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Fallen	By : serendip Category: Star Wars (All) > General Views: 3106 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Star Wars is the property of George Lucas. This story is for entertainment purposes only. No infringement of rights is intended. I do not make any profit from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Fallen
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 6-Six
- 7-Seven
- 8-Eight
- 9-Nine
- 10-Ten
- 11-Eleven
- 12-Twelve
- 13-Thirteen
- 14-the end...
- 13
- 14
-We all begin with good intent, when love was raw and young
We believe that we could change ourselves, the past can be undone
But we carry on our back the burden time always reveals
In the lonely light of morning, in the wound that would not heal
It's the bitter taste of losing everything that I've held so dear
I've fallen...

"Aala, I'm scared."
"Just hold on, Padmé. I've got you."
"Watch your sister."
Aala lifted her head to glance at Padmé playing on the shore, the gentle waves lapping at her little ankles as she giggled and tried to jump over the swelling water.
"Watch her do what?" Aala muttered, laying down again on the blanket and lifting her holobook up in front of her.
"Aala." The tone of her mother's voice left no room for argument, but her annoyance peaked and she thought she'd give it a go anyway.
"Why do I have to watch her?" she asked as she sat up, turning to face her mother. Then she noticed Sola waiting patiently in the distance and narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "What are you doing?"
"We're going to go for a short walk, have a talk; this is our last chance to spend some time together before she goes back to University tomorrow."
Aala huffed."I still don't see why Sola had to move away. There's a school right near where we live! Why isn't that school good enough?"
"Aala." Her mother's face softened as she kneeled down to touch Aala's arm. "We've discussed this already. I promise you'll understand when you're older."
"I'm thirteen now! Is that why I can't talk with you and Sola? I'm not old enough?" The conversation she'd had with her father when Sola left for school seeped to the forefront of her thoughts. Time to grow up, time to decide what you're going to do.
"That has nothing to do with it, darling. I think you're very mature; I'm putting you in charge of Padmé, aren't I? She's your responsibility while we're gone, alright? We won't be long."
Aala let out a long dramatic sigh. "Fine." She watched a moment as her mother and older sister strolled down the path, then turned back to the lake to where her little sister was still playing. "Padmé!" she shouted. "Don't go out past the shoreline, okay?"
"Okay!" came the young girl's reply and Aala settled back down with her book.
It was only a few minutes later, the sound of splashing registered somewhere in the back of Aala's head, and she knew that sound could not be coming from where Padmé had been playing before, barely touching the water. When she glanced up and Padmé was not where Aala expected to see her on the shore, she sprung to her feet, her holobook forgotten in the sand.
It was there, about 10 yards in, right where she knew the bottom dropped off, that she saw Padmé's head dip under the water.
Fear flooded her mind and she cursed under her breath as she sprinted for the water. What is she doing? She knows how to swim...
Panicking... she answered herself. A little girl, panicking. And her mother's words played over and over – she's your responsibility, watch her. Your responsibility.
Aala felt tears began to prick in her eyes just as she jumped in the lake, and Padmé's head popped up, just for a moment, her arms flailing in the water.
"Aala!" she cried and then she slipped back under.
Please don't die. Please don't die. Her father was right. She was too young, too irresponsible, she would never be as good as Sola. She would never be as perfect as Padmé. Please don't die.
Diving under the water with ease, she wrapped an arm around Padmé's waist and drug her back to the surface.
"Padmé!" she called when they broke free, and Padmé coughed and she spluttered, but she was breathing. She was okay.
"Aala," she cried again as Aala slowly began swimming back to shore.
"It's alright," Aala managed. She kept her arm tight around her waist, pressing Padmé's back into her chest, making sure she couldn't drag them both back under but she felt exhaustion starting to kick in, her muscles weakening with the strained effort. Just a bit farther.
"Aala, I'm scared."
"Just hold on, Padmé. I've got you."
But they were slipping under, being pulled downward, descending into an abyss of darkness together. It was hopeless, there was nothing Aala could do.
