Interlude Four
Redefinition
I am a father.
Just saying the phrase out loud causes my thoughts to blur into a pleasant haze, forgetting that I should be asleep. But every time I try to succumb to my exhaustion, the smallest, seemingly insignificant detail will explode inside my mind – and I am left with no other choice than to lie awake and bask in the happiness warming my heart.
Padmé moves slightly, burrowing deeper into my arms, her cheek pillowed on my chest. I glance down at her dark head – a faint, silvery glow outlining the woven pattern of the loose braid she'd pulled her tangled curls into to keep the thick ringlets from falling in her eyes. It winds down the nape of her neck and over the arm I wrapped around her slender shoulders – a cord of the finest silk laying against my skin, and my angel alive and safe, sleeping beside me.
I wonder for a fleeting instant if this is a dream, and the desire for rest flees. I would rather exist in a dream than face a reality without her in my life.
Then her breath warms the hollow of my throat, the steady rhythm of her heart beating in harmony with mine, and I know that this is real…and I am overwhelmed.
After all that I have done, and planned to do – I have been given everything that I have ever wanted.
I wanted to become a Jedi, and fight against the injustices surrounding me as a slave child on Tatooine.
I wanted Padmé to love me – to hold my heart in her soft hands and shield it from my inner demons.
I wanted us to raise a family, and live in a place where nothing could touch us…but love.
There were other things that I thought I had wanted, but they evaporated like a chill fog defeated by the strong, bright rays of a rising sun. Those dark ambitions that had surfaced from the shadow of Vader have burned away in the steady gleam of the spark inside my heart.
She fuels it merely with her presence, entwined so intricately with mine, and the tender echoes of her essence swirls around with such comfortable familiarity that I wonder if she has always been there – I just could not see her.
And I am certain that she is what I have been missing all of my life – half of my heart, and my soul. I felt it the second her luminous brown gaze touched mine in that junk shop, and as a nine year-old boy, I could not understand the emotions that awoke within me.
"Are you an angel?"
If she would only speak to me, I thought, then perhaps I would be able to control the feelings burgeoning inside my chest, causing my body to tremble and my heart to thunder rapidly in my eardrums.
Yet when I heard her voice, something leapt within me – took flight and soared away from the thin white clouds garnishing the cerulean sky.
I was scared.
What does a young boy who dreams about Pod races and spends his free time building a protocol droid know about the passion between a woman and a man? I didn't even think of girls in that way yet.
Naturally I was incapable of defining exactly what happened to me as I talked with an angel.
I think she felt it, too. Maybe not as strongly as I did, or in the same way – but now that I know her and share part of her soul… She was self-conscious and rather fidgety for a fourteen year-old ruler of a planet. She had said things to humor me, or fill the silence that unnerved her as I stared avidly, trying to memorize every curve of her face.
And the words burst out of me before I could stifle them.
"I'm going to marry you."
It was foolish, and my angel reacted, as I would expect any girl on the threshold of womanhood to do when confronted with the outrageous statement of a small boy. She laughed.
I remember raising my chin defiantly as her tinkling giggles sparkled in the air, and she tried to work around my certainty with logic. I was only a little boy, after all… And although I did not know at the time, she was a Queen. It was just a silly notion from the mouth of a slave who desperately wished for freedom…only a little boy…
"I won't always be."
I will never forget the expression on her face as she absorbed the implications of those words.
It was the same expression I saw ten years later, when I told her that she lived within my dreams.
And then she was my wife.
If she had asked it of me, I would never have left her to fight in the war. I woke up on our last morning together before my first campaign, staring down at her slumbering form tucked into my chest, and I silently begged her to ask me to stay. One word from her lips, and I would give up my desire to become a Jedi, my friendship with Obi-Wan, my status as the fabled Chosen One – I would give up everything.
"I will do whatever you ask."
Shadows slither near the edges of my vision, and I barely suppress a shiver, the darkness of the room suddenly oppressive and malevolent.
"Just help me save Padmé's life. I can't live without her."
Admitting that piece of self-definition could very well have become the final nail in my coffin. Sidious never cared about me – I was only the next pawn in his game to control the universe. He would gladly see me lose the one person I care for more than my own life, and use that loss to reshape my shattered conscience into a creature that he could keep on a short leash. Like a faithful pet.
My gut twists with anger and a smattering of revulsion, and I lay my cheek against Padmé's dark hair, breathing in the spicy-sweet fragrance until my churning thoughts subside. What could have been cannot change what is – and as my mind replays the events of the day, it turns once again to dwell on the new title I have received.
I am a father.
Need colors my thoughts, and I feel my skin flush with a ripple of anxiety. I have to see them. I have to make sure they're safe and well.
Carefully, I slide out from my angel's embrace, cradling her head in my palm and then laying it gently on my vacated pillow. She shivers a little, and I wrap our blankets around her, watching her face for any hint that she might be awakening. But she just nestles into the covers and slumbers on, and a brief sigh of relief puffs out from between my lips. Then my gaze is drawn to the tiny crib at the far end of the room and I pad over soundlessly, the floor icy under my bare feet, and peer down.
Amid a nest of bundled blankets, scarcely visible in the faint light emanating from the viewport above, are a pair of the sweetest faces I have ever seen. I feel the corner of my mouth tilt upwards in a grin – which is swiftly becoming an automatic reaction whenever I see our babies, our little stars.
They are so small, snuggled together in the crib, and in the dim starlight I can't tell them apart.
Sleeping so soundly – a rare feat that can change in the blink of an eye – I watch their tiny bodies rise and fall with every little breath, and my flesh hand reaches out of its own accord, tracing my fingertips across each twin's forehead.
"I love you." Barely a whisper, yet the emotion behind that phrase seems to permeate the cool, filtered air of the MedCenter room.
But it's not enough.
I am so desperate to show my children that I love them, and to know that they love me – and against my better judgment I lean over and brush my lips on their soft cheeks. As I slowly withdraw, the silvery glow shimmers white on the crown of the nearest twin's head…and my son's eyes open.
I freeze, dread filling me as I wait for his ear-splitting wails to break the stillness…but he is quiet, looking up at me with wide orbs that glimmer blue even in the muted light of the room.
He regards me for a handful of heartbeats with a maturity and wisdom far beyond an eight hour-old infant – and I find that I cannot breathe, nor look away from his piercing stare.
Then he blinks sleepily, his tiny mouth stretching open with a yawn…and the intensity sparking between us is severed, and he is my newborn son again. I chuckle under my breath, feeling a peculiar sense of relief and fold the blankets more securely around Luke, and then Leia. She makes a soft noise, like the coo of a dove, as my knuckle caresses her cheek.
Once I am certain that Luke has gone back to sleep, I move away from the crib and gingerly settle my weight on the bed, fitting my body into the space beside Padmé.
My teeth sink into my lower lip when her eyelashes flutter, and drowsy brown eyes look over at me.
"Can't sleep?" She murmurs hoarsely, smoothing the wrinkles on her pillow with her hand.
I shrug, and shake my head slightly – a wordless gesture that tells her not to worry about me. She waits until I relax into the mattress, watching me with the same perceptive gaze that our son obviously inherited from her, and then she folds her body into mine.
The tip of her nose nuzzles into my collarbone as she tucks her head under my chin, and instinctively my arms encircle her, and she draws the covers around us both. My chest lifts with a deep, peaceful breath, and she whispers warmly, "Go to sleep, Ani."
Her sleepy, soothing mood pulls steadily at my wakeful mind – and finally I allow myself to fall into dreamless rest, lying in the safe harbor of my angel's arms, and the words resound one last time through my head as I drift away…
I am a father.