Archive of Our Own

It starts on Tatooine. He is seven, and he dreams of freedom. Under the unforgiving heat of the twin suns, it will only ever be that—a dream.

Nevertheless, Anakin dreams. He dreams because it’s the only thing that is truly his own. His mind and his name, a luxury that many of the other slaves didn’t have.

Names hold meaning, his mother tells him. Ours, maybe, the most of all.

Anakin relishes in the stories that she whispers to him on the rare nights when Watto has left them alone, fingers carting through his hair in a way that radiates safety. It was my great-great-grandmother who chose ‘Skywalker’. The one who walks the sky and no chains can hold. The slave who makes free.

He holds these stories close to his heart.

This will be me one day, he thinks, hopeful as he clutches onto the little remnants of youthful innocence that had not been taken from him yet. I will free all the slaves and we will never be slaves again.

He closes his eyes and dreams.

—

Anakin is nine when they tell him that he is free and he will train to become a Jedi.

He is ecstatic at first. The mantra of ‘Finally, this is what I’ve been waiting for’ choruses through his mind on a loop.

He will miss his mother, Kitster, and even Threepio, who he built himself out of scrap. But it’s okay because Anakin will come back for them.

He doesn’t know much about the Jedi. Only that they were something of a legend on Tatooine, wielding swords made of light in a righteous glory.

Anakin wants to be like them. He wants to descend on Tatooine and cut the chains binding every slave. He wants to be the sun-dragon that his mother always says he is, wants to be powerful enough to protect everything and everyone he loves.

This vision fades away the moment he steps foot in front of the Jedi. Their prying eyes burn holes into him from every side and he unconsciously shrinks into himself like he would in front of a slaver.

Anakin is silent and unmoving as he listens to them discuss what to do with him. He wills his body to stay still but his hands tremble on their own accord through the whole assessment and after.

They tell him he will be Obi-wan's Padawan and that Obi-wan will be his Master. They don’t say anything about removing his slave chip.

He had really thought… He feels stupid for ever thinking so.

Qui-gon had bet on him to get him away from Watto—bought him from one system and placed him into another.

He wonders which Jedi Master has his detonator.

(Back on Tatooine, they had always said that you weren’t truly free until the chip was out.)

—

The Jedi say he’s reckless. That his emotions are unchecked. That he’s too attached.

Some of his classmates snicker when he can’t pronounce words in Basic—just another reminder that he’s different from them all, that he shouldn’t be here—and he physically has to stop himself from lashing out because Obi-wan says that it’s not the Jedi way.

He hears Jedi whisper about how it was such a shame that Obi-wan Kenobi, being the bright and promising young Jedi that he is, was hindered by a lost cause like him. They say he could’ve been so much more if he hadn’t made a promise to his dying Master.

Anakin knows he’s not like the rest of them, that maybe he’ll never be, but he tries. He tries to make the Jedi want him. He tries to make Obi-wan want him. All he does is try.

(It’s never enough.)

Even though they had a rocky start, the only person who has put in real effort with Anakin since he arrived at the temple is Obi-wan, who lets him crawl into his bed when the nightmares become too real and runs a hand through his hair until he falls asleep. Obi-wan, who sits with him and doesn’t get frustrated when he stumbles across words in a book. Obi-wan, who has started to smile more and laugh at his stupid jokes with something akin to fondness. Obi-wan, who lets Anakin call him by his name instead of ‘Master’ when they’re alone.

Sometimes, if he ignores the world around him he can pretend that Obi-wan truly wants him—that he’s doing it all out of genuine care in his heart. It lasts only a moment before the clawing guilt inside him comes crashing back down and he’s reminded that his actions were only because of an eternal sense of duty he had to Qui-gon. Anakin is simply an unwanted burden that has been placed on his shoulders.

Despite it all, Obi-wan is always kind—a steady and unwavering presence in the Force. He has not once complained about Anakin’s existence since he claimed him as a Padawan, when all he has gotten from others is pitying looks and solemn condolences.

The man is nothing like other Masters he has had in the past. He doesn’t yell or hurt Anakin when he messes up. At worst, his punishments come in the form of stern lectures that usually end up with tea and Anakin asleep in his arms.

