Chapter 2
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
Well, it certainly wasn't the first time Obi-Wan had been wrong about him. Likely wouldn't be the last time either, he supposed.
"He's put himself into a healing trance."
Actually, no he hadn't.
While he could admit his collapse had been decidedly a bit… involuntary, Anakin had stubbornly fought the pull to submerge himself into the welcoming sanctuary of the Force. Instead, he had focused every cell in his body that wasn't screaming in agony to concentrate on Padmé's hand desperately wrapped around his own.
The smooth silkiness of her palm against his.
The intimate way her small fingers intertwined with his own.
Her touch was a lifeline so freely offered, and he had willingly grabbed ahold with no intention of ever letting go.
Anakin had meant what he told her that morning on the terrace at Varykino.
Your presence is soothing.
Her presence was everything.
He would withstand endless pain – be it in the form of haunting nightmares or physical agony — if it meant Padmé gave up this pretext of rules and should nots that she liked to hide behind when it came to them. If Death had to stare her in the face for her to confess the feelings she had been desperately trying to suppress, he would have been a bit more reckless showing off on the shaak during their afternoon in the meadow. If losing an arm was the price to pay for being able to hold her hand this way, he might be willing to trade more limbs in the future for further allowances when it came to Padmé.
And so, despite the enticement of surrendering himself to the Force's restorative power, Anakin had refused the lure of the healing trance.
In truth, Anakin hated healing trances. They required a certain amount of forbearance and centering that some might say he lacked. In his mind, it wasn't so much that the spring of his spirit ran dry in the patience department – there were plenty of instances that went sorely unnoticed where he called upon a seemingly infinite sea of tolerance when dealing with his overbearing Master – instead, Anakin liked to think it stemmed more from a thorough lack of enjoyment exercising the virtue rather than a damning lack of it entirely.
A rolling stone gathers no moss. Good things come to those who wait.
Yeah, yeah, but you wouldn't win the Boonta Eve Classic sitting on your back pockets either.
Yet now, he finds himself adrift in the deep, plunged into a trance against his own will, without Padmé's familiar signature to reach out to for its steadying support.
The Force ripples around him, its waves cushioning his tired mind and battered body with indigo serenity. It whispers calmly in his ear, consoling, reassuring. The words it implores him to hear are hard to make out over the heavy languor that beckons him with a siren's call. He's heard this mantra before. If he will just let himself listen. If he can just relax into this melody, surely its lyrics will reveal themselves.
There is no emotion; there is peace.
Anakin is fairly certain he's going to need to hear that at least several thousand more times before he starts to finally believe in that credo.
There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.
He almost snorts with amusement. He has met plenty of ignorant beings who fully thought themselves invested with so-called knowledge. Tell that to them.
There is no passion; there is serenity.
But what about when the object of one's passion was the key to one's serenity? What about when she was essential to it?
There is no chaos; there is harmony.
Pretty sure the galaxy is swinging more to the side of chaos given what all just transpired on Geonosis, so good luck finding harmony anywhere in its vast corners right now.
There is no death; there is the Force.
"You shouldn't be here, Ani."
His mother's voice cuts through his meditation with unabashed immediacy.
Anakin flails, his head twisting side to side, his eyes searching frenziedly in a futile effort to peer past the moving currents around him. All he can feel is the ebb and flow as the Force buffets him gently with its magnificence. All that surrounds him is infinite darkness
Just when he lays back and capitulates to the trance's undulating design, resigning himself to the idea that her dulcet tones were purely imagination and not an actual resonance, she speaks again.
"You both shouldn't be here."
This time when he sits up, waist-deep in the cosmic lake, his mother stands before him.
She looks exactly the way she did when he turned his nine-year-old back and walked out of her life to pursue his own. Whereas before she had smiled at his retreat in that encouraging yet softly sad way, this time her features look upon him with a silent yet fraught plea.
"Who?" he asks. It's not the first question he wants to ask her, not by a long shot, but it's like he's been disembodied from himself. Even though his own eyes fixate on hers, he feels as if he's watching from beyond a vast distance.
"Mom?" he asks, his voice cracking a bit. Grief hangs close to the surface, not yet buried deep enough by Time to prevent such rending emotional exhumation.
Unblinking, Shmi stares at her son. Her soft brown eyes are wary and concerned.
"You both shouldn't be here, Ani," she repeats solemnly. "She needs you to get her out."
