Who: Aunakin and Canakin What: Pausing the war to pay respects to the dead When: Now Where: Tatooine Rating/Warnings: Maybe some swearing
The shuttle broke through the twisting web of blue-white light of lightspeed into the darkness of space. The dusty planet of Tatooine loomed large in the viewport, and beyond it and its moons hung the unforgiving light of two burning stars.
Anakin remembered the coordinates to Owen Lars' farm and set a course.
"You can stay on the shuttle," he said to the person sitting in the chair next to him. "You don't have to come with me."
He knew his twin wouldn't experience this the same way he would, that this trip was for himself.
Some part of him didn't know why he'd even agreed to come. Some part of him knew he wasn't ready to never see her again, no matter how it hurt.
"I. I might." He didn't know what he wanted. He hasn't been back here since they buried her. He didn't know if he could and he didn't want his own grief to overshadow his twin's.
Anakin didn't question this. He had his own feelings to deal with. He'd lost his mother twice, and both times he'd felt guilt in some way. Though the first time by far outshone the second, even if his mother wasn't less dead the second time.
"Explaining two of us to Owen and Beru would be tricky," he said.
Who: AU Earth Anakin and Canon Obi-Wan (ihateflying) What: The Force is up to some fuckery and gives Obi-Wan something both frustrating and necessary When: Not too long after Obi-Wan takes up residence on Tatooine Where: Hut on Tatooine Rating/Warnings: Epic pain and sadness
The train was crowded and Anakin was ignoring everyone with air-pods in and his music on his phone turned up loud. Loud enough to drown out the emotions and sense of life coming at him through the Force from everyone and everything around him. He hated feeling the emotions of others, it felt intrusive.
The train came to the station and to a full stop. Anakin pulled his hoodie up over his head. Southern California wasn't cold in winter the same way it was cold in the northern latitudes, but it was colder than he likes - he knew he was a complete wimp about this. He didn't care.
He adjusted his backpack, shifted a sucker in his mouth (sugar was good for him) and moved with the crowd to walk through the train doors.
And he stepped into something very different than a train station platform.
The walls looked hewn from stone. The room was sparsely furnished. A very uncomfortable looking bed. A table. Light streamed in from the windows. And it was quite warm in the room.
And there was someone in the room with him. Someone he knew only from memory.
"Oh!" He said, taking a sucker out of his mouth. "C'mon!"
There was, to borrow a cliche, a disturbance in the Force. He felt something heave, nearly ripple and resettle.
Which meant he was already looking up from his datapad with mild confusion when Anakin appeared. Except it wasn't Anakin. The clothes were wrong, the hair was wrong and most importantly he had 3 of his 4 limbs firmly attached.
He stood up slowly, setting the datapad aside slowly as he did so.
A flood of emotions came rushing back when Obi-Wan spoke.
For Anakin, he hadn't heard that voice in a real world interaction in all... his current life. Which was moving on to twenty-seven years. He had his memories that he revisited in dreams every night. But they faded when he was awake.
There was a lot to process, deep regret and shame, a complicated mix of love and rage, a whole lot of confusion that had nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the presence. He took a breath and tried to think through all of that.
He stared back at Obi-Wan, and yes, his eyes searched for a tell-tale weapon. Judging by Obi-Wan's clothes and the location which he didn't recognize, he wasn't in So Cal Kansas anymore. There was a past here and he didn't know where in that past he'd landed.
It occurred to him that he could ask.
"Uh... hello," he offered back. "What's the date?"
Because Anakin knew what hangar bay the transport would use, he knew they could safely use one of the other bays. With the right Imperial codes, a ship was invisible. A program carried on the back of the code signal erasing the time signature as soon as the code's purpose - docking - was achieved. It was like a signal had never been sent, received, and processed.
Once on board, it was just a matter of hiding until the guard, Master Unduli, and the Grand Inquisitor boarded and the ship jumped to hyperspace. They would have two hours once the ship jumped to dispatch the guard and the Inquisitor. That only these players were involved in this transport played to their advantage. The ships was a giant empty vessel.
Part of the program he'd sliced into the code gave them access to viewing the hangar bay that the ground-to-ship transport would dock in.
They watched with a holocron as the ship floated in and landed.
"Okay," he looked at his synchronized chronometer strapped on his new metal arm. "Ten minutes to hyperjump."
He looked at Obi-Wan. A months worth of training, planning, a new arm, and working through break-downs had lead to this moment. Whatever happened, they were about to change the course of this galaxy in big way.
A month of training, planning, working through breakdowns and issues, pushing forward had led to this moment-
and Obi-Wan was confident that they would be able to do this.
