@jedimessianic // I CAN’T HELP BUT BE WRONG IN THE DARK; I’M OVERCOME IN THIS WAR OF HEARTS.
the scarf that hides her hair is gauzy, and keeps catching the wind ––– she sighs a little bit, a soft puff of angry air. she knew she should have gone with the dark linen, something heavy, something with weight. the gauzy white seems to be attracting more trouble than it’s worth, but perhaps there’s some sentimentality to this decision. white clouds on either side of her vision, and for a moment, she’s back on varykino, with the breeze on her face and anakin’s hands ( one flesh, one skin warmed metal, both careful, both gentle ) and white lace wrapped over her scalp, trailing down to her hips. yes, there’s a sentimentality to this. the most important moments of their live, she came to him hooded. cloaked in fire on the ship in space with a blanket to cover him, to shield him. cloaked in clouds at their wedding, her hands reaching for his, her mouth soft and her heart full. cloaked in blood at the end, with the weight of something broken between them, with a dagger up her sleeve she couldn’t bring herself to use.
and now, cloaked and hooded, it feels almost like no time has passed; though, from which time, she cannot be sure. they are not the children they once were, nor the happy couple with their whole lives ahead of them, nor the broken beings staring at the rubble of what they once were. they are something else. they are someone else, each of them, together and individually.
and she –––– she has been someone else for a long time.
ANTHIA BARRIE STEPS DELICATELY THROUGH THE DOORWAY OF THE CANTINA, brown eyes wide, but careful, watchful. she takes in details in the span of a second; all the exits, the amount of beings around, how many might or might not be armed. her own blaster rests solidly at the small of her back, a vibrodagger strapped to her thigh, but she doesn’t think she’ll need them. not here. this is, for the moment, a preemptive mission.
mon had sent her to –––– what ? she’s still not entirely sure. but he’s getting too close to the trail of where they left luke, to obi-wan and tatooine, and she’s . . . still not sure she trusts him with this. she’d been told he changed. or, at least, had turned away from the change. he’d taken steps, he’d frozen himself away for years, he’s been funneling intelligence and weaponry to the alliance, he’s been the picture of A FREEDOM FIGHTER. but she closes her eyes and she can still hear the echoings of the things he’d done, in her name. ( i’ve done it for you, to protect you. ) she can still feel blood, warm and tacky on her hands, her forearms, her shoulders, her throat tightening up, but that’s . . . that’s just a nightmare, she reminds herself. anakin had every opportunity to continue down the path sidious set him on, and he did not. but –––– she has to remind herself that the tipping point had been her death, that the sith apprentice had been buried with the decoy of a corpse on naboo.
SHE HAS TO REMIND HERSELF SHE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’LL DO WHEN HE LEARNS SHE’S STILL ALIVE.
her throat goes ashen, swallowing becomes difficult, and she forces herself to breathe evenly through her nose, straightening her spine like she learned as a teenager, with a planet balanced carefully on her shoulders. there’s no getting around this now. she heads past the bar, looks for the booth she’s been told by their intelligence operative ( another damn FULCRUM; the alliance is crawling with them, and while she knows the strategic use, it’s getting hard to keep them all straight. ) that he’ll be in. she doesn’t know who they’ve told him to wait for. her palms go dry, cold. clammy. his name is like fire and holy water on her tongue, building in her throat, beating against skin and muscle like a heartbeat. ANAKIN, ANAKIN, ANAKIN, ANAKIN. she takes a deep breath, and then slides into the seat across from him, reaching up carefully to lower her hood as she sits.
❝ VARN BARDACK, ❞ she starts, ❝ i think it’s time we finally had a talk. ❞ it’s a testament to her training, both royal and senatorial, that her voice does not shake when she stares her husband down. his eyes are still so blue. ❝ i’m here for your recent shipment, and –––– to give you some answers, to . . . questions i’m sure you have. ❞ it’s harder than she thought, to keep her voice detached. it’s one thing to read reports of his actions, to scroll through a datapad telling her things in a clinical, detached notation. it’s another thing to look into the blue eyes of the man she loved for most of her life, the man who gambled their lives and their happiness on power and something that started at safety and ended at possession. the man whose children she bore, their daughter, raised by another couple. their son, who she never got to hold. she stares at anakin for a long moment, and whatever lurks between them, whatever has always lurked between them, this living thing that ties them together somewhere between their fourth and fifth ribs, it rears its ancient head. RAW, ACHING, LIKE AN OPEN WOUND. she can’t bear to look at him, but she can’t seem to look away.
❝ we should go somewhere private for this. ❞ they always did operate best in secret, away from the eyes of others.
