Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Found a body by the rest stop,

Buried in the woods beneath

Garbage and leaves

Workers clearing overgrowth

If despair ever had a meaning beyond the one defined by words, it would be this, Anakin thought to himself as he stared into the yawning jaws of the icy cave. Icicles, like glinting teeth, reflected the cold sunlight into his eyes, blinding him in its glare. 

This was where they had buried her. This is where her ashes had been laid to rest.

He wanted to scream.

The cold air of Illum was mild in comparison to the empty, frozen slash in his mind where the bond had once been, a once-warm connection now scarred over by a frozen ravine. He was here for a kyber crystal, he had to keep reminding himself, urging his feet to move through the dreadful stone-and-ice awning. 

He was here for a crystal, and he would have to keep returning here for as long as he was a Jedi, for it was inevitable, undeniable that he would not be spared this torment. If not because he lost his saber, he would be forced to return to guide future younglings, and-

-and the image of her flashed in his mind’s eye, and his legs refused to continue onwards. He wanted to fall to the ground and scream until the cavern collapsed, burying him with her so that nothing could separate them ever again. 

And yet he kept moving. He forced himself to take one step, then another, then another and another and another until he found himself surrounded on all sides by packed ice and frozen stone, the song and light of kyber unable to pierce the horrid, choking grief he felt. Still, he continued. Past numerous twists and turns, though countless tunnels and innumerable passageways, he continued, until his legs ached and his stomach cramped with hunger. His tongue felt swollen and dry, his eyelids drooping though he felt no more tired than he had before.

Just keep going, he repeated to himself with each step. Just keep going. Just keep going. Almost there, just keep-

“Master?”

His heart froze, his body going as still as the endless darkness before him. 

“Master, is something wrong?” 

Don’t look, he told himself, scrunching his eyes closed as fresh waves of pain crashed into him. Tears pricked at his eyes and clawed at his throat, but he didn’t turn around - he knew what he would see, and he knew it would destroy him.

“Master, you’re scaring me,” she said. Anakin let out a choked sob, shaking his head as he forced himself to take another step forwards. He couldn’t bear to look, couldn’t face her knowing that she wasn’t real.

“Please,” he managed to gasp through the pain in his chest, in his throat, in his soul. “Please- I can’t- please.”

The cavern fell silent, the faint glow he hadn’t even realized was there vanishing. 

He let out another sob, collapsing to his knees. Curling up on the hard ground, he grasped first at his torso, then his hair, grief pouring out of him like blood.

“Why?” He whispered, his voice hoarse. Opening his eyes to glare up at the ceiling, he saw an endless darkness above his head pierced only by the glowing kyber that lined the walls. 

“Why?!” He screamed into that endless dark, his voice echoing back to him.

“Why are you doing this to me?!” He stumbled to his feet, trembling with rage and emotion.

“Why, why, why?! Why me?! Why her?! Why them?!” Tears cascaded down his face, falling to the ground where they shattered into pale, floric shards.

“How much will you take from me?! I have nothing left to give you! You took everything from me!”

White and pale-pink blossoms bloomed where water should have stained the barren earth, wrapping around his feet and spreading with each shed tear.

“I gave everything to you! I gave up my home, my family! I gave up my arm! I gave up countless of my friends and brothers in defense of you! I sacrificed myself countless times and yet you still took her from me! ”

The cave rumbled ominously around him, the crystals flashing as if panicked.

“Master? I’m scared,” she said.

Everything went silent, the rumbling stopped. Anakin’s words caught in his throat, his eyes falling shut.

“No,” he whispered, his hands curling into fists. Something sharp stabbed into the flesh of his left palm, and he focused on the sharp pain it brought and not the counting he could hear echoing in the back of his mind. This wasn’t real, she wasn’t real, none of this was happening. It was all a sick vision, some twisted Force hallucination, and she wasn’t here, and this wasn’t happening.

“Do you think… When all of this is over… We could play that video game we’ve been wanting to play for a while?” She asked, and despite knowing that none of it was real, despite knowing that this conversation had already happened, that these events had already passed, he nodded. 

“Yeah,” her voice replied to something that had been said long ago. She sounded farther away now, and he longed for nothing more than to turn around and race towards her, to embrace her and never let her go, but he knew that she was- that she was gone, that she was never coming back.

“That sounds nice.” 

He had to strain to hear her now, and something in his chest broke all over again.

She’s not real, he mentally screamed to himself. She’s dead, and she’s gone, and she’s buried somewhere in this cave and it’s all your fault!

One last time, he heard her voice - so faint he could barely make it out, weak and wavering like water.

“I love you, too.”

Anakin screamed. 

The cave collapsed.

Found it hidden in the brush,

Just beyond the line of the trees

Jawbone and teeth

Winter into spring on Fulton Street

She was just as he remembered her. Mischief danced in her sharp blue eyes, a smirk resting on her lips as she strode forwards, a bounce in her step. 

“Hey, SkyGuy!” She chirped. Anakin’s breath caught in his throat. 

“Ahsoka-“

She passed right through him.

Anakin stared down at himself, feeling numb. 

“Hey, Snips! Come check this out,” a different version of him said, smiling at her. They began talking, but Anakin couldn’t hear them over the ringing in his ears.

“Anakin,” a familiar, inhuman voice echoed from behind him. Tearing his gaze away from the sight of her, he turned to face the glitchy, unidentifiable mess of something that he had seen before in one of his visions.

