K, this chapter has three main scenes, switches between the point of view of Anakin and Aria, and covers two days worth of activities...and jumps about another four days from where the last chapter left off.
AngelDesaray of Fanfiction It's my Facebook page. Go like it, seriously, I'm not joking, I post pictures, update alerts, I do teases, and I'm going to start working on descriptions, like I'm planning on drawing and then posting a picture of Luke's altered lightsaber in the Test of Time series. And I'm going to post any FanArt that comes my way on there. please like the page!
PLEAAAASE Review! Please! This story is...surprisingly...coming to an end...and then we'll have the sequel.
I will not reveal the title yet though hahhahaha
Enjoy!
The funeral, surprisingly, did not take long to arrange. The date was set for Wednesday the very next week, with hardly any time for anyone to really plan on coming out for the funeral. Apparently, for this family, that was actually plenty of time. There were relatives staying in hotels and with other relatives in the area, and they visited often, but every time they visited Aria stayed up in her room; and every time she stayed in her room, the Star Wars trio stayed with her.
Anakin hated to see her like this. She'd been so full of bubbly life the first four days they'd known her despite the bullying and the fighting in her house and being constantly worn out between work, school, chores, bible study, and—recently—researching anything she could get her hands on for the trio. Now it was like the life had been sucked out of her. He saw her just blow through the motions like a leaf on the wind, burying herself in stacks of research in every spare moment she found herself with in a not-so-secret attempt to forget and make it all go away. There had been several moments in the past few days where Anakin had woken in the middle of the night to realize Aria was having a nightmare, and he'd made the effort to comfort her in those moments. Needless to say, neither of them were getting much sleep.
She still had the traits that made her Aria though; it was just that some of them had gone dormant. It was Aria that comforted her younger siblings over the loss of their father, Aria that rocked Roxanne to sleep with songs of a Concrete Angel that she didn't think anyone could hear, Aria that was the first to brave her Father's possessions, and it was Aria that now wore his military dog-tags around her neck with the addition of a blue dog tag that read 'With Love From Dad, U.S. Army 2004' on its increasingly weathered features.
Today, though, was a day where the house was eerily quiet. The Star Wars trio watched in silence as Aria got ready for the funeral, dressed in a long black dress with her hair pulled up in an unrelentingly tight bun that just had to hurt. They were going to attend the funeral as well, of course, and were also wearing black. Tears were visible in Aria's eyes, but she never once let them fall from her eyes. There was a gentle knock on the door and Joshua poked his head in the door, fresh tear streaks visible on his face. He was dressed in a nice black suit that seemed just slightly baggy on him when he stepped all the way in.
"Mom says we're going," Joshua said softly, his voice trembling. New tears leaked out of his eyes and Aria moved to kneel down in front of him, pulling him into a tight hug.
"It's going to be all right Joshua...you'll see," Aria whispered. Anakin was sure they weren't meant to hear, but Aria sang softly in her brother's ear. "I know sometimes things may not always make sense to you right now; but hey, what daddy always tell you? Straighten up little soldier. Stiffen up that upper lip. What you crying about? You got me."
Joshua hugged her tightly, sobbing lightly in her shoulder. "I miss him."
"I do too Joshua...I do too," Aria said gently, rubbing small circles on her brother's back. She cleared her throat and stood up, casting her eyes to the other three occupants in the room. "We better go," she whispered, her hand clasped tightly around her brother's.
Aria didn't process anything that happened at the funeral really. It was a closed casket because of the...the state her father had been in after the wreck. She sat in the front row, staring at the casket, holding the dog-tags in a white-knuckled grip at her chest as the eulogy and everything was done, not a single word coming through to her. She did register when it was her turn, and she got up numbly from her seat to stand in front of everyone, her eyes unfocused so that she couldn't really make out the faces of the people that were in front of her. She offered no introduction; she simply took a shaky breath and sang. Her father had always loved to hear her sing...
"Come in, come in my father dear...and spend this hour with me. For I have a meal, and a very fine meal; I fixed it up for thee, thee, I fixed it up for thee. No, I ain't comin' in, no, I ain't comin' in to spend this hour with thee. For I have to go down in the mines, I'll return this night to thee, thee, I'll return this night to thee. Then she got up her arrow and bow...Her arrow and her string; and she went down to the forest deep, and sweetly she did sing, sing, and sweetly she did sing. Up spoke-up spoke a mockingjay up from a willow tree; Saying you had a father in the mines who's gone this day from thee, thee, who's gone this day from thee. Woe be, woe be mockinjay. Woe be, woe be to thee! I'll send an arrow through your heart for to bring such news to me, me, for to bring such news to me. Up spoke-up spoke that mockingjay. Don't waste your time with me; go home and mind that pretty little girl, her father no more to see, see, her father no more to see. And she went home to her house that night; that house so cold and mean! And she held her sister close to her side, and never more did sing, sing, and never more did sing."
She didn't know if anyone else realized it, but in her heart, she wanted to swear never to sing again; her father wouldn't want it though, so she kept herself from making such a promise to herself. Silently crying, Aria blindly returned to her seat, not sure how she managed to find her spot through the tears. She felt Anakin put a strong arm around her shoulders in comfort, but she hardly registered the movement. It did little to warm the icy numbness that was rapidly spreading through her as the viewing was wrapped up in a blur of dull colors and black, and she stood up to join the funeral procession.
Aria managed to drive them to the funeral procession. Anakin didn't know how—he could tell the girl was hardly there with them—but she managed. Aria, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme were all in one car while Selina, Joshua, and Roxanne were in another, but they all arrived at the cemetery at the same time. Silently they got out of the car, watching the line of soldier's carry the flag covered casket to the grave. They all gathered by the grave, watching as the soldiers lifted the flag tightly above the casket. They simply stood there holding the flag tight above the casket, and just as Anakin was starting to wonder why the first shot was fired into the air.
Beside him, Aria jumped and stifled a cry of emotional pain, visibly biting her lip to stop the sound from escaping. The second shot fired and she visibly flinched. By the third and final shot, she was silently crying, watching the casket with an unwavering gaze. A soldier off to the side started to play a sad and mournful tune, and Aria visibly wavered in place, causing Anakin to gently grasp her arm in concern to steady her. Once more, she was holding the dog-tags in her hand in a death grip, as if somehow holding them would bring her father back before he went down in his grave forever.
The song ended, and the flag was folded up before one of the soldiers came up to Aria's mother, got down on one knee, and presented it to the woman.
"Ma'am; this flag is presented on behalf of a grateful nation as an expression of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service rendered by your loved one," he said. He stood back up, saluted, and then walked away. Aria's head was bowed low, and tears flowed freely down her face the entire time.
Aria had to go to the school the next day. Considering the funeral had been just yesterday, Anakin thought that it was horrible timing. Obviously, Selina wanted her children back into their 'normal' lives as soon as possible despite everything that had happened. Anakin and the others were going to pick Aria up, as she hadn't been fit to drive since after the funeral the day before. In fact, she'd had a small emotional break-down in the car when no one was watching; one the trio had stood by and acted as a human wall of sorts to shield her from any peering eyes while she had it. Anakin had been the one to help her out of the car and softly insist that someone else—namely him—take the wheel.
Of course, they couldn't interfere; Aria was Selina's daughter, and it was not their place. Still, Anakin drummed his fingers against the steering wheel nervously, staring at the school house entrance. He knew it wasn't the only entrance, but he figured it was the one to watch as it was where Aria typically came out. Anakin sighed, thinking back to the first time he'd picked her up from school.
"If I see anyone pick on her today, I swear—" he muttered.
"Today?" Obi-Wan asked, surprised. Anakin glanced at him. He'd completely forgotten that he'd never told the other two that Aria was bullied at school. The topic had completely slipped his mind, understandably.
Anakin sighed. "The other day, when I picked her up from the school, she was being picked on by some of the other kids. Apparently it's a regular thing."
"That's horrible," Padme said with a frown, looking anxiously out the window for Aria with Anakin. The faint sound of the bell ringing could be heard from inside the school, and Anakin craned his neck for a better view of the door.
"She should be out now," he mumbled more to himself than anyone else. He watched the students pouring out of the door, adjusting the Star Wars snap-back on his head once again with a steadily growing frown. He didn't see her...
"She's over there...and she does not look happy," Obi-Wan mused, nodding in the direction of the other door. Aria was walking at a quick pace, a scowl plastered on her face as she tried to escape three boys that were tailing her. Anakin didn't even say anything as he got out of the car, Obi-Wan and Padme following suit before they all started to make their way towards her. They couldn't hear what the boys were saying, but Anakin could sense Aria growing steadily angrier with a pool of hurt lying underneath all of the anger. Halfway towards her, the three saw Aria finally just...snap.
