Archive of Our Own

There was something dark and twisted inside Anakin Skywalker that best showed itself when he was striking line after line of Imperial soldiers.

Where he once feared the onslaught of emotions that took hold of him in the middle of battles, he had grown to cherish it—though cherish in itself might’ve been too strong of a word. Anakin learned that, unlike what the Jedi preached, his feelings were as much as part of him as his legs, or his heart. Trying to get rid of them brought him nothing. 

Instead, Anakin had learned the moments when he needed to control his demons, and the moments he could freely unleash them. Equilibrium, or as much of it as he could achieve.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t something Anakin was keen on showing to others, mindful of the fact that Bail Organa still didn’t trust him a hundred percent, and if that word were to reach Padmé’s ears about how he slashed and gutted man after man as a whirlwind in the battlefield, she was sure to reach out to him with the words he already knew by heart: you should take your mind off the fighting at least for a while and we’re not married anymore but we’re still friends and please, don’t shut me out again.

For that reason, Anakin preferred to be sent into missions on his own. It wasn’t like he wasn’t capable of killing a bunch of Imps or blowing up some shining new Imperial facility all by himself. 

Artoo was all the company he needed. The rest of the rebels were only too eager to remember his alias as The Hero With No Fear, a title that made Anakin want to puke every time he heard it.

If only they knew.

Thus, when Bail Organa, leader of the resistance movement — to which Anakin had only been accepted because Padmé vouched for him — kindly informed Anakin that he wouldn’t be destroying the Imperial rhydonium refinery in Yinchorr on his own, but alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi, it took him every single fiber of his being not to tell Bail to kriff himself.

Force, he would — begrudgingly — accept anyone else, but Obi-Wan Kenobi? His former master, the man who had saved him from the inebriating clutches of the dark side, the man with whom Anakin had not exchanged a single word since?

The man with whom Anakin had been in love with?

That would be one hell of a problem, to put it mildly.

But when Obi-Wan got inside the ship with nothing more than a curt nod to Anakin’s direction, he allowed himself to believe that maybe he could be wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, after all. And when Anakin and Obi-Wan managed to make the refinery — or the pieces that remained of it — fly towards the sky in a blaze of red flame without exchanging more than five words, he wondered who would’ve thought, huh?

They were called The Team, once. In the midst of all his nightmares, of the knowledge that Obi-Wan despised him as a murderer and a traitor of the Jedi Order, Anakin sometimes forgot that.

He should've known there would be some sort of catch. The Force loved him as her own child, but it didn’t mean she guided him out of every bad situation. 

As the obsolete freighter he piloted was about to pick up speed towards the atmosphere, a loud rumble made itself heard inside the ship and soon, Anakin’s stomach dropped as they fell towards the snowy soil of Yinchorr.

Anakin Skywalker did not expect he would, for the first time in years, crash a ship—not when they were about to leave that damned wasteland of a planet.

“You have to be kidding me,” Anakin muttered under his breath, forcing the doors open to step out and inspect the damage. The icy cold wind of the planet assaulted him at once, the frozen specks hitting his face with enough force to hurt. “There’s no way I’ll be stuck here, not with Obi-Wan. I refuse. I will not.”

He jumped down to the snow, something that still managed to feel utterly alien to him, who had traveled to countless ice planets even before the Clone Wars began. Tatooine’s sand clung to his skin, and with it remained the pain and the fear he was taught when a slave, no matter how much he tried to run away from it.

Anakin shook his head, thanking the fact they were flying low enough that neither he nor Obi-Wan hurt themselves with the crash. Quickening his steps, he walked around the ship; a cranky HWK-290 light freighter, old and, frankly, outdated since before the Clone Wars.

Anakin, however, liked it, as he liked a plethora of outdated things—R2-D2, for example, though he would never call his faithful astromech outdated to his face. Anakin would give anything to have the droid with him at that moment, but Artoo had stayed in Alderaan, working alongside Threepio to decode the newest batch of information Ahsoka had managed to steal from under Palpatine’s nose.

It was just Anakin and Obi-Wan; unless he managed to fix whatever had gone wrong.

Anakin tried to focus on that, the fixing side of things, which he had been desperately trying to do since he fell into his knees in the Supreme Chancellor’s office.

Until now, he hadn’t been successful.

He was so fixated on the internal circuitry of the ship, trying to find exactly what had stopped working, that he didn’t notice the sound of another pair of footsteps on snow until a familiar voice — a voice too familiar for comfort — reached his ears.

(Of course, they had talked during the mission. But it was nothing more than the essential to ensure nothing would go wrong, and Anakin was always expecting it, anticipating the moments when he would be able to hear Obi-Wan’s voice again; which meant he could harden his mind and heart seconds before, enough not to let his feelings show on his face.

Obi-Wan would be proud of him for that if it had happened ten years before. But now? Anakin could only laugh.)

“Not that I know anything about machinery, I’m sure you have everything under control,” Obi-Wan said. Anakin’s whole body tensed for a second before he schooled himself back to the pseud-normalcy he strived to maintain since he joined the rebel movement.

Not that Obi-Wan, knowing Anakin as well as he did, wouldn’t be able to notice.

“You’ll be surprised, then.” He turned around, his gaze fixed on the broken power cell he was holding, pointedly avoiding Obi-Wan’s eyes. “I told admiral Aneen the ship was too old for a trip this long, but she said I would have to make do with it. And now— well, the ice found a way inside the engine compartment somehow, and the freezing temperature damaged the power cell’s circuitry. Without this, the ship won’t even turn on, much less fly.”

Obi-Wan, practical as ever, nodded as if this didn’t mean certain doom. “It’s a good thing you’re able to fix anything you get your hands on, isn’t it? I’m sure our delay will be short-lived.”

“I wouldn’t be so hopeful,” Anakin said. Sure, he could fix that if he were in Alderaan, or anywhere else where spare parts were easy to get. But on Yinchorr? Unlikely. “I’ll see if there’s something on the cargo bay that can help me, but…”

“But?”

“We might stay here a lot longer than planned.” Oh, because that was just what he needed—to be stranded on an inhospitable planet with Obi-Wan Kenobi, the person who had once trusted Anakin the most in the whole galaxy.

And the person who had been the most affected by his betrayal.

(He remembered Obi-Wan’s eyes fixed on him, Obi-Wan’s desperate words framed by the scalding hot lava rising from Mustafar’s insides.

There are things one can never forget, no matter how hard one tries. This, Anakin learned, is just another one of them.)

But Obi-Wan, who by all means should be disgusted and horrified with the idea of spending another minute close to the Jedi turned Sith turned nothing that was Anakin Skywalker, and didn’t look bothered at all. “Like the old times, huh?”

Anakin didn’t answer him.

There was nothing he could say to that without screaming.

Darth Vader dreamed of stars and fire and fury, of mountains that bled shining red and stars that burned and burned and burned until there was nothing inside them anymore, only fear and emptiness and red hot fury.

His lightsaber cut through skin, flesh, and bones without resistance. It was almost, he thought, as if he was slicing the air itself. The blade shone ruby red in his dreams, despite the fact that Vader knew that it hadn’t reached that point, not yet. It had not absorbed the pain and the horror it needed—it had not been fed enough.

Across the fire, and the smoke, and the glass that crunched beneath his feet, Darth Vader walked without hurry. With every step he took, another body fell to the ground. He knew them all; or at least he did, at some point. A few hours before. A long time ago.

In a sudden twist, the glass turned to stone, and the air became thick with volcanic fumes. A blue lightsaber met his own, deflecting every blow. An unstoppable force against an immovable object. He heard a scream, far away—and then thousands, inside his head, filling him up, breaking him apart.

Two blue lightsabers. Blue, as Obi-Wan’s eyes, as his own, before the screaming, before the fire, before the anger.

It was not a dream. Darth Vader understood it, then. It was a memory.

Anakin Skywalker woke up with a scream.

He felt a pair of hands against his arm, warm and gentle and wrong. He tried to push them away, but his arms wouldn’t move, and he didn’t know why until he looked down and saw the handcuffs binding him to— to a bed.

A medical bed.

“Shhh, Ani. Calm down, you’re okay. You’re okay. I promise.” He turned his head towards to sound to find Padmé sitting by his side, stroking his cheeks. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, while Anakin’s own were trailing down his face freely. “Take a deep breath for me, Ani. Come on.”

“Padmé!” He said, trying once again to move his arms, to bring her against his chest and never let her go. If he focused on the smell of her hair and the softness of her body against his, he wouldn’t have to remember how easy it had felt to hold her by the throat, how simple it would have been to crush her trachea with his newfound well of power. “Padmé, I’m sorry, I—”

She kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his lips. “It’s okay, Ani. I’m fine. And the baby is fine too. The babies. There are two of them. Our babies.”

But his dreams! They were so vivid, so real! Anakin couldn’t believe it. Had Palpatine’s— had Sidious’ plans worked then, had he discovered a way to keep Padmé alive? But the place Anakin found himself in didn’t look like anywhere on Coruscant, and he had not overlooked the fact he had been handcuffed and didn’t Padmé say he was breaking her heart?

He licked the roof of his mouth and tasted ashes. Mustafar, he remembered Mustafar. A red hot river of lava, and Padmé running out of her ship to see him, and—

His master. His former master.

Blue, as Obi-Wan’s eyes, as his own, before—-

It was only when Padmé’s hands wrapped around his own did Anakin notice how hard he was shaking. “Ani, please, you need to calm down.”

“I— Fine,” he said, taking a deep breath, just like she’d asked. “I want to see them; our children.”

“I’m sorry, Ani. You can’t; not right now.” She looked down. Anakin followed her gaze to the durasteel handcuffs binding him to the bed. “Master Yoda says you’re still— unstable. Dangerous. They wouldn’t even let me stay near you. I had to beg Obi-Wan for this.”

His first instinct was to say I’m not! Not to you, never to you. But Anakin was never good at lying, and Padmé was too good at it, as a politician should be.

“Where’s Obi-Wan, then?” Anakin remembered their sabers clashing, his mouth filled with the taste of blood, the need to make Obi-Wan bow down to him. To become the master—isn’t this the fate of every student?

At that, Padmé turned her eyes away from him. “He left. He said it would be best if he wasn’t here when you woke up.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! Something about— About bringing you back, and— Well, Anakin, you know what you did, don’t you?”

“Some of it,” he lied, tasting bile up his throat. Anakin knew blood and death and something dark seeping out from him, something squeezing around his throat. “He regrets it, doesn’t he? Saving me. He thinks he should’ve killed me.”

“That’s not it, Ani. He’s just shaken by everything.”

“He should’ve killed me, but revenge is the Sith’s way, not the Jedi one.” Vengeance is mine, as much as anger, and hate, and fear. “But there’s no more Jedi left; except Obi-Wan and Yoda, that is.”

Anakin turned his eyes to the window and to the dark expanse of the galaxy beyond it. If he focused long enough, he would’ve been able to feel the holes in the Force where the Jedi were supposed to be. Aayla Secura. Plo Koon. Ki-Adi Mundi. All of them dead—wiped out in a blink of an eye, in the last pulse of a dying star.

Mace Windu, he thought, feeling once again his lightsaber striking flesh. He saw Windu falling endlessly against the Coruscanti skies. He had done that. He gave Palpatine what he wanted. Unlimited power. Consecration.

The revenge he had been craving for long before he was born. Anakin gave it to him on a silver platter, without asking anything in exchange.

Because if Obi-Wan had saved him, and Padmé was still alive… That meant his dreams were wrong. That meant she was going to live anyway.

That meant everything he’d done, the lives he took, the legacy he destroyed—it had been for nothing.

It meant he had been nothing but the fool the Council always took him for.

Padmé’s voice shook him out of his reverie. “You’re still a Jedi, Ani.”

Anakin Skywalker. Jedi Knight. The Hero With No Fear. Anakin closed his eyes and laughed, and laughed and laughed until Padmé looked at him with pity shining in her eyes, until he felt the handcuff chaffing against the skin of his left wrist, until his throat was raw and burning. “I’m not a Jedi anymore. I’m not even a Sith. I’m— Anakin Skywalker, from the sands of Tatooine. A wasteland cannot birth anything but waste itself, Padmé. I’m nothing at all.”

Just as I always have been.

Anakin would scream, if only there was anyone else on the damned planet besides Obi-Wan to hear.

“Looks like we’re going to stay here for a while,” he said as soon as he stepped back inside the ship, not so discreetly relaxing as the door closed behind him, a reprieve from freezing currents of air. “There’s nothing in the cargo bay that I can use to fix the power cell.”

And even if there was, the freighter was so kriffing old Anakin doubted he would have any success.

If he were Obi-Wan Kenobi and someone told him he would have to stay inside a spaceship with Anakin Skywalker for an unknown period of time, he would probably brandish his lightsaber in rightful anger and slice something — preferably Anakin himself — in two, therefore making his own situation even worse.

The real Obi-Wan, however, let his feelings show only by pinching the bridge of his nose, a gesture which Anakin knew meant mild displeasure, from the time when he knew how to read Obi-Wan as an open book. “I tried using the communications system, but to no avail. Not even the emergency settings are working.”

That’s what happens when the power cell breaks, Anakin thought. More advanced models usually had a smaller generator so, in cases like that, some sort of signal could be sent, or basic functions, like lightning and heating, could be preserved.

He didn’t say any of that out loud. There was no reason for them to talk more than what was strictly necessary. The idea of making small talk with Obi-Wan left a bitter taste at the end of his throat.

Also, by talking he might give away a sign of how anxious he felt with the idea of being stranded on an icy planet, without any sort of communication with the outside world, for who knew how long, waiting for a possible, but not certain, rescue.

With none other for company than his former master slash man who beat him in battle and brought him back to the light side: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi extraordinary, a paragon of justice, of diplomacy, of everything that was good and right in the galaxy.

