Sacrifice

“There isn’t much time left,” Lumiya said. She touched the fleshy fingertips of one hand to the silvery mechanical fingertips of the other, and leaned back in her black chair. “You’ll need to make your decision, and make it soon. The path of the Sith is not without its cost. You need to make a sacrifice.”

Jacen nodded stiffly and bowed his head, then stormed towards his quarters aboard the Anakin Solo. The trouble was that there wasn’t much that would make an appropriate sacrifice; he couldn’t kill someone he loved. Everyone he loved was already dead and gone, except for his daughter, and no, he couldn’t justify the murder of a four-year-old. She posed no threat. Killing her would not benefit him, the Alliance, or the Sith philosophy in any way.

He pressed his palm to the security panel and watched the door slide open. When it did, though, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and an electrical impulse of something’s not right here shot through his body. Immediately on his guard, he dropped one hand to the lightsaber clipped to his belt, and looked around the room.

There was a form curled up on his bed, a male form, human and enough like his own that a casual passerby, had such a passerby had any access to the room, might have assumed that it was him. But there were subtle differences; a slighter build, darker hair spreading across his pillow. It can’t be…

“Jacen?”

The voice was rougher than he remembered, but still unmistakable. “Anakin?” Jacen gasped, angry with himself about how surprised he sounded. He took a moment to gather his wits and think logically about the situation. Anakin Solo, his brother for whom the ship was named, had been dead for thirteen years. This had to be an apparition, or at best, a clone. “How did you get in here? Did Lumiya let you in?”

“She might have,” Anakin said. He sat up in his wrinkled gray jumpsuit and turned around to face Jacen. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Jasa. I’m not a ghost. I’ve… I’ve been in the care of the Yuuzhan Vong. I stole a ‘skipper and came back, and didn't get far before she caught me and brought me in.”

“No. You’re a clone.” Jacen stepped closer to the bed, never letting his eyes leave Anakin’s, except to quickly glance over the rest of his body and make sure that he wasn’t about to try some pathetic stunt, like attempt to stab Jacen with a hidden knife. “You tell me why you’re really here, or I’ll kill you myself.”

Anakin’s blue eyes reflected the hurt that Jacen already felt coming from him, dimly, in the Force. “Lumiya let me in. She said you’d kill me – I didn’t think you really would try. Why, Jacen? I spent thirteen years as a captive and come home to see you fallen like this?”

“I haven’t fallen. I’m not the one who’s blind.” Jacen realized that this was his test, that he was going to have to take that saber and plunge the blade through Anakin’s chest. Anakin knew who Lumiya was; he was aware of at least some of their plans. Jacen closed his hand around the lightsaber handle, but went no further; there had to be a way out. He didn’t have to destroy Anakin right here, one of the last few who didn’t hate him, who could still be drawn onto his side. His lost brother, now back - if it was really him. “If you’re not a clone, tell me what the last thing you said to me was.”

Anakin sighed, weary, and now Jacen noticed the tiny crinkles around his eyes, the scarring along his left ear, and a chain of purple marks winding their way down his neck from the side of his face. Whoever had made this clone had done an excellent job of mocking up over a decade of change, both natural and forced. “I told you to kiss Tahiri for me,” Anakin said. “If I couldn’t, then I wanted it to be you. Did you?”

“No,” Jacen said. The firm understanding that this really was Anakin didn’t do anything to soothe his mind. They couldn’t both leave the room alive, not if he was meant to kill him.

Anakin shook his head slowly, and took a deep breath. He locked his gaze with Jacen’s again, and his hands moved down his own chest, popping the buttons on his jumpsuit one by one. When it was undone to his waist, he pulled the sides of the suit apart, showing Jacen the tattooed and skin – purple and blue lines swirling around each other, over smooth areas and over gnarled scar tissue, competing with chiseled muscles for one’s attention. Thirteen years’ worth of grisly art, and Anakin was the canvas. No more, Jacen thought, and an emotion that he thought he’d killed off – the need to protect his little brother – came up from the dark place where he’d buried it and left it for dead, back while they were still hunting the voxyn queen.

“Get on with it,” Anakin said, and he closed his eyes.

His breath hitched when Jacen leaned forward and grabbed him, but there was no searing pain, just the aches and burning that jolted through him from the fresher tattoos as they were pressed tightly against Jacen’s jacket. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Jacen said. “You’re safe.”

“No, m’not.” Anakin’s voice was muffled, his face up against stiff olive fabric.

