Chapter Text
"Padmé, please, you're pacing holes into the floor."
Padmé Amidala's eyes darted to her childhood friend, sitting across from her in the sofa in the living space of her penthouse apartment, flanked by Gregor Typho and Dormé--all the bodyguards she had trusted to be present at the meeting they were waiting to start.
"And you're awfully relaxed," Padmé remarked, trying to swallow the bitter taste of her following words, "For a hostage."
Sabé shrugged and kept cleaning her blaster. "I'm a willing hostage. Collateral."
"Can we not do this? Could it have been anybody else in your place?"
"You're my friend, Padmé. I'm here to ensure your trust and your safety, regardless of us being on opposing sides." Sabé replied, and Padmé sighed.
"This whole week is ridiculous." she said. "It's ridiculous. Count Dooku being more reasonable than Chancellor Palpatine, our countryman, our inspirator..."
"Yours, maybe." Sabé retorted, and Padmé tried to calm the twitch in her hands.
"We've been waiting long enough. Your negotiator is not going to show up." she stated...right as the doorbell rang. Sabé just raised her eyebrows in feigned surprise. Typho and Dormé's hands went to their blasters. "Through the front door? Really?"
"I will go look, Senator." Dormé stated. She walked to the door slowly, hand itching closer and closer to the door...and it was a cleaner, mop and cart in hand.
"Hello." the green-skinned Togruta remarked. For a moment, he seemed awfully familiar to Padmé, but Dormé prevented her from asking questions with one of her own.
"What are you here for? We haven't asked for cleaning services."
"Must be a mistake." the Togruta gave her a smile--and the bin on his cart popped open, an unruly blond mop flopping out.
"Force, was it tight in there!" the Human exclaimed, hoisting themself up out of the bin and waltzing past a flabbergastered Dormé as the Togruta retreated outside as if nothing had happened, closing the door behind him. "I know I'm short but not that short, Sabé. Tell me the truth, you wanted to get back at me with this plan for last week's uncomfortable situation."
Sabé just snorted. "Spare us the theater, Luke. Nothing is going to put Padmé at ease, unfortunately."
Luke. Padmé looked at the Human in front of her, now extending a gloved hand for her to shake. They looked like an older version of Anakin through a distorted mirror, as if she was taking a peek at a future that never was. The Human was shorter, leaner than Anakin, with greying blonde hair that struggled not to keep falling over their forehead and ears, a stronger jaw and scarred skin, dressed in simple spacer attire, with a blaster hanging over their brown Corellian pants and a puffy yellow jacket. Would Anakin have become like that, if he'd left the order for her and just followed his dreams of being a mechanic or a racer?
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Senator. On behalf of the free government and people of Tatooine, the Socialism and Liberation Movement, and the Anti-Slavery Rebel Alliance, I wish to do anything in my power to put your mind at ease over negotiations with Count Dooku and the Separatist government."
Padmé took their hand but gave it only a cautious shake. "I know the Separatist leadership. What makes you think you have anything to add to make possibility of talks materialize?"
Luke Skywalker--Gods, it felt so weird to even think of this name--merely smiled. "Me and Count Dooku have a personal relationship that the Count values very much. And since you're renowned for your ability and empathy in managing your personal relationships in such a way that it aids your political efforts for the greater good, you should see the value in this fact, Senator Amidala."
"I see." Padmé motioned for the sofas. "Please, have a seat."
"Thank you." Skywalker gave a short bow, and sat themselves right next to Sabé. "I realize you may have questions." they said, still smiling, though now Padmé could see that there was more than politeness to it..the smile was tight in some corners, as if full of sadness.
Yes, there were many questions. Many personal ones, most of all, but Padmé was acting as a politician. Here in front of her she had--presumably--the person who had written the note she had found hidden in her apartment, promising her and her husband a normal life and a family outside of their obligations on a faraway world...and she wouldn't speak of it. The war was more important. The billions of other families--sarved, refugee, displaced, imperiled--who would benefit from a truce where more important. Thus she spoke: "I do. For example, what is your official role in the administrations you described? In what capacity are you acting as negotiator?" she asked...and to her surprise, Sabé burst into laughter. And her surprise could only turn to horror as Luke followed. Dormé glared at them, and Typho had the decency to give an irritated cough.