Obi-wan is good and Anakin loves him. He thinks Obi-wan might grow to love him one day too.

(He doesn’t know that ‘one day’ had come a mere week of having him as a Padawan. That Obi-wan has become a far greater man than he could ever have hoped of becoming solely because Anakin came into his life. He doesn’t know that despite his undying loyalty to the Jedi code, he is also bound in loyalty to this gift of a young boy. Not just as a Master to his Padawan, but as a brother. Perhaps, maybe even as his own child.

He never speaks of this aloud, not even to himself. But it’s there—an undeniable truth. Obi-wan knows that it’s daringly close to crossing the line to attachment, but he can’t help it. And when he gets to hear Anakin’s giggles fill their apartment, lighting it up and casting warmth into his heart, Obi-wan can’t bring himself to care.

(Later—much, much later—Obi-wan, aged by loss and grief, wonders what would’ve been if he had only been brave enough to say those three words.))

—

At first, Palpatine makes Anakin nervous. He isn’t sure what the Chancellor of the Republic wants with him.

No one on Coruscant had ever raised a hand at him, but it was hard to lose habits that had been beaten into Anakin since he was small. So every time he calls on him, he straightens up and makes sure not to let himself make a single mistake in the older man’s presence.

To Anakin’s surprise, the Chancellor is nice. He smiles at him and tells him he is adjusting well at the temple, and that he is sure he will be one of the greatest Jedi the galaxy has ever seen. After a few more meetings, he even tells Anakin that they’re friends, and because of that he should just call him Palpatine instead of ‘Chancellor’.

Palpatine understands Anakin in a way none of the other Jedi do. He doesn’t shy away from his frustrations and even agrees with them. He is always honest and never fails to tell him the truth.

Most of all, he makes Anakin feel wanted. He’s glad he has Palpatine as a friend.

(After every meeting with the Chancellor, a nauseous feeling overcomes him and he is restless in a way that makes him anxious of everything around him—heightened awareness that he only ever experienced back on Tatooine. He doesn’t realise this, or at least never makes the connection with Palpatine and the disgust he feels later, but it makes him feel as if he’s still a slave.

(Maybe he still is.))

—

The nightmares come.

Anakin begs Obi-wan to let him have even a glimpse of his mother from afar just to know that she is alright.

Obi-wan’s tone is stern with finality. He says that he has already made too many exceptions for Anakin, and that as a Jedi he must let his past life go.

Anakin clenches his fist to prevent a biting remark and doesn’t bring the subject up again.

(He never tells him exactly what the dreams are like, never tells him that it's his mother’s death that he sees every time he closes his eyes.)

Weeks later, the opportunity to go back to Tatooine comes in the form of Padmé Amidala who offers to go with Anakin posing as her bodyguard as if it was the most simple thing in the world.

Obi-wan never finds out.

—

No. Blood coats his shaking hands. Please, no.

Anakin was supposed to save her. He was supposed to free her.

He was too late.

He thinks of Shmi Skywalker’s everlasting love, how she always made sure Anakin knew he was special, how she had given up everything so that Anakin could have even a semblance of a childhood. He thinks of how she let him cling to him as if having him in her arms was the only thing that mattered in the entire galaxy. He thinks of her smiles, tired and worn out, but smiling nonetheless. He thinks of her tales wrapped in a pull that spoke to her son just as she knew they would.

He sees the light fading from her eyes and feels her body go limp in his arms.

The furnace inside him burns and the dragon breaks free of its chains.

Anakin can’t quite remember what happens next, only that he has never felt such raw, unbidden grief before and he is sure it is swallowing him whole. Red fills his vision. He thinks he hears screaming.

He’s not sure if it's theirs or his own.

When he comes back to himself, Anakin is the only survivor. The smell of death fills the air.

(What have I done?)

(Far, far away, Darth Sidious feels a surge of Dark in the Force. A smirk pulls at his lips.)

—

Padmé is… everything. She is calm, unwavering support. She is bold, enduring determination. She is bravery that could rival the greatest of warriors. She is piercing words that sway entire systems. She is pure kindness and limitless compassion. She is the most beautiful person he has ever known.

