All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
— Havelock Ellis
Chapter Eleven
"Mistress Padmé, Mistress Padmé!"
Padmé sighed at the frantic voice of Threepio assaulting her ears as soon as she crossed the threshold of her stately senatorial rooms in 500 Republica. The stresses from the Senate and the secret she was hiding wore on her patience, and she was not in the mood to deal with the anxious droid. The raucous and heated talks of granting the Chancellor more emergency powers continued despite her and her collogues best efforts to stop the motion from continuing. Bail Organa's voice rang in her head. More power? The man already possesses enough power to command an army, for Force's sake! What more does he want?
Padmé agreed wholeheartedly. The rashness of her fellow senators shocked her. They were a Republic, yet the amount of power the Chancellor now possessed equaled a low grade dictatorship. It never ceased to amaze her how far people were willing to go to follow silver tongued, empty promises of safety and security. And those promises were empty, spun in a shiny web, trapping friends and enemies alike.
She didn't know when she had begun to lose faith. Not in democracy, never in democracy, for that is where her loyalty remained—but rather in those who participated in it. There was intent behind this war, more than just Separatist anger, and she was beginning to feel a darker hand pulling the strings. Some nights in the dark moments between sleep and dreams she felt herself beginning to fear if this war would truly ever end. A suspicion had begun to worm its way into her mind, suspicion so black and so mutinous she feared to voice it even to her closest friends. There was something broken at the heart of the Republic, something evil.
However, the sharp words intended for her droid died on her tongue at the presence of another voice, one she usually only heard through holographs and late night dialogues, one soft and heavy, laced with love and full of weariness.
"Padmé?"
"Anakin?" She rushed toward him, her arms out flung. He responded in kind, pulling her close to him in a crushing embrace. Padmé felt tears sting her eyes as she breathed him in, allowing her fears and terrors about the Senate and their child to momentarily be forgotten in his arms. "Oh, Ani!" she cried, finally pulling away to look at him. "You're back? I thought you weren't coming back on planet until tomorrow!" She looked closer then, and saw something wrong reflecting in his eyes. She swallowed a sudden dread. "Did something happen? Did you . . ."
Anakin shook his head, shushing her and holding up a finger to her moving lips. "Padmé, my love. That can wait." He pushed her an arm's length away, gazing at her with adoring eyes. He reached down and placed a gentle hand on her belly. He looked up, his face suffused with wonder and consternation as he felt the warm light growing inside her.
"I feel it," he said, his voice struck almost soundless with amazement. "I can feel the baby!"
Lips trembling, Padmé smiled and covered his hand with both of her own. "I know," she whispered back. She swallowed, the fears of the last few months rushing back then as she finally had someone with whom she could share. The pressures and strains of her secret keeping finally caught up to her and she felt the tears she had been holding back begin to flow.
Distressed, Anakin pulled her to the couch and sat them both down on it. "Padmé, what's wrong?"
"Oh, Anakin," she cried, flinging her arms around his shoulders once again and carding her fingers through his hair. "What are we going to do? This baby . . . it changes everything. I don't know how we can explain it, and the Council? When they find out it's yours . . . and there is no one to talk to them now that Obi-Wan is—"
Anakin winced and she stopped herself then, gasping slightly as she covered her mouth in dismay. The light kindled in his eyes at the prospect of their child shuttered behind darkness and sorrow, and he turned infinitesimally away.
She could still remember their first meeting after it had happened. She had returned as soon as possible from her duties on Naboo, but it had taken infinitely longer than she had ever hoped. But there was protocol to follow in these matters, and no one expected her to rush back for a Jedi she had in theory known only formally. She shuddered to recall Anakin's blank stare at her questioning words and his inability to respond to her queries and comforts with more than single words. Instead he looked down at his hands as if he could still see the slippery blood coating his fingers. He couldn't sleep either, instead waking up from nightmare after nightmare, Obi-Wan's name frozen on his lips.
He was better now, if better meant he now talked using more than single words and sleeping mostly through the night. But he was still broken, a mere shadow of the strong man she married. She did not resent the grief, for grief and pain were natural responses to death, but the gleam of retribution in her husband's eyes, the relentless obsession with revenge . . .
Was there a way to resent a ghost? But she did, she hated who her husband was becoming because of a memory, a false drive to set right what Obi-Wan wouldn't have even wanted.
