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Chapter 48: Part 1
They decided to contact the Council like the Defenders had planned to do in the first place (and would've done, Clayton hastened to add, if they hadn't gotten shot at).
As Anakin set up the commlink-projector, Kadalia and Acacia's eyes met, and they both knew they'd both noticed the stoic, boiling-fury-below-the-surface way he was acting. Like he was holding a mountain of rage on the inside, and the slightest annoyance would cause it all to come bursting out.
Acacia gave a tentative knock at the door of his mind. Anakin? He didn't respond, but in the silence, she could actually sense him scrambling to cover up his secrets, burying whatever it was that burned him inside, left him sleepless, and kept the Dark roiling off him in little, prickly waves.
She pulled back.
His eyes bounced to meet hers, but then they darted away again, and he said nothing, either aloud or in their minds. Did he really think that hiding like a youngling would keep her from finding out the truth?
Acacia bit back a sigh—of annoyance, exhaustion, pain—and tried it again. Ani...
This time there was nothing to hide. His mind was as smooth as the surface of a Nabooian sea—a sea that held a million deadly creatures somewhere in its depths. Maybe, she said slowly, we should let the Defenders take care of the first part.
What? Why do you say that?
Acacia paused, trying to figure out how she could nicely explain that his clothes were tattered, his arms were singed, and he looked as haggard as if he hadn't slept in a week—which might have been more or less the case. That she hadn't even gotten to the part where every Force-Sensitive in a five-mile radius could feel the flare of fury in his ForceMark every time the Council was mentioned, and that, to be honest, some of the kids were looking a little worried.
But since her mind was already open to him, he could see all that she wasn't sure how to say. To her surprise, he smiled slightly. That bad, huh?
She gave a little smirk in return. Worse.
She heard the slightest of chuckles from her brother's mind. After he completed the setup, Anakin stood, told Kadalia she could take care of informing the Council while he washed himself up, and then he simply walked away.
Acacia watched her brother go until the door swung shut behind him.
As strange as it had been to see himself through his sister's eyes, Anakin couldn't deny that it had been good for him. A sort of... wake-up call, so to speak.
He had to hide himself better.
As he cleaned up in a nearby storage building, every blink almost an act of the Force, he could feel his burn mark pulsing. It didn't burn like it had earlier, but every couple of seconds, it would give him a little squeeze, like it just wanted to remind him that it was still there.
He wasn't stupid; of course he knew he'd touched the Dark as he fought, and of course he knew that, even now, he hadn't completely withdrawn from it. He wanted to, knew he needed to but at the same time... it had worked, hadn't it? That Dark usage was the only reason he and his sister had still been alive when the Defenders came, and the only way they'd've made it out alive if the Defenders had never come at all.
He would try not to go any farther; he knew where the Dark Side led. But he couldn't regret what let him save his family.
Anakin ignored the pulsing in his chest and pushed his exhaustion away; as he rubbed the remains of a bacta tube into his burns and changed into an old outfit of Cliegg's he'd found, Anakin spun a single question around in his head: Why? Why had the clones attacked? Had Palpatine discovered where they'd gone and sent his cronies after them? But then why attack the other homesteads first? And why the shock from the clones when they met up with real Jedi?
Perhaps they'd been sent to intercept the Defenders, but again, why attack farmers with no guarantee that Kadalia would ever even know about the damage? It all seemed so infuriatingly random. Yet Anakin knew that when it came to the Empire, no such thing as random existed.
It's there, he told himself. The answer is right there. You're just not seeing it.
Something clanged against the wall. It took Anakin only a second to realize that it was Owen's old box of tools, and that he'd Force-hurled it across the room without even thinking about it.
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