Beautiful Sexual Tension

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☞︎ 𝓕𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓲𝓰𝓷 𝓕𝓮𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼|𝓐𝓷𝓪𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓧𝓕𝓮𝓶!𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

☞︎ 𝓛𝓪𝓼𝓽 𝓗𝓸𝓹𝓮|𝓐𝓷𝓪𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓧𝓕𝓮𝓶!𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

☞︎ 𝓡𝓾𝓵𝓮𝓼|𝓖𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓽𝓧𝓕𝓮𝓶!𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

☞︎ 𝓡𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮: 𝓢𝓪𝓵𝓿𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷|𝓐𝓷𝓪𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓧𝓕𝓮𝓶!𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

☞ 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓪 𝓝𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓼 𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓮|𝓐𝓷𝓪𝓴𝓲𝓷𝓧𝓕𝓮𝓶!𝓡𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓻

Chapter Two: Rising

Chapter Three: Living Errata

Chapter Four: Gold in Steel Mouths

Chapter Five: Sub Rosa

Chapter Six: Don’t Touch That, It’s Dead

Chapter Seven: The Afternoon After the End of the World

All banners are done by @cafekitsune ! Please check out their work 🫶🏻

𝒩𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈: Well… this one took longer than I meant it to. Months, apparently. But here we are again! Missed y’all.🥰

Banners by @cafekitsune !

Enjoy🖤

‘Report to Koth the moment we touch down. Leave the rest to me—I’ll find you tomorrow.’

Censoriously, not in memory but consequence, the Temple stretches in front of you. Failed expectations pry the jaws of each durasteel-reinforced wall, what was withheld, what was granted, what could be—what should be—stripped away with no pity.

The Temple hasn’t changed. That’s the trouble.

Surprise would be amiss here as you hadn’t expected the Temple to change in one day, though its temper definitely has. The physicality of your home is a crippled version of salvation; the atrium opening in the same lecture of disapproval in the arched planes of the ceilings and railings, but now it sees the unimpeachable truth of what you’ve done, what you’ve allowed to be done to you, and it judges.

You’ve been standing on the lip of this abyss for five minutes now.

Corruption can’t enter here.

But no sirens wail at your arrival, and no ancient ward rises to cast you out as you step in. You walk through the Temple unimpeded, and the evil you imagined could never enter has. And if the Temple can’t tell what you have become, or worse, if it can and doesn’t move to stop you, then the balance is truly lost.

It’s not just me. At least I have that going for me.

Halfway up Koth’s vanilla staircase you stop again, hallucinating Koth’s face, contorting at what you’ve carried back: twin desert-saffrons squinting into yours, matching dense brows knitting into a landscape of sapience, with his leeched-pink lips pulled in distaste. The image nearly propels you down the stairs and clear across the Temple grounds.

Retreat, however, is a luxury you no longer own, if it ever belonged to you at all, so you do as you have always done: one foot, then the other, until you stand before his bored door.

Your wrapped knuckles rise, waiting an inch from its surface.

The instinct that you’re arriving too late, is….. nostalgic. Every initiate pretending not to talk about you, that you would never last. That one day the inevitable would occur and you would destroy yourself in some spectacular, uneducable fashion. How was never the question, only when.

Your fist meets the door with a sharp rap and you flinch at your own urgency, louder and harder than needed per usual. The paneled door gives, nudged open by your pounding, spilling a narrow blade of gold across your boots.

You prepare for Koth in the hue; tall, hunched, with broken amber eyes ready to read through whatever version of today you’ve managed to stitch together.

Calm, Control, Fo—No, that’s dead.

You pull a meditative breath in anyway, your last embroidered trace of training taking hold before you release it, cracking the door wider.

The room is a muted hush of candlelight, but the clutter is the same. Drunk stacks sag in every corner, parchments curled on the floor like sleeping animals, and abandoned notes scattered over the broad wooden desk at the center of the chaos.

“Master Koth?” You crack out, not any louder than a whisper.

The soundless track is unhelpfully gentle, as if Koth had morphed into the air itself.

He isn’t here.

Maker, thank you. I won’t have to lie tonight.

Your chest inflates with relief, allowing the mountain of exhaustion you’ve been hauling uphill for twenty-four hours to dive at you—repeatedly.

The candlelight smears into amber ribbons as the entire room begins a slow centrifugal pitch like a coin losing balance. Your hand reaches blindly, catching the spine of a chair.

Not here, not on the floor.

Your vision blurs and clears, only to blur again.

The cot.

One foot, then the other, to the alcove behind twin sagging bookshelves, before you collapse onto the mattress.

Koth isn’t here but he will be.

Your stomach knots and twists at the ceiling’s jitters, its waxen expanse dissolving into a nervous smear you can’t focus on.

He’ll find my body and know I survived. It’s proof of… attendance, if nothing else.

You settle deeper into a thin pillow, foolishly closing your eyes, allowing the darkness to amp the unsteady spin up to a repulsive momentum.

You inhale, slower this time and catch the scent embedded in the sheets beneath you: dust, of course, and... leafy. You take a second breath, then a third, but the air refuses to enter the correct tubes, leaking and overflowing your lungs with the sharp, green odor.

The spinning recedes and the ceiling, in its madness, flattens itself in the candlelight.

The tension in your neck unclenches a thread at a time as the cot seems to welcome you. Your fingers curl into the cradle, greeting it, while the tremble in the rest of your limbs cease, and for one impossible second, one microscopic lapse in universal logic—

You feel safe.

Consequence paws at your feet, along with purpling bruises, lancing aches, and the blood drying tight between your thighs, yet this fever break is peaceful.

Sleep has been stalking you behind bleeding walls and tattered, cooling bodies of dead comrades. At last, it corners you and the last thing your fried brain gutters out is an infantile belief. That when Koth finds you spilled across his sheets, unrecognizable, he’ll decide to stop at the lip of the alcove and do the unthinkable for a Jedi Master; the only action he’s capable of.

Nothing.

Waking begins as a crawl into a mist of viridescent current sluicing across your temple, and into your nose. Your vision doesn’t return, and you don’t force it as your mind takes its time, concentrating on the warmth engulfing your entire body—your right cheek is pressed into a firm plane, too hard for your pillow, while your leg lies draped over another band of heat. The same flame brackets your thigh, indenting your skin with a gentle hold.

Anakin?

Clarity, the old supportive friend, punches through you instantly. Anakin would never feel like this. Only then do you truly register the rest of the man you lay across without rush.

A pale, finely corded throat, decorated with a discolored scar that disappears behind a head of auburn waves.

Master Koth.

Gold light accentuates the scar beneath his right eye, now inches above yours. It’s no bigger than a thumb, coursing down his cheek into a field of coppery freckles that signal with each hiccup the candlelight gives.

You trace, in a stunned sweep, the lithe muscular expanse you rest on; one you never anticipated was hiding under his deceptively cumbersome robe. Then the hand gripping your thigh gives an unconscious tug, bringing your body closer.

Move, before this becomes another catastrophe I can’t fix.

But you don’t.

The purple linen tangling both your bodies, the green-threaded scent you now know is his, and the Force itself, all pour over you like a sedative. Each wave of pacifying energy, passing easily into your soul, flattens the spike of wakefulness and panic in its ascension.

Just this once.

Your mind lags in the negative space between sleep and consciousness.

This fugacious peace is earned, a truce your body negotiated while you were out cold. You lie in it, waiting for the dorm ceiling to re-form itself behind your lids and for the day to announce itself in the bureaucratic, joyless ways it usually does. Nothing arrives. There’s no dream residue, lingering flashbacks, or alarm clocks blaring. Only pain.

