Office hours [all day]

[sith_happened]

After a quick trip to the Isle of Ikea to replace all of the broken glassware, Anakin's office was back to its normal state of cleanliness.

He turned on some soothing music from Ithor and waited to see how many students came in to see what he'd told their guardians.

The door was open.

Comments

[solo_sword]

Jaina hadn't been at the fight because she really didn't want to encourage that kind of thing, but at the same time, she was massively curious. So when she leaning the doorway today, she began with, "So who won?"

[sith_happened]

Anakin grinned. "I did. How was your weekend?"

[glacial_queen]

After the heart debacle on Wednesday, Genesis had told her to go talk to someone. And since 2 out of 2 fangirls agreed that Professor Skywalker was the go-to guy for emotional crises, well, here she was.

She might have been praying to the Darkness that Anakin was going to be as understanding as Ben. Somehow, she was pretty sure that the 'ripped out a maenad's heart at an orgy' wasn't going to go over well.

"Ki--Excuse me?" she called, poking her head into Anakin's office door.

[trigons_child]

Raven had not had any visitors, thank Azar, but where there were Anakin office hours, there was a Raven.

"Good morning, Professor Skywalker," she greeted him. "I hope your weekend was not entirely unpleasant." She'd heard on the radio about someone making him unhappy.

[sith_happened]

Anakin glanced up. "Hello, Karla. Come in."

[sith_happened]

"It had its moments," Anakin said a little wryly, "but they've all left now."

Oh yes, he'd done a very thorough check in the Force to make sure Ferus had gone home.

[glacial_queen]

"Hi Professor," Karla said with a smile. She slipped inside his office, closing the door most of the way closed behind her. "Congratulations on your win, by the way," she said, taking a seat. "I'm getting a trip to Chilly Boulder out of it."

Karla had bet on Anakin mostly so that, if asked, she could honestly say she bet on Anakin.

[trigons_child]

"I did not receive any guests this year," Raven said. Which was a good thing considering last year Sebastian had shown up for the first time.

[sith_happened]

Anakin flashed her a quick smile. "Excellent choice, then."

[sith_happened]

"I didn't either, yet it didn't seem to stop me from being annoyed by other people's guests," Anakin replied.

[trigons_child]

Raven nodded. "I had heard on the radio that some of the visitors were causing you some distress," she said. She totally paid attention any time Anakin's name was mentioned, of course, like a proper fangirl. "And that your son was here as well, but not the one I met? Ben's father?"

[glacial_queen]

She was friends with Raven. The question was almost an inevitability.

"Glad you approve," Karla said, returning the quick smile. Mostly because then there would be something he'd approved of in their conversation.

She was tempted to try to dance around the topic for awhile, but then she'd be making small talk with a small pool of dread in her lower belly and that was almost as unappealing as just talking about it in the first place. "So, I know you're not my teacher right now, but I was told that I really should talk to someone. I kind of had a weird reaction at the theater last week."

She began wringing her hands a little, really uncomfortable with talking about this. "I play the Wicked Queen in Snow White. At one point in the play, she asks her Hunstman to fetch her Snow White's...heart. In a box."

[sith_happened]

"Earth-based fairy tales are a little disturbing," Anakin agreed, "at least in their original, non-animated form. What bothers you so much about particular request?"

[sith_happened]

"Right," Anakin said. "The version of my son who is decades older than I am." He smiled. "He didn't cause me distress."

[glacial_queen]

Karla winced a bit. "I don't suppose you heard anything about a trip to Louisiana in August? With a maenad?"

By carefully not mentioning either 'Raven' or 'orgy,' Karla was hoping to avoid both topics if she could

[trigons_child]

"But you fought with him, as planned, did you not?" Raven said. She didn't entirely Approve, but she had to know: "Were you victorious?"

[sith_happened]

"Raven mentioned a very little bit about it," Anakin said, nodding.

[sith_happened]

Anakin grinned. "I won, yes, but he is very, very good."

[glacial_queen]

Okay, well, if he already knew Raven was involved, Karla couldn't implicate her in it. That was a plus. "Did she say what happened to the maenad?" Karla asked in a small voice. "Or, umm, what happened to me?"

[sith_happened]

"She told me that you had been sacrificed," Anakin said, looking deeply unhappy as he thought back on the conversation.

And suddenly the heart made a lot more sense.

"And how you got rid of the maenad."

[glacial_queen]

"She shrugged off every other thing I tried to throw at her," Karla said quietly, looking down at her hands. "I had to do something drastic. Something that didn't use Craft that she could just absorb or deflect or whatever the Hell it was she was doing."

[sith_happened]

"It was brutal," Anakin said quietly. "Are you quite certain it was the only option left?"

[glacial_queen]

"It felt like it," Karla said. "She was going to leave. I could feel it. She was losing and she decided to just cut her losses and go; to start this up again somewhere else, with another person up on her meat-tree, about to get stabbed for her so-called god-who-comes. Maybe Bobby or Kennedy could have stabbed her, but she'd be just as dead that way. But we couldn't just let her go. And we had no one to turn her over to; the police in Sookie's town were just two more of her mind-controlled victims."

Had there been another way? Karla couldn't be sure. She'd been terrified and furious. That bitch had stolen her Sapphire and tried to kill her. She was abusing landens people and taking away their will. Every instinct Karla had had pushed her to kill her where she stood, to make sure she could never harm anyone again.

And to take vengeance for what she'd done.

"I suppose we could have given her over to the vampires," she said, a little bitterly.

[sith_happened]

Anakin nodded. "You lashed out in fear," he said, "and good decisions are never made when we are reacting with our darker emotions."

[trigons_child]

"But you are better," Raven said with a smile, pleased herself that he had won. No, she wasn't biased at all.