Anakin hurts. The world is spinning, even though he's—yes, laying down, and when he takes a deep breath something twinges and sends tangy warmth bubbling up into his airways. He tries to speak and coughs up liquid.
A familiar voice, overlapping itself as awareness slips sideways. "Medic! We need a medic in here!" Sharp pain dulls, head throbbing. Blurred figures in armor, lights gather near, one brighter than the rest—his father, his brother? No—the training bond twinges and constricts—good, Ahsoka will be able to stay focused. There is a weight on his legs, and then there isn't—sweet relief. So Anakin drifts for a minute, lets the world swim around him, only to startle when he sees a clone unsheath a hypospray with green labeling. He knows the green, the green is—
Vision sharpens. Anakin struggles to speak around warm liquid and a heavy tongue. "Please, ple—no, no, Obi-Wan, I'm lucid, I'm lu—l, luse—you—
"Clearly you're not lucid, dear one, because if you were you'd never admit that you don't want it," Obi-Wan says quietly. He attempts a light tone, but he looks so sad, why does he…?
—no, no, they're going to find it, the crevice between bone and gristle deep in the meat of his left thigh and they'll fill it, they'll fill it—
Anakin comes within a hair's breadth of fighting them in earnest. Armored gloves catch at his shoulders to hold him down and he thrashes and fights and in the back of his mind sees how he could splatter them like fireworks at a glance, spread them like pressed flowers between two dimensions because Anakin is not a drop of water in the ocean, Anakin is a bomb beneath the skin of the world. Tug the right tendons and he could see the muscles twitch, see them flicked off undramatically like insects from the back of a bantha—but there is Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan, father and brother, and he looks so sad, who died? Cody? (Flicked off like insects, he remembers Geonosis, how they crackled.) I have been a stranger in my own land all my life; the blasphemy of my birth has followed me….
/B/
The charge in the air passes away like a summer breeze, and the prey instinct in Obi-Wan's gut begins to settle as his apprentice's lurid yellow eyes roll back in his head. But not the fear. Never the fear, at times like this.
The medics quickly take things in hand, shouting at each other as they attempt to stabilize him on the run. Then the gurney goes the way of all the others, pushed with ruthless efficiency toward the half-destroyed infirmary. Mustering possibly the greatest amount of self-control he has exerted in his entire monastic life, Obi-Wan remains where he is.
A dark shape on the ground catches his eye, sticking out of the rubble they pulled his padawan from. Slowly, ever so slowly, he bends to pull it free.
It's Anakin's ridiculous sun-goggles. One lens is completely missing; the other is a mess of jagged shards.
A moment later, he senses a grim assessment directed at him in the Force, and looks up to meet Captain Rex's eyes, hidden as they are behind his visor. "They've just gotten him to surgery. As stable as he could be," Rex reports. Ah. So more than a moment has passed, a good deal more. He needs to get ahold of himself. He needs to be better.
"That's…good. Thank you for telling me, captain." Obi-Wan hopes someone has told Ahsoka, then looks around and realizes Ahsoka is nowhere to be seen. His heartbeat jumps again.
Rex is still standing in front of him. Rex hasn't replied, Obi-Wan realizes with a start, just keeps staring at him steadily. There's a question there, and a warning. A hint, buried beneath years of conditioning, of a threat.
Oh. "I was aware, Captain," Obi-Wan offers tiredly. He's hit with a burst of inappropriate, slightly hysterical amusement. "I could hardly have missed it by this point, but he told me over our leave. We will have to find some replacement for these heinous sun-goggles of his."
Rex watches him in silence for a moment longer. He nods, once. And then he's gone, already yelling orders at the nearest group of confused shinies.
Obi-Wan should really be doing that too. He gives himself a mental shake, then a physical one, which jars his ribs unpleasantly and thereby does an admirable job of shocking him back into focus. His men need him now. He's a Jedi Master. He can release these feelings into the Force, or at least shove them down deep for a few hours before he can examine them, name them, and overwrite them with cold, calm logic.
He manages for two hours before Cody gives him a look and spells him for the final touches. Without his conscious permission, he finds himself in the (hastily repaired) medical tent, where Anakin is out of surgery and lying on a tarp on a shaded patch of ground crowded with other men on tarps—they've long since run out of cots. Obi-Wan experiences a moment of intense relief when he sees him, and another when he realizes Anakin is in the section for patients who aren't expected to be in immediate danger anytime soon—stable patients. Ahsoka sits next to him, doing something on a datapad with her whole left hand and forearm wrapped in thick bandages. She nods politely when she sees him, dirty-faced and old behind the eyes. She's clearly exhausted.
With effort, he lowers himself to sit cross-legged on the ground, leans back on his hands when the pain in his ribs spikes. Oh, stars, he's never going to be able to stand up again. It's delicious to be off his feet.
Anakin's face is pale and still, smeared with dirt that he has to resist the urge to brush off. His forehead is bandaged and his face is badly scraped around the deepening bruises of a broken nose. There's a thin blanket covering him below the chest and an IV in his arm, the level in the bag dangerously low—rationing, Obi-Wan concludes with a start. Ahsoka appears to have fallen asleep sitting up. The medical tent—tent complex, really—bustles with activity, but this lukewarm, shaded corner is relatively quiet.
With a sigh, feeling a little detached from himself due to the sudden drop in adrenaline, Obi-Wan lets his mind slip back to the moment of impact.
What surprised him was not the fact that Anakin risked his life to save near-strangers—that's so far from surprising that it only occurred to Obi-Wan afterwards that it should have been, now. Anakin has never had the most robust sense of empathy in the world, but he has a very strong sense of justice. Actually, the only surprising thing that happened today was that charge in the air, and the fact that it dissipated.
Obi-Wan has felt that charge a few times in his life. Twice when Anakin was small, and Obi-Wan woke him from a screaming nightmare. Once when Anakin was fifteen and a ship crash on a mission left him badly concussed. And once, as the shock began setting in after Anakin lost his hand. On all of these occasions, Obi-Wan stood in a room with his tiny or medium-sized padawan and abruptly knew what it was to be a small fish, feeling the water ripple as something unfathomably immense glides past you in the dark. Became aware, with unsettling clarity, that he was very, very close to death.
And, at the risk of sounding conceited, he attributed his survival in all of those instances to the excellence of Anakin's Jedi training. To the Light, and all that comes with it. Obi-Wan's not much of a teacher, but the Light makes up for many deficits in those who serve it.
Qui-Gon never talked about his master. Neither did Yoda or Jocasta Nu, or really any of the old masters who fought alongside Dooku for decades. But that certainly didn't stop a curious padawan from looking, and there has never been a Knight since the founding of the modern Order who left no traces in the Order's extensive records. Dooku before his Fall was…in some ways the same, but in many ways very different. There was a curiosity in his mission reports, an edge of gentleness to the way he referenced his few friends and his padawans, that felt completely at odds with the mass murderer Obi-Wan later met on the battlefield. Dooku became…unrecognizable, after his Fall. That was why Jedi had such horror of Falling, a slightly younger knight once concluded as the flames of war spread across an unprepared galaxy—not just because Sith perpetrated horrors against the universe, but because it was a kind of death much worse than death itself. An erasure of the soul, leaving only a malignant husk behind: a tumor, where a person had been.
