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“This isn’t a good idea.”
It hurt to say. It was tempting, so tempting, to give in, to carve out this secret space for themselves, where the war could not touch them.
Anakin’s face screwed up in confusion. She couldn’t blame him; she thought of how it must look for her to reject him again after having broken from that conviction in the arena. But…
“It was different when we were about to die,” she said. “But we survived, Anakin. And we…all the reasons why we shouldn’t do this haven’t gone away.”
“You said that you loved me,” Anakin said.
“I do,” she said. “But we have to make sacrifices when there’s more important things at stake. You can’t leave the Jedi now, not when they need you to fight the war. And I have important work to do in the Senate. So, we can’t…at least not right now.”
“Not right now,” Anakin echoed, a spark of hope lighting his eyes. “But someday?”
“When the war ends,” Padmé said, “we can…revisit this discussion.”
So for the moment, the matter was put aside, and Padmé never knew how much that decision contributed to her long-term health and survival.