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Chapter Text

They are sitting in a cell. It has been his estimation of two weeks’ time since they’d last seen sunlight or another human being besides each other, and the meager ration bars they’d had with them will only last for another week. Thankfully, the hydration packets will last longer. Obi-Wan could calculate it, but he hasn’t.

Obi-Wan had begun to feel the effects of this longer ago than he would have liked. It’s harder to resist temptation when the cell is perpetually dark, enough so that he can barely see the wall across from him as he and Anakin sit side by side. 

Everything feels a little fuzzy around the edges. Time has no meaning, the edge of hunger never leaves him, and he can tell he’s starting to lose focus. He would be having hallucinations already had he been isolated.

In this way and many others, having Anakin with him makes it all simultaneously better and worse at the same time. 

At least, if Anakin were out searching for him instead of in here with him, Obi-Wan would have no doubts that Anakin would find him. Anakin would search until the ends of the universe, Obi-Wan knows, because that’s what he always has done. That’s what he did the last time, when Obi-Wan had faked his death. 

And Obi-Wan would not have to hear him suffer. Perhaps that would have been kinder after all. Obi-Wan would not mind suffering alone so Anakin does not have to. He’s used to things like that.

However, they are in this cell, their lightsabers stripped from them and Force collars on. They got to keep their bags full of medical supplies, rations, and two small lights that they’ve used to inspect the inside of the room. Obi-Wan had only used his once, but Anakin had kept searching for something until the battery on his light died.

He hadn’t found any vulnerabilities.

Maybe Ahsoka is looking for them. Maybe she thinks they are dead. Maybe the Council sent a party looking, but when they spend too much time looking with no findings they’ll shake their heads sorrowfully and return to the war front. 

They’ve had these conversations before, Obi-Wan reminds himself. It is circuitous to keep thinking about them. However, he cannot stop the worst-case scenarios from flashing across his mind. 

When he’s finally getting to the part about the both of them being brainwashed into being Sith, Anakin interrupts.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin says, and immediately he knows something is wrong. 

“What is it, Anakin?” He says, and tries to stay calm for his former padawan who he knows still relies on him perhaps more than he should. Obi-Wan can confess, in the confines of his own mind, that he too relies on Anakin’s presence more than he should. 

Anakin, however, knows no different way— and none of Obi-Wan’s thoughts— as he plows forward. “They’re probably close to finding us by now, right?” The tone of his voice is dull. There is none of that intrinsic spark that usually fills Anakin’s person with vivacity. 

The remnants of Obi-Wan’s brainwashing dream stir up from the ground, but he knows what Anakin wants to hear. 

He swallows.

“They’ll be here any day, I’m sure,” Obi-Wan says.

“Mmm,” Anakin acknowledges. Both of them know the odds of the statement’s veracity. Neither one of them mention it.

Obi-Wan comes out of a doze to the sound of their packs rustling and the crinkling of the packages used to seal the ration bars. There’s a rhythmic quality to it, a pattern. Four crinkles and then a few seconds of rustling fabric, then the four crinkles again. 

The crinkles are for the amount of ration bars they have left.

Somehow, Anakin must know he is awake, for he asks: “Do you think there are any more that we missed?” 

“Any more what?” Obi-Wan says, though he knows the answer. 

“Ration bars,” Anakin says. “Do you think they might crumb? We might have dropped some crumbs.” 

Obi-Wan’s stomach cramps at the thought of any food. “I don’t believe that they do,” he lets out reluctantly. “The bars are meant for battlefield use. Any disintegration would signify a poorly engineered product.” 

Anakin whines at this, barely, but the cell is quiet. 

“I’m going to… I need to check anyway. Just in case.” 

Obi-Wan stays silent. He knows there will be nothing, but if anyone can miracle up something, it would be Anakin. 

“Tell me a story.” 

Obi-Wan startles at the sudden inquiry. “A story?”

“Please.” 

Obi-Wan cannot think of any good stories off the top of his head. He doesn’t have too many stories that would be good for telling, anyway. “Well…” he starts, but trails off when his mind stays hazy and blank.

“Tell me something that happened before you met me,” Anakin suggests. 

Obi-Wan considers this for a moment. He had tried to give Anakin as much as he could, but those first few years had been a little rough. He supposes that there are more than a few stories which Qui-Gon featured in that he never got around to telling Anakin. 

Obi-Wan thinks through the ones that he can remember before making his decision.

“Alright. This is the story of why I no longer drink rhasmayatix tea. Rhasmayatix is a root from the planet Fromlia, and it’s tea is their main export. It has a delicious licorice flavor that is very strong with undertones of vanilla honey…”  Obi-Wan goes on, weaving the tale of the Fromilian representative not wanting to sign the treaty because his daughter was in love with the Tralisian representative’s daughter, which he did not approve of so much so that he tried to set his own daughter up with Obi-Wan instead.

Qui-Gon, of course, had found the whole thing hilarious. But the kicker was when the diplomat had sent ten baskets of the tea to their door as a “courting gift” that Qui-Gon had howled at with laughter. Obi-Wan had seen no reason to waste the tea when the mission had ended, and took it all home with him.

That had been a mistake. Qui-Gon would not help him drink the tea, and refused to buy more until Obi-Wan had finished all of the rhasmayatix laying around.  

