. “Thinks we’re letting grief cloud our judgment. He follows the official story. Always has.”
“So that’s the tension I’m picking up.”
Rex didn’t answer.
Ahsoka exhaled slowly, trying to process the implications. “You said it’s a chip… is it still in all of you?”
Rex nodded.
“We’ve tried to dig deeper,” Jesse said. “Scans, medical data, structural testing. But we don’t have clearance. To remove one — even to examine it properly — we need authorization from a General. Or a Jedi.”
“And you haven’t had one,” she finished softly.
“General Skywalker didn’t want to hear anything more after Fives said ‘Chancellor,’” Kix muttered, anger simmering just below the surface.
She wanted to ask more, but a look from Rex told her — not now.
There had always been a line between Jedi and troopers — unspoken, unwritten, but there.
But she wasn’t a Jedi anymore. She would ask Rex later.
“Until now,” Kix said, hope flickering in his voice.
Ahsoka stared down at her hands. At the fingers that had wielded blades. Defended lives. Walked away from an Order that no longer felt like home.
She wasn’t a Jedi. Not by Council standards. Not officially.
But these men…
They trusted her.
They had taken her back.
And she had promised — she wouldn’t leave them again.
She looked up.
“I’m not sure what I am these days,” she said. “But if it means keeping you alive, I’ll sign whatever you need. We’ll find out what’s really going on.”
Rex’s nod was slow, firm. “Glad you’re here, Commander.”
She looked at him, pulled a face, and made the battle sign for “overwhelming force” — a gesture the troopers had long since repurposed into something else entirely.
It meant: complete shitshow.
“We’ll need to keep this quiet. I’m still authorized personnel — I think — so this isn’t technically a punishable action if I ask for it. But…”
“They could ground you.” Rex’s tone darkened.
“Or make me pay for the tests. Or stop us before we get anywhere.” She sighed. Shook her head. “Doesn’t change that it needs doing. Just best not to draw attention until we have something to show for it. Then we bring it to someone we trust.”
“Yeah,” Jesse added with a grin. “Now we just need to figure out how to pull a chip out of someone’s brain without killing them.”
Kix muttered, “Minor detail.”
Ahsoka couldn’t help it — she laughed. Really laughed this time.
But even as the sound echoed off the training walls, she knew the weight behind it hadn’t gone anywhere.
If anything, it had only just begun to settle in.
There was something dark at the heart of the Republic.
Something hidden.
Something waiting.
And it wasn’t just about the clones anymore.
It was about all of them.
Dray had seen a lot of death.
He’d been on the frontlines for a year before he joined the Coruscant Guard. He’d cleaned up after more battles than he could count. He’d pulled civilians out of rubble, wrapped plastoid around friends bleeding out, and stood in silence over fresh-made graves on worlds that didn’t even have names.
And that was before he even got here — and had to learn to deal with the violence, corruption, and vitriol of the denizens of the esteemed center of the Republic.
He thought he knew what destruction looked like.
But this—
This wasn’t war. Or even crime.
This was something else. It reminded him more of the results of a natural disaster than anything else. Like a volcano breaking out and blindly raining destruction and death on everything in the vicinity.
The stench hit first. Burnt flesh and ozone, mingled with rot and thick urban decay. Dray lifted his helmet’s rebreather settings and tried not to gag. Rubble lay in heaps where support beams used to be. Smoke slithered up from collapsed walls. Blood pooled in gutters like rusted rainwater.
What was left of the building in front of him looked like it had been stepped on by a giant.
They’d found the first bodies three levels up. Gang enforcers, all of them. Slashed open, crushed, some burnt straight through. One of them had been embedded into a ferrocrete wall like a grotesque mural. That was the first hour. The rest had been worse. A smoldering trail of devastation leading through the lower slums of Coruscant — barely more than two dozen levels above 1313.
“Sir,” came a voice from the far end of the comm line. “Local says the attack started at the pit-fight venue. One of the Gora Syndicate strongholds. She saw a man in black — said he looked like a Jedi, but…”
Dray turned toward the speaker — a fresh-faced corporal barely out of cadet training. The kid trailed off when he saw Dray’s expression.
“Yeah,” Dray muttered. “But.”
There were no clean lines here. No tactical strategy. Just devastation, pure and wild.
A child’s toy melted into the floor near a charred body.
A mother shielding her kid — both dead, broken under a collapsed ceiling.
Slavers had been here, no question. But victims, too.
Too many.
Dray knelt beside a smoldering body half-pinned beneath wreckage. Civilian. Mid-level retail worker, by the looks of the ID chip. Not a criminal. Not even gang-adjacent. Just someone who didn’t make enough to live in one of the nicer areas — like billions of others.
He closed their eyes.
Nothing more to do here.
