Anakin startled up as Savage's body hit the ground. He hadn't even heard—but then again, how could he hear—he couldn't really hear much except for the distant pounding in his own head, because his hand was still stained red from where the blood had dripped down on him—
He should have been paying attention. Not paying attention would get him killed, which he realized now as Obi-Wan rasped, "Pay attention."
"Obi-Wan—" Anakin started, but then a cannon boomed, and the rain seemed to fall down harder. Rain. Rain meant water—
Anakin's hands fumbled as he took out the empty bottle. He flipped open the cap, passed it to Ahsoka. "Hold on to this," he said. Ahsoka nodded, and with that, Anakin walked over to Obi-Wan. He dropped down the tribute's side, flipped open his pack. He thought he had seen…
There. Another empty bottle.
Anakin unscrewed the lid so that it, too, could catch water.
But in the meanwhile...Anakin looked down at Savage. He was on his belly, blood already slowly soaking his back. Anakin contemplated his body for a moment, and then with his foot, nudged the body aside. He meant only for the body to shift against the ground, but he had kicked a little hard, and now Savage rolled over, his eyes and mouth still open.
Anakin grimaced. He turned away abruptly, lowered himself down next to Obi-Wan instead. He looked down at Obi-Wan's hand, which was still swollen and an angry red-purple color. But other than that, Obi-Wan was pale, his lips bloodless. His hair clung to his forehead, whether from rain or sweat, Anakin wasn't really sure.
He lifted a tentative hand to the side of Obi-Wan's face, even though he already knew that it would be burning. And it was—Anakin felt that same heat radiating there, and Obi-Wan let out a small sigh, leaning just the slightest into Anakin's rain-slicked hand. If they weren't in an arena filled with killer wasp-human things and a handful of other tributes who wanted everyone dead, Anakin would have almost smiled.
Anakin looked back up at the sky, blinking the rain out of his eyes. What now, he thought. Tell me what to do now.
"Filled it up," Ahsoka said from behind.
Anakin turned around.
Ahsoka was wiping water from her face as she walked towards him. She screwed the cap back on, nodded to the other water bottle sitting between Obi-Wan and Anakin. "They're full," she explained. She passed Anakin the water bottle and kneeled down to the other. She screwed the cap back on and looked at Savage's body. Her eyes widened a fraction of an inch before she was looking back down at the water bottle in her hands.
"Do you think it'll stop soon?" Ahsoka asked after a little while, looking up at the sky.
"What do you think?" Anakin asked.
They both looked at each other.
And then Ahsoka looked down at Obi-Wan. "How is…"
"Not much better," Anakin said, nodding down to the swollen hand. "I don't…" He didn't bother finishing that. He settled for glaring at Obi-Wan instead. Idiot, he thought. Why did you have to get yourself stung?
"We need to get out of the rain," Anakin said at last. He stood up, set the sword carefully so that it wouldn't accidentally pierce Obi-Wan or Anakin as he tugged Obi-Wan up into a semi-upright position. "I don't wanna think about what would happen if this gets worse." He tried to ignore how hot Obi-Wan was against him as he hoisted Obi-Wan over his shoulders again. For a moment, Anakin's knees buckled—but then he was standing back up.
He looked at Ahsoka. "Come on—maybe there's shelter near the mountains."
"There's also snow," Ahsoka pointed out, but Anakin noticed that she still followed him as he started walking. "And it's raining. There'll be ice."
"Then there's ice for us and ice for anyone who tries following us," Anakin replied. "Nice and simple." He adjusted Obi-Wan on his shoulders. He heard Obi-Wan mumble something again, and for a moment, Anakin thought that he was going to wake—but Obi-Wan only settled back into sleep. Anakin had to bite back on his own disappointment—and then he hadn't even realized that he wanted Obi-Wan to wake up until that moment.
Bad idea, Anakin thought. That kind of thinking was almost certainly a bad idea.
But he would just have to worry about that later.
Anakin shifted his grip on Obi-Wan. "Lead the way."
What had once been a shower of rain now turned into downpour. Ahsoka kept wiping the water from her face, and once or twice, she had to stop completely just to remember where they were going. The rain had gotten into her boots a long time ago too, and the bits of fabric she had stuffed into them had long since become wet.
