When You Come Home

-42-

"Anakin, nooo!"

Obi-Wan's voice followed him, a ghost of the past and a terror of the present, as he fell. Strangely, he didn't feel scared. He knew that falling from this height – several hundred feet in the air, onto a solid flooring of concrete and rubble – would undoubtedly be fatal. But he wasn't scared. If his heart raced, it was only out of excitement. If his breath caught, stolen by the rushing, howling wind, it was because this was the closest he had come to flying. He had always dreamed of flying, whether it be traveling in an airplane, or jumping out of one, he knew he would have loved it. And he did. That endless, limitless freedom tearing at his clothing and whipping through his hair was a liberation he had never since experienced. The adrenaline that coursed through his system was invigorating, sharpening each of his senses to enjoy the vivid blue-and-white patchwork sky, the stinging, biting smell of pollution on the cold wind, and the tingling, enlivening sensation racing across his skin.

The ground was rushing up to him astonishingly fast, but he still wasn't scared. He had faced death so many times, in war, in his last rock-climbing adventure, in any of his many drag races, in his own life, in so many ways. He didn't fear death. It wasn't that he had ever intentionally sought it out – he knew too well its repercussions. He just wasn't scared of it.

He watched as his doom rapidly grew closer, his hands too far from the building to grab onto it and his balance too thrown off to readjust. He didn't look back to Obi-Wan, for some undecided reason, perhaps so he didn't have to see his horror, choosing instead to meet his demise headlong. So fixated on winning his staring competition with death was he that he would never truly understand Obi-Wan's mortification when he fell. The pure panic on Obi-Wan's face would never be made known to him, nor would the blood-curdling dread that churned in Obi-Wan's bones. He would never see how Obi-Wan leapt from the building, glass shards and rubble dislodged by his desperation. Obi-Wan's voice, crying out from a bygone age, echoed those same words, a real and tangible expression of the guilt he had carried for over seven years. Anakin would never experience the way Obi-Wan's world slowed, the way his heartbeat, pounding in his ears, and his breaths, shallow and frantic, became the only sound he heard. Or how his very existence narrowed onto the only thing that mattered in that moment. Every fibre of Obi-Wan's being was stretched out, manifesting in the tips of his fingers as the wind and the revolutions of the world itself fought him and tried to seal the future of his brother with a permanent seal. He would not let Anakin fall. He would catch him. He would save him.

He was so close to him, too, as the wind tore into him, wailing its scorn, and as the ground grew larger and larger, reaching up to snatch Anakin away from him forever. But he fought the powers of nature, the very cogs of time, as his fingertips brushed Anakin's shirt. In an uncalculated jerk, Anakin slipped from his grasp again, but he didn't give up. He wouldn't.

And as Obi-Wan was making promises that he probably couldn't keep, Anakin suddenly realized, mere seconds from his fate, that he didn't want this. He didn't want to die. He was only seventeen; he hadn't lived yet! He never fell in love, he never reconciled with Obi-Wan, he never got to say goodbye to Rex, he. Wasn't. Rea–

The resolute jolt reverberated through his body, halting his journey moments before it should have ended. The triumphant "gotcha!" inches above him was the only mockery the grave would be granted as another victim was stolen from its fingertips. With a painful wrench to his shoulder, the speed of his energy was rapidly redirected from straight down to sideways and through the broken building. His survival instincts kicked in, forcing him into a ball as he tumbled over and over, spending his momentum like a garment going out of fashion. His rolling expedition ended abruptly as he slammed into a metal beam, his breath squeezed out of him like a child's balloon.

He was vaguely aware of the surrounding sounds – the wind that whistled through the tunnel, the creaking of the building, the panting gasps of another human being close by – but everything was distant and confusing, muddled by the shock of a near-death experience. His body ached, bruised and scraped from his concrete landing pad, and his hands shook from the adrenaline racing through his system. He pushed up from his elbows, planting his palms on the ground as he struggled to his feet. His balance was shifting, tilting like the floor, but he hung onto the metal beam beside him, willing himself upright. He knew someone else was nearby, and they sounded hurt. Some voice in his mind told him it was his brother, but that somehow didn't sound right. Last time he fell, his brother hadn't caught him.