The Haunting of Anakin Skywalker

by Lady Salieri (ladysalieri@aol.com)

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: None really, just a mention of Q/O

Archive: M/A, my site (www.geocities.com/ladysalieri), DPS if they want it?

Feedback: Yes, please! To: ladysalieri@aol.com

Warnings: Some out-of-characterness, perhaps, depending on your point of view. The fic is meant to be ambiguous, but hopefully in a good way.

Notes: Some Halloween-style creepiness (I hope). I meant to hold off until Oct. 31 to post this thing, but well... patience was never one of my virtues.

"I'm running the hyperdrive calculations as we speak, Master. If all goes well, I should be arriving on Coruscant in just under twenty-two hours."

"Very well, Padawan. I look forward to your return."

//All too easy,// Anakin Skywalker thought, as he nodded his farewells to his Jedi Master and ended the holo-transmission.

It was by no means common for a Padawan of not quite twenty to be granted use of a Temple space vessel, and even less common for such a Padawan to fly unaccompanied to the Outer Rim--but, then, Anakin noted smugly, he himself was by no means a common Padawan. Still, Ani had to admit that even he could not have achieved this break from the confines of Jedi life had it not been for a chain of fortuitous events.

Anakin's Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had been assigned to Coruscant as a temporary replacement for a creche instructor injured in 'saber practice. The demanding schedule of his Master's work and the unfortunate timing of their arrival--near the end of the class term, and thus too late for Ani to enroll in classes himself--had left the Padawan almost entirely alone, and with little means to occupy his time. When he had asked to spend some of this unexpected leave with his mother on Tatooine, Knight Kenobi--eager as always to help Ani stay close to his childhood loved ones--had willingly granted the request. And since public transports to so remote and unsavory a port were few and far between, Obi-Wan had used his considerable charm and influence to secure Anakin a small, one-person craft from the Temple lot.

That Anakin had not, in fact, visited the planet of his birth was a truth known only to himself and one other individual--the man who had taught Ani to disguise a lie so far beneath a calm face and placid manner that even one as strong in the Force as Yoda would be blinded by his deception. Anakin had taken to that lesson as quickly as he had the other lessons Sidious had taught him in the five years of their acquaintance... and the ease with which he had fooled his Master, the ever-watching Council, and the Jedi Order as a whole was further proof of the Sith's claim that true power in the Force lay in Darkness.

Instead of wasting his leave on Tatooine, feigning affection for his aging mother and her vacuous new family, Ani had spent the past several days in an underground facility on the polar ice cap of Vivosk, where plans for the Sith's eventual triumph over the Republic were beginning to take shape. Lord Sidious had amassed a vast stockpile of ships and weaponry, and acre upon acre of maturation chambers were producing the warrior clones that would one day operate that equipment. When the time came, the Republic army--kept carefully undertrained and understaffed by the efforts of his Lord's alter ego--would be no match for the Sith's might. War was imminent, though the Senate and their pet Order were unaware of the threat, and Anakin would be there to reap the benefits of their willful ignorance.

Long ago, the child he'd once been had believed in a hero of the Light--believed that the bearded, impossibly tall man who'd appeared in Watto's shop had come there to rescue him from slavery. Instead, this Master of Light had fallen to a mere student of Darkness, and Anakin had found himself entrapped in a whole new form of slavery. That slavery--one of unquestioned sacrifice to the cause of one pathetic race of beings after another--was rapidly coming to an end, and the anticipation was almost too sweet to bear.

He smiled coolly as the hyperdrive engaged and the stars whizzed by in thin strands of white. The Sith would rise again, just as his true Master had promised, and this time no one would stand in their way.

The ship was freezing.

Anakin scowled as he pushed himself up from the cockpit, flexing his numb fingers impatiently as he trudged back to the ship's central heat system.

Ten years of traveling from the climate-controlled Jedi Temple to planets bearing all forms of environmental extremes had failed to balance the effects of a childhood spent in the arid heat of Tatooine. Anakin was almost always cold... colder still in space, where the on-ship heat systems were often no match for the absolute zero of space around them.

