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Anakin Skywalker looks upon his son with his own eyes, and it is the last thing he sees.
The color of those eyes, blue like the ones he had once gazed at in the mirror, without the red haze of his mask, is what makes it all worth it in the end.
After, there is the calm touch of the Force, and the soft pads of Luke’s fingers on the little skin he has left. It is hot, almost painful, but not as the last twenty years have been. Rather it is soothing—reminiscent of herbal tea in quarters he had never once forgotten the arrangement of.
It is soothing, knowing that Luke stands by the pyre as he had once stood by Qui-Gon Jinn’s; a full circle moment he had learnt to appreciate over the years.
And it is a mercy he does not deserve; the fact that he does not feel the fire of his funeral.
The floor of death is smooth underneath his fingers, and that is the first thing he notices. Because he does not have fingers. He has only the mechanical digits crafted by Sidious, those that only serve to take life.
And yet, skin meets the surface of his face when he reaches up to feel the curve of his nose. The soft, forgiving flesh of his cheeks is unmarred when his hands trail there next. As is his forehead, where he discovers the startling texture of hair. It curls to the side, familiar in an aching manner.
When he opens his eyes after multiple fearful seconds, he breathes a sigh when he finds the world free of red.
Then, he startles again at the easy flow of air through his mouth and nose.
He is breathing freely for the first time in more than twenty years. There is no burn in his throat, spitting pain like the lava flow on Mustafar did its fire.
He sits up, stares at the reflection of his 22 year old self in the marble wall across from him, and does not cry.
For a while after Mustafar—the burn of his own wrath tearing through his body; writhing on coals; the end of Anakin Skywalker—he had been convinced his tear ducts had shriveled up along with the rest of his humanity.
But the tears had come, eventually.
They always do.
Yet as he stands in the polished hall and recognizes it as the Jedi Temple as it had once been, the flow of tears does not press at his waterline yet.
The corridor is almost foreign, in its current state.
It is different in the way that it is distinctly not.
The floor is clean, as though a cleaning droid had passed by moments before. There are no sticky pools of viscous red. No robes, no mutilated bodies with their eyes still open. Haunting.
The looming pillars are intact, the windows are void of breakage.
It is horrifying. It drills a bone-deep terror into him, the kind only memories like these can. Those of his own making; those so twisted that his touch is almost visible on them.
He wonders, then, what punishment the Force will dole out to him in these halls.
A faint tapping echoes behind him, and Anakin turns. His anticipation is not one of dread—indeed, it is almost one of relief.
But he does not find any punishment.
“To scare you, I meant not.”
Yoda remains unchanged. Wisps of grey reside above the grooves on his forehead and his eyes are the same green. They are still wise; far beyond those of any other Jedi Master. Even his staff and the languid grip of his fingers around its handle are the same.
Anakin stares. The words barely register. Only their tone does: it is kind. It is not bitter with resentment, nor has the hall been lit with the green of the Jedi’s lightsaber yet.
Yoda hums, a subtle smile inching onto his face. “Waited for you, we have. Fearful, you must not be. Too long, you have already been so. Greet you warmly, we do.”
And Anakin somehow finds it in himself to respond.
“You… Must be mistaken, Master Yoda.” His voice is soft. It is lenient and moldable and it is his.
He has threatened people with this voice, too. It was not only the deep timbre of Darth Vader’s voice with which he had killed.
But this voice has been kind, too. It has been sweet where it has been sour, it has been mellow where it has been sharp.
And now it is quiet. Unsure.
“Mistaken, I am rarely,” Yoda says mirthfully. Simply. He wanders a little closer.
Anakin does not move. “What is this? Where am I?”
The Jedi Master shakes his head. “Forgotten so quickly, have you?”
“Am I dead?” Anakin demands to know. He soon curls his shoulders inwards, distraught by his own loud voice.