She is Anakin’s wife. Four words that make Anakin want to grab her hand and spin her around against his chest out of sheer joy, uncaring that the world around them was currently falling apart, uncaring that they would have to live their lives out in secret. The only thing that mattered at this moment was them.

Here, they are not Jedi and Senator. They are not Padawan and Queen. They are Husband and Wife. Anakin would give the world for those to be the only two things that they ever had to be.

(He wishes his mother was here. She would’ve loved Padmé.)

(He would not let himself fail Padmé the way he had failed his mother.)

—

Anakin is nineteen when he is appointed as a General in a war that could have been avoided. He has just lost an arm and is hardly given any time to process it before he’s thrown head-first into Knighthood and a situation that he had never been prepared for. He is nineteen when he meets the Torrent Company—only a small fraction of what will soon be his battalion, the 501st legion.

They are a sea of white helmets and shining armour. His heart drops at the sudden realisation that he will have all these people under his command, shouldering the responsibility of keeping them alive on an active battlefield.

(He couldn’t even protect his mother. How was he expected to protect thousands of soldiers?)

Pushing his thoughts away, he steps up to the group. Instantly, they salute him in unison. Anakin has done nothing to deserve respect like that.

“Helmets off, please,” he says, in an effort to maintain a tone that doesn’t sound too demanding.

He watches as they remove them, and feels collective confusion at his request. Anakin guesses it’s not standard procedure. Frankly, he couldn’t care less.

They’re identical, each sharing the exact same facial features. It’s jarring, but Anakin had known this already.

His eyes fall onto the first of the men, the marking on his armour signifying a higher rank from the rest. Where the other Clones have identical brown hair, this man is blond and significantly more tense than any of the others at the prospect of removing his helmet.

Anakin finds himself drawn to him before he even makes the conscious decision. An uneasy feeling washes over him as the man gets stiffer and the troopers surrounding him have a surge of something. Protectiveness?

“You’re my Captain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” he breathes. “My name is Anakin Skywalker. What’s your name?”

“CT-5775, sir.”

Anakin furrows his brows as the unsettling feeling continues to flare under his skin. “Do you not have a name?”

The Captain hesitates. “We only have our designations, sir.”

We only have numbers. We’re just soldiers.

(You don’t have a name. You’re just a slave.)

Anakin wants to punch something.

“Well,” he starts, willing his anger at bay. “It won’t be like that here. You’re not just a number. And that goes to every single one of you.” He looks around addressing everyone in the room, pushing conclusiveness into his words.

“While you’re here on the Resolute, you’re not just a Clone. You have a name.” Anakin feels surprise and uncertainty rolling over the men in waves. “I’ll call you by what you’re comfortable with and if that’s your… designation, then I’ll respect that.”

He lets his words sink in. Despite every one of the men wearing identical faces, he feels the differences in their Force signatures as clear as day. He thinks he could tell them all apart even now.

“Let’s try that again.” He turns back to the Captain. “My name is Anakin. What’s your name?”

(I’m a person and my name is Anakin!)

The man in question doesn’t speak for a moment and Anakin holds his breath. “It’s Rex… sir.”

Anakin can’t stop the smile that overtakes his face.

Rex. It fits his Force signature perfectly. A rush of dark blue—noble, king, leader.

“Good to meet you, Rex. I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.” He claps a hand on the man’s shoulder. “And drop the ‘sir’, you’ll make me feel old.”

Rex nods in a sort of quiet disbelief, but from the look on his face, Anakin gets the feeling he won’t be doing that any time soon.

He moves on to the next trooper. Names come to him one after the other and Anakin makes a conscious effort to remember them all.

It takes time, but the 501st legion let themselves relax in his presence, no longer instinctively straightening up when he walks into a room, wiping any emotion from their face as if fearing the consequence of having even a single hair out of place. They had even begun to crack jokes around him.

Anakin notices how they have a mischievous streak that matches his own, the glint of fire in their eyes as they go through with another one of his almost impossible impulsive plans with little complaint. Amusedly, he thinks that they acclimated to Anakin and Anakin to them as if they had known each other for years.

While the Jedi alienated him for his differences, his men welcomed him. With the 501st he was part of something that felt bigger than the Jedi. Something that cried safety-acceptance-trust regardless of the ranks between them.