But now Obi-Wan reconsiders. Dooku's Fall wasn't exactly flipping a switch. Dooku's mission reports provide ample reason for him to distrust the Jedi or the Republic. On some of these missions, if one read between the lines, Dooku saw horrific things and experienced worse. He did things by the book and saw terrible consequences; he did terrible things because they were demanded of him. Multiple times, in his younger Knighted days, he formally registered complaints in strong terms because his orders called for him to step aside in the face of cruelty, suffering, or insidious corruption. These complaints were logged, sometimes briefly debated, and now linger, silent, in the archive they were dismissed to.
Obi-Wan always thought of these experiences as factors leading to his Fall. He never considered whether they might also have determined his behavior afterwards—not just his betrayal of the Republic, but also the Dark methods he employed to accomplish it. Never considered that Darkness and cruelty, or Darkness and madness, or Darkness and a twisted idealism, could be…simultaneous, perhaps interwoven, but ultimately separate threads in a personality.
Anakin is Anakin. Anakin, for all Obi-Wan's sometimes exhausting efforts, has always categorically refused to be anything but.
Obi-Wan needs to meditate on this. He needs time. Oh, Force, let there be time.
He catches a medic as he rushes by, feeling a little guilty for it but needing to know. "Excuse me. How long until General Skywalker will be back on his feet, do you know?"
He's not expecting a hopeful answer. Weeks, he's thinking. Perhaps a month. Perhaps more.
He's not expecting the look that the medic gives him as he pauses, and the feelings of shock/awkward/muted distress that reverberate through the Force. "Um. Sir…."
The worry in his stomach spikes, working its way up toward a full-on panic. "Spit it out, trooper," he clips out, and the man cringes back in the Force at his tone.
Ahsoka saves the poor shiny the trouble, apparently roused by the tension in the room. "He's not in immediate danger, Master, but the damage to his legs is extensive, especially his right foot and ankle. The bones there are shattered." She takes a breath and adds, very quietly, "They're considering amputation."
The shiny medic nods, regret staining the Force wine-purple with the scent of burning oil. "If we had advanced equipment, we would set the breaks surgically in a pressure chamber, drop him in bacta, have him starting physical therapy in a month or so. Without it, the bone shards are a threat to his major blood vessels. He could sever one of his tibial arteries by moving wrong, sir. And then…."
"Yes, I understand."
The shiny bustles on to other patients. Ahsoka falls asleep sitting up again. And Obi-Wan sits there, trying and failing to think of something helpful to do or say or even think.
Well, a darkly amused corner of Obi-Wan's brain points out, at least he'll be easier to keep up with now.
/B/
Anakin wakes up disoriented.
A moment later, the pain in his chest hits him, and he grits his teeth around a scream. It hurts to breathe. Oh, Force, it hurts to breathe.
There's a flurry of motion at his side, and he's out again.
When he next wakes up, it hurts significantly less to breathe, but he's too aware, after a moment of working himself up to consciousness, to think he's on the really good meds. He glances around, and even that small movement of his head sets his right side on fire. His back is deeply unhappy with him—burned, maybe?—and he has to breathe carefully around the feeling of the blanket resting on his right hip especially, which is hard with several clearly cracked ribs. He knows what massive dermal abrasion feels like.
It's another moment before he recognizes that that orange-and-white shape to his right is Ahsoka, wrapped in a liberal amount of bandages. He tries to speak to her, and then his body seizes up in another wave of pain when his throat doesn't want to cooperate. He carefully gathers saliva in his mouth, swallows to moisten his throat, and tries again. "Snips," he manages in a hoarse whisper.
She startles visibly and in the Force, having been staring off toward the door of the medical tent with her arms wrapped around her knees. "Master! You're awake!"
"Barely," he admits. "...Water?"
"Kriff, yes, of course!" she rushes out all in a breath, scrambling to grab something behind her. It's her canteen, and he manages to drink a few sips, holding one side with his organic arm while she holds the other. It doesn't exactly solve everything, but he feels a little better than after the couple of occasions on which he's been tortured, so.
Ahsoka is shielding pretty well, but he can sense a well of roiling emotions through the bond. "You alright?" he asks her, and then the full weight of their situation returns to him. "Fuck. Status report?"
"Holding steady. Master Plo and his men are doing well against Dooku in space and in the air, and they managed to land and launch a ground attack from the west starting yesterday morning. Between us, we've probably taken out two thirds of Dooku's total land troops—mostly us in the huge battle day before yesterday, you've been asleep a day and a half—and forced him to shift his camp a lot further away. The shields are holding. The Gamorrean forces haven't reappeared since the tunnel system collapsed. Our best guess, from what we've seen and what we've gotten out of a few locals who Obi-Wan, ah, forced the issue with, is that outright attacks or defense on the battlefield aren't really a thing here. Their idea of warfare is entirely guerrilla, and even more cautious than you'd see on, like, Utapau; it's about waiting for a weak point for infiltration and ritual hostage-taking. Now that we've fought off their first attempt, we're thinking it's gonna be awhile before they try again, and hopefully we'll be gone by then. They're not a huge threat to a well-prepared force. Those slug-throwers are nasty, though." She wrinkles her nose, undermining her professional mission-report tone. "Cowardly weapon."
Anakin huffs humorlessly. "A weapon is a weapon, I guess. Not cowardly if it works. Did you—" He stops, swallows, and she helps him take another drink before he can continue. "Did you check any tunnels that are still there?"
"There, uh. There aren't any. Not under the city, at least. Got a couple fewer buildings, too."
He nods as much as he can, digesting that. "ETA?"
Luckily, she understands what he means, because he doesn't think he can talk much longer. His whole right side is throbbing steadily now, and the pain in his ribs is mounting even as his energy quickly drains. "We think we'll have them beat within two days now. Maybe earlier."
"Wizard," Anakin sighs, not noticing Ahsoka's giggle. "Think I'm gonna pass out. 'nything else I should know?"
Ahsoka goes cold in the Force, which is almost enough to startle him into wakefulness again. "...'Soka?"
Her lips thin. Almost against her will, her eyes dart toward the foot of the bed. Toward his right leg. Which he can't feel.
Oh. Oh.
His last thought before he passes out again is: Wow, this feels familiar.
/B/
The next few days are an…adjustment.
The medics are kind enough to straighten out his assumption as soon as he wakes up again. He hasn't lost the foot, not yet. But it's a possibility. He's got pins shoved into his right leg, completely numbing his nerves and paralyzing the muscle, from the lower thigh down, to keep him from accidentally cutting through his own major blood vessels (thank the Force for Kix's interest in obscure medical technologies). He certainly won't be walking on his own power until long after they've left Gamorr. The leg won't even bear his weight, Kix assures him with a serious warning in his tone. Regardless of how bad the breaks really are, regardless of how long they can hold out before he either bleeds too much internally or the bones heal wrong and they have to take a lightsaber to his calf while he watches, Anakin is grounded for the foreseeable future.
The thing is, Anakin doesn't have a lot of time to process how he feels about potentially losing a crucial portion of his body, again, because he's still a general in a city under siege. As soon as he's conscious more often than he isn't, Rex resumes reporting to him for any medium-term strategy decisions that are above his command level, and First Lieutenant Flounder reports to him for high-level decisions about siege defenses and camp administration, and Kix shamelessly takes advantage of his being stuck in the medical tent to pester him about resource allocation and better procedures for said medical tent. This means that he needs to remain up-to-date on a wide variety of developments, which means that he spends most of his time bugging people into tracking down other people who can give him the information he needs to solve various problems, and the rest of his time filling out flimsiwork.
