Disclaimer: I haven't seen the prequels for at least 15 years!! I just got punched with the Obidala bug and claim no decent knowledge about anything PT.
CORUSCANT, at night:
"Obi-Wan?"
The Jedi knight, facing the floor-to-ceiling salon window overlooking the trailing lights of Coruscant, held his hands behind his back as if in contemplation. What contemplation that might be, Padmé did not know.
Nor did she know why he was here, in her salon, of all places.
The strain on his face disappeared when he saw her. He veneered it as if he thought he could hide it from her, and he gave her a pleasant look.
"My lady," he said, with a slight bow of his head.
He was always so polite.
"Padmé," he added.
She tried to ignore the way he said her name.
"Why are you here?" she asked with practiced pleasantry; a Senator, she was. "I thought you'd gone to Stewjon for the cycle?"
Strain tried to break through his veneer, and she could see it even though he stood half a room away from her. Perhaps she just sensed it.
"I've come back," he said simply, as if that were an explanation.
Padmé laughed softly.
"Clearly, you have come back," she observed, gesturing towards him, the obvious Jedi in the room.
Only the smallest of smiles passed his features before it evaporated into whatever it was that bothered him, tonight.
"Don't be alarmed," said he, "but I believe there may be a… threat of some kind."
"A threat?" she inquired, desiring more clarification.
"To… you," he said, as if he didn't want to say it.
"To me?" she asked, waiting.
He cleared his throat slightly and glanced aside.
"There's a criminal mastermind in the Underworld who's decided he wants to make an example of a Senator that opposes his interests," he said, shifting his weight, "Or, at least, that's what my informant has told me."
"Obi-Wan," she said, with something of a laugh, "I'm a Senator. You don't need to beat around the bush with this sort of thing. I've been dealing with death threats since I was thirteen years old."
"I know," he said.
"I'm not going to run screaming home to Naboo, you know," she said, smiling at the absurdity.
It was true that she was used to the hazards of being in public office, and this wasn't going to ruffle her feathers any more than the last five times did.
Obi-Wan seemed to pick up on her levity and added his own faint laugh, but it wasn't well posed.
She tilted her head to look at him edgeways.
"Obi-Wan…," she said, stepping closer, for inspection, for curiosity, for interest. His eyes came to hers in a hesitant arc. "What is it? What's the matter?"
He turned sideways so he could gaze back out of the window, out into Coruscant and the dizzying, colored lights that sped through, around, and above it.
"It doesn't feel like it's a criminal mastermind from the Underworld," he said.
"What?" she asked, looking over his face, though he kept his gaze outside, as if watching for something. "What do you mean?"
He faced her after a moment and looked over her as if contemplating how much to say, or what to say to her.
After a moment, he drew a breath and sighed it out, his gaze shifting elsewhere, above her head, becoming lost in his thoughts again.
She felt a tinge of frustration with his elusiveness and decided if he wasn't going to talk, she was going to go unpack her bag and quit wasting time.
There, at a table on the other side of the room, after she'd pulled her holo pad, her tablet, and other things that didn't matter from her luggage, she finally heard his voice carry from the window.
"How well do you understand the force, Padmé?" he asked.
She paused her unpacking to see he was gazing out of the window again in that contemplative pose, making her wonder what exactly the matter with Obi-Wan Kenobi was, tonight.
Considering a moment, she said:
"I suppose I understand it… some," she offered.
"What do you know about it?" he asked.
Supposing that now he wanted a proper conversation, she dropped her things and moved closer, noticing that in the window's reflection he was looking at her, at her reflection, and not at the driving Coruscant frenzy outside.
These Jedi were incorrigible. Opaque. Frustrating in their mysticality. A mish-mash of opposing forces, not just the force. Anakin Skywalker could be maddening with his overt flirtation, his disregard for the rules, his seeming glee in teasing out disaster, but this one… this one was simply unreadable most of the time. Obi-Wan was maddening in his own way.
His actions said one thing, but his eyes said another.
Oh, what his eyes said…
She pushed that thought aside, pushing aside old, foolish, youthful crushes, pointless as they were.
"Well," she said, coming to stand beside him with the aim of pretending to look out the window as well as he did, "I know the force helps one to sense things that might not otherwise be perceived with one's regular senses, for one…"
He remained quiet so she went on.
"And one can hone one's sensitivity to the force to be able to perceive many things," she said, "And perhaps even to manipulate one's environment in clever ways."
"Do you think it's clever?" he asked, then clarifying: "The force?"
"It can be," she said, "can't it?"
He seemed to find that somewhat amusing and his posture curved, relaxing a degree.
