Starboy - Clone Wars

Seven

"You really like staring at me," Seraphina says, her eyes closed as she lays on her bed in Coruscant. Padme's room for her has started to feel like home, if she's honest - well, home away from home. She moves her head back against the pillow, stretching her back and, unintentionally, showing off more of her neck to the boy leaning against her wall nearby.

"You really like making it easy," he replies, turning away from her with a red face.

She chuckles to herself, sighing into the comfort she feels. "You make it easy to make you look." He gives her a sarcastic laugh. "You like it."

He can't fight the smile on his face. "I like it when you don't get hurt more."

"That's kind of impossible. And it's not what I'm used to."

"Oh, don't worry, I can tell."

The bed moves with his weight as he sits at the edge, his back to the redhead as she sits up. "You're not much better." She joins him, leaning back on her hands. Her feet swing back and forth while his barely touch the ground.

"I've been trained as a Jedi," he states. Their fingers are barely touching. "You... you ignore it."

"So, you know," she says. He nods: the desire to hold her hand is almost getting to him but he keeps himself composed. "I'm almost certain it's from my mom." He waits for her to continue, his full attention on her words - his eyes flickering to her mouth as she talks, her eyes focused on the ground in front of them. "My jacket... it used to be hers and it has the symbol of the Republic on the inside. She had told me she got it from a Jedi when she was younger - I thought that meant she had gained the attention of a Jedi in secret, not that she was the Jedi.

I also thought everything I could do came from all the shit Bane put me through as a kid," she continues. "I could jump higher, further. I could feel the surroundings - feel the difference in people and what they thought of me. I knew how to get what I wanted if they found me attractive or if they found me threatening; I just thought it was from Bane's lessons. And then I met all of you."

Anakin remembers when he had learned of his own future as a Jedi. It had been something terrifiying and awesome at the same time - he had been too old for normal training so he had sped through all of it at an alarming rate. And he was given all the responsibility of the Chosen One as soon as he understood what it meant. But Seraphina had Bane; the same Bane who hates the Jedi for the simple reason that they don't usually pay for help from criminals - she had grown up being trained as a killer and someone who would do anything for some money.

"Sorry," he says.

She rests her chin on her shoulder to look at him. "I'm not. It's... something new. It's a piece of me. It explains more about what happened to my parents."

Before he can ask what that means, Obi-Wan buzzes his wrist. Again. He groans. "I've been avoiding him all day." He gets off the bed and instantly misses the feeling of being so close to Seraphina. "Sooner rather than later, he'll send some clones to find me."

"Imagine the rumors," She teases.

"They already exist," he assures her.

He stops at her door. But without another word, he leaves her room.

*seraphina may*

Someone knocks on her door a few hours later but she knows it's not Anakin as she sets down her book. "Come on, Sabe," she calls.

The handmaiden opens the door. "How are you, Seraphina?" She closes it behind her and joins the redhead on the ground.

"Oh, you know: just making sure I heal up fast so I can get back out there," she replies.