Anakin/Padmé fic
Mar. 14th, 2007 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilThis started out as a missing moment scene, but quickly morphed into something else entirely. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with how it turned out...but here it is anyway. There's a part that includes some self-plagiarizing from one of my drabbles. I guess I'll have to sue myself. :P
I’ll go with you.
The words had left Padmé’s mouth in pure instinct on that gray morning at the Lake resort, had been spoken before she had any time to think. If she had paused to think, she knew she would have hesitated, realized how rash and dangerous such a decision would be, and decided to stay on Naboo. Would have walked away from Anakin, cut off the tenuous connections they had made in spite of all her denials, let him leave for Tatooine alone, let him leave her life.
Padmé was glad she hadn’t taken the time to think.
She often reflected on how much had hinged upon that choice. It was a decision that implicitly repudiated her rejection of Anakin’s advances, that told him without words I want to be at your side forever, no matter what happens. They both knew it, though Anakin obeyed her previous spoken wishes like an honorable Jedi, kept his distance until Padmé herself stepped across the gap between them and left all her rational resolutions behind.
If she hadn’t gone with Anakin, she never would have known the simple happiness of making him smile every time she took his hand. She never would have felt the joy of calling him her husband, of hearing him say my wife. She would have missed the pleasure of his impassioned kisses, his touch on her bare skin...
She wouldn’t have seen the raw hurt in his eyes when he brought his mother’s body back to the homestead. She wouldn’t have watched as he stood at the brink of darkness, gripped by the horror of his rage and violence and unspeakable grief, and she wouldn’t have been there to help him draw back into the steady sorrow that heals, to assure him that he was still human and worthy of reclamation.
When Padmé allowed herself to wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t been there, she shuddered.
Three years later, that choice had led once more to a path that was altogether unexpected, terrifying and wonderful. They were having a baby, a child whose existence defied every rule in the Jedi Code, who would probably cause more trouble than all of her other choices. Her life with Anakin had been full of trouble, but she never doubted that it was worth it. She knew the baby would be worth every trouble as well.
I’ll go with you.
Padmé found herself thinking often about that choice, three years ago on Naboo, during the time she and Anakin had together after he rescued the Chancellor. It was the first chance she had had to tell him about her pregnancy. Every day she was grateful to wake up beside him, to share their excitement for the baby, and was glad for her choice. Yet every day, as well, she saw the strange and ominous gloom settling more heavily upon him, more ponderous even than the brooding anxiety for his mother that had led him to leave Naboo for Tatooine. Nightmares again. When she was honest with herself, they frightened her too. Anakin’s dreams had proven true before. There was no rational reason to fear a deadly childbirth, but rationality did little to soothe her, and absolutely nothing for Anakin.
She tried. She tried to be reasonable and calm. When Anakin was unusually jumpy to learn that Obi-Wan had come to visit, Padmé smiled, squeezed his shoulder and offered the assurance that his old master cared about him. “He was worried about you. He said you’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
Anakin sighed heavily, clearly not assured. He moved listlessly, joining her in the bedroom. “I feel lost,” he said distantly.
“Lost?” Dismayed by his mood, Padmé spoke the word more sharply than she had intended, almost like an accusation. He looked away from her, out the window, instead of drawing her in as she had hoped.
“Obi-Wan and the Council don’t trust me,” he said flatly. “I feel more and more like they’re shutting me out.”
What must his state of mind be, for Anakin to come to feel that way? Urgently she reminded him, “They trust you with their lives.” It was exactly this peculiar blend of self-reproach and raging pride that had driven Anakin to his darkest place on Tatooine. He must not enter that darkness again. How had she pulled him out before?
“Something’s happening,” he said softly, still staring out the window. “I’m not the Jedi I should be.” A horrible, unformed fear began rising within Padmé. Was there something he was keeping from her? Something as hideous as the massacre of the Sandpeople, a deed that he had confessed with an agony like peeling off his own skin...
