I swear this wasn't supposed to be a whole ass fic.
Padme didn't have to be Force sensitive to tell that Luke was bothered. Both of the children were disturbed, but when Padme had agreed to supervised visitation, she knew what she was sending them into. Every night since she had signed the papers permitting one hour of public, supervised visitation, she was tormented, questioning if she had done the right thing.
Anakin had been writing them letters for years. It was his only luxury in solitary.
Padme had never given the letters to either of her children, but she didn't read them either. They were words from father to daughter and son. She had to protect them, and keep away whatever madness had struck him when he chose to kneel at the feet of Palpatine. When they were older, when they could take the measure of his character safely, she would give them his words.
Anakin wrote her too, but only years later. Obi-Wan had shamefully confessed that he'd allowed Anakin to think she was dead for the three years he'd been in jail. Whatever Anakin had wanted to say to her, she hadn't wanted to hear it. The problem was, she knew if she spoke to him, she'd forgive him. Their love was madness; for her children, she had to protect herself from going back.
Padme was strong in every way that mattered, but Anakin Skywalker was her weakness.
"Love?" she called him from the other room, dismissing her handmaiden with an idle wave of the hand. "What's wrong?"
It was their week with her. Padme had fought long and hard to have even that much, after her senate bar had been stripped. Recovering from her stroke had been even longer, and though she lived normally now, it had been a fight to even be allowed visitation. She was so grateful to Bail for having taken in her children—that young, they would have fared fine among the Jedi, but in her heart, she could never dismiss Anakin's words; the fears and insecurities he had disclosed to her from being mistreated by the Council. It was hard to know what was true, and what was grooming.
All the work she had done for the Republic was not enough to attest to her fitness to parent to the family court of Naboo, especially not against Bail and Breha Organa, who the new administration admired. And Sola hadn't helped.
Sola couldn't see past the weakness of her flesh, she couldn't see that the physical impairments caused by the eclamptic stroke had done nothing to ruin her sharp mind. She'd had pre-eclampsia and had not known it; Anakin and Obi-Wan had battled over her seizing body. The stroke on the birthing bed had nearly finished her off. Even after Padme had relearned how to walk, talk, and function almost entirely normally, Sola saw a feeble, helpless, burden, and resented her and loved her in equal measure for it.
That custody battle after Anakin's trial was hardly the first time the system had been set against her. Everyone she had thought was her ally had revealed their true nature. Obi-Wan, Sola, and Breha had all testified against her. No one could prove that she had ever done anything that proved that she was undeserving of custody of her children, and so it had been settled with 40/60 custodial rights and half cycle visitation. The court had refused to vacate the adoption. Bail had pulled all the right strings and had the Jedi in his corners, she was grateful that she won even that much.
It was exhausting.
Luke crept in on quiet feet, his pale eyes lamplight in his thin, fine face. He crawled onto the couch and lay his head on her shoulder. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder. His chest pressed under her arm and she could feel his heart beating, rabbit-fast against hers.
"Leia told me that...Father tried to kill you," Luke said, voice even but terribly close to breaking. "Is it true?"
Though he was much too old for such things, Padme gathered Luke close to her. He did not resist, and laid his head on her breast. His eyes, like Anakin's only in color, pensively considered her.
"Where did Leia hear that?" She dodged his question, but was not surprised.
Leia could be a tempestuous child, but she was not hateful, especially not towards strangers. Padme had been careful not to color the children's perceptions of their father, for even imprisoned he was as controversial as he had been free. For her to hate Anakin so fiercely, and not even know him...
"I don't know," Luke lied, averting his gaze. Padme didn't press, and pursed her lips in thought. How much of the truth should she tell?
Anakin had been a living lie detector, but even he could be fooled, manipulated, and groomed. Could she do the same to her own child? No, she decided. They deserved the truth, as much of it as she could give.
"Whatever Leia thinks she knows, she cannot know it all," Padme decided, "And I think you two are old enough now, to understand. Go get your sister, and I'll explain as much as I can."
He hesitated. "She's really mad about it. About...you making her have to go see him."
"You're not her messenger," Padme smiled sadly and kissed Luke's forehead, "And we'll talk more about the visitation together."
