It was so dark.
The barren rooms of Anakin's Jedi quarters were empty. The bed was made, his Padawan braid tucked neatly in a draw next to a photo he coveted of Padme. His lightsabers were tight to his belt, and his clothes were haphazardly strewn in half open drawers Obi-Wan had scolded him about often. There was even bits and pieces leftover from the engineering tinkering he and Snips had been fiddling with last time they had sat in this very room.
But it was still so empty. So cold. Anakin's robes were suffocating, latching and sticking onto his skin like burnt leather. It was hard to breath and just so, so cold.
Obi-Wan stood in the entry, arms crossed and frowning disapprovingly. He was always doing that. The sadness in his eyes was just a front. He didn't care. Not like Anakin. Never like Anakin.
"Anakin," he began, "you must pull yourself together. Ahsoka has made her decision and you must live with tha-"
He stood up abruptly, eyes flashing as he swept an arm out. The scatterings of metal from Ahsoka's mechanic kit went flying into the wall. "No!" his voice was hoarse. Obi-Wan's eyes downturned. This wasn't going to be easy. It never was.
His voice was softer when he took the couple steps necessary to be in arms reach of his old apprentice. "You must let go. There is nothing you can do to get her back."
When Anakin looked up at him, Obi-Wan felt a tremor tear into his heart. "But Master," his voice was wobbly, tears in his eyes and the desperation- "I brought her back last time. She- she came back!"
Obi-Wan looked deep into his eyes. All he could see was the brash boy crying out all the why's and injustices of the world. Help me, please, I'm scared.
Don't leave me.
"You can't bring people back, Anakin."
The boy just shook his head irrefutably from side to side, squeezing his eyes shut. "But- on Morfis- she came back. I stopped it, she was okay, everything was fine!"
Obi-Wan stilled. He exhaled, trying to crumble all of that horrible day into a pit in his chest and get it all out, up and up and gone, through his nose and into the force all around them. He had done much the same for many days afterwards, trying to let go and let go of the pallor in Ahsoka's cheeks, how her head craned unnaturally. Anakin's tearful scream.
He should have known he was still holding on. He was always holding on.
"She died," Anakin croaked. His eyes were so blue. Unfathomable and mirroring in the souls of screaming and the wails he trapped inside himself. "She died, and you died and now you're both here, and you're okay and we're okay."
The Jedi Master swallowed. His eyebrows pinched painfully. "Ahsoka is gone, Anakin."
It was as if he'd wrenched a hammer deep in his chest cavity. Obi-Wan could see the moment he'd processed the words, frantically taking steps back, back, back until his heels hit the wall and he was sinking down, down, down, head in his hands and a repeating mantra. "No, no, no, no."
Obi-Wan stayed where he was. Grief bit at his sternum. When he gulped, it was painful to get past the lump residing there. There was Anakin, knees clutched to his chest with incoherent sobs, but all Obi-Wan could see was the light ominously piercing Ahsoka's face.
She'd looked at him, in that chamber where she was all alone, surrounded by those deciding her fate. She'd looked scared. In that moment she had looked at him and Obi-Wan had been unable to hold her gaze, blue eyes so much like her Master's. The order had been given and her breathy gasp of betrayal had risen up deep in his chest. She had looked at him, so small so far below him, and she had been afraid.
Of him.
"I said I'd protect her," Anakin gasped out. "She needed me and I failed her."
The rapid inhales chafing down his throat were chilling. He was struggling too much, there was no breath in his lungs yet still he gasped, hyperventilating rapidly at the weight of his perceived failure. "She is alive, Anakin. Do not overstep your responsibilities as her master. You did all you could."
The steel tempered in his voice pulled Anakin out of his breathless gaping, as he'd hoped. There was anger there. There was hatred. Obi-Wan kept his face still. "She was betrayed by everything she cares about! She needed- she deserved more! How can I call myself her master if I can't even give her that?"
Obi-Wan stared resolutely into his eyes. His lungs throbbed with all they needed to expel. The words and the apologies and the I failed too. Instead, he looked on to his old Padawan cooly. "You are not her master any longer."
This seemed to finally do something. Anakin stared up at him aghast, horror and sorrow blown wide in his pupils. He looked down, and unclenched his fist.
Ahsoka's Padawan braid lay there, twisted and broken with the force of his grip.
Obi-Wan left the room to the sound of Anakin's sobbing, his form hunched and huddled over the precious item he had destroyed, cradling the leftovers gingerly. His bones felt cold.
It is the way of the Jedi, he tried to tell himself. The screams and cries of his family echoed in the back of his mind. Yet still… He had never quite felt so lonely before.