OMFG! Anakin might do ~something~ *pearl clutch* (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} darkforcerising) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} makebelievelog,@ 2013-02-22 20:36:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What: Walking up and realizing the world is very, very wrong!
When: Thursday morning
Where: Anakin and Padmé’s bedroom (even if Padmé doesn’t claim that ownership)
Rating/Warnings: Angst and woe, mentions of Siths doing evolnesses
Status: Complete
The night had offered Anakin no new visions of what was to come, blessedly, he’d been able to get a few solid hours of sleep because of this divine reprieve. It was still early morning, the time he would normally get up to start his day with training. But the night had been so kind to him, had given him some peace, and Padmé body beside him pressed against him in a way that anchored him to the bed.
She had been nothing but patient with him since those visions started. He knew his anxiety must be spilling over into her world as well, and he didn’t want to cause her more stress than she was already dealing with.
In an effort to show her that he was apologetic for dragging her into his problems, and that he truly did appreciate all her support, he snuggled closer to her half-sleeping (as she was stirring in her sleep now) form. He dropped a kiss to her hair – which he failed to notice, in this early morning daze, was shorter than normal. Much shorter.
“You make it so difficult to leave you in the morning,” he mumbled. It was a joke, and he hoped he put enough inflection in his tone to convey that. “Why can’t I stop time and we can stay like this forever?”
It had taken Padmé awhile to recover from the birth. Beru had come and helped to take care of her niece and nephew, when she could. Obi-Wan had watched carefully over Padmé and the babies as time went on. The simple fact was that no one knew that Padmé or the children were with the hermit. No one but Owen and Beru knew the true identity of Obi-Wan Kenobi. It was best that way, because the fact was that the twins, and Padmé, wouldn't be safe if they were found. And there were bounties for their live capture.
Every night of the time she had spent recovering, Padmé had been plagued with nightmares. It was trauma, to lie it out in simple terms. She had lost her husband and he had nearly killed her. Anakin had been lost, taken over by a monster named Darth Vader. She knew there was still good in him somewhere, but she didn't know how to reach it. It seemed Anakin would stay dead, for all intents and purposes, while she stayed in hiding with her children. She had to keep Luke and Leia safe.
Tatooine had been the only option for such a thing amidst an Empire that had proven increasingly sadistic and deadly. Tatooine was the only place that Darth Vader wouldn't possibly feel the pull to visit, as it might pull up some remnant the lost person inside of the suit.
Anakin kissing at her hair and whispering sweet words, was a cruel taunt. It was a tantalizing hint of sweetness from time that could never be regained. The irony of Anakin's words was lost on Padmé as she awoke and found she was in a plush room. Her head turned, brown eyes wide, as she realized that it was Anakin lying there.
"No. No, no-" Padmé practically shrieked, pulling away in a speedy jolt to escape the confines of the bed. "This isn't real. I - no. What is this?"
Padmé was looking around wildly, trying to find some explanation or else a weapon.
Being shrieked at by Padmé was not something Anakin was used to. He was even less used to her shoving him away in a frantic attempt to put as much distance between them as possible. It was certainly an experience that scared the last vestiges of sleep from his mind.
“Padmé?” Anakin asked, panic and confusion catching his throat. “What’s-”
In the Force he reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on to shed much needed light in their room.
That’s when he saw how she looked. Short hair, and she looked so exhausted and worn. There was something about the few new lines on her face that spoke of trials and suffering. And the way she felt in the Force…
She wasn’t pregnant anymore.
This wasn’t right.
“What’s-” he repeated because the word seemed to be stuck on repeat in his mind. He tried to still that dread rising in his chest. But he’d always struggled with doing that when fear like this, fear for his loved ones, set in.
For a moment he wondered if this was it, the start of his visions, but there was nothing else registering in the Force, no warnings, no premonitions. Just Padmé and the waves of distress rolling off of her.
Maybe this was another time bending thing the castle was pulling?
“We’re safe, in the castle,” he tried to explain, not yet aware Padmé wouldn’t find any comfort in those words.