He stood and made his way to a haggard woman leaning against the remains of a stairwell, her eyes wide and feverish, wrapped in a half-shredded shawl. Local. Witness.
“You saw it happen?” he asked gently.
She nodded, looked scared and spooked still.
“Tell me everything.”
Her voice was hoarse. “It was loud all of a sudden, so I hid. Then I saw it. Some of the brawlers from the arena a few levels up — they… normally I hide from them as well. But they were running… screaming, looking behind them like they were being hunted by monsters. Then suddenly, there he was. Murdering them as they ran away. And — he was laughing. Like a walking nightmare. There were five men at the entrance, and they just… flew apart. And he just kept killing. Killing and laughing until nothing moved anymore.
You know, they say he’s a Jedi. But they’re wrong. I’ve seen Jedi before.
He was not like them.
Jedi don’t kill like that.
Jedi don’t laugh like that.”
Dray's jaw tightened.
“He didn’t even draw his weapon at first. Just—crushed things. Reached out a hand and made a fist, like grabbing something. And then… there wasn’t a person anymore. Just squished red slime. Then when they came at him with blasters, he lit that red saber and—”
She flinched.
“He didn’t stop. He didn’t see us. Just kept going. Through walls, through bodies. Like none of us mattered.”
“Did he say anything?”
The woman shook her head. “No. But right before he left… he changed. He froze. Went completely still in the middle of the street like he was listening to something only he could hear.”
Her eyes glistened. Her voice lowered, and she swallowed, already trying to inch away, hide again.
“Then he smiled.”
Dray’s stomach turned.
“Like… like something good had just happened, you know? Like a kid that had just been promised a treat.
Then he turned around — and just… walked away.”
She was obviously not eager to find out what Skywalker’s “treat” might be.
He couldn’t say he blamed her.
He didn’t want to know either.
“Direction?”
She pointed downward.
Deeper.
Of course he did.
Dray tapped the update into his datapad, pulled up the casualty estimate, and felt bile rise in his throat.
Over eighty dead so far. At least two-thirds of them civilians.
Probably more.
Skywalker might have tried for criminals, but he sure as fuck did not care how many innocent people he killed in his rampage.
His comm crackled again.
“New order just came through,” came the voice of Sergeant Strobe. “Coruscant Guard is still ordered not to engage. We stand down unless there’s a direct threat. But now they’re sending experts directly. We are to wait for them before following the trail further.”
Dray didn’t answer at first.
He stared out at the ruin.
The cratered walls. The blood-streaked alley. The burned-in shadow of a body against the far wall.
Then he turned, slowly.
“…Good.”
He meant it.
Let the Jedi deal with their golden boy gone rogue. He wasn’t sure what scared him more — what Anakin Skywalker had become, or how many would want to follow him if he asked.
He switched off the comm, exhaled shakily, and whispered to himself through his helmet:
“Not our problem.”
It sounded a bit like a prayer even in his own ears, and he turned away.
Notes:
So, i'm officially moved and I love my new home. It's awesome. :)
Thx, cookies and flowers to everyone who commented despite my not being here a lot. You made me smile and write this new chapter in the middle of all the chaos.
Now, I'd love to know what you think about this as well.
I hope you have a great weekend.
Chapter 19
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Obi-Wan’s head swam, the air thick with a strange hum that vibrated through his very bones. He blinked, trying to steady himself as the dizzying effects of the teleportation faded.
The Department of Mysteries—this strange sanctum—unfolded around him with its dark stone and the bright humming of the Force. It felt eccentric, like an Alderaanian opera played on cymbals, whoopee cushions and electric guitars. Best not to look too closely at what was happening here, because the answer would definitely break his brain.
He wondered what that said about his strange little companion—or the fact that he himself was still following the man through this labyrinth of half-finished Force incidents in the making.
As it was, he found himself in a vast chamber. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve said he was standing on a platform in the middle of space.
A massive stone circle surrounded him, ancient standing stones etched with glowing runes pulsing in shades of blue and green. The runes thrummed in resonance with the Force, an eerie symphony of energy threading through the air. Above and around them, a vast translucent dome projected a swirling, Force-based model of a galaxy—probably this one, which only drove home the fact how far he’d truly come. The stars were vaguely familiar, yet alien, constellations shifting as if alive.
The floor beneath him, though solid, gave off the disconcerting sensation of drifting—as if the ground had ideas of its own about where “down” should be. The circle beneath his feet pulsed with light, and crystals embedded along the circumference shimmered with restrained power. All around him the Force was woven into layers and layers of patterns, whose meaning he could sense but not decipher.
Then Saul Croaker bustled forward, all momentum and barely restrained glee. The round-faced wizard’s eyes gleamed behind thick spectacles, and his deep-blue robes flared with each frenetic movement. He tugged the hem of his sleeve up just in time to avoid tripping over one of the glowing crystals.
