Adrien smiled at her rambling – in truth, he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t hoped to impress Marinette a bit with that display.
“Thanks,” he said. “Kagami was really good, too. I haven’t had an opponent push me like that in ages. It’s just too bad that her mom…didn’t agree.”
No, it had to have been the hidden Sith, come out of the shadows to do his butchery by his own hands. Even if that had not been enough evidence, the oppressive cold that now suffused the Temple, that bit into the mind and bound the lungs, deep and dark and bitter in a way that Ilum could never be – that unnatural chill would be evidence enough that this was the work of the Sith. A thousand years would not be enough for the horrible echoes of the slaughter to fade.
Tears silently slipped down his face, and Ahsoka was siezed with a sudden fury at them. How dare he cry at a tragedy of his own making? How dare he weep at the blood he’d shoved his hands in?
But in a moment, she let it pass and the anger fade. She was a Jedi, and she would not let herself die in hatred and rage.
“The Jedi have betrayed the Chancellor, betrayed the Republic. But it’s not too late for you, Ahsoka. Renounce the Jedi and help put an end to their insurrection, and you will be spared.”
She just stared at him. This couldn’t be real. This was a nightmare, or some twisted vision that had dumped her into a reality where up was down, and where the people she knew and trusted most promised death at their hands. First the troopers, and now Anakin...only a vision could explain how the whole galaxy had turned inside out in an instant.
“Master!” she said, all her relief and joy at knowing he was alright suffusing the word. She started towards him, but Whie caught her arm without even looking at her, his eyes never straying from Anakin. Whie’s expression was one of recognition, of one who had just seen all the pieces fit into place, and finally reached understanding that had long been elusive.
And in the Force, he felt so much like the soldiers Ahsoka had seen that had known that the medics would not be able to save them, that she immediately started looking for the wound.
“They’re still coming after us,” he said.
“Those are my men,” Ahsoka said. “I know them, they wouldn’t do this.”
“But they are doing this! They’re going to kill us if we don’t get away,” Whie snapped.
She turned the corner, and had to immediately deflect a blaster bolt into the wall.
“Vaughn, it’s me!” she said, recognizing the trooper instantly. His quick shooting was something to be admired, but not when there were friendlies around. They were fortunate that Ahsoka had been able to deflect the bolt, if she’d been a hair slower…
“Two Jedi,” Vaughn said, and the world fell out from under Ahsoka as he continued, “Open fire!”
She hit the ground, hard, her sabers shuttering off, her death-tight grip the only thing keeping them from flying across the room. But Ahsoka hardly noticed this against the noise in her head and the nausea rising in her gut. The Temple, Coruscant, the galaxy, spinning and spinning and screaming wordlessly and she didn’t know why.
“Padawan Tano!” Whie exclaimed, his own saber deactivated as he ran toward her, the sparring match forgotten. “Ahsoka! What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t feel that‽” she managed between gasped breaths as she wrenched her mind away from the maelstrom in the Force.
Ahsoka flashed a sharp-toothed smile.
“I’m just getting warmed up.”
It was a routine, but unlike everything that had come before it, Adrien thought this was one he would be satisfied if it continued forever. He felt happier than he had been since his mother vanished, and he no longer caught himself fantasizing about escaping to go to school, but instead about hanging out with Marinette. If he fantasized about escaping at all, it was to go searching the streets to uncover the truth behind Marinette’s death, with her at his side, showing him the city as he’d never been allowed to experience it.
He hadn’t acted upon this fantasy, of course, but...he wondered if he might, soon. There was something about Marinette that made him want to be brave.
“What’s wrong?”
Marinette shrank a bit and wrapped her arms around herself. “I...don’t like horror movies.”
Adrien stood there blinking for a moment.
“Marinette,” he pointed out, “you’re literally haunting me right now.”
“That’s irrelevant!” she said, releasing her self-hug to wave her arms around.
Marinette, Adrien decided, was going to be a terrible influence on him.
She is speaking. She spoke these words before, just moments ago. But something is different. Wrong.
She speaks, the words are hers.
The voice is not hers.
She struggles. She is caught in a nightmare and must wake. This dream must not reach its conclusion, because her words are being used falsely, and for ill intent.
“Ready for the most mind-numbingly boo-ring experience of your afterlife?” he dared to whisper as the adults moved away.
“Must not be so bad if you’re making jokes like that,” Marinette said, clearly amused.
“Oh no, it’s bad,” he said. “But I’m glad to see you’re in higher spirits.”
Adrien smiled, but didn’t wave back, since his bodyguard was watching him, and Adrien was not going to try to explain their local ghost to anyone.
“So you’ve probably only been dead for a few days, at most,” he concluded. Marinette looked away, out towards the rain beating against his windows. Adrien winced. She clearly didn’t really like talking about her death, and he supposed it made sense that she wouldn’t want to think about it. If she was wandering about as a ghost, it probably wasn’t any kind of peaceful end.
But if they were going to figure out how to help her move on, then they would have to discuss it, and find out the truth behind her death. Otherwise, they’d never know what unfinished business she had left before she could pass on.
The ghost bit her lip. “I...maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t really get an instruction manual for this.” She then looked at him rather suspiciously. “You’re taking this really well.”
Adrien shrugged. “How else am I supposed to take it?”
She threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know, normally? If a ghost appeared in my house, I’d burn the place down, probably!”
Would all these ghosts be extinguished at once, many who had never even known that they weren’t alive? Would there be peace for those who had?
You could leave, but a part of you was still trapped, would forever be trapped here, even if you never returned. And if you never returned, she would never know what had happened to you. She would never get to grow up, stuck forever as a memory of a little girl in a frightening world.
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