“We have enough food and water to last us a few days, so it’s not that bad.” Anakin hoped he had fulfilled his quota of eating rations during the war, but life was, as always, full of surprises. Few of them were good ones. “It shouldn’t be too long until someone tries to communicate with us. At our lack of an answer, they’ll send a search party.” Or at least I hope so.

Obi-Wan knew that. Anakin was saying those words more to himself than anything—he was afraid, and being afraid was normal, no matter how much bullshit the Jedi fed him during all those years about his emotions and how he should feel ashamed of feeling so fiercely about the smallest matters. 

Being afraid wouldn’t help him at that moment. Inside that small cargo freighter, in a desolate world, what Anakin needed was tranquility.

Something which Obi-Wan exuded in waves, even after everything that went down between them. The exact thing that had drawn Anakin to him, back when he was still a young man trying to fit the enormity of his emotions inside the frail cage of flesh he called a body.

The Jedi — the only one between them — smiled, that same smile he used when master and padawan overcame a major altercation that threatened to undo all their careful planning. “You’re right. We shouldn’t worry much. Soon enough we’ll be out of this planet.”

I’m not worrying, Anakin felt the urge to say, as he would have done it a decade ago. It had come easy to them, bantering. Anakin didn’t know he used to talk to someone so freely as that.

“You know, this reminds me of a few missions we had in the past,” Obi-Wan continued, ignorant to Anakin’s internal turmoil—just as he had been in the days before his fall, Anakin noted sourly. If only— “Do you remember that time, in—”

In Mylar, when they were trapped inside a cave for almost a week, where Anakin, still a brazen padawan, survived on the meager portions of biscuits they carried, while Obi-Wan fasted the whole time? Yes, he remembered.

But he’d rather not to.

“You can sleep in the cockpit,” he interrupted before Obi-Wan evoked any other deeply buried memories within him. “I’ll take the cargo bay; maybe look around again to see if I can find something helpful.”

The cockpit was, of all three areas of the ship, the smallest, and therefore the warmest. A small detail; one he’d rather not share.

“Anakin—”

“Look, there’s no need for us to talk. You don’t have to pretend you like me, not even that you tolerate me. I’m a big boy now; I can take a cold shoulder.”

He didn't understand why Obi-Wan was talking to him freely, as if Anakin wasn't the one responsible for the massacre and quasi extinction of the Jedi Order.

But then, he still didn't understand why Obi-Wan decided to bring him back, instead of burying his lightsaber into Darth Vader’s chest, just to leave him right after, fleeing before Anakin woke up on Polis Massa.

“It's bound to feel awful alone without some sort of conversation.”

“I like being alone.”

“You didn't, before.”

“I was a different person then,” Anakin pointed out, hoping to end that conversation before it could start properly. 

I was not a traitor, for starters.

Obi-Wan sighed and ran a hand through his hair, in the exact same manner he did when Anakin was being an obtuse student on purpose. As if there was any hope that Anakin might forget what he’d done, that he could pretend they were the same master and padawan of years before, when his biggest concern was how to break the maximum of rules without being expelled from the Order.

(The thing, he saw now, was quality, not quantity. A thousand and one illegal podraces? Oh my, we can turn a blind eye to that. Fall to the dark side and execute a massacre once? My boy, we have some bad news for you.)

“We have all changed, Anakin. Don’t let your eyes fool you; reach for the Force and it’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Anakin chuckled. The Force and he weren’t on very good terms after Mustafar. How odd it was, to be afraid of the thing that brought him to life, to know its power was too big for him to comprehend, that trying to dive too deep into it was going to drive him insane. Again. “Stop with the whole Jedi preaching. I’m not one of you anymore.” His voice picked up volume, echoing against the walls of the ship. “Are you becoming senile or what? Did you suddenly forget what happened at—”

The dip in the center of gravity was too sudden for both of them to feel it before it was too late. In one second, the freighter stood perfectly still above the crackling surface of the ice. In the other, they were falling as the ground under them gave away against the weight of fifty tons of durasteel.

They had crashed above a subterrenean cave. Nice. Just what Anakin needed.

Later, he would sit down and admit that the free fall couldn’t have lasted more than three seconds, though it had felt endless. The already battered hull of HWK-290 was pierced open by huge stalactites of ice-covered stone that cut the steel as easily as needles. Thrown off balance by the collision, Anakin skidded on the inclined floor, rolling down until his back hit the ship’s wall.

And something else too.

He heard the telltale sound of bones cracking, followed by a sharp hiss. Anakin raised his eyes, trying not to focus on the sharp ache around his ribs, and watched as Obi-Wan cradled a wrist against his chest.

Oh my, he thought. To be twenty-nine and still a fuck up.

“It’s alright,” Obi-Wan said, as if he could read Anakin’s mind. Once, Anakin would’ve sworn he could, in his early days as a padawan, when no self-deprecating thought of his was safe from Obi-Wan’s kind eyes. “It’s nothing more than a sprain. You won’t believe it, but it’s not even hurting that much.”

Anakin sat straight and reached for Obi-Wan’s arm, examining the injury. “Yeah, I don’t believe that at all.”

Obi-Wan’s wrist was already faintly swollen, and tender to the touch. Try as he might, his former master could not prevent a flinch when Anakin pressed lightly down on the spot. Definitely twisted, maybe broken.

Not hurting, my ass.

(It was also the first time Anakin and Obi-Wan touched in seven years. Anakin consciously chose not to dwell on that.)

“Wait here,” he said, quickly crossing over to the cockpit, maneuvering between caved-in pieces of the hull and stalactites that perforated the ship from top to bottom. Grabbing the first-aid kid stored under the pilot’s seat, he turned back to where Obi-Wan had, surprisingly, done as he was told.

It was familiar; easy, even. Anakin had taken care of Obi-Wan countless times, in hostile plants faraway on the galaxy, on blazing space stations or decrepit ships that floated around aimlessly, waiting for rescue. In turn, Obi-Wan had taken care of him a hundred times more, patching him up after fights with other younglings so he wouldn’t have to go to the Halls of Healing, where someone would denounce his behavior to the Council; dragging the inert body of Anakin on his back for miles whenever he got hurt in missions, which, Anakin being the reckless teenager he was then, happened many more times than each of them could count.

It felt good to pad Obi-Wan’s wrist with gauze before placing two pieces of duraplast and wrapping around them with a bandage, in a makeshift splint. It felt like something they would do ages ago, when there was no war looming above their heads, when Anakin still dreamed of buying his mother’s freedom, when Obi-Wan’s single worry was living up to the promise he’d made to Qui-Gon Jinn.

They both felt it. As such, none of them said anything.

It was only checking the splint thrice that Anakin cleared his throat and let go of Obi-Wan’s wrist. “That should do it, I think.”

“Thank you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, voice somewhat heavy with— affection? Gratitude? Anakin didn’t deserve those things; not from him. The only thing Anakin deserved from Obi-Wan was scorn and hate. “I see you’ve become skilled at medicine.”

“It’s just first-aid. Having kids does that to you.” He internally admonished himself as soon as he said that, wishing there was a way to swallow those words back. Obi-Wan surely would not want to know about the two kids Anakin had as a result of breaking the Jedi Code, the kids he burned the Jedi Temple for. “Let me help you to the cockpit.”

“There’s no need, I can walk by myself.” Before Anakin could protest, Obi-Wan got up, using his good wrist as support. “But as you can see, the cargo bay is in no state for anyone to sleep there, not now that it’s riddled with holes that will allow the cold to seep in. We’ll both have to sleep in the cockpit—I hope you won’t mind sharing with me.”

Just like old times, indeed.

“It’s fine,” Anakin said. It wasn’t like he had a choice.

Anakin had been to the Royal Palace of Alderaan four times before that, and none of them could be described as nice. This one fit the pattern.

On the bright side, the place had a wondrous view. Waiting on the balcony, Anakin could not fight the urge to sit on the railing like a child and let his legs sway over the vast expanse of pure, vibrant green that sprawled beneath him. After the yellow sand of Tatooine and the monotone grey of Coruscant's spiraling towers, Alderaan never failed to take his breath away.

Even the blinding white of Eplimo's snow-covered soil, where he and Padmé had built a home, was starting to please him. The kids loved it deeply, but then, all kids like playing in the snow.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting long," Bail Organa said as he approached, careful not to startle Anakin, who would've laughed if he still had half his temperament of before. They all treated him like that now: sometimes scared of his every reaction, sometimes as if he was the scourge of the galaxy. "Some of the dignitaries can be awfully… persistent."

That was something Anakin could agree with. Some of the worst experiences of his life were caused by politicians.

"I don't mind." And he didn't. He had, in fact, been grateful for the opportunity to stay away from home for a while, out of reach from Padmé's pitying eyes.

There was a time, in the peak of the war, where every second he spent away from her left him in pain. Now he welcomed it, if only because being away from Padmé meant that he wouldn't have to think about how she was stuck in a small town, unable to do what she loved the most, because her secret Jedi husband had became a mass murdered who had helped the ascension of the dictatorial regime that now ruled the known galaxy.

Honestly, it would be weird if Anakin was not stricken by the suffocating weight of his guilt every time she smiled at him. The worst of all was that she didn’t appear to hate him, nor did she blamed him for their current situation. It’s Palpatine’s fault, not yours, she would say at night, running her fingers over his hair. Why should I despise you, when you were used by him as a pawn, when you were the one harmed the most by him?

And the kids—he couldn't even begin on the kids. His precious kids, with their shining eyes and sweet faces, too young to understand the extent of the atrocities their father had done.

Bail cleared his throat, which made Anakin turn his attention t away from his gloom line of thought. "It would be better if we talked in my study."

"Of course."

"It's not that I don't trust the people working in this place," Bail said, as soon he closed the door behind them. He walked around the table, sitting down on his intricately carved high back chair. Anakin sat in front of him, not bothering to hide how out of place he was amidst such luxury. At least it wasn't the throne room. Force, he still shuddered at the memory of that first talk with Breha and Bail Organa on the throne room after their arrival in Alderaan. "Regardless, a bit of precaution never hurt anyone."

Was that meant as a jab at him? Anakin ignored it. Over his almost exile, he became very adept at that. "I wouldn't bother if you preferred to do this in the cellars. Both you and Queen Breha are risking yourselves enough by hiding us in Eplimo. I can't imagine how hard it must be for you to keep us out of Palpatine's radar."

"A thing you're not making any easier by tracking down and killing his Inquisitors, I'm afraid."

Ah, of course. There had to be a reason for Bail to call him to Aldera in such a sudden manner; and, unsurprisingly to everyone, the reason was Anakin fucking things up, again.

This felt just like his Jedi days, with Bail taking the High Council's place in chastising him. This time, however, there was no Obi-Wan Kenobi to reassure him through their bond.

Anakin shrugged, letting his eyes wander around the office, with its bookcases that reached the ceiling and its walls covered by colorful pieces of art. In a sense, it wasn't much different from Padmé's senatorial office on the Royal Palace of Naboo. She probably missed it dearly, even though she seldom spoke of it.

Some things are too painful to be put into words and released to the wind.

Bail Organa was not pleased by Anakin's silence. "You have nothing to say in your defense? You, who could never keep your mouth shut?"

"What's the point of speaking when my answer won't please you? You want me to stop what I'm doing. I won't." His voice didn't betray his powerlessness in that situation. There was only too much he could risk before Bail—and, more importantly, Queen Breha—decided their safety was more important than their friendship with Padmé Amidala. If not the Organas, who else could protect their children? "I can't."

Burying his lightsaber into the flesh of the Galactic Empire's Inquisitors was the only thing that made Anakin feel alive and useful—something he hadn't been since his fall to the dark side. He was not a man born to cower in a house at the foot of a mountain, hiding from his enemies and pretending there was nothing wrong outside.

He was not the type of man that could watch, unbothered, as people sacrificed their lives to right a mistake he had made.

It was futile to hope that a man like Bail Organa would understand that. After all, Bail Organa was not the type of man that allowed his own fears to control him. "First, I need to know how exactly you have found the information about the Inquisitors’ whereabouts, since—"

"It was for Padmé's and the other high-ranking officials of the resistance, I know. Don't worry, she didn't tell me anything. Sometimes, when she's out with the twins, I grab her datapad to read the reports." Because being in this dark pit all of you want me to stay safely in has been driving me insane. "I'm a soldier; I like to be where the fight is."

"You are a peacekeeper—a Jedi."

Anakin bristled. "I was a Jedi."

Two years had passed since Mustafar and Order 66. The Jedi Order was no more, and even if it was, Anakin had enough shame left not to call himself a Jedi ever again.

He abdicated that right when he turned a Sith. And after he abdicated being a Sith, there was no Jedi alive that would accept him into the Order again.

(Not that he wanted it, in all honesty. Those days were long behind him. Anakin was fine being nothing. No expectations weighing on his back this way meant there were fewer people to disappoint.)

Even that small piece of conversation was enough to leave Bail exhausted, if the pinching of his nose meant anything. Anakin had that effect on people since before—and it had become much worse when he added cynicism to his list evergrowing of flaws. "You might be a soldier, but you are not my soldier. That was made abundantly clear."

Oh, yes, it was. In the countless times Bail denied Anakin a part in their movement. Just because you don't want my help doesn't mean I can't do things by myself.

"I could be your soldier. I want to."

"You've done enough fighting in the Clone Wars. Why not accept the opportunity to rest and spend time with your wife and children?" Bail seemed genuinely curious. Anakin couldn't make himself say I can't stand to look at their faces without feeling like the most wretched man alive. I do not deserve them.

