Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (star wars)

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  "Mom, I'm not in any danger," Padme insisted, taking Anakin's hand in her own.

  "Is she?" Ruwee asked Anakin.

  The Padawan stared hard at Padme's father, recognizing the honest concern. This man, who obviously loved his daughter so much, deserved to know the truth. "Yes, I'm afraid she is."

  Even as the words left his mouth, Anakin felt Padme's grip tighten. "But not much," she added quickly, and she turned to Anakin, smiling, but in a you'll-pay-for-that-later kind of way. "Anakin," she said quietly, her teeth gritted, locked into that threatening smile.

  "The Senate thought it prudent to give her some time away, and under the protection of the Jedi," he said, his tone casual, showing no reflections of the pain he was feeling as Padme's fingernails dug into his hand. "My Master, Obi-Wan, is even now seeing to the matter. All should be well soon enough."

  His breath came easier as Padme loosened her grip, and Ruwee, and even Jobal, seemed to relax. Anakin knew that he had done well, but he was surprised to see that Sola was still staring at him, still smiling as if she knew a secret.

  He gave her a quizzical look, but she only smiled all the wider.

  "Sometimes I wish I'd traveled more," Ruwee admitted to Anakin as the two walked in the garden after dinner. "But I must say, I'm happy here."

  "Padme tells me you teach at the university."

  "Yes, and before that I was a builder," Ruwee answered with a nod. "I also worked for the Refugee Relief Movement, when I was very young." Anakin looked at him curiously, not really surprised. "You seem quite interested in public service," he remarked.

  "Naboo is generous," Ruwee explained. "The planet itself, I mean. We have all that we want, all that we could want. Food is plentiful, the climate is comfortable, the surroundings are-"

  "Beautiful," Anakin put in.

  "Quite so," said Ruwee. "We are a very fortunate people, and we know it. That good fortune should not be taken for granted, and so we try to share and try to help. It is our way of saying that we welcome the friendship of those less fortunate, that we do not think ourselves entitled to that which we have, but rather, that we feel blessed beyond what we deserve. And so we share, and so we work, and in doing so, we become something larger than ourselves, and more fulfilled than one can become from idly enjoying good fortune!" Anakin considered Ruwee's words for a few moments. "It is the same with the Jedi, I suppose," he said. "We have been given great gifts, and we train hard to make the most of those. And then we use our given powers to try to help the galaxy, to try to make everything a little bit better."

  "And to make the things we love a little bit safer?"

  Anakin looked at him, catching the meaning, and he smiled and nodded. He saw respect in Ruwee's eyes, and gratitude, and he was glad for both. He could not deny the way Padme looked at her family, the love that seemed to flow from her whenever any of them entered the room, and he knew that if Ruwee or Jobal or Sola didn't like him, his relationship with Padme would be hurt.

  He was glad, then, that he had come to this place, not only as Padme's companion, but also as her protector.

  Back in the house, Padme, Sola, and Jobal were working together to clear the dishes and the remaining food. Padme noted the tension in her mother's movements, and she knew that these latest events-the assassination attempts, the fights in the Senate over an issue that could well lead to war-were weighing heavily on her.

  She looked to Sola, too, to see if she might find some clue as to how to help alleviate the tension, but all she found there was an obvious curiosity that set her off her balance more than had her mother's concerned expression.

  "Why haven't you told us about him?" Sola asked with a sly grin.

  "What's there to talk about?" Padme replied as casually as she could. "He's just a boy."

  "A boy?" Sola repeated with a laugh. "Have you seen the way he looks at you?"

  "Sola! Stop it!"

  "It's obvious he has feelings for you," Sola went on. "Are you saying, little baby sister, that you haven't noticed?"

  "I'm not your baby sister, Sola," Padme said flatly, her tone turning to true consternation. "Anakin and I are friends. Our relationship is strictly professional."

  Sola grinned again.

  "Mom, would you tell her to stop it?" Padme burst out in embarrassed frustration.

  Now Sola began laughing out loud. "Well, maybe you haven't noticed the way he looks at you. I think you're afraid to."

  "Cut it out!"

  Jobal stepped between the two and gave Sola a stern look. Then she turned back to Padme. "Sola's just concerned, dear," she said. But her words sounded to Padme like condescension, as if her mother was still trying to protect a helpless little girl.

  "Oh, Mom, you're impossible," she said with a sigh of surrender. "What I'm doing is important."

  "You've done your service, Padme," Jobal answered. "It's time you had a life of your own. You're missing so much!"

  Padme tilted her head back and closed her eyes, trying to accept the words in the spirit with which they were offered. For a moment, she regretted coming back here, to see the same old sights and hear the same old advice. For just a moment, though. Truthfully, when she considered it all, Padm had to admit she was glad to have people who loved her and cared about her so much.

  She offered her mother an appeasing smile, and Jobal nodded and gently tapped Padme's arm. She turned to Sola next, and saw her sister still grinning. What did Sola see?