He still insisted they build time for recovery in. In truth, it was as much for his sake as Anakin's. It was just that making it about Anakin, as well, made it easier to insist that it happen, rather than hope.
For the moment, though, this... didn't feel terrible. Largely because of the teamwork aspect, and the change aspect. The actual doing, he did not look forward to.
"Probably not, but I will be when we're in motion." Respond to the moment, and this was not the moment. This moment, he was standing, and he was waiting, and he was content to do so.
It was just better with Anakin. "How are you feeling?"
In total, over the course of four rescue missions and six weeks, they'd rescued fewer than a dozen Jedi and moved them to their stolen ship.
He'd lost count of how many people he'd killed.
The Jedi (and people they'd killed) recognized him, of course. His reputation very quickly changed, though, as survivors were able to talk to each other. Most of the survivors were at least half afraid of him, some more than half. Convinced he was somewhere either in the process of falling, or had already fallen.
He didn't blame them.
Soresu had gone away entirely, as had negotiating. They'd been replaced by a series of aggressive attack sequences with his blade, wielded ruthlessly and in complete silence. Combined with seeming a near total emotional void in combat, the effect was enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
It just happened to be that both of those things were what enabled him to hold onto any of his sanity.
Even then it took him a little longer to 'come back' and start talking and responding normally each time they returned to the Maverick. Routine helped. Shower. Change clothes. Drink tea that was so hot it was physically painful. Do what he could to help Anakin. Eat. Sleep like the absolute dead for hours, interspersed by several more hours of increasingly vivid dreams of increasingly personal and violent ways he died at Vader's hand.
The point in the routine he became more responsive varied and so did the point sex happened, but he did come back and sex usually happened.
He wasn't in any danger of falling. He wasn't turning dark. He was turning... dim.
He kissed Anakin on the temple after he'd cleaned up and changed into a fresh pair of dark, dark navy trousers and similarly dark red tunic (thanks, Bail). "I'll be in the gally, when you've finished showering." Soft, slightly hoarse.
By the time Anakin did come find him, he was sitting at the table with the arch of his foot against the seat of the chair. The second crystal they'd taken from the Inquisitor's blade when they'd pulled up Luminara, with a steaming cup of tea and his lightsaber hilt on the table in front of him, purifying the crystal.
It broke Anakin’s heart every time he felt Obi-Wan slip into that empty space that allowed him to do what needed to be done. It was necessary, but undesirable. Obi-Wan has been raised on the ideals of serving and protecting. What they did felt less like protecting and more like pure violence.
There was a time in his first life when he thought the Jedi needed to use these tactics on the Separatists. And now he was here, wishing their foes were just droids again.
But they couldn’t change their opponents, the Empire used sentients as shields. And the Empire was hunting their kind down - not just Jedi, but Force sensitivities as well. It felt like fighting fire with fire. Pointless, mutually assured destruction.
He was surprised and felt hope when he came into the galley and saw Obi-Wan was doing something healing, for a change.
He grabbed his own tea and sat down across from Obi-Wan. He didn’t interrupt Obi-Wan, he simply waited for him to finish purifying the crystal.
It had been a few days since their last mission, when Anakin first brought up Exegol and Scariff. Anakin had left the topic alone. He'd seen how long Obi-Wan slept that first night, Anakin had been up half the time. He'd found things to occupy his time, mostly spent working on his ideas about Exegol and Scariff.
And he wanted to give Obi-Wan more restful days before he brought the rebellion back into their space.
He never thought he'd want the quiet obliviousness of Tatooine. Fuck this man for making him find something ... if not enjoyable or desirable about Tatooine, but bearable.
He caught Obi-Wan as the man was finishing putting away dishes. He slipped an arm around Obi-Wan's waist and dropped his nose to the man's shoulder.
For once, he meant it. He'd slept deep and hard. He'd re-balanced and had time to breathe. He wasn't barely holding it together. He felt, more or less like himself.
He dried his hands and then turned around to brush his fingers across Anakin's temple. "I'm ready to stratagize when you are."
He was aware of the need. Also grateful for the peace, quiet, and stability of a few days of breathing room.
They'd gotten away with quite a lot without any injury more serious than cuts and bruises between them. They were simply changing too much to continue to be as well informed as they had been, as well as fueling paranoia within the Empire.
They were good - really good, both separately and together - but they were also confident and had gotten comfortable. It was inevitable that eventually their luck would break.
They had what they'd come for - which was updated information - when eventuality became reality. They were not prepared for the sheer numbers of Storm Troopers blocking their escape, and they certainly were not prepared for there to be more than on Inquisitor with them.
It went from easy exit to fight for their lives quickly.
It went okay, for a while. Storm Troopers were killed, Inquisitors were engaged. It looked like they were going to be fine. A few Storm Troopers and the Inquisitors to dispatch and they would be out.