He chose something less personal to say instead. "I could've ended the Clone Wars, if only I had noticed— I mean, it has ended, but not like it should've." Because of me. Because I was eager to be trusted, and too easily manipulated. "And now, after I messed everything up, everyone wants me to rest and, what, heal? I can't heal until I fix things."

Simply hunting Inquisitors wasn't enough to quench the fire — lava torrents, blue lightsabers, blue eyes — that burned inside his lungs. Not when he knew that, with each one he struck down, Palpatine would find two others to fill his ranks with. Not when some of them were being fed the same lies as he once had been, lies which had been so comfortable to believe in.

Bail Organa didn't see that, and Anakin couldn't blame him.

"Skywalker, I truly believe that the best thing you can do for this rebellion is staying out of it," his tone was gentle, somehow, as if it would make his words hurt any less. Still, Anakin couldn’t hide a flinch. "It's not that I don't trust you—"

"You don't trust me."

"I have reasons not to, don't I?" Anakin bit his tongue, hard enough to taste blood, but stayed quiet. Humiliation was but the smallest price to pay for his actions. "And besides, you think Palpatine won't try to bring you to his side again? You are— you were the most powerful Jedi of your generation. Of all generations, according to Master Yoda."

Let Palpatine come, Anakin thought. There's nothing I want more than see him dying at my feet. "I know his tricks now. I was young then, and I trusted him blindly. But now I know that he wanted me as a weapon, nothing else."

How easy it had been, to fall into that trap. Some part of him wanted to—Anakin knew that. Some part of him longed for affection, and acknowledgment, and trust; and this part, this hopeful and hopeless part that resisted from that lonely slave boy of Tatooine, didn't care to see from who this trust came from.

Bail shook his head. "It’s too dangerous."

"I'll just keep acting on my own, then."

"This way you're endangering not only yourself, but your family."

"Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I tried my best just to be happy where I am and forget— forget about everything I've done? Don't you think I would be glad to spend the rest of my days in peace if my wife and my children, if I could?" Anakin seethed, trying his best not to bang a fist on Bail's table. He got up and started to walk around the office, in a vain attempt to release the anger boiling inside him. "I can't. I can’t simply watch it all happen. Staying all cozy inside that house, knowing that there’s people fighting out there, that there’s people dying to take down the Empire I’m resposible for—  It feels like I've died and somehow forgot to leave.”

I died in the Supreme Chancellor's Office, he thought, closing his eyes. Anakin Skywalker had died on his knees so Darth Vader could be born; and Darth Vader had died on Obi-Wan's arms so Anakin Skywalker could rise from the grave, clinging to his former master among screams and tears. I died in Tatooine alongside my mother, and I've died in Mustafar, and I die every day I spent in Eplimo doing nothing at all.

If talking reason to Bail didn't work, maybe showing how desperate he was would help.

"You've been in the Senate since the start of the Clone Wars; you've read the reports. You know I'm the best you can get." That was still true, and Bail couldn't deny it even if he wanted to. "I'll follow orders if that's what you want. I won't complain. But I need you to let me do something. Anything at all."

Anakin locked stares with Bail, and if he hadn't run out of tears months ago, he would've cried in happiness when the man sighed in clear defeat.

And by the small smile that appeared on Bail's face, he might've felt Anakin's elation on the Force, even if he wasn't sensitive to it.

"I'll concede, then. It's not like you're giving me a choice, with the chasing of Inquisitors. I hope you’ll keep yourself clear of Palpatine’s gaze—he hasn’t given up on you yet." Anakin clenched his fists. Palpatine would never give up on him, that he knew. 

That was exactly why Anakin had to kill him.

Bail reached for the holoprojector on top of his table. "I'll speak with the necessary people. Until then, I'll assign you to— well, since you've worked with him for decades, I think Master Kenobi will be the safest choice."

Cold wrapped around him at once. Anakin knew that feeling well enough—he had been dominated by it. Fear.

He couldn't face Obi-Wan, not yet. Maybe never again.

He swallowed dry before he could form the words to speak. "Can I— I know I'm already asked enough, but can it be someone else? Obi-Wan— Master Kenobi and I haven't talked in a while."

Since— Well, Anakin didn't have to say it. Bail was there to see the aftermath.

He was one of the select few to know what Anakin Skywalker had been capable of.

"Let's see... I think Admiral Hopkhar is in need of good starfighter pilots. You can start from there, and then we'll see what the future may reserve for us all." Anakin nodded in agreement, hiding his trembling fingers from Bail's sight. He hadn't felt this good since long ago—maybe since he got knighted. It was a scary thing, to let oneself feel so deeply, knowing it could turn sour in less than a second.

Knowing the things he had done when his feelings had overcome him.

Anakin made to leave, but not before thanking Bail again. "Thank you. I promise— You won't regret this."

"I do hope so."

Once, good news such as that would've made him sport a spring on his steps for hours. Now, Anakin reached the nearest exit in a slow, measured walk, allowing himself to raise his head and observe the night sky before going on his way to the spaceport.

Soon, he would be up there again; amidst the stars, untouchable in a fighter—the place where he felt closest to the god a few believed him to be.

Some gods were angry, some were vengeful. Anakin doubted any of them had felt as much fear as he did, that any of them had walked the thin edge of a precipice and let themselves fall away into the dark before a hand shot from the skies and pulled them back into the light.

He was no god—and no Jedi, and no Sith; just a human with too many deaths on his hands to be forgiven, and too much to set right before he could allow himself to wallow in grief.

At least, among the stars, he didn't have to think. He could surrender himself to the Force, knowing it would guide him through asteroid fields and galactic superwinds; through storms and fires and the end of the world.

At least, there, he could focus on staying alive and forget, if only for a moment, the weight of the guilt on his shoulders, trying as hard as it might to crush him.

It wouldn't be long; there was only so much regret one could carry. Anakin felt himself approach the breaking point that had waited for him patiently since the beginning, every step taking him closer to self-destruction—one doesn't get to be a god without giving up a piece of oneself, after all.

He just had to make the most of it in the meantime.

Forget everything Anakin had ever said about hating the suffocating heat of Tatooine’s desert. The endless, biting cold of Yinchorr was at least three times worse.

They’d agreed on eating no more than three bars of rations per day, a quantity that did nothing to sate the gnawing hunger camping on his stomach. The once simple act of moving had become painful, as if the first night he’d slept on the carcass of the ship had covered his limbs in a thin, invisible coating of ice that stuck him in place.

Keeping still, however, was a quick — and deathly — way of feeling colder, if that was possible. Anakin walked back and forth around the internal space of the freighter, again and again until he thought he could see the imprints of his boots on the gray floor. His teeth chattered, which in turn made his head ache, which, in turn, made him into an insufferable pile of nerves.

Anakin couldn’t even rage about their current situation, not when Obi-Wan was a permanent form on the periphery of his vision. Obi-Wan with his serene expression, his thousand words of wisdom on how they would be found out soon enough, and that the only thing Anakin needed to do was wait.

Seven years away from me and the old man forgets there’s nothing I hate more than waiting, he thought, as he finished his twentieth lap around the ship, feeling the blood rushing to his toes again. 

(He doubted Obi-Wan had truly forgotten about that. He just needed to release all the pent-up anger somehow, and if the only way was by getting mad at the man he once used to love, so be it.)

Anakin stopped, facing the cockpit’s door. He wasn't ready to go inside yet, to spend the entirety of his day trying to avert his eyes from Obi-Wan’s face.

The present situation was so reminiscent of their days as master and padawan that it made his chest clench with a painful kind of longing; magnified by the way Obi-Wan acted as if everything was normal between the two of them, as if they hadn't come close to killing each other in the black, scalding soil of Mustafar.

Anakin felt as lost as a small child—just as he had been on his last days as a Jedi.

Sighing, he pushed the door open and went inside.

“Took you long enough,” Obi-Wan said, eyes closed in meditation. Anakin had tried that, in the beginning, but to no avail. It had been difficult to him before—now, it was almost impossible. “I was starting to get worried.”

Once, these words would make him roll his eyes. Now, Anakin felt a weird, warm feeling expand over his chest. Because if Obi-Wan was worried, that meant Obi-Wan still cared for him, somehow. Even after what happened.

Anakin didn’t know what to make of that. What he knew was that he had no right to feel good about it; he had no right to crave Obi-Wan’s devotion after destroying the two things Obi-Wan held dearest: the Jedi Order and the Republic.

“It's getting harder to warm up,” he said, trying to steer the conversation towards the objective facts surrounding the present circumstances. “We don't have much time left before— you know.”

Before we get too cold to keep breathing, Anakin meant.

“Ah, yes. I'm aware.” Obi-Wan acknowledged, pursing his lips. He released a sigh before uncrossing his legs, stretching his arms towards his toes to preserve the blood flow. “I was desperately wishing for some time away from— well, the rebellion, the fighting, everything. I didn't plan for it to come in the form of being stuck in a frozen wasteland, however. Not exactly an adequate place for the rest and relaxation I had in mind.”

Against what his mind said was the best course of action, Anakin found himself unwilling to ignore his former master. Talking was, after all, a useful way to keep his mind off the numbness that had taken over his fingertips.

“I didn’t think you would want to rest until the fight was over.” Republic, democracy, and all that. Anakin had been the sole Jedi that didn’t care much for that.

Obi-Wan chuckled, looking down at his hands. “As you were so fond of saying, the fact stands that I am old. Or that I’ve been getting older. And with age, comes a new perspective. A Jedi is a peacekeeper, not a warrior. I've been tired of fighting since the Clone Wars began.” 

Anakin remembered these days well. Obi-Wan had been vehemently against the declaration of war, hoping that a deal could be struck with the Separatists, that diplomacy was the right way to discuss the matter, not war.

It hadn’t worked, of course. Now that they knew that Palpatine was the mastermind behind it all, it was obvious that there was no other course possible but bloodshed, not when the Republic and the Separatists were headed by the same man, not when war was his chosen path towards power.

“Frankly, at this point, I’m part of the movement not for the ideals of it, although I share the wish to see the Republic restored. Let’s say I have some… personal matters to settle with the Emperor.”

At those words, Obi-Wan threw a fleeting glance at Anakin, one he failed to conceal. Could it be that— No, of course not. Anakin bit his tongue, keeping his doubts carefully tucked inside his chest.

Surely, Obi-Wan wouldn’t have joined the rebels because of Palpatine’s relentless search for Anakin, or to avenge the Sith’s manipulation of his former apprentice. 

(And yet, his heart chanted. And yet, and yet, and yet.) 

“Obi-Wan Kenobi, having a personal vendetta? I find that hard to believe.” Anakin sat down, hugging his legs to keep his limbs warm, and also so he would have something to do with his hands. “I mean, you don’t seem to have one against me, so…”

“Oh, Anakin. Why would I hate the pawn instead of the player? If anything, you should be the one with hard feelings against me, not the contrary.”

What in the Sith hells he’s talking about?, he thought.

“I’m sorry, it’s just—” Anakin found it difficult to choose the right words to use. Some things weren’t meant to be said at all. “Did you forget the part where I— where I burned the Jedi Temple? Where I tried to kill you?”

Obi-Wan’s eyes looked like endless pools of the saddest, bluest water Anakin had ever seen. He, too, seemed at loss for words. “I could never. What are your mistakes if not a reflection of mine?”

“You’re not making any sense,” Anakin stated, to which Obi-Wan paused for a minute while he arranged his thoughts in order. 

“I was your master. It was my duty to protect you against evil, no matter where it came from,” he began, for once looking directly inside Anakin’s once glowing yellow eyes. “I was too blind to see the influence Palpatine had on you. All those private reunions, the gifts, the praise— he was grooming you into the pivotal point of his plan, feeding you with lies and twisted truths. And I allowed it all to happen. I let him treat you differently from everyone else, I did not ask myself why he would be so interested in you. I did not look for the hidden meaning of his words or actions, I did not allow myself to think the Supreme Chancellor could have reasons darker than any of us would dare to dream.”

Anakin remembered it all: the endless talks with Palpatine, the feeling of knowing someone that understood how he felt, someone who understood being furious and elated and terrified, all at the same time. He’d once thought of Palpatine as a kindred soul, a person to who Anakin could confide his deepest, darkest secrets.

Palpatine made Anakin feel safe—so safe he’d failed to notice how every word of Palpatine was an indirect contradiction to what Obi-Wan had taught him, failed to perceive he was being made into something sharp and dangerous.

“I can’t throw the burden of this guilt onto your shoulders as if it was something you did alone, as if you woke up one day with the idea of exterminating the Jedi. As if it wasn’t Palpatine’s plan all along.” Obi-Wan continued, his voice getting somber as he went. “That’s what Order 66 taught us. The separatists, the clones—the whole conflict was artfully crafted for him. I was a member of the Jedi High Council, Anakin. It was my duty to protect the Republic. I should have noticed there was something amiss. But I did not, and all the galaxy paid for it. You, most of all.”

Anakin got up in a swift movement, unable to stand still. Obi-Wan’s words had the same effect of a pickaxe striking against the wall of everything Anakin once thought certain. To hear that Obi-Wan blamed himself for what happened, that he chose to shoulder the guilt reserved to Anakin and Anakin alone— It didn’t make any sense.

Saying that was easier than letting himself understand.

Anakin clenched his fists, turning his back to Obi-Wan’s dejected gaze. “You’re wrong. I was a grown-ass adult when I did what I did. No matter what Palpatine said to me, no matter— I should’ve known that I was going too far.”

It was only after the words left his mouth that he’d notice how harshly he’d said it, how angrily. And for what? Anakin couldn’t tell. Anakin couldn’t think.

“I’m not saying you are not at fault for what happened. I’m saying you’re not the only one.”

