Exams

She looks at her reflection in the mirror and tries to smile to herself. She looks tired and thin but she hasn't slept all night and she doesn't even remember the last time she ate.

I won't fail, I won't fail, I won't fail..

Of course she won't. She never fails exams and she has studied hard. She is brilliant, and brave and nothing can stop her - she repeats that to herself, as a mantra. She knows all the codes, the doctrine, the rhetoric.

She won't fail.

When he finally gets up, he is already late. He has an exam in one hour, but it takes him fifty-five minutes to get to the university. Man, he is not used to it. And what's the point in having a math exam if he knows he can do it? Whatever. He gets on some clothes and rushes out of the common dormitory, because for some fucking reasons he cares. It probably has to do with Olin's face and his posh attitude and his conviction that he is better than Anakin. Fuck the idiot. I'm better than him, he tells himself, gritting his teeth.

Padmé is in front of the class, repeating to herself all the codes she has to know by heart. She doesn't want to fail and for sure she doesn't want to be second to any male student, this time. She is well aware that the world out there is tougher for women than it is for men and she doesn't want to score second, not this time.

She also thinks that she is not as brilliant as other students are. But she studies more –she is more determinate, passionate, dedicated.

Anakin has to run to make to the class on time, and he is sweating when professor Dooku greets him. He feels eyes on him and he knows for sure that his classmates are commenting on the conditions of his grey shirt and on the fact that he is generally a mess. So messy, so gross, so vulgar. Such a fucking immigrant he thinks angrily to himself, taking a seat in the first row.

She feels her heart race when she sits and she is almost running out of breath. She doesn't know anything anymore and she is pretty sure she is going to mix up Intergalactic code number 456 with the Intergalactic code number 465. She is panicking, she does not feel her hands anymore. She won't fail. She can't.

"Ready in five minutes" the professor announces.

Padmé takes deep breath, trying to calm herself. She recites the nine fundamental amendments just to calm herself.

"Ok" says professor Satine Kryze "You may turn your sheet and start"

The room fills with the sound of thirty students turning a paper. Padmé turns hers –her hand is trembling a little.

"What's this stink?" the guy next to him asks aloud. Anakin hears laughter behind him, and fights hard the urge to kill the fucking idiot. He doesn't smell, he knows it. He is just not all dress up for a fucking exam and he lives in the suburbia –so yes, it took him a lot of time to get to the university and yes, it was hot outside so he was sweating a little.

"Skywalker! They do have showers where you live, don't they?" the guy addresses him, pretending genuine interest.

"Sometimes" Anakin retorts quickly "But we also have a lot of funny things that may amuse a little fag like yourself".

Anakin takes an immense amount of pleasure in seeing the boy's smile fade a little.

"Boys!" Professor Dooku shouts "You have one hour!"

Professor Dooku takes a particular pride in distributing the exam papers after the hour has started. He thinks that mathematics is a subject just for the most gifted and he will fail any student that doesn't live up to his expectations.

Anakin is the last one to receive his paper and five minutes have already passed. He is almost preoccupied now.

"Skywalker" the professor whispers to him, while he turns his paper "I think you'll find the last exercise particularly interesting."

Anakin grins and looks at his exam. Three problems, one equation. The problems are a piece of cake, he could solve them blinded and drunk, probably. The equation, well… he licks his lips unconsciously.

Padmé knows all the answers. She knows she does and she starts writing so fast her arm aches after a while. She is not going to fail this time. No second place to Clovis, no. Particularly not after he decided to shag stupid, blonde Chuchi. She writes and writes, trying desperately to fix in a brilliant and consistent paper all the things she has learnt in the past three months.

Anakin is glaring at the sheet. There so many letters that probably Dooku was thinking about a fucking poem not about an equation when he designed it. He lifts his chin and just glares at his teacher. Dooku just smiles, conscious that even his most brilliant student has yet a lot to learn. All right he thinks, cancelling with a sharp line everything he has written and taking another paper to start the equation again.

They only have five minutes left, and everybody is reading their answers to check for errors. But Padmé is not, she is still writing, certain that she hasn't made any mistakes. Not this time.

Anakin is really sweating right now, but he doesn't care anymore. He has just had an intuition, and it seems to be working.

"Five minutes" Dooku announces.

They'll be enough Anakin thinks confidently, as he has finally seen the solution to the fucking equation.

Padmé gives her sheet one minute earlier than the delivery time. It is an old trick her dad thought her. Never let your enemy think it took you some effort to beat him. Always deliver one minute earlier. Professor Kryze nods approvingly at her.

He is the last one to consign the exam, trying to fix a polite smile on his face while he does it. He still had twenty seconds after he finished. Pleased with himself, Anakin grabs his bag and shows the guy who was seated next to him his middle finger, grinning widely. The idiot looks like the exam didn't go so well and Anakin treasures this little victory with wild joy.

Some hours later, former Senator Kryze, full professor at Coruscant University –one of the most prestigious of the galaxy- is looking at the twenty-five papers his students provided that same morning. She scrolls the familiar names and reads some lines. Chuchi is lucky her father is the richest man in the Capital and Clovis is as outstanding as always. Organa is good, his critical nature and predisposition for clear and fine thinking suiting him well in advanced law studies. He is not one for losing too much time on books tough, and he doesn't get the maximum. She opens Naberrié's exam with interest; the girl is clever and dedicated and she is studying harder than all her classmates, but she still seems a little immature and too much afraid to produce a perfect score. She has the potential tough, and Kryze is sure she will demonstrate it sooner or later. Kryze takes a sip of her tea, reading some passages of Padmé paper. The professor's smile grows wider with every word and line.

Count Dooku is one of the most renowned mathematician of his times and he knows it. He has always enjoyed the elegant, flawless passages of a demonstration and he likes to deal with concepts as absolutes as curves, functions and infinites. He was never one for the imprecise studies –never liked social sciences or biology, all crude and gross and imperfect.

He reads the papers. Almost all of his students have solved all the three problems –they are the most promising kids in the galaxy after all, the entrance test to the faculty so hard that almost nobody is accepted. But just two have tried the equation. The first is Olin, one of Dooku's favorites. Olin's reasoning is clean, conscious and precise. But still. Dooku sometimes feels that the boy's style lacks a little creativity, a little daring. He is going to do something, sure -probably he'll be a great engineer, but Dooku feels that he is not going to surprise. However, Olin got the solution right and Dooku gives him the maximum grade.

Then he opens Skywalker's sheet. The boy is a total mess, he considers, cursing Qui-Gon mentally. Skywalker is scruffy, crazy and confuse and all his violent personality seems to reflect on his reasoning, which is twisted and …well, original. Skywalker is almost the exact opposite of what Olin is; he is not clean, but he has a great intuition. He doesn't know what he is doing half of the times –Dooku notices it- but he is so crazy that he is almost inspiring. And he has the potential to become a great mathematician, Dooku has to concede it. Count Dooku is almost excited when he gets to the final equation, trying to follow Skywalker's twisted sense of math. After he finishes, he has to do the calculus himself twice, but he concludes that Skywalker solution is brilliant. It is complicated and Skywalker could use a little manners but he got the point and solved it.

The real surprise comes when Dooku turns the page, though. Big as the entire page, written in Skywalker thin calligraphy, just a sentence: "Go fuck yourself, I got it".