Chapter 43. The Fight

I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.
― Sylvia Plath

We stared at each other in the mortifying silence. My rejection of his marriage proposal hung thick in the air. I divided my lips to exhale words that would part the painful fog, but none came out.

Anakin blinked rapidly and swallowed while he processed what had just happened. "Did, did I say it wr— Padmé? Do you know what I just asked you?"

In the worst of ironies, I replied, "I do."

The irony wasn't lost on Anakin either, as he visibly cringed in pain. He leaned away from me in a movement which threatened to obliterate my heart inside its penitentiary in my chest. He ultimately came to an unstable stand before gradually beginning to pace back and forth across the compact room. His fists, both the gray and the flesh one, opened and closed as he alternated between peering at me through squinted eyes and searching the floor for answers.

"I-I don't understand."

I watched him stalk. Anakin, walker of the skies, who could never stay still when emotion fueled him. Whereas I stood immobile, rooted to the tile like an ancient tree. The continuing avalanche of my feelings made the idea of putting them into intelligible, careful words impossible. "I… Oh, Ani… How do I say this…?"

"Well, Threepio isn't here, so in Basic would be nice."

Through his wounding, Anakin was resorting to the technique becoming more and more natural to him— lashing out.

The first reason to erupt from my lips was merely the first to trek a successful path from my brain to my mouth. "We're different branches of the government." He served me with his first stunned and disapproving expression of this exchange, but by far not his last. "Can you imagine what the reaction would be if it got out that we'd been married? Every piece of legislation I've ever looked at which in one way or another helped, funded, or favored the Jedi Order will be scrutinized."

He rolled his lips under one another and shook his head. "Preposterous. You're exaggerating the reaction."

"I am not." I knew the optics of the political word far better than he did. "Anything I've touched that directly or indirectly influences the Jedi in the past or in the future will be judged through a completely different lens. There will be accusations of favoritism instead of impartiality. Some might even wonder if I was aiding my husband's rise." Anakin scoffed at this, so I pressed, "The Senate bankrolls the Jedi. Could you live with that over your head, Anakin? That for every promotion you genuinely earn, there would be those on the outside wondering if you only reached it because your meddling wife was pulling the strings?"

Anakin's nostrils flared, whether with indignation at the very suggestion or simply frustration at what his beautiful proposal moment had become. "It's not possible for you to have that much control in the Order."

"I am well aware of that, but not everyone else is." I fought to keep my voice calm and failed. These thoughts had been torturing me for days, and they spilled out into the air like a cork had been violently tugged loose. "The Jedi are notoriously secret in their rank and file. They thrive off their lack of transparency— which would make it near impossible to convince outsiders that a Senator working in the very chamber the Order has sworn allegiance to isn't using that to her benefit. Every dangerous mission you don't get sent on and someone else does— was it because I protected you? Every mission that brings glory to the Republic— was it because I got you assigned to it?"

He finally stood in one spot. "No one will believe the system is that corrupt."

I broached into sensitive territory I'd yet to bring up with him. I knew how much he'd idolized his Jedi heroes since he was a child. "Anakin, have you seen the favorability ratings of the Order? In some sectors, they poll lower than the Senate does. Much lower."

Clearly exasperated, he raised his arms and reproached, "Only a politician would bring up the merit of opinion polls a minute after she's been proposed to!"

I clenched my jaw. "I'm trying to look out for your career."

He waved away a hand at this. "I can handle the Jedi."

"And mine," I rushed out, my own irritation growing. "You're not the only one who has their life's work to think about." I may not have been a Chosen One of prophecy, but that doesn't mean my contributions to the greater good didn't matter too.

He put both hands on his hips. "I didn't realize I was such a lower priority to your political career. Foolish of me to think you had put me first like I have with you."

How can he be so narrow-minded? "I have a right to be proud of the work I have done."

"Didn't you once chastise me about pride?"

The debate was devolving into a full argument, but I was too hurt by his selfishness to reign it in. "I'm allowed to care about work I've devoted my entire life towards, Anakin. I didn't choose to go into public service yesterday. And it's not just about me; no Senator works completely alone. My name is attached to work several others devoted their time and efforts see accomplished. My scandals shouldn't impact their legacies!"

