Anakin hadn't said a word since it happened. He could physically make his mouth move to create a sound. He couldn't even try. Every time his eyes moved he saw Obi-wan fall. When sound reached his ears he heard himself scream Obi-Wan's name. When his hands touched anything the feeling morphed into Obi-Wan's still chest and Ahsoka's trembling shoulders. He would never be able to sleep again without seeing Obi-Wan's limp body bounce off the crates below him.

The healers try to give their comfort. They said that it had been quick. Obi-Wan hadn't suffered, he hadn't felt any pain. Anakin doesn't believe them. Rako Hardeen had shot him in the shoulder. Anakin had been shot before in the same place, and it hurt. He thinks he could hear his master's spine snap like a twig when he landed. They tell him it didn't, that the breaking sounds he heard was the wooden crates that he fell into.

Master Plo took him aside after the service and suggested he make a session with the temple mind healer. Anakin had sharply turned away from the hand on his shoulder and had not dignified the suggestion with a response. He supposed he should feel bad about treating the kindly master with such disregarding harshness, but now he couldn't bring himself to feel...anything.

Had Obi-Wan been afraid? He had to have been. No one isn't afraid when they're hit with a blaster bolt. He can't think about his master being scared. It made his hands shake and his breath come in and out too fast. Obi-Wan was kind and strong and so so brave. If he was filled with fear then Anakin would never stop being afraid.

They didn't have a funeral pyre like Master Qui-Gon. They had a beacon and sealed his body up into a tomb in the temple. It's dark in those tombs, and cold. Anakin feels like he's laying side by side with his master in the mausoleum instead of in his bedroom. Ahsoka had cried harder than he had ever seen her when they got home. She begged him to say something, to do something other than stare quietly and exude painpainpainhurtsadnesssuffersufferpainpain. Anakin could say nothing. There was nothing to say.

He wished he could just sleep. Close his eyes and forget for a few hours. But the force would not be so kind. He was too experienced to forget that with sleep came dreams. He was exhausted, he wasn't afraid to fall asleep, he just dreaded what would come when he closed his eyes. He couldn't survive if he had to hear Obi-Wan cry out in shock and pain as he was hit. He curled up on his side as quietly as possible, feeling his heartbeat, counting how long he could hold his breath until he felt dizzy.

Finally, when the weight of his eyes became too heavy he let them shut all the way. He released his breath and let his mind give in to his exhaustion. Before the rope of his wakefulness snapped he sent a silent prayer to the force to not have him dream of Obi-Wan's death. He was asleep before the thought had even completed itself, and consciousness dissolved into dream with dissolved into memory.

"Mom!", Anakin screamed at the top of his lungs pulling as hard as he could against the slaver's arm. The large imposing man pulled him up off his feet his arm like durasteel. He was trapped in all the trappings of a nightmare, except he was wide awake. Watto had sold him. That's what he had been told by the younger of the two men that pulled him from the shop and tried to haul him away. When he had refused to leave the older of the two slavers, the one with the scarred face grabbed his arm so tingly Anakin thought that his bone would splinter and break out of his skin in slivers. THe mad had grabbed around his throat too until the younger stopped him saying that Anakin was no use to them if he smothered.

He couldn't be sold! He was only eight standard years old! His mother needed him. He needed to be with her, to build droids while she did the sewing and laundry and cook with her, he had promised that he was going to free her, he had to! He screamed some intelligible sound praying that someone would hear him. What if no one heard him? Shmi Skywalker would never know what happened to him. She would wait for him to get home, try and keep his dinner warm and worry until someone else told her what happened to her son. The thought of his mother waiting by the door twisting her hands in her apron like she always did when she was nervous made Anakin feel dreadfully ill.

He suddenly felt a shimmer in the energy around him, it glowed a soft dark blue. He knew that was how his mother felt in the unknowable power that filled him up. Sometimes the energy inside him felt too big for his tiny body. Then he would get all silent and pale and push his hands to his ears as tight as he could to try and block out some of the noise. His mother was never overwhelming. If anything the blue feeling of lovecomfortsafelovepatient drowned out the bad feelings

"Mom!" He screamed again as he saw her form grow slightly larger as she ran forwards to him.

"Anakin!" His mother cried back, her skirts getting caught around her legs as she ran as fast as she could. The wind tossed her hair back and sand blew into her face and eyes. She didn't dare shut them, didn't dare take her eyes off her boy.

"Mom! Please!" Anakin screamed again pulling and pounding at the arms that held his still.

