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The lights are warm, soothing and yellow. The gentle blue lights he can see in the corners of his vision relax him, soothing the ache in his chest as he stares up at the familiar faces around him. Everything aches, but it’s a good ache, and ache that comes with natural aging and remnants of hard fought battles instead of the ache that comes with lightning and malfunctioning prosthetics (after all these years those aches are faint but ever present echoes that remind him of how much he has since gained). Around him, everything is calm both physically and in the force. He tilts his head and the world shifts, his eyes roving over the members of his family around him (his beautiful, amazing family).
He reaches a hand out and Luke gently grasps it, expression sad and grieved but accepting. Luke stares calmly into his eyes (his real eyes) before a quiet smiles breaks out over his weathered face. His son’s name comes out hoarse through his sore throat.
“Luke.”
His son looks at him with a gentle smile, and Anakin moves his gaze to the others around him. Rex, Cody, Ashoka, Padmé, Bail, Breha, Leia, and Han are all in his room (Obi-Wan passed several years ago, also, blessedly, of old age), creating a warm atmosphere that feeds the gentle and warm light inside of him. Padmé is laying next to him, her aged hand resting gently on his chest, watching him breath with an expression so full of love that it makes his breath catch when he sees it (even after all these years).
This moment has been coming for a long time, and Anakin is so grateful that everything has lead to this moment and not the one that he has remembered in so many nightmares.
As his breath slows and as his vision starts to go grey around the edges he reaches out with the force, gently wrapping it around the people in his room and extending it out to locate the other people in the large Skywalker-Amidala homestead (the fact that he even owns a home still fills him with wonder most days). As he feels all the people in the house, all his extended family and friends, he feels tears come to his eyes as love and contentment well up within him.
No words are spoken, and he can feel his breath slowing as his eyes close for longer and longer each time he blinks, heaviness weighing them down.
He can feel warm tears rolling down the hand Luke is holding, and he brushes against his son’s presence in the force, sharing his own love and feeling his son’s flare in return.
Taking one last moment to simply bask in everything he has worked so hard to build, Anakin fades.
He can feel the force around him, darkness and light flowing through him, feeling echoes come up against him and flow over him before moving on into the greater vastness of the force. Sometimes he can feel other presences, hints of sentience brushing up against his own before flitting away.
He is one with the Force, and the Force is with him.
Moments pass, possibly even years are spent basking peacefully in the endless presence of the Force.
One beat, two beats.
He wakes up.
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Heat. Grit. Sand.