Then it stopped going reasonably well and went straight to hell. A blaster bolt found its mark in the back of his left shoulder. That caused his concentration to break and his guard to drop just enough to take a slash across the chest from his right shoulder to his left hip. It was incredibly, stunningly painful though not nearly as deep as it might have been since he managed to recoil and twist with it to lessen the force of the strike and it's potential depth.
Less fortunately, it forced his blade down entirely.
Edited (removing extra words) 2020-01-25 19:44 (UTC)
Working together these past few weeks and being intimate together had developed in Anakin an awareness of Obi-Wan's presence and body in the Force he didn't have for anyone before he arrived. He hadn't questioned it the first time they came out of a fight with a scrape or two, just sharing that closeness in the Force seemed natural now.
Now...
It was chilling how vividly he felt that blast to Obi-Wan's shoulder and the slice across his body. He didn't need to see how the man's guard was down.
"Obi-Wan!"
They'd always approached these missions as clinically as possible - at least Anakin knew Obi-Wan did. Anakin still had his complicated emotions to contend with, but he tried to stay as present in the moment as he could and not let his memories of being Vader slip in. He was afraid of what that anger might make him blind to. While they planned their missions using his old memories, collaborating around the kitchen table was different from using those memories in the heat of battle. And he knew it limited his ability with certain skills.
But now- Obi-Wan couldn't die.
The battle had to end now. And if he just accessed certain memories...
He seized both Inquisitors with the Force, freezing their limbs and bodies and shoving them back into the group of stormtroopers. Then he reached out with his mind and found the thermal detonators on the utility belts of all the remaining stormtroopers and activated them. It was a horrible way to go, burning alive, he knew how that felt. But this was the fastest way he could think of achieving their need to end this now. He shielded the space around him and Obi-Wan until the blast energy dissipated.
When the energy was gone along with their opposition, he shoved his feelings and memories aside - deal with that fall out later - and dropped to Obi-Wan's side.
"Okay, attempt number three at sandfowl* chili with grains."
Anakin looked down at their dishes and they both had to agree this was his best try yet - but that wasn't saying much. On the plus side, there was no carbon taste from burning anything, but it still didn't have that shade of rich brown that was more appetizing than whatever this shade was.
But he'd tried. He was determined to do what he could to keep Obi-Wan as comfortable and off his feet as much as possible while he recuperate. And that meant Anakin was trying to cook more.
He set the dish down in front of Obi-Wan, along with a glass of water. And then sat down to his own serving himself.
That shade was awfully close to the nondescript shades Obi-Wan had defaulted to wearing for the majority of his life. Perhaps the official name should be 'bland' - or maybe nondescript covered it well enough?
He picks up his spoon and then look up at Anakin, kind of fondly exasperated. "I'm beginning to feel as though, if I manage to avoid getting you killed, there is an entire future of people who are going to owe me a debt of gratitude for forcing you into a situation where you tackle domestics."
He's teasing, but he is also sincerely a little cautious when he tries the food. Which, as it turns out, is not spectacular but doesn't feel as though it's likely to kill him.
Teasing aside? He still needs the help. He is healing, and he's helping that along, but it's burning a lot of energy to do so, and there is no short cut for the fact that a whole bunch of muscle was sliced through.
Time on Tatooine had been good for him, and not just because it had given him an opportunity to physically recover. Time with Anakin (and occasionally Luke), the... near boring mundane nature of the place and utter absence of having to kill anyone had been good for him. There was planning and talking, yes, but there was also meditation, playing with Luke, working on equipment, cooking and sex that wasn't all about desperation.
It didn't exactly fix anything, but it went a long way toward letting him be at peace with what was.
It meant he was a bit more steady, clear headed and interactive about this newest mission, and the fact that it was at least a rescue undoubtedly helped that, but - he was present and there and not distant and dissociated.
He even managed a quick smirky smile at Anakin. "Ready?"
Anakin enjoyed the break just as much as Obi-Wan did. The chance to see Luke more than once was something he hadn't thought possible before then. And the time, be it quiet, serious, sensual, ridiculous, spent with Obi-Wan was worth it alone.
And when it was done, he was ready to pick up the mantle of breaking the Empire.
"Ready."
He followed Obi-Wan in the maze of makeshift shacks. A refugee camp, left standing after the stormtroopers had swept through and relocated the majority of inhabitants. But, as with any unoccupied structure, it never really emptied completely. Mostly the remaining inhabitants were the stragglers or the most stubborn of individuals that refused to move short of death. And this planet didn't have the resources to fully doze this place. The stormtroopers had established Empire rule and then had moved on to the next planet.