Padmé had cut her hair both to lessen the amount of sand she dealt with and to lessen her looks. If someone noticed her, if they somehow were around and found out that she was there, she didn't want to match the described looks of Senator Padmé Amidala. She wanted to be another face in the crowd, not Anakin's "angel." The shop where he had asked her if she was an angel was a speeder's ride away, though she would never think to go back there. Padmé didn't want to think about the innocence of the meeting and what path it had set her upon.
It was a path that she regretted taking so deeply and, yet, she had a hard time lamenting over her choices. It had been the downfall of so many and, while she had two wonderful children, she had no idea what sort of a future they could have amidst a galaxy like the one she lived in.
There was nothing in the galaxy that she could think of that would explain what was going on. How had she gone from a hovel on Tatooine to a plush castle with a physically intact Anakin. "I don't know how you're intact, but - don't tease me like this. I know -" Padmé had a hard time even saying the name, but she pushed on amidst the agony and fear that she felt, "I know what you've been doing as Darth Vader. Don't patronize me. Tell me what's going on."
“Intact?” he exclaimed. But he didn’t get much further than that.
Anakin felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Stunned and having forgotten how to breathe, he gaped at Padmé.
This was so different from their first conversation in the Land of Make Believe. Yes, Padmé had been struck by the revelation of her future, and her fate at his hands. But she had ultimately forgiven him, she had accepted that he had consciously chosen differently and was trying to prevent falling while here in this place. She still loved him.
Something was so very wrong if they were having this conversation… that didn’t even make sense compared to what he knew about their future.
“You think I’m Vader?” he forced out in almost a whisper. He could barely utter the words but he needed more confirmation of what Padmé was saying, despite the rather clear words she’d just spoken.
Padmé may have been looking around the room still, but she never let Anakin fully leave her line of sight. Even as she demanded answers from him, her head was slightly angled down and there was fear on her part. She would gladly give her life to protect Luke or Leia, but this situation had thrown her. She had no idea what to make of Anakin in front of her -
Or what looked and sounded like Anakin. It couldn't be, though. Padmé knew it couldn’t be Anakin.
"The news hasn't been consistent, but I've learned enough. I know what the Empire has done." Obi-Wan had kept a good deal from her, initially. Her heartbreak had been horrendous and, with her weakened physical condition, there had been good reason to fear what would happen if Padmé lost the motivation to push forward. "Why are you playing at this? What's the point?"
With more strength than she was feeling, as she moved a few more steps back to distance herself, and stated rather than asking, "And tell me where the children are."
That was as clarifying as it was confusing, impossible though it was for those two conditions to apply to the same answer. She thought he was Vader, she didn’t know what the castle was, or why she was here. Granted, no one who lived at the castle knew why they were brought to this place, but most people figured out an answer for themselves that worked with their understanding, only the new people were overly concerned with that question.
But if she had been sent back to their universe and then brought back to this place from a different point in time, what she said didn’t make sense. She was slated to die three short years after their marriage, just after giving birth. She didn’t live long enough to see the works of the Empire.
Or see their children grow.
But some questions were second to other, more pressing matters.
“Padmé,” he pleaded urgently. He slipped out of bed now so he could stand and face her. “I’m not Vader. I promise you, I’m not. And I’m not doing this to you. I’m stuck here, like you are, because someone, or something, brought us here. No one knows who did this.”
Padmé was looking up and down at Anakin when he stood, looking for some indication of surgery or artificial limbs past his arm, some indication that he was lying to her. Something that would hint at the physical damage that she knew had been inflicted upon Anakin. She may not have known explicit detail, but she knew he had been injured in battle with Obi-Wan. However, she saw no traces of that. His eyes were blue, not tinged with the darkness and the red and yellow that they had when she had tried to talk to him on Mustafar.
"I have to be dreaming again, or hallucinating -" A dream come in on the midst of night time, which would soon leave her. Padmé was destined to have very little social interaction for however long things stayed as they were. Anyone who had contact with her would be in an enormous amount of danger.