“Do you blame yourself?” It asked once more, tilting its eyeless head at him imploringly. 

“What do you want?” Anakin asked, his voice low and wavering slightly. 

The thing regarded him for a moment more. 

The scenery changed. They were back in the cave he had been in before, but rocks had fallen everywhere except a near-perfect circle around him. White and pink petals, like floric manes, crowned the faces of numerous flowers that now grew all along the sides of the cavern and all along the floor. 

“Do you know what these are?” The thing asked, a singular blossom rising up from the carpet of white and pink.

Anakin shook his head, mesmerized by the sight of the flower.

“It is your destiny.”

Anakin blinked, frowning slightly in confusion as the blossom came to rest in his outstretched hands. It was light on his palms, but something deadly pulsed just under the surface, something dangerous and toxic. 

“It is oleander,” the thing said, and as Anakin watched, the flower began to spread across his skin, roots burrowing into his flesh and leaves wrapping around his limbs. Anakin flinched, but he felt frozen in place, unable to move or scream or do anything but watch in horrified, fascinated silence as the plant overtook him completely.

“It will show you the future.”

And it did. Darkness overtook him, but distantly he could feel his physical form. He felt the sting of roots and thorns, the gentle brush of petals against skin. 

Choking, he inhaled around vines and stems, his blood mixing with potent, toxic sap and his lungs filling with flowers. In his mind’s eye, colors dared to thrive, blooming and wilting and reviving over and over again as he watched, helpless, hypnotized. He saw the way they were connected, felt as his veins and arteries merged and became one with the vast commune of roots, sending signals to hundreds, thousands, millions of others. He saw a copperhead viper sinking its fangs into flesh, its mouth dripping venom and blood to the floor, seeds awakening where they fell. He saw as the creeping vines overtook the snake, covering it, absorbing it, stripping it bare until only pale bones and paler flowers remained. 

He saw Rex, and he saw Ahsoka. He saw his mother, his Clan, his brothers, all sleeping in a sea of pink and white, their eternal rest betrayed by the stillness of their chests and the vacancy of their eyes. He saw himself, standing in the endless field, the horizon lighting his back and a thorny mass of tangled stems and lethal flowers resting in a crown atop his head. His eyes glowed, his blood turned to toxic sap in his veins, but he thrived.

He saw futures that would never come to pass, saw events rendered impossible in this timeline unfold. He saw Kenobi, hurting him, betraying him, over and over. He saw the Jedi lose their way so many times he himself lost track. He saw a web of possibilities branch out all around him, like the veins running through petals all poised around a poisonous center, like roots branching out to erode earth. 

“Victory is assured.”

A sound, much like the braying of beasts, escaped his throat. Wind whipped all around him, lifting loose petals into a floral mimicry of a blizzard. They coated him, clung to him, flooded his senses and burrowed under his skin.

The roaring in his blood, in his veins, in his head and heart and soul - it went silent. The universe was put on mute.

“Are you ready?”

The world went dark.

“-ey! Over here! I think there’s some-“

Voices, muffled and distorted as if underwater, filtered in and out of his awareness.

“-ster Skywalker? Master Skywalker, can you hear me?”

Anakin forced his eyes to open despite the impossible weight of them. In front of him stood a female rodian, two younglings huddling behind her. 

“You’re injured, Master Skywalker. We’re going to move you to the transport, now,” she said. A grunt was all he could manage in response, his eyes drifting shut once more. 

Through his muddled senses, he felt as a blast of warm air engulfed him, caressing his frostbitten skin and chasing away the cold he hadn’t even realized had set in around him. His body pulsed and throbbed in distant agony, something hot and stinging moving sluggishly across his scalp before drip-drip-dripping down to the floor of the ship he was now on. 

Touching his hand to the side of his head, he peeled open his eyes to see his fingers coated in-

Sap, thick and potent, black and vile and seeping poison, staining skin and surging against the senses-

-blood, red and sticky because it was normal, human blood, not something else, something other.

In his other fist, which he realized had been clenched, a fiery orange kyber crystal had partially embedded itself into his skin, its sharp edges drawing blood as he peeled it away from the flesh of his palm.

Anakin blinked down at it in surprise. Reaching out with the Force, he wrapped it around the crystal inquisitively. At his touch, however, it shifted, reaching back, turning blue. Even more intrigued, he cupped it in his hands, feeding the living Force through it.

It shifted to green. Then, when he withdrew, it faded back to ember-orange. 

With a pang, he realized it was the same shape as her skin, the blue color of her eyes, the green the color of her sabers.

He held it even closer, the echoes of an “I love you, too,” repeating in his mind and stinging his eyes. 

With a shuddering breath, he moved to wipe his face, but the back of his hand brushed against something foreign.

He pulled it down.

In his hair was a pale pink oleander flower.

And cities grow weeds, and cities grow

And cities keep secrets in the trees

In the shadow of the pyramid

The rowan tree was wrapped in light blue ornaments. The glow it emitted was pale and haunting, spidering like lightning, echoing in the fog. Vines dangled from overarching branches, moss clinging to gray-brown-red bark and seeming to absorb light and sound, muffling and distorting it.

Anakin stood in front of it, staring up at the eerie, leafless canopy.

Caw.

