Disclaimer: Not George, not Disney, yadda yadda yadda.

A/N: Phew! Okay, this chapter is long and full of a few rather unexpected and possibly crazy plot points. In my defense, these were not things I came up under the influence of New Year's Eve (hehe) or anything like that. Actually, I had most of this planned out way ahead of time when I first conceived of this story (yes, even the crazy bits). However, I wrote the Padme stuff first because it made more sense to me (from a standpoint of narrative and creating suspense) to leave this chapter for a little later. (Also most future chapters will not be this long).

Lord Lelouch: Oh, don't you worry. The romance will probably be painfully slow in development.

Jedi Master Misty Sman-Esay: No problem! Also, lol yeah I don't see nerdy Jaat as much of an outdoorsy Twi'lek.

Maria Rose: Yes, and yes to your questions. Also thank you!

Thanks also to sodorland and JACarter for the encouraging reviews!

III: Torn

The rain pelted Anakin as he struggled to clamber up the rocky incline. He had to get back home and get his stave.

There had been death this evening.

Ten out of twelve ships downed. Thirty graves.

Now there would be more.

And what was more, he had company.

Blinking hard to keep the water droplets out of his eyes, he instinctively dropped to his knees as the wind gusted, threatening to throw him off the slope. With great care and even more concentration he picked his way among the rocks, wishing not for the first time in five years that he had salvaged a small solar battery, from, say, one of the astromechs, before Jules and Rascal had led their remaining brothers to burn what was left of the pilotless fighters – including his – in a blazing inferno that could be seen on the other side of the mountains.

Yes, a solar battery would have been nice. Ion batteries were good, but they only lasted about a year, and it was very, very hard to mountain-climb with no gear and only one hand, Force or no Force.

With effort, Anakin reached up with his left hand and dragged himself onto the mountain ledge-path that led to the fairly sheltered cave he called home. He lay there for a moment, simply catching his breath, before starting along the treacherous natural walkway, one side of which plummeted down in a near-vertical drop much steeper than the comparatively easy way he'd climbed up.

After only a few steps leaning into the wind, he gave up all thought of dignity, deciding that while going on hands and knees along the ledge would take twice as long, it was preferable to slipping to his death off the rain-slick stone. With practiced ease he tucked the useless mechno into his clothing to keep it out of the way. He still kept it gauntleted, because even though it had no power, he figured if he ever got off this rock it would be easier to find a battery than a whole new arm, so he'd like to keep it as safe from the elements as possible. The gauntlet was still mostly intact, as were all the heavy-duty or leather pieces of his Jedi clothing, except for his boots, which had been through the most wear and were now held together with so many pieces of bark and animal furs that he felt downright prehistoric. Most of his other clothing and his robe still technically existed, though their usefulness was debatable. His robe at least he had supplemented with a makeshift coat of sorts made of animal skins – a mishmash of herbivores and carnivores, proof that he had both hunted and been hunted.

The coat, which he wore now, had a hood of sorts – as a Jedi, Anakin had grown fond of hoods – but the wind was much too strong for it to stay in place without him holding it there, and he needed his left hand to guide him along the ledge. So the hood stayed down, and the rain beat down on him and plastered his dirty, tangled, overlong hair onto his head, running down to soak his clothes below.

Come one, come all, and see the Hero with No Fear crawling on the ground while soaking wet! Look at how the man who was supposed to be your savior spends his time!

It was the kind of thing that would've filled Anakin with a raw, frustrated anger once upon a time. But he had to live, and he had to endure, and there were some things that just had to be done.

There was no one around to see, anyways.

There was usually no one around at all. Except the forest, if one counted the forest as a someone. Anakin still wasn't sure whether he did or not.

In any case, the forest wasn't about to judge him or laugh or at him.

Anakin had often thought to himself and laughed to himself about how crazy that kind of thing would sound if he said it to someone out there in the more normal reaches of the galaxy. But it was true nonetheless – and it was hardly an ordinary forest.

It was a Force-sensitive forest. And it had saved Anakin's life and sanity.

He had heard before about Force-sensitive animals, but never plants. Plants were different than animals. The Force-using beasts of the world did just that – used the Force, if in simple ways: to sense danger or help themselves heal quickly. Things Anakin had unconsciously done before he could walk. But plants, these trees – they were, like all plants, a wellspring of the Living Force, only so much more so.

Like the Jedi, they were a bastion of the Light side of the Force.

Unlike the Jedi, they merely existed. They didn't judge, or indoctrinate, or scold. They simply were. There was no question of loyalties or motivations. Instead, they gave and gave and gave out of that unending fountain – for support, for aid in meditation.

For comfort and healing.

He knew. He knew everything now. Or almost everything.

Anakin had felt the massive shift in the galaxy – no, that wasn't right. Not a shift.

A sudden and violent rending of all he had ever known.

