They were two people – Anakin and Vader. Two soul entities, two conflicting aligned allegiances, two polar opposing personalities... but, one body... that would make things quite complicated. [AU story – Read warnings inside]
A/N: Warning: Suicidal thoughts, PTSD, character death. This AU is about dissociative identity disorder, in which Anakin and Vader are two personalities, one body. Inspired by the movie 'Split', but doesn't have anything to do with that plot, just the defining topic.
"I'm not sick, but still so far away from sane. Nightmares, but I haven't slept in ages." - Former Vandal
The explosion hit.
He couldn't move.
He realized with gut-churning paralyzing terror that for the first time in all his life, Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, the Jedi's most greatest warrior was frozen solid in a state that was so foreign it was indescribable. He had not a mere sense of free will, as his body had reached it's information overload capacity, or perhaps the amount of soul-tearing trauma that one's brain could process, making Anakin an enslaved prisoner of his own mind.
He couldn't breathe anymore, his lungs had become ash, disintegrating just as his conscience seemed to. The phantom feeling of automatic breathing had finally escaped him, leaving his body entrapped, but aware enough that it needed air Anakin was deprived of.
It hurt, it burned, the sensation of no longer being provided oxygen made his eyes blur, his head ache and made the scene before him tip dangerously to the side.
Air was all around him, he knew that. It was laced with grit and dirt and the putrid smell of metallic blood accompanied by the screaming warning through the Force, left over by the explosion, but he just couldn't grasp any of it. His mind had locked his whole body into place, every functioning bodily necessity – even the ability to intake vital oxygen, something taken for granted, something that he never had the need to think about before – was practically shuting off with his mind still fully coherent.
Well, as coherent as one could possibly be in that state.
Electric messages throughout his body to his brain were scrambled – there was no way Anakin could tell that his mechno arm was crushed, ripped apart, dangling lifelessly by a few wires and metal fragments, since the nerves wouldn't respond correctly. But the part of his mind that was just thoughts was fully conscious, practically screaming in words that were unable to decipher.
He ached for the chaotic, erratic buzz of everything to fade away, for the Force to take him away, as this was the time Anakin truly thought it was all over, the time to stop fighting and rest, the time he'd be free, be with his mom and – and he'd– but...
He'd be with Padmé.
He saw, not with his eyes but with the Force sense entwined within the air, and felt the most excruciating feeling his twenty-two-year-old self had ever been exposed to know. The very essence of a fading lifeline connected to his being was shattered, being torn away from the insides of his mind, the air, the living Force. This, Anakin knew with as much certainty as he knew is own name, was Padmé's life.
It rendered him completely lifeless, real agony only he could feel from the moment the explosive struck, eliminating at least one of its targets.
"Padmé!" Was the sound he registered first, a distant cry in the empty dark that bared in vulnerability and distress – that, before the last couple of weeks he would never had recognised as his own voice.
A vivid memory, laying in a medical bed's medbay days after the battle, Anakin heard uneven frantic breathing, struggling to take a breath just like on Scipio, only accompanied with the high-pitch ear-piecing noise of a spiking heart monitor.
He was confused at first, trapped almost within some kind of bubble that didn't allow his brain to process the current situation correctly. It didn't matter to him, though. There was no pain in this bubble, no terrifying thoughts or memories. He decided this couldn't have been reality then, real life was too much harsher.
He didn't feel anything wrong, and wasn't exactly aware enough to know if anything was wrong – but then, through all the fuzziness and puzzlement, Obi-Wan was somehow present in the scene, looking quite fretful and concerned, more so than in a long time. Anakin didn't understand.
His Master's voice clung in the air like a deranged echo, impossible to comprehend. His little bubble that surrounded him muted all other sounds, but the monitor and the distressed breaths.
It wasn't until he caught a glimpse of himself through a screen of glass that he realized there was no bubble, nothing protecting him, and he was exposed and there was nothing – he was alone, so alone, Padmé was dead, she left him alone and all he had were the scary thoughts, and the isolation, and the image of her mangled body lying broken and flesh-torn on the ground of Scipio–
And now, he couldn't see straight – couldn't keep the bile down – couldn't breathe all over again for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few days, hours, minutes it had been –
He screamed.
And then he knew what he sounded like when in totally anxiety.
But by now, Anakin was used to it. He knew the screams in the petrifying void that was sleep were his cries; he knew the whimpers and tears left behind on his pillow and sheets were from his eyes, and he knew the reflection that he barely faced in the mirror anymore was his own pale, isolated look plastered to his own face.
He got better and better at telling when those panic-induced moments or relapses of Scipio were brought on, more frequently, fortunately – unfortunately – simply. They were infrequent, sleep-depriving, and mostly in the consciousness of his own dreams, like the relapses had been this night.
Honestly, you can deal with it all. It is okay, you will be okay – his mind often told him. But, a pretty clear indication that he deceived himself was when the memories now no longer just affected him alone but Ahsoka, too, as she felt too uncomfortable (and scared) to stay in their combined quarters (both Temple and the Resolute) at night anymore.
He was alone at night then again... And coincidentally or not, the medications prescribed increased.
Frankly, he kind of liked that aspect – the drugs they gave him, to deal with 'trauma', as they said. They made the pain lessen, at least, so that was good. He had a clearer head for the most part – not so fuzzy or drowsy – and it kept his emotions in check, because forbid there be an 'unstable' (as they also put it) Jedi on the battlefield.