“...I had at least one cup of rhysmayatix tea every day thereafter for four years. Unfortunately, my taste for it depreciated significantly over that time, and when I’d had the final cup, I swore to never have another, so sick of it had I been. And to this day I have not broken that vow.” After all that talking, Obi-Wan’s throat feels a little dry. He moderates his breath and tries not to think about the hydration packets not too far out of reach.

“That’s a good story,” Anakin says, and just for a moment, Obi-Wan lets himself smile.

“Yes. However, I think now that I would do anything to have even a cup of that tea available to drink,” he confesses, his voice scratchy.

He feels Anakin shift beside him. “You should have a mouthful of the hydration packet,” he says.

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “No.” 

Anakin pokes his arm. “I made you speak. You should have some and I’ll have some after our next nap.” 

The offer is tempting. Obi-Wan hesitates, too long. Anakin crawls away from him and then comes back, handing the packet to him without a word.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan tries to reason, shoving the packet back at him.

“Just have some!” Anakin says sharply, depositing the packet into Obi-Wan’s lap.

Guiltily, Obi-Wan reaches down for the packet. He sips.

“Gods, I think I’m going kriffing crazy ,” Anakin says. 

Obi-Wan has lost track of the amount of time that has passed. He had a count earlier, of the probable amount of hours or days or weeks. He’s not sure when he stopped counting.

“From what?” Obi-Wan says back blandly. “The accommodations here are truly unique, and the food is without comparison. Other beings would be grateful for such an experience.”

Anakin taps a finger against the ground. Obi-Wan only knows because he hears the sound of Anakin’s nail against the stone. Normally, Anakin would pace, but… the ration bars ran out yesterday. They’re trying to conserve energy.

“This isn’t the time for sarcasm, Obi-Wan. It’s so dark and I can’t feel the Force more than the barest of trickles and I’m in a tiny ass room with just you and there’s no food and I just feel so kriffing helpless!”

Obi-Wan presses his lips together. Tightly, he replies, “This has not exactly been a walk in the park for me either, Anakin.” 

Anakin sighs and leans closer to Obi-Wan so that their shoulders touch. “Yeah. I know. Sorry.” 

They stay there for a few minutes, probably, leaning into each other more and more so as the time passes. Then Anakin feels the need to speak again, desperately. 

“Master, can I see you? Can we use your light for just a minute? Please?” 

Obi-Wan cannot find the strength within himself to say no to Anakin, nevermind the fact that he wants to see Anakin too. The light is tucked away in his belt, and takes no time to get out.

The light is bright. They’ve been in darkness for too long, and it takes Obi-Wan’s eyes a minute to adjust. 

When they do, he almost wishes he had refused. 

Anakin looks terrible. Gaunt, pale, sallow cheeks and flat eyes. His robes hang on him more loosely than Obi-Wan has ever seen. 

Yet, there is comfort in seeing his face again. There is a small measure of relief in his own eyes running over Anakin’s figure and watching a small smile cross his face. Anakin’s eyes are searching his own visage, which Obi-Wan imagines looks just as awful as Anakin’s. 

“Thank you,” Anakin says, and he means it. 

Obi-Wan can’t think of what to say in reply. He flicks off the light a moment later, and Anakin leans back against his side.

Things continue to get worse. Obi-Wan’s thoughts are scrambled, meandering from one point to the next without logic or direction. 

They get so hungry that Anakin brings over the ration bar packets, and they split them evenly to lick the insides at a chance of even the barest of nutrients.

It is only Anakin that keeps him grounded, now. They spend all of their time curled up next to each other, the familiar weight of the other person a comfort and an anchor against insanity. 

When he can, Obi-Wan rasps out stories. In return, Anakin tells a few of his own. As the time passes, though, they feel less like stories and more like secrets. 

The first stories are of Anakin’s Temple shenanigans when he gave Obi-Wan the slip, and Obi-Wan’s most treasured memories of his apprenticeship with Qui-Gon. Then their tone changes as the time goes on, until Obi-Wan says that he never felt good enough to be Qui-Gon’s padawan, and Anakin in return mentions how much he’d struggled with Basic idioms in his first months at the Temple. 

After that, the barriers fall quickly. Obi-Wan tells Anakin of Melida/Daan. Anakin talks of the many times he wanted to bundle up his mother in his shoddy podracer and flee Watto’s shop. Obi-Wan says a few halting sentences about his first duel with Maul, and how he’d touched the Dark to make what he’d thought was the killing blow. Anakin recounts sneaking away to try and save his mother only to watch her die. 

It keeps them alive.

They sleep a lot now. It’s easier to stave off everything when they sleep. Every few naps, they take singular mouthfuls of their greatly diminishing hydration packets. 

Obi-Wan finds himself contemplating dying more than he ever has, which is alarming. He definitely thinks about dying more than the average person even without this debacle, and perhaps more than the average Jedi as well. But here, the possibility of death is higher than ever. 

Obi-Wan never thought starvation would be the thing to get to him first.

He finds that, despite all of the time he has thought about death, he does not want it to come yet. But if it does come, he hopes that it comes for himself first. 

Obi-Wan does not think that he could bear to have Anakin die before him.

“Infinite sadness,” Obi-Wan says into the dark. It’s a confessional, a truth weighed heavy on the tongue whose utterance somehow ameliorates its weight despite the lack of context.

“What?” Anakin says back. 

