95th Padmé AU
This one went on forever, and all in all, I don't think these will quite be weekly anymore; the remaining five will be done when they are done.
Title: The Second Meeting
Fandom: Star Wars
Character: Padmé/Anakin, the Naberries
Prompt: #8-Weeks
Word Count: 2675
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Sequel to Chill Headaches, on request.
By the time she met with Anakin for the second time since she’d learned she was pregnant, Padmé’s belly was so swollen it was an indication of the babies’ connection to the Force and the aid they were giving to her through it that she wasn’t having any trouble walking.
She’d had trouble getting here alone. She’d slipped out the last time, then returned to find her entire family waiting to confront her. Whatever they hadn’t already gotten out of her after Ryoo and Pooja had seen Anakin’s message had come out that night. They’d seen her leaving today and at first had insisted on coming with her. She’d finally begged them not to until they had backed away. She still wasn’t sure if either of her nieces weren’t following her. She ended up walking around the village twice in an attempt to lose them if they were.
At last she walked a little beyond her village, and sensed his presence before he materialized beside her and they were in a tight embrace, the heat from his body warming hers in the cold night. “I’ve missed you, Padmé,” he whispered into your hair.
She wanted to say that she’d missed him too. But she could only think about all the questions of why, why he had to stay away for so long. She would never dare ask them, and she didn’t even need to; it wasn’t as if she didn’t understand. But they lingered in her mind and held her tongue.
“Feels like we’ve been apart for a lifetime,” Anakin continued, then kissed her neck, then her mouth, and that sent tremors up and down her back, and if he wanted her, here in the darkness of the woodland, she thought he would have her-until she heard a rustle too loud to be an animal in the bushes behind her.
Anakin heard it too. A moment later he was down in the bushes, lightsaber blade out and placed on the throat of a frightened Pooja.
“Ani, Ani stop it! That’s my niece! Oh Pooja, I told you not to follow me!”
Anakin hastily deactivated his weapon and retreated, allowing Pooja to scramble to her feet. Glancing between the two of them, she looked frightened, but also angry.
“I wanted to see you,” she said to Anakin. “I wanted to find out who you were. I wanted to see the man who got my Aunt Padmé with two children and then couldn’t stay to give her any help at all, who left her alone for months with no idea how she was going to explain her pregnancy to anyone and told her to wait and wait and wait for months, and then came back and told her to wait again, and you’ve been gone exactly seven weeks and four days and she’s been in agony the entire time and what do you have to say for yourself?”
During this speech Anakin’s face had gone from perturbed to outraged to simply defensive, and he said, “I’ve wanted to be here every single day. But I’m lucky to be here tonight. I should be back with Master Kenobi, but he sent me with Geonosis with a message, so I could stop here tonight.”
“Let me guess, you don’t have time to meet the rest of our family.”
Anakin turned from her to Padmé and said, “How important is it that I meet your family?”
Pooja answered before Padmé could. “If you’re going to keep Aunt Padmé tied to you so that she can’t marry and get her babies a real father, that’s the least you can do.”
“Then I’ll follow you and we’ll meet right now.”
There was still some hostility left in his voice, but Pooja didn’t notice it. “Okay, come on then!”
She headed back towards the village, humming. “Please try to be quiet,” Padmé called to her. “Noone else can know about him.”
All the way back through the village her heart was hammering. Surely it was too much to hope for that noone would look out the window. It was not too much to hope for, at least, that they wouldn’t quite realize what they were looking at.
When Padmé knocked on the door, it drew open a little, and she saw Sola peering over the edge. A moment later it opened completely and Sola held out her hand. “Knight Skywalker. Glad to finally meet you. Come in, you don’t want the other villagers seeing you, do you?”
With the door safely shut behind them, Padmé introduced Anakin to each member of her family, beginning with Sola and ending with her father, who shook hands with Anakin while Anakin gazed at him nervously. “So...you knew who I was?”
“I told you already that Ryoo and Pooja saw your message. After that meeting I intended up telling them most of it.”
“She said you were a Jedi,” said Ruwee Naberrie, “and that you’ve been at the front lines in the war these past three years with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who helped liberate our planet thirteen years ago.”
