Chapter 1 - Tethered
Plot: Half-Force beings can't die, not even from mortal injuries. Instead, they just develop an unexplainable connection to the person who killed them, that lets the other control them. Anakin didn't mean to find that out by accident when he fights Windu during Operation Knightfall. He always felt like the Jedi's slave. He just didn't expect it to become literal. And then he's sent on a mission with Obi-Wan, for the first time since the Jedi fell.
Yes, I know this isn't how the Force works. No, I don't care. =) Windu might seem a little bit OOC, but there is a reason for that...
PS: Anakin has also never done anything wrong ever ever 333 but that doesn't mean anyone else agrees... so prepare for a lot of angsssst
WARNINGS: Self-harming, suicidal thoughts, homicide from the murdered person's POV if that needs a warning..., the horrors of being immortal, emotional abuse
~ Tirana Sorki
"Our worst fears have been realized. We must move quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive."
"You will need my help if you are going to arrest him."
"For your own, stay out of this affair... If you what you have told me is true, you will have gained my trust, but for now, remain here."
"You Sith disease. I am going to end this once and for all."
"It's not the Jedi way."
"Power! Unlimited power!"
"What have I done?"
"Henceforth you shall be known as Darth Vader."
"Do what must be done, Lord Vader. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy."
**w**
He can't save everyone. Not this time. The knowledge has settled deep in his gut, a sickening knowing that he can't shake. He's too overwhelmed from the – everything that just happened to think of anything. The Jedi just committed treason, turned on everything Anakin thought they believed in. He saw Windu about to break the Jedi Code.
Stopping them is for the greater good, like – like they always taught him.
And he doesn't get a say in this now more than he ever has. It's the Chancellor's orders, and he has no choice to back out. No choice but to fight if he doesn't want every last one of his boys slaughtered here, and if he has to choose who to defend in a fight to the death between them and the Jedi, it's – it's not a question of who he's going to choose.
Especially not when Padme and his child's life are on the line. Not when he hasn't truly ever been one of the Jedi. They've never once treated him like it, not truly. He's their weapon, and now – now he's the Chancellor's.
He doesn't think. Can't.
Doesn't mean he doesn't hate himself more and more with each passing moment.
Doesn't mean he doesn't know how he'll never be able to live with himself again, but he can't stop.
He can feel the death surrounding him. Death by his hand and everyone else's. Feels like with every death is ripping him apart anew.
This isn't for himself. It's for his family, for his boys, for – for the galaxy. He keeps moving.
Until a purple lightsaber floods the darkened hallway in front of him, and Anakin stops cold.
"Skywalker," Windu hisses. His eyes are burning with fury.
What – what he's doing here?
Anakin freezes, for only a moment, before raising his own blade. He can't stop and freeze up, no matter how confused he is. Windu was – the one who started this all in the first place. The one who was going to commit treason and got all the rest of the Jedi to go along with him. He's the one who Anakin has to stop most of all. He's – he has to stop the masters first. They're by far the most dangerous.
Anakin moves forward, letting the Force fuel his moves as he attacks him. But Windu has always been good at fighting Dark Siders and Anakin never meant to give in to the Dark Side like this even if he already committed Sidious but he couldn't hold it back anymore. Still remembers what it felt like to be on his knees to a master again – not that he's truly ever been anywhere else.
Any sense of calm evades him now. He can't feel anything but the death and destruction and his steadily growing self-loathing and anger at the Jedi for things coming to this and for hurting his boys and –
Windu's lightsaber swings up to clash against his. The duel is fast and furious. Other Jedi come to join the fight and Anakin's able to take a couple of them down until it's only Windu again, but the Jedi Master is still holding his own.
Anakin doesn't know when he moved wrong enough to leave an opening, but then Windu's lunging forward – irrespective of the fact that Anakin's nearly about to take his head off – plunging his blade straight through Anakin's lower chest.
He has no idea how far it went, but a strangled gasp escapes him and he hardly remembers falling, but he hits the floor at Windu's feet a moment later. He just –
Feels like a hole is steadily burning through him and the pain is only worse and worse by the moment – like his insides are on fire and it's not stopping. He can't breathe. Can't – anything.
Blaster shots ring out in the background. It sounds far away but he can see the flashes so it must be somewhere close by, even if he can't muster up enough energy to twist his enough to see what's happening.
But he can hear the occasional cries of pain. It's his boys and Windu is slaughtering all of them. This – this is why –
But there's nothing he can do anymore. He failed. Failed. And he's – he's dying.
Can't say he really... minds that. Not anymore. Not after everything. Means he'll finally be free, but he doesn't want to leave all his boys behind or Ahsoka or Padme and he's never going to even get the chance to see his child –
Darkness slowly hazes over his vision, and he blacks out.
Except it's... not the end?
