Where Darkness Strikes Again
It was raining.
As a child rain had been a myth. A legend told by off-worlders who knew the wonder of planets that had enough water to dump it indiscriminately, wherever a capricious shower wanted to be. Such people complained of the inconvenience of rain making a regular outing a cold soggy grind to find shelter.
He had been envious that they could treat rain so casually.
And then he was on a planet where rain was scheduled like the rest of the weather. He had watched those weather broadcasts and if there were a forecast of rain, he'd find a way to be outside when the heavens opened up. His master was understanding of his fascination with rain, though often a little put out with having to send another load of laundry down. Once he understood, really understood, that water was in abundance and didn't need rationing, he'd discovered the wonder of a shower, how it mimicked rain and the wondrous feeling of life-giving water falling from the heavens as if just for him.
Then war came. He led troops through downpours, mud, flooded rivers, and violent thunderstorms. He'd been caked in grime so thick, he never thought he'd get clean until the rain came and at least washed his face and hair. That was when he'd understood that rain could be a hindrance, inconvenient. It interfered with troop placement, spoiled food and washed away tracks.
But rain took a whole different, painful meaning on Jabiim. For two horrible, disgusting months, rain was just as much of an enemy as the Separatists and half the citizens of Jabiim. Dry moments were fleeting and cherished in the horror as clones, Jedi, and allied Jabiim were slaughtered day after day like livestock. It had been when he was in a downpour positioning clones when there was a flash of pain that wasn't his and then terrifying silence from a corner of his mind that hadn't been completely quiet for over a year. For the next forty-eight hours, he'd led search efforts in a down-pouring thunderstorm that did not stop. He would have kept going if he hadn't passed out from exhaustion.
Rain now held pain, even now as it was trying to wash away what had just happened.
Anakin tilted his head back, letting the rain push his hair back out of his face like he would in the shower. He was sitting on a log. A log he had cut in his recent battle. His clothes were in tatters, his robes almost non-existent, and pants with gaping holes. He was already soaked through; he could feel water swishing in his boots.
Letting his head sink once more, he remembered. He had been leading the starfighters over Muunilinst, his master trusting his flying skills, as always, despite the complaints. A fanblade fighter had caught his eye that had pulled off quite a few unusual maneuvers that, admittedly, impressed him. It was the taunting "Catch me if you can," that had him disengaging and following. Even though he knew Obi-Wan would be disappointed, his curiosity got the better of him. The space/air battle was going well and he'd rationalized that he could be spared long enough to satisfy said curiosity.
It had turned out to be her. The evil Sith bitch. All thoughts of Muunilinst were gone, save for his master, his family. This bald bog-witch was the one responsible for Obi-Wan's torture. As they had worked together to help Obi-Wan release all the feelings, Anakin had caught flashes of what his brother-turned-father had been through. And it hadn't even been a fraction of what Obi-Wan had experienced.
And the perpetrator had stood before him.
Anakin hadn't thought. He'd just reacted.
"You!"
That was all he had said.
What followed had been brutal. Violent. Animalistic. That bitch had hurt Obi-Wan. That was all Anakin had been able to focus on. It was like a gift from the Force that she was there, because in all his worry and concern and fretting over his brother-turned-father, a tiny black part of himself he hadn't even been aware of was nursing the anger and thirst for revenge.
A Jedi sought justice, not vengeance.
Anakin knew he could never rationalize murder as justice. His meditations with Obi-Wan had made him accept that. He had sworn to himself, again and again, that if anything happened to Padme, he'd seek justice, not vengeance, else leave it to someone else.
It was only now he realized that he hadn't made that same promise for Obi-Wan. His brother-turned-father had always been strong and invulnerable in his eyes. Even those awful times that he came back from a mission injured, Obi-Wan had maintained his quiet dignity and strength, complaining about being in the Healer's care, saying he was fine.
When he'd finally come home from Rattatak that was not true. Obi-Wan had been broken down, chewed up and flushed into a sewer. He had never said he was fine. He had never refused help, leaning heavily on his Padawan for everything. The most random things would set off flashbacks, leaving him reverting back to the shell he was when Anakin had finally found him.
Each time this had happened was like another cut at Anakin's heart. Obi-Wan was his family, just like Padme was. Together, the two could fill him with such warmth and love that he felt like he could overflow.
And that this sadistic, cruel, aggressive, egregiously antagonistic, evil bitch had hurt someone he loved. His family.
