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The marble of the sculpture in front of the window is the same shade as living coral, moulded into the shape of a humanoid female’s contorted naked torso with a slitherfish’s tail for legs and plaited hair, and a veil covering her face. In the festive, tinted glow from the lightpole spilling in from the street, the sculpture’s outline shines an artificial red. True red. Sith red. Anakin stares at it without seeing it, at the backlit silhouette and folktale shape, so he doesn’t need to think about the space Padmé left between them on the sofa.
“It’s Darred’s,” she says, breaking the unsettling silence that nestled into that space after he arrived on the doorstep of her Theed apartment not twenty minutes earlier, still dressed in his light-weight armour and dazed from his fight with Count Dooku. He was only able to come because Master Windu’s ordered Anakin to leave while he and Obi-Wan discussed the night with the Chancellor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement, her head shifting to look to him before she says, “He gave it to me as a twenty-fifth naming day present. Darred. Sola’s husband. Your brother-in-law.”
Your brother-in-law , she says, as though to remind him that she’s his wife.
“Yeah, I remember,” he says, and forces a breath in, then out before he turns to face her.
The sofa isn’t that big, not like those she has back in Coruscant, but this whole place could fit in its main room. He hasn’t seen it before, though he knew its address. She sits on the opposite end from him, pressed against the angle where the armrest meets the back with her knees bent to her chest beneath her white nightgown and cold weather shawl. There’s a glass of wine in her hand. Her hair is loose, her curls hugged close around her to catch the reflection of the chandelier, and her gaze is fixed on him, expectant and unwavering. He sits with his side against the other armrest, facing forward. They each leave half a cushion each between them.
Since he returned from Zygerria, hardly anyone has touched him.
Obi-Wan did, a couple of times, before the Council—before the Senate —decided he was healthy enough after just a couple weeks’ recovery to work another undercover mission where this time, he needed to die. Though Ahsoka has more than once, she always apologises after, like she thinks he’ll shatter from contact. Maybe she’s even right; Padmé brushed his hand during the memorial when he couldn’t tell her the truth, and he startled so severely he knocked back into his padawan. People aren’t touching him, but that’s his own fault. Or, most people anyway.
A few hours ago, when they all thought that Cad Bane’s assassination attempt had failed, the Chancellor told Master Windu, “Anakin will be more than enough for the night’s security,” over the man’s insistence that a Knight alone would not be adequate protection, then placed a hand between Anakin’s shoulder blades to lead him away. Now he’s here, his wife left the equivalent to a cushion’s width between them, and he’s relieved. The burning feeling of the Chancellor’s handprint hasn’t left his back.
Darred Naberrie’s artistic monstrosity lacks visible eyes, but its judgement radiates towards him regardless.
“At the memorial,” Padmé says in the calm, even tone she uses against her opponents in the Senate, “you told me it would be a little while before we could see each other, since the Council would be watching you. That made sense. But it’s been six weeks since you returned from your mission on Zygerria, Anakin. Six. I understand that you’ve been in mourning, and what Obi-Wan meant to you, but he was my friend. We could have—”
“Obi-Wan’s not dead,” Anakin says, and drums his fingers on the armrest, glancing away from her and down to the floral carpet. “He had to do it for an infiltration mission. But it’s over now, so you’re allowed to know. Even most of the Jedi couldn’t. The Council basically said I couldn’t go anywhere until he was done so it’s just been me and Ahsoka until we came here.”
Before Padmé can get over her shock, he explains about the Chancellor and Count Dooku and how the only bounty hunter in Coruscant who could reasonably integrate himself into the assassination team had Obi-Wan’s approximate height and build. No one but Anakin, Ahsoka, and the Council could know. Obi-Wan “died” when he was out in the Works alone, Anakin says. What he doesn’t say is that though Obi-Wan’s injuries were severe and his minor, it’s Anakin whom the Council largely kept from leaving the Temple. Most are wary around him, but a different wary than usual. He doesn’t tell her that, and he doesn’t say that Master Plo apologised on behalf of them for their miscalculation about Zygerria, or that if Dooku somehow had a way to watch him, to monitor his behaviour to verify Obi-Wan’s death, the man probably did believe the mourning act; in the weeks since, instead of visiting Padmé, Anakin spent most of his time fixing droids or sleeping. Mostly sleeping, which he thinks annoys Ahsoka and R2.
When he finishes, she drains half her wine. “So,” she says, the word coming out on an exhale, “you knew he was alive and you didn’t tell me? You know I can keep a secret. Do you know what it’s been like? Trying to wade through all the Senate’s recent bullshit while I was grieving for my friend and worrying about how my husband was handling it? Alone? After—oh, I’ll just say it. I know what happened in Zygerria, Anakin. Everyone does. I thought you were supposed to be on the front, like you said, but the news spread after the battle of, what was it, Kav-something? Everyone was saying it would be seven days before Skywalker and Kenobi were home and then I still didn’t see you until an apparently fake memorial a full week after you returned? Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? You can’t even have messaged me?”
