All will love her and despair

by Enchillchilla

Summary:

Anakin's first swan dive into the depths of the dark side was particularly gruesome. He did in fact not only kill the men, but the women and the children too. And when that fact was discovered, he was swiftly recalled, fairly judged, and locked in the halls of healing with a half dozen mind healers to try and rehabilitate him (if that at all was possible).

But it didn't stop there.

When it was also discovered a certain senator not only hid that fact from the galaxy for the better part of three years, but also married him, she wasn't treated so fairly (at least in her opinion). Expelled from the senate, ostracized by her friends and family, forced to live in isolation, all while pregnant too?! It really is no wonder she did what she did.

(Or: Padme's crashout after she gets thrown under the speeder for Anakin's massacre. Also much more dramatic than the summary implies, I just suck at summarizing.)

Chapter 1: The Blue-fire Blade

Notes:

First off, it's been ages since I've written any kind of fanfic, so if my prose is weird or my dialogue formatting now quite right, that might be why. And if my writing massively changes as the fic goes on I'll go back to these early chapters and touch 'em up a little bit. Also CW: child death, and a brief description of children in abject terror.

He found it by accident. 

 

Quinlan Voss’ actual mission was to escort a group of escaped formerly enslaved people from a stop in the freedom trail deep in the dune sea to a hidden starship just outside of Mos Eisley. It was a glorious change of pace from the endless campaigns of the Clone Wars. Before the war these kinds of secretive but intrinsically humanitarian missions were the norm for him. Back then he found them almost boring.

 

It almost made him laugh, in the hysterical way that was the prelude to choking sobs. There was a time when he found helping the most vulnerable people find some semblance of safety… uneventful. Devoid of excitement or adventure. He’d give anything to go back to those days now. Now it seemed like all he was good for was leading cloned slave soldiers to their deaths for the glory and freedom of the Republic-

 

He stopped that train of thought before it sent him spiraling into another depressive episode. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the nihilism and despair flow from him. He heard the sand shifting under the clumsy plodding of two dozen souls, bone tired but desperately continuing regardless for their freedom was so close they could almost reach out and touch it. He smelled musty bantha hair fluttering in the gentle night breeze, the sand people riding them keeping a watchful vigil in the night. And beyond, he saw with his mind’s eye the stars twinkling overhead and the moons hanging high in the sky over the endless expanse of the dune sea.

 

And then suddenly he felt it.

 

A deep, sickly sweet darkness calling out from the distant sands. It pulled at his worst emotions, gently at first, almost imperceptibly, then suddenly yanked on his consciousness and threatened to pull him into a bottomless inky black void. He gasped, his eyes shooting open. The would-be escaped former enslaved stopped, trading nervous looks. The sand people watched him curiously. Quinlan turned to the lead bantha rider, signing in their ancient unspoken language.

 

There’s something evil out there, Quinlan signed, then pointing in the vague direction of the dark nexus.

 

The leader nodded, signing back, it is an evil place. It is said an enraged demon wielding a sword of fire destroyed an entire village down to the last child. We dare not approach, for some say the hate and rage still poison the land. 

 

“Is something bad, mister jedi?” a tiny twi-lek child squeaked. The rest of the refugees looked more and more nervous by the second.

 

“It’s nothing we have to worry about,” Quinlan said as he hoisted the child onto his shoulders. “Just a Jedi thing that I’ll have to look into later.”

 

And with that, the group continued on. They walked all through the rest of the night, and made it to the half buried transport ship as the first rays of dawn broke over the dunes. It was only made to look abandoned, however. The ship, while old and not in the best shape, was still fully functional. Its hull and engines had been sealed off and treated in such a way that burying it wouldn’t negatively affect it in any way.

 

The sand people worked quickly to uncover the rest of the ship, the few dewbacks they brought expressly for this purpose clawing at the sand and sweeping it away. Quinlan helped by shifting hundreds of kilos of sand with the Force, so it took less than an hour to fully uncover it and prep it for departure. 

 

It didn’t take long for the refugees to board and get settled while the Whitesun pilot performed all the necessary pre-flight checks. And once he completed them he walked down the ramp and looked expectantly to Quinlan.

