Author's Notes: I like the concept of this, since I always thought how Padme died in Star Wars was really dumb. First person present tense is bad, though. I shouldn't talk about the fact that I think this is badly written, either, since I wrote it, but it is. Anyway. Concept generated by the brain-hurting fanfic pairer.

http/ Two Worlds

By Kage Chikara

Cutter is the chief of his tribe. Ever since his father fell to Madcoil, he has ruled his hardy band of survivors with an iron hand. He has conquered his fear of heights, his fear of changes and someday, in a far distant, he will conquer his fear of humans. But now he looked down at the face of his wife and he is afraid.

She is healthy. He knows the noise and the groaning and whimpering and writhing are all part of the normal process a woman goes through when giving birth. But he cannot help but think of the faces of tribe members who died in child birth, the faces of children lost before they were ever out of the womb. He feels helpless, caught between the knowledge that he cannot do anything to help her and the desire to draw his father's blade and slay the grim reaper that lurks above his beloved's bed.

Leetah wishes she could console him, take his hand in hers, but her whole body is engaged in a singular struggle to expel the burden she has carried inside her for so long. Her body is drenched in sweat and the lower half of her body is a mass of pain, stretched almost beyond bearing. She will not admit that it scares her, despite the fact that she knows that both she and the two sparks of life within her are healthy. Never has her body betrayed her in such a way. Never has she felt so like an animal, a grunting, squealing creature instead of a true woman.

Perhaps that is why she cannot find it in herself to take his hand, her Tam, because there is a part of her petty enough to blame him for what she now suffers. She knows that it would be the same no matter who had put these children in her, but she knows the secret of the Wolfrider blood and it taints everything between them.

Someday, she will tell him. Tell him that she accepted it long ago, this taint, and that took it into her own body and in doing so understood that it was his strength as well as his weakness.

"The first child struggles like a wolf, Leetah. Never have I seen a child so lively." Shenshen tells her, and Leetah feels the bitter irony of those words cut her.

"First?" Cutter asks, but already Leetah drifts away from him. It is a simple thing for a healer to do, to put himself or herself into a trance, and she does it now without thinking, letting her body writhe and scream as her spirit drifts free.

In the cool darkness of the spirit world, there is no pain and her thoughts are not constricted with the pettiness of suffering. As she drifts, she reminds herself that she loves Tam because of his wolf blood, not in spite of it. He is her anchor, her tie to this world. She, who was once so removed from physical sensation, who shielded herself from any kind of pain, now feels as he does. She reminds herself that it is his biggest gift to her.

And then she is not alone. The mind that brushes her is uncertain, untrained, pushed into a trance by a pain so deep Leetah can barely comprehend it. What-whowereohpainohpleasesomeone…help me…my soul, my other half, Anakin, Anakin, please, why-why-why, not yet, don't leave me please someone healkillhelpsave me…

Leetah knows she has been away from her body too long already, but no healer could refuse such a cry. Shade and sweet water, sister, why do you cry? What ails you? How can I help?

He is gone-dead-turned-lost to me and I cannot-will not live without him. Leetah feels a moment of panic as the strength of the other's mind, even untrained, threatens to pull her in. She stabilizes herself, then begins a controlled descent into the woman's mind.

The loss of a soulmate. More than a loss, more than death, a soulmate turned to a darkness so terrible Leetah knows of nothing to compare it to, though she can see the beginning threads that led to the unraveling and they remind her of nothing so much as a beautiful black-haired desert elf.

And the guilt, endless, sure that she should have known, could have helped, if she hadn't been so blind, so afraid, and on and on and on…Leetah struggles to keep the woman's emotions out of her mind.

And the children, the twins, that tie that binds the two women together, though they are from separate worlds and—Leetah slowly began to realize—of separate races. But Leetah fears only wolf blood and this woman—Padme, her mind whispers—fears something far darker.

And now Leetah can see it, the soul wound hiding the real wound, and she calls her healer's fire to her.

No! Padme snarls like a wolf.

It will kill you. You must live. You have children. But even as Leetah thinks it, she feels the despair and guilt Padme feels for these children and realizes that no, she cannot raise them, she cannot look on them without seeing her failure to save the man she loved.

Help me. Free me. The human pleads of the elf, and Leetah, who has always fought against death with her last breath, recoils from the plea.

I…cannot, Leetah begs

I cannot live in this world! Let them say that I died here, don't make me… And the images, the pain Padme fears she will cause those she loves in her desperate attempt to escape the world. Leetah, overwhelmed, cringes beneath the torrent of images.

I have never… But she knows how and now that she looks, it is easy, easier in a human than an elf, for there is a core of mortality there no elf possesses.

No elf, that is, except those with wolf blood in their veins.

Leetah reaches out with a mental touch she has used a thousand times to heal and finds the tiny, flickering spark of life. And with extreme gentleness, she blows it out.

It snaps her back into her body and the lusty wail of a newborn child. Cutter beams down at her, two children in his arms, and she looks up at her lovemate and sees that same core of mortality in him and she reaches up to him.

Tam… Her mind whispers to his, and he cannot understand her tears.