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Hate was like ash.
It choked and overwhelmed, covering everything and leaving it uniformly grey, like a memory. It consumed the colour and lust of life, ate away all that could remove it and would continue to crawl the windows until it blotted out the sun.
She made looking away from the light so hard. She was a star unto herself, all shining metal and glorious radiance. She was the sun he orbited, and never was that more apparent than these damned festivals the Council whored her out to.
This one had been one he'd particularly loathed, because the Senator who was hosting it salivate when he caught sight of her.
Anakin had it his personal mission to block the man the entire night. He didn't think she was ignorant of his motives, but she didn't bother him about it.
She was stunning that night, too. One of the few times he'd ever seen her in full regalia. Her dress was floor-length, made of many layers of thin silver fabric of that flowed around her like water at the slightest movements. Her hair was held aloft by a chrome crown, shining with purple gems. Curls fell around her face in elegant styling. She was a goddess descended to the people that night.
"Why does the Council make us go to these things?" He muttered to her, his own clothing so oversoft it felt like nothing.
"It's to keep up our influence as negotiators." She replied, her eyes lined with purple shadow that made the blue pop even more. "If we are known in political circles, they are more likely to accept our arbitration."
"And what happens if you ever seen them again and you look normal?"
She paused, taking his hand in her full sleeve. "Anakin, what's this about?"
"I don't like that the Council exclusively sends you on these missions." He said lowly. "You're not an ornament to dote on political egos."
"I know. I'm no more comfortable than you, and this crown is heavy." Her joking fell flat. "You must trust me when I say I would not come if the reason wasn't valid."
"I know. I trust your judgement, Master." He sighed. "I just wish they wouldn't burden you. Other, more influential Masters have loads of time they could spend doing this kind of stuff. Why is it always you? They always want you to do their dirty work."
She softened. "I wish I had of known your feelings on this earlier."
"The Senator has been waiting for just a second alone with you all night." He groused. "He wants to slobber all over you, like you're a robot prostitute, like he's got any right to your attention."
"I did notice you getting between us, and I assumed there was a reason for it." She paused, thoughtful. "I've been a major player in the negotiation arena for a long time. Back in my Padawan days, I was critical to the ending of three civil wars and two intergalactic incidents. I suppose that's why they send me out to rub noses with all the snobs - they all know me already."
"It just feels cheap and wrong to use you like this, Master. And so often." He stroked up her wrist. "You've been through enough, I think."
She winced. "Yes, the scarring took more than a day's work, I'll admit."
"Have we been here long enough to leave? That Senator's going to get insistent soon, I can feel it."
Almost like he'd heard, the Senator made a bee-line for them. She glanced to the side, spotted Anakin's nemesis, and began to feel his face.
"Master?" He asked.
"You're very right, my Padawan." She cooed, soft and motherly with just a hint of concern. "You absolutely are burning up."
"Burning up?" The Senator asked. "Don't tell me the young one has fallen ill?"
"I'm afraid so, Senator." She replied, her act a perfect mockery. Anakin knew what she looked like when she was worried for him. There wasn't nearly so much fawning.
"Shall I summon a servant to escort him back to the rooms?"
"I'm afraid it's worse that than, Senator." She said, elegant regret painted on her face. "It's Force Exhaustion. Common with younger Jedi, but troubling all the same. I need to monitor him personally until he recovers."
"You'll be . . . leaving?" The Senator was less jovial now, his false smile falling and a sneer creeping at the edges of his mouth.
"Unfortunately, yes."
"I'm sure one of the servants-"
"I'm sure you can understand the need to take care of those close to you. Your wife takes ill often, doesn't she?" She picked Anakin up like he was nothing. He dipped his face into the crook of her neck just to hide his smile, knowing the foreign man was squirming under his Master's sharp gaze. "I very much appreciate your hospitality tonight and your sympathy for my apprentice. Don't let this spoil your evening."
She turned and abruptly left the massive hall, carrying him without a word back to their rooms and locking the door with the Force. Once he was on his feet again, she began diligently stripping out of the gaudy trappings.
"Help with the crown, will you?" She said.
Wordlessly, as she changed back into her robes, he unwove her hair from it's elaborate prop. Once it fell about her shoulders naturally, he took her brush and unknotted it, removing the tangles and getting it to shimmer again.
"Change yourself, Padawan."
He chanced a look, trying to determine what she was planning, but she was turned away from him. As he pulled on his breeches, she clasped the last bit of fabric around her throat, hiding away all that pain. She caught his lingering gaze.
"You can ask whatever question is on your mind."
"Why do you hide the scars?" He winced, stumbling over himself. "No, that's not- I mean, I understand why you don't want others to see them. You just don't let anybody see them. Barely even me."
"I will answer once we're out lakeside."