“Right! Master Kenobi — excellent, you’re in place already. Do not move,” Saul chirped, waving a hand as he squinted at a brass instrument of wildly spinning dials. “Not because it’s dangerous — well, it is, but mostly because the geometry is very picky and I really don’t want to recalibrate again.”
Obi-Wan arched an eyebrow, folding his arms. “That’s... comforting.”
“I know, isn’t it?” Saul beamed, clearly missing the sarcasm. “Barely an 18% chance of fatal failure left there. Now. As to why this should work—”
A low snort came from the edge of the circle. Grankhill, the sharp-eyed goblin with a heavy brow ridge and arms folded like iron bars, muttered without looking up. “Because Croaker thinks it should.”
“Because Arithmancy proves it should,” Saul replied without missing a beat, his tone blithe. “There’s a difference.”
He turned back toward Obi-Wan, practically vibrating with anticipation. “You see, we didn’t bring you here. But the magical signature left on you—it’s unmistakable. Structured, ritual-based, leading beyond this universe. It’s the first true trans-universal trace we’ve seen here in several centuries actually. It’s all very exciting.“
From the far side of the room, someone groaned.
Saul nodded. “And very tragic, of course. Truly terrible.”
He still looked like a child in a toy store as he continued, with a marginally less enthused face. “And far too precise to be a fluke. You didn’t fall into this universe, Master Kenobi. You were called.”
A smooth voice cut through the air like a blade. “Or pulled,” Severus Snape said from the shadows, his dark robes whispering over the stone as he stepped closer. “Possibly through a hole someone tore in the fabric of reality while flailing.”
“Yes, yes, very dramatic,” Saul replied, flapping a hand in dismissal, “but the important part is this: the ritual that caught you didn’t just move you. It tethered you. You’re part of this universe now, metaphysically speaking.”
Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed slightly. “So you’re saying... I belong here?”
“Oh, no, no!” Saul flailed both hands this time. “Don’t worry. The multiverse does not care a lick where you belong, or where you are staying. If it did, you would already be dead.” He said it like it was supposed to reassure Obi-Wan.
In the shadows, the dark man pinched his nose. “Saul…” he started.
Saul Croaker, coming back from his rabbit trail, not understanding the issue at all, soldiered on nonetheless. “Right. It’s not an issue of survivability. It’s more that every universe has its own energy signature. Having imbibed that energy signature all your life, you are saturated with it. This has no effect on you staying here, by any means. But it left a sort of sympathetic trace. Like a magical echo. That’s our in. Because if we can read that echo, we can find your universe again. Not the whole thing, of course. That’d be—well, impossible. But we don’t need the whole thing. We just need... a thread.”
Grankhill’s voice came again, this time more serious, low and direct. “Which is where the danger comes in. Mentally or physically, you cannot travel a path with an unfixed end. You try to go home that way, you won’t go anywhere. You’ll be scattered. Atomized across space.“
Obi-Wan nodded. “So, no thread, no path,” he summarized.
A sound like distant thunder echoed through the chamber as Firenze, the solemn centaur, stepped into the light. His equine body moved with quiet grace over the glowing symbols etched into the floor. The starlight from the dome above gleamed faintly in his pale hair.
“Magic — your Force — reaches far,” Firenze intoned, his voice deep and even, resonant as if it had been carved from stone. “But even it requires harmony to move between places. Your presence is a ripple in a much larger current, Master Kenobi. We can trace it to its source. But we cannot create an anchor on the other side from here. We need the counterpoint to your harmony to do that for us. Both sides together we might succeed.”
Obi-Wan’s gaze dropped for a moment, the words anchoring something within him. “And that is where Hermione Granger comes in, I take it?” he asked quietly.
“Aha!” Saul practically bounced. “Yes. Her. She vanished due to that same ritual we think — a complicated mess of probability and unstable bindings, but the timing was... identical. Same energy class. Same harmonic decay. Too much of a coincidence given how rare trans-universal displacement is. Which means—she was pulled into your universe by the same event that pulled you into ours, so you and she are entangled. Not physically. Energetically. Soul-threaded, you might say, by the ritual that displaced you.”
Severus gave Saul a look like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “You are betting their lives on an assumption.”
“I’m relying on math, Severus. The Arithmancers agree — if both ends of the original ritual left traces, which we can assume given the traces on Master Kenobi here, then those traces can be drawn together. Like magnets. Or leyline harmonics. Or... well, you wouldn’t like my metaphors.”
“You want me to find her,” Obi-Wan said slowly, beginning to understand.
“No,” Saul replied with near-reverent excitement. “I want you to reach her. Just for a moment. That’s all we need. One spark. It will create a mental link — a communication bridge. If we can get a message across, confirm she’s there, alive, coherent — we can start building a proper pathway. Together. From both sides.”
