all things said and done
The galaxy doesn't fall; Anakin Skywalker does.
i.
He woke to furious, savage incoherence, half-blind with pain, an enraged howl working its way out of his throat, betrayal stinging molten behind his eyes, but he didn't know why.
"None of that, now," Vokara Che said sharply, and something stung inconsequentially against his neck, flooded his veins with something cool and crawling, blasted the remnants of the already hazy past from the front of his mind. He shook at the onslaught of cold, strained against the material that held his limbs (only three, only three, a part of his mind gibbered, where in the nine kriffing hells was his hand?) to what felt like a medical cot, breaths coming too fast and too hard as air was pulled from his chest and shoved back in without his control, what the kriff was on his face, shoved down his throat -
"Don't try to breathe, Skywalker," Master Che said, voice less than kind, cool fingers pressing down on his sweat-dampened forehead as she curtailed his aborted attempt at panicked flailing. "Let the machine do it for you." He let it, reluctantly, vision clearing of bright, flashing spots as oxygen made its way to his blood. The harsh lights of the operating centre in the Halls of Healing flooded his sight, Master Che's lekku dangling before his eyes, the periphery of his vision still a bright, garbled haze. The fingers of his flesh hand scrabbled against the cool sheets, the stump of his other arm aching in sympathy.
Everything hurt, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he somehow deserved it.
"Mmph?" he tried through the breathing apparatus, hoping the general sentiment he was trying to convey (namely, 'what in the nine hells is going on?' with a side of 'why am I chained to the cot like a kriffing war criminal?') made it across without words. The Force ducked and slid out from his grasp like a bar of soap, feeling slippery and unwelcoming. He reached for it and hit only cold darkness, biting its way up his spine, coating the back of his mouth, and his heart pounded with confused terror, limbs (only three, only three) jerking again in an attempt at panic. "Mmmph?" he repeated, breath stuttering against the forced flow of air that wasn't going nearly fast enough to convey the strength of his confusion.
"I can sense your disorder," Master Che said, voice still a tad too firm to be kind like he remembered, "but you're in no state to remember anything I tell you right now. Sleep, young Skywalker." Her fingers pressed once more into his forehead, the Force suggestion stronger than the chaos muddying his brain. His eyes slipped closed almost gratefully, smoke clogging the back of his throat, seeing red behind his eyelids.
Her voice was soft, a foreboding, accented rasp.
"Though I make no promises for better circumstances the next time you wake."
The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the calmer, solemn lights of a room in the private ward. It was almost completely empty, the blinds drawn, the walls bare. The slightest hint of sun creeped out from under the window and threw a sliver of light on the wall across from him. Out of his reach.
He didn't feel calm, exactly, but his heart beat slowly and steadily, his thoughts muddy. He had the briefest, hazy flash of ruddy beard and blue eyes, of shaking, calloused fingers as they trailed gently down his face. Impossible, though he was having trouble remembering why. He'd been drugged, he thought sluggishly, and heavily too, though the indignation that knowledge usually brought was slow to come.
His prosthetic arm had been replaced, thankfully, though he could tell already that the servos would need adjusting, that it lacked the fine motor control of its predecessor. Whatever it was that had been shoved down his throat was gone too, only a mask left, supplying air for his lungs to inhale as required. Or at least, he thought, as his chest stuttered painfully, as best as they were able.
"Hello?" he said, cringing into the cot at the quiet, mangled rasp of his voice, jerking unconsciously against his restraints as the sharp pain in his throat brought to life a sea of fire behind his eyes, the memory of smoke, charred and thick and hot, filling his lungs. 'Come back!' his master yelled in the vestiges of his mind, eyes desperate, and the past was a blurred, sickening haze. But he had a better idea now of how exactly he had come to be here and his stomach roiled with the revelation.
"Oh no," he muttered, the Force broiling thick and black and unfamiliar with his deepening fear, but clumsy in his grasp. "Oh, kriff."
