this is a disclaimer.

sleight of hand and twist of fate

They're married in a small ceremony three days after Anakin's proposal. Sabé and her Security Chief Typho are their only witnesses. For the first time since his childhood, Anakin isn't wearing Jedi robes. Padmé's own blue dress isn't exactly cut to hide her pregnancy; rather ruefully, she thinks that baggy just isn't going to do it anymore. She's going to have to go shopping for maternity clothes.

They don't have rings, but that hardly matters.

"You could have had a far nicer ceremony in Theed, you know," Sabé says, reprovingly, over dinner.

"With my family, you mean?" Padmé says. "I remain unconvinced I want them knowing about this at all."

"She gets moody," Anakin says seriously to Sabé. "It's the hormones."

"It's my mother," Padmé snaps. "As far as she's concerned, I'm old enough that this pregnancy oughta be my third. Possibly fourth."

Sabé grins. "I am blessed in that politics are a legitimate excuse for not having any. Apparently surgeries that save people's lives aren't."

"I think you two are being a little harsh," Anakin says. Glances from one to the other: they're both frowning at him. "Aren't you?"

"Well, you see, Nubian society is rather enthusiastic about children," Sabé explains.

Anakin grins. "And we're having two! That'll keep her happy."

Padmé laughs in spite of herself.

*********

"They wouldn't have thought anything less of you if we'd put the wedding off," Padmé whispers in the dark. It's very early in the morning, and Anakin is wrapped around her, hands cupping her belly to better feel their children shift inside her.

Strange but true: she hadn't felt truly married until they had come back to her – their – apartment, until they had torn each other's clothes off and fallen into bed, until he'd kissed her breathless and held her hips as she shifted and sat up and straddled him with desperate urgency, until they were moving together in a slow steady rhythm, until his eyes were blown with ecstasy and her body was trembling around him, until she had fallen, trembling still and panting, against his chest and had felt his arms go around her.

He's silent for a while. Then, "I would have thought less of me."

"The Holonet is going to be overflowing with sympathy for you, letting yourself get trapped like this by some scheming pregnant nobody."

"You know, marriage does actually still mean something in some parts of the galaxy," Anakin says, and she knows he means to be angry but they're both so tired that it doesn't come across that way.

Her turn to be silent. "Tell me."

"It's protection," he says softly. "Against – being sold away from each other. And for the woman, too, from... well, you can guess. Not legally of course, it wasn't a guarantee at all, but in some places, away from the Hutts especially, it was custom. It still mattered."

It was custom, he says, and Padmé shivers, feeling the weight of a thousand thousand years of sentient misery in those words.

"Thank you," she says quietly.

Almost, she can feel his frown. "For what?"

"Telling me. Trusting me." She smiles a bit, and lays a hand over his, twines their fingers together, feels that flutter inside as one of their children moves, and knows he senses it through the Force and the palms of his hands, big and heavy and callused and warm against her skin. "Protecting me."

Anakin kisses her shoulder gently. "Go to sleep, my love. You need it."

*********

Rare are the occasions when the Jedi Council is stunned into silence. Anakin thinks he should probably be recording this for posterity.

"May we ask why you've come to this decision?" Master Mundi says, struggling to contain his surprise.

Anakin smiles briefly. "I've recently been married."

The part he didn't tell Padmé: it's protection against these people, too. They have no power to dissolve a marriage. Nor can they take a Force-sensitive child for training to the Temple without consent: the mother's alone if she is unmarried and if the father is not known or not legally entered into the Registries as the child's sire, consent of both parents if they are married or if the father is legally entered.

Anakin checked to make sure.

You could hear a pin drop in the Council chambers. He doesn't quite dare turn to look at Obi-Wan, but his former Master's Force sense is a mess of resignation and understanding and a distinct lack of surprise and a streak of something like pride.

Master Yoda sighs. "Knew, I did, that such an outcome, we might face."

"Surely something can be done," Master Tin says. "The boy is the Chosen One, after all."

"The boy has broken the Code," Master Windu says harshly. Is there condemnation there, or just relief that such a troublesome part of the Order has been so neatly removed?

Like operating out a tumour.

Never before has Anakin's self-control slid away so quickly in these chambers.

"The boy is standing in front of you," he says, voice hard with anger. "The boy is sick and tired of being talked over and treated like a lightsabre that needs careful maintenance!"

