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( open. )
Who: anakin skywalker + you
Where: the station
When: days 165-166
Summary: man wakes up from bender to find all his problems still there
Warnings: violencewell that took no time
that's gratitude.
rest is the obvious treatment for his sense of malaise, and anakin does try. considering a few hours later find him in the training hall, the results were about as successful as one would expect.
he was brought down during the time set aside to adjust. almost two weeks were spent aware of nothing while the others singlehandedly pissed off an entire population. he has a lot to catch up on.
his lightsaber remains clipped to his belt, which is the only reason his target(s) live still in one piece. with a sword, with a staff, with anything permitted to him, anakin takes down target after target in a demonstration that is all elegant violence and brash grace. his lungs ache, his muscles burn — but that’s the point. action does not necessitate thought. ]
even with an audience, anakin doesn’t look up, too busy completing the first part: an arm, which he tests the articulation of by having it extend and close around his finger. ]
There’s a chair if you plan to keep watch, [ he observes idly. ]
the force remains weak. his once instinctive awareness, blunted. anakin swallows thickly.
he’s still more ripped than kylo ren, though. ]
Where: the station
When: days 165-166
Summary: man wakes up from bender to find all his problems still there
Warnings: violence
I. EVERYBODY WAS KUNG-FU FIGHTING[ after days spent comatose, anakin sleeps almost half a day. he might have continued sleeping but for a rather brusque awakening. not that he could blame ahsoka. were the roles reversed, he would have been waking her every hour on the hour, and likely earned himself a punch for his efforts.
SOMETHING SOMETHING FAST AS LIGHTNING.
that's gratitude.
rest is the obvious treatment for his sense of malaise, and anakin does try. considering a few hours later find him in the training hall, the results were about as successful as one would expect.
he was brought down during the time set aside to adjust. almost two weeks were spent aware of nothing while the others singlehandedly pissed off an entire population. he has a lot to catch up on.
his lightsaber remains clipped to his belt, which is the only reason his target(s) live still in one piece. with a sword, with a staff, with anything permitted to him, anakin takes down target after target in a demonstration that is all elegant violence and brash grace. his lungs ache, his muscles burn — but that’s the point. action does not necessitate thought. ]
II. DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A DROID, MAN[ though at this point, it resembles nothing. spare parts in a pile on a table in the hangar, through which anakin sorts through for whatever he needs, stripping them out if need be. his fingers move with the ease of experience. the lack of ai is a crass limitation, but he doesn’t need an intelligent droid.
YES, IT HAS TO BE A DROID, MAN.
even with an audience, anakin doesn’t look up, too busy completing the first part: an arm, which he tests the articulation of by having it extend and close around his finger. ]
There’s a chair if you plan to keep watch, [ he observes idly. ]
III. THE THIRST OPTION[ —or he’s seated on the edge of a pool after a swim to cool off, a glove over his mechanical arm, and focused entirely on the surface of the water. he holds his hand, palm out. a stream of water rises, collects into a ball before his hand. his fingers tremble from the exertion, and his brow furrows, and the ball collapses.
AKA I HAVE NO EXCUSE.
the force remains weak. his once instinctive awareness, blunted. anakin swallows thickly.
he’s still more ripped than kylo ren, though. ]
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Anakin?
[He's dreaming. She can see it -- more importantly, she can feel it.
Instantly, she feels as if she is witnessing something she shouldn't be. There is the sense of eavesdropping, but after all the knowledge she had gained, she can't pull herself away from it. This is the piece she's missing, the link to children and grandchildren. She gets a sense of who it is, but her eyes never manage to open to her face, she can't place the voice in memories fabricated and not her own. She doesn't hear or see her the same way Anakin does, despite their kinship.
But her mind draws closer. She can feel his resistance to stir, watches him turn away from her. Something in her chest twists. The desire and serenity Anakin feels from the gentle hands and vibrant eyes. She nearly falls to its spell -- never had she experienced such...longing. Such sorrow.
She swallows, blinks back tears that aren't her's. Why didn't he tell her? Why was he carrying the burden alone?]
