Twelve
"Are you alright?"
Padmé stopped short when she exited the fresher and found Ahsoka loitering in the corridor outside. She self-consciously swiped a trembling hand across her mouth, trying not to look as if she hadn't spent the last fifteen minutes huddled on her knees dry heaving. Her efforts were futile, however. The evidence was clear on her colorless features, and she could tell from the expression on Ahsoka's face that she was very aware of the circumstances and had likely been standing there for some time. Padmé dropped her head forward in chagrin.
Ahsoka surveyed her with concerned eyes. "I wasn't trying to eavesdrop," she said, "We're leaving for Mortis soon and I wanted to get a little time with you before that."
Padmé released a short, noncommittal grunt. "You may want to rethink spending time with me. I'm not the best company."
"That's understandable. Are you ill?"
"No. I don't think the midday meal agreed with me," she replied lightly as she made her approach, "Or breakfast for that matter. My stomach has been in knots since last night."
"I'm not surprised. You're overwhelmed and worried."
"How can I not be?" Padmé asked, choking back a sob, "I'm terrified for my children! What if I never see them again, Ahsoka?"
"You can't think that way," Ahsoka admonished her gently, "Hope is not lost. You know that we won't come back without them."
"I know. The only question is…will they want to come back?"
That question had been whirling around endlessly in her mind for the past 30 hours. The reality that Luke and Leia had run away wasn't the sole source of Padmé's churning anxiety. Even when they eventually found them and brought them home (because Padmé wouldn't allow herself to dwell too long on any outcome besides that one), she had no idea what she was going to say to either of them or how she was going to help them come to terms with the truths they never should have learned in the first place.
Her children's illusions had been utterly shattered, not only about their father, but about her as well. She had never felt the need to apologize for her love of Anakin before. Never once had she felt compelled to justify her feelings for him in the least. He was a good man who had done bad things and he had put that life far behind him. It was a distant past. A forgotten memory. A nightmare chased away in the warm glow of morning. Together, she and Anakin had figuratively closed the door on those terrible misdeeds, and they had not looked back, not for a long time.
That was certainly easier to do when Anakin's past was merely anecdotal, an insignificant footnote in an altered history that was no longer relevant. It was a different matter altogether when there were eyewitnesses involved and, in this case, the eyewitness was her daughter. In Leia's eyes, Padmé's determination to stand with Anakin after the horrific atrocities he had committed was nothing less than complicity. Padmé could recognize that the situation was a great deal more nuanced than that, but that was a difficult thing to explain to a 10-year-old girl, even one as intuitive as her clever little Leia.
The same could be said for Luke. While, thankfully, he had not been exposed to the same visions that his sister had been, Padmé wasn't sure how long that would remain true. But she honestly didn't know if that even mattered. Confirming the truth to him had already been damaging enough. She had literally watched as the innocence and adoration for his father had faded from his eyes. He had looked at them both with disgust, as if they were strangers that he had no desire to know or understand. Right then, Padmé couldn't imagine how they would ever mend what had been broken.
Seeming to sense her friend's morose reflections, Ahsoka reached out to pull Padmé into a brief hug. "We'll help them understand," she whispered, "They just need time…like we all did."
"She saw him hurt me, Ahsoka. I knew it was bad. Anakin could barely recount it without becoming emotional, but Leia saw it happen and who knows what else?" Padmé mumbled thickly, "Who is this Abeloth? What kind of person does that to a child?"
"An amoral one. Abeloth doesn't care about anything beyond fulfilling her own needs."
"That creature destroyed my daughter's innocence. We're never going to get that back. She's never going to look at Anakin the same way again."
"Maybe she won't. Or maybe one day she'll come to appreciate how he became all those terrible things, and everything he did to turn his back on his past. She'll admire his strength of character."
"I hope so. She and Luke both. But, at this moment, I can't see it."
"Don't underestimate them, Padmé. This Force entity is obviously manipulating them. But Luke and Leia are very astute children. They will figure it out eventually."
"But will it be too late by then?"
"No. It won't. We'll find Abeloth and destroy her before that happens."
Ahsoka wasn't merely feeding Padmé platitudes when she said that either. She meant every word. She was feeling very encouraged after the briefing with Masters Yoda, Windu, and Ki-Adi-Mundi even if Anakin and Padmé remained mostly lukewarm about their prospects. The Jedi masters had, at least, been able to give them several places to begin their search, but it was only one of those places in particular that sounded the most promising to Ahsoka. After they retrieved the dagger from Mortis, they would begin their search in the Corellian star system.