There’s a lot in there that he should address, but what he says first is “You know? Everyone knows?” For weeks, he imagined what he would tell her. How he would explain. To learn she knows already unbalances him even more than the evening already had, so the thread of his carefully planned script unravels.
“‘Jedi Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker topple second Zygerrian slave empire,’” she says, matter-of-fact. “It was the headline in all the holojournals. The legitimate ones anyway. Don’t get me started on the HoloNet tabloids. Who decided to send you to Zygerria? That’s sick. Was it the Council? The Senate? I swear, if I was the Chancellor, I’ll—”
“It was the Council,” Anakin says, the tension in his back loosening all at once as he realises just how tired he is, that it must be past the twenty-second hour, and what he really wants to do is sleep. Mostly he was sleeping, right up until the ship entered hyperspace en-route to Naboo, where they cruised for days. “I think. Well, probably also the Senate. I don’t know. They didn’t have another option. It’s Obi-Wan who got fucked. I’m fine.”
“There’s always another option,” she says, and flexes her feet, curling her toes in a sign of sedentary frustration.
He runs his thumb along a seam in the armrest and looks away from her again. “They, uh,” he says, stumbling, “needed a receipt of purchase. For the Zygerrian queen to believe it.”
After a short pause, Padmé says, “But you don’t have one. Qui-Gon won a gamble.” Though she doesn’t say won you , she also doesn’t say won your freedom. Vaguely, he thinks the Republic citizenry’s “tactful” avoidance of the topic might explain his decade-long confusion.
Not that it matters much now, and not that it’s relevant to this conversation. Discussing the background information like some sort of excuse for his actions was not part of the plan. Padmé, I cheated on you, he needs to say. I’m sorry. It’s all he needs to say. She doesn’t need to know the rest, and he doesn’t need to avoid directness. In the end, that sensibility just marks another difference between them, the kid from the Outer Rim and the Republic Senator.
Her mother was an unwanted exception.
“Yeah, he did,” he says finally, “but I’ve got one. It’s not important.”
“Not important? How’s it not—”
“Padmé,” he says, forcing out the words and forcing his neck to turn, to focus on her sitting there in her rumpled nightgown with her almost empty glass of rose-berry wine, the dark red of which stains her lips. “Padmé, I. I. There’s something I need to tell you.”
She finishes the drink, and sets it on the low table in front of the sofa, the wooden one with the built-in, switched-off wish globe and clawed legs. “You don’t need to be scared, Ani,” she says, gentling her voice. “Just tell me.”
Once, then twice, he tries to start, but falters. She waits with an unreasonable amount of patience until, on the third time, he does it: “Padmé, I’m sorry. I cheated on you.”
It sounds as ugly aloud as it did in his head, the truth of his infidelity and broken vows now raked out into the open, but her expression remains unexpectedly neutral. “On Zygerria?” is all she says. He nods, the movement just a harsh jerk. “Right,” she says. “Did this have anything to do with why you needed, apparently, a ‘receipt of purchase’ I didn’t know about? That you shouldn’t have?”
“What?” he says, brows knitting as a shock of frustration shoots through his now-never-quite-closed bond with Obi-Wan. No, it’s more than frustration. He’s livid and trying hard to suppress it.
With a low huff, Padmé asks with Outer Rim directness, “Is it true? Were you sold on Zygerria?” The word sold comes out just as harsh as his confession.
“Yes?” he says, like a question. “That’s not really the—”
“Did you ‘cheat’ on me,” she presses on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “with the person who bought you?”
He fidgets, rubbing the back of his neck where his chip is and where the Queen of Zygerria sunk her nails so deep into the skin he bled. She hadn’t applied bacta; by the time he reached Kix and the medbay, the cut had already scarred. “Yeah,” he says. “It was—I thought you said everyone knows.”
“I guess not everything,” she says, and pushes her hair away from her face to twist over one shoulder. “Ani, you didn’t cheat on me.”
When he pictured this conversation, he also pictured how she would respond, but he never once predicted that she wouldn’t believe him. “Look,” he says, mortified, “I know, really, I don’t know as much about relationships as you, but I know what cheating is. If you don’t want to—I mean, I understand. I’m sorry, Padmé—”
“Oh, I don’t believe this!” she says, standing with a flurry of lace and shimmersilk that flashes in the light to pace on the other side of the table so fast that his body automatically seizes, paralysing him in place. “I’m going to find out who gave this order, and I’m going to kill them—no, I’m going to kill, who was it who bought you? Was it really the Queen? Is she already dead? Hasn’t Obi-Wan talked to you? The medic who treated you? Because you were treated, weren’t you? If you weren’t, I’m bringing you to a medical facility right now or so help me—”
“No, no,” he says quickly, and relaxes minutely when he registers that her anger, miraculously, isn’t targeted at him. “Kix got the drugs out of my system—”
“The drugs? ”
“—and I got tested twice. I’m not sick.”
Padmé stops, standing between Darred’s sculpture and the table, which acts as a barrier between her and the sofa. “Drugs,” she repeats, and scrutinises him, her eyes narrowed and her face pinched. “That mark on the back of your neck. Those are from nails, aren’t they?”
