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“Hey, Snips,” Anakin greeted, trying to inject some cheerfulness into his tone as he pulled up a visitor’s chair.
“Skyguy!” Ahsoka returned his greeting, pushing herself up on her elbows with a noticeable effort. “I almost missed you, Gramps,” she smiled her usual cheeky smirk and Anakin felt something inside of him settle. Her veins were still too dark and too prominent, but they were much improved already.
“Good to see you haven’t changed,” Anakin teased, hoping against hope that she would understand everything that went unsaid.
“A disease isn’t about to take me out,” Ahsoka responded haughtily. She choked a little on the end of her sentence and bit back a painful looking cough. Anakin found himself instinctually rising halfway out of his chair, reaching forwards as if to help. She waved him off with one hand, turning to cough into her pillow. When she recovered, she turned back to Anakin and asked in a threadier voice, “How’re Rex and Padmé?”
“They’re both much better,” Anakin told her, before backpedaling quickly, “Not- not that I’ve seen them in person.” It was half true. He hadn’t seen Rex at all since they had all been transported off of Naboo.
Ahsoka side-eyed him, but clearly didn’t have the energy to argue. “Why couldn’t Rex come here, instead?” Ahsoka motioned around to the Halls of Healing around her. Rex was in a Kaminoan medical station orbiting space with many other injured clones. Padmé was in a hospital located in Theed. Anakin knew why Ahsoka was asking about Rex.
Anakin opened his mouth and found that he had no answer. “It’s… complicated.” He said lamely, because what was he supposed to tell his very young padawan? That the Kaminoans technically “owned” the clones- the people who Ahsoka had befriended and fought with and watched die in front of her? That the Jedi and the Republic were content to stand back and watch as slavery was perpetuated in the galaxy. That Anakin was a hypocrite and an oath-breaker and a traitor to his own people?
He settled on putting his hand on top of Ahsoka’s blanket and awkwardly patting her leg through it. Ahsoka looked at him and did not speak. Anakin did not look at her and began to speak. “Look,” he started, uncomfortably, awkwardly, “I know I was teasing you a few days ago, but… you handled yourself much better than I would have at your age. You’re very brave.” Anakin was not looking, so he did not see Ahsoka’s eyes fill with tears. Ahsoka was not speaking, so she did not tell Anakin what his words meant to her.
“I guess I just mean to say, I’m really proud of you, Snips,” Anakin finished, quietly cringing at his own words. He didn’t know how to do this anymore, constantly flip-flopping between masking his feelings with jokes he didn’t mean and uncomfortable wide-openness. Nobody knew how to deal with him, which was fair, because he didn’t know how to deal with himself.
Ahsoka sniffed audibly now and Anakin looked up, shocked. “I didn’t feel brave,” she whispered, as if telling a deadly secret. She looked up at Anakin, eyes wide and young and skin still bubbling blue and black and sickly. She lowered her voice to a guilty hiss and admitted, “I was so scared.” Ah, perhaps, here in the Temple, such a statement was a deadly secret. “I guess it’s always seemed like nothing bad would ever actually happen to me and suddenly it hit me that I was going to die and I know I should have been happy to become one with the Force, but I wasn’t . I was just… scared.
“I understand,” Anakin told her sincerely, earnestly.
“You do?” Ahsoka seemed unconvinced, “I didn’t think you were scared of anything. I thought you were ‘The Hero With No Fear’.” Her voice is stretched with sarcasm, or bitterness, or some other unnameable emotion.
“All that propaganda has been getting to your head, Snips,” Anakin frowned, displeased. Ducking his own head to meet her eyes more squarely, he quieted his own voice to match Ahsoka’s, “I’m scared all the time. I was scared out of my mind the whole time you and Padmé and Rex were down there. I felt helpless and it terrified me.”
“I thought Jedi weren’t supposed to be afraid,” Ahsoka was still whispering, like a youngling afraid to be caught awake in the middle of the night.
“To be afraid is to be sentient,” Anakin told her, paraphrasing something his much better half had once told him, “Our struggle as Jedi is to put aside these fears and do what must be done anyway.” He didn’t want to admit to Ahsoka that he had never learned to put aside his fears. He was afraid and angry and hurt every day of his life and he would do anything to protect his padawan from such an existence.
Ahsoka was nodding to herself, mouthing words silently towards her own legs. “I think you’re brave, too,” she said, after a moment, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and not quite looking at Anakin, “You’re always sacrificing your own safety for the sake of others.” Anakin’s heart clenched and his breath stuttered as his insides swirled with the guilt of a particularly awful lie warring with a sickening sense of pride. His eyes hardened with the remembrance of those awful events that he did not- could not regret.
“Thanks, Snips,” he choked out around the black pit of lies blocking his throat and cutting off his airways. “I should probably let you get some sleep,” he tried to casually make his escape, selfish and cowardly and small - just the way he’d always been.
“Will you stay until I fall asleep?” Ahsoka murmured, looking embarrassed. It was a particularly childish request and not one that Anakin expected from Ahsoka. Nevertheless, what would he be if he denied her so simple a favor?
“Yeah, of course.” He swallowed. His throat hurt. Ahsoka was already laying down again, eyes closed, breathing deepening. Anakin stared down at her and wished beyond anything else that he could save her from everything he had gone through. Anakin sat, feeling as if he could sink into the ground and never rise again. The Force swirled around them both and, for once in his life, Anakin actually prayed .