“I want more.” Anakin looked at her at last, his eyes filled with a startling hunger that faded into remorse as he went on, “And I know I shouldn’t.”
What to say? You’re still human; you haven’t gone too far. Let me in, let me help you! She went to him, clutched his arms as if to physically keep him from wandering to the dark places. “You expect too much of yourself,” she said softly. Don’t you know that you’re already all I want, all I need?
But her words seemed to have only pushed him further along this uneasy track of thought. “I found a way to save you from your nightmares,” he told her, his voice shaking slightly in quiet intensity.
“Nightmares?” Padmé repeated unsteadily. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
He took in her face with a gaze of fierce determination. “I won’t lose you.”
All of his tension with Obi-Wan and the Council, his wavering moods, his unnatural hunger and the accompanying remorse...all of it flowing out of the fear of losing her. All of it her fault. No, that was absurd. She had never regretted going with Anakin; she would not regret it now. Together they would overcome this darkness. “I’m not going to die in childbirth, Ani. I promise you.”
“No. I promise you.” Now it was Anakin clutching her arms, his grip so tight that Padmé winced. And even amidst all her fear and confusion for him, she was struck by the depth, the wildness of his love for her. She knew he would die for her, if it came to that. As much as the implications of that knowledge troubled her, she could not deny how much she loved this part of him, the man who would give up his life to save her.
Unable to find any more words, she took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. Perhaps this was in fact a better way to convey her comforts and assurances than hollow speech. His lips were warm and desperate.
She felt as if they were both drowning.
Anakin left some time later to meet with the Council about the progress of Obi-Wan’s mission. Padmé’s chest was oddly tight as he prepared to leave, and the words almost sprang to her lips again. I’ll go with you. She felt somehow that he should not be alone right now, the same as he should not have been alone when he went to Tatooine. But this time reason stepped in, reminding her that if she and Anakin went anywhere together, their secret would be discovered and everything would be ruined. So she stood in the doorway, watching Anakin stride down the corridor to the elevators, only turning to re-enter her apartment when he had gone out of sight completely.
She was restless, unable to get anything done. Her mind refused to focus on Senate work. Attempts to consider another way to curb Palpatine’s powers led her thoughts to the argument she and Anakin had had the other day, which in turn brought her back to the only thing she could care about any more. Something was falling apart inside of Anakin, and she couldn’t find a way to fix it.
It didn’t help that her pregnancy exhausted her, weighed her down far more than she could have imagined from such a tiny unborn baby. Wearily, she sat on the sofa, rubbing a spot where the baby had just delivered a particularly strong kick.
A heavy shadow seemed to settle upon the apartment as the sun set. Padmé looked up, unsettled.
Something was wrong.
She knew without question that this creeping worry centered on Anakin. Slowly, she rose and went to the window, directing her gaze toward the Jedi Temple as if she could somehow catch a glimpse of Anakin. Her eyes saw nothing more than the sprawling cityscape, but in her mind appeared an image of her troubled husband, alone in a chamber.
She closed her eyes painfully. They were haunted, both of them, by ghosts of the past and the future.
Something cold seemed to run down Padmé's back. Fear. A shudder ran through her. Grief. As if Anakin were standing before her, she could see the anguish in his face, the single tear that spoke of stark sorrows. Her imagination, it must be. Nevertheless, her heartbeat quickened, an anxious rhythm that would not be calmed. Somewhere across the way, she knew that Anakin's heart was pounding too.
I'm in agony...
She bowed her head.
After that, there was no peace. Padmé paced before the window in the growing darkness, pleading whatever gods or Force ruled the universe to spare her husband from the grief which threatened to consume him. The bleakness deepened as the night wore on. Though she knew Anakin had only gone to the Temple, it seemed he was pulling worlds away from her.
She should have gone with him. Never mind keeping their secret. She hadn’t cared about such practical concerns when she went with him to Tatooine. All that had mattered was being with him. But this time she had paused to think, and missed her chance.
