Summary: Quinlan Vos misses Obi-Wan and Master Yoda at the Jedi Temple by mere hours. Now stuck on Coruscant in the wake of Order 66 and the declaration of the Empire, he has to decide what he should do in a galaxy taken over by the Sith.

Notes: What happened to Quinlan Vos after Order 66? New canon hints that he's still alive – see Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith comics – and so I figured I'd have a go at showing what he was up to.

Those Fallen to Darkness

Quinlan Vos, hooded, cloaked, and avoiding the security cameras like nobody's business, knelt outside the Jedi Temple and touched the helmet of a dead clone trooper.

501st, he thought, noting the distinctive blue markings. Skywalker's unit.

Blaster fire seared this place the Jedi Master had always called home and the stench of death hung in the air, the echoes of children crying out in fear resounded in the Force.

Quinlan gleaned nothing from the armor through the Force, but he noticed that all the Clones had been cut down by the blade of a lightsaber. Or more than one person wielding a lightsaber.

At least one Jedi had wanted to get into the Temple very badly indeed.

Quinlan reached over and touched a piece of a blaster rifle which had been cleaved in two.

Fear. Hatred. Confusion.

An overwhelming, all-consuming need to kill Jedi.

The green flash of Master Yoda's lightsaber as it sliced cleanly through a clone trooper's neck.

Obi-Wan's face, stern and resolute, as he spared no one.

Quinlan pulled away with a gasp. Something terrible had happened here. Something monstrous.

He took the steps two at a time, no longer caring about cameras or security footage or Palpatine's infernal new Empire. Kenobi and Yoda could still be here.

He burst through the front doors knowing and dreading what he would see and found…nothing.

The light-filled hallways and graceful pillars and walkways were marred by blaster fire, the scent of ozone and burned flesh still hung in the air, but there were no bodies of brothers and sisters to haunt his memories.

Quinlan paused to catch his breath and calm the frantic beating of his heart. It took more courage than he wanted to admit to reach out and touch a crumpled Jedi robe, which had gotten lost under a bench.

A flash memory came to him then…the girl's tiny hands clutching a lightsaber slippery with sweat…the pain of her body as it was riddled with plasma from a clone's rifle…gentle hands lifting her body up as the cloak fell away – Kenobi's hands – and carrying her small body down the hall…

Quinlan dropped the cloak as though scalded, breathing hard and still feeling the pain of multiple burns across his body, memory though it was. He glanced around once more at the empty, echoing hallways. Obi-Wan and Master Yoda must have burned all the bodies, must have moved every single one of their fallen brothers and sisters and given them a proper – if hurried – farewell.

He didn't want to think about what either of his friends had been feeling in those moments. He felt stifled by death and grief and loss in this place that had once meant home and love and peace. Standing in the emptiness, he tried to think of what he should do – something, anything – to honor those who had died here; Clone and Jedi alike.

He remembered a song – low and crooning, almost haunting – which Asajj had hummed over the body of a fallen Nightsister. She has become a part of the dance now, she'd told him as she closed the woman's unseeing eyes. She glanced up to the stars above them then, and Vos had understood her meaning.

He wished she was here with him now. If Ventress was anything, she was a survivor. She would know how to make sense of all this. She would know what to do next.

Still, he stood in that strange, lifeless, echoing mausoleum which had once been filled with light and he hummed a hymn to the dead. You are all part of the dance now, he thought, and one day I'll dance with you.

But not yet. And he went to find the security footage.

The security tapes had all been erased.

Quinlan stood staring at the static that played instead of any recording. Who had erased them? And why?

Surely not Palpatine. His disfigured form and sickly yellow eyes when he'd announced the Jedi attempt on his life and the formation of a Galactic Empire – splashed all over the HoloNet like he was some sort of celebrity – had told Vos everything he needed to know about the Sith Lord they had been looking for, the start of the Clone Wars, and who had given the order to hunt down and murder his entire family.

Still didn't explain the security tapes though.

'Always two there are,' Master Yoda had said, with regards to the Sith. 'A Master and an Apprentice.'

The apprentice had been Dooku, Quin reminded himself, feeling a chill run down his spine and feeling disgusted at his own timidity.

Who became the apprentice after Dooku's death? his mind probed without his consent.

