A Cold Start - Anakin x Reader

Ana-Kindon?

The Queen and her cousin had just left the room to have a few more drinks and discussions in private and Anakin and I were dismissed for the rest of the night. Finally, we were free to go to bed and sleep, but that is not what we wanted to do. At least not just yet. Because for the first time in the course of this mission, the opportunity presented itself to find out secret information that could possibly be valuable to the republic- and, of course, we couldn't just let that opportunity pass. So, on tiptoes and when the rest of the guards had finally all left, we walked down the corridors, trying to find the room that the Queen and her cousin had retired to.

While other people would have found this task extremely difficult, it wasn't so much for us jedi and even less so for Anakin whose senses were extremely well trained. With his eyes closed and a slight frown on his face, he stopped walking every now and then to check if he could sense their energies getting stronger or weaker. I did the same. And after having repeated that procedure of walking and sensing a couple of times, we soon felt the Queen's energy especially strong behind a large wooden door.

"We can't possibly get in there unnoticed.", Anakin whispered to me but I couldn't make out what he had said. He said it too quietly.

"What did you s-?", I asked. A little too loudly, I realised, because Anakin quickly covered my mouth with his hand and shot me an angry look of warning, telling me to shut it.
But then his gaze softened and his hand left my mouth when he reached out to brush the hair that was hanging in my face behind my ear. Leaning closer to me, he then whispered the words to me again.
"Sorry. I said there is no way we can get inside."

"I know, what do you reckon we should do?", I asked, this time making sure not to be too loud.

"I thought you'd have the answer.", he whispered back.

I tried to come up with something and as my gaze mindlessly wandered over the door, the slit under it caught my attention. A faint light penetrated through it and I thought that if the light could get through, so could the sound. Without wasting another second, I laid down on the cold marble floor, pressing my ear against the slit. I saw Anakin raising a brow at me, but I was quickly distracted by faint voices speaking. It was the queen and her cousin. Bingo!

Of course I couldn't hear everything, but I was able to catch a phrase or two.

"...wouldn't dare to try anything. They don't have the means."

"...your boy needs to hurry though..."

"...we can count on the separatists... Katzo has ordered at least another thousand of them..."

"...what do I care about the people?"

"...keep them believing that."

It was all very incoherent and not much information to actually work with.
When they started laughing and their voices got louder, I quickly jumped up from the floor, scared that the Queen and her cousin would leave the room soon. Anakin got the hint and together we ran down the corridor and only slowed down when we were at least a few hundred meters away from that door.

In the safety of our room I told Anakin everything I had heard. He, too, didn't quite know how the puzzle pieces fit together. All we had clarity about was the fact that the Queen was indeed involved with the separatists. But that wasn't much of a surprise. Other than that we still didn't know who 'Katzo' or 'your boy' were or what exactly was ordered in a quantity of more than a thousand. And since it didn't look like we were going to solve any of those riddles, we decided it was best to go to sleep and come up with a plan, once we had our lightsabers back tomorrow.

---

The next day wasn't very different from the day before. Early in the morning, we were woken up and ordered to get to work- Anakin had to join another guard shift and I had to serve the Queen for her morning rituals again. After that, I was sent down into the kitchen to do some minor tasks. For a few hours I chopped up vegetables, assisted the chefs the best I could and finally was sent away to do the dishes in the backroom where the old lady from the day I first met Kindon joined to help me.