 

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

 

Quinlan hesitated, then shook his head. “No… No, there's something out in the deep desert that I think I need to investigate first. Go ahead and take off, I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”

 

The pilot shrugged, then returned to the cockpit. Quinlan stepped back as the repuslors hummed to life and the transport lumbered into the air. He watched it disappear into the sky, then turned to the sand people leader.

 

That place you spoke of, that evil place. I have to go there. I’ll go alone, I’ll just need to borrow one of your banthas.

 

The leader stilled, then nodded. An older bantha was led to him, one that the tribe wouldn’t miss should Quinlan not return.

 

---

 

It took a full day and night for the elderly bantha to make the journey. The twin suns had nearly risen by the time he arrived at the darkside nexus. It indeed appeared to be the remains of a village, and though he knew it had been abandoned for years, the huts were strangely intact, like the darkness was so pervasive that even the desert sand and winds refused to touch it. The bantha wouldn’t even approach, instead nervously shuffling at the very outskirts. Quinlan calmed the frightened animal then entered the village alone.

 

It didn’t take him long to find the first body. It appeared to be a warrior, cut cleanly in half at the ribcage with its severed arms and lower torso laying nearby. The body had completely desiccated and mummified in the hot, dry air, but even then Quinlan could tell the cut was made by a lightsaber. It was a particularly brutal strike, low enough to miss vital organs so the poor person would have suffered for minutes, maybe even an hour. 

 

The last memories of this warrior were bound to be incredibly painful, both emotionally and physically. Wincing in anticipation, Quinlan steadied himself, centered his emotions, then removed his gloves and touched the frayed robes of the body. He froze as the psychometric visions rushed into his mind.

 

He had to get to his family. The demon had already cut through the majority of the warband and was heading to the women’s huts. In times of danger all the children of the tribe would be spirited to one hut that could be easily defended. Except there was no defense against this monster, and no way out of that hut save the single entrance.

 

He rushed through the tent flaps in time to see the village matron be cut down. The children shrieked, tumbling over themselves as they pushed against the back wall of the tent. His younger sister fell to her knees desperately signing, trying to convince the creature to spare the children at least. The beast cut her down without a second thought. 

 

Roaring, he wildly swung his gaderffii in a desperate attempt to save the children. The demon didn’t even turn to look at him, it just flicked the blue fire blade in a low sweeping arc and he fell to the sands in pieces.

His upper torso hit the compact sand hard, and while the pain was overwhelming, he was still desperate to save the children. But he was literally missing everything below the waist, and his arms just above the elbow. All he could do was squirm pathetically, tormented by the sounds of screaming children until mercifully the darkness took him.

 

Quinlan snapped back to his reality with a strangled cry. His body trembled from the residual panic, but eventually he calmed enough to process what he saw. And it sickened him.

 

He assumed this could have only been the work of a sith, or some other darksider. But he was wrong. It was a Jedi’s blade that dealt such slaughter. And though he already had a pretty firm grasp on the identity of the murderer… he had to be sure.

 

Further inside the hut was more carnage. Small bodies, doubtlessly the children, laid in scattered pieces around the tent. None of the strikes were clean or quick. Even the children were subjected to slow, agonizing deaths. Quinlan froze at the sight, then forced himself to continue. 

 

He couldn’t bring himself to touch any of the children. Inhabiting the body of the adult male was bad enough, the terror of a child would be too much. But one of the bodies was larger than the rest, more teenager than child. Not ideal, but better than the alternative.

 

Quinlan knelt down and brushed his fingers against the mask and the visions came quickly.

 

She screamed as the matron was cut down. Every instinct was telling her to run, to try and save herself. But instead she bravely faced the demon head on and was shocked to see the young face of a Settler. He had to have been only a few years older than herself. Tears cascaded down his cheeks, his eyes wild with more grief than anger. Foolishly, she thought she might be able to reason with him.

 

“Please,” she signed as she dropped to her knees, “the children are innocent! They haven’t hurt anyone just let them-”

 

She saw a flash of blue and felt a hideous searing burn that went from shoulder to hip. It was agony, but mercifully brief. She was overcome by pain in seconds before darkness swallowed her up.

