Chapter Text
Ahsoka woke up stiff and stinky, and was grateful to realize there was a small refresher she could scrub off in. By the time she'd redressed and poked her head out into the hall, Senator Organa was still, apparently, in the communication room, reviewing the data that she'd brought.
He was sitting back in a chair, watching a screen flicker in front of him when Ahsoka entered, his forefingers pressed to his lips, his brows drawn together. It reminded her a lot of Master Obi-Wan.
"Senator?" she said quietly.
He looked up and smiled. "You're looking better for your rest."
"I feel better too," Ahsoka said, wondering how he would respond to the teasing.
Kindly, she noticed. He was still polite, but not so stiff he couldn't grin at her joke. It made him relax again too. Which might not be good.
"I apologize for not waiting for you," he said, "but I contacted Master Kenobi while you were sleeping. Just to let him know you'd arrived. I told him we'd call again before you left, so he would know when to expect you. He said he sent you coordinates for a rendezvous point."
Checking her comm Ahsoka noticed she did have one coded message from her master. Well, make that dozens of messages from a lot of people and a most recent coded message from Master Obi-Wan. She was getting messages again. She should have thought to check when she was flying over. Some of them had probably finally gotten through while she was in hyperspace. She could tell people she was alive. She could—
"Was that alright?" Senator Organa asked, bringing Ahsoka back to the moment.
"Yeah. I mean, yes. Of course. Thank you for notifying him. I…maybe forgot to even think about it."
"You've been in a dead zone for quite a while. It's no surprise."
No, but it was annoying. She needed a distraction.
"What is it?" she asked, coming over and looking at the screen he'd been studying. It was schematics of some sort, that much she could tell. It looked like a command deck.
"Baffling," Senator Organa said, the frown coming back between his eyes. "It looks like a space station. But the scale is…”
When he seemed too distracted to finish, Ahsoka asked, "Too tiny?"
"Too large," he corrected. "I can't say something like this would be impossible to build, but it would be incredibly difficult, especially with the limited resources the Confederacy currently has. And with how many of them are being used to manufacture droids. Something like this just isn't feasible, but they've plotted it out in great detail, like it's in the final stages of planning."
Ahsoka squinted at the room. It didn't seem that large based on the numbers she was looking at, but then it obviously wasn't the full schematic. "How big?"
"Massive," Senator Organa said. "At least a hundred times larger than our flagship star destroyers."
Ahsoka blinked. "That’s…not even useful. Why?"
"I don't know. The blueprints are incomplete, and I haven't had time to read through all of the development notes. But the firepower…”
"The manpower," Ahsoka muttered. "Even if we shoved the whole GAR in there, would that be enough to man it?"
"That's less of an issue for the Confederacy, given they can just keep making more droids. But you're right. That's still an incredible number of units. After having used enough supplies to build the station itself. And to what benefit? Why would you need something that big?"
"I don't know," Ahsoka said, watching as the senator shifted the view out, until they were looking at a simple sphere. It didn't look important or significant like this. "But I bet Leia does."
Senator Organa's attention snapped to her. "She does?"
"I think so," Ahsoka hedged. "I know she's the one who insisted on getting these off Naboo. And I think…” Could she say this? "I think she was part of a special mission to get them on Geonosis. But An—General Skywalker doesn't really talk about it."
Senator Organa was staring at the plans again, more ominously than before. "If Leia Skywalker knows what—“
Ahsoka flinched as an alarm blared and red lights started flashing. An aide ran into the room, yelling, "Confederacy ships incoming. At least a dozen!"
"Standard fighters or heavy?" Senator Organa asked, shifting so quickly from placid to intense Ahsoka almost thought he was a different person.
"Carriers," the aide gasped, looking between them. "They have fighter squadrons."
Ahsoka could smell the panic from the aide, could feel Senator Organa's worry in the Force. He looked at her, and she could almost see his mind spinning. He must have come to some decision because he spun around, removing the data crystal from the terminal he'd been using and pressing it into her hand. "Go. Now. Don't fight, get as far away as you can as fast as you can. Let us distract them."
The ship shook as the shields took a hit from what had to be a full battleship.
A dozen.
Had they followed her? Had they caught her jump coordinates? Had she brought them here?
