fandomtownies | The Junkyard - Thursday after classes

Entry tags:

The Junkyard - Thursday after classes

The Acorn was still in one piece, and River ran her hand along the rough metal surface of the main doors, wondering where this particular piece had originated. The squirrels had been quite resourceful. As daylight struck the floor of the cargo hold - the only large space inside the ship, the dust covering the floor became a little too obvious. Not enough people around to stir it up, River thought. She looked around the room, trying to decide of a good wall for the mural A.J. had promised her. The IKEA furniture - which Buffy had helped her chose - was firmly attached to the floor, but was looking a little to dusty to be particularly inviting. She switched on the lava lamp, hoping it would improve the atmosphere of the ship.

[River is here to meet Anakin, but post is open if you want to stop by.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Anakin wandered into the ship and gazed around. "This is quite a piece of engineering," he said, clearly impressed.

River turned, smiling, running a hand along one of the walls, which left it covered by dirt. "The squirrels were inspired," she said.

"Squirrels did this?" Anakin grinned. "I had no idea their mechanical engineering skills were so advanced."

She grinned. "Neither did I." The memory of how she had been someone else for a weekend, obsessively drawing spaceships and somehow inspiring the squirrels to build the Acorn came back to her, and she didn't try to hide it.

Anakin's emotions were wryly amused. "I heard about that weekend," he said. "Luke was a little traumatized."

"Turned into someone he didn't like?" River asked. She didn't remember Tess as being frightening in any way.

"He stayed the same," Anakin said, "and thought the rest of you had gone crazy."

River chuckled. "Not crazy, just different." She patted the wall of the ship. "Didn't mind. I got this."

"And it flies," Anakin said, taking a closer look around him. "Incredible."

"Still needs fuel," River replied. "And unless flying in atmo increases the consumption by ten times more than the usual I believe there is a leak somewhere." She had been lucky to get the ship back to the junk yard last time she flew it, which was when she had offered Pippi a demonstration. She tried not to think about the particular details of that.

Anakin frowned. "Yeah, it shouldn't do that. Show me where the engine is? I can poke around."

The engine room - which wasn't exactly a room, more like a cramped space under a hatch in the floor behind the couch - smelled of engine grease. Kaylee would have loved it.

Anakin did too. His posture was noticeably more relaxed as he shrugged out of his robe. "Do you mind?" he asked, looking much more like a kid than River was probably used to.

She shook her head, happy to see that he enjoyed this. While engines wasn't something that generally caught her attention, she could easily understand the fascination they may hold for others.

"It sings to me like music does," he said, wriggling underneath to get a better look. "I can feel the pieces, the way they're supposed to go together, and can convince them to do things better."

His hands quickly located the leaking fuel line. "Like not leak," he said, poking his head out. His face already had a smudge of oil across it.

Watching Anakin work, River could see what he meant. She knew that feeling. "Am not a doctor of engines myself," she said. "I just listen, but the finer details evade me. You sing back." She stuck her head down into the engine room, her hair dangerously close to getting stuck in a safety valve. "Should have watched Kaylee talk to Serenity, but my mind was elsewhere."

"Watch your head," Anakin said absently, his focus mostly on what the engine was telling him. "You have your own interests. This was my first love; it was how I proved my usefulness before I knew I could become a Jedi. I've been poking my head into machinery since I could walk, or near enough."

"Love of flying requires basic knowledge of maintenance of spacecraft," River said, pulling her hair away. "How did you learn about becoming a Jedi?"

"The tales of Jedi are told like nursery rhymes back in my galaxy," Anakin said. "I grew up on them, but didn't think I could become one any more than I could fly by flapping my arms. Then two fell from the stars, landed on my dirtball of a planet and told me I was special."

He let River feel the mixture of wonder, pride and guilt that still filled him with. "I left Tatooine and my old life behind and never really looked back."

She smiled a little, still curious. "Your family must have been proud," she said.

"I suppose," Anakin said. "The Jedi forbid contact after you've entered the Temple."

The smile disappeared from her face. That reminded her far too much of the Academy, the early days, before she really understood the experiments. "Why?"

"To be a Jedi, you have to stand outside of the flow of the galaxy," Anakin said, clattering parts that probably didn't need to be clattered quite so loudly. "You must remain completely unbiased and have no loyalties to a home planet or a family so that when you are negotiating, your words can be taken with the weight that a thousand generations of Jedi give you. I was much older than most Jedi when I entered the Temple. Most of them no have memory of a life outside the Order. I never really played by those rules."

River nodded, still uneasy about that. "What rules did you play by?" she asked.

