Blurred Sides (COMPLETE)

7.14.2

Eventually, reluctantly, Anakin held her away from him, but just enough so that he could see her as she looked for the first time. This was when he saw how sick she looked, how weak she had become. He also saw the bandage, now, which was the ultimate proof the Jedi needed. She was really was the Inquisitor. Anakin took all of this in before picking her up, carefully. "Come on, let's get you resting."

"You know I can walk, right?" she asked him, grunting as her stomach shifted and needles of red hot pain spread again.

"I know you can," Anakin responded lowly and set her down gently on the couch in her apartment. Again, Ahsoka grunted, despite her desperate efforts to mask the pain.

Anakin sat down next to her and studied her. Ahsoka leaned back on the cushions and rested a hand over the stain on the bandage before turning to him. When she saw that he was staring at her stomach, she pulled her hand away. "It's just a flesh wound, I'll be fine." She reassured him.

Anakin looked down, leaned his elbows on his knees, and shook his head. "This is my fault. I did this."

"How?" Ahsoka asked, and he glanced at her, not meeting her eyes. "This was my choice, not yours. My fault, not yours."

"I should have..." he fell short, not really sure what he should have done, but sure that there was something. "I should have-"

"There was nothing you could have done," she said. "Not with the Council. You did everything you should have done."

"I could have killed you," he said aloud, admitting it to himself and to her. "I almost did."

Ahsoka shook her head slowly. "It was my fault I was there in the first place. I killed the Chancellor. You were supposed to come after me."

Anakin clenched his fist, furious that she was right. Everything about this was wrong. He was supposed to do what he did, and he hated that he couldn't do anything to change it.

He looked at her finally, meeting her eyes, and all he could see was sorrow. Regret. He didn't know how he looked, but Anakin felt like a monster. He didn't realize that Ahsoka felt the same way. After a long silence, he asked her, "How did this happen to you?"

Ahsoka's face fell, and Anakin realized that it was far worse than he knew.

She breathed deeply, wincing as her burn pained her again, but fought the urge to cover it and started to speak. Her voice was a little shaky, but she began to tell him. "The night after I...I left, I was walking in the Lower Levels. Dooku trapped me, and, as he put it, 'forcibly escorted' me to Sideous." She made air quotes as she said 'forcibly escorted'.

Anakin sat upright and listened. As her story continued, his stomach dropped even further, but he forced himself to accept that this was true, that this had happened to his apprentice and that he couldn't change it.

"He told me about his plan to kill the Jedi and said I had two options. I could join and help him, or I would die. I didn't see a choice. I knew if I refused to help, no one could warn you in time. No one would know until it was too late. I chose to help him.

"They couldn't make me into a Sith, since there were already two, so I called myself an Inquisitor. I tried to convince Sideous that I wanted to make a whole group of Inquisitors, so it would like I meant it."

"Did he believe you?"

"I don't think so. I don't think he ever believed that I was really loyal to him."

"So why did he trust you so much, then?"

"Because if I let him down, he would-," she paused, and dropped her gaze. "He could kill me."