I may as well have given my impassioned speech in broken Geonosian.

"You're not on the budget committee that funds the Jedi Order. Your reputation as an honest leader will spare you from any criticism. I know it, I'm sure of it, or else I'll-I'll—"

"Or else you'll what? You, my Jedi husband, will step in and threaten whoever to stop tarnishing your wife's name?" I looked at him, vexed. "'There goes Senator Amidala— don't call her out on her scandalous marriage, or else her husband will visit you with his lightsaber'."

To his credit, instead of inflaming at my words, Anakin inhaled deeply and seemed to try to reduce his rising anger. "I'm simply saying, you should not underestimate your reputation. No one who knows you is going to believe you're using me to interfere with the Order."

If only it was only that. Such a hurdle would be so much less complicated to take on… if only he operated inside an organization without extraordinary capabilities of influence.

"Any existing honor in my reputation would not be enough to save us from suspicion."

His cheeks twitched. "What are you saying?'"

"You joke about how I'm not susceptible to mind tricks. But even if I'm not accused of helping you intentionally, you might be accused of using the Force on me."

His mouth dropped open in shock. "I would never do that."

"I know you wouldn't. But every time I vote on something, someone's going to wonder if I'm voting what you, or— far more dangerously— what the Order wants enacted in the Senate."

Now he threw up his hands and started pacing again. "I never took you as one to be a conspiracy theorist."

My eyes trailed after him as he moved like a caged animal. "Anakin, like it or not, the Jedi Order is fighting their own battle right now in the court of public opinion. They and the Senate are the pillars of the Republic, working in harmony but separately." My volume rose with the increasing speed of my delivery. His stomping back and forth was further undermining my tether to composure. "All it would take is a few loud detractors to start making charges that the Council is using you to perform Jedi mind tricks on a Senator behind the privacy of closed doors, manipulating me to vote in ways that help their agenda, or to use our marriage to spy on an official with influence—"

"They wouldn't be able to produce any proof of any mind tricks happening—"

"And we wouldn't be able to produce any proof that it's not happening!"

"For Force sake, this the craziest thing I've ever—"

"No, it's not crazy, Ani! I know this landscape! I've been fighting my way through it since I was an Apprentice Legislator!" My eyes begged him to understand. "There are people in it who will use whatever they can find— even something beautiful and real— to twist into something awful for their own ambitions." I made a haphazard gesture at our surroundings, an active assault cruiser. "We're at war! The Separatists are looking for anything they can point at to degrade the Republic and justify abandoning it. A Jedi and the leader of the opposition— who's on record making speeches about the nobility of truth and upholding the moral high ground— hiding a forbidden marriage in the shadows? I would be called the most duplicitous Senator of them all."

My heart pounded with adrenaline, its rhythm matching the wildfire growing in Anakin's eyes. "If the Senate is already so vile and the Jedi poll so low, what do we care?! Damn the galaxy, Padmé, if it means we can't be together!"

"Even if all that could be forgotten, there's still a glaring fact the entire Jedi Council couldn't change even if they put all their abilities together and tried."

"And what's that?"

"You're nineteen!" He'd lived a lifetime's worth of pain and struggle in his short life, but at the end of the day, no matter how close to his twentieth birthday Anakin was, he was still a teenager.

"I won't always be!"

Dear Gods, it's our meeting in Watto's shop all over again.

Whether or not he was cognizant of his own echoing, Anakin continued to storm, "I believe that is the concept of marriage, Padmé— that two people grow old together." He raised palms up, facing them towards me. "You know what?" He dropped them to his thighs with a slap. "Fine. You can talk like Obi-Wan and call me 'my very young fiancé' if it makes you feel any better."

I swallowed and reigned in the volume from my prior exclamation. "Don't you think you're a little young to decide who you want to be married to for the rest of your life?"

But I'd foolishly said something very, very wrong. Anakin's eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. His voice rose despite my venture to lower mine. "What do you think this is here, a summer tryst?" In the small space, his voice ricocheted off the walls, cutting into me a second time with not more than a moment to catch my breath before the next assault. "Is that what it amounts to for you?"