Accustomed as he was to the nagging discomfort of space travel, it had been some time before Anakin realized the cold attacking him at the moment was far more intense than what he generally felt. The temperature controls in the ship's cockpit had failed to make an appreciable difference, so it was likely the trouble lay somewhere within the heat unit itself.

A quick look at the control panel on the main heater revealed the answer to the problem. Though the cockpit controls had been set to heat, the unit itself was still programmed to release cold air. There had evidently been some breakdown in the comm relays between the main computer and the heat controls. Anakin punched in the necessary commands to raise the ship's temperature to a more normal level... then paused for a bit, as a thought struck him, and keyed the ship's heaters up to their fullest capacity. There was something to be said for traveling alone, the Padawan thought; there would be no one to complain if the ship's temperature rose to Anakin's level of comfort.

Anakin stood there before the display, watching to make sure no other problems arose, till the corridor around him was as dry and warm as his childhood home. He smiled faintly as sweat beaded his forehead and his thick uniform clung to his skin, then was surprised when a massive yawn overtook the smile. With so much to see and so much to plan, Anakin had slept little in the past several days, and it seemed the long hours had finally caught up to him. The Padawan turned back to the cockpit for a last check of the ship's path and condition before heading off to his quarters for some much needed rest.

Cold.

The air around him was as penetratingly cold as a carbon-freeze chamber, and the thin blanket that was his only cover did little to stave off the chill. The Padawan woke, shivering terribly, unable to remember for a moment where he was and how he'd gotten there--then his mind caught up with his body and he scowled, realizing the heater had once again failed.

Anakin hopped from his sleepcouch and began to dress, cursing viciously as his bare feet encountered the ice-cold metal floor. He stepped into his boots and drew his robe tightly around him, then headed back to the site of the ship's heat system.

It was the heating coils, he mused, as he strode through the corridors, rubbing his hands to generate warmth. Heat coils were notoriously fragile bits of equipment, inclined to blow at the least provocation. He doubted the ship had a replacement part in storage, but if the coils were indeed the problem, Anakin thought he could scavenge a replacement from the heat unit in the ship's kitchen.

Anakin reached his destination and immediately reached for the handle to open up the machinery, but a quick glance at the display panel stopped him in mid-motion. The unit was in perfect operating condition--but the panel had again been set to its lowest temperature setting.

//What the hells?// Anakin thought as he squinted down at the panel. The unit's controls were not ones that could slip from one setting to another; a change of this nature required a push of three buttons and a manual input of the requested temperature. Yet how else could such a change of occurred, when there was no one else--not even a droid--on this ship?

The hair rose on the back of his neck as the Padawan felt a sudden certainty that someone was watching him. He turned his head slowly, denying the impulse to turn around and flee, then laughed at his own fancy when his search revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

His first solo flight had obviously made him jumpy, he reflected. Most likely, the ship had been programmed by its last user to maintain its lowest temperature. Perhaps Knight Akir, or another Jedi of a cold-weather species, had entered an override code in the main system and forgot to remove it when they were finished. That explained his previous trouble with the climate controls as well as this problem.

Mystery explained to his satisfaction, Anakin wasted no time in correcting the trouble. He reset the temperature to his preferred level, then disconnected the control panel from the unit. Heat poured from a nearby vent, and with a satisfied nod, the Padawan set out for the kitchen in search of a hot drink.

Several minutes later, trouble struck again.

Anakin had just finished his meal in the kitchen and was heading back to the cockpit, when his his thick boots lost contact with the ground and he was attacked by a swathe of thick brown cloth. He had just enough time to realize it was his own cloak before his flailing arms sent him hurtling into the corridor wall.

"Sithdammit!" he spat, tearing his robe off his body and launching it down the hall. "What else on this ship can go wrong?!"

Calling on the Force to compensate for the sudden loss of gravity, Anakin pulled himself back to the floor and began moving slowly toward the main control room, where the artificial gravity generators were found.

