Severus was awake and yowling, too, both in shock at the dream and in physical pain. Whatever else had been fictionalised in his dream, Anakin could feel that the painful scar in his foreleg was literal, and that it was hurting him now. Konstantine, wakened by the noise, was standing, checking the room for intruders, as far as he could see by the moonlight shining through the open window. Anakin reached out in the Force to flick the light switch, and for a moment all three organic life-forms blinked at the sudden bright light.

Severus bent his head to lick himself, not only to wash away the embarrassment of having cried out, but to try to soothe the pain in his scar. Konstantine glanced between him and Anakin, trying to work out who most urgently needed attention.

'I am safe,' Anakin informed him. 'I merely had a bad dream. Severus is injured.'

Konstantine murmured soothingly to the kit until he relaxed enough to stretch out his paw and allow Konstantine to examine the inflamed scar. Anger spiked in the man as he realised that the old injury hadn't been causing Severus any trouble earlier, and that Anakin had almost certainly had something to do with it.

'It was not my intention to cause harm,' Anakin tried to explain. 'I did not attempt to read Severus's mind, but – there seems to be a link between us, whether we desire it or not. When we both fell asleep, Severus was unable to Shield his thoughts, and my mind was open to view his dreams. I believe his dream was a memory, and the memory reopened his wound.'

Konstantine's own memory winced in understanding – obviously, he had been through similar experiences. He stroked the kit's soft black fur, trying to distract him from licking at his sore leg. 'Severus, it's all right. It's a dream. You don't have to remember it now. You're here now, on the Rock. You're safe…' he tailed off, realising that 'safe' didn't sound very plausible when Anakin was around. 'You have to think of something else, then the pain stops. Think, Professor! You showed me which potions I needed to take, earlier. Do we have something to soothe wounds? Something that's safe for cats?'

Severus gave an uncomprehending miaow that didn't so much mean, 'I don't know,' as 'I have no idea what you're saying.'

'Not sure Dreamless Sleep's safe for cats, either,' Konstantine went on, not so much because he still believed that Severus could understand him as just hoping to reassure the frightened kit with a familiar voice. 'Can't give it to you till we've asked Cheiron. If you took Dreamless Sleep, General, that might help. So you can't get into his dreams.'

'I could, but it might not help him,' said Anakin. 'I think – it is not the mind-link, but my presence here at all, that triggers dreams. We are both connected to the Dark Side, so my Darkness feeds his, and vice versa. His pain feeds the cruelty in my soul, and…' Anakin checked himself. 'No. It is not that my pain feeds his cruelty. Whatever else he is or was, he is not a man who delights in violence.' He didn't need to add, 'unlike us'. He went on, 'If we are to solve this problem, I need to conquer – to tame my Dark tendencies. I need to meditate. In the meantime, a bacta dressing might ease Severus's pain.' He wasn't convinced that it would – after all, what could a physical remedy do for a psychic injury? – but it was unlikely to do any harm, and at least it provided a distraction.

He still wasn't sure what to do about meditation. Jedi ideals of quietening his mind and letting go of emotion didn't work for him. After all, how could he be compassionate without feeling emotions of sympathy for Severus and guilt at having distressed him? But equally, Sith meditation, focusing on anger and hatred, wouldn't help either. He tried to visualise something associated with being in the flow – something where he was too absorbed in what he was doing to have time for anger and recrimination. What was the best feeling in the universe? Tinkering with something mechanical, maybe, or – better – flying. Yes!

He let go, letting the Force take him to whatever vision of flying was best – a spacecraft, or a flyer in a planetary atmosphere. Not flying in war, though – and most of his most memorable experience of flying, he had to admit, had been in battle. He needed a peaceful image…

He found himself in a garden, on some planet he wasn't familiar with. The air smelled unpleasant, and the surroundings – even the leaves of the plants in the garden – looked grimy, as though they were on a half-developed planet that hadn't yet found an alternative to burning things for fuel. Yes – looking up, he could see the huge smoking chimney of some factory. Still, at least it wasn't a desert.

He was crouching behind a bush, watching two girls playing on swings. The younger, about nine years old, with red hair and striking emerald-green eyes, let go of the swing and flew, laughing, while the blonde girl beside her called, 'Mummy told you not to!'

