Author's Note: Yes, I obviously have ADD or something, because instead of finishing my stories, I create one-shots on the flimsiest of pretexts. In this instance, my excuse is that I have been considering for some time doing a sort of companion to "Nightmares," and, since the idea wouldn't leave me in peace, I decided to run with it for a few pages. Hopefully, you guys will enjoy this. As I hinted at earlier, this is kind of a companion to "Nightmares," but I think that you will understand this fic perfectly fine without reading that. In terms of a Star Wars timeline, this occurs after the battle of Geonosis and after Anakin has escorted Padme back to Naboo. This sort of has a plot (but not really) and is depressing like most of my writing, so don't read it if you are in the mood for reading about rainbows and flowers.

Reviews: Review, or I will set Dracula on you to suck your blood and make you a real vampire unlike the Edward Cullen brand that sparkles in the sunlight.

Disclaimer: I do not own any Star Wars characters unless you count action figures…

Insomnia

Anakin Skywalker couldn't sleep. He had tried everything from counting banthas to emptying his mind, and still he couldn't drift off. Every time he closed his eyes, horrors swam before his eyes, and he didn't have the courage it required to immerse himself in them without drowning.

Every time his eyes shut, he was on Tatooine again, hearing his mother's voice fade, feeling her tenderly stroke his cheek, sensing the life in her ebb, and being filled with a dreadful, bottomless pit of rage that he couldn't even begin to acknowledge, because the truth and the depth of it was so appalling. When he closed his eyes, it wasn't just that darkness met him—it was that he had to face the unpleasant fact that he carried the dark about inside him. He was a killer. He had slaughtered all the Tuscan Raider women and children without hesitation, because wrath and the desire for revenge had overwhelmed him. Killing them had been so easy, but living with the knowledge that he had murdered them was difficult. During the daylight, he could push his guilt aside, but at night when he was all alone, he had to be honest with himself, even if that was the last thing he wanted to be.

Then, when he finally managed to shunt aside the images of the blood stained sand on Tatooine, memories of the blood soaked sand on Geonosis assaulted him, instead. He remembered a hundred things he wished he could forget: being chained to a stone pole, of riding on the back of an incensed reek with Padme, of dismantling what seemed like an infinite amount of droids with Padme at his side, and of watching Jedi Padawans and Knights all around him being mowed down in a nightmarish crossfire. Worse than that had been the fear that he, Padme, or Obi-Wan would die—

Of course, that hadn't happened. That was the consolation he returned to repeatedly, but it was always a frail one, because it was really nothing more than a stay of execution what with the Clone Wars that were starting now. Sure, Padme would probably be pretty safe on Coruscant, but in a perilous galaxy, being relatively secure didn't mean much, and, besides, she had many enemies that would love to see her dead. As for him and Obi-Wan, well, they hadn't done that great in the duel with Count Dooku, had they?

Fierfek. He didn't want to think about that duel, especially not when he was trying to fall asleep. He didn't want to contemplate how close he had come to losing Obi-Wan. He didn't wish to consider the rage that had flooded him when he thought that he was a millisecond away from losing the closest thing he had to a father as he had lost his mother. He didn't want to acknowledge the terrible compulsion to destroy the Count that had swamped him when he saw Dooku's lightsaber lancing toward Obi-Wan. If he ignored the Dark Side in himself, it would go away. It had to, because he couldn't live with it.

Unfortunately, he couldn't forget about the confrontation with the slimy Separatist leader, since he had a permanent, physical reminder of it. His natural hand had been chopped off and replaced with a metallic prosthetic limb. Warm, malleable flesh had been traded in for cold, intractable durasteel. Cells and muscles had been switched with servometers. Lightning reflexes had been slowed by an eye blink that made all the difference in the galaxy to Anakin. Grips that he had never noticed he was capable of now were impossible.

Most awful of all was the fact that he couldn't fix these problems. Even though he was a brilliant mechanic who had constructed a protocol by the time he was nine, he could make a prosthetic limb function like a real one. He had hit a problem that he couldn't solve, and, despite his rising powers, he was bumping into more and more of those lately, much to his discomfiture.

Right, this is insane, he snapped at himself, shaking his head and pulling himself back into the reality. There was no point in just sitting in the darkness mulling over his failures. If he wasn't going to sleep—and it definitely seemed that slumber wasn't on the agenda tonight—he might as well get up and do something. After all, tonight was his last evening on Coruscant, so he might as well do something fun before he emerged himself in warfare for Force knew how long.

Throwing back the covers that were stifling him, he pushed himself off his sleep couch and walked out of his bedroom into the living room and kitchenette area he shared with Obi-Wan. There wasn't much in the way of entertainment in the living room apart from his Master's meticulously arranged holobooks and Anakin's own neatly stacked tools. At the moment, reading seemed even duller than normal, and playing with his tools would just remind him of his failure to do anything else with them. No, he had to occupy himself with something else.

