darkforcerising | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who: Canon Anakin, AU Earth Anakin
What: Cross universe shenanigans continue - the two Anakins work on fixing a starfighter
When: now
Where: aboard the Resolute
Rating/Warnings: Probably low

Well it seemed as if Anakin was stuck back in this universe for the time being and he might as well use it to the fullest advantage. Being allowed to remain free, he set out wandering and quickly found the hangar bay. Listening to his music, he walked the perimeter a while, just looking at all the ships that were both so familiar and distant in memory for him. It was the weirdest form of nostalgia.

He stopped next to a currently-decommissioned fighter and rested his left hand on the metal hull. There was something about just feeling the cold metal against the palm of his hand. After a brief pause he started tracing a finger along the seam of a panel. It was so strange how a machine could feel so alive to him. And having twenty-four years of recent experience with the absence of that connection only made the feeling now so strong in contrast.

Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he noticed another familiar form working on another ship in disrepair. Without invitation, Anakin walked over.

“These were fun,” he said when he was close enough to be heard. He was referring to the Delta-7B Aethersprite-class light interceptor in front of him. “I remember them.”

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"Weird is different from weird." His twin could figure which he was.

"Yeah go ahead. Ship's docked for repair anyway." So Anakin didn't have to worry about relying on it for combat to find it broken.

He started walking around the ship slowly, taking his time. It was nice seeing one of these up close again. It was a weapon of war, but the yellow and grey paint somehow read as cheerful to him.

“Weird is better than bad,” he said. “Is it bad?” He was handling this better than some of the surprises he’d confronted the last two years, but now he was wondering how his twin was doing.

Yellow had always cheered him up at least. Anakin boosted himself back up, climbing up on the wing to remove a panel. Might as well access the wiring to the cockpit. If there was something knocked loose, it works be easier to fix that way.

"It's." He stopped. He'd gotten intensely private as he'd grown up among the Jedi, he didn't use to be that way. Having someone who might understand that and why wasn't something he was sure about. "I don't know. I don't know what you know, remember, whatever. I don't know why or what to do with you."

This elicited a chuckle from Anakin.

“No one ever knows what to do with me.”

That wasn’t entirely true. He’d had some very good therapists in his life on Earth. And they’d helped him understand himself in ways no one else could.

But the sentiment was the same if it was amended to accurately reflect that most people didn’t know what to do with him. There weren’t enough people here and now who knew what to do with him.

“If we assume you’re my past and I’m you’re future, then I know and and remember everything you currently know. If we’re from parallel universes, there must be variations.”

That got a laugh at least. "At least that's consistent." The only person who had known what to do with him was good mother. And that. Well.

"If you're my future you also know things I don't. But if we're from parallel then this might not matter." He's aware Yoda would tell him not to act on it, the future wasn't something to dwell on. But that seemed wrong to him.

“Yes.” But he didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t sure yet if him being here disrupted the balance of the universe. Plus, he was well studied in the art of not giving more information that was explicitly asked for. He knew it irritated people, but he did it anyways.

He stopped at the tool cart and picked up a tool he knew wasn’t needed. But he didn’t try to use it on anything. Instead he leaned against a strut and started taking the tool apart.

“What I know could still be relevant.”

"Was it better? The life you have on Earth?" He did wonder. Some things had to be better right?

Anakin noted the tool and only had paid attention to it. If he didn't break it, he'd be willing to let him help. Maybe.

"How so?"

“Yes.” He said it without hesitation.

“No space flight, but no...” he stopped now, considering how to say it. He chose to be blunt. “No slavery. No Jedi. No Sith.” And here he stopped. Should he tell his twin that Shmi was there, too, that she had raised him, that that was the biggest reason it was better?

"Mom?" Let's be honest about what he wanted, still wanted. Losing space would hurt, but no slavery, no Jedi telling him all the ways he was wrong, no Sith trying and succeeding in killing people. That was all great. But Mom. He wanted Mom. He wanted the one person who had always understood him, supported him, loved him. Who had made him feel special but in a safe way.

Anakin thought about how to explain it, but he decided not to say anything at all.

Instead he pulled out his phone and unlocked it, then opened the photos app. He was smart and had all these photos backed up on multiple places... back ‘home’. But he had them here as well. He keyed the folder that contained his photos of his mother - all their shared happiness, every one celebrating accomplishments throughout the years, even if it was just a regular, average day. They started when Anakin was a kid and Shmi was a young mother and ended with the last picture he took with her at his graduation from the Air Force Academy. Some were poor quality - photos from before the advent of inexpensive digital images scanned into digital format, the later ones much more clear and vibrant.

Anakin held up the phone for his twin to take.

Anakin looked at the phone for a moment, then touched the screen gently, testing it. And then went through each and every picture, openly staring at each for long moments before moving on. Going back to some again. He didn't realize he'd curled up on the wing, legs crossed, hunched over the device. He didn't realize the open longing on his face. He didn't hear honey cursing under his breath when he touched an imagine and the album went back or forward. All that mattered was being able to see Mom. He didn't even realize he was teary eyed until had to sniff hard to breathe.

Despite not really trusting his new twin, he didn't think he had to explain or justify that one.

No, Anakin didn’t need any explanation. He’d been in his twins place before, in another life and nightly in his dreams when he relived his memories. Here Shmi was gone, here he had failed to save her, here there was guilt and pain and longing that just never went away.

