i wanna know if im a good one

(dying to know who are the good ones) strictly au Anakin Skywalker rp. 5 min of Darth Vader. please read rules / info. semi-hiatus.

[astranovus]

hi im raive this is a strictly au anakin skywalker. very selective cause im just not here enough to be writing with everyone.

rules / about / verses / hc

Sideblog: Luke Skywalker

[spokewar]

"I don't know." The truth burns his throat on its way out, each syllable a tiny shard of glass which tears into his flesh in a vein attempt to stay hidden. Stay unknown.

He wants to vomit and cry and scream all at the same time, but his mind and body stay frozen in place. Would he? It's impossible to imagine it, striking down the boy he raised with the two lightsabers he trained him with, the ones that so naturally hummed in harmony with Anakin's own. They never felt exactly the same, but they did feel like fractures of something once whole and they were pleased to be together again. Obi-Wan never wanted a padawan, he can't imagine never having one now, never having Anakin. His toothy smile, choppy hair, and eager eyes; a boy with passion too big for his heart and a power barely contained within his small fragile body. It's no wonder the Sith had their eyes on him, no wonder his mind broke, he was all the galaxy in a paper bag.

"Not in defense of myself. But for others . . . yes." This time, he feels confident in his words and they only barely waver. He would do all he could to spare his life, but he wouldn't stand down. Not only because it was the right thing to do (he wouldn't know how to stop anyway), but because Anakin would hate him if he didn't. Would hate him even more than he does now had Obi-Wan stood by and watched him slaughter the defenseless and innocent.

He tries not to think about how he did. The 212th had been beyond far from Coruscant when rumors of Dooku's surrender and Palpatine's final grab for power collided, hundreds and thousands of miles away from Anakin with no way to reach him and only a thread-bare mentor bond to assure himself he was even alive.

Logically, Obi-Wan knows there is nothing he could have done in the moment, but there is nothing to spare him from the guilt of ignoring Anakin's need for help for all the years prior. Had he just been a better teacher, a kinder mentor, a more caring brother.

"I'm sorry, but it won't come to that. Ever." Because they're going to help him (those who could stand to be in the same room as him), the Jedi are done with abandoning their own, Obi-Wan would make sure of it. "Who you are- you don't want to hurt people. You aren't evil. I know that."

It would be a lie to say everything he's doing he's doing for Anakin's sake, but he's certainly a driving factor. The temple can hold him forever, but they won't want to, not when he's painted the walls red with blood of their own. The Lothal temple is far and out of the way, both easy to forget about and inoffensive. It will be well fortified and the Force will be quiet. Early on, he'd considered recruiting Rex—who likely wouldn't refuse a call to duty—but from what little Obi-Wan knows of their relationship, he was really more Ahsoka's Captain than he ever was Anakin's and inviting him might do more harm than good. To all three of them.

"And someday. I hope you'll believe me."

[astranovus]

"Then why have I always felt like I am evil?"

If Obi-Wan feels wretched at the thought of all this, then Anakin feels like he's sunken deep in to a black hole and he's been pulled in so far there's no way out. There's no way out of this room. There's no way out of his life. Anakin leans forward again, his face in his hands and let's out a frustrated yell.

He's on his feet before he realizes what he's doing. He almost stumbles before he catches himself.

"How can you say any of this when you can't even look at me?" Not that Anakin can look at himself. He doubts he would recognize himself in the mirror. His chest feels tight, his head feels stretched to thin. How many Jedi had he killed? How many of them begged for their lives? Not as many as he could have. "Every future I've seen... There's something wrong with me. I keep seeing them. I'm never going to stop seeing them."

Part of him realizes he's not making any sense and he snaps his mouth shut. He shakes his head, uncaring how off kilter it makes him. Does it matter if he were to believe Obi-Wan? Hasn't he fought his inner demons all this time and failed? He should have been able to kill Palpatine. He should have been able to resist him. He should have been able to stop himself. He's stronger than Palpatine, he's stronger than any singular Jedi that's ever lived, he shouldn't have fallen so hard and so easily.