“Infinite sadness,” Obi-Wan repeats. He sees no reason why not to. “When Satine and I were on the run for that year oh so long ago, we stopped at the tent of a fortune teller. I was… intrigued. And when the teller read mine, she said that I was made for infinite sadness.” 

“ Kriff,” Anakin whispers under his breath, but it’s quiet in the cell. Obi-Wan can hear him. 

“Indeed,” he agrees. “At the time, I tried to forget about it. But as I have continued to live, I fear more and more that she is right.”  

“No, she can’t be,” Anakin whispers. “You deserve better.”

Deserve. What a funny concept. Obi-Wan stopped thinking about what he did and did not deserve a long time ago.

“Sometimes, what we deserve has little to do with what we get,” Obi-Wan says instead. 

Anakin crawls closer to Obi-Wan and gives him a hug, which Obi-Wan thinks would overwhelm him to the point of tears were he not so exhausted. 

It doesn’t take long for them to fall asleep again.

Not too long after, the hydration packets run out. Obi-Wan tries not to think of how much time it takes for the human body to shut down without water.

He fails.

“I don’t want to die,” Anakin whispers, pausing between each word and longer between each sentence. “I don’t want to die without doing so many of the things I wanted to do. But we have no choice. Nobody’s coming for us.” 

A faint lurch tugs at Obi-Wan’s heart, but Anakin is right. It has been too long and there is a weakness in Obi-Wan’s bones that lends itself even further to his prediction. 

“I fear they stopped looking a long time ago, padawan,” Obi-Wan rasps back. It’s a confirmation that Obi-Wan agrees with all that Anakin has said and doesn’t want to waste the words. 

They breathe for a moment, the pace of Anakin’s kicking up in speed slowly.

He reaches out and clutches Obi-Wan’s robe in a fist. “Can I tell you something? I need to tell somebody, to tell you, before we… before…” 

Obi-Wan moves one of his hands to cover Anakin’s. “Yes. Of course, I will listen.” 

“I married Padmé. I love her, Obi-Wan.” 

The confession should fill Obi-Wan with dread, but he cannot condemn Anakin for his foolish desires and tendencies. He has learned more and more of them in the time they have been here and, sure in his approaching death, he has accepted that he can do nothing about them. 

So, instead, Obi-Wan is glad. He is glad that Anakin has known love, has had a source of happiness to hold onto in the bleakest of times.

“I knew the two of you were involved,” he says. “Didn’t know you married, though.” He pauses for a minute, then says in a lighter tone, “You deserve it.” 

Anakin lets out a sorrowful noise at the callback. His fist in Obi-Wan’s robes tightens for a second, then relaxes. “I’d hoped, when the war ended…” 

His trailed off sentence brings about possibilities that Obi-Wan has never let himself indulge in. He imagines laughing with Anakin and Padmé over a dinner with Ahsoka, and something inside him warms. 

His imagination pops Satine into the picture, too. When she looks at him sweetly, he does not hesitate to return it and hold her hand under the table. 

“I know,” he assures his padawan. 

They won’t see the end of the war, though. They will die here, in some forgotten storage basement of an abandoned warehouse, wearing Force blocking collars and starving to death. 

It does not make for a pretty picture. 

Obi-Wan scoots closer to Anakin. Regardless of his thoughts, he vows: “I will be there with you.” 

The varied interpretations concerning their imagined future or their death have no matter. Obi-Wan will be there for Anakin in both.

Chapter Text

Ahsoka has not left the Halls of Healing in two days. She’d almost managed to stay a solid week once, but Master Che had thrown her out and banned her return for an entire day.

She’d come back as soon as she could, and vowed to be more sneaky this time around. She doesn’t want to leave Skyguy or Master Obi-Wan alone in there. She needs to see them, to reach out in the Force and feel them, to watch their bodies as they slowly recover from their trauma.

They had almost been too late. 

Ahsoka always hates the times when her Master and Grandmaster go off on missions without her. War is unpredictable, and a small part of her always worries about them until they get back. 

Unfortunately, losing contact with them for a few days was a common thing; so when they’d stopped checking in, nobody was too worried.

Ahsoka had lost track long ago of the amounts of ships the three of them had seen crash over the few years of the war. Everyone just figured it had been something like that.

But after two weeks passed, it seemed less like a mishap and more like an issue. Ahsoka had demanded to be on the rescue team. 

It had taken too long to retrace their steps, and longer still to find the anti-Jedi faction that had captured them and to figure out where her Masters had been abandoned. 

Almost two months was the time total when they’d broken into that abandoned storage basement to find the emaciated figures of her Master and Grandmaster curled up together in the corner of the room, empty hydration packs and ration bar wrappers scattered around them. 

She wasn’t sure if they’d been breathing at first. But Kix had been quicker than her and jumped in immediately. When she ventured near a few seconds later, she immediately saw the blockers around their necks and used the Force to dismantle them with prejudice. 

From there, it had been a scramble to get them back to Coruscant alive. 

And since they had indeed returned to the Temple, Ahsoka refuses to let them out of her sight at all costs. She will protect them; under her watch they cannot die.

People come and people go. Healers check-in frequently. Master Che tries to get her to leave again, and fails. 

Ahsoka knows how much she is letting her attachment affect her, but she absolutely does not care. Her lineage is her family. 

She is only persuaded to leave through the gentle negotiations of Master Plo, who promises to stay with Anakin and Obi-Wan while she hits the training salles and takes a shower every day for two hours. Then, she comes back and sleeps on the extra bed that Master Che had put in the room for her.

