By My Side

Chapter 1 - Where it all Started

Anakin's life could've gone smoothly from that point on, if not for the Council. Even years later, the crushing feeling of their rejection still haunts him. Is that why no one believed him when he spoke of Ahsoka's innocence? He had seen Qui-Gon as something like a role-model, the father he'd been waiting for his whole life. Those feelings were only reinforced when the man decided he would train him anyway, regardless of the Council's decision. And he would have, too, if the Council hadn't been stupid enough to send him and Obi-Wan straight back to the place their mission all started, when they knew full-well the long-disappeared Sith had returned and were waiting for them.

Anakin had wanted to stay with them, all the way through to the end. "Stay in that cockpit," Qui-Gon had ordered him flatly when he tried to get out to follow. And he did. He won the battle with that fighter, completely by accident, but when he came back, he knew something was wrong. He felt Qui-Gon's death more strongly than he'd felt anything in his life.

So, he was left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, who didn't want him in the first place. Neither of them wanted each other, but eventually, painfully slowly, they formed a bond like nothing ever made. A bond Anakin once thought nothing could ever shake.

It was a decade after Anakin became a Jedi that it happened. The very day before the Clone Wars broke out. He finally gave in and returned to Tatooine to find his mother, after having visions of her calling for him for a month. Obi-Wan refused to allow him to do anything about it, but Anakin went anyway, while Obi-Wan was gone. But when he got there... he was already too late.

Only three months afterwards, before he even had time to finish coping with everything between his mother's death, having lost his arm the first day of battle, becoming a Knight only because the war started – a war that went completely against his morals and everything he believed in and stood for his whole life – and becoming a general, was he given a padawan. Ahsoka, his sister, being the careless, reckless little girl she was, had no idea what war really meant. She didn't know what she was walking into, and it took a toll on her. Fourteen at the beginning – more with the maturity of a twelve-year-old – and sixteen at the end, but already an adult in all sense but age, having experienced horrors no one ever should.

And all throughout the war, he established many fleeting relationships with his men, his brothers, only for them to be taken in battle. Anakin can only be grateful Rex is still alive, but a dark part of him always has to remind himself that no one knows for how long. Rex could easily be taken in the very next battle.

It was two years after the start of the war that Obi-Wan faked his own death and didn't even bother telling Anakin about it. Anakin was there when he was shot. Ahsoka held him; they carried him back to the Temple together. Only to learn he was dead and find out only after Anakin and Ahsoka tracked down Rako Hardeen, the person who was supposedly Obi-Wan's killer, nearly killing him. They could've killed him by accident, and all Master Yoda – the most respected member of the entire Jedi Order – did was tell him they didn't trust him. They used him, and Obi-Wan flat out told him later it was his idea. It was that moment Anakin finally realized that he doesn't mean anything to any of them. Ahsoka, Rex, Padme. They were all he had left, but now... now...

He wants to – he doesn't know what he wants anymore. He remembers back on Mortis, that even when Ahsoka died, he was able to bring her back. And this, in a way, hurts worse, because even though she knew everything he went through to bring her back to him, she chose to leave. She wasn't taken from him this time; she walked away of her own free-will, shattering the last ties he has to the Order except Obi-Wan, who he can't bring himself to leave. If he weren't so afraid of being an even bigger disappointment, he'd walk away without a second thought. This time, no one would have to tell him not to look back.