Chapter Text
Stay away from me.
Stay away from me.
Stay away from me.
Anakin stared sightlessly up at the ceiling of his almost pitch-black room. Coruscant was so rarely truly dark, even at night, but Anakin had shut all the windows and curtains, turned off all the lights, wanting no distractions from his misery. His wallowing. His rage. Better to stay here than run after Padmé and demand her forgiveness, beg for an explanation, plead with her compassion, with the love she once bore him. If she still loved him. Perhaps she did not. Perhaps she never would again.
Obi-Wan would call him dramatic if he was here. But he wasn’t, of course. Nobody was here. Not anymore. Not Obi-Wan, order business forever taking precedence over Anakin’s various crises, even though Anakin needed him, then, now, always. Not Ahsoka, who had left him behind just like the order had abandoned her.
Not even Padmé…not after what he’d done. He didn’t even know if she was safe. If she was all right. Aayla Secura had been assigned as her protective detail after “a request by the senator” and Anakin had been too shocked, too stunned, to even protest much, just frozen in front of Windu’s serious face. Did Windu know? No, unlikely. Padmé hadn’t told them her reasons, then. Hadn’t told Anakin, either.
His blood was boiling, fists clenching on top of his covers, at the thought of her alone on her mission with Rush Clovis. Well, and Aayla. At least Aayla would be well able to defend her if Clovis tried to make any more advances.
Anakin couldn’t….No. He couldn’t do it.
He jumped up, throwing the covers on the floor, summoning his lightsaber with a flick of his hand. They had only left Coruscant a few hours earlier; he could still catch them if he left now. Break a few rules in hyperspace lanes and reach Scipio before them, even.
Anakin closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Then opened them again, determined.
He would not let her go so easily.
She was his; he was hers. Those were the vows they had made.
Did their marriage mean nothing to her? All that disappointment, that fear in Padmé’s eyes…because he’d defended her? Because he had beaten a man who would have touched her against her will – his wife, his. How dare he. How dare he touch what was Anakin’s –
Anakin focused once more on the present and an involuntary sound escaped him, something deeply guttural, almost animalistic. His hand was clenched around his lightsaber, raised slightly in front of him. The weapon dropped to the floor with a loud clank as Anakin forced himself to release it from his grip.
He stared at it in shock. What am I doing? I’m losing my mind.
Anakin slowly sank to the floor.
Force would not bring Padmé back. If he stormed off to Scipio and attacked Clovis again, she would be lost to him forever, he could feel the truth of it deep in his bones, with a clarity that had to come from the Force, whispering to him. Trying to help him? Anakin could only hope.
He shut his eyes again and got up, slowly and gingerly, because the pain he felt was so raw and piercing it might as well have been physical. Calling his lightsaber back to his hand he stared at the door for one long moment before making his way back to his bedroom. He would stay and trust in the Force, in Padmé, in their love. They would endure. They had to.
Sleep, however, kept eluding him that night.
The next morning, Anakin felt slightly calmer, despite the restlessness of the previous night. The sight of his blinking comlink was enough to make him feel a measure of hope. Surely, if Padmé did not intend to forgive him, she would not be contacting him at all. Still, his heartbeat was pounding so loudly it nearly drowned out the sound of the holonews he’d put on as a distraction.
With trembling hands he pressed the button to play the message he had received.
Anakin closed his eyes and exhaled a shaky breath of relief as his beautiful angel appeared in front of him, immaculately dressed as always in her senatorial robes and hair done up in a simpler style than she usually preferred. Perhaps she, too, was distressed by their separation.
The flickering blue hologram brightened, and she began to speak.
“Anakin. I hate that we parted in the way that we did. I have had time to process what – “ there was slight hesitation, as though she wasn’t sure how much to disclose, “ – happened, and I do understand your…feelings. Why you acted the way you did. I am not indifferent to the difficult position Clovis put you in, you must know this.”
Anakin had been too enraptured and relieved by her familiar, beloved face to truly give much thought to what Padmé was saying, but he clenched his fist at these words.
A difficult position? He’d walked in on the man trying to assault his wife.
He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath.
She’s only trying not to give out too much information, in case the line is compromised, Anakin reasoned.
The hologram flickered again, but the warmth in Padmé’s eyes shone through, soothing something raw and wounded inside him.
