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“How did it begin?”
Padmé had often wondered that herself. Had it started when she was born, or was she damaged somewhere along the way? Had it started when that boy had kissed her in her father’s garden as a child? When she realized she had no interest in kissing a much older boy during her time in the Legislative Youth Program? When it seemed she would have to become queen? She couldn’t really know.
Right now though, she didn’t feel like a queen. Sitting in this high vaulted office with windows and statues that dwarfed her teenage frame, Padmé felt very much like a scolded schoolgirl, sent to the headmaster’s office for her punishment. She probably even deserved it.
“Our hyperdrive was damaged in the escape,” Padmé said. “We had to stop on a desert planet called Tatooine to make repairs.” It was all objective fact, a matter of record, none of it her fault. “The Jedi seemed to know exactly where to go. We found what we were looking for in the first junk shop we walked into. And then…”
And then, he walked in.
Padmé had tried her best not to look, not to stare. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if she had. No one would have guessed what had been going on behind her eyes. Maybe Master Qui-Gon would have but then again, she supposed Jedi felt rather than saw.
“Well, it was all so strange, being in a place like that,” she said, “so different from the palaces and city streets of Naboo.” There had been plenty to look at hanging from the sand stucco walls, metal parts to machines she couldn’t have even imagined. But despite their mission, Padmé hadn’t been thinking about parts, not steel ones at least.
“That was where you met this… boy?”
Padmé gulped. She couldn’t avoid him forever. “He asked if I was an angel.”
The man across the desk from her chuckled at that. “Monarchs are often seen as something closer to the divine. Perhaps the boy was onto something.”
Padmé smiled an embarrassed little smile.
The question had caught her completely off guard. Until then she had tried her best to avoid looking at this little boy, at his beautiful blue eyes or his adorable little lips, his blond hair and developing body. Queens weren’t supposed to like little boys. Women weren’t supposed to like little boys.
“He said angels were the most beautiful creatures in the universe.” Which meant by extension, she was the most beautiful creature in the universe. At least to him. Her heart fluttered at just the memory. “And that they lived on the moons of… somewhere I had never heard of.”
“Strange things lurk deep in the recesses of the galaxy, and far stranger things far beyond. It is entirely possible. But I didn’t ask to speak with you concerning rare astral phenomena my queen. What did you think of this boy, young Skywalker, when you met him?”
That I wanted to kiss him. Hold him. Feel his warmth pressed up against me in some meadow by a lake. “He was clearly intelligent, and curious. Precocious is a better word. He said he was a pilot himself. That impressed me, even though looking back I probably shouldn’t have believed him at the time. But I would have been wrong. He clearly had a knack for working with machines.”
“A gifted youth,” Senator, no, Chancellor Palpatine said, “I have been lucky enough to know a few.” The chancellor gave her a knowing smile. “Certain enough it was his latent Jedi talents mixed with a natural aptitude for such things.”
“It’s such a shame the Jedi Order said they wouldn’t take him,” she said, hoping they could return to more matters of record.
“Perhaps,” Palpatine allowed, “though we are getting ahead of ourselves. Did you two discuss anything else?”
Padmé grit her teeth in annoyance. “He told me he was a slave, that some Hutt sold him or lost him in a betting game to his master Watto when he was three. It broke my heart, thinking about how different his world was from ours.”
“You felt sympathy for him?”
“Yes, of course.”
She had felt more than that. Immediately she had considered buying him. They probably didn’t have enough credits on hand, though money was never a real concern for a queen, at least in personal matters such as this. But Padmé didn’t want to own him, didn’t want him to owe her his freedom. Of course the right thing to do would be to buy and free both Skywalkers, mother and son, and give them some new home either on Tatooine or Naboo, but darker intentions crept in. Maybe having him as a slave would smooth over getting what she really wanted from him. She could free him later or… no.
“I’m a person and my name is Anakin.”
Those words had shut down this repellant tangle of thoughts. She had brought herself back to the moment, back to the task at hand, at least until Jar Jar bumbled his way into something and derailed her train of thought completely.
“A moment later Master Qui-Gon came back and told us we were leaving.” It had almost broken Padmé’s heart. After so many long days of worrying about the invasion, the safety of her people from the Trade Federation, this innocent conversation with this innocent boy had been like an oasis in the vast Tatooine desert. “We went on our way and I thought I’d never see him again. But then he reappeared, right when we needed him. Jar Jar had gotten himself into trouble. Again. And Anakin defused the situation like he was a little diplomat.” She smiled to herself. “A sandstorm was coming so he offered to take us to his home for shelter.”
“I’m assuming this was where…” the chancellor trailed off.
“Yes. Later that night…” Padmé said, flushed. “First I met his mother.” She had felt shame then just as she felt now. Perhaps she should feel more, considering, but now just as then all Padmé could think of was the disgusting contradiction of what she was and what she wanted from this slave woman’s son. “He showed me a protocol droid he was building. Anakin was modest about him, said he wasn’t finished, but I was astounded. Knowing nothing of circuits and wires it seemed like a miracle what this nine-year-old boy had managed to create with his own two hands.”
“Each of us have our specialities. I’m sure young Skywalker would know nothing of diplomatic relations or planetary treaties. Differences in what we learn and what we are taught.”
She remembered watching C-3PO come to life, feeling as if little Ani were a god or an angel himself, blessing inanimate matter with life. She recalled as the droid took his first shaky steps that she wished she had had the freedom to go weak in the knees like that. Their R2 unit beeped something at the protocol droid to imply he was naked, and Padmé suddenly went flush with embarrassment and imagination. Despite her instant and inappropriate crush on this small boy, her thoughts hadn’t quite arrived yet on scenarios in which they found themselves naked. But suddenly, it was all she could think about.
Padmé’s mouth went dry, Palpatine seeming to notice her distress. She had to keep the story moving.
“His mother made us dinner and Anakin offered to win a podrace for us to get the parts we needed.” Shmi Skywalker had been terrified for her son, and objectively speaking it was not a good idea, but still Padmé would have loved to see little Ani race. He clearly loved it himself. Things however, didn’t exactly work out that way. “And he put together that Master Qui-Gon was a Jedi almost immediately.”
Young Anakin had seemed very much his age when he claimed that “no one could kill a Jedi”, but then he told them of his dream, that he dreamed that he was a Jedi himself, come back to the desert planet to free all the slaves. Padmé imagined him as a teenager or a young man, wielding a laser sword and striking off chains. While the image was dashing and romantic, she couldn’t help but find herself preferring that he stay that little boy on Tatooine.