Wake up, Anakin.
[Firmer, she forces herself to pull away from his mind, lest she fall victim to his overwhelming emotion. And when he turns over to face her, wiping away tears, there is hardly any relief to be found on her face.
She is somewhat gaunt from lack of sleep, even moreso from the nightmares she had given herself by sharing minds with Kylo Ren. The only sustenance she has had in the last twenty four hours had been meager rations gathered out of habit rather than desire. She has been sick over him for days, and all he has for her is that stupid nickname.]
Who is she?
[She can't stop her voice from cracking like she had stopped the tears. It isn't jealousy -- not quite. But it's definitely a close cousin. Who was this woman who Anakin was prepared to throw his entire life away for? The woman who he felt he couldn't trust his own Padawan with?]
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Ahsoka?
[ the thought of her is pride and affection and a baseline worry born the moment he accepted her as his padawan. anakin can no more let it go than he can stop the suns from setting. concern bleeds across, concern cut by surprise. he meets resistance when he tries to lift his head. scanning his surroundings, anakin recognizes where he is — where he first awoke — and he knows the cause, finding it with a clumsy hand tossed behind his neck.
he yanks the cord out without flinching. the headache that comes on is abrupt, and expected. anakin eyes the end suspiciously before tossing it away from him. he had not been back since the first day. did not like the thought of being “plugged in.” did not trust it. he would not have come back willingly.
he does not remember coming back. ]
Why am I here? [ he does not feel ill, headache aside, but something feels off. not just his lack of memory. not just ahsoka’s appearance or her behavior. he struggles to get out, to sit up. his movements feel sluggish to him, like he has not used his limbs for some time. ]
What happened?
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[Swiftly, one hand swings over the side of the pod to press into his chest with strength that doesn't belong to her, but to the symbiote she is bound to. He isn't going anywhere yet. Her emotions bleed furiously through their link -- she's relieved, she's angry, she's hurt and she can't find a way to lean on one emotion more than the other.
But she knows one thing, and that's that she wants answers.]
By the time I found out, we were already planetside. I don't know how long it's been -- but it's been a long time.
[He hasn't answered her question, but she doesn't ask again. Her hand pressed against his chest turns to a fist. She thought he was really gone -- and not gone in the sense that he was dead, but worse. Present and get devoid of things that made him himself. A shell. She can't voice it, for fear that the worst hasn't yet past.
After all, Anduin was taken so abruptly...]
Don't sit up so fast.
no subject
a coma? that doesn't— he would—
his adam's apple bobs when he swallows. rather than look at her, anakin focuses on a random point in the ceiling. the headache has become a piercing thing behind his eyes. before he can lose himself to irrational denials, he ventures quietly, ] Approximately how long was "a long time"?
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[Don't make her try and piece together how long she was being forced to act like she understood that everything was always going to be fine. She almost finds sympathy in his he startles under her augmented strength. It's almost enough to get her to let go of him, if only because the other half of her just wants to hug him and let go of the knot in her stomach.
But then he isn't looking at her. He still hasn't offered an explanation. Her frustration grows. The ugly laughter that had been following her in her sleep pings in the back of her head again.
She shakes it off by exhaling through her nose.]
Why does it matter how long? You came back.
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anakin pushes at her hand. ] Let me up. [ anakin tries to wrap his head around the concept. two weeks just…gone. fourteen days too long to have spent still. he refuses to spend another minute down.
the force is quiet, as it has been. it is there, however, and all the comfort he needs. the nest is louder: from ahsoka's upset, to the more distant murmur of a dozen voices. they have a different quality to them; something changed. something he plainly missed. he struggles up. ]
Help me sit —
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This time, she remains silent, but she stands vigilant until he decides he doesn't need her support.]
Why didn't you tell me?
