Chapter Text
You’re not home, Ahsoka reminds herself, ignoring the swoop of emotions in her chest.
She’s surrounded in the Force by the warmth of the soldiers around her, not the least Rex and Anakin. Rex glows with pride, the newly painted orange and white helmet held gently between his gloves as she trails her hands over it. Anakin wears a small smirk, mischievous and self-satisfied. It's a far cry from the unease he's been projecting ever since she landed on the Resolute: stepping around her cautiously, tripping over his words. But by presenting her a company in her own colors, his turbulent emotions settle into pride.
Behind Ahsoka, twinned relief and excitement emanates from the small contingent of clone officers, especially from the ones she knows well. Vaughn is at perfect attention, his energy calm and balanced, while still incredibly pleased to see her. Kes and Prim radiate delight, barely holding their salutes. Jesse stands over her right shoulder, the ARC Trooper an unshakably warm presence that settles in the back of her skull.
She’s missed this, the easy comradery of her siblings, her vode. The last time she saw this group had been well before the Temple bombing. She spent weeks afterward wondering if they thought she was guilty, or if they blamed her for leaving the Order without saying goodbye... Even if they had, any lingering resentment has been replaced with infectious joy at seeing her safe and back amongst them.
You’re not back and you are not home, she chides, pulling herself back to the present. In Anakin’s hands rests a lightsaber box. Her lightsabers. Her throat closes tight, unruly emotions getting the best of her as her hands reach, long fingers resting on the carved wood.
In that moment, the klaxons begin. The wailing alarm sets the ship into action, soldiers in blue and gold breaking towards battle stations. The officers behind her stand still, waiting for further instructions. Master Kenobi sweeps through the door, ordering the assembled verde to their stations. Frustration lances through Ahsoka as the General announces their immanent departure to Coruscant, abandoning the plan to assist Mandalore.
She shouldn't be disappointed. She shouldn’t. Kenobi cares about catching Maul, much more than anyone else present, but his aloof detachment has her bristling. If only her former Grandmaster would express something beyond the quietest whisper of concern... Perhaps that wish makes her a bad Jedi. If she was more like Kenobi, maybe she wouldn’t have cared so deeply when she was cast out of the Order.
“The heart of the Republic is under attack,” the older Jedi rationalizes, the frustrated line between his brows deepening.
“I understand that as usual you’re playing politics,” Ahsoka accuses sharply, arms crossed over her chest.
Anakin's concern is plainly written on his face as he watches the two of them snipe at each other. While Ahsoka was never afraid to question orders, this is the first time she’s openly confronted Obi-Wan. But she doesn't want to be fair right now, and she certainly isn't feeling charitable. The Force shimmers with tension. Once, Master Kenobi's disappointment would have hurt, but that part of her dissipated in the depths of Coruscant. Gone, meditated away with the despair that lingered in her bones.
Ahsoka is no longer a lost child cast out of her home. She’s learned who she is on her own and most importantly, she’s learned there's no running from the war. It will find you, no matter how well you hide. Since her misadventure with the Pykes, she’s been training with the Nite Owls and advising Lady Kryze. While they began as reluctant allies, an easy friendship formed between her and the rebel Mandalorians, born from competency and survival. She’s more than earned the beskar pauldrons glinting on her shoulders. Though Bo-Katan has complex feelings about the clones, no one denies Ahsoka’s place with the Mandalorians. She speaks Mando’a (though in the distinctive pidgin dialect of the Vode’An), has spent her life defending the people of the Republic, and is now rallying to Bo-Katan's summons.
Ahsoka is not a padawan under Kenobi’s direct command. She will not be the one to back down.
It's Anakin who uncharacteristically breaks their standoff, stepping between them. He offers half of the 501st, roughly 4,500 soldiers, plus medics and the ship crew of three venators. It's barely enough to siege a city the size of Sundari and certainly not enough to hold it for more than a couple weeks, but it has to do. They need to draw out Maul and install Bo-Katan as leader before the populace pushes back at the Republic occupation.
