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There’s an empty void lurking just under Anakin’s skin. It won’t ever be satiated and someday, it will consume him. Some days it’s stronger than others, and on those days he eats little and speaks less. There’s no name to it, only violence and a festering in his chest. Weary eyes and clumsy hands, his Force signature dead in the water.
It’s been getting worse, lately. It’s worse now that Ahsoka is gone, it’s worse each day that passes.
Coruscant is quickly becoming more a prison than a respite. It’s too quiet, too peaceful. Anakin spends every day of leave with his muscles coiled tight, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s having trouble telling when he’s awake and when he’s asleep.
The only thing that ever brings him focus is a fight. Anakin learns how to slip out of the Jedi Temple or Padmé’s apartment without anyone noticing, learns the quickest and quietest ways down to the under-levels of Coruscant.
Outside of his Jedi robes, it’s easy to stay unrecognized. Anakin’s face is plastered over the holonet and newsreels, but down here he’s nobody at all. It’s all too easy to disappear into this role he’s created for himself, so easy that it might almost be cause for concern.
The route he takes tonight is familiar, as is the club he ducks into. It’s like any other bar during the day, serving mediocre, overpriced drinks. It’s only at night does it become something special. At night, the tables and chairs are moved away, the blinds lowered and the doors locked.
At night, the pocketbooks come out and the betting starts, but Anakin cares only about the violence to come.
He puts his name on the list and stands in a corner, arms crossed and gaze shuttered. He hasn’t decided if he wants to win or not tonight. Some days he comes here to hit something in the hopes that it will curb whatever monster it is that lives inside of him. He returns home to Padmé with unmarked skin and a calmness that he can’t hold on to no matter how he tries.
Nothing feels right tonight. His head buzzes, filled with half-formed thoughts he can’t pin down. Somewhere, someone is dying, someone that could have lived if they had Jedi aid. He shouldn’t be on Coruscant. The war is still thunders on in the rest of the Galaxy. There are people he should be trying to save, battles that need to be fought. He hates it here, hates that the only fights he can find on Coruscant are manufactured. He wants a firefight, wants someone to hit him with intent to kill. He wants to say stop and for no one to listen.
Nights like this, he likes to let himself get hit. It’s better that way, easier. Sometimes he worries that if he starts to fight back, he won’t stop until his opponent is dead. He’s killed plenty of people, but he doesn’t want to kill a civilian. He hates returning to Padmé with blood on his hands.
Anakin is restless, eager. He wants it to start already, wants to lose himself in the violence. If Aayla were here and feeling charitable, she’d call this moving meditation. His mind is blank after all, drifting peacefully. He is one with the Force and the Force is with him.
When they call the fake name he’d written down, Anakin moves like a marionette. He feels like he’s in one of the plays Padmé sometimes takes him to, acting out a story that he can’t control. If he so much as closes his eyes he can feel Obi-Wan’s disapproval and Padmé’s horror.
He steps into the center of the room and watches his opponent with a dull gaze.
He wishes Ahsoka were here. He needs her to be here, to not have left. She would look at him with wide-eyed horror and ask him to stop, and he’d be unable to refuse her. Unlike Padmé, it wouldn’t be a fight. Ahsoka would bandage his wounds and threaten to tell Obi-Wan, and he’d pull his rank and she’d fall asleep in his room like she used to when she first became his padawan.
He knows it’s wrong to long for the early days of the war, but everyone knew what they were fighting for, everyone was alive. Rex didn’t look so tired all the time, and Ahsoka still knew how to laugh.
They had fun. The war had been fun, for a while.
A fist slams into Anakin’s cheek and his head whips to the side. He’s brought back into the present as pain blossoms across his jaw. It doesn’t last long enough, but Anakin smiles anyway. He lets himself be hit until he stops weathering the blows and falls to the ground with a thud. Anakin rolls out of the way of the foot coming down to stomp on his skull and kicks upward. The fights’s just begun, and there’s already blood welling up in his mouth.
He wants to be hit. He deserves it, probably. There’s something wrong with him, some part of him ticking like a time bomb. He can never disconnect the wires, but if he’s lucky he can reset the clock.
Padmé can reset it when she kisses him, when she lets him pick her up and twirl her around. He sleeps with his head in her lap and she strokes fingers through his hair and the seconds get added back to his clock, each one a blessing.
