Chapter Text
Dust floated in the air, the light specks dancing in the morning sunlight. It streamed in the bay windows, almost directly into Anakin’s eyes. He stared up at the ceiling, an emptiness inside that he felt for six months now, gnawing at him.
He’d only just been released from the hospital. Recovery had been worse than they expected, what with one heart transplant failing, being on bypass for so long, and then having another heart transplant. It was all a little much for his body and recovery was taking a long time.
Longer than he wanted to sit alone in a hospital bed with his thoughts, surrounded by get well soon and condolences flowers.
But now, Anakin was home. He wasn’t clear to work; the job being deemed too much stress for now. Which made the stocks drop, which in turn made him more stressed, but it was doctors’ orders after all.
So, Anakin laid in bed and stared. He was supposed to start a workout regime when he got home since he had no more physical therapy. Or, he refused a physical therapist to help him. Instead, he was going to go for a run in the park. He got a second, third, chance at life, he couldn’t spend it inside.
A run through the park in the early morning before it was too hot was the perfect way to build up his endurance. He just had to get out of bed and do it.
He’d been sincere when he’d told his mom, in that hallucinogenic dream, that he didn’t have anyone to come back to. Why did he get another chance at life when he had no one?
Anakin tried to bury those thoughts as he begrudgingly sat up. The sheets pooled around his bare waist, a hand automatically coming up to touch his chest.
The scar wasn’t healing right. If he’d only been opened up once, maybe it wouldn’t be as blatantly obvious, but they’d stitched him up and then re-opened him. The scar was a nasty, jagged thing. His heart — his new heart — clenched at the thought and tears sprang to his eyes. Fuck.
Anakin threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood slowly. It’d be fine. It had to be.
He got dressed in his workout clothes — shorts and shirt that came up high on his neck. Maybe it looked weird but… the scar was covered, and he felt safe again. Anakin tried not to think about how empty the house was as he puttered about, getting his water bottle and heart monitor watch all set up.
It was a short run, nothing too strenuous. Anakin stretched beforehand like the physical therapist told him to. Then he was off.
From his front porch to the park, then through the park and back. That was the plan. It was going well until it wasn’t, as most things went for him.
Halfway through, his heart pounding strongly, steadily, he missed a step when it squeezed. Panic flooded him and he nearly collapsed, choosing to slow down and pause for a moment. Anakin placed an open palm against his chest, his heart clenching painfully.
Nothing had happened. Anakin had misjudged a particularly hard pounding of the heart – something that came naturally with cardio – for something else and ended up stressing himself out to the extreme.
He just had to sit down, rest, then finish the run. He was supposed to do this. It worked the muscles, made them stronger.
But fuck it hurt.
“Are you alright?” an accented voice asked. Anakin looked towards it, heaving for breath. Sitting on a bench nearby was a man, older, greying hair at his temples, the bluest eyes Anakin had ever seen, and looking so concerned for him.
“I’m fine,” came Anakin’s knee jerk response. The man looked dubious, as he should. He stood from the bench and came over. Anakin moved a step away, even hunched over as he was. The man held his hands up in surrender but gestured for Anakin to come join him on the bench.
Sitting sounded so nice, even next to a kind stranger that might mug him.
He was breathing hard as he flopped on the park bench. The man sat next to him, and Anakin belatedly realized he had a neatly kept beard. What a strange thing to notice all at once.
It was… nice.
“I’m fine, really,” Anakin wheezed, not sounding fine at all. The stranger looked skeptical as he settled in his seat back on the bench next to Anakin.
“Sure. Just… stay here until you feel better,” the man offered. Anakin looked at him from the corner of his eye, watching as the man pulled out a notebook pencil and began sketching. They didn’t talk again but sat in comfortable silence.
Anakin glanced at his watch now and again, waiting for the heart rate to be somewhat normal again. Instead of going the loop, he’d just go back the way he came. This seemed to be his stopping point for now, until he could work up better stamina.
He tried to sneakily peer at what the man was drawing without being too obvious.
The man was sketching their surroundings. Nothing fancy at all, but it looked amazing. It was almost an exact replica of the trees and the trail and— it almost looked like Anakin running before he’d been bent over double, trying to stop the pain in his chest.
It was just a pencil sketch but it looked so real—
“Here,” the man said, ripping the page out. He signed at the bottom, some initials in a little square in the corner, and handed it to Anakin.