Standing up and turning away from her, Anakin looked out the window at the relentless Coruscant traffic streaming by. "There is a reason I'm home a day early" he said quietly, refusing to meet her eyes. He paused for a long while, long enough for Padmé to wonder if he would actually continue.
"I found him, Padmé," he whispered finally. Turning to face her, his gaze suddenly hardened, his face becoming something different from the loving man she had married. It was hard, cold, and so terrifyingly dark that Padmé irrationally felt the need to pull away.
"Found him?" But even as she asked, the answer to her question became clear. There was only one him that Anakin could be referring to, only one man that could produce such a response of hate and anger in her husband. "Oh, Anakin. What did you do?"
His eyes shifted away from hers and far over the horizon. He didn't appear to notice the clenched fists at his sides. "Does it matter?" Shadows deepened the lines of his face. "He's dead," he said simply.
Once again Padmé's hand flew to her mouth, dismay coursing through her veins. "You killed him, Anakin? Please tell me you didn't kill him." She sat frozen to her seat, staring at the stranger in front of her.
"No, Padmé, I didn't kill him," he hissed, suddenly whipping around to face her again. "That's the problem."
Padmé drew her brows together as she tried to piece together her husband's disjointed thoughts. "Problem?" she asked, "But I thought . . . you wanted him dead?"
Anakin scoffed, pacing the floor vehemently in front of her. "Of course it's what I wanted. The kriffing bastard deserves even more than that. But he died and I didn't kill him." He stopped his pacing then, pressing both hands against the window. His head sunk between his shoulder blades. The setting sun cast him into silhouette, and suddenly he seemed more shadow than man.
"But Padmé, I would do anything to go back there and do it again just so I could run my lightsaber through his kriffing heart. And that's the problem, I know it's wrong, I know it's not-not what he would have wanted and that more than anything makes it worse." He planted his face in his hands, breath trembling in and out as he attempted to control himself. "Padmé, I failed, I failed him, because I would still kill Malus."
The agony in his voice seared her heart. What love Obi-Wan had unintentionally inspired in the man, to drive him to such feats of retribution. And what anguish would he have felt to see the friend he loved reduced to a shadow of vengeance, a wraith in the halls as a result of his death.
Standing up and walking over to where he stood by the window, Padmé rubbed soothing circles on his back, her fingers ghosting over knotted and overworked muscles. "Anakin, the Jedi may think of you as their Chosen One, but that doesn't lessen the fact that you're only human. Everyone makes mistakes and you didn't fail Obi-Wan because you didn't kill the bounty hunter. You did the right thing."
Voice muffled by his hands, Anakin revealed, "But I wanted to."
"But you didn't."
His shoulders slumped, his breath shuddering through his lungs. "It's just . . . I don't feel any better." He looked over at her then, desperation written across his exhausted features. Padmé could suddenly read every sleepless night and relentless obsession with the war on every shadow and wrinkle on his face. "I thought if he died, then-then . . ." he swallowed before saying the name quietly, "Then Obi-Wan would have been avenged and I could move on." He grasped both her hands in a despairing grip, searching her face for an answer. "But I still have this burning grief inside. Why do I still miss him so much?" The last sentence came out a keening cry, the heartbroken confusing of a child missing their parent. He slowly sank down onto his knees as if his pain was too much to bear. Padmé followed him down to the floor, their arms and legs tangling together.
"Ani, oh Ani," she repeated, "Grief never ends, my love," she pushed around the ache in her throat. "But if there is one thing I have found it is that it changes. You cannot stay in it forever, it is a passage." She pulled away to look in his face, her hands still caressing their way through his hair.
At her words he scoffed derisively, his pain echoing in the sound. He looked back, his eyes still fever-bright, face flushed, the shadows of his bones reflecting those of a dead man. "Padmé, why won't this pain and guilt go away? It's like a burning pit inside me, and everything I do and see and feel is stitched with it. Guilt that I can't think about him, and guilt that I haven't thought about him enough. Then all I can feel when I do think about him is grief. Padmé, it's like a lightsaber stabbing my heart every time and I just can't . . ." His words ended in a pained gasp, trailing off as words ran out and pain and guilt filled the void left behind.
Her heart ached. Oh, Obi-Wan. If you could see what your death has done to him, would you have tried harder to live? Would you have made a different decision, chosen a different path so Anakin could live as well? But Obi-Wan was not there, he had gone where no living could follow. But that did not mean his teachings had departed as well.
