Chapter Text
Familiar eyes. An open, caring face. Sinking dread. “Only the power of the Dark side can save her now.”
(What? That can’t be— What?)
A broken window. Echoing silence. Another’s malicious triumph. “What have I done?”
(Oh no. No, no no—)
Little bodies. Your duty, for her. Numbness. “Master Skywalker, there’s too many!”
(Oh stars, oh gods, don't—stop, stop it, please!)
You had to you had to you had to you had to— “Ani, you’re breaking my heart!”
(No, no no, Padmé, no!)
The fire’s mercy. Unbearable loss. Abandoned, forsaken, discarded, nothing. “You were my brother, Anakin! I loved you!”
(Master! Master, please! Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan, help me, please!)
Your fault. “It seems, in your anger…”
(It can’t be real. It can’t be real. It can't be real.)
It is.
He vomits almost as soon as the Vision releases him, rolling out of his bed and landing on his hands and knees on the floor. Hand and knees, rather, his prosthetic is—somewhere else.
Sense memories bombard him at the thought, the agony of those heavy, ill-fitting prostheses he had in the future. All four of them, because he looses all his limbs, all his limbs are taken from him, oh stars, and, and—
Obi-Wan will do that to me.
Anakin retches again.
The last time he saw Obi-Wan was only a few days ago, returning to the Temple from a successful sabotage mission that just the two of them had been assigned to. Their clothes were grimy and stiff with dried sweat, their stealth ship not having a sonic for the three-day trip, but their spirits were high.
The mission had been a resounding success, neither of them even having been injured besides a couple bruises. Just as they’d disembarked, Obi-Wan had stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and a warm smile. He’d praised Anakin, commended him for his quick thinking and ingenuity in placing the explosive charges when the factory’s layout had ended up being different than what they had been told. Anakin had been over the moon ever since, cradling the precious words close to his heart.
But it doesn’t matter now. Because, not so far in the future, he’ll fuck up so bad that Obi-Wan will have to neutralize him, attack him and maim him and try to put him down like a rabid animal.
And he’ll deserve it.
It takes him so long to stop dry heaving that the cleaning droids have already arrived. Normally he would thank them for their help, or at least greet them, but he can’t even manage that. He trembles, watching them beep and whir as they go about their duty.
(It was so real. He’s never had any vision like this before, not even with his mom. The level of detail (the pain), it was like he was experiencing the carnage firsthand, remembering it now like he had actually been there.)
It’s nighttime and the lights are off. He can just barely see the mouse droids cleaning his floor by the faint glow of city lights coming in through his window. Horrors that he never could have imagined before flash behind his eyes. He’d thought he’d already seen the worst the galaxy had to offer, the grisly violence of the war, the everyday cruelty of slavery.
But he was wrong. Oh so wrong. Things could be so much worse. Things will be worse, it will be, oh gods, it’s going to happen—
—unless.
Anakin crawls awkwardly to his nightstand, circling the puddle of sick. Scrabbling blindly, he wraps his flesh fingers around the cool cylinder of his lightsaber, then twists to slump back against the wall, gripping it tight. Tears flow freely down his face, every breath shuddering.
He remembers seeing Padmé the previous evening. He had enough time to visit her for a meal, but couldn’t spend the night. His beautiful wife, eyes bright, face flushed with happiness as they danced in her kitchen, just because they could. Then he remembers the way her corpse looked, splayed out on the dirty ground, where he’d tossed her.
Slowly, tremulously, Anakin brings the hilt up and presses the cold edge of the blade-emitter to his throat, flush against his skin.
He has to do it. It’s the right thing to do, the only right thing to do, the only way to stop—all of it. All the horrible, monstrous things he will do, to the galaxy, to innocents, to his loved ones. A quick death is better than he deserves, he knows. He’s evil, a monster.
(And he’s a coward, such a coward, scared not only of himself but for himself. Scared of the losses, the suffering he will endure, the years, decades of loneliness and torture. He deserves it, he knows he does, be he—he can’t. He can’t do it, he knows he can’t, has no idea how his future-self was able to for so long.)
You have to, you have to, you deserve it, Anakin thinks to himself. He’s shaking wildly. This is the only way, you have to do it. The terror infecting him ravages his soul, eating him from the inside out. He would do anything to free himself from it. If you don’t do it, someone else will, and it’s going to hurt so, so much.
