Chapter Three: A Mother's Choice
Padmé was no stranger to pain. She had suffered the pain of knowing that because of their duties, she and her Jedi love could never have the life together that they had always dreamed of. She had survived having her back torn to ribbons by a nexu – Force only knew what kind of filth it had had on its claws, and the battle that had followed had all put poured sand into the open wounds. Not the most pleasant experience.
Yes, Padmé knew pain all too well.
Yet never, not even in her harshest nightmares, had she known agony like what was assaulting her now.
Childbirth alone would have been bad enough. Add the heartbreak that cleaved her soul in two, and her desire to live was shattered.
She was not as strong as everyone thought. Not even the twins she distinctly remembered Obi-Wan telling her she would bear were enough to anchor her to the land of the living.
She was tired of pain. She wanted to leave it behind forever.
She wanted Anakin by her side.
If she couldn't have one, she would have the other.
Anakin . . . he should be here! It should be him sitting beside her, holding her hand, encouraging her. Not Obi-Wan.
Another contraction hit, and Padmé cried out. What had happened to them? Only last week they had been so happy, and now their lives had fallen completely apart. What had they done to deserve such tragedy?
Tragedy.
Leia.
She clenched Obi-Wan's hand. She had to tell him. She had to do this for Anakin.
"Anakin thinks it's a girl . . ."
Obi-Wan tried to soothe her, but she would have none of it. "If it's a girl . . ."
Another contraction hit. Padmé moaned.
"If it's a girl . . . name her Leia."
There. She had done it.
Leia. Tragedy. It seemed to fit, somehow.
The surgical droid at her feet came to stand beside Obi-Wan, holding a newborn so small Padmé doubted the child's tiny fist would close fully around Anakin's forefinger. "It's a boy," the droid said softly.
Padmé reached for her son, but had the strength to do nothing but touch his angelic face with her fingertips.
He needed a name. She had spent months thinking of boys' name, sure her child would be male, but now that the time to bestow one on her firstborn had come, they all seemed inadequate.
She thought of Anakin, as the boy she had met, and as the man she had married.
And suddenly, she knew what to name their son.
Luke.
It meant hope, or brightness. It was what Anakin had been.
"Luke . . ." she whispered.
Such a simple word, yet it carried the universe. Her universe. Sometimes the simplest things, Padmé reflected, held the most meaning.
Another droid approached, another beautiful infant in its arms. "It's a girl," it said.
Padmé tried to smile. Anakin had his Leia. "Leia . . ." she breathed as her eyes met her daughter's.
And then both children were gone. Taken from their mother's side.
Forever.
Not long after that, their mother was gone, too.
And so the Skywalker twins were named for their father: Luke, for what he had been, and Leia, for what he was.