Being Even
PG
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. One-post response to an old Rejection Challenge on Jello Anarchy.
A note: Have you heard about the slash? Everyone knows that the slash is the word! But if it's not for you, don't read this. And don't be surprised one day when you realize how empty and meaningless your life has been.
Anakin gets turned down.
---
He loved the light, despite his own darkness. When he walked into the room, he saw how the dawn poured through the shades, spilled over the floor and across the bed, and he longed for the purity of its warmth. It was crisp, steady in its luminosity, radiant blood of the universe's life force. And there beside it existed the shadows, for there could never be one without the other, the glare of staring into the sun had to be balanced by shutting his eyes away into black. The day was beautiful, but the night always came, too. So both had to exist for a reason. There had to be a reason why one person, the person slumbering beneath the pressed white sheets, could be a creature of unadulterated light, while he himself struggled against a ceaseless pall.
Maybe it was balance. He took another step, closer, and thought of that word. The Council was obsessed with it; everything he did was measured against this standard of ultimate equilibrium the Force required. But he stood in the core of their chambers, and knew, quietly, that on his own private scale, his messier, ugly thoughts outweighed those of calmness. They could call him the savior of the Jedi, their Chosen One, until their throats dried and cracked, but it would never be true.
He was too many things, could never be the one blunt outline they had all chiseled in his future's stone. He wanted peace, but his chest swelled with exhilaration in the thick of battle. He despised politics, but he met the ruler of the modern universe for frequent talks. He cherished the soft face of his wife, the way she smiled and laughed and touched his brow to hers.
But when he was apart from her (and he was almost constantly apart from her), his feelings for her became a fragile, gray smoke. When that smoke lifted, his mind's eye was focused on something else entirely.
He had never identified this feeling that breathed inside him, though he had said its name more times than he could number.
When it first became known to him, he denied it with the vehemence of someone who has been told there is a slithering slug dwelling in their guts. He ignored the sensation, but soon it was burrowing deeper, until he realized it was not in his body, and it was not a slug at all. It was not repulsive or shameful, it had been there forever, in his heart and mind; it was not intrusive, because it was there at the very base of him. He had only now awakened to it. And though he never mentioned it, he no longer denied it.
No, he had loosened his hold on his secret, and chanced brushing his fingers briefly on a pale wrist as they walked, holding the attention of blue eyes long after the other had spoken. It was a betrayal of his Order to do such things, a spar with fate on planets where tradition was stridently grasped.
But neither the Jedi nor the galaxy's mass of judging eyes had to live his life. They were not stalked by phantoms, tormented by the weight of his unique responsibilities. They did not feel the way he intrinsically felt, and if they did, then how could they blame him for what he had done?
He turned his eyes from the slumbering figure, looking hard at the silent, still furniture while listening to the even breaths fall around him.
There had been chaos choking the bloodied little world, and they had been in the midst of it. Two cloaked warriors leading thousands of white-armored men. The earth had erupted, tossing chunks of soil and limbs, and the survivors pressed inside the remaining bunkers. Night had descended, and the atmosphere was placid, but he had not slept. He laid in the stinking dirt, a small rock digging behind his ear, and thought of all the terrible things he had witnessed, the countless bodies strewn over the grass like autumn-ruddy leaves under a naked tree, the gurgling screams and guttural yells, the eyes perfectly polished in their final gazes.
And then he had turned to the person resting beside him, and saw a gentle kind of candlelight kindled there, while the shadows swarmed and their enemies encroached, and his own pit inside him grew wider and darker. And he had felt a surge of need, to connect to that spot of light, to be united with its spirit and brightness and grace. It was all the beauty he had never experienced, the thing that gnawed at him no matter the time.
He put his mouth over the other mouth, and a hand struck out and grabbed his shoulder, pushing him back.
No, was the startled whisper, no we can't…
But his lips sealed over the protest, and hot tears journeyed down his cheeks, because they could die at any moment, this dear person could be another corpse corroding under an alien sky, and the blasts were so intense and he had never been given this freedom and it was like unlocking a door that held back the ocean and he loved loved loved every part of this person beneath him, more than he had ever allowed himself to understand, and now with their lips sewn to each other he understood that he would never want anything else but this. Never wanted anything else.
He had heard the gasp, the fingers press compulsively into his skin.
For a few moments, they were together in the strange twilight that melded from the connection of their mouths, the rapid beating of their hearts, so near to one another's.
The light and darkness entwined, like the hooded sky burning with stars.
And he felt alright, he felt the balance he was supposed to be feeling all along, lifted beyond the gutter and below the clouds. His fingers had squeezed the limp strands of hair, slick and warm with the day's sweat, and then he reached down, finding a strong hand to hold onto.
It had been perfect hours to him, but when the lips were abruptly pulled from his, reality told him mere minutes had passed. The eyes, gone a misted slate, had glimmered, and a small smile touched the face.
There are things we just can't do. No matter what we…I'm sorry.
They had yet to mention it. They moved from planet to planet, skirmish to full-scale combat, acting the same as they had since the first tinges of war. Now, they were home, in the apartment they shared because things were too hectic to care about living arrangements, and it was morning.
A soft shifting in the background, and he turned to see him sitting up in the bed.
The hair looked clean, swept back away from the stubble-covered face. The cream-colored nightshirt concealed what his hands had only glimpsed once before.
They regarded each other wordlessly.
Then he moved to the bed, and sat on the edge. The mattress creaked quietly under his weight.
Their eyes met, and that same communion passed between them, ignited the want.
He didn't know what else to do but lean forward, eyes nearly disappearing beneath heavy lids, lips beginning to part.
But the flesh that connected with them was cool, too solid. A finger, resting lightly on his waiting mouth, the unlikely wall between desire and fulfillment.
"It doesn't have to be this way," he murmured in desperation.
The other shook his head. "But it does."
He remained where he was, hovering near the scent and feeling of alright-ness, of goodness and being even in the Force.
Neither of them moved for a very long time, except to bring their hands together for a brief pulse that ended too soon.