EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

025 | Every Ending Has a Beginning..

━━━━━━ ༻ 🌄 ༺ ━━━━━━
" every ending has a beginning "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE ༺ ━━━

          THE ESCHATON'S ETERNAL PROMISE was the only way their souls knew to describe the pending suffering of knowing relief could mean grief and that the moment spent surrounded by the whirring of the elevator was at the only pinnacle of peace that they were guaranteed. Thus, they wasted no time enjoying it, as only tired souls could grow to enjoy the minute of pseudo-silence, seemingly a bare breeze in comparison to every single ear-bleeding noise they've endured. Mimicking the still nature of a painting capturing motion, that ancient dexterity of art caught in a veil of time transcendence, his right hand was permanently interlocked with her left, held into place by her right's warmth, as Eden's leant over a while ago and refused to lift her temple from the cushion of Anakin's arm. 

Though she's caught several minutes of sleep, during the flight back, her eyelashes were unprepared for being called into a Council meeting without those minutes having turned into hours first. Listening to his lullaby breath, Eden's own inhales and exhales were trying to mirror him, to escape her own rhythm of anticipated turmoil, so violently haunting her behind her closed eyes that her right hand started drawing circular patterns Anakin felt inscribed into the sensors of his mechanic arm, hidden behind dark leather. 

The arch of her brows was burdened in the same gloom of anticipation, because her mind clung to worries he was familiar to as well: everyone had been arrested upon arrival by the clones guarding the Jedi Temple, but only the two of them have been called immediately to an emergency assembly of the High Council. Eden worried about what she's done, what she couldn't find in herself the simplest reassembly of regret for doing, but Anakin knew better what this formality really was. He knew the doors would open, that they would enter the Council chamber and he will leave it without his lightsaber, without a title, without being anyone at all. 

It was not often that he could admit so genuinely: he was terrified. That fear was what numbed his expression, what made his head lean to the right in a resisted urge to lay his temple down on the top of her head, and anchor himself to the breathing reason why he was willing to sacrifice what he had embedded into his life as a goal and desire. What will he be, without the Order? What will remain of Anakin Skywalker, when he lays down his weapon, his title, his life's work?

But the heaviness he sensed in the air, he knew he could only blame on himself; with little chance to talk with each other, he's told Eden nothing of what he'd done to reach her in time.

That very barrier of secret was undeniably malignant in its looming presence above them. It felt wrong to allow it to fester and grow, to deliberately let it consume and cause rifts, so it was with a gulp that Anakin's eyes closed and his boldness took over. The elevator shook to a stop and Eden was startled by it to open her eyes. Her flinch made her clung to him a little stronger, dig herself into his side, unashamed of how vulnerable that would make her seem. It warmed him to the point of aching burn that while she trusted him with vulnerability of such degree, the world... his world had hurt her such every sound was terrifying, every quake a threat. 

"They're waiting for us," Eden's voice was the candle's last flickers, holding on valiantly to life. Holding on to Anakin, she looked up and smiled, finding him already looking down on her with the sort of gaze that, coming from a creator, could birth miracles and life and beauty, nurture flowers to bloom and whisper love into the ears of birds learning how to fly. It was the sort of gaze that would let the candle burn a little while longer, a little calmer.