DISCLAIMER: I own nothing apart from my own work. I do not own Star Wars, LucasFilms, Disney, Anakin Skywalker - fml - and if this work of fiction is similar to any that have been done before, I apologise in advance. I can assure you, this was created from my mind with Star Wars as the basis and my own insanity commingled in.

Author's Note: REMEMBER, REMEMBER THE SITH OF NOVEMBER! Now, the apologies couldn't express how much I sincerely am sorry for taking this long to update, so please enjoy this pleasant surprise. As always, comments are welcome and I hope you enjoy.


They had convinced him to sit against the wall. Willed him to abide by their requests while using the notion of his family's health as their reasoning. To bring peace to his mentality and to search for the Light as it would mirror onto those in his vicinity. As the war raged on around them and pulsated from the man within, it was what the medically inclined inhabitants of the operating room needed. Peace and order to bring about those that were there in the room to the Hangar Bay awaiting them. To have the Hero with No Fear burst as he had would stunt them all, and with that realisation alone, Anakin Skywalker abided by their requests to stun the chaos for his family to leave.

Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with No Fear, deemed to sitting on the sidelines of both wars going on in fear he would hurt those he loved.

A sigh was breathed, only audible to him as his posture demolished to a slouch. His eyesight exchanged themselves between the three primary beings holding the majority of the attention in the consistent room. From the ruffled brown curls curtained around a now flushed, ivory face, body unmoving but to those checking vitals and implanting various metallic objects into her. As requested by Masters Shaak Ti and Vokara Che, Padmé had fallen unconscious as to lead any primary thoughts within her mind away from the healing they were trying to ensue upon her. The foreign blood running through her veins were being guided by the meditating Twi'lek. Doing as Anakin had and delving into the crevices that were craving to be satiated from being so dry. It was no feat to do as Master Che was doing, but with her skill and knowledge with the Force, it was more successful than not. Anakin could sense it as his entire gravitational pull towards the unconscious woman on the metallic table stayed within her to make sure Che was doing right since they didn't allow him to.

He was like a vein within her. Red and unstopping. Vibrant and strong. Continuously pulsing the life source through her for if he stopped, she would die. Like a red string of fate, Anakin couldn't help but think, ensconcing his mind on the thought. Entwined by a string that tethered them to each other; anchored their fates into one which they now were. They were tethered now more than ever as he could feel the midichlorians entwining with her blood as they were pushed along by Master Che.

It hurt to see Padmé as she was. Then again, it felt like a soaring sunrise to know she would be well.

A movement of orange and Earth tones brought blue eyes to settle on their second and third points of attention. The personnel orbiting them rushing in an aqueous wave that it made it look like a choreographed dance. To his knowledge, no children had been born in the Halls of Healing. From the many times he had been forced to set roots there after returning from battle, not once had the occurrence of a birth been recorded in his visits. Nor in general. Then again, that was only to his knowledge.

Watchful eyes caught glimpses of his children, quiet in their nature from the serenity boasting from Shaak Ti, as they were probed and monitored as their mother was. They were before their due date - nearly a month. A more critical case since they were twins. Twins… That word alone brought Shaak Ti's peace to branch into his tired mind and settle it. Not one, but two of the greatest things that could happen to the galaxy. Despite the urgency the staff felt in accords to his children, Anakin couldn't help but now they would be all right. Yes, they were released into the world too soon, but they were Skywalkers. By their birth, they were entrusted the exemption from being impotent. Their father had it. Their mother had it. They would have that potency, too.

A sense of Anakin felt useless that there was nothing more that he could do apart from where he sat upon staring. As if his unrelinquishing gaze were enough to soothe the ravenous war. How could it? It was the request of another to him, but which war were they insinuating? To each in that room there was a different one. For the patients, it was to live. To the staff, it was the fight for their patients. For the Jedi's, it was finding the hope and justice in the many deaths happening to their comrades while maintaining their duties where they were. But for Anakin? His war could not be simplified nor could any other conclude it into one thing for him as the Healing staff thought they could.

