Disclaimer: Nothing related to Star Wars belongs to me. No money is being made from this ficlet. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: People complain a lot about Padmé's reaction to Anakin confessing to murdering the Tusken Raiders, as well as the romance as a whole. I decided to write this scene out from her point of view, hopefully adding some depth to it - depth that I saw in the movie. The title is a reference to a poem out of Mary Oliver's "Thirst".

The Uses of Sorrow

1 Anakin's new family were good, hospitable people, and Padmé was glad and grateful to be allowed to stay with them over night whilst Anakin searched for his mother. It was hard to imagine kind, selfless, good-hearted Shmi Skywalker being held captive by Tusken raiders. She'd been so good to Padmé and the others ten years ago, when they'd been on the run from Naboo to Coruscant and had depended on outside help. She'd sheltered a random teenage girl, a Jedi master, and a bumbling Gungan just because those people had nowhere to go and because she didn't want them to spend the night unsheltered. Shmi had been a slave, forgotten by the powers that be on Coruscant, left to fend for herself and her little son, and still, she'd been more generous and altruistic than most people Padmé knew.

Then, the pod race had happened, the little group had moved on, and all the events that unfolded pushed the fate of Shmi Skywalker to the back of Padmé's mind. Quite frankly, she'd all but forgotten about the woman. She'd had so much work to do. There'd been so much damage to repair. Over the years, Padmé had thought of the short time she'd spent on Tatooine less and less, until at some point, she'd stopped thinking about it at all. It wasn't as if she and a few others hadn't tried to enforce the Republic's anti-slavery laws more strictly in the Outer Rim, but the bureaucracy had turned out to be insurmountable. There were assorted power groups and consolidated companies who profited extensively from (often illegal) business with the Hutts, for example, and who had no interest in changing the status quo. There was a lot of money in the slave trade that didn't stay limited to the Outer Rim, and corruption pervaded every level of the republican government. It was, if Padmé were to be honest, disheartening to even try to accomplish anything.

In the end, she and her allies failed. That was one of the reasons she agreed to serve as senator when the new queen asked her to. By that point, she'd already been somewhat disillusioned, but hope sprung eternal, and Padmé prided herself on being tenacious. The truth of the matter, however, was that too many duties befell her as senator and that she was caught up in too many proposals and legislations and projects. Therefore, her attempts to end the trafficking of sapient beings fell by the roadside. Yes, she'd forgotten about Shmi Skywalker. Yes, it was shameful. Yes, it was unforgivable.

Now, as she sat with the Lars family in their lovingly decorated, dimly-lit, underground living area, she couldn't help but blame herself in part for what had happened to Anakin's mother. It was hard to imagine her as captive of Tusken raiders.

It was even harder to wait for Anakin to return.

To be perfectly candid, she had kind of forgotten about him, too. It wasn't all that surprising, surely, since they'd only known each other for a short time, even if a memorable one. The time she'd spent in that little boy's company had helped shape her into the person she was today. Before, she'd been nothing but a girl playing at politics. During the Naboo crisis, she'd found out that she could be much more than that: she'd discovered strength and determination and courage in herself that she'd feared she lacked when she was elected queen. Meeting Anakin and the Jedi had helped her grow as a person, too, because through them, she had learned to relinquish at least some control and have some faith in others and in the workings of the universe – the Force, as Master Jinn had emphatically pointed out.

Whenever Padmé thought about those days, she felt a mix of fondness and sorrow – the latter due to all the losses that had been suffered; the former because of the wonderful people she had met and the incredible experiences she had lived through. Going through that crisis and emerging victorious had made her a better queen, but it had also made her life a richer one. That was what came to mind when she remembered, as well as the faces of the ones in whose company she had spent those remarkable days.

Meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi again a decade later had been a delight. He hadn't changed much, apart from growing a beard and sporting a different haircut. He was still the same good-natured, honest, witty, pleasant man he'd been as a Padawan. Padmé had been fond of him then despite their limited interactions, and upon seeing him, she realised that she still was.

