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English
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Part 8 of For The Republic
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Published:
2017-12-25
Completed:
2017-12-25
Words:
1,217
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2/2
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Hope

Summary:

Anakin’s already out of the Hall of Healing when Ahsoka and their men return. He sneaks in, not yet ready to face Ahsoka or his men just yet, but desperate to confirm that she's alive and, more importantly, okay. She looks more tired than he’s ever seen her, and Anakin is ready to go after the Council right now. That’s... good, actually. Familiar, even, and Anakin thinks he can do it without… revealing anything. He can be mad at the Council and nothing will be wrong to them except his failure as a Jedi.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: The Council

Notes:

I really hate the Jedi Council.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Anakin’s already out of the Hall of Healing when Ahsoka and their men return. He sneaks in, not yet ready to face Ahsoka or his men just yet, but desperate to confirm that she's alive and, more importantly, okay. She looks more tired than he’s ever seen her, and Anakin is ready to go after the Council right now. That’s... good, actually. Familiar, even, and Anakin thinks he can do it without… revealing anything. He can be mad at the Council and nothing will be wrong to them except his failure as a Jedi.

So, here he is, asking for an explanation. It’s well within his rights, as Ahsoka’s Master, to chew out the Council about this, at least. (All the things that he will never tell them. Yes, he strays too close to the Dark, and he fails at every tenant of the Unwritten and the Written Jedi Code, but half of them are in direct opposition to either reality or each other. Anakin knows that he’s attached, that he couldn’t let go no matter how much he loved them, and he knows that that's wrong… but the selfless love he’s seen people like, say, Obi-Wan show… that should not be made as evil as his own... There are still so many pieces of the Code that he disagreed with, but he really doesn’t have time to rewrite the Unwritten Jedi Code. He wishes so much that he did.)

“I would like a very good explanation for why you sent Ahsoka on the kind of missions that I would never let her come along with-”

Ki-Adi Mundi interrupts him.

“We pulled her out of Umbara.”

Anakin laughed, humorlessly.

“Yeah, and how well did that go? My men lost brothers because you couldn’t even sense that Krell had Fallen, and then you send Ahsoka back to deal with that, and then to Kiros, and then you dragged Obi-Wan away. I survived two months with Dooku, you could have waited on me and given her, the sixteen-year-old Padawan some help there,” Anakin smiled, the grin not reaching his eyes, “Trust me, I’d trade Ahsoka’s safety for my life every day of the week, regardless of the Jedi Code.”

Now, more than ever.

“Skywalker-”

Now it’s Anakin’s turn to interrupt.

“At least tell me that that was the last thing you sent her on.”

Silence.

“Where. Did. You. Send. Her?”

“A peace meeting, on Mandalore. It was perfectly safe…”

Huh. Padme had seen Ahsoka recently. That was good.

“But?”

“She got involved with a boy named Lux Bonteri, and he was involved with Death Watch.”

Obi-Wan. Great, Obi-Wan could give him information, now. He’s coming here as Master, rather than a Jedi, and Masters are allowed to know the details of their Padawan’s missions. They aren’t allowed them immediately, because needing them immediately is attachment. (Not true. Inaccurate information about what Ahsoka’s dealing with has been… very dangerous, in the past. If he had his way, Ahsoka would be perpetually far from the war effort. It’s completely ridiculous that the Jedi willingly send 12 year olds to fight in this war, Jedi and Clone alike. (And isn't it funny that the oldest soldiers are the same age as the youngest Padawans?))

“Oh, great. She’s alright now, though. You’ll send her right back out with me in two weeks, and she’ll be perfectly fine.”

“Knight Skywalker!”

Anakin just let out another humorless laugh.

“Forget it, I’m gonna go talk to her myself.”

Notes:

Okay, so you may have notice that Anakin seems much healthier right now...

he's really not. He's lying to himself, and he LITERALLY tells the Council that he would prefer torture and/or DEATH to them leaving Ahsoka alone to save her people from slavery.

Yes, I went there.