Without warning the slaver holding him reached up and clubbed the back of his head, hard. Anakin dropped like a stone onto the sand his ears ringing and the world swimming in his vision. When his eyes cleared enough to make out color again he lifted his head to look at his mother a few feet away from him, tears clouding his eyes worse than the blow. She looked like a smear of color, her blue dress and dark hair indiscernible from each other in contrast to the desert around them. He blinked a few times to clear his vision from the tears. He needed to see her. If this was his last moment with his mother he needed to know that he could recall the exact color of her eyes ten or twenty years from this moment. He could be sobbing out loud, his chest certainly felt like he was, but his ears were still ringing so much he was unaware of anything happening around him other than her.

Over the thrum of his abused skull, he could make out two cold voices and some shouting. Not his mother, never his mother. He had never heard her yell at a master once in his life. She wouldn't start now, not when Anakin himself was on the line. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and took two deep breaths in and out through his nose, pulling in the air and that strange, vibrant energy he felt around him constantly to clear the cannon-cover fog that had covered him when he had been struck. The blurring in his eyes cleared again and he lifted his face from the sand to again look out at his mother.

She was standing a little closer to him, arms at her sides, hands slightly lifted to her son. Her dark eyes fixed on the slaver that had hit him to stop his struggling.

"Leave us, woman. He means nothing to you now." The older slaver with the scar on his jaw said.

"Please," His mother began, the twilight lighting making the tears in her eyes shine.

Anakin couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from his mother. Why wouldn't she look at him? He needed her to look at him again, to see him. He opened his mouth to call for her but all that came out was a strange gargled cry. From beside him, he felt the younger slaver's energy falter a little bit. As if the pleading sound of Shmi's voice and Anakin's cries of pain and distress had shaken his resolve for the line of work he had chosen.

"Let me kiss my son." Her voice was clear and held more resolution than sadness.

Anakin heard the older of the slavers sneer in her direction, "I told you, He is no longer yours. We paid, you no longer have any claim to him, not that you did in the first place."

Anakin felt sharp hot pain burst from his mother, she had carried him, raised him, held him as he cried, shared blood with him. Birthed him under the rising suns and fed him from her own body. Anakin was hers...he had always been hers, her child, her entire heart. To think that all of that could be forgotten through a handful of credits exchanged between two selfish hands was enough to make both the mother and the son want to weep and scream with despair.

"Please…" Shmi still looked forward at the slaver without breaking contact, such rebelliousness could have lead to a beating from another master. "Please, let me kiss my son." She repeated her voice smaller and more pleading.

"Vinar," The younger slaver began touching the other man's shoulder. "Let her do it, it's not like it will cause any harm."

Anakin still couldn't bring himself to dare look away from his mom. She still hadn't looked at him yet. He wanted to call for her again, he needed to tell her something, he didn't care if the older man beat him senseless he needed his mother to hold him, just one more time. Something hot and red filled his vision in one eye, Anakin didn't know if it was rage or blood.

The older slaver sneered again and turned away, finally giving in to his mother's humble plea. Her dark eyes flew to her son, the two finally making eye contact. Anakin let his eyes drop again to the sand as his mother rushed to him. Tears filled his closed eyes, he felt like he could scream until his throat ripped up and still no one would hear him. His mother gathered him into her lap and they laid on the sand cooling after the abusive heat of Tatooine's twin suns. Her hand stroked his cheek and she pushed her forehead to his.

"Ani.." she heard him say. Anakin still kept his eyes stubbornly shut afraid that if he gave in and looked at her again she would disappear like a mirage in the sun. "Ani, I'm so sorry my love. I love you, I love you, I love you."

She put more strength in the hand that was stroking his face. The words "I love you" reverberated in the air around them. Anakin could feel his mother staring at his face, touching along each line, trying to memorize all his features. The small nose, jaw, and chin still round, angular cheekbones hidden behind cheeks that had never filled out properly through years of malnutrition.

"Ani...I need to see your eyes, dear heart." her thumb stroked his left cheekbone, Anakin could feel something slightly wet half smear across his face and wondered if he had been bleeding or if it was his mother's tears, or maybe some mix of both. "Anakin, please.."

Anakin couldn't open his eyes, he couldn't look at her, he was sacred if he did then it would all become real. He couldn't bear the thought of looking at her for the last time. When Anakin was four or five he became very ill, he didn't remember much of that bleary painful time being so young. But he does recall hearing his mother's voice as she was holding him in her arms and begging for him to receive some medical attention. She had said that she would not live if he died, that it would be more rational to treat him than lose two slaves.