He wasn't eating or sleeping well, but he was eating and sleeping. Anakin being there made an enormous amount of difference on both those fronts and was probably the only reason they happened at all.
Meditation did not happen at all and that was even more likely to continue than disrupted sleep patterns.
Still - the point was he had slept and eaten as well as showered and gotten cleaned up before leaving the Star Destroyer on the Maverick and meeting up with Bail with a promise that they had something to show him.
Something that was currently looming very, very large in their viewscreen.
Obi-Wan wasn't okay, but this? This he was going to enjoy which was why he was watching Bail's face rather than the ship he already knew about.
Bail was a man of composure, of eloquent, of persuasive words. He was humble, but used to commanding a measure of control over both his persona and the situation.
It took a lot to knock him off his 1.9 meters tall solid footing.
His heart had leapt into his throat the moment the destroyer blossomed into life on the viewscreen, his mind going first to the obvious - his covert operations had been discovered.
But Obi-Wan explained.
And then Bail was left speechless as he tried to process the reality of two individuals commandeering an entire capital warship on their own.
Jedi would be the death of him. An early grave for sure.
"How?!" he finally asked, seeing no way to hide his mix of shock, some admiration, but mostly disbelief.
In theory, the idea sounded... well, it was bad either way. They were desperate, they thought ‘the enemy of my enemy is maybe a friend.’ Or at least a loosely associated ally. In practice, it turned out that Maul was just a stabby son of a bitch who didn’t care who was on the end of his blade as long as it wasn’t him.
The mission had started out successfully. While Anakin didn’t feel the draw of the using the Dark Side, he could not deny that having an unabashed Dark Side user was useful when clearing a Destroyer of its occupants. He didn’t feel any remorse for anyone that died at the end of Maul’s blade.
They’d hit the communications room first, then the systematically worked their way outwardly until the last Stormtrooper was felled.
Now, on the bridge, it was just a matter of dealing with the payment.
In good faith, he’d deactivated his lightsaber, and it almost looked like this operation would be a success.
Anakin should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
When he turned to Maul, the Zabarrak’s blade was still bright, traitorous red.
“Thank you for the help, but I’m taking what what’s mine!”
Anakin spared the briefest of glance for Obi-Wan and reignited his blade to meet Maul’s.
All he can think in that moment is that he is not going to watch this play out again. That he has seen this scene with everyone he has ever loved, and that it is always Maul on the other end of that red saber and he is not doing it again.
Except, in the end, that is exactly what happens.
He can't get in, easily, not in time and not with the speed this is happening. He watches that red blade sink into Anakin with a kind of ... numb inevitability and what seems like slow motion all the way through Anakin falling.
That same cool, calm, detatchment carries him through his brief, furious fight with Maul. Plenty of force use, no negative emotion just the sense that he is... playing out a part that must be played, and watching himself do so from a distance.
That breaks the moment his blade slices through Maul's neck (he has learned a thing or two). He deactivates his saber and runs for Anakin before Maul's head hits the ground, slides under him and gets his hands - both of them - on Anakin, immediately. One behind his neck, the other on the side of his face.
They'd been on Tatooine for days, passing a week, to give Anakin time to recover. The first few days Anakin did sleep as much as possible, or he spent time in a healing trance to help his body repair itself. This was easy to do when he had little energy.
But the moment he started to feel his own old level of energy return, he started to itch for something more. Which made him prone to being disruptive, to outbursts, neediness for attention or just something to do.
In short he was starting to get annoying.
Of which Anakin wasn't unawares, and he tried to mitigate his tendencies by hiding in the Maverick to work on something rather than pestering Obi-Wan for attention and entertianment all the time. Though his ability to do something happened in fits and bursts because his energy came and he spent it more quikly than before he'd ben injured- he really, really didn't like this recovery process.
But lying there on the floor of the Maverick's mess, surrounded by the mess of droid and ship parts he'd been working, forced by his quickly depleated energy to pause. And while he was there paused on the floor, he could only think. And while his body might need a moment, his thoughts flew at him a mile a second. And eventually those thoughts turned into ideas, and the ideas piled up until they were ready to spill out of his head.
He held back from telling Obi-Wan every one of his wild musings until he had something that was more substantial.
And that didn't happen until a night some week or two after they'd come home.
They were just sitting down for dinner when he decided to broach the subject. He knew how much Obi-Wan liked the peace and that he wouldn't like blasting off any time so soon.
"I think we should discuss future plans," he said and then started eating.
Who: Aunakin and Aubi-Wan What: Traumatizing and Confusing Aunakin? When: During the Clone Wars, probably. Where: Tatooine because Aunakin needs to be where his mother was killed. Rating/Warnings: Slavery, allusions to violence, and traumatizing Anakin
What he remembered about his current circumstance was... less useful than all the things he didn't know would have been.