So why had he? Why was he so disgustingly weak?

"Why do you think I could help after all this? Why would you want it? Why would anyone?"

[astranovus]

I think Yoda suffers from usually being correct Abt things but he's so esoteric and unwilling to be clearer that he ends up being frustrating.

[astranovus]

Like for a starter if we haven't written together yet.

[astranovus]

Like for a starter if we haven't written together yet.

[sanscest69]

I just realized that many many people have jobs

Rb with your job, wtf do you people do while offline???

[astranovus]

hm. i think several years after leaving the empire / breaking from the dark side, anakin would realize all the things that were done to him by Sidious. Like, he would recognize that certain choices he made weren’t really choices he ACTUALLY made and were more so suggested to him, and the doubts he had were his own internal struggle against that, but after so many years of manipulation it was hard to disentangle his own thoughts from that of Sidious and…

i dunno i just really want Anakin to talk someone about all that. 

[astranovus]

grabs him from behind and tries to body slam him into the floor.

Not many people can catch him unawares. Anakin's sensitivity is such that most people are disappointed when they try to sneak up on him. Unfortunately for him, Obi-Wan is in the very select few who know him so well that he can surprise him.

And it's never for good reason.

"I DIDN'T DO IT--"

It could be a great number of things, all of which Anakin would and will deny.

The sight is comical, really. The suddenness of his master's actions, the way in which Anakin's eyes turn as round as saucers where seconds ago he'd been in the middle of rolling his eyes. Rex does literally nothing to assist. What had alerted Anakin initially was Rex's casual side step a second before Obi-Wan grabbed him.

Traitor.

"LET ME GO--"

[xanthema]

[spokewar]

"We can't let you go. The ramifications- it would set a bad precedent." The Jedi have always handled their conflicts internally, whether it be because the senate lacked any interest in them or if they had a modicum of respect for their agency. Either way, releasing Anakin into their clutches would topple that already wavering barrier and then what would stop them from wanting to prosecute others, the strike force that was sent to kill Palpatine? Consular Jedi like Obi-Wan himself who represented the Republic through multiple negotiations and never walked away with peace in hand?

The Republic wants a scapegoat and Anakin, who could not be proved guilty of collusion against the state, but could be proved to be a confidant of the chancellor and a traitor (murderer) to his own people, would be a tempting pick. They want an easy trial with a neat bow on top, they don't want to examine their own corruption and untangle its roots. They'd want to kill him; say he is a Sith no different than 'his Master' and silence his voice.

It isn't safe to let him go, in fact, it's about as unsafe as it is to keep him confined to the temple. They've taken precautions, of course, they've moved their younglings to a refuge off planet with a platoon from the 442nd and they've sectioned off the different halls with varying guards and troopers at each door. Ideally, they'd have moved all non-essentials to a safer location, but they have none. The council finds it unwise to split into smaller groups and no where is large enough and fortified enough to house them all. At least, not yet.

"Would you kill me?" The question escapes him without thought. He hasn't the faintest idea why he asked, he already knows the answer.

Perhaps Obi-Wan just needs to hear it for himself, pointless and disrespectful and self-centered as it is.

"I mean right now. Do you want to?" His back is turned as he speaks. "A real Sith would. A real Sith will never stop and that is why we kill them, there is no other way."

He had to believe Anakin could heal; Quinlan had healed. He was never as Fallen as Anakin, but surely they could use his healing process as an example, a protocol going forward. They would need it, the war had broken them too thoroughly and Anakin wasn't an anomaly, a disease, but a symptom.

"You have another way. You might not have our trust, but you have our mercy."

It would be impossible to say if Anakin was wholly aware of his actions while taking them—not even Anakin's own word is to be trusted—but Obi-Wan would hope without Sidious' influence, this would have never come to be. So there has to be hope. Sidious is dead so there has to be hope.

