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Empty Movement

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

[http://www.demando.net/]

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The Padawan's body had become a live wire- fused with worry, with fear and

with denial. He had only seen her just this morning... she had been alive

then, smiling, breathing, her presence filling the audience chamber to the

top.

[Yes, but you rode in the tunnel-car, didn't that seem to take forever?]

No! It couldn't have.. she can't possibly...

[Die? Anakin, don't be a fool, she is human- just as you are. ]

The voice- the awful, treacherous voice- spoke in the tones of Qui-Gon but

used them with so little skill that Anakin knew it was not really the old

Jedi. He pushed through the crowd, desperate in his search. Secreted in his

robes, the black hilt of the lightsaber belonging to (no one, not me, not

me), slapped painfully against his side as he ran. Anakin paid it no heed as

he spotted a short-cut, headed away from the crowd and into the arched

alley-ways of the Plaza. Here, the once-grand (they were grand only a few

hours ago) buildings seemed even more dilapidated, their statues having

crumbled into half formed nightmares. His breath came out in uneven- so

thankfully uneven- gasps as he rounded the corner, his footsteps echoing

behind him as if he had become two men and not one.

A lost feeling came over Anakin, then, for his surroundings had suddenly

become unbearably alien. Instead of the main Plaza, with its high,

impossible towers, he found himself in the midst of yawning black rubble. A

beast's jaws, opening into the sky. Wild, monstrous weeds grew inward from

the rubble, their thorns scrapping along the dirtied marble.

"Hello?" Anakin called, his heart pounding annoyance and fear. He couldn't

have gotten lost, he needed to go see Amidala, to proove that she wasn't...

Well, she just wasn't. She couldn't be.

'Hello?' his own echoes laughed back at him. Narrowing intensely, Anakin's

blue eyes scanned the circle of fallen stones, coming to rest on another

unfamiliar figure in the distance. He ran towards it- not through the great,

thorn-encrusted center- but around it. Even though it took longer.

"Where- where did the procession go?" the Padawan demanded, almost as soon

as he reached the robed figure.

"Why should you care, young Skywalker?" the figure, bent with age, seemed

to shake with barely contained mirth. Anakin frowned.

"I need to see... who they are burying. Do you know where they went, old

man?"

"Indeed I do," again, the old man shook in his insane amusement, and Anakin

felt fresh rage. Such disrespect- especially if the funeral was for...

No! It wasn't for her. It couldn't be.

"Of course it's not," the old man's voice became filled with false pity,

"It couldn't be, could it, young Skywalker? Who would kill the Queen of

Naboo? She's so young, so pretty, so *kind*." The robed man said it like it

was a bad thing, said it like it was an insult. Unwilling to waste his time,

the Padawan moved away, prepared to leave the robed one's company all

together. "Wait," the reptilian voice cautioned. Now it seemed somehow

familiar, forced into false polite tones. Somehow, however, it refused to be

placed. A single, claw-like hand extended, "Look there."

As his gaze came to rest once more at the center of the rubble, Anakin

suddenly realized he was standing in the ruins of Amidala's audience

chamber. Gone were the rich hangings, the portraits and the polish- now the

great hall was open to the mercy of the sky. Anakin's heart lurched, stopped

almost, but not at the destruction around him.

The woman from the tunnel car, the woman with Amidala's eyes, had been

right to fear her unwanted companion-shadow. It was a monster. It stood

there now, in the center of the destruction of everything Amidala loved- and

that horrific, automatic sound returned full force.

It's breathing! Anakin realized in a wild panic. For a moment he considered

that it was the breathing that had done all this, the destruction, the

death- but no. The breathing was a symptom, not the disease itself.

The monster bent over and pried loose one of the great marble tiles that

had lined the floor of the audience chamber. The movement of the heavy stone

was painfully clear amidst the ruins, but Anakin could bear it. What he

could not bear was...

Having completed its task, the demon, black and terrible, removed something

from the behind the crumbled throne and lifted it into its arms.

Someone started screaming in a long, senseless note of disbelief- but a

great deal of time passed before Anakin realized those where his own

screams. His mind became focused on what the monster held, until the image

was burned into his retinas and he was sure it would haunt him mercilessly.

The monster held Amidala- disheveled, beautiful, and very, very dead.

In a fit of absolute furry, Anakin rushed forward. The demon was going to

put her in the ground, he was going to cover her with the heavy marble stone

and let the weeds take her for their own. An image flashed before the

Padawan's eyes- the Queen, wrapped in the weeds' tender, painful embrace-

the thorns piercing her flesh here and *here* and HERE....

