yesterday is long since lost
FINALLY got this thing done!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25070434
Anakin â and he is Anakin, even if that name feels a little bit like putting on a shirt he had thought he had outgrown â knows that heâs messing up. When he first realized what had happened, that he really had come back, he had been grateful that his body had collapsed under the weight of his future memories, leaving his subconscious mind to slowly make the connections and let him wake up again. He had thought he was prepared for it, when he shook off the last of the sleepy haze. The phrase ârude awakeningâ turned out to fit almost too well.
The two weeks that it had taken for his body and mind to acclimatize to each other proves itself to be so far from enough. Heâs jittery, uncomfortable in his own body (and itâs his body again, more flesh than metal, inescapable marks of betrayal (but whose was it really? Not Obi-Wanâs, he knows now, and that thought cuts impossibly deeper than ever) erased) with its lack of aches and pains, and reflexes that no longer match flesh limbs.
Rex knows something is up, but military discipline keeps him from asking, at least for now. Ahsoka knows somethingâs up, but sheâs still too relieved that heâs okay (and hah, if only she knew) to push.
He thanks the Force that Obi-Wan isnât here, because even though theyâd made some sort of peace at Anakinâs funeral pyre and after that, he doesnât know how he would react to seeing his former Master with them both alive again. Obi-Wan also likely wouldnât hesitate to call him out on his poodoo. Oh, heâd be diplomatic, and he likely wouldnât push if Anakin reacted badly, but Anakin still isnât sure he could take that.
When they had been dead there hadnât been much to do but make peace. Now, alive and with the Clone Wars barely halfway through, Anakin is realizing that a lot of their peace had come from the fact that nothing they could have done would have affected anything in the end. That calm understanding that had come with being one with the Force is gone as well, and Anakinâs love for and rage at his old Master are dueling for prominence. His guilt wants to land on the side of his love, but his anger has always run hot. He fears seeing Obi-Wan, for he truly cannot tell whether heâll be angry, snappish and rude, or if heâll want to fall to his knees and cry.
Thereâs enough of Anakin wanting to cry as it is.
It had been hard, seeing Ahsoka, seeing Rex when he first woke up and truly getting hit with how he had failed them. But they had been the lucky ones, in that awful future. They had gotten away.
Seeing Coric in the medbay, seeing Kix⊠that had been worse. Kix had been gone before Anakin Fell and Order 66 was executed, they hadnât even found a body. Coric had died two years later, two years of living not unlike a battle droid covered in flesh, with only the barest glimpses of the man he really was underneath the weight of orders and grief he wasnât allowed to understand.
Grief that none of the clones were allowed to understand.
(Vader had seen Bly. He had seen Shocker. He had seen Cody.)
(He had seen all those who had eaten their blasters as the chips died, never actually intended to survive past usage â just like the clones themselves.)
Vader hadnât cared, or at least tried to tell himself that he didnât. Anakin does care. And Force, but it hurts.
The first day Anakin just avoids everyone, using Kixâs orders of rest as an excuse. Facing everyone is⊠something no amount of preparation could help him with, a punch to the gut and a knock to the head that leaves him reeling. The effort it takes to not simply flee for his quarters actually leaves him winded when he finally reaches the corridor, enters the room, closes the door behind himself and locks himself in.
Thereâs something wrong with him. Anakin is not reacting the way he should â the way he ought to, having seen so many ghosts in so short a time. His mind is a mess.
Meditation does not come easy.
He forces himself into it, in an attempt to reconcile the different parts of himself. He is Anakin, jedi general, student, teacher, husband, lover, twenty years old and so arrogant. He is Vader, sith apprentice, failure, world-weary, beaten down, a monster shackled to a madman⊠a father, in the end.
He is Ani, slave boy, who cares so much and loves so deeply but doesnât know how to handle it, never learned how to grow it, only hoard.
(If you love something, let it go.)
(He let Luke go, in the end. Let his son choose his own path andâŠ)
I am a jedi, like my father before me.
Sleep doesnât come at all.
Vader has spent literal decades hating his past, weak self, disgusted with the man who couldnât even save the single most important person left in his life, who had lost everyone else along the line. Past-(present-?)Anakin is horrified by what he became, by what his future self allowed himself to be twisted into. Ani doesnât understand, doesnât want to understand how it could have even happened.
Itâs a good thing self-hatred is nothing new to him, he thinks, because that is the common point that finally allows him to reconcile the different facets of himself.
Itâs also awfully appropriate, in a twisted sense.