Obi-Wan hesitantly agrees, and glides away towards the command bridge. Maul doesn't stay dead, he admits in the moment before the door closes, and Ahsoka knows that is as close to an apology as he is able to offer.
Again, Anakin offers the box with her sabers and her heart skips. She now knows what it is like to live without them, but immense relief lights up the Force as she opens the lid and finally holds them again. It's like taking a deep breath after being underwater, her face cast in a blue glow identical in hue to Anakin's blade.
Ahsoka secures the hilts on her utility belt as Anakin confidently states, "With any luck this will all be over soon."
"Master Kenobi always said there's no such thing as luck," she retorts.
"Good thing I taught you otherwise," he responds, arms crossed.
She rolls her eyes. Anakin is notoriously cocky in moments of doubt, and this defiant assurance of their survival is no different.
With that, Anakin starts towards the door when a feeling of wrongness overcomes her. If this is the defining moment of the Clone Wars, as Obi-Wan had indicated, how can she just watch her Master walk away without another word? It must be the same emotion that struck Anakin as he chased after her through the Jedi Temple, desperate for closure.
"Anakin, wait," she calls out, reaching towards him with the Force.
He turns back, confusion flashing across his face.
Crossing to him in two steps, Ahsoka grabs his wrist. Their dormant training bond sparks, Anakin surprised at the contact, but he follows easily as she uses her grip to pull him forward. He's still taller than her, but time has lessened the distance, the tips of her montrals branching up towards six feet. In a quick and definitive movement, she brings his forehead to hers.
The keldabe is familiar. Across the GAR, but particularly in units like the 501st where the culture of the Vode'An is deeply ingrained, the helmet-to-helmet greeting is seen as frequently as a salute. The Jedi that participate in this practice used to be few and far between, casual touch not common for those who grew to adulthood in the Temple. Yet the war changed much for the Jedi, and padawans and young knights raised on the front absorbed habits from the clones and vice versa. A Commander knocking foreheads with members of their squad before or after a battle isn't an uncommon sight, even when censured by their Master.
Anakin's never chastised her and knows she’s aliit, adopted clan, to several of the older clones. His only request has been to keep anything that would get him censured by the Council private. Anakin doesn't have a leg to stand on anyway, considering the startlingly gentle press of his brow to Rex's jaig eyes before and after every single campaign.
Jedi do not greet each other in this way. Luckily, she's not a Jedi anymore.
Anakin initially flinches at the contact but settles, hand resting on her right pauldron. Their training bond, previously silent and neglected, flares awake, bringing his emotions to the forefront of her mind. Relief seeing her safe on the ship. Pride at everything she has accomplished. Hope for the end of the war.
Ahsoka responds in kind, projecting: Thankfulness for everything he taught her. Determination to take Mandalore. Strength for this final push.
Their emotions and surface thoughts blend. For a lingering moment they hover together in the Force, until the klaxons change, announcing the imminent jump to hyperspace.
Time to go.
Ahsoka draws away.
Bottomless fear, deadly and cold, digs like a barbed hook into her chest and pulls. Ahsoka plummets into the place between their minds, losing track of her waking body. She's suspended amidst grey clouds and the hangar vanishes. There is no up or down, no here and there, only writhing fog that consumes all her senses.
Pain lances through her limbs, her veins hot as plasma. She's screaming, tears flowing down her face in desperate gasps. Her body is bifurcated, a gaping hole of nothingness where her abdomen should be.
Help me, the voice that tears out of her isn't her own. Anakin, help me.
Another wail burns her throat, high pitched like an infant. Clouds swarm into her open mouth as she screams, clawing down her throat, cutting off her air supply. Her breath wheezes, heavy and labored.
Anakin, help me. She cries out again, her voice overlaid with that of the stranger. Anakin!
But Anakin is also ensnared in the violent vision. The shaking and crying are as much his as hers and they can't tell where one person stops and the other begins. Cold dark tendrils wrap around them, melding bones, stretching beneath skin. It fills their stomach, and it burns like hatred, stronger and uglier than any anger they've felt before. It binds them together as one creature: Them.