"I've never heard it described that way," he said, glancing at her with levity. "But I suppose you're right."
There was another pause, and they both stared out of the window. She tried not to look at his reflection in the glass. She was afraid if she did, he'd be looking at her and she would embarrass herself.
How did he have the ability to make her, accomplished Senatorial woman that she was, feel fourteen again? To feel afraid and anxious and excited and terrified to hope, yet unable not to and thrilled by it.
She let out a swift sigh she hadn't meant to release.
"Why do you ask?" she inquired.
There was a pause as he considered.
"I just wonder if when a Jedi comes to you and says, 'I feel this' or 'I feel that', do you think it's idiotic? Or useful? Or… does it make any sense to you?" he asked, meandering.
She turned to face him and looked over him.
"I think it's legitimate," she said, "because I have feelings, too."
"Do you?" he asked with interest, turning to look at her, not simply in the reflection.
"Yes," she replied, "I felt something was wrong the moment I saw your face."
"Is it because I always bring trouble?" he asked.
She couldn't resist laughing at that.
"No," she said, shaking her head.
He smiled at her.
"I just felt it," she said, "and I assume your feelings work the same way, except perhaps augmented, and… honed."
He nodded as if in agreement of her assessment. She felt a small sense of pleasure at his approval, but berated herself inwardly at the same time for caring.
"Then I will tell you," he said, fixing her more directly than he had all night. "I don't feel like the threat to you is some nameless criminal from the Underworld at all. I feel like it's something else. Something more… insidious."
"Like what?" she asked, unable to look away from him.
"Sith," he said. "It reeks of Sith."
She felt as if she'd paled, though this wasn't something she did. She prided herself as excellent at staying composed. It was what landed her the burden of Queen of Naboo at fourteen years old, what brought her to know Jedi such as Qui-Gon Jinn and his young padawan.
But the Sith, they were terrifying because of they were raw, destructive anarchy. They were everything the Jedi weren't, and if there was a Sith after her…
"Don't be afraid," he said, prompting her out of her thoughts and back to his eyes.
"Why shouldn't I be?" she asked.
"Because I don't know it," he said, "I simply feel it."
She looked away.
"Perhaps I'm wrong," he offered.
"Do you think you are?" she asked the window Obi-Wan.
His eyes met hers in the reflection, and there it was, just a moment of depth, of fathoms. He let it fall from him in moments when he thought she wouldn't notice it, but she did. She caught every one, every time, and pressed it for safe-keeping.
"No," he said, his voice soft, quiet, confessional.
She drew a breath and it came in unsteady, so she let it out as smoothly as she could muster. She wasn't going to be a damsel in distress. That wasn't the role she would play. She would take it head-on.
"Very well," she said, raising her chin a little. "What do we do about it?"
He looked relieved by her resolve, and perhaps also for her faith in him.
"First, we need to get you a tighter security detail," he said.
"That's done easily enough," she said.
"Second, we need to talk about who you might have made angry through your politicking," he said.
"That might be hard to pinpoint," she said, tossing him a dry glance, "I've made a lot of people angry. I'm a politician."
"Have you ever thought of going into something a little less hazardous?" he asked her.
"Like becoming a Jedi Knight?" she asked, mocking him.
She'd only a moment to draw in the teasing look he gave her in return when they heard a loud clunk from outside and saw a nearby chunk of Coruscant outside fall into darkness, powerless, empty against the neon-stripe frenzy that surrounded it.
"What-," she began, as they'd both turned to the window.
Another block of Coruscant went black with another clunk, and another.
"I've never seen a single building lose power on Coruscant," she said, staring in wonder as another part of the city fell empty, "Not once."
Obi-Wan seemed to tense beside her as he watched.
"Neither have I," he said, just before the salon went black.
It was silent, so silent. So empty, and pitch for a long moment… until her eyes adjusted to perceive the softened left side of Obi-Wan's face lit pale blue by the remaining moving light outside.
His hand found her wrist and gripped with intensity.
"We need to move," he said, low.
"My pistol," she said, pulling him towards her luggage.
Away from the window, the feeble light caused her to bump into the table, and she made do with fumbling through her bag with her free hand.
"Let go for a moment," she said, pulling on her wrist.
"Only for a moment," he said in the dimness, relinquishing.
"You could ignite your lightsaber?" she suggested, rummaging in the dark.
"If they're looking for us, we should be easily spotted that way, wouldn't we?" he said.
"I suppose," she replied, securing her gun and turning to reach for him. He was closer than she thought and her hand landed on his chest. There was only the briefest of pauses wherein they both seemed paralyzed.
This wasn't normal. The darkness forced them closer physically than they were accustomed to being. She sensed it from him and she knew it in herself.
