Dormé in Darkness
Title: “Dormé in Darkness”
Author: That would be me (Polgarawolf).
Fandom: Star Wars AU, Prequel-era.
Characters: Dormé Tammesin, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, with various other handmaidens, General Grievious, and Palpatine/Sidious also briefly mentioned.
Pairings: Unrequited (secretly Sith-influenced) Dormé Tammesin/Anakin Skywalker. (Secretly Sith-influenced) Padmé/Anakin. Unrequited Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin/Obi-Wan. In other words, folks, this is the story of two love/lust-triangles in head-on collision with each other. The focus, though, is on unrequited, Sith-influenced (though Dormé doesn't exactly realize this) Dormékin.
Rating: Hard R (borderline NC-17). Rated both for explicit subject matter and mature themes.
Warnings: 1). This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for an extremely AU Dormé Tammesin's life (one that is not compatible with my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series, if anybody's familiar with it). If anything doesn't make sense, please feel free to ask! 2). Please be aware that this story combines het and slash, with the Obi-Wan/Anakin pairing referred to at the end being the only true romantic pairing of the story. 3). There is some reference to knife-play, bloodletting, and self-harm in this fic. It's a much darker fic than my norm. There is an unknown Sith/Dark Side apprentice/acolyte (Sola Naberrie) behind the scenes who's manipulating Dormé's thoughts/emotions, trying to influence her towards an action that will reveal Anakin and Padmé's forbidden hand-fasting/marriage, and the meddling is slowly driving her insane.
Word Count: 4,011 words, counting the themes (the presence of which are explained at further length in the continued notes under the first lj-cut).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more's the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: This is fifty random (but essentially chronological, if with some overlap) moments from the life of an extremely AU Dormé Tammesin, whose life is forever altered when she realizes that she desires Anakin Skywalker and encourages the feeling rather than trying to fight against it. There is a story here - one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stetched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together - but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )
Author's Notes: 1). Again, this not-quite-a-story is NOT compatible with my SW AU WiP You Became to Me (which is on my LJ and has been crossposted to several SW communities), not even if you squint at some things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Dormé’s increasingly desperate eyes. 2). This "story" is modelled on theme set Delta for an LJ community called 1sentence (where the aim of the game is to write one sentence for each theme in a given table of set prompts), but was actually prompted by a somewhat wistful comment on another story of mine to the effect that it was a shame I don't write Dormékin (Dormé/Anakin fic). Ta-da! I give you my extremely screwed-up attempt at Dormékin! (Please, don't shoot me!!!) 3). Before readers get upset about the way her emotions are all over the map, especially towards the end, readers might want to consider the fact that, in this AU of my AU SW series, Dormé is being meddled with (as in influenced via the Sith version of the Jedi Mind Trick) more and more by Sidious' secret apprentice/tool, Sola Naberrie, and is therefore losing more and more of her sanity the further into this you get.
#01: Air
The air always feels warm and close in his presence, but it's not until Dormé realizes that she's breathing more deeply, trying to draw in the scent of him, despite that sense of almost overwhelming heat, that she realizes what the problem is.
#02: Apples
Anakin smiles at Dormé - the openly warm expression of a friend - and heat abruptly blooms in her belly, sizzling in her blood and rising in her body until a flush rises up the column of her throat and spreads out across the apples of her cheeks, marking her out for anyone with eyes to see for the traitor her flesh has made her.
#03: Beginning
In the beginning, Dormé thought it was sweet, how Anakin did everything he could to make Padmé look upon him with favor, smile at him and speak to him kindly, but a venomous serpent coils within her now, hissing and spitting angrily, jealously, with every warm look and soft touch they share, and she is forced to dig her nails into her palms until they slice bloody half-moons into the skin, to keep from crying out at their hypocrisy.
#04: Bugs
It bothers Dormé immensely, knowing that Padmé doesn't love Anakin with either her whole heart or her body, that Padmé has, in fact, been helplessly in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi since the moment she first met him, and she finds herself spitefully wondering, during one of her routine sweeps of the apartment for bugs, whether or not Anakin suspects that he is not the only one in the marriage with an unfaithful heart and a body that yearns for the touch of another.
#05: Coffee
She is bringing Padmé her morning coffee (Naboo's answer to the caf and stim-tea of the Core Worlds and Inner Rim) when she catches her first glimpse of Anakin fully unclothed, lying passively upon the bed, blue eyes shut tight, face twisted in an expression closer to pain, to agony, than to pleasure, as his illicit wife's small white hand curves around the hard length of him, carefully smoothing over rigid flesh, teasing back the fragile foreskin with the same delicacy of motion and rapt attention Dormé has seen Milady pay to a piece of fruit being peeled for the eating, and the eruption of heat in her body is such that it is not until Padmé (eyes locked tight to the prize in her grasp, thankfully unnoticing of anything or anyone else) strokes her hand in a certain way and Anakin throws back his head against the pillows, lips moving to the shape of an "O," moving to form the shape of a name he would likely die before uttering in this bed, that she remembers herself enough to slip silently back out of the room, her bottom lip caught so viciously between her teeth to keep from crying out at the unfairness of it all that a gush of scarlet pours down her chin and stains the bodice of her dress, the mark glistening crimson against the fabric like an open wound.