She thinks they’re more reluctant to tear her away from her Masters because of the war. Many Jedi are in and out of the Temple and stay no longer than a week, even most of the Council. Only Master Che and Master Plo have any real idea of what’s going on, and they know how determined she is. 

There is also the guilt, of course. She weeps at their bedsides in the wee hours of night more than she ever thought she would. She just misses them both so much with abandon that reeks of codependency. She holds one of their hands and looks at them and apologizes out loud. After that, she can’t stop herself from tearing up at how fragile and lifeless they look in their medically induced comas and dripping IVs. 

But during the day she is strong, keeping a careful eye on their vitals just in case they wake up and they need her there. 

Ultimately, it happens unremarkably. Master Plo had talked to her the day previous about trying to meditate some more, and so she’s decided to make a valiant effort today, only because she has been feeling anxious for two weeks straight and she needs to calm down.

In the middle of it, entwined deeply with the Force, a zing in her awareness makes her eyes open. She crawls off her bed and looks frantically around the room for any changes. Her eyes catch on the bright blue of Master Obi-Wan’s. 

“Master Obi-Wan!” She gasps, running to grab a cup of water before anything else.

She brings it back and helps him to drink it slowly. When the cup has been drained, he looks at her sluggishly and blinks slowly. 

Ahsoka stands and fidgets under his gaze, not quite knowing what to say or do. She should probably call Master Che, but she doesn’t want to. Not yet. 

Finally, he speaks a few words that Ahsoka has to strain to hear: “So we did live, then.” 

Ahsoka feels her eyes tear up, and she nods.

“Good,” Master Obi-Wan says. Then his eyes close, and he goes back to sleep. 

Ahsoka bursts into tears, but this time with relief. She knows that if Obi-Wan managed waking up, Anakin will not be far behind. There is a long path ahead, but they’ll make it though. She has no doubts now. 

When Anakin wheezes out a “Snips” to her two days later, her suspicions are confirmed. 

Multiple things become quickly apparent. 

The first is that Anakin and Obi-Wan’s recovery will take time. This, she already knew, seeing how long it took her Masters to wake up. Even now, their faces are just starting to fill out. They will need to regain lots of lost muscle tissue as well as build up fat reserves. Jedi healing trances can only do so much, and they require conscious effort that the two of them are only starting to regain. Not to mention the mental effects of such captivity. Ahsoka has awoken from whimpers in the night often enough to know there will be nightmares, and she thinks that ration bars and hydration packets will be swapped out for real food more often in the future.

The second is that Ahsoka can feel that there are some Jedi that think she should get reassigned to a new Master and go back out in the field. She understands how much the war impacts her life, but Ahsoka cannot bring herself to go back out there and leave Obi-Wan and Anakin alone. Now that they’re awake, Master Che has banished Ahsoka back to her rooms, but she hates how quiet things are there without them. She’s made up her mind. She isn’t ready to go back out there until she can go with Skyguy and Obi-Wan. 

The third is that something more than the trauma of starving without the Force in a cell happened to her Masters while they were in there. It is obvious in the way the two of them interact. They had always been close, before; Ahsoka had not seen a pair of fighters that worked together so harmoniously on the ground nor in the air. They had trusted one another with their lives, and Ahsoka knew the fondness in both of their voices when they bantered or spoke about the other when they weren’t there. 

But there is something different about their relationship now that Ahsoka can’t place in anything other than their physical closeness, Anakin quietly asking for her help to push his bed closer to Obi-Wan’s only to reach out and grab his Master’s wrist as if to ground himself. 

One night, alone and desolate, she wonders why. The only thing that makes sense is that they had expected to die there, and almost had. They’d probably shared what they thought were their last words at the time; their last confessions and greatest sins. 

She dislikes the thought immensely, and puts it out of her mind. 

In her normal spot, Ahsoka revels in being able to banter again with her Master, who is smiling at her as they argue about the best type of engine for a speeder bike. This is the best day that both Anakin and Obi-Wan have had in a while, and it makes Ahsoka happy.

“Snips!” Anakin says, “That makes no sense . You have to make at least twenty-seven modifications to the combustion chamber alone to make its speed comparable.” 

She snorts. “Yeah, that’s the whole point, Skyguy. I said it’s the best base model to work off of. All of the parts are set to standard sizes, which means you don’t have to go looking for anything other than Republic standard parts to make any adjustments. That alone is more valuable than whatever has the—”

Master Obi-Wan sighs, loudly. It’s the kind he uses to play up his exasperation, which means he’s going to jump in on the banter as well. 

“I’m surprised the two of you are still having this argument. Why wouldn’t you just design your own engine from scratch with all the best features, and then submit the design to the Republic’s Vehicle Department?”

Anakin laughs. “And deal with the government in any form? No thanks.” 

“No dealing with any parts of the government at all, Anakin? You might want to reconsider a few of your life choices, then,” Obi-Wan teases, before something in his expression tightens and shutters away.

Anakin looks at Obi-Wan incredulously as well, and Ahsoka cannot help but feel like she’s missing something as the air in the room freezes.

“Did you really just…?” Anakin asks.

Master Obi-Wan looks more uncertain than Ahsoka has ever seen him, and she feels more lost than before. 

“Yes?” He says back sheepishly. “I didn’t mean anything of it, Anakin, truly.” 

A wierd, constipated expression makes its way across her Master’s face before he laughs. 