“I was Master Kenobi’s apprentice until I was knighted, after the war began, and we still usually work together.”
“How is it really going?” Jobal asked next. “We follow the news, of course, but they never provide the real picture.”
“Really?” asked Anakin, who never had time to pay attention to such things.
“It says we’re winning. Are we, really?”
“We’re doing better than them,” Anakin answered, “but they are still causing a lot of death and destruction throughout the galaxy. I’ve talked to Chancellor Palpatine, and he has said more than once that the only way to end the war is to take down both Count Dooku and General Grievous. Without their leaders the Separatists will fall into confusion and can easily be subdued.”
“That’s what the holonet says as well,” replied Jobal thoughtfully, as if he thought Anakin was leaving something out. It occurred to Padmé that she couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t.
“What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you?” Ryoo asked suddenly, much to Padmé relief.
“The absolute scariest?” Anakin thought for a few moments. “Here’s one. It was about five months ago. I was on Kashyyyk. The siege had already been going on for a long while there, and Obi-Wan and I were part of reinforcements. I’d been there a week when I was sent out alone to lead a small squadron of clone troops deep into one of the planet’s swamps. The Wookies called it Tasshuyk-the forbidden swamp-and noone goes in there. But we were convinced that the current leader of the Separatist forces on Kashyyyk was headquartered there, and Obi-Wan and I were convinced that he was someone only a Jedi such as us could really deal with...”
“A fallen Jedi, you mean?” Padmé interrupted. “Or a Sith?”
“Not a Sith,” laughed Anakin, in a way that reminded Padmé that she actually wasn’t sure what a Sith was, only that Count Dooku was one and that they were the most dangerous beings in the galaxy. “But a Dark Jedi, we thought, yes.”
“There were trees growing in that swamp, and they were so large the entire time we were there we couldn’t see the sun. We had lanterns, but something weird kept happening to the light. There were areas of darkness-patches of air-that we’d thrust the lanterns into and they’d go black-the light just wouldn’t penetrate them. I tried running my lightsaber through them and the blade would turn invisible. We also heard some strange sounds, probably animals, but something about them sounded...just unnatural-and I don’t been they sounded electronic, I mean they sounded just plain wrong.”
“We went on this way for a number of hours, until I think even the clones were very badly rattled. When we found no sign of there being anyone in the swamp besides us I think we all started to wonder if our intelligence had been wrong. Though the Clone Commander and I also were concerned about a trap. Normally I would have sensed a trap, but instead I could sense...this darkness that made it hard to sense anything else.”
“Then, without warning, two of the clones fell dead. Just like that. We spent nearly an hour trying to determine why, but we couldn’t find a thing wrong with them, except that they were dead, and that the darkness in the swamp seemed to be emanating from them. I was certain it was the cause of their deaths, but I couldn’t figure out just how it had killed them.”
“We went on-”
“You went on?” Pooja interrupted incredulously.
“The clones won’t turn back from a mission unless ordered to. And they wouldn’t have liked it if I had ordered them to. They don’t care about their own lives.” The complacency in his voice was somewhat disturbing, even though Padmé knew he wasn’t completely indifferent to this. Maybe he was just worn down. “And I knew if whoever we were looking for could do this, we had to stop him.”
“It was another hours when three more of the clones fell dead. Again we tried to determine cause of death, and again we couldn’t. At this point I tried to contact Obi-Wan, but none of our comms would work. I ordered a stop for the night; even clones have to rest. Though we only really measured night and morning by the chronometer; there was no change in light. They slept in shifts. I stayed up the entire night, trying to sense some sort of pattern to the darkness. I couldn’t sense anything. In the morning about half the company was still alive. Again we couldn’t get the comms to work.”
“Another clone died shortly after we got back underway. After that we were all tense, waiting for the next death, but three hours passed. I think we were all starting to think it just might have stopped when four more died. The only ones left alive were the commander, three other clones, and me.”
“The first three died two hours later, and the commander less than an hour after that. I was alone.”
