sith_happened | Office hours [all day]

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Office hours [all day]

Now that his class was held on Thursday, Anakin's office hours had shifted to Tuesday. He was currently at his desk with his class roster and a piece of paper designing a seating chart.

Based on the first day of class and the radio from this morning, he was wondering if he should just have Loki and Alex come to ethics every other week.

The door was open!

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"Hey, you busy?" Luke asked. He didn't look that busy but he wasn't really sure what teachers did with all those papers they always seemed to have on hand at all times.

"Nothing that can't wait," Anakin assured him, putting the seating chart to the side. "Come in, Luke."

"Thanks," he said, coming in and taking a seat. "I was pretty sure that teachers don't have life or death paper work, but I like making sure anyway."

Anakin snickered. "Only if we've killed someone?"

With Deadpool and Anakin both on staff and Jamie Madrox back, Zoe probably needed to keep herself covered on an insurance front.

"You can't possibly be that frustrated with the new kids already." And, yes, he had met Loki.

"Not yet," Anakin said. "The faculty are a different story, but I've made 'don't kill people' my New Year's resolution."

Most people don't need to resolve to do that, Anakin.

"That one is on my list as well," Luke said lightly. "Or, well, 'don't order people to kill other people'. That's more accurate."

Anakin nodded toward the door. "Would you like me to make the squirrels choose to be elsewhere?"

"That would be preferable, yeah," Luke said with a nod. He was a pretty open person with what had happened, but he wasn't quite ready for the entire island to know he had gone off the deep end.

Anakin waved his hand and the door to the office clicked closed, then concentrated for a moment and the squirrels skittered off. "There," he said. "I was more the enforcer of someone else's kill orders."

Which was something he really didn't want getting around to the general population.

"Yeah, I guess that is kind of what I was too," Luke said. "Not that I wanted to admit that for the first...year or two."

Hey, admitting that actually said a lot about how his ego had been deflated since this all started.

"I thoroughly deluded myself into thinking I was Kronos's partner rather than a high ranking flunky."

Anakin nodded, looking understanding. "No one aspires to be the minion. I believed that I was just biding my time until I'd take over myself." He snorted. "I was deluding myself, too."

"How long did it take you before you realized you completely screwed up?" Luke asked.

"A heartbeat after learning my wife was dead," Anakin replied. "I didn't do anything about it for almost twenty years, though."

"Sorry about your wife," Luke said with a frown. "At least you did something in the end. That's what counts. Or so my friend told me. I still don't feel all that great about it."

"And you won't," Anakin said, "but that's how you know that you're you again. Would you have felt guilt about it two years ago?"

"No," Luke answered. "I thought I was doing the right thing. I knew going into it that people were going to get hurt. I just thought, you know, the ends would justify the means."

Wow, he had been stupid.

Anakin nodded. "If they could only see what you saw, it would all make sense and they'd stop being disappointed in you?"

Luke nodded. "Even now I don't regret wanting to change things. I hope I did change something for the better. It would suck if I went through all that for nothing."

Anakin's lips quirked up. "Now that sounds familiar. I was prophesied to bring balance to to the Force. I did it by bringing the number of Jedi down to two, to match the number of Sith. Oops."

"Wow, not even my prophecy was quite that bad," Luke said. "Though I'm sure my god of prophecy would have gotten a kick out of it."

"That's because prophets tend to be sadistic bastards," was Anakin completely unbiased opinion.

"They tend to be powerful sadistic bastards as well," Luke said, sighing. "I am glad to be out of that, no matter how much I miss being able to go home sometimes."

Anakin nodded. "I've kind of stepped out of the timestream myself," he said. "I get to freak out my grandkids when they show up because they know all about my...old self."

"Yeah, but they know how you realized you made a mistake, right?" Luke asked. "People can't hold a grudge forever if you tried to fix things."

He was kind of counting on that.

"They know. My daughter Leia--the one who went here--still hasn't gotten to the part where I change my mind in her timeline," Anakin said with a little wince. "She doesn't know what I was."

Living in Fandom was a special kind of hell sometimes.

"Yeah, I kind of get how that is. My ex doesn't know what I did to fix things. Can't know, since he's heavily involved in it," Luke said. "Kind of makes it hard for him to trust me again when he can't know the full story. And I don't even know if he'll trust me after that."

"Timelines are worse than prophecy," Anakin said. "Trust is incredibly difficult to build up again--I lost several friendships here when people realized who I'd been."

He shrugged. "I can't say that I didn't deserve it."

"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," Luke admitted. "I know I'd deserve it if he never trusted me again but I really, really don't want that to happen."

"How far behind is he on the timeline?" Anakin asked with a small frown. "Messing with someone else's future isn't something I generally advocate for."

"He should be nearing the end of everything, but his timeline is moving super slow, apparently," Luke said. "I'm not trying to mess with his future, believe me. I'm actually afraid if I told him anything he'd actually try to stop me from stopping Kronos. Which would be bad. World ending bad."

Anakin winced. "Yes, let's not end a world if possible."

He'd blown up a planet once. It had been bad.

"That's my plan," he said. "Makes trying to gain trust back a little harder but I guess it's better than the alternative."

Even if this way made him all mopey and broody. Which was something Anakin wouldn't know anything about, really.

You mean Sunshine McOptimism? Never!

"But it doesn't make it easier for you," Anakin said sympathetically.

"It doesn't," he said, sighing. "But I figure I deserve it. And that's not even me martyring myself, I really did a lot of horrible things and deserve it."

"How are you sleeping?" Anakin asked, switching topics slightly. "It took me months afterwards to sleep through the night."

"It's hard," he admitted. "It doesn't help that I was recently put in a situation where...well, I didn't sleep at all, really. Not unless my body gave out on me, which was rare."

Kronos's decision, not Luke's.

"It's hard to remember that I can sleep when I want and when I do remember that, falling asleep isn't easy."

"Have you thought about going to the clinic for something to help with that?" he asked quietly. "Sleep is important for healing."

"Hadn't really considered it," he said. "I've usually taken the 'suck it up and deal with it' approach in the past."

Which has turned out wonderfully, as you can see.

"Me too," Anakin said with a tiny smile. "Be smarter than me."

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