And despite everything he'd been doing to prevent a repeat of what had occurred with the Tusken Raiders, Anakin had flown at the malicious bitch in the same red haze. He attacked with everything he had. His lightsaber. The Force. The trees. Stones. Vines. Dirt. Anything. Everything. Because she would never hurt his family again.
The darkness that had been sticking and clinging to him had diminished since he had started meditating about it with Obi-Wan. But it wasn't gone. It had surged forward as he fought, giving him power and an intoxicating sense of superiority. And as if that wasn't enough, there seemed to be darkness all around him that was heeding his call. Particularly at the ruined temple where Anakin had finally pitched her off the roof and down into a cavernous ravine with no visible bottom.
As she had shrunk to a tiny pinprick and disappeared, Anakin had let out a wild call of victory, shouting out his success with so much power and force that the local wildlife that hadn't already fled in fear, ran away.
And standing on that parapet of power, anger and sweet, cold vengeance dancing around him, a soft "...anakin...?" had echoed ever so briefly in his mind.
Anakin was no longer sure if there were tears mixing with the rain or not.
He didn't even know what to feel.
It was time to get moving. He knew that. Battle still raged on Muunilinst. But he just couldn't bring himself to move.
There was a sudden chill down his spine and Anakin stiffened, looking around. He didn't see anything, but that meant nothing. Reaching out with the Force, he shuddered. The Dark Side. The planet reeked of it.
He needed to leave.
Now.
Because darkness stuck and clung; and it attracted more darkness.
Anakin had had enough darkness for one day.
And then some.
It didn't take long to find the bitch's... Ventress's ship. Even less to hotwire it and lift off.
When Anakin returned, the battle was still raging, and one of the clones started giving an assessment of the battle and who needed help and where. Anakin, as was becoming increasingly necessary, put his emotions aside to work on the fight. Really, there was nothing left in him to feel, and as he sunk into the Force to feel out the fighters and the enemies and who was where and what to fire when, he convinced himself the nausea that he felt for using something so grey was actually nothing more than fatigue. He joined a squad and gave the plan - another daring flare of extravagance from Skywalker - and in twenty minutes turned the tide of the battle and then finished it.
It meant nothing to him.
He had boarded the Negotiator, and he had immediately retreated to his quarters and sunk into meditation. He needed to assess how much darkness was still sticking and clinging.
It was... disappointing.
All the work that had been done was... undone.
Anakin slipped deeper into his meditation to figure out what had happened to him. Much of the Darkness in him was... familiar. It was the thirst for vengeance. Only instead of only being the need to avenge his mother, Anakin was shocked to find that a large chunk of his darkness also came from a desire to avenge his brother-turned-father for what had happened to him on Rattatak. He had never even known that it was festering inside of him. Anger that Obi-Wan had been treated so. All the feelings he'd had after his mother had perished in his arms, only this time, about Obi-Wan.
He had never prepared himself...
And because of that, he had messed up on a grand scale. He'd killed Ventress. She may not have been defenseless like many of the Tusken he'd slaughtered, but the intent was the same. He'd called on the Force, not caring which side answered his summons and the inner darkness that all beings had answered. The same darkness that he and Obi-Wan had been working on purging. It had grown and undulated and wrapped itself once more around him, sticking and clinging.
As if that wasn't enough, some of the darkness from that horrible temple, that despicable world, had decided to stick and cling as well.
This was frightening, worrying, disheartening... So many negative emotions flared when this was realized and fed the darkness, making it wrap around him even more strongly. He tried to do as he'd been taught, accepting the negative feelings and releasing them, but the knot was too big, there were too many emotions to sort out and he couldn't even find one end of a thread to follow. How could he do this? How would he ever be able to get rid of all of this?
Anakin?
He jerked himself out of meditation.
"Obi-Wan!" he cried out. Anakin surged forward, clutching at his brother-turned-father's shoulders, dropping his head to his listen to the steady heartbeat that assured him after a nightmare.
Tears prickled and started to fall as the turmoil of everything flung around him out of control. So much darkness. So much. And part of it was his. What did that say about him? He wanted to be a Jedi. He worked hard to be a Jedi. He still stumbled and fell, but he'd made progress. He was still on the right path. Wasn't he? What he had done that day...
"Master!" he tried to find the words. "It's... everything's wrong... I just... what I... I'm disturbed!" Because the whole day had been disturbing from finding and fighting Ventress to meditating and seeing what had happened to him. And if the whole situation wasn't disturbing, Anakin himself was disturbed, because what kind of person was he? "Wrong... it was so wrong..." he shuddered. "Ventress... the darkness... so wrong..."
