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“The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.”
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Plink. Plink. Plink.
Tiny drops of water hit the cold metal floor of the hospital room. Tears.
It took a lot to make teardrops fall from eyes that had seen war and loss and pain, but Padme Amidala had about all she could take. The anguished storm swirling up inside her felt sharp enough to cut her to slivers with its bitter, biting winter winds and her body was too exhausted to let it out in any other form but tears.
Everything, everything she’d worked for and loved had been murdered and left in a bloody, unmarked grave and forgotten.
Her husband, her lifeline, her love- He wasn’t even dead but this was worse. Ten times, no, a million times worse. Or maybe he was and this monster that now lived wasn’t him? It was easier to think that way, maybe.
Ani is not a monster.
The thought brought no comfort as it whistled through her mind, carried by another gust in the raging storm.
The Republic she’d so loved and worked for and poured all of her strength into had collapsed, now led by another creature that seemed to have crawled straight out of the sith underworlds, the same man who she’d seen as a mentor, Force, they came from the same planet.
He used me to do this.
It wasn’t a new thought but it felt like someone had thrown her into a frozen sea all over again and she was struggling to keep her head above water, struggling to move as the cold zapped the strength from her limbs and all over again she wanted to scream but couldn’t force the sound through her throat.
She’d had a part in not only the death but the burial too of everything she loved.
Her biggest regret was her final words to her husband, that she hadn’t said more, really seen how deep his fear ran. Force, she’d been there with him through his dreams about his mother, she should’ve known-
Her vision flashed red but not the red of anger, the red of a blade made with a bleeding crystal, clashing against blue. The glaring lights went out and a thick cloud of something blackish - Ashes? - settled over her vision. She was floating now, somehow she couldn’t feel the ground under her feet. She saw two faces, two pairs of hands each holding their blade, a battle on a smoking field of ash and rock, from no planet that she could recognize.
The first face so clearly human made her want to scream but she couldn’t force a single whisper out her sore throat. Her thoughts screamed for her.
Anakin!
He didn’t pause, he didn’t smile at her, he didn’t even seem to have heard even when all she ever wanted was to feel his arms around her and hear his voice tell her that the world wasn’t falling apart and everything had been a nightmare.
The second face was black and angry and not even a face at all, just a mask for a monster. Padme’s heart leapt to her throat as she wondered whose face was under that mask and her gut told her what she wished she’d never heard.
She watched blue and red hiss as they clashed over and over, a narrow swipe at the monster’s head, a sharp block preventing a blow that would have cut her husband clean down the middle and left two smoking pieces, another body for her to bury-
She watched the monster more machine than human flesh move just a little too quick and land a blow that should be fatal. She watched the spirit so reckless and strong and untamable fade from Tatooine-blue eyes and a blade of the same color fall from suddenly numb hands but she still couldn’t scream and all of a sudden she couldn’t even weep.
She watched Vader - Vader, not my husband, not Anakin, a murderer, some twisted creation of Palpatine - step back from his fallen victim with pride bleeding from his stance, from the set of his shoulders to his stride, and walk away. It made Padme’s stomach churn to know that there was a smile hidden under the mask.
All of a sudden she was there, on that battleground, able to cry out and weep and scream so she did and if there had been another life form on that planet they would have heard her screams. The harsh black rocks bruised her feet as she ran but the pain wasn’t even registered in her mind as her gentle hands turned her love onto his back and her horse voice whispered pleas into his ears.
“You can’t just die you can’t let him win not him you can’t leave me, you have so much left to do and we have a child, Ani, a child, stay please for me and for our child-”
A jumble of words that barely made sense even to her but that she knew Anakin would have understood turned to tears when her breath caught and her voice refused to work anymore. Anakin’s eyes were still wide open and stared into hers, unseeing and dead. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought hysterically that it was ironic a boy from a desert planet had eyes the shade of blue that colored the Kaminoan oceans.
They were full of pain and she recognized that not all his pain was from the wound spilling deep red in his flesh. The hopelessness she saw was the worst, and the loss a close second.
I’m sorry
Her voice refused to carry her words but she knew that he would have heard and maybe he still did so she continued.
I should have seen, I should have helped I shouldn’t have dismissed your fears you tried so hard Ani I’m so sorry I love you
She leaned down to plant a soft kiss in his messy hair - He never cared how messy his hair was I used to comb it for him when he was anxious - and it all went still at once when she caught that flicker of color clinging to his skin, something just a touch too stubborn to be chased away by a simple wound.
It wasn’t life, not quite or maybe it was but what she recognized wasn’t death, so maybe he wasn’t-
He’s not gone.
For the next twenty-three years Anakin Skywalker would be dead to the world, maybe, but he was not gone and he would be back.
This something, this hope so sharp and painful it shattered something in her chest and left a million beautiful, broken, wonderful pieces swirling around inside her she could have screamed and probably did.
He’s not gone he’ll be back he’s not dead he’s alive
She could have sworn that she saw his lips curve into that cocky, reckless and unstoppable smile just for her.
She raised her eyes to the ashen blue sky and let tears stream down her face, washing away dust that the wind had thrown at her and she laughed, loud and joyous and full of life. It stained the air and clung to the rocks and she felt it was probably the happiest sound that this graveyard had ever heard.
All at once and all too soon it all faded when she blinked, Anakin’s face, the rocky plain of shadow and ash and pain and the vision all together - Vision. It was a vision, something to give me hope - and the pale sky became the grey durasteel ceiling and the glaring, harsh lights of the medbay stung her eyes again. She was breathing hard, she realized, her heart was pounding and she was lying on her back on something hard and uncomfortable. She heard tiny cries and saw two small faces inches away from hers, two infants held by Obi-Wan’s gentle and calloused hands.
The first was round and sweet and he - She just knew it was a he, somehow - had Anakin’s clear Tatooine-blue eyes full of untamable, unbreakable spirit and Padme’s boundless kindness shone in them and his little chubby hand reached out to brush her cheek.
“Luke,” She breathed. It was what Ani had wanted to name the baby if it turned out to be a boy, it meant “free” in the language of his home planet. Lukka.
The second face was fat and soft and Padme knew it had to be a girl - Twins? I had twins - with her mother’s rich, hazel brown eyes and her father’s burning, reckless and relentless fire right from birth.
“Leia.” The second name they’d chosen, if she remembered right it meant “The mighty one” in that language she couldn’t remember the name of (The language she couldn’t remember was called Amatakka, the language of Tatooine and Ar-Amu’s people, though her mind was too full of too many things to remember this), she’d suggested it and Anakin had told her the meaning.
Two perfect little bundles of light, two starbursts.
My starbursts, Ani’s starbursts.
She felt her breath running out and forced herself to look Obi-Wan in the eyes to gasp some last words past her dry lips. She prayed that he saw the light of hope and fire in her eyes to back up her undying belief.
“There’s good in him, I know, I know there’s still…”
She knew he understood what she meant and heard what she hadn’t managed to say.
Her heart was in peace as it pulsed for the single last time.
And stilled.
Twenty three years later she welcomed her love back and felt his arms around her and let herself weep with the joy of it all and having him back, and knew that her hope had not died with her. And when her husband appeared among the trees of Endor and the celebration of so many to her beautiful, brilliant son with a heart too big for the world and smiled to thank him she was right by his side though her son couldn’t see her.