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Washanooir, third moon of the gas giant Esne in the Dareon sector, was once marked as a Republic colony prospect. It had a breathable atmosphere, a very tolerable climate—if annoyingly hot and dry—lush grasslands, and was only three hours in subspace from the nearest hyperspace lane.
There wouldn't be a colony on Washanooir for at least a century now that the Seppies had razed it. Thermal annihilator bombs had burned the lush grasslands to ash, leaving behind bare soil polluted by toxins. Between the system's yellow star and the blue gas giant it orbited, the moon never saw true night, but the granite mountain range surrounding their sector glowed eerie orange against a blood-red sky, high winds driving the grasslands fire to spread all the way up to the peak.
In the detonation crater of a spent annihilator bomb, Anakin crouched down beside Rex and adjusted his rebreather. His lungs burned with every breath, superheated air and wood ash fileting them with microparticles. His mouth tasted like blood and smoke. Every time he had to rip the mask off to retch up soot-black tar, he inhaled twice as much as he brought up.
But none of that mattered. They had a mission: retake Sector L-93, drive the droids back out to the salt flats, secure the valley and the rich plasma deposit underneath it.
"How're we looking, Captain?" Anakin asked, trying not to wheeze.
Rex was finishing his headcount of the troopers crouched around them. "Looks like we only lost two in that last push, Sir. Squared away and ready on your mark."
"Ahsoka, come in!" Anakin barked into his comlink.
The sound of blaster fire and the whirr of her lightsaber came in before her voice did. "Copy!"
"Status report, now. Over."
"We—haar'chak, shut down already—we made it to the treeline. Driving them into the open now, over."
Anakin spared a small smile for his Padawan. That's my girl. "How many, over?"
"Estimate five hundred down from eight—Appo, move! Di'kut, are you trying to get shot in the face? Down from eight hundred, over."
"Just keep driving them west. Jaig will pinch from the southern impact site, over."
"I know the plan, Skyguy. Flank 'em and spank 'em. See you in ninety seconds, over and—"
"Mortar, mortar, mortar!" Appo roared.
The connection died with a squeal at the same time a small explosion rocked the treeline. "No, no!" Anakin scrambled out of cover, eyes locked helplessly on the spreading fire, and fell on his face as a sharp hit to his jaw that felt like a hammer strike nearly blinded him. "She's—" Anakin struggled to raise his shields without blocking their bond entirely—he wanted to see straight, but he needed to feel her on the other end of that golden string, feel her heartbeat, the reassurance of her presence in the Force.
A tug on his boot, then he started to slide backwards; Rex was trying to drag him back to cover. "Where are you hit?" he shouted.
"Not hit," Anakin forced out. His ribs ached too, and the skin on the right side of his body crawled like it was covered in sandfleas. He struggled to his unsteady feet. "She is."
Rex turned towards the treeline; Anakin sensed his fear, the anguish of it twisting the Force around him like a torn spiderweb.
"We gotta go, now! Move, men, move, double time it!" Anakin took off in a sprint, trusting that his men were behind him. Trusting the fact that he could feel Ahsoka's pain through Force Sympathy meant she was alive. Trusting she would stay that way until he could reach her.
They only had five hundred droids to get through first.
Anakin strengthened his shields and ignored the ethereal knife in his jaw to focus on the enemy. Akul Squad—minus their commander—poured out of the treeline, pushing the droids into the burnt valley as planned. Anakin, leading Jaig, hit the droids from behind. He took down two destroyers before they could turn around, then rolled into the deflector shield of the third and sliced it in half.
Rex rolled two poppers with expert aim and executed the next two destroyers.
"Sword and shield!" Anakin ordered, heart racing. Ahsoka was close. She was alive. He opened their bond again and reached out to her with a tendril of love-comfort. What he received in turn wasn't as pleasant. But the pain in his jaw, his stinging ribs, the second heartbeat under his skin; he welcomed it all, because it sang alive alive alive, and he clung to it like a raft amid the chaos of the battlefield.
Rex took position behind him when it was time, falling into the sword and shield maneuver like they had since the beginning of the war. They moved without speaking, wordlessly reacting to one another's motions, ripping up droids like cloud candy. The plan to drive them to the salt flats was quickly forgotten. These droids were scrap, they just didn't know it yet.
Jaig and Akul closed ranks around the droids. Many men fell as the circle tightened—stunned, mostly, thanks to Gen2 plastoid—but many lay still, their light returned to the Force like the snuffing of a candle.
Anakin gritted his teeth and held on to the golden thread. His saber moved independently of his mind, slicing B2's to bits and deflecting the bolts that went for Rex's head. In return Rex let off volleys of bolts through Anakin's legs, over his shoulders, directly next to his ear, mowing down squawking B1's with devastating efficiency. Jaig and Akul worked to clean up the rest until there was only a small circle of B2's huddled together with no place to run.