"Go," Senator Organa repeated, starting to drag her to the door. "We've outrun pursuers before. But those plans—“
She'd left Anakin and Padmé and Rex to get them out. She couldn't stay now. "Do you have a copy?"
"Yes," he said. "I was going to try and send it—It doesn’t matter. Get to Master Kenobi. Tell him what happened."
They were half running down the hall. People were moving with purpose around them, another aide following the Senator, making noises about getting him to his quarters for safety.
Ahsoka broke into a sprint when they reached the docking bay, leaping onto her ship and slipping inside, pressing buttons before she was completely in her seat. She looked up, saw the Senator raise his hand to her. His mouth moved and she couldn't quite hear, but it looked familiar, and could have been, "May the Force be with you."
Then he was being dragged away and the hatch was opening. Ahsoka burst through the moment it was just wide enough for her ship to fit, knowing exposing their interior was the most dangerous part of this plan.
She fell into space, punching coordinates as quickly as she could, before the fighters noticed her.
She wasn't as lucky this time. She got hit twice trying to get away from a squadron that followed her. No damage to her hyperdrive, but her whole body was trembling and she kept counting the battleships, wishing the number was wrong. Senator Organa was back there, his whole ship. It was so many people and they'd fed her and given her a bed and—
The console signaled she was jump ready, Ahsoka went to slam the button, and there was an explosion near the front of her ship. She had a half second to feel herself thrown forward, to realize she’d been moving so fast she hadn’t strapped in, before everything went dark.
Obi-Wan had contacted Leia several hours ago to let her know he'd heard from Senator Organa. Who had also contacted her, just a brief message, saying he'd picked up a special package. It had come late enough that Leia hadn't slept, but early enough that she'd been able to mostly focus on her work and get a few things done. There was a meeting this morning for the Loyalist Committee, at least those that were still in attendance on Coruscant, and she'd promised Jar Jar she'd go with him.
"I'm not being afraid of them," he'd explained. "But Padmé always be catching the things I not be seeing right away."
And, he'd informed her, she had a mind much like Padmé's. Which was a generous compliment, if an untrue one. Leia was pretty sure Padmé's mind was much more reasonable and intact than Leia's. And also had fewer people in it.
Master Gallia was present, because for some reason this emergency meeting also involved the Jedi Order, which told Leia it was probably about trying to stop the court case from going forward. There hadn't been much progress since the case had been brought, but it was actually going before the Supreme Court this next session. "To show how seriously we're taking the matter," Chancellor Palpatine had said, even though he shouldn't have had any say in what the Court was doing. At all.
Leia had years of practice gritting her teeth and not looking like it, so she had taken that information as well as she could. But this wasn't ideal. At all.
Master Gallia had pulled Leia back before they entered the Chancellor's office and said, very softly, "We had a communication from Master Kenobi this morning, with an update on Senator Organa's progress. It sounds like a positive report, and that he might be back soon, with good news."
"That's wonderful," Leia had said, instead of admitting that she'd already gotten essentially the same message. Twice.
Master Gallia must have realized it anyway, because she had grinned before letting Leia catch up to Jar Jar.
Now they were twenty minutes into Jar Jar nodding graciously as the Chancellor opined on Naboo having taken such drastic steps, against his express recommendation, when someone popped into the room and waved Mas Ameda out. This interrupted the tirade only for a second, giving Jar Jar just a moment to look forlornly at Leia, and for her to grimace an apology at him, before the Chancellor turned back to the matter at hand and began reciting his extensive personal history with Padmé and Jar Jar.
It was clear why the Loyalists were there. This was an act of betrayal, something Palpatine had never imagined Padmé capable of, and he was using Naboo as an example to warn the others.
It wasn't clear how well it was working. Jar Jar had been coached years ago to silently nod at most things, a gesture which most of the Senate knew now was meaningless. That didn't seem to be slowing Palpatine down at all, though. He just kept going, and Leia wished she could be anywhere else. Even in Jar Jar's shoes. At least then she could take control of the conversation and cut this off. She caught Senator Darsana's eye at one point and he flicked his fingers in angry, bored dismissal. She drew her thumb discreetly from her navel to her hip, suggesting she could eviscerate herself with more pleasure. She almost broke his composure with that one.
