Chapter Text
Days later – is it weeks? Sometimes it feels like months, yet only seconds have seemingly passed since then – Padme Amidala is still uncertain how she survived.
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Her throat is sore – raw from screaming, and constricted like the last time she wore a choker at a state dinner and it had been accidentally tightened just a notch too far. Sore and aching from the screaming, the begging. From the way she strained against each push, from craning her neck to see as they were pulled free from her. She feels the strain on each tendon sharpened by the burning in her throat; the dry, chapped feeling of too much mucus but no saliva for relief each time she swallows her cries.
Her whole body is wracked with the force of it, and ever new second, each additional tear of her flesh, she is increasingly certain that the prophecy He feared so deeply was self-fulfilling in the end. She knows that she is supposed to be numb to this, but the pain is so blinding, so deafening, that she can no longer form words to tell the delivery droid she can feel it all.
Her world is centered to a pinpoint of pain and the void of an absence so large that she can feel the weight of it in her belly. It balloons inside of her, stretching to replace them as they go. It fills her hollowed center with every inch of vacated space, and leaves her wailing. He is not there, and in the chasm that is left in the wake of him, she feels pinned by her own agony.
The first one they place into her arms is curiously silent, but it’s limbs toss around in indignation. A boy, she hears a droid tell her from so far away. A curse, like Him.
“Luke.” Her lips move, but there is no moisture. The sound is barely a name, whispered like a breath of wind through meadow grass she misses so desperately in that moment. It is taken from her, then, and He takes up the space it left within her.
Tugging, pain, tearing. Another snip of scissors against her flesh, opening the way for more suffering. Pain lighting down her spine where the sedative has failed her.
A screaming, intolerable thing is placed into her arms, and He is forced past down through her ribcage beneath it. Into the only opening she has left – the hollow of her heart, where he has always lived. Where he dies now, left to burn and rot like what he has done to her.
A girl, she is told. It wails in her arms, angry at the injustices of life without understanding any of them – not yet, at least. A creature of vengeance and contrariness – yet another burden He has placed in her. He chose this name, and she is too weak to find another that doesn’t remind her of Him, his absence. She would give anything to keep him with her, and so she must keep this name as well. For someone else to remember him when they are all that survives her from this.
“Leia.” She says, and once again it is taken away.
She is certain that she will follow Him, now. Where neither of them should have gone. Where their children will be unable to reach them for decades to come. At least she will be with him there. In the Force.
Padme sobs, unable to stop her tears, unable to quell the violent shaking of her body now that she has been emptied of everything in her but the reminder of Him.
A memory is all she has left, and it is not one she can bear to relive.
“There was good in him.” Her tongue is thick, and her mouth sticks to each word with heavy mucus. Blood. Bile. She can taste all of it. She cannot see beyond the burning edges of her vision. She cannot feel it when the Other takes hold of her cold hand. She cannot hear the muffled, garbled plea he begs of her.
“There was good in him, please-” she says again.
She can feel the droids picking at her skin.
The burning, all over her body.
The air being forced out of her lungs-
“I know it.”
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Once she regains the semblance of consciousness, Padme Amidala – Skywalker now, she has to remind herself each time – does not know how she survived.
She remembers warm, calloused hands lifting her; the feeling of scratchy robes against her skin. She recalls the wailing of two infants through the haze of semi-consciousness. The warm glow of life, wherever she’s been taken.
It takes her days to regain herself.
When she does, she wishes immediately to return to the dark, and the safety of His embrace there.
“Padme?” The name is her own, and still it takes too long before she realizes someone has used it to address her. A man, soft and familiar.
Padme jolts upright, breath and awareness coming to her with the shock of pain and revelation. By some curse of the Maker, she is alive. The air burns her throat, her lungs. Her lips are dry to cracking, and her body is wracked by a new agony each time a new muscle twitches to remind her of its existence. She feels each stitch, hidden beneath a bacta patch between her thighs. She does not know where she is.
It takes too long for her eyes to be able to see.
“Padme, dear one, it’s alright.” The soft voice from before is a whisper at her side, now. It’s bearer eases her down back to where she has been laying – a soft mattress covered in silken sheets. The throbbing pain does not subside, but the voice sticks in Padme’s skull. The heavy Coruscanti accent might be quiet, but it remains melodious in its distress.
She knows that voice.
“I’m here.” It says, and disappointment floods her.