"Yes, Master."

"What should we do if Fidela decides to reach out?"

"Talk to us as soon as possible."

She nods. 

After the lift ride, the two pairs split off.

Asha and her padawan are going to do the post-mission debrief while working on saber forms at quarter-speed, as is tradition. "So, what fucked up, and what would you do differently?"

She thinks for a few moments before answering. "I don't know yet if anything did fuck up - hiding the intelligence about Fidela from the Council would be a drastic step, one that I don't think is warranted." 

"I do not think I could have dissuaded Elesse from speaking to Fidela, and it would have been worse to let her go alone. The situation was... Odd."

"Odd how?"

"Fidela knew we were coming, and she was waiting for us - she could've easily escaped well before we got there, and we would've had trouble tracking her - but she wasn't acting like she wanted to talk or collaborate."

"Elesse was also very sure approaching her peacefully would go well, which... Isn't suspicious itself. Elesse is very attuned to the Force and usually has good instincts. But..." She trails off, suddenly uncertain about what she even saw.

"Do you think she was compromised?"

"...I don't know. I just... I don't know what's going on."

"If you figure it out, say something."

Elsewhere, Elesse decides (as she often does) that what she really wants is more context. So. To the archives, and see what they have to say about historical Sith and fallen Jedi.

They have a record of Darth Bane, actually, the only survivor of the Brotherhood of Darkness - the Jedi record him as killed a little over a decade after the Seventh Battle of Ruusan. He wasn't believed to have any apprentices. The Banite Sith and the Rule of Two have actually been recorded since - Padawan Kibh Jeen, who kicked off the Dark Jedi Conflict, claimed that the Sith still existed and described the system. His claims were dismissed as the ravings of a madman who fell to the dark side.

There have been fallen Jedi nearly as long as there have been Jedi, so the records are extensive. The longest and most well attested lists are from the Fourth Great Schism and subsequent thousand years of the New Sith Wars, though so many Jedi fell and the Republic was in so much chaos that large tracts of records are lost. After that, known fallen Jedi cluster in the fifty years of the Old Sith War and the twenty eight years of the Great Galactic War; fallen Jedi prior to the Old Sith War are extremely poorly attested even though they definitely existed, and many would've fallen in the First through Third Great Schisms. A relatively manageable amount have fallen since the Ruusan Reformations, and their identities are mostly known. 

Fallen Jedi who emerged into Knighthood straight into a war and who used battle meditation are significantly rarer - true mastery of battle meditation is itself incredibly rare. That particular history would put someone before the Ruusan Reformation, statistically most likely in the New Sith Wars (by sheer numbers of fallen Jedi), followed by the Great Galactic War (and they do actually have a fairly complete list of everyone who used battle meditation on the Jedi's side in the Old Sith Wars, and none of them match Vader), or an even more ancient conflict they don't have records for.

There have been multiple Sith Empires, some of which don't seem particularly related to each other - the Sith name is apparently well thought of enough among darksiders that any group who gets the power to demand everyone else calls them Sith tends to do so, including groups of fallen Jedi like after the Fourth Great Schism.

These timelines... don't make any sense. A thousand years since Bane, sure, but there's practically no way Vader could have come after that. She'd have had to have been before, which, okay, ghost, maybe that works?? But.

Elesse feels like she may have made a mistake.

It's while she's staring at her notes in confusion that she gradually becomes aware of a gentle presence, leaning over her table and apparently reading some of what she has out.

She flinches away with a start.

Vader pulls back a bit.

"So which part did you lie to me about," she asks at length.

"Nothing I said was a lie. Some things were simply... Left out."

"How long have you been dead."

"Long enough the years no longer have meaning. Long enough I have chosen to let myself forget most of that great span of time."

"Yet, at the same time, I have just died; at the same time, I have not yet died."

"And yet, at the same time, I have been dead only those few years I had something outside of the Force to interact with. Time grows strange when you are one with the Force; it was not an existence I enjoyed, though at least it cannot be said to have had a clear duration."

"...Putting it another way. Your apprentice claimed to be the heir of Darth Bane's teaching, but there hasn't been a war with battle meditation that you could have died in since the Ruusan Reformations."

"She was originally Plagueis's apprentice, for what it's worth."

"Beyond that... I do not wish for the Jedi nor, especially, Plagueis to know how old I am; better they think I am a living result of one of the Line of Bane's many branches, than realize an entirely new paradigm sits before them."

"That doesn't really help me trust you."

"What would?"

(She... Doesn't know if she wants to manipulate Elesse into trusting her - well, of course she wants to. But the part of her that used to be Anakin can't imagine Elesse as anything other than good, anything other than filled with wondrous light; what possible right does she have to corrupt the woman who was and yet could be her Jedi Master? And she still doesn't understand why Elesse has kept her a secret - she didn't ask Elesse to do so. And, to be honest with herself, she wouldn't mind more openly collaborating with Elesse's Master, even if no one else; the Breha of her original life was an honorable woman. The only question there is if any Jedi other than Elesse would even consider trusting her...)