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“Ugh!” Ahsoka flung up an arm to shield her face from another burst of hot, sulfuric gas that broke loose from one of the ducts above her head. It stank of rot. Ships designed to transport large and varied loads of fuel could prove incredibly useful—when they weren’t as severely compromised as this one was. She slammed a hand down on the controls that sealed off the hallway, and stumbled onwards as the bulkheads crashed shut behind her.
The bridge was still mercifully oxygenated. “Master Obi-Wan!” she shouted. “We got everyone we could find into the escape pods, but Anakin and I got separated in the lower levels. He said he had a plan, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it was, or where he went.”
“He’s pursuing our attackers onto the planet surface,” Obi-Wan said with calm assurance, as he pushed a button to restart the failing navicomputer.
“How do you know?” As far as Ahsoka knew, comms were still down.
“Oh, I don’t know anything for certain. But I did tell him not to—so what else would he be doing?” The navicomputer blinked and went dead. Obi-Wan sank further into the pilot’s seat with a longsuffering sigh. “Looks like we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
Ahsoka watched with concern as he attempted to manually pilot their disintegrating ship into a stable orbit of the nearby planet’s uninhabited moon. The ship shuddered in protest.
“What do we do if we start to crash?” she asked.
“Then we get to the escape pods and join Anakin and the rest of your squadron on the planet’s surface,” Obi-Wan replied, through gritted teeth.
“And, uh...” Ahsoka shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Hypothetically, if there weren’t any spare escape pods left after the men evacuated...”
“Then, hypothetically-” Obi-Wan wrenched the controls, “-we would have to take two of the fighters instead.”
“How many fighters did this tanker have, again?”
“More than two, I should hope.”
“What about more than twelve?” she asked.
“I don’t see how that matters at the moment, Ahsoka!”
“You might,” Ahsoka replied, “if you looked out the viewport.”
Obi-Wan did—just in time to watch twelve starfighters zoom past on their way to the planet below. “Well,” he sighed, sounding more tired than horrified. “There goes Plan D.”
“So what’s Plan E?”
“Don’t crash.”
Plan E took only a few minutes to begin to fail spectacularly. Alarms blared so loudly as the ship’s nose dipped toward the moon that Ahsoka couldn’t make out whatever word it was that Obi-Wan shouted when the chaos erupted.
She couldn’t make out any of the words that followed, either, but she was able to infer their meaning from his frantic gestures, and followed him off the bridge at a run.
“It’s no use,” he said. “We’ll have to head to the hangar and hope it’s not entirely empty.”
“What if it is?” Ahsoka asked. Considering how fast they had been going from failed plan to failed plan, she figured it would be smart to always have a backup plan—or three—at the ready.
“In that case,” Obi-Wan replied, shouldering open a jammed door, “we’ll simply have to trust in the Force.”
“That’s your plan?” Ahsoka squeezed through the doorway after him. “We’re falling from the sky in a burning tanker with no escape pods and your plan is trust in the Force?”
She had expected a snappy retort—I don’t suppose you have a better one?—but it didn’t come. Instead, Obi-Wan paused, just long enough to rest a hand on her shoulder. “It is a plan that has served countless generations of Jedi before us,” he said. “It will not fail us now.”
She hoped he was right.
As they made their way through the doomed ship, relying on the Force certainly seemed to be their only option. The emergency lights had failed in most of the hallways, and rooms filled with toxic gases lurked behind many doors. They felt their way through the ship as rapidly as they could, trusting in the Force to guide them, and stretching it like a thread between them to protect against separation in the darkness.
Over the course of her training as an Initiate, and her brief time as a Padawan, Ahsoka had participated in all manner of exercises involving navigating in the dark, surviving exposure to toxic gas, or evacuating from a crashing ship—but never all three at once.
Her lungs ached for oxygen as she half-stumbled, half-drifted down a noxious corridor where the gravity had failed as well as the lights. She tried using the Force to guide her, as well as to fill her lungs, but multitasking with a cosmic power was growing more difficult by the second. Everything was growing more difficult by the second; possibly because she was running out of air.
Ahsoka swayed. Her feet lifted slowly off of the ground. The Force flung a warning at her, but as her dazed mind fumbled to catch it, it let go of her lungs. Horror filled her stomach and acrid fumes filled her lungs. “Master Obi-Wan!” she shrieked.
Artificial gravity slammed back into place, hard. The metal plates of the hallway buckled along with her knees. She felt Obi-Wan’s hands grasp her shoulders, pulling her away from the danger and the crumpling darkness and into the only place of safety left on this ship; pulling her into his arms as the nauseated gravity threw them both against the ground.
“Master!” His arms were still around her, but they were lax. “Master Obi-Wan!”
