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He won’t say a word, her master, about what happened on that planet. Ahsoka’s not at all surprised; he won’t ever talk about things that are difficult. Or perhaps that isn’t a fair assessment—and that does sound like something he would say—it might be better to think that he won’t talk about something that is hard on him. Easy to notice back on their first real mission in Tatooine, when she could tell there was weight to the past he hadn’t wanted to talk about. Anakin’s willing to drop the brashness to be kind when she needs it, but not when she thinks he might need it, when she wants to know him. Ahsoka has to know him indirectly. Maybe he doesn’t need that: not from Obi-Wan, whose concerns are also brushed off—sometimes she feels they’re shut out just the same, for all Obi-Wan was his master and so wise—and not from her.
And that’s fine, usually, but it’s not fair when the thing in the past is about her.
She wants to know why she could feel tears when he hugged her.
She just doesn’t know what that would look like. No precedent for it; if he’d been angry, she wouldn’t even have needed to ask, but sadness and hurt don’t lend themselves to expression in him without that to channel them through.
Anakin stirs in his seat, turning to face her. “You feeling well, Snips?” His expression is casual but his eyes are intent. Slowly, still thinking of how to go about talking to him, Ahsoka tells him she’ll be all right. “Just thinking over it all. I should head back to my bunk and meditate.”
He raises his eyebrows. “That sounds like a good plan.” I’m a little surprised at you, she waits for him to say. Instead, he says “Well-thought, Padawan,” and nods her along.
Another change. Maybe it’s not so bad, if he can praise her without including something to provide a sting.
She really needs to find out what happened. When they’re alone.
The next time they’re away from Obi-Wan, it’s at the Temple. Ahsoka knows she’ll need to catch him soon after training, plans for it, but he derails her completely as soon as they arrive.
Endless rounds of physical tests—tests which she notices he is not enduring—ended, he’s still watching her carefully. It makes the walk back to his quarters a little more awkward than usual, and her determination grows with every step it takes them to get there.
Ahsoka manages, just barely, to avoid asking him if he was all right. Knowing him, it’s not that he needs a check-up; or rather, he might but it’s not the issue here.
The issue is he’s stubborn and he won’t tell her what the issue is.
“Master,” she says, opting for plain directness over frustration, “you’re watching me.”
“As is my duty, Padawan.” He emphasizes her title.
“Of course.” But what happened to make that duty so immediate now? “It just seems like you’re feeling that duty a bit more recently. Since we left Mortis.”
She doesn’t need to reach out to know he’s tensing up. Her eyes, as careful as his had been, can tell her. So can the way he’s gathering himself in—she cuts through the moment before he can summon his barely controlled poise. “I trust that you have a reason. You always do. That’s why I’m asking.”
Ahsoka looks down, releasing them both from the eye contact. “Something’s missing. A part of me.” At his increasing alarm, she adds, “not like something’s hurt. Just my memory. A chunk of my life.”
She returns his gaze again. “What happened to me? I feel I should know.”
Anakin has never looked so helpless. Not true, she realizes. He’s tense, not relieved, but other than that he looks just as when he’d held her back then, off-balance and lost.
Ahsoka walks closer and puts her hand on his shoulder. It’s one of the last things she remembers doing before. Comforting him after one of his dreams. She rubs him, feeling his turmoil under the skin, through muscle and bone. It echoes in her belly, half with sympathy and half with her own foreboding. He sighs. She readies herself for the blow. He delivers it as plainly as she’d done with hers.
“You died, Ahsoka.”
She blinks. “Pardon, what?” Her voice must have made the words sound loud; Anakin reaches for her hand, frozen on his shoulder. He finds the other and takes them both in his. He looks her steadily in the eye—he keeps her from swaying down and away.
“You died,” he repeats.
“I died.”
“You sure did. Ahsoka, I—Ahsoka?”
She’s burbling, Ahsoka thinks. Oh, she’s laughing.
“It’s not funny!” His grip tightens on her hands. “I lost you.”
The simplicity of that statement brings her back out of herself, and the world slows down.
“You haven’t.” There isn’t much she can do, hands where they are; Ahsoka lets him keep them and makes sure she’s all there when she looks at him. “I’m right here.”
He takes a breath. “That much is true. Come on.” Squeezing her hands again, he draws her back the short distance to his bed, and gently presses her down onto it before sitting next to her. He rubs his fingers, the flesh ones, over her palms; the metal ones stroke her knuckles. She watches them for a moment, before meeting his eyes: he waits for her to steady herself before he continues.
“I did lose you.” Anakin pauses. “I brought you back. Only it wasn’t me. Not completely. It should’ve been. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” He draws back a bit, though his fingers never stop touching hers. “Thank you,” Ahsoka says again.
“You didn’t ask for us to be brought there. You weren’t the one who kept us there, who made those things happen.”
He is the one who had done something later. Something which had necessitated Obi-Wan warning her to disable the ship and get away.
Whatever that had been, she won’t blame him. Not even if he remembered enough to say it, which Ahsoka recalls that he doesn’t; no more than she remembers what had happened to her.
“Still, you saved me. If they helped, well. It’s still you. And I thank you.” She smiles, taking her hands out gently so she can hold his in turn.
“What am I supposed to say to that?”
He’s not smiling, but he’s loose, now that he’s talking and she’s still here, keeping him with her grip. He peers at her, uncertain as to his next move, or hers. He’s waiting for her to lead him. The thought warms her belly, soothing the turmoil, though she still has some questions.
“Well, you can start by telling me what happened before that.”
Maybe it’s not fair, she thinks, to ask that of him when she can’t offer the same. She hopes Obi-Wan will, though knowing her Master’s master, and that Anakin had forgotten, he might think this was the way things were meant to be. She can’t know if that’s right. If she knew what happened, she would tell him. Since she doesn’t, that’s between Anakin and Obi-Wan.
What’s here between her and Anakin is different. He looks tired, but he’s there, smiling at last at her persistence, and Ahsoka is happy knowing he’ll tell her what she needs to know, because she needs it. Because he does need her to hear it too—and he’ll let them find this all out together.