Everything hurts.

Sitting up feels absurdly ambitious. You flirt with it anyway and bargain with an arm sliding across the mattress toward the nightstand where a glass of water should be.

Your shoulder sobs, but the cup fills your palm.

Victory!

You lift, and swallow, well prepared for the cool mercy of water. Instead, you inhale Hell, and its wretched fires fold you forward in a coughing fit.

“Careful,” a voice, pushing past idyllic straight to royalty, says across the room. “That was… ambitious.”

You thought you were in pain before, now it’s indisputable.

Your teary gaze meets Koth’s, and for many, many embarrassing seconds you forget how to do anything but brace and dry-heave. Your stomach rolls, intent on making an appearance, and you cough like you might let it.

Not my dorm room. Excellent. Got it.

Koth sits at his desk like this is a perfectly respectable way for a morning to begin.

His robes are gone, leaving him in a modern undersaturated berry tunic that sits far too close to his frame. The candlelight is also gone, replaced by a dim ceiling fixture whose orange hue marks the familiar slope of his shoulders.

You watch his attention drop to the cup clenched in your hand, then climb to your shoulders, which have nearly locked up around your ears.

“You Jedi,” he mutters, “have a talent for poor first decisions.”

Is he attempting to be funny? Right now?

You try to answer, but your lungs have staged a violent coup. All dignity is lost while you brace your free hand against the cot, knuckles blanching, and drag in a very loud breath that scrapes all the way down before coming right back up in another coughing fit. You manage to swallow, forcing it through until sound passes your chapped lips and proves you aren’t choking to death in front of him.

“Why is there—?”

“Whiskey on the nightstand?” He finishes, with a pleased brow lifting.

His interruption shouldn’t irritate you but it does.

You glance down at the amber liquor, waiting for its explanation and when it doesn’t speak, you set it back on the stained glass side-table.

Did I even open my eyes?

“Disorientation after trauma often resembles confidence.”

Your gaze snags back to him before the corner of his mouth pulls and his attention drops once more, this time to your hand clenched in the sheets.

“That” he observes, intelligently, “was not confidence.”

“No.” You push, finally breathing enough for embarrassment and relief to kick in.

“No,” he agrees, tilting his unstyled yet perfect, chestnut hair. “Blind faith, then.”

His fingers start their slow flick across the page in front of him, the routine scratching momentarily filling the room before abruptly stopping.

“Courage or carelessness, I can’t decide.”

“I—“ You start, before hissing at the attempt to lean forward, muscles reminding you of the serious argument you lost last night.

“Relax,” Koth lulls, eyes fixing directly on the pain ailing your ribs. “You can choose whichever you prefer. It will not offend me.”

“And before you ask,” he dryly adds, sitting back in his chair while gesturing with his pen toward the center of the desk. “it’s here. You’re not missing time. Only judgment. Temporarily.”

Koth’s whiskey has no stake in the way your stomach is now pitching.

That’s—that’s my saber. Why didn’t I feel its absence?

One of his signature pauses ensues, and you’re hauled back to dismissing you, shooing you away like a dog.

“We’ll address it,” he states at last, “once your body stops attempting to evict its vital organs.”

You don't have the breath to argue. And there’s only one reason a Master takes a Padawan’s saber, only one reason it wouldn’t be on your hip.

“Are you going to report me?”

His brow lifts again. “For drinking before breakfast?”

“For—” You gesture to your broken self. “All of this.”

“That depends,” he supplies, as his eyes narrow. “Are you planning to offer a version of events, or am I to assemble one from context?”

You want to default, to tell him every exhilarating detail of your first battle, from first touching down to the mistakes you can now see with startling clarity.

You also want to tell him about the clone who saved your life. How you’ll never know his name or who cherished him. How you carry his lavender sky memory in the front of your mind, and probably will forever.

I want to tell him everything.

It takes a lifetime for him to break the intense stare-off he started. The tension relaxing in his full lips as he exhales, just shy of a laugh, and sets his pen down, aligning it to the edge of the desk like it matters.

“Very well. Context it is.”

His arms lift, toned muscles rolling under pale skin before his long fingers laced together over the desk. Your shoulders creep up again, preparing for him to make this more intimate than it already feels.

“I should clarify first,” he starts, voice slowing down to savor every syllable, “my reconstruction is not an accusation or a confession on your behalf.”

You nod, eyes trying their hardest to stay tuned to his while you ease back against the headrest, legs staying tangled in the plum blankets.

“You were reassigned under Council authority. This is not unusual, lately. The Council has developed an… optimism about accelerated survivability.” His voice is normally unhurried, taking its time to fully form the words he speaks but now it’s much slower, making sure to articulate each letter. “You objected. Vigorously. That tells me you assessed the risk to be disproportionate to your preparation.”

Your instinct is to correct him. To say, ‘no, it was like this, it happened like that.’ But he doesn’t sound like he’s building a case against you, at least not yet.

Context is better than the truth.

He looks to the empty portion of the cot, where he slept, leaning back in his chair.

“You returned several hours past the window I would expect for a standard forward sweep.” With no interruption from you he resumes, “Then you slept through dawn.”

He glances toward the chronometer on the desk.

“Fourteen hours, exactly.”

A sudden hollowness follows his pause, hauling the definition of embarrassment beside it.

“Abnormal for your schedule. Either you had pharma assistance,” he says thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on the armrest, as he continues, “or you exceeded your reserves by an irresponsible margin.”

Fourteen hours.

The drag imprints, dawning red-stained memories—the fallen clone, the heat of Anakin’s body on yours, the searing line of cyber against skin, your hands matted with bone and humiliation.

The silence is closer to vertigo than fear, knowing that one wrong word will cause the conversation to dip and you’ll slide straight into confession without meaning to.

You barely notice the tendons on the line along your neck, still smarting from the burn you’ve buried under fabric and denial, until you nod.

“I pushed,” you murmur, stopping your hand from raising to the burn. “Harder than I should have.”

Koth hums low in his throat, giving a small tilt of his head. “Everyone does the first time.” His eyes drift briefly to the far wall, to the layered maps and scrawled annotations. “The distinction is where the excess goes.”

You follow his glance without thinking, reading the notice he’s focusing on. Bold black lettering with a layer of dust, well-planted on the top edges reads: RESPOND IMMEDIATELY: URGENT!!!

“Into the body?” He utters, thinking out loud. “Into anger? Into silence?” His gaze returns to you, settled back. “Occasionally into all three.”

The panic begins to mold as you trace the garbled decorations, tasting the familiar copper on your tongue.

“I expected some combination of them, from a Padawan placed under a commander who values results over… aftermath.”

Your face is a mask, one you’ve handwoven to hide from gawking instructors, and it holds, until…

“Anakin Skywalker, has a habit of mistaking intensity for lucidity. The Council shares the affliction.”

The name is a spark in a room full of pressurized gas, causing your carefully crafted façade to burst.

He lifts both lithe arms, running his fingers through his auburn hair before they rest casually behind his head. “On paper, the outcomes are magnificent.” His starry depth gravitates across you, completely unreadable. “It is less kind to those required to keep pace with him.”

‘Keep pace?’ He must know how Anakin treats new Padawans, and he’s simply ‘keeping pace’ with The Chosen One like everybody else.

“Results,” Koth licks, in your silence. “They excuse a great deal, yes?”

You only move what has to. Chest, eyelids, and the cramp you can’t control from hearing Koth say Anakin’s name.

“The mission succeeded,” you speak up, like a good little soldier.

