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I’ve gotta go now
I'll find a new place to be from
A haunted house with a picket fence
To float around and ghost my friends
No, I'm not afraid to disappear
The billboard said, "The end is near"
I turned around, there was nothing there
Yeah, I guess the end is here
-Phoebe Bridgers, I Know The End
It isn’t until after they escape the Arena that Padmé realizes that anything is wrong.
She’s being bandaged up by the medical droid for the mauling she took in the Petranaki Arena, for the blood, for the skin that hangs like curtains from her back, and Anakin is hovering, more attentive than anyone should be allowed to guess, because he’s still a Jedi knight and the Jedi are not supposed to be this close to someone, especially not someone who can still feel the burn of their tender touch against her skin, when Obi-Wan off-handedly says, “Don’t worry. The twins are both okay.”
Both Anakin and Padmé freeze. “I’m sorry?” Padmé asks, heart in her throat.
Obi-Wan nods to her stomach, and there's only one answer that that could possibly mean.
She’s pregnant?
She’s pregnant and she was in an Arena and for a moment her heart squeezes, because whatever child is growing inside of her could have been horribly injured by what they just went through—
“I’m sorry, did you say twins, Master?” Anakin asks, and he sounds faint, because not child—children.
Obi-Wan nods, something tender in his eyes, something protective in his expression, as he says, “Both of the heartbeats are there. Faint, but true.” There is some measure of awe in his voice, and she supposes that after the horrors that they just went through, after escaping the Arena with their lives intact, even through the gash on Padmé’s back, after all three of them saved each other, the idea of a babe surviving must seem somewhat insane.
"Twins," Padmé murmurs, half in awe herself. She's never really thought much about raising children, too busy with being Queen and Senator and the like, but considering the fact that they are here, now, and she has her choice—
Padmé knows that she can’t ask Anakin to stop being a Jedi, to stop being who he is, but she also doesn’t want to raise this child alone.
She doesn’t want the flicker of life in her stomach—the flicker of two lives, to be more accurate—to end up fatherless, whether through Anakin’s duties pulling him far away or through him, Force forbid, dying.
But in the end, when they are back in Naboo, when Obi-Wan has gone to rest for the night before heading back to Coruscant, when she goes to him, when she says, “I want these children to have a father,” he places a hand on her stomach—still flat, the life within unable to be felt by anyone who does not have an enhanced sensitivity to life—and he swallows.
Padmé knows that he is haunted by what happened to his mother. By the fact that he was unable to save her. By the fact that when he thinks of home, when he thinks of the place where he was born, he now has ghosts and a stepfamily he barely knows and the massacre of a people who did the deed on his conscience.
Anakin wants the people that he loves to live. He doesn’t wish to carry any more ghosts on his shoulders.
And Padmé, in her turn, is selfish in her own way. She wishes Anakin to not leave her side. She wants to dig her nails in and keep him close and keep him from wrecking himself on some distant planet.
And so when Anakin says, “I would wish to quit the Jedi order and stay by your side,” she smiles and reaches up to pull him down into a kiss.
Anakin tastes like a supernova. Like a dying star.
And yet, anyone in the galaxy could tell you that all life comes from stardust, and in order for new life to be born, a star must die.
---
So Anakin Skywalker leaves the Jedi Order at the height of his notoriety, and shifts the course of Qui-Gon Jin’s prophecy forever—
But he doesn’t care about prophecies or fate.
All that Anakin cares about are her and the children, Padmé knows, and she takes his promise when they marry—not in secret, since he is a Jedi no longer, but in a ceremony on Naboo, where he is happy to become a Senator’s husband, and Obi-Wan attends, as a Jedi representative, but it doesn’t feel right.
What would feel right would be him walking Anakin down the aisle. Shmi is dead, buried in the sands of Tatooine, and Obi-Wan is the person that Anakin is closest to in the world, someone that Padmé cannot marry Anakin without knowing that Obi-Wan approves.
Obi-Wan approves, it seems, because he does attend with a smile on his lips, but there is something that aches in Obi-Wan’s bright eyes when he congratulates them both after the wedding.
