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Anakin
“It’s okay, Papa.”
It’s his son’s voice that pulls Anakin out of the nightmare that his mind has trapped him in. It isn’t until his eyes adjust to the dim light that he catches sight of the six-year-old in question. Luke is standing near Anakin’s bed with one hand reaching for his shoulder. Seeing him awake, Luke clambers onto the bed to sit beside his father. He’s still clutching his teddy bear in one hand, though he sets it down as he gets comfortable. Anakin’s still shaking, half of his brain still focused on the horrors that it couldn’t release. He reaches to flick on the bedside lamp and the shuddering finally stops.
“You were crying again, Papa.” Luke says, leaning against his father’s side.
Anakin tries not to cringe. He really does. But his son’s words hit something inside of him and it’s suddenly impossible not to cringe. ‘You were crying again, Papa.’ It’s not like Luke meant to be cruel, of fucking course he didn’t; he’s six-years-old. His son’s words still unsettle him, though. Those words, spoken by a little boy who simply loves his father and worries more than a boy his age should, remind Anakin of the brokenness inside of him. They remind him that he went to war a man and came back a monster. He pushes these thoughts aside for the moment as he turns back to Luke.
“Sorry, buddy.” He says, wrapping an arm around his son’s shoulders. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Luke rolls his eyes. “I don’t mind. Mama says that no one should be alone when they have a bad dream.” He says.
“Yeah, but you have school tomorrow. You don’t need to be woken up by my screaming every night.” Anakin protests, shaking his head.
“We have nap-time after lunch, Papa.” Luke points out. “And you weren’t screaming tonight. Just crying. I heard ‘cause I was going potty.”
Anakin kisses the top of his head. “We should still get you back to bed. You’ve gotta be up early tomorrow.”
“Can I stay here with you, Papa?” Luke asks. The blue eyes that he and his sister share with Anakin turn pleading.
Anakin’s first instinct is to say no. He can’t help but remember what happened the last time someone slept beside him and the memory of his hand tightening around his wife’s throat almost makes him sick. He looks down at his son, intending to say no, and pauses. Anakin doesn’t have to work the next day which means that he doesn’t have to go back to sleep. Luke will be safe here tonight.
“Yeah, but just for tonight.” Anakin says.
Luke grins and lays down, grabbing for his teddy bear again. After a moment he tugs at Anakin’s hand, wanting him to lay beside him. Anakin hesitates for only a moment before lying down. Luke snuggles into his father’s chest and the sight settles something inside of Anakin. Luke is asleep now, one arm clutching his teddy bear and the other clinging to the arm that Anakin has wrapped around him. The sight brings tears to Anakin’s eyes because, despite all the broken pieces inside of him, his son still feels safe with him.
~ ~ ~ ~
Padme
When Padme wakes to find her son’s bed empty, she panics for only a brief moment. She always wakes Leia first because it always takes longer to get Luke out of bed and it’s nice to know that Leia can get herself ready while Padme fights with her brother. But Luke’s bed is empty. His blankets are rumpled, the sheet completely on the floor. Her son, however, is nowhere to be seen. She stands in his bedroom for a long moment, fear falling like a tidal wave over her head.
“He’s probably downstairs with Papa.” Leia says, poking her head around the corner.
She disappears again before Padme can respond. The shower turns on as Padme slips out of Luke’s bedroom, heading for the basement where her husband has slept for the last year and a half. Padme pauses to peek in on Leia before continuing down the basement stairs, keeping her movements as quiet as she can. Her heart swells as she steps into her husband’s room, unable to look away.
Luke is lying on his side, curled under his father’s arm. Anakin is lying on his stomach, one arm thrown over their son and the other under his head. Padme covers her mouth to cover the slow sigh that flees her lips at the sight of her husband and son. If she closes her eyes she can still remember what it felt like to lay beside Anakin like that, she can feel the weight of his arm slung over her stomach. Shaking her head, she steps toward the bed where Luke is starting to stir. Anakin’s eyes open as she reaches them and she gives him a soft smile as she reaches toward their son.