Of course she noticed it, he thinks as he rubs his hand over them again. She poured herself wine after he sat, so she crossed around behind the sofa to sit herself, which means she passed him. When again, he manages a jerking nod, she sighs. “I’m going to guess,” she says, “that you think you cheated because your body had a physical reaction when this person touched you. Sexually. Is that right?” He doesn’t speak, too numb from shock to form his thoughts into linear sentences, the too-common side effect of these too-common conversations, but she takes his silence as affirmation. “How your body reacted didn’t mean anything. It just happens. It’s, oh Goddess. It’s normal in these cases. But clearly, this is not what you wanted. That’s rape, Ani.”
Rape sends him back to Tatooine, to the night after his first podrace crash when his skin was hot with fever and he pestered his mother to tell him who his father was, not for the first time nor the second nor even the seventh, so she said, “You had no father, Ani,” as she flicked his nose, but it was the first time he realised, Oh, so she didn’t want me , because that’s how Suria, a Togruta three doors down, explained her recent pregnancy when everyone really knew that her owner gave her for a night to a man to pay off a debt. In Mos Espa, they never called that rape; he learned that term later, from Obi-Wan, who explained about about age and consent but not taken-for-granted freedom in Coruscant during an early days mission in the lower levels to gather information on a spice ring when Anakin, determined to prove his worth to the Order, offered to play on the leader’s appreciation for young boys. In Mos Espa, it was all just sex. If the father wasn’t around, then never was one.
No one’s ever said anything about how a body reacts.
After the silence lengthens, Padmé sighs, walks around the table, and hovers between it and the sofa for a moment before sitting on its surface directly across from him, so close that their legs tangle. “I’m not like Obi-Wan or Ahsoka,” she says, and takes his right hand in both of hers. He doesn’t move. With his gaze focused on her face, he can’t mistake the touch for anyone but hers. “I can’t read whatever’s going on in your head. I’m going to need you to talk to me.”
“I don’t really know what to say,” he says. “What do you want to know?”
For the next hour, he answers her questions to the best of his ability—he has a receipt of purchase because Jabba manipulated Obi-Wan into buying him on Tatooine, so yes, that does mean Obi-Wan was also the one who had to sell him, and the chip helped their lie but yes, it is deactivated and yes, Kix double-checked, which was at the same time he did the tests. It was the Queen who did the buying. Frankly, Anakin would rather not talk about the rest, if that’s all right, because it’s all okay now anyway that she’s dead and he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he’s sorry.
When he’s done, she leans forward and kisses his forehead. “You don’t need to apologise,” she says, “ or push yourself to talk about it right now if it’s too hard. This was not your fault, and it’s so, so wrong that anyone asked you to do it. I thought the Jedi were better than this. That the Republic was. You’re my husband and you’re free and you’re not alone. I love you, Anakin, and no Zygerrian queen is going to change that. Understood?”
“Yeah,” he says, and shuts his eyes for a long moment as he breathes in, breathes out, and opens them again. “I love you,” he says, “but I need to go. I’m sorry. Master Windu told me to make myself scarce, but I should get back before anyone notices I’m gone.”
“That’s fine,” she says, moves as if to brush her fingers through his hair, then lets her hand drop. “Why did he need you to leave? Does this have anything to do with the banquet I didn’t organise?”
After Count Dooku ran and Master Windu dragged Anakin out from the decorative columns and tableware he collapsed to stop the droids, Obi-Wan comm’d Padmé to verify that the she had, in fact, organised the banquet the Chancellor thought he was attending. She claimed she had not, but the Chancellor had the invitation. He was still holding it up, showing it to Master Windu and Obi-Wan, when the two shared a glance and told Anakin to leave. There were no revelers on the streets on his walk here, and the curtains were drawn in most of the windows, so the candelabras were just shadows and light. Inevitably, the Chancellor’s attempted assassination dampened Theed’s celebetory spirit. Anakin wonders what Master Windu and Obi-Wan discussed with the Chancellor, and knows neither of them will tell him even if he asks. For all that Master Windu doesn’t like him, he has, as Obi-Wan said he would, made a concentrated effort to reduce Anakin’s exposure to the Chancellor. The talk won’t be good.
He explains the basics of the events as well as he can, though it involves details he still doesn’t know himself, and leaves out that he heard Master Windu tell the Chancellor, “I know Skywalker is your preferred choice, but he’s still in recovery from his last mission,” as if Obi-Wan weren’t the one who had to spend a night in the bacta tank. For now, at least, he keeps this much to himself; Padmé’s a gift for her ability to forgive and rationalise, but he doesn’t have the energy to lay more of his faults out into the open for anyone to scramble up and explain away as something he should understand, but doesn’t.
Though she isn’t happy about his piecemeal explanation, she accepts it. “I’ll see you on Coruscant?” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Go. Bring Obi-Wan so I can yell at him.”
He agrees, and lets her walk him to the front door. Outside, the lightpoles are back to their usual white, signalling that it’s past midnight and the Festival of Light is at its end.