Beyond - Legends Anakin Solo and the Fear of the Mask (Anakin Solo, Legends Continuity AU)

Particular Author's Note for this board: Hey all, I haven't logged into this account in 5 years. Since a year or two before the big move, and with college I have not had the time to come back. Hopefully it is a great return! It was always such a friendly community! I never saw a flame or argument in my thousands of hours of fanfiction reading!

Send me a note if there are any format issues, its been ages!


Title: Anakin Solo and the Fear of the Mask

Author: G-AnakinRPG/G__Anakin

Characters: Anakin Solo, various others

Keywords: Anakin Solo resurrection, Legends Continuity AU, Fear of Darth Vader/Destiny, Star Wars: The Old Republic

Summary: Anakin Solo died on Baanu Rass on the trip to destroy the Voxyn and save the Jedi Order. But for some reason, this isn’t true and Anakin is forced to come to terms with what it means to be named after Darth Vader.

Notes: This is my first fanfiction since early 2013. That’s 3 years! And I haven’t written Star Wars since 2010. This story serves mainly as a way to motivate me to get back into writing fanfiction – because who doesn’t love a good Anakin Solo fanfic?

This idea came while playing through Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), a video game set roughly 4000 years earlier in the time line. The Sith Warrior story line is based off of Darth Vader, and I got the idea that Anakin should be put into the Sith Warrior story in order to explore his self-concept and what it means to be named after Darth Vader. This was always one of my favorite story lines in Star Wars, but sadly was dropped in 2001 when Anakin died.

So yeah, this story is meant to be a fun go at getting me back into fanfiction and to fill the dearth of Anakin Solo and post-ROTJ Legends fanfic in general!

I have been sitting on this 6 page outline for another story for months, so I am hoping this story will give me the courage to write that one! Message me if you want to know more! Main character are Ben, Tahiri, Mara and Anakin Solo. Roughly canon-compliant frame story style.

All positive and/or constructive comments appreciated.


Anakin Solo and the Fear of the Mask

Prologue

Anakin Solo absentmindedly brushed a lock of brown hair out of his eye sight. Ideally, he would flick his head to move the obtrusive hair, but the blood that matted his hair made that an impossibility that would at best end in whiplash. But that was barely a thought in his mind as he fought harder than he ever had in his life. He was on the worldship Baanu Rass in the Orbit of Myrkr, and this was suicide mission. For the team, he had to pretend that they were going to survive, that they were going to get off this hell of a planet, but he knew deep down he could not guarantee it. But he would die doing his best to make sure his team, his siblings, his love, his friends made it off this planet. And that was what he was doing now, at this moment. Dying to give them that last chance. Dying to take out dozens of the Yuuzhan Vong that threw themselves at him. Dying so that they would not have to carry around the useless husk that was what was left of his body after the amphistaff tore into his abdomen and ruptured his spleen - the damage of which was too much for even a Jedi in these unfavorable conditions.

So he fought without concern for his health, except for that which would prevent him from taking as many Yuuzhan Vong with him as he fought. The hair, he reasoned, was an acceptable distraction. Moving the hair out of his eyes could prevent another thud bug like the one that caused the bleeding in the first place from taking his head off.

Mere moments, milliseconds, had passed before he somersaulted over a amphistaff heading for his clear abdominal wound and landed behind the Yuuzhan Vong warrior that had attempted to assault him by quite literally adding insult to injury. He landed in a slight crouch that sent pain shooting up every limb and his body was on fire, but he ignored that, drawing on the force to raise his lightsaber in a cleave through the warrior before twisting his blade around in an arc that beheaded three others who frozen in mere moments of shock that the clearly injured human would dive into a pack of warrior twice his size.

Anakin had time for a slight breath before he was surrounded yet again. The warriors, he knew, had no interest in their life. Dying in battle was their greatest honor. He gave it to them out of necessity. Dozens of kills later, mere minutes since he left Tahiri in a fight they both quietly knew would lead to his death, the warriors showed no signs of stopping. But he was fighting better as time passed. A contradiction, he knew, as battle of this intensity should have wiped him of what little energy his damage body held, but he felt more alive than ever. His blade was more of an extension of his body than it had ever been before. The air, the ground, even the bodies of his opponents, dead and alive, felt as a part of him. He barely had time to recognize the Force enveloping him, truly becoming one with it. He didn’t notice his skin glowing, the energy pouring forth from his pores, his hair turning golden white. He had no way of seeing himself moving more swiftly until he was a blur of energy with barely a corporeal body as he carved through countless bodies of soldiers around him.

His body wasn’t his anymore. It was a vessel of the Force. His consciousness was barely in his body, only an essence, a purpose. Fight, protect, defend. He knew that he would not live, could barely focus on the tear stricken face of Tahiri as his strike team pulled her along. Could barely focus on the anger that Jaina felt as she cut ahead a path through what few Yuuzhan Vong were not joining the glorious slaughter Anakin was holding. Could barely feel the calm and dedication that his brother was pouring into the Jedi battle meld that held the scraps of his strike team together. He heard the thoughts ‘calm. escape. complete mission. anakin died for this. hold together for him’, but they were not of concern to him and he faded into the Force. Bright, golden lights arching out of his being like solar flares - and then he was gone.

-

The burning heat cooled, replaced by icy bliss. He felt happy, at peace, one with the Force. And finally understood what it meant to be a Jedi, to live your life helping others, and then to become one with the Force. This is what many civilizations throughout the galaxy referred to as heaven, and he knew now why people devoted their whole life to such concepts.

But this lasted a moment. A small one. A time frame too miniscule for Anakin to comprehend. There were no words for it. There was no concept for it. The bliss was for but a moment, but now he awoke.

-

It was warm. Not the burning if pleasant heat that he had experienced moments ago, but that of the sun striking skin. And then he spat sand from his mouth, turning his head to the right for air. His ear brushed the sand making him aware that this planet was uncomfortably hot though not unbearable.

Waking up face down in sand is not how I expected to come back from … well whatever that was, Anakin thought to himself. He took a deep breath for what felt like the first time in years as that last battle that supposedly took his life was too intense for his ragged body to find a chance for a breath of air, not that the atmosphere of Baanu Rass was ideal.

Anakin pushed himself up from the ground to his knees with surprising strength. Odd, Anakin thought, my body should not have the strength for that. Reaching under his shirt, he felt his abdomen. Painless, though a clear scar could be felt where he had been injured. Brushing a hand to his brow, he felt nothing out of the ordinary. At least that one didn’t mark me for life, he thought, smirking at his own fortune.

“How long have I been out here?” he asked himself. Then looked around to make sure no one saw him talking to himself, no matter how silly of a concern that maybe. He did have to speak out loud, he knew, to make sure his voice still worked not knowing how long he had been lying face down in the sand. His lips were not particularly dry, which was a good sign. In fact, they were in better condition than they were on the worldship. Flicking his tongue over his lips, he stood up and looked around. “Where am I?” he whispered under his breath.

Clearly, not the worldship. This planet only had a sun in view. The worldship was in orbit around Mykyr, and he wouldn’t be able to look past a planet that was well within eye sight. Picking up a handful of sand, he gave it a sniff. Neither the color nor scent told him anything particular about where he was.

Then he reached out to the Force, and then immediately shut back in on himself as he fell to the ground in a heap. The Force told him of a world of power, of anger, of greed, of anguish. Wherever he was, it was a planet of the Darkside.

And faintly, he heard a whisper.

Destiny.