Midnight in the Garden

Chapter 18: Divide and Conquer

Anakin waited at the door to Sereine's office. At last she appeared, looking very sad.

"Sith history lessons tonight?"

Anakin grabbed her hand. "Meeting at Padmé's. Come on."

He commed Padmé on the way over. "Padmé. Is our guest in his room?"

"Yes."

"Keep him there 'til I get there."

He ushered Sereine quickly and quietly into the kitchen.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"You need to stop eavesdropping."

"You need to stop teetering on the edge of an affair with him!"

"I am not 'teetering on the edge' of anything!"

"You wouldn't admit it if you were!"

"Anakin." She crossed her arms and glowered up at him. "I know what's at stake. I am not going to do anything that would jeopardize our work here."

"Then you can tell me what's going on." Anakin crossed his own arms.

Padmé bustled in in an empire-waisted dress so enormously hooped out that she resembled a tank. Now that the secret of her pregnancy was out, she needed to shop for real maternity clothes. "If you don't want Finis to know you're here, you'd better quiet down," she said.

Sereine took a deep breath and looked up at Anakin. "When what's going on is my personal life, I don't have to pull it all out for your inspection."

Anakin felt ready to throttle her. "Oh, but I've had to pull all mine out for yours! Yours and the Council's! Is there anything about me you don't know? And everyone has the right to question me like a criminal, but not you! Never you! You're the last person I expected this from!"

He pushed past Sereine, throwing his hands in the air, and stormed out.

***

Sereine lowered herself into a chair. A temper tantrum from Anakin was the last thing she was ready to deal with just now. She could still smell a faint note of Palpatine's cologne. She still could feel Palpatine's arms around her, Palpatine's lips upon her mouth -- arms and lips she hadn't felt in over thirteen years and thought she'd never feel again. And now she must never feel them again, even if it could have helped their situation.

Doubtful ... highly doubtful. Whatever Palpatine wanted, it wasn't what she thought they could have had thirteen years ago. With what she now knew, she would never be so stupid as to believe that.

Padmé looked after Anakin's retreating back, folded her arms over the hoop skirt that served to hide her burgeoning belly, and leaned back against a row of cabinets.

"If you want some advice," she said, "I wouldn't do that to Anakin, if I were you."

Sereine rubbed her forehead, trying to get at the ache behind her eyes. Never mind the ache in her heart. "What?"

"What you just did," said Padmé. "You treated him like a child."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did." Padmé paused. "If you treat Anakin like you know everything and he knows nothing, and he has to be completely accountable to you but you don't have to be accountable to him, it doesn't go well. That's why he and Obi-Wan had so many problems."

"Anakin and Master Kenobi had problems? You'd never know it, from all their heroic exploits."

Padmé pulled out a chair and sat down. She leaned her elbow on the table, put her head in her hand, and shook it slowly. "You wouldn't have believed it. They had a nasty disagreement on a protection detail for me one time. If Jar Jar and I hadn't been there, I think they would have really been at each other's throats, right in front of Captain Typho. I think that's part of the reason Anakin got so close to Palpatine in the first place, because he didn't treat him that way."