“I killed Mace Windu,” Anakin whispered, as if at the memory at that Obi-Wan would eat his previous words; as if the image of Mace falling down the height of the Senate Office Building would make Obi-Wan acknowledge the monster that Anakin had become. “I embraced the dark side. I could feel it flowing through me, all that raw power, stronger than anything I had ever seen. I rejoiced in it, Obi-Wan. It was better than anything I had ever felt.”

“If it was so, why did you come back to the light?” Obi-Wan asked him.

Because you called me. The thought came to Anakin’s mind unbidden, but he could not answer that. “I don’t know.”

“Think about it,” Obi-Wan said, once more the master, the mentor—never the lover Anakin once dreamed he could be. “The answer might surprise you.”

Codenames were a big thing in the rebel movement, where so many, like its leader himself, pretended to still be good, faithful servants of the Empire.

Given the choice to choose one for himself, Anakin refused. After losing himself inside the truth of Darth Vader, however brief that time had been, he clung to his name with nothing short of desperation. He was Anakin Skywalker, like his mother before him, like the children he’d brought forth into this world. He would not bear to be called anything else.

(Palpatine will find you, Padmé said, watching as Anakin filled a bag with clothes before his first mission. Anakin shrugged, not ready to admit he didn’t care about that. Let him find me, Anakin thought. I can’t wait for it.)

He’d been part of the rebels for more than a year by then, a whole year of blowing Imperial ships to pieces and striking madly against the Inquisitors Darth Sidious sent after him. In each of them, Anakin could feel the imprint of the Emperor’s desires, his hands stretching to grasp Anakin and bring him once more to the dark side. 

And it was only then, when he was sitting against of piece of debris that had once been part of a fortress in Zallanu — where the rebels had suffered a catastrophic defeat against the Imperial forces — that Anakin was summoned to meet the one called Fulcrum.

“Skywalker,” the pilot said, bowing his head to him as if Anakin was still a general, or a hero, or anything but a traitor. Anakin made a dismissive sign with his hand—he had tried as much as he could to have the rest of the movement treat him like anyone else, but it was easier said than done. The Hero With No Fear legend had spread much more than he’d first thought. “Fulcrum sent for you.”

Fulcrum. He had heard the name whispered on hangars and sleeping rooms and battlefields. He was acquainted with it, though he couldn’t tell who was the person behind the mask.

Fulcrum. It reminded him of— well, no matter.

“Where?” Anakin asked, rising up in a quick movement, eager to do anything but to look around the clouds of smoke that rose towards Zallanu pinkish skies, painting it gray.

“The command tent. I mean, what’s passing for it.” The pilot scratched his head. He looked young, even younger than Anakin had been when the Clone Wars started. Part of him wanted to shout for the boy to leave the battlefield and never again come close to anything like it. But the rational part of him knew they needed every being they could find if they were to have a chance against the Empire.  “I’ll accompany you there.”

Anakin nodded, falling into step behind him. They crossed through more debris, littering the ground like fallen insects. Between them, the few rebels that survived lay down on the ground, catching their breaths and counting on the fallen blocks of ages-old duracrete to provide cover should the Imperial soldiers decide on another assault.

Anakin would, if he were one of their commanders. There were so few rebels left that wiping them off would be as easy as child’s play.

And Zallanu would be just another burial ground for those who opposed Palpatine’s rule, joining the hundreds of words that had been reduced to that.

As he walked, Anakin could feel the Force swishing around him, sluggish and weak around so many wounded people that grasped, fruitlessly, to the life they still had. A quarter of them would be dead before they reached Alderaan, and another quarter wouldn’t be able to come back to action with the speed the movement needed.

The other half would keep fighting, in spite of the fire and the pain and the death, because when faced with a ruthless dictatorship like the Empire, there was nothing else you could do.

Anakin raised his walls around his mind, trying to keep the Force at bay. It was painful for him to willingly cut himself from the thing that gave him life, if only for brief moments, but it was also the only thing preventing him from falling into madness.

But as he felt the world quieting around him, a familiar energy blinked on the periphery of his senses.

A very familiar energy.

“Here we are,” the pilot said, scratching his throat to catch the attention of the figure standing in front of them, covered head to toe with a dark cape, before he left them alone.

This is what means to be Fulcrum, Anakin thought. To be no one at all and everyone at the same time.

But this Fulcrum, this one standing right in front of him, unmoving, so tense that Anakin could feel the air around them — around her — trembling? That one would need much more than a flimsy black cape to fool him.

Anakin opened and closed his mouth, trying to form the word he spent so long believing he would never say again. “Snips?”

She didn’t have to lower her hood for Anakin to know she was smiling, but she did it anyway. “Long time no see, Skyguy.”

It’s hard to say who reached for the other first. Later, much later, Ahsoka would tell Rex and the other clones that she hadn’t yet taken a full step before Anakin enveloped her in one of the tight hugs he was so fond of giving before the world fell over their heads. Anakin, by his turn, would say that if the clones wanted to know the truth, they only needed to find someone who had been standing close to them, and they would get the full description of how Ahsoka threw herself over Anakin as if she was still that same small fifteen-year-old girl, almost making them both fall to the ground.

But if any of the clones were to actually find someone who had watched the scene firsthand, what they would hear was this: they met in the middle. Anakin, with arms open wide as the smile on his face, and Ahsoka giggling like a child, throwing her disguise to hell so she could be seen by Anakin as she always had been: his stubborn, foolish, brilliant padawan.

They stayed like that for a long minute, basking in each other's presence in the Force. He heard the hum of engines coming from her, the clash of lightsabers, the screaming as she watched the 501st turn on her, blasters aimed to kill.

She must've heard the screams inside his head too; she must've felt the droplets of lava scorching his skin. But she didn't know. No one did, unless the four sentient beings that had wandered the halls of the medical facility on Polis Massa: Padmé, Bail Organa, Yoda, and Obi-Wan.

They might have told her, Anakin thought, feeling a cold shiver run through his spine. It was soon dispelled, however, by Ahsoka’s arms tightening around him one last time before she stepped back.

If she knew, she would not treat me like this. 

If she knew, she would never want to see me again.

Anakin tried not to think about what were to happen if he met her under such circumstances.

Ahsoka took a step back to see him clearly. “I knew it was you! As soon as I landed, I could feel you, this— this huge, unimaginable thing that is you mingling with the Force. Sith hells, you thought you had died at Temple! I thought—” She shook her head with such force her lekku swinged.

Anakin didn’t have anything to say at that—it wasn’t like he could tell her of course I didn’t die there! I was the one doing all the killing. So instead of using words, he hugged her like she were still that same reckless padawan that couldn’t help but put herself in danger, even now that she was a twenty-one year old adult and the same height as him.

“Fulcrum, huh?” he asked after a few seconds, winking at her. It was just like Ahsoka to cling to what other people would find small or meaningless. “A bit too sentimental for me, but a nice name indeed.”

“Yeah, yeah, very un-jedilike. I know the drill.” She moved her hand in a dismissive gesture, as if the fact that she named herself after a comm frequency Anakin created was nothing of importance. “I'm not a Jedi anymore, though. And by the rumors I've heard, neither are you.”

“Not since the end of the war,” Anakin revealed to her, which wasn't a lie, not fully. The war had ended when he switched sides and left to burn the Temple, wiping out the Jedi on Coruscant while Order 66 did the job on the rest of the galaxy.

“I knew you were going to leave sooner or later. You’re the least Jedi Jedi I’ve ever met.” She laughed before a serious expression took over his face. “Still, there had to be a reason. A strong one.”

Oh, she wouldn’t want to know his. Anakin shrugged, silent.

He preferred not to think about his Jedi past at all, and yet some days it was the only thing he would think about.

Ahsoka would be able to sense his resistance around the topic even if she weren’t a Force sensitive. She turned her head around, watching for any possible disturbances around the perimeter of their camp and, finding nothing, walked past Anakin to the desert-like land that extended beyond them, wide open and barren like the Jutland Wastes on Tatooine. “Let’s find somewhere quiet, shall we? This much noise always gives me a headache later.”

Zallanu, though small and settled very far into the Outer Rim, was once a luxurious verdant planet, covered side to side with jungles and small, inland seas. Humans had populated the planet since at least four centuries before, though very sparsely. The trees didn’t give up their land easily, not the animals that lived on it.

Or so it had been until a preliminary study done by Imperial scientists and geographers revealed the possibility that the planet hid a sizeable amount of Agrocite under its soil.

The Empire struck without warning, burning the trees down, killing the animals, digging holes into the soil without even pretending to care how its actions would affect the people that lived in the once peaceful planet.

The few ones brave enough to fight back started small: burning cargo, blocking pathways, ambushing stormtroopers that ventured alone into the jungle. Soon, they managed to get in touch with Bail’s movement, and a temporary alliance was struck.

However, In their hope, they forgot the Empire did not react nicely to subversion. The burning battlefield Anakin and all the others had fled from was proof of that.

This was the land Ahsoka and Anakin walked upon, talking back and forth about the things they had been up to until that moment. Ahsoka would gladly talk his ear off with only her retellings of adventures with Trace and Rafa Martez and her time working as a mechanic for the Fardi clan; that was, if Anakin hadn’t taken an opportunity to tell her about her secret marriage with Padmé — I knew something was up between you two! — and Luke and Leia, safely hidden away in Alderaan.

They walked until everyone behind them appeared to Anakin as black dots moving around aimlessly, waiting for salvation to come from the skies. Only then he sat down on a stump of wood, at least four feet wide, just as the other that flanked the riverbed.

All that remained from the jungle that had dominated the place.

“I could feel your curiosity from a mile away. Go on, ask it,” Anakin said, knowing well enough what Ahsoka wanted to know, and why she preferred to have that conversation away from prying eyes and ears.

As always, she did not disappoint him. “Tell me why you left the Order.”

Anakin raised his face to the sky, the once pink arch now almost black from all the smoke that had been caused by the fight. He could flee if he wanted. He could say that it wasn’t her business, could say it was simply because he wanted to be a good husband to Padmé — a laughable thing to say when they weren’t even husband and wife anymore — and a good father to his children.

Ahsoka would know he was lying, and she would be slighted that Anakin didn’t trust her well enough to confide her with the truth, but she would not pry. In these last years away from him, Ahsoka had grown up to the point she was much more mature than Anakin himself was at her age.

“You won’t like to hear it,” Anakin said, his last shot at leaving the matter alone.

Ahsoka had brought him there with the sole reason of hearing his answer. And as they walked, Anakin had decided that, if someone deserved to know the truth directly from his mouth, it was her.

At her lack of words, Anakin ran a hand over his face. It was a lot to tell. He had no idea where to start. “You know about Vader, I presume.”

He watched as Ahsoka’s fist clenched, shaking with barely contained anger. “How couldn’t I? After I heard about what happened at the Temple, I—” She shook her head, as if trying to throw away unwanted thoughts crawling into her mind. “Bail says he’s gone, but I don’t believe him. I’ve my best people watching over even the smallest mention of him, trying to find a clue. Darth Vader is still there, hiding, and I swear to you, I will find him. And when I do—”

What are you going to do, kill him? By all means, do it. I’m your guest.

He raised a hand before she could go any further. “You don’t have to keep looking anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Anakin allowed himself a gloomy smile. “That you’ve found Vader! What else?”

“Then where is he?”

“You’re looking at him.”

One second, two seconds, three. Anakin saw the exact moment Ahsoka’s eyes widened, her throat as she tried to swallow back a thousand and one words of denial. “It’s not true.”

It is the truest thing you have ever heard. “I wish it wasn’t.”

“You're telling me you're the one that— that burned the temple, that killed everyone inside? You?”

Unable to answer properly, Anakin nodded. And, before she could storm off thinking this was some sort of ridiculous prank, he recounted the events that had happened in that fateful day, three years ago, starting from when Palpatine revealed himself to be Darth Sidious.

All the while, Ahsoka listened quietly, looking at Anakin’s face in search of something — anything — that contradicted his words, any sign that he wasn’t telling her the truth.

She found nothing.

“I refuse to believe this. It doesn't make sense. Why would you?” Ahsoka walked back and forth, circling him like she was searching for a reason not lunge at him.

“Because Padmé was in danger and Palpatine said he had the solution to keep her alive,” Anakin said. “He also told me the Jedi were the ones trying to take over the Republic.”

“And you believed him,” Ahsoka scoffed.

“I was desperate to believe anything.”

She stopped abruptly, before she started to laugh. 

It was the worst sound Anakin had heard all year.

“And you're telling me that after destroying the Republic, you're now fighting to restore it?” Ahsoka looked at him as if he were mad, as if she couldn’t believe he would dare stand in front of her after what he’d done. “You should be ashamed of standing along with those people. You know how many of them lost relatives and friends to the Imperial forces, how many were forced to leave their homes, all thanks to— to you!”

“I know I can't fix what I've done. Believe me, I know this better than anyone else.” Anakin ran a hand over his face, powerless against the inferno of Ahsoka’s anger. “But I'm trying my best to help; I know it's not enough—”

She didn’t allow him to finish. “To think I thought you dead; that I mourned you, like a hero, like a brother. I swore to avenge you, for Force’s sake!”

“I’m sorry,” Anakin apologized. What else could he say?

That wasn’t enough for Ahsoka, but then, Anakin doubted anything he said or did would be.

“Do not say that to me! You have no right—” She shook her finger at him. For a brief moment, it seemed like a lightsaber she was ready to strike him with. And then, just as suddenly, she stopped; the fight leaving her as soon as she noticed how useless it was to scream. “You have no right.”

“I know.”

Ahsoka turned her back to him, but Anakin could feel her as clear as water on the Force. All her anger, her regret, her confusion about everything that had transpired in these last minutes. 

But he was sure that, unlike him, Ahsoka would never allow these emotions to control her, would never follow the dark path Anakin had chosen at the feet of the Supreme Chancellor. She was better than that. She was better than him—and he knew that since he’d accepted the task and the gift of teaching her.