Ahsoka turned around to look at Anakin. He was trying to blink around the rain too, and save for a few grunts, he had kept largely quiet. The rain, if anything, seemed a little better for him—that foggy, not quite focused look had gone from his face, instead replaced by a grim kind of determination.
Still, Ahsoka heard herself ask, "Do you want to…"
"No," Anakin said.
Ahsoka turned back around. She made it a few more steps before her foot caught against something slick. Down she went, and Ahsoka heard Anakin's sharp, "Ahsoka—"
"I'm okay," Ahsoka said breathlessly, jumping back to her feet. She looked down and there, amidst the rain, she saw the glisten of ice on the ground. Ice and...Ahsoka looked forward and saw the faintest patches of white that were only semi-melting under the rain.
Ahsoka grinned.
She didn't bother explaining the rest—she knew that Anakin saw what she was looking at, too, and the two of them made their way across the increasingly icy ground. Once or twice, Ahsoka thought Anakin would fall—and each time, she reached out to grab him back.
And eventually, the iced over dirt gave way to—
Brightness.
Everywhere.
Ahsoka blinked a few times, looked up at the snow and icy landscape in front of her. Even despite the rain, it gleamed and shone, reflecting whatever light must have been left behind. Spotless—that was what the landscape was, with not a hint of dirt or blood.
Ahsoka shivered as a cold wind swept by. She hugged her arms and tried to lift her head against the rain to get a better look at the landscape in front of her, but Anakin beat her to it.
"There," he said. "Left."
Ahsoka looked to her left. At first, she couldn't really see anything, but then the rain and wind changed direction just the slightest, and Ahsoka saw the grey of a cliffside.
Shelter.
Without speaking to one another, Ahsoka and Anakin made their way to the cliffside. Ahsoka ignored the cold spearing into her as she walked forward—but her hands and her legs shook, and her head was starting to hurt from being in the cold for so long.
Maybe some tributes will freeze after all, Ahsoka thought. But given that the landscape seemed deserted, Ahsoka wouldn't have been surprised if some tributes were hiding out in the forest somewhere. Maybe some had gone back to the volcano.
Ahsoka shivered again, trying to imagine the long trek back to the Cornucopia. If there was anyone at the Cornucopia…Ahsoka briefly wondered if maybe Barriss had made her way there. Or if maybe Barriss was still in the forest somewhere, probably hiding out in the rain. Ahsoka wasn't sure if she wished that Barriss was in the forest or at the Cornucopia or even in one of the other outcroppings. And even deeper down, Ahsoka didn't know if she would have preferred that Barriss wasn't alive at all—
Ahsoka cast another glance backwards, even though there wasn't anything to actually look at except for the forest being left behind. She wondered if the Capitol had picked up the dead bodies yet. If they had picked up Savage and...that boy. District 12. The one whose blood still seemed to coat itself over Ahsoka's hands, even though the rain had long since washed it away.
Ahsoka saw her home suddenly: saw her dad and her brothers watching Ahsoka's stunned expression as the boy pitched forward, sword still buried deep in his chest. Anakin tugging the sword back out, with that stony expression on his face.
Ahsoka glanced over at Anakin. He still hadn't said anything on the matter, and Ahsoka wasn't sure if she wanted to ask.
She glanced back to the front. She just had to focus—
Anakin swore, and Ahsoka turned around in time just as he started to fall. Only this time, she wasn't able to catch him—and Anakin and Ahsoka and Obi-Wan all crashed into the snow.
The good news, at least, was that the snow hadn't completely iced over—but all the same, Ahsoka struggled against the ground, trying to remember how to regain her breath against the cold blowing around her. She heard both Anakin and Obi-Wan groan beside her, and when she turned, she found Anakin already clumsily getting up to his feet.
"Sorry," he said. "My fault—"
"It's okay," Ahsoka replied. Or tried to reply. It came out slightly garbled, both from the cold and from the snow that had slipped its way down Ahsoka's throat. She spat some of the snow out, made her way up to her feet. "Is he—"
"Awake," Obi-Wan mumbled. He slowly lifted his head from the snow, his eyes dull but at least semi-focused on their surroundings. He started to stand up, and this time, both Anakin and Ahsoka leaned forward to support him.
