#coruscating

He nodded again, with another faint smile as he brushed a careful gloved hand over Leia’s forehead. “Will you be in the senate later?”

She nodded, with a weary sigh. “I doubt I’ll enjoy it, but I need to be there. Bail has ordered me to stay home until the session proper starts, though. There’ll be a great deal of talk before the senators are ready to contend with the current situation.”

She had to push him on… what had happened on Mustafar, before long. For all that his appearance in the medical centre on Polis Massa had brought forth a storm of questions all of its own, there was more — worse — hiding behind flesh that was somehow both fire and ice, and she had to remember what he’d done even before Mustafar. That rage he’d shown in those few brief seconds before he’d lifted a hand to silence her —

Crackling ice against her shoulder snapped her mind back to the room, to the blaze in her husband’s eyes. “You have to stay well.”

Hesitant, she drew in a ghostly breath, studying his intent gaze. She couldn’t forget Mustafar. Perhaps she never would. But the storm — the rage — that had greeted her desperate questions was gone, barely a trace of it left in his flickering skin. “I will. I’m being careful until we can get some help with the children.”

He nodded, slowly, chilling hand drifting down her shoulder as the other traced circles on Leia’s forehead.

The elevator’s gentle beep rang through the room. Padmé lifted her head, stiffening so as not to make Leia shudder. Anakin’s burning presence contracted, a chill current in the air pulling tighter around her shoulders. After the parade of Senators that had passed through the apartment once news had got out that Padmé had returned to Coruscant, she couldn’t blame Anakin for being tense. But Senators warned of home visits, and whoever was now at the door hadn’t, which meant that it could only be Bail, Yoda, or Obi-Wan.

Look at him now. There is no one left in this brittle galaxy who is truly safe from his anger. He has turned on the spires that fed him and trained him. He has brought down his love; he has exploded in turmoil in front of newborn eyes. And beneath the ice that holds him from life-heat, he still burns with the betrayal of that one last shard of the few things he loved about the Republic.

Were this a matter of pure, unemotional, brutal logic, this planet would be the next thing to collapse between his crushing fingers.

He is the human remnant of a power greater than life and death. Were this a matter of logic, he would rule this galaxy, and perhaps then it would be a kinder place. There would be no chains, no cages. Unless people wished to build those cages for themselves.

“Good afternoon, Padmé.” Obi-Wan shut the door on the end of his cloak, but only the slightest twitch in his brow indicated that he’d even noticed. “Bail sent a message half an hour ago indicating that everyone who hasn’t made an excuse for lateness is in attendance.”

“Everything is on schedule, then?”

Obi-Wan nodded, frowning as he folded his arms in his sleeves. “He indicated he’d sent the same message to you.”

“The children, Obi-Wan.”

“Ah.” His head bowed.

Anakin’s hand trailed off Padmé’s shoulder, the chill weight of his presence drifting away as he rose to stand. “You’re still well, Obi-Wan?”

“As well as I can be, certainly.” But his attention now drawn to Anakin, Obi-Wan rocked back, tugging his robe tighter around his shoulders.

“Recovering from the sight of the Temple?”

Padmé shuddered, pulling Leia’s weight closer to her chest. Obi-Wan’s eyes froze wide open as he shrunk away from Anakin’s height. In the silence, Padmé shut her eyes, sucked in a wavering breath through clenched teeth. She’d heard what he’d done. Obi-Wan and Yoda were survivors of more than a mere massacre. She couldn’t let herself forget that.

How could Anakin — Anakin — have walked through the Temple just to kill everyone there?

And how could he now speak of the place so… calmly?

“It will be a while before I can go that far.” Obi-Wan’s voice twanged with all the tensed nerves that Padmé was doing her best to hide. “You visited it yourself, I’m told. You can imagine how I must feel.”

Anakin’s head turned aside, the bronze glow under his frosted skin dimming. “You would find it much changed from your own visit.”