"Mine," Anakin said with a wry smile. "I ignored the parts I didn't think were important. Jedi aren't allowed to be married and certainly shouldn't be fathers, but I wouldn't take either of those decisions back."

Finding that reassuring, River smiled again. "The rules you mention make no sense to me. Define what a Jedi is? Choice? Calling? Destiny?"

"All three," Anakin replied, "at least for me. You can be Force-sensitive without being a Jedi, and I thought a lot about choosing that path--especially after I married--but to be Jedi, to protect the weak and bring justice to those who might not know it otherwise, to end conflict and strike back at wickedness...it's who I am, and I can't shut it off. It's taken me a long time, but I realize now that I don't want to." He went back to working on the engine. "In Luke's lifetime, the Temple is gone anyway. He's the only Jedi left. Vader tore down the good and the bad of the Order with equal ruthlessness. There's no one left to scold me if I love harder than I should."

River listened and remained silent for a while. At the mention of Vader she flinched, but said nothing. Finally she asked: "And who will rebuild?"

"Luke will," Anakin said, voice quietly proud. "I've been pulled from my timeline. I can't go back and I won't join him. I'll stay here and teach for as long as I'm useful."

Hearing Anakin talk about Luke was weet and made River smile. "He has a good heart. Free to go where you want then?" She wasn't sure that was a good or bad thing.

"That's what brought me back here," he admitted. "The year I spent at Fandom, even with the zombies and the ridiculousness, was as happy as I ever was."

"Fandom manages to make very different people happy." River smiled. "A place to return to, if you can."

Anakin poked his head out to look at River. "Does it make you happy?"

There was a pause. "Yes," she said, finally, avoiding his gaze. "But things distract."

"Distract how?" he asked gently.

"One year left," she said quietly. "All paths after that point towards my brother, but somehow I resist." It made her feel guilty, but it was true. "I'll be the little sister, possibly the second pilot." She bit her lip, glancing nervously at Anakin. "I could do anything as a child. I chose badly, but I didn't know better. My brother followed me and I should follow him, but there is nothing."

Anakin gave her a smile full of understanding. "Then you do know how I feel about Fandom," he said, putting the finishing touches on the engine and sliding out.

"When I was a Padawan here, it was a release from being constantly watched at home," he said. "The reason they'd let me into the Temple, despite how old I was, was because they believed I would fulfill a prophecy about bringing balance to the Force. I felt as though they kept waiting for me to explode." He ran a hand through his hair. "When I was younger I found attaining Jedi calm to be...elusive."

He shrugged. "Here no one knew about the prophecy, or my past. I could just be Anakin and accepted as such."

River let out a laugh, clearly understanding what he meant. "And when you returned to the temple?" she asked, her eyes moving between Anakin and the engine, trying to memorise what he had done.

"It was back to being watched," he said quietly, letting her feel a flicker of the frustration he'd felt. "I pushed myself to be better than the rest of them, just to prove them wrong. Even with the war--or perhaps because of it--every Jedi in the temple knew what I was doing at all times. It was stifling."

He looked a little amazed that he was sharing this at all.

"But they had their own agendas," he said. "Your brother might not."

She shook her head. At least she didn't have that to deal with, and it made her concerns seem a little petty. "He doesn't. Wants to look after me, I want to look after him, both of us lost." She smiled sadly. "Problem's sorted?" she asked, refering to the engine.

"Problem's sorted," Anakin confirmed with a smile. "And knowing where you're going in very overrated," he said quietly. "You'll end where you're supposed to be regardless."

She laughed again. "And how do you set the course?" But the question was meant jokingly. "And with the fuel, she'll fly again?"

"She'll fly again," Anakin said. "What's her name?"

"The Acorn," River replied. "Built by squirrels after all." She got to her feet and began spinning around, arms outstretched, a sense of freedom suddenly coming over her.

Anakin grinned, opening himself up to her sense of delight.

After a moment he reached for his robe. "I should let you get reacquainted with her."

River stopped, the movement sudden. "Thank you," she said, the words emphasized by her emotions.

Anakin ghosted his hand against her shoulder. "Any time," he said quietly, smiling.

An equally sudden wide smile appeared on her face and she resumed the spinning, sensing the ship around her, hearing the sound of her feet against the floor and the soft echo against the hard walls, her mind forming an image of the spacecraft as extending from her own body. At the same time the images of all the people she had promised to take with her on a flight came into her mind, as well as one whom she'd most of all would like to show what flying could be like, one whom looking at stars gave vertigo.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Junkyard - Thursday after classes

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject