Chapter Text
They strip him, beat him, take away his dignity.
The brown cloak, a familiar comfort, stained with blood, thrown carelessly somewhere in the darkness, he tries in vain to stop them. Now he has nowhere to hide his trembling hands, it makes him panic.
This hell on earth robs him of his identity, the cloak is only a beginning and a warning, then he becomes a number, but he is not given to sink into total oblivion, sometimes the guards whisper his name with a predatory smile, as if to say: "Here is the invincible General, dirty and in chains!" It's a subtle torture as he balances between memory and emptiness, but he's never completely in either state.
Rex looks at him with concern as he coughs up blood and finds it harder and harder to open his eyes. Kenobi's heart bleeds as he looks at the man and understands that it is his fault. Everything is his fault in this cursed inferno that consumes people until only emptiness remains, shaded by the dull ache of suppressed longing.
Kenobi does not eat or drink. First because he doesn't want to, then because they won't let him.
The Togruta look at him with fear, recoiling as he approaches. Sometimes it seems to him that this fear is the last spark in their hearts, then there is only oblivion, the last step into emptiness. He fights, with teeth and claws, he cannot allow the same to happen to him. In the darkness of the cave, he whispers "Anakin" over and over again. And when he can no longer articulate the words, he uses a found spike to carve the familiar name into the wall.
Anakin.
Six letters. Nothing more.
---
Days pass. The owner of the name does not come. Kenobi, number 87, waits.
Finally they give him food. He feigns pride, but he is so hungry, so tired of trying to remain a High General. He has long since ceased to be one.
The marks in the wall deepen until they take the spike from him.
"We can't let our precious prisoner do something stupid, can we?"
Their smiles are cruel and without compassion. They cannot have hearts. Sometimes he wonders if he has a heart, but when he puts his hand to his chest, he feels it beating faintly, but still.
He is alive. What for? There is no life in the darkness, only existence.
"Kill me!" He screams directly into their faces, watching them respond with a slight curling of their lips.
"We can't," they laugh. "Our master doesn't want you dead, he wants you humiliated, destroyed."
---
One day, in a moment of cursed clarity, he remembers Rex. He would rather not remember.
"Oh, wretch, how could you forget!"
The High General cries.
"Where is he?"
They don't answer, pushing him deeper into the mine, into the heart of darkness.
The next day, he forgets again. Perhaps Rex once existed, or perhaps this is just a product of his shattered mind? Maybe he wanted a familiar soul in this palace of despair, so he made up a face and a name?
---
"Who are the Jedi?"
"They are brave individuals who are willing to sacrifice."
Electricity struck.
"They will come to rescue me."
A blue lightsaber strike.
He vaguely remembers that he once carried that particular weapon himself.
"No one will come."
Their stinking breath on his face is real. Are his words as real?
---
"Who are the Jedi?"
"I don't know."
The strike doesn't happen.
It's true, he really doesn't know who the Jedi are. So why does he feel like he's betraying someone?
---
Number 87 begs for food.
They throw him a half bitten bone. The prisoner wants to cry with happiness, but no tears fall.
The world is now reduced to a brutal cycle of labor and numbness. Food is a reward he would like to earn, but he doesn't know how.
Along with a bone, they throw a piece of brown fabric into his cell. The prisoner doesn't know what to do with it, though something in his head tells him it's not the first time he's seen this cloth.
It frustrates him, these snippets, stinging his dulled mind like shards of glass.
He tears the material to shreds with a scream, but the pieces do not disappear. The prisoner does not disappear either, though he would like to.
The screams echo for a long time in the prisoner's cell.
The guards laugh.
---
They lead him through the corridors. His muscles know the movements well and he doesn't even question them anymore.
He sees dark shapes. Other beings, similar and at the same time different from him, doing the same thing he is doing.
This is new. They are not usually there when he does the Task.
He feels a kind of primordial kinship with them. The beating of hundreds of hearts, like in his chest.
One being breaks away from the rest with a cry. No one stops it.
"General!"
This sound has no sense or meaning to him.
"Sir! Look at me, please!"
Number 87 doesn't understand. Why don't they let him do what he's always done?
"M'st'r, wh...m'why?"
The words.
They stick to his palate, confuse him, he chokes on them.
Better to remain silent. The creature is gone.
"Get back to work, 87" the Warden's honeyed voice reassures him. Now he knows what to do.
---
A
N
A
K
I
N
How strange... Have these signs been here before? Should he have known them?
Probably not.
None of these signs have anything to do with either the sleep or the Task, so they have nothing to do with him.
He forgets the signs very quickly.
Sleep.
Task.
Sleep.
Task.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
It's all very simple.
A...
---
"Who are the Jedi?"
87 does not move.
"Who are you?"
He does not understand.
---
He sees shapes moving. Hasn't this happened before?
The Bigger shape pushes the Smaller shape against itself, and 87 sees blood on the Smaller's face.
A strange sound comes out of the Bigger's mouth, full of something painful and.... 87 just listens and feels something wet on his cheek.
This is strange.
It feels like the Bigger and the Smaller are somehow connected. They're two forms, but it's like they're almost one.
Has he ever had that before?
Once. There is a past. Things have not always been the same.
No, it's crazy.
The pain makes him forget the stupid thought and the golden thread between the two Shapes, which is like a bite of electricity somewhere inside him.
---
The white-headed creature looks down at him from above.
"Look how you fell, Kenobi."
He doesn't understand. What do they want? He will do anything for them, but he must understand.
"I know, 87," the being laughs. "I am very pleased.
He knows this bundle of sounds! That means they will let him sleep.
Indeed, they allow it.
---
"Master! Look at me! Wake up!"
Sleep. Why can't he sleep? The white-headed creature has allowed it!
Drops of salt water fall on his face.
"Master! Don't leave me! You can't, you can't, you can't!"
Bigger, Smaller and strange sounds from the mouth of Bigger.
He suddenly remembers this one thing. Why?
A moment of silence and then:
"Anakin, I am Anakin! Remember me, your Anakin?"
That sound means something. But not that he might go to sleep, nor that it's time for the Task, so it's probably not important.
The creature will leave him eventually and silence will fall again.