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They arrive on the moon where the Venator crashed and Vader cannot feel… anyone. The ship had crashed and he cannot feel any of the clones. He cannot feel Ahsoka. He chooses to go down to the crash site. The bond between him and Ahsoka has waned in her time away and maybe… maybe she is still down there.
The ship is a wreck.
There is a graveyard.
Someone had to have done this, and Anakin’s money is on Rex. There was so much of his old squad on that ship though, there’s a few it could have been. There are helmets and pieces of armor scattered across the snow. He looks down at one of the painted helmets, orange and white for Ahsoka. It seems so distant, seeing her, telling her that the squad had painted their armor. It’s foggy, already, in his brain. Like it’s an old memory and not a fairly recent event.
There is so much pain in the air. He knows she never would have gone down without a fight. No wonder the ship is in the state it is. Anakin walks through the wreckage, through the bodies. It aches in his chest and he ignores it. There’s no room for that anymore.
Anakin sees a familiar handle sticking up out of the snow and his stomach drops. He realizes now that he didn’t expect her to be gone. It feels absurd that she would leave the world and he wouldn’t feel a thing, that there wouldn’t be a loud crack of thunder in the Force. What has he done to their bond? He has strayed so far that he cut off the last person close to him. Anakin is angry at himself for so much and he adds this to the list. He had thought she might have survived. That she would be out there somewhere, running away. Running until she was safe and never looking back.
Anakin picks the lightsaber up. It’s just the one and he doesn’t want to consider if her other saber is laying somewhere else in this wreckage. Like she was thrown and is scattered across this moon. He doesn’t know how long he stands there staring at it. The past few cycles have been nothing but loss after loss after loss , for him. Obi-wan, Padme, now Ahsoka. He’s angry. He is angrier than he has ever been and he has few places to point it but at himself.
He tells his squad to sweep for survivors. Take care of the dead. He tells them if they find any other lightsabers out here to bring them to him. His commander asks if he wants a list of who they lost.
Vader says no.
He turns away to walk back to his own ship. The last thing he wants to do is look at Ahsoka’s dead body. He was already seeing it in his nightmares; he does not need to see it in his waking hours.
For a while it stays on his belt, the whole lightsaber. It is tucked towards the back. He doesn’t know why he’s carrying it around, it’s not as though someone would be in his quarters or would dare to question it to begin with. He just finds he can’t leave it behind. It pulls at him when he leaves it there. Anakin isn’t sure if it’s real or in his head. Some days he is sure it's a magnet, pulling all the metal in his body towards it. Other days he touches it and it makes him nauseous. He touches it and he can feel bile in his throat.
On those days, he still reaches back and hooks it to his belt. He won't ignore her.
He is back on Mustafar, suit half off. The Emperor has introduced the Inquisitor program. He wants the jedi caught now. Says they can turn them, use them. Vader does as he is told. They haven’t caught many, there weren’t many left on the run, when it was all said and done. But they have a couple.
And then there’s the children.
Holocrons full of force sensitive children. They are also for the inquisitor program. Anakin wasn’t sure what the volunteer rate on it would be but they’ve got a few less fortunate who were left behind from the war. Some are even showing some promise. Vader is in charge of their training.
Anakin looks down at the lightsaber in his hand. Ahsoka’s old saber. He can’t keep carrying it around. Especially not in front of the Inquisitor recruits. He tried leaving it behind earlier today but he was itchy without it. So here he is, thinking of how else to carry it. He loosens his grip and watches as the saber floats out of his hand. He is careful as he takes it apart, lets each piece come off one at a time. Finally, he has it separated in front of him and the crystal is glowing in the middle of it all.
He reaches out for it with his other hand. As soon as he touches it he feels a jolt through him, an echo of something he hasn’t felt in so long. There’s a warmth in it, like the sun on his skin. Like summers at the temple, in the garden. Ahsoka’s hand on his face, her body next to his.
He misses her so much it hurts.
The saber drifts back together without the crystal.