“After the mission, when I’m back on Coruscant, I’d like to see you,” she said.
Anakin wanted to shout, cheer, sing, in his joy.
“There is much to talk about,” she continued, “but never doubt that I…care.”
His angel. His light.
Anakin could hardly believe how different the world felt in this moment, compared with the night before. She had forgiven him – surely she had – and they’d reconcile and everything would be as it had been. He hadn’t lost her, hadn’t lost the only thing in the world that truly belonged to him.
A sudden wave of gratitude washed over him that he hadn’t run after her in his panic the previous night, despite the temptation. He had to prove to Padmé that he could control his rage and fear, especially around her.
But can you?
A soft, unwelcome voice in the back of his head murmured, quietly.
Flashes of the Tusken raiders, murdered and dismembered, surged up in his mind unbidden, but Anakin shoved the memory away with ruthless force. He’d lost control, once – twice – it was still an outlier. An error he’d not repeat.
He was fine.
Soon, he would have his beautiful wife back in his arms, and it would be as though none of this had ever happened.
The days without Padmé felt like years to Anakin’s wounded heart, but at last he received word that her ship was on its way back to Coruscant – minus one Rush Clovis. Details had not been transmitted by Aayla, only that Clovis had indeed betrayed them and been killed in the process. Anakin felt a fierce flush of vindication at the confirmation of his suspicions.
For days afterward he replayed different versions of the same scenario in his mind.
Padmé, returning, remorseful and apologetic.
Oh Anakin, she’d say. You were so right about Clovis. I don’t know what I was thinking, trusting him. I never should have chosen him over you.
Anakin would be magnanimous, of course, and take her gently in his arms. It’s all right, he would assure her as he finally got to embrace his beautiful wife again, we all make mistakes sometimes.
Perhaps, he thought, this would be a good thing for their relationship. He had always been the screw-up, his many errors patiently excused and endured by compassionate, gentle Padmé. Now he could be the one to comfort her, to hold her through her guilt, just as she had done for him so many times before.
Sometimes, though, Obi-Wan’s face intruded on these daydreams. As kindly as Padmé, he would look at Anakin with that steady, understanding gaze and tell him he forgave him for his transgressions. That he understood.
Anakin always tried to expel such thoughts because he knew very well they were nothing but delusions.
Obi-Wan, perfect Jedi that he was, would never understand. Would never look at Anakin with sympathy again, if he knew, what Anakin was, deep down. What he’d done.
Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
That was why Anakin would never let Padmé go. She was the only one who would love him no matter what, the only one who would choose him above all else, in a way Obi-Wan never had, never would.
At last, on the day of Padmé’s return, Anakin sat through a council briefing about his next mission, listening with only half an ear. The departure was still days away, thankfully, so he’d get to see Padmé first. The moment the meeting ended, he practically ran for the exit to grab his speeder and take off in the direction of his wife’s apartment.
Aayla had given him an inscrutable look when he’d crossed paths with her on his way out, but Anakin barely noticed. He felt invincible. As long as Padmé forgave him, everything would work out. And since she would never reveal their marriage to anyone, the Council had nothing but mere suspicion – if that – so nothing that they could act on.
Anakin closed his eyes for a heartbeat, overwhelmed by the emotional exhaustion of the past week. Then jerked them open again, swerving sharply to avoid oncoming traffic as a particularly belligerent Nautolan leaned out of his speeder to honk furiously at him for the lapse in attention.
Finally, the high rise of Padmé’s building came into view, its glass façade catching the late-afternoon sun like a shard of gold. After all this time, all this agony, Anakin felt his chest tighten with a mixture of hope and dread. He could not wait another moment to see his wife again.
He jumped off his speeder the instant it slowed, boots hitting the pavement harder than he intended, and strode toward the entrance – only to be intercepted by Padmé’s senatorial guard, led by Captain Typho, armour glinting, face unreadable.
“The senator is in a meeting right now,” said Captain Typho sternly. “You may see her afterwards.”
Anakin felt indignation flare hot and sharp. They didn’t realise – of course they didn’t, they had no idea he and Padmé were married. Yet still, he was a Jedi, a General, a hero. To be dismissed like a common petitioner – a familiar rage started to encroach on his vision.
“Step aside,” he growled, his voice low, controlled only by habit, not calm. He moved to push past, but Typho stepped directly into his path.