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the secret was not one he wanted to keep. never has he been ashamed of his decision. to those who disagreed, he did not care. he is above petty opinions. if the jedi decided to ostracize him, let them. he is a jedi knight, rightfully a master. there is nothing they can do to him. the only ones who mattered, the only ones whom he would care numbered few.
and they number still fewer. ]
I wanted to, [ he admits quietly. with three words, he voices more than he has in three years to another person.
he wanted to tell everyone. he has loved one woman since he was nine-years-old, and could not know what it meant when he told her "I'm going to marry you" — only that he was certain of it in a way for which he had no name. as certain as the sky and earth, anakin skywalker would love padmé naberrie. she is his last thought before he sleeps; and she is the first, in that curious moment between sleep and waking, when he believes if he would only stretch his arm, he would find her slumbering beside him. every morning, he wakes to the realization that she is gone; every night he sleeps desperate to return to her in his dreams.
without her feels like screaming himself raw, and not a soul can hear. ]
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[Her tone comes out accusatory and her shoulders tighten under him. Hearing him say it only makes her feel worse, and she has to look away from him to avoid getting over emotional over the fact. Enough people had chided her for her concern for him -- she almost feels silly for being so upset.
After all of this time--]
You still don't trust me.
[All that comes from her is disappointment. A strange feeling of inadequacy. What had she ever done to make him doubt her? Why did she make him feel unsafe?
She blinks back tears stubbornly, uncertain of their origin.]
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[ he only kept a secret for three years because…reasons. also you left. he's still halfway bitter about that.
but mostly, he is incredulous. anakin shakes his head. how she can think that he wouldn't trust her after everything they had lived through… he reaches for her, willing her to understand. ]
We told no one. We couldn't tell anyone! It wasn't just me at risk; she could lose her position too. And the Council… [ his perception of the council is a twisted mire. having lost sight of what they were meant to be, incapable of listening, unable to accept that they may be wrong. they felt challenged by him: preaching against fear while fostering it in their hearts. it is the only reason he has not yet been named a master. he will have more freedom, then; enough so to enact changes of his own.
until then… ] You know what the Council will do.
[ his voice quiets. beseeching. ]
I'm trying to protect her. Just as I tried to protect you.
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[It's a petty admission, and she doesn't respond to him reaching for her. Somewhere in this conversation, her arms had folded tightly -- she is always reminding people that she isn't the child they think she is. She is grown, and yet sometimes not strong enough.
The tension in her shoulders releases as she rounds on him. He is always so busy trying to protect people that he flies right into the face of fire alone. She knows this about him -- but she hadn't ever imagined something of this scale.]
What the Council would do is exactly why you should have told me!
[She is well acquainted with the Council's wrath and the potential to ignore all evidence for the sake of sticking to tradition. She doesn't even want to think what would have happened to either of them if anyone else had found out. And the fact that they were going to introduce children into the mix--
She wants to clunk their heads together.]
I could have helped you.
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By asking you to lie for me? [ his smile is heartbreaking in its sadness. ] It's not a good life, Ahsoka. [ and they would have come down on her if it was discovered. as they did.
he leans back, finding a place to rest his head. anakin closes his eyes. without white light burning into his corneas, the headache lessens. without the pressure to perform, his tongue loosens. ]
The Jedi have never been my family. [ his eyes open. they are flat, expressionless, his features smooth as silk. ] I came to the temple too late. I knew what a real family was. I knew my mother.
[ he understands now. the council's initial resistance to him. he was too old. too old to be fitted into their only approved mold. too old to blindly accept what he was told. at nine years old, anakin had lived a richer life than most jedi would ever know. he had known love: profound and unconditional. things he failed to understand when he was young. things he had no outlet for when he was grown. maybe that is why he continues to speak when he would have clenched his jaw before and allowed the words to turn to poison in his belly. ]
The Council refused me at first. Did you know? I passed all of their tests. I had nowhere else to go. Master Qui-Gon Jinn freed me…but not my mother. And they said no. [ a flash of teeth, a noise of amusement lacking in humor. ] I was nine. I remember everything.