I tried to shush him, waving my hands in a downward motion as I pleaded in a harsh whisper to enunciate my point, "That is not what I'm saying. But Ani, you're young, and—"

"—and what? I might find someone else? I don't believe this. I'm old enough to duel, certainly old enough to be a Knight, but not old enough to get to decide who I love?" A bleeding offense which hadn't originated from our situation leaked into it nonetheless. "I wasn't even born in the Republic, and I go out there every day, risking my life trying to protect it! I already gave it my arm! Now I'm supposed to hand over my heart? When it didn't lift a finger to help when my mother and I were slaves right beyond its door?"

His visible hurt became my own, and I flinched. "Anakin—"

"Do you think I'm just planet hopping in search of a wife? Are you worried I might miss out on the next beautiful brunette that catches my eye?" Then he used my shallow words after our very first kiss against me. "You still think I'm just swept up in all the flowers?! Look around, Padmé! I don't see any flowers growing outside the portholes of this cruiser, do you?"

"Ten years indoctrination to the wisdom of the Jedi doesn't translate into all life experiences!"

"I'm not trying to have all life experiences. I only want you! Do you think I take my commitment to the Order so lightly that I would consider— even for a second— breaking my oath for anyone else?"

His shouting was going to out us faster than any kiss would. "Anakin, control your volume! I'm just trying to say you're—"

But he wasn't listening. Tears flooded his eyes as his own torturous thoughts from our time together streamed out. "You don't think I haven't fought this? You think I didn't try to wish away my feelings?" He paused, but I was too frozen to capitalize on the silence. His chin started to tremble. "There's no doubt in my mind, my mother would be…" A single tear escaped the rim. "She would be so happy to know I found a woman like you. A woman who says she loves me. But my mom still sent me out our door under the belief I was pursuing a Jedi's path. Qui-Gon went up against the Council for me in one of the final acts of his life. And Obi-Wan—" Here, his face grew the most pained, something I truthfully found surprising given the prior to names he'd listed. "I don't want to disappoint him. He's the only one left alive who has any stake left in what I become— in what they all wanted from me." He slowly began to shake his head from side-to-side as his chin continued to quake. "I'm not that guy on the HoloNet who's collecting wives in every solar system." He took a pair of long steps towards me. His stare was intent. "Padmé. I know my future when it's standing right in front of me. I've seen it with you since I was nine years old." His eyes searched mine desperately. "Don't you see? You're everything to me. You're everything."

We stood staring at each other for a long moment, eyes attempting to express where lips had tried and failed.

For all the rashness and recklessness of most of his actions, Anakin is a very perceptive person. He can sniff out unspoken subtext better than most.

"You weren't saying all this before I asked you to marry me. You were talking about there being a way." His voice dropped. "Our risk of discovery is the same whether or not we get married. If the galaxy knows we are in a relationship, what difference does it make if they know I'm your brainwashing husband versus your brainwashing lover?" There was beat, and then his eyes narrowed. "Unless…"

My breath hitched. "Unless what?"

"Unless the reason why you don't want those labels of husband and wife… is because they imply a permanence to the relationship that you do not seek."

I shook my head emphatically, crippled by the sign of him going there. I wasn't sure I'd survive it. "Anakin."

"You don't see us together for the rest of our lives the way I do."

In the most heartbreaking of ways, he was absolutely right.

It was a truth I'd struggled with since the moment I realized the depth of my feelings for him. Even now, days after my pledge to the galaxy on that homestead mattress, this was the reality I still did not know how to reconcile— the fact that every fiber in my being wanted him in my life for the rest of my life… but recognition that it would involve a sacrifice I could not forfeit.

I shook my head at him again, gravely. "You want more than you realize you're asking me to give."

"I thought you said you loved me."

My chest collapsed. "I do love you. But what you're asking me to do makes me question if you truly feel the same."

He stilled at this; his indignation trapped behind a pour of pain. "Padmé… how can you even say—"

"There was a moment," I interrupted quietly but morosely. "On the ledge at Edum Bloom. After the comm call, when you went to arrange our leaving with Brother Luke."

