eldest daughters are like "I'll handle it, leave it on me", and like "okay so this didn't work out, never mind I'll try something else", and like "I'll do it on my own no matter how impossible it looks", and like "it's okay, I'll be fine", and like "I'm strong and the world isn't ending" and like "I won't break bcz then how will I hold other people" and then one day, her hair claw breaks and everything crashes and she crying over it like someone died
i'll be your parachute | anidala | fix-it | padme amidala centric | angst | rated: t | 4.7k | chapter 1/?
Padme Amidala believes the Republic is doomed, her job is redundant, and her husband, Anakin Skywalker, is dead. Mid-mental breakdown about her definitely dead husband, she accidentally calls her sister, Sola Naberrie.
It saves the galaxy.
.
the first chapter of my padme amidala centric anidala fix it has been released! please, enjoy. if you regularly enjoy my tumblr ramblings/meta, none of the characterisation will surprise you. it is time for padme amidala to have her mental breakdowns about her husband's mortality and the decaying republic. here is my thesis!
It's the day it all started, yet it's the day it all ended. Nadakhan, the wishing, the pirates and the floating islands. Nya's death. It's the day it all started, and Nya wasn't brought back fully. Not that she's truly aware of this yet, still processing the fact she died at all, and everything else that's happened the past month. (Skybound, as a whole)
Then, alone in the Samurai X cave, she gets stuck as a ghost and finally has that breakdown she's not allowed herself to have. In one timeline, she stays alone through it all, but in another someone is there to comfort her. This is that timeline.
WARNINGS: body horror, breakdowns and hallucinations (and dead dove don't eat for these.)
I will write in the comments what actually happens if anyone wanna know before reading (along with some background lore, the what happens is the first/oldest comment.)
Something else broke inside of her, Nya sinking down to the ground with a wail tearing itself out of her throat, tears welling out and burning anything and everywhere it touched her skin.
She could hardly even see, now, everything blurry from her tears and burns. Why was she brought back?! Couldn't- W H Y ? !
The first scream was joined by another, wrenched broken and shattering, a revival of her D E A T H. Of everything that had happened the past month.
It was all too much. Too much, too much, too much. She couldn't cope, couldn't process, and now she was stuck like this.
A G H O S T .
D E A D .
Translucent hands dug deep into her hair, going straight through her coral horns. The pain of the liquidity of her hair burning her skin only pushed her to dig her hands deeper, going through her own scalp.
She was spiraling too much to even be freaked out over it.
(That was a lie, but to separate the freakout from the spiralling? It was all too FUCKING M U C H - ! ! !)
And then she felt her fingers move behind her eyes and –
don't move don't move don't move dontmovedontmovedo NOT M O V E
– Shouldn't it hurt? Shouldn't this bring pain?
DON'T FUCKING MOVE DO NOT MOVE RIGHT NOW –
Her claw on her little finger scratched against the back of her eye, moving her eyeball and it all went black. A void she could not see through.
Hadn't she gone through enough?
“Nya? Oh, by the Realms, Nya?!”
The new voice made her flinch, her claw digging deeper into the back of her eye. Who there? Who was that? How?
“By the sixteen realms! Dear child, what has happened to you?”
There was a slight echo to whoever this was; Nya had frozen up completely when she first felt her nail on the inside of her eyes, and so could not move now. Could barely even afford to breathe or cry. Only remain frozen in place while this breakdown killed her a second time from the inside.
Yet…
“Help-”
Her own voice came out hoarse, shattered and echoed. But if there was someone else in here? All Nya really wanted? At this very moment? To get her hands out of her fucking skull.
“I'm right behind you. I'm going to touch you now, but you must be clear about where you can feel your hands, alright?”
“...Okay. I- on my eye-!”
Cold hands touched her arms, right below her elbows, wrapping around to hold onto her more securely.
“Which way do you want me to pull?”
“I don't care. I don't care. I don't care!”
Half a breathe, and very slowly but surely her hands were removed, pulled backwards and up. Until finally she could no longer feel hands on the inside of her head. No more. No more.
“I'm letting go of you now and walking around.”
The same mysterious echo-y voice said, and a second later a body of translucent green sat down opposite of her. She didn't recognise him at first, with it being so long ago and physically impossible!
Because there, rght in front of her, were Sensei fucking Garmadon. Just like he'd looked the last time she'd seen him, on Chen's Island.
“Oh, great. Now I'm hallucinating too. Fantastic. Why is it you?”
The man in front of her opened his mouth to speak, but she continued before he could, interrupting whatever he'd say to claim to be anything else but a hallucination.
“Whatever, I'll take it. I don't care if you're a hallucination right now, I just.. I just want to not be alone and to be HUMAN again.”
She didn't even let the man speak, flopping forward until she landed on his lap before she could second guess or overthink any of this. It was someone and she wasn't alone.
“Who cares if you're not real and I'm actually laying alone on the floor. I just don't want to be alone anymore, and I can't tell them. I can't tell them ANYTHING.”
