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wickedwitchofthegalaxy · 1 month ago

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☞𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒞𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝒶 𝒩𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝑅𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒☜︎

☠︎ 𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝒾𝓋𝑒: 𝒮𝓊𝒷 𝑅𝑜𝓈𝒶 ☠︎

𝒫𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔: 𝑨𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏(𝑪𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒔)𝑿 𝑭𝒆𝒎𝑷𝒂𝒅𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒏!𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: 18+, DEAD DOVE🕊️, Non-Con, Power Imbalance, Rough Sex, Dirty Talking, Emotional Manipulation, Obsessive Behavior, Coercion, Mild Blood/Injury, Degradation/Praise, Toxic Dynamics

𝒲𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓃𝓉: 6.9K (Tehe🤭)

𝒮𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎: What happens here will not be spoken of, but it will leave its mark.

𝒩𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈: I’m super excited but also lowkey terrified to share this chapter with you. It’s darker and a bit more intense than before. This was definitely a… complicated chapter to write. Never hesitate to leave a comment, I love hearing from ya’ll. ☺️

Banners by @cafekitsune !

Enjoy🖤

Your instructors told you war happened on the front lines, in bursts of fire and blood. With screams caught between blaster bolts and the split-second calculus of who would die first. This was a more isolated war. This war followed you down steel hallways and gave instructions in a voice so smooth, you mistook it for mercy.

“Left,” Anakin ordered behind you.

Below your boots, the drone of the ship prospers louder, droids move cargo with clanking limbs, and console panels blink rhythmically along the walls.

You turn.

The stairwell yawns downward, and each step sends a sharp jolt through your feet. The alien metal ridges nibble at your soles, the ship reminding you who it belongs to.

You pass a pair of troopers exchanging low banter, one laughing about something you can’t hear. He glances at you.

Doesn’t look again.

“Do they know you drag people down here,” you toss over your shoulder, the rungs of your voice catching on the words as they drop, “or am I getting special treatment?”

It stings, but you push it. Your skin is thick enough.

You can handle this.

This game you’re playing now, it’s the only one you’ve got left. The trick of dominance. The magical delusion that if you say the right thing, smart enough, keen enough, maybe you can tilt the scales.

“Again,” he announces, his voice chipped. “Left.”

You hesitate.

You don’t know what your foot does next; only that it forgets how to be a foot for a second. Your cadence breaks, and your step glitches. A vessel faltering around its sown chagrin, its dread sewn tight behind the knee.

You don’t have to obey.

You could stop. Here, now.

You could, right?

You could turn and cry out, let the accusations blister up from your throat and scald the walls. You could shatter the neat order of this damned metal cage. You would be unapologetic.

They’d hear you.

But what then?

Would they step in? Tell him what he’s doing is wrong? Draw their blasters?

No… they wouldn’t.

You know what name is stitched into the history of this war, of their loyalty.

It isn’t yours.

If they came running, especially if they came running, how would you explain this?

That you followed? That you obeyed, again and again, until your own limbs stopped trusting you?

You don’t have a clean sentence to give them.

There is no bleeding wound to show the medics. No bruised lip to press into a report, nor would there be a soul on this ship that would believe its origin. You don’t have the wording to explain that kind of fear. No description that would fit on a report, no line item that says the silence was a cry.

You don’t have any proof.

Deep within your intestines, where the glare of your defiance rests, that sparks it more than anything else.

Your fingers twitch.

You turn.

Behind you, the pause lengthens, and he, of course, fills it.

“You’re scheming,” he begins, almost like it pleases him. “You’re trying to decide what would happen if you stopped walking.” He answers as if he already knows the flavor of your rebellion. Like it’s a delicacy he’s swallowed and dined on for years.

You flinch, but it’s internal, visceral, gaping, a sliver of memory in the folds of your gut pulling tight like it’s bracing for a blow.

“You want me to tell you?” he asks, his tone delicately barbed.

You try to breathe.

Calm. Control. Focus.

But your chest doesn’t expand; it locks. Your ribs feel like scaffolding; you, a building half-destroyed from the inside out.

“Would you like me to describe what happens next?”

The cadence of his song coiled incantations into your skin.

Don’t turn around. Don’t let him see it on your face.

Your throat tightens. Your body does the strange thing it always does in moments like this: Preserve. Conserve. Contain.

You pull your energy inward, flatten your rage, and tuck your panic into a corner of yourself that doesn’t move. That won’t tremble.

It won't last.

“Stop,” he orders, and you freeze mid-step.

He doesn’t give you time to question it. “Go ahead. Scream. Run. Cause a scene,” he pushes, daring you. You can feel the frigid amusement in his eyes on your back. He's expecting the worst, and wishing for it.

You could cause a scene, you should.

His voice slides back into your ears with menace clotting the letters.

“Before you do,” he adds, and these letters come out darker. A command. “Look around you.”

You make yourself turn your head, your pulse thumping painfully. Every panel along the wall blinks at a beat you can’t keep track of. The clones, those soldiers who you followed around halls similar to these a thousand times, now stare straight ahead, rounding you on either side and pretending not to notice the two of you stopped in the center of the walkway. The droids drift past without a peek. But then there’s a flicker.

One of the clones. His visor is lifted, face visible; young and very tired. He locks eyes with you as he passes. For a heartbeat, he sees you. Yet, the moment his eyes scan behind you, they jerk away, and he too passes you. And then another.

And another.

Anakin steps in closer. You can feel it, the change in pressure before his body even brushes near. A new gravity.

You hear the smirk as he whispers the last words you want to hear.

“They’re afraid of me,” he states, not as a secret but as a low-slung truth.

“Look at them.”

Your eyes move on instinct.

None of theirs meets yours. Not one. The ones that glimpse your way avert just as fast like they’d seen something they weren’t meant to.

“None of them will look me in the eye. They don’t see you,” he says. “Not truly. They’re pretending not to.”

“You could scream,” he starts again, and the sound falls inward, like water down a well with no base. “You could run. But none of them will help you.”

There’s nothing uncertain in it, no trace of doubt, and he waits to let it settle.

They’re not going to save you.

It’s not a question anymore. It’s reality.

“You’ve got five seconds,” he warns, veiled barbs now pricking.

He’s tired of pretending you have choices.

“Decide your path.”

You want to spit an insult back, something bright with venom. But nothing comes. You’re not even sure what language you speak anymore.

There’s rage, but it’s disoriented.

Fire without a direction.

You don’t have to obey. You can fight back.

But your voice is caught someplace profound, chained next to the vertebrae where your dignity lies. And when you try to conjure the scene, your body turning abruptly, your hands a weapon, throat open, you see a version of yourself that doesn’t move. Not paralysis. Absence. The image slips, half-formed, like a dream dissolving. You see static as if your body’s been erased from the moment.

“I’m not angry,” he murmurs, with that infuriating calm he wears as armor. There’s a smile just beneath like he’s humoring more than denying the idea. “This?” he tells, as if he’s clarifying for your sake. “This isn’t anger.”

“You’ve seen me angry,” he clips in, tone dipping like the stillness before a scream, lullaby-sweet but soured.

