As Anakin descended down the shaft, he couldn't push away his memories from the trial. It wasn't quite the same, since the morning was well underway instead of the night, but he could still see Ahsoka free-falling from the sewage line output. He could still remember what was running through his head when she had asked him to trust her.

I can't protect you out there, he had wanted to tell her. If someone finds you and you need help, I won't know. It's not safe to do this on your own. Please, just let me come with you. We can figure this out together, even if we don't go back, just please don't go.

Even as he had shaken his head, she had jumped from the piping and down the shaft. What would have gone differently, if she had come back with him, or if he had gone into the Lower Levels with her? Why had he let them separate? They had always been together when they had to face something, and sometimes even when he had ordered her to stay behind. So why, when it was more important than ever, had they split up?

The shaft wasn't the only thing he remembered. On the surface, the things he had said...no, screamed at her, how could he have said those things? He had told her that she deserved to die. The whole time she had been trying to help him, whether she was Ahsoka or not, and how had he repaid her? He had answered death with death, and what had that accomplished?

He wanted to go back, he wanted to go back to his youth when the Force seemed like a superpower and the Jedi seemed like they were heroes to all. He wanted to go back to a day when he hadn't trusted a Sith Lord and when he hadn't fallen to the Darkness. Anakin would even be willing to go back to Tatooine, back to slavery, if it meant that he wouldn't have caused all of this. All of his mistakes, they would have been erased, gone, and he wouldn't have hurt so many people. Maybe his mother would still be alive, and Ahsoka would still be a Jedi. Another Jedi would have looked out for her, and protected her and stood up for her the way he hadn't.

Even as he thought that he knew it wasn't true. No one would have stood up for her when she was accused or they would have helped her. He and Padmé alone had defended her. As much as he hated what he had done, it was possible that it was better than what might have been.

He finally landed on the very bottom level of Coruscant, where no one ever ventured unless they were incredibly brave, or incredibly stupid. In Anakin's case, he was stalling, but he wouldn't admit it to himself. Instead, he dismounted and looked for signs that the Inquisitor had been here.

The place certainly felt Dark. All around him, the Dark Side of the Force was snaking about the shadows, and it chilled Anakin's blood. Maybe Sideous had hidden something down here. Whatever it was, it didn't feel like the Inquisitor. There was no blood on the ground either, which meant that she had caught herself before falling this far. Maybe she had landed on a ship? Or had she been able to slow her fall with the Force? Anakin was glad that he hadn't sliced her in half now, but looking back he really ought to have finished the job if he was going to do it. What had he been thinking? If it wasn't so atrocious, and he wasn't so afraid of what he was going to find down here, he would have laughed at himself.

The bottom level was deserted, so Anakin mounted his speeder again and started working up levels. As he rose, he looked for blood spilled on the ground. His lightsaber would have cauterized the cut, but if she had survived, she would have had to move, and even a cauterized wound would bleed if it was stressed. Wherever she had gone, blood ought to have stained the ground behind her. If he found a trail, he would find where she went, whether he wanted to know or not.

It wasn't long before he saw a group of people clustered around one of the platforms to a level. He sped towards them (at the slowest speed possible, mind you), and parked the speeder in one of the spots reserved for government agents only. He dismounted, shouldered the pack, and went to see what all of the fuss was about.

The crowd parted before him, and when he reached the center of it, people started clamoring "It wasn't me" and "It was there this morning when I got here".

Anakin looked down where everyone was staring and saw what they were so defensive of. A pool of blood was staining the ground, dark, and it had clearly been there for hours. Anakin knelt down, his fingers hovering over the blood, but not touching it.

"There's more over there," someone behind him said, and he looked to see who had spoken. They pointed a finger down into the level, away from the shaft. Anakin followed their direction, but he couldn't see through the thick of the people, so he stood up and excused his way through the crowd. When he spotted where the trail picked up, he turned back to the crowd.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of this. There's nothing more to see here." He turned away and back to the trail. The people quickly scuffled off, to work, or wherever else they went in the morning.

Anakin knelt down. It wasn't a trail, actually, it was more that droplets of blood had spilled while the Inquisitor had been moving. It was more like breadcrumbs than a single continuous trail. They led down the path and Anakin followed it.

Could he have scanned the blood by the crowd? ...probably. Yeah.

...

The trail went into the thick of the city where a lot of people would have been going home last night. Then again, they probably saw all kinds of things down here, it was deep enough that bounty hunters would be crawling all over the place.

Oh, Mortis. What if she got carried away by one of them? A hunter, even a non-sensitive one, could carry away an injured Force-wielder. Maybe a Separatist would have...