He was starting to get hysterical.
Obi-Wan stiffened at Ventress's name, his entire form going rigid with tension, muscles taught, before loosening and pulling Anakin close into a rough, firm hug.
Anakin hadn't been held like this for years. It just couldn't be because he'd shot up in height to over a head taller than his master. Obi-Wan couldn't wrap Anakin in a hug of safety because it just wasn't as easy as when he'd been smaller. Plus, as Anakin grew up, like all other teenagers, he didn't want to be treated as a child any more. He pressed his body into the hug, warm arms, rough cloth, strong grip. Obi-Wan never realized it, Anakin never realized it half the time, but his master gave great hugs. Anakin shivered and realized only belatedly that his clothes were still in tatters. He was shaking.
When they pulled apart Obi-Wan shrugged off his robe and gave it to Anakin. Selfless in everything. The Light in the gesture made Anakin's eyes water, he would never be so thoughtful in his life. Never. He wasn't the Jedi he should be. He wasn't, and would he ever be after this?
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said softly, wrapping the cloak around him, "You're thoughts are too jumbled, your feelings are overpowering. I can't make sense of it. What happened?"
Ah, if only it were so easy to say!
Instead, Anakin sent pictures along the bond, snapshots of what had happened when he chased the fanblade ship and the dire results. Attached to them were emotions: rage, lust for revenge, power, victory, realization, remorse, self-disgust. Doing it this way Anakin found his knot was a little looser, he could identify threads now. He had no idea that sharing could bring this level of clarity, and a corner in the back of his mind wondered why he didn't go to Obi-Wan so much sooner about the Raiders.
When he was done, they both took a deep breath and sat down.
"... Master," he said softly, "I'm not the Jedi I should be..."
Obi-Wan exhaled through his nose, taking a long pause before answering. "No one is the perfect Jedi, Anakin."
Anakin looked up. "You are," he pointed out. Obi-Wan never saw it. Never. And that was just like him.
Obi-Wan blinked and immediately tried to rebuff the statement. "Anakin, I'm hardly perfect-"
"A perfect human, no," Anakin readily agreed, "You're anal retentive, obsessive compulsive, you think rubbing your beard is an adequate substitute for a smile, you'll never hug in public, you have utterly no sense of self-preservation and don't even get me started on how much you like meditation." They both chuckled, perhaps a little dully, but the young man continued. "But as a Jedi? You never get angry, you don't let all those emotions you claim to have affect you, you always - always - manage to choose the greater good, you're self-sacrificing, humble. The dark can never touch you."
Obi-Wan Kenobi was the proof that it was possible to be the perfect Jedi. Anakin was the space-be-damned Chosen One, if he were as great and all-powerful as prophecy dictated, then surely, surely he wouldn't be having the problems he was having. The darkness shouldn't be able to touch him; and yet it did.
To think one with such confidence would have so little of it.
By now, Anakin didn't even question the stray thoughts he so often picked up from his master - especially since finding him. Obi-Wan projected understanding across the bond, something Anakin felt so strongly it wrapped around him like a blanket, and he mentally nestled into it, feeling parts of him relax.
"What you conveniently forget, Padawan, was that the dark has touched me."
Anakin shook his head. "You threw it off! So what if it took a year, so what if it was the death of Qui-Gon. I. Just. Keep. Attracting. It. What's wrong with me?"
Obi-Wan sighed and put a hand on his Padawan's shoulder. "Then perhaps we should learn why it keeps finding you," he said slowly.
The two sat down.
"What emotions were you feeling when you saw her?"
"You already know, Master. I showed you."
"Tell me in your own words."
Anakin ran his hands through his short hair, tugging at the longer strands. The pain made him feel good, or at least marginally better. "Anger. Delight-"
"One at a time," Obi-Wan said, rubbing his beard. He wasn't looking at Anakin, his gaze locked on the middle distance of deep thought. "Why anger?"
"Because it was her."
"Why? What made her so special compared to, say, Durge or Grievous?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Anakin asked, suddenly feeling snappish. Why was he suddenly so angry?
"No, Anakin," Obi-Wan said in level tones, his gaze finally turning to Anakin, flat and closed off. "It isn't obvious at all."
That was a lie, of course; Obi-Wan did know why she made him angry; it was bait to make Anakin say it out loud.
What would later gall Anakin was that he fell for it even though he knew it was coming.
