Office hours [all day]

[sith_happened]

Anakin had been feeling twitchy ever since he'd said goodbye to Anakin on Tuesday and in an effort to stop his children from picking up on his anxious Force-aura, headed back to the island to burn off some energy.

He spent an hour at the gym, then went to his office, sat with cross-crossed legs on his floor and began to meditate:

There is no emotion; there is peace.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is peace.
There is no death, there is the Force.

Maybe if he repeated it to himself enough, he'd believe it.

[OOC: The door is closed, the post is open!

Comments

[solo_sword]

As much as Jaina didn't want to deal with anything that was going on, she knew she wasn't the only one that was dealing with it. So she went to her grandfather's office, knocking lightly since she knew he was in there.

[sith_happened]

"Come in, Jaina," Anakin said, not opening his eyes just yet. He'd found some calm and was reluctant to give it up.

[solo_sword]

She came inside, closing the door behind her again. And when she saw what he was doing, she just took a seat across from him.

"Hi."

[sith_happened]

"It's helping a bit," he murmured, "but only after beating the poodoo out of the dummy at the gym."

Finding quiet and stillness had never been one of Anakin's strengths.

[solo_sword]

"Beating something up is much more helpful," Jaina said. "Feels like you're doing something that way."

It hadn't been a strength of Jaina's either.

[sith_happened]

"Paying for a lot of replacement dummies?" Anakin offered a little wryly.

[solo_sword]

"Of course not. If the gym didn't want them broken, they wouldn't make them available to me." That was a very lame effort at a joke there. Jaina shrugged, and said, "It's that or sit around waiting for it to happen. I'd much rather hit things."

[sith_happened]

"Wonder where you get that from," Anakin said with a wry smile. "Sit down?"

[solo_sword]

She did, and stated simply, "This is the worst."

[sith_happened]

"No argument here," Anakin said, staring at the floor.

[weetuskenraider]

Tahiri had stayed in Fandom ever since Anakin had left. Like Jaina, the last couple of days had felt like a long, slow, horrible process of just waiting for the inevitable, and even though she knew she was going to be okay this time she still had no desire to be alone if she was going to relive the experience in any way.

She was already projecting sympathy and reassurance (and the need for it as well) in the Force by the time she came and knocked on the door.

[sith_happened]

"Come in, Tahiri," Anakin murmured, swinging the door open for her.

[weetuskenraider]

Without saying a word, Tahiri pushed the door open, closed it behind her, and immediately went over to offer him a hug.

It somehow seemed easier than articulating anything out loud just yet.

[sith_happened]

Anakin hugged her back tightly. "Yeah," he said, answering her emotions rather than anything out loud.

[weetuskenraider]

"Uh huh," Tahiri agreed. "Is it awful that I don't feel worse about not doing anything?"

[sith_happened]

Anakin shook his head. "I've been thinking about that myself," he admitted. "When I knew that Padme would die I fought so hard against that happening...and it ended in disaster."

[weetuskenraider]

"And I keep thinking about that other version of me thinking she could change the past," Tahiri added quietly.

She didn't want to say more about how that had gone, and she didn't think she needed to. Bringing it up at all was bad enough.

[sith_happened]

"There are worse things than death," Anakin whispered. "It just takes a lot of faith to realize it."

[weetuskenraider]

"I can look back on it now and say that I'm convinced I wouldn't be here now -- probably Jaina and Ben, too -- if he hadn't done what he did," Tahiri said; her voice broke slightly at first, but seemed to gain resolve as she kept talking. "I'm grateful he did it, but it doesn't make me miss him any less."

[sith_happened]

Anakin nodded, sending a pulse of reassurance through the Force. "You can second and third and fifth guess every decision and just drive yourself insane that way."

[weetuskenraider]

"It's one thing to be at peace with it. It's something else, and a lot harder, maybe impossible, to be okay with it." Tahiri gave him a shaky smile. "You know what the worst part is? Not being able to tell him how proud I would be of him."

She ducked her head and looked down at her (bare, of course) feet. "I'm just so glad he got to know you."

[sith_happened]

Anakin ducked his head. "I hope it could ease some of the pressure."

[weetuskenraider]

"He wasn't --" and she knew they hadn't felt anything just yet, but it also felt so inevitable that the present tense seemed like self-delusion -- "my Anakin, but he was . . . too Anakin to be that different, so I think I knew him pretty well anyway."

Tahiri glanced up at him briefly, half-smiling. "And I think I can say with reasonable certainty that it did make a difference."

[sith_happened]

Anakin's jaw clenched. "That means a lot," he whispered.

[weetuskenraider]

Tahiri reached out to hug him again. "It does to me, too."