One of the boys said something, and in the next instant Aria's bag was on the ground and she had popped the boy right in the mouth. The other two boys were too shocked to do anything for the first few seconds as Aria tackled the boy to the ground and proceeded to bat his attempts at defense away and land a few more punches to the face. By then, Anakin and Obi-Wan had broken into a run and arrived to pull Aria off of the boy before she could do any serious damage to him.
"Aria, Aria, calm down, it's me, calm down," Anakin said repeatedly, his arms hooked around Aria's waist while Obi-Wan planted himself between the boys and Aria. To their surprise, Aria didn't continue to fight when she realized that it was Anakin that was restraining her. Instead, she slumped against him, the fight rushing out of her in an instant. The boy got to his feet, blood gushing out of his nose, complimented by a split lip.
"You broke my nose!" he exclaimed. A spark appeared in Aria's eyes, and she tensed up in a sudden surge of anger.
"Be glad that was the only thing I broke," she spat with such venom Obi-Wan blinked in surprise.
"Figures, coming from a military brat," one of the other boys growled. "The whole lot of you is rotten to the core; the world's a better place without your fa—"
The boy didn't get to finish, because this time it was Anakin that hit the boy right in the mouth, and he seriously hoped he knocked a tooth or two out in the process.
"Anakin—!" Obi-Wan was about to scold, but Anakin blatantly ignored and spoke over him.
"I suggest you keep your trap shut and go crawl back to the hole you slithered out of," he snarled, eyes flashing dangerously. "Or you're going to find yourselves dealing with me, and you wouldn't want that; trust me, I'm much worse, and I'll get away with all of it."
The boys rapidly scrambled to their feet, darting away so quickly he didn't think anyone even realized what had just happened. Anakin was still scowling as he turned to face Aria again, but when he saw her silently crying in Padme's shoulder his expression softened and he put a gentle hand on the girl's back. "Come on…let's get you home."
"Thank you," she whispered softly to him as they collectively headed back towards the car.
"Anytime," Anakin promised in a gentle tone of voice. They all filed into the car, with Anakin taking up the driver's side and Aria sitting in the passenger side while Obi-Wan and Padme sat in the back of the car. Aria had flipped through her CD's and inserted one of the albums before Anakin even started the car, and when he did start the car she flipped the album right to a specific track and turned up the volume, twiddling the dog-tags absentmindedly in her hands. Anakin didn't say anything, but he did listen very, very carefully to the song that started to play through the stereo as by now it was obvious that Aria's mood and thoughts could easily be gauged by the music she played in the moment.
'Take me down to the river bend. Take me down to the fighting end. Wash the poison from off my skin; show me how to be whole again. Fly me up on a silver wing, past the black where the sirens sing. Warm me up in a nova's glow, and drop me down to the dream below. 'Cause I'm only a crack in this castle of glass; hardly anything there for you to see…for you to see. Bring me home in a blinding dream, through the secrets that I have seen. Wash the sorrow from off my skin and show me how to be whole again…'
When they arrived at the house after an extensively silent trip that felt longer than normal, Anakin could feel ripples in the Force. Something was about to happen again, and he didn't think that it was going to be necessarily good. Instinctively, he drew closer to Aria in a protective stance; he was beginning to see her as a sister of sorts, especially recently after seeing her in so much pain. Aria took a deep breath and hefted her backpack higher onto her shoulder before she walked through the door. Selina stormed around the corner, an inferno of anger.
"You and I need to have a talk young lady," Selina said in a dangerous tone of voice. Aria wasn't even phased by her mother's tone, she just seemed…tired; worn.
Anakin gently took Aria's bag from her, slipping quietly into the living room with Obi-Wan and Padme following close behind. Roxanne was sitting in the middle of the room playing with her building blocks, and Padme crouched down to play with the one year old. For a few moments, a mild hum could be heard as Selina spoke in angry, raised tones, though not loud enough for anyone to really hear what she was saying. Aria had yet to speak as far as Anakin was aware, though he stayed sitting in the chair closest to the kitchen, listening intently for anything that he could pick up.
Suddenly, he felt a warning through the Force, and the argument in the kitchen exploded.
"How would you even know? You don't care; you never cared! You don't even know the crap that I've gone through because you haven't even bothered to ask! And I'm the selfish one! We've never even been a real family! Just a bunch of fake smiles pasted together!" Aria suddenly shouted. "I work my butt off every day to be your perfect child, your model girl that you can flaunt to all your friends, and every time I screw up—no matter how small of a mistake it is—I'm the laziest most ungrateful child in the universe that will get nowhere and has no life. Well guess what; I'm tired of being your perfect little girl! I'm sick and tired of it and I won't do it anymore! So sorry Mom, but you're going to have to get used to the fact that I am not perfect, and I never will be; especially right now after everything that's happened. So suck it up and get used to it."
