Title: Any battle, anywhere.
Characters: Anakin (introspective, POV), Obi-Wan and Rex minorly guest star.
Timeframe: About the middle of the clone wars.
Disclaimer: This is all George Lucas' people and places. I'm just making them move for fun and own none of it.
Summary: Anakin's mindset during yet another battle during the Clone Wars.
Notes: In all honesty, this is the first piece of Star Wars fanfiction I've written since around 2003, so I'm just testing my waters to see if I can still kick it. Hopefully, it's still an enjoyable read.
Weaving in and out of battle droids, it wouldn't be difficult to believe that Anakin Skywalker was having the time of his life. Heads and other various body parts dropped under the blue lightsabers artful strokes. He can't call them controlled, not even in his own mind, though they have become such second nature that he just sees or hears and reacts without need to process. With these useless little battle droids, it's all become a little automatic.
He's found himself keeping a running commentary of his own life. He's not sure when it happened or why he's doing it, but somehow making a record of words instead of a steady flow of imagery makes him feel that one day, when this is all but a memory, he'll remember those words and remember that it happened. It wouldn't be difficult to write off the entire war as a fever dream, like the ones he used to have about suffocating under the weight of the darkness or the sounds of blaring and the overwhelming feeling that he's been here before. He could write it down, but if it were to fall into the wrong hands of the separatists or their spies within the ranks (or the council, or worse, Obi-Wan) then it would cause untold damage. It was better not to think on it.
There is a small part of him that wants to believe these are the stories he'll tell his children, with the glories of the battles focused on while they were young and innocent (as he wondered if he had ever really been or if he'd simply changed and now believed children should be sheltered instead of given the truth) and the harsh realities when they were ready to understand how terrible war could be. It's that small part that wants to sit Obi-Wan down after one of these battles and tell him everything, that believes if they stick together then maybe, after the war, the very Order itself would change and it would no longer be something they just couldn't talk about.
He lives in the moment, overstimulated by the sounds of weapon fire and not for one minute even considering his own mortality or that one droid might get lucky and just get the right hit on the Republic's poster boy. He has to live in that whirlwind of chaos and energy, because the alternative was paralyzing. If he stopped to consider that this may be the last time he laid eyes on Obi-Wan or that separatists are going to win and the republic destroyed (it would kill his wife and thus, would kill him) then he would spend every moment in a state of perpetual fear and inaction. Inaction gets you killed and everyone else killed. He had to be proactive. He went into every battle with the same promise to himself that he would come to life in it, his own abilities enhanced by the intense burst of joy that came with righting wrongs. There wasn't much that could beat knowing you were saving the galaxy one skinny battle droid head at a time and that he would win and go home.
On the other side of the city, he knows Rex is in trouble. His comms were destroyed, but he's always been better at just knowing things, in a way the Coucil now seemed incapable of doing. Surprise victories were atypical for him, though. Things always got darker before the dawn when Obi-Wan and himself were involved. They'd sweep in, just as separatist forces were about to declare victory and obliterate them. Hostages held their breath as they caught a fleeting glimpse of a blur running through the city. It could be any city in the galaxy. They'd all begun to look alike, filled with darkness, oppression and pain. He wanted to bring light and laughter back to those cities and the people in them. He wanted to put people back in the cities where they were all dead and dying, but he had enough to live up to without that.
People were screaming for help in the distance as the relief effort had begun. He'd like to stop and help, it's why he became a Jedi after all but Rex needed help too and medical teams and relief workers couldn't help him. That was his job.
Sometimes, it was a little overwhelming, all of the people who needed him or needed him to be or do things for him but he supposed that was his weight to bear. He wasn't like other Jedi. As Qui-Gon had once told him, he was special. On occasion, when he has Ahsoka asking for guidance, when Padme asking for patience while she does so much more research, when the Chancellor presents him as if he's supposed to be a great hero simply for being alive and saving too few people and when Obi-Wan looks at him, sizing up his own failures in his former padawan, that's when more than anything, he wasn't wish he wasn't different or special. More and more lately, he's begun to wonder if he even wants to be a Jedi or if he's clinging onto the dream of a nine year old boy who thought he could make a difference. He's not sure he can make a difference, in the long run. He doesn't understand why he was chosen, as often all he can see when he looks into his past is (death, disappointment, pain) his own failures. He doesn't need the council to tell him he's not exactly the poster boy for the Jedi.
