The Search (Anakin Skywalker x Reader)

Prologue

|[ WARNING]|   This section of the story features abuse and traumatic stress. If you'd like to skip this, it is safe to read the next time you see words in bold.

She sobbed with fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, struggling to breath. Her small hands furiously wiping away the mess on her face as she found herself unable to look away from the scene in front of her. Her brother emerged from his previous spot behind her. His arms wrapped around her and held her in a protective embrace all while they both cried their young eyes out, emptying the amount of stress that only kept refueling itself within their hearts.

The images of the mother's bruises seemed to never stop as the young girl recalled how many times she'd seen them. She always knew why they were there, but never said a word, afraid her father would do the same thing to her.

She hadn't known any better than that. Had she known how serious it was, maybe she would have helped. Maybe she or her brother would have done something, but the poor children were too young and didn't know what to do when the panic inducing images settled in. They didn't know what else to do other than cry in each other's arms as they watched in horror.

Their father took another sip out of his glass before sending another swing against the mother they loved so dearly.

"Don't look" her brother whispered as he cried in silence. She was quite the opposite in volume when she couldn't stop the loud sobbing flowing from her stressed throat. She didn't hear him... or rather, she was too focused on her crying mother to notice his voice that only surfaced as white noise in the background of her mind. She watched on and her older sibling hadn't stopped her as he ignored his own advice.

"Ssssto-....STOP!!" the mother screamed, but paused as she was silenced by another slap, causing the daughter to sob even louder.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" the father yelled, but no one was sure if he was speaking to the mother or to the crying children who cowered in the corner of the room. The glass bottle in his hand had been emptied by that last sip, but it hadn't stopped him from using it as a weapon.

This type of action had gone on for several minutes. The crying children hadn't moved in fear of the father who continued to hurt the mother with everything he could. Nothing seemed to be off limits. The brother's tears only slipped at the yelling and the sight of his sister's sadness. The young girl's tears slipped at the sight of her mother's sadness. She watched on as her father became more and more of a monster by the minute and the mother sobbed and yelled in hopeless protest.

The look on the mother's face. The heart wrenching expression was indescribable in how it made her children feel. It was pain in every way it could be perceived. The entire room was just pain and only pain. Agony in its entirety.

The daughter couldn't take it. She screamed with all her might. "NOOOO!!!" with one of her eyes open while the other squeezed shut, pushing out more tears. She felt as if a push left her body, like power had blasted from her anger and she watched as the glass bottle in her father's hand had shattered on its own, leaving the remnants of a rounded shard of sharp glass. Yet another weapon for her father's use that she now felt was her fault.

She hadn't known what that burst of energy was or how the bottle shattered in her father's hand, but she knew that it was her fault, somehow. Even if she was nowhere near it, cowering in the corner, she could feel that the new weapon in his hand was her fault.... and her brother felt it too.

The father turned to his children, his face filled with rage. Anger radiated throughout the entire building from this one man. He was too drunk to care why the glass in his hand broke, he only cared that a new way to hurt his sobbing wife was within his grasp.