Work Text:
“Snapshots of Padmé Amidala’s Life, After Obi-Wan”
01.) Motion: When the young Jedi warrior explodes over the edge of the roof into a dancing flurry of motion – kicks, slashes, spins, somersaults, flips, and, when he eventually touches ground, lunging blocks and whirling parries, all punctuated by a diamond-blue brilliant blaze of lightsaber – she can feel her heart stutter to a stop in her chest, rooting her feet in place, and it takes the grasp of two of her handmaidens and the jolt of forced motion, in time with the electric touch of the young man’s equally intense blue eyes and the sight (from out of the corner of her eye) of it requiring both of the other two handmaidens in their escape party to physically jolt Sabé out of her own shocked frozen stillness, to start both it and her moving again.
02.) Cool: Logic says that eyes so blue – a miracle of water-based colors, blues and greens and indigos and silvery grays all mixed together – should be liquidly cool, and the unfairness of the fact that they burn more brightly than even the frozen laser of his Jedi weapon makes a scream catch painfully in the back of her throat.
03.) Welter: He is both boyishly charming and indescribably beautiful, a welter of seemingly contradictory graces, and it’s shockingly hard, at first, to pin down any particulars about his appearance at all, because every single time she looks upon him, she is without fail hit with such an overwhelming impression of brightness that she feels so light-dazzled and sun-drunk that, afterwards, her befuddled and bedazzled mind runs so slow and stupid that she simply cannot be certain of anything she’s seeing or remembering having seen.
04.) Dance: She literally cannot take her eyes off of the young Jedi – he is watching them all quietly, attentively, his cerulean gaze so steady and unflinching and warm that it feels almost like a touch (like soft, insistent, shiveringly good pressure, all over, like being embraced, held, cared for, cherished, even), but every few moments his Master will say something that will cause him to move ever so slightly, just enough for the light to hit him at some mysteriously exact, specific, perfect angle to make his close-cropped and Padawan-styled hair flare with light and color and life, the seemingly ordinary and even dull shade flaming like a corona, throwing off bright red-gold sparks that dance around him like mad, wild, frenetically joyous, living creatures (like she would like to be able to do, to be free to just whirl around and around him with madly dizzying glee), revealing the seeming dullness of that hair as little more than a pretense, a farce, a wash meant to disguise that glorious brilliance, making her mind race with half-formed, wildly fanciful thoughts, to try to explain away the attempted disguise – and it shocks her so badly, to hear her name being spoken, that she flinches and jumps like a wild bird startled from the safety of a marsh nest.
05.) Shock: She honestly shouldn’t be surprised to find her own reactions to Obi-Wan Kenobi so perfectly mirrored in Sabé’s reactions to the young Jedi – she and Sabé have been inseparable for years (having literally grown up together ever since Padmé’s family moved to Theed and so came to reside on the same street as Sabé and her grandparents and guardians, Siraphé and Alenn Dahn), are so alike that they’ve been mistaken for twins more times than she could ever possibly remember (and not just because of how physically similar they appear to be, either! So many intelligent individuals could not and would not so consistently make such a mistake without an obviously discernible level of far greater than normal closeness between the two girls), and so thoroughly and completely compliment (and complete) one another that their families have often joked about them sharing but one immense spirit between the two of them – but between the distance that the reestablishment of the handmaiden program (and Sabé’s insistence that she be the one to be Padmé’s primary decoy) has put between them and the strain that this sudden estrangement has put on her, emotionally, somehow she doesn’t manage to expect it, and so the shock of seeing herself so clearly in Sabé (over and over and over again) is painful to the point of being brutal.
06.) Alternative: She neither likes nor respects Qui-Gon Jinn – the man is self-centered, irritatingly self-righteous, pompous, arrogantly aloof and coolly distant in a way that all but screams of contempt for others rather than mere self-containment or self-sufficiency (except, of course, for when he deigns to notice that she and her handmaidens are, in fact, beautiful young women, at which point his intense focus and willingness to engage become downright creepy, in a way that makes her skin crawl shamefully), and, frankly speaking, treats his Padawan so badly that, if he were the young man’s father instead of his mentor and if they lived on Naboo, he very likely would have long since had the boy forcibly taken from him, for the combination of sheer neglect and blatant mental and emotional abuse he so casually heaps on the young man – but unfortunately (thanks to the Trade Federation) her options just now are all but nonexistent, so long as her ship is so badly damaged, so there’s very little she can do aside from openly seeming to graciously and gratefully accept Master Jinn’s aide and protection while also quietly doing everything she can, when the Jedi Master’s back is turned, both to come up with alternative options that won’t force her to pin all of her hopes for her people on this one extremely unlikeable (and, in her opinion, downright unpleasant) man and to try to do whatever she can to minimize the damage his mere presence aboard the ship is wrecking on others, especially Obi-Wan and Sabé . . . and herself.
07.) Choice: To be perfectly honest, Tatooine strikes her less as a calculated risk than the kind of suicidally dangerous, randomly made choice one might get from blindly throwing a dart at a flat star chart, but she trusts Obi-Wan in a way that she’s never trusted anyone but Sabé, so . . . to Tatooine they shall go, and the Lady grant it be the right choice!
08.) Explanation: She’s rarely been either so stunned or so horrified as she is in the moment when she turns the corner of the ship’s corridor and espies Obi-Wan Kenobi in the floor, body convulsing helplessly, violently, but the explanation he rapidly chokes out, in order to try to convince her not to call for his Master or a medic – that his lightsaber essentially fell victim to the same clumsy Gungan on board the ship, when Obi-Wan tried to protect the klutzy creature from some of the landing battle droids and, as a result, ending up being thrown down into the swamp, the water shorting out the blade and requiring him to attempt to use the Force to permit his body to simply absorb several blaster bolts from the battle droids, with the result being what he insists in only temporary damage from the rapid and rather abrupt energy overload – is so amazingly awful that she’s left feeling almost stupefied with shock and horror, but for the crushingly violent wave of mingled worry and sympathy and helpless affection that accompanies that horrific shock.
