Epilogue
The world of Lothal was awe inspiring in its massive prairies and warm breezes. Communication towers relayed information across its surface, and as Ahsoka stepped off the star-fighter, she couldn't help but sigh and roll her eyes. It was a recently colonized world -easing the pressure further on the refugee from the war. It was mind-boggling how the after-effects of the war that had happened two years prior could still be visible in those modern days.
Mister Fluffles meowed from her feet, and began to walk forward with purpose and poise. Ahsoka rolled her eyes and followed him. Around his neck, the Padawan braid she used to carry jingled softly -she was a Knight now, had been for a year circa. And while she enjoyed narrating stories to the initiates at the temple, she also had to 'stretch her legs' across the galaxy. She highly preferred it to sticking around with a Padawan and having to look after them. She'd probably change her mind in a few years -not likely, but possible all the same- and until then, she had the freedom to explore, and she was going to make the most out of it.
Mister Fluffles made a turn left, and then one right, making Ahsoka leave the main roads for the narrow ones made of beaten dirt and ill-maintained. She began to hum as she came to a halt in front of a non-descriptive house, which seemed capable of blending perfectly with its surroundings.
Mister Fluffles passed through the door without a care in the world, and Ahsoka 'tsked' before ringing the bell.
The door slid open as a woman with purple eyes and dark hair looked at her in surprise, clearly not expecting a visitor such as hers.
"Yes?" the woman said.
"I am Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano," she said. "Are you Mira Bridger?"
"Oh, yes-I-are you here for my husband? I'm currently-" there was a loud giggle from inside the room, which made the woman turn and look back at what was causing it. She balked the next moment, and looked at Ahsoka next.
"Your son is strong in the Force," Ahsoka Tano remarked. "I was sent here to bring him to the Jedi Temple for training."
The woman looked back inside, at whatever was causing the giggling sound Ahsoka heard, and then looked at the Togruta with a sad expression. "Is it really necessary?" she asked, her voice soft.
"It is the law," Ahsoka replied with an awkward smile. It never got easy, 'taking force-sensitive children'. It was for their own good -this was true, because you never knew when the 'bout of anger' might turn into a lightning bolt to the chest of a friend, or a force push that broke bones, but at the same time, it was horrible to take children away from their parents. It had to be done, for the good of the galaxy, but she didn't have to like it.
"My husband isn't home at the moment," the woman said. "Could you come by later?"
"Of course," Ahsoka nodded. "I'll come by tomorrow."
She had other things to do, after all.
As Ahsoka stepped away, she realized Mister Fluffles had already left the house, and was heading straight off towards the vast plains outside the city proper. It came to Ahsoka as a flash that maybe she'd need a speeder, and thus she went and loaned one. As a Jedi, she got it for the modest price of 'free', and all without using Jedi Tricks of any type or kind.
She felt the air rush through her face and she grinned as she sped up, no silly 'traffic regulations' or 'speed limits' halting her advance through the fields, following the blurry orange form of her Cat-Like Force Hallucination that somehow managed to keep ahead of her all the time.
When the cat stopped, so did she. They had covered a large portion of ground in a single day, and came to a halt in front of a large stone, surrounded by smaller ones that seemed to feel slightly off to Ahsoka's keen eyes.
Mister Fluffles meowed as he patted and scratched against it, while Ahsoka raised a single eyebrow.
"This is a very nice rock, Mister Fluffles, but I don't understand your point."
"I think you need to push it up, but that would just be my suggestion," her Master said from her side, his pale blue appearance as a Force Ghost making him stand out in the otherwise green scenery.
Ahsoka looked at him. He stared back. She spoke the four words she always spoke when her Master's Force Ghost popped up long enough for her to see him.
"I demand an explanation."
"I rebuke thee," her Master replied. "Explanations are boring. Come along Ahsoka."
"You're no longer my Master, you know that, right?" Ahsoka said, only for her Master to turn and raise a single eyebrow, channeling his 'come along silly child.'
She groaned and stomped her right foot on the ground once, before grumbling a curse under her breath.
She was Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Knight.
And her Master, although dead, hadn't changed an inch in his madness.
"Being a Force Ghost is awesome, by the way," he remarked. "Can go through stuff, see everything everyone is doing, hang around people with no one being none the wiser."
"My master turned into a peeping tom," Ahsoka mumbled in disbelief. "I can't believe you died, became one with the Force, and then used that as a way to peep!"
"I don't peep," her Master replied dutifully. "I watch interesting people do interesting stuff."
