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It was called Jedi General Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace, and subsequently, former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano and Clone Commander Rex’s prosecution and eternal damnation.
He would say Rex forced his hand, that he made him do it. He would say Senator Padmé Amidala betrayed him, that she didn’t love him anymore. He would say it was the dishonored and exiled Obi-Wan Kenobi’s fault. He would say Ahsoka left him when he needed her most, even though he knew he left her, too.
Even though he knew he let her down when the Coruscant Guard falsely imprisoned her, and then chased her down, down, down into Coruscant’s deep underworld of crime and filth. Even though he knew he should have left the Jedi Order with her when she withdrew, even after she had been offered the title of Jedi Knight. Even though he knew he should have gone with her to Mandalore, to the very end.
Because he said he would, didn’t he? And he said he understood why she left, because she found her place, and he thought it was with him, when really it was with Rex and her brothers, in life and in death. Because while she had formerly pledged herself to the Order, and to him, she took an oath the day she joined the 501st, and she had promised to keep it until her last sigh heaved from her lips.
He could feel her lungs inflating as she walked through the halls of the long-forgotten, destroyed Temple of Eedit on Devaron. He could feel the way her breath rattled in her chest cavity that he longed to put a lightsaber through. Maybe a sword would have been better, because then he could see her bleed. Lightsabers were clean. They cauterized upon impact. They left scars, but did not allow bleeding, because the Order forbade unnecessary bloodshed, even though they had left a trail of bodies in their wake for hundreds of years.
He was being hypocritical. He killed without thought, without reason. He didn’t need any. He was the right hand of the Emperor, and he had one job.
Deliver Ahsoka Tano to the Emperor, dead or alive.
Unfortunately, Ahsoka Tano was slippery, and he no longer possessed flesh and skin and tissue to cover his hands.
Unfortunately, when he saw her, standing in the hallowed light of Devaron’s two moons, he froze, if only for a millisecond, and time slowed to a standstill. She turned to look at him, her fuel-blue eyes melancholy, something he couldn’t decipher swimming in her gaze. She was taller now, as tall as he had been as her Master, if you counted the montrals, which she indubitably would, if things were how they had been three years ago. If they both were how they were three years ago.
The stripes painting her montrals were longer now, jagged. He had tried his best to learn of how lekku evolved as their owner did, but as the thought crossed his mind now, all he felt was rage. Slow, simmering rage, fighting its way up his esophagus.
But he just stood there, even as she launched herself into the night, in the quiet, and wondered if he would let her go a third time, given the chance.
Ahsoka knew he wouldn’t, because the next time she faced Anakin Skywalker- Darth Vader, Sith Lord, no longer a Jedi Knight and no longer her Master-, he promised her death.