sith_happened | Office hours [all day]

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Office hours [all day]

Anakin hadn't slept in a couple of days.

Not that this was so terribly unusual for him since coming back from his galaxy, but today the shadows under his eyes were particularly noticeable.

He was flipping absently through a magazine that was six months old and fighting to stay awake.

The door was open.

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Anakin nodded. "They all become part of the Force," he said softly. "They're still with you."

And if that hasn't kept him up most of this week, well, you're ignoring the circles under his eyes.

He frowned. "I don't know what Hades would want with souls. I can't imagine it's good news for the person who used to have it." Anakin's eyebrows went up. "He wanted your soul for that favor?"

Rikku closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to see if she could feel any of them out there. She couldn't, but they were, so it was okay.

"I ... he just said it was a 'shopping list.' I tried ... I tried to do it myself, because I didn't think anyone would let me, and I did it wrong and that's why things were bendy all week. Uh, and I'm sorry about that. There was a rip. He had to fix it. That's when he said I should have just asked."

Anakin blinked. "You ripped...what?" His face paled. "What separates them from us?" His eyes went hard. "You won't do that again."

It wasn't a request. Anakin had a bit of a vested interest in not having the them visit him.

Ever.

Rikku flinched, squeezing her eyes shut. "N-no, I won't. H-honest. I wasn't - I don't know what I ripped. It - he was supposed to m-move here from there, and instead I moved there and when I got back there was a h-hole. I'm s-sorry."

Anakin gave her hand a squeeze. "We make mistakes," he soothed. "But bringing people back...once they're gone, they're gone."

Except for Obi-Wan, but that hardly seemed like an example to use.

Rikku sighed. "It's our fault. What we did ... it made his world go away. We didn't know. I wish we had. We could have ... something."

"You made his world go away?" Anakin frowned. "With explosives or magic?"

Rikku looked up, eyes wide. "What? No, it wasn't like that! We'd never! We saved the world. We were totally the good guys! It's just ..."

She shook her head again. "It's just that his world wasn't real, and - and fixing what was wrong made all the unreal stuff go away, and - and he faded."

"We didn't know. Maybe we could have done something if we had. But ... he didn't die. He was just - someone stopped Summoning him, I guess."

Anakin nodded slowly. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I think he's gone."

It sounded so final when he said it. Rikku closed her eyes and nodded. "That's ... that's okay. I mean it's good, right? B-because ... that means I can stop trying, and not worry about ... if it's just over, and he's gone, I d-don't have to t-try to ..."

That's when her shoulders slumped and she started shaking again. Idiot. Crying all over his office like this.

Anakin reached over to wrap his arm around her shoulder. "It's all right," he soothed. "Keeping it all inside will just eat you alive."

Rikku leaned against him for a long moment before calming down, taking a deep breath, and straightening up. "I'm ... I'm okay. I cried a lot of this out last night, and ... I don't like being sad when I'm sad so I try to feel better even if I don't and ... and it'll all go away if I don't think about it, but lately it doesn't."

She blinked at him. "Whoa. That's what you mean, isn't it? The eating-alive?"

He nodded. "I have a bit of experience with it."

Rikku swallowed, hard. "That's ... kinda scary."

Then flailed a bit because that came out entirely wrong. "Not you, not the you-having-experience bit! I mean! I didn't know that ... I didn't realize that kinda thing wouldn't go away. That's kinda scary."

She looked down. "I spent two days not telling anybody about the hole and when I finally did it was like I could breathe again. You know?"

Anakin nodded slowly. "When you're sitting on a secret, your instinct is to hide it from everyone." He paused. "Your instincts are normally wrong on that." He smiled. "A comparative religions class I took here taught me that confession is good for the soul. It's a lesson I keep having to relearn."

Rikku nodded. "I had to, I mean, I thought I did. Because they might have stopped me and this was important enough ..." She looked at her hands for a second, smiling oddly. "You know, it's funny, because ... underneath that, once things got really bad? I wanted to find someone and let it all out. Not someone-anyone, someone specific." She shook her head. "It was like a homing beacon. Go, find him, spill it all out, and everything will get fixed. So weird."

"I'm in a sort-of-religions class this semester. By accident. I haven't really been paying attention. I guess I figured it was all more lies and mind control and whatever else." She considered. "Who taught the religions class that you took?" Probably not Ares. She couldn't imagine him thinking about souls too much.

"A wizard named Gandalf," Anakin said. "I think he gotten eaten by Special Collections."

He smiled softly. "I had someone like that, too," he said. "He died a while ago."

Well, technically Anakin'd killed him, but details, right?

"He was ... eaten by it!?" Her jaw dropped. "Whoa. Is that why they have a twenty-minute time limit? In case it tries to eat you!?"

She smiled ruefully at him. "I'm sorry. About your friend. That's gotta be extra hard, when it's someone like that. Are you ... okay?"

"I miss him every day," Anakin admitted, "and I miss my wife. But I can't bring them back."

He shrugged it off. "Special Collections is strange. There's also a genie who will do your nails."

Rikku nodded sadly. "I'm ... I'm sorry about your wife, too. Was that Luke's mom?"

She nearly smacked herself. Stupid question, and personal at that. Good combination!

"A genie? My nails?" She considered. "I don't think it'd be worth it. The rest of the place is way too creepy."

Anakin smiled sadly. "She was," he said, then quickly changed the subject.

"Special collections is bizarre. I've only been in there once." He smiled again. "They had a prophecy on me."

Rikku shook her head. "I only went in once. Rory gave me gloves and told me she'd come after me if I was in too long. That's when I was looking for stuff on ... bringing him back."

She nearly facepalmed. Rory had mentioned him being her ex. Smooooooth.

She swallowed quickly. "What, uh, kind of prophecy? I mean, about you specifically? That's kind of neat."

Anakin's face had reverted to the carefully polite look he reserved for talking about people who meant more than they should when Rikku mentioned Rory.

"I was supposed to bring balance to the Force," Anakin said quietly, wondering why he'd brought that up.

Rikku was blushing faintly but luckily, had enough tact not to mention her mistake to Professor Skywalker. Somewhere, somehow.

"That's ... that's a good thing, right? Did you do it? I mean, did it work?"

"Not exactly the way people'd had expected," Anakin said quietly, then switched topics again.

"So you're friends with Luke?"

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