And Padmé thinks—Anakin is the person that Obi-Wan is closest to in the galaxy, as well. Obi-Wan’s world has narrowed down to Jedi master and padawan for decades, now, and now he has neither.
And something in her yearns for him to stay. For him to be a part of the children’s family. For him to be close to Anakin, and to her, and to take over as her Jedi protector, and maybe for things to go with Obi-Wan in the same manner as they did with Anakin—
For his bright eyes, his steady spirit, to never leave.
But he is a Jedi master, and so he must.
Anakin watches the skies as he leaves, and she cannot blame him for it.
---
Anakin is a good husband, taking care of her and every need that she has when it comes to both herself and to the ways that the babes stir up a fuss in her stomach.
But she knows that he feels a bit off sometimes, restless, full of energy.
He fiddles with engineering while she is at work, developing new droids and the like, to get rid of some of that restless energy, and yes, he soothes slightly when he’s taking care of her, when he gets to prepare for the child, but often she finds him with his hand twitching towards an empty belt, the hilt of a saber left behind in Coruscant when they came back to Naboo. Since he is a Jedi no longer, the way of the lightsaber is not his to take.
But she knows that he misses it. That there is some part of him that was settled by being a Jedi, by being with Obi-Wan, by being a warrior.
At night, he dreams. He dreams of the universe burning, of the galaxy falling into chaos, and he wakes most nights before the sun has even risen, a scream trapped behind his teeth, ghosts in his eyes.
And she's worried about him. Worried about the bite of the dark side of the force, about the lack of sleep in his eyes, about the way that he gave up everything for her and the promise of the future in her stomach.
Anakin is an orphan who once killed a village for taking his mother as a slave. What will he be willing to do for his family if everything burns?
---
The few times that Anakin does feel entirely settled are when Obi-Wan visits.
It is then that Anakin has everyone that he cares about in one place: wife, unborn children, Jedi Master.
And Padmé, in turn, feels a bit more settled. Sure, the babes in her stomach kick and make their presence known through how they push at her organs, and she must deal with the aches and pains of her back, but she, too, has the people she has come to trust and care for most in one place.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, doesn't seem as settled each time he visits.
As a matter of fact, he looks more haggard with each visit, the weight of being a padawan-less jedi, a masterless-jedi, weighing on him.
Anakin talks to Padmé about how he wants to let Obi-Wan rest. That he feels guilty about leaving the protection of the galaxy to Obi-Wan, who got too used to fighting with Anakin by his side.
Padmé has seen the dark circles beneath Obi-Wan's eyes.
(What has Obi-Wan been dreaming of? Padmé wonders. Does he dream of the same darkness that Anakin does? Is this why he does not sleep? Does he dream of fire, of darkness, of the rising tide of blood spilling over the galaxy, setting fire to every planet that it touches, corrupting every state?)
Obi-Wan is good at what he does, a master of his arts, whether that be diplomacy or the Force or fighting with a saber to assist the clones in their war, but he is adrift, no connections on either side of the Jedi system, and that should be good for a jedi, to not have any personal trappings, but Obi-Wan is not just any Jedi.
He is Anakin's Jedi, and that makes all the difference.
---
On one of Obi-Wan's visits to Naboo, there is a surprise attack on the convoy to the capitol by the Separatists. They all end up fighting together, Padmé fighting with her blaster, Obi-Wan and Anakin with their sabers, because Anakin's not supposed to have it, and yet when the battle begins, a hilt is tossed from Obi-Wan’s belt to Anakin's hand and Padmé makes sure he stays with them, to fight alongside them, despite the swell of her stomach, because she refuses to lose either of them.
Padmé Amidala is not a Jedi. She gets to have her personal connections. She will dig in her nails, sink her teeth into skin, in order to keep the people that she loves most close.
Obi-Wan wakes in her and Anakin's bed—Anakin refused to leave Obi-Wan in the hospital bay of a ship, and Padmé more than agreed with her husband—and he places a hand on her swollen stomach. The touch is tender, charged, the sort of thing that could power entire sections of Coruscant, the infinite planetary city, the ecumenopolis, the shining jewel of the Republic.