With his suit back on, he walks through the halls of this base. His castle, they call it. He supposes that is what it looks like. He walks until he is outside, lava hitting the walls of his home below him. The crystal is what was connected to her, the part of the saber that would be the closest to holding her heart in his hands. He looks down at the lava. Ahsoka hasn’t been here before, not that he remembers. At least now there will be a piece of her for the planet to soak up. He drops Ahsoka’s lightsaber hilt over the side and into the lava.
Vader has long days. Training the inquisitors isn’t his only duty. He is still the Empire’s attack dog, expected to go where he is pointed and take care of the problem, whatever it is. As often as he can, he finds time to sit and meditate. He used to hate it and he still does but these days he needs it. Some of it he does to hold his body together, to keep what's left of him functioning. And some of it is to sit and hold Ahsoka’s crystal.
His right hand was gone already when he got his padawan but his left was still there. He looks down at the crystal resting on his glove and he wishes there was something left for him to hold this with, something left that was still him.
Top half of the suit gone, helmet on the floor next to him, he spins the crystal in between his fingers. There is a safety that radiates off of it. A familiar cockiness that Ahsoka felt, that she probably got from him, at least a little. Anakin closes his eyes and presses the crystal to his bare chest, over his heart. It is so warm on his skin, the only thing other than his suit that has touched his body as it is now.
The crystal is under his palm and he rolls it, gently, back and forth across his skin. He can feel the ridges digging into him and he wishes he could get this crystal to melt into him the way Ahsoka’s lightsaber hilt melted in the lava. Liquify and seep into his bloodstream. Maybe what is left of her in this crystal could ease the pain he feels.
He couldn’t do that though, he couldn’t taint the last piece of her he has by mixing it with what he has become. Even now, even after…everything. He won't do that to her.
It becomes something he clings to on the bad days, the real bad ones. He reaches for her like she is still here and he can convince himself, however briefly, that she would console him, offer him comfort. He knows how she would look at him now, really, but he cannot face it and he doesn’t have to. This crystal gives him warmth and he can shape it however he likes.
He wraps cording around it and hangs it from his neck. It is present under Vader’s suit all the time. It is close enough to his heart that he can enjoy the benefit without worrying about the crystal itself. He rests his hand on his chest and presses until he can feel it digging in. Anakin hopes if he can do it enough he will leave a mark on his chest for it to sit in, a place made in his skin.
With each year that passes, he gets angrier. He gets more violent. He keeps wearing the crystal.
Vader’s master sends him on errands, sends him to commit horrors. They have been working on a weapon for years now but they are not done. The engineers are scared and it is making them slow. There is so much for Vader to do, all the time. Even more with every year his Master gets older.
When there is any weight to the rumors of a Jedi, they call him. It lights a familiar fire in him, to see one face to face. So often it is someone he knew, at least in passing. They do not know him anymore. Cannot see through what he is now. There’s something infuriating about seeing them, knowing they’ve spent years hiding and running and then thinking they have what it takes to stand up to him. He was the strongest one long before the Jedi fell and he has only gotten stronger.
It is an insult, for them to show themselves. For them to try and fight him.
He is supposed to bring this one in, she is good and the Emperor thinks she could be a good inquisitor. Vader cannot bring himself to back off. She is taunting him, making sarcastic comments. She is quick and cocky and she is mocking him. When he finally cuts her down it is with a rage he hasn’t let loose in a long while. He kills her and barks at the inquisitors to do something about the body.
All the way back to his quarters on his ship, the crystal burns on his chest. He cannot tell if he is really feeling that or if he is just imagining the disappointment Ahsoka would feel if she were here. He gets inside his room and waits for the airlock to click before he starts tearing off his suit. When he finally reaches the crystal, it is hot, even through the gloves. Vader pulls on it, tearing the cord off of his neck. When he can finally see it, he drops it to the floor.
There’s something wrong with it.
Vader steps back and drops to his knees.
The bottom tip is tinged red.
