NEW FIC: "Burning Bright and Brittle"

[mattlauercansuckit]

Title "Burning Bright and Brittle"
Author patientalien
Summary Padme reflects. AU, post-ROTS
Notes I've been sitting on this one for a while. If you want to get the idea of where it came from, listen to "Shooting Star", by Harry Chapin.

"You're all I've ever had," he tells her, fervent and desperate, clutching at the sleeves of her gown. His eyes are wild, lost and untamed and for a brief moment he frightens her. She puts a hand on his waist - the furthest she can move with him grabbing her like that. "Padme..."

She softens him with a look. "Ani, calm," she says gently, and he blinks. "Don't worry." She talks him down like this frequently, now that the war is over and everything is gone - their friends, his Order, her Senate, and his sanity. "I'm here."

He envisions her death, as he had at the end, and it torments him. It's no longer just at night, now, and his body will tense, his eyes will hollow, and he will lose himself until she comes to him. "They'll take you away," he insists, grip tightening. "You, and the children, they're going to take you."

The children, still babies really, are what keep them together and what keeps Anakin from running. He has done it before, disappeared in the middle of the night only to reappear days later bedraggled and despairing with the realization that he can fly as far as his ship will take him but he cannot escape himself. "No one is going to take us," she assures him softly.

There is, after all, no one left. The Jedi are destroyed, and Palpatine lies in pieces thanks to Anakin's blade and the final sacrifice of his mind. Even Obi-Wan, Anakin's rock when Padme could not be, is gone, shot down by his own clones on some Force-forsaken backwater. It is, Padme suspects, the severance of that bond that makes Anakin what he is now, a ghost in their home, a shell. She still loves him, but it is different now. Now she is more of a caretaker, a mother or a nurse, than a wife. She has three children, it seems, and though nanny 'droids can care for the twins when need be, Anakin tends to dismantle them in bitter anger. He knows what he lost, and it makes him feel worse that he has to rely on others to keep him grounded in reality. He lashes out at her, and at himself, his flesh arm a latticework of scars, and sometimes she questions her own reluctance to put him in a hospital. It is because she knows if she does that, she will never see him a free man again. She won't do that to him.

"Sometimes I think you're the only thing that's not just in my head," he whispers hoarsely. "Why are you still with me?" And he sounds younger than he is, though he is still a very young man. Young, and hurt, and lost, and her heart aches for him.

"Because I love you," she tells him, and it is true. She still loves him, but she is no longer in love with him. She cannot be, and she doesn't quite know when things changed. It was before he lost himself, that much she knows, so does not feel as though she needs to blame Palpatine for it. It means, though, that she finds herself blaming Anakin.

She is sure he knows. He still, after all, has his connection to the Force. It is one of the few things he does have from his life before, and she will find him deep in trance, looking into the mysteries of the universe, losing himself within it, a look on his face so full of wonder and despair that she cannot watch him. And sometimes he looks at her and the light of congizance will dawn in his eyes and he will turn away, ashamed, because he can see what is in her secret heart.

She knows they will not have a happy ending. Anakin is more lost to her every day, and she knows one day he will leave and never return. And she knows when that day comes, she will not mourn.

Anakin was lost to her a long time ago.

Comments

[citizenjess.livejournal.com]

I feel most for Padme in this piece. She's the one putting off her own life so Anakin is in some modicum of comfort, and they're both still miserable.

ILUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

[patientalien.livejournal.com]

I think that's how it would be if they were together with him as Vader, as well. Part of it would be he'd keep her there, but part of it would be she knows he'd be even more, well, evil, without her there.

ILU MOAR!!!! I MISS YOU OMG