“You must wait,” the captain repeated, firmer this time.
The world narrowed. Anakin’s breath went tight. He would not be spoken to like a schoolboy, not by this man, not after everything he had endured.
“I will see my –“ he forced himself to swallow the truth, “– my friend. I have been waiting for weeks to hear from her, to see her. I will see her, and you will not stop me.”
Typho reached out and grabbed his arm. Anakin’s vision flushed crimson. He seized the man by the front of his armour and slammed him against the wall, the impact ringing through the corridor. How dare he – how dare this insignificant man stand between Anakin and the one person who loved him most? Why could he never, ever get what he truly wanted from anyone?
“Ani?”
A soft, shocked gasp. A voice he would recognise anywhere.
Anakin turned slowly. The door behind the guards had opened, and there she stood. Padmé – radiant, familiar, achingly beautiful – yet her face was drained of colour, her eyes wide with something like fear.
“What are you doing?”
The words hung in the air, echoing the last time they had spoken, echoing his worst memories.
What are you doing?
And suddenly, beneath the anger and the exhaustion, a tremor of doubt pierced him.
What was he doing?
“I just wanted to see you,” Anakin stammered. “They wouldn’t let me. I haven’t seen you in so long. You promised – you promised we would talk!” His voice rose with each word, cracking under the strain.
Padmé stared at him, her expression unreadable.
“Come in, please,” she said at last. Captain Typho stepped forward as if to protest, but Padmé lifted her hand, stopping him with her usual quiet authority.
Despite the tension knotting his chest, Anakin felt a brief flicker of vindication. At least the captain had to obey his wife as well.
As the door shut behind him with a sharp bang, Anakin stepped forward, reaching to finally pull Padmé into his arms, but she moved away.
The motion was small, almost restrained, but it hit him like a physical blow. He could almost hear his heart cracking under the weight of it. Still, he refused to let despair swallow him – not yet.
He only needed to explain. Once she understood, everything would be all right.
“My love,” he said, the words coming out almost pleading. “I didn’t mean to – it was not my intention – “ Why wouldn’t the words come out? He took a deep breath, frustrated. “It won’t happen again. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Anakin took a step toward her, desperate, hands trembling.
“Please. Please forgive me.”
Padmé looked tired.
“Forgive you for what? You have not actually apologised for anything.”
“I’m sorry,” spilled out immediately, Anakin feeling something akin to panic even if a part of him rebelled at the thought of having to apologise for loving his wife. But if he had worried her – “I never meant to frighten you.”
Padmé said nothing, just looked at him with large, unreadable eyes.
Anakin moved towards her again, this time slowly, cautiously, as though a sudden motion might frighten her. This time, she allowed it. Anakin closed his arms around her tentatively, not daring to pull her fully against him, even though nothing in the galaxy mattered to him more in that moment.
For one brief, wonderful heartbeat, she returned the embrace.
Then she gently slipped out of his arms and stepped back.
With her large, dark eyes fixed on him, steady, unreadable still, she said quietly, “Anakin, we need to talk.”
Anakin did not remember how he got back to the Temple. He must have climbed onto his speeder after his conversation with Padmé ended and flown through the city in a daze, but not a single moment of the journey remained in his memory.
His body had moved; his mind had not.
All he could hear – over and over, echoing like a blow that refused to land fully – were the words she had said to him.
We are not good for each other.
We should not be together.
Both of us are better versions of ourselves when we’re apart.
We bring out the worst in each other.
But what lodged itself like a blade in his chest, the only meaning his heart could make of it, was:
I don’t love you.
I don’t love you.
I don’t love you.
When he finally reached the door to his quarters, Anakin opened it in a daze and slipped inside. Away from prying eyes at last, he could finally fall apart. The breakdown that had been clawing at him the entire ride home surged up the moment the door shut behind him.
He took a few unsteady steps toward his bedroom, when he suddenly realised that his lights were turned on and definitely had not been when he had left. And there was a familiar Force presence close to him, a presence he had not felt in weeks.
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan’s voice was startled, full of concern. He stood up from the couch and stepped toward him. “What’s wrong?”
Obi-Wan’s Force signature prodded at his, questioningly.
“You feel…disturbed, in the Force. Has something happened?” Obi-Wan was now standing in front of him, bright eyes searching his face.