09.) Home: She feels at home, here, nestled safely and securely in Obi-Wan’s arms, completely cried out (at least for the moment) and feeling much lighter (not just of spirit, but of her entire being, the whole of her feeling almost as though she could simply float away on one of the warm puffs of air being breathed softly against her hair, where Obi-Wan has curled himself so closely around her in the process of trying to provide comfort, the solidity and warmth of him all around her – above and below and encircling, her slight form cradled by lap and arms – the only anchor keeping her from simply wafting away) and far more serene for it, the slow, circling motion of Obi-Wan’s strong hand across her back not so much soothing, anymore, as shiveringly sensual in the clarity of exhausted calm, the urge to tilt her head back and search out the lips that have been ceaselessly murmuring words of comfort and calm and strength while she clung helplessly to the folds of his increasingly tear-sodden robe and tunics and sobbed violently until she thought she was going to literally shake herself to pieces in his arms so very nearly overwhelming that she doesn’t really trust herself to do anything else but sit, and breathe, and soak in the warmth and kindness radiating from the young Jedi like rays of light from a sun.
10.) Beast: A part of her wants to snarl like a wild beast at the thought of leaving Sabé virtually alone (without her there!) on the ship with Obi-Wan, but most of her is so completely ashamed at her own selfishness (she cannot trust Qui-Gon out there alone, not when so much is at stake!) and illogical possessiveness (Obi-Wan is not hers to claim or to feel jealousy over, for stars’ sakes! And she and Sabé are separated, because she agreed to be nominated for the throne of Naboo and Sabé refused to let her try to do it all alone and the danger was so obviously real even before the Trade Federation went so far as to merely blockade their planet that she couldn’t logically refuse, when Sabé insisted on reviving the handmaiden/chosen companion program, decoys and all) that her determination to go with Master Jinn soon overcomes her hesitation, and she finds herself stepping foot on Tatooine for the first time.
11.) Twist: The strange little boy from the shop (a slave, for Asherah’s sake! In the Galactic Republic, even if it’s a part that’s also been claimed by the Hutts!) looks at her with so much unabashed awe and adoration in his vividly bright blue eyes that it’s as though he’s been simultaneously sun-dazzled and moon-struck, and it makes her want to scream in frustration every time she catches him looking at her, because she knows that his obvious fascination with her will make it sickeningly easy to use him, to twist him about and manipulate him into helping her, no matter what the risks or cost to himself and his family might be, and she knows, too, that she will do that, that she will use him, no matter how much she might hate herself for it later, because the stakes are simply too high to let her sense of morality make her balk at the thought of manipulating a child into helping her get this damnable ship fixed and on its way to Coruscant (and deliberately putting him in harm’s way, in the process).
12.) Vanish: Of course, he’s not just a silly little boy – he’s kind and caring (compassionate and empathetic to a magnitude she personally thinks would far better behoove Master Jinn, in all honesty, than a Tatooine slave) and warm and helpful and generous to an almost insane degree and ridiculously brave and genuinely good and so many wonderful things that she actually finds it hard to believe that he’s entirely real, sometimes, because honestly she wasn’t expecting to find such a pure and bright and helpful spirit on such a desolate and corrupt world, and, occasionally odd quirks aside (really, an angel? And marriage? If he weren’t so frightfully earnest, she’d be sure that the entire conversation was some sort of odd joke at her expense! Plus, there are those oddly adult turns, when, for whatever reasons, all of that seemingly boundlessly optimistic innocent enthusiasm suddenly abates, leaving behind it someone so intensely serious and watchful and quick and weirdly understanding of everyone and everything around him that it’s downright eerie, especially when compared to that childlike openness), he’s extraordinarily likeable – but even though she very quickly finds herself rather attached to the strange child (more than she really wants to be, in all honesty, considering the circumstances), she also finds herself enormously unsettled by him, both by the way he looks at Qui-Gon Jinn (like he knows the man, but also rather as though he’s intensely puzzled by him, like he’s been expecting something – or someone – else, his gaze often sliding off of the rather tall man towards the place where his shadow rests, as if he’s expecting to find something or someone else there, aside from that shadow) and the way that he keeps looking at her, with so much wonder and adoration in his wide blue eyes, like she’s the most unexpected and wonderful thing that’s ever happened to him and he’s halfway afraid that if he blinks while still looking at her that it’ll make her vanish away into the aether or some such nonsense.
13.) Off: There’s some troublesomely nagging something about the interactions between Qui-Gon Jinn and Shmi Skywalker that feels vaguely and yet distressingly off to her – something about the level of almost immediate (and entirely unearned, from her perspective, anyway) trust and easy, open affection Shmi has for the Jedi Master (Jedi Knight, to be perfectly accurate, though how he could be merely a Knight when Master to an apprentice like Obi-Wan Kenobi . . . well, she can’t and won’t pretend to understand the way that the Jedi Order functions) when compared to the almost blatantly callously mercenary attitude of Master Jinn towards Shmi and her young son – but there are so many things going on and it’s all happening so very fast and she knows that, for many reasons, she’s not operating at anything like her normal mental capacity or full speed, so she doesn’t try as hard as she might have, at almost any other time, under almost any other circumstances, to try to get to the bottom of whatever it is that’s bothering her about it.
14.) Voice: Obi-Wan’s voice on the other end of the comlink feels like a literal lifeline, like the only thing keeping her fraying edges from simply unraveling into utter insanity and despair, and she is so desperately, pathetically grateful that he is humoring her so much, by making the time to listen to her, whenever she comms, that she feels ashamed for the hope (insane, ridiculous, ludicrous, impossible hope) that keeps flaring widly within her heart, every time she hears that wonderfully musical cultured voice.