The main bright spot is Ahsoka, who spends most of her spare time in the med tent with him or Echo (who took a blaster bolt right through the chink in the armor on his upper right thigh, an injury his brothers will not stop razzing him for, though it's not like he really got shot in the ass). She's hovering, but since she spends most of the time roping the other injured men into conversation instead of just him, it's comparatively unobtrusive. Plus, she's gotten good at sensing any downturn in his mood and making herself scarce. (When did she learn that?) Something still clenches deep in his chest at the idea of her seeing him so weak, so useless, but it's not like she hasn't seen him injured before. He practices feeling that aversion, acknowledging it, and then letting it pass so that he can just be happy to see her.
Obi-Wan, by contrast, is never around, which Anakin has decided to think of as a good thing. Totally. There were a few days after Anakin first lost his hand where Obi-Wan was unbearable, so beside himself with worry and so distrustful of Anakin's capabilities that he would barely even let Anakin eat without hovering. This drove nineteen-year-old Anakin so incandescently up the wall that it culminated in him very nearly murdering his master with a pair of chopsticks, and instead screaming him out of the room so loudly and with such a variety of profanities that Obi-Wan actually fled to sleep in Master Vos' apartments for three days. He's glad his men are reacting better, though really, he shouldn't have expected anything less of the 501st—practically every man in the army knows a brother who's lost a limb, and they're used to thinking of him as more of an occasionally embarrassing force of nature than anything stoppable by something so small as a potential amputation. On the other hand (ha), he's still incredibly tired and exceedingly injured even without the whole foot thing, and he thinks he'd really like more than a few moments snatched between sleeping and waking to figure out how he feels about all this, and what he's going to have to do about it going forward.
When he does get a moment to think about it, he thinks there are, ironically, two hands about the whole "been there, done that" aspect too. On one hand, he knows now what he wasn't sure of the first time: He can get through this, overcome it. He's done it before. It was one of the most difficult challenges he'd ever faced in his life up to that point: wading through days of depression and rage and self-hatred because he'd been training to become stronger since he was nine, and wishing for it much longer, and now the body he'd put so much time into was oddly balanced and struggled with the stupidest things. Especially so soon after losing his mother, he found himself shattering under the intense waves of frustration and grief that rolled over him every time he forgot and tried to accomplish some simple task with his left hand, and later, a kind of manic paranoia at his own vulnerability whenever he wasn't wearing the prosthetic.
On the other hand, having dealt with losing a limb before means he knows exactly how hard it is. He remembers how many things he had to learn to adjust for, big and small, and how they kept coming up. Obi-Wan's temporary exile from their apartments was really a great opportunity for him to start figuring out basic workarounds for some of the more embarrassing everyday tasks complicated by losing a hand.
But a foot is very different from a hand, just as his non-dominant left hand would have been different from his dominant right; he can dwell on it all he wants, but realistically, there's no way he can predict everything he'd have to adjust for if he lost the foot. It would be a lot of things. Better not to think about it at all.
And when he really lets himself consider it, it's not as if he ever really overcame the loss of his hand. Fuck, he still has nightmares sometimes about that fight, about Ahsoka or Obi-Wan taking his place in that fight. The phantom itches are infrequent but drive him absolutely insane when they do crop up, and he still struggles with basic tasks like opening jars whenever he takes the prosthetic off, still humiliates himself knocking glasses off of Padme's counter when he reaches for them without thinking, because he's not nearly practiced enough with his workarounds. And that's because he's still wearing his prosthetic hand over far longer periods of time than the doctor recommends, though it's hard to tell how much of that is him and how much is just the times they live in. Another way in which he has trouble telling where he ends and the war begins, these days.
So in conclusion, it's better not to think about it. It's just a hypothetical, anyway; it's entirely possible that Master Plo will break the siege tomorrow, or the next day, and there will be bacta on the ship they're evacuated to, and a quick trip to surgery, one vacuum chamber, and a short bacta dunk later he'll be—not good as new, but ready to start physical therapy and be battlefield-ready again within the month. He's definitely lost some functionality due to nerve damage, but it might not be too much; it might be minor enough to simply adjust his movements for, or they might be able to salvage it fully with synthnerves in a secondary surgery. He knows the Republic would pay for that, even if the Temple wouldn't; he's made himself too valuable to the war effort for them to do anything less, for all that they'd undoubtedly hem and haw about it. That's more than almost any other soldier could say.
The rest of their stranding on Gamorr passes in this strange, anticlimactic way for Anakin: sleeping too much, filling out flimsiwork, strategizing, enduring uncomfortable medical checkups with bad grace, and chatting with his padawan and his men about their plans for after the war ends, or their opinions on blue versus green milk. He's hungry and in pain and misses the relative privacy of his and Ahsoka's own tent (and, okay, he's pretty miffed at Obi-Wan), but it's nowhere near the series of low points he's experienced over most of the previous two weeks. There are no more all-out assaults from Dooku; he doesn't have the numbers for that to yield any chance of success anymore, and he knows it. Any day now, Plo Koon's forces are going to break the blockade completely and evacuate all Republic forces to a fully equipped, fairly well-supplied star destroyer.
It's weird. Fifty-three men are dead and burnt to ash, and even that's better than they ever could have expected. Things are weirdly easy, here at the end.
It's enough to set his teeth on edge.
/B/
The other shoe drops the night Plo Koon accepts Dooku's bridge commander's surrender, four days after the tunnel explosion. Dooku isn't up there to surrender for himself. There is a reason for this.
Anakin startles awake to the Force's screaming-acid-rotten-eggs warning. As the highest-priority long-term patient, he's been moved to a a tarp near one of the medical tent's two main door flaps for easy access, which means he has a great view of a burning red line igniting on the other side of the flap before he's dragged under it at high speed. One could think of any number of things Anakin should be considering at this moment, starting with how to break the uncomfortably tight Force grip on his neck and shoulders and followed by trying to figure out how the hell Dooku got through fifteen layers of security and how many clones he killed to do it—but in the moment it's hard to think about anything except the burning pain in his back and right hip, which is so overwhelming that he manages to break the Force hold purely on instinct, shove himself up on his left side without the use of his legs, and be sick on the ground repeatedly without actually becoming conscious of any of these actions.
When the black spots fade from his vision enough to see, he searches hastily through the darkness and blurred vision for that red line. Dooku is, surprisingly, about ten yards away, picking himself up from behind a hillock of rubble with what Anakin hopes is a lot of joint pain. His saber stains his dark robes wine-red as he retrieves it. Anakin grits his teeth and tries to shove himself to his feet, but the wave of blinding pain that resurges with the attempt is nearly as incapacitating as the remaining needles still paralyzing the major muscle groups in his right leg. He falls back with a wheezing gasp. It is humiliating.