[ standing in the middle of a circle of unfamiliar, judgmental faces. scrutinized by every angle. found lacking. the masters became familiar to him over the years, but the rest…that never changed. ]
Obi-Wan… [ anakin shakes his head. ] Obi-Wan has never understood. Everything he knows is the Order. He's ignorant. He has never known what it's like to love someone so much…
[ a tear splashes past his eyelashes. he dashes at his eyes; another falls. ]
I have loved her for thirteen years. And by some wonder, [ his laugh is a shaky exhale, ] she loves me. [ his awe is palpable. every day, until the day he dies, struck with reverence by his wife's love for him. his confession spills between heaving breaths, red and agonizing. ] When I see her, I can breathe. When I hold her, I beg time to stop. To love her and never say a word has been agony. But I would live through every second of it again if it meant she was mine.
And I've lost her. [ his eyes find ahsoka's. in that moment, he is not a jedi. he is not a general. he is not her master, nor her friend. he is a man, broken. chest seized by gasps, he curls in on himself, another pathetic, wounded creature. ] I lost her, I lost everything—
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[But its the only thing she says before he collapses into an explanation he's been holding onto for years. Ahsoka holds her tongue diligently, a task that had not always come easy to her, and a task rarely made easier by having Anakin Skywalker as a master.
So many things he says cause her to blink rapidly in an attempt to hide her surprise. The Jedi were not his family -- its a concept she can hardly understand, having been raised by them. To Ahsoka, they were her family. It was why their betrayal had nearly destroyed her sense of reality and balance in the world. She hardly remember the faces of her biological mother and father. Master Plo-Koon had raised her for so many years, and Anakin was like a brother to her, but their bond ran even deeper than that. It gets easier to piece together the more he explains. Anakin and Obi-Wan had never had a relationship like he had with her, and she understands why now.
Because Anakin had never been responsible for anyone but himself. Then suddenly, he was saddled with her, on top of needing to hide his relationship with Padme, all with the context of being raised under a mother's love rather than a communion of rules and religion.
Her gaze drops somewhere in the middle of the conversation. She can feel his emotion gathering to startling levels, and she understands now that the tears she had blinked back were not all of her own. Still, its habit -- a Jedi doesn't show emotion, doesn't give in to such base things like grief and desire. If anyone other than Anakin had seen her, they would chide her for it, and it is so ingrained that it feels wrong to let him see her do it even unconsciously.
Sometimes, it was hard not to see Anakin as invincible, even having carried him from battle in her arms half-alive. This emotion he describes about Padme makes him so unstable that she almost doesn't believe she's talking to her Master, and at the same time she could not have ever imagined he would finally open up like he's suddenly chosen to. Its jarring, and she doesn't know how to fix it, but she wants it to stop. Its uncomfortable at its best, a loss of control at its worst. And when a Jedi loses control--
She breathes slow, and quiets her mind.
Conditioned by the Order, she doesn't have a deep understand his love, and probably never will. But he had long ago taught her that compassion was not the enemy the Jedi made it out to be. Seeing him so broken by this emotion he calls love has her wondering how worth it it must be, to be so ruined by it when divorced from its focus. She wants to understand, but -- how can she pretend to know what he's gone through? At age nine, she spent all of her days studying and training with the other younglings, conditioned by the Masters of the Order.
They sent her to bed at night the way they sent all the other younglings. Its the only concept of family, of love that she has.
And in that moment, she forgets her anger and her frustration with him. Her shoulders wilt and she moves up to the pod to join him, if only so she can reach around and embrace him around his shoulders silently, pillowing his head against her chest and resting her chin on it.]
Not everything.
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she watches him as intently when they return. something wonderful has happened. she trembles. her happiness has turned to apprehension — or maybe it has always been tinged by the fear of what would happen. what he would say. she need not have worried. never has he felt such immense joy. he grins, he laughs, he will continue to laugh alone, exhilarated by her news.
what are we going to do?, she asks. he lays a reverent hand on her face, watches it light up. she can outshine the moons and suns, and he…he has never loved her more.
his love has become poison. it eats away at his insides for the lack of her. it's a hole, deep and impossible. he offers her his heart, and she takes it with his hands, fingers lacing through skin and metal alike, her face so close, the delicate stitches of lace brushing her skin with the soft breeze. never thought it unfair, giving her everything that has ever been his to value: the droid he made for his mother, the braid seared off by a lightsaber and pressed into her trembling palm, his life, his pride. he who had nothing gave her everything.
