author's note: thank you all so much for your kind reviews! it means the world to me ❤️ i hope you all enjoy this next chapter! :)
Padme woke with a start.
Where am I? Where am I? Vader-
She sighed with relief, her eyes focusing on her dim bedroom. Everything was fine. Everything was fine. She was dressed in her blue silk nightgown, safely tucked beneath her sheets.
Even though her heart was pounding, and her pulse was drumming in her throat, it didn't mean anything. It was just a silly nightmare, that was all. She hadn't really gone to Helaitraa, and the Dead God certainly hadn't told her his name. And after all, she'd been hunted by assassins before; was it so strange she'd have a nightmare about more of them comin-
A crash sounded in her living room.
Padme shot out of her bed, sprinting for the window only meters away.
The crash, the assassins, the green speeder, the nightclub, the maintenance tunnel, the Jedi Temple-
She wrenched open the blinds and slammed her palm on the window's security override; within seconds, she had unlocked the duraglass covering and slid it aside. A cold wind roared through her bedroom. Padme shivered in her shimmering nightgown, legs quivering as she climbed onto the thick window ledge.
The lights of Coruscant, like so many softly glowing stars set into the skyscrapers, glimmered before her. Padme raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare; her other hand clung to the window frame with a death grip.
Her long brown curls whipped in the night air as she cautiously leaned out the window. The window frame was tall, just tall enough for her (a very petite woman) to stand up within it. Her bare feet screamed in protest as they touched the frigid metal of the outer ledge.
Airspeeders raced through the cityscape like deadly, colorful bullets. Lane after lane of high speed traffic was stacked in vertical rows. Her stomach lurched- if she fell from her window now, she'd be killed as easily as a bug smacked against a windshield.
Carefully, Padme turned to her left, searching for a bright green speeder with an open cockpit. It would be several levels below her, and apparently coming up very fast if she wouldn't even have time to judge when to jump. According to the Dead God… Vader… she would have to jump as soon as she saw it.
She shivered again; gooseflesh crawled up her bare arms.
Keep me safe, she silently prayed.
A flash of green met the corner of her eye.
There.
It only took a moment to determine that it had an open cockpit.
Adrenaline rushed through her shaking limbs.
She threw herself off the ledge.
Padme didn't scream as her stomach dropped, or as the groundless city rushed up at her, or as the colorful lights streaked past her so fast they were only blurred lines. But she gasped as the cold night air hit her face, and the wind roared in her ears, and she was falling for what seemed like hours as her limbs trembled and her hair whipped around her and her nightgown billowed out like a bird's wings-
A dart of color screamed towards her ankles, and she shrieked, realizing she was about to die, to break every bone in her body-
And with a soft umph, she fell on something soft- first her feet slammed into it, and then the speed of it knocked her to the side, forcing her onto her knees. Before she could fully register what had happened, she was rolling to the right, about to scream again as she fell half a meter, and then landed on her back on another soft, swiftly moving thing.
Padme gasped, chest heaving, all the air slammed out of her lungs by whatever she'd landed on. Red lasers screamed above her head- sniper shots! But then the city scape was rushing by, faster and faster and faster, and the lasers were gone….
Shaking, coughing, and still gasping for air, Padme dared to sit up.
"What in all Hiekkonrra am I sitting in?" She rasped, her throat raw from the cold air. A ditzy laugh sounded somewhere to her left.
The senator shook her head, rubbing her eyes- only to feel them sting as a fine sort of powder coated them. Still coughing and hacking (Shiraya's wings, she sounded worse than General Grievous!) she tugged at the bodice of her nightgown, pulling it up to wipe her eyes.
She blinked a few times, not certain if what she was seeing was real. She ran her hands over it. Yes, unfortunately, this was definitely real.
She was sunk into a two-meter pile of artificial glitterstim- a cheap substitute for the actual narcotic, it was a sparkling blue powder with one curious property. Due to a quirk of its molecular structure, no matter how tightly the powder was packed together, it stayed as soft as freshly fallen snow. In fact, in large quantities, it became quite pliant- even springy.
Padme laughed shakily, digging herself out of the huge pile. For once, everything made sense.
The green speeder.
She'd fallen almost twelve meters, and landed in the backseat- then fallen onto the floor- of the green airspeeder.
But the backseat was veritably overflowing with artificial glitterstim. Not small, snortable quantities sealed in plastoid packets- no, this was a sand dune made of blue powder, two meters deep and three wide. It had no packaging. It was just loosely thrown into the speeder, completely filling the backseat, and overflowing onto the airspeeder floor… where Padme was now lying.
