"There's a man in a world of pain,
Can you hear it in the air and the words he breathes?"
- The Bollox
Calm Before the Storm
"Are you proud of me master?"
Ahsoka was running for her life as well as her master's. She was hopping out of the way of every piece of debris and blaster shot she could, moving so smoothly in between the falling rubble as if she'd been doing it her entire life.
It certainly felt that way, with how long she'd been involved with the Jedi and the Clone Wars.
Come on, Anakin.
She was feeling through the Force with intangible hands, looking for a sign, or a pulse, or even a subtle hint that her master was still here. Not just in the sense of being on this planet.
But all she'd gotten back were the overbearing sounds of civilians' screams, anger, and hatred towards both factions of the war. There were arguments about whose responsibility it was for the chaos, as if that had any actual relevance to the situation at hand.
Ahsoka's own counterproductive thoughts were plaguing her mind, about how all of this could have been started because of her. Throughout this ordeal, she'd been asking herself where it all had gone wrong, or how any of this could have been avoided. Such thinking was non-progressive and hostile towards herself and her wellbeing.
The smoke in the air burned her lungs and a coughing fit had stopped her. She collapsed onto her knees and her palms pressed into the ground, feeling as if an early defeat was already taking place.
I can't do it...
She had never been one to give up so easily. Whether it was because of pride, tenacity, or just being stubborn, Ahsoka had always pulled herself out of the hole she had dug herself in and kept on.
Even after she abandoned the Jedi Temple.
But with everything completely out of balance around her, and everything that the Jedi had worked to protect crumbling before her eyes, Ahsoka dared to challenge that resolve.
"I don't need you anymore, master."
Ahsoka knew something had happened on Mortis after she'd been captured. Even if she hadn't been fully conscious to experience it, she knew a massive conflict had taken place between her and her master.
She was aware of this because she had dreamt of it. It seems that no life experience could elude a person who wielded the Force, and when these kinds of encounters repeated themselves in her dreams, Ahsoka would wish she wasn't one of these people.
In her nightmare, she was facing against a carbon copy of herself, but there was a key difference between the two of them. The one she'd been facing had the horrible glow of a Dark Sider in its irises, and black streaks spread throughout its entire body.
Beside the doppelganger, Ahsoka could see the shadow of The Son, laughing maniacally and encouraging both of them to fight. In this dream, Ahsoka was unconfident in herself and uncertain if she should kill the dark version of herself or try to save it. Either situation would happen in the many times she'd experienced this.
But at one point when she dreamt about it, and managed to pierce her lightsaber through the cursed double, it turned into something else. And suddenly, Anakin was looking up at her, with pleading eyes, clutching the area where the lightsaber pushed through.
"Why, Ahsoka? Why did you hurt me?"
And in present-day Coruscant, Ahsoka could see that this battle she'd only dreamt of was manifesting itself. It was within herself as she thought about what she would do if she'd found Anakin completely turned, and she could suspect that it was in him, too.
No Jedi or Sith could ever escape the eternal conflict that was the battle within themselves. Perhaps no one without the Force could, either.
"Are you alright, Commander?"
Rex's kind words helped yank her out of those tainted memories.
"I..." Rex helped her back onto her feet. "I'm fine, Rex."
Ahsoka could have been more vocal towards him, but aside from trying not to draw attention to herself, she was also unsure that she should call out to him. Maybe what she was doing was only making the situation worse by appearing on this planet in the first place.
"Rex." She said, calmly.
"Commander?"
She was about to ask him if it was a mistake to seek out Anakin - not that Rex would have been able to answer that - but she stood completely still in her tracks, her mouth open but with no sound coming out.
"Ahsoka."
There it was. The answer to all the calls she'd been looking for. But his presence was not at all what she'd expected. She turned ever so slowly to meet the one who had contacted her and he emerged from the shadows and the smoke like a predator approaching its prey from the dark depths.
His presence had never been so cold and so uninviting than it was at this very moment. Ahsoka was speechless as she analyzed him from the top all the way down to the ground. His clothing had been torn with visible cuts on his limbs.
On his face, large dark circles hung below his eyes. She could see the veins poking out from his forehead. His eyes may not have had the evil shade of the Dark Side, but the hatred was clear in the way that he stared her down. It was such an intense glare that Ahsoka felt as though he could strangle her just by looking at her like that.
Despite traveling here alongside Maul, and agreeing with most of what he'd been telling her. She didn't want to believe it. She couldn't believe it. Anakin's words flew through her mind.
"I can't let you die, Ahsoka."
