A Halloween Fic for Ani-Haters!! :> (complete)

Hello, all! Apologies to everyone waiting on the next section of Conduit. This story idea hit hard, and I wanted to be sure I had it up by Halloween.

Anyway... hope you like it!
Obi-Fan

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THE HAUNTING OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER

"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 Sith?// 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 have 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

 

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.

?Sith take it!? 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 c

 

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 t

 

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 damaged by a similar 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, Qui-Gon," he announced thickly to the air around him and the soft material that had long since ceased to hold traces of his Master'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, Master," 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 Padawan," 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."

-the end-

 

Cool Very well written

 

Excellently written and very thought-provoking. A very fitting end for Anakin, and good that you included Palpatine, too!

 

LOL! I love Anakin, but that was a great fic nonetheless. Too bad that doesn't actually happen. The galaxy would have been better off.

 

I LOVE this fic!!! Bout time someone killed the brat off! Great job Obi-Fan!!

 

*Dances around* ANI'S DEAD! ANI'S DEAD! LET'S GET A PITCHFORK AND CHOP OFF HIS HEAD! > You tell him Qui! Nobody hurts our boy Obi! *Sighs* Anybody know what happened to Laheara? She has some good stories that need to be updated! *Grumbles* Such as Now I Know and I Will Always Love You!

 

Wow! That was great! Ani didn't survive, and neither did Sidious...

Thanks for this Halloween treat!

 

Lovely story Obi-Fan Anakin can't escape the power of a protective ghost. Poor Obi-Wan at the end.

 

WONDERFUL! I saw the words 'Ani-haters' in the title, and thought: THIS IS A FIC FOR ME! Hehehehehehehehehehee. Nice to see Anakin pay for his decisions to betray the light side.

Poor Obi though.

-Little Jedi-
MTFBWY

 

I had the same thought when I read Ani-haters. I was like, evil grin, here I come!

I really don't mind Ani, but still, these things with the word haters in them are usually fun, so long as they ain't Obi!

Oh, and one other good thing about this story. If Ani died at that age, I think that would mean NO WHINY LUKE!!!1 I would miss Leia, but getting rid of Luke and Ani at the same time and not hurting Obi is worth it.

Great fic.