“You want to create a permanent trans-universal mind link between two magicals, wizard? You do understand not everything that can be done, should be done? Do you have any idea of the possible ramifications? Even if it works, it could destroy their minds. It could make them crazy. At the very least there is the danger of it remaining permanently embedded in them; they might never be free of each other again,” the goblin said, sounding aggravated.
“So?” Saul asked, defending his plan. “Master Granger is a very accomplished witch and an Occlumens, with great mental discipline. Even if it comes to that, she can weather it. So can our friend here. Mental links are one of his specialties as I understand it, are they not?”
When nobody said anything, or stopped hesitating, he added challengingly, “Or does any of you have another idea as to how to undo this mess?”
He let that sit for a moment. When there was no answer or protest, he finally added, “I do not like the risk either. But we need to be able to actively work together, or neither of those two will go anywhere.”
“Once the thread exists,” Firenze suddenly spoke up, “it can be followed. Fate does not open doors twice without reason. That I can assure you of.”
Grankhill muttered, not convinced but somewhat resigned, “We’ve strengthened the stones. The magic should hold. If it breaks, it won’t be the stones’ fault.”
Obi-Wan let all of it sink in. It was wild, strange, impossible—and yet, the Force did not resist. It flowed, just beneath the surface of this strange theory, not rebuffing him, but guiding him.
“And if it works?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Then we’ll know she’s there,” Saul said. “We’ll have an active contact and we can work on it together. And from there... well, it’s a start.” It was brilliant, even if not really reassuring, yet Obi-wan certainly had no other idea either. For all that these people where horrendously underdeveloped in the technological sense, the way they worked with the Force seemed unparalleled outside of legends.
Severus took a single step forward, eyes gleaming with cold precision. His cloak rustled softly against the floor. “This is not a game, Master Kenobi. You are gambling your mind, and Master Granger’s mind as well if you get that far, on a theory no one else has ever tried. If you are wrong—”
“Then I stay here,” Obi-Wan said calmly. “Or worse.”
He looked up. His eyes were clear, steady.
“But if Saul is right — we’ll have hope. And we’ll have found your friend. I can’t ignore that.”
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then Saul rubbed his hands together with a gleeful snap. “Excellent. Right then — hold very still. No sudden movements, no interrupting chants, no touching the stones unless… you’d like to spend the next six hours disassembled.”
The runes flared in the floor beneath him, light spilling like water from the stone.
And Firenze, his voice steady as the stars, said the final words: “Let the thread be drawn, and fate reveal its other end.”
The chamber darkened.
Crystals embedded in the standing stones ignited one by one, flaring with a fierce inner light that licked the runes like fire. The array activated, a resonant pulse thrumming out across the circle as if the entire room had drawn breath — and now held it.
The ritual had begun.
The stones shivered underfoot. Not physically, but with a strange metaphysical pressure — as if reality itself were tightening. The very air crackled with raw, searing energy, alive and hungry, bending the edges of existence around it.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes.
The Force surged through him like a current unleashed. For one suspended instant, he was aware of everything — the runes’ song climbing in pitch, the stones vibrating like struck bells, a thousand tangled echoes humming just beneath the surface of his mind.
Then the floor vanished.
Not truly, but his senses dissolved, swallowed whole by the roar of the ritual’s power. The circle dropped away. Light fractured around him. Sound bent. It was as if his consciousness had been torn loose from his body, from gravity, from thought itself — hurled into the great, whirling stream of the Force with no anchor and no return.
Time lost all meaning.
The Force, ever a steady presence in his life, warped into something deeper — older, vaster. Not a hum, but a cacophony. Whispers, echoes, memories not his own. Half-formed images swirled past: dying stars, shattered temples, the gleam of a lightsaber swallowed by dust.
Force and magic beyond any understanding were suddenly at the tips of his tongue — and gone again in an instant. Energy beyond comprehension pulsed through him, brushing his mind with the wings of an ancient thing.
He drifted.
Suspended in a liminal space, untethered from body or world. Reality and dream folded together, overlapping like pages half-turned. Shapes flickered at the edges of his perception — fragments of lives, shadows of forgotten moments, doors that had already closed. But through it all, something tugged. A thread. Faint, but insistent.
The mists parted.
Below him sprawled a graveyard of ships, half-sunken into the rust-choked depths of Coruscant’s undercity. The wreckage stretched endlessly — broken hulls, shattered spires, the skeletal remains of starships swallowed by time. The air here was damp, heavy with corrosion and silence. The dim, flickering lights of the lower levels had long since lost even the faintest battle against this place.
His vision focused.
Among the tangled corpses of vessels, a single shape shimmered — half-there, half-not. Sleek, angular. Familiar.
The Harbinger.