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Anakin crows. “Did we actually die back in that cell or what?” 

“No,” Ahsoka says sharply, quite confused and also not liking the feeling of it one bit. “You’re not dead, Master, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t say that again. And I am really just very lost as to what is happening right now, if you’d care to explain?” 

Both of her Masters’ faces freeze at that accusation for a moment, then their heads turn to face each other, and they share a glance. 

Master Obi-Wan responds first, tone and expression giving nothing away. “It’s nothing important, Ahsoka. Just a joking reference to how much Anakin gets caught up in political affairs when we all know how much he hates them.” 

“Sure,” she says. Anakin still hasn’t recovered himself, though, so she knows it’s not that. But they can keep their secrets for now. 

Anakin inelegantly changes the subject from there, and Ahsoka decides to deal with it later. 

The first day they’re let up out of their beds to begin trying to walk again is exciting. Unfortunately, they started when Ahsoka was out doing her obligatory daily training, which had taken her longer than usual because she’d run into Barriss, who she’d stopped and chatted with for a minute. 

But when she returns to see both Obi-Wan and Skyguy on their feet, Ahsoka cannot help herself. 

She is filled with such joy that she runs to her Master and gives him an inelegant hug that sweeps him off his feet. Ahsoka laughs brightly and twirls him around, utilizing her Togruta strength combined with the fact that he’s lighter than normal. 

“Master! It’s wonderful to see you up!” She cheers, then puts him down, steadies his hand on the railing of his bed, and then turns to Master Obi-Wan and gives him a slightly more reserved hug.

“And you, too, Master Obi-Wan,” she adds.

Anakin laughs. “Nice to see you too, Snips.” 

Obi-Wan just smiles at her indulgently as the healer in the room helping them starts lecturing Ahsoka for behaving recklessly with them when they’re still recovering. She tunes out their words and instead watches Anakin as he takes the few steps between his bed’s guardrail and Obi-Wan’s, where the two of them lean into each other just a bit. 

She can’t wait until they can spar together again!

But things aren’t all happy. 

Sometimes, in her room all alone at night, Ahsoka forgets that she’s found them, or has a nightmare where she and the 501st didn’t get there in time. She recalls the haunted look on Kix’s face when he’d said that, had they been even two hours later, her Masters most likely would have been dead. 

“And they’d be dead now, if they weren’t Jedi,” Kix had amended. “They were too close to the brink otherwise. I’m glad you recognized those anti-Force collars and got them off, Commander. I won’t ever doubt whatever magic you Jedi work with healing again after a miracle like this.” 

Sometimes, when she goes in to visit, Anakin and Obi-Wan won’t let go of each other, Anakin holding onto Obi-Wan’s wrist or the two of them leaning into each other’s space. The healers frown over the codependency, but it is obvious that neither of them feel very comfortable for longer periods of time without the other. 

On the worst days, she can tell that none of them have slept, and Obi-Wan will try to refuse the tasteless nutritional food they put in front of him. Then, only Anakin can get him to eat, and he usually makes Obi-Wan tell a story first.

Ahsoka learns lots of frivolous things about both of her Masters this way. They seem to do best just after one of them tells a story about a past point in their lives; eating, drinking, and acting more like their usual selves afterward. 

She just tries to keep up hope and meditate and be there for her Masters when she can. It’s all she can do, after all.

It feels like the beginning of the end when, after the longest four weeks of Ahsoka’s life, her Masters are released from the Halls of Healing. 

The first meal Ahsoka has them eat is Dex’s, hand delivered by herself and eaten at the old oak table Master Obi-Wan loved to fuss over in his quarters. 

Atmospherically, it feels like everything is starting to slide back into place besides a few edges that are now rougher than ever. Still, as Anakin starts to thank all that is good in the world for Dex’s secret spice blend and Obi-Wan actually eats everything on his plate without pushing it away, Ahsoka feels victorious as she does after winning a good fight. 

She knows that she will treasure this night when the bad days come and things invariably slide backward. When they feel lost and far away from each other again, this is the night she will remember. 

Ahsoka drinks it in, drinks in every second of it: all the words, the laughter Anakin has when Obi-Wan tries and promptly spits out the tea Anakin made for him, the look on Obi-Wan’s face when he’d first tasted his meal, their reactions to one of Ahsoka’s better jokes, the quiet hum of contentment in the air. 

And as she internalizes, she hopes and hopes that there will be more days like this through the rest of her life. 

There aren’t.

Chapter Text

Vader hates. It is his constant, his touchstone, his mantra. He sees the world through a visor tinted red. 

Whenever such is not the case, his suit is in need of repairs or replacements, Vader hides out in his quarters. 

It is only there, alone, and physically unarmored that Vader feels weak. It is only there that the regrets of another man haunt him as he stares unblinkingly at the ceiling. And it is only there that he would even consider laying claim to the name of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin screams. He can barely settle on one thought at a time his mind is so scrambled and he hardly knows where he is and what is going on. He is running on panic mode, mind jumping to the nearest conclusion and then leaving it there without thought. 

Obi-Wan is dying. Padmé is dying. 

He needs to find them, he needs to find them, he needs to prevent their deaths, where are they; they can’t be too far away from him, not now, not now!

He’s commed them. 

No answer. 

He’s reached out as far as he’s capable in the Force, and then reached out further.

He cannot feel them.

