Trigger Warnings: Body horror? (I dunno, Anakin is definitely horrified)

Headcanons: Trans Luke, Autistic Force-sensitives

AUs: Anakin survives RotJ

0o0o0

"Are you sure you're ready?"

There was darkness. Darkness, and muffled sound, and movement, and he was helpless to control it.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Another voice. Almost, but not quite, familiar.

He struggled against the darkness, straining to open his eyes, and perceive the galaxy around him. He felt strange. Wrong. Like he was chained to a weight, dragging him to the bottom of a deep ocean.

Where was Padmé? Ahsoka? Obi-Wan? He was treading water, and getting nowhere, and there was a terrifying sense of exhaustion in his ribs, begging him to just give up, and let himself sink. To leave the galaxy to see to itself, to abandon those he loved…

And then he was free. Suddenly, the weight was gone, and he raced upwards, shedding the sea, and it's deep, all-consuming darkness.

But the pain in his chest only grew as he suddenly gasped for breath and found himself tethered.

There was something over his face, and as he instinctively scrambled to pull it away, he found hands at his wrists, pinning him.

For a second, there was only panic, rising within him as the ocean had risen without, the same threat of drowning ringing in his ears.

He was afraid, he couldn't swim to escape this, he didn't know what to do.

"Woah…" It was the second voice again, spoken in time with a slow caress against his wrist. "It's alright. You're safe."

Anakin had a terrible feeling of being a long way from home, but the familiarity of the voice gnawed at his bones.

"Where am I?"

His voice was small. Was he that close to tears? He hadn't felt that way before, but perhaps…

"You're with the Alliance," the voice informed him steadily.

Anakin shook, and carefully lowered his arms again. Pulling at people he couldn't see was only increasing his panic, and he needed to breathe deeply and think if he was going to get out of this. "The Alliance of Payota?"

"The what?"

The voice was decidedly confused.

"Do you know who you are?"

"I'm General Anakin Skywalker, and if you don't let me go-,"

He didn't really have a thought to finish that one up, but he hoped the effect had been good enough to merit his release anyway.

Instead, there was just a little, breathy laugh.

"Oh, boy."

"And who are you, to capture a Republic general?" he demanded, finally managing to force his eyes open, though it was of little use, the galaxy so bright that he couldn't make out much more than a dark shape beyond whatever they'd covered his mouth with.

The patch of darkness shook its head, and Anakin cringed back as it reached out for him.

"My name's Luke," the darkness said, tilting its head slightly. "You know me."

Anakin snorted. "I don't even know where I am. Who are you?"

"I'm a Jedi."

There was an inappropriate air of pride in the tone, and Anakin shook his head slightly, managing to squint up at the stranger. He didn't look much like a Jedi, clad in a tight black outfit, rather than the traditional light robes, with no clone armour on his shoulders or arms.

"Not familiar," Anakin croaked. And now he was sure there was something wrong with his voice, because it wasn't strengthening, and he wasn't close to tears at all.

The other man frowned slightly, and averted his gaze, looking over at an old 2-1B unit a bit forlornly, before waving it off.

"You really don't remember?"

His voice was strange to Anakin's ears, sad and desperate, almost pleading.

"What should I remember?" Anakin asked. He was confused, and injured, and the mask over his nose was starting to itch somewhat, but he couldn't seem to move his arms…

"A lot," he murmured, and Anakin watched in confusion as his arm moved, and he slowly folded his fingers with Anakin's, before pulling his arm back, and standing up, busying himself with the equipment his mask was hooked to. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two." Anakin frowned. It was the right answer, he knew that… but the Force seemed to be telling him otherwise. "Where's Obi-Wan?"

The stranger's presence pulsed with a sudden shot of alarm, and Anakin struggled to sit up again, and heard a sound of ripping metal. The other man whipped around, and Anakin felt a surge of alarm from him.

But Anakin was preoccupied with his own sudden fear.

He didn't look like himself.

Forget the other Jedi not looking like one, he didn't look like one either. He was dressed all in black, something Obi-Wan had never allowed him to fully reach, but it wasn't what he'd had in mind, even then. It was all rich leather, shining boots, and expensive armourweave, it didn't even retain the design of his own robes.

"What's happened?" he demanded again, and now the weakness of his voice was too much, and it cracked and strained in his alarm. "Where's Obi-Wan?"

He reached up to grasp the stranger's steadying hand, and let out a shout of fear as he saw his metallic hands. Hands. Both of them shining metal, and empty space, one familiar, and one terrifyingly not.

"What happened to my hand!"

"Calm down!" the stranger demanded, grabbing Anakin in return, grasping his hands tightly, and forcing him to meet his eyes. "I've convinced them you won't hurt anyone!"