"I don't want you to die . . . I have no words for what you've done. But we've said our goodbyes, we've burned the bodies, and we are ready to move forward." An oversimplification, not all Jedi have mercy. Some do want Anakin exiled and their anger has only been just quelled by his expulsion and stripping of rank and title, but there's nothing else they can do. Execution is not an option, but there is no where in the entire galaxy strong enough a Force nexus personified, especially no where humane. Rehabilitation and close observation is all they have, and perhaps someday he can be trusted enough to use his power for good; after all, the galaxy will be healing for a long, long time. "Ours are not the only wounds that need tending."

[astranovus]

He wonders if it would be so bad if they used him as a bargaining chip. Put him on a pedestal and say we give you this and you keep out of our affairs, we separate ourselves from the Republic, from everything. Would he be enough? Probably not, that would be too presumptuous, too arrogant to think he was so important. But then, they had put him on a pedestal: The Hero With No Fear.

It was all gone now. His respect. The hard earned trust that Anakin sometimes barely believed he got. He knew they looked at him with suspicion even all these years later and now, now, they could shake their heads and say I never trusted him, I knew he was wrong all along.

The question snaps him out of his rumination. He lifts his head, blinks at Obi-Wan's back, the knee jerk response on the tip of his tongue. And then it recoils, like he's pulling himself back into the hermit shell he's created. Is the answer so simple?

It is simple because-- Anakin would do anything for the people he loved. For the ones he cared about. He would raze the entire galaxy if it meant saving any one of them. Even at the cost of everyone else. Even when he wants nothing more than to save everyone. To keep them all safe.

"No," Anakin says finally, but the answer is hollow. "But I think you're wrong. ...I know you're wrong."

Jedi. Sith. Just two sides of the same coin. For one second he'd seen it: he'd understood everything. Light always casted a shadow, no matter what. Darkness couldn't exist without it, but neither could the light exist without the dark. In that second he'd seen what he could do, what he could be capable of.

It was in that moment right before Sidious had broken his confidence. He'd been so close. His rage had been righteous, his purpose so clear. Palpatine had been in his grasp and then he played into his fears. Anakin felt something burrowing deep in his mind and--

Again it's Obi-Wan's voice that snaps him back to reality. Try as he might, he can't really remember everything after that. It's bits and pieces all out of order, out of context. Nothing he would say could help his case. Obi-Wan's words hurt. They're a stab wound in his chest. You might not have our trust. It doesn't surprise him, but it hurts all the same.

How long had it taken for them to really see him as belonging? He'll never have that back. What does Ahsoka think of him? Padme would never look him in the eye again. He hasn't taken a look out of that barred window for weeks now. At first he'd dared--denial of his own actions making him pace like a captured lion. The anger had come quick on its heels-- anger at Sidious, at the Jedi, at Obi-Wan. At himself. Until finally it had turned into this. All lack of desire to even acknowledge the outside world.

It doesn't matter what he does from here on out. He's lost everything and to gain it back would take another lifetime.

"You're making a mistake." Anakin shakes his head even as dizziness cuts the movement short. "If you had to-- would you kill me, Master? Obi-Wan?"

[astranovus]

High Fantasy verse concept:

The Knights of Coruscant are an elite society, taking in young potentials born with the gold mark-- the mark of magic. For many it is lucky to be born with the mark as it can bring fortune to your family. Peasants cherish the child with the mark, hoping the knights will take them and bring good luck to the family name.

But not every mark is the same. Some are cause for exile. Some are excised.

While marks are not very common, every year the Knights spread out across the land in search of new potentials. Some villages are glad to give up their marked children, while others do whatever they can to get rid of them.