His eyes are wide, red-rimmed, tired, near feral, as he says, “I’m doing this for them.”
It is a slip of the tongue. The sort of admission that could take down any Jedi master, if he spoke it to anyone else.
Jedi aren’t supposed to have personal connections. They aren’t supposed to have any sort of drive beyond that of the Jedi Order. They're not supposed to have a loyalty to planet or person or anything beyond the quest for peace.
They aren’t supposed to sleep on the velvet sheets of a Queen, of a Senator and her husband, they are supposed to be served in hospital bays and the Jedi temple, and yet, here Obi-Wan is, and it’s not the first time he’s slept on their bed, nor will it likely be the last.
You could say that Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn't have a drive towards a specific planet. That this is just a drive for the next generation in general, a loyalty to the future.
But Padmé feels the warmth of Obi-Wan's hand through the drape of her gown against her stomach, and she knows that neither she nor Anakin wish him to leave or separate himself from them.
And so she doesn't even think about her next move.
In an instant, Padmé is leaning forward, her mouth pressing to Obi-Wan's, and he tastes of the sky, of kyber crystal, of what it feels like to find yourself in the heavens aching to ground yourself in the lightning strikes, to be with the people you ache to love—
"Finally," comes a delighted voice behind Padmé, and she leans back to find Anakin has returned to their room, grinning to Obi-Wan awake, to see them connecting like this.
It is a reckless thing, Padmé knows, to kiss a man who is not her husband, but her husband loved Obi-Wan before she even did, so there is no doubt that he will embrace this—
But Obi-Wan himself looks between them both like prey in the headlights of a ship, and before they can do a thing, he is out of the bed, despite the bandages still wrapped around his torso, and he is fleeing, like a stray cat, across the galaxy, and he doesn't return back the next month for his usual visit, and Padmé's fingernails dig into her palms.
Anakin bites his lip, but there are tears gathering in his eyes.
He is a fighter, a lover, not a diplomat. Not a peacemaker. He cares more about specific people than he does about the state of the galaxy.
All Anakin wants is for Obi-Wan to return home.
---
The fires rise across the galaxy. There is a rising tide of darkness that is bubbling and spilling across the galaxy like an oil slick, polluting each planet.
There are stories about padawans going missing. About the younglings being attacked.
The fighting gets worse. Grievous and Obi-Wan fight, the story spreads throughout the galaxy, a legend that will linger for generations, Padmé is sure.
And all Padmé can think is: If Obi-Wan dies, a part of us both will die with him.
Padmé’s hand drifts to her stomach each time that she goes to her Senate seat, Anakin at her side. She has always believed in the power of democracy, but there are ways in every system for people to take advantage of the mechanisms of government. She is protected, and so are her children, but as liberty begins to die with thunderous applause, the emergency war powers turned over the Chancellor, she aches for a blaster in her hands.
Next to her, Anakin is bristling, a line of ache, a line of worry, a line of anger carefully controlled.
After the Chancellor gets his powers, they head straight back to Naboo. She is close to giving birth, but she doesn’t know what will happen after she gives birth. After the children come.
Will there even be a galaxy for them to be born into?
Will her children be raised in a republic or an empire?
---
They barely make it back to Naboo before she goes into labor.
Padmé screams for both Anakin and Obi-Wan alike as she gives birth.
Only Anakin is there, and she is incredibly grateful for it; Anakin lets her bruise his hands and curse his face for putting two babes in her belly as the tides are rising to swallow the galaxy whole. Other warriors might turn their nose at being in a birthing chamber, but Anakin was raised by a mother, he has a fondness for his younger siblings on Tattooine.
And this, at least, reassures Padmé. Anakin is here. He is not off fighting battles that he will not survive. He is here, with her, with the children, and he is the first to hold them after the umbilical cords are cut.
Then, Padmé gets to hold them. Hold her children, Luke and Leia, Luke who has the bright hair of Padmé's father and Anakin's bright eyes, and Leia who has Anakin's dark hair and Padmé's brown eyes, and the galaxy is ending, the war is swallowing them all whole, and yet—
For a moment—just a moment—in time, the war seems so far away. It has not reached Naboo’s doors just yet.