Up close, she can see the tear tracks drying on Anakin’s pale cheeks. Another nightmare. A voice n her mind whispers. He shifts his gaze to the little boy curled beside him and his hands are gentle as they touch Luke’s cheek. Luke smiles as his eyes blink open and Anakin’s lips mirror that smile.
“You gotta get ready for school, buddy.” Anakin says, gesturing toward Padme with his thumb.
Luke studies Anakin’s face before nodding. “Okay. Did you sleep good, Papa?”
A shadow passes across Anakin’s eyes. “I sure did.”
Luke cheers, leaning forward to kiss his father’s cheek before climbing out of bed. He pulls on Padme’s hand, leading her back up the stairs and out of Anakin’s sight. Upstairs, Padme focuses on getting dressed and helping Leia with her hair. She has to push away the thought of the tear tracks she’d seen on Anakin’s face multiple times and it hurts each time. By the time the twins are ready to leave, Padme feels like she’s fleeing the house to get away from that image in her head.
Leia gets out first with little more than a kiss to Padme’s cheek. Luke pauses, though, and his expression is so serious that it makes Padme’s heart stop for a moment. He looks so much like his father that it makes her ache for her husband. Finally Luke slides forward, unbuckling his seatbelt so that he can reach her.
“Mama?” Luke asks, lips pulling into a frown.
Padme strokes the hair out of his eyes. “What’s wrong, love?”
“I-I think Papa needs you today.” Luke reaches for her hand, squeezing it when she frowns at him. “He was crying for you last night, Mama.”
His words are like a punch to the stomach and Padme can’t speak for a moment. “Did you hear him?” She asks.
“I heard him crying when I went potty last night, so I went to make sure that he was okay.” Luke squeezes her hand again. “He was just crying your name, Mama. He needs you today.”
Behind her, someone honks and Padme reaches to kiss Luke’s cheek. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Have fun in school.”
“No, Mama.” Luke pleads. “Promise you’ll go home. Papa needs you.”
She’s never heard her son sound like this, there is not an ounce of anything child-like in his voice. For a moment, Padme can see a glimpse of the man her son will someday be and it makes her ache because all she sees is Anakin, the Anakin she’d married at least. She runs her fingers through Luke’s fine hair.
“I’ll go home. I promise.” She whispers, kissing his forehead. “Now go on. Have fun today.”
Luke kisses her cheek. “Thank you, Mama. I’ll see you later!”
He’s grinning again when he climbs out of the car, all of the serious determination draining out of his expression. Padme drives away when he’s safely inside the school, her heart heavy. She drives to the park down the road from her home and parks along the road, dialing a familiar number. Obadiah Kenobi has been Anakin’s closest friend since they were children. It was Obi who went off to war at her husband’s side four years ago and it was him who brought Anakin back to her after he’d been held as a prisoner of war for over a year. It was Obi who had the idea to open up the Private Investigation company that the three of them have been running for over a year. She dials his number and her hands are shaking when she raises the phone to her ear.
“Padme? Is everything all right?” Obi’s voice sends a wave of calm flooding Padme, though the concern in his voice makes her feel worse somehow.
“I… I’m not coming in today.” Padme says and her voice breaks. “I promised Luke that I’d go home and I-”
The concern is heightened when Obi interrupts Padme’s rambling. “Is Luke all right?”
“He heard Anakin crying last night.” Padme whispers. “When I dropped them off at school, Luke told me that he thought Anakin needed me today. He said that Ani was crying for me last night. Obi, I…” Her voice trails off, fading into a pained whimper.
“Go home, Padme.” Obi orders, his voice gentle.
Padme closes her eyes against the tears that are threatening to fall. “Obi, have I… have I failed him?”
“Have you stopped loving him?” The question comes out in Obi’s typical soft voice, but it feels like he’s shouting at her.
“I love him more now than I did when I married him.” Padme whispers, shuddering. “But that’s not what I mean. How… how long has he been crying for me while I’ve been sleeping peacefully in my bed? I feel like I’ve failed him, Obi. And I swore to him when we married that I’d always be-”
“You have not failed him, Padme. Now go home and talk to him.” There is no room for argument in Obi’s tone.
