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The worst is when they are gentle. When their hands are gentle on his bruised and screaming flesh, planting a symphony of kisses up and down his body. When their voices are soft, and their eyes not as sharp as they were just a moment before.
Tenderness burns him, worse than fire. It sinks deep into the bone and bites deep, tormenting his poor little ruin of a soul. It would make him weep, if he could, but his tear ducts are as scorched as the rest of him.
Anakin almost finds himself breathing a sigh of relief when it shifts to pain: the cut of knives, the dig of teeth, the pinch of hands tracing their hate-love-loss over his skin. This is something that makes sense, that doesn't tempt him with what he'll never have.
There's a crunching sound and Ahsoka looks up at him, blood dripping from her mouth and staining her chin. She could be coming back from a thousand different hunts on a thousand different planets, where it not for the way her eyes grow yellow with something a half step away from insanity.
"Taste like chicken, Skyguy," she says, smacking her lips in appreciation. His torso flutters, blood streaming from a shallow cut in the side, pulsing in time with the rasp of Anakin's vocabulator. The metal is cold in his mouth, the only piece of his suit he has left to him, a sharp contrast to Ahsoka's glistening fangs.
Togruta don't eat humans, or any sentients, really. But Jedi don't kill Jedi, and Republics aren't meant to wake up as Empires, and the average Skyguy doesn't turn himself into a Vader. So perhaps he can understand the change in her habits, just a little bit.
"Don't push yourself, little'un," Rex says absentmindedly. "You'll choke."
Compared to Ahsoka, Rex is as precise and composed as he ever was, his expression perfectly calm as he drags the knife over Anakin's temple. There's a faint scraping sound, and a dull throbbing ache that makes Anakin wonder if he's carving into the bone.
Fresh blood washes over Anakin's eyes and Rex pauses, lifting the knife just enough so he can get something to carefully dab the blood away. He hums as he works, a tune that Anakin vaguely recognizes at the Vod An. Only it's too fast, to wild, with some of the beats just a hair bit off.
"We're making good progress, General," he says. Through the haze of Anakin's scorching, throbbing eyelids, he looks like a shadow rising up from the depths. "Everything is proceeding on schedule."
Yes. Yes, it is, isn't it? His Snips, his Captain, they always know what they're doing. He's proud of them for that. He hates them for that. He can't help himself, either way.
They'd lured him with a story of a Captain and an ex-Padawan on the run, a rumor to be chased down on some backwater planet. They'd known he would come alone, doing whatever he could avoid Palpatine's meddling. He'd been so tempted by the chance to see them, to make them understand, to put their trio back together again.
But they'd caught him. Snapped him up in a trap, sharp and clever as the teeth Ahsoka is now plunging back into his flesh. They'd gotten him somewhere, he doesn't know where, trapped him in a collar that leaves a cutting ache where the Force would be.
Anakin--and he is Anakin, now, with the armor stripped away, with the eyes of his Padawan and Captain so certain on him, almost trusting--knows he should be angry. Knows he should be raging, plotting their demise, scheming a way to get out of here.
But he can't. He missed them too much, and now a part of him can embrace the pain, even the awful tenderness, because he's not alone anymore.
When a star you thought long burned out comes roaring back to life, does it matter how much the fire scorches you?
"Do you remember that story we heard on...where was it again? I don't remember." Rex is cutting him again, shifting the knife so whatever path he's cutting curves. "There was a family that got thrown out of paradise. They had two children, and one killed the other."
Anakin has a hazy memory of that story. He's a bit distracted, though, by the sound of Ahsoka munching and muttering to herself. She's got her head on his stomach right now, running a thoughtful hand over his ravaged hip. She seems him looking and smirks, wagging her tongue lewdly.
I feel more like myself than I ever have, she said once. Who does she feel like now? Who does Rex feel like? Are these fractured, spinning forms their new selves, or are they still changing, still becoming?
Rex is still talking, and Anakin makes himself listen (for once). "The brother-killer was forced to leave his family and go out into the world with a mark on his forehead, so that all would know what he'd done." Rex presses just a little harder. "So that none would harm him."
"And now," Ahsoka says, a bit of a muffled gurgle to her words. "We'll be able to make sure we always know who you are, where you are. We won't have to worry about losing you again."
Words rasp up Anakin's throat: Aren't we all already lost? But before they can make their way out, Rex is bending to kiss him again, fresh bursts of pain ripping through Anakin's ravaged body as Rex's lips drag along his throat.