"As a Jedi, you are nothing more than a weapon of the Living Force," Windu says, and Anakin realises what he sees in him: triumph. The man is triumphant.

He thinks he's beaten Anakin.

"If you truly believe that then you are a fool," Anakin says. He might as well have slapped Windu in the face. "How can you hope to protect the people of this galaxy if you've got nothing but contempt for the way they live? If you shut yourselves away –"

"How dare you –"

"Permit him to speak you will," Yoda says firmly. "Hear this, we shall. His right it is, if to leave his intention still is."

"You're damn right it is," Anakin says sharply. "You wanna hear what I think, about your glorious Order? I think you're afraid, Masters. I think you're afraid of yourselves, of your emotions, of all the things out there in the galaxy you don't understand." He draws a breath. "I came here with Qui-Gon Jinn because I wanted power – the power to protect and to help the people who couldn't do that for themselves. I had this – this dream that Jedi were brave, and noble, and good, and that they helped you, no matter what. That their only duty was to go out there into the galaxy and save the people who needed it." Savage grin. "I found a bunch of self-righteous navel-gazing politicians."

The contempt in his voice when he speaks the last word is indescribable.

Another breath. "Don't worry about me, Masters. I'm not about to go the way of Count Dooku. But I'm done being the poster boy for a set of outdated beliefs and a way of life I won't ever think is right. Ever."

He doesn't bother to bow before he leaves.

*********

The nightmares come back that night: Padmé finds him in the kitchen the next morning, sitting on the floor with a cold cup of something between his hands.

"There are drugs and things, you know," she says for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, Anakin shakes his head no, mouth set, eyes haunted. He'll see the doctors if she pushes him, and sometimes even when she doesn't, but he won't take meds.

In anyone else, it would be a pride thing, but she senses it's different with Anakin. There's a genuine fear there, and she suspects she knows what it is: loss of control. Putting himself so completely in the hands of another being that not even his mind would be his own anymore.

She can respect that fear. He's had enough of his dignity stripped away from him over the years.

*********

The galaxy finds out that Anakin Skywalker has left the Jedi Order via a rather awkward press conference given by the Temple's official PR speaker. Padmé watches the whole thing on the Holonet in the doctor's lounge at the medcentre, feeling delightfully wicked for getting so much enjoyment out of the poor man's misery.

"Um. Well. No, General Kenobi will be leading the attack on his own. Anakin Skywalker is no longer a member of this Order."

The uproar is instantaneous.

"Well, he broke the Code. No, no, there were no crimes involved..."

Padmé snickers into her cup of caf.

"You know, I heard a rumour once that you were friends with him," Liran says, coming up beside her. He's wearing a calculating look and a faintly teasing grin.

"Oh, really?"

"Performed the surgery on his arm. Doesn't he drop by here to check on the new synthskin treatments every now and then? And of course there's Tennar. Saw Skywalker having caf with him just the other day. Excellent shrink."

"I think he prefers psychologist."

"You would know. He married your university roommate."

"He did," Padmé agrees, keeping her face expressionless. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to know if the Boss is in today?"

Liran sighs, looking woeful and put-upon. "And all I wanted from you was an introduction to the Hero With No Fear."

"The simple fact of the matter is, Anakin Skywalker got married," the Temple speaker snaps at last in response to some obnoxious question or other. Plainly, even Jedi PR reps run out of patience sometimes.

Liran's jaw is hanging open.

"It isn't the introduction I would object to," Padmé says, putting on her most dignified look. "It's the opportunity you'd think it presented."

She waits until she's out of the room and halfway down the corridor before she starts to smirk, and then finds, somewhat to her own surprise, that she barely stops for the rest of the day.

Padmé hadn't realised quite how much she wanted this.

*********

Obi-Wan is in the kitchen with Anakin when she gets back that evening. He stands up with a smile when he sees her.

"Doctor Naberrie. Or did you decide to take his name? I advise against it, it'll only feed his ego."

Padmé laughs and kisses his cheek. "I think I can handle his ego just fine, Master Kenobi."

"Please. Obi-Wan."

"Padmé. After all, we're family now."

She says it with a smile and a firm look, and for a moment Obi-Wan looks startled, but then he smiles back, a little hesitantly, as if it's not something he's used to –

No, he's used to having it. He's just not used to admitting to himself that he does.

"Yes, I suppose we are."