He blinks and he is looking at the floor, his throat burning from the bile clawing its way up. It’s all over the bottom of his helmet, dripping from his mouth onto the floor.
What did he do?
It isn’t a large spot but it is there. Like it was dipped into a pool of blood. Vader’s hand drifts back to his chest to be sure it isn’t his blood but there’s nothing there. He thinks of how angry he was earlier, in that fight. He thinks of the attitude the Jedi was giving him. The way she spoke to him, how reckless she was.
He knows who she reminded him of.
Vader picks up the crystal again, gently. He brings it close to his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “don’t take this on, don’t carry this with you. Leave it, please leave it with me.”
He brings the crystal to his lips, smearing drool and vomit all over it; presses a kiss to it gently, “Let me take it back, Ahsoka, please.”
He holds the crystal against his mouth, breath shaking in his chest. He can’t do this, he can’t ruin this last piece of her. He won’t . Anakin whispers to the crystal and digs his other hand into the ground until the panic starts to fade, little by little. He sits there even longer still, nervous to open his eyes. What if he made it worse, what if he cannot fix the blight he’s left on this?
Anakin finally opens his eyes and he slumps forward, letting out a sharp breath. He fixed it. Ahsoka’s crystal is back to normal. It is the clear blue it was before, and the relief coursing through him is making his body heavy.
Anakin clutches the crystal in his hand as he climbs into his bacta tank, tired and in pain. He cannot keep wearing it the way he was. The idea that this last piece of his padawan could be permanently tainted without him even realizing it, is too much to handle.
He won’t do this to her, or her memory.
Kyber crystals are not typical, they are like a life form. They react and adjust. The Jedi and Sith have ways to cut them, ways to harness certain reactions. Still, it isn’t something Anakin can melt, and so he has moved on to other ideas. His left arm is disassembled in front of him and he is making space inside it. No one does maintenance on him except for himself a few droids he has picked over the years and so no one will ever stumble on this. Not the way he is hiding it now.
There is now a casing in his arm, small and closed off for the crystal to sit. He cannot leave it behind but he needs to protect it. Anakin places it gently in the spot he has made for it and places all the durasteel pieces back into his arm. From the outside it isn’t obvious that there has been a change, but he can feel it. The kyber crystal isn’t heavy but there is a weight to carrying it around.
Anakin puts his glove on over his hand. It isn’t as deep as he wanted to get it, but what’s left of Ahsoka is inside him, finally. It is different than carrying it in his hand or wearing it on his chest, but he can still feel the warmth in his arm.
This particular rebel cell has caused enough problems that he is being sent in to clean up after his Inquisitors. Lothal has been such a strange itch to the Empire but Vader will crush that problem today. The rebels took off but there is a tracker on the shuttle. Agent Kallus is helping him and Vader is thankful to have someone competent next to him for once.
Vader is in his tie-fighter going to handle the rebels when his left arm starts to ache. He takes his hand off the controls and shakes it out. He goes back to flying. There is a squadron coming at him but even with one arm tied behind his back he could outfly all of these pilots.
He misses a shot because his arm is more than aching now, it’s like a burn has set in. He tries to ignore it, goes after the main fighter. It is getting worse and worse, his fingers are starting to lock up. What is wrong with him?
He is flying and shooting and dodging when he feels someone reaching out to him, in the Force. It must be the Jedi he ran into on Lothal, the one with the half baked padawan. He opens up a little to the call to see what he can learn but he is hit with something else instead.
His left arm locks up and the burning gets more intense as he feels something he hasn’t felt in years.
Ahsoka.
It is bright and it hurts and he can feel her surprise as well, her disbelief. She isn’t dead she is alive, she has been alive this entire time. The shock he feels tells him she didn’t know about him, that she thought he was dead but he sees the horror setting in.
Then it cuts off.
Nothing.
He breaks off and turns his fighter around.
