Chapter Text
You were right about me. Tell your sister...she was right.
Anakin's own last words echo in his ears as he dies, joining with the Force in a way he should have done a long time before. There's a distant tug on him, something familiar that he can't quite place, but it fails to pull him anywhere and he allows himself to slip away.
Dying feels like floating. It brings that same sense of peace that he found when he would be suspended in bacta, no feeling but the cold press of liquid against his skin. Only there's no liquid or cold, just floating, drifting along for what could have been moments or centuries, for time is a concept reserved for the living, and Anakin is no longer alive. Thank the Force for that.
Which is why waking causes him to jolt. There's an assault of feeling on every part of his body, like nerve endings are coming to life one by one and the Force is filling him again and whispering not yet, not yet .
And so Anakin wakes.
On a bed.
He lies still for a minute. He had died, he’s absolutely sure of it. Luke had been right there , a blurry form in Anakin’s ruined vision but there all the same. Anakin grits his teeth, wondering if his son had gone against his wishes and taken him to get healing, but a knock somewhere nearby startles him enough that the bitter thoughts are cut off.
“–akin? Anakin! Force’s sake, are you still in bed!?” The voice is muffled behind a door, but Anakin would know it anywhere.
Obi-Wan.
His heart clenches at the sound of his former Master’s voice, a voice he had tried to remember in the long hours where sleep evaded him and he drags himself into a sitting position.
Blinking against light as a blanket falls away from where it had been pulled over his head, Anakin looks around, confused. He’s...in his old bedroom, the one he'd had in the Jedi Temple dormitories. Light streams in through chinks in his blinds, and Anakin can breathe. Then, reality sinks in like a blanket of cold being laid over him. As the air knocks itself from his lungs, he feels an untethered panic begin to set in before Obi-Wan’s voice comes through the door again.
“Anakin? Are you alright?” concern and warmth laces the older– younger? He sounds like he did when he was in his thirties, and isn’t that painful– man’s voice, and Anakin can feel it through the Force. “I’m not mad that you slept in, if that’s why you’re being so quiet, but you are the one who jumped at the chance to guard Senator Amidala. I’d expect you to be up.”
“I-” Anakin cuts off immediately, freezing at the sound of his voice. Not Vader’s voice, the one that came from his armour, and not the meek, choking whisper that it had been reduced to outside of the suit, but his voice. His eyes burn with the threat of tears. “Obi-Wan?”
“Yes, dear one?”
Dear one.
How long had it been since he'd last heard that?
Anakin can’t help but choke back his emotions, shutting his mental shields tightly at the grief that crashes over him. He can’t be– he can’t be back, can he? Before everything? The affection in that voice, not hollowed by age and grief...could this be his punishment? Reliving the years where he wasn’t a slave to Sidious, following his every command? It’s a damn good punishment, he’ll give it that. After all his years of being separated from everyone by the suit, going back through the time when he was loved and free to love in return is like the harshest of tortures. He bites down on his hand hard to stop the sob that threatens to leave him. It had been over two decades since Anakin last cried, and it's a weakness that he will not allow himself to have.
There’s a sigh from outside the door, Obi-Wan’s worry lacing the bond between them, even as Anakin tries to shut it out. “If something’s wrong, you can tell me, Anakin, you know that,” he says, voice unbearably gentle, “I’ll let the Senator's security know we’re getting a bit of a late start. Do try to hurry, though, would-be assassins don’t tend to wait.”
When he’s well and truly sure that the man is gone, his footsteps and presence fading away through the main room of his quarters and then down the hall, Anakin slides out of bed and sits on the floor. He stares down at his hands, examining the warm flesh in wonder. His hands hadn’t been flesh in a long, long time, and being able to feel them causes him to shudder. Swallowing down the sensation, he pinches his arm. There’s a burst of pain and he can’t deny his situation any longer.
Anakin wants to scream.
All the pain, all the hurt, all the destruction, and he’s the one who was sent back? Why not Obi-Wan? Hell, even Yoda! Either of them could do so much good for everybody. Anakin...couldn’t. When had he ever done something good?
Every time he tried, it came back to bite him.
He shuts his eyes. In the darkness, he sees their faces as though they were stood in front of him. The younglings, the Jedi, the rebels, Padmé, Obi-Wan. Could he save them? With this second chance, could he give them all a happy ending?
He could. He could get rid of Palpatine, clear out all of his former enemies before they got a chance to rise up. Anakin is skilled enough in the Force and has enough experience under his belt to do it. Not effortlessly, of course, he doesn’t underestimate his enemies like that, but he’d manage it. A plan starts to form, half-baked, something that needs serious revision, but it might just work. He wants to grab something to write with, wants to save them all, wants to–
He stops himself, because he already knows that he’s lying. More than anything else, far more than whatever remains of his desire to play the hero, Anakin wants to rest. It’s selfish of him, he knows. After everything he’s done, he doesn’t deserve rest. He had killed so many people, so many innocent people. As Vader, he had betrayed everything he had ever been taught, gone against the ones who had raised him and given him everything. Of everyone in the universe, there are none less deserving of rest.
Making up his mind isn’t difficult, not after that. His lightsaber– his first one, blue and so firmly in the light that it’s hard to think he had ever wielded it– rests beside the bed. Holding it in his hand, he takes a moment to appreciate the weight, how it fits perfectly in his grip. This lightsaber had been built for him and by him, and Anakin regrets ever losing it.
“This lightsaber is your life,” Obi-Wan had told him once. Recalling, Anakin lets out a tired, broken laugh. He rests the lightsaber against his chest, the open end pointed up towards his heart.
There’s no space. No room for error. He takes a moment to grieve, to allow himself an ounce of remorse for the things he would never accomplish. Allowing the tiniest feeling of sorrow to slip through to Obi-Wan, he activates the weapon in his hand.
For the second time, Anakin dies.
And for the second time, he
vastly
underestimates the Force’s plans for him.