Anakin, though…well, it was hard to describe how strange it had been to run into Anakin as a grown-up. When she'd last seen him, he'd been a child of perhaps ten. Now, he was around twenty, a head taller than her, and surprisingly good-looking. That had been a bit of a shock, having her slightly fuzzy, but warm memories of the kind-hearted and selfless boy she'd known shattered by reality. Of course he wouldn't have stayed a child, but strangely enough (and foolishly enough, too), her first reaction had been to be a bit taken aback by the fact that he'd had the temerity to simply outgrow the image she had thus far cultivated of him.

His clumsy attempts at flattery had been endearing – the way he'd stared at her…well, not so much.

At first, she'd felt annoyed by him – the way he'd watch her, smile at her, try to be close to her. Then, on their flight to Naboo, she'd sat down to talk to him, to listen to him, and had ended up recognising bits and pieces of the sweet boy that she'd known ten years back. He was bubbly and excited to be on an adventure without his patient, but overbearing master. He was passionate about his beliefs. He was proud to be a Padawan. He was impatient. He was a perfectionist. He had a mean streak that manifested itself as a sarcastic and rather impish sense of humour. He was cocky. He was a bit of a show-off, despite the fact that he was also hindered by issues of insecurity. He was very intense. He was a quick thinker, but clumsy with words. He didn't know how to talk to a woman. He was brave. He was curious. He was filled with an intense desire to know everything, to master everything.

He was in love with her.

Padmé wasn't completely oblivious, meaning she'd noticed that little Anakin had developed a pre-pubescent crush on her shortly after their first meeting. It was cute. It was harmless. It made him seem vulnerable. It made her protective of him.

Now, everything was different. Anakin wasn't a little boy anymore. The childhood innocence was gone. The vulnerability was still there, but he'd hidden it behind a wall of arrogance and anger. He didn't realise this, probably, but she could see right through it. She had listened to him talk about his years as a Jedi apprentice, talk about the things he loved and the things he hated. She'd noticed that he avoided mentioning his mother. When he denied having a nightmare, she realised that what he most wanted in the world was to simply avoid pain.

That was something she could get behind.

During the Naboo crisis, Padmé had realised that she was afraid, mortally afraid, in fact, of giving up control of a situation to anyone. In the end, she understood that this was nothing more than fear of losing control of anything, especially her emotions. What if she couldn't bottle it up? What if whatever she felt won the upper hand? What if it tore her apart? She couldn't afford that. Too much depended on the work she and like-minded allies were doing to put an end to the corruption of the Senate and the militarisation of the Republic. If Padmé allowed her feelings to get out of control, she might never be able to function again.

That, too, was a way of coping with pain…well, not so much coping as hiding it in a dark corner, locking it away, and hoping that it would never come out into the light.

When Anakin confessed his love for her, it was all she could do not to just get up and leave. How was she supposed to handle this, to handle the raw onslaught of emotion radiating off of him like an infection? How was she supposed to handle the intensity, the irrationality, the desperation, the possessiveness of his feelings for her? She'd never blindly desired anything like this before. Sure, she'd wanted things, but those were mostly rational and related to her work. It could even be said that Padmé was passionate about her profession, but that was not the same thing. What he wanted from her, what she could sense he felt was the exact opposite of what her carefully constructed, functional, organised, neat, and clean world looked like. This kind of love, of desire, of raw want was chaotic and unpredictable and destructive. She wasn't a girl who was free to indulge impulses as she pleased. She was a senator. She had responsibilities. She could not lose control. She could not give in. It would put everything she had worked so hard to achieve in danger, because she didn't trust herself enough to believe that she might emerge unscathed if she allowed herself to feel such things.

And yet, here she was, sitting in the relative dark, thinking about Anakin: the sound of his voice, the silly jokes he made, the way his eyes shone with excitement when he talked about something he truly believed in, his impulsiveness, his courage, his admiration for and resentment of his master, his devotion to his mother, the pain he so valiantly suppressed at the thought of losing her.

No, Anakin was no longer a little boy, and Padmé tottered on the brink of an abyss she dared not look into, lest it look back into her.