They were drifting now. The faulty gravity had fled as quickly as it had come. Rough fabric brushed against her arms. She reached for Obi-Wan, and clung tightly to him, feeling like a sailor drowning in an enormous, pitch-black ocean that stank of acid and decay. She had to get them out of here. Choking on the toxic atmosphere, Ahsoka struggled to keep hold of Obi-Wan’s arm as she kicked against the floor, or perhaps the wall, and propelled them both toward the exit.
There were lights in this next passage, and clean air, but gravity remained absent. Despite the ominous groans that their decaying orbit sent resonating through the hull, Ahsoka paused for a moment, sucking in deep gasps of oxygen and scanning her surroundings. The Force hung darkly around the bulkhead on the left; Ahsoka closed her eyes, and felt the sloshings of leaked fuel against its interior surface. Not that way, then.
The turbolift farther ahead looked more promising. It was no longer functional—she didn’t need the Force to tell her that—but it could still serve as a passage that would bring her and Obi-Wan closer to the level of the hangar.
Alright, she told herself, as the ship’s hull let out a resounding scream, break’s over.
She dragged herself and Obi-Wan towards the lift. She hesitated for a moment as she drifted out over the dizzying depths and prepared to dive. Buckled pipes and bracing beams lines the edges like clumsy teeth. She had never had a particular fear of heights, but this…this felt like willingly stepping into the mouth of a sarlacc pit.
Beside her, Obi-Wan was beginning to stir. Better get this over with before he’s awake to see it, she decided, and pushed off the ledge.
She tried to count the levels as they passed, but she was soon forced to face the reality that she had no idea either of where she was or where she needed to be. She was lost in a deadly maze with no map and no Master.
At the least, moments like this made putting trust in the Force easy. What else was there to trust? She stopped counting levels. The Force would guide her to the right one. Wouldn’t it?
Light spilled out from one of the lift exits below. Was the Force calling her there? It looked promising.
Obi-Wan stirred again, and mumbled something indecipherable. “It’s alright, Master,” she reassured him, stretching out a hand to grasp the doorway. “I’ve got you.”
The next second, gravity had him instead.
Ahsoka’s scream was left behind in the upper levels of the lift shaft as she plummeted downwards after him. She scrambled wildly in the rapidly flickering darkness, but her grasping hands found nothing to cling to. Fear and disorientation choked the Force.
She was going to die.
She was going to die, and she would never see her Master again. She could almost hear his anguished scream as he searched the wreck of the ship. It stretched out, horrified and haunting, blending with her own—
“Ahsoka!”
A strong hand clamped around her wrist, arresting her fall and nearly jerking her shoulder free of its socket. She swung sideways. Her knees met the wall with a loud and less than pleasant thud.
Obi-Wan clung with one hand to one of the support rails that lined the shaft, and with the other hand to Ahsoka. He grimaced as he hauled her upwards. “Grab the ledge, Padawan. Yes, that—that’s it. There you are. Now, if you don’t mind…”
Safely out of the shaft, Ahsoka lay flat on the hallway floor and extended her hands to Obi-Wan. A few more moments of pained exclamation and boots scrabbling on metal panels brought him to the ground beside her.
“How did we…” Obi-Wan stared down into the gaping shaft for a minute, and then wiped a hand across his face. “I’m not even going to ask,” he decided.
“Probably for the best,” Ahsoka agreed.
The accident proved a remarkably fortunate one. It had brought them much closer to their destination than Ahsoka had anticipated, and the journey to the hangar doors only cost them a few more minor scaldings from bursting fuel pipes. Perhaps the Force had guided them after all.
“Alright,” Ahsoka said, taking in a deep, steadying breath. “Moment of truth.” She pressed a finger to the control panel and the doors whooshed open with a blast of cold air.
Empty. The hangar was empty.
“Great.” Ahsoka flung back her head in frustration. “Now what do we do?”
“Young one…” Something in Obi-Wan’s voice chilled her far more deeply than the cold air in the hangar had. “I am afraid there is nothing more we can do.”
“But… We can’t… We came all this way!” Cold, bare, empty metal flooring spun around her as she turned in a desperate circle, looking for something, anything, that could form the foundations of a plan. “If we don’t do something, we’re going to crash!” It wouldn’t be her first crash-landing, but on a tanker filled to the brim with heavy fuels, it was certain to be her last. “We’ll think of something,” she decided. “We always do. We just need a new plan, that’s all.”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “There is no time for that. I am sorry, Ahsoka.”
He looked so calm. Infuriatingly calm. Didn’t he understand what was happening? Ahsoka felt her breath come faster and faster. “We’re going to die!” she screamed—or someone did. Her voice sounded shrill, distant. “We’re going to die!”