You have.

That’s the problem.

You know the distance between this and fury; this is worse.

Because this is control. This is him letting you think he hasn’t already decided how this ends.

You swallow. Or try to. It riddles halfway down.

Behind you, steel boots clatter over metal. A voice crackles through a comm link, blurred and indistinct. From above, there’s a burst of laughter.

Life continues.

“Four,” he states.

You grip your forearm. Dig your nails in.

He’s taken everything. Every choice. Every shred of control.

He’s stolen it.

“Three.”

You flinch, and something in him catches on it, either his satisfaction or his sorrow. Maybe both. The lines blur so effortlessly now.

The ship thrums around you, boards blinking like false sentinels as if they’re trying to warn you, or watching. A clone passes. Doesn’t glance. Doesn’t blink.

Anakin steps in again, and the world seems to slope on its axis.

“Two.”

His voice, there’s a split in it, vulnerability cracking inside him mid-word. Not much and not visible, but there.

Your heart should be faster. It’s not. It’s delayed like it’s listening instead of pumping. You feel your hand fall from your arm. You don’t remember telling it to. It’s the smallest movement. But enough. Enough to halve the suffocating stillness.

He notices. Of course, he notices.

“You think I want to count?” The words spill tighter now, like pressure seeping out of him through a seam he can’t seal. “You think this is the lesson I want to show you?”

“I tried to let you go. I tried to leave you alone. I tried to do the right thing. I tried—”

He cuts himself off, voice snagging on the words like they hurt coming out. The space between you sags, like a bridge too long without repairs.

You’re too quiet. Too still.

He exhales once, sharply through his nose, as if it costs him. Like you’re costing him.

"This isn’t about punishment," he breathes, voice sliding thinner, more frantic. "It’s not discipline. I’m not training you."

A pair of clones pass across the upper walkway. One taps a comm. The other checks his weapon.

Neither of them looks down.

"This is about keeping you."

He says it plainly as if it should clarify everything. Like it’s enough.

The word is coming. You can sense it in your bones, vibrating up through durasteel plating, collecting in your spine.

“One—”

Your foot recalls how to move.

Not both. Just one. A twitch forward, like your body’s hauling itself up from a grave.

The word dies on his tongue, unfinished.

The dread inside you feels rehearsed. Your body sets into its marks, each muscle moved by some forgotten script you are bound to, obedience disguised as instinct.

“That’s it.”

It’s a line you’re not certain if he’s telling you, or himself.

Regardless, the words cram your chest with a warmth you won’t dare address. You don’t even consider giving it an ounce of introspection.

You endure a single step, then another, the rhythm falling into place.

“Keep going,” he mutters, and you catch the command returning to his voice. “Not much further.”

He doesn’t rush you again. He watches, content in the knowledge that you’ll do precisely what he’s asked.

You hate this.

The walls ooze indifference, and the air grows denser the farther you go. Saturated with burnt oil and the scent of metal shavings. Overhead lights flash repeatedly as you pass beneath them, sputtering against the recycled air, their dim, sallow light resisting the dark.

A common enemy.

This part of the ship doesn’t feel like the others. No console panels. No shuffling of clones. No droids. Just welded grating, exposed piping, and a low, soulless whine bleeding through the passageways like it’s alive and sobbing.

You can feel it drive into your blood, its pulse in sync with your vibrating heart.

Locked hatches and thick mechanical joints of sealed doors line either side.

This is where things are stored until they’re needed again.

Or never.

You wonder, briefly, if you'll be part of the forgotten things down here.

You speak without turning your head. “Is this where the other distractions all went?”

A pause. The kind you recognize instantly because it means he’s debating with himself.

Anger licks up your throat.

“I’m not your secret to stash away,” you state, harsher now. But your voice doesn’t plug the corridor the way you expect. And then, behind you; half scoff, half exhale. It’s not quite laughter or disbelief, it’s vacant.

“You think I’d hide you?” The words tow behind your steps, as he keeps a steady pace. “That’s not what this is.”

You don’t change your speed, but you listen. Your entire body is on edge to hear his next sentence. It’s infuriating.

“This place doesn’t matter, it's an unused space where no one else gets to look or guess or laugh about things they don't understand,” he continues, “Why are you acting so immature? You did the hard part for me, now no one will question why you’re bruised and shaking when you walk back in.”

His voice stretched out past your skin and found the dish of your vertebrae. You keep moving, despite your spine wanting to spring. Wanting to curl.

The hallway feels smaller than it is; it narrows as the main path gives way to a pressure-sealed junction. There are cleaner welds here, newer lights, but still unmarked. Still buried.

You stop in front of a sealed hatch.

Behind you, his boots halt too. He steps forward, and your head straightens. The moment wrinkled, like time bent a knee to him.

What just happened?

“You want to keep wearing this act of being scared, Y/N? Fine.”

His hand lifts mid-sentence, skimming the access panel. A low chime responds to his presence, and the hatch opens with a groaning hiss. A ruddy light bleeds out in strips across the floor from the opening to your feet, flowing wider as the door parts.

“Be afraid that I haven’t changed—that I don’t want to.” He’s closer, and your mind starts to buzz, a familiar numb yet present impression taking over.

“You want to fear me?” He leans in, his words growing large and reshaping law as you know it.

“Fear that I’ve stopped pretending I don’t need this, and I won’t do anything to get it.”

There isn't a second to move before he shoves you forward.

Your body crashes into the threshold with the sound of metal greeting skin. You instinctively try to catch yourself on the chilled floor, hands splayed, knees jarred.

It isn't clean here. It isn't warm.

You breathe in: coolant, scorched wiring, and grease. A chemical rot where nothing circulates.

Above you, a single bulb sways like a body hanging from a noose, casting red lines across the foundation, and humming with a frequency just off enough to bother the teeth in your head.

Your palms sting and your left is slick. Oil or blood, or both. You don’t look.

Your knees ache. Not from the fall, but from the way they stay planted. Your body understands; do not stand. Not yet.

You hate that.

You hate how natural this all feels.

You shift to sit upright, slower than you want, elbows trembling. Because it’s cold. That’s all. Not fear. Just temperature.

The door hisses closed behind you. Not a slam. A seal.

You keep your eyes trained on the wall.

You already know where he is. He’s an excessive pressure behind your eyes as if he's mapped into your nervous system. Every cell aware.

The silence carries. You expect him to move. To speak again or gloat.

He doesn’t.

Why didn’t you run?

Because you don’t know this ship? No.

Because you had no choice? Closer. But not it.

Because some hideous, blistering part of you wanted to feel him again?

Bingo.

“Is this… what you had planned?”

“Planned?” he echoes, and it’s not really a question. It’s a taste, foam, and corrosion. “No. I tried not to plan this. I gave you space. I let him have you for a while. I tried to be better.”

I let him have you for a while.

The audacity. The ownership buried in the words, offered like a gift.

You swallow down the spike of stomach acid.

“I told myself I wouldn’t do this,” he tells, above you, like he’s delivering a eulogy. “I swore I’d keep my distance.”