Koth’s sunken eyes lift, amused, as he reaches for the pen again. He spins it between his fingers, then sets it down. “Mm, yes. That is usually the headline.” He leans in, forearms finding the desk. “And you? Would you write the same headline?”

It’s an invitation. You see that much immediately, even while your mind rifles through the half-built version of events you carried up the Temple steps the night before. That version had been designed for scrutiny, not for being asked what you would write.

You swallow.

“Yes.” Because it’s true in the thinnest, most survivable sense. “The objective was met.”

Your neck prickles as he settles on it, his breath shaking before commencing, as if imagined, and looks away just as smoothly. Back to neutrality.

“The problem with objectives,” he warns, conversational again, “They pinch the world. Everything outside them becomes… negotiable.”

Your hands curl where they rest, fingers worrying the fabric beneath them until you feel the resistance of the weave bite.

Philosophy is survivable.

“I kept up,” you snap out.

“I don’t doubt that. Tell me,” Koth’s shoulders shift under the tight tunic, hugging as he sits forward, and unhelpfully, you remember what that movement feels like under your cheek.

—Stop.

The pen, parallel to the edge of the tanned desk, stays vacant—a line of ignored potential, as his elegant fingers fold together above it. “When Skywalker submits his record, will it keep you at his side the entirety of the mission?”

Records. Reports.

The vertebrae of neat alchemy, that convert heroic bodies into tidy paragraphs.

Anakin didn’t prepare you for this but you hardly need it. The answer is dressed and rehearsed behind your ear, serenading his everlasting threat.

‘You don’t have to understand, just stay.’

Traitorous brain, why? Why pick that memory?

“I didn’t leave him.”

He doesn’t offer reassurance, or say anything that Masters do when they want a Padawan to start talking.

He marinates in the tension before he acknowledges the attempt.

“Mm.”

He isn’t asking about your juvenile bandages, or why you slept fourteen hours in his bed.

This isn’t about me, it's alignment—making the paperwork neat. That should comfort me… why doesn’t it?

“You are pale,” he states, his vowels plumping together. “And you are working very hard to remain still. This makes you a poor liar.”

The tremor beneath your skin, that you had done well at pretending was just leftover adrenaline, now crawls up your back, offended at being seen.

“I’m fine,” you throw back.

It doesn’t feel like a lie, you’ve been saying it since you were small. In truth, it’s the greatest lie in the history of the spoken word.

Koth’s curvy lips move strangely, not a cocky smirk, but not nearly soft enough to be a smile. It belongs to another life or another context but slips through, gracing your eyes.

“I know.”

His chair groans as he rises, snapping your chest and attention in one go.

His height grows in agonizing stages, becoming an undeniable memory the orange light overhead will not let you flee from.

Veins swim under impressions of scars, marring his moon-kissed skin, and he carries an ease with him, as if the Temple handcrafted him.

Your eyes set on a new scar, several shallow crescents on the webbing of his left hand, and you have the horrifying urge to trace it, to know whether they healed smooth like the one snaking his neck has or peaked and charred like the one slicing Anakin’s chest.

—Stop

An angry itch flares under your collarbones and you look away, your tiny act of penance, before he’s drawing you back with a gesture towards a narrow door set farther in the shadowed shelves.

“Come,” he says, already halfway through, not looking back.

Your body is grateful for the directive, daringly pushing itself off the cot. The truce you have with your legs dissolves in fragile pieces of legislation, rippling sharp jabs up and down your thighs.

One foot, then the other.

The door appears once you’re already moving toward it. Yet, this one is far from the dull slab you walk through to get into his study. It’s darkened with age, holding a bruised burgundy that presents its loyal years of passage beautifully.

The floor beneath your feet loses the faint grit of paper-dust and becomes smooth stone, softened by light high overhead. The hallway is not opulent or bold, but it’s striking in the intentional coziness it creates.

This isn’t a monk’s cell annexed to a workplace. It’s a dwelling—a home, nested improbably within the Temple’s body.

You follow Koth through the back of the cooled skull, into its welcoming anatomy with pinballs for eyes. He doesn’t give a tour of the artifacts, displayed in soft-lit cubbies, or the layered tapestries and awards that adorn the walls. He stops at a door that looks grown rather than built, the grain of the wood swirling in patterns that make your eyes ache if you look too long, and points.

"The refresher," he explains, turning the doorknob. "The water is real and runs hot for 20 minutes. I will find something that is not... this."

He gestures to your tunic, which is less a garment than a record of everywhere you’ve failed, before he turns on his heels and vanishes into a smaller side chamber.

Without his cosmic presence and the promise of hot water, you push open the washroom door.

Twilight transcends the room, the tiled panels purposefully askew with deep indigos and charcoal grey, and in place of the modern chrome or touch-sensitive controls, stark brass and dark obsidian paint each fixture and toiletry, while the shower itself is a deep slate with hardware belonging on a high-altitude cruiser from the last century.

You’re staring at the sheer solidity of it all when Koth re-emerges, a pair of mossy green and sun-bleached cream fabrics draped over his arm. “They are old, but the weave is in good condition." He moves past you to reach the counter, pulling a thick-coated towel out.

“I don’t—” you begin, and pause.

I don’t need clothes? I don’t want a shower?

That’s not debatable.

“They will fit.”

You find him in the mirror, the distance he keeps nearing as he looks at the bundle of clothes now on the countertop.

“I will be in the kitchen, at the end of the hall. You can meet me there when you’re done, and—”

His shoulder brushes past yours, pollinating well past the skid. It’s grounding, uncanny to the Force, prompting your heart into a frantic rhythm.

"I—" he starts, stuttering before he clears his throat and fixes on the garnet door. "I will prepare something… edible. Hopefully… Do not hurry."

His boots clumsily scuff the stone as he shuts the door behind him and you’re left staring into the winding grain, utterly stunned.

Did he do that?

Tentatively, you flex and it responds with a tranquil flick, spreading no farther and no deeper than where he brushed against.

He must have, it’s the same feeling that ushered me back to sleep.

You dissociate on the rings of curling timber, listening to the striking absence he leaves behind while arguing with your blooming arm about its birth.

Why didn’t he push for details? Why didn’t he dismiss me to the dorms or the infirmary? Why am I still here?

The bloom drums gently, amused at the pile of questions neatly stacking inside your mess of a head.

Unless—

Time can be stretched and bent when people are tired. Exhaustion loosens tongues, turning narratives malleable.

He knows that, who doesn’t?

You remember his eyes across the desk, not pushing or interrupting, allowing the silence to fatten until you popped it.

He’s the true version of patience; cruel.

The sensation laughs, refusing to be labeled as pain or respite, which would at least make it identifiable; instead, it rests in the middle of your nerves; snug, unwelcome, and relentless.

‘Poor liar.’

The knot in your abdomen resurfaces, tripled.

I slept fourteen hours in his bed like a corpse that forgot where its grave was, and coughed whiskey across his sheets like an idiot.

Subtlety was never on the table.

And then your saber.

Your attention flies toward the door again, though it gives nothing new.

‘Temporarily’, he said. ‘Only judgment. Temporarily.’

The bloom nags, and you rub the spot with your thumb, as if friction might push it back into whatever part of the Force it crawled out of.

You drag your gaze back to the corner of black slate that promises twenty minutes of privacy, and try very hard to think about practical things like soap and water and the sticky cloth clinging to your thighs that you would very much like to peel off and burn.

Fine.

Your hand falls, and you square your shoulders toward the shower with the resolve a convict approaching an execution that happens to involve hot water might have.

If he’s waiting for me to make a mistake, then the least I can do is take my time delivering it.

