𝐒 𝐓 𝐀 𝐑 𝐖 𝐀 𝐑 𝐒 | 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 + 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬

the love only lasts so long (the grief lasts longer, the guilt never leaves)

He doesn't think he will ever be able to get the image out of his mind.

No matter how many times he imagines himself taking a steel brush to the stain of this heinous memory and scrubs, no matter how viciously and determinedly he wills it away, it is the sticky residue that clings to the surface like the unwanted sap from a tree mars the bench beneath it, and no amount of elbow grease will wipe it from his mind.

And she's a walking reminder of it. A breathing reminder of how she looked when she couldn't breathe at all, and Anakin doesn't know whether it's the being so close to her but never feeling farther that will kill him, or the stale air of the Resolute's corridors, empty in her absence but far too full in her shadow, that scales to the physical distance between them that will.

Because there's no way to put it nicely — he's been avoiding her, and whether it hurts worse when she's near him or out of his sight is a hard distinction to make. Either way he can still feel the band around his lungs constrict and the ice shard residing in his chest ever since her body had hit the ground and she didn't get back up again twist painfully and re-harden again from all the times he thinks it's capable of finally melting.

Every time she is near him, he feels the ice crack. Little fissures scale to the mountainous distance between them, and it shatters. Every crack in it he takes as a sign of progress, until he realizes the splintered, jagged fragments sting worse than before; until he realizes, that all that's happened is that the ache has spread, the shards become sharper, and the pain found a way to be more efficient; refined itself and threaded through his chest strategically, sewed this cold feeling so tightly to his chest he can feel when it constricts, and then the shards pierce his lungs and all of the sudden he can't breathe.

Because she wants answers; answers that Anakin cannot give. And he can feel her eyes, see the pain reflected in them as starkly as his own, the way she holds the hope in her chest and won't let it go with both hands; the way Anakin can tell there is nothing there to hold at all, and that he must be the one to tell her that it's slipped through her fingers the same way coarse sand had slipped through his a lifetime ago. The blues of her eyes are drowning, and her gaze feels like an accusation. Though, what she is blaming him for couldn't ever be worse than for what he already blames himself. Anakin clenches his jaw, keeps these regrets and apologies begging for the validation of the air between them to himself, before this tangy feeling on his tongue leaks into the air beyond and there is no coming back from the stain it leaves between them.

"Tell me what happened."

Her lips move, but it all feels like a pantomime. The words sound hollow in his ears. All he can hear is laughter, cold and cruel; red eyes pierce into his own, bleached skin stretching into a sick smirk.

"I want to know what happened. Master, I-" She swallows. The pain in her eyes is an ocean, and suddenly he realizes he doesn't know how to swim. "I feel... different. "

Her lips move again, and all Anakin sees are yellow eyes and veins run through with black; fangs bared and lips twisted into a sneer. "I feel more like myself than I ever have!" And the words wrap around his heart and squeeze, claws extended until he can feel the pierce of them, and he wonders if he even wants it to stop; does he even deserve it?

And Anakin knows grief; knows the way it's silent and savage and creeps up from behind, fingers to slip around your throat and it's too late to scream because no one will hear you. Knows the way it tastes metallic and stings even worse, bleeds into chests and cracks the bone on the way out, and it's too late to put a name to it because it's already run its course and the closure never seems to fit into the gap it leaves behind quite right.