You hear him strip his gloves off, one finger at a time.

The leather creaks.

“You should’ve heard the promises I made.” His voice files like it's being shaved down to something barely manageable. “To the Council. To P—”

He cuts the name off like it burned him and exhales. Almost a laugh.

“Didn’t matter.”

Whose name was he about to say, and what promises were made?

You don’t dare look back. Can’t. Because the heat in your gut is already curving into a shameful knot.

You shouldn’t feel this.

You shouldn’t…

But it’s not new, is it? It’s just undeniable now.

You brace, but it doesn’t help.

You feel his knees frame your back. Wide. Grounded. His boots set apart just far enough to box you in; not touching or grazing, but unmistakably there.

His hand, uncovered now, skin warm and wrong, hooks under your chin.

Your breath stalls.

You don’t lift your head. He does it for you.

Anakin’s arm is wrapped around from behind, elbow locked to his side, using the weight of his stance to tilt your face upward. His body doesn’t press into you but looms just shy of your back.

His cloak is open, parted like a veil around either side of your shoulders. The light wags, slicing the enclosure into bands of shadow and ichor. A gash of light runs along the underside of his jaw, gleaming the faintest stubble on his throat and the hollow just beneath it.

The sharp line of his nose casts a long cloud over your mouth. His cheekbones, usually elegant, and noble, now jut like cliffs from his skull. Sweat has gathered at his hairline, intertwining a few strands against his temple, darker and wetter than the rest.

The blood rays daub his eyes like wounds. You see them from beneath, those skyless cyan irises clouded and cracking. His stare is a much greater consequence than his touch. His expression, it’s not wild. It’s worse than wild.

It’s starving.

There it is again.

You had nearly buried this feeling.

Not submission, obedience comes naturally now. It’s that same muscle-deep urge, wreathed between fleeing and understanding. A soundless, dishonorable abidance you can’t name without flinching.

“I didn’t mean for it to go this far,” his tone has no business being soothing, yet it lathers across the room like honey over warm toast. “But the second they handed you off to him, knowing the bond we share, as if you weren't meant to be at my side—”

You don't need to see his jaw muscles flex; the proximity allows you to feel it in your skull.

From this angle, you capture the movement in the cut of his neck, the hard line twitching just under his skin. It shifts his entire face, sets one cheekbone higher, and darkens the stage of his mouth until he doesn’t look like himself.

Except he does. This is Anakin. This has always been Anakin.

“You thought I forgot about you?”

It’s an arterial laceration, a carefully placed first cut in a creed of oaths.

“I should’ve.” His voice kinks, the trembling escaping in the small caverns of the syllables. “I should’ve pulled it out by the root. You. Every trace of you.”

The thought had crossed your mind that you’d been a moment. That he’d blinked and let you go. You expected the Council meeting to snap him out of it, shock him back into his right mind.

Maybe that would be the end.

You were exceedingly mistaken.

“You want to know what I’ve been doing while he’s been wasting your time in that archive?”

He doesn’t wait for your answer, the guise of patience has depleted. His breath comes once and he speaks again.

“I’ve been undoing every reason I had not to touch you.”

Your eyes clench shut.

If you see his, words will spill; words you'll regret later.

“Look at me.”

You don’t.

Not fast enough.

His grip closes, but doesn't hurt, it isn’t meant to. You gasp without sound.

“I said,” he cuts in, closer now, “look at me.”

Your lashes lift.

He’s there.

Not angry. Not yelling.

But gone, his restraint dwindled to ash.

His lips barely move. “There you are, good girl.”

His words shouldn’t land like that. They shouldn’t ease your shoulders.

What is this feeling?

This nuisance that turns shame molten. That eats at the only piece of you that remains sane. Their little whispers in your head turn to screams.

You're smarter than this, stronger than this, you should claw your way out.

A Jedi would.

Your actual voice should protest. Your actual limbs should fight. But neither move. You’re not afraid of him. You’re afraid that you aren’t afraid at all.

The next noise is more subtle. Not speech. Not breath. A pruned click. You realize it's his teeth tapping once, against the inside of his lower lip. Unconscious. Edged. Regretful.

It shouldn’t mean anything.

It's a sound that doesn't mean anything.

He's been above you for a lifetime. Long enough for the swelter to rise and stay trapped between his body and yours.

You remember that heat. It doesn’t belong in you. It’s not the calm of meditation or the clarity of the Force, it’s a breach. A wrongness curling down in your abdomen. It tugs at your soul like hunger, but not for food, not for peace.

He tips his head the barest degree. The cartilage in his nose creaks, inaudibly, but you see it in the way one nostril flares broader than the other. His lips part again, not to speak. Just to breathe.

When he finally does speak, it’s in the leeway between drags of air. Almost like he doesn’t want you to know which exhale it came from.

“There are things I’ve done,” he whispers, “to try to forget what it felt like to be inside you.”

The words aren’t thrown. They’re released.

He smiles or tries to.

His grin doesn't lift his face; it’s the kind that drags at one corner, like something is unraveling inside. A single canine glints through the split, catching the blood light just as it breaks across the plane of his face.

“I’ve burned hours in sparring drills I didn’t need. I’ve repeated the Code so many times it doesn’t even sound like words anymore.”

He swallows, listless and dry.

“I’ve meditated for hours,” he continues, “with your voice in my head and my hand wrapped tight around my cock—”

A pause. Not for effect. For composure.

“I can't stop hearing how you sounded when I pushed you open.”

Corruption and manipulation are nonexistent in his voice. That one, that one is a confession.

A truth.

And when your eyes tinge, just slightly, his lashes descend. A racing bead of sweat has made its way down his neck now, catching in the recess where his collarbone disappears beneath his robe.

Anakin’s hand, still tucked tightly beneath your chin, adjusts slightly. Not to lift. To feel. The pad of his thumb shifts to the curve just below your bottom lip, where your skin is delicate.

He doesn’t press.

You feel the pause in him, waiting, wondering if you’ll cower. You don’t. You know you should. That would be the smart thing to do. The right thing.

Perhaps even the safe thing.

‘Safe’ ceased in meaning to you. If it ever had one, you're not sure. Not when it comes to him.

“Say something,” he murmurs, and though it’s scarce, it isn’t an order. It’s softened like it’s not meant to be heard.

For a split second, you nearly do.

A brilliant and cruel retort. Your tongue is sharpened by years of experience in the great arts of insults. You could cut him down and make space between your skin and his heat. You could remind him of the mission. Of the Order.

Yet there’s a chunk taking refuge in your throat.

Lodged behind your teeth and gums; connected to the pits of your stomach.

You remember how it felt, too. How he sounded.

Silence, at least, lets you pretend this chunk is absent.

But then a darkness dresses behind his voice.

That strange duality of him; you remember this as well. The speck of vulnerability suppressed under a far more famished appetite.

His thumb rises, tracing the boundary of your lip once, slowly. Your traitorous lips part, but you say nothing. He inhales again, pointed this time like your speechlessness cut him.

“No,” he corrects, voice rougher now. “Don’t.” The two words land with prejudice; one part blessing, the other warning.