Obi-Wan’s breath hitched. He recognized the curved nacelles, the layered plating — unmistakable. An ancient Miralukan freighter, long extinct as a class, out of service for millennia. But its design had been revolutionary in its time — extraordinary, Anakin had called it when he was twelve.
It had been the only piece of history the boy had ever shown genuine interest in. History of spaceflight. Obi-Wan remembered watching him pore over this ship class specifically. He had treated the schematics, half-decayed records, and reconstructed blueprints like holy texts. Anakin had memorized every known deck layout and engine spec, tracing its sleek lines with something like reverence. Insisting that this was special.
And now, impossibly, there it was.
Its ghostly silhouette flickered in and out of visibility, as if struggling to exist across the veil of time and space. Around it, broken ruins of other vessels drifted — silent, lifeless. But the Harbinger was moving.
Not drifting — assembling. Or rather, transforming. Somehow.
Metal floated around in vast, graceful arcs. Massive hull plates, scorched beams, old pylons — all suspended in the air, orbiting slowly like moons. Pieces rearranged themselves with precision, guided by an invisible force.
And at the center of it all stood a figure.
Small. Fierce. Her hair wild, her eyes burning bright with focus and power. Hermione Granger. He’d found her.
But she wasn’t simply standing among the wreckage — she was shaping it.
The Force blazed around her, crackling like lightning in the storm of her will. Every motion of her hand sent girders spinning into alignment, wires coiling through air, plating sealing with elegant inevitability into something new.
Obi-Wan didn’t know what she was building — but the Force told him it mattered.
She turned.
Her gaze cut through the storm of floating metal, through the haze and distance — and landed on him.
Not at the space he occupied, but at him. As though she sensed the tether pulling tight between their two worlds — a cord of thought, of fate, of shared consequence.
She saw him.
And then he moved — not walked, not drifted, but was drawn toward her by the Force itself. The graveyard of ships blurred around him, edges dissolving like smoke. Time flexed. Distance folded.
Consequence be damned. There was no more room for doubt.
Every step closer sharpened the vision. The air thickened with presence. The humming in his chest — not noise, but power — grew louder with each breath. The deeper he moved into the illusion, the more real it became, until the rusted wreckage underfoot felt solid, and the flickering shadows around them whispered with substance.
She didn’t move. She didn’t need to.
When he reached her, their hands rose at the same instant — his steady, hers certain. Fingers brushed.
And the world snapped into place.
A rush of clarity poured through the connection — raw, overwhelming, right. The Force surged, not as a wave but as a truth, sudden and absolute. Her presence flared within it, sharp and brilliant and utterly her.
Not a vision. Not a dream.
A link.
He saw everything in that instant — not just her, but with her. And for a heartbeat, he was there with her. Truly and fully.
And beside her — another figure. Familiar, half-grinning, unexpected.
Quinlan Vos.
A little bruised, a little unkempt, but alive. Whole. His eyes widened in recognition, and then disbelief.
“Obes?” Quinlan’s voice cracked across the space, stunned and ragged. “Is that—? No kriffing way—”
But there was no time. No breath.
The bond vibrated with too much power, too much distance, too many laws of reality stretched too thin. A sudden pressure built behind Obi-Wan’s eyes — an impossible strain — and then it shattered.
The world broke.
Pain exploded across his consciousness as the tether recoiled. The Force ripped backward, tearing him from the ship graveyard, from the Harbinger, from Quinlan and Hermione and the thin, shining thread that bound them.
He was falling.
Falling—
And then—
He slammed back into his body with brutal force.
The stone floor beneath him was cold and real and merciless. His entire form convulsed once, and he collapsed sideways, gasping for air as if he’d surfaced from deep water. The ritual circle still burned faintly behind his closed eyelids, and the dizzying hum of the Force echoed in his ears.
But even through the pain, he felt it.
A new thread. Fragile, hidden, shielded — but there. Wrapped in thought. Wrapped in will. More active and stronger than any bond he had ever had.
Hermione Granger.
He knew her now. Her Force-signature was etched into his mind like a star map.
And that meant the connection was real.
Footsteps thundered nearby. Robes swept the stone. Saul’s voice rose first, high and frantic, followed quickly by Severus’s cooler tone. Hands reached for him.
Obi-Wan barely registered them.
He exhaled once, slow and full of aching clarity.
Then the dark came, soft and inevitable.
He let it take him.
Notes:
So the next chapter... what do you think?
And how do you feel about Obi-wan back-seat driving the rescue of his Order from the sanctity of his seaside retreat, with the force of sarcastic commentary? (via trans universal mind link...)
Chapter 20
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Commander Fox stood at rigid attention, armored fingers locked behind his back. The warmth of the high-end lighting and plush silence of the Chancellor’s private chamber might as well have been on another planet. With how far removed it was from the hard practicality of the duracrete floors at Guard headquarters — and from the squalor and merciless devastation of the lower levels — the velvet drapes and perfumed air felt almost obscene. A sign of how little care these so-called leaders had for the people. How far they were from everyday life. Today was no different.
