Disclaimer: If I could buy Star Wars from Lucas, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

A/N: Whee! Nearing the end! I guess I don't have much else to say . . . Have fun reading it? Click my name and find out what other stuff I've written? Oh, and another bring-Anakin-back fic is on my favorite stories.

Anyway. Don't kill me for the cliffy - if I die, you never get to see the end!

Chapter XX: Run

Anakin Solo was frantic. He had managed to get off the Rock Dragon without having a relative see him, and his parents and Luke were too busy fussing over the return of the twins to realize that there was a presence on the Errant Venture that shouldn't be there.

When the ship landed, Mara had been waiting around a bend in the corridor with Ben, and Anakin exited through an emergency hatch in the back while his siblings distracted Han, Leia and Luke at the main ramp. Mara reached out with the Force and mentally "tapped" Anakin on the shoulder. When he rounded the bend, she finally got her first look at him, and spend one stunned moment staring. Then she pulled him into a rough hug.

"Dammit, kid," she muttered, letting him go and fiercely wiping away any trace of tears, "don't ever do that again!"

Anakin grinned sheepishly back at her. "I won't, Aunt Mara. Where's Tahiri?"

"C'mon, follow me."

They walked about half a corridor before Anakin asked, with only a hint of hesitation, "Can we run?"

*

There was no word to describe the creature who was curled up on the bed in Tahiri's room. Her green eyes stared mindlessly, deprived of the everlasting peace she sought, and her hair and clothes were wrinkled, mangled, folded around her in place of the blankets she couldn't seem to figure out how worked.

All that was left in the body was an empty shell, the soul too shocked and worn to bother doing much of anything but lying there and staring. After all, the world she saw was fascinatingly horrible - it was, for the first time, a world without Anakin, and every time she saw something new, the idea ripped into her deeper.

Anakin is dead.

Is dead.

Dead.

Tahiri - or what was left of Tahiri - couldn't even work up the ambition to attempt to kill herself again. The firmest plan she had was to lay there and waste away. Nothing Tionne can do about that.

She was just spiraling into another bout of depression when she heard the compression of air that accompanied the opening of a door. She didn't even bother moving her eyes to see who had come to check up on her now - just curled herself deeper into the Force so they couldn't touch her with it.

"Tahiri."

Nonononono! She screamed, and with a spasm, her eyes shut. She knew that voice . . . No, no, no, no! There cannot be anything this cruel! Anakin's DEAD!

"Tahiri!"

A Presence in the Force so strong, so filled with Light that she screamed again in denial and pain, seemed to leap from the door to her side, wrapping her in his arms and burying his too-young face in her hair. "Please, Tahiri, please . . ."

"NO! NO! You're dead! Stop it, stop it, no, go away!" Tahiri whirled around and pushed him away, backing wide-eyed to the other side of her bed, against the wall. "You're dead."

"I was. Now I'm not. I . . ." Anakin reached out with one hand, and Tahiri stared at it like it was a Krayt dragon. "Please. I'm here. I'm back. Tahiri!"

Terrified green eyes stared up at him, and she reached forth a shaking hand.