He’s telling you not to ruin it. The illusion that you want this, that you always have, could still hold if you stay quiet a moment longer.

“I have few words for how you feel,” he murmurs, head dipping. His nose grazes your temple, not a kiss, but intimate enough to make your skin weep.

His hold changes.

His hand slides from under your chin, but not without tracing the column of your throat first. It snakes around the front of your throat, palm flat, thumb pressing below your jaw, tilting your head back further.

“You feel like betrayal,” he mutters, closer now, his voice folding into the smooth niche behind your ear and blooming down your nerve endings.

He's crouched, his knees spread just enough for you to settle between them. Your lungs draw in as his metal hand finds your shoulder and drags. He wrenches you back against his legs, tighter, aligning your body where he wants it.

There’s a reason you trained. A reason you were attentive when the superiors lectured about attachments. You learned to handle the rise of appetite without seeking food, anguish without chasing relief, and loneliness without pursuing touch. You learned discipline in solitude. You listened. You obeyed.

What was all the training for?

With one word from his mouth, it’s all erased. One tip of your head, one breath in your ear, and you’re frayed as if you were never trained, like you were constructed for this instead.

For him.

No.

No, that’s not true.

You shouldn’t let this happen.

You shouldn’t.

You whisper his name. A diminutive, broken sound. The final trace of your sanity trying to surface before he pulls you under completely.

“There you are,” he whispers again. “My girl.”

He releases your throat and snakes into your hair, yanking it back, and with his steel hand, he moves your torso, bending it forward just slightly. Just enough to tell your body what comes next.

His thigh presses forward behind you, nudging your knees wider, and anchoring your hips in place.

You hate the part of yourself that arches into his touch. That embraces the positioning, the claiming. That goes flexible, not in dread, but in readiness.

Your body knows this version of him. Too well.

“You dream about me?” he rasps, again not waiting for an answer. “Because I dream about you. Ruined. Sobbing. Still begging for more.”

Ruined—and your center contracts like it wants the damage.

Sobbing—and your lungs seize, filled with too much air, too little dignity.

Begging—and it settles in your hips with a familiar welcome.

You let your spine relax. Not because your mind gave in, but because everything else inside you already has.

He exhales, and it tastes like vindication.

He knew this part of you before you did.

That makes you physically nauseous.

You despise that your knees haven’t buckled in objection.

You loathe that you're still on them, back against his chest, pliant, pliable, willing.

He pushes his chest against your back, solid. There’s no room to breathe, no space to move. His hand slips down your body, metal fingers slick as they trace the outline of your waist.

You want to move, to fight this.

Instead, you feel your chest snare when he changes positions behind you, his fingers curling tighter in your hair as he tugs your head back to expose the bend of your throat.

“You knew,” he says. “Back in that hall. You knew what this would turn into.”

What you don’t know is if you’re trembling from fear or something else, maybe both, but he senses it. He always senses it. And it only makes him move closer.

“You’re not even bleeding yet, pathetic.”

Your knees scrape the floor as you’re tugged, then shoved, your forearms catching your weight. The angle forces your spine to curve as his hand remains knotted in your hair.

You want to scream. You want to resist, to wail, but you don't.

The words slip from your lips, faded and flimsy, “I hate you.”

He doesn’t need to answer, the way he drags you back against him with one swift motion tells you everything you need to know. His other hand slides around your waist, fingers digging into your flesh with no intention of letting you go.

“You hate me,” he declares, a breathless, unstable smirk in his voice. His hand wanders lower, pressing firmly into the fabric of your pants, rubbing what’s underneath. “Is this what hate makes you feel?”

The words are a vicious twist, trickling with ridicule and mockery. His metal fingers rub against you in the most intimate, violating way. You tremble at the sensation, disgust swirling in your chest.

“I hate you,” you breathe, the repetition lurching past your lips before you can stop it.

You want to believe the statement, to connect to it like a lifeline, but the sum of your body betrays you.

“Liar,” he whispers.

Click

You don’t feel the phantom limb of compliance, but the moment you see stainless steel in his fist, the world ruptures. His metallic hand glides from your core to the hilt of your saber.

He holds it out, the polished cylinder’s fresh grip gaping at you with a cheated blood glow.

Two days.

Forty-eight hours of owning that thing, and you’d barely looked at it.

Two long days of page-turning and taciturn disappointment. Of pretending the endless archaic words fed you like combat might have. The saber had felt like a prop, a congratulatory relic earned in name only.

You’d shown Lex and Abby like you were shucking back your skin, exposing weeping tissue. Not pridefully. You offered it up like a wound before it scabbed, just to see if they’d flinch. But they hadn’t. They’d lit up, lit you up, their awe adequately drowning the second-guessing, tugging you into the courtyard with bare feet and joy on their lips.

They pulled you into the plaza and called it amazing. Called you amazing.

That was the only time the saber had felt like yours.

Their splendor pressed into your skin like daylight against a bruise. You could almost believe it then, that this path had been carved for you, not around you, that you were becoming someone to be amazed by.

“Most Padawans sleep with their sabers the first night,” he tells, almost conversational. His hand knots tighter in your hair. You can’t move. Can’t look away. “They light them in the dark. Learn the sound. The weight.”

He lifts it slightly, and the hilt grazes your upper arm. It’s rigid, foreign.

“But not you,” he murmurs. “Too busy pretending to be something else.”

The red bulb overhead flickers once. Anakin stares at your saber, rolling it in his hand.

His thumb brushes the ignition.

He won't—

Snap-hiss

The green blade splits the room. Not emerald, not jade, a more brutal color, like acid flash-frozen midair. It bleeds green across your thighs, across your knuckles as you brace yourself. The light saturates the crimson in the room, bursts the gloaming into slats.

He brings it near your throat.

“They make you build them,” he continues, his voice hushed, as if the blade has made him holy. “So you’ll respect the weapon. So it’ll respond to your touch.”

The ignored chunk blocking your airway is gone, replaced by a dryness. The light licks against your collarbone, projecting green sparks in the sweat on your skin.

“I wonder if it will still answer you after this.”

You feel the undeniable pull of it then, the memory of building it, fingers trembling as the components snapped into place. The crystal knew what you didn’t, even then. It had whispered, don’t fuck this up. It recognized the fracture in you.

Anakin hums, a bottomless rumble in his throat. The saber’s glow washes neon over the curve of your neck. You can’t swallow. Can’t shift to relieve the ache thriving down your spine.

“Take off your pants.”

You blink. Not at the words, those don’t surprise you anymore, but at the cruel finality of them.

You don’t budge.

He clicks his tongue and angles the saber.

The beam kisses the narrow skin of your jaw.

You can smell it burning.

“Now,” he insists.

Your fingers start to move.

You hate how deftly they find the buttons, how easily you pivot your hips to shimmy them down. You hate the sound they make, fabric slinking down your legs, pooling around your knees.

“You kneel like you've done this before,” he rasps, and you want to hate the words. The depth of it. But you can’t because your own saber is still at your throat, and hate is small in comparison.

