Blurred Sides (COMPLETE)

7.10.4

When Anakin came to, he was lying in a pile of rubble quite a ways off from Killian's lair. He couldn't even see it when he looked around. All he saw was smashed concrete and the Sister, a ways off from him, and her hand about a meter away from the shattered holocron.

Anakin looked on the ground around him and he saw the pieces of his own, scattered about. He picked up one of the shards but he knew the casing was beyond repair. He tried to feel around for the crystal (there was no lighting around where they had landed), but he couldn't hear its song anymore. It must have broken as well.

He sighed, defeated. The holocron was a lost cause, now. If he couldn't recover the crystal, he couldn't recover the vision that was apparently in it.

What had been in it? Anakin had never had a vision like the one he had seen up in the air a few moments ago. He didn't even know if it was technically a vision, it was more like a place that the holocron had brought him to. He hadn't stayed long enough to understand much about it.

Beside him, the Sister stirred. Abandoning the shards beside him, he crawled over to her and helped prop her up as she coughed to consciousness.

"You okay?" He asked softly, shifting her to her knees as she grunted.

"I will be," she told him, "eventually. Thanks."

"No problem," he said, surprisingly genuine. They may have only been on the same side for an hour or so, but he was glad that she wasn't hurt.

Footsteps came from behind them, although distant and faint. A group of footsteps. Someone must have sent a team to investigate their fall. Anakin supposed that their impact must have looked odd from a distance.

"Come on," he instructed, pulling her to her feet. "We have to move before they figure out what happened."

"What about the holocrons?" She asked, following him as he ran into the forest encircling the edge of the capital city.

"Leave them. They're destroyed from the fall anyways."

They ran into the forest that encircled the capital city, disappearing into the trees before the government forces could see them. They waited and watched, making sure that they mistook the glass shards for litter, before taking the long way back to the Republic base.

They snuck silently for about ten or twenty minutes before Anakin noticed that the Sister was starting to wheeze. He turned behind him and saw that her side had been injured during the fall.

"Hang on," he said, slowing to a stop. "Stop here. You don't want to injure that more than you have."

She halted and propped herself up on a nearby rock. "I think I elbowed myself when we landed."

"Don't sweat it," he told her. "Just rest for a minute. We've got time."

She stood still, breathing as she held her side. They didn't say anything for a while, but the Sister noticed he had been staring at her the whole time.

"You have questions," remarked the Sister, eyeing him out of the corner of her eye.

Anakin shook his head. "I agreed to complete the mission, not to conduct an interview."

"But you want to."

He remained silent, neither confirming nor denying the fact.

Yes, he did want to. He wanted to ask her, beg her, to tell the truth about who she was. He wanted to know where she came from, how the Sith had found her. He wanted to clarify what she had meant on those first couple missions, on Xlenia and Bespin. He wanted all of this and more, but he said nothing. He couldn't.