14,000. 14,000. 14,000. The number echoed over and over in Ahsoka's mind as she walked with Anakin down the ornate Temple halls. When Master Plo had brought her home over a decade ago, her midi-chlorian count had been around 16,000.

"It's normal." Kix had said. "Exhaustion." he said. Anakin had tried to reassure her by having his count tested too. It was lower than normal, but not enough to be damaging, considering his count surpassed Master Yoda's. Even though her drop was significant, she knew full-fledged Knights and Masters with counts as low as 8,000. After all, size matters not. The drop didn't explain such a sudden and complete loss, or why Anakin couldn't sense her presence. Normally, returning to the Temple dropped her into an oasis of calm after the chaos of the battlefield, an overwhelming sensation of SAFE and HOME and PEACE and LIGHT. But without the Force, Ahsoka's mind was a shaky raft adrift on a raging sea. Every emotion, every fear and sadness and desperate thought she had been trained to release into the Force bounced around in her head with nowhere to go. 14,000. 14,000. 14,000.

She tripped, stumbling over her own feet. She winced, preparing for the hard smack of hands and knees against the tile. But it didn't come. Anakin had acted on instinct, reaching out before she could hit the ground. He kept a hand around her elbow as she regained her footing, shooting a glare at a group of snickering younglings. Ahsoka saw them too. Her headtail stripes darkened, the Togrutan equivalent of a blush. This is only the third time Anakin had seen her like this, head bowed, embarrassment radiating off her so strongly he can feel it without their bond. This time, it made the bruises on her lekku stand out even more, eliciting another round of laughter from the brats.

Anakin sighed, placing an arm around his padawan's shoulders as they continued their walk down the hall.

"Just ignore them." He murmured.

She leaned further into his touch, as if she could disappear within the folds of his robes. The Knight held her tighter, trying to provide as much comfort as he could.

Anakin Skywalker had faced a lot in his twenty-one years. He'd been enslaved, threatened, tortured, shot, stabbed, electrocuted, poisoned, and dismembered. He'd faced the Hutt overlords, the Jedi trials, and years of Obi-Wan's cooking. But he'd never experienced anything like this. He'd been injured, all Jedi were. But those wounds were physical. A little bacta, a little rest, and you'd heal with time. This was entirely mental. Invisible. It could not be seen, only felt.

He remembered what it had felt like when he had been Knighted, and his training bond with Obi-Wan had been severed. The process had been meticulous and remarkably gentle. For all the Jedi lecturing on attachments, they ensured that neither of them would suffer any emotional damage. As the Mind Healers eased him into sleep, his last conscious thought was his former Master's pride and affection rolling over him in waves. When he woke up, the bond was gone, but nothing felt missing. It was peaceful, being alone with his thoughts for the first time in several years.

And then Ahsoka entered his life and everything became loud and chaotic and bubbling with emotion. The Creche-Masters did not teach shielding, and it took a while before he was able to help her control her thoughts. Not even his shields could stop her rushing rivers of excitement and feelings- especially during a battle. He was amazed at her ability to focus and feel so intensely at the same time.

But now she was gone. And something was deeply wrong, a part of his life had been silenced. They were a team, worked best as a team. He grounded her in the present, keeping her mind on the here and now. She was his little fireball, pulling towards a bright future, a better future, where the Jedi weren't falling to gunfire daily. Where people weren't being created simply to be sent to slaughter. When he felt her, he felt her hope.

Ahsoka shuddered again, and he swore he could feel the vibrations in his bones.

/Hang in there, Snips. We'll figure this out./

Dammit, she can't hear you, idiot.

He couldn't imagine losing his own sensitivity. For a Jedi to lose their connection to the Force, there was no experience comparable. There were blind Jedi, deaf Jedi, Padawans and Knights and Masters who couldn't speak, some who had lost a limb or two. But they were still Jedi. Without the Force, there was nothing that separated them from the billions of sentients outside the Temple walls. It wasn't possible to be a Jedi in name only. You had to feel it within you.

Anakin tightened his grip around Ahsoka's shoulders, not needing their bond to know she was in pain, but wishing he could use it to relieve her. She'd experienced too much anguish on the battlefield, it wasn't right that the pain had corrupted their home, too. He felt helpless, watching her wrestle with the emptiness closing in around her. The Creche-Masters never taught their younglings how to cope with their emotions, another flaw in the Order's system. The answer was the Force, always the Force. The Force was eternal, the Force was everlasting, the Force could not be destroyed or silenced.

If anyone was going to prove the Council wrong, it'd be you, Snips.

But maybe there was a way to help her. After all, Anakin had not grown up in-Temple. Like the Jedi, he'd repressed his emotions when he needed to; feelings could get a slave killed. But his mom had always allowed him to feel around her. He trusted her with those feelings, and Ahsoka trusted him. If anything, it might buy them some more time to figure out what was going on. There was no telling what such sudden and complete deprivation could do to a Force-sensitive's psyche.

But that was something he attend to later. Right now, they were seeking out the greatest help one could find in the Temple. They paused in front of the door, large enough to admit any species of Jedi, though its occupant had no need for such space. Ahsoka pulled away from his embrace and rolled her shoulders back. Sure, she was internally crumbling, but determined to project an image of stoic serenity. You've been spending far too much time around Obi-Wan. But before he could point out the humor to her, the doors slid open, and his gaze was drawn downward.

"Master Skywalker, Padawan Tano. Glad to see you, I am."