Someday I will learn to stop making promises! Sorry, this is really late, much due to the fact that school started yesterday, hooray!

Thanks everyone who is reading, once and again. You're all fantastic and I love you (=

Replies to reviews for the last two chapters are down at the bottom! More chapters coming soon, and I promise they get happier! (Whoops, just made another promise…)

Enjoy!

Chapter 13

Graveyards were supposed to be dark and shadowy; spooky places no one wanted to be. Ahsoka had joined the funeral ship from that perspective, but when they'd broken through the smog of lower-level Coruscant and the entire ship had filled with sunshine from the open roof of the courtyard, she figured hiding in plain sight was going to have to be her new tact.

It would be a shame to die at a funeral. A huge one, at that.

Coruscanti 'buried' their dead in the most space-conserving way possible—taking a cruise to the upper atmosphere and releasing the ashes into space. Some people didn't want to let the ashes go, so instead they actually buried the boxes in the soil that was built into the ship—in the gardens of grassy moss on all sides of the open courtyard. She'd rather not become one of them.

She'd sneaked into the captain's log that morning and made sure there were no major security checkpoints to be passed before entering the atmosphere. Unfortunately, there was one just around the corner. Ahsoka ran around the edge of the hull, gripping the railing as she swung around the deck to get a peek at the checkpoint.

There it was, hovering just in front of a large cloud, and she could barely make out several clone troopers stationed on the edge. Ahsoka groaned. Coruscant was on high alert. Maybe because of her, maybe because of a war development, but she could never be too careful.

"Sorry, 'scuse me," she apologized as she ducked behind a small family of Obiid and narrowly avoided a human couple, people who were on board for their loved ones' funerals. With a flick of her head-tails, she made sure no one was watching when she used the Force to open up a panel in the wall, ducking to fit inside.

It was dark in the belly of the ship. A sharp, pungent scent caught her nose and she wrinkled up. Preservative. She was close to the morgue, or the crematory. How was it that she couldn't seem to avoid horrible smells?

Maybe she could just use the Force to trick the guards at the checkpoint—pass as an ordinary girl going to mourn her dead brother—naw, that wouldn't be particularly smart. Whoever was after her, the man in the helmet; he knew Force abilities well. Using it would be a dead giveaway, if by any chance he'd traced her here.

She glanced around quickly, squinting in the dark. There was a large barrel off to the side. Without thinking the better of it, she hastily jumped inside, and almost squealed as she felt her entire lower body submerge in a sticky pool of something. Hmm, no time to find out what it was but it smelled like—paint?

Recalling her Temple studies, she realized that this was the paint for cataloging dead bodies. She smiled grimly, now glad that it hadn't been full enough to cover her whole head. Maybe she was going to die. At any rate, she'd been catalogued.

Morbid thoughts aside, there was a pounding just above her on the hull of the ship. Straining her ears, she thought she could hear people shouting. Ahsoka suppressed a shiver. That was usually bad.

Shifting her weight, she noticed it was strangely difficult to move. She wiggled her elbow, not sure what was going on, and why the paint had gotten so—thick. Her heart sank as she realized it was hardening, and fast. Already she had to strain to even lift her shoes off the bottom. She had to get out of here, preferably without making a trail of bright yellow paint!

Frustrated, she pushed against the sides of the barrel, straining to pick herself up out of the mass of paint. It got stickier by the second, but she was making some headway. A split second later, she felt off-balance and before she could stop it, the barrel tipped over on its side, spilling gloopy yellow paint everywhere and still leaving her stuck in the barrel.

Carefully, she pushed her way out a little farther until she could effectively kick the barrel clear across the room away from her. It fell over the railing and down a dark shaft. "Good riddance," she grumbled to herself, now unsure of what to do. If she took a single step in any direction, the paint now gave her away. She had to get it off, somehow.

Noises continued to echo through the ceiling as the security inspectors searched the upper part of the ship and various passengers continued to protest.

They started getting closer. Now she could sense the guy with the helmet. He really was here—here to kill her.

A stack of body shrouds stood along one wall—maybe she could use them to at least get the paint off her feet. She grabbed three and started scrubbing at her shoes and legs, trying to get the bulk of the goo off so it wouldn't track as badly, when, abruptly, someone started banging on the door to the morgue. They were coming in!