“Do not allow your emotions to control you, Ahsoka. Remember your training.”
Her training? What did her training matter now? She was never going to finish it. Never going to use it again.. She was going to die, a young, frightened padawan buried in the midst of a war she would never see the end of. Her training?
“I can’t!” her voice cried, still small and far away. “Master Obi-Wan, I can’t, I don’t want to die, I’m not ready!” Whatever had control of her voice had control of her limbs now, too. It shook them violently, rattling her hands, pounding against her knees until they gave way. She sank down, down down into the pit that had opened beneath her heart. “I don’t want to die.”
“There is no death,” Obi-Wan said softly.
“There is the Force,” her voice repeated on instinct. Was it true? She hoped it was true. She had known it was true, every moment of her life, until now, when she needed it, when the time had come to face it. What if they were wrong? What if they were all wrong?
“Do not give into your fears, Ahsoka.” Obi-Wan’s voice was firm, commanding, yet soft and full of understanding. “Find your center.” His hand touched her elbow. Ahsoka allowed herself to be guided to kneel on the floor. Obi-Wan knelt beside her. “Close your eyes,” he told her, “and open your mind. Do not confine yourself to what immediately surrounds you. Reach out beyond.”
She tried. It felt so strange, facing imminent demise this way, on her knees with her eyes closed and her hands folded. Meditation was far too tranquil: an act intended for times of peace. Wasn’t it?
“Peace comes from within, not without,” Obi-Wan said, in answer to the unspoken question. “A Jedi does not demand peace from their circumstances. You must seek it within yourself.”
Searching for peace within her pounding heart felt like the time she had been sent to look for a datapad buried in Anakin’s quarters on Coruscant. She knew it was there somewhere, had even seen it there countless times before, but now?
She rummaged through mental images of exploding ships and bomb-scarred landscapes, searching for something less horrifying. Nothing here even seemed to resemble peace.
“Breathe, Ahsoka.” Obi-Wan’s hand found hers, and pressed it. A Jedi Master had not held Ahsoka’s hand through a meditation since she was a youngling just learning to grasp at threads of the Force, but Obi-Wan did not let go. Ahsoka did not pull away.
Obi-Wan’s guiding consciousness unfolded itself, stretching out to run freely across the expanses of space, and then drawing nearer once more, nudging against her, encouraging. Walk with me, he seemed to say. Ahsoka could not suppress a backward glance as she followed him onwards, leaving behind the burning ship and the two small figures kneeling within it, but she still did not pull away.
He seemed so at home here, in the Force. He cast his meditative thoughts easily out into the darkness, and found Light there. The natural grace with which he conducted himself made Ahsoka feel clumsy beside him: an ungainly dinghy bobbing along at the side of a great vessel. She saw now as clearly as ever why Obi-Wan was renowned as a great Jedi Master.
And why his death would be a grievous blow to the Order.
Ahsoka shivered. In an instant, she was back on the ship, kneeling on cool metal, plummeting towards an uninhabited moon. Then the hand around hers tightened, drawing her back to a place of harmony. Obi-Wan fell into step beside her once more. He smiled, and offered her a palmful of stars.
She pressed closer to him. The cold was pervasive, even here, but his presence warmed her. She was glad he was here with her, at the end. It was not that she wanted him to die. She didn’t want either of them to die. But he was a comfort in these last moments, a light in the darkness, a reminder of what it was to be a Jedi.
She only wished that... well...
She thought of Anakin, who would lose both his Master and his Padawan in a single moment. What would he say, if he could see them now? Perhaps—
“Can’t you two meditate when it’s a little more convenient? I don’t have all day.”
Ahsoka’s eyes flew open. “Skyguy!”
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan looked up in disbelief. “I must have hit my head harder than I thought.”
“Your eyes don’t deceive you, Master.” Anakin grinned, and spread his arms. “Your glorious rescue has arrived.”
“I hope by glorious, you don’t mean a single starfighter,” Obi-Wan retorted, pushing himself to his feet with a groan.
“Of course not. It’s a single starfighter and the best pilot in the galaxy.”
Obi-Wan’s raised eyebrow did not look particularly awed by the glory of this description.
“It’s the best I could do,” Anakin protested. “No one else had the guts to fly through the firestorm coming off your hull out there. We’re already entering the moon’s atmosphere. Speaking of which, it’s time to go!” His voice was nearly drowned out by a bellowing explosion echoing from the heart of the tanker.
All three Jedi sprinted for the starfighter.
Anakin helped first Ahsoka, and then Obi-Wan, into the crowded cockpit. “Strap in,” he ordered automatically, as he took hold of the controls.
“I most certainly would,” Obi-Wan muttered, “if I had a seat to strap myself in to.”