He looks at these men, this army of soldiers, and sees himself in every one of them. Anakin does everything in his power to protect them and reduce casualties no matter how brutal their situation is. He takes hit after hit for each of them, undeterred by it constantly ending up with him in the med bay sporting the injury of the day and a routine scolding from Kix, who never fails to remind him that he outranks everyone when it comes to Medic-related duties.

“With all due respect, General, we’re just Clones. You shouldn’t keep throwing yourself in front of us like this*,*” Rex says to him one time with poorly hidden concern.

Anakin had felt the endless amount of gratitude radiating off of his Captain as well as the unspoken whisper of ‘We’re replaceable’ hidden beneath his words.

“Not to me,” Anakin had answered, mirroring the same sentiment he had made the first time they had met.

He hears an exasperated but fond murmur of ‘di’kut jetti’ before the drowsiness from the painkillers kick in and he drifts off into sleep.

He loves his men for simply being and feels every death as if it were a scar tearing at his own body. Anakin holds the 501st—his brothers in arms—close to his heart, wrapping them with the Force and tightening it around them.

I would know these men by their laughs alone.

—

It’s mere months after Geonosis when the Jedi Council throw a child into his care despite Anakin barely being an adult himself.

He privately fumes at them for this, not because of Ahsoka herself, though she is snippy and reckless, but because they made the collective decision to send a fourteen-year-old into a battlefield to fight a war that she should have no business in. Anakin knows he isn’t a child (he had never been given that luxury) but he is nineteen and they know he is unequipped for this responsibility. He’s not like Obi-wan who is known for his wisdom and advice. He can’t handle a Padawan, not now and not ever.

So he snaps back at her and refutes her claims that she’ll be his Padawan throughout the entirety of their battle in Christophsis.

In the aftermath, he finds himself sitting beside her. Amid the fighting and bone-deep tiredness, of the easy banter that they kept going even while striking down droid after droid, something had changed.

He knows his men have already warmed up to her, noticing how Rex, the traitor, hadn’t even tried to cover his snicker when she called him ‘Skyguy’ for the first time and how Echo had laughed heartily when she playfully punched his shoulder at something he had said.

Anakin supposes he might have as well.

The Togruta girl is stubborn and has a habit of disobeying orders, but she is also unrelentingly determined and brave, driven by the need to do what is right above all. Anakin looks at Ahsoka Tano, and it is almost like he is looking into a mirror.

“You’re reckless, little one. You never would have made it as Obi-wan’s Padawan,” he tells her, feeling only slightly guilty at how her face falls instantly, already fearing the worst. “But you might make it as mine.”

As if a switch has been flicked, hope brightens up her expression and the transparent joy that fills the Force brings the corners of his mouth up into a smile that matches her own. Her unmistakable delight gently brushes against his mind, and Anakin feels that he has made the right choice.

It is slow at first, and he feels his skin crawl whenever she calls him ‘Master’, but Ahsoka manages to worm her way through his carefully built defences and quickly makes a home for herself in his heart.

He does his best to give her the childhood he was robbed of in the little ways he can, making a game of how many droids they can get rid of and dragging her into small indulgences like stargazing on the night of a campaign or dancing with him in the rain. It is so much less than what she deserves and Anakin wishes he could give her more, but he cannot.

The fear of not being good enough—of making a mistake that could get her killed—is still there, continually lurking in the depths of his mind. He doesn’t think it will ever go away, but he makes a silent promise to himself that he will protect her no matter what, however possible it is in the middle of a war. Now and always.

(The sun-dragon in him is content.)

From then on, the echo of Skyguy and Snips—of brother and sister—is a constant between them.

(Forever.)

—

Zygerria happens.

Grimly, he understands why they had chosen him for this mission. What better person to send undercover in a slave empire than a former slave? Anakin thinks bitterly.

But Ahsoka, who is just a teenager and a Togruta nonetheless? They know the Zygerrians specifically sought out her kind, and they’re still choosing to dawn her with jewels and make her go in as a slave. It makes him want to throw up. She is a child.

He argues with the Council against bringing her with them to no avail.

(Anger boils beneath his blood, threatening to erupt in a blinding fury. A rush of Dark blows in his ears.)

