EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

016 | Paradise is Ahead..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" paradise is ahead "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER SIXTEEN ༺ ━━━

          THE THRUMMING OF THE elevator was but a dulled background noise to the otherwise deafening heartbeats thundering in each of their chests. It wouldn't be long now that they reached the top and the doors would open, but with hesitation like a knot in their throats, both Eden and Anakin prolonged becoming the first to let go of the other's hand. Soon, the low, constant sound of the elevator would be a transition to the sacred silence of the top floor, but even then, on the mounting pressure of the approach of the journey's end, words were impossible to be spoken without risking to break the fragile confidence they've worked so hard to build. 

Neither wanted to bring to light that torching root of doubt poisoning their composure with suffocating worry. 

Because of their constant hesitation, so powerful in thickening the atmosphere that neither of them even remembered Crusher standing behind them for the whole journey with the elevator, the opening of the doors had seen their hands joined and even their lingering battle of letting go once they stepped outside of it. Anakin was wearing his formal attire, but his posture stiffened uncomfortably knowing the Council room door ahead marked the point past which he would not be allowed to go. 

"It's unfair," he muttered. "I should be going in there with you..."

"I'll be out before you know it," Eden whispered, feeling the cold chill of emptiness on her left palm, where she had grown used to his own hand's presence. 

The outrage hardening Anakin's features softened before he bowed his gaze upon Eden. "Don't let them intimidate you in there, alright?" Her smile would be a precursor to the real answer, which was her right hand lifting up to her chest. Beneath her borrowed robes, both of them knew her unpolished necklace stuck close to her heart and underneath her touch, evoked a promise. 

Such a gesture made it temporarily easier for Eden to step away and turn around. It even smothered the ache for Anakin of watching her leave him behind with the clone whose respect vibrated in silence. But that was all the gesture could do: be but a temporary blip in its healing properties, because as soon as Eden pushed those doors open and Anakin glimpsed at the Council chamber, he felt his right to breathe has been revoked. 

How would he even begin to survive the wait? He hadn't a clue past the fact that he had to try.

Eden slipped inside the Council chamber and found herself surrounded by a dim morning light, seething past a cloudy sky and descending on the oval assembly of a room with smoothened rounded walls of glass. Like encapsulated within a fractured crystal ball flattened above and below, the chamber's walls and retractable roof were held up by a skeleton of curved columns, dulled claws in the palm of which twelve chairs awaited empty. Engaged into cordial conversation, the High Council's members, be them holograms projected from lightyears away or physically present Master, waited for Eden with their knees buried into pillow set on the mosaic floor. 

A solitary pillow waited before their three rows. That would be hers.

This arrangement was not unfamiliar to Eden. The Omni Sanctuary held a conference of representatives from all temples once a year to keep account of all the new discoveries, if any at all, as well as the state of some of the faraway corners towards which a visit would take too long. The preservation of their knowledge was made in a meeting where everyone would kneel on the ground, where their equality was humbled to the same level, leaving room for an anchored agency of truth. 

She took her place naturally, in the abrupt silence which her entrance has dawned over the Council. When Eden's eyes lifted, she sought out first to meet Obi-Wan. Though on the second line before her, he was present in person, bearing the marks of a lack of sleep which had been his price to pay in order to make it back in time from his political errands. She recognized Ki-Adi-Mundi besides Obi-Wan, though he was but a hologram, and... no one else.