Not for the first time, Anakin found himself cursing Lord Sidious and his top-of-the-line personal transport, which would carry the Sith lord to Coruscant in half the time and, most likely, without any of the mechanical quirks that had so far made Anakin's trip back such an adventure. But the time would come when all need for secrecy and caution would be abandoned, and the Padawan held this thought in his head as he carefully maneuvered into the room.

The grav unit was just below waist level in the far corner of the room, and Anakin braced himself against the wall as he pulled the front panel out from the wall. A shower of sparks flew from the console's innards and rained down on the Padawan; he drew back, struggling against the flash of red-hot fury spurring him to reach in and gut the system with his 'saber.

"Anger is of the Dark Side, Anakin."

Anakin jumped in surprise as the words echoed in his head. He had heard those words many times in his years as a Padawan--from his Master, from Master Yoda, and from a handful of other Knights and Masters who had thought to offer them the benefit of their so-called Jedi wisdom. But the voice that had spoken this time was different from those; it was a voice he'd not heard aloud since... since a young boy sought refuge in a small fighter in the royal palace of Naboo.

In the years immediately after Qui-Gon Jinn's death, Anakin had often heard the Jedi Master's voice in his head. Qui-Gon Jinn had been friend, family, and most respected teacher to the insecure boy Ani had been. But when a fifteen-year-old Anakin had met the mysterious Lord Sidious, the tone of Qui-Gon's conversations with Ani had changed. Tired of hearing the same worn-out platitudes from Master Jinn that he heard from his own Master and the rest of the Jedi Order, Anakin had turned from his once-cherished friend. The nagging voice had eventually faded from his mind, and he had heard nothing from the Jedi Master for almost five years.

Dismissing the voice as a mere echo of memory from those earlier times, Anakin peered into the grav console. In the jumbled mass of colored wires and tiny computer boards, it was difficult to see where a part might be damaged or out of place, and the lack of gravity complicated things by making it impossible to keep his focus entirely on the system. Anakin pulled the console's innards as far out from the wall as possible and stared down at the tangle in a furious dismay.

"The Force flows best through us when we are at peace, young Padawan."

Anakin's face darkened still further as the voice of the late Jedi resurfaced in his mind. Blithely ignoring the Master's words, he took a deep breath and channeled the strength of his frustration into a mental search of the console. He smiled as the Dark Force led him instantly to a small wire in the bottom of the mass that had pulled itself free at one end. He touched the exposed wire carefully, keeping a barrier of Force between it and his skin, and returned the loose end to its place. The system sputtered to life and the return of gravity brought a familiar weight to the kneeling Padawan.

"So much for your great Jedi platitudes, Qui-Gon," Anakin murmured. "Why struggle for peace when anger will do just as fine?" He pushed the tangled wires back inside the console, muttering to himself all the while, "Why I chose now, of all times, to hear voices in my head, I'll..."

"What makes you think you had a choice in the matter?"

The voice was no longer in the Padawan's head--instead, seeming to come from a point almost directly behind him. With a gasp of surprise, Anakin spun on one knee, his hand going instinctively to his lightsaber.

There was no one there.

It couldn't be, Anakin thought; there was no way the bothersome Master could have returned after all these years. He scanned the control room for any trace of movement or Force presence in the area, but there was nothing in the room to suggest Ani was anything but alone. "Master Jinn?" the Padawan ventured hesitantly, cringing mentally in dread of a response.

The Padawan gave another small start as the bodiless voice spoke again, even louder this time. "In person," the deep brogue of the late Jedi Master answered; then, with a faint amusement, "...so to speak."

Anakin was silent for a long moment, thoughts racing with the struggle to reconcile the conflicting evidence of mind and senses. Finally, disregarding the subject as not worth his attention, his face clouded over with a deep scowl and he turned back to the grav system. "Nice of you to drop by, Master Jinn," he tossed over his shoulder, "but as you can see, I'm quite busy. The last thing I need or want is your interference."

"Like it or not, Anakin," the voice replied, "interference you will receive. You have chosen a dangerous course, young Padawan, and you will not like the consequences."

