Notes: Sadri is an RP character; her relationship to Mace Windu is something that should be treated as AU.

Any similarities to any other EU works are completely coincidental.

Susser Tod

"It all returns to nothing/ It all comes tumbling down/ tumbling down /tumbling down"
- Komm, suuser Tod, from "The End of Evangelion"

Interestingly, Sadri Oboa found herself unwilling and unable to extricate herself from her quarters, despite the incoming onslaught. She could sense it; she could sense it hours ago, as the troops were being rallied and their orders were coming through and she felt that singular-minded obedience that unnerved her so when she had led them time and time again into battles.

She couldn't move because she was in shock.

Mace had told her what he had discovered: the Chancellor was the Sith Lord that had the Order on its toes for close to fifteen years. The war was a farce. And he - despite her misgivings and loud protests - was going to get the Republic back into the hands of the people. She scoffed. Politics had a habit of turning people against each other. If she'd had the choice she'd have gone right back into battle after her eighteen-month absence. But she'd been sequestered at the Temple, and Mace, being on the High Council, had ordered his onetime Padawan to get two solid weeks of off time. She had protested this fact as well: if the personnel she was working with did not get breaks, far be it for her to be declared deserving of leave because she was a Jedi.

However, she had ascertained that in present climate, disobeying the Council probably wasn't the best thing to do. So she'd sat in her room for the better part of the day; and now dusk was falling. The lights were starting to turn on and transform Coruscant into a glittering cityscape. She had her bed arranged in such a manner that she could whittle away hours of time staring out the window.

Out that window, she had felt in detail the life being rent from her Master's body. Death. She was still in shock from that event. It had manifested itself in her mind as the equivalent of being smashed into a duracrete wall. Such was the nature of bonds she formed with people. She had wept, forehead against the window, staring down into the darkness, and had risked everything to find him - to say her own goodbye. The darkness that was in the Force as well as dusk's natural absence of light. She stared down at the walkway that led to the entrance of the Temple.

She'd seen the clones approach.

And she'd felt the mass panic as they infiltrated. Sadri's quarters were relatively high up, close to the top floor of the main structure. She had time to center herself and fight. Or flee. Whichever.

Still, she couldn't bring herself to move. The moment the panic started she had settled herself into a meditative position on her bed, facing the window. She had laid both her lightsabers at the foot of the bed in front of her, and they were still there, inert against the white sheet that was on the bed. One was hers. One had belonged to her dead master. She simply stared out the window.

Because she had picked him out of the crowd. For all the talk of the Grand Army being a mindless singularity, each and every one of the soldiers she had worked with had had very different and very real personalities. She smiled, remembering the past eighteen months. She'd become good friends with them - in the last six months they'd even stopped calling her General - and after being used to having them around so much, she was starting to miss those crazy crack commandos who went by the designation of Pi Squad. She recalled Jav's unexplainable focus and manic hyperactivity; Leeroy's constant insults and all-around good humour. She couldn't think about Scrat - he had died and she still blamed herself for it - and then there was Ven.

The door to her room hissed open.

Sadri closed her eyes tight, and opened them again slowly, as though collecting herself.

"I figured it'd be you," she said softly, her eyes fixed on the Coruscanti skyline.

There was no response. She turned around to face an unhelmeted trooper who had a blaster pistol squarely aimed at her forehead. She smiled, making eye contact with him. "Better you than a stranger," she continued.

Ven had often called himself the winner of the genetic lottery; he had been a random recipient of a gene developed by the mysterious biochemist who went by the surname Mardin - a gene that would effectively slow down the double-growth rate and enable the maximum usage from the clone troopers. At one time Ven looked older than all of his brethren, and now he looked comparatively younger.

She had taken to him immediately. Their impromptu interlude following her extraction from Yavin three years ago had almost gotten away from her, and she had toed the line between Jedi discipline and all-consuming, instinctive human love to the best capacity that she could. Ven was the catalyst for all of it, and the entire convoluted situation was the butt of private jokes amongst she and the members of Pi Squad. She didn't even begin to think about how he got in here, or why, but all she knew is that she was relieved to see him alive and well.

Even if it meant she was going to die.

