SPECIAL NOTE:

Chapter 14 written by AnakinPadmeSkywalker userid 1309664: (Also author of Reincarnation here on Fanfiction).

Enjoy! - CG

Padme woke up suddenly, sitting up in bed and wiping the dark tendrils of hair from her brow. The wind and rain blew torrentially outside and the poor insulation of the makeshift clay lodging in which they dwelled did little to stop the sound.

Dagobah was no Coruscant, she thought. But this, they'd told her, was the only place remote enough and Force dense enough to shield their whereabouts from the prying reach of her husband.

Perhaps she was spoiled, Padme thought. If nothing else, Anakin had provided for her and the twins very well, leaving them wanting for nothing.

Padme sighed.

Times like these were the hardest, when she'd woken up from another of her dreams, lonely and drenched in sweat. They always started out the same.

They should have been safe inside; instead, when she turned around she saw only herself, Luke, and Leia. Desperation to find Anakin filled her with fear, but even more fear because she somehow knew exactly where she was. She left the lodging, slowly at first and then running at breakneck speed until she reached the edge of the water, looking down and seeing his countenance.

The only thing that ever helped her during these nights were the twins. She needed them, desperately, to keep her grounded in reality and in hope, and told herself they needed her just as much. She missed Anakin, and they missed Anakin, but she was reminded by her recent memories that Anakin was no more--his hunger for power and control had taken over the beautiful and kind young man that once was, and the only chance at a normal life for her children was following the guidance of the remaining Jedi, however difficult.

It was still a chance, and a chance was all she had. Padme loved who Anakin used to be, and thought this was what he would have wanted. She would protect their children from the dark side. She owed him that much.

Padme approached their bedroom, cautiously, wanting to check the linens before she woke the twins. They had periodically been bedwetting since arriving on Dagobah. Although they had been mostly trained by the time she left Coruscant, the stress of separation from their old life had thrown their progress back. Guilt for what they were going through left a lead weight in her stomach, and Padme only got through it by vowing to do her best to make them forget.

She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her due to fatigue when she approached the loft and saw it empty. Rubbing them, and opening wide again, the result was still the same. Breath catching in her throat, Padme stepped to the other, thinking that sometime during the night Luke must have gotten anxious and crawled in Leia's bed but the same horror met her senses when she found that one was empty too.

Padme rushed to the small kitchen area, thinking of all the horrible possibilities that could await the twins outside the walls of their shack on a stormy night...pnemonia...water and fallen branches...predators...

The little green figure was at the sink, slowly and calmly stirring his food when she rushed in. His voice, wise and unconcerned, met her ears before she could formulate a sentence.

"Worry about them, you must not. To training, they've been taken."

Padme blinked, took a couple deep breaths. "W-what?" So Yoda knew where they were. And Mace, she noticed as she looked around their limited dwelling, was gone. She felt her fear recede, replaced by something else. "Where are they?"

"Learning the ways of the Force, the younglings are."

Padme trembled. "Out there?" she asked incredulously. She couldn't fathom the twins safe, or being able to benefit in any way on such a night. "Are you crazy? It's raining..."

"Taking care of them, Master Windu is." He had not yet turned to face her.

This couldn't be right. They hadn't even asked her, hadn't even let her know, that the twins were now outside undergoing...Jedi training? Padme started to shake with rage at the injustice of the situation. She was sure now they were safe; even so, they didn't need to be out on a night like this, with or without her. Windu's very appearance frightened them. She shuddered, wondering what her babies must be thinking now that he was their primary guardian this night.

"They're four years old..."

"Too long, four years is. Trained from birth, Jedi are." Yoda looked at her with a distinct condescension now. "Accelerated training, they must undergo."

Padme's eyebrows lowered and she threw her shoulders back in a regal manner. "You will not be taking them out again without my permission, do you understand?" She'd never considered that Yoda and Mace would want them to be trained, hadn't thought at all that they were doing anything but rescuing her from Anakin and his oppressive Empire.

Yoda was quiet for a moment, and was stirring his food; it was almost done as he turned the fire off. "A Senator, you are no longer. Your concern, this is not." There was an air of finality to his voice, and Padme knew it would be futile to argue with him. She swallowed and looked out into the dark night. It was clear Yoda was done.

Padme slowly walked back to her bedroom and closed the door, sinking down in place on her bed before she allowed her own emotion to swell. Tears, tears of pain and rage and regret, found their way down her cheeks, and she didn't even move to wipe them away, sitting numbly with her knees to her chest and her arms pulled around them.

She sat there that way, looking out her small window into the darkness, knowing that sleep wouldn't find her until the twins came back home.

Sleep shouldn't find her until the twins came back home.

Sleep was a mercy she didn't deserve, she thought with guilt, when her babies were out there somewhere, undergoing exercises of some type under the tutelage of a hideous dark fallen Jedi. They didn't ask to have her and Anakin as parents, or be born into a life on the run, so much more tumultuous than the one she had been blessed with. And what type of Jedi were these?

Guilt assailed her senses, this time for Anakin. Padme had plenty to be bitter about, and it drove her decision to leave him and run far away with his enemies, but right now she could find no hard place in her heart towards him. Every thought, every sentiment she had for him, filled her with warmth and longing and nostalgia, and in this moment she was even sorry she hadn't trusted him more. So this was what he meant when he said the Jedi would separate them, and take their children. Padme still hadn't believed him then, clinging to her stubborn idealism. Surely he'd misunderstood, she had thought, the Jedi meant no harm...

This phrase was only a hollow assurance now. She didn't know exactly what they wanted anymore. She'd sensed no warmth and no concern from them from the very first time she'd stepped on board with Mace, desperate to flee her life with Anakin.

Thoughts of Anakin, again, found her when she thought of all the places they'd run, all the trouble he'd went to, all the things he had brought her back in a desperate attempt to make her happy. More tears. He really had tried, and tried hard. She'd just never been able to make him grasp the fact that she only loved him, and not what he could do for her.

She supposed that was her failure as much as it was his.

Now she had woken from one nightmare to find herself in almost as bleak a reality. Padme lacked control in this life just as she had in the one with Anakin, except here there were no comforts and no love. She would wait, with baited breath, until an unknown time at which the twins were returned to her. And she could no more prevent Mace from taking them out again than she could fight him, because the Republic was dead, and she'd allowed their small family to be voluntarily kidnapped, and she truly had no power, anymore.

She would wait for them, looking out the stormy window in what was simply one Hell she'd traded for another.