He could remember now, in bits and sluggish flashes, his dreams of Padmé, his ever-increasing unease, the refusal of the Council to grant him the access (the power, don't pretend like you didn't want it, don't pretend like you don't want it still) he needed to save her, the churning mess of terror that had lately seemed permanently lodged under his ribcage, the Chancellor (his friend, his mentor, only - ), pale under the gloomy lighting of the opera as he offered him a way to stop death -
- it figured that the only person in his mess of a life that he'd felt he could confide in was actually a Sith Lord. The revelation hadn't come pleasantly. There'd been – a conflict.
A long, drawn out conflict within himself that had ended with the bitter, ashy taste of betrayal in his mouth, the feeling of walls pressing in on all sides. He couldn't remember leaving the Temple, wasn't sure if he'd stopped to see Padmé on the way, the sequence of events blending together in a nauseous haze of red that only ended with the sickening thump of the Chancellor's head as it hit the ground and rolled to a stop at his feet.
He'd never even seen it coming, Anakin thought hazily, stomach churning, putting up a token fight against the cuffs that trapped his hands and feet to the cot. Hadn't even conceived of the thought that his greatest creation (because that was what he was, to Palpatine, to the Jedi, nothing more than a tool, something to be twisted and melded into shape and cast aside the moment he stepped out of line) might in turn betray him. He'd been in the middle of a sentence when Anakin had rid him of his head, the words temple, separatists, mustafar penetrating his thoughts through a fog of terrified confusion – he'd left, almost immediately after that, recalled the way his hand had traced the cool metal of the Senate hallways, the disorientating shake and rattle of the ship he'd stolen, fingers plugging in Mustafar's coordinates as if in a dream.
He hadn't touched the Temple, wouldn't do anything that monster had wanted him to do, bile still coating the inside of his throat as he remembered the once comforting touch of the old man's hand on his shoulder (you were not a child, not a confidant, not a son, you were nothing more than his property), but the Separatists still had to go, of course. He had ended the Sith; now he would end the war. It was his destiny. It had been – logical, it had been the rational thing to do, he had wanted the galaxy safe, safe for Padmé, safe for his child, but he couldn't fit the pieces together, couldn't remember what had happened next. Saw only his master's face, pained, begging, lightsaber flashing blue in the searing, red heat of the volcano, had only the distinct impression that he had crossed some invisible line from which there was no return.
Now you've done it, Skywalker, he thought distantly, breaths still coming in odd, rasping gasps. But what exactly have you done?
"You're awake," a cool voice said, interrupting his increasingly panicked rumination, accompanying the familiar rush of air as the door to the room slid open. Master Che approached gracefully, Master Windu a tall, silent shadow at her heel and Anakin did his best not to look like he wanted nothing more than to sink into the cot and disappear from sight. "Do you remember?"
"Uh," he rasped eloquently, hoping it managed to get across the extent to which he both did and did not understand what exactly had happened. "I -" He paused to hack painfully into the unfortunately lumpy pillow he'd been provided with, eyes watering, frustration at their reticence growing. "I wouldn't mind – being filled in on a few details."
They both ignored him, Master Che moving closer to shine a light in his eyes, press her hands to his throat and chest, fingers cool even through the thin tunic he'd been provided.
"Well," Master Windu said, as she finished her examination. "Is he fit to go before the Council?"
What?
Anakin's breath caught in his throat, was expelled from his lips through another fit of pained hacking, blood running cold even through the drug-induced haze that he assumed was preventing what Obi-Wan sometimes referred to as a patented Skywalker Meltdown.
"Please," he managed, throat stinging, "I don't -" understand what's going on, I don't know what's happening -
"Normally, I wouldn't advise it," Master Che said, frowning. "But under the circumstances -"
Master Windu looked at him coldly. To Master Che, he said, "I'm sure you can agree that it is a pressing issue."
