Office hours [all day]

[sith_happened]

Anakin was writing up his impressions of his current Ethics students in preparation for Parents Weekend. He'd decided that giving himself a time-cushion of a week meant that he could observe the students who hadn't made a huge impression more closely in this coming class so he could tell their guardians how much improvement they needed.

Anakin was a giver that way.

The door was open.

Comments

[likes_scoundrels]

"Good. Mostly." The conversation with Ben was still troubling her a little. "I've been busy with studying and catching up on what's going on back home and I realized I hadn't seen you in awhile."

[sith_happened]

Anakin's eyes searched her face. "Right. What's bothering you?"

There were advantages in being empathic when dealing with parenting issues. Well, at least right now.

[likes_scoundrels]

Jedi parents suuuucked.

"Knowing too much about my future," she said. Which was mostly her own fault since she kept pushing for details, but she wasn't going to admit that part.

[sith_happened]

"What did you learn?" Anakin demanded, overreacting just a little.

[likes_scoundrels]

She was almost tempted to ask "What's the worst thing I could learn?" to see what his response would be, but that would either make things worse, or more likely, he wouldn't give her any response.

"Just my son dying young," she said. Really. Nothing big.

[sith_happened]

Anakin bit back the instinctive reply of "Which one?", instead asking, "Tell me about it?"

[likes_scoundrels]

"I met Anakin the same weekend as my mother," Leia said. She'd just tucked it far far away at the time.

[sith_happened]

"So did I," Anakin said, looking a little haunted for a moment. "And now you're wondering about changing things."

It wasn't that hard of a guess.

[likes_scoundrels]

She was her father's daughter.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to just let him die," she said. "I don't know if I can."

[sith_happened]

Anakin tapped his fingers against his desk before finally speaking. "When I was a little older than you are now, I had visions of my mother in pain," he began quietly. "In my time, Jedi had no contact at all with their family once they entered the Temple. I'd left her, still a slave on Tatooine, when I was ten years old. I was convinced that if I got to her quickly enough, I would be able to change things. Why else would I be getting the visions?"

[likes_scoundrels]

"Any other reason would be cruel," Leia said, just a little bit bitter. And if that was what the Force was, she wasn't so sure she wanted any part of it.

[sith_happened]

"I was on bodyguard duty on Naboo," Anakin said. "I shouldn't have gone to Tatooine at all." He shook his head. "And I definitely shouldn't have taken your mother with me."

But that way he could still guard her! Padmé was a lot like Leia in her thinking.

[likes_scoundrels]

"Why would you be given those visions then?" Leia wanted to know. "Just to torment you to know she was suffering? Or to make you indifferent to it?" Neither option was remotely acceptable.

[sith_happened]

"Because the Force likes to fuck with meI don't know," Anakin replied. "Perhaps to put me closer to Obi-Wan to assist when he was captured on Geonosis."

Where all three of them had been captured and almost eaten by giant creatures, so...probably not.

"The point is that despite all of my foreknowledge, I arrived just in time to see my mother die," he said. "I didn't take it well."

Which was possibly one of the greatest understatements ever uttered.

[likes_scoundrels]

"So are you saying I'm just supposed to ignore what I know and pretend that my son isn't going to die young?" Leia said bitterly. "How?"

[sith_happened]

"I'm saying you don't know if your son is going to die young," Anakin countered, "just that the ones Ben, Jaina and Tahiri knew did. The future is constantly in motion."

Mmm, platitudes.

[likes_scoundrels]

"So all the other timelines so far," Leia said. "That doesn't make my odds seem very good at all."

[sith_happened]

"Three out of possibly thousands," Anakin said with a small smile. "Every year we get an influx of impossible children to remind us that we don't always know everything, even if we can see the future."

[likes_scoundrels]

"So am I supposed to just ignore what I know then?" Leia said. "Not care when I have a son who reaches his age that every time I say goodbye to him it could be the last time I ever see him?" That was always a possibility, but never one that was so certain.

[sith_happened]

She was asking the man who sent her out the door waiting for the day she came back in to tell him that Alderaan was gone, so he wasn't the best source of information on this.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Trying to fix the future can have disasterous consequences."

[likes_scoundrels]

"So if you knew when I would die," Leia said quietly, "you would just let it happen?"

She wasn't exactly being fair, but she didn't care at the moment.

[sith_happened]

"That's not a fair question," Anakin replied.

[likes_scoundrels]

"But it's fair for me?" Leia protested.

[sith_happened]

"That's why I don't like telling you things about your future," Anakin said. "I don't like seeing you unhappy."

[likes_scoundrels]

"No one told me about him," Leia said. "I only knew his name until I met him that weekend. He's the one who recognized me."