He isn't used to seeing her like this. She was always so sure, so full of passion. He doesn't understand the sadness that lurks in her eyes, growing stronger with each day.
Something... something other than him is breaking her heart. He clenches his prosthetic hand in useless anger. He can't stand it, that as powerful a Jedi as he is, there is nothing he can do.
Have you ever considered that we may be on the wrong side?
How could she say such a thing? How could she?
He spent the last three years risking his life fighting the Separatists in the Outer Rim. Separatist scum almost killed her more than once! How can she suggest that the enemy is right?
He wants to shake her, to scream that she stop being irrational. But he reminds himself that he loves her. He can't take out his anger on her.
"You didn't really mean it, did you?" he says. "You can't want to join the Separatists. Tell me you don't."
She remains silent for a long moment – too long, the suspicious voice in his head hisses.
Then, with a pained sigh, Padmé shakes her head from side to side. "I could never. Not even now. Not even... if things get worse. I'm not a..." Her voice breaks as if she can't bear to say the ugly word. Traitor. Her eyes are wide, like a frightened child's. "Everything I worked for... I can't believe it has come to this," she says faintly. She looks down at her hands. "I'm just... so tired of war."
"Me too," he agrees, trying to comfort her.
But she doesn't look at him. It is as if she is in a place where he cannot reach her.
Maybe it's her job, her duty. Maybe it's because he is a Jedi. Or maybe – no. Not that. She said there is no one else, and he believes her. He has to believe her.
She knows if anything happens to her, it will destroy him. He can't live without her. And yet she keeps endangering herself by going on all these high-risk diplomatic missions. Maybe, he thinks bitterly, it's about priorities.
He misses the laughter and the carefree banter from before their marriage, before the war. He misses the time when nothing was more important to her than their love. (Was there such a time? Or was it all a lie? No, she wouldn't do that to me.)
Politics has become a wall between them, and he hates it, because it isn't fair. To him nothing in the galaxy matters more than she does. For her, he would give up being a Jedi. He would give up everything he has been taught. He would even give up his life. But she... she won't give up politics for him.
"I thought I knew what I stood for," she says distantly, her usually confident voice weak as a whisper. "I believed. But after what's been happening these past months, I no longer know what to believe."
"What do you mean?" he says, because he truly has no idea what she is talking about. The chasm between them seems endless at moments like this, and he can't stand it. It makes him want to scream and destroy and kill.
"The Chancellor has been supporting policies I never imagined he would. He has changed... I don't know what to think of it."
She looks like a child again, like the girl he met on Tatooine, but that girl never looked so uncertain, not even when he caught her watching the holo message about the death toll on her planet.
"He hasn't changed!" Anakin protests. "He is the same good man who has been my friend since I was a Padawan."
"Has he always talked with you like he does now – in favor of war, of dictatorship?"
"It's not dictatorship! It's leadership, doing the right thing. Doing something, not like the Jedi Council wasting time on pointless debate instead of action."
She stares at him as though he has said something foul. "Is that what he tells you? What he has always told you?"
"Why, what's wrong?"
She looks as though he has confirmed all her worst fears. "It is?" she whispers with disbelief, and sorrow, almost infinite sorrow. "No. No... you couldn't have understood correctly."
"I'm not stupid," he says defensively. "I may not be a politician, but I'm not ignorant. Jedi have to do diplomacy too. I –"
"You must have misunderstood. He couldn't have been lying to me from the beginning. It's the war, it has changed him... It was too much for him. He was always too kind-hearted, not the type of man who should be a wartime leader. It's tragic, what it has done to him... to all of us."
He doesn't quite understand what she is taking about, but that's nothing new, between them. He tries to comfort her anyway, but she is inconsolable.
He does his best to hide his frustration. To hide how much he hates feeling useless.
"How much longer will this go on? How many more lives will be lost before it ends? Does it even matter who wins, at this point? We have... the Republic has become as bad as our enemies. I knew this is what war does, but I never thought it would happen to us."
She is crying, and the sight of her tears sends a surge of red-hot rage through him. He wipes them away from her face roughly, his hand tense with emotion he can barely contain. He wants to break something, everything.
Crying about politics. Why does it matter so much to her? Why can't she just be happy that he is here after months of absence? Why can't he be enough for her?
"I will end this war, Padmé. I will do whatever it takes."
He has to do something before his own wife turns into a traitor. She is already spouting Separatist propaganda, speaking like the enemy he has spent years fighting and killing. He won't let them take Padmé from him too. He can't, because she is the only thing that matters. He is nothing without her.
Behind her, Coruscant's sky is radiant with light and life. He glares at the lanes of traffic rushing past her window.
He holds her tightly and pretends he can't see her slipping further away from him every day. He pretends he can't feel her energy fading, as if the child in her belly is stealing her life to create its own. He pretends she hasn't become a shadow of herself since he came back.
He will end this war. No matter what it takes.
He will do it for her.
He will do it for himself, because it's taking her away from him and he can't let it. He can't lose her. Losing her means losing himself.