Chapter 25. Survivors
"Say something."
Anakin lay acquiescently, if not patiently, where he had been ordered to on the comfortable divan in Padmé's stateroom on the Yacht. Stern and silent, Padmé hunched over him, her soft hair pooling on his belly, while over and over again her fingers traced lines of bruising and scorched flesh on the skin of his chest and arms . He shivered under her touch. It wasn't from pain; he didn't care much about that, and besides, the salves had taken care of most of it.
It was her silence, the accusation in her fingertips, that made him quake.
"Padmé, please say something. Aren't you happy to see me?"
The shimmering oval of her face was shadowed by her hair; the sweep of her lashes hid her eyes, which looked only at the mottled flesh beneath her hand. The third time she traced the same purpling welt down his side and along his hip he couldn't bear it any longer; he sat up and reached for her roughly, ignoring the dizziness that mocked his sudden movement. Even locked tightly in his embrace, Padmé drooped against him while her hands explored the new landscape on his back. Anakin tried to bury his face in her neck, and when that didn't satisfy, he worked his way up to her mouth, desperate to pull a breath of life and passion out of her quiet melancholy. She barely responded, sharpening his distress.
"Padmé…"
"Roll over. I want to look at your back."
"You've seen my back already." Rebellious, he lay back down on it, ignoring the new throb of pain, pulling her down with him. "That's enough now." Feeling utterly abandoned in the face of her inwardness, Anakin could only hold her helplessly against his chest, wishing for the blast of fury that had scorched him when he had first arrived. How much better to be consumed in her flame than to be silently mourned!
"Padmé," he protested, his voice beginning to fray, "if you don't stop this right now you'll really have something to mourn. I can survive duels and wars and any number of crash landings, but I cannot survive this silent misery."
Her weight on his chest increased, as if she were draining into him.
"I thought you were dead," she said at last.
"That was the whole point."
She pulled away from his grasp and lifted her face to his, a hand's breadth from his nose. "You don't understand. I thought you were dead."
They stared at one another.
"With any luck," Anakin said obstinately, "a great many people will think that."
"I thought you were gone from me. Forever."
A kind of dim comprehension began to penetrate Anakin's general exasperation. She had honestly, truly, genuinely believed him dead. The idea was outrageous.
"You should have known better!"
"What?" Padmé sat back sharply, making him wince. "How can you say that?" She gave his shoulders a furious shake, making him wince again. Ow. That was something, anyway. At least she was coming back to life.
"Padmé, did you stop for one moment to feel whether it was true?"
"I was told straight out!" "Captain Typho… Dormé …" The very air around her spat with fury. That was much better.
"Did you? Or did you just believe what you were told?"
"What else could I have done? It seemed so final… they were so convinced…"
"It doesn't matter what other people think or know. It only matters what you know. I promise you, Padmé, if that day ever comes, you will know for yourself that I'm gone, in the same way that nothing will ever convince me of your death unless I experience it for myself. "
"You're talking about the Force again," she sulked.
"No, I'm not. I learned my lesson on Naboo, when I couldn't find you anywhere in the Force, so I began to believe that you were gone. But you weren't." He braved her sputtering aura until they were nose to nose. "Never again. This is beyond the Force. You are part of me. I will know when you are gone the way I knew when I lost my arm. Worse, even. I will feel it as though someone cut out this... " He grabbed her hand and pressed it against his heart. "The same is true for you, I know it is."
A whole series of heartbeats pulsed under her hand until Padmé finally ventured, "You did this on purpose? This was part of a plan?"
"Let's just say the opportunity and the idea appeared at the same time. Organa's ship got in trouble all by itself, but I could have saved the blastboat, if I'd tried." Irritably he added, "I thought you'd be mad at me about that, not about showing up alive!"
"You were dead! "
"I just explained that!"
Padmé looked daggers at him, but her hand stayed pressed against his heart. The atmosphere around her grew more pliant. Her lips parted a little, enough for Anakin to decide that it was time for a serious, no-holds-barred kiss. He had fought his way to her through storm and fire, and for his trouble, he hadn't been properly and appreciatively kissed since he'd arrived.
"Just how… how dead do you want to be?" Padmé asked as he was about to pounce.
Anakin hesitated. "What do you mean, how dead?"