Looking around the living room, his eyes fixed on the blank, black holoscreen, and he snatched up the remote, scowling at the slowness of his replacement hand, and turned it on. Immediately, the room was filled with the wailing of a third-rate holovee actress who was crying because her boyfriend stood her up or some such rubbish.

The reason behind her tears was irrelevant to him, because he had little patience for drama holovees. After all, in his opinion, there was no need to create drama when there was enough of it in real life. He preferred action, because there could never be enough of that in reality, even if you were a Jedi.

Still, the holovee actress' shrieking at her boyfriend who seemed to have arrived finally reminded Anakin that it would be nice if he muted the volume and switched on the subtitles, instead. Obi-Wan didn't need to be awoken in the middle of the night by a lame holodrama, especially because his love of weepy holovee actresses rivaled his love of politicians.

As he muted the volume and flicked on the subtitles, Anakin surprised himself by choosing Huttsee instead of Basic as the language for the subtitles to be written in. For some reason, Huttsee appealed to him more than Basic at the moment. Right now, he was in the mood for a rough, uncultured, and harsh language packed with profanities, because maybe that would release some of the fury inside him. Maybe hearing people rage would be as cathartic as if he had a temper tantrum himself. At any rate, it was worth a shot, as just about anything short of lobbing his head off with his own lightsaber was at this point.

Once he had the volume and subtitles set to his satisfaction, he began the tedious process of flipping through the channels to find something mildly intriguing to lose himself in for awhile until daylight came, and he could return to normal. Sadly, he discovered that there was nothing decent on, because, apparently, the people who controlled the holochannels in this sector of Coruscant were convinced that nobody would be watching them at this time. What fools they were, Anakin thought bitterly. Coruscant was the planet that never slept, wasn't it?

Feeling cheated by the universe as a whole, Anakin leaned back on the sofa and started staring at a particularly stupid hologame show, hoping that it would be so boring that he would fall asleep watching it. He had been doing this for a few moments when Obi-Wan walked into the room.

"Did I wake you up, Master?" Anakin asked, as Obi-Wan seated himself beside his Padawan. He hoped he hadn't, because one of them deserved to get a good night's sleep. Still, it wasn't his fault that the holovee actress wouldn't stop with the waterworks, even though she hadn't had a real cause to cry since her mother hadn't died after weeks of being tortured in her arms. If anyone had woke up Obi-Wan, it was the blasted holovee actress who wouldn't shut up about her dreadful boyfriend, whom she should have just dumped if he was so awful and saved everyone's ears some agony.

"No, the Force woke me up," replied Obi-Wan in his typical enigmatic fashion.

Anakin wasn't in the mood for riddles, though, so he admitted bluntly, "I can't sleep." Then, on a surge of inspiration, he added, "Can you?"

"In patches," Obi-Wan answered, and Anakin knew he wasn't the only one who was tormented by memories of Geonosis.

Silence fell between them then, but it wasn't an awkward one as it might have been before Geonosis. Before Geonosis, he had felt affection for Obi-Wan and vice versa, but they both had done a spectacular job in masking it. Now, they didn't go to as much trouble to hide it. Obi-Wan had seemed softer and more indulgent ever since Dooku had chopped off Anakin's hand, and Anakin in return was trying to be a little less insolent. Now, they were comfortable enough with each other that silence between them was perfectly comfortable, and even soothing.

Yes, Anakin didn't find his Master's presence as calming as he did Padme's, but Obi-Wan was the only other person who could soothe him now that his mother was dead, and that counted for a lot. After he had relived in his mind the tumult at Tatooine and Geonosis, Anakin was more than happy to take refuge in the easy silence that had fallen between him and his Master. In an easy silence, he could tell himself many falsehoods and believe every one. He could tell himself that he had all the answers rather than only questions to which there were no answers. He could tell himself that his youth hadn't been washed away in an ocean of blood on Tatooine and Geonosis. Best of all, he could convince himself that he could hold the galaxy and time at bay forever, and that he could remain trapped in this moment of relative tranquility forever. Perhaps it was an illusion, but it was one so flawless that Anakin could never disbelieve in it until after the spell had ended, and it was an illusion that Obi-Wan was almost as skilled at creating as Padme was.

Finally, Obi-Wan broke the quiet by prodding gently, "Geonosis?"

"Geonosis. Tatooine. Everything," Anakin responded grimly, refusing to elaborate, because if he let the words spill out of him, he might end up revealing that he had massacred the Tuscan Raiders. That was definitely not something that he wanted his Master to know. Obi-Wan would be appalled by his savagery, the lectures would be never-ending, and Anakin wouldn't be able to deal with his Master's disappointment in him.

Now that his mom was dead, Anakin needed his Master's approval and affection more than ever, but every psychology book said it: a father's love wasn't like a mother's. A father's love was conditional, which meant that it could be earned, but it could also be lost, and Anakin's fear was that if he told Obi-Wan about killing the Tuscan Raiders, Obi-Wan's love for him would disappear. That was something he couldn't live with. It would be better to not tell Obi-Wan about the Tuscan Raiders just as it was prudent not to tell him about his marriage to Padme. There were some explosive secrets that he had to keep to himself, hoping that they wouldn't detonate and send his whole life crashing down around him.

