The room is white, and clean, and sterile. There are no flowers, no birthing party, no hum of activity. Her mother is not there. Her sister is not there. Her husb-
In the brief space between her own wails of grief and the pain of being ripped apart by the new life being brought into the world, there is nothing. Nothing that can bring an end to this pain, reverse time to a moment where things made sense, where there was a Republic and love and a future stretched ahead instead of this blinding expanse of white. There is nothing.
And then.
"It's a boy."
No. It couldn't – Ani had said it was a girl. He had been so sure. She couldn't lose both of them, not now. Anakin. Leia. His daughter he named Leia, because it meant so much. Both gone. But her son.
She reached out and touched his cheek, so impossibly small, because she had wanted a son so very much, even when Anakin had felt the child's presence in the Force and said it was a girl, even when she knew he was right – (he had been wrong, though, and not just in that). Her son. Her son, the guardian of the sky.
"Luke."
Then the world rips apart again, and she can't think straight enough to imagine why. The second baby slips out within moments, and Padmé is not entirely surprised.
"A girl."
They were both right. Both right, and both so very wrong. The guardian and the goddess.
She tries to reach out and touch her daughter, too, but the world has gone too grey. Instead, she tries to reach out with her thoughts, with her mind as came so easily with Ani. She falters for a moment, but her daughter – her infant daughter with so much presence in the Force that even she can feel it, shining bright and clear alongside her brother's – latches on to it and they stay there, suspended in that moment, as Padmé projects onto her what love and warmth she has left, though she cannot stop the flow of despair that joins it.
"Leia."
She will grow up to look like her father. They both will. Padmé can see in her mind's eye – the only one left with any semblance of clarity of vision – a young man (golden, triumphant, like another she once knew) climbing from the cockpit, his dark sister (Ani's jaw, Ani's nose) running to him, laughing, that smile. The world is almost entirely dark now, and she knows she will not be there to see it.
"Obi-Wan…"
She suddenly remembers.
She has to tell him. He has to know. As long as Luke and Leia have each other, they will be fine. They'll survive, and be happy in each other. Anakin will have no one, not once she's gone.
"There's good in him," she chokes, and there is. His children are proof of that, and he needs to know. Someone needs to know, someone needs to help. She can't. She doesn't want to go, but she can't stop the drowning and she can't leave it like this. "I know there's still…"
It's too much. They'll know, her children.
Luke will know.
Leia has to.
Soon, Anakin. Soon.