Serendipity

1. Incarnation of a Goddess

"Please stay with me, Padmé." Obi Wan begged, with the most heartbroken expression a man could muster on his face.

"I... can't..." she gasped through failing breaths. Padmé was rightfully terrified and scared out of her wits.

When she had asked for Anakin, Obi Wan had just... grimaced? He had drawn his lips into a thin line and shook his head, saying, "I'm sorry, but he's not here right now, Padmé. Can you try to follow my finger?" His voice was kind and tender, yet his words were colder than Hoth.

What was that supposed to mean? "He's not here". Not here where? Did Obi Wan mean Ani was not here in the Medbay with her, as her child - children, she reminded herself, still shocked from the reveal that they were twins - were born? Or did Obi Wan mean Anakin was not here in this galaxy, lost to... his own Master's lightsaber?

Padmé didn't know what to make of Obi Wan's vague words. She wanted to trust the Jedi, her good friend whom she had known for more than 13 years now, and find comfort in his warm, comforting, cinnamon-like smell, but a part of her remained wary of him.

While Obi Wan was being the sweetest and softest person she'd ever had the pleasure of meeting at the moment, he might have been the one to kill Anakin - her husband and Obi Wan's student, in cold blood. Could Padmé really trust a man like that? That too, now, of all times?

"Try to take deep breaths. Slow and steady. One at a time." Obi Wan pleaded. "I need you to stay strong for me, Padmé."

"Why...?" she whispered, losing the will to live.

Padmé had come to the assumption that Obi Wan had slain Anakin in order to end the oppression of the Sith, and that the love of her life was now... dead. Everything seemed meaningless to her now.

Though she wasn't Force-sensitive like her husband and many of her friends from the Order, she always fancied that she and Anakin had a special connection, letting them know how the other was. It had always seemed bright and lively to her, like a cosy reminder that her bright and lively husband was on the other side of it, but now the same place felt hollow, dark and empty, like her other half was gone.

Before his death, Anakin, who she had once regarded as incapable of ever doing wrong, had decimated everything. He'd torn apart the very democracy that he had sworn to serve for as long as he lived. He'd undone everything that he'd sacrificed, everything that he suffered through and everything that he had painfully tolerated during the three-years of the Clone Wars.

Padmé told herself that Anakin had allowed himself to fall victim to Palaptine's mind tricks. She told herself that he'd let this happen, despite knowing that her due date drew impossibly closer. She told herself that he didn't care and that was why he left it all behind. Padma was too afraid she believe that the strongest man she knew had fallen prey to the one she'd trusted the most, thus to make her believe it was Anakin at fault, she repeated those words in her head over and over again until it was all she knew.

It was like salt in the most painful wound, but Padmé repeated to herself, over and over again, that Anakin had loved her until he wanted power.

Until he wanted power.

Padmé still remembered how she'd felt sick to her stomach when she saw his golden Sith eyes. If you were forced to eat rotten slugs and then you felt something slithery and slimy crawling in your stomach, how would it churn? Wouldn't you feel disgusted and repulsed? How would it feel if you thought that chicken the animal and chicken the food were different things, but then it slowly dawned upon you, as you feasted upon tasty chicken wings, that they killed the animal to make the food? Wouldn't the horror slowly settle in your chest like a deadweight as your eyes widened like saucers? That was exactly how she'd felt when she saw those beautiful blue eyes turned golden amber. The sting of Anakin's betrayal was like a fresh, deep cut - he had done unspeakable things. And he'd claimed to do have done it all for her, to save her life.