The fog pulls back to reveal a flight deck, but it's all wrong. The hangar is destroyed and fire leaps from ship to ship as blaster bolts surround them. The floor shakes and they're tumbling down, down, down, fire licking at their skin. Their bones snap against durasteel beams, puncturing their skin. Blood sprays from their mouth. A helmet falls away, and even through empty eyes in a dead body, they know what is painted on it. The Republic Cog glows starkly black through the fog that whisks them away.
They're returned to solid ground, on their knees, wrapped together like twins in the womb. The gray fog is gone. The visions are gone, but they are stuck, trapped between bodies. Ahsoka sees Anakin and she is Anakin seeing herself. Their prosthetic is in front of them, hooked into their skin. Their montrals sit heavy on their head, hair tickling the back of their neck.
Too long, it needs to be cut. That's Anakin's thought, they realize.
Ahsoka frees herself just enough to distinguish her sensations from Anakin's. The sound in the room is wrong, both multi-directional and strangely divided between her left and right sides. She shakes her head, the klaxons coming in one ear and out the other. She doesn't have ears.
Anakin slumps against her, hands clutching the sides of his face. She feels them against her own skin. A headache cracks through their skulls like thunder, Anakin unused to the level of sensory input that comes from her lekku. There's a low groan in their- no, his- throat and a vein threatens to pop from their forehead. His open mouth tastes the air in a way that is second nature to her and foreign to him.
She reaches down to touch her abdomen, stomach miraculously whole even as wet hot pain lingers from the vision's gaping wound. Fear and anger bubble in her chest, burning her esophagus. Nausea splits through them- her- and she careens sideways, puking across the floor. Anakin gags, but there's nothing in his stomach to throw up. It's entirely empty, only cramping pain where food should be.
Ahsoka wonders how long it's been since Anakin ate.
Two days, is the simultaneous response. No time.
The words overlap in her mind, a thought answered before the first is finished.
They reach for separation, each grasping at the sensations unique to their bodies until the only overlap are the tattered vestiges of their shared vision, screams echoing in the bond. A voice, crying out for Anakin....
Padmé, Ahsoka realizes. What's wrong with Padmé?
Anakin's mind recoils, the bond between them going taut as old bone. Pain blooms from the base of her skull, radiating down her spine. She gags again, a reflex to the overwhelming sensation, but has nothing left to throw up.
Dreams, they're just dreams, he responds, frantically grasping at the shreds of his mental shields, but Padmé's face twists and breaks, cloudy tentacles taking root.
His voice is raw when he speaks out loud. "I'm so sorry, Snips. You weren't supposed to see that. I don't- I don't know-" There is an echo in the Force of things going unsaid. My visions. No one can know. Not safe. No one can know.
Ahsoka's eyes water as she breathes through the throbbing pain, vision wobbly. "Anakin,” she sobs, and she must be imagining the second voice laid over hers. “What's going on?"
Her Master's eyes bore into her. His hand lifts towards the center of her forehead, the place he had just leaned into.
The crackle of comms slices through the space between them, the automated voice on his vambrace announcing jump to hyperspace in T-5 minutes.
His hand pauses, the gloved prosthetic barely brushing her skin. There's reverberation as they make contact, a brief flash of them, together, one, but they are not pulled under. Pulling back, he turns his hand over to offer assistance. She shakily takes it and together, they stand.
"I-" Anakin trails off, shaking his head. His face is white with pain. "Afterwards, Ahsoka. You need to find Rex and leave before we jump. We'll talk after."
After. There's never a guarantee of after, and memories of days spent in the MedBay, suspended in bacta, or worse, bleeding out into Separatist soil, filter through their bond. "Promise me," Ahsoka holds his mechanical forearm urgently, unwilling to let go.
Anakin clutches just as tightly and she knows her skin will bruise from the hydraulic grip.
"I promise," Anakin says.
I promise, the bond repeats, the connection between them intense and bright at the back of her mind. He believes himself, so she believes him too.
After. It's the best they can hope for.
