In case you didn't pick it up in the title... Warning: Major Character Death. Enjoy- er... appreciate the sadness?

Padmé Amidala can barely breathe.

Her breath catches in her throat, in a mixture of panic and grief that she can't stifle. She heaves for air. She's long had to sit down, guided by Dormé's firm grip, onto the couch in her quarters, but still all she can see is the smoke rising above the Temple's spires.

Rising, rising.

And hear Senator Organa's words in her head. It was a slaughter… all the Jedi are dead.

Darkening the sky.

She hasn't seen Anakin since yesterday. She's spent the night in hell. She's tried his com, his private com. She's in a panic and her mind is in a flurry. Her head feels light. He hasn't answered. He always answers.

She asks Dormé for the fourth time if there's any news about the Jedi. She checks the holonet, the holonews. She tries to contact Obi-Wan Kenobi. It doesn't matter to her anymore who finds out about her and Anakin and their unborn baby. It doesn't matter. Anakin needs to be safe.

He is safe. She knows it.

Her head is spinning.

Against Dormé's concerns for her health, she makes her way to Chancellor Palpatine's emergency Senate meeting. She wants answers, and knows they will come from him. Everything is on account of him. This is too.

"Every Jedi is now an enemy of the Republic," he tells them, as the crowds roar. "The remaining Jedi will be hunted down and destroyed!" The waves of sounds wash over Padmé's ears, and suddenly everything is muffled. She sees Palpatine's arms extend, as if to embrace his people. He was once her mentor.

She can't stay after that. Feeling nausea stir in her belly, she slowly stands and makes her way out of her chair. She wants to leave.

She doesn't want to wait for the vote. She doesn't want to wait to see if Palpatine takes those final steps to declare himself an Empire.

Her world is falling apart. The senate pod rocks around her.

She brushes away Senator Organa's concerned offer to help her out of the pod. She feels unsteady, so she takes Dormé's hand. The faithful handmaiden leads her out, and Captain Typho greets them at the Senate steps. He helps her into her transport, because Padmé can barely lower herself into the seat. She is shaking too hard.

She is barely aware of where they are going until she sees the familiar banners of the Naboo Embassy. And suddenly she realizes they are going the wrong way. She needs to head in the opposite direction.

"No," she tells Typho, and her head of security looks concerned as he turns around to stare at her.

"No," she says again, swallowing her nausea. "Take us to the Temple."

"Milady-" Dormé protests.

"Take us to the Temple," Padmé repeats.

Typho looks stunned. "Milady, you're in no state-"

"I need to go to the Jedi Temple." She needs to know for certain. She won't rest until she knows for certain.

"Milady, it's not safe—the clone commanders have closed the area off-"

"I will walk if I need to," she threatens him, though in her weakened state it would be quite impossible.

It does the job.

Typho turns the transport around, and Dormé gives her a disapproving look as the speeder changes lanes. Padmé doesn't care. She needs to get to Anakin.

The Temple is scarred and scorched as their speeder settles on the landing platform. Smoke still rises high above. Ash covers the ground like a thin layer of Naboo mountain snow.

Padmé doesn't wait for Typho to help her out. She opens the speeder door and shakily steps onto the ash. The hem of her cloak stirs it up.

There are bodies littered as far as she can see. Smoking, dismembered. Jedi, clones. Padawans, masters, knights, younglings. Faces, limbs, helmets, singed skin and burns. These were the Jedi who didn't make it out of the Temple. She knows there will be more inside. She knows Anakin might be in there too.

She vaguely realizes Typho has come around and offered assistance, but Padmé doesn't want it. She refuses it and moves forward. As if she is an automaton, she moves forward without true consciousness. She heads in the side entrance, and soon she is under the arching ceiling of the Grand Hall.

Its pillars have crumpled. Debris and bodies lie everywhere. There is a haze of smoke lying in the air, as if the scene hasn't quite settled. Eyes are still open, arms outstretched, bodies splayed and curled. It appears that most of the clones have left, but the smell is still unsettling, and Padmé's stomach turns in nausea. The child in her belly is stiller than it has been in a few months. She knows it must have sensed the deaths. It probably senses its father too.

Padmé places a hand on her belly to soothe the child and moves forward slowly. There's something about the scene that she doesn't want to disturb. The place seems sacred in some way.

She can hear Dormé's ragged gasp behind her, but Padmé doesn't pause to backtrack. She moves forward. Anakin is somewhere near, she can sense it.

Bodies, younglings. Glazed eyes. Everywhere she turns there are still figures on the ground. They didn't even spare the innocent. This is what the Republic has become.

Soon she becomes aware that someone is whimpering, and her eyes are drawn to a padawan with a dark wound in his stomach. If she hadn't slowed she wouldn't have heard him. As she watches him, she can see that the wound is mortal; he won't survive for much longer. He's not even lucid. She bends by his side, but there is nothing she can do. He dies a minute later. Padmé doesn't know what to feel. She's in a daze. This is what the Republic has become.

She soon becomes aware that someone is moving a little ways away. She focuses her gaze before her, and she sees a figure bending over something—holding something—a little ways away. The figure is clothed in light robes, and is bent over a body, obscuring both their faces. Padmé knows by their robes that they are both Jedi. She doesn't think she knows them.

But then the figure raises his head, and Padmé can see he's Obi-Wan. It's Obi-Wan sitting there. His eyes look red, his hair and face are grayed with ash, and his hand rests on the other man's face… He looks desperate. Padmé's eyes fall down to the face of the man in Obi-Wan's lap.