“I’m sure hearing a lot of complaints from the people I’m supposed to be rescuing,” said Anakin, in joking repartee. “Whatever happened to gratitude?”
“I’ll thank you once we’re safely on the planet’s surface,” Obi-Wan told him, as Anakin executed a nauseating spin in order to avoid a flaming pile of debris.
“Couldn’t you at least have gotten a bigger ship?” Ahsoka grumbled.
Anakin glanced down at where she was wedged on the floor beneath the console and controls. “You had a bigger ship,” he reminded her. “Don’t tell me you want to go back, after all this trouble I’ve been through to get you off it.” He dodged another flying piece of the ‘bigger ship’ for emphasis.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. “Just get us back on solid ground as quickly as you can, and we’ll call it even, Master.”
Just then there came a horrific crash. The fighter shuddered ominously. Alarms blared.
“What was that?” Obi-Wan demanded, when he had recovered from being thrown into the wall he was already pressed against.
“Um... The bad news is, we’ve taken some serious damage to the engines and steering,” Anakin said cautiously.
“Oh good. Nothing important, then,” Obi-Wan muttered.
“What’s the good news?” Ahsoka asked.
“Well...” Anakin’s face was drawn with concentration, but he still managed a slight smirk. “We’ll be back on solid ground even quicker than you were hoping.”
The solid ground seemed far more eager to meet the Jedi than they were to meet it, but the velocity at which they were approaching the planet’s surface left them little room for choice.
“Brace yourselves,” Anakin warned them. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“That’s a shame,” Obi-Wan said. “And here I was preparing for a relaxing crash-landing.”
A moment later, the ground enthusiastically made their fighter’s acquaintance with a terrific and resounding crunch, and everything went black.
“Solid ground, as promised.” Anakin extended a hand to Ahsoka. “Ready to call it even yet, Snips?”
“Master, you’re bleeding!” She gasped as she took in the sight of his scarlet-smeared forehead—and gasped again as he attempted to help her off the floor. “Ow! My shoulder...”
“I’m sorry. Here.” Anakin made to crouch beside her, only find himself hindered by the pilot’s chair that stood between himself and his Padawan. He remedied the problem with a quick slash of his lightsaber. The chair thudded dully on the ground outside the ship.
Anakin’s fingers hovered just above Ahsoka’s injured shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“So are you,” she pointed out, motioning to his forehead.
“It’s nothing.” He wiped away the blood, leaving her to wonder if it had even been his in the first place. “Now let’s get you out of here. Does anything hurt besides your shoulder?”
“Everything hurts a little.” She took a moment for introspective self-assessment. “But I don’t think anything is broken.”
“Good.” Without another word, he reached around her knees and torso and lifted her from the wreckage. Her shoulder throbbed in spite of his gentleness. She clenched her teeth against the pain. “I know,” Anakin murmured in her ear, intensely aware of her unshielded feelings. “I’m sorry.” She was too exhausted to be embarrassed by his perception of her weakness.
A light rain began to fall as he settled her on the ground outside the ship. “You stay here with Obi-Wan,” Anakin told her. “I’m going to try to find something to build us a shelter with.”
Obi-Wan? Ahsoka turned her head. Obi-Wan. He lay on the ground not far from her—unmoving. One of Anakin’s dark tabards, torn roughly into strips, was wrapped around his forehead. A trickle of escaped blood stretched out from beneath it and disappeared into his beard.
Ahsoka dragged herself nearer to him, feeling torn between the inability to do anything and the desperation to do something. No doubt Rex and the rest of his squadron were already looking for them, but with limited resources and half a planet to cover, it could take a long time to be discovered. Days, certainly. Maybe weeks.
She wondered if they could make it that long. If Obi-Wan could make it that long.
It was easy enough to take stock of their supplies when they had so few of them. They had no rations, no medical supplies, and no ship—only a heap of steaming wreckage and the clothes on their backs.
Ahsoka turned back to Obi-Wan, wishing, not for the first time, that she was more skilled at healing others with the Force. It was something that Anakin had never got around to teaching her—possibly because he had never got around to properly learning it himself.
Obi-Wan blinked up at her with a dazed expression. He hadn’t been in the best of condition before the crash. He looked even worse now. Much worse.
“How are you feeling, Master Obi-Wan?” she asked gently.
Another slow, confused blink. His unevenly sized pupils seemed unwilling to focus on her, or anything else. “You know what they say,” he said after a moment. “Two head injuries are better than one.”
She winced. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’m afraid not, Padawan. But that is no fault of your own.” His hand found hers. His grip was much feebler than it had been before, but still strangely reassuring.
