Chapter Text
“You’re a Dreamer,” Obi-Wan breathes, in awe and horror, as some of Padmé’s clothes came free at the medicenter droid’s hands.
Padmé is in the middle of a high and painful gasp, struggling through yet another contraction, and she squeezes his hand tightly. It’s uncertain if his words play any part in this reaction. Their hands are trembling fiercely together, shaking with the pain and loss and horror of what had happened.
They have held together since Obi-Wan returned to Padmé, burned and strangled and feeling as though he shattered into a million pieces, and Padmé in the same state of brokenness and bruises. One of them had reached out, maybe both of them, and they hadn’t let go since. By now, it’s hard to know where Obi-Wan Kenobi ends and where Padmé Amidala Naberrie begins. They’re in too many pieces to ever pick up, he thinks, and so much of them has been lost forever.
They hold each other as though they’re the only real things in the universe.
Obi-Wan’s eyes trace the beautiful golden spirals and splashes around Padmé’s toes that all the way up her legs, disappearing up under the cloth bunched at her hips. The markings look as though someone has managed to weave molten gold. Liquid jewelry set into skin. All beads and lace and ropes. The markings are as elaborate and fine as any costume Padmé wore as queen or senator, if not far more beautiful. There is no trace of them above mid-chest or her arms, from what he can see, but the rest of her has been nearly entirely covered by the markings.
Nearly consumed and yet Obi-Wan didn’t know that Padmé is a Dreamer. He’s known her so long, considered her one of his closest and dearest friends, and loved her. Not a love so intense and shattering as the one he felt for their shared lost love, but a love so long that steady that it feels painful – like a blast to the lungs, still now burning – to think that he didn’t know she carried a Dream.
“Didn’t… didn’t think… it mattered,” Padmé says, on the hitched end of a sob.
Obi-Wan makes a noise that tries to be a laugh, but it too hitches on a sob. “Of course not,” he assures her. “Of course, it changes nothing.”
He feels ashamed that he never once suspected, but how was he to know? The Jedi Order largely does not value Dreams and Padmé seemed to be of a similar philosophy, remarking once or twice that Dreams should not have a bearing on doing and listening to what was good and right and true. He never considered it. Padmé has hid this well and perhaps for good reason, as outed Dreamers have suffered assassinations and terrible accidents in recent years – without doubt, Obi-Wan sees in hindsight, at the hands of the Sith – and Dreamers never dare well in war besides.
It still hurts to think that Padmé never trusted him enough to share her Dream. Betrayal and horror are too recent and have left his shattered chest too wide open for more hidden things and lies not to burn at him. No matter how reasonable or well-meaning.
How has he been so blind? To everything?
Besides, Padmé’s Dream really might not have changed anything, if she had been outed and survived. Palpatine – Darth Sidious, the Emperor – is too powerful, too cunning, and too cruel. Perhaps, even if Padmé’s ornate and carefully crafted outfits bared her Dream with pride and she wielded her status as a Dreamer like a weapon, they were always going to end up here.
Mere Dreams change nothing, he has heard it said by those of the Jedi Order inclined to be kinder to the idea of Dreams. It is always… and only… what you do with them.
It’s a saying he has always agreed with in the past.
Now, Obi-Wan cannot help but stare at the shimmering gold marking over Padmé’s skin, like water and molten metal woven into intricate spirals and patterns by the Force and set into a person. Obi-Wan has met more Dreamers than most ever would, but each Dream is unique and he has never seen this one or its like before. It appeared duller than it should be, worryingly so, and it was so terribly complicated and enormous. By the glint of gold at the bottom of Padmé’s now opened collar and what Obi-Wan can see of her skin, it’s apparently consumed her body from the heart down.
The enormity of Padmé’s Dream sends a shudder through Obi-Wan’s soul. Dreamers consumed by their Dream are… dangerous… and Dreaming Jedi gone Dark are… were held up frequently as an argument for serenity and detachment and moving beyond such temptation as Dreams. Obi-Wan has seen a few consumed Dreamers over his lifetime and, while not all have been bad encounters, the most recent…
(“You turned her against me!”)
(“You have done that yourself!”)
Obi-Wan should have paid more attention, he knows. He knows now. He should have done something; he should have done anything besides hold back and wait and move on like the coward he is. But no, he told himself that Anakin was a Jedi, the Anakin was the Chosen One, and that Anakin was more than capable of controlling and moving beyond his Dream.
It was war, went the reasoning time and time again, and all those little things could always wait for later. Because it was war, later always seemed to slip slowly into never.
(“You will not take her from me.”)
(“Your anger and your lust for power have already done that.”)
Padmé shrieks, followed by an agonized moan, and Obi-Wan has by now nearly lost all feeling in his fingers. It hurt, of course, but nothing compared to the waves of pain rolling off Padmé. And what was a little more agony? Perhaps Padmé can, if he asks, reached straight into his split, shattered chest and strangle the terrible burning feeling there.
“Obi,” Padmé sobs. “It… is it supposed to h-hurt this m-much?”
The medical droid beside them launches into statistics on pregnancy and birth for human females, but Padmé only has glassy eyes for Obi-Wan. He stared back, helpless and shattered and burning alive. He can feel her agony, bright as a dying star, and… he does not think so. He has witnessed birth before and there is something wrong here, they both know it.
“I don’t know,” he says, though, because he has never been in so much pain before.
He has many terrible burns all over his skin, the fires of Mustafar having eaten into every piece of flesh and cloth they touched, and many of them still bite white-hot at him whether he moves or not. He has bruises all over his limbs and back from being thrown about, enough to turn his skin black and blue. Obi-Wan’s throat burns from the large hand that tried to choke him, his lungs stutter through his attempted calm, and his heart feels as though it’s in burning pieces inside his chest.
Maybe this is just what pain feels like when you’ve had your heart broken and life devastated. Maybe, despite everything he has ever survived, Obi-Wan has overestimated his understanding of suffering.
Padmé’s hand is tight around his own, so very tight, and he still does not know where Obi-Wan Kenobi ends and where Padmé Amidala Naberrie begins. They’re in a spiraling agony together, the only real anchor keeping each other from an endless fall, and he just doesn’t know.