As he looked around at the destruction of his home – the blaster fire of the 501st, the marks on the walls which could only come from lightsaber combat – the hollow, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that more than likely, a brother or sister had fallen to the Dark Side.

It would be just like Kenobi to erase the tapes of their deeds before he went to try and save – or stop – them. The man was too honorable for his own good.

The blinking light of the Temple's emergency beacon caught his attention and he flicked it on. A ghostly blue figure swam into view and Quin felt a small, grim feeling of satisfaction as Obi-Wan's haggard face and sad eyes appeared.

This is Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. I regret to inform you that both the Jedi Order and the Republic have fallen…

When the message was finished, Vos left the Temple and went to stand on the main steps. Late afternoon sunlight streamed orange and red across the stone of the Temple and glittered like fire off the windows of innumerable buildings.

The silence that encase the Temple was ominous and Vos noticed how the traffic had been re-routed much further away from the Temple than it had ever been before.

All of Coruscant, it seemed, was looking the other way from what had happened to the Jedi.

Quinlan Vos, who had once been a Jedi Master and was…something else now…still didn't know what to do next. Kenobi's last instructions were vague, unhelpful, and he had missed both him and Master Yoda by enough time that he'd never pick up their trail again.

Being a Jedi, even a terrible one like him, was a death sentence in a galaxy run by the Sith. Asajj was long dead and Aayla, his wonderful, brave former Padawan – he had felt her death like a dozen knives stabbing him all at once.

Quin honestly didn't know what to do next.

He'd never been much of a joiner, never cared for politics or causes – the Jedi had been all he'd ever needed. How were they all gone, and he was still here? The prodigal son with nowhere to return to.

And where in the blazes was Kenobi?

He stood at the edge of the steps, the wind whipping around him, and frowned at the horizon as he tried to run through a list of anyone else who might still be alive.

A police droid eventually entered Temple air space and headed for him, no doubt thinking him a simple trespasser in a restricted zone. When it saw the lightsaber on his belt though, it drew the baster recent regulations permitted it to carry, and aimed to kill. Vos dispatched it easily, the glowing green blade humming in his hands now the only constant in a galaxy turned upside-down.

Quinlan stalked up to the police droid's idling hoverbike and planted himself squarely before the holorecorder installed just beneath the handlebars. A light on the side flashed red and he had no doubt alarms were going off like mad back at Headquarters.

Good.

He didn't want Palpatine sitting too comfortably on that throne of his.

He smirked for the 'recorder and knew his face looked vicious. He was no Anakin Skywalker, winner of Coruscant's Most Eligible Bachelor aware for three years running.

"Good evening, Chancellor," he said, his gravelly voice sounding more menacing than usual due to three days without food and very little drink or sleep.

"I see you've been busy trying to destroy my family. And I know you think you've won. But one day a Jedi will take back everything you stole." He turned away, paused, and then turned back to grin at the holorecorder. It wasn't a pleasant expression.

"Oh, by the way, Kenobi and Yoda are still out there. Somewhere. I have no idea where…but if I were you, I'd be worried about this."

He smiled wider until he barred his teeth, ignited his lightsaber, and sliced the 'recorder in half.

As sirens wailed and lights from patrol speeders swarmed towards the Temple, Vos vanished into Coruscant's lower levels. The smart thing to do would be to leave the planet immediately but the police droid had given him an idea.

And he'd bet money old Palpatine would never see it coming.

Barriss Offee had spent more days than she could count staring at bare walls, which were crisscrossed by energy fields strong enough to hold a Jedi.

Well, former Jedi anyway.

She'd forfeited any right to that honored title when she'd bombed the Jedi Temple. And when she'd framed Ahsoka for it.

She'd been in prison ever since, banned from the Order and placed in solitary confinement by the Republic – they had wanted to execute her. She could no longer remember why she'd thought it a good idea to blow up her home, although that tangle of fear and pain at all those senseless deaths, misapprehension and disgust over the never-ending and escalating war, hovered in the background of her mind in a discordant buzz.

All she could see now though was Ahsoka's face when the Temple Guards brought Barriss into the Courtroom to confess her crimes. Ahsoka – who had been her closest friend. The pain in her big blue eyes had been more than Barriss could look at, even as twisted as she had been back then. But the devastation in Ahsoka's Force presence was what had hit her like a punch to the gut.

