Disclaimer: Star Wars is owend by Disney/Lucasfilms. I'm not Disney nor Lucasfilms.
Mucho grande thanks to my lovely Beta BookJunkie.
Fear is the path to the dark side.
It was the first lesson Yoda had given him and it was given before the wise old master had even agreed to train him. It was a lesson given as a reason for denying him.
Denying him an education. Denying him a home and a future. He hadn't even been ten at the time, but he had already felt so hopeless. Standing before a counsel that, in a strange way, feared him.
A counsel of beings who couldn't understand that they were his only hope for a life. Where else could he go? His mother was a slave and his father unknown. While Master Jinn had promised to train him, Anakin had been unable to believe that it could happen; not without the counsel's approval.
He had feared their decision, then.
Now he was fighting their war. A war that causes bloodshed and greed and fear. Now the counsel had assigned him a child, a Padawan, whose best years too were wasted on meaningless battles.
Everything was wasted.
His boots sank deeper into the muddy, bloodstained ground. He picked up a now filthy rifle without being aware of his actions. Instead, his eyes fixated on the cold hand that had dropped it. While he hadn't had any problems seeing dead bodies at the beginning of the war, Anakin was starting to notice how much more difficult it was to see them as the fights went on.
Far too many had died.
"Anakin." Obi-wan looked at him with familiar worry in his eyes.
Sometimes he wondered if his master would one day be capable of speaking the words that obviously lay in the gaps.
"It is not your job to do," like always, Obi-wan tried to be reasonable.
"I know." The blaster slipped through his fingers and fell next to the shiny. One of those inexperienced clone-soldiers bred for violence and wasted in war.
Anakin could remember the spark in the man's eyes and in the eyes of his brother, both now lying lifeless on the ground. The pride to be part of the 501st. To be part of Anakin Skywalker's squad.
The hero with no fear.
At first it was said as some kind of joke by the holonet news anchors. But with time and more and more lost battles, fading hope, dead Jedi, and his reckless maneuvers, it went from a joke to a meaningful title.
His name brought hope to citizens and soldiers and fear to his enemies … and himself.
He was able to rush into battle, to do things other feared in order to rescue at least a few lives. Because he couldn't just let clones die even if they were made to. He was never able to treat them like slaves.
And still, at the end of combat, so many had lost their lives.
Because of him.
Because he wasn't able to put enough value on a clone's life.
Because he let them down.
Still, for everyone else, he was the hero. It both flattered him and scared him. The times when he managed to lead a fight without big losses he felt like he could meet the expectations. But after battles like the one they had encountered today, he couldn't even stand to look at himself.
The battlefield was a wasteland, where men were devoured by mud, sand, and rain.
And despite the fact that Anakin was the hero to most of the galaxy, the ultimate heroic act – to finally end this war – wasn't his to fulfill.
On some nights, when he was unable to sleep – something that happened too often lately – he would muse over the fact that blood and death were what made him well known.
Blood and death made hope glimmer in every face he encountered.
The council had hope that he – the chosen one – would bring balance to the force. The Republic had hope that he – the hero with no fear – would bring the right side victory. The clones and the commanders had hope that he – their general – wouldn't let them die.
They trusted him, more than he did himself. But he wasn't that hero. He had lost far more good men than he had been prepared to let go. Politicians may think that clones were droids with flesh, but Anakin knew better. He had seen them grieve for their brothers and laugh together at bad puns.
All the more reason for him to live up to his reputation.
He couldn't watch more people grieve.
He couldn't let more people die.
He feared the death of others.
"Anakin," Obi-wan spoke again. The troubling silence his former Padawan had fallen into was too heavy to bear. "The special unit will be here in time. They will retrieve the bodies and bury them. It is not your work to do."
"But it should be."
How else could he honor their lives? Maybe there had once been an Anakin Skywalker able to believe that these men weren't wasted, that the Jedi weren't wasted, and that there was a possibility to respect what they all are and fight the war at the same time, but this person had died slowly, part by part, with every clone who fell, with every lost battle, with every new operation.
He was the men's hero. He was the galaxy's hero. He couldn't just turn around and pretend he hadn't failed them.
Silence. Uncomfortable silence. Although Obi-wan wanted to get his friend to talk, to leave the field spiked with bodies and destroyed battleships, he couldn't bring himself to push his former Padawan. In such desperate hours he knew that he had to give Anakin time.
So both men were standing on the remains of those lost as they watched the sun crawl through the rainy gray sky.
As the special unit arrived, Anakin sighed heavily before finally turning around and setting off to his ship. Obi-wan quietly followed him.
Anakin knew that he wouldn't forget any of them or their useless deaths, but he was a well-known general, after all, and he had to follow the schedule laid out for him. Or other battalions would be dealing with even more losses.
So, like always, he would pretend to get over it, he would talk to the remaining soldiers, and a long time after that he would try to make his first post-combat joke in Obi-wan's presence. His master would think that he had gotten over it, while down on the planet's surface a cruelly impersonal device would collect the dead clones and pile them up for burning.
He should have buried them. It would have been the least he could have done for them.
Anakin had to do better next time. In the next battle he had to be their hero.
And more importantly: he had to end this war.
That is what heroes with no fear did.