Heat Haze

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Summary: "An artist the Force is. Not to be happy about that-look what artists do! Unpredictable they are, like children." -Master Yoda, Rogue Planet

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Anakin Skywalker, an omega on the verge of his first heat, is on Tatooine during the events of Attack of the Clones, speeding out into the Dune Sea, on the hunt for his mother. Thirteen years later, Obi-Wan Kenobi, an old, solitary alpha, is watching the suns set over the sand from a lookout near his small home in the Jundland Wastes. The Force decides on a whim to deliver the former to the latter, and smiles at the mess it makes: Anakin's heat hits hard, and Obi-Wan is tempted by something he never expected to have.

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The vast emptiness of the Western Dune Sea was making Anakin feel unmoored from time. It was bad enough to be on Tatooine at all, let alone speeding out into the desert. He felt on some level like the nine-year-old sent on assignment from Watto to meet with the Jawas, like the past decade had never happened.

He felt hot, shaky, sick-the barren expanse of the desert only let the echoes of his mother's suffering reach him clearly, so clearly, too clearly. She was out there, suffering and near death, and he wasn't going fast enough. His speeder whined in complaint as he pushed the limits of its capability, and he growled, pushing it even harder.

The setting suns painted the sand and the stone a familiar burnt orange, and the shadows were growing both longer and darker as night began to absorb the land. The heat of the day's light was fading, but he still felt flushed and sweaty, his fear about what he was going to find, that he would be too late-it was all making him feel insane.

He blinked rapidly, noticing a strange shimmer up ahead. It looked like a mirage, but it didn't make sense, it wasn't nearly hot enough for there to be one. It was so out of place, maybe some kind of trick of the half-light? It hung suspended in the air, and he gasped as his speeder bike plowed directly into it.

It was thick, like the air had turned to toffee. The breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he felt dazed. He dropped heavily to the ground, and gasped, desperate for breath. He groaned when he got a mouthful of sand, and rolled over, dizzy with confusion, spitting and swearing. There was sand on his tongue, in his eyes, on his clothes. Sith hells.

He didn't understand what was happening, his mind was struggling to process. His head ached like he'd been struck, and he felt hotter and sicker than ever. Somehow his speederbike had vanished out from under him, and his lingering momentum had dropped him forward onto the sand. What the kriff had happened to his speeder? Where was it?

He took a slow, centering breath and sat up, making himself really look around the empty dunes. He was in the same place as he had been before, but the suns were slightly higher in the sky. Everything was different, but the same. The heat shimmer that he'd seen was gone, as was any sign of his speederbike. There wasn't even a track back in the direction he'd come from-just an expanse of undisturbed sand, as if he'd been dropped from the sky.

Most importantly, though, his awareness of his mother in the Force was completely gone. He couldn't feel her anymore at all.

No!

Anakin scrambled up and ran in the last known direction, feet slipping in the sand, focusing hard and reaching out with his feelings. He still couldn't sense her, and he tried again harder, and harder, and then slowed to a stop. He looked around the dunes, wondering if he had a concussion, or worse, as there was something extremely strange happening and he didn't-couldn't-understand.

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