2 It was already well into the next morning when Anakin came back to the Lars moisture farm on the speeder bike he'd borrowed. Upon hearing Owen call her from the surface, Padmé hurried up the white stone stairs into the glare of the desert suns. Even though she was shielding her eyes, her pupils didn't adjust at once to the brightness. The air was dry and the heat hit her like a hammer. Silently, breathing in the dust, she listened to the bike's hum getting louder.

That was when she saw Anakin dismount the bike; in his arms, he carried a wrapped-up body. He was pale and serious.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.

Paralysed, unable to say anything, unable to find appropriate words of consolation and support that could even come close to not sounding tired and trite, she just stood there as he walked past her and his step-brother in stony silence.

It had all been in vain. Their excursion to Tatooine had been for nothing. They'd defied Obi-Wan's orders and had not accomplished anything. This had been a waste of time. They were too late.

Too late. Shmi Skywalker was dead.

3 As Shmi's body was being prepared for funeral, Anakin retreated into the Lars's garage to repair something or other. It wasn't as if anyone blamed him. He'd held his mother in his arms as she died after a months' worth of terrible torture. Padmé had been there as Owen and Beru started cleaning up Shmi's body. She'd wanted to help, but they gently ushered her outside, asking her to have an eye on Anakin. Padmé, of course, would never impose herself on anyone, least of all on those who were grieving for a beloved family member and wanted some privacy. Therefore, she – after getting permission, of course – filled a tray with some edibles she found in the kitchen, as well as a cup of whatever that sugary red liquid was, and went to find Anakin.

He was standing at the back of the quadrangular, tech-filled chamber adjacent to the actual garage, focussed on a small regulating engine. In his hand, he held a capacitator.

Her heart picked up the pace when she entered the room. She was clasping the tray firmly. Hesitantly, in a rather timid voice she hardly recognised, she said, "I brought you something. Are you hungry?" It was a rather insipid thing to say, yes, but how else to start a conversation? She didn't know how he wanted to grieve, which made it difficult to know how she could be there for him without being overbearing. What she wanted to do was to simply put her arms around him and tell him that he wasn't alone, that he didn't have to bear the burden of his grief by himself…

…that he was loved.

Instead, she was holding a tray with food on it, standing awkwardly in the garage of people she'd just met, unsure of what she was supposed to think or say or even feel.

Anakin kept looking down at the engine. "The shifter broke," he said quietly. "Life seems so much simpler when you're fixing things. I'm good at fixing things – always was."

She carefully placed the tray down on a free working space and slowly turned to scrutinise him: his slumped shoulders, his pale face, his bloodshot eyes. Her stomach clenched. Despite the heat, she felt a cold shiver run down her spine. The image of his dead mother popped up before her mind's eye. Shmi's face had been disfigured by a nasty, infected, ragged cut. She'd been emaciated. The sand people had obviously done their best to make her life hell and keep her breathing for as long as her body could take the punishment. That was how Anakin was always going to remember his mother, now – not as the sweet, loving, warm woman she'd been in life, but as the beaten, bloody, broken shell he'd watched die.

Padmé knew that it was wrong to hate any group of people, but she couldn't help but wonder if the universe wouldn't be better off without the Tusken raiders. Tatooine humans called them animals and monsters on two legs for a reason. No, it wasn't a good thing, giving into such prejudices, but the impulse sure was tempting as she watched tall, strong, courageous Anakin fighting to keep functioning even on a basic level.

How was this in any way fair? What good did all those pompous laws the Senate passed do if they didn't reach the Outer Rim? What good was Padmé, were any of the senators, was the Supreme Chancellor if they just stood by and let good people get killed by beings that were barely more than savage animals? Politics and lobbyism and greed allowed for slavery to keep thriving, allowed for planets like Tatooine to function under the most savage of conditions, allowed for innocents to get caught up in the maelstrom and be torn apart by it. If the Republic fought slavery the way it was supposed to, Shmi Skywalker would not have been at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Now, she was dead, and nobody cared but the ones who had loved her.