Obi-Wan shivered, something flashing in his eyes that Padmé couldn’t identify in the half heartbeat before he turned away, one hand rising to cover his mouth. Whispering heat swelled in the room as Anakin adjusted his robe. “I should go. Stay well, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan stiffened as Anakin stepped past him. Padmé sank her teeth into her lip and sat back, shifting Leia’s weight against her chest. The air crackled between Anakin and his old Master every time the pair were in the same room, now, and she couldn’t be sure if that was some consequence of the foreign fire that had filled in all the spaces between his scars, or the remnant of all that pain that she had to force herself to remember. The door clicked shut behind Anakin.

Politics, she’d been told by one of the older tutors in the Legislative Youth programme, had to come from the heart lest one find one’s downfall before seeing how cruel one had become. But politics required planning, strategy, compromise, self-awareness. How was the same heart that couldn’t bring itself to admit it loved a fallen man supposed to produce any of those things?

Obi-Wan shook himself and shuffled past the drinks table to seat himself next to Padmé. “How are the twins?”

“They’ve stayed well.” Always the first question out of his mouth as soon as Anakin was gone. Why does he mind Anakin hearing it? “A little more restless over the last couple of days, but they’ve been rather quiet for newborn children prior to that, so I don’t think there’s cause to be alarmed.”

“A change in their habits…”

Padmé shrugged. “Can we expect much rhyme or reason from newborn children?”

Obi-Wan’s gaze fell aside. “I suppose not.”

“Why is it that you’re only willing to talk to me about the children, and not Anakin?” The words came out softer than she’d meant them. But softer than intended would do no harm. As many questions as she had about Obi-Wan’s plan on Mustafar — and the way he’d reached the planet — it was clear enough that he was suffering. And she knew exactly why. She glanced down at Leia, whose wide brown eyes were starting to flicker. What kind of world would the twins grow up in, with the Republic — and their father — in half-dead limbo?

Obi-Wan didn’t answer, shaking his head with downcast gaze. Leia lifted a wobbling hand to grab for Padmé’s thumb.

“Obi-Wan.” Padmé forced herself to stiffen her tone along with her spine. “You and Yoda have been silent about Anakin for too long. You know you can’t… kill him. For now, that means you must live with him.”

“Do you have any idea what it feels like to look at him now?” He lifted a gaze as lost and empty as the far reaches of hyperspace to meet hers, his robe folded tight around him, his usually commanding presence shrunken away between the folds. So much like Anakin, who, for all the stature that his strange glowing flesh had restored, seemed so small after Mustafar.

She wouldn’t be the first to look away. Not today. “I know that it hurts. That it’s… strange and confusing. Whatever he’s become is not… normal to you.”

“To say that it is not normal is to understate things magnificently.” He shook his head slowly, a momentary light of familiar wryness flickering behind his eyes before his shoulders slumped with his weary sigh. “Padmé… to even notice his presence in the Force is enough to overwhelm me. No human — no life form at all — should be able to do that.”

“Is that worrying?”

“It leads me to believe that something unnatural has taken root in him.” Obi-Wan sighed, drawing himself upright and brushing his robe aside as if irritated by its weight. “Do you notice nothing yourself? Half his flesh is…”

“Is some form of cold fire that behaves almost like our own flesh and blood.” He’d become a rather curious union of matter altogether. Human flesh and blood, the metal arm, and that incandescent chill… strange indeed. Though Obi-Wan seemed to have cause for fear that she’d yet to realise. “A construction of the Force, you’ve suggested.”

“A construction for which the closest precedent we have —”

A chirping cry made him shut his mouth, brow twitching as he looked up, seeking the source of the sound.

“That’s Luke waking up.” Always so calm until Anakin left, and then it only took a few minutes to stir the children. She shifted Leia away from her chest and held the swaddled child out to Obi-Wan. “Do you think you could hold her while I go see to him?”