Yoda watches him almost curiously and Anakin is reminded of one of his first times in the Temple. He had not liked the feeling of Qui-Gon broad hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place as they stood in front of the Council. He had not liked standing there on his own either, as Yoda had asked after his mother.
As he had asked after his fear. Never-ending. Innate.
What had Yoda seen, then?
What did he see now?
The Jedi reveals something in the curve of his lips, but Anakin cannot seem to make out what it is. “One with the Force, we are,” he answers, and Anakin decides to take that as a yes.
He looks down at himself. He wears the Jedi robes he had discarded so long ago, as they had burned to a crisp on the lava banks of Mustafar. It is not as shocking now that he has already seen his younger face again, but the metallic hilt at his hip surely is.
He hitches it off its clip carefully, feeling the weight for a moment.
There spills no blood from it, when he ignites the weapon.
Blue reflects in Yoda’s delighted eyes and the lightsaber wooshes when he swings it experimentally.
But when he stares at it for too long—azure on marble, deadly heat in his hands—he drops it as though it had burned him.
The plasma pulses back into the hilt and it clanks emptily on the floor.
Anakin looks at Yoda. He feels angry, but it is not the fury of Vader that thumps in his chest. Rather it is a brief spark; a flicker, like a memory of who he once was.
“Why would you give me that?” he whispers hoarsely, refusing to look at the discarded weapon again. For fear of what, he does not know. “I have—Don’t you know what I did?”
Yoda does not answer immediately. His cryptic silence feels almost like a test. Anakin wonders if those will ever stop.
“Question my knowledge, you do. Expected, this is. But, misguided, as well.” Yoda taps his cane to the ground. “Follow me, you will. Many people to meet, you have. Waited for you, they have.”
He begins to hobble down the corridor before Anakin has the time to respond. He wants to ask why he is misguided. He wants to ask if Yoda truly knows of the horrors Anakin has caused.
And if he does, why is he still so calm?
But Anakin knows the Jedi Master well enough to know that there would be no clear answers to his questions. Of his stubbornness, Anakin also knows.
And so he follows slowly. The space behind them seems to vanish as they pass, but when he looks back, he can still see the form of the lightsaber hilt on the floor.
Until they round a corner, that is. But by then, Anakin is too horror-struck to think of the lightsaber or fading corridors.
Because around the corner are dozens of people.
Jedi.
He freezes.
They are sitting around rather languidly in their robes and tunics. Playing games, speaking quietly, sharing a meal. There are even padawans practicing katas in the corner.
They are not awaiting him with blazing lightsabers and bloodthirsty snarls. The Force does not reek of a lust for vengeance.
But as every head gradually turns toward him, standing conspicuously on the threshold, the Force around him turns stringy with guilt and sorrow. It is entirely his own.
There is no fear anymore. Because that fear is not something he has a right to. Not among the Jedi he had slaughtered, even despite the fact that they had taken him in. He does not deserve anything but the guilt to drown in after wallowing in it for years.
He deserves the agony of a thousand lightsabers through his heart.
But no Jedi in the room ignites theirs.
They stare, but even this is not a hateful gesture. A nearby woman smiles.
She smiles, while he cannot even remember if he had murdered her during the night of Order 66 or not. There had been so many faces. So many screams and wails.
He could not recall if any of them had been hers.
It is then that the tears come.
He traces the woman’s smile with his eyes as though it is something precious until the lines of her face turn blurry with his regret. He turns his head away from her—how can he cry in front of her?
How can he cry in the faces of those he slaughtered? Of those whose futures he had stolen brutally?
But his gaze finds the padawans next. Then a youngling sitting on a man’s lap. And he remembers. He remembers ‘Master Skywalker?’ and the hiss of his blade. Final. Unforgivable.
The Jedi watch as he stands there with silent tears streaming down his face. Somehow, through his own ugly, raw feelings, he senses the waves of comfort they channel toward him in the Force.
It is unbearable.