But as she stood there and waited for the dream to somehow end, for the apparition to fade and for the plain ceiling of the hovel to take its place, she found herself questioning it. The plush castle setting was staying and no cries from her rambunctious young children were breaking through what she thought had to be a ruse of her own mind. Her breath started to go jagged as she tried to stay focused and, despite her resolution to stay strong, her hands were shaking. "This can't be real. How - can you not be Vader?"
Anakin still had the nagging feeling that there was something more to this than the average castle timeline mix up. But he didn’t know how to approach that now.
“I hadn’t made that decision yet, before I showed up here. This place can do that. Everyone here is from different points in time. When we leave we’re returned to the point in time we’re from, our memories of this place are erased, it’s as if we never left our home.”
That explanation, no matter how many times it was given, would never lose its weirdness. It would always sound strange, because Anakin came from a world where such things were impossible and he would always know that.
“I know what Palpatine is, but- but I’m not his apprentice. Not here.”
Anakin knew his words probably carried very little weight with Padmé, considering she thought him a lying, manipulative, genocidal maniac who would harm her because of his uncontrollable rage. He needed something more to convince her he was on her side and he wasn’t going to hurt her. Something he might regret doing, but he’d vowed, when he’d learned of his fall, that it was always Padmé’s needs and comforts before his.
“You were here before.” And he wondered why this place saw fit to shake their situation all apart… if Padmé had been sent back, and returned… what of the pregnancy that started here? “But I suppose you were sent back and then pulled from a different point in time. You keep a blaster in your bedside table drawer.” He pointed at the table drawer in question. “That one.”
Padmé was cautious to keep her eyes on Anakin as she made her way to the indicated drawer. She had no idea what to make of this idea that it was reality and she suddenly had to face the idea of having Anakin back, but not having her children. The drawer could've been trapped somehow if this was all a setup and she was awake, she was sure, but it wouldn't have made sense to keep her alive amidst this ruse for so long just to have the drawer rigged with something.
She only looked away to look at the contents of the drawer when it was open. Her royal blaster sat in the drawer. She reached down to pick it up, the object feeling foreign in her hands anymore. It was an expensive model and it hadn't been among the things that she had; she had an older, lower-level model to use now.
She looked back to Anakin, at a loss of words for a moment. She found her immediate thought was a question if using it on herself would mean she would go back to Tatooine. The children had been the only things to push her forward; the idea of getting her want of her husband back and being given almost exactly what she wanted for just herself was beyond her comprehension in that moment. "Is he here? And - why tell me where this is?" She didn't point the weapon at him, but she kept it in her hand. She was still shaking and she didn't want to have the weapon go off on accident.
“He’s not,” Anakin reassured Padmé.
He saw how noticeably Padmé shook and his heart ached. He knew why, if she believed him to be Vader, she had a reason to be so upset at the sight of him. He hated his future in a way Jedi were not allowed to feel, but he couldn’t not despise it so. Or himself for that matter.
“You seemed like you wanted some defense against me.”
Padmé may have been able to breathe a little easier at the knowledge that the Emperor wasn't there, but she still wasn't feeling any sense of ease. Rather, she was feeling all of the pain that came with the reality of her current situation. It felt like someone had put her lungs into a vice and squeezed it shut.
He wouldn't have given her a method to defend herself if he was Vader. This was either a dream, a hallucination, or a moment meant to crush what resolve she had gained over the past two years in hiding. "Ani?" She questioned weakly. Her eyes, wide, had filled with tears. The weapon dropped out of her hand and clattered to the floor, her shaking hand coming up to cover her mouth.
“Padmé.”
When the blaster clattered to the floor Anakin broke position and started walking around the bed towards her. He was afraid she was going to collapse, so much of her looked like a stiff breeze or another confusing truth would crumple her foundation. He was torn between backing off and leaving so she could figure this out without the specter of Vader in front of her or going to her side. In the end he chose the latter.
“You’re safe here.” Even if he had visions of something awful that would happen in the future in the here and now he could honestly say that she wasn’t going to be attacked by him or Palpatine.
"How long will I be here?"