She leaned forward and whispered, "What would Obi-Wan say?"
At her words, his face froze. For a moment it appeared as if he wouldn't respond, but finally something flickered infinitesimally across his face. "Before or after 'what are you doing in Senator Amidala's apartment at this time of night?'" He choked out a tearful laugh, no mirth in the sound, just a pathetic whimper, a physical manifestation of grief. He passed his hands across his eyes, pressing his fingers to the lids.
Padmé felt her heart break a little more. Trembling lips curving into a watery smile of her own, she gently reached out and pulled her husband's hands away from his face. "After," she replied, placing a light kiss on his chapped knuckles. His own fingers curled around hers.
"He . . . he'd say all feelings teach us something. A person must feel the pain, and learn from it." Anakin swallowed, but pressed on, his voice a whisper. "'What is the point of guilt, Anakin? To help us learn self-forgiveness.'" His voice cracked, eyes bright with emotion as he suddenly pulled his hands away, placing them once again over his closed eyes. He breathed, filling his chest with air and letting it out before continuing suddenly.
"I would do it again, Padmé. For him. I would kill someone if I found out they were involved. Someone like that doesn't deserve to be saved." And in his suddenly open eyes, Padmé saw the depths of flames that matched those Tatooine suns so many years before. The pure dedication, the raw promise in those words chilled Padmé to the core. The implications of Anakin's statement reverberated in her mind, sending icy shards of dread deep in her soul.
She leaned closer to her husband, softly grasping his tightly clenched jaw in her gentle fingers, turning his shadowed face toward her. "It's not about killing or saving them, Ani. It's not about revenge or justice. It's about saving yourself."
She had seen firsthand the result of her husband's fury unleashed upon those he deemed had wronged him, she had witnessed the brokenness and pain he suffered, both in mind and spirit, and angered beast wrestling with the guilt torn heart. She too had lost a friend with Obi-Wan's death, but she refused to let his death cause another.
"I know there is good in you, Ani. And it scares me to see that goodness slipping away each day." A desperate pleading entered her voice, echoing the pounding love and fear growing in her heart for this broken, strong, lost and grieving man in front of her.
Suddenly Anakin recoiled from her touch as if it was poison. He hurdled up off the floor, flames burning high in his eyes. "What if I was never good? What if my goodness came from those around me? My mother, you, from Obi-Wan. It's just—I can't contain this anger inside me, Padmé."
Padmé breathed in slowly, pressing down the fear and sorrow in her. "You need to stay strong, Ani. For yourself, for us. For our unborn child."
He shook his head, running trembling hands through his hair. "What if I can't? Padmé, without him . . . He kept me good, and now that he's-he's gone all I can feel is pain, and that pain—the only way it escapes in is anger." His voice rose in volume, the room humming with rage and power and screaming agony.
Swiftly Padmé leapt up, enveloped his trembling and tightly corded body in her arms as tightly as she could, pulling him down on the floor again. Tears trembled on her own lashes, diamond bright in the dim light. She could feel her own heart breaking inside, tiny fault lines slithering across the surface. Their twin sorrows wound together, a monument to sorrow, a tableau of grief. She gently ran her fingers through Anakin's tangled curls, feeling his tense muscles against her arms, shushing and soothing him as she would a little child.
"Some believe the pain demonstrates a lack of faith, some internal part of you that is too weak to move on. The Jedi would have you believe there is no death, only the Force. But Ani, that is not true at all. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor is it a lack of faith; it is the price of love."
Upon hearing those words, his face crumpled, looking as if she herself had shot a blaster bolt into his chest, such was the agony scrawled across his face.
"Padmé, he-he told me he loved me. And I never told him. I knew he loved me, but I never told him. . ."
"Oh Anakin, he knew. I could see it. I knew. He must have known. It is said that it is only with that heart that one can see rightly, Ani. What does your heart tell you?"
Anakin blinked then, a seemingly vast movement in the utter stillness of the room. "He knew," he whispered finally, but with certainty. A single tear trembled on his lashes before suddenly, slowly tracing its way down his face. Padmé reached up and brushed it away with the pad of her thumb. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against his, closing her eyes.
"Of course he knew," she whispered, feeling their breath mingle. "For a brief time, my love, you had Obi-Wan in your life, but now you'll have to carry him in your heart." She felt something break within him, a dam that had been built to protect the child from the pain.
"I miss him Padmé, so much." The voice came out as a broken whisper.