Wrapped in her regrets, Padmé looked up at the Temple again and gasped in naked horror. Great pillars of smoke were rising from its heights. “Ani,” she choked, touching the glass of the window. Her senses reeled from the acrid smell of burning, whether real or only imagined, it didn’t matter. She could see him writhing in flames, screaming. Her stomach twisted sickeningly; her eyes burned in anticipation of unbearable loss.
“Threepio,” she said faintly. “Threepio!”
The protocol droid came to her side. “Miss Padmé?”
She couldn’t speak properly. “You have to find out – check the records – where is Anakin?”
He said something in reply; she hardly heard him, only noticed that he was going to another room to comply with her inarticulate request. The very walls pressed upon her as she waited for the droid to return. After all her worries for Anakin’s state of mind, his grappling with darkness, was it simply death that had claimed him? Would she have died too if she had gone with him?
But she wasn’t afraid to die. Not at Anakin’s side. It was being separated from him that killed her, more brutally than any mortal blow.
Dying a little bit each day...
Threepio returned. Numbly she heard him tell her that Anakin was in the Temple. The words hung over her for a moment like a stormcloud. Then the storm broke with a rush of crippling grief, its ferocity startling even in the face what she had just heard. It was for more lives than Anakin’s alone, she realized. How many were dying in the Temple? Her baby stirred fitfully while she let out a tremendous sob.
And all the while she wondered what would have happened if she had gone with him.
He came back. Padmé saw his ship arrive, watched him climb out of it, and still couldn’t believe he was there, was alive and whole, because the horrible dread wouldn’t leave or be lightened by any degree of relief. She ran to him, her baby leaping inside of her, and embraced him with the hope that his physical form would remove the dread at last.
But his kiss was strange, unsettling. She pulled away and tried to find questions that would make sense of this nightmare. “Are you all right? I heard there was an attack on the Jedi Temple.” For a moment all her tangled emotions resolved themselves into sheer panic. “You could see the smoke from here!”
“I’m fine. I came to see if you and the baby were safe.”
There was no warmth in his words; they seemed to be spoken out of duty or the mere memory of fondness. And how could he say he was fine? How could he speak with any degree of composure after this horrible night? “What’s happening?” she demanded.
Flatly he told her, “The Jedi Council has tried to overthrow the Republic.”
Every part of her rejected such an idea. “I don’t believe that!” Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, all the other Jedi who had shown her concern and kindness – how could they capable of treachery, of sedition? It would break the foundation of her beliefs. And it ought to have broken Anakin’s...
As if he could read her thoughts, he answered with some heatedness, “I saw Mace Windu attempt to assassinate the Chancellor myself.”
The disturbing idea crossed Padmé’s mind that he was lying, and she pushed it aside with difficulty. Anakin simply stood there, apparently unperturbed, stating appalling things without flinching. “What are you going to do?”
“I will not betray the Republic.” The words were almost chant-like, as if he had been repeating them as a mantra. “My loyalties lie with the Chancellor and with the Senate. And with you.”
The words ought to have been a comfort, but Padmé could only think of betrayals and broken trusts. “What about Obi-Wan?” she asked in a low voice.
He paused. “I don’t know. Many Jedi have been killed. I hope he has remained loyal to the Chancellor too.”
And if not? Padmé dared not speak the question aloud. There was little she could bring herself to say, though a dozen shouts thronged at the back of her throat. What really happened in the Temple? What did you do when Mace tried to kill the Chancellor? Who killed the Jedi? Did your heart break when your fellows turned against the causes you believe in? Or did the betrayal lie in another place entirely? All she could manage to voice aloud was her fear. “I’m afraid.”
Now, of all times, Anakin smiled. “Have faith, my love. Everything will soon be set right.”
She did not believe him, not when her preternatural dread continued to deepen and spread within her. His eyes were glittering, the look of someone not quite sane.
“The Chancellor has given me a very important mission,” he went on. “The Separatists have gathered in the Mustafar system. I'm going there to end this war.” He spoke as if to a small child, as though she were too young, too simple-minded, to understand the full scope of what he was doing. Never, in his behavior toward her, had he treated her as less than his equal. Hurt and confused, she struggled to find a reply, but nothing was coming.
