Eventually, reluctantly, Anakin held her away from him, but just enough so that he could see her as she looked for the first time. This was when he saw how sick she looked, how weak she had become. He also saw the bandage, now, which was the ultimate proof the Jedi needed. She was really was the Inquisitor. Anakin took all of this in before picking her up, carefully. "Come on, let's get you resting."
"You know I can walk, right?" she asked him, grunting as her stomach shifted and needles of red hot pain spread again.
"I know you can," Anakin responded lowly and set her down gently on the couch in her apartment. Again, Ahsoka grunted, despite her desperate efforts to mask the pain.
Anakin sat down next to her and studied her. Ahsoka leaned back on the cushions and rested a hand over the stain on the bandage before turning to him. When she saw that he was staring at her stomach, she pulled her hand away. "It's just a flesh wound, I'll be fine." She reassured him.
Anakin looked down, leaned his elbows on his knees, and shook his head. "This is my fault. I did this."
"How?" Ahsoka asked, and he glanced at her, not meeting her eyes. "This was my choice, not yours. My fault, not yours."
"I should have..." he fell short, not really sure what he should have done, but sure that there was something. "I should have-"
"There was nothing you could have done," she said. "Not with the Council. You did everything you should have done."
"I could have killed you," he said aloud, admitting it to himself and to her. "I almost did."
Ahsoka shook her head slowly. "It was my fault I was there in the first place. I killed the Chancellor. You were supposed to come after me."
Anakin clenched his fist, furious that she was right. Everything about this was wrong. He was supposed to do what he did, and he hated that he couldn't do anything to change it.
He looked at her finally, meeting her eyes, and all he could see was sorrow. Regret. He didn't know how he looked, but Anakin felt like a monster. He didn't realize that Ahsoka felt the same way. After a long silence, he asked her, "How did this happen to you?"
Ahsoka's face fell, and Anakin realized that it was far worse than he knew.
She breathed deeply, wincing as her burn pained her again, but fought the urge to cover it and started to speak. Her voice was a little shaky, but she began to tell him. "The night after I...I left, I was walking in the Lower Levels. Dooku trapped me, and, as he put it, 'forcibly escorted' me to Sideous." She made air quotes as she said 'forcibly escorted'.
Anakin sat upright and listened. As her story continued, his stomach dropped even further, but he forced himself to accept that this was true, that this had happened to his apprentice and that he couldn't change it.
"He told me about his plan to kill the Jedi and said I had two options. I could join and help him, or I would die. I didn't see a choice. I knew if I refused to help, no one could warn you in time. No one would know until it was too late. I chose to help him.
"They couldn't make me into a Sith, since there were already two, so I called myself an Inquisitor. I tried to convince Sideous that I wanted to make a whole group of Inquisitors, so it would like I meant it."
"Did he believe you?"
"I don't think so. I don't think he ever believed that I was really loyal to him."
"So why did he trust you so much, then?"
"Because if I let him down, he would-," she paused, and dropped her gaze. "He could kill me."
Anakin knew that there was something she wasn't saying, something that had happened. He wanted to press, to know what that monster had done to hurt Ahsoka, but he didn't. For now, it was enough just to see her, to know that she was okay.
"I trained for about nine months, then he sent me to do things for him. I started missions, and he told me that it was my job to help convince you to join him. Since he knew about my trial, he knew what I should say to shake you.
"I couldn't run too far away, but I could do small things over time. Once I was let near the HoloNet, I sent messages, surprise tips that Sideous didn't know about. He couldn't completely control what I did, so I tried to send warnings myself. None of them seemed to work." Ahsoka gave Anakin a weak smile.
Anakin thought back to the missions he had met her at. "The whole time, you were trying to tell me."
"I couldn't say too much," she admitted. "I was normally being watched."
"But the tips, how did you do that?"
"I sent anonymous tips with someone else I had met on a mission. She got them to the Temple without Sideous realizing."
"Who?" Anakin asked. He didn't realize someone else on Coruscant was talking with Ahsoka.
Ahsoka winced guiltily. "Remember Ventress?"
Anakin closed his eyes. It made sense, but he was getting tired of how often Ventress was worming her way into his problems. For someone who was supposed to be dead, she was very annoying. Then again, Ahsoka was sitting beside him.
"Yeah, I remember."
"She was pretty excited to help fight Tyrannus and Sideous, especially when I told her about Sideous being Palpatine. She carried the tips to the Temple at night, and went back underground during the day."
Anakin nodded slowly, but his face still showed all of his concern. "I still don't understand how you became the Inquisitor, though. How...how did he do that to you?"
He saw the regret on her face, but he told her, "I don't blame you, Ahsoka. I don't blame you, but..." he fell short, but Ahsoka seemed to understand anyway. She shifted forward on the couch so she was closer to Anakin before she started speaking.
"I knew that if I wanted to convince the Sith, I had to use the Dark Side," she started. Anakin could already tell that this was going to be bad, but he didn't say anything. "He trained me every day for months, and he used his own power to give me my disguise. Eventually, I got.." she paused, and her voice got shakier. "I got stronger, and I was able to create the disguise on my own. I used the Sith crystals he gave me to make the lightsaber, and I didn't object to the armor he made me wear. I...I did everything he wanted me to. Soon, I got better at...it. Good enough that he started to trust me a little. Enough to learn how to use Sith Fire."