He remembered the political events that led to a political motive. He remembered a fight that he had most decidedly lost and was the result of the faded bruise covering one side of his face. He remembered his absolute panic when the force suppressing collar locked around his throat. He remembered the faint thrum and vibration of ship engines. He remembered a series of sharp stings from a needle and the nauseating, disorienting haze that followed.
He didn't remember being put on the ship or how long he was on it or a single face from the attack or his time on the ship. He had no idea how long he had been in transit, or where he was. He did not remember being sold - which was likely a blessing - or to who or for what.
He was quite clear on it being unbearably hot, that he was still wearing the collar, along with the same clothing he'd been wearing in the Senate building, albeit now dirty and with a tear in the tunic. He knew he was sitting in the shade of some building in what was likely the slave quarters of... wherever he was.
He was definitely still drugged completely out of his mind and had a 1,000 yard stare to show for it.
He did not feel any upheaval in the force thanks to the collar, and the drugs made it entirely possible that the man in front of him had not actually just appeared from nowhere.
He blinked a couple of times, tried and failed to focus and then frowned faintly. "Hello."
Anakin took out his air pods and pocketed his phone and keys as he took in his surroundings. This was not his apartment. Everything seemed vaguely strangely familiar, but he couldn't say he recognized anything specifically. Dust and an unpleasant smell hung in the air. And the sun was unbearably hot, in a way that it never was in Irvine.
He turned one way, hefting his backpack on his shoulders, trying to orient himself and came face to face with a dewback- a row of dewbacks tethered along a post.
"Fuck!" Anakin shouted, startled, and started backing up, stumbling over his feet and then actually falling back. He did not see dewbacks every day.
When he regained his senses he was next to the man propped against the building.
He looked over at the man, catching his breath and got another shock, realizing he knew that face.
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What: Pausing the war to pay respects to the dead
When: Now
Where: Tatooine
Rating/Warnings: Maybe some swearing
The shuttle broke through the twisting web of blue-white light of lightspeed into the darkness of space. The dusty planet of Tatooine loomed large in the viewport, and beyond it and its moons hung the unforgiving light of two burning stars.
Anakin remembered the coordinates to Owen Lars' farm and set a course.
"You can stay on the shuttle," he said to the person sitting in the chair next to him. "You don't have to come with me."
He knew his twin wouldn't experience this the same way he would, that this trip was for himself.
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"I. I might." He didn't know what he wanted. He hasn't been back here since they buried her. He didn't know if he could and he didn't want his own grief to overshadow his twin's.
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"Explaining two of us to Owen and Beru would be tricky," he said.
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What: The Force is up to some fuckery and gives Obi-Wan something both frustrating and necessary
When: Not too long after Obi-Wan takes up residence on Tatooine
Where: Hut on Tatooine
Rating/Warnings: Epic pain and sadness
The train was crowded and Anakin was ignoring everyone with air-pods in and his music on his phone turned up loud. Loud enough to drown out the emotions and sense of life coming at him through the Force from everyone and everything around him. He hated feeling the emotions of others, it felt intrusive.
The train came to the station and to a full stop. Anakin pulled his hoodie up over his head. Southern California wasn't cold in winter the same way it was cold in the northern latitudes, but it was colder than he likes - he knew he was a complete wimp about this. He didn't care.
He adjusted his backpack, shifted a sucker in his mouth (sugar was good for him) and moved with the crowd to walk through the train doors.
And he stepped into something very different than a train station platform.
The walls looked hewn from stone. The room was sparsely furnished. A very uncomfortable looking bed. A table. Light streamed in from the windows. And it was quite warm in the room.
And there was someone in the room with him. Someone he knew only from memory.
"Oh!" He said, taking a sucker out of his mouth. "C'mon!"
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Which meant he was already looking up from his datapad with mild confusion when Anakin appeared. Except it wasn't Anakin. The clothes were wrong, the hair was wrong and most importantly he had 3 of his 4 limbs firmly attached.
He stood up slowly, setting the datapad aside slowly as he did so.
He continued to stare.
"Hello."
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For Anakin, he hadn't heard that voice in a real world interaction in all... his current life. Which was moving on to twenty-seven years. He had his memories that he revisited in dreams every night. But they faded when he was awake.
There was a lot to process, deep regret and shame, a complicated mix of love and rage, a whole lot of confusion that had nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the presence. He took a breath and tried to think through all of that.
He stared back at Obi-Wan, and yes, his eyes searched for a tell-tale weapon. Judging by Obi-Wan's clothes and the location which he didn't recognize, he wasn't in So Cal Kansas anymore. There was a past here and he didn't know where in that past he'd landed.