After all—

He did say not to hurry.

𝒩𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈: Well hello, hello! I thought this chapter would be simple. It wasn’t. It took me apart several times and put me back together before it finally felt right. Thank you for waiting, for reading, and for still being here. You all make it worth coming back to.

Banners by @cafekitsune !

Enjoy🖤

Calm. Control. Focus.

Preserve. Conserve. Contain.

Contain. Contain. Contain.

Am I calm? Am I containing?

Perfect, he said.

The word has stayed behind, leaving a sour aftertaste in the roof of your mouth. You’ve been thinking it, or whispering it, your mouth skips the distinction between speech and thought now.

Containment. That was the mission. The entire purpose of this day. The two words loop behind your eyes, a system error flashing in your skull: containperfectCONTAINperfectcontain.

Your boots are on. You know because your ankles ache in them. You’re sitting, but you don’t remember lowering yourself. The bulkhead is cold at your back, knees half-open, saber where it belongs but angled a degree too low. Betrayal leaks through the inches between you and the weapon, both of you pointed away from one another like you’ve both already chosen a side.

Perfect.

Perfect distraction.

That’s what he titled you with.

That was only an hour ago—maybe less. Time drips itself in glutted intervals, and the exposed nerves inside you thrash for a pattern to stitch themselves to. There’s an invisible line, running from the base of the blade’s hilt up through your bones. Without it, you’d slump over and collapse into the plating below.

You count the rib bones Anakin touched and the ones he didn’t; all of them wail.

I will stay, Master.

It replays scrambled. Reversed and inside out. You hear your voice declaring it yet you can’t tell if it was forced or relief.

Your neck stings.

Contain, you think. Con—

The intercom crackles overhead.

“Drop zone approaching. All units report to your deployment positions.”

Your eyes snap open.

Reality mourns back into being with weeping coolant lines and hissing pressurized magnetic currents.

The ship’s alive again and demands your presence.

Obedience lifts you to your feet, the dead limb at your side tapping against your hip as you stagger through the metal corridors.

It should be chaotic, but it’s not.

Clones rush in and out of formation, locking weapons to their bodies and checking gear. The gunships screech awake, one crying out as it shifts position, while bay doors yawn like mechanical mouths. The scent of grease and plastoid armor drills your sinuses as you move forward, leaving another hole in your mind.

One clone, helmet in hand, braid caught behind his ear, glances your way. His eyes snag on the burn across your neck.

“Guess Skywalker didn’t hold back,” he mutters to the clone beside him. Not loud enough for rebuke, but loud enough for you to hear. The caurterized wound burns hotter beneath the laughter, both men passing.

They think it was a sparring calamity. Let them.

Your muscles remember the motion: one foot, then the other.

Deserved. Earned.

You don’t see his face at first—only the slope of his shoulders and the leisurely set of his stance. One hand braces against the wall, the other on his hip. He’s speaking over the flickering holomap in front of him, reaching out to gesture across it.

Clones slip past you in seamless rhythm, flooding around him, as your feet plant to the floor beneath you.

He looks the same as he did before.

The same cadence he had three years ago, when you watched him in training through a holotransmission. Anakin had sung out of the static-ridden speakers, briefing about the war, the many advancements, and wins the Republic was accomplishing. Even through fuzzy memos, your attention always snagged on his shoulders.

Rot-slick bile rocks your gut as questions race faster than stomach acid ever could.

Is this his battle face? I’ve never seen it up close. Strategizing? Pretending I’m not here?

No. He knows I’m here.

It’s a test. Another game.

Or you dreamed it all.

No. The charred skin on my neck disagrees, and muscles are aching I didn’t know existed.

Anakin gestures to a quadrant on the map and one of them mirrors the gesture. The clone must have told a joke because it draws a chorus of chuckles.

Anakin, he’s—

You don’t know this version of him. But you do.

He looked like this when he taught a class on orbital tactics, when you were a year younger and more starved for purpose than anything else. You memorized the way he stood in front of the class, hands clasped behind his back, body fluid with loose confidence in each step.

Anakin didn't trip over words the way the other generals did. War, in his mouth, became simple tactics and toys, not ending lives. As if no one ever bled, and soiled themselves in fear, or screamed for their mother as the light fled their body.

If this is him… Then who just hurt me?

Another man is living in the skin of Anakin, burrowed deep and well-fed. You think you might see his outline, hiding just above the collar of his robe.

You catch just the tail end of a sentence: “... heavy sweep from the south ridge. They’re cut off here.” The clones nod. One offers a comment and points to a blue cluster on the map. The group chuckles.

Everyone is calm.

And you’re… what?

Upright? Somehow.

Your gaze catches on the gunships before dropping to your boots. Scratched durasteel, crusted oil, and your laces aren’t even. They weren’t a few hours ago, but it matters now. You bend down to fix them.

As if it helps.

You hear your name.

Your spine flinches—but it wasn’t him. Just a clone calling out orders down the line.

You stand, finding him again.

He’s barely moved. Arms crossed over his chest. The muscles in his throat work around a deliberate swallow as if the moisture required your audience.

His mouth is—

—Stop—Contain—

The holomap flashes, strobing blue and white across his jaw. His mouth keeps moving with orders and coordinates, but it’s all vapor. Meaningless. Because he’s looking at you now—at your neck.

You don’t move beyond a twitch. The specter pressure on your throat isn’t a memory, it’s present and incessant. And your mind, useless thing, rips his voice out of the Force. Not the one he’s using now, barking coordinates and drawing strategy into lines of glowing hues.

Your wailing ribs hear it. Your cracked lips. Your scarred neck, your bruised hips—you feel his words.

“Focus, Y/N.”

“I am.”

“Not enough. I know when your mind is drifting.”

“And you are perfectly centered?”

“I can still feel you. So yes, I’m centered.”

You reach for anger, but it laughs at you. What you grab instead is lethargic. You want to cover the mark, claw it until it’s a gruesome hole of jarred pearlescent blue cartilage.

His eyes drag to meet yours. And gods, it’s a war all over again. There’s a narrowing at the corners of his eyes—a pinprick of… pride?

Or hunger.

Or control.

Maybe that’s all he is. Whatever dual personality he has, it prefers possession to creed.

His voice recovers at a deafening rate, as if the lapse never happened: “—aim right above the fuel cells as we approach. Taking out the last of the transports is our first priority but not the most important. Once we make our way to the forward command center, and reconvene with—”

His voice doubles back to the filtered distortion of a general who once seemed genuine.

He’s making war sound effortless again.

Your feet move to the dropship because Anakin does. Stale metal underfoot, like the floor of a medical wing. The handgrips are overhead, swaying from the force of its engines spooling.

He stands across from you, his body pitching the way practiced bodies do. Voices drone together, muffled by helmets and readiness while the clones fill in, sliding into their places. One behind you murmurs about the drop altitude in a fatigued tone. Another responds but you don’t catch the words, only the sound of familiarity.

The hatch closes and all sound condenses to the low howl of gears. You feel each gust in your chest as if it were bullied to fit in.

Anakin grasps the overhead bar, his mouth close to the comm at his wrist. “You all know the plan. Keep your eyes open and don't get shot.”

How is he so… composed?

You nearly choke when a flashing red washes the inside of the dropship.

That color again.

“You should pay attention, padawan.“

His voice infiltrates; warping into your mind as if he’s said it right behind your ear.

“Yesterday’s mission, we went in blind. I was scattered. But now?”

His gaze flicks toward you through the blinking red.

“You should be proud, you’re the reason this one’s already won.”