The hand on his face moved to his hair. "Ani, please look at me" She was unabashedly weeping now, "Please sweetheart I need you to be brave." Those words stirred something inside Anakin and he slowly opened his eyes. His mother shifted slightly to better look at his face.

"M-mom." he sobbed.

"Ani.." she said again

"I can't go….I can't leave you." His lip trembled and his eyes filled again with hot shameful tears. He wanted to turn his face away in terror and humiliation, but Shmi kept a firm hand on his cheek.

"My love," She whispered wiping away the tears that rolled down his face. "You have always had the bluest eyes. I imagine sailing away on them sometimes.." She continued looking into his eyes wanting to live with the color in her mind forever. She had been pleasantly surprised when she had been gifted with a blonde-haired blue-eyed baby. Shmi knew nothing of how he even came to be hers, but staring into his blue eyes had further convinced her that he was the most perfect miracle. She had felt so very blessed that he had come to her. No one on Tatooine had blue eyes, and very few had yellow hair. Anakin wasn't meant for this life on this world...he never had been.

Anakin clutched his mother as hard as he could, his fists balling into her dress and accidentally pinching her skin. "I won't go." He said trying to make his voice sound more steady.

It was a foolish ambition. He was only eight standard and small for his age at that. He would be completely useless against two grown men even if he gathered up all that strange power he felt shining in him and made it burst out of him like a supernova.

"Anakin….You are my greatest love. You have made my life worth its living and always will. I will always be with you." And then she closed her eyes and leaned down kissing her little boy's face. Anakin shut his eyes and accepted the kiss memorizing all he could about this one moment in time. He could come back to this moment whenever he wanted, he could feel her love and patience and pain and he would be reminded. He would never forget, and he would never forgive.

"Time's up." The scarred slaver began pulling Anakin off his mother. He struggled immediately. He felt so angry, if the anger and fear in his body alone could kill the slaver would be dead, he imagined him twitching on the sand as his blood stopped pumping.

"No, No!" He squirmed again and the man shook him hard enough to rattle his teeth. Anakin was pulled off his feet again and half slung over a hard armored shoulder. Anakin let out a wet ragged scream. They would have to hit him again for him to stop his struggling. They would have to hit him again and again and again until he stopped moving covered in his own wet, red blood.

"Be brave Ani." His mother gasped in a whisper. "Be brave…"

Anakin stopped his struggling again to look at his mother. She was still on her knees, her eyes brimmed over with tears, holding her arms outstretched like she was waiting for her son to come back into them, already missing the warmth that he had provided her. Anakin wanted to scream that he couldn't be brave. He was too scared, too angry, and in far far too much pain. He couldn't live with himself knowing he would leave her without being able to come back.

"Stop!" Yelled a familiar accented voice. "This wasn't the deal!" Watto was making his way across the sand with a surprising speed. "The deal was for the mother, not the boy."

"You said the name Skywalker." The younger slaver. "You never told us we weren't allowed to pick which one we wanted."

Watto's voice was grating and very cold. "You very well knew what the deal was eh!" He spat.

"Look at her!" The older slaver scorned, "How long do we have with her before she breaks under hard labor? She can read, that doesn't make her educated enough to do more work. He's only a boy and we have plenty of years with him, we can make him useful." He squeezed Anakin's ribcage so hard he couldn't force any breath in and out of his lungs. Anakin saw black spots surface in his eyes.

"The boy is very useful! That's why he belongs to me. And since you refuse to honor the deal you can have none of my slaves." Watto drew a leather pouch full of the credits the two men had used to try to purchase them and tossed it into the sand at the younger man's feet.

The older, scarred slaver took a menacing step forward but was stopped by his younger more level-headed companion, who picked up the credits and put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Varin, there are plenty of slaves in this region, the boy is too small anyways. We can find another for much less trouble."

The older companion looked ready to tear his partner to pieces right then and there, instead, he hardened his jaw and threw Anakin off his shoulder. Anakin laded straight on his back and spent a moment gasping for air. When his lungs finally spasmed and he was able to take a breath in the two slavers had turned their backs and continued to walk back to their speeder without looking back. Watto looked down at Anakin still laying prone on the ground and a corner of his mouth raised in mock disgust. Anakin stared back at him trying to decipher any meaning in his eyes. Was it really only selfish greed that stopped him from making the deal? Or had it been something else? Anakin abandoned that though immediately remembering how he had no trouble hearing Anakin's screams for his mother, and that he would sleep perfectly fine that night knowing what he had almost caused.