For a moment, Padmé is here with just her husband and her children, and it’s not quite perfect. This wouldn’t feel right unless Obi-Wan was here.
But they are all alive. They are all alive, and here, and that is enough for now.
---
The days are trickling down to the end of the Republic, it could end any day now, and maybe that's why Obi-Wan shows up a week after the birth.
Anakin and Padmé had requsted a Jedi envoy for the traditional Naming of the children. As the current Senator from Naboo, Padmé rated such treatment, but she hadn't been sure that Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero of the Clone Wars, slayer of Grievous, would be willing to attend, not after the way that he last left this planet.
And yet, he does. He comes for the ceremony, smiling tightly as Luke and Leia are named, and afterward, he even stops to speak with them.
He doesn't hold the children, though, despite the fact that it is clear from a single glance at his face, at the way that his gaze falls to the babes in Padmé and Anakin's arms, that he wants nothing more than to do such a thing.
“You don’t have to be with us," Anakin says, though it is clear, because she knows him, because she can read him, that that is all that he wants. It is all that both of them want, at the end of the day.
“That’s the problem,” Obi-Wan, voice soft. He’s looking down at Leia in Anakin's arms, but he’s speaking to them as he says, “It’s all I want. And I promised Qui-Gon, I promised myself, that I would never do such a thing. You two are happy, with your children, with your work, and I am a Jedi Master, and I must do my duty to make sure that the galaxy stays in balance. That it stays at peace. Both because it is my duty, and also for your sake.”
Obi-Wan’s voice breaks on those final words, and it’s everything that Padmé thought that he might say. Everything that she thought that he might be thinking, because that is Obi-Wan for you, a man of duty, a man of an ache so deep that she wonders if he will ever know how not to be haunted.
He watched one master die in front of his eyes and had to fight his murderer and then burn the body.
But Anakin isn’t hearing it, and it is for that reason that Padmé loves him, because she wants Obi-Wan with them as much as Anakin does. “I am not complete without you, master, neither of us are—"
It is now that Padmé, for the first time, sees Obi-Wan's nostrils flare in frustration. In something approaching anger. “It’s that. I am not your master, anymore."
“And isn’t that a better thing?" Padmé offers up, fingers running through Luke's hair, but she can see in an instant that Obi-Wan has taken it the wrong way, what with the way that his expression tightens, the way that he looks away from her and to the babe in Anakin's arms.
Obi-Wan’s smile is a sorrowful thing. “I managed to get you out of Tattooine, Anakin, and then out of the frontlines of the war, to live a beautiful life, with beautiful children. You have the life that you never could have had as a slave on Tattooine. Embrace that."
Anakin has always been all fire, the insistence that he is right, the insistence that the galaxy is falling apart and it will be up to them to keep themselves together. “But how are we supposed to live without you?" Anakin pleads.
"Obi-Wan," Padmé says, and both of them turn to look at her. "I understand that you have a Jedi Code to heed to. But the galaxy is falling apart. Please, for the sake of whatever love you have—stay."
She can see it, in the moment, the instincts warring in his face, the way that a heart wants to stay while a mind wishes to go, the way that love wars with duty, the vows he made to save the galaxy, the oaths he took to keep peace in the face of war—
But they don't get to hear Obi-Wan's answer, because war waits for no one, because the Empire finally descends on Naboo.
It should not be a surprise, the women of her guards bursting into the room, not when there is a Jedi Master and a former Jedi padawan standing in here with her, both of them bleeding with force sensitivity—
But it seems as if Anakin and Obi-Wan were both too wrapped up in the matter at hand to notice Naboo finally being attacked.
A war breaks out across the galaxy, Chancellor Palpatine having killed Mace Windu, it is said, and taken his role as Emperor Sidius, the lord of the Sith, another Jedi his padawan to become Darth Neronius.
The younglings burn. The clones turn on their Jedi masters.