“My Master’s looking for something to use for shelter,” she told him, “but he’ll be back, soon. Maybe he can help you into a healing trance?” It was an overly optimistic sentiment, and Obi-Wan knew it.
“Help me into a coma, more likely,” he muttered, and shut his eyes. “Your Master has the healing abilities of a two-tailed swamp rat.”
Ahsoka covered her mouth with her hand to hide her amusement. “You’d better not let him hear you say that.”
“He can hear me say it, and a good many other things besides,” Obi-Wan replied serenely. “Concussions are an excellent excuse to speak one’s mind.”
“I’ll try to remember that for the next time I get one,” she told him, now openly smiling.
“Try to avoid flying with Anakin, and that may not be a concern.”
“Bold words from a man I just flew to safety,” Anakin retorted, reappearing with a bundle of sticks under his arm just in time to catch the end of the acerbic remark.
“Ah, yes,” said Obi-Wan. He wiped a smudge of blood away from the corner of his mouth. “Safety.”
There was nothing in their surroundings that would allow them to build a shelter large enough for the three of them, but Anakin’s sticks and Obi-Wan’s discarded cloak provided sufficient room for a small stash of dry wood, some of which Anakin used to start a fire once the rain began to let up and the sun to go down.
Ahsoka curled close to the feeble flames, hoping that some of their warmth would absorb into her limbs—particularly her damaged shoulder, which had grown stiff and sore with cold. Anakin sat beside her, with legs crossed and arms folded: a silent guardian keeping watch over both his former mentor and his current apprentice.
“Master?” Ahsoka asked, when the night seemed at its deepest.
“Yeah?”
“Is Master Obi-Wan… Will he be alright?”
Obi-Wan’s eyes were shut, and had been for some time. The dark bandage around his forehead had grown gradually darker with the slow seep of blood.
“He’ll be fine,” Anakin assured her. “Rex and his men will find us soon, and then the medics can have a heyday with him. He’s pulled through worse before.” He huffed. “I should know. I’ve pulled him through a lot of it.”
“He just looks so…” she coughed, and winced, “so still.”
“He’s okay, Snips.” Anakin reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and then, thinking better of it, gave her head a gentle pat instead. “He’s just resting. Like you should be. Try to get some sleep.”
“Yes, Master.”
To her credit, she did try to rest—but, as Master Yoda might more accurately have put it, she did not. The cold set her muscles shivering, agitating her shoulder which, despite burning with the sensation of fire, did nothing to warm the rest of her.
Worse, this planet’s thin atmosphere was insufficient to satisfy her scorched lungs. The longer she lay still, the more she felt that she was suffocating, choking on air, drowning on dry land. When she was not awoken by her own coughing, she was stirred by the sound of soft voices: her Master’s, and Obi-Wan’s, arguing faintly about who ought to keep watch, or discussing their plans if rescue had not arrived by the following morning.
She kept her eyes shut and tried to breathe through her restlessness. The cycle continued. Coughing. Voices. Dreams. Shivering. Voices. Dreams. Dreams of drowning. More violent coughing. Louder voices. Something in Obi-Wan’s voice that sounded almost like a swear word. Something in Anakin’s voice that was most definitely a swear word.
She opened her eyes and gasped for air. Anakin pressed his hand to her forehead. He muttered another curse. “She’s freezing.”
“M’ster…” she gasped, as he began to spin. He shouldn’t spin like that. It made him very hard to look at.
“Hush, Ahsoka. Just breathe.”
“I’m…trying.” She gulped in more air, and coughed it up again. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t—don’t apologize. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay. We just—blast it, Obi-Wan, I told you to stay there!”
“Let me help.”
“I’m handling it. She’s fine.”
“Clearly not. If you would just allow me—”
“No. I won’t. You need to rest.”
“She needs help.”
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I can tell that my own Padawan is—is…” Fear. Biting, snapping anger. A pause. Heavy breathing. Stinging regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—but you’re in no state to try anything. You’ll exhaust yourself, and then I’ll have both of you to worry about.”
Ahsoka was coughing again. Force, it hurt.
“Please, Anakin.” That voice. It sounded almost…broken. Like her lungs. She wanted to fix it.
Anakin seemed to feel the same. “Alright. But be careful.”
“Aren’t I always?”
“Are you ev—whoa, steady there.”
There were scattered sounds of shuffling, and then hands wrapped around her again. Ahsoka tried to twist away from the throbbing stirred up afresh in her shoulder. A supportive arm tightened around her torso. “It’s alright,” Anakin murmured in her ear. “I’ve got you. Just try to relax.”
“I…can’t.” Her voice cracked with pain.
“You can, young one.” That was Obi-Wan. “A little at a time.” He laid a hand on her forehead. “Breathe in slowly.”
