Author's note:

This story is a direct sequel to my story In Time. Naturally, here is a lot of spoilers for that story, so I recommend you read In Time first :) The events of In Time and this story take place in the last year of the Clone Wars, sometime after CW episode 607 Crisis at the Heart (Clovis arc).

As this story is a work in progress, the rating might change later. And now, without further ado, enjoy!


Adrift

Prologue

Anakin stared at the messy innards of the flight computer. The cramped space under the open control panel, where he had wedged himself, had became a familiar cranny of spilled wires and circuits. Normally hacking a flight computer would have been child's play for Anakin, but this particular one had so far managed to stubbornly withheld its information despite the many hours Anakin had spent cracking it. Someone had really wanted its secrets to stay secret, for the old freighter's flight computer had layers upon layers of painstakingly installed safeguards and pitfalls.

Most people would have already given up, considered the hack impossible or not worth the time and effort, but not Anakin Skywalker. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to cover any trace of the freighter's previous whereabouts, which only made Anakin even more determined to figure it out. The secret operative, who had left the time travel inducing holocron for him and Obi-Wan to find, clearly wanted to stay in the shadows, nameless and faceless. Tough luck then, for Anakin would be on to them soon – as soon as the blasted machine would do what he wanted!

"Ouch!" Anakin quickly snatched his hand back from the offending wire, the shock of sudden surge of electricity a sharp jolt in his body. "Kriffing piece of junk!"

"You're doing it wrong." Snips' confident voice came from somewhere above. Anakin turned his head so he could just see her slender legs at the edge of his vision. He pursed his lips in annoyance.

"I think I know how to do this – having done this a million times."

"A million, Master?" Ahsoka sounded amused.

"Near enough," Anakin muttered, hands hovering below a small circuit, undecided. The flow of work had been interrupted – he didn't quite know what to do next.

"You shouldn't force it. It will come to you in time," Ahsoka told him, sounding for a moment far older than her seventeen years. "Master, I think you should take a break. This whole week you have either tinkered with your fighter or tried to hack this ship. The Vigilance will soon arrive in Coruscant and then you'll have all the resources of the Jedi Temple to help you."

Anakin shoved himself out from under the control panel, clambering up. Snips was sitting on the communications console, her legs dangling carelessly. She smiled at him impishly and there was a happy glint in her blue eyes. It made Anakin realize he was in a dream.

"You left." The words were all his brain needed to recognize the impossibility of her presence; the freighter vanished around them, and they were left standing outside the Temple, at the top of the grand stairs, the rays of the setting sun exposing his Padawan's – former Padawan's – grave but determined face.

"Yes. And I'm not coming back."

Her words were as painful to him now as they had been then. He followed the familiar beats of the memory, confessing quietly, "I understand wanting to walk away from the Order."

"I know." Instead of Ahsoka, it was Obi-Wan's voice saying the words. Obi-Wan, who was standing before Anakin, face sombre and disappointed. "I know everything now." Then his Master turned away, and rooted to his spot, Anakin could only watch as Obi-Wan walked away, getting smaller and smaller with each step, until there was nothing left of him and Anakin truly was alone.

He was alone, until he was not.

"Master Anakin, you should sit down. The dinner will be ready shortly," C-3PO fussed, herding Anakin to a plush couch. "Oh my, your clothes are very dirty, Mistress Padmé won't like that at all." Anakin looked down at his robe: it was drenched in blood. Panicked, he struggled to get out of the garment, and stuffed it behind the couch, out of sight.

"I'm afraid that hardly made any difference," C-3PO said disapprovingly. Heart hammering, Anakin noticed that his tunic and trousers were also covered in fresh blood. "And Master Anakin, now you have dirtied the couch as well, how am I getting it clean now in time for the party, I'll never know."

"I didn't mean to!" Anakin protested, sullen.

"I don't know you anymore," Padmé cried, clutching her stomach. She had come to stand before him, and there was a growing red stain on her white silken nightgown, right where her heart should be. She looked at him like he was a stranger instead of her husband. "Anakin, you are breaking my heart."

"I didn't mean to," he repeated, now anguished. Padmé could not leave him too, he could not bear it – but she had already vanished before the thought had fully formed, leaving Anakin standing in the middle of a sea of burning sand, alone. The desert surrounded him on all sides, stretching as far as his eyes could see and even further; it was endless. He knew it had devoured the whole galaxy, every star and moon, everything he had ever loved.

He stood in the emptiness an eternity, until they finally came.

They rose from the sand swift and silent, one after another, circling Anakin. Soon there was no gap in the circle of Sand People surrounding him, only a solid wall of deformed, mutilated bodies. They stared at Anakin with hollow eyes, their rags of clothes blackened and scorched. The smell of burnt flesh made Anakin gag.

"I'm not sorry," he rasped, throat scraped raw by dry sand. "I'm not. You took them from me." Wherever he turned, he was met with a row of empty eyes. The monsters' black maws opened, swallowed Anakin's denials and then they spoke as one, with one voice – and it was Obi-Wan's voice.

"Deceiver. Murderer."

