Who: Anakin-in-a-Helena-Suit and Padmé
What: This place is messing with people again. These two wake up to a surprise
When: Monday morning, July 22. The starts of the plot
Where: Their bedroom
Rating/Warnings: Not too high. Anakin is topless, because he doesn’t usually wear a shirt to bed
Status: Complete

One moment Padmé was deep in slumber, the next she found herself staring to work toward the world of the waking. It was a struggle and, in truth, she felt a great temptation to go back to sleep. During the first trimester she had been tired a lot, but then things had leveled out during the third trimester. Now, she was starting to veer back toward being tired more easily. Part of it may have been quality of sleep, though. It was more difficult to get to sleep and stay asleep anymore.

She knew it would all be worth it in the end but, in that moment, Padmé was more in the moment than thinking of the future. The moment became rather unusual, though, as she came to realize that the person on the pillow next to her most certainly wasn’t Anakin, though the face was familiar. Padmé had just had tea with her on Saturday.

Pregnancy hormones had been making Padmé increasingly scatterbrained, having little moments of forgetfulness, but she doubted she forgot Helena somehow going to bed with her. Eyes widening and the haze of sleep thinning, Padmé found her voice. “Helena? W- what’s going on?” It had to be one of the odd events that happened. That was the only logical explanation.

Anakin was deep in sleep, the kind of sleep of someone no longer connected to the Force and no longer subject to the alacrity and quick reversion to alertness a Force sensitive could count on. In short, he was mired in slumber and he was slow to wake up.

He grunted, waking up was so much more difficult without assistance.

“S’mhmm,” was all he managed at first.

Padmé found herself wondering if somehow Helena was completely okay and without issue, which lead to Padmé shifting enough to sit up in the bed. Once sitting up, she firmly stated, "Helena, you need to wake up."

She waited a beat, and then added, "You're not in your bed, and I don't know where Anakin is. Something is going on." If the woman didn't rouse after this, Padmé would try gently shaking her shoulder or something along those lines. But she wanted to try to do it verbally, if possible, given the shock that someone waking a person up with physical contact would likely cause if Helena had gone to bed by herself the night before.

Anakin didn’t really catch the first thing Padmé said, sleep still clouded like cotton stuffing in his ears. But he did more or less hear the second part.

He blinked at her. He heard that part, but he didn’t understand it. He was right here, next to her.

He brought his left hand up to rub at his eyes. Something was going on.

“Padmé what are you talking about? I’m right here,” he said sleepily, stifling a yawn.

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around the room then, for Helena. His mind did think if Helena was in their room, it was probably the doing of this place. Perhaps the woman would unfortunately be stuck with them like James Potter had last year. But he didn’t see Helena anywhere.

He turned back to Padmé. “Where’s Helena? I don’t see her.”

He could have been mistaken but his voice sounded a little bit off. He concluded he must be really tired.

Helena was in their bed, topless, and remarking that she was Anakin. Padmé's brows furrowed in complete confusion and honest worry as she stared at the dark haired woman's face, seeing that there was a seeming lack of joviality behind the statement. It wasn't a joke.

"You're Helena." Padmé clarified, continuing to stare at Helena's face. Could the castle really have done something to turn Anakin into Helena? Maybe it was Helena, somehow convinced she was Anakin. It was a concerning matter either way.

He reached his right hand for the arm belonging to what he knew was his wife. “Padmé, I’m Anakin-”

Okay, now he heard it. His voice was definitely… higher. And now he saw his hand was not metallic, but it was, in fact, made of flesh. And not at all how he remembered his hand looked like. His fingers had never been that slender.

He pulled his hand close to his face to look at it, turning it over and over.

“Padmé?”

"Ani?" Padmé usually liked the Land of Make Believe, the second chance it gave her and Anakin at having a life. There were parts of it that she would've changed if she could've, and she missed her family, missed the greenery and water of Naboo. But the fact was that usually she did like the Land of Make Believe.

But right then, she wasn't thrilled with it.

"Go look in a mirror. It - it must be the Land doing tricks again." Padmé wasn't even sure what to say, how to comfort him. How did one comfort someone for being pulled out of their own body? "We ought to contact Helena, and - see if others are suffering from the same thing." To make sure it was temporary, that it was something castle-wide.

Anakin scrambled out of bed and rushed the mirror. The image staring back at him was of a dark haired woman. A topless dark hair woman who bore a striking resemblance to their good friend Helena.

“Force!” His eyes went wide and out of embarrassment for his friend he crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t body shy, nudity didn’t bother him. But there were things about Helena he never wanted to know, and he was sure she didn’t want him to know either. And Padmé probably had an opinion on that, too.

He turned back to Padmé, imploring. “I need a shirt.”

Padmé got up out of their bed without any more prompting, going over to the closet to dig for something that might fit Helena's shape. She found a top rather quickly that would provide modest cover; between the closet and the dresser, she still had a few non-maternity items around. This was a flowing green top. It wouldn't necessarily win fashion awards with fit, but that wasn't the immediate goal.

"Here." While there were certain parts of the female anatomy that Padmé had seen before, she was happy to have Anakin put on a shirt. "Ani, are you alright? Aside from a new body, do you feel okay? And - can you sense anything? If whoever has your body has some sort of abilities, we ought to try to find them quickly... assuming this is wide-spread."

Anakin donned the shirt quickly while Padmé spoke. He tried reaching out through the Force, but was met with an impenetrable silence. It was shocking that he hadn’t noticed it before. For all of a second it felt like he couldn’t breathe, he was cut off from something he was so intimately connected with.

But this wasn’t the first time he’d experienced this, he reminded himself. This was not the time to panic.

“I can’t feel anything.” And then he was reaching for his phone to find out just what the kriff was going on, as Padmé suggested.