***THIS VERSION IS OUTDATED. SEE THE ADAPTED AND IMPROVED VERSION ON MY PROFILE***
There are few stories that are told among the Jedi Order long enough to become myth. Legend. It takes importance to stand the test of time that way. A lesson has to b...
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Republished on August 29, 2022 :)
This story is out of date and currently being reuploaded under the same title on my profile. Please read the new version! April 17, 2024
The sun is falling in sheets of gold across the dunes of Tatooine. It is silent there. As if the desert were holding its breath, watching. Waiting. Dust rises in choking clouds, picked up by the wind and carried miles away. It settles gently beneath the feet of a squad of Jedi warriors, where they walk among dozens of fallen, metal bodies.
Circe is coming over the crest of one of these dunes, her robes fluttering around her ankles. It's hot, she can barely breathe through the sand clouds, but she bores on through the wind. The hill begins to dip at her feet as she reaches the top, sloping down into a sandy ravine. Across the way, a figure is beginning to shimmer into view, distorted by the heat waves and backlit by the sun.
Anakin.
She very well could have limped off the battlefield, blood soaking her robes, body aching with the pains of violence, and it all would have disappeared the second he found his way to her side. This was a known fact, by everyone they knew, and everyone who ever came to know them.
She had been just a child when they had first met. A little girl with hair so white it seemed to glow in the sun. She was pale while Anakin was tan from his days on Tatooine. Her hair was thick and straight, his was dark and unruly. She was brave and outspoken while he was rash and impulsive.
Their first teacher used to call them "te sun bal me'suum'ika". The sun and moon. It was Mandalorian, her native tongue, and she said it rather exasperatedly, as though their differences might just be too great to overcome. As though the fervent sun might burn out the observant moon. But Anakin and Circe only drew each other in, bound together through their teachings and their innate desire to belong to one another. Friendship found them quickly, quickening their feet and brightening their eyes.
They grew from children into adulthood, building their lightsabers among the crystals of Kyber, leading platoons across foreign soil, always falling back to the Temple tired, and aching with the labor of battle. But there was always something in the air of their return. Something nearly tangible, yet ever illusive. Anakin's broad, vast affection stretching all around them, and Circe, watching him with stars in her eyes.
Circe watching him like he was the last thing she'd ever look at.
Now, ten years later from the day they first saw each other, her hair still glows in sunlight, but she is undeniably older—her body sturdy and strong, one of the most skilled Jedi in the order. And his face has sharpened, his hair curling down against the nape of his neck, his shoulders wide and flecked with scars.
She is not limping. But sweat has soaked through Circe's robes and her muscles are beginning to ache something terribly from the intensity of the battle she's endured—her body relaxing into its exertion as the adrenaline leaves her bloodstream.
