Midnight in the Garden, chapter 16

"Divide and Conquer"

He waited at the door to her office. At last she appeared, looking very sad.

"Sith history lessons tonight?"

Anakin grabbed her hand. "Meeting at Padmé's. Come on."

He commed Padmé on the way over. "Padmé. Is our guest in his room?"

"Yes."

"Keep him there 'til I get there."

He ushered Sereine quickly and quietly into the kitchen.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"You need to stop eavesdropping."

"You need to stop teetering on the edge of an affair with him!"

"I am not 'teetering on the edge' of anything!"

"You wouldn't admit it if you were!"

"Anakin." She crossed her arms and glowered up at him. "I know what's at stake. I am not going to do anything that would jeopardize our work here."

"Then you can tell me what's going on." Anakin crossed his own arms.

Padmé bustled in in an empire-waisted dress so enormously hooped out that she resembled a tank. Now that the secret of her pregnancy was out, she needed to shop for real maternity clothes. "If you don't want Finis to know you're here, you'd better quiet down," she said.

Sereine took a deep breath and looked up at Anakin. "When what's going on is my personal life, I don't have to pull it all out for your inspection."

Anakin felt ready to throttle her. "Oh, but I've had to pull all mine out for yours! Yours and the Council's! Is there anything about me you don't know? And everyone has the right to question me like a criminal, but not you! Never you! You're the last person I expected this from!"

He pushed past Sereine, throwing his hands in the air, and stormed out.

Sereine lowered herself into a chair. A temper tantrum from Anakin was the last thing she was ready to deal with just now. She could still smell a faint note of Palpatine's cologne. She still could feel Palpatine's arms around her, Palpatine's lips upon her mouth—arms and lips she hadn't felt in over thirteen years and thought she'd never feel again. And now she must never feel them again, even if it could have helped their situation.

Doubtful ... highly doubtful. Whatever Palpatine wanted, it wasn't what she thought they could have had thirteen years ago. With what she now knew, she would never be so stupid as to believe that.

Padmé looked after Anakin's retreating back, folded her arms over the hoop skirt that served to hide her burgeoning belly, and leaned back against a row of cabinets.

"If you want some advice," she said, "I wouldn't do that to Anakin, if I were you."

Sereine rubbed her forehead, trying to get at the ache behind her eyes. Never mind the ache in her heart. "What?"

"What you just did," said Padmé. "You treated him like a child."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did." Padmé paused. "If you treat Anakin like you know everything and he knows nothing, and he has to be completely accountable to you but you don't have to be accountable to him, it doesn't go well. That's why he and Obi-Wan had so many problems."

"Anakin and Master Kenobi had problems? You'd never know it, from all their heroic exploits."

Padmé pulled out a chair and sat down. She leaned her elbow on the table, put her head in her hand, and shook it slowly. "You wouldn't have believed it. They had a nasty disagreement on a protection detail for me one time. If Jar Jar and I hadn't been there, I think they would have really been at each other's throats, right in front of Captain Typho. I think that's part of the reason Anakin got so close to Palpatine in the first place, because he didn't treat him that way."

Sereine stared out of the window. A cold sensation penetrated the dull headache—a distinctly uncomfortable feeling.

Padmé crossed her arms on the table and studied her calmly. "Look, I don't want to upset you. But I know your reputation, even though you left the Capitol years before I arrived here, and I know you still do occasional consulting work. Do you know why I've never hired you?"

Sereine peered at her. "You didn't need me?" Though true, she doubted that that was what she was about to hear.

Padmé shrugged. "Well, that ... and you have a reputation for being patronizing. Did you hear Bail, that first night you were here? He'll work with you ... but he complains about it."

Sereine sat there, several scenes where she might have been rude or arrogant to Bail and other senators she'd worked for passing through her head.

"You're really full of yourself," said Padmé. "Not that you don't have reason, but you are full of yourself."

