Eight
Dusk was approaching.
Leia was feeling her fair share of apprehension about that, which was causing her to rethink her rash decision to slip away from the Lars homestead. While she was understandably shaken in the aftermath of her latest vision, she hadn't completely taken leave of her senses. She was aware of the danger she'd placed herself in by being out alone on a strange planet when the nighttime was imminent. Had it not been for Abeloth's inveigling calls, she would have been hesitant to leave the homestead altogether, even with the real threats presented to her there too.
Owen Lars had filled her and Luke's heads with enough warning stories about the merciless, indigenous tribe that roamed Tatooine's rolling dunes, looking to carry off captives for enslavement, torture, and eventual execution. Even her own grandmother had fallen prey to their legendary brutality before Leia was born. But, according to Owen, the enemy had heroically saved her.
Leia was wholly skeptical about that part. She doubted that he was truly capable of anything good. And ultimately, that belief had propelled her into running away. She was desperate for a way to stop the enemy from infiltrating her family any further. However, she also realized that she would be no good to anyone if she died in the process.
She didn't even have a clear understanding of where Abeloth was leading her in the first place. The most logical direction, in Leia's opinion, would have been to head towards Mos Espa where she could obtain a transport off the planet, but instead her friend seemed to be leading her deeper into the more unsettled portion of Tatooine, an area littered with rocky cliffsides, deep caverns and fearsome sand critters. The environment made her nervous because Leia didn't know who or what might be living in those caves.
More than once, she considered turning back, but Abeloth kept compelling Leia forward, whispering that Leia should trust her and that only she could give Leia the answers she sought. It was that promise that kept Leia stalwart and helped her to push past her fear when she would have stumbled. She kept walking, obediently following Abeloth's instructions because she trusted that her friend would ensure that everything would work out in the end. After all, Abeloth had traveled across the galaxy just to protect her. Leia was confident that Abeloth wouldn't allow anything to happen to her now.
The first of Tatooine's twin suns was just beginning to kiss the edge of the horizon when Leia finally reached her destination. It was a cave, not unlike the numerous ones she had passed during her journey but this one was large enough to house several people. Swallowing her trepidation, Leia stepped into the cool, shadowed interior and tentatively called out for Abeloth. She could feel her friend's presence vibrantly in the Force but was unable to visualize her in the diminishing light.
She was sweeping her gaze throughout the confined space when she spotted her. Leia fell back a frightened step as a tall, wiry young woman with smooth dark skin and incandescent silver eyes emerged from the shadows. She was thin almost to the point of emaciation, her high cheekbones sharp and angled in what Leia imagined was once a very striking face. But now, she appeared almost skeletal, her lips pulled back from her teeth in a cadaverous smile. Leia tensed as the woman approached her, backing away step for step.
"Who…who are you?" she stammered, "What have you done with my friend?"
The woman's smile widened. "Don't you recognize me, child?"
Leia's eyes rounded considerably as she realized that she did. The Force signature emanating from the woman was a distinct and familiar one. Leia finally halted in her retreat, but her wariness remained. "Abeloth?" she whispered, "I…I don't understand."
"They are my hosts," Abeloth explained to her, "They give themselves over to me and, through them, I am able to travel where I wish."
"Give themselves over? What does that mean?"
"They become one with the Force and I become one with them. It is a symbiotic connection."
Leia tried not to flinch in fear at the description, especially when she noted how wasted the woman appeared. Was that the result of her connection with Abeloth, the price she paid for wielding such dynamic energy? Leia shuddered at the thought.
"What are you?"
"I am not like you."
That vague response was hardly satisfactory for Leia. She faltered another step, the impulse to flee rising within her once more. "What do you want from me?"
Abeloth cocked her head to one side, as if genuinely puzzled by her question. "You are my friend, Leia Skywalker," she said, "I wish to help you."
"But…but you lied to me," Leia argued.
"I have never lied to you, child," Abeloth told her, "I have only shown you the truth. My physical body is of little consequence. My devotion to you is genuine and unshakeable."
"But why do you need these other bodies at all? Why can't you, the real you, be here with me?"
"Because I have been bound in a prison far beyond the physical world. I am in the place beyond shadows, and I am unable to venture out into the galaxy without assistance from others."
"Why are you in prison? Did you do something bad?"
"I told you once that I had a family," Abeloth recounted, "A son and a daughter and they were everything to me. There is nothing that I would not have done to be with them. But their father poisoned them against me. He was jealous because I loved them far better than he could. He convinced them that I was their enemy…and they locked me away."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," Leia whispered.