It occurred to him that he could ask.
"Uh... hello," he offered back. "What's the date?"
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Once on board, it was just a matter of hiding until the guard, Master Unduli, and the Grand Inquisitor boarded and the ship jumped to hyperspace. They would have two hours once the ship jumped to dispatch the guard and the Inquisitor. That only these players were involved in this transport played to their advantage. The ships was a giant empty vessel.
Part of the program he'd sliced into the code gave them access to viewing the hangar bay that the ground-to-ship transport would dock in.
They watched with a holocron as the ship floated in and landed.
"Okay," he looked at his synchronized chronometer strapped on his new metal arm. "Ten minutes to hyperjump."
He looked at Obi-Wan. A months worth of training, planning, a new arm, and working through break-downs had lead to this moment. Whatever happened, they were about to change the course of this galaxy in big way.
"Ready?"
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and Obi-Wan was confident that they would be able to do this.
He still insisted they build time for recovery in. In truth, it was as much for his sake as Anakin's. It was just that making it about Anakin, as well, made it easier to insist that it happen, rather than hope.
For the moment, though, this... didn't feel terrible. Largely because of the teamwork aspect, and the change aspect. The actual doing, he did not look forward to.
"Probably not, but I will be when we're in motion." Respond to the moment, and this was not the moment. This moment, he was standing, and he was waiting, and he was content to do so.
It was just better with Anakin. "How are you feeling?"
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He'd lost count of how many people he'd killed.
The Jedi (and people they'd killed) recognized him, of course. His reputation very quickly changed, though, as survivors were able to talk to each other. Most of the survivors were at least half afraid of him, some more than half. Convinced he was somewhere either in the process of falling, or had already fallen.
He didn't blame them.
Soresu had gone away entirely, as had negotiating. They'd been replaced by a series of aggressive attack sequences with his blade, wielded ruthlessly and in complete silence. Combined with seeming a near total emotional void in combat, the effect was enough to make anyone's blood run cold.
It just happened to be that both of those things were what enabled him to hold onto any of his sanity.
Even then it took him a little longer to 'come back' and start talking and responding normally each time they returned to the Maverick. Routine helped. Shower. Change clothes. Drink tea that was so hot it was physically painful. Do what he could to help Anakin. Eat. Sleep like the absolute dead for hours, interspersed by several more hours of increasingly vivid dreams of increasingly personal and violent ways he died at Vader's hand.
The point in the routine he became more responsive varied and so did the point sex happened, but he did come back and sex usually happened.
He wasn't in any danger of falling. He wasn't turning dark. He was turning... dim.
He kissed Anakin on the temple after he'd cleaned up and changed into a fresh pair of dark, dark navy trousers and similarly dark red tunic (thanks, Bail). "I'll be in the gally, when you've finished showering." Soft, slightly hoarse.
By the time Anakin did come find him, he was sitting at the table with the arch of his foot against the seat of the chair. The second crystal they'd taken from the Inquisitor's blade when they'd pulled up Luminara, with a steaming cup of tea and his lightsaber hilt on the table in front of him, purifying the crystal.
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There was a time in his first life when he thought the Jedi needed to use these tactics on the Separatists. And now he was here, wishing their foes were just droids again.
But they couldn’t change their opponents, the Empire used sentients as shields. And the Empire was hunting their kind down - not just Jedi, but Force sensitivities as well. It felt like fighting fire with fire. Pointless, mutually assured destruction.
He was surprised and felt hope when he came into the galley and saw Obi-Wan was doing something healing, for a change.
He grabbed his own tea and sat down across from Obi-Wan. He didn’t interrupt Obi-Wan, he simply waited for him to finish purifying the crystal.
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And he wanted to give Obi-Wan more restful days before he brought the rebellion back into their space.
He never thought he'd want the quiet obliviousness of Tatooine. Fuck this man for making him find something ... if not enjoyable or desirable about Tatooine, but bearable.
He caught Obi-Wan as the man was finishing putting away dishes. He slipped an arm around Obi-Wan's waist and dropped his nose to the man's shoulder.
"How are you feeling?"
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For once, he meant it. He'd slept deep and hard. He'd re-balanced and had time to breathe. He wasn't barely holding it together. He felt, more or less like himself.
He dried his hands and then turned around to brush his fingers across Anakin's temple. "I'm ready to stratagize when you are."
He was aware of the need. Also grateful for the peace, quiet, and stability of a few days of breathing room.
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They were good - really good, both separately and together - but they were also confident and had gotten comfortable. It was inevitable that eventually their luck would break.
