Chapter Text
Seven years.
Had it really been that long?
It still felt unreal to her. Like it had all happened yesterday.
Like it had never happened at all.
Padmé braced her hands against the balustrade, trying to centre herself against the rough stone as sparks burst across the horizon. Flashes of red and gold that turned night into day as she watched over the city, her city, from high above it all as the revelry went long into the night.
The Day of Peace.
It was the last tangible proof that the invasion had happened at all. That they had fallen under attack. That they had survived. It wasn’t the Naboo’s custom to cling to the hardships of the past, instead they appreciated the ceremony. The reminder of their traditions, their successes.
It seemed to Padmé that this one annual celebration was the only evidence that it hadn’t all been a fever dream.
Well… not the only evidence.
She wrapped her shawl tighter, a shiver running through her despite the warm night air.
The City of Theed had forgotten him but she could not.
They’d found him at the bottom of the generator shaft, cut clean in two and yet… alive. A miracle or a curse, she couldn’t tell. His hearts still somehow beating despite the gleam of spine that showed through the endless sea of red, as if he could keep himself breathing through sheer force of will alone.
He’d been taken to the medbay on her orders, her physicians fighting the odds to save as much of him as they could. She wondered if she would‘ve made a different call if she’d known then exactly where her orders would lead them.
Maybe it would have been easier for everyone if she‘d let him die. More merciful even.
The sharp smell of bacta rose from her memories, making her eyes water as she remembered how they’d submerged him. The acrid stench of charred flesh and the hiss of liquid against burning wounds. It had been all she could do to keep from gagging.
The med-droids worked with micro-precision to reassemble the wreckage of his body as she’d swallowed her disgust; her hatred and sympathy. Averting her eyes as she fought to recompose herself, fixing her attention on her subjects instead.
“Will he survive?” She’d asked, harsher than she intended. A distant sort of panic ringing inside of her head as she lingered there, the aide at her elbow pressing her to move onto the next thing. The next fire to put out. The next shattered fragment of their world that needed piecing back together.
“I believe so,” The doctor hesitated, bowing his head before her in an uneasy show of respect. “We can repair his body but a trauma like this… he might never wake up. If he does I don’t know how much of his mind will have survived.”
She nodded, schooling her face into impassivity even as her heart clenched. A dull throb of hate echoing up from within the cold places in her chest at the thought that this man, this… creature, should survive when Qui-Gon hadn’t.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
She could see her feelings mirrored in the doctor’s face, his throat working in a tight swallow as he gazed over her shoulder at the patient. It was an expression she knew all too well, one of a subject who had more to say but felt that they couldn’t. Not to her at least.
“Speak freely, sir.” She could hear the edge of impatience in her voice, unable to mask it even with her years of training. Fighting with herself to appear as they expected - impassive, untouched by the bloodshed. Somehow above it all even as her heart hammered in her chest, bruising her up from the inside.
She didn’t want to be here any more, she wanted to be as far from here as possible. As if any form of proximity to the creature in the med bay might taint her.
“Why, your majesty?” The doctor asked at last, his face twisted in a sort of horrified disbelief that left her cold inside. “Why try to save him? He deserves to die.”
The guilt swept through her, wrapping oily tendrils around her ribs as she was faced with the same question she’d been asking herself since the order had been given to save him.
Why indeed?
She was at war with her own ideals. The principles she had always put her faith in faltering beneath the onslaught of her grief. Her anger. The tightly controlled part of her mind that demanded a life for a life, that wanted to deal the blow herself.
She fought it back.
Vengeance isn’t justice. The words echoed out of her memory in her father’s voice. Mercy isn’t weakness.
It was a sentiment she clung to.
“We don’t get to decide that, doctor.” She said, forcing herself to look down at her unconscious enemy at last. Maker, even unconscious he was a fierce sight to behold, entirely alien to her with his stark red and black skin, his horns. She kept her gaze fixed firmly on the sunken hollows of his closed eyes, denying him any power over her now. “There has been enough death this day. He will face justice for his crimes.”
If the gods were willing he’d never wake up, but she wouldn’t make that choice for them.
He was a monster. A killer. But she wouldn’t allow herself or her people to be.
It hadn’t been long after that that the dreams had started.