Sereine remembered how she had spoken to Padmé only a few nights previously, and felt overcome with shame. She put her hands over her cheeks, and then one over her mouth.

Finally she said, "I should apologize for the way I spoke to you the other night. That was overbearing." She felt a million excuses rise to her lips, and stopped herself. "I'm sorry."

Padmé said, "Thank you," and just sat there. Not a twitch, not even the slightest evidence of any discomfort, even though she was young enough to be Sereine's daughter and at an age when most girls were still tentative and unsure of themselves.

This girl had held and defended a planetary throne at fourteen. What had Sereine thought she was doing? Her mind ranged over the times she had spoken to Palpatine that way—out of necessity.

And then she got it.

"I fell for it," she said. "And he knew I would, too." She put her own head in her hand. "There's nothing like Palpatine for showing you where your faults are. I fell for it."

Padmé wrinkled her delicate brows. "Fell for what?"

"Palpatine's been ... approaching me ... about resuming our relationship."

Padmé's hand hit the table with a thump that startled Sereine. "What!"

"I know. I know. And Anakin confronted me about it." Sereine fumed. "He knew I'd do this! He's not trying to break me and Finis up! He's trying to break me and Anakin up!"

Padmé's eyes found hers. "You aren't actually considering—"

"No! Five moons, no!" Sereine ran a hand over her hair. "Finis's first wife did that to him. I'd never do that to him. Besides, after what Palpatine's done?" She shook her head again. "No."

Padmé eyed her dubiously. Finally she cut her eyes across the room. "If this is the best he can come up with, we're home free."

Sereine shook her head. "Oh, no. You know he can come up with much better than this. He's testing us, to see how easily we'll fall apart. This is his way of being kind. When tactics like this one don't work ... he'll escalate. This is just the beginning. If you hadn't walked in and said that to me just now, I wouldn't have gotten this one. It might have worked!"

Padmé stared at her. "He is so insidious. So underhanded. When he escalates, as you say ... how will we ever ...?"

The kitchen door slid aside to reveal former Chancellor Valorum, clad casually in a thin linen shirt and slacks. He cast a weather eye on Sereine. "No one told me you were here."

Sereine glanced up at him. "I had a fight with Anakin."

"I was just coming to get a glass of water," said the Chancellor, and brushed by them to open one of Padmé's cabinets.

"Dormé or Threepio can do that for you." Padmé's eyes traveled dubiously between the two spouses.

"No, I've been waited on most of my life. It's good to wait on yourself."

He sounded his age, and just then Sereine felt every year of hers. She looked at Padmé, her dark brown hair with not a strand of silver, her unlined skin, her body brimming over with youth and the health of a first pregnancy.

She and Anakin had been separated most of their married life. For all intents, they were really still newlyweds. What was she, twenty-six? And Anakin? Twenty-two?

She remembered how uncomplicated life had been at that age. How could they possibly imagine the disappointments, the tarnishes and tangles another twenty years could bring? She watched as her husband filled his glass and took several swallows. Finis turned to lean against the counter and study her, crossing his arms in front of him. Or another forty years? Sereine thought.

How contracted and frozen and narrow a life could become, congested with outcomes and obligations and lingering ghosts from the past. Here stood Finis who counted on her, sixty years old, an unwilling prisoner here, with a failed Chancellery and a failed marriage behind him. And here she sat, her husband's lined face in front of her—

—and Palpatine's face in her heart.

Finis deserved better than this from her. She wanted to go to him and kiss him, hold him as she hadn't done in weeks. But she was afraid that if she did he'd ask her to stay.

And she didn't think that she could.

"I can make us some dinner," said Padmé. "I'm sure Anakin will be back before long."

"I don't think that would be such a good idea. He's pretty angry with me," said Sereine. She got up, watching as Finis's eyes followed her.

A surge of love and pity overtook her and she walked over and folded him in her arms. He struggled awkwardly to set down his glass, and she looked at him and reached up to stroke his cheek.

