Chapter 19

Anakin is back in a dark period that he has not been in forever. After he had refused to take Candice's help, he'd been practically forced to do so. Anakin almost hates him when he finds himself he cannot fight. He imagined each of them doing the same thing, all of them full of disgust and wanting to kill him.

Anakin doesn't regret for refusing. Between all the loss and pain that Anakin faced, he didn't care about it. The problem is nobody understands. Everyone thinks he's a crazy little slave that needs assistance. They didn't need to know his agony, they have no idea what he is going through. And he isn't going to tell them. It's not like they would listen anyway, even Sabé give him over to Candice to abandon him. But he didn't need them thinking he was weak too, what good would tell do? He didn't want help, he wants to die.

He squirms when he feels the tears going down his eyes. Anakin forces his eyes to open a little to see if anyone is in the room. Unfortunately, Candice sits right next to him, a hand laid across his chest. He closes his eyes again and grunts. She had him now; she could do whatever she wanted. He lays, his head turned away from her.

Suddenly he feels a cool cloth sweep my arm. He reacts quickly, jerking his arm out of her reach and skidding to the other side of the bed. He eyes the mind healer warily, the roll of cloth held in her hand.

"Anakin, you were slightly wounded when they had to subdue you. Please don't make this harder than it has to be."

Anakin snorts. "Good luck with that," he thinks. Anakin swiftly turns over onto his stomach and hide both of his arms under the sheets of the bed.

"Anakin, please don't make this into a bigger problem."

Anakin stuffs his head into his pillow as Candice rubs against Anakin's back. Her gentle hands attempts to coax me out of my ball, but he wouldn't budge. Through the muffled noises he can faintly make out her please for him to unravel himself but he refuses to. He didn't care if he is beaten.

"Anakin, I'm just doing this to help you. It was a rough takedown."

He ignores her again. However, she is beginning to destroy his ball so he shifts his position and turns to the other side of the bed.

After a few more seconds of annoying pestering, Anakin realizes Candice finally grab over his arm. Before he can fight, he feels his body from the waist up go numb. He has no idea what to do or how it happened. She turns him over and pulls both arms straight in front of him. He couldn't fight it, no matter how hard he tries to move my body remained still. But he can still use my legs and talk.

When Candice comes to wrap his arms, what Rabé taught him fuel through him, and he kicks her hard in her chest and shouts for her to go away, instantly regretting at this violence. She topples over, a surprised expression written on her face. But when she regains her balance she come over and attempts to make him stop. Ignoring the regret he feels, Anakin just kicks her again and thrust his legs out. However, he couldn't get off the bed due to the immobility in the upper half of my body.

Then the two Guards guarding the room storms in. He hisses in their direction and follows their movements toward him. He notices Candice rising again and together they all come to him. The two Guards come from the sides and pinned down his legs and he is not able to break free. Candice grips his arm and wraps it with a cloth, pinning it closed with a metal clip. After she did the same with his other arm she commands both Guards to let go of his legs and leave. They do as they are ordered.

When they left, Candice come over and props him up on the bed then grab something from a kit. He doesn't care about what she did any more, the fight he just had drained me of energy. Incapable to move from the waist up anyway, Anakin gazes at his arms. He didn't care about infection or whatever Candice is talking about. All he wonders about is a way to escape so he can finally have the chance to kill himself.

As he muses over this, he notices the mind healer come up to him again. He attempts to avoid her eyes as she comes to sit on a chair next to him. Anakin is not in the mood for the lecture that he knows is coming for him.

"Anakin, I need you to look at me."

Anakin stays how he is.

"Anakin, please I'm here to help. Everyone in this palace cares for you and doesn't want you to keep suffering like this."

Great, here come the same old lies. Nobody wants him around anymore, not after he has failed his mother and would destined to fail them. So, why does she continue lying?

"Anakin, maybe you don't want to talk about you're suicidal problem now, I respect that. But we have to go somewhere, move forward. So, why don't we start with something simple like, 'how do you feel about being a recently free slave?'"

As much as he is trying to block out her voice, that one question comes through. What did he feel like being freed? Well sometimes good, enjoying the fact that he had met people, grateful he is away from his torturers. But other times, which is most of the time, Anakin despises it. Despises all the pressure of being away from his mother, their high expectation. Anakin despises the guilt that came with death and seeing the face of his mother is gone because he was too weak. Anakin despises being able to live but he couldn't leave, Sabé would hunt for him up and down throughout this galaxy. So there is only one way out of his terrible life, death. Welcoming death that Anakin yearns for. So why wouldn't anyone let him go there, where he would be happy? Why must they torture his soul by keeping him alive?

