unrepentant | ic contact.

I don't have a future with him.

[An admission that guts her to ruins. She's not over it. She's scared to look him in the eye ever again, knowing what she does now. Knowing what she's done and how much he hates her for it.

How much he was right to do so.]

It was just another crappy story I made up. I was dumb enough to believe it.

When I'm with you, I don't have to imagine anything.

I'm not a writer like you. I didn't even learn to read until I was twelve or thirteen. On Tatooine we would remember our stories and have to tell them to each other, but that meant sometimes things would change too. Names and places, stuff like that.

You don't have to decide your future right now Toko. I just want to go the same direction as you and we can figure it out when we get there.

[It's lucky, she thinks, that they met while she was still under Byakuya's thrall. Otherwise all those pathetic habits — following him like a shadow, peeking from hiding spots, declaring outlandish things while he shoots each down and tries his damnedest to shake her — would have been fixed on Anakin. Even though she fell hard and fast, she held back long enough to see him. And more poignantly, herself.

Below her skirt, her number ticks down.]

I suppose I'll just have to make something new. Like you said. Stories can change any time.

I'd like that. But only if I can follow you, too.

What about your home? I don't know if I'll be much help, but I'd like to try.

[Now there's a question. What about your home. Anakin's gaze lifts to what he knows is the roof of a traincar, but has always looked like a strange, foreign stretch of sky. To end the war he thinks the quickest way through will be to confront Palpatine- a man he's considered a friend for almost his entire life. He believes Obi-Wan and Cal, the future they've seen brought to bear by a man Anakin didn't have the heart to kill.

Does he have the strength to do it now?
That's probably the wrong question. Whether he has the strength or not, he has to do it.]

Are you kidding? I can't wait to fly you around the stars. You'll be piloting ships of your own in no time.

[If they were speaking in person, she'd catch the misdirection. And while the state of his world and what it's about to become presses hard on her mind, she still has stars in her eyes.

One day she'll learn to read him like a paperback. Just not today.]

You want me to pilot?

I can't even ride a bike! I'll crash it into some asteroid for sure!

Edited 2022-01-24 17:36 (UTC)

Aw, everyone crashes into an asteroid once or twice.

But you're smart and you're always paying attention to things around us. Besides, you've done plenty of firsts since being on this train.

I can't wait to see you in a cockpit.

Plenty of firsts, huh?

Well I hope you've got a will, because putting me in a cockpit is going to be the death of you.

ic contact.

If this ain't a whole mood

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