Attachment
Title: Attachment
Rating: T, possibly M
Fandom: Star Wars
Summary: It wasn’t so much of Anakin’s selfish love for Padme that led to the fall of the Jedi Order. It was Obi-Wan’s selfless attachment to his Padawan. It was Bant’s adherence to the Healer’s code. It was the sum of all these.
Warnings: Ethical grey areas here. Also, great deal of graphic torture. Beware!
-
A flash of green, and a flash of scarlet.
A scream.
It takes a while to learn he is kneeling on the grass, and that the helpless raw scream has been torn from his throat.
He doesn’t stop.
-
“Has there been any change in his condition?” Obi-Wan asked, carefully keeping his eyes from Anakin’s still form, until he was certain he had regained control of his wayward emotions.
“No.” Bant said, gently. She did not like to distress her friend, and she did not like to see Obi-Wan suffering, as he contemplated the state his former Padawan was in. He had become a regular visitor to the medical wing. “You know I would tell you, Obi-Wan, if there was. But he just isn’t responding.”
Obi-Wan accepted that comment with a nod. “I know. I’m sorry, Bant.” He stared resolutely at Anakin, fighting words past the lump in his throat. “I just…I…It’s hard to see him, like this. I had to snatch his lightsaber from him.” His hand fell to where the two lightsaber hilts rested, clipped to his belt.
“I’m sorry.” Bant said, again, emphasizing it. She had never before felt so helpless. “He’s just not responding. He screams sometimes in the night, and goes into fits. We have to sedate him, until someone can get close enough to use the Force to send him back into sleep.”
“Could he talk to someone about this?” Obi-Wan wanted to know. He already knew the answer. He had asked the question every day, until the question and the answer were burned into his weary heart and mind.
But he asked it anyway.
To her credit, Bant did not answer with any impatience. She laid her hand on his arm for a short while, before withdrawing it. He drew off her strength and calm. “No.” She replied, gravely. “He would have to be reasoning to do this. Obi-Wan, it doesn’t seem as if he’s sane when he’s aware. Or he’s just barely sane. Mind Healers need something to work with. With Anakin…”
She moved her hands in an expansive gesture that could very well be empty. “His fits cause him to lash out with the Force. Dashl’ya was injured.”
“Is she better now?”
“Yes. I’ve asked her to serve in another section of the medical wing. That’s why Anakin’s in an isolation room…and we’ve removed most of the items. When he goes into one of those fits… everything starts moving. Sometimes, even if they’re secured to the wall.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Obi-Wan pleaded.
“Wait. Hope.” Bant said. She had never felt so helpless before. But that was a lie. She always felt helpless when there was a patient she could not heal. And the invisible wounds that plagued Anakin Skywalker were beyond her ken, and beyond her power to affect.
-
A flash of green, and a flash of red.
Sometimes the lines meet. Other times, they spin. He remembers a tracery of red, in a web so deceptive that it shimmers before his vision. Sometimes the web is there, and sometimes it isn’t.
He remembers nothing but the mindless path of blue fire, an inexorable tide.
And he remembers power.
And a small Togruta girl, whom no power can bring back.
-
Obi-Wan sat beside Anakin, waiting, and watching for any sign of a change. It was wishful thinking, and he knew he would soon be called away for another mission. He watched Anakin between missions. Sometimes, he thought there would be a sign of stirring.
But there was nothing.
Now, they hooked Anakin up to a few machines. Muscular atrophy would set in, Bant explained, and the mild shocks from the machines would prevent that.
Every time they’d tried to wake Anakin up, he hadn’t responded. The last time, he had cried out in fury and tried to throttle Bant with his bare hands. And he had nearly succeeded. Other times, he would lie there, placid, crying out, trapped in some nightmare he couldn’t be extricated from.
Bant confided in Obi-Wan that they suspected it was a very strong case of backlash shock. Most Jedi had weak bonds formed between friends and Master and apprentice. Anakin, however, had always tended towards attachment. Obi-Wan remembered all the times he had reached out in the Force to synchronise with Anakin.
It was always easiest with Anakin. The moment they got close, he always seemed to want to take up permanent residence. Breaking the temporary bond formed in the Force was always difficult, when they withdrew after battle.
