CHAPTER LES ELEVENTIESSE:

"Will you be attending the Senate hearing today?" DT-2 asked Padmé when she entered the main sitting room of her apartments.

"No," said Padmé. "Would you please attend in my stead?"

DT-2 paused for a moment.

"I believe the Senate would appreciate it if you were there in person, today," said the droid.

"I'm sure they would," said Padmé, "And we are almost finished, but not yet. I only need you to fill in for me for a little bit longer, DT-2."

"Very well," said DT-2.

"Thank you," said Padmé. "I promise you this is all for a very good purpose."

"Yes, ma'am," said DT-2.

"One that, I should say, may very well end up more important than attending that hearing," added Padmé.

"As you say, ma'am," said DT-2, acquiescent.

Padmé wasn't sure who she was trying to convince, seeing how the droid was fully compliant. Perhaps it was herself. She turned to see Anakin shifting his gaze away from her and back to the ship prototype holos he had been studying.

"I made some improvements," he said, striking commands on the holoboard. "Who do I send them to?"

Padmé opened her mouth to say something but found herself not knowing what to say.

Anakin looked back at her expectantly.

"Does your mind ever stop?" she asked him.

"No," he said, and he didn't look proud or pleased by the notion. In fact, he looked more tortured than anything else. "So, who do I send them to?"

"To whom do you send them," she corrected.

Anakin groaned and rolled his eyes, deflating quite dramatically over her grammatical correction.

"You're such a dork," he muttered, almost too quietly for her to hear, and continued making adjustments to the ship blueprints.

"Did you just insult a senator?" she demanded.

Anakin's glance shot back to her with white heat.

"Would you stop using your stupid senatorhood as an excuse to treat me like a child whenever you feel insecure?" he snapped.

Padmé stopped at once, speechless.

"I'm not a child, Padmé, and I haven't been one for a very long time," he said. "One might say I never did have much of a childhood, if you want to split hairs about it."

She bit the inside of her lip because she knew he was spot on in pointing out her flaw, and she kind of hated it if she was to be honest with herself.

"I mean, what are you… five years older than me? Four?" he asked, sounding exasperated. "What does it even matter? Obi-Wan is enough. I don't need another mentor, especially not a bossy know-it-all senator who I didn't ask for correcting my grammar like I'm seven years old!"

Padmé blinked hard, glancing down at the floor. She drew a long breath and let it out.

"I… I'm sorry, Anakin," she said.

Silence.

"What?" came his reply, as if he didn't expect it, or understand it, or hadn't imaged an existence where she rolled over so easily.

"I said I'm sorry," she said, lifting her gaze to him. "And I mean it. You're right. I've been doing exactly what you said. I've been treating you like a child, like the child I met years ago."

Anakin suddenly looked uncomfortable with this turn of events.

"Well," he said. "Yes, well. Ok."

"I'll try not to do it anymore," she said.

"That's fine," he said, as if in a hurry to get this uncomfortable apology time over with. "It's fine. Whatever. So who do I send these upgrades to?"

He glanced at her.

"Or rather, 'To whom shall I send these upgrades?'" he smirked, making his voice sound posh and senatorial.

Padmé laughed.

"Ok, fine, please don't say it like that ever again," she said, and he laughed, too.

She came around behind him to look at the blueprints.

"Show me what you did?" she asked, curious.

He was delighted to do so.

HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIH

It was at least a click before Obi-Wan came back into the main room to join them. Anakin and Padmé had spent the entire time discussing possible improvements and upgrades to ships. With his technical and creative ability and her knowledge of political and social systems, they'd made quite a lot of headway on something that nobody had ever thought to ask for.

"Where've you been?" asked Anakin as Obi-Wan glided into view.

"Oh," said Obi-Wan. "I was taking the opportunity to meditate and center myself."

Obi-Wan gave a tight smile and avoided Padmé's eyes. She could tell he was feeling guilt, or remorse, or whatever it is Jedi feel when they're not perfect. As a result, she felt sorry for being his stumbling block, and sorry he had to spend extra time meditating just to cope with her.

"How much longer do you think it will be before we get word from your friend?" asked Padmé, pretending like everything was normal and regular and fine.

"Ah," said Obi-Wan, glancing outside, as if he was going to gauge by the flight of the sun, which was just silly, "I should hope only a few more clicks."

