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"Ahsoka! Ahsoka!"
Anakin's voice tears across the battlefield, raw and panicked as he screams her name, and Ahsoka forces herself to blink her sticky eyes open.
There's a sheet of metal only a couple inches above her face, and its ragged edges glint at her, twisted and barblike, close enough it would have gouged her eyes out if it had been flying at her just a little faster, a little harder.
"Ahsoka!"
She hears the thump of boots on dirt, the clatter of metal as her Master jumps over heaps of wreckage, from durasteel crossbeam to the shredded wing of a LAAT in the quickest possible path to where she lies.
"Ana...ngh…"
"Ahsoka!"
He lifts the piece of wreckage hanging over her, and fuzzy darkness becomes fuzzy light as he force-shoves it away.
"Oh, thank the force…"
Ahsoka blinks a couple times, pulling his image into focus. He's fallen to his knees beside her, paying no attention to the dirty rubble, and looks like a mess, face licked with sweat and eyes wide and faintly bloodshot.
She tries to talk, and ends up coughing instead, the sound wet and strangled. She thinks she might be coughing up blood.
"It's alright Snips," her Master's voice whispers in her ear as he slips his arms around her and scoops her up into a maiden carry. "You're going to be fine. I promise you're going to be fine."
She coughs again, but this time manages to speak. "Where's… where's master Kenobi?"
Anakin's voice breaks a little, twisting high. "He's... he's fine too, Snips. He's going to make it. You both are."
It sounds more like he's trying to persuade himself than like he's actually sure.
"A… Alive?"
His grip on her tightens just a little, the fingers of his metal hand cold even through leather. "Yes. You're both alive. And you're going to stay that way, got it?"
Energy spent, the best Ahsoka can give him is a lolling nod.
The grey nothing of unconsciousness pulls at the edges of her awareness, but she devotes her last scraps of strength to keeping her eyes open as he carries her back to the ship.
"You and Obi-Wan are never going on a mission without me again," he mutters as he steps into the medbay.
"Wasn't his fault, Master," she says. "Weren't reckless. Had… had to."
He winces at the rawness of her voice, and she shuts her mouth as he gently lowers her onto a bed.
It's the bed closest to the bacta tanks, and she grimaces at the sight of Cody and Master Kenobi hanging suspended in the gel, stripped down to just their underclothes and sickly pale through the blue fluid. They both look strangely small without their armor.
Anakin paces back and forth at the end of her bed, his presence in the force a maelstrom of agitation.
"Shouldn't you…" She swallows. "Shouldn't you be on the bridge?"
"Rex is handling it."
"...You left a captain in charge of two entire battalions and a Star Destroyer?"
He stops and scowls, looking away from her. "He's doing fine."
"Yes, but it's your job."
He shoots her what she thinks is supposed to be a defiant look, but it does an even worse job than usual hiding the tightly wound anxiety underneath. "I should be here with you."
"It's okay, Master." Her tone softens a little. "You've done what you can. Go be a general and let Kix fix us up."
He bites his lip, pulling his fingers through his hair hard enough to make Ahsoka's lekku ache with sympathy pains. "I know. I just… I can't let you out of my sight right now. Either of you."
"Master…"
His eyes flash. "I thought you two were dead today, Snips. For almost an entire hour. Forgive me for not keeping my attachment under wraps."
"That's not…" she closes her eyes. "I'm sorry. That's not what I was trying to say."
I'm just worried about you, she thinks, but doesn't say aloud.
Anakin cools quickly, anger draining out of him with a frustrated sigh. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be snapping at you, I'm just… on edge right now."
"You should go find Rex," she says, a little firmer this time. "Brooding never helps you. You'll feel better once you have something to do."
"You're sure? They'll probably need me on planet, it might be awhile before I can get back--"
"Yes." She rolls her eyes. "It's not like we're going to be conscious, Skyguy. We might even do better without you stressing all over the force."
He chews on his lower lip. "I'll come visit you first thing when I come back."
"Good," she says, making a shoeing motion at him. "Now, goodbye."
He lets out a choppy laugh, one that sounds more like he's trying to stabilize himself than actually amused. "See you later, Snips."