"Are we supposed to plan your ceremony of passing? Announce it over the Holonet? Do I have to weep and wail in public, and wear mourning clothes for a year?" Padmé collapsed dramatically against his shoulder, dashing Anakin's hopes for immediate succor. "Besides, quite a lot of people know that you're alive… Captain Typho, Sabé, Dormé… oh. " A thought struck her. "You should know that V'ar is here…"
"I know. I've felt her presence, and I guarantee you that she has felt mine. I was going to ask you about that." Anakin found that he had lost interest in the subject of death, of V'ar, or any other business they might discuss. He only cared about being kissed. "Later." His eager mouth found the nearest part of Padmé, which happened to be her hair. He buried his face in it. She didn't move away, so he moved on to her temple. She nestled into his neck, leaving him free to nuzzle his way down to her cheek.
"She just showed up. She said she had made you a promise to look after me."
"Do we have to talk about this right now?" The more Padmé relaxed into his arms, the less he wanted to think about anything but the heat of her skin, the curve of her body against his, and the singular brightness in the Force that was hers alone.
… curves… brightness…
… wait a minute!…
Padmé yelped in surprise when, in a single breathless moment, their positions reversed. Suddenly she lay where he had lain, while Anakin sat over her, running his hands over her abdomen and hips with rapt attention. "Look at this!" he crowed. "New curves!"
Padmé propped herself up on her elbows to watch. "I told you that once I started to show, it would go fast."
"I haven't been gone that long, but there's such a difference…" He rested his face on the firm low mound of her belly, listening and feeling with all of his senses for the bright energy pulse within. It was vivid, but elusive. Trying to make a connection with it was like dipping fingers into a bright stream to capture the sunlight that lay on top of the water. As soon as he had it in his grasp, it was gone. He chased the tantalizing sparkle, only to have it slip away again.
"Where are you, Anakin? Padmé prompted gently, bringing him back from far away. "You got lost."
"Trying to have a conversation with…" It was there, just beyond his reach, dancing and playing with him. He just couldn't…
"… your daughter?" Padmé suggested.
Is it? Anakin wondered. He slanted a look up at Padmé through his lashes. "Or your son. I can't really…" The Force seemed to laugh at him. Holding her hips so that she couldn't wiggle away, he said firmly to the white flesh of her belly, "Remember this, little light: always assume that reports of your father's death are greatly exaggerated!"
A deep silence formed around them, a well of stillness broken only by Padmé's surprised intake of breath. "I felt something!" she whispered. "Something moved!"
"I'm not surprised," Anakin agreed, nibbling gently on her stomach. "You should see what it's like in the Force…"
"Anakin…" The hitch in her voice made him glance up. The expression on her face brought him climbing up her body, straight into her arms. "I'm sorry, Anakin," she whispered. "I'm so sorry I was angry with you. I let my fear get the best of me. It won't happen again."
"So," Anakin murmured against the longed-for touch of her lips. "You are glad to see me?"
"I have never been happier about anything in my life."
It was all he required. He was where he wanted to be; where he needed to be. He was home.
x
The wild storm had scarcely abated when a solitary figure shrouded in a light brown cloak slipped away from the sleek form of the Nubian starship and streaked across the bare landing plain at a steady, ground-eating run. Dawn on Esh-Col crept up reluctantly at best. The dark red soil, barely re-settled after the storm, blew up in clouds with the runner's every footfall, darkening her way even more.
The stony plateau that served as the refugee colony's landing platform was as broad as it was high above the ground. By the time she had reached its rim, grudging fingers of yellowish light were spreading across the wide swathe of low, gray-green vegetation on the flat plain below. There didn't appear to be an easy way down; the plateau rested on steep, craggy reddish cliffs and there was no sign of a path, much less a road. Breathing easily after her exertion, the runner lowered her hood and raised a hand to her eyes, searching below for any signs of civilized habitation. At first glance, and at second, and at third, the landscape appeared to be alone under the sky, bare to the forces of nature. She turned to look behind her, studying the slope of the plateau, the ridges around the edge of the escarpment; even the movement of the clouds in the brightening sky. Tiny in the distance, the lone starship glinted in the early light like a single lost bead.
The illusion of emptiness was very well done.
Unhesitatingly she leaped off the edge of the plateau onto a narrow ridge of rock that lay a distance of many times her height below. She landed lightly; barely a stone turned. A quick search through the Force led her along the ridge to a narrow shadow that her eyes would have overlooked. Sure enough, recessed far into the unremarkable crevice was a signal panel. There the idiom of the Force reached its limit, and V'ar had to rely on her best guess to activate the machine. She tried a sequence of signals, and then, when there was no result, she tried a few more. Eventually a deep rumbling that seemed to come from the ground told her that she had been successful. She stood back and waited.
