#vjkdnjvkdn

       “Yeah, you think—you think I don’t see that?”

      Although he’s trying to sound brave, impervious, sarcastic, it comes out very simple: the high-pitched rasp of someone who is closer to tears than anything else as he watches his own trembling hands move towards the roll of bandages to cut more to wrap around the side wound from which blood keeps gushing forth. 

     He feels tremulous, sweating, nauseous, as if he’s the one bleeding out on this rock and not Obi-Wan. And of course, even bleeding out, all Obi-Wan can do is state the obvious. 

     “Just—don’t, it’s only been a few minutes. It’ll stop, just wait.” As he puts some more pressure on the wound, Anakin knows that he may as well be offering words of comfort to himself more than anything.

     The bleeding doesn’t quite stop. It’s one more minute, two, and he pretends that he can’t see or feel the blood seeping through the bandages yet again. No one had prepared him for this just yet, he thinks. 

     Combat is one thing. Being prepared to watch your friends die is quite another. 

     He tries his comlink again to no response, and around them, a light breeze swooshes the endless vegetation back & forth. The morning suns are scorching and blinding, he hears the cry of a strange bird—and all of it, every piece of it, feels wrong. But either the news of the war simply haven’t reached them, or things like war and death simply don’t matter at all when you are bright and endless and free like the sun and the flowers and the earth. In those two, three, four minutes that pass the entirety of his life feels as it if flashes through his eyes and he keeps thinking, thinking of every other thing he should tell Obi-Wan, might have wanted to tell Obi-Wan. Just in case. And then he tells himself he should refuse to even consider it. 

      “I should’ve taken stitches, that’s all. When the medical aid gets here, they’ll … they’ll fix it. I’m a lousy medic, I sh—” It’s like he’s apologizing, allowing himself one sort of blundered confession until he suddenly catches the sight of his blinking comlink and he hears Ahsoka’s voice, a shining miracle, on the other end of it as he passes along their coordinates. 

     And suddenly, Anakin straightens up, firmer, more resolute. 

     Today’s not the day, he thinks. Today’s not the day. When that day approaches, he will know—and as long as he’s here, the sun will not rise over a day when Obi-Wan is no longer around.