For @celebrate-the-clone-wars’s 12/9 Writing Wednesday prompt Mirror, Mirror.
Summary: Plainly put – what if, on Mortis, the Son had temporarily caused Obi-Wan to Fall, instead of Anakin?
Much angst, and then lots of fluff! Enjoy.
Some small part of Anakin had never gotten over his childhood fear of perfect mirrors.
An irrational a fear as it seemed, it was a simple thing born of circumstance; slaves could ill afford the expense of a clean mirror, and neither the slime-soaked floors of Gardulla’s halls or the scrap heap of Watto’s shop offered anything that reflected light with such perfection as the pure, priceless water in Gardulla’s crystal glasses, which always promised a beating if handled incorrectly. On Tatooine, anyone who owned anything that was mirror-finished proved they had money and power enough to escape the scouring sands of the desert planet. And for Anakin and his mother, those with money and power usually brought tough work and enduring pain.
Even after he became a padawan, and the word Master became something else (despite the stabbing feeling in his gut the first few years he got used to the new application of the word) there would oftentimes be a moment where he would stare in a mirror and see himself, but not himself; a flicker of yellow eyes where there should be blue, accompanied with a shudder of the Force. But then he would blink, and Obi-Wan’s familiar form would be there, reflected behind him, calling him towards another day and another duty.
It was only when war descended on the galaxy that Anakin began to look at the face that stared back at him in the mirror and see himself; a self he could understand. The Hero With No Fear, Jedi General. It made him almost believe the cocksure grin he would conjure up even when he felt anything but.
And then came Mortis.
And with it, a shattering.
It began with one of Mortis’s inexplicable worlds within worlds; a plain of shallow water stretching to a horizon completely flat in the distance, so still and so dark that the unfamiliar stars above reflected perfectly onto the fluid plane below, a window into another night sky; an unbroken field of stars and nebulae, a galaxy suspended around a single, solitary flame in the Force.
The flame that was Anakin Skywalker.
He stood there, still, and felt no fear; only that he was walking the sky, as he always meant to. The mysteries of Mortis and its three cryptic inhabitants fled from his mind; even the Force, which would shout to him in combat but never spoke to him when he tried to seek it in quiet, seemed to settle calmly on his shoulders.
And between one breath and the next, the illusion shattered.
The Force rent in a keening scream; the air hissed with the sound of an activating lightsaber, and the water shuddered as a blue bar of plasma sliced through the plane of reflected stars.
Anakin spied the reflection – auburn haired, cream-tuniced, blue-lightsabered – the moment before he spun in place and saw properly, but none of these registered except for Obi-Wan’s eyes.
Those narrowed, sulfur-yellow eyes.
That mouth, curl-lipped and dripping with disdain, was what Anakin focused upon next; strangely, even more than the threat of the lightsaber flourished in a Makashi salute of all things – not Soresu, not even Ataru, but Makashi.
“Obi-Wan,” Anakin said, blinking.
Obi-Wan’s sword hand blurred in an impossibly fast flourish, and Anakin leaped back with a yell, the sharp scent of burnt fabric searing his nose.
“Obi-Wan!” he shouted, eyes wide, ducking under another lightning reverse-thrust aimed at his neck, so burningly close that the place where Obi-Wan’s blade would have entered his spine tingled. The stars blurred in a desperate dance of near-death and hopeless incoherence.
Where Obi-Wan was once a nebula in the Force, blazing bright, there is now a neutron star; compressed, dead, and impossibly heavy. Every point of reference skewed towards him, a gaping maw in the Force that threatened to swallow stars and sky and Anakin whole.
Obi-Wan wasn’t-
This wasn’t-
Anakin gasped in a breath of plasma fumes, reeling in the shrieking of the Force. “Master, please, I don’t- what’s happened to you?”
And Obi-Wan spoke.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Obi-Wan said, in a voice like ice-polished steel. “You never were sensitive to the Unifying Force.”
“I don’t-”
“Of course you don’t. You never could, and you never would. But I don’t need you to understand, Anakin. For the galaxy to live, you need to die.”
Anakin stumbled, sending a spray of water from his left boot. Nearly lost his good arm to a shrieking plasma blade that winked scarlet and then azure again the the tilting Force.
“What?” he managed to gasp, blinking the reflection out of his vision – like shadows in a one-way mirror.
“Every minute you live brings the galaxy closer to destruction,” Obi-Wan said, even as his blade snapped towards Anakin’s chest like a striking viper. “It has been made apparent to me that this error – you – must be eliminated.” It was almost worse that Obi-Wan’s voice was so utterly dismissive – not cruel, not harsh, not disappointed, even – simply indifferent. As if Anakin was not worth speaking to at all. Worth less than the breath needed to form words.
