Chapter Text
Leia is in the Room of a Thousand Fountains in the Jedi Temple, waiting to give her report on the siege of Naboo. While she waits, she drafts a message to Pa– to Senator Organa’s office, a report he asked for based on her research. Rys stands behind her, as always; he never truly relaxes while on duty, but there are parts of the Room of a Thousand Fountains where he is as close to calm as Leia has ever known him to be.
That feeling like lightning hits Leia, danger coming –
She shoves Rys to one side and jumps back herself as a person appears out of thin air right in the space where she was just standing.
What Jedi trick is this?
Is it even a Jedi trick? Malevolence oozes off the person, the darkness unmistakable. Has Palpatine or Dooku selected a new apprentice already?
Rys swears as he rights himself, while the intruder does the same. Leia draws her lightsaber, holding it loosely by her side, not attacking. Not yet.
The intruder – human, male – straightens fully, shaking his long, unkempt hair, drawing his own lightsaber, a sickening red the colour of dried blood, a dark purple aura around it. Clear blue eyes squint at her, ignoring Rys completely.
Luke stirs in the back of her mind.
“Identify yourself,” Leia commands.
Ben Naasade has been having, against all expectations, a good day, marred only by the sneaking suspicion that he has forgotten something. His Soul Healer tells him it is a symptom of trauma, and to go enjoy himself, so he settles down under Yoda’s favourite tree in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, with the book he brought back from Dathomir, and attempts to make sense of it.
The text swims, in a way that seems more than a symptom of his inattention, and then the Force yanks at him. He is on his feet, lightsaber drawn, as soon as his eyes have opened, but he is exactly in the same spot as he was before.
“Identify yourself,” someone snaps in an imperious tone, someone who was most certainly not there but a moment ago.
A well of barely-leashed power to his left; also, conveniently, the source of the command. He has not felt such raw strength since – since his first Anakin.
The second thing he notices is the other lightsaber, glowing white, and humming at a frequency unlike any saber – kyber or adegan – that Ben has ever interacted with.
The young woman has the sense not to charge. Her stance is battle-ready, but still elementary Shii-Cho. She is short, dark haired, Force sensitive, and, most importantly, not dressed like a Jedi. Even after the reforms, the various Corps try to maintain some unity in style of dress, but this woman is dressed like a senatorial aide, albeit – like one of Padmé’s aides, finery disguising function.
No, not Padmé. The current Senator of Naboo is Palpatine. He must have found a new apprentice now that Dooku is… uninterested. Ben is nearly impressed at the gall of this apprentice, to attack Ben in the heart of the Jedi Temple with no attempt at artifice.
“Who are you?” the woman demands.
Ben is, if he says so himself, famous in the Temple. Some (such as Tahl) might even say notorious. Over the past few years, however, his rumoured history as a Shadow as well as his chosen last name have attracted their fair share of intrusive questions. It has been a long time since he has faced such a direct challenge.
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” he demurs.
Her presence in the Force retreats at that, like a flinch, although her face remains immobile. Ben tugs on his bond to his padawan on instinct – and finds an echoing absence. For a moment, he forgets how to breathe. He looks at Palpatine’s new apprentice, whose appearance coincides with Obi-Wan’s absence, and commits that face to memory.
Ben charges.
Copper meets white; her blade sings an unfamiliar tune. She never moves beyond Shii-Cho, but she leans into the Force, letting it move her. For all that, she is not a true master of the form; Ben spots an opening within seconds and seizes it. She blocks him, not with her saber, but by pushing him back using only the Force, hard and fast, towards the tree trunk. He bats off the effort, lands on his feet, inhales, reminds himself of the repercussions of what he did to Krell, and strikes back with his lightsaber instead of the Force. He delivers a vicious cut along her arm, and knocks the lightsaber out of her hands as she hisses through the pain.
Someone shoots him from behind, and he deflects the bolt back to its sender without looking, focused on the larger threat.
The strange white lightsaber hangs suspended in the air between them; Ben cannot rip it away from the woman in the Force, for all that it was child’s play to overpower her physically. For once, Ben finds himself outmatched; she yanks the lightsaber back to her own hand. Ben swings at that hand before the hilt can touch it –
He opens his eyes in a fountain. He is lying flat on his back, covered in splinters and blood, and everything hurts. There is distant shouting, coming closer, but his vision is still blurry.
He can recognize one of those voices – the Force-sensitive aide from Naboo. She barks orders as well as any general of the GAR had, in Ben’s first life.
Armoured boots appear in Ben’s field of vision – white, plastoid boots, painted red. The Coruscanti Guard, which does not exist. Ben looks up into a familiar helmet, and wonders whether the branch hit him hard enough to cause brain damage, or if he is in another flashback. He cannot quite sit up yet, and is sufficiently disoriented that he does not dare Shadow Walk, but when he cranes his neck up, he can see a large hole in the foliage. Had the woman thrown him? How? He had not felt anything in the Force. What has she done?
“Lady Skywalker!” the hallucination shouts. His gun wavers, as if he is not quite certain whether to point it at Ben.
“Stay back, Rys,” said the woman, who is… impersonating Shmi? And can see the hallucination?
A face appears above Ben, blurred through either Ben’s tears or the blow to his head. Familiar warm brown eyes look down at him, from a face that somewhat resembles… Padmé.
“This is Jedi banthashite,” the woman snaps. “No concern of the Chancellor. And you’re injured.”
Her accent is pure Alderaan now, when it was more nondescript before; it is the exact tone of voice that Ben has heard – from Bail’s mouth, from Breha’s, in another life. She presses down on Ben’s shields with a kind of strength he has only felt from an adult Anakin, and she has Anakin’s temper and Shmi’s eyes.
“Princess Leia Organa?” Ben asks.
All of that presence in the Force draws away from him entirely, disappearing into her so completely, that Ben almost disbelieves the evidence of his own eyes, that tells him she is still there (she cannot be there, she does not exist, Ben has unmade her). Ben gasps with the relief and shock of it.
And then the woman who should not exist shoots him.