A beeping sound interrupted his reflection. Ahsoka put her comm into her ear, keeping her eyes pointedly away from Anakin as she listened.

With a look as hard as in stone, she turned to him. “Rescue is on the way. I’ll go back and organize the evacuation.”

“Fine. I’ll stay here for a while.” To think, he thought. And to mourn.

Ahsoka did not insist for him to walk along with her. Without wavering, she walked away, with her head held high—every bit the honorable, authentic Jedi he had never been.

Anakin waited until she was far enough before allowing himself to cry.

Meditation had been hard enough when Anakin was a well-fed teenager, with the hum of the water running around the Room of a Thousand Fountains to lull him into tranquility and no worries on his mind besides how to better make Ferus Olin eat his own words. As a rebel fighter trapped into a faraway planet, with his stomach screaming from hunger and his lips dried out from the cold, to empty his mind of worldly apprehensions and meditate sounded like something from another plane of existence.

Obi-Wan did it well, though. Obi-Wan did a lot of things well, like pretending they weren’t doomed, and meditating, and being a big kriffing liar.

Five days passed since the last time they talked; since Obi-Wan said in fact I do not hate you and I don’t know why you ever thought that. And yet, Obi-Wan kept acting with a degree of normality, as if nothing had changed, as if Anakin’s world hadn’t been turned upside down—again.

Every night, after the sun went down and everything turned darker and colder, Anakin closed his eyes and pretended to sleep, keeping the facade until he heard Obi-Wan’s constant snoring—something which didn’t know he’d missed until then. After that, his mind started to twist into itself endlessly, showing him images he’d long thought forgotten, possibilities, alternate futures. Anakin tossed and turned on the floor, feeling the cold seep inside his skin until sleep took over him, just as the sun was about to rise again.

After five nights of that, fatigue showed itself on his face for everyone to see—which, in his case, was only his former master, and the source of his recent problems, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The man who pretended nothing was wrong, ever.

“Have you been keeping count of how many days we’re trapped here, or am I mistaken?” Obi-Wan asked, pointing to a place beneath the main control board, currently marked by the small, clean strikes Anakin had carved with the butt of his lightsaber.

He considered not answering it, but his mouth was faster, reacting to the old instinct of answering a direct question from his master. “Nine days.”

“We’ve broken the record set on Mylar, then. We were trapped there for… seven days, if I remember well.” Seven days and fourteen hours, to be accurate, until Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura dug them out of the cave. “Once more, Kenobi and Skywalker find themselves neck-deep in disaster. Nothing out of the ordinary, if you were to think about it.”

Anakin scoffed. “I try hard not to.”

“Sorry, I’m only trying to lighten up the mood a little,” Obi-Wan said, sounding genuinely taken aback by Anakin’s crude manner. “If it bothers you, I’ll stop.”

Seven years had passed since their battle on Mustafar. Seven years since Obi-Wan discovered his former padawan had fallen into the dark side of the Force and committed a massacre inside the Temple; seven years since Obi-Wan himself had pulled him from the dark claws of Darth Sidious and towards the light again.

Six years, and yet, he still had that same flaw: Obi-Wan Kenobi refused to see what was right in front of him.

“Oh no, by all means, keep doing your… thing. Just don’t expect me to play along. There’s nothing fun in the fact we only have three bars of rations left, and will starve in a day or two.”

“And yet brooding won’t help us out of the current situation. So why can’t we talk a little, and forget the inevitable doom hanging over our heads for a while?” He suggested, casually; as if any rational person would be calmly waiting for their demise instead of throwing a fit and taking desperate measures to guarantee their survival.

Anakin, by his turn — and showing himself to be the sanest person in the room — got on his feet with a single fluid movement, not bothering to hide the anger in his steps as he made his way towards the ship’s doors.

“You know what, kriff it. You want to waste away inside this ship, fine.” He fastened the strap under his hood, keeping it closed tight against his chin. After, he did the same on the rest of his clothes, making sure he was ready to stand the longest as possible in the open wasteland. “Just don’t expect me to do the same. I won’t let myself die so easily.”

Anakin Skywalker still had many sins to pay before he could lie down and rest.

For the first time since they crashed, Obi-Wan looked disturbed, following Anakin to the airlock. “Anakin, what do you think you are doing? If you’re even thinking at all, that is.”

Force, he really wanted to fight Obi-Wan at that moment.

“I’m finding us something to eat, or else we’ll be long dead when rescue arrives. If it arrives.”

“In case you didn’t read the report file on this planet, it is uninhabitable,” Obi-Wan emphasized the last word. Anakin had, in fact, read the report, but he wouldn’t give Obi-Wan the satisfaction of an answer. “You won’t find anything out there except snow and rocks.”

Anakin didn’t bother to look at him as he waited with his palm close to the button that opened the outer door, preparing himself to be assaulted by the freezing temperature. “No one bothered to study this planet enough. There may be something out there. Something edible.”

Besides, the idea that he and Obi-Wan were the only living beings on the whole planet was enough to drive him crazy.

His former master shook his head, putting both hands on his hips. “Even if there is some creature out there, how are you going to hunt it? With your lightsaber? Anakin, please. You’re going to get yourself killed out there.”

Even inside the ship, it was as cold as Anakin had ever endured. But at those words, he could swear he felt his insides burning up; the unmistakable warmth of anger.

“Oh, so now you care about my well-being?” He turned his body towards Obi-Wan, taking little notice of how close they were standing to each other. He hoped Obi-Wan could feel the red hue of rage clinging to his soul where it belonged. “You spent seven years without caring to know absolutely nothing about me, or about how I was doing, and now after mere nine days you’re worried about my safety?”

Anakin hadn’t meant it to hurt—he was only stating a fact. Obi-Wan had not reached out to him, not once in all this time, while Anakin tried to find him until Yoda said Obi-Wan did not want to be found. 

Not by him Anakin, at least.

However, as he watched Obi-Wan clench his fists, as he watched the pang of guilt — guilt! —  that crossed those blue eyes — the eyes that had saved him —, Anakin couldn’t help but feel pleased by it.

He had suffered alone for so long, after all. There’s nothing misery loves more than a bit of company.

“That’s totally different,” Obi-Wan argued.

“Oh, I beg to differ.”

“What did you want me to do, huh? To play house with you and Padmé?” Obi-Wan countered,  arms open in exasperation. “You had children, for Force’s sake! You had a life in Eplimo, a good life! Was I supposed to, what, barge into it and drop the whole emotional luggage on you, just as you were getting better?”

A good life, Obi-Wan said, and Anakin saw red again, fuzzing his peripheral vision; red, creeping into his eyes, his lungs, wrapping itself around his heart. Hot red anger, fear’s favorite companion.

It had been years since it had taken hold of him so easily. Suddenly, Anakin felt ready to tear the whole ship apart, himself included.

“I had a good life, you say? I was getting better?” Anakin seethed, a grimace on this face. “If only you were brave enough to show yourself, you would know this isn’t true at all.”

The so-called good life: being unable to rise from the bed, scared of touching his own children, incapable of sleep with the screams replaying inside his head. Everywhere he turned to, Anakin smelled burned skin and blood. Every corner of his house held a pile of dead bodies dressed in Jedi robes, their eyes open, their mouths chanting. Murderer. Traitor. Monster.

Anakin had screamed, and raged, and cried—and when he got tired of that, he did nothing at all save lying down on the floor and waiting for the nightmare to end.

Waiting for himself to end.

“I was miserable, Obi-Wan. I was the farthest thing possible from good,” Anakin said, his throat constricting as the memories threatened to surface. “You saved me, and then you left, and I didn’t know what to do” I didn’t know why you’d saved me, why you would think I deserved to keep living after— after what happened. I need you to stay and help me, but you left. You walked away.”

Obi-Wan turned his face away from him, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I couldn’t stay. I wanted to, but I couldn’t, Anakin.”

“Oh, so you could pull me out of the dark side of the Force, but you couldn’t stay to tell me why you’d done it?” Anakin scoffed. Unbelievable, he thought. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to live with a mistake you can never make amends to? How many times I lay down to sleep wishing you had killed me, that night?”

“Anakin, I tried to stay. Believe me, I did!” he cried, while Anakin rolled his eyes. “But I— When I looked at your face, all I could see were the dead bodies in the hallways of the Temple. I couldn’t fathom how the boy I had taught since he was ten could have done what I saw that day. I— I couldn’t stand to think about when you’d wake up, and I would have to… to look at your eyes, to talk to you, again. You, who had destroyed the Order I vowed my life to.”

Anakin knew what was about to come next. He could feel it around his body, in the Force, the words clogged on Obi-Wan’s throat, waiting to be released.

“I couldn’t stay because I… At that moment, I hated you, Anakin.” Ah, there it is, Anakin thought, the moment of truth.

He tried to tell himself he was waiting for that, that it wasn’t anything he didn’t know already. There was no possible reality in which Obi-Wan wouldn’t have hated him after what happened; no world in which he was deserving of anything more than his scorn.

Still, as he sucked in a breath, Anakin could feel the space between his lungs where a piece of his heart had been carved out.

Obi-Wan went on. “I had never felt something like that, something so… deep and powerful and wrong. I knew that if I stayed, that feeling would fester until I wasn’t able to control it anymore. So I left, as you said. I went to Lides and stayed there for a while, completely alone, and all I could do was think about what had happened, and why it had happened. It was only then that I understood the part I had played in it; how I failed to make you understand you were already more than enough as you were, without needing to search for power in the dark side of the Force. I’m deeply sorry that my absence hurt you; I did not expect it. But I don’t regret leaving. I did what I needed to.”

Wow, Anakin thought, closing his eyes for a brief time to take it all in. He almost had me for a minute.

“How long did it take you to have this big revelation?”

“A year, give or take.”

“You could’ve talked to me, then. At the second year. You didn’t hate me anymore, and you could’ve talked to me, but you didn’t. Not in the third year, or the fourth, or all the others.”

“Anakin, listen—”

“You know, I wouldn’t take it against you if you hated me,” Anakin interrupted him, unable to stop the flow of his words. “As a matter of fact, I do think hating me was the only sensible outcome after what happened. I assumed you didn’t look for me because you despised me, because you saw me as the worst kind of scum to be still alive. And that was fine! I deserved that. I truly did.”

His fists were clenched at his sides, shaking with the effort he did to contain the tidal wave raging inside his body. “But to find out that you didn’t hate me, after all? To discover I suffered so tremendously, that I hated myself with such a passion, that I thought of myself as someone so unworthy that not even you, my former master, the man who saved me, wanted to look me in the eyes anymore? To learn that you could’ve prevented all that with three simple words, and yet you didn’t. You didn’t want to; or didn’t care to. It doesn’t matter which”

“I did want to,” Obi-Wan countered, despair seeping into his voice. “But you were building a new life, Anakin, one with your family. What good I could bring to you, if I would only make all the memories of that day resurface?”

“You say this as if they ever left. I remember every single minute of that day, since I stepped inside the Chancellor’s chamber and he told me he was a Sith Lord until the moment I fainted on your arms.”

More than that. Anakin remembered every second. He remembered the face of every person he had killed; the shock in their eyes as they recognized the person holding the lightsaber that had pierced their hearts.

“And now, seven years later, you talk to me as if nothing happened. You look at me in the eyes and say ‘It was my fault’ and ‘I’m sorry’. Seven years! Where were you when I needed you, when every breath I took reminded me I was alive, after everything? I, who killed so many, who deserved the cruelest death imaginable. I, alive! Because you had saved me. Because you had looked at me, after knowing what I did, and still you didn’t give up on me. You could have killed me then, you could have ended my misery right there on Mustafar. You could have given me the ending I deserved. But you didn’t. And for what?”

Anakin could see Obi-Wan’s mouth moving, but he couldn't hear him, not over his own shouting.

“So I could spend all this time hating myself, and thinking you hated me? So I could think it was your way of punishment, to make me live under the weight of all I did? Because that’s what you did!”

“I saved you because I loved you, Anakin!” Obi-Wan shouted back, reaching for him, as if he wanted to shake some sense into Anakin’s head, as if he wanted to write those words on the back of Anakin’s eyelids so he couldn’t ever forget them.

Once, Anakin would’ve let him. This time, however, Obi-Wan had been too late.

Anakin told him the only thing in the world he knew to be true. “If you loved me, you would have killed me.”

“Don’t you ever say that again!” Obi-Wan shouted, stepping back almost as if Anakin’s words had burned him, hotter than a river of lava. “I could never— I could never consider doing that.”

“Because you’re weak, and a coward. But I’m not, Obi-Wan. I’ve fucked up too much to be afraid now.”

With enough force to break the arm of a person, Anakin hit the button, exposing them both to the exceedingly low temperature of Yinchorr.

How long would he be able to survive out there? It was time to find out.

“Anakin, don’t go. Do you want me to beg you? I’ll do it.” Obi-Wan pleaded, trying to change Anakin’s mind for the last time. “Please, stay inside the ship. Please. You’ll die out there.”

He was truly a fool if he thought that would make Anakin stay.

“If I don’t come back,” he said, looking at Obi-Wan’s eyes for what could’ve been the last time. “Don’t go looking for me.”

As Anakin took a step into the snow and prepared to jump towards the opening of the cave, all he could hear was Obi-Wan’s voice behind him, louder than the wind that howled at his ears.

“Sith hells, Anakin!”

Padmé was never one to say things in a roundabout way.

Below his mother, she was the strongest woman Anakin had known, and that was one of the things that made him become infatuated with her with the tender age of ten, just by seeing how fiercely she fought to restore the freedom of her people.