Padmé shoots her husband a grin. "You didn't have a fight, did you?"

"Of course not," Anakin says, grinning back. "At least, not by our standards. The, uh, the living room is still a little..."

"Oh, for Force's sake," Obi-Wan objects. "I'm not here to make a bad impression on her, you know. I just came to drop off Artoo," he explains to Padmé, "and the rest of Ani's clutter, of course."

Padmé raises her eyebrows. "I didn't realise he had clutter. I thought Jedi disapproved of clutter."

"As a rule," Obi-Wan agrees. "I really should be going, Padmé, Anakin."

Anakin stands up to shake hands with him, smiling faintly. "I – uh. I'm sorry I won't be there to watch your back."

Obi-Wan frowns slightly. "I don't think I am," he admits. "I think – you should be here. I sense it's the right decision, Anakin. And I am very proud of you for making it."

Anakin smiles, pleased and proud and grateful. He meets Padmé's eyes and she touches a hand to her stomach; he nods briefly.

"There's something else," he says quietly to his brother.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, curious.

"Padmé's pregnant. We're having twins."

Obi-Wan goes from amazed to delighted to horrified in about three seconds flat.

"Oh, Force," he says. "I hope you won't ever expect me to babysit, Anakin, once was enough! And two of them! From scratch this time!"

Padmé bursts out laughing and insists on pouring them both a celebratory drink, delaying Obi-Wan's departure by over an hour.

*********

"Oh, I almost forgot," Anakin says sleepily as she settles into his arms that night. He loves to sleep naked, but Padmé is in a thin nightdress that's doing a lovely job of hugging all her new curves, and she's fairly certain that they, and the slinky material that's going to be pressed against his skin, will have him wide awake in not very long at all.

"Hmm?" she says absently, making sure she's shifting against him in all the right ways.

"The Holonet managed to find out who my mystery wife was just before Obi-Wan came over. And your mother's been comming all evening."

Padmé freezes up, groans, struggles to get upright again. "My mother... oh Force, we shoulda told them right away... aah. All right. I'm going to go..."

But Anakin's hands slide over her hips from behind before she can leave their bed, pulling her backwards. They brush over the hem of her nightdress interestedly before moving further along, slipping up to trace circles around her knees, once twice, fingertips tracing the jagged scar on her left knee that she picked up during the Battle of Naboo, and then they travel back the way they came, caressing the soft skin of her inner thighs, gently pushing them apart. His breath is warm on the side of her neck and somehow he's moved so that she's sitting between his legs with her back to his chest and her head's falling back against his shoulder of its own accord and her fingers are flexing against the taut muscle of his thighs while his hands...

Oh, yes. Wide awake.

"No, you're not," he says huskily.

No, she's not.

*********

Padmé calls in sick to work the next day and spends most of it in front of the Holonet, staring in mounting horror at the media circus that has become her marriage – her whole life, in fact. The reporters aren't allowed inside the apartment building, but there are a good few of them camped out front, and even more on their way to Theed, presumably, and her mother has been on the commlink three times already, mostly just to wail and gnash her teeth, Padmé thinks viciously, which isn't entirely fair, because, three years of a secret relationship with and now a semi-secret wedding to the most famous man in the galaxy and babies on the way, but she's pregnant and irritable and her whole life has just been turned upside down, she's allowed to be nasty about her mother in the privacy of her own mind.

"I don't understand why they insist on dropping all these hints that you're some kind of calculating gold-digger," Anakin says, frustrated, halfway through the afternoon. "I'm not exactly the richest man in the galaxy here. Jedi don't have possessions."

Of course, he's sitting on the floor elbow-deep in that astromech of his as he speaks, and the kitchen table is piled with datapads and flimsis that Obi-Wan brought over yesterday. Padmé had a poke through them that morning while he was still asleep: everything from old study assignments to research of his own to starship designs to lightsabre specs (she'd always thought you were supposed to build those by instinct and the seat of your pants or something) to a journal she doesn't stoop to reading, even though she'd like to.

There's a half-formed plan in the back of her mind that involves getting him to sell the starship designs to one of the big companies and make a career out of them. Anakin should spend his life doing something he loves, and he loves to fly.

*********

Interestingly, the reporters are gone when Padmé leaves for work the next morning. She wants to worry about it, but decides there are more important things.