He turned to find a crow perched upon a pile of pale bones. It looked odd, uncanny - it appeared at first to be normal, if off-putting, but the more he looked the more disturbing it became. Its eyes were not eyes, but rather darkened acorns. Its beak was two elaborately rolled leaves, its tongue a blackened, forked stem. Its down feathers were pine needles, the quills thin twigs of flexible brown-red twigs. Flight feathers made of long leaves spread as the crow tilted its head at him, cawing once more as it leapt from its throne of bones, taking flight.

Anakin craned his neck to follow it with his gaze, and as he did the leaves of the crow’s wings turned vibrant, violent shades of fire-orange, burning-red, and brilliant-yellow before the bird’s body turned brown and drooping, rotting as he watched, damning the crow to fall to the mist-draped earth. Plant material withered and decayed as it fell, hitting the ground with the rattle of dead leaves.

Approaching the downed creature, he was met with the sight and smell of a still-pulsing mound of over-ripe fruit-flesh that was roughly in the shape of a bird. The overwhelming stench of citrus-gone-sour hung heavy in the damp air. 

Bare-breasted, the plant-meat crow’s feathers shed, leaving behind tiny thistle seeds where they once were, like the pimpled gooseflesh that lined the skin of plucked birds. The root-like feet of the bird twitched and curled in on themselves with the trembling death throes, and the crow let out a final, gasping cry before falling silent, quickly decomposing into an oozing lump of detritus. 

The ground shook, trembling, quivering beneath his feet as it cowered from the sky, the scenery shifting around him. The taste of blood soured his mouth as his vision exploded into color, before finally settling into place. 

Where dark shadows and dense fog once hovered in the air, a forest rich with the scent of a recent rain now stood strong. The dripping canopy shivered and wind-whispered, leaves silvering as the breeze brushed through them like hands carding through hair. Flowers thrived in the undergrowth, reaching towards the sun in defiance of the dappled shadows that slept on the forest floor like great nocturnal beasts. Droplets of dew, like tiny glinting eyes, perched on stems and spiderwebs alike, occasionally plunging to the needle-carpeted ground like gannets diving into water.

Winding through the trees, an invisible, unmarked path lay hidden to all but those looking for it. Striding forwards, his steps cushioned by the springy forest floor, he set his gaze ahead though his eyes still lingered and snagged on every sight in wonder. 

“This way brings salvation,” the rustling of leaves rolling across the ground assured him. 

“This way brought damnation,” the shivering underbrush warned him.

“This way breeds betterment,” the gentle breeze whispered.

“This way bleeds suffering,” the cracking of branches screamed.

He brushed it all aside, for the glinting sunlight carved words into the ground, words only he could read. 

“Sacrifice,” the words read. 

“Sacrifice?” He whispered, turning his face towards the sky.

“Salvation!”

“Damnation!”

“Betterment!”

“Suffering!” 

The voices all cried out, but the words burned themselves into his mind.

Sacrifice - an old friend, an old foe, he thought, passing through the forest edge. The final copse of trees, frail and twisted, disappeared behind him, becoming a part of the ever-growing past. 

The sunlight grew harsher and harsher, until he was blinded by white light, his vision blurring into monochrome as he breathed in a sharp gasp of air. 

“Ah, Master Skywalker, you’re awake,” the healer greeted. Anakin stared at them dumbly for a second before shaking himself and nodding.

“That was quite an ordeal you survived.”

The healer’s tone was kind, though there was an undercurrent of question and curiosity in their words. Anakin simply nodded again, meeting the healer’s inquisitive gaze. 

Evidently disappointed, the healer turned back to what they were doing, and Anakin checked himself over in the Force.

A few broken bones, a good bit of bruising, a general feeling of weakness…

“What’s the last thing you remember?” The healer questioned, drawing him back to reality.

“Illum,” Anakin rasped, his throat dry and scratchy. 

A soft smile from the healer.

“Yes, you were discovered by a crèche caretaker. She and her two charges found you surrounded by collapsed rocks. Was there a cave-in?”

The memory of a field of flowers and him screaming up at the cave ceiling flickered across his mind’s eye.

“Something like that,” he told her, reaching up to rub at his head.

“It’s a miracle you’re alive,” she said, and Anakin paused, frowning.

“What exactly happened?” He asked.

“We were hoping you would be able to tell us that,” she sighed. “You came in yesterday with a concussion, hypothermia, dehydration, malnutrition, some pretty serious bruising. multiple sprains, and multiple lacerations.”

A sudden thought occurred to him, and his frown deepened.

“How long was I away?”

“Master Skywalker, you’ve been missing for almost two weeks, now. Like I said, it’s a miracle you’re alive, and in relatively good condition, too.”

Anakin let out a shaky exhale. 

“I- I had a vision from the Force,” he explained. “I must have been in some sort of meditative trance.”

Before the healer could answer, their com began beeping. The healer gave a bashful, apologetic smile, before quickly bidding farewell and exiting the room, leaving Anakin to his rest. 

Two weeks. As soon as he was able to, he’d have to contact Padmé.

But for now, he mused, all he could really do was rest.

The cities grow weeds, the cities grow

By the river and the covered bridge

The cities grow weeds, I know

Chapter Text

All the memories your dreams retrieve,

Make you dress up for the funeral

Hold in a vigil in the field,

Release lanterns at night-

Drip.

