Chapter Text
“Ahsoka, I want you up front,” Anakin ordered over the whine of battle droids and blaster bolts. His padawan darted ahead, taking down droid after droid in her path.
She’s getting good at dual wielding , he thought, a surge of pride blooming in his chest. Ahsoka’s montrals danced around as she did, slicing through waves of droids with ease. The men of the 501st stood behind them, laying down cover fire. Anakin didn’t want to interrupt her field training. While they had been caught off guard, it wasn’t something she couldn’t handle. Just a few rogue droids, it looked like. She turned around and beamed at her master, as if to say “Look at me! Look what I can do!”
Ahsoka’s happy moment was cut short by a poorly-aimed grenade thrown by one of the newer models of battle droid. The sudden noise surprised her and she lost her footing. The second grenade nearly hit its mark, with a third on the way. Her delighted grin dropped to pure terror as she watched the arc of an incendiary. Anakin reached out to the Force and gripped her around the waist, pulling her back as hard as he could.
But he was too slow.
The grenade exploded right beside his young padawan.
Anakin woke up in a cold sweat again. He slammed the palm of his hand on his forehead and groaned. It was becoming increasingly irritating each time he woke up in that fashion. Glancing at the chrono on his bedside table, he saw it read 0247. Too early to try and stay up.
His heart was beating too fast. He knew that. Obi-Wan would have told him to meditate and release his feelings into the Force, but Anakin had tried that. He tried it the last hundred times he woke up from his nightmares. By now, he called bantha fodder on Obi-Wan’s methods.
The only thing that could calm his racing heart was seeing his padawan, alive and well, with his own eyes. Anakin rose from his bed and crept across the apartment he shared with Ahsoka. Her room was on the other side, across from his and separated by a common space to give the impression of privacy. He knocked his shin on a low table in the dark, hissing in pain and cursing to himself. His master would have been aghast.
Anakin peered past the fabric dividing the bedroom from the living space, only to see Ahsoka blissfully asleep. Lights from outside the temple shone through her window, landing just before her bed. He watched dust motes dance in the air beside her and listened to her breathing for a few minutes before feeling satisfied that she wasn’t blown to bits by a droid.
Nerves slightly settled, Anakin went back to his room to try and fall back to sleep. He thoughtfully slowed his breathing, counted shaaks in his head, tried every method he could think of to lull himself into unconsciousness. They were leaving for a mid-rim, Separatist controlled planet in the morning. It wouldn’t do him any good to be stumbling through his command on account of exhaustion. But something about the nightmare had shaken him. Ahsoka’s grin—radiating joy despite being in the middle of a battleground—flashed in the back of his head.
It’s not a prophetic dream, just a nightmare , he chastised himself. Still, the one about your mother was true, wasn’t it?
And what of your wife?
Every attempt he gave to falling asleep went to waste. Thoughts of Padmé filled his head, her cries of desperation, screams of pain, pleas to whoever was listening. A deep dread settled in Anakin’s stomach. Did she know he worried about her every waking moment? How could she know, tucked away in her senatorial apartment on one of the upper levels of Coruscant?
His last effort exhausted, he dropped himself on his floor and slipped into an agitated meditation.
The chrono buzzed at 0500 sharp, high and shrill and haunting Anakin every day of his life since nine years old. His meditative state was long gone. The Force hadn’t revealed anything to him anyways, so he turned his attention on packing for the trip.
“Snips, did you grab firstmeal?” Anakin called out. He trusted Ahsoka would be awake, if not by her chrono then by him stomping around his room. “I doubt we’ll have anything but ration bars for the next few days.”
Ahsoka popped her head in the door. Her ever-bright eyes scanned the disorder in Anakin’s room. He could tell from her furrowed face that she was trying not to say anything about it. “No, I just finished packing up. I was planning on grabbing some caf and heading to the hangar.”
“What?” he asked, appalled.
“ What ?” Ahsoka whined in response.
