The shadows were alive.
Gloom was heavy in the air, misting smoke and thick haze spiraling down from the black skies overhead.
Monstrous storm clouds churned ravenously, black and rumbling with fury that blocked out all warmth and light from the sun. The air was cold, like a breath of ice down his neck, with harsh winds whipping at everything in their path.
And in the distance, he could hear the screams.
He closed his eyes, furiously trying to keep out the nightmare around him.
The searing heat of the fire scorched his exposed skin, singing his face, as the flames licked at his boots, hungrily reaching upward toward the edge of his robes as the heat began to rise up his legs.
A blast of hot wind hit his face and he winced, cautiously opening his eyes.
The boiling surface radiated scalding hot air around him in shimmering waves, each brush of air ripping at his cheeks like vibroblades. Through the shimmering veil of the sizzling air, he could make out blackened outcroppings eroded by the torrid heat in the distance, with intricate veins of molten lava running across the rocky terrain of the scorched wasteland.
For a moment, he was lost.
This was not the place he had expected to be, and yet he knew it well.
He had been here once, a lifetime ago, and has been here ever since, trapped within walls of molten rock and drowning in a sea of magma that burns his skin from his bones even as it drags him deeper under the surface.
This is hell.
As if on cue, the shadows begin to dance.
He can feel them, just on the other side of the thin black veil dividing them, drawing closer around him. He can hear them whispering, feel their phantom fingers reaching out for him.
They want to bury him alive.
He began to back away, stumbling blindly over the melted ground, barely sidestepping an erupting steam geyser, but the shadows refused to be left behind.
They pressed in on him, icy hands grabbing at the edges of his clothing. He tried to shake them off, but there were too many of them, and he could only scream as they crawled over him, tightening their grip, making him their prisoner.
After a moment, he could no longer even scream.
The shadows were covering his mouth now, and his nose, and he could not breathe.
They meant to kill him, making it a long struggle into death.
It was only fitting, they whispered in his ear.
He had done it to them.
Struggling is useless, but he continues to do it just the same. It makes him grow weaker, though, and they seem to gain strength from each breath that is stolen from him.
His vision begins to swim, and he gives one last weak tug of his arm.
The shadows in front of him still, and a single wisp stretches outward from the darkness, taking on form and shape as it approaches him.
His heart skips a beat at the familiar face.
Qui-Gon Jinn has been dead almost two decades, and yet his visage has not changed. He is still the man that freed him, that fought for him to have a place at the Temple.
Save for the gaping hole in his stomach.
You must use the Force for good, Anakin.
The memory of that ghostly whisper, which had halted his murderous fury on Prestilyn, rose unbidden, flooding him with the shame and confusion of that day.
As suddenly as he had appeared, Qui-Gon began to fade.
He tried to cry out to him but his mouth was covered, he tried to reach for him but all he touched was smoke and shadow, and the long-dead Jedi Master disappeared.
Another soon took his place, though.
A headless Count Dooku reaching toward him with severed arms, flailing handless limbs in his direction. On the ground rolled his head, and when it came to a halt, lifeless eyes stared up at him, forever frozen in a silent plea for mercy that he had been denied.
Jerking in the shadows' grip, he tried to look away, but the shadows force him to watch.
Dooku's head is missing, and the headless body vanishes before his eyes, but he feels no relief, for he knows now that what is coming next will be worse.
And worse and worse.
Until he can no longer bear it, until he is driven mad by it all.
That is the shadows' goal, after all.
Mace Windu.
Anakin, help me!
Eyes dead and cold as stone, lips unmoving, simple staring through him with piercing intensity and an unspoken accusation that practically sings in the air.
Betrayer.
Then Mace is gone and is his place is a youngling, just a little thing, barely able to hold a lightsaber, staring up at him not with fear or confusion, but open adoration.
Master Skywalker, what do we do?
Even with the telltale burns of a hideous lightsaber wound visible across his chest, the little boy does not understand that it wasn't salvation that walked into the room, but damnation.
He does not realize that his hero is also his murderer.
More younglings appear, and Jedi young and old that met their doom at the hands of one they trusted, one they called a brother in the Force.
Wise Shaak Tii.
Young Whie.
Gentle Bant.
One by one they emerge from the wall of shadow, and with each new apparition he feels as if he has been stabbed, as if their appearance is slowly, and painfully, killing him for his sins.