#06: Dark
She feels darkened by her desire, tainted by it, but she cannot bring herself to stop following him with her eyes or savoring the nearness of him when he visits Padmé, and, even though it feels wrong (she feels wrong, in experiencing such emotions) and she feels like a monster, like an abomination, like sin itself, substantial and personified, she knows she cannot stop wanting him, that she doesn’t truly want to stop (a part of her likes this, oh, yes, likes it very much, indeed, the feeling of raw, open, solid, real, undeniable desire, of lust untempered by any softer affection, and that's the crux of it, after all, that she likes it, that she wants it, wants to feel this, to have this, to revel in it, the rush of this intoxicating high that lays her to waste and yet makes her feel so terribly alive), and, despairingly, she begins to wonder if one must be a Jedi to go dark, because she can feel the pull of the Dark Side every time she lays eyes upon Anakin Skywalker, and it becomes harder and harder for her, each time to resist that seductive lure.
#07: Despair
She picks up the knife in a fit of despair, huddled alone in the quiet of her room, eyes glued to the holodisplay of the monitoring device she has deliberately planted in Milady's bedchamber, watching as Padmé writhes frantically upon Anakin's body, impaling herself again and again on his impressive length (too caught up in her own wanton frenzy to note the strange passivity of her husband's body beneath her or the way his mouth keeps moving to shape an "O" that never makes its way past his lips), and, with four fingers buried viciously within her own aching wet heat, slashes the blade across the tender skin of her clenching upper thighs, desperately trying to turn herself aside from this madness by teaching her body that the desire she feels will bring her body nothing but pain.
#08: Doors
The doors are always carefully shut - Padmé always makes sure of that, terrified that otherwise they might somehow be seen and so caught out in the midst of their tangled snarl of lies - but it no longer matters: Milady trusts her, and all it takes is a few carefully placed holocomms, a few deliberately planted bugs, to ensure that they will never again know a moment's privacy within the confines of these rooms.
#09: Drink
She begins to crave drink so badly that she can taste the burn of the alcohol and the heady rush of heat blossoming in her stomach (so like and unlike the uncoiling explosion of lust in her blood, whenever she is faced with the sight or sound or scent of Anakin Skywalker), and it is only the fear of exposing herself and being cast out, where she will never again be able to lay eyes on Anakin, that keeps her from giving in to the siren's call of liquor.
#10: Duty
She knows her duty, and this isn't it, isn't anything even near what she signed on for, and the temptation to use that knife, again and again, is only staved off by the realization that, of the three of them involved in this sick cycle carousel of misplaced lust, her dereliction of duty is so minor, compared to the infractions of the others, that she would barely rate a blip on the HoloNet, should Padmé and Anakin's relationship ever come to light.
#11: Earth
She is outside one day, tending to Milady's flowers, gathering her a bouquet for the dinner table, when Anakin suddenly appears, smiling in obvious good high spirits, slipping over to her side and lingering long enough to remark that her eyes are the same color as the newly-turned earth of the flowerbed, the long-fingered hand hidden beneath that ever-present leather glove breaks off a fragrant bloom to tuck (apparently absent-mindedly) behind the shell-like curve of her left ear, before he finally gathers up the flowers from her trembling and numbed hands and rushes, utterly unheeding of the effect he's had on her, into the house, calling out for Padmé and waving his offering of flowers like a perfect HoloVid Knight.
#12: End
Dormé can feel the end approaching and knows, logically, that this cannot possibly last forever - that she will be lucky if she has until even the end of the war before Anakin or Padmé forgets and slips and reveals their hollow sham of a hand-fasting to the rest of the galaxy at large - but her blood sings in her ears, siren-sweet, and blossoms heat at the least possible sign or mention of Anakin, and she knows, too, that she will delay that end, fight it with all of her strength and cunningness, likely long past the point of plausible desirability, and the knowledge does not surprise her, even in her most rational moments.
#13: Fall
In her saner moments, Dormé knows that it's not the long fall into darkness and obsession but rather the abrupt halt awaiting at the end of that dizzying descent that is most likely to be her death, but the moments do not last long, for she has become so enamoured of the intoxicating freedom inherent in the act of surrender to that fall that she can no longer remember what it was like, to stand unmoving on solid ground.
#14: Fire
Desire is a disease, a ravaging agent enveloping and permeating her body and devouring her soul, merciless and mindless as fire, and she finds she can do nothing but suffer its wracking torment in silence, in her weakness treacherously yielding to its plundering embrace.
#15: Flexible
Her morals have become more flexible, over the course of the war and the course of the Padmé and Anakin's relationship, by necessity, allowing her to bend where once she would have simply broken irrevocably.
#16: Flying
Dormé dreams it is her name on Anakin's lips, that she is the one who makes him break and move and actively reach to thrust and claim and mark, and the feeling of exultation is so like flying that, when she wakes in a tangle of bed sheets, she feels the jolting impact of crash so vividly that she cannot understand why her pale flesh is not black and blue from the violence of collision.
#17: Food
Every time Anakin ducks his head and smiles and uses the Force to float some paltry morsel of food across the table to Padmé, Dormé wants to cry out, to scream that he is wasting the power he should be using to combat the Sith and end the civil war, and only the shock of remembering her duty is enough to jar her away from such a display of hypocrisy.
#18: Foot
He pads silently out into the kitchen one night, wrapped only in loose sleep robe, and shocks her by sitting down at the table next to her and helping himself to a cup of her tea, smiling at her tiredly as he explains that he finds himself unable to sleep and unwilling to risk disturbing Padmé's slumber, legs extended in a loose sprawl that brings his bare left foot so close to her that the outermost edge rubs distractingly up against her slipper-clad right foot, and, when it takes all of her willpower to keep from orgasming at the accidental and purely innocent touch, she finds herself wondering, desperately, just how far out of her depth she's already fallen.
