A/N: Hey guys! Thanks for all the awesome reviews. Shout out to lexiedexie, Legionary Prime, Lily, JourneyRocks13, Lusitana, brooklynturtle, ccp, and dragonball256. Your kind words always make my day. Without further ado…
Chapter Fifty-three
Mourning
Padmé was dressed in one of her dark toned mourning gowns. She didn't think she'd ever have to wear those kinds of clothes again. At least not for a loved one.
Anakin was still getting ready.
She felt the gentle stirring of her babies and touched her belly. She felt a pulse against her palm. Maybe a little hand or foot pushing up against her skin. She couldn't tell.
It would make her smile normally. It was what she had always wanted. More than anything. More than her career. More than success.
She remembered both times Sola had been pregnant and how envious she was. How it amazed her that a woman could have another living being inside them. How she yearned to have that for herself. The way Sola would light up when she'd play with her little girls.
She wasn't so sure anymore. About anything.
She looked up at Anakin, felt the warmth of his love surround her.
But she wondered if she had made a mistake.
Falling in love with him. Marrying him. She wondered if she should have walked away when he asked her to marry him all those months ago. She wondered if she should have asked the council to send another Jedi to protect her.
What kind of world was she bringing her children into?
How would she be able to fake a smile around her little ones? How would she be able to pretend she wasn't falling apart and that her heart wasn't breaking?
Anakin sensed her distress and looked at her with soft blue eyes of concern.
"I can't go, Ani."
"You have to go." He replied. "Ruwee would want you to be there. His little princess?" Anakin smiled sadly.
"You know how it feels."
He dropped his gaze, looking at the variations in the carpet.
"Yes. I do. And that's why I'm telling you have to go. If I had a father, especially one like him I wouldn't hesitate to go."
"I don't know if I can handle it."
"We don't have to stay for very long. Just enough to pay our respects. You can sleep for the rest of the day."
She looked away from him.
"If you don't go, you'll regret it. I know you will."
She nodded silently.
He kissed her forehead.
When Padmé was very young, probably five or six Ruwee had taken her to the Lake Country for the first time.
Jobal had been sitting amonst the tall meadow grasses, weaving wildflower necklaces for them all.
Ruwee had asked his youngest child which flower she wanted.
Padmé answered, "I want the purple ones, daddy."
He smiled and walked the rolling hills of the meadow for almost an hour until he felt like he had gathered enough.
She felt her necklace was the prettiest of everyone's. In reality, it looked very similar to the rest. But it was beautiful because he had picked the flowers.
She wore it until the flowers dried out. But she always kept it. For years it had been tucked away in her dresser drawer.
The house didn't exist anymore and so she couldn't give it back to him like she would have wanted. Ryoo and Sola found a shop that sold the same wildflowers and they bought them.
Every mourner had a handful and they sprinkled it onto Ruwee's funeral pyre.
Anakin watched his wife walk over to the burning body of her beloved father. She hesitated, looking at the pale purple flowers in her hand.
Padmé tossed the flowers into the flames and they burned brighter for a second.
Then she turned back around.
Padmé cried for only a few moments in Anakin's arms as they lay in bed later that day. She fell asleep very quickly.
She had yearned for it. For a moment where she didn't have to think. For a moment where she could feel like nothing existed. Not even herself.
Anakin stared ahead as he ran his hands up and down her exposed shoulder blades.
He tried to sleep. To meditate himself into resting. He couldn't.
The walls of Padmé's bedroom became more and more obscure as his thoughts drifted elsewhere .
The dim room was washed in light; the blue of the sky and the bright green of Naboo's meadows.
He was carrying her on his back, his footfalls soft on the plentiful grasses. He could feel the spray of the waterfalls on his face.
He could see her horrified face as he was perched dangerously off the opening on their Coruscant transport when Zam Wessell tried to take it down.
He remembered the way she ran into his arms afterwards, relieved that he was alive.
He remembered the look of thrill and uncertainty, of longing in her eyes when they first made love in the cramped stateroom on their way to Naboo.
Those days seemed so far away now.
He had opened up a part of her soul. And he had been glad. That had been important to him. More than making her fall in love with him. Above all that he had wanted her to be happy.
She had made him happy. And she deserved the same.
The morning she walked into Watto's shop all those years ago had started like every other day. He would have had to listen to Watto barking orders. He would have had to scrub the rust off the old speeder parts so Watto could sell them like they were brand new, at full price. And he knew the blisters on his fingers would probably bleed.
And that had been his normal. His dreary, exhausting normal.
Padmé had walked in peasant's clothing, but all the rags in the world could never hide her majestic presence.
When he had helped her and Qui-Gon he could say that it had been out of the goodness of his heart and it may have been true to a certain point. But mostly, it was to extend his time with her. He knew that once she was gone she would never come back. And so he made up excuses for her to stay.
Stay at my place.
I'll race for the parts you need.
There had never been a person who had looked into his eyes with such compassion.
Some days he could pretend he wasn't a slave, but he always knew it by the way other people looked at him. Even his friends. He knew they felt like they were better than him.
But she looked at him like he was just another kid. Like he deserved her time of day, her courtesy.
He had loved the way her eyes lit up when he showed her unfinished Threepio.
No one ever looked at his little creations like that. They all thought he was crazy.
She had made him happy.
More than anything he had been happy after their reunion so many years later that he could ease her troubles.
Take her away from responsibility.
That was more important than the promise of love.
And now it was gone.
And he knew deep down that it was his fault.
She had been right.
It was wrong for them to love each other.
It felt pure and it was.
But he knew that it couldn't last.
Not at this rate. With her crying every day.
There would come a point where they couldn't run away anymore.
Where the level of human loss around them would become too great.
Where an assassination attempt would be successful.
Or where the war would take him away.
Anakin prayed to whatever Gods existed, to the force that it would all stop.
That they could go back to the careless days on Naboo.
Raise their children peacefully.
His eyelids were heavy with all the thoughts. He blinked slowly a few times before his eyes shut completely and he fell into a deep sleep.