now he learns the true extent of his price. unable to live without her…unable to return. not a glimpse. not a message. you'll endanger her. her cry remains in his ears. the dragon lunges, and anakin shoves her away from him, cushioning her fall with the force. he looks only once: padmé in steel blue, her face drained of color, calling his name. her hand lies protectively over the rounding of her stomach, so clear to see in her nightgown. what are we going to do? his chest heaves with the force of sobs desperately bitten back.
half-hidden by the pillars on the atrium of the senate, anakin runs to her. he seizes her and whisks her through the air. between them, that strange new being in the force. a laugh at his lips, as certain as he has ever been, anakin promises her, we're going to be happy. ]
no subject
[She keeps their minds separate, as separate as she's able to, but its impossible to shut out the flow of his thoughts entirely. Ahsoka isn't sure she'll ever master it until she learns to patch her bleeding heart. Her voice is firm, an attempt to return him to reality before they both end up trapped in the sea of his grief.
Her grip on him goes tighter. Her hands are rougher than Padmé's in spite of their difference in age. There are callouses from handling her lightsabers, there is a firmness in her muscles developed from years of training. And yet, there is a softness in the way she cradles his jaw when she forces him to look her in the eyes.
His grief reflects in them. But her eyes go soft, and understanding.]
Padmé is anything but weak. She'll be alright. And...she wouldn't want you to dwell now.
[And she believes that, it reflects in her tone. If anyone could weather the storm of the Clone Wars, it would be Senator Padmé Amidala.
And if anything she's seen through his mind holds true, she will wait for him. Its that thought that encourages her to smile down at him from where she's knelt.]
We'll go back together.
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her departure was a tipping point, one for which he has yet to become aware. what he knows: he failed her. failed her as he did his mother. as he is his wife.
steel fingers close around her wrist with infinite delicacy. he pulls her hand away from his face, though not away from him. his forehead drops onto her shoulder. his real hand spasms shut at the hem of her shirt. don't leave me, the action seems to beg, though the words never form. his shoulders shake.
after he has exhausted himself, anakin pulls away. he wipes at his face with his sleeve. but he hasn't yet let go of ahsoka. his fingers have since dropped from her wrist to her hand: a desire to keep her close, yet the hand with which he reaches for her lacks any true sense of touch. ]
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When Ahsoka looks up for him, there is clear concern -- a certain sad understanding that her presence doesn't substitute for the one he is looking for. She had felt it while he was asleep, and while others had come and tried to comfort her. Her thumb smooths carefully over metal almost shyly. After all, affection of this sort was meant to be forbidden among their kind.
But they had never been very good at following the rules.]
I'm glad you're ok.
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when he moves to stand, he does so carefully. two weeks without moving is hell on muscle. but he is surprisingly well. strong. the back of his neck where the cord had been itches. he tugs at the neck of his suit instead. ]
Let's get out of here. [ he has not dropped her hand. ]
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There's not a lot of effort involved in it -- just something to try and cheer him up.]
You can make it up to me. I'll add it to the list.
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anakin quirks an incredulous eyebrow. ] There's a list now?
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[She grins slyly in her peculiar manner, hiding her sharp canines behind pressed lips. Most of her coping mechanisms were picked up from him just the same.
So as long as she grins, she knows he'll grin back. Eventually, they'll round back to being content with each other's company.]
But most of the time, we break even, so I never bring it up.
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a simple act. friendly. it brings her closer. thoughts of impropriety and boundaries are far from his mind. anakin gives the action no real consideration. a friend and a friend, a sensation akin to the steady contentment brought on by one of his brood.
it almost feels like being happy. ]
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But the sound transforms into a delighted (infectious, his contentment mixes with her own emotion -- humble, and awkward) chuckle once she finds her balance with her montrals pressed to his chest.
She releases his hand and follows suit -- she can't reach his shoulders, so her arm finds his waist. And she jabs a fist there for good measure.]