“Wait until I return,” he said softly. “Things will be different, I promise.”
Wait? No, that wasn’t right. I’ll go with you! She had to say it now, before it was too late – had to run to him before he got into his ship, insist that she come along –
It was already too late. She should have said it hours ago, when there had still been a warmth to his kiss. She could not go with him.
“Wait for me,” he said one last time. Her dread lifted to hear a note of true pleading at the heart of his words. Something remained, some scrap of hope, if she could only –
But he was gone.
She spent the remainder of the night fruitlessly trying to sleep. The morning passed in a blur. Mechanically she answered the summons to a special session of the Senate. When the Chancellor revealed his true intentions, things became brutally clear. It was Palpatine who had betrayed the Republic, however he shifted the facts to appear the hero. He had deceived them all. And Anakin...?
She was sick with how willingly the Senators gave up their freedoms, how swiftly came the death of her beloved Republic. But most of all she was sick with the lies that Anakin had told her last night. For no matter what had really happened in the Temple, he had not told her the whole truth. Nothing fit.
The pieces came together when Obi-Wan came to visit.
She shoved up walls of denial against his words; she could not admit any acceptance of their truth. You’re wrong; not Anakin; I don’t believe you...But deep in her core, the truth resounded. And something that had once been solid, her strength, her resolve, began to splinter.
“Anakin is the father, isn’t he?”
Padmé could only look at Obi-Wan, a silent pained acknowledgement in her face.
“I’m so sorry.” His sincerity was plain, but she had no doubt that he would kill Anakin if he found him. And for that, she could not forgive him.
Could not forgive Anakin. Could not face what he had done, could do nothing to bring him back...
I’ll go with you.
But it was too late –
Was it?
She had to try.
Padmé clung to her last scrap of hope, Anakin’s plea, all the way to Mustafar. Wait for me. It was almost like the expression on his face as he looked at her that morning on Naboo, the eyes that had wordlessly pleaded Come with me. If she had only answered his plea immediately, last night – but she must push back her imminent regrets, find the strength to do what she had done on Tatooine and pull Anakin back from the darkness.
But he had gone so much farther this time –
When they landed on Mustafar, she was afraid to leave the ship, afraid that she would look for Anakin and find a stranger with a monster’s face. She put a hand to her head, already mourning their lost future. No matter what happened here, nothing could be the same.
Then, when she saw him running to her ship with the anxious energy that had always colored his love for her, her mood shifted and she flew from the cockpit to greet him. He was her Anakin still, he would always be, and she would follow him to the end of the universe.
I’ll go with you.
The joy of his embrace was brief, slipping into nightmare. Anakin denied none of his dark deeds, showed no remorse, spoke scornfully of Obi-Wan. Disdained her love, the one thing he had treasured above all else.
Her strength splintered further, but she had a final hope. As she had gone to him, followed him even into this hell of burning rivers and lakes of fire, so he could go with her, to distant worlds of blue skies and soft flowers. “Come away with me,” she said, holding his face with all the tenderness she had left. “Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can.”
“Don’t you see?” he smiled. “We don’t have to run away anymore.” He rambled about bringing peace to the Republic, overthrowing the Chancellor, ruling the galaxy! “We can make things the way we want them to be.”
This was what he had come to. Exultant after all his horrible deeds, glad for the power he had gained, heedless of the cost. Where was the fervent light in his eyes that had led her to follow him before? In its place, a repellent, lurid glow. The words she had longed to say dried up on her tongue, never to be spoken again. I’ll go with you.
No. In pure instinct, Padmé took a step away from him. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing...”
He raged about Obi-Wan, ignored her pain. “The Jedi turned against me. Don’t you turn against me!”
The accusation struck her as a blow; her strength and resolve shattered completely. “I don’t know you any more! You’re going down a path I can’t follow.”
She couldn’t follow. She couldn’t say the words. I’ll go with you. She couldn’t bring Anakin back this time. She couldn’t go with him.