One thing was incurable, still, and he'd figure it'd always be. Because nothing he'd ever learnt taught him how to deal with the death of his beloved. Jedi didn't experience grief, loss, pain. There was medicine for the body, but not for the head. He'd known anger and vengeance and the Dark Side when his mother was murdered, but there was Padmé then. She was his lifeline, his consolation... But she was gone, and he was lost, alone.
Silently, he sometimes begged for a sense of comfort in return. Somedays when he felt completely desolate, devoid of peacefulness and losing reality, when he stared into his own empty eyes for too long and wished there was someone there, he needed someone.
Lie, his conscience told him harshly – not even his inner thoughts were reassuring anymore. But Anakin couldn't deny that fact, either.
He'd been surrounded by people ever since that day – Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, healers, clone medics. The medics gave him painkillers for his arm, the healers gave him meds for shock, his friends tried to assure him in the best way a Jedi knew how – himself remembering useless repetitions of words Obi-Wan's fragmented voice had whispered continuously as his old master dragged him away from what was left of the battlefield a month ago – but none of them sufficed. None of them were Padmé.
As it always went, now was the part of the night he found himself weeping, trembling, aching for consolation and calmness – and her love – he knew he'd never receive... Unless, the lurking thought in the back of his mind, becoming more vibrant and welcoming each day, whispered pleasingly, warmly up against the cold heartless night. His eyes took to the medication, then the utility knife, then the 'saber, each object offering peacefulness in ways that were so wrong, he was nauseated that he liked the self-bodily-harm ideas so much. All his conscience consisted of was how well each substance or weapon would work against himself.
Some nights he'd go as far as taking the blade just above his flesh, or holding the bottle's worth of pills in his new mechanical hand. It was serene, in the moment, like a pathway to something better than life itself...
But that was before he remembered.
...Remembered that there was a war still left to fight, that there was a Padawan still left to train, and he remembered his and his wife's promise to never let the secret out – even after death (that wasn't supposed to be her's); so he crushed the tablets, cried, then told the medics some unbelievable lie to get new meds... only just to repeat similar thoughts and actions the next night.
This night, however, he was too tired to listen to the voice that whispered, suicide, and too tired and afraid to sleep. He wandered the halls of the Resulote, which wasn't even an unusual thing even before Padmé's death. It was both times an escape, though before Scipio he was only escaping from stress, anxiety; and nowadays it was to escape his own suicidal mind, evade sleep, nightmares, despite rarely sleeping anymore.
His feet guided him to the training room, the automatic lights burning against his irises that were used to the darkness. But the world seemed less isolating with them on, regardless that they were too bright, harsh and painful.
The Force aura around the room swirled conflictingly at his presence, something that he only notice when the air was previously quiet. He wasn't the only one who felt it, either. Ahsoka sensed it always, and that's why she leaves him alone most of the time. Even the clones get a look on their faces' when he enters a room, unaware themselves, but feeling a hint of the darkness Anakin constantly lives with.
He activated multiple training balls, setting them to a high-firing level and whipped out one of the various training 'sabers, ready stance – he didn't trust himself to use his real one.
Tensely, Anakin watched carefully for the first bolt to fire. If he were in battle (which he hadn't been since Scipio), there would be no wait for the firefight to begin, but this ominous feeling of knowing it's coming, but just waiting for the thing to shoot was nerve-wrecking. It was like knowing for certain that something bad was going to happen. And Anakin Skywalker had a choice: to evade the badness if he wanted to, or not – block the bolt, or stand there and get struck – but it was the feeling of totally unprepared wrongness that he hated.
The bolt of energy fired.
Then, soon Anakin was blocking every single one that came his way. So, badness averted, he survived – but then there was the knowing dread of thinking about the next shot to be fired. The setting was set high with multiple training orbs, so mere milliseconds were in between the lasers, but that didn't stop the dreaded feeling through each pause, fire, pause fire.
His movements were not connected, his strikes didn't flow the way he remembered them doing so. The blocks that met each bolt seemed heavy and unsynchronized, it took effort to simply hold the 'saber upright. He physically felt his mind get weighed down as the bolts were harder and harder to keep at bay. His eyes stung, and not from the light or tears this time, but something else. Anakin wondered absentmindedly if this was exhaustion, his body finally rebelling at the lack of sleep and food – bodily needs he never paid much attention to care about.
But the sensation was too different, considering he frequently had and was used to exhaustion by now.
This was more than worrying, and though he had little care for himself or his health, Anakin was afraid – definitely not an uncommon emotion as of late, but more pronounced than typically.
The black edges of his vision made their way fully across his now blurry line of sight, as he faintly felt a new burning awareness back behind the depths of his eyes. He thought he saw fire, maybe, and the ignition of his own blue lightsaber, then... Ahsoka, could it be?
But then the whole thing was all over. He was back in his quarters, sitting quietly on his cot, staring into the mirror at the ghostly figure called Anakin, seemingly forgetting why he ever left this room in the first place. Nothing felt quite normal, but not indifferent to what it felt like earlier.
A/N
Hi c: ... First chapter to another new something I'm writing. If you didn't read the notes at the start, this story will get a bit dark considering the topics it's about. DID or MPD is a main theme, and I have never written about mental illness like this before, so forgive me if I'm wrong about stuff.
Feedback is cool and appreciated, even though this is only the first part x/ I'd like to know what you think, is this too much of a dumb idea? x3
Anyway, updates are totally unpredictable for me. I have barely even planned this fic out yet.
May the Force be with you
-CyanGalaxy