Anakin wasn't lucky to be born with a gold mark. His was a tri color seal. The mark of the unknown. Shmi, his mother, tried her best to hide him away. They were very, very poor and often ridiculed for their reclusion. They lived on the fringe of the kingdom just on the edge of a desert. They feared she was a witch or a shape shifter or that Anakin was a beast of some sort and despite the quiet life they lived, the rumors persisted. The truth was Shmi was an elf, often thought of as special in most societies, but Anakin-- he was half elf, half ... Something else, even if no one would see it. And the mark was even worse.

Shmi sewed clothes and sold them at the market while Anakin made trinkets and little gadgets that the townspeople used as an example of why they shouldn't be trusted. They never sold much.

And then one day after a kindly young man purchased one of Anakin's gadgets, he died. It was nothing more than the usual illnesses that caught on in their villages and towns, but everyone pointed their fingers at the the single mother and her son.

They narrowly escaped when villagers set fire to their house. They were forced into the desert where the Tusken rule. And the Tusken are often not kind to trespassers, especially those of the Kingdom that had persecuted them for centuries.

They spent years in confinement before his mother found a chance for her son to escape. Anakin didn't want to leave, but the choice was taken from him. His mother died as he fled, running as far as he could, running into a storm that should have killed him. And in that storm he realized his power.

The Knights of Coruscant found him. He had turned back, found his mother's murderers and killed them. He killed them and his captors. And everyone else that had hurt them. The tricolor seal of the unknown could now be read, and the Knight who forcibly bound him to the Order shuddered. The boy of prophecy who bore the Mark of the End.

[astranovus]

you know what like this for a starter with Vader somewhere within the 10 year timeline post rots

[rage-in-pastel]

@astranovus Started following rage-in-pastel

"..."

Emerald eyes glared at the presence before her. A Jedi...no...something else. "You're the one...the one my Master fears." And that man feared nothing. To be on that short list was both impressive and terrifying. She could already feel her feet sliding backwards in a backpedal.

[astranovus]

Vader peered through his lenses at the young Force user, slowly coming to a halt several feet before her. Rumor of Force-sensitives in the area had led him here, but he hadn't imagined he would come across anyone so...easily.

"And yet you stand before me, knowing full well the consequences. Either you lack foresight, or you are foolish enough to believe you can face me." From the way her feet backpedal, he has his doubts. "Where is your master?"

[astranovus]

so yeah about that one reliant k song devastation and reform--

[astranovus]

also also. i know you weren't wondering but here's the song i currently have as my blog title

[astranovus]

so yeah about that one reliant k song devastation and reform--

[spokewar]

Obi-Wan does an awful job at hiding his frown, though it hardly matters given how much Anakin is struggling to meet his gaze. Which is fine. He doesn't want to see it anyway, he's scared of what he'll find and what he won't. He doesn't want it to be hollow, doesn't want to look into his padawan's eyes and see a stranger. Worse, a monster.

"No one is . . . defending you." There is likely a softer way to say it, but Obi-Wan currently has no capacity for his famed silver tongue. He rarely ever does with Anakin. "We all know what happened, what you did, but we also know it wasn't wholly you. Not entirely you. Palpatine had influence over each and every one of us, but his focus was on you. That kind of power- it rots you."

He wonders just how much is the council shielding Anakin from any outside news. Does he know the senate wants to question and try him? The political pressure the Order is facing for refusing them? There are parents demanding their younglings back, Jedi renouncing their oaths and titles, padawans without Masters, and a number of both still unaccounted for.

The majority of information known to the populace is still hearsay; there is simply too little context to explain why troopers had turned on their Generals and allies, why the Coruscanti temple had been attacked and been put under lockdown. Everyone knows the chancellor was a Sith Lord and he's dead, but not everyone believes it. Plenty have reason not to, but the Jedi have no such luxury. They've been ignorant and blind for too long.