Anakin's eyes narrowed. His blood ran hot. The need to punish someone—anyone—for hurting his Padawan screamed through his veins. He reached out with the Force, lifted the surviving trio of B2's high into the air, and clenched his fist. They exploded in a shower of sparks and hot oil above their heads.
While the men cried out in triumph—"Oya! Kandosii!"—Anakin was already moving to the treeline, Rex hot on his heels.
Appo was there to greet them. "Sir—"
"Where is she?" Anakin wasted no time.
"Capsa set up a portable osmotic shield so she can breathe without the mask, but she needs a medevac ASAP." Appo was trembling slightly, and his left side was covered in blood. Bits of viscera stuck to him, rapidly shriveling in the smoky air into little black bits. "He's got her stabilized."
Anakin softened. "How many were hit?" he asked.
"Would have been half the squad." He swallowed hard. "Commander Tano threw us out of the impact radius. Most of us."
Anakin glanced again at the bits of gore stuck to him. "Copy that, Captain. Rex, call it in. L-93 is secure."
Rex already had his commlink up and activated. "Jaig at L-93 to base, copy. Need a medevac for Commander Tano ASAP, time sensitive, do you copy?"
Anakin left him behind and sought Ahsoka. Only five feet tall and wide, the spherical osmotic shield around her glowed eerie blue in the ashy air like a nuclear reactor.
"This is going to help with the pain, Commander." The clone medic pricked Ahsoka's unburned shoulder with a small ampule. Her robes were falling apart, though Capsa had done his best to preserve her modesty by keeping her chest covered with what remained. Her right side looked like she'd been steamed, exposed skin bright red instead of orange, hundreds of grotesque blisters running from her right shoulder all the way down to her knee. The right side of her face was swollen, the skin so tight that it looked ready to split like an overripe jogan fruit.
"Ahsoka." Anakin knelt on her other side and tugged his mask off. The air tasted like antiseptic. "Hey kiddo. Bad day?"
"S'Guy," she said weakly. "The… The men…"
"Shh, little one. You saved them." She relaxed. "The medevac is on its way." Anakin stroked her forehead and tried to give her a reassuring smile. "What's the rundown, Sergeant?"
"She wasn't hit directly. The shockwave from the explosion sent her flying into a pile of burning logs." Capsa worked efficiently as he set up a hovering field IV unit. "We pulled her out almost immediately, but the damage was done."
"Her jaw?" Anakin traced over it with his flesh hand. Ahsoka hissed in pain.
"Broken, probably from the impact. She lost some teeth as well."
"I did?" Ahsoka whimpered, her lip trembling.
"Shh, shh. I'm here. Don't worry, my little Padawan, I'm here." Anakin gave Capsa a dirty look. "Don't give her bad news when she's on morphine."
"Sorry, Sir." Capsa had his helmet on, but Anakin sensed he was blushing.
"Sir!" Rex called, jogging up behind him. "Medevac… medevac is en route." He stared at Ahsoka. Anakin almost physically heard his heart break. "Oh, vod'ika…"
"We won," Anakin reassured her. "Sector is secure and all of those droids are scrap. You did it. You completed the mission."
"My fangs." Ahsoka started to cry. "A-Are my fangs okay?"
"Lemme see." Anakin carefully pulled up her swollen lip. His heart sank. The right side of her face had taken the brunt of the damage. Her upper fang and the two teeth beside it were gone, the rest cracked and broken. Blood dribbled from the empty sockets and exposed pulp and leaked out of the side of her mouth. "Don't worry," he said smoothly, forcing a smile he didn't feel. "Everything can be fixed."
Drugs dulled Ahsoka's Empathy, made it muddy and hard to differentiate the emotions she saw as colors in the Force; even so, whatever she saw in his aura made her eyes screw shut and she began to cry in earnest.
"It's alright, Snips, don't cry. They can fix it at the Temple."
"M-My fangs…"
"It's just one." He wiped away her tears before they could sting her burns. "Just one. Not even your favorite one. The tip was chipped, remember? You'll get an implant and it'll be perfect. You won't be able to tell."
"O…Okay." Ahsoka's agitation resonated through their bond like a pulled muscle. But even burned, broken, and full of morphine, she was pulling herself together and soldiering through it. Her tears slowed. Soon her lip even stopped trembling. She turned calm, blank, accepting her lost fang like a casualty report.
It wasn't fair. Fangs were as culturally important to Togrutas—especially to the Binishii, her people—as their lekku. Those without them were regarded with suspicion, as having survived exile into the wilderness for committing a terrible crime. Ahsoka had done nothing of the sort. She had stood her ground, taken precious seconds that could have been spent getting clear to throw her troopers out of the blast zone! It wasn't fair.
