darkforcerising | OPEN POST

Well he had cut off Anakin's limbs and left him on fire.

He did not, however, think suffering was penance. Penance was connected to absolution.

Also that was...

That was both Anakin and an older and steadier Anakin than he had ever known.

"Check the cupboard in the bathroom. It's likely in the box there." The unpacked box, but roughly the right location.

Anakin was quick about retrieving the med-kit and returning to the living area. He sat down closer to Obi-Wan this time, opening the med-kit and pulling out the things they'd need. It was so strange how he'd lived an entire life without having access to one of these kits, and yet he remembered how to use everything in one.

"So... what happened to me?" he said while he worked. He took a breath. "That's... a lot to explain. But I can say you didn't fail me."

Having realized Anakin was now aware of the Force, Obi-Wan made an attempt to at least shut shunt most of the physical discomfort away from Anakin. Treatment made most things feel better, but he knew very well the arms would not be fun.

And if he could spare Anakin that, he would.

He blinked at Anakin, very slowly and pretty dubiously. "That... needs an explanation."

Anakin would have told Obi-Wan to not bother, it's not like he was no stranger to limb pain. But some things you had to let others control for themselves. He simply pulled out the right sprays, salves, and cleaning supplies.

Okay, an explanation. Anakin gave that a moment's thought. "What Palpatine did to me, the place I've been living has a term for it. It's called grooming. It's when someone builds a relationship, trust, and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit, and abuse them... I was going to be his the moment he first saw me on that landing platform when I was nine."

When he'd first remembered all this, Anakin had not been this composed about the truth. He'd been very angry, but having a period of being angry about it had helped. Now he could look back on it as something that had happened. Sure, if he thought about it extensively, his emotions might flare up again, but he could sit with that.

"The Jedi weren't very... equipped to notice emotional manipulation." He gave a small shrug. It's what had been. A breath and he'd moved on. "And they all thought Palpatine was as close an ally as a politician could be. Part of grooming involves manipulating care givers into not noticing the red flags of abuse."

Anakin was most certainly used to limb pain much more severe. Obi-Wan had experienced all sorts of pain, and injury, much more serious than any he had now, and Anakin had still insisted on taking care of him.

Sometimes you spare the people you love the smaller things that you can, because you can't spare them the bigger hurts.

"I trusted Palpatine. I believe at one point I compared him to a doting uncle, when discussing the relationship between the two of you with the Council." His tone is quiet, but mostly tired, but also sad. His focus is... elsewhere, in as much as he has any. "Palpatine is evil. The Jedi are profoundly... ill equipped for a good many things, he turns out. Neither of those are my responsibility, at least not soley, but that doesn't change... my responsibility to you, if not as your teacher as your friend."

And he is... going to try not to go spiraling back into very recent memories, now, apparently.

Anakin paused his work, now that everything was prepped. He wasn't sure Obi-Wan wanted him to touch him. "Which injury first?" Was the question to the solution for the problem.

"After we 'rescued' Palpatine from Grevious' kidnappings, I started having visions of Padme dying in childbirth." As composed as he'd been so far, and as hard as he tried to keep his voice measured, something wavered when he said that. He couldn't forgive himself for a lot of things, even from a life long since passed on. His role in Padme's death would always be one of them.

After he'd found his voice again, he said. "I reacted to that in all the wrong ways."

He opened his eyes and found and met Anakin's when he heard the change in Anakin's voice. "You were under a tremendous amount of pressure, Anakin, a good deal of it because I backed down to the Council, rather than pushing harder against what I knew was wrong. I'd already showed myself untrustworthy, in regards to you having visions. Though with that timing, I can't help but wonder how much influence in them the Chancellor had."

It's too late to matter, but again, when your past and future come to you in the present -

"I can't imagine any other reaction you could have had."

"Love," Anakin scoffed in a self-depreciating way. "Cool motive, still murder. I still had choices."

He let that settle before explaining more. "Palpatine did at least know about the visions. He baited me with promises of helping me save Padme... He actually does have the ability, but... I think that's why Padme died. And I didn't. Take life from another person and give it to someone else."

"I... don't know." Why Padme died. He was careful around the subject, both for Anakin's sake, and because her death was still fresh in his mind and she'd been a good friend, and because he hadn't forgotten the implication, somewhere in there, that he and Padme had betrayed him. "I only know that at we couldn't find anything physically wrong when she died."