"Be safe, Skyguy," she says as they reluctantly let go of one another. Selfish desire curls around her Force sense, an impression of grey smoke clouding her vision momentarily, before she swats it away.
"You too, Snips," Anakin’s eyes flashing with renewed focus and determination. I’ll keep everyone safe, he promises as he jogs away, burying their shared agony and fear.
She waits until the door closes behind him, hand resting on her stomach. If she focuses, she can imagine the shape of her organs, exposed by an illusory, gaping wound.
----------
Their training bond settles into something mimicking normalcy as they travel to opposites sides of the galaxy.
It's not just a training bond, Anakin speculates as they vault through hyperspace, war preparations underway. Obi-Wan is going to flip out.
Ahsoka relays an image of the lines that appear between Master Kenobi's eyes when Anakin has done something egregious. Unless you have a better idea, we'll have to tell him eventually.
A flash of muted yellow armor catches her attention, until she realizes it's from Anakin's eyes. The sensory overlap is dissipating, though whether that’s due to distance or the side-effects of the bond mellowing out, Ahsoka can't be sure.
The Negotiator and the Resolute arrive at Coruscant with a deafening shriek that echoes through her montrals. She isn't able to suppress the flinch. Rex and Bo-Katan are stationed on the other two venators respectively, but even over holo-call the sudden movement is conspicuous.
Rex looks concerned. Bo-Katan, curious. They won't ask. She doesn't offer an explanation.
The door that Ahsoka and Anakin have constructed between their minds is temporary, shoddy work, but neither have the time or inclination to meditate. They only hope it'll stand up to the demands of war.
----------
The orbital bombardment of Sundari begins on their arrival, Commander Rex spearheading the assault from the Tribunal.
Lady Kryze and the Nite Owls are impatient to get moving, stuck in orbit for days, but like everyone else, they must wait. Ahsoka knows it will be hours more, until the skies are clear enough for a ground assault of the city. She’s been at war for three years, can recite in detail the stages of a siege faster than the names of the Jedi on the Council. They're barely through phase one, Kyr'tsad pulling back from external defense of Sundari, trapping themselves in the domed city.
Blockade, set. Anti-aircraft measures, implemented. Targeted surface bombing, in progress.
There's not much for Ahsoka to do except plan, the troops on the Penitence ready in the wings. The bell for third shift chimes, the start of 'night cycle.'
A message comes through from Bo-Katan.
> Go to sleep, jetii. Your dark circles look even worse over holo.
Ahsoka snorts, used to Kryze’s brash form of care, and opens a different message chain to ARC Captain Jesse.
> Space in the officer barracks for one more?
> Vee's on third. Bunk's got your name on it. 1406.
Ahsoka smiles, her feet already trekking down a memorized path to the officer quarters. She catches Captain Vaughn on the way out. He's repainted his bucket in orange and white, as did most of the 332nd, but has added thin black lines outlining the white markings of the visor. He offers a crisp salute, which she returns, before drawing them together with a fond tap of forehead to helmet.
“Captain,” she breathes out, “it’s so good to see you.”
“Likewise, Commander Tano,” Vaughn’s helmet tilts, “Several of your LTs are bunked down, so don’t be surprised if you’re accosted when you get inside.”
She chuckles. “They’re not my LT’s, Vee, but I appreciate the warning. We’ll talk later?”
The Captain answers affirmatively and strides away to take his shift on the command bridge. He’s right, as usual. Immediately upon opening the door to 1406, Ahsoka is flooded by off duty vode. They share ebullient greetings, freed from the formality of their first meeting above Yerbana. Soon enough, Ahsoka is settled in an already warm cot. There are enough ships and more than enough beds that hot bunking isn't necessary, but she wants to. She needs the sound of the others around her, their signatures in the Force evened out by sleep or the imitation of it. The alternative is staring at the lonely grey ceiling of the ship's Jedi quarters, alone with her thoughts, the vague memory of clouds crowding her lungs...
No good would come of that. She closes her eyes and meditates on the present.