Anakin blinked, slowly taking the page from him.
“I shouldn’t,” Anakin muttered, but stared at the page in his hand. This stranger was giving him something he created?
“Why not? I come here all the time. I have a whole notebook of the same trees and the same bushes. This one is different because you’re in it,” the man pointed to the figure in the drawing. “Makes it special.”
Anakin was a little taken aback at this stranger’s kindness, almost instantly suspicious. But the man closed his notebook and reached to the side of the bench to pull a bag off the ground that Anakin hadn’t seen. He put his things away and stood.
“Don’t move until you feel better,” the man said, like he was worried for Anakin. “I won’t feel good if I read in the newspaper about the handsome young man dying of a heart attack in the park because I had to go to work.”
Anakin could only stare at the man. There was a lot to unpack from that sentence, from handsome to the man nailing the heart attack problem right on the head – though when someone’s clutching their chest, it seems like that’s a good guess – but the stranger was turning to leave, walking in the opposite direction of where Anakin came from.
He looked down at the drawing in his hands. ‘OWK’ sat in the corner in a neat little rectangle, the letters stacked on top of each other. Anakin stood suddenly, wanting to get home to look up ‘OWK’ and ‘artist’, but immediately regretted it as spots bloomed in his vision and his head swam.
Anakin walked home instead of jogging.
The search for ‘OWK’ came up with nothing. No combination of those initials and ‘artist’ or ‘drawing’ or ‘realism’ resulted in anything useful. Anakin sighed, lounging in his office chair, cooling down, looking at his useless search results. His chest was sore, but that was nothing new.
The silence in his house was deafening, threatening to suffocate him. Alone. Alone.
But he couldn’t waste the new heart, because then what? He’d waste his mother’s sacrifice. His medications were lined up on his bathroom sink, waiting for him; calling to him from the other room. They made every other part of his body feel like it didn’t belong to him with all their side effects. Depression was blooming in his core and dragging him down. The only thing keeping him going was the new heart.
“Do you think my new heart will love you as much as my old heart?” The question rang out in his head as his memories plagued him. How was he supposed to trust anyone again when the last people he’d trusted tried to murder him?
The hospital left a bad taste in his mouth, but at least there he’d had the occasional distraction of others: doctors visiting him, nurses doting over him. Here, in his home, he had nothing. Anakin couldn’t work and he couldn’t smoke or drink. Actually, he could have one drink, but what the fuck did that do when he wanted to forget?
If Anakin would have been allowed to work, bury himself in contracts and blueprints and anything that had to do with his company, he might have forgotten all about the man in the park. He might have been able to stave off his all-consuming depression. The hospital said he might feel this way for a typical heart transplant, let alone one that had cost him everything he held dear.
He pushed back from his desk, leaving the search up on his computer and the drawing next to his keyboard, and made his way to the bathroom. A shower and his medication. If he had small goals in mind, he could get through the day.
Anakin stood in front of the mirror, avoiding looking directly at himself and haphazardly dumped the pills out that he needed from the four bottles lined up neatly in front of him. Maybe he’d choke on one and—
“No,” he admonished himself, taking the pills one by one without any problem. If only they could add an antidepressant to the mix, but it didn’t work well with the other medications, and he refused to call the hospital’s therapist. They’d ask for him to come back.
Anakin turned away from the sink, released from the worrisome spell of maybe seeing his scar again and going through the constant loop of anxiety all over again. He went to the shower, turning on the rainfall faucet and stepping under it when it was the right temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. If it was up to him, he’d make it nearly burn his skin off, but he literally wasn’t allowed to anymore.
He tilted his head up, pretending like the water hitting his face was his tears he’d finally let fall.
Did that man, OWK, really think he was handsome? Anakin’s confidence was entirely shattered. He knew, once upon a time, that he thought he was. But now? Now he felt hollow and too full all at once. OWK didn’t know any of this, but if he did, he might not think that same thing.
A stranger sitting on a bench, worried about him. Should Anakin have been kinder? Thanked him? He’d been distracted enough by the pain, but looking back… OWK’s hair was pushed back into a perfect coif, his beard was trimmed neatly. His clothing had been immaculate as well, neatly pressed trousers and a light blue button up. Anakin hadn’t noticed any of these things when he’d been doubled over, trying to focus on calming down.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, squashing his thoughts before they headed down the wrong direction. Anakin should not be having thoughts like this about a man he’d seen once and never would see again. It didn’t matter if the grey’s at his temples and along his beard were enticing.
