anakin (anakin) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-03-22 18:59:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log, ahsoka tano, anakin skywalker |
Log: Anakin & Ahsoka
Who: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano
When: BACKDATED to March 6
Where: Anakin’s apartment
What: Telling his presh apprentice about that whole Vader thing, only to find out she already knew. SURPRISE.
Rating: F for Feels
This moment had been waiting for them since Ahsoka’s arrival. After her meeting with Master Obi-Wan the disturbance in the force, the disturbance in her Master made more sense than Ahsoka would have liked. And in the following days Ahsoka had spent much of her time in deep meditation, trying to find an answer for the question that was the fall of the man she put more faith in than anyone else. But the Force did not hold all the answers and in this it held nothing but more questions for her to try and sort her way through. Her own identity was in crisis after the temple and now she had her master’s to contend with as well. But the man who finally had called her to speak was not the man who would help bring about the Empire. The man whose door Ahsoka knocked on was Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight and servant of the Republic. He was a Jedi who had taught her the ways of the force that she never would have imagined with another master. The man on the other side of the door was the only reason she was still alive to have this conversation with him. And so Ahsoka waited after knocking, patient as she had promised she would be. Days passed, blurred one into the other, but no passage of time wiped clean the truth or made the prospect of revealing it to his padawan any less petrifying; and Anakin Skywalker was petrified. He had been chiseled to stone, frozen in the chill of his own thoughts, lost in some swarm of mounting guilt and shame. Dipping into the Force and locking his mind on projects smoothed sharp edges in his mind, just as the reassuring words of his namesake had spread like some balm, but they could not wash out the shadows falling thick in his mind, couldn't stamp out the fire burning hot in his chest. Resistant though he was, the vast informational pull of this dimension's 'internet' had drawn him, and however ill it made him to imagine those terrible tales of his future splattered for the world to see at their leisure, no mention had been made of Ahsoka's fate in all of this. He supposed she must have escaped the Empire's fall, with no ties to the Order linking her to the devastations that befell the Jedi at his own hands -- at Darth Vader's hands, for it was hard to find himself in that void black mask -- but after her departure, there was little beyond speculation. Maybe no news was good news. When the knock came, Anakin tried to calm his nerves, tried to seek some peace in the warm embrace of the Force, but though his family had slammed no rejections, fear lingered still, tangled in the shame pressing heavy. Ahsoka cared for him as he cared for her, lives held in each other's hands with a trust that bridged beyond the battlefield and beyond the detached sort of bonds a master and apprentice were mention to forge -- yet he wondered if she could see past this. His padawan had always been a little too much like him, impulsive, willing to stretch the rules, prone to the emotional bursts they were meant to leave behind, passionately devoted to what was right... but Anakin's future left a sickness roiling in his stomach. He hated himself when he imagined that looming black figure cutting down Jedi, imagined his children raised by people other than himself and Padme, imagined -- Padme. He had done more than leave the Jedi Order, more than enact change. He had demolished it. On the other side of the door, he found Ahsoka, as he'd known he would. "Hey Snips." Somehow the nickname just made him sadder. This young woman before him had been a girl when she'd been sent to him on Christophsis, a youngling from the Jedi Temple, but she wasn't little anymore. Anakin was meant to be the mentor, the one guiding her, helping her, teaching her -- yet he was the one to crumble in the end. Opening the door wider, he let her pass through, closing it behind them. “Master.” Ahsoka’s head bobbed slightly in greeting, the smallest hint of a smile just at the sight of Anakin. There was a hesitence to it, but the smile existed all the same. His future, their future, held so much fear, so much pain. But that was not something she should focus on. Instead she needed to give her master the chance to come out of the shadows, to trust her as she trusted him. Even if that trust had done nothing to save him from the fate that was laid out before him. Stepping inside, Ahsoka looked around Anakin’s apartment with interest. The differences from Obi-Wan’s were there, of course. Anakin was not the same sort of jedi as his master, he never had been. Still she would have time to snoop around later. So she turned to face him, hoping the Force would guide her even through its lack of answers. Lord Vader was not standing before her, there was no Sith here. But there was the potential, the seed that could sprout. And if he continued to hide from her, from the world, then Ahsoka had her own fears for that seed. Subtle though it was, the bare shadow of her smile was a treasure for all its hesitancies; Anakin wished he didn't have to dispel the trusting warmth billowing in her eyes, but he couldn't lie about this, not here. Even if he were to hide his fate as he'd hidden his marriage, she would only learn from someone else... or look it up in some public archive on their 'internet'. Though he had not yet 'googled' the explicit details of his own coming darkness, Anakin had researched Ahsoka's fate, and there was nothing standing between her and whatever information