Dooku is on his feet now and fast approaching. Anakin mentally pings Obi-Wan over the bond, but he must be asleep, there's no response. There's no way he's calling for Ahsoka. He could openly yell for help, but beyond the way his pride rebels, he would just get a lot of men killed and be killed himself before they could take up deflection-avoidant sniping positions. Instead, he activates the silent SOS on his wrist comm with the touch of a button. Now he just has to survive until Rex or someone else can attempt to take a Sith lord by surprise, so at least two minutes. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he's missing a foot, where's his saber, what the fuck is he supposed to do—
He's scrambled. Not too scrambled to make an attempt to Force push Dooku as hard as he can, but Dooku is braced physically and metaphysically this time and only sways like a man in a rough wind even when Anakin changes the vector to push him from the side. Pushing himself up onto his right elbow, Anakin makes a second attempt with lightning, but Dooku effortlessly catches the weak trickle on his lightsaber, raising a barely visible eyebrow. Then he lowers his saber, and his face disappears back into the gloom.
"I see that still has a ways to go," he says drily from the darkness. "Tell me, boy, did you even bother to seek the wisdom of your forebears when you Fell, or did you believe you could carry it through on pure talent? I assure you, the Dark Side has no room for such arrogance."
…Anakin had kind of forgotten how irritating he finds this man. The only good thing about Dooku's personality is it makes him uniquely susceptible, when Plan A (Violence) fails, to Plan B (Distract). "I have not had a lot of free time," Anakin says through gritted teeth. "I imagine you've been a bit busy, too, since the death of your best general."
"Oh, you're boasting about General Grievous. No, he was unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Though, I used to think the same of you," Dooku muses, slowing his approach to a casual saunter. Anakin never thought he'd feel insulted by someone coming to kill him slower than necessary, but hey, today has been full of surprises. Dooku suddenly thinks he's important? Yes, Anakin's one of the two best generals in the GAR, but that's never stopped Dooku from brushing him off before.
Then Dooku is standing over him, and Anakin needs to get better at precision pushing a saber in the Force real quick or he'll be unnecessarily difficult to collect for cremation. He braces for the slash, tries to draw out the conversation. "You're here for me? How did I finally manage to piss you off?"
"This is nothing personal, boy." The tip of Dooku's saber drifts up to waver slightly over Anakin's chest, and Anakin sets his teeth in a snarl. He will not die looking up from the ground at this man. "I just made an…unpleasant realization, reviewing the footage from the spy droid I left inside our dear departed general. My master has plans for you that I would prefer not to come to fruition."
What? "Your master can stuff his plans up his wrinkly—"
"He wants to replace me," Dooku continues slightly louder, as if he didn't say anything. "The Rule of Two and all that. Terribly inconvenient, but he's something of a traditionalist, the old vulture-hawk. And here you are, his favorite little pawn, frying a man with lightning like a fully-fledged Sith lord. Clearly, I can't let this go any further."
Anakin is internally reeling at the revelation that apparently his Fall was engineered, but he's also facing imminent death, so this really isn't the time to focus on that. Still: "You're only killing me because of that?" he says, dredging the depths of his mind for better stalling tactics and coming up empty. "It's like you don't even care about the war you're days from losing."
Dooku raises an imperious eyebrow, letting up on the lightsaber just slightly as he smirks a little. "Yes, it really does seem that way, doesn't it."
Anakin's brow furrows. "What—"
"No, enough talk. You've always irritated me, child. Let's just say I'm doing this for personal reasons." And without further ado, he centers the point on Anakin's gut and leans his whole weight on the saber.
Anakin's mind—fractures, a little bit. He seizes the hilt and the humming plasma beyond it like a dog seizing a stick, managing to catch it just as it makes contact, distantly feeling the flesh above his diaphragm sizzle and begin to melt. The hold is so tenuous it's like grasping for the tail of a sprinting bantha and the gossamer-thin tendrils of a Nabooian jelly-snake all at once, holding on by the skin of his teeth. Vision wavers; sounds fade. Dooku tries to pull the saber away to slash from a different direction, but Anakin holds on grimly. He immediately regrets it when Dooku resumes stabbing with renewed force, an incredulous grimace twisting his lips. He says something Anakin doesn't register. Anakin's grip slips for a heart-pounding millisecond, catches again. The burning point digs ever-so-slightly deeper.
He ends up sunk so deep in the Force, putting the whole weight of his rage and indignation into pushing that burning point away, trying with the far corners of his mind to find room to push Dooku instead or the strength to roll out from under the saber but the moment he loses his focus he'll be dead—so deep that he has no idea how much time has passed when someone deeply familiar yells, "Get away from him!" and practically tackles Dooku out of Anakin's frame of view.
/B/
Obi-Wan does not, in fact, wake to Anakin's prodding at the bond; after years of nightmares, he's grown far too inured to the feeling of that particular supernova presence battering against his shields in unconscious panic at night. No, Obi-Wan wakes up thirty-one fortuitous seconds later to take a piss. He's almost finished this delicate operation at the base of a modestly distant bush (part of the privacy screen for someone's yard) when a half-armored shiny bursts out from behind the bush in question, forcing him to readjust his robes in a blind panic, which is the reason it takes him a moment to register what the man is saying. "—Skywalker's signal from the medical station, captain's setting up to take down a Sith lord in camp!"
Obi-Wan sprints.
/B/
Anakin has to retch a few more times before his vision clears enough to really see what's going on. The light strobes and judders, red-blue-red. Obi-Wan and Dooku are going at it like tigerfish. In the distance, now, he can also hear the whine of blasters, shouts—Dooku must have brought the remainder of his forces as a diversion, though apparently only he could get through the shield with any stealth. No assassin droids with electrostaves, that's a nice change of pace.
Both fighters Force push in unison and end up blown back to opposite sides of the dueling ground, where they pause for a minute, sizing each other up. Obi-Wan, predictably, takes the opportunity to taunt.
"You must know, even if you kill us here, you'll end up in our exact same position when the Master Koon wins or further reinforcements arrive, both of which could happen at any moment," he offers blithely, though Anakin can still hear the undercurrent of burning anger. "By chasing us here, you've lost yourself the war."
Dooku pauses, smirks. "Oh, dear, yes," he says. "The Separatist cause, lost. Who could have seen it coming?"
"Have you no loyalty to your constituents, my dear Count? What a surprise." But Obi-Wan sounds perturbed under the sarcasm. "But really, I'm curious. What could prompt you to showcase such suicidally awful strategy?"
"Suffice it to say, General Kenobi, that circumstances have forced my hand. So as much as I enjoy your attempts at conversation, I really must insist we get on with things." Dooku takes a quick step forward, and the two fighters collide again in a flurry of motion.
Cursing himself, his leg, Kix, and every god he's ever heard of, Anakin does his best to drag himself out of the way of the combatants, but with them moving around so much, and Dooku actually trying to fight his way past Obi-Wan to take potshots at Anakin (what a reversal!) it's basically pointless. Anakin burns at his own helplessness, at becoming the fucking damsel in distress stranded on the edge of the battlefield. He just has no idea what to do; he can't Force push or zap Dooku without risking hitting Obi-Wan. Worse still, he's an additional impediment for some of Rex's gunmen and snipers, who can't fire on Dooku for the same reason. And the side of his skull aches with a peculiar intensity that suggests Dooku caved to the indignity of kicking him in the head while he was sunk too deep in the Force to notice, and he can't stop coughing. Anakin genuinely considers trying to bite Dooku's ankles the next time he comes by.
