Anakin

Everything burns.

Every thought is an ache, like his heart is being squeezed over and over again with things he cannot change.

He can't sleep again. His pillows and sheets are halfway to the floor, scattered from his constant shuffling and nightmares. He groans angrily, his fists clenched up to his face as he grabs his curls, scalp burning. If he is the Chosen One, if he is the best - then why is he acting so childish?

It's like he had never grown up. He's a mess. A mixture of his failures and his regrets. Things that just barely slipped through his fingers, he could touch it, just before he lost it forever.

He misses his mom. He misses not being a Jedi. He misses not wishing away the crippling anxiety he suffers from, he misses being himself - the Jedi will not let him do a single thing. His body shakes as if he's trying to come out of his own skin, his nerves flaming and burning him from the inside out as tears sting his eyes, a long grunt leaving him.

If he is so great, if he is strong, then why can he not handle the reminders of everything he'd fail to do? The scars littering his body, the prosthetic arm he's terribly tired of looking at. The tears spill down his cheeks now, dropping from his chin, onto the bed as he sits up.

It feels like every emotion is coming at once, bubbling up his throat until it kills him. He cannot handle it.

Out of frustration, he painfully rips his robotic arm from his flesh, only a stub from where it had been cut off. He yells, throwing it across his room and into the wall, where it makes a loud thud - falling to the floor into pieces. He regrets it.

He curls up in bed, crying more into his fist, now carelessly sobbing and grunting. His body shakes, jumping as he swears he hears footsteps. A knock on his door. He's completely, utterly silent.

Only now does he realize how pathetic he must look right now. How loud he was. How embarrassing the sound of his pain must be.

He fixes himself. He sits upright and stands from his bed, falling to the ground as he remembers the muscle memory of his arm, pain stinging up from his nub. He grunts, crawling and trying to place his arm back together with his flesh hand, fixing it back on the best he can, the feeling coming back to it through its wires as he wiggles his fingers.

He harshly wipes his face with the heels of his palms, reddened and stained with tears and snot, glistening from either dried tears or sweat. His face goes straight, as if nothing had ever happened, and he opens the door, his fist clenched by his side, everything tensed.