#19: Grave
Padmé's face is always grave, heart-broken, sad and yearning, whenever Anakin has to leave, but Dormé knows that this graven mask is a lie, for she sees the relief that breaks across those carefully schooled features, shattering Padmé's facade into a hundred thousand lying fragments, every single time he has gone away again.
#20: Green
Green is said to be the color of envy, but she finds she cannot hate it, nor herself, for every time she catches sight of coolly verdant color, she remembers a day out in the gardens, Anakin appearing out of the blue and sidling up to her, laughing exclaiming that her eyes are the color of the freshly-turned earth, and she finds herself fecund and wanting, waiting for only his fruitful touch, to flower and ripen with seed.
#21: Head
A part of her is almost glad that his visits are so infrequent and so frequently brief, for she finds it so difficult to keep her head about her when he is near that she begins to fear Padmé will notice the scarring on her palms from the many times she's driven her nails into the tender flesh until it parted under the pressure and bled, in an attempt to impart herself some shadow of control.
#22: Hollow
Her body is empty, yearning, her flesh burning with need for him, her mind and will sapped, bent out of shape, the whole of her reshaped into a perfectly hollow vessel, waiting only for his notice to fill herself, glut herself, with and upon him.
#23: Honor
She has no real honor left, and yet, the realization is as hollow and meaningless as the one that came with the understanding that she was failing in her duty, for if she has broken honor with Milady, then how much more honorless has Padmé's actions towards Anakin (when she still loves Obi-Wan, so much that Dormé has often seen and heard her, of a night, writhing and crying out for her Bendu, her Master Kenobi) rendered her?
#24: Hope
She cannot decide if she should hope for a hell as sweet as this purgatory has been, when she dies, but she is fairly certain that it is to hell she will be going, and she figures that, as acquainted as she's become to the sweetness of suffering, it only makes sense to assume that hell will be familiar.
#25: Light
Kenobi & Skywalker are the light of hope in a galaxy of increasing darkness, and she watches them on the HoloNet, rapt as any other worshipfully adoring fan, as they cut a swathe of blazing glory across the Outer Rim, Separatist factions falling before them like shadows retreating before the glare of a twinned sun.
#26: Lost
She knows she is lost - though a single niggling thread of pride insists that she's nowhere near as far gone as Padmé, marrying the Padawan apprentice of the Jedi Master she loves in order to feel closer to that Master - but the longer the war rages, the less she finds herself able to rouse the energy to care.
#27: Metal
The mirror-bright metal of the blade gleams, reflecting a wild and earth-dark eye back at her, and she glides its razored edge along the smooth skin of her right inner thigh, pressing gently, gently, just enough to draw a line of scarlet against her white skin, and then, leaning in close, seals her mouth to the lower edge of the wound, lapping and sucking at the bitterly sweet metallic tang of the liquid marking her desire.
#28: New
There is a new line of crimson painted against her thighs or the tops of the breasts (where her mouth can reach) every time that Anakin visits, and she finds herself grateful that Padmé has started keeping bacta bandages on hand, just in case Anakin should ever visit her while wounded, for it would be much harder to keep up her end of their interwove, precariously balanced web of lies, should the wounds ever go without bandaging, the blood seeping through the fabric of her clothes like a rising stain.
#29: Old
One day she catches Padmé clinging desperately to a carefully still and mostly awkwardly unresponsive Obi-Wan, and is surprised at the viciously of the sudden resurgence of an old fury, her entire body shaking violently, as in the grip of some violent seizure, as her mistress throws herself once more at a man less likely to ever accept her offering than he is to realize the desperate love his former Padawan has harboured within his heart for his former Master for at least as long as Dormé has known him.
#30: Peace
The Jedi Order preaches peace through detachment, a deliberate foreswearing of attachment to all things and all beings, but it is only when Anakin Skywalker gazes upon the face of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the love he feels for the Jedi Master suffuses him and softens his eyes and his features that she knows he is experiencing true serenity.
#31: Poison
Hatred, like desire, works in her like a poison, and she finds herself wondering, again, if one absolutely must be Force-sensitive in order to fall to the Dark Side, because she can feel it growing within her, like some rapidly ripening, bitterly poisonous fruit.
#32: Pretty
She knows she is only pretty, not beautiful like Padmé, but stars above and earth below, what she would not give for Anakin to look upon her, just once, and see her as a desirable woman!
#33: Rain
One day when she is out in the gardens again, she finds herself so distracted with the muddied swirl of her own ugly thoughts that she fails to notice the turning of the weather, and it is only after the rain has given way to hail and a sizeable chunk of ice has struck her forehead with enough force to burst the skin like that of an over-ripe fruit, scarlet rushing down into her eyes like an explosion of suddenly pressed juice, that she even realizes she's soaked to the skin and standing in the midst of a violent storm.
#34: Regret
She wants to be able to feel regret, remorse, something, but the blood trickles down her face, mingling with the icy rainwater, and the shocking sweetness brings an eerily dreamy smile to her face, even as she stumbles her way back to the shelter of the Lake House villa.
