Sleep, when it finally came to Anakin, brought no peace.
He thrashed on the simple pallet, caught in dreams that twisted familiar memories into nightmares. The sound of storm winds howling outside the monastery couldn't wake him—he was too deep, too far gone into his subconscious where old wounds never truly healed.
Then—gentle pressure on his shoulder. Soft. Familiar.
"Anakin. Wake up, my son."
That voice.
His eyes snapped open. In the darkness of the small room, lit only by distant lightning through narrow windows, a figure sat beside his bed.
"Mom?" The word came out strangled, disbelieving.
"I have something important to tell you." Shmi Skywalker's face was exactly as he remembered—weathered by Tatooine's suns, lined with care and kindness, eyes that had looked at him with unconditional love even when he was nothing but a slave child with impossible dreams.
Anakin's heart hammered against his ribs. "Who are you?" His hand moved instinctively toward where his lightsaber lay beside the bed. "Answer me. Who. Are. You?"
"It's me, Ani." She smiled, and it was his mother's smile—tired but warm, the one that had comforted him through countless nightmares as a child. "Your mother."
Lightning forked across the sky, and for one brilliant second, the room blazed with white light.
There she was. Shmi Skywalker. Unmistakable. Real.
But she was dead. He'd held her broken body in his arms. Felt her life slip away. Buried her in sand that never should have been her grave.
Anakin scrambled backward so fast he nearly fell off the pallet, his back hitting the wall. "This is impossible. You're—you died. I was there. I held you—"
"Nothing is ever truly gone, Anakin." Shmi's voice carried that patient wisdom he remembered. "Your studies of the Force have taught you this, haven't they? Energy cannot be destroyed. Only transformed."
He stared at her, his mind screaming warnings even as his heart desperately wanted this to be real. "What do you want?"
"To share a truth with you." She stood, moving with the slight stiffness he remembered from years of hard labor. Every detail perfect. Every gesture authentic. "Everything you've experienced—everything you've learned—has brought you to this moment. To this place."
"My mother is dead." Anakin's voice broke on the last word. "She died because I wasn't strong enough. Wasn't fast enough. Wasn't—"
"You blame yourself." Shmi stepped closer, and Anakin could smell the desert on her—sand and sun and the faint scent of the moisture farm. "Your Jedi training has given you so much, Ani. But you're more than just a Jedi Knight."
Anakin looked away, unable to meet those eyes—eyes that knew him, that had watched him grow, that had let him go to become something more.
"Tell me your pain," Shmi whispered. "Let me help carry it."
The words tumbled out before he could stop them. "The clones. They were created to serve, programmed to obey. I command them. Lead them into battle. Send them to die." His hands clenched into fists. "I became a slave master without even realizing it. The thing I hated most, the thing you freed me from—I perpetuate it every day."
He took a shuddering breath.
"And I couldn't save you. Couldn't protect you. I failed as a Jedi." His voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "I failed you."
Shmi's hand reached out, cupping his cheek the way she had when he was small and frightened. "Oh, my son—"
"I killed them." The confession burst from him like poison lancing a wound. He grabbed her wrist, turned it over, stared at her palm as if he could still see Tusken Raider blood on his own hands. "After you died. The whole camp. Men. Women. Even the—" He couldn't finish. Couldn't say children.
"I tasted revenge. And it was sweet. What does that make me?"
"It makes you human," Shmi said softly. "It's time to forgive yourself, Anakin. Your guilt doesn't define you—"
"What if I let it go?" His eyes snapped up to meet hers, desperate and afraid. "What if I stop holding onto this pain and I become something worse?"
"Holding guilt isn't love, my son. It's a cage. A prison you've built for yourself."
"I have a wife." The words came out in a rush, as if confessing to his mother could somehow make it real, make it right. "You met her. Padmé. She's everything to me. Everything I've ever wanted—"
"She is not your destiny."
The words hit like a physical blow.
"What? No—I love her. More than anything—"
Force energy suddenly spiked in the room, dark and malevolent and wrong.
"No." Anakin stepped back, his hand finally finding his lightsaber. "You're not her. You're not—"
Lightning flashed.
In that split-second of illumination, Shmi's face shifted. Skin pulled tight over wrong angles. Eyes blazed red. Leathery wings sprouted from her back, and the creature that had been wearing his mother's face grinned with too many teeth.
Darkness returned.
When lightning struck again, a tall figure stood there—red eyes glowing in the shadows, tribal markings stark against pale skin.
The Son.
Then the illusion snapped back into place. Shmi Skywalker smiled at him with fangs.
"ANAKIN!" Peter's voice shouted from the doorway.
The Son's form shrieked—a sound that transcended human vocal range, hitting frequencies that made both Anakin and Peter clap their hands over their ears, dropping to their knees in agony.
Vision burst into the room, unaffected by the sonic assault. The Mind Stone blazed with golden fury as he fired a concentrated beam directly at the Son.
The creature's wings snapped open, leathery membranes blocking the blast. Light exploded across the room—blinding, overwhelming. When it faded seconds later, the three of them blinked away afterimages.
The Son was gone.
