Chapter Three:
Simple Need For A Not So Simple Man
"Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?"
― Lord Byron
Anakin Skywalker's P.O.V
Despite what others may think of Anakin Skywalker, he was not blind and he was no fool. The fact remained, despite everyone else ostensibly being wilfully oblivious of it, that there was something terribly wrong with Lady Potter from the Land of Eng.
And it had nothing to do with the time she had greeted him and his Master out in the hallway, the very first time he had the honour of meeting the five-foot tyrant, with a tip of her chin and a merry 'Trash-bin Squawker, Master Sichuan Adobe".
She was terrible at names everyone knew, ask Mace Windu who, until this very day, was still being dubbed Face Mildew in her diplomacy statements to the Senate floor.
Apart from Master Maul, Anakin's mind helplessly supplied.
She remembered Maul's name well enough.
That was not jealousy speaking. Not at all. It was irritation. Irritation that now, thanks to that topsy-turvy-tiny woman, his Padawan Ahsoka had called Anakin Trash-bin for the last two cycles.
Dreadful name-to-face skills aside, by purpose of aggravating everyone around her or accidental slips of the tongue, it did not matter much in the grand scheme of the things Anakin found worthy of his frustrations. What was worthy was the very brazen ruse she was using as a smoke screen to-
Well… Anakin did not know what she was up to yet, but he would.
He would.
For if there was one thing General Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight extraordinaire, could do well, better than most Alphas he would argue, it was smell, and all he smelled in the Witches wake was the starchy void of suppressants. Bland, bleached, barren suppressants.
He had caught a whiff of them the very first time she had walked passed him and Obi-wan, with her jaunty tweet on Trash-bins and Adobe's, and ever since then he knew she was up to something.
That flavourless bleak scent was hiding something. It had to be. There was no other reason why, on that first hazy inhale, a breath that burned, that the scent would have snagged inside like a phaser bolt, ensnared with how utterly, totally… Wrong it was.
The scent was wrong.
Lady Potter's scent was wrong.
It was hiding something.
Something Anakin needed to… Know?... Scent?... Understand?...
Needed.
Simply needed.
So Anakin had stepped back, and he had watched.
He watched her buzz about the Senate suites, always running this way and that, she never seemed to keep still or silent for long, whirring, lively, always some scheme or mad-dash to do.
He watched her across the Senate floor, sitting in her pod next to Lord Malfoy and Lady Granger, watched how she swung her foot when something was boring her, or the way her brow would cock high on the left when she found something funny, the downward tilt of the corner of a mouth when she was not impressed with a proposal.
He watched her leave in the speeders, driving herself unlike most Senators who had droids to do the job, the way she kept the speeders shield down, careless of assassination attempts, laughing or grinning toothily at goodbyes given down the steps of the grand building.
It was recon, Anakin told himself.
To win a war, one had to know one's enemy, and Anakin, no matter how much he watched, could not make head or tails of the infuriating woman.
She was spirited, yes, but Anakin saw the lilac tones beneath her eyes, thumbed bruises from too many nights' lack of sleep.
What was keeping her up at night?
She put on a show in the Senate, yes, steel and steam and inflexible integrity, but Anakin saw the nervous tic she had of spinning the ring on her forefinger idly.
Who gave her that ring?
She was always grinning, yes, stretched things, wild things, bright things, but as soon as that speeder door shut behind her, Anakin saw the smile drop, shatter, and die. She would sag back against the seat, there would be a tremble to her fingers on the wheel, and from his distance looking out the window, he could see a sigh of breath.
Why was she so… Sad?
No.
That question did not matter.
None of them did, truly.
What did was Lady Potter was up to something, and Anakin needed-
Anakin needed.
A Beta would have no need for suppressants.
An Alpha up to nefarious means, who wished to go incognito as an unsuspecting Beta, however, could dose themselves high enough to get the same flavourless stench. An alpha masking as a Beta might feel tired, hormones all askew from the amount of suppressants it would take to level the pheromones. An Alpha hiding as a Beta might just let the mask drop when they thought they were alone. An Alpha secreting as a Beta might just have a ring of Beskar, the only metal known to mankind, that could conceal that true scent even further.
The man who took Anakin's mother had one such ring. Slavers used them all the time Anakin knew personally, spent months pumping suppressants into their bloodstream so they could get close enough to Omega's homes without alerting the poor soul inside, slip a Beskar ring on to temper any flares, unaware Omega's such as Anakin's Mother had been, sneak in close enough to snatch and-
There was never any good that came from an Alpha pretending to be any other designation but the one it was born to.
And what else could the Lady Potter be?