Nute Gunray, as oblivious to what was happening as the other Separatists killed that day.
As powerless to stop it as the hundreds of others he has murdered since.
And suddenly his victims are driven away by the presence of an angel.
Young, graceful, every bit the queen that she had once been, she wears her funeral gown, hair adorned with Naboo lilies, and in one hand she clutches a jappor snippet, while the other hand clutches her swollen stomach.
Anakin, you're breaking my heart...
He sobs within himself, fighting furiously to break free of the shadows' grasp now, to escape so he does not have to see, so he does not have to look at her.
She is pale, deathly so, and when she reaches out a hand to touch his face it is like ice, causing a deep, soul-wrenching shudder to rise from his center. Her lips are blue and as they draw closer to his own, he feels ill, knowing they will be just as cold as her porcelain skin.
No, Anakin, I'm sorry! I'm sorry... I love you...
Just when he thinks she will kiss him and he will die from the anguish of that kiss, she draws away, an unpleasant smile that does not fit her tugging at her lips.
She pulls the hand touching her abdomen up for him to see, and he nearly retches.
It is stained with blood.
Unlike the others, she does not fade when the next specter appears.
Instead, she steps aside to reveal a small child.
Their child.
Dark curls fall around a cherubic face and deep brandy eyes beam up at him as the little girl holds out her arms, silently asking to be picked up, to be held.
With a kick that hard? his own voice rumbled in his ears, a different time, a different man. Definitely a girl.
Suddenly he is aware that he can move again, that his body is no longer locked in the unforgiving prison of the shadows, and he takes a hesitant step toward the child, then glances up at the thing with his wife's face.
She gives him an encouraging smile, blue lips curving upward slightly.
And so he reaches down to the child, and his heart soars with relief when there is something solid beneath his fingers, when she does not disappear under his touch as she has every night in his dreams.
For a single moment, he remembers what joy was like.
And then the child's skin begins to melt.
He screams, but he is powerless to stop it, powerless to do anything but watch as flesh falls away from bone until all he holds is a skeleton, and then that, too, is lost to him as it becomes ash that vanishes into the wind.
He looks up at his wife, but, she, too, is gone, and he finally understands.
Everything he touches, he destroys.
He is a monster, inhuman, an abomination.
When the lava begins to rise, seeping up onto the rocky terrain from the rivers running through it, he does not move, he does not even blink.
He allows it to devour him, because that is his punishment.
He will burn forever.
But the shadows will not let go, they are not sated by his suffering, they want more.
He feels them closing in on him, but does not look up.
A cold, clammy hand comes to rest on his shoulder, an icy breath spills across the back of his neck, and suddenly he is being smothered, darkness pressing in around him, consuming him.
Panic sets in as the Shadow cackles, but he knows he cannot escape.
He is a prisoner, he is a servant.
A slave.
Death would be better, anything would be better than this fate, this eternal nightmare from which there is no waking, but he is the one who forged the shackles, who put them around his wrists, who sealed them shut.
To burn would be a far kinder fate.
The Shadow's gnarled fingers dig into his skin, fierce and possessive, and the hood falls away from the Shadow's head to reveal a gruesome face and a cavernous mouth full of razor teeth that drip with crimson blood.
His, Padmé's, their child's…
The Shadow has devoured them all.
And now the Shadow will finish it, destroying what is left of him, and as those ravenous fangs brush against his neck, he only wishes someone had ended it long ago, that death had claimed him in the place of all the others.
There is a piercing pain in his throat.
And suddenly his eyes snap open, desperate gaps of air are drawn from his chest as his body convulses, and he finds himself staring up at a sand colored ceiling.
A hand touches his forehead, and he jerks away, but he is too weak to move.
Then a face swims into view over him, and he realizes that it is not the Shadow who has him, he has not been captured after all.
Lips move, but he can't hear anything over the ringing in his ears and he is too dizzy, too feverish, to read what the man is saying. He tries to open his mouth, to speak, to say anything, but he is falling back into the warm bliss of oblivion.
As he sinks into darkness, the last thing Anakin Skywalker sees is the concerned face of Obi-Wan Kenobi hovering over him.
Then he rests, because he knows that Obi-Wan will keep the Shadow at bay.
He is safe now.