CHAPTER TWENTY:
ENTROPY – change within a closed system; a transformation; a change within; or, broadly, the degree of disorder or uncertainty within a system; or CHAOS, DE-ORGANIZATION.
OR: to fall to ruin; to release order; the opposite of creation; to dissipate, to fall into a state of instability, disorder.
The transformation of matter and energy from a state of order to chaos.
To relent; to fall apart; to be unstable; THE STATE OF TRANSFORMATION BETWEEN ONE STATE AND ANOTHER; UNSTABLE - UNFINISHED.
Entropy.
A closed system.
How can we escape a closed system, Obi-Wan?
Padmé awoke in a state of intense, undefined yearning. Above her, the stars turned in a slowly disintegrating wheel. Dawn distantly clawed at the seams of night.
She turned her head to see him lying beside her, his eyes similarly upon the disintegrating stars. He was silent, empty; without movement or purpose. He looked to be only existing in the moment.
His purpose had been full the night before, burning beyond the boundaries of his personal contingency. He'd pulled her into the trees and away from the light of the dance, he had kissed her with chaotic abandon, with an urgency that betrayed the complete release of control and the total surrender to chaos, to entropy.
She'd gasped for breath as he'd drowned her; she'd been consumed entirely within his depths, in the blue that blackened into blindness, into a slow, rapturous asphyxiation, into a final burning rupture of blinding white.
Within entropy, within that transformation, they had shed everything that they were, as if it were a shell in which they no longer fit; the Jedi and the Senator were among the constructs they cast off, but not the only ones. They devolved and revolved into the most basic building blocks that humans throughout the eons had been; they were man and woman, and that was all.
Even before the human form had come to be, there had been ages of previous beings which had also inhabited the basic building blocks of male and female – the combination of two halves to create a whole, the most redundant of chemistries, the foundation at the heart of the creation of life which they inherited during this moment which they inhabited. It was the greatest of inheritances from an endless wave of previous generations of men and women and the prehistoric - the primordial. It was, in that moment, the time in which they were the most themselves because of what they had been given by the unknown legion of before.
Now they were left with nothing. They lay upon his cast-off cloak of a Jedi, they were covered with her pale cloak of leadership, and they didn't yet know what they were to become. After entropy, after the destruction, comes the rebirth… but into what?
Though his eyes were on the stars, she watched as his emptiness filled slowly with an awareness of her eyes upon him and he turned to meet her gaze. The depths of his eyes were beyond anything she'd seen in them before.
She could have uttered words like, "I love you."
He might have done the same, had she said it.
It didn't feel like that was enough.
To share a poignant gaze, however, to observe and absorb every minute expression that shifted across his face, to feel the edges and ebbs of the force within him, that was getting closer to enough. Her lips parted to suck in a breath and his eyes fell to her mouth, back to her eyes, and he moved all at once over her, darkening the stars above, a warm hand coming to touch her face and his mouth upon her – and again they fell to, but the desperation was gone, now.
There was only experience and warmth and gratitude for their primordial inheritance.
-0—0—0—
"Yes, so where have you been?" asked Jamillia after dawn had come and gone and morning was high in the sky and upon them all. She looked exceedingly suspicious, but in a way that came across as if she was very much enjoying her suspicions.
"I would have expected you to sleep in this morning, what with all the brew you downed," said Padmé, feigning dignity as she clicked open the holofile they were to work on that day.
"I would have said the same to you, if you'd had the chance to have any," said Jamillia. "You disappeared with your Jedi and were never seen again."
"It was a nice night for a walk," Padmé said, switching a button.
"Oh, is that what you did?" asked Jamillia, coming around to face Padmé, resting her elbow on a bar and propping her chin in her palm. "Tell me all about it."
"Oh, you know," said Padmé. "There was a stream and starlight, and we explored the forest."
She was trying very hard to keep her face from flushing but suspected she might be failing.
"It was… nice," she added, and then cleared her throat.
"Oh, good," said Jamillia, smiling knowingly. "I'm glad it was nice."
