Title: Through Death's Eyes
Author: Lauren A.M. (Red October)
Rating: PG-13, 'cause you'll thank me later
Summary: A new look upon the pivotal scene; Anakin cast into the molten pit of his 'death' I will take the side that Anakin was not committed to the Dark Side then, but still a pawn in the Emperor's game. CAUTION: content is rather violent and may be disturbing to some readers.
Disclaimer: The characters go to Lucas. The plot and ideas outside the movies and books are mine; everything of mine is Christ's.
Feedback: Yes, Please
Dedication: To the team of writers and researchers who so excellently do 'Star Wars: Technical Commentaries' http://theforce.net/swtc/ this bunch enables me to add detail to the Star Wars universe not commonly found. Of course, to my friends and 'beta' readers, Jedi Lizzybean and Empress Kay. And finally, to my reviewers. :)
"In hindsight only can we witness, without bias, what has shaped and scarred us." -Lauren A.M.
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Anakin once wondered what the blind saw.
Was it blackness, as in perpetual sleep, or an off-white cream hovering before their consciousness; void and dull? He often was troubled, that should he loose his sight, he would likewise lose precious memories; forgetting the color of his mother's hair, the rich brown only streaked with gray in her older days. Or the shape of a loved one's palm. He once had a chance to ask, but he had been to young at the time, unable to muster the courage to approach a man whose eyes had been cleanly ripped from their sockets. The man was one of the few Jedi casualties of a small, planetary war on the Rim, and his sightless face held a look of perpetual horror. It seemed as if the last thing he had seen had been sent to mock him in his every waking hour, to dance before him in the silent torture due for his failure.
Both the boy's fear of becoming that fallen warrior, and the crude damage inflicted upon that Knight struck the boy like a clout across the face. It humbled him, for he saw the Jedi as a whole incapable of being marred in death or slain in life, though it was quite odd this fact had not made itself apparent when Master Jinn passed on. Even the recounting from Obi-wan of the fatal blows had not phased him; the Jedi were still venerable, and the passing of one had occurred too quickly, and had passed just as expediently to leave not much more than a passing impression on young Skywalker. It was a mistake, a proof of how time, indeed, was relative, and likewise skewed in the minds of children. He vehemently cursed such an ignorant understanding now…
…Molten slag crept up his spine, but he had long since lost sensation. The heat that would have surely thrown him into bouts of agony now merely lapped at his flesh freely. The pain receptors in his limbs had been dissolved, and feeling the slogging, semi-liquid that sucked him down was no longer an option. He wished to reach for the rim of the metal pool, to grasp the edge and find some relief in pulling himself free, but he couldn't rally the strength. A muscle in his youthful cheek twitched, and liquid fire rolled over two days' worth of stubble, reducing the skin to raw, charred flesh that wept tears of crimson, streaking his face along with the saline kind that now flowed freely from his eyes. Involuntarily, he inhaled to scream, but the fumes that rolled off the surface of the auburn lake had scorched him internally, and he mustered no more than a low moan that tore at his throat. Each breath did more damage, each one gave him a bit of life to spend; and promptly robbed him of it two-fold. Breath was asickening treasure to him now. He sucked it in to stay alive; he sucked in it to invite his death. Fate was a cruel mistress, granting him amid this private hell enough buoyancy over the seething fiery mass he lay in to keep his head and chest above it. He begged for his death, but it eluded him, a fleeting image on his consciousness.
Anakin had been a student of Darkness for a little under a standard year before he was confronted by his Master; his Master of the Light, Obi-wan. Kenobi knew not of the other who trained the boy, Skywalker had buried that away in his thoughts, allowing no intrusions, even by a Knight. The Dark arts sustained him when he was forced to drink down the lectures of the Temple, they encouraged him to complete his lessons there, if only to keep up the facade. Yet, the ruse had collapsed, and Anakin was given no words of encouragement to throw off the Dark path, but was instead offered objurgation and participation in a duel; as if aggression should mend the gap between young Skywalker and the Light. It was an increasingly long battle, neither participant practiced forbearance, yet its sudden climax had the younger man the loser. Kenobi had been confident in his own eventual triumph; he had fought the embodied powers of Darkness before. The Master wished to overcome his student, but not destroy him; to prolong thatmoment of enlightenment the other Dark foes received just before they were vanquished by the Light. It was always signaled by an expression of horror when a Jedi's blade pieced their side, only then did they see that Darkness was no stronger, yet it did not occur this way for all. In the same thought it would not occur in this conflict either.
