this is a disclaimer.

all that you believe is here and now

"I hadn't realised," Padmé says. She sinks into a chair in the so-called command centre and strokes her greying hair out of her face.

"How bad it was?" Anakin asks dryly.

She nods. Thirteen years of Empire has wrought devastation throughout the tattered remnants of what was once the Republic and Palpatine rules with an iron, far-reaching fist, but with the way the Imperial propagandists decry Anakin Skywalker and his hidden band of rebels and rescued Jedi, anyone would be excused for thinking they have bases and equipment to rival the Imperial Fleet.

"Palpatine grows stronger in the Force with every passing year. I can almost... see the Dark Side sometimes, like a shadow creeping at the corner of my eyes."

"I think I understand," Padmé says wearily. "Coruscant has become a prison planet. You can barely turn your head without a note of it being made in someone's report."

He chuckles in spite of himself, sighs. "I know. Hiding from him is becoming increasingly impossible. I don't understand it, they all said..." he trails off, groans. "Ah, what does it matter."

It matters, Padmé thinks. For a moment there, she'd seen something in his face, his voice, an echo of the old passion, but it was quickly swept away by weariness and despair.

"You're not all-powerful, Anakin," she says suddenly.

Anakin looks up at her and tries to smile. Even that faintest curve of his mouth pulls angrily at the scar on his cheek. "I should be," he says, but there's no anger there, and no life: just regret. "For this, I should be."

Instinctively, Padmé reaches across the table to touch him, to lay her hand against his cheek and give him comfort, to let him know he's not alone, but as her palm comes closer his eyes drop to it and he stiffens, awkward beyond words. Sucks in a breath and licks at his lips.

She freezes. They stare at each other in silence, the Senator and the Jedi Master, childhood friends, almost-lovers.

Finally, Anakin forces another smile. It's lopsided, maybe even painful – what made that scar? A knife? A lightsabre? It looks shiny, smooth and raw as new burn scars often do.

"You know you and your daughters are welcome here, milady," he says. That voice of his was husky once; now it's just rough and hoarse. "For as long as you need what small help we can give you. I was... greatly saddened to learn of Clovis' death. There were many things I didn't agree with him about, but he was a good man."

Padmé draws her hand back to her lap with a little gasp at the mention of her husband, executed not three weeks ago at Palpatine's orders.

"Thank you, Master Jedi," she says softly. Just gently enough for it to be teasing, but still formal enough to hide behind.

Anakin stands up sharply and bows to her before he leaves the room, long black robes trailing behind him.

*********

"Master Skywalker?"

It takes Anakin all of ten seconds to respond to the question. He's in the mess hall, hidden in a corner with a cup of caf and his own dark thoughts: innumerable failures, inability to protect any of the people here, his most recent defeat at Palpatine's hand. At least he's still alive, as Ahsoka pointed out; but at this point that thought is scant comfort. Is he or is he not the Chosen One the Jedi Order named him so long ago?

If he is not, then who is? And if he is, why can't he fulfil the prophecy and finally defeat the Sith? What is it that he's doing wrong?

And Padmé: older, greyer, with wrinkles around her eyes where there should not have been any, not ones so deep at her age, and a bearing slumped beneath an immeasurable weight. That gesture she made earlier, reaching out to him like that... all the old fire and love and longing had jumped into his throat and tried to strangle him before he got it under control.

There is no passion; there is serenity.

It would destroy our lives.

(Besides, how very tasteful, making advances to her now, within weeks of her husband's death, with her two teenage daughters in the meagre medbay being checked over and she herself is practically trembling with exhaustion and shock. Quite the hero you are, Anakin.)

But that voice – he looks up.

"Ye – oh, you're Sola, aren't you?"

Very like Padmé, with her dark hair and delicate features. She nods and smiles, and tries bravely not to wince when he smiles back. Anakin does tend to forget about the scar, even though it's been three years, and she can't be used to people who look like he does.

(Padmé didn't even seem to see it.)

"Have a seat?" he offers.

"Thank you," Sola Naberrie Clovis says, sinking into a chair opposite him. "Well, actually, that's what I came to say – to thank you very much for your help and hospitality."

Anakin chuckles. "I don't think much of your standards if you call this place hospitable, milady," he says teasingly, and she smiles again, far wider and more naturally than before. He's proud of himself for being able to put her at ease, even disfigured as he now is.

"Nevertheless," Sola says determinedly. "I wanted to thank you. Mother has been – I expect you can imagine. And Ami even worse, she and Father were very close, and we're just..." Words fail her then. Anakin looks away while she bites at her lip very hard and blinks furiously to clear away the tears.

He wants to say the right thing – I'm glad I could help you; your mother has always been a friend to me – but instead finds himself blurting out, "How is she? Uh, Padmé, I mean."

But perhaps the question was the right thing to say, because Sola straightens a little, swallows hard. Plainly she has her mother's talent for putting other people first and losing herself in the effort.

"Disconnected," she says. "Sometimes I think... it's as if she doesn't really believe it happened. She and Father were always such good friends."

Anakin blinks. "I. Friends?"

"Oh," Sola smiles sadly. "I forget. You can't have known."

He's thoroughly puzzled now.

"They haven't – their marriage has been... something of a sham... since we were little."

Anakin feels rather like he's just been hit in the face. "I'm..." he says. "What?"