They exchange pleasantries before hanging up, but Padme doesn’t move right away. Despite Obi’s assurances to the opposite, she still feels like she failed Anakin. Luke’s words echo over and over again in her mind. He was crying for you last night, Mama. She hates that thought, hates knowing that she was not there when her husband needed her. Lowering her head to the steering wheel, Padme finally lets go of the tears she’s been trying so hard to hold back. In a few moments she will pull herself together and drive home, but right now she cries into the leather steering wheel until her throat aches.
~ ~ ~ ~
Anakin
The house is empty by the time Anakin gives up on the idea of getting more sleep and comes upstairs. He sets a pot of coffee to brew while he considers climbing in the shower to ease the aching in his back and shoulders. Half of him is hungry while the other half is nauseous, so he skips out on the idea of food. His clothes are still in the bedroom that he once shared with his wife and he steps inside carefully, feeling like a stranger in his own home.
Usually a hot shower is the perfect cure for the mood he’s in right now, but it doesn’t seem to be working today. He still can’t get the image of Padme’s face, frozen in that instant when his hand had closed around her throat, out of his head. The image makes his head ache and it fuels the nausea coursing through him. He closes his eyes, trying to think of anything but the look on her face or the sounds she’d made as she struggled to say his name. It doesn’t work. All he can think of is that night, the night he almost killed his wife.
His knees collapse, sending him to the floor of the shower, and he can’t breathe. He tries to pull in a breath and can only manage a small gasp. His head is swimming and he tucks it between his legs the way Obi taught him back when he first came home. It doesn’t work. Padme’s face hovers in front of him again, terrified and pleading with him. In his nightmares, he doesn’t let go and he feels the life drain out of her. He feels like he’s drowning all of a sudden and he tries to turn off the water but can’t move, can’t do anything but curl into the fetal position and sob.
He hears the bathroom door open and he can’t raise his head to find out who’s come in. The shower curtain slides open, the water shutting off, and then there she is. Padme’s expression is concerned and that’s not right. She never looks concerned, only terrified and pleading. Anakin still can’t pull in air and he squeezes his eyes closed, his breath coming out in harsh gasps now. It’s only when he feels a gentle hand touching the side of his face that he opens his eyes again. She’s still staring at him and her hand is still on his face.
“P-Padme.” He whispers, stuttering over her name.
“Come here, my love.” She holds out a hand. “Let’s get you out of there.”
He wants to take her hand, but he’s so scared. All he can think of is that it isn’t safe to touch her, that he’ll hurt her if he touches her. His fear must show in his expression because Padme shakes her head.
“You won’t hurt me. I promise. Come out of there now. You’re going to hurt your back.”
He swallows, looking down at the hand she’s still offering. He’s shaking as he places his palm in hers. Padme’s lips quirk into a smile as she helps him to his feet, wrapping him in a towel and tugging him down the hallway toward her bedroom. He stops outside that room, his feet refusing to move any further. This is where it happened, after all. What if it happens again? What if he hurts her again in here?
“Come on, Ani.”
In the end, he allows her to pull him into the bedroom. She pushes him toward the bed and he frowns at her. He wants to ask what she’s doing but his mouth won’t form the words. Instead, he watches her pull out underwear and a pair of sweats out of his dresser. She walks back toward him and it’s right then that he notices the tear stains on her cheeks. His hand raises involuntarily, thumb stroking her cheek, and she leans into the touch of his hand.
He allows her to help him dress, watching as she pulls her pajamas back on before climbing into bed beside him. It feels natural to reach out and pull her into his arms, though he hasn’t done so in over a year now. She goes easily, resting her head against his chest.
“I don’t want you sleeping in the basement anymore.” Padme whispers, voice slightly muffled against his chest.
Anakin pauses, unsure. “Do you want me to… leave?” The question makes his heartbeat quicken.