"Who, Mom?" His voice is surer in its timbre, even if beneath its tone still wants to tremor.
Instead of answering outright, Shmi ducks her head, her eyes falling to her hands laying folded over her middle. A cord dangles from her fingers, a small charm rocking gently back and forth on an invisible breeze. Anakin isn't close enough to see the carvings in the japor, but he knows intimately the pattern he will find etched on its ivory face.
A sinister chill seizes the breath from Anakin's lungs. All at once, his heart understands what his mind refuses to hear. His lips press together to form the first familiar consonant of her name, but the air necessary to push out her name escapes him.
"She needs you, Ani," Shmi repeats. She tilts her head, then graces him with the melancholy smile from his memory. Her brown eyes hold his gaze with an earnest entreaty. "Can you hear her?"
Her image shivers a bit, as if celestial signals are still prone to experiencing interference even in this otherworldly dimension. Anakin leans forward, even as she retreats the same desolate distance.
"Stay with me, Mom."
Just as she did under a cloudless Tatooinian night sky, Shmi can't fulfill his plea. Her apparition recedes slowly, fading away as if some invisible string pulls her further down into the void. Or, is he being pulled further up? Truly, Anakin can't tell, but he stretches out with his right arm anyway, reaching for her. He's more surprised by its appearance even as fingers close around nothing. Even when his elbow burns viciously, a harsh reminder to avoid any additional movements.
She needs you.
When he looks back, his mother is gone.
"Mom?!"
The once peaceful ebony void around him suddenly feels less inviting than before. Anakin folds into himself, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to block out the menacing pain strangling the voice in his throat, spreading like wildfire up into his shoulder…
He tries to dive back down.
"You shouldn't be here…" Shmi's ghost warns from afar.
"Stay with me, Mom!"
Anakin!
You both shouldn't be here.
Get her out. Can you hear her?
Anakin!
Anakin jolts awake, gasping loudly as the enforced submergence in the Force spirals away like water rushing down a drain. Sitting up abruptly, his startled eyes take in the stark white walls of the infirmary surrounding him with too much enthusiasm before they flutter rapidly, protesting the sudden contrast of vivid light to the inviting, dark sanctity of the healing trance. Eventually, his vision adjusts, coming to settle on Obi-Wan perched on the edge of his chair. His Master's expression is tense under the pretense of a calm exterior.
"Take it easy, Anakin," his Master says, reaching out a hand that lands a little too heavily on his Padawan's shoulder. "You'll only hurt yourself further."
Anakin blinks once at Obi-Wan. His Master's smooth accented voice feels rough after the echoes of her melodious shout. Hysterically, Anakin reaches out for her familiar signature.
Her presence is elusive.
"Where's Padmé?"
"Anakin…" Obi-Wans says, trying for patience, but Anakin instantly recognizes the exasperation at the tail of his Master's expired breath that has been a constant companion of his for the past decade. It's hard to forget an old friend.
"Where is she?" Anakin all but growls. His irascible tone furrows his Master's brows with shock.
Obi-Wan sighs with barely restrained censure.
"She's on board. Master Ti commed only a few minutes ago to report they had successfully retrieved the Senator's ship right where you both had left it."
"You let her walk back into that hellhole?!" Instinctively, Anakin stretches out further, seeking beyond the more proximate auras he had been sifting through with haphazard industry. His anxiety flares wildly when he comes up yet again empty.
"Come now, Anakin," Obi-Wan admonishes, "She wasn't on her own. Might I remind you that Master Ti is a member of the High Council… What are you doing?"
Obi-Wan pauses as Anakin struggles to sit up more on the hospital bed, the reclined angle and the limited use of one arm awkwardly impeding his progress.
"Where are you going? Anakin. Please just sit still."
"Something's not right," Anakin says, shaking his head emphatically. His words end in a muffled groan, the simple motion of sitting up jarring his injured right arm, pain reverberating up through his shoulder with the rough transition. Fighting to breathe against the onslaught of agony, Anakin pauses before swinging his legs over the edge of the cot. His boots hit the floor with determination.
"What do you mean 'something's not right'?" Obi-Wan's irritation is rapidly morphing into annoyed worry, as his Padawan rips off the monitors attached beneath his tunic. "Anakin, please, be reasonable. You've suffered a terrible injury and…"
"If Padmé is back on board, can you sense her, Master?" Anakin interrupts, halting his rush only long enough to issue the challenge he knows Obi-Wan won't be able to rise to.