That's Obi-Wan, isn't it? He's the poster boy for the Republic and together, they were going to win the war and restore peace. Sometimes, if he said that enough, it stopped sounding like his own empty promises to free the slaves or save his mother or do anything but watch helplessly as his life and the life of everyone in the galaxy crumbled around him.
At moments like that, it was Obi-Wan's smile and Padme's love that pulled at him and made him stronger. It lifted him up and pushed him through, giving him someone and something to fight for. They gave him the strength to grin, crack jokes and make fun of the whole situation and remind him that one day soon, everything would be fine.
Rex was holding his own when he got there, but he helps him out, cutting through the last of them with a cheeky laugh when Obi-Wan threatened to give him a round of applause for his usual theatrical entrance. He doesn't know how to tell him that the men he went with to retake the left side were now lying dead with wounds through them and bodies that had been trampled by the machine of war or that the cries for help he had heard were now silent, indicating the collapsed buildings had claimed the lives of the remaining living under the rubble. He didn't want to lose the unexpected but wholly welcome friendship that had developed between them, placing them on more equal ground (most of the time) and mutual respect for the others abilities. He couldn't keep running to him every time he had a problem or he'd start treating him like a child more than he already did. It was like that though, between fathers and sons and they were closest thing he had to that.
He can smile and laugh and play like it's nothing but a game and let them think he thinks no more of it than that, because if he tells them how his hand begins to tremble if he starts to think instead just doing then all he'll hear is how he isn't ready. He's frightened they're right. He doesn't want to say it out loud or make that real, but he can't deny it every moment of every day. Sometimes, it gets under the fence. He's afraid of not being a good husband, a good son, a good Jedi and letting down the Republic when it needs him like a gauze to a wound. So what if he spends half an hour or so in his sleeper later with tear stains and silent, straining breaths with the weight of the death toll weighing down, as well as things he just can't place? He's still Anakin Skywalker, hero of the republic, Jedi Knight, husband of Padme Amidala, best friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Chancellors right hand man on the front lines, Shmi Skywalkers little boy and General in the clone wars. He's still going to save the galaxy. He's still himself. It was just harder and harder to be all of these things at once and he's found himself responding like the lines are scripted in advance without passion or hope. It's almost voyeuristic, as if he's watching his own life unfold with no real control over it. That unsettles him more than he wants to think about.
"You look like you're a few thousand klicks away."
He looked up, smile faltering into a split second of predatory anger before slipping into a solemn grimace, anticipating a lecture that never comes. After a moment, his brow lightens and he smiles, really smiles this time. "You got me."
There's an unspoken feeling between the two and he knows, he just knows that Obi-Wan has figured it out about Riggs and Klaxon and maybe he understands why it's hard to work with people and then have them die in quick succession. Sometimes, it feels like the war began with Qui-Gon and the sith lord back on Naboo. They didn't die horribly. He barely felt it, high on his own impressive defeats.
For a horrible moment, he thinks he's going to press him to say it out loud and make it real.
Instead, he just says, "Let's go get cleaned up."
It's moments like this that make him hold onto the fact they will win the war and that perhaps things would all work out. Moments when Obi-Wan understands him and Padme is waiting for him back on Coruscant and the Chancellor will have nothing but kind words to say about his efforts and maybe he can even make the Council crack a smile, but he doesn't want to be too unrealistic. Moments when the image of him telling a little girl about her fathers exploits around the galaxy years before she was born and hearing her laughs and gasps seem entirely plausible to the point that he even believes it. Moments when he knows he's going to save the galaxy and free them, all of them. As long as he has those moments to hang onto, the war is as good as won and the enemy is doomed.