"Oy vey." Luke sighed, wiping a tear from their eye. "Factotum, I guess? Gofer? I do what's needed."
Padmé's mouth fell open.
"You're saying you're not even a diplomat?"
"More of a moisture farmer."
"We are here to talk about galactic politics!"
"I, uh, got a university degree in history in Chandrila..."
"What my comrade is trying to say," Sabé volunteered, "Is that even if we trust the people in this room, my comrade would rather not give you too much information on what their role actually is, so that the Republic may not use this information against Tatooine. After all, talking on a secure, encrypted line is one thing, smuggling a person in and out of the planet is much more dangerous, and the less of a trail there is, the better."
"This apartment is secure, Sabé. You have scrubbed it clean yourself under Typho's watch." Padmé snapped. "I just want to know my trust is repayed with concrete evidence, not statements."
"Then fine." Skywalker stated, and Sabé sighed. "It will be fine, Tsabin."
"Just go easy on the humor." Sabé's smile was tired. "Padmé does deserve simplicity after how much we frayed her nerves."
"Simpler than this." Luke made a similar, painful smile. "Senator Amidala, you ask for my role. I'm a SOLIRMO advisor on national and international policy. Before that I've been a teacher, an archeologist, a soldier, and a farmer. Always things that life threw at me. We Tatooine people put to use everyone according to their experience. We don't yet have universities to teach political science, since we barely had schools up until a year and change ago." the Human shrugged. "You, Senator, are a politician by choice. Because you had ideals and you wanted to fight for them. That's...noble. Humbling, surely. But me and all of my comrades...politics for us a necessity. A necessity to survive. You want me to have credentials, qualifications, all I can give you are the scars I received on the battlefield for the rights of my people. I speak to you because I've fought, I've killed, I've spilled my own blood for the rights of my people, and as such my people trust me. I hope that's enough."
Padmé listened to each word carefully, weighing them. Indeed, Luke Skywalker was no politician. No politician would have dared be so prosaic about themselves. Even deflective self-deprecation would have more play to it than whatever Luke Skywalker was doing. But Padmé too had a part to play.
"I know you're a fighter. Sabé has told me of you. Some might say you're a leader...the leader, even." she said, and Skywalker's smile cut across their face.
"Please, Senator. This is not about who I am. This is about negotiations."
"How can I trust you to be honest in negotiation when you will not be honest about yourself and be who you clearly are? You're a shadowy figure, 'advisor'. You use agents to stalk me, to plant messages to me, you refuse to show your face when addressing the Galaxy and try to paint yourself as a nobody when I have seen the video of the IGBC heist and I can tell that--"
"Tea?" a mug floated towards Padmé interrupting her thoughts. "I prefer hot chocolate myself."
Padme's hands tightened into fists in her lap. "You don't care about a word I'm saying."
"No." Skywalker seemed to produce a mug of hot chocolate out of thin air and proceeded to drink from it. "I do wish I could be personally open to you, Senator--I really wish I could. I wish we could just talk about the people who have managed to mark both our lives. I wish we could be just two people, fully honest with each other. Free. But we're politicians. And we've got a truce to this war discuss. Therefore, who am I, and who am I to you, is stuff that just doesn't matter."
"Fine." Padmé forced out. "What are you asking Dooku?"
"All that he has promised in his second Raxus Address last week and more. Legalizations of unions and political parties, redistribution of profits from capitalists to the workers, and a ban on the persecution of our actors."
"So, you're following the same playbook you followed with Mandalore. Forcing another government to adopt your political program in exchange for stability, so you can replace it slowly from the inside." Padmé's lips pursed in disgust. "And I suppose you want Dooku to walk free, regardless of how many times he has tried--and sometimes succeeded--to assassinate our own."
