Work Text:
I
I dug a grave for you. I dug it for me too, but there was nothing to fill it with. Nothing to fill it with but how much I hurt, the vast ocean waters of my grief, perhaps, and all of those terrible, terrible things I felt. All of those nightmares I thought, I lived, I breathed. Everything I had tried to forget.
But couldn’t.
II
I dug it with my own hands, no help from the Force at all. Nothing to make the task easier, nothing to make the task more bearable. Just the sound of the shovel cutting into the soft sand, moving it aside, throwing it over my shoulder. Over and over and over again, a rhythm, a song, a hymn, a dirge.
I wanted to feel every second of it, every moment of pain and discomfort. Some sort of penance for what I did to you. Some sort of way to say I’m sorry.
III
I met you under twin suns, and now under twin suns I try to forget you. Try to live without you.
But the dreams don’t stop. The heart keeps on beating. I keep on living, once living for you, now living without you.
IV
My daily routine means nothing to me. It’s designed to mean nothing to me. I am an automaton, a droid. I am a man merely in design, not in feeling. Not in thoughts. I have no thoughts. I am doing everything by rote, I am thinking of nothing as I do them.
I am clinging to life when I want to let go.
V
You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.
Agonised words thrown to a man in agony. A twisted attempt at a parting gift, perhaps, because I knew I’d never see you again? Or a desperate attempt at a justification for what I’d done (I had to take your life because I loved you too much to see you ruin it).
My brother Anakin, I loved you.
Anakin, I loved you.
Love.
You.
And the force of the feeling those words give me open my eyes and send me lurching upright out of my crude, cold bed.
Alone in the cave, nobody can hear me screaming.
VI
Sand everywhere, in everything. In anything. Didn’t you once complain of that to me? Why did I not listen more carefully?
Sand, sand, a sea of it, an ocean to drown in. Filling my shoes, irritating my eyes. Ruining my meals, coarsening my skin.
I let it happen.
I want the sand to swallow me whole. Bury me with you.
VII
When I call out at night, it is not for you. Not anymore.
At first it was, at first you were all I wanted (needed), but quickly your name faded from my lips, a necessity to protect myself from the slow poison that is heartbreak.
Now I only seek my mentor, my guiding star from long ago, the first one who left me too soon, but not the last.
But he has forsaken me as well. And so I am in this dark place alone, this rough cave turned into rough home. And I call out for him, and once, just to try it, I call out for you, but the pain burns me like the fire that took you from me and so I never try it again.
VIII
I watch over him with eyes that try not to see too much, eyes that try to carefully ignore the repeating pattern that is you in him. But it can’t be ignored. He is your spitting image, truly a piece of you, reborn.
As much as I want to know him, to be close to him, I am afraid of it. To know him is to know you again. To know that he is here, your son, your boy, and you, one who would have loved him so much, are gone.
But love isn’t enough to save a person from their fate.
Love didn’t save you from your fate, no matter how hard I tried.
I watch over him and I try to never look too closely at his eyes.
IX
Now there is someone else who needs me, someone else who has called out to me to help them. An old friend. Someone who, as soon as I hear his voice, plunges me back into the past. Back into my memories of you and those last dark, dwindling days of whatever goodness remained in the galaxy.
And I can’t answer his call because I’m not the man he’s looking for. Not Obi-Wan the hero, but Ben the survivor.
So I say no, and again I fail. Again I make the wrong choice.
But I am afraid.
X
And then I see again the consequences of my broken heart, the long shadow that my fear and grief cast.
Someone just like me (or, who I used to be) has paid the price.
I can’t let that happen to her. Not to that little girl. Not to your daughter.
I can try to be the hero again.
XI
I find myself digging again now, not a grave, but to find something that was once lost. Something that will, one way or another, bring me back to you.
Because everything always leads me back to you, eventually. I am forever in your orbit, a tiny planet trapped by your brilliant sun.
And I can’t break free. Because I don’t want to.
I dig, shovel eating into the sand once again, to find what was buried. Two halves of one whole. My heart and yours.
Weapons that saved our lives. Weapons that were our lives. Side-by-side, just as we used to be.
XII
I dug you a grave once, and I dug it for me too. We are not resting in it yet, but one day we will be. One day soon.
Together.