“The darkness was getting thicker around me, but I was getting more convinced I had to somehow find this being and deal with him or her before he or she killed me. I hope I could possibly be viewed as a challenge, and thus not be killed off like the clones had been.”
“The chronometer read that night was coming on when I finally met with a still figure covered in a dark black cloak and hood. I couldn’t see any features beneath the hood. I couldn’t even see any hands.”
“I drew my lightsaber. But the minute I ignited it it felt like there was a huge invisible hand crushing my throat. I couldn’t breath; I couldn’t even stand. I was on my knees, my lightsaber slowly slipping out of my grip. I was slowly sinking into the swamp.”
“I thought I heard laughter, though I felt so woozy by then I couldn’t trust my ears. Then I felt cold, colder than I had ever felt in my life. I was certain I was going to die. I used all the mental energy I had left to try to sent a distress call into the Force, hoping that somehow Obi-Wan could hear it. If I had been thinking straight, I wouldn’t have drawn him into the danger, but...”
“I woke up two weeks later in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Obi-Wan had heard me, and he found me in the swamp. None the troops that accompanied him in died, and though the darkness remained strong they found no sign of whoever I had met.”
“We’ve waited ever since for something similar to happen on another planet, so that we might have some sign, some clue of what happened. But nothing. The Wookies have since become convinced that there were no orders coming to the Separatist forces from the swamp, so the being might not have even been involved in the war.”
At this point Padmé father’s glanced at the chronometer and asked, “How long can you stay?”
Anakin glanced too, and shook his head. “Not much longer, I’m afraid. I have to be on Geonosis tomorrow.”
“Then I will ask you a couple of questions now which I have been thinking over these weeks. Then, I believe, we will leave you a little time alone. First, how do you intend to be a proper father when your relationship with my daughter is forbidden by your Order, and you can be here so little?”
This was why Padmé had not wanted to bring Anakin together with her family. Because she knew he had no good answer to that question.
“I’ll probably be able to be here more often after the war ends. Of course, it still won’t be for sometimes very long periods of time, but I can promise you that I will make every attempt to be here for my family.”
Would this be answer enough for him? In her head, Padmé passed through what her father had said in the past, about how it was the most selfish of men that ran out on a pregnant woman without telling her their intentions first, leaving her to face motherhood uncertain of how to give her child what he or she needed. Never mind that her children would have the same five people taking care of them that Ryoo and Pooja did, and while Padmé was worried about something they might need, that something wasn’t a father.
Jobal Naberrie did indeed look less than pleased as he next asked Anakin, “Why are you putting my daughter through this?”
“What?” Whatever Anakin had expected the next question to be, he clearly hadn’t expected that. “I love her-”
“You don’t love her enough to let her go, or to let your position in the Jedi Order go.”
“I don’t want him to,” Padmé said before Anakin could respond. “I don’t want to let him go either, and I don’t want him to make that kind of sacrifice for me. I initially turned him away because of that, but in the end, I couldn’t.”
She felt everyone’s eyes on her as she said this, was aware of the selfish weakness she had admitted to. “Well...” her father said slowly. “I still don’t like this, but if you both insist on it...come. Let’s leave them alone for a little while.”
Padmé’s family trailed out of the room, and Anakin pulled Padmé close and whispered words of love in her ear that she barely heard. Even with them gone she could still sense their eyes on her.
They kissed several times and then he pulled away. She saw his eyes travel to the chronometer and hers followed.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
“You must,” she replied; his tone had made that clear.
“Walk with me, please.”
Hand in hand they walked through the night, Padmé no longer caring who saw them. Houses gave way to brush and trees without her really noticing. They heard the sound of the nightbirds above them and Padmé felt Anakin’s hand tighten around hers.
At last they came to his fighter pilot. The battered but still bright steel had never looked more out of place than it did then.
Only then did he look at her again. “I love you,” he said, and they kissed one last time, gently, and very, very slowly.
Then she stepped away as he climbed into the pilot seat and started up the takeoff cycle. She retreated to the edge of the fighter’s engine lights, and watched, as calmly as she good, as after one last look he closed the hatch and pulled up off the ground and up to the tops of the trees. She looked up after him, and stood there until he became a spec of light that vanished against the dark sky.