Her husband was there, in front of her. It wasn't Darth Vader, it was Anakin. She had told Obi-Wan that there was still good in him and then she had passed out into the blissful oblivion. She had found something pulling her back, though. She hadn't been allowed to retreat into the warm glow it had offered but, rather, there had been something that pulled her back. She didn't know if it was something the medical droids had done or if it was a Jedi technique or something completely past her comprehension. She just knew she had only had a brief release from the pain, from her heart feeling completely broken, before it had come back. But here she was, with the pain and with Anakin in front of her. She didn't know what to think.
So, after a moment, she cautiously brought her hand down from in front of her mouth and reached forward with it. It was a light touch, a matter of fingertips and extreme caution. She reached out to touch Anakin's arm. To get proof that he was there and the hallucination wouldn't suddenly dissolve and leave her feeling like a fool.
When her hand was met with solid flesh, someone may as well have physically shocked her. She pulled her hand back with a jolt. She was starting to feel moderately woozy. The rush of adrenaline had combined with her disoriented state to result in a bad mixture.
As Padmé took on that look as if the room might be spinning under her feet Anakin reached to steady her without both hands. He wanted to draw her closer, and to embrace her. She may not remember this place, but she was still Padmé. He loved her.
But he didn’t dare confine her like that, she was already so wary of him.
“I don’t know. No one ever knows how long we get to stay. It’s different for everyone.”
Padmé stared down, rather than looking up at Anakin, as he reached out to steady her. She, after a moment, admitted freely, "I need to sit down."
Her mind went away from the situation and back to the twins, who had been down for a nap. She had taken the opportunity to get a breath, herself, and to try to rest. She hadn't expected to wake up in a castle, supposedly in an entire new place. "You said that it will be like I wasn't gone, right? The children - they will be safe and okay? I don't want to leave them..."
“Here,” Anakin nodded towards the closest furniture for her to sit, which was the bed.
“You mean Luke and Leia?” he asked as he helped her sit.
“Leia’s here, just down the hall. She’s… an adult, here.” Anakin was trying to be helpful, trying to find something that would be reassuring to Padmé. He figured knowing about how well Leia is might do the trick. “Senator Organa and Breha raised her well, gave her-” Anakin couldn’t look Padmé in the eye as he finished, “everything we couldn’t.”
He paused and then looked at her again. “When you’re feeling up to it, I’m sure she’d love to talk with you.”
Padmé shook her head, though she stopped the motion rather quickly as it didn't help steady her. She put both of her palms down on the bed to brace herself. "Why would Bail and Breha raise her? Obi-Wan took Luke, Leia, and I into hiding."
"I've wondered about better for them, but - Bail would be an obvious figure to look at." As would any of her family members. If the children went to anyone, it would have to be Owen and Beru or else strangers. Considering the risk that could come from strangers, she wasn't happy with that idea. She wanted better for her children, for their children, but she was wasn't at a stage where she felt she had to give the children up. She had some hope, however futile, that she might be able to reach Anakin within Vader. She had yet to really form any plans to try it, between recovering from the birth and trying to cope with what had happened while raising two children.
Anakin blinked, because that did not fit with what he knew happened in their universe. Luke, Leia, and Obi-Wan had confirmed the future events that were detailed in the DVDs, and there was so much other information backing up the DVDs as well. Though he was sure he shouldn’t bring up that source just yet.
“Because you died, in childbirth, and they each needed somewhere safe to live,” he said cautiously. “Master Obi-Wan was here for a time. Luke as well. They both told me what will happen on Mustafar, what I will do to you. Leia can also confirm it, she grew up in the Alderaan royal court.”
That feeling that something was off in a way that was beyond the norm for the castle persisted. With utter clarity Anakin knew what would happen to him and Padmé when he returned to their universe, he couldn’t stop it, no matter how much he willed those events to play out differently. And yet, Padmé seemed to be claiming just that, that she hadn’t died.
That was impossible – not that she could ‘say’ it, anyone could say just about anything - but that it would be true.