You don’t cry. Not because you’re strong, but because your body is too focused on surviving. Everything else, everything you thought you knew, is nothing.

“I see pieces of myself in you, pieces that need breaking, or maybe… setting free.”

His hips grind into yours, wanting to feel your body's reaction. He delights in what it responds with, tilting his head to see your face better.

A breath. His voice drops lower, the kind that twines inside you and pulls tight.

“I’m not asking for your permission.” His fingers tighten like a vice, yet strangely reverent. “I’m showing you how to listen. To feel beyond the pain and the fear and the lies.”

His hand abruptly leaves your hair, and your head leans forward from the loss, searing your throat further. Your teeth click down on your cheeks, holding back the yelp in your chest. The copper tange is becoming an all-too-regular taste.

The droplet of sweat dragging down your temple distracts you momentarily from the ruffling of fabric from behind you as it drools over your lip and falls onto the saber, a small crackle emitting and throwing you disturbingly fast back into reality.

It isn't until his bare length is rubbing greedily into your folds that a noise flits from your lips.

Your eyes are fixed on the red walls while your fibers are only aware of the ridges and veins of him, and a delicious, sickening warp inside you.

This isn’t like last time, and you know it.

It's more.

So much more.

There isn’t a single thought or memory that exists here. Not now.

The stretch is brutal. He doesn't stutter, not even when your body spasms and bucks under him.

When his hips finally hit the curve of your ass, you can barely breathe.

The floor plunges from beneath you both, a shared weightless pleasure.

You know because, for a moment, his hand goes slack.

The blade dips lower, singeing your clavicle.

You can feel the blisters forming on your skin, yet it, too, like your memories, are lost. Because his cock is thick and throbbing inside you and his body is scalding and damning. And the sounds.

Oh Gods. The sounds.

Low grunts, resounding, carnal.

Whimpers, depleted, pitiful.

Your hips jerk forward as you try to get away, but he only drags you back, pushing in deeper. It doesn't hurt, not exactly, not the way you expect.

Because you're wet.

Your pussy is fucking wet.

Drenched.

It's shameful.

And then, the blade is gone.

Gone from the fresh wounds, gone from your thoughts, and then—

Crash

Glass shatters across the floor.

The lightbulb above is dead.

It's pitch black.

And he's everywhere.

His arms wrap around your waist, and he fucks into you. He fucks you like it's not his cock between your legs, but the truth and the truth is that you love every second.

The pain and fear are gone.

“There is no emotion, there is peace,” His voice rumbles against your neck, so deep you almost mistake it for a growl, but the words he spoke are ones you've memorized yourself. “Say it,” he demands.

Your mind scrapes at fog, desperate to obey, desperate not to. It takes all the willpower you have to push the words out.

“There is no emotion, there is peace,” you echo, as he pushes further, his hips hitting forcefully and rapid, each one jolting you.

“Say the rest."

You find it. You make yourself find it.

"There is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

"Say the rest."

Your words are barely coherent, the last few words broken and disjointed as he pounds harder.

"There is no passion, there is serenity."

"Say the rest!"

“There is no chaos, the—”

His cock hits inside you, sending a bolt through your spine, and you can't hold back the wail that escapes.

You could die from the humiliation alone.

He chuckles, pridefully.

"What was that?” he goads. “What were you saying?"

You don't need light to know the expression on his face, the satisfied grimace, the gleam of his blue eyes.

You're not sure how you haven't shattered yet, but you can feel it.

Building.

"T-There is no chaos, there is harmony."

There’s a rhythm to the desperation now, a music in the way the body can still move, still dance, even when it thinks it can't. Your hips rock, and you can't tell if you're doing it consciously. Are you doing that? You don’t know.

You don’t know.

"Say the rest." He groans through his teeth. It’s not appealing. It’s not performative. It’s a man who’s too far gone to care.

"There is no death, there is the Force."

Your voice breaks, and you're almost certain that you've fallen apart, but no, no, the pressure is still building.

You don't notice the tears. They're a reflex. A chemical response to stress.

"There you go," he murmurs, a deformed gentleness in his tone. "That's it."

His thumb catches the tear at the rim of your jaw, dragging it down in a motion so soft it feels like a caress, then he slides it to his mouth and curls his tongue around it.

“You don’t have to understand. Just stay.”

The tears aren't stopping, salt-streaked mixing with the moans that rive out of you, each one more dismal than the last.

He doesn't seem to mind if anything, he seems to treasure it, the way your walls are clamping down on him, the way the noises are becoming manic.

“Say it, say you will stay.” he pants, “Tell me you will stay.”

You try. But what comes out is garbled, unmade. Your mouth is a ruin, your voice a trembling gasp of syllable soup.

His thrusts are punishing, searching your body for the answer your tongue can’t form.

"Fuck," he grunts, "come on, Y/N."

You're already gone.

Your body shudders violently against him, and your mouth opens, but there are no words, just wreckage.

Just ruined breath.

He doesn’t wait. He drives harder, chasing the answer your body is giving.

But your voice finds you, just as the pressure peaks. It's not a whisper or a scream this time. Not a sob or a plea, no, a plea would be braver. It would beg. This is not that.

“I will,” you state, and his mouth is on yours before the word finishes.

Not a kiss. Not even close.

His lips crash into you, tongue slipping inside your mouth, tasting the vow.

He doesn’t have to ask if you meant it.

Your body is honest, always.

You're not sure who came first, him or you, but your orgasm is still pulsing when his releases, his length twitching as it empties deep inside you, so hard that you can feel each rope of his cum shoot into you, filling you up.

He slumps into you with a hiss. The sound of a man emptied, not of passion, but of need. You feel it, too. Not just the spill of him inside you, but the silence that follows. The awful, tender silence.

His breath scalds the side of your neck, mouth parted against your skin.

You expect shame. You want shame. A clean and penalizing feeling. It doesn’t come. A much crueler fate presents itself. A frantic calm. Like descending into a lake and deciding not to swim.

His metal hand drags along your waist, a possessive line, and then flattens low over your stomach. You swallow, but your throat’s scraped of any healthy tissue. Your lips are open, but they hold no protest behind them.

“Say it again,” he murmurs, kissing the back of your shoulder. “Just once.”

Every muscle is tight and trembling, but your control is rotted. Thought and will have slipped behind you. You aren’t deciding to speak. Your mouth simply moves.

“I will stay, Master.”

The title falls off your tongue in a daze, drugged.

His breath hitches along your shoulder, and there’s a moment where everything feels even, serene before the next wave hits you.

“You are… the perfect distraction.”

Perfect.

A word that means he sees you as equal, more than equal; you exist in the one place he’s still human.

You break.

Not with sound, you’ve run out. You break in the tranquility. In the way your body seizes and stays. In the way you remain full of him, unmoving, undone, and thoroughly, irreversibly his.