She never saw him again.
Title: The Second Meeting
Fandom: Star Wars
Character: Padmé/Anakin, the Naberries
Prompt: #8-Weeks
Word Count: 2675
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Sequel to Chill Headaches, on request.
By the time she met with Anakin for the second time since she’d learned she was pregnant, Padmé’s belly was so swollen it was an indication of the babies’ connection to the Force and the aid they were giving to her through it that she wasn’t having any trouble walking.
She’d had trouble getting here alone. She’d slipped out the last time, then returned to find her entire family waiting to confront her. Whatever they hadn’t already gotten out of her after Ryoo and Pooja had seen Anakin’s message had come out that night. They’d seen her leaving today and at first had insisted on coming with her. She’d finally begged them not to until they had backed away. She still wasn’t sure if either of her nieces weren’t following her. She ended up walking around the village twice in an attempt to lose them if they were.
At last she walked a little beyond her village, and sensed his presence before he materialized beside her and they were in a tight embrace, the heat from his body warming hers in the cold night. “I’ve missed you, Padmé,” he whispered into your hair.
She wanted to say that she’d missed him too. But she could only think about all the questions of why, why he had to stay away for so long. She would never dare ask them, and she didn’t even need to; it wasn’t as if she didn’t understand. But they lingered in her mind and held her tongue.
“Feels like we’ve been apart for a lifetime,” Anakin continued, then kissed her neck, then her mouth, and that sent tremors up and down her back, and if he wanted her, here in the darkness of the woodland, she thought he would have her-until she heard a rustle too loud to be an animal in the bushes behind her.
Anakin heard it too. A moment later he was down in the bushes, lightsaber blade out and placed on the throat of a frightened Pooja.
“Ani, Ani stop it! That’s my niece! Oh Pooja, I told you not to follow me!”
Anakin hastily deactivated his weapon and retreated, allowing Pooja to scramble to her feet. Glancing between the two of them, she looked frightened, but also angry.
“I wanted to see you,” she said to Anakin. “I wanted to find out who you were. I wanted to see the man who got my Aunt Padmé with two children and then couldn’t stay to give her any help at all, who left her alone for months with no idea how she was going to explain her pregnancy to anyone and told her to wait and wait and wait for months, and then came back and told her to wait again, and you’ve been gone exactly seven weeks and four days and she’s been in agony the entire time and what do you have to say for yourself?”
During this speech Anakin’s face had gone from perturbed to outraged to simply defensive, and he said, “I’ve wanted to be here every single day. But I’m lucky to be here tonight. I should be back with Master Kenobi, but he sent me with Geonosis with a message, so I could stop here tonight.”
“Let me guess, you don’t have time to meet the rest of our family.”
Anakin turned from her to Padmé and said, “How important is it that I meet your family?”
Pooja answered before Padmé could. “If you’re going to keep Aunt Padmé tied to you so that she can’t marry and get her babies a real father, that’s the least you can do.”
“Then I’ll follow you and we’ll meet right now.”
There was still some hostility left in his voice, but Pooja didn’t notice it. “Okay, come on then!”
She headed back towards the village, humming. “Please try to be quiet,” Padmé called to her. “Noone else can know about him.”
All the way back through the village her heart was hammering. Surely it was too much to hope for that noone would look out the window. It was not too much to hope for, at least, that they wouldn’t quite realize what they were looking at.
When Padmé knocked on the door, it drew open a little, and she saw Sola peering over the edge. A moment later it opened completely and Sola held out her hand. “Knight Skywalker. Glad to finally meet you. Come in, you don’t want the other villagers seeing you, do you?”
With the door safely shut behind them, Padmé introduced Anakin to each member of her family, beginning with Sola and ending with her father, who shook hands with Anakin while Anakin gazed at him nervously. “So...you knew who I was?”
“I told you already that Ryoo and Pooja saw your message. After that meeting I intended up telling them most of it.”
“She said you were a Jedi,” said Ruwee Naberrie, “and that you’ve been at the front lines in the war these past three years with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who helped liberate our planet thirteen years ago.”
