Part IX
The summons comes at an obscene hour of the morning with Anakin still away on assignment. That should have been her first warning. Even as Dormé works her handmaiden magic, Padmé is still hard-pressed to get her late-term self presentable in a timely fashion. Her gait weighed down by creeping dread as much as her large abdomen, she arrives, winded, at the former Supreme Chancellor's office.
Eerie disquiet shakes her palm stretching out for the access panel until cold trepidation freezes all of fear's motion from her entirely when she enters the room.
The goosebumps erupting all along her skin and the hair on the back of her neck standing on end are her second warning. Fully heeding it, her heart rate doubles, then triples when Anakin doesn't seem surprised.
She hadn't even known he was home.
"I hear congratulations are in order. How is the mother to be?" The slippery voice of Palpatine sounds fraught with disdain.
Forcing pleasantness to her face, Padmé smiles tightly. "Well, your Excellency." She almost gags. "Did Lord Vader tell you?"
"No." The reply is sharp, angry, cutting. "But he should have. For his fault in loyalty, I have asked you here to witness his punishment so that you may both understand my mercy."
Behind her, the door hisses and Galen Erso is brought in in binders. The moment he spots his allies is the moment he forgets he has them. "You promised me we would be safe! You lying sack of-"
The Red Guards shut his mouth for him with a brutal jab of their pikes. She watches, hand covering her mouth in horror, as Galen falls to the floor, gasping air for the both of them.
Immune to the misery on display or perhaps feeding on its panic, Palpatine reclines, comfortable on his throne.
"Two versions of events have floated around these chambers for far too long, each naming one of the individuals before you an enemy to the Empire. I trust you to eliminate the traitor, Lord Vader.""
Bile roils in the back of her throat but it looks like Anakin is going to be the one to throw up. He won't even acknowledge her as he moves past, igniting his lightsaber with unmistakable intent.
"Ani, don't," she whispers, her voice disappearing in an irony of breath-taking when she sees the ruby red color to his normally brilliant blue eyes. Even horrified at the unnatural hue, she can't stop herself from trying to stop him.
Her fingers barely snag his ebony sleeve when the coarse fibers wrench away from her grip. She doesn't understand at first, an invisible force yanking her off her feet, the leaden weight in her limbs suddenly gone. Impossibly, she's flying, lighter than her body's felt in months, but her trajectory is all wrong. She only vaguely comprehends when her spine slams into the wall, a sickening crunch rivaling the echoes of her screamed name.
Her vision spirals, and it's hard to hear what's happening past the agony roaring in her head, her veins, her womb. Her hands slipping across inexplicably wet and warm fabric. She can't see why, just like she can't see the source of all the shouting and noise - is that Obi-Wan's voice?! Are those more lightsabers?!- but it sounds like all hell is breaking loose.
Louder than the rest, one voice carries over the chaos around her.
"Padmé!" Anakin screams.
"Anakin..." she tries to answer.
But the world goes black.