fools, anakin skywalker (ongoing)

thirty-three.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

hello there :)

ANAKIN WATCHED ARTIE STORM ONTO THE SHIP WITHOUT A GLANCE BEHIND HER, SEVERAL YARDS AHEAD OF HIM AND AHSOKA. THEY'D BURST FREE FROM THE BAZAAR'S CONFINES, but Artie benefited from her head start. Anakin swore under his breath and broke into a run. Ahsoka did the same, but his legs were longer and carried him farther.

"Get onboard," he called over his shoulder. "Stay in the hull. I'll talk to her."

"Master, we'll lose Hardeen if we don't get moving," Ahsoka warned.

"I know," Anakin fired back. He felt slightly panicked and couldn't completely wrap his head around the breadth of his problems, as they had certainly never seemed so dire. Their bad luck was unrelenting. He hated to imagine what had happened back in the bar, but the pit in his stomach and Artie's thrumming anguish he could feel in his blood told him it was something bad.

Anakin leaped up the cruiser's ramp and found the door to the cockpit shut, but he'd expected as much. Ahsoka joined him and smashed the button to close the ship's belly and soon they were sealed away from the horror that was Nal Hutta. Internally, Anakin scourged himself for letting Artie step foot on the planet — he had known something would go wrong.

He cast Ahsoka a look, then approached the cockpit door. It slid open and he stepped inside.

Artie sat in the pilot's seat with her head in her hand. Her braid fell limply over her shoulder and he could see she was shaking; she seemed shriveled, weakened. He stepped closer, and Artie flinched in surprise and sat up straight.

"Sorry," she murmured, pushing pieces of hair away from her face and wiping her eyes.

"Sorry?" he repeated. It shocked him. "Artie, what — what happened? Why are you apologizing?"

"I, um." Her voice came out a hoarse croak. She fiddled with the control panel but wouldn't fire the ship's engine. "I don't think we have time to talk about it. We need to go."

"Artie, you're bleeding. Let me see your hand." He came to kneel before her. He took her hand in his own and turned it over. He'd seen enough wounds in his life to be desensitized to most, but it did not mean the state of Artie's fingers and palm did not alarm him. The flesh was ripped into flayed pieces, a mash of tissue and blood. Shards of glass stuck out of the wound, which dripped red down her arm and soaked her sleeve. "Artemis . . . "

"Don't," she whispered. Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Shh," he said. "Hang on. I'll take care of it. That glass has got to come out." He made her spread her fingers slightly further. She let out a small, pained cry, but clamped her other hand over her mouth and turned away. Anakin lifted his hand and took in a deep breath. He felt the Force move in him and show him in a gentle image where the shards were buried in Artie's hand. None too deep, which relieved him. Another deep breath. He narrowed his focus on one shard and lifted it from her flesh. He let it drop to the floor to be swept aside by someone's boot later.

"I did this for Obi-Wan once," Anakin remembered aloud as he lifted another shard. That screaming grief still raged inside him, but he had to hold it back for now. It helped, he found, to siphon it out with small recollections of his former Master. "It was bad. Eight pieces of transparisteel lodged in his chest — from that assault on Kothlis Grievous launched. Missed his heart by an inch, his spine by half. It was kind of a miracle . . . "