"You remind me of my child," Abeloth said, "My dear son whom I lost. You have given me joy again, Leia Skywalker."
"Perhaps you can reconcile with them," Leia considered with childish innocence, "My mother always says that it's never too late to make amends."
"It is impossible. They are lost to me now. I have only you."
"But what can I do?" Leia lamented, "How can I help you?"
"Come to me," Abeloth cajoled, "There is a place here that will grant you knowledge and wisdom beyond your wildest dreams." She extended her hand to Leia. "Come to me, and you will become stronger than you can imagine. You will help me break free from this prison and you and I will be together always."
Leia started to reach her hand forward but hesitated at the last second, her small features crumpling in dismay as she witnessed Abeloth's disappointed reaction. "I want to help you," she whispered, "But I can't leave my mother and brother behind. They are in terrible danger! I need to protect them!"
"Yes," Abeloth murmured, "You are understandably troubled by the visions you have seen."
"They don't know how dangerous he is! I have to help them see the truth!"
"Your enemy is very strong. Though you are gifted in the Force, you will never be able to stand against him on your own, child."
"But you said that I would kill him!"
"I have foreseen it. You will do this. But you are not yet strong enough. There is much you need to learn first, young one."
"I know that," Leia muttered miserably, "I need you to teach me. I need my brother. Luke and I have always been stronger together."
"Your brother?" Abeloth echoed with deceptive innocence, "You have spoken of this one to me many times before. Is he as strong in the Force as you are?"
"He's stronger, but I would never admit that to him in a million light years," Leia said, "But Luke is blind when it comes to that man! His love for him clouds his judgment, and he won't protect himself! It's up to me!"
"You should bring him to me. I will open his eyes…just as I have opened yours." She stretched out her hand to Leia again with a patient, benevolent smile, her clear gray eyes swirling with compelling light. "You must trust me, my child."
"Leia, get away from her!"
Startled, Leia reflexively snatched back her hand at the growled command only seconds before Anakin Skywalker came abruptly charging into the cave and positioned himself firmly between her and Abeloth. Before Leia could react to his sudden appearance or even process what was happening, he already had Abeloth suspended mid-air in his Force grip. From her point of view, her enemy was attacking her helpless friend unprovoked, brutally exerting invisible pressure on her host's throat. The woman dangled haplessly, clawing desperately at her neck in a futile attempt to draw air. From Anakin's perspective, however, he was protecting his child from a clear threat.
Anakin's most immediate instinct was to kill the creature without a second's compunction. The only reason he hesitated was because Leia was standing directly behind him to witness every moment. But he didn't dare release the woman from his chokehold.
When Anakin had first spotted them together in the cave, he had been briefly assailed with an instant of disjointed surrealism. He didn't immediately see his daughter standing there with some unknown woman, but himself as the lonely, little boy he'd once been standing with a seemingly compassionate Sheev Palpatine. The vision was quick, but the parallel was impactful enough for Anakin to recognize the gravity of the situation, and what was being done to his child. When his vision cleared, however, he was able to see the woman in her true form.
She was the most grotesque thing he had ever seen. Her body was a strange amalgamation of humanoid features and curling, diaphanous tentacles. Her body and hair were white, her wild tresses falling in unkempt waves across her shoulders and back. Her silver eyes were lined with onyx and reflected as dark voids of pure malevolence and evil that were sunken deep into her emaciated skull. Her mouth was a gaping maw that stretched from ear to ear, and it was filled with razor sharp teeth. She was a monster in every sense of the word, but it was evident to Anakin that Leia did not see her that way at all. She wouldn't have dared to go near the creature if she had any inkling of what it truly was.
Even now, she was screaming at him hysterically like a maddened thing, begging him to release her "friend." He could feel her small fists beating angrily against his back as he held her off, determined to remain stationed between her and the creature that obviously meant to consume her. He tensed when the entity gradually separated herself from the writhing body that he'd suspended mid-air and dropped down to circle Anakin, her wide, macabre smile seeming to widen as she took stock of him. When she spoke to him, Anakin knew instinctively that he was the only one who could hear her words, that the conversation they were about to have would be known only to him.
"So, you are the fabled Chosen One," she hissed in a whisper, "The One that He brought to replace me. We meet at last." She swept him with a contemptuous glance. "I cannot say that I am impressed."