Ahsoka could reset it when she smiled, when she beat him in one of their games and laughed and laughed like a little girl. His clock runs out quicker, now that she’s gone. He’s growing closer and closer to something, and he doesn’t know what’s going to happen when he reaches zero.
Obi-Wan can sometimes, when he calls Anakin his brother, when he calls Anakin son and smiles when he enters the room. Even as a padawan when they fought or Anakin thought he might hate Obi-Wan or Obi-Wan might hate him, Obi-Wan always smiled when Anakin entered the room.
Then there’s this: hands picking him up by the collar and slamming him down onto the concrete floor, his head bouncing as he hits it. It hurts, and he smiles, rears back to punch his attacker. He didn’t wrap his knuckles before the fight, but when you have a metal hand, you don’t need to.
His opponent screams when Anakin’s durasteel fist makes contact. A tooth rolls bloody out of his mouth and skitters across the room. In the crowd, someone yells. Anakin doesn’t hear what it was.
It’d kill his mother if she saw him doing this to himself. After all she did to keep him safe, to keep him healthy and whole. She was able to let him go, she was happy that he was going to be doing something better, something free.
The other man kicks him in the ribs and Anakin grunts. This is the most free he’s felt in weeks, and isn’t that some sort of tragedy?
This resets his clock too, makes him remember that he needs to keep himself in check or else something terrible will happen. This is better than a battle. The war doesn’t soothe any ache in him, just gives him somewhere to put the violence. It’s better when he’s choosing to fight, when he knows no one will die if he dodges the wrong blow or takes the wrong hit.
Cody took a hit for Obi-Wan a few weeks ago. Caleb nearly got his head shot off defending Depa. The only person Anakin is willing to let die for him is himself.
He’s not paying attention. He’s distracted today; the pain is distant and barely there. He hopes it hurts tomorrow. Force, he hopes it hurts tomorrow.
Anakin’s opponent isn’t as strong as anyone he’s used to fighting. He’s slow and predictable. Anakin could step out of the way of these attacks and kill him, easy. He could pin his arm behind him and slam his face into the floor, he could kick him in the jaw and flip upward while the man was still falling.
It’s very easy to kill people, he’s learned. War has taught him so many things.
This is the real reason no one here will ever recognize the Hero With No Fear. The Hero With No Fear would fight back. He would win, he would not have a scratch on him. Anakin doesn’t fight back. Anakin lies there and takes it until he’s bored, until he feels something in his chest snap or a wire in his wrist break.
He waits too long to stop the fight tonight. He can’t feel the pain, is the problem, and the ticking time bomb in his chest won’t reset if he can’t feel anything. He needs to know that he can break, so that he can stop wanting whatever is at the end of all of this.
Anakin gets hit again and his teeth feel loose. Blood drips out of his nose, and one of his ears won’t stop ringing. He hears shouts but can’t understand any of the words. He’ll have to stop soon, if he wants to be able to get himself home. There’s bacta in his room at the temple, but he never brings any with him when he comes to places like this. He wants the pain to set in. In battle, sometimes Kix stitches him back together so quick that Anakin never knows he was hurt in the first place.
Does Ahsoka have enough bacta, wherever she is? Does she have someone to watch over her while she sleeps and to make sure that her wounds don’t fester?
Anakin’s starting to see spots. He blinks as his ribs crack; he hadn’t realized he’d been kicked again. “I yield,” he says. The words come out mangled with blood, but the man stops. They always stop when he asks; none of them actually want to be murderers. Anakin’s a murderer. Every Jedi in the Galaxy is, these days.
His Padawan - his former Padawan - is sixteen and a murderer. Anakin doesn’t know what a murder is anymore. No Jedi does.
The fight is over. There’s blood crusted on the side of Anakin’s face and it’s a tremendous effort to breathe. When he stands, one of his legs threatens to crumple beneath him. The fingers on his metal hand don’t work right, don’t move when he tries to adjust them.
No one helps him to his feet. Anakin stumbles out of the bar and starts to make the long, treacherous journey back to the upper levels of Coruscant. He left his speeder parked near the top to avoid any notice, and it feels impossibly far away.
The walk will be good for him. The pain will finally settle into his bones, and his body will remember how to bleed and how to hurt. This is the best time; the time after a fight when he can be sure he won’t do anything he’ll regret. He means his every action right now.
He limps past 79s on the way back to the surface. There’s blood trailing behind him, and a terrible rattling in his chest every time he breathes. Anakin’s head swims, and he still barely feels the pain. When is it going to start feeling real?
