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Ahsoka came to, her head aching and her mouth chalky with dust from the temple's collapse. She rolled over, and a jolt of nausea moved through her. She spit out the dirt on her tongue. Her stomach eased as her head cleared. She wasn't dead, and her limbs weren't bound.
A glance beside her confirmed her initial suspicion. The dark-cloaked bulk lay still. Her senses told her he was alive even before she heard the mechanical wheeze of his respirator. She wasn't dead, and Ana...the Sith Lord she'd fought wasn't dead either. They'd battled with lightsabers, him aiming for her destruction, her for preserving his life and the lives of her friends, and as the temple had gone critical, they'd each reached out against the other with their powers. Apparently this had saved their lives. For now.
There was no change in his breathing but Ahsoka was aware that he had awakened as she watched him. She tensed, hands reaching for her lightsabers. She told herself this was a Sith Lord, that nothing of the Anakin Skywalker she'd known remained inside, that cutting him down now would be a mercy to the memory of her dearest, lost friend, and that if he reached his blade first, he would kill her instead.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, flipping herself over him, her lit sabers in her hands.
Like a huge, invisible hand shoving her, Ahsoka felt herself flung away from him as he rose to his feet. His mask had been damaged, and she thought he was injured, but that didn't stop him from stalking towards her, the black of his mask reflecting the red glow of his raised lightsaber. She refused to flinch away.
As he struck, she watched him fly back away from her, crashing against a fallen wall. With a growl of anger, he attacked her again, but her arms were raised in defense.
Their blades never met, both of them pushed back by the same unseen force. She stared at him at the mad glow in his one revealed eye.
"What have you done?" he demanded, slashing at crumbled stone and cutting through it like paper. He turned on her again, and again he was turned away. He reached out one gauntleted hand, squeezing his fist. She felt a pressure around her throat, but no more than the softest caress rather than the choke he obviously intended.
Her mind raced back to the last moment before the explosion. She'd felt the achingly familiar touch of his powers aimed at her, and she'd stretched her own back towards him, sending the full measure of her last sixteen years of grief and love as a last hope of reaching the man beneath the mask. "You sent a mental attack at me," she said. "I blocked and redirected it, just like my master taught me."
"Your master was a fool." He spat the words with venom, and a self-loathing that struck her harder than any blow.
She doused her blades, heart racing as she clipped them to her belt. She didn't move as he tried to attack her again, and failed again.
"Yes. But I still miss him." She stared at the dark creature across from her, sensing his rage. "Are you done?"
"I will destroy you."
"Not today you won't. Apparently whatever we did means we can't hurt each other, at least for the moment. You can waste your time trying. I'm leaving."
"You always do."
The stab of pain had nothing to do with a physical attack. They could hurt each other, it seemed, as long as they stuck to words. She ignored him, and made her way towards part of the destruction that suggested an exit lay beyond. She got three meters away from him before a different pain struck, a nausea so intense she couldn't breathe. He must have found a way around the block. She had to escape, no matter how much she wanted to stay and find her way through to the man he'd once been. Each step was harder, until Ahsoka fell to her knees.
Behind her, she heard his deep, mechanical moan.
She turned her head to see that Vader had collapsed. His anger was mixed with the same nauseated agony, and she knew without asking he blamed her. She allowed herself to rest for a moment, mild terror growing as she saw him crawling towards her like some monster from a cheap horror holodrama.
As he neared her, the pain relaxed, and the heaving in her guts settled. Ahsoka turned to flee, and again came up against a hard barrier of her own severe pain. She heard him groan again.
The last several minutes replayed in her memory. She'd sworn not to leave him, and she'd felt her certainty in her bones, even as they'd cast their powers against each other. In hindsight, casting a protection spell while swearing an oath never to leave her former master's side again while standing in the middle of a Sith temple had probably been a bad idea.
"We can't kill each other," she said, thinking out loud. "And we can't leave each other. Not as long as this spell or whatever it is lingers." This was correct. She knew it instinctively. "We're stuck together."
"Then I will order another to kill you."
"I don't think you can. I think that if one of us winds up getting killed right now, the other one will end up dead too. Tell me you can't sense the same thing."
He didn't reply.
Ahsoka approached him slowly, then held out her hand. "Come on." Vader ignored her and got to his feet without assistance. She began walking towards the ruined guts of the temple.