He remains silent as he ponders these things in his head. The whole time Candice sits there, watching him. Then, the voices came. 'Loser, why are you still alive? Poor Candice has to deal with the likes of you, unwanted, unloved, hated, weak.'

He tries so hard to get the voices out but he is still trapped. So he lunges out his legs and messes up the sheets trying to fight a losing war. The voices would always win because nothing can defeat them. That word bounces in his head, tormenting him as it has done before. He needs to get to a window so he can break it and jump out, so he can end it all quickly.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Candice leaning over him trying to hold him down. Remembering being hold down as a slave, Anakin jerks forward and, to his surprise, find he has regained motion in my upper body. Anakin reaches out to her, grabbing hold of her throat, watching as her throat constrains and he is close to snapping...

"Anakin, what are you doing?" She barely get out while he is choking her.

"I HATE YOU! YOU DID THIS TO ME, MADE ME MORE DEPRESSED, ANGRY, FURIOUS! I HATE YOU, WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!?"

Anakin spits that in her face. He allows his anger and hurt and hatred control him, he is a lost cause anyway, and throw insults after insults to Candice. Then, in the middle of his tantrum, he feels the world go spinning and his vision turn fuzzy. Disgusted with himself, he releases Candice and staggers backward, the world becoming darker and darker.

Darkness greets him as always.


For a long time, Anakin Skywalker depended on time. When he was a young slave, one of the things Anakin and his mother had was time, and the boy thought that he wouldn't miss that life so much now that it's gone. No, he doesn't miss that life but he misses his mother.

So yes, time is a funny thing. And all Anakin has these days are time; like he'd never had before. In his room confined with Guards outside, there is nothing to occupy him, no slaver to order him around, no mother to make him do his shores, no Master to drag him from one lesson to another, no reason to live.

All there is time.

Time to think, to plan, to mourn. Time to look over things, time to meditate, time to just lay in his bed and mainly just sleep, time to think about Padmé, Sabé, the handmaidens, the Jedi.

Anakin's first couple of meetings with Candice has been tensed, mainly because he would turn away and the mind healer would stare over him as if he is something else but a slave. Eventually, he begin to speak. The Guards are nice. They would sometimes put the tray of food down and wait until he eat, but they hardly ever exchange conversations.

He has visitors sometimes other than her. She brings Sabé a lot. She looks over him with sympathy and pity and is very patient with him. Anakin doesn't like to talk with the woman, but slowly time change that, and they become friends. Slowly, Anakin began to open up, and with each talk to preoccupying his mind, he didn't want to end his life as much.

As it goes by the seasons start to change on Naboo; Anakin can see himself growing, and although his mind is healing, the boy doesn't smile as much as he use to. He was alone without his mother.

And as it changes the seasons, time also has a way of changing people. At least that is what his mother claimed, even though seasons changing are hardly noticeable on Tatooine as things don't grow from hot to cold as they did on Naboo, as the white snowflakes - Eirtaé taught him winter in her books - go down.

That day when he saw the lightsaber cutting through his mother and her face scrunching in agony he had been so angry; so incredibly and pitifully angry.

He wanted nothing more but to die when he'd first come to Naboo so long ago. Even that was denied to him. His imagines become a lot more disturbing eventually. Images of him slaying that monster constantly flashes in his mind; he imagines himself cutting his head from his shoulders with any weapon, he imagines how he would strangle him with his bare hands, or how he'd just beat him to death like Watto use to.

But then the days come and go, and he sleeps and awake and eat and drank and bathes in the cold waters of the shower which he loved. And as he did something within him changes, he is so exhausted of being angry, he is so exhausted, so fatigued.

He is fatigued of being filled with the need for revenge on himself; it has been eating away at him. It is killing him every passing moment as he realizes with a start that he doesn't want to die anymore. He wants his mom...

Anakin thinks and thinks; he barely speaks to anyone other than Candice, he barely listens to anyone other than his own mind and he realized he has been pissed off for so long; he has been angry all his life. He'd been angry at Watto for being his slaver, he'd been angry at his mother for letting him go, he'd been angry at Qui-Gon for dying, at the Jedi Order for not accepting him among the ranks, at his friends for all not caring about him, at his older sisters for stopping him from killing himself, at the mind healer for adamantly coming back and growing attached with him.

And most of all, Anakin is angry at himself for being angry.

Yet now, that he has time, he realizes that there are still some people who cares about him.

So, as time did with all things, it changes him. It matures him as Rabé did, given she eventually came to teach him.