#35: Roses
The invocation of his name alone on the HoloNet has become enough to make heat and color bloom in her cheeks, and one day she finds herself automatically plunging her face down into a bouquet of roses, to hide her reaction from Padmé, too distracted to notice that a similar flush has risen in Milady's face and throat at the mention of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
#36: Secret
Their marriage is a secret, but Dormé can't for the life of her understand how they're managing to keep it, because they betray themselves so obviously in so many ways that she would think it would take someone deaf, blind, and dumb to keep from noticing, but then again, Obi-Wan has his trust to keep him blind, and it is the same trust that keeps Padmé and Anakin from noticing her infatuation with Anakin, so she suppose she should simply count her blessings and let sleeping Sithspawn lie.
#37: Snakes
The single serpent of envy has long since laid eggs and hatched a slithering, writhing nest of snakes, hissing and spitting and sinking their venomous fangs into her over and over and over again, and she wonders, sometimes, if there's any blood left for all the hateful poison that must be flowing through her veins.
#38: Snow
When it becomes clear that Padmé is pregnant with Anakin's child, it begins to snow in her heart, and the coldness seeps through her with such rapidity that she wonders, in a brief moment of lucidity, if she will ever be able to feel warm again.
#39: Solid
She can feel the solid weight of the ice as hoarfrost collects and solidifies into a permanent barrier around her heart, and she knows her face is just a little too blankly calm when Padmé sends her back to Naboo, to oversee the final stages of training of a new round of handmaidens meant specifically for duty as decoys and body-doubles, while Padmé stays behind on Coruscant, but (unsurprisingly) finds that, all things considered, she no longer cares if Milady suspects anything.
#40: Spring
Spring is still fading into summer on Naboo, and the gentle warmth of the sun and the verdant fecundity of the land surprise her, jolting her into a painful remembrance of a day, a flower tucked behind her ear, a smile, a compliment comparing her eyes to the earth, and tears suddenly rise up and spill over those earth-dark eyes, moisture raining heedlessly down her face, in a flood far too violent for her to stem.
#41: Stable
Whatever strength Dormé may've had left rapidly deserts her, in her exile, until she's about as stable as a star a heartbeat away from exploding into nova-fire, but there's absolutely nothing she can do about it, and she finds herself flushing with an odd sense of freedom, for she knows that there is little to nothing that she might do that will harm Anakin any worse than Padmé's unexpected and unplanned for and utterly unwanted pregnancy.
#42: Strange
It's strange to remember her own sense of willing, waiting fecundity, knowing how ruinous Padmé's pregnancy is liable to be, not only for her (and so for Dormé) but for Anakin (and so for Obi-Wan, too) as well.
#43: Summer
Summer is beginning to show signs of fading into autumn when word suddenly comes the Coruscant is under attack, that General Grievous has somehow managed to penetrate the planet's defenses to kidnap the Supreme Chancellor and is attempting to flee the system with him, and that the famous Team, Anakin & Obi-Wan are in route to save the day, and she shivers with a sudden cold premonition, not of disaster for Palpatine, but rather of disaster for the four of them, caught up in this tangled web of unrequited love and misplaced affection and wrongly channelled lust.
#44: Taboo
Love, for a Jedi, is the greatest taboo, short of outright deliberate embrace of the Dark Side, but she sees the love, hears the love, senses the love, knows beyond her ability to question the love that Anakin feels for Obi-Wan in his every word, every gesture, in the very stance of his body and the light in his eyes and reverent hush in his voice when he speaks his former Master's name, and she wonders, as she watches the endless loop of repeating HoloNet interviews, how it is that no one else has come to the same conclusion that she so long ago came to, regarding the one true keeper of Anakin Skywalker's heart and soul.
#45: Ugly
It is an ugly thought, a vicious thought, a dishonorable thought, a thought worthy of a Sith, but she cannot help but indulge in the fantasy that Padmé might have been killed, in the confusion of battle surrounding Grievous' attack on Coruscant, especially not when the silence from her stretches out from mere hours into days, with no sign of her on the HoloNet to counter her silence.
#46: War
The war has never been quite real to Dormé, paling before her own titanic struggle with temptation and desire, and it is a shock, to realize how close it has come to her, and that her unworthy, ugly, hateful, hopeful thought is, in fact, the literal truth.
#47: Water
As colors of the room swirl together like eddies of storm clouds or muddy currents in sluggish water, darkening and bleeding inevitably towards black, Dormé hears a desperately shrill and frightened voice calling out, "Force, she's fainting - help me catch her!" and a bubble of hysterical laughter wells up and shatters the crushing pressure in her chest, breaking her open, shattering her like a glass dropped from a great height, for she knows it's far too late for anyone to ever catch her now.
#48: Welcome
The solicitous attention of the other handmaidens is not welcome: Obi-Wan and Anakin have unmasked and defeated the Sith Lord Sidious (none other than Palpatine himself), and they are together now, in ever sense of the word, and all Dormé desires to do is to curl up in a dark corner somewhere and die.
#49: Winter
The winter in her soul will never turn to spring, and she knows there's only one thing left for her to do.
#50: Wood
The wood is well-seasoned and eager to catch light; the alcohol content of the liquor is high and volatile enough to explode into flame at the barest hint of spark; the mirror-bright blade of the dagger eager to seek out her veins, to rain bitter poison down upon the makeshift pyre and add fuel to the fire; and Dormé Tammesin walks to her death with an eerie smile upon her face, arms flung wide to embrace the return of a familiar hell, unwilling and unable to deal with the new hell that is the marriage of hearts and souls and minds and bodies of Obi-Wan Kenobi (whom everyone loves, damn him to hell) and her beloved Anakin Skywalker.