She was as hot-headed as any other Alpha, as Anakin had seen on the Senate floor as he guarded Padme, not afraid to stand and challenge any motion she deemed unfair.
She was equally as territorial, protective of those she called her friend, downright defensive of those she thought in need of protection, and openly hostile to those she believed unjust.
She was similarly reckless, having not needed much convincing, in the reports Anakin had read, of speeding full force into their galaxy to offer aid, as full force as she had charged at the Chancellor with nothing but a gut feeling, an almost unreasonable streak of luck, and Master Maul of all people at her side.
Lady Potter was a potent mix of paradoxes, as fiery as her hair and yet contradictorily as unyielding as cold, hard carbonite, and Anakin did not like the blank he was drawing every time she so much as entered the room.
She was up to something.
So he watched… And he followed.
Especially when he saw her descend from the topmost chambers of the Jedi Temple beside Master Plo Koon, flushed and edgy in a way he had not seen before, had not noticed he had been watching enough to know how jumpy she was by the deepness of the crease by her eye, feet swift in their pace to the exit, as if she could not leave fast enough.
And she didn't leave fast enough. Not without obliviously taking a shadow along with her. And he, Anakin, unwittingly taking another along with him when someone noticed him stalking out the Jedi Temple.
Anakin Skywalker's P.O.V
Lady Potter did not head straight home from the Jedi Temple. Instead, she dipped down low into the belly of Coruscant in a red and gold speeder, down the narrow winding highways, to Moshi's bar of all places. Anakin kept back, down artificial-wind, between the silhouettes of the fluorescent flashing lighting, careful not to have his own scent give him away too soon.
Moshi bar, a small tavern in the underworld of Coruscant, was known for its… Varied clientele, should he say. Operated by one Tiggs Leo, a Volpai male long since on the Jedi's radar, only those who did not want to be recognized sat down in its booths, and only those with a good right hook ever left in one piece.
It was pretty full that evening, patrons stumbling in and out the door, hooded, shielding in the dark canopy of the lower streets, faces momentarily flashing to brilliant technicolour by the strobing purple, blue and pink lights of the sign above the door.
By the side of the entrance stood a little group of Dum-series pit droids below a hovering Amplifier droid, spitting out pounding beats of syntho-music into second hand megaphone disks to draw in the crowd.
He watched Lady Potter stall beside the little group, drop a bar of credits into one's expectant hand, which meant she must have visited this place often for the droids to expect payment when everyone else passed them without a second glance, before entering the bar.
Anakin waited four parsecs, and went to follow-
A voice came whistling up from across the dingy alley, just across the bar, equally disappointed as it was exasperated.
"Anakin… You are not stalking the poor woman now, are you?"
Anakin sighed and turned.
From the shadows, the face that stepped forward was one he knew well.
Too well.
"Obi."
Master Obi-Wan Kenobi regarded him keenly.
"This is the third time I have caught you skulking after her, and this will be the third time I have to tell you the same thing. Leave her be, Anakin."
Anakin, in return, shook his head almost too aggressively.
At the accusation, for it had been, at best, two times he had followed her now, the third did not count as he had not known he had been walking after her until his thoughts had caught up to his feet.
At the word skulking. Anakin did not skulk. If anything, he prowled.
And at the strange, unusual, unwarranted, sharp, biting barb of the idea of not following. Of not being able to… Go where she went.
To finally see what she was up to, certainly. Nothing more.
"She's up to something. I know it, you have to by now too."
He hissed, head slanting in confusion.
"Can't you smell it?"
At his question, Kenobi seemed similarly puzzled. Anakin huffed frustratedly, gesturing with a sweep of his hand to the bar that was not so very far away.
"That scent! It's… Washed clean. Too clean. Sterile. She's masking her scent."
Kenobi-
Well, Master Kenobi smiled indulgently. Not exactly the reaction Anakin had been expecting from the accusation of something so highly illegal.
Alpha's weren't allowed to mask their scents, unless they were in Senate sanctioned or Jedi Order ordained negotiations.
Only Slaver's in the trade masked their scents.
Only the worst of the worst, with only the foulest of deeds in their hearts, would do so.
So what in the name of the Force was Obi-Wan smiling for?
"Of course she is."
Anakin blinked.
Froze.
Beat.
Broke.
"You mean you know?!"
Obi-Wan shrugged nonchalantly.
"How could I not? It's all there for anyone to see if they looked close enough. Lady Potter has done a good job of hiding her designation, I will give her that, but it is the little things that give her away."
Anakin spluttered.
"How can you be so unconcerned about this?"