Obi-Wan frowns, but stills slightly, catering to his student's fevered summons. Anakin can see the lack of success before his mentor draws breath to remonstrate him further.
"Ana-kin, calm down. I'm sure Senator Amidala…" Anakin's jaw sets against Obi-Wan's obvious rebuke meant by using Padmé's formal title and not her familiar name. "…is just resting after the whole ordeal she just went through."
"If Padmé was just resting, I would know!"
As his voice rises, so does Anakin. Stars alight behind his eyes from the sudden change in altitude, but he viciously beats back the encroaching blackness until the void retreats with its tail between its legs. His breathing sounds harsh in his ears, whether from surging pain or panic, Anakin can't tell.
"I've been around her every waking moment for the past week. I know her Force signature inside and out, and I'm telling you, Master, I can't find her!" He stares down at Obi-Wan, his eyes daring the older Jedi to contradict him.
Your senses aren't that attuned…
And yours are?
For a moment, neither Jedi moves.
Anakin's heart continues to churn with the frantic urgency it started when his mother first appeared before him with her enigmatic warning. He almost turns to leave his Master behind, when Obi-Wan comes to a stand. He tries to hide his own wince of discomfort, but Anakin catches the cautionary hesitance in his normally fluid motion. Obi-Wan's own battle wounds scowl back with black austerity.
"Alright then," Obi-Wan acquiesces wearily, accepting this is a battle he cannot win. "Let's go find her. But first…" Anakin stops mid about-face. "…we must know where to look."
Anakin nods once in understanding. He knows Obi-Wan doesn't mean seeking a specific physical location to start their search. While tangible clues often aided them in their quests, Jedi relied more on the internal compass that their supernatural connection to the Force gifted them with. Taking a deep centering breath, Anakin closes his eyes and wills his body to go infinitely still.
He falls back into the Force, bobbing against the ripples that concentrically flow away from him, as if he were a plummeting pebble that rudely disrupted its lake's still surface. At first, he struggles to stay afloat, the sudden sensory deprivation ironically sharpening the torment from Dooku's malicious cauterization like a blade taken to a whetstone, but Obi-Wan's voice reaches for him in the deep, guiding him to focus.
To find her.
"Quiet your mind. Stretch out with your feelings."
There is no emotion; there is peace.
Suddenly through the dark, a thousand little lights blink into existence, each shimmering with a decidedly individual hue. He mentally runs past the numerous reds, golds, and greens, concentrating all his attention on finding the particular shade that belongs intrinsically to Padmé. The azures and purples filter through his mind's eye, but her beautiful blue-violet is poignantly absent. Trying not to feel the rise of panic, briefly, begrudgingly, Anakin wishes for a return to the somnolent state granted by Yoda's enforced trance. How uncharacteristic of him.
"Breathe, Anakin. Think. Don't let your feelings control you."
There is no passion; there is serenity.
Anakin tries to recall the last time he felt the peaceful bliss of Padmé's signature envelop him. He doesn't have to search long before the memory sears him with its emotional cauldron, the images almost boiling him alive.
Viciously, Anakin clamps down on the fiery grief that threatens to engulf him. A delicious darkness begins to whisper, its seductive tendrils offering to temper sorrow's sordid flames from the all-consuming inferno to a more manageable burn. His blood simmers, the potent concoction of power singing a haunting harmony to his barely contained rage, Padmé's doe brown eyes, wide with astonishment, her melodious voice cracking with poorly suppressed fear. Her trepidation alone had tamed the wild dark animal that stalked the confines of that sweltering garage. Her strength to stare it down had been enough for Anakin to cage it.
The shame had almost broken him then. He hadn't expected her to stay.
But she had.
Folding him into her waiting arms, she had held him together even as he was breaking apart. Padmé hadn't been aware of how his crimson tide had bled across her blue-violet waters, the periphery of her essence stained amethyst from his desperate encroachment. Eventually, mercifully, her tranquil pool of wisteria extinguished the worst of his anguish and despair. Throughout the long hours of the night, her presence had become irrevocably essential to his salvation.
Please don't leave, he had pleaded.
I'm right here, Ani, she had whispered into the dark. I'm right here.
And there she is.
All other Force signatures fade away until her soft periwinkle pulses at him, the glow faint and graying at the edges.