He doesn't know where, exactly, this part of the punishment comes from. It doesn't seem to be coming from a place of long-buried romantic feelings (although if he's being honest with himself, Anakin is perhaps not the best of judge of other people's emotions as he once thought he was). Is another kind of taunt, perhaps? Or is it more in the "fuck it, the galaxy is on fire and took my heart with it, why not kiss the Hero with No Fear even if he isn't quite as pretty as the propaganda art anymore?" vein?
Maybe it's a reminder that he's lost the easy familiarity of what they had before. Rex's mouth is biting, vicious, and every movement seems to carry another secret. There is nothing simple or easy here, nothing comradely.
It is the kiss that the predator gives to the prey. Anakin told himself, once, he would never be the prey again. Perhaps his true mistake was for thinking that was possible.
Rex pulls away and gets back to work. He's humming the Vode An again, and Anakin realizes Ahsoka has joined in. He can see over Rex's shoulder, smeared even redder than before. Her head is bobbing to the beat like she's listening to some of her favorite hyperpop tunes to kill time on a long journey.
Their voices are slightly out of tune, but neither of them seems to care. The song seems to slip farther out of control the more Anakin listens, teetering to the edge of unrecognizable.
He wants to say sorry for what he did, for killing the music like that. He wants to beg their forgiveness. But he doesn't even know if he is sorry, if he hasn't been pushed beyond guilt to a place ruled by want and bitterness and a kaleidoscope of pain.
Sorries are irrelevant, anyway. They wouldn't naming him brotherkiller (killer of fellow Jedi, killer of Vod, killer of the galaxy that was) if that wasn't so.
"There," Rex says, twirling his blade the way he does his blasters. "All done." He pats Anakin on his head, and the wound on his forehead flares in response. "How does that feel, General?"
It hurts, but Anakin has been hurting so long in one way or another that saying so feels irrelevant. He shrugs the best he can in his restraints, the tiny motion making him want to whimper as his tortured muscles scream.
Rex nods. "Good." He sits back with a satisfied sigh, rubbing his hand over his hair. It's been cut short, so short Anakin can see little cuts dotting his temples. He wonders how many of them were accidental.
"Come on, Ahsoka," he says. "He's ready now."
She straightens up and makes her way to their side, kneeling down besides Anakin with a low hum. Her fingers trace over the marks Rex left in his forehead, the blood slick on her hands.
"I've been learning things," she whispers. "We're going to go inside you now, Skyguy. Find all the secrets you've been hiding, all the little threads you've helped spun while we were gone."
The Empire flickers back into his mind for the first time in a while. So, they're not that far off the deep end--of course not, they couldn't have been to catch him. Now that he's trapped, hurt, helpless, (wanting, desperate, spiraling) Ahsoka can cut into him with ease.
They'll probably try to free the other troopers (the troopers, the troopers, will they be any better off than Rex after what's been done to them?) and dismantle the Empire, most certainly. Should we want to stop them? With the crisp glide of his suit, the soothing hum of his meditation chamber, the gentle buzz of Palpatine's darkness, the answer would be easier. Now, though his head just feels like a fog.
"I've been learning things," Ahsoka says, tracing her thumb over his forehead. She presses, hard, and Anakin grows. Her legs wrap around his head in a mockery of the erotic, giving him a good look at just how much her clothes are stained with his blood. "I've been pushing myself."
She will break him. She will flay open the last bit of privacy he has less, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing because the Chancellor already knows all of his dark and dirty secrets, doesn't he? And Obi-Wan, (Obi-Wan, are you mad, too?), and his vengeful ghosts, and...
Perhaps this is a just another on the long list of things Anakin Skywalker has been tricked into thinking he has.
Her nails scrapes his skin. Rex has one hand on Anakin's skull, holding him steady, while the other gently rubs Ahsoka's back.
Anakin tries to stay something, anything. All that comes out is, "...then?" It's a pitiful little whine, even though he's sure his vocabulator isn't broken.
"Don't worry, general," Rex says. "We'll put you to good use soon enough." Anakin thinks of Ahsoka's appetite, so ravenous as a child. He thinks of all the words Rex could write in his skin.
He wants to say...something. I'm sorry? Please don't? You will all suffer? He can't. The anger is bleeding out of him, is being digested in Ahsoka's gut. All he has left is smoldering ashes.
And besides, anything he wants to say is irrelevant. Ahsoka closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, as she and Rex start humming the not-Vod An again. The beat swells, swells, impossibly loud, fast enough and wild enough to cut into Anakin's skull, let the white fire come rushing in--
He burns all over again, and this time it almost feels like coming home.