He stopped and pulled up his sleeves, fairly matter of fact. "Start there." They could still talk and, if nothing else, the bruises from Anakin's hands forcing his arms apart and back by the wrist had bled to indistinct and blurred into more generalized bruising from the bones feathering into green-stick fractures from the force.

Anakin still had no ability to heal others, but it was easy to see where to start. Med-kits only had so much bacta products in them so he made sure to apply the spay judiciously.

He understood how Padme was not a good topic for all the various reasons!so he moved on.

“He- Palpatine did other things. I can’t prove it, but I know he was messing with my thoughts. With the Force and without. He lied about the Jedi. Manipulated facts and evidence to make me believe they were trying to take over the Republic...” working on Obi-Wan’s injuries gave him a good excuse to keep his eyes averted.

“He never said it exactly like that, but when members of the Council went to arrest him, I was... confused. When Master Windu wanted to kill him, I thought I was doing the right thing to stop him because the Council rarely condoned killing... I shouldn’t have intervened, I should have just let him.”

Force, he hated the smell of Bacta.

It was an olfactory trigger for some of the worst memories in his life.

Until the most recent, anyway. By comparison those were now good memories.

"Mace was more aware of what was happening than the rest of The Council combined." When Anakin finished with one arm, he turned his hand around and briefly brushed his fingers over Anakin's wrist, making an attempt to settle and reassure.

An unsteady attempt to be sure, but an attempt.

"This began when the Republic disbanded it's military. It continued when the Clones were commissioned, and that was at least ten years before Geonosis, and Dooku trying to... convert me. The Chancellor manipulated you , abused you, and used you, and had an enormous amount of pride tied up in having you as his Apprentice, but the trap was set long ago and we walked into it."

Anakin stopped what he was doing with the medical supplies.

“I know.” He knew and he still couldn’t forgive himself because nothing could correct what he’d done - what the copy of him that was out there doing right now, making memories for him.

He forced himself to look up, to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes because at the bare minimum, he should show that remorse. And he didn’t care how his emotions bit at his eyes and his vision blurred.

“I am so sorry, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan's impulse was to dismiss the apology.

There were many reasons for that, but when Anakin looked up at him it entirely stopped being able whether he needed - or even wanted - an apology, if he deserved an apology, his own guilt and grief, and -

And Anakin needed to say the words and have them heard, understood and believed.

"I know." His voice was rough, but not cracking and his eyes most certainly filled with tears. "So am I."

Anakin nodded. After all the wondering about this conversation, it concluded with this - and he didn't need anything more. Time and distance provided enough force to act on many emotions, redirecting them so they ended up far from their original trajectory. And Anakin's fine as they were.

He blink, the tears that had been welling fell, but they stopped at that.

"Okay, other arm."

He could feel the conclusion of the conversation. If he were less interested in keeping Anakin close (and that feels frankly pathetic to him) he would have used that as an excuse to end the unnecessary first aid session.

But he very much wanted Anakin close.

He gave Anakin his other arm.

"Why are you carrying drugs?"

He did not care what the conversation was, actually.

Anakin snorted. "They are not recreational." He started there.

This was another long explanation. Though he wasn't at all ashamed to explain it.

"I have ADHD- Uh, Attention Deficit, Hyperactive Disorder and PTSD, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. The first is an executive functioning disorder- the frontal lobe of my brain developed differently than what is considered typical. My brain either doesn't produce enough dopamine and norepinephrine or processes them too quickly leaving me with a deficit. And when that happens I struggle with attention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, emotional control- and the perception of time, which is my favorite." Nothing like thinking you've only spent fifteen minutes on something but an hour or two has passed.

"PTSD, that's when you experience traumatic shit and your brain reacts to protect you from the memory of it by locking them all away. But those barriers are not very good because your brain is used to functioning like all memories are accessible, so you encounter something that triggers signals firing through those synopses and then you lose control of experiencing those memories. That's not an inclusive definition.

"I have drugs that help manage all of that."

He hadn't thought they were recreational, though if pressed he would have struggled to explain that his assumption was that they were not.

