Midnight in the Garden

Chapter 20: Battles with Love, Light, and Trust

Padme had no idea how the night had gone between Sereine and her now apparently estranged husband. Sereine appeared at her breakfast table, but not Finis. Sereine looked distracted, morose. She looked up at Padme as she settled into a chair. "He's still sleeping," she said.

"Are you okay?" said Padme.

Sereine put her elbow on the table and rubbed her forehead. "I think 'okay' is relative these days."

Padme noticed Anakin, having left the kitchen carrying his mug of kaffe to go back to their bedroom and dress, loitering in the doorway.

Padme took her mug of kaffe and sat across from her. The cooking droid scraped and clanged behind them, cooking flatcakes on Padme's big gourmet range.

"Is he  okay?" Padme said.

"He's terrible," said Sereine. "I feel so bad for him. I just ..." Her gaze traveled to the window. "I feel like it'd be better for all of us if I just hadn't married him. And I love him, but ..." She sighed. "The thing is, at the time I had nothing I wanted to do but  marry him. And I don't want to leave him, but I cannot leave either of them. I cannot."

Anakin walked into the room, put his mug down, and stepped behind Sereine. He leaned down and gathered her into a hug from behind.

"And I think he'd be better off without me, but he thinks he has to hang on. That if he doesn't, Palpatine will swallow me." She put her head in her hands. "I'm his galactic salvation project. His penance. I just don't want to hurt him anymore. I have to choose."

Anakin pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. "Sereine, don't choose now. Please. Give it time."

Sereine clasped her hands in front of her and stared down at them. "I keep turning it over in my mind. If I gave myself to Palpatine, which way am I pushing both of them?"

Padme clanked her mug to the table in alarm. "Oh, stars, don't do that!"

Sereine shook her head. "I don't know, we may be wrong about it. I think Palpatine, in his way, craves connection. I think he does better with it. Let go of him, and he sinks into all this arcane lore and this idea that it's the only way. That he has nothing else. That it's his only hope. I just don't know for what."

"You can't make him your galactic reclamation project, Sereine," Anakin said.

She rolled her russet eyes slowly to stare at him. "Too late," she said. "We already have. We all have." She stared down at the table. "My penance. And my love. I can't say there's never been anyone else but him. But ..." She didn't finish that thought.

Padme looked at Anakin to find him looking back at her with hollow blue eyes. She heard his thought: Padme, I have a bad feeling about this.

Sereine reached into her borrowed robe's pocket, pulled out her datapad, and began to scroll the morning's headlines.

Padme reached out and put her hand on Sereine's arm. "Does this change ... what you said earlier? That you could kill him if you had to."

Sereine looked up. "No. Absolutely not." It was the first of her old resolve Padme had seen in her all morning. "I can't put myself or him above anyone else. But, if I have to do that, I go with him." She dropped her gaze to the headlines. "I can't do that to him and live. That's just going to be my breaking point."

She met Padme's eyes. "You've got to help me, because that's my breaking point."

Force and stars, Ani. Padme aimed the thought at him, and the movement of his eyes to hers told her he understood.

Sereine's datapad pierced the silence with a ping. A message.

She opened it. And then she put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears.