AN:

Cheire – Right! Anakin will have to make his decision regarding Palpatine.

Angie – Padme still hasn't found out about Dooku :D Thank you for the heads-up, I know FFN has been giving me problems. I couldn't see any reviews or stats until yesterday. Hopefully the site resolved it.

Karma Police

This is what you get

This is what you get

This is what you get

When you mess with us

It seemed like everyone in the room was running through a maze twisted by the other. A maze enshrouding the truth, a cycle of suspense, a scrape short of logic.

Detective Mace Windu's voice easily travelled over the disturbing curiosity. "Mrs Skywalker, just tell us what you can remember."

"Is this really the time?! She's just given birth and survived a car crash!" Anakin swooped in with a battle cry as if wounded.

It was clear to Mace that Anakin and Sola would probably have some influence over Padme's state of mind and alter her decisions and ability to be honest. So to avoid them talking on her behalf, he gave a nod through the glass-windowed door to the two big security guards standing outside. They not only removed Anakin and Sola from the area, they also sent them off into separate corners to avoid a sparring match.

"Anything at all, miss." Mace stepped closer to her bedside, suspecting her of hesitation.

It was all too much. Padme was trying to create a realm of smallness. Make everything small. So small that she wouldn't have to face it. Alice did it. Alice made herself small in wonderland so she could rediscover the experience of childhood and through some miracle she did. She got to play pretend. Padme once upon a time ventured on a lark to find a carefree child-likeness. And now she was faced with two options: tell the truth about Anakin's crime, which would lead to her admit she turned the wheel and have her babies' world torn apart before they've had a chance at life OR do something she'd never do: lie. She got her wish. She had to remember how to pretend. To remember how to play pretend, like a child, like Alice.

"We were just driving back home from my husband's hometown. We were tired.. The car got out of control."

Yoda came forward now. "Your sister was very emotional when she heard you were in the hospital. She has some grave concerns."

Padme fought back tears, bottling up what she knew she'd pray fervently to free tonight. She also couldn't accept that she wasn't just lying to the police, she'd be lying to her sister. A confession to anyone was a confession to all. "I love my sister and I know she cares about me very much. She just worries too much."

Yoda and Mace looked at each other. Senses drumming, thinking in riddles until Yoda ceased to exert more effort than necessary. There were not enough answers, pieces, evidence, no fusion of them in these events. Yoda scratched his forehead as if to dispel a brain teaser. It was sounding more and more like a silly family spat.

"Does your sister have reason to believe you are. . .unsafe at home?"

It was funny to Padme. Sola did not know what she knew, yet she was afraid of the impact of Anakin. Conversely, Padme became aware of how Anakin was now marred by this alarming crime of his and yet when Padme stopped to think about it, she didn't even consider that she could feel unsafe with him. Maybe this was the first intimation of trouble; she had her own intrigues, red flags, weaknesses.

She looked up at Detective Yoda's hazel eyes bearing down on her. She then looked into her own mind, picturing how her days would play out, how much she wanted to be out of here, and her limited options in this vastness of bittersweetness. A virus had transmitted through the sweetness like a sieve, and all that didn't pass swiftly were the chunks of bitterness that weren't going anywhere today. Her children were born on the day the husband she knew died.

And she decided there was only thing she was capable of now.

The detectives left, much to Sola's dismay. She rushed to Padme's side, picking up right where she left off, pulling and threading together some semblance of victory or a self-fulfilling prophecy. "As soon as they say you can leave, you're coming home with me."

To Sola, Anakin was responsible for all her distrust. He was the reason Padme didn't answer her call. He's the reason she was hospitalized. He took Padme away. The man she deemed never good enough.

Padme felt compelled to answer the pressure of Sola squeezing her hand.

"Oh give it a rest, Sola." Anakin glared at his sister-in-law incensing him with her charade. This charade of making her fears about him Padme's fears too. "What the fuck were you doing framing me in front of the police?"

Sola rose stiffly, dropping Padme's hand. "Framing you?"

"Whatever problem you have with me, don't project it out onto her." He swept a hand toward Padme.

"You crashed the car with your heavily pregnant wife in the passenger seat!" Anakin was exactly what she initially thought he was: A typical reckless race car driver.

"Sola—" Padme tried to get a word in but they bombarded each other with attacks and accusations rolling off their tongues like explosives, grenades hitting the ground and their anger was released like red smoke clouding everything. So Padme snapped, "Would both of you just stop it!"

Their shouts and shrieks of chaos were only disrupted when two nurses carried the twins into the room. Their white sleeves were bright angel wings of roses, fairies, guardians of purity, and whatever feelings, anxieties, or desecrations had entered and lodged in the bodies of Anakin, Sola, and Padme now slid away as if the nurses' silvery wings were a sail that could catch, steer, swell, and propel them out to the winds so they're blown far away.

They all fell silent. The movements of the body slowed and the racket in their ears had dulled when Anakin was handed his son.

My son. It made no sense and yet he felt this immense trust in what those words brought to him. An immediate dispersion of past losses and chaos that tried to eject him from the present like carriers of pain. He became deluged with this incredible, strange wave of protectiveness, purpose, and morality. None of his inventions, fantasies, dark stories could compete with this sense of triumph, responsibility, and reward.

In Padme's arms, her daughter's tender, long-lashed eyes opened with a slight tremor of the eyelids like wispy leaves. With the gentleness and limpness of a baby, Leia extended an arm in the air. And warmth emanated and severed all the profound damage and insincerities from the adults' own bodies, basking them in the glimpse of dazzlingly perfect brown eyes as if passed down generations like rivulets of brown precociousness, with a shade of chestnut from her mother and the chocolate palette of her aunt's.

"She looks like. . .us." Sola's sight was blurring with tears.