Anakin has 1,000 pounds of issues, and 100 pounds of denial, but at least he admits it.

Chapter 2: Hope

Notes:

Anakin really needs more time as the comforted, rather than the comfortING...

Oh well.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Anakin reaches out to find Ahsoka and, thankfully, finds her safe, sitting on the bed in her room and feeling vaguely… upset. Oh great. What had the Council left out this time? He gets to the room as fast as possible, entirely sick of Jedi bullshit and hoping that he’s at least pushed his new memories far enough away not to freeze up at the sight of her. He can imagine what she might have felt after he was captured, so he has no more room to be the weak one here than he did with Padme or less.

 

Padding silently through the living room, Anakin knocks on her door.

 

“Ahsoka? It’s me.”

 

Silence, and he feels her reaching across the bond. He sends her strength and love and everything she needs right now. It’s probably unhealthy, all this pretending, but the last thing Ahsoka needs right now is to deal with his issues.

 

He opens the door, goes to the bed, and pulls Ahsoka into a hug. She starts to cry.

 

“You were gone. I thought I’d never see you again.”

 

She feels so heartbroken at the thought that Anakin almost considers calling off his plan…

 

But then the same face buried in his chest flashes before her eyes, older but still recognizable, and her love for him keeps her there, leading her to her death.

 

In an instant, it strengthens his hidden resolve once more.

 

A death is far easier to recover from than a betrayal.

 

Outside, of course, he portrays none of this, pouring strength to his Padawan through the Force and gently stroking her middle Lek as she cried.

 

“I’m here, Ahsoka. I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” Not this time.

 

She only cries harder. Anakin holds the girl he considers a daughter even closer. Force help him, but sometimes he almost forgets that Ahsoka is only 16.

 

“Please don’t leave me alone again," she whispers, but it feels as though she yells it. It’s an impossible thing to promise. He has to die. He has to protect them. He has to…

 

He just wants the people he loves to be safe and happy.

 

And he’s not safe.

 

“I promise.”

 

(Suddenly, he’s hesitant to go through with his plan. Yes, he’s never going to be what Obi-Wan, Padme, and Ahsoka deserve. Yes, he’s definitely got to kill the Sith Lord. Yes, he can’t let go, but…

 

He had told Obi-Wan almost everything, and Obi-Wan had stayed. He doesn’t reveal this, but a good third of his shields are to avoid passing by others’ shields. He’d heard Obi-Wan promising to stay with him, however long it took for him to… to heal. (Such a small word. A nothing word, to an outsider... but what it took for that word to be used for a mind with the Jedi... was he truly that bad?)

 

Padme, who he’d told even more, who’d still believed that she was to blame. He made her cry in this world, too, and it was because she knew he was going to die.

 

Could he truly do that to her?

 

And, now, Ahsoka. She’d asked him not to leave her again, and he knew, he just knew, that the Council would repeat what they had just done. He couldn’t leave her to that, to a knighting when she was just made a Senior Padawan (She’d been so excited. Force, but that was the last time he’d seen her, right before… right before.), to continue to fight what was now very obviously a sham war, to knowing that he had lied to her…

 

Could he do it? Leave them? Would it truly be better-

 

No. It wouldn’t. No matter how much his death would hurt them, the chance of him Falling was too high.

 

You can’t go back from the Dark Side.)

Notes:

A look into the mind of Anakin Skywalker: Anakin would do anything for the people he loves, and he has. Right now, however, he thinks that they'll be safer and hapier far away from him. Ahsoka, however, clearly needs him HERE WITH HER, and it's making him question his plan. He's also, annoyingly, gotten into the "denial" phase, which he gets shaken right out of by Obi-Wan's "death", thankfully.

As for Ahsoka, that's just the logical result of a teenager put in charge of a legion of lives right after loosing a parent. She's strong, and she's probably taking everything much better than I ever could, but..

All things considered, Anakin is actually a really good parent for the society that he lives in.

Notes:

find me on tumblr @flaim-ita

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