Anakin had always been a strange, haunted child. Ever since he could remember, he would have what the Tatooine Elders called Waking Visions, or Waking Dreams. Though, if you asked him, they were more often than not nightmares. Waking Nightmares.

Mom told him it was an inherited thing - apparently, Anakin’s grandfather’s sister, Allsight, experienced the same thing though not to the same extent. According to Mom, these things were called Washovers when they were neutral (and a handful of times, dare he say pleasant ) and Bleedovers when they were… bad.

Drip. Drip.

When Obi-Wan found out, he said that there was something wrong with Anakin. That something in him was broken or defective. Damaged goods.

Maybe he was right, Anakin thought to himself, blinking at the dark puddles in a mixture of dismay, disdain, and exasperation.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

This particular Bleedover was reoccurring - but it was getting worse. It had started when he was ten, when he had woken up to the feeling of that dark, cursed, burning water dripping down to land on his forehead and on the backs of his hands. It kept happening like that, where he’d awaken and look up to see off-color splotches on the ceiling, small bacterial stalactites hanging down, drip-drip-dripping that horrid water. 

When he was eleven, it escalated to him hallucinating dark puddles scattered on the floors of the Temple. They had been small, to begin with, black and glinting and ominous but mostly ignorable. As the years passed, however, they grew bigger and deeper, and Anakin had watched as people would trod through those abyssal pools, causing obsidian ripples to spread out, undulating and shivering unnaturally in a way reminiscent of thick slime, not water.

It never failed to make him shudder.

It was horrible, the way it moved: like flesh flinching away from a sharp prod. Nauseated, Anakin’s body would tense, his muscles clenching against his will as he quickly averted his eyes.

Drip. Drip. Drip, drip, drip.

He had stepped in one, once, when the water had covered the floor and was impossible to avoid without appearing absolutely insane to those who couldn’t see the water… which was everyone. So, he had casted one last pleading look at Obi-Wan (who, of course, ignored him) before stepping forwards.

Immediately, he had been swallowed up, unwittingly plunging into the inky depths, his body engulfed by greedy water.

He had flailed frantically, his vision going monochrome as a flood of bubbles escaped his shout-parted mouth. It streamed in through his teeth as he snapped his jaws back closed, through his nose as he choked. Everything had been muffled, but he remembered that clearly - the way his scream had been muted and distorted. It all had felt unreal, yet too real at the same time, like a vivid nightmare brought upon by a near-death experience. 

He still remembered how it felt to have the breath stolen from his lungs, to open his mouth to scream, only for water to rush in instead. The water had been so cold, it had driven all feeling from his limbs and all thought from his mind, save for the thought that he’d never be warm again. At the same time, it had been so hot that his skin had begun to peel, red and angry. He had watched the light let in by the puddle’s mirror-like surface grow more and more distant, the void reaching up to cup him in its eternal embrace as he sank. At that point, he had no energy left to fight, and so he hadn’t. He had simply closed his eyes and stopped resisting the water that churned in his lungs and throat.

Dripdripdrip-

He had jolted awake after that, foam and dark water pouring out of his mouth as someone pressed down hard on his chest. 

Coughing, gagging, choking, he had laid there, shaking so hard he made himself dizzy, blood dripping from his nose, his ears, his mouth. Tears slid across his scalded face as his body thrashed, rejecting whatever had invaded. 

Whoever was performing chest compressions stopped, their relief near tangible in the Force. After that, medics had swarmed and surrounded him, rattling off things he hadn’t understood at the time, words like seizure and secondary drowning and Force anomaly.

“His fingers have frostbite,” one medic had said.

“His arms, legs, face, and torso have been burned,” another added.

“He’s drenched!”

“What is this stuff?”

“This isn’t normal-“

The voices had blended, blurred together, and at some points he was uncertain as to what had been spoken and what had been picked from someone's mind. They had wavered in and out, as if he had a faulty connection.

After that, he passed out.

Drip. Drip.

From then on, he was always “that weird kid”, the one who tripped and stumbled on and over unseen objects, who stared at things that weren’t there, that had a weird curse that sometimes made him spacey and unresponsive. 

They said he was cursed.

Funny - the people on Tatooine had said the same thing.

Drip. Drip.

“The only ‘Force anomaly’ in the Temple is him!” Anakin had heard one of the masters say, one. The others had agreed - Obi-Wan had agreed.

Humiliated, Anakin had stared down at the floor, wishing for the first time that one of those dark puddles would appear and swallow him up.

He had always been ‘the weird one’ - the Temple was no different from Tatooine, in that regard. But just because he had always been ‘the weird one’ didn’t make it feel any better. It all still hurt, it all still got to him - he was human, after all. The other kids would avoid or mock him; the adults would watch him closely, as if he were a lab specimen.

Ahsoka, Padmé, and Rex had been the only ones to look at him like he was normal.

Like he was a person.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Drip.

He hadn’t realized the tears had formed at all until one fell from his face, but by then it was too late to stop from crying. An uncontrollable, unstoppable cascade of tears escaped his eyes as all around him, dark water flooded the room.

Ever since That Day, the Bleedovers had gotten worse - no longer were there scattered puddles, but rather the whole room was ankle-deep in water. Bacterial columns grew up from the submerged carpet like decayed stumps in a bog or like stalagmites in a cave, their surfaces pulsing and scuttling, their tips nearly touching the teeth-like bacterial stalactites that now grew massive in size. Water dripped from pointed bottom to pointed top, and he buried himself in his blankets.