162 notes · View notes

wickedwitchofthegalaxy · 3 months ago

Text

☞𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒞𝑜𝓈𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝒶 𝒩𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉𝓈 𝑅𝑒𝓁𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑒☜︎

☠︎ 𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓊𝓇: 𝒢𝑜𝓁𝒹 𝒾𝓃 𝒮𝓉𝑒𝑒𝓁 𝑀𝑜𝓊𝓉𝒽𝓈 ☠︎

𝒫𝒶𝒾𝓇𝒾𝓃𝑔: 𝑨𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏(𝑪𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒆𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒔)𝑿 𝑭𝒆𝒎𝑷𝒂𝒅𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒏!𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: Power Imbalance, Manipulation, Implicit Coercion, Verbal & Emotional Confrontation

𝒲𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓃𝓉: 5K

𝒮𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎: In this game, to lose is to never have played at all. And you’re a sore loser.

𝒩𝑜𝓉𝑒𝓈: Helllloooo babes, how are you? Hopefully you're doing well and if not, maybe this chapter might bring you some comfort. As always I love hearing all your feedback and can't wait to read your comments.

As always, banners done by @cafekitsune!

Enjoy 🖤

Luther Koth’s office wasn’t a grand library or some towering archive of Jedi wisdom. It was small, cluttered, and filled with the dull hum of a man who had long since buried himself in labor that few would ever care about.

You sat at his desk, hunched over the third and final book, your fingers pressing into the brittle edges of its pages as if by force alone you could will the text to make sense.

The first two had been exhausting enough. Accounts of Jedi history, but told through the voices of those who had watched from the sidelines.

A village elder who spoke of the wars Jedi had waged in the name of peace. A merchant who had seen his home burned in a battle between Republic and Separatist forces, both sides wielding lightsabers, neither side caring for the rubble they left behind. It had taken hours to untangle their words, to piece together the meaning through scraps of old dialects and conflicting records. You had done it, though.

Last night, before sleep had dragged you under, you had translated them both.

But this one—the third—was different.

The texts are a mess of ink and strange symbols.

You had tried the same methods that had worked before: cross-referencing, pattern recognition, even gut instinct, but the text refused to bend. Every few sentences, you’d have to stop, search through the scattered volumes beside you, and try to stitch together meaning from half-formed thoughts. It wasn’t working.

And yet, here you were. Drowning in it.

Your fingers flexed against the paper, frustration mounting as you reread the same passage for the third time. Jedi traditions, ancient wars, the betrayals… it was all a twisted game. Nothing was ever as simple as they made it sound.

The Jedi spoke of history with such certainty, as if the past were a clear path leading to the present, but these texts, these forgotten voices, told a different story. A messier one. One that didn’t fit so neatly into the Council’s teachings.

Why am I even reading this?

Master Koth sat across from you, silent as ever, his head bowed over his work. He hadn’t spoken to you since you arrived that morning and hadn’t really acknowledged you beyond a brief glance before returning to whatever meticulous records he was compiling.

You weren’t sure what to make of him yet. There was an intensity to the way he worked, something almost mesmeric; resembling a man reaching for the final piece of evidence that does not exist, his focus unshaken despite the absence of anything to complete.

You tried to ignore the other thing—the way his presence curled around the whole room, a boisterous feeling you couldn’t quite place. Maybe it was the silent authority he carried, the practiced discipline in every movement, or perhaps it was simpler, some other answer for the way your skin pricked. Either way, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t paying attention to you now. His silence was almost oppressive, but you couldn’t bring yourself to break it. Not yet.

The ink on the pages blurred, the letters writhing and twirling as if a harmonious tune were lulling in the air. You leaned back in the chair, the ache settling deep in your spine from hours of leaning over. This was ridiculous. Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t you make sense of it like the first two? Why did everything in this damn place feel as if it was out of your control?

Focus. You have to focus.

But the words wouldn’t come.

“You seem distracted,” the quiet ruptured beneath his voice, his tone sharp but not unkind. “You should rest. Come back to it later.”

Your head snaps up, eyes locking onto his for the first time that morning. The space between you felt charged now, taut with tension that hadn’t been there before. Master Koth hadn’t moved much from his place across the desk, both arms poised on either side of his work with his pen still in hand, but his attention was fully on you now.

A ruminative beat of silence stretched between you. You weren’t sure what you were supposed to say.

“I’m fine,” you mumbled, and the sound of it felt thin, it sounded like a lie.

“Then continue.”

Instantly, the scratching sounds of his pen resumed and an invisible drape had fallen between you two. You waited for something; acknowledgment, maybe, or a sign that he had meant to say more, but his focus had already returned to the pages in front of him.

The expression on your face was anything but professional, and your frustration was lurching closer and closer to a full psychotic break. The sharp angle of his brow, the downward tilt of his head, the way his free hand hovered near the edge of the paper like a silent barrier—all clear signs of a man who didn’t want to be spoken to, much less one who wished to teach.

You looked down at the page again, but the words were still a jumble. You sighed sharply. “This text…” you began, trying to keep your voice level, but it came out clipped. “It’s nothing like the others. It doesn’t make sense.”

He didn’t glance up. “Then move on to something else.”

“That’s not helpful,” you muttered under your breath.

“No,” he said, voice smooth yet distracted. “I don’t imagine it would be.”

The sheer indifference of his response made your fingers twitch, the urge to snap the book shut and walk out nearly overwhelming.

“The other two followed a structure,” you tried again, keeping your tone cadenced. “I could track the changes, map out the influences, but this one—” You gestured at the pages, feeling ridiculous even as you did so. “It’s quite literally written as if it’s hiding something.”

Master Koth still didn’t look at you. “Perhaps it is.”

You stare at him, waiting for more, but after serval grueling seconds of wordless scratching it becomes crystal clear he was not going to give you any substantial advice.

He is infuriating.

The room warped and distorted similar to a fever dream you couldn’t shake, and the silence cracked like dry glass, then flattened into a hum. It placed the last building block you needed to turn your frustration into a living, breathing thing. The new resident is now pressed against the inside of your skull, your teeth grind to accommodate the stretch of its unconventional intrusion as your fingertips dig into the crumbling parchment.

You want to break something.

And then—

“There you are.” He quirked, “Am I interrupting something?”

The room changed.

No, shifted.

The walls didn’t move. The air didn’t change temperature.

But the room—the room collapsed.

No sound accompanied it. No astonishing, violent transition, no physical proof that something was different. But it was. He was here.

You are a spasming knot of nerves and dread, yet you forced yourself to stay still. Your body cannot be trusted; it betrays you in its shuddering, in the weakness of your limbs, in the sheer biology of its reaction to him. The mind can build walls, but the body is faithless.

A writhing mass of hot, clammy disgust coils within you.

Is this fear, that is liquefying your gut, making you feel hollow, yet horribly full, as if there were too much of him, forced into the pit of your being? Is this the burn of his fingerprints bruising your neck—is this the savage grind of his hips against yours, is this the suffocating silence, your mind screaming one thing while your body does another? Is this the way your body can’t forget his hands, or how it doesn’t try to? Or is this the inevitable feeling of giving too much away?

Koth had been here before Anakin entered, and he was still here now. But something was wrong. The way he held his pen. The way his copper eyes flicked over his own work as if he was the only one in the room. Nothing had mundanely changed about him yet… something was wrong.

