Fading

Chapter 7 - Brush With Death

Author's Note: Please take the warnings at the end seriously if you think something in this chapter might bother you. It gets DARK. Worse before better. I know y'all have been waiting for this for a long time. Lol.

~ Amina Gila

Anakin wraps his arms around himself as if that would make him invisible, torn between going the rest of the way out there or backtracking. Torn between drawing on and drowning himself in his anger or begging forgiveness again, for – for everything. For anything. Because that's all he can ever do. "I didn't mean to wake you," he blurts out instead.

"That is the first thing you have to say?"

"I was not – trying to leave," he protests, knowing it's pointless. "I only want to be alone right now."

"Do you truly expect me to believe that?"

"I had a – a vision. Nightmare. Sidious is searching for me."

Obi-Wan's scowl deepens. "How do you know?"

"He was reaching for me. I was able to shield myself, but I... don't know for how long."

"And you thought leaving would help?"

Something about the comment and the tone finally pushes him over the edge. "Kitster asked me to leave earlier, and I refused!" he yells, "He asked, because he saw what you were doing, and he knew you were my master, and he thought – he thought –"

He chokes over the rest of it, nearly shuddering, but really, it's not an illogical assumption to make, because he is scared of Obi-Wan, to the point it feels like he can't move or breathe or do anything at all. He's terrified of doing something wrong to make his master angry, something that will make his master hurt him, considering... everything, it's not surprising, and maybe that's half the reason he couldn't bear to stay near Obi-Wan after he woke up.

"And I didn't leave," he continues, in a slightly more normal voice, though he knows his rage is still perfectly evident, "I didn't, because I have nowhere else to go, and I can't go to my family because if Sidious finds me, he'll find them."

He stops talking only when he sees – and senses – a strange flicker of fear from Obi-Wan. He's afraid, and that doesn't make sense, and it should be impossible, because this is Obi-Wan. He's... And for some inexplicable reason, he's afraid of Anakin, and he doesn't know why. Anakin can't understand why.

But it explains so much why Obi-Wan has been... what he is, because Anakin himself can understand so well the urge to hurt someone you're afraid of, as if that would do good to make you less afraid. He feels it now, too, and he hates himself for it.

He hates himself for everything, enough that he wants to – to take the lightsaber Obi-Wan buried in the sand somewhere and run it through his own heart, just to... something. He didn't know anything could be worse than what he's already done, than what he was going to do before his master stopped him.

Somehow, this... is.

"You were the one willing to have him around them before," Obi-Wan shoots back.

He has no desire to argue about this again. "I saw no other way," he retorts, "I didn't have time to think of a solution."

"And now you want to hide from him?" he asks, dubiously.

"I did not want to join him!" Anakin protests, but it's pointless. It doesn't change that he did, and he knows it. It doesn't change any of it. It was his choice.

"Then I see no reason to stay out here," Obi-Wan retorts. There's still a hint of uneasiness from him, past the ice he's showing, and Anakin can't understand why.