15.) Roar: The violence of this place – not just of the Tusken Raiders or the Hutts, but so very many of the regular citizens, so bloodthirsty and angry and frustrated with their own lots in live that they gleefully howl for the blood and pain and destruction of others, at these pod races – baffles and frightens her, leaving her feeling bruised and shaken and very, very small and helpless, and it takes all of her strength of character and will to keep from simply closing her eyes and weeping with hurt and sorrow, while the race is taking place, the roaring of a crowd pummeling her until her very spirit feels battered.
16.) Comfort: The young boy is clearly distressed by the attack and their attempted detainment; yet, to her shock (and, if the rather startled and perplexed expression that flashes across Master Jinn’s face is any indication, Qui-Gon’s as well), instead of turning towards Master Jinn for reassurance, he turns about and (there’s no other word for it, really) latches onto Obi-Wan in a way that reminds her painfully of the way that she and Sabé used to lean upon one another, prior to the regnal election, clinging to him with so much forcefulness and such a . . . well, not quite proprietary air, perhaps, but almost, with edges of familiarity and absolute comfort, like Anakin Skywalker feels as if he has every right in the worlds and then some, to be hanging off of the young Jedi as if he were his one and only true friend (the kind of friend who’s so close that the relationship naturally evolves to that of lovers, her mind whispers), and desires to be nowhere else and with no one else, the shock of it so jarring (especially given the look – half open shock and half barely controlled panic, like he cannot even begin to imagine what might possess the child to even think him a possible source of comfort, much less want to cling to him, and has no idea whatsoever what to do, in response to the boy’s obvious trust in and affection for him and even more blatant expectation of receiving comfort from him – that Anakin’s behavior elicits from Obi-Wan) that she’s left gaping at the whole lot of them like a fool, at such a complete loss as to how to respond or what to say that it doesn’t even occur to her to protest when Master Jinn declares that the situation with this mysterious attacker is one that will be dealt with by him and his Padawan and that he and said Padawan have much that they need to discuss until it’s already far too late to try to stop Master Jinn from basically snatching Obi-Wan away from Anakin (all by prizing the boy’s fingers off of his apprentice) and muscling him out of the area of the ship, off to their private quarters.
17.) Flood: She’s sent reeling from the frantic flood of words and tears (“I didn’t think it would be like this. It’s not just the cold. Master Qui-Gon . . . he isn’t what I was expecting. I saw it, before, a little bit, but I didn’t want to believe it. He’s . . . colder. Darker, even, in some ways. He didn’t really care that we had to leave Mom behind and he’s – he’s cruel to Obi-Wan. I was so sure that it would be alright, that – that it wouldn’t matter, that things seemed different than they should’ve been, but I – I hadn’t ever thought he could – I wouldn’t’ve – Padmé, did I make a mistake, agreeing to come? Should I have stayed with Mom, instead? What I thought would happen – what I dreamed would happen – was nothing like this! It’s not right, it’s – it feels wrong. Something’s wrong with him. I agreed to come because I thought it was right and that I could help and that things would be okay, but I’m not – I don’t – this isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t helping like I thought it would. He’s – it’s worse now, I think, since I agreed to come. He’s just – he’s so cold. And Obi-Wan is – it’s like he expects it, like he thinks it’s alright for Master Qui-Gon to be like this, to treat him like he does, but it’s not right, it’s not! You care about him, too, right? You see it, too? I’m not imagining it, am I? It’s really – it’s not right, it’s off, it’s – it’s – it’s wrong, somehow, and it’s getting worse. It’s getting worse, and I think I’m the one who’s making it worse. I’m making things worse, instead of helping! Padmé, what should I do? I want to be here, with them, and I want to help, and to be a Jedi, and understand the Force’s will and do good, but I’m afraid I’m making things worse just by being here and I have a really, really bad feeling about this and I don’t know what to do and I – I miss my mom and he just – he didn’t even try to look sad, he just left her behind like it was nothing and I know she told me to go with him but it’s not right, it’s not right, and I don’t think I should have agreed to come and I don’t know what to do, Padmé, what should I do, please, just tell me what to do to make it better and I promise I’ll do it!”) that follows her simple observation that Anakin misses his mother, at such a complete and total loss for words (and really, what could she possibly say – much less do! – in response to such a frantic, revelatory rush of worries?) that it’s entirely likely she’s never been more grateful before in her life (honestly, she could almost kiss the seemingly perpetually clumsy young Gungan!) to have someone interrupt what really should be a private moment.
18.) Breathe: The boy’s desperate, pleading, painfully worried, tearful face stays with her, as she readies herself for bed that night, haunting her sleep, lingering behind her eyes and remaining there, when she wakes, driving her to seek him out, to attempt to give him some kind of comfort (though what she might say that could possibly calm all of his fears – especially when she herself has observed the same cold cruelty towards Obi-Wan and others, like Anakin’s mother, Shmi, as well as other hints of a vast inner darkness within Master Jinn that the boy suspects and finds so terribly worrisome – she still does not know) . . . causing her to observe one of the most surprising things she’s seen in a very, very long time (in a way that makes all of the breath leave her in a rush, as if she’s been suddenly compressed beneath a crushing weight or between two massive, unyielding bulks, the shock of it so harsh and painfully abrupt that tears spring to her eyes), when she finds the boy not only with Obi-Wan, but clearly asleep and being carefully and tenderly wrapped in the young Jedi’s voluminous outer robe, the look on the young man’s face so open and unguarded (vulnerable) and warm and affectionate and undeniably caring that, even if she still had any air in her lungs, she doesn’t think she could’ve made herself breathe, because it reminds her so much of a look she saw on her own face, once, in a mirror, after tucking an exhausted and sick (with an extremely nasty cold trying to turn into something far worse) Sabé safely away in bed, that (even though she knows, logically, that it doesn’t mean anything like the same thing and that she’s being ridiculous to an insane degree) she’s fairly certain there’s not enough air in all the worlds of all the galaxies of all of creation to let her breathe easily again.