Consciousness is slowly slipping back in, but instead of the sound of fighting, everything is quiet. Too quiet. And something's – something's wrong. Can't say what it is. but he can feel an overwhelmingly strong Force presence in his mind. And it's... Windu?
Feels like their bond just multiplied a hundred-fold or something insane, and that doesn't... make any sense? He feels wrong all over and everything hurts. There's something wrong with his mind. Can't figure out what it is. Something's –
At least he can breathe again.
Why is he still alive? That – that shouldn't even be possible.
Anakin rolls over onto his side, wincing at the sharp pain spearing through him. He shifts enough that he's moving up to lean on his elbow, cautiously looking down at himself. His robes are burned black in the general area of the wound and he doesn't want to know if the black ash surrounding it is all his robes or something else. But he's so exhausted he frankly doesn't want to move at all right now.
Why can he feel Windu so strongly? And it suddenly feels like he's coming closer.
Not good. He needs to get up. And get out. Determine the status and see what's happening. The Force is still screaming of death.
His fault.
It is, even if the Jedi made their choice.
He can't say it doesn't feel like he deserves every bit of how much this is hurting. Anakin pushes himself into a sitting position with a groan, pressing a hand to his stomach at the sharp pain running through him. Forget trying to go fight. He doesn't even know how he's supposed to stand right now and that's saying something. How deep was the wound? How –
He's lying off to the side of the hall and he can hear footsteps approaching. Anakin looks up sharply. His bond with Windu pulses again.
It's the Jedi Master himself.
"You were dead," Windu says sharply, crossing the room, "How are you alive now? What did you do?"
As if he did something? He doesn't bother answering, just flings the Jedi Master across the hall with the Force, trying to pull himself upright. He barely makes it to his feet, ignoring the strangled gasp that escapes him as he nearly falls, before a Force wave catches him, flinging him into the wall before he can block it.
A strangled scream escapes him as his wound is jarred and he lands on his knees, trying and failing to suck air into his lungs past the burning pain in his chest.
Boots sharply hit the floor he looks up sharply to see Windu stalking towards him, leveling his lightsaber at his throat before Anakin can try to move again. But for how much his chest is burning, he hardly has the mind to try that. Everything hurts, and he presses away from the lightsaber instinctively, the moments ago when it ran him through replaying through his mind again.
"How are you alive?" Windu demands.
"I don't know," Anakin grits out. It's not like he has any more of an idea either.
"You had to have done something."
"You're the one who killed me. Maybe you didn't do it well enough," Anakin snips back. Seriously, what's he supposed to say?
He's not stuck in a time loop or something equally ridiculous, is he? Because that's absurd, but –
The blade presses closer against his neck nearly enough to burn, but Windu isn't pulling back. "There are rumors of beings with a deep connection to the Force that can't die. Perhaps they are more than mere legends." His eyes are dark, burning with anger. "But you're too dangerous to be left alive."
Anakin doesn't have the chance to react before it happens, Windu's blade running through him again.
He vaguely registers screaming, struggling to breathe when everything feels like it's on fire all over again only it's much worse this time.
Windu gasps faintly, landing on his knees next to him.
Something's hurting him too but Anakin can't figure out what it is. Doesn't care to and wouldn't have the mental space to think about it even if he did, as darkness claims him. Maybe it's a phantom pain that he's sensing through their bond, though that doesn't really make sense.
Except then, he wakes up again.
Only this time, it's somewhere else entirely.
He has no idea where it is, but his wrists are stuncuffed to the frames of a bunk – he must be on a ship, from the layout of the room. And that means someone must have taken him.
Anakin can still feel Windu's Force presence overwhelmingly in his mind, almost as though it's a part of him, whatever that even means, and just slightly nudging outward with the Force, it's enough to tell that he's here.
Windu took him.
Force.
He needs to get out of here right now. The panic that lights in his chest is icy and overwhelming. Can't stop remembering the second time all over again – he doesn't think he'll ever get it out of his head and he has no idea why he's alive but he can't stay here. What's he even taking him for? Is he planning to keep trying to find ways to kill him? Anakin needs to get back to Sidious, needs to –
He reaches out with the Force, twisting the metal of the bunk then snapping it. It takes all his concentration and he's practically gasping from the effort when it already feels so hard to breathe, but the metal shatters with a much too large snap, freeing him from the cuffs – which he can't well open with the Force because they're such concentrated energy. But now they're only around his wrists and attached to nothing, so he just needs to figure out a way to get out of here.
Pushing himself upright, Anakin stumbles to the door.
Only for the door to snap open before he can make it out, to see Windu standing there.
He jerks a step back instinctively, gathering the Force to him to lash out. His heart is already in his throat, and he can't – He can't let himself die here all over again.
"I don't think you'll be going anywhere, Skywalker," Windu warns, eyes narrowed.