“Never.” Her eyes are bright as she tilts her head toward him. “I want you to come back here. I want… Ani, I miss you.”
“I don’t… I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you again.” Anakin whispers, voice heavy.
She kisses his chest. “That wasn’t your fault, Ani. I’ve never blamed you for that. You were in the middle of a nightmare. I shouldn’t have tried to wake you like that. I know that now, but I didn’t know it then.”
He can’t speak for a long time. It sounds like she’s blaming herself for his actions, but that can’t be right. After all, it was his hand that wrapped around her throat in a grip tight enough that it had left behind a bruise. She hadn’t forced him to do that, hadn’t deserved it. How could she blame herself for that? He doesn’t realize that he’s trembling again until Padme stills in his arms and he knows that, if he looks down at her, her eyes will be wide and afraid. Afraid of him, the man she should never have had to fear.
“I could have killed you, Padme.” He whispers. “I… how can you want me anywhere near you when I could have… you would have been dead at my hand.”
He can’t look at her, doesn’t want to see the way she’ll look at him when she realizes that he’s right. His entire body is trembling now and he tries to stop it, tries to hold himself steady while she gathers the nerve to tell him to leave. The trembling isn’t stopping and he doesn’t know how to make it stop. His frustration is beginning to mount because he hates this, hates the out-of-control feeling that builds when his body refuses to listen to his command. He knows that it’s just the anxiety, brought on by the PTSD that the war left him with, but that doesn’t make him hate it any less.
“C’mere.”
Her touch is as soft as her voice, pulling him gently back into her arms. The self-hatred grows stronger as she tries to keep him calm, like a frightened animal who may be dangerous. He feels like he should pull away from her but he doesn’t have the energy to do so, not anymore. It’s been so long since he allowed himself to fall into her and he can’t quite force himself to pull away. Padme’s fingers are gentle as they stroke his hair, scratching gently at his scalp the way she had when he’d first come home. The action is as comforting now as it had been then, maybe even more so because he hasn’t allowed himself to take comfort from anyone in so long and this is Padme, the one person who’s comfort he’s needed the most.
The panic is fading, but the self-loathing remains and maybe it will never go away. It’s the self-loathing that makes him miss the Anakin of old. That Anakin was cocky, self-assured in a way that he’s afraid he’ll never be again. He misses that, misses feeling like himself because he hates this Anakin, hates that the cocky self-assurance has faded into fear and anger.
“I want you to listen to me.” Padme murmurs, forcing him to look at her with a hand on his cheek.
There’s something about the look on her face that makes him unable to look away. He can only nod, his eyes holding hers.
“I have never, not for one second, blamed you for what happened that night. You were scared and I woke you too abruptly. I should have been gentler.” She swipes a thumb across the tears falling down his face. “The second you realized what you were doing, you stopped. You’re punishing yourself for a mistake that was mostly my fault.”
He shakes his head. “What if it happens again? I can’t always wake myself up and sometimes my body reacts physically to the nightmares.” He pulls down his sweats, revealing a long scar on the outside of his thigh. “I did that to myself while sleeping. And it isn’t the only time I’ve scarred myself during a nightmare. I wake up sometimes and there’s blood-there’s blood everywhere. What if I… Padme, I can’t let that happen to you. I can’t hurt you again.”
“Not having you next to me hurts more.” Padme whispers. “I-I miss you, Ani. I miss sleeping with you and I miss waking up to you. I miss my husband.” There are tears in her eyes now.
Anakin can’t look at those tears or he’ll lose his resolve but he doesn’t know where else to look. He settles for staring at the wall above her dresser. There’s a part of him that wants to give in, to tell her that there’s nothing he wants more than to sleep beside her in their bed. But he can’t let himself give in, can’t do to her what he does to himself without knowing it. He promised that he’d never hurt her and he’s broken that promise once but he won’t do it again. His hands are shaking again, the tremors starting in his fingers but soon they’ll be all over his body. It always happens like that. First his hands are shaking and then the rest of his body quickly follows suit.