Obi-Wan, Ahsoka noticed, didn't complain—whether that was because he was too tired or too cold to, Ahsoka didn't know, but she couldn't help but be glad of it, because she didn't particularly feel like complaining either.
"We're almost there," she said. "We just have to…" She didn't bother finishing. She just nodded towards the outcropping.
Luckily, Anakin and Obi-Wan didn't seem to need any more of a signal, either. They walked—staggered forward, and when Ahsoka turned around, she found that the snow was already covering up their tracks.
They collapsed to rocky ground a few minutes later, just barely after slipping into a small opening in the cliffside. The good news, Obi-Wan realized dully, was that the inside of this opening was at least dry, and it at least was a bit warmer than the outside, where both snow and rain still came rushing down.
For a while, Obi-Wan could just listen to Anakin and the girl—District 11, Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan was remembering now—breathe on either side of him. Eventually, Anakin rolled over on his back, and then Obi-Wan followed, and lastly, Ahsoka.
They all exhaled.
Obi-Wan lifted his eyes up to the rock ceiling. He found a few icicles, and as a gust of wind swept by, Obi-Wan managed, "We should move."
"We've been walking for hours," Anakin mumbled. "Just a minute."
An icicle dropped in the space between Obi-Wan and Anakin.
Anakin looked at Obi-Wan.
"Fine," he said after a beat. "We'll move."
With barely suppressed groans and sighs, the three dragged themselves away from the entrance and deeper into the cliff opening. And in the end, Obi-Wan figured that was a good thing, because the deeper they went, the dryer (and therefore slightly warmer) it seemed to get.
The three of them dragged themselves against the rock wall. Pain lanced up Obi-Wan's wrist and arm, but it didn't feel quite as painful as it had been before...he looked down at his hand. Still swollen and still red, but it had lost that strange purple color now. He frowned. Maybe…
"The snow," Ahsoka said. She was looking at Obi-Wan's hand too, her eyes growing just a little wider. "The cold—it must have helped."
"Must have," Obi-Wan agreed. He turned the hand over, settled it on his lap. He looked at the girl properly this time. Up close, she was much, much younger than Obi-Wan had seen her both during the reaping and the training room and the interviews. Much smaller, too, but that nonchalant innocence had long since faded from her face—just as Obi-Wan had predicted.
Ahsoka looked back up at Obi-Wan. Those bright eyes of hers seemed to challenge him—and she lifted her chin as though to prove that point. Obi-Wan could see why Anakin had taken a liking to her.
"I suppose I'm to thank the two of you," Obi-Wan said after a little while.
Anakin huffed beside Obi-Wan. "You suppose…"
"Thank you," Obi-Wan said. He glanced over at Anakin, who was busy wringing out his jacket. "Although I don't quite know how you…"
"Found you?" Anakin asked, still wringing out his jacket. "Coincidence." He slapped the jacket against the rock wall, turned to Obi-Wan and Ahsoka. "Take those off—we're going to want to dry them at least a little."
Ahsoka started tugging off her jacket immediately, but Obi-Wan paused.
"There isn't such a thing as coincidences," Obi-Wan said. "Not here."
"What makes you say that?" Anakin asked. He settled his jacket against his lap. "Do you need help?"
"No," Obi-Wan replied. He tugged at his own jacket the best he could with his good hand. After a few clumsy fumbles of his hand, he managed to get his jacket free. He shivered as another wind blew past them—not quite as strong as the others, and not quite as bad as it could have been, considering that they had shelter, but all the same, Obi-Wan wished that it would at least stop raining.
"So—what was that about coincidences?" Anakin asked.
Obi-Wan rested his head against the wall behind them. "This entire place is controlled by the game makers," he said flatly. "That should be reason enough."
"It wasn't like the game makers forced Ahsoka and me to run into you," Anakin said. "Maybe we just got lucky."
Obi-Wan gave Anakin a sidelong stare. "Our definitions of luck are very different, then."
That gave everyone some pause.
Finally, Ahsoka cleared her throat. "Luck or not, we might as well know each other, right?" Ahsoka asked. She pushed herself away from the wall and turned to Obi-Wan. "I'm Ahsoka."
"Yes," Obi-Wan replied. "I know."