Padmé plopped herself down on the sofa, finding it strange to be stalled in the midst of whatever mess they were uncovering, to be sitting on her couch but feeling like she didn't belong there anymore.

"Well, have a seat," she said to Obi-Wan, who was still standing. She gestured towards the other half of the sofa she was sitting on.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat gently and sat on the couch.

Anakin peered at Obi-Wan.

"Don't be weird," Anakin pleaded.

"I'm not being weird," said Obi-Wan.

Padmé crossed one leg over the other and rubbed the back of her neck.

"Just… no," said Anakin. "No weirdness. Please."

"I'm just sitting here!" said Obi-Wan, growing exasperated.

Anakin exhaled and shook his head.

"Where's that ring?" asked Anakin.

"I have it," said Obi-Wan.

"Can I see it?" asked Anakin.

Obi-Wan pulled it from his robes and handed it to Anakin, who considered it for a long moment.

"Hey, Padmé," said Anakin, turning the ring this way and that in his grip. "Do you have any extra parts I can use lying around?"

"Maybe," she replied.

"Good," said Anakin, rising with the ring. "Let me see what you've got."

"What are you doing, Anakin?" asked Obi-Wan.

"I've got an idea to modify this," he said. "I want to, uh, use it like a focus. It's just an idea, but… it might make it so someone who is less force sensitive can use it."

"What, someone like me?" asked Padmé.

"Well, I did have you in mind," said Anakin.

It was extremely touching, for some reason. Padmé didn't really know what to say.

"But… how would I use it?" she asked.

"That's the interesting part," said Anakin, grinning at her. "We won't really know until we modify it. How you use it is as unique as you are."

"It won't possibly kill her, will it?" ventured Obi-Wan.

"Nah," said Anakin. "Well, unless…"

"No," said Padmé. "The correct answer is 'no'."

"No," Anakin told Obi-Wan, then he turned to Padmé: "Parts?"

Padmé glanced over him, torn between being flattered that he would think of her and wish to make something for her to use the force, which was exceedingly exciting if she was honest about it, but also being wary of dying ignominiously in a foolish experiment using a technologically modified ring in her apartment. That death would not make a flattering obituary.

"Fine," she relented. "DT-2, please get Anakin the parts he requires for his experiment."

DT-2, who was nearby, replied, "Of course, ma'am."

"But don't let Anakin take any of your parts," warned Padmé as Anakin and the droid left toward the storage rooms. Anakin made sure to give Padmé a questionable smirk on his way out, to which she replied by sticking out her tongue.

And then she was alone with Obi-Wan, again. The realization petrified her for a moment until he spoke up from behind her.

"You have lovely apartments," he said.

She turned at once. He was sitting very mildly on her sofa, looking quite neat, unruffled, and as if nothing at all was or had ever been wrong.

"Yes, I've been quite fortunate," she replied stiffly.

Somehow, in this light, his eyes looked especially ethereal and blue. She half-blinked and looked away towards the window.

"I should say much of the loveliness is due to the arrangement you've created," he said. "It reminds me of Naboo."

She glanced down at her hands.

"I suppose that was my intent," she said.

"I'm sure you miss Naboo while you're away," he said.

She couldn't understand why he was being so banal.

"I do," she said.

"So do I," he said, and she glanced over at him.

"But you're not-," she began.

"I've been there a few times," he said a faint smile crossing his features. "And that's enough to miss it."

She peered at him.

"Do you want to go there?" she asked.

"What, now?" he asked in surprise.

"No, of course not, not now," she sputtered.

"But, you know," he said, holding up a finger and glancing around, "being in this place with you… it is quite reminiscent of being on Naboo itself."

"Oh," she replied, finding herself unable to contribute anything of value to the conversation.

"I suppose that feeling made me recall some folly of my youth," he said, an admittance. "And I kissed you."

"Oh," she went on.

She began to fold her arms and then didn't, but kind of half did it, and then realized she had no idea what she could do with her arms that wasn't awkward. Her arm situation was actually terrible.

"I hope you can forgive me," he offered.

She hazarded a glance at his face. He looked serene. She peered at him. He looked too serene. Suddenly she felt a little miffed, because she realized his serenity wasn't sincere at all; it was a coping mechanism. If there was one thing that miffed Padmé, it was insincerity.