One of the young sergeants she doesn’t know is snoring lightly in the next bunk over, asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Lieutenant Kes has a dim light on as he flips through a flimsi book. There’s the barest waft of tabac coming from his blacks, the smoky scent distinct against the regulation soap and laundry detergent that characterize the other troopers. Lieutenant Lion and Sergeant Nelona quietly converse at the far end of the room, words inaudible even to her hearing. Clones from third shift relinquish their bunks to the retiring first shift, slipping in and out of armor as resting arrangements are negotiated. A comm crackles sharply before it's hastily cut off, followed by whispered apologies from the offending vod.
Ahsoka’s bones know the routine of wake, work, and rest; the varied meaning of chimes, alarms, patterns of light, the sound of armor being donned and doffed. Ever since her arrest she's floundered, surprised by how reliant she'd become on the rigid structures of the GAR. Only with the Nite Owls did she manage to regain some of that consistency, but being back here with the vode?
You’re home, her desires whisper, enticing her to curl her Force signature around those in the room like a contented tooka. Why did you leave? It challenges. She buries the greedy emotion and is carried into sleep by the sound of the clones around her.
She dreams of Padmé.
The senator’s face is warped by hazy clouds, but she is more vivid, more detailed than in the deluge of Ahsoka’s earlier vision. Her eyes are open wild with pain, skin a flushed, fevered red as she writhes among the starched-white sheets. Padmé cries out for Anakin, terrified beyond recognition. For a moment Ahsoka is her, sobs ripping from her throat as a shrill cry fills her ears.
That isn't Padmé. It's too piercing, too instinctual to be made by an adult human. It sounds more like... Ahsoka reaches for her abdomen and finds the skin of her stomach peeled away in layers. Her hands grow wet with blood, filling the crevasses under her claw-like nails.
A baby. It's a baby.
Ahsoka searches frantically for any sign of the child, but she's oscillating between seeing Padmé and being Padmé and she can't move.
"Al’verde?"
The dream changes and the screaming dies, carried away on the wind. Ahsoka is surrounded by white, the same blank color as the sheets Padmé is laid out on. There is no sound. Why is there no sound? She is prone on the colorless, shapeless ground, peering blankly at herself in a clone’s helmet, spoked wheel of the Republic painted across the dome. It's not her own reflection, but the half-crushed face of a million brothers. It could be anyone, she rationalizes, panic rising. It is not just anyone, the vision whispers back.
The helmet is empty. She touches it, dragging her bloody hand, the wrong shape and size, across white, black, and blue. The sobbing returns, muffled, distant. She is herself. She is Padmé. She is weeping.
"Tano, please wake up." The voice mutters in quiet Mando’a, low but insistent. A calloused thumb sweeps gentle lines across her forehead. "Come on, al’verd'ika, you're scaring the evaar'e."
Ahsoka comes to gasping for air, silk sheets sliding across her bare chest. There’s someone sleeping beside her and she startles away from the sensation, nearly rolling off the narrow bunk as she underestimates the distance from herself to the edge of the bed.
"Vod!" A voice warns, firm hands preventing her from falling off the bunk.
Ahsoka snaps into her own body, blinking her eyes open. She's under GAR-standard rough polyester sheets and fully clothed. Turning her head towards the edge of the bunk, she sees Jesse kneeling beside her, helmet off but otherwise armored, holding her steady. Kes and Brake lean over him, their concern filling the Force.
A wave of aguish sweeps through her, and Anakin's head falls into his hands. I'm sorry, I can't... I can't control it, he cries through their bond before retreating. He's not gone, but he's hidden himself away behind his weak shields, impossibly small.
Ahsoka is raw, hollowed out. Tears stream down her face as she shakily reaches to brush the Republic wheel on Jesse's forehead. He's real. Not an empty helmet. Not a caved in skull. Real, flesh and bone. Her hands are clean, not dripping blood.
Her thumb traces the tattoo, his skin warm. "Alor’ad," she hiccups, centering herself in the here and now. It comes out weak. She's supposed to be better than this, stronger than this.
"Hey, hey, breathe," Jesse prompts. He supports her weight as she sits up.