“Anakin?” 

That was Padmé’s voice, but if he lifted his head to greet her, to see her, he’d instead see the water and the pillars and it was all too much. 

He couldn’t stand the thought of it, let alone the sight, so he just laid there, chattering unease eating away at him.

“Oh, Anakin,” she sighed, the sound of sloshing water followed by a dip in the bed next to him, her warm skin pressing gently against his.

“Another Bleedover?” She asked, her voice soft. Anakin hesitated, then nodded.

He had told her about the Bleedovers, once, when he had freaked out in her apartment about a fog that wasn’t there, she hadn’t reacted badly then, nor had she in the months that followed - he had no reason to fear that she would now, and yet the doubt and self-consciousness ate away at him relentlessly, illogically.

Padmé hummed in his ear, oblivious to his insecure thoughts. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

“They’re getting more frequent,” she eventually said, a hidden question in her statement.

“Stress,” he mumbled in answer. 

She didn’t reply. She didn’t have to ask why he was stressed - she mourned their absence, too.

“This isn’t healthy.”

Anakin tensed for a moment. Had he been wrong? Had she been judging him all this time?”

“Not you, love,” she was quick to assure him, as if sensing his spiraling thoughts and rising fear. “I meant this. The way we’re grieving. Just… ignoring it all. Trying to lose ourselves in our work. You know?”

Yes. Yes, he did know, more than she could ever guess.

Poking his head out of his nest of blankets, he grimaced as he saw the vile water, then relaxed when he turned his attention to his beautiful wife. 

“We should take a break. Go to Naboo. Have… Have a funeral. That way we can- we can grieve the proper way. The healthy way. Begin to, anyway.”

Anakin stared at her for a few seconds, contemplating it. 

A funeral… That sounded… Well, ‘nice’ was too pretty a word for it. It seemed like it could help.

“That- I like that idea,” he said, reaching out to grasp her hand.

“I’ll take some time off from the Senate,” she said.

“I’m still on leave,” he added with a nod.

She smiled at him, squeezing his hand, before turning and leaving the room, presumably to schedule that time off.

With a sigh, Anakin cast a sideways glance at the rising dark water.

As hard as it was to stay optimistic, he was trying his best to believe that things would get easier, that better days were ahead of them.

Maybe, if he kept trying, it could one day even be true.

-And I saw, on the shoulder of the interstate,

When I followed your eyes, when I followed your eyes,

All the crosses for the accidents

All the photos and the flowers by the street

The funeral came and passed as all things do, and yet he felt no better than he had before - but he didn’t feel worse, either. All he felt was that same, hard knot of determination and emotional numbness that he had felt for ages now. For all that the funeral had symbolized, it very much felt that very little had changed.

There was someone nearby the gardens he was in, someone who didn’t belong, someone who felt like herbivore teeth against his plant-like senses. Carefully, he grasped an oleander blossom in his hands, setting his shoulders as he sank into that familiar trance of duty. It felt delicate in his palms. Its pale pink petals were soft and unassuming, its texture thin and almost fragile.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He said aloud, cupping the flower gingerly. 

The bounty hunter paused, their presence prickling with uncertainty. 

“It symbolizes love, you know? Love, destiny, understanding, desire… All those fickle, beautiful things.”

He turned to where he sensed the hunter, bearing his fangs in a sharp smile as his eyes scanned the shadows. He saw nothing. No matter - he didn’t need to see his target to kill it.

“But it also means another thing: ‘beware’. Do you know why?”

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, shuddering as he felt his power fill him with its poisonous, addicting rage. Everything came into focus - his prey’s thundering heart, the racing of its pulse, the way its breath hitched as its instincts screamed at it to run. 

“It’s ironic, you know? Because the flower that symbolizes love and relationships and destiny and all that is also incredibly poisonous. All parts of it are deadly, its toxins strong enough to kill. Did you know that?”

He seized the mind of the hunter-turned-prey, shadows creeping across the floor and dripping from the walls and ceiling to cover the unfortunate assassin’s mind. 

“It’s a killer. And yet, people put it in their gardens and grow it in their fields because of its deceptive beauty, unknowing of the lethality of it all.”

Inside the hunter’s mind, a wordless scream echoed as Anakin’s grip grew tighter and tighter, squeezing all life out. At the last second, he released his hold.

“Who sent you?” He growled, buzzing with danger and deadly intent.

The hunter didn’t even hesitate.

“The Kaminoans!” The hunter gasped out, foam dripping from the corners of their mouth.

Anakin cocked his head imploringly, his silent question asked with eyes that were cold and dead.

“They wanted- They wanted samples- I was just supposed to knock you out and take some blood and swabs! I swear, that’s all!” The hunter writhed in his invisible grasp, eyes alight with panic. 

“Why?” Anakin inquired, voice monotone, though the faintest spark of curiosity flickered deep inside his chest. 

“I don’t know! I don’t know, I swear I don’t know!” The hunter blabbered. Anakin scrutinized the hunter, sensing no deceit from the human.

“I believe you,” Anakin replied after a second of thought. The hunter slumped slightly, blinking at him with a pleading glance.

“Come,” he ordered, a look of surprise on the hunter’s face as their body began to move without them telling it to.

“I wish to have a word with your employers.”