They had what they'd come for - which was updated information - when eventuality became reality. They were not prepared for the sheer numbers of Storm Troopers blocking their escape, and they certainly were not prepared for there to be more than on Inquisitor with them.
It went from easy exit to fight for their lives quickly.
It went okay, for a while. Storm Troopers were killed, Inquisitors were engaged. It looked like they were going to be fine. A few Storm Troopers and the Inquisitors to dispatch and they would be out.
Then it stopped going reasonably well and went straight to hell. A blaster bolt found its mark in the back of his left shoulder. That caused his concentration to break and his guard to drop just enough to take a slash across the chest from his right shoulder to his left hip. It was incredibly, stunningly painful though not nearly as deep as it might have been since he managed to recoil and twist with it to lessen the force of the strike and it's potential depth.
Less fortunately, it forced his blade down entirely.
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Now...
It was chilling how vividly he felt that blast to Obi-Wan's shoulder and the slice across his body. He didn't need to see how the man's guard was down.
"Obi-Wan!"
They'd always approached these missions as clinically as possible - at least Anakin knew Obi-Wan did. Anakin still had his complicated emotions to contend with, but he tried to stay as present in the moment as he could and not let his memories of being Vader slip in. He was afraid of what that anger might make him blind to. While they planned their missions using his old memories, collaborating around the kitchen table was different from using those memories in the heat of battle. And he knew it limited his ability with certain skills.
But now- Obi-Wan couldn't die.
The battle had to end now. And if he just accessed certain memories...
He seized both Inquisitors with the Force, freezing their limbs and bodies and shoving them back into the group of stormtroopers. Then he reached out with his mind and found the thermal detonators on the utility belts of all the remaining stormtroopers and activated them. It was a horrible way to go, burning alive, he knew how that felt. But this was the fastest way he could think of achieving their need to end this now. He shielded the space around him and Obi-Wan until the blast energy dissipated.
When the energy was gone along with their opposition, he shoved his feelings and memories aside - deal with that fall out later - and dropped to Obi-Wan's side.
"Can you move?"
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Anakin looked down at their dishes and they both had to agree this was his best try yet - but that wasn't saying much. On the plus side, there was no carbon taste from burning anything, but it still didn't have that shade of rich brown that was more appetizing than whatever this shade was.
But he'd tried. He was determined to do what he could to keep Obi-Wan as comfortable and off his feet as much as possible while he recuperate. And that meant Anakin was trying to cook more.
He set the dish down in front of Obi-Wan, along with a glass of water. And then sat down to his own serving himself.
*[totally made up this name.]
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He picks up his spoon and then look up at Anakin, kind of fondly exasperated. "I'm beginning to feel as though, if I manage to avoid getting you killed, there is an entire future of people who are going to owe me a debt of gratitude for forcing you into a situation where you tackle domestics."
He's teasing, but he is also sincerely a little cautious when he tries the food. Which, as it turns out, is not spectacular but doesn't feel as though it's likely to kill him.
Teasing aside? He still needs the help. He is healing, and he's helping that along, but it's burning a lot of energy to do so, and there is no short cut for the fact that a whole bunch of muscle was sliced through.
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It didn't exactly fix anything, but it went a long way toward letting him be at peace with what was.
It meant he was a bit more steady, clear headed and interactive about this newest mission, and the fact that it was at least a rescue undoubtedly helped that, but - he was present and there and not distant and dissociated.
He even managed a quick smirky smile at Anakin. "Ready?"
Lemme know if you need me to change anything
And when it was done, he was ready to pick up the mantle of breaking the Empire.
"Ready."
He followed Obi-Wan in the maze of makeshift shacks. A refugee camp, left standing after the stormtroopers had swept through and relocated the majority of inhabitants. But, as with any unoccupied structure, it never really emptied completely. Mostly the remaining inhabitants were the stragglers or the most stubborn of individuals that refused to move short of death. And this planet didn't have the resources to fully doze this place. The stormtroopers had established Empire rule and then had moved on to the next planet.
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Meditation did not happen at all and that was even more likely to continue than disrupted sleep patterns.
Still - the point was he had slept and eaten as well as showered and gotten cleaned up before leaving the Star Destroyer on the Maverick and meeting up with Bail with a promise that they had something to show him.
Something that was currently looming very, very large in their viewscreen.
Obi-Wan wasn't okay, but this? This he was going to enjoy which was why he was watching Bail's face rather than the ship he already knew about.
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It took a lot to knock him off his 1.9 meters tall solid footing.
His heart had leapt into his throat the moment the destroyer blossomed into life on the viewscreen, his mind going first to the obvious - his covert operations had been discovered.
But Obi-Wan explained.
And then Bail was left speechless as he tried to process the reality of two individuals commandeering an entire capital warship on their own.