Her eyes linger on the door to the medbay for a long while after he leaves, a faint prickle of uneasiness settling over her shoulders.
She has the sudden thought that maybe she shouldn't have sent him away, but she pushes it out of her mind. She'd meant what she said--there was no reason for him to stay.
She doesn't even want him here, really. There's a part of her that always feels warm inside when her Master shows how much he cares for her--against the code or not--but his constant mother-henning could be exhausting, and the way he tends to treat her like a delicate glass sculpture when injured always frays the edges of her patience.
Despite her reassurances, the unnerving feeling doesn't fade as a med droid cuts away at the bloodsoaked fabric clinging to her body, rising to a fever pitch as Kix prepares the I.V.
Something is off here. Anakin should have stayed.
She raises a hand to stop Kix, chewing on her lower lip. "No."
He raises his eyebrows, taking a step back. "Commander?"
"I need my comm. I have something else to tell him, I just realized."
His forehead creases, but he grabs her wrist-comm off the bedside table and hands it to her. "Be quick. The sooner we get you under, the better."
She gives him a pained smile of gratitude, scrambling to turn it on. Punching in Anakin's comm code is muscle memory, but he doesn't connect.
Ahsoka frowns and tries again, but before she can input the information a third time, Kix pulls the device from her hands.
"Hey--!"
"He probably has his turned off," says Kix. "I can take him a message, after you're in the tank."
Ahsoka scowls. "Tell him he needs more men. Something's going to go wrong while he's gone.
"Will do, sir," he says. "Now please, try to relax."
***
Ahsoka awakes to pain and confused terror.
It isn't hers but it feels like it is--her lungs burning, the thick heaviness of bacta gel pressing in on her from all sides, spilling down her throat--
It's not real, she tells herself, focusing on the suction seal tracing over her nose and around her jaw. She forces herself to stop gasping, steadying her breathing into the familiar rhythm she uses to meditate.
Everything is still sluggish and stinging and cold, and Ahsoka remembers that people aren't meant to wake up while in bacta.
Where is Kix? Ahsoka reaches out with the force, searching for his familiar presence.
She doesn't find him.
She finds Cody's instead, and the terror is his. He is dying, drowning and Ahsoka's scream chokes on the equipment feeding her air, the sound of it muffled through the bacta.
She reaches out blindly in the force, grabbing at the bacta in his lungs and yanking at it, but the liquid is unresponsive, as tranquil in the force as a still pond. Ahsoka lets out another primal scream and pulls again, wrenching at the force.
There is still nothing. It sits in his lungs and continues to choke the life out of him, and Ahsoka doesn't understand. She can feel the microorganisms in the fluid in the force, a million glowing pinpricks of life and light and healing, a mockery of her helplessness as Cody's brightness continues to dull.
Ahsoka keeps tearing uselessly at the liquid. She refuses to let him die here, in the medical bay of a Republic ship. In a bacta tank.
There's nothing she can do to stop it.
His thrashing finally stops, and Ahsoka withdraws her touch from his body. It is less alive now than the liquid around it and somehow that makes it worse than any of the other corpses she's ever felt.
Now that his terror is no longer overwhelming her senses, she feels something else, too, a slick sense of heavy darkness that had slipped past her perception before.
In the next three seconds, Ahsoka has two realizations:
First: They are not alone.
Second: Cody's death was not an accident.
On the fourth second, Ahsoka's breathing mask disengages, and she realizes that whoever it is is here for her, too.
She manages to avoid inhaling too much of the liquid, but the sour taste of it still fills the inside of her mouth, more rushing up her nose before she has a chance to plug it. A gasping cough spasms through her, but it only ends in more bacta flooding her mouth.
She screams out into the force this time, but it doesn't hear her, her defiance and despair and fear swallowed up by the same barrier that has stopped her from helping Cody. Her lungs feel simultaneously like they're burning and collapsing, and her head is starting to go fuzzy from lack of oxygen.
She refuses to die like this. They'd made it off the battlefield. They'd made it out.
But Master Kenobi is drowning beside her and Cody is already dead. No one is coming to save her.