Skywalker's blue eyes peered up at her from behind the mug. "Would you truly mind socialism, Senator? Would you truly mind production and services to be collectively organized by society according to the people's needs instead of profit?" Luke set the mug down on the wide coffee table behind the two sofas. "Sure, we're using every dirty trick in the book to ensure it. Sure, we're tearing apart the Republic to do it. So what? The Republic is acting against its people's interests. Its people have a right to tear it down if they so wish, and replace it with a system similar to ours if they so wish. What legitimacy would you have in their eyes if you tried to stop us from helping them?"
"The people have elected me. They trust me to fight for their rights."
"And you've elected Palpatine, who's pissing on every one of your attempts to do so." Luke sighed. "Senator. Your Clones' rights bill is a reality on Tatooine and all ASRA territories. The Chancellor could have signed it into law by executive order thanks to his emergency powers, but he didn't. At the negotiating table, we'll ask both the Republic and the CIS to adopt it and enforce it, for clones and for droids, as we did from the birth of our government."
"And how will you convince a Senate who voted it down?"
"Who knows? Maybe both of your armies will start deserting to us if you refuse."
"Neither clones nor droids can desert."
"Why? Do clones have chips in their brains forcing them to obey a programming like droids do?" Skywalker's smile was all too coy as they said that. It made Padmé's skin crawl. It couldn't be possible. It was an absurdity to think of it. And yet... they kept talking as if they were just stating plain facts. "Senator, one of our conditions is literally something you want to happen. The enactment of a law you wrote. When are you going to get a better offer than that?"
"But I didn't write it." Padmé said. "Anakin did." Skywalker's pupils dilated. "He's really coming, in the end. You'll have to be honest, finally."
Skywalker's face darkened. "Then you should have told him to come sooner."
"Why?" Padmé palmed the dagger hidden in the wrist lining of her dress. "Are you going to harm me now that I've told you this?"
"Not me." Skywalker said, and dived towards her. Padmé took the dagger out, but Skywalker tackled her into the sofa--right as the window behind them and Sabé exploded.
Padmé's ears were deafened by the explosion. Shards of glass, steel, wood and concrete showered them, and smoke filled the room.
"Take cover!" Sabé shouted, taking our her vibroblade and blasting at the figures stepping through the smoke. A clone trooper painted in the distinct red of the Coruscant police forces cried out and fell out of the window. More followed, wielding shields and blasters, wounding Dormé and Typho in the leg and shoulder respectively while they took down two of their number.
"Force, I'm getting too old for this shit." Luke groaned, lifting themselves off Padmé. "How about calming down and talking this out peacefully?" they said and then, white with soot and dust and glass all over, they twitched the fingers of their right hand. The clones were all immediately slammed to the floor, as if gravity had shifted for them and for them only...except one, who stared down Skywalker with a minigun in their hands.
"No." the clone said, and punched Skywalker so hard the Human was thrown back behind the Sofa.
"Luke!" Sabé cried out, shooting at the clone without missing a beat. Blaster bolts sailed through the hair and shattered the clone's wristguards, chestplate and helmet, but the clone didn't go down, merely took out his own blaster pistol and shot back. Sabé cursed, was winged in the forearm, threw herself behind the Sofa, and shot back. Padmé herself cried out and went to stab the opponent. Clones or not, they'd hurt Typho and Dormé--she couldn't let them get away with it.
Her dagger found the side of the clone, piercing through the armor a good four inches, but the soldier merely backhanded her to the floor. "What are you waiting for?" he called out to his brothers. "Get the Senator!"
"On it." the other clones spoke as one man, their voices a drone-like echo, and grabbed Padme by the arms and legs.
"Get off her!" roared Sabé, rushing the clone with her vibroblade. The weapon tore through the plastoid of the armor, but the clone knocked Sabé's grip loose on it with a headbutt.
"You women like to stab." the clone sneered, seemingly unfazed by the injury, before taking out a small, short sword out of a scabbard on his back and stepping over Sabé's supine, dazed form. "But I can play this game too."
"No!" Padmé cried out as the two other clones holding her secured her and themselves to ziplines dangling over to the hole they'd blown in the wall. Dormé and Typho, finding more strength at the last minute, staggered up again and shot the clone again, but again the clone barely seemed to notice the blaster bolt hitting his body...and pinned Sabé's body to the floor via sword to the stomach.
"Bastard!" they heard them cry, echoed, much more coldly, by Luke, who had risen from behind the sofa, the left side of their face a swollen mess.
"Sorry we can't stay and chat." he said, putting his sword back in his scabbard and letting a small, silver ball fall to the floor right next to Sabé's body.
"That's a thermal detonator." Typho paled, and the clone laughed as he attached himself to the last zipline and disappeared with Padmé and his cohorts. As the zipline was retracted, Padmé barely managed to see her security chief be pushed away by Luke, who threw themselves over the grenade--and then the building was rocked by another explosion.
"We have neutralized the terrorist." the clone holding her said, speaking into a comm. "Extraction in progress."
Padmé felt tears sting her eyes, but push them back. Damn it, Anakin, where are you?
-line break-
Anakin walked through the smokes, sparks and flaming appliances and sofa of his wife's apartment, heart racing with fear. He could feel her presence moving away, but he couldn't pinpoint her. Where was she being taken? What had happened here? He could see Dormé, Typho...unconscious, or straight up dead? Fear just kept building in the pit of his stomach.
"Padmé?"
Color drained from his face as he seemed to see her broken body strewn across the floor, next to an unknown corpse with smoke coming out of its chest.
"Padmé!" he cried, and knelt by her, tears welling up in his eyes, grabbing her shoulders and noticing the gaping wound in her stomach.
"Force, I hate when this happens." the corpse right next to him sit up as he was doing so, smoking chest and all.
Anakin just stared in horror. It was...himself?
"Huh." himself said. "So that's how my face must have looked in the cave on Dagobah." then they rose, cracked their neck and went to crouch over Padmé's body. They held their hands out over her, and as they did so...the wound magically stitched itself back together again.
"Fuck!" Padmé gasped, sitting back up and grabbing hold of Anakin. "Anakin--hey've taken her--clones--"
"What?" Anakin was on the verge of madness. "Who? Who did they take? Who took who? What is happening?"
"Padmé." Padmé stated, and on that moment, Anakin felt immensely stupid, as he'd managed to feel only a few other times in his life, and always for the same reason as he did in that moment.
"You're Sabé." he said, and felt his anger move from himself to her. "What happened? Where's Padmé? Why did you let her be taken away?"
"I was impaled with a sword by an indestructible man. What's your excuse? You were running late?" Sabé retorted, and she saw Anakin's face flush red. "Great Naboo. I keep asking myself what Padmé sees in you."
"What Kori sees in me. The Skywalker Stupid Gene, I guess." Anakin watched his clone--admittedly, a way shorter clone--bend over Typho and Dormé's prone forms and magically heal them as they'd done with Sabé before pulling the familiar Starkiller mask over their soot-and-dust-covered face. "These two are stabilized, Anakin can finish healing them."
"You can heal people without a healing trance?" Anakin asked, his confusion and correlated headache growing bigger and bigger by the second. "Not even Temple healers can do that--and I'm not even one."
The Starkiller sighed, putting on a pair of Mandalorian gauntlets. "Well, I suppose that's the problem with standardized testing in education. Stifles creativity in young students."
"Starkiller," Sabé pointed out in the driest tone Anakin had ever heard, "Your chest is still on fire."
Starkiller looked down. Sure enough, flames were still licking at their chest. "Aw, nuts. I liked this outfit." they said, and proceeded to rip it off only to reveal the completely shattered and charred front of the blue armored breastplate beneath. "Alright," they said, pulling a red scarf and an orange overcoat--orange like their pants had seemed to turn into--out of thin air. "Be back with your wife in a jiffy, junior."
"I see them." Sabé said, pointing to a speeder that was sprinting far away from the building. "modified airspeeder, four clones and her. Ninety klicks a hour, southwest and downwards, seven-hundred-meter distance already."
"Alright. Close enough."
"Wait, I have a speeder outside." Anakin protested. "You can't possibly grab them at this distance or jump all the way there."