Ahsoka suppressed a gasp and frantically threw the shrouds over the railing after the barrel, but the door was opening. The Force slowed down time and she saw it opening toward her, the being on the other side coming closer and closer to the split-second in which she would be spotted. Diving to the floor behind the remaining shrouds (of which there were quite a few), she pulled one down over her head in what she knew would be a completely futile attempt to hide.

This was it.

Anakin burst in the door with Windu following close behind. They'd followed Ahsoka to her location aboard the graveyard ship, and, seeing the Republic security forces investigating, had gained permission to board.

Something didn't feel right to Anakin about this. It reminded him too much of the last time Ahsoka had been chased down by Republic forces—could her past be repeating itself? Surely Ahsoka wasn't what these security forces were after—right?

He was just in time to see his former Padawan, in a flash of yellow and white and little orange fists, fighting off two guards and whipping around to face another, the leader. A tall man in a helmet, emanating weird combinations of Force energy unlike any Anakin had ever felt before. The helmeted man raised a blaster, and Anakin saw what was coming before it did.

Ahsoka's fist got tangled in the body shroud, which stuck to her because of the yellow stuff she'd apparently taken a bath in, and she was just a split second too late.

He heard the blaster go off just before the young woman hit the ground, and Anakin was seeing red. In a spasm of blue energy the helmeted killer fell to the ground, but not before swinging around to face Anakin with his blaster, as if he'd expected him to be there. He got a glimpse of long, dirty fingernails clutching the trigger that had killed his Padawan. The helmet was familiar. He'd seen this one before, but now he was dead and there were other things to worry about.

The remaining clones in the room were bewildered, having lost their leader and weren't sure how to treat the suddenly appearing Jedi. Anakin felt a wrenching grip on his shoulder from behind but he shook it off and, two seconds later, the other three clones fell dead at his feet as well.

Gasping, Anakin reeled back and reached for the railing, finding himself in Windu's grip instead.

"Anakin!" Mace shouted in his face, shaking him. "You didn't have to kill them! They're clone troopers! Our own men! What did you do it for?"

Anakin's chest heaved, but his breathing didn't make a sound. He didn't know if he had any breath left in him. "This is war!" he wheezed, still angry, and now at Windu. "And—I knew this fellow, Firor! He was up to no good in the first place! Why didn't I see—"

Guiltily, he looked around, trying to remember where—

"Where have you seen him?" Mace asked evenly.

"He works for Palpatine…" Anakin whispered absentmindedly, still looking. Then he spotted her, crushed now in a pile of coffins in the corner of the morgue. Another step told him she was lying inside one.

That was how she fell. Straight into a coffin.

Another step.

Then another, and he was down on his knees. Facing her, running his hands down her face and body and fingers hovering over the wound. She was still so warm. She was covered in paint and still tangled up in the stark white shroud. She'd come to her death 'fully prepared', so to say. Anakin's mouth went totally dry. "Ahsoka?" he croaked out, before his voice dropped too low to even hear. "How could I let this happen…"

Mace's face twitched ever so slightly as he grimly looked on.

Anakin's shaking arms wrapped around her unconsciously, pulling her out of the coffin and cradling her lifeless form to his chest.

This wasn't how it was supposed to end.

She bled out onto his robe, and if felt like his own blood was being spilled.

She was gone.

And it was all his fault.

Replies to Reviewers:

ErinKenobi2893: Yes, I know, very very exciting! Notice I didn't say whether or not Obi-Wan WINS the duel, did I? Hahaha! Yes, Obi-Wan really is trying to be sweet. I think he deserves his own chapter somewhere in the future, pretty soon. We're about to hit the middle of the story, I think, so he'd make a good transition.

.5851: Yes, literally! Lol, so I am really sorry because I know you are an Ahsoka fan…please don't stop reading though because, well, you know Star Wars! Character deaths don't necessarily mean they disappear! Spoilers…

scottusa1: Thank you (= Hope you continue to enjoy the story!

scottusa1: Greivous it is! Yes, Palpatine is a slippery one but he'll get what he deserves in the end, for sure.

ErinKenobi2893: So—rry. But hey, Grievous it is, and I can't tell you how pleased it would make me to watch you stalking the Emperor with a mop (= You would definitely win.