To his left, Senator Amidala paced softly in her ornate silk, voice low, pressing the Chancellor with concern — concern for General Skywalker. And she was normally the voice of reason, standing for justice, compassion, and freedom. The good of the people before everything else. Obviously, those lofty goals only held until it concerned her own life.
“…he’s been under unimaginable pressure,” she said, fingers twisting together. “Please, there must be something that can be done to help him.”
Palpatine, seated in the wide chair that dominated the room, wore the patient expression of a weary father.
“He is a good young man, Padmé. Idealistic. Passionate. This war has taken a toll on all of us — and for him, the burden has been extraordinary.”
Commander Fox said nothing. But his teeth ground behind the helmet.
Also present were three Jedi Masters — Mace Windu, Ki-Adi-Mundi, and Grand Master Yoda. Their silence was iron-bound, the kind that needed no dramatics. Fox appreciated that.
At the rear of the room, Tukuma Desante, the Chancellor’s personal PR specialist, stood with two aides. All datapads, sharp clothing, and public messaging. Fox had already guessed why they were here.
Palpatine folded his hands.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Jedi will have their say, of course. But I think we must all remember — this situation is not yet confirmed to be as dire as some suggest. According to initial reports, General Skywalker was engaging the criminal underworld—”
Windu cut in, sharp. “He went AWOL. Defied a direct order.”
Fox stepped forward at that. He inclined his head slightly to the other occupants of the room — a greeting and a show of respect, all at once.
All the respect given to the positions these people occupied. None of it personal.
“Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard, reporting.”
Palpatine gestured kindly. “Please, Commander. What do we know?”
Fox’s voice was clipped and steady. Professional. Nothing more.
“Following the disappearance of High General Kenobi, General Skywalker was denied the request to lead the search. That assignment was given to Master Quinlan Vos.”
The group nodded. This, everyone knew.
“Shortly after, General Skywalker left his assigned post without authorization. He entered the lower levels. We located his position and dispatched a five-man non-combat squad to deliver the Council’s orders for Skywalker to return to the Temple and present himself at once. Their directive was to act as an escort only.”
Fox let that land.
“General Skywalker refused to comply. When the Guard clarified that this was a direct order, he responded with violence. Four troopers were critically injured. One was killed on impact.”
Padmé gasped. But said nothing.
Fox continued.
“General Skywalker then continued deeper into the undercity. Down to Level 1324. There, he caused an incident resulting in the death of numerous civilians and the destruction of several buildings and other private property.”
Palpatine raised a placid brow and intercepted.
“Commander, we are in a war. Aggressive action against known criminals isn’t new. Do we know who Skywalker was targeting?”
“He did not target,” Fox replied, flat. “He attacked. Without warning, provocation, or discernible cause. Eighty-six civilians are confirmed dead.”
Desante looked up from her datapad, blinking. Even she hadn’t known that number.
Palpatine leaned back in his chair, face thoughtful — but not troubled.
“How many of these individuals had criminal records?”
Fox didn’t look at him.
“Thirty-eight. Mostly minor. Non-violent. The rest were bystanders. Unrelated civilians. Seven minors. Four burned in structural collapse. Three killed by debris.”
Silence followed.
Palpatine steepled his fingers. “I see. This is deeply unfortunate. However… if these individuals were part of the organized crime syndicates—”
“They weren’t,” Windu said coldly.
Palpatine frowned.
“Still, Anakin Skywalker has been essential to our success in this war. His victories across the Mid Rim alone have raised morale sector-wide. We must consider the bigger picture.”
He turned slightly toward Desante.
“The public must not lose faith in the Jedi… or our war heroes.”
Fox swallowed hard. There it was.
“Commander,” Windu said. “Continue.”
Fox gave the rest.
“General Skywalker fled into the underlevels. Jedi agents have been dispatched to retrieve him. Additional Jedi Generals have been delayed from redeploying to the front due to the severity of this crisis. In the meantime, civilian casualties continue to accrue. Coruscant law enforcement has not been involved further, per Council instruction.”
He stopped. Palpatine didn’t look pleased.
Fox didn’t care. There would be consequences, but there always were. And he was so tired. If Palpatine finally decided to go for his head, he might as well make it count.
“The incident was entered into formal record under wartime regulation 881-C. Trooper deaths were filed as government property destruction. Injuries logged as resource damage.”
The Jedi winced at that last point. Nobody said anything.
After a moment, Padmé Amidala — pale now, lips trembling — finally spoke again.
“Is there… any chance we’re wrong about this? Anakin… he wouldn’t—” her voice cracked, “he’s not capable of just—murdering civilians.”