And in Naboo, the palace is attacked, beams cutting through the ancient architecture, Anakin and Padmé's apartment from her duties as Senator destroyed.
They all need to go on the run. They all need to flee.
But as the palace burns, the ceiling comes down right between them.
Padmé has Luke in her hands. Anakin has Leia in his.
And Obi-Wan happens to be next to Padmé, his arm around hers the only thing helping her up as she coughs and hacks in the darkness, her focus on keeping her own robe wrapped around Luke's vulnerable head and mouth to keep the smoke from roiling into his lungs.
At the end, as the clones and droids are closing in, they are on opposite sides of a burning canyon, the building burning down around them, and Padmé thinks—
He was right. He dreamed of the world ending, the darkness spilling over everything, and he was right.
“You both know where to meet me,” Anakin yells across the gulf, because they all know that it's going to be near impossible to find their way to each other here on Naboo before the Empire gets them all, but he trusts Obi-Wan and Padmé to protect each other, and it’s the last thing that either of them hear from him before he and Leia disappear into the empty liquid dark of space.
---
Of course they both know where to find Anakin Skywalker. There is only one place in the entire galaxy to find him.
A place that is poor, and lonely, and full of ghosts, and yet still, at the end of it all, home.
---
A queen ditches her velvet, her silks, her gold, in favor of dim, plain clothing and robes that will allow her and her babe and their protector to blend in as they smuggle their way across the galaxy to safety.
Except—
Protector takes on an interesting quality when it is two adults and a babe with the steady state of the universe falling apart around you, doesn’t it?
They can't use credit sticks or sabers or anything that could help the emperor track them. No active Jedi weapons. No martial arts training that Obi-Wan has made his life on.
But there is nothing stopping Padmé from using her blaster, because officers and smugglers and soldiers have been using them for millenia across the entire Republic—now the Empire, ruled by Emperor Palpatine, the man that so many willingly traded their freedom to in favor of safety and fear and privilege.
So Padmé and Obi-Wan trade roles, him the diplomat, the smallest turn of the force allowing them to be sneak through Empire garrisons and onto smugglers’ ships, while her blaster is their weapon that allows them to push through tight circumstances, Luke beneath her robes, still being weaned.
And she has to pray that wherever Anakin is, he can find a way to feed Leia and keep her safe.
---
A destroyer goes up in flames between planets right before Padmé, Obi-Wan, and Luke are supposed to sneak their way onto a smuggler’s ship, and Padmé thinks about Anakin and his nightmares.
He saw the end of all things, Padmé thinks, and she knows that that could be enough to turn any person mad.
The man she loves, the man who has ached to fight for so long, with her babe in hand—
What will he do? What solutions might he turn to in order to keep them both alive?
And can Padmé really blame him, for whatever he does?
The suns turn over planets she’s never been to, jungle planets and desert planets and tundra planets and lava planets and urban planets, places they can get lost in, places where they can escape the ever-watchful eyes of the Emperor.
Padmé is not a senator any longer. She is nothing more than Padmé, than a mother without her husband by her side, nothing more than the grit of space and the grease of smugglers’ ships and her own stubborn will.
But at least Padmé has Obi-Wan to steady her. To give her something stable against the vast, vast empty infinity of space and the churn of smuggling and the pressure to hide the last remnants of the Jedi Order within her arms.
At night, she snuggles in close with Obi-Wan with Luke in her arms, her babe clutched close to her chest, as they sleep beneath the brigs of star-going ships, bouncing from planet to planet, from ache to ache.
But there is a hollow between them, because somewhere out there, Anakin is alone, no one to pull him back from the edge that he has been toeing for years, now.
What will her reckless, restless husband, who has always burned brighter and harder than the dual suns, do to an emperor who has separated them?
The only thing that can soothe Padmé’s nightmares is the humming of Obi-Wan’s lullaby to Luke, the only sweet thing she has to clutch onto when the empire threads itself through every planet in the galaxy, choking the life out of systems that once hosted so much life and color.