Author: That would be me (Polgarawolf).
Fandom: Star Wars AU, Prequel-era.
Characters: Dormé Tammesin, Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, with various other handmaidens, General Grievious, and Palpatine/Sidious also briefly mentioned.
Pairings: Unrequited (secretly Sith-influenced) Dormé Tammesin/Anakin Skywalker. (Secretly Sith-influenced) Padmé/Anakin. Unrequited Padmé Amidala/Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin/Obi-Wan. In other words, folks, this is the story of two love/lust-triangles in head-on collision with each other. The focus, though, is on unrequited, Sith-influenced (though Dormé doesn't exactly realize this) Dormékin.
Rating: Hard R (borderline NC-17). Rated both for explicit subject matter and mature themes.
Warnings: 1). This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for an extremely AU Dormé Tammesin's life (one that is not compatible with my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series, if anybody's familiar with it). If anything doesn't make sense, please feel free to ask! 2). Please be aware that this story combines het and slash, with the Obi-Wan/Anakin pairing referred to at the end being the only true romantic pairing of the story. 3). There is some reference to knife-play, bloodletting, and self-harm in this fic. It's a much darker fic than my norm. There is an unknown Sith/Dark Side apprentice/acolyte (Sola Naberrie) behind the scenes who's manipulating Dormé's thoughts/emotions, trying to influence her towards an action that will reveal Anakin and Padmé's forbidden hand-fasting/marriage, and the meddling is slowly driving her insane.
Word Count: 4,011 words, counting the themes (the presence of which are explained at further length in the continued notes under the first lj-cut).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more's the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .
Summary: This is fifty random (but essentially chronological, if with some overlap) moments from the life of an extremely AU Dormé Tammesin, whose life is forever altered when she realizes that she desires Anakin Skywalker and encourages the feeling rather than trying to fight against it. There is a story here - one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stetched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together - but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )
Author's Notes: 1). Again, this not-quite-a-story is NOT compatible with my SW AU WiP You Became to Me (which is on my LJ and has been crossposted to several SW communities), not even if you squint at some things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Dormé’s increasingly desperate eyes. 2). This "story" is modelled on theme set Delta for an LJ community called 1sentence (where the aim of the game is to write one sentence for each theme in a given table of set prompts), but was actually prompted by a somewhat wistful comment on another story of mine to the effect that it was a shame I don't write Dormékin (Dormé/Anakin fic). Ta-da! I give you my extremely screwed-up attempt at Dormékin! (Please, don't shoot me!!!) 3). Before readers get upset about the way her emotions are all over the map, especially towards the end, readers might want to consider the fact that, in this AU of my AU SW series, Dormé is being meddled with (as in influenced via the Sith version of the Jedi Mind Trick) more and more by Sidious' secret apprentice/tool, Sola Naberrie, and is therefore losing more and more of her sanity the further into this you get.
#01: Air
The air always feels warm and close in his presence, but it's not until Dormé realizes that she's breathing more deeply, trying to draw in the scent of him, despite that sense of almost overwhelming heat, that she realizes what the problem is.
#02: Apples
Anakin smiles at Dormé - the openly warm expression of a friend - and heat abruptly blooms in her belly, sizzling in her blood and rising in her body until a flush rises up the column of her throat and spreads out across the apples of her cheeks, marking her out for anyone with eyes to see for the traitor her flesh has made her.
#03: Beginning
In the beginning, Dormé thought it was sweet, how Anakin did everything he could to make Padmé look upon him with favor, smile at him and speak to him kindly, but a venomous serpent coils within her now, hissing and spitting angrily, jealously, with every warm look and soft touch they share, and she is forced to dig her nails into her palms until they slice bloody half-moons into the skin, to keep from crying out at their hypocrisy.
#04: Bugs
It bothers Dormé immensely, knowing that Padmé doesn't love Anakin with either her whole heart or her body, that Padmé has, in fact, been helplessly in love with Obi-Wan Kenobi since the moment she first met him, and she finds herself spitefully wondering, during one of her routine sweeps of the apartment for bugs, whether or not Anakin suspects that he is not the only one in the marriage with an unfaithful heart and a body that yearns for the touch of another.
#05: Coffee
She is bringing Padmé her morning coffee (Naboo's answer to the caf and stim-tea of the Core Worlds and Inner Rim) when she catches her first glimpse of Anakin fully unclothed, lying passively upon the bed, blue eyes shut tight, face twisted in an expression closer to pain, to agony, than to pleasure, as his illicit wife's small white hand curves around the hard length of him, carefully smoothing over rigid flesh, teasing back the fragile foreskin with the same delicacy of motion and rapt attention Dormé has seen Milady pay to a piece of fruit being peeled for the eating, and the eruption of heat in her body is such that it is not until Padmé (eyes locked tight to the prize in her grasp, thankfully unnoticing of anything or anyone else) strokes her hand in a certain way and Anakin throws back his head against the pillows, lips moving to the shape of an "O," moving to form the shape of a name he would likely die before uttering in this bed, that she remembers herself enough to slip silently back out of the room, her bottom lip caught so viciously between her teeth to keep from crying out at the unfairness of it all that a gush of scarlet pours down her chin and stains the bodice of her dress, the mark glistening crimson against the fabric like an open wound.