"Who are you? What do you want with my daughter?"
"My daughter," she bit out fiercely, the deep voids of her eyes becoming iridescent with rage, "My Leia! You will not take her from me!"
Anakin glanced warily between Abeloth and the unknown woman he was currently choking into unconsciousness. He didn't fully understand her part in all of this, but he could sense that the creature needed the woman. There was some sort of symbiotic link between them. At the same time, he also knew that killing the woman would not necessarily kill the creature. The death would slow her, but it would not stop her. What lay before Anakin felt like an untenable choice, and the creature sensed his vacillation as she followed his line of sight.
"You may kill her if you wish," Abeloth invited him, "But I will find another." She tipped a glance towards a tearful, hysterical Leia. "And she will never forget what you have done."
Recognizing the truth in that, Anakin did the only thing that he could. He slammed the woman into the cavern wall as hard as he could, with enough force to knock her unconscious and shake the creature's hold on her. The instant he did, the aberration retreated from him with a snarled hiss, but not before mercilessly consuming the life force from the fallen woman, drawing forth the invisible vines of energy into her gaping mouth until litter more than a shrunken husk was left behind. She favored Anakin with one last satisfied look before she disappeared.
Leia's plaintive screams gradually died away in the horrifying aftermath. She finally slackened behind Anakin, too stunned to utter a sound. She stared at the shriveled remains of Abeloth's host, uncertain if her friend had been lost as well. It had all happened so quickly. One moment she was held aloft, struggling for breath and the next the enemy had slammed her brutally into the rocky wall of the cave before consuming her in a way that Leia had never seen before…the way that only a monster could. Leia turned her tear-filled eyes up at the man who claimed to be her father and she didn't a face filled with fear and worry for her. Instead, she saw a masked face, those dark, obsidian eyes reflecting her own terrified countenance as the sounds of his harsh, mechanical breathing filled the space around her.
"It will be dark soon," Padmé fretted to Beru as she watched the horizon for a glimpse of her husband and daughter, "What if something happened to them?"
"Anakin can handle himself," Beru reassured her, "You know that.
"The last time I thought something similar, I lost him for ten years," Padmé muttered, "I take nothing for granted now."
Beru looped an arm around her shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "He's going to come home, Padmé," she said, "He always does."
She couldn't refute that Beru's conviction was a solid one. Considering Anakin's colorful history and mind-boggling feats of survival, it wasn't surprising that he had gained a reputation for being indestructible. That reputation was a well-earned one too. After all that Anakin had revealed to her that afternoon, Padmé knew that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.
Truly, it wasn't his physical well-being that had Padmé concerned at all. She was worried about his mental and emotional state. He had barely taken any time to process Luke's revelation before he went charging after Leia. Padmé shuddered internally when she imagined what that confrontation between father and daughter might be like. They could both be stubborn and emotionally volatile when they were hurt or felt threatened. The potential for an already disastrous situation becoming even worse was likely, and Padmé had no idea how they would navigate the fallout afterward.
She still hadn't managed to wrap her mind around everything Anakin had told and shown her that afternoon. She remained incredibly angry with him but, at the same time, that all seemed so inconsequential now. When she closed her eyes, she could still envision the devastated expression on his face, the way he had been barely able to meet Luke's eyes at all. She remembered those early months in their marriage when he had hated himself so virulently that sometimes it had caused him to act out in destructive ways.
All of those deeply buried emotions had come flooding back following Luke's account. She had seen it, that same anguish that had defined his existence before…the thing that had spurred him to lay waste to everything and everyone he deemed a threat. It was there again, only now Anakin was 100 times more powerful than he had ever been. Now he had the power to destroy, not just himself, but the galaxy along with him. That frightened her more than anything.
Anakin wasn't thinking clearly, and Padmé didn't blame him for reeling. The idea that their daughter had become privy to the sordid details of his reprehensible past, that she would have her innocence shattered so callously by a stranger was distressing and rage inducing. And if she was angered by the thought, Padmé couldn't imagine how Anakin must feel. She wouldn't be surprised if Anakin's primary objective had become hunting down that individual and destroying them.
But, as satisfying as that endeavor might seem, Padmé wondered if it would only prove more harmful than helpful. She empathized with Anakin's hatred, but she didn't think he should feed it. That would only alienate their daughter even further.