"Where are you going?"
"To find out what happened. Maybe there's a scroll or something."
"The information would be within the holocron. The boy took it."
She hadn't been paying attention, too busy with fighting Vader to see what Ezra had been doing. "There might be something else left."
"No." He remained where he was, and if he flinched under his mask as she stepped to the limit of their invisible tether, he didn't show it. "This is old magic. The Jedi knew of it."
"What is?" She came closer again. "Has this happened before?"
"Unwitting bonds between two powerful users of the Force were known to the Jedi Council." His tone was regulated, and something in the modulation made him always sound irritated. Nevertheless, he also managed to sound uncomfortable.
"What happened?"
"It is irrelevant."
She gestured between them. "It seems pretty relevant to me. How long will we be trapped like this?"
He didn't look at her, instead fixing his gaze on a crumbled carving at his feet. "The duration varied. It could fade within an hour."
He was holding something back. Whoever and whatever he'd become, Anakin had never been able to keep things from her. She'd known his secrets, even the secrets he'd thought were carefully hidden. "And if it doesn't?"
Vader folded his arms, and glared at Ahsoka with his own revealed, yellow eye. "In some situations, the effect was permanent."
A laugh colored with hysteria bubbled out of her. "You're kidding."
The eye didn't blink, and she felt another wave of anger from him. "A permanent link was grounds for expulsion from the Order. Jedi were forbidden to marry. A lifelong tether to another, no matter how it came to be, was considered no different. I believe the fools considered it a kindness."
"What?" She shook her head. "I don't believe you."
"Your belief is inconsequential. The effect is unlikely to linger. When it ends, I will kill you."
Fight him to what would surely be the death of one or both, or spend her life bound at his side. "The day gets better and better."
"I offered you mercy before. Swear loyalty to the Empire, help us root out the remaining Jedi, and you will be permitted to live. The Emperor will be your Master as he is mine."
"I already had the best master I could have ever asked for. According to you, he's gone now." She knew a part of her heart would never believe that. If this hulking brute hid Anakin's living body beneath his crackling black shell, and she was certain now that was the case, then a piece of her would never stop believing that under the ashes of Vader's soul, part of Anakin also remained, choking and buried, but real.
"He was weak, and he taught you weakness. Even now, I sense pity in you where there should be only fear and vengeance."
"I'm not afraid of you. I could never be afraid of you." She turned from him and began walking through the rubble to where she hoped she could find the wreckage of the Inquisitors' TIEs. As soon as she reached the end of their invisible line, pain struck her, and she looked back at him. "We can't stay here. I don't know how long Maul was marooned on this planet, but I don't want to have to find out what food and water he survived on." She shook her head. "Do you even eat? What happened to you?"
Without a word, he joined her, then pushed past her, heading in a new direction.
"Where are you going?"
"My ship landed well free of the temple." With little choice, she followed.
"I'll contact my friends," she said, already thinking of particular channels she could use that wouldn't jeopardize Rebellion security.
"Excellent. Show me your Rebel base."
He couldn't slay her, but his crimson blade would cut the entire base to ribbons. She saw it all in one horrific mental flash. "They can find us a safe house somewhere. They could bring us supplies."
"No. We will return to the Empire. I have work to finish. You will remain by my side."
Another terrible image: he couldn't kill her, and he didn't dare allow another to try, but torture from an ITO droid was a different matter. She grimaced, then before she let herself think about it too much, she brought one hand up, and gave a vicious, painful twisting pinch to the exposed skin of the opposite shoulder, hard enough to bruise. She looked at him. The mask, even broken, gave nothing away, but she knew. Whatever link they'd accidentally forged between them, he'd felt the pain as sharply as she had.
"If you take me back, the Emperor will torture me for information, and you'll feel all of it. Are you into pain play?" The last word had slipped out with the first, and hung there uncomfortably between them.
"There are other means of extracting information from you."
"And all of them will rebound on you."
He stared at her, and she could see him turning the problem over inside his mind. He took no more pleasure from being hurt than she did. From what she knew of his terrible Master, the Emperor would not see that as a reason to forestall her interrogation. He would demand loyalty from Vader while not offering any in return.