"I can." Starkiller just turned at him and smiled, as the air started vibrating with electricity. "'Cause I'm supercool."
-line break-
"Whatever is the reason why you're doing this, you'll be court-martialed." Padmé said, trying to calm her trembling hands as the clones handcuffed her and forced her into the speeder waiting atop an empty floor in Republica 500 that was under renovation. The clones around her had not spoken a word since they'd extracted her, after murdering her friends and what little remained of Anakin's blood family.
"No court is going to convict us for killing terrorists, Senator." the clone waiting for them in the driver's seat. "We are soldiers of the Republic carrying out its orders."
"You killed my staff!"
"Unfortunate collateral damage." another clone said. "They should not have gotten themselves involved."
"And they opened fire on us." the third clone said. "Opening fire on Republic troops is a crime punishable with sentences of degrees varying according to severity until penalty of death."
"And what are you going to sentence this Senator of the Republic to?" Padmé spat as the speeder drove away from the building...and downards. "You just murdered the only witnesses to my death penalty."
"Yes." the fourth and last clone--the one she'd seen shot and stabbed and stabbed herself, looking none the worse for wear, said--turned to her, the single blue eye visible through the blaster bolt-caused hole in his helmet fixing onto her like a knife at her throat. "Traitors must pay the price, Senator."
A chill went down Padmé's spine as the car lifted, gained speed and turned towards the direction of the Industrial District. Clones didn't have blue eyes. "You're not a clone." she said, and the clone sitting in the shotgun seat turned to look at them in shock.
"He isn't?" he asked, and then seemed to freeze on the spot. "Wait. Behind us--enemy jumping towards us!"
"That's impossible, no being can jump that long--" the driver said, but he couldn't manage to finish the sentence.
Lightning comes in threes, they say. First the flash, then the crackle through the sky, and finally the thunder. And so it went. First, green light bathed the vehicle, then the clones driving were flung out of the vehicle by a roundhouse kick, and finally, Ka'Lir the Starkiller landed and rose to their feet and the hood of the car, golden hair and red scarf billowing in the wind together with their orange longcoat, standing tall despite the car driving at over a hundred kilometers per hour.
"Headed for the Industrial District, I see." they remarked, without moving to gain hold of the driving controls. "I'll give you one chance to surrender."
"This is impossible. What you did--" the last remaining real clone stammered in fear. "What even are you?"
"A chance for payback." the non-clone trooper said, and took the vibroblade out of his body, Padmé gasping in horror as he slammed it end-first in the last remaining clone's throat. "It's once again me, you and a damn woman, huh?" he sneered, getting on top of the car himself, taking out the vibroblade out of his victim's throat and his sword out of his scabbard and standing over the seat. "But this time you don't have the Force to help you."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do, Starkiller. On Tatooine you may have wiped my memory of your real name, but I recognize the twitch in your finger when you use the Force, even if you barely move your hands at all, unlike the Jedi. And you've been twitching like crazy since you got here, wondering what's wrong with me, why you can't seem to affect me with the Force."
"Whatever freakish ritual Sidious may have done on you, there are more ways to killl you than just Force-chucking you out of a car from five thousand levels in the air."
"Wouldn't work anyway." the assassin laughed, and lunged at Starkiller. The rebel reacted by drawing their lightsaber to cut him in two on the draw--but their green blade crackled into nothingness against the clone's sword. Cursing, Ka'Lir sidestepped the stabbing lunge and put away their now-useless lightsaber with their left hand, and with their right one punched the flat of the assassin's blade into dust.
"Cortosis." they said through gritted teeth. "Capable of shorting out a lightsaber, just like beskar, but not of surviving afterwards, unlike it."
"That punch took something out of you, huh?" the assassin chuckled, taking Padmé's dagger out of his chest to wield replace his shattered sword. "Even using the Force at all, on yourself or something else, it's difficult just by sheer virtue of being in my presence."