Anakin's heart was broken, and there was nothing Padmé could do about it but fumble with words and try to make him understand that he was not alone in his despair, in his outrage, in his blind fury at the unfairness of it all.

He snorted derisively, said, "But I couldn't," and turned to face Padmé. His lower lip was trembling slightly. He had dark rings around his eyes. His pupils were narrowed. "Why'd she have to die? Why couldn't I save her? I know I could have!" Angrily, he turned away and stomped further back into the room.

Gingerly, mindful not to overstep boundaries, she stepped a little closer to him, saying, "Sometimes there are things no-one can fix."

"Well, I should be!" he snapped, sniffled, and nodded curtly to himself. "Someday I will be. I will be the most powerful Jedi ever!" Spinning around to face her again, he added, "I promise you. I will even learn to stop people from dying!"

It was easy to tell that he was pouring all his concentration into not weeping – and failing. Seeing him like this made her breath hitch in her throat. There was a knot there, too. How badly she wished that he could go back to being the overly enthusiastic, gleeful person he'd shown glimpses of on Naboo. But after what had happened here, after what they had failed to prevent by arriving just a little too late, she couldn't see him surreptitiously and affectionately mocking her political fervour. She couldn't see him doing some incredibly silly stunt to make her laugh. She couldn't see him playfully show off his force abilities in an attempt to seem as grown-up and impressive as a Jedi master. She couldn't see the warm side of him, the sweet vulnerability, the natural and innocent kindness that was so captivating.

What she saw was a broken, lonely boy who was desperately trampling down his sadness and helplessness in the face of grief by revving up the anger, by building up walls.

It was enough for her to want to make those who were responsible pay for making him suffer, so much so that she momentarily froze, wondering where this intensity of emotion was even coming from. Her own walls were crumbling, weren't they? Part of her that she cherished so much, that she was so proud of because she had cultivated it for so long was dying piece by piece, all because this one person had stepped back into her life.

He was suffering now, suffering so badly that it baked off of him like a fever.

She felt guilty not only for her own part in Shmi's ultimate fate, but also because her thoughts kept returning to her own whirlwind of emotions. This wasn't about her or her feelings. This was about Anakin. All of this was about Anakin. She wanted to be there for him, to listen, to understand, to support unconditionally.

Feeling helpless and lost and stupid and a little taken aback by the force of his anger, she said, "Anakin…"

But he wasn't listening. No, he was talking himself into a frenzy. Livid, he spat, "It's all Obi-Wan's fault! He's jealous! He's holding me back!" He tossed the capacitator he'd been holding across the garage. It clanked against the durasteel wall and clattered to the floor.

It wasn't easy to put her finger on it, but she got the distinct feeling that this outburst wasn't simply about his mother. She'd spent enough time with him to be able to tell that his resentment of Master Kenobi was just a façade for something he wanted to suppress badly. Obi-Wan had nothing to do with any of this. Why was Anakin bringing him up, now? That was when it dawned on her. She remembered her and Anakin's conversation in her Coruscant apartment, shortly before their departure; he'd complained that Obi-Wan thought him impatient and overly emotional.

That meant that he'd done something Obi-Wan would disapprove of and was now trying to justify it by lashing out at his mentor.

The logical conclusion was that Anakin was feeling guilty.

Padmé's stomach cramped. Her legs felt weak. All she wanted to do was take whatever was hurting Anakin away from him, to make it all right, to make him understand that it was perfectly fine to be imperfect, no matter what the Jedi had taught him. She briefly wondered whether her judgment was clouded to the point where she couldn't see him clearly anymore, but pushed the thought aside as soon as it formed in her mind. This was not about her. She should stop pushing herself into the centre of things. The universe did not revolve around Padmé Naberrie.

But she had to say something. He obviously needed to vent, and she'd be a bad friend if she didn't give him the chance to do so. Rather timidly, almost afraid of what the answer might be, she said, "What's wrong, Ani?" marvelling at her automatic use of the affectionate nickname.