They suspected that had happened with Anakin and Ahsoka. He had felt the death of his Padawan, and all of her last moments.
She had been tortured, and grievously so. And while she had not broken, her death had broken Anakin in turn. And that broke Obi-Wan’s heart, to see the wretched state his old Padawan was in.
Anakin recognised no one, not Bant, not even Obi-Wan. Master Yoda elicited no reaction from him at all. Neither did Master Windu.
“You would have loved Ahsoka’s funeral.” He said, quietly. “They burned her, of course. She’s one with the Force now. She was only an apprentice. But she died as a Jedi.”
-
The blue calls to him, sometimes. It is sad, but he doesn’t know how to respond. He is fire, and he gathers up his infinite arms, but finds them diminished.
Although he hasn’t even realised it, the water is trying to drown him.
And then she comes, and asks him where he thinks he is.
“This isn’t water.” She says, fixing him with her mutilated smile. “This is my blood.”
He screams, and screams, and keeps on wading and running.
-
“We have to do something.” Obi-Wan said, quietly. There were more lines of care across his ragged features, and they were not all due to the Clone Wars. “He could never recover.”
“He could recover the next day.” Bant countered. But they both knew they had been saying that for three months. There had been no change in Anakin’s condition. “You know I can’t do anything to drag him back to sanity. I need…something to rely on. I need…a focus. And to do so, I need to invade his mind, and break down his shields. Anakin may not let me past. It may destroy whatever is left for his sanity.”
Obi-Wan took a deep breath. She knew what he was going to say, and she turned away before he had the courage to say it. She didn’t want to do it. Her desires, her knowledge of how dangerous it was warred with the thought that it might work.
“Do it.” He said.
She turned around.
It was too late. Tears glimmered in the depths of Obi-Wan’s eyes.
“It could kill his sanity. It could kill him.”
“Do you think Anakin would want to live like this?” He demanded.
She bowed her head.
-
He was the avenger, he was the blue fire. He ravished, burned and laughed, the edge of his voice burned a raw black. He laughed as skin sizzled and burned and he wallowed in every bit of agony.
He remembered little, except the water. He saw the blue carry her body in his arms, cradling the broken spine, the torn limbs. He snarled - how dare they take her, she was broken, they were taking her away to suffer…
Fire met fire, sizzled, and he was on fire his arm burned, he was on fire…
He treaded water but the fire did not go out. He realised only when he emerged that his skin was stained red with the blood he swam in, pooled all over the floor and the scalpels that had peeled back layers of skin like blossoming flowers were descending on him…
Layer by layer, the scalpel opened him, parted skin, muscle, flesh and bone and mind and he writhed and screamed in a twisted anger that mingled with delight. Let the dance of pain and death continue, he would revisit it on them threefold...
-
Bant was pale when she opened her eyes. “He has no shields.” She whispered. “Nothing is there. Nothing at all. Just nightmares. Endless nightmares.”
“Let me.” Obi-Wan said, reassuringly. Bant was sobbing convulsively, taking horrified gasps of air every few moments. Her salmon pink skin lightened a little. “He was my Padawan, Bant. I’ll search as long as I must.”
“If you can locate it,” Bant whispered, too drained to argue with him, “Tell me. Direct me. I will do it.”
He nodded, took a deep breath, and plunged into the chaotic depths of Anakin’s mind.
-
Obi-Wan wanders in the vague shadows, the vague mists that hang at the edge of human understanding, that whispers of the night-horrors that no sane human wants to know of.
He sees too many images, swims past them all. They move and change in a blur, and he can’t fix his gaze on any of them. So he calls up his memories of Qui-Gon, but there is no answer from Anakin. His own face draws no response.
And then, he realises he knows Anakin. There is only one thing that Anakin would certainly respond to.
At Padme Amidala’s face, there is the first stirrings of some response from Anakin.
-
“Padme Amidala.” Obi-Wan said, pulling away from Anakin’s mind. “He recognised her.” He didn’t want to think about what that entailed. If that meant Anakin would recover, so be it.
It was an attachment, and a dangerous one. Obi-Wan did not try to deny it. He cared deeply for the young Jedi. While he had once been rather grudging in his taking Anakin as his Padawan, that had been a time long past. Years of dangerous missions had bonded them together as surely as brothers.