"And we mourn for . . ." for everyone you killed. "But we're Jedi. We don't find justice in a life for a life. You will heal, you will get better, and you will help push us through this because it is going to take every ounce of power we have to make it out in one piece." There are governments who want their heads as retribution, Separatists who call them Sith in disguise, politicians who want them disbanded; their home is in the heart of the Republic and they can't take a single step outside without being scrutinized and questioned.

The Jedi—with their meager numbers—will not survive if they don't stick together, and they need to survive. If not for their younglings who could safely be placed elsewhere, then for the Clones who face equal struggles, yet have no where to go.

"Your punishment will be your survival." Without thinking, he wanders to the room's one window which sits above the Coruscanti skyline. It's closed and sealed with a ray shield which casts the room in a gentle blue glow. Obi-Wan finds himself thankful for its ever present humming, he doesn't think he could stand the silence otherwise. "I'm sorry if you don't understand that."

[astranovus]

Anakin laughs a little in the space between Obi-Wan's words. Brittle, cracked. He coughs again and almost, almost gives in to the presence of the water.

"...I didn't say that." He's not stupid enough to think the Jedi are defending him. As usual, it feels like Obi-Wan doesn't understand, and maybe that's why they're here. Maybe, if Anakin knew how to explain himself better, if his words weren't so blunt and stunted, if he didn't try to pretend he could live up to the expectations set before him, he would have been able to explain himself better. Maybe he wouldn't have been so naive, so foolish, so easily corrupted. But, then, he was always corrupted, wasn't he? "They could give me up. One thing off their hands. But they won't. You won't."

He doesn't know everything, but it's not hard to infer what they whisper about. He knows how the Senate works, he's intimate with its on-goings thanks to Padme's long discussions on its intricacies. He may not have the patience for it all, but he understands the way the gears turn. The way the Jedi Order has been intertwined for far too long, and that is how Palpatine had so much influence. He'd spent grueling years trying to catch up to his peers on the Republic's long history. It's imprinted in his mind alongside Tatooine's rituals and cultural history. He knows the twists and turns of bureaucracy and he hates every bit of it.

If he has committed atrocious acts, then he should be punished for them. He is a traitor of the Republic, a murderer, a fallen Jedi. Does this not all call for the death penalty, or if not that, a life sentence? Anakin hates the thought of having to life with this, but he's willing to do so if they would stop doing exactly what Obi-Wan is doing. Thinking he's still worth some kind of use after all of this.

"You don't need me," Anakin says.

And that, if anything else, is the point. Why keep him when he was so thoroughly corrupted, a perpetrator in his own right. There's a small of part of him that rejects this idea, but it doesn't want to take blame. It wants to claim it's his fault, it was all Sidious. He said he would kill everyone he ever cared about, and that he could do it, too. Anakin closes his eyes and sees the bodies in the temple. Did it matter if he would kill everyone if Anakin did it himself? Was that the joke? The big irony? In trying to prevent the worst, he had caused it?

(Not that this is the worst. The worst hasn't happened. It won't happen. Or maybe it still will, still can. Is there a chance that being alive can cause the future The Son had shown him still progress, and that the Jedi, in keeping him alive, are still so close to destroying their own future?)

Anakin lets the water bottle settle beside him. His hands run through his tangled, matted hair, as he presses his face into his arms. If it's not the temple, it's the sound of a respirator. It's the children looking up at him with fear and hope and-- Anakin isn't sure if that happened or not. How far did he get? Sidious laughs in the darkest crevices of his thoughts and Anakin has never felt more afraid.

It's been months. He doesn't know how he can continue like this. His head is killing him.

"What if it's my survival that's the problem, Master?" He lifts his head briefly, his words barely above a whisper. "How could you ever trust me after this? Tell them to let me go. They were right.

"He told me he would kill everyone I ever loved if I didn't follow him and I believed him. And he was right. Because he didn't have to. I would have."

[astranovus]

Anyway yes I still think Anakin should be able to do Eldritch equivalent force things and yes I think canon is lame for not giving him special abilities. He's my Eldritch force abomination!!