The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

FAN FICTION

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Take This From Me

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“Take this from me!”

Wild eyes, their azure ice glowing in terror in the darkness. His brow drowning in the sweat of his dreams. This happens more lately, and I grow to dread the dark as much as my former padawan. The moon shining in through window casts a light just over his eyes and what I see makes my chest leaden with fear. He is still so young.

“Another dream, Anakin?”

He turns eyes that have looked to me since boyhood my way. Still blue and wild. Still full of terror. Still asking the impossible of me.

His chest is heaving and I can feel the sheer panic that has come over him, his own ocean of dread. It suffocates him as he sleeps. He sits up, placing both hands on the side of the bed. Strong capable hands that have done things in the name of peace that I myself once could not fathom. No longer the hands of the sand boy we brought from Tatooine. These hands have killed. These hands have maimed--and these hands have healed. But never himself. Only clones. Only me.

I move to the bed and sit beside him, my leg touching his. To anchor him to my serenity.

Despite myself, I want to curse the Force on nights like these.

Placing my arm around his shoulder I draw him to me, and he turns those eyes to me and even through my training, I feel the fear lick up my spine making me shiver. I clamp down on emotions that until the war I had mastered, but now as something inexplicable chases him with increasing frequency, I find myself sometimes pushed under the weight of them. Every ounce of me fights with my teaching and my upbringing, and sometimes it is enough.

Now, with my brother and best friend beside me, fighting demons that tear at him more and more as the war drags on, I reach desperately into the Force for my center. I call out to him through our bond as I have done so many nights as he grew up. But just like then--he is lost to me, wild and tortured. Some weight pressing on his shoulders that even I cannot lift. He breathes as if he is running from something so terrible that should it catch him, he will perish in the most terrible way.

“Anakin, tell me.”

“Take it…Take it from me, Master. I… I can’t do this.”

“Anakin, you must breathe. Relax. Take what from you?”

“What if I cannot do it? What if I am not enough? Does the Force know what I am? Does it know what I can….” He lets the sentence die on his ash lips.

He clutches my knee desperately with his flesh hand.

“I see it, all the time. I cannot get away from it.”

“Anakin, get away from what?”

He turns his frightened eyes to me again, and I find it hard to remember he is a man now, grown up with the horrors of peace-keeping and war.

“I do not know. I only know to run from it, and its shadow gets closer every time. Every time I…” Again he stops, his eyes darting frantically around our quarters.

Running my fingers through the golden locks that have become as familiar as my own, I pull him to me, and reach again for serenity. Determined to save him from his nightmares, to save him from himself.

“Anakin, you must calm down. Breathe.”

His breathing slowing, he turns his gaze back to me as I see the man I know come back through the fog, his heartbeat slows next to mine as I continue to stroke his hair.

“Anakin, you are a strong Jedi. You will conquer this fear. You must.”

“What if I don’t?”

“You will, you are strong and you are wise and the day will come when you know exactly what it is you are supposed to do. The Force will not let you down, Anakin. You must be patient.” I continue to stroke his head absently as I feel his breathing slow to normal.

He lifts his head from my shoulder and clasps my hand. Once again the man I have fought beside and grown to love for these many years. Once again the face of my brother looks at me through the murky depths of acceptance.

Nodding, he squeezes my hand once again softly as he turns to me, his blue eyes searching. “Thank you, Obi-Wan.”

He looks as if he has been on the frontlines for days, the dark purple under his eyes contrasting with the clarity of the blue.

Not for the first time in these many years, I ask the Force, did Qui-Gon do the right thing? Is this how you meant it? Why must he be forced to endure this? And just like before no answer comes. We must wait and find out, we must trust in the Force. I stand and move toward my own bed.

“Obi-Wan?”

“Yes, Anakin?” I turn once again to the small voice lost in the warrior’s body.

“Just promise me you will never leave me.”

“We will always be there for each other, Anakin. In the Force. Get some rest,” I smile, my relief washing over me in waves.

I turn back to my cot as the word whispers through the Force, always.

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