Despite his earlier naïveté, little Ani sounded like a Jedi Master himself when he corrected Qui-Gon and said that maybe they really had come here to free him and his mother. Perhaps it was really fate. But then again… little Ani’s prophecy had only come half true.
“Later that night I found myself alone with him.” Padmé’s heart started beating fast. “His mother had told him to go to bed but he clearly didn’t want to.”
She remembered being in that dimly lit, sandy room, listening to the faint grumbles of the grown-ups talking through the walls. Qui-Gon had given Ani some sort of blood test before he found her. He was still scratching at his arm when he asked her.
“If I win tomorrow, do you think I could be a Jedi?”
“I don’t know,” Padmé had answered. “Jedi powers are something you have to be born with.”
“It’s not fair,” little Ani whined. “I want to help you guys but… once you leave everything will just go back to normal.” He looked down, defeated.
“Hey…” Padmé beckoned the boy closer. “We won’t forget about you, Ani.” She presented her lap for him to sit on, like a mother would. Ani plopped down onto her leg like he had done it a million times. “I won’t forget about you.” She put a single arm around his side.
“You promise?” He looked up at her with wavering eyes, blue as the spring water on Naboo.
“I promise.” She pulled him closer. “Once this is all over, I promise I’ll come back to Tatooine and set you and your mother free.”
Those blue eyes got wider, daring to hope. “You mean it?! But… that would cost a lot of money…” He looked off to the side. “A Rodian tried to buy us once but Watto asked for way too much. I don’t think he wants to sell us. I basically run his junk shop all by myself.”
Padmé giggled. “I promise, once this is all over, money won’t be the problem.”
He looked at her with that curious, precocious look she loved so much. “You’re serious aren’t you?”
“Mmm hmm.” She smiled, lightly licking her lips.
Nothing would come out of this she knew. Freeing the Skywalkers would simply be a good deed, an honest gesture of thanks for their invaluable help. Her true feelings, her maligned intentions, would never have to come to light.
Then he kissed her.
It was just an innocent peck, closed lips and over before it began. But in that moment Padmé knew that all her good intentions were about go out the airlock.
Padmé jolted back.
“I’m sorry,” Ani said immediately. “I didn’t mean to do that. I just, I was so happy that—”
Before he could finish his thought Padmé pressed her lips to his for a longer, deeper kiss. It too had lasted no more than a second, just a small escalation, but she couldn’t help herself. Suddenly she wanted more than either of those two little pecks. She wanted to stick her tongue past his teeth and taste his nine-year-old mouth. But that could wait.
Anakin grinned awkwardly. “Whe-where would we go? If you…”
“You could come to live with me,” she immediately offered, knowing that this, all of it, was a horrible idea. “I could show you my house on Naboo, all the gardens and lakes. It’s so different from here in the desert, so green. You’ll love it.”
“I know I will,” he said, fully wrapping his arms around her into a hug and a kiss all at once. Finally she let herself indulge. Padmé’s mouth opened and her tongue slipped between his lips. After a few moments of awkward mashing, Anakin got the message and opened his mouth. The little boy had no idea what he was doing, but he was still eager to do it. “You really are an angel…” he said when their kiss finally parted.
She brushed a strand of his blond hair with her thumb, their faces so close they could feel each other’s hot breath on their cheeks.
The day’s desert heat was cooling into a cold arid night but pressed up against the stone wall, and up against each other, they were warm. Padmé felt that warmth flush from her cheeks to her heart to down between her legs, everywhere. It was so warm. And getting warmer, the stone beside their faces growing hot.
“I was sitting and we were talking,” Padmé told the chancellor, feeling her breath accelerate as she sped past that night’s indiscretions. “About the race, Naboo, little things.” She chuckled awkwardly. “I barely remember… But then, it was like the wall behind me got hot and…”
As they had looked into each other’s eyes, the only two people in the galaxy, Anakin’s suddenly went wide.
“Watch out!” he had screamed, pulling her away from the glowing stone wall.
Half a second later a spike of red-hot plasma punched through the stone barrier. Padmé fell to the floor as little Anakin hopped to his feet, both watching as the whirring blade sliced a molten triangle in the adobe wall that soon punched in to crush them. Padmé clamored back as the stone slab slammed into a nearby table, her little lover lost on the other side of the dust and chaos.
Cold desert wind flooded the room as a dark figure stepped through the burning door. Instead of an angel, it had the face of a demon, black and red, its yellow eyes burning with hate.
“That was when he attacked us,” Padmé said.
“He?”
“A Zabrak, I think,” Padmé said, terrified at just the thought. “I think I saw horns under the hooded cloak. He had a lightsaber…”
Instead of Qui-Gon Jinn’s verdant green, this blade had been the color of blood, burning with malice. The handle seemed longer too, as if even unignited it could be a weapon all its own, a club this thing could swing to beat her to death.
“A red lightsaber,” Palpatine added. “This assassin has since been identified as a Sith acolyte named Darth Maul. You were very lucky to have seen him and lived to tell the tale.”
“It… wasn’t all luck…”
Just as she thought she was surely about to die…
“Get away from her!” Anakin had screamed. The little boy had found a metal rod, a mop handle or piece of piping taller than he was. He jumped in front of the young queen and held it out like he had a lightsaber of his own.
Padmé’s heart had stopped. Suddenly Anakin was the adult, and she the lovestruck child.
The Sith stepped closer, the blade of his saber burning beside him. “I am no longer here for her,” Darth Maul said in a low, melodic voice.
Padmé should have grabbed Anakin and run, or shielded the boy with her body. That’s what a woman, a queen, should do when danger presents itself to an innocent child. But in that moment all she could do was watch as her gallant hero, her little Ani, met this monster with sword in hand.
Anakin charged Maul, raising up the rod to bring it crashing down on the beast’s head, but the Zabrak flicked his wrist and sliced the pipe in two. The longer half clattered to the ground, but Anakin still pressed the attack. The little boy drove the freshly molten point into the side of the Sith Lord’s robes, the shortened stick scorching fabric as it struck. Maul hardly seemed to notice.
“Hm.” Maul looked down at little Ani with amusement. “I can see why he wants you as his apprentice.” He raised his saber to strike the child down.
“STOP!” a woman’s voice shrieked as a body flew between the mismatched combatants. Maul’s saber seared through flesh as Shmi Skywalker tackled her son to safety, mother and child both tumbling to the ground.
A moment later Padmé heard another saber ignite. Green light blazed against the red shadows as Qui-Gon Jinn rushed the assassin with lightsaber in hand. Darth Maul’s red blade oddly seemed to vanish and reappear on the other end of his handle as the Sith engaged the Jedi in a flurry of lightsaber combat. The world disappeared into a series of screams and flashes, green and red lightning strikes slashing apart everything in the cramped desert home, the walls splitting open with glowing hot wounds as the two Force-users did battle.
Shocked out of her trance, Padmé scrambled over to Anakin and Shmi who were huddled together on the floor near the hole in the wall.
“Anakin!” Padmé screamed as she tried to roll the mass of limbs over.
Little Ani was still wrapped tight in his mother’s hug as Padmé tried her best to pull him to safety. His moment of bravery having passed, her little hero now looked entirely his age, terrified with tears in his young eyes. His mother’s hand brushed his cheek.
“I… love…” was all Shmi could say as she looked into her little boy’s eyes, a smoking wound through her chest nearly separating her body at the torso.
“Mom!” Ani screamed. “MOM!!!!” But she was already gone.
Padmé pulled him out of his mother’s grasp, the child kicking and screaming as the Force-users danced their deadly ballet overhead.
Maul suddenly appeared over them, blade within striking distance, when another body darted into the room.
“Wassa goin’ on in here!” Jar Jar yelled in his usual brash tone, oblivious to the danger all around him.
“Get out of here,” Qui-Gon said. “All of you!”
But it was too late, Maul cut the Gungan to screeching ribbons before reengaging with his Jedi opponent.
“I tried to pull Anakin away after that but…” Padmé trailed off, looking out the window into the Naboo sunshine. The young boy’s shout of “I can’t leave her!” still echoed in her mind all these weeks later. “I had to carry him out and onto the street.”
At first she ran with Anakin in her arms. Once he regained some sense of reality he told her of a place that they could hide. She sat there with him, huddled in the dark as the grieving child sobbed silently into her clothes.
Qui-Gon found them little while later.
“Once you two were gone the assassin fled,” the Jedi Knight had told them. “But it’s still not safe. I’m afraid we’re going to have to find another way off this planet. Tonight.”
“And, I think you know the rest…” Padmé told the chancellor, hoping to be done with this interrogation. Despite her regal status, the aged man across from her was now in every way her superior, now everyone’s superior, having just been elected to the highest office in the galaxy.
“You brought the child with you to Coruscant to stand before the Jedi Council, yes, yes.” Palpatine waved a hand. “I’m well aware of the official happenings of those fateful days. Unfortunate for young Skywalker, though I dare say very fortunate indeed for the Naboo.”
“And for you,” the queen told the newly appointed Supreme Chancellor.
Chancellor Palpatine smiled a thin little smile. “And for you as well, Your Highness.” He brought his hands together on his wide wooden desk, steepling his fingers with utmost care. “But again we find ourselves off track. How did Anakin take the loss, in those first delicate hours of your escape?”
Once they met up with Obi-Wan and her decoy’s security forces, the group had set about finding the fastest starship they could commandeer to make it to Coruscant. Kenobi had his reservations about grand theft starship, but quiet words from his master about the dark assassin made him give up his moral compunctions.
Qui-Gon also worked with Ani to locate his slave tracker-bomb at Padmé’s insistence and removed it before they took off. For a moment as the Jedi Master preformed the minor surgery, Anakin seemed not to care if he lived or died, but a gentle word from the Force-user calmed him for a time.
Later, Padmé found him huddled alone in the cargo hold of the borrowed outbound freighter, shivering between sniffles.
“How are you feeling?” Padmé asked, her voice wavering.
“Cold…” Ani whimpered the way only a heartbroken child could.
The sunbaked world of Tatooine was always warm in the daytime, the houses usually holding onto that lingering heat at night. But now they were in space, and space was very cold. Thankfully though, that was one thing she could fix. Padmé sat beside him and pulled the young boy into a hug.
“Who…” Anakin said as they jumped into hyperspace. “Who will open Watto’s shop tomorrow…?”
“I guess Watto will,” Padmé answered.
Ani gave a heartbroken little chuckle before collapsing forward to cry into her stomach.
“I… I could’a done it you know…” she heard him say. “I could’a beat Sebulba and won the race and then we all could’a been free…”
“It’s not your fault Anakin,” Padmé whispered as she gently rubbed his back.
“Wh-what’ll happen to 3PO?” he asked. “He must be so confused, I don’t even know if he was turned on when it… it…”
His head fell into her lap but there were no tears this time. He looked too hollow for tears. All Padmé could do was rest her hand on his head and stroke his small cheek.
“I’ll kill him,” he said after they rode a while in silence. “I’ll train to be a Jedi and then I’ll hunt him down and kill him for what he did to my mother.”
Padmé didn’t know what to say. She knew enough to know that Jedi only used violence as a last resort. It wasn’t good to kill people or to want to get revenge. But still, Padmé thought to herself that if she had the opportunity to kill Nute Gunray for everything his battle droids were doing to her peaceful planet, she would do it in a heartbeat. Though killing someone to solve a problem that was still happening wasn’t quite the same as something that had already happened.
“I’ll be the most powerful Jedi ever,” Ani said. “You’ll see…”
“I know you will Ani.” She looked down into his tired little eyes.
“Will you…” he started. “Can you be my new mother?”
Something had twisted up inside Padmé then. On one hand she wanted to be this boy’s family, she knew now that after all this that was what she had to do, but being his mother wasn’t exactly the idea…
“I can’t be your mother,” she said, as tenderly as she could. “Your mother’s gone. But I could be… your… something else.”
Anakin picked himself up to look her face to face, still sitting in her lap and in her arms. “Can… can I kiss you again?” he asked sheepishly. “That’s the only thing in the universe I think could take my mind off thi—”
Before he was even finished asking it had happened. Padmé was more than happy to grant this one simple request. Their tongues danced in each other’s mouths, but not the hot, frenzied dance they had shared those long hours before. Now it was a slow waltz, something like a long soothing hug exchanged between their lips. It was sweet, in the way that sad music was sweet, sweet and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Eventually Ani pulled back.
“My mom used to give me kisses, just… never like that.”