Out of nowhere a rough capsule the size of a huge lift in a Coruscant office building rose up from the ground, still carrying its rocky disguise on its roof. A door slid open, revealing a sleepy-looking human of indeterminate age, wearing layers of tattered clothing and bristling with weapons. He looked her up and down sourly.
"I don't know you."
"I'm with the Naboo delegation."
He scowled. "Who?"
"The Refugee Outreach Alliance's visiting delegation."
"S'nothin' to do with me."
"There was an accident last night in the storm. Another one of the Delegation ships. I need your help in getting to it."
"No can do. This 'ere's the back door. Here I stay. Ya shouldn't be here anyways." He looked suddenly puzzled. "How'd ya get here, an 'all?"
"The scouts who brought us word of the wreck came this way."
"Go 'round the front. Other side of the butte."
"I'm in a hurry."
"I don't know you," the man said again, as though it explained everything, which, from his point of view, it did.
The problem was, V'ar really was in a hurry.
The colony's scouts who had fought their way through the last throes of the storm to bring news of the Tantive IV's crash hadn't been very specific about where she had gone down. The Naboo, unhinged by the prospect of having to deliver Padmé the news of Anakin's probable demise, hadn't asked too many specific questions. Secure in the knowledge that Anakin was indeed safe, V'ar had followed the scouts from a distance. Someone needed to check on the Alderaanis, and V'ar needed to speak with Senator Organa before order was restored and the Delegation reconvened.
She stepped close to the man's nose, just outside the capsule. To his credit, he didn't back down.
With a light movement of her hand, V'ar intoned, "Take me to a transport now."
The man stared at her. "I said, I DON'T KNOW YOU."
Tough-minded, then.
V'ar thought longingly of her lightsaber and how quickly a streak of hot green light sizzling between them would change the man's mind, and sighed inwardly. "Well, someone does, or we wouldn't have been invited!" she snapped. "Surely you understand that the Outreach Alliance is here to help you and the people of this colony. I need transport so that we can do our job."
The man glowered. "Politicians," he muttered. "Had enough of y'ar kind of help, haven't we?" but he stepped aside. V'ar stepped past him into the capsule, which lurched downward with a stomach-churning jolt as soon as the door slid closed behind her. In short order the door opened again into a huge, dimly lit hangar crammed full of ships of all types and sizes. The transport ships and cargo freighters, large and small, made sense in a colony that was not economically self-sustaining. The refugees depended on those vessels for their lives. What surprised V'ar were the rows and rows of mismatched one-man fighters.
Seeing no other openings around the walls, V'ar looked up to study the ceiling, which was marked out by a grid of huge panels; hatches, most likely. At one side of the hangar long ramps led up to the hatches, providing access for ground vehicles. Evidently, the only way to get out was to go up. Behind her the doors of the crude lift slid closed again. Its guardian hadn't waited to be thanked, but it was clear that he had reported her presence, because an equally tattered and equally heavily armed team of… security personnel? …. very quickly appeared and surrounded her.
V'ar bowed to the group, singling out a short, heavyset human woman in the middle, whom she took to be the leader. "Peace be with you. Communications are not functioning on the Naboo starship, and I seek to make contact with the disabled ship of the Alderaani Delegation. We do not know its exact location. For this I need your help."
The craggy human bearing the blaster nearest V'ar's head snorted. "Comms are out everywhere, and likely to stay that way for a time. There's magnetic disturbances on this planet all the time, storm or no storm."
"Then it is even more imperative that I reach the Alderaani ship and the others as well, if that is the only way our group can communicate."
The heavyset woman stepped forward, proving V'ar right about which one was the leader. "Who are you?"
V'ar bowed again. "V'ar Taanil, general assistant to the Outreach Alliance, problem solver and troubleshooter, at your service." She smiled. "I'm the one that gets all the rotten assignments."
A few of the armed guards stifled snickers. The leader looked at her appraisingly, and then seemed to make up her mind all at once. She jerked her head toward the craggy one next to her. Bram'll take you over there. He's the one who investigated. It's a few spans west and south."
A few spans? V'ar wondered how Anakin had covered the distance. On foot, with the storm not yet subsided? "Thank you," she said to the man named Bram, studying him speculatively. He grunted in reply and lowered his blaster.
Minutes later V'ar was clinging to her seat in a beaten-up speeder that had shot up out of the hidden hangar and down the side of the butte like a guided missile. The air shields weren't working very well and the effect was like being back inside the night's storm, only without protection. Since conversation was impossible V'ar retreated inside the hood of her cloak, wondering more with each passing minute how Anakin had traversed the distance from the wreck to the Naboo starship.