The insouciance rinsed clear of Obi-Wan's face, replaced with a cool, hard, frown.
"Why aren't you? Out of anyone Anakin, after what you have been through, your mother and the Tusken Raiders-… Out of anyone, you should understand Lady Potter's plight better than most."
His mother.
His sweet mother, who had never hurt a single thing in her entire life, who had given her all to her son, what little she had, who had been passed from slaver to slaver, abused and shackled, and when, finally, freedom was as sweet as honey on her tongue, snatched from her home by a band of masking Alpha Tusken Raiders on a lonely stretch of sand bitten streets-
Anakin did understand better than most.
He understood the danger of Alpha's, human or Tusken, who hid their scents.
"Oh, I understand alright. I understand the threat Lady Potter poses, and I will not let the same horror that befell my mother happen to anyone else. Masking Alpha's are dangerous, Obi."
Obi-Wan, perplexed, grimaced-
A flash of light in his cheerful eye. Understanding flickering bright, and Obi-Wan chuckled.
Laughed.
"Anakin, no. You have this all wrong. Lady Potter is-"
"Is getting sick and fuckin' tired of finding you, Master Trash-bin, lurking and glowering about wherever I go. Are you following me, again?"
Anakin swivelled on his heel, around, over, to find Lady Potter, in all her fire-burn glory, standing behind the two Jedi.
Behind.
She must have figured out he was following her before she entered the bar, swept out round the back exit to get behind them in the side alley.
Brilliant.
Positively brilliant.
Anakin scowled at the tiny woman glaring at him, so small he could likely lift her up with one arm and sling her over-
Anakin bit his tongue until he tasted copper, and then spat the bitterness out through stinging words back at the Potter-paradox.
"You may have fooled everyone else, Master Plo Koon, Master Maul, now Master Kenobi, and everyone else who is unfortunate enough to stumble across your way, but you haven't fooled me. I can smell you."
That was a lie.
A big, fat, ugly lie.
Anakin couldn't smell her, couldn't scent her, couldn't understand, and that was the problem.
He could not figure out Lady Potter, and it was driving him half-mad.
All-mad.
Beyond-mad.
Yet, to win in a game of Pazaak sometimes you had to bluff, and if Lady Potter thought he had it all lined up in a pretty row, she might not see his ploy and once, just this once, slip.
And she did slip.
Backwards.
One step, two step, three steps, as if Anakin's words had physically struck her, knocked the wind out her lungs, blown her eyes wide in… Frantic, yes, frantic, desperate surprise.
It was the look of a cornered animal.
And cornered animals, particularly wounded ones, were treacherous.
"You know what I am."
It wasn't a question. It was hardly a sentence, gave on an exhale, light and wispy and barely there. However, Anakin heard it, and twists it deep, and he lets his anger get the better of him.
His mother.
It was people like Lady Potter that had taken his mother from him.
He would not let that happen to anyone else.
"I do, and I won't let you hurt anyone."
Obi-Wan tried to cut in.
"Anakin, pleas-"
But it was too late.
The accusation was like a Kyber crystal, and Lady Potter the energy core it was plugged into. With a blast, she ignited in fury.
"Hurt? Hurt?! You think I want to hurt people?"
Anakin, never one to back down from a challenge, quite the contrary in truth, squared out, feet bracing, readying.
"The only reason for masking a scent such as you have is to fool people into false security. I don't know what you are up to, but I won't let you get away with it."
"Anakin, listen-"
Lady Potter snarled over Obi-Wan's plea.
"What I want to do is live!"
It came as a shout, gasping, enraged, hurt. A shout that cuts over Obi-Wan's softer voice. A shout that tempered Anakin's own reply.
"Is that so much to bloody ask for? Just once I want to live without being locked in a cupboard, or drugged for years, or hunted down to be slaughtered. What I am trying to do, Master Skywalker, is live!"
So she does know my name then?
Another headshake to dislodge the, clearly, irrelevant thought. He's an Alpha, but Anakin not preening over having his name known.
That wouldn't make any sense at all, would it?
"What you are trying to do is trick people into-"
"Anakin-"
But Anakin was not listening.
Neither was Lady Potter.
There was a spark that had been lit between them, something heated and brutal, and uncontrollable.
And it only got worse when Lady Potter laughed, sarcastically, grim and low and detached.
"Yes, of course. It's always our fault, isn't it?"
Anakin faltered momentarily.
"What?"
But Lady Potter cared very little about Anakin's state of being, clearly.
"Somehow, someway, it's always our fault. Well, Master Skywalker, I never asked for this! I was born this way!"
