The next morning, when Padmé went to check on her former boyfriend, she found that the guest bed she'd inserted the almost completely passive Anakin into was empty.
Not wanting to alarm Obi-Wan with an immediate holocall, she instead padded through into the kitchen, in case he was already awake.
She spotted him slumped over the counter, with a half-empty bottle of her whiskey next to him.
"Is it helping?" she asked, keeping the acidic response she wanted to make out of her voice.
"Uh… little." He replied.
"It's ten-o-clock Coruscant time." Padmé pointed out. "And that means that Ahsoka will be... ready for visitors in about an hour."
Anakin dragged himself to his feet at that.
"Get in the shower." Padmé ordered him, "I'll have your caf waiting,"
Anakin just staggered through to the shower.
Stars. He's suffering. She supposed, really, that she shouldn't be too surprised at his reaction. Anakin had never been something to do anything by halves, particularly when it involved sports or interests. If she'd read Ahsoka's body-language correctly the previous evening, they'd probably been in bed together a hour before they arrived at the restaurant, and just over two hours before she was shot.
There was absolutely no way she was letting him drive the four of them to the Temple. Not with all the Force-Cleansing abilities in the world, if he had half a bottle of whyren's reserve inside him.
To her relief, he didn't fall over in the shower. Instead, he stumbled out, dressed in what appeared to be the set of clean robes that had ended up in her wardrobe permanently. His graduation robes looked like something out of a horror flick. So, admittedly, did her coat. Both had been dumped into the laundry machine the previous night.
To her surprise, he sounded coherent in the airspeeder.
"Padmé..." He began, hesitantly. "How much did seeing me with Ahsoka hurt you?"
He's not... he's not thinking I ordered that... for her?
"Anakin." She replied, injecting enough arctic chill into her voice to make a Wampa feel nicely at home. "We've been over for six months. The fact that I'm, to use the colloquialism, 'knocked up,' doesn't matter one bit to me. I'm glad you're the father, compared to a couple of the boy-toys I've had since then."
"Ah." He sounded more than slightly abashed.
"Anakin, seeing you with Ahsoka makes me feel that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. We've all seen the reports on the holonet about Jedi being arrested down in the Red Light district or in some of the luxury hotels in the senate district. A fair chunk of the galaxy believes that Jedi don't marry because they don't want to, not because they are banned from doing so."
"People really believe that."
"You'd be surprised." Padmé replied.
"I probably would be." Anakin commented.
To his surprise, she didn't go directly to the Temple. Instead, she dropped the airspeeder down in a small market, and clambered out, taking Anakin with her.
"Where are we going?" He asked.
"We're picking up something I ordered earlier." Padmé replied, as they turned into a florists, signed as 'the widest range of exotic flowering plants on Coruscant.'
Once inside, Padmé showed her ID to the manager. The ithorian nodded at her, before stepping into the backroom and returning with a massive bouquet Anakin realised, judging from the colouration, was almost certainly a selection of shillian flowering plants.
It was placed in his arms by the senator, before she led the way back through the marketplace, selecting from what appeared to be a pet supply store what looked suspiciously like the flavoured rawhide biscuits Ahsoka had a taste for.
"You're not going to give her those?" He asked.
"They're up to the standards expected from humanoid-consumable food." She replied. "She also seems to like them."
Anakin didn't have a reply to that, and simply followed Padmé back to the speeder, helping to stow everything inside, before clambering into his seat and buckling up as she lifted off.
It wasn't very long before the speeder dropped into the parking area at the Temple. Glancing around, Anakin noticed his speeder, parked up in one of the bays assigned to members of the High Council.
"Obi-Wan had one of the garage attendants recover it early this morning." Padmé explained. "He felt that you'd prefer to be able to drive yourself to your meeting with the chancellor at four."
Anakin rubbed his eyes slightly, before setting off for the medbay.
The walk was relatively short. Someone, when planning the Temple's layout, had ensured that the two bays were very close together. There was also a direct turbolift to the trauma room, although that wasn't Anakin's destination.
Outside the intensive care unit, Stass Allie was waiting with her datapad.
"Master Skywalker, Senator Amidala." She said, in greeting, as the pair walked up to her.
"Master Allie." Anakin replied with a nod. "How is she?"
"The best answer that I can give you is a head-to-toe." She told him.
Anakin winced slightly, before nodding, gesturing for her to go ahead.