 

Quinlan crashed back into the present, a wave of nausea overtaking him. He leaned to the side and dry heaved, writhing in the sand until the panic and agony dissipated. It took him longer this time, but eventually he fully processed the terrifying vision. He knew who the culprit was without a shadow of a doubt now. 

 

Skywalker.

Chapter 2: Questions, Answers, and More Questions

Beru cursed under her breath as the faulty wiring of the moisture vaporator sparked against the metal housing. Owen had left a few days ago to bring this month’s water harvest to the market. Which meant it was up to her to fix the blasted thing. Ar-Amu preserve her, she was hopeless with mechanics. She hoped Owen would be back soon, otherwise she was liable to break it even further-

 

She froze.

 

She felt the sands shift as someone approached. They were very good, had she been even a hair less vigilant she wouldn’t have noticed. But she was a child of Ar-Amu and knew how to read the desert better than Huttese. 

 

“Alright, that’s far enough,” she said as she turned, blaster in hand.

 

“Sorry miss, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. Force of habit, I’m afraid,” the man replied.

 

Beru regarded him carefully. He wore simple roughspun robes, a strange gold tattoo across his face. Dreadlocks hung heavily from his head, and dark eyes looked at her expectantly.

 

“What do you want?” Beru asked, her blaster still leveled at him.

 

“Um, shelter, if possible. But if not… just some information. I’m wondering if a Jedi had stopped by sometime in the last oh, three years, maybe?”

 

“Whose asking?” Beru said, her blaster barrel still firmly pointed at the stranger’s chest.

 

“I’m Quinlan Voss, Jedi knight,” Quinlan said, slowly pulling his robe aside to show her the lightsaber hilt on his hip.

 

Beru holstered her blaster. “Sorry, you can never be too careful, especially now. Come, let’s get out of the sun so we can talk properly. I’m Beru, by the way. Beru Whitesun.”

 

Beru led him to the homestead, sat him down at the table, and returned a moment later with a pitcher of cold bantha milk.

 

“To answer your question, yes,” Beru said as she poured him a glass, then poured one for herself. “A jedi did visit just before the start of the war. He’s…” she paused, wondering just how much she should divulge. After a moment she simply sighed. “He’s my husband’s stepbrother. Anakin Skywalker. He visited exactly once, then never came back. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since. To be honest, I sort of forgot he existed.”

 

Quinlan arched an eyebrow, “can I ask why he visited?”

 

Beru nodded, “he was looking for his mother. She had been kidnapped by sand people a month before. We told him there was no point in looking further but he left anyway and returned a few days later with her body.”

 

“Do you know why the sand people abducted her in the first place?” Quinlan asked before taking a sip of his drink.

 

Beru nervously chewed her lip. “My husband would tell you that the sand people are animalistic savages who took her for no other reason than to torture her and sate their sick desires. But… the truth is they have reasons to be so aggressive. They’ve been slowly losing territory to the moisture barons for centuries now.”

 

She sighed, running her fingernail along the wood table. “They took Shmi as retribution and warning. They could never know that we’re an independent homestead with no ties to the corporate farms. It was just bad luck that they found our farm and found Shmi out alone.”

 

“Did Anakin say anything about what happened once he returned?”

 

“No,” Beru shook her head. “He just said she was dying when he found her. Then he said a few words at her burial, but didn’t even stay long enough to properly say goodbye to his own mother. He was so hellbent on finding her, you’d think he’d care enough to-”

 

Beru took a deep breath. 

 

“I really couldn’t stand him to tell you the truth, so maybe it was a good thing he just left. Him and that gorgeous senator he was dragging along for the ride-”

 

Quinlan sat up suddenly, “wait, senator? The senator of Naboo? He brought her along to the village?”

 

“Oh no,” Beru said, “he had enough sense to leave her with us. I just mean, he dragged her here, to Tatooine. Poor girl. She was nice enough, but I could tell she couldn’t really handle the heat.”

 

Quinlan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, I guess that was better than leaving her alone and totally unguarded. Did you know he was supposed to be protecting her? She was in hiding after a series of assasination attempts, and he just left her with two people he barely knew...”