"Not enough for you to win." Ka'Lir threw their left hand out, and blasted the assassin's blades out of his grip. The assassin retorted by going for a haymaker, but the rebel ducked under it and countered with a gut punch. The assassin choked out a cry of pain and slammed his elbow down on his opponent, who parried while going for jab right into their jaw, shattering the lower side of the helmet with a sickening, wet crunch of bones crushed by metal. "That's my payback to you, asshole," they spat, grabbing him by the helmet with their left and punching him repeatedly in the head with their right hand until the helmet's side was fully basted open and his face behind it was a bloody, swollen mess. "And this is for the other people you hurt today."
"You don't really get it, huh?" his jaw seemingly fixing itself by magic, the assassin spat a gollop of blood into Ka'Lir's visor, blinding them, and kneed them in the kidney, making them bend over in pain. "And I thought you took that thermal detonator to the chest, not to the head." they stated, taking a standard ordinance stun baton off his belt and slamming it straight into Ka'Lir's heart through the blown-out hole in their breastplate. "But me? I'm even more durable than that." he said, his voice seething with bloodlust at Ka'Lir's cries of pain, driving them down past Padmé into the back hood of the car with the baton jammed into their ribs and hitting their visor and rebreather with fists as it sped away into the endless sprawl of power plants, logistic centers, factories and ongoing construction works of the Industrial District. "On Tatooine you killed nothing but an ineffectual prototype. But I have been upgraded." he continued, tightening his free hand around Starkiller's throat as he kept electrocuting them with the baton. "But now I am improved. And I am here to hunt every last one of you communist scum into extinction for the order I represent. So be thankful I am going to kill you now. You will not have to live to see everything you ever built burn to ashes."
Padmé dove towards the driver's seat. She had to do something to save Starkiller--to save Luke. So she grabbed the gas lever, and.
Just.
Pulled.
The car blew past all it speed configurations to reach two-hundred-and-fifty kilometers per hour, and both Padmé and the assassin were slammed back into the back seats as the car shot through the air like a missile. Padmé was left with the lever in her hand, but there was no time to panic. She slammed it into the side of the assassin's skull, destabilizing their inner ear, and as he fell over by her side between the front seats, stun baton flying out of his hands and into the levels below, Padmé's handcuffs clicked open and fell off her wrists. She turned to see Ka'Lir, hand outstretched toward her and trying to lift themselves off the hood of the car.
"Thank you." their breath was ragged and harsh, but their gaze behind the visor was firm and clear. "Please take my hand. We're getting off this thing."
"No you don't." the assassin growled, rising to grab at Padmé--but he staggered back, falling back between the seats. Shocked, they turned their head to see that Padmé's handcuffs had latched him to the steering wheel. "Oh." he said, and then he looked towards the front of the car: it was driving straight into an open construction site--and it would soon end up straight into the duraconcrete back wall of the place. "Oh." he repeated, and started laughing. Padmé saw that his face through the crack in the helmet had now fully healed.
She took Ka'Lir's hand.
"Now hold on tight and don't let go until we're on solid ground." they said, grabbing her by the waist and aiming the ripcord thrower of their free hand's vambrace upwards.
"You're crazy." Padmé said, but held onto them all the same, struggling not to be blown back by the wind resistance.
"They're not." the assassin laughed. "It's an impossible shot, but only to you. They're just more than they show to you. A nuclear inferno, a desert winter. A maelstrom of horror and fury." he seethed, and Padmé felt herself pale as she felt Ka'Lir's fingers arm tighten around her waist. "Power that could glass this city. We have torn a planet asunder, me and them. What world should we devastate next? This one? Your own? Take your pick, Amidala--you have given yourself to a dragon capable of devouring Suns! Why do you think they call themselves the Starkiller?!"
And at that, it was Padmé that broke out into laughter. "Whoever you are," she said, to the assassin's baffled face, "Trust me, I know better. You've got it all wrong."
"Just leave it be, Travis." Ka'Lir smiled, and shot out the ripcord. Padmé watched the beskar weave hurtle itself through the ar, magnetic pole at the end shining in the sunlight that peeked through the half-finished roof of the building as they entered it, big as a cathedral--and the ripcord attached itself to a support beam close to the ceiling. And right as it went taut under their drag, Ka'Lir the Starkiller kicked away from the car as it hurtled to its own--and the assassin's--demise. Padmé held on as they swung on the rope, soaring through the air towards the freshly-installed skylight, Ka'Lir twisting their body to protect her from the impact.