The next morning, Anakin woke with the sun. An emptiness settled over him as he stared at the specks of dust floating before him.
Just like the day before and the day before that. He lifted a hand and touched the scar at his chest, the first thing he did every morning upon waking up.
Anakin dragged himself out of bed, the only thing motivating him being the pressures impressed upon him by others. He had nothing else to do. He barely wanted to eat; barely wanted to move.
But he got dressed, workout shorts and high-necked sweat wicking shirt. Anakin tapped his watch face, sighing at his heart rate like it’d personally offended him. It was normal.
He stretched, dreading the warmth of the sun on his skin. It would remind him that he was alive; that everything was supposed to be fine.
Anakin opened his front door out into the world, the rush of cars going by and the stifling presence of his own mortality hanging over each step as he carefully crossed the street to jog to the park.
He wasn’t thinking of meeting the man again, though as he got closer to the park bench, his thoughts became consumed by it. Maybe the sunlight would hit his hair just right again, the auburn looking more gold than red. Had he really paid that much attention to the man the first time or was he exaggerating his looks?
Anakin slowed to a fast walk, heart racing painfully at the exertion. He was looking at the ground as he walked, knowing if he looked up he would either see the man or be disappointed. Anakin was the CEO of a billion-dollar investment firm, he made deals with international investors and spoke a handful of languages and didn’t overthink whether a single man was sitting on a bench or not.
Anakin looked up and over and there he sat again. The man on the bench. OWK.
He had his notepad on his lap, drawing with a pencil. Anakin stumbled a little when the man looked up. He might have collapsed when OWK smiled at him, but Anakin held strong, slowing even more to a slow walk. He was going to keep walking by, just with a smile on passing—
“Glad to see you doing better,” the man called out. Anakin felt something in his chest flutter and was surprised when it didn’t hurt. He came to a stop, looking over to the man and feeling a little lost.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Anakin replied, surprising himself.
“Well, then, come here and have a seat next to me. You did wonders for my motivation yesterday.” OWK patted the empty space next to him. Was Anakin really going to sit next to this man twice in as many days?
As it turned out, he was. His legs moved entirely without his permission, taking him to the bench and plopping him down next to the neatly dressed man. The neatly dressed man who beamed at him like he’d just been offered the Noble Peace Prize for making Anakin sit down in the middle of his jog.
“What’s your name?” Anakin asked abruptly, through heavy breaths. OWK looked endlessly amused by his tactless question. Anakin tried again, “You signed the picture OWK and I don’t mind thinking of you as just those initials, but I’d like to know the name of the man who was so worried about some stranger in a park.”
“You don’t have a lot of people looking after you, do you?” OWK asked, bringing a hand up to his beard to stroke it in consideration. Anakin blinked. Had that question… hurt him? He couldn’t quite tell his feelings on the matter. His thoughts were interrupted when the man on the bench spoke again, and Anakin latched onto the name given to him with everything he had.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
His chin was on top of his hands, staring into the wide rim mug. The milk he’d poured in was swirling with the dark coffee. Anakin had never taken a moment to just look but he did now. Because he had so many moments now.
The milk and coffee settled into beige color — he put so much milk in; he’d been too lazy or maybe too tired to go out and get real coffee beans is he was stuck with some generic burned brand that always tasted burnt. Anakin felt crazy as he vaguely thought the coffee looked pretty now, almost like a nebula with the minuscule swirling of the foamy bubbles and spotted brown between them.
His eyes slid over to the parfait he made. It was healthy. He’d never begrudged healthy foods before but now— now that he had this gaping emptiness inside him…
A cold morning breakfast was not appealing. Anakin wanted something warm, and filling and he had the power to make eggs for himself but here he was with a yogurt parfait instead.
He pushed the bowl around with a finger before sitting back and covering his face with both hands.
There was something to be said about being aware of your depression and not being able to break free of it.
Obi-Wan Kenobi. The name rattled around in the back of his head, happy to be able to know it now. He felt like the name fit the man. It sounded strong and sturdy, and Obi-Wan looked like he was both things.
Anakin had been reluctant to introduce himself because his name was known, but Obi-Wan had only smiled and acted normal. It was refreshing. Anakin had smiled without realizing, and Obi-Wan’s answering smile was blinding in its radiance.