He faced away from her again and braced himself against the edge of the workspace in front of him, his breathing ragged. "I…" he started, straightened up, and took a deep breath. "I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead." Turning around and slowly approaching her, he added sharply, almost daring her to be shocked, "Every single one of them." He was almost smiling now. It was a bitter, hateful expression – a grimace, a sneer intended to kill any sympathy she might be feeling for him, intended to push her away, because he obviously felt guilty, felt torn apart. "And not just the men, but the women and the children, too." Through clenched teeth, trembling, and with tears spilling down his face, he snarled, "They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals! I hate them!" Exhaling sharply, he slumped down against the computer console and buried his face in his hands.

He'd let the rage and the grief avalanche him after spending a decade suppressing his feelings, after spending a decade being taught that wanton emotions were the path to the dark side if they were allowed to run rampant. Now, in the face of the tragedy he'd feared the most, everything he'd made himself not feel was crashing down on him. He'd been blinded by all of it and had taken justice into his own hands. Was that justice?

Did it matter?

It did, and she knew it. The problem was that right now, she didn't care. This was Anakin – complicated, passionate, obstinate, brave, strong, boyish Anakin – and the last thing she wanted was for him to be in pain. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by the pure desire to just be close to him, to just share the load with him, to do what she could to make his life a better one. Of course she knew that he didn't deserve to live any more than any other person, and that making his well-being a priority was a selfish, petty thing to do, but she simply couldn't help herself. This was Anakin. He made the universe a more lively, interesting, and worthwhile place just by existing. He might not be worth more than anyone else, but he was worth more to her.

She didn't think she could handle a life that had no place for him in it.

Slowly, carefully, trying hard to keep her expression level and her breathing calm, she sat down next to him. Who were the Jedi to proclaim that being overcome by feelings was a bad thing? Many sapient species functioned differently, but humans were, for the most part, highly emotional creatures. Trampling down that fundamental part of humanity could only backfire. It had backfired monumentally in Anakin's case, and here he was, hurting and unable to cope, feeling guilty for that and for succumbing to an impulse that was only natural.

A small voice in the back of her mind reminded her that he had committed mass murder, but then she remembered Shmi's mutilated body and disfigured face. Bile shot up her throat. The people were right; Anakin was right: Tusken raiders were animals, and that tribe? They'd all been guilty. Now was not the time to question their deaths. This would lead to uncomfortable places, and Padmé didn't feel that she should go there. Anakin was heartbroken. He needed her. Anything else seemed secondary for the time being, and the own ugly sting of guilt she felt at those thoughts? Right now, it was fairly easy to brush all of it aside.

"To be angry is to be human," she told him warmly. It was. He should be allowed to grieve profusely. He should be allowed to be furious. He should be allowed to love. Maybe he should even be allowed to execute those who had tormented and murdered countless innocents, because if he didn't do it, no-one else would. The Republic was far away, and out here, the only justice a person could get was if they sought it themselves.

Again, the small voice in the back of her mind pointed out that this was vigilante justice and that two wrongs didn't make a right. Again, she quieted that voice by focussing on the torment Shmi had gone through and on the suffering Anakin was feeling.

That, too, was part of being human, wasn't it? It may not be pretty, but it was fundamentally human.

"I'm a Jedi," he said, in a small, broken, quiet and defeated tone that was so helpless, it felt like a knife to the heart. Unable to stop it, he started weeping. "I know I'm better than this."

Padmé placed one hand on his neck and ran her fingers through his short, blond hair. Maybe all she was doing was trying to find excuses for his behaviour, to make it sound palatable to herself because she didn't want to think badly of him. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he really did have good reason to do as he'd done. Maybe it had really been justice. Right now, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that Anakin was in pain, and that she would do anything in her power to make it go away. This was a dangerous path she was walking, but that didn't seem to matter, either. With a thundering heart and a knot in her throat, she took Anakin into her arms, and he clung onto her tightly. That was the only thing that seemed important: he was with her and she was with him. It felt as if they were the only two people in the universe, and strangely enough, that was a good feeling – a feeling she might even get lost in.

Realising that she wasn't even afraid anymore was probably the scariest thing she had ever experienced in her life.