Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [188]
He could feel her patience, and her trust, and he was so grateful for both that tears welled once more. He had to blink out at the burning night, and blink again, to keep those fresh tears from spilling over onto his cheeks. He put his flesh hand on top of hers and held it gently until he could let himself speak.
“It was a dream,” he said finally.
She accepted this with a slow, serious nod. “Bad?”
“It was—like the ones I used to have.” He couldn’t look at her. “About my mother.”
Again, a nod, but even slower, and more serious. “And?”
“And—” He looked down at her small, slim fingers, and he slipped his between them, clasping their two hands into a knot of prayer. “It was about you.”
Now she turned aside, leaning once more upon the rail, staring out into the night, and in the slowly pulsing rose-glow of the distant fires she was more beautiful than he had ever seen her. “All right,” she said softly. “It was about me.”
Then she simply waited, still trusting.
When Anakin could finally make himself tell her, his voice was raw and hoarse as though he’d been shouting all day. “It was … about you dying,” he said. “I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand it.”
He couldn’t look at her. He looked at the city, at the deck, at the stars, and he found no place he could bear to see.
All he could do was close his eyes.
“You’re going to die in childbirth.”
“Oh,” she said.
That was all.
She had only a few months left to live. They had only a few months left to love each other. She would never see their child. And all she said was, “Oh.”
After a moment, the touch of her hand to his cheek brought his eyes open again, and he found her gazing up at him calmly. “And the baby?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
She nodded and pulled away, drifting toward one of the veranda chairs. She lowered herself into it and stared down at her hands, clasped together in her lap.
He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t watch her be calm and accepting about her own death. He came to her side and knelt.
“It won’t happen, Padmé. I won’t let it. I could have saved my mother—a day earlier, an hour—I …” He bit down on the rising pain inside him, and spoke through clenched teeth. “This dream will not become real.”
She nodded. “I didn’t think it would.”
He blinked. “You didn’t?”
“This is Coruscant, Annie, not Tatooine. Women don’t die in childbirth on Coruscant—not even the twilighters in the downlevels. And I have a top-flight medical droid, who assures me I am in perfect health. Your dream must have been … some kind of metaphor, or something.”
“I—my dreams are literal, Padmé. I wouldn’t know a metaphor if it bit me. And I couldn’t see the place you were in—you might not even be on Coruscant …”
She looked away. “I had been thinking—about going somewhere … somewhere else. Having the baby in secret, to protect you. So you can stay in the Order.”
“I don’t want to stay in the Order!” He took her face between his palms so that she had to look into his eyes, so that she had to see how much he meant every word he said. “Don’t protect me. I don’t need it. We have to start thinking, right now, about how we can protect you. Because all I want is for us to be together.”
“And we will be,” she said. “But there must be more to your dream than death in childbirth. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know. But I can’t begin to guess what it might be. It’s too—I can’t even think about it, Padmé. I’ll go crazy. What are we going to do?”
She kissed the palm of his hand of flesh. “We’re going to do what you told me, when I asked you the same question this afternoon. We’re going to be happy together.”
“But we—we can’t just … wait. I can’t. I have to do something.”
“Of course you do.” She smiled fondly. “That’s who you are. That’s what being a hero is. What about Obi-Wan?”
He frowned. “What about him?”
“You told me once that he is as wise as