That was the same excuse the slavers used, wasn't it?
Alpha's were born with the need for an Omega.
They were just making a market for a biological imperative.
They were catering to nature.
That was all.
That was never all.
Anakin swelled, a churning in his gut, in his chest, static trailing up and down his spine.
Something was wrong. All this was wrong. He had thought when he finally understood Lady Potter, this feeling would go away, blow away, smoke caught in a gust.
Not blaze brighter.
"As was I, and you do not see me sneaking around, playing coy-"
"Playing coy? No. You're entirely too loathsome to play coy Master Skywalker-"
That… Stung. Stung, perhaps, more than it should have. Much more than it should have. Too much. It cut deep. Anakin, as he typically did, took that pain and rolled it into a tight ball, into something that squirmed in his blood, into fuel for the fire. It was useful, that way, at least.
"Loathsome, am I? You're needlessly combative and maddening, you tiny-terror of-"
"At least I do not glare at anything that dares come within sixty foot of me, you bogart-faced bastard-"
"Perhaps we should all take a moment to breathe, and talk this out as productive adults-"
Obi-Wan could not slip into the verbal battle, however, as, seemingly, without notice, the two had drifted closer, eye to eye, chest to chest, breathless, vicious, and baying for blood. Or, that was what Anakin thought the gnawing hunger in the pit of his chest was, a biting sort of fight that came with battle and sweat and… Something that made his skin feel suddenly too tight for his bones, too prickly and confining.
If Obi-Wan could have interceded, perhaps it would have stopped the madness to come, for Anakin threw his final blow and there was no going back.
For any of them.
"I swear I will tell everyone what you are. There will be no where left for you to hide."
There was a clamp of Lady Potter's jaw, a roll of muscle working tongue over teeth, chewing something sour.
"You will, will you?"
"Lady Potter, he does not mean-"
A stick was in her hand between one blink and the next, the Wielders use of weapon Anakin knew, a Wand they called it, primitive but powerful, and just as he reached for the Lightsaber strapped to his belt, Lady Potter pounced.
Shouldering passed him.
Anakin stumbled, surprised, turning to follow, only to see her make the short distance over to the Dum-series droids.
The Dum-series droids who handed over the megaphone disk.
"Hey! Everyone! Hey! Over here! That's right! Over here! Come listen!"
The meandering crowd in the street began spinning, stopping, watching, unused to anyone in this low of Coruscant wanting to be seen and heard.
"I'm Representative Hemlock Potter from Earth! I believe some of you might have heard of me?"
Obviously, they had. Her face and name, along with Maul's, had been splashed across every holonet recording for three cycles due to their run in with the old Chancellor, and by the uptick of whispering breaking out in the crowd, this was exactly what Lady Potter had wanted.
Obi-Wan groaned.
"Oh, no."
Lady Potter, from across the way, looked over to Anakin. Her gaze was as cold and far-away as Ilum.
"I presume you all know the prestigious General and Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker too?"
A wave of gazes.
All Anakin could do was what he had since this women, this fervent, maddening woman, had come speeding into his life.
Watch.
"Please, Lady Potter, let me explain before-"
Lady Potter cut across Obi-Wan deftly.
"I, like so many others, joined the Jedi's Matching service today because-… Anakin Skywalker here must have seen me in the Temple, and put two and two together. Now, instead of just leaving it well enough alone, he decided to follow me, corner me, and then threaten to out me… So here I am. I am an Omega. Hear that? Hemlock fuckin' Potter is an Omega! Happy, everyone? I'm an Omega! Clearly, the Jedi Matching service isn't as bloody confidential as it pretends to be! So hear it here first lads! I'm a fuckin' Omega!"
Oh.
Oh.
Oh no.
She lowered the megaphone disk in the silence, and threw it down at Anakin's boots in an unspoken challenge.
Her eyes-
Wet.
Her green eyes were wet and wounded.
"Is that what you wanted, Master Skywalker? Well, now you have it… I hope you're bloody happy."
She turned on her heel, and with a crack and a fizzle, and a push in the Force, she was gone.
The crowd was almost deafening-
Anakin could only hear the thumping of his heartbeat ricocheting off his ribcage.
A hand slapped down on his shoulder, resolute as it was sympathetic.
Obi-Wan shook his head under Anakin's blank stare.
"That could have gone better."
Next Chapter: Obi-Wan tries to do some damage control, but Hemlock Potter's gone MIA...
A.N: Thank you all for the lovely response to this fic. I hope you liked this chapter, and if you can, don't forget to drop a review. Hopefully, I will see you all soon with our favourite quad of human disasters stumbling their way through love.