Before the Saga No Escape

(Author's Note:
Spellbound as I was by the fight between Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader in the Season 2 finale of Star Wars: Rebels, I watched it until just having every line of dialogue memorized wasn't enough. I couldn't stop wondering what was going on in Vader's head.
So, I wrote it up.
The following is the fight, as seen through Vader's filtered readout lenses. It ends where it does because we don't really get to see what happens after that.
Read it and tell me you loved it.)

“…the apprentice lives…”

He could feel her presence. She was here, and they would meet. His Master had said as much, and his Master always knew. He took comfort in his Master’s surety, in the fact that he was on the side of a being who always knew. That he was on what was, incontrovertibly, the right side.
He and she would meet, and he would walk away. This he knew.
But for now…
“I don’t fear you,” said the child before him. The child was older, slightly, than the other children—the first children were.
Had been.
“Then you will die braver than most.”
He struck.
The child—he knew his name, but it mattered not—fought back, fiercely, valiantly, pointlessly. Within seconds, he had destroyed the child’s weapon and knocked him to the floor. The child stared up at him, and he could see the same fear in his eyes that had been in the eyes of the others.
“Perhaps I was wrong.”
A clear voice rang out from behind him. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She is here.
He swiveled to face her, and his black robes swirled around him in what seemed like slow motion.
He had not seen her since she had left him—abandoned him—so many years before. She was taller—she had been a child herself when he last saw her. Now she stood before him as an adult, radiating maturity, confidence, and…
Danger.
He understood that the danger she presented was not merely physical. Already, strange temptations were stirring, deep, deep within the very core of his being.
The name Ahsoka rose automatically to his lips. He refused to say it, and defeated one temptation.
Pride welled up within him as well; seeing what she had grown into, what she had become—because of him, and the teachings he had imparted to her. He let that warp into fury, outrage: she owed everything to him—everything—right down to the cool confidence that let her face him now, and she dared to stand against him, in flagrant betrayal of all that he had done for her.
Her weapons—new ones, not the ones she had wielded when they fought side-by-side, the ones he knew—were clasped securely in her hands. She had not activated either of them. She evinced nothing but serenity.
Peace is a lie…
“It was foretold that you would be here. Our long-awaited meeting has come at last.”
“I’m glad I gave you something to look forward to,” she said, and the casual cockiness in her voice could have belonged to Anakin Skywalker himself.
In some ways, it did.
That, above all other reasons, was why she had to die.
But not yet.
“We need not be adversaries.” He deactivated his weapon, but kept hold of it, in a grip of durasteel and black leather. “The Emperor will show you mercy if you tell me where the remaining Jedi can be found.”
“There are no Jedi,” she said, and anger crackled within her now. “You and your Inquisitors have seen to that.”
That was a lie, and both of them knew it. He turned his helmeted head to glance over his shoulder at the boy sprawled behind him. “Perhaps this child will confess what you will not.”
He felt another lightning bolt of rage flash in her. “I was beginning to believe I knew who you were, behind that mask. But it’s impossible. My Master could never be as vile as you.”
Yet another lie, this time one she was telling to herself. She knew who he was. Or at least, who he had been.
“Anakin Skywalker was weak. I destroyed him.”
The lightning struck brush, and the fire ignited. “Then I will avenge his death!”
“Revenge is not the Jedi way.” Couldn’t she see it? Could she not see that she clung so desperately to nothing but lies and ghosts?
“I am no Jedi,” she said, and white fire erupted from each of her fists.
…there is only passion.
He answered her with a single line of blood red, and she charged, closing the distance between them with all the speed of a lightning bolt.
Her form was breathtaking. Unbelievable speed, surprising power, perfect control. Her twin white blades buzzed and whirled around his one of red, and he felt… overwhelmed.
Seizing her advantage, his erstwhile apprentice let loose with a blast of raw Force that hit him like a punch to the gut.
From a rancor.
He maintained his footing, even as he was sent skidding back and doubled over. Crouched, he regarded her past the red line of fire burning in his hand.
It was impossible not to see himself in her. If he were not in this suit, he would, very likely, fight just as she did. Gracefully. Fluidly. With dash and speed and…
But he was in the suit. He was of the dark side now. And, as his Master never let him forget, to be of the dark side was to be concerned with one thing—the only thing that mattered.
Power.
He rose to his full height, and she bounded toward him once again. He met her not as Anakin Skywalker, but as the Dark Lord of the Sith.
He hammered at her twirling blades, forcing her to stop dancing and start fighting. Her spinning and whirling stopped short against the over-the-shoulder smashes of his sword. Her fighting became purely defensive, and he obliged her, readily supplying the offensive side of the encounter.
Her breath turned short and choppy. Her strikes lost their polish and became wild, desperate waves. She was meeting every blow of his single blade with the both of hers, and he could feel the strain grow in her with every clash.
Sensing her weakness fed his own strength, and with abject brutality, he crashed his weapon into the both of hers, sending them pointing uselessly to the sky. He let loose with his own blast of the Force, fueled by all the power of the dark side. She plunged back from him, over the edge of the temple, and down into the abyss below.
He moved to the edge and watched her fall. The white lines shorted out, and only blackness remained.
Senses sharpened by the dark side thrumming through him, he reached out with his feelings, and found her, battered, rattled—alive.
It was not over yet...

He had crossed swords with them before, the Purge survivor and the Force-sensitive boy. On a world called Lothal, he had given them an object lesson in their own inferiority. There, it had served his purpose that they escaped. Here, it seemed they needed another object lesson.
None escaped him.
He reached out with one black-gloved hand of durasteel and took mental hold of the small pyramid the boy held. The boy resisted, and so did his master, but their efforts were meaningless.
All of them.
He pulled harder, and the both of them were dragged toward him, helpless in the wake of his power.
Suddenly, from behind—
He turned just in time to deflect what would have been a killing blow from Ahsoka, diving at his back. Her sabers scraped off his and slashed into his mask. He roared and dropped to his knees...
And the breeze brushed his cheek.
He stared at the floor of the temple, assessing the damage. Ahsoka's attack had obliterated a swath of his mask on his right side.
His left eye gazed at its filtered readout lens.
His right eye saw the world without filter, exposed to the open air of the world, for the first time since...
Mustafar.
And with that exposure, came an unstoppable torrent of memories.
The end of the war—Obi-Wan standing above him on the lava bank: the lowest, most agonizing—most important—moment of his life.
Severing Mace Windu's sword arm, and watching a storm of lightning burn his life away.
Rescuing Palpatine from Count Dooku, before he had thought of Palpatine as Master...
And memories of the war itself: of fighting, time and time again, alongside—
"Ahsoka," he said, not with an electronically modulated blare of contrabasso, but with his own, real voice. The voice of—
"Anakin," said Ahsoka.
He rose up off his knees, lifting his exposed face to Ahsoka, and she stared up at him.
It had been a lifetime since anyone had looked him in the eye.
"I won't leave you," she said. "Not this time."
Not this time...
More memories burst forth, ones he had kept buried for so long that he thought they had died. Like a storm raging, a volcano erupting, a star going supernova in his head.
It was too much. He answered it the only way he knew how: with his hate.
"Then you will die," he said. His lightsaber crackled into existence, right before his exposed eye.
It hurt to look at, and he welcomed the pain.
...

 

I Ike how you get into Vader's head here. He's fighting himself, still justifying his actions, just as much as he is fighting her.

 

Heartrendiing.