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Thalia's thoughts are in a never-ending loop spelling out the word duty. She should not have let herself be distracted by Shadril's words, let alone taken Anakin to the woods. She was at the head of a whole planet, she couldn't afford to be a stupid teenager.
Yet, the word duty looks a lot like 'Anakin' as it loosely settles in her mind.
He's talking with Padmé at dinner. They're all sitting, her and Shadril at either ends of the table, and he's making a show of the fact that he isn't talking to her. It's fine, she tells herself. Besides, she's been ignoring him too, for the past week.
Everytime his eyes settle on anything but her, she wants to grab his chin and turn his head back to her.
Clearly, staying close to him would do neither of them good. He was right – being a Jedi could almost rival being a monarch in obligations. Whatever happened at the lake could never happen again, for either of them. He swore an oath. She did too. It can never happen.
The fake snowquills on the dinner table are taunting her.
"And when I got to them, we went into aggressive negotiations," he tells Padmé.
Padmé frowns, a confused smile on her face. "'Aggressive negotiations'? What's that?"
"Well, negotiations with a lightsaber."
Shadril hums, taking a gulp off of her drink. "Maybe the Queen could take a page out of your book."
"Shadril."
Anakin stares blankly at the Princess. He doesn't say anything, he just looks at her. If Thalia always found his gaze too intense when his eyes settled on her, she's taken aback by the void they hold now.
Shadril doesn't look away. She wants to say something else, her aunt can see it all over her face. Her gray gaze turns to her, and the flowers. It blazes.
"Beautiful snowquills," she says. "You don't see those around the castle often, am I wrong?"
She knows. Anakin's eyes finally cross Thalia's, and her jaw tightens. She didn't need to give Shadril anymore ammunition in regards to her incompetence. She hadn't thought this through, entranced at the idea to act like a normal teenager, to show Anakin the place she loves most.