Reversing out of a twist, Anakin opened his mouth to reply-
– and Obi-Wan backhanded him viciously across the face with the pommel of his lightsaber.
Anakin spat blood, reeled, felt something in his chest twist and break at the sting on his cheekbone-
-and then, as the nine-year-old child cast adrift in the galaxy rose again within Anakin’s screaming mind, with all the fear and insecurity that a child torn from the only loving arms he could ever remember, Anakin found that a small part of his mind remained logical.
It was something Obi-Wan had tried and failed, many times, to teach him – how to think logically on his feet, without the influence of emotion.
Oh, so much emotion.
Strange, that Anakin only succeeded now, when the rest of him wanted to throw himself onto Obi-Wan’s incoming blade and end it right there and then.
It has been made apparent to me.
Someone had done this to Obi-Wan.
With this abrupt realisation, Anakin found rage.
Oh, rage was good.
His lightsaber slapped into his hand, and his mechanical fingers curled so forcefully around its hilt the ache lanced up to his elbow, flesh and bone. He reached out, grasped the shattered pieces of the Force with an immaterial hand, and coalesced them.
Obi-Wan dropped his lightsaber and screamed, an inhuman sound so unlike him that the Force itself shivered as Obi-Wan clawed at his neck – at an invisible hand there.
Anakin levelled his lightsaber at Obi-Wan’s chin and hissed, “Who are you. And what have you done with him.”
An abyss in the Force. Laughter, beyond, and then a black-clothed figure with a red-marked face emerged.
Anakin growled. The Son.
The Son shrugged as he circled a struggling Obi-Wan. “I showed him a possible future,” he said, smiling predatorily at Anakin. “He was…rather difficult to convince. I had to resort to other methods.”
Other methods. “What future,” Anakin snarled.
“Is it so impossible that you must die, or the galaxy will?”
“You lie,” Anakin hissed, and pushed away the part of his mind that noted how Obi-Wan’s movements were weakening.
“Did I?” the Son replied, gesturing at the ground. “Take a look in the mirror.”
Anakin did.
His reflection stared back at him, eyes bleeding yellow at the edges, seeping blue.
He recoiled.
Obi-Wan dropped, nerveless, onto the shallow water-plain; ripples spread from his still form, breaking up Anakin’s reflection until there was nothing recognisable at all.
The Son laughed.
And Anakin, the Hero With No Fear, found himself terrified of everything here – Obi-Wan, the Son, himself-
-and the Son hissed and flickered out of existence an instant before green and yellow plasma blades passed through the space where his neck had been.
Ahsoka.
Anakin blinked. Watched his reflection on his hands and knees, cool water over his fingers and calves-
His reflection had blue eyes.
And he was Anakin again. Skyguy. Jedi. General.
Ahsoka’s voice: “Anakin, are you alri-”
He scrambled gracelessly over to Obi-Wan’s slumped form, grasped his former master by the shoulders and shook him, harshly, a never-ceasing and half-coherent mutter falling from his lips, “Obi-Wan. Wake up. Please, master. Please wake up, Obi-Wan-”
Obi-Wan stirred. His irises peeked out between fluttering half-lids.
Blue, the colour of a Stewjon sky.
Tears started at the corners of Anakin’s eyes. He dimly registered that Ahsoka was crouching next to them; but in that moment, all he did was curl forward like a child towards warmth and bury his face into Obi-Wan’s shoulder, a soundless howl of relief choked in his throat.
A ‘saber-calloused hand slipped into Anakin’s hair, almost hesitantly. The Force unwound itself, bound back together, and Obi-Wan’s Force-signature glimmered to life like a hearthfire.
Anakin threw himself mentally at it and felt Obi-Wan lower his shields after a moment of surprise. Their bond was the shortest and the brightest it had ever been, even compared to their years as master and padawan.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan croaked, a hint of fond confusion entering his bruised voice, “What…why are you doing this?”
Anakin shook his head. Bit his lip as the motion aggravated the cut on his cheekbone.
Curled in the Force together as they were, Obi-Wan could not possibly miss it; a gentle finger brushed Anakin’s cheek as Obi-Wan murmured, “How did this happen?”
The older man’s voice was still rough from abused vocal cords, but its tone was clear.
Concern. Chiding worry.
It was too much.
Anakin gave in to the sob in his throat and hugged Obi-Wan tighter, and cared not that Ahsoka knelt beside him in utter confusion as Obi-Wan ran an uncomprehending hand through Anakin’s hair.
Mortis and its mysteries could wait.
END
This is cross-posted to FFN. Have a lovely day, everyone! You can check out more stories of mine on my masterlist.
Twisted Mirror
Published
mid-nighttiger 