"No." Padmé's voice was quiet, but she said what was on her mind without hesitation. Her tears lessened as she looked at Anakin, confused, "Y - Vader-" The name was choked out, "-choked me. I almost died. I - wish I had, sometimes, but I didn't. Something pulled me back. We went into hiding, as there was concern for safety that made it necessary. We've been living in hiding. I - took a long time to recover, but I lived."
This line of talk, this discussion that she should be dead, brought a sense of fear back into her. Something in the pit of her stomach hardened and she wondered, still, if somehow this would now turn into a nightmare of some form.
Anakin stepped back, only because he was shocked and action meant doing something, something that could help him think. He looked back at Padmé, utterly perplexed. Because what she was saying didn’t happen. She died, Luke and Leia were separated and raised without him knowing.
But looking at her, the worn look on every angle of her face and body, the short hair – he suppose that helped with changing her looks so as not to attract attention - what she kept saying, it all matched. For her.
“You lived?” It was all he could say, because while ‘strange’ was the order of this place and he should just be used to it by now, he wasn’t. Not this. This new kind of torture struck at him in a way that was entirely unfair. He knew the Jedi saying ‘the future is always in motion’ – was he being shown in a very tangible way how that was true?
A possible future where what he did to Padmé didn’t result in her death. He thought for a moment why it couldn’t show him a possible future where they were happy and living together with their love and their children. But then he figured that would be far too cruel.
Padmé had a rather alarming and scary thought occur to her. Sitting there, her mind started to stray to this idea of the twins being raised apart. "Maybe - something happens and then they're separated. They're young enough. They wouldn't remember me, now, if I died."
Her eyes flitted down to the fallen blaster for a moment before back to Anakin. "I can't help but think they deserve better, but I don't want to separate them. I - I -"
She looked down, hesitant to say what little seeming futile, whimsical hope she was holding. She hoped she could bring Anakin around, to have that good in him surface. Now, he was standing right in front of her without any physical indication of Darth Vader existing.
But that didn't mean it was safe. He wasn't harming her, but she was a woman whose heart had been broken and then she had been forced to live with it. She knew there was good, but she also knew of a good deal of bad. "Why aren't you his apprentice? If he were here, would you take that path?"
Anakin shook his head. “There’s something going on here. This place, it’s changing facts and timelines and-” He stopped talking, realizing how that must sound crazy. And it was, but there wasn’t any other way to say it. They had different futures. How that was possible, Anakin couldn’t explain, but that’s how it seemed to be.
He stopped moving then, and crossed his arms and looked down. “If he were here I would not be his apprentice, I would choose differently. I made the decision to follow him based on his lies and manipulations, but I know now what they are, he is, and I would not go down that path.” He said that without more heat than he had intended, as bringing up Palpatine always did to him, and he needed to take a breath before continuing.
“Their mother is just fine, perfect really. The ‘better’ they deserve is a father who doesn’t give into the Dark Side and break apart the galaxy.”
Any progress in Padmé's crying decreasing was lost in the moments after he told her how he wouldn't become Vader now. She didn't know what lies Palpatine had told exactly, but as she knew there was good in him, so this scenario made sense to her. She wanted the twins there, she wanted Obi-Wan there, she wanted a way to fix the galaxy... but for the moment, she was extremely happy to settle for having Anakin.
She didn't know what to make of the idea of the place changing things around. She didn't quite care, unless it meant things could be changed at home. For now, she took the liberty of reaching a hand out toward Anakin in an attempt to get him to come close the gap between them. She wanted a hug from her husband.
"They're the only things that push me forward sometimes, but - they deserve better than me and a life in hiding. I - I keep wondering about trying to reach you, but I don't know how."
Anakin unfolded his arms at Padmé’s silent behest to catch a hold of her hand. He took that step back towards the bed and it was her crying that drove him pull her close in an embrace.
Force, she felt so fragile next to his body.
“Padmé,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes because her hope brought that stinging of tears to his own eyes. “You can’t- You shouldn’t think like that. You can’t hope to save me. The Dark Side, it’s-” he struggled to find a way to explain what she needed to know about what she proposed to face. “It’s like flying with a blind canopy, with the planet above you but your sensors are feeding you false date and telling you it’s below you instead. So you pull up, and the more you pull up the more your sensors warn you you’re flying too low, so you pull up harder… And you just keep trying the wrong thing until you crash.”