19.) Separate: She doesn’t like this – the idea of splitting up, as soon as they land on Coruscant – but unfortunately the simple reality is that, no matter how worried she is about Obi-Wan and Anakin and the way that Master Jinn has been behaving, neither she nor any of her people technically have any right (no matter how many reasons they might have, both from a purely logical and from a moral standpoint, or how good those reasons might be) to try to meddle in the inner workings of the Jedi Order, and, while the Senate will certainly need to hear testimony from the Jedi responsible for rescuing her and the others, about the Trade Federation’s highly illegal invasion and occupation of Naboo, it isn’t the responsibility of the Jedi to convince the Senate that actions need and must be taken immediately in response to Naboo’s plight, so . . . it appears that they will have to go their separate ways, no matter how much worry (and sheer wrongness) roils in her guts at the very thought of such a separation.
20.) Urge: This isn’t how things are supposed to work, in a civilized and respectable and moral and democratic society, and, between the urge to scream a steady stream of viciously accurate invective at the incompetent, dithering Senators about their laziness and greed and corruption and cowardice and apathetic allowance of evil and the desire to run and find Obi-Wan, so she can bury herself in his arms and rage and weep until every last ounce of energy has left her, it’s very likely a bonafide miracle that she doesn’t suffer some sort of a breakdown, there in the full sight of the assembled Senate, and ruin all the effort that’s gone into protecting and keeping her safe by falling so thoroughly and completely apart that she gives herself away.
21.) Ugly: As soon as she opens her mouth to issue the challenge, she knows, with a certainty so strong that it feels as if the knowledge has sprung from the very depths of her soul, that she’s making the wrong choice – there may be many things about Chancellor Valorum that are less than perfect, but he is, at heart, a good and decent man who has gone out of his way to try to help resolve this whole ugly mess between Naboo and the Trade Federation (he even sent the Jedi to act as mediators without first receiving the Senate’s permission for such an act or even bothering to run the possibility that the situation might require such outside interference to reach any sort of peaceful resolution by the Senate, apparently) and it’s not his fault that the Senate is full of gormless, cowardly, greedy, incompetent, corrupt, selfish, idiotic, evil beings – but she cannot see another way (any other response that could possibly lead to anything like a swift enough resolution to all of this frustratingly endless dithering and therefore maybe, just maybe, result in some sort of action being taken by the Senate that could help her poor beleaguered people and planet) and she cannot simply sit by and do nothing while Naboo suffers and the Viceroy and his cronies profit from that suffering, so . . . she initiates the motion of no confidence, and then tries very, very hard not to look at the Chancellor’s shocked and betrayed and bloodlessly white face (or to try to imagine how Obi-Wan might look at her, when she finds out what she’s done).
22.) Gentle: He is so achingly beautiful, here in the light of Naboo (sunlight is surely his natural habitat, where he belongs. It’s almost as if his skin absorbs the light and reflects it back on some strange wavelength that the human eye can’t quite detect, so that she feels the reflection rather than seeing it. It makes her own skin itch with the urge to reach out, to touch that warm skin, to feel the captured light moving beneath her hands), that she cannot help but reach out to touch Obi-Wan’s hand, the motion light and cautious – a gentle caress that goes unnoticed by the others in the tent they have congregated within to plan their desperate attack, but which causes him to look over at her, to see that she is smiling shyly up at him – yet, though he returns her soft smile with a gentleness that stops her breath, he also carefully slides his hand out from under hers to move away from her, taking himself and all of that warmth and light (and life) back to his ungrateful Master’s side, and she feels her heart helplessly shivering itself to pieces yet again.
23.) Young: She is too young, still, to want what she does of this young man, even for a people who think it no strange thing to elect a teenager for a monarch and judge maturity by the mind and the spirit rather than the flesh; yet, Force help her, she wants this man, wants his seed, can with such stunning clarity and vividness see herself carrying his children – fraternal twins with flame-touched hair cradled securely in her arms as she looks up at him, smiling lovingly at his boyish features as he beams down on his children with all the blazing brilliance of the sun – that her empty arms ache with the loss of the weight of a boy and a girl.
24.) Last: The absolute last thing she wants is to shame or embarrass him in any way, but she cannot understand how an organization that claims such benevolent goodness could ever deny him the comfort of so much as even a single hour in her arms, in her bed, and so she cannot keep from offering herself, again and again, even though he never accepts and she knows (in spite of all of her foolish hopes and dreams and wishes) and that he never will.
25.) Wrong: The Jedi Order claims that love is wrong, that it’s a selfish and dangerous emotion, but she has gained so much from her love of him (even though she knows, now, that she can never and will never truly have him), that she knows, all the way down to the marrow of her bones, that the Jedi are wrong, and that knowledge – that absolute certainty – tempts and terrifies her, both, to no end.
26.) Thousand: She must have told him, “I love you, Obi-Wan, and I will never stop loving you,” at least a thousand times, but she knows that she will say it at least a thousand more – or however many times it takes until he no longer doubts her, until he no longer believes he is undeserving of her love, until he understands and believes that her love for him is not dependent upon whether or not it is appropriate for her to love him or if she can ever even physically have him – and mean it every single time she speaks the words, even though she also knows he will never be able to answer her in the way that she so desperately wishes he could.
27.) King: She wonders, sometimes, how it would have been, if their situations had been reversed – she the Jedi Padawan whose promotion to Knighthood was long past due and he the newly elected King of a planet invaded and overrun by machines of war bought by a corporation made evil by greed and corruption – but she knows that she never would have been able to adhere to the vow of chastity he has so effortlessly upheld the whole of his life, and the knowledge makes her weep in frustration and shame and hate herself for such wonderings.
