Title: Tonight We Ride on Clouds of Fire
Challenge: SWMININANO2
Prompt: starfighter
Word Count: 1025
Characters: Anakin, Ahsoka, Yularen
Rating: R
Summary: Even the best star pilot in the galaxy can't work miracles.
Author's Notes: So, uh, this is kind of a companion to "Hero With No Fear". An homage to a scene in The Descent by Jeff Long. Some gore. Title from "Black Fire Upon Us" by Dethklok.

Ahsoka Tano watched from the bridge of the Resolute as the space battle raged in front of her. She pinpointed her Master's fighter, vivid yellow against the black of the night-time sky, pulling out of a dive that any other pilot wouldn't even consider. Of course, her Master wasn't any other pilot.

She watched, trying to keep her breathing steady, as Anakin's fighter whipped through the battle, laying waste to the Vulture fighters in its path. Laser cannon blasts sliced out from the Separatist cruiser, laying waste to the fighters in its path, Republic and Separatist alike.

The Force sang around her and she nearly shouted out a warning, forgetting for a brief instant that Anakin wouldn't be able to hear her. She ran to the viewport wall and watched, horrified, as his fighter began screaming towards the atmosphere. Suddenly, Anakin's voice broke onto the overhead coms. "This is Skywalker. I'm going planetside. Keep up the assault and meet me down there!"

"General Skywalker, is this a controlled landing?" Admiral Yularen asked, calm as a stone.

"Negative," Anakin responded, voice tight. "My controls are shot. I'm going down hot." Ahsoka's stomach knotted with dread and she looked up at the Admiral.

"Understood, General," Yularen replied, and turned to one of the Clone officers on the bridge. "Track General Skywalker and prepare for retrieval."

A wash of terrible pain washed over Ahsoka and she dropped to her knees with a strangled cry, clutching her arms over her stomach, leaning forward so her head touched the cool deck plating. "Commmander Tano!" She felt Yularen's hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't respond, couldn't stop shaking. It felt like something had been forcibly ripped from her very being.

"Master..." she managed to gasp. "Oh, oh no."

He'd done his best to slow his descent before hitting the ground. The best pilot in the Order, in the galaxy, and he'd been able to use the Force and gravity to glide the fighter into a grove of trees. It still wasn't ideal, and the impact was still enough to knock him unconscious.

He awoke to dripping water, and a tinny voice beside his head asking his status. He flitted his eyes open, blood flowing into them from a deep gash along his hairline. His mechno was a tangled wreck of sparking machinery, and his left arm looked - and felt - like ground meat. The air tasted metallic, poisonous. Anakin reached up with difficulty, pain dancing up his back and rib cage, and grabbed his mask, fitting it tight over his face. Sweet, cool, oxygen flooded his senses, made him more lucid. He almost wished he hadn't done that, because lucidity made the pain appear, and the pain was epic.

He tried to push up on the cockpit canopy, but it wouldn't budge, and he couldn't wrap his consciousness around the Force enough to have much of an effect. His lightsaber had fallen down by his feet, and maneuvering to reach it would have been impossible. He pushed his mask up, spit blood onto the control panel, reseated the mask.

"Master. Come in. Master, please."

He couldn't respond, couldn't think of the words he needed to say to tell her he was alive. Instead, he closed his eyes.

When he woke up again, things seemed even more hazy than before. He'd vomited in the mask and clumsily emptied it, knowing he should count himself lucky he hadn't aspirated, but unable to think in coherent phrases. He licked his parched, cracked, swollen lips, wondered fleetingly how long he'd been there. He was thirsty. He hurt.

"Master? Artoo said he can't get the cockpit open. Master, answer me."

She sounded tired. Anakin was tired. He wanted nothing more than to sleep; he pushed a hand against the cockpit to show Artoo he was alive, then slumped back down, the small movement sapping his energy. He slept.

There were monsters in the woods around him. Anakin could see them through the fogged-up cockpit, moving in the periphery of his vision, darting across his line of sight. Man-shaped monsters, hooting and calling to one another in the dark.

"Master, we have a lock on your location. Please, answer me!"

"It's been four days, Commander Tano."

Four days. That much Anakin was able to process. The cockpit began to close in on him, and a scream ripped itself from his damaged throat.

He'd thrown up in his mask again. Anakin flitted open his eyes, the lids stuck together by dried blood. He could hear voices, not just through the comm, but outside the fighter. The monsters had come closer, had decided to stop waiting, had decided to descend upon him. A green flash on the outside, and the cockpit canopy was lifted. He wanted to throw up his hands to shield himself, but he couldn't move.

"Oh, Master!" cried the monster with Ahsoka's voice. He felt himself lifted, and tried to fight. He couldn't, couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but close his eyes and hope that when the end came, it came quickly.

That Anakin was still alive was a surprise to all of them. Ahsoka watched as the medics worked to stabilize him enough to transport back to the Resolute, amazed at her Master's pure dumb luck. Of course, Jedi did not believe in luck, but she'd spent enough time with Anakin now to doubt that particular belief.

Hypos hissed, a backboard laid down; Anakin grunted as they moved him onto it, encompassing his neck in a high brace. His left arm was shot through with deep red and black - infection, gangrene. Bacta was injected directly into his shoulder, his hip, his legs. He vomited again, thick and bloody, lips frothed with pink.

The medics were grim, but Ahsoka knew - if he had survived this long, he would survive a little longer. He had to.

She ran her hand down his cheek, and he slitted his eyes open. "It'll be okay, Master." He didn't seem to notice her, eyes sliding closed as the medics lifted the backboard and carried him to the gunship and safety.