  "Now tell me, son, how serious is this thing?" Ruwee asked bluntly as the two neared the door that would take them back into the house. "How much danger is my daughter really in?"

  Anakin didn't hesitate, realizing, as he had at dinner, that Padme's father deserved nothing but honesty from him. "There have been two attempts on her life. Chances are, there'll be more. But I wasn't lying to you and wasn't trying to minimize anything. My Master is tracking down the assassins. I'm sure he'll find out who they are and take care of them. This situation won't last long."

  "I don't want anything to happen to her," Ruwee said, with the gravity of a parent concerned over a beloved child.

  "I don't either," Anakin assured him, with almost equal weight.

  Padme stared at her older sister until, at last, Sola broke down and asked,

  "What?"

  The two of them were alone together, while Jobal and Ruwee entertained Anakin out in the sitting room.

  "Why do you keep saying such things about me and Anakin?"

  "Because it's obvious," Sola replied. "You see it-you can't deny it to yourself."

  Padme sighed and sat down on the bed, her posture and expression giving all the confirmation that Sola needed.

  "I thought Jedi weren't supposed to think such things," Sola remarked. "They're not."

  "But Anakin does." Sola's words brought Padme's gaze up to meet hers. "You know I'm right."

  Padme shook her head helplessly, and Sola laughed.

  "You think more like a Jedi than he does," she said. "And you shouldn't."

  "What do you mean?" Padme didn't know whether to take offense, having no idea of where her sister was heading with this.

  "You're so tied up in your responsibilities that you don't give any weight to your desires," Sola explained. "Even with your own feelings toward Anakin."

  "You don't know how I feel about Anakin."

  "You probably don't either," Sola said. "Because you won't allow yourself to even think about it. Being a Senator and being a girlfriend aren't mutually exclusive, you know."

  "My work is important!"

  "Who said it wasn't?" Sola asked, holding her hands up in a gesture of peace. "It's funny, Padme, because you act as if you're prohibited, and you're not, while Anakin acts as if he's under no such prohibitions, and he is!"

  "You're way ahead of everything here," Padme said. "Anakin and I have only been together for a few days-before that, I hadn't seen him in a decade!" Sola shrugged. Her look went from that sly grin she had been sporting since dinner to one of m
ore genuine concern for her sister. She sat down on the bed beside Padme and draped an arm across her shoulders. "I don't know any of the details, and you're right, I don't know how you feel-about any of this. But I know how he feels, and so do you."

  Padme didn't disagree. She just sat there, comfortable in Sola's hug, gazing down at the floor, trying not to think. "It frightens you," Sola remarked. Surprised, Padme looked back up.

  "What are you afraid of, Sis?" Sola asked sincerely. "Are you afraid of Anakin's feelings and the responsibilities that he cannot dismiss? Or are you afraid of your own feelings?"

  She lifted Padme's chin, so that they were looking at each other directly, their faces only a breath apart. "I don't know how you feel," she admitted again. "But I suspect that it's something new to you. Something scary, but something wonderful."

  Padme said nothing, but she knew that disagreement would not be honest.

  "They're a lot to digest, all at once," Padme said to Anakin later on, when the two were alone in her room. She had barely unpacked her things, and was now throwing clothes into her bag once more. Different clothes this time, though. Less formal than the outfits she had to wear as a representative of Naboo.

  "Your mother is a fine cook," Anakin replied, drawing a curious stare from Padme, until she realized that he was joking and had understood her point perfectly well.

  "You're lucky to have such a wonderful family," Anakin said more seriously, and then, with a teasing grin, he added, "Maybe you should give your sister some of your clothes."

  Padme smirked right back at him, but then looked about at the mess and couldn't really disagree. "Don't worry," she assured him. "This won't take long."

  "I just want to get there before dark. Wherever there is, I mean." Anakin continued to scan the room, surprised at the number of closets, all of them full. "You still live at home," he said, shaking his head. "I didn't expect that."

  "I move around so much," Padme replied. "I've never had the time to even begin to find a place of my own, and I'm not sure I want to. Official residences have no warmth. Not like here. I feel good here. I feel at home."

  The simple beauty of her statement gave Anakin pause. "I've never had a real home," he said, speaking more to himself than to Padme. "Home was always where my mom was." He looked up at her then, and took comfort in her sympathetic smile.

  Padme went back to her packing. "The Lake Country is beautiful," she started to explain, but she stopped when she glanced back at Anakin, to see him holding a holograph and grinning.

  "Is this you?" he asked, pointing to the young girl, seven or eight at the most, in the holo, surrounded by dozens of little green smiling creatures, and holding one in her arms.

  Padme laughed, and seemed embarrassed. "That was when I went with a relief group to Shadda-Bi-Boran. Their sun was imploding and the planet was dying. I was helping to relocate the children." She walked over to stand beside Anakin and placed one hand on his shoulder, pointing to the holograph with the other. "See that little one I'm holding? His name was N'a-kee-tula, which means 'sweetheart.' He was so full of life-all those kids were."