I'm right here.
His eyes flash open.
"She's nearby," Anakin says, the relief evident in his strained voice.
"I'm sure she's found her way up here to check on you," Obi-Wan says, sighing expressively when Anakin shakes his head and pushes past him. "She's probably in the hall right now…"
But Anakin doesn't want to hear Obi-Wan's theories. He wants to see Padmé, standing and breathing in front of him. He wants to hold her, to feel her press against him the way she had in the hangar. He wants to revel in that spark of defiance that had flared through her when she had held his hand. He knows his last two desires are likely little more than dreams, given present company and the fading excuse heated battle afforded them. Even still, Anakin would more than settle for his first wish.
When he steps into the passageway, he has to settle for a lot less than even his lowest hopes. Anakin twists his head left and right, his eyes furiously scanning any and every living and mechanical being for her telltale short stature and dark brown hair.
Padmé is nowhere to be found.
As his heart plummets, Anakin tries hard not to admit how much he had been hoping Obi-Wan was right. Just this one time.
"Can you still sense her?" Obi-Wan asks, coming to a stand beside him.
Anakin nods, starting to take a step to his right when an NR-S3 droid spots him up and about. If its photoreceptors could widen to show its bewilderment, Anakin swears momentarily that they did.
"You should not be out of bed!" it squawks at him, its startled demeanor quickly changing to one of veiled irritation.
When Anakin blatantly ignores it, and moves off down the passageway, it turns to Obi-Wan, its mechanical arms turned up in the universal gesture of "What gives?"
Anakin continues to move, his focus completely locked on the end of the hall. Padmé's signature seems to pulse brighter with every step he takes, until he is standing in front of the turbolift.
Impatiently, Anakin mashes the call button several times before a soft chime signals the lift's arrival and its doors open welcomingly. The sense of relief that bowls him over isn't from the elevator's timely appearance; no, the turbolift is covered with Padmé's signature. Anakin takes a hurried step forward in an effort to feel her ethereal presence wash over him, but the Force rushes out of the lift, the ghost of her motion rushing past him. Instinctively, he turns to his right, his eyes taking in the glow of the fresher's beacon.
Anakin is already running towards the entrance. He doesn't even stop to consider the illuminated sign he rushes under specifically designates this fresher for female users only.
"Wait Anakin, you can't just go barreling…" On his heels, Obi-Wan's attempt at guidance and warning dies the instant the two Jedi push through the short winding passage into the restroom to find the esteemed Senator from Naboo sprawled unconscious on the floor.
"Padmé!"
"Oh, not good," he hears Obi-Wan groan softly next to him.
Anakin falls to his knees by Padmé's inert form. His hand shakes, fingers flitting over her hair, cheek, arm before he finally gets the nerve to push them into the shallow groove of her neck. When her pulse taps a slow but strong rhythm back at him, Anakin almost sobs with grateful relief. Sliding his left hand underneath of her, he gently eases her up to a half-inclined sit, his eyes searching her for any bumps, bruises, or unaccounted for injuries. Despite Anakin's cursory exam, Padmé remains unnervingly still.
"She needs an Emdee," Anakin says. Padmé starts to slide away from him. Quickly, he adjusts his awkward hold, the sudden movement causing a spasm of pain to lance through him with a harshness that almost sends them both sprawling across the floor. Gritting his teeth, he shuts out the torment in his elbow and shuffles himself closer, letting her upper back lean against his chest for support. "We need to… get her to… an Emdee." The physical agony and emotional panic spirals, making it hard for him to get the words out.
A placating hand comes to rest on his throbbing shoulder. The intensity rocketing through him softens a fraction.
"Anakin," Obi-Wan says gently, waiting to continue until he has his Padawan's full attention. Anakin doesn't even try to hide the tumultuous chaos in his eyes from his Master. "We will do it together."
Anakin nods, his chest heaving as if his heavy breaths can act as a valve for all the emotion boiling beneath his skin. Obi-Wan moves to Padmé's left side and reaches out, allowing Anakin to slide her slim shoulders to him. His left arm sliding under her knees, Obi-Wan scoops Padmé up off the fresher floor. As he rises to a stand, her head lolls backward, her neck twisting at an awkward angle. Tenderly, reverently, Anakin cradles the back of her head, the coils of her bun flattening against his palm as he guides her to come to a more stable rest against Obi-Wan's shoulder.