 

A serious breach of protocol was nothing compared to Skywalker’s other crimes, but the mundanity of that one specific infraction helped center Quinlan.

 

“Is that what you were investigating? His conduct during the mission, or something?” Beru asked.

 

“No. I wish. That would be so much simpler. But I’m afraid it's something much more serious.” He stiffened, feeling another pull from the Force. He pointed across the courtyard, “what’s down there?”

 

“Oh, just our maintenance bay, why?”

 

“Do you mind if I poke around there a bit?” Quinlan asked.

 

Beru shrugged, “be my guest.”   

 

The maintenance bay wasn’t anything special. There didn’t seem to be any reason for the Force to pull him there. He looked around, refraining from touching anything for now, and tried to find whatever he was supposed to find. He was just about to give up before he felt a slight pull to one of the adjacent bays. And laying innocuously on the floor under a half-repaired speeder was a bent spanner.

That had to be it.

 

He picked it up, bracing for the vision. Except it didn’t really happen in the way he expected. He remained present and aware instead of the more usual way where he saw through the eyes of whoever was the subject of that memory.

Instead he saw the ghostly image of Anakin, like a very high definition color hologram. Anakin fiddled with something on the workbench, very obviously agitated. A wave of cold washed over his body, and he realized that the image of Padmé walked right through him.

 

Their conversation started innocently enough, with Padmé bringing Anakin something to eat. And then it quickly turned into a whiny tirade with Anakin ranting about how it wasn’t fair, how he should have been powerful enough to save his mother, Obi-Wan was holding him back, blah, blah blah…

 

Quinlan started to tune the conversation out and almost missed Anakin’s blatant admission of his atrocity. His blatant xenophobia was almost as sickening as the admission itself. But what was most shocking of all was the senator’s reaction.

 

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The shining paragon of the senate, the golden girl who supposedly valued justice, diplomacy, and mercy almost to an irrational degree was helping a murderer rationalize slaughter.

 

“To be angry is to be human…”

 

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to fly in court, honey,” Quinlan muttered as the vision faded. 

 

Quinlan rubbed his temples in a vain attempt to stall the coming headache. This was a top to bottom clusterkriff, one that he just happened to walk in on by accident. And he didn’t really know how he’d un-kriff the situation. 

 

Skywalker had to face justice, that was obvious. Though he was at a loss for how to make that happen. If he reported this to the Council they could recall him and restrict him to the Temple’s halls of healing. But Anakin was well loved, both by the public and the Chancellor. He was fairly certain neither would care about an alleged mass murder that occurred far outside Republic jurisdiction. 

 

It didn’t help that his evidence was so intangible. He can only show his psychometric visions to other Force sensitives, so it wasn’t exactly admissible in court. And there was the matter of the senator’s involvement too. To be honest he didn’t even know why the Force showed him the vision. It was incriminating, sure, but he had no way of acting on it.

 

Unless…

 

There had to be a reason the senator would go to such lengths to protect Skywalker. And judging by how close they were in the vision, he’d wager that reason involved a romantic entanglement. There could be a way to leverage that relationship, he just needed to find actual, tangible proof.

 

---

 

Before Quinlan could go on his wild bantha chase he’d first have to finish his current mission. He met the refugees at the rendezvous point and escorted them to the next stop on the freedom trail, made his report to the council, then requested a few days of recuperation leave. After a quick stop to the mission report archives, of course.

 

Which was how he found himself piloting a rented waterspeeder to the island retreat of Varikyno.

 

The villa was absolutely stunning. He could definitely see how a few weeks alone surrounded by paradise could inspire a whirlwind romance between two very different people. He anchored the speeder a couple hundred meters offshore of the island, just past the water boundary of the villa. It was technically private property, after all. And he was sort of illicitly entering to find evidence. Thankfully he wouldn’t be submitting it to any formal courts.

 

Though as soon as he made landfall he realized there was no need for subterfuge. The property was deserted, save for a single easily avoided elderly groundskeeper. It was all too easy to go from room to room looking for significant objects to psychometrically analyze.

 

The first thing he found was a jet bead between two couch cushions in one of the firelit lounges. 

 

This vision was much more pleasant than his last foray into psychometry, though he always found it uncomfortably invasive to see the visions through the point of view of a woman.