For that reason, Padmé was willing to set aside her own anger and hurt for the time being. She recognized that she and Anakin would need to stand as a united front if they were going to protect Leia from this harmful, new influence. Beyond that, Padmé's motives were much simpler. The fact remained that she loved Anakin Skywalker. When everything was stripped away, regardless of what he had become or why, he was still her husband. When she looked at him, she still saw the man she married. She still wanted him. And he was hurting now. She was hurting with him.
That was also the reason that Padmé hadn't yielded to Luke's increasing demands for the truth. The longer Anakin was gone, the more adamant Luke became. She had managed to mostly avoid him by keeping herself preoccupied with Owen or Beru, but Padmé could feel him watching her every move. Her oldest child had inherited, not just his father's steadfast tenacity, but hers as well. He was obnoxiously stubborn. Once Luke dug in about something, it was impossible to dissuade him. Padmé knew that her son wouldn't be put off for too much longer.
Beside her, she felt Beru give her a gentle nudge. "You should come inside," she urged Padmé softly, "Have something to eat. I'm sure Anakin and Leia will return before long."
Padmé forced a smile. "In a bit. Thank you, Beru."
As soon as Beru disappeared into the house, Luke predictably emerged from the shadows. Padmé wasn't surprised to see him. She hadn't needed any sort of Force intuition to know that he had been lurking nearby the entire time she had been conversing with Beru.
"How many times have I told you about eavesdropping?" she sighed wearily.
"I wasn't eavesdropping," Luke said, "I was waiting for you to finish." She growled his name, but he was undeterred by the censure in her tone and stepped closer. "Are you going to tell me now, or should I go after the answers on my own like Leia did?"
Padmé scowled at him mournfully. "Why would you say something like that?"
Refusing to be cowed, Luke crossed his arms and demanded in a flat tone, "Is it true or not?"
"It is…" she confessed in aggrieved reticence, but before Luke could dissolve into a puddle of pure disillusionment, she added, "…and it isn't."
He glanced at her sharply, blue eyes blazing with impatience. "Which is it?" he grated, "Did it happen or didn't it?"
"It's complicated."
Padmé almost laughed aloud at the irony when her reply resonated in her ears. How many times had Anakin responded in similar fashion to her when she had pressed him on the details of his past. Each time he had done so, she had been left frustrated and annoyed by what she'd believed was his deliberate attempt to be vague with her. It wasn't that he couldn't be transparent with her, she'd thought, but because he didn't want to be.
But now she realized that he was being honest with her the whole time. His past was complicated. And trying to explain what he had done and experienced in a cohesive manner to someone who had not directly known that life firsthand felt like an incomprehensible endeavor. But as Padmé looked upon the stony countenance of her son, she knew she would have to find a way. He wasn't going to be satisfied until he knew everything. She decided to take the direct approach.
"Your father is from the future."
Luke blinked at her for several seconds, as if she had just spoken in a language that was unfamiliar to him. "What?"
"What your sister saw was the life your father lived before he came here. She saw the past that he thought he had erased."
"Mom, please," Luke began mildly, as if he were speaking to a small child, "Time travel is not a thing."
"It is for your father."
"You're not being serious."
"I'm being perfectly serious."
Luke staggered back a step, his brows snapping together in a deepening frown as he slowly assimilated the reality that his mother was not joking. He stared at her, dumbfounded. "I don't understand," he uttered, "How is that even possible?"
"He never really explained to me how he accomplished it, except that it involved some kind of ancient artifact and a Sith temple."
"Sith?" Luke parroted, recalling the many stories Ben and Ahsoka had relayed to him about the Sith and their unspeakable evils, "Dad was a Sith?"
"Yes. He was. In his original timeline, your father fell to the dark side of the Force," Padmé explained to him gently, "He was manipulated by a man that he loved and trusted, and that man capitalized on your father's greatest fear."
"What fear?" Luke whispered.
"Loss," Padmé replied softly, "He was terrified of loss. You already know that your grandmother Shmi was taken by the sand people many years ago and that your father was able to rescue her?"
"Yeah. Uncle Owen has only told us that story like half a dozen times since we've been here."
"That same thing happened in your father's original timeline," Padmé explained, "She was taken then too, but he wasn't able to save her that time. She died in his arms."
"What? Grandma died?"
Padmé nodded. "Your grandmother's death affected him profoundly. During that time, he and I were also trying to make sense of our feelings for each other. He was a Jedi, and the Jedi Order did not allow emotional attachments. Marriage was forbidden."
"Ben never told me that."
