"Okay. I don't think I'll be too long."

"I hope not. Don't forget your coat."

She laughs, gets into her winter gear, and with a cheery wave heads out towards the cave system, at times closing her eyes and letting what she feels guide her.

The cave is dark and the way is narrow, but her steps are sure and do not fail her. It's almost impossible not to know where she's going, actually, like following the sound of a singing choir or water spiraling down a drain.

She can feel it when she arrives in the main chamber. It's positively glowing, both to her eyes and the Force. Crystalline blossoms stud the walls, floor, and ceiling, each an explosion frozen in time.

A deep purple one calls more to her aesthetic sense than her heart - she picks it for her focusing crystal.

And then - 

There's one that sings.

She reaches for it.

Her bones ache.

Anakin chuckles under her breath, sitting on the bench and turning her face up to the sun, feeling every tired wrinkle.

There's a voice, young, calling for her in the distance. Still insisting on formalities... Though 'Master Skywalker' has less sting than it used to.

Her lips curl up, and she hides herself in the Force, like slipping a favored blanket over her shoulders, crouching down with a friend...

She's yelling, trapped, helpless despair and anger pouring through her, strong enough to drown her, strong enough the world should shatter at her command, but that idiot grandchild of hers won't listen, can't even see her, Anakin's twenty years dead and none of them have learned - 

She laughs, leaning against her battered X-wing.

"We gave those bastards what-for," she says, as someone else laughs helplessly, congratulating her - 

"We couldn't have done it without you, General Skywalker," someone says, a young pilot, and his friend elbows him in the side and they all laugh - they did it they did it they did it, and the dead still scream but there's a curl to the Force now Anakin would almost call satisfied...

she's dead it's all my fault I fucked up I'm so sorry so fucking sorry she's DEAD - 

She finishes removing the last of the slave implants - carefully, deft fingers guided by the Force and long experience - and closes up the wound. The woman's going to have a long convalescence ahead of her - many of the free will - but they're free, every one, and Anakin's breast glows warmly, thinking of all she's done...

She's looking down at an infant's face.

She doesn't name the children.

She doesn't think she could bear what comes next if she did.

"They need to be hidden," she says, voice far away. "Even from me - I'll know them, if I ever meet them again, but... Looking shouldn't be trivial - "

Death is more unpleasant than philosophy suggests.

Of course, Anakin's brought far more death to her enemies than they will to her. A drop, though, with the younglings she'd been escorting to the escape route hiding behind her as she raises her saber, eyes hard...

She's numb.

Her lips move, the harsh, mechanical words escape her. Her limbs move, supported by her suit. Her lungs move, technically, the machine forcing them far past the point where Anakin died.

(Should have died, perhaps, flits across her mind, floating away, swept down a dark river by the emptiness where her heart should be.)

(She wonders, sometimes, if that's a machine now too.)

Her daughter would be vexing, if Darth Vader felt anything at all.

Instead she feels nothing in particular, as her daughter refuses to give up her allies, as she gives the final command and everything her daughter loves dies -

Darth Vader feels nothing.

(Anakin does, somewhere distant, screaming, her heart filling with horror for a woman she - is - isn't - will be - was - )

She's crying, when she comes back to herself.

She hugs herself, feeling - reassuring herself she can feel - she isn't numb, she isn't creating a wound in the Force Anakin can feel decades early just for leverage, just for cold calculation towards a goal she should hate but can't - 

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry - " Anakin repeats, voice cracking and hoarse. (She was screaming.)

(That's almost comforting.)

She takes a deep breath, rubs at her eyes, and dives into the Force, drifting, floating, letting herself be herself in the most intense way she knows how, wrapping herself in every emotion echoing across possibility - 

She feels like she's drowning.

It's better than freezing.

(She can see now why someone would cling to hatred and fear and all those horrid, painful emotions - )

(Anakin has never felt nothing before and she would rather be miserable, she would rather be dead, a ghost trapped screaming uselessly at the living, than that.)

Slowly, gently, like an overflown river that's found the ocean, Anakin's horror drains.

It leaves behind...

Something - wrecked, almost, but not.

She uncurls, hesitantly, reaching for this new feeling.

Determination.

She won't become that person.

Anakin stands.

Anakin breathes, for a while.

And she bends down, picks up the resonance crystal that had contained everything she could be - the resonance crystal she knows the empty her didn't use - 

And she leaves the caves, and returns to the ship.

Elesse has kept it warm, as promised.

(She felt the turbulence her Padawan experienced in the cave. It was practically impossible not to have. She was concerned, for a time. But forcing herself into the cave would only have made things worse, and you can only gain self-knowledge through yourself.)

In motion the future might be, but Elesse is a solid rock upon which to stand.

She really, really appreciates that right now.

"I got the crystals. And I know who I don't want to be," she says, voice firm. A pause, and: "I had eight visions. I need to work parts of them out, before I make my saber."

"Eight visions?"

"They - were mostly not good."

She details them, in order, voice swerving between shaking and firm.

And then, abruptly: "If I leave now - that's the future where I'm proud of myself. Where I'm - spending my life freeing slaves, a little change at a time. I think. I - have to be a Jedi, first, for the others. At least... I'm pretty sure."

"You brought the crystals back with you."

"It felt right. And - I haven't decided. I..."

"I can't be Vader. I'd rather die."

"But I think - "

"I can do more as a Jedi."

"I just - "

"Don't know what's worth the risk. Or what the Force was trying to tell me."

"As Master Yoda is fond of saying, the future is always in motion. You've seen eight possibilities, but they are only possibilities, and they are not your only choices." She puts a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "Nothing you saw is cast in durasteel."

She nods, slowly.

"There's a wound in the Force. It - was there, I think, when I was the General. The same one Vader made. I - "

"If I'm running around the galaxy freeing whoever I happen to run across, i don't think I can stop it."

"And - "

"I want to be a Jedi."

"Then a Jedi you shall be. Whatever else the future brings."

She nods, wrapping her arms around herself and shaking a bit. (Her skin feels like it's crawling, and hugging herself only kind of helps.)

Hug?