She laughed again, cautiously sitting up and crawling into a seat. So that was how she'd survived the fall. This much artificial glitterstim in one pile…. It wasn't just an oddly springy mound, it was practically a trampoline. And it had saved her life.
Not only that, but she'd somehow- rather miraculously- jumped straight out of her window, and through five lanes of airspeeder traffic, without being killed.
"Miraculous" was an understatement.
"Oh thank you, thank you," she whispered to Vader. She hoped the god heard her.
Another groggy laugh floated to her ears- hadn't she heard one earlier? Padme leaned forward, squinting against the bright, artificial lights of the city. She could see, just barely, the scratched windshield of the airspeeder she was riding in. Yes, and there was the front bench for the driver and other passengers… there was the steering yoke….
Her heart flipped.
Where's the driver?
The groggy giggling started up again. Padme scrambled forward towards the sound- only to find a very, very inebriated rodian slumped in the driver's seat. And to the senator's horror, the alien's foot was jamming down the accelerator, bringing them to a speed of…
"Three-hundred and twenty kilometers per hour?!" she cried. Clutching the back of the driver's seat, Padme desperately tried to recall the Dead God's instructions.
"Take me to the fifth sublevel!" She shouted over the roar of the wind, putting as much authority into the command as she could. "And for Force's sakes, slow down!"
"Okie-day," the teal rodian hiccuped. He sent the speeder rocketing into a steep dive, and Padme felt her stomach drop. She kept a white knuckled grip on the seat in front of her as they dove down, down, down….
As the speeder descended into the lower levels, the artificial glitterstim in its backseat finally began to blow away in the harsh winds. Vaguely, Padme wondered how many millions of credits were being lost right now.
But she didn't have time to wonder about it, because the craft beneath her bucked uncertainly as the driver, still giggling, tried to maneuver through the first sublevel's tight alleys.
"Be careful!" Padme cried.
"Yessa ma'am… bein' careful 'nuf already…." The rodian gave her a sloppy salute, then sent the speeder into another tight dive.
The senator screwed her eyes shut, too terrified to offer a proper prayer to Vader, although she did her best.
Suddenly, the speeder bucked again! Padme's eyes flew open- only to see that the speeder was flying so low that its belly was dragging on the street beneath them. And they were barrelling straight toward a storefront!
"Stop!" She shouted in the driver's ear. He didn't seem to hear her.
"Please, stop!" She yelled as loud as she could, trying to drag the rodian out of the driver's seat.
Too late. The storefront was barely three meters away.
Padme did the only thing she could, and jumped out of the speeder's open canopy.
An earsplitting crash sounded behind her as she landed roughly on the duracrete street. Rolling to her feet on shaky legs, Padme turned and saw that the speeder had driven straight into a wall of transparisteel, the entire window shattering around the green craft. The driver, however, was stumbling out, either completely unharmed or too inebriated to notice potential injuries.
He looks fine, Padme decided. And there's already some beings gathering to help.
Or to sneak a pocketful of glitterstim out of the speeder's backseat… probably both.
Looking up, Padme saw the sign above the storefront: "The Wild Nexu." Judging from the logo (a scantily clad lady wearing a nexu-cat's ears), and the music blaring from inside the dim building, it was a nightclub. And the bouncer was currently distracted by the speeder lodged in the front window.
Heart pounding, Padme ran inside. She made it through the lush waiting room in a matter of seconds; it was much harder to elbow her way through the crowded, colorfully lit rooms farther inside. She spun in a small circle, trying to find the back exit.
The green speeder, the nightclub, the back exit, the maintenance tunnel, she chanted in her mind.
Suddenly, a sliver of light caught her attention- a twi'lek server, already pulling out a cigarra, was sneaking out the back for a quick smoke. With renewed vigor, Padme shoved her way to the back. Every second, she fully expected a cloaked assassin to wrench her away from the Dead God's path of escape.
She could barely believe it as she reached the back exit, elbowing past the twi'lek server, and emerging into the cool night air. The alien shrilly cursed at her as she sprinted down the cracked stone road.
Something was wrong. Her lungs- no, her ribs- were on fire, searing pain shooting up her sides. Panting, gasping for air, Padme stumbled through the street, losing track of time as she ran, still searching for the maintenance tunnel. She wasn't sure how long it took her to find it- minutes? Hours? It felt like hours.