The speeder finally slowed and V'ar emerged from her wrappings to see that they had entered a far-flung debris field. On the horizon she could make out the massive bulk of what might once have been a starship. "You say there were survivors?" she asked her guide, now that speech again was possible.
"All of 'em, they say," the man named Bram grunted. "Ya wouldn't think it, lookin' at the mess." He guided the speeder skillfully around jagged deposits of debris.
"There was another ship, we were told. A small one." V'ar studied the man's face closely as she spoke. "Your scouts said there were no survivors from that one."
"That's right," the man said shortly, and V'ar felt a sharp pang in her stomach that told her he was lying. He knew that someone had survived.
The Tantive IV lay on her side like a wounded sea creature on a desolate shore, her form mostly intact, but despoiled in every detail. Her extremities were open wounds; the engine housing at her tail was severely damaged. Deep gouges in her sides attested to the roughness of her landing and the loss of much vital equipment. It was a miracle her weapons hadn't detonated in the crash.
V'ar prodded a pile of twisted metal with her toe when she emerged from the speeder. "Looking at this, I don't understand how the Alderaan ship survived."
Bram already had gone straight to the housing of an engine – not one that had belonged to the starship, from the looks of it – that lay wedged under the starship's belly, and touched its cold, dead surface almost reverently. "There was some prodigious flyin' done last night, I'll certify that."
Reverence, yes. That was a good description of what she perceived. V'ar studied the man, who was no doubt an exceptional pilot himself, before returning straight back to business.
"So how do I get inside, with comms down? I how do I make my presence known?" The vast, curved side of the downed ship loomed nearly four stories above her head. The nearest thing that looked like an access hatch was high above.
Bram grinned. "Ya knock." He picked up a nearby rock that more than filled his broad, strong hand and heaved it toward a large hatch over their heads. The dull thwang when it hit the side of the ship reverberated across its length. It wasn't long before the hatch creaked open revealing a dark head and the shoulders and arms of a gray uniform.
"Senator Amidala sends greetings," V'ar shouted. "May I come aboard?"
x
"I'm glad to know that Padmé and her people are well." Bail rubbed his forehead wearily. "Is there any news of the other members of the delegation?"
"Not yet, no. When I left, the Naboo were still dusting themselves off and waiting for comms to be restored, but I have since learned that we can't count on that happening. Without comms our only option is face-to-face communication. That is going to take time. "
"This will put the Delegation's visit to the colony far behind schedule."
"To say the least." Bail's visitor looked at him intently through her golden eyes. "But it seems to me that for the moment you have more immediate concerns than the Outreach Alliance's mission."
Isn't that the truth, Bail's Grandmother's voice snapped.
Please, Bail begged. Not now.
Pull yourself together, she shot back, and then fell mercifully silent. Bail stopped rubbing his forehead and sat up straighter.
"The Colony representatives who came to check on us offered us transport off-planet any time we want it, so that won't be a problem even if comms are never restored. My people are fine…" Bail fought down a wave of emotion..."miraculously enough. I don't see any reason to cut short our planned visit, or our participation in the Delegation's program."
"The colonists are quite interesting," V'ar remarked. "From the little I have seen of them they struck me as extraordinary pilots."
Bail closed his eyes, rocked by the memory of violent freefall and the screams of his staff as their ship rolled and twisted and fell…
"Senator Organa?" The young Jedi's voice brought him back to himself. "Are you all right?"
"I'm sorry." Bail opened his eyes again and tried to focus on the conversation. "It's just that… we killed one of their extraordinary pilots. Last night. He saved us, but lost his own life in the process."
His visitor didn't say anything at first. Bail took it for silent sympathy. "They deal with these weather conditions, and with the intermittent communications, all the time," she said finally. "They know the risks."
"I don't know how they do it."
"They have no choice."
Bail fell silent.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" his visitor asked gently.
"Someone died on my behalf," he said bleakly after a while, "There is no remedy for that."
V'ar's hand drifted to rest lightly on her stomach. "He knew what he was doing. He must have known the risks."
"Still…" Bail shrugged.
"That's the real reason you're remaining here with the delegation, isn't it?" V'ar suggested after another interval. "To find a way to repay the colonists for their loss."
"Between us, the Delegation members will find a way to get these off this terrible planet – to find them real homes." He attempted a little smile, but without much success. "Somehow."