A hero was one that others looked to. When darkness was there, whether it be in the form of a person, a cause or event, there was always a counter to it. A chosen source to counteract its abysmal hunger and suppress it into the nothing that it personified within. War was to peace as violence was to nonviolence. For the villain, there was the hero. Darkness compared to the light.

To Anakin Skywalker, he contained every form of warfare that could be mustered.

The bloodlust within him ran rapid. It remained in the confusion he felt towards who the enemy was. Who's side of the war he should fight alongside rather than against. For a long time, it had been against the Separatists. Before that, it was towards those who were the root of the Separatists. When he was a mere slave child and Darth Maul tainted the universe and before that, his slave owner. There was a war that was always being fought, always having opposing sides. Who represented the good and who withheld the evil; and, for a long time, Anakin believed that he was on the side fighting against evil. The very darkness that threatened every being, whether Force-sensitive or not, seducing them to its depths. But what was evil anymore? The person that had taken reign of the Republic and the Separatist movement had been the same person all along. Palpatine had exhibited himself to be the good and the evil of the galaxy. Leader to what most deemed good and leader to those who thought they were good when the rest thought of them as the terror. That same person had always remained a constant as good in Anakin's life. Had always been on his side since youth - after he became a padawan from being a slave, to when he released the information about his massacre of the Tuskan Raiders. The Chancellor remained fighting alongside him just as Anakin remained to do the same for him. He had fought his war, had vowed to continue fighting but as his apprentice. As Darth Vader.

So had he been fighting for both sides the entire time? If he looked up to one and followed orders from a leader her led both sides of the war, did that make Anakin both good and evil? Surely, no, for that could not exist amongst the Force. There was only one or the other.

For the first time in a long time, Anakin closed his eyes. He did not look towards Padmé's direction, nor towards Luke and Leia's. His gaze had been towards that of the ground but nothing in particular from the designs of the intricate tile. Anakin only saw black with nothing burned onto his eyelids, and it was soothing. A relief actually. The sensation of exhaustion was heavy upon his bones. An ache in his side being numbed after making itself noticed minutes prior. He had all but forgotten the blaster fire he had absorbed while making his way to the Halls. It was a familiar wound, one he had sustained many times while in battle. It was something his body could endure for a prolonged period of time, just as the cloak of exhaustion was a native amongst the lands of his mind.

Peace. A feeling one felt once a war was over. Anakin felt it, and it confused him. Why should a person who felt nothing but turmoil within feel the way he did in that moment?

Violence was something he wanted to maintain on those who betrayed him. On the clones that had their minds obtained by another and against him. That betrayed their leaders, their comrades - the ones that led and saved them in battle. That killed their brothers that remained sane enough not to take on the murderous rampage of Order 66. That killed the Jedi's he had known since his arrival on Coruscant all those years ago; the ones who had guided him, raised him.

Violence was something he wanted to maintain on those who betrayed him. All of those who followed the ways of the Jedi, were raised to be one and who were one. It was his initiative to end their lives for ending his. For so long he had lived under their constant control and restrictions. Their scrutiny and unwillingness to believe that the Chosen One should release his full potential. Denying him from his mother and his lover. The tortuous pull against the emotions he wanted to emit for it was not the Jedi way. They had chosen him to be a Jedi, yet never accepted him. And the only person who did brought him to realise they had been against him all along. The war pertaining to the Chosen One and they were all on the opposing side against him.

Anakin's eyes opened to peer at the shrill cry from who turned out to be Luke - his son. Padmé had always said that if they were to have a boy, she would love to name him Luke. After all, she had always insisted that it was a son they would have, not a daughter. That was against his own knowledge that it was a girl that would bless the world with her arrival. Much to Anakin's dismay, his son acquired traits of him he didn't want to give. They deserved the warmth of their mother. The neutral tones of Earth - brown eyes and brown hair. Colours of warmth and growth. The obvious colours that his Leia had inherited as he had wanted. Not the colours of a desert. The yellow of sand and blue of blazing skies. A constant reminder of being enslaved to those who should never be given contentment or happiness. Who should be entrapped to do a monster's bidding just as the enslaved always had to.

