✧

ANAKIN: How will you remember?

ELARA: That I love you?

ANAKIN: Yes.

ELARA: That's easy. I can't help it.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

─ Florence & The Machines,
Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)

✧

To bear the title of CELESTIAL was to bear the sins of the galaxy.

It was to be adorned in a crown of stars, and bleed as if they were thorns. It was to be the sacrificial lamb at the altar, slain for the greater good of all. It was to die a martyr, praised only in death. It was the ultimate undoing. To be the Celestial was a death sentence in the realm of fate. One that each Celestial was to take with their head strung high and their hands tied behind their back.

A star died when she took her first breath. It burned out as her little lungs exhaled, breathing life into her body while draining the star of its own. In its final moments, the dying star fell from the sky and dug a crater into Delria's soil, destroying a town that neighbored the capital. Her mother wept for hours afterward, clutching her starlit babe tight to her chest with pale, shivering hands. In every way, the birth of a Celestial was a tragedy. For Delria, the galaxy, and the mother unlucky enough to have bore a child swaddled in death and prophecy.

Elara Kallisto was a burden to her family from the beginning.

Her mere existence was a constant threat, an ode of destruction to the galaxy as a whole. It has been said since the dawn of the universe itself: A Celestial is only born when great suffering is to come. Always doomed to be intertwined with forsaken prophecies and ravenous ruinations, Elara was a living omen, one that was dangerous and heavily sought after. The family she'd forever cursed with her birth was not a noble one; the Kallistos came from the Delrian slums, wore rags and tatters, and led a life that bordered on impoverished. Her familial origins were not that of her own flesh. They were not cut from the same sacred cloth of destiny and death. The Kallistos were not meant to bare the weight of the prophets: they were never made to raise the galaxy's lamb awaiting her eminent slaughter.

Though despite their predisposition, her beloved family tried all they could to shield her from the world that was already grabbing at her ankles; ready to drag her under. For the first eight years of her life Elara lived hidden within the cracked stone walls of her home. She was to be invisible to the public; undetectable by anyone other than family. She spent her early childhood hidden, but seen (she never would be seen like that again). Her mother cradled and nurtured the soft heart within her, showed her the strength in the gentle and kind amongst the brash and bronze that encapsulated the galaxy. Her father taught her how to create, to use her mind and hands to build anything that heart could dream up; even if all she could get her hands on was secondhand scrapyard junk from her father's job. Her siblings blessed her with their own gifts: her older sister was her quick wit; her brother his cheeky smirk; her little sister was her endless curiosity (she would imitate them until she died). But, after all, her family were still only mortal. They would die when stabbed and burned. Elara was not meant to die a mortal's death. Not with the ichor running through her blood. In the end, they would always have to die for the galaxy (the force) to get its Celestial.

Their blood would forever be on her hands.

The Great Houses came searching for their damned Celestial eventually. Prophets and their prophecies rang in their ears and made them greedy. What to them was a budding star ready to be grasped was really a girl raised in scum and filth. And to get what wanted they had to cleanse her of her mire. So they burned her rags, destroyed her home, and slaughtered the source of her dirtiness: the Kallistos died like the vermin they were. And Elara had watched, rendered useless by the shackles binding her hands and legs. The abilities that had haunted her life laid dormant at her fingertips, unreachable in the one moment she truly needed them (never again would she allow herself to be so weak). She had clawed at the bloody ruins as they dragged her away, nearly deafening herself from her own screams.

Never had Elara truly been able to wash away the blood from underneath her fingernails.

From the bloody ashes of her past, PRINCESS ELARA IZAR was crafted. Atop her head was her prized crown of stars (thorns) that held her head high. Attached to her wrists were the bracelets of light (bindings), that kept her hands at bay. She was to sit by the right hand of the king, to be bathed and cleansned in the ways of royalty. Because that's exactly what she was now: royal. The ichor of the stars that flowed through her veins and poured out of her when she bled was all the proof needed. The Celestial would be royalty, as it always should have been.

Princess Elara Izar was a fraud.

She was not of noble origin. Her blood may be ichor, but it was never royal. House Izar had fabricated her from nothing, weaved her existence and sowed it with lies. In their truth, Elara was House Izar's hidden treasure, their star-studded child only to be revealed in the election of the new ruling house of Delria. She was their secret weapon, the chess piece played with a sly smile and narrowed eyes. House Izar has the Celestial. The people, the courts, and the galaxy itself would whisper. They are worthy of the throne. Her existence and the notion that came from it won them the election. All because House Izar had been the ones to steal her first. To break her like a wild horse. They had hand-molded her into the star they craved, and the scars that stained her skin and the guilt that plagued her mind was the branding.