According to Master Yoda, two standard months before Preet rose to power as Emperor, Jev'Tok Tun and a small team of Jedi Knights had been tasked with investigating the veracity of a bit of Corellian folklore. For years, there had been circulating rumors throughout the system of a secret civilization onboard some mysterious space station that might be habitable that was located somewhere in the deep stretches of space beyond the five planets. The Jedi High Council had been hopeful that such a place could serve as a suitable haven for the Jedi away from the Republic's reach.
Tradition held that there was a massive, ancient space station situated between the twin worlds of Talus and Tralus that had been constructed long before the invention of artificial gravity. It was almost too fantastic to believe. The builders of this unique space station were unknown, but theories about its potential architects had abounded for centuries. Yoda was old enough to be somewhat familiar with those farfetched tales. He said that it was believed that powerful Force beings known as Celestials had been responsible for constructing the secret station, but for what purpose no one knew.
Though Ahsoka suspected there was substantial reason to believe that claim, especially considering what she knew about Anakin and what he had experienced on Mortis, she had said nothing during the briefing to reinforce Yoda's theories. At Anakin's behest, she and Obi-Wan had revealed to the masters very little about the Skywalker family crisis beyond the fact that Luke and Leia were being targeted by a Force entity, possibly one of these "Celestials" of which Master Yoda spoke. Yoda seemed to agree with the theory, adding that the Celestials had always existed and must always exist to exert balance within the Force. It was his firm belief that if the spirit targeting the Skywalker children was dark, then there must be a Celestial One made of light to counteract her harmful influence.
He had looked directly at Anakin when he said that, as if he had already guessed what Anakin was deliberately keeping hidden from them. But he didn't accuse Anakin of anything outright and Anakin, for his part, didn't make any confessions either. Consequently, the conversation returned to the matter of Tun's last mission and what the Council had hoped to gain by sending him.
What had drawn the attention of the Jedi masters hadn't been the builder of the rumored station at all, but the relic's purported size. It was said that the station was large enough to be colonized and, at one point in history, it had once been inhabited. There was even talk that the place had its own self-contained, sustainable ecosystem. Based on those various rumors, it had certainly sounded like an ideal place for the Jedi to disappear.
Under more ideal circumstances, the Jedi High Council would have never given any real attention to such speculations as they had more pressing matters to occupy their time, but the political pressure around them had been swiftly increasing. Though they had all but abandoned the Jedi Temple on Coruscant after Preet was named as Supreme Chancellor, their withdrawal from the planet was hardly enough to satisfy Wilhuff Tarkin. He made it his personal mission to harass and hound the Jedi wherever he could find them. He made it clear that he would not be satisfied until they had all been eliminated.
With each passing day, the unrest had been steadily growing in the Republic and within the Jedi Order itself. Many Jedi were growing weary with being made into convenient targets for Republic instability and were beginning to chafe under the persecution they were enduring. It was evident that Preet wanted to spark a war between the Jedi and the Republic, and there had been many young Knights who had been spoiling to give him one. Yoda, Windu and Ki-Adi-Mundi had felt that in order to preserve the Jedi as a peaceful order and prevent further fracturing, they would need to take drastic measures. The Order would need to withdraw from society entirely to maintain their safety and continue their faithful adherence to the Jedi code.
It seemed that Tun and his team might have been successful in their mission based on his last cryptic transmission to the Council. He had insisted that they rendezvous with him on Crollia, an uninhabited planet in the star system where they could speak freely and were "unlikely to draw attention to themselves." From there, the encounter with Tun unfolded just as Obi-Wan had described.
Tun and his men ambushed them and attempted to assassinate Master Windu before they were ultimately thwarted. Tun was killed, and the rest were forced to flee. The masters were able to glean only one seemingly insignificant detail before the remaining survivors escaped. Hollowtown. That had been the clearest piece of information that they had been able to scrape together from Jev'Tok Tun's last rambling transmission to them before it had all gone sideways.
Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan now had a weighty task ahead of them. They needed to discover exactly what "Hollowtown" was and if it bore any significance to Tun's last mission. To do so, they would need to retrace Tun's steps. But, before they could do that, they had to return to Mortis and retrieve the dagger since there would be no subduing Abeloth without it. The plan was to leave Tatooine within the hour, but Ahsoka was reluctant to do that while there was still an obvious tension between Anakin and Padmé. Considering the heavy pressure that both her dear friends were both under, the last thing either of them needed was to nurture a rift between them. Ahsoka told Padmé exactly that.
Padmé fluttered her hand dismissively. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"There's something going on between you and Anakin," Ahsoka persisted stubbornly as Padmé started to shoulder past her, "You've barely said two words to him!"
Without warning, Padmé rounded on her with a surprisingly wrathful expression. "Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"Know about Anakin! About how Mortis changed him! Did you know?"
Ahsoka dropped her eyes. "I suspected," she hedged in a mumble.
"So, then you lied to me? We're doing that now?"
"I didn't lie. I had hoped that when Mortis was destroyed, everything that happened to him on that planet was destroyed with it," Ahsoka countered softly, "I think that Anakin was probably hoping the same thing." Padmé glanced away, her jaw set so tightly that Ahsoka was surprised she didn't grind her teeth down into powder. "Is that why you're so angry with him?" she asked, "Because he didn't tell you about Mortis?"
"I'm not angry with him," Padmé clipped.
"Now who's lying?"
"You'll forgive me if I'm not displaying an appropriate response to discovery that my husband is now a Force god!" she retorted with searing sarcasm, "Not to mention that I learned this on the very same night my children ran away from home. Like you said before, I'm overwhelmed!"
"It's not his fault, Padmé," Ahsoka replied gently, "And it's not yours either."
"Then why does it feel like it?"
She had tried very hard to fix her past mistakes with Luke and Leia. When Anakin was gone those ten, lonely years, she had held on to them so tightly, too tightly at times, because she had never stopped being terrified that she would lose them too. They were all that she'd had left of him, and she had guarded them like the precious treasures they were. But her protective instincts had caused them to buck under her strict authority, especially Luke. The harder she tried to keep them close, the more inclined they became to push her away.
After Anakin returned, she tried to relax her grip and allow both Luke and Leia more freedom. That was the sole reason she hadn't exerted more control over Leia when she befriended what they'd all believed at the time was a harmless old woman. Padmé had wanted to prove to Leia that she could give her space if she needed it, but that had been the wrong choice too. And because she had backed off and ignored her own intuition, her children were in grave danger. What was even worse, they no longer trusted her.
Suddenly feeling weary beyond measure under the sheer weight of it all, Padmé dragged both hands down the length of her face with a deep, rueful sigh. "It feels like no matter what I do where it concerns Luke and Leia, it's always the wrong thing," she lamented.
Ahsoka grunted a low, ironic chuckle at her words. "I swear Anakin just said the exact same thing to me not ten minutes ago," she said, "You two are more in sync than you realize." She was hoping that Padmé might manage to crack a small smile at the wry observation, but instead her friend's expression darkened considerably. Ahsoka sobered. "You blame him for what's happened, don't you?"
"I'm trying not to, Ahsoka. I know that he didn't cause any of this."
"Not on purpose anyway," Ahsoka added dryly.
"No. He never does it on purpose. And yet, this is the sort of thing that will always follow him, and me and the children by default."
"You're right. It will. He cannot separate himself, Padmé, no matter how much he might wish otherwise."
"I know that already!" Padmé snapped.
"Then stop punishing him for it!" Ahsoka snapped back, "He didn't choose this life! It was chosen for him, and he's handled it a lot better than I would have!"
"What do you want me to say? I'm not proud of feeling this way!"
"Do you want him to go?" Ahsoka asked, "Would you prefer not to have him in your life at all?"
"How can you ask me that?" Padmé uttered, aghast, "I love him, Ahsoka! I died a little every day without him! You know I love him more than anything!"
"Then love him, Padmé! All of him! Everything that comes with that, the good and the bad and the absolute insanity…or walk away. You need to make a choice. Otherwise, you're only causing needless suffering, for him and for yourself."
Padmé thought about Ahsoka's words for a long time after her friend left to review last minute mission details with Obi-Wan. She knew Ahsoka was right. In less than an hour, Anakin would be leaving on a quest to find their children. There was no telling when or if she would see him again. The future was uncertain. She didn't want him to go off with so much unresolved between them. After all, that was the promise that they had both made to each other very early in their marriage…that they would never run away from each other or their problems but would stand and face them head-on instead. If she expected Anakin to stay true to those vows, then Padmé knew that she must be willing to do the same.
