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Anakin lies on his back, staring up at the heavy movements of the exhaust fan. He’s been missing in action for forty-seven hours, keeping track only by the dappled movement of the sun overhead, streaming in between the cracks in the fan.
Erimoh is a nothing world. A billion humans, a hundred industries. He was here on a recon mission, alone, which he begged to do. And what did he find out? That he needs a babysitter more than Obi-Wan thinks he does. Forty-eight hours ago, Anakin was in the market place, watching the locals mill about, observing the movements of battle droids patrol the streets. Separatist occupied planets like these were a dime a dozen, and in practice, the Republic had no business out here. Strategic importance, gross Separatist abuses, nill. Rumors, probably spread by the civilians who wanted the battle droids out of their homes and off their planets, of a super weapon. Intelligence was flimsy, at best, but Anakin got a feeling, the same feeling that sent him to the middle of that market place. He was hoping for Dooku or Ventress, a chance to make him a war hero, but he’d have settled for the super weapon or a big battle droid factory, definitely above the concussion.
In his defense — which he has been writing in his head since forty-six hours ago, when it was clear the small squad of troopers he’d been sent with had lost track of him completely — he’s pretty sure the feeling he was getting was a dark side artifact, the kind of Jedi mission he’d been on time and again before this war, which is why they were able to sneak up on him, and he’s pretty sure that the Separatists are using it to lure Jedi away from the front. Is he embarrassed that he fell for it? Should he be more focused? Well — if he can get out of here before the clones find him and find and destroy whatever dark side artifact the Separatists have gotten their grubby little hands on, then he won’t have to be. What’s fudging the truth a little between friends, or between Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi council at any rate. He won’t be a war hero, technically speaking, but he will have completed an important mission for the Jedi Order, which is to keep powerful objects of great importance out of stupid civilian hands and malicious military ones.
Feeling satisfied with his explanations for a later date, Anakin rolls over onto his side. So far, he can’t figure out a way out of the cell he’s been thrown in, ray shielded and the influence of whatever artifact they’re holding is keeping him weak and distracted. And he’s seen exactly zero people since they threw him in here, unconscious. He can survive off the Living Force for a while, but even he will need to eat after a while. He closes his eyes, listens to the humming of the Force around him, the lives of a billion people on the planet and the billions more in the Galaxy spinning around him. Sometimes it can make him dizzy, but now it’s all he has. He hasn’t seen anyone, not a soul, in forty-eight hours. He isn’t stupid. He knows that prolonged isolation is a kind of torture. He isn’t alone, he reminds himself. With the Force he’s never alone.
Typically, Anakin doesn’t have time for this sort of thing, but now time is the only thing he has. All the voices in the Galaxy are speaking, moving around him. Somewhere, far away is Obi-Wan, too far away to make any sense of, but it’s like a reflex to reach for him first, to center the Galaxy around Obi-Wan’s presence first of all, like he was taught to do when even sitting still was a challenge for him. It calms him, somehow, to know that wherever Anakin is in the Galaxy, Obi-Wan is there too. It helps him focus on the here and now, and the things he needs to focus on, and the things he has control over, which is, at the present moment, not very much. He’d like to know who his captors are, who had the ability to sneak up behind him, a Jedi Knight, in a crowded market place, and hit him before he could react.
Dark side artifact, definitely.
He can feel it and he tries to steel himself against it. Deep in this building — wherever or whatever this building is supposed to do when it isn’t housing Jedi prisoners and dark side artifacts — the thing is seeping malice into the Force, settling in Anakin’s gut, whispering to him.
You’re stuck here.
No he is not. Sooner rather than later, someone will come for him, and it will probably be Obi-Wan, who will be gloating, because Obi-Wan is incapable of executing a rescue without gloating, and Anakin will act annoyed but really he’ll be relieved. He has, at least, that much self-knowledge, and the idea of all this is so deeply humiliating which is why Anakin has to get out of here first, before the clones can get a rescue squad together. He is going to rescue himself first. So there.