"Hurt anyone?" Anakin asked, his heart clenching at the genuine fear in the stranger's face, at the way it radiated through the Force, and despite the other's closeness, it seemed to be of him. "Who are you?"

"Luke," the other said, half pleading as he shifted closer to Anakin on the cot, drawing his hands to his chest. "Luke Skywalker."

"Skywalker?"

Suddenly it wasn't his voice that made him quiet.

His mind was racing, stumbling over a desperate realization that he was not twenty-two anymore.

"Where's Padmé?" he asked, almost choking on the name.

Was he really old enough to have a grown son? What had happened; why couldn't he remember?

"My mother?" Luke asked, his head tilting slightly.

Anakin's chest squeezed, and he managed a tiny nod. The boy should have known her name.

"I don't know," he whispered, anxiously folding his fingers around Anakin's, repeatedly, as if they refused to settle. Frightened as well, Anakin wrapped his hands around the boy's in return, stilling them, in a half-hearted hope the boy would be calmed, that he could soothe the other's pounding heart, even if his own clattered on. "I never knew her."

The words were like nails driving into his heart.

"Why?"

Had she left him? He… he would understand that, his schedule was impossible, he was bad at caring for her, he knew she deserved better-

"I don't know," Luke said again, and Anakin allowed his hands to be pulled as the boy buried his face in them, squeezing his eyes shut.

"How…" He wanted to say something comforting, but his heart ached with the knowledge that Padmé was gone. He could understand leaving him, but to abandon their child… "How old are you?"

The boy's mouth twisted as he struggled for a smile, before he let out an involuntary sob, and Anakin's heart broke.

"Twenty-two."

"Shh," Anakin whispered, pulling the boy to his chest, ignoring that that hurt an unreasonable amount in favour of holding his son. He wasn't sure he was thinking like he should have been yet, he still felt twenty-two himself.

It was easy enough to hold Luke, though. Because it was what he always did for Ahsoka, when she was hurting, so it must have been what he did for his child as well.

In his arms, the other gave a great, shaking sob, and Anakin squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his face into Luke's hair in desperation to remember the boy, to remember their bond.

"And Obi-Wan?" he asked, terrified of the answer.

"Dead," Luke choked out.

Dead. The word echoed in Anakin's head, rattling him to the core. He'd always known he and his loved ones were unlikely to live to old age, from the moment he'd had a concept of 'life' and 'death'. There had been no illusion of safety, and further no reality of it, when his mother had died in his arms, when Ahsoka had nearly died on the battlefield, time and time again-

"How did it happen?" he asked, carefully rubbing at his son's back, and feeling knots there, tension in his shoulders, even as he clung to his father.

Luke only shook his head.

"Ahsoka?"

Luke's shoulders moved slightly, and Anakin clung all the tighter to him.

"And… why do I know you?" he asked, combing his fingers through Luke's hair, savouring his nearness in the face of all that was apparently lost.

"I wouldn't leave you."

"You would have been only a baby," Anakin said, pulling Luke away from himself, stroking the boy's hair out of his face, and meeting his wide eyes, feeling a smile pulling at his lips. "How could you have fought."

Luke smiled, slightly, the corners of his mouth fighting against him as tears continued to roll down his cheeks.

"And why are you so sad?" Anakin asked. He didn't feel twenty anymore, a surge of protectiveness growing as he brushed away tears, and felt the contours of his child's face under his fingers. There were years between them, after all, he had not somehow lost them all. "Surely I should be the one upset about these changes."

Luke, his son, his boy, looked up at him, and gave a great gasp, before falling back against his chest, still shaking with tears.

"Why did you have to tell them I wouldn't hurt anybody?" Anakin asked, looking down at his son in trepidation. "Why were you afraid?"

"How can you not remember?" Luke asked, his voice fragile and shaking as Anakin cautiously ran his hands over the boy's back. "How can you-."

Anakin shook his head, reaching blindly for the controls of the hospital bed, and moving it into an upright configuration, Luke making only a slight sound as he was pulled along. He couldn't take his eyes off the boy, off the future he'd hardly dreamed of. He didn't know what was happening, why he felt so terrible, why he could barely see beyond his own toes under the blankets. But his son was lying in his arms, shaking quietly, and it was only right to protect him.

For a long time, they sat in silence, as Luke cried his heart out into Anakin's hospital gown, and Anakin could do no more than hold him.

"Why did you not know your mother's name?" he asked at last, his thumb faltering over Luke's shoulder blade in the thousandth caress.

"Because she's gone," Luke hissed, his fists tightening in Anakin's gown.

"Why had I not told you?"

Luke choked, before the tension fell from his body, and he lay silent against his father's chest for a moment.

"Because you were gone, too."

The words shook Anakin to his core once again, and he looked down at his son again, once more drinking in the petite form against his own.

"Gone?" he asked. His voice was smaller than it had been yet, and he trembled with another sense of terror and pain from the Force.