"Thank you," said Padmé, who was certain her face was red by this point. "So, shall we, ah, continue with this?"
"Certainly," replied Jamillia, who proved herself to be an excellent friend by falling into the work with no other questions asked.
Padmé didn't see Obi-Wan again for the rest of the day. It was easy to forget momentarily about the earth-shattering events of the night before while she was working - there was an entire Rebellion to run, after all – but the moments when it all came back caused her breath to shudder and her heart to skip a beat or two, and then her mind had to press it all back into order and begin again.
She was no longer what she was currently pretending to be. She'd shed that skin and would never return to it.
Where was he?
At the evening meal she saw him with Mal and some other recruits, working with exhaustive physical precision on the training grounds for a last round or two before they broke to join everyone else to eat. His Jedi robes were bound with what seemed like less perfection though not untidy. He looked looser, a bit more comfortable, and relaxed. She dared to posit that he looked happy.
She was so transfixed with watching him that she didn't notice Jamillia speaking to her until whatever her friend had said was already in the past.
"Oh, I'm sorry, what?" begged Padmé.
"How absolutely delightful," said Jamillia, observing Padmé.
"That can't be what you'd just said," Padmé chided her.
"Does it matter?" Jamillia asked, taking a seat next to Ruwee, who immediately fell into gossiping about his bunkmate's poor tidying habits.
Padmé placed her dinner next to Jamillia, but before she could sit, a gentle hand closed around her arm with familiarity and an earthen scent fell across her.
"Can I have a moment, Senator?" inquired Obi-Wan, his blue eyes warm upon her, though his tone was polite.
"Yes," she breathed.
They barely made it to her room before they fell on her bed, kissing with a type of blind madness she never thought possible for either of them. There was a certain blatant existence within the white noise of their passion that was like a well of gravity from which they couldn't escape. She never wanted to escape.
There was no plan, either, for anything.
Through the noise she slowly became aware of a high-pitched whine coming from the tiny droid Anakin had made, and it seemed that Obi-Wan did, as well, for they both turned to look from within their embrace at it whirring upon her bedside tray.
"Has it ever done that before?" he asked, observing it.
"No," said Padmé, and then she asked the droid, "Is everything alright?"
The droid only continued to whine, reaching a pitch and lingering there.
"You'll wear out your power bank," warned Padmé.
The droid didn't listen, but kept whining, and turned in a tight circle.
Obi-Wan sat up, wary. "Is it malfunctioning, perhaps?"
Padmé reached for it and it sparked, causing her to yelp and draw back.
"Are you alright?" asked Obi-Wan, concerned and reaching for Padmé's hand.
"I'm fine," she said, with a small laugh – but then the sirens began, drowning out the high pitch of the droid's whine. The lights of the bunker flickered, as if power was being routed to elsewhere and the generators had to accommodate the change.
Obi-Wan was alert and up at once, straightening his belt and groping for his lightsaber hilt.
"What could that be?" she asked, moving to rise.
"I don't know," he said, the knight in him coming to the fore, and he was ready to spring into action. "Do you have a blaster handy?"
"I do," she replied, fumbling for her blaster in a nearby drawer. "Do you think -?" she began, but didn't finish.
"Yes," he said.
"What do you know?" she demanded of Anakin's droid.
The droid fell mute and still, though she didn't know if it was a response or a coincidence.
"Fine," she said, low on patience. "We will talk later, droid."
She grabbed it and stuffed it in her pocket as Obi-Wan pressed the hatch open to the corridor.
Again the lights flickered, and there was a tremble and a shimmering of dust from the rafters from the rumble of a distant, but deep explosion. Along the corridor and through an arch into a larger room beyond Padmé could see rebels rushing to and fro – to battle-stations, to radars, to war-rooms, to the flight decks.
"All ammunition to the gunner-deck immediately," said a tinny voice over the loudspeaker. "We are under attack."
"By whom?" inquired Padmé, though there wasn't anyone moving slowly enough to hear her inquiry, so she addressed Obi-Wan: "I need to get to the war-room."
"Stay behind me," said Obi-Wan, alert.