"I'm sorry I haven't been here," she said. "I'll come back and stay with you soon. I promise."

She tiptoed and kissed him, holding tight to her emotions. It would never do for Palpatine's spies to report her walking out in tears. Before her throat could close any tighter, she gave her husband a gentle pat and walked out.

Valorum's eyes followed her impassively. As the door closed behind her, one corner of his mouth pulled back, and he met Padmé's eyes with a simple, "Hmmph."

***

Anakin didn't return until very late. When he walked into their bedroom, Padmé was there in her nightgown, folding down their bed for sleep. Anakin moved to help her.

"Where have you been?"

"I went to Dex's Diner. I just had to get away from all of them. Palpatine. And Miss Perfect—she's starting to turn into another Obi-Wan!"

Padmé reached across the bed and grabbed his arm. Grave brown eyes met his. "Anakin, this is beyond serious. We have to talk to her."

"How?" Anakin pointed. "He's always in the next room."

"My office. Tomorrow night. I'll dismiss the staff. You bring her. Tie her up and drag her, if you have to."

***

Anakin found watching her face extremely satisfying. For perhaps the first time since he'd known her, Sereine looked scared. She huddled on Padmé's office couch, wringing her hands, her eyes roving over the walls.

She looked more than scared. She looked anxious. And guilty. And sad.

Anakin struggled with a sudden rush of sympathy. How many office couches had he sat on in the Temple, probably looking just like Sereine did?

"I don't know what to tell you," she was saying. "How can I tell you what's going on, when I don't know myself?"

She had started to talk about Palpatine, telling Anakin what she had already said about the probable reason for the Chancellor's behavior.

Padmé had gone for the kill. "We don't want to know what you think is going on with him," she had said. "We want to know what you think is going on with you."

Padmé digested what she had just said in silence. "I don't think I like how that sounds," she said. "If you don't know what's going on with you, how do we know we won't wake up one morning and find that you and Palpatine have joined forces and engineered something that's ultimately going to be very harmful?"

"Even when I didn't know Anakin was listening, I wasn't considering anything of the kind." Sereine cast him a baleful look. "I want Palpatine at the very least retired and out of office. I won't lie about caring for him, but that does have limits."

"You've helped him avoid prosecution in the past," Anakin pointed out.

"I didn't have all the information about what I was dealing with then."

Padmé shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "Feelings can lead to some strange behavior. Look at me. I ran off and married a Jedi!" She put one hand over her round, hard belly, which actually vibrated a little.

Sereine sighed. "You're going to have to trust me."

Padmé's brows rushed together over her nose, and Anakin smothered a smirk. His wife was slow to anger, but when she finally did get angry, look out! "I don't think that will work. Especially since you've threatened to switch sides on us previously!"

"Not in that manner, and not in that context!" Now Sereine was angry, too. "And you know that!"

"Sereine," said Anakin, "you kissed him!"

"What are you doing going to him with those feelings, anyway?" Padmé demanded. "Palpatine's not going to help you with them. He's going to exploit them!"

Sereine sighed and gave up, casting her gaze despairingly out of Padmé's office window at the evening speeder traffic. "He isn't capable of anything else at the moment."

Padmé snorted.

"No," Sereine corrected her, "he really isn't. As long as he sees the world that he sees, and believes what he believes about it, it's as if he's ill. We can't depend on him for the consideration we would get from a normal person. He's the sick one, we're the helpers. If we need something, we need to turn to each other, not him."

Suddenly she hid her face in her hands. "I know that better than anyone, and still I did it anyway." She shook her head. "Stupid, stupid."

Anakin was angry. "If you're going to prescribe that, then you actually need to do it!" he snapped. "When you assume I can't help without even asking me and then you just blow me off—but I'm supposed to bring everything to you—" He stopped.

Sereine raised her head and looked over at him. "What?" she said. "You're supposed to bring everything to me—what?"

