Tis the time for reunions. I know it's taken a while but it's finally happening, just not in the way you'd expect. Disclaimer-I don't own Star Wars the Clone Wars or any of its characters.
Chapter 10
Ahsoka Tano POV
Ahsoka Tano walked all night to arrive at a battle field.
During her walk, Anakin appeared a few times and tried to convince her to go back. Ahsoka wasn't falling for it.
She saw droids and clones shooting at each other from both sides of the battle field. Her leg and wrist were still bleeding heavily. A few hours before, she had wrapped up her leg would with a piece of dirty fabric from the bottom of her shirt, and she held her wrist tightly to contain the bleeding.
Her feet didn't stop moving. She feared that is she stopped, all she had accomplished would be lost. Ahsoka walked right through all of the battling troops to the front of a Republic Starship that she recognized as the one where high authority would be staying at. There she recognized the two Jedi that must've been leading the mission.
The broken, insane, and tortured girl tried to keep her voice strong, but it came out small and helpless. "Master Unduli..."
Master Luminara Unduli POV
Master Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee turned from talking to each other to see…was that-it was…
Ahsoka Tano.
But…she was dead.
Master Unduli could tell her Padawan was thinking the same thing she was. How was Ahsoka alive?
But the Jedi Master Unduli ignored all of her questions when she saw Ahsoka's condition. She was beaten, bloody, and looked like she hadn't slept in weeks. Her clothes were tattered to shreds and she was thinner than she was before. Luminara could see more of her ribs due to thinness than she'd like. Then it dawned on the Jedi.
Ahsoka had been tortured.
Ahsoka POV
Master Unduli and Barriss stared in shock at Ahsoka. She said the first thing that came out of her mouth.
"I-I think I need some help."
Then she passed out.
Master Luminara Unduli POV
Ahsoka lost consciousness right before Luminara and Barriss's eyes and they both still stared in shock at the girl that was pronounced dead six months before. It took a few seconds for the two of them to snap out of it.
"Someone help us!" Master Unduli yelled, not caring who came to help just that they came quickly.
A few nearby Clones heard her call and came to help. They saw the girl on the ground, and the Jedi told them to take her up to the medical droid in the ship. This was urgent they had to get back to Coruscant. Ahsoka's wounds didn't exactly look minor; she would need proper medical care.
"Come Barriss, we have to go." Master Luminara began briskly walking to the ship, her Padawan following just behind her.
"But Master, Ahsoka is supposed to be dead," Barriss objected, not able to swallow the entire ordeal.
Luminara stopped abruptly and looked back at her Padawan. "I thought so too, but apparently she isn't. Barriss, you saw the condition Ahsoka is in. If we don't get her back to Coruscant soon, she may very well die without proper medical treatment. Now we have to go."
Barriss answered a 'yes Master,' and then followed the lead to the ship. Hastily the two of them prepared for the trip back to Coruscant and departed.
Ahsoka POV
Ahsoka woke up back in the lab.
She started to cry. "No…" she choked out a sob. "No! NO! I thought I escaped!" She curled up on the lab chair. "I was free! I found a way out…" She wasn't being quiet either. Her sobs came out as loud wails. Her tears formed and fell so quickly that her shirt began to get wet.
Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her arms were clutched around her own body as she cried. Only then did she realize her arms and legs weren't strapped down.
She'd be damned if that wasn't the universe telling her to escape.
Ahsoka stood up out of the lab chair and ran out the main door. She rushed through the hallways she'd memorized to the door she'd seen the one time she nearly made it to freedom. But everything seemed different than it normally was. There was just something off about the whole place. Ahsoka had been in this prison for a long time, and she could tell that something was different. But she was just about to get out, so she ignored it for the time being.
There it was. The door she always knew was the exit. Some part of her just sensed that that was the way out. She ran faster than she ever did before to the unguarded door. The door opened as she pushed through and-
No. No! It was the white room. NO! This couldn't be the white room. The white room was back two halls ago. It was impossible! Yet there she was standing in the room she'd gotten so familiar with.
Ahsoka ran over to where the air vent had once been thinking she could still get out. But it wasn't there. The air vent had disappeared. Maybe it never existed.
"No!" Ahsoka screeched out loud. So what if anyone heard her? She wasn't getting out anyway. There was no way out. She was stuck here.
She turned around from where the vent should be and tried to run back through the door to the hallways. But she ran into someone.
Anakin POV
Anakin was just standing in the hangar talking to Obi-Wan. When they turned around to go inspect a broken ship, someone ran into him.
"Oh watch it," he grabbed the shoulders of whoever ran into him and adjusted them a few feet in front of him. It wasn't until he'd done that that he'd seen who it was.
"Ahsoka…"
It was her. It was his Padawan. But it couldn't be. She'd been dead for six months. He saw her body. He was at her funeral. His eyes couldn't lie to him though. She was standing right in front of him.