she sought. (If Obi-Wan were to hold something back from him and there was a way to find out what it was, Anakin wouldn't hesitate to seek it; and Ahsoka was her master's padawan.) Such a truth made him want to hide as much as reveal, her belief hurting as much as it comforted. Anakin wanted to shine in her eyes, to be someone she could believe in when every Jedi let her down, but what did his lessons mean if he ultimately fell to the darkness he tried so hard to protect her from? For one spiraling second, he thought about redirecting the coming subject, skirting and diverting... ...but miserable though it was, she deserved to know. She deserved to hear it from him. "Come sit with me." Gesturing across from himself, Anakin settled in a chair -- the same chair he'd sat in when Luke had broken the news. Anxious prickles crept silent, soon kept at bay with a calming breath, slow and reaching. The Force welcomed him still, gentle tendrils that warmed the icy fear, cooled the burning guilt, smoothed the sharp edges of his anger -- and he felt a little calmer. Within his mind, Anakin stood at the ledge -- and on the winds of trust, took his plunge. "The night you arrived, you said I was killed by a Sith at the Temple." In his chest, a painful twist writhed. (If only he had been. It would be better than his reality.) "Part of me wanted to believe that could be true. I never would have thought death at the hands of a Sith could be a better alternative, but..." Tensely he forced himself to meet her eyes. "It seems this Kanan had his details muddled." There was no escaping the truth. Ahsoka knew that, and had no fears of facing it from Anakin. The confusion of how had not been settled, the Force held no answers for her as she had sat in meditation. And she was not sure it could have had answers. So instead she followed her master a finale time, taking a seat across from him quietly and doing her best to betray no emotion on her face. The Force was in reach, a comfort even if it housed no solution to this problem that would be their future. Part of her wanted to stop him, to tell him she already knew and there was no reason to continue. The pain of the knowledge Obi-Wan had given her was still so fresh, so new, that anger was a haunting shadow on her heart. But Ahsoka met his eyes as he looked to him, resisting the urge to reach out to him to provide some kind of connection. This was something she needed to hear from his own lips, to know that it was true and that he trusted her with the knowledge of knowing his eventual descent into darkness. So Ahsoka stayed in silence, watching her master and reaching for the calm that could come from the force. This man was not the one driven mad by rage, this was still the man who had believed in her. For now she would believe in him. Tension built in Anakin's head like some cluster of strings pulled taut, and though the silence was thick, heavy, suffocating, he willed himself to continue. "Recently, I asked Luke to tell me why I have descendants who are Jedi, when the Order forbids having a family... I assumed I must have left after the war and trained them myself, but I had it even more wrong than Kanan." A flash of pain crinkled little contortions in his expression, but with hands clasping tight like some grip to an anchor, he pushed forward, "The Order doesn't forbid it because the Jedi Order ceased to exist, and it's my fault." His eyes dropped then, frame stiffening. "The Chancellor was the Sith we were looking for all along. Palpatine, of all people... I..." Shame clogged his throat, and he wanted to stop, to leave it implied in his words, but if he lost his momentum, the words might not come again. "I leave the Order, but it's to join him. He claims to know how to keep people from dying...to keep Padme from dying." Anger buzzed at the back of his mind -- anger at the lie, and anger at himself, feeling even now the overwhelming temptation in such a claim. "And it seems I believe him. It's my fault the Empire rises under a Sith. It's my fault the Jedi are slaughtered." Though he wanted to stop, he couldn't seem to stay the tumbling words as they passed his lips. "It's my fault my children grow up separate and hidden. It's my fault Padme dies -- after all of that, she still dies." Like air released from a pressurized chamber, the words were purged, and Anakin Skywalker fell silent, letting his face bury in his hands, propped with the heels digging firm against his eyes. Embarrassed, foolish, ashamed, guilty -- his emotions tangled themselves in a knotted mass, forfeiting whatever semblance of masterly poise he had regained for a moment, and internally he kicked himself. When he dropped his hands to a clasp again, his eyes didn't quite lift all the way. In his mind’s eye, he thought of Obi-Wan, collected and calm -- (how was he meant to find peace when those horrors were his fault, in years to come?) -- yet he breathed deep, grasped at the soft feathery tendrils of peace in the Force. I can be better than that. I can master this. When his eyes met hers again, he waited, eyes flickering with quiet uncertainty and an extension of the trust he hoped she could still have in him. It was the job of the padawan to protect her Jedi Master. And Ahsoka had failed. She had known that from the moment that Obi-Wan had shattered her illusion of a hero’s death that her master had suffered. Here Anakin Skywalker was before her, laying every weakness out in front of her and how he would fall, how his fall would doom the galaxy to pain and suffering and the machinations of the dark side in a way that neither of them had ever imagined. She had left his side. When he fell into his own hands Ahsoka’s heart ached to reach out to him, to cross over to Anakin and pull him close. As if somehow here she could protect him from the future they both knew was coming and couldn’t