Besides, she's grateful she doesn't have to deal with them.

Anakin's still asleep. She brushes a stray curl off his forehead and touches her fingertips to his lips in farewell before she goes, smiling to herself. Obi-Wan was right: this was the right decision for him. Padmé had been worried – about Anakin, about the Republic, about the war and his sense of duty and a thousand other things.

But she has rarely seen him look so untroubled, not since Naboo, that first week at Varykino before the nightmares about his mother started again, when he kissed her in the kitchen while Sabé was unpacking upstairs and Padmé tilted her head back and leaned into him, sliding her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck and kissing him back with equal fervour and a lot more finesse (but oh, how eagerly he'd learned from her) and imagined – this.

*********

It's midmorning when Anakin is woken by the door chime. He drags himself out of bed and tugs his pants on before grabbing his lightsabre, fully intending to wreak havoc on a few holocameras before he crawls back under the covers, and opens the front door only to come face to face with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

Anakin glances down at the sabre in his hand and feels like an idiot.

"Chancellor!"

Palpatine looks amused, eyes twinkling. "My dear boy. I take it you weren't expecting me?"

Anakin grins at him. "I have to get my practice in where I can these days."

The Chancellor chuckles, same friendly understanding as ever. "Of course, of course. Would you mind –"

He gestures towards Anakin, who realises he's blocking the doorway to the apartment as if Palpatine were the enemy, and jumps aside, scratching at the back of his head ruefully.

"If you'll just wait in the kitchen, sir, and let me grab a shirt..."

"It's a charming apartment, Anakin," Palpatine calls after him as he ducks into the bedroom.

"It's entirely Padmé's," Anakin calls back. "I'm just the lodger."

"Naturally," Palpatine murmurs.

"Caf?" Anakin asks. "Breakfast, even? It turns out pregnancy and bacon sandwiches go really well together as far as my wife is concerned."

He can't quite keep the pride out of his voice when he says my wife. For three years and more he's been feeling progressively more of a fool and a failure that he hasn't been able to give her what she deserves, and finally he's in a position to start correcting that.

"Caf will be fine, thank you," Palpatine says. "Is she not here, your wife? I would very much like to meet her."

"At work."

"The medcentre, of course. She intends to stay there after the child is born?"

"Well, it's not like the Jedi are paying me a pension," Anakin says ruefully. "To be honest we haven't quite figured out how we're going to manage the working thing yet – she earns enough that technically I don't have to, but... I like to work. And I'd feel like a sponger if I didn't."

Palpatine nods. "I think she might argue with that definition. She plainly loves you."

Anakin sets the cups of caf down on the table and drops into the chair opposite his friend. "Of course. But I –" he sighs. "On Tatooine, you provide for the people you love. Even if they might not need it in that exact moment. And I just can't take it for granted that – no unforeseen catastrophes will occur. Not that I'm expecting – ah. I don't even really know."

"It's quite natural to want to protect them," Palpatine assures him. "To want to do everything you can to ensure their safety, no matter what."

Anakin smiles and nods, takes a few sips and feels himself begin to wake up properly. "But you didn't come here to talk about my future income, did you, sir?"

"Hmm," Palpatine says, frowning a little into his own cup. "Well, actually, my boy, in a sense I did."

Then he can hobble down here and ask me himself, Anakin told Padmé when she asked what would happen if the Chancellor wanted him to retain his commission in the Army. A chill chases down his spine.

"Sir?"

"I'm here to ask for your help, Anakin," Palpatine says quietly. Almost grimly, in fact. "I know you have been out of the loop, so to speak, politically, but things are in motion now. Peace is becoming ever more of a possibility, especially since Dooku's death in your duel. But I'm afraid that several of my political enemies are using the last days of the war to make a grab for power while the Republic is still unstable, before any overtures can even be made towards the Separatist leadership."

"I... see," Anakin says slowly, and wonders, for the first time in all the thirteen years he's been friends with this man, what in Kessel the point of this conversation is. He's impatient, he realises, with all this beating around the bush; a thought never before associated with Palpatine.

With the Order, yes. With the Council. Sometimes even with Obi-Wan. But Palpatine, of all people?

"I wonder if you do," Palpatine says. "Anakin, my boy, I need all the allies I can get – the Republic needs all the allies she can get – if we are to end this war at last and stabilise the galaxy."

"That makes sense."