Anakin found himself strangely reluctant to finish that sentence. "It ..." He tried again. "It makes me really angry. It's like you think you're better than I am, when anybody can see you've got problems, and it really makes me angry!"

Sereine sat, listening, and more words tumbled out of him. "I hate being treated like I don't even deserve to be asked. I mean, I'm going to be a father—I am married!—and even if I weren't, I am your friend, and I do still care! I thought we were friends."

Sereine studied him intently. And then she did an extraordinary thing.

She said, "You feel like I think your thoughts about it and your support about it aren't worth anything to me."

Anakin couldn't have been more surprised if she had suddenly thrown a rock and smacked him on the side of his head. He swallowed, and said, "Yeah. That's exactly it."

"Oh."

"And it ..." Anakin fought down a lump in his throat. "And it really made me feel bad."

He thought, Why couldn't Obi-Wan ever have done that?

"Oh," said Sereine again. And then, "Anakin, I'm sorry. I don't want to make you feel that way."

"But you thought it."

"I don't know that I thought that, exactly. I guess ... I guess it's a problem I didn't expect you to have any answers to. Either of you. And I guess I was worried about ... about having problems getting you to do what I know needs to be done about Palpatine when I'm wrestling with something like this myself."

Padmé joined in with a quizzical smile. "Well, we can't exactly tell you if we have any answers for your problem if we don't know what it is, can we? And if you're going to give us reasons to distrust you, that isn't going to help."

"I know. I know." Sereine cut her eyes to the view outside again, with an almost desperate air.

"So we're back to, 'What's going on with you?'" said Padmé.

"What do you want me to say?" Sereine snapped. "Do I have feelings for Palpatine? Yes. I think I've said that. I think I've even said it in front of Finis."

"I think what kind of feelings, is what we're concerned about," Padmé probed.

Sereine sat, considering, her head down. "I wish I knew," she said finally.

Padmé leaned forward. "You don't think he's influencing you in some way?"

"Not possible, Padmé," Anakin broke in. "Sereine's harder to influence than a Toydarian. You could influence the wall sooner than her."

Padmé cast her eyes to him, then down, appearing to accept his verdict.

Sereine did not answer.

"Sereine, we've got a real problem," said Padmé. "You're not there with Finis much, but I am. He knows something's wrong, and I don't know what he's going to do. And we need him! He probably knows more about what Palpatine's likely to do than any of us."

Anakin gave her a question mark of a look.

"He doesn't have much to do at our house, so he studies legal texts. You know that most of the legislation we pass, we don't even have time to read. Finis has the text of every bill we've passed that affects the powers of the Chancellor, and he's read every word."

"He knew every letter of the law before the war, anyway," said Sereine. "From trying to find loopholes during the blockade. And then from preparing his defense during the investigation afterwards."

"He plows through history texts at a rate that astonishes me," said Padmé. "Every word that's been written on the Sith by a non-Sith, he's either read or he's about to read. None of us has the time to do all this.

"But that isn't all. He loves you," she told Sereine, "and he's afraid of losing you, and he's miserable. He doesn't say much to me beyond 'good morning,' and I can see this."

Sereine's eyes were watering, and Padmé tried to throw in a joke. "Besides, I think Dormé's starting to get a crush on him."

Sereine's strangled laugh turned into a sob. Anakin and Padmé sat there in despairing silence while she wept.

Finally Padmé left her desk and went over to hug her. "We're sorry you're so unhappy," she said, and her tone touched Anakin's heart.

He remembered the holo of her with the children on Shadda-Bi-Boran. No matter how high born or well-placed, Padmé had a tender heart, one that never seemed to run out of compassion. It was one of the many reasons he had fallen so hopelessly in love with her.

"But you have to let us help you with it. There's no other way we have any hope of handling this," she said.

Sereine could only nod, and Padmé held her while she cried herself out. Padmé looked at Anakin over her shoulder and directed her eyes toward a box of facial tissues on her desk.