28.) Learn: She has learned over the years that she can ask virtually anything of him, short of possession of his body, and that he will move sun and stars and moon(s) if he must to give her what she wants, but it’s never quite enough to stop her from wanting to unlearn that one damning (damnable!) caveat, and the knowledge that she cannot leaves a constant bitter taste of ashes in her mouth.
29.) One: All it would take is one word, one motion, one confession of desire or need, and she would make herself his alone, for all time, without so much as a single regret or moment of hesitation, but he isn’t the one who finally comes to her to speak to her of passion and reach out to hold and kiss and cherish and worship her, and, in the end, her soul ends up grieving once again (helplessly, hopelessly) for the one she cannot and will never have.
30.) Blur: He moves to catch her, as she’s falling, so quickly that she cannot even see him, only a blur of brown and beige robes crowned by a fiery corona of hair like the heart of a sun, and she wants so badly to kiss him, in the moment when that blur resolves into his familiar, beloved body cradling hers, in the shadows of the sacrificial pillars, that the lingering taste of his Padawan’s desperate mouth on hers at once makes her want to vomit and to find that young man and bear him down rapidly beneath her slight weight onto the sands and claim him, as she cannot claim the man who is so carefully holding her close against his chest now.
31.) Wait: Things are spinning rapidly out of control, and she knows, rationally, that she should stop, should wait before deciding what to do or say, but to pause now would be to acknowledge the absolute folly of turning to one who should be as unavailable to her as the one she does not just love but is so irrevocably in love with that she cannot imagine her life without him in it, and to do that would be to condemn this young man, this young Padawan, for a weakness she has actively encouraged, and she is already far too ashamed of herself for having been such a source of temptation to compound that damage by causing him such pain, and so instead she rushes, headlong, into his arms, despite the bone-deep knowledge that what she is doing is wrong.
32.) Change: She is both horrified and terrified of the irreversibility of the change she’s so recklessly inflicted on both her life and Anakin’s, and, in a way, the open declaration of war is a blessing (a thought that makes her feel sick all the way down to her spirit, though she cannot even begin to pretend to deny its validity), because it lets her hide from that change, pretending that it hasn’t really occurred (though she’s never quite able to completely forget that it has), behaving as though Obi-Wan should trust nothing has ever or will ever change between them.
33.) Command: He is a man of command and control, a man who clearly puts a lot of thought into everything – every expression, every gesture, every word that passes from his lips, all obviously the result of much careful internal debate, and all therefore carrying an immense weight of power, of charisma and command – and yet he so clearly puts everything of himself into a course of action, once a decision has been made, that she wonders, sometimes (especially given Anakin’s complete lack of control and forethought, even if he also has charisma and command to spare), if the reason he clung to his vows rather than cleaving to her isn’t because she so often succeeds in bypassing that control and making him act without forethought that he actually feared he might lose himself within her.
34.) Afford: She wishes, sometimes, that she were even a hundredth of the warrior that Sabé is (or hell, even a hundredth as good as Dormé is as a blademistress, given that the girl’s talent with blades of all sorts is very nearly as terrifyingly high and all-encompassing as a Jedi’s skill with a lightsaber), if only because it would afford her much more of an outlet to try to work off some of her frustrations than simply running and her usual physical conditioning workouts (which duty and circumstances all too often conspire to force her to skimp on or even skip entirely far, far too often for either her peace of mind or her general level of fitness, adding to her vulnerability in a way that can only serve to continually fuel her disquietude) can generally afford her.
35.) Need: The Jedi Order accounts need a sin as dangerous as desire, and so when he admits that he needs her, that she is both a balance and an anchor for him, her heart stops painfully in her chest, and she nearly blacks out, from lack of oxygen, before the need to breathe jerks her back to life and motion again.
36.) Monster: Asajj Ventress is a monster, nothing more and nothing less, but . . . well, she is also beautiful, after a fashion (just a little bit too curvy, despite hard-muscled slimness, to be convincingly androgynous, even in the tightest of garments, and undeniably graceful and striking, with all of that smooth white skin and those shocking, almost glow-in-the-dark bright blue eyes and that almost ridiculously full and seemingly sensuous wine-dark mouth, which had to be natural because there was simply no way that the Dark Jedi and Sith wannabe would ever be vain or petty enough to bother with such a vividly colored stain, much less go to the trouble of having actual work done on her lips), and indisputably passionate, and highly skilled and intelligent, and thoroughly entangled with Obi-Wan, in a way that often keeps her up at night, worrying, and sometimes makes her jerk awake in fearful cold sweats from unspeakable nightmares, when she does sleep, and that makes it just as impossible to ignore or underestimate what a threat she is as it is to forgive the woman for the strangely both oddly casual and yet intensely meaningful references she makes to Obi-Wan as “my dear” and “my love.”
37.) Contact: The first time Padmé meets Satine Kryze, Duchess of Mandalore, she can barely breathe around the crushing sense of déjà vu and of familiarity – Asherah wept, the woman practically is her, their stories and their initial introductions to Obi-Wan are so similar (danger, war, flight, an unexpected but badly needed ally and protector, and Lady bless, but she envies Satine, envies the woman the months she had of running and fighting and hiding with Obi-Wan, even if they were also accompanied by Master Jinn the whole time and even if the High Council called them away almost as soon as Satine had her world back and her reign ratified by the new government, even if Padmé has actually had far more of Obi-Wan to herself since Naboo’s freedom was regained than Satine ever did, given that she and Obi-Wan have kept in contact, since their first desperate meeting, and behaved towards one another as friends, unlike Obi-Wan and Satine) – and she has the strangest sensation of having come face to face with either a ghost of her past or a specter of her future, so much so that she’s quite certain, afterwards, that she surely must’ve seemed like a vapid idiot to the Duchess, so great is her distraction.