A jostling at the cell door. Anakin opens his eyes. There are — approximately — three people in this building at all times. Under most circumstances three civilians or three Separatists are no match for him, but ray shields and dark side artifacts…
Before Anakin can react, whoever it was is gone back down the hall. He looks back up at the exhaust fan. He’s been missing in action for fifty hours. Soon, the fleet will call the clones back and Anakin will be marked as missing in action. He’ll be stuck here, rotting on Erimoh. His recent confidence is waning. His captors brought him no food, only a little glass of water. Anakin stands, stretching his stiff muscles, and sips it slowly, trying to peer out through the ray shields, but there’s nothing, just a dark hallway that disappears into darkness just five feet in front of him.
When it gets dark, it gets completely dark. The light pollution on Erimoh is as bad as it is on any other semi-industrialized world, so the sky is a hazy gray at midnight and there are no stars. Tonight Erimoh’s two moons hang low in the sky, both a deep orange. But his cell is silent, just the exhaust fan and the quiet sounds of city life around him. There are no sounds coming from his building, but he can tell there are still at least three guards. He also realizes that his head hurts in the place he was whacked three days ago now, though some of the fuzziness from his concussion is fading. One discomfort replaced by another; his mouth is dry and his muscles are stiff so Anakin is standing now, pacing. Pacing to keep his muscles loose, and because he’s sure that one of his captors is coming. He doesn’t have his lightsaber — also humiliating, because it is only about three months old — and he’ll need it. Maybe Obi-Wan is right, maybe he should be less reliant on his weapon and more on the Force. The Force is his ally, he tries to remind himself, but right now, all it’s good for is sending shock wave signals of danger his way while he waits in the uninterrupted silence until the sun rises.
When it does, he sits, finally, his eyes itching and his knees aching. Into the Force he sinks, lets it revive some of his aching muscles and exhaustion. It’s no replacement for sleep, but it will have to do as long as he’s in here. When he escapes — and he will — he can sleep. Perhaps he will be allowed to sleep for a year. He tries, valiantly, to ignore the dread settling ice cold in his bones as one of the guards approaches him. This time, Anakin is ready, he hops up and reaches through the ray shield with the Force, clasping an invisible hand around his captor. A rush of adrenaline overtakes him. He’s never felt quite this powerful as he squeezes harder. “Let me out!” he snarls, surprised by the intensity in his voice.
His captor is swearing and sputtering, and then, suddenly, Anakin’s whole body lights up in pain, his tired muscles convulsing and he collapses, releasing his grip on the man. On his knees, Anakin finally gets a glimpse and he’s angry enough to stand, surge towards the ray shield, close enough he can feel the heat radiating back onto his face.
“Kriffing Jedi scum,” the man spits, the red light reflecting yellow onto his blue eyes. “No breakfast then. Thought we’d feed you, but what do I care? Die.”
“I’ll kill you,” Anakin hisses. For a second, losing all sense, he puts his mech-hand right up against the ray shield until he can smell the glove melting. He pulls back. “I will get out of here, and then I’ll kill you!”
“Whatever, Jedi.” His captor doesn’t even grace him with another look and disappears back into the shadows. Without him, Anakin deflates, his anger going out of him in a rush. He is tired and the sounds of the city bustling somewhere above him make it impossible to ignore the truth. He has been alone for sixty-four hours. No one is coming. He is alone in a room that is electrified and ray shielded, and he doesn’t have his lightsaber. He’s going to die in here, and no one will know.
At hour eighty, someone sets off the electrified room without provocation. It startles Anakin out of a fitful sleep and he wakes, shaking and numb on the floor for a minute before he realizes what happened. Somewhere, far away, he can feel the delight of the people who took him. They are dark, twisted, stupid men, and Anakin wishes they would let him out. He could show them a real fight then, even without his lightsaber. Here, he is worthless. He’s less than worthless. He wasted Republic resources to come here, and whatever stupid Sith artifact these losers have, it could have nothing to do with the war effort. Time, money, clone troopers, his worthless self. The only real good that came of this mission is that Obi-Wan and the Jedi will finally be rid of him. Maybe they were the ones to send him here in the first place, and their betrayal, now that Anakin has so easily convinced himself of it, stings more than he really thinks it should. He knows who he is — annoying and hard to be around, ungrateful and petulant. Obi-Wan knighted him — reluctantly, he might add — to be rid of him, no matter what Anakin might have wanted himself. Now he will be. They all will be.