"Stop!" he cried, running towards the center. Frustration, intense as his

anger and perhaps twice as dark, consumed him as he met with an invisible

wall, "Don't put her in the ground!" Anakin pressed against the barrier,

desperate. A thought came, possessed him that he should take the lightsaber-

not his own, the other, the one that hid a blade of crimson- and use it.

Wield it against the blockade like an axe, tear at the invisible wall until

he could rush forward, kill the monster-

-Abruptly, the sky was brilliant with stars, Naboo was whole, and Anakin no

longer stood in the ruins of the Great Hall. Instead he found himself

standing on the high, narrow walkway that led to Theed's highest citadel,

bathed in the light of late sunset. Gazing over the curved, bending skyline,

the Padawan saw Theed, glimmering with life; but moreover, he saw Amidala

alive and smiling. Relief filled him, made him exhalant, reverent. He failed

to notice that her wide, deep eyes held pain; that her smile was composed of

sadness and her flesh more pale than even the painted mask she sometimes

wore.

"You're alive," he breathed, moving those scant few steps he could not bare

to have between them. Amidala smiled gratefully, as if she was glad he

thought so. She moved away from where she had curled her hand around the

railing and glided along the walk-way, gesturing for him to follow. She wore

a white dress Anakin had never seen before, and it twisted around her in the

twilight wind. It was only when he watched her walk that Anakin became aware

that something was wrong. A feeling of dread solidified along his spine,

urging him forward. The Queen's movements seemed halting, careful and

calculated as they had never been before. More than once she stopped to grip

the railing with white knuckles, gasping for breath.

"Ami, what's wrong?" he asked, hurrying to her side. The relief was gone

now, washed away with worry for his friend/companion/lover/queen. She turned

her face away from him, eyes focusing on their destination, then shook her

head.

"I want to show you something. Help me," one elegant, perfectly sculpted

hand reached out blindly, and Anakin caught it in his own. Amidala moved

closer, almost closer than she ever had before, and allowed a portion of her

weight to rest against her friend. Of its own violation, Anakin's hand moved

to support her at the small of her back, but she stiffened painfully and

cried out. The Padawan withdrew it quickly and placed it on her shoulder

instead. It rested there, feeling the sheer willpower with which Amidala was

forcing herself to walk.

"Are you sure?" he asked, blue eyes filled with worry he feared might give

him away.

"Very sure," it was a royal nod, and thus a royal command, so he helped her

along the walkway and into the glass cage that would take them to the

tower's zenith.

Amidala smiled weakly when they reached the observation deck, walking at a

pace that forced Anakin to let her do it on her own. It seemed to take all

of her energy to reach the cushioned window seat, and she wilted there.

Tucking her feet beneath her, she gazed out on her city with unseeing eyes,

before they finally slipped closed all together. Anakin himself stood rooted

to the spot then, for she looked so much like the faces of peaceful Tatooine

saints, carved to be beautiful, wind-bent, quiet and...

Dead.

[.... Her body, cradled by the weeds. Thorns turned inward, piercing flesh,

drawing precious crimson fluid...]

"Will you please tell me what's wrong?" Anakin didn't even realize had

moved forward, until he found himself kneeling at her feet, holding fistfuls

of her white dress. Up close, he saw that it wasn't a dress at all, but a

long cape she was holding closed around herself. Amidala refused to look at

him, but the Padawan thought she didn't need to. She knew- her knowledge was

her mystery, and it was all the mystery he needed. Leaning forward, he laid

his head in her lap and felt the barest touch of her fingers in his hair. "I

don't want you to hurt," he whispered. That must have moved her, for she

untangled herself from him with impossible ease. For a brief moment, Anakin

feared he had never been holding her at all.

"I will show you," her voice was low, and she gazed at him though the

comfort of her long lashes. Anakin moved back and climbed to his feet,

suddenly aware of the black lightsaber's weight as it lay in his robes-

perhaps it was alive. Gasping with barely reined hurt, Amidala reached for

the clasp of her cape, motioning for her friend to stay back. The jeweled

hook came undone, and the heavy, white velvet fell away.

She was nude, but Anakin didn't notice- he couldn't. For there,

off-centered and asymmetrical, lay a wound so deep and red that you could

look at nothing else. It looked as if someone had...

[stabbed her through with a lightsaber. Why, yes...]

There was blood, so much blood that Anakin couldn't fathom how she'd

managed to hide it. Her eyes, so expressive, held nothing put agony then,

but she stood unashamed.

"Who did this to you?" he'd meant for it to be quiet, respectful of her

pain, but it came out as a snarl. For an instant, Amidala looked away, and

though she never said the words, the truth was there in her eyes, in the

forced way she held her body, and in the blood as it fled her pale form.

