Chapter Text
“ -was weak! I destroyed him!”
The scene resets again. Ahsoka stands on shaky ground - not yet but it will be soon, she knows, its fallen apart enough times she can practically see the fault lines - the temple's darkness lit only by saberlight, white and red.
Malachor is a terrible planet.
It’s time to respond, she knows, three heartbeats of waiting, that’s the rhythm of this dance.
“Then I will avenge his death!” She declares to Vader, the monster she thought she knew, once, a lifetime ago.
Maybe a lifetime here too, if time means anything anymore.
“Revenge is not the Jedi way.” The correct response, it’s always the same, he never changes except in response to what she does.
Vader doesn't loop.
Once a spec of blue showed through terrible golden eyes, when she cut the mask.
She wonders what it would mean if Anakin does.
“I am no Jedi.”
The dance begins, block high, slash middle, flip her shoto grip to catch Vader’s blade inches from her neck.
He only goes for killing blows. Never anything that would hurt, only what would end things permanently, quickly.
It is probably supposed to be a kindness.
Vader is known for being decisive, but not like that.
She flips over his head, blocking his sweep - lateral cut, would have bisected her head to groin - with a flourish, and lands grinning. One hundred and thirty eight seconds after the reset Ezra will get the holocron and the collapse will begin. Another forty and he’ll be on the Phantom, Kanan in tow. A minute more and they’ll have broken atmosphere before Vader can pull the ship down with Anakin’s unreasonably strong force power.
She does not like how precise she knows the timing on that. She usually keeps Vader busy enough that it doesn't matter anyway. It’s only been thirty.
Block left, feint up and dodge right. Backflip because she can and it will give her distance.
Vader is an indomitable wall. She has broken it before. A score of times but twice that matter.
Sparks and broken prosthetics explained the suit.
A broken mask, a saber to the chest - center left, pierced lung, non-fatal with treatment - and a head cradled in her lap gave her blue-speckled hope, once, before the raging tide of gold resurfaced. She probably deserved that particular coup-de-grace, he’d still had his saber, and chest-wounds hurt.
Dash forward, feint for the legs, pull a chunk of rock she knows from experience is loose towards him from behind. Press the attack, keep him on defense, roll to the side because the boulder has finished flying.
He bats it down, she was a second too early on disengaging and Vader has excellent situational awareness.
It’s better than them both being crushed by the thing, which happened once and was awful.
She continues the roll, sweeping up in an Aratu flourish that barely stops her from getting skewered - center-right, heart, lethal - Vader is relentless, that used to be endearing. Before it was Vader.
She smiles sadly, switching to a Soresu form her grandmaster insisted that she master. Vader growls, recognising the shift and thinking of the same person.
That’s the first noise either has made since the beginning. She wants to banter, she can't think of anything original, not that he’d remember that it wasn’t.
She blocks a horizontal swing with both blades, steps back, stumbles. Vader takes the opportunity to shove her off a ledge with the force. It’s a relatively short drop, only a few dozen feet, and it won’t do much more than inconvenience her, even if she lands badly like the first time.
They both know it.
Vader walks away, towards the escaping duo. It’s too early, he’ll catch up with them. She can’t let that happen.
It doesn't matter if he does. They will reset anyway. She could just lie here, a few minutes and then she would ‘lose.’
Everything would begin again.
She is exhausted. She’s barely breathing hard. She takes twenty seconds because she knows they can be spared.
She gets up, and vaults back to the platform.
She catches up as Vader is about to pull the holocron from Ezra’s grip. Dash, leap, twirl, slash and she’s cut off the upper-right quadrant of his mask again.
If she twisted her wrist properly in that move she could take off his head. She has never tried.
“Ahsoka!” two voices call, three if the sparking vocoder counts. “Come on! Hurry!” One continues.
“Anakin.” She knows her lines by now. “I won’t leave you! Not this time.”
It is far, far truer than he could possibly know.
His eyes are gold. They are always gold. Those specks of blue were her imagination.
It wasn’t, they were real but it's hard to remember that looking now, harder to believe it.
Hardest to believe who Vader really is even though she knows beyond all doubt.
She reaches out through the force, pushing at the broken bond they once shared, master and padawan. She finds a storm raging in the desert. He reignits his lightsaber.
“Then you will die.”
“Ahsoka!”
She pushes Ezra back with the force, tossing him far enough towards Kanan, towards the ship, towards freedom that he won’t get back through the blast doors before they close.
Block behind, catch a saber-lock, twist and slash, repeat. Roll out of the followthrough.
The door is closed. It is done.
'This is where the fun begins'
The thought slips unbidden across her mind. She wants to laugh, she wants to cry.
She does both and Vader pauses for a heartbeat, midstroke.
It’s going for her neck, again, something she can block with ease and they both know it. She doesn't, she steps back out of the way instead. Vader flows with the momentum, despite expecting another blade-lock he’s a good enough duelist to adapt without a break in stride, resetting to a form V opening stance.
He taught her everything she knows about that form.
She stares at him, he doesn't move. Vader is a mountain, of course he doesn't move. If he did the world would have to move with him. She is probably hysterical.
She stopped counting somewhere around the three hundredth loop. She deserves to be a little hysterical.
She powers down her sabers, moves forward.
Vader looks incredulous.
She leaps forward, dodging a blow that would cut her in half, rolls, and pounces up to greet Anakin Skywalker - because no matter what he claims that is the same person as Vader - in a bear hug.
A moment later a crimson blade enters her side, angling up, piercing her heart.
She stares Anakin in his one visible eye. The gold is dimmer. More so than can be explained by the blackness overtaking her vision.
He looks like he might cry.
She has no idea if that is progress. If it is, he won't remember in a moment.
________
“ -was weak! I destroyed him!”
The dance begins anew.