Silence crashed down like a physical weight.
Peter opened his mouth to speak, to ask what the hell just happened—
Then he saw Anakin.
The Jedi Knight had collapsed to his knees, hands pressed flat against the floor, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Tears streamed down his face unchecked, his breath coming in harsh, broken gasps.
Peter had never seen Anakin like this. None of them had. The confident warrior, the legendary hero—reduced to a broken man weeping on the floor.
"Anakin." Peter dropped beside him, one hand hovering near his shoulder, uncertain. "Hey, it's okay, it wasn't real, it was just—"
"What kind of monster am I?" Anakin's voice was barely recognizable—raw, destroyed. "How can I call myself a Jedi after what I've done?"
His fists slammed against the floor.
"Why couldn't I save her? Why wasn't I there? I had the power—I had the Force—why wasn't I strong enough? Why didn't I arrive in time?"
The words poured out in a torrent, years of suppressed guilt and rage and grief finally breaking through the walls Anakin had built to contain them. He sobbed openly, his shoulders heaving, every breath sounding like it was being torn from his chest.
Peter and Vision exchanged helpless glances. This was beyond their experience, beyond anything they knew how to fix.
Peter settled onto the floor beside Anakin, close but not touching. Waiting.
"My Uncle Ben was killed." The words came out soft, but Anakin's body went rigid. "It was my fault."
Now Anakin looked up, his face blotchy and wet, eyes red-rimmed.
Peter's own tears started falling. "I was... I was selfish. Stupid. I'd just gotten my powers, and all I could think about was using them to make money. To be somebody important. To finally not be the nerdy kid everyone ignored."
His voice cracked.
"Uncle Ben tried to talk to me the night he died. Tried to tell me that having power meant having responsibility. That I needed to think about how I used these abilities." Peter's laugh was bitter, self-loathing. "But I wasn't listening. I was too busy being angry that he wouldn't just let me do what I wanted."
Anakin sat up slightly, still on his knees, his attention locked on Peter despite his own devastation.
"There was this wrestling match. Underground fight club thing. Cash prize. I won, obviously." Peter's hands trembled. "But the promoter tried to cheat me. Only gave me a hundred instead of the three thousand he promised. I was furious. Walking out, and this guy came running past me—he'd just robbed the place. Stolen all the money."
Peter's eyes grew distant, seeing something that wasn't in this room.
"The promoter yelled at me to stop him. I could have. Would've been easy—web him up, hold him for the cops. But I was angry about being cheated, so I..." His voice failed. "I let him go. I stepped aside and let him run right past me."
Tears streamed down his face now, unchecked.
"Twenty minutes later, I found Uncle Ben bleeding out on the sidewalk. The same guy. The one I'd let go." Peter's voice dropped to a whisper. "I wanted him dead for what he did to Ben. Hunted him down. Cornered him. And I got my revenge."
He looked directly at Anakin, and the Jedi saw his own pain reflected in the young hero's eyes.
"But it didn't help. Killing him didn't bring Uncle Ben back. Didn't make the guilt go away. It just... added to it. Because now I'm not just the kid who let his uncle die. I'm also a killer." Peter's voice was hollow. "There's always been this darkness inside me since then. Always threatening to swallow everything good about who I try to be."
The silence stretched between them—two warriors, two broken people who'd failed the people they loved most.
Finally, Anakin spoke, his voice hoarse but steady. "You can't let guilt define you, Peter. Can't let it reshape you into something you'd hate." He reached out, gripped Peter's shoulder. "Don't let it poison how your loved ones would see you. Would Uncle Ben want this?"
"No." Peter shook his head. "He'd hate what I became that night. The person who hunted someone down for revenge."
"Then honor him by being better." Anakin's grip tightened. "We can't change the past. Can't save the people we lost. But we can choose who we become after."
Peter managed a weak smile through his tears. "Ahsoka and Barriss helped me see that too. That with great power comes great responsibility." He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Uncle Ben tried to teach me that before he died. I finally learned it after."
Something shifted in Anakin's expression—not healing, but perhaps the first crack in the armor of his guilt. He blinked, processing.
Peter squeezed Anakin's shoulder, offering that same human contact, that same silent support. "I don't think Uncle Ben would want me drowning in guilt. And I don't think your mom would want that for you either. They'd want us to keep going. To do better. To help people until we can't anymore."
Anakin sat back on his heels, emotionally exhausted but perhaps fractionally lighter. This kid—barely more than a boy, Ahsoka's age—somehow possessed wisdom that eluded most Jedi Masters.
It was humbling.
"There will always be moments of sorrow," Vision said quietly. Both of them had almost forgotten he was there. "But sorrow need not be a permanent state. I have never known loss as you both have. But I understand sadness. And I have learned that hope—real, genuine hope—has power that guilt cannot touch."
He settled beside them, his synthetic form somehow conveying compassion.
"You both carry wounds. But wounds can heal if you allow them. And healing doesn't mean forgetting those you've lost. It means honoring them by living as they would wish you to live."
The three of them sat together in the darkness of a monastery on an impossible world, sharing silence and grief and the tentative beginning of something that might, eventually, become peace.