The one who would sacrifice himself to keep others safe. The one who would do anything for the people he loved and cherished most in this entire galaxy.
Even join the Dark Side.
But then...
The images of each time he'd strangled a prisoner for information came to her mind. Or the times he didn't hesitate to kill an enemy even after that person had begged for their life.
But then...
The pure anger in his voice whenever he'd just come from another fight against Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi Council. And the way he would unleash his anger onto the walls by punching his fist into it.
It can't be.
But it was. The evidence was standing right in front of her. The light but sturdy ravine of Anakin's Force Signature was now poisoned and jagged. Ahsoka was no longer looking at her most trusted friend and the only person she could safely call her family.
She was looking at a feral animal, confused and lost and only relying on its instincts rather than its conscious.
Even so, she did not allow that to phase her. Anakin was inside that vessel somewhere, and she wasn't about to give up on finding him now.
"Anakin, you're okay." She said, even though that word was relative. He didn't feel okay from where she stood and he certainly didn't seem okay. But he was alive and that was what Ahsoka was hoping.
He stepped forward, making both Ahsoka and Rex step back.
"Answer me one question," Anakin started, without acknowledging that Ahsoka managed to get here despite all the destruction. "Did you come here with him?"
"'Him'?" Ahsoka questioned. There could only be one person Anakin was referring to and there was no way of lying to him. He must have seen it all, already. Or Sideous must have shown it to him. "I... I had to."
"Why?" Anakin demanded. When she didn't answer, his voice became harsher. "Answer me."
Her master had been angry and frustrated with her before, but this was something else. This was intimidating. Scary, even. "Because... I thought he would help."
"Help with what, Ahsoka?"
Again, silence. If she'd told him the truth, it could have only made the transformation process happen sooner. If she lied to him, he could easily sense it. There was no winning, here.
Anakin sighed heavily. "You've really let me down now, Ahsoka. I thought I could trust you."
"I... I wasn't trying to."
That was all she could say.
"Then why did you bring him here?" Anakin stomped towards her close enough that he was face-to-face with her. "Why did you come back with the enemy? You said so yourself that you would rather die than side with any users of the Sith." He narrowed his eyes at her. "So why did you do it?"
"Because..." Her hands were trembling for the first time since she'd first learned to handle a lightsaber. "Because he showed me-"
She said the forbidden words.
Her sudden retraction on what she was about to tell him made him perk his head up and his jaw drop slightly.
"He showed you what?" His voice leaked with venom. "What did he show you?"
By now he was shaking her by the shoulders and Ahsoka bit her lip, wondering how in the world she was going to tell him what she'd seen. The truth? The potential truth? A false scenario made up by a Sith Lord who was only looking after himself.
After she didn't say anything more, Anakin shoved her back and she was almost thrown off her position.
"You don't trust me." He concluded.
"No, it's not that at all!" Ahsoka clearly lied, thus angering Anakin even more. He began pacing back and forth, allowing words to fall out of his mouth as if he'd been talking to himself.
"Obi-Wan and the rest of the Council turned their backs on me, and now I'm getting the same treatment from you? My closest friend? The only one who I could actually tell about how I felt about the Jedi?" He ran a hand through his frazzled hair. "What happened to the unstoppable team, Ahsoka? What happened to you always being by my side no matter what?"
She hung her head in shame.
"You abandoned me, for a long time. And then all of a sudden, you show up here when things seemed to be going in my favor, with a psychopath who manipulated you and turned you against me."
But he didn't... I'm here with you, aren't I?
Those words stayed in her head.
"Siding with the enemy means you're going against the Jedi and all you've believed in. And worst of all, you're going against me." Anakin grabbed his saber. "That makes you a traitor."
"I'm sorry, master."
What he'd told her wasn't too far from the truth. Yes, she had gone against her better judgement and taken Maul's hand even if it was for the purpose of saving him and preventing him from his apparent destiny.
She did abandon him. Not because she didn't care, or because she wanted to be rid of him. Truth be told, she wasn't one hundred percent sure why she stayed away from him for so long. Maybe it was because of her guilt at leaving him to uphold the role of being the Chosen One by himself.
Anakin made as if he was about to activate his saber, but he lowered it and sighed heavily, closing his eyelids.
"Listen," He said, softly. "I can forgive you for all of that. I won't blame you too much for it. I am against the Jedi as much as you are, believe it or not. And because of that, I know I can have a little more faith in you than the others."
Ahsoka took a step back. Those words sounded awfully familiar.
And then, Anakin straightened, his gaze softened, and he extended his hand out in the same way that Maul did not too long ago and said the words, "Come with me and let's see this through together."
