Summary: This war has taken it's toll on your mind and body, though it's almost like nobody has noticed. And you assumed that as a good thing. But Anakin noticed, Anakin loved you too much to not notice.
Warnings: Severe mental illness, depression, mentioning of war and death, do not read if any of these warnings make you uncomfortable
Requested!
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The war. You blamed everything on the war now. Because as much as you shouldn't, it was the war. It was the war that ruined your life. It was the war that tore the galaxy apart with pure white gloves. Pure white gloves that had everyone else do it's bidding for them. Everyday started to feel pointless.
As a Jedi, you knew that your well-being was supposed to hold up. You were supposed to be better than this. You were supposed to be more stable than you are now. You weren't supposed to feel so numb.
We weren't getting to the core of the problem. If there was anything you knew, it was that we were so far from the solution. We were so lost. It felt like everyday, we almost got farther and farther from the solution to this war. You can't even remember why it had started. Can't remember the events that led for it to be so harsh.
But you knew someone that did. And when you told him those same words that echoed through your mind, he didn't see that chew marks in your mind, he didn't see how badly this war was eating at you. He offered up explanations to how it started. But you didn't wanna know anymore. Cause you knew it would make you throw up.
Anakin was everything to you. He was your best friend, the person you had clung to as a padawan. He was someone you admired for his unchallenged talent. You might've said that you both were something more, but you had never spoken about it, knowing the code and the rules you both had to abide to. But you could feel it - the spark people always spoke about when speaking of love.
You couldn't feel anything at all if it wasn't with him though. You went back to your dorm, to your room with blank walls and shelves with few trinkets that were of beauty to you. Or from Ani. And you laid in your bed and stared at your ceiling.
You used to lay down after missions or a long day and cry. When the war started, you used to cry. Cry till the muscles in your core felt like they were being separated, pulled apart like strings and crushed. You would cry until your face hurt and your eyes couldn't squeeze out tears. Till the only way you knew you were crying was by the choked out wails leaving your throat. And then like a wave, everything would crash. That last tear would slip down your cheek and curve under your chin. And your eyes would stay open, eyelashes soaking and eyebags growing fast. Your face would go still, as if you had died. Maybe you had in a way.
Like the last night you cried. You died that day. Some part of you was rotting from the inside out. You were a zombie walking, one with armor and a weapon. Like a bad fruit, you spoiled the others and killed their cells. It seemed like everyone died around you. It seemed like you weren't the only zombie, too.
But now, as you punched in a 4-digit code on the panel to the right side of your door, it opened to reveal the same room that bled you dry.
Every night this room killed you more.
You unhooked your lightsaber from your belt, placing it down on a console table that was next to the door. The plant centered on it gave you peace, a living thing that you were able to make thrive.
You couldn't have shed your armor faster, boots kicked to the floor, one laying perpendicular to the hard wood and the other parallel. The least you could do was hang your clothes the correct way, smoothing them out and slipping into baggy pants and a comfortable sweater.
Your eyes traveled to a mat sitting in the corner of your room, waiting for you, but no calling. You felt no draw to meditation anymore. Something you used to enjoy now felt like a mere memory. Ani liked forcing you to meditate, but he wouldn't allow you into your room when he prompted you to.
He knew how the cream walls eroded you.
You hesitated, feeling your heart clawing at itself and crying. It weeped for some magical fix to the way you felt. But there was no fixing this, nothing that could make you smile again, and nothing that could make you form bonds with the poor younglings that were only walking into death by being at the temple.
You sat down on your bed, the mattress dipping at your weight.
Civilians were been bombed during your last mission. The separatists killed children. You couldn't save them.
You stared at the crease of your wall, the wash of emotions forcing your eye bags heavier. They were getting too much to carry. You were drowning, them dragging you down to the bottom of the disorienting ocean.
A knock on your door made you flinch. It had been firm, enough to scare you out of your skin, standing up in a panic response. Your hands grasped your arms in a way to try to ground yourself before walking towards the door.
You didn't have to open it, really. But in your mind, you felt that this was a must moment.
You stood in front of it and pressed the grey button to open it with little hesitation. The mechanical noise made you look up at your visitor, and the sight of him made a tsunami of emotions flood you.
"Ani," you croaked, voice barely sturdy.
You cleared your throat, seeing the concern on his face. Anakin cared a lot, for you and for the people that surrounded him closely. But you didn't often see his eyebrows furrow in the way they did, looking at you like you were lost.
Maybe you were lost, void of anything that was true.
Anakin invited himself in, stepping towards you so you would, in turn, step back. The door closed behind him and it left you in a breathless silence. You felt a pang in your chest, Anakin looking around your room the same way you had when you entered earlier that night.
Anakin spoke your name softly, drawing your eyes to his own. They coated over with sadness. Maybe he was starting to hate the color cream as well.
"What's happening to you?" he asked, lips not even closing fully as he felt the mood in the room darken to a hazy gloom.
You shook your head, fingertips digging into your sweater sleeves, "What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what mean," Anakin retorted. His voiced lacked the sternness it should've had, given that sentence. Instead, it was steady, "This isn't the first time I've felt this. I... Your mind has changed so much. This room used to be so bright, what's wrong?"
You felt yourself break. Out of the numbing feeling you felt in your bones, came a sudden sadness, one you would much rather have than no feeling at all.