The walk back down the corridor feels ten times longer than his first trek down it. Anakin hovers behind Obi-Wan, ready to catch Padmé if at any point their navigation back to the wards causes her head to slip back off his Master's shoulder. Her blue-violet presence fades in and out, occasionally responding with a fervent rush when he lets his own signature edge up close.
I heard you, he silently assures her, then offers up the same words she had soothed him with when his galaxy had come crashing down around him to be buried literally under the unforgiving desert sand. I'm right here.
At some point, Obi-Wan secures the attentions of an orderly who directs them to an open ward at the other end of the hall. Anakin barely notices that they pass his assigned room, nor does he see the frenetic energy of the medical droids as they file into the room, responding to the call ordering all available emergency staff to Padmé's aid.
As Obi-Wan carefully lays Padmé on the gurney, her bare right arm rolls to dangle off the side, her fingers uncurling, her palm open towards Anakin as if in silent supplication. Anakin doesn't hesitate. Easing her arm back onto the cot, he wraps his left hand around hers.
A NR-S3 droid appears to his left, and he watches numbly as it waves a small device over her forearm with practiced ease. Padmé's medical history, imported from the datachip under her skin, lights up the droid's front panel. The thought so trivial it almost escaped his awareness entirely, Anakin briefly wonders if Obi-Wan had had to fill in the droids that had attended him, considering his own datachip still rested in his severed appendage on Geonosis.
"Human female, twenty-four standard years old, no known medical conditions, no known current medications, known allergies: bees…"
Anakin balks. Padmé had never said anything about being allergic to bees! By the stars, she could have at least kriffin' warned him before she proposed that picnic in the meadow with the little flying insects buzzing to and fro about them all afternoon. Then again, Anakin grimaces, his mouth twitching with wry realization, if she had mentioned her immune system's weakness, he probably wouldn't have let her out of Varykino at all, let alone allowed her to go traipsing about in a field full of the tiny murderous bugs.
"… presents recumbent and unconscious with superficial scratches over the patient's mid and lower back, and right upper arm."
The nurse droid finishes its systematic report, its raindrop photoreceptors coming to rest on the MD-29 droid standing by Padmé's head.
"What happened?" the Emdee droid asks, turning away from where it absorbs the recital to regard the two Jedi expectantly.
"We don't know. We found her unconscious in the fresher," Anakin explains quickly.
"Any complaints of fainting, light-headedness, nausea…?"
Mutely, Anakin shakes his head. "I don't know. I wasn't with her when…" Anakin can't find the words.
"Aside from the wounds on her back, did she experience any other traumas?" Emdee continues.
"Yes! She fell out of a gunship…"
"While it was airborne?"
Anakin nods grimly.
"I need a scanner in here stat," Emdee chirps at one of the assistant droids, then rotates back to the two Jedi to continue collecting history. "From what altitude?"
"Probably seven or eight meters?" Obi-Wan quickly calculates.
"She landed on the top of a sand dune," Anakin adds.
"Did she lose consciousness?"
"I don't know!" Anakin answers. His voice breaks.
"We remained on the ship," Obi-Wan says carefully. Anakin notices that his Master purposefully keeps his eyes on the medical droid and refuses to look anywhere in his direction.
"Did you see how she landed?"
"Flat on her back."
"Doc?" a tech droid interrupts. "Scanner data uploading."
The room goes disconcertingly still as MD-29 reads the datapad held out by the nurse droid. Anakin tries to make sense of the image of Padmé's skull and spine that he can just see over the tilt of the screen, but the shades of gray, black and white may as well have been letters etched in some Outer Rim language.
"Did the wounds occur before or after her fall?" Emdee asks.
For reasons unknown, the question causes the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. The Force whispers warningly in his ear.
"Before," he says.
"NR-S3, run a tox screen," Emdee orders. The nurse droid taps a panel from where it had recently loaded a sample of Padmé's blood, the current display a list of letters and numbers, all glowing a soft green. Anakin assumes green is a good color.
"A tox screen?" Obi-Wan asks, his tone mystified. "You think she was poisoned?"
Anakin's mind races. But they hadn't eaten anything since Tatooine! And she had seemed fine for the duration of the two-hour flight to Geonosis. Despite the accommodating host he pretended to be, it wasn't exactly like Dooku had offered them refreshments while he and Padmé awaited their date with death in that holding cell.