Obi-Wan has a close call, then another. Hes not fighting as defensively as he normally does, relying more on Ataru than Soresu. He's losing, slowly but surely. Anakin bites his cheek so hard that his mouth fills with blood. At one point the duelists whirl so close that a pebble kicked up by Obi-Wan hits him in the forehead.
It is this, finally, along with the recent memory of his struggle to switch mental gears while pushing Dooku's saber away, which gives him the idea.
Anakin looks around. Now that there's a light source, Dooku dragged him a bit less than a hundred feet away from the medical tent, into an open area of rocky ground, something like a large intersection or shabby public square. It's fringed with abandoned houses and the occasional scrubby tree, behind which twenty or so of the 501st's best snipers flicker in the Force with anticipation and fear. And about fifteen feet away to his left, as his eyes adjust, he can just make out the thick line of rubble tracing the path of the collapsed tunnel. Jagged angular boulders and the last standing wall of someone's half-collapsed house stick up at odd angles like a line of rotten molars, lighter black against darker black. He can work with this.
Reaching out with the Force, he pinpoints a shard the size of a speeder that feels easy to shift quietly. His head swims—mild concussion?—but he clenches his jaw against it and lifts the rock smoothly into the air. Then another, and another. It's like the time Ahsoka and Barriss were buried in the rubble of the exploded droid foundry, except Anakin finds that now, fueling himself with his anger and embarrassment and ice-cold determination rather than trying to focus despite his fear, he can lift far more weight more easily than he could then.
As the duel drags on fifteen seconds, twenty, more and more indistinct shapes cluster in the darkness above the center of the battlefield. Neither duelist has noticed.
Ahsoka's presence washes over him in the Force a moment before her hand lands on his shoulder, which blessedly keeps him from startling and dropping the rocks on Dooku and Obi-Wan both. "Master, are you alright?" she says quietly, the curve of her face and lekku faintly illuminated in the fitful light of the clashing sabers.
Ah, and there's the part of his plan he hadn't figured out yet, coming together. It's a bit of a struggle to gather his thoughts to speak, an odd, lightheaded feeling coming from splitting his attention between the considerable weight he's lifting and his headache; his words feel clumsy on his tongue. "Yes, I'm great, but I need a…favor." He touches her wrist, tilts his chin up meaningfully toward his projectiles. Her brow furrows for a moment, and then she senses that he's doing something in the Force and follows the ripples. Her mouth opens in a silent "Oh…."
"When I give the signal," he says quietly, "I need you to grab Obi-Wan and pull…pull him out of there." Even if he was good at communicating complex things like that over his training bond with Obi-Wan, he wouldn't even notice a subtle projection right now, and distracting him by forcing his way in could be fatal. "So you need to—Ahsoka, look at me"—small points of red and blue light dance in her eyes as she tears her gaze away from the fight—"you do not enter the, the duel unless you have to. Defense. Just sl…skulk around the edges until I…ah, whistle or something."
"Got it." She nods decisively, the set of her mouth grim. "I'll be careful. Don't accidentally squash me, Skyguy," she adds, a glimmer of mischief returning to her expression.
It's really not funny and actually one of his worst nightmares, but he returns her a wry twist of his lips. "No promises." She grins with fangs, then stands and stalks away along the edge of the battlefield, igniting her sabers.
The fight has accelerated to a frenzied pace, effectively showcasing the prodigious talent of both duelists, but also how much they are tiring—getting desperate, impatient, sloppy. Obi-Wan, fighting with uncharacteristic aggression after weeks of active combat with limited rations while recovering from a crash concussion and an arm injury, is tiring faster. The momentum of the fight has turned definitively against him and forced him back to his Soresu foundations, but he's still being pushed backward pivot by pivot. The weight of the massive pile of rubble overhead is starting to genuinely strain Anakin, but he just grits his teeth and continues matching the battle, waiting for the perfect moment.
Ahsoka prowls around the battlefield, clearly unhappy with Anakin's admonition not to join in but also aware that this is too fast an unpredictable a fight for her to intervene in without a perfect window. Dooku ignores her completely.
That's always been his most glaring weakness, dismissing people like his padawan.
A stutter in the rhythm of battle—Dooku gets in a decent Force shove, knocking the wind out of Obi-Wan even though he keeps his feet. It creates distance between them, and suddenly Obi-Wan is right next to Ahsoka.
Anakin lets out a short, piercing whistle. With a garbled cry of "Don't-question-it-Obi-Wan!" Ahsoka seizes her grandmaster's arm and sprints for the edge of the clearing to Anakin's left, practically dragging him and flinging him ahead of her with her Force-assisted strength.
And then Anakin drops the rocks from fifty feet up.
For half a second, it looks as if that's going to be it. But no, Dooku has been alerted by Ahsoka and Obi-Wan's behavior. He takes a few wary steps back, looking around with narrowed eyes for the threat. Like most people, it takes him a moment to look up, but the whistling of air resistance alerts him, and his eyes widen. At the last possible second, Dooku throws his hands up.
The sound the barrage makes is thunderous as the first boulders smash against an invisible obstacle and are suspended in midair, leaving their fellows to fall directly on top of them until the whole mass shudders with the impacts. Acting on pure instinct, Dooku has caught all of the boulders, not just the ones directly above him, and now they fan out in a rough cone with a five-yard radius, its flattish circular base hovering dangerously six inches above his uplifted hands and saber. There's something incredibly eerie about that great black mass, an imitation mountain, hovering over the entire intersection and that one small man, blocking the starlight, pregnant with purpose.
Now the roles are reversed, and Anakin is the one pressing down with the force of gravity on his side. Concentration, even for a Jedi master, is ultimately a finite resource. If Anakin couldn't split his focus enough while holding back Dooku's saber to roll two feet to the side, Dooku has no hope of running all the way to the edge of the intersection while holding up this massive weight of rubble. If he tries to drop the boulders at the outside first, he'll trap himself like a bug in a jar; the boulders that pile at the edges reach a height taller than the seven feet or so at which Dooku has suspended the pile. And he certainly can't throw the rubble away with Anakin holding it in place. All he can really spare the presence of mind to do is push.
Dooku drops his saber to brace his other hand against the metaphysical attack, face still underlit in red as his features contort into a pained grimace beneath the beard. Anakin's lips curl unconsciously into a feral grin. "What's wrong, Count?" he calls out—further distractions can only help. "Can dish it out, but you can't take it?"
Dooku growls audibly, the type of choked sound a conventional weightlifter might make under a dangerously heavy load. Indeed, his whole body is braced as if under a real, physical pressure. The suspended mountain of rubble, only really visible where it's underlit by Dooku's saber, inches downward perceptibly.
Anakin's not actually using his full strength to push down. Part of it is going toward holding together the pile at the edges, keeping it contained within its bounds over the intersection, but with the aid of the rubble's weight, he still has more than enough strength left to crush Dooku like a gnat right now. But he finds he doesn't want to. As soon as he had Dooku genuinely pinned, he realized he really wants to crush him very slowly. This man has tortured him; Anakin would like to torture him in return. He realizes he would truly like to slowly cook this fucking gnat in the fires he himself stoked.
Obi-Wan is saying something, but Anakin doesn't really register it. His vision has tunneled. Sweat is now running down Dooku's forehead and neck in rivulets, darkening his beard. He has a look on his face like he really wants to say something. He always wants to say something, doesn't he. Some liquid thing in Anakin's chest and stomach smolders pleasantly at the idea of making him suffer his last moments in silence. Though really a scream would be satisfying. Or a gurgle.
