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Anakin had thanked the Force, his lucky stars, the universe at large, any of the gods he remembered hearing about as a little boy, anything and anyone when he found her. He knew it was too easy– the Son had taken her, and here she was, out in the open, alone, unguarded, but he had to try, didn’t he? He had to hope. “It’s me, you’re safe now, let’s go,” he said, but he didn’t believe it. The words felt like ash on his tongue, though a cursory glance around the courtyard didn’t reveal any immediate threat. It’s me? He wouldn’t need to say that; Ahsoka would know it was him. She would know he was coming before he entered the courtyard, before he entered the tower. Just as she would know it was him, he would know it was her, but– but he felt nothing.
She stood there, in front of him, same height, same build, same padawan braid, but his stomach turned to lead before she even opened her mouth. Ahsoka was always bright in the Force, brilliant and blazing, like a patch of sun on a cloudy day, like shared, secret laughter at an inside joke. But Anakin didn’t feel that, didn’t feel her; instead all he felt was cold. The cold of the wind, the cold of the planet, the cold of the dark. He should’ve felt her, warm, in the back of his mind, but there was only a gaping emptiness where he usually found her.
“Are you…proud of me, Master?” That was her voice, he’d know it anywhere, but it was off, it was wrong. It grated, it hurt his teeth, it dragged along the air like claws through the metal hull of a ship.
“What?” The thunder that followed his question startled him further. Proud? Of course, how could she not know that? It was a given, she was his padawan– wait, that line of reasoning was faulty, it was familiar, but…
But the shadows in the courtyard grew longer, and he scanned the area again, though he still saw nothing.
“Of course, Snips, of course I’m proud of you, now let’s get out of here.” His mouth was moving without his permission. His eyes were trained on the sky, his ears straining for anything out of place, his senses reaching out as far as they’d go with his attention along with them. It surprised him when they all pulled him towards Ahsoka.
As Ahsoka’s spine straightened, ice shot through Anakin’s. “He’s right,” she drawled. “Right about everything. You must join him.”
She turned, and Anakin’s mind went blank when he saw her eyes were yellow.
“He only wants what’s best for the universe.” Her pout, that imploring look– it was always something silly, like when she wanted to quit saber training early, or wanted to eat in the mess with the troops, or wanted to explore when they visited a new planet, not– not whatever this was.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand to attention. “Hey. What’s wrong with you?” As soon as the words hit the air, he knew they were the wrong ones to say.
The temperature of the courtyard plummeted. “Always with the criticism, Master! Never really believing in me, trusting me.” The words were familiar, the sentiment behind them moreso. He heard them in her voice, but he felt them in his own throat; he remembered their seeds planted in his chest, growing thorns and brambles, cutting his lips on razor-sharp leaves. “Well, I don’t need you anymore.”
She turned her back on him again, and he would have laughed if only it were funny. Those words cut, they tore into him, they smashed through bone and ripped through muscle, tissue, every one of his vital organs, and all he saw for a moment was Obi-Wan’s face. Always the same face– his jaw set in a hard line, a barely-there frown, a furrowed brow, eyes gleaming with a hurt he’d never admit to. He’d been making that face for ten years. He made that face yesterday. They were always his one giveaway, his eyes; he’d seen Obi-Wan’s disappointment, his anger, his pain shining in them, but only now did Anakin understand. He was sure the same feelings were reflected in his own.
“Ahsoka.” The cold air was filling his throat, it was flooding his lungs and controlling the rapid beat of his heart. “Ahsoka, listen to me.” Why would she listen to him? “He has done something to you. Snap out of it!” He may be young, but he wasn’t born yesterday. He knew his words were empty, that they wouldn’t change anything. “This isn’t you, Ahsoka!”
His words had always seemed to do more harm than good.
“Isn’t it?” And that summed everything up right there, didn’t it. He wanted to say no. He wanted to believe that this was coming from nowhere, was just a vision conjured up by the Son, but– but there was always that doubt, that spark, that little ember balancing on a knife’s edge of roaring into an untamable conflagration of uncertainty. “I feel more like myself than I ever have!”
Okay. Shit.
His fingers trembled, even the mechanical ones.
She fell into an apathy he could only describe as robotic, but even the most basic of battle droid models had more vitality than she did. “He asked me to give you a message.” His gut twisted, and he knew what she was going to say before she said it. “He said if you don’t join him, he will kill me!” He heard the smile in her voice, and her giggle was lost in the thunder that roared, the Son’s own mocking laughter. He saw red.
She had barely finished speaking before he growled, “I won’t let him.”
Ahsoka pivoted around, just as smoothly as she did when they sparred, just as smoothly as he’d taught her. “Then you will be forced to kill me.” She ignited her saber, and he couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing.
Force knew that was the last thing he’d ever do. He’d rather die himself than see her fall at his hand.