“I can’t be your mom,” Padmé said as he rested his head on the pillow of her breast. “But I can be your everything else. Maybe…”
“Not if I become a Jedi,” Ani whispered.
And maybe that was for the best…
Anakin reached into his pocket. “I forgot,” he said. “I made this for you.” He handed her a carved necklace. “So you'd remember me.”
“I promise Anakin,” she said, vowing to cherish this token of his affection for as long as she lived. “There’s no way I’ll ever forget you.” She gave him another sweet little kiss. “Many things will change when we reach the capital Ani, but my caring for you will remain. Always.”
“He was sad,” Padmé told the chancellor. “And angry.”
“Angry?” Something shifted in Palpatine’s eyes.
“He had just watched his mother get murdered for protecting him. He has every right to be angry.”
“Not according to the Jedi Council it would seem.” The older man looked up at the painted frescos that loomed above them. “Though he is a little too old for their tastes, funnily enough.” Palpatine’s eyes flicked back to look into hers, taking in her discomfort. “The Order prefers to identify Force adepts soon after they are born, and take them away from their mothers to raise each child as a blank slate. Otherwise they believe that the emotional connections of their previous life may corrupt them and turn them to the dark side.” Palpatine rolled his eyes. “Always seemed overly paranoid to me, but I was certainly not consulted.”
“It seems cruel,” Padmé said. “What sort of boy wouldn’t want justice after that?”
“It is only natural I think,” Palpatine said with an understanding smile. “The eternal flaw of Jedi ideology is the prohibition of passion, the criminalization of human emotion in favor of blissful, static complacency. Why any of them would seek an… alternative point of view I can scarcely imagine.”
Padmé had never thought of it like that. It hadn’t occurred to her that there was another path for Force-users outside of the Jedi. Though she supposed she had become acquainted with one such heretic that fateful night on Tatooine. It didn’t seem to her however that this Darth Maul had found himself a better path.
Padmé still felt that nagging moral compunction toward monkish self-discipline herself. Had she been raised a Jedi, certainly she would have the mental fortitude to resist the desires her perversion forced upon her. But so long as she could escape the notice of the authority figure sitting across from her, Padmé had no intention of giving up what she wanted just because it was the right thing to do.
“And so,” Palpatine continued, “our young Skywalker was sent forth to be judged by the Jedi Council, hatred and hurt still fresh in his heart.” The old man grinned. “With even pedestrian emotional attachments striking terror into the hearts of those doddering old fools, Master Qui-Gon’s prospective pupil must have mortified each and every one of them. How I would have loved to have seen the look on Master Yoda’s shriveled green face.” Palpatine took a moment to relish the thought. “Anakin came to you afterwards, didn’t he?”
Padmé’s face went still as stone, every muscle trying its best not to betray her the truth of that moment, but she was certain that her labored non-reaction was a tell in and of itself.
It was soon after she had forced the vote of no confidence in Supreme Chancellor Valorum. Padmé, still in her regalia, had been pacing in her royal apartments on Coruscant. Her mind swam with fears and hopes, political maneuverings and panicked thoughts of home, her heart trying its best to force away its fervent feelings for her little lover. That was when one of her handmaidens came to inform her that her Anakin had come to call, and it took everything inside her to keep her royal mask from crumbling.
“I’m sorry,” she heard one of her attendants say, “but Padmé’s not here right now.”
Still in her regal kabuki makeup, Padmé could not even allow her lip to twitch up into a smile.
Elegantly, she rounded the corner and saw Anakin, looking much the same as he always had in his poor desert clothes, while she herself was transformed. Though nothing about his body had changed, Anakin’s face was now hardened into a look she had never seen, grief and anger having compounded into what looked to her like cold rage.
“Your Majesty.” Ani bowed before her stiffly. “I just came to talk to Padmé.”
Queen Amidala looked around at her attendants stoically. “Leave us,” she commanded in her royal affect. “I wish to speak with the boy alone.”
Only once the door had shut did Padmé relax her body and sigh. “Oh Ani…” she said.
“I, um…” Anakin said, looking off to the side awkwardly as the queen approached him.
In less dire circumstances she would have toyed with him a little longer, seeing what it would take for the young boy to notice. But having heard of the Council’s decision already, she presumed the boy had suffered enough cruelty for one day.
She knelt down in front of him. “Ani, it’s me.”
Anakin blinked in confusion before his face twisted in surprise. “Wait, you’re Queen Amidala!?”
She pulled little Ani into a hug, the giant decorative horns of her senatorial headdress nearly falling off from the motion.
“The queen you met was my decoy,” she told him, “to keep me safe. But yes, my name is Padmé Amidala Naberrie, elected Queen of Naboo.” She pulled the headdress off and set the massive hairpiece down on the floor, hoping she looked a little more like herself now despite the white and red face paint.
For just a second, Ani allowed himself a small smile before all the grief and angst came back to him. “I… they said I couldn’t become a Jedi…” He looked away from her as the queen held onto the little boy’s arms. “I passed every test they gave me but, but, it’s not fair!”
“I know it’s not Ani,” she said, trying to hide her joy. She stroked his cheek.
“Master Yoda said I had too much hate inside me,” Anakin added bitterly, “and that hate was a path to the dark side, whatever that means… Master Qui-Gon tried to stick up for me, tried to say I was the chosen one, but Master Windu forbid it.” He balled his little fists, Ani’s lip twisting up. “I hate them!”
A flash of deep empathy coursed through her as if something invisible had exploded out from this boy she loved so much. Even the furniture in her estate seemed for a moment to rattle.
“Ani it’s okay.” Padmé trailed a finger down his angry face. “This may even be a good thing. You can come live with me. We can find you a new Force teacher. There has to be someone out there somewhere. And we can kiss every day and swim in the lake, and do, other things…”
He looked back up at her, a vulnerable little boy once again. “What kind of other things?”
Padmé’s heart was pounding out of her chest. Everything depended on this moment. Just as everything in the galaxy had hinged on her words in the chamber of the Galactic Senate, everything in her heart converged in this single instance. This was her final chance to walk away, the last second she could view herself with any sense of self-respect, the moment this thing that had always waited inside her could finally seize upon its prey.
“I can show you…” she said, feeling outside of herself as she said the words. “I can teach you things a Jedi Master never could.” Well… hopefully. “Things that will make you forget about everything in the world so much better than a kiss.” She let her hand caress its way down from his chin to his neck to his little collarbone and to his chest. With her other she took his hand in hers.
“Do you love me?”