#06: Dark
She feels darkened by her desire, tainted by it, but she cannot bring herself to stop following him with her eyes or savoring the nearness of him when he visits Padmé, and, even though it feels wrong (she feels wrong, in experiencing such emotions) and she feels like a monster, like an abomination, like sin itself, substantial and personified, she knows she cannot stop wanting him, that she doesn’t truly want to stop (a part of her likes this, oh, yes, likes it very much, indeed, the feeling of raw, open, solid, real, undeniable desire, of lust untempered by any softer affection, and that's the crux of it, after all, that she likes it, that she wants it, wants to feel this, to have this, to revel in it, the rush of this intoxicating high that lays her to waste and yet makes her feel so terribly alive), and, despairingly, she begins to wonder if one must be a Jedi to go dark, because she can feel the pull of the Dark Side every time she lays eyes upon Anakin Skywalker, and it becomes harder and harder for her, each time to resist that seductive lure.
#07: Despair
She picks up the knife in a fit of despair, huddled alone in the quiet of her room, eyes glued to the holodisplay of the monitoring device she has deliberately planted in Milady's bedchamber, watching as Padmé writhes frantically upon Anakin's body, impaling herself again and again on his impressive length (too caught up in her own wanton frenzy to note the strange passivity of her husband's body beneath her or the way his mouth keeps moving to shape an "O" that never makes its way past his lips), and, with four fingers buried viciously within her own aching wet heat, slashes the blade across the tender skin of her clenching upper thighs, desperately trying to turn herself aside from this madness by teaching her body that the desire she feels will bring her body nothing but pain.
#08: Doors
The doors are always carefully shut - Padmé always makes sure of that, terrified that otherwise they might somehow be seen and so caught out in the midst of their tangled snarl of lies - but it no longer matters: Milady trusts her, and all it takes is a few carefully placed holocomms, a few deliberately planted bugs, to ensure that they will never again know a moment's privacy within the confines of these rooms.
#09: Drink
She begins to crave drink so badly that she can taste the burn of the alcohol and the heady rush of heat blossoming in her stomach (so like and unlike the uncoiling explosion of lust in her blood, whenever she is faced with the sight or sound or scent of Anakin Skywalker), and it is only the fear of exposing herself and being cast out, where she will never again be able to lay eyes on Anakin, that keeps her from giving in to the siren's call of liquor.
#10: Duty
She knows her duty, and this isn't it, isn't anything even near what she signed on for, and the temptation to use that knife, again and again, is only staved off by the realization that, of the three of them involved in this sick cycle carousel of misplaced lust, her dereliction of duty is so minor, compared to the infractions of the others, that she would barely rate a blip on the HoloNet, should Padmé and Anakin's relationship ever come to light.
#11: Earth
She is outside one day, tending to Milady's flowers, gathering her a bouquet for the dinner table, when Anakin suddenly appears, smiling in obvious good high spirits, slipping over to her side and lingering long enough to remark that her eyes are the same color as the newly-turned earth of the flowerbed, the long-fingered hand hidden beneath that ever-present leather glove breaks off a fragrant bloom to tuck (apparently absent-mindedly) behind the shell-like curve of her left ear, before he finally gathers up the flowers from her trembling and numbed hands and rushes, utterly unheeding of the effect he's had on her, into the house, calling out for Padmé and waving his offering of flowers like a perfect HoloVid Knight.
#12: End
Dormé can feel the end approaching and knows, logically, that this cannot possibly last forever - that she will be lucky if she has until even the end of the war before Anakin or Padmé forgets and slips and reveals their hollow sham of a hand-fasting to the rest of the galaxy at large - but her blood sings in her ears, siren-sweet, and blossoms heat at the least possible sign or mention of Anakin, and she knows, too, that she will delay that end, fight it with all of her strength and cunningness, likely long past the point of plausible desirability, and the knowledge does not surprise her, even in her most rational moments.
#13: Fall
In her saner moments, Dormé knows that it's not the long fall into darkness and obsession but rather the abrupt halt awaiting at the end of that dizzying descent that is most likely to be her death, but the moments do not last long, for she has become so enamoured of the intoxicating freedom inherent in the act of surrender to that fall that she can no longer remember what it was like, to stand unmoving on solid ground.
#14: Fire
Desire is a disease, a ravaging agent enveloping and permeating her body and devouring her soul, merciless and mindless as fire, and she finds she can do nothing but suffer its wracking torment in silence, in her weakness treacherously yielding to its plundering embrace.
#15: Flexible
Her morals have become more flexible, over the course of the war and the course of the Padmé and Anakin's relationship, by necessity, allowing her to bend where once she would have simply broken irrevocably.
#16: Flying
Dormé dreams it is her name on Anakin's lips, that she is the one who makes him break and move and actively reach to thrust and claim and mark, and the feeling of exultation is so like flying that, when she wakes in a tangle of bed sheets, she feels the jolting impact of crash so vividly that she cannot understand why her pale flesh is not black and blue from the violence of collision.
#17: Food
Every time Anakin ducks his head and smiles and uses the Force to float some paltry morsel of food across the table to Padmé, Dormé wants to cry out, to scream that he is wasting the power he should be using to combat the Sith and end the civil war, and only the shock of remembering her duty is enough to jar her away from such a display of hypocrisy.
#18: Foot
He pads silently out into the kitchen one night, wrapped only in loose sleep robe, and shocks her by sitting down at the table next to her and helping himself to a cup of her tea, smiling at her tiredly as he explains that he finds himself unable to sleep and unwilling to risk disturbing Padmé's slumber, legs extended in a loose sprawl that brings his bare left foot so close to her that the outermost edge rubs distractingly up against her slipper-clad right foot, and, when it takes all of her willpower to keep from orgasming at the accidental and purely innocent touch, she finds herself wondering, desperately, just how far out of her depth she's already fallen.
