The Moons of Iego: The Padmé Amidala & Anakin Skywalker Website

FAN FICTION : REVENGE OF THE SITH ERA

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Breath

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She can't breathe.

She's not sure she wants to.

Doing so would require making herself a part of that world again. A world where Obi-Wan has told her the unthinkable.

He's lying, she tells herself. She's all too familiar with Obi-Wan's 'certain point of view' philosophy, which she and Ani share similar distaste for. But she could see the truth in his eyes, the spark of grief in their usually wry, now cold, depths. That blue so much like but nowhere near as beautiful as her Ani's.

There it is. The fist at her throat. That name. That face. Those eyes.

It's not real, she thinks.

Then why can't she breathe?

He could never have done those things. Yet she remembers. The curling finger of black above the glowing ember of the Jedi Temple, the fear cutting her heart because he'd been there, and he might be lost to her forever. His seemingly utter lack of caring about the fates of his lifelong comrades when he had shown up alive, completely unharmed. For the first time him not wanting to run away from this world with her.

She'd seen it, but none of it had mattered as that look in his eyes returned - the one he never had for anyone but her - and he'd lowered his lips to hers and traced her cheek with the same softness he always had, had told her to wait for him.

It hadn't ever been in question. Would it have been if she'd known the hands that held her, that laced through her hair, were covered in children’s blood? Would she have cared?

Have faith, my love...

Ani. A person Obi-Wan said no longer existed, had no longer existed when he'd come to see her. A Sith. Even if she had drawn breath she knew her tongue would be physically incapable of forming that word in the same context as Ani, as if it were a trait like tongue-rolling that she literally did not have the gene for. It is not him. Ani could never have done these things, could not have betrayed and murdered so many. She remembers how he was after the Tusken camp, the broken boy cradled in her arms, who seemed to be drowning in the blood on his hands. There is no way he could have done these things and come to her, loved her. No way he could have sworn himself to the enemy of the who he's spent half his life growing to be.

She doesn't want to believe Obi-Wan. And even if it is true, it means Ani needs her more than ever. She knows Ani is still there - she'd lost herself in him as he'd come to her, even after the horrors he'd done, she couldn't have done that if there was nothing left to lose herself in - and that's where the fist comes from.

He is still there. Those things still happened.

She feels a blackness coming over her, pressing stronger the longer she goes without breathing. She clutches the old pendant around her neck, this reminder of the innocent boy who first slipped into her heart as if he'd always belonged there when he called her an angel. And she throws off the blackness, breathing again, thinking of the health of the child inside her, of the children already dead.

The air suddenly flowing through her throat cuts it, and she cries out.

The child. Their child, his child, this unnamably beautiful thing he's given her. She knows it's beautiful, knows it's pure and wonderful. It's the truest beauty she's ever felt, and it's come from him. That cannot be faked, nor the love in his eyes and touch. She knows he can't truly be gone.

And as long as a problem has been able to be solved, Padmé Amidala - Skywalker - has not sat by and let someone else do it.

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She can't breathe.

The same name this time, the same face. Only this time the fist is very real, and everything in her is screaming to breathe.

Anakin...!

She struggles, hoping that her eyes can tell him what his ears choose to no longer hear. That she will always love him, would never betray him.

His eyes are just as blind, and hers have begun to water and can no longer clearly see him.

Somehow, in that moment, a not-too-distant memory flashes in her dwindling mind. The thought, of not being with you... I can't breathe...

She fights the blackness every second she can, and even the thought of her child is no match for the power holding her.

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