 

“We’d be living a lie, one that we couldn’t keep if we wanted to. I couldn’t do that. Could you, Anakin? Could you live like that?”

 

“No… you’re right. It would destroy us.”

 

Quinlan tuned out the majority of the conversation, something about breaking up or whatever. And the senator’s choice of eveningwear was as distracting as it was perplexing. Quinlan didn’t exactly blame Skywalker for attempting to continue the relationship. Her dress certainly sent mixed signals. 

 

But while the vision added some insight to the relationship, it wasn’t exactly the kind of revelation Quinlan could use. 

 

In fact, after hours of touching random objects that called to him in the Force and accidentally witnessing several very intimate moments, he began to believe he’d never find what he was looking for. It was especially true because he didn’t even know what bit of information he was trying to find. He just knew whatever was here was important.

 

But eventually he found something of interest wedged into the mortar of a stone courtyard that offered an absolutely stunning view of the lake. If Quinlan had to guess, it was a gear from the servo of a droid. The teeth had been completely abraded away by coarse sand, which might have been why it jostled free.

 

He was immensely disoriented at first. The point of view was very low to the ground, and everything looked strange, like the world was being filtered through a camera. After a moment Quinlan realized he was inhabiting an astromech droid. That was a first, even for him.

 

“Do you, Set, bathed in the light of Shiraya, take Vere as your wedded wife?”

 

“I do.”

 

“And do you, Vere, bathed in the light of Shiraya, take Set as your wedded husband?”

 

“I do.”

 

“Then may this union be sealed with a kiss.”

 

Bingo. 

 

---

 

Pontifex Maxiron Agolerga trundled through the market stalls feeling every second of his seventy-seven years in his aching joints. In days long gone by, mundane tasks like shopping for supplies to refresh the abby larder was given to the younger initiates of the Brotherhood of Cognizance. Except there were no initiates, and there hadn’t been for decades now. Every other member of his order was either as old, or even older than him, so this month’s shopping fell to him.

 

At least it was a lovely day and the market was more well stocked than usual. While the war hadn’t affected trade to the system enough to create shortages of critical supplies, things like fresh fruit from offworld was definitely a rarity. He was eyeing some only slightly overripe jogan fruit when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder.

 

“Pontifex Agolerga? I’m Jedi Knight Quinlan Voss. May I have just have a moment of your time to ask some questions?”

 

“Ask away, Master Jedi,” Maxiron replied.

 

Quinlan picked up a jogan fruit, squeezed it to test its ripeness, then plopped it into Maxiron’s basket. “I understand that your order officiates marriages?”

 

Maxiron nodded, “yes, that is indeed one of my order’s sacred duties, though it's one that we haven’t been called to perform in centuries. Why? Do you need a marriage officiated? I didn’t think that was allowed for Jedi.”

 

“It very much is not,” Quinlan replied, “so I find it very strange that you’d agree to officiate a Jedi’s marriage.”

 

The old priest stilled for just a moment, then huffed, “I may be old, but I think I’d remember officiating a wedding for a Jedi.”

 

“Considering it was a wedding between a Jedi and the senator of Naboo, I think it would be even more memorable,” Quinlan said, pretending to idly inspect another jogan fruit.

 

Maxiron actually froze that time, “Senator Amidala told me she just wanted to keep her relationship private because she didn’t want media vultures hounding her beloved. Understand, if I had known the boy was a Jedi I would never have agreed to officiate. It was only after he had become a famed war hero that I learned the truth.”

 

“You aren’t being accused of anything, Pontiff. Being lied to isn’t a crime." Well technically not disclosing it was a crime but Vos didn't have time to get into that right now. "But their marriage represents a gross conflict of interest that cannot continue. All I need from you is a sworn deposition, though if you kept any kind of record that would be immensely helpful as well.”

 

It turned out they didn’t have much. The couple was particularly adamant that no official record be made. Though to make their marriage something more tangible than just the memory of the ceremony itself, they did consent for it to be recorded in an ancient handwritten logbook of marriages performed in centuries gone by. There’s was the singular modern entry:

 

20th Day of Grizm, 845th year of Kwilaan - The marriage of Set and Vere, surnames not provided, performed by Pontifex Maxiron Agolerga

Chapter 3: Memory Singularity

Notes:

Content Warning for the brief mention of a suicide attempt and background internal consideration of abortion.