"Are you saying that's what all this has been?" she asked, approaching him as he sat on the sofa and spreading her hands to represent 'all this', "This is just you reliving something you never got over from ten years ago?"

Obi-Wan looked a little taken aback.

"Ah… perhaps?" he ventured.

"Really?" she demanded.

Then he didn't look so sure, or so serene.

"I mean, yes, I had a crush on you, too," she said, and he had the gall to blush, "but I was fourteen! I was a child; a weird, freakish queen-child who had no idea how to 'like' someone."

"You give your young self too little credit," he interjected, but she ignored him and went on.

"And you, an awkward teenaged padawan!" she said, gesturing towards him.

"Was I that awkward, really?" he questioned.

"You hardly knew yourself what it meant to have feelings for anyone! We were silly and dumb and inexperienced and barely even held hands," she said.

Obi-Wan glanced aside, his brow furrowing.

"We didn't even acknowledge our little crushes on each other," said Padmé.

His eyes returned up to hers.

"And you're trying to tell me that this… that us… that who we are now and the depth of feelings that we have been experiencing are just some kind of residue, some kind of echo of something else created in the naivete of youth?" she asked. "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

Obi-Wan opened his mouth, but she went on before he could speak.

"Because I don't believe it for a second, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I expect better from you," she said. "What kind of meditation did you do, to feed yourself such a blatant lie and then come back and try to convince me of it?"

He stood at once, perhaps affronted by her attack on his precious meditation, but she wasn't having any of it.

"If you wanted me to believe your lies whenever you need them to cope, then you should have never taught me to feel the truth," she said. "There's one thing I know: that none of what's been happening with us is 'leftovers'. This is new, and we've been creating it. Perhaps you don't want to create it, but I honestly don't know how much choice we have. It's simply happening."

She finished what she wanted to say and they stood looking one another over for a long moment.

"Is it my turn, yet?" he asked, irritation pushing at his seams.

"I don't know; it depends on what you're going to say," she replied, crossing her arms.

"And now I'm not allowed to speak unless I'm sure it's something you'll like?" he asked. "That doesn't sound like tyranny at all."

"Then don't lie to me, Obi-Wan!" she insisted.

"I never did," he said.

"Yes, you did!" she said.

"I did not," he replied.

"If you don't stop, I'm going to-,"

"Going to what?" he demanded of her, and suddenly his presence was all-encompassing. "Verbally browbeat me into agreeing with you? Prod at me with the force until I beg you to stop? Propose legislature that limits the rights of the Jedi? What? What can you possibly do to me that would cause more damage than you've already done?"

She shut her mouth and stared at him with her jaw clenched. She'd never heard him raise his voice, not like that. She'd never seen that expression on his face; a strained, simmering anger shadowed by quiet desperation.

"Tell me what I've done," she said, her voice weakened, her breath short.

"No," he said, his voice suddenly much less than it was, his anger drained or buried, or both. The word was an anti-confession, a broken conundrum. He breathed a moment, then went on: "I find myself wishing you would allow me to make excuses."

"Obi-Wan," she whispered.

"I am… not doing very well," he admitted.

"No, no," she said in a rush, crossing the distance between them and taking his face in her hands. "No."

"No?"

"You're perfect," she said.

"You're wrong," he said.

"I'm right," she said.

"No, you're not."

"I am."

"No, Padmé."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No," he insisted, like a string drawn tight.

Something snapped in Padmé and she advanced. In later recollection, she'd realize that during this advance was the only time she'd seen a flash of undiluted fear in Obi-Wan's eyes.

She rushed him, taking his lips for her own, kissing him and not at all in the way he'd kissed her; she wound her arms around his shoulders, she crushed her fingers through his hair, and she kissed him like she didn't care if either of them ever came up for air again. She kissed him thoroughly, assertively, messily. She did it and she meant it.

He allowed it. In fact, the moment her lips touched his he submitted at once, in an instant, as if he could do nothing but allow her to kiss him to within an inch of his life and hope to still be breathing on the other side of it. He was pliant, willing, and helpless to receive and receive and receive, and his hands eventually clenched at her waist like a person might hold the edge of an abyss.