Your mind doesn’t spiral, as spiraling would require motion.

This is stasis.

Your back teeth clack from the lift off before your stomach rolls, the ship tilting nose-down. Your core locks, and knees bow. A bead of sickly sweat rolls down your back, and you realize you’ve been holding your breath.

In through the nose, out through the teeth.

Again.

You taste vinegar—anger? Fear? Shame?

Anakin speaks into the coms again; it swims beneath the ocean of blood, muffled and clotted.

What did he say?

Your heels press against the metal floor, but your feet don’t hold you. The axis of your saber's hilt at your side is the only spine you have left. There’s no room inside you for anything but the will to get through this mission and back to the, now appetizing, redundancy that awaits in Koth’s study.

Contain. Contain.

Perfect.

The sound of war doesn't end when the battle does, it just gets tired. The wounded keep making the same cinched cries with less air inside them, their screams thinning into red.

Everything is red.

The hangar bellows around you, a carousel you’ve fallen off. Techs shout. Droids roll by. Medics split armor, talk rapidly, and pinch arteries closed with clamps that start clean but end drowned in red.

You haven’t moved in…how long? You don’t remember getting back to the hangar. The mission ended. You think it ended.

You can taste one, a memory, purple skies, and burnt ration bars. Someone else’s nostalgia that's too sweet for a day like this. It’s not yours, so it has to be his.

The clone’s jaw hit your shoulder when he fell.

That’s what you remember.

Not his name or the callout he gave before he threw himself forward. Slick, warm cartilage on your collar as he slumped against you while black smoke and blood poured from where his mouth should’ve been—that’s yours.

A line of officers disperses from the center of the hangar, their boots muted across the metal. A clone pats another’s shoulder. The debriefing must be over.

Your howling feet carry you down the service corridor, past rows of lazily stacked gear crates, and into the washroom behind the hangar's second bay. The shivering black walls line the washroom, lit by strips of white light above the row of mirrors and sinks.

You stagger to one of the sinks and lean forward, palms up. Rusty blood pools in the lines of your hands, sunken in the crescents of your nails.

I don’t feel like a Jedi.

Pink swirls in the basin from your hands as water hisses out of the faucet. The silence in your head is sudden and it makes your breath shake.

You watch the blood spin down the drain, before a jagged sting breaks your peace. You wince, looking closer as you rub your thumb along the edge. It snags so you dig at it.

It’s not a chip of armor or shrapnel. It’s—

You blink.

Again.

Again.

Chunks of mandible. Tiny pieces of the clone's jaw and skull, are inside you.

Your lips seal as you scrape in air.

Gravity clutches behind your knees, refusing to let you fall—so he must be close. And, right on cue; there he is. Framed, red-lit inside your periphery.

“Don’t,” you warn, without turning. Your voice is hoarse and foreign; maybe it’s the dead clones. “Don’t do that Jedi thing where you blanket it in purpose and protocol. Just—”

His voice cuts in, low. “Just what?”

One moment Anakin is a distant presence, and the next he’s a reflection. Scissors-blades lick through fabric and replace both your speech.

Where did he get those?

In the mirror, he’s soaked black and his tunic clings to an open wound. It slips from his torso as his saber lands on the sink's edge with a dull knock. Then his trousers drop enough to uncover the full wound: a yawning diagonal seam carved from navel to hipbone.

You steal small glances, regretting it.

His lean abdomen flexes when he breathes, the scar tissue tugging. Dried blood veins his hip, like rusty vines. The muscles spasm when he leans forward, trading the scissors for a sterile packet out of the medkit sitting inside the basin that he must have brought with him.

A thick old scar bisects the curve of his ribcage, raised and about an inch wide.

You pretend not to stare, digging with your nail again, trying to pinch out the shards. Your fingertips slip and scrape but none budge.

Ridiculous.

You’re a soldier now. Supposed to handle much worse.

You press harder. The world tunnels before detonating.

“Just get out,” you rasp, your nausea daring to rise. “Get out. Get out. Get—”

You, again, try to steady, but your heart has transferred to the bones in your palm. They drum with throbbing, bruising pulses. Your opposite arm roasts where a bolt grazed the tricep.

There’s too much happening.

Your nails slip and you probe harder this time, until your body jolts. Sound ricochets off the walls before you recognize that it came from your mouth.

“You’re going into shock,” he mutters.

“Don’t say it like that.” You gag, voice splitting. “Makes it sound less heroic.”

You glance toward his mirror.

His eyes are pinned to his open wound, a needle clenched in his bare blood-streaked fingers. It moves almost like a magnet to metal, his muscles jolting beneath each puncture, but he doesn’t stutter. There’s zero pain on his face, only concentration as a row of neat sutures glints, sealing his flesh in a mirrored shimmer.

That surely hurts.

You count eight stitches before your stomach pitches again.

He lays a pad of mesh over the seams, binding himself in practiced arcs—around his hip, waist, and ribs.

“Give it to me,” he says.

You scoff. “What, my hand?”

“Your weight.”

The sink blurs immediately as your knees give. You drop together, causing a swell of vertigo, as his arm hooks you from behind, locking across your ribs, while the other catches your wrist before you can hit the floor.

His knees drag up to bracket your hips, and he draws your body closer into the curve of him. Heat from his wound seeps through your back; the bandage tags against your shirt. His hand moves from your wrist to the underside of yours—bearing the bloodbath that is your palm.

You glance down and catch the shimmer of silver tweezers in his hand at your waist.

How did he know to grab those?

It doesn't matter.

Your legs are too irate to run, and your chest is way too full to argue; so you shut your eyes and tip the side of your head to his collarbone. Antiseptic rises from his wrappings, mingling with the blasterfire that lives in his sweat.

The tweezers slip in, and pain obliterates his incense. White fractures bloom behind your eyelids as the first fragment leaves your body with a wet click. It’s not giant or broad but it lands on the floor with a sound that could quiet a planet. No piece that small should damage your ego this much.

The tweezers realign, angling toward the next shard. There are many more—the bones of the hand are puny and selfish, there are simply too many places to hide inside them. He works surgically, his hands stable on your quivering one.

He must be used to this—cutting people open, and taking what never belonged.

No, this is pure thrill for him.

The respect of it. The control. The way a body slackens when he holds it.

Stop it.

This is not that.

This is medicine.

This is just survival.

But your mind sneers.

He brought me here. I didn’t want this.

The clones' dying groans still bounce around the curves of your brain.

I’m not a Jedi.

Not a soldier.

Not anything.

Anakin’s voice grazes the crown of your head, through the downward spiral you’re on.

“Say it, then.” The statement sounds like an order.

A thousand barbed insults come forward, only one survives your teeth. “That you brought me here to die.”

You halfway expect silence, but his fingers stop, tweezers clasped midair. Everything either burns or aches but no injury compares to the incessant pause between you two.

The gods of silence perch at the edge of their thrones; watching their imminent fall nearing.

“You think I—”

“I watched you keep walking,” you whisper. Your forehead stays huddled to his pulse, hearing it hammer as you attempt to swallow the taste of ash. “I watched you keep walking while I held his body in my arms.”

“You want to do this now?”

You do. You don’t. You do.

“He died on me. I was holding him, and you—”

“He was dead before he hit the ground.”

His words must have rearranged themselves on the way out of his mouth, they’re vicious to your ears. His eyes are already on you when you unfurl, shadowed but still unbearably blue. That impossible, crystalline blue that’s always colder the closer he gets.

“You don’t know that.” You force out, your tongue swollen around the words.

Multiple fragments rattle to the floor. You pinch your eyes shut at the noise.