As long as the attachment did not progress further, perhaps it would be safe. And he would watch Anakin carefully.
“He may seem obssessed with her for a time.” Bant warned. She knew what he was thinking about. “To pull him back to sanity, I have to wrap his mind around her, crudely speaking. To ground him in sanity through her. And I will need your memories of the war…to clear the time he spent in the medical wing.”
Obi-Wan opened his mind willingly. He felt Bant’s probing touch, as light as a feather, and as gentle as handling a krashkor egg. Carefully, he showed her memories of battles, and felt her shudder.
Bant never fought in the Clone Wars. Her closest glimpse had been with the wounded. Unlike some of the other healers like Barriss Offee, her need for immersion as a Calamarian made her slightly more dangerous to utilise offensively. And she was most comfortable at the Temple.
The memories affected her in so much as influencing her distaste for battle, rather than disgusting her. As a Healer, Bant saw much more of sentient suffering than Obi-Wan did and probably would ever see.
-
A face.
A face swims to the surface. She is beautiful, he thinks. An angel. He loves her, and will always love her with all of his being.
And then for the first time, the words and names swim back to his feverish mind.
Padme!
She opens her arms, offering him solace, and the promise of oblivion.
He takes it.
-
“He is sleeping normally now. How fast and how far he recovers is the will of the Force.” Bant said, tiredly. Her eyes were about to flutter shut. “No one will hear of this from me, Obi-Wan.” She said, reassuring him before he had even said anything. “It is between you and Anakin. The Healer’s code requires patient-healer confidentiality.”
She turned to leave, but paused as she remembered. “He will rememeber little of Ahsoka. I blurred some of those memories, even the name.” Her voice held some self-loathing, and some disgust. Obi-Wan realised those were directed at herself. Bant hated having to do those kind of things. To her, she had told him, it felt too much like mental control.
He knew she was right. When he balanced that against Anakin’s fragile state of mind, he could not say she had been wrong to do what she had.
“I will tell Master Yoda about mentioning Ahsoka as little as possible to him. I’m sorry.” She said, before she retreated, to give him some space with Anakin, and to confront her own revulsion at what she had to do. “Tell him he suffered from a fractured skull and some internal bleeding from Cadis V.”
-
Obi-Wan sat by Anakin’s side. He was lost in thought when blue eyes flickered open for a brief moment. Instead of emptiness, however, there was a clarity and a focus in Anakin’s gaze that had been lacking for too long.
“Oww. I feel like I’ve been stomped by a reek.” Anakin grumbled. “What happened? How did we get back to the Temple from Cadis V?”
“You were hit pretty hard on the head, I think.” Obi-Wan lied easily, surprised by how the words came without any suspicious pauses. “Bant said something about a fractured skull and internal bleeding. She’s probably wrong though. I never thought anything could be harder than your head.”
“Thanks,” Anakin replied dryly. “You’ve been waiting here and scaring the Healers, I suppose.”
“I wasn’t the one who drew his lightsaber on the Healer-trainee and told her I would whack her with it if she did not let me in.” Obi-Wan teased lightly. He felt no urge to restrain the growing smile on his face.
Perhaps, he thought, washing all thoughts of what they had to do to Anakin from his mind, everything was going to be just alright after all.
-
A/N: I’m sorry, I hate Ahsoka. Therefore, it took me quite a while to decide on a piece that even referenced Ahsoka. This one is because I noticed it was so strange that while Anakin keeps remembering his mother and fearing for Padme in Episode III, Ahsoka is never referenced.
As Anakin is the type to easily form attachments with those truly close to him, possibly like a Padawan he’s been bonding with over missions, I’ve always been disturbed by why he doesn’t ever mention Ahsoka. Isn’t she even worth one second of depression or fond memory? (Alright, the fact that I think the answer is ‘hell, yeah, she isn’t’ doesn’t affect the glaring continuity error.)
As for why he’s taken this harder than with his mom, I’ll say it’s partly cumulative, and partly because while he felt his mother’s pain, he didn’t feel or witness his mother’s torture. Those two are subtly different, but the difference is crucial.