He chokes on nothing but the bruises of his past.
And he sinks to his knees when they buckle underneath the weight. He presses his fingers to the floor—cold—and dry heaves abruptly.
He is a monster.
And as the monstrosity he has created, he sobs into the marble and imagines, inexplicably, his mother. She says nothing to him, but cups her hand around his jaw. Her touch is unfamiliar after all the years—he feels as though his memories of her have eroded. But it is soothing.
He realizes too late that it is the Jedi who are providing the comfort once more.
When he lifts his head, Yoda is standing in front of him again. There is a sad frown pulling his features down. “Come back, you have. As Anakin Skywalker, you have returned here, to your home.”
His small hand comes to rest upon Anakin’s shoulder, pressing down just enough to anchor him.
“As I said, welcome you, we do.”
Anakin cannot find it in himself to respond. Instead, he slowly stands. His tears have dried up, but it seems his heart can’t stop crying when he regards the Jedi in front of him again.
Yoda huffs and taps his staff. “Pain, I did not wish to bring upon you,” he murmurs. “Come. Find you a calming presence, we will.”
Anakin briefly wonders who the hell could possibly be calming for him, except maybe for Luke and Leia. And yet even those two… he had brought them pain, too. He had brought the whole galaxy pain by keeping the Empire in place.
He is desperate to get out from underneath the Jedi’s gazes, though, and so he follows the old Master dutifully.
He dreads who they will find behind the door looming at the back of the room.
-
He should have expected it, probably.
And yet it feels as though his heart stops again, just like it had in Luke’s arms.
Behind the door is a living room that is all too familiar. The cabinets holding porcelain tea cups, the small couch with its thin blanket draped on it. The carpet he had once thrown up on, back when he often became sick from the Coruscant atmosphere.
There stands Obi-Wan, waiting.
Anakin can see that he too is back to his younger self, even though the man has not turned to face him yet. The lean figure, strong even through the standard Jedi robes, is enough of an indicator of what his face will look like.
His hair is a deep auburn instead of the dull grey Anakin had last seen on the Death Star.
When Anakin looks down, hoping to find Yoda and ask him to bring them anywhere else, even back to the room of Jedi, he finds nothing but an empty floor. The Jedi Master has vanished and Anakin is alone with the man he had betrayed.
And that betrayal is perhaps the worst of all.
His brother.
Anakin prides himself in the fact that he does not flee the moment Obi-Wan glances over his shoulder. It is a near thing, though.
“Anakin,” the Jedi breathes, then turns. He does not step closer, appearing just as frozen as Anakin.
His voice is like a slap to the face. It is a reminder of Anakin’s failures, opening a flood of images he had long pressed back.
Of gardens and sitting side by side in meditation. Of battlefields and the number one priority being to keep the other alive. Laughter lost in the winds of speederlanes and lessons taught in the reclusion of their quarters.
As Vader, he had chosen to forget this. And even the existence of that choice, he had shunned.
Now it looks him in the face, and there is nowhere to turn to.
There is no anger to hide behind; no mechanical limbs and a mask.
“You came back.”
Yes, he wants to say. Master. My Master. Obi-Wan.
But his mouth does not open. It seems it is glued shut with his fear. Because he is scared.
He is scared that when he opens his mouth, he will bare his teeth and snarl, “Anakin is gone. I am what remains.”
He is scared.
It seems he is once again that nine year old in the Council chambers.
But when he lifts his gaze, he finds Obi-Wan to look just as scared. There is no confidence in his stare. No certainty in the way he fidgets with the hem of his cloak. And Anakin realizes that it had been a question.
He feels he has no right to keep his former Master in the dark.
“Yes.”
Obi-Wan’s face crumbles in a display of emotion he does not often show, and it tugs at Anakin’s heart the same it did when he was younger.
He knows now that Obi-Wan had not lied on the banks of Mustafar. Those confessions, torn from him in that moment of tragedy, had never once been anything but truthful.