When the swell began to subside like seawater dragged back into the tide, the kiss faded away slowly, without a perceptible nor a perfect end. Perhaps the best part was the just after; the tension of their lips barely a hair's breadth apart, in the place between resolution and the resurgence of dissonance, when the echoes of what had just happened reverberated through the amphitheaters of their bodies, over and over, with the blinding promise of possibilities to come. She reveled in it, and felt he did, too. Perhaps neither one of them wanted to move on to the next phase, the reshaping into new forms that basic existence and time required. They procrastinated together.

Pulling back at last, far enough to look at him, she found piquant pleasure in his flushed cheeks, in his shortened breath, in his mussed hair and dazed eyes. She wanted the opportunity to conquer his mouth and his countenance again and again.

"Should I apologize, now?" she asked softly, wondering whether to smile or not and falling somewhere in between.

Oh, dear stars, he was so very flushed, so beguilingly overcome, so accidentally siren-like in his trembling surrender.

She moved in, her lips brushing his as she half-whispered with insistence: "Should I?"

He gasped; soft, sharp and responsive. The sound of him, the intimate pull of air she felt against her lips; it filled her senses with stars.

In the distance, she could hear Anakin and DT-2 coming closer, and she drew back in a rush, feeling the intensity of the cold air that rushed between them, dissipating the heat they had created.

"Oh, criff it all, your hair is a mess," she grumbled, quickly reaching up to put Obi-Wan's hair to rights.

He seemed as if he could do nothing but gaze at her while she fixed his mussed-ness, and she did the best she could do to ignore the intoxicated warmth in his eyes, lest she fall into it and be lost forever as a total, senseless idiot, idiot, idiot.

"Well, did you find what you needed?" she asked Anakin imperiously as he arrived. She an Obi-Wan had straightened themselves and were seated on opposite ends of the couch, attempting to look as chaste and unengaged as possible.

Anakin read the room in the way Anakin always did.

"Okay," he said, glancing over both she and Obi-Wan. "I am literally never leaving the two of you alone again."

She was starting to get tired of his uncanny way of reading rooms. It was like she couldn't live her life, with the way he read rooms.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Padmé.

"Sure," said Anakin, giving Obi-Wan a knowing look.

"We, indeed, have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Anakin," said Obi-Wan, doing a fairly good impression of a man in denial.

"So anyway," said Anakin, looking disturbed, "how long do I have? I want to get this put together and test it out on Padmé before we leave."

"It hasn't been that long," said Obi-Wan, rising and seeming enlivened by the prospect of having something productive to do. "I'll help you. Let's get to work on it and see how far we can make it."

It took them maybe two, three clicks, including snack breaks, to come up with a workable prototype. Even though Padmé knew nothing at all about how machines work, she tried to offer help where she could, generally to the consternation of Anakin and the polite declination of Obi-Wan. Still, it gave her something to do so she felt vaguely useful. Mostly, she was there to be a mannequin: the form upon which the apparatus was to be attached. Anakin and Obi-Wan were fully absorbed in the task and she suspected the reasons for why; Anakin to quell the constant whirring of his mind and Obi-Wan to focus on something, anything else other than what had just happened previously.

Padmé also welcomed the distraction, but for her part, in the duller moments when the men were babbling about technical this or that, she found herself falling back into the echoes of what it felt like to be close to Obi-Wan and she had to will her face to stop burning.

Finally, Anakin drew back from his creation, not looking satisfied, but looking absorbed in whether or not it would work and whether or not he should adjust it some more. He held her hand parallel to the floor. Upon it was the ring, to which was attached a number of wires, tubes, memory boards, cells, switches, fuses, and other electronic minutia, forming something like a band around her hand and wrist, with a red button in her palm as the switch.

He turned her hand this way and that, inspecting his handiwork.

"You're sure this won't hurt her?" asked Obi-Wan, glancing up at Anakin from the glove.

"No," replied Anakin, lost in thought. He came to himself and amended: "I mean 'yes'."

Padmé let out a sharp, mirthless laugh.

"You'll be fine," Anakin said to her. "It's fun, right? This is fun."

"Fun," she parroted. "Yes. So, should I turn it on?"

"No!" Anakin yelled, alarming both Padmé and Obi-Wan. He cleared his throat and went on more 'calmly': "Um, not yet. You'll need to be attuned to the kyber crystal, first."