Anakin took a deep, shaky breath, and let his bare left hand hover above her cheek. Over the last year he'd found himself drawn more than once to the healing texts in the Jedi Archives. The knowledge had helped him save Jesse's life when Aurra Sing's men slit his throat trying to take Boba, and it would help Ahsoka now.
Anakin concentrated, breathing in, then out, steadying himself then opened himself up to the flow of the Force. The forest was charred but not totally ash; the Living Force still roared through here with the kind of strength that could only be felt in wild places, and Anakin acted as its conduit, directing it full-on into Ahsoka's mutilated jaw before letting it spill out across her weeping burns.
It took immense concentration to control it. After only a few seconds the osmotic dome began to look oddly bright and sparkly. It slowly spun, which he was fairly sure it was not doing before, and it sped up if he moved his head. He squeezed his eyes shut instead and focused. Ahsoka needed him. He could power through.
Rex steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.
Controlling the flow of the Living Force was exhausting, like trying to dam a river with only his arms. He tasted copper—another nosebleed, spectacular—and with a grunt of exhaustion, closed off the current and fell hard on his ass.
"Master?" Ahsoka sat up, clutching the burnt remnants of her robe to her chest. Red skin was once again orange, free of blisters. The swelling in her face was rapidly receding. She touched her cheek with a look of awe and peeled up her lip.
"Nice." Anakin's vision went dark, but when he fell backwards he had a grin on his face at the sight of her new white, shiny, unchipped fang.
Even before Anakin opened his eyes, he knew from the strong smell of disinfectant and blood that he was in the medbay of The Resolute. Even stronger was the sweet, familiar scent of amber and pollen emanating from the purring Togruta beside him. Ahsoka was stretched out, long and boneless, plastered to his side and rumbling like a finely-tuned engine. Her eyes fluttered open as soon as he moved.
"Hey, Master," she said softly. She rubbed her lek on his cheek with a fond smile.
" 'Ey." Anakin cleared his throat and grimaced. His mouth tasted like blood, tar and smoke. He looked around. "Can I—"
"Do you want something to drink?" Ahsoka sat up cross-legged and fed a straw through the neck of a hydropouch. "Here. I grabbed you snozzberry. You need electrolytes." She held it for him and patiently waited for him to drink his fill of the sweet, cold drink. "How do you feel?"
"Forget me, are you okay?" Anakin could have probably sat up on his own, but he allowed her to help him and adjust his pillows to keep upright with an indulgent smile. She was such a little nursemaid.
"I'm fantastic." She pulled up her lip and showed him her sharp new fang. "I don't know how you did it, but you didn't just heal me, you made my teeth grow back. Not just the fang, all of them. I didn't know that was even possible. Are you sure you're not a natural Healer?"
"I'm just that good." Anakin fought off a yawn. If he was a natural Healer, he wouldn't have knocked himself out in the process. "How long was I asleep?"
"Twelve hours." Ahsoka rifled through the bedside cabinet and dug out a package of wet saniwipes. She washed his face as she continued, "Washanooir is officially cleared. They're sending in engineers from the 38th to oversee plasma extraction. Master Yoda himself is coming along to oversee the operation, from what I've been told. It's nowhere near as big of a deposit as what's on Naboo, but they still don't want to risk the Seppies retaking the valley and extracting it. Or blowing it up."
"Makes sense." He tugged her hand down. "I'm clean, kid."
"And the Council is waiting on a debrief when you're ready." She ripped open a small foil package and handed him half of a chocolate bar. "I'll be right back."
"Where are you going?"
"It's a surprise!" Ahsoka flashed him a grin before she darted out the door.
Anakin was just finishing off the chocolate when she returned holding a tray of pure deliciousness. He gasped. "No way!"
"Yep." Ahsoka set down the tray full of Biscuit Baron and reclaimed her spot on the bed, nose scrunched in a smug little grin. "I hid this in the mess ultracooler in case we were deployed on your birthday."
There were two triple nerfherder biscuits dripping with blue sauce, a mountain of tato rings, a little cup of blue vinegar, even a shuura shake. "You're the best, Snips."
"Even Obi-Wan would agree that you earned it. I…" She trailed off with a weird look on her face, then gagged.
Anakin paused mid-slurp of his shake. "What's wrong?"
She snatched up the used saniwipe and spat a thick, viscous gob of milky-blue into it. "Yuck. Salty." She shuddered.
"I got ripe glands," Ahsoka announced. She peeled her lip up to show him. "Thee?"
"No way." Anakin almost tossed his tray in his lunge for Ahsoka's face. "Open up—no way, no way—"
"Wah ih it?" Ahsoka garbled.