The sand was burning; all around him it was a hellish fire, a hot agony searing through him. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" Anakin screamed and it was himself he hated most of all.

Old Obi-Wan looked at him sadly, flames licking at his robes. "Remember," Ben said, hand reaching towards Anakin. "Remember. I have always loved you. Always."

And then there was no heat, only cold. No fire, only dark. Sand had turned into immovable stone and he was standing in the middle of the Great Hall. The four-story tall chamber was unusually empty, and the echo of Anakin's footsteps was the only sound in the cavernous hall. Every corridor, every balcony, every chamber was thus: abandoned and devoid of all life. Anakin knew he was utterly alone.

He roamed the Temple a long time, not knowing where else to go. Eventually, he came to the Holocron Vault. The security doors had been left wide open and Anakin stepped inside the closely guarded space with ease. In the middle of the Vault stood a pedestal and on it was a crystalline cube – the holocron he had found hidden inside the mysterious freighter. Obi-Wan was standing beside it, hands on his hips, staring at the cube intently.

"We don't have enough time," Obi-Wan muttered to himself.

"Master?" Anakin asked, hesitant.

Obi-Wan turned towards him, piercing Anakin with his heavy gaze. The wealth of emotions on his face made Anakin's heart ache: such deep sadness, fierce determination, unmasked fear.

"Anakin, this will not happen. This cannot happen." Obi-Wan reached to touch Anakin's cheek; the feather-light contact set Anakin aflame, and he woke up gasping for air, heart beating wildly.

For long minutes, Anakin lay on his bunk looking at the ceiling, trying to calm down his erratic breathing, his clamouring thoughts. The tendrils of the strange dream lingered; the strong emotions it had evoked were slow to dissipate. The loneliness still clung to Anakin with a deathly grip, and the thick, sticky fear continued to choke him. He took deep breaths, telling himself it had been just a dream – or more accurately a nightmare. It had been an unsettling mix of memory and the fearful imaginings of Anakin's own restless mind; it had not been like the visions he had years ago, of his mother in pain, heralding her death. It had been just a dream and dreams passed in time.

Determined to dispel the disturbing images of his nightmare, Anakin got up and strode to his cabin's tiny refresher. He splashed cold water on his face, and then spat some of it to the sink, the recycled taste bringing bile to his mouth. When he raised his eyes and met his own gaze in the mirror, Anakin startled. He looked a complete mess: skin pale, cheeks sunken, tired eyes encircled by a ring of bruises, face covered with one week's stubble.

He had looked worse, Anakin decided, but not by much. At the very least, he would have to shave before the ship entered the naval docs on Coruscant, or risk looking like something a cat dragged in. Although, he could always claim he had begun to grow a beard, á la Obi-Wan. The thought made him gleeful for a second, until he exited the refresher and saw the miserable bunk that waited him, empty. Sleep, with the possibility of new dreams, held no appeal to Anakin.

The run-down freighter was sitting on the hangar deck, where it had been pulled to from its slow drift through space, their inspection having deemed it safe enough to bring abroad the Star Destroyer. Its secrets still waited to be revealed; like on so many other nights, Anakin could go there and continue to take the ship's computer apart. Instead, he found himself opening the secure safe in his cabin, and taking out the cube-shaped object that had pushed his life into a free fall.

It was the first time Anakin held the holocron in his hands since finding it; after their time traveling ordeal had come to an end, Obi-Wan had unceremoniously shoved the cube inside the safe, claiming it was too unpredictable for anyone to handle. Having learned his lesson, Anakin examined the holocron gingerly, taking care not to reach out with the Force. He had no desire to repeat the uncontrollable tumble through time, not when there seemed to be no way to control it.

Which made no sense. For what was the use of a time-traveling machine, if one could not control the where and when? Anakin turned the holocron slowly, fingers feeling for any abnormalities on its smooth surface. If there only could be a way to master the holocron, to set the jump to a right time and place…Anakin could go back in time and prevent Obi-Wan ever finding out about Padmé, about the Tuskens. He could safe his mother from torture and death, Qui-Gon too. He could do so much good. Perhaps he could even turn to tide of war against the Separatists.

His thumb found a slight, minuscule rise; pulse quickening, Anakin pressed against it harder. A snick sounded and one of the six sides folded away, revealing a small opening. It was empty, but Anakin could straight away discern with his mechanic's eyes that it held a purpose; it was a slot, where something was meant to be inserted. Something that would react with the grooved walls of the slot, act with the rest of the cube. Exited, Anakin knew he had solved one of the puzzles of the mystery. The holocron was uncontrollable, because it was not whole – it was missing a vital piece.

And what better place to start looking for it than the freighter's flight computer? The operative had gotten the holocron from somewhere, so it was more than likely that they also had the missing part, or at least knew where it was. Perhaps they didn't realize what the piece was, or they wanted to keep it for themselves or sell it; whatever the reason, Anakin was going to find the operative and make them reveal all they knew.

He put the holocron carefully back inside the safe and hurried out of the cabin, filled with new energy, new hope. He would crack the freighter's secrets and he would find the holocron's missing piece – and then he could make everything different, better.