He tries not to show the fear smothering him, but it's hard not too when he can't even breathe. Both from fear and the pain in his chest. Doesn't want to know what it looks like with two stab wounds. "You can't keep me here," Anakin shoots back.
Sidious will come for him.
He doesn't want to be anywhere near the Sith, not when he realized who he truly is, when he's now his master not his friend, but anything would beat being near Windu right now.
"I've read enough about these legends of Force beings in the time you've been out," he retaliates, "You will stay in here until I tell you otherwise."
The words vibrate through him, through something in his mind, and his body jerks to a stop almost of its own accord. It feels almost like a... mind trick? Except not exactly. It's more a – it's not that he doesn't want to do it, it just doesn't feel like he physically can, and he feels himself slowly move back to the half-destroyed bunk, sinking onto it.
Windu seems distinctly satisfied as he turns to leave the room.
All Anakin can feel is a steadily building overwhelming terror. What is he – what is he doing to him what just happened how did he even do that –
He doesn't know what is, why it doesn't feel like he can – can disobey it.
He's always belonged to the Jedi, in some form or other, but never – never like this. He's not – what.
He can't outright disobey him. He just... can't?
It's not even a surrender, even if he's half a mind to back down just from how scared he is. This is something he doesn't have control over.
The only thing he's always had as a slave is his mind. That's the one thing no one could take away from him. But now he doesn't even have that anymore. He can't even resist passively, can't anything if he can't control his own mind.
He's never felt so violated and used before. Never felt an unclenching terror quite this strong before either because he's never been so completely powerless before.
And this doesn't make any sense. Doesn't –
How is he going to get away from him if he – he can somehow borderline Force suggest him?
A sharp knock on the door jars Anakin to wakefulness, through the haze of the nightmares replaying in his mind.
"Skywalker," Windu's voice calls sharply and Anakin stiffens instinctively, pushing himself upright.
"Yes?" He probably ought to get up to answer the door – not as if Windu can't open it if he wants to. He certainly wasn't given private quarters here. He's nothing more than a prisoner – but he really doesn't want to. Never wants to be anywhere near him. He never has and it's far truer now.
"I expect you at the briefing room in half an hour," Windu replies, tone clipped.
Footsteps move away from the door seconds later, without waiting for a response.
Anakin drops his head into his hands, breathing in and out, trying to gain some semblance of control of – of something. As if that's even possible since all of this started. It's been weeks since the Jedi fell and the Empire formed. He doesn't know exactly.
There's nothing that can take an edge of the emotion strangling him. The guilt or the loneliness or the bitterness, or the – any of it.
He wishes he'd died at the Temple. It's not like he didn't deserve it, but maybe that's exactly why he didn't. Because that was too... fast. Too easy. Is that why the Force didn't let him go, instead doing something that should be impossible? Bringing him back to life somehow?
But it's not like what the Jedi want of him is any better than what the Sith did. Not really.
Not as if he even knows what's right or isn't anyway. Doesn't think he ever has. Everything was clear and simple on Tatooine. He would help people but most of all he would protect his family and friends and dream about being free. That was easy.
Nothing ever has been since.
It always felt like there was something irrevocably wrong or broken about him as a Jedi, that he could never be good enough to be one of them. That's what Windu's told him repeatedly and it's not like it's ever felt untrue. Maybe from his past, from being hit a few too many times and beaten into submission to ever be as good as the rest. Maybe that's the real reason all he's capable of is destroying everything around him, incapable of ever figuring out what it means to be free. Or maybe it's that he never was and never will be, and maybe never deserves to be anyway.
And he needs to get ready for the day and get to the briefing room before he makes Windu angry.
His new master.
In more ways than he ever was before. Anakin still doesn't want to think about that and everything that comes with it, but it's been haunting his mind from the moment he came back from the dead and he has no idea if was something the Force did to him, or something Windu himself did to him.
He wishes things were like they used to be, but it's not as if anything was more real then either. He belonged to the Jedi just as much then as he does now. But at least he wasn't so completely alone. Not like he deserved even them anyway, did he?
Memories of the Jedi falling on his lightsaber, mingled with seeing the Jedi unhesitatingly cutting down his boys replays through his mind again.
Stop thinking. Just get moving.
He fumbles his way through the 'fresher quickly enough, ignoring how much his hands trembling from the sheer effort of moving this much right now, pausing only long enough to study the awful scars from when he was stabbed. They're still healing and the indentation is still deep and sore, but he frankly has no idea how it healed this much in the first place. He can still remember every bit of the burning pain when the lightsaber plunged into him and it was bad. How he survived that doesn't make an ounce of sense.
Nor does the – the part of the connection he now has to Windu.
Get going.