It’s also, frankly, getting impossible to construct any kind of mental barriers between himself and the rest of the Galaxy. All around him are billions of life forms, their own horrible thoughts swirling around him, their anxieties and fears and anger mixing with his own until he feels sick and confused. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for him to gain a semblance on his own thoughts. He tries, he tries so hard to center himself in meditation, but there’s nothing around him except hate — his own, his captors’, the people on Erimoh’s — that he can’t get a firm grip on anything besides hate, and anger, he can’t center himself, who he is except this hate. His own self slips between his fingers, cold and oil slick, so eventually he just gives up.
At hour one-hundred-and-four, though at this point, Anakin has lost count, there is a hand against his cheek. This is the first sensation in days that does not hurt him and he startles away from it like a wild animal. His eyes shoot open and immediately regret doing any such thing, the light too piercing to do him any good at making out whoever is in front of him. The Force is useless, still so muddled and loud, but there’s no use in trying to shut it out.
“Are you alright?” Whoever touched him sounds like he asked before. Anakin squints up at his rescuer. Obi-Wan’s blue eyes are inches from his face, or — perhaps not inches, but rather feet. Inches is how close he feels to Obi-Wan in the Force, millimeters, even, nearly touching, but Obi-Wan is keeping his distance for some reason. It’s been hours, days even. Obi-Wan is the first concrete thing Anakin has had to hold onto, so he reaches out, his grip iron tight onto the bond they share, and his fingers, caught in the hem of Obi-Wan’s robes. Obi-Wan winces, but he doesn’t say anything, just shifts so he can place an arm underneath Anakin to help him sit up. The light is becoming slightly more bearable, as is the general volume of the universe.
There’s something important he needs to tell Obi-Wan, something relevant to the volume and the brightness of everything. His mouth figures it out before his brain does, and he’s choking out the words “Sith artifact” before he understands what they mean.
To his credit, Obi-Wan takes it in stride. “I’ve sent Waxer to retrieve it. Turns out this mission wasn’t a waste of resources, though it will be a fight to wrest control away from the Separatists in the end.” As he’s talking, Obi-Wan is helping Anakin build his shields back up, slowly, piece by piece, like they did when he was a child. First, comes Obi-Wan. Then comes Anakin. When Anakin is Anakin enough, Obi-Wan lets go of him and stands up, surveying the scene. Anakin does too, still clinging desperately to Obi-Wan in the Force. The tide of the dark side is enough to make him nauseous, and right now it’s threatening to sweep him away entirely. “Are you alright?” Obi-Wan asks him again.
This time, Anakin shrugs. “I think I have a concussion,” he admits. It seems like the smallest problem.
“Yes, and you’re dehydrated,” Obi-Wan concurs. He turns his back on Anakin, but Anakin is pressed so closely to Obi-Wan in the Force that he can feel Obi-Wan’s expression shift as Waxer returns to the level where Anakin was being held. “That’s close enough I think. Bring it back to the shuttle. I’ll deal with that first, and then we’ll load Anakin on board.”
Anakin bristles, but as Waxer walks away, some of his annoyance fades. “Sorry,” he sighs. “I thought you abandoned me here.”
“Don’t be,” Obi-Wan says simply. “We’ll have someone look at you. I need to…er, neutralize the artifact you found. I fear it’s been feeding off of you, strong as you are.” He touches his hand to Anakin’s cheek again and smiles. There’s no gloating, Anakin realizes, as Obi-Wan leaves and his place is taken by a clone Anakin hasn’t met, with the medics insignia emblazoned on his armor. Anakin still doesn’t let go of their bond.