Now Ahsoka is talking, he thinks. Saying something to Obi-Wan in a perturbed tone; the Force around them curdles with unease. They can handle whatever it is, though, he's sure. Anakin applies just a little more pressure in the Force, and Dooku's arms visibly tremble.
He really is nothing, isn't he? All his dignity, his voluminous robes and stentorian tones, all his posturing. But really, he's just a pathetic old man sweating in silence as his own death opens a thousand eyes, staring from all around him. As his own death picks its way toward him on bare calloused feet.
Anakin pushes just a little harder and watches the rock pile drop a foot or so. It touches Dooku's hands. He thinks he hears a little gasp, a wheeze.
Everyone gets a little power and acts like they're somebody, until you get them under your heel. Then they remember what they are. Then they finally realize what they've always been. Then skyscrapers rise and fall, civilizations topple under their own weight, planets crack into pieces under the burning rays of the suns that birthed them, galaxies spin apart under their own centrifugal force and freeze their grateful populations in their zeal to flee from themselves. Every fucking thing deludes itself, one way or another, into thinking that it's important, that it's immortal.
Only Death is honest. Only Death is faithful.
War is truth because Death is truth, the truth of Power, the truth of Providence, the truth of their futility, and that truth is there is always a bigger heel.
He tastes blood and acid,
and his cheeks hurt,
and he wants to make this miserable smear of bantha shit kneel—
A small "pew!" rings out, and a flash of blue light. Everyone present gets a momentary glimpse of Dooku teetering forward, an expression of mild surprise on his face, before several thousand pounds of rock fall directly on top of him with a thunderous roar. His presence in the Force winks out like a snuffed candle.
It takes a moment for the earth to stop shaking enough for most of the spectators to stagger to their feet. A few smaller pieces of rubble bounce down the sides of the pile, and a cloud of dust rises silently from the gaps in the sudden spotlight illumination from the clones' helmet lights. Anakin blinks dumbly, a little dazed, a little disappointed, but the abrupt end to that little episode has cut his anger off at the knees. In retrospect, he really shouldn't have been taking chances with Dooku just for the sake of punishment; he still burns at the fact that the gungans didn't immediately kill Grievous before that prisoner exchange that still keeps him up at night could happen. He'll blame it on the concussion. The man's dead now, that's good.
Rex stands up fully from behind a half-ruined wall to Anakin's left. "Alright, who got him?"
"That would be me, sir!" Another helmet pops up from a position directly behind where Dooku was facing, decorated with six blue dots, three lined up down each "cheek." Lens, if Anakin remembers correctly; a recent transfer from the best squad of sharpshooters in Executor battalion. A good shot, but not particularly distinguished. It was pure luck that he transferred before the battle over Arami, where he would certainly have died otherwise.
Rex considers him for a silent moment. The grin in his voice is audible when he finally answers, "Good man."
The rest of the surrounding clones begin to erupt into cheers as exuberant as when they got Grievous, but Rex immediately cuts them off with a hand signal, the semi-distant sound of blasters enough to remind them that the night's work is far from over. Ever professionals, they immediately quiet, though Anakin can feel their elation expanding like an enormous balloon in the atmosphere over the clearing. Rex turns to Anakin and Obi-Wan, who Anakin finally registers is unusually distracted, giving his former padawan (who's finally managed to sit up, thank the Force) an odd, unreadable look. Anakin raises an eyebrow, and he shakes himself a little before directing his attention to Rex. "Generals, your orders?"
"We need to know where they're attacking from. Shield is still intact, evidently. Captain, could your communications officers get in contact with the point lieutenants and compile a status report?" Obi-Wan says smoothly, disguising how heavily he's still breathing from the protracted fight fairly well.
Rex glances at two men to his right, who nod and presumably begin contacting lower command over helmet comms. Anakin catches Rex's eye, as much as is possible through the visor. "If we can convince the droids that their general is dead, at least thirty percent of them should be compromised by executive dysfunction. And any formations not dictated by long-term strategy should fall apart, even if there's a droid general in play. Can we get Engineering and Comms to exploit the same bug they found in the last battle, assuming they only patched the system access part and not the comms access?" Mind already focused on the technical challenge, Anakin tries to stand again before his body rudely reminds him that he can't (and he still feels really odd, almost dazed). He flushes. "Actually, could somebody just help me get to Engineering?"
"You should be going back to Medical, Master," Ahsoka mutters disapprovingly from his side as two of the 501st sharpshooters rush over to awkwardly help him balance on his one working foot. Anakin bites his tongue hard as the motion tugs at his messily-cauterized open chest wound, and his headache spikes brutally. It takes some effort to wave a hand airily and minimize the strain in his voice. "Medical can come with me to Engineering."
The two guys deputized by Rex to gather status reports signal their readiness to share then, so they all tune back in as the full squad works its way around their cover and the rock pile to gather on command's side of the clearing, casting the occasional wary glance at the unmoving rubble. "Prognosis is decent, sirs. Though we were caught by surprise by the frontrunners on speeders at points C, E, and H, all squads effectively mobilized to their stations in time to repel the bulk of the attack in both valleys. No attempt was made to take either ridge. Numbers are smaller than expected; estimated 300 clankers in the south with only twelve tanks and fifteen speeders remaining, 250 in the north with thirteen tanks, one with a shield popper, no speeders yet sighted. Lieutenant Borstin at point H is preparing to make a rush to take out the popper with a squad of twenty-two. Bombers reportedly seem hesitant to take out their own men again, but Borstin requested Jedi assistance as a precaution."
"On it," Ahsoka says, sprinting off to the south at Obi-Wan's confirming nod.
"Lines are holding strong at all points," the other comms guy picks up the summary. "Cannons are jammed again, though. Second Lieutenant Kelvin in the tower is trying to get them back online so we can take out a few of the bombers before we try to push them back any further. Overall, we suffered twenty-two casualties in the first few minutes of the attack, before we got our feet back under us. Eleven injured, two dead between points C and E. Nine watchmen found dead on the path Count Dooku presumably took into the camp. Two more are still unaccounted for."
Anakin's chest pangs at the news, but it's better than he'd hoped for. And Dooku is dead! The war is basically over. It's almost surreal.
Fighting through the feeling, he glances at Obi-Wan. "I'm gonna head to the tower, work on the cannons and then join the slicing team to share the good news with the clankers." Even after literal years as a commander and then a general, some immature part of him still hates asking for approval from a commanding officer, even the old master he used to obey easily (most of the time) as a padawan; this casual, carefully non-questioning tone is one of the many little communication workarounds they've developed over the years to deal with Anakin's various issues.
Obi-Wan glances over Anakin with a critical eye, and he must look truly terrible given the grimace that pulls at the corner of his old master's mouth, but he knows they can't spare anyone on this final push; though not nearly as badly as before, they're still outnumbered and outgunned. "Understood," Obi-Wan acknowledges, playing along with the familiar charade. "We should get word up to General Koon as well, share any slice you can develop with him if we can. Captain, you take south, I take north?"