-Cymru
Rating: T, possibly M
Fandom: Star Wars
Summary: It wasn’t so much of Anakin’s selfish love for Padme that led to the fall of the Jedi Order. It was Obi-Wan’s selfless attachment to his Padawan. It was Bant’s adherence to the Healer’s code. It was the sum of all these.
Warnings: Ethical grey areas here. Also, great deal of graphic torture. Beware!
-
A flash of green, and a flash of scarlet.
A scream.
It takes a while to learn he is kneeling on the grass, and that the helpless raw scream has been torn from his throat.
He doesn’t stop.
-
“Has there been any change in his condition?” Obi-Wan asked, carefully keeping his eyes from Anakin’s still form, until he was certain he had regained control of his wayward emotions.
“No.” Bant said, gently. She did not like to distress her friend, and she did not like to see Obi-Wan suffering, as he contemplated the state his former Padawan was in. He had become a regular visitor to the medical wing. “You know I would tell you, Obi-Wan, if there was. But he just isn’t responding.”
Obi-Wan accepted that comment with a nod. “I know. I’m sorry, Bant.” He stared resolutely at Anakin, fighting words past the lump in his throat. “I just…I…It’s hard to see him, like this. I had to snatch his lightsaber from him.” His hand fell to where the two lightsaber hilts rested, clipped to his belt.
“I’m sorry.” Bant said, again, emphasizing it. She had never before felt so helpless. “He’s just not responding. He screams sometimes in the night, and goes into fits. We have to sedate him, until someone can get close enough to use the Force to send him back into sleep.”
“Could he talk to someone about this?” Obi-Wan wanted to know. He already knew the answer. He had asked the question every day, until the question and the answer were burned into his weary heart and mind.
But he asked it anyway.
To her credit, Bant did not answer with any impatience. She laid her hand on his arm for a short while, before withdrawing it. He drew off her strength and calm. “No.” She replied, gravely. “He would have to be reasoning to do this. Obi-Wan, it doesn’t seem as if he’s sane when he’s aware. Or he’s just barely sane. Mind Healers need something to work with. With Anakin…”
She moved her hands in an expansive gesture that could very well be empty. “His fits cause him to lash out with the Force. Dashl’ya was injured.”
“Is she better now?”
“Yes. I’ve asked her to serve in another section of the medical wing. That’s why Anakin’s in an isolation room…and we’ve removed most of the items. When he goes into one of those fits… everything starts moving. Sometimes, even if they’re secured to the wall.”
“Is there anything you can do?” Obi-Wan pleaded.
“Wait. Hope.” Bant said. She had never felt so helpless before. But that was a lie. She always felt helpless when there was a patient she could not heal. And the invisible wounds that plagued Anakin Skywalker were beyond her ken, and beyond her power to affect.
-
A flash of green, and a flash of red.
Sometimes the lines meet. Other times, they spin. He remembers a tracery of red, in a web so deceptive that it shimmers before his vision. Sometimes the web is there, and sometimes it isn’t.
He remembers nothing but the mindless path of blue fire, an inexorable tide.
And he remembers power.
And a small Togruta girl, whom no power can bring back.
-
Obi-Wan sat beside Anakin, waiting, and watching for any sign of a change. It was wishful thinking, and he knew he would soon be called away for another mission. He watched Anakin between missions. Sometimes, he thought there would be a sign of stirring.
But there was nothing.
Now, they hooked Anakin up to a few machines. Muscular atrophy would set in, Bant explained, and the mild shocks from the machines would prevent that.
Every time they’d tried to wake Anakin up, he hadn’t responded. The last time, he had cried out in fury and tried to throttle Bant with his bare hands. And he had nearly succeeded. Other times, he would lie there, placid, crying out, trapped in some nightmare he couldn’t be extricated from.
Bant confided in Obi-Wan that they suspected it was a very strong case of backlash shock. Most Jedi had weak bonds formed between friends and Master and apprentice. Anakin, however, had always tended towards attachment. Obi-Wan remembered all the times he had reached out in the Force to synchronise with Anakin.
It was always easiest with Anakin. The moment they got close, he always seemed to want to take up permanent residence. Breaking the temporary bond formed in the Force was always difficult, when they withdrew after battle.