Anakin knew that he was receiving a dream of Severus's memories again. He looked down at the person he was in the dream. Yes, he was still looking through Severus's eyes, but this time Severus seemed to have admitted to himself that he was – or had been – a human boy, small and skinny, wearing a shabby, adult-size coat and blue trousers which he had long outgrown, so that they didn't just expose his bony ankles but pinched uncomfortably around his waist and groin. Occupying Severus's memories, Anakin could feel bruises and welts, too, which the clothes also pressed uncomfortably on. If he wasn't actually a slave, he was seemingly treated not much better than if he were. He was too warm and wanted to take off his coat, but that would reveal where blood had seeped through his shirt – his mum's old blouse. Dad wouldn't listen when he said that it hadn't been his fault what had happened, Sev knew he would always get punished regardless – never mind that! Just watch that red-haired girl. She was another one like him and Mum, not like Dad. She would understand, anyway. But her sister wouldn't like him, because she was ordinary, like Dad.

Anakin could sense child Severus's feelings, but at the same time, he was detached enough to think about them from his own, adult perspective. It was obvious that young Sev felt the same sense of wonder and instant adoration at the red-haired girl that Anakin, at much the same age, had felt for Padme – and perhaps not very different from the hero-worship Konstantine felt for the red-haired, grey-eyed woman Anakin had seen in his memories.

But this girl, though? Why? Yes, she was a powerful Force-sensitive, who seemed to have more control over her use of the Force than young Sev at the same age did. But Anakin didn't sense that she was an especially good or wise or compassionate person – not that she was malevolent either, and you could hardly expect her to have the maturity to be a saint. She was just an ordinary youngling, enjoying playing. And yet to Sev she looked like an angel, and Anakin could feel his longing to be like her.

That was it, though, wasn't it? He didn't long for her because she was a saint. He longed for her because she was a happy, untroubled, freeborn child, and to him, this represented everything that was out of reach for him.

Anakin realised that he was no longer occupying Severus's body. Instead, he was crouching beside him in the bushes. Looking down at his hands – yes, he definitely had hands, and feet – he was about nine himself, too.

The dark-haired boy swung round to glare at him. 'Why did you bring me here?' he hissed. 'Do you think it isn't bad enough that I have to live with my memories of Lily, without you poking into them? Just like a Gryffindor!'

'I am sorry,' said Anakin. 'I intended to give you a pleasant dream, to give you rest from these memories. I thought of flying, and this was where the Force brought me.'

'You thought I would enjoy a dream of flying? Let me show you!'

More memories whirled past him. Eleven-year-old Severus trying to climb onto a flying broomstick as it fought to throw him off, while Lily – seated on a broomstick which hovered like a docile mount – laughed at him. Severus as a teenager, lurking outdoors at dead of night with Lily while taught him to fly unaided, the way she had been doing in the earlier memory. This at least seemed encouraging, but Anakin, receiving Severus's memory, knew that they were working on this only because Severus knew that next time the school bullies threatened to push him off his broom, they might actually do it. Severus as an adult, hovering on a broom to referee some sort of flying ball-game between two teams of padawans, feeling sick with anxiety and the rolling movement of the broom, knowing that everyone on both teams hated him, but knowing that he had to be there to prevent another assassination attempt like the one in the last game, and that, to make matters worse, the boy he was trying to protect – a boy with green eyes like Lily's – undisguisedly hated and distrusted him. Severus in a night-time air-battle – on broomsticks again, of course – trying to cast some sort of attack at one of the enemy to protect an ally, but missing and instead wounding a young man who seemed to be the same green-eyed boy, a few years older now. Severus having to soar through the air unaided to survive having thrown himself out of a window – without having time to open it first – to dodge his pursuers.

'Do you still think I'd find a flying dream relaxing?' Severus growled.

Anakin had to admit that it hadn't been a good choice of activity. He had always loved flying when he was young, before everything went wrong and he lost the ability to enjoy anything, but it was exciting rather than relaxing. Probably working on fixing droids would have been a better activity, for him at any rate. But what would Severus enjoy?

'What do you enjoy?' he asked.

Severus paused. Anakin wasn't sure how old Severus felt in his head at the moment, but his voice had sounded more like his adult voice, and probably Severus, like himself, had spent so much of his adult life in a bleak fog of guilt and misery and self-hatred and trappedness that he could no longer remember how to enjoy things. Still, after a moment's thought, he said, 'Come with me.'