‘You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you.’
And yet it is only at this moment that he realizes the weight of Obi-Wan’s grief.
“I’m sorry, Master,” he says, because it is the only thing he has. The title feels right on his tongue for the first time in years. “For all of it.”
It is a mirror image of how Obi-Wan had apologized to him on the moon of Jabiim.
It is not enough. It never will be.
But Obi-Wan smiles through the tears that had begun dripping down his face. It is faint. Subtle in the way Obi-Wan often was.
And Anakin suddenly understands what Yoda had meant with home.
It is home, when Obi-Wan takes him into his arms. The warmth of his Force signature, buzzing contently between them, is home. It is the hand on the back of Anakin’s head, the smell of tea and the lips pressing a tender kiss into his hair.
And distantly, he waits for it to end. He anticipates Obi-Wan shoving him back and igniting his lightsaber. One last mercy.
But Obi-Wan never once moves away. “I am so glad to see you again, dear one,” he whispers.
Anakin’s fingers tremble and he clenches them into the fabric of Obi-Wan’s robes to steady himself. He breathes into the fabric, squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head.
“I don’t deserve this,” he says, but he does not pull back. He has always been selfish like that. “You know what I am. How can you—?” His throat constricts around the question.
He feels hollow.
Obi-Wan remains steady. He fills the emptiness. “You are my Padawan. You…” he pauses, inhaling deeply. Anakin can practically feel him choosing his words.
“You are the boy I raised, and I will always love you.”
Obi-Wan has never been a cruel man, and so Anakin does not know why he had expected cruelty. But Obi-Wan has never been exceptionally expressive either. Training Anakin, he was often humorous and teasing.
Why did he always confess his love at moments such as these?
At moments where Anakin can barely handle hearing it?
He weeps into Obi-Wan’s shoulder. He is a child again, at that moment. He is fresh out of slavery; he is no Jedi. No Sith. He is not human. He is only that shaking form held gingerly in the same pair of arms.
His mind floods with a torrent of emotion and he feels the fires of Mustafar lapping at his skin the same as he feels the Tatooine heat on his neck. A mere repetition of the same tragedy, over and over again.
And Obi-Wan is there to keep him together once more.
His Master. Father. Brother.
“Obi-Wan,” he croaks, and the man tightens his hold, releasing a shuddering breath.
“How long I have waited to hear you say that, Padawan mine,” he murmurs, and it is as genuine and warm as the tendrils of his Force signature, curving around Anakin’s own.
And there, in his hold, Anakin feels something unfurl beneath the seeping layers of his remorse.
Grief.
He mourns that little boy from Tatooine he once was. He mourns trips into the city with Obi-Wan and the feeling of his grubby fingers, sticky with residue from exotic fruits. Visiting planets during the peaceful times before the Clone Wars. Swimming in the abundant lakes of Naboo.
He misses rainy Benduday afternoons.
Misses the sound of giggles in the back of a classroom and the texture of a padawan braid between his fingers.
He even mourns his pride. His youthful arrogance. The frivolous arguments between him and Obi-Wan when he had neglected his coursework again. The heated scoldings when he’d gone podracing on the lower levels of Coruscant.
And he wishes he had cherished it, then.
He wishes he had recognized Obi-Wan’s love through Palpatine’s lies.
He is so selfish—he wishes that he had never fallen so deep and for the first time, he wishes it for himself. For the future he could have had.
The ache in his chest tremors.
Obi-Wan continues to comb his fingers through Anakin’s hair, humming comfortingly all the while. Anakin forces himself to breathe evenly through his sobs, willing them to wane.
His fingers loosen around the fabric of Obi-Wan’s cloak.
“What am I doing here, Master?” he asks, forcing himself to pull away and meet the Jedi’s eyes.
And Obi-Wan smiles.
“You’re free, Anakin.”