...well what difference would it have made? Both the Separatists and the Republicans were taking orders from Sideous. Would it have mattered who had gotten her? Anakin began to see how cruel and how brilliant the overarching plan was. Both sides of a war obeying Sideous, and on both sides, he gained more and more power. Terrible as it was, it was truly genius.

The blood stopped all of a sudden, and Anakin felt his heart rate pick up. He turned around frantically, looking for where she could have gone, but there were no intersections that she could have turned down. Then his gaze traveled up the buildings. No one would have been able to see her up there.

He jumped up onto the building on the right side, and the trail picked up immediately. The droplets led to a corner, where another pool of blood was waiting for him amongst other things. The first one had been noticeable, maybe a foot wide or so, but this one was big. The Inquisitor has lost a lot of blood here.

Anakin remembered what he had thought last night: She would bleed out and die if the impact of dropping down so far didn't kill her. He hated it, but he was right. There was no medical facility that would accept her, not on Coruscant. She was a Separatist, and once the news got out she would be a criminal. Who would take in a criminal?

Once she had gotten here, she must have staggered over to the cement frame of the door, which protruded from the top of the building. That's where the blood was anyways. That wasn't all.

Her lightsaber was here too, along with the red sash that usually wrapped around the Inquisitor's waist. It wasn't just red though, because now, it was completely soaked in blood. She must have tried to use it to mop up the mess, but it hadn't done much. Her headdress was lying next to it. On the wall, next to the mess, the Inquisitor has burned her symbol into the cement.

So this was where the Sister died, then. She had known it and left one last monument to her work burned into the wall. Her body must have been dragged off by some no-good bounty hunter. When Anakin picked up her lightsaber (which was also stained), he couldn't feel the crystals inside either. He lifted up her headdress, but it must have taken a lot of stress because it snapped in half in his hands. The fall must have weakened it.

He removed the bag from his back, and it was only then that he realized his hands were shaking. When he tried to undo the straps, his fingers kept fumbling, and the buckles kept slipping out of his hands. When he finally got them open, he pulled the scanner out, somehow managing to turn it on.

This was it. One way or another, he would know who the Inquisitor was. Either she was telling the truth, and she was a nomadic Jedi whose master he had indirectly killed with his fighter, or it was his Padawan, and sh..she was...

Dead.

If he did this, there was no going back. If he scanned the blood for DNA, he would have to accept the answer he got. He had wanted proof, and this was as sound of proof as there existed. Whatever the reason, however the path, what the scanner told him would be fact. Either this was Ahsoka's blood or it wasn't.

He wanted to run. He wanted to go back to the Temple and pretend he hadn't found anything, but he couldn't leave. He couldn't live with himself if he just...left. Ran away. Pretended that he hadn't done anything. Anakin had to stay, had to know.

So he activated the scanner. It began to analyze the blood. Anakin's pounding heart rammed itself up his throat, and the blood in his head pulsed. The scan was complete. The circle on the screen spun, spun, spun, running through all of the DNA samples in the Republic's database. Anakin couldn't breathe.

Please.

A match came up. The profile filled the screen.

No, please!

Anakin didn't hear the scanner clatter on the ground as it slipped through his fingers.

He didn't hear himself scream.

He didn't hear himself plead for his actions to be undone, even though he knew it was impossible.

He didn't hear himself beg for forgiveness, even though he was alone and the one to whom he was begging wasn't with him.

He didn't hear these things, but he knew he did them because there was nothing else he could do. All he could do was to scream, to try to hold the tears back though it was useless.

His nightmare wasn't an accident, it was real. It was a vision. He was the executioner. Palpatine had manipulated him. He had done the one thing he had told her he would never do. He told her he would never let anyone hurt her, but he was the ruthless hypocrite he had accused the Council of being. He was the one who was blinded by his fear and rage. He was the one who killed and betrayed without thinking, and he had paid the price for it.

Or rather, Ahsoka had paid the price.

How could he have done this? How? How? How had he not seen? Why did he turn a blind eye to her when she was the one he had been looking for for so long? How?

It didn't matter, none of that mattered now. "I'm the monster, I was supposed to die! Not her, not her! Not her..."

It was his fault, it was all his fault. He couldn't protect Ahsoka, he couldn't protect anyone. Everyone close to him died, and they died because he couldn't save them in time. He was too late, he was always too late. His nightmares came flooding back to him just as fast as his tears fell, mixing with Ahsoka's blood.

You could have helped me!

You could have if you tried!

I gave you everything I had!

I defended you, I fought with you, I stood by you when no one else would have! I gave my life for you!

How could you?

You were my master, I trusted you!

YOU FAILED ME!

I failed you.

Anakin had killed Ahsoka.

I'm so sorry.

Please, please, please...