Another Anakin PoV. I still think I suck at these, though I do thank Golden Snowflake for thinking I don't. He's hard for me to write… I'm thinking it'll get easier with practice, and as the story goes on and I get more of a feel for him, but right now he's still tricky. But, I muddle through. Hopefully you guys will too. XD This one's longer than the last Anakin chapter, so there's that, at least. And, to IncomCorporation, though like I said in the last author's note there are some reasons for his 'calmer' and more collected thought process, I tried to keep that in mind and make this one a bit less… structured? Or something along those lines. I think it turned out more how my brain works when I'm brooding, though, and I'll admit I'm much more Ahsoka than Anakin myself… we'll see. Anyways, thanks for reading, please review… and please be gentle, I'm still aware Anakin is not exactly my forte.

Chapter Five

Damn these plains. Damn this grass. Damn this planet, this was almost worse than the deserts of Tatooine. At least there he knew where the hell he was going. There was no shelter on plains like this, either, just klicks and klicks of crunchy yellowed grass. He'd been walking these plains for what, nearly a week now, and hadn't found much different. Nothing to mark direction by, nothing to assure him that he wasn't just going in circles. He probably was going in circles. He didn't have time for this. He grunted in irritation and kicked a rock across the fields. Where's the blinkin' pod? …Maybe it's not even in this area… maybe it landed somewhere else entirely. No, it couldn't have. This is where the trajectory would have put it; there was no way he'd wound up on another part of the planet than her. It had to be here. And he had to find it fast, before… he didn't want to think about that. He'd taken much too long already.

He was brooding. It was easy to do, in a situation like this. There was nothing visually interesting to hold his attention, and no voice chatting on to distract him. He could deal with the monotonous landscape, but damn he wanted that voice back. It was strange how used to her company he'd become, how odd – and unpleasant – it felt now to be alone. She wouldn't approve of his brooding; she'd do everything she could to snap him out of it. And she'd eventually succeed, she always did, somehow. He'd been doing a lot less brooding since she'd wound up his Padawan – she had a way of bringing him back, cheering him up. But she wasn't here. And it was his fault she wasn't here. So he was brooding and wasn't likely to stop anytime soon.

Why did he send her on that pod in the first place? That was stupid. The ship was going down! I had to get her off of it! So you put her on a pod so it could get shot down too? Well, at least she wasn't on the ship when it got blasted. No, she was alone in some metallic hunk of an escape pod when it crashed. He tried to convince himself that it had been a smooth, gentle landing for the pod, but he was pretty certain of the contrary – he'd felt her fear, after all; he'd felt the jolt through the Force as the droids aimed their lasers at the pod while it fell. But… it had made it… there had been no explosion, no horrible flash of fire to light up the darkness of space. The pod had made it onto the planet. So now he just had to find her. And besides, she's not alone… Artoo is with her. Why was that such a small comfort? …Damn these plains.

He tried to reach out, tried to sense his Padawan's presence, tried to feel her in the Force. But he couldn't – not now, not ten minutes ago, not twenty, not the past hour or two hours or yesterday or the day before or any day since he'd landed on this rock. He told himself it was just still being blocked – that had to be it; there was no other explanation. Unless… No, Anakin, we are not going there. I'd know if that happened. Something's blocking my Force sense, that's all.

He didn't know how much longer he walked before he saw it. The pod was klicks away, easily visible thanks to the expanse of pure open area, but he could already see that the thing was not the shape it was supposed to be. "Ahsoka…" he broke into a run towards the pod. "Ahsoka!" He'd yelled her name three times before it hit him that he was probably too far away for her to hear him – or for him to hear any response. He stopped shouting and saved his breath for the run. The closer he got to the pod, the worse it looked. Anakin didn't think he'd ever run so fast; by the time he got near the escape pod his heart was pounding, and he doubled over for a moment, trying to catch his breath. "Ah… Ahsoka…" Deep breath, clear throat, try again. "Ahsoka!" No sound answered back.

Sweet mother of Chaos, the pod was a mess. It was a wreck. A hunk of mangled metal. He was a bit surprised at how simply this fact hit him, how calmly he took it. He covered the remaining distance to the thing in a few steps. Yeah, even I can't fix this thing, he thought vaguely. "Ahsoka?" His mind was calm – his shaking voice betrayed him. "C'mon, Snips, answer me, here." He circled the pod – if one could even still call it a pod – looking for any sort of opening, an entrance or exit, some indication that she'd made a shelter out of this thing. All he found was a small gap, a place where a window had been, a couple feet above his head. "Ahsoka? You in there?" Still no answer.

His mind was already racing with explanations. There was no trace anyone was here – or had been here in a decent while. Well, Skywalker, it's not like you got here particularly fast. She probably got… hungry, or something. The Togruta could have a healthy appetite at times. She'd likely have gone through the rations by now – he had. He judged the distance, hoped he'd guessed the stability right, and hopped up onto a slab of metal to the side of the shattered window; it creaked and swayed, but held. She probably went to look for food. And, he wouldn't want to stay in the wrecked husk of an escape pod if he could help it. She'd try to find another shelter while she was out there. A twist and another jump, and a slightly awkward scramble to get in a position where he could look through the window without getting his clothes – or skin – in the way of the glass shards. A couple of them were already tipped with red… he shook the thought away. Well, I didn't expect either of us to walk away from this without a couple scrapes. There wasn't much room inside of the pod, with the metal all bent and twisted like that; this thing really was a wreck – and Ahsoka wasn't inside, that was instantly obvious. Anakin gave a small grunt of frustration, shifting back onto the slab.