"Oh," said Padmé, looking at the ring and having no idea how or what that meant.

"Master Kenobi's better at that stuff, I'll let him coach you through it," said Anakin, putting some tools and parts aside.

She looked to Obi-Wan, who met her eyes. His gaze shuddered, then broke away in a moment of weakness, and then returned after he drew a bolstering breath.

"I'm still not leaving you two alone," Anakin announced while organizing some parts on the nearby table. "So just get on with it."

"Yes, so," he said, taking her hand and guiding her to the sofa. "Let's begin."

They turned towards each other on the sofa, and he held her hand up gently. Her hand looked as if it had been bedecked in finely wrought jewelry made from droid innards. Supporting her hand beneath his own, she could feel the gentleness of the pads of his fingers and thumb on the parts of her skin that weren't covered. There was always a heat that emanated from him. It distracted her.

He drew her gaze to his face, and she watched him fall into his mentor mode, and she knew it was the mask behind which he felt most comfortable. She smiled a little at him, and he returned it with his own.

"I have no idea how to do this," she said.

"You do," he said. "You just haven't applied it to a kyber crystal before. You have all the parts necessary at your disposal to attune to it."

"Then tell me how," she said.

He glanced over her face.

"I'll tell you exactly how," he said, and his voice fell soft: "Do what you did to me."

Thinking of what she'd done to Obi-Wan, she worked hard to suppress a blush which threatened to burn her face to ashes.

"What I mean is," he said, still teaching, yet gentle. "You attuned to me. You felt the force within me. You found it and felt it and knew what it was. In that way, you understood the basic properties that make me what I am. And then you aligned yourself with that force, with the way it manifested in me."

She blinked, considering.

"Didn't you?" he asked.

Taking in his face, she knew. "Y-yes."

"So this may only be a rock, but every particle of matter in the universe is the same. The force manifests within it in a unique way, just like it does in me, and in you. It is your unique manifestation combined with this crystal's unique manifestation that will create something new, something yet unknown in our universe," he said. "It is that way for every padawan who attunes with a kyber crystal; every light saber is subtly different."

"This isn't a light saber, though," said Padmé.

"No," he agreed. "But it is a kyber crystal, and to use it in any function, you must come to terms with it."

She drew a breath and let it out. His fingers tightened on hers.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

She closed her eyes and tried to feel. Immediately she felt Obi-Wan, strong, almost blinding in his brilliance, and familiar now. She didn't know when she'd become so accustomed to him, so familiar with him, but she had. She wanted to linger there with him, but knew she had something else to do.

The truth was she felt it completely intimidating to try to communicate with a rock, but she dove in with abandon, turning all her focus toward the ring on her finger, and the crystal within it. All at once she sensed it. She couldn't not sense it. It was roiling with the force.

Her eyes snapped open. Obi-Wan sought her with his eyes, curious.

"There's something wrong with it," she said.

"Something wrong with it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, feeling confused. "It's… um. It seems… hurt? Somehow?"

Obi-Wan's eyes widened, and she saw Anakin shoot up from his chair.

"Did you say it's hurt?" asked Anakin, instantly piqued.

"I-I think so," she said.

"Wow," said Anakin, coming around to look at the apparatus. "Wow."

Obi-Wan stared at the stone.

"That means what I think it means, doesn't it, master?" Anakin asked Obi-Wan.

"Yes," said Obi-Wan, still staring at the ring. "It does."

"What does it mean?" asked Padmé.

Anakin and Obi-Wan both looked at Padmé.

"It means," Obi-Wan told her, "the previous owner of this ring was…"

"A sith!" said Anakin, pointing at the ring. "Only a sith does that to a kyber crystal!"

Obi-Wan's expression was sober, but there was a peculiar agitation radiating from Anakin.

"That's correct," said Obi-Wan, sighing and giving Padmé a terse, joyless smile. "It must have been owned by a sith."

Padmé felt her eyes widen.

"That means-," she began.

"Yes, it means-," cut in Anakin.

"That the person orchestrating the fall of the Republic-," said Padmé.

"Is a sith!" exhaled Anakin.

"Yes!" said Padmé, and as that sunk into them all, she oathed, "Oh, dear stars!"

"Dear stars, indeed, Padmé," said Obi-Wan, clutching her hand, his light shadowed by gravity.