skymurdock asked: whispers 17, either Alex/Eliza or Anakin/Padmé.
17: I know your weakness. It’s kisses. You are doomed. (Don’t worry. We’re all doomed eventually.)
How the galaxy fell to the Dark Side, one kiss at a time. Or, an overview of the Sith Padmé AU.
“Oh,” Padmé says in surprise as the Force goes yesss in the back of her mind at the sight of a young boy with hair like sunshine and a presence like the sun itself. Her Jedi protectors are easily as arrested by the boy’s presence, but she suspects for rather different reasons. His power is spectacular, certainly, but there’s more—a sharp click as of a lock, and something in her core says that is mine.
The boy’s head snaps up and his eyes meet hers and she hears, clear as day, his voice, as it says, An angel.
When she meets him properly, Anakin with his sky-blue eyes and child’s voice, she offers her hand to shake. Instead, he takes it, reverent, and kisses her knuckles.
“I’m going to marry you, someday,” he tells her solemnly, still holding her hand, and she smiles.
“I know.”
–
They stay in touch, sort of—Anakin sends her letters, more than occasionally but less than frequently, and Padmé always responds. The link, the humming cord in the Force, isn’t strong enough to do more than carry vague impressions, but it stays bright and strong in her mind as she carefully teaches herself more of the Force.
She’s not sure how she feels about the Jedi, to be frank, and Anakin is so lonely. Obi-wan is a good man, but she can feel, along the thin-stretched link to Anakin, thick, sticky ripples of sadness flavored with the bitter taste of guilt.
She goes out and does some research, and then she’s sure about the Jedi. Emotional control is all well and good, Padmé is a politician and understands these things. But emotions are strength and fire and life, anger drives passion and passion gets things done, and Anakin has so much passion to offer that the Jedi are so determined to quash.
Padmé goes out and finds a gift, a paired set of Force stones that cost more than she’d like to admit, and writes a letter—a real letter, paper and ink under her hands—to accompany one to Coruscant. The stones aren’t designed to do anything in particular, just a pretty bauble for the wealthy to boast about, but she knows how to feel for the Force and she’s always been good at odd tricks. She needs something to strengthen her bond with Anakin, something that will give him someone in the galaxy who welcomes his heart as well as his strength in the Force, and these should do perfectly. She presses a kiss to the letter beside her name, leaving a faint print of red lipstick there, and sends it off with a courier to the Jedi Temple.
Thank you, Padmé, his voice murmurs in her ear when he picks up the stone for the first time, and she hides a smile behind the mask of Amidala.
–
I don’t know if I can do this, Anakin whispers to her, years later. It’s mid-morning on Naboo, and one of the precious few days that Amidala is not needed. Padmé is stretched comfortably on the edge of a lake, watching Sabé creep up behind Saché and dunk her forcefully under the water, and, until just now, she’d been peacefully wondering what was for lunch.
She sits up, and Sabé’s head pops up attentively. Padmé waves her off, just in time for Saché to get her revenge and yank Sabé’s feet out from under her, and closes her hand around the stone fixed into a pendant.
Ani? Are you okay?
They just—they want me to feel nothing and I don’t know if I can do it.
Padmé half-snarls, and Anakin’s mental touch wavers for a moment before she snatches him back and sends a soothing wave of calm at him. I’m not angry with you. Ani, the Jedi can’t tell you what to feel.
I just. I want to be good at this, I should be good at this.
You are, she says, and sends him a gentle touch, the sensation of a hand sliding over hair. They’re not your masters, no matter what you’re supposed to call them.
There’s a pause, and she feels her words hit like a hammer, like he hasn’t even considered them before. Force, she’s going to kill someone, kill Anakin’s old master like she should have. She’s been trying to bring the slave trade under the Republic’s eye and it’s been a war, every step a slog against dozens and hundreds of people who dance around the truth—that they don’t want to put their energy into the slave trade because it’s easier this way. And she just…Padmé believes in democracy, she does, but she also wishes that she had the power to point her finger and say end this and bring the hammer down without another word. Anger curdles in her stomach and she welcomes it, lets the warmth wash over her and into the link like an amber tide, and she feels the cautious way Anakin reaches for it, lets it touch him—because, she realizes with a rush of something else, something darker and just as warm, he trusts her. He believes that Padmé, his angel, could never lead him wrong. And she won’t. She’s going to protect him.
