Chapter 9 – Voices and Visions
"Oh shit," Ahsoka swore. She had never wanted to acquire a Sith lightsaber, let alone two of them. They radiated pain. Through the power of the Force, she could hear the screams of the victims who had fallen to the blades. The voices were filled with pure terror and the sounds reverberated in her skull. Pain. Fear. Death…
Pain. Fear. Death…
"Are you feeling–,"
"Like crap?" Ahsoka proceeded to swear in almost every language she knew. She couldn't help it. The voices of the dead echoed in her mind, producing a skull-splitting sensation. Ahsoka dropped the lightsabers and pressed the palm of her hand on her temples in an attempt to suppress the sound. It didn't.
By this time, Lux was behind Ahsoka, holding her shoulders to stabilize her.
"Something to do with the Force, isn't it? When you touched them." Lux guessed.
"Dead…Voices…" she could barely form a sentence. It had to do something with her alignment with the Force. It was as if the lightsabers had tried to reach out to her in their own twisted way.
Trying attempting to reach out to the Force, Ahsoka's knees buckled beneath her and she slumped against Lux. He lowered her to the ground and sat beside her. "Force…Saying something," she muttered, "That lightsaber… different…"
The effort of reaching out to the Force as well as trying to keep herself sane against the storm of voices in her head had finally over-powered her.
"Oh… Kriff," She muttered, everything starting to blur.
"Don't you dare pass out Ahsoka, I'm warning you!" Lux told her.
"Sorry," Ahsoka said before she blacked out.
"Come to us…" The voices said.
"See your true potential…" They hissed at her.
"Your destiny lies with us!" They cried out at her.
Ahsoka was suspended in the air, faced by darkness.
She felt weightless like she was floating in the vacuum of endless space.
Voices called out to Ahsoka, telling her to join them.
Telling her that it was the only way to survive.
That it was the only way to save him.
"Don't do it, Snips," her master appeared before her.
"You did it! You changed!" Ahsoka looked at Anakin, shaking her head.
"Don't make the same mistakes as I did, Snips," Sorrow lined his face, "I'm sorry Ahsoka."
His head was down in shame but, when he looked back, he looked entirely different.
Like a Sith.
"Sorry that I am not sorry at all," Anakin switched on his lightsaber, "Not sorry about anything."
Before she had the chance to react, Anakin swung his lightsaber, cutting her down.
Why?
Why?
"Ahsoka!"
Why?
Why?
Why?
"Ahsoka!"
"Ahsoka!" The Force vision dissolved suddenly as she was being lightly shaken awake by Lux. Ahsoka looked around in confusion as she found herself on her bunk in the ship.
Lux must've carried me here, she thought to herself.
"Finally." Lux sighed in relief, "You were out for a while."
"Here," he said, helping Ahsoka stand up. Just as she had made her way out of the room (with the aid of Lux), Ahsoka was meet by an unexpected wave of nausea. Hand over her mouth and spots obscuring her vision, she tore away from him and stumbled into the refresher. She leaned over the sink, expecting to throw up, but the feeling left as soon as it came.
"Ahsoka," she looked up at her reflection in the mirror, sensing Lux in the doorway, "He's not coming back and you know it Ahsoka." She looked at herself as she said the words.
It was the only way to make herself believe the truth that she had been avoiding.
She had to stop lying to herself.
Anakin was gone.
Forever.
"What did you see?" Lux asked Ahsoka. They were sitting outside, feet in the lake, soaking up the warm afternoon sun.
"And hear," Ahsoka added, "I heard voices when I first held the sabers, there Sith, by the way. It's why I was so affected by it."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"You know how a Sith usually has a red lightsaber?" Lux nodded, "Well the color is achieved via a process called bleeding. The Sith corrupt the crystal by using the Dark side of the Force to bend the crystal to their will. They usually use a crystal from a lightsaber belonging to a Jedi who had fallen at their hands." Ahsoka looked out at the water sparkling in the sun.
"Go on" Lux urged her. She looked at Lux, then back at the water.
"I think the crystal was calling out to me. Through the Force. It was like the crystal was telling me to help it get rid of the pain its owner had caused it. Does that make sense?"
Lux thought for a second, frowning in concentration, "Sure, I mean when you look at it like there's a living being in the crystal, in this case, the Force, I guess it kind of does."
Ahsoka nodded, impressed, "I didn't expect you to get that. It took me a while to understand, but Master Yoda was explaining it to me so…" she trailed off from the happy memory back into the present, "Let's just say that in the vision, voices told me to go to the Dark side, and Anakin turned up. He warned me of the danger of the Dark side despite the fact that he'd gone over to the Dark side, the hypocrite, and not to make the same mistakes he did. He then pulled out his lightsaber and, well, I think you can guess the rest."
Ahsoka sighed heavily and placed her head on Lux's shoulder and he wrapped an arm around her waist.
"There's another thing," she said.
"What's that?"
"How come that, after I pass out, you're always there when I wake up?"
Lux laughed at her, "Ahsoka, you're always going to need someone to watch your back. Besides, if I wasn't here for you then who would be?"
A/N:
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