Narrative: Anakin Who: Anakin Skywalker When: Sunday evening, December 30 Where: His and Padmé's apartment What: He and Padmé watched Episodes I - III. Anakin is having difficulty swallowing it :X, so he tries to meditate, gives up, and tinkers with various electronics he's scavenged since arriving. Rating: Pretty low...references to the movies aren't graphic
A Jedi found peace in the Force, no matter the turmoil around; and yet Anakin, allegedly born of the Force itself, could find no peace in light of his future. In approximately six hours, everything he believed (or had convinced himself of) had fallen to pieces, twisted and burned. His darkest fears were formed into reality, right before his eyes, and he was powerless to affect them.
The first of the three had been enjoyable enough: a fond memory, the chance to see his mother alive and well, but tainted by a strange dark figure with a twisted but almost eerily familiar voice, and the loss of the man who had fought to deliver Anakin from a life of slavery. The second, too, was held in his memories: reuniting with Padmé and the start of the Clone Wars they were in the midst of fighting back in their own time and universe...
But the third was another beast entirely. His Padawan Ahsoka was nowhere to be seen, completely unexplained and out of sight; he could only hope it meant she had reached Knighthood and was carrying on independently. Padmé was pregnant with their child--children--but hanging like a dark omen were the dark dreams of her suffering, the paralyzingly fear of her death. Like watching a drawn out ship collision, he saw his life unravel, saw his mentor reveal a dark treachery -- and worst of all, saw himself follow behind in the vain hope of saving the family he loved more than any other person, place, or ideal. If the very real concern for Padmé or the very real horror toward the Chancellor had not been wretched enough, to see himself turn his back on Master Windu and pledge himself to Sidious had been a tipping point that quite nearly ended the life of its DVD messenger. Had he been alone, the rest of the story would have likely been lost to him (as would a fair few other things in the room, more likely than not), but like a cool splash of water on a desert journey, Padmé was beside him, calm but firm as she soothed the flashes, tried to remind him of their children, and how the future is not set in stone -- clutched his hand when the unrivaled horror to come seemed too much to take in. The Younglings, Obi-Wan, Padmé...
Sitting silently in their bedroom, trying to meditate (as she had calmly suggested), his mind instead wondered whether she would still be there when he came out again.
He felt ill. His mind raged, could see so clearly how he had been taken in, how the Chancellor had used their years of closeness and his blind fear for his wife against him...had lied to him. Anakin had not hated anyone so much since the Tusken Raiders had murdered his mother, and yet he could see more vividly than ever just dangerous that hate truly was. It was not a distant darkness that would float in and out, controlled when the fit was over, but rather something that would consume him so completely that he would do the unthinkable.
He had become a monster, and what scared him more than anything was that he could feel that monster already -- had fought it for years, had already succumbed more than once, in more fleeting ways. Even so, despite knowing there was probably some attachment lesson to be found, he could not separate himself from that need to be with them, nor even the need to love them so intensely that it hurt.
And it did hurt. Luke had seen the films -- he said so himself, through that network post -- and why he was still agreeing to come on Monday, Anakin could only wonder. They had gotten along so instantly, could connect in a way that Anakin rarely connected with another -- but after all of that...
If only he had allowed Master Windu to slay Sidious, as he himself had slain Dooku...If only he and Padmé had simply left everything behind...Would she have lived? Could the Order have ever understood? Could they have ever been happy, or were they destined to crumble, no matter the choices he made?
Meditation (truthfully more of a close-eyed brooding silence than any actual meditation) was eventually abandoned in favor of a more soothing distraction as he shifted gears, setting his hands to work and his fingers to tinkering with any number of mechanical and electrical devices he had gathered up since his arrival. He missed his droids, his tools, his ships...but even here with the technology available, it was a small comfort. Something he could create, control, modify, tend to and succeed at. Working with his hands calmed him down, allowed him to truly relax, gave him something positive to focus on; after quite some time, the brunt of his rage had cooled to something sharp but somewhat more controllable. The mere thought of those terrible scenes would send the emotions reeling again, but he wanted to see Padmé, wanted that comfort, wanted to hear that maybe it was not as inescapable as it had suddenly felt.
Leaving the half-open device as it was, Anakin once again stepped out of their room, into the apartment's common area.