“I know Obi-Wan makes it seem like you can exist solely on meditation and caffeine, but that’s not exactly the case. Especially for you, my growing padawan.”
Ahsoka scoffed at the accusation. “It’s not—”
“Good for you to enter hyperspace on an empty stomach, correct.”
Anakin grinned at Ahsoka, who stood there with her arms crossed.
“At least let me make some panna cakes before we head out. We have time.”
Which was true. They didn’t have to be at the hangar until nearly 0800. The only reason they woke up so early was that they knew they’d save packing until the very last minute, and didn’t want to rely on the backup uniforms on the Resolute.
Within twenty minutes, Ahsoka had a stack of golden, flaky panna cakes and bantha butter set in front of her, as well as a steaming mug of caf.
Anakin and Ahsoka were no strangers to the Resolute. Ahsoka felt herself comforted by the heavy metal walls, having spent more of her childhood on the vessel than anywhere else. Anakin, however, felt unsettled by the weight. This time he couldn’t help but feel choked, boxed in by the layers of steel and wires.
The Force gave him the same answer it did hours before. Frustratingly unclear, he poked at the edges of his awareness like a stick in mud. Ahsoka could feel his discomfort through their training bond and bristled at his unease.
He greeted Rex as he entered the bridge. Preparing himself for hours of empty time in hyperspace, Anakin grabbed the hydrospanner tucked away in his belt. He settled in his seat and started to pick at his prosthetic arm, falling into the familiar rhythm of taking it apart and putting it back together.
The metal clinked satisfyingly in his ear. Every click of the spanner resonated in his hand, a comforting cadence instilled in him from a young age. His adept fingers plucked away at the bolts and wiring, quelling his anxiety and calming him with the fulfillment of tuning up a well-engineered machine.
“—do you think, General?”
Anakin snapped back to the bridge from wherever he was in his mind.
“Huh?”
“I asked what you thought about taking some time to settle in. Commander Tano’s already headed to her room. We’ve got a day or so in hyperspace,” Rex said. He rested his hand on the back of Anakin’s chair, peering over at his work on his prosthetic.
“Oh, sorry, Rex. That’s probably a good idea,” Anakin mumbled.
“Are… you alright, sir?”
Anakin nodded at Rex and gave him a thin-lipped smile, one that he knew couldn’t fool him. At the very least he hoped it would placate the rest of his crew, now turning to watch him walk away from the bridge.
The walls of Anakin’s room loomed over him. They were dark, gray, just like the rest of the ship. A small porthole allowed for minimal view of the outside. Hyperspace still. Varying shades of blue smudged together, with the occasional splotch of an unseen planet breaking up the mess. With only mere hours on board he didn’t expect the view to be any different.
Ahsoka’s room across the hall was filled with her bright burning signature, a bonfire of energy barely contained in her young frame. His own signature might have looked like that at one point. Maybe that’s what drew Qui-Gon to him in the first place. Maybe that’s what made Obi-Wan so reluctant to knight him.
Her signature was a steadying light to him in the middle of this wretched war. How many men had he seen die, their signatures snuffed out like a doused lamp? He refused to let that happen to her, the padawan he never wanted in the first place.
Anakin tried, once again, to slip into a meditation. Third time’s the charm, he figured. As soon as the thrum of the Resolute’s ion engine slipped away, he was assaulted with flashes of dead and dying men, droids in pieces on the ground, Ahsoka, laying unnaturally limp next to her unlit lightsabers.
He pushed the image out of his mind, scattering his things around the room in the process. The room was a mess, and he hadn’t even unpacked his bag yet. The mattress was askew, his pillow wound up on the floor, and the chair from the desk on the far wall overturned, most likely causing a noise that nobody would bother to check in on.
He needed to punch something.
The small training room on board was empty, devoid of the usual clatter from the 501st killing time with their brothers. The door slid shut behind Anakin and his feet sunk into the foam of the mats on the ground. A row of training droids lined the back wall, ones he was intimately familiar with. Those were the droids he took apart and reassembled on long trips, or when his hands felt restless.