Blue eyes were concealed once more as Anakin brought both hands to caress his muffled mind. It brought him back to his thoughts and the fighting that pursued. Comparing his son to that of being enslaved was denying any ounce of morality to remain in his thought process. The darkness bellowing inside like a thunderous wind ensured no part of the man could find shelter from it. That the dragon, though in a slumber, still released flames from his nostrils while he dreamed. It would continue to burn him. To blacken and create a coarse texture to where softness should be. To allow his furnace heart not to fizzle but to explode and char everything in its wake. It would leave his insides dark with no light.

How could he have let it get so far? To fall so far from the light and skim beneath the dark? It had always been there, though. Anakin knew it, as did the knowledge that he would birth into it as something else. As someone else.

Darth Vader.

Words were being spoken around him, of transport and the necessity for anybody who could fight to barricade the patients and ensure their safety from any possible attacks. They were to be moved to safety, to a ship in the Hangar awaiting them where they were to be taken to an unknown location. He was to be taken to an unknown location with people he did not trust nor did he trust with his family. Any other time, Anakin would be for diving into a battle with no sight at the end of the tunnel. This time, that wasn't the case. He was tired. Angry. Relieved. Yearning. Betrayed. So many coinciding emotions that created a curtain of perplexity.

Who could he trust if he couldn't trust the ones he always had? When everybody was against him, who could he trust?

Padmé. Her name was the first to fill his mind, eyes awakening to look at her unconscious form. A new white dress was wrapped around her, replacing the bloodied uniform she wore to birth her children. She glowed, a candescent appearance and a strong heartbeat. His soul becoming brighter with each passing minute as her life strengthened. For what she had been through that night was something he hoped she would never go through again. That neither of them would.

Her pain lingered heavily in his bones. The inner turmoil of knowing and feeling like it was too late… The loss of hope when she looked at him. The thought of how she had recoiled from him outside of the Jedi Temple niggled into his mind. How she had tried to protect her baby… Their babies from him.

A scowl blossomed onto his already strained features, realising that trusting Padmé was something that might not be returned. Would she still trust him when she woke? Could he trust her since, after all, she had been against him? Just as the others whom he put his life into, it was not returned because they were opposed to his nature. How could he extend himself to her now that she might not accept who he was?

"Young Skywalker," the soothing voice of Master Ti delicately wrapped the air around him.

Ignoring the usage of his age, Anakin mustered himself to rise. Shoulders set and chind turned upwards in a form of respect for himself and the air of the Master. The need to end a Jedi was strong, but the gratitude for her care for the twins was stronger. "Master," he answered monotonously.

Her black eyes skimmed over him, as if assessing. He didn't like it, though she gave no sign of an ill nature his way. "We must start our trek to the Hangar. A ship awaits the patients."

A nod was returned as his gaze fell upon first his twins, then his wife. The distrust towards the Jedi was strong in him, but the well-being of his family was stronger. He could easily request for a personal ship to dismount him away from the Temple, his family safe in his control away from the traitorous Council members and 501st Legion. Surely C-3PO was near. The only ship available for her use in the Republica's Hangar Bay was the star skiff. His knowledge of the vessel was up to par and Anakin would be able to maneuver them safely away since it was a ship that belonged to a senator. And has sublight engines and laser cannons, Anakin couldn't help but add on to fuel his argument.

"Anakin," Shaak Ti's voice broke his concentration of his plan bringing his annoyed eyes upon her. "If Senator Amidala and her children are to survive, we must maintain their progress with watchful eyes. On the hospital ship, such a task can be successful, but it is your duty to ensure they make it to safety."