The mouse droids chitter to each other as they finish their task. A few of them leave, but some, the ones that recognize him, they stay. The little droids watch him, bleating confusion at his unusual behavior. He sobs bitterly. At least he won't be alone. It’s less than he needs and more than he deserves, but at least he won’t die alone.
He scrounges about for the guttering embers of his courage, to do what he must.
There is noise, suddenly, then. Approaching thumps, a bang, and then abrupt, blinding light fills Anakin’s vision. He squeezes his eyes shut, flinching from the sensory barrage.
(By luck—or maybe the Force’s will alone—his finger was not over his ‘saber’s ignition button.)
“Anakin!”
He knows that voice. Would know it anywhere.
Anakin wrenches his eyes open, squinting against the glare of the hallway’s light. Obi-Wan stands there, haloed in the warm yellow glow, like a sun with its corona.
“Anakin! Anakin, stop!”
The older man’s eyes are wild. He’s in his rumpled nightclothes, and his hair, cut short just a few weeks ago after one too many close calls in the field, sticks up in all directions. He leans forward, both hands outstretched towards Anakin, palms out, practically vibrating in place.
When he speaks again, his voice is the kind of forced calm of someone who knows they are the most stable one in the room, but who is still barely hanging on.
“Anakin, put the lightsaber down.”
“…Master…?” he croaks, confused and overwhelmed (and afraid, so afraid).
“Just…just put it down.” He stares into his Master’s eyes and sees his own fear reflected back at him. “Just put it down, Padawan.”
Anakin is paralyzed. He doesn’t know what to do, what will lead to the least amount of pain. All his training tells him he should trust his Master, that Obi-Wan will know how to make things better, but he has to do this, so everyone will be safe, so he won't be able to hurt anyone (so no one will be able to hurt him).
But slowly, Anakin’s fraying mind puts together the picture in front of him. The man’s frantic turmoil, the shock and echoing revulsion in his presence, the panic in his eyes.
He Saw it too.
His stomach bottoms out. He didn’t know it was possible to feel this afraid.
“No…” Anakin whimpers, a fresh wave of tears pouring down his face.
“Anakin—”
“Y-you’re going t-to hurt me.” His voice is high and thin, something weak and broken escaping between wretched sobs. “You’re here to—to h-hurt me again…” He’s so scared—he can’t do this, can’t bear it, not Obi-Wan, not his Master being the one to—to—
“No—” The word is a strangled gasp. Anakin can feel the panic and horrid grief staining the air get impossibly heavier. “No, no no no, Anakin, sweetheart, I—I’m not—” A ragged sob tears out of Obi-Wan’s throat.
Anakin can only stare.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The words shake, dripping desperation. “I promise, I promise, child, I won't hurt you. I won’t ever hurt you again. “
There is a pulse in the Force, and it nearly startles Anakin. Only now does he realize that It had been whirling around him in a frenzy since he woke up. At Obi-Wan’s words, though, a few pieces break from the storm to swirl closer, slowing to a soft caress, whispering credence and gentle encouragement.
“What I Saw, what…” Obi-Wan chokes for a second, then rallies. “You had the Vision, too,” he checks, “didn't you?”
Anakin, reeling, nods just a little.
Obi-Wan nods back, even as fresh horror blooms from him. “That, what we Saw—that is never going to happen.” He practically spits the words, more vehement than Anakin can remember seeing him
“Please—please, Anakin, please. I could never—I will never do that to you. Even—even if you do Fall—” Anakin flinches back violently, unable to stifle a short, hiccuping cry at the mention of his terrible sin. Utter terror bolts through Obi-Wan in that instant, his body going rigid, even his breath stopping.
It takes Anakin a long moment to realize it’s because his ‘saber is still against his own throat.
Neither of them move for a long moment. Then Obi-Wan says softly, deliberately, “Anakin. Can you point your ‘saber away from yourself, please? You don’t have to put it down.”
Anakin gives a short, jerky shake of his head.
Obi-Wan briefly looks shattered. He says, “Wh…why is that, dear one?”