Rex acknowledges with a "Yes, sir," and an efficient salute. He nods to his own general as well before they both jog off in opposite directions, Rex taking the rest of the squad with him except for the two still awkwardly holding up Anakin and his dangling kkrorkupine-victim leg. Being dragged probably kriffed it up badly; he knows he lost a few needles. Anakin takes advantage of the helmet comms of one of the men dragging him toward the tower, Private Dje'k, to ping Kix's second-in-command medical officer asking for somebody they can spare in a minute or two at the engineering tower. Undoubtedly Kix himself will rush over and glare ruthlessly at him for underselling the situation and conveniently forgetting the medical prioritization protocols that put commanding officers at the top of the triage list, but a general can dream.
They have a long night ahead of them. But by the time dawn pokes its first vermillion rays over the horizon—the smallest of the three suns is rising first today, evidently—its light spreads across a force of four hundred sweaty, exhausted men nonetheless whooping and cheering, leaping in the air and hugging each other and getting unbelievably drunk on bathtub liquor someone, improbably, smuggled out of the wreck of the Dominator in their elation. Dooku's remaining droids have been decimated. The space battle is won. And word has just come in from Plo Koon and his army in orbit that, upon receiving video proof of the death of its leader, the Separatist senate has officially capitulated.
/B/
Four hours later, Plo Koon is finally able to put landers on the surface of Gamorr. In another thirty minutes, Anakin and Obi-Wan's small combined force is loaded and ready for takeoff. Everyone is happy to say goodbye to this miserable little planet, though Anakin considers that it wasn't as bad as a lot of places he's been. In terms of the types of injuries he received, it's decently high on the list—crush injuries are always more of a bitch to deal with than burns or piercing injuries, in Anakin's informed medical opinion—but in terms of overall casualties and pure misery, the fighting wasn't that bad. The crash was bad, but only, statistically, in terms of percentage; a long-term siege or major attack begun with the full numbers of the 501st will usually cost significantly more lives. It makes him sick to think of it that way for a lot of reasons, though, not least that he has some of the lowest casualty numbers by engagement in the whole GAR.
But even if they had lost significantly more men on Gamorr, he thinks there still would have been a festival mood as the landers rose into the black. Because, for once, most of those sacrifices really felt directly, concretely impactful. If they hadn't held out Gamorr as long as they did, Dooku wouldn't have gotten desperate enough to sneak into camp for an assassination alone. The war wouldn't be over.
The war is over. It ended. It's still weird to be thinking like that. He's still getting used to thinking about it in the past tense.
Soon, he's going to have to start thinking about the future. Seeing Ahsoka through to knighthood—Force knows she's already far wiser and more experienced than he was when he was knighted, but he'll hold on for a few more months at least, out of pure selfishness if nothing else. Dropping out of the Jedi Order. Marrying Padme publicly. Starting a family with her. And balancing that with, someday soon, seeing how many of his men choose to go mercenary after their release from the army—he's sure it won't be an insignificant number. Offering them a job, as free men. Going back to Tatooine and Zygerria, establishing contacts, and using the one thing he's good at to do the only thing he's really wanted to do since he was very young.
Anakin certainly isn't done with war. He doesn't think he'll ever be, for better or for worse. But he's more than done with this one. He is very, very excited to see his wife again.
And it helps his mood that he won't be going back to her on one foot. The 104th brought with it a medical ship with bacta and a pressure chamber advanced enough to help with safely resetting the bone shards. His foot officially will not need to be chopped off. Sure, he's going to face months of secondary surgeries and physical therapy before he can walk unassisted again. Staying in shape will be a mess. The creeping feelings of vulnerability will be a mess. The hoverchair is useful, but he finds it irrationally embarrassing; he's bad at manipulating it and he does not like looking up at people. Any other campaign, and he thinks he might have felt overwhelmed by that prospect, pulled down into the dark places he slogged through whenever the downtime dragged too long for so much of the war.
But what the hell. He's gonna get to see his wife again. Indefinitely. He anticipates riding that high for at least a month.
He still doesn't know quite what to do about mending ties with Obi-Wan. He knows his old master is still angry at him, despite their partial rapprochement after the crash, but he refuses to apologize for killing Krell. He's just at a loss for how else to resolve things if Obi-Wan won't follow their usual script of just pretending to ignore it and moving on, resurrecting the matter only for the occasional cutting comment when they irritate each other again.
But if it weren't for Obi-Wan's conspicuous absence, life would be…honestly better than any time he can remember.
/B/
Speak of him, and he shall appear. The next morning, after an absolutely luxurious eight hours of uninterrupted sleep (the surgical sedation may have helped; some of the guys were complaining good-naturedly about the time change), Anakin hears a knock on his cabin door and hits the button at his desk to open it remotely. Obi-Wan is there, looking slightly frazzled with his beard still fluffy from the campaign.
"Obi-Wan," Anakin says very casually. "What brings you here?" By way of response, Obi-Wan smiles and holds up three wrapped koja nut dessert ration bars. Anakin hasn't seen those since the first months of the war, when he was still commander of the 212th. Plo Koon must have squirreled them away for a celebration.
Anakin raises an eyebrow. "Wow, Master Plo's been holding out on us!"
"Yes indeed. Somehow he managed to produce three pallets of these for breakfast this morning, but he wasn't anticipating the extra three hundred-odd men when he stored them away. I barely managed to snatch these before the auctioneering started."
Anakin accepts his and Ahsoka's with a smile, mood lightening further. So Obi-Wan's finally gotten around to the pretending-it-didn't-happen stage, it was just a matter of time. Anakin's a bit more prone to grudges in general, but in this case he's happy to oblige.
And then Obi-Wan does something completely unexpected. "I'll admit these are a bit of an apology gift."
Anakin freezes a moment before biting down. "Apology for…?"
"I've—well, frankly, I have been acting beastly toward you. I shouldn't have avoided you when you were hurt. I, ah. Wasn't sure what I would say."
"Oh," Anakin says. I just figured you were still angry, he doesn't say. "No worries. You made it over when it mattered, so. Can't complain about your timing."
"Well, be that as it may, I should apologize, Anakin. I still disagree with what you did, if only because vows are—well, anyway. I don't wish to start another fight. I understand why you did it, and I can admit that some of my reaction was…perhaps disproportionate. Founded on some, ah. Incorrect assumptions."
Obi-Wan is practically grimacing by the end of this, radiating so much awkwardness that Anakin takes pity on him. He learned to translate from Obi-Wan-speak to ordinary Basic with maybe sixty-percent accuracy by his early teens, though it kind of plateaued there. But Obi-Wan is being remarkably transparent today. "You were afraid," Anakin says easily. "I get that. I was, ah. Disconcerted, as well."
"I suppose that's one way to put it. But regardless, that conversation should not have happened the way it did." Obi-Wan pauses, and an odd, hesitant look steals across his face. "I'll admit, there was a moment at the end, when we were trying to deal with Count Dooku, when it was—I felt—" He cuts himself off before Anakin can figure out what he's getting at. "But no, never mind, that's not at all what I came here meaning to say."
His eyes soften.
"I am proud of you, padawan. Somehow, and probably in spite of me, you've become…." There's a huskiness to his tone, and he has to pause to search for the words: "...the best man I know, and a very good master to Ahsoka. I should never have let my fears for you blind me to what matters."