It isn’t fair.

A fool’s complaint. The thought arrives childish in its laughable naivety but lands completely honest in the indisputable clarity.

Nothing about this is fair.

Not the war. Not the men bred to fight and die. Nor the twisted dynamic between you and the Jedi caging you. Certainly not the faint way Anakin can harvest another’s remains out of your flesh as if it were just another task, or suture his own without so much as a hiss.

“I do know that,” he insists, his voice strained in a way that tells you he's running on borrowed fumes. “And if I had hesitated—if I’d paused to think—every one of us would’ve died.”

Your skin is packed, lungs raw and full of someone else’s blood, and it’s his fault.

It’s always his fault.

“Is that what you wanted? For everyone to die while you clung to one soldier you couldn’t save?”

“Stop.”

"You want an apology? From me? I should’ve stopped everything for your tears—is that it?”

You don’t have the strength to keep your anger at bay and lingering on the clone’s death will end you. So you seize on another wound.

“Why did you bring me here?” The question rips out of you and he doesn’t stutter.

“I thought I made that pretty clear.”

He plucks the final shard free. Fresh blood wells, running in thin streams down your wrist before he wraps the wound, tying the end off so quick it looks thoughtless but the knot sits right where it should. You hardly notice the growing sting under it, and you don’t question where the wrapping came from. Your entire world narrows to him.

“Tell me—”

“I don’t trust anyone else with you.”

A brittle laugh escapes you, mostly hysteric.

“With me? Or of me?” Your jaw ticks while you fight the impulse to drive your elbow into his stitched side. “Why here—and not next to Master Koth?”

A moment passes, and his silence is enough.

This was never about your safety or the needs of war. It’s about control. It always has been. And control despises witnesses.

“I didn’t bring you here to lose you,” he says finally, his tone stripped of fury and any salve. “If I wanted that, you’d be dead. You’re here because there’s nowhere else you should be.”

The one truth calls for a flash of guilt; he could have killed you in the undercity, or left you behind in the field today and no one would have questioned it.

The memory of that clone’s, of that boy’s, open, trusting eyes flashes—that last fixed look finding yours as his chest fell—and beneath that memory, a different understanding rises: if you do nothing now, if you cede this moment, whatever’s left of you will be written in stone.

I won't let that happen.

You twist, climbing him before your smarter half can stop you, pressing into his lap. Your thighs tighten around him until your knees bite the grated floor. Your bandaged palm wedges between you, while his metal hand follows, like he had been waiting for this turn, before it finds place on his bare shoulder.

“Mercy,” your heart, alight with damaged pride, convulses your teeth. “That's the word you’re trying to describe.”

“Mercy?” His mouth curves, denial warping it. “What a strange word to hang on me.” His head tilts, gaze dragging to your mouth. There’s a line between restraint and indulgence you watch him balance on.

It makes the anger so much harder to hold.

“Has anyone taught you what love is, Y/N?”

Love?

Love belonged to parents, and to myths buried under temple creeds, not for soldiers or Jedi’s or whoever you are.

You don’t answer.

“True love,” he begins in your silence, the words too rich for the mouth it’s exiting, “decides for you. You don’t get to think or prepare. It chooses you—and it never lets go.”

Scorched ash returns to your tongue.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” you say, with no craft or clever undertone. “It doesn’t make sense.”

He exhales through his nose, an impatient, weary sound you’ve come to learn is irritation before his voice drops. “It’s not meant to.”

“Then—take it back.”

He lets out a dry huff. “That’s not how it works.”

“So lovers? Is that what we are?”

“Say it again.” His hand tightens at your thigh; deciding whether to be cruel or crueler. “See what happens.”

You want to run but your body locks, knees squeezing at his sides.

Abby once pressed her cheek into the flimsy mattress of your shared dorm, eyes sunny as she whispered that love meant being chosen. Lex laughed so hard she nearly rolled off her bunk, spitting that no one ever got chosen, only used. You’d stayed silent, staring at the ceiling, telling yourself that Abby just needed discipline, and that Lex was always bitter. You never questioned why your own thoughts fizzled at the topic. Now, the memory saturates into his warning.

If this isn’t love or hate then what is it?

“You’ve been hounding me with words made for common people ever since we met.” You snap, harsher than expected, and his eyes fix on yours. The stillness itself is another kind of grip, but it’s not tight enough to hold your breath any longer.

“You want to know what I see, General? It isn’t wisdom or generosity. All I hear clearly are your threats. Your voice and your words—“ Anger hisses out, half-delirious. “You won’t leave me alone, you won’t let me die, you won’t let me live—”

Your laugh breaks, too lofty and cracked.

“You’re sick.”

“I’m sick? Then what does that make you?”

Hysteria churns hotter, making each inhale grind. “Don’t twist this back on me. I didn’t ask for this.” The force of your speech leaves you shaking. Your palm beats, the bandage seeping through the cloth, leaving your grip on his shoulder to turn slick. Your right shoulder’s worse. The blaster-graze is an unwrapped sob, pain lancing every time you move, like the bolt is inside you. You taste charred meat.

Mine. My flesh is burning.

“I’m not your soldier, and I’ll never be your Padawan. I belong next to Master Koth.”

You lunge to stand, meaning to climb off. His hands climb, gripping your thighs down and your knees slam into the plating with a sharp pang.

“Try again.”

Like drills. Like a game.

Your heart batters, every muscle braced for flight. “Let me go, Anakin.”

He leans closer, cutting your plea in half. “No.”

Your chest heaves as fury comes frothing and full of smothered courage. You want Anakin ruined—split open like the boy was split in your arms, skull collapsing, and teeth dislodged with gums spraying fresh crimson. You want to bite through Anakin’s sweat-ridden cheeks until his gums fold and spray. You want him begging, the great Skywalker brought to his knees not by Sith or Separatist but by you; a girl too old, too late, too broken.

Fury wants blood—his, yours, anyone’s. It doesn’t care whose.

This is what your predecessors warned of, the way hate spreads so easily.

‘Your veins drum against bone, and your muscles tear from their moorings,’ They had said—but they were wrong.

A splenetic glow builds and bursts until your own body becomes hostile territory. Your head cracks forward before reason can stop it, your hold on his shoulder anchoring the strike. His nose folds under your brow with a crunch wet enough to temporarily satisfy the fury in your chest. His grunt runs against your mouth as blood mists across your face. A prismatic explosion follows behind, pain blooming across your forehead, making the whole room tilt.

Worth it.

When you try to stand again, seething, the dizziness leaves your body off balance and nauseated. You torque your hips and he corrects you without hesitation, as if he’s slotting a conduit back into place.

It’s not enough—wait.

His grip on your right thigh slips away, and in that instant you see freedom. Sangre drips in crooked creeks from his nose, like someone turned the body’s faucet on and forgot to close it. The back of his hand drags under it, revealing his proud grin, and smearing the red over his bruised cheekbone.

He’s made himself into a portrait in one, singular lazy stroke—and it stops you, as all amazing art does.

Stand! Stand! The chance to run is now—the door is right there.

He meets you through crimson-brushed lashes with that cocky look that reworks his whole face. “Finished?” he murmurs, the word licked with obscene pride.

Your mouth opens and closes. There’s no reply that doesn’t turn into sobbing or more violence.

You hadn’t picked a side that night, with Abby and Lex. You’d pretended neutrality was adulthood, letting the two drone on till the sun rose. But now your eyes fall on the liquid leaking from his nose as if you’ve seen a ghost, and neutrality shows itself for what it is: a lie.

Neither of them knew what they were talking about.