Anakin sat crouched beneath a rocky outcropping in the shadow of a great peak. From this vantage point he could observe the plain below, at least several klicks in each direction. No one could sneak up on him from down there, and he would hear if one of the fighters came over the mountains behind him.

It was just as well. He was hardly in a fit state of alertness.

Anakin gripped his saber hilt tightly in shaking hands.

It had been all right at first, when there was nothing but shock and confusion. Being shot at. Avoiding dying.

Realizing that it was his men shooting at him.

Shooting back.

Five of the twelve ARC-170s in the squadron had gone down then – fifteen clones. Four more clones he cut down in his escape from the burning wreckage of his fighter.

It was just as soon as he had reached a relative, wary position of safety – just as soon as the Force cleared a bit from its desperate warning of danger, that he had felt it.

Death.

The deaths of Jedi. His brothers and sisters. His only family, since his mother's death.

Shocked deaths. Painful deaths. Confused deaths. Betrayed deaths. Humiliating deaths. Ignoble deaths in the dirt.

He had not felt all the deaths personally, could not quite pinpoint who had died where and by whose hand – though he knew they had all been betrayed by the soldiers serving under them. The Jedi were scattered across a galaxy at war, and not even his prodigious power was that precise. But a poisonous tide of the Dark side of the Force had swept in an implacable wave across all, and the light of the Jedi was going out.

That was when the Coruscant garrison reached the Temple, and Anakin felt himself slowly reduced to a shaking ball of helpless horror.

The knights and masters present in the Temple were valiantly defending their own, but the clones were not targeting the knights and masters.

They were targeting younglings, apprentices. Children.

And they were having at least some success.

Anakin felt his mind consumed by directionless rage. How dare they! He would make them pay for hurting his people, make them suffer for daring to attack when he was not there to defend.

But he could do nothing, so he sat under a mountain and made sure he would be alive to avenge his fallen.

Two awful, beleaguered, horror-stricken days later, the familiarity of the Dark presence snapped into place as the newly uncovered Force-signature of the Sith Lord who had wrought this madness reasserted itself to recognition.

Palpatine. Palpatine was the Sith Lord. Darth Sidious.

A sickening wave of shock and betrayal swept through him.

And then he really was sick, even though he hadn't eaten in days, when he remembered the proposal he'd been so bitter over not one week earlier.

Remembered how Palpatine always praised him, always told him all he wanted to hear – even initiated conversations that consisted of little more than complaining about the Council.

Obi-Wan had seen it – had sensed enough to be wary of Palpatine. And Anakin had been blind, had brushed off the admittedly gentle warnings of the only person who had really cared about him for him and not for his midichlorian count, because he liked what Palpatine had to say and wasn't willing to face the fact that in several key ways, he hadn't yet grown up at all.

Palpatine and most of the Jedi Council had been fighting over Anakin like children over a pet – and why should he expect anything different when that was how he had treated himself? When he had paid lip service to loyalty, but wagged his tail and happily followed whichever person was currently throwing him the most treats?

Anakin curled into himself under a tree and spent the rest of that day and much of the next letting himself be soaked by the rain.

The next day, Yammer found him.

Anakin emerged from his miserable ball of self-loathing and guilt soon enough to kill before he was killed, but not soon enough to stop the downed pilot from contacting his fellow clones.

He would have to move.

One week later, he reached other side of the mountains, and a forest at its foothills that gave way to sweeping plains not unlike others he had seen on his trek over the large moon's surface.

There was something different about this forest, but he didn't have time to pinpoint what it was. He had to discover whether this area was safe, and, if so, establish some kind of shelter where he could focus on gathering food and supplies, and resting. He had to regain his strength.

Obi-Wan escaped three days later.

Of course, Anakin had used their still-strong (much to the dismay of Council traditionalists) training bond to check on Obi-Wan several times since what he was calling the Great Betrayal.

Obi-Wan had been captured by Cody and the rest of his legion, rather than attacked with intent to kill.

It was odd, really, but Anakin wasn't complaining.

When Obi-Wan escaped, he headed straight in the direction of Lycradel III, where Anakin was. At first, Anakin had been innocently content to wait for rescue.

Obi-Wan would bring the ship, and they would leave and go find Sidious and confront him together and kill him. And then they would lead the remainder of the Jedi in a crusade across the galaxy to restore peace and sanity.

It sounded so simple in his head.

After a while, he realized that Obi-Wan's presence through their bond felt too tense, too harried. Too harried even for one who had just escaped capture – unless he was still being hunted.

And then Anakin's hope sank into a deep, paralyzing despair.

Sidious hadn't given up on him yet.

Anakin remembered the Darkness of what he'd done after his mother's death, that, completely contrary to her entire character, he had brought even more death in her name. And Palpatine had praised it.

Obi-Wan knew where Anakin had been last.

Palpatine did too.