They suspected that had happened with Anakin and Ahsoka. He had felt the death of his Padawan, and all of her last moments.
She had been tortured, and grievously so. And while she had not broken, her death had broken Anakin in turn. And that broke Obi-Wan’s heart, to see the wretched state his old Padawan was in.
Anakin recognised no one, not Bant, not even Obi-Wan. Master Yoda elicited no reaction from him at all. Neither did Master Windu.
“You would have loved Ahsoka’s funeral.” He said, quietly. “They burned her, of course. She’s one with the Force now. She was only an apprentice. But she died as a Jedi.”
-
The blue calls to him, sometimes. It is sad, but he doesn’t know how to respond. He is fire, and he gathers up his infinite arms, but finds them diminished.
Although he hasn’t even realised it, the water is trying to drown him.
And then she comes, and asks him where he thinks he is.
“This isn’t water.” She says, fixing him with her mutilated smile. “This is my blood.”
He screams, and screams, and keeps on wading and running.
-
“We have to do something.” Obi-Wan said, quietly. There were more lines of care across his ragged features, and they were not all due to the Clone Wars. “He could never recover.”
“He could recover the next day.” Bant countered. But they both knew they had been saying that for three months. There had been no change in Anakin’s condition. “You know I can’t do anything to drag him back to sanity. I need…something to rely on. I need…a focus. And to do so, I need to invade his mind, and break down his shields. Anakin may not let me past. It may destroy whatever is left for his sanity.”
Obi-Wan took a deep breath. She knew what he was going to say, and she turned away before he had the courage to say it. She didn’t want to do it. Her desires, her knowledge of how dangerous it was warred with the thought that it might work.
“Do it.” He said.
She turned around.
It was too late. Tears glimmered in the depths of Obi-Wan’s eyes.
“It could kill his sanity. It could kill him.”
“Do you think Anakin would want to live like this?” He demanded.
She bowed her head.
-
He was the avenger, he was the blue fire. He ravished, burned and laughed, the edge of his voice burned a raw black. He laughed as skin sizzled and burned and he wallowed in every bit of agony.
He remembered little, except the water. He saw the blue carry her body in his arms, cradling the broken spine, the torn limbs. He snarled - how dare they take her, she was broken, they were taking her away to suffer…
Fire met fire, sizzled, and he was on fire his arm burned, he was on fire…
He treaded water but the fire did not go out. He realised only when he emerged that his skin was stained red with the blood he swam in, pooled all over the floor and the scalpels that had peeled back layers of skin like blossoming flowers were descending on him…
Layer by layer, the scalpel opened him, parted skin, muscle, flesh and bone and mind and he writhed and screamed in a twisted anger that mingled with delight. Let the dance of pain and death continue, he would revisit it on them threefold...
-
Bant was pale when she opened her eyes. “He has no shields.” She whispered. “Nothing is there. Nothing at all. Just nightmares. Endless nightmares.”
“Let me.” Obi-Wan said, reassuringly. Bant was sobbing convulsively, taking horrified gasps of air every few moments. Her salmon pink skin lightened a little. “He was my Padawan, Bant. I’ll search as long as I must.”
“If you can locate it,” Bant whispered, too drained to argue with him, “Tell me. Direct me. I will do it.”
He nodded, took a deep breath, and plunged into the chaotic depths of Anakin’s mind.
-
Obi-Wan wanders in the vague shadows, the vague mists that hang at the edge of human understanding, that whispers of the night-horrors that no sane human wants to know of.
He sees too many images, swims past them all. They move and change in a blur, and he can’t fix his gaze on any of them. So he calls up his memories of Qui-Gon, but there is no answer from Anakin. His own face draws no response.
And then, he realises he knows Anakin. There is only one thing that Anakin would certainly respond to.
At Padme Amidala’s face, there is the first stirrings of some response from Anakin.
-
“Padme Amidala.” Obi-Wan said, pulling away from Anakin’s mind. “He recognised her.” He didn’t want to think about what that entailed. If that meant Anakin would recover, so be it.
It was an attachment, and a dangerous one. Obi-Wan did not try to deny it. He cared deeply for the young Jedi. While he had once been rather grudging in his taking Anakin as his Padawan, that had been a time long past. Years of dangerous missions had bonded them together as surely as brothers.