(A pain shot through his skull, sharp, jagged, white-hot, digging into the space behind his eyelids and setting every nerve ending alight, but just for a moment. He was overcome with the feeling that he’d had this conversation with himself before, that he’d been made to think about this, however terrible– but he couldn’t remember anything like that. He’d never turn a weapon against his apprentice. Never.)
His reflexes took over.
Ahsoka was trying to kill him. She knocked him off balance, and he took several steps back before he was able to hold his ground. He looked into a face that was hers in every way it shouldn’t be, but just wasn’t in all the ways it should. He’d seen her angry, seen her puff up like an affronted loth-kitten, but the snarl on her face would be more at home on a nexu. Her yellow (no, no, they were supposed to be blue) eyes were glowing, her sharp teeth glinting in the light reflected from her lightsaber, and she pushed him back, back, back.
She threw everything he’d taught her at him, then surprised him with a few things he hadn’t, and it was all so very Ahsoka that the fleeting thought that this was her crossed his mind. But no. No, this couldn’t be. The Son couldn’t do this, couldn’t take her from him– he wouldn’t let him.
At least, he wouldn’t let the Son take her and walk away without a lightsaber through his throat.
She drew her second saber and he knew he was fucked.
Even when Obi-Wan (finally) came to help, he was nervous. He was a little bit in awe of her– never let it be said that he pitied a battle droid, but if this was what it felt like to be on the wrong end of his padawan’s lightsaber, well. He certainly didn’t envy them.
(Was this what Obi-Wan saw every time he chastised him for his aggression?)
Obi-Wan didn’t reveal much in his face or his words, he rarely did, but Anakin always knew how to read him. He could feel his anxiety, could feel it steadily climb towards something more like desperation, while Anakin was sure his old master could feel the blind panic sticking to him like a second skin. Watching Ahsoka focus on Obi-Wan made him feel like a teenager again, like a little boy– confused and scared, watching someone he loved as they were hurt right in front of him. He cut in front of Obi-Wan, pushing Ahsoka back, away from him.
Anakin could take it. Ahsoka was his padawan. She was his responsibility, these were his mistakes. He would not let one of the only other people in the galaxy he cared about be hurt because of his failures.
The dagger, the Son, the Father, the Daughter– none of them really registered, none of them really mattered to Anakin. Everything started and ended with Ahsoka, with the Son declaring her usefulness over, with her body falling, crashing to the ground in a sickeningly lifeless heap of bones. It was instant. No desperate gasp for air, no feeble, final heartbeat, no fingers stiffening around those of someone who loved her– she had served his purpose, and then she was gone. She lost the Son's attention as soon as she crumpled, left at his feet like garbage.
Her lightsaber rolled out of her grip, and he knew her fingers were cold, even from across the courtyard. The thought struck him, and he felt bile rise in his throat, then he was moving before he even was conscious of it. The air was cool, the wind was biting, and she was broken on the ground. He wasn’t there with her. No one one was.
He knew her fingers would be cold.
A terrible scream pierced the frigid air and he knew in the back of his mind that it was his, but he was knocked off his feet, his clothes tore under him on the rough stone and broken glass, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. He was on the ground, a little bruised, a little scraped, but Ahsoka was on the ground, too. She was on the ground and she wasn’t bleeding, she had no bruises; just graying, ashy skin, and black, black veins that spiderwebbed across her body. Anakin hauled himself to his feet.
Ahsoka did not.
More screaming, more thunder, more flashes of light and dark, but Anakin could only see what was behind his eyelids. Qui-Gon on his funeral pyre, as serene in death as he'd been in life, with a broken Obi-Wan, not much older than he was now, at his side. His mother, painted in bruises of a hundred different colors, always so kind, always so patient, so warm and loving, going cold in his arms. Ahsoka’s body giving out under its own weight, just yards in front of him, but just beyond his reach.
Obi-Wan had told him of Qui-Gon’s last words, of how he’d gone still in his arms as his heartbeat slowed to nothing. Anakin had told Padmé of finding his mother, of feeling her life slip away like grains of sand between his fingers. But Ahsoka was alone. Her last touch had been what had ended her. Qui-Gon was a teacher, a Jedi Master, and his mother had found her freedom, was a mother with enough love for the entire GAR, but Ahsoka– she was bright and eager. She was a learner. She was barely sixteen.
There was a reason he’d never wanted a padawan.
He knew she was cold, he knew she was ice, but as soon as the Son took off, as soon as he fled that damned courtyard, Anakin ran to Ahsoka, and when he touched her he was frozen. His touch was gentle as he rolled her over, careful to use his flesh hand, scared he would shatter her, that she would crumble to dust under his fingers. He still felt the shock of cold through his glove, and he barely registered Obi-Wan’s footsteps behind him. The tears that stung his eyes were hot, but stars, her body was cold.
