Padmé Amidala - her perspective

Chapter 10 - the attack

When I woke up it was almost midday and I asked 3PO to cancel everything. I had so much to think about and I forced myself to start with the politics, to try and find a solution with work before getting into the mess that was my marriage at the moment.

We obviously needed more members and stronger opinions in the Two Thousand Petition. We needed Mon Mothma to use her ability to recruit even more Senators and that would be difficult because even if Mon was talented with that, the Chancellor also easily got along with people. We needed to clarify our arguments, to present more examples and gain more unbiased people who could get behind our cause.

With Anakin on the opposite side it wasn't easy to get motivated and I still couldn't see how things had gone so bad between us.

The day went by and I stayed home, wanting to be here in case Anakin found an opportunity to come, but he did not and every minute passed by agonisingly slow. When the evening finally arrived 3PO told me that Anakin had been spotted heading towards the Chancellor's office earlier, probably to inform him on how the battle on Utapu progressed.

I winced at the thought of him possibly consulting Palpatine with his struggles within the system right now because I didn't trust the Chancellor to guide him in the right direction. Putting those two together had proven to do more harm than good and I blamed Palpatine for that.

When had everyone given up on patience and union? My home-planet had been the first victim of the Separatists but even so, I, it's leader, had been the one advocating diplomacy the longest. Not at the expense of efficiency but for the sake of stability - security. For me it was so obvious that we could not risk the Constitution in order to defend the Republic but perhaps I was more alone in that stance than I had realised. If even Anakin refused to see the damage democracy had taken because of the public's longing to end the war things had gone from bad to worse.

I stood up and walked over to the window and saw the Jedi Temple far away. It almost felt as if I was meeting Anakin's gaze. I could have sworn he thought about me too at that moment when I stared at the ancient building. The sun was setting over the capitol, casting a golden light over it but instead of making it beautiful, the light seemed to create a melancholy atmosphere.

It hurt me so profoundly then and there to realise that I was no longer completely sure of who my husband was. Something inside him had changed enough to make him question everything, enough to prevent him from opening up to me. I refused to lose faith in him but I was forced to accept that things may be way worse than I had realised and perhaps too big for me to handle on my own.

I remembered the day he had gotten back, struggling to understand how things had gone bad so quickly. He was so happy initially and then everything came crashing down around him when he had that nightmare. I knew he felt that the Council didn't trust him and after Ashoka left he never really trusted them either. At the same time he and Obi-Wan seemed to have a falling out Palpatine had made sure to show that he had complete confidence in Anakin by providing him with the rise in rank. Or maybe these events were connected?

It was so hard to tell.

The nightmares had definitely beaten him off balance. He had not been himself recently and now I could understand how the dreams made its mark in his behavior. It must have been easy for Palpatine to... lure him in? Or whatever it was he had done.

And then there was the thing he had said yesterday. That thing about how he wanted to save me, and he had found a way to do it. Thinking about that now made my stomach twist without me being able to pinpoint exactly why.

I took a deep breath and then looked down. Everything suddenly felt so wrong, really, utterly wrong. It was as if the air trembled, waiting for something terrible to happen that would change everything.