"That's peeping!"
"No, it's pretty much like watching the Holo-Television, only it's live and three-dimensional."
Mister Fluffles meowed, and Ahsoka sighed, and took a deep breath. She lifted her hands up, and as her Master disappeared inside, Mister Fluffles waited.
The rocky spire soon rose, and as Ahsoka let go of the Force, she took a step forward to where an entrance in the rock had just then materialized.
Her Master, on the other hand, took one outside and dusted off his robes, covered in cobwebs and dust. He looked pretty much alive, and healthy. His skin was a bit pale, and he winced under the dying sun's light.
Ahsoka froze, while her Master hummed as he stepped further away from the rock.
"Palpatine, zero. The Ones, zero. The Universe, zero. The Force, zero. Death, zero. Master Shade, One."
Ahsoka took another step, and then wrinkled her nose in disgust as she felt the start of tears in her eyes, which she quickly wiped away before pinching her nose. "Urgh," she mumbled. "The smell!"
"I've been stuck years inside that place, Ahsoka," her Master dutifully remarked. "Well, a part of me has. The clothes aren't the best, but I guarantee you, some stink is way better than being dead."
Ahsoka nodded numbly at that, and proceeded to forget the 'There is no emotion' piece of the Jedi code to crash head first into her Master, tackling him into a hug. "There, there, everything's fine and dandy now," her Master said. "Well, kind-of, but still-"
Then Ahsoka held firmly on her Master's back with one hand.
"Ahsoka-"
And with her right hand, she punched the living shit out of his face.
"Ah," Ahsoka said in relief, moving her hand up and down while simultaneously opening and closing it. "That felt good."
"Gah! My nose!" her Master replied, clutching his nose and taking a few steps back to recoil from the strike. "Why?! The Jedi Code-"
"What? It clearly states 'and you shall break your Master's nose when he acts stupid, dumb, and doesn't say a thing about what's going on', so clearly, I had to!" Ahsoka snapped. "Especially on the 'Fake your death' part!"
"That wasn't really faked," her Master acquiesced. "You see, I was a Wound in the Force, that much was true. Had to fix that somehow, and I couldn't 'fix that' by just dying -heck, dying made it bigger, and that was one of the contingencies to deal with Abeloth and co. What I could do, on the other hand, was hand off two parts of me to someone else and wait for the right moment to come back. Mister Fluffles," he gestured downward to where the orange tabby cat was, meowing with a bright grin. "And the Cheshire Cat," he gestured to the other side, where the Cheshire Cat stood grinning.
They both disappeared into dust, dispersing inside his body. "That is a kind of 'Essence Transference' which, I admit, is a thing of the Dark Side. So I couldn't really do it always. Anyway, this is Lothal, and we have to speak with the council, so allons-y!"
"No!" Ahsoka gripped his robes. "Explanations. Begin. Now!"
Her Master sighed, and flicked her nose with his right hand. She closed her eyes under the familiar 'attack', and grinned. This still didn't change things. She snapped her eyes open and glared at him.
"My~ You have learned my glare, my wayward student," her Master acquiesced with a chuckle. "That's great. Fine," he sighed, his face somber. "Where do you want me to begin?"
"The beginning," Ahsoka said, "We have time, Master," she continued as she sat down, legs crouched. Her Master obeyed her with a chuckle.
He moved his right and left hand together, forming a perch for his chin to rest on as his elbows sat comfortably on his legs. "I made a clone," her Master said bluntly. "I made a clone, and put the clone in a stasis tank, and then, at the height of the battle against Abeloth, I sent the Cheshire Cat away to it through the galaxy. Then, I waited for Mister Fluffles to naturally gravitate towards it, and when they both connected, I was whole once more, and no longer a Wound in the Force." He pointed to the stone construction. "This is a special Jedi Temple. It tests the Initiate to see if he's ready to become a Padawan. The Master and the Student together can open the door, and if the student fails...the Master dies within," her Master sighed. "Well, the other point of Essence Transference is that it's impossible to do so with a body that already has a soul within. This doesn't mean it doesn't work. It simply means that bits and pieces of it stick around, like a sort of 'stench' or smell. Since I had no intention of 'living forever' and I merely wanted to share a piece of myself with you, I didn't actually lose my body in doing so. It hurt like crazy, I admit, but it wasn't that bad, and the piece was tiny. You were the one who made it grow."