Ani nodded, fear and excitement mixing on his sun-beaten face.
“Do you trust me?”
Padmé pulled his hand onto her gown, past the gold beads and into the folds of her royal robes.
“Yeah…” Anakin whispered.
As she rested his hand onto her still covered breast she pulled him into a soft, lust filled kiss. The hand that still held him trailed behind, her fingers gripping themselves around a cheek of his little butt.
“Do you want me?” she whispered.
Anakin bit his lip, his hairless chest pumping in and out as his breath quickened. His wavering eyes looked up into hers. “Yes.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Padmé picked the child up by his bottom and pulled him into a kiss, luxuriating in how deliciously wrong it felt to be carrying a lover this size. For a second she considered never putting him down, Naboo’s queen strutting through the halls of power fondling her little love doll in front of every horrified face. She licked his tongue with her own and pulled herself out of the delusional reverie. They would have to keep this a secret, at least until Anakin came of age. For just a moment she wondered if she could still love him all grown up, but thinking of how he’d come to her rescue in the little desert hut she knew this was her one and only love. She would raise him and love him and marry him and have his children. It was all she ever wanted.
By the time she sat them down on a nearby sofa Padmé noticed that her face paint and lipstick was now smeared all across little Ani’s face, the white making him look like a child who had gotten into the powdered sugar, and the red like a savage animal, mouth dripping with blood. Padmé wanted both.
Anakin’s hand found its own way past the silken garments to the bare flesh of her breast, his tiny fingers playing with her stiff nipples. Pleasure and dark satisfaction coursed through the young queen, her own hand responding in kind by trailing up the boy’s smooth back. Her hand shifted around to the front of his shirt but his tiny nipples were barely even there. She grinned as she realized what she really wanted was down below.
Her perfectly manicured hand rubbed down the front of his tattered pants, finding the buried treasure underneath.
Anakin jolted in surprise, seeming shocked that she would touch him in this special place, but Padmé flashed him a grin and took the plunge beneath his waistband, feeling his baby cock and balls with just two fingers and her thumb.
“Wh-what are you doing down there?” he whispered, panting.
“Trying to see if I can turn on your lightsaber,” Padmé said with a sultry smile.
Just then his little penis, as if waking up from a dream, began to stiffen in her hand. She wondered if this was the first time he had been hard, but had to imagine it would have come up at some point. The knowledge that she was the cause of this new and alien sensation in the boy was hotter than a thousand bursting stars.
Carefully working his foreskin, Padmé jerked Ani off as his boyish body began spasming at the motions. It was just jolts of pleasure, not the grand finale, but Padmé suddenly wanted to try something else to give her little hero his well-deserved reward. Shifting down to kneel on the floor, Padmé pulled Anakin’s sandy trousers to his feet and took a moment to admire her handiwork.
He was small, but stuck up with enough prepubescent height to suggest his little Ani still had much room to grow. Padmé lamented that she would probably hardly feel him when she finally took him inside of her, but like a sapling sprouting into a full spring flower, she couldn’t wait to feel him grow up inside her day by day.
“It’s… cold…” Ani muttered, his little balls seeming to contract.
“Let’s change that,” Padmé said, taking him into her mouth.
Anakin shuddered at the new, overwhelming sensation, making adorable gulping noises as she brought her lips up and down and up and down, smearing her makeup on his stiff little rod. Padmé cupped his small stones with one hand as she sucked him, savoring the taste of her tiny conquest. If anyone walked in it would be the scandal of the century, but in this moment that thought only made it more exciting.
“He came to you,” Chancellor Palpatine reiterated, “that night, is that correct?”
Padmé’s heart sunk inside her, everything she had learned about decorum and masking her emotions in public life falling away as she struggled to twist her lurid memories into something she could present.
“Ani, uh, Anakin had just been rejected from the Jedi Temple,” Padmé said, trying not to stammer. “He, came…” Oh boy did he. “To see Padmé.”
Palpatine’s eyes never left her face, his own still and unreadable. “And you, I was informed, sent away your attendants to speak with him for some long while. What on such a politically perilous day could have warranted secrecy between you and this young boy?”
“Secrecy?!” Padmé smiled anxiously. “Nothing required secrecy. I could just tell how disappointed he was. Not being accepted amongst the Jedi crushed him, and so soon after he had already lost his mother.” Perhaps that would have been enough but Padmé kept speaking. “You must understand, the night of the attack we formed a very close bond. I was the only person in the world he had left and, despite everything else that was happening I felt an… affection for him.”
Why did she say that?!
“Affection?” the chancellor parroted back. “A benign word for, what I must say Your Majesty, at least one of your handmaidens seemed to misconstrue as… undue interest, given the state of your royal cosmetics when she came back in.”
Padmé kicked herself. She had tried her best to get the red and white paint back to looking proper before she allowed her staff back in the room, as well as take care of Anakin’s smudged and lovedrunk face which only added to the suspicious amount of time they were taking. And she had never applied the royal face paint alone before. What passed for natural to her own eyes in the mirror was evidently not good enough fool the woman who would typically paint it on.
“I managed to isolate her before she could spread any salacious rumors but, if you’ll forgive my saying so my queen, it is a tad, unbecoming of royalty to take such interest in… a child.”
“I…”
He knew! Padmé couldn’t even fool herself any longer. Palpatine knew, and now her life, her queenship would fall apart around her. She should have feigned ignorance. She should have denied it. She should have threatened the old man into keeping quiet. But instead her panicked mind defaulted to her oldest, gravest fear regarding this dark side of herself.
“You’re not going to tell my parents are you?”
In that moment she was not a queen, not a stateswoman, not a noble or even the woman she liked to pretend to be. She was a teenage girl, begging for an adult with complete power over her not to tell on her to her mommy and daddy.
Palpatine allowed himself a sinister grin. “Tell them what, my dear?”
“About me and Anakin…”
“What about you and Anakin?” He seemed determined to draw it out, to torture the information out of her and watch her squirm.
“That I…” Padmé squeezed her eyes shut. “No. No, nothing, nothing hap—”
“Tell me!”
Palpatine’s voice twisted into something inhuman in the darkness behind her eyelids, a command she couldn’t refuse no matter how hard she tried.
“That I love him!” she admitted finally. “That I… want him… That I… like him. I like…”
“Say it.”
“Children.” Padmé’s face fell into her hands, starting to sob.