Surprise melted into shock and horror as Anakin took control of the hunter’s body, manipulating their limbs and torso as if it were a puppet on a string.

Shoulders set, head held high, in this moment Anakin looked nothing like the despairing creature that stalked the Jedi Temple, the one who drew pitying glances and quiet whispers.

“There’s Master Skywalker,” they’d say. “Poor him, poor him. Lost his Padawan, his legion, his Master. Poor him, poor him.”

The bounty Hunter whimpered in fear, powerless in his grasp.

Poor him, indeed. 

The flower was still grasped in his hand, so very gently, its lethal prowess gurgling in the Force, hissing a silent warning. 

“I am dangerous,” it seemed to say. “I am not to be messed with.”

Anakin hummed absentmindedly, placing it in his hair, just above his left ear.

“I lie,” the position meant, in the language of flowers. And he did - he lay in wait, though he never did tell a lie - everyone simply came to all the wrong conclusions. All he had to do was play the part.

“There goes poor Master Skywalker,” they’d say as he passed. “Poor him. Poor him. Found him injured next to a pool of lava, poor him. Master Kenobi died there; I hear the two were close, poor him. He refuses to talk about it, poor him. Always looks so shell-shocked and far-away whenever asked about it, poor him, poor him.”

The ship Anakin led them to was almost unnoticeable, if one didn’t know where to look. It simply bled into its surroundings, blurring with everything else around it until it was near invisible. 

“You know, a long, long time ago, people used oleander to treat venomous snake bites,” Anakin said as he started up the pre-flight sequences. He removed the flower from his hair, stroking the delicate petals reverently. 

“Of course, it can be used as such today, with the proper preparation. But back then, they’d simply grind up the whole plant, poisonous sap and all. Sometimes the effects of the oleander would kill the person, sometimes the snake venom would do so first, but on rare occasions the person would recover, and as such the remedy was deemed a success and would continue to be used.” Anakin replaced the flower in his hair and began to take off from the hanger. “People would plant it everywhere. The trees and shrubs it grew on provided shade and decoration, and its roots helped prevent erosion. Its flowers were beautiful and made the air smell sweet and fragrant. Pollinators such as bees and butterflies would flutter around. They’d make the air seem fresher, cleaner.”

Anakin navigated through Coruscant traffic as he spoke, weaving up through the lanes until he breached the atmosphere. 

“People loved it, but there was a problem.” Anakin inputted the hyperspace coordinates, then turned his seat so that he was facing the now-restrained bounty hunter. As they made the jump, Anakin leaned forwards and entwined his hands.

“See, when people would let their small children or their curious pets out to play, they would inevitably try and eat the plant. Some were, unfortunately, successful.” Anakin bared his teeth in a predator’s grin. “But it’s not like people didn’t know the risks. Sure, those in charge of selling the plant or growing it or researching it could feign ignorance, but at some point it all falls apart.”

“W-What do you want with me?” The bounty hunter gasped out. Anakin frowned at him.

“See, the plant is deadly because it’s beautiful, and because of that people underestimate it. Others know, and simply do not care. The plant is deadly because of ignorance, incompetence, and a percieved innocence, and that’s what sets it apart from other toxic plants, like the oh-so-toxic Manchineel tree. That plant is dangerous, and everyone knows it. The simplest touch, the smallest brush or inhalation or contact can maim or kill. There’s no subtlety there, no beauty or hidden lethality - and that’s why it’s been almost eradicated from this Galaxy, whereas oleander still grows nearly everywhere.”

Anakin tilted his head, his eyes gleaming unnaturally.

“Over the millennia, it’s probably killed more people than snakebites ever did.”

Anakin turned his gaze to the swirling sea of stars surrounding them. 

“Fascinating, isn’t it?”

The rain was driving, the wind whipping and clawing at the ship with ruthless vigor. The bounty hunter’s helpless, constant terror marred his concentration, but Anakin wasn’t the Galaxy’s best pilot for nothing. 

Safely landing the ship, he turned to the hunter with a sharp grin. 

“Alright,” he said, releasing his control over the poor, trembling creature.

If they weren’t already seated, Anakin amusedly thought, they would have collapsed.

“What- What the fuck- who- what are you?!” The hunter cried, breathless from fear. Anakin waved his hand to release the hunter’s binds, not bothering to answer. To be honest, he himself didn’t know the answer to that - not anymore.

“What I am,” he said after a long moment, “is someone who’s surrendering.”

The bounty Hunter stared at him in shock, their eyes wide and disbelieving, like a mouse who just took down a cat.

“…Surrendering?” 

“Think about it,” Anakin began, baring his teeth in a grin. “We both win. You get your bounty and keep your life, I get the information I seek - and an opportunity I’ve been chasing.”

“I don’t understand,” the hunter whimpered. 

“You don’t need to,” Anakin purred. “All you have to do-“ he handed the blaster to the hunter, “-is shoot.”

“Shoot? What- what do you- why would you want me to-“

“ Shoot ,” Anakin growled.

The hunter’s hands shook as he took the blaster, leveling it at Anakin’s shoulder. 

Anakin’s world exploded in pain.

Voices ebbed in and out of Anakin’s mind, floating in and then away like dandelion seeds caught in the wind. Slowly, he became aware of tense words being exchanged nearby, all the while he lay there, motionless, his body stiff and aching. 

“-don’t know!” Someone shouted from nearby. 

“You were meant to acquire samples and nothing else,” an important-looking Kaminoan hissed angrily at the bounty hunter.

“I tried!” The hunter protested weakly. “He- He’s not human, he can’t be. He moved my body with his mind, like I was a puppet! He bleeds black blood, and that blood burns whatever it touches! There’s something wrong here!”

“And you expect us to believe such tall tales?” The Kaminoan growled. 

Personally, Anakin thought that the long-necks would be the first people to believe tall tales.

“Weirder has happened,” a different voice said, one that Anakin recognized as belong to his target. 

From one second to the next, he went from laying sprawled out on a table of sorts to pinning his target to the wall, his teeth digging into their throat until dark blood stained his mouth and face, and digging thorn-like fingers into their skull. This motherfucker had terrorized his clan while they were alive, had made Rex and all the boys live in fear. 

Rage drove his teeth farther into flesh, uncaring of the cacophony of screaming and the frenzy of action behind him. Loss (and all the guilt and anger and all the other tyrannies of grief that came with it) pressed his hands tighter against their skull, tighter and tighter until something creaked and shifted beneath his palm, before it all finally collapse inwards, and he knew that he had done the right thing, even if, in in this state, he didn’t even remember his name.

At some point, Anakin had locked the other two in the room with him without even noticing, absent-mindedly creating a bubble that prevented them from calling for help. Baring his teeth in a primal mockery of a grin, he turned towards them, blood and gore dripping from his still-open mouth. Viscera was streaked across his face, soaking his hair and staining his clothes. His eyes were glowing, he was sure, and the shoulder wound he had accidentally torn open in his frenzy now drip-drip-drip-dripped black, boiling blood. His pupils dilated as he tensed, anticipation humming in his veins. 

The Kaminoan made the first move, attempting to lunge for a button on a nearby console. With a snarl, Anakin intercepted him, wrapping his hands around as much of the Longneck’s long neck as he could, before jerking his body backwards with an iron grip. A satisfying crunk-pop echoed, and the Kaminoan went limp.

Finally, all that was left was the bounty hunter.

Anakin was going to have fun with this.

He grinned, baring his teeth as he readied himself, breathing in deep.

He lunged.

Will I ever put flowers by the street? 

Will I ever put flowers by the street?

Effortlessly, he executed the silent dance, each rhythmic movement a subtle advance. Short, fast steps forward, and death strikes with him, chaotic and disordered. An onward spin, his target against the wall, bristling and cornered. His elusive partner, fate itself, the gardener of the fields of graves, waves of oleander rolling across the hills.

And yet, he needn’t strike the killing blow - as his foe moved to attack, Anakin side-stepped, the enemy lunging straight into the jutting corner of a partially torn-open console, sharp metal and wires spilling out of it like entrails. A sickening crack sounded as the man’s skull made contact, hard enough to break open the skull, sharp enough to pierce through the flesh, revealing brain matter beneath.

“The thing with oleander,” he said, coming back to his senses as he watched the man gasp and heave on the ground. There was blood pouring from the gaping, self-inflicted (albeit accidental) wound in his skull.

“-is that it doesn’t have to seek out its victim. All it has to do is sit there and look pretty, and everyone else will do the rest.”

“Anakin.”

Anakin scoffed, crossing his arms behind his back as he spun on his heel, his eyes narrowing slightly as he took in the ghostly blue form in front of him.

“Obi-Wan.”

“So, is this what you’re becoming? A side-line hunter who controls people like puppets?” Ghost-Obi-Wan shook his head with a sneer of disgust. “The Anakin I knew would never do such a thing.”

Anakin flashed his teeth in an imitation of a small smile, tilting his head slightly.

“Funny. The Obi-Wan I knew wouldn’t hesitate to do such a thing, and would scold me for refusing to put the mission before morals. Now, if all you’ve done is come to hypocritically chastise me, Hauntobi , then leave; I have more important matters to attend to.” Anakin turned on his heel once more, striding swiftly yet confidently out of the now-destroyed room, his arms still clasped neatly behind his back.

“Stop this madness, Anakin. It doesn’t have to be this way,” Hauntobi continued, trailing after him.

“Ah, but it does, my ghostly friend.”

“Don’t call me that. We’re not friends - you killed me.”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? I’ve seen what the future held for us. What the future held in store for me. I’ve seen what you’d do to me, all the ways you’d hurt me either because you put something else before me for the billionth time or just to show that you could. Tell me, Kenobi, in all those futures we saw, did you enjoy hurting me, or did you do it just to feel in control? Did it make you feel better about yourself? Did you ever feel guilty, tearing me down and then telling me you loved me?”

“You can’t judge me for crimes I have not yet committed, crimes I never will commit,” Hauntobi retorted.

“Ah, but judgement for crimes not committed at all was a fine thing to do, something that ended in death and still was forgiven with only an apology?” Anakin growled, not once pausing his long strides to listen to Hauntobi’s bitch whining.

“Are you still on about that? We apologized and tried to make it up to you. Really, Anakin, you should have-“

The rest of Hauntobi’s words were drowned out by the blood roaring in Anakin’s ears. He halted in his tracks, standing in the hallway with his fists clenched so tight his metal once creaked ominously. 

“Am I… ‘still on’ about it?” Anakin parroted slowly, interrupting whatever Hauntobi was saying.

“For the love of the Force-“ Hauntobi began, but Anakin turned sharply and stomped towards the ghostly blue form.