Her Master gripped a blade of grass and uprooted it, pinching at it with his index and thumb, rolling it across his finger. "The Force, you have to understand, sought balance. There are two ways to bring balance. You kill everyone, and call the desert peace, or you make everyone equal. I chose the latter option. I used my peculiar ability to turn the Ones, strong Force-Sensitive users capable of influencing the entire Galaxy, and their planet, into a pale imitation of what they were. I sucked and devoured their strength, their power, their abilities. I only left the Father alive, because he was Balance. When he too will die, eventually, in the decades to come, then there will be freedom of choice, freedom of determining one's own destiny, and with that freedom, well...I suspect the Vong will arrive on that day."
Her Master looked up at the darkening sky.
"What else is there to say? I'm sorry won't probably cut it, and I won't beg forgiveness where there is none to ask. I know best how much it hurts to be betrayed, Ahsoka. I'm sorry it had to be that way, but things had to play along my scenarios. Any of them would have been fine, but it had to be that way."
He grimaced. "I'm sorry for that."
"Now it's over, isn't it?" Ahsoka asked after a moment of quiet contemplation. "All the manipulation and deceits...they're over, aren't they?"
"I'd like that," her Master whispered back. "Unfortunately, I don't know anymore." He chuckled. "There is a lost tribe of the Sith, there are the Vong...a lot of things, horrible things, yet to come. There is the Pool of Knowledge and the Font of Power, ancient vestiges of the Dark Side that I couldn't completely drain. There are the Mandalorian, who will probably start to rally for war again now that there is peace...a lot of things," he whispered. "And unfortunately, I have destroyed the very seams of the future. The Force is in disarray over that, and let me tell you, she'd be pissed if she had actual emotions."
Ahsoka raised an eyebrow. "Master Yoda, he said you weren't a seer. I...Does this mean-"
"Are two blades of grass ever identical?" her Master queried her, gesturing at the fields around them.
"Well...no?"
"Ahsoka," her Master gave her a flat look. She shifted uncomfortably under it, and then nodded. "Better. Well, the right answer is indeed 'no'. Only, the vast majority of differences aren't visible to the naked eye. It's the same with the Universe. There are...countless universes. Imagine an infinite recursion, with tiny differences. Sometimes, it's a matter of eye color in a single person in an entire galaxy. In another case, it's an entire race's way of life. In my particular case, it's fiction turned into reality."
Ahsoka shot him a puzzled look, but her Master simply sighed. "Ahsoka, you haven't played my Pagemaster campaign, so you might not know about it, but-"
"No, no, I know it. I asked Anakin about it. The heroes read a book to its end and then end up inside the book. I got that. They also try to change the story, but the story's characters adapt and the story goes off the rails."
Her Master nodded.
"What...what was supposed to be my story, then?"
Her Master sighed. "Ahsoka-"
"Come on!" Ahsoka blurted out. "We know of Anakin's potential fall already! We know he'd kill the children-so what's bad about mine?!"
"I was actually going to tell you, my 'Ahsoka' was merely a sigh," her Master dryly remarked, making Ahsoka look sideways with her cheeks heating up. Her Master then spoke, and told her the story of her life.
She listened keenly to all of it, and when he finished speaking, it was already night, and a crackling bonfire had been created between them, to illuminate their faces.
"So...I kicked asses, got the chance of becoming a Knight, and left the Jedi Order. And I was Skywalker's apprentice rather than yours," Ahsoka mumbled. "Well, I don't know. I didn't get dismembered though, not even once."
"You did die and get better," her Master pointed out.
"Oh right, that thing on Mortis. Well, when you put it that way, I guess you were the better Master."
Her Master shrugged. "There is no 'better', only 'different'."
"So..." Ahsoka remarked. "What now?"
"Well, that depends," her Master replied, and took out from one of his sleeves a large pack and a few plastic-looking sticks. "Fancy a marshmallow? I have the Carnivore-eating ones...commonly known as 'meatballs'."
As he remarked that, a second pack flew in the air together with a stick in Ahsoka's lap, and as the Togruta looked at it, and then at her Master already whistling and opening his own, she couldn't help it.
She laughed.
Her laughter soon turned contagious, and as her Master began to laugh too, Ahsoka cheerfully popped her pack open and skewered a meatball on it, before pushing it over the campfire to cook.
Her Master couldn't possibly be that strange.
But he was.
And she didn't care.
Because she liked him just like that.
Author's Notes.
Done.
...
Notice: Palpatine's failure at holding a clone body for long was due to Sabotage, Dark Side ravaging the planet he put the clones in, and generally him being uncaring on overusing them.
See previous Dark Sith who managed it just fine.