Master Luminara later told her that Ahsoka left the Order, left even Master Kenobi and Jedi Skywalker, and struck out on her own.

Barriss wondered where Ahsoka was now. If she was alright. And if she ever thought on Barriss with anything except pain and betrayal.

Despite the Order casting her out, Master Luminara came every week to sit outside Barriss' cell – turned opaque for her visits – and spoke to her in that voice Barriss had once loved. She had spat hateful words at her those first few months and Master Luminara seemed sad and distant, but gradually she'd listened in silence to her former master's news from the front and stories of life at the Temple. It brought a strange sort of comfort to know she hadn't been forgotten.

And when Master Luminara was off planet, Master Yoda himself came. Sometimes he told her fantastic tales of things he'd seen in his youth, but sometimes he would gentry prod her to talk about what she was feeling. Barriss never did though. At first, she was too angry and then she was too ashamed.

But Master Luminara hadn't come this week. And neither had anyone else.

What was more worrying to Barriss though, was that a couple days ago she had felt a disturbance even through the darkness which suffused the Force and dulled her senses to almost non-existence. It was as though thousands of lights she had never noticed before, flared supernova before vanishing into darkness all at once.

And after their passing the darkness in the Force grew.

Barriss' bond with Master Luminara had been severed, first due to her Fall and then upon order by the Jedi Council, but she tried to reach out to her Master anyway…

…and flinched back in horror at the wall of malevolent evil she encountered, blocker her from Mater Luminara's cool, clean presence. She hadn't tried again after that. Whether Master Luminara was still alive or dead, Barriss couldn't reach her.

Now she stared at the entrance to her cell, patiently waiting. If the Jedi were gone, someone would remember her eventually. And they would come to kill her too.

The buzzing red energy beams around her cell flickered ominously and then flickered out, leaving a deafening silence. Footsteps pounded in the hall, shouts coming as she suspected that the locks failed, and the prisoners were finding themselves free.

A hiss of air as the lock depressed and the transparisteel door slid upwards. A shadow loomed outside her cell – tall, male, humanoid – and she felt menace, both dark and light, in the Force. She raised her eyes to meet his. At least she could try to die like a Jedi.

Jedi Master Quinlan Vos looked back at her. His tawny eyes were amused and wary and relieved all at once. "Hey, kid," he said, arms crossed and showing the strength in his arms. His already wild appearance was more disheveled than usual, and his eyes had a shadow behind them.

"What happened, Master?" she asked.

He grimaced. "The Sith. No one's left. The Order's gone…and Palpatine will come for you sooner or later. Once he remembers you."

Barriss stood up. "Why come to save me then?" She didn't move towards him. She'd heard all about his own Fall to the Dark Side. He had been forgiven, taken back, but if the Sith had won, why was he still alive? And his presence in the Force felt darker than she was comfortable with.

"I liked Luminara," Vos said simply. "She was always kind to me, always respectful and understanding. She didn't deserve what happened. None of them did. And she loved you. The least I owe her is to give you a second chance. Everyone deserves one of those." His grin was lopsided and strangely boyish, like he had stuck his hand in the cookie jar and gotten caught.

Barriss felt surprise flow through her. She'd never thought the Dark Side a laughing matter.

"A chance to do what?" Her hands were clenched tightly together. If he tried to take her to Palpatine – who was in league with the Sith? Who was a Sith? – she would fight him.

"To choose." Vos uncrossed his arms, stepped back from the cell door and swept his hand out. "You could wait for Palpatine and join his new little Empire. Or you could come with me." He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. "And I guess we'll both try and figure out how to be Jedi again."

He didn't feel false in the Force.

Barriss thought about her options and gradually began to see a new path before her, clearer than anything she had seen in years. She nodded to him and stepped out of the cell. "We'll find whoever's left," she said. "That will be the first step."

She wondered how long redemption would take.

'The first step is always the hardest,' Master Luminara's voice came back to her.

Well, Barriss was going to find out.

End Notes: Barriss took over the story at the end. A bit of redemption in the wake of the Dark Side's victory. Chirrut and Baze are up next, and Jedha and some kyber crystals. We'll find out where Vos and Barriss ended up as well!