Fulfillment: Star Wars

Part Seven

Padmé entered her darkened apartment with a heavy heart. Visions of an empire with a Sith Lord as it's leader flashed through her mind without warning. All ended in suffering, blood, death...

Shaking her head softly and pressing back the bile rising in her throat, the senator sunk down into her living room sofa. Tears welled up in her eyes, blurry vision seemed to be all too common to her.

"What am I going to do?"

Seemingly, the fate of the galaxy rest on her shoulders. She was the only soul that was loyal to democracy and to the republic that knew about this. A heavily pregnant young woman whose hormones were about as balanced as a three legged bantha. The odds of her pulling everything off and getting Anakin to keep his promise seemed slim. To slim to even have hope.

Padmé sighed deeply and reluctantly pulled the datapad that T-K9O gave her onto her lap. She scrolled through the speech "outline" that Sidious had wrote for her but to T-K9O's credit, she was right. Most of the speech was already written. Padmé grimaced as she read the lies on the page about the benefits of the empire. The ending of this war, the unity of all peoples, peace through the galaxy, a stable economy, free trade routes, low taxes- the list went on and on. All of it was glorious propaganda that she knew would fail in the end. Even a no brained low life would know that this was a horrendous idea. Yet, it didn't matter what other people thought. No, Palpatine got his power... and that is all he wanted. With Anakin ruling right beside him.

Padmé thought that with the promise he made her last night, she had succeeded in ridding all the darkness that was in him. But when he was promising her to never change, Padmé saw gold flecks in his eyes. Tension in the way he held her hand. As if he was trying to hold back darkness, hold back screaming at her.

"Am I already too late?"

No... she had to believe her Ani was still there. The day she stopped believing was the day that life was no longer worth living.

A sharp knocking at the door shook Padmé out of her reverie. Shaking her head and blinking quickly, she arose from the couch and waddled over to the door to her apartment. The senator pressed the button that was beside her metallic door and it swooshed open, revealing her an old friend behind the door. Padmé's eyes widened and covered her smile with her hand. She ushered in her friend with urgency into her apartment and quickly shut the door behind her.

"Ahsoka!" Padmé exclaimed and hugged her. Ahsoka giggled and hugged Padmé back with glee.

"Padmé it is so good to see you! I hate to tell you this but, I can't stay long." She explained and Padmé nodded.

"Of course, Ahsoka, I know how busy you are." The senator said with a wink and led Ahsoka over for her to sit on the sofa. Two cups of tea were already set out on the caf table in front of them, the scent appealing to all scenes.

"It's so weird to hear you call me Ahsoka, I normally go by another name these days..." Padmé raised her eyebrow and Ahsoka smiled.

"Fulcrum, it's a code name so my real identity is well, secure."

Padmé laughed, her eyes watering at the thought of Ahsoka leading rebel alliances all around the galaxy.

"Things have changed so much since you left here." Padmé mentioned wistfully, looking down at her tea with a solemn expression. Ahsoka took hold of Padmé's hand.

"I know..."

A tear leaked out of Padmé's deep brown eyes and fell into her tea. With a sigh, she set it down onto the table and Ahsoka leaned in for another hug.