Things My Heart Used To Know

Chapter 4 - People Always Say Life is Full of Choices

Author's Note: I'm finally back at updating this fic :D I should be able to weekly for at least the next 4-5 weeks.

Time for the next arc of the journey. :3 I really struggled with Palpatine's voice in this chapter so hopefully it's okay lol

~ Tirana Sorki

Anakin wakes before dawn, the way he always does. The sky is just lightening, light enough for him to see in the dim attic space as he clamors out of bed, in the same tiny room he's lived in all this time.

Like every morning, Anakin makes his way to the window, withdrawing the screw he's used to make a tiny scratch in the wood on the side of the window frame, marking another day, another morning.

Unwittingly, his eyes dart up and down the long line of weeks he's marked here. There's... so many now. Over thirty of them.

It's been so long. He didn't start counting immediately. Not until he started really realizing that he had something to miss.

But maybe – maybe there's a small hope that this time, the days he counts every morning, are starting to come to an end. He's still working on that ship and after how many months it's been, he's doing good on it, he would say.

The more the days go by, the more the memories are starting to come back to him, too. Whispers, flashes, images. Sometimes, he thinks what he needs is something to actually jar them all back.

But – but he can feel something shifting, changing in the energy around him. His time out here is ending. A change is coming and it feels bright. And he clings to that hope desperately. He needs that tendril of hope more than he needs to breathe.

***

It's been months since Sidious first met Biel. He's remembered a bit more of him and Engel overtime, things from their childhood he long thought he forgot. Things that aren't important anymore. He may have grown used to having Biel here now; he may even find speaking with him about the political state of things a bit enjoyable – in the same way he enjoyed speaking with Anakin, playing on his emotions – but he knows where his focus still is. Where it will always be.

And that reminder comes unpleasantly as he should have expected. He knew something would likely go wrong with letting Biel stay at his apartment but he didn't expect it to happen like this.

"You told them I was off-world?" Sidious demands, standing in front of Biel. His anger is burning sharp and fierce even if he's used to controlling it. But now – his plans could have been destroyed. He was off-world to meet Dooku on Mustafar. No one else was supposed to know but he had to tell his brother something when he didn't come back to his apartment that night.

"They were asking," Biel objects, frowning. "I didn't know you didn't want them to know." If he wanted the Jedi Council, of all people, to know where he went, he would have told them himself.

"I specifically told you where I went wasn't important," he throws back, sharply. He always tries to present his normal façade to Biel, and he's never seen past it but this is too much. All his plans could have been undone. His anger is burning to fiercely and maybe half of that is because he knows he was the one being foolish in this circumstance and he knows why.

Biel is frowning now. He's probably sensing something through the stupid bond they have, something Sidious isn't capable of shielding and he hates it. "Then why does it matter that I told them? Is something – "

"I'm the Chancellor now, not just your brother," Sidious cuts him off. Having him here is becoming a liability. He should've let himself get used to it when it wasn't necessary. "If you can't respect that then don't speak to me again. I don't have to let you stay here. You don't know what I'm capable of."