Predictably, she found Anakin in the engine room of Ahsoka's borrowed star cruiser. There was a certain comfort in knowing that his habits hadn't changed despite his incredible metamorphosis. Beyond the near limitless power and uncanny Force magic, he was still that solemn little boy from Tatooine who liked to fix things when he couldn't fix his own life.
She stood there and watched him work for a moment. He was running a last-minute inspection and diagnostic of the ship's machinery prior to their take-off. As soon as she stepped over the threshold to enter the compartment, however, he froze and regarded her warily. It was obvious then that he had been aware of her presence the entire time.
"Does this mean you're ready to do it now?" he asked flatly.
"Do what?"
"Tell me that it's over between us." Padmé barely completed her answering eyeroll before he picked up his tools and nonchalantly resumed his work. Despite his actions, Anakin was hardly unaffected. His words were punctuated with just the barest quiver of emotion as he spoke again, even though he maintained a matter-of-fact tone. "It's not like I didn't see it coming. Honestly, this is a relief. I'm not going to beg you to change your mind or throw a tantrum if that's your fear."
"For someone supposedly gifted with foresight, you are incredibly inept at reading my intentions."
Anakin flicked her with an impatient glance, but Padmé easily glimpsed the unshed tears that caused his blue eyes to glisten though his features remained impassive. "This doesn't need to be a painful ordeal, you know. I'm not the same foolish, nineteen-year-old boy I was when we fell in love. I won't fall apart if you walk away, Padmé."
"That's very reassuring. Thank you."
He plunged on as if she hadn't spoken, ignoring her sarcasm entirely. "All I ask is that you don't keep me from Luke and Leia," he said, "Not that they want anything to do with me right now but…if that changes, I want to be in their lives."
"Really, Anakin! Must you always be so dramatic? Do you never grow weary of having this same conversation again and again?" Padmé sighed in exasperation, "I certainly do!"
"Are you saying it's not a valid conclusion?"
"It's a ridiculous conclusion!"
"I don't think it is," he argued, "I have been waiting for you to leave me from the very start! So, I wish you would stop this indecision and just get it over with! Put us both out of our misery!"
"You really are impossible!" she cried, throwing up her hands, "How are we supposed to have a marriage if you continually doubt my love for you? What kind of relationship is that?"
"Why do you love me?" he asked with the utmost seriousness, "I've always wondered. It's the one thing that I've never been able to understand in all the years we've been together."
"You truly mean that, don't you?" Padmé whispered sorrowfully, "Even after all this time… I can't believe you still think this way, Anakin."
It wasn't the first time he had asked her the question and it was disheartening to think it wouldn't be the last either. Even if she stood there and listed her innumerable reasons for loving him, he still wouldn't believe a single word she said. Not because he would have suspected her of being deliberately deceitful, but because he had never been able to see himself through her eyes.
She wouldn't deny that he could be temperamental, petulant, impatient, and shortsighted but he was also a brave, passionate, incredible man who had loved her better than anyone she had ever known. They had successfully weathered a multitude of trials together, had created two beautiful children, had reaffirmed their love for one another in countless ways and, after all that, he still couldn't fathom why she had chosen him. Her heart ached to know it, and for the first time Padmé wondered if she had done something inadvertently to contribute to his misguided perception of himself.
"You act as if I'm martyring myself just to be with you," she uttered sorrowfully.
"I'm not sure that's the exact description I would use, but it's not far from the mark. How many times have we been in this same place because of something I've done?"
"You've made me laugh far more than you've made me cry, Anakin."
He snorted mirthlessly. "That's hardly an endorsement!"
"Alright," she conceded, "Consider this instead. I choose to stay with you. Shouldn't that be enough?"
"And what has that cost you?" he charged fiercely, "What will it continue to cost you? We don't get the same things out of this marriage, Padmé. Let's not pretend that we do."
"What are you talking about?"
"You are my home. You give me peace that I cannot possibly describe. You are my truest source of happiness, my ultimate reason for joy. But I can never give back to you what you give to me. Our relationship has been painfully unbalanced since its inception."
"What is this imbalance that you speak of because I am unaware of it!" she challenged, "Not once have I ever felt taken for granted in our marriage, Anakin…or unloved or unappreciated. If anything, I fear sometimes that the esteem you hold for me is much too high!"