You can be angry at them, she tells him, pulling his mental presence closer. You can feel anything you want. You can do anything, Ani, because I’m going to help make sure of it.
He reaches back for her and sends a shy touch along the bond, a kiss to the high apple of her cheek, and she smiles.
–
They meet again, and she discovers that Anakin, who is so shy and articulate over their bond, is a fucking mess in person. It’s unspeakably endearing, and a terrible relief, because somehow the little sunlight-haired boy she remembers has grown up into…Anakin. And goodness. He’s very…tall. When most people were learning to flirt, Padmé was hauling Naboo out of the flames after the invasion, and it’s only the fact that Anakin is actually worse than her that preserves her dignity. He holds her hand and kisses her knuckles like he did as a little boy and goes on a frankly adorably pointless rant about sand, and Padmé can’t help herself.
This is mine, she thinks as they go to war and then into hiding. And she kisses Anakin’s cheek and leaves a mark there, like the mark she once left on a letter.
–
She knows what Anakin is about to do before he does. It rips through her, his grief and the blind yellow tide of his rage, and no no no mother please I came back please no. Her own anger flares in answer to his—how dare someone touch what is hers, what she has placed under her protection—and she reaches along the bond when she feels him cry out for help, someone to save his mother.
Padmé, he half-screams, throwing the image of his mother at her, unbreathing in his arms. What do I do?
She’s torn for a moment, because she knows she should tell him to bring the raiders in for legal proceedings but she wants…
It’s her heartbeat of indecision that makes the choice, the split second where his direct line into her soul plunges past the surface morality to the dark heart that cries out for vengeance, to destroy these people as she has wanted to destroy the slave holders they’ve passed here on Tatooine. The yellow tide rises and blots out her thoughts, blots out her sight and hearing, until she can only see Anakin, tears on his face as his lightsaber rises, falls, rises, falls, and leaves destruction in his wake.
When he comes back to the homestead, he crumples onto the floor at her feet and buries his face in her lap, and she winds her fingers into his hair and kisses the crown of his head and croons mindlessly to him, wrapping them both in the warmth of her dark heart.
–
Anakin loses an arm. Padmé, planets away, screams in hate and fury, and lightning seems to crackle through her veins, blue-white sparks showering at her fingertips.
When he comes back, she sneaks into the medbay and christens his new mechanical arm with a kiss to the knuckles, just like he did when they first met.
–
So they get married.
No, really.
It’s a secret, because Anakin, Force help him, still wants to be a Jedi, and she would never try to take something he wanted from him. But it’s a delight, and the link between them glitters and hums, and the Force sings yesssssss and Anakin grins like a fool as Padmé giggles through her vows. And then they’re declared wedded forever in the eyes of the Force, and she throws her arms around his neck and pulls him down. His arms are strong around her, metal and flesh, and his lips are soft on hers and that dark, hungry thing in her heart wraps him up and declares him hers.
–
They go to war. It’s terrible, and Padmé has to cling to the moments where she sees Anakin, where she can run her hands through his long hair and hold onto him. He looks wearier every time she sees him, with new terrible stories and warnings of the Sith Lord. The guilt-bitter taste whenever she feels him push away his emotions is stronger than ever, and Padmé wants to scream. The Jedi had their problems before, yes, but now they’re clearer than ever. Force, Anakin’s padawan is a child still, and she and his soldiers are the only ones who don’t recite the mantra of emotional control when he reaches out. She feels the keening grief shock along the bond like lightning every time one of the 501st dies, and there’s nothing she can do but hold on and try to give Anakin an anchor point as they lose ground in the war.
Padmé does some research, much like when she was a little girl first figuring out how to use the Force. This time, she just needs help, and she’ll read anything she can get her hands on for it.
That’s how she finds the first book. It’s in an incredibly archaic form of Aurebesh, and it radiates something dark and hungry, and when she sits down and looks at the first page, the letters seem to ripple.
The book open in front of her, Padmé sits down on the floor, legs folded under her wide formal skirt, and she summons up all her yellow-gold rage to boil at the surface. Anakin, engaged in a battle parsecs away, doesn’t notice beyond the haze of his own. She opens her palm and lets the anger hit the flash point, and it seems to vaporize, into a bright spark of blue-white electricity arching from her fingertips to a decorative sand garden on her desk. There’s a deafening crack and a sibilant yessss and Padmé is gasping with it, with the power, and now Anakin has definitely noticed.