Palpatine nods slowly. Anakin gets the impression that his non-committal answers aren't quite what the other man was expecting. Ruefully, he thinks he had much more of a temper the last time they sat down to talk. Of course, that was back when he was still expected to care, to do something about it, to worry about the whole galaxy instead of just his family.

"I wonder if you realise how much confidence you inspire in people?" Palpatine asks. "How much of a symbol of goodness, of right, that you've become? The Hero With No Fear is a very powerful ally in these troubled times, Anakin. You have almost more power with the people of the Republic than I do. Your support would lend any new government instant legitimacy with them."

"New government?" Anakin says quietly. "But surely we're talking about the restoration of the old one?"

Padmé's lectures about Opposition politics have plainly infected him.

Palpatine waves a hand. "Eventually, yes," he says. "The galaxy is teetering on the brink at the moment, Anakin. Committees alone will not bring it back from the edge."

Anakin nods slowly, waits for him to continue.

"I want you to return to service," Palpatine continues, watching him closely. "I want you on my side, Anakin. You would retain your old rank of General – actually, you would probably be given a promotion. You would have authority to oversee many of the rest of the command staff – to implement your own changes as you think them necessary. More than once you've spoken to me about how excessive bureaucracy and the timidity of some officials have endangered lives – here is your chance to end that. To make a difference, not just to the soldiers, but to the galaxy. With your help, I could re-establish the control I need to begin meaningful negotiations with the Separatists."

For a moment, Anakin wants to say yes. The list of things that need changing – improving – in the Grand Army of the Republic is a long one, and he could do it: no more delayed supply ships because the money's not there, no more bureaucratic wrangling with this office and that, pristine equipment, better food for the men. A real chance to help force along the peace process...

Force.

The Force.

Is this what it wants from him?

For what is perhaps the first time in his adult life, Anakin Skywalker pauses before he makes a decision. Actually thinks it through, methodical as he can be, he who thinks with his gut and his instinct rather than his brain.

If the peace process is successful, what need for the Army at all?

And what would he be, in this new order: a bureaucrat himself? A field commander still? The thought makes him shiver. To go back to that, back to the killing fields and the mud and the rain that freezes your skin and soaks through your clothes, leaving them heavy and wet and chafing, tiny little inconveniences that mean more than all the deaths and the mutilations and the children's toys in the rubble and that poor woman at Christophsis who'd put the muzzle of the blaster in her mouth and pulled the trigger right in front of him after her rape at the hands of a Separatist mercenary put together because the little things you can grasp and hate and understand but those others are just too much –

Anakin's hands are clenched into fists, pressing into his thighs. He closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing, on releasing it all into the Force.

It takes a while.

Palpatine watches him through hooded eyes as he struggles back to Coruscant, not saying a word. In a way, it's what he needs, that silence, and in a way it isn't, because Padmé always puts her arms around him and tries her best to help and comfort him. Anakin has never done this in front of anyone but her before, not really, and suddenly he wants his friend gone with a fervour that surprises him, wants him out of this apartment and out of his life, and may he take his sithing war with him and never look back.

"I don't believe I can," he says at last. "I'm sorry, Chancellor."

Is that anger? A flash of temper, exasperation?

"You have a duty, Anakin, to the Republic. To the people of the Republic, who still need you."

"I have a duty to my wife," Anakin says too softly.

The 501st could have told their Chancellor that Anakin Skywalker is only barely beginning to get truly dangerous when he becomes so perfectly calm.

"And your friendship with me?"

"I value it, I always have."

"But not as much as this." Palpatine casts a glance around the apartment. By his standards, it's just about primitive. Too small, too messy.

"Naturally not."

Why won't he understand? Can't he see what he's doing, acting just the way the Order always did, demanding that Anakin choose one way or another, refusing to believe that it's possible to compromise? It doesn't have to be this way: Anakin doesn't want to betray his friend, but he can't give him everything he is, not anymore, and if he won't accept less, if he insists on dealing in absolutes like this...

They lock gazes over the table top. Anakin briefly wonders if Palpatine's political opponents have seen this steel in him always, or if it's a new development, a mask coming down that only he has ever seen. It doesn't matter.

The Chancellor is his friend, but Padmé is his family.

Odd, but Palpatine can't seem to hold his gaze for too long, as if there's something there that hurts him. That he cannot stand against.