But when she found it, she found that the lock had been damaged- in fact, the electronic keypad had been stolen. Still trying to regain her breath, still alternating between swearing and prayers of gratitude, Padme wrenched open the door and climbed inside.
Carefully, she set her bare foot on the first ladder rung, curling her toes to get a better grip. Not even taking time to catch her breath, she started to climb.
Sweat poured down her brow as she reached the top. A domed metal roof was less than half a meter above her head, and she was precariously balanced on one of the ladder's topmost rungs.
This isn't good, Padme realized. She was still panting, unable to catch her breath, unable to raise her arms above her head without that same searing pain shooting through her ribs. This entire climb had been torture.
She closed her brown eyes, wiping the sweat off her brow as she took a moment to collect herself.
Head to the Jedi Temple, she reminded herself. That's all I have left to do. That's all. That's all….
Padme shoved open the door beside her, and stumbled out of the maintenance tunnel, back onto solid ground.
Immediately, she had to screw her eyes shut. The daylight was searing, as bad as the burning pain in her side. But she managed to take some swaying steps forward.
Just keep moving, she coached herself, even as she struggled to breathe. Remember the assassins. Remember Vader. Remember the assassins. Remember Vader….
A few more seconds, and her eyes had almost adjusted to the brightness of dawn. She must be on the surface of the planet, then. Thank the gods- thank Vader. Padme didn't know how she would have found the Jedi Temple if she'd still been stranded in Coruscant's underworld.
Tentatively, Padme held up a hand to shield her eyes; then finally managed to look up.
A near-hysterical laugh bubbled out of her. Straight ahead, not even a quarter of a kilometer away, was the Jedi Temple. A new wave of energy surged through her, and Padme set off at a dead run.
Time seemed to blur together as she ran. Her lungs seared, her ribs screamed in pain, and all she could focus on was putting one foot in front of the other.
Great One, give me strength, she prayed, barely able to hear her thoughts over her ragged breathing.
Vaguely, she was aware that everyone around her was staring. She must have been quite a sight, she thought with a breathy laugh. Barefoot, in her nightgown, blue glitterstim caught in her tangled curls as she sprinted for the Jedi Temple. Her heart skipped a beat; would Anakin be there waiting for her? Could he have returned from the front lines overnight? Was it too much to hope for another miracle?
She was only thirty meters from the stone temple. The first in a set of towering stairs was just before her. Her heart pounded in her ears, fast, too fast-
The temple guards were in sight!
"Help!" Padme hoarsely called, barely able to make a sound. "Help me!"
One of the guards started to descend the steps, lightsaber held guardedly in hand. Even though he couldn't have heard her from the top of the stairs, he must have sensed her panic in the Force.
When the guard ignited his lightsaber, Padme knew something had gone horridly wrong.
She didn't have any more time to ponder it as two unseen hands shoved her to the ground.
"Stay down!" Vader's voice commanded- though no one else around her seemed to hear it.
Still, Padme obeyed, laying flat on the permacrete- just as three lasers flew above her, right where her head had been moments before. Suddenly, the invisible grip on her shoulders loosened, and Padme shot to her feet.
She scrambled towards the steps of the temple, all too aware of the pounding footsteps behind her. She didn't dare look over her shoulder, didn't dare look for the assassin pursuing her-
The other temple guards ignited their yellow lightsabers, and in one fluid motion, the closest guard deflected a volley of blaster shots. One of the lasers whizzed back toward Padme, flying right past her ear, so near that her heart flipped.
It was only when she saw the guards deactivate their weapons that she dared to slow down. Panting, Padme came to a stop at the foot of the first stone stair. She glanced behind her- and let out a shaky breath as she saw the dead body mere meters away.
It was lying face down, a humanoid figure completely covered by its scarlet cloak. Padme vaguely recognized it as the uniform of the Blood Carvers. She also vaguely registered that she was gasping for air.
Someone had a hand on her shoulder. Someone was lightly shaking her. Someone was saying something.
A temple guard?
She couldn't tell.
Black spots crept into her vision, streaked with red and paired with dancing white lights. Through the haze, she managed to see why the assassin was dead. A laser bolt had cut clean through his skull, leaving nothing but a charred, smoking hole in his head.
The guards deflected his blaster shots back at him, Padme hazily realized. He was killed by his own shot.
That was her last coherent thought before she collapsed.
to be continued...