Mirror Prism

Chapter 13.5 - Bonus

This is a bonus chapter. X_X I thought could get it in with the other parts, but it didn't really work, and I thought Anakin, Ahsoka, and Ashla deserved their own chapter. It's bonus cuz it's the only one not clone-centric.

~ Rivana Rita

Her mind is her own again, and Ashla forgot what it meant to be free. She forgot what it meant to love, the blinding, selflessness that she has for them all now. She loves them. All of her... children. Her brothers and sisters. Whichever they are.

And she hurt them. It – it was for – for what? What did she do? How could she have been the one to do that to them?

But their family is together, with a piece of herself. She and Vision are a thing she'll think through later. She split her soul, light and dark, half as a Jedi and half as a clone, meant to be one and the same, but there is no reality that can sustain a double of them. She knows that. Knew that.

But she'd been so, so desperate.

The loneliness was maddening. There was nothing but the desert, and her need to feel something in the pit of emptiness that ripped her mind apart.

Abeloth deserved better, but she's gone, and Ashla is here to hold her power in her place.

Her and Emerie and Vision.

She wishes they could've been one, but they have each other, and she can't keep them when she's done that too much already. Force knows how much she's hurt them.

So, here she is, watching them from afar the way that she always used to, wondering if there will ever be a chance to soothe the desperation in her heart, begging to be let in and become one with them. Wondering if she'll ever have the chance to be their sister.

Ahsoka's grown so much.

She remembers from before – a baby. A little girl she was hardly big enough to hold in her arms, a name she couldn't remember but someone she loved.

The same as what happened to Omega before her brothers were ripped from her, leaving nothing but shattered dreams.

She wants to see something burn. Doesn't have a problem with that. Burning the Imperial Palace was amazing. Killing Sidious was – it was awful.

She should be happy, but Anakin had tried to kill her, and he'd been so, so angry.

Anakin, who hasn't eaten in a long time either, even if not as long as her. She forgot what it was like to eat something other than chaos, to be fueled by something other than the twisted broken shades of the lives she shredded between her tentacles like they were her – pets.

She lost her life to chaos. To the master that left her for dead when Omega pulled her out.

In another world, it was Anakin. It was him who found her there, and brought her home. That was the world she came from. The one she made, and her family here – the one she longed for – is the same.

The one she watches with fond wistfulness and knows she'll never make right.

"Ash." Ahsoka grabs her wrist, looking up at her with bright eyes. She doesn't hold what Ashla did against her, but she's not the same one that she watched in another reality, the one she saw live and grow with her, the way they fought in the war as Ashla worked herself ground to keep her little sister safe and Ahsoka fought her protectiveness with all she had because she didn't want to watch it happen. "We still have a life."

She should have a reply to that, something laced with an energy that she was meant to have, but her energy is gone. Sapped away with an emptiness that's gutted her out to the bone. "Uh-huh. I think a choice between a traitor and a dead person was a good one."