“I was Master Kenobi’s apprentice until I was knighted, after the war began, and we still usually work together.”
“How is it really going?” Jobal asked next. “We follow the news, of course, but they never provide the real picture.”
“Really?” asked Anakin, who never had time to pay attention to such things.
“It says we’re winning. Are we, really?”
“We’re doing better than them,” Anakin answered, “but they are still causing a lot of death and destruction throughout the galaxy. I’ve talked to Chancellor Palpatine, and he has said more than once that the only way to end the war is to take down both Count Dooku and General Grievous. Without their leaders the Separatists will fall into confusion and can easily be subdued.”
“That’s what the holonet says as well,” replied Jobal thoughtfully, as if he thought Anakin was leaving something out. It occurred to Padmé that she couldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t.
“What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you?” Ryoo asked suddenly, much to Padmé relief.
“The absolute scariest?” Anakin thought for a few moments. “Here’s one. It was about five months ago. I was on Kashyyyk. The siege had already been going on for a long while there, and Obi-Wan and I were part of reinforcements. I’d been there a week when I was sent out alone to lead a small squadron of clone troops deep into one of the planet’s swamps. The Wookies called it Tasshuyk-the forbidden swamp-and noone goes in there. But we were convinced that the current leader of the Separatist forces on Kashyyyk was headquartered there, and Obi-Wan and I were convinced that he was someone only a Jedi such as us could really deal with...”
“A fallen Jedi, you mean?” Padmé interrupted. “Or a Sith?”
“Not a Sith,” laughed Anakin, in a way that reminded Padmé that she actually wasn’t sure what a Sith was, only that Count Dooku was one and that they were the most dangerous beings in the galaxy. “But a Dark Jedi, we thought, yes.”
“There were trees growing in that swamp, and they were so large the entire time we were there we couldn’t see the sun. We had lanterns, but something weird kept happening to the light. There were areas of darkness-patches of air-that we’d thrust the lanterns into and they’d go black-the light just wouldn’t penetrate them. I tried running my lightsaber through them and the blade would turn invisible. We also heard some strange sounds, probably animals, but something about them sounded...just unnatural-and I don’t been they sounded electronic, I mean they sounded just plain wrong.”
“We went on this way for a number of hours, until I think even the clones were very badly rattled. When we found no sign of there being anyone in the swamp besides us I think we all started to wonder if our intelligence had been wrong. Though the Clone Commander and I also were concerned about a trap. Normally I would have sensed a trap, but instead I could sense...this darkness that made it hard to sense anything else.”
“Then, without warning, two of the clones fell dead. Just like that. We spent nearly an hour trying to determine why, but we couldn’t find a thing wrong with them, except that they were dead, and that the darkness in the swamp seemed to be emanating from them. I was certain it was the cause of their deaths, but I couldn’t figure out just how it had killed them.”
“We went on-”
“You went on?” Pooja interrupted incredulously.
“The clones won’t turn back from a mission unless ordered to. And they wouldn’t have liked it if I had ordered them to. They don’t care about their own lives.” The complacency in his voice was somewhat disturbing, even though Padmé knew he wasn’t completely indifferent to this. Maybe he was just worn down. “And I knew if whoever we were looking for could do this, we had to stop him.”
“It was another hours when three more of the clones fell dead. Again we tried to determine cause of death, and again we couldn’t. At this point I tried to contact Obi-Wan, but none of our comms would work. I ordered a stop for the night; even clones have to rest. Though we only really measured night and morning by the chronometer; there was no change in light. They slept in shifts. I stayed up the entire night, trying to sense some sort of pattern to the darkness. I couldn’t sense anything. In the morning about half the company was still alive. Again we couldn’t get the comms to work.”
“Another clone died shortly after we got back underway. After that we were all tense, waiting for the next death, but three hours passed. I think we were all starting to think it just might have stopped when four more died. The only ones left alive were the commander, three other clones, and me.”
“The first three died two hours later, and the commander less than an hour after that. I was alone.”
“The darkness was getting thicker around me, but I was getting more convinced I had to somehow find this being and deal with him or her before he or she killed me. I hope I could possibly be viewed as a challenge, and thus not be killed off like the clones had been.”
