EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

022 | The Man Holding The Scythe..

The toughness of the mission had been no mystery to any of them before dedicating themselves to it: not to Anakin, where the choice was hardly even there, not to his battalion, who would have followed him to clear perdition anyhow, and definitely not to the 27th Squadron, who had a duty by their Squadron Ghost and they would remain unable rest until they've rectified their mistake on Deyihiri, for which they have knelt in full accountability before General Skywalker once their valiant paths of salvation inevitably and fortunately crossed. 

"Scans show two more droids, both sides," Captain Rex hurried to give directions. "Corridors branch out, three meters in. Bryyk and Dott gon' have to take the left for the next hangar, General and I will take the right for the prison wing."

After catching his breath in a quick break, Anakin rolled back his shoulders and got ready for the moment Dott's working on the wires paid off and the doors would open.

The door to Eden's cell was pushed open by a droid whose approach she did not hear from the depth of her thinking, unlike per usual, when the sense of at least being able to distinguish those metallic trots on the hallway, could give her a couple of seconds to prepare herself for the pain. It was strange to realize how fast they've managed to rewire her thoughts into revolving around such specifics. 

Naturally, she blamed her own reckless loss of an edge on having been left in a deep and silent meditation following the departure of that odd presence. Meditation had been a rare luxury inside that dark cell with only her delirious mind for company, because Eden found herself sooner diving into outright exhaustion, then actually communing with the Force. But that visit asked the exact right questions to stir her away from her suffering, though through the meditation itself, Eden's grown rather certain she imagined the stranger entirely and that her now healed left hand was but a miracle in a strange case of one insanity outshining another. 

She looked up, startled to see the end of a blaster rifle, pointed at her by a much smaller droid than the MangaGuards that have been responsible for all her hurts since she got there. This one droid looked vaguely familiar, reminding her rather of how she's almost been gunned down in that snow storm, a time that felt ages ago rather than just two months back. 

The droid said nothing. It had nothing to say, because whether or not a B1 unit could vouch for its sentience, blocks of programming dictated their behavior to enact that of a perfect soldier whose rifle becomes an extension that once pointed at a target, under a clear order, nullified any other objective.

Without a nuance of hesitation, it pulled the trigger and Eden had no time to even flinch, though physical movement was far from being considered by her at the time. 

Her left hand, wrapped around her right, tightening down despite the pain it elicited and in a surge of consciousness anchoring her to the moment, she witnessed the blast being fired and its red brightness lighting up the room, reflecting into her eyes yet to finish their started blink. 

Time itself held its breath and everything subject to it followed its command, in a bold mirroring of a programmable flaw. Thus, the creak of the droid's joints became a screech in the symphony otherwise loudly dictated by the blast cutting through the warm, thick air. A softer noise vibrated on a distant choir that Eden knew only she had the grace to hear: it was that breath the violence had stopped her from taking, rushing in like a river held back, joyous that she had stopped and reconnected herself to the streaming power of the Force. 

She felt under her fingertips the echoes of the red blast burning in, resisting the tightening of her gesture until it could oppose no longer the heaviness of the air and the change of conditions that she coerced into action. 

The blast fired curved in the air and passed by Eden's head, sinking into the wall.

"What?" The droid exclaimed, quite literally taken aback in a little stumble carrying the recoil of its weapon as well as its shock. Eden exhaled heavily, releasing her painful grip on herself and realizing her hands were shaking. "I missed?" The B1 unit seemed perplexed, too much so to aim right away once more. "How did I miss?"