"Now who's being ridiculous?" he scoffed.
"Neither of us is perfect! But you do make me happy! You always have…that is when you aren't driving me insane with this same tired argument! We should be well past this by now! When will you trust my commitment to you? I vowed forever. I meant forever!"
"Yes. In misery until you die. What kind of existence is that?"
"Have I truly struck you as being miserable in all our years together, Anakin?"
"You are now."
"That is a given. Our children are missing and currently under the influence of an evil Force presence. This wasn't quite the life I envisioned for us after the Empire fell."
"I know that. Why do you think I feel so guilty? I've failed you yet again."
"You shouldn't feel guilty," Padmé countered softly, and she was surprised to realize that she meant the words. "This isn't something you've done this time, but rather something that has been done to you. I understand that now."
"You blame me," he accused her softly, "Just say so."
"I do. I did. For a long time before this moment, even before you left, I struggled with these feelings. But I haven't been fair to you, and I realize that now," she said, "The truth is, I am the one who should feel guilty. I have this tendency to place unrealistic expectations upon you and then I'm disappointed when you fail to live up to them. And you've never once called me out on that."
His gaze flickered with her acknowledgement and the fact that he didn't try to deny her words or reassure her to the contrary was telling. "I always want to be the person you need me to be."
"There is nothing wrong with who you are, Ani…and that is what I need. I'm sorry if I've failed to make that clear to you…and perhaps that is the reason we always come back to this…because I've given you the impression that you are not enough as you are, and that is untrue.
"Leaving you has never been a thought for me! It will never be a thought, and it has nothing to do with principle! You are my home too. You are my greatest joy. So, I would sincerely appreciate it if you would stop encouraging me to walk away from you because that will never be an option for me!" she finished forcefully.
He snapped in attention, struck by the righteous passion in her declaration. "Understood."
"I never want to have this conversation again."
The intractable nature of her tone provoked a small smile from Anakin. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Alright. I hear you. Honestly, your intensity is a little frightening."
His lighthearted joking managed to accomplish what nothing else had in the past hellish day, and Padmé emitted a short bubble of laughter. "That's quite an ironic statement coming from you." Her laughter quickly dissolved into tears, however, when he stepped out from behind the engine panel to draw her into his arms. "I'm so frightened, Ani," she wept brokenly into his chest, her fingers bunched tightly into his soft tunic, "I really can't do this without you."
"I can't do this without you either," he whispered against her temple, "It's going to be alright. We're going to fix all of it."
When he framed her face in his hands, she was as eager for his kiss as he was for hers. The need for physical contact was born from desperation and grief, driven by a fervent yearning to reaffirm to themselves that they hadn't lost everything that was dear to them. Not everything had been razed to the ground. As bleak as their circumstances seemed right then, they still had still had one another.
They were still clinging to one another, kissing ardently in between murmured affirmations of love when Anakin first became vaguely aware of the faint blossoming of a unique Force signature that foreign to him, but not wholly unfamiliar. It felt like an awakening, the first, delicate beats of a microscopic heart, a new life unfurling in the Force. Compelled by curiosity and instinct, he gently traced the edges of that brightening presence only to rear back from Padmé with a soundless gasp of stunned disbelief when he belatedly recognized the source. Padmé stared up at him anxiously, noting the rapid drainage of color from his face with growing alarm.
"What is it?" she asked, "Did you have a vision? Was it the children?"
"Not exactly," he answered with a dazed expression, shrugging away from her. "It's not a bad thing. At least, I don't think it is…just very unexpected."
She caught hold of his sleeve when he started to pace. "What's unexpected? Ani, tell me! What's happened? You're frightening me!"
"I don't know if this is the time to discuss it, Padmé," he evaded, "You're dealing with enough."
Padmé expelled a long-suffering groan, already jumping to the worst possible conclusion. "Wonderful! What fresh hell has happened now? Just tell me and be done with it!"
Anakin peered at her with an inscrutable sideways glance. "Um…I don't suppose you've been on any sort of birth control in recent years, have you?"
It took Padmé a moment to decipher exactly what he was asking her and, when she did, she laughed. A full, throaty laugh that aptly conveyed just how utterly absurd she found the question. "No," she scoffed carelessly, "That's completely ridiculous." But when she noticed that he wasn't smiling and didn't seem to be joking at all, Padmé's laughter quickly gave way to mild annoyance that was mingled with a bit of hysteria. "No," she insisted again, but this time in pure denial, "You're mistaken. That is impossible."