"You…" the boy hesitated, turning his face from Anakin, and pressing into his chest still further. "You turned."

The boy trembled again, as if expecting to be struck, and Anakin pulled him closer in terror at the implications.

"But you-you're alright, you're here," he plead, gripping him tightly, feeling the solid form of another human against himself, suddenly terrified that if he let his child go, he would evaporate. "Your mother," he asked, begging his son to promise him that it hadn't been the case, that he hadn't hurt Padmé…

"I don't know, Father! I don't know, she's always been gone! I never knew her, I've only known you for a few hours, all things considered!"

"Will I remember?" he asked, half desperate not to, half afraid to lose what time they'd had. "Is this what happens, when you turn back? Do you lose everything that happened?"

His memory was foggy, he had no clear 'last memories', but he struggled in vain to find them, to know what might have precipitated his turn. But there was nothing remarkable about the time he could remember, only service to the Republic and training Ahsoka –

"No," Luke said, and his voice had a cold, hard edge to it now. "No, you definitely remember sometimes."

"Sometimes? I… did I hurt you?"

And oh, Force, he didn't want the answer to that question, he couldn't imagine hurting the child who had lain in his arms and sobbed in quiet pain as he had longed to more than merely hold him.

Luke shook his head, his hair stirred slightly by the motion, and Anakin found himself watching it in desperation. The movement of a child's hair was natural, was so mundane that pain and cruelty could feel momentarily impossible.

"Not since I saved you."

So, there had been a time when he had laid hands on their child in cruelty. His stomach knotted, seemed to fold itself inside out.

"I'm so sorry," he croaked. "Oh, Force, little one…" And then words escaped him, and he tucked his head down to his son's, ignoring an odd tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with the tears, and finally cried.

He needed answers, needed to know what had gone wrong, but Luke seemed to have none, to be more confused even than he. He needed to know what had happened to Obi-Wan, to Padmé, to Ahsoka, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much he suspected, deep in his bones, that it had been his actions.

"How do you know I remember?" he asked, finally, struggling to pull himself together to face his child.

"You've been drifting," Luke told him, and again those wide eyes looked up at him, soft and gentle and so much more than Anakin had ever dreamed – "Sometimes you're lucid, sometimes not, and sometimes you just… you just cry, about the things you've done, and… and I'm sorry, I can't listen to it all, I can't know…"

"Shh," he whispered, and Luke squeezed his eyes shut again, as if closing out the pain, and the fear of failing someone violent and cruel. The person he must have become –

He shut that thought out as well.

For now, his duty was to hold his son. To hold his son, and not dare to look back until the boy was comforted.

"Shhhh…"

He leaned back again, pulling the boy's slight form along easily, the Jedi completely unperturbed by the motion as he held on tight. Slowly, he curled the fingers of his familiar right prosthetic in the boy's hair, twirling it slightly as the boy lay still. He didn't look up at his father again, didn't speak.

"I'm sorry," Anakin said again, finally, when the silence began to eat at him. "For leaving you, for… for anything I've done since."

Luke's shoulders shook, and for a moment, Anakin wished he hadn't spoken, before the boy's laughter became audible.

"It's not me you have to apologize to. I've already forgiven you."

"Then who should I be apologizing to?" Anakin asked good-naturedly, glad that a bit of joking seemed to have pulled Luke out of his pain, at least for the time being.

"Leia!" He was still laughing, and Anakin reached up to brush his son's tears away, ineffectually, the tears merely rolling off his metal fingertips, before the boy swatted him away and did it himself. "She still wants to kill you."

"Much as I'm sure I deserve it," Anakin said, "Why should I care what this 'Leia' thinks of me?"

"Because she's your DAUGHTER!" Luke said, meeting Anakin's eyes in surprise.

"I have a daughter, too?!" he demanded, sitting up straighter, and trying to swing his legs over the side of the bed, only to find them bound as well.

"Hey!" Luke slipped, and threw himself across the bed to cling to the opposite bedrail, before he could slide off altogether. "She's expecting you to stay here, for now!"

"Is she older or younger?" Anakin asked, excitedly tugging at the cuffs on his ankles once more, before falling still. "Where is she? Is she safe?"

"She's fine!" Luke laughed, and Anakin's smile grew as his son met his eyes. "Last I saw her, she was in Command. We're twins."

The boy practically sparkled with the proclamation, his eyes wide and locked on Anakin's, as if he'd eagerly been awaiting the opportunity to tell someone, and was gleeful to have got it.

"Command," Anakin said, forcing himself to get comfortable again, drinking in his son's presence again. "And a Jedi. Your mother would be so proud."

0o0o0

A/N Anakin's memories do return, probably after he finally goes back to sleep, and time's rough for a while. But he and Luke are both glad they had this time together.