They will never understand how completely and irrevocably slavery changes you, how the predatory gazes and shark-like grins creates scars that are mental and physical alike, how the feeling of being lesser never leaves you—forever lurking in the back of your mind.

(How the chip in your arm itches under your skin every day, a reminder that you are still shackled. That you are a slave cosplaying as a free man.)

Anakin has experienced this all his life, he can handle it. Ahsoka, Obi-wan, and Rex can’t. He doesn’t want them to.

(How can he protect them in a situation like this?)

In the end, they’re all forced to anyway.

—

They go through with the mission.

Obi-wan and Rex get captured in the exact way that Anakin had feared, but all together they manage to escape and free the Togrutians along with them.

(The memory of a child from Tatooine is an echo in his mind, holding up the weight of the sky in his hands as he makes a promise to the stars. I will free all the slaves and we will never be slaves again.)

There is something in Anakin that burns when he sees the bruises sporting Obi-wan and Rex’s skin and the dark circles under their eyes, the way Ahsoka’s entire body continues to tremble even though they’re far, far away from that planet, the way he can still feel the phantom sensation of her hands hovering over him as she takes and takes and takes*—*

Anakin shudders involuntarily. They’re out. He’s free.

(I’m a person and my name is Anakin.)

(Are you?)

—

“Anakin,” Obi-wan starts from beside his still shaking form, awoken by yet another nightmare. “What happened on Zygerria?”

And when the man looks at him with an expression so soft, filled with genuine tenderness and concern, Anakin breaks.

The dam collapses and words come spilling out. Before he knows it he’s a sobbing mess in his former Master’s arms, feeling like a Padawan (a child, a slave) all over again.

Obi-wan holds him tightly, pushing safety-and-comfort into their pulsing bond as he runs a hand up and down Anakin’s back, murmuring apologies into his curls. He thinks he feels tears of his own dampen Anakin’s hair.

“I’m sorry, dear one. I’m so—so sorry.” Obi-wan’s voice breaks, Anakin still enclosed in the man’s strong grip.

“Why are you apologising?” He mumbles. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

There is a flame in his eyes as he speaks. “I should’ve fought harder to stop the Council from sending us on this mission. I should’ve known that the Queen—” he trails off, breathing in sharply as he tries to let go of the anger that twists in the Force. Something Anakin barely ever sees in the man. “I should’ve done more to protect you.”

Pulling away, instantly missing the warmth that enveloped him, Anakin looks up into Obi-wan’s red-rimmed eyes and down turned lips.

How was Anakin supposed to tell him that he was supposed to be the protector—the sun-dragon that guarded them all, and that he was the one that had failed?

“You did all you could. I will always be grateful for that.” Anakin clasps his hands around the man’s arm and lets forgiveness that doesn’t need to be given prod at the man’s shields. “Thank you.”

Obi-wan smiles sadly, it’s a small thing worn down by the exhaustion that marrs his features and the ache that Anakin knows he feels in his bones. But it’s a smile for him.

“You’re welcome, my Padawan.”

Anakin doesn’t mention that he’s not Obi-wan’s Padawan anymore.

And when Ahsoka hesitantly cracks the door open later, lower lip wobbling, Anakin is the first to pull her into Obi-wan’s bed. The three of them fall asleep in the comfort of each other’s steady presences. Anakin and Ahsoka both tucked under one of Obi-wan’s arms.

(Brother-brother-sister. Anakin doesn’t know what he’d do without the two of them.)

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, they will be okay. As long as they stay together.

(He should know better by now.)

—

Betrayal comes from the last person in the galaxy Anakin ever would have thought possible. The man who raised him and taught him everything he knows about being a Jedi, the man who let him feel what it was like to be loved as one’s own child once again.

Still, Obi-wan takes the careful trust they had built up over years and shatters it in the palm of his hand like it’s nothing.

Anakin had mourned him. Ahsoka had held his dead body in her arms, tearfully looking up at Anakin as if he could bring Obi-wan back to life.

He had been the first to seek out his murderer with Ahsoka by his side. Anakin knew idly that Obi-wan would never want him to seek revenge, and that is the only thing that spares him from beating the true Rako Hardeen to death with his own fists. He thinks anger is a better alternative than the unbearable grief he will feel when the man is behind bars and there is nothing left to be done.