 The second day he tries to play at normalcy and heads to the bridge. Ahsoka tracks him down when heâs alone during a quiet moment and hugs him until he stops trying to make her let go. Her relief broadcasts in the Force and their bond alike. Anakin⊠lets himself hold her, and heal, just a bit. Then Kix finds them and sends him back to bed. Itâs enough to make Ahsoka laugh and think everythingâs back to normal. Anakin lets her believe it.
He heads back to his bunk, and since Kix is a suspicious one, wise to the ways of his jedi, Anakin has company the entire way.
âForty-eight hours of rest,â says Kix dryly, âand a visit to medical. Neither of these has been completed, and youâre still obviously tired. Get some more sleep, sir, or I canât clear you.â
âHow about just the visit to medical?â Anakin tries to bargain.
âSir, I know disasters tend to strike like clockwork around here, but please. Nothing will happen if you just get some more rest.â
And despite Kix all but punching fate in the face and yelling âcome get meâ, nothing does happen. Anakin meditates some more and actually manages to grab a nap as well.
When he wakes up itâs shipboard afternoon. He heads down to the hangar, and instead of attempting to work on the Twilight like he planned to, he finds himself drawn into a discussion with three of the troopers (Lyn died on Umbara, Bell was lost on Mandalore, while Flipper had marched on the temple and not died until after more than five years of atrocities in the name of the Empire).
He failed them. The thought hovers in his mind even as he gets more involved in the debate. He failed them like he failed all his men, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan. Like he failed his mother. Like he failed Padmé. Like he almost failed Luke, like he did fail him several times.
The storm of emotions is like a vibroblade to the gut and Anakin claws desperately at it, keeping it from showing either on his face or in the Force. He almost pulls away again, until Bellâs words cut through him like shards of glass.
â-but not this time!â
Bell punctuates his words by punching the air. Theyâre talking about marksmanship contests now, but Anakin cannot fully restrain how deeply it hits him. His expression must twitch, because Bell turns to him, eyes wide with feigned upset.
âYou think I canât, General?â
Flipper nudges him. âThe General simply knows better than to put his credits up on the word of such an⊠unreliable source.â The grin is contagious, and Anakin finds himself smiling as well, grounding himself in their gentle teasing and free-flowing affection.
His failures feel further away and, desperate to keep that feeling, he does what he always did best â jump without looking. âWell, maybe I can help make it less unreliable.â
Anakinâs mouth really ran away with him this time, but something tells him that this is good. A comfortable warmth that sits in his gut, the Force whispering in his ear, Bellâs disbelieving â but growing â excitement. âYouâre off duty. I have some spare time. There are several training halls available.â
Not this time. He failed them all then, but not this time.
It is with a strange sort of budding contentment that he puts Bell and several other clones through their paces in a training hall. Heâs doing something, changing something, and itâs such a tiny difference but itâs a difference. Anakin canât do a lot from here, not yet, but this â being with the men, helping them â is something he can do.
For the first time since he woke up, Anakin feels like heâs doing something right.
Nearly an hour after they began, Anakin catches sight of Rex by the door. The expression on his face is one part amusement, one part âI know what youâre doingâ and about five parts exasperation. Itâs familiar despite the years, comforting, and Anakin laughs before he can even register the urge to.
The next moment he freezes because â how long has it been? He catches himself almost immediately and excuses himself from the practice session. They can continue without him anyway.
By the door, Rexâs amusement sharpens into instant hyper-awareness. Anakin starts running through the excuses heâd hoped wouldnât be necessary.
Rexâs care for his jedi is something Anakin has been in turns awed, perplexed and humbled by. Now, his worry is just as humbling, but it is also troublesome. In the end, Anakin finds himself released to medbay only because Rex too is still shaky after his coma. None of them are fully back to normal, so Anakinâs issues are easier to hide.
They wonât always be, but Anakin will get better at hiding, too.
He runs into Ahsoka again in the hallway and she immediately attaches herself to his side. The last time he had seen her in that other time flashes in his mind â tall, strong, grieving â and he rests his hand on her montrals, his tiny, beloved padawan who the galaxy has barely even started to break yet.
She is here and he hasnât lost her, not to his own madness nor her iron-clad conviction that heâs gone forever.
The poisonous thinking that came with the Dark Side is still haunting him, and for a moment he wants to drag her even closer, make sure she could never leave â and then the thought leaves him sick, his hand drops down to squeeze her shoulder and then he lets go.
She follows him to the medbay, where Kix clears Anakin. The clone is clearly reluctant, going by the grumbling, but Anakin is free to return to duty. As such, he is free to check out exactly when it is he has returned to.