"I'm going back to the Senate," she said—proclaimed, truly, after the kids left the house to build snowmen in the backyard. Snow never stopped falling in Eplimo. Anakin wished it fell heavy enough to bury his family from the perpetually seeking gaze of the Emperor. "I'll fly to Naboo next month to arrange everything. Luckily I won’t cause much of a scandal  And the allies I have left should be enough to have me elected without any major altercations."

She smiled, but Anakin didn't smile back. He did not try to hide how those words displeased him.

Bottling up his feelings was the surest way to get them to spill up horrifically.

How, for Force’s sake, did Padmé think it was a good idea to set foot on Coruscant again, knowing what — knowing who — waited for her there? Palpatine knew about them; he wouldn’t miss the chance to bring Padmé to his side, or, failing that, to hurt her. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in love anymore. Padmé was still dear to Anakin, and Palpatine knew that better than anyone but Padmé himself, thanks to Anakin spilling all his secrets to the Chancellor when he thought he could call the man his friend.

The memory of it made him laugh now. Friend. How stupid he had been, then. How naïve.

"Why?" he asked, fidgeting with a thread of loose wool from his glove, the one that protected his human hand from the freezing cold of Alderaan's mountains. "I thought you it liked here." 

It was more than a question of liking the place, however. It was a question of being safe there.

"I do. But I'm a politician, not a housewife. And there's only so much I can do for Bail and the movement while being away from the center of power. I need to go back." Padmé asserted. She said it in a way that made it appear so obvious, like Anakin was the one wrong for disagreeing with her. Like he was still nineteen and foolish.

But he wasn't nineteen anymore, nor he was married to her.

Anakin raised his eyes to the window, watching as Leia threw a snowball straight at Luke's face; both children blissfully unaware of all the pain surrounding them. "You'll be too exposed— to be in Coruscant again, in full sight of Palpatine? He'll try to kill you, or win you to his side. He'll try to get the kids."

He would be already pacing around the house if he could, but the still unhealed longitudinal slash crossing his calf prevented him from moving without feeling pain shoot through his body. That's why he been sent into home rest—and, as he had no home but the headquarters of the rebellion, that meant going back to Eplimo, where Padmé and the children still lived.

Padmé pursed her lips. "That's very hypocritical of you to say, considering you spend all your time doing dangerous maneuvers on fighters, blowing things up, and killing Imperial soldiers." Anakin bristled at those words, but Padmé didn't allow interruptions to her speech, just as she did in the Senate. "Palpatine will not dare strike me in full view of the Senate. Oh, he will watch me closely, that's for sure; I know how to use that to our advantage."

No, Anakin thought. You have not heard his words whispered into your ear, lies so twisted and sweet you can't help but think it's the truth. You don’t know what he’s capable of. 

"You underestimate him. All of you." They hadn't felt firsthand how it was to be used by Palpatine like a pawn, they hadn't woken the next day to find their worlds fundamentally changed, all because they had fallen into Palpatine's trap. "Palpatine is too dangerous. He’s treacherous and shrewd. He knows exactly what you want to hear, how to manipulate someone until— well. You don't have to look far, Padmé. You know exactly what I did."

When Anakin said that, he didn't mean the burning of the Temple, the slaughter of the Jedi. He meant his arm extended towards her, fingers poised in a grip, the Force pressing against her fragile windpipe until she couldn't breathe, until death seemed to brush its hairs against her cheek.

And Padmé understood that.

It just wasn't enough to make her change her mind. Or better: the fact that there was a man out there who could make people into what he made Anakin that day — Darth Vader, she heard in her dreams sometimes, and shuddered — was exactly why she couldn't shy away from the fight.

(She was smart, and shrewd too—maybe too much for her own good. Yoda might have told Bail that living with what he’d done was punishment enough, but in the end, it was Padmé’s cunning that had kept Anakin out of prison for all the lives he’d taken.)

Knowing this, for he knew her as well as the back of his own hand, Anakin reached for the last card, the one hidden under his sleeve. "And what of Luke and Leia? You won't be able to take them to Coruscant with you—it would be madness, and you know it." Padmé might do whatever she wanted with her own life; Anakin lost all the right to complain when he decided to split up. But he would not allow her to jeopardize the safety of his children. "Can't this wait a few more years, at least? Right now, the kids need their mother."

"They need their father too."

"It's different."

"Why? Because you're a man, and I a woman?"

Anakin wished it were because of that. It would make things infinitely easier. "Because I'm a war criminal, a traitor, and a murderer."

"Oh, Ani," Padmé said, moving so that she was sitting right beside him on the sofa, his hand enfolded by hers. "You shouldn't— You're still their father. You cannot deprive yourself of contact with your own children for that."

"That means killing hundreds of people, allowing the rise of the Empire, and being the reason they must live hidden in a small, wintry village at the foot of a mountain, like fugitives, stripped of the life they had the right to have as the children of a senator."

"You're not the sole responsible for the Empire, Anakin. We all are—the Jedi Council, with its inability to perceive a Sith Lord so close to them. Bail, Mon Mothma, myself, and all the senators that turned a blind eye to his amendments of the Constitution and his mad drive for power until it was too late." Padmé pointed out, fidgeting with her hands. "We all played a part in the events that unfolded that day."

"My part was bigger." And uglier, too.

"It may be. Even then, you aren't the only one that needs to fix things. That's why you got into the rebel movement, wasn't it? It's why I want to return to the Senate, too." She smiled; the same one she reserved to him when Anakin came back from the battlefields of war, bruised and broken and desolate. The smile he spent his nights dreaming about. "We all help the way we can. This is mine."

Anakin sighed, lowering his head. There was nothing he could say that would make Padmé reconsider. She was as headstrong as him; something which, in her, was a strenght, as it made her keep fighting for the good things she believed in.

The only thing Anakin could do was keep a closer eye on her, and the children.

"And please,” Padmé continued, placing a delicate hand over Anakin’s knee. “Don't withdraw yourself from your children's lives. They love you, and they won’t stop loving you when they learn of what you did. You’re their father, Ani—you need them as much as they need you."

No one really needs me, Anakin thought. No one needs a father that carries such a heavy cloud of shame everywhere he goes. The only person that needed me was my mother, and I was too late to help her.

If he told Padmé that, she would just bite her bottom lip and then find a million reasons why Anakin was wrong—once again. He didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to wallow on his misery, to fell it running through his veins, thicker than blood, impossible to overcome.

Instead of fighting, he said, "If you say do. I’ll try.” And then, after a deep breath, “I promise.”

“Good,” she said. “I know you will.”

Poetic, wasn’t it? That Obi-Wan hadn’t killed him on a fiery planet just to watch him die on a frozen one.

At first, Anakin had been thankful for the fact that Obi-Wan had not followed him out of the cave. The mere idea of spending another minute by his side was unbearable; a nightmare. And knowing himself as much as Anakin did, their fight was bound to escalate into something he might regret.

He had already said too much—there was no need to allow himself the opportunity to reveal thoughts and feelings he had buried a long time ago.

Regardless, when he looked back and found himself without the slight notion of where he was, and how to make his way back into the fallen spaceship, he accepted that maybe the whole storming off outside had been a bad idea.

Contrary to what Obi-Wan assumed, Anakin had read the available reports about Yinchorr, if only because it was always a good thing to know about the atmospheric conditions of a planet before entering it, especially with a ship frail as the one he was given for the mission. In consequence, he knew that the few explorers brave enough to set camp on Yinchorr hadn’t found any sign of living organisms excluding a few bacteria floating on the water. Of course, he mumbled to himself, stopping and looking around. Nothing could survive in a place like this.

The snow stretched for miles without end, reaching far beyond what his eyes could take. There was no single spot that wasn’t covered with snow. Even the mountains standing close to the horizon line were topped with it.

In a sense, the monochrome of it reminded him of Tatooine, where the yellow burned the cornea of his eyes. But as ugly as the desert was, it teemed with life—krayt dragons, banthas, eopies, dewbacks. As far as anyone knew, Yinchorr didn’t have anything like that.

The planet was, by all means, dead.

For the first time, Anakin recognize that he would be dead too, and soon, if he didn’t find his way back to the ship.

(Or even if he did. They had nothing to eat, and just a few packets of potable water, though they could try to make do with snow.)

“Kriff this planet,” Anakin muttered, covering his mouth with a gloved hand to feel the warmth of his breath. “Kriff the resistance. Kriff Bail Organa. And kriff Obi-Wan.”

He turned back to where he presumed he came from, seeing nothing but snow. Anakin was faced with two options: try to go back, and hope not to die of hypothermia on the way; or keep walking, hoping to find something edible. There had to be something. A mushroom. Moss. Anything. He was so hungry he could eat literally anything.

Moreover, if we went back, Obi-Wan would be waiting for him with those sad and deep and disappointed eyes, with his lips turned downwards and that kriffing face of someone who didn’t expect Anakin to succeed, because he was foolish and reckless and stupid and did nothing right, ever.

Anakin shook his head and jumped in place a bit to warm himself up. Then he stepped forward, going deeper into the white unknown.

He walked, and walked, and walked; still, nothing could be found. With every step, the cold crept in. First, on his uncovered face, eyelashes heavy with the weight of the ice that had crystallized there. After, on his hands and feet, even under the heavy boots and gloves he was wearing. 

Walking had become too bothersome, so Anakin decided to stop to catch his breath a little. Soon, he was kneeling down on the snow, and then sitting on it, as his legs became too weak to sustain him upright.

Damn it, Anakin thought, feeling his lower limbs become wet from the snow. His stomach ached in protest. Inside his head, he could feel something pounding the bones of his cranium from within, wanting to leave, to escape the mess that was Anakin Skywalker.

In a desperate attempt, Anakin used his last energy to reach for the Force. 

Nothing answered him—there was no life in Yinchorr from the Force to anchor itself too.

His back hit the snow with a muffled sound. It was very soft, Anakin thought. Almost like a bed. A deathbed.

He raised his eyes to the sky, for once clean of clouds. It was blue, so unbelievably blue. Blue like Luke’s eyes, twinkling as he asked Anakin to tell him a story before sleep. Oh Luke, Anakin thought, running his tongue through cracked, bleeding lips. Luke, Leia, I’m sorry. Daddy made a mess out of everything again. But you’re gonna do okay. Mom will take good care of you. She always did. And she’ll find a way to make the galaxy a nice and safe place for you to live, I know she will.

Fighting against his own body, Anakin kept his eyes open, still admiring the sky. Blue, like Obi-Wan’s eyes, all-encompassing in their sorrow, in the concern he showed towards Anakin, even after everything that had transpired between them, even after Anakin managed to fuck things up beyond the point of no-return. He thought of Obi-Wan, waiting by the airlock, reaching out to the Force only to find no trace of Anakin’s signature. Obi-Wan, alone in the ship, waiting for a rescue that would never come.

The sky was blue; like a lightsaber, like Obi-Wan’s eyes, like his own before the darkness, before the screaming, before the fire that consumed his soul.

Blue. Once again, as it had been seven years before, the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes.

“There was this series of small explosions, and then boom!, everything went up in space!” Anakin opened his arms, trying to transmit to Ahsoka at least part of what he felt as he watched Moff Sulamar’s Star Destroyer explode. “It was absolutely beautiful. Force, you’d have loved to see it.”

Ahsoka scrunched her face, as if she were about to cry from the injustice of it all. “I can’t believe I’m a higher ranking official than you for once in my life, and yet you’re out there blowing spaceships while I’m stuck with intel missions. I’ve spent two whole weeks tracking this noble-ass snobby shit from Hendram only to find no new information whatsoever. Ugh. This is so unfair.”

She let herself fall back against the crates in which they were sitting, inside the resistance’s base on Dosa, a small satellite on the Outer Rim. All around them, people scurried about, exchanging information about the Empire’s attack formations, or planets that had called upon the movement for help against invasions of stormtroopers.

Anakin himself had just come back from one of such battles, preventing Moff Sulamar’s forces, the Dark Saber Command, from successfully reaching their rendezvous point where the rest of the Empire’s navy awaited them.

The Moff had probably escaped before her ship exploded. All Moffs were slippery things like that, he’d learned.

“I thought you wanted to do intel missions. The whole Fulcrum deal,” Anakin said, smiling at Ahsoka’s dramatics.

After their meeting at Zallanu, he didn’t think she would ever forgive him. And yet, there they were, slowly rekindling the easy relationship they had before she left the Jedi Order.

It was a bumpy road, with Ahsoka still unable to fully get past what Anakin had done, and Anakin unwilling to talk to her only to feel the bite beneath her words. But it was getting better, one step at a time.

Sometimes, like that moment, it seemed nothing had changed at all. Except the fact that Ahsoka had gotten so tall all of sudden. Who had given her the right?

“I do like them! I love them, in fact. But I’d also like to blow up a ship now and then, for a treat.” She sat up straight again before showing the log of the planets she’d been this year on her datapad. “See, when it’s not intel missions, it’s supervising field efforts. Supervising, never participating in it. Before Hendram, it was Truhpolee, Nuth, Etheve, Kot — which was such a bore —, Ros and Yihpot. No funny missions for Ahsoka Tano at all.”

Anakin recognized some of the names as planets he’d been once, as a General in the Republic Army. Palpatine’s Empire, however, didn’t wish to stay confined to the borders of the former Republic. He wanted more — he always wanted more, but we were too blind to see it —, sending his soldiers to every corner of the known galaxy. It was easy, with the new conscription policies and the massive propaganda the Empire spread to keep young, starstruck young humans pouring into their ranks.

There was one specific planet, however, which Anakin had recognized not because he’d been there, but because he’d heard rumors someone else was.

“You’ve been to Ros?” He asked Ahsoka, trying to sound simply curious about the whole ordeal and not anything specific. “I thought Obi-Wan was handling things there.”

Just saying that name made his heart do a weird, hopeful flutter. Anakin squashed it before Ahsoka could notice.