She did. It was strangely manageable with his aid. Her chest remained tight, but oxygen trickled its way into her lungs with each careful breath. Her Master and Obi-Wan hovered close to her in the Force, stirring the air currents around them as they did what they could to ease her pain and take her burdens upon themselves. Wrapped in their closeness like a warm blanket, Ahsoka allowed herself to sink into the first deep sleep she had achieved all night.
She found her the worst of her agonies faded away when she rose under the light of morning, but returned with a vengeance whenever she made any attempt to lie down and rest. She spent the following nights propped against a fallen tree, or else leaning against her Master’s side for support, and even so she often woke choking on empty air, or on something that tasted disturbingly like blood.
She desperately hoped Rex would find them soon.
One night, when her Master, and usual source of support, had gone in search of food and remained away long after the sun had set, she leaned against Obi-Wan instead. He wrapped a comforting arm around her, but the rattle she heard in his lungs as she pressed closer to his chest brought her no comfort at all.
She hoped Rex would find them very soon.
Anakin dropped what he was doing when he heard the whine of approaching speeders. The thick, vine-tangled canopy blocked the sky from view, but it could not block out the bright glimpse of hope afforded by the sound. It might, however, succeed in extinguishing that hope, if whoever was on the speeders passed obliviously on by. And that was something he could not afford to let happen
Anakin clipped his lightsaber to his belt and began to climb.
The uppermost branches of the forest were grown together in a tangled, impenetrable mat of vegetation, but in his haste even this obstacle caused him only a few seconds of delay. He hacked away at the barrier with his lightsaber and then raised the blade triumphantly above his head. A wash of sickly sunlight spilled down on his upturned face as he clambered into the open.
“General!”
He was immediately flanked by speeder bikes, one on each side of him. “Rex! Boy am I glad to see you.” Anakin swayed suddenly. The Force convulsed, and his muscles seized along with it. Pain, pain, and a deep, rolling dread uncoiling in his stomach.
“General?”
Hands clasped his elbows, holding him upright. His vision cleared. “I’m alright,” he gasped. “But Obi-Wan and Ahsoka aren’t. We have to hurry.” He accepted Rex’s proffered arm and pulled himself onto the back of his captain’s speeder bike. “Let’s go.”
The pain in the Force stretched in front of them like a trail of blood, easy to follow to its source, but they pulled up short as they reached the place where Anakin had left Obi-Wan and Ahsoka.
Rex shook his head at the tangled mass of trees below his feet. “There’s no way we can get through this canopy. We’ll have to go around and find an opening.”
“We don’t have time for that!” Anakin ground his teeth. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka needed help now. He knew it. The Force was screaming it in his ears. A few wasted moments could cost far more than he was willing to lose. Rex’s requests for further orders faded into the background, drowned out by the sounds of his blood pounding in his head. He knew what must be done.
Anakin raised his arms, shut his eyes, and sank deep into the Force. He drew its strength into himself, gathering more and more of it until his eyes burned and he felt his skull would burst—and then with a sudden exhalation released it all at once in a tightly controlled supernova of power.
It spread out from his fingertips like a tidal wave. The bike swayed. All around him, trees and branches began to crack and fall outwards. The forest shook with the thunderous impacts of each as it met the ground, one and then another and another. When Anakin opened his eyes, Rex’s eyes were almost as wide as the clearing that had opened beneath them. “There’s your opening,” Anakin said. “Go!”
They went.
The clone medics swarmed around Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, forming such a tight mass that for a while Anakin lost sight of his Jedi companions entirely. Although he could not observe the clones’ efforts directly, they seemed to be succeeding. Fear and pain receded in the Force, replaced by the reassurance of rescue and the anxious hum of a well-coordinated medical team. The shadow of imminent death faded under the light spilled in through the newly created clearing.
Once Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were stabilized, a few of the medics turned their attention on Anakin. He tried to wave them off, insisting that he was perfectly well, but their instruments and medical expertise told them otherwise, and he was soon taken hostage. Kix ordered him onto a stretcher.
“I can walk!” he argued. “I’ve been walking around just fine ever since we crashed.”
“That would explain how these bone fragments got to where they are,” said Kix, without looking up from his scanner. “You’ve done a number on this ankle, General. We’ll have to operate once we get you back to the ship.”
“Is that really necessary?” Anakin complained.
“Of course not,” came the dry reply. “If you don’t want to use the ankle anymore, we could always cut it off right here and be done with it. I’m sure your lightsaber would do the trick.”
Anakin folded his arms across his chest, but he shut his mouth.