A group of clones stumbles out of the bar, laughing and shouting. The night is cold and burns Anakin’s lungs with each step he takes.
One of the clones separates from the group. “General?”
Civilians say that the clones all have the same voice, but Anakin could recognize this man by the sound of his breathing. Anakin doesn’t reply.
The clone ushers his brothers to go ahead without him and steps towards Anakin. Even here, each step is perfectly regimented and military.
“General?”
Rex’s touch on his arm is far too gentle. Anakin wants to flinch away, wants to laugh or ask Rex to hit him. He doesn’t think he would. Rex isn’t shy about telling him when he doesn’t agree with his orders.
“What happened to you?” Rex’s expression tightens with anger, his mouth curling in distaste. “Who did this?”
Me, Anakin thinks. I did this. “Stand down soldier.” His voice doesn’t sound like his, and blood spills out of his mouth when he opens it. One of his teeth might need actual medical attention.
“Like hell I will,” Rex snarls. His hand tightens on Anakin’s arm. “Where’s your speeder? Did you come here with General Kenobi? Is he alright?”
“It’s just me,” Anakin says. “No one else.” He sways a little on his feet. His head is starting to hurt, finally. He might have a concussion.
Anakin sees the moment Rex decides what to do with him. His face tightens and his eyes narrow, and his mouth turns downwards. “Fine,” he snaps. He marches over to flag a taxi, then drags Anakin into the backseat. “You’re paying.”
There’s credits in Anakin’s pocket, he thinks. His head buzzes and his hand still won’t work right. It’s starting to hurt to breathe. Good. Thank the Force; he can still feel pain.
Rex is silent as their taxi driver ferries them up to the surface. The man tries to make small talk a few times, but Rex rebukes him each time. He’s furious, or possibly worried. Anakin hopes he’s furious.
He thinks once about mentioning that his speeder needs to be picked up, but he doesn’t think Rex wouldn’t stop. He seems like he’s already made up his mind on whatever it is he’s doing with Anakin.
He half expects to be dropped off at Obi-Wan’s quarters like he’s a padawan again, or even worse taken straight to the Jedi Council. Instead, Rex marches him to the barracks, one hand still gripped tight around Anakin’s bicep. They don’t speak, and no one says anything to them as they pass.
Anakin has never been in Rex’s room before. It’s sparse and simple, with a bed shoved into the corner and a duffel bag under the bed. There’s a photograph on the bedside table, the same one that Anakin has seen Rex take with him on missions.
Most achingly of all, there is very little permanent here, to suggest that this is somewhere Rex considers himself at home. If Rex spends a lot of time here, Anakin has no way of knowing.
“Sit.” Rex’s voice is short and stern.
Anakin sits on the bed. The back of his head throbs, and when he reaches up to touch it his hand comes away bloody. He’s so injured that it’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s wrong, and he doesn’t know that he particularly cares.
Rex pulls out a medkit and applies a bacta patch to the back of Anakin’s head in silence. He pulls Anakin’s shirt off and doesn’t speak as he dabs bacta ointment onto the bruising of Anakin’s ribs, ignoring his hiss of pain at the touch. His ribs are cracked, but Anakin knows they’ll heal soon enough
After, Rex sits down on the bed next to him. Anakin’s shirt is bloody and crumpled in his hands, and after a few minutes he lets it fall to the floor. There’s still blood on his hands, and his jaw still hurts. Kix is probably going to have to look at his tooth, and he’s going to be a real bitch about it too.
Being near Rex doesn’t make the time bomb inside Anakin’s skin reset or slow down, but he can ignore it. Sometimes, that’s even better than having it reset. For a few minutes, he is no one but a General, trying his best to keep his men alive.
“What happened.”
There is a beautiful, crystalline moment where Anakin thinks about telling Rex the whole truth. His captain wouldn’t tell anyone, would hold the secret the same way he holds the rest of Anakin’s secrets.
“Sometimes I get into fights,” Anakin says. “This one got out of hand.”
“I thought you were decent enough not to lie to me.”
Anakin lies all the time. He’s been lying for as long as he can remember.
“I’m not lying. I got into a fight. I probably should have stopped it earlier.”
“You’re a Jedi,” Rex retorts. “You only get hit in a fist fight because you let it happen.”