They ran, though again the lights flickered, the rafters trembled, and this time the earth moved, though slightly – yet any movement by the earth is always disconcerting. Obi-Wan glanced back, over his shoulder, and she caught his eye.
"I hope everyone wasn't still outside when this started," she said, though they both knew the likelihood that they were, and that much of the rebellion was caught unawares in the middle of the evening meal, outside and vulnerable. "Jamillia and Ruwee…" she murmured to herself, and perhaps it came out as a soft whine.
They resumed rushing towards the war-room's location, dodging running troops and people of various jobs – it seemed scattershot, but they'd been training for this for months. She hoped all that work would pay off. Another blast hit, this time with crushing force, and the lights went out with a delicate flicker, and, after a breathless moment of darkness, the backup lights powered up, dim and reddened. A greater weight of urgency seemed to grip everyone in the bunker, including Padmé and Obi-Wan.
"You should go find Mal," she told him.
"No," said Obi-Wan, unusually contrary. "I won't leave you."
"You must," said Padmé, feeling as if they didn't have time for arguments. "Mal and the rest of the fighters will need you."
"Yes, but I must see you to the war-room safely," he said.
"I can-," she began, but he stopped her by taking her arm and bringing her close.
"Padmé," he said with a tenderness which nearly everyone would have thought unthinkable of Obi-Wan Kenobi, "I must see that you are safe."
"What have I done," she said, seeing the flaw in a Jedi succumbing to attachment.
"You've done nothing," he said to her. He was obstinate and determined to shut down her argument immediately, knowing her thoughts, somehow. "It is as the force wills. I will see you to the war-room or I will not, but I will be certain of your safety."
"Then let us go to the war-room," conceded Padmé, hoping it was, indeed, as the force willed it.
Another blast rocked the bunker and the earth, and they fought to maintain a sure footing as a nearby corridor collapsed, extruding a blast of dust that made it harder to see.
"This way," said Obi-Wan, pulling her by her wrist through the confusion. He lit his lightsaber to provide greater, though still wan, light for their path.
The normal passage she would take to the war-room was blocked by debris; they were rerouted once, and then twice, and then the blasts became too much. It slowly became clear to them that it was no longer an option to stay within the bunker – the war-room, if it still stood, was most definitely lost, and their duty then became the pressing urgency to get as many people safely out of the bunker as they possibly could.
There was a small, barred side exit near the room where they had studied the holos together and come to the dark conclusion about Chancellor Palpatine all those months ago, and this was what they saw to be their best bet in getting out alive, while grabbing as many people as they could on the way there. They'd managed about ten or so; most people had been either outside or in the common areas when all this had occurred, and thus not that many were stuck where they were, but there were still some. By the time they made it to the exit shaft, the only light guiding them was the blue of Obi-Wan's light saber. The emergency lights had also been extinguished, at least in this part of the bunker.
It frustrated Padmé that she had no way of knowing what was happening anywhere else.
"Does anyone know what this is?" asked one of the rebels. "Who attacked us?"
"Who do you think?" asked another.
"Could be pirates," said one.
"It's not pirates," said the other. "It's imperials."
"How do you know?" asked Padmé.
"I was on the other side when it happened," he said. "Imperials came on the radar, but suddenly. I don't know how they found us – I don't think there was even a scout."
"Only imperials have this kind of firepower," muttered another rebel.
Padmé looked at Obi-Wan, who looked pensive, like a cat paused before a pounce.
"Let's get to a ship and get out of here," said Padmé. "Clearly the base is lost – our goal now is to preserve what we can."
"Aye, Senator," said one of the rebels, "You've got the right of it, I think."
"It's a terrible shame," said another. "All that work."
"It's enough if we preserve an ember," she said. "We can light the flame again elsewhere."
They seemed to all take a bit of heart from her words, even though Padmé felt as precarious as the rest of them.
"Hold this, would you?" Obi-Wan asked her, handing her his lightsaber.