  "Were?"

  "They were never able to adapt," she explained somberly. "They were never able to live off their native planet."

  Anakin winced, then quickly picked up another holograph, this one showing Padme a couple of years later, wearing official robes and standing between two older and similarly robed Legislators. He looked back at the first holo, then to this one, noting that Padme's expression seemed much more severe here. "My first day as an Apprentice Legislator," Padme explained.

  Then, as if she was reading his mind, she added, "See the difference?" Anakin studied the holograph a moment longer, then looked up and laughed, seeing Padme wearing that same long and stern expression. She laughed as well, then squeezed his shoulder and went back to her packing.

  Anakin put the holographs down side by side and looked at them for a long, long time. Two sides of the woman he loved.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The water speeder zoomed above the lake, the downthrusters churning only a slight, almost indistinguishable, wake. Every so often, a wave clipped in, and a fine spray broke over the bow. Anakin and Padme reveled in the cool water and the wind, eyes half closed, Padme's rich brown hair flying out behind her.

  Beside them at the wheel, Paddy Accu gave a laugh at every spray, his graying hair spreading out widely. "Always better over the water!" he shouted in his gruff voice, against the wind and the noise of the speeder.

  "Are you liking it?"

  Padme turned a sincere smile upon him, and the grizzled man leaned in close and backed off the accelerator. "She's even more fun if I put her down," he explained. "You think you'll like that, Senator?"

  Both Padme and Anakin looked at him curiously, neither quite understanding. "We were going out to the island," Anakin remarked, a note of concern in his voice.

  "Oh, I'll get you there!" Paddy Accu said with a wheezing laugh. He pushed forward a lever-and the speeder dropped into the water.

  "Paddy? "Padme asked.

  The man laughed all the harder. "Don't tell me you've forgotten!" he roared, kicking in the accelerator. The speeder jetted off across the water, no longer smooth in flight, but bouncing across the rippling surface.

  "Oh, yes!" Padme said to him. "I do remember!"

  After a moment of initial shock, looking from Padme to Paddy, wondering if the man was up to some dark deception, Anakin caught on, and was also swept away by the bouncing ride.

  The spray was nearly continuous, thrown up by the prow and washing over them.

  "It's wonderful!" Padme exclaimed.

  Anakin couldn't disagree. "We spend so much time in control," he replied. His mind went back to his younger days, on Tatooine, Podracing along wild courses, skirting disaster. This was somewhat like that, especially when Paddy, in no apparent hurry to reach the island dock, flipped the speeder up and down from one edge to the other, zigzagging his way. It amazed Anakin how this little adjustment, dropping into the water instead of smoothly skimming above it, had changed the perspective of this journey. It was true, he knew, that technology had tamed the galaxy, and while that seemed a good thing in terms of efficiency and comfort, he had to believe that something, too, had been lost: the excitement of living on the edge of disaster. Or the simple tactile feeling of a ride like this, bouncing across the waves, feeling the wind and the cold spray.

  At one point, Paddy put the speeder so far up on edge that both Anakin and Padme thought they would tip over. Anakin almost reached into the Force to secure the craft, but stopped himself in order to enjoy the thrill. They didn't tip. Paddy was an expert driver who knew how to take his speeder to the very limits without crashing over. It was some time later that he slowed the craft and allowed it to drift in against the island dock.

  Padme grabbed the older man's hand and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "Thank you!"

  Anakin was surprised that he could see Paddy's blush through the man's ruddy skin. "It was… fun," he admitted.

  "If it isn't, then what's the point?" the gruff-looking man replied with a great belly laugh.

  While Paddy secured the speeder, Anakin hopped onto the dock. He reached back to take Padme's hand, helping her stay balanced while she debarked with her suitcase in her other hand.

  "I'll bring the bags up for you," Paddy offered, and Padme looked back and smiled. "You go and see what you can see- don't want to be wasting your time on the little chores!"

  "Wasting time," Padme echoed. There was an unmistakable wistfulness in her voice.

  The young couple walked up a long flight of wooden stairs, past flower beds and hanging vines. They came onto a terrace overlooking a beautiful garden, and beyond that, the shimmering lake and the mountains rising behind it, all blue and purple.

  Padme leaned her crossed forearms on the balustrade and stared out at the wondrous view.

  "You can see the mountains in the water," Anakin remarked, shaking his head a
nd grinning. The water was still, the light just right, so that the mountains in the lake seemed almost perfect replicas. "Of course," she agreed without moving.

  He gazed at her until she turned to look back at him.

  "It seems an obvious thing to you," he said, "but where I grew up, there weren't any lakes. Whenever I see this much water, every detail of it…"

  He ended by shaking his head, obviously overwhelmed.

  "Amazes you?"

  "And pleases me," he said with a warm smile.

  Padme turned back to the lake. "I guess it's hard to hold on to appreciation for some things," she admitted. "But after all these years, I still see the beauty of the mountains reflected in the water. I could stare at them all day, every day."