Precipice by shadowsong26

Part 4: Commander

Commander: Chapter 10

Between the two of them, even with Anakin fading in and out, Ahsoka and Rex were able to get him back onto the ship and without hurting him further. Artoo was hovering in the hold, waiting for them; he crooned worriedly and rolled closer when he saw them coming in. Ahsoka managed to flash a smile at him. "It's okay, buddy," she said. "We've got him."

Artoo beeped and rocked back and forth a little, nudging her a little as she passed with what she'd learned was his version of affection. She would have patted him in response, just like she used to, but she had her hands full helping carrying Anakin.

Ahsoka was pretty sure Artoo understood. She'd missed him, too; she hadn't realized quite how much until she saw him again.

"We'll catch up later, okay?" she said.

He beeped and rolled back again, making sure he was well out of their way.

She and Rex maneuvered past him and got Anakin into his closet-sized personal space; there was a door for privacy, a few scattered piles of machine parts on the ground, a pair of cabinets taking over one wall, and a metal bunk on the one opposite, designed to fold up if he needed more floor space for whatever. He did rouse a little when they set him down, but was still have trouble focusing, through the pain and shock and cold.

The fact that he was still cold, actually, was what worried Ahsoka the most. Oh, he was definitely in bad shape, no mistake, but-well, Maridun had been...the damage Anakin had taken there was maybe not quite as awful, long-term-since at least it hadn't been permanent. But, on the other hand, Anakin's injuries back then had been a lot more likely to be immediately fatal. So this wasn't the worst she'd seen. And he'd come out of Maridun just fine. There wasn't much that could take her Master down.

Except it hadn't been as cold, when she and Master Secura had had to leave him behind and go for help, and things like that made a difference. Ahsoka wasn't sure exactly how long Anakin been lying unconscious out there before Rex found him, while the wind and the freezing rock of the mountain leached away his body heat, other than that it was too long.

"Blankets?" she asked Rex quietly, once they had Anakin settled on the bunk as best they could.

"Right hand cabinet," he said, before disappearing back through the door again.

She felt Anakin's eyes tracking her as she carefully stepped over a half-finished-she had no idea what that was supposed to be, actually. Which was very, very reassuring; a little hint that even though everything had changed, maybe some things hadn't.

Just like he used to do back on the Twilight, she thought, with fond memories of almost tripping over him when he'd fallen asleep working on something. And slightly less fond memories of actually tripping a couple times, when he'd gotten distracted or called away suddenly and left his project behind. Remember where that is, for when you're walking around at 04h30 and haven't had any caf yet.

The cabinet opened easily, and, just like she'd figured, there was a probably excessive pile of extra blankets inside. She grabbed as many as she could easily hold, and turned back to find that Anakin had managed to push himself partway up, propped up on one elbow.

"Lie back down," she said softly, piling the extra blankets on top of him, careful to avoid jostling the stump as much as she possibly could. "Stay here for a while, try to get warm, okay?"

"Mm," he said, and sank back. He frowned a little. "...Rex was here a minute ago, right? Or…?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Sorry. I wasn't...wasn't sure how long I was..." He shook his head, shivered again and curled tighter under the blankets.

"It's okay," she said.

And, speaking of; Rex came back, with a canteen and a capsule that Ahsoka figured was probably a heavy-duty painblocker. Good. She was already picking up on Anakin's pain, and if the cold was numbing him at all, it would only get worse as he warmed up. Better to take care of it before that happened.

She stepped aside to let Rex in-there wasn't a lot of space in here, especially not right near the bunk.

"Here," him said, holding the canteen and capsule out for Anakin to take.

He blinked at Rex for a few seconds, processing, then frowned. "Ship's still damaged." He took a breath and started to push himself up again. "I should-"

"Rex and Artoo and I can handle it," Ahsoka said.

Rex nodded, and put a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "We'll manage, sir. Take it, please. Just rest for a bit."

He hesitated for another moment, then sighed and nodded, accepting the pill and then dropping back again. After that, it only took a few minutes for him to start drifting; and not much longer for him to fade out completely.

