Ahsoka didn't know whose blood was on her hands.

She supposed it could be Rex's, but he didn't look banged up enough when she dragged him off the battlefield to warrant that much blood. He'd only had a moderate concussion and a fractured rib or two. At least that's what she'd read off the datapad before she'd been unceremoniously escorted from the makeshift medical tent. Or it could have been Tup's, maybe, or even Fives'. They certainly had enough injuries between the two of them. Or maybe it was a Shiny's, and she'd never know if he lived or died, and that really bothered her. Would her efforts have been in vain?

She could still hear them. The med tent wasn't that far away, and their cries of pain were loud through the makeshift walls. But she couldn't tell which were the cries she was hearing now and which were the ones she had heard then, back when they had just discovered what it felt like to lose an arm or be crushed under a rock. Because their screams were echoing in her head and they were just as loud as the cries that she was hearing now.

But the point was, there was no way to tell. Her hands were slick with someone else's blood and they itched and ached, and they were red where they were supposed to be orange and she couldn't stop staring at them, even as she knew she should probably find a fresher or at the very least wipe them on the back of her skirt.

"Ahsoka?" Someone was talking to her but she didn't bother looking up to see who it was. Her eyes weren't focusing and there was a distant buzzing in her head that she couldn't find the source of.

"Snips? Are you okay?" A shag of brown hair appeared in front of her, and blue eyes, and dark Jedi robes. They belonged to her Master, she knew, but she didn't meet his eyes. She turned away, still looking at her hands.

The blood was beginning to dry and it was itchy. It was caked under her fingernails and it seeped into the cracks of her knuckles. In the dimming light it was getting harder and harder to see but she knew it was there. She could feel it. It was everywhere. It had seeped under her gloves and it was rubbing her wrists raw.

"Look at me." Her master's finger tipped her chin upward and she followed his direction even as her eyes refused to focus. It was getting darker and darker. The sun was setting and the sky looked like an ember extinguishing. She thought about what it looked like when someone died and she realized it didn't look all that different. Maybe people and aliens and flames all died the same. She wondered what category she fit into.

Anakin looked down at his Padawan. He reached out to her with the Force, which wasn't hard as they usually spent significant time in each other's heads. She wasn't hurt and he exhaled around gritted teeth.

That usually wasn't the case.

So what was bothering her so much her eyes wouldn't focus and she wouldn't speak? He squinted through the growing darkness and noticed her hands.

They were much more orange than normal. Maybe she had gotten sunburnt or dehydrated from spending so much time in the hot jungle. Could togrutas get sunburnt? No, that wasn't orange, was it?

It was red.

Red, red, red.

"Ahsoka," he breathed, and though he didn't understand yet he was glad he had already ascertained she wasn't hurt because panic was clawing at his insides and he wasn't sure he could take seeing her covered in that much blood and thinking it was hers all in the same breath.

"It's not mine," she said and her voice sounded like the rust on her wrists.

"Whose is it?" Anakin put his hand on her back, just enough to begin steering her from the edges of the makeshift medbay. The cries of the wounded were echoing in his ears and he hadn't even been there. He didn't want to think about what his padawan was hearing.

For the first time since he got there, Ahsoka looked up at him. Her eyes were huge, on the verge of breaking. "I don't know."

"Come on," Anakin said. He guided Ahsoka out of the shelter and into the cooling desert. A soft breeze billowed through his robes.

Anakin led the way past all of the makeshift buildings, past the tents and starships and cruisers. Groups of clones stood around laughing, trading stories about the battle, treating each other's minor injuries, clapping each other on the back. He spotted Obi Wan and Cody hunched under a splintering awning, cups of steaming caf in their hands. On Obi Wan's forehead was a bacta patch and Cody's left arm was in a sling. This battle hadn't been kind to anyone.

Anakin took a split second to be thankful his Padawan wasn't hurt.

Everything around them was covered in a faint haze and even as the sun sunk further and further in the sky the heat didn't let up. He pulled his hair away from his neck, allowing the breeze to reach it.

Ahsoka, meanwhile, hadn't taken her eyes off the sand beneath her feet. She didn't seem to notice the setting sun or the heat or the sweat prickling on her neck or under her arms. She just walked. She knew how to do that, at least.

They walked for a while, until Anakin could no longer make out the helmets of his men held at their sides or sitting in the sand. He reached out and put his hand on Ahsoka's shoulder and she jumped, but she didn't look up at him.

They had found themselves at the base of a natural spring. They were few and far between, out here in the middle of a desert planet, but the water that came from this particular one fed the entire shanty town. It flowed downhill towards the people, deep and cold enough to be sanitary for their purposes. He didn't particularly appreciate the grit of the water, but circumstances forced him to make do.

He pulled Ahsoka to the bank and she sat with her legs folded underneath her. Anakin pulled a cloth from the pocket of his robe and dipped it in the water. It was cold against his throbbing fingers.

"Give me your hand," he said.

Carefully Anakin worked the cloth between her fingers, under her nails, over her hands. He rinsed the cloth and re-washed them again, until he could see nothing but orange in the near-perfect darkness.

Ahsoka focused on the water, on the rushing cold, on the chilly spray that hit her in the face every time a strong current crashed against the bank. She sat perfectly still while he worked, meticulously removing every indication that she had ever had any blood on her at all, that the battle, the violence, the death, had touched her.

"It's under my gloves," she said suddenly, startling Anakin into nearly dropping his cloth into the spring.

Anakin didn't say a word as he deftly removed her gloves, first the right and then the left. He wiped the skin underneath them clean, as best he could, as it was now completely dark.

"I'll wash these in the spring," he said when her wrists and forearms were clean.

"Don't bother." Ahsoka folded her arms against her chest; it was finally starting to cool down between the darkness and the breeze. "I don't want them."

Anakin thought for a minute. Then carefully, almost painfully, he began to dig in the banks of the spring.

Anakin wasn't surprised when Ahsoka leaned over to help him dig. And after they had buried her gloves in the banks of the spring, he wasn't surprised when she took the cloth from him and began to wash his hands, just as he had done for her, to wash the sand from between his fingers and under his nails.

Because he didn't have the blood of his comrades on his hands, but she needed to do something to show she appreciated it, and he really didn't like the sand much at all.