So he knew if he dismantled one in his reckless assault, he would be able to put it back together with his men none the wiser.
He tossed his lightsaber to the side and dropped his cloak where he stood. Space travel had always sent a shiver down the spine of a young boy from Tatooine. The dark, endless vacuum made a chill settle deep in his bones. From the exercise he hoped he would warm up enough to not need the abandoned cloak.
At first, Anakin worked through the forms he learned as a child. It was what Obi-Wan had him start with whenever he needed to get some energy out, and only after meditation didn’t work. This time, it barely made a dent in the pool of potential energy flowing through his body. He felt stiff, unreliable. Like he was holding his breath for something yet to show itself.
Abandoning the attempt, Anakin reached out to pull a droid to him. The Force wavered with reluctance.
This too?
The sleeping droid dropped unceremoniously in front of him, so he turned it on and set it to the highest level it would go, waving away whatever nag stuck in the back of his mind.
“Training level twenty, activated,” it droned. “Status: safety protocols off. Force resistance on. Defeat only accepted at destruction.”
Well, there was no rebuilding the droid now. He’d have to apologize to Rex later.
The droid kicked to life without warning, running to hide behind a crate across the room. He didn’t stop to think. His lightsaber flew to his hand just in time to block a barrage of blaster bolts coming from the droid.
Dust kicked up around Anakin’s feet from where he hurried to crouch behind a large rock. Crackling red blaster bolts filled the air above his head, and he looked left and right to find men to cover him. Seeing none, he waited for the blasts to stop before jumping from the crate he ducked behind and advanced on the training droid.
Predicting his assault, the thing in front of him ignited its lightsaber. The blood red glow shone on the battlefield around them as the Sith drew himself up to his full height. Anakin leapt back to fall into a defensive stance and avoid the burn of the lightsaber.
None of his men were around, leaving Anakin alone to fight the Sith. He deftly blocked an overhead strike, and then jabs aimed right for his heart.
The two danced around the room, pushing and pulling when they could. When the droid jumped on a crate to gain higher ground, Anakin pushed it from under its feet. It fell on the ground in a clatter, resulting in a moment of disorientation that Anakin used to his advantage.
His senses sharpened with the onslaught of attacks. The Force felt clear, for the first time all day. He flowed with it, and it flowed through him, guiding his every step.
But a new signature approached, bright and fierce and energetic. Anakin turned to see Ahsoka running over, spending a few precious seconds he couldn’t afford to lose. She was grinning, big and joyful, and waving her arms at him. The Force flashed with soonprotectheralert as Ahsoka shouted his name. He moved to jump away from the feeling, but not before the Sith swiped the side of his outstretched arm.
Anakin gasped in pain, real pain, as he remembered the droid reciting its settings.
He pushed through it, like he had every time before. With a final burst of strength, Anakin advanced on the Sith and delivered a whirlwind of attacks that could only come from his Djem So training. He overtook the Sith, tapping into a reserve that begged to break through.
Finally, finally, the droid was on the ground, a mess of irreparably chopped parts. Some of them were still smoldering when he turned to look at them.
Anakin was left gasping for air and reaching for his singed arm. He fell to his knees and buried his head in his hands, and screamed.
At the sound of his scream one of his men came running in.
“Sir?” The soldier sounded confused, frightened, almost.
“Yes?” Anakin replied. He didn’t move from his place on the floor.
“Um… never mind. Sir.”
Anakin could see the soldier through his fingers. He watched as he turned on his heel and walked out.
As soon as the door was shut, he looked up from where he was sitting. A droid, cut up and glowing orange hot on the floor. Blaster marks and saber slashes on the walls around him. His heart, still beating at an elevated rate. But no dust. No Sith. No battleground.
What stuck around was a looming feeling of unease and anticipation settled deep in his chest.