It was one of the roughest mornings of Padmé’s life, and considering what she had been through in her twenty-seven year existence, that was saying quite a lot. Her body trembled then violently shook as she dry heaved and vomited what little was left in her stomach into the basin of the toilet. By now everything of substance was gone and only bile was coming up. Padmé wondered why her body insisted on the persistent nausea and heaving if there simply wasn’t anything left to expel.

 

Dormé, sweet, patient Dormé, had spent the last few hours in the ‘fresher with Padmé holding her hair back and stroking her spine. She might not be able to offer much more than her presence, but Padmé was eternally grateful for even that small comfort. And by Shiraya’s grace, after over two hours of persistent vomiting the heaving stopped, though the nausea had only slightly abated.

 

“Are you sure you didn’t eat anything off, milady?” Dormé asked.

 

Padmé groaned, her cheek pressed against the porcelain seat, “I’m almost positive. And I’ve been exclusively eating with my staff, and none of you are ill.”

 

Whatever the case, it seemed the worst was over. She was too exhausted to stand for long so she couldn’t take a sanisteam shower. A bath would have to do for now. The tub was huge, set in the bathroom floor, and was more akin to a spa jacuzzi than a bathtub. One of the finer perks of her senatorial apartment.

 

Dormé sank into the water with her, more of a safety precaution than anything. Padmé was so exhausted she was liable to fall asleep and slip under the water. She couldn’t even muster up the energy to lather her own hair so Dormé took the liberty of massaging the cleanser into her scalp for her. 

 

“Is there any other symptom you can think of, milady?” Dormé asked as she rinsed the suds out of Padmé’s luscious hair.

 

“No, not that I-” Padmé paused, “actually, there was something else. My breasts have been very, very tender over the past few days and my corsets and brassieres haven’t been fitting quite right either.”

 

Dormé looked very concerned, “milady, when was your last cycle?”

 

Padmé frowned, trying to recall, “I… I don’t remember… A-a month… maybe two at the most? B-but that doesn’t mean anything! I’m so stressed all the time because of work that my cycle has never been regular anyway.”

 

“I’ll have Motee sneak out and get you a test,” Dormé insisted.

Padmé shook her head so fervently that her hair whipped water droplets all over the bathroom floor, “I- I’m sure it’s not necessary. I have the very best implant available.”

 

Dormé shrugged, “even the best implants fail.”

 

“Even so, we’re very diligent with condoms-” Padmé stilled, remembering something. She and Anakin did have a quick tryst in her office. It was passionate and in the moment, and Padmé didn’t keep condoms in her office so it was one of the very few times they partook in unprotected intimacy.

 

Dormé caught Padmé’s expression, “it only takes once,” she said in her best impression of their finishing school health teacher.

 

Padmé groaned and slid further into the tub until the waterline was right under her nose. Of course she and Anakin had to have some kind of super gametes that evaded her implant. And the absolute worst part was she was most likely going to have to go through this all on her own. Anakin had just been deployed to the Outer Rim Sieges so she’d barely be able to get messages to and from him, let alone any kind of in person support.

 

All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry. But she was still a senator of Naboo and there was work to do that day. Thankfully it was work that could be done from her apartment since she was liable to have a panic attack the second she stepped into a senate pod.

 

After a protracted two hour bath that involved a lot of crying and soothing words from her handmaidens, Padmé was ready to tackle the trials of the day. She dressed in the loosest, least intrusive summer dress she had, picked up her datapad, and started sifting through the backlog of memos and reports that had built up during her morning tribulations. She had just started to get really stuck in her work when Threepio waddled into the living room with a red and white armored clone officer of the Coruscant Guard in tow. 

 

“Mistress Padmé, there is one Commander Fox requesting an audience.”

 

“Not just an audience, I’m afraid. Apologies Senator, but I have orders to bring you to Coruscant Security HQ.”

 

“Can it wait, Fox?” Padmé asked. She was still uncomfortably nauseous and really, really didn’t want to go anywhere anytime soon.