"I know," she whispered back, allowing her tears to fall in his hair like a gentle rain washing away the dirt, leaving a land washed and clean.
Besides that first day, Anakin had denied his tears. It was as if the raging fire within him had seared his heart, turning him into a vengeful flame burning and evaporating all in its wake. But here, in the place where he had always felt safe, the tears came. Deep, wracking sobs that seemed to tear out pieces of his soul shook his body.
And she held him as he wept.
The harsh dark of the night eased into the warm, watery pink of dawn. The soft light kissed the two faces wrapped in each other's arms. Anakin gazed at the face of his wife, placing small kisses on her hand and forehead. He laid a gentle hand on her slightly protruding stomach, caressing the small life within.
"I'm sorry, Padmé," he whispered unexpectedly. Her surprise was palpable as she peered into his face. Sitting up in the bed, she carded her fingers through his tangled curls. Their combined bodies warmed the sheets and her heart. She had missed this. She had missed him.
"For what, my love?" she queried.
His face fell into the shadows. "I haven't been here. I know I haven't been present." He rolled over on his back, his eyes far away. "I know I've been . . . distracted these last months."
Padmé settled her head on his chest, feeling her heart constrict. "Oh, Ani. You don't need to apologize at all. Something like these last few months, losing someone you love, you don't just let it go." She gazed at his face from her position on his chest, seeing his eyes still lost in his own world. She could count the number of nights spent together as husband and wife in the last few terrible months on one hand. It took a toll on both of them, but then the war was easy on no one, least of all the Jedi. Reports of more of their number falling every day reached the ears of the Senate, and every time Padmé felt terror chill down her spine until the last name was read, dreading to hear the name that she loved added to a list of those lost into the Force. Losing Obi-Wan was already too great a sacrifice, and she didn't think she could bear any more death.
And each day, as the moment their child would arrive grew closer, she began to dream of a galaxy free of war and pain and death. She dreamed of the three of them, a family, sheltered from the oppressive weight of the problems of others. The baby would change everything. She could feel it. But Anakin, excited as he was, willingly blinded himself to the inevitable change this baby would bring. As much as he adored her, he loved his life as a Jedi almost as much.
Sometimes, however, Padmé worried. Did he love the selflessness of being a Jedi, the tenets of self-sacrifice they all followed, or did he bask in the power his position afforded him, the adoring eyes of the public and the fearful eyes of the public? Sometimes she didn't know.
Slipping out of the bed, she padded across the soft floor to the elegant dresser. The silky material of her nightgown felt cool as it brushed across her skin. She paused for a moment, gazing into her reflection before turning around to face her husband. "Anakin, we need to talk about the baby."
Anakin sat up, the muscles on his chest defined in the faint light, but the strain of the last few months showing clearly through new scars marring his body and the thinness in his face. Frowning at her words he crossed his arms. "Padmé, we're not going to worry about anything right now, all right? Our baby is a gift."
Shaking her head, she paced agitatedly at the end of their bed. She couldn't let them ignore the inevitable any longer. It was childish to pretend that nothing was changing, that life would continue as it always had. Anakin, she knew, would never address the problem unless forced. Give him a physical enemy and he would overcome it or die trying. However, emotional problems? Dealing with the highs and lows of relationships, with the issues they presented; his response was to attempt to forget, to elude, and to completely avoid the problem until it blew up in his face.
They couldn't afford for that to happen now. Difficult as it was, so soon after that day, this was too important.
She stopped pacing and stepped swiftly to the side of the bed, desperately grasping her husband's hand. "I know, but Anakin. We can't just push it down and away and pretend nothing is going to change. Because things will change. For me, for you. I can have the baby on Naboo, but what then? Remain hidden? Lie when they ask who the father is?"
Anakin pressed his lips together and disentangled his hand from hers. He refused to look in her eyes as he flung aside the covers and slid past her out of bed. For a moment she thought he would refuse, would hide away behind his façade. She prepared to debate, arguments already forming in her mind. She opened her mouth just as he spoke.
"You're right," he said, gazing out the window at the vibrant sunrise. The pink and gold hues set the blond strands alight in a delicate blaze. Padmé snapped her mouth closed, feeling her lips curve into a smile until she heard his next words.
"I'll talk to the Chancellor. He'll know what to do."
Her heart beat once, hard, and for some unknown reason Padmé felt the urge to recoil. "Anakin, the Chancellor?" Her mouth felt dry. "You've told him about us? Is that wise?"
