Back in the Game (COMPLETE)

9.17.1

No one moved for the longest time. When the clones finally did rise, they activated a stretcher they had brought for her, not expecting that it would be Ahsoka's final resting place. A white sheet was found, and when Ahsoka was moved onto the stretcher the sheet went on top of her corpse to hide her wounds, her closed eyes, and her still chest. For all of them who had known Ahsoka since her first battle on Christophsis, it was impossible to see anything except for the little girl who had walked on the battlefield with bright eyes, so long as they could still see her body. At least with the sheet on, they could hold themselves together.

Ahsoka's stretcher was laid to rest on one of the bunks in the back of the Jedi shuttle. Anakin denied all of the supplies the troopers offered him and Obi-Wan, and he told Rex privately that they had received an invitation to hide away somewhere. The troopers would need those supplies more, so at Anakin's insisting they were packed onto the larger shuttle for them.

He also gave Rex Ahsoka's bag, the one with the rest of her belongings in it. Anakin had taken Ahsoka's blaster off of her back and slipped it inside, knowing it was Rex and his brothers who had given it to her. As the troopers began to load the shuttle, Anakin pressed Ahsoka's comlink into Rex's hand also.

"Just hang onto it," he asked Rex, who had hardly spoken in the past half an hour. "If you need me, I'll come."

Rex nodded, not trusting himself to respond otherwise. With a salute to him and Obi-Wan, he boarded the shuttle and worked with Jesse to pilot it off of Xlenia. None of the troopers knew where they were going, they just wanted to go away. Rex and all of the other troopers kept their helmets on so no one could see them cry underneath them.

Anakin and Artoo piloted the Jedi shuttle off of Xlenia, but Obi-Wan sat in the back, alternating between staring at the white sheet that covered Ahsoka's corpse and the ground. When the ship jumped to hyperspace, Anakin left the astromech droid to watch the cockpit and joined his master.

When he walked back, Obi-Wan was looking at the body again, with his hands folded over his mouth, and his elbows propped up on his knees. He glanced up to look at Anakin when he walked in, and after a moment of neither of them moving, Obi-Wan swallowed and finally spoke, in a faltering, low voice. "Do you remember when you said that...that having her as your Padawan was my plan? On the first day?"

Anakin nodded. To be honest, he didn't remember saying that specifically, but it was exactly the type of thing he would have said at the time.

"Before the Battle of Christophsis, I had gone to watch the Younglings train, to see if I ought to train any of them," he admitted, resting his forearms on his knees. "I..I was planning to take another apprentice, but I never did."

"Why?" Anakin asked, quietly moving to sit next to his master. "I knew you planned to, but it's been years, and..."

Obi-Wan looked ahead again, trying not to remember what Ahsoka looked like under that deceptively white sheet. "I started talking, with her...and I saw her with you. I saw so many things, Anakin. Her training, you teaching her, the shoto lightsaber, the red saber, the white ones, although I didn't know it when I saw it. I.." His voice broke, and he bowed his head. He could feel his eyes burning with tears again. "I saw the troopers kneeling, that day. I didn't know..."

He covered his eyes with his hands, trying to keep it together just a little longer. He needed to get this last bit out before he lost the courage to say it. "I told Yoda...I told him she should be your Padawan. I thought- I saw so much more, so many things that she should have done. She wasn't done, Anakin, she wasn't..."

Anakin didn't need him to finish, because he knew. He embraced his master for the second time that day. There was no more Jedi Order, and no more reason not to. Obi-Wan clung to his arms, the arms of the only other Jedi left. Yoda had abandoned them, and the rest of the Council was dead. If anyone else was still alive, they were in hiding, surely. This was it. This was all that was left, the only remnant of hope for the Jedi. "Is this how it felt?" Obi-Wan whispered as if Ahsoka could hear him. "Is this how it felt to be alone?"

As the one who had pulled Ahsoka out of her despair, Anakin knew the answer was yes. Once before, he had held Ahsoka after her year of isolation with the Sith, and this feeling was too familiar, too familiar. It, also, was not the first time he had been the only one standing with someone who had lost faith in the Jedi Order.