Anakin nodded, a pensive retrace to the moment etched on his face. "I remember."

"When you came back, I began crying—" The quivering in my voice made me grind my revelation to hold. I started to take several breaths to steady myself before continuing.

I'm sure hoping to be helpful, Anakin attempted to finish my sentence for me. "You were crying for Cordé."

My face crumbled and I shook my head, dismissing tears that clouded my vision anyways. "I was crying for myself. For her yes, but for me too. I hadn't let myself cry for ten years." I bore into his eyes as ardently as he seemed always to want to feast on mine. "Ten years. I pushed all that down. When Queen Jamillia asked me to serve as Senator, there was a part of me that screamed to stop and take a breath to-to take time for myself, rest, to spend time with my family, maybe start my own." A strangled laugh, a harsh sound, came out of my throat. "Maybe take some ceramics classes." My sardonic smile disappeared. "But I pushed that voice down, I pushed everything down, and you saw the grand result when I fell apart on the way back from Eden Bloom."

"I didn't…" Anakin sighed and dipped his chin. "I didn't realize." He exhaled deeply once more, then he closed the distance between us to pick up my right hand in his left. He gave it a soft squeeze. "But I don't see how that applies to us." He peered at me under his soft lashes. "I know you want more in your life than just legislation and committee hearings. And you don't need to hide your pain with me." Another compression around my fingers. "We both know what it's like, remember?"

I lifted my other hand and cupped it against his cheek. I brushed my thumb against the skin. A few seconds more, and I couldn't resist. I stepped forward and placed a tender kiss to his mouth. It was a luxury I'd been unable to act on despite the countless moments of wanting to, and the joy in exercising the ability to kiss him freely nearly buckled my legs. Just as he began to return it, I moved back. He watched me go under a confused gaze.

"Don't you see?" I whispered. I swallowed my volatile feelings, only for them to scrap and crawl their way up my throat. "That level of suppression in lives like ours— you pushing it down for the Jedi, me for my role— it leads us to try to abolition our emotions until things blow up. Until we act out destructively, against others or ourselves. You took out your grief on the Tusken villagers. I take it out on myself. That's what I do. I internalize my grief inwards and take all the blame." I caressed my thumb against his cheek once more. "I love you, Anakin Skywalker." I dropped my hand. "But what you are asking me to do is even more suppression than I've ever done in my life. I wouldn't just be suppressing my pains, but my joy and my love for you. The whole spectrum of what loving you feels like, the sheer magnitude of it— you're asking me to hide this now, too. For the rest of my life."

His brow furrowed, and his quiet voice was loudly earnest as he replied, "I will do anything you ask, Padmé. Just say the words."

"There's something you cannot give me."

He shook his head with urgency. "Not possible." He wrapped both of his arms around my waist, low around my back, and drew me into him. Our faces were inches apart. "I will give you the galaxy, if only you ask for it." Blue eyes sought answers in mine even before he asked, "What is it? What is it that you want so badly you would let it keep us apart?"

This was it. This when I had to voice the most important part. The part which would end us.

"Motherhood." I held back tears and started to despondently push myself away from him. But his limbs had locked, and I stared up into his fractured expression instead. "I want to be a mother, Ani. I want to sit around the table with my family on Lunar Day and not worry about someone walking by the window and seeing who's in my husband spot. Darred, my sister's husband, is already turning into an empty chair, and that wasn't anticipated in their marriage." I finally disentangled myself from his frozen arms now but only served to back up into the table's edge. Still, I pressed, "If we start with an empty chair being the expectation, what could we devolve into?"

He swallowed and looked down at our feet, then up at me. "We can figure it out along the way."

"This isn't improvisation inside of a mission. You can't just jump blindly into marriage and parenthood like you're leaping out of a speeder in the middle of Coruscant's traffic lanes."

