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In a single blazing moment he will learn what he has wrought, and it may destroy him.
In the flames his violent heart has thrown into the dry kindling of a crumbling world around him, he will see the disasters that have befallen us all because of him.
In the afterglow of his implosion the embers of his downfall will scatter in the world and settle to the ground, awaiting his lashing out, the final cruelty of this most powerful of Sith Lords.
And we will all stand braced and awaiting his wrath, alive and dead, lost and found in the Force. We will watch the furnace swell and consume like the dark heart of a star bursting free of its plasma cage.
We will watch the son of suns explode.
And we will beg of his mother, with her ash-streaked hair and her broken, inhuman smile, that we do not all unravel as he tears the galaxy apart.
Visions ached like any war wound.
She was alive, she’d live. Twins. Ghostly cries still rang in his head, a cosmic storm beyond the stars that stained his eyelids. Her fingers tightened around his nothing more to fear.
The cold whispers were not him. The walls bowed under the weight, coalescing around the fires in his flesh, Obi-Wan’s not the only one here choking them to smoke.
His vision refocused on Padmé. Her brown eyes stared up, wide open in the same shock that the two children what world will they grow up in that the medical droid still held swaddled in off-white blankets one without masters shared.
“…Anakin?”
She knew him.
Though the fires that had torn through his flesh, she knew him.
“Yes.” Shivering fingers, the dust between stars contained by cold gravity, laced with hers. The golden afterglow of the stars they’d been born under held them tight. “You’re going to live, Padmé.”
“The child…”
“Children.” He leaned forward, the breeze between planets catching in his teeth. “They’re twins.”
“Twins?” Eyelids fluttered with the exertion of her speech.
He nodded.
“Can I…”
The droid brushed against Anakin’s over-wide robe like it had been pulled there, whisper-songs echoing as it held the two swaddled babies they will be safe out to Padmé. No more scars. No whips, no chains, no cages. A hand caught her shoulder as she sat up, shaking with the feeble effort. She flinched from the glow, but the droid moved forward, and though he could still feel her shudders what is there to be afraid of now her mouth turned up as she reached out to touch her children.
They shone as bright as he did in the galaxy’s web of matter.
“Oh…” Her smile brightened, strengthened as she took the children in her lap. Golden zephyrs made him glow brighter for a flash of a moment as he watched.
Sparking white like a bottled fire shattered the air. He froze someone’s outside. Heat cracked the fractures in the fabric of the room wider open. The transparent wall out to the corridor shimmered with low light and the haze of his stinging, soot-smeared eyes, but there were figures beyond it, moving, watching. A blaze like Obi-Wan’s slumped presence, hesitant outside who else made it out alive?
Something shuddered beneath his hand. Her head turned. He followed her gaze to the corner of the room, where Obi-Wan had fallen. “Ani…” Then a gasp.
No! “You’re safe, Padmé. You’ll live.” A feverish wordspring, gasping reassurance how hollow is it now as spectral fingers tightened. Careful, careful. No scars for the angel even if I’m made of them now. “Everything will be okay.”
“Obi-Wan…” Bright mist in her eyes fear against the shielding glass of their whites.
“Padmé, no…” Hurried shakes of his head. Soot in his throat again, charring already scorched flesh. “He’s alive. He’s alive. But he… he blacked out. When the droid said you were going into labour…” Hissing whispers scraped against the medbay’s calm, Mustafar’s simmering breeze in places it did not belong. Padmé’s jaw had lost its tension. There is no passion, there is serenity. “He’s alive. I promise you.”
She nodded. Dark eyes turned away from his gaze what is she seeing now to return to the twins. Their twins, their children, but if she won’t look at me —
“Who are you?”
He blinked, pushed away the darkness in his thoughts to the searing whitelight as a figure filled the door. Familiar. Ripples of something twisting and calculating in the void-warm glow of the Force. Bail Organa. Fists tightened, metal crunching. “What are you doing here?” Weak whispers, drawn from a broken throat but I’ve been mute before that vanished into the hum of the droids that hovered out of the way, their buzzing circuits background noise to every far-flung sound that rang in his head from everywhere and nowhere.
