Blurred Sides (COMPLETE)

7.14.1

When he ran out of breath, he stopped screaming. There was no point, he couldn't change what he had done. He had killed her.

"Ahsoka, I'm sorry," he told no one. No one alive, anyway. "This is all my fault. I did this to you. I did this." He looked up at the scanner again and her picture stared at him on the screen. It was the ultimate proof.

What had she thought as she had fallen down the shaft? She had laid here, probably only hours ago, as she had bled out. What ran through her head? Did she know that it would happen? Did she have the same dreams that he did, when no one was there to see her? Did Anakin kill her in her sleep too?

She had tried to warn him. She had explained it to him, all but laid it bare for him to understand, and he still hadn't realized. Did Ahsoka know that Anakin didn't know, or did she think that Anakin knew who she was and that he had killed her anyway?

He had killed her. His mind couldn't wrap around the idea, it wouldn't accept the truth even though his heart already had. Anakin had so many questions now. How had Ahsoka even gotten into the Separatist Army? What made her go Dark, and how was she able to control it to still kill the Chancellor without betraying him until the last second? How did the Sith not realized what she was doing? Had she fallen, or had she tried to infiltrate the Sith because she wanted to betray him?

If only he could see her again and beg for her to forgive him. If only he could ask her what had happened, if only he had known, he never would have tried to kill her.

Or would he? Had Sideous twisted him so deep into his grasp that he would have killed her even if he had known?

He wanted to go back, and to tell Ahsoka that he was in danger, from Pal-from Sideous, that he wasn't himself, and to run, not fight him. Then once he had realized, he could come back here and find her and everything would be okay again, but he couldn't. He couldn't because he had caught up with her while she had fled, and he had tried to kill her. After everything they had been through, after all she had survived, she had fallen at his own hands. It was his fault. He did this.

Anakin felt the hole inside him grow, the hole Ahsoka used to fill. So long ago, back when he hadn't been a Knight, when he hadn't been her master, he thought that he could never have the capacity to care for a Padawan. He thought a child at his side would slow him down. He didn't know that Ahsoka would only ever teach him, build him up and trust him, after she had worked out the kinks. Once she had come into her own, they weren't just Master and Padawan, they were partners, they were friends. Ahsoka had always had his back, even when he had tried to tell her not to. Anakin had even ordered Ahsoka not to go on the Citadel mission, and she still came. He used to think that he didn't want a Padawan.

The truth was he didn't deserve a Padawan. He didn't deserve to have someone at his side, to have someone who trusted him that much. He didn't deserve to be trusted, or protected, or fought for, or loved. He was too broken, shattered into too many pieces, to deserve that kind of loyalty, that kind of friend.

He pulled his glove off and he clasped her Padawan chain in his hand, clinging the last piece of Ahsoka he had left. I was wrong, Ahsoka, he thought. You shouldn't have trusted me. Why did you trust me? Why did you come back when you knew all I would do was hurt you?

Anakin would have given nearly anything in that moment for an answer, a whisper, even the slightest sign that she was there, listening, somehow. He didn't care if she hated him, not now. At least if she hated him, then she would be alive enough to hate him. At least she would be alive. A world where Ahsoka hated him was better than a world without her in it. A world where he had killed her.

It was then, off in the distance, he finally felt her, for the first time. He looked up, and although it was weak, it was there. Her Force signature, he realized. It's joined with the Cosmic Force. She's not all gone.