When he attacked her, Padmé had nowhere left to go at all.
I’ll go with you.
The words had left Padmé’s mouth in pure instinct on that gray morning at the Lake resort, had been spoken before she had any time to think. If she had paused to think, she knew she would have hesitated, realized how rash and dangerous such a decision would be, and decided to stay on Naboo. Would have walked away from Anakin, cut off the tenuous connections they had made in spite of all her denials, let him leave for Tatooine alone, let him leave her life.
Padmé was glad she hadn’t taken the time to think.
She often reflected on how much had hinged upon that choice. It was a decision that implicitly repudiated her rejection of Anakin’s advances, that told him without words I want to be at your side forever, no matter what happens. They both knew it, though Anakin obeyed her previous spoken wishes like an honorable Jedi, kept his distance until Padmé herself stepped across the gap between them and left all her rational resolutions behind.
If she hadn’t gone with Anakin, she never would have known the simple happiness of making him smile every time she took his hand. She never would have felt the joy of calling him her husband, of hearing him say my wife. She would have missed the pleasure of his impassioned kisses, his touch on her bare skin...
She wouldn’t have seen the raw hurt in his eyes when he brought his mother’s body back to the homestead. She wouldn’t have watched as he stood at the brink of darkness, gripped by the horror of his rage and violence and unspeakable grief, and she wouldn’t have been there to help him draw back into the steady sorrow that heals, to assure him that he was still human and worthy of reclamation.
When Padmé allowed herself to wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t been there, she shuddered.
Three years later, that choice had led once more to a path that was altogether unexpected, terrifying and wonderful. They were having a baby, a child whose existence defied every rule in the Jedi Code, who would probably cause more trouble than all of her other choices. Her life with Anakin had been full of trouble, but she never doubted that it was worth it. She knew the baby would be worth every trouble as well.
I’ll go with you.
Padmé found herself thinking often about that choice, three years ago on Naboo, during the time she and Anakin had together after he rescued the Chancellor. It was the first chance she had had to tell him about her pregnancy. Every day she was grateful to wake up beside him, to share their excitement for the baby, and was glad for her choice. Yet every day, as well, she saw the strange and ominous gloom settling more heavily upon him, more ponderous even than the brooding anxiety for his mother that had led him to leave Naboo for Tatooine. Nightmares again. When she was honest with herself, they frightened her too. Anakin’s dreams had proven true before. There was no rational reason to fear a deadly childbirth, but rationality did little to soothe her, and absolutely nothing for Anakin.
She tried. She tried to be reasonable and calm. When Anakin was unusually jumpy to learn that Obi-Wan had come to visit, Padmé smiled, squeezed his shoulder and offered the assurance that his old master cared about him. “He was worried about you. He said you’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
Anakin sighed heavily, clearly not assured. He moved listlessly, joining her in the bedroom. “I feel lost,” he said distantly.
“Lost?” Dismayed by his mood, Padmé spoke the word more sharply than she had intended, almost like an accusation. He looked away from her, out the window, instead of drawing her in as she had hoped.
“Obi-Wan and the Council don’t trust me,” he said flatly. “I feel more and more like they’re shutting me out.”
What must his state of mind be, for Anakin to come to feel that way? Urgently she reminded him, “They trust you with their lives.” It was exactly this peculiar blend of self-reproach and raging pride that had driven Anakin to his darkest place on Tatooine. He must not enter that darkness again. How had she pulled him out before?
“Something’s happening,” he said softly, still staring out the window. “I’m not the Jedi I should be.” A horrible, unformed fear began rising within Padmé. Was there something he was keeping from her? Something as hideous as the massacre of the Sandpeople, a deed that he had confessed with an agony like peeling off his own skin...
“I want more.” Anakin looked at her at last, his eyes filled with a startling hunger that faded into remorse as he went on, “And I know I shouldn’t.”