Padmé? he asks in alarm.
I’m fine, love, she says, unfolding herself from the ground. She picks up the glass sheet the sand has melted into, without regard for the heat, and looks at it curiously.
I felt Darkness—
Just me, Ani, she says, and gives the glass a curious twist in her hand.
Padmé…
We need firepower to win this war, Ani, she says, watching the shimmer of something gold in her reflection. She doesn’t remember putting on any jewelry. Please, she whispers down the bond. I have to do something to help you. I can’t watch this anymore. She shoves her memories at him, of watching Anakin’s eyes darken and Ahsoka’s light dim, of her years and years of struggling to bring attention to the slave trade. I’m done trying to do it their way, now I’m going to do it mine. Do you trust me?
His anxiety unravels into easy warmth, and he touches her mind gently. Of course, angel. There’s a burst of fear and she sees a flash of his lightsaber as he fends off an attack. Maybe you can teach me some of that firepower, he adds, his mental voice breathless.
Of course, Ani, she says, and presses a kiss to the glass, below the place where yellow-gold glitters.
–
Padmé is pregnant. It’s wonderful. It’s terrible. The galaxy is at war. Anakin has never been so delighted.
She feels the heat of the Dark thing in her heart flood out into her veins and wraps her child tight in its power, feeling the unquenchable sun of Force energy sing back to her. She feels the nascent link in her mind and sends them a kiss, and tells Anakin, “I’m going to end this war. For them.”
He looks back, at her eyes that shudder gold now when she touches the Force, and says, “I’ll help.”
–
She’s had about seven months to unravel the Sith Lord’s identity and she’s so close she can almost taste it when Anakin bursts wild-eyed into her chambers. The bond is such clanging disarray she can barely hear herself think, and he drops to his knees and presses his face into her skirt like he did as a young man. Padmé reaches for him with hands and Force, wraps him up in the soft warmth of the Darkness she’s been summoning so easily, and croons quietly to him until he stops shaking.
It’s Palpatine, he thinks helplessly at her once his mind is quiet. “Palpatine is the Sith Lord, he wants to be Emperor, and—and the Jedi don’t believe me!” he says aloud, half a shout. “Yoda’s going to confront him alone, and I—I’ve served them for years and they don’t believe me!”
“I believe you, Ani,” Padmé whispers, and he looks up at her, eyes wide and very young. “I do.”
“What do I do?” Anakin breathes. “He wants me to be his apprentice.”
“The Rule of Two,” Padmé muses—she’s better versed in Sith lore than most Jedi, by now, because Anakin tells her his war stories and her research has not always, perhaps, been strictly of the Light. She’s always been better at touching the Force through anger and love and hate and passion, anyway. “He wants to be the Master.” Anakin nods and she raises a hand to cup the sharp angle of his cheek. “What do you want, Ani?”
Anakin sits quiet for a long time, at peace kneeling at Padmé’s feet in a way she rarely feels when he’s in the field. “He believes I’m afraid of the Dark Side,” Anakin says finally. “But you—I’m not afraid of you.” He catches her hand and kisses the knuckles. “I want to do what you want me to do,” he says, lips still against her skin. “Whatever will keep you safe, and happy, and able to help the people you want to help.”
“I don’t think you can do that as a Jedi, Ani,” Padmé says quietly, because she has never lied to him but it aches to think she might be taking something from him. He doesn’t flinch at her words.
“Then I’m done with the Jedi,” Anakin says, and looks up at her with eyes that shiver gold. “He called me Vader—Darth Vader. He said that I would be his weapon.”
“But you don’t want that?”
“No,” Anakin says. “I knew the moment I saw you that I was yours.”
“Good,” Padmé says, and finally lets her dark heart boil up and stain her eyes, through and through. Darth Vader, she sends to Anakin, half-playful.
Darth Amidala, he replies, and she smiles. “How can I serve you, my lady?” he asks, with a note of formality in his voice.
Darth Amidala reaches down and takes her husband’s hands and stands, drawing him up to his feet. Reaching up, she cups his face and says, “Palpatine wants an Empire, with Darth Vader as its strong arm? Fine. He’ll have it.” She brings Anakin’s face to hers and whispers, “Bring me Darth Sidious’ head.”
And she seals the fate of the galaxy with a kiss.