As long as the attachment did not progress further, perhaps it would be safe. And he would watch Anakin carefully.
“He may seem obssessed with her for a time.” Bant warned. She knew what he was thinking about. “To pull him back to sanity, I have to wrap his mind around her, crudely speaking. To ground him in sanity through her. And I will need your memories of the war…to clear the time he spent in the medical wing.”
Obi-Wan opened his mind willingly. He felt Bant’s probing touch, as light as a feather, and as gentle as handling a krashkor egg. Carefully, he showed her memories of battles, and felt her shudder.
Bant never fought in the Clone Wars. Her closest glimpse had been with the wounded. Unlike some of the other healers like Barriss Offee, her need for immersion as a Calamarian made her slightly more dangerous to utilise offensively. And she was most comfortable at the Temple.
The memories affected her in so much as influencing her distaste for battle, rather than disgusting her. As a Healer, Bant saw much more of sentient suffering than Obi-Wan did and probably would ever see.
-
A face.
A face swims to the surface. She is beautiful, he thinks. An angel. He loves her, and will always love her with all of his being.
And then for the first time, the words and names swim back to his feverish mind.
Padme!
She opens her arms, offering him solace, and the promise of oblivion.
He takes it.
-
“He is sleeping normally now. How fast and how far he recovers is the will of the Force.” Bant said, tiredly. Her eyes were about to flutter shut. “No one will hear of this from me, Obi-Wan.” She said, reassuring him before he had even said anything. “It is between you and Anakin. The Healer’s code requires patient-healer confidentiality.”
She turned to leave, but paused as she remembered. “He will rememeber little of Ahsoka. I blurred some of those memories, even the name.” Her voice held some self-loathing, and some disgust. Obi-Wan realised those were directed at herself. Bant hated having to do those kind of things. To her, she had told him, it felt too much like mental control.
He knew she was right. When he balanced that against Anakin’s fragile state of mind, he could not say she had been wrong to do what she had.
“I will tell Master Yoda about mentioning Ahsoka as little as possible to him. I’m sorry.” She said, before she retreated, to give him some space with Anakin, and to confront her own revulsion at what she had to do. “Tell him he suffered from a fractured skull and some internal bleeding from Cadis V.”
-
Obi-Wan sat by Anakin’s side. He was lost in thought when blue eyes flickered open for a brief moment. Instead of emptiness, however, there was a clarity and a focus in Anakin’s gaze that had been lacking for too long.
“Oww. I feel like I’ve been stomped by a reek.” Anakin grumbled. “What happened? How did we get back to the Temple from Cadis V?”
“You were hit pretty hard on the head, I think.” Obi-Wan lied easily, surprised by how the words came without any suspicious pauses. “Bant said something about a fractured skull and internal bleeding. She’s probably wrong though. I never thought anything could be harder than your head.”
“Thanks,” Anakin replied dryly. “You’ve been waiting here and scaring the Healers, I suppose.”
“I wasn’t the one who drew his lightsaber on the Healer-trainee and told her I would whack her with it if she did not let me in.” Obi-Wan teased lightly. He felt no urge to restrain the growing smile on his face.
Perhaps, he thought, washing all thoughts of what they had to do to Anakin from his mind, everything was going to be just alright after all.
-
A/N: I’m sorry, I hate Ahsoka. Therefore, it took me quite a while to decide on a piece that even referenced Ahsoka. This one is because I noticed it was so strange that while Anakin keeps remembering his mother and fearing for Padme in Episode III, Ahsoka is never referenced.
As Anakin is the type to easily form attachments with those truly close to him, possibly like a Padawan he’s been bonding with over missions, I’ve always been disturbed by why he doesn’t ever mention Ahsoka. Isn’t she even worth one second of depression or fond memory? (Alright, the fact that I think the answer is ‘hell, yeah, she isn’t’ doesn’t affect the glaring continuity error.)
As for why he’s taken this harder than with his mom, I’ll say it’s partly cumulative, and partly because while he felt his mother’s pain, he didn’t feel or witness his mother’s torture. Those two are subtly different, but the difference is crucial.
-Cymru