He blinked, but nodded slowly, reaching out an unsure pair of hands to accept Leia’s weight. Still almost as afraid of the two newborns as he was of Anakin. Newborns. Force preserve them, even if the fact that they were Anakin’s children made them dangerous somehow, what could two children of that age do to hurt him? Especially after all the hurt he’s already faced.

Who wishes to build cages?

Life forms tend to want the question to be simpler than it is. Masters, slave-owners, beast-tamers, they are the ones who build cages. Cages are for containing the wild, savage things. And to confront savagery, should that savagery not lie in some towering monster that can be denied the comfort of home, can be painful. It is unthinkable to most that they might themselves be civil enough to tame their beasts of burden and savage enough to require a cage of durasteel and stone. Life forms struggle greatly to confront duality.

Duality demands that they contend with the darkness that surrounds every candle — and the candle that casts each shadow. The cruel sanctimony of giving aid and the great loyalty that drives them to kill.

Many of them know this. They avoid saying so out loud.

Duality is all they will ever know, and they wish long and well that they did not. Duality demands compromise, shades of grey, and these things paralyse. It requires them to understand, these tormented life forms, that it is their own life, their weight upon this world, that will one day kill them.

Death is life, and life is death.

But it is far easier to imagine that death is a shrouded figure walking the shadows, come to steal away the only thing these life forms own. Death, after all, is often painful — savage — and so should be caged.

Unlike his sister, Luke seldom fussed for long; once rested against living warmth, he relaxed, turning his head every so often to stare at whatever came close enough to be seen, and often as not smiling at it. Obi-Wan had relaxed too by the time Padmé seated herself again, with Luke in her arms. Leia seemed somewhat more perplexed than usual by Obi-Wan’s rough-edged face and poorly trimmed beard, but thus far, she wasn’t protesting her position.

“You meant to say something about what precedents exist for what Anakin’s become.” She offered the prompt as softly as she dared. She’d delayed long enough.

Obi-Wan looked up, shoulders stiff again. “There are no other precedents than legend.” He looked aside and cleared his throat, all the while absently letting Leia grab at his fingers. “Legends of Sith Lords encountered long ago whose use of the Dark Side had corrupted their bodies beyond physical repair.”

She stiffened, trying to suppress a cold shiver. Luke squeaked in displeasure at her failure. “Sith Lords alone? No…”

“There are no stories of Jedi altering their bodies that way. Our methods of healing serve to restore the body should it suffer undue damage, not to… reshape it.” He seemed to have to force the word ‘reshape’ past his teeth. “Padmé, the way the Dark Side works… it is far more than the use of the Force turned to evil ends.”

She couldn’t help but frown. “What more is it?”

He sighed. The escaping air seemed to make him wither, collapsing underneath the weight of his robe once again. “It… warps the mind. Drives its user to think of nothing but power, see every other life form as disposable… the Sith are not alone in their use of it, but they are perhaps the most studied by the Order.” He’d struggled to meet her gaze a good deal since they’d returned from Polis Massa, but now his gaze darted around wildly, without even an attempt to conceal its alarmed flickering. “Those we lose tend to find their way there.” He still spoke of the Order in the present tense.

Padmé let her gaze fall to Luke, who’d turned his face towards her chest and shut his eyes. Doubtless Force-sensitive, the twins, even if she couldn’t confirm it by herself. But if none of this — Anakin turning dark, the dismantling of the Republic, the massacre of the Jedi — had happened, and they’d been raised in a galaxy in which the Jedi had the right to take the children from her were they powerful enough… something twinged in her chest like snapping bone. “What is it about the dark side that makes it so different from the way you use the Force?”

Obi-Wan started, making Leia whine. “Padmé…”

“I know I don’t understand it.” She sighed, then took a deep breath, filling her lungs to straighten her back. “I don’t know if I can. But if I cannot know anything about it… I don’t know what you or Yoda expect me to do. Anakin is… not the way he was when I went to him on Mustafar. Something has changed his mind as well as his body. I don’t know what.” Another deep breath. Queen and Senator. She’d get nowhere right now if she lost herself in the raw feeling of the agony he’d inflicted. “What he did to you, to the Order… it must be hard to forgive. I understand that you’re… you’ve lost a great deal.”