38.) Beautiful: Satine is easily as beautiful as a Hapan noble – tall and slim, with bright blue eyes and flaxen gold hair and perfectly smooth and unblemished alabaster-fine fair skin, some of the overall lushness of her curves lost to height, perhaps, but not to the point where anyone could ever mistake her for anything other than a stunningly beautiful woman, her proportions much closer to the stylized perfection of an old-fashioned hourglass than Padmé could ever hope to achieve without a ludicrous amount of strategic cinching and padding – and she and Obi-Wan seem so perfectly matched and suited for one another that, whenever she encounters the Duchess or even thinks about her, Padmé can’t help but feel drab and plain and ridiculous in comparison, like a mud-hen of the swamps plotting to somehow steal the sun away from the moon.
39.) Hold: In spite of everything that despicable creature did and tried to do to him – all of the pain and worry, the confinement and torture and the losses he’s been made to suffer, because of her and the part she’s played, in this war – the hope (the mere possibility!) of her redemption had such a tight hold on him that Ventress’ death broke something in Obi-Wan, and so she finds her arms opening to him, cradling him with the same fierce tenderness as when she held onto him, that night after Qui-Gon’s death, utterly unsurprised (if, to her shame, vindicated to a degree that makes her feel full to bursting with pride, because he has, after all, deliberately and willingly come to her and shared this terrible grief with her and trusted her to see how vulnerable sorrow and regret have made him, not Satine or Sabé or anyone else but her!) to feel the wetness of his face where he’s buried it against her right shoulder and neck.
40.) Surface: The near-human, lovely little blue-skinned, lavender-haired Senator Riyo Chuchi of Pantora is a good and decent and smart and hardworking and honest and dedicated and idealistic young woman, but she is also still very unsure of herself, especially when faced with resistance or disapproval from the cold and manipulative Pantoran Chairman, Chi Cho, which makes her somewhat less steadfast and less openly brave than perhaps she ought to be, given her profession and the current unhappy situation in which the Republic finds itself, and that is why it’s so very easy to see Obi-Wan’s fingerprints all over the startlingly peaceful resolution of this whole mess with Orto Plutonia and the Talz, and, if the blatantly sky-high level of hero-worship and fierce adoration that frankly over-saturates the young Senator’s voice and manner whenever she speaks of Master Kenobi or the topic of the young Jedi Master is breached within her hearing weren’t so distressingly familiar, Padmé could almost find it within her to be amused (or perhaps even glad, for Chuchi’s sake) by both the apparently sudden rapid infusion of spine of durasteel and the young Pantoran’s fervid, almost zealous desire to protect and defend democracy all throughout the galaxy, the young Senator’s desire to win Obi-Wan’s approval and affection so screamingly obvious that Padmé thinks it entirely justifiable to feel an almost overwhelming need to pound her head (repeatedly) against the nearest solid surface (especially since she is going out of her way to be strong enough to avoid giving in that temptation . . . at least while she’s in public or anywhere that the young Pantoran Senator might be able to see her).
41.) Pity: Satine always looks at her with so much understanding and pity in her eyes that Padmé cannot help but be relieved (and, in the deepest, darkest recesses of her heart, desperately, viciously happy) when the situation with the Death Watch remnants and the movement of the so-called Mandalorian Protectors finally becomes so serious that Satine is forced to depart Coruscant in all haste for Mandalore, despite the fact that her going both weakens the generally anti-war and pro-diplomacy stance adopted by Padmé and her allies and leaves the Council of Neutral Systems (the coalition of allied worlds and moons firmly opposed to entering the war on the side of either Republic Loyalists or Separatists) floundering badly without the direction of its duly elected leader . . . though the subsequent fall of the pacifist New Mandalorian government helmed by Satine to the openly warlike party of the Mandalorian Protectors (though they still claim to be New Mandalorians, afterwards, as though adopting the name of the pacifist party they’ve not so much defeated as overthrown might somehow trick others into believing that the political party the Duchess has led for years is still in charge of the government of Mandalore) quickly makes her regret her relief and hate herself for being glad of Satine’s return to Mandalore, and she is shamefully glad that word of it doesn’t reach Coruscant until after Obi-Wan and Anakin have been sent to the Outer Rim battlefront, if only because it means that the news probably won’t reach Obi-Wan anytime soon and she won’t have to try to find a way to tell him anytime soon that his beloved friend is all too likely dead, now.
42.) Vision: The vision of fire-touched twins morphs, one night, into a nightmare of a boy with golden hair and blue eyes and a girl with brown hair and brown eyes who will destroy first the Republic and then the galaxy she knows entirely, and she wakes, screaming with uncontrollable horror and terror, to realize she’s missed one of her menses entirely and is due for another that has not yet come.
43.) Attention: His name can command her attention as no one and nothing else can, and her handmaidens claim, half teasing and half exasperated, that the sky could fall down around her ears and she would not notice, if Obi-Wan were on the HoloNet – a claim that makes her flush in tongue-tied silence, for she cannot bring herself to protest when she cannot be sure that they are not right.
44.) Soul: Her soul feels as if it were dying within her, but the time comes when she can no longer justify putting off a visit to a med-droid, and the pain is such that she cannot keep from crying and must be blindly led by her handmaidens into the examining room.
45.) Picture: There is a picture of them that she carries everywhere, protected by half a dozen different elaborate codes on her personal datapad, and she finds herself staring helplessly down at his beloved features, too shocked even to weep, wondering if it might not be best to simply kill herself now, before he can find out the truth.
46.) Fool: She’s such a fool that even though she knows, in her heart of hearts, there’s no fixing the mess that she’s made, short of death, she talks herself out of suicide, desperately hoping he’ll be able to pull off yet another miraculous, seemingly impossible last-minute save and find another way for her to salvage the situation.
47.) Mad: She weeps like a madwoman as she destroys her chambers, furiously ravaging all of the fragile little gowns she can no longer expect to be able to keep wearing and the delicate expensive ornaments she no longer feels worthy of wearing, feeling the silks tear under her nails and the frail shell carvings shatter in her hands and wishing like mad that it were her skin and her bones, instead.