Anakin blinked at him, unable to process the question. His mind felt like static.
“You’re…here,” he murmured, still numb.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, frowning as he scanned Anakin’s entire body, obviously still looking for the cause of his distress. Anakin could feel his presence in the Force again, asking permission to catch a glimpse of his feelings but he kept his shield as tight as possible. Unthinkable to let Obi-Wan know of the turmoil he was feeling. How could he ever explain?
“Why are you here?” Anakin asked, with a touch of despair. He would not be able to hold it together for long. Obi-Wan could not be here when he lost control of himself. If Obi-Wan left him too – left him for real, took away even the careful, distant friendship he offered – Anakin did not know what he would do.
Obi-Wan stared at him with open concern. “I wanted to see you. Aayla told me – well, I asked her how the mission went, and – she said you seemed unsettled. Earlier, at the Council meeting. So I thought – perhaps you would want to talk.”
So unlike the great Negotiator to stumble over his words as clumsily as this but Anakin was in no mood to talk.
“You need to leave,” Anakin ground out, turning away from Obi-Wan’s well-meaning face, fists clenched so tightly his nails bit into his palms. “I can’t – I’m not - just…please go.”
“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice behind him was quiet and unbearably gentle.
“If something is wrong, you can tell me. We’re friends, are we not? Share your burden.”
“NO!” The words tore out of him before he could stop them.
“You don’t understand!” he said, voice rising, trembling. “You could never understand what I’m going through.” His breath hitched. “You don’t know anything, you don’t know what I’ve done. If you did, you wouldn’t be here!”
His voice cracked on the last word.
“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, unbothered by Anakin’s anger, as ever. “ I cannot claim to fully understand what’s happening in your life, not if you don’t trust me with the details. But you and I have known each other for a very long time.”
A hand on his arm, soft and imploring. Anakin clenched his teeth but was unable to resist the gentleness and let himself be turned around to come face-to-face with his Master again.
Obi-Wan looked as uncomfortable as Anakin had ever seen him. He hesitated and took a cautious step forward.
“Is this about Senator Amidala?”
“What?” The word burst out of Anakin and for a moment he felt that he could not breathe. “What do you mean? I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“I am not blind,” Obi-Wan said, somewhat sharply. “I know you have feelings for her. I know there is…something…between you.”
He crossed his arms, visibly uncomfortable with his own line of questioning. His voice sounded less sure than he had before.
“It is not…forbidden, exactly.” A pause, while Anakin was unable to do anything but stand there in silent shock, uncomprehending. “You’re allowed to have…relations.” Another pause, longer and more awkward.
Obi-Wan stumbled over the next words, face reddening with slight embarrassment. They had spoken of feelings before, during Anakin’s apprenticeship, of course, but Obi-Wan had always been in the mentor role back then. Mind your feelings, Anakin. Control your thoughts, Anakin.
This was…unlike that, in every way.
“It is just that deeper attachment is discouraged. But casual relationships are – “
Obi-Wan stopped here. Either he’d lost the thread of what he was trying to explain, or Anakin’s expression – stark disbelief, raw panic – made further explanation impossible.
There was nothing casual about Anakin’s relationship with Padmé. Anakin knew it. And Obi-Wan apparently knew it, too.
“I don’t understand,” said Anakin faintly.
“You know. You’ve known all this time.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “You do not hide your feelings well, Anakin,” he said ruefully. “I daresay anyone who knows you well could tell there was something between the two of you. I would assume Ahsoka knew as well.”
The mention of Ahsoka caused a familiar pang, her absence yet another wound that had not healed properly, too entrenched in the bitterness he felt at the treatment she had received.
Anakin closed his eyes briefly at the onslaught of emotions.
“We were careful!” As though he could bargain his way out of the revelation Obi-Wan had just so unceremoniously dumped on him.
His old master shook his head, almost apologetic. “Careful enough for strangers, perhaps. Not for people who care about you.”
Anakin swallowed hard. The room felt suddenly too small, too bright, too exposed.
“You knew,” he repeated, hollow.
“I suspected,” Obi-Wan corrected. “I hoped I was wrong. But you two – “ He hesitated, looking away. “She made you happy, when nothing else ever did. I did not wish to take that away from you.”
A sharp breath escaped Anakin, half-laugh, half-injury.
He shook his head so violently the curls at his temples trembled.