He should’ve known better. “He is. I was just checking if he needed anything.” Ahsoka pursed her lips before looking at him from the corner of her eyes. “Why, there’s something you’ve been meaning to ask?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just wanted to know how he was doing.” Anakin shrugged. A former student asking for news of his former master's well-being. Nothing weird about that.

Ahsoka shrugged too, in perfect imitation of him. “He’s fine.”

“That’s all you’re gonna tell me? Fine?”

“You can always ask him directly for more information.”

“You know I can’t.” Anakin gave her his best disapproving stare. Ahsoka was insufferable sometimes.

She was unbothered. “Have you ever tried to contact him all this time?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me. Master Yoda told me so,” Anakin mumbled, remembering the day he’d given up and reached out to the old Jedi Master, after months of fruitless searching for Obi-Wan’s whereabouts. 

Ahsoka sighed. Anakin noticed that people tended to sigh a lot when talking to him.

“Master Yoda said he didn’t want to be found, not by you but by anyone at all. And that was what, three years ago? Things change.”

“I disagree.”

“Yeah, well. Your feelings for him didn’t change, it seems.”

Anakin turned his body to her, only to catch her looking fondly at him. The kind of stare you reserve for a loved, yet foolish child. “My deeply seated friendship for him, you mean.”

Ahsoka laughed. “If believing that is what makes you sleep better at night, fine. But I meant the fact that you still sound like you’re in love with him.”

Oh Force, Anakin thought, pinching the bridge of his nose. I can’t deal with this right now.

“Ahsoka…”

“Nah, I don’t want to listen to your bullshit. I was fifteen, not blind,” She said, still smiling. “You looked at Obi-Wan the same way you looked at Senator Amidala. Like he hung the stars in the sky.”

Was he so obvious? Anakin liked to think he’d hidden his feelings better, especially the ones toward Obi-Wan. He couldn’t risk his master finding out, not in the position they were in—two of the Republic’s finest generals, loved by the public, relentlessly fighting a war that seemed to have no end.

It wasn’t like Anakin could turn to Obi-Wan and say, just so you know, I dream of kissing you on the mouth every night.

Yeah, that wouldn’t have turned out well.

“So what? It doesn’t mean it was love. I was simply… infatuated with him.”

“Again: if it makes you sleep better at night.” Ahsoka made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “He is fine, alright. Could have been better. He’s not that keen on this whole rebellion thing, you know. And there’s this, uh… this empty space beside him. How can I say it… A very Anakin Skywalker-shaped space.”

“And let me guess: there’s an empty, very Obi-Wan Kenobi-shaped space beside me too.”

She nodded. “You really need to talk it out, both of you.”

“I don’t know, Snips.” Anakin let out a deep sigh. If only things were so easy as Ahsoka made them appear. “Obi-Wan and I… we’re History now, I think. Nothing more.”

Anakin Skywalker dreamed of stars and quiet and peace.

He floated around in space, unbothered by the lack of pressure, drifting aimlessly around the dark, vast, infinite emptiness.

Then he felt himself move as if tugged by an invisible chord. Up and up and up, without end—until he passed close to a bright, blue star; so close he could touch it. Anakin stretched his arm out towards it and found himself not being burned, but wrapped in soft, warm light. Dear child, the star said, with a voice that was also a thousand voices, its words a sum of all the words once spoken. I’ve been waiting for you for so long.

Gravity made itself known to him first as a pulling deep on his guts, and then: falling. The background of his dream changed colors—from black to purple to yellow to white and to blue. He tried to grasp something to stop his descent, but his arm didn’t answer him. Anakin Skywalker looked to the place where his right arm was supposed to be and found nothing. Anakin Skywalker looked to the place where his left arm was supposed to be and found nothing.  Anakin Skywalker looked to the place where his legs were supposed to be—

Everything was red, painfully red, and he breathed in only to hear a mechanical sound coming from his throat, and he opened his mouth to scream—

“Anakin!” Anakin’s ears rang, echoing the sound again and again. Anakin! Anakin! Anakin! He opened his eyes only to find Obi-Wan’s face hovering over his, blue eyes — not red thank you thank you — wide open and scared. “Anakin, snap out of it!”

He opened his mouth to suck in a deep breath, the only sound coming out of it so unmistakably human that it made his lungs ache with relief. “Obi-Wan,” he wheezed, trying his best to get the words past his cracked lips. “I need—”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and brought his hand to his chest, muttering a quick prayer of thanks before scooting away from Anakin, who instantly shivered from the loss of warmth. “Water, I know. Here, drink this.”

The water packets had a slight artificial taste from the plastic wrapping, but Anakin gulped them down without noticing it. “Easy,” Obi-Wan said, angling the package downwards to stop Anakin from going too fast and choking himself on it. "That’s it.”

His throat was so parched he could drink a whole river if given to him. He sucked the packet until it was dry, and then he sucked more, wishing for a few last drops, only to come empty.

It would be enough to make him cry, if he had enough water left in his body to produce tears.

Anakin let himself fall down back into supine position only to wince as his back touched not a soft bed of snow, but the hard — and equally cold — durasteel of a spaceship.

“Kriff,” he winced. By his side, Obi-Wan let out a raspy, muffled laugh.

It was only then that Anakin noticed how close Obi-Wan was. They were, in fact, touching from the shoulders down, and Anakin could feel Obi-Wan’s toes pressed against the arch of his own foot.

He tried to lower his gaze and see exactly how compromising their current position was, only to see that he was covered with a thick, fluffy coat—Obi-Wan’s one, white with silver lining. Anakin was very, very glad for it, because, as soon as his mind cleared a bit, he was faced with the most unbecoming piece of news.

He was naked.

Well, not exactly. He could still feel his underclothes pressing against his skin. But the fact stood that he was almost naked, covered only by Obi-Wan’s coat, with the man himself lying by his side.

If he were able to think coherently, Anakin would admit it: they were basically snuggling.

Sith hells, he found himself thinking. If only younger me knew that’s what it would take—

“Anakin, dear, tell me how you’re feeling,” Obi-Wan said, pressing a hand against Anakin’s forehead. It felt warm, so warm, and so good. Anakin wanted to die with Obi-Wan’s hand on his skin. “You’re still a bit feverish.”

“I’m fine,” Anakin groaned, barely audible. His voice resounded inside his own skull, making everything hurt even more. “Cold.”

“A sure thing, after the stunt you pulled.” There was no bite in Obi-Wan’s voice, only quiet resignation. He wrapped both arms around Anakin, bringing him closer until they were lying face to face. “You’re lucky it didn’t take me long to find you.”

Oh Force, Anakin thought. Unlike him, Obi-Wan was still clothed from the waist down, but that didn’t stop Anakin from feeling the heat that radiated out of him like a miniature, up-close version of a sun.

Involuntarily, Anakin sighed in pleasure.

After a few minutes of peace, however, a few thoughts started to make themselves excessively loud inside his head, and Anakin had no option but to destroy the delicate cocoon Obi-Wan had weaved for him.

“You weren’t supposed to go after me,” he said, closing his eyes not to watch Obi-Wan’s expression. He didn’t want to see if Obi-Wan regretted that. “You could have died.”

“Yes, and so could you. You did, in fact, almost die.” Obi-Wan sounded reproachful, just like he did when Anakin was fifteen years old and did a forbidden maneuver on his speeder.

“I’m still going to die soon.”

Obi-Wan tsked. “Don’t say things like that, Anakin.”

“It’s true. I can feel it.”

He could. It was a haze, setting over his mind. It was a heavy weight dragging his limbs down, a tightening of his lungs making it harder and harder to breathe.

Anakin Skywalker did not fear death. All things die; even stars burn out.

He simply wished he’d done more with his life.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Obi-Wan said, but he was wrong. There were only a few times before when Anakin had been so sure of what he was talking about. “Rescue will come soon, and they will take good care of you. Before you know it, you will be up in the stars, blowing up the Empire’s starfighters.”

“Nice, but also: counterfactual.” He smiled as he used one of the big, fancy words Obi-Wan was so fond of. “Doesn’t matter, though. I don’t want to waste my last minutes fighting about this.”

“I— Fine, then. Have it as you will.” Obi-Wan sighed. Resistance, as he well knew it, was futile at this point. “But that is entirely because I do not want to fight you, either.”

Good, Anakin thought, relaxing inside Obi-Wan’s embrace. Objectively, he knew that being clothless and snuggled against someone else was the best method of warming up in a situation of possible hypothermia. It didn’t have to mean anything deeper than that; it didn’t have to mean anything at all.

Objectively, he knew that. Nevertheless, it was impossible for him not to let himself pretend that Obi-Wan wasn’t doing that because he needed it, but because he wanted it.

To believe such a thing was so pleasant that Anakin didn’t notice the minutes passing by them, not until Obi-Wan spoke. “Well then, care to tell me what you want to spend your ‘last’ minutes on?”

Oh, there were so many things! Obi-Wan had no idea. Anakin wanted to send a last message to Luke and Leia, telling them everything would be alright. He wanted to reach for Ahsoka and praise her for being the padawan learner and the Force user he’d once strived to be. He wanted to tell Rex it was okay to cry and scream and rage about all the clones — all his brothers — that were trapped into fighting for the Empire. He wanted to tell Padmé and Bail to give Palpatine hell in the Senate. He wanted, if only in the last minutes of his life, to be at peace.

Above all that, he wanted to tell Obi-Wan the words he’d been saving inside his chest for the last seven years.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin said, mouth forming perfectly around the words he had rehearsed a thousand times over. “For everything that happened after you left for Utapau. I was immature, and reckless, and scared, and I know none of the this justifies what I did that day, but—”

Every word said was a bit of warmth that left him. Still, Anakin didn’t want to stop. He had so much to tell Obi-Wan. He needed to let it all out, he needed to—

“It’s okay, Anakin. Save your breath, alright? It’s okay.” Obi-Wan’s hand traveled upwards, caressing the golden locks of his hair. Anakin shuddered, remembering all the times he’d been frightened as a young boy and Obi-Wan had soothed him like this. “I forgive you.”

Three simple words that made his heart expand until it pressed against his ribcage. Anakin felt the pinprick of tears on the back of his eyes, the familiar knot forming inside his throat. “I hope you aren’t saying this just because I’m about to die.”

“Force, no. Absolutely not.” Anakin believed him. Obi-Wan said it with such passion it was hard not to. “I’m sorry too. I should’ve said all that to you a long time ago, but I didn’t know how; I had no idea where to begin. I was a fool not to reach out to you, for no other reason than my belief that you would want to leave your past as a Jedi behind you.”

“Not all of it,” Anakin said, his eyes fixed on Obi-Wan’s. Blue on blue on blue, mirrored into infinity. “Not you.”

He watched as Obi-Wan’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, his anguish flowing freely onto the Force. “Anakin—”

“I meant it. I— kriff it, I missed you. I missed you so much I thought I was going to die of it.”

“I missed you so much it hurt to breathe.”

“Then why didn’t you— no, forget that.” Anakin shook his head, forgetting the pain until it made itself known to him with a sharp pang. It didn’t matter now. The pain, the dying. He had more important concerns. “What matters is that you're here now. That I talked to you before I died.”

Obi-Wan chuckled, stroking Anakin’s earlobe with his thumb. “Anakin, I’m serious. You’re not dying.”

His body told him otherwise, but if Obi-Wan wanted to be stubborn as a bantha, fine. Denial wasn’t such a bad coping mechanism in their current circumstances.

“It doesn't matter. I did what I had to do. I couldn’t bear to die without making amends with you. And I—” Anakin wet his lips as he tried to keep his grip on life going on for as long as he could. “Forget it”

“What is it?” Obi-Wan asked.

“It’s stupid, and— kriffing hell.”

Obi-Wan’s hand stopped suddenly, the tips of his fingers brushing against Anakin’s neck.

“Anakin…” his former master said. Anakin felt the air being sucked out of his lungs. He knew that tone of voice, those wrinkles on Obi-Wan’s face. For as long as they had known each other, that set of reactions had always meant the same thing.

“You knew it, already, didn’t you?” Anakin asked, laughing at himself. It came out as a wheeze, the last sounds of a dying animal. “I bet you knew it all along.”

It was funny that after all these years, Obi-Wan was too much of a Jedi to deny him the truth. “You had Padmé. I knew about that all along, too.”

“We could have talked about it, Obi-Wan. We could’ve— If you knew and you didn’t say anything… was that because you didn’t feel the same about me?”

Say it, Anakin’s mind chanted, steady as a prayer. Say it so I can die in peace. Say it say it say it—

“It doesn't matter anymore,” Obi-Wan stated, not saying it. “It is all in the past.”

Anakin wanted the truth and Obi-Wan’s lack of direct response gave it to him. Obi-Wan’s blue eyes gave it to him, like Yinchorr’s sky, wonderful, endless, waiting for him.

“Not for me, it isn’t.”

In the silence that fell upon them, Anakin could distinctly hear both their hearts beating in tandem; the wild, fluttering motions of a foolish, fated love.

“Obi-Wan,” he said, savoring the name on his lips, thinking of all the years he had waited for this. “Can you kiss me?”

Obi-Wan shuddered. “You’re delirious, Anakin. I couldn’t—”

“I’ve never felt more aware. And even if I were delirious, it wouldn’t matter. I’m going to die soon. You’re going to die soon. It’s been too long—they’re not coming to rescue us.”

“I know that,” his former master acquiesced, closing his eyes in pain. His feelings were so deep Anakin could almost listen to them in the Force. Obi-Wan didn’t care about dying—he just wanted Anakin to live.

In the shattering cold of Yinchorr, he felt as hot he’d once did while stepping on the scalding hot sands of Mustafar.

“What are you waiting for, then?” Anakin said, touching Obi-Wan’s cheek with his hand, feeling the warmth of the blood pulsing beneath his skin. “I want to feel this, just this once. Don’t you?”

