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The most excruciating of physical sensations amalgamate, threatening to knock him out clean. He’s wrapped in a miasma made of ash and the lurid stench of synthetic material melting into burned flesh. His flesh. Even so, by some twisted miracle, he holds onto his last anchor, his fingers digging into the dirt bank—his metal fingers, because those are the only ones he has left.
The voice above him belongs to somebody he once loved, somebody who loved him. It carries words, too little too late. Words, bleeding from the heart yet all paltry by now. Words, and none of them reach him through the haze of pain and putridness. The smoke is stinging his eyes. The embers in the air are burning his skin. His entire body is one great throbbing wound that keeps tearing itself further apart at the edges. If it wasn’t for the hate blackening his veins he would have already crumbled and succumbed, and perhaps that would have been better.
“I hate you!”
The words come out unbearably loud, ringing in his head, surpassing this plane of existence. He takes in a deep breath and suddenly instead of smoke it’s cold air that knifes into his lungs. Sensations and sentiments are all garbled, and as the signals from his burning nerve endings to his brain go staticky and rickety, the pain slowly fades into a tingle. He gasps—and it’s that again, cold air, almost icily cold, and now his face also feels cold and damp, and his skin is also cold, and he’s sure he’s dying. He’s so, very sure he’s dying, and he’s dying because that is what he deser—
“Anakin... Anakin!”
Anakin’s eyes shoot open. For a good few moments, he sees nothing but incandescent afterimages of the lava and the flames and the embers overwhelming his vision. As the white-hot impressions slowly dissipate into contusion rings in the dark, he makes out the lines of a ceiling… and a face. A strand of hair, a dip of the brow, a slope of the nose bridge, and all beneath it a signature so soft and familiar it pulls a sharp breath from his chest.
“Anakin, dear one…” Obi-Wan’s voice suffuses his being with a feathery warmth, a gentle hand running through Anakin’s hair.
Anakin sits up shakily. The images, the sensations are coming back all too vividly. Their lightsabers clashing and the vibrations running up his arm; his mechno-hand on Obi-Wan’s throat; Obi-Wan’s blade slicing through his flesh. The pain that contorted Obi-Wan’s face in his dream now spread within his chest, gnarly fault lines digging barbs into his very heart. He could even smell it again, the putrid smoke of burnt materials melted into seared flesh. He was burning. Obi-Wan was watching. I loved you, he’d said, like Anakin was a dead man crawling, like it was a thing of the past. Like he hated Anakin then already. Why would they act that way to each other ever? His fingers dig down into his own scalp and forehead, a sob and a shudder tearing through his body. He feels like a volcano erupting for the last time, spilling its guts and killing everything in the way of its self-destruction. Magma in the earth, magma in his veins, magma rolling in tiny streams down his cheeks as he doubles over and begins to cry hot, silent tears into his mismatched palms. What was that? What was that?
The bed dips as Obi-Wan shifts his weight. His arms wrap around Anakin and Anakin doesn’t bother to fight it. He leans into Obi-Wan’s warmth like a wilted flower, pressing his face into the crook of his Master’s—his lover’s—neck, seeking to override the smell of smoke and ash and burnt flesh that seems to cling to his senses despite not being even real. Obi-Wan’s hand runs up and down his spine, rubbing gentle, gentle patterns into his back.
“You’re alright, Anakin. You’re safe,” Obi-Wan murmurs, holding him closer, tighter, more protective. Anakin clenches his jaws, but it doesn’t help. A sharp sob still escapes between his gritted teeth, and he curls his fingers into Obi-Wan’s robes, letting out something between a pathetic cough and a hiccup. Obi-Wan strokes his hair again, pressing little kisses to his temple. “Easy, easy now. That’s it. You’re fine, you’re safe now. It was all just a dream.”
Anakin shakes his head, You don’t understand, but he can’t form the words. He can barely even form thoughts, can barely breathe, let alone doing something as complex as speaking. His arm and thighs still dully ache, echoing the maiming wounds in his dream. He shakes like a leaf in a snowstorm, even as his body feels like it’s going up in flames.
Obi-Wan kisses his forehead, and then presses his cheek against it. “You might be having a fever,” he says, his voice as soft as the touch of flour. His signature is glowing cool and gentle, a welcome presence, half open on the other side of their bond. “Do you want me to get you something?”
Anakin’s lashes flutter in another mournful sob, shaking his head vigorously. No, no, no, he’s seeing it again. Obi-Wan, standing above him on the sloping bank of a lava river, picking up his lightsaber before turning away, leaving, leaving him...
“Don’t,” Anakin chokes out, “don’t go, Master.” He wants to scream, but there’s not enough air in his lungs and strength in his larynx to do such a thing. He’s gasping for air as it is.
“I won’t, my dear. I won’t.” Obi-Wan hushes him, cupping his cheek fully in the curve of his palm. “Anakin, darling, could you open your eyes? Look at me, please.”
Obi-Wan’s smooth voice and soothing words are underground streams of freshwater to Anakin’s scorched earth, threading through the ruins and nourishing what is left and what could still be. The lingering bitterness and betrayal and pure hatred from the dream still swirls within him in an indefinite mass that he can’t quite parse. He opens his sandpapered, blurry eyes, biting down hard on his lip.
“There you are,” Obi-Wan says, thumb gently dabbing a tear away from the corner of his eyes.
“I love you,” Anakin rasps, and says it again, “I love you,” like it’s an incantation, like it can protect him from the blinding afterimages of magma and lightsabers, like it will ward off whatever evil that has invaded his dreams just now. He stares up at Obi-Wan’s face, reaching up with his trembling flesh hand. “I don’t want you to hate me.”
“You’ve never given me reason to,” Obi-Wan answers as though it’s the most natural thing in the universe. He holds Anakin’s hand to his cheek, turning to briefly kiss his palm. “You are my one and only, Anakin. I love you.”
Obi-Wan’s mental shields lower and lower, until his signature colors the Force around Anakin, wrapping around his psyche as a warm cloud, light and balmy and soft to the touch. Anakin lets out a long, shuddering breath, his own walls already in shambles by then. He welcomes Obi-Wan in as he always does, sniffling while Obi-Wan wipes his tears away streak by streak and kisses him for every sob he takes in. Their lights mingle like dusk and dawn, and soon the ash and embers cede place to morning dew and night rains, the lava river turns into a crystalline brook, the flaming sky now as blue and gentle as Obi-Wan’s eyes. It was all just a dream. A dreadful, horrid dream, but only a dream.
“I love you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan whispers again, nearly against his mouth. Anakin cups his face and leans in the rest of the way. Obi-Wan cradles the base of his skull and parts his lips, despite the taste of drying tears on his own. Anakin hums softly into the kiss, and finally feels like he could smile again.