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Ahsoka Tano is supposed to be reviewing scout reports on her datapad. They have an Imperial carrier now, so they can actually have a Rebel fleet, but they still need a planetary base to grow further and organise properly. There are fifty-seven possibilities and she’s cross-referencing them against records of Imperial movements to eliminate the easily discoverable ones. It’s tedious, brain-hurting work, better suited to droids, and she’s been staring at it for hours now.
So instead she finds herself flicking desultorily through StarChirp, the informal distributed comms network. It’s a good way to scan for news of Imperial crackdowns or areas that need support, though following tags like #imperialatrocity and #wearelothal does make for a rather depressing feed. Alongside the pictures of gizkas trying cutely to climb out of a bowl, and arguments about the colour of Wynssa Starflare’s latest improbable gown, there’s a video of white-armoured stormtroopers beating a ragged group of people at a turborail station in an industrial zone on Bracca, and a picture of a smoking ruin that had once been a small town on Bar’leth.
A notification. Somebody else has shared her latest repost of the recording of Ezra’s message, the one he managed to spike into Lothal’s Imperial broadcast network last year. Good. It's still going, still inspiring people.
They’ve tagged it #rebelscum #fightback #andsoitbegins #comingforyousidious.
Ahsoka blinks.
#comingforyousidious.
Ahsoka knows ‘Sidious’ as a name for the Emperor that only a couple of groups of people use, and neither of them made it public. It’s almost certainly a coincidence, but…
She taps it.
The first item in the tag is a famous image of the Emperor from one of his state speeches. A hooded and cloaked figure – the player-protagonist from the hologame Assassin’s Code – has been added, creeping up behind him. The caption reads ‘ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS COMING FOR YOU, SIDIOUS’.
And that’s when Ahsoka spills her tea.
She doesn’t even wipe it up, at first. Instead she closes her eyes for a long moment, against the memories, against the fear she’d held all these years, the hope she’d discarded.
When the hot tea has soaked through her tunic and begun to feel uncomfortably warm, she finally stands and strips it off, balling it up to mop her legs with it. She carries the datapad with her as she heads off to get a new top, scrolling as she goes.
The next item is… the Jedi Order symbol, black on white. Ahsoka bites back tears and keeps scrolling, hope rising beyond hope.
There’s a couple more images of the Emperor (‘DON’T LOOK NOW, SIDIOUS’). A short holovideo of a Changrian she’s never heard of saying ‘My name is Vaarna Garecka and I’m coming for you, Sidious’. A large figure in a burning cloak with the caption ‘ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS HERE FOR YOUR SOOOOOOUUUUUUL’.
More videos. A human girl with a bruise on her cheek, a stained shirt and a determined glare. ‘My name is Jyn Erso and I’m coming for you, Sidious.’ A Twilek man, a Rodian, another human. A Wookie who is probably also saying the same thing – she doesn’t know more than a couple of words of Shyriiwook but it sounds pretty threatening.
A picture of Anakin.
It's a rare probe droid image from the Clone Wars, just how she remembers him, throwing himself forward through the Force, lightsabre swiping down, a trail of droid destruction behind him. The Emperor’s face is superimposed on the droid in the foreground, right under the descending lightsabre. The image is captioned ‘THIS IS WHAT’S COMING FOR YOU, SIDIOUS’.
Ahsoka feels light-headed, unreal. She keeps paging. She needs to know. Is Anakin alive, or are his name and image just being used as an icon, an idea to rally behind?
The Jedi Order symbol again, this time in flashing colours set to music. Another picture of the Emperor captioned ‘ANAKIN SKYWALKER IS COMING FOR YOU’.
And then a face, a face she barely recognises, pale as Lothal rock, a pink, ridged scar across his left cheek, the slash down from his temple to right cheekbone now faded to silver, short sandy hair that doesn’t hide the gouge on the top of his head. It’s a still image that looks like it was captured from a holovideo – a bit fuzzy, but obviously real.
And just to remove all doubt, it’s next to another Clone Wars image of a young, smirking Anakin.
There’s another pair of photos too, a recent one of the Emperor, sagged skin, yellow eyes, yellow teeth, and one of him when he was Chancellor Palpatine. Underneath, the poster has added ‘Time has not been kind to these guys.’
Ahsoka cups her hands over her nose and mouth and lets the tears flow freely.
It’s not enough. She scrolls on, desperate for more. More about Anakin – where is he, what happened to him, what is he doing.
More videos of people she doesn’t know.
‘My name is Tara Bendik and I’m coming for you, Sidious.’
‘My name is Oona Verlussi…’
‘My name is Aven Grinduk…’
‘My name is Cal Kestis.’
And that last name is familiar. It’s a few moments before she can place it, and she can’t quite recognise this tired, scarred man as the shy kid she vaguely remembers playing with in the Temple creche, just a couple of years younger than her. But he’s staring out firmly as he says his piece, determined and righteous, and holding a lightsabre…
And Ahsoka fears that this is a trap, a way to make the last of the Jedi reveal themselves for the Inquisitors. But, oh, how she hopes it is not. She scrolls on, searching. More names, faces. Every now and again, one she recognises, one she had thought dead, one holding a lightsabre defiantly. And here’s Ezra, nervous but resolved, saying the same thing, and she could kill that boy…
And then another one she knows. He looks old, now, much older than before, hunched over, and he is wearing the rattiest robe imaginable. But his eyes are bright and his ears are pricked up and he pokes his little stick at the holocapture.
‘Yoda my name is, ohohooheeheehee. Coming for you Sidious I am, yes. Coming. For. You.’
And Ahsoka laughs through her tears.
It’s Ezra, later, who sends her the original Scrap Hunters video. It’s been corrupted or taken down many times already, but Ezra was one of the first to see it and share it, just a couple of days ago, and he’s not the only one who keeps putting it back up in new locations and new networks. She watches it all. Twice, back to back, all two and a half hours of mechanical jargon and wires being rerouted, with the same enthusiasm and skill that she remembers, the same banter with Obi-Wan (Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan is alive.) that she hasn’t seen in over 18 years…
And she knows she shouldn’t, she knows it’s a stupid risk, she knows better, but…
Her heart is in her throat as she puts up and tags her own video, bouncing the encrypted signal through proxies on twelve systems, of herself glaring at the holocapture, arms crossed, lightsabres in her hands.
‘My name is Ahsoka Tano, and I’m coming for you, Sidious.’
Not ten minutes later there’s a private message in her inbox.
SkyRising @thatsaneatrick
snips?