Obi-Wan didn’t say anything, but Anakin could hear his answer whispered onto the Force. Yes, it sang. Yes and yes and yes.

Anakin closed his eyes and felt Obi-Wan’s lips touching his.

He had dreamed of that for so long that it was hard to believe this wasn’t just another one of his fantasies. In his dreams, however, they were inside his room in the Jedi Temple, lying on top of his soft mattress; not on the cold floor of a spaceship. In his dreams, Obi-Wan’s lips were soft, not chapped, and he laughed against Anakin’s mouth instead of letting tears fall down his cheeks.

It was nothing like what he’d dreamed of. And yet, Anakin wouldn’t exchange it for anything.

He twisted his fingers into Obi-Wan’s hair, pulling him closer until they were so closely pressed together as to be mistaken for one single being. Anakin gasped into the kiss, exploring Obi-Wan’s mouth with his tongue, memorizing the taste of him, the small sounds Obi-Wan made, the way warmth flowed into their bodies for one last, radiant time.

And when Anakin broke to kiss to suck in a breath, it was Obi-Wan who reached for him, again and again, with his hands running soothing motions on Anakin’s back.

“You’re shivering,” he whispered, as a set of tremors ran past Anakin’s spine.

“It hurts,” Anakin said, feeling as the cold spread up his body even as Obi-Wan fought to keep him warm.

“I know, dearest. I know.” He traced Anakin’s cheekbone with his thumb, smiling at him all the time. “Go to sleep. I’ll be there when you wake up.”

“And if you aren’t?”

“I will. I promise you, Anakin. Wherever you go, I’ll follow.”

It’s a promise, then, Anakin thought—but as he opened his lips to say the words, he felt his eyes closing against his will, no matter how hard he fought to keep them open.

For last, he saw Obi-Wan’s eyes, blue like his own, like their lightsabers, like water and rebirth and forgiveness.

And then everything was dark and so, so cold.

When Bail Organa had asked Anakin to coordinate the training of one of the few rebel cells that still survived in Felucia, Anakin, against his better judgment, bowed his head and agreed without complaint.

He had said he could be Bail’s soldier, and he wouldn’t back off his word, even if he didn’t think himself fit for command yet—nor ever again.

“Sir, the blasters have been distributed among the fighters. There are more of them than we’d expected.” Anakin turned around to see Rex standing by his side, still wearing the same trooper armor he’d donned during the Clone Wars. A sign of defiance, with so many people being distrustful of the clones for their part in the extermination of the Jedi Order. “That’s not exactly a good thing, however.”

“How so?”

“Not all of them are what I’d call capable.” Rex shrugged, to which Anakin smiled. If there was one good thing in being in charge again, it was reuniting with his old friend. “Some of them are too old; a lot are too young. The Kyuzos will be useful. The Felucians… not so much.”

A ragtag band of rebels, then. The backbone of the resistance.

Palpatine would laugh if he could see them; Anakin would too, some years ago. Now, he knew there was a specific kind of strength only the most desperate soldiers could muster; only the ones who were fighting to take back what had been stolen from them.

Anakin pursed his lips, considering his options. They needed all hands on deck against the Empire, even the ones that weren’t exactly fit for it. “I don’t think training them will be such a problem. After that, we can sort the ones that don’t make good soldiers into other tasks. Healing, intelligence… You know the drill.”

“Sir.”

“We trained some Felucians once, you know that? Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and I,” he said, for the first time not feeling his guts twist at the sound of his former master’s name. “Scared off a bunch of pirates away from their village before they could steal all their nysillin. So don’t underestimate them.”

“I won’t, sir,” Rex said, with a smile. He was likely filing that down on the long list of instances of Anakin’s attachment to old, small, and broken things. But then, they were all broken things too. “If you’ll excuse me.”

He nodded, watching the waning sunlight as Rex returned to where their cell had struck a makeshift camp. Felucia was not the same planet he had crashed alongside Ahsoka and Obi-Wan—how can you call yourself such a good pilot when you crash all your ships?, she had asked.

Once, one couldn’t see the horizon, hidden by giant plants with its colorful leaves pulsing with bioluminescence. Now, after years of fighting between the Republic and the Separatists, followed by the advance of the Empire, with its heavy machinery had razed the vegetation, lush jungle had given way to naked soil.

Aimlessly, Anakin wandered further away from the settlement. Heads turned as he strode past, whispers so loud he could feel them reverberating inside his body. Isn’t that Anakin Skywalker? he heard, from teenagers carrying blasters too big for their hands and Felucians sharpening blades as tall as their own bodies. He is the Hero With No Fear. He’ll save us. He’ll destroy the Empire!

The words made him nauseous. I helped the Empire!, he wanted to turn around and shout the truth on their faces; he wanted to tell them every one of his dirty secrets until their admiration turned to revulsion, until they chased him away with stones and torches in their hands.

Anakin hid his hands inside his pockets, so no one would see them shaking. He quickened his steps, fleeing the eyes that followed him, the smiles on the faces of people who thought him someone good, someone honorable. People who didn’t know him as a murderer, or a traitor, or a liar. People who didn’t know him as what he was.

Aayla Secura died here in Felucia. Once, she had helped him when he was hurt and they were lost on the plains of Mygeeto. A year after that, in the same soil Anakin was standing on, Commander Bly made a sign with his hand to the rest of his Corps, and they all pointed their guns to Aayla’s back, shooting long after she went down.

Had she felt the blaster shots piercing her skin, or she was already dead by then, killed by a merciful shot straight into her head? And all the others, the countless Jedi spread across the galaxy, gunned down and betrayed and murdered, had they hurt? Had they screamed, bewildered, for mercy? Had they looked into the clones’ eyes, the eyes of Jango Fett, and asked why before being silenced forever?

Anakin needed to know so he could feel the same. The bolts, the knives, the fire. He wanted to feel it all against his skin, this pain he had inflicted on others—the Jedi inside the Temple, the Jedi everywhere else. Anakin wanted to scream as they had screamed, to cry as they had cried, to die as they had died.

Maybe this way they would forgive him.

(Foolish boy, the birds told him in Aayla’s voice. You are wretched. You are unforgivable.)

Gasping for breath, Anakin wrapped his hands around his neck, feeling his pulse run wild beneath his skin. Reaching for the Force, he sensed the blood running through his veins, his lungs expanding as they filled with air, the cells inside his body dying and being born, multiplying themselves endlessly—all the things that kept him alive, through fire and water and the endless vacuum of space.

All the things alive in him and dead in Aayla Secura, and Mace Windu, and Ki-Adi Mundi, and every other Jedi who had been shot or drowned or cut in half, every Jedi who used their last bout of energy to suck in a dying breath as their bodies were consumed by flame.

What right had he to survive when they didn’t? Who had decided that he should have another chance, that he could look back to what he’d done and think oh shit, I fucked up, that he could try to fix his mistakes? There’s nothing in the galaxy that could make Aayla stand up again, that could make her pinch the bridge of his nose and call him a stupid, reckless boy in the fondest tone possible.

It wasn’t a mistake that could be undone. It wasn’t something that would never leave him alone.

(Foolish. Stupid. Reckless. Dangerous. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.)

Anakin sucked in a trembling breath and sat down on the dirty floor, head between his knees, as he waited for the ghosts inside his head to stop screaming.

So what if they didn’t forgive him? He didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

Anakin lost track of time. After the shaking stopped, his breathing had slowed down, and the tears had come and gone away, he stayed away from the camp, watching as the darkness revealed the few luminous plants that had fought back and resisted destruction; that ones that had thrived despite everything that told them to do otherwise.

And he would’ve stayed like that for longer still if R2-D2 didn’t find him.

“Hey buddy,” he said, not bothering to fake a smile. Artoo answered with a series of indignant beeps, all his lights blinking red. “Sorry, I wasn’t supposed to take long, but I got… carried away.”

Artoo beeped sadly, in the way that only he could.

“I’m fine now.” He was not, but there was nothing that could be done about it. “Why are you here, anyway? Something happened at the camp?”

This time, the answer came in the form of a hologram, replaying the image of a togruta with long mantrels and a playful expression on her face.

“Where the fuck are you? Rex and I have looked for you all around the camp. I need you to drag your sorry ass here, now. Master,” Ahsoka said, and Anakin couldn’t help but laugh at the way she called him master at the end, as if that excused the swearing. “I have a super hyper secret message for you. Also, the kids said hi! Go on, Artoo. Bring him back.”

The last phrase was said in a slightly worried tone. Anakin wondered if Ahsoka suspected anything—she likely could pick up some of his melancholy, even after all the barriers he tried to raise around his mind.

Ahsoka was a good person. Ahsoka, and Bail, and Padmé—the ones who knew but didn’t turn their backs to him, the ones who knew and still hoped that he could do better, that he could be better than his past.

Anakin felt tears well up behind his eyes again. He raised his eyes to the sky for a second, willing them to leave — the tears, and the fear, and the pain — and gazed at the faithful droid that waited patiently for him.

“Come on, Artoo. Ahsoka isn’t the type of girl one leaves waiting, isn’t she?”

Artoo beeped in agreement, falling in place at Anakin’s side as they made the slow trek back to the camp.

When the birds sang again, it was not in a voice Anakin could recognize.

Anakin opened his eyes to a world of softness, warmth, and all-around whiteness.

That was how he knew he wasn’t dead—he still had much to do if he wanted to be worthy of an afterlife such as this.

(Just to be sure, however, he willed his right hand to move—what answered him was an intricate synth-net neural interface. His mechno-arm was still there. Which meant he wasn’t dead, not yet.)

After ten seconds of quiet contemplation, the past couple of weeks came back to him all at once. Fast as lightning, Anakin rose up to a sitting position on the bed, wiping his head about to find—

“Right here,” a deep voice said, two steps behind him, and Anakin felt relief washing over him, soothing as the rain that fell yearly on Tatooine. “Don’t make any sudden movements. You’re still a bit fragile. Rescue came just in time—a day later and we would both be dead.

He turned his head to see Obi-Wan sitting by the corner of the room, cradling a mug of steaming tea on his hands—his fingers bandaged where frostbite had burned the skin. Anakin wanted to reach out to him, to flung himself into his arms, to thank every deity that allowed both of them to walk out of Yinchorr alive, somehow.

But he was scared that Obi-Wan would push him away, or leave him like before.

Just as he was about to put these thoughts into words, Obi-Wan stood up and moved to the exit. He didn’t look into Anakin’s eyes as he started to speak. “Well, I’ll go and find Ahsoka. We’ve been taking turns waiting for you to wake up. Oh, she also wants to hear your report about the mission. I told her everything about the refinery, and the crash, but she would like to hear it all from your mouth, and I’m sure—”

“Obi-Wan, wait,” Anakin said. He extended his left arm, grabbing Obi-Wan’s wrist as he moved past the bed. “Please, not right now.”

He didn’t want to see Ahsoka at the moment, nor Rex or Bail or anyone who would bother him asking for details about the worst couple of weeks of his life.

He wanted Obi-Wan, the man who had been standing with him through it.

“Can’t you stay just a little longer?” he asked, eyes still half-lidded from exhaustion focused on Obi-Wan’s clear, sorrowful ones. “If you want to, I mean.”

At that, Obi-Wan looked so close to tears that Anakin felt his heart squeeze inside his ribcage. “I do, Anakin, of course I do. But first,” Obi-Wan reached for the chair, dragging it to Anakin’s bedside before sitting down. “First I need to know exactly what you remember from our last day on Yinchorr.”

Obi-Wan’s fingers caressed his own. Anakin allowed himself a fragile yet hopeful smile. “All of it.”

“I meant it, Anakin. I need to know exactly—”

“I meant it too. I remember all of it.” Your chest against mine, your hair around my fingers, our lips pressed together. “I remember waking up inside the ship, warmed by your body. I remember telling you things I had bottled up since Mustafar. I remember asking for a kiss,” Anakin chuckled, suddenly shy as he thought of the desperation which had taken him as he experienced what he believed would be his last minutes alive.  “And I remember having that wish granted.”

Obi-Wan did not accompany him in his laughter. Instead, he grasped Anakin’s hand harder. As clearly as Yinchorr, Anakin could feel it. His former master was afraid. 

Like their time estranged from each other, Obi-Wan let his thoughts run dark and wild, twisting into paths he couldn’t walk away from, not on his own.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, running the letters through his tongue carefully, as if he feared this could be the last time he said them. “Of all the things that happened, I— I need to know if there’s something which you regret. Because if there is, you don’t need to worry about it. We can simply pretend—”

“I regret none of it,” Anakin interrupted him, placing a bandaged finger over Obi-Wan’s lips—no longer cracked and bleeding from the frigid temperatures they were subjected to. “And before you say it, the last thing I want is to pretend that day never happened. I know most people don’t start relationships as they’re about to die, but then, you and I aren’t made of the same thing as most people, are we?”

At that, finally, finally, Obi-Wan smiled at him, a watery smile that brought tears to Anakin’s eyes too. “No, we are not.”

Obi-Wan reached out to him, gently brushing his hair away from his face. His fingers traced Anakin’s eyebrows, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips. Anakin leaned into it with a sigh and a smile, allowing Obi-Wan to cradle his face in one warm, perfect hand.

“I’ll stay a little longer, then. I don’t think anyone will mind.”

“Me neither,” Anakin whispered. “And you will follow me wherever I go, like you promised?”

“I will,” Obi-Wan vowed, reverently running a thumb over the arch of Anakin’s cheek. “To all the hidden corners of his galaxy, if it is what you want of me.”

Anakin brought Obi-Wan’s calloused palm to his mouth, kissing the center of it. “It is,” he prayed against his skin. It is everything I had ever hoped for.