What to say? You’re still human; you haven’t gone too far. Let me in, let me help you! She went to him, clutched his arms as if to physically keep him from wandering to the dark places. “You expect too much of yourself,” she said softly. Don’t you know that you’re already all I want, all I need?
But her words seemed to have only pushed him further along this uneasy track of thought. “I found a way to save you from your nightmares,” he told her, his voice shaking slightly in quiet intensity.
“Nightmares?” Padmé repeated unsteadily. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
He took in her face with a gaze of fierce determination. “I won’t lose you.”
All of his tension with Obi-Wan and the Council, his wavering moods, his unnatural hunger and the accompanying remorse...all of it flowing out of the fear of losing her. All of it her fault. No, that was absurd. She had never regretted going with Anakin; she would not regret it now. Together they would overcome this darkness. “I’m not going to die in childbirth, Ani. I promise you.”
“No. I promise you.” Now it was Anakin clutching her arms, his grip so tight that Padmé winced. And even amidst all her fear and confusion for him, she was struck by the depth, the wildness of his love for her. She knew he would die for her, if it came to that. As much as the implications of that knowledge troubled her, she could not deny how much she loved this part of him, the man who would give up his life to save her.
Unable to find any more words, she took his face in her hands and kissed him deeply. Perhaps this was in fact a better way to convey her comforts and assurances than hollow speech. His lips were warm and desperate.
She felt as if they were both drowning.
Anakin left some time later to meet with the Council about the progress of Obi-Wan’s mission. Padmé’s chest was oddly tight as he prepared to leave, and the words almost sprang to her lips again. I’ll go with you. She felt somehow that he should not be alone right now, the same as he should not have been alone when he went to Tatooine. But this time reason stepped in, reminding her that if she and Anakin went anywhere together, their secret would be discovered and everything would be ruined. So she stood in the doorway, watching Anakin stride down the corridor to the elevators, only turning to re-enter her apartment when he had gone out of sight completely.
She was restless, unable to get anything done. Her mind refused to focus on Senate work. Attempts to consider another way to curb Palpatine’s powers led her thoughts to the argument she and Anakin had had the other day, which in turn brought her back to the only thing she could care about any more. Something was falling apart inside of Anakin, and she couldn’t find a way to fix it.
It didn’t help that her pregnancy exhausted her, weighed her down far more than she could have imagined from such a tiny unborn baby. Wearily, she sat on the sofa, rubbing a spot where the baby had just delivered a particularly strong kick.
A heavy shadow seemed to settle upon the apartment as the sun set. Padmé looked up, unsettled.
Something was wrong.
She knew without question that this creeping worry centered on Anakin. Slowly, she rose and went to the window, directing her gaze toward the Jedi Temple as if she could somehow catch a glimpse of Anakin. Her eyes saw nothing more than the sprawling cityscape, but in her mind appeared an image of her troubled husband, alone in a chamber.
She closed her eyes painfully. They were haunted, both of them, by ghosts of the past and the future.
Something cold seemed to run down Padmé's back. Fear. A shudder ran through her. Grief. As if Anakin were standing before her, she could see the anguish in his face, the single tear that spoke of stark sorrows. Her imagination, it must be. Nevertheless, her heartbeat quickened, an anxious rhythm that would not be calmed. Somewhere across the way, she knew that Anakin's heart was pounding too.
I'm in agony...
She bowed her head.
After that, there was no peace. Padmé paced before the window in the growing darkness, pleading whatever gods or Force ruled the universe to spare her husband from the grief which threatened to consume him. The bleakness deepened as the night wore on. Though she knew Anakin had only gone to the Temple, it seemed he was pulling worlds away from her.
She should have gone with him. Never mind keeping their secret. She hadn’t cared about such practical concerns when she went with him to Tatooine. All that had mattered was being with him. But this time she had paused to think, and missed her chance.
Wrapped in her regrets, Padmé looked up at the Temple again and gasped in naked horror. Great pillars of smoke were rising from its heights. “Ani,” she choked, touching the glass of the window. Her senses reeled from the acrid smell of burning, whether real or only imagined, it didn’t matter. She could see him writhing in flames, screaming. Her stomach twisted sickeningly; her eyes burned in anticipation of unbearable loss.