Her life was over. Her love for Anakin was over. She would be better off flinging herself from the high window she sat across from than face the indignity of her secret coming to light. But even though he let her languish for a moment that seemed sadistically long, eventually, Palpatine reached out his hand.
“Oh my sweet,” he said, pulling her face back up to look at him. “There’s no need to cry. I have no intention of revealing the truth of your misdeeds to anyone outside this room.”
Padmé’s heart caught in her throat as she dared to hope. “You, you… but why?”
“I assure you,” the man said casually, as if they were discussing the fine details of galactic trade, “I am far more forgiving of, shall we say, unorthodox relationships than most.” He pulled back to sit comfortably in his chair. “It has always been my view that the chains of conventional morality, narrow minded and dogmatic as they are, can never serve a ruler well. You are a queen, Your Majesty, and that means you should have the strength to take exactly what you want.”
Padmé’s eyes went wide as a sudden revelation clicked into place. “Just the same way you’ve, taken what you wanted… Your Excellency.”
Chancellor Palpatine smiled. “I think we have finally come to understand one another. Your Highness.”
Padmé walked out of the meeting feeling brand new, with a lightness in her soul she had never experienced before. Now that the Trade Federation was defeated everything could be exactly as she wanted it. It was as if the chains of shame that had trapped her all her life were finally broken, replaced by the strength of her passion for her beloved Anakin.
With her personal crisis finally over, Padmé made her way back to her family estate in the countryside, where little Ani waited.
With the help of the Gungans, inspired by tales of Jar Jar’s noble sacrifice, they had managed to liberate Naboo. The two Jedi, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, made quick work of the battle droids inside the royal palace, allowing them to retake the planet from Viceroy Gunray with relative ease. Even Anakin managed to finally show off his piloting skills and destroyed a Trade Federation control ship all on his own.
Hearing that astounding fact made Padmé feel victoriously certain in her morally dubious life choices. Anakin was something special, everyone could see it. It didn’t have to be wrong, because Anakin was not an ordinary little boy, and she not an ordinary girl. It was fate that had brought them together. All she had to do was keep him a secret until he was a young man, then she could marry him and live exactly how she pleased. It wasn’t going to be easy, and she couldn’t always be around, but Padmé felt an excitement for the future she had never known in her short life spent entrenched in politics and duty.
Maybe I can find some small position for Ani, she thought, as a page or some kind of attendant. He could travel with me on diplomatic missions. I could show him the stars. And one day, with a lightsaber at his belt, he could be my bodyguard, my brave shining knight, Jedi or not.
“Ani!” she called down the beautifully marbled corridor. “I’m home!”
Padmé hoped little Ani would run out and hug her shouting “Yippee!”, but instead a different, far less enticing being waddled out to greet her.
“Oh my!” C-3PO said, “Queen Amidala, it is so good to see you. I must thank you profusely for my rescue off that desert planet. Sand is so terrible for internal circuitry, I must say. Though, looking around at the decor I do feel a smidge underdressed.”
Anakin had installed a number of gold panels to cover the protocol’s exposed wires, but there was still work to be done.
“Where’s Anakin?” she asked.
“Master Anakin is in the garage, fiddling with one of your speeders,” 3PO said. “I told him that it looked expensive and that he’d best leave it alone, but he threatened to disconnect my power coupling and that was that.”
Padmé laughed to herself. That’s my Ani.
“No need to fret over the price tag, 3PO,” Padmé said. “It’s just a machine.”
“Well, speaking as a machine myself I…”
Padmé left him in the foyer, too anxious to see her boy to worry over his robot’s anxieties.
Anakin spent most of his free time working with machines, as if he were still a slave in Watto’s shop rather than allow himself to take in all the luxuries his new life offered him. Padmé had experienced such a rush of joy when she first brought Anakin here on Naboo once all the danger was done. He had never experienced even the simplest of luxuries firsthand; never seen a tree, never swam in open water, never tasted fine foods or slept in a soft bed. But once the initial shock and wonder of it all wore off, Anakin seemed uncomfortable around such opulence, like it was all a trick and would be pulled away the moment he got too used to his new surroundings.
The first part of him she saw were his little knees, legs sticking out from under the polished chrome speeder bike.
Padmé had tried to approach silently but Anakin sensed her immediately. “How did your queenly stuff go?” he asked, his body shifting with the movement of a turned wrench.
“I shouldn’t have been so worried. Everything is going to be just fine Ani. I let the government know I would be spending a few days resting now that the crisis is over, so for the time being I have you all to myself.”
Anakin slid out from under the vehicle, grease smeared across his face and forehead.
“There was an acceleration restrictor built into this speeder,” Anakin said excitedly. “I managed to make it so you can overclock it. That means this thing will be able to go much faster.”
“Don’t try anything too dangerous Ani,” Padmé said, slightly concerned.
“You sound like my…” Anakin’s excited smile faded.
Oh no.
“Hey.” She rushed over to him, kneeling to pick the greasy boy up off the ground. “How about we get you a bath. Then we can play that game again.”
“Really!?” he said, excitedly.
“Mmm hmm.”
Crisis averted.
Anakin was certainly old enough to bathe himself, but baths seemed to have worked differently on Tatooine. And of course, Padmé didn’t mind.
“Back home we always had to recycle the water back into our drinking supply,” he said as she poured warm bathwater over his blond head. “We had a water filter but it always tasted funny.” He looked down at the steaming pool surrounding him. “I wonder how long it would take a moisture farmer to catch this much.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as moisture farmers,” Padmé said, admiring his undeveloped chest and looking down through the soapy water to get a blurry peek at what waited bellow. “Doesn’t seem like an industry that’s going anywhere when there are whole worlds made of water.”
“Your planet already has more water than I could even imagine,” Anakin said. She recalled him flailing around, trying his best to swim when she first brought him down to the lake. “One day, I want to see an ocean world and go underneath the water.”
“We wouldn’t have to leave Naboo to see that,” she said. “But soon, I’ll take you somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away. Wherever you want to go.”
“There’s so many stars in the sky. I want to see them all.”
Padmé smiled.
Once he was all cleaned up, she grabbed the naked boy and pulled him out to dry, taking more than a few moments to glance at his wet butt while doing so.
It was evening by the time they were done, so after a nice meal Padmé decided to go to bed a few hours early.
“Are you feeling alright, your majesty?” C-3PO worried. “Is there anything I can get for you?”
“No, no, just power off 3PO,” she said as Anakin grinned ear to ear knowing what was about to come.