"That's because by the time you were born, the Jedi Code was evolving from what it had been," she said, "But in your father's time, it was forbidden and so we had to marry in secret.
"When I became pregnant, he began to have premonitions about my death in childbirth. He became obsessed with preventing it. He couldn't confide his fears to Obi-Wan without revealing the truth about our relationship and risking expulsion from the Order. So, he turned to the one person he thought he could trust for help."
"What happened?"
"That man convinced your father that he knew a way to prevent my death, and that he could help him save me…for a price."
"What price?"
"His humanity."
"And that's why he turned," Luke concluded in a soft whisper, "To save you?"
"Yes. And, in doing so, he caused his greatest fear to become reality."
"So…everything that Leia saw…it really happened just like she said?" Luke grimaced as he tried to make sense of it, his emotions like a windstorm inside of him. "He…He killed you?" Padmé jerked a reluctant nod. He turned away from her with a sickened groan.
It was difficult to know what to feel right then. Luke was churning with confusion. On the one hand, he couldn't reconcile the father he knew was the man being described to him now. He felt like he was hearing some fantastical tale about someone else that had no real basis in reality. But, on the other hand, he also knew it was real. Leia had seen it. She had experienced all of it in visceral detail. To have her chilling account confirmed so matter-of-factly by his mother made Luke feel physically ill.
He swallowed past the lump of bile rising in his throat, barely able to push his next words past his lips without succumbing to the waves of nausea that threatened to follow them. "How…how could you marry him…" he uttered in disbelief, "…when you knew what he did…what he was…?"
"Was, Luke. Not is," Padmé countered softly, "Not for a very long time. Why do you think he came back?"
"Because he wanted to erase what he had done?" Luke bit out angrily, "And pretend like it never happened? Because he's a coward?"
"Because he wanted to fix it!" his mother retorted, "How do you think I know any of this at all? He didn't have to tell me anything. He could have come back and lived his life again with no one the wiser, but he didn't. With the power he has now, he could have taken the galaxy for himself, but he hasn't! He is not that man anymore, Luke."
He pinned her with tear glazed eyes filled with recrimination. "That's not what Leia says."
"Leia is confused."
"Is she?" Luke challenged hoarsely, "I think maybe you're the one who's confused, Mom."
She took a step closer, meaning to pull him into her arms but he flinched away. Padmé sighed his name in longsuffering. "I know you're angry and hurt, but don't shut me out this way."
"Were you ever going to tell us the truth?" he ground out in accusation.
"This wasn't your truth, Luke! This is something private and very painful, and it should have been your father's choice to share it with you! He is deeply ashamed of the things he did."
Despite Padmé's earnest declaration, Luke homed in on a single word. "Things?" he echoed in a hollow tone, "You mean there's more? Killing his pregnant wife wasn't enough?" Padmé winced at his virulence. "What else is there, Mom?"
"Don't do this. You're searching for reasons to hate and blame him," she said, "I refuse to give you the ammunition."
"Why don't you hate and blame him?"
"Because I know who he is," Padmé whispered, "And you do too."
"No. I don't know him," Luke muttered as his anguished tears finally spilled over, "And I don't know you either."
Padmé could sympathize with his disillusionment. Hadn't she uttered something similar to Anakin just that afternoon? If she was having difficulty processing the complicated twists and turns of her husband's past, persona, and purpose, how could she expect a twelve-year-old boy to grasp it? Time and experience had granted her the wisdom to recognize the nuance of their situation. She had lived long enough to see past absolutes, to understand that no circumstance was ever truly black and white. Luke didn't yet operate in that space. For him, there was good and there was evil…and he couldn't decide right then where his father fit, or where she did for that matter.
"You probably feel as if you can't trust me—,"
"—I can't trust you! You lied!"
"I didn't lie," she argued, "For it to have been a lie, you would have had to have been entitled to the truth, Luke, and you weren't. You're still not."
"Then why tell me now?" he muttered tersely.
"I'm dignifying you with honesty," she said, "The least you can do is not rush to judgement. I know that you're hurt and confused. But, please, do not reject your father. It will destroy him."
Padmé watched the internal conflict chase its way across her son's tear-stained features, and the maternal compulsion to comfort her child became too overwhelming to ignore any longer. She stepped forward to pull a quietly weeping Luke into her arms just as the echo of terrified screams began to ring out from the darkness. She and Luke froze simultaneously at the sound mere seconds before Leia suddenly emerged out of the void, running at top speed, her features white with terror.