Only sleeping, though. Which was for the best-unless Rex was hiding something truly miraculous, which he probably would've brought out instead of the painblocker if he did, all they could really do for Anakin here was get him warm and keep him from hurting himself even more until they could get him to an actual doctor. Above and beyond the fact that resting was just a generally good idea when injured, getting Anakin to sleep for a while would go a long way to help with those two goals. And, sure, the drug was probably a big part of how they'd made that happen, but it was still not the same as him actually blacking out again. Or any of the other dozens of nightmare scenarios she'd tried not to think about on her way here.

Although-given the crisp, clean edges to Anakin's wound, and given the oily, slightly nauseating hum that still lingered in the Force, in the air, dancing across her montrals…

"What happened?" she asked Rex. She already knew, but-hey, maybe she was wrong. It wouldn't be the first time she'd misinterpreted something that had seemed so obvious at first.

Probably not, but it was a nice thought, anyway.

"We were ambushed," he said, grimly. "The General-when he can, he backtracks, loops around on his path, to confuse anyone pursuing him. This was supposed to be our first change on the way to Cinna and-we were ambushed. By Darth Specter."

Yeah.

Ahsoka had heard that name, once or twice-the Emperor's new assassin, someone like Ventress only less chatty; more like a thief in the night.

"Where is he now?" she asked. Anakin was still alive and uncaptured, despite how bad he'd been hurt, and Rex had seemingly been able to extract him without any problems, and that hum of darkness was faint and fading, not an active threat. Which probably meant Specter had come off even worse in the duel, but she didn't want to assume.

"Dead," Rex assured her. "Saw the body myself."

She blew out a relieved sigh. Well, that's one less problem to solve. Which was, probably, a really awful way to think about it; because Specter was like Ventress, sort of, and Ventress had turned out okay in the end. ...sort of. She'd stopped being outright evil, anyway. And Ahsoka would never forget the way Ventress had helped her when she'd desperately needed it. If Ventress hadn't gotten her second chance, Ashoka might not be here right now.

But, on the other hand, just how often did that kind of change happen? And what kind of pressure had to be applied to make it happen? Maybe everyone-or, everyone except the Emperor, at least- deserved a second chance, but at some point, you had to act on the situation at hand, and not hold back in hopes of a better ending. And the situation at hand was pretty damn clear: Specter was a Sith Lord, who had spent the last four years murdering his way across the galaxy on the Emperor's orders. And he'd damn near killed her Master right after she'd found him alive again.

So, all things considered, she felt perfectly justified in honing in on that victory, on that silver lining. Even if it wasn't fair. Even if it, maybe, wasn't right.

"What about the ship?" she asked, setting that aside and moving on to the problem they did still have to solve. "I didn't get a good look while we were outside." She wasn't quite as good as Anakin, but he'd taught her pretty damn well, and she'd been on her own for six years. As long as there were parts, or a reasonable substitute, she could get the ship flying again. Eventually.

The problem was, especially with Anakin badly hurt and semi-sedated, "eventually" could be a really, really long time.

"Not as bad as it could be, especially since Specter had kriffing buzz droids to throw at us."

She hissed. Oh, she remembered buzz droids. "Great," she muttered. That meant hours of work ahead of them. If they were lucky, the pests hadn't ripped anything vital out and thrown it away, and it was just patchwork. But still...

"It's all on here." He tossed her a datapad, with Artoo's diagnostic readout called up.

She studied it for a moment, and felt her shoulders unknotting. Oh, good. There must not have been many of the damn things, and Anakin must have landed and cleared them off fast. It would still take a few hours to clean up after them, but-

Silver lining again.

"Okay," she said. "Let's get started."

Rex nodded, and smiled briefly-weary, but genuine. "Sir," he acknowledged.

It had been years since she was a Commander of any kind, but it still sounded warm and right. Like slipping into a pair of old, comfortable boots, worn so often that they'd molded to the shape of her feet. Everything fit. She had Anakin and Rex back again, and it finally felt real.

It felt like she'd come home.

She had missed them all so much.

Ahsoka grinned back, and went looking for the hidden compartment where Anakin would have hidden his spare tools.

Of course, that brief burst of optimism was maybe a little premature. Because Ahsoka had been right; it had taken hours to get the Waterfall even vaguely ready for flight. She and Artoo and Rex worked steadily; other than taking it in turns to check in on Anakin every so often. He was in and out-mostly out-and feverish by the fourth hour.