"You've gotta be—you didn't eat anything blue, right?" He peered inside her mouth, careful not to touch her fangs.
"Uh-uh." Her lekku twitched nervously.
Anakin eyed the blue glob of mucus in the saniwipe. "And you said it was salty?"
"Yah?"
Anakin let her go and hit the call button, grinning.
"What is it?" Ahsoka demanded. "Is this some sort of weird side effect of growing a new tooth?"
Anakin's feet danced, unable to contain his glee. "You could say that."
Coric cracked open the door and peeked through. "Feeling alright, Sir?"
"I'm great." He used the Force to levitate the saniwipe to the door. "Test that and tell me what it is, but whatever you do, don't touch it with your bare skin."
"Uh, yes Sir." Coric pulled a glove from his jumpsuit pocket and gingerly plucked the wipe out of the air. "Give me five minutes."
"Tell me as soon as you have an I.D." Anakin bit into his biscuit with a happy hum.
"Are you going to share?" Ahsoka demanded once Coric had limped away.
Anakin held his biscuit protectively to his chest, frowning. "No. This is my treat."
"That's—you know that's not what I'm talking about!" Ahsoka said, exasperated. "What do you know that I don't? What was in my mouth?" She made another face and spat more into a new wipe. "Ugh. What is in my mouth?"
"There's gonna be more. If it's anything like before, you're going to have to milk your fang every morning until it regulates." Anakin chewed, watching the pieces click into place.
Ahsoka's jaw dropped. She touched her fang, dumbfounded. "You—that's not possible. My venom glands were removed."
"So were your teeth," Anakin pointed out. "Remember, Padawan, all things are possible through the Force."
"You can't just grow back a removed organ!" Ahsoka insisted, looking distressed. "Or… I mean you did, but… there had to have been some cells left behind, just enough to… to regenerate, I guess…"
"Probably. C'mere." Anakin tugged her down. "Don't think too hard. You'll sprain something."
"But Master—"
Anakin shoved a tato ring in her mouth. "Shush. Just say thank you."
She rolled her eyes as she chewed. "Ugh. Do you think it's going to hurt more as an adult?"
"Will what hurt?"
"Removing it."
Anakin glared at her. "You're going to remove it? After all the hard work I just put in growing it back for you? I gave myself a nosebleed!"
"I don't know that they'll allow me to keep it," Ahsoka said. She gave up any pretense of not wanting to snuggle and burrowed against his side. "I've got a history, after all."
Anakin stewed as he chewed. She had a point. They hadn't given her a choice the first time; after she'd chomped Obi-Wan as a little kit and put him in the Halls of Healing for a week, they'd ripped her venom glands out for safety reasons. They hadn't even told her what was happening. "Then we won't tell them," he said decisively.
"But Master—"
"What do I keep telling you? What the Council doesn't know won't hurt them."
She snorted, then eyed his mech hand curiously. "You don't think…"
"Hmm." Anakin considered it. He would be overjoyed to have his arm back; the prosthetic was a constant reminder of not just his failure to stop Dooku from throwing the war into motion and killing trillions in a chaotic, galaxy-wide conflict, but of his even bigger shame: what he had done to poor Ahsoka's arm in a fit of rage after Obi-Wan's funeral. He would do almost anything to take that back.
But growing back a few teeth and a gland the size of a breath mint was one thing. Half a limb was a whole other prospect. "It's something to think about, at least," he said finally. "I would need to do a lot more research before even attempting it. The last thing I want to do is grow back some sort of weird..." He flopped his wrist like it was boneless.
"It would be pretty cool if you figured it out," Ahsoka murmured, fiddling with the edge of the blanket. She laughed softly. "I can't believe you grew my venom gland back. You were so insistent that I keep them when we were little, and then when they took them out…"
"It was wrong." Anakin tried to keep the heat out of his voice without much success. "They operated on you without even telling you what they were doing. It was wrong."
"I was five. I wouldn't have understood it anyway." She patted his chest. "Don't get worked up about it. It was over a decade ago. And you gave it back to me, so there's nothing to be angry about."
If only she'd had them when Sylen took her. "One of them, anyway." Anakin finished off his first biscuit and moved onto his second. "I still haven't heard a thank you."
Ahsoka heaved a dramatic sigh. "Thank you for growing back my teeth and venom gland, Master Skywalker. I am forever in your debt."
Anakin smirked. "You are very welcome." Rejuvenated by the salt, fat and sugar coursing through his veins, he leaned back with a satisfied sigh. "When's that debrief again?"
Ahsoka shrugged. "Whenever you're ready."
He didn't feel quite ready yet. Probably wouldn't be for a while. He still had half a milkshake to finish, after all.
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