He smiled unsurely and ran off to fetch his sister, and Padme sunk agonizingly back into her thought. Perhaps she was wrong to testify for Anakin's parole. Perhaps she was wrong to approve visitation. Perhaps she was wrong, for not fighting harder for her children, for not dragging out custody battles for ten more years until Luke and Leia were Luke and Leia Skywalker, and not Organa, as they should have been.
Perhaps she was wrong for the tiny well of bitterness in her heart, that Bail had used his political influence to expedite his own adoption of her children, that he had presumed her as good as dead when she was in a coma, that he had pushed her to give up her custodial rights, her right to be called mother.
"Breha has been their mother for two years," he'd pled before she took him to court, "Would you wrench that away from them for your own satisfaction?"
She hadn't even been given the opportunity to try. She'd woken up to a hellish world where everything was pain, her children were no longer her own, and her husband slated for execution for crimes he might've done, not things he'd actually done.
Luke and Leia came back in, thought Leia hesitated in the doorway, poised but slightly ashamed of her conduct. For the past three weeks, the tantrums had been unending. The end of the month was arriving, and the visit to the Coruscant loomed over them like a shroud.
"Come, sit by me," she patted the fluffy sectional with a smile, and the two of them were immediately put at ease when they saw she wasn't mad. "I know this is hard, but you can be honest with me, I promise. I won't be mad, or upset, and truly, if you do not want to see Anakin, you won't have to."
Leia relaxed even more when Padme did not call Anakin their father, while Luke sagged almost in disappointment, and Padme internally sighed.
"Your father," and now Leia scowled as Luke brightened up, "was a deeply troubled man. A good man, but a troubled man. He was a Jedi for many years, and a good one, but he made— we made— many, many bad decisions. Most children have to wait until they are much older to learn that parents are people. And that we make mistakes."
"He tried to kill you Mother!" Leia said, "it's not like he broke a vase or, or stole a speeder or something!"
"Tell me what you think you know," Padme pulled Leia to her feet and unbraided her waist long hair, running fingers through it until she began to relax. "And I'll tell you if you're right."
"Why not tell us everything?" Luke asked.
"We're not babies, we can handle it," Leia added.
"I can't tell you everything, because I don't know everything," Padme admitted, "Some things, only your Father knows. And I would rather you have only the truth, and not a certain truth."
They looked at each other, light and dark eyes meeting, and nodded together in certainty.
"I married your father when he was only a padawan—"
"A jedi student," Luke explained to Leia, who had looked confused at the word. She was utterly disinterested in the ways of the Force. Obi-Wan despaired for her.
"Yes," she murmured, "Just before the Clone Wars started. No one else knew. It was only for us. But sentients don't live in a vacuum. And war began to take a toll on us both. When you two came, I was sick."
Padme had been terrified to seek out care. She hadn't told Anakin, but in his nearly year long absence there had been attempts on her life per usual, and the diplomatic missions had been unending. Every conversation was espionage, and every negotiation ended in conflict. It seemed peace was hopeless, and in a manufactured conflict where one puppet-master pulled both strings, it truly was.
"Why didn't you go see an EmDee droid?" Luke wrung his hands nervous. "There's a bajillion on Coruscant!"
"It prescribed bed rest, and during the wartime that was in short supply for us all," Padme sighed. "Your Father was powerful, you know, and he knew it. Somehow, he knew I was sick. He was afraid I would die. He would do anything to stop it."
"That's not what I've heard!" Leia seemed almost worried, her brow furrowed between her closed eyes.
"Were you sick because of us?" Luke's voice was small.
"No!" Padme shook her head vehemently, squeezing Luke tight. "Sometimes things just happen. I had been sick all through my pregnancy, and no one knew. Your father saw the worst case scenario, and tried his hardest to prevent it, but he went about it the wrong way, asking for help from the wrong people. He's a good man who made bad choices, and now he's dealing with the consequences of them. He'll deal with them forever."
"But what did he do?" Leia was not content to be coddled, and pushed away Padme's hands from her half-braided hair, turning around and facing her mother. "I heard—"
"No hearsay Leia," Padme sighed, and pulled the little girl onto her lap. Her children had grown up so quickly— and the visitation was never enough. She missed them more than she saw them, and to split their time in three— if it was right for children to know their father, why did this feel so cruel?
"I was sick, and no one knew, and we were driven off a precipice we didn't know we stood on," Padme whispered hoarsely.
Padme had been young and naive. She thought love was enough.