Your arms went rigid where they hugged each other but your legs felt weak. Your eyes heated and glistened over with feeling and your chin pushed at your bottom lip. Your head already started to ache from the way the muscles in your face shifted so drastically.
Anakin knew when he was needed. And he knew that all you could've asked for in this vulnerable moment was him. So, Anakin did what he did best in these moments and he grabbed onto you by your arms and held you in his own. His biceps pressed against the sides of your arms while his elbows bent to hug you, hands placed flat on your back. One hand pressed itself against the back of your head, fingers spread through your hair and held you to his chest, cheek ironed to him. His chin rested over your head, allowing you to fit into the slots of his body where you belonged.
When you wrapped your arms around his waist instead of clawing at the cloth covering you, it felt like you were made to cry in his arms in some weird, corrupt thought. You were perfect against him, and the way your tears stained his Jedi attire, you felt a connection you had never felt, one that woke you up from your depression.
You seemed to press tighter into him, grounding yourself to the Coruscant planet through the means of his torso. Your whole body shook with sobs and your cheeks were stained with the time having passed from grappling onto him. He was so steady for you, and you admired him as being your rock. You could never thank him, you could never.
"Please don't leave me," you babbled, words mindlessly leaving you as you sharply inhaled a lung-full of air, your chest letting out a broken wail.
Anakin smoothed out your hair, petting it down to your back as he listened to the words slip from your mouth. In a heart-broken response, he said your name, "I'm not leaving you. I'm staying right here, I promise. There's nowhere I'd rather be."
He placed his hand on the hair over your neck and held you steady to him. You pressed your nose into his clothes, taking in the distinct smell he had and the feeling of his warmth against your face.
"Just.. Just don't leave... I can't..." you hiccuped, "I can't do this without you."
The aura of the room finally made sense. The corners that seemed to dark for the way you used to smile. The objects that would constantly shift due to you picking them up to reminisce, now were always in the same place and tended to collect dust. Your meditation mat that always seemed cold made sense. Even the paint set you kept, gifted from Ani, sat dormant - the exact activity you called out to when you were upset.
It all made sense now, now that you were clinging to Anakin Skywalker like he was the only thing keeping your joints from splitting and your body from cracking in two.
Anakin knew the pressure that was holding you down; it wasn't something they had taught you as a naïve padawan. They never taught you about the way something like a war would destroy you wholly.
"I need you," you cried, sobs matching the wracking of your body, a sort of cry that only came from pure hurt, "I can't do this alone... you're all I have."
Anakin leaned his head down, feeling his own head become fuzzy from the words that you spoke into his chest. He pressed his lips to the top of your head in a kiss that made your body warm and tired, but the crying seemed endless. He broke you out of your trance, guiding your body to your bed before he sat down. Your arms were tore from him, and you almost felt like a helpless child when you looked at him. But Anakin scooted up to the pillows near the headboard, holding your arms to drag you onto the bed softly.
Your knees hit the bed, only seconds before your body did. You latched onto him again, hugging around his torso. You did never want him to leave, you didn't want to come to, to realize you couldn't hold onto him forever. He couldn't always be your anchor.
But he would try like maker to be that for you. He held you gently, one hand on your head, pressing so meaningfully against your face. Your leg hooked his waist, pressing your body to his side as he cuddled you a sweetheart would his lover.
But it stopped your sobbing, and it made you feel tender love. Tender love that you returned.
"I'm right here," he spoke in a mere whisper, words travelling through the air and echoing like a firefly light.
You knew he was telling the truth. Yes, of course you should know he was here, but the words meant more. The words meant he would be here, that as much as he could be away on a different planet or stuck in a meeting he couldn't leave, he was here for you.
His hand rubbed at your cheeks, letting your tears soak into the skin of his thumb. You stared into his distracted eyes, finding yourself captivated by him.
"Don't tell Obi-Wan," you mumbled.
Anakin finally connected his eyes with your own, "Why would I tell him?"
"So you can get help for me. I don't... I don't want him to worry about me."
The dirty blonde breathed smoothly, contrasting your own quick, quivering breaths. His mind seemed to wander, latching onto a few thoughts before responding, "What if you need it? I don't like seeing you this way, I hate watching you cry."
"Just..." you reasoned without thought, "Ani, will you stay with me?"
Anakin let his lips crack into a pacific smile, rubbing over your soft cheek with his lightsaber-roughed thumb.
"I'll stay with you," your name slipped from his mouth with ease, allowing your mind to relax and fall in the solace his presence gave you.
My own thought about Gaetan Jego as an unsung hero to Logan Sargeant
Note: Thoughts are entirely based on my own views only.
A post which I didn't meant to let wait for a long time but . . . I do have to do admit; Gaetan Jego who is the race engineer whom he used to work with Logan is also the actual unsung hero and an unsung MVP in my very own opinion ever since he genuinely supported Logan all the way from the beginning until the end of his (Logan's) F1 career.
Major props to Gaetan Jego for supporting Logan not only as a race engineer from the very beginning of his (Again, it is Logan's F1 I'm speaking about here) F1 Career back in 2023 all the way until the end of his F1 Career.
Distorted Perceptions is a Women's Fiction, Literary/General Fiction title. Modern Historical, 1980s to 1990s Nostalgia Fiction. The novel is available via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu, etc.
This is a small selection of short fiction, from Paula's archives. Her story length ranges from Flash Fiction to the shorter end of the short story spectrum. Free download.
Daphne du Maurier wrote both novels and short fiction. Same. 😀
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