“The chronometer read that night was coming on when I finally met with a still figure covered in a dark black cloak and hood. I couldn’t see any features beneath the hood. I couldn’t even see any hands.”
“I drew my lightsaber. But the minute I ignited it it felt like there was a huge invisible hand crushing my throat. I couldn’t breath; I couldn’t even stand. I was on my knees, my lightsaber slowly slipping out of my grip. I was slowly sinking into the swamp.”
“I thought I heard laughter, though I felt so woozy by then I couldn’t trust my ears. Then I felt cold, colder than I had ever felt in my life. I was certain I was going to die. I used all the mental energy I had left to try to sent a distress call into the Force, hoping that somehow Obi-Wan could hear it. If I had been thinking straight, I wouldn’t have drawn him into the danger, but...”
“I woke up two weeks later in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Obi-Wan had heard me, and he found me in the swamp. None the troops that accompanied him in died, and though the darkness remained strong they found no sign of whoever I had met.”
“We’ve waited ever since for something similar to happen on another planet, so that we might have some sign, some clue of what happened. But nothing. The Wookies have since become convinced that there were no orders coming to the Separatist forces from the swamp, so the being might not have even been involved in the war.”
At this point Padmé father’s glanced at the chronometer and asked, “How long can you stay?”
Anakin glanced too, and shook his head. “Not much longer, I’m afraid. I have to be on Geonosis tomorrow.”
“Then I will ask you a couple of questions now which I have been thinking over these weeks. Then, I believe, we will leave you a little time alone. First, how do you intend to be a proper father when your relationship with my daughter is forbidden by your Order, and you can be here so little?”
This was why Padmé had not wanted to bring Anakin together with her family. Because she knew he had no good answer to that question.
“I’ll probably be able to be here more often after the war ends. Of course, it still won’t be for sometimes very long periods of time, but I can promise you that I will make every attempt to be here for my family.”
Would this be answer enough for him? In her head, Padmé passed through what her father had said in the past, about how it was the most selfish of men that ran out on a pregnant woman without telling her their intentions first, leaving her to face motherhood uncertain of how to give her child what he or she needed. Never mind that her children would have the same five people taking care of them that Ryoo and Pooja did, and while Padmé was worried about something they might need, that something wasn’t a father.
Jobal Naberrie did indeed look less than pleased as he next asked Anakin, “Why are you putting my daughter through this?”
“What?” Whatever Anakin had expected the next question to be, he clearly hadn’t expected that. “I love her-”
“You don’t love her enough to let her go, or to let your position in the Jedi Order go.”
“I don’t want him to,” Padmé said before Anakin could respond. “I don’t want to let him go either, and I don’t want him to make that kind of sacrifice for me. I initially turned him away because of that, but in the end, I couldn’t.”
She felt everyone’s eyes on her as she said this, was aware of the selfish weakness she had admitted to. “Well...” her father said slowly. “I still don’t like this, but if you both insist on it...come. Let’s leave them alone for a little while.”
Padmé’s family trailed out of the room, and Anakin pulled Padmé close and whispered words of love in her ear that she barely heard. Even with them gone she could still sense their eyes on her.
They kissed several times and then he pulled away. She saw his eyes travel to the chronometer and hers followed.
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
“You must,” she replied; his tone had made that clear.
“Walk with me, please.”
Hand in hand they walked through the night, Padmé no longer caring who saw them. Houses gave way to brush and trees without her really noticing. They heard the sound of the nightbirds above them and Padmé felt Anakin’s hand tighten around hers.
At last they came to his fighter pilot. The battered but still bright steel had never looked more out of place than it did then.
Only then did he look at her again. “I love you,” he said, and they kissed one last time, gently, and very, very slowly.
Then she stepped away as he climbed into the pilot seat and started up the takeoff cycle. She retreated to the edge of the fighter’s engine lights, and watched, as calmly as she good, as after one last look he closed the hatch and pulled up off the ground and up to the tops of the trees. She looked up after him, and stood there until he became a spec of light that vanished against the dark sky.
She never saw him again.