"Where shall we go?" she asked him, recovering as he took her arm.
"Not here," he said, pulling her towards the exit. "Perhaps we can get out, to a transport, and off the planet. That would be safest, I think."
Somehow Obi-Wan budged the stilled auto-door and craned it enough for them to squeeze through it into the narrow causeway, and then pushed it shut again with a loud metal-to-metal crash. After the reverberations faded, it was silent.
She'd never heard such silence on Coruscant. There were always machines running here, until this moment.
Though she knew the causeway well, everything seemed different in the shadows of wan light that managed to penetrate the darkness from the decorative windows high above. There was nothing but shadows and darker shadows and unnerving blackness.
She felt Obi-Wan pause, as if not knowing which way to proceed, so she led him onto the curling stairway that led down to the lower levels.
Perhaps down there, if not a transport, there would be more people and perhaps even a little light.
They began to descend silently, not daring to speak for the fear that a surprise Sith might pounce from the pressing blackness, though Padmé told herself, perhaps in reassurance, they would have heard someone opening one of the many stilled auto-doors along the causeway from afar if one were to be opened, and as far as she knew Sith couldn't teleport through walls.
After some moments of descent, they were startled by the sound of shattering glass from an upper room. Padmé knew there was only one habitation above, and that was hers.
Obi-Wan pulled her by her hand up, to him, and whispered faintly into her ear:
"Let's find a side door, now."
She felt the stair rail for the opening and pressed into the edges of the walls until she found the tell-tale imprint of an auto-door and pulled Obi-Wan, pressing his hand against it.
The protests of a door upstairs began to screech in tandem with the door Obi-Wan pulled, shoving it with his strength and what must have also been the force.
They rushed through and he shut and bolted it behind them.
If she thought it was dark before, that had been nothing compared to the darkness which enveloped them, now. She couldn't even see her hand in front of her face.
"Where are we?" he asked, his voice whisper-soft in the emptiness.
"I don't know," she replied, gazing ahead, waiting for the blue haze of a window to fill the void, but nothing came. "I don't think there are any windows."
"Then there are probably no transports," he replied in dismay.
She listened to his soft breathing beside her for a few moments, and then:
"This must be a storage unit," she said, pushing off the door and into the room, arms outstretched.
"No, wait-," he protested from behind her.
"But I can-," she began, scarcely brushing something in front of her with her fingertips before Obi-Wan's sudden grip on her waist pulled her back against him in haste.
"Padmé," he chided. "Please cooperate."
"What are you-," she began, reflexively beginning to chide him in return.
"I'm trying to protect you," he replied, "which is difficult to do if you're plunging yourself headlong into dark corners."
"Then," she said, trying to ignore his hands on her waist, and the warmth of him behind her, "light your lightsaber so we can see. There are obviously no windows in here."
He didn't move.
After a moment, he said: "Perhaps the power will return soon."
She spun to look at him out of habit, but there was nothing to see. His hands fell away from her waist as she did it, and she paused, realizing how close they stood. Though they didn't touch, she could sense his closeness, radiating from him like gravity… like a force.
"We can't just stay in here, waiting to be found," she said.
"I know," his voice replied. "I can feel the darkness of the Sith through the force, and it will sense my lightness."
She caught her breath.
"It will find us," he said, "Or rather, it will find me."
"Shall I leave you?" she asked, not wanting that to be the answer.
"That's too dangerous," he replied.
"Will you fight it?" she asked, liking that solution even less.
"I'd rather not if it isn't necessary," he said, his voice distant, as if remembering past violence with the Sith.
She drew a shaking breath and let it out, feeling at once frustrated and trapped.
"I… have an idea," said Obi-Wan, though he sounded hesitant.
"What is it?" she asked.
"If he senses light, then, perhaps, if I can dim it enough, he will lose sense of where I am," he said.
"Can you do that?" she asked.
"Maybe," he replied, opaque.
"How?" she asked.
"By allowing myself to do something I've wanted to do for a very long time," he said, closer, more delicately, and the timbre of his voice sent electricity through her limbs, as if her old foolish, suppressed hope hadn't been in vain. It leapt up in her like smoldering, ignored ashes stoked to instant flame, shivering, wistful, ridiculously exposed and fragile.
She felt his hand touch her arm, experimental, unfamiliar, and then her shoulder, only barely, and then her face, which he framed in the curve of his fingers. It was as if he'd just found her, and his other hand came to cradle her face as well.
"Obi-Wan-," she managed, but he kissed her and she stopped as a trembling crossed her. His kiss was gentle, knightly, almost reverent, and over much faster than she would have wanted.