He does not know where they are, how they are. There is Darkness all around him, and pain.

All he knows is fear. 

The dreams were what had started it all, yes. Vader remembers that now, in a detached sort of way. He doesn’t like to think of those times, of course.

Vader hates that he can still feel the remnants of that man inside of him, the one who’d cried in his weakness and trusted others with his heart.

It has been burned out of him, now, though. There is no more room for fool’s errands.

He thinks he’s commandeered a ship. He’s flying to go get Obi-Wan, to pick up Ahsoka and then find Padmé… 

Where are they, again? Where is everyone? 

Something crashes into his ship, throwing him off the pilot’s seat. 

The world goes black.

Vader remembers the old nightmares. They had been frightening and painful at the time. Anakin Skywalker had not been able to fathom anything worse than his loved ones’ death, especially after the experiences he’d been through with them. 

When Darth Vader starts to be haunted by images of those people, but alive, the pain erupts and burns him over twenty times worse than what he could ever recall.

He lays on his bed and almost cannot make himself get up. 

Once, he wakes with the name Padmé on his lips. 

She had been older than he’d ever seen her in life, but still beautiful as ever. Anakin Skywalker comes closer to the surface than he has in a while, tearing pain up his chest like wildfire. 

It takes longer than it should to wrestle the feelings back into hate.

There are only hazy snapshots here. 

Anakin screams, there are flashes of red, white lightning sears itself into the backs of his eyelids. It feels like the Dark side. He hears a low and maniacal chuckle. Pain. Pain. Pain.

He will not recall any more than this. 

Sometimes, Vader hears the whispers from memories that he wishes had been burnt out of him long ago. 

Despite this, the impressions of the words infinite sadness come to him still. 

In his weaker moments, Vader thinks of how apt the words turned out to be.

In his weakest, he remembers how sure Anakin Skywalker had sounded when he’d said You deserve better.

Then, all of the sudden, Palpatine is there.

“Help me!” Anakin gasps; or he thinks he does. He does not know. The world is blurry, he can hardly see, it’s all just pain and he doesn’t know where he is.

Where is Padmé? Where is Obi-Wan? How long has it been?

“Visions, I’ve had visions, I need to find them—” he rambles, still unsure if the words are even leaving his mouth.

Palpatine, his old friend, gives him a look so full of sadness that it hits Anakin like a blow to the chest.

“You were captured,” he says. 

“By the Sith,” he says. 

There is white noise in the middle.

“Most everyone is dead,” he says.

The words are too easy. Anakin does not know what to believe. 

“No,” Anakin whispers. He can hear it this time. It’s real.

“Yes,” Palpatine says. “The Jedi are dead and your wife is dead. The Separatists have won. Help me, Anakin. We must get our revenge.”

Anakin stops thinking for rage. He looks down at his wrists. They are unshackled, free. He shakes his hands loose.

“Yes,” he agrees.

Despite wishing all of his memories had been burned out, Vader still has one point in time that he cannot remember. He doesn’t like it, but he has never been able to remember much from his time being tortured by Count Dooku, until Palpatine had rescued him.

The one time he’d asked about it, Sidious said it was better that he didn’t remember anyway. 

But when Anakin Skywalker makes his little protests again and again, the doubt starts to wiggle in. 

What could have been terrible enough that his mind forced him to forget it?

It is a blur. His lightsaber flashes and buzzes around him; he has less leaned on the Force and more fallen into it. 

Cauterized limbs are everywhere. Anakin pays them no mind.

Palpatine is there. 

Anakin doesn’t know how long his own imprisonment was, he has no idea how his friend has managed to gather so many clones when the Separatists have apparently won the war, he knows not why he had been kept on Coruscant. 

If he stops to think, he will be overcome with sadness and fear and pain.Things already don’t make sense. He does not want to make it worse.

So he does not think. 

Palpatine tells him to lean on his anger, and so Anakin does, and he kills and kills and kills until Dooku’s head rolls on the floor. 

“We have done it, Anakin,” Palpatine says, sounding proud.

Anakin does not feel anything. 

“We must take a stand and we must bring order to the galaxy after this terrible war.” Palpatine pauses for a moment.

“Anakin? I would like for you to stand beside me.”

Anakin does not feel anything.

“If you’re sure,” he says. 

“Yes,” Palpatine assures, almost too fast. “I am sure. I want you there with me. The last jedi…” 

Anakin does not feel anything. 

“Can I go rest?” He asks.

“Yes, my boy. Of course,” Palpatine says.

Anakin rests. He doesn’t think, and he doesn’t feel. Anything. 

What if Vader had not forgotten, but had been forced to forget? Maybe it hadn’t been torture. Maybe it had been something else entirely.

Vader thinks about his dream from the night previous: Obi-Wan, with a longer beard than ever that was starting to turn white, holding hands with a child and standing in the desert.

It didn’t feel like something his brain would make up.

Neither did the one numerous days previous, still burned in his mind like a brand of Ahsoka doing katas with two long, white lightsabers and montrals down to her waist. 

Or the one two weeks ago, Padmé with streaks of grey in her long brown hair, braiding an intricate style into the hair of a little girl sitting in front of her.

They are too real. Too vivid. Too mundane and too emotional. They bring out the shattered pieces of Anakin Skywalker’s heart and press the shards into Vader’s lungs so he cannot breathe. 

He forces himself to move on from them, but cannot escape their relentless chase deep in the night when he has to catch his breath; they are there and they haunt him behind his eyelids.