Their steps took them to his TIE, which was indeed undamaged. Ahsoka glanced at him, then rummaged through the supplies in the back until she found a medikit. A quick bacta spray was enough for her injuries. "Come here." He stood apart from her. "You're wounded. I can feel it." Reluctantly he approached her. "Does the mask come off?"
"No." He was lying.
"I can fix your face better with it off."
Reluctantly, he reached up to the fasteners holding the helmet in place, removing first the dark, shiny plate, then the face mask. His breathing was labored, free of the full face respirator. She felt the sympathetic crush against her own lungs, and knew she had to work quickly. Nevertheless she froze at the sight of his too-pale skin, and the old wounds all over his hairless head. She knew his face, but not like this.
His eyes flashed angrily at her, rejecting the pity he sensed. Ahsoka hurried to her task, cleaning the fresh injury that she had inflicted. "I'm giving you a bacta injection to prevent infection. Don't argue." As soon as she finished, he placed the mask back over his face, and resumed the steady pulse of his regulated breathing as he donned the broken helmet.
"What happened to you?"
"I was attacked by a half-trained Padawan wielding two lightsabers."
She rolled her eyes. "I meant, what happened, Anakin?"
"That name means nothing to me now."
"It means everything to me. What happened to you? Is this what turned you into Vader?"
"I am Vader," he said to her, pointing with a rude finger in her face. "Anakin Skywalker died years ago."
The wounds had a distinctive pattern. "In a fire."
"He was dead before that. The fire cleansed away the last of his weakness." He turned and moved to the comm panel.
"You can't take me back with you. It will be the end of us both. Let me contact my friends."
"No, we will...." He wavered, and the spike of his anger turned to her. "Traitor!" He stepped towards her unsteadily, then collapsed, hanging onto the seat. "When I die, so will you."
"It's a sedative," she said, and when he'd fallen to the floor unconscious, she added, "I'm sorry."
"Let me get this straight," said Hera over the long-range commlink. "You're alive, you need supplies, you can't meet up with any of us in person, and you're married to Darth Vader, the Sith who keeps trying to murder us?" They were speaking voice-only, but Ahsoka could picture the expression on her face. "Do I even want to know how that happened?"
She considered and abandoned the thought of any explanation. If she'd never heard of this particular obscure quirk of the Force back at the Temple, there was no way Kanan had learned of it, either, and no point in asking for his help in fixing it.
"It's been a very long day."
"Are you sure you're not acting under duress right now? I can send an extraction team to get you out."
"Have I burned through all my uses of the phrase 'trust me' yet? Because I need you to trust me now. Drop the supplies at Fort Anaxes." It was her best plan. The Empire knew about the base but would leave it alone due to the creatures inhabiting the planetoid.
"Speaking of evil monsters who've tried to murder us." She paused again, thinking. "But the fyrnocks didn't attack you when you left supplies there for us."
"No. I'm safe from them."
"And Vader?" Hera wasn't concerned for his safety.
She turned to look where she'd lain his sleeping body in the cramped space behind the seat. "I'm as safe as I can be from him. He can't hurt me. He can hurt the rest of you, and he will if he has the chance. Whatever you do, don't let Rex make the drop. You can let him know I'm all right, but you shouldn't tell him where I am in case he gets it into his head to come despite the warning." Because he would. He was her friend, and he would come to rescue her from Vader's clutches, and Vader would strike him down while she watched. "Hera, please."
"I trust you. We'll leave the supplies. Give me a list."
Ahsoka rattled off as short a list as she could justify. Even the short look she'd taken of Anakin's old injuries suggested he needed on-going medical care, but the Rebellion couldn't supply more than the minimum.
"That's not a lot."
"It will be enough for now." She closed her eyes. "You'll want an evacuation plan for the base. I'm not planning on revealing any of our secrets, but I can't guarantee the Empire won't pull them from my mind by force."
"Understood. Ahsoka...." She was offering Ahsoka kindness, but Ahsoka didn't have the space in her heart to accept it, not now. There was too much at stake, and too much she'd already lost.
"How are they?"
"Healing. That'll go better when they hear you're alive. I can't speak for what will happen when I tell them the rest."
"Go light on the rest. I'm still sorting things out."
"Good luck. Let us know what help you need, and we'll be there."