The moment split, a hairline fracture in the world’s logic, and through it, Anakin stepped.

His arrogantly paced footsteps settled into the foundation of the office. He was in no hurry.

"The Council has reassigned her schedule for today, she’s needed on the frontlines.”

The fabric of your reality cracked a little wider.

“Effective immediately."

You couldn’t breathe.

Master Koth didn’t lift his gaze. His hand remained frozen around the pen, an unspoken message that he was choosing to remain in his world, to pretend that nothing had changed. But even as he stared down at his work, his mouth twitched, just the slightest sign that he was aware of the disruption.

"Is that so? You come with orders, I take it?"

Anakin’s lips quirked slightly, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, but there was no warmth in it. He was businesslike—almost too businesslike. Without a word, he reached into his cloak and pulled out a piece of parchment. The paper was thick, well-creased, and bore a distinct wax seal of the Republic.

Koth finally lifted his gaze, but only briefly. The sunken hold beneath his eyes made it look more akin to an afterthought than genuine interest. The paper crackled in the stretch between them as Anakin extended it forward.

Koth took it.

Not eagerly. Not cautiously. Just... absently.

His fingers pressed into the paper, the seal catching faintly in the light. For a moment, there was silence. Anakin didn’t move, didn’t sway. He didn’t need to. He knew what Koth would do.

And he was right.

“Everything seems to be in order.”

Your throat burned, a thick chunk of disbelief swelling just behind your ribs to accompany the acid swelling to your tongue. You stared at Koth, searching, pleading, for some flicker of hesitation, some sign that he would reconsider, that he would wake up from whatever hollow trance he’d buried himself in. Or was it even a trance, was this just who he was, a dissociated forgotten Jedi who lives in his own world?

You blinked. Once. Twice.

Then—

"You can't be serious. This is all in order?”

Your voice hit the space between you like a dropped glass. The drawn-out pause afterward only made it worse.

Koth didn’t look up immediately. He pressed his thumb against the parchment’s edge, smoothing it flat.

“I don’t make a habit of repeating myself.” The words were steady, matter-of-fact. “It’s in order.”

You stared at him. The moment ached, expanding into something vast and thin, threatening to break, yet stubbornly refusing to end. It should have snapped under the burden of its impossibility, but it didn’t. It just sat there, lodged in your throat resembling something that couldn’t be swallowed.

“No,” you said, voice lower now, as if keeping it controlled might make him listen. You close the coded book, placing it atop the others on Koth’s desk as you stand. “It is not in order.” Your heartbeat kicked and spasmed, a sickly, uneven thing, tripping over itself. And the heat—gods, the heat—slithered after it, slick and unnatural, soaking into your muscles, sticky as spit, cloying like blood. Like hands. Like him.

“It’s not—”

A pause.

Not real? Not right? What were you even supposed to say? This isn’t happening?

Koth didn’t seem to register the unfinished sentence nor the way your eyes demanded attention. Or if he did, he chose not to acknowledge it. He’d already shifted back into his world, his pen scratching softly as he stared down.

“Master Koth, please—”

His hand flicked, a small, precise movement as if brushing away an insect. “Go.”

You opened your mouth, grasping for anything that would make him look up at you. If you spoke again, if you pleaded again, would he just repeat himself? Would he even bother?

Go.

Uniform to a command you would give a stray.

Anakin hadn’t so much as sighed. He watched you instead, head tilted ever so slightly as if committing the exact shape of your resistance to memory. Anakin Skywalker was not a patient man, but he could wear the illusion of patience well.

You swallowed, hard. “That’s not—”

“You’re wasting time.” Anakin’s tone didn’t rise, didn’t dip. “If you want to stand here and debate with him, fine. But soldiers are dying and the council has called for our quick support.”

The breath you’d tried to take snagged.

That was a lie.

You weren’t needed. You knew that. The war would grind on with or without you, just as it always had. But that wasn’t the point, was it? This wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about duty, or necessity, or orders.

It was about him.

You could still feel Koth’s presence at the desk, just over your shoulder; could still hear the slow, agonizing drag of his pen. He had already dismissed you. And now, the last and only thing between you and Anakin had crumbled to dust. You wanted to look back at him, wanted to shake him, force him to see what he was doing, what he was letting happen.

But you didn’t.

Because deep down, you knew.

It wouldn’t change anything.

"You’d rather argue with the Council’s decision?" Anakin muses, and there it was—something nearly amused in his tone, but not quite. "I can’t imagine that would go well for you."

You only noticed the bite of your nails when the pain sharpened. A poor replacement for something solid. Something real.

Because this—this—wasn’t real.

Couldn’t be.

And Koth, Koth had already disintegrated.

He wasn’t gone. Not physically. But he may as well have been a fixture. A chair. A table. A comatose object, there for viewing pleasures only. His body existed here, but his mind had flown, far beyond the four walls of this room, far beyond you.

“I— I belong here. I was assigned here.”

Koth exhaled sharply, rubbing his temple.

“Things change.”

"Things don’t change like this," you returned.

Scratch. Silence.

"You can stand here all day if you want," Anakin added, mildly. "But I won’t."

You turned back to see him at the door, waiting, patiently.

Silence. Scratch.

More damn silence.

You stepped forward, and the world shrank.

Not all at once—no, that would be merciful. It crumpled in increments, creasing in on itself like a lung emptied too fast. It was a ruin of sensation, a series of mute failures. You were stepping toward him, but it didn’t feel as if forward movement was taking place.

You were sinking.

The steps you take aren’t your own; they belong to something else, something that doesn’t care what your body wants, what your mind screams. You’re not running. You’re not even trying to fight it. There’s a numbness to it now, the kind that rots you from the inside out, an unheard rebellion against the instinct to recoil, to flee. It’s not courage; it’s nothing as romantic as that. It’s just a twisted form of understanding.

Am I losing my mind?

The last breath you took in Koth’s study tasted identical to dust, but you didn’t mind. Dust, after all, was all that was left in this room.

The warship groaned.

Metal ribs flexed and sang with each shift of the ship, great iron lungs inhaling deep, exhaling deeper, dragging you and everyone else through the suffocating black of space. The assault ship was clotted with voices, the easygoing murmur of clones exchanging jokes, shifting in their armor. They had nothing to fear. This was just another mission for them.

Another landing. Another fight.

They were at ease, strapped in side-by-side.

But beside you, twin to the low whisper of a whetstone kissing steel sat Anakin. He was leaning back in his seat, long legs stretched out, his posture easy; too easy. As if he knew exactly how much space he occupied. Like he knew that no matter how much you tried to pretend otherwise, you were aware of him.

The ship was a fusion of sounds, the air hefty with the scent of musk, of ozone, of armor warmed by body heat and the hours of waiting. You focused on that instead; on the steady thrum of the hyperdrive and the jumbled noise of the clones talking amongst themselves.

Anything but him.

“I can practically feel you thinking,” he murmured, his voice just for you.

You refused to turn.

Don’t react.