Jedi would be the death of him. An early grave for sure.
"How?!" he finally asked, seeing no way to hide his mix of shock, some admiration, but mostly disbelief.
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The mission had started out successfully. While Anakin didn’t feel the draw of the using the Dark Side, he could not deny that having an unabashed Dark Side user was useful when clearing a Destroyer of its occupants. He didn’t feel any remorse for anyone that died at the end of Maul’s blade.
They’d hit the communications room first, then the systematically worked their way outwardly until the last Stormtrooper was felled.
Now, on the bridge, it was just a matter of dealing with the payment.
In good faith, he’d deactivated his lightsaber, and it almost looked like this operation would be a success.
Anakin should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
When he turned to Maul, the Zabarrak’s blade was still bright, traitorous red.
“Thank you for the help, but I’m taking what what’s mine!”
Anakin spared the briefest of glance for Obi-Wan and reignited his blade to meet Maul’s.
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Except, in the end, that is exactly what happens.
He can't get in, easily, not in time and not with the speed this is happening. He watches that red blade sink into Anakin with a kind of ... numb inevitability and what seems like slow motion all the way through Anakin falling.
That same cool, calm, detatchment carries him through his brief, furious fight with Maul. Plenty of force use, no negative emotion just the sense that he is... playing out a part that must be played, and watching himself do so from a distance.
That breaks the moment his blade slices through Maul's neck (he has learned a thing or two). He deactivates his saber and runs for Anakin before Maul's head hits the ground, slides under him and gets his hands - both of them - on Anakin, immediately. One behind his neck, the other on the side of his face.
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But the moment he started to feel his own old level of energy return, he started to itch for something more. Which made him prone to being disruptive, to outbursts, neediness for attention or just something to do.
In short he was starting to get annoying.
Of which Anakin wasn't unawares, and he tried to mitigate his tendencies by hiding in the Maverick to work on something rather than pestering Obi-Wan for attention and entertianment all the time. Though his ability to do something happened in fits and bursts because his energy came and he spent it more quikly than before he'd ben injured- he really, really didn't like this recovery process.
But lying there on the floor of the Maverick's mess, surrounded by the mess of droid and ship parts he'd been working, forced by his quickly depleated energy to pause. And while he was there paused on the floor, he could only think. And while his body might need a moment, his thoughts flew at him a mile a second. And eventually those thoughts turned into ideas, and the ideas piled up until they were ready to spill out of his head.
He held back from telling Obi-Wan every one of his wild musings until he had something that was more substantial.
And that didn't happen until a night some week or two after they'd come home.
They were just sitting down for dinner when he decided to broach the subject. He knew how much Obi-Wan liked the peace and that he wouldn't like blasting off any time so soon.
"I think we should discuss future plans," he said and then started eating.
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I wanted to write it, but you do not have to reply. Do so only IF you want and WHEN you want.
What: Traumatizing and Confusing Aunakin?
When: During the Clone Wars, probably.
Where: Tatooine because Aunakin needs to be where his mother was killed.
Rating/Warnings: Slavery, allusions to violence, and traumatizing Anakin
What he remembered about his current circumstance was... less useful than all the things he didn't know would have been.
He remembered the political events that led to a political motive. He remembered a fight that he had most decidedly lost and was the result of the faded bruise covering one side of his face. He remembered his absolute panic when the force suppressing collar locked around his throat. He remembered the faint thrum and vibration of ship engines. He remembered a series of sharp stings from a needle and the nauseating, disorienting haze that followed.
He didn't remember being put on the ship or how long he was on it or a single face from the attack or his time on the ship. He had no idea how long he had been in transit, or where he was. He did not remember being sold - which was likely a blessing - or to who or for what.
He was quite clear on it being unbearably hot, that he was still wearing the collar, along with the same clothing he'd been wearing in the Senate building, albeit now dirty and with a tear in the tunic. He knew he was sitting in the shade of some building in what was likely the slave quarters of... wherever he was.
He was definitely still drugged completely out of his mind and had a 1,000 yard stare to show for it.
He did not feel any upheaval in the force thanks to the collar, and the drugs made it entirely possible that the man in front of him had not actually just appeared from nowhere.
He blinked a couple of times, tried and failed to focus and then frowned faintly. "Hello."
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He turned one way, hefting his backpack on his shoulders, trying to orient himself and came face to face with a dewback- a row of dewbacks tethered along a post.
"Fuck!" Anakin shouted, startled, and started backing up, stumbling over his feet and then actually falling back. He did not see dewbacks every day.
When he regained his senses he was next to the man propped against the building.
He looked over at the man, catching his breath and got another shock, realizing he knew that face.
"Obi-Wan?"
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