"You did."

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Anakin didn't wake up, not right away at least. He didn't want to, so he

hovered in between-sleep, unwilling to retreat into slumber and by the same

token wary of what reality held. He couldn't carry on with it for long,

though- the not-knowing hurt just as much as any death.

In his mind, the illusive memory of the return trip fluttered, but it was

vague. Logically, he knew he must have ridden the tunnel-car back from...

where-ever it was he had gone. He could recall sitting in the empty car,

which held no girl with coiled hair and senator's gown, no boy with a

blue/green lightsaber. It must have all been a dream- the train-ride, the

funeral and...

There was only one way to tell, really. He could go down to the

tunnel-station, wait on the bright, shadow-lined platform. He might see the

woman there, whose face was Mother's, then Amidala's, then no one's at all.

He might ride the train again, and see no one in the empty car...

But he might not.

Still, the twin demons of worry and fear taunted him, whispering that he

should go see Amidala, just to make sure. Three times he rose and dressed,

twice he changed his mind and laid back down, employing the Jedi claming

technique mercilessly. The third time, he could stand it no longer, and

dressed in his Jedi robes (there was something heavy in his pocket, but he

wouldn't look, he wouldn't look), he made his way across the palace. He felt

the inevitable embarrassment and stupidity when the Queen's guards looked at

him dubiously- wondering what a Padawan wanted with Her Majesty at this

hour. Anakin ignored them as best he could, waiting impatiently as they rang

to see if she was even awake. He wondered what she would think- their

relationship did have a few unspoken rules. There were not many, but they

did exist, and many of them seemed geared toward keeping it just that; a

friendship. A slight pause hung, before the head guard ushered him through

the open door. It slid shut, and Anakin realized he was trapped.

"Ani?" sleep and pleasant dreams clung to Amidala's voice, as well as

surprise. The Padawan contented himself with looking at his feet for some

time. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I suppose I just," he looked up, and fumbled for the words. In the

pale light of her chambers, Amidala was a warm, hazy shadow back lit by the

moon- she was not Amidala at all. This was not the Queen, but the girl; here

she was patient, concerned and real. This was Padme`, Ami- her truest self.

This put him more at ease than anything else, "I thought something had

happened to you. I know it's stupid, but I just needed to check... make sure

you're okay."

"A premonition?" she asked, obviously thinking of the infamous Jedi and the

things they had seen come to pass. Clutching at her long blue nightgown (not

white, thank the Force it's not white), she looked very young- almost his

own age. It was a welcome deception and, when she motioned, Anakin joined

her out on the small balcony.

"It wasn't a premonition," he started, then felt once again that weight in

his pocket, "Maybe- I don't know." He shook his head ruefully, "It's hard to

tell. Everything was jumbled together."

"What happened?" she was closer now, Anakin wasn't looking at her, but he

could feel it. Her hand rested on his shoulder, an disturbing mirror of his

dream. They stood eye to eye now, and Anakin gazed into her own orbs for a

moment, wondering if she knew. That was the thing no one understood about

her eyes, really. They seemed brown, but they weren't- they were opal,

changing to be dotted with gold, and sometimes ebony in the moonlight. They

were now.

"I thought you were dead," it wasn't supposed to come out, and Anakin knew

she saw that. He shifted uncomfortable. She was very close, and the way she

held herself whispered that, yes, they could make one of their few

exceptions. They could offer small comforts, as they had before, and forget

about it in the morning.

Putting his hand against her stomach, were the wound had been, he felt it

warm, soft and solid. He drew back, then, as if burned. "You're alright," he

wasn't sure if he was telling her or himself. Ami's wide, opal eyes looked

only half astonished as she moved to put her arms around him. He felt her

trembling, and knew that she had not had pleasant dreams after all. What had

she seen, or lived through, or been haunted by? The object was still there,

in his robes, heavy and real, as he leaned against the balcony railing and

held Ami hesitantly. And really, when it slipped from his pocket too swiftly

for him to catch, when it fell through the railing and down onto the ocean

cliff bellow- well, it was an accident.

"What was that?" Ami asked, hushed and perhaps a little fearful as she

heard it hit the rocks.

"I don't know," he replied- and he didn't, not really. It could have been

anything, a tool or some gadget he'd stuck in there and forgot about.

Really.

"I won't hurt you," he promised, or lied, or maybe he never even said it at

all. He did mean it, though- whatever they might say about him later, he

meant it then. However, Anakin did press his lips against Ami's soft cheek,

so he wouldn't have to think about the crimson lightsaber, laying in wait at

the bottom of the cliff.