"I see you're determined," he says, and stands up. "I'm sorry for that."

Anakin stands up as well, and his eye catches on something lying on the table between their caf cups: his lightsabre.

(His mother would probably have called it a sign.)

"I'm not," he says honestly, and there it is again, that flash of temper.

In the artificial light of the kitchen, Palpatine's eyes look almost yellow.

*********

A strange sort of madness seems to take the lower levels that afternoon, and the medcentre is overflowing with patient from one moment to the next. Padmé performs six major surgeries, sleeps for a total of nine hours on the couch in the doctor's lounge over a period of two days, disinfects and bandages countless blaster wounds, sets two broken arms and sits in on one of Liran's surgeries because her grasp of Rodian anatomy has never been as good as she'd like it to be, and he's the expert.

Once a girl with curlers in her hair and a burn scar up her leg where she'd crawled out of the wreckage of her apartment building after a gang set it on fire pokes at her shoulder interestedly.

"I've seen you before," she announces.

"I doubt that," Padmé says, smiling. "I don't get out of this place much." She winks at her.

But the girl is not to be deterred. "Yeah, I have," she insists. "You're Anakin Skywalker's wife."

Padmé sucks in a breath, surprised at being addressed that way, and then breaks into a broad grin. "Yes, I am," she says.

The girl glares at her. "I decided not to like you," she says. "I wanted to marry him."

Padmé ruffles her hair, still grinning. "Oh, I'm sorry, little one. But he's mine, and no one else is having him."

*********

When she gets home at last (the Boss finally caught on to that whole pregnancy thing that Padmé's been trying to talk to her about for the last three weeks, ordered her off the premises demanding what she thought she was doing still working so much and agreed to Padmé taking her six-month maternity leave starting tomorrow and oh, by the way, she has excellent taste in men. Padmé smirked and told her she knew that already.), the apartment is empty, and something – something feels wrong.

Anakin left her a holo on the kitchen table.

"Love, I have to go to the Chancellor's offices, something's happening – Obi-Wan's here, he needs me. Listen, don't worry about anything, OK? I will see you soon. I adore you, Padmé."

It's the emphasis he puts on will that tips her off to the fact that he thinks there's a good chance he's not coming back at all.

She leaves the apartment at a run.

*********

Galactic City is in absolute chaos. There are people everywhere, panic and screaming, soldiers trying desperately to restore order, broken glass on the sidewalks, a crashed speeder, fights breaking out. Padmé runs from the shuttle station through the streets to Senate Plaza, pushing through the crowds and dodging the soldiers. There's smoke rising from the Senate Building, and the troopers are herding people away from the Plaza in an effort to get the Building evacuated. Padmé spares a brief thought for Sabé, but no more.

She has to get to Anakin. There's an urgency thrumming in her blood, pounding in her head; where this conviction that he needs her has come from, she doesn't know, but it's there, pushing her on. Is this what it feels like to feel the Force? Who knows. Who cares? He needs her. That's enough.

Padmé pushes past a group of shaken-looking Senatorial aides and aims for the Rotunda entrance, but a trooper grabs her arm.

"Madam, the building is being evacuated – you have to leave, now!"

"My husband is in there," Padmé snarls, trying to shake his hand off her arm. His Legion markings catch her eye, and she wonders –

"I understand, madam, but I can't permit you to go in there!"

"You're a member of the 501st," she says.

He nods, uncertain.

"Anakin Skywalker was your commanding officer."

He pulls his helmet off with his free hand. "But you're that his wife – that doctor."

"Padmé Skywalker, yes. Captain..."

"Rex, ma'am. The General..."

"He needs me. He needs my help. Please, Captain. He's spoken of you often – called you a friend..."

Rex glances around, looking uncertain. Then he sighs. "Trust General Skywalker to get me into trouble even after he's left the damn Army," he says ruefully. "This way, ma'am!"

"You're coming with me?"

Rex gives her a piercing look. "I'm not about to let Anakin Skywalker's pregnant wife walk into that place on her own."

Padmé smiles. "Thank you, Captain. Can you tell me what's going on?" They're hurrying through the crowds now, troopers parting for Rex easily and without question. Padmé gets a few curious looks, and she wonders if they recognise her.