He heard voices, he saw the Daughter in front of him, he saw the Father desperately grasping her hand. He felt their anguish, their despair, but his thoughts swirled around him just as much as the clouds and debris did. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel, he just kneeled by his padawan and watched the light from the Daughter fade further and further with each heartbeat. Ahsoka was so small– little gods, had she always been this small?
Stars, what was he going to tell Rex?
The courtyard was silent. He couldn’t guess what Obi-Wan was feeling. He hadn’t a clue what the Father and Daughter had been saying. He looked up at them, then, feeling shards of glass rumble through his chest. “Can you help her?”
“There is no light,” the Father said, his eyes trained on his Daughter. “The evil has been unleashed, and the dark side shall consume her.”
Anakin looked down at Ahsoka, his padawan, his friend, his sister– dark, sickly veins showed through the unusual pallor of her skin, contorting her into someone, something else. She had tried to kill him, had tried to kill Obi-Wan, and he hadn’t felt her warmth once in this fucking courtyard, but– but no. No. No. “You must help her,” he pleaded, ignoring the tears that flooded over, hot and sticky on his face. He could not leave her here like this. He wouldn’t.
“I cannot undo what is done! There is…no hope.”
He shook his head. “Yes there is!” He was speaking around razor blades. “There’s always hope!”
Then the Daughter pointed to Ahsoka with fingers that shook, with fingers that still valiantly glowed with a dying light, and the Father stood. Anakin stood with him without commanding his body to, and kneeled between Ahsoka and the Daughter. He closed his eyes, and let himself fade into the space, the world, the people around him.
“Then let my Daughter’s last act be to breathe life into your friend.” The Father’s voice sounded far away, and then Anakin heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing but the light of the Daughter and the emptiness of Ahsoka under his fingertips.
It felt like he was burning from the inside out, but– but it didn’t hurt. He took the light from the Daughter when she handed it to him, took her warmth, her spark, and gave it to the smoking remnants of Ahsoka. He thought of her, of meeting her on Christophsis what felt like decades ago, of the playful glint that sparkled in her eye when she had an idea, of the way she took an extra half step to keep up with one of his, of all the nicknames she’d come up with for him, for any droid she met, for any fauna she came across on any planet, of all that he’d tried to teach her, of all that he had given her, of all that he still wanted to, and he stoked the embers until the tinder caught, fanned the flame until it was roaring under his hands.
Then the warmth was unbearable, and he barely caught himself as he fell forward.
He didn’t need to look to know that the Daughter had been extinguished. He was hoping that the heat he had felt had returned to Ahsoka’s body, was hoping to see the fire roar in her eyes once again.
The darkness of her veins had receded, the gray had all washed away, but her eyes were still dead, and her chest still refused to rise or fall.
Until she coughed.
She choked, the force of it propelling her forward as she fought to bring air back into her lungs. Anakin crawled to her, latching onto the brilliant blaze he felt kindled from her ashes, and pulled her forward, into him. She was warm, thank the stars, she was warm and he felt her lungs inflate and deflate, he felt her heart beat, and though he felt her fingers only twitch weakly against his sides, he felt them move. She was breathing. She was breathing. She was breathing.
He listened to the shallow rattle of her breath, felt her come back to herself, and only when she gently hugged him in return did he allow himself to exhale. She was okay. He pulled back, but kept a hand on her shoulder, afraid that if he let go, she’d slip away again. “Hey, Snips,” he breathed, not bothering to clear away the wetness in his throat, nor to wipe away his tears.
Ahsoka just blinked at him, her eyes hazy. “What’s…going on?” She looked from him to Obi-Wan, clearly confused, but Obi-Wan just gave her a small smile. That smile Anakin recognized, the one that pulled at the corner of his mouth but didn’t reach his eyes– that was the terrified, oh gods, it almost happened again smile. Anakin met Obi-Wan’s eye briefly, and he felt the true depth of his horror for the first time. He knew they would have a discussion about this later, but for now, he turned back to his padawan.
“Uh…” Ahsoka just looked at him, that clarity of innocence, that trust for his guidance back in her eyes. “Not much,” he decided. “It’s good to see you.” She seemed to accept this as good enough, and he helped her back to her feet. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when she was steady. Obi-Wan handed her her lightsaber, and Anakin swallowed down the last piece of ice that had spread through his veins. She had it, it was back in her hands, it wasn’t lying next to her lifeless body anymore. She was okay.
Ahsoka was okay. She would be okay. He swore to the Force itself he would never let anything hurt her again.
(He felt an echo of that pain behind his eyes from earlier, felt that strange familiarity. Maybe the living Force was trying to tell him something; what that might be, he couldn’t guess, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.)
(Maybe he should have.)