 

Fox shook his helmeted head, “unfortunately, it cannot. CSF wants you to testify on a criminal matter and they absolutely will not take no for an answer.”

 

---

 

Fox was kind enough to let Padmé change into something a bit more appropriate for a public setting than a nearly sheer summer dress. She didn’t have the energy to get into true finery, plus Thorn made it very clear whatever matter awaited her at CSF headquarters was extremely time sensitive. She made do with one of her more basic senate gowns and whatever makeup her handmaidens could hastily apply while she got dressed. 

 

Padmé had no idea what could warrant her testimony. Perhaps one of her more unsavory colleagues had tried one too many times to get away with something and were caught? Whatever it was, she didn’t exactly get a warm welcome at CSF HQ. In fact, there wasn’t anyone to greet her or brief her or anything. Fox just escorted her to a secure interview room and gestured for her to take a seat.

 

“Fox, if I didn’t know any better I’d think I was the suspect in this ‘criminal matter’,” Padmé said as she nervously took a seat at the interview table.

 

Fox took a deep breath, “it’s because you are. I’m very sorry senator, I thought it would be easier to bring you in discreetly.”

 

If she wasn’t so angry at the indignation of being tricked into walking into her own criminal questioning she might have appreciated his discretion. The press would have a field day if they saw her cuffed in the back of a police speeder.

 

“Again, apologies for the lack of transparency, someone will be in shortly,” and with that, Fox made his hasty retreat from the room.

 

‘Shortly’ ended up being nearly forty-five minutes. Padmé considered trying to make an escape attempt just to get someone’s attention, but decided that would be a very bad idea indeed. Thankfully someone did come for her before she went stir crazy. 

 

A kiffar man with gold facial tattoos lumbered in and took the seat opposite Padmé. He looked absolutely exhausted, his tattoos only serving to highlight the dark bags under his eyes. Padmé thought he looked vaguely familiar and tried to remember where she saw him. 

 

“You’re Quinlan Vos,” she said after a moment, “you were at the Battle of Geonosis.”

 

“I’m impressed. You have a very good memory, senator,” he replied.

 

The resulting silence stretched on into seemingly infinity. Knight Vos nervously tapped his finger on the table, obviously trying to find the words to something . After another agonizing moment he took a deep breath.

 

“I know about the incident with the tribe of sand people on Tatooine.”

 

Shamefully, it took Padmé almost half a minute to realize what Vos was alluding to. She truly hadn’t thought of the incident since the day it happened. The days following the Battle of Geonosis were hectic, to say the least. Between her marriage and honeymoon, endless committees forming new wartime departments and protocols, and a three day long bender with Mon and Bail after it became clear the past year of their opposition to the Military Creation Act was retroactively made pointless by a clone army the Jedi just had in their back pockets for whatever reason… Somehow the fact her new husband had brutally murdered an entire tribe of people down to the last child had slipped her mind.

 

At least, that’s what she told herself. The reality she wasn’t able to face was that she had a black hole in the back of her mind that she routinely tossed memories that would break her if she acknowledged them. Anakin admitting to his atrocity got sucked up by that mental singularity, just like the memory of walking in on her father with a woman who very much wasn’t her mother, or the time her sister admitted through drunken tears that her daughters were the result of sleeping with random men and not in-vitro fertilization like she claimed, or the night she spent talking Saché off the ledge of the highest balcony of the Theed Royal Palace.

 

Her heart pounding, Padmé whispered, “so this is it? I assume I’m going to be transferred to a holding cell to await trial?”

 

Vos barked a laugh, “Oh, you’d think it would be that simple, wouldn’t it? But the only evidence I have is inadmissible in court, and further, it happened outside Republic jurisdiction so there’s no way we could even bring this to trial if we wanted to.”

 

“Forgive me, Knight Vos, but if that’s true, why am I even here?”

 

Vos leaned forward, his chair creaking. He looked Padmé dead in the eye, his stare frighteningly sharp. “Skywalker cannot go free any longer. When, and we both know it’s ‘when’ and not ‘if’, but when Skywalker has another breakdown it could be orders of magnitude worse with a legion of extraordinarily loyal clones at his back.”