Anakin had come back from Mustafar, wild-eyed and raving, speaking nonsense. His presence was cold. She'd stopped him at the doors of the Senate chambers, begged him to stop as he went to meet up with the 501st for whatever task Palpatine had set him on. Then, she hadn't known it had been genocide. But she knew had gone to Mustafar, heard democracy die, and then Master Yoda and Obi-Wan had come—
Master Yoda took on the master, and Obi-Wan the apprentice— his apprentice, the Sith apprentice, ANAKIN—
Right there in the Senate building, abandoned after democracy's disbanding, and Padme had been begging him to stop, begging him to deny what Obi-Wan accused him of, because the Anakin she knew…
Well, the Anakin she knew had killed children, and hated himself for it, lived to atone for it, not reveled in it. He didn't anticipate the slaughter.
She had stopped him, told him to come away with her, to leave everything behind. Her life's work lay in ashes behind her, and it was obvious the Jedi stood against him like he always feared (to send a dear friend who had already betrayed him once to kill him was as thoughtless as it was cruel), and at that point, she didn't care if the galaxy burned if only Anakin would stop and come back to her.
And then Obi-Wan had opened his stupid mouth and everything fell apart. She was choking, Anakin choked her, and everything went black. When she woke next, the EmDee's black visor at the Jedi Temple stood over her, and healers rushed around her. The air smelt like blood and burnt plastisteel. Her vision had blacked out, fading in and out of focus and there was so much pain. She had never been in pain like that, and never wanted to again. It was too late for an epidural, so she'd pushed when the Healers told her to, muttering the entire time.
One child—
Two—
A boy, and a girl.
"Mother?" Luke was shaking her, "Are you alright?"
"I will be," she smiled at her son, and when he hugged her back, her smile grew and became more genuine than sad. "Leia," she sighed. "You deserve the answers to your questions. You both do. That's why I want you to visit him. I've been asking these questions for ten years. Whatever Sola says, I don't think your Father tried to kill me."
If she had been anywhere other than the capital of the galaxy…she would be dead.
"I thought you had the right to know him," Padme's eyes welled with tears as her voice thickened. "Bail has been good to you, but you deserve to know your Father and decide whether you want him in your life. He made his choices, he has to live with them. So no Leia, I won't force you to go."
It wasn't what she wanted to say. She loved Anakin, and would defend him with her dying breath. She loved him even when they were apart. She loved him when she blackmailed him into pleading guilty.
Nine years ago, her children had been taken from her without a choice. Luke and Leia had been loving enough to accept her as their mother anyway. Padme Amidala was not a hypocrite; she would give Anakin the opportunity, and leave the decision in her children's hands.
"Master Kenobi would know what happened," Luke told Leia when they got back to Alderaan.
Leia wrinkled her nose. "Master Kenobi? What does he have to do with this?" Leia only knew him as their father's occasional visitor. Luke, who had been interested in the stories of the Clone Wars and Jedi, knew him better; he was always at his heels whenever he came to visit.
Luke shrugged. "Well, he knew Father. He taught him, in fact. That's what he told me when he asked if I wanted to join the Jedi."
Leia pulled up sharp and whirled around, grabbing Luke by his shoulder. "When did Master Kenobi ask you to join the Jedi?"
He tapped his cheek in thought. "Well, it was a really long time ago. I think it was the year we met Mother. I didn't really know what it meant."
"Well, I'm glad you said no," she huffed, "If you were a Jedi, you couldn't be my brother. Who else would steal the speeders when we sneak out?"
Luke laughed, the first genuine smile on his face in what felt like forever. "Leia, I could be a stranger from across the galaxy and I'd still be your brother." Tucking his hands into the sleeves of his robe, he straightened his spine and raised his chin. "It is the will of the Force, young one," he imitated the posh accent of Master Kenobi.
Leia punched him in the shoulder, but couldn't raise her hands fast enough to hide her own smile. "You're ridiculous."
"You're nosy, but that never stopped you," Luke said dramatically, relieved that Leia wasn't in a foul mood...for once.
"Well, you're helping, so you're just as bad," Leia retorted. "How do we contact Master Kenobi?"
They considered each other. "Artoo would know."
Their resolve decided, they set off to find their Mother's wayward navigation droid.
I...don't have anything to say. Leave comments, they feed me. (^:
YellowWomanontheBrink
November 29, 2020
10:17 PM