And then, as if the universe had taken pity on him, he finds out that Obi-wan is alive. He almost breaks down in tears of relief before he is told why and the rage is back, igniting him like a star on the verge of exploding.

Obi-wan came back a week later expecting them to take it all in stride, pretending that everything was okay.

He doesn’t even apologise, only drops a casual remark much like the ones they would exchange in the past, still wearing Hardeen’s face. Anakin fumes.

He tells him that it was Obi-wan himself who decided for them to keep Anakin in the dark, that they needed his reaction to make it believable. This only enrages him even more.

(They speak so highly of the danger of attachments, yet they turned around and used his without question.

The Jedi Council was made up of a bunch of hypocrites.)

How could you? He wants to scream. How could you? I would have never done this to you.

Obi-wan still doesn’t understand. Anakin doesn’t explain it to him.

After, there is a growing distance between them. The betrayal festers deep within his blood, simmering in silence. They don’t talk about it, but Anakin doesn’t think he can ever forgive him for this.

(Palpatine was right. Obi-wan was just like the rest of them.)

—

Anakin wants nothing more than to fall to his knees and scream as he watches her walk away from him. The silka beads she had closed his fingers around hold the weight of a rock in his palm.

(Was Anakin Skywalker destined to lose everyone he loves?)

Once again, it was the Jedi themselves that never let Anakin forget of his susceptibility to attachment. Still, they were the ones that had chosen to put a child into his care and then expected him not to be shattered beyond repair when he had to let her go.

Their violent distrust of Ahsoka, one of their own, was what had led them here. A seventeen year old girl being tried for crimes she didn’t commit because the Council were too blinded by their own pride and achievements.

Anakin was the only one who had believed in her. It still is not enough.

I’m sorry Master, but I’m not coming back.

Please. He begs silently. Don’t leave me. I’ll be better for you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Please, not again.

His vision blurs and there is wetness on his cheek. He stays frozen, eyes locked onto her moving figure. (She was still so small.)

Ahsoka doesn’t look back.

The sun-dragon weeps.

(This is the beginning of the end.)

(Decades after, Ahsoka sees him everywhere. She is plagued by a ghost and the regretful myriad of ‘what if’s’. He is gone and she can’t help but feel that it is all her fault.)

—

The nightmares are back. This time they’re visions of his wife. Terror seizes him.

He hasn’t eaten or slept properly in weeks. He can’t recognise himself in a mirror anymore, all that’s present is the aching desperation and need to protect-protect-protect.

He can’t lose Padmé, who is pregnant with their child. He will do anything to keep her alive. Whatever it takes.

—

Anakin is twenty-three and the world is falling apart by his hands. He has lost everything—everything.

It ends like this: Fire. Pain. Screaming. Betrayal. Lies. Flames burning inside and out. Trapped in the very worst of nightmares.

You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!

(I promise you, Anakin, I will not let you come to harm. Not while I’m still living and breathing.)

“Where is… Padmé?” She is all he has left. Everything he had done was to protect her, to keep her safe. All the darkness and death that reigns the world now is irrelevant, as long as she is by his side.

Then: “It seems in your anger… you killed her.”

Darth Vader lets out a roar of pure, unfiltered anguish and falls to his knees.

All that he has done has been for her, and now she is gone.

(The sun-dragon is deadened, shirked by the repeated failure of losing everyone over and over again. Anakin Skywalker cannot save anyone.

Not even himself.)

He is betrayed (and the betrayer). He will have revenge for what was taken from him.

(Darth Sidious has won.)

—

In another world, Anakin Skywalker holds two incredibly small humans in his arms.

This Anakin is full and content, carrying his children. Padmé smiles softly over at him before, taking Luke carefully into her own motherly hold and sitting beside him. Anakin tells her in amusement that they were both right about their children in the end. He had thought it was a girl, Leia, and she had thought it was a boy, Luke. She laughs, shaking her head and Anakin wants to bottle it up and get drunk on it every night.

In this world, Darth Sidious has lost, and the sun-dragon lives.

Luke and Leia grow up in the comfort of a loving home with their parents right by their sides. They call Obi-wan and Ahsoka ‘uncle’ and ‘auntie’ and jump into their arms like it's the most natural thing in the world. When their uncle Rex brings his brothers over, they race to the door in excitement attacking their legs with mini Skywalker-Amidala hugs.

In this world, everything is right.

On Mustafar, Vader wakes up in cold sweat.

—

A lightsaber he had forged with his own hands. (For a girl who was bigger than it all, destined to be more than he could ever have hoped for.)

A black hole of death surrounding a snowy plain. (Bodies of the men he once swore to protect lie buried beneath him.)

The last sliver of light dies and Anakin Skywalker is gone.

Darth Vader rises.

—

On Vendaxa, he is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife*.*

She has Padmé’s face, yet she is not her. She is not who she says she is, yet she knows the name of the man he used to be, the man that he destroyed. Her responses to his questions enrage him, yet he can’t bring himself to rid himself of her. Not when this is the closest he has ever gotten to seeing Padmé again. Not when he sometimes physically has to stop himself from recoiling when he looks at her. (Not when he misses her so much that he can hardly breathe anymore.)

“Why would I be scared of Anakin Skywalker?”

In the end, he kills her anyway.

—

There is nothing left in Darth Vader but pure, inexhaustible rage. It blackens his core and seeps like poison into his veins. He cares for nothing and no one. There was a time in his life, many many years ago when he had. When, in his weakness, he cared more than some people thought was possible, but that time was over.

Anakin Skywalker is dead. Darth Vader has made sure of it.

—

A clash of Blue and Red. Light and Dark. Jedi and Sith. Sorrow and Anger. (Master and Padawan. Brother and Brother.)

I’m sorry Anakin. For all of it.

(Please stay. Don’t leave me again.)

—

The only other time Vader feels a spark of something since the end of everything is when he comes face to face with another ghost.

“The apprentice lives,” Vader says.

(Snips, Anakin sobs.

The revelation that she had somehow survived Order 66 and then been forced to hide away in isolation almost crushes him. Ahsoka had never been able to handle complete and utter solitude.

She had grown up without him, hardened by grief and loss in a way that he had never wanted for her. Just another person he failed to protect. Just another promise he had broken.)

“My Master could never be as vile as you!” She is filled with conviction, firmly holding onto a childish dream from a time that had passed. A time that she is not able to mourn.

Foolish girl. The truth is in front of you yet you still cannot accept it.

“Anakin Skywalker was weak,” venomous words recited from another resentful reunion with another traitor who believed themself responsible for Vader’s unforgiving wrath. “I destroyed him.”

(I’m sorry, Anakin. Choking breaths, a torrent of tears built by endless regret and loss, by despair that would never be healed. For all of it.

I am not your failure, Obi-wan. Bittersweet closure that only twists the permanently lodged knife in deeper and deeper. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker… I did.)

“Then I will avenge his death.”

(I don’t care! Gretta is guilty. She should be punished!
Remember, Ahsoka. Revenge is—)

“—not the Jedi way.”

She is all fire when she speaks. “I am no Jedi.”

Twin lightsabers emit matching glows of white, and she leaps.

Vader tries to kill her because that is all he knows. The fact that she was once Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan does not mean anything to him. She will die in this temple by his hand, and he will remember her as nothing but a minor inconvenience.

(He ignores the thought of the lightsaber, retrieved from snowy ground above a mass grave of brothers, and silka beads that a Padawan had pushed into her Master’s hands, both carefully enclosed in a box on Mustafar. A suffocating memory from the past that he himself had not been able to bring himself to crush.)

Their fight is a blur of moving limbs and bending light. White against Red. Light against Dark. (The Daughter versus the Son.) Barely anyone can sustain a fight with Vader anymore, yet the girl holds herself well as she defends against his attacks in a way that had been purposely engraved into her, predicting every possible strike.

(When I was out there, alone, all I had was your training and the lessons you taught me. And because of you, I did survive.)

(Keep fighting like that, and you might be able to beat me in a fight one day.
Bet I can already. What do you say, Skyguy?
Oh, you’re on.)

Somewhere throughout it, she manages to get a hit on his mask. The sensation of cold air that he never feels anymore blows against ruined skin. The right side of his mask falls to the ground with a clatter.

(The Brother had broken off the left, and the Sister had broken off the right. Neither had been able to take off the whole thing.)

Vader cannot say what happens, cannot explain why his chest clenches so suddenly at the unfiltered sight of his Pada-–

No. She left him. She walked away from him. She betrayed him, just like everyone else.

“Ahsoka…” he breathes, unable to control his voice as he utters a name from the life he had destroyed. Ana—Vader’s throat is tight. His mechanical breathing is heavier. A spike of pain travels along his chest.

“Anakin?” Her blue eyes are wide and glassy. It almost seems as if she is truly seeing him for the first time.

(She looks every bit of the child she used to be, looking up at Anakin in barely concealed disbelief like he had hung the stars.

Anakin’s heart breaks.)

He watches as a newfound determination steels her features, something akin to hope renewing the fight in her. The temple is falling around them.

“I won’t leave you!” She announces with determination. “Not this time.”

(You’re stuck with me, Skyguy!)

A beat. A flicker of Light. (Blue and Green, Master and Padawan, Brother and Sister.)

(I would never let anyone hurt you, Ahsoka. Never!)

The Darkness returns. (red and yellow, pain and betrayal, traitor and betrayed.)

“Then you will die,” and Darth Vader strikes.

(The sun-dragon is no more.)

—

The temple comes undone. Between the chaos the apprentice is pulled away by another.

He doesn’t die. (He wishes he had.)

—

Boba Fett is just a bounty hunter. A bounty hunter that Vader keeps hiring. A bounty hunter with a face that was once identical to a thousand others.

A bounty hunter whose voice reminds him of buzzed blond hair and a fond grin accompanied by loyalty that had not once faltered.

(Sometimes, when he looks away and Fett speaks, he lets himself pretend for a moment that it is his Captain by his side, relishing in the haunting familiarity of the man’s voice, no matter how much it torments him in his nightmares and memories alike.)

“Rex—”

A pause.

“Who the hell is Rex?”

Ice fills his veins. His mind roars.

“Get out.”

“What—”

“Get. Out.”

Fett leaves, but the image of bleach-blond hair and brown skin doesn’t.

—

He doesn’t know this, but his daughter is right in front of him. Leia Organa, senator and princess, with the fierceness and dignity that Padmé Amidala possessed, yet the spitfire and sarcasm that was all Anakin Skywalker.

There is familiarity as he observes the princess with her quick words and fiery temper. Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognised your foul stench when I was brought on board.

(General Grevious. You’re shorter than I expected.)

Often, she reminds him too much of Padmé. Once again, Darth Vader is tormented by a ghost.

He doesn’t know this, but it is his daughter’s life that he ruins. He forces her to watch as he blows her home to pieces. For this, she will hate him forever.

(Another regret. The Anakin Skywalker from before would despise who he had become. A wrath of evil that loved nothing and was loved by no one. A dark presence that reigned terror even on his own children, whom he had once so tenderly welcomed before they had taken their first breath.)

(He keeps kicking.
He?
It’s my… motherly intuition.
Motherly intuition, huh? With a kick that hard? Definitely a girl.)

It doesn’t change anything. Darth Vader’s touch is poison. A trail of death and destruction is left wherever he goes.

—

Finally, finally, Darth Vader kills Obi-wan Kenobi.

The revenge that had driven him for decades tastes bitter in his mouth.

—

Later, Vader meets his son face to face. He looks every bit Skywalker, yet has the gentleness that was all Padmé Amidala. This, too, doesn’t matter.

They fight and he cuts the boy’s arm off the same way another Sith had done to his father all those years ago.

Writhing in pain and now defenceless, Vader knows he can capture and force him to turn to the Dark as planned with ease.

He doesn’t. Instead, he watches as Luke Skywalker makes his escape.

—

“Luke. Take off my mask.”

(In the end, it was neither the Brother nor the Sister who had taken off Vader’s mask, but the Son. The harbinger of a New Hope, the promise of a better future.)

Anakin Skywalker dies with a smile on his face.

(The prophecy of the Chosen One is fulfilled.)

—

“Because the sun-dragon has the biggest heart in the galaxy, a furnace of flames powerful enough to protect everything and everyone it loves. The strongest heart—stronger than the heart of a star.” 

“Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out.”