“I rescued Obi-Wan and Yoda from the betrayal of the clones, and joined Obi-Wan here after hearing about Padmé.” A hand drifted towards a blaster. Narrowing eyes. As he hesitated, breaths rough against a tortured throat, shattered lungs, the Senator’s gaze turned to the corner of the room turned to the corner of the room, then darkened as he drew his blaster.
He lifted a ghost-warm hand he’ll be the only one hurt but no words passed in the air before the blaster fired. Wild heat congealed between them, frozen into coherent form, frozen in place. Air rushed through him, a sandstorm seeking dust and decay to spin into the air. “Obi-Wan is alive. He blacked out. I don’t know why.”
“Who are you?”
His words rose higher now, fraying at the edges. The storm of a Senator’s anger compacted, drawing tighter as if it no longer dared approach him. “We know each other.” One of Padmé’s best allies in the Senate. But how many identifying features — the smile, the scars, the Jedi uniform — had been cremated by the aftermath of Mustafar’s forge and the void-hot presence of the Force keeping him standing despite Obi-Wan taking both his legs off?
“Bail…” Padmé’s voice cracked like a whip above his head. Shivers made his ice-glass skin flicker. “It’s Anakin.”
Another hand settled on the blaster, but shaking, shaking with a weakened spine and a storm below his skin, one of tearing power that found an echo in the thermonuclear furnace where dragons and serpents are they gone now or just asleep tore dirt off the ground and threw it into the howling space between stars.
“From what Obi-Wan said there’s no way he should have survived Mustafar.”
The words were stronger because they’re true but the blaster didn’t steady. Red pain still simmering in the air between them. He let his hand fall, slowly, mind still fixed on that bar of light. “I can’t explain it either.”
A shake of the head. “What’s happened to you? You’re half burn scars and half hologram.”
Was that what he looked like now what else would people who don’t know this supernova see to Bail — to Padmé? How had she known him when Bail hadn’t, when his old Master hadn’t but no more masters. No chains, no cages.
“Deal with this I must, Senator. Beyond your abilities this matter is.”
Bail didn’t let the blaster fall, but he stepped sideways, away from the door, closer to Padmé.
Somewhere below the folded cloak his chest rose and fell, but it didn’t trap air, just sharp stabbing pieces of something vital. Of all the people who could have survived… of course it would be the Grand Master of the Jedi Order did his clones even turn on him who was here to judge him now. The red blast in the air sputtered into nothing in a clenched fist, held as if to shield his heart, the glove hiding the metal arm, the one that the Masters had stared at with sighs in their throats is that what makes me less than human still. Through speckled vision the stooped figure of the Master of Masters never again entered the room. His ears turned down as he glared at Anakin.
Something dark like the hidden heart of a kyber star caught fire, burst through the sandstorm and through rime skin to fill the room with the spittings of the furnace that had forged his flesh anew. Below the storm he heard a muted chirp, an unfamiliar sound on a tongue not broken to a language yet. What world will they grow up in?
Bail shuddered, shoulder against the wall. Never mind. Blasters were harmless now. Gaze turned on Yoda. “You failed.”
Yoda tipped his head, large eyes narrowing. Blotting vision and shifting colours hid the rest of the room from him. Silent presences one collapsed don’t forget yourself between his furnace and whatever emptiness Yoda had managed to gather into himself in a galaxy full of feeling. “Blame us you would, young Skywalker, hmm? Suggest that becoming Darth Vader is irrelevant, do you?”
Below the blankness… there is no emotion, there is peace but something echoed from Yoda’s deep glare. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. “A Sith Lord in the Senate and he had to tell a Jedi Knight about it himself to be discovered.” Hissing again, the sandstorm a childhood he thought he’d buried. Home is an anchor and it will drown you. Burning eyes ta vara på ditt vatten he brushed an ice-covered hand against the burn scars. Ignorance, yet knowledge. “But you couldn’t end the war. The clones, the Separatists, it was all Sidious’ work.”