Sola shrugs and grins a bit. "Politicians, you know," she says. "Arranged marriages. Alliances cemented."

If it weren't so obvious she were teasing, Anakin thinks he would be cut to the quick. Married for political reasons to a man she didn't love when he would have given anything for a goodbye kiss from her, at the least some final acknowledgement that there had been something between them, even if they couldn't give in to it...

But yes, that's Padmé – or rather, not Padmé; Senator Amidala. Pragmatic as ever.

He's not bitter, he tells himself. Not even regretful. Facts are facts and that's the kind of person she is (had to become).

Sola's smile dies away soon enough, though. She looks pensive, upset – how old is this girl? She's the elder, so no more than sixteen. And here she's gone from a pampered Senator's daughter to an outlaw with a father executed and a mother on the verge of collapse and a little sister who is grieving too deeply to know anything else, hidden away in a poorly equipped, dimly lit underground base surrounded by grim fighter pilots and even grimmer Jedi, traumatised and with no one to turn to.

She plainly needs someone to talk to, and if Anakin can't give her family anything else, he can give her this.

Naberrie women have always been able to get him to do anything they ask. (Even walk away and forget about them.)

He makes an encouraging gesture, sends her a wave of reassurance through the Force.

"I think he probably loved her," Sola says at last. "And I think she wanted to love him. I really do. But they just... when I was little, the worst part was that they wouldn't fight. You know? She didn't care enough, maybe, for that; or not 'not enough', just not... in the right way. And now I think she feels even guiltier than ever, because he's dead and she could never be what he wanted so much for her to be. For them to be. And there's no use telling her she was never under any obligation to be what he wanted in the first place," she adds with a touch of asperity.

Anakin finds the strength to make a noise that may just pass as a chuckle. "No," he murmurs. "Padmé has never been very good at putting herself first."

Sola nods and grins at him. Some of the tension leaves her shoulders as she does so, making Anakin wonder if that little proof of how well he knows Padmé has made her trust him more.

"Tell me about your sister," he offers. "I know a thing or two about losing a parent, if you think it might help."

They talk for hours. Sola is smart, quick and kind, and very observant; she reminds Anakin of her namesake, and looks delighted when he tells her so, but her sense of humour is sharper than either her mother's or her aunt's, with an edge he appreciates, and there is a bitterness to her words every now and then that Padmé is not really capable of. She asks him about the state of the Rebellion; he answers her truthfully, and gets a precious hoard of information about Coruscant and the Imperial Court in return.

Finally, she asks about the Jedi.

"You're not allowed to marry or anything, are you?" she asks absently as he walks her back to the rooms assigned to her family.

"No," Anakin says. "Well, not theoretically. Many of the survivors of the Purges have... found comfort in each other, let's say. In light of what's happening in the galaxy I find it hard to condemn that."

Sola frowns. "Sounds to me like you'd like to," she says. "Haven't you ever been in love?"

Anakin starts, so surprised it takes him several moments to answer. "Once," he says at last. "A long time ago."

"And?"

And she was your mother, and in another life you might have been my child.

"I was a boy," he tells her. "Boys are fools. It's better this way. Jedi shouldn't love; it can be dangerous."

There is a place in the desert that the Tuskens still avoid, littered with old bones, to attest to that.

Sola shrugs. "If you say so. I think it's important."

Anakin smiles. "Let me guess: it gives your life meaning?"

Sola flushes. "There is a difference," she says with all the haughty unshakeable arrogance of youth and innocence, "between having a reason to fight and having something to fight for."

"I never thought of it that way," he admits.

"Maybe you should try being a bit more of a fool, then," she suggests impishly, and it startles him into a genuine laugh.

"Maybe I should."

She stretches up on her tiptoes to kiss his scarred cheek when they reach the rooms. "Thank you, Master Skywalker," she says. "I would... very much appreciate it if you would talk to my sister, as you offered. As I appreciate everything you've done for us so far."

Anakin nods. "Of course," he says gently. "You are most welcome."

He looks up after the door slides shut behind her and finds Padmé standing a few feet away, smiling a little.

"Milady," he says softly.

"Ani," she says. Pauses.

Anakin realises he's actually holding his damn breath. Embarrassing. He lets it out as quietly as he can, but whether or not he fools her is another question.

"I have to admit I'm a little disappointed that you can spend so much time with my daughter but not with me," she says at last, smiling a little.

Half a dozen quips come to mind, most of them dismissive, some rather vicious, all meant to defend against... well, her, this glorious lovely woman who took his heart and broke it but refused to give it back when she was done: seventeen years later and still holding the shattered pieces carelessly in the palms of her hands.

It's too soon. It's too late. It's definitely too much. Since Obi-Wan's death Ahsoka is the only person with whom he permits himself to have anything remotely resembling a friendship, let alone anything else, and now here she is, and here her daughters are, and Sola trusts him to help her sister and Padmé is disappointed that he's not spending more time with her even though they only arrived this morning, for Force's sake.

"Oh, I'm sorry, milady," he says mildly. "It's just that she's far less demanding than certain others I could name."

"Are you saying I was inconsiderate?"

"Well, you did drag me to Geonosis, Padmé."

He thinks it's the use of her first name rather than the memory of that disastrous battle that makes her smile.

One way or the other, it hits Anakin like a punch to the gut, how much he's missed the sight of it.