“As you say my queen.”
Once the door to her bedchamber was shut, Padmé threw Anakin onto the bed and climbed atop the sheets herself. A warm breeze blew in from the balcony, the wispy curtains blowing in elegantly from the lake. Walking on her knees across the comforter, Padmé felt like raxshir tiger sizing up her undersized prey.
“We’ve gotten so little time alone since that day in the capital,” Padmé said. They had shared a number more kisses, felt each other’s bodies one way or another, but more important matters had a habit of getting in the way. The night Anakin had first arrived here Padmé thought she had finally found a moment to attend to these matters she deemed most important, but then, of course, Queen Amidala was called away on official business.
“Can I see you…” Anakin said bashfully, “you know, without your robe on?”
“It’s already so much less than my royal attire,” Padmé said, pulling her negligée against the curves of her body to give Anakin a taste. “But for you, alright.”
Slowly, sensually, Padmé pulled her night dress over her head and exposed her teenage body. Her breasts were still smaller than some men preferred, but she didn’t suppose Anakin could complain about anything being too small. She tweaked a nipple and let her hand drift down to her pubic hair, cut in a small design above her bare lips.
Anakin’s eyes went wide with boyish shock and wonder.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
“Only because I’m so in love.”
“No I think you’d probably be beautiful either way.”
Padmé grinned and pushed forward into a kiss.
Anakin was only wearing what amounted to a nightgown as well, no need for undergarments going from the tub to her bed, but she was ready to rip it back off of him. She felt his hardening little boycock but knew it was too early to let that tiny speeder blast off. There were other things she wanted to show him tonight, and more importantly, things she needed in return.
Padmé took Anakin’s hand by the wrist and brought it to her thigh, the little mechanic’s fingers not seeming to know what to do with something so soft.
“I want you to feel me,” she said between kisses. “All of me.”
It was a touch awkward having to bend over to accommodate Anakin’s smaller frame, but she found their mismatched sizes extraordinarily arousing.
With her guidance, Anakin’s hand found its way to her royal folds, his little fingers clumsily mashing into her lips before one pierced between to find the wetness waiting inside.
“Oh wow,” he said, pulling back. “I’m gonna need to get a better look at this.”
Padmé giggled as a warm feeling spread throughout her body.
Candles illuminated the room, giving Anakin enough dim but flickering light to see this new and exciting mechanism he had to work with. Padmé laid herself back on a large pillow and spread her legs knees up for this young boy, making sure to take it slow so her lips would gently come apart before him.
Anakin watched in awe, sitting naked on his knees, his little lightsaber sticking straight up into the air.
“Go on starpilot, time to figure out the controls of your new ship.” She supposed the space ship metaphors would be helpful in guiding him. “There’s one very important button you’ll have to find. Go ahead, see what you can do.”
Tentatively, Anakin reached forward, resting a trembling thumb in the gap between her hair and the top of her lips. First he just brushed his fingers downward, the gentle tugs on her skin tickling her as he moved, adding to her excitement. Then Anakin took the plunge. With both hands he pulled apart the curtain of her labia and saw her pink within. Padmé wanted nothing more than to grasp his dumbstruck face and force his tongue inside her, but they were not there quite yet. Curiously he poked a finger inside, feeling her wetness as he made absentminded circles around one side of her opening. Padmé took the opportunity to guide him, taking him by the hand and pulling his pointer finger up to her clit.
“There’s your controls,” she said. “Now push down.”
He jammed his finger in like he was pressing a metal button.
“Ow, not quite so hard.” She took his finger in her own. “Like this.”
With her guidance he made circles around her little nub, sending electric shocks coursing through her body. It felt so much better than anything her own hands could do to herself.
After a few moments of rubbing, Anakin seemed to get the hang of things, making Padmé want to escalate the situation. She brought his other hand to the opening of her vagina, taking two of his little fingers and making him explore her pink cave. The new angle of attack made Ani forget to keep making circles around her clit, but with a little encouragement he was able to pleasure both parts simultaneously.
Finally, Padmé began to feel the relief she had sought all her life. No man’s penis or mouth could pleasure her like this, none but Anakin’s when he was all grown up. That would be a new kind of pleasure for her to look forward to, but it was all the more reason to take as much as she could while he was still small.
They eventually found that three fingers and even a thumb worked better to push inside her. Padmé wondered if she could take his whole little hand, but having never shoved more than a comb handle inside herself, that could wait for another night.
Despite luxuriating in her own pleasure, eventually Padmé noticed Anakin’s hips humping the sheets he was lying on as he explored her, and she knew that would never do. It was time for the main event, time to show Anakin the depths of what she could teach him, even if depth was something she would have to wait on personally.
She pulled Anakin up to sitting and then positioned him so his body lay between her thighs. His head barely reached her breasts when she angled him into the proper position, but she supposed that was a good enough place for him.
“You ready?” she asked.
“Umm hmm.” He nodded with nervous excitement.
Closing her thighs around his hips, Padmé took a boyish buttcheek in each hand and forced his pelvis forward. His little Ani collided with her outer lips but slipped upward away from its target. Shifting to hold all of his bottom in one hand she adjusted his undeveloped penis to slot into the mouth of her opening. Then with his butt in hand she shoved Anakin inside her.
It felt little more than a sort of soft finger, but still both partners rocketed with pleasure. Anakin’s hips seemed to instinctively know what to do and started rocking back and forth. Padmé took her hand from the base of his staff to rub herself as the little boy fucked her.
As he thrust into her, panting and whining and making such adorable little noises, Padmé smiled inwardly to herself, laughing at every moment of deep shame she had felt in her life. This was what she had been made for, clearly. It was destiny that she was the way that she was, and for Anakin to be here inside her. She was the happiest woman in the universe, shining brighter than all the stars that ringed the center of the galaxy.
Anakin’s slim hips grew more frantic and she knew his time had come. She pressed furiously into her clitoris, adding one of her own fingers down below to add some girth to little Ani’s thrusting cock. She was so close, all she had to do was keep pressing harder and…
Both woman and boy screamed at once, a long labored sigh of pleasure so deep they felt disconnected from the world they were fucking on. It was like they were floating through space, riding the wave of a supernova out into the dark.
Eventually Anakin collapsed between the pillows of her breasts as Padmé wrapped her legs around his small frame. She could lie like this forever she considered with a sigh.