#19: Grave
Padmé's face is always grave, heart-broken, sad and yearning, whenever Anakin has to leave, but Dormé knows that this graven mask is a lie, for she sees the relief that breaks across those carefully schooled features, shattering Padmé's facade into a hundred thousand lying fragments, every single time he has gone away again.
#20: Green
Green is said to be the color of envy, but she finds she cannot hate it, nor herself, for every time she catches sight of coolly verdant color, she remembers a day out in the gardens, Anakin appearing out of the blue and sidling up to her, laughing exclaiming that her eyes are the color of the freshly-turned earth, and she finds herself fecund and wanting, waiting for only his fruitful touch, to flower and ripen with seed.
#21: Head
A part of her is almost glad that his visits are so infrequent and so frequently brief, for she finds it so difficult to keep her head about her when he is near that she begins to fear Padmé will notice the scarring on her palms from the many times she's driven her nails into the tender flesh until it parted under the pressure and bled, in an attempt to impart herself some shadow of control.
#22: Hollow
Her body is empty, yearning, her flesh burning with need for him, her mind and will sapped, bent out of shape, the whole of her reshaped into a perfectly hollow vessel, waiting only for his notice to fill herself, glut herself, with and upon him.
#23: Honor
She has no real honor left, and yet, the realization is as hollow and meaningless as the one that came with the understanding that she was failing in her duty, for if she has broken honor with Milady, then how much more honorless has Padmé's actions towards Anakin (when she still loves Obi-Wan, so much that Dormé has often seen and heard her, of a night, writhing and crying out for her Bendu, her Master Kenobi) rendered her?
#24: Hope
She cannot decide if she should hope for a hell as sweet as this purgatory has been, when she dies, but she is fairly certain that it is to hell she will be going, and she figures that, as acquainted as she's become to the sweetness of suffering, it only makes sense to assume that hell will be familiar.
#25: Light
Kenobi & Skywalker are the light of hope in a galaxy of increasing darkness, and she watches them on the HoloNet, rapt as any other worshipfully adoring fan, as they cut a swathe of blazing glory across the Outer Rim, Separatist factions falling before them like shadows retreating before the glare of a twinned sun.
#26: Lost
She knows she is lost - though a single niggling thread of pride insists that she's nowhere near as far gone as Padmé, marrying the Padawan apprentice of the Jedi Master she loves in order to feel closer to that Master - but the longer the war rages, the less she finds herself able to rouse the energy to care.
#27: Metal
The mirror-bright metal of the blade gleams, reflecting a wild and earth-dark eye back at her, and she glides its razored edge along the smooth skin of her right inner thigh, pressing gently, gently, just enough to draw a line of scarlet against her white skin, and then, leaning in close, seals her mouth to the lower edge of the wound, lapping and sucking at the bitterly sweet metallic tang of the liquid marking her desire.
#28: New
There is a new line of crimson painted against her thighs or the tops of the breasts (where her mouth can reach) every time that Anakin visits, and she finds herself grateful that Padmé has started keeping bacta bandages on hand, just in case Anakin should ever visit her while wounded, for it would be much harder to keep up her end of their interwove, precariously balanced web of lies, should the wounds ever go without bandaging, the blood seeping through the fabric of her clothes like a rising stain.
#29: Old
One day she catches Padmé clinging desperately to a carefully still and mostly awkwardly unresponsive Obi-Wan, and is surprised at the viciously of the sudden resurgence of an old fury, her entire body shaking violently, as in the grip of some violent seizure, as her mistress throws herself once more at a man less likely to ever accept her offering than he is to realize the desperate love his former Padawan has harboured within his heart for his former Master for at least as long as Dormé has known him.
#30: Peace
The Jedi Order preaches peace through detachment, a deliberate foreswearing of attachment to all things and all beings, but it is only when Anakin Skywalker gazes upon the face of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the love he feels for the Jedi Master suffuses him and softens his eyes and his features that she knows he is experiencing true serenity.
#31: Poison
Hatred, like desire, works in her like a poison, and she finds herself wondering, again, if one absolutely must be Force-sensitive in order to fall to the Dark Side, because she can feel it growing within her, like some rapidly ripening, bitterly poisonous fruit.
#32: Pretty
She knows she is only pretty, not beautiful like Padmé, but stars above and earth below, what she would not give for Anakin to look upon her, just once, and see her as a desirable woman!
#33: Rain
One day when she is out in the gardens again, she finds herself so distracted with the muddied swirl of her own ugly thoughts that she fails to notice the turning of the weather, and it is only after the rain has given way to hail and a sizeable chunk of ice has struck her forehead with enough force to burst the skin like that of an over-ripe fruit, scarlet rushing down into her eyes like an explosion of suddenly pressed juice, that she even realizes she's soaked to the skin and standing in the midst of a violent storm.
#34: Regret
She wants to be able to feel regret, remorse, something, but the blood trickles down her face, mingling with the icy rainwater, and the shocking sweetness brings an eerily dreamy smile to her face, even as she stumbles her way back to the shelter of the Lake House villa.