The answer⊠staggers him. Itâs the early days of the war, that much had already been obvious in the many presences that had been long gone, but⊠so many of the bad things havenât happened yet, so many things he can change, disasters he can undo, lives he can save â
And even though he knows he canât just rush in, the scene plays out in Anakinâs mind. Since heâd learned about Luke, Vader had ever entertained the thought of killing his Master. And even before that, before PadmĂ© and Obi-Wan and Mustafar, Sidiousâ survival had never counted in Anakinâs plans. More than once he had tortured himself with what-ifs⊠and now he has the chance to make them come true.
Still, striding up to the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and attempting to cut him down, for all that it would be satisfying, would more likely end with Anakin fleeing from the Coruscant Security Forces with his task still not accomplished more than anything else.
Itâs nothing but wishful thinking and Anakin waves it away.
A quick talk with Yularen confirms that theyâre heading back to Coruscant. Theyâre still six days out, at current velocity, something Yularen relays with an apologetic look, since Anakin tends to be eager to get planetside. In this case though, it means thereâs only six days to prepare for seeing the temple again, seeing PadmĂ©, seeing â Force, seeing the younglings.
Ahsokaâs voice pulls him out of those dark musings.
âYeah, Snips?â The nickname rolls off his tongue with reflexive ease, and it is not until it already lingers in the air that he realizes how much it grounds him.
âIs everything all right?â
He could lie. She would see through it, and either let it be or keep digging until she thought she had found out every little detail.
âNo.â Ahsoka stops dead and he turns to look back at her, her big eyes even wider than usual at his uncharacteristic honesty concerning his own state. âBut itâs getting better.â How can it not?
The ringing silence that follows is belied by Ahsokaâs slow reach for him through their bond, and Anakinâs hesitant reach back, to meet her halfway. Ahsoka smiles at the contact and runs ahead. Theyâve ended up by the mess hall and, though itâs still relatively early, thereâs more than enough people moving around, grabbing an early meal.
âGlad to see youâre doing well, General!â
Anakin looks up to see Echo. The young ARC trooper has raised a hand to wave a greeting, precariously balancing his rations tray with only one hand. Smile tugging at his lips, Anakin raises his own hand in response. Another fate he would hopefully be able to change. Echo didnât deserve what had happened to him.
Realization comes a second too late.
Echo slides down on the bench by Anakin and Ahsoka, and Fives sneaks up only half a step behind him. Ahsoka immediately vaults over the table and seats herself opposite Echo.
âGoing to join us, General?â asks Fives. Anakin almost chokes. For an instant, Fives has all Anakinâs attention, but just as quick, Anakin turns away.
âSorry.â he says choppily. âSorry, I- I have something- I need to- Iâm sorry. Later?â
He whirls around and practically flees the hall.
Anakin hears a hesitant âIs⊠something wrong?â from Echo, but escapes before he can hear Ahsokaâs response. Yes, somethingâs wrong. Something heâd managed to avoid thinking of entirely, but that he now canât escape.
You died for the knowledge that might have saved everything and I didnât believe you.
Fives had been â is â one of his men and that alone would be enough guilt to drown in but⊠that isnât all.
Anakin firmly blocks the thoughts from his mind, refusing to wander down that old path of what-if. He had entertained enough of them, after Fivesâ⊠death. Even more after Echo had been found. So much more, in stolen moments with PadmĂ© and occasionally SabĂ© or RabĂ© as well, staying up late nights with more alcohol than was probably advisable.
Three hallways down, Anakin finally stops, leans against the wall, and covers his face with his hands. He slowly sinks down, ending up sitting and pulling his knees close so he can hide in them instead of in his palms.
Smooth, Anakin. The internal reprimand takes on Obi-Wanâs voice, which is almost a step too far. Anakinâs eyes sting.
Eventually Anakin manages to gather himself enough that he can paste the mask back on. He canât quite push the thoughts back into the box where he hadnât even known that heâd stored them, however, and from that point on he canât decide whether to run from Fives out of shame or never let him out of sight again. Over the coming days the result of the impulses leaves Anakin looking like a shy adolescent from a holo-drama, constantly keeping track of Fives, but ducking around corners, hiding behind bulkheads, and on one occasion, making a Force-assisted leap up a staircase (accidentally sparking a game of tag with Ahsoka, but he managed to make it look deliberate, so he counts it as a win) to avoid the clone.
Whatever explanation Ahsoka had given the two ARC troopers must have been unsatisfying however, because suddenly it seems like Fives is everywhere. Anakin tries to distract himself, mingling with the troops, burying himself in the Twilight, catching upon the present, but whenever he senses Fives just a little too close, heâs running again.
Anakin fears he will keep running for a long time.