With the harsh sound of his flapping wings, Watto turned away from the mother and son and flew back to the small homesteads of Mos Espa.

Anakin still laid on his back letting the black that spotted in his eyes claim more of his vision, the sun had gone down and he couldn't tell if the sky was dark or if it was his eyes. He was having a lot of trouble putting things together in his mind. His body still thrummed with hot energy he had no way of controlling. He didn't feel like it was over yet, could it even end that easily? The entire interaction couldn't have lasted for more than half an hour. How could his life change so much and yet not at all in that brief of a time?

When he came back into his body he knew he was in his mother's lap again. He could smell and feel her. He forced his eyes to see again. She was leaning over him holding his face with one hand while the other cradled his body. He pulled one hand up to touch her dark hair, his hand felt like it wasn't attached to his body. He felt like he wasn't connected to his physical form anymore, he was just a pair of eyes and ears. Shmi Skywalker didn't say anything, she just held her little boy and cried silently. Anakin cried with her, neither of them daring to make any kind of sound and destroy the calm night around them with weeping.

Afterwards, when the sky had filled with stars, Shmi picked up her son and carried him back to their small home. She was not a particularly strong woman, they had been correct to leave her for another if they wanted someone who could do more hard labor. Anakin was small for his age but her arms still burned when she finally laid the both of them on her bed, he was not a burden for her to carry. She told all the other slaves multiple times that her son was a blessing, not a burden. She had told them when she first found out that she would carry him, had told them when he was born, had affirmed it when he caused mischief and even more when he made her smile.

Anakin's eyes had closed sometime during their walk home and she couldn't tell if he was asleep or just quiet and still with shock. She pulled off his dusty boots and laid next to her child. One hand in his hair, the other pulling him into her chest. She had hummed deep in her chest where he could feel it resonating inside of her. Praying that the galaxy wouldn't be so cruel to have him dream that night.

Anakin startled awake from the memory that had played again in his mind as a dream. The truth of the previous day slammed into him the moment he shifted from asleep to awake. He already knew he would not be granted a reprieve, not while he was awake or asleep. The pain in his head of his and Obi-Wan's silent frayed bond still pulsed with white-hot pain. He was suddenly trapped in the memory he had been dreaming in and the suffering of his current reality. His mother had fallen asleep that night thinking he was already asleep next to her. He hadn't fallen asleep the entire night, or the night after. Instead, choosing to shuffle through his work with dull eyes and heavy limbs. He couldn't think about falling asleep, he didn't want to wake up into a different reality where his mother and he were separated. He didn't want to sleep and re-live the memory over and over again.

Anakin collapsed on Watto's shop floor after going seventy-four hours without sleep. His mother had been called to retrieve him. She had held and kissed him thinking he might be sick. She had given him water and used their food rations to make something easily digestible and nourishing. He still wouldn't fall asleep until she promised she would be by his side the entire night and to wake him if he began dreaming. She sang to him too, and he finally found a little rest tucked safely in her arms.

But there was no mother here, there wasn't any Obi-Wan either. There was no music, no arms he could crawl into, no love, no safety, no comfort. There was Ahsoka in the next room, but what could he tell her? He was supposed to comfort her, not the other way around. He had failed rather spectacularly at that, he hadn't said one word since he felt Obi-Wan's heart stop beating. There was Padme, he could still feel her soft blue energy radiating in the force. Not the same dark blue his mother had been, she was a soft light blue like a summer sky or the lake on Naboo where they had shared their first kiss. But he couldn't leave the temple, he was afraid that if he did he would lose all the precious control he had wrestled into himself.

He would just have to be alone, he was never good at being alone. He had a lot of practice with failure. Loneliness was something he could never seem to succeed at. Instead, he swallowed the pain that had been threatening to build in his mouth as sobs. Anakin pulled his hands up to cover his ears, bringing his knees close to his chest. He needed to be small, if he could be small enough the pain would shrink with him. He needed to be eight years old again. Become a boy so that all the suffering could shrink and fade with the years.

"Master Qui-Gon….Obi-Wan...mom…" He whispered his mouth choked on each of the names of the people that had died for or because of him. "I can't do this…its too hard, I'm not strong enough anymore….I can't…"

Anakin screwed his eyes shut as tightly as he could and pounded one hand on his chest trying to banish the pain inside of him with bruises. He finally let himself fall asleep again when crying silently used too much energy.

One thought remained set in his mind. He would never lose anyone again. Never, as long as Anakin Skywalker existed would another person he loved die because of his own failings. He would just have to be enough to stop it before it happened. Never again would he fail...never, never again.