They smashed through the glass as the speeder car exploded against the back wall of the place, and fell to the concrete roof as Starkiller twisted again and let go of the rope, rolling around for four meters before falling to a stop and letting out a shared groan of pain and exhaustion.
Straining, Padmé lifted herself up into a sitting position and looked at Ka'Lir. Their eyes had gone blank and glassy, fixed into a point far beyond horizon. Padmé reached out to touch them, worried--and for her troubles, Starkiller's hand shot up and grabbed her wrist, squeezing it like a vice.
"Ah!" Padmé cried out in pain, trying to pry their fingers open from her wrist. "Stop! You're hurting me--" she told the blank-eyed warrior. "--You're hurting me, Luke."
It was like a bucket of ice water drenched Ka'Lir. The rebel let her go and shook, frantically scooting away from her and ripping their shattered mask off. "Fuck. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
They were breathing hard as they said so, tears driving clear lines into their blackened, bruised face.
"I'm sorry." they repeated, looking at once utterly disraught at what they'd done and scared of her.
"I'm sorry too." Padmé said, rubbing her wrist. "Post-traumatic stress disorder, isn't it?" she asked, eyes softening at Luke. "It's not the first time you've been electrocuted, is it?"
Luke didn't reply. But at least their breath slowly grew steadier and calmer.
"I thought you were a freeborn."
"I was enslaved for a time. Zygerria. Got too careless in trying to free other slaves." Luke said, as they dried their stress tear and sniffed. "But that's been the only other time I've been electrocuted with a stun baton. The others...." they looked back at her, their gaze so terribly sad. "He's right, you know? The Force is a power that is...unimaginable. You can hurt someone with it in ways that make death feel like a sweet mercy."
Padmé didn't know how to respond. She knew Tatooine people did not cry, but whatever memory she'd triggered in Luke was clearly enough to shatter them.
"May I?" they said, motioning to her wrist. Padmé gingerly held it out to them, and felt her hurting joint and skin tingle away into normalcy. So did all the other bruises she'd received in that day's ordeal.
"Or you can heal people with it." Padmé smiled despite her surprise. "Did you heal Sabé, too?"
Luke made a small, weak smile. "Yep. And not for the first time. Your staff, too...I never thought I'd become team medic." they said, and let out a sigh that shook their shoulders. "It's really easier to hurt with the Force rather than to heal. This...took more energy out of me than fighting with Travis."
"That man..."
"An agent of the Republic. I don't know what alias he may use here. But he almost destroyed my home. He almost killed my whole family."
"I thought Anakin was your whole family?"
"You know that's not true. You went with him to Tatooine, you met the Larses, you heard Sabé's story. Me and him, we got a much larger family there than just blood." Luke said, and sat back on the concrete, sighing. They looked so much smaller now than the towering, mythic figure who had struck the car she'd been taken away in like a bolt out of the blue. And then it dawned on Padmé.
"You're a superhero." she said with a smile, as Luke pulled up their scarf to replace their shattered mask, covering their face from the bridge of their broken nose down. "You dress up like this, like one of Anakin's childhood drawings, to convince anyone might be behind that mask."
"I'm tired of being a symbol. That’s why everyone in our army wears these outfits. Everyone is a symbol, this way." Luke said. "And it's a symbol created by a child yearning for freedom, for agency against oppression."
"You'd do right by that child if you met him, explained yourself, hugged him." Padmé said. "Anakin, he's...he's really just so alone."
"You're wise. Wise like I always dreamed you to be." Luke said, and stood up, helping her to do the same. "But this is all bigger than the three of us. And here, now--it's neither the proper time nor place for explainations."
"What do you mean here, now?" Padmé asked, and Luke motioned behind her with a nod of their head. Padmé turned to see her husband, Anakin Skywalker, approaching with lit lightsaber in hand fron the vehicle access ramp to the roof.
"There are you are." Anakin said, voice trembling with fury. "Now get away from her."