They make Vader feel like he is losing his mind. 

When he wakes from one, Ahsoka fixing a droid and singing an old Tatooini work song Anakin Skywalker had taught her, her voice low and clear and strong and right, Vader cannot stop the tears rolling down his cheeks.

The next time Darth Sidious calls him, Vader hesitates, then decides that he is busy. He does not pick up.

Anakin is a ghost. He stands next to Palpatine, dressed in all black with a cape and a big hood.

“You will be a target if they know you’re alive. It is safer to let them think you are dead,” Palpatine advises, and Anakin listens, if only because it’s easier to exist when people can’t see his face. 

He feels numb, constantly. He listlessly wanders the halls of the empty, cold Jedi Temple at night. Nothing seems real. 

There are moments that his mind screams at him, where it asks him to retrieve the moments between his intense visions about Padmé and Obi-Wan dying and running off to save them and being rescued by Palpatine. 

When he tries to reach for them, nothing appears. He doesn’t want to tell anyone. He doesn’t want to seem crazy, he already feels crazy enough as it is. 

Everything feels wrong, the Force around him feels muted. He watches Padmé’s funeral on the holo for five minutes, then can’t stand any more and turns it off. He finds the records in the GAR’s paperwork of Obi-Wan going to Grevious and not coming back out, and forces himself to read it all.

Anakin doesn’t look up the rest of the Jedi. He doesn’t want to know. 

He lives at Palpatine’s beck and call. He says nothing when Palpatine starts to act a little different. 

Anakin starts to fade, and Palpatine’s smile starts to gain a razor’s edge. 

It doesn’t concern him. He doesn’t feel anything, after all.

Darth Sidious would say there were many reasons for Anakin Skywalker’s fall. Anakin Skywalker would say there were four. Darth Vader would say there were infinite reasons and that it was written in his fate in the Force. 

Darth Sidious would have waxed poetic about his plans and his back up plans, and the contingencies that lined each one. 

Anakin Skywalker would keep it concise. Trust, he would say. Despair. Love. Fear. 

Darth Vader, however, would not elaborate on the matter. He would Force choke anyone who had enough impertinence to ask him such a bold question, anyhow. 

For a moment, after about three weeks of nothingness and standing at Palpatine’s side as a guard of sorts, Anakin snaps out of everything in the middle of some of his wanderings and bounds to Palpatine with a question. It burns inside of him and makes him frantic. He has not felt so alive in months.

Anakin slams Palaptine’s office door open, thankful that nobody is with him right now.

“Ahsoka,” he demands. “Is she alive?”

Palpatine’s face falls.

“My boy, I wish I could say she was.” 

He drowns.

Everyone you love is dead. Revenge, revenge, revenge. Everyone is dead. Anger. Hate. Rage. Show them what it feels like to lose everything.  

When he remerges, his name is Darth Vader. 

The newly minted Darth Vader gets a suit. 

“Give yourself a chance to be remade,” Darth Sidious says. 

And Darth Vader learns the truth about everything through Darth Sidious: the Jedi had always used him, and he could finally have what he wanted as a Sith. 

“Can I get back everyone that I’ve lost?” He asks. He knows he has enough power in the Force that even the slightest hint at a ritual will be enough to hook him, give him hope.

Darth Sidious looks at him for a minute, almost pensive. The moment suspends for a second, and then something in Sidious’s eyes hardens. 

“No,” he says coldly, but then smiles at him, empty and maniacal. “Instead, I will get you your revenge for all that you’ve lost.” 

Vader burns for it, yearns for it, turns for it. 

He dons the suit with glee and takes his coordinates and gets a crystal to bleed and makes a new lightsaber and goes on a year-long mission just taking out people he wishes were gone.

Darth Sidious encourages him, and stays behind to rule his new Empire, which is fine with Vader. He gets lost in his rage, lets the feelings consume him, lets the Force churn always around him…

It makes it easier not to think about all that he has lost.

It only takes Vader about a year before he runs out of people to kill. The Hutt Syndicate has a power vacuum, lots of Separatist senators have lost their lives and their planets join the Empire without struggle, and several would-be padawans are turned over to his Master for rehabilitation. 

Vader doesn’t know what to do next. He has nobody left to kill. 

He calls Darth Sidious. 

“Join the Imperial Navy,” Darth Sidious tells him, and it is easy to agree.

Vader falls into a routine. 

After a while, it is easy to keep himself entrenched in a simmering anger that he has lost everything important to him while simultaneously not thinking too hard about it. Just like it becomes easy to feed his constant annoyance with his underlings into that hatred, due to their general incompetence. 

He does what Darth Sidious tells him to, and he exists.

Eventually, Darth Vader grows somewhat lax with his mental shields. It changes everything and nothing at the same time. 

Darth Sidious would have said that Anakin Skywalker returning to the Light would be impossible. Darth Vader would have agreed with him. Anakin Skywalker, however, would insist with a cocky air that he’d been the exception to the rule for enough things that one more wouldn’t be such a big deal, even though he would be scared out of his mind about the concept.

But Anakin Skywalker loves. And as long as he has that burning hot love in his soul keeping him grounded, he stays firmly encased in the Light. 

The dreams start to come with an urgency that he cannot ignore, not even pressed up in a suit manufactured to keep him in servitude, and not even Darth Sidious’s increasingly insistent calls, not the comms waiting for him about that new stupid secret project having to do with all of Illum’s crystals; none of it stops him or makes him wait.

