Explosions: anakin skywalker

chapter 17

no matter how dark it got, the sun did rise again

As he becomes a part of her world again, a weight lifts from Elara's shoulders. Obi Wan can sense it and see it; she is lighter when Anakin is around. Padmé seems oblivious, but Obi Wan knows the look in Elara's eyes all too well.

She's growing closer to happiness again, and he is not the source of it.

Anakin watches over Elara sleeping when he should be watching over the safety of his wife.

The way her blonde hair pools beneath her head as she rests on the cool floor beneath them mesmerizes Anakin every night.

At the beginning of each shift, they always say they will take turns, but they never do. Once she is sound asleep, Anakin never has the heart to wake her.

Unless she has a nightmare, which she frequently does. He can tell because she shifts endlessly once they begin, sometimes letting a mumble or whimper escape her lips. She is at her most vulnerable, her most innocent in these moments, and Anakin wants nothing more than to protect her from it all. Whatever haunts her beneath her eyelids, he wants to destroy.

He keeps his loyalty hidden well in the daytime. When Padmé is awake, he risks glancing at Elara infrequently, talks to her briefly.

In the darkest hours, they share whispers, secrets. They have gotten so good at choosing a volume at which to speak, to keep Padmé asleep and Obi Wan far away and their world untouched. Anakin tells her things he has never told another. She does the same.

One night, the two are sitting beneath a storm outside their walls. Rain pools on the skylights above them. Elara leans her head back against Padme's doors.

"It was nights like these I loved most back on Generis," she tells him quietly, her eyes closed as she listened to the rain. Anakin stares at her intently. His attention is always heightened when she speaks, especially when she speaks of her home planet. She does it so rarely.

"The rainy season brought a lot of growth to my people, but the storms would get rough and we would have to stay indoors, which no Generisan liked to do," she continues, "It was still beautiful, though, once the fire within the village homes were lit and each family gathered around. The light of the lightning and the fire inspired so many stories within my mother and father, stories of the Jedi and the grandeur of far off planets. They filled my head and Renata's with so many legends; it was hard to separate fiction from reality." Elara's memories used to just trickle out, but now they flow like waterfalls from her mouth, peacefully and bathing Anakin in her nostalgia, so sweet and sorrowful it hurt.

She has never mentioned her sister before. He has known she had one from Obi Wan, but she has never spoken of her.

"Renata is your sister, yes?"

Elara has not realized that she so casually mentioned her older sister, but as Anakin speaks her name, she nods.

"She was a lot like Padmé," Elara begins to describe her sister, her blue eyes shadowed as if she were somewhere far away, "She has this...grace that nobody could ever emulate. She was the talk of the village; everyone talked about the places she could go, the planets she could change. She was so sweet. She had a way of making every person feel special, making every person fall in love with her."