He had used a similar analogy to describe what he was feeling those days just before he did fall to the Dark Side.
I’m sorry, Padmé. I’m sorry, I know I’ve been… difficult to deal with. I just – I feel like I’m in free fall. Free fall in the dark. I don’t know which way is up. I don’t know where I’ll be when I land. Or crash.
“Everything I see and hear on that side of things is distorted by the Dark Side and I don’t know what will get through. I’m sorry, Padmé,” he choked out, because by now his eyes weren’t just prickling, they were spilling over with tears. “I’m sorry I ever believed him. I never wanted to hurt you, or Master Obi-Wan, or Luke and Leia, or the Order, or anyone.”
Padmé felt like her lungs were finally let out of the vice and she could breathe again. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, though her breathing pattern remained ragged amidst it all. Still, that bit of contact was comfort. She leaned against him to rely on his strength for just a moment.
"I can't let the kids - not able to have a life. Have friends, a good education. I - I can't let the galaxy go on like it is either. Or you. I love you, Ani. I know there's good left, even when - when it's Vader." Tears continued running down her cheeks, leaving distinct trails. "If there's no hope -"
Her voice caught in her throat, her mind going into a panicked state at the idea. "Maybe Obi-Wan could convince Vader that the children and I are dead - and then take Leia to Bail and Breha, Luke could go to Owen and Beru."
Anakin dropped to his knees so he could be level with her. His hands cupped her face, his thumbs tried to brush away the tears.
He wanted to tell her that Luke and Leia needed her, too. And that their life would be full with their mother. The thought of Padmé wasting away was not an easy one for him to accept. But right now everything seemed to be upsetting and just feeding on those negative emotions. While this was a conversation he wasn’t opposed to having, Padmé was clearly on the verge of a break down, and he didn’t blame her. This was a lot to take in at once.
“Padmé,” he tried to say soothingly. “Listen to me. I’m here. Okay? I love you, I’ll always love you. We’ll start with that and figure out the rest later. I need you to stay with me right now, okay?”
"What if I go back? I - I don't -" Padmé couldn't face the prospect of things being without any hope. She knew that she would forget about this and hypothetically go back to thinking that there was hope. Maybe Darth Vader would give up looking for the children if she died.
Because the simple fact was if she tried and couldn't reach Anakin within Vader, there was nothing that the empire could subject her to that would get an answer to her about where they were. She would die for her children's safety.
“You’ll be here a while,” Anakin answered. “And we’ll figure this out.” Anakin wasn’t so sure himself about their ability to ‘fix things’, he had to wrest every day with the way he used think – there was always hope – it had driven him to reach out to Palpatine when he thought he had no other option. He knew how dangerous hope could be. But when his wife was sitting there before him, her heart threatening to break all over again, he couldn’t not say such things to her. To reassure her in whatever way he could.
“We will,” he said it firmer this time, giving into the conviction behind his voice.
“You can rest as long as you like. I know- I know Tatooine doesn’t have water like Naboo, you can shower here. Do you want something to eat? I can get it for you.”
Padmé relented, reassured for the time being. While she may not have had hope in her own galaxy, or so it seemed, she had hope for the immediate future. So long as she stayed wherever this was, there was some sort of hope. She had to cling onto that.
"Okay." Her tears started to slow again, as did her breathing, though her voice was quiet as she spoke. The idea of a shower did appeal, as did some decent food, but she had little appetite at times when she was very emotional anyhow. Rather, while she didn't know it, what she wanted was rather parallel to what Padmé tended to want on a regular day in the Land of Make Believe.
"I've had dreams like this, though they've never lasted. Will you stay with me for a little while?" It was what she really wanted.
“Of course,” Anakin said without hesitation. Sure, on days when he and Padmé were in good spirits he might decline extended rests just laying about in bed. But Padmé wasn’t, she needed him now. He wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.