(Rex had been the one to check on him that time; he'd come back grim and hard-eyed. "Any way we can speed this up?" he'd asked. She'd had some ideas. A handful of them had worked.)

And maybe they should've been monitoring him continuously, but then they'd've had one less pair of hands to work on the repairs, and it would have taken that much longer to get him some actual help. It was the better of two bad choices. But now, six hours on, the ship was finally patched enough that it would hold up for a quick trip, at least.

Of course, there was still a pretty damn big problem with that.

"Where do we take him?" she asked. They'd avoided that question, in part because they'd needed to focus on the task at hand, and take things one step at a time. But also because Anakin was-well, the only word she could think of was notorious. The fact was, there probably weren't a lot of safe ports of call for him these days. Especially when he was hurt.

Although, on second thought, she did know a place they might be able to go-a doctor with a small clinic who was willing to look the other way and not ask questions about patients who were clearly Not Friends of the Empire. But even with that-and the fact that he'd told her he owed her a favor after the mess she'd helped him out of two years before-this would be asking a lot of her contact, and there were a lot of other points of exposure that put them all at risk. To say nothing of any other patients that happened to be there, who would be right in the crossfire if Anakin was seen and recognized.

Or who might sell him out themselves.

"I don't know," Rex admitted. "We've got a safehouse not too far from here. We set it up a couple years ago-it's got a pretty good cache of supplies, at least, and access to a med droid that works okay. Plan was, if it's something too much for us to handle on our own, either here or at the farm, we go there. But…" He sighed.

But that might not be enough. Especially if they hadn't checked on the cache in a while. It might have been raided, the supplies might have gotten damaged some other way…

So probably Ahsoka's contact was the best play, after all. Despite the risks involved. "I might know a guy," she said. "Not sure he has the equipment to make and fit a prosthetic, but…"

"It's better than improvising at the safehouse," Rex said. "At least if your contact's doing the improvising, it'll be someone who knows what the hell they're doing. You sure it'll be safe?"

"Yeah," she said, then corrected herself. "Well, I mean, he's safe, but I can't guarantee that you won't be seen or recognized by someone else there. I wasn't, but..."

Rex sighed again. "Yeah, but that's a risk we're probably gonna have to take, wherever we end up going."

True. It still worried her, though. "Maybe Obi-Wan will have some ideas?" she suggested.

"Maybe," he said. There was a level of doubt in his voice, though, which immediately set off alarm bells.

"...what?"

Rex ran a hand over his head. "General Kenobi's been...out of contact for a while now. Raiding an Imperial ammunition storehouse, so he's probably just gone quiet, but…he hasn't responded to my messages. Or to the one General Skywalker sent right after we all split up, setting the meeting at Cinna."

The timing was not good. "Kriff. Is that normal?" Because it didn't feel right, but she'd been…

It had been years since she'd seen Obi-Wan. And everything had changed, so maybe she was missing something, some kind of context, that made that somehow not a sign that Something Was Very Wrong.

Or less of a sign, at least.

"It's...well, it has happened before," Rex said, uncertainly. "Just usually not this long without prearrangement, and with everything else going on…" He ran a hand over his head again. "I don't know. I don't like it. But the three of us agreed to wait twenty-four hours before anyone tried to do something stupid."

She frowned. So, maybe it was just the worst timing in the history of ever. But Ahsoka didn't really believe in coincidence, and Rex didn't seem to think it was just anything, either. And she trusted Rex's instincts. "Well, I didn't promise anything like that," she pointed out. "I can go see what's going on, after I've called in my favor at the clinic."

He brightened a little at that. "You could," he agreed.

She thought fast. Good thing we didn't have to cannibalize my ship for parts, she thought. Probably the best plan would be for them to take both ships and meet at the clinic so she could talk them through the door. That way, Anakin and Rex wouldn't be stranded when she left to bail Obi-Wan out of whatever trouble he'd stumbled into. Just in case something went wrong, or they were seen, and they had to make a quick exit of their own.

She ran that by Rex, who nodded. "Right," he confirmed. "Sounds like that's the best option we've got. I wanna have Artoo run one more diagnostic before we go, just in case."

"Good call," she agreed. "I'll get the coordinates for you while you do that." And then they could be on their way, and then she would get Obi-Wan, and this whole messed up day would be behind them soon.