Something within him urges You need to come now, and though he is a fool in many aspects, in listening to the Force when it deigns to yell at him he is not. 

It comes accompanied by the images of the two children he’s seen, always separately— the boy with Obi-Wan and the girl with Padmé— together this time, and with Ahsoka, who he’s never seen before with them.

He doesn’t even make excuses, he just takes his modified ship out of the hangar bay and leaves. He knows there aren’t any trackers in it; he’s never done anything like this before and he’d taken out six of them when he’d gotten the thing. 

No time is wasted. A direct course to a place he thought he’d never go back to appears in his mind: Tatooine. 

He works himself into a panic in hyperspace, getting so bad that the black armor around him feels like a trap. He takes it all off and goes into the small refresher, staring at himself in the mirror. 

He hasn’t done so in longer than he cares to think about, and seeing his own face is a little bit odd. His hair is stringy and longer than he’s ever had it before; the scar on his face is the same as always, and there are a few more wrinkles than the last time he’d looked. 

His eyes are yellow. 

He looks away. 

Sitting down on the floor, he isn’t sure what to think about the whole situation. Sure, he is going. But what will he find upon his arrival? Who will be there? Will Darth Sidious come after him? Will anyone on his ship even notice he is gone?

He reaches inside of himself for the Force. 

Go, go, go, It still whispers. Answers. Go for the answers.

“Go for the answers” seems pretty clear to him. He resurfaces, and decides to wait.

The revelation shakes him and settles something in him all at the same time. As the cloak lowers itself from his shoulders, the tension leaves his body, and he rushes forward to make sure the image in front of him is no mirage.

It is his angel, alive, standing in between Obi-Wan, alive, and Ahsoka, alive. They’re in the Tatooine desert, where he’s seen Obi-Wan and the boy again and again in his dreams for the past three years.

All of them look shocked, weary, skeptical; but he has reached into the Force already and confirmed that this is real, not another dream to torture him. 

“Ani?” Padmé says, stepping forward ever-so-slightly, reaching out toward him.

And, though he doesn’t know it at the time, right there and then his eyes fade from sickly yellow to pale blue.

He’s Anakin again now, he thinks, dazedly letting the two five-year-old children in the hut climb over him and excitedly show them their toys and boast that they are “twins, didn’t’cha know?” 

To be specific: they are his twins. His and Padmé’s. 

Anakin feels overwhelmed. There is a sense of loss, a deep-rooted grief, and a happiness so bright that he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Staring up at his Master, padawan, and wife, Anakin suddenly realizes that everything he’s done the last five years has been in vain. He has been manipulated and used. 

They were never dead. 

He didn’t “forget” being tortured by Count Dooku. It’s more likely that he never was, as Obi-Wan told him just a moment ago that he’d been declared missing in action and then, later, dead when the Jedi had been wiped out. 

How did he not see it before? 

Everything is contradictory. 

He hears their stories and he loves them dearly. At the same time, he’s constantly generating hatred with every word they say: at Sidious, at himself, at the universe, at everyone who has ever done them wrong; and Anakin has to feed it all right into the Force as it generates.

Unstable. That’s the word for it. That’s how he feels. 

“You know I’ve been Darth Vader all this time, right?” He confesses. 

The armor had been left behind in his ship somewhere in Mos Eisley; he hadn’t wanted to be recognized. But Anakin almost wants punishment for his actions. He’s not used to being loved, anymore. 

Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, and Padmé all look at each other, contemplating his words.

“But you came back,” Ahsoka points out. 

Anakin blinks and reevaluates how he feels and where he is. Unmistakable Light fills his soul more and more as he keeps siphoning out the Dark hatred that he keeps creating. He thinks that maybe if he stops the flow of hatred, he could be a Jedi again. 

A thought stops him. 

“This is because of Palpatine,” Anakin breathes. “He captured me and lied to me, telling me you were dead… I Fell because of him!”

He looks at his children, blabbering on about a story with figurines and dolls alike, and his resolve hardens. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Anakin announces, starting to get up.

He’s blocked by his family. 

“You are not going to face him without me,” Obi-Wan says, challenging him in that way he’s always been so good at through making it feel like camaraderie instead of an order. 

Ahsoka flips her lightsaber hilts in her hands. “Nor me.” 

“And I’m more than handy with a blaster,” Padmé adds. “I’ll be there too.” 

“What about the children?” Anakin asks. 

The twins get dropped off on Alderaan on their way back to Coruscant. 

It only takes two weeks to off Palpatine. It takes more like two years to fix the galaxy. 

Anakin joins Obi-Wan at the window of the Jedi Council chamber. His Master looks tired, but happy. He’s training Luke, and the boy has taken to being a Jedi more than well. 

Anakin hears a whisper in his ear of something he thought he’d forgotten, and it startles him. 

He puts his hand on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, which causes him to turn around and look at Anakin, quirking an eyebrow. 

“Are you happy, Master?” He asks.  

Obi-Wan’s face melts into a smile. “Of course I am, Anakin, why ever do you ask?” 

Anakin’s grip tightens on Obi-Wan’s shoulder for a moment, and then he lets go, letting all thoughts of the words infinite sadness leave his mind. 

“No reason,” he replies. “Just wanted to make sure.” 

And the galaxy keeps turning.