She didn't look good either. Her eyes looked like she hadn't slept in weeks and her clothes were shreds hanging on by a few strings not to mention also covered in dried blood. She looked like she was barely able to stay upright as she faltered from side to side.
Then he saw her wrist and leg. It hit him like a gust of wind. She'd been tortured.
She pulled his hands off her shoulders and stepped back in an attack position. "Go away! You're not real. I know you're not real!"
Anakin tried to reach out to her but she backed further away. "Please don't hurt me again…" Her hand went to her cheek as she must've reminisced on something that happened during her torture. In the meantime Anakin's heart was breaking at the sight. He pulled his hand back.
She went back into her attack position; her only weapon being... it looked like a piece of a ventilation shaft cover. And it had her blood on it.
"You just want me to talk to the Separatists! And I won't! I won't talk to General Grievous!" She started to cry. Anakin looked over to his former master to see that he was just as shocked.
"Ahsoka," It took every ounce of strength to say just her name, let alone the next sentence. "It's me. It's actually me." He grabbed her hand that held the vent shard and gently released her grip on it. He saw that she had been griping it so hard that it had punctured her skin. "I'm right here."
Her cries came out in choked sobs. "No it's not! The real you thinks that I'm dead. The real you doesn't know I'm alive! But I am! I'm trapped here in this hell of a white room!" She took a gasping breath just to let air into her lungs. "I just want to die!"
She lost the bit of balance she still had and started to fall. Anakin quickly picked her up before she fell to the ground and carried her over to the stretcher he saw making its way over to the most recently landed Starship.
"Over here!" Obi-Wan called to the nurses wheeling the stretcher as he followed Anakin. The nurses changed their course and made their way to Anakin.
When the stretcher was before him, Anakin placed an unconscious Ahsoka down on it carefully.
"What happened?" The Doctor asked, pointing his question towards Master Unduli and Barriss Offee who were on the other side of the stretcher.
The Jedi Master spoke first. "She found us at the battle on Omwat. I'm pretty sure she's been tortured there ever since she died six months ago, but beyond that we know nothing."
The Doctor (her name tag read Reed) began talking to the nurses as she examined Ahsoka's body. "The affects appear to be different types of poison. She needs to be tested for every type of poison recorded. The Separatists get creative sometimes." They started to move the stretcher down the hallway and talk at the same time. The Doctor started to examine Ahsoka's wrist and leg. "There's blood poisoning in her wrist and leg. She may have to lose the hand and lower arm, save it if you can. For her leg just lace it with a metal exterior. Do that for the wrist and hand too if you can."
One of the nurses spoke up. "Doctor, what do you want us to do first, toxin testing or work on the blood poisoning?"
The Doctor paused taking great thought in the answer to the question. Anakin wanted her to hurry up and get Ahsoka well again as soon as possible, but he could see there were a lot of issues to address. His temper wanted to rise up out of him and start yelling for them to do something. Somehow though, he was able to stay quiet for his Padawan's sake.
"Get her to surgery, work on the arm and leg first." The Doctor decided.
"But Doctor Reed what about the poisons?" another nurse started.
"I understand that, but this girl has gone the last six months with poisons running through her veins." She looked down at Ahsoka with sympathy in her eyes. "She's going to stay strong and fight through it while we save her arm and leg, then we'll work on the toxins. She'll just have to hang in there."
"What do you mean hang in there? She's going to be fine right?" Anakin spoke for the first time. There was weakness laced in his voice.
The Doctor sighed as they made their way to the operating room. They stopped outside the door and the nurses wheeled Ahsoka in. The Doctor stayed outside to have a word with General Skywalker and Kenobi.
"Master Skywalker I can't promise you anything. Right now we don't know how this will turn out because we don't know exactly what happened to her. Her wounds looked self-inflicted and from what we hear she thought that you weren't real. Is that right?"
Anakin was frozen after she said that they couldn't promise anything so Obi-Wan answered for him. "Yes that's right."
The Doctor adjusted to speak to both of them. "Well in that case, there's a strong probability that she was driven to the point of insanity, and even if there isn't any brain injury, I can certainly say that your Padawan isn't going to be the same person you once knew. Torture changes a person; I've seen many cases of it. And this is all only if she survives the procedures and poisons. I'm very sorry. We'll do what we can."
She went off into the O.R. leaving Anakin and Obi-Wan staring wide eyed behind her.
Anakin just couldn't believe that Ahsoka was alive and he was going to lose her again.
A/N- I'm so happy to see your guys' reactions to this. Tell me what you think! I'd love to hear it!
As for what happened. If you're having trouble processing it, let me explain. Ahsoka imagined herself back in the lab when she was actually in the medical bay on the ship. When she woke up and hallucinated running through the halls she was actually running through the ship and made her way out to Anakin. It was all a hallucination.
Poor Anakin. He's gone through so much. He doesn't deserve this. -Saraphine
