winter | FIC: Chances (Anakin/Cordelia, PG-13)

This is a bit of silliness inspired by The Pairing List That Broke Fandom. It's also in the set-of-drabbles format that I'm getting really tired of. At least this time there are no pretentious Dog Latin titles ~_~ 785 words, 45 minutes.

Fandom: Star Wars prequels/Buffy/Angel
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Anakin/Cordelia, sort of

CHANCES

I.

The assignment is a disgrace and disrespect for a seventeen-year-old Jedi padawan close to his Trials. While his master is guarding a Senate lobbyist who has received – probably deserved – death threats, he is stuck guarding the lobbyist’s daughter. This is babysitting, not Jedi work, and since the whole thing is a sham, because even on Coruscant lobbyists aren’t worth killing, a waste of his time.

Anakin hopes it doesn’t mean that his Trials are further away than he thought. If all he has to look forward to for the next few years is shoe shopping with an obnoxious underage female who thinks of nothing but her looks, falling on his lightsaber is starting to look more appealing by the minute.

“Do those make my ankles look fat?”

Cordelia poses in wooden shoes matched with oversized socks that make her legs look like a baby ronto’s. Anakin assures her she looks spectacular.

He’s always been a fast learner.

II.

Anakin feels the assassins’ minds before he sees them, and his lightsaber is lit and ready to deflect blaster fire from both himself and his charge. But Cordelia isn’t there, and in the next five seconds he has to worry about the three attackers first.

Two attackers, because when he decapitates the second one, the third falls to Cordelia’s vibro-knife.

Her breathing is as calm as his, and she cleans the blade with as much care as she devotes to fixing her lipstick.

Anakin sees that the knife went straight into the attacker’s heart. “Where did you learn that?”

It’s the first time he sees her smile.

“Have you ever heard of Sunnydale?”

III.

Sunnydale, it turns out, is the capital city of Cordelia’s planet, where humans coexist with an evil species called leshi, or vampir. Coexistence is too strong a word – the vampir feed on humans. The only things that keep them in check are their low reproduction rate (Cordelia is annoyingly vague on this point) and people marked by destiny to fight them. Cordelia is not one of them, but she knows someone who is.

“Wait,” Anakin says at one point. “So the entire vampir race is evil? That’s hard to believe. You say they’re intelligent. I would think that some of them would learn to get along with humans.”

Cordelia pauses, sucking on an Andorian lira-stick, the only carb-free dessert at Dex’s. “Well, Angel is pretty okay. But he’s a special case.”

“Angel? Like the ones from the moons of Iego?”

“He’s good-looking,” she explains. “Like, drop-dead gorgeous. Literally.”

Anakin feels hurt. “Better-looking than me?”

“With that hair? Well, duh.”

IV.

“You have done very well, Anakin.” For once, Obi-Wan sounds like he means it. “Even though there was a risk with taking Mistress Cordelia to the smugglers’ headquarters, you evaluated it and took the right actions. I am particularly proud of the way you did not let your feelings get the better of you. No anger, no impulsiveness, no unnecessary attachments to the subjects involved in your mission-“

Help me, Anakin mouths. Cordelia’s eyes flash.

Then she’s in his arms, hugging him in that expansive way she calls glomping (but only losers and weirdoes use that word, she’s quick to assure him, and she’d never know it if not for Xander and Willow, eww). She tastes of lira-sticks and girl-sweat, and her ronto shoes bruise Anakin’s shins as he lifts her from the ground to kiss her better.

He’s vaguely aware that they have just stunned Obi-Wan speechless, but he has other things to do.

V.

Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker thinks that no human can tear a droid apart with his bare hands. But whatever the human-looking (and hot, his traitorous libido puts in) creature is, their lives are entwined. For as long as it takes them to defeat a detachment of battle droids, and one droideka too many.

Later, the not-human leads him to a nondescript building, which is apparently the seat of the resistance movement on this backwater planet. Anakin tries to remember where he had heard of Losan Geles before.

Inside, there is a motley crew, mostly human, tired and dirty and blood-stained. His guide mutters something about contacting the Jedi order, getting a replacement for the fighter Anakin crashed into the Separatists’ control tower.

“You’re Angel,” Anakin says suddenly. His eyes flash.

Angel turns, his mouth open in a question, but before the breath (do vampir breathe?) issues from his mouth, there is a soft cry and a dark blur. Anakin’s arms are full, combat boots are bruising his shins, and he couldn’t care less about the growl that’s issuing from Angel’s chest.

Cordelia tastes of kaffee and girl-tears.

Angel snorts. “Why don’t I ever get a hug?”

-FiNIs*