"Thanks." She closed and scrambled the line. She'd sent it using an old channel, and there was no way to track the direction of the signal. Her transmission had been as safe as she could make it, and still she worried she'd revealed too much.
She set the course, intentionally taking multiple jumps to extend out the time. She had to give the supply team time to get in and get gone before their arrival. No one was safe from Vader, except Ahsoka.
As the blue wash of hyperspace surrounded them, she watched him rest, feeling the churning inside his tormented mind. Sedated sleep could trap even the kindest souls in dreadful nightmare. Vader had waded in blood. She could only imagine what images his mind fed him while he slept now, and what horrors he relived.
"What happened to you?" she asked his sleeping form.
They were on the last leg of the trip when Vader stirred. Ahsoka steadied herself. She could sense the bond between them still. His anger towards her rose even as he edged back to consciousness, but he could not attack her.
"A foolish gambit. Once we return to the Empire, I will have you permanently sedated."
"We're not going back to the Empire. We're going to lie low until this wears off." The ship came out of hyperspace outside of the asteroid field. She could only hope she'd delayed long enough. "That's our destination. We've got food and shelter." She fixed him with a flat smile. "You can spend the time trying to convince me to join the Empire with you."
He moved as though to strike her, but his fist fell to his side. "You were always stubborn and foolhardy. It will be the death of you."
She folded her arms. "I could say the same for you. Now, do you want to take us down, or should I fly?"
He shoved past her to the control panel, checking the navicomp for their flight path. They hadn't stopped near any known systems. With a disgruntled noise, he took the controls and began setting a new course.
"What are you doing? We need to land," she said.
He ignored her, set in the coordinates, and blasted them back into hyperspace away from the safe haven she'd set up.
"This is a bad idea. If you take me back with you--"
"--you will stop causing trouble with your Rebel friends. I see it as an excellent plan."
Ahsoka watched the back of his head. The magic that bound them would prevent her from taking her lightsabers to him now. She wondered if it would prevent her from slicing open the canopy and exposing them both to the raw, deadly blue maelstrom around them. Her hands clutched at her saber hilts, considering this, knowing she could rid the galaxy of him, knowing the price of her own life was easily and happily spent to do so.
She wondered if it was the binding spell that bid her hands loosen and fall to her sides, or if it was something deeper.
"What happened to you?"
"You sedated me."
"You know what I mean, Anakin." It hurt every time she said his name. "You were my friend. You were the best person I knew, even when you were annoying. How did you become this? What changed you?" And why didn't you ever tell me? The worst part, what she had shared with no one, was the guilt she'd felt ever since their psychic encounter months ago. She'd told herself it couldn't be true, but she hadn't been about to fool herself.
She assumed he would ignore her again, and for some time, he did. The reflection of the blue swirls cascading over his ruined mask.
"I learned the truth. The only true means to power is the Dark Side."
"You never wanted power. You wanted to fly, and tinker with machines, and...." She'd known his secrets. "You wanted to protect the people you cared about." She said the words as a plea for Anakin to remember who he'd been.
Between them, from the echoing tendrils of his mind that touched hers, she felt him recoil in sudden, sharp pain.
And she knew.
"You thought you needed power to protect them." There was no point in denying her own place in this. "To protect all of us. And seizing it destroyed everything you had. I'm so sorry, Anakin. We didn't want your protection. We just wanted you to be happy."
"You know nothing," he said, and he didn't speak to her again for hours.
As they traveled, she told herself she could fight him, if the need arose. She'd barely held her own during their battle but she had stayed alive. Others who'd gone against him hadn't fared so well. But she didn't want to fight him. Whatever mean, hopeless existence he lived now, it wasn't the whole of who he'd been. In the heat of their duel, killing him had seemed the greatest kindness she could offer. Now death was off the table, and Ahsoka found herself glad.
"If you don't want to talk about what happened, that's fine," she said, her voice cracking slightly from disuse. "The past is another planet, or whatever, right? We can't live there, we only visit."
"That is a terrible analogy. You can live on whichever planet you want regardless of your own history." Despite the artificial depth of his growl, the tone was all Anakin.
"I can't. I can't go back to Shili. When's the last time you visited Tatooine?"
She felt another wave of pain inside him, followed instantly by anger.
"Sorry," she said, and meant it. "I'd rather talk about now. Where are you taking me?"
"To the Empire."