"Lakeside?" He pulled on his boots and barely had time to register what was happening before she threw open the balcony doors and jumped off the ledge. He followed swiftly, somewhat surprised she would choose to walk through the dense woodland instead of just fly to whatever beach she had in mind.
"Why aren't we flying?"
"Their sentries would see me take off, or else I would." Her wing caught on another branch, but she didn't slow or acknowledge it. He gave up on questioning her and just followed along. Eventually she led them out of the trees to a small lake, just as she said, that glowed softly from the light of the bio-luminescent algae.
He stopped at her side, totally in awe.
"Qui-Gon treated me like I was impossibly fragile every time he saw me afterwards." She said. "And I am. I'm a living being with flaws and weaknesses. I'm flesh and blood and judgement that may be wrong. I am very capable of falling victim to death. But what Master Jinn never understood was that I never wished to hide behind that. In the scope of the universe, my life is insignificant unless I make it so. I could not sit idle while others took on the danger, while others ran into the fire. Even beyond my duty as a Jedi, it matters to me that I am trying to make someone else's life better."
He felt her wing wrap around him and he let her pull him in, sitting them down on the surprisingly warm sand of the beach. It felt like silk beneath his fingers, even more beautiful than the one on Naboo.
"I know you understand that feeling." She said, petting his hair. "You wish to save everyone from your mother's fate, from your own fate, just as you were saved. You wish to put back the good that has been given to you, so that another can have a better life too. But you can't do that if you act like you're going to break. In truth, there are some things, bigger than us, that are worth more than us. These things are things we would give our lives for."
"Like what?" He said softly.
"If it was my life in the balance versus the lives of an entire planet, I would gladly lay myself down. Billions of life forms are not greater than I am. My spark is no more beautiful than theirs."
"I don't know about that." He muttered. "Your spark is more beautiful than everyone on Tattooine."
"And yet, you and Shmi were both on Tattooine." She replied, pulling him tighter. "Then two beautiful lights would have been lost to my one. Qui-Gon believed the same thing."
"Couldn't you tell that he just didn't want you hurt?"
"I know he didn't. It's very much the same way I don't wish you hurt." She took a deep breath. "But that desire to see you safe does not stop me from skydancing with you, bringing you into a nest of vipers like that party of into the heat of battle. The desire to protect what we love most can become a fear for that thing. Then we tend to hate all that defies our desire."
"Why is that a bad thing?"
"Not all things that go against what we want are bad for us. Death is a necessary part of the circle of life, and comes for even the longest-lived races. We must learn to accept that it is part of our mortal lives, that just as we begun, we must end. It will not be pleasant, but it is part of our world."
"I don't see any way around the fear of dying, Master."
"I said death was an essential part of our universe, not that it was the only part." She stroked his hair. "What Qui-Gon didn't understand was not that I didn't have a repect for death, but that I am unwilling to live in that darkness. There is much I want to do and to see, there's no time to waste. Living with a fear of death is not living. It's waiting on the edge of what you can't escape, falling deeper into your fear of the inevitable. I don't want that."
"Waiting on the edge of what you can't escape." He murmured, looking back out over the softly pulsing purple algae. "What happens if the edge rushes to meet you?"
"You jump and enjoy the descent."
"Did you ever tell the Council any of this?"
" . . . No."
"Why not? You tell the Council everything."
He saw the shift in her face, the expression she wore when she was brought into Knighthood, distant and cold and alone. She stood at the peak of a mountain, staring into the sun, but there was only room for one, and the Council was far, far below her.
"They wouldn't understand."
"Why not?"
"Only a slave can relate to what slavery feels like. My fear of death is back on that mining colony, shackled to my pickaxe and the prods they used to sedate me. I am no longer bound, and I have nothing to fear." She rubbed his arm passively, lost in thought. "It is just as hard to explain as describing a rainbow to someone who can't see colour. It's a majestic, terrifying freedom that's as beautiful as it is brief because we know what it is to have colour taken from us by force and we are unwilling to abandon it again simply for safety."
He wrapped his own fingers around hers.
"Above everything else, I never want you to be afraid." She met his eyes. "I will always be here to catch you when you fall, even when I can no longer do so physically."
The world is grey and bleak, the air stale in his lungs. There is nothing left inside of him to wipe away the dust.
He wondered if she had enjoyed her descent, the bleak and terrifying fall to nothingness and all that came with it. He wondered if the Chancellor was right, if there was a way to return. If anyone could do it, she could - that's what wings were for. He wondered if the hollow emptiness he feels inside reflects on her outside, weightless and ethereal in death. He needed her so badly, needed to have someone restore him from these monochrome shades. No matter what he destroyed, it just filled his lungs, filling and filling and filling but never quenching.
He was a drowning man on dry land, eating ash and drinking seawater just to not taste fear.