Obi-Wan walked aimlessly down the beach, trying to escape the terrible words he'd heard a few minutes ago. His boots splashed through the thin waves washing up, his hair blowing in his face as he ran both hands through it wildly. The sky was still a beautiful blue, the sea foam still tracing pretty patterns across the sand.
And Padme, poor, broken Padme, was still standing back there, waiting for his answer.
The answer he couldn't give.
He wandered over to the steep cliff walls and brought his hands up to rest on the rough, cold stone, leaning his head down between his arms and trying to even out his breathing.
Tears fell on the sand below, fading almost instantly as they did.
He closed his eyes and listened to the ocean behind him, to the strong, soothing rhythm of the waves. In and out. In and out. Forever. No sadness. No anger. Just the back and forth of the water sweeping across the beach.
Obi-Wan began to murmur to himself, letting the ocean set the pace of the verses that had brought him comfort in nearly all of his darkest hours. "There is no emotion, there is peace..."
Despair beat against the door of his mind, a black windstorm outside, but unlike his moment of nihilism on the starfighter, he did not give in to it.
He had a purpose now. Two, actually.
Luke.
Leia.
When Padme's hand touched his shoulder he was more in control. "Obi-Wan?"
"I cannot do it, Padme. I will not do it." He stood up and turned to her, summoning every last bit of the Negotiator he had left in him. "You would be much better served if I stayed here and protected your children."
"You don't think he deserves to die? For what he did to me? For what he tried to do to my children?"
"I am not an assassin."
She looked at him, her brown eyes narrowed and the wind gusting her hair over her shoulders. "The Force brings you all the way here, to this planet and this island and me and my children, and you deny it?"
"Perhaps I was brought here to help you. Padme, Anakin… hurt you."
"Oh, I know that. You think I don't?"
"Let me try to help you. Please?" He gestured to a low, flat shelf of rock nearby, cracked in places from its long-ago fall further up the cliff, and she went to it wordlessly, sitting down next to him. There was still so much that was achingly familiar about her: the proud line of her shoulders, the delicate way she folded her hands in her lap. It was almost like his encounter with Anakin on the ship, seeing someone you knew and yet suddenly didn't, a safe harbor now infested with sharks.
It was unsettling. "May I?" he asked, dreading touching her mind once again but knowing he would never forgive himself if he didn't try.
When she said nothing, he reached out and let his hands come to rest on her face. She said nothing, her chin lifting slightly, and he willed himself to reach once again into the squirming mass of her consciousness. Under the soft, pale skin of her cheeks, hate greeted him, long-brooded upon hate and despair and fear, and he understood immediately how hopeless it was, how long her mind had been twisting in the currents of what had happened.
Gritting his teeth, he began the monumental task of trying to soothe her mind, to reconnect pieces shattered so small and fine it was like sifting through dust and shards. It seemed she was lucid and coherent largely through sheer willpower alone.
That was all that was left of Padme Amidala, brave queen of Naboo, defiant force against the rising darkness of Palpatine and the Empire. The brute force of her will.
She hated her husband.
She loved her children.
Those were the only two truths left in her mind, the only two suns that shone over the jagged dunes of her soul and the writhing, seething pain that demanded blood and fire and would be sated by nothing less. The hissing mass of it hurt Obi-Wan, lurching through their shared touch and crawling down into his soul to tear at his mind and heart with vicious teeth.
He struggled against it anyway, fighting it so long the sun moved in the sky and the shadows shifted on the ground.
Padme sat quietly, watching him with unreadable eyes, as still as the stone they sat on. One of the handmaidens came to stand out on the beach, watching cautiously from a distance, but Padme lifted her hand and let it fall again without looking away from Obi-Wan, and she retreated back into the caves.
Sweat formed on his brow and hers, and still nothing changed. Everything he tried was swallowed up like jewels tossed into a greedy, dank swamp. The sun began to sink, the late afternoon light taking on a golden hue, and Luke and Leia came out to play at one point but were quickly rushed back inside by the two handmaidens.
When his hands were shaking, fingertips twitching against her skin in a random staccato, Padme finally reached up and brushed them away. The spell broke, and he leaned back with a long, ragged gasp for air. "I told you, Obi-Wan. I know very well he hurt me. If it weren't for my children I would be dead."
He hunched over, resting his arms on his legs, trying to straighten out his own thinking and find the right words to say. "I am so sorry, Padme. I am so sorry you have been here alone."
Rubbing his temples, he looked up through his fingers at her as something clicked, something he hadn't been able to focus on during the non-stop fight with the chaos in her mind. "There… there was a thought I didn't understand." He closed his eyes, trying to pick up the idea and brush the worst of the grime off of it. "Ahsoka… Why were you thinking of her?"
Padme reached over to smooth his hair out of his face, shaking her head. "I sometimes send my handmaidens out for information, just to help me keep up on how awful the galaxy has become. Our second year here Allari brought back news of a new resistance group. A tiny one, barely organized, led by Tano. I spent months debating contacting her."
"Did you try?"
"We didn't know where she was. Still don't. And I decided I wouldn't trust her with my children anyway."
"Why?"
"Anakin's former padawan?" She gave a snort. "Why not just give them to the monster himself?"
Obi-Wan stood, wanting this conversation over, and held out his hand to help her up. "I am Anakin's former master. Why do you trust me?"
The Senator of Naboo regarded him now, the ice in her eyes so cold he felt his blood slow as she took the offered hand. "Because you owe me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You owe me for sneaking aboard my ship when I went to Mustafar. One could argue, quite easily, that you were the one that set him off."
"I will not kill him."
She pressed ahead, the hatred inside her finding a crack to bleed through. "Did Anakin learn to shirk his duty from you as well? It is as just as much your fault as his what happened. Maybe more."
"Padme…"
"You will face him and kill him, or die trying. I demand this of you as your blood debt to me and my children."
"Please…" Obi-Wan begged her.
"Say it," she commanded.
"I…"
"SAY IT."
"I will do as you ask," he whispered, loathing himself as he lied to her.
They walked back together in frigid silence, his back stiff and eyes dark, the sound of the waves the only thing left between them. He felt hollow, and angry, but he was also confused as he hung his head to look down at his boots leaving prints in the sand. A black rage was seeping in from somewhere outside himself, a heavy shadow mixing with the golden light of the sun low on the horizon.
Padme?
No. This was too powerful for her, too organized and ruthless in its focus.
Padme looked up, and he heard a different sound now over the surf and the tide starting to roll in.
After so long alone on the quiet green plains of this planet, it took Obi-Wan took a second to place the low roar even though it had been in the background for most of his life.
The throaty roar of a ship arcing far overhead.
His awful feeling clung to the tiny silhouette, a black comet smearing the deep blue dome of the sky. Both Obi-Wan and Padme stared at it as it disappeared over the cliffs, sweeping inland in a search pattern.
"Anakin," he whispered in disbelief.
Padme let out a soft, insane laugh at the name, cupping her hands over her mouth in fear and amazement. They broke out in a run back to the caves, leaving rough, ragged marks in the sand behind them.