But Ahsoka never stays still for long. Even if she'd found some shelter – even if this was her shelter – she wouldn't just sit there. She's probably out looking for me, the little laserbrain… she never knew when to stay put. He'd have to scold her for it. When he found her.

With little else to do, he began to dig through the wreckage. He'd sent Artoo with her – there were no droid tracks around the pod, but then, this dense, hard dirt didn't really leave much chance for impressions. Maybe the droid would have been able to leave some sort of message as to where they were going, though, something for him to follow. It was a vague hope, but it was a hope just the same, and at this point hope was what he needed, to keep his brain from straying to the darker thoughts he didn't want to let in. He couldn't fit in from the window; he'd have to make his own entrance – but a few quick slashes of his lightsaber made that easy enough. He grunted as he pulled back a heavy piece of battered hull, edges still warm from being sliced, opening the way into the pod.

Anakin didn't know what he was looking for – he guessed he'd know it when he found it. And it didn't take him long to find something. "Oh, crap…" That was a big red stain. Under a sharp, protruding piece of metal which was also stained deeply crimson. "Crap, crap, crap…" he stepped forward to examine it. A moment's hope of 'Maybe it's not her blood' was instantly erased. Who else's could it be; Artoo's? Droids don't bleed. Not good, not good... but… she walked away. She wasn't here, right? It was the only option. She was hurt – I expected that, it's not that big a deal, is it? Positive thoughts, it's not as bad as it seems – but she'd walked away. He took a deep breath and kept looking around.

There wasn't much to see. It had been a small pod to begin with, and the majority of it was crushed in; any consoles or electronics that Artoo might have used to leave any sort of message were definitely not in working order. He sighed slightly, turning in another circle, one last look before climbing out – and then he spotted it, barely visible, all but blending in among the shadows. He dropped to his knees and edged forward under a bent hunk of metal that had once been part of a console, stretching out his arm and reaching until his fingers closed around the familiar handle and pulled it out from beneath the smashed control panel. He stared at it in a strange, indefinable horror.

Sure, Ahsoka could have gotten hungry. Sure, she could have wanted better shelter. Sure, she could have decided to go look for him. But she was a Jedi, a well-trained Padawan. She would not have done any of that, would not have gone anywhere, without her lightsaber. They were in the middle of a war. I taught her never to be caught unarmed. And she'd learned the lesson well.

He didn't know how long he sat there for, staring at the saber, staring at the crimson stains, trying to keep his mind blank – blank was better than the alternative. Maybe he couldn't sense her directly, but he could feel the residual energies here, and that was all he needed to know the truth, which was making 'blank' a very hard thing to manage. She's hurt. She's hurt bad. She's hurt, and unarmed, and I don't know where she is… Panic was rising. I put her here. It was Padme all over again… but, somehow, this was worse, and he hadn't thought that was possible, for anything to feel worse than that. I put my Padawan in this situation. Now panic and rage mingled as a painful pressure built in his chest, but still the voice in his head was horribly calm. Snips is hurt and it's my damn fault. He had her Lightsaber; he was gazing at stains made by her blood… and there was no denying it: that was a lot of blood. Walked away? Hardly.

The Force pulse rattled the entire pod, making metal creak and screech loudly as the wave of power pushed up and away, unbending it, trying to 're-inflate' the pod into its old shape. Another movement, another push, and more screeching rent the air. Turn, push, turn, and push again. The noises were horrid; he didn't care. This was anger, this was pain, this was… he didn't know what it was. But it was a release; the effort it took to summon the Force, to blast the pod walls, it was mindless, it was power, it was release. The more metal he freed, the more spots of crimson he spotted, and the more the pressure in his chest increased. But still he kept going, until the pod was as close to its old shape as it was going to get – and just as empty as it had been before. He'd found nothing. The pressure all seemed to implode until it felt like his heart was being squeezed; the lightsaber fell from his hands and he dropped to his knees with a desperate shout of anguish. "Ahsoka!" Her name echoed eerily off the twisted metal.

He sat still for a long time, like a statue, unmoving, staring blankly at nothing, emotion spent and leaving him feeling strangely empty. When he finally did move, it was slow, deliberate. He picked up Ahsoka's lightsaber and held it almost reverently for a moment before positioning it at his waist opposite his own. Then, still slowly, deliberately, he turned for the opening he'd made and walked out of the pod. His Padawan was not here. Maybe he couldn't sense her, couldn't feel her, couldn't guess where she was – but, she was not here. And this meant that he had to find her, wherever she was, wherever she'd managed to go. Maybe he could save her… maybe he was already too late. But, either way, he had to find her. He'd gotten his Snips into this; he'd get her out if he could. And if he couldn't, well… he'd do what was right and proper for a Jedi Knight. He owed her that much.