Fox didn’t respond.
Windu did. “Anybody can, given the right circumstances.”
Desante stepped forward, smooth as smoke.
“Let’s not forget public perception. General Skywalker is seen as a symbol of Republic strength. The Hero With No Fear.It’s not just morale. It’s recruitment, planetary cooperation—”
Palpatine raised a hand. “Thank you, Ms. Desante.”
He stood slowly, hands clasped in front of him, and offered his most serene expression.
“The Jedi may proceed. If it is your judgment that General Skywalker must be retrieved and… tried by your laws, then I will not stand in the way.”
He looked solemn now. Thoughtful. A performance so polished it almost convinced Fox.
Everyone in the room gave nods — Amidala’s troubled, the Jedi indiscernible. All of them respectful.
Fox wanted to vomit.
The room was soft, lit by Nabooan lamps, draped in fine cloth and gentle perfumes. Senator Amidala had asked for a meeting. Commander Fox stood at ease, helmet still on, posture perfectly controlled.
Senator Amidala looked like a shadow of herself.
Her eyes were bloodshot. The lines around her mouth were set like stone. Still, she tried.
“Permission to speak openly?”
“Commander… I know what he did. I’m not asking you to forgive it.”
Fox said nothing. She had not given him permission.
“I just want to understand… is there a way to alleviate some of it? A way to help him — not to excuse, but—something.”
She stepped closer. Her voice dropped.
“He’s not well.”
He remained silent as she stared at him pleadingly, then raised an eyebrow. She closed her eyes, pained.
“Yes, of course you can speak freely, Commander.”
Fox gathered himself and drew a deep breath, trying to stay calm. To remind himself this was the closest thing he had to an ally in the Galactic Senate.
Fox exhaled. “You knew some of the men he hurt.”
Her hands clenched. Slowly, he continued.
“CT-8813. Callix. Impaled on a pole. His organs and spine were basically paste. But the pole kept his arteries closed until we got there. He was awake while we tried to cut him free. He knew what was happening.”
Her lips parted in shock. “Callix…?”
“CT-5559. Jek. Still alive. But only because machines are breathing for him. He’s gone. TBI.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
“CT-6773 and CT-1169 — they were too young to have chosen names yet. Both critical. Internal damage. They’re not getting better. Droids gave them two days. Maybe less. You hadn’t met them yet — they got here from Kamino only two weeks ago. Neither of them was nine years old yet. As shiny as they come. Should’ve still been cadets for at least a year or two. They were good though. Motivated. Fast learners. They could’ve done normal duty. But we wanted to give them a fair shot, or as much of it as possible. So we only let them do safe duties to start with.
Safe — like delivering a message to a Jedi.”
A hand went to her mouth.
“And CT-4490, Boomer. He’s stabilized. But internal bleeding is worsening. He might not make it either. If he does wake up, it’ll be to his squad — his closest family — dying around him.”
Padmé sat, hard, hand splayed on her stomach. Her face was chalk-white.
“They liked you,” Fox said, quieter. “You remembered their names. Joked with them.” He hesitated. „We are not people to this republic, but you were always good at pretending that you think we are. So, I suggest you pretend now.“
She did not say anything. Fox gave a shallow nod and turned toward the door. He certainly had not done himself any favors today, but he had thought of her as nearly a friend. Someone he could rely on to see his brothers as people and fight for them in the snake-pit that was the senate.
At the threshold, her voice came faintly. “Commander.”
He paused, turned his head slightly.
“I’m sorry.”
Fox held still a moment longer. Then: “So am I.”
And then he walked out.
The chamber was quieter than it had been in weeks, though the air remained tense — stretched taut with the weight of decisions already made, and those yet to come.
Master Windu stood near the central table, arms folded, his gaze fixed on a point on the floor that wasn’t really there. Master Yoda sat silently in his place, eyes closed, as if listening to something only he could hear. Ki-Adi-Mundi paced once across the polished floor, then turned sharply to face the others.
“This cannot continue,” Ki-Adi said. “We were right to insist on acting quickly. The Chancellor’s attempts to delay — to shield Skywalker behind rhetoric and propaganda — are not acceptable.”
“He plays a dangerous game,” Mace replied, voice low and edged. “One we’re done entertaining. The search is ongoing, and it will not stop because he’s afraid of the headlines.”
Yoda opened his eyes slowly. “Heed the public face, the Chancellor must. But blind, he has become — to the threat within.”
“Skywalker is no longer a concern of state,” Plo Koon added via holocomm, his calm voice carrying weight. “As a Jedi, he is our responsibility. And we bear a share of responsibility for his actions. He will not stop. If he’s fallen this far into the dark side, then he can’t. He’ll keep going until he gets what he wants — or until there are none left to kill.”
