HANDS CAN TELL SO MUCH ABOUT A PERSON. if eyes are the window through which one can peer, hands are chained gates, secrets carved into the rust, things that cannot be washed away with the rain. her own small, white hands don’t say much: a lifetime of privilege some would call it, that they’re not as rough as papa’s are, no callouses to speak of a lifetime of menial labour. they don’t speak of all the tears they had to wipe away, nor of the smiles seared into the palms. but they are hers, nonetheless. holding, nurturing, deadly.
there is no real force behind the grip she has on his hand. it’s not there to act as a shackle, to chain him in place so he may not be able to flee under threat. lids lowered to where fingers are following the lines carved into stone, the briefest of pressures ghosting across his skin. “ are any of our hands untainted ?? ” it had been eating at her, the question. she thinks of qui-gon, of her handmaidens, of all the people slain in the name of a pointless war and shudders. the hitch in her breath is subtle, a crack in the mask she wears for his sake more than her own. “ no. should they be ?? ”