"To interrogate me? Sedate me? You can't kill me. You'd die, too."
He sat, gazing out into blue. "I have not yet decided."
"We could still go back. I know you think the Rebellion is full of criminals and terrorists, but I give you my word you wouldn't be harmed, not if I asked."
"You overestimate your importance. In the company of thieves, a lie told to another thief is nothing when broken."
"I'm not a thief. We're not murderers." Not the groups she'd worked with, as sparse and loosely-affiliated as they were. She'd heard stories about other cells. She slept better pretending those were Imperial lies, but she'd known Saw back in the day and she'd taught him too much of what he knew now. She offered up a small token. "I've already told them about the weird Jedi marriage thing."
He turned to her. "It is not a marriage, merely a temporary inconvenience."
"It doesn't feel temporary, does it?" There'd been no reduction in the connection since they'd awakened together. "If anything, it feels like the bond is growing stronger."
"Unlikely."
She tossed up her arms. "Then tell me what's going on. You're the one who knows about this, not me. All I know is, I can feel the emotions you're having, and we can't walk away from each other, and we can't harm each other. When you hurt, I hurt. From what I'm feeling now, you've been hurting for a long, long time. What am I missing?"
Again, he fell silent, leaving her nothing but the seething roil of his emotion to interpret as best she could. Hatred was easy to read, and anger covered everything, but underlining these was a deep sense of loss. He'd lost everything. So had she. It wasn't much of a mutual foundation to rebuild their lives upon.
"The Emperor wants you turned. You would make a powerful ally."
"You can't turn me to the Dark Side. I'll die first."
"Perhaps. As my prisoner, you would be subject to Imperial law, which you have broken on many occasions. You will be interrogated and executed." He turned his head to her. She saw the mad look in his eye, but also a mischief she'd long missed. "As my wife, you would remain free and unharmed, and you would stay by my side. This would be better suited for the Emperor's goals."
And your own, she mused. The Sith worked in pairs. Should Ahsoka find herself joining their ranks, the third would be superfluous, and she and her master would be obligated to kill him. As Rebel priorities went, assassinating the Emperor was very high on the to-do list, and as Darth Vader's consort and apprentice, she might find herself with that opportunity. The price might be her soul, but paying for the galaxy's freedom at the same time made the deal an inviting trade.
Her research over the past few months had informed her Vader kept his personal base on Mustafar. She expected they would land there, and she would be his prisoner. Instead, they came out of hyperspace in a system hosting part of the Imperial fleet. They docked aboard a Star Destroyer, her last hopes shrinking as the docking bay closed in around them.
She should have scuttled the ship with them aboard.
"Come," he said, and she had no choice but to follow. She had at best a few meters of freedom. If she refused to walk, he now had the means at his disposal to force her to his side. As they walked, she took in the shocked faces of the deck crew, and the wary stances of the stormtroopers. The fear was palpable. Vader commanded respect through terror, and they could see he was injured. They could see a known Rebel at his side, and her hands weren't bound.
The Admiral in charge of the Star Destroyer met them in a hurried fluster as they reached the entrance. "Lord Vader. You didn't signal you were coming. We could have welcomed you properly." His eyes flickered to Ahsoka and back.
"I do not need to announce my arrival. You ship should be ready for inspection at any time."
"Of course, Lord Vader. I will have a stateroom readied for your personal use. The guards can escort the prisoner to the brig." He gestured to the stormtroopers to approach, but they were stopped by the raise of Vader's hand.
"That will not be necessary."
"But sir," said the Admiral, proving once again the Empire did not often offer promotions for intelligence.
"My wife will remain with me." He walked past the Admiral, Ahsoka at his side, risking a glance to view the shock on the Admiral's face as they passed.
He was offering her a chance to survive, tied to his own survival. She'd stand beside him while he attempted to crush the little Rebellion she'd spent the last decade building. But one chance might lead to another. A constant presence at his side meant her voice in his ear every day. She would spend her confinement slowly chipping through the walls he'd built, digging deep into the hated monster until she found the loved man inside, and then they would escape this prison together. All she needed was time, and he had just given that to her as a wedding present.
There were far worse fates than spending the rest of her life with someone she loved.
Ahsoka threaded her arm into his, enjoying his surprise and discomfort. "Where should we go for our honeymoon?"