The panel beeps loudly, a line of text flashing red repeatedly.
"Screen complete," NR-S3 confirms. "Neuro-toxin GS24 present."
Anakin stops breathing.
"Initiate antitoxin therapy at once," Emdee says. Within seconds, one of the nurse droids keys a requisition order into the pneumatic tube Anakin assumes connects to the ship's larger central pharmacy, retrieves a vial of a cloudy, dull yellow substance, and begins to infuse the liquid slowly into the catheter snaking into the crook of Padmé's left arm.
"Not poisoned," Emdee explains, drawing Anakin's attention back to their unlikely tribunal. "Like most planets, the soil on Geonosis contains foreign particles that can cause undesirable effects in non-native species. Neuro-toxin GS24 is commonly found in all Geonosian biomes and is only toxic to warm-blooded beings, such as humans. It is likely the patient became exposed when the impact from her fall forced sand and debris contaminated with toxin into the wounds on her back."
"Fortunately for her, GS24 is slow-acting," Emdee continues, "and its effects haven't reached far into her central nervous system." The droid pauses its instruction, and Anakin wonders if it's anticipating a laudatory celebration at the morosely good prognosis. At their continued silence, it speaks again, trying woefully to imbue empathy in its mechanized bedside manner. "She's very lucky that you found her when you did."
Anakin doesn't feel the least bit comforted. He stares at Padmé's hand in his, wishing silently her delicate fingers would close around his own.
"Will she…" Anakin swallows awkwardly around the knot in his throat. "Will she recover?"
"While I can never completely guarantee any particular outcome, it is highly likely your girlfriend will make a full recovery," Emdee says.
Obi-Wan shifts uncomfortably beside him.
"She's not my girlfriend," Anakin corrects the droid. "She's my…" Assignment? Love? The only thing I have left in this entire galaxy? "… friend," he finishes lamely.
"Oh, I see. My mistake," Emdee says. Its photoreceptors rotate, taking in their entwined hands, before fixing on him again. Anakin can almost see the whirring beneath its plating, its social programming computing and reprocessing the visual sensory data only to come to the same conclusion.
But the next words out of the droid's vocabulator make Anakin want to dismantle the droid in its entirety.
"In that case, you will have to wait outside while we perform the next treatment."
"I'm not leaving her," Anakin snaps.
"Are you next of kin?"
"No, what does…"
"It is not proper for just anyone to be present for submersion therapy."
"Oh," Anakin says, dropping his inflamed bravado for contrite understanding.
Submersion therapy required a patient to be fully immersed in a bacta tank for a set period of time dictated by the severity of their injuries. Sometimes, treatment was only a few moments in the medicinal pool while other regimens utilized oxygen masks, and in some cases,sedation to help patients endure longer sessions. No matter the prescribed course, in order to achieve the maximum benefits of the bacta bath, the patient was always dunked… completely naked.
It takes everything Anakin has left in him to untangle his fingers where they have woven themselves with Padmé's. He doesn't want to keep her from any necessary treatments, but the thought of leaving her side again is palpably unbearable.
"Come, Anakin," Obi-Wan says softly behind him. "We've done all we can."
In the end, Anakin finds the strength to turn away and leave Padmé in the hands of the medical droids.
Well, it certainly wasn't the first time Obi-Wan had been right - what more could they do?
A/N: Wow, thank you all so much for welcoming back this author to FFN with your kind words and your palpable excitement! I recognize some names from reviews of other stories I posted a while back and it was so heart-warming to "see" you again - :) To the newcomers and guests, your words are so appreciated as well!
I hope to try to post/update as regularly as possible but I am in the midst of my profession's busiest and most-demanding season so the free time to write and polish is not always at my disposal. I do have a huge drive to get this story out of me (it's been kicking around in my head for over a decade), some recent prequel love in SW land, and a serendipitous "meeting" of another author who was so inspiring to me revisit this and dust off the cobwebs. For those of you who haven't already stumbled across Rose-Arwen-Padme's Suppression, you should probably just abort this paltry work now and go binge on her masterpiece. It's epic.
I intend for this to stay canon, but for those of you hoping for AU Anidala fics, I have few of those kicking around some dust too that I tend to unearth and get to posting. So check back!
While most of this will be from Anakin and Padme's perspectives, a few chapters will also be from other POVs. Some of these characters have been, dare I say, even more fun to write for at times ;)
Reviews are always appreciated!