Chapter Fourteen

She had herself well under control by the time the chiming rang, alerting her to a visitor. She sat with her back against the headboard of her bed, hugging a pillow tightly to her chest. She knew that the curtained half-canopy held her face in shadow, and it was all for the better. She lifted her heavy eyes to the door, only briefly considering who could be beyond it. She called for the visitor to enter.

Not to her surprise, a droid—the same one from the dining room—entered, joints emitting a soft hydraulic sound as it moved.

"Miss Sarbarn, I have been sent by Lord Vader to inform you that he has left for a mission that does not require your services," the droid, his silver casing glinting from the only source of light in the room—the thin sliver coming through her window.

Padme's stomach rumbled, and it had nothing to do with hunger. If Vader was gone on a mission without her, it could only mean that it was the type that he and Palpatine had mentioned when she first received this assignment. In turn, that meant something as well. People on said mission, undoubtedly, were going to die. She felt sick, her mind and stomach churning. How did it come to this? How did life get to this point? First, the slaves, and now the wonton taking of life… Oh, her Anakin… how did he fall so far? How could she not have seen it? Had she excused too much in their relationship?

Was this all her fault?

"Miss Sarbarn, my master also bid me to inquire as to your health. Are you well?" the droid said, interrupting her grim thoughts.

She blinked and had to bite back the laugh bubbling up in her throat. That Vader would ever ask if someone was okay was baffling and hilarious to her. But the laugh died easily enough when she realized that she was supposed to be thinking of this man as her Anakin and trying to save him. Her fingers dug into the pillow she still held. She felt hot tears springing back into her eyes, and she forced herself to look away from the droid.

"Yes. I'm fine. Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all."

It was an obvious lie. But the droid thanked her nonetheless, leaving. She felt a tear roll down her cheek. She silently cursed herself for her lack of control. She had been stronger than this, in her other body. But, then again, she had also not suffered the losses she had suffered since. She bit at her bottom lip, her fingers beginning to cramp from gripping the pillow so hard. She let a sob escape as she tossed the pillow away, whirling to put her feet on the floor.

"This isn't fair," she growled to the stone below. "It isn't fair. Haven't I been through enough?"

Some part of her didn't like the way she felt at the moment, so hateful toward her old friend and his new, lovely family. Padme knew that Bail and his wife had been trying, for years, to produce a child but to no avail. But the emptiness in her womb gnawed at her.

She and Anakin had decided not to seek any information out about the status of their baby, beyond its health. A torrent of rage roared inside of her. She didn't know. She couldn't remember her last moments, so she didn't know what happened to her child. And because of this choice, she never knew its gender. For all Padme knew, this new infant girl could be her lost child. The way things were going, she might never know.

She shoved herself to her feet and yelled to the ceiling. "It's not fair, Qui-Gon! It's too much! This whole divine mission is Hell! What could I have possibly done to deserve this?"

She felt heat in her face, and she knew she had to be red in the face. She panted, her hands curled into fists at her sides, and waited for the dead Jedi to answer. Instead, after a moment, her only answer was the beep that informed her that someone was trying to contact her via commlink.

Padme loosed a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and wiped the tears from her face. She turned, pulled the comm out of the drawer, and answered the call. A palm-sized hologram of Mon Mothma appeared.

"Triana, I received your information about the slaves and the factory. It took us a bit to confirm it, but we have. Excellent work," Mothma said, though her face was grim.

Appropriately so, Padme thought. She nodded. "Thank you. I hope the information will be useful to you."

"It already has been. It's confirmed something that we have all thought true for a bit now. It's made our next course of action clear. In fact, we've already made arrangements to take care of it."

Padme arched a brow at the hologram. "I don't understand, Mothma. What exactly is this next move?"

"Well, we've suspected for a while that the real hold that Emperor has on this galaxy is his most powerful agent. It has been, um, suggested that, without him, the Emperor might be at a slight disadvantage, given the vastness of this Empire. So, we have dispatched someone to take care of this Vader problem."

Padme sunk to her bed, eyes wide. "No. No, Mon Mothma, you can't."

Now it was Mothma's turn to arch a brow. "Why not, Miss Sarbarn?"

Padme shook her head, and the feeling overwhelming her felt foreign to her after all this time. She realized, then, that Qui-Gon might be right. She didn't want anything to happen to Anakin… but there was another feeling there too. It was this one that she argued.

"It can't be done. He's too powerful. Unless you have a Jedi being sent after him, the chances of your solution working are zero. Even with a Jedi, it would be slim."

Mothma let out a humorless chuckle. "He's not immortal, Sarbarn. I know he must seem frightening to you, especially being in such close proximity to him, but he can be hurt. It's happened before."

"I know that, but that doesn't mean that he's not the most powerful killer in the galaxy. No one you could send will be able to do this. They will die, Mothma."

Mothma shook her head. "It's been done, Sarbarn. Be safe, Triana. I suspect you'll be home soon."

With that, the transmission ended, leaving Padme with a gaping mouth. Terrible things were going to happen very soon, but what frightened her the most is that she didn't know who would get the worst of it.