My take on Zygerria, and how Anakin got his eye scar:
It’s short enough to post on tumblr, so I thought I’d just post the whole fic here.
“There is no mirror that has ever loved Anakin Skywalker. And the mirror in the Medbay bathroom is no exception.
That glass always shows him exactly what he doesn’t want to see. Most of the time, it shows him his mother. It shows him the youth she never got to live as a free woman.
Today it shows him beauty. It shows him that his hair, as messy as it is, is still voluminous. As weary as he is from the mission, he still has that smoldering expression, a fierceness in his eyes that could rival stars. He has always been grateful for his beauty; Padmé remarks on it frequently, as do people on the Holonet. He’s always seen it as an advantage.
Now he hates every inch of his beautiful skin, because she loved it. If only his face had been scarred. If only his hair hadn’t been long enough for her to tug.
If only you weren’t so beautiful, the dragon chides, maybe she wouldn’t have looked into your eyes.
The mirror has to pay, because somebody does. His knuckles collide with it; he sees himself splinter. Sees silver and rainbows and blood.
“General?” He hears one of the clones outside say. “Are you alright in there? We heard a loud noise.”
“Fine,” he says, though it comes out almost a wail. Fuck, he can’t throw up- they’ll hear it. He tries to swallow the vomit rising up into his throat, unsuccessfully. It spews out of him. It’s all wet and slimy, like the inside of her. He wishes Mom was here, to clean him up. Or Padme.
Even her forgiveness has its limits, the dragon hisses.
Even through the cracked mirror, he can still see himself. He is split into pieces. But the mirror is vengeful; even broken, it still reflects.
Too much beauty. Too sharp.
There’s one way to make it go away, forever. He has to get rid of these eyes that she complimented, these eyes that looked into hers.
He rakes his nails over his eye socket. And then ah, blissful black-
There’s a frenzied knock. “Sir! What’s going on in there, Sir?”
Gods, Can’t anyone just leave him the fuck alone?
“I told you, I’m fine,” he snaps. But he’d be a lot better if they’d just let him finish what he’d started. And his eye hurts now.
When it hurt, Mom used to sing to him. Back then the only beautiful thing he used to know was the sound of her voice.
Troopers shuffle around outside.
“Are you hurt, Sir?” Says one of the clone troopers.
“I’m…fine…” he says, though he feels faint. Is all that blood on the floor his?
He is hurt, but he hates the fucking doctors. They can’t look at him, not in this state.
So he just slumps against the countertop and groans. “I’ll be just a moment.”
On the floor, blood and mirror shards have all mixed together. His reflection is stained crimson now. Where he dragged his nails there is a trail of blood. He thinks of the battlefield, of all the lightsaber wounds that don’t bleed. It is a blessing, he thinks, to bleed. Bleeding is not beautiful.
“We just want to know if you’re alright,” one of the troopers repeats quietly. Funny, how the Council never said that. They never asked if he was alright with this mission. In fact he practically begged them not to send him to Zygerria, please, I’ll do anything but that…
But we need you on this, Skywalker.
This had to happen. It was meant to happen. Because that’s what it means, to be needed. It means: you have a purpose. And his is to be sent to Hell, because no one else will go.
He feels bad, keeping the men waiting. He makes himself stand up and open the door. The Troopers look at him with caring, but also with the kind of concern he has always resented.
“Yeah, I know, I’ll go see a fucking Medic,” he huffs, before they can pester him about it.
The next few hours are a painkiller induced haze as they fix him up.
They do not fix him like he is a droid. There is no restart button on the human body; skin remembers every touch. They can fix the external damage; they can restore his functionality. But there’s no doctor in the world who knows how to make the remembering stop.
Anakin doesn’t understand why the doctors recommended he be put on medical leave. He is perfectly capable of returning to battle like this. His eye is healing, and his men need him.
He wasn’t going to take the leave. But when he called Padme up and told her what happened to his eye, she’d threatened him with a litany of violent acts if he didn’t.
So he finds himself back home. Padmé isn’t there when he arrives at her place, but he has a key. He wants to collapse in their shared bed, which he knows smells like her, but when he sees it, all he can think about is how plush it had been.
He plops himself down onto the sofa, without a blanket- he wouldn’t be able to stand the softness- feeling ill again. The queasiness has lasted for days now. Obi Wan would tell him to meditate; that was the Jedi cure for most illnesses.
Despite how sick he feels, how bone dead weary he is, he does not sleep. In his sleep, she comes, sharp as a reflection, as the score of a whip.
When Padmé finds him later that night, he is staring blankly at a wall. She sits down beside him and strokes his hair. This is not the first time she has helped him through an injury.
“Does it hurt?” She asks.
He stopped noticing whether it did or not. All he can offer her is, “I think so.”
She furrows her brows a little at that. An odd answer, he knows.
“A mirror… did this?” That was the story he was going with, the one he told the doctors. The mirror had been broken already, he’d said, and when he went to use the sink a shard had cut him.
Padmé looks at him questioningly, but doesn’t push him. “Then what happened?”
Anakin’s only answer is to sob. Padmé just lets him, doesn’t rush him.
“I didn’t want to see anymore,” he answers finally. “Not her face or…or myself. I can’t stand it. After what I’ve done…She made me break my vow to you.”
Understanding crosses Padmé’s face. “What was done to you,” she corrects. She places a light kiss on Anakin’s bandaged eye.
He is glad he can see her. She looks like Mom’s voice. He remembers that beautiful is not a bad thing.”