Over the years, Ahsoka’s rest has been full of nightmares. Sometimes it was real memories from the war, everything that happened on Mandalore, everything that happened when she left. Sometimes it is the Trandoshans that kidnapped her to hunt or it is the look in Barriss’ eye right before the trial when they fought.
Sometimes there was something that felt like a nightmare, but she could never really place what it was or why she was seeing it. Flashes of pain and suffering but no face to go with it. It was strange, but she could hardly ever hold onto them when she woke up. Left with the feelings only. Ahsoka would wake up gasping like maybe she was drowning in her dream or she would wake up in pain, full body pain. It would disappear as soon as she was conscious.
She dreams of Anakin. Of the war, her training. She dreams of the first time they kissed. Ahsoka falls asleep alone and wakes up alone, but sometimes when she closes her eyes she is in bed with Anakin again.
Ahsoka never figured those dreams out but they became less and less frequent over the years.
Kanan and Ezra are a bright spot in her vision that was getting darker all the time. They are proof that hope can not only survive, but find ways to thrive, even after all the horrors of the Empire. She has a job to do as Fulcrum and it is important, but she leaves it to her other agent for a while so she can help Kanan and Ezra and their squad.
They are a family. It makes her heart ache for the people she used to have. Ahsoka is perhaps a little jealous, but that’s natural. More than jealous, she feels protective. She could not hold her family together but she can help shield this one while she is around.
They are all together after a Sith presence on Lothal. Palpatine’s mysterious apprentice. Ahsoka has successfully avoided him all this time, she supposes she should have been more ready for the day he finally caught up with her and the rebels. She runs to help because she will not let him take any other rebels from her if she can help it.
He is a good pilot, the Sith Lord. She feels something… something she cannot quite put her finger on. She reaches out in the Force and asks Kanan for help. Kanan is helping to amplify it as she reaches and reaches. There is something familiar that starts to trickle through her mind as she reaches but she cannot figure it out before it hits her.
Vader. Anakin.
It is like ice water was poured over her head. She thinks her heart might have stopped for a second. Maybe it stopped and has not started again. It hurts and it is overwhelming and it happens faster than she can process it. It feels like she was hit with some sort of blast and then it all cuts out.
She dreams, she thinks, but as she wakes back up it all starts to drift out of her grasp.
Everyone is flitting around her, worried, but she begs everyone off to get back to her quarters. She gets there and goes back to sleep, exhaustion weighing her down. When she wakes up again Ahsoka isn’t sure how long she was out but she feels clearer than she did before.
For a while still, she sits and stares at the ceiling.
There is a numbness that has set in. That brief moment, on the ship, when they connected… Ahsoka cannot remember ever feeling such an intense, awful stab. She felt it like a physical thing. Now, there is nothing. She’s so tired, drained. All these years he has been alive. All these years he has been committing horrors.
Her Master.
Ahsoka gets up and rifles through her things. She pulls out an old holo, one she’s been carrying around for longer than the Empire has existed. She places it in front of her and turns it on.
“Keeping your saber moving, is the key to deflecting-“
It is an old training hologram from when she was still a padawan. Back when Anakin used to help teach at the Temple. It has been a long time since she pulled it out to watch it. She closes her eyes and listens to Anakin’s voice.
Ezra walks in and sits across from her. He says Kanan speaks highly of Anakin. Ahsoka tells him Anakin was kind, because he was. Her Anakin, he cared so much. Ezra asks, what happened to him?
Ahsoka doesn’t know what to say.
Ahsoka hasn’t felt this much rage in a long time. Or maybe ever. Anakin’s voice is so different through the mask and it grates on her ears. She cannot believe that this is her old Master. That this is her Anakin. Sweet, caring, cocky, romantic, Anakin. She starts hitting him harder. There is a Sith temple shifting around her but she can hardly see it anymore. Her focus and vision zeroed in on Anakin, on Vader . He is taller, looks all wrong with the suit he is wearing but he moves like Anakin. Ahsoka knows these moves because a lot of them became her moves. This is the same man who trained her, all those years ago.
She knows how to fight him.
