𝗔𝗵𝘀𝗼𝗸𝗮 𝗧𝗮𝗻𝗼

Chapter Six

Numb.

That was all Anakin Skywalker could really feel — or rather not feel was a better way to put it.

The stone steps had become cold, frozen, even, underneath him — a reflection of the very man himself.

Rooted to the spot, frozen, hanging on to the image forever seared by the cruel, iron hand of fate into the back of his eyelids — her silhouette framed by the sunset, a stark contrast to the mood of its meaning, as she just left — Anakin was lost.

The scene on repeat in his mind, he gazed unseeing at the commotion of the busy night, hanging onto the misery it insinuated like a lifeline — as if he were being viciously tugged at by rapids with only a thornbush to hold onto. Letting go meant suffering, but so did hanging on. The only difference was he already knew he could survive the thorn — so he hung on in a desperation that only someone who is not a stranger to grief would understand.

He hung onto the pain of the memory — fresh like the beads of blood on a knee after falling— like if he shifted his concentration from the monotonous scene, she would have only been a dream.

He felt cold.

And it was not from the icy breeze disturbing the relative peace of the Coruscanti night. Anakin barely felt that — there wasn't much he could feel with the frigid blanket of circumstance curtained over him, numbing his senses, dulling his mind, and making his ears ring — the only constant he knew then.

It was ironic, Anakin thought. How could the planet keep turning, the stars keep shining, and the clouds keep moving when he felt like his own world was imploding?

The way that everything and everyone just kept going didn't make any sense. Wasn't Ahsoka more important than that? Didn't her absence warrant something, anything, from the metaphysical, omnipotent, paramountcy that whether you chose to believe in it or not, it was still absolute and existentially there?

Why was Anakin still able to sit on the solid ground when everything else seemed to have disappeared beneath him, crumbling to the nothing that was his understanding of existence at the moment?

The intangible tangibility of reliance and loyalty and surety seemed to become one with its definition again — slipping through this fingers like a fragrance: the sweet smell only a memory now, but one that he would never forget even if he would never experience it again.

The type of nostalgic redolance that you experience even years after the fact that leaves you either with a warm feeling in your chest or a sickening twist of your stomach as you recognize the source.

He couldn't breathe — and that seemed to be the only thing in this backwards, upside down, monotonous reality he was existing in at the moment that fit into his new idea of actuality. It made sense that the air was poisonous, that his lungs weren't working. It just made sense. Because normally it wouldn't, but with everything reversed it just did. With Ahsoka gone, everything should fail — because, only realizing it now, Ahsoka was the only thing keeping him together... and now she was gone.

Mourning.

Not for her death, no.

This was much worse.

Anakin was mourning her absence. An absence that wasn't so absolute, so simple and black and white as dying.

So why would the preeminent dominion that seemed to be spreading it's cruelly ironic fingers over Anakins existence allow him the simplicity of the non discriminatory affair of death?

No. It was her choice that caused him the agony. And the reason behind it that was too arduous to accept, too strenuous to handle at the moment when he couldn't even remember his name.

That was his undoing, because to Anakin, the world had always been black and white, good and evil — a constant in the absoluteness that one was either doing the right thing, or the wrong thing. If something wasn't all good, it was bad. And the acceptance of the harsh reality that if Ahsoka had done the right thing, then why did it feel so wrong, was just too much for his conflicting conscience to process.

So he didn't. Instead, he sat, eyes fixed, but not focused, on the last place he had tangibly known his Padawan — the horizon — even as the glaring sun was replaced by an orange haze obscuring the shining stars, he existed. Not feeling, not thinking, not anything. Just there.

And his lack of conscience was not even broken by the soft, hesitant hand coming to a rest on his shoulder as Obi-Wan Kenobi gazed down, heartbroken, at his former Padawan. The tenderness of his touch and the reassurance of his presence was still not enough to wake Anakin from his misery. 

The gut-wrenching feeling of guilt and the overwhelming of raw, primordial emotion was the only constant between the two men as both sets of eyes seemed to shift their eyes to gaze to the strange formation of stars to the North that was known to them as the former Padawans favorite constellation. The akul.

And with nothing more to do, the two men sat. Not feeling, not thinking, not anything.

Just there.

And you know what they say:

You never truly know what you have;

until it's gone.

::::

Wow, this is the shortest chapter i've ever written. anyway, sorry it's really short, but i wanted to explore Anakins phsych a bit. Sorry if it's boring or confusing. i'm just procrastinating my homework, so i decided to do this instead.

anyway, hope you enjoyed!

10/12/20

*unedited

Word count: 944