When they could finally leave the hospital, Sola booked a flight back to Naboo to her own children. They hadn't really resolved anything; Sola and Anakin weren't talking. But Padme put on a brave face. Brave enough to calm her sister and cover up dark secrets for the sake of her babies.

It was a quiet cab ride home for Anakin and Padme. Nothing was said. Nothing except the bare necessities regarding the twins. Neither Anakin nor Padme wanted to rock the boat for fear it would tip over and something scary would spill into it, pouring gasoline on an already tempted fire.

Anakin was finally home hours long enough to put another crib together that Padme had wanted in the living room. He spent an hour on the floor, connecting the pieces. As he did so, holding up the headboard, screwing the stationary rail to the headboard, and fitting the mattress, it felt like trying to water plants while holding up the entire garden. It felt like trying to screw together the fragile structure of their home and dream of becoming a family. It wasn't physically a hard task but emotionally. It wasn't supposed to be this lonely, this divisive. It was difficult to weld a future together for your children when the parents were so far apart.

It did feel a bit like a lost battle. Like watching your step in a minefield for anything could go off at any given second and you just didn't have the tools or tech to prevent it. He just didn't want it to come to the ultimate failure of war – where hatred spreads and curses good people, aggressively confuses and abuses values, and turns ordinary people destructive in their ways of thinking. Their old cathedrals, their paintings, their music all become awash with hate until everyone isolates, tribes are formed, and enemies are unnecessarily made. Nobody benefits.

Left alone with her children, Padme could tune it all out. She needed no stress. She wanted to cultivate or resuscitate some imaginative ideal of how she pictured bringing Luke and Leia home. The picture was a way for life and art to meet and have the latter override the former. She wanted to lock herself in a state of being, not thinking, not talking, not doing. Just being with her babies.

The newborns were so exposed, so helpless. So innocent and fragile as they lied in their reclined rockers, each painted different exhibitions on the fabric. There were variations of patterns and shadings of color in the drawings. A great backdrop as the babies' heads covered most of the rockers' art design. Padme was happy to just sit and take in the half-closed eyes and tiny heads rimmed with a few soft hairs. The soul says through the body what it cannot say through words. She was consumed by love as she contemplated their dreams, their hungers, their every need under the sun. And one day she'll ponder their pities, goals, and hope to be around for it all.

It was a mystic revelation, the clarity of motherhood. Nothing else mattered but her two bundles of joy, sources of strength.

Anakin completed the crib and took Leia while Padme took Luke to swaddle them as they failed to fight their sleepiness before lying them down on the mattress. Anakin then took his screws and tool box from the floor and placed it on the kitchen island. He looked back at Padme who was happy to lean over the rail and gaze at them. Anakin dimmed the lights, revealing where Padme stood but not her expressions. "You didn't tell them what happened." He said, referring to the Detectives.

Padme didn't meet his gaze, but she did match her voice range to his, calmer and lower. "No."

Anakin could not shake off this idea that he was this symbol of upheaval and anarchy. There was a narrow circle before him at all times daring him to enter it like a mental challenge, a quandry unresolved forever stalking him. "I guess we should talk about what went on in the car."

"No." She said bluntly. "Not tonight. I can't. I can't deal with the car and you and... " She finally looked up, hopelessly exhausted. "The babies are home. Let's not taint that with everything that happened. Just – not tonight. Please."

Emotion robbed her face of its brightness, like flowers losing their brilliance, molting with the subdued colors of defeat.

For a minute there

I lost myself, I lost myself

Phew, for a minute there

I lost myself, I lost myself

Their first night home set the tone. Anakin slept on the couch, willing to take the twins for the night shift and Padme would take them during the day. She would bottle breast milk so Anakin could bond with the twins during feeding times. It was beneficial for other reasons, too. They also barely saw each other, which helped them to deny the big elephant in the room.

Also, in her attempt to ignore everything else and act in the pace she needed now, a pace not to be synchronized with the angry pulse of the world, Padme wore neutral tones of self-sacrifice. It was the best kind of sacrifice as she took on the tasks of a mother. The goodness of a mother. Humble, generous, wonderful. She would breastfeed her children near the large window in the bedroom so they would be kissed by the evanescent sunlight contained and softened by the muslin curtains.

But sometimes there were parts of her faded self made evident through her garments of choice. She had little time to give to herself, which she was grateful for. She was afraid to sit alone with herself too long. She was happy to say these days reality eluded her.

Once in the crib, Padme made sure the cotton wrap Luke was swaddled in did not come up to his chin. Anakin came up behind her. She was smiling at the twins. They were modeled by sweetness, the small noses, the young mouths, and the pleasantness of their faces as they slept, not yet dreaming under the eyelids – just restful flying. Flying in the black night.

"They look so peaceful." He murmured.

"Yeah..."

"Can't believe we made that." He chuckled softly. It still felt surreal. The twins were actually here.

There was a caressing glance and maybe even some intimate gestures with their sleep-deprived eyes as they looked upon their babies as a couple. Anakin loved how Padme turned on this miraculous openness with her children as if their presence helped her decide who she wants to be and were slowly granting her cosmic liberties.

Anakin felt the unity of family. The feeling was immense, complete... Except for one thing.

He placed a loving hand on her back under the illusion that she'd give into this protective, familial embrace, and yield, bend, and sway towards him, but she flinched, feeling his body coming too near. He withdrew his hand. That one move fragmented any flexibility between them.

The distance was a plague. A rejection of all he could fulfill, relieving him of his promise and everything he'd love to mend, knit, and comfort like a blanket.

And so it is – there are other punishments worse than jail. Prison was not limited to steel bars. It can be an empty home, a mask, a facade. Or it was feeling like a stranger to the woman you love.

Radiohead - Karma Police