They push each back and forth across the Temple. A give and take that feels too natural in this unnatural setting. Ahsoka gets in close and gets the shot she was aiming for. His mask is cracked and she cannot see a lot but she can see him… Anakin. He is still under there. He does not look the same, no, he’s scarred and gaunt but that is still Anakin.
He yells her name and to hear his voice mixed with his helmet hurts. Ahsoka’s stomach turns. She was swinging for the mask so she could see it for herself. Ahsoka needed to see him under there, couldn’t reconcile what had happened without it.
It was a mistake.
She could see him, hear him. It was so much harder to fight after that. Ahsoka can feel herself getting sloppy, getting angry. Letting her emotions take over the fight. It was so hard to look at him like this. To look into his now golden eye and face that the man who shaped her, made her.
The man she loves.
Ahsoka loses the fight but Vader does not win. They go their separate ways and Ahsoka tries to swallow down the guilt she feels over how she could not finish this for them. For the galaxy.
That she still loves him too much.
When Anakin dies, Ahsoka feels it.
The Force reacts. To all things, and for Force wielders, this means a whole other level of input. During the war, it meant feeling the loss of every clone in the squad. At the end of the war, it meant feeling the loss of every Jedi.
On the ship leaving Mandalore, it meant feeling Anakin’s agony, right before it all happened.
Today, for Ahsoka, it means feeling the moment that Anakin dies.
There are rebels on Endor. The communications they had gotten so far told them that success was an option. Ahsoka isn’t there, but that doesn’t matter. She feels Anakin’s last breath like she is the one it was being taken from. Ahsoka feels the world shift under her, she blinks and then she is on the ground.
Without him there, the Force seems to adjust itself.
Ahsoka feels like a void has opened up next to her. She didn’t realize how much space Anakin was taking up until now. Until he is gone from it and she feels an emptiness she isn’t sure she will be able to fill.
When Ahsoka meets Luke and Leia, she feels like she is being reunited with family. Luke is so much of his father but even more, he is so much his mother. Leia is a terrifying mix of them both with a politician’s upbringing.
Ahsoka thinks they are perfect.
Luke wants to train new Jedi and she wishes Padmé could be here to see it. Wishes she could have been there to watch the twins grow into the incredible young people they have. Ahsoka tries to spend extra time with them, for Padmé. Tries to tell them about her, point out all the beautiful traits she passed on.
She tries to make sure they know that they have some good qualities from their father.
When Luke finally chooses a place to start a new Jedi temple, Ahsoka helps him to get everything moved there. They are unpacking one day when Luke comes to find her.
“I appreciate the help, Ahsoka, really.” He’s smiling, “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to stay here? Help me train full time?”
Ahsoka snorts, “I can assure you, I am absolutely sure.” She sits down on the ground and reaches for her canteen. “Did you just come here to complain that I’m faster than you?” She says with a smile.
Luke’s face tells her that he had forgotten briefly, that he came here with a purpose. She sees so much of Anakin in him. She hopes Anakin can see this too.
“No, no, I have a reason.” He walks over and drops down next to her. “So, this is gonna start kind of weird but, after my Father died, I wanted to give him some semblance of a funeral, y’know?” Ahsoka nods at him. She wanted that too. Even if Luke and Leia were the only ones in attendance.
“I remember, Luke.”
“Well, so, when we were getting ready to burn his body, I felt something.” Luke shakes his head, “I don't know how to describe it, like he was dead so i knew it wasn’t him, but there was something on him, carrying the Force?”
Ahsoka nods at him, even though she really isn’t sure what he is saying.
“Anyway, I found this in one of his durasteel hands, it was in, like, the forearm? And I wasn’t really sure what it was doing in there.”
Luke pulls a crystal out of his pocket and Ahsoka’s heart stops.
That cannot be what she thinks it is…
“I’ve just been carrying it around because something told me I should, but I found it just now and something said, Ahsoka.” He looks over at her. “Do you know what this is?”
