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It wasn’t the low woosh of the door that woke him, it was the cautious coiling feeling at the back of his head, pulling him out of the dark abyss of sleep. He didn’t dream anymore.
He couldn’t be bothered to open his eyes, hearing your shuffle closer until you were standing by his sorry excuse for a bed. He relented and opened his eyes, staring up at you. You stared back down at him, a pillow clutched to your chest like you were still a youngling looking for someone to cuddle with after a nightmare.
By the looks of it, that was exactly what you were. He heaved a heavy sigh, the sound only exaggerated by his ventilator, but you remained unwavering in the face of his annoyance. You were the only one who could still do that, you were the only one who he allowed to get on his nerves.
He rolled his eyes, something you no doubt saw by the bright glow of his orange eyes, but moved his bionic arm out of the way regardless.
Your smile could have powered cities as you crawled into bed alongside him. You were careful not to jostle him as you settled him, something he was grateful for. After the incident he could only lay on his back to get any sleep.
You curled against his side, and he noticed you had abandoned your pillow and instead chose to bury your head against his ribs. He withheld a wince. You didn’t mean to hurt him. He could never bring himself to tell you the full extent of his injuries, he could never bare himself that intimately to anyone ever again.
He couldn’t hide the sudden loss of his limbs, but by then you were so scared by the bloodshed around you and the unexplained betrayal of the clones that you didn’t even question him as he herded you onto a ship and stole you away.
He had to. That’s how he rationalized taking you and keeping you as a stowaway on every ship he boarded. Obi Wan would have found you eventually and he couldn’t let the only thing he had left be taken from him. He couldn’t let Obi Wan poison you and turn you against him like he had to Padme.
Similarly, he couldn’t very well let the Emperor discover your existence. The man took every chance he could to make him suffer, whether that be physically or mentally. He had no doubt in his mind that if Emperor Palpatine found out not only of your existence, but also how much he fed off of your happiness, something horrible would happen to you.
He would never be able to connect it to Palpatine, but he would know and that alone would torture him. He and Anakin had wildly different goals, but they shared one: the priority of your safety. Anakin failed at every goal he set out, restricted by rules and relics of the past. He would not fail. Not with this.
So he kept you hidden. He wiped every trace of you from the remaining bits of the Jedi records, he killed anyone he remembered having close contact with you. Each ship for the empire was created with a number of secret passages, most leading to nothing but dead ends, but one inevitably led to your room.
Only he knew the way and anyone that somehow managed to stumble across you met a quick death. He would bow to no one or take to threats, but he also wouldn’t run the risk of someone spreading rumors or directly telling the emperor.
He would never be replaced, but you were so fragile. He sometimes saw you trying to return to your Jedi training, practicing sparring in your room or meditating to work on mental blocking, but after a few stern lectures that behavior started to fade and he was left with this frail creature that had too much power and too much love stuffed inside.
You took a deep breath and his attention was drawn back to you like a magnet. He cynically supposed that he should feel embarrassed he was so attuned to you, but he couldn’t help his adoration.
You felt content. Your force signature was like a cat stretching from a lazy nap in the sun. Whatever drew you to his quarters tonight was already fading from your mind as you took full advantage of his willingness to put up with you.
He reached his arm around your shoulders and gently pressed his hand against your back to settle the last of your wiggles. You twitched from the cold metal of his arm, making him grind his teeth.
“Go to sleep, little one.” He rasped, his voice modular rumbling. You hummed softly and he felt the slightest push of defiance like it was a reflex to be stubborn with him. He hushed you as gently as he could muster, pushing back against your defiance.
Despite your best efforts, you were already tired when you came into his room and trying to fight off sleep was a losing battle and within minutes you were asleep. He closed his eyes and found solace in still feeling your force in the back of his mind thrumming with life.