House Izar took her by the neck and hung her in the sky, showcasing their ripening star (lamb for slaughter) to the galaxy. Princess Elara Izar became a spectacle. Delria's very own star, its radiant paragon of unbiased kindness and undeniable power. Pretty, believable lies that the good people of galaxy would want to believe. That would usher Delria into a new era of power in all facets. One where Celestial and royal were blurred together: A world where divinity and dominion collided and solidified Delria as a symbol of power.

Princess Elara Izar may be a star, but Elara Kallisto was a sacrificial lamb. She bore the sins of Delria as red cuts and purple bruises. She died and died many times to save Delria: to forge a good vision of her beloved world despite House Izar's bearings. In title Elara was never a slave, but her labors and their fruits tell a tale of strife that was ultimately akin to it. Star-powered technological innovations emerge thanks to her Celestial abilities and the avant-garde talents she had developed during her primitive years; she spent her childhood and early teenage years creating (she hoped her father had seen all she'd made). Elara watched as House Izar slowly eroded the democratic ideals impeded into Delria's foundations; she then dedicated her late teens to senatorial studies despite the king's efforts (the heart her mother had loved never stopped beating). By age eighteen Elara had become a Delrian Representative in the Galactic Senate, serving just beneath their senator.

House Izar may have crafted her into a star, but it was Elara Kallisto who made herself lustrous.

They had skinned her alive, carved out a girl fit for stardom, but could never mutilate the heart within her. Try as they might, but it was steadfast and resilient in its survival: no matter how much it bled, it would never succumb to its wounds. Though in the end, that very heart that had survived everything would still be her downfall.

Because it was the heart that loved Anakin Skywalker enough to let him kill it.

✧

Anakin Skywalker was born burning.

Part boy, part PHOENIX: he would die as many times as he needed to get what he desired.

First it was freedom.

He'd been born into slavery on Tatooine, shackled to the sands and suns from his first blazing breath. He spent the first nine years of his life there, slaving and burning. He was akin to a fledgling fire: feed it and it flares. Resentment and anger and fear build up over years of abuse. Each added to the firestorm growing in his soul (would it one day engulf him?). He would use it to survive, to fight the fates and fight the life given to him. Anakin Skywalker was not destined for a life in chains. The fire (the force) within him would make sure of it.

When the opportunity came for him to have his freedom, he did not hesitate to take it. The Jedi had branded him of importance; claimed him as their CHOSEN ONE. The universe had finally proven what he'd burned for all long: that he was destined for more than shackles. Anakin was no longer a slave boy, but a lion-hearted hero. Praised by millions for his fight against the Trade Federation, and the now Jedi's prophesied Chosen One. Though a part of him had died when he left his mother still stranded in the everlasting binds of slavery, the promise of his eventual return (he would be too late) and his freedom made it survivable. For once he would not burn under the suns of Tatooine, but become his own. Scorned and angry, but still a sun the galaxy could not ignore.

Second it was approval.

The fire within him never burnt out. The Jedi had tried to extinguish it. Teachings that villainized everything he ever was (and everything he ever could be) were melted into his burning flesh. The Jedi Masters scolded and mocked the very way he existed; made him forever eager to prove himself to a group of people who were hell-bent on writing him off. He scraped and clawed at whatever scraps of approval the Council would give him. Shoveled and dragged himself through ten years of dust and neglect. Though, he never let them douse the flames raging beneath his skin. The fire only grew with age, and so did the resentment. It was cruel that the people who had given him purpose kept his future dangling just above him. All because, in the end, Anakin was everything the Jedi weren't: heroic, righteous, and passionate. He was a lion in a den of wolves ── a sun forever stuck in a fruitless eclipse. And though they would never let their pride falter enough to admit it, that fact cut them to the core. Anakin would find that some twisted part him liked it when they bled.

Third it was love.

Love was what ignited it all in the first place. He'd loved his mother so deeply that the Jedi nearly turned him away because of his pure fear of losing her (he was right to be scared). Years later, standing at her makeshift grave in the very sands he'd swore would never burn his feet again, Anakin Skywalker vowed that he would never fail to save what he loved again. He would do anything to keep her alive. To save the star-girl that haunted his memories and held his heart in her soft hands (he could never escape her). Anakin would raze the galaxy, burn it all in his own righteous fire, in order to ensure Elara Izar lived. However, fire has no allegiance. In the end, it would burn all (she would die in the sear of his damned fire; he would never forgive himself). And he would live, barely surviving amongst his own ashes.

Because Anakin Skywalker was always destined to die and be reborn in his own flames.

✧

Heavenly bodies were not made for flesh and blood.

Prophets and seers had foretold their visions of star and sun (lamb and lion) for thousands of years. The fate of the Celestial and the Chosen One had always been preordained to be intertwined in a dance of death and hymn of tragedy. They were not meant to live mortal lives. Their destiny was crafted and cradled by the Force itself: it never theirs to claim. And it would never be theirs to make. Elara Izar and Anakin Skywalker's fate was not their own.

They belonged solely to the Force and its will.

  The Force had long awaited its true embodiment. For generations it searched for vessels capable of carrying such pure and sacred weight. They were to enact devastating change in a galaxy plagued by decay. To wash it anew and cleanse it of its rot. They would each bare the true will of the Force within. It would manifested in its many different forms: good and evil ── powerful and weak ── merciful and vengeful ── life and death. All the facets that made up the perpetually indifferent Force (even those the jedi and sith would rather ignore). Elara Izar and Anakin Skywalker were ultimately two halves of the same damned whole: cursed to be forever interlaced by fate and doomed by love.

In the end, their ruination had always been inevitable.

✧

It's a sad song
But we sing it anyway

─ Anaïs Mitchell,
Hadestown

Rachel Zegler as
ELARA SELINA IZAR

THE CELESTIAL
( the sacrificial lamb.
the ripening star.
the paragon princess. )

✧

Hayden Christensen as
ANAKIN SKYWALKER

THE CHOSEN ONE
( the brazen lion.
the scorned sun.
the burning phoenix. )

INCLUDED IN THE:
VENERATION OF THE STARS SERIES

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ ────── OLD REPUBLIC ERA

CARDINAL WINDS
(sora kasumi x obi-wan kenobi)

HEAVENLY BODIES
(elara izar x anakin skywalker)

TWIN SOULS
(zena nallé x luca thorne)

.｡*ﾟ+.*.｡────── REBELLION ERA

HEARTBURN
(tai'sa shyrri x cal kestis)

EVERGREEN
(runè naberrie x luke skywalker)

ALTERLIFE
(luz skywalker x kian hako)

⋆.ೃ࿔*:･────── NEW REPUBLIC ERA

█████████████
(███████ x ███████)

█████████████
(███████ x ███████)

DEDICATIONS!
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
This fic is dedicated to all who have supported me and works!! I adore every single one of you and appreciate all the love you've given me!! I hope you enjoy this book 🫶🏼

loveysgarden  redwaterlakes where_the_fun_begins   CassideeMickaelson starlightxs binarysun

FOREWARNINGS!
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
This book deals with a lot of heavy topics (mostly star wars typical) such as: death, canon typical violence, abuse, mental illness, war, grooming, and others that may be added later. Please read this book with caution if any of these topics are triggering for you.

DISCLAIMERS!
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
I sadly do not own the Star Wars franchise, and all credits for the wonderful universe I've spent years obsessing over go to George Lucas and Lucasfilm. However, I do own all my ocs and their stories, so please do not steal! They are my children and I have put a lot of work into these silly little characters, so please respect that (of course, if anyone wants to incorporate them into one of their own fics, just ask me for permission!).

ANNA YAPS!

WELCOME TO HEAVENLY BODIES!

💫 this fic has gone through so many changes throughout the years and is so very dear to me. i genuinely do not think i would be even half the writer i am now without this silly little star wars fanfiction (i still suck!). though it started out absolutely horrible (i still have the original chapters i wrote back in 2021... lets just say they will never see the light of day again 😟) i'm actually semi proud of the version that you are reading now! the core of elara and anakin's characters and their story are still there, but it's a whole lot more complex and interesting than the last time i revamped this book (the era of this book being titled "bleeding love" you will forever be famous!!). needless to say, i'm incredibly excited to finally give this story and its characters the writing it deserves and actually finish a book for once (even if i only end up writing this book, i will finish it!!). from the bottom of my heart, I hope you all enjoy this book!

💫 now let's get into the nitty gritty!! my girl elara now has 10x more development and trauma then before!! ofc she's still at heart the same character, but i feel with the major changes i've made to her backstory it has made everything make a lot more sense (and just made her a heck of a lot more interesting; however i will forever love you BL!elara, you are the blueprint fr). overall she just has a lot more personality to her that i always felt was lacking when i was writing the original version. but just to give everyone a quick rundown if you were confused by the summary (totally understandable btw i can't decide if i love it or hate it); in this version elara is still technically the princess of delria (my original planet), however not by blood at all and definitely not by choice. also delria is no longer a monarchy in the traditional sense; its kinda complicated to describe but basically they elect a ruling house out of the great houses every fifty or so years (it will be explained in greater detail in the actual fic itself). so essentially house izar used elara as a ploy to win the election, and has been using her and her celestial status and abilities ever since (girl has never known peace i fear). in this version she still manages to become senator, however she isn't nearly as composed or mature, given realistically she is nineteen in AOTC and has endured a heck ton of abuse (house izar when i catch you!!), so it's natural to be lost and confused and not always know your way given her circumstances (big part of her story and development!). also if you haven't noticed, i changed her face claim!! i've loved rachel zegler for years now (ever since west story 2021) and i didn't realize till recently just how much she really embodies elara; in looks and personality. merve bolgur you will always have a special place in my heart fr, but rachel just is elara sm that I literally can't imagine anyone else playing her. anyways sorry for the absolute yap i just adore my girl sm!! can't wait for you all to get to know her!!

💫 whew this version of anilara is so superior i fear!! BL!anilara will always be famous, however, they get ate up by what i have planned for them in this book 😼 (i love them your honor). they now have a lot more of a deeper relationship and also now are fatally doomed by the force itself?? (a prophecy and a force dyad incoming??) they are so orpheus and eurydice coded it's not even funny (they were always going to end in tragedy core). the symbolism of lion and lamb, star and sun (yes i am aware a sun is technically a star, its metaphorical ppl bear with me), and anakin being a burning phoenix is all very intentional and telling about their dynamic and their story as a whole. they are just so beautiful and amazing and i love them sm (get ready to cry your eyes out 🫶🏼)!!

💫 some inspirations for anilara include: orpheus & eurydice from hadestown and the actual greek myth, romeo & juliet from romeo & juliet, alina starkov & mal oretsev from shadow and bone, fang runin & yin nezha from the poppy war, coriolanus snow & lucy gray baird from the ballad of songbirds and snakes, tony & maria from west side story, simba & nala from the lion king, rapunzel & eugene from tangled, and obviously anakin skywalker & padme amidala from the star wars prequels. these are ofc just inspirations so please take these all with a grain of salt!

💫 elara's character and story was inspired by: eurydice from hadestown and the greek myth, lucy gray baird from the ballad of songbirds and snakes, moana of montunui from moana, maria vasquez from west side story, alina starkov from shadow and bone, jasmine from aladdin, katara from avatar: the last airbender, linh cinder from the lunar chronicles, mel medarda from arcane, and ofc padme amidala from the star wars prequels. yet again these are simply characters i love that i have found myself drawing inspo from for elara!! she ofc is her own character and has her own story.

💫 AO3 tags/tropes for this fic bc why not: doomed from the beginning, major character death, tragedy core, childhood best friends/crushes to lovers, princess x knight/jedi, senator/political figure x jedi/politics hater, star x sun, sacrificial lamb symbolism, force dyad, forbidden love, prophecies galore, inventor gf x mechanic bf, traumatized x traumatizing, and emotionally unstable x emotionally detached.

💫 i have created a lot of extra characters, lore, and planets for this fic, so be prepared for a lot of canon divergence! my original planet, delria, is very central to this fic and its subsequent sequel (looking at you alterlife) and will be featured heavily so definitely be aware of that!!

💫 also this book is the second book in my star wars series, meaning some characters/ocs from the other fics in the series will be making constant appearances throughout. another thing to note is that while this fic does explore elara and anakin's relationship in full (past and present), the other books will have important elements of them implemented as well (basically please make sure to read the other books once they get released bc it makes the broader story a lot more cohesive!). ofc you can always read this fic as a standalone, but trust me when i say there's a lot more to the universe i have planned!

💫 that's all the yap i have for now!! thank you sm for reading and i hope you enjoy this book!!