A corner of Ahsoka's lips twitched. "Good," she said. "Because I know you, too. And Anakin and I already got to know one another while you were out."
Obi-Wan vaguely remembered snatches and snippets of muted conversation above him from the forest. Ahsoka's hands had been red with blood...Anakin saying something about leaving a body behind, while Ahsoka protested something…
Obi-Wan glanced between the two. "Yes," he said slowly. "I would imagine so."
Another wind blew past, and this time, they all looked out of the opening. The rain was falling down even harder now, so much so that Obi-Wan could barely make out anything beyond the sheet of grey and white. He shivered again, inching his jacket over himself.
"Well," Anakin said after a little while. "There won't be anyone coming after us in that weather."
"Do you think there's anyone else around here?" Ahsoka asked.
"I didn't see anyone following us," Anakin replied. "So if there's anyone else around, then they're either on the other side or on the other end of the arena. Or in the trees, probably getting soaked."
Obi-Wan looked out. A wind howled again, this time loud enough for the hairs on the back of Obi-Wan's neck to stand up. Anakin and Ahsoka seemed to hear it too, because they both paused and looked out the opening with the same kind of wariness that Obi-Wan imagined he was wearing himself.
"So there's an us now," Obi-Wan said after some time.
Anakin blinked. He turned to Obi-Wan. "Yeah," he replied. "Any objections to that?"
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "Given our current situation," he murmured, "I don't think I have much of a choice."
"That's the spirit," Anakin said.
Another wind howled outside, and everyone fell silent yet again.
"You know," Anakin said, "if there is anyone following us, the rain will take care of it."
"Them," Ahsoka said.
Anakin paused. "Right," he said. "Them."
They didn't bother to speak for a long time after that.
Rapid footsteps echoed down the hallway.
A brief silence, and then—
"Well, at least they found each other."
"Took them long enough."
"But do you think they'll…"
"They will," Qui-Gon said, folding his arms across his chest. He looked at the screen, where Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka were all staring out the opening. "They've made it this far."
"There's still six tributes left," Padmé said.
"So they're halfway through," Rex replied.
They all watched the screen warily.
Finally, Padmé said, "About the boy…"
Deep sighs from all of them.
"There'll be more," Qui-Gon said after a while. "But we all knew the cost."
"It's terrible," Padmé said dully.
"Which is why we're doing this in the first place," Rex replied. He turned around in time for the door to open behind them. No one was surprised at the escorts and stylists walking in—they all wore similar expressions, except for perhaps Threepio, who looked his perpetually anxious little frown. "Well?"
"Well," Asajj said, throwing a little black bag in Rex's direction (and ignoring Rex's little huff of annoyance as he plucked the bag out of the air), "it's acquired. What did you expect?"
"Nothing less," Qui-Gon said.
"Good," Asajj said, and she looped over to the couch. "Satine, darling, that would be your cue."
Satine bristled at the darling, but still, her tone remained steady as she said, "Everything seems to be in place. I've checked myself." She paused. "As for the others…"
"We've discussed that already," Artoo cut in. He looked at the mentors. "Or they've discussed that already."
Qui-Gon remained unruffled. "Any other updates?" he only asked.
"No," Threepio chimed. "Just...er. The families, sir—"
"That'll be taken care of," Rex said with a pointed look to Asajj.
"Yes, I suppose so," Asajj said, examining her nails.
"Ventress."
"Fine," Asajj said, swinging her legs off the couch. "I'll do that now. Really, from the way you three all speak…" She cast them all a throwaway smirk. "You'd think we were running out of time."
"Just get it done," Padmé said.
"Yes, dear," Asajj said sweetly. And then she was walking out, and everyone else was turning back to the screen.
Meanwhile, Cody came up to Rex's side. The two glanced at each other once, nodded. Looked back to the screen.
"Well, Rex old boy," Cody said after a little while, "you think it'll actually be pulled off this time?"
A pause.
"It better," Rex said.
A/N: i'm terribly sorry for both being a day late and also for the shortness of the chapter-real life, unfortunately, threw a wrench my way, and i was in a bit of a hayday situation for a little bit. next chapter will actually be the length that i wanted!
as always, reviews/follows/favorites are greatly appreciated!