He turned as he ran his hand down the front of his face. Seeing his back, I wanted to reach my right hand out to him but kept it glued to the table's rim. "Anakin, Anakin, look at me. Look at me." He took a shuddering breath. I watched the reflective fabric of his leather tabard contour the light. I patiently waited until he finally turned and met my gaze. "Please understand. You have my heart. Completely." I put the hand I hadn't allowed to touch him over the center of my chest. "And you have my body, even though we haven't…" I pushed through the tiny wave of shyness. "It's yours. It's yours. And, it's not that I don't feel you there too— I do, but," I hesitated, caught on my words. This was incredibly hard to describe. "You have my heart and you have my body, but my children have my soul." My hand moved to my abdomen, a poor representation, but the best I could do to explain the gut-wrenching truth. "They don't live yet, but I'm trying to secure the best life I can for them. It's one thing to ask me to accept a hidden husband; it's another to ask me to give my children an absentee father."

Anakin smiled and shook his head, as if he'd discovered a sudden loophole in my reasoning. "I wouldn't be absentee. I would love them as fiercely as you do. You forget, I'm the only one in the Order who knows the warmth of a parent's love. Even the Jedi can't preach that out of me."

Even as his enthusiasm made my heart balloon, it made it ache. "Say we have this family. Say we're somehow successful at keeping living, breathing, active children a secret. What happens when you don't come back from a mission? You're not even twenty and you almost died in a duel. We're entering into a war. It's not as if your profession comes with ample life-security." That would give a whole nother meaning to an empty chair at the table.

He tilted his head and one-eyed me. The fight was returning in his stare. "Funny. From where I'm standing, being a politician from Naboo doesn't seem all that safe either."

Well, I could set my mouth into a firm line too. "I want to be able to walk down a public street holding my husband's hand in one grip and my child's in the other. It's not a crime to want that."

He frowned as he handled my words, shifting even now to transform them into ways for us to be together. "There are streets we can walk down where that's possible. It's a big galaxy. Lots of streets."

I nodded in perfect understanding. "Dark streets. Hidden streets."

His eyes were pleading even in his resumed sweet tenderness. "Just because something is a secret doesn't mean it's inherently wrong."

I tried to ignore the voice in my head that recognized this was a phrase, or a variation of it, used by politicians behind closed doors when they were planning strategies they'd rather the HoloNet didn't find out.

He stepped forward and picked up both of my hands in his human one. "It just means it's ours, that it's too precious for the masses. It doesn't belong to them. Who cares what anyone else does or doesn't understand so long as we have an understanding between us as to what this is?"

Anakin didn't have to say what this was out loud, not when I could see it in every inch of his face, the well of his eyes, and hear it in the tension of his breath.

This was everything.

"Oh, Anakin…"

"I'll-I'll," Anakin suddenly searched for words like a desperate man, already fighting for the family he didn't yet have. "I'll leave the Order. Today. Tomorrow. The day you tell me you want to have a little girl, I'll leave."

I looked back at him, momentarily too perplexed by his singular choice of word to begin the stampede of reaction to what else he'd just said. "A girl?"

The corner of his perfect lips tugged up briefly, but his overall gaze was serious. His voice came to me as a reverent, almost-whisper. "Do you think I don't look at you and see a future with children?" His smile grew even as his eyes glistened. Then he lifted a shoulder in a show of casualness. "Don't get me wrong, a boy would be wonderful. The more the merrier. We can have as many babies as it takes to fill up a flight academy."

I clumsily yanked my hands out of his and stepped away from him and his beautiful daydreams. "You can't leave the Order."

He didn't let me get far before he came up behind my back and wrapped his arms around my stomach. His chin set itself on my left shoulder; I felt his lips move against my ear, eliciting titillating feelings that had no place in this conversation. "It's survived for thousands of years. They can make do without me." He planted a hurried but hefty kiss to the side of my head. "You're what matters to me now."

My hands instinctively rose to land over his. He responded by capturing all of my fingers in interlocked embraces with his, even the artificial ones. I bent backwards into him, absorbing his warmth, his scent, his passion.

Heat began to rise between us as his continued breath panted by my ear. He turned his face and smelled my hair. My fingers curled more tightly into the trenches offered by his. Without warning, he spun me around and reunited our bereft mouths. Fully compliant, I lifted up onto the tips of my feet and let him consume me. Meeting him in kind, I pressed my lips against his with such force, I feared the characteristic fullness of his would be reduced to thin strips by the time I stole my treasure.