V'ar stood up. "I have more visits to make, to the other member of the Delegation. Because of the storm we all landed in very different locations. Do you have ground craft aboard?"
Bail stood up, too, trying to think. At this juncture the damage reports were still flooding in by the minute. It was hard to think of anything that wasn't damaged. "We had several speeders on board. I don't know whether they are intact."
"I will ask the colonists to keep an eye on you until comms return."
"Thank you." V'ar's hand still rested on her stomach, Bail noticed. He didn't know why he noticed. He just did.
Long after the Jedi took her leave Bail remained standing in the shattered remains of his on-board study, staring into the recesses of his own mind and heart, where the death of one embodied all the deaths of an immoral, illegal war, and all the deaths yet to come.
x
"Sabé! Wait."
Sabé turned around in the narrow gangway between the galley and the service lockers to see V'ar hurrying toward her – if it could be said that the Twi'lek Jedi ever hurried. Mostly she seemed to flow from one place to another, at some times faster than at others.
V'ar held out a bundle of what looked like alternating layers of light-colored and rust-colored rough cloth. "He'll need this."
Sabé peered at the suspect object, but didn't take it.
"Clothing." V'ar pushed the bundle toward her until Sabé had to take it.
"It looks like a bundle of rags," Sabé sniffed, dusting a fine layer of red dust off the bundle, and then off her own bodice where the offending bundle had touched it.
"Local clothing."
Sabé looked at V'ar. "What makes you think…?"
"He'll have to go again. You know that. He can't hide in here forever."
Sabé looked around quickly, wondering whether anyone could overhear their hushed, cryptic conversation.
"It's all right," V'ar assured her quickly.
Jedi.Bah. Sabé always found them unnerving, which she masked behind hostility. But Jedi prescience wasn't half as unnerving as the idea of Padmé's mood if Anakin left again after all this.
"Don't worry," V'ar whispered. "I think he has found some friends nearby who will hide him."
Sabé glared at her, intensely disliking the feeling that the Jedi somehow knew what she was thinking.
V'ar smiled, bowed, and disappeared beyond the galley.
For the first time in a long time Padmé woke up without knowing quite where she was, or what had brought her back from far away. She felt warm and peaceful, and as she came back to herself, she became aware of the steady rise and fall of Anakin's chest under her check. She breathed deeply in rhythm with his breaths until a soft knock at the door of her cabin brought her fully into wakefulness. It could only be Sabé or Dormé. Everyone else used the chime.
Reluctantly she pushed herself away from Anakin and sat up, looking down at him with the faint sense of wonder that never left her where he was concerned. He was deeply, and apparently dreamlessly, asleep, with his good arm curled under his head and the metallic limb flung out across her pillow. Even in the low light of the cabin his skin looked better. The mottling was beginning to subside and the burns no longer looked as raw. A few more treatments with the burn salves and he should be all right again.
Once again, he had survived the unsurvivable. Padmé wondered how many times he could repeat that miracle before mortality caught up with him – yes, before it caught up even with Anakin, who seemed to offer his life as freely and as unconditionally as he offered his love.
Another soft knock. Padmé reluctantly slid off the bed and padded to the door, which she allowed to slide open only a crack.
"How is he?" Sabé whispered.
"Alive." Padmé whispered back, and added, significantly, "sleeping."
"V'ar brought him some local clothes." Sabé held a tattered bundle up to the crack in the door, which Padmé reluctantly allowed to open wide enough to pull the bundle through. She wasn't ready to open it up all the way. Not yet. Sabé seemed to understand, because she disappeared again without further comment.
When Padmé turned around clutching the bundle to her chest she cried out in surprise to see Anakin's wide awake blue eyes staring at her steadily.
"Sabé," she explained quickly, rooted to the spot. "She brought you clothes…"
"Come here," Anakin said.
She went, tossing the bundle aside somewhere in the short distance between the door and his arms.
"We haven't talked about what you are going to do now," she said into his neck.
"No," he agreed, pulling her close.
"Or what I'm supposed to do about you."
"Forget about what happens next," he murmured.
Padmé was more than willing to let time stop and the worlds beyond them recede. Her willingness to totally abandon everything that loomed just beyond her cabin door was richly rewarded with a soul-deep plunge into a timeless place without pain or fear or worry – a plunge, in essence, into her source. She let herself slide beneath the surface of her existence, where there was neither light nor dark; where she and Anakin were no longer separate, but merged, dissolved into one another as salt dissolves in the sea. Elemental. Quintessential. Whole.
The world beyond could wait.