“Hmm.” Yoda tapped his cane against the floor. Droids shuddered as the faint shivers chilled the room. “And you could?”
A fist clenched around the burning heat, condensing matter in his chest that would crush his ribs with its collapse. “Sidious is dead.”
“One death won’t pay for thousands.” Bail’s voice trembled, but with the serrated roughness of a rising storm.
Yoda nodded, face set as he took a shuffling step forward. “And followed him you did, hmm? Grant you greater power than we would, you thought he could?”
Knowledge, yet ignorance.
The air — the rippling warp and weft of the Force itself — cracked with the shockwaves coursing out of the explosion in his chest. The dragon lifted its head again never dead enough as burning eyes let their fire fall on this being he once called Master. A deep breath, another. Bail slumped against the wall, legs weakened. Somewhere to his side, a gasp, a faint cry. Yoda bowed further over his cane as the trapped storm began to whine, only his wide, whitened eyes to reveal the pressure at the edges as the sandstorm broke free, the dragon’s children slipping out between his ribs to hiss in the room as his fist closed, a cold hand around the heat of rage, ice to channel the fire of the furnace.
“You would have let everyone I ever cared for die!”
“And how many others have died to save those you cared about?”
Through whiteout vision he spun to face Obi-Wan. As the serpents split his ribs the man struggled upright, bracing against the corner of the room. His overflowing eyes burnt through the skull-splitting everything that ran through Anakin’s veins. “You know what you did, Anakin. What you brought on the Order. On the Republic.” Obi-Wan shook his head. “If it was so easy to kill Sidious, why wait until after thousands of us died to stop him?”
His mouth kept moving, but if he made a sound it was lost in the sudden roar of the sandstorm.
And the crying of the Force as every darkness that his kneeling to Sidious had brought on them unravelled to show its shape. No chains, no cages, and what price to pay for that ghost of freedom?
Visions ached like any war wound. Like every war wound.
The medbay blurred out behind the sandstorm, the star-fire heat of the dragon’s breath to show him every cruelty again. Watch your water, Ani as he’d gone through the Temple. Younglings, Padawans, Knights with a sick core of fear there is no emotion, there is peace, fear to anger to hate behind the bewilderment that had tainted every trembling hand reaching for a sabre hilt hate to suffering. “No…”
They’d shot Obi-Wan out of the air. Aayla had looked out among the trees for the threat her clones had to have seen. Yoda’s clones had been late to get the message — the Master of the Order had already felt that disturbance tearing the Force in two, had already been alerted to the crumbling pillars who was the Order afraid of? “Who were you afraid of, Yoda?”
A silent lake zephyr below the storm. So easily torn away into the maelstrom, the turmoil of the interstellar weave turned on itself.
Shards of faces filtered through the storm surrounding his static existence. So many identical what becomes of the clones now and so many foreign despite it. And so many faces that he should have known, should have stood side by side with as they fell but I didn’t because you were afraid of me and fear to anger, anger to hate, “…hate to suffering.”
Visions ached like every war wound, black holes in his flesh. Star-cold rage, the banked coals of pain to strike across the throat of the galaxy itself to drain the life out of us all an icy hand clenched and struck bone.
The sandstorm shattered into Obi-Wan’s ashen face, close enough that his gusting breaths like something struck him but I couldn’t have raised a hand heated the ice holding phantom flesh together. “I don’t know what you’ve become, Anakin.” He shook his head. Serpents twisted around his heart. “But justice is justice… and the Emperor’s life alone…” Slick palms slipped on the burning rime of Anakin’s Force-hot flesh.
His fingers unfolded from Obi-Wan’s wrist. Death, yet the Force. “The Force shall free me.” Silence seeped into him again as he turned away. Away from what had been, what had been torn apart just the two of us and the burning bridges by words spat on the hot rocks of Mustafar.
Shut-down droids lingered in the corners of the room, surrounded by shards of glass. Bail straightened from a braced crouch as Anakin turned, a darkness in the set of his jaw that made the dragon hiss as it curled back around his heart. One side of the Senator’s face was scratched by the glass you shattered. Only breathing and a startled child’s noises.