Anakin tries to work up the nerve to speak. “H—How…” he eventually manages to eek out in a broken whimper. “How—how’m I s-s—s’posed to—to believe y-you, when…”
His Master takes a shuddering breath, and then another. His hands are shaking. He seems to be thinking.
Finally, he says, “Do—Do you remember…? You told me something, before the war. Right before the war, we were in, in that bar. That bar where, where we were investigating Sen—Senator Amidala’s assassination attempt, remember?” Obi-Wan keeps stuttering, stumbling over his words in a way that’s entirely unlike him.
“In that bar, you told me, you said I—that I—” He swallows hard. “You said I, I w-was like a—like a f-father to you. You remember?”
“…I remember,” Anakin whispers.
“And I—I—” Obi-Wan laughs mirthlessly, a rough, self-deprecating bark. Anakin has never heard him make a sound like that. “I just—brushed you off! I made a joke!” Another terrible laugh. “Because I was scared.”
Anakin watches him, his mind blank, hanging on to every word. “I was so scared to admit how much I loved you—how much I love you!” he reiterates with sudden emphasis, frantic.
“I love you, Anakin, my Padawan, my dearest, darling boy; I love you.” Anakin tastes tears on his parted lips, watching Obi-Wan pant and tremble with emotion. “And I never stopped. No matter what I said at the time, I never, ever stopped.”
Obi-Wan takes a deep breath and continues in a shivering voice, “I am a coward, Anakin. And I am selfish. I am selfish, because I could not let you go. Even after everything you did, after all the years I had to come to terms with it, I—I couldn’t! I couldn’t let you go.” Tears of his own run down the older man’s face, glittering in the low light.
“I need you. I need you, I cannot imagine living without you, not again.” Sounding desperate, utterly destroyed, he sobs out, “Please, don’t do this…”
Anakin’s mind is is a turbulent haze, a writhing maelstrom of desperation and fear. Memories both from the past and the future flash through him, wreaking further pain in the cacophony.
But those words. “I love you.” They were true. They are true, he can feel it, with as much clarity and certitude as the Force Itself.
Anakin takes one more shaking breath, and trusts.
He drops his arm.
That very instant, Obi-Wan lunges forward. He throws himself to his knees, grabbing Anakin’s lightsaber and hurling it away, and then he yanks Anakin into a crushing hug.
“Oh, Anakin…” He clutches desperately back at the man, breaking down into sobs once more. “Padawan, my padawan…” His Master holds him like he doesn’t plan on ever letting go, and Anakin feels something that he’d shoved deep down inside of himself suddenly reignite with urgent need.
“Don’t leave me!” he cries. “Don’t—don’t leave me, please!” The moment his father turned away and left him to burn replays over and over and over in his mind.
“I won’t.” Anakin feels warm fingers combing gently through his hair, the arm around his back squeezing tight, banishing echoes of the hungry flames. “I won’t, dearheart, I promise, I’ll never leave you again.”
“Master,” he sobs, hand fisted tightly in the back of Obi-Wan’s robe. “Master, I’m sorry, please…!” He’s not even sure what he’s begging for, just that he needs it more than oxygen.
“Shh,” Obi-Wan soothes, “I’m here.” He begins rocking them back and forth, resting his cheek on top of Anakin’s head. The older man is curled near all the way around him, cradling him tight, and Anakin almost feels like there’s a chance he might be safe one day. “I’m here, little one. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Anakin weeps for a long, long time in the security of his father’s arms, mind going numb as he cries himself out. Eventually his breathing is mostly steady again, though tears continue to leak from his aching eyes.
He can see the window from his position huddled on the floor. They sky is beginning to lighten just a little, heralding the sunrise, the achingly familiar view of the Federal District’s southern skyline just visible. The speeders drive by in an endless parade, the world still marching on despite everything.
Obi-Wan is still wrapped around him, murmuring soft reassurances and petting his hair. Anakin feebly hopes they can just stay like this forever.
But all moments end.
There is a noise, again. Anakin feels Obi-Wan stiffen, and his own anxiety cranks back up in response. A scuffling, footsteps coming closer, movement from the hallway. He blinks tears from his eyes once more and looks.
In the doorway to his bedroom stands Mace Windu, panting for breath, his lightsaber drawn and ignited, and his bright, intent eyes centered unerringly on Anakin.