Somehow, despite his best efforts, Anakin couldn't bring himself to trust himself enough to do the right thing this time despite the advantage of knowledge. Consumed in a black hole of doubt, he believed his attachment to his Master was too great for any good to come of this.

And so, still drowning in the emotional turmoil of the past weeks, he did what seemed to him the best: Obi-Wan, and thus the rest of the Jedi, would believe him dead and not come looking for him. With luck, Anakin would be too damaged to be of any use to Palpatine, who would doubtless not be fooled.

Obi-Wan was strong, though. Obi-Wan could get through anything, and he would get through this much more easily than Anakin could.

And so it was that with equal parts fear and resolve, and ignoring the sharp warnings of the well of the Force he had unknowingly fallen into, that Anakin Skywalker reached up to the rock-solid Force bond he shared with Obi-Wan Kenobi and, summoning all the power that flowed in his veins, took hold of it where it emerged from his soul to run to his Master's.

"I'm sorry, Master."

And snapped it.

Anakin Skywalker came back to himself surrounded – not physically, but spiritually – by a blinding nimbus of the Living Force. Detached, he looked on almost curiously as the shattered pieces of his self were ever-so-carefully picked up and melded back into their places.

He found, to his great surprise, that despite the gaping hole in his heart, he could breathe. He could think. He was not dead, nor was he a gibbering mess of pain. Astonished, a part of him wondered dazedly what sort of chance could have led him to a place like this, only to have an amused baritone rumble around in his memory, telling him to hold tight, little Ani, because the universe wasn't done with him yet, and nothing happens by accident, because you are the Chosen One, and I'm very, very rarely wrong about things like this.

There was something comforting about the voice that accompanied the trees in the grove. A sort of protection that he hadn't felt in years.

It was an impossibility, because there is no self after death.

But it reminded him strongly of Qui-Gon Jinn.

Anakin ran his flesh hand over the wood of the stave as the meditative memories faded away into stillness.

The grove had helped him put himself back together. And just like when a bone is broken again so that it can heal straight and true, Anakin felt as though it had been necessary. He still felt like himself, but like a truer, more whole Anakin Skywalker. He was all still there – he was still the boy who had been born a slave and spent his adolescence with the nagging feeling that he would never be good enough – not good in the sense of able enough or accomplished enough, but good in the sense of purity, nobility. Honor. He had feared he was tainted. Cursed.

Now, he no longer feared whether he would ever be good enough. He simply knew that he wouldn't.

There were days that he went about his business, such as it was in the wilderness, content in the knowledge that whether or not Obi-Wan was alive, they would see each other again, one way or another.

There were other days that he didn't leave the cave, but simply spend the whole day crying in a ball for the empty place he didn't know how to fill.

There were days he walked for months looking for the bodies of dead clones, to bury the men who through no fault of their own had been used as pawns, to give them the remembrance they deserved.

There were other days it was lucky none of the still-living clones were in his general vicinity.

There were days he sat in the grove and learned to meditate on the Living Force.

There were other days he climbed from mountaintop to mountaintop and scanned the skies for signs of rescue because he thirsted for vengeance and anything was better than just sitting around.

As the years went by, the other kinds of days became more and more infrequent. But they were always there, and as the days continued to pass, he came to accept that they always would be.

He would never be perfect. Not in the way the Council wanted him to be, or the way Obi-Wan convinced the rest of the world that he was.

Qui-Gon had never been perfect, anyways.

But as the months passed, Anakin knew he was getting stuck. If the Force was testing him, it was time for the next test. He had made great progress, had nearly passed this stage. But he could do little good here except to himself, and deep inside Anakin knew he could never be so selfish. It was time to go out into the galaxy again.

And the idea was, frankly, terrifying.

More than anything else, the fact that Anakin had years ago dismantled his lightsaber spoke volumes of how his distrusted himself as a Jedi Knight, a title he, if he were to be honest, no longer thought he should have been given so soon.

Instead, experimenting with the windfall from the wood in the grove, Anakin had carved a stave of sorts and implanted his saber crystal into the center. He had learned to use it very well, had seen how it helped him use the Force with more precision than he had ever thought possible. And every time he used it, it grew stronger, until he began to suspect he might be able to legitimately use it in a duel. Force-strengthened staves were not unheard of, though so uncommon that Cin Drallig was the only Jedi he knew that could use one proficiently – and that was only because it was part of Master Drallig's job description as Battle-Master. But he had only ever heard of them as physical weapons, never for the purposes he put this one to.

Anakin built a fire in his cave and dried off as best he could. The light was fading fast from the cloud-darkened, still-rainy sky. It would be wisest to wait for tomorrow to head down to the visitors.

This was it, he knew. He was leaving.

He set his stave and his coat and boots to one side, and then, after a moment's pause, put the pieces of his saber hilt into a skin pouch to take with him.

He smiled a little to himself as he drifted off to sleep.

Well, whatever else happens, I'll probably get a new battery out of it.