Another morning. Dust specks in the light above his head. Scar over his chest. All the boxes to his day were checked, and he found himself staring dead eyed out at the park.
It was a hot day for this time of the year, and the high-necked shirt might have been overkill. But he bounced on his toes in some form of lazy stretching before deciding it was good enough. It was so hard to fall into a routine about something he hated doing.
Anakin sighed heavily and ran. He was distracted, too in his own head about how depressed he was, dreading each step in front of the other, knowing there was only one shining light in his life. How had he become so consumed by this man so quickly? Anakin thought of his ex-wife and how fast he’d fallen for her. It was on brand for him, wasn’t it? To move fast and reap the consequences later.
He barely tuned back into reality in time.
High pitched ringing was in his ears, vision went fuzzy, his extremities numb. Anakin wasn’t sure what pushed him over the edge because the run wasn’t even that bad. It was approved by his hospital physical therapist – via e-mail because Anakin still staunchly refused to go in person – and it was hardly anything to work out any other muscle besides his heart.
Maybe it was the anticipation mixed with the exercise. Obi-Wan would be there, right? Three times was a pattern, and if he was there then Anakin might develop a new morning routine. One that involved the older man and that was exciting.
But as he neared the spot, his world began getting hazy at the edges. His chest ached; his watch was silent as it flashed red at him. Obi-Wan was there, but Anakin’s whole world was tilting.
“Anakin!” Obi-Wan’s voice sounded so far away, like it was underwater.
Anakin didn’t remember falling, but he was on the ground, and Obi-Wan was above him. He squinted, trying to focus on Obi-Wan’s blue eyes. It hurt to breathe; it hurt to move.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Obi-Wan was saying, one hand holding Anakin up and the other rummaging around for his phone. “Fuck, I left it in my bag. Okay, hang on let me get it—”
“No,” Anakin’s voice was harsh when he could remember how to talk. “No hospital.”
“What? Anakin, you have to—”
“My place. It’s—I have things for this there.” A half-truth. He had nothing for this there except maybe a pill he could take. What would he have anyway? A defibrillator to use on himself? Obi-Wan looked just as dubious, but Anakin groaned in pain and the older man seemed to have a mild panic attack.
“Okay, your place. Can you stand?” Obi-Wan asked, both hands now on Anakin. He wished terribly that he wasn’t having horrible chest pains and he could enjoy the feeling of Obi-Wan’s big hands on him. Anakin managed a nod and Obi-Wan frantically held up a finger to get up and go grab his bag by the bench.
He stared up at the blue sky, a hand over his chest, trying to breathe through it. Obi-Wan was back in no time, trying to help Anakin into sitting up. He was gasping by the time he got to his feet, leaning fully against Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan had an arm wrapped around his waist, holding tight like Anakin might disappear in a puff of smoke.
The time it took to get back to his house felt like an indeterminate amount of time. Each step was like a lifetime, but all of a sudden they were at his front door and he was trying to input the keycode in the lock with a shaky hand.
“Anakin, let me,” Obi-Wan sounded so stressed, and Anakin felt so bad that he told him the code and they were inside the nicely air-conditioned house.
“Upstairs,” Anakin croaked.
“Of course, it’s upstairs, why would the things you need to help you be easily accessible,” Obi-Wan was muttering to himself, but Anakin could hardly pay attention. He just wanted to lay down, stretch himself out, and rest.
They stumbled up the stairs together, Obi-Wan clutching onto Anakin tighter and tighter each step up they went. Anakin could only lean against him, head on his shoulder, hands holding any part of him that they could.
“Down the hall, to the left, my bedroom,” Anakin mumbled, words hard to come by now. Obi-Wan steered him that way, following direction. Anakin blinked slowly, eyes finding it hard to open again, but when they did, he was laying in bed.
“Anakin, Anakin where is it? What can I get you?” Obi-Wan was leaning over him, asking him all these questions, confusing him. What did he need again? Did he know he looked a little like an angel hovering over him like that?
“Bathroom, orange bottle,” Anakin croaked. Obi-Wan was gone in a flash, presumably to the bathroom, though Anakin missed his presence dearly already.
“Anakin! You have five prescription bottles in here!” Came Obi-Wan’s lovely, accented voice. Anakin snorted, finding that funny.
“I do, don’t I?” Anakin mused, though his words slurred together too much. When he closed his eyes, he didn’t feel any pain in his chest anymore, consciousness escaping his clutches.