When oxygen became the triumphant victor of our attention, his mercifully intact lips moved to my neck. I lifted my chin to grant him blessed access. But just as his human hand began to roam further south than my lower back, I moved my hands once again to cover both of his— this time to stop his pursuit. Then I took his face between my hands as if I was holding my own life between my palms.

"I love you," I breathed over his parted mouth. Eyes swimming with desire and desperation funneled into mine. Their bountiful flecks of blue outmatched the spectrum offered in Naboo's widest oceans, just as the life shining through their light put all the combined illumination of Coruscant to shame. "But I cannot rob you of your destiny any more than you can ask me to give up my wishes for mine."

Dark blond eyebrows pulled in questioningly. "What destiny of mine is it that you're trying to protect so much?"

That's when I realized I'd slipped.

I'd sworn to myself, that night beside the fireplace, that Anakin could not know the Jedi's prophecy had been the ultimate reason why I'd pushed him away.

Foolishly, I tried to back track quickly. "Nothing, I-I just, you're a Jedi they shouldn't have to lose. And like you said, it's what you, your mother, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan— it's what we've all always wanted for you."

But Anakin could read me better than almost anyone at this point. He dropped his hands from their place at my waist and took a step back.

"Is this about the prophecy?"

I sighed, then set my chin. What had been let loose was out. "Even if it isn't true, you'll be watched by the Order for the rest of your life. We'll never be able to successfully raise children in a healthy environment with your exposure and expulsion constantly over our heads. And if it is true… who am I to stand in the way of it?"

"I never asked for a prophecy." He stared back at me with anger aimed at a Council and a cosmos that never thought to hear his opinion on the matter. Then his jaw clenched so tightly I thought it would break. "I only ever wanted my mom to be happy, and free. And to be the best Jedi I could. And to grow up and marry the angel that walked across Watto's undeserving dirt."

He resumed his pacing on the flooring like he'd never ended it, only now there was a more manic tension to his stride and his shoulders as they cut through the air.

"Have you considered a crucial part of your plan, Padmé? You keep saying that you love me, yet, when you talk about this family, you leave out the man who will be at your side in my place. You leave out the part about you falling in love with someone else and spend your life with him instead of me."

I clamped down on my lips. Confessing that I could never imagine loving another man after him would cause me to shift from righteous posture into a broken sob.

"There are other ways of having children, Anakin. Not the least of which is adoption." He threw a knowingly look at me at this, so I admitted, "It's not my first choice, but I could be a single mother. If I had to." Without properly thinking it through first, I added emphatically, "Your mother did it!"

"That, as I have made perfectly clear, was under a very unique set of circumstances!" His storm was back. "I am impressed, Padmé. Here I've been going through all the reasons I know we should be together, and you've obviously been spending your time compiling a list of all the reasons why we shouldn't."

I was just about to open my mouth to try again when a knock at the door startled me, and my eyes anxiously darted between the closed entryway and Anakin. But he stayed unmoved, gazing at me with those intense eyes as if he planned to ignore the sound and what it meant.

Another pointed knock.

"Get the door," I pressed, quietly. Sadly.

Seconds went by.

I looked at him with more urgency as the knocker tapped again. "Get the door, Anakin."

He straightened and nodded. "At your command, my lady."

Then he flicked a hand, and the door several feet away flew up. On the other side was a clone— a medic, by my initial impression of him. But something was different about his cloth uniform.

"Afternoon." He nodded at me in greeting as he stepped into the passageway. He tilted his head again when he came in far enough to see Anakin. "Ready for another round?"

Of course. Anakin's afternoon rehabilitation appointment for his arm.

The patient met my eye briefly before squaring it with the man in front of him. "I don't need another session. I followed your advice and just let my instincts take over. It works."

The clone smiled but said, "Be that as it may, we need to do just a couple minutes so you can show me and I can sign off on it. Shouldn't take long— oh, goodbye, miss."

