Title: Necessary Sacrifices
Author: A.j.
Rating: R
Spoilers: All released Star Wars movies.

Summary: Darkness tells.

[()]

In the darkness, he spoke softly. Whispers of things long gone and horrors 
yet to come.

Padme knew Anakin thinks her asleep. Maybe. It's hard to tell just what he 
does and doesn't know. The Jedi had always seemed so... omnipotent to her. 
Heroes out of romance vids, dashing and perfect in their discipline.

She knows better now.

She modulates her breathing carefully. Low and deep so she can hear it all. 
She walked into this place with her eyes open. She knows the danger this man 
- this boy really - presents to everything. Saw it in his face and heard it 
in his voice as he cried over his mother, but not the remains of a dead 
village.

Her mind is strong. She was queen to her people. Trained from childhood to 
show nothing to the universe, nothing unintended.

She listens, in the dark, to this madman. Learns everything she can so that 
they will be prepared. So they can do *something* to salvage what is good and 
right.

There is a war coming. A thousand years of peace and prosperity are demanding 
their price. Her body is but a microscopic percentage of the whole.

It always has been.

-fin-