The student did not have such confidence, only a brash invincibility of youth. Skywalker had never fought a fellow Jedi in such a situation, to spar was one circle of thought, but to strike to kill was disorienting. To fight against one you were trained to fight along side rebelled against what had been impressed upon him in the Temple from early on. His only strength was ebbing rage. He was but the learner, a student of the shadows and his opponent was a Master of the good. There was little surprise in Anakin, therefor, when he blocked an over zealous swing and lost his precarious purchase on the girder, tumbling into darkness only illumined in burnt orange and glinting metal. The roar of the shifting wind currents past his ears as he fell refused to let him know of the tortured shout that followed him. The echoes of Obi-wan despair dovetailed with a wet snap signaling the apprentice's collision with the thick rim of the phosphorous pool, and in the flickering light he watched as the body, limp as in death,slid off the rim unhampered into the boiling mass.
Obi-wan stayed no longer, his footsteps rang hollow on the metal platforms as the Knight retreated back to the forgiving arms of the last person Anakin had allowed himself to trust in those final days before his first death. Amidala wept openly into in the Knight's chest as she had for months when Anakin grew increasingly violent. She had hardly noticed it then, so enraptured in the soft, loving touch he always reserved for her, even when Obi-wan reported him viciously striking another student in the face out of nothing but jealous hate. As Anakin's sanity unraveled in later times, she found mutual comfort with the Knight, and when Kenobi returned that morning, red eyed and haggard, she needed no explanation. She grieved for Anakin then; for the proper marriage that was denied them due to Anakin's status in his training, and her own position as Queen; for the Darkness that had finally claimed him; and for their children she was to bear, that he would never know…
…As Anakin lie in suffering, the world about him began to become unfocused, his eyes would no longer respond to his commands to look right nor left; up nor down. What little sight remained with him flagged, depending on where he aimed his gaze. The severe head trauma that occurred took its most wicked toll now, detaching the weakened retinas in the young man's eyes, severing the bundle of nerves that transferred the images of sight to his brain. It was not painful when they tore completely, but only testified to by utter loss of vision; the blindness he had feared came now to envelope his world. He cried out, a choked sound that threatened to collapse his spent lungs. It was the sort of cry that had come to him his first few days on Coruscant, when he was but a child in the world that seemed to hold him in a bowl. He had sobbed each evening for week, he had whispered his sorrow to the chilled air, but so softy no one else would hear; it barely reached his own ears then, and often not even that. Now he mouthe his agony to deft ears, forming the words with his lips to assure himself of at least that function. He could no longer move below his shoulders, the snap that had coincided with his impact on the pool's rim had also spoken of three broken vertebrate in his neck, and it was a miracle of the human body that his brain took alternate routes to ensure heart and lung function, if it could do nothing more. He was taking in less air now, and while he could feel no pain from his lungs, he had instinctive knowledge that they took less and less in each breath, and to damn him further, he began to pitch down into the fiery abyss...
…Another Master had come after Anakin that morning, though he did not chase Skywalker, he had no need. The boy was to come to him here, to speak into red-tinted blackness that would enfold the Dark master like the tapestry of his cloak, to forge an agreement upon the ownership of the boy's soul. Anakin had begun to wander in his Dark path, he saw the power, but would not fully grasp it, he remained too innocent too strike down those who gave him love. The thumb of circumstance was on him, his mother had molded him long before Sidious took a claim to the same piece of human clay, and when the Sith tried to sculpt it, it rebelled like kiln hardened stone. His influence only went so deep, there was so little the Sith could do alone, and he was damned there, it had to be of Anakin's own choice. Thus the two dark spirits had come to offer a willing bond against the light, a spoken contract of wills under Sidious' influence that would bring Anakin to a line he could never uncross. It hadn't occurred. The same Knigt that had struck down his former student interfered now with the next the Sith wished to take, though all had not been lost in his contravenes. Shortly, the boy lost consciousness, and it was only then Sidious lifted his hand to spare the life. He had doubts then, the boy had been beaten, though if he could not mold the ridged mind to his will, he would mend the broken body and form it as he saw fit…
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"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle." - Robert Alden