Office hours [all day]

[sith_happened]

Anakin was running late because Juliet had needed to get her flu shot (and then Anakin had needed to fix the pediatricians office and mindwhammy people into not remembering how she'd thrown the examining table down the hall...) and so he arrived in his office with a giant mug of coffee and a slightly disgruntled look on his face.

Which was kind of his default expression, but details.

Comments

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

Katniss tapped lightly on the door, peeking in. "Is this a bad time?"

[sith_happened]

"Not at all," Anakin said, waving her inside. "How have you been?"

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

Katniss shrugged. "Fine." That was a word. She didn't feel better, just...more able to fake being fine.

[sith_happened]

Anakin made a face. "In my family, 'fine' is code for 'not at all fine, but I don't want to talk about it.' Is that true here too?"

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"It's more...I don't know how to talk about it," Katniss said softly, shaking her head.

[sith_happened]

"That's all right. Start wherever you'd like," Anakin replied.

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

Katniss gingerly climbed into the chair in front of his desk, where she was so used to sitting, and thought about where to start. "I have nightmares."

[sith_happened]

"That's your brain trying to work through things," Anakin replied. "Are you seeing memories or variations of what happened?"

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"Prim."

She didn't need to add when. He'd seen her, too.

[sith_happened]

Anakin still had nightmares of Padme's last moments, so he looked stricken to hear that even though he wasn't surprised by the answer.

"But you're still trying to sleep, right? My grandson tends to pretend that if he doesn't sleep, he won't be bothered."

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"If I close my eyes, I see her," Katniss answered. "So. I try not to."

[sith_happened]

"That's not going to help things," he said softly. "I think the clinic might have sleeping pills..."

[thegirl-onfire.livejournal.com]

"No!"

She hadn't meant it to sound like that, and Katniss immediately looked a little regretful. "No," she said, more calmly. "I...only just stopped having withdrawal from morphling."

[wwiii]

There was a Warren. A Warren in Anakin's doorway, made of fidgeting and uncertainty, because that was just how Warren rolled when he had to go to people in order to talk about things.

Things were just hard, okay?

The thing was, Lucivar had given Warren an assignment of sorts, to find adults on the island that he felt like he could trust to not blow sunshine up his behind, and Warren had to actually seek them out and talk to them and on second thought, taking off back down the hallway seemed like a great idea! But there Warren went, knocking on the door anyhow. Because if Lucivar showed up tomorrow and Warren hadn't spoken to someone who had a good head on his shoulders and some actual life experience behind him, he was never going to live it down. Probably.

"Um... Excuse me? Professor Skywalker?"

[sith_happened]

Anakin glanced up. "Warren. Come in."

[wwiii]

Okay! It was not too late! Warren could enter the room, and offer Anakin an iffy little smile (like so) and a little nod of his head (like so) and then make words happen before deftly excusing himself and slipping off down the hall like a complete and total chickenshit.

"Uh, hi." Words like those! "I, uh... Sorry if I'm interrupting anything? I can go."

Because people usually invited people in when they wanted them to leave, Warren.

[sith_happened]

"Nothing pressing," Anakin assured him. "Would you like to sit down?"

[wwiii]

Well, so much for Warren's brilliant plans to go fleeing down the hallway with his dignity in one piece. He nodded again, tentatively, and then walked over to find a chair.

"It's... nothing that can't wait," he stated. "Or that can't come in little bits and pieces. Or anything like that. I just kind of need to, uh, talk to somebody."

You know. Just talk. About things that people talk about!

[sith_happened]

"That's why I get paid the big money," Anakin said with a tiny smile. "Would you prefer the door closed?"

[wwiii]

No. If the door was closed, Warren couldn't go running through it if he absolutely needed to get somewhere out in the open, where he could stretch his wings and reassure himself that he wasn't strapped down or something.

Yes. If the door was open, anybody walking by could hear what he was talking about, and there were things that he was chewing on talking about that he hadn't even told Bobby.

Yes won out over no, and Warren nodded a little bit, murmuring a "Please" along with it.

[sith_happened]

Anakin waved his hand and the door closed on its own. "There," he said quietly. "Now what's the matter?"

[wwiii]

Right. The matter. Making words happen was the next stop on the path to actually talking. Or so Warren had heard.

"It's kind of..." He furrowed his brow, frowning at the top of Anakin's desk while he worked on gathering his thoughts. "A lot of things, all kind of piling up on top of themselves, I guess. But mostly I think the matter is my ability to, uh, cope."

Kind of.

"I guess I'm not so good at that part."

[sith_happened]

Anakin had been wondering when the students had gone to Panem would start trickling back into his office, so he nodded and tried to look sympathetic.

"You've had a lot dumped on you in the last few months," he said. "I'd have trouble coping too."

And then he hoped Warren would fill the blanks in on just what he was coping with.

[wwiii]

"I... guess." He attempted a sort of uncertain little smile. "I mean, there was... Panem. And that sickness."

Fidgety claws, right there, at the mention of that one.

"And other stuff. I mean, I'm trying to help pull things together with Karla to help the Black Widows from Glacia, and my dad is going to be here this weekend, and... a lot of things that I have no control over, mostly. All at once."

[sith_happened]

"Parents Weekend tends to bring a lot of things to a head," Anakin agreed. "I know I stressed over it when I was a student. Fandom tends to be a safe space for people to learn who they are. Visitors usually have their own ideas about who we're supposed to be."