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Blasterfire lit the hangar in flickers of red and white. The holofeed was grainy, but the image was clear enough: Padmé on her knees, wrists bound, lip split, chin lifted in that way that meant she was furious and afraid and refusing to show either.
“They’re broadcasting this all across the Mid Rim,” Obi-Wan said quietly beside him. “They know you’re watching.”
Anakin didn’t answer. His fingers were dug into the edge of the console hard enough to hurt.
The Separatist commander’s voice crackled through the speakers. “Bring us Skywalker, and perhaps the senator leaves here alive.”
Padmé didn’t look at the camera; she stared off to the side, shoulders squared. “Don’t you dare,” she said, and Anakin knew exactly who she was speaking to, even if the galaxy did not.
“She’s bait,” Obi-Wan said. “This is designed to pull you in.”
“It’s working,” Anakin rasped.
The drop onto the outpost went bad immediately.
Turbolasers shredded the first gunship. The second crashed smoking onto the landing pad, clones spilling out under fire. Anakin hit the durasteel hard enough to jar his teeth, rolled, came up with his saber blazing.
“Forward!” he shouted over the comm. “We don’t have time—”
Bolts screamed past. A trooper to his left jerked and fell without a sound.
“General, there’s too many—” The clone’s voice cut off in a burst of static and a strangled cry.
Anakin spun, catching sight of blue armor crumpled under a hail of fire. For one terrible second he froze.
Padmé’s pain flashed through him like lightning.
He roared and surged forward, dragging the Force with him like a storm front. Droids toppled, walls buckled. Clones followed, because they always did, because they trusted him to make it worth it.
He tried.
By the time they fought their way inside, the squad was half its size. By the time they reached the inner corridors, it was just Anakin and two troopers, both limping, armor scorched.
A mine took one.
A sniper took the other.
Anakin heard the body hit the floor and didn’t look back. He couldn’t. If he stopped, he’d feel every life slipping through his fingers, and Padmé was still screaming in the Force, even when she made no sound at all.
The cell door opened on a wash of harsh white light.
Padmé hung from the restraints, toes barely touching the floor, head bowed. Burns striped her arms in neat, ugly lines. The interrogator droid hovered at her shoulder, still humming.
For a heartbeat, Anakin thought he was too late.
“Padmé,” he said, and his voice broke.
Her head twitched. Brown eyes blinked open, glassy but sharp enough to find him. “You took your time,” she whispered.
Relief hit so hard his knees wobbled.
The commander stepped from behind a control bank, flanked by droids, smug smile already forming. “Skywalker. I wondered how many men you’d spend to get here.”
“Enough,” Anakin said, and ignited his saber.
The fight was short and vicious. He was already half-broken; control frayed, every move fueled by terror and fury. Blaster bolts seared his side, his thigh, one grazing his jaw. He didn’t care. He couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t.
When the last droid fell and the commander lay still, Anakin was shaking, lungs burning, vision narrowed to a tunnel that ended at Padmé.
He staggered to her, almost dropping the saber as he fumbled it off.
“Anakin,” she murmured, looking him over, the blood and the burns. “Your team—?”
“Gone,” he said, and the word tasted like ash. He sliced through the restraints, hands clumsy. “They gave everything to get me here.”
Her legs failed when the last cuff opened; he caught her, swallowing a hiss as injured muscles protested.
“I couldn’t let them have you,” he whispered into her hair. “I can’t lose you.”
Her fingers curled in his torn tunic, holding on with what little strength she had left.
Alarms shrieked, closer now. The base shook, distant explosions rattling the ceiling. An exit route Obi-Wan had promised flickered red on the datapad at his belt.
Anakin shifted her weight in his arms. Pain flared down his side, black creeping at the edges of his vision. He set his jaw.
One step. Then another.
The corridor outside was smoke and ruin. He walked anyway, Padmé’s heartbeat fluttering against his chest, their breaths ragged in unison.