"If you want to talk, I'm here for you, Anakin," Obi-Wan informed him softly.

Anakin didn't doubt that. Not really. If he wanted to talk to Obi-Wan, he didn't doubt that the man would listen. His Master would even try to understand him, but he wouldn't be able to, because nobody could understand him. It was reassuring to know that Obi-Wan was there for him and Anakin loved his Master for trying to comprehend him, but that didn't mean he was going to talk about the Tuscan Raiders any time in this lifetime. Obi-Wan knew that Shimi had been killed by Tuscan Raiders because Anakin had told him so in the sickbay when they were recovering from their injuries, and that was all he could be apprised of. If he was aware of anything else, he might start to guess that Anakin had danced with the Dark Side on Tatooine, and that was clustered at the bottom of the list of things that Anakin wanted to transpire.

Luckily, Obi-Wan wouldn't think it was too suspicious that he didn't want to discuss what had occurred on Naboo, since his Master wasn't one to talk about his feelings. In fact, Obi-Wan's idea of a revealing moment was when his sabaac expression that he wore throughout practically his whole life slipped for a fraction of a second.

"There's nothing to say." Anakin shook his head. "You were there, Master. You saw everything I saw. Talking about it will just bring us both down."

"I wasn't on Tatooine," observed Obi-Wan at his most delicate, and Anakin noted how easy it would be to just break down and confide everything in the man. Yet, that was a temptation he couldn't give into.

"You didn't miss anything that anyone would want to see," Anakin insisted. Then, changing the topic slightly so that Obi-Wan wouldn't have time to pursue the issue, he asked, "What happens when someone dies, Master?"

"They become one with the Force, Padawan," Obi-Wan educated him with a faith that Anakin envied.

"They become one with the Force even if they aren't a Jedi, then?" persisted Anakin. He had heard all this in philosophy classes, but somehow it was reassuring to hear it all repeated. Repetition might make him believe it, after all.

"Yes, because all lifeforms are created by the Force, they are taken back into its fold when they die," Obi-Wan confirmed.

"In that case, people who die have eternal life," Anakin hedged, because this was the important part, since he wanted to believe that his mom would go on living in a higher plane of existence, "but they don't retain their sense of self. They become one with the Force, but they are swallowed up, and don't know that they have, so what's the point?"

Anakin expected a profound response of the type he had come to anticipate from his mentor over the years, but instead Obi-Wan asked a seemingly insignificant question, "Padawan, have you ever taken the garbage from the rectory out to the compost heap in the Temple gardens?"

"Yes, Master," Anakin replied, completely flummoxed. Thinking of the compost pile, he wrinkled his nose and mumbled, "It stinks worse than a wet womprat, and I don't consider myself lucky to have that as a basis for comparison."

"Indeed," conceded Obi-Wan, "because it is comprised of the remains of dead organisms. Yet, out of that compost heap we get fertilizer, and we can even see plants growing out of the compost itself. The point of it all is in that compost pile. The point of it all is that life goes on even if the individual does not, and out of death life ultimately emerges."

"The individual doesn't matter at all, then, Master?" Anakin demanded, his eyes widening incredulously.

"Who says that individuals want to live forever?" Obi-Wan returned. "Eternal life might not be as valuable a commodity as you think, Padawan. Eternity is an unfathomably long time, and to live that long in any conscious capacity would be to expose oneself to a practically infinite amount of anguish. By joining the Force, one can gain a wisdom and serenity that being an individual cannot yield."

"We don't know that. We don't know anything about death except that we cease to be." Anakin shook his head, trying to shake a pest out of his head, but it wouldn't be dislodged. Desperately trying to distract himself, he continued, "Let's not talk about death before we go to war. That's got to be bad luck. Oh, and, speaking of war, I'm surprised that the Council has enough confidence in me to allow me to participate in it."

"Every Jedi is needed now," Obi-Wan sighed, and he didn't voice it aloud, but the words "after the bloodbath on Geonosis" hung in the air anyway.

"Then why haven't I been made a Knight yet?" The resentful words poured out of Anakin's mouth before he could stop them, and he called himself nine uncomplimentary terms in Huttsee. Here he and Obi-Wan had been having a relatively pleasant conversation, and he had to ruin it with a reference to a perpetual cause of tension between them. Yet, he couldn't take back the words now, so he might as well press on. "I'm more powerful than most Jedi Knights."

"Yes, you are more powerful than some Jedi Knights." Anakin was astonished when his Master agreed with his final assertion, and that alone kept him silent as Obi-Wan finished, "However, you haven't learned everything I'd like to teach you yet. Be patient, Anakin."

Obi-Wan was always exhorting Anakin to have patience, and since waiting wasn't exactly his forte, Anakin typically failed at doing so. Yet, he thought that if the post-Geonosis Obi-Wan stayed around maybe he could be patient, or at least he wouldn't be chomping at the bit as he normally was, which tended to be his definition of being patient.