Note: the referenced conversation between Padmé and Obi-Wan comes from Karen Miller's Wild Space
"But the little Tooka was much too fast. She ran through the garden, and back under the Tuanulberry bush. Under the—"
"The Tiny Little Tooka, hmm?"
Padmé looks up to see Obi-Wan's shadow falling across the floor. She closes the picture book and holds Leia a little tighter.
"Is Anakin here?" he asks.
"I don't know where he is," says Padmé truthfully. Anakin had slipped off after their conversation with the doctor that morning, holding a piece of paper in his fist.
"He hasn't answered my comms for two weeks. But I assume this is where he's been most of that time."
Padmé nods.
Obi-Wan stands up a little straighter. "Are you well, Senator?"
"Yes," says Padmé. It's true enough. She had been discharged from the medcenter that morning, although fatigue from the anemia is still a constant companion.
It's awkward, being alone with him. The last they spoke in confidence like this, it was the week after Geonosis and Obi-Wan was urging her not to emotionally entangle Anakin any further. No good can come of this, for either of you. Well, he'd been wrong. Luke and Leia were proof of that.
"Please tell Anakin I need to speak with him immediately."
"Is this the best time?"
"It is the only time, Senator. This is on the Council agenda for tomorrow afternoon. I'm doing what I can, but it won't be any use if he doesn't show up to the meeting."
Padmé flinches with barely concealed anger. "They want him to appear before the Council so they can expel him to his face?"
"He isn't being expelled," says Obi-Wan quickly. "I have been researching the precedents for this type of situation, and if he is able to keep a cool head and demonstrate that he understands why the relationship was improper, I don't believe we will have a problem."
He assumes too much, Padmé thinks. He assumes that Anakin will go along with whatever terms the Council offers.
Padmé sets Leia back down, mindful of her wires and monitors. She wants to hold the babies constantly, but being so small at two weeks old, they can't regulate their body temperature outside the incubators for long periods of time yet.
Obi-Wan approaches the other incubator and stoops a little bit to peer inside. "Hello, little one," he whispers. Luke gives him a wide-eyed look.
A shadow crosses Obi-Wan's face as the baby starts to fuss. "Padmé," he says, suddenly abandoning his stiff formality. "Where is Anakin?"
"I've told you," says Padmé, not unkindly. "He left in a hurry, he didn't say where to."
"Did he seem alright? He hasn't been acting…unstable at all?"
"Attached?" Padmé suggests derisively.
"This isn't about the Code anymore," says Obi-Wan, betraying a note of frustration. "There is darkness here," he finally says. "Your children are as strong in the Force as he is, Padmé, their light is blinding. But it is also tainted – it has been touched by the Dark Side."
The Dark Side. Padmé would never claim to know a lot about it, but she is more aware than most civilians. She knows about Maul and the Battle of Theed, and she has since gleaned more information from Bail's clipped comments about Zigoola. She knows about the Sith. But how could that possibly have anything to do with her family?
Luke and Leia exist on an entirely different plane from those kinds of existential worries. They cry and spit up and curl their tiny toes. Padmé had been able to feed Leia from her breast for the first time a few days prior, while Luke was taking the transition harder and still needed to be fed in tiny increments through a nasogastric tube. Those were the kind of challenges that made up the babies' day-to-day lives, not anything as arcane and serious as Jedi Theology.
Padmé bites her lip. "Anakin's not been sleeping. I think he believes something terrible is going to happen to them."
Obi-Wan considers that. They both know that Anakin's dreams of his mother were true, while his dreams of Padmé never came to be. But to a scared and volatile Anakin, alone somewhere in this city, the logic of it wouldn't matter. If there was any threat to his family, Anakin would make himself a bigger threat to whatever was causing it.
"I must find him," says Obi-Wan, more resolutely than before.
"Obi-Wan," Padmé demands. "You're wrong if you think he's…he's…"
"No," Obi-Wan snaps. "On that we are in complete agreement. He will not turn. Never that."
…
Anakin stares directly into his cup of fancy honeyed wine and lets everything flow off of his chest.
He talks about Leia's new talent for kicking the pulse-ox monitor off of her foot and then crying when it is strapped back in place. He talks about how Luke still isn't gaining weight, and about the persistent vomiting that keeps him reliant on a feeding tube and barely able to keep down enough nutrients. How even now, Anakin's own thoughts are consumed every second with the knowledge that any little thing could make the babies sick. How he hasn't been able to get rid of the sensation of being on the edge of a knife, not for a single night in two weeks.
The Chancellor says little during his outpouring of pent-up stress. He just listens, as he always does. But when Anakin breaks down in tears, he murmurs, "Oh, Anakin."
"This isn't how it was supposed to be," he snarls. "We should be…I don't know, snuggled up in bed together, all four of us, and I'd make Padmé breakfast and we'd just be a family, all together. I can't take any more of this pacing around the medcenter, paranoid that everything's going to go to hell. It's not fair."
Palpatine's hand on his shoulder squeezes just a little too tightly for comfort. "It most certainly is not, dear boy. I am so sorry that you are going through this."
Palpatine waits until Anakin has wiped the tears away before he makes his next move.
"And I hope you don't mind my saying so, I know you are protective of the Jedi Order, but I find their stance on the matter simply inhumane."
Anakin's head snaps up, thinking of the dozens of unwatched messages from Obi-Wan on his commlink. "What? Have they said anything? About me?"
Palpatine nods sadly. "They have not released anything to the press yet, but I have it on good authority that the Council has decided that your association with Padmé makes you a liability to the war effort," he lies. "They have voted to strip you of your rank and your command, and your standing within the Order is in question. It was unanimous, I heard."
Anakin nearly chokes. Unanimous—that meant—
"And I'm afraid," Palpatine continues, "That they are concerned for the children as well. They feel that such bright beacons of the Force could easily fall prey to darker powers, and the sooner they are safe in the Jedi's crèche, the better."
No. Anakin's daydreams of the little nursery on Naboo, of a quiet life, safe from politics and Codes, starts to vanish. Luke and Leia, in the Order's custody? "No, no, they can't do that, they have no right!"
"Of course not," says Palpatine, now placating instead of provoking. "The final decision will rest with you and Padmé, I'm sure. The 'baby-snatching' scandals of some 15 years ago were all shown to have been fabricated, if memory serves."
Anakin swallows hard. "Thank you for telling me."
"Of course, of course, I wouldn't have wanted you to find out through rumors. I'm sure you must be angry."
But anger was one thing that Anakin was having a hard time separating from the waves of terror pulsing through his veins.
"Truthfully, I expected you might already know. I thought perhaps Obi-Wan might have had the courtesy to warn you."
It was unanimous, I heard. Obi-Wan had been in support of this. Had betrayed him like this, without even hearing his side. He thinks of Ahsoka.
"But let us not speak of the Order anymore. You are suffering as no parent should ever be made to suffer, Anakin and they would be cruel to try to distract you with the politics of it at a time like this."
Luke. Leia. So tiny and fragile, and facing threats from all sides.
Anakin opens his mouth wordlessly, shaking his head. No tears come, he has already cried them all, and his second glass of wine is half empty and making him feel heavy. "I can't protect them," he says thinly, a million possible scenarios playing out in his mind, none of them good. "I can't protect them."
"Not as a Jedi," the Chancellor says, in a voice as sleek as a lothcat.