Give Me Love

chapter seventeen

"Your squad is already on Zephyr-IV. They were dispatched yesterday."

"What?!"

"I told them you'd be a day late because of an emergency hold-up," he explained. "That's why we're all late. I promise they won't hold it against you— you'll find they're all pretty casual and just want to do their jobs."

"Plus," he ducked his head lower so he could capture your eyes, his bangs now falling into his face. Your skin was alive like a buzzed wire, and you wanted so bad to wriggle out of his grasp and away from his eyes and to gulp in deep breaths before you succumbed to your nerves and passed out or something. "You're under the direct order of General Skywalker. No one can punish you unless they go through me."

"Oh, not this crap again," you muttered.

"Hm?"

"'Direct order?' Remember what happened last time you said something like that?"

"This is different," his hands were hard now, squeezing your wrists like he didn't realize he was doing it. "I won't be supervising you— I'll be off with the troops and you'll be working in the medical tents by the ships. And before you complain about not being in battle, all beginner medics start in the tents. That's their rule, not mine."

"Okay," you hung your head dejectedly. You held your hands up for him to see, still shackled by his wrists. "Can I at least have my arms back? I have to do my hair."

He let you go and gave you two more minutes for your hair. You desperately ripped through your other bags for a brush, and then miraculously found a hair tie at the bottom of the bag. Grimacing at your reflection in the mirror— still not used to seeing yourself with stark white hair— you ran your brush through the strands and began tying your hair into a braid.

Smoothing down the little flyaways, you scanned your appearance and sighed. White on red on white. It was different than you were used to, the hair, and you tried smoothing down the little flyaways and baby hairs to reduce the appearance of white, and make it look more like you.

Oh, who were you kidding. It looked awful.

Frustrated tears pricked in your eyes. You didn't want to care what people thought of you, but the notion had been hammered into your psyche since you were a small child; you always had to look presentable, perfect, and pretty because all eyes were on you.

That was when you had a legacy to uphold, of course, but you hadn't forgotten in all these years. You could hear your mothers voice in your ear clearly as if she were standing right next to you:

"Honey, your hair."

"What happened? Why'd you want to look like an old lady so soon?"

That color is atrocious, sweetie. It completely washes you out."

"And who taught you to braid like that? Pin the flyaways down at least."

You didn't have any pins, so the hairs too short to be braided back fell in front of your face and by your ears. You cursed yourself for being so forgetful while you were packing from your apartment, hating your reflection.

"You ready?" Anakin asked. You took a deep breath and walked out of the room. He scanned you up and down, patting your arm pads to make sure the armor was correctly in place, straightened your badge, and then tightened the cop on your wrist. "Yeah. You're ready."

And then you were off. Anakin often forgot that his legs were twice the size of yours and he usually left you in the dust when he was walking someplace, but now that he was actually hurrying, he quite literally left you in the wake of his billowing robes. You had to jog to keep up, palms growing more and more sweaty as you neared the starfighter hangar.