"Really?" the Padawan shot back, the rage that had always lingered in the back of Anakin's mind rising quickly to the surface. "And what consequences are those?" With a fierce shove, he slammed the panel cover back into place and rose to face the figureless voice. "Wealth?" he continued. "Glory? Power beyond your comprehension? I think it is you and your kind who should fear the consequences of my path."

"You are wrong, Anakin Skywalker." The voice deepened with an icy intent. "The only consequence of your path is your own destruction... and that consequence begins now."

The small vessel shuddered as if struck by an enormous missile, the force of the blow throwing the Padawan to his feet. A cry of fear nearly wrenched itself from Anakin's throat, but he swallowed the noise with an iron determination. Turbulence, he told himself firmly, repeating lessons learned in a lifetime of studying space flight--merely hyperspace turbulence. The fabric of hyperspace was marked with countless tears and microscopic anomalies, and travel across these singularities made for a bit of a bumpy ride. It was clever of Qui-Gon, the Padawan thought, to time his speech so perfectly with such an anomaly, but he had clearly underestimated the strength of Anakin's will.

"Should I be impressed by your little tricks, Qui-Gon?" Anakin asked, leaping to his feet with a defiantly acrobatic maneuver. "Do you think you can scare me back to the Light? Let me save you the trouble, Master Jedi; you haven't got a chance."

"I'm not here to scare you, Anakin," the voice replied simply. "I'm here to stop you."

Anakin gave a bark of incredulous laughter. "Stop me?" he repeated. "Stop me from wiping out all trace of the Republic and its pathetic pet Order? Stop me from fulfilling the destiny that you, Qui-Gon, saw from the first moment you met me? You'll have to kill me first."

A faint sigh answered this reply. "Yes, I know."

Anakin's breath caught in his throat at the response; he swallowed once, then again, before finally finding his voice. "S-spare me the theatrics, Master Jinn," he replied, with an almost convincing bravado. "You're dead! You've been dead for ten years! How can anything you do even possibly touch me?"

A deep chuckle touched the Padawan's ears. "Ah, Anakin," the voice replied, "if only you'd listened to more of those 'great Jedi platitudes'."

The lights in the ship were abruptly snuffed out, plunging the room around Anakin into absolute darkness, and the ship shook once more with a bone-rattling force. The voice came again, then, cold and brittle like glass, its harsh tone sending a shiver of fear through the Padawan's spine.

"There is no death."

In a flash, Anakin's lightsaber was out, its blue-white light flashing about the pitch-dark room as the Padawan struck at the air around him.

"Show yourself, then, Qui-Gon," he shouted over the deafening hum of his saber. "You were no match for a Dark student once; do you honestly think you'll fare better with me? I'd like nothing better than to carve my name into your smoldering corpse and dump what's left of you at your Padawan's feet."

"Do you think it will be so easy as that?" the voice mocked. "I am in your mind, in the space around you... in the cockpit of your rickety little ship. Strange how one tiny change in a hyperspace calculation can make such an enormous difference, isn't it? One insignificant little error can fly a ship through an asteroid field, or bring your journey to an abrupt halt in the midst of an exploding supernova."

The transport shuddered again, as if in illustration of the point, and another of his piloting lessons came abruptly to mind--that hyperspace anomalies were often concentrated in the vicinity of.. of...

With scarcely a moment for thought, Anakin was off and running--stumbling some in the dark as he wound through the passageways in search of the ship's cockpit. He fell sideways, striking his shoulder painfully against a wall as yet another shake rattled the vessel, then pushed past the cockpit doors and slid into the pilot's seat, fumbling across the comp panel in search of the emergency power controls. A faint electric whir accompanied the return of lights to the ship, and the Padawan allowed himself a brief sigh of relief before pulling a small diagnostic module from a compartment at his feet. Quickly he plugged the machine into the ship's main computer, nearly dropping the delicate equipment in his haste to connect the system, then watched tensely as the module scrolled through the long lines of hyperdrive calculations.