"I'm sorry… ," she apologizes, cognizant of the dozens of eyes in the room all directed at her. "I shouldn't have stayed here and kept you awake."
Kes gives an unbothered smile. "Not the first time and not the last time, sir," he shrugs. "We've all been there."
"The Force osik is new," One of the younger officers mutters to themselves. Jesse glares over Ahsoka's shoulder before checking his chrono.
"Beauty rest is over anyway, verde. Time to get a move on," he directs, as calmly as before, but they all can discern a suggestion from an order. This is the latter.
There are a few groans, one person complaining that they still have another 23 minutes until their alarm. They're promptly smacked in the head with a piece of armor.
Ahsoka sits silently amidst the shuffle, curled into herself and willing away the unshed tears hot behind her eyes. Jesse continues kneeling in front of her, a human barrier protecting her from the others in the room. Soon enough, they are the only two left behind.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, “You’re supposed to be on duty.”
“You are my duty,” Jesse responds in Mando’a. "Do you need me to call anyone else? Rex? Bo-Katan?” His hands press down on her knees, stabilizing their shaking. Ahsoka is reminded of being fourteen, when her toes barely brushed the durasteel floor. Flashes of memory: Anakin measuring her feet for new boots. Rex wrapping a broken ankle. Obi-Wan guiding her to name five things she can see, four things she can hear, three…
Ahsoka’s feet are planted on the ground. She's not a child.
"No," she shakes her head. "We should get back to the bridge. We need-"
Her voice cuts off as she meets Jesse’s gaze and her vision is overtaken by his reflection in a crushed helmet. She shallowly inhales, bile rising in her stomach. She forces it down.
Jesse looks concerned. "Are you sure, Al’verde?"
"I'm not a Commander anymore. You know that."
"Kriff that, Tano. You always have been and always will be our Commander," he says vehemently. He stands and pulls her up with him. "Offer stands. You have time to run to the MedBay if you need anything."
Ahsoka considers this while she snaps her pauldrons and chest plate to her armorweave underlayer. "I suppose it can't hurt. Is Kix with us or did he go with Anakin?" She closes the snaps of her boots, "It would be nice to see him."
Jesse is quiet for several long moments. Like all senior clones, he has learned how to shield his emotions, but his grief is palpable.
"Oh, Jesse," her voice breaks, "When?"
"Not long after your trial. You'll have to ask Rex for details, but Kix…that di'kut went searching for answers about what happened to Tup and Fives and never returned." Jesse's jaw is tight, tension clear in his face.
What happened to Tup and Fives? Ahsoka wonders, but doesn't ask, running a tally in her head of the clones she started the war with. It doesn't seem right. There's too few. Her brow furrows.
"Who-"
Jesse anticipates the rest of her question. "Me and Rex in the 332nd. Appo and Ridge with the 501st."
"That's it?" She gasps, grief threatening to overwhelm her. “Coric? Hawk? Tup? Fives?”
He shakes his head after each name, and Ahsoka barely controls her breaking heart. She should be used to this, the never-ending loss. "We found Echo,” Jesse says, “but he's... he's not with the regs anymore."
"I'm so sorry, Jesse. Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la." Ahsoka rests her hand on his shoulder and Jesse's gloved hand cover hers. They allow the hurt to linger for just a moment before Ahsoka collects their grief and releases it to the Force.
----------
Sundari is finally locked down, the dome sealed tight against their attacks.
All Mandalorian ships around the capitol are grounded, and Republic fighters swarm the skies. Ahsoka sighs in relief as the ground assault is given the green light by Bo-Katan on her cruiser. Finally, she can do something beyond sit and wait.
She is finishing a landing brief for the LAAT/i pilots when she feels Anakin knock against her shields. Wait, she instructs, stepping away and calling him from her personal comm.
Anakin appears in the blue glow of the holo and Ahsoka's shoulders relax imperceptibly. Ever since their second vision, she's been holding the bond tightly, afraid to release her grip on the haphazard door keeping their minds separated. She loosens her hold, letting her relief project to him.
