Padmé Amidala - her perspective

Chapter 2 - happiest moment of my life

My initial reaction of pure happiness quickly turned into anxiety while I got ready. How would Anakin react when I told him about the baby? Would he be happy or horrified? I had no idea. I only knew how long it had taken for me to get used to the idea of being a mother. Just accepting it had taken several weeks, and even longer yet to actually smile at the thought. The pregnancy would not last for much longer – he would have to get used to the idea pretty quickly. Even though I tried to push all my worries away and replace them with my initial joy, I was not able to shut them out completely.

Dressed in a modest gown and with my hair in a simple celebratory up-do I flew to the Chancellor's residence. A collection of politicians was gathered at a landing pad along with some Jedi's. I landed my speeder on the landing pad next to the one they waited at and slipped into the group.

Mace Windu saw me right away. I automatically blocked my emotion-related thoughts – longing and expectation – and replaced it with thoughts of the more rational sort. I mentally went through the arguments for my last proposition to the Senate step by step to create a controlled mind. My facial expression mirrored my thinking - completely and totally sensible.

The first few months of our marriage had been some of the most horrible I had experienced in my entire life. I was not used to hiding things, especially not things that were so amazing and wonderful, yet at the same time completely, totally wrong. Luckily Anakin hasn't been forced to participate in battles or missions since he was preparing for the trials to become a Jedi Knight instead of a padawan. During that period he had lived in my apartment nearly all the time and we had worked through some long discussions, which sometimes - if not most of the time - turned into arguing. Both of us were on the edge all the time and even though we found comfort and grounding in each other we would also get on each other's nerves almost daily.

Only when Anakin and Obi-Wan went off to Mustafar to defend the Republic's mining facilities I had realised what we were risking with our relationship. When he came back home we stopped arguing and started to reevaluate our marriage. Neither of us wanted to give up the idea of us, and we had enough problems related to our relationship without the ones we could cause by fighting.

As our marriage developed, so did our capacity of hiding it. Nowadays I was pretty good at hiding my feelings, and Mace sensed nothing.

"Senator Amidala! Have you also been reached by the news? "

I nodded. "I got here as soon as I heard of them," I said and smiled politely.

It was harder than usual to distance myself from my feelings but even if Mace sensed something he hid it well. I calmed myself. My excitement was unusually hard to contain today, but I knew I could handle it. I just had to keep the conversation going.

"Why did Anakin and Obi-Wan land with Grievous' ship? Did they catch the general?"

Mace shook his head, his facial expression matching my disappointed one.

"According to the information we received so far, he ran with all the escape pods. The ship got split in half due to the damages from the battle but Anakin managed to steer down the wreckage and no one was harmed."

I quickly had to push down the pride that grew in my chest and hurried with another question that I wanted to ask. Small talk would not distract my mind, so I had to keep the conversation interesting.

"Do you know anything about what happened with Count Dooku? According to my information, he was involved in the kidnapping. Did he also manage to escape?"

My stomach turned at the thought of the manipulative Sith-lord who had cut off Anakin's arm during their encounter on Geonosis and I'm sure my face mirrored those feelings.