Enlisting a few of the rebels to help him unbar the exit shaft which was blocked by two massive, rusty lengths of steel, Obi-Wan and the others labored against its corroded weight. It probably hadn't been opened in ages, and when they'd pulled out the bars and dropped them to the ground, the doors still resisted movement, the hinge squeals echoing through the empty, dark corridors behind. At last, light spilled through a crack, and then a foot, and then enough space for them to escape the crumbling bunker.
"Go, go, go," prompted Padmé, urging everyone out quickly and, once the last had left, Obi-Wan came back in for her.
"Here," she said, handing him his lightsaber. "It doesn't feel right in my hand."
But Obi-Wan seemed distracted.
"What is it?" she asked.
He seemed to be gazing over her shoulder, behind her, into the darkness of the bunker's corridor.
"It's…" he said, his mind occupied and his eyes not leaving the dark behind her. "I don't know."
She stared at him, but he didn't look at her at all. He was poised, alert.
"I don't dare to guess," he said. His breathing trembled for a moment.
"We should go," she said to him. "Obi-Wan, we need to get to a ship."
His eyes shifted to hers then, and it was as if his focus moved to her only momentarily. He was bathed in the blue light of his lightsaber, brighter on the one side, darker on the other where shadow could produce furrows in the light.
"This is the will of the force," he said to her, and then she saw a shuttering in his eyes, a shift in his resolve, a fissure in his armor. "But I don't know if I can bear it," he confessed in a whisper.
"What?" She asked, almost demanded in her frustration to know. "What is it, Obi-Wan?"
In the distance, towards the darkness, the sound of moving rock was followed by the distant but growing sound of a number of footsteps.
"We need to go," prompted Padmé, feeling an urgency she was trying to keep from edging towards panic.
"No," said Obi-Wan.
"Please, Obi-Wan," she said, pleading.
"Padmé," he plead back, his voice soft. He fixed her with his eyes and touched her cheek.
"I don't understand," she said.
"Neither do I… not fully… not yet."
The footsteps grew louder until she knew they had to be nearly upon them.
"This is our last opportunity to run," she whispered, and she found herself trembling.
"The force wills it," he said. It sounded like a mantra, almost, as if it was something he'd said a thousand times, though she couldn't recall hearing him say it until that day.
"And I'm just supposed to trust you?" she asked, feeling desperation claw at her seams.
"No," he said. "Don't trust me."
He gazed at her.
"Trust the force."
She drew a ragged breath and, locked in a gaze with Obi-Wan bathed in the blue light of his saber, she knew what he meant. It was, however, more than she could do – she wasn't a Jedi. She was a senator. Senators never just trusted the force. It wasn't something they did. It felt too dangerous. Too risky. Too fallible. She felt tears sting her eyes because of her own weakness. His thumb ran over her cheek, a gentle caress.
"I love you," he breathed with a vulnerable tremor.
She caught her breath and felt twin drops fall heavy as the tears welled over against her best efforts.
Obi-Wan released her cheek and turned to the corridor and to what it might hold for them with its encroaching march. Padmé couldn't help but assume it was death as she readied her blaster.
Then, the footsteps stopped.
Bathed in silence and darkness save for the pale blue of a lightsaber, Padmé felt as if she'd rocket out of her skin if this nothing stretched for much longer. Her senses begged for something, anything, to reveal itself – and then she felt it.
A field of ice-cold fire stretched out, filling the entire area instantly with frigid, sterile light. It was light, but it was also the force. And she recognized exactly whose immensely powerful force signature it was without seeing who was there. Obi-Wan was stiff, tense – he was caught in between a juxtaposition of emotions. She felt his own signature tremble, his placid surface rippled by uncertainty.
Flanked by four storm troopers in pristine white plastisteel stood a tall figure cloaked in black, hooded, the hilt of a light saber resting easily in his palm. He seemed calm, confident, and in no hurry or in any sort of duress. He was quite comfortable, yet remarkably frigid. He seemed more complete, somehow. The anxiety and the discontent which had plagued him was absent. Gone. Cured.
His eyes were locked with Obi-Wan's and she felt their forces circle each other, as if it was a sizing-up outside of normal senses.