I was hurrying towards the door without looking back.

"Padmé!"

But I had already slammed the button on the panel, ensuring the door's fall a second after I stepped through it.

I hit the access button on this panel with far more strength than necessary as well. I charged through and searched the scene critically.

This was my second distraction excursion into a designated area of the ship. Returning to my stateroom with Ob-Wan potentially next door was not an option— not with these feelings swirling like a whirlpool inside me. I couldn't sit behind a table in the conference room and put enough faith in my Amidala exterior to think I'd be able to make it through a meeting without bursting into tears. I needed movement. I needed to focus on something with my hands and avert attention away from the screams of my heart.

My first stop had been the clinic. I'd practically barged in and immediately sought out the head nurse. I'd tried throwing myself into helping others— whatever service the patients needed. I was willing to do anything. But this far out from the battle, there weren't enough soldiers with wounds needing immediate attention, and the small medical ward had run out of things for me to do after ten minutes. On spontaneity more so than rational thought, I'd then charged straight to the engineering hub of the ship.

I found a serviceman who perhaps looked like he might be the leader of the crew. His brown eyes went wide as he saw me march up to him with a concentrated stare. I came to a stop an arm's length in front of him.

"Put me to work."

"Um. Aren't you… Aren't you the Senator?"

"Right now, I'm someone who's about to be the most dedicated member of your team. Put me anywhere." Then I thought better of my declaration, and quickly added, "Except near floor 16."

Anakin's floor.

"Well, ah," he gave me a look up and down. It was too befuddled to come across as degrading. "What can you do?"

Sudden dismay crushed my face into a frown. An engine room was Anakin's arena, not mine. But then the memory of a recently acquired skill sprung into thought. I looked at the engineer with more confidence than I might've earned.

"I can read the basic operations on moisture vaporators."

His eyebrows rose in even greater surprise. But after a moment, he nodded. "Alright. I can work with that. Come on, let's find you something to do."

A/N: Last week, I started conferring with fanfic writers on a different site's forum, giving them a spoilerific rundown of what's coming in Suppression and asking their thoughts on the rating. Knowing what was just ahead, I was getting nervous. I reread FF.N's text on what distinguishes between a T and a M rating five times over before I ever posted the prologue, but I've decided that because there's enough gray area to cause concern for risk, this will be the last chapter where Suppression is posted with a T rating. This means the way-back-when A/N (which has now been deleted) that said there would be a chapter posted in the T version here but an M version of it posted separately will no longer be happening. If I'm changing rating to M anyways, I might as well keep it all in one place. I don't want anyone to feel caught off guard, so I'll reveal that "the M chapter" was never the wedding night chapter. So, if— after reading about this rating change— your new plan is/was to read along until the wedding night, hopefully now you won't feel unfairly surprised.

In the goal of my full peace of mind that the fic will never be in danger of being reported/removed, I'll also be making the tough decision of taking down the "Notes & Quotes" page. It will be moved to— wait for it— Suppression's Tumblr page, which has been operational in a very low-maintenance way since the day the prologue went up. My hope is to expand on it later with posts about insights behind writing choices, full lists of Easter eggs by chapter, the first place for news on forthcoming fics, etc. I haven't publicized this Tumblr anywhere, so it's amazing it has any followers at all, but if you'd like to join in, search rose-arwen-padme and you'll find it. As for the Notes & Quotes page here, if you're so interested, you can take a last look at where I hinted at the roller coaster to come for Anakin & Padmé, and where I laid out the guiding quotes directing the track. I'll take that page down when the fic is finished.

Lastly, I can't take the space to do an A/N and not reflect on the above chapter. It's one of the most important ones of the entire fic. There are so many hints in AOTC (at least, in the deleted footage) and in ROTS that show Padmé was excited about and fully invested in being a mother. She didn't know there were two in there instead of one, but Luke and Leia were anticipated and loved. Padmé is sometimes referred to as "the mother of Star Wars"— when accusations on the complete opposite of the spectrum aren't being hurled at her— and I look forward to sharing how she still gets to the altar.

Thank you kindly, as always, for kind reviews.