Luke reaches over and drops it into Ahsoka’s hand. The second it touches her, she knows with certainty what it is. She knows it.
This is one of her old Kyber crystals.
Ahsoka just stares, for a moment. Her mind catches up with what Luke said.
Anakin’s arm.
“You said, in the durasteel? Like, inside or…?”
“Yeah, it was his left arm and it was sort of, encased? I don’t know, I thought it powered something in that hand but it didn’t seem like it.
Ahsoka has not taken her eyes off of the crystal. She can’t. He kept it. Anakin kept her kyber crystal. All this time… It must have been there when they fought on Malachor. He was so angry at her or it seemed that he was but he… was carrying her around everywhere he went. Ahsoka does not know where to even start. The way her chest warms at him keeping a piece of her this whole time is at war with the nausea that he did the things he did with her in his arm. She is still lost in her own head when Luke speaks again.
“Ahsoka?”
She shakes herself, “Yeah? Oh, uh, yeah. Yes I know what it is.”
Luke lifts his eyebrows but doesn't say anything else, just waits Ahsoka out. She hesitates, suddenly self conscious about how close she was to Anakin. At how this will seem, when she says it.
“It is a kyber crystal, from a lightsaber.” She takes a breath, “It is my kyber crystal, from my old saber.”
Luke’s eyes widen but he doesn’t say anything. He looks at Ahsoka for a moment longer before looking back down at the crystal.
“The two of you were really close.”
It isn’t phrased like a question but she thinks he is actually asking something.
“Yeah, yeah we were.” She looks at the floor. “I’ve never been closer to anyone else.”
She glances up and Luke is nodding, looking off to the side.
“Yeah, I had a feeling.” He looks back to Ahsoka.
“I’m really glad we found each other.”
He is just as stupidly earnest as his father and Ahsoka will do anything to protect him. Anakin did not ask her to, but he didn’t need to.
Ahsoka is back on her ship, checking and rechecking all the systems. She is avoiding the rock she left on her bed. It is so small but it is taking up all of her thoughts, it is hanging over her like a cloud. Why did he keep it? How did he end up keeping it for so long ?
Why did he have it in his arm?
Finally when Ahsoka has gone over the whole ship three times and has physically run out of things to do, she goes back to her room. This crystal was in Anakin’s arm for who knows how long, there has to be some of him in there that she will feel. She wants to feel him, so desperately, just one more time. But it could be that Anakin isn’t who she feels.
It could be Vader.
Ahsoka loses the staring contest with the crystal eventually and she reaches forward to snatch it up. She takes a deep breath before she closes her eyes and cups the crystal between both hands. Ahsoka keeps breathing, steady, slow. She sinks into meditation and reaches out. She can feel him, Anakin. It is him, and not Vader.
And it is such a sad feeling.
Ahsoka feels a tear roll down her own cheek. He was so alone for so long. She didn’t know… they said he was dead. How could she have known?
Ahsoka squeezes her eyes together, holding back heavier tears. She lifts her hand and presses the crystal to her chest, over her heart. Presses it in until it hurts and she might actually cut herself.
Then she sees something.
Clear in her mind she sees Anakin on the floor, crying over her crystal. Whispering to it. Anakin presses his lips to it in the most agonizingly soft way, given that he is still half in his suit. Ahsoka blinks and the vision is gone. His whispering fades away.
Let me take it back, Ahsoka, please.
She finally lets herself cry.
Ahsoka feels wrung out, scraped empty, when she finally stops crying. There was so much of him left in there. Luke had said, after the fight, but Ahsoka thought that was the optimism shining through. Luke wanting so desperately to believe his father was good more than he was bad.
Maybe Luke is right.
Ahsoka looks down at her hand, crystal still sitting in her palm. She shifts it in between her fingertips and brings it up to her mouth.
She presses a soft kiss to the crystal. She whispers.
“You took it back, Anakin. You kept it safe.”
It is not much, but it is the closest she has felt to kissing his lips in years.