He still feels half dead on his feet as he stumbles out of the 'fresher. To be fair, he has ever since waking up from being dead or maybe ever since he started having nightmares of Padme dying. Feels like that was a lifetime ago already, for how different everything is. Doesn't know if the exhaustion is from the injury or from his emotional state, or both, or... or what. Probably doesn't matter as long as he can keep functioning, even if the number one thing he wants to do right now is stop functioning.
Never mind the part where he doesn't get to die so forget that.
He could eat but he doesn't want to take the time. Doesn't think he could keep it down very well, anyway. And he can't keep skipping eating because he doesn't feel like it but he just – just doesn't want to right now. Having to face Windu is always enough to kill his appetite entirely.
Anakin slips out of the small room, going into the rest of the rebel base. The surviving Jedi here and whoever their allies are repurposed an old Republic base for resistance against the Empire. Exactly what Anakin doesn't want to be helping with, but it's not like anyone was asking him.
He makes it to the briefing room barely in time, trying to ignore how his heart rate is picking up the moment he enters the room. Windu is already waiting for him, face twisted in a scowl. Though what's always most unnerving is the way his eyes glitter black.
Why are his eyes black? Literally the entire thing is black. They don't even look like eyes.
He didn't look like that when he stabbed Anakin. When he woke up, that's what Windu looked like. That's half of why he can't figure out what happened. Something about the Jedi Master has felt increasingly wilder and emptier and like his Force presence is maybe fading a little, to something hollow and dark, whatever that even means. All he knows is that it's... terrifying, when he has so much control over him.
Anakin shuffles up to the holotable, crossing his arms in an effort to hide how uncomfortable he is, how much he wants to be anywhere else. Not like it's not obvious. He digs his metal fingers into his left arm, enough to hurt.
The pain is distracting. That's what he needs right now.
"The mission you need to go on is extremely important," Windu says, tone dripping with the venom he always speaks with. He wanted Anakin dead. Apparently, that didn't work so well. He's always been cold with him, but it's even more true now. "You will be working with someone else but I expect it not to distract you. Your attachments have caused more than enough damage already. It's long past time you learn to control it."
His gut flips uneasily and he nods, not looking up.
Doesn't really want to know what he means or what he's going to have Anakin do this time. It's not as if it's something he can say no too.
Maybe the problem always has been him. That's what everyone's always told him. Can't say it doesn't feel like it because it certainly does. Even if it wasn't just because of his attachments that he Fell. Doesn't mean that wasn't part of it, and – He doesn't want to think about this anymore.
A familiar Force presence is suddenly nagging at the edge of his senses, the feel of coming rain, and Anakin looks up abruptly when the other door in the room opens.
It's Obi-Wan?
Air freezes in his lungs as he stares at him. He hasn't seen Obi-Wan, since –
"Goodbye old friend. May the Force be with you."
He didn't even know that Obi-Wan survived Operation Knightfall. Hadn't wanted to think about it, no matter how desperately he didn't want to think that when he left for Utapau was the last time he would ever see him. Sidious had told him very clearly that Obi-Wan was a traitor too, and if the Council was plotting treason, he would have been. Anakin couldn't let himself think about it, nor of his fear for him or of him – because he could only imagine what it would mean once Obi-Wan realized he was the one who betrayed the Jedi. Even if it was after the Jedi betrayed the Republic.
But Obi-Wan is standing here in front of him right now, and very much alive, and very obviously in league with the Jedi rebellion.
"Anakin?" Obi-Wan asks, abruptly stilling. He sounds shocked and confused at once.
Did he not know Anakin was going to be here?
"As I said," Windu speaks, very pointedly before Anakin has the chance to say anything. Not that he's overly comfortable with saying anything to anyone in front of him. Never has been and he definitely isn't now. "You would be wise to watch him closely. He is far from loyal, and I can't trust for certain that he won't try to sabotage the mission if he's given a chance."
Yes, he is standing right here. No reason not to talk about him like he isn't an object.
That's always how slavers act, though. Doesn't stop the surge of bitterness and hopelessness that surges up inside of him, though.
He's right back to where he started – to be fair, he was never out of it. Never has been. He has no idea what it means to be free. He wishes he was just an object because then it wouldn't hurt. Then he'd be able to die. Not like he deserves that, though. Not like he deserves any less than what he's getting, does he?
His fingers dig deeper into his right arm. It's probably going to bruise.
Good.
"Then why is he here?" Obi-Wan asks. He seems confused.
Does he... not know? Did Windu never tell him?
What does that mean for how Obi-Wan is going to act toward him, on this mission? Anakin's not ready to face him. He's too scared too – the fear and shame and guilt are already smothering him. Even if he's also missed him so much. But he just... There's no way Obi-Wan isn't angry. He can deal with that from Windu, but not from Obi-Wan.
"That's beside the point," Windu cuts him off, "The mission is urgent."
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