Alarmed, Luke and Padmé immediately began sprinting towards her. As they rapidly crossed the distance that separated them, Anakin materialized out of the darkness behind Leia in obvious chase, begging her plaintively to stop running from him. But Leia didn't stop running. Instead, she darted straight for her mother and cowered behind Padmé's hip, weeping so hysterically that Padmé couldn't even decipher her tearful rambling. What she did know was that the closer Anakin got, the more frenzied Leia became.
While Luke did his best to comfort his distraught sister, Padmé held out a hand to stave off Anakin's advance. "Stay back for a minute, Ani!" she admonished him sharply, "Can't you see she's terrified! Give her some room!"
Though he felt thoroughly helpless and emotionally eviscerated by Padmé's harsh words, Anakin reluctantly complied with her request. He began pacing in restless circles while Padmé knelt to address their manic daughter and tried to make sense of Leia's jumbled sobbing. She clucked soothing words to the weeping girl, skimming her fingers gently over Leia's wet cheeks in an attempt to calm her while Anakin and Luke looked on forlornly.
"I know that you've seen a lot of confusing things lately, my love," she began in a calm, measured tone, "But you don't have to be frightened. You're safe. No one will hurt you. Your father won't hurt you."
"You don't understand," Leia choked, "He killed her. I saw it. I saw it, Mom." She swept up Padmé's hand and began to tug at it adamantly, silently urging her mother to rise and flee. "We have to go! We have to get away now! He's a bad person!"
"No, Leia. Listen to me. He is not a bad person," Padmé insisted softly, "You're being misled."
Far from comforting her daughter with her gentle manner, Padmé's denial only further incited Leia's growing hysteria. She shook off her mother's light hold and backed away several steps, her wild eyes growing rounder with fear and disbelief. "You're with him," she declared in breathless irrationality, "He's infected you, and you can't see! You won't protect us! You won't help me!" She threw a desperate glance at her brother, sobbing uncontrollably once again. "I'm so sorry, Luke," she whimpered, "I'm sorry I wasn't stronger."
When she took off again, Luke quickly stepped forward and held both of his parents off from chasing after her. "I'll go," he declared in a wooden tone, "You're just making it worse! Besides…it's not like what she saw was a lie." He glowered at Anakin with glittering eyes filled with condemnation. "Is it?"
Anakin and Padmé stared at his retreating back, watching as he was swallowed by darkness in pursuit of his sister before finally addressing one another in the resounding silence that followed. They regarded one another warily. Anakin was the first to speak. And when he did, his words were raw with pure anguish.
"Did you have to tell him?"
Padmé flinched at the accusation in his tone. "He wasn't going to stop pushing until he had answers. It's not like I had a choice, Anakin!"
"Fantastic," he muttered, blinking back the tears the burned to the surface, "Now everyone in my family hates me. The circle is complete."
"I don't hate you," Padmé countered softly. He glanced over at her, his expression tentative with hope. "Though sometimes I think it would be easier if I could. You're a very complicated man to love, but I do. I love you so much, Ani. I don't want to lose you…or our family."
"I don't want to lose us either," he whispered.
"Then I guess we need to figure out what comes next," she said. He wilted at the tacit indication that she meant to stay with him even after all that had transpired, suspended somewhere between relief and regret at her words. As he floundered for an appropriate response to her, she asked, "What happened out there?"
"Something awful," he told her, "I need answers myself before I can explain it to you." Padmé regarded him with a vaguely mistrustful expression. "I'm telling you the truth," he insisted softly.
"I believe you. But Leia was so upset just now. She was terrified."
"I know. The things she's seen…" His words became choked with emotion as he finished, "…it's the worst of me."
"That's not real anymore," Padmé whispered.
"It's real to her," he whispered back, "She genuinely believes I'm a threat." He turned to her with a desperate, hopeful look. "You know that I would never hurt her, don't you?"
"Of course, I know that!"
Her reply was so quick and so passionate that Anakin almost doubled over with a thankful groan. Padmé forced herself to remain rooted in place, and not reach out to pull him into her arms as she longed to do right then. There was still too much that was unresolved between them, too many unanswered questions and those obstacles could not be easily mended with tender embraces.
"So, what happens now?" she asked once he composed himself.
"You should go after the children," he advised her, "They shouldn't be left on their own right now. It's not safe."
"And what are you going to do?" she asked him when he started to turn away.
"I'm going to get answers."