be stopped but Ahsoka knew that was a fools errand. There was no saving Anakin, not by her hand. No one would say it was her fault, she was simply his padawan. But anyone who knew them would know the guilt in Ahsoka’s heart. His fall was on his own choices, but the attachment between them was another straw that had weighed down upon him. So Ahsoka held back, waiting for Anakin’s head to raise up and meet her eyes. And her heart broke as she looked back, holding her own tears at bay. “I know.” she said softly. Subtly Anakin's brow lifted, the pain in his eyes flickering with a dawning realization. "You know," he echoed -- more a statement that a question -- as Ahsoka's words took form and settled like ash after a blast, possessing of their scoping implications. That she might discover the future on her own was not a true surprise, with all the opportunities and accessibility surrounding the records of their lives, but delivery could come in many ways. To think of her hearing it from someone else or reading it on this world's 'internet' left him uncomfortable, as calling forth the confession had been troubling enough, like a thousand little hooks catching in his throat. Yet for all the struggle, it was her sadness he felt, not anger, and with a somber dash of his own, Anakin's brow furrowed again. "For how long?" This honesty had taken so much from him. There had been a true worry for Ahsoka that Anakin might attempt to hide it, to pretend and let the knowledge fester in his heart. With the dark side looming over him to do something like that would only endanger him further to temptation. Secrets had been part of his undoing and Ahsoka had no wish to further add to them. “A few days.” She answered, keeping still as she did. Focus and setting attachment momentarily aside so that she could achieve it had been one of Anakin’s lessons to her. For all his failings, he had always served Ahsoka well. And the man who gave her that knowledge, the man before her now, hopefully had lived on in their galaxy through her actions. “I’ve spent most of them in meditation, waiting for you to speak with me.” Anakin nodded then, every uncomfortable prickle of self-awareness creeping over him. Though his padawan had not known the truth of it for long, there was weight in knowing she had been waiting for his approach, this heavy reality standing subtle as a restless bantha between them, but his call was met with a calm acceptance that spoke of her maturity, and for that, he felt a bittersweet rush of pride. However many mistakes he had made -- in his past, and in the future to come -- Anakin knew he could be proud of the person Ahsoka had become, and the support in her manner was the final balm he had needed in this strange, time-mixed world. Unbearable as the fear of her rejection might have been, the acceptance was more bolstering still, because however hurtful her departure from the Order had been, he felt more than ever the kindred understanding between them, the sense that Ahsoka Tano truly got him in a way so many others failed to grasp, and however much he wished she hadn't needed to know how far he was destined to fall, no judgement peered back. "Part of me kept hoping to discover it was a misunderstanding," he admitted after a moment, shaking his head as his brow furrowed again. Though Anakin knew he wasn't the Jedi he should be, he had always thought he could resist the dark side's beckon call, that he knew better than to slip over that thin line he walked...that his foundation was firm under his feet. "I know I let everyone down, but I'm not going to let it happen here." “It won’t happen here.” Ahsoka’s voice was firm as she watched Anakin. There was no doubt in her. With the knowledge of the future at hand they knew just how far Anakin would fall, how far he could fall. And if that happened here, for all their heroes and powers was this world truly ready for what the chosen one could do once he had embraced the ways of the Sith? This world was off balance simply from their arrival and they all knew it. Ahsoka took a deep breath and focused in on her master. She wanted to comfort, she truly did. But this world and its people were more important and they both knew it. While she had left the order she had never and would never stop believing in the need for people like her to protect the galaxy, no matter which galaxy she ended up in. “If you fall, I’ll stop you. As will Obi-Wan and the rest.” Ahsoka’s face tightened in the agony of the thought. Did she face her master in her own future? No one seemed to know her own fate, perhaps it was at the hands of this very man as she tried to stop him. “So if you are not prepared to cut me down, then you won’t fall.” Tension prickled like a needling wave, but with resolution lining the clench of his jaw, Anakin nodded, holding her eyes. The truth of it stung, and to imagine crossing lightsabers with Ahsoka -- with Obi-Wan, his children, grandchildren, this new family he had only just begun to embrace -- was akin to gouging out some part of him, cutting away that which was most precious to him, and he couldn't. Wouldn't. Won't. However tight the clenching hold of his still unraveling future, Anakin held stubborn to a conviction burning hot and bright in his chest. Whatever happened at home, he was in control of his present, a director of his own destiny. No Palpatine, no Jedi Order... This place was different. His experiences, he could make them different too, and though the temperamental nature of this Tesseract niggled at him -- snatching as swift as it gave -- a unique opportunity was laid out before him. It was not so perfect as he would like, but however he might long to have Padme at his side to navigate this strange place, time and the Tesseract would tell. A dull ache lingered still, but each day was a step forward, and he would not slide again. |