The ensuing ride back to the site where the clones had made their temporary base was long and dull, particularly for someone who could do nothing but lie on a stretcher and stare up at the clouds whizzing overhead. Anakin spent most of the journey peppering his accompanying medic with questions about Ahsoka and Obi-Wan. What was their condition? Were there enough supplies to treat them onboard the surviving ship? Were they going to be alright?
The medic, a recent transfer to the 501st whom Kix had introduced as Stitch—“General Skywalker, meet Stitch, your new attendant medic. Stitch, meet General Skywalker, your new worst patient”—obligingly filled him in. Commander Tano’s and General Kenobi’s conditions were serious, he believed, although exactly how serious had yet to be determined. Tano had fluid buildup in her lungs and burns on her skin as a result of exposure to toxic gases onboard the damaged tanker, as well as extensive bruising from the crash landing on the planet’s surface. Kenobi had the same, in addition to several concussions and a deep laceration on the side of his head, which was beginning to show signs of infection.
Anakin got a glimpse of them, just once, as the speeder bikes slowed to a halt at the edge of the base. Both Jedi lay perfectly still on their stretchers, pale faces obscured behind oxygen masks that fogged dimly with their too-faint breaths. Sensing a lapse in his attendant’s attention, Anakin saw his chance and took it, ignoring the pain in his ankle as he dropped to his feet and hurried forwards.
Ahsoka did not move when he said her name, but her eyes fluttered slightly as he clasped her hand. Her skin remained unnaturally cool to the touch. Skyguy? Her lips formed the word slowly, painstakingly.
“Hang in there, Snips,” he told her. “They’re going to take good care of you. I’ll come see you as soon as I can.”
“General Skywalker!” His time was up. He gave her hand a quick squeeze and fled back to his stretcher, perching innocently on the side of it as Stitch ran over to berate him.
He did not see either Obi-Wan or Ahsoka again for some time. Swept away on a current of hasty operations and drugs that made him woozy and the Force slippery, Anakin lost track of time and place and everything in between. Still, even through the haze of post-operative confusion, he clung tightly to the thought of what had befallen his Padawan and his Master—and of what might still befall.
Fear for them, fear beyond the compassionate concern of a Jedi, writhing, hungry fear that took root in his mind and spread through his blood to his heart, sent his cardiac monitor into a frenzy of beeping that summoned several clones to his aid. A renewed dose of sedatives took away the edge of some of the fears that he could not, would not release, but he saw Obi-Wan and Ahsoka even as he closed his eyes. How quiet they were. How still, how pale, how cold. How deathlike. He hated it.
Master! he called out, feeling strangely small and lost, like a frightened Padawan crying for help.
Help came. It was quiet, so subtle that he wasn’t entirely sure that it was real. But it came. I am here, Padawan. The voice was Obi-Wan’s. He clung to it. Quiet your mind, Anakin. Release your fears. Sleep. Anakin did as his Master asked of him, relinquishing the last of the anxious threads that tethered him to consciousness and falling into peaceful oblivion.
Their ship must have departed from the planet sometime during his unconsciousness, because when he awoke, the planet and its makeshift base were gone, and the blue fire of hyperspace was rushing by outside the viewport. His ankle remained swathed in the sticky cold of bacta wraps, but it no longer throbbed with persistent pain. He tested it out. It bore his weight easily enough, and soon carried him out of his recovery room and into the medbay at large.
The first thing he noted was that the space was much too small to accommodate all of the cots which had been crammed into it, much less the men that occupied them. After all, this ship had only been intended as one escort of many for the much larger tanker they were supposed to be accompanying to Felucia. Now it held the entirety of the surviving troops, a sizeable number of whom had received injuries during the hasty evacuation of the tanker. Anakin and his squadron had made quick work of the pirates responsible for the attack, but it hadn’t been enough to save the tanker, or to reduce the number of clones now relegated to this crowded medbay. Kix would certainly have his hands full.
“Anything I can help you with, sir?” A passing medic stopped, and gave him a questioning glance.
“No, I—sorry.” Broken suddenly out of his thoughts, Anakin stumbled over his words. “I was just looking.”
“Who for, sir?”
He hadn’t realized there was an answer to that question, but it came out of his mouth without a second thought. “My Padawan. Ahsoka Tano.”
“This way, sir.”
Ahsoka seemed almost as restless as he had been. Her fingers twitched, curling around the slender wires that still fed oxygen into her nose. He watched her eyes flick rapidly beneath their lids, and, through the bond they shared as Master and apprentice, he saw flashes of what it was those eyes were watching: the walls of a narrow corridor, crumpling in around her. The empty black pit of a turbolift shaft. Tongues of flame shrieking along the flanks of a fighter as it plummeted through the moon’s atmosphere.
He reached out to take the small, quivering hand that lay against the sheets.