“Am I still on about what, Kenobi?! Am I still on about the fact that the child I raised, the child I cared for and protected was murdered by the very people she worshipped?! Am I still on about the way you stood by and did nothing while one of the most important people in my life, someone who thought of you as a hero, who loved you was tossed aside and left to rot?!” Anakin sharply jabbed his finger in Hauntobi’s face as he pressed angrily onwards, both in his step and in his verbal tirade.

“Oh, or maybe you’re exasperated at the fact that I didn’t accept your bullshit ass apology! ‘Oh, I’m sorry you felt that way nyuh nyuh nyuh-‘ oh FUCK off! You and all your fellow lice-in-Jedi clothing stood up there and fucking apologized! As if words could ever ease the pain, could ever make this fucked up reality any less fucked up. As if words could help with the fact that the girl that I- I loved as my own is gone , and I’m never getting her back!” Tears, hot like molten steel and stinging just as much, rolled down his cheeks as he struggled to control his erratic breathing. His voice was slightly raw from shouting, but the anger still bled under his skin, still festered into bruises of pure vitriol. 

Anakin gave a wet scoff, angrily wiping his eyes with his sleeve as he glared at the stunned ghost of Kenobi.

“I want you and all your allies, all your friends, all your fucked up Jedi, ” he began, his voice low and trembling under the weight of his rage. “I want you all to suffer the way you have made me suffer. And I want you, Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, to suffer the way you made your family suffer.”

Hauntobi, his eyes wide, shook his head slightly.

“I don’t have a-“ he began to say.

“ Don’t ,” Anakin snarled, “you dare say you don’t have a family. We were your family, whether you liked it or not, and it’s pretty obvious your stance on the matter.” 

“Jedi don’t have families.”

Anakin screamed, lunging at Hauntobi and grabbing his ghostly form by the shoulders.

“Do you even hear yourself?!” He screeched, shaking Hauntobi violently. “Look around! YOU did this! YOU! My actions are my own, but you, Obi-Wan Kenobi, are the villain of this story!”

Hauntobi shoved Anakin, breaking away and backing up with a look of fear on his face.

“Your choices have done nothing but harm the people who depended on you! It was YOU who chose to stand by and do nothing when Ahsoka begged for your help! It was YOU who chose to let MY MEN die! It was YOU who chose to hurt people and YOU who chose to do nothing! Your choices have fucking consequences, Kenobi, and for the first time in your fucking life you’re seeing them!”

Anakin gave a strangled laugh as Hauntobi backed up into a wall. In the cornered man’s eyes, Anakin could see the reflection of his towering form. The tears continued to roll down his face even as he continued to laugh, his bitterness giving way to hysteria. His outfit was torn and splattered with blood and carbon scoring, small bits ripped off or burned through. His hair was wild and slick with sweat, his eyes glowing with power and emotion. 

“How does it feel, Master , to taste the bitter result of your own actions and inactions, the sour fruit of what you’ve sown?” He managed to choke out, his laughter spluttering off.

“I tried for so long to keep our family together, to keep it all from falling apart. You, Ahsoka, the clones, all of us! I cut away pieces of myself, sacrificed so much just to keep you all happy, just to keep us all together! I changed myself so much for you because I thought that’s what you wanted! I thought that if I became what you said you wished I was, I could make you proud, that I could make you want to stay.”

Anakin shook his head.

“But now it’s only me. I saw once, in the rear-view mirror, an image of what we could have been, but I realize now that it was all just a trick of the light. The mirror broke when you let it shatter, but I was so desperate for it all to work out that I drove myself insane trying to repair it. I thought that if I held all the pieces close to myself, I’d be able to see that image once more, but all I did was cut my hands and arms, and I have the scars to fucking prove it!”

Hauntobi was silent for a long moment as Anakin tried once more to even out his breathing.

“What is it… that you want?” Hauntobi asked eventually. Anakin grabbed the dead man by the throat in response.

“I want revenge for all the time I spent trying to hold myself up to impossible standards set by you and all your delusional dipshit colleagues. I want vengeance for all the times you’ve screwed me over, all the times you’ve tossed me aside or hurt me or made me feel small and worthless. I want justice for all the lives you either ruined or wasted in your endless, fruitless endeavor to be something you’re not. I want to be free of all of this bullshit I’ve been dragged into, free of this curse that binds me here. I want the clock to turn back, Obi-Wan! I want to change things, I want to save the people I love! I want to live in a world where everyone is happy and safe, but that’s not possible because you’re in the way! You, the Jedi, everyone is. In. My. Way!”

Anakin snarled, driving his metal fist into the closest wall.

“I want to have the impossible because all the possible does is hurt me. 

And mostly? Mostly I just want to see you hurt, Obi-Wan. I want, no, need you to know how it feels to have everything you’ve ever loved torn down around you by someone you once cared for!” Anakin paused, backing up.

“Unless, of course, that, too, was a lie?”

Hauntobi was silent. Anakin scoffed, brushing his hair out of his face as he turned and began to walk away. He was halfway down the hall when Hauntobi called out.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he said. Anakin gave a slight glance back over his shoulder, a small sneer on his face.

“It never is, is it?” 

Never needed to, never suffered through the pain,

All the tyrannies of grief, if I ever do

Will I even have the strength to do anything?

Could I go and leave flowers by the street?