Why?

Anakin Skywalker struggles to come to terms with the fact that Ahsoka Tano has left the Jedi Order. One shot, set soon after the Season Five finale.

Ahsoka left the Jedi Order nearly a week ago, and Anakin swore she took whatever it was that gave him the will to get out of bed every day. It was so abrupt, she didn't even bother to pack a bag—she just walked off into the setting sun.

"Your Padawan status will be stripped from you, and you shall forfeit all rank and privileges within the Grand Army of the Republic. You are barred from the Jedi Order."

Every time Anakin let himself get too isolated, too low, he could still feel the rip in the living Force that had occurred when Ki-Adi Mundi had uttered the words that truly broke Ahsoka's heart—the abandonment, the loneliness, the isolation she suffered for the past two weeks was hard, but nothing could compare to a betrayal like that. Soon she would bury her emotions so deeply even he couldn't sense them. He was sure those words snuffed out any hope of clearance for the murders and Temple bombing.

Maybe that is why she left. Not because she didn't trust herself, but because she thought things would never return to normal. That she would never return to normal.

And that is what happens when something you put your entire life into completely fails. When something crushes your hopes and dreams and abandons you, kicks you in the gut and breaks every bone in your body in the process; and that something was the Jedi Order, the Jedi Council—him.

Every fiber of his being begged him to march up to the Council chamber and throw his lightsaber in their conceited face, give it all up, so he could go find Ahsoka. Prophecy be damned—he barely believed in it anyhow, even after Mortis. Who needs the Sith with Jedi like that?

What's Ahsoka going to do now? He had no idea, and he only knew that the thought nearly drove him crazy with worry. Wherever Ahsoka was with her reckless ways, trouble wasn't too far behind. He'd resigned himself to the fact that she was just like him soon after he'd taken her on as an apprentice.

"Anakin," Obi-Wan said, interrupting his thoughts. They were in the mess hall, and though Anakin hadn't had an appetite in days, the older man had managed to get him to sit down with a glass of muja juice and muja fruit-filled donut, which the Jedi Knight already eaten. "I've been saying your name for the past five minutes. What's wrong?"

Anakin looked up and glared at the Jedi Master. "You know what's wrong, Obi-Wan." He took a sip of juice and nearly spit it back out. He'd let it sit for too long, and the pulp had risen to the surface. He felt a pang in his heart—Ahsoka was an even pickier eater than he was. Getting her to drink most juice offered in the Temple was a lost cause, as she insisted the pulp made her mouth slimy.

Obi-Wan sighed as Anakin wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Anakin, it's been a week—"

"Don't remind me." Anakin crumpled the napkin into a ball, standing and stomping over to the buffet, grabbing a knife from one of the silverware filled containers at the end and returning to the table. He dropped the knife in his glass with a clink and stirred it around, making a whirlpool in the bright red juice.

Obi-Wan calmly waited for him to go through those motions. "You need to move past this. You can't let it consume you."

"Obi-Wan…" Anakin trailed off, removing the knife and carefully taking another sip of juice. This time, he managed to swallow it. "It isn't that easy."

Though Ahsoka had left, parts of her still lingered. Her room had not been reassigned to someone else's apprentice yet, and he couldn't bear to disturb what almost seemed like a time capsule of an unmade bed, a dresser covered with both ship floor plans and makeup and, worst of all, a makeshift repair kit filled with spare beads for her Padawan braid.

Well, her old Padawan braid. Anakin really wished it was possible to knee haul the voice in the back of his head right then.

"I know. Though I could never imagine how this feels, I can relate. When Qui-Gon died, I was very upset about it for a long time, and—" Obi-Wan cut himself off as he saw every muscle in Anakin's body lock stiffly into place. "I'm not saying she's going to get herself killed. I'm only saying… Ahsoka isn't the Ahsoka you knew anymore. Her priorities have changed."

"That's what I hate. It was Ahsoka's dream to be a Jedi Knight. She was so close. The Council practically told her she was to be knighted. And—," Anakin's voice got quiet, "—she threw it all away."

"There's a lesson in here somewhere. Perhaps we should not have assumed she was as okay with everything as we thought." Done eating, Obi-Wan straightened up his tray and got to his feet with it in his hands. "Or maybe it's not that complicated. Maybe it's just letting go."

I hope not, Anakin thought glumly, watching his former Master clean off his tray, lay it neatly on top of the other used ones and then leave the mess hall. His attachment issues had pretty much been the start of the Clone War, or at least the Battle of Geonosis, as much as he hated it.

Ahsoka was gone—gone for good—and she wasn't coming back. She blocked him every time he tried to contact her through their bond, which he suspected would eventually wither away from disuse. Her lightsabers had been lost in the depths of Coruscant, and though either of them could go and recover them, he knew neither of them wanted to. She was done, off to become anything from a doctor to—Force forbid it—a pony farmer.

Still, despite everything that had happened, he and Ahsoka were more alike than either of them would care to admit. And it made him wonder.

Would he follow the same path as she did? And if he did… would his reasons be as pure as Ahsoka's were?

Okay, the thing I love about this (especially as a photographer) is that it's roughly 1K, and one picture. That picture being of Obi-Wan and Anakin sitting at a table, Obi-Wan looking calm and collected and Anakin sitting there with a cup of juice in his hand, grimacing.

Anyways, thanks for reading, even though it's pretty short. Remember, reviews are great motivation. ;)