48.) Child: The child – she stubbornly refuses to believe her vision of galaxy-ravaging twins may be the truth, no matter how many nightmares she has or how awful they may get – literally makes her sick, and, though she hates suffering from illness, a part of her is also viciously glad, because she believes that the misery is no more (and certainly far, far less) than she deserves.
49.) Now: She’s had to alter her entire style of dress, now, to disguise her belly and prolong the day when she will have begun to show so badly that it will no longer be possible to camouflage the truth, and she dreads the coming of that inevitable day when she’ll no longer be able to hide that horrible truth so badly that she starts to wonder, again, if it might not simply be best to throw herself off of her balcony, now, and have done with it all, before she can ruin both Anakin and Obi-Wan’s lives with her folly.
50.) Shadow: She sees him in every blue eye she meets, and her sorrow is so great that soon the stains under her own brown eyes more closely resemble warpaint than shadows, darkened to the point where it’s no longer possible to cover their shadow completely with makeup, making her wonder, somewhat morbidly, as she contemplates herself in the mirror, if their shadowy presence presages the shape and tenor of things to come.
51.) Goodbye: On the day when she is absolutely certain that she has undeniably begun to show, despite all the concealing drape of extra fabric on the very best of her carefully constructed, high-waisted gowns, only the selfish desire to tell Obi-Wan goodbye face to face keeps her from drinking from the cup of a nonhuman visitor and deliberately swallowing what would, for her, be a deadly poison.
52.) Hide: Her handmaidens (skillful and efficient as always) effectively hide what she is certain is an increasing (and increasingly nasty) amount of rumors and gossip, and yet still she sobs herself to sleep every night and rises every morning to sick up the contents of her stomach, wishing so badly to be hollow and empty that she can no longer hide behind her mask of imperturbability.
53.) Fortune: The messages cost a small fortune to send, in bribes, but she does not hesitate to pay, when she learns that there is a Nabooian among the regiments of soldiers being sent to swell the ranks of the Broken Circle Armada that Obi-Wan and Anakin command, and knows she would have paid ten times as much, if necessary, to contact both the man she loves and the man she is still so desperately and hopelessly in love with, even if, in the end, she proves too much of a coward to say anything about what she truly should to either one of them.
54.) Safe: The fighting is getting so much worse, now, that she’s begun to wonder if it’s wise, to consider Coruscant safe, but she cannot bring herself to speak her suspicions out loud, as a small voice in the back of her mind has also pointed out that dying in an attack would be an honorable way for her to go, and she is desperately afraid of the confrontation that she knows will come, inevitably, if just such a fate does not claim her (and so save her) first.
55.) Ghost: As the days without contact pile up, she becomes paler and paler, until finally Bail exclaims one day that she looks like a ghost and insists that she go home and rest, and she hasn’t the strength to argue, even though she knows she will simply sit alone in the darkness of her room and cry.
56.) Book: As the days in which she so bitterly regrets so much of her life (why was she ever so stupid as to give up Sabé and a real chance at happiness for a damned career in politics? Why did she have to be so pathetic and weak that she couldn’t give up on or let go of even such a patently impossible dream as love and family with a Jedi, of all beings? Why, oh, why was she ever so insane as to think it could be a good idea – much less right – for her to choose to use Anakin as a substitute for Obi-Wan? And for Asherah’s sake, why is she still alive and carrying this child, when she knows that nothing good can possibly come of this situation?) that she honestly wonders if it might not have been better for the galaxy altogether if she’d simply never been born at all start to outnumber the days in which she can fool herself into believing that things might yet turn out alright, if only she continues to hold on to hope, she begins to feel, increasingly, that the book of her life is nearly complete, and she fears so much the kind of afterword she might engender that she begins to start nervously at sudden noises and shadows, until her handmaidens become so afraid that she will have a nervous breakdown in the midst of some Senate or committee meeting that they finally insist that she begin to take calming draughts, in hopes of taming her nerves.
57.) Never: “I’ll never stop loving you,” she whispers, alone, into the darkness and silence, and, despite everything that has happened, it is no less true now than it was when she first laid eyes upon him, whirling and somersaulting and drop-kicking his way into her heart during that first fateful rescue, on Naboo.
58.) Sing: She cannot keep anything down, and the blood sings in her ears so that she often cannot tell exterior noises from the interior din of that rushing hum, the illusion of music lulling her to drift and dream of smiling bright blue eyes and sun-touched hair and ’saber-calloused hands cradling her body with infinite tenderness, gently guiding her to the steps of a dance older than time itself.
59.) Sudden: A sudden outpouring of rich melodic laughter knifes through the noise of the sitting room, and she knows instantly who it is and so doesn’t look up, because seeing his face on the HoloNet now would only make the painful cramping in her stomach worse.
60.) Stop: She wants so badly to stop that she’s begun to have dreams of dying that make her smile maniacally in her sleep, worrying her handmaidens so much that they’ve stopped letting her go anywhere by herself – even into the ’fresher, to use the necessary – because they’re afraid of what she might do, if left alone.
61.) Time: Time has gone oddly fluid and strange, some days flowing past in a never-ending rapid stream while some minutes freeze in place and seem to endure forever, and she wishes so badly that he were here with her and despairs so of all the time she’s had with him that she’s squandered that not even the calming draughts are enough to keep her from bursting into tears in the midst of her afternoon tea.
62.) Wash: She dreams so constantly of the gentleness of his lightsaber-hardened hands (warm and smelling of sunshine and clean wind, of soft rain, of springtime and life and light and Light) upon her that, one day, when the two newest handmaidens are washing off the chalky pale pancake makeup slathered upon the shadows under her eyes (which does nothing, really, but turn their blackness to a cool blue stain that reminds her of his eyes and makes her want to cry) with coolly precise movements softened by heart-crushing tenderness, she wants to scream so badly that she finally gives in and does, keening like a wounded beast before her vanity mirror.