Anakin is…floored. For a moment, he has no idea how to respond. He just replays Obi-Wan's words on repeat in his head, feeling the warmth of them seep into his bones, feeling like this is most of what he's been waiting for his entire life, maybe. Like he could live on Obi-Wan's pride like air, like the Force, breathe it in and let it envelop him. He actually feels kind of lightheaded.
"Master," he begins. "Obi-Wan, I—"
He pauses, hears himself. Coughs into his elbow.
"I appreciate that," he continues with self-conscious steadiness, but he's still grinning like a loon. "And you know if I've ever done anything decent, it's thanks to you, you old goat." He feels his cheeks heat up a bit. "And perhaps I also should have, you know. Read you in on the plan with Krell. In retrospect. Though I don't regret how it turned out."
Obi-Wan's somewhat overgrown beard moves in that way it does when he's fidgeting, sucking in his cheeks. "Well…I suppose we can agree to disagree. Force knows we've done it before."
"Did I ever actually agree to that?" Anakin jokes.
Obi-Wan smiles again, and it more than reaches his eyes; it transforms his thin, dirty face, so much so that for a moment, from the low angle of the hoverchair, it's like Anakin is ten again. "Perhaps I just chose to believe you did, for my own peace of mind."
From behind them comes the whooshing sound of the door opening; Obi-Wan turns quickly to face it, while Anakin makes an inexpert attempt to spin the hoverchair around, bangs his good knee on the desk, and resorts to impatiently craning over his shoulder. One of the guys from lower down in Engineering, Jarrit, is poking his head around the doorframe. "General Skywalker, sir? Specialist Cheska asked if I could bring you to look at the seventh starboard radiator to settle an argument, if you're not busy with anything? Commander Jens of the 104th is looking into buying a new vibro-duster unit, but our guys think he could rig a perfectly good one from scratch with the parts he has in storage. Like we did on Munto Codru that time. But, uh. He doesn't believe us."
Ha, sometimes he forgets how petty Cheska, one of his lead engineers, can be. "Sure, I've got ten minutes," he decides, happy for any excuse to leave the flimsiwork on his desk for a moment. "Obi-Wan, are you up to anything? Want to help us drive Cheska mad with power?"
"Ah, I'm alright, the defeat of the good Count has left me with rather a lot to do. Mostly good things, for once."
"Dinner, then? With Ahsoka," Anakin pushes, and he's gratified to see Obi-Wan's smile grow in strength.
"Yes, I suppose I can make time for Ahsoka," his old master allows.
"Alright, Jarrit, lead the way," Anakin grins, finally getting the hoverchair backed up enough to semi-gracefully swivel toward the door. "Seven standard, Obi-Wan, don't fall asleep!" Engineering Officer Jarrit, who has been waiting very politely by the door, tactfully withdraws his unspoken offer to push and heads down the hallway, Anakin falling into step (so to speak) beside him. They've made it a few yards down the hallway when Obi-Wan calls out from behind him, uncharacteristically, flustered. "Oh, wait, stars, Anakin! I got completely sidetracked, I meant to give you these." Light footsteps chase them down the hallway; Anakin turns.
His old master is holding out something dark and angular. Anakin takes it from him, turns it over in his hands. It takes him a moment to recognize it as a pair of sun goggles.
"One of the privates in the 501st somehow managed to buy these before deployment, no idea how. I had to pay him a premium for the blasted things."
Anakin reaches instinctively for his belt, where he'd taken to hanging his own shades, and realizes he hasn't actually seen them for some time. Obi-Wan notices the movement. "Your old ones were with you when you were injured. Quite beyond repair, I'm afraid."
The new pair is in a more conventional goggle shape, though still not flush with the face in a way that would look too weird indoors. It has the thick joints that will hide his eyes from the sides, and a thin line of gleaming brass tracing the tops and bottoms of the frames. Padme, who serves as his fashion sense, will still probably laugh at the sight of him, but then, he likes to make her laugh. They're still a fair sight nicer than his previous pair, and more in line with his own tastes.
Anakin's throat feels unaccountably tight again. Perhaps a delayed reaction to Dooku's neck-drag the night before. "Thank you, Obi-Wan. I appreciate it."
"Well." Obi-Wan looks a bit lost. "As long as you do. And next time you see Private Bentham, please tell him from me that he's a beast and a con man."
Private Bentham undoubtedly offered Obi-Wan the goggles for free when he asked for them and twice over when he learned who they were meant for, but Obi-Wan enjoys his little obfuscations. Anakin has never met another man who takes such an earnest joy in bitching, as a pastime. "I'll pass on your deepest antipathies."
Obi-Wan sniffs. "Excellent. Now, I believe you have an appointment with a radiator." Without further ado, he beats a slightly too-hasty retreat toward his own quarters.
Private Jarrit side-eyes the goggles as they turn down the next hallway. Anakin grins and slides them into place on his nose. "What do you think?"
"Oh, the height of fashion, sir," Jarrit replies, beaming.
/B/
From the Records of the Founding of the Aurelian Reform Sith Order, Server 12A, Datalog 22103742.33, Entry 326/412, transcript abbr.
14/31, 20 BBY
Incoming call 22:38, logged and recorded 22:39–22:41 (2mins 12secs)
BO [22:39:02]: Hello, Master Skywalker.
BO [22:39:04]: Your friend Senator Amidala gave me the address for this commlink, and assured me that a conventionally encrypted message left in its records would neither bother you on campaign nor risk giving away your position. She has been very kind.
BO [22:39:43]: I am calling to let you know that I have taken your advice, at least in part. I have not left the Jedi Order, but I have requested and been granted a one-year sabbatical. I was [pause] somewhat surprised it was approved, during wartime. I have since become aware that Master Nu expressed her support, citing concerns she held about my health and wellness, and that my own master seconded her assessment.
BO [22:40:20]: I am not sure whether to feel touched or [pause] very angry. [ext. pause] I did not think that anyone had noticed.
BO [22:40:31]: I have acquired an apartment I can afford on my stipend, with the help of Senator Amidala, and my master was even able to help me move in some furniture during the last day of her leave. I served her tea. It was [pause] nice.
BO [22:40:54]: But I have gotten off track. I meant to tell you that I have had time to do some research. It has been lovely, actually. I found what I was looking for almost immediately, as if it was just waiting to be found!
BO [22:40:01]: I would rather not speak of this to a recording, so all I will say is, do you know anything about [pause] our kind of holoc—recording devices? Feel free to comm me back when it is convenient for you.
Call ended [22:41:14]
From the Records of the Founding of the Aurelian Reform Sith Order, Server 12A, Datalog 22103742.33, Entry 327/412, transcript abbr.
14/31, 20 BBY
Incoming call, 22:42, logged and recorded 22:42–22:42 (0mins 40secs)
BO [22:42:07]: Hello, Ahsoka! I hope you are well, or as well as you can be out there. [pause]
BO [22:42:12]: Much has changed since my last message! The least of it is, Senator Amidala invited me for tea in her office. She ultimately had to leave in something of a hurry, but it was very kind of her. And you were right, the crepes there are shockingly good.
BO [22:42:31]: But what I truly called to tell you is that I have found something else to occupy my time! I have indulged my curiosity nearly to its limits, and it is causing me to reconsider . . . everything. I find myself—excited, I would say! To share this with you.
BO [22:42:43]: May the Force be with you always!
End call [22:42:47]