One day, Anakin is not angry. He is just sad, so painfully and dishearteningly sad. And, somehow, he finally realizes that anger and vengeance would do nothing to end the emptiness that had been born within him for a long time; it would not bring his mother back, give him a second chance to do things over, get his mother to a better life.

Finally it dawns on him that he would never see her again, that, no matter what he did, she is gone forever and it is so unbearably heart-wrenching that he did not find strength within him to be angry anymore.

Anakin feels his height growing, feels his hair beginning to grow longer, and him slowly matching how tall Yané and Saché is. He can imagine Eirtaé picking at his hair, Yané complimenting his height, Saché picking at his cheek, Rabé teasing him about his muscles developing, Sabé chuckling and breaking it up because she is always the type of person who saves Anakin from embarrassment.

It is a night like any other when he finds himself in the room, another long day with Candice but one that he'd enjoyed. He isn't going to tell her that he adores her company. She reminds him of Yané and Saché so badly that he is almost afraid, but she still cannot be another Sabé, the woman who he loves with everything in his heart.

It is a winter night so Anakin just stares out there, knowing that Candice promised to be back in the morning.

Anakin loves to stare out of the window, to look at the stars and morph images in his head. He starts to feel like other children. He realizes from Candice that his mother wouldn't have wanted him to kill himself. Anakin has yet to accept his mother's gone but he begin to miss Sabé, and Rabé, and Eirtaé, and Yané, and Saché...

And Padmé.

Slowly, the door slide open. It has been just another day of venting to the woman who he came to call a friend. Why is women typically the best people who he talks to? Anakin turns around to see Sabé and pouts slightly because he still can't face her. He cannot face the woman who months ago he had said he hated.

He stares at her intently, actually seeing her for the first time in so long, buried as he has been in his own horror. Finally, he realizes that she is just as depressed as he has been and that she is the one woman who stands by him despite it all and Anakin knows that, despite having lost so much, he has not lost it all.

Maybe he didn't have to be broken hearted alone. The belief that at crying wasted water is still there but he knows that Sabé would allow him to claw and sob as long as he needs.

After all the things his older sisters has, they have each other, and while they has each other, they could fight. They will do it together, as they always have. He is not sure how or even why, he isn't certain he would ever have the strength to fight for anything again, but if he ever did, he did not have to do it alone.

Sabé is still taller than him but he doesn't love her any less.

Anakin rubs against himself, feeling a shiver that comes from his own body; it has been so long since he feel something like this, but he has always carried it with him, never finding in himself to leave it behind or throw it away, never finding the will to let go.

He remove his golden jewelry necklace and hold it out, the symbol of his connection with all of them, the physical evidence of their friendships. He searches inside his mind, the thing that have been forged between them shortly after she has taken him in remains intact despite all of it. For the first time in so long Anakin reaches out, almost wanting to hug her, and slightly tugs at it, but he feels too ashamed to do it.

Sabé's eyes widens and she stares at him, stunned, as if she has forgotten it was there. He has almost forgotten it. He manages to smile at her, it is not an exuberant smile, not even a joyful one, but it was the best he can muster.

Sabé grasps the necklace, the cool metal rubbing against her fingers. She hold the necklace in her hand as her smile fades. "I wish we were able to save your mother." She says, finally. "I should have threw myself in to push your mother away from him."

"Oh, Sabé..."

Have this been her for the past months, blaming herself for what happened to his mother? Anakin never was able to fault her for his mother's death. He most certainly wouldn't have wanted her to die either and he wished that they were successful in saving her, but Sabé would have done anything that she can for him.

"I have made mistakes before that. I decided to take you in instead of giving you a better life to someone who may have raised you temporarily. I kept so many secrets and sacrificed my handmaiden status that I became buried in them and it almost cost me everything. But I realize now, that I didn't lose everything."

Anakin didn't feel the urge to cry for so long. How can he ever be angry at Sabé? She is like his...

Sabé watches as a tear slide down Anakin's cheek. Anakin is blinded by emotion that he almost imagines another woman standing in front of him. Shmi mattered more to him in over so many years and he wants nothing more but to bring her back, but he knows that there has to come a point where you would have to try and accept it.

"I'll always be here, mom."

Anakin feels a brief rush of shame for addressing another woman as a mother, but it's been possibly a year if not more since the death of Shmi Skywalker. Candice has been persistent in seeing him better himself, but she cannot help the fact that Anakin lost the anchor he had for the first nine years.

Finally, he understands what Sabé is to him. His mother's death would always hunt his mind but he have someone who have been there since the beginning of time. He cares about all of the others but they are so attached that they understand things about each other that Anakin didn't realize he needed to learn.