Anakin's hair is unkempt, curling wildly around his forehead and ears. He's in his tunics with no armor or outer robes present. It’s normal enough for the Jedi Temple, but it makes him look disheveled. This aura is only exacerbated by the dark circles under his eyes, more pronounced than they had been in person. Exhaustion, both physical and spiritual floats across the bond.
In his defense, it’s been a very, very long week.
Despite the honesty of his emotions, the smile on his face is fake. His eyes are carefully blank.
"After. As promised," he boasts.
Ahsoka sighs as she walks discreetly to a more private part of the ship, away from the flurry of pre-assault prep, "Maybe for you, but we've barely started. I hate sieges."
Anakin's expression softens, becoming something more genuine. "I knew I trained you well."
"I mean, why do something strategically when we could just blast our way in and hope for the best?" She teases. "Any chance you can join us with the rest of the 501st now?"
His face falls, not bothering to hide the rush of negative emotions from the bond. Shame, pride, regret, strung through with a current of fear that makes Ahsoka's pulse spike.
"I wish I could, but now that we're back, the Council is being hard line about 'resource allocation,'" he says, making air quotes around the last two words. "We suffered heavy losses during the Battle of Coruscant and there is no guarantee the Seps won't come right back."
Ahsoka can read between the lines. Anakin is as much a resource to the Council as the clones are. They are keeping him close by.
"It's fine, Master," she sighs through the disappointment, "It's just good to see-"
"Dooku is dead," Anakin interrupts her. "I killed him." His tone is strained, no sense of accomplishment or bragging that she would have expected with that statement.
Ahsoka blinks twice, taking in the confession while responding to his emotional output with her own: joy, concern, shock, relief.
"Are you alright?" she finally asks.
"I- I don't know, Snips," he admits. "I didn't have to kill him. He was defeated, unarmed, and I should have…" He breaks off with a low-pitched sound of frustration. "I don't know! I don't know if I did the right thing, but he’s dead and now we just need Grievous."
He paces, not meeting her gaze. "We just need to kill Grievous," he repeats, "The war is so close to being over... but I can't shake the feeling of something terrible coming."
His gaze stays glued to the ground. "'Soka, I've been having visions."
She is herself. She is Padmé. She is weeping. The grey clouds in the back of her mind circle.
Anakin continues. "They only happen when I am asleep, but they don't seem up for interpretation in the way Master Kenobi’s do. They feel-"
"Inevitable." Ahsoka finishes for him, picturing Jesse's helmet in her hands. Empty, so empty.
His eyes lift to meet hers, searching her face. "They're so real, Snips. I have been having vague premonitions for weeks, but now that I know the reason…" He does not continue. She thinks maybe he can't.
An infant’s cry cuts through the fog. Tiny hands, clenched against the cold.
Ahsoka is not blind. Anakin and Padmé are careful, but secrets are hard to keep for three years, especially in close quarters. She assumes most people in the 501st, the 212th, and if she's feeling uncharitable the entire Third Systems Army, know that they are involved in some way. Ahsoka herself has spent too many nights bunking in the barracks when the Senator was on board to have any illusions about their relationship. Even Rex used to gripe about "running interference" for the young couple before he went all tight-lipped about it.
Still, she doesn't think Anakin has ever spoken about his relationship. Not with Obi-Wan. Certainly not with Ahsoka. Hell, not even Kix, who took many a vod's secrets to his grave. There on the steps of the Jedi Temple, hurting and broken, Ahsoka believed Anakin might have told her. He didn't. Ahsoka is not sure why he can't form the words himself, what mental block stops the truth from leaving his lips.
If he cannot start, she will have to be brave for him.
"Anakin, tell me about Padmé."
It is a gentle request, a small plea, for him to cross the bridge to her. She sends waves of love across their mental connection, calm and understanding. It is perhaps more than he deserves after years of hiding the truth, but she doesn't care. She just wants him to tell her.
This time, Anakin does not recoil. He meets her eyes; she's never seen him look so young. "I don't know where to start."
