Chapter Text
PART I
“Ani, I want to have our baby back home on Naboo.”
A disembodied hand floated down a shaft in the clouds.
“We can go to the Lake Country where no one will know.”
A stone man screamed and a woman leaked blood from her eyes.
“Where we can be safe.”
A sword ran through the ghost of an old knight.
“I can go early and fix up the baby’s room.”
A child’s blood boiled around a crackling saber.
“I know the perfect spot. Right by the gardens.”
The desert fled in fear of a demon with a glowing sword.
“It’s only because I’m so in love.”
The tall trees toiled deep underground, families chained together by their tears.
“So love has blinded you?”
Sparkling white towers shattered into a billion voices.
____
Padmé was pulled from her nightmare, into a blurred and colorless world. A dull pain pulsed behind her eyes. Her throat felt like a rusty hinge. Droids and medical equipment hummed around her. There was a warm touch on her forehead, then on her shoulder. She tried to sit up but was gently pushed back down.
“Padmé, don’t move too fast.” That voice, she recognized…it was Obi-Wan’s.
She tried a word, but it came out half slurred.
“You’re alright. Shhhhh…you’re alright.”
Her head felt heavy but she lifted it anyway. “Ana—guahhccouh.” She was choking!
Obi-Wan held a cloth to her lips as she coughed up a fountain of blood.
She closed her eyes in pain and disgust.
“It’s normal Padmé, you’re just healing. Can you try and drink water?”
Her throat felt like two stones grinding together. Obi-Wan propped up her head with his hands and held a cup to her lips.
“Small sips. Don’t strain yourself.” She felt as helpless as a newborn.
She tried to stitch some words together, but there was no need. Obi-Wan recounted events for her. “You are on Polis Massa, it is a medical facility on an asteroid. Only myself, Bail, and Yoda are here with you, and we are hiding from the Emperor. Palpatine won, and we’ve lost the Republic. After the twins were born, you almost died. I told the med droids to try and save you with a drug that induces a coma. You have been asleep for three weeks. I didn’t think you would make it.”
Three weeks? It felt like she had just spoken with her husband, begging him to come back to her. She closed her eyes to reform that terrible memory. His dilated pupils. His raised hand. The feeling of a vice around her windpipe.
“You had tracheal trauma, and you needed surgery. It was successful, but talking might be painful for a while.”
She touched her throat in disbelief.
“Yes. He did that.” Obi-Wan hung his head. “I thought he would never let me down. How wrong I was.” There was a bitter weariness in his tone that she had never heard before.
She willed herself to remember, even though she wanted to forget. Obi-Wan had told her that her husband had killed younglings, effectively wiping out all future Jedi. She thought it was impossible until Anakin had explained himself. He sounded like Count Dooku then. Both were overconfident and angry. Both had wanted more than what they had. And as for herself—she couldn’t decide what she wanted. Was she unable to live with what Anakin had become? Or was it that she couldn’t live without him, now that he was—that he was—
“Is he still…?”
Obi-Wan shook his head. “He’s dead, Padmé. I’m so sorry, but he forced my hand. He would have killed us both, and many more after that.”
Padmé threw her head back on her pillow, and let the tears fall. “Tell… me… everything.”
“I will. But first, they want to see you.” He turned away from her, and when he turned back, there was a tiny baby in each arm.