"She has what appears to be a repeated concussion injury, and further soft-tissue damage consistent with whiplash. Those injuries are about three days old, based on her medical records and healing rates. Further down, she has what appears to be a cracked collarbone, presumably from her rather awkward landing after being shot. The slug which narrowly missed her heart struck the base of her third rib on its way out through her back, sending a variety of fragments into the surrounding soft tissue. Most of them have caused minor injuries, although one came closer to her aorta than we would have liked. Unfortunately, one of the fragments, travelling at quite an acute angle, has penetrated the soft tissue protecting her spinal column, although we aren't entirely sure if it's a bullet fragment or not."
"What effect is this likely to have?" Anakin asked, looking very nervous.
"Judging by the nerves struck, she is unlikely to walk again without assistance, which will almost certainly be required for the rest of her life."
Anakin just looked at the healer for a few moments, calling to mind the grace of Ahsoka's stride, and her combat movement, even while impaired.
"How much of an effect can treatment have on her injuries?" He asked.
"Unfortunately, not as much as we'd like. She's not allergic to bacta, but her neural tissue isn't responding to the treatment as we expected it to. I'm sorry, Master Skywalker."
Fortunately, there was a chair nearby. Anakin collapsed into it, feeling his world implode again. He'd seen the Force, and galactic-level medicine treat almost any medical condition or injury. To learn that Ahsoka would, in all likelihood, only ever be able to walk with a stick was horrifying.
"Is there anything that the Force can do for her?" He asked.
"I'm afraid, Master Skywalker, that there isn't. We've been able to do some DNA testing of her spinal tissue. It looks like her myelin sheath grows far faster than normal."
"Does she know?" Anakin asked.
"Master Skywalker... we haven't been able to tell her."
"Why?" Anakin demanded.
"She hasn't woken up. Even with the Force... we don't know when or if she will wake up. She was clinically dead for thirteen minutes. Even with all of our scans, we don't know what damage her brain has sustained."
Anakin just looked at her, trying to process the fact that his former padawan was in a coma, possibly brain-damaged, and might never wake up.
"Is there anything I can do?" He asked, finally.
"We don't ever know if people can hear us when they are in a coma. What we do know is that the stimulus from a conversation has been known to sometimes cause people to spontaneously recover from a coma."
"Can I see her?" He asked.
Stass Allie just pushed open the door. "Go ahead."
Just looking at Ahsoka, Anakin almost managed to convince himself she was just sleeping. Her chest was rising and falling steadily, rhythmically. It didn't detract from the fact that although she was breathing, she was clearly ill. There was a wide dressing on her chest, all-too-close to her heart, and another two lower down, one covering the far smaller hole that had come within fifteen seconds of killing her from blood loss, and another covering the hole in her stomach that was largely repaired already, from a combination of old-fashioned surgical procedures and topical bacta treatment.
"Snips, I don't know if you can hear me, but I love you so much." Anakin told her, listening to the melodic rhythm of the monitoring equipment as it reported her vital signs. "The healers don't know if you're ever going to wake up. I know that you can, any time you want to, and try hard enough. I'm going to be here for you, whatever it takes." He gently reached out, and took a firm hold on her hand, before squeezing it gently. "I know that the twins will want to meet you, and to know you." He said, tears in his eyes. "I want to do all of those things we talked about. I want to be with you as long as you want to be with me." Anakin knew it was a trick of the light, but he always believed he saw her mouth twitch slightly, before going slack again.
"Padmé?" He called, hesitantly. The senator hurried into the room, carrying the brightly coloured bouquet, and placing it in a vase thoughtfully provided by the medcenter.
Next to it, she placed the various treats, in a box that rather belied that only a akk-dog or a togruta would want to eat them.
Anakin just sat there, holding Ahsoka's hand, with tears rolling down his face, not knowing when the nightmare was, if ever, going to end.
Finally, though, it was time to face the Council, then the Supreme Chancellor.
I've got some more material planned, and a few bits and pieces of pre-fabricated material written. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have enough time to write over the next couple of weeks, as I am busy studying again.
Ahsoka's injuries were generated using a roll table, ultimately. Fortunately, I had given myself a reroll in the event of a critical hit. As a result, Ahsoka will not be in a hoverchair for the rest of her life.
I'd like to thank Roisethehobbit17 and Tellemicus Sundance for their reviews. I always really enjoy it when people take the time to let me know what they think about my stories. It only takes a few seconds, even if it's just a small note, but it always makes my day a little brighter.