Ki-Adi’s brow furrowed. “He has too much power. Too little balance. And he never had respect for the way things are done.”
“We are already searching,” Mace reminded them, though his tone betrayed urgency. “The shadows are in motion. We’ve dispatched those who know how to move unseen. The Coruscant Guard is following his trail at a safe distance. It’s only a matter of time now. And the Temple Guard stands ready to bring him in. I will join them. Skywalker is dangerous — but Vapaad was developed to counter those who fall to the dark side.”
“The current in the Force grows clearer,” Yoda said. “Faint, it was, when first it appeared in the wake of young Obi-Wan’s disappearance. Now stronger. Sharper. Still strange. Unfamiliar — but Light, it is. Whatever is coming, Jedi it is not, but pivotal, yes. If he finds it first… much I fear.”
Ki-Adi crossed his arms. “That current led Vos down into the depths below the undercity. The Force guides him — and he believes he found it, though contact with him has been spotty. He’s too deep down for a vid-link or proper report. It’s not Kenobi, and it’s not fully explained, but whatever he found, he’s certain it’s what the Force was drawing him toward. He’ll return as soon as he can.”
“As soon as he can?” Mace frowned, eyes narrowing at Ki-Adi.
Ki-Adi Mundi pursed his lips, his expression twisting like he’d just tasted something sour. Quinlan Vos was another Jedi who had little patience for tradition or logic.
“It seems he crossed the threshold into the Underworld for some reason. And there are injured.”
He let that sit for a moment.
“If he’s still focused on this,” Mace said slowly, “have you warned him about Skywalker? He needs to know. Anakin is loose in the Undercity — and he’s looking for the same thing. He wasn’t happy when someone else was sent. He’ll be even less happy when Master Vos returns — without results, and without Obi-Wan. Lost as he is, he might take his temper out on Master Vos. And for all his strength, Quinlan is no duelist — nor would he fight with the necessary force against the Padawan of his creche-mate. One he helped raise.”
Ki-Adi nodded grimly. “None of us would — not without knowing what Anakin’s already done. I’ll go to him. If Quinlan’s found something, I’ll help. If it’s nothing, we’ll add our strength to the search for Skywalker. I can fill him in, and together we’ll manage. Fox and his Guard will come with me. I don’t love the politics, but I trust his discipline.”
“And take some of the Temple Guards with you as well,” Mace added. “They’ve fought Darksiders before. It’s part of their training — to protect the Temple and withstand those who fall.”
Ki-Adi’s expression tightened. “I will.”
Yoda exhaled slowly. “Caution, yes. Like this, none of us do. But prepare for darkness… we must.”
Mace turned toward Yoda. “What about the Temple?”
“Stay, I will,” the Grand Master said without hesitation. “Vulnerable, it has become. Guard-thin, it is. But the Battlemaster and I — and those who remain — will defend it. Fall, the Temple will not.”
“There’s pressure building,” Mace muttered, rubbing at his brow. “My shatterpoint sense is nearly useless. Too many fracture lines. All converging.”
“Soon, a break,” Yoda agreed quietly. “A fulcrum point in the Force. Coming, it is.”
“Then we don’t have time to waste,” Mace said. He looked to the others. “I’m joining the next wave of the search. Joclad Danva is ready again. He’ll come with me. We’ll move quickly — no high-profile sweep, just enough to strike if necessary.”
“Skywalker is still a Jedi,” Plo Koon said. “If there’s any way… we must try to bring him back to the light.”
Silence fell for a breath. There was doubt in it. But in the end, Plo was right. Anakin Skywalker was one of their own. They would help him if they could — even if justice had to follow.
Then Ki-Adi said, almost reluctantly, “And what of this other current?”
He continued before anyone could answer.
“I don’t like it. Strange Force manifestations, non-Jedi anomalies — it’s never anything good. At best, it’s misguided. At worst, dangerous.”
Yoda’s ears twitched. “Dangerous, sometimes yes. But… not evil. Big, the galaxy is. Much dwells in it. A different point of view can add to the whole. Especially in times of great upheaval, when our sight is hindered.”
Mace gave a sharp nod. “We don’t dismiss it. But we don’t rely on it either. Right now, it’s not the problem. We don’t even know what it is. And Vos — Vos has decades as a Master Shadow. If it were harmful, he wouldn’t be bringing it with him.”
He paused.
“I’m more concerned about the need to cross into the Underworld. You all know what’s down there. Be careful.”
Ki-Adi gave a reluctant nod.
“I’ll trail Vos’s path as far as possible. Try to make contact before descending myself.”
“No matter the outcome,” Yoda said softly, “changed, all will be.”
Notes:
I have to say, this chapter is no favorite of mine, it fought me... a lot. Hence why it's so late. I'm still not happy, but it was either posting this now, or giving up on this for the next five years....
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