As he began to pull away she gripped his wrist to stop him.
He stilled, and they stood frozen in total darkness, the only sound being their uneven breaths and the impasse between them. She could feel, somehow, that he was teetering, though accomplished at restraint.
Here, within these circumstances he wavered, listing on the edge of a precipice, and perhaps only a small weight or an inch of pressure would cause him to embrace that which he would never do otherwise. It was an opportunity she couldn't let pass by; she couldn't resist her own unearthed wants, when they were hers for the taking. When he was hers for the taking.
He seemed to sense her altered resolve; her gripping of the upper hand. She heard a faint catch in his breath at her dominance. She knew she'd won, already.
"That's not enough," she declared, and his resolve collapsed like a crumbling tower, slowly, with great thunder.
-*--*--*--*--*-
The light was blinding and shocking when it blinked on too few minutes later, as if the restored power alone caught Padmé and Obi-Wan in the midst of their forbidden embrace, holding them in contempt for being human.
Obi-Wan gasped against her mouth, pulling back a fraction, but was held and holding in a mutual clinch against the wall in which they seemed and felt to be united yet collapsed, so well matched yet disastrous, so embroiled in shared, agonizing experience, and so consumed by the aching pleasure of their embrace that letting go wasn't the immediate reaction it should have been.
Padmé opened her eyes and felt herself not merely looking up at Obi-Wan, but gazing at him, knowing she looked lost but being unable to stop herself.
She tried to come to herself, but his presence, his earthen scent, his lingering taste and gentle crashing touch had left her dazed, drunken with power and weakness.
He looked down upon her and brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear; it was an endearment.
She knew she should say something, she knew he was trying to… but the lingering afterthought of their combined glory shuttered all coherence for long moments. Speaking meant it was over. Speaking would break this spell that she wanted to go on, more and more, but she soldiered on for the greater good, like she always did.
"Do you…," she began, then realizing how out of breath she was, "Do you think he's gone?"
Obi-Wan gazed down upon her, regret and a depth of want in his eyes. He didn't release her. Not yet.
"He's gone," he whispered to her.
She reached up and touched his face, running a hand through his beard in a light caress and taking him in with her eyes.
His eyes closed tightly and he turned his face into her hand; he kissed her palm with a tight, dissatisfied passion.
"I suppose it worked," she whispered back.
He returned his gaze to hers and looked pained, stretched, even hurt.
She hated the thought of hurting him.
"Obi-Wan," she said, taking his face gently in her hands, "I'm sorry…"
"Sorry," he said, touching her wrist, "why should you be sorry? Shouldn't I be the one who is s—"
"Obi-Wan, don't you dare ever apologize for what you've just done to me," she said, her Senatorial, dictatorial voice coming out.
He seemed to find that both amusing and flattering, for he blushed and smiled, but tried and failed to suppress both. She delighted in watching his modesty, regardless.
They both began to straighten, to begin to examine the broken pieces of their broken vase.
"It is I who is sorry for tempting you into breaking your vows as a Jedi," she declared.
"It was necessary," he counter-declared, "for your safety."
"Necessary," she said, clarifying.
"Yes, and the only clear course of action we could have taken under the circumstances," he said.
"Entirely a logical conclusion, and such a unique circumstance that it will…," and her voice weakened, softened and went vulnerable, though she didn't want it to, "… never happen again."
He fell silent, his gaze upon her.
"Maybe," he said, "in an abundance of caution, I was more thorough than the situation warranted."
Then he added, softly, a beguiling weakness passing through his eyes: "I couldn't stop myself."
She watched him, and she leaned on the wall and felt as if it were holding her up. She wished he were holding her again, that his maddened kisses were stealing her breath and life and sanity, again.
Breaking eye contact, she soldiered on.
"Shall we check my room?" she inquired.
"Yes," was all he said, and she knew his gaze was still on her.
How much more would his eyes say now?
How much more would it hurt to see them?
She mourned her way to her salon as security guards were called and Obi-Wan handled many of the details with exacting precision as if slavishly driven to secure her safety.
The window had been broken through, the one in front of which he had stood and gazed at her reflection. In her room, they had found her bed slashed with the darkened scores of a lightsaber, and her mirror shattered.
As day dawned on Coruscant, Obi-Wan, the new security detail, and the lawful authorities all milled about her rooms, finishing up their investigations into what had happened and how to better protect the Senator from assassination.
Padmé stood and gazed out of the broken window in the pale blue light, the feel of chunks of broken glass beneath her feet and watched Coruscant pass by, never sleeping, never stopping, never noticing the disaster, and never seeing the crumbling tower and thunder in her heart.
•••The End•••