"What makes it impossible?" he challenged, "It's not like we've been careful. Not even once."
She glared at him. "Anakin, no! This conversation is pointless!"
"Are you late?" he asked, ignoring her protest entirely, "When was the last time you bled?"
Padmé felt her cheeks suffuse with heat at his bold probing and the sheer indignity of being forced into such an intimate and unwanted discussion. "That is hardly evidence!" she cried, "I've been irregular for years now! Also, I will soon be 39 years old! I'm not a young woman anymore! My childbearing days are done!" She made each argument as if she expected they would be enough to negate the reality of what was occurring inside of her body right then, but Anakin continued to regard her with the same woeful expression. She shook her head at him wildly, her exasperation growing. "Stop looking at me like that! I am not pregnant. I'm not!"
"You are."
"With all due respect, I know my own body. I have given birth to two children! I know how it feels to carry a child! You don't!"
"You're right. But I know what I feel," he replied softly, "And I'm telling you there's a baby."
"Oh? So, now you can suddenly sense pregnancies?" she scoffed, "This is a new development! I was nearly two months along with Luke and you never suspected a thing! But now you've supposedly figured out this pregnancy before I could even begin to speculate? I'm not sure I like these new powers of yours very much, Anakin!"
"They're not new powers," he argued, "When you were pregnant with Luke, I didn't see because I didn't want to see. My fear of becoming a father made me blind to the truth. With Leia, I knew before you even told me you suspected. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to spoil the surprise for you."
Padmé gaped at him and stumbled back into the closest wall, caught somewhere between outrage and incredulity over his admission. "So, were you just putting me on with all that excitement when I gave you the news? Was that an act?"
Anakin stepped over to gather her hands into his own. "No. My reaction was real. I was ecstatic that day and it made me happy to see you happy." He tipped his head lower to peer at her more closely, trying to discern what she was feeling right then from her expression rather than reading her thoughts. "I think we're having another girl, in case you were wondering," he revealed softly, "I don't imagine you're very far along. We probably conceived that night on Hoth."
She briefly closed her eyes and bit her lip with a dejected frown. "Please don't tell me that, Ani."
"I know the timing could be better…"
Padmé scoffed again and tugged her fingers from his grasp to cover her mouth, as if she feared that she might begin sobbing or become ill. "The timing is terrible!" she yelped, "We have no idea where our children are! They no longer trust either of us! There's an evil Force spirit that is bent on corrupting them both! You're about to leave for some otherworldly, celestial planet to find a magical dagger, and now this! Bad timing does not begin to cover it!"
Anakin gently framed her face in his hands before she could spiral further. "Calm down. It's a baby, Padmé," he whispered, paraphrasing the same words that she had uttered to him years ago when he learned about Luke, "not the end of the world."
"It's not just a baby," she whispered back, pulling his hands away to take a step back, "It's everything." She placed a tentative hand against her abdomen before raising uncertain brown eyes back to his face. "There's so much to process. I wonder what this child will even be…because of what you are now."
He straightened with a brusque nod, considering that awesome implication for the first time since he realized the truth. "Right."
Before they could discuss the dizzying array of thoughts running through both their heads right then, Anakin suddenly sensed Ahsoka and Obi-Wan's approach and mumbled a quick warning to Padmé so that she could compose herself before they arrived. An instant later both Jedi rounded the corner but then immediately stopped short when they caught sight of Anakin and Padmé's tense expressions. It was apparent to them both that they had just walked in on something rather profound. Obi-Wan cleared his throat self-consciously.
"I thought we should be on our way now," he said, "Unless you two needed more time to sort things."
Anakin darted an apprehensive glance towards Padmé, but her expression was set in a cryptic mask he often referred to as her "senator face" when she said, "There's nothing to sort, Obi-Wan. Everything is fine. He's ready." She held up her hand when Anakin started to protest. "We should focus on Luke and Leia and bringing them home. That's the most important thing. We can figure out the rest later."
"I don't want to leave you like this," Anakin muttered under his breath.
"I will be fine, Anakin," she insisted, "Just go."
"Are you sure you're alright?"
"Not at all," she replied with a forced smile before rising on her toes to peck his lips in a hasty goodbye kiss, "But I'll get through it…because that's what Skywalkers do."