He listened to the explanations, and then nodded slightly. "That sounds like... you." Anakin? His Anakin? Anakin's former life? Or just Anakin. That was probably easiest. He'd never heard of it, didn't even truly know what some of those words were, but he understood the description.

The description of PTSD, however, made him just wryly wonder if there was a 'traumatic stress disorder' without the post, and apply absolutely none of it to himself because why would he.

"I'm glad you wound up somewhere that could make sense of it and help." It also explained, he thought, why Anakin felt steadier to him.

Far from being upset about Anakin touching him? At least at the moment and with less emotional conversation happening, he was... not relaxing, exactly, but losing some of the adrenaline that had been driving him. Slowing down, both in feelings and thoughts and movements. Just a little.

"Should I avoid asking about your arm?"

It did sound like him. He knew how he'd been before, exactly how frustrating he'd been. And he reverted to some very annoying habits when he went off his meds. Hopefully they figured out how to send him back before they ran out.

"You can ask. The thing about PTSD is that it only gets better when you address the traumatic shit that happened." Was that too pointed?

It was not too pointed. Too pointed might have been pointed enough for him not to assume that Anakin was talking about the reason that Obi-Wan could ask about the loss of his arm.

Possibly even not to sincerely believe that he has addressed the 'traumatic shit'. They'd just had a discussion about it, that was addressing, right.

"All right. How did you lose your arm?"

"Crashed a jet," Anakin said. "Not the worst thing I've endured, but at the time, my brain decided it was... It was also career limiting where I was. I couldn't fly anything anymore."

He let a smile chase the seriousness off his face.

"Maybe I can get some flying in before I go back. I'll even take a spice freighter at this point."

"We're near a Space Port. We'll find you something more exciting than a freighter."

Anakin had worried about Obi-Wan's reaction to Anakin being close? Unnecessarily, apparently, because while he's listened, heard, understood and felt bad about the crash - enough to wince, even - he was also falling asleep.

"I promise."

That is an absolute vow, by god, even if it comes with absolute exhaustion catching up to him and him dozing off.

Edited (fixing word salad good grief) 2020-01-06 01:42 (UTC)

"Ooh, smuggle a smuggler's ship," Anakin remarked. But he could see where Obi-Wan was headed, not being filled with exhaustion himself.

He touched Obi-Wan's shoulder gently to make sure he was awake enough to move.

"Hey, Old Man, time for your nap. I highly recommend you sleep in your very uncomfortable looking bed and not here."

He... made some noise or another of acknowledgement that was honestly a growl, and took himself to bed where he properly went to sleep.

Sort of. He didn't sleep without dreams - they stayed vague more impressions and emotions, snippets of sound or sight, than a full recounting of events, or clear memory - but he was too exhausted not to sleep pretty deeply all the same.

He woke up to the feel of Anakin nearby, and disoriented. "Protect Luke" was far beyond the need for conscious thoughts, though his vague, restless, dreams reinforced that. That there was another Anakin, and he was here, was something he'd need to be far more oriented than he was in the instant of waking, to remember.

He startled, the chair flew off the trap door, the trap door flew up, his lightsaber went flying toward him as he sat up.

And, honestly, everything smaller than a person in the house levitated about 6 feet off the ground, and then slammed into the walls and floor.

Anakin had his air pods in, music turned up as loud as he could stand - the louder the music the more he could focus - and was engrossed in a game on his PS4. And very much ignoring the Force. He was also thinking about what he’d need to do if this visit turned into an extended stay.

But all that was thrown out the window when he was slammed back into the hard stone wall. His ears rung, but not from the music, he’d lost his air pods along the way from where he was sit to where he was now pinned against the wall. His vision blurred and turned double. And it took him a moment to breathe again.

The Force has his focus now. He cursed to himself, stretching out to find the source of the attack. But he was looking outside the hut, not inside.

There was nothing outside the hut, and inside it-

Well, at least Obi-Wan didn't stay disoriented -at least not that disoriented - for long. Once he was upright and the hilt of his lightsaber slapped into his palm, and he ignited it, he started to come back enough.

Enough to immediately quench the blade and see the wreckage and process-

This was bad.

He went to find Anakin, his own heart racing with both worry and lingering dream/memory/protect Luke adrenaline. "Anakin!"

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