It's not-

Padmé finds herself frozen. Obi-Wan has met her eye, and something terrible has just passed between them. The figure in his arms is limp, and does not react though Obi-Wan weaves his hands repeatedly through his hair.

The man in Obi-Wan's lap is terribly still. His dark boots are curled under one another, his hair, once golden, is singed and coated in ash. His lips are parted, and his eyes are open and glazed. She knows him.

She knows him. It's him.

She feels her stomach falling down, and her body falling forward, and suddenly all she can hear is her own catching breaths—shortening, shortening—as she pushes herself to the two. She reaches them, and desperately stretches for the man in Obi-Wan's lap. She grasps his shoulders, his head, but his neck is limp and his eyes don't blink. They're lifeless. He doesn't respond. His skin feels cold beneath her hands. There's a scorch mark on the right breast of his tabard.

She can barely breathe. "No," she gasps, "no-"

"Padmé… Padmé-" Obi-Wan breathes over and over, and his voice cracks.

His lips are parted, growing gray. His head lolls, and his eyes stay fixed on something far beyond them. There's no recognition in them anymore.

"He's-he's gone," Obi-Wan's voice is telling her, and Padmé's chest breaks. She can feel Obi-Wan's hand on her arm, grasping her tightly, pulling her away.

"Anakin," Padmé moans, and a desperate hatred and yearning surge in her for the man lying limp before her. He had promised—he had promised they'd be okay—he lied.

"Ani, Ani-"

His blond curls are dirty, and as Padmé runs her hands over his head it comes off on her fingers. The tears come quickly, her chest heaves in and out, and she presses her head to Anakin's, her hand to his cheek, her lips to his curls… over and over and over.

Obi-Wan is shaking. She's never seen him so unsettled, and she supposes that it's because they never really expected Anakin to leave. He was a constant in their lives; they had always expected to come out as a team. It once had been unthinkable to consider that one of them wouldn't make it.

The tears fall for a long time, and they clear away streaks of ash on Anakin's face. Soon, when Padmé can only clutch Anakin's hand, Obi-Wan's trembling hand reaches forward and slides Anakin's eyes shut. The blue is gone forever. Padmé's throat spasms, but no air is drawn.

Obi-Wan's eyes latch on to a place below her breast, and Padmé realizes her dress has pulled against the mound of her belly. His eyes slide closed, as if he is in pain, and he lowers his head.

"Padmé," his throat finally grates out. "Padmé, there's no time."

Padmé presses Anakin's hand against her lips, squeezing it, touching it to her skin. She can't leave him. They have to take him and bury him. There's a place on Naboo, in the lake country, where they fell in love and where she wants to have their child—

"Padmé, the Emperor will come for us. You're in danger too."

He's left now, and he won't be there when the child is born. He won't see the child grow, he won't become a Jedi master, and he won't grow old and wrinkled with her… Padmé squeezes the hand tighter, as the tears start afresh.

"I'm sorry." Obi-Wan's voice catches. "I'm sorry."

Her eyes are closed, but she senses that Obi-Wan is shifting around Anakin's body to hold her. His hands soon grasp her shoulders, and he gently detaches her hand from Anakin's cold one.

"Padmé, we have to go." His voice is stronger now, but his grasp is still pleading. "Please. For his child. He told me—he wants you to be safe-"

Padmé's legs feel stiff and unresponsive, but she allows Obi-Wan to guide her upward. Typho comes forward to meet them.

"Milady…" he begins softly, and Padmé realizes he had been standing back this whole time.

"We need to leave immediately," Obi-Wan tells him. "Do you have a ship we can take?"

And they leave Anakin behind.

Looking back, Padmé can barely remember the blur that was their trip to the freighter. She leaves most of her belongings behind, taking only her basic clothes, her and Anakin's droids, and the things she needs for the baby. She leaves Typho and Dormé behind as well, and though she never says goodbye to her other handmaidens, she leaves Dormé with a message. Obi-Wan pilots the freighter, and soon she is sitting in the copilot's seat as the freighter exits Coruscant's atmosphere.

They settle in a mining colony in the Meridian sector, tucked safely away from the Empire's reach. Padmé gives birth two weeks later to the twins. It doesn't come as a suprise to Obi-Wan and Padmé that Luke and Leia are both unusually strong in the Force, like their father. They begin showing sensitivity at a young age.

Obi-Wan and Padmé work undercover with the fledgling Alliance, and when Luke and Leia are of an appropriate age, Obi-Wan begins their training. He tells Padmé that they will be able to better protect themselves, and though Padmé has doubts about their safety nonetheless, she watches them grow into strong young individuals. Both are headstrong and confident, exceedingly intelligent, and even more so capable.

Twenty years after Anakin's death, the Alliance leads an insurrection against Palpatine's Empire, and Leia and Luke are at its forefront. Palpatine is killed in a bombing of the Imperial Palace, and Padmé's colleagues Mon Mothma and Bail Organa take over in the reformation of the Republic.

Padmé has never quite lost the sadness that comes when she thinks of Anakin. Sometimes she sees him in her children, or remembers him when she thinks of the Great Negotiator and the Hero With No Fear. She knows he would be proud of his children, proud of the work she and Obi-Wan have done. She thinks of him when the Senate is restated and the New Republic is born. She thinks of him when they release fireworks and she stands with her children and Obi-Wan, just watching the color bust above the reconstructed Jedi Temple. She is so proud of them, and so misses him.

Thirty years later, Obi-Wan passes into the Force.

Ten years later, and she is ready to rejoin him again.