(The lullaby Padmé distantly identifies as being from Stewjon. For all that Obi-Wan has told Anakin and her that he remember naught of his homeworld or anything before becoming a Jedi youngling, that he left behind any part of himself that was personally connected, there is still something so very, very human within him that he is sharing with her babe.)
Sometimes she wonders if Obi-Wan’s voice, this soft, strong tenor, is laced with the Force. If that is the only thing that allows them all to sleep.
Years ago, she might have hated such a fact. She would have resented it, wouldn’t have trusted it, the way that it feeds through her mind.
But at the end of the galaxy, at the end of all things, with her husband missing, with the war raging, with nothing able to be trusted—
She needs all the help that she can get, to sleep.
There are only two people she trusts in the entire galaxy right now, and one of them is the one that is singing by her side.
---
It takes them two years to get to Tatooine, in the end. By that point, Luke is a bright child who speaks in full sentences and shows his father’s penchant for fiddling with machinery and tinkering with droids and his other father’s penchant for levitating things with the force and his mother’s curious, determined tongue.
And there, in the desert, Padmé, Obi-Wan, and Luke finally see Leia and Anakin.
Anakin Skywalker is a hooded figure with glowing eyes and a blood-red saber, robes dark, a familiar scar across his face, one hand made of metal, maintained by a man who was raised to build machines.
Anyone else would be terrified of the sight. A Sith, many would scream, and run, this man clearly turned to the Dark Side.
But he is here, with her babe—now a toddler—in his arms. Leia could be a stern-faced child, but she is babbling at him, smiling up at her father, and something in Padmé aches to know that she has missed first steps, first words, first everything, but what reassures her more than anything is that both Leia and Anakin are alive. Alive, despite it all, and Leia clearly loves her father, and that's enough for Padmé.
Anakin sets Leia down on the ground and lets her go, and she doesn't run to Padmé and Obi-Wan—she grabs at her father's robes and stares up at Padmé and Obi-Wan, gaze measured, calculating, the sort of thing that most two-year-olds wouldn't be capable of, but that a force-sensitive toddler raised on the run just might.
But when Padmé sets Luke down on the ground, she pushes him towards his sister, and Leia doesn't look at Luke with suspicion. Rather, she reaches forward and pulls him in, touching his hair and his robes and asking questions about him and his life, and it seems as if Anakin has seen fit to make sure that his daughter knows that she has a brother, just as Padmé has done the same with Luke.
And now, it is just the two of them looking at each other—or, rather, three of them, because Obi-Wan is here, too, as if he ever would have ended up anywhere else.
And Padmé sees her husband, flooded with the Dark Side, but she does not fear him.
She cannot fear him, because she has spent her life one-half of a queenly split, a senator of many faces, doing what it takes to protect her planet, to maintain its power, and over the past two years, she has done whatever it has taken to protect Obi-Wan and Luke. Killed friend and foe alike, as long as it kept them alive. She has clung to those she loves with her fingernails, unheeding the blood that stained the underside of her nails.
But for a moment Padmé is worried that Obi-Wan will reject him. That the former Jedi Master, a man sworn to be a knight, will look at the red spilling across the desert like a bloodstain, the evidence of a man's turn to the Dark Side, and push him away. Consider him as much a traitor as any other Sith.
But at some point in the last couple of years, Obi-Wan has broken his vows, to care, to connect, to stay.
There are no Jedi any longer. There is no Code. There are no rules about holding back.
And so Obi-Wan Kenobi steps forward on the Tattooine desert and pulls Anakin in and kisses his mouth, there beneath the blood red suns, and Anakin's tense shoulders collapse as he lets himself fold into Obi-Wan's hold, as he lets himself finally be held, as he lets himself finally fall into someone else's hold for the first time in two years, finally able to trust that someone will catch him.
And next to them, Padmé smiles, because come what may, whatever the Empire throws at them all, she has her family here. And she will do anything to keep them all safe and together.
Let the brokenness be felt
'Til you reach the other side
There is goodness in the heart
Of every broken man
Who comes right up to the edge
Of losing everything he has
We were young enough to sign
Along the dotted line
Now we're young enough to try
To build a better life
-Sleeping At Last, Mars