Ahsoka stopped talking. Anakin was nearly fuming at the idea of Sideous even laying a finger on her, much less teaching her, but forced himself to calm down. It wasn't helping either of them.
"So how did you get out of the Darkness?"
She looked up, hesitant, but Anakin turned to fully face her, and she saw that he wasn't angry with her. She spoke again, still in a weak voice.
"At night, when I wasn't training, I would let go of the Darkness, and the disguise would disappear. Sideous thought it was because I was weak, but I did it on purpose. It wasn't...good, though." She paused abruptly.
"What do you mean?"
Ahsoka stiffened, and Anakin knew she didn't want to tell him, but he rested a hand on hers. It was a small gesture, but Ahsoka was very cold. His warm hand soothed her, and she found the courage to keep going.
"When the Darkness is in you, it feels...good. Strong, but when it leaves, it feels like poison." She looked up and met his eyes. "The first time, I thought there was acid in me instead of blood. I always had a nightmare after, but I still did it, every night I could. At first, the effects faded after an hour or so, but it got worse. A few months ago, it stopped fading. The acid would last all night, and I could barely sleep. Some nights weren't worth it."
"You're still healing," Anakin realized. "The acid, it's still hurting you."
"It's been over a full rotation," she confessed. "It still hasn't faded."
Anakin thought for a moment. "The nightmares, was that from Sideous?"
Ahsoka nodded. So it was both of us, thought Anakin.
He studied her face again. He focused on her tired eyes, her weak state, before asking, "When's the last time you've slept?"
"A few rotations?" She guessed, and Anakin rested his face in his hands.
"Ahsoka.."
"It's been busy for me. I had to travel all the way into the Inner Core, and I couldn't sleep without waking up anyways."
"Ahsoka, no."
She was silent, and Anakin didn't speak either. He didn't care if he was a hypocrite, he wasn't going to let her make the same mistake he had. She had to sleep tonight. He had to be sure she did, but he didn't know how he could.
He hadn't removed his hand from hers, and he focused on her Force signature. If he focused hard enough, he could feel the Darkness, or the acid, as Ahsoka called it. He could see why, though. The Dark residue in her was almost visible. It was still present, but Anakin could tell that it was much better than it had been. It was sapping her strength, but she didn't even know it because now she was used to it. Knowing that made it all that much worse for Anakin.
He could feel her physical pain, too. His cut was hurting her a lot more than she was letting on. She could feel her desire to not worry him, but he was way past that now. There was emotional pain, too, but he didn't think he could take any more hurt to his apprentice. Not after everything she had been through.
Anakin wasn't specialized in healing with the Force, but he knew the basic idea and he remembered what he had done on Mortis. He was a conduit then, but now he had to be the source, too. He used his second arm to pull her closer to him, and her forehead rested on his. He could feel her weakness, but he didn't focus on that. He focused on her strength, the strength that had carried her through the past year, alone, and he fed that.
Ahsoka didn't realize what he was doing at first, but she didn't care. Right now, after spending the past three months fighting Anakin, it was enough to just be close to him without being enemies. She could rest in his soothing presence without fearing that she was being watched. She felt him trying to feel her pain and instead of trying to hide it, she let him because she could feel his strength, something she desperately needed right now. When she was younger, she hadn't realized how much she depended on his Light and the Light of the Jedi. Being away from it for so long, it was breaking her. Now that she was away from Dromund Kaas, she could feel it freely.
Anakin started to give her the Light, and Ahsoka could feel the Force flow in her. Compared to the Darkness, the Light felt like medicine. She hadn't been alive for her healing on Mortis, but she knew what he was doing for her. She focused on the Light and forgot about her wound, about the acid, about her pain. The two of them began to glow with the Force, and they stayed like this for a few seconds, as long as Anakin could hold it.
He didn't want to overload her or hurt her somehow, so he stopped after a while. The glow faded, but they stayed for a moment, to let the Force help Ahsoka.
She felt the change start in her. The pain in her side subsided, and she could feel the wound scabbing over. The biggest change in her, though, was in her Force signature. She could feel the Light fighting the Darkness, and it started to recede into her, more than it had in months. It couldn't completely disappear, not yet, but where much of the Darkness had been now there was Light. The poison had left her. The pain was gone.
She opened her eyes and looked at Anakin, who was smiling, really smiling, for the first time since he had seen Padme. The external change in her had been as immediate as her internal change. Her dark veins were clearing, and retreating closer to her heart. Her skin wasn't as pale, and her face looked fuller. She looked literally brighter, from her eyes to her skin tone, and she already looked stronger than she had mere seconds ago. Her breathing steadied, and her Force signature began to shine with its usual Light.
Ahsoka couldn't believe it was possible, that the pain could go away, but Anakin had done it. She stared at Anakin with the wonder that had long since left her, and Anakin chuckled.
"There you are, Snips," he told her, and she gave him a smile. Not a weak, pained smile, like before, but a true smile.
It wasn't a perfect fix, but it was a start. Healing was possible. Anything was, now.
She was free.