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But the screams of pain come, most of all, from Dooku ripping through his mind, shattering the outermost layer of his shields, and rooting through all of the memories Anakin had thought unimportant, but instead tore him apart as they were pushed aside one by one. Dooku was looking for something, and it was entirely unfamiliar to him as it was ripped from his mind, but it overwhelmed the pain of his body, and the last thing he remembers before passing out is the smug satisfaction in Dooku’s mind as he pulls out…
Anakin wakes up not with a start, but with a whimper.
Padme is beside him, of course, and she stirs awake not long after as if sensing his roiling emotions.
“Ani?” she asks. Anakin doesn’t know what to do. He feels lost, still back there with Dooku. Slowly, he turns around.
“Angel,” he says, whispering it like a prayer.
Padme sighs. He must look as broken as he feels, and kriff this because it’s been months , even since… that meeting.
And yet…
“Don’t leave me,” he begs. “Please.”
Padme shakes her head as Anakin curls into her like a child because he needs this comfort, and he feels like less than nothing, right now, so does it really matter?
“Ani...” she says. Anakin just shakes his head.
“No,” he says. “You did the right thing. You did… ”
And she did, really.
His life is worthless in comparison to the amount of people, Clones and Jedi in particular, still alive because Grievous is dead. His trauma is nothing for everyone saved because he stopped Sidious.
…This probably isn’t a healthy way of thinking, but it’s better than Before.
“I’ll never stop thinking about it,” he confesses. “I… you shouldn’t even be able to do something like this, but I can, the Jedi and the Sith and we all…”
He shudders.
“You made the right decision,” he says firmly. “But I can’t get him out of my head .”
And then he starts sobbing because these dreams always just get him right back to square one.
Force, he feels ridiculous. Stupid. Useless.
Why can’t he banish these thoughts from his head?
He just wants to be free.
Stripped, that was the word for it. Reduced to nothing piece by piece.
It’s the gut wrenching knowledge that the only woman he ever had or ever would love was the one to put him here.
Completely and utterly alone.
Pain is his life now.
Countless victims, countless cries... It’s all too much to take in.
Memories, overlapping and painful. The physical he could take, he could deal with. The mental…
He can’t. He just can’t. He’ll never be free.
It’s never going to stop.
Never gonna stop.
Never never never neve-
“Ani!”
Padme’s voice pulls him back to the present.
He’s home, and he’s safe.
Force but if only he could remember that.
“I’m sorry,” he says, slowly sitting up. Nothing in his life had broken him. Not slavery not the Council not the war not Sidious … but here he is.
It’s been almost a month since the last time he’d had such a vivid nightmare, too.
Padme just sighs, looking at him with sadness.
“Oh Ani,” she says. “Why do you keep apologizing? I left you there, and now we both must live with the cost of my decision.”
Anakin just laughs, and it’s definitely the broken one.
“Padme, you wouldn’t be the woman I love if you had chosen me,” he says. “I can’t blame you for thinking rationally.”
Padme’s laugh is only barely less sardonic than his.
“I’ve never been rational when it comes to you, Ani,” she says. “I asked you to marry me when we’d known each other for a month in total.”
Anakin smirks.
“But you don’t regret it,” he says. She’s said it enough for him to almost believe it. Padme shakes her head.
“No,” she says. “Somehow, I don’t.”
Anakin smiles. A large part of him still feels lost, just like he always does on nights like these, but he has his Angel in his arms. He’s home with her.
A large part of him is broken, yes…
But he’s happy.