He just waited patiently. And while he waited he examined the parts of the tool one by one as he took it apart. When everything was in pieces, he worked in reverse and put it back together again, flicking it on and off to test it even though he knew it would work.

“She’s not gone,” he said at last.

"She's happy? You said no slavery but that doesn't mean things are good, that she's not. Not really poor, not putting on a brave face for me." He wanted her to be alive and happy and well. He wanted it so badly he ached for it, and no it never, ever went away.

He could, for now, ignore the terrible spike of jealousy that roared in his heart.

“Eh, poverty seems to be a common theme,” no lying about that. “But we were definitely happy.”

He paused before going on. “But that’s not what I meant. You asked what, if I’m from some parallel universe, could I know that’s relevant. This is one - she’s not gone. Here. Death isn’t the end end.”

He could, he thought, handle poverty. Ever if he wanted better, less hard, for his mom. But happy was what mattered.

Anakin scowled and turned back to the wing, carefully laying the phone down before prying the panel open. Lifting his hand, a spanner flow into his hand, landing with a solid thud. "Yes yes. One with the Force and all."

"No," Anakin said. "I mean, that's an overly simplistic way to teach it. It's more complex than that. People still exist, themselves, them. Um, an afterlife."

He tossed it around in his head and then tried, "You know what I'm talking about but you don't acknowledge it because the Order says to believe otherwise is heresy. I remember the Order's position on this. But you know you've heard and felt Qui-Gon still... That's because he's still an entity in existence."

Speaking of not acknowledging, Anakin continued to work on the wiring leading to the cockpit. But his head was turned just a little towards his twin, posture tense. And he didn't say anything for a while. "Not since Mom was killed."

He waited a moment. "The Order believes a lot of things. I don't agree with all of them."

"Ya, well," Anakin added pointedly. "I think you can figure out why he might have stopped talking for a while." There wasn't judgment in his voice - he'd done the same thing to the Tuskens, and so much more - he was just drawing his twin's attention to what the reason for Qui-Gon's silence might be.

He lifted the tool in his hand with the Force so it was suspended in front of him, and then, one by one, he started dismantling the parts of it, still with the Force, so that the whole of the tool ended up as one 3D diagram of itself in front of him.

He couldn't help himself from smiling. "I know."

"I know. I disappointed him." That was an understatement he knew. But he also wasn't entirely sorry fur what he'd done either. Not after all those dreams, those visions. "Did he ever start talking to you again?"

Anakin scooted so he could watch his twin, approving of the skill it took to to that. "Obi Wan wouldn't approve." So don't get caught, he means.

"No one else does. I'm the one whose wrong." So it was nice, if frightening, to have someone agree. Even if that someone was himself.

Anakin shrugged and kept playing with the parts. "I'm very comfortable with Obi-Wan's disapproval." He summoned another tool and, while keeping the first one still hanging, started dismantling the second with his hand. An exercise in splitting his focus.

"Qui-Gon does... And then... of course, I died, and there were many conversations after that."

Edited 2019-11-01 04:51 (UTC)

Anakin just watched for a moment. He was not comfortable with it, although he was used to it. It was why he didn't discuss certain things with his former Master, not wanting to court it.

"I'm glad he does. I miss him." Quite a lot actually. "It's. I know we are told we shouldn't try to peer into the future, that we have to be careful of it." And yet, he was tempted and there where things he wanted to know.

"The Order says a lot of things," Anakin acknowledged. He started putting the tool in his hand back together.

"There are an infinite number of possible futures. Or maybe every possible future is already set and there are an infinite number of set universes and that's what we see in the Force." He shrugged, he didn't care which was the truth because it didn't change anything for him.

But he knew that's not what his twin was getting at.

"What do you want to know?"

"And it doesn't seem to work for me." Which was the problem.

"Yeah the Force is real helpful that way." Vague and indirect and confusing - he was left frustrated more often than not. And feeling alone and like he couldn't turn to others for help. Because their help felt wrong.

Anakin gently nudged his twin's device over, moved to sit with his feet hanging off the wing. His shoulders dipped forward, chin bowed, and he played with the spanner in his hand. "With Mom. I don't. I don't want to feel that again. I don't know what to. I hate the lying. I don't want to lose people but I keep losing them. It's like nothing I do is enough."

Anakin was quiet as he tried to figure out what to say. There were many things he could say, but would it be right to say it. He still was unsure if he was in a paradoxical situation where everything he did had an infinite number of terrible, unforeseeable ramifications. If he said the wrong thing, could he really talking himself out of existence? Like Back to the Future?

But... everyone died at some point. And if what he said helped, wasn't that worth it?

Making the choice to say something was like stepping off the ledge. But he liked that feeling of freefall.

"Everything is stacked against you," he finally said. "Nothing you do is enough because you don't know what enough is to try to give it. You cannot win this war with the resources you have because you don't even know who you're actually fighting against. You can't balance the Force because not even the Jedi Order has a clue what balance is. You can't be truthful because the Jedi raise children to be compliant, not honest. And they can't help you with your feelings because they don't even know where to start."

Anakin loved the feeling of leaping in the air. It was one of the few times he dent truly free. Falling through the air felt like flying. And he'd once dreamed almost nightly of flying away, of the freedom of it.

But his twin wasn't telling him anything that at his core he didn't know. Nothing he didn't know, but didn't dare say out loud. "So what should I do?"