“Threepio,” she said faintly. “Threepio!”
The protocol droid came to her side. “Miss Padmé?”
She couldn’t speak properly. “You have to find out – check the records – where is Anakin?”
He said something in reply; she hardly heard him, only noticed that he was going to another room to comply with her inarticulate request. The very walls pressed upon her as she waited for the droid to return. After all her worries for Anakin’s state of mind, his grappling with darkness, was it simply death that had claimed him? Would she have died too if she had gone with him?
But she wasn’t afraid to die. Not at Anakin’s side. It was being separated from him that killed her, more brutally than any mortal blow.
Dying a little bit each day...
Threepio returned. Numbly she heard him tell her that Anakin was in the Temple. The words hung over her for a moment like a stormcloud. Then the storm broke with a rush of crippling grief, its ferocity startling even in the face what she had just heard. It was for more lives than Anakin’s alone, she realized. How many were dying in the Temple? Her baby stirred fitfully while she let out a tremendous sob.
And all the while she wondered what would have happened if she had gone with him.
He came back. Padmé saw his ship arrive, watched him climb out of it, and still couldn’t believe he was there, was alive and whole, because the horrible dread wouldn’t leave or be lightened by any degree of relief. She ran to him, her baby leaping inside of her, and embraced him with the hope that his physical form would remove the dread at last.
But his kiss was strange, unsettling. She pulled away and tried to find questions that would make sense of this nightmare. “Are you all right? I heard there was an attack on the Jedi Temple.” For a moment all her tangled emotions resolved themselves into sheer panic. “You could see the smoke from here!”
“I’m fine. I came to see if you and the baby were safe.”
There was no warmth in his words; they seemed to be spoken out of duty or the mere memory of fondness. And how could he say he was fine? How could he speak with any degree of composure after this horrible night? “What’s happening?” she demanded.
Flatly he told her, “The Jedi Council has tried to overthrow the Republic.”
Every part of her rejected such an idea. “I don’t believe that!” Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, all the other Jedi who had shown her concern and kindness – how could they capable of treachery, of sedition? It would break the foundation of her beliefs. And it ought to have broken Anakin’s...
As if he could read her thoughts, he answered with some heatedness, “I saw Mace Windu attempt to assassinate the Chancellor myself.”
The disturbing idea crossed Padmé’s mind that he was lying, and she pushed it aside with difficulty. Anakin simply stood there, apparently unperturbed, stating appalling things without flinching. “What are you going to do?”
“I will not betray the Republic.” The words were almost chant-like, as if he had been repeating them as a mantra. “My loyalties lie with the Chancellor and with the Senate. And with you.”
The words ought to have been a comfort, but Padmé could only think of betrayals and broken trusts. “What about Obi-Wan?” she asked in a low voice.
He paused. “I don’t know. Many Jedi have been killed. I hope he has remained loyal to the Chancellor too.”
And if not? Padmé dared not speak the question aloud. There was little she could bring herself to say, though a dozen shouts thronged at the back of her throat. What really happened in the Temple? What did you do when Mace tried to kill the Chancellor? Who killed the Jedi? Did your heart break when your fellows turned against the causes you believe in? Or did the betrayal lie in another place entirely? All she could manage to voice aloud was her fear. “I’m afraid.”
Now, of all times, Anakin smiled. “Have faith, my love. Everything will soon be set right.”
She did not believe him, not when her preternatural dread continued to deepen and spread within her. His eyes were glittering, the look of someone not quite sane.
“The Chancellor has given me a very important mission,” he went on. “The Separatists have gathered in the Mustafar system. I'm going there to end this war.” He spoke as if to a small child, as though she were too young, too simple-minded, to understand the full scope of what he was doing. Never, in his behavior toward her, had he treated her as less than his equal. Hurt and confused, she struggled to find a reply, but nothing was coming.