Jacen felt his world collapse, spinning around this one pivotal point in time. He had to do it, but he couldn’t – he wouldn’t. He made a choice not to kill Anakin, Lumiya and the sacrifice be damned. There was another way, and he’d find it. He kissed Anakin’s forehead, like they were small again, and stroked his hair. Still disbelieving, a little bit, that this was not an illusion, until he felt Anakin’s heart beating, faint pulses through his clothes, and the warmth of the younger man’s body seeped through.

Anakin slid his arms out of his jumpsuit, and Jacen watched the intersecting lines swirling across him twist and ripple with each motion. Jacen’s heart ached, and he wondered briefly if any part of Anakin, except for some of his face and his fingers, had gone untouched.

They hadn’t. Anakin sensed the question that Jacen never gave voice to, and broke away to strip down, out of the suit, out of the shorts underneath. Skin damaged by blade, fire, and tooth, colored with poisons. From the neck down he was hairless, except for a thin stripe of coarse, short curls below his navel. He turned around to display the rest of his body, shame drawing from his markings and not his nakedness.

Jacen took Anakin into his arms again, and traced the blue lines on Anakin’s neck with his lips. “You could never be anything but beautiful, Ani,” he murmured, leaving a wet trail along the lines, lingering pain lapped up with his own tongue. Pain was nothing to Jacen; he could take on the galaxy, just to leave it safe, just to make sure that others didn’t have to suffer. Anakin shouldn’t suffer. He never did anything to deserve it.

Jacen ripped off his jacket, displaying his own scars, not as extensive as Anakin’s but breaking up the natural form all the same. Both of them broken, so many years earlier, separated by time and belief that the other had perished. The light had gone out from Anakin’s eyes, and Jacen was determined to bring it back. He slid his hands over Anakin’s shoulders and back, soft caresses to contrast with the permanent marks given by hard restraints. Anakin moaned softly, close to Jacen’s ear, and Jacen laid him down gently, back against the soft mattress and satiny sheets.

There was a brief and wavering protest – “Jacen, we can’t…” but there was no conviction behind it, and when Jacen paused his motions and lifted his head, Anakin raised his hand to touch Jacen’s cheek, a silent explanation that he didn’t really mean what he almost said. He hungered for a careful touch, one meant to love him and not use him as a sculpting medium in a temple of agony.

Jacen was careful, careful not to bruise him with his fingers or leave marks with his teeth, and he pulled off his pants so that the buckles wouldn’t catch on raised skin. He immediately felt relief, his erection no longer constricted and pushed down, but he let it jut between them, without even a whispering touch from his own hand. The tension in his groin was something he could handle, and he was too busy teaching Anakin with fingers and lips that Anakin was still whole, still worthy of affection.

He shifted slowly downward, following the curling lines. Anakin began to rock underneath him, years of dampened desire, overruled by bare survival and despair, flooded to the surface and made him achingly hard. Anakin whined low in his throat, and Jacen sensed hope and fear blended into one.

“It’s all right,” Jacen whispered, and placed a soft kiss on the tip of Anakin’s cock, just enough to pick up a trace of precome and breathe in his musky scent. Anakin relaxed around him and hesitantly rested his legs on Jacen’s shoulders; his thighs spread wider when Jacen took the entire head between his moistened lips, wider still as Jacen’s mouth moved further up the rigid shaft, enveloping it in damp warmth.

Jacen massaged every centimeter with his tongue, once in, and once out, then again. He pressed Anakin’s hips back to the bed, softly but firmly, preventing the thrusts that would interrupt his rhythm. Let me take care of you, Ani. He used his other hand to slip underneath and gently stroke Anakin’s balls. One, two, one, two, the steady pattern, in time with Anakin’s moans. He knew Anakin was getting close, but he didn’t speed up, and when Anakin finally reached the moment of release, crying out and arching up, Jacen didn’t pull back. He let his mouth fill with the bitter liquid, then swallowed what he could, drinking in the flavor because it was Anakin, his Anakin.

He crawled to Anakin’s side and lay there with him, body to body, mouth to mouth, their tastes mingling together. Anakin placed his palm on Jacen’s thigh and looked into his eyes. The light he’d been waiting for was back, although it wasn’t quite how he remembered. Dimly, as Anakin began to stroke him towards his own ecstasy, he realized that he’d made the sacrifice after all: the last shreds of Anakin’s innocence were gone. But in that moment, he didn’t miss them, and when they molded to each other's embrace in the fading afterglow, he realized that Anakin didn’t, either.

They were stronger together.