WHO: Dr. Aphra, Anakin Skywalker WHEN: Saturday night WHERE: The Casino WHAT: Anakin confronts Aphra about two weeks of ignoring him. WARNINGS: Two seriously broken people with some mental illnesses they don't even know how to cope with.
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The casino noises were not quite loud enough to get rid of the pounding of her own voice in her head. She'd been sabotaging herself again, and instead of fading out like everyone else did, he confronted her. On the network, and then he wouldn't let her abandon the conversation like she'd tried, and it was selfish but there was a tiny part of her that hoped that maybe he cared even half as much as she did. Maybe someone thought about her when she wasn't around.
The thought brought watery eyes. Aphra jutted out her chin, biting the inside of her cheek in a feeble attempt to stop it. She didn't deserve someone thinking about her. She'd done nothing with her life but look out for herself.
The slot machine pinged again as she slipped another (fake) coin into it, over and over, zoning out at the sound and letting the little fruit keep blurring and blurring. Maybe he wasn't coming at all. The ship was big enough, and if she decided to get up and move around, how likely was it that he could find her? If she kept on the move? She didn't even have to sleep in her room at night. She could sleep up on the top deck under the stars. It might not be home, but it was closer than this damn casino was.
It bothered Anakin to realize just how deeply Aphra's negativity towards herself ran, and how much he could relate to it himself. They'd both thought of themselves as the one who'd messed things up between them. They were both so quick to see or presume the faults in themselves. Anakin knew the Jedi had unthinkingly cultivated that trait in him, but he didn't know where it came from for Aphra.
And in a way, he was also frustrated that Aphra could have so completely mistaken how he regarded her. Hadn't he demonstrated otherwise? He thought he had. And if she was going to try to push him away because of how she felt about herself, maybe he needed to do a little more demonstrating.
Maybe it was "creepy" to her, but he really could sense her location. The casino didn't appeal to him so he hadn't been there before on his own. It had too many flashing colors and noises to interest him even if he wasn't solely focused on finding Aphra. It didn't take long for him to come up behind her.
She didn't think it was creepy, not really, but at the time she'd been trying to shake him off. To push him away. To make him think it wasn't worth it. It wasn't fair to do, but when you were so thoroughly broken as she was, everything felt like a test. Eventually, people would give up. They always did.
It didn't take a Jedi or a Sith Lord to know when someone had stepped into the space behind her. Even without the reflection on the slot machine's shiny surface, she'd have known he was there. The air always changed when someone was close. Aphra tried not to feel that stupid bubble of hope just because he'd come to find her.
The coins rattled as she dropped them into the slot. The lever came down. The slides rotated. And then all over again. Aphra glanced at her shoulder, intending to say something, found nothing, and looked back at the screen. What was there to say?
"Aphra." They weren't alone together; he wouldn't call her by first name here. He reached his hand out to touch her shoulder. "Don't ignore me now. Please."
"Why are you here?" she found herself saying. She fought the urge to reach for his hand, letting her shoulders slump instead.
"Because you're hurting. Because you matter to me." He squeezed her shoulder a little when she slumped.
Aphra closed her eyes. She could feel the hope bubbling more now, and she need to squash it. Stomp on it until it was all gone. Hope got you nowhere. Hope left you without a mother and a father who ignored you. It was complicated all the things she wanted to say. Some of them were hard to explain, but she would try if he wanted to know. "I got scared. I run when I get scared."
"Scared of what?" Obviously she wasn't scared of him. This wasn't really the right venue for a serious conversation, but until she felt prepared to leave, it'd have to be here.
The noise of the casino wasn't enough. She didn't want to take that chance that any of the other passengers could overhear them. It was bad enough to feel these things; another for someone to overhear her talking about them. Especially since it wasn't common knowledge.
She dumped the last of her coins on top of the slot machine and stood up. There wasn't really anywhere to go that was private, except one of their rooms, but Aphra didn't want to go there. There was a "business center" the floor up, and almost no one used it. Everyone had their own computers or datapads or phones so it was usually quiet. This late into the evening, there wasn't even another person here.
When she finally stopped, she wasn't sure where to begin. "When you leave in the morning, I don't want you to go. I want to see your stuff hanging in the closet, and I like seeing your face first thing when I wake up." It was hard to say this stuff; she wasn't the kind of person who was this kind of honest with her feelings. She was the kind of person who raged against them, so the overbright eyes were really pissing her off. She was trying to make a point, not snot all over him. "I started — that last night, I just — I didn't want to be just your dirty secret. I don't want to be."
Anakin stayed quiet as they walked. Small talk now would just be even more awkward. He would have preferred to go to one of their rooms, but that apparently would seem too personal to her right now.
It was hard to see her expression like this and not want to immediately try to comfort or distract her. Actually talking through the feelings was hard. But it was too important not to do it.
"I'd… like those things, too, and…" His eyebrows drew closer together as he was trying to understand and not presume. "... I thought you were just joking when you called yourself that. 'Dirty secret'. That's not how I think of you. But are you saying you don't want to be… whatever we are together, or you don't want it to be just between us?"