"Anakin," she whispered, breaking the silence.
Anakin's eyes flicked to her, then back to Obi-Wan.
"Senator Amidala and Jedi Kenobi, you are under arrest for crimes against the Empire," he said.
"We've committed no crimes against the Empire," said Obi-Wan, his lightsaber still lit.
Anakin tilted his head with bemusement. "Haven't you?"
Of course, Anakin knew they'd all committed what could very easily be considered crimes against the sovereignty of the current emperor. High crimes, at that.
"What is our charge?" demanded Obi-Wan.
"Treason," replied Anakin.
Well, he was right. As a lawmaker herself, she had to admit Anakin was quite right in his charge against them, considering how the ruling government had changed. Funny how the overthrow of a republic and the instatement of a dictatorship could so quickly turn one into the worst kind of criminal. Padmé was quite certain Obi-Wan wouldn't see it that way, however.
Obi-Wan shifted his weight and tightened the grip on his lightsaber.
"I see no reason to surrender," he said. "You know we'll only be put to death."
"The Emperor has requested you both," said Anakin.
"I'd prefer not to give him the satisfaction," replied Obi-Wan.
"Then I suppose I'll have to do this the hard way," said Anakin, flicking the switch on his lightsaber hilt.
It was red.
A gasp escaped Padmé before she could stop it. She felt an earthquake ripple across Obi-Wan – the feelings came in succession one after another – betrayal, failure, fear… and beneath it all, a stretching, gaping thread of agony. Waves fell across him and through him, mixing and chaotic, and then through an intense bolstering gained through decades of focused training, he stilled it all, zeroing his awareness into one single point. That point of awareness had decided it was going to fight Anakin with all of his gathered ability.
She felt the cold, sharp intensity of Anakin gather as he raised his lightsaber, but beneath it she felt something else. It was a hesitation. That was the signal. She knew she had to act at once.
Padmé would ruminate later how throwing oneself between two men about to attack each other with lightsabers is an incredibly stupid thing to do, but she didn't have time to realize that before she'd already done it, flinging herself between them and activating her lightshield at the same moment their sabers were falling to clash; blue and red light striking her shield and crackling with crazed, low thrums of explosive energy.
"Stop!" she cried, and they both withdrew with surprise, dousing their lightsabers at once.
"Padmé, what are you—" began Obi-Wan.
"We will come with you, Anakin," she said, leaving her shield up, for good measure. It was a bit traumatic, almost being sabered by them both. Anakin's cold had been cracked, if only for a moment, by his surprise at her interference, and perhaps by the close call. She could see he did not wish to see her harmed.
"No, Padmé, we can't do that," said Obi-Wan.
"Yes, we can," said Padmé, turning to look at him.
"That's certain death," he said.
"Perhaps," she said, giving Anakin a glance, who had gone stone cold and impassable, again.
"Take me," said Obi-Wan to Anakin. "Leave her."
"No," said Anakin.
"I said, leave her," demanded Obi-Wan. "You know as well as I do that she doesn't deserve death. The universe is a far better place with her in it."
"The Emperor requires you both," said Anakin, immovable, and Obi-Wan seemed poised to begin another storm.
"We will go," said Padmé firmly. "We will both go."
"Padmé, please," pled Obi-Wan.
Anakin glanced at Obi-Wan, then back to Padmé. She thought she saw a tightening about his mouth, a narrowing of his eyes. She felt as if he were withholding saying something he badly wanted to say. Interesting.
Padmé released her lightshield and turned to Obi-Wan. She took his hand and moved close.
"What do you feel?" she asked him softly.
He gazed down at her. The roiling within his force was back and afflicting him. With her touch the roiling stilled somewhat, however. His eyes flicked over her head to Anakin.
"We will go with you," said Obi-Wan.
"Bind them," said Anakin, as if there wasn't any to-do at all involved in this particular arrest. He took Obi-Wan's lightsaber and turned away to return down the corridor as the stormtroopers clapped their wrists behind them in stiff steel bands and shoved them into Anakin's wake.
-00—00—00-