Chapter Text
Ahsoka stared at the monster that had killed her master. The monster that had tried to kill Ezra and Kanan. The monster that she could not kill because the monster was staring at her with beautifully yellow eyes that were so horribly familiar.
Their force bond was back.
Barely there, barely anything, as thin as a thread…but it was there.
She could feel his anguish. She could feel his rage. She could feel the desperation and hatred and agony that he was in, constantly.
She could feel his grief.
His anger.
His hate.
His suffering.
And the tiniest shard of hope.
The revenge that had flooded her heart at the sight of the monster was gone now. It was replaced with a sadness that threatened to consume her. A sadness and a rage, because she had been blind.
Palpatine had seized power and she and Rex had connected the dots.
And oh, no wonder a monster was standing in front of her.
He had met with Palpatine so frequently.
She remember a kid she had met a few years ago. They had been tortured and enslaved by a man who pretended like he had their best interests in heart. She had freed the kid and now they lived far in the outer rim.
And oh, oh, oh, she had left her master and Palpatine had sunk his claws into him just like that man had sunk his claws into that kid.
She couldn’t leave him again.
She would not leave him again.
The decision had been made in her mind the minute that monster had stepped into the temple.
He stared at her, emotionless. The force swirled around her and she reached out to his bond, searching for the right words to say.
The bond was growing thicker before her eyes, his emotions threatening to drown her with hate and rage and fear and pain and grief and there, shinning like a beacon, was the hope.
The hope, in his mind, that she would not leave him.
That she would not forsake him like everyone else had.
His rage at Obi-Wan, the betrayal, Padme…oh, everything in his mind was twisted and angry. Hating them for things that she knew they would not have said. Hating them for things that had been so twisted and decayed in his mind that they could not possibly be the truth. Anger and hate and suffering and it was cruel to think that the order had known what they were talking about.
But it had been so many years.
And she knew that the emotions themselves did not turn someone. It was the clinging to the emotions, it was the letting that fear and anger stay in your heart and mind instead of accepting them and letting them go.
She had learned that.
She had finally learned that after the end of the clone wars. Her years on the run, her years before she became Fulcrum, her years of searching and learning and teaching herself, they had paid off.
She could accept her anger and fear and hate and let it go.
But the monster…he was so scared. Scared and angry and abandoned. The pain…those emotions had been in his heart for so long. Coiling there without anyone to help.
He was alone.
So alone.
He was thinking of her leaving the temple. The way she had walked away. The way his heart had cracked and shattered and he had desperately tried to pick up the pieces.
She…she would not leave like she had then.
She could not leave him, not when the tiniest shards of him were left. She did not abandon Rex when he tried to kill her and she would not abandon the monster that had tried to kill her master either.
She opened her mouth to tell him, to say that she would not leave, she would not walk away like she had at the temple, she would not leave, not this time, but…
To remind him about one of the worst days of their lives?
To remind him of when she left?
“I’m not leaving you. Remember?”
She gave him a smile, her saddest smile, and she grasped their bond and pushed a memory into his mind.
“You’re stuck with me, Skyguy.”
The temple collapsed around them.