Padmé drove the speeder back to the farm. Anakin was too defeated to focus properly, and besides that, she couldn't bear the thought of taking Shmi's limp body from his arms. He didn't need to hold on, he had the Force to help him keep balance, but as they flew, he leaned forward and rested his forehead against her back, and they moved on in silence.
He didn't say a word when the Lars family emerged from their home and stared in heavy sorrow at what they had been expecting, what they had been dreading. He disappeared at some point during the minutes that followed, full of half-asked questions and half-told explanations. She felt helpless to explain what had happened. It was too much, and she didn't know these people. Not enough to betray Anakin to them, to put to words what he had almost –
Padmé helped Beru transfer Cliegg into his chair while Owen went out to dig in what was too quickly becoming not the family plot, but the plot of dead mothers. She then squeezed Anakin's stepfather's hand and went out to search.
Anakin was a straightforward enough person in his interests that it didn't take her terribly long to find him. The scene that she stumbled upon in the garage, however, was too private a moment to be interrupted, and so she waited.
The corpse that lay on the table was bloodied and bruised, a perversion of the devoted mother who had sheltered them from the storm. A shadow of the night before, and that in itself was a perversion, too. Shmi still gazed unseeing onward, at least until her son gently placed his fingers over them, shutting them for good. Filthy mats of hair, caked with blood and sand, hid her worn face until he lovingly brushed them out of the way, tucked behind her ears. Anakin made no sound, betrayed no emotion. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, kissed both her cheeks, then for a moment simply stood there, holding her head in his palms, gently running his finger along the wounds he found there. It was only after he had brought the coarse sheet over her body once more and Anakin looked up, straight at her, that Padmé could see the wet tracks down his face.
She reached him before he met the garage floor, and he sunk into her arms.
She didn't know what part of him wouldn't allow for anything more than dry sobs, but she held him tightly as his body hitched and fell back once more. Here they were again, a treacherous part of her mind whispered, and Padmé tried not to see just how much they had come full-circle.
Words had been enough the last time, and she knew no other way.
"Remember what you told me about your mother's gods?" she said suddenly, idly stroking his golden hair. "We have gods on Naboo, as well. Such myths. My favorite… my favorite is the story of Atané and Adee. He was the brother of Kiavé, the Goddess of All, and Atané was the favorite of her many daughters. And of course they were madly in love."
At this she smiled, but the sentiment was lost on Anakin, who still had not opened his eyes. At some point while she had been talking, he had begun to cry in earnest, and so Padmé continued to hold him, running her fingers through his hair, and she talked all the while.
"I don't think it's ever said how they met," she said, "only that they loved each other fiercely. In secret. Their love was forbidden by Kiavé, who thought that the duties she had charged each of them with were too different to be reconciled even by love. Atané was the Lady of Spring, see, the herald of new life and flowers and the world's rebirth and everything really that was opposite of Adee, King of the Dead.
"Kiavé feared that the natural state of Naboo would be unbalanced if there was a union of such opposites. So she forbade them from seeing each other. She charged her youngest daughters with keeping Atané distracted and happy in the fields far away from the gates of the Dead Kingdom, where she forbade Adee from straying. The lovers could not accept this. They were too filled with passion, I suppose, too caught up in their cleverness. Atané's father had been mortal, you see, and so even though she would never age, she was still capable of human weaknesses. They staged her death at the hands, or hooves, I suppose, of a shaak, and were reunited in the Dead Kingdom."
Anakin shivered at that, visibly trying to staunch the flow of tears by merely squeezing his eyes, and when that failed, Padmé wiped the salty tracks from his cheeks to smooth through his hair, holding him close, never ceasing her story.
"But without the Lady of Spring," she whispered, "Kiavé mourned. While Adee and Atané could be together at last, Naboo was plunged into an eternal winter. Seeing the suffering caused by their love, at last Atané revealed herself to the world again. She agreed to return from the Dead Kingdom to allow the world to bloom once more, on the condition that half the year she could spend with her husband, ruling by his side."
"Why are you telling me this?" whispered Anakin suddenly, speaking for the first time since they had left the Tusken Camp.
("You're right," he finally whispered, clenching his jaw, his whole face contorted in agony. "I can't.")
Padmé smiled softly.
"It's how the ancients explained the seasons," she answered. "But more than that, it's metaphor." She stopped for a moment a chuckled to herself. "Gods, Sola would kill me if she heard me say that. She'd kill me if she heard me refer to it as mythology at all. She's very devout, you see."
"Metaphor," repeated Anakin, nudging her back on the topic of her answer.
"For grief, Ani," she said gently. "Atané is at once Queen of the Dead and Lady of Spring. It's a metaphor to remind ourselves that death and springtime love each other and can never be separated. To remember that death is inevitable, but the good things in life – happiness, new life… they're never far behind."
For a moment he considered this, closed his eyes, and then –
"It's not enough."
"No, it's not," she agreed. "But it helps. Nothing can ever replace her, nothing ever should – "
"You're not… Padmé, just stop," he said suddenly. Her mouth hung open for a moment, the words still formed on her tongue, before she closed it and watched him worriedly.
He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. He was doing this all wrong.
"I can't talk about this right now," he whispered. "It's my fault."
"How can you – "
"I was supposed to protect her. You don't understand, I was always… always supposed to… and then I left, and that was supposed to be part of it, but now I don't even know anymore."
"What don't you know?"
"ANYTHING."
Suddenly the room was very still and after a moment he turned away, embarrassed by such an outburst. Tentatively she reached out a hand and lay it to rest on his shoulder.
"I forgot her, Padmé," he said quietly. "I forgot everything I was supposed to do, everyone I promised to… and look what happened."
"That wasn't your fault."
"It was. I forgot. They told me to and I forgot."
Oh Force.
"But you don't want to blame them," she said, suddenly understanding. "That's what this is about? You can't blame them because they freed you."
Anakin looked at her straight in the eye for the first time all day.
Did they?
The question lay between them, unspoken, unasked, because neither of them knew the answer. To offer one, to unload such heavy baggage, was too frightening a prospect.
Anakin turned away again. Padmé bit her lip.
"Owen might be done by now," she said quietly. "We'll need to bury her soon."
He nodded quietly.
"And then back to Coruscant."
"And then back to Coruscant."
"But it's different now. You remember. You won't forget again."
No, he wouldn't. Anakin shook his head and closed his eyes in resolve. Just when the idea crossed Padmé's mind, however, that perhaps she should help him up off the floor, his eyes snapped open once more and he said, quite unexpectedly, "We need to go back to Mos Espa. There's someone I have to find before we leave."
"Oh?"
A fleeting grin dashed across Anakin's face, quickly replaced by a sudden worry.
"I don't know if he's still there. He could have been sold, or freed, or – " he didn't want to say it. "But we should still look. It wouldn't be right not to."
"You've lost me. Who are we talking about?"
"Do you remember – "
"Excuse me, Anakin?"
Neither of them had noticed Beru appear in the doorway. She twisted the simple band on her finger nervously, apparently feeling rather awkward about the whole situation.
"Yes?"
"Sorry to interrupt, but um, your droid has a message for you? Threepio translated, said it's from someone called Obi-Wan Kenobi?"
For a moment they had been radicals. For brief moment in time they had been a young couple like any other, grieving together, healing the old wounds of childhood. A stolen moment. Padmé wanted to tell Beru to go away, to beg Anakin not to answer the message. But the new fire was gone from his eyes, the new wounds, too, and the old determination was back with new scars. This was his job. This was his life. Stolen moments were not reality, and reality was quite literally calling them back now.