The machine bleeped, then flashed up its report. One line of code changed since the hyperdrive code was first entered, and the security protocols disengaged to prevent the computer itself from sounding an alarm. The change was a simple inversion of two numbers in a line of several thousand, but it was enough to put the small craft on a direct course for a nearby black hole. Anakin re-activated the security protocols, taking deep, calming breaths as the ship corrected its course, then he typed in a further line of code, instructing the computer to disregard all further manual commands.

"I've found your little change, Qui-Gon!" the Padawan informed the air around him, the ease with which he had saved himself reinforcing his instinctive arrogance. "And I've locked you out of the ship's computer. You'll have to do better than that if you expect to kill me!"

"Locked yourself out as well," the voice returned promptly. "Are you sure that was wise?"

A mechanical screech filled the chamber as the ship's panel lit up in alarm. Anakin's face paled as the display reported depressurization in the aft guntower; air was escaping through a breach in the outer hull, and the automated air locks meant to seal off such a breach were not responding.

"Oh," Qui-Gon's voice said casually, "did I mention I ordered the ship to keep the air locks open at all times?"

Anakin flipped the manual overrides on the aft air locks, hoping against hope the ship's computer would understand that this was an exception to his last command, but the locks remained open and the ship's alarms grew to an even more fevered pitch. Slamming his fists down on the panel, the Padawan rose to his feet, pausing only to grab a thick roll of duranium cable from a utility drawer before dashing headlong toward the rear of the ship.

"Do hurry, Anakin," the voice said, seemingly having no trouble keeping up with the Padawan's flight. "In time, the force of the escaping air will rip enough of the hull loose that even the air locks won't be able to fix the problem. Have you ever seen a body exposed to the vacuum of space? Not a pretty sight, I assure you."

As he approached the section of corridor nearest the room with the breach, Anakin could feel the pull of the air rushing out from the tear in the hull. Moving more carefully now, keeping a tight grasp on the metal handrail lining the corridor in case the escaping atmosphere should pull him off his feet, Anakin drew near the open air lock nearest the breach. He paused a few steps away, closed his eyes, and summoned the Dark power that had always come so easily to his grasp.

The door rattled slightly, the pull of the air and the strength of the ship's commands increasing the door's resistance to movement, but finally the door slid home and the air around the Padawan stilled. Opening his eyes, the Padawan stepped forward and tied the door shut with a thick loop of the duranium cable. Then he leaned back against the thick door and threw a challenging smile up at his unseen tormentor.

"What's next, Master Jedi?" he taunted. "Engine trouble? More tricks with the gravity or temperature? Anything you can damage, I can repair, Qui-Gon. Is this all you have to throw at me?"

There was no reply, and Anakin let out a loud, gusty laugh. "I knew you were no match for me, Qui-Gon!" he cried. "You're no different from the rest of your kind, all big words and clever tricks, but when your skills are finally put to the test, you're... you're..."

His words trailed off in a wheezing cough, and a wave of terrible weakness nearly drove the Padawan to his knees. He drew in a long breath, panic setting in as the air in his lungs seemed insufficient to bring strength and vigor back to his shaking limbs.

"Qui-Gon," he gasped, after a moment, "what have you done?"

"Cut off your oxygen supply," came the quick answer. "For the past few hours, you've been steadily poisoning yourself with your own breath. A fitting metaphor, don't you agree?"

"Damn you!" Anakin rasped. He threw himself back down the corridor, using the metal hand rail to hold his faltering body upright. //Environmental suits,// he thought numbly, //there must be environmental suits near the outer air lock.//

He staggered down one corridor and into the next, moving slower each moment, till a fit of coughing struck him and he fell limply to the floor. When the spell passed, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees and began crawling down the long passageway. But his senses were reeling with the lack of oxygen, and a terrible blackness was increasingly consuming his vision.

"Qui-Gon," the Padawan found breath to ask, "why are you doing this to me?"