After a few moments she slowly came back to reality, the sweat between their bodies now feeling overly hot and sticky. Little Ani seemed to almost try to hump her again but Padmé sat them both up and gave him a long, lingering kiss.
Both of their mouths were desert dry from the excitement, so Padmé pulled their two bodies apart to go grab some water from the kitchen.
“Don’t take too long,” Anakin said excitedly. “I think I’m ready to go again!”
Padmé blushed, her heart warmly fluttering at his youthful energy.
Despite the fact that they were all alone Queen Amidala still felt some sense modestly moving out into the rest of the estate, so she threw her nightgown back over her head and wandered down the marble halls.
Everything in the world had a sudden lightness to it, an airy slipperiness she had never known, like she was barely tethered by Naboo’s gravity.
She poured them two glasses of ice water and began to make her way back through the darkened halls to her bedchamber, when the dark silhouette of a man appeared out of the corner of her eye. Padmé nearly jumped out of her own skin, a bit of water splashing onto her toes from her fright, but it was only C-3PO, standing deactivated in an uncanny fashion.
“Don’t do that 3PO,” she said with a little laugh, when she felt something else shift behind her. A metal rod pressed against her throat.
“Where is Anakin Skywalker?” a hauntingly familiar voice hissed.
Suddenly she could not move, as if her entire body were encased in carbonite.
“I’ll…” she managed, fighting though the paralyzing force. “I’ll never tell you…”
“Bring me to him,” Darth Maul said as he twisted the hilt of his lightsaber into the side of her neck. “Or he will come to the sound of your screams.”
Padmé dropped the glasses, hoping the sound of shattering would alert Anakin there was something wrong. But it was a big house and all she did was scatter broken glass around her bare feet.
“Your thoughts betray you,” the Sith Lord said. “I can see him down the hall. Now, march.”
Still in his Force grip, Padmé walked forward to her and her Anakin’s doom, her heel taking a shattered shard on the way.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, shivering with fright.
“You would not understand,” Maul said in a low voice as he moved her down the hall. “The boy might. But that no longer matters. I saw something. Something I was not meant to see. A vision of the future…”
They passed by a bust of one of Padmé’s ancestors. She tried her best to reach a trembling hand out to grab it and smash the Zabrak’s horns into it’s skull, but she couldn’t.
“My master intends to discard me,” he said, his voice a hiss of betrayal. “And for young Skywalker to take my rightful place as his apprentice.” They reached Padmé’s bedroom door. “So I decided to take the boy from him instead. Open it.”
“Ani…” she called as the assassin dug his lightsaber in deeper. “Ru—” she started, but her mouth slammed shut.
With his red and black hand guiding her, they opened the door together and stepped inside.
Anakin was dressed again in his night robe, kneeling up on the bed as the queen and the killer moved inside.
“What’s going on?” Anakin asked, terror on his little face.
Maul shoved Padmé into the boy’s arms at the edge of the bed, moving her with the Force as much as his own arm. Padmé held him close.
“Say goodbye to your…” Darth Maul said standing over them, yellow eyes fluttering in the briefest moment of confusion. “…whatever this is.”
Anakin strained against her but all she could do was hug him, trembling as the Sith raised the long handle of his saber above his crown of horns. A red blade ignited with a hiss, all the world around them turning dark crimson. Padmé knew this was the end. She knew that they had to go together, that if it was their fate to shine together, it was also their fate to burn.
The darkness shifted behind Maul as he made ready to strike, a shadow even blacker seeming to materialize beyond him. The baleful glow of the red saber illuminated a face underneath the shadow’s hood. The eyes of the shadow burned like fire, glowing gold within the face of a nightmare, gray and wrinkled as if the thing had once been a man who had lived a thousand years.
Maul’s own face twisted from a look of grim determination to one of horror, his bloodshot eyes going wide.
Another saber ignited in the shadow’s hand, and then another from the opposite end of Maul’s handle. Their would be killer twisted around as fast as he could to engage the shadow, three crimson sabers colliding with a speed Padmé’s eyes couldn’t even register. The shadow fought with a ferocity that Qui-Gon Jinn could never have brought to bare, and even Maul’s two saber blades could not save him. The fight was over an instant after it began, Maul howling in pain as the shadow swept low and cut off the Zabrak’s legs just above his knees.
Maul’s body twisted around unnaturally to face them, propped up by the stumps of his shortened legs, the slightly shorter one seeming as if to hover a centimeter off the ground. The now extinguished double-bladed lightsaber clattered to the stone floor, rolling in front of them and coming to a rest right before Anakin.
The little boy twisted in her arms, fear turning to righteous rage as he fought his way out of her grasp. Now free, Anakin bounded to the floor, picking up the lightsaber and pressing every button at once as he rushed his mother’s killer. Both blades ignited, one lancing forward to stab right between the Zabrak’s two hearts while the other pointed its burning red light back at Padmé.
Anakin took a moment to scream out his hatred, driving the searing blade in deeper through Maul’s chest before he finally let go, his revenge complete. The dual blades retreated and Maul’s saber fell to the floor, along with its master.
“Good, Anakin, good,” another familiar voice said.
All the candles had been blown out in the chaos, but she still recognized his face in the moonlight as Chancellor Palpatine let down his black hood.
“Your… Your Excellency…?” she stammered. “You’re…?”
Palpatine smiled, looking much the same as he had during their meeting, his burning eyes now their usual blue gray.
“There’s no need for such formalities, my dear,” he said casually. “I know one of your secrets, and now… you know one of mine.” He looked down to Anakin, still breathing fast over the corpse of his mother’s killer. Palpatine rested a hand on the young boy’s shoulder. “You did well Anakin.” He looked back to Padmé with a satisfied smile. “You will be his guardian, and I will train our boy in the ways of the Force.”
“I can…” Anakin looked up at his new master. “I can be a Jedi?”
Palpatine looked down at the corpse this young boy had just made, the violent act seeming to please him. “Not exactly.” He picked little Anakin up from under his arms and sat him down next to Padmé on the bed. “One day when you are older I will begin your training in earnest, but for now, you two need each other.”
“I thought,” Padmé began, “I thought for sure we were going to die…”
Palpatine grinned down at them. “I’d never let anything happen to you, Your Highness. I know how long you’ve waited for this moment.” He moved closer to the bed so he was standing over them. “Isolation, loneliness, is no good for a queen. No, no… There must always be two.” He took Anakin’s hand, taking a moment to caress it before setting it on her own. “No more, no less.”