 

“Surely the Council has the authority to at least recall him from the front?”

 

“Yes,” Vos nodded, “but I suspect it wouldn’t last long before they bow to pressure from Palpatine. But, if we had the testimony of a senator…”

 

 “No,” Padmé said without hesitation. A tiny part of her in the back of her mind screaming that Vos was right, Anakin was dangerous and had to be imprisoned. But it was brutally silenced by the overwhelming and aching love she held for her husband.

 

“Unfortunately, senator, I’m not asking,” Vos said as he slid a copy of the singular marriage record he could find, along with a transcript of the testimony of the Pontifex that married them.

 

Padmé tried to deflect by barking a dry humorless laugh, “Oh, you really did dig deep for dirt on us, didn’t you. But what are you going to do, leak it to a coruscanti gossip rag?”

 

“Don’t play coy with me. You know your marriage is a huge conflict of interest. One specific incident comes to mind: the gungans had captured General Grievous at enormous costs to themselves, and you unilaterally made the decision to trade him for Anakin. I remember you got into a bit of hot water for that, which you got out of by claiming Skywalker was more vital to the Republic war effort than Grievous was to the Separatists. It was a good argument then, ut I don’t think the Senate Oversight Committee or the courts will find it so compelling when recontextualized by the fact that Skywalker is your husband.”

 

“This is extortion, Knight Vos,” Padmé growled, “and a very poor attempt at that. I can either testify against my husband and incriminate myself, or I refuse and get taken to court anyway for my marriage. Doesn’t seem like either choice is particularly better than the other.”

 

“Oh no, working with me is the much better option, I assure you. Sure, you’ll be admitting to being an accessory to genocide, but seeing as it was committed outside Republic jurisdiction and you didn’t actually do anything except fail to report it, I think you’ll walk away with a legal slap on the wrist, if that. Sure, your reputation would never recover and your political career would be over, but the alternative is mostly the same except with an actual prison sentence tacked on.”

 

She was prepared to fall on her metaphorical sword for her husband, but her hand instinctively drifted to her stomach. She didn’t even know if she was going to continue with the pregnancy, but she didn’t want to wrestle with that decision while also fighting a lengthy and stressful legal battle. And while alternative would mean political and social ostracization for both herself and her child, should she choose to keep the pregnancy, at least they’d have some semblance of freedom. 

 

“Fine,” Padmé whispered.

 

“Excellent. And just for cooperating I even have a way for you to avoid a little blowback, if you’re willing to tell a little white lie,” Vos said as he unclipped a handheld holocam from his belt.

 

Notes:

Looks like the jig is up for our favorite senator. But don't worry, things aren't going to go to hell for her juuuust yet. Also, about the 'memory black hole' thing. Padme's family is boring. There's barely anything about them in canon, and what we have makes them seem like the ideal family. I wanted to shake things up a little bit. So I visualize the idyllic happy family thing is a little bit of a facade that hides some actually kind of intense family issues. And I Padme has a huge moral blindspot for the people closest to her. Like, in RotS she still begs Anakin, who had just committed an even greater mass murder, to run away with her to raise their kid. It makes me think she just cannot handle confronting very awful things when they involve the people she loves, which is why she memory holed all the issues with her family.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the thing with Sache, it's a reference to something that happens in the Queen trilogy (the book series where Padme is finally the focal point of the story). Sache and Yane, two of Padme's handmaidens, don't leave with the rest of the queen's retinue during the invasion of Naboo. They stay behind and work for the Naboo resistance. Sache gets captured and is brutally tortured by the Trade Federation for information. Now, mind you Sache and Yane are the youngest of Padme's handmaidens, at just twelve years old. All of this is canon.

My headcanon goes a little further. I'd think a twelve year old would be very very mentally unwell after surviving torture. You know, as far as torture survivors go. And one really hard night she couldn't take the PTSD nightmares anymore and went to the highest balcony of the palace. Padme found her and talked her down from jumping. And that was something Padme memory holed because like... she was fourteen and had just undergone a long string of nightmarish events and that last one was one too many.

Anyway, I hope that wasn't too dark and dramatic for you. I wanna say it'll get better soon but uh... its not.