“Padmé, he nearly killed you.” His eyes widened as he leaned forward, tense and terrified again. “Search your feelings, can you really… can you really live with him again?”

The answer didn’t come to mind quickly enough. She turned her head to look out of the window, leaning away from Obi-Wan’s intent observation, and sighed. This quarter of Coruscant was clouded grey, only slight gaps in the clouds letting through ephemeral slices of sunlight. Not foreboding, but far from cheering, and with the Senate session still to be dealt with today, she would have appreciated something cheering. “If he’d… changed as far as you think… I don’t think he’d have been as gentle as he was on Polis Massa.”

“Gentle?” He snapped the word, then looked aside, momentarily abashed before allowing staid decorum to rule his face again. “The glass, the droids…”

“He barely knew what he was doing.” She let her head bow. “The way his expression changed when he caught your wrist… I’m not sure he knows what he’s dealing with himself.”

Obi-Wan froze, drawing in a silent breath that pulled the heat from the air. “Padmé… after everything he’s done…”

“Then how do you propose we bring him to justice?” So close, so close, but the last word cracked and fell away into hum of the city moving on. How much did the citizenry of Coruscant care that the Jedi were gone? How much had changed for them? How much has changed for the rest of the galaxy? She took a deep breath. Queen and Senator. Even if it hurt. “I still worry, Obi-Wan. I do. But… I can’t believe that the Anakin I knew — that we both knew — is… gone. And if Mustafar didn’t kill him, what use is there is only concerning ourselves with punishment?”

He shook his head slowly, shoulders slumping as he shifted Leia’s weight in his arms. “I don’t know what we can do.”

Padmé nodded. She could understand that, at least, even if she couldn’t make sense of everything that Obi-Wan could sense about Anakin thanks to his Jedi training. And she didn’t know what to do either. Why were they so far from agreement in a situation that had to be equally concerning and confusing for both of them?

The holo-projector on the table flickered into life, revealing Bail in his formal dress. He looked more haggard than he had done when Padmé had seen him off earlier.

The thing about cages: even if life forms do not look at something and call it a cage, it can fill much the same purpose. It can contain some raging power, some devastating force of nature, if only within weightless confines of morality and must do and must not do.

Life forms are very good at these kinds of cages. They feel like freedom, and yet serve the necessary purpose of containing their own savagery.

Perhaps they are freedom. Freedom to live, to survive. What keeps something in will keep other things out.

And even the son of the suns is a life form, of a strange and unpredictable sort.

“Bail. We’ll be on our way shortly. Has something come up?”

The holo-figure nodded, face severe. “There has been something of an incident in the Senate chamber.”

Padmé frowned. “An incident? Has someone tried to dissolve the session already?”

“No.” Bail’s head turned, as if he was watching something going on far below him, before he snapped his attention back to the holo-projector that had to be in front of him. “Anakin walked into the chamber perhaps three minutes ago. He’s just announced the death of the Emperor.”

A/N: One might be forgiven for thinking that I should have come to expect the inability to be productive that often hampers my writing during the first few months of the year, but it continues to come as a rude shock every time. But I am alive! By technicality at the very least! And I have written a thing.

It has not been a smooth process, and I don't know how much of that can really be blamed on the Seasonal Depression. Padmé's POV just kept slipping out of my grasp, trying to get the dialogue to go where I wanted it to without taking three thousand words about it was Not Easy (and as weird as writing the rest of the series has been when so many scenes have been limited dialogue affairs, the fact that there is now heavy dialogue makes the Thematic Consistency harder to maintain), and the fact that the twins are there and also very young is a further complicating factor. I don't know a lot about babies and they're not going to be a huge influence on the plot for a while, but some kind of narrative consistency has to be maintained and that means they have to have a presence. Which is moderately irritating.