"From the beginning," Ahsoka directs, finding a seat on the hard floor of the venator. She imagined this conversation going a hundred different ways… perhaps wearily after a hard campaign, one of the nights when she, Anakin, and Obi-Wan piled into one bedroom just grateful to be alive. Perhaps secretly in the dead of night, whispered across a fire on a hostile moon. Perhaps confrontationally, slammed down onto a table in the officer mess beside a tray of rations. Perhaps in retrospect, in some distant future where they would laugh about how things seemed so fraught during the war.
In no version of this conversation did she imagine being over holo call, Anakin thousands of parsecs away. She's unable to reach out, unable to do anything but watch quietly as her brother falls apart.
Ahsoka listens as Anakin tells her stories: Of a world with two suns, unbearable except for the nights he and his mom would sneak under the blankets and sing until dawn. Of the first time he saw Padmé and mistook her for an angel, the first person he had ever seen untouched by sand and strife. Of the worlds he visited with Obi-Wan, amid lessons of peace and forgiveness. Of reuniting with Padmé and their whirlwind love story, sure the Force would catch them wherever they landed. Of his previous dreams, his mother's death, and his breaking point. Of his marriage of stolen moments, too fragile for the world around them. Of the things he holds too dear to release into the Force. Of Padmé's pregnancy, the Force glowing brightly around her.
Finally, he tells her of Padmé's death, as clear to him as his mother's.
Ahsoka feels scraped from the inside out, accepting the depth and truth of Anakin's emotions as if they were her own. If she’s not careful, she'll fall back into his body, collapsing their minds into one. Even now she can sense the heaviness of his robes, the prickle of the chilly Temple air, the quiet hum of Coruscant outside his windows.
"I can't leave the Jedi now, Snips, we're too close to the end," His voice is hoarse, barely above a murmur as he shares his darkest secrets with his former Padawan, "But, Force, I'm so afraid of what will happen if I stay."
"I’ve seen it all," she confesses. "I believe you.”
He nods, “I saw your vision of Jesse as well.”
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know, but we have to find a way to save them. I wasn't fast enough to save my mother and I refuse to have this end the same way."
She closes her eyes and reaches deliberately across their bond. Anakin meets her there. She clutches onto his Force signature like she is fourteen again, covered in debris and reciting a never-ending list of names. His energy wraps around her in a way she doesn't remember him doing since Mortis, plagued by an undefinable sense of loss. Their pulse evens out, matching rhythm across parsecs. They breathe in and out as one being, the Force a melody shared between them.
"We'll find something, Master," Ahsoka promises, opening her eyes, untangling herself from Anakin’s senses. "Have you told anyone else about Padmé's pregnancy?"
The incredulity in his face almost makes her snort.
"Of course you haven't," she sighs, longsuffering.
"The Council already hates me as it is,” Anakin asserts, “I can't risk them removing me from duty and assigning the 501st to someone else."
Krell, they think simultaneously.
This, Ashoka understands. Even months removed from the event, the specter of the Council looming above her and dooming her to a military tribunal haunts her sleep. "At least-"
"If you say, 'tell Obi-Wan' I am hanging up." Anakin's dismissal is sharp, more bitter than she expects.
"I don't know how long I will be on Mandalore,” she argues, “you need someone there with you and Padmé. Maybe Rex or Appo-"
"No. The Commanders have enough to manage just keeping these undertrained troopers alive. They shouldn’t be worrying about me as well." He says, agitated. "I can handle this until you come home."
"Anakin," she starts before she is cut off by an urgent comm. She swipes it open to see a series of missed messages. The last one simply reads: Drop in 15. Be ready.
"I'm sorry, I need to go." She types a response to Rex and Bo-Katan. > Copy.
Ahsoka puts on a brave face and leans into the Force briefly before pulling away. "Please consider talking to him. We're leaving for ground ops, and I may not be able to contact you."
Anakin reluctantly retreats behind his shields. "I’ll think about it. Be careful, Snips."
"Don't worry about me, Skyguy. I've been trained by the best," She jokes, projecting false confidence.
"No," Anakin shakes his head. "That’s all you."