Give Me Love

chapter forty one

Your heart pounded in your chest. Could Anakin feel that?

You wondered what would happen if it stopped beating in your chest-- would he feel that too? Or would the force energy he had given you just return to him, and he would have no idea?

Would he even care?

Probably not. It had almost been a month since you've been here, and he still had not come for you. None of them had. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka-- they'd given up on you just like you'd given up on yourself. Bad luck and misfortune followed you everywhere. You always had to be saved. And then you left them.

You weren't worth the trouble anymore.

You didn't even know where Padmé was with the tapes-- that was the whole reason you had come here in the first place. You just doomed yourself for no reason, and gave them no good explanation as to why.

No. They hated you now. And you didn't blame them.

You still didn't want to die, though. That much was very clear as you were wrangled onto a cool metal table in the back of the lab. The lights shined on your face brightly, making you squint and lash out blindly.

Your muscles were useless. Arms flopping about at random. The droid secured straps around your ankles and wrists as your father prepared the anesthesia. It was hovering right over your face, steam hissing out of the mouthpiece, slowly lowering down, and a single tear squeezed out of your eye as you realized this could very well be the last thing you ever see.

After everything.

"Excuse me sir," a servant stood by the door, looking from your father to you with apprehension. "I hate to interrupt." 

"What is it?"

"The Misses requested Y/n to attend dinner this evening. I am here to escort her to the house."

"Now?" you had never heard annoyance in your father's voice before.

"Right now, yes."

You could kiss that servant.

After a pause, your father drew the mask back. Let you breathe. He told the droid to untie your restrains, and started filling a syringe with adrenaline to cancel out the effects of the tranquilizer.

You couldn't stop shaking after he injected you with it. It was like your muscles were stuck on 'vibrate' and you could do nothing but tremble pathetically as you sat and pushed yourself off the table.

The cool tile beneath your bare feet grounded you. And then you were heading out that cursed room with the servant.

He wasn't one you recognized from your time living here, but you trusted him lead you out of the lab as your father snapped his gloves off, calling "We'll be back here tonight."

For the first time in three and a half weeks, you felt pure sunlight on your arms.

Well, as pure as it could get on Noxella. It still had to punch through miles and miles of thick clouds before it got to you, so it wasn't very warm or bright. But the fresh air, the damp grass on the ground, the gentle breeze-- it was all bliss to you.

The walk from the lab to your house was a short, slight uphill trek through the grass of your estate. Your legs cried with relief from the stretch of getting to use them after so much time, and your lungs stung with the cool air. Each inhale and exhale, a gift.

All of this was, really-- a chance to get out of here.

You'd tried escaping your father's lab before. The first time was three days after you had been here, but he caught you running and locked the whole place down before you got to any doors. The second time had gone similarly, only your fathers droid assistant caught you and was much less gentle dragging you back. And the third time, your window earned those bolts on the sill when your father heard you trying to pick the lock with a fork.