Oh, yeah. Anakin got up and retrieved the box, and crouched on the floor while Sereine dried her eyes and blew her nose.

Finally she said, "I don't know what's wrong with me. This is horrible. It would be hard enough anyway, but this ... I don't need this. I don't know why I have to have this, now."

"What is it you want?" Padme questioned softly. "Do you want to ... do you want to sleep with Palpatine? Do you want to divorce Finis and marry him?"

"No!" said Sereine emphatically. "No. I don't care what I feel for him, I can't support what he's doing. I certainly can't help him do it!" She sniffled and wiped her eyes. "And yet, I do want to. I remember what we had years ago. I can't stop remembering. I remember what he was like then. It was the happiest time of my life."

She dried her eyes again. "I know this sounds ridiculous to you, but Palpatine is hurting, too. He's not happy like this, either. I'm watching him every day, struggling behind walls that really aren't there. They're put there by him, because he believes they should be there. He's been taught that they're there, and he won't let go of it. He believes he has to do this, and he's miserable. It's like watching a rancor dying in a trap."

She managed a watery half-smile. "Only every time Palpatine thrashes his tail, he kills about ten thousand people."

Anakin and Padmé managed to share her ironic laugh, and then Anakin caught her hands, drawing her attention. He wasn't about to let her get away with it.

"Sereine, I want to save Palpatine, too. But I'm not kissing him in the evenings like I'm about to tear his robes off."

Padmé goggled at him and said, "I hope not!" and the three of them dissolved into nervous laughter again. Sereine sobbed reflexively and daubed at her eyes.

Finally Padmé said, "We're waiting."

Sereine took a deep breath and managed, "I don't know. The Palpatine I almost married doesn't even exist!" She sniffled. "Well ... he does, but it's a matter of degree. I thought I was with maybe a three on an 'evil scale' of one to ten, and now I find out he's a twenty!"

Anakin almost laughed, but he stopped himself. Sereine's brown eyes fixed on the opposite wall with a faraway look that told him she might actually be about to say something.

"And yet ..." she said, her hands clasping her tissue reflexively to her heart, as if she could see through the wall into the world of another Sereine and Palpatine, so long ago. "And yet ... there's this longing, all the time, for the way things were. The way things felt then. And there's no way they can ever be that way again. They weren't even that way in the first place! And I can't make it go away, and it's awful. It's awful!"

She hid her face in her hands, and Padmé looked at Anakin with helpless eyes that said, What are we going to do?

Finally she said, "You have to talk to Finis, Sereine. You have to."

"I can't," said Sereine, her voice muffled behind her hands. "How can I say this to him? It'll kill him!"

"He's miserable, anyway," said Padmé, and Anakin saw her sit up straighter as an idea came to her. "Sereine," she said, "this isn't fair to him."

"I know. I know," said Sereine again, behind her hands.

Anakin rubbed her arm sympathetically. "Look, I'm up there all the time now. At least I know what's going on. I'll be there to help you."

Sereine was beginning to cry again.

"Just don't do anything dumb. You don't want me to have to go charging in there and ... cauterize anything, do you?"

"Ana-kinn," Padmé groaned, and Sereine laughed unwillingly through her tears.

"I feel like I'm diseased," she said. "Like I'm mentally ill, like I just have these awful feelings for no reason and I just have to bear it and deal with it. I hate it!" Finally she looked up at first Padmé, then Anakin, with red, wet eyes.

"But I can bear it, and I will," she said. "Don't worry about me. I won't do anything stupid." She dried her tears. "And I'll stop letting Palpatine put his hands on me. No sense allowing him to tempt me to do something stupid. Something stupid that won't help anyway." She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"And I don't want you to think your support doesn't matter, Anakin. It does matter. At least I don't feel like I'm floating in hell all by myself, here." Her eyes began to water again.

Anakin got up and drew the three of them into a hug.