He turned his head. Padmé was bowed over the twins, but none of them bore a single bleeding mark.
“The Sith Code you recall, hmm?” Yoda’s usual grumble had become something flat, like a sea waiting to have its surface broken by a monster of the deep. “Consider you fallen we must, then.”
“Master Yoda…”
Padmé? She hadn’t moved, but her lifted chin carried all the confidence everything that made you call her an angel that the Queen and Senator had ever been able to summon. “We’re all distressed and in shock after the events of the last few days.” Not a quiver though her voice was weak with pain you inflicted. She shifted the weight of the twins in her lap. “Now is not the time to make rash decisions. We must return to Coruscant and attempt to salvage the political situation. If the Emperor is indeed dead, there will be chaos throughout the galaxy.”
Blue shock filtered through the Force, freezing the thoughts in his mind. Yoda sighed, ears drooping. “Defeated the Order is, Senator. Helpless we are. To restore order, those with power you need… not those scattered by betrayal.”
Too lacking in power to make a difference to this abandoned Empire. A clenched fist under the folds of his robe. Padmé sighed. “You’re the only ones with authority enough over the clones to rein them back in. We need you in the capital, Master Yoda. And you, Master Kenobi.” Her gaze only skimmed him in seeking out Obi-Wan, but something ran through the Force, a red warmth he didn’t know. “Anakin’s present situation is clearly far beyond either of you. Wait on making a judgement until that changes.”
Was that a defence? If anyone would…
Yoda's gaze fell to the floor. “Much you ask of us.”
“These are desperate times, Master Yoda.”
Bail straightened his back and sighed, folding his hands over his blaster. “You’re suggesting that we leave the man who slaughtered a Temple full of youths alive and free?”
Burning ice in his veins again. The cracked edges of the window snapped with the chill.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice, Bail.” A Queen’s command in her darkening gaze.
He turned his head, glanced and Obi-Wan, Yoda, Bail. Padmé and her children. Their children.
Yoda heaved out a sigh that left him doubled over his cane. “Argue with you I cannot.”
“Then we’ll arrange for departure immediately.”
Bail started. “Padmé, you’re not well…”
“I can recover along the hyperspace route as well as I can on a medbay bed.” She swung her legs down to let her feet hover above the floor. “Any time we lose now is time for disarray to establish itself throughout the Republic.”
Still the Republic, in her mind. His clenched fist relaxed. Democracy, a word he’d only ever had shouted at him. Obi-Wan’s allegiance, the reason he could never have been a slave because that didn’t happen in a democracy, this shining ideal of a galaxy he’d never lived in.
A galaxy sobbing a broken song of bloodshed and disaster in his head, chaos stretching out across it like shattered glass across the medbay floor.
He was reckless, impulsive, quick to act, not quick enough at thinking to make up for it. It nearly ended him once.
I nearly ended him once.
And I died for it. How many will follow my path? Fall victim to the cold blood of one born of the Force itself, a human dressing on a force so old, so inexorable, so passionate in its consuming of everything it loves that the vessel it shapes can hardly be compassionate?
I wonder still that he seemed so human when I first met him. The recklessness … it does not seem the act of something that knows it will live long. Perhaps the act of something that does not believe it can die.
Watching him now, I have to question it all. He is insecure, he trembles, he freezes when the Force begins to scream. How many others stand behind him as the glass explodes with his anger? I see shades in the mist, but I cannot speak to them. If they do not hear me, does he?
I might, perhaps, forgive him if he does not want to hear. His mother already screams at him enough, fills his head with … things that I don’t pretend to understand. It is for the best that I do not. Sidious’ teachings corrupted me enough — I feel it, now, I feel the way the aether I live in turns on me, tears at me.
He knelt for Sidious, but the Force does not consume its own tail in his chest now. That furnace no longer burns simple steel. There is kyber below the ice, and I can only fear what it means for the day he breaks.
I pray his mother will have mercy. He will not.