In the end, it’s the sound of Padme’s quiet sobbing that breaks his resolve. She hasn’t cried in front of him since he came home and seeing her do it now breaks something inside of him when he didn’t think that there was anything left to break. She’s curled in on herself, her head bowed and her shoulders shaking. Again, it hits him that he’s broken his promise again. He swore he’d never hurt her and look at what he’s done again. She’s crying because he’s too broken to open himself up to her, to trust her when he’s scared to even trust himself. His lips curl into a snarl and he bows his head, unsure what to do now.
“I don’t know what to do.” He admits in a low whisper. “If I agree to this and I hurt you, I don’t know that I’ll be able to live with myself. I still have nightmares where I kill you and I can’t… Padme, I don’t know what to do.”
She’s silent for a long time, but she’s stopped crying now. Her face is pressed into the crook of his neck and she’s breathing deep. For a moment, he thinks she’s fallen asleep.
“If you were at all dangerous, Luke wouldn’t have gone downstairs last night. But he did and he was comfortable enough to fall asleep in your arms. He still won’t go near that old man at the end of the street, you know.” She raises herself out of his arms enough that she can look into his eyes.
Anakin closes his eyes. “He comes down every time I have a nightmare. I swear to God our son has some kind of radar that tells him when I’m having a nightmare.”
It’s clear that Padme didn’t know that by the way she frowns, her head tilting to the side. “How long has he been coming down there?”
“Since the first night I spent down there. I woke up and I think I was screaming. There was little voice saying, ‘it’s okay, Papa’ and there he was, standing by the bed with his teddy bear.” Anakin’s lips quirk into a fond smile. “He always waits until I’m fully awake to climb up beside me, like he knows that I might hurt him if I’m not awake.” The smile disappears with these last words.
“He doesn’t think you’ll hurt him. He waits because he knows you’re scared and that you’ll calm down quicker once you see him standing there.” Padme says.
Anakin doesn’t know what to say to that so he says nothing. She brings another hand up to cup his cheek, pulling his forehead down to hers.
“I know you’re scared and I’m not even saying that you don’t have a reason to be.” She whispers. “But… Ani, I know you, okay? I know you won’t hurt me because I know what to do now. I know not to wake you up the way I did that night. It’s just…”
She trails off and he waits for her to speak, knowing that she isn’t done. Her eyes fall closed and a few tears slip out of them, trailing down her cheeks. Anakin wipes them away with a finger and she leans into his touch.
“Sometimes I wake up and I think you’re still-I think you’re still gone and I get so scared. I reach for you and you’re not in bed and I can’t ever get back to sleep because I’m so scared that I’ve lost you again.” A sob slips past her parted lips and she curls into his arms. “And today, today when Luke told me that you were crying for me I… I just wanted to try. I’m sorry, Ani. I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. I know you-”
“I’m the one being ungrateful here.” Anakin interrupts, pulling her closer.
Christ, how can he have been so stupid? The thought of her waking up alone and afraid makes him want to hit himself. He should have been there for her instead of hiding away in the basement like the coward he’s turned into.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll… I’ll come back up here. I’m sorry honey, I’m so sorry.”
Padme’s eyes are shining. “I love you, Ani.”
“I love you too.”
She tucks herself in against his chest then, curling with her head pressed into the crook of his neck the way she’s always liked. He doesn’t know when they laid down, but the weight of her in his arms feels nice and his eyelids are getting heavy. Padme’s breathing is evening out, her arms tightening briefly around his middle as she falls into sleep and Anakin doesn’t hesitate before following her over that edge.
~ ~ ~ ~
Obi
When Anakin asks him if he’ll take the kids for the weekend, Obi says yes without a second though. There’s a light in Anakin’s voice that hasn’t been there in two years, a light that tells Obi that his brother is gonna be okay. He picks his niece and nephew up from school that afternoon with a wide smile and McDonald’s happy meals ready for them. As always, Luke and Leia are overjoyed to see him, though he notices that Luke looks just a little smug. And, when Luke tells him the story while they’re watching reruns of Dragon Tales that evening, Obi can’t help but love his nephew just a little more.