"I was. I was kidding about it, but then it kind of became a thing, and now I've got too many feelings and I don't know what to do with them. When things get overwhelming, I cut and run. I usually do something really horrible so they never want to come back, and then I tell myself that it wasn't worth it anyway." It was never them that was the problem; it was always her. She couldn't stand herself, and if her own father didn't care about her, then how could anyone else?
"You mean a lot to me," she answered, tears finally crested. "And I'm scared I'm going to kriff it up, and you're going to hate me."
"I think I can relate to not handling overwhelming feelings very well. Or at all." After all, he literally shifted from younger to older self to cut and run. If anybody could relate to her, well… "Are you trying to do that to me? Get me to leave and never come back so you don't have to deal?"
He leaned in closer to her and used his gloved hand to wipe her cheek. "I'm scared I will, too. But… I don't know how we could do worse than what we've already done to each other before. You mentioned betrayals; I've betrayed everyone. I know I don't deserve to just… be happy. But when my son was here, he said something to me. 'You're still punishing yourself for what you did. You're hurting more than just yourself with this.' Maybe he had a point about more than just me."
She'd spent a lot of her life screwing over friends, coworkers, teachers, her father that her gut instinct was to automatically go for a sucker punch and run. That was how she worked after nearly twenty years of doing just that. She couldn't do it though, not to him. Ignoring him for two weeks had taken an awful lot of willpower she wasn't exactly known for.
Aphra wanted to ask him about his wife, who clearly hadn't stopped loving him. Or his family who wouldn't approve of an arms dealer who worked with Vader. Or a hundred other things that were just more nonsense to try and get out of dealing with her feelings. "I don't know what to say. I've never done one of these conversations. I don't want to push you away. I want there to be a we and an us. And…." Maybe this was pushing it. "I don't care who knows about us."
"I've had… some conversations." He didn't really want to go into it, but there had been numerous occasions before and after marrying Padmé that they'd discussed the status of their relationship. "But there's only been the one person, so it's different because you're different. Do you want to be able to tell people about us, or not deny that there's an 'us,' is that what you're saying? Or do you want to be… uh, public about it?"
He tried to imagine Aphra being affectionate in public. It was a strange mental image.
Aphra swiped at her face, angry that she'd cried because it felt like a manipulative trick to make him feel bad. She wasn't a crier; it rarely happened because she was used to stomping down her emotions. But he'd let her in: sharing his nightmares and childhood stories, making light of a future she knew he was terrified would come to pass here by bringing her goddamn toast. It was hard to shut down those feelings when she'd already been attached to Vader who rarely showed any emotion, but Aphra somehow knew how he was feeling. It was another to see his face.
Her ideas of public affection weren't the normal holding hands, interlocking arms, or declarations of love. It was more like being in his personal bubble a little more than usual: leaning on him while reading something over his shoulder, putting her feet on him while they were sitting on a couch. It was much more casual.
Her insecurities got the best of her at those questions though. "What do you want?"
"I know I don't want you ignoring me or barely talking to me." It was easier to define what he didn't want. "I don't want to have to lie or pretend we are just friends around other people. I've had to do that before, and I didn't feel good about it. The lying, the secrets, literally hiding sometimes. I don't want that again. But I don't want to… um, rush into... things, if that makes sense. I got married very quickly, and then I was away at war almost all the time."
Aphra made a face at the word married. That was something she did not want to do. Ever. Ever. No marriage she knew of was ever a happy one, and they always ended disastrously. She shuddered unpleasantly. "Never ever say the married word again."
"But the rest of that... I'm good with." Aphra knew this wasn't the end of her stupidity when it came to relationships. She was going to continue to mess up; she was going to have to learn how to apologize. "If you are."
"I'm not saying we should be!" He spoke it quickly, horrified as well at the idea. Marriage obviously hadn't worked out for him before, and it was much too soon to even consider it again. "But… I was before, so… um… what should I say, 'committed'? What I'm saying is, I don't want to repeat my mistakes."
He nodded and cupped both of her cheeks in his hands, leaned down, and kissed her softly at first.
For example: this was public. This was him leaning down to kiss her in public. She had to stop herself from backing away instantly and asking him what he was doing. Saying what she wanted wasn't the end of the instinct, and it was going to take a lot of work. Aphra just had to remember that they were in this together.
Together.
It was both comforting and terrifying. Together meant there could be an apart, and that meant pain. It meant that everything they built, were building, could build might be ripped away like everything else in her life. Did this mean there were labels to them? Boyfriend, girlfriend… Always seemed to stupid and immature.
When the kiss paused briefly, she asked, "We could go for a walk on the upper deck?"
If other people had been in the room with them, he almost definitely wouldn't have done it— but there was the obvious possibility someone could have come in, unlike in one of their rooms. It was a public space, after all. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have kissed her here.
"We could do that." He held out a hand to her. "Do you want to, um…" Maybe holding hands or linking arms wasn't her type of thing.
She took a moment to look at his hand, trying to decide if hand holding was something she was interested in. It wasn't like she had to keep holding it if she decided she didn't like it, right? So a few seconds passed and she rested her hand in his.
"Okay, but if I don't like this, I'm smacking your butt."