"Because of what she did to you!" he shouted, energy surging him to his feet. "That fucking bitch tortured you, took away the Force from you! It's the worst violation you can do to a Jedi and she did that do you!" Words were pouring out of him, thoughts he never gave voice to suddenly falling out of his mouth. "She hurt you! She hurt me! That Sith-slut took you away from me! I was all alone because of her! When I saw her it just brought everything up again and I just wanted to kill her because she deserved it because of what she did to you! To us! To me! When you came back you weren't you; I could see all your flashbacks and it hurt, it hurt so much I couldn't stand it and if I felt that way I couldn't even picture what you felt like and I couldn't do anything! I tried! I tried so hard but you kept having them and I couldn't help you; I couldn't fix it, just like I couldn't fix my mother and IT'S ALL HER FUCKING FAULT!"
The energy finally spent, Anakin found himself breathing hard. Obi-Wan continued to sit still, a quiet rock against Anakin's storm. How did he ever manage to do that every single time? Suddenly listless, Anakin slumped back down.
"You said you were delighted to see her. Why?" Obi-Wan asked softly.
"Because it gave me the opportunity to make her pay."
"...'Revenge is a confession of pain'."
The old Jedi adage, though he and every youngling in the Temple had heard it several times, hit Anakin hard. His eyes widened and he gave a haunted look to his master.
"... What?"
His bearded face was still blank. "How were you hurt?"
Anakin knew immediately what Obi-Wan was asking. He couldn't bring himself to answer it. The words died and turned to ash on his lips. He knew the answer; he knew it like he didn't as a teenager. When he was younger all he knew was that he hated being away from his mother, being isolated from the other students. As he grew older and meta-cognition began to develop, however, Anakin began to attach different words to those feelings. In the simplest terms: he hated being alone. More accurately, because he had no control over events in his young life as a slave he had come to treasure those things he considered his. The things he treasured most were people, and when he claimed them in his heart he did so with everything that he was: his mother, Padme, Obi-Wan. And, much like a slave who hated having his free time taken up or slapped across the face for being funny or having things taken away because they kept you from your job, Anakin hated having those he loved taken away from him. He clutched and clung and held onto them as tightly as he could, and hell would rain down on those that dared try to take them.
Like the Tusken Raiders.
Like Ventress.
With Obi-Wan's question, Anakin realized with utter clarity that he would do this again. And again. And again.
Fear exploded in his head and stole his breath. Obi-Wan sucked in a gasp, too, a hand shooting up to his temple.
"Anakin... Anakin... where is this fear coming from?" Obi-Wan's voice seemed very far away.
That was when the door slid open with a fwoosh and Clone Commander Cody stepped in. "Sirs," he said. If he was aware of the tension in the room he made no sign of it. "General Windu would like your reports."
"Yes, Commander," Obi-Wan said, "Tell him we'll be there shortly."
Cody left, the door sliding shut. The two stared at each other.
"Anakin," Obi-Wan said slowly, running a hand over his beard before settling on tugging at a small tuft of it. "I suspect that there is a core reason that makes you so attractive to the dark. Even in our meditations I've yet to see you bring it up and deal with it, and until you do I don't think you'll be successful in this." He paused, something in his face changing. Anakin didn't focus quickly enough to pick up what it was.
"Master?"
"I... I cannot help you with this," he said at last. I can't face this for you, came the stray thought.
Perhaps for the first time, Anakin understood. This was something he would have to do himself. He had to face that debilitating fear on his own. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.
"We should make our report before Mace decided Muunilinst needs his personal attention."
Obi-Wan gave nothing away as the two left to proceed to the bridge. He didn't need to. His disappointment was obvious. Anakin was disappointed too, because he knew damn well he was running.
That just made him feel even worse.
Author's Note: Hmmm, it seems we might have disappointed you since Ventress didn't actually show up. Nor was there a true battle. We didn't wish to rewrite what was already seen in the Clone Wars animated mini-series. Yes, we know that this technically happens BEFORE Jabiim, but this is just so much more poignant if it is here. In fact this placement was inspired by the original version of Misunderstood (go read). No, Ventress is NOT dead, and will keep coming back as per canon dictates. Anakin just thinks he killed her. But at last, we have discovered what Anakin's primary attraction to darkness is (not that we didn't already know this) and Obi-Wan and Anakin can attempt to deal with this (though success is questionable at this point.)
We have three more chapters for this arc before we take a month break and put up the third part. For those of you wondering about All But Name, expect a new chapter for that during the break for Simple Steps. And possibly a new story that is not Star Wars related, haven't decided to post that or not now. The remaining chapters will be outside points of view, in the order of, Sidious, Yoda, and Mace.
Next week: Where Sidious Ponders