“No. No, that’s not – you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Obi-Wan didn’t flinch. “Anakin. Please.”
“You think you know – You think you understand?” Anakin snapped. “You don’t feel love. Not like I do!”
“That is not fair,” Obi-Wan protested. “Satine – “
“You gave her up!” shouted Anakin, despair suddenly turning into rage. “You just – You let her go. If you loved her you would have fought to keep her!”
“Keep her?” said Obi-Wan, incredulous. “She is her own person. Not a priced trinket for me to keep or lose –“
“You promised to love her forever and you didn’t!” bellowed Anakin, rapidly losing the thread of his argument. “She said she’d love me forever and she didn’t! We made vows – “
Obi-Wan looked slightly harrowed at the rapid pace at which Anakin changed the direction of their argument, but he valiantly prevailed.
“Vows? That sounds…more than casual.”
Anakin threw his head back and laughed, bitterly. “You have no idea.”
He fixed his eyes on his former master, angry blue meeting concerned blue-grey.
“I married her.”
For once in his life, Obi-Wan looked absolutely speechless, his eyes widening in shock.
Anakin couldn’t breathe. “We got married and it didn’t even matter, it didn’t matter – she left me anyway! Just another broken promise. Everyone leaves me, everyone has left me behind – “
At this, Obi-Wan drew in a sharp breath.
“Am I nothing to you then, Anakin?” he said, with an acidity that barely concealed the open hurt in his voice.
Anakin only laughed, shrill and, even to his own ears, slightly unhinged.
“You left me long ago!” he shouted. “You are never here when I need you. You let me think you were dead!”
Another one of Anakin’s open wounds, never truly healed, tore itself open.
“If you cared about me,” he choked out, “how could you do that to me?”
Obi-Wan’s face tightened, as though Anakin had struck him. For a moment he said nothing.
“Anakin,” he said finally, his voice low. “That is unfair. It was a mission – “
“A mission that came first,” Anakin hissed. “As every mission does. That’s not love!”
Obi-Wan flinched, a small movement, barely noticeable unless one was watching for it.
“I did my duty.”
Anakin barked a laugh, ragged and cold. “That’s always your excuse, isn’t it? Duty. Responsibility. The greater good.” He stepped back, shaking, arms wrapped around himself.
Obi-Wan continued to stare at him, face white as a sheet.
“If that is how you really feel…I have failed you, Anakin. Truly, I have failed you. I have tried to instil in you the principles of the Jedi Order, but I see now that...” He broke off, visibly trying to collect himself.
“Perhaps you were too old, or perhaps I was not the right master. If only Qui-Gon had lived – he would have taught you better than this.”
Anakin stared back at him, helpless. “Don’t,” he croaked. “Don’t do that. I was happy with you as my master. I was.”
He pressed a hand to his chest, trying to hold himself together.
“There’s something wrong with me. You don’t understand. There’s something rotten at the core of me, and I don’t know what do.”
His vision grew blurry once more.
“You don’t even know the worst of it!” he cried. “You think Padmé is my biggest transgression? That’s nothing. My mother – when she died – “
Anakin stopped himself, just barely.
“What happened, Anakin?” Obi-Wan sounded as though he was dreading the answer, but his voice was firm. “I want to help you in any way that I can, but you must be truthful. What happened with your mother?”
Tears finally spilled from Anakin’s eyes.
“She died,” he gasped out. “She died, and I was too late – and they killed her! Tortured her, and murdered her!” He inhaled sharply, shaking. “So I killed them. I killed them all!”
It felt like a weight lifted from his chest. This was the first time he had spoken those words to someone whose judgment he knew to be unbiased. He had told the Chancellor, of course, but the man did not truly understand the ways of the Jedi, and neither did Padmé. She had tried to comfort him, to make him feel less of a monster, like the gentle, compassionate soul that she was.
She did not know what something like this truly meant to a Jedi, the kind of depravity he had revealed.
There was a silence in the room as the two men stared at each other. Obi-Wan looked lost for words, and as though he was made of stone.
Eventually, he turned around and left.
Don’t go. Don’t go, don’t go don’t go.
But Obi-Wan didn’t listen to what Anakin wanted, as always. Anakin stared at his retreating back, then at the door as it closed behind him, and let himself sink to the floor.
It was truly over, then.
Everything was lost.