"We were wrong," Obi-Wan realized, and acknowledged out loud for the first time, through tears and fear and pain. "How were we so wrong?"

He didn't know, he didn't know anymore. Doubt filled him and mixed with his grief, and suddenly, Obi-Wan couldn't make himself trust anything the Order had done. Every move, every decision they made in the Clone War, every ideal they had held so dear, that he had held so dear, it was all caving in on him. The ground beneath his feet didn't seem solid anymore. The only thing that he still had faith in was Anakin. It was all he had left.

Which was why he couldn't tell him everything. He couldn't bear to see his face if Obi-Wan admitted that he had seen Ahsoka reach Knighthood. He couldn't confess that he had been harboring a secret hope that Ahsoka was going to return to the Jedi Order one day and that Anakin's faith in her hadn't been misplaced. He couldn't do that now because he had been wrong. Not because Ahsoka wouldn't have, maybe, if things had finally been set right, but because she had given all possibility of a future up.

This was a woman who had sacrificed everything for the world and lost it all. She had given her life, the first time, to save Anakin on Mortis. She had given up herself to the Jedi because she thought they would defend her in her trial, and she had lost her place in the Order. She had given up her chance to return to the Order for a chance to do the right thing, and she had lost her freedom in exchange for slavery under Sideous. She gave up her Light, her personality, and her ability to choose, to save the Jedi and all of the Republic from Sideous, and nearly gave up her life just to end it all. She gave up her civilian life to protect Mandalore, and she gave up her chance at escape by protecting the troopers who remained loyal to her. By some cruel, twisted fate, she ended the same way she began: she gave up her life to save Rex.

What hadn't she given up? What hadn't she lost, what hadn't the galaxy stolen away from her? In fact, what hadn't the galaxy stolen from any of them? How many people was Obi-Wan going to lose to the 'will of the Force'? Why should he trust the Force if it was going to take so much from him? Qui-Gon, Satine, very nearly Anakin, all the rest of the Jedi, including Yoda, and now Ahsoka. Where were they now?  Yoda himself had given up on the Jedi, or he wouldn't have exiled himself. The Grandmaster of the Jedi Order had surrendered to the loss. He had walked out of the Temple in the exact way Ahsoka had years ago, leaving Anakin and Obi-Wan alone.

Silently, Anakin felt faith in the Force slowly begin to drain from Obi-Wan. He knew why: the loss of so much was finally hitting him at full strength, but not Anakin. Not Anakin, because he refused to let himself forget what he hadn't lost. He hadn't told Obi-Wan yet, but he had set their coordinates for Naboo, where Padmé and the twins were still alive and safe. The pain of losing Ahsoka again tore at him, but this time, she had taught him something he refused to forget: it wasn't over. Maybe Ahsoka was gone, and maybe the Order was no more, but Anakin wasn't dead yet, and neither was the rest of his family. Ahsoka had given him a chance to keep going, to protect all that he had left, and for the first time in his life, not let his pain and anger control him. He had lost his mother, and he had lost Ahsoka before, but this time, he could make it. This wasn't going to end as the first two times had. His story wasn't over yet. Ahsoka Tano may be dead, but because of that Anakin Skywalker wasn't.

As Obi-Wan trembled in his arms, Anakin looked up and stared at Ahsoka's body. That silent promise, the one that told him that 'it was enough', that was going to sustain him from now on. That was his promise to her, that he wasn't going to give up just because he had lost. Ahsoka had given and given until she had nothing else to give, and Anakin was going to do the same for as long as he could. Right now, he had to hide and make sure his children would never be found by the Separatists or anyone else, but that wasn't going to be forever. One day, Anakin knew he was going to get too restless in hiding and he would go back out there and fight. When he did, he promised her that he was going to try to be as brave as she was, brave enough to risk everything for what he believed in.

As long as he had that promise, he was going to make it. He was going to be okay.