"I just don't understand why she feels the need to put the Senate in this precarious position when we're at war. We need to show a united front, and even the hint of divided loyalties—“
Mas Ameda swooped back into the room, cutting off the asinine suggestion that Padmé was considering turning traitor to the Republic, and offering almost breathlessly, "We received an emergency call from the Tantive III almost twenty minutes ago. They were under attack by Separatist forces. Ten minutes after the call arrived, before we could establish a connection, the call was cut off."
It took Leia a moment to reach the implications of that. To realize he meant the call hadn't been manually ended, the signal had simply stopped sending. Meaning the sending station had been damaged. Had been damaged so badly—
Something lurched in Leia's mind, her breaths coming in awkward, uneven hitches that were painful to keep silent.
(nonotagainneveragainneveragainneveragain)
"Do we have anyone near the sector?" Palpatine asked, standing. "Anyone to confirm—“
"A scout," Mas Ameda said. "They couldn't stay to scan for lifeforms. There was too much enemy activity. But they provided visual confirmation. The Tantive III had a major hull breach. The ship was dark.”
Someone was asking about deeper scans, but the words weren't quite registering in Leia's brain. She was flailing, reaching for the fledgling connection she had to the Senator, that faint light she had sensed in her heart at one point, that pinprick of hope.
She found only darkness. A void.
(Green then fire then nothing—)
Her vision was darkness, her lungs were burning, straining to find room to breathe in her chest as the fire of rage and agony cascaded over her. (neveragainneveragainneveragain) She could feel life around her, flinching back from her as that rage licked out, looked for a single outlet—
Darsana. Master Gallia. Jar Jar.
Leia couldn't hurt them. No matter how much she was burning, burning (someone was screaming, was that her heart, was her heart screaming again, beating a flood of lava into her chest), she couldn't, she just couldn’t.
She fell. Fell into the darkness, grabbing the fire and wrapping it around her, like a burning blanket, smothering her from within.
The droids just kept coming. Jango had almost made it past the ships twice, but had failed. If he could just land, Anakin could throw him somewhere else on the planet, make him deal with the armies that were pushing forward, trying to reach herds and farmland and smaller cities and—
"They just don't know when to quit," Rex complained. "Can't they tell when they're already beaten?"
"Not built that smart," Anakin smiled as best he could, trying to decide if he should call Artoo. He might do better in the air. He might do better in space. Even just him and a few units might be enough to clear a path and let Jango and his forces through, and then Anakin might be able to breathe—
Rex was saying something else, but Anakin couldn't hear it. There was a rushing in his ears, like a gale (like a scream), and his chest felt like it was on fire, burning him from the inside out. He pressed a hand to his heart, almost certain he'd been shot. But then the fire was just gone, gone like it had never been, gone like it was behind a wall, like it was slipping away, hiding. Hiding like—
"Leia," he said, looking to the sky, hearing his voice crack. Reaching in the Force and getting nothing in return. No response, no sense of her at all. "Leia?"
"Sir," he heard Rex say, felt someone tug his shoulder. But he was looking to the sky. Reaching, reaching, reaching. Out and in, searching for that mind, that heart that had become so familiar, it was almost a part of him. LeiaLeiaLeia…
Someone was shoving him down, down and against something. There was someone right in front of him, grabbing his face. But he couldn't answer them. That had been Leia. That had been Leia screaming, burning, so hot and so bright Anakin had felt it far, far away. So far he shouldn't have felt it at all.
And then he hadn't.
It could mean anything. Leia was hiding. Always, always hiding. She could just be hiding now. Hiding with the burning and the screaming and the painpainpain…
He had to go. He had to get to her. She needed him. She needed him and these…things were in the way and he’d promised he’d go to her.
He reached up, up and out, up to the things floating the darkness above him. Shoved until they crashed into each other, blinking and blipping until they weren't in the way anymore and Anakin could reach further, up, up beyond the stars, out and through, reachingreachingreaching…
Nothing. Nothing anywhere. He couldn't find her, couldn't find Leia. There was buzz, buzz all around him and people dying and it was too noisy, didn't they know he had to reach her?
He pressed and pressed, pushing that buzzing noise until it started crunching, until it stopped buzzing, until—
—everything went black.