Call it disbelief or ignorance that keeps you from moving, either way, striking him and still being in one piece is paralyzing all on its own.

You barely remember his lifted hand until it tightens. His fingers sequence back down on your thighs, and a hum opens in him—a resonant note that cycles deeper than his throat. He shifts beneath you, a slow roll of muscle grinding your straddled body closer. Every motion is synced between his hands and hips, as if he could fuse you to him right here.

I know exactly where this is going if I don’t stop it.

A thought tries to surface and you shove it down. Another rises and you pack it lower. You bite your tongue until the sting punishes the wicked thoughts away.

“Remove your hands.”

“You don’t want that.”

“I want off your lap. I want to leave.”

The grin on his lips grows as his eyes flick to the door, then back. “Then stand.” His voice falls back into naming coordinates and dictating strategies. “The door hasn’t moved.”

The slight tilt of his head causes a fresh bead, painting a light arc down the drying smear as it finds his lip. The color is promising and foul and, Maker help you, absolutely captivating. It shouldn’t be —a wound is just a wound— but the color begins to mutilate the fragile laws inside you, the ones he’s already scratched out and rewritten.

“You heard me,” he taunts, “Stand.”

The washroom is the old hymn of fluorescent fatigue and blackened steel grating. The blood is an outlaw stanza written over it.

Your body lists forward; his hands correct a degree and you’re back where you started.

“You’re restraining me.”

“If I meant to restrain you, you’d know.” His voice doesn’t rise. “You’re in shock.”

Shock. There has to be a more honorable word to explain this.

There is a version of him that closes his hands around your throat and calls it teaching. There is also a version of you that lets him.

Maybe I should be thanking this version for the semantic upgrade.

“You’re insufferable.”

“No. I’m right,” he says, certainty plastered where other men's shame would be.

That’s almost honorable.

“There is nothing right about you.”

“There’s everything right about me,” Zero boasts, only more absolute certainty, which makes it so much worse. “And I always seem to be right about you.”

That’s what drives you mad.

Mad is generous.

“You’re impossible.”

His expression doesn’t veer as his voice cools. “You prefer me this way.”

Perhaps entitlement comes with the title Chosen One; he wears it well. You saw him at the holomap before the mission, how the clones leaned into the gravity of him. Your own legs had answered his stride like a habit. Pathetic. You want to be immune to him.

“Arrogant?”

“Accurate.”

Your nails dig into his shoulder, desperate for any kind of leverage. “I don’t want whatever this is.”

“You do.”

“I do no—”

“You do,” he proclaims again, relentlessly. “You don’t want a body count, that’s all.”

The truth supports your stomach's growing illness, while your ears crave the comfort of any kind of lie. The urge to obnoxiously cackle and give him your infection is tempting, but you swallow it. The laugh follows the coppery bile down while your tongue brushes the cut you gave it earlier.

“I’m not a piece of property or object you can claim. You don’t get to own me.”

“Ownership is for droids. You’re not a droid.” His crystal eyes travel, cruelly slow. “You are far more dangerous than that. You can disobey—and still, you don’t.”

What do I say to that?

“Maker, you love hearing yourself.”

“Maker,” he returns, with a dull tick of amusement, “so do you.”

He's not wrong. You’ve always enjoyed the click of clarity, especially now, considering it’s been missing since the club, but who doesn’t? Clarity is a soundless, tasteless narcotic.

His palm spreads over your thigh, not squeezing down, just reaffirming that your body is still atop him.

“You want off me?” His voice curls, low. He’s offering a substitute for clarity that reeks of iron.

I want to stay until you break in a way that will free me. I want….

“Say it,” he adds.

“Say what?”

“That you froze.” He doesn’t move when your eyes question him. “Admit it—and we’ll move on.”

Your pride works around the word, and memory struts in with an uninvited altruism: the tremble in the boy’s broken body, the way his chest tried to lift, the gurgling that couldn't have been speech and still begged you to answer. You can’t remember the last time you exhaled without shaking. Most likely, it was then.

The crimson on Anakin’s face has thickened into a lacquer, sealing a formal signature. You want to revel in the pride that it’s your signature drying across his face, but the part of you that respects art refuses any satisfaction.

How could I take credit for this mastery? This is all his doing.

There are worse admissions, but you seem to be collecting them all tonight.

“I held him,” your voice cracks out. It’s a fact you can carry without vomiting and one he can't say is untrue.

“You did,” he replies—and for once, his voice changes. Softer. “And then you stood, and followed every order I gave.”

Arguing with the chronology will do nothing. Telling him about the seconds that weren’t seconds but hours, how time turned to tar instead of water, will only lead to fat, pitiful tears.

“Stop using today to build this,” you fume, head dipping in a gesture to both of you. “I was hideous. My movements were sloppy. Today doesn’t count.”

“It counts,” his saw-toothed attention that split you open the first night continues slicing now. He moves—not out of reach but deeper into you. The urge to rip yourself off him capsulizes into a single swallow.

“I need you to stop,” you whisper, leaving the sentence suspended, as vast and senseless as today has been.

His stare flicks briefly to your mouth, before returning. “I tried,” he mimics your hush, and the way his voice is, it isn’t a gesture for pity. “You know I did.”

His right hand slides up your thigh, palm finding the crevice where your hip meets thigh, and his other follows. The stutter in your breath is small enough to hide inside, but your chest takes it as an order to align. Your back straightens, knees firm, and a bracing you didn’t consent to yanks your body.

“Try again,” your breath hits his lips, “please.”

He hears your please and answers in plain pulses that rub your clothed heat. His grip tightens by a hair, and his hips give a short grind that he reins in immediately. You feel the misstep and want to ignore it.

I should’ve been more specific. Please could mean anything—please don't kill me. Please stop touching me. Please leave me alone. Please fill me.

Every road you took bent back on itself and any further one will do the same.

Even my pleas loop back.

I’m out of tricks.

You take your new vocabulary—mercy, perfect, earned, love—and set them on the floor between you. Older phrases stir and die with them. There is no emotion. There is peace. In that hallowed carcass, it becomes obvious that these creeds were made in a time long before Anakin, and that’s exactly why they hold no merit here.

Your mouth parts, planning to say the ultimate argument-ending comeback that would end this whole farce, before the room begins to pivot and his hands shift up. They drag the hem of your shirt higher on your back, until the pads of his fingers run against your bare skin. It’s the tipping his touch always gives and the direction is never evident, till you hit the bottom.

He rubs circles into your spine, and you are... powerless. Exhausted.

You’ve blamed your body for mutiny since the very first night, and every night since, like it’s a separate entity. You didn’t chime in on Abby and Lex’s debate because the idea of love frightened you—because it meant you wanted it.

You flirt with the idea of hitting him again, but you’re too tired of broken things to fight and too furious to leave. That same cowardice stops you now. Yes, you are a coward. An undeserving coward. But no amount of foresight or reflection or calculation can prepare anyone for the all-knowing, all-powerful, Anakin Skywalker.

“Today counts,” His voice keeps its shutter, like he’s reciting scripts. “It counts more than any day you’ve lived. Today I saw your rage steady your hand better than peace ever will.”

His praise braids with his fingers as he raises your shirt past your waist. The fabric sticks where blood and sweat have glued it to your skin, peeling free in draws that feel more forceful than tearing would.

“Do you know how rare it is for obedience to win over grief?” He holds none of the grandeur he uses on clones or the Council; it’s private, and obscenely personal. “Do you know how few I’ve seen do it? How few could?”