She could hear screams in the hallway. The fzzzt noise of activating lightsabers, their distinct hum, and the sustained noise of DC-15 rifles firing repeatedly. Outside it was chaos.

Inside, she looked at Ven, who still had his pistol pointed at her head. "Last time I checked," she whispered, "there was something you needed to do."

She kept staring into his dark eyes, a smile tugging at her lips as she recalled everything that they had experienced together, both with each other and with the squad, flicked through her mind in agonizing detail. Sadri noted with a strange sense of detachment that she was seeing her life flash before her eyes as the experiences cascaded through her psyche, tumbling down into a black abyss of realization. She was going to die.

Ven was going to kill her.

She focused her eyes on him again and noticed that the blaster pistol was shaking. He was shaking. His eyes were wide and frantic, an expression she had never seen before. He looked torn.

Her hand found the barrel of the pistol and gripped it firmly, holding it in place against her forehead. "Do what you're told," she snapped, and Ven seemed to snap out of a trance. It took a few moments for his shaking to stop, and he then resumed his two-handed grip on the weapon.

She smiled, still holding the barrel, and fought away her urge to touch him just once before she died. Her desire to not die. She remembered telling the rank-and-file troopers of the 111th that it was not fitting to lie down and accept death. Fighting is more important, she had said, and most of all fighting such that you can live to fight another day.

Hypocrisy.

But rage simply could not manifest itself, and she could not find it in her to live. She felt Ven flex his hands around the pistol. He was going to fire. She was as good as dead: it was the nature of a commando. If they'd marked her as a target, she'd be safe only when she was dead. And best she died this way. There would be no suffering.

"Ven," she said, her voice calm. "Please."

His finger found the trigger and began to squeeze.

Then Sadri was overcome by a need to let him know that she'd never hold this against him. Not in this lifetime or the next. If he was doing what he had to to survive... then who was she to stop him? But he had to know. She'd never been able to verbally reciprocate his feelings for her before, and if she was going to die, she better hurry up and tell him.

"I love you," she said, the sad smile splitting into a grin. She closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable.

Instead of death, she felt a gloved hand pry her fingers away from the pistol. She heard the creak of armour plates as he fell heavily to his knees, and she opened her eyes, frantic, wondering if someone had killed him.

But he was alive. The screams in the hallway continued; that was the sound that met her ears as she looked down and saw a strange sight. He had his arms around her, his face pressed into her chest, and he was crying.

She blinked, and put a hand to his chin, raising his face so she could see him. It was startling; the normally strong and humour-filled face that had simply defined Ven was gone; instead here was a man suffering from emotional upheaval so profound that it left him trembling and with tears streaming down his cheeks.

"No," he whispered, finally speaking. "No." He held her face in his gloved hands and stared her down, his expression softening. "It's -you-," he whispered, touching his forehead to hers in the same spot he had placed the blaster just moments ago. "I can't kill you. No."

"You're supposed to," Sadri said in a low voice, eyes locked onto his. "Aren't you?"

Her answer was his lips pressed against hers. "Yes," he said. "They knew you'd be specially hard to, erm, dispatch... after eighteen months with us..."

"What now?" An explosion from the depths of the Temple shook her room.

"Now, cyar'ika, you run." He got to his feet, his efficient, military personality returning almost immediately.

"I'm not running away," she said quietly, looking up at him.

"Sadri - "

"No, Ven. I ran once and it served me nothing. I'm not running away from my fate. Not again." She shook her head. "One of two things will happen. Either you pick that pistol up and shoot me now, or I go out in that hallway and fight. And most likely die. The choice is yours."

All he could do was stare at her. Sadri's green eyes bored into his soul again and willed him to make a choice.

She hoped he would choose the first option. She didn't want to face what had happened in the Temple. She would rather die here, quick and painless like she knew Ven would make it, and become one with the Force that way.

His face fell as he picked up the pistol again and touched it to her forehead again. Sadri's eyes sparkled and she smiled; she felt no fear.

Only remorse at what the two of them had lost. They had been scared, at one time, that she would outlive him. Now, it seemed, he would outlive her. With her blood on his hands.

Ven's voice cracked the silence. "I'm sorry, Sadri."

Sadri closed her eyes.

The bolt hit its mark.