It was a trait of the Togrutan Master that Anakin disliked - her ability to decipher the aura of another. To read the Force Signature and decode it from any discrepancies, using it against them to make them see cause. He did not want to trust her, but she was the only one genuinely perceptive of his family's security. An hour earlier, she would have met the end with his blade through her heart. Now, she was alive and leading him.

"I'll flank behind them and make sure no blaster fire meets them," Anakin answered simply.


The majority of the shots fired their way were in need to make contact with any sentient being wielding a luminous blade. Each sound finalising its route made to kill and others sent the fire recoiling to his masters. With such robotic gestures, it was easier for each Jedi to counteract the clone troopers attacks. Their aim reduced to blind shots fleeing their way in hopes that a target was hit, not much of their actual intelligence used to guarantee that it was actually done.

It gave the Jedis enough knowledge that Anakin Skywalker no longer led his troops simply due to the fact that he was now killing them. No remorse showed on his face - no sense of a General loosing his comrades. He fought alongside those fighting the 501st Legion and that alone paved the way that a new Clone War was unfolding before them. It was against the Clones.

"Rex, you're giving me a little too much fun over here," Skywalker's voice could be heard bouncing around the halls. Intermingling with the cries and battle shouts of younglings, babies, and Jedis alike.

"That's the first time I hear you complain about that," Captain Rex replied with an obvious smirk emitting through the helmet that had been long since removed.

Too much was bombarding the mind of Anakin as he maintained his stance twenty feet behind the wounded patients that were being transported. Emergency protocol had gone underway with every and any Force-user ran the halls of the Jedi Temple. Some were fighting the waves of red fire shot their way, doing what they could to protect the sacred place they called home. Others ran in the direction of the Hangar, seeking refuge in an escape that was promised their way. The older younglings, one deemed fit to become another's padawan remained on the battlefront along with others, dismay filling Anakin at the sight.

Their bravery was treasured, but children shouldn't be raised for this cataclysmic slaughter. It only brought the dragon back into his mind, claws gouging his eyes and making them see his morality with the fact that a short hour prior, it would have been himself that they would be up against. His cold blade leading them to darkness and not a burst of red light. Blue invited them while red led them to fight. They would have never stood a chance… Betrayers given their rightful end…

A roar sounded from Anakin's throat, a Force blast throwing five troopers into the stone wall, a web sprawling out from where their broken backs made impact with the stone and their lifeless bodies littering the floor.

While in the operating room, he had been tired - weak. Now, he was alive in the bloodlust. Fulfilling the necessity of life being taken in return for his retribution for fighting with a cause always meant for evil. To shoot at their General, their leader? They weren't his brothers, but mere droids acting as a system failure.

To be in his own action against what only he perceived as the opposing side was the only action left fighting for. That was Anakin Skywalker's war. It was against his own thoughts and not those of his mind being influenced by another's perception of how it should be. He was not lost for thinking someone evil, because everyone was. The Jedi sought peace but fought for justice. Chancellor Palpatine cracked a whip upon everyone beneath him despite having taken him in so long ago. The galaxy could not be just one and not the other. That was the true war, picking just one side to be apart of.

Let it be the Dark side of the Force reigning in him, Anakin would accommodate to the hate he felt for those that acted without morality. He would gladly welcome a part of him that embraced the emotions he felt. It was no longer the dragon managing his movements, determining what came next and who would die in its wake. No longer was the image of himself as Darth Vader reigning in his eyesight. It was Anakin Skywalker. Anakin's blade swung across the sliced air into a neck and out of a rib. It was Anakin sensing his wife's unconsciousness and children's liveliness behind him as the rumbling engines of rising aircraft in a confined space echoed raucously into his ears. The Light of their existence bringing forth the lightness to his steps, the swiftness to his movements and the wholeness to his actions. The Dark and the Light of the Force ran as one.

He would no longer be apart of the war that he had brought upon the Jedi Temple. He would not fight for either sides. The Dark and the Light would not define him, but they would reign alongside each other only as Anakin Skywalker would allow them to be.

The Chosen One was meant to bring balance to the Force, and the scales could not be even if one side was favoured.