You knew better than to give him even the slightest hint of any disposition. Anakin thrived on reactions. He could feel them before they fully took shape in your mind, could track every shift in your breath, each flicker of your eyelids. Every hesitant move was a victory.

“Shouldn’t you be focused on the mission instead of me?”

The words came out of your mouth so casually, as if you too weren’t watching for the minute adjustments of his body from the corner of your eye, measuring the distance from his hand to yours on the shared armrest, or the restless bounces of his legs.

A shadow of something ruinous passed over his features, there and gone, smoothed with the kind of grin that suggested he wanted you to notice the transition. “I’m always focused on the mission.” He replied, his head tilting toward you.

You refused to look at him straight on.

The way he watched you, almost as if he was examining a puzzle that he had the last piece to, but was savoring every instant before solving it, made your blood glow. You swallowed down the urge to stir in your seat. Instead, you exhaled, slowly through your nose.

“Hmm,” you murmured, feigned disinterest coating your words. “sounds like you’re distracted.”

He didn’t answer right away, but his lips ticced, the barest hint of regalement.

“I don’t get distracted,” he shared, his voice low, almost purring. It was too mellow, too knowing.

You couldn’t trust it.

“I just know how to handle distractions when they come.”

The double meaning of his words dangled.

Your pulse stuttered.

But you gave him nothing.

From across the seating area, one of the clones—broad-shouldered, a jagged scar carving a pale line from temple to cheekbone—chuckled. “Yeah, General Skywalker’s got nerves of steel. Nothing fazes him.”

The others muttered in agreement, a few exchanging knowing glances. They had seen proof of it firsthand, in battle, in command. On the field, Anakin was unshakable.

You didn't need to hear it. It didn’t matter what they thought. What mattered was that Anakin had made you feel something that shouldn’t have been there. That shouldn't exist.

But here—now—

Here, is something else entirely.

“Oh?” You couldn’t help but let out a small laugh, mostly to mask the slight uneasiness that threatened your chest. Using your perfected form of communication, sarcasm, you add. “What’s your secret then? Get rid of the distraction before it becomes a problem?”

The moment the words left your lips, you regretted it.

Anakin’s jaw worked slightly, chewing on a thought. "I wouldn’t say ‘get rid of,’" he ventured with a luster of intent in his eyes. "More... guide it. Mold it to fit the situation."

You turned your head slightly, enough to meet his gaze fully.

The flux was subtle, nearly imperceptible to anyone but you, but what had been a flicker of awareness now swelled.

There it was again. That undercurrent.

"So you control things,” you mused, testing the words on your tongue. Your skin prickled, but you made it sound casual. “How impressive."

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Anakin countered, the electricity in his voice gripping around the sonants. “Control is an art. And not everyone can master it.”

You felt the shock of his words, your eyes narrowing just a fraction. “Master? You’ve got a very funny way of looking at things.”

His mouth ticced again, an expression that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve learned... that sometimes, to teach someone control, you have to show them what it feels to be out of it.”

Your fingers fidgeted in your lap, daring to draw blood as you averted your gaze to them.

The words slotted themselves somewhere inside you, filling a space you hadn’t realized was vacant.

A calculated move.

That was the thing about Anakin. It was never just words.

It was the way he said them. The way he let them settle, let them combine into you.

Your defenses bristled, fury in your chest winding, the beat at your throat suddenly more noticeable.

“You think you can teach me anything?” You scoffed, keeping your tone light, but his equivoques pressed against a visible nerve. “I’m already learning plenty under Master Koth. Lessons that actually matter.”

Anakin’s chin dips. Not by much, just enough, and that was when you realized—he was playing the long game, moving slowly, waiting for you to notice, waiting for you to come to the conclusion on your own. He was watching an unraveling, and he wouldn’t miss a second of it. “I’m sure you are. But lessons aren’t always ink-covered and painless.”

You blinked at that, slightly thrown off. Your lips parted, a retort brewing as his gaze skimmed the clones, who were still nescient to the vein of frisson between the two of you. Anakin leaned just a fraction closer, his breath skating against the hairs covering your ear. “What I mean to say is… you don’t get to choose when this lesson ends.”

Heat licked up your spine. Your head snaps sharply to his, but his expression has already reverted to that same maddening ease. The conversation around you carried on, clones snickering, their attention flicking between you both as if spectating a match. They weren’t in on the game. Not really. They heard only the surface of your words, the back-and-forth, the teasing edge of it all.

And you—despite everything—you played along.

“You took me away from my lessons.” You snap back.

“You wound me,” he enounced, pressing a hand to his chest as if you had struck him while his grin widened just enough to show the edges of those vexing canines. “I would never take you away from anything… important.”

There was an emphasis on the word important.

The kind of emphasis meant to remind you that he had done just that.

You almost wanted to laugh, but the sound caught. You cross a leg over the other, glancing to the side as if the right angle would give you release from this conversation.

The clones snickered again, some muttering to each other. They were entertained. Oblivious.

Anakin enjoyed this game. He triumphed in it. And maybe you did too, just a little. Maybe you savored throwing stones at him, just to see if he would throw them back. The small, defiant part of you riled, but you kept your shoulders back, forcing a casualness you didn’t feel.

“You could’ve just left me alone.” You whisper, as your fumbling hands find place across your chest; the only form of solace you can give your body. You didn’t want to sound small, yet your hushed tone didn’t make you sound the least bit confident.

Anakin’s eyes tapered on you, and his whisper sounded anything but small.

“I don’t leave things unfinished. And you... You’re far from done.”

The laugh you were holding escaped in a sharp exhale, a mixture of irritation and bewilderment. You pulled your arms tighter across your chest as if physically reinforcing the shield you had placed.

“You think you’re above everything, above everyone.” Your voice came serrated, frustration had honed your voice into something finer than steel, not meant for brute force but for the exacting cut. “It’s not just control that you’ve mastered—manipulating people around you, thinking you can bend them to your will like this—it takes true dedication to master selfishness to this level General.”

“I know exactly how far I can bend you.”

Your nails dug into the fabric of your sleeve, distorting the weave into rippled lines. The clones were still laughing, entertained by the show they didn’t understand.

Of course, he knew how far he could bend you.

Hadn’t he already?

Yet—How dare he?

It wasn’t just frustration that propelled you to speak your next words; it was fate itself. A glowing nerve, one that filled every ending with an orange—no, red—no… a cohesive quintessence of golden promise, where consequences bore no weight, so long as you kept alight.

“Maybe you are the expert at bending people, breaking them, warping them into something else.” A breath, steady and slow. “But tell me, General—who did it to you first?”

You felt the clones' eyes on you, their laughter fading as they finally began to sense the gravity of the exchange. But they didn't know what was really happening. How could they? This was after all just the playful veneer of a Padawan and her General having a spat, right?

Yet for you, it was not the same; a strange cadence in your chest, as if the very air carried a scent of another time—sharp, metallic, and sweet, like crushed herbs taking refuge inside warm resin—freshly smoked spice and velvet lined walls.

Your body was compressed as if it were preparing for something that was both foreordained and irrevocable.

The room held its breath and you held his eyes.

“Below deck. Now.”

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