Wow! That was a lot of reviews for just one chapter! I'm flattered. Thank you all so much. Some of your ideas really helped me for inspiration on what is going to happen later on in the story, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Thank you.
Well, onto the chapter. Sorry it's kind of short, but I hope it meets your expectations.
-:-:-:-:-
No.
No.
No.
She did not want to open her eyes.
She did not want to see the sight that would meet her the moment she lifted her heavy eyelids. She did not want to see that horrific, hellish image, to see Anakin horribly injured beside her and know that she was powerless to help.
Never in her life had she been forced into such passivity. And quite frankly, it scared her.
Moving him was out of the question. If she touched him, she could harm him more. Not to mention that his body was incredibly fragile, and very heavy, and if she did manage to get him moving, where would she take him? Her ship, with its barely functioning medical equipment? She could hardly move herself. She had no idea what to do with him. She had no knowledge of such injuries and therefore decided it would be safest not to do anything.
Not the best decision she'd ever made, but for the moment it would have to suffice.
Unable to prolong the moment any longer, Padmé opened her eyes and hated the blackened, smoky sky that greeted her. She was lying on her back on the ashes and dirt, just a few feet from the edge of a lake of fire. Not the safest place for one pregnant woman and one critically injured man, but again, what exactly could she do to better the situation? Leaving him alone here was not a possibility.
Bracing herself, she forced her eyes to move left, to the unconscious man just beside her, and felt sick to her stomach upon seeing the charred and mangled features of a man that had once been beautiful. She felt tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, and for the millionth time, she cursed Obi-Wan Kenobi, a man she had once been honored to call her friend.
Disgusted, she resolutely turned away from the sight.
She slowly reached down to her utility belt, buckled loosely just below the bulge of her pregnant stomach. Of course, the comlink wasn't there. Just her luck that, in her haste to save Ani (which she had quite decidedly failed at), she had left it behind. Well, that was the end of that.
She heard a groan from beside her.
A shot of adrenaline sent her body into convulsions, and she snapped her neck to the side to see if he was awake. His shoulders shifted ever so slightly and he moaned again.
"Anakin," she rasped, though it appeared that she had lost her voice in all the commotion earlier; her throat was on fire from all the screaming. So she settled for a croaky whisper instead, and tried his name again. "Anakin," she repeated, drawing out the last few syllables, turning very carefully onto her side to get a better view of him.
"Padm—ahhh," he groaned, his pain too much for him to bear. His eyes opened and closed over and over again, like he was struggling to remain conscious.
"I'm here, Ani," she croaked. "Stay with me. Don't close your eyes." She feared what would happen if he drifted back into pain-induced sleep. She feared he might never wake up.
The fingers of his mechanical hand, the only remaining limb on his body, flexed and stretched, clawing in the dirt. "I'm not," he hissed, his voice infinitely tired and his words barely even audible. "What's…going on…?" he managed to ask.
She longed to reach out her hand, stroke his forehead, just between his eyes, and reassure him like she always had been able to. But she doubted he would welcome her touch now, and it would probably hurt more than it would soothe.
Padmé coughed, feeling like the inside of her lungs were lined with smoke and ashes, and inhaled a breath of thick, dry, air. "You've been hurt," she informed him, her voice calm for his sake. "Try not to move."
She saw his fingers flexing again, and his eyes again closed in pain. "I have to…move…on my back…" he trailed off, and wiggled his shoulders around. "My chest…hurts," he rasped, and with great effort and probably a lot of Jedi strength, he rolled himself onto his back. He sucked in deep breaths of air, his chest slowly heaving up and down. He appeared to be somewhat more comfortable like this, so she let him be.
"It'll be all right, Anakin," she told him slowly, and with much more confidence than she felt. "We're going to get out of this."
He gasped in more air, shaking with the effort. "We're going…to die…here," he corrected, and shuddered in pain.
She did not like the tone of his voice when he had said that. "Don't talk like that," she ordered him, her voice stronger. "For as long as I've known you, you've been able to handle anything. Don't give up. Not yet."
He didn't immediately agree with her, but he didn't protest either, and for the moment, that was probably all she would get. Tiredly, she moved herself back onto the ground, arms stretching out beside her. Her back was screaming in pain, and she gently touched her belly with her fingertips, praying that the child had not been hurt.
Suddenly, the even, heavy breaths beside her silenced. Feeling fear grip her lungs and heart, she quickly turned to face him, but he did not appear dead. His eyes were closed, as if in extreme concentration, and he uttered a single word.
"Palpatine."
Confused, she managed to pull herself into a sitting position, ignoring the throbbing in her head. She awkwardly twisted her body to face behind her, and felt a sense of dread when she saw a dark ship touch the landing platform beside her own.
Oh, no.
She contemplated this turn of events as she watched Palpatine, followed by three troopers, quickly emerge from the ship. She gasped in deep lungfulls of air as the Sith Lord's eyes scanned the environment, searching for his new apprentice. She shuddered in disgust; she had almost forgotten.
They spotted them quickly, and the hunched figure made his way to the embankment. No, no, no, she did not want him here!
He spotted her, took in her form for a moment, and then ignored her. He knelt beside his injured apprentice, and muttered, "Vader," his hand touching the young man's forehead.
Anger flared in her, sharp and like the flames just feet away from her.
The new Emperor pulled his yellow gaze up to meet hers, and she felt herself trembling under the gaze of such evil eyes. "What happened?" he demanded in his eerie voice, his eyes accusatory and challenging.
She swallowed the bile that had formed in her throat and managed to form a sufficient reply. "He was burned," she told him, not meeting his gaze. Padmé turned her deep brown eyes onto the form of her husband, whose blue eyes, for the first time since they'd awakened, were level with her own. Her heart melted at the sight and she felt her resolve wither and die. She looked back at Palpatine skeptically; he was a Sith Lord, a traitor to democracy, and the man responsible for Anakin's downfall. But standing right here and right now, he was the only man that could help her husband, and that alone made everything else irrelevant. "Can you help him?" she asked him, her voice low and shaky.
The Emperor took a moment to reply. "I can try," he said by way of answer, and turned to one of the clone troopers beside him. "Fetch a medical capsule," he ordered the solider, and watched for a moment as the armored man whisked away to carry out his orders. He turned back to her, and his eyes were menacing. "You should go back to Coruscant, Senator," he told her, spitting the title with venom. "Let me take care of this."
She was about to protest, but another voice spoke in for her. "No," Anakin refused. "She comes with us."
She was very, very surprised when Palpatine didn't argue, but she figured that he must have something in mind if he didn't protest to her coming along. Before, that would have bothered her, but now…well now, everything seemed unimportant.
And that's why she found herself trusting blindly in the man that had destroyed her world, following him into his ship with Anakin in a medical stretcher just in front of her. Why? Because whether she liked it or not, this man was her only hope.
-:-:-:-:-
To be continued…