A Path Less Taken

"Better?" Anakin asked Ahsoka. They had just finished a job, and Anakin had taken to using some of his money to improve the Eclipse.

"A little," she said hoarsely, her face somewhat paler than usual. "It's just... did I have to decapitate him?"

"You didn't have to. As long as the job gets done, you can finish them however you choose to," Anakin told her. "'Why did you' is my question."

"I dunno. I just kinda... did. It's... unnerving seeing the underside of someone's head like that," Ahsoka said, leaning back in the chair she was sitting in.

"You could make a pointed idea in your head not to look," Anakin suggested, making Ahsoka shake her head.

"That sounds incredibly simple, yet there's this compulsive part of me that needs to look. I need look at whoever I'm killing. It just feels... right. I don't know," she said with a frown.

"You know Snips..." Anakin said with a grunt as he installed the last part. Then he slid from under the ship and looked at her directly. He looked around the hangar he stopped to do the repairs in and made sure his and Ahsoka's hoods thoroughly covered their faces.

"Given what we're doing..." Anakin said as he gestured around the hangar, or perhaps he was gesturing just to emphasize his point. "...this vigilante type of life that we're living by being bounty hunters, the line between right and wrong has been crossed. Just barely, but crossed nevertheless."

"Barely? I'm not sure most people would see that way. It would just be simply wrong," Ahsoka said.

"True. But this is just me speaking on my perception of the situation. I will tell you this. If looking at the corpses of your enemies makes you feel better, then hey. Go ahead and do it," Anakin said as he flashed a thumbs up and started walking towards the entrance of the ship.

"Thanks. Now I feel like a creep when you put in those terms," Ahsoka said, making Anakin chuckle.

"Perception can change a lot about decision making. People would see what we're doing as immoral and vile. That we're no better than the people we're killing," he said as he sat down in the pilot seat of the ship. He didn't continue speaking until he got the ship into liftoff.

"Well guess what? I see it as me finally doing something constructive rather than fighting a war that seems to go on and on and on. Death doesn't solve all problems, but it sure as hell can solve a good amount of them when it comes to the Separatists. People like Nute Gunray, Wat Tambor, and others like them are better off dead," he said as he put the ship into autopilot. "You see, when you put people who have connections, money, and power in jail, there's nothing that you can do but wait for them to find a way to worm themselves out of it. Whether legally or illegally."

"Take the first time we caught Gunray for example. if we had just executed him as soon as we caught him, he wouldn't be out there being able to cause problems for us. Perception is everything. And everyone has it. Some people see it with tunnel vision, but others? People like us? We see the bigger picture."

Ahsoka was strangely reminded of Obi-Wan when he said that sentence. Nowhere near as serene, but his message seemed to be filled with knowledge and experience. She did have to say that he was right about that perception thing. She was looking at this situation somewhat differently now. Well, when he laid down the facts for her. About jail being a very short term solution when it came to people who had ways to get out. Killing them was the right solution, not the good solution. Long term, it was the better solution. It would be more than likely they'd be on the run after the war was over cause the Jedi could more formally turn their efforts into catching them. With a hesitant glance towards Anakin, she would wonder what effect that would have on his marriage.