Anakin gave her a strange look. "Padmé, he's always been a friend to me, has trusted me when no one else has except . . ." he paused and shook his head as if to clear it. "He's always guided me when I've needed it."
"It's just. . . I don't know what it is," she shook her head. "But something is wrong here. I can't put my finger on it. It's just the whispering in the shadows, the way people are shrinking away from what this Republic was founded on."
Waving away her words with an indifferent hand, Anakin began to slip into his tunics. He had denied the traditional white tunics worn by the Jedi for years, and now somehow the dark, muted colors that distinguished his clothing from theirs seemed even darker and blacker then she remembered. "It's called war, Padmé. The people are right to be scared."
"No Anakin, it's-" once again she shook her head helplessly, feeling a flash of anger at his unconcerned attitude. "It's more than that. I think . . ." she trailed off, not sure how to explain what she thought. It was just a feeling—and while if anyone should understand following a feeling it would be a Jedi—she even questioned herself sometimes.
As if sensing her irritation Anakin's brows drew together as he finally focused completely on her. "What, Padmé?"
She placed her hands on her hips, making a frustrated noise. "I don't know! All I know is something is broken, there is something dark and sinister behind this whole war. And I think its heart is here, in Coruscant. There's someone high up, someone with power . . . I just think we need to be careful."
At her words Anakin's face suddenly drained of all color and he stumbled half a step back in the room. His distress was so palpable that Padmé quickly reached for him, concern written on her expression.
"Anakin? What's wrong?"
He swallowed visibly, his adams apple bobbing up and down. The white in his face stood out against his dark tunics. "It's just . . . that's what-what Obi-Wan said before . . . before he . . ." He stopped, the words seeming to grate their way out of his throat.
Icy dread prickled across her skin. "Obi-Wan? He suspected something, someone, here? In the Senate?"
Anakin's face remained pale. He opened his mouth to respond before closing it again and shaking his head. "I don't know." He turned away from her concern, his back closing off the possibility of discussion.
Padmé felt frustration building inside her. He just didn't deal with problems like he should. He turned away, shut people out, believed because he was the Jedi's Chosen One it meant the weight of the galaxy was on his shoulders and his alone. But she was his wife, and that meant she didn't need protection, she needed his trust.
Walking over to his side, she rested a hand on his arm, gazing up into his pinched and worried face. "Don't do this Anakin! Don't shut me out."
Sighing, Anakin pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. "I'm not shutting you out, Padmé," his voice sounded tired. "I just don't know." He took his hand away from his face and ran it through his hair, lips twisted into a frown.
"Years ago, right before we got married. Remember Geonosis? How Obi-" he swallowed, "how Obi-Wan had been captured by Dooku? He told me later that Dooku told him about a Dark Lord controlling the Senate."
Padmé gasped. "And what did the Council say?"
Snorting derisively, Anakin rolled his eyes, his contempt for both the Council and Dooku written across his face. "Dooku is a Sith, a master of lies. Why would they believe anything he said? Even Obi-Wan doubted him. At least, so it seemed until . . ." Once again his face twisted, and suddenly he looked adrift, like a small child who had lost their guidance in life.
Suddenly frightened, Padmé wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face into his warm, solid chest. "Ani, what should we do?"
Shaking himself as if waking from a dream, Anakin pressed a kiss on the top of her head before pulling away from her embrace. "The Council has called me in for a meeting. I need to go, but don't worry Padmé, okay? I will be back." Smiling tenderly at her, he leaned down and kissed her softly on the lips. "You take care of our baby girl."
Padmé smiled, shoving her fear and uncertainty about the future down and away to think about later. "Don't you mean our baby boy?" she teased. Anakin smiled back at her, adoration writing across his face.
"We will see, my love. I promise not to gloat too much when I'm right."
Padmé giggled even as her heart broke a little. She missed this Anakin, the carefree man she married, not the war weary general he was most often these days.
"Goodbye, my love." As he headed out the door, the words echoed between them as their fingertips brushed. Just before he left, he turned around suddenly and looked her straight in her eyes. "Don't say anything about this to anyone, okay?" And the seriousness in her voice evaporated any trace of humor she felt and sent a quiver of apprehension through her body.
"I won't. Be careful, Anakin." And as he sped off into the sunrise, Padmé suddenly had a strange premonition that things would never be the same again.