Sensei Garmadon seemed to hesitate for a near minute - his arms somewhere above her and her cheek pressed against his leg, frozen in place - before at least pulling her closer into his lap. He hugged her close, patting her floating liquefied hair and coral horns. It reminded her of what she'd seen Garmadon do to Lloyd, when he was alive and real. Because this couldn't really be him. It couldn't.
“Would it be easier for you to see me as a hallucination?”
“...Yeah. Because you died and why would you be here instead of with Lloyd. You wouldn't. I'm hardly important enough for any ghost or whatever of you to not rather stick with Lloyd or Misako. Or Master Wu, I guess.”
“You are in pain, Nya. Of course I must come to check on you too, to help however I can.”
“Whatever. Just keep hugging me for a bit longer?”
“Of course.”
Sensei Garmadon massaged her back with the arm embracing her, beginning to rock her a moment later. It did nothing to stop her thinking of how the man had been with Lloyd when alive. Did that say something about her? Probably, but for now she simply would accept the comfort and not question where it came from.
“I don't know what I am.”
Nya's confession was mumbled, the rocking far more grounding than she ever wanted to admit. Not that she ever wanted to voice this confession to anyone real either, ever.
“Kai doesn't have got the horns and scales I got, I don't remember our parents and.. And not even you, Master Wu or Lloyd got these scales or horns, either. And- And- And now this? I- I died, and- I don't know what to do. I don't know what I am.”
“Why would we have the same horns and scales as you, Nya? You do not belong to our family, do you?”
“No, but I know none of you are human. Maybe.. Maybe if you did, I’d at least have a clue. Something to know. Now.. Now I don't know at all. What am I, Sensei G?”
“I can't answer that for you. You're something unique, something you'll have to find yourself.”
Well. Of course!
“You would say that, wouldn't you? You're just a hallucination, and I've probably blinded myself with my own fingers and laying dead on the floor by now, again.”
“What if I weren't a hallucination? What if I'm really here and real, simply here to help you.”
That's simple. Nya curled up a bit more on his lap, hugging herself loosely.
“Because were you real you'd be sticking to Lloyd and wouldn't notice any else of us struggling. Because Lloyd is your whole world, along with Misako and Master Wu. You'd be so busy keeping an eye on them..”
Sensei Garmadon hugged her closer, one hand dug into her hair and the other squeezing her closer for a short moment.
“They are my world, that's true. But I care for the rest of you too, and right now you're the only one who's seen me since The Preeminent was defeated.”
Nya scoffed, turning to hide her face in his torn gi. Was this what it was like to have a dad, had hers never disappeared and died?
“Then how come you can hug me at all? I'm not solid and my hair burns ghosts. You'd have the burns at least. No, you're a hallucination because you're the closest to a father I've ever known, even if you're not mine and never have been a dad to me. I'm simply remembering seeing you comforting Lloyd and for some reason wishing someone did it to me. You're here because I don't want to be alone and my brain decided you were a good option because everyone else is alive. A hallucination of someone alive is something I would have believed to be real.”
“You raise an interesting perspective, Nya. So what are you getting hugged by, if I'm a hallucination? Who are you hearing me instead of? Who are you seeing if it's not me? A hallucination is rarely all senses.”
“It's not all senses, you're not covering all senses. I'm probably on the floor, maybe hugging myself if anything at all, and it's probably the computer or something I'm hearing. I don't know. I honestly don't care, either. Even if you're just a hallucination, I want you to stay.”
Please, she didn't say. Wasn't sure how to. But it was true, all else, she truly did not care whether or not this Sensei Garmadon was a hallucination or not, as long as she wasn't alone.
“Stay, now that's something I can do. For as long as you need me to, whenever you need a hug and someone to talk to, I can be here for you.”
“..Thank you.”
Nya finally hugged him back, breathing out as Sensei Garmadon rested his chin on her head, hugging with all of the love and comfort he'd done to Lloyd as alive.
A talking point I see occasionally (Freddie deBoer has dabbled in a variant of it) goes something like, "Anti-trans people say that trans people are mentally disturbed, but have you ever seen how many people on that side react to any kind of trans stuff by getting absolutely obsessed and unhinged and insane?"
I dislike this talking point for reasons that I'm not going into in this post (which is definitely not to say that I'm okay with the notion it's trying to combat, that of "trans people should be dismissed because they're just mentally ill"). But I recently ran across a fascinating rationalist gender-blogging character who, it seem, clearly is an example of anti-trans person who kind of went actually insane over getting bothered by certain aspects of the trans movement. (To the extent that he deserves being tarred as "anti-trans", as he seems quite okay with gender medicine and mainly has a massive issue with the "definition of man/woman" stuff.)
(I ran across this person very indirectly as a result of reading up on Ziz stuff -- he apparently knew Ziz and briefly reports her being a nice person to him in this very long and very interesting post mostly about gender identity / language stuff; I can't remember which Ziz-related article linked me to that one.)