“Wait until I return,” he said softly. “Things will be different, I promise.”
Wait? No, that wasn’t right. I’ll go with you! She had to say it now, before it was too late – had to run to him before he got into his ship, insist that she come along –
It was already too late. She should have said it hours ago, when there had still been a warmth to his kiss. She could not go with him.
“Wait for me,” he said one last time. Her dread lifted to hear a note of true pleading at the heart of his words. Something remained, some scrap of hope, if she could only –
But he was gone.
She spent the remainder of the night fruitlessly trying to sleep. The morning passed in a blur. Mechanically she answered the summons to a special session of the Senate. When the Chancellor revealed his true intentions, things became brutally clear. It was Palpatine who had betrayed the Republic, however he shifted the facts to appear the hero. He had deceived them all. And Anakin...?
She was sick with how willingly the Senators gave up their freedoms, how swiftly came the death of her beloved Republic. But most of all she was sick with the lies that Anakin had told her last night. For no matter what had really happened in the Temple, he had not told her the whole truth. Nothing fit.
The pieces came together when Obi-Wan came to visit.
She shoved up walls of denial against his words; she could not admit any acceptance of their truth. You’re wrong; not Anakin; I don’t believe you...But deep in her core, the truth resounded. And something that had once been solid, her strength, her resolve, began to splinter.
“Anakin is the father, isn’t he?”
Padmé could only look at Obi-Wan, a silent pained acknowledgement in her face.
“I’m so sorry.” His sincerity was plain, but she had no doubt that he would kill Anakin if he found him. And for that, she could not forgive him.
Could not forgive Anakin. Could not face what he had done, could do nothing to bring him back...
I’ll go with you.
But it was too late –
Was it?
She had to try.
Padmé clung to her last scrap of hope, Anakin’s plea, all the way to Mustafar. Wait for me. It was almost like the expression on his face as he looked at her that morning on Naboo, the eyes that had wordlessly pleaded Come with me. If she had only answered his plea immediately, last night – but she must push back her imminent regrets, find the strength to do what she had done on Tatooine and pull Anakin back from the darkness.
But he had gone so much farther this time –
When they landed on Mustafar, she was afraid to leave the ship, afraid that she would look for Anakin and find a stranger with a monster’s face. She put a hand to her head, already mourning their lost future. No matter what happened here, nothing could be the same.
Then, when she saw him running to her ship with the anxious energy that had always colored his love for her, her mood shifted and she flew from the cockpit to greet him. He was her Anakin still, he would always be, and she would follow him to the end of the universe.
I’ll go with you.
The joy of his embrace was brief, slipping into nightmare. Anakin denied none of his dark deeds, showed no remorse, spoke scornfully of Obi-Wan. Disdained her love, the one thing he had treasured above all else.
Her strength splintered further, but she had a final hope. As she had gone to him, followed him even into this hell of burning rivers and lakes of fire, so he could go with her, to distant worlds of blue skies and soft flowers. “Come away with me,” she said, holding his face with all the tenderness she had left. “Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can.”
“Don’t you see?” he smiled. “We don’t have to run away anymore.” He rambled about bringing peace to the Republic, overthrowing the Chancellor, ruling the galaxy! “We can make things the way we want them to be.”
This was what he had come to. Exultant after all his horrible deeds, glad for the power he had gained, heedless of the cost. Where was the fervent light in his eyes that had led her to follow him before? In its place, a repellent, lurid glow. The words she had longed to say dried up on her tongue, never to be spoken again. I’ll go with you.
No. In pure instinct, Padmé took a step away from him. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing...”
He raged about Obi-Wan, ignored her pain. “The Jedi turned against me. Don’t you turn against me!”
The accusation struck her as a blow; her strength and resolve shattered completely. “I don’t know you any more! You’re going down a path I can’t follow.”
She couldn’t follow. She couldn’t say the words. I’ll go with you. She couldn’t bring Anakin back this time. She couldn’t go with him.
When he attacked her, Padmé had nowhere left to go at all.