#35: Roses
The invocation of his name alone on the HoloNet has become enough to make heat and color bloom in her cheeks, and one day she finds herself automatically plunging her face down into a bouquet of roses, to hide her reaction from Padmé, too distracted to notice that a similar flush has risen in Milady's face and throat at the mention of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
#36: Secret
Their marriage is a secret, but Dormé can't for the life of her understand how they're managing to keep it, because they betray themselves so obviously in so many ways that she would think it would take someone deaf, blind, and dumb to keep from noticing, but then again, Obi-Wan has his trust to keep him blind, and it is the same trust that keeps Padmé and Anakin from noticing her infatuation with Anakin, so she suppose she should simply count her blessings and let sleeping Sithspawn lie.
#37: Snakes
The single serpent of envy has long since laid eggs and hatched a slithering, writhing nest of snakes, hissing and spitting and sinking their venomous fangs into her over and over and over again, and she wonders, sometimes, if there's any blood left for all the hateful poison that must be flowing through her veins.
#38: Snow
When it becomes clear that Padmé is pregnant with Anakin's child, it begins to snow in her heart, and the coldness seeps through her with such rapidity that she wonders, in a brief moment of lucidity, if she will ever be able to feel warm again.
#39: Solid
She can feel the solid weight of the ice as hoarfrost collects and solidifies into a permanent barrier around her heart, and she knows her face is just a little too blankly calm when Padmé sends her back to Naboo, to oversee the final stages of training of a new round of handmaidens meant specifically for duty as decoys and body-doubles, while Padmé stays behind on Coruscant, but (unsurprisingly) finds that, all things considered, she no longer cares if Milady suspects anything.
#40: Spring
Spring is still fading into summer on Naboo, and the gentle warmth of the sun and the verdant fecundity of the land surprise her, jolting her into a painful remembrance of a day, a flower tucked behind her ear, a smile, a compliment comparing her eyes to the earth, and tears suddenly rise up and spill over those earth-dark eyes, moisture raining heedlessly down her face, in a flood far too violent for her to stem.
#41: Stable
Whatever strength Dormé may've had left rapidly deserts her, in her exile, until she's about as stable as a star a heartbeat away from exploding into nova-fire, but there's absolutely nothing she can do about it, and she finds herself flushing with an odd sense of freedom, for she knows that there is little to nothing that she might do that will harm Anakin any worse than Padmé's unexpected and unplanned for and utterly unwanted pregnancy.
#42: Strange
It's strange to remember her own sense of willing, waiting fecundity, knowing how ruinous Padmé's pregnancy is liable to be, not only for her (and so for Dormé) but for Anakin (and so for Obi-Wan, too) as well.
#43: Summer
Summer is beginning to show signs of fading into autumn when word suddenly comes the Coruscant is under attack, that General Grievous has somehow managed to penetrate the planet's defenses to kidnap the Supreme Chancellor and is attempting to flee the system with him, and that the famous Team, Anakin & Obi-Wan are in route to save the day, and she shivers with a sudden cold premonition, not of disaster for Palpatine, but rather of disaster for the four of them, caught up in this tangled web of unrequited love and misplaced affection and wrongly channelled lust.
#44: Taboo
Love, for a Jedi, is the greatest taboo, short of outright deliberate embrace of the Dark Side, but she sees the love, hears the love, senses the love, knows beyond her ability to question the love that Anakin feels for Obi-Wan in his every word, every gesture, in the very stance of his body and the light in his eyes and reverent hush in his voice when he speaks his former Master's name, and she wonders, as she watches the endless loop of repeating HoloNet interviews, how it is that no one else has come to the same conclusion that she so long ago came to, regarding the one true keeper of Anakin Skywalker's heart and soul.
#45: Ugly
It is an ugly thought, a vicious thought, a dishonorable thought, a thought worthy of a Sith, but she cannot help but indulge in the fantasy that Padmé might have been killed, in the confusion of battle surrounding Grievous' attack on Coruscant, especially not when the silence from her stretches out from mere hours into days, with no sign of her on the HoloNet to counter her silence.
#46: War
The war has never been quite real to Dormé, paling before her own titanic struggle with temptation and desire, and it is a shock, to realize how close it has come to her, and that her unworthy, ugly, hateful, hopeful thought is, in fact, the literal truth.
#47: Water
As colors of the room swirl together like eddies of storm clouds or muddy currents in sluggish water, darkening and bleeding inevitably towards black, Dormé hears a desperately shrill and frightened voice calling out, "Force, she's fainting - help me catch her!" and a bubble of hysterical laughter wells up and shatters the crushing pressure in her chest, breaking her open, shattering her like a glass dropped from a great height, for she knows it's far too late for anyone to ever catch her now.
#48: Welcome
The solicitous attention of the other handmaidens is not welcome: Obi-Wan and Anakin have unmasked and defeated the Sith Lord Sidious (none other than Palpatine himself), and they are together now, in ever sense of the word, and all Dormé desires to do is to curl up in a dark corner somewhere and die.
#49: Winter
The winter in her soul will never turn to spring, and she knows there's only one thing left for her to do.
#50: Wood
The wood is well-seasoned and eager to catch light; the alcohol content of the liquor is high and volatile enough to explode into flame at the barest hint of spark; the mirror-bright blade of the dagger eager to seek out her veins, to rain bitter poison down upon the makeshift pyre and add fuel to the fire; and Dormé Tammesin walks to her death with an eerie smile upon her face, arms flung wide to embrace the return of a familiar hell, unwilling and unable to deal with the new hell that is the marriage of hearts and souls and minds and bodies of Obi-Wan Kenobi (whom everyone loves, damn him to hell) and her beloved Anakin Skywalker.