A/N: Originally posted on ao3 under the pen name youngjusticewriter.
Warning: This - Anakin's pov - is meant to be chaotic and quite frankly a mess.
The title is from Run by Daughter. This fic is an au from Unknown Fact, a what if, where Anakin had been stuck with Vader.
Some of the stuff I mentioned won't make sense unless you read Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith (I couldn't help but mention the dead star dragon because that's always fascinated me) and watched Rebels.
Even dead, a ghost, an echo whose punishment is to observe how his sins have destroyed the galaxy and those he loves-
(Her tiny hands clutching her throat - the throat, the person Anakin did this all for - there are tears in her eyes as she claws at her throat because he took her breathe.
Anakin's dead (he cannot touch nor feel anything) yet he thinks that the ashes Mustafar are in his mouth unlike Vader who burns, but like a phoenix he shall never die despite the flames that consume him, as Obi-Wan watches ("You were like a brother to me!" How many times had Anakin wish for those words? Now all Anakin wants is to unhear them.)
No one can kill a Jedi he had once naively announced to Qui-Gon yet there are corpses in the temple. Blood of younglings staining the carpet.
"I never hurt you Snips," echoes in his head as a red lightsaber blade enters into the Jedi breastplate. She had refused to leave him (again) and just like Padme she's dead by Vader's - his hands.
Always two there are; no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.)
he can hear them - all of them - screaming. It's too much; it's too little because a world is gone; just gone (and Anakin can almost just taste those ashes in his mouth).
Then it's silent except for Vader's breath. Always there, never to silenced or forgotten; like the dragon. Not the ones children on Tatooine told each other - no, those were stories about dragons that were bigger than they're cousins of the dessert, the dragons that live in the twin suns.
No, the dragon Anakin had feared for years was not of warmth that burns you until there's nothing left (Anakin isn't afraid of fire; if anything he wishes he had burnt until there was nothing left.) but of dead star. ("Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out.") Ancient and unyielding in its coldness. Always there to remind Anakin that everything dies. ("It seems in your anger, you killed her.")
And finally here Anakin was. He'd just watched a planet - Alderaan - die and it's wrong. Unnatural.
Anakin wishes to destroy this place. For it to just die, just like everything in the universe. (Don't you know even angels die?)
"When will this stop?" He croaks out and Vader's helmet doesn't even move an inch which means Vader's not going to address him. Thats the thing about being haunted. Sometimes you get use to the ghosts that haunt you. It's like how Vader doesn't even fight the slavery of the dark side and Sidious. Because when you've lost everything the only thing you can do is go back to being what yo-
Anakin's thoughts were interrupted by Bail's daughter who's most certainly staring straight at him instead of glaring murderously at Tarkin. Her eyes had stubbornly unshed tears in them yet, despite this, Anakin can see the silent confusion in her eyes. The wisely unasked question in them and Anakin knows she can't speak.
She'll be killed just like so many or worse, Anakin thought with a grimace as he remembered the brief encounters Vader had with the Inquisitors.
And since Vader is in front of her, and therefore capable of seeing Anakin instead of just hearing him, it's not like Anakin can mouth the words "don't acknowledge me" to her.
"Do you remember what it was like? To want to make the universe better. To wish to go home and free the slaves like we once dreamed? To argue with Padme on those fields of grass how it was best to-"Anakin never got to finish his sentence, to dig a dagger deeper into both their chests, as Vader just walked away from Tarkin, the Princess, and Anakin without so much as a word. The Princess didn't fall from just having herself support her weight despite the murder of her planet and her people. And Anakin can't help but think they would have gotten along well when he was him as she was dragged back to her cell.