Give Me Love

chapter fifty six

You hadn't forgotten about your whole... situation. Neither did Anakin.

He spent most days running around Coruscant, doing a number of things. Sometimes it was holing up in the library to look for a way to keep you alive, researching prophecies and stolen lives and force signatures. Other times it was combing the streets, searching for Ahsoka, or at least gaining insight in to where she may have gone. And between all this, he was still carrying out the Council's duties. No matter how much he wanted to tear the whole room apart, he needed to become a Master to gain access to the holocrons they kept locked up in the library. That, he told you, would hold the answer to saving you.

You helped look, too, but you also had to focus on being the pillar of Anakin's strength. When he came back every night bloodless and stumbling, you forced him to drink water and eat something and get some rest. And when he couldn't sleep, you stayed up with him and told him that Ashoka was okay out there, and you would find her someday, and you could all be together again. He held you tighter when you said that, and you knew it was because he still believed you were going to die.

You could both feel the seconds ticking down.

The end came when Anakin was informed that the Chancellor had been kidnapped. He and Obi-Wan were sent to rescue him. The look on his face when he was told yet another one of the people he loved was gone–

You felt sorry for whoever was on that Separatist ship.

The mission was far too important and dangerous for you to go on, this time. It shouldn't take a long time, either. Anakin left you behind, promising to be back in only a couple of days, and so you were left alone with your thoughts. The only way to get rid of them was to go back to working in the medbay.

Everything felt different now. It was hard to hold your head up and keep your eyes open. Your hands felt like cement blocks. You could never get warm. It was almost like whatever was keeping you alive was depleting. No... not depleting. Morphing. Into something cold and careless and... dark.

Patching up injured soldiers did not bring you joy anymore. And every time you saw a Jedi walk into the medbay, or brush past you in the halls, or fly overhead in a fighter jet, you felt hatred. Pure, unbridled hatred.

It scared you. They didn't feel like your feelings. But you couldn't stop it.

News soon came that Anakin and Obi-Wan had rescued the Chancellor and were returning to Coruscant. It had only taken a few days, like Anakin had promised. On the way back, however, General Grievous's location had been scouted and Obi-Wan was sent to kill him. With the death of Count Dooku at Anakin's hands, and the soon death of General Grevious... the war was basically won.

Not for Anakin. Not for you.

Ahsoka was still gone, and the Jedi were still on the front lines of a war that had taken more lives than saved. Anakin couldn't get passed it. Or the fact that he was still forced to spy on the Chancellor even after saving him, or that he could feel you slipping away and could do nothing to stop it, or that the Council would still not make him a Master. After everything he had done for them.

You think all of this was the reason you were not upset when Anakin left and did not come back for a whole day. When you felt that shift in the air, that dark, dreadful shift. When every single Jedi in the temple suddenly stopped, looked up at the air like it tasted sour, and turned pale.

Mace Windu was the one you stopped to ask what was happening.

He said Anakin had gone to the dark side.

You were not surprised. You were not even upset. You felt... nothing. Except anger, because you did not know where he went and he had promised to take you with him.

Obi-Wan pretended not to notice when you snuck onto his ship. He took off to Mustafar, where reports of Anakin were seen, and was tasked with stopping him. Whatever it took.

You knew exactly what that meant.

And on the flight over, Obi-Wan looked at you with years of sorrow and disbelief in his eyes.

"Did you know? That Anakin was going to turn? That he was... going to the dark side?"

"I think everyone knew."

And no one did anything to stop it. Not him, or you, or the Council. You were all fools.