Sabé didn't expect that for a moment, her big brown eyes going wide. She strained her relationship with Padmé because she was willing to take care of a boy who means so much to her in a matter of months. Anakin would never hold onto grudges and Sabé honestly finds him a inspiring presence.

"I know." She smiles again. "And I will always be here for you."

Sabé hold out her hand and shows him the necklace she had placed in his hand so long ago. "Will you come back? Please? Come back to me? To us? I-I'll do anything! Anything! For you!"

The pleading in her voice cleanses any conflict within his soul. Anakin didn't realize how much Sabé may be hurting. Poor Sabé didn't deserve to be sad, and Anakin has been a fool for not seeing it for so long.

Anakin looks at the nice jewelry on the older woman's palm and he takes them and places it around his neck, where it used to be. He was never able to remove it for the past seasons as it signifies his heroism during the Invasion of Naboo and his bond that they all have with him.

"I've never really left."

Anakin allows the warm embrace of the only woman who he has as a mother to nearly paralyze his mind as a whole. His mother is gone. Jira might be as well. And so is everyone who he had back on Tatooine that was close to him. He would never be the same but he wants to try to move on.

His mother would want that for him, and as Sabé walks out of the palace, Anakin realizes that everything changed. Sabé is no longer living at the palace. Did he ruin Sabé and Padmé's relationship?

He can feel her shifting around with keys in her pocket as she injects it into a doorknob before opening the door. It is a well decent place that has various many bedrooms, at least by the glances Anakin is successful to send, the place has paintings of all types, and Anakin wonders how much they have to work for this.

"Ani, Padmé and I had a falling out," Sabé proclaims, pushing back a strand of hair. "So I had to use the benefits that I had as a Handmaiden to purchase this place."

...So Padmé abandoned him? And Sabé and Padmé are not talking right now? It is all his fault. Anakin should have been sent back to Tatooine.

Anakin clings onto Sabé harshly and eventually she collapses with him on her bed.

"I love you." Anakin cannot remember the last time Sabé told him that. She kissed him before and hugged him for sure but if memory serves correctly there has never been a time that Sabé admitted that she'd loved him.

Anakin is not the type for physical comfort always but her warm arms can make him forget everything. Sabé would never regret the day in her life to bring Anakin in, and Anakin would never regret that the Jedi refused him so he would have been able to know the former Handmaidens of Padmé. Their stares upon him was acknowledgments back in those days but they had thought he would have became a Jedi with little concern to what would have happened to him.

Sabé loves him. That brings forth so much agony. Anakin will not displease Sabé again... he will not let the tears go down his eyes no matter what. The fight comes, and Anakin can feel his entire body freezing up. He cannot win however...

Anakin feels his throat trembling, before at last he dissolves into sobs, tearing against Sabé. With protective instinct, Sabé brings him closer to her shoulder, sending whispers of comfort through his ear. Anakin cradles closer, not realizing that he has been lacking this for so long, but he manages to speak too.

He loves Kitster but nothing matters to him like Sabé now. Sabé is a angel in her own way and she is more soothing than Padmé. Anakin realizes that he should have given her the snippet instead. He even wishes that he ran into Sabé instead on Tatooine as she seems to be more independent and open-minded unlike Padmé.

Anakin cleans his mind of that thought. For now, Anakin doesn't want to think of anyone aside from the woman in front of him.

"I love you too."


Darth Sidious can feel a shift through the Force. Skywalker has been calmed severely and no longer has the intent to end his life. That opens him up in the future for the taking but for now it's time for the boy to begin his training. While Sidious can do it himself, the disappearance of a well-known Naboo hero would go noticed and it may lead back to him.

Using the communicating device, Sidious clicks the button which leads him straight to Obi-Wan Kenobi. The man appears within a second, and Palpatine offers him a gentle grin which he knows the boy would not be able to avoid.

"Chancellor? This is kind of a bad time. I hope-"

"My friend, I believe it's time for you to begin training Anakin Skywalker," Palpatine interrupts. "Recently, I have gotten a report from my aides who have been observing things on Naboo. He is no longer on a suicidal tangent but he may lack the emotional support. Go, do what was always your destiny, my boy."

Kenobi's eyes go wide before he bows, so much appreciation leaking through the Force. "As you wish, sir, thank you for informing me of this."

Palpatine speaks like he is addressing the members of the Senate. "Of course, young man, just remember I would ensure that the Jedi doesn't discover this."

Thus, Kenobi would be off to Naboo and Skywalker would be in the right mind to begin training.