“Master?” Her eyes tried to open, and failed. Her confusion formed dizzying eddies in the Force.
“I’m here, Ahsoka,” he said. “It’s alright.”
“Master, we were—“
“I know. It’s alright. You’re safe now. We’re all safe.”
She shuddered. The image of an empty hangar flashed across their bond. “Master…”
“I’m here,” he assured her, and thought of his own fear, his own plaintive cries for help that he had set adrift in the Force not long before; cries that had come back with an answer. He thought of Obi-Wan.
“Quiet your mind, Ahsoka,” he murmured, echoing a familiar voice of wisdom. “Release your fears. Sleep.” He nudged her gently with the Force to assist her in following the last instruction. She released a long, slow breath, sending the chilling memories floating away on the stream of air, and sank back against the pillow. Her small hand closed tightly around his as she slipped off to sleep.
Obi-Wan was glad to be free of the bacta tank, even if he still remained confined to the medical ward, forbidden from so much as lifting a datapad. Rex would handle the mission report, with assistance from General Skywalker when he was recovered. Kix had assured him of that much. Still, perhaps the experienced medic felt the assurance was insufficient to keep him out of trouble entirely, and Obi-Wan found himself being escorted to the place where he was to remain for observation by Kix and his new assistant, Stitch.
However, despite the haste he must inevitably feel to finish this brief errand and get back to his other patients, Kix paused and sighed as they entered the crowded medbay. He turned to Stitch. “I thought we had a few spare cots still lying around,” he said.
“We did,” Stitch said, “but we’ve also had a few more men come in to take them. Sounds like it took some of them a little while longer than the others to realize they weren’t feeling so hot after breathing in that nasty stuff on the tanker.”
“Well, I won’t have the General sleeping on the floor here. Are any of the men fit to return to the barracks?”
“I don’t know about any of the troopers, but General Skywalker is pretty well recovered. He’s only here to keep Commander Tano company.”
Kix nodded. “Better tell him to move along, then. As much as I don’t like it, we don’t have room to spare for company at the moment.” He put a hand on Stitch’s shoulder. “But be…tactful,” he cautioned. “His Padawan was badly injured, and he may not take kindly to being told he has to leave her.”
Stitch gave a solemn nod, and took a slightly reluctant step in the direction of Anakin’s section of the medbay, but Obi-Wan held up a hand. “Let me handle it,” he said. “There are others here far more deserving of your attention. I can speak to Anakin myself.”
“Very well, General. I’ll stop in to check on you after I’ve made my rounds.”
Obi-Wan softly approached the cots Anakin and Ahsoka had pushed together. Anakin had slung a protective arm over his Padawan’s shoulders, and she had huddled against her Master’s chest. After several long nights spent in fear of eternal separation, closeness had become the greatest form of comfort.
Anakin gave a half-mumbled reply as he felt a hand settle on his shoulder, and then his eyes snapped open when he saw who it belonged to. “Master!” he said, turning his head first towards Obi-Wan, then towards Ahsoka, then back to Obi-Wan. “I—Ahsoka had a nightmare. She—”
Obi-Wan shook his head, offering a faint smile as he leaned more heavily on his former Padawan’s shoulder. His knees were growing rapidly weaker. “I haven’t come to lecture you, Anakin,” he said. “I’ve come to tell you to move over.”
“I—what?”
“Kix is determined to keep me here overnight, and I would very much prefer not to take a cot from someone who needs it more. Move over.”
“Oh. Right. Here, let me…” Anakin shuffled to one side, careful not to disturb the still-sleeping Ahsoka. Obi-Wan settled himself down in the small space that opened beside his former apprentice, and gladly shut his already-drooping eyes. After spending the previous night drifting in a bacta tank, having someplace solid to lay his head felt like an enormous luxury, even if it was only a fraction of a medical cot. Too tired to say another word, he gladly surrendered himself to the embrace of sleep—and to the embrace of his old Padawan, who had slipped an arm around him and was already snoring contentedly into his shoulder.
“Well,” said Stitch, coming to stand next to Kix beside the sleeping Jedi, “this certainly is a first.”
Kix looked at him in mild surprise. “For you, maybe,” he said, in the gently ribbing tone usually reserved for rookies. “The men in your last team never did this after a rough go of it?”
“Oh, you bet they did,” Stitch replied. “I’ve seen ‘em pass out on the floor in a heap next to a medbed when it’s got someone they’re close to in it. But that’s different, isn’t it? I mean, we’re all brothers. The only family we’ve got. But Jedi? As far as I know, most of them don’t even have family.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Stitch,” Kix said, smiling down at the sight of General Kenobi and Commander Tano nestled securely in General Skywalker’s arms. “I wouldn’t be too sure.”