63.) Torn: She’s torn in so many directions that she no longer knows whether she’s coming or going, and, when she visits Mon Mothma one day and the Chandrilan Senator (yet another beautiful young woman who all too often looks at Obi-Wan with an expression of awe-struck adoration) insists on letting Padmé lie down for a nap in Mon’s own bed and giving her a pill that will make sure she sleeps, she swallows it without question, half hoping it will tear the burden she’s carrying from her and so make the decision she’s too afraid to make for herself.
64.) Nightmare: Her sleep, such as it is nowadays, is constantly haunted and broken by a recurrent nightmare in which an indistinct figure garbed in an elaborately embroidered and deeply cowled and hooded black robe steals into her private chambers at night to place an ugly, corpse-colored hand on her belly and laugh, and laugh, and laugh, until her head is ringing with the shrieking din of echoes of evil, self-satisfied cackles and she wakes from a combination of sheer horror and terror and rage, shaking so badly that she cannot even hold the cups of calming herbal tea her handmaidens bring to try to soothe her jangled nerves, the awful suspicion that it is the hidden Sith Lord who is so frightfully pleased with her condition always more than enough to make her break down in a bout of weeping so hysterical that she can tell her handmaidens are afraid for both her sanity and the baby’s health . . . sentiments that, unfortunately, merely make her laugh, uncontrollably and shrilly, while crying, until she feels so wrung out and frayed down and used up that not even fear of the nightmare’s return is enough to continue to keep her conscious any longer.
65.) History: It’s incredibly strange to think that the battle that is sweeping ever more rapidly down upon them will one day be regarded as little more than a part of the Republic’s history, but she hopes, with all her might, that it will also be remembered as the tipping point that kept the course of events from conforming with her nightmares, and so she welcomes the noise of the Separatist droids, when the din of battle finally becomes too loud to mistake it for anything other than what it is.
66.) Power: Her power has always been in her mind and her body – she’s never had any strength to speak of in the Force – so when she can see the death that is coming for her, she is so surprised that it doesn’t occur to her in time to try to warn Bail.
67.) Bother: She’s never wanted to be a bother, and the thought that her doom might drag Mon Mothma and Bail down with her is so painful that she wants to scream out in anger, but by then it’s already far too late to protest, and all she can do is cry out to Anakin and Obi-Wan and hope that they hear her and will forgive her for her weakness when she is gone.
68.) God: The humans of Naboo have no organized religion, as such, being spiritual and idealistic and conscientious in nature rather than dogmatic in their beliefs and morals and ideas, and trusting strongly in the Force as a sort of elemental and eternal power of life (which they generally refer to as Asherah, the Lady of Light and the Mother of Life and of the Seas, though to be fair the Lady is also given many other ceremonial names – such as Shiraya, Lady of Moons, and Vima, the All-Mother – in honor of the many different aspects of all the myriad forms of life within the province of Her all-pervasive embrace, and there are some who devote themselves specifically to one aspect or another of the Lady, if they feel that they are called to do so), rather than blindly worshiping some kind of strange, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing (and therefore endlessly proven to be utterly lacking in any real sense of justness or compassion) deity; Obi-Wan has been her personal god for so long and she’s so afraid that her mistakes are going to shatter him, though, that she finds herself welcoming the end, when it rushes towards her, as the only possible way out still left open to her.
69.) Wall: She wakes crumpled against a wall she has slammed against so hard that it has literally broken her, and she smiles up at Mon Mothma so sweetly through her pain that the Senator instinctively recoils a little, horrified by the thought that her fellow Senator and friend might wish for death instead of wanting to rage and fight against it.
70.) Naked: She always felt oddly naked, in Obi-Wan’s presence, and the sensation returns as she presses the necklace of hair formed from Anakin’s Padawan braid into Mon Mothma’s hands, her friend’s assumption that the beloved she’s spoken of who gave that token to her is Obi-Wan rather than Anakin stripping her bare and leaving her feeling oddly light.
71.) Drive: She always thought that her drive was a gift, not a flaw, but as she lays there, dying, she knows that Palpatine used that determination and ambition as a means to a terrible end, and she desperately hopes that her death, now, will be enough to forestall the coming of that end.
72.) Harm: If anyone speaks of her death to Anakin before Mon Mothma can bring the news to Obi-Wan, then she knows that the harm she has inflicted will be more than enough to destroy the two men who mean the most in all the worlds to her, and so when the spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn (a man she has never fully trusted nor been able to truly respect or like, given his treatment of Obi-Wan) offers to help her see to it that it will be Obi-Wan who breaks the news to Anakin, she accepts his proposal without so much as an instant’s hesitation.
73.) Precious: Obi-Wan is infinitely precious to her, she cares a great deal for Anakin, and she knows how precious Anakin is to Obi-Wan, and so she rejoices uninhibitedly when their mouths meet in their first kiss.
74.) Hunger: Their hunger for each other is as boundless as her joy for them, and, when she finds that she can help to give those two wonderful men the flame-touched children she used to dream about so often, she is so hungry to help them that she nearly forgets herself and kisses Anakin, for giving her the chance to by bullying her into staying in her sister’s body long enough to give all of her other family members a proper goodbye, so happy that she can’t even bring herself to properly regret the fact that she still won’t have a chance for a really proper farewell for her handmaidens (especially Sabé, who deserves so much more than just the few buttons she’ll have time to press for the standing file and orders she’s had ready for years, in the event of her untimely demise).
75.) Believe: They have come to trust and believe in one another as much as they love each other, and she is so perfectly content to find her belief in them proven right that she slips loose of her borrowed second body and into the Force with a smile, as certain as ever that she will never stop loving Obi-Wan and no longer able even to regret the fact that she was not the one who would share his heart and soul and life, not when she can so plainly see how complete Anakin has made him.