She pursed her lips and avoided Anakin's gaze. "Yes," she said.
"Would someone please tell me what is going on?" Anakin rasped, more politely than he wanted to. "I don't – remember how I got here, I don't remember hardly anything after -" He broke off, wheezing. Swallowed harshly, jaw tense. "Where's Obi-Wan?" Where is my wife?
Master Windu met his wild gaze with a face like stone, and just as comforting. "He's not here, Skywalker. You won't be able to rely on him to dig you out of your mess this time."
"Mess?" Anakin shot back, indignation rising through the twist of worry for his absent master, though a shadow of doubt curdled his stomach. Monster, it whispered. "I – I found and dispatched the Sith Lord. I got rid of the Separatist leaders!" Actually, he had a faint, ill-defined memory of dismembering them and tossing them over into Mustafar's active lava field, which, to be fair, probably wasn't exactly up to the merciful standards of the Jedi Code. But they were at war. Or at least they had been, before he'd ended it.
And he wasn't so naive as to think that Mace Windu, vaapad master, had never beheaded an enemy in a fit of pique.
"You did," Windu said, pressing forward until he towered over the cot, voice sharp and slowly enunciated, speaking as he might to something both dull and peeled off of the heel of his boot, "at which point you began to make designations to replace said Sith Lord as our Head of State."
Oh no.
Anakin sunk back into the cot, heart sinking.
"But," he whispered after a moment, gut churning, "that's insane."
"Yes," Master Windu said pointedly.
"But I don't remember any of it," Anakin protested, struggling weakly against the restraints. Nausea threatened to climb up his throat, heart pounding. Monster. "And even if it did happen like you said, I clearly didn't succeed!"
"No," Master Che stepped in. "Your former master managed to break through before you went forward with anything."
A flash of red behind his eyes, burning smoke filling his lungs, flames licking at his limbs, Obi-Wan's voice echoing desperately in his ears -
"Did -" he choked, not quite wanting to believe it, breath wheezing in his chest as incontrovertible evidence, " - did he toss me into a lava bed?"
"It's my understanding," Master Che said, poking delicately at the thin, stinging synthflesh that he could now feel coating the right side of his face, "that your fall into the lava was unintentional on both your parts." She looked at him now with what might have been the barest hint of sympathy, though he wasn't sure it was for him. "Your master was quite torn up about it. The respiratory tract is delicate and difficult to repair, especially from burn damage."
"Kriffing hells," Anakin wheezed, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Precisely," Master Windu said stonily. "You fell, Skywalker. In consideration of that and the other facts that have come to light since," he paused ominously, the kriffing bastard, "the Council would very much like to speak with you."
Anakin would have personally given his remaining arm for the privilege then of not speaking to the Council -
- but something in the gleam of Master Windu's eye told him that wasn't going to be an option. The Force sang a portent, the future hanging precariously before him, shadowed and murky and cold. The dark side, he found, biting his tongue, wasn't much use when you wanted nothing more than to be rid of it.
(Or at least when you were trying to trick yourself into thinking that you wanted nothing more than to be rid of it.)
What he wanted, more than anything, what he would have given anything for, in that moment, was to be with his wife, to make sure she was alright, to make sure his dreams hadn't come to fruition. To make sure that he hadn't made a mistake in killing what he'd thought might be her only hope.
(In the moment before his blade had come swinging through Palpatine's neck, he'd thought for what felt like an eternity about what she would have wanted. Her survival was more important than anything else, more important than the galaxy at large, if he was honest with himself, but he had faith in his wife, had faith in her beliefs. She would have wanted him to do what was right.
Sometimes figuring out what exactly was right was more difficult than he liked to admit.)
Anakin gritted his teeth and swallowed back the sluggish rush of fear pulsing through his veins, tried again to sink further into the firm mattress of the cot.
"If I do," he ventured, "will you let me see my wife?"