Rex isn’t wrong. Anakin picks at one of the exposed wires on his hand. It doesn’t hurt to touch it, which isn’t good. He’s going to have to reconnect some of the nerves.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Anakin jerks his head up and meets Rex’s eyes. “I do. I need to do this.”
Rex pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s a gesture that has Cody written all over it, and it makes something inside Anakin ache. Ahsoka used to swear in Huttese because of him; does she still, somewhere out there in the galaxy?
“It’s supposed to be the war that kills you.”
Anakin leans against the wall and tips his head back, closing his eyes. “Are you saying you want me dead, soldier?”
Rex lets out a choked laugh, despite the frustration Anakin can feel coming off him in waves. “You’re already fighting one war. You don’t need another.”
Anakin thinks he’s worse without this. He’s worse without someone hitting him in the face, in the stomach, without blood in his mouth and a loose molar or two. Pain keeps him human, keeps him in his skin. Without it he loses track of who he is. Without it the nothingness will surely consume him.
“General?” Rex says.
“Yeah,” Anakin says. “All the same, I don’t think I’ll stop.”
Rex sighs, but doesn’t push the issue. Anakin should feel guilty, for taking advantage of his captain’s loyalty, his trust, his belief that Anakin will do the right thing. He doesn’t. Nights like these, Anakin doesn’t feel much of anything.
“Rex?” Anakin opens his eyes.
“General.”
Say my name, Anakin thinks about saying. Say it and make sure that it still sounds real. “Do you think it will end? The war.”
Rex is quiet for a long moment, long enough that Anakin thinks he might not respond at all. “It’s not my job to think that sort of way.”
It’s not an answer. Anakin ponders for a moment ordering Rex to answer, commanding him to tell him how he thinks this will all end. He doesn't think Rex would listen. He doesn’t want him to, to a command like that.
Anakin nods. “Right.” His arm is bandaged. He should leave.
“General?” Rex prompts.
An answer for a question Anakin doesn’t know how to ask is written on Rex’s face. “Captain.”
“Do you…” Rex’s voice falters. “Do you want to stay here?”
It isn’t proper. These are the clone’s quarters, and although Rex has a private room, this isn’t right. Anakin shouldn’t stay here.
“I shouldn’t.” Anakin doesn’t move. The circuitry on his hand aches; he needs to take it apart and put it back together.
There’s something Anakin wants that he can’t voice. He doesn’t know how to name it and doesn’t know if it should be named. It’s just that sometimes, when Rex looks at him, Anakin wants to look back.
Rex watches him with a careful gaze. “It’s late, and you’re injured.”
This is a mistake, and a foolish one at that. Anakin needs to go home, back to his quarters or back to Padmé’s apartment. She hates seeing him after a fight, no matter what lie he feeds her about the cause. She would wash the blood off his face, but it would hurt her. He never wants to hurt Padmé. He’d kill himself before he hurt her. He’d fight a million losing battles to keep her safe and alive.
“I shouldn’t,” Anakin repeats.
Rex straightens and looks Anakin directly in the eye, as though he’s the commanding officer here. “With all due respect sir, that isn’t what I asked.”
Anakin wants someone to hit him again. He wants the buzzing in his head to stop. Rex’s gaze doesn’t leave him. There’s no right answer to this question. Anakin sighs and curls his fingers into Rex’s sheets. His body aches, his wrist is falling apart. He should go home and put himself back together, apply new bacta patches, go find someone to look at his tooth.
“Okay. Just for tonight.”
Rex’s gaze on him is so heavy. He doesn’t touch Anakin, but he wishes he would. Sometimes he thinks about asking Rex to fight him. It would be better probably, coming from someone he knew. The fight would last longer. Rex would make him fight back. He’d earn his win, and Anakin’s clock would be reset and his brain would quiet down.
“Just for tonight,” Rex repeats.
Anakin lays down in the narrow bed and holds himself very still. His body aches and the pain that settles in is perfect, deserved. He knows who he is and he is in control of his hands. Rex lies down next to him. Their shoulders brush. Regulation clone trooper bunks are very narrow. They are meant for one man that is always the same height and the same weight. They are not meant for a general and his commander, both with blood smeared onto their hands.
Rex’s hand ghosts over Anakin’s waist, and Anakin closes his eyes. It’s fine, he thinks about saying. I don’t mind. You can touch me if you want.
“Good night,” he says instead of anything else.
Rex’s hand rests on his waist for half a second. It’s too short to feel real and too long to forget. “Good night.”