She had almost lost her balance with how much shock she was in. She could have tried to convince herself that it wasn't actually him who was saying this, and it wasn't him who was now beckoning her to come forward.
But her senses were telling her otherwise.
"Commander?" Rex said, quietly. Anakin didn't flinch when the clone said what he did.
Once again, Ahsoka had been moving involuntarily against the logical part of her mind. She stepped forward and was about to take his hand like she did with Maul, but she froze.
She knew who the mastermind was behind the manipulation of Anakin. The one who had been playing him since the beginning, and took advantage of these raging emotions about Obi-Wan, the Jedi Council, and Ahsoka's departure.
And she knew who it was that would be waiting for them if she'd taken Anakin's hand. By the time she would face the true Sith Lord behind the Clone Wars and all conflict Ahsoka had been involved in, it would already be too late.
There would be no going back.
And Ahsoka knew she couldn't have taken on the Dark Lord, himself. Not if Anakin had given Sideous all of his trust.
Ahsoka retracted her hand and sighed. "I can't."
Anakin's face began to look normal once he offered her his hand, but now it was back to being completely darkened and shadowed by his anger. He grabbed the handle of his saber with both hands and activated it.
"If you're not with me, then you're against me."
There was a tightening feeling in her chest as she realized what he just said. Those words were not ones that were spoken by a Jedi, or someone who was a Force-sensitive being that did not follow either faction.
Those were the words of a Sith. Almost like the Sith whom she had made a deal with earlier.
Rex readied his blaster. "Sir! Please don't do this!"
Ahsoka grasped her sabers and activated them like she normally did when faced with a threat. The blue blades hummed and shone right behind her back and she was ready for whatever attacks he was about to give her.
But not before a brief reenactment of an encounter she had before she'd left the Temple came to her.
...
She had been wandering down the halls with her head low and a gloomy expression on her face. It was the fourth night in a row she'd had that nightmare and it was starting to interfere with her daily routines.
Normally she would have been meditating with Master Yoda, but this morning, she couldn't focus. Those yellow eyes kept following her wherever she went.
She'd been so distracted that she didn't even realize she bumped into Anakin as he was traveling down the opposite direction.
"Oh, sorry, Snips, I didn't see you there."
Ahsoka nodded. "Hi, master."
Anakin was the only one who would ever ask her this question, "Something on your mind?"
She shook her head. "Nah, it's nothing important, really. Just had a bad night, is all."
"You want to talk about it?"
Always checking in with her whenever he saw something wrong. That was one of the things that made Ahsoka feel safer around him. Much safer than with the other masters. She knew they meant well, but they would tell her that the solution to this particular problem would be to not let it get to her. And right now she felt as if that wasn't enough.
"Sure."
Anakin and Ahsoka walked towards the end of the halls of the Temple, where few people were loitering. She wasn't sure where to begin with this dream, because it felt like such a small issue. Dreams were usually abstract parts of the subconscious that didn't hold a lot of meaning in terms of real world scenarios.
But this one was about a specific situation in a place that she knew Anakin remembered. It was the place where he'd almost lost her, and she almost lost him.
"Okay," She began, slowly. "I wanted to know something that's been swirling in my mind for a while." Anakin leaned back against the wall and listened close. "What happened on Mortis?"
Anakin looked as if he wasn't sure how to answer this. "A lot of things. Remember?"
"Barely," She massaged her temple. "I... just woke up and you were right beside me. And I keep having these dreams about being back there and The Son is taunting me. And..."
"You're not yourself..." Anakin finished for her in a quiet tone.
Ahsoka looked at him. "Yeah. It was like I was possessed by the Dark Side. But... I was fighting against myself while I was taken by the Dark. And..." She lowered her eyes. "Did that actually happen? Not me fighting myself, but... was I possessed?"
Anakin sighed, without answering "yes" or "no". And that was all Ahsoka needed to confirm her suspicions. She didn't tell him, however, that it was him on the opposite side of her in one of those dreams.
"I'm sorry I tried to kill you, master." She said to him. "If that's what it was that I was trying to do. I know it's unbecoming of a Jedi to feel guilty, but... I do."
Ahsoka apologizing was becoming a rarer event as her training in the Temple advanced. It wasn't because she was never remorseful whenever she did something wrong, but it was more to keep herself from dwelling on it. She couldn't say that she wasn't prone to doing so every so often.
Anakin gave her a small smile. "It's okay, Snips. That wasn't you doing all that stuff. The Dark Side makes us do plenty of things that are not within our control."
"I also wanted to thank you for saving me."
He waved a hand. "No need to thank me for that. You'd have done the same for me."
