A Cold Start - Anakin x Reader

balance

“Oh, just one more thing. Who is it that sent you here?”

The clone stopped in his tracks and turned back around to us. When he was facing us again, he had a puzzled expression on his face. It was easy to tell that he wasn’t faking his confusion- clones could not lie to superiors that easily.

“I- I don’t remember, sir. I don’t know who sent me.”

That answer was more than suspicious. Of course (and as Kindon wanted us to) we would ignore the clone’s request to fly out to this planet in the outer rim. It was important that we stayed safe in the temple.

---

The clone incident had given Anakin and me a lot to speculate about.

On the one hand it unfortunately proved that Kindon was telling the truth and that something dangerous was indeed going on behind our backs and coming our way; on the other hand the big question remained how much the jedi council was really involved in all this. The mere idea that a jedi might be conspiring against us was still absolutely insane to us. But still, one way to explain the confused state of the clone was that a jedi had used their mind tricks to manipulate him, so that he could no longer remember and tell us who exactly had sent him to us.

Or could it be that all this was the work of a separatist or a sith? Did they have the power to manipulate and send a clone all the way to Coruscant and infiltrate him into the temple?

Anakin and I were sure that this could only be accomplished with the help of an insider.

But even after hour long discussions we couldn’t pin down a single suspect within the walls of the temple. We were lost for answers. Kindon had warned us: ‘time is running out’, but at the same time, he never gave us concrete instructions on what exactly to do to avert the big disaster that he said was coming our way. I was to be protected we were told, but again- nothing extraordinary happened over the next few days, which might sound positive, but definitely didn’t help at all with our nervousness. Anakin and I were on pins and needles. While we would have enjoyed our togetherness in the half-empty temple under other circumstances, we were now on alert and had not a moment of peace.

Of course, Anakin never left my side.

It was no secret how concerned he was for my safety. And throughout the days that followed, Anakin's overprotective tendencies continued to manifest in various ways.

He would enter every room first to ward off any possible attacker and any possible danger lurking in the shadows, determined to fight anyone and anything wanting to hurt me; at meals in the canteen I had trouble to convince him that it wasn’t necessary for him to taste my food first, out of fear I would be poisoned.
Of course, he also insisted that I should sleep with him in his bed. While he made me lay down and enjoy the gentle strokes of his hand on my back or in my hair, he himself leaned against the headboard of the bed because he wanted to watch over me all night - that’s how far his paranoia went.
Eventually, however, he always fell asleep - something he beat himself up for the next morning, which broke my heart a little every time. Just like when he told me he loved me at any given opportunity or was tormented by nightmares and tossed and turned next to me- not that I slept any better.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Kindon had said to us and what his motives to help us could be. Clearly, he wasn’t only sending the warning out of sympathy for us. He must have done it because he himself or other people he cared about would be directly or indirectly affected by the disaster he kept talking about.

‘The situation is serious, it’s so much bigger than all of us in fact, and that’s why I saw it as my duty to reach out to you. If you don't believe me, then you’re putting Y/N at risk... and the galaxy’s balance altogether.’, he had said.