Chapter Text
Anakin woke to alarms blaring and the spire shaking around him. The barracks room looked foreign around him, the red painting what must have been his desk and his roommate’s bed in strange colors. He reached for his belt, grabbing his light -- his blaster. It wasn’t what he had been expecting to find, but that was silly. He had always used a blaster, every pilot had one.
“Skywalker!”
He looked up, to see a stranger standing at the door. The stranger’s face was terse. He clearly expected Anakain to know him, even though he didn’t.
“What’s happening?” asked Anakin, deciding to ignore the unknowns. An emergency was no time to indulge the weirdness in his head, and trying to remember the stranger just aggravated the headache he was getting from the alarms.
“The Sith are attacking. We need to find Kenobi!” the man indicated with his blaster, looking annoyed at Anakin’s hesitance.
Of course he was annoyed, Anakin realized. This was no drill. He half-remembered evacuation protocal that must have been drilled into him at the beginning of his service. He should be gone already, if he wasn’t being to strange today.
Anakin didn’t know who Kenobi was either, but he wasn’t about to ask. Just like the stranger’s identity, Kenobi was another face that he should’ve known. He must have hit his head before he woke up. It was better to just go with the flow then to make the stranger wait for his bullshit.
He got up and followed the stranger as they ran through the halls. The spire was wrecked, the red lights flickering in and out with the booms that could be heard in the distance. Anakin could see scorch marks on the wall, some from blasters and others whose source he couldn’t identify. Enemies had clearly boarded while he had been in his fugue.
He could hear fighting around the corner. He skidded to a stop, but the stranger kept running for a beat or two more.
“What are you doing? We need to take back the spire so we can help Kenobi! Remember your oaths!” the stranger glared at Anakin, before charging into the battle in front of him.
Anakin followed, hands shaking over the blaster. His head might be scrambled, but he could tell his discomfort with the blaster that he was no soldier. It felt big and clunky in his hands. Still, if the stranger said he had made some oath — he couldn’t abandon it, even if he doesn’t remember it at the moment. He felt a surge of disgust so strong that it almost felt like it came from outside himself at the thought of breaking his oaths.
The battle was over in almost a blur. The solider that had been fighting the armored troops before Anakin and the stranger came upon them lay dead on the floor, her shoulder still smoking from the blast.
“Come on, no time to mourn. We have to keep moving.”
The stranger and Anakin kept moving forwards, taking out any troops that they ran into. Anakin assumed they must be making their way towards some part of the ship where this ‘Kenobi’ might be, which he hoped was also where the escape pods would be. The spire certainly wasn’t in good shape.
They come across the bridge, and the stranger pauses and sighs. “It looks like Kenobi has already retreated from the bridge… once Kenobi evacuates, there’s nothing stopping the Sith from blasting the Endar Spire into galactic dust. We should evacuate too.”
They move on, now picking their way through fallen debris and the occasional corpse. The escape pods must be closer to wherever these ‘Sith’ that the stranger had mentioned had boarded the spire, as the density of downed soldiers both ally and enemy increased as they progressed.
The stranger suddenly motions for Anakin to stop, indicating in front of him. Distant sounds of what must be a lightsaber battle come from the path that they need to take.
“Do you have your melee backup weapon?” asks the stranger, in vain. Pilots don’t usually carry melee weapons since they require more proficiency to use, and he knows it.
“No,” Anakin confirms the strangers suspicions.
“It sounds like there’s two Jedi fighting up ahead. I’ll provide support while you continue past and look for Kenobi.”
Without waiting for Anakin’s confirmation, the stranger takes out his vibreblade and charges forwards. Anakin follows in time to see him join the fray, intercepting a potential killing blow to what must be an ally. As all three of them begin fighting, Anakin knows he doesn’t have the skills to help. He would be just as likely to blow away the Jedi or the stranger, so he keeps on running past.
Just as he’s about to turn the corner, he smells the sickening odor of a lightsaber burning flesh, and the voice of the stranger screaming. He doesn’t turn back.
There are more troops between Anakin and the presumed direction of the escape pod, and Anakin’s progress slows as he fights his way through. Without the stranger’s support, his lack of skill with the blaster shines through more obviously, and his thigh began to ach from all the medpacs that he had used. His discomfort fighting through the Sith made sense, and if anything Anakin was surprised he had made it so far. He was a pilot, not a foot soldier, and they only got minimal combat training. A pilot behind enemy lines was almost always assumed dead, and this situation was almost certainly worse than that. His abnormal luck when flying must have continued into his combat skills, as the strikes and shots of the sith soldiers kept barely missing him.
“This is Padme Amidala. I can see you from the Endar Spire’s life support systems. Kenobi has already left in his own escape pod. You need to get to the escape pod — I can’t hold much longer, and you’re the last surviving crew member I can detect.”
A voice crackles through the personal communicator on Anakin’s hip, startling him from his temporary rest in what seemed to be a break room. He was the last surviving crew member? Surely that must be wrong. But if this ‘Padme Amidala’ was about to leave on the last escape pod, he had to hurry.
“Be careful. There’s some Sith troopers in the corridor before the pods.”
Anakin groans to himself. He doesn’t know if he can take anymore Sith troopers. He’s already used up all his med pacs, and his fingers feel shaky on the blaster trigger. Still, if the only other option is to lie down and die, he has to keep moving.
He opens the door and immediately runs into the Sith troopers that Padme must have meant.
“E chu ta!” he palms the door to close it immediately, not having expected them to be right there. He knew he was close to the escape pods, but not that close!
He scrambles under a table before the Sith open the door again, entering the room with weapons drawn. Anakin peers out nervously as what must be a Jedi stalks through the door, the red of her lightsaber barely visible.
The Sith spread out and begin to search the room. Anakin knows that he won’t be able to beat all of them, let alone take on the woman with a lightsaber. His mind races through his options as the Jedi steps away from the door, leaving him a direct path.
He bolts, and the Sith immediately turn their blasters on him as the Jedi shouts in surprise. He makes it past the doors and shoots at the panel, causing them to jam shut. Then, he falls to the ground, clasping his right leg where one of the blasters had hit him. Of course it was too much to expect such a thoughtless escape to go perfectly.
He limps down the corridor, hoping that Padme’s silence didn’t mean that she had left yet. The way her voice sounded on the personal communicator, she sounded like an important person — not the type that waits for a single crew member instead of evacuating.
He stumbles into the door and it jankily opens, giving him time to catch his footing again.
“You made it!” said a voice that must be Padme. She sounded kinder than she had on the communicator, uninhibited by the limited range and static. “We need to leave right now. The spire is going down.”
She grabbed Anakin’s hand and pulled him into the escape pod, guiding him to sit down.
“Kenobi’s escape pod was gone, so we must have gotten away too. We can reconnect with him on Taris.” She moved away and began to trigger the escape sequence, disengaging the pod and setting it on a vague trajectory towards the planet below.
Anakin took in her appearance for the first time. She looked different than he had expected. From her voice, he had pictured some rough war veteran, older but grizzled and determined. Instead, she looked only a bit older than him, with her hair braided and tucked into her regulation soldier’s uniform. Unlike other soldiers Anakin had seen, it seemed like she took care of it.
“You’re really pretty...” Anakin muttered as his world started getting fuzzy. The hit he must’ve taken to the head had messed him up more than he thought. Her eyes were pretty too, even when they were looking at him in surprise as he slipped from the chair and fell into unconsciousness.