“You think I want you for your pretty face? For what’s between your legs? Or your clumsy twirls with a saber?” He huffs out a small chuckle as your shirt lifts higher, the sear on your shoulder tugging the cloth as it passes over. “No. I save you because you obey, even as your soul revolts.”

Your throat swells with muted insults as he pulls the shirt over your head. He drops it aside without looking—a discarded meat-suit—and you’re left bare from the waist up, save for the thin wrap binding your chest.

“You think this pain is yours alone?” He asks, not skipping a beat, as his hold migrates. Gold fingertips scrape against the small of your back, pulling you forward until your palms find the old terrain of his shoulders, and his arousal presses against you again.

“Do you know how many commanders I’ve buried because they mistook stubbornness for courage?” His voice dips lower, human hand finding your thigh once more, quickly climbing to your naked hip. “How many rotted on nameless worlds because the council is too blind, too afraid, to send me?”

He continues, each word punctuated with the smooth trace of his thumb across your hip, grazing the lower band of your pants.

“I know better. Better than the council.” He tightens, bringing you back to his lips. “I know what a soldier can take and what they can't. You, Y/N, can take more than any of them. You're not just a Padawan. Not just—you are more than that, little one. You have so much power—”

Power.

“I thought I was just an outlet—the perfect distraction.”

They escape you the same way they had him weeks ago but instead of his profane growl, you confessed them. It makes him pause before an indulgent grin darkens his crimson lips.

“A beautiful face,” he repeats, “but just an outlet.” His fingers keep their tracings along your hip, patiently. “You remembered.”

His head tilts, and you find each wrinkle the new angle allows beside his eyes, daring for a hint of compassion behind those cerulean disks.

"If you want to be used,” he states, “I’ll be there. If you want to be owned, I’ll be there. And if you want the anger, fear, and stubbornness taken out of you—” his voice seems to catch, for a breath, “—I will be there.”

His pupils dilate as they canvas your face and his tone never puts on the Generals' attire he’s worn several times throughout this argument; it’s a much glassier suit. “And when you crawl back to your lectures in Master Koth’s hollow cave once this ship lands, I won’t follow.”

Compassion, if that’s what this is, at last.

The lights blink their indifferent white eyes as the ventilation jeers in a bruising laughter. Inside this theatre of mechanical derision, his offer takes on a literal form, making rings of sound that encase the two of you.

‘If you want to be used, I’ll be there. If you want to be owned, I’ll be there.’

A vow? A cursing?

Regardless, there’s no intention of release.

There’s no version where he isn’t waiting and him genuinely stopping is impossible now—he’s proven that.

It’s an endless cage.

“Even when I walk away,” You give, voice wrecked, “you’ll still be there.”

His grin fizzles and he lets out an exhausted breath, leaning back. He studies your face again, the furrow of your brow down to your pinched mouth, with an appreciation that feels centuries too late for this conversation.

“I will never love you, Y/N.”

He whispers, finally, with the softest lull he's ever managed. “Not the way you imagine. But I will give you more than what safety or sanity can. You can't ask me to leave you. Because I won’t. Run,” His eyes, those feverish blue orbs, lower to your mouth. “And I will bring you back. Do you understand me?”

No, no I don’t.

“Why lie to me?” The question leaks out quieter than you intended, making you shift your weight.

You watch his shoulders slack and realize he’s been wearing armor this entire conversation, only now is he stripping the pieces off. “You asked me to try again. This is what it looks like.”

You feel your own chest constrict as he divulges. “I tried after the club, after the council meeting, and I’m trying again now—in here. Softer than you deserve.”

He’s suffering from the pressure that’s been building too.

The blood on his nose has slowed to a weep, leaving thick ruby lines from his bridge to his chin. The sight, so violent and genuine, makes you unconsciously catalog it in its new state.

“‘Trying again’ is supposed to mean progress,” you push out, your voice as brittle as the parchments back in Master Koth's office. “It’s not supposed to be… more of the same.”

Across the room, behind you, the open medkit lifts from the sink and glides toward the two of you.

“You’re asking for something that isn’t real.”

He releases you, reaching for a bottle of antiseptic and a fresh roll of gauze from the now grounded medkit by his side.

“A world where I don’t want you.”

That’s… not what I’m asking for.

Or is it?

Do I want him to want me?

I want the Temple. I want to study dusty books. I want to debate philosophy with Lex and listen to Abby’s daydreams. I know I want a world without red. I want to be bored again…

Right?

“You’re still in shock.” He observes, with his factual lilt.

He’s absolutely right. The tremor in your hands against his shoulders is a frantic Morse code of today’s toll. When you start to pull away, his hand intercepts yours mid-flight, dropping the gauze and antiseptic. Gently, he guides your trembling fingers to the bridge of his nose—pressing them against the crooked cartilage.

“Feel that?” He murmurs, almost proud. “You did that.”

You feel the swollen ridge, the kick beneath the nascent bruise, and the sticky tack of drying blood. His hand falls away, leaving your fingers stranded on the cracked wound until your hand falls, fingertips absentmindedly trailing lower.

“I won’t apologize for it,” he utters against you, his hot air skating your fingerprints. “Not for taking you. Not for wanting you. They taught you to sever and starve yourself of anything that doesn't serve them. I’m only…” A deep breath, his chest rising and grazing your elbow, “…giving you a feast.”

You trace the blood to his jaw, your thumb brushing the stubble there. It’s oddly secret, the sensation of cooled blood on his flesh, and the way his head trustingly tilts back, exposing his neck.

Power. This is power.

“Do you enjoy seeing me bleed for you, little one?”

The question—the vibrations it sends crawling up your spine. His crimson. The pressure from his confined length—it all melts together until you can’t tell where revulsion ends and curiosity begins.

You are a ship with a dead engine, coasting in the debris field of your own making. He is the only star left in your sky. A black hole, but a star nonetheless.

His metal hand returns, resting over yours, and he leans forward until your thumb hovers over his lips. Twin pools drown you while his tongue draws the tip of your thumb past his lips, your other fingers folding naturally to cup his jaw.

He—Maker, he enjoys this.

The entire world is shrunken to the washroom’s unforgiving spotlight on his face and the foreign heat inside his cheeks. His pupils have blown, swallowing the blue until they’re no different from impact craters as he hums around your thumb, and the noise dances between your hips.

Gravity cracks your jaw, leaving your lip parted once again.

I can’t feel my knees.

Your thumb slips out, shiny and wet, resting along the curve of his plump bottom lip as an ugly yet candid equality blossoms within the lassitude you two have sown. There’s no balance here, only the rhythm of two people who don’t know how to stop colliding with each other, and in it, clarity takes place.

The club was the only time I let myself want.

You’ve been choking yourself on silence, gargling routines, and idolizing restraint until your ribs eroded from the effort of holding it all in.

So that’s why they sang when he touched them.

Your mind travels—back through the cargo bay’s metal, through the endless nights spent in freezing dorms. You see the mess hall, your friends across from you, all forcing the same tasteless paste down. You feel the pop in your knuckles from gripping a training saber too tight.

Then faster, spooling forward through the many compact dorms and cold sheets, you see yourself standing before destiny itself; tall, damning.

And then—this.

This rot infecting you—this fatal acclimation.

Years and years and years and more years.

“You’ve starved yourself long enough, let me feed you.”

Red cracks back into the edges of your vision with his words—splintering itself through the seams of the room, the walls, into him—his eyes, his throat.

The color isn’t signaling danger or warnings anymore.

Contain—No—No—I want to want.

That’s the difference between before and now.

Before, you’d flinch—Preserve. Conserve. Contain.—

Now, you lean in.