"I don't know for sure," Rex admits. "But a little over an hour ago several members of the Jedi Council arrived to speak to Chancellor Palpatine. About twenty minutes after that, Generals Skywalker and Kenobi were seen running towards the Chancellor's offices, and at around the time they would have reached there, the signal for the evacuation of the Senate Rotunda was given. It's been chaos ever since."

Somehow, they've gotten inside the building, rushing along an empty corridor carpeted in red and brown. There's a set of turbolifts at the other end, a few hundred yards away, and more corridors branching off left and right at regular intervals.

"Leads to the docking bays," Rex says briefly. "Maintenance, catering and so on got their offices down here. Those turbolifts lead directly to the Chancellor's floor – this entrance began life as an evacuation route."

"Thank you, Captain," Padmé says again as they reach the lifts. She presses a hand to her belly as the twins kick at her, anxious, worried. "Thank you so much."

Rex glances down at her pregnant stomach, mouth twitching in a faint smile. "Congratulations, by the way," he says, and she manages a laugh.

The lift ride is taken in silence. Rex checks his blaster, hands sure and steady, and Padmé slumps against the wall and struggles to get her breath back and calm the twins down, stroking over her belly as they twist inside her. Can they feel what's happening to their father? Are they the ones impressing this need to get to Anakin on her, this knowledge that he needs her now?

"The smoke," she says suddenly. "I saw smoke."

Rex glances at her sideways. "It was coming from the windows of the Chancellor's offices."

Padmé gasps. She wants to cry, to scream, to break down in tears, to grab a blaster of her own and shoot someone, anyone, to demand an explanation of whoever's in authority here – the Force, the Jedi Council, the Chancellor, she doesn't know.

But she swore an oath, and she discarded panic long years ago, and Anakin has never seen her cry, not from fear and weakness. She won't start now.

The Chancellor's secretary and aides have all fled. The doors to his offices are shut; Rex opens them by methods Padmé strongly suspects are highly illegal.

Stepping inside is like being punched in the gut. Automatically, training and practise take over: lightsabre wound. Death instantaneous. Decapitation. Another lightsabre wound, nothing she can do. Rigor mortis sets in quickly in Nautolans. The wind rushing through the antechamber carries a stench of ozone and old blood.

The office of the Supreme Chancellor is in shambles. Furniture overturned, art destroyed, the body of Jedi Master Mace Windu at her feet. Padmé checks his pulse, catalogues his injuries mechanically, nods at Rex. Call someone, he's still alive.

Obi-Wan is slumped on the dais, by the Chancellor's heavy desk. There's blood on his forehead and a faint trembling in his limbs, unconscious, cardiac and respiratory arrest – she can't see any electrical burns, but that's electrocution just the same, and Padmé turns; Rex is still bent by Master Windu.

"Rex! CPR, quick." She leaves Obi-Wan in his capable hands and comes around the corner of the desk.

Anakin is sprawled on the floor in front of her, between desk and window. Beyond him, there's a pile of robes and what looks like the charred remains of a human corpse, but Padmé barely registers it. Her husband is lying on his back, lightsabre fallen from his outflung right hand, breathing harsh and irregular, eyes closed. There's heavy bruising around his neck, consistent with attempted strangulation, and deep angry wounds around his left eye as if something has tried to scratch it out. There's a lightsabre wound in his left arm and another in his right thigh – right hip too – but the one that worries Padmé the most is the one in his left side that the blood is leaking out of.

Idiot already yanked the knife out.

She's kneeling over him with her hands pressed to his side to stem the bleeding when his eyes flutter open.

"Padmé."

"Don't you know better than to go pulling knives out of wounds like that?" she demands. "No, stay still. Obi-Wan is gonna be fine. Master Windu might be a little more touch and go, that was a nasty head wound. You're gonna be in bacta for a week, genius. And you scarred that pretty face."

"Married me for my looks?" he rasps, chokes and coughs. There's no blood; his lungs are still intact. Internal bleeding, trauma, exhaustion, possibly also electrocution like Obi-Wan.

"They were a major factor, yes," she says. "Along with the penthouse and the private fortune."

She thinks the cough was meant to be a laugh. Anakin's eyes are falling shut again; there are shouts in the background, men swarming into the offices, Obi-Wan being lifted on a stretcher, a medic coming up beside her.

"Anakin," Padmé says. "Look at me, my love. That's it. You're going to be fine. Understand? Just hold on. Hold on for me. For Luke and Leia."

He meets her eyes and nods.