"Why?" For the first time since the voice had begun speaking to him, Anakin heard emotion tinge its deep, cultured brogue. "You dare ask me why? I believed in you, Anakin Skywalker... risked the fate of a planet and my honor as a Jedi to free you from slavery... drove a wedge between myself and the man I love in my zeal to secure your future... then bound that man to you with my dying words and the strength of his love for me. Did you think, for one minute, I would just stand by and watch you destroy everything else he has left to care for in his life?"

Anakin's arms abruptly gave out and he pitched forward, the force of even so tiny a fall driving still more precious air from his lungs. "Qui-Gon," he said, managing one last desperate plea. "Could change... will... just... please..."

"I'm sorry, Anakin." The voice had softened, but the resolution behind the words had not. "Even if I believed you, it would be too little, too late."

There was a brief pause and then a distinct feeling of comfort crept over the dying Padawan's senses. "Go in peace, young one," the voice continued. "The Darkness in you was not entirely of your making, and it will not follow you from this world. The Force will be with you always."

The sigh that was Anakin's last breath in the physical universe could almost have been one of relief.

In the five days since a physically intact but unresponsive Jedi transport had surfaced from hyperspace in the Coruscant system--from there to be boarded and flown in by representatives of the Jedi Order--all of Coruscant had buzzed with the mysterious death of Anakin Skywalker.Healers at the Jedi Temple had run a thorough diagnostic on Padawan Skywalker's body and had determined the cause of death to be atija fever, a quick-acting and often deadly viral disease. From this, it was possible to extrapolate the last few hours of Skywalker's life: hot and cold flashes, exhaustion, disorientation, followed by auditory and visual hallucinations of increasing length and intensity, and leading ultimately to respiratory failure and death.

Less simple to understand was how a young man visiting family on the desert world of Tatooine could have contracted a virus only commonly known to infect ice miners in the polar regions of Vivosk, a planet some twelve thousand light years away. Temple investigators had contacted the Padawan's family and found that no visit had occurred in recent weeks, nor indeed had such a visit been expected. A Jedi Knight had been dispatched to Vivosk to investigate whether Padawan Skywalker may instead have ended his trip there, and what the purpose of such a visit might have been.

The Padawan's death, while tragic, may not have merited so wide an interest had it not been for a second death from atija fever. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine had been found dead in his chambers mere hours before the Padawan's ship was brought in from Coruscant space. The Chancellor had also been off-planet in the weeks preceding his death, and the similarities between his case and the Padawan's made it likely that, wherever the pair had contracted the virus, they had done so together.

Perhaps the lone Jedi not buzzing with speculation over the mysterious deaths was the one most touched by the event. Obi-Wan Kenobi had performed the funeral rites for his Padawan in a haze of bewildered grief, the blazing pyre scalding a heart already too damaged by loss. On the very day that a Jedi Knight made a startling discovery in northern Vivosk, Knight Kenobi sat dully in his quarters, wrapped in the thick folds of his late Master's cloak.

"Failed you, Master," he announced thickly to the air around him and the soft material that had long since ceased to hold traces of his lover's Force signature. "I failed you on Naboo, and I failed you again here. He was... your last great cause, and now he too is just ashes and dust."

The Knight shifted to lean against one side of the chair, pulling the cloak up to bury a tear-stained face in its warmth. "I'm so sorry, love," he sighed as his mind gave itself over into sleep. "So terribly sorry."

A strange disturbance filled the air in the Knight's quiet quarters--neither breeze nor light nor energy, but some combination of the three. The disturbance resolved itself into the blue-tinged image of a bearded man, who looked down on the sleeping Jedi with eyes bearing the sadness of a galaxy. One hand stretched out to hover over the Knight's head, and a small surge of the Force pushed red-gold bangs back from the man's forehead.

The presence leaned forward to whisper in the Knight's ear. "I am the one who is sorry, my love," he said. "Sorry it had to end like this. But better the pain you feel now than the one he would have brought to you later." The being's lips ghosted across the man's brow, soothing the deep lines of tension that lingered there. He straightened again, then, and began to dissipate, leaving only his parting words to hover in the air. "One day, you'll understand."

-end-