Anakin was up and at the door halfway through Aria's explosion, and he managed to reach the door just in time to see Selina's hand fly out and smack Aria so hard across the face her head snapped to the side. "You do not talk to your mother that way!" Selina growled as Obi-Wan and Padme appeared behind Anakin.
Aria stared at her, the angry red mark on her cheek refusing to disappear as she spoke in an even, deadly serious tone. "The only real parent I ever had was my father."
Selina reeled back in shock and Aria broke free of the woman, racing out the door and into the snowy world outside, the screen door banging shut on her way out.
"Aria!" Anakin called, rushing out the door after her. Padme and Obi-Wan were right behind him, and Padme had enough of a mind to grab Aria's coat on the way out the door; the girl had just run out into the cold with her sheer long sleeve and nothing else to keep warm.
She was a fast runner; Anakin had to give her that. She'd already made it quite a ways down the street and was currently a dark spot against the snow as she rushed towards the forest. Anakin broke into a dead sprint to catch up with her, hopefully before she got lost in the trees, though if that happened he would simply use the Force to locate her.
"Aria!" he called again. The girl faltered slightly in her step but other than that she kept moving, disappearing into the forest in the next few strides. Anakin growled low in his throat in frustration before he let the feeling go, plunging into the forest after her and feeling for her presence through the Force. Obi-Wan and Padme were off to either side of him so they could fan through the forest and find the girl before she got too cold and hopefully before she developed hypothermia or something like that.
Finally, Anakin sensed that her presence had stopped moving, and he made a direct charge towards the spot he could sense her. He had to jump over a fallen tree-trunk to make it, but he eventually found her sitting at the base of a willow tree, hands clasped over her head with her head between her knees like she was trying to calm herself down and keep from hyperventilating. She was whispering lyrics to herself as she tried to calm down, sobs breaking through the words every now and then.
"In between the coats in the closet, she held on to that heart-shaped locket, staring at a family, flawless; but it ain't a pretty picture tonight. Mom and daddy just won't stop it, fighting at the drop of a faucet, cuts through the walls, catastrophic; she's caught in the crossfire. Puts her hands over her ears, starts talking through the tears; and she's saying, and she's praying. I wish words were like little toy guns; no sting, no hurting no one. Just a bang, bang rolling off your tongue, I wish words were like little toy guns. Yeah, no smoke, no bullets, no kick from the trigger when you pull it, no pain, no damage done. I wish words were like little toy guns..."
Anakin kneeled down in front of the girl, putting his hands on her shoulders and ignoring the cold of the snow as it seeped into his legs. "Aria..." he started, just stopping short of asking her if she was all right. The girl continued to cry, and he gently pulled her into his arms, rubbing her back soothingly as he tried to comfort her. "Just breathe...it's all right...you're all right now..." he said in a gentle tone.
Padme gently tapped his shoulder, offering Aria's jacket to him. He took it gratefully, mouthing a 'thank you' before he situated the jacket around Aria's shoulders and simply stayed there in the snow, letting her cry into his shoulder to her heart's content as she let the past few days' worth of pain out in an unrelenting flow. Finally, her sobs quieted, and the only sound in the clearing was the breathing of the four of them combined and the soft rustle of the willow tree. Aria buried her face a little deeper into Anakin's shoulder before she startled him with a very soft-spoken question.
"When you go back...please, promise you'll take me with you. Take me away from all of this; I won't do it anymore. I need to get away, and I want to come with you. I've never felt like I belonged here anyway," Aria cried quietly into his shoulder.
Anakin looked up at the other two, meeting first Padme's gaze to try and gauge what she was thinking. The woman's face was filled with sympathy for the girl, and she seemed ready to take Aria under her wing and provide her with everything that the younger girl could desire. Obi-Wan seemed a little more guarded, and was probably trying to figure out if taking Aria from her home, family, and galaxy was the right thing to do. Anakin sighed, closing his eyes and sending a quiet plea to the Force for some sort of guidance as to what to say, teetering between a gentle no or a firm yes.
After a few moments, Anakin pulled Aria away, gently helping her wipe the tears from her face and tucking a stray tangle of hair behind her ear before he cupped her cheek and looked right into her eyes.
"I promise."