Ahsoka grinned, now feeling better about her situation, and turned to leave. But Anakin had something else to say.
"Wait," He said. She turned to him and saw that he'd been looking down on the ground with a slightly dazed look on his face. She could practically see the gears turning in his head. "Back at that place, I also was taken by the influence of the Dark. And I said some pretty terrible things and almost did even worse. If that ever happened to me..." His eyes met hers. "... you would put a stop to it, right?"
Ahsoka was taken aback by this question. He'd never asked something like that of her before. Frankly, she wasn't sure if she should have told him she would or she wouldn't. When he said, "putting a stop to it", he could only have meant taking his life away. Ahsoka had been taught that bringing someone back from the Dark was nearly impossible.
But she returned the smile he'd given her and said, "I don't think you'll have to worry about that, master. You won't."
"But what if I did? What if it wasn't in my control? What would you do then?"
Ahsoka fully turned her body around and placed her hand on her hips. "Then I'll make sure to bring you back to your senses."
Anakin nodded like he was reassured, but the look on his face told her otherwise. He didn't say it, but Ahsoka was now thinking that maybe some part of him believed that was going to happen at some point in the future, and he didn't even realize.
...
Ahsoka closed her eyelids and powered off her sabers, though her grip on them was still tight. "I'm not here to fight you, Anakin. If you don't trust me, I'll understand. I've done some regrettable things that would make anyone look at me differently. But if you think that I came here because I'd turned against you, then I truly believe you don't know me at all."
Anakin tightened his hold on his weapon.
"If you want to kill me, then all I can do is defend myself." She continued, looking straight into his eyes. "But I am not here to kill you. I came here because I was worried you were in danger. I've seen things that you wouldn't believe. I've dreamt things." She loosened her grip on her sabers and allowed them to fall to the ground.
"Commander!" Rex said.
Ahsoka stood up straight and reiterated, "I'm not here to fight you."
Anakin's brow twitched and the veins in his head showed themselves even more now than ever. His jaw clenched and his hands tightened around the handle of his saber. Ahsoka could see it now, the fight within him. The constant struggle he'd faced every single day he'd walked through the Temple and interacted with each of the Jedi Masters.
She may have let go of her weapons, but she kept a sharp eye on Anakin's reaction, waiting for him to strike her. But he didn't. He raised his blade slightly and made Rex take a step towards him.
But he lowered it again, deactivated it, and turned away from her.
"Leave."
Ahsoka didn't accept that. "Anak-"
"I said leave."
She shared a look with Rex, who chose not to interfere during that entire exchange of words, as he took another step back. Ahsoka collected her sabers and was about to follow him, but she stopped.
If she left right now, it would have been all over. Any chance at redeeming him would have been lost. This entire ordeal with Maul, the clones turning against her, and the detachment from her master would have all been for nothing.
She would have been running away knowing that many people would have lost their lives today for nothing.
And the evil that had been present under their noses the entire time would reign.
"Commander," Rex said. "We should get out of here before this place starts to collapse!"
The ground underneath was unstable and the Temple had been falling apart around them. If they stayed any longer, they would have been devoured by the debris.
And although Ahsoka was sure that her presence on this planet was only making things worse for her companion, she remembered how completely devastated he was when she resigned from the Jedi.
And how deeply it had affected him going forward. It had driven a wedge between them and possibly was the true culprit of Anakin's downfall. She could only imagine how lost and alone he'd felt without her help in guiding him forward.
She was not about to make that mistake again.
"No." She turned around. "You go without me."
"Ahsoka!"
She stepped forward to where Anakin was still standing.
"I won't leave you, master. Not this time."
The jaded man turned his head towards her and she could see that his eyes had shifted. The look on his face was no longer that of intense anger and hatred, but of sorrow. It looked as though he'd felt guilty about the things he'd done, or the things that he was about to do. And for a brief moment, he seemed shaken from that momentary trance that the Dark Lord had put him in.
But things were about to become much worse for the both of them.
There was a moment of a peculiar silence and calmness that surrounded them and seemed to make time slow down. She watched his head turn up and his eyes and mouth widen exponentially.
Ahsoka only had few seconds to turn her head upwards and see what Anakin was looking at. It was a warship that had seemed to appear out of thin air and opened its hatches at the bottom to rain bombs and fire upon what was left of the Temple.
"Watch out!" Rex shouted.
Anakin and Ahsoka both shared the same look of fear and without a second though, Anakin pounced forward and shoved both Ahsoka and Rex out of the way of the fiery rain that had fallen.
AN: It ain't over yet!
