The cave is dark, quiet. In the first little way, there are some carved stone plaques, Jedi koans inscribed upon them.

Shortly after, she comes to a branch in the path. The left seems to lead higher up the inside of the clifff, the right slopes downwards.

...The right. It feels - correct.

Anakin navigates through the caves like that, her feet tracing the path almost of their own accord, like she's walked this path hundreds of times. It doesn't even feel like the Force is nudging her, not really - but more like she's gotten distracted and found herself at her destination. The walls whisper at her, and there's thoughts that drift through her mind that don't feel like hers - but they aren't hers, and she knows that, and can ignore them, and getting distracted doesn't matter anyways, because -

That destination is a crystal, once she turns her focus properly to what's at her feet. It's - imperfect, the purple a dull, angry thing. Numerous flaws cut through it, looking like the faintest tap might shatter it into multiple pieces.

It's beautiful, and it sings to her, sets something resonating in her chest.

She picks it up, and the world falls away.

It falls back in. Or - a world does. Anakin's standing, disembodied, not quite fully in the world, in an open doorway. There's a bedroom before her, large airy windows along one wall, artwork and souvenirs and small miscellaneous signs of life like her and Elesse's quarters together, but more so -

There's two women sitting on the bed - fortunately clothed right now - apparently absorbed in each other. They're painfully familiar, and the one who looks like an older mirror image of Anakin cups the older Elesse's face and kisses her, quick and light, with a laugh and an adoring expression on her face. The motion of her hand reveals the glint of a wedding ring.

They don't feel like visions. They feel like Anakin's hovering outside of herself and Elesse, feeling them in the Force - the other her resonates with her just as the crystal she found does, and Anakin can feel the wash of her love more keenly than she normally can sense echoes in the Force -

Anakin makes a small, startled noise, eyes going wide as she freezes in place.

- And the other her reacts immediately, whipping around to face Anakin, her Force signature rippling oddly -

Anakin startles, and -

It feels like tripping, even though her body doesn't really move.

She falls out of that vision - that world -

And into what can only be described as an 'utter disaster.'

The world around her other self is strange, the air thick and heavy with hatred made manifest in a way even the dark side of the Force shouldn't be able to do - it's not coming from her other self, who's a far more sensible well of protective fury and pain - it's hard to orient quickly, but it's clear her other self is coordinating part of a truly massive ground battle, her Force signature spreading in desperate little flicks out to those she has enough of a bond with to communicate in this situation.

(The woman looks much older than the one in the last vision, easily two decades, but - she feels different even beyond that. More rooted in her body, less rooted in her own selfhood. There's no Elesse immediately visible, but... There's a sense to the air, like there might as well be, wrapped like a dark, protective cloak around Anakin's own other self. There's a dark collar on her other self's neck, too, and something about it feels strange - )

Some of her commands are out loud, of course, and not all of them make a ton of sense - something about a 'bijuu' -

Anakin would extremely like to know what the fuck!

She stills herself, looking around, taking in the shattered landscape in the distance, and makes a small distressed noise - there's so much death in the Force -

But there's a lull in it, just before Anakin regains enough composure to react.

It gives her other self the time to turn to her, to notice her properly and orient her attention, to say - "Where are you - "

It isn't out loud. It echoes in Anakin's head, demands an answer, the desperate grasp of a woman with no time to be kind.

Anakin flinches - and the thoughts bubble in her head -

But she flinches out of the world before the answer can be fully given.

The next world's - calmer. There's a her, of course, but an even stranger one. She's still much older than Anakin, but younger than the other two. Disembodied, not rooted at all in physical reality, merely an intense presence in the Force so overwhelmingly together her lack of a physical body doesn't matter.

She's giving directions - training - to a much younger Elesse, it seems, though one that feels... Strange and not entirely like Anakin's own. They're working on saber forms, possibly.

...Anakin's more - confused, now, than alarmed, though a lot of her previous distress and pain is still crashing over her.

She doesn't make any noises right away.

And when her other self inevitably notices her, it's - gentler. Kinder, even. She doesn't startle, doesn't whip around. She trails off talking to her own Elesse, turns to look at Anakin with a furrowed brow.

"Where did you come from?" she asks.

The Elesse-alike pauses in her movements. A trio of mistily-indistinct figures blur into being behind her.

"What? Do you see someone?"

"A flicker of a vision," she says, softly. "Like - a much younger me."

"She's not a threat, I don't think." And she turns her gentle focus back to Anakin.

"I - "

"I don't know what's going on, I was in the crystal caves - I - "

"Visions don't work like this."

She's shaking - and that upset, that fear, the echo of the turmoil she felt in the last two visions - it blurs her sight, ever so briefly, and the world before her dissolves.

The next world is still, at least.

But it's not the stillness of peace, nor of contentment. Not a warm familiarity.

The next world is a cold room, undecorated, and a black suit, and a hiss of air through a machine, and a hollowed, dark reflection of herself.

The her is kneeling - almost meditating, except for how her mind circles around its emptiness rather than doing anything meditation should - and she notices Anakin immediately.

She doesn't say anything, though. Just looks at her.

That echo of pain - too great to ever untangle, too overwhelming, too much, until it compresses in you and forms a dense hole in your selfhood that sucks in everything of any worth -

It's never really happened to Anakin, but she doesn't need visions to have a creeping sense of how utterly terrible her other self's emotional state is.

"What happened?" she asks. ('Are you okay' would be... Patronizing. The answer's obvious.)

"Everything of worth died, by my own hand," she says, voice flat.

(There's something stirring in that black hole in her center. Something dangerous lifting its head.)

"I'm sorry," is all she can offer. (That, and the own echo of her empathy, her open pain an invitation, almost, to anything within her other self that isn't that darkness.)

"I imagine the entire galaxy is rather sorry right now," she says, and it'd feel wry if there wasn't such a yawning abyss where her identity should be.

"That doesn't remove your pain."

The other her is very, very still.

"Find what you love," she says at length. "And turn towards it, and never look back."

"I will," she whispers, even as the world breaks.

(Anakin would like these visions to end, now.)

They don't, of course.

This world - they're in some kind of very finely appointed, official-looking office. Her alternate self is alone with a much older Elesse (one with dark hair and - who doesn't feel Force sensitive, but there's an echo through Anakin's other self, almost...). Anakin's alternate self here is much younger than the others, though. She's perhaps fifteen or sixteen or so. There's a newer feeling to her Force signature, too, to the echo of her - she hasn't been worn down in the same ways. Hasn't rebuilt herself from the same tired rock bottom.

She also is dressed in a way that subtly signals 'acting as a guard,' and she's got her eyes demurely down for all that her attention in the Force is keen on her surroundings, and she's taking a somewhat menial order from her Elesse with a breathy, yearning 'yes, ma'am' as Anakin manifests. There's food laid out before Elesse, and it's oddly clear that the Anakin here had been serving her.