It had started so well, too-a successful mission, finding Anakin alive, finding out Obi-Wan was alive, too, finding Rex alive and safe, in all possible senses of the word…

Well. If she couldn't bring them back to this morning, they had taken control of the situation; they had a plan now to make things better from where they were, as much as they possibly could.

Silver lining, again. She'd take what she could get.

Doctor Vils Naar did not consider himself any kind of revolutionary. What he was, first and foremost, was a doctor, and he took that very seriously, indeed. No one who came to his door was ever turned away, and no one who came to his door was ever turned over to their enemies. Whether they were a soldier, a freedom fighter, or something else entirely.

Of course, he didn't precisely advertise this fact. While most of the anti-government types at least grudgingly accepted it (most, but not all; he'd once been held at gunpoint and informed that this policy made him an accomplice to any number of horrific abuses of power), Imperial officials tended to take an exceedingly dim view of such things.

Still, his reputation for competence, professionalism, and an ironclad adherence to the ethics of confidentiality had spread by word of mouth. And every so often, he had an outlaw turn up in need of care.

Or, sometimes, for less worthy reasons.

That had been the case when he'd first met the Togruta ex-Jedi (she hadn't given her name and he hadn't asked; safer for them both) two years ago. Medicine was nearly as valuable on the black market as purely recreational drugs, and a local small-time crime syndicate looking to expand had decided his clinic would be a good source of startup cash for their new enterprise. After all, he frequently harbored fugitives and traitors. It stood to reason he wouldn't risk going to the authorities.

And maybe they were right about that-Vils certainly would have spent quite a while weighing the repercussions either way-but they clearly hadn't been prepared for him to have other assistance available to him.

The ex-Jedi had come to him to get a broken wrist set, and he had just finished doing so when the thieves had arrived. She had calmly shoved Vils under cover and handled the threat, without any further damage to herself, or to his supplies, or the one other patient in the clinic at the time-a local teenager, not a soldier or freedom fighter, and luckily sedated for unrelated reasons.

So, he owed the young lady quite a bit-whatever he might have decided to do about the theft in the long run, if she had not intervened and saved him, his clinic would have had to shut down for a few weeks, at least, while he resupplied.

Of course, he hadn't been sure she would ever come back or try to claim that debt; that she would be near enough and have need enough to do so. And, while he certainly hadn't forgotten, the matter had slipped to the back of his mind. There were other patients, other problems, other crises that required more attention.

So, when a soft, vaguely familiar voice called his name from the shadows, just as he was locking up from the night, he was more than a little surprised.

"Dr. Naar," she repeated. "We need your help."

We? he wondered, with a slight sense of foreboding.

But he recovered quickly. "Of course," he said, and unlocked the door again. After all, with or without involving his debt, no one was turned away.

The ex-Jedi and her companions stepped into the light; she and an adult Human man were, between them, supporting the patient; another Human, semiconscious, with his left leg amputated above the knee.

He stood aside to let them pass, catching a better look at the patient as they did, and-

Oh.

No one who was cognizant enough to watch the news during the War could have failed to recognize this man. Who had once been the greatest hero the galaxy had ever known, but now…

For a brief, frozen moment, Dr. Naar hesitated.

It wasn't that Vils hadn't admired him-didn't still admire him, for the bits and pieces of real information that filtered through the propaganda. And it certainly wasn't that he didn't question that propaganda, at least in the privacy of his own mind.

But the risk involved, to him and to the work he did-if he was caught with this man in his clinic, harboring this fugitive…

"Please," she said, blue eyes full of worry and a hint of desperation meeting his. "Please."

The moment passed, and acid shame filled the space where raw terror had been.

No one gets turned away, he reminded himself. And no one gets turned over. What the hell kind of doctor would you be if you let that change?

He took a deep breath, and nodded. "Put him on the table," he instructed. "I'll see what I can do."

Because Doctor Vils Naar wasn't a stupid man. He knew the Empire lied about a great many things. And, sure, the Republic's propaganda had probably stretched the truth as well, but to someone who knew how to read between the lines, that version was probably closer to reality than the new one. He would bet good money on that fact, at least where a man like Anakin Skywalker was concerned.

Besides, he had an ethical obligation here. He had a rule. No one got turned away.

...all right, so maybe he was a little bit of a revolutionary after all.