She knew it was a dream, she knew she was dreaming, but she couldn't pull herself awake, she couldn't escape it, couldn't turn away.
It was like watching a shuttle crash, horrible but fascinating.
And then it turned, it turned into her shuttle crash, and in contrast to the clammy coolness of the water, now she could feel the heat of the fire licking at her skin. This particular nightmare always started with heat. Often she'd wake, sweaty, to find all the blankets had been piled on top of her, or Obi-Wan was holding her too close, and she'd remember it wasn't real, she'd already survived it. It was over.
And she knew she was dreaming, but just the same she was there. The acrid smell of hot metal filled her nostrils. There was a painful kink in her side like she'd been running too fast, running for miles, and if only she could stretch out her muscles and take a deep breath, the pain would ebb, she knew it would, but she couldn't move. When she tried, nothing happened and panic flooded her mind once again, and she tried to scream, but she couldn't do that either.
This is a dream. It was a dream and she'd already survived it, it was over.
And like a ghost she separated from it, drifted away, and then she remembered waking up in the medcenter. Everything hurt, her entire body ached with a pain she couldn't describe and she desperately tried to force herself back into unconsciousness but someone was talking.
"She was lucky." The voice sounded distant, like they were underwater, the sound tinny and distorted. Lucky? This was lucky? Surely lucky could only feel like this in hell.
"Yes, she was."
But no, that was her mother. Aala could feel her, and she knew then this could not be any place bad.
"The metal that pierced her torso, it was bad, but it didn't damage anything vital." The healer continued his speech sounding like some odd voice over to a bad holo-vid. "And it pinned her where she was, it kept her from moving, and it - held her body together. It kept her from bleeding to death. There were only two other survivors, they were thrown clear of the wreckage, and weren't critically injured. We were able to concentrate most of our resources on her."
So she was lucky because everyone else had died.
How could that be possible? How could she be one of the only ones that lived? Why her? Was she meant to suffer? Was it only coincidence? Did this mean she was supposed to do something important with her life?
She couldn't. Not her. She couldn't change the galaxy. That was for Padmé.
Padmé...
Burning heat teased her flesh again. Made her skin tingle and she felt drops of sweat sliding down her back. And she was pinned in that destroyed shuttle but instead of the fading, hazy memories, now she was wide awake. Her eyes snapped open and Padme was in front of her, right in front of her, trapped in a circle of flames. "Please. Please, Aala," she cried. "Please help me."
"Yes." She was determined. Padme was her responsibility. She was supposed to protect her. "Just hold on Padme. I'm coming." Aala pushed at the twisted metal wrapped around her mid section, she shoved and heaved with everything she had but nothing happened.
The blaze seemed to intensify, it spread, turning into liquid magma at their feet. "Aala, I'm scared."
Aala was crying herself now, hot tears rolling down her cheeks. "No," she sobbed. Twisting her body, she squirmed, trying to push up, trying to get out, but she couldn't. She kicked and screamed. "No!"
Hazy dark smoke started to fill the air until she could barely make out Padme's tear stained face. The flames leaped higher, hotter than ever.
"No!" She cried out in frustration. "No, Padme."
And with a gasp she awoke. Obi-Wan was cradling her head to his chest and stroking her hair. Aala took in great big gulps of air and tried to calm her racing heart.
"Shhh, it was just a dream." Obi-Wan murmured, his hand rubbing comforting circles over her back. "Shhh."
A dream. It was a dream. Just a dream. It wasn't real, she was here... here... on the Tantive. With Obi-Wan... Padme. Padme was gone... the twins...
"Oh!" Aala pulled back abruptly to look past him. "Did I cry out? Did I wake them?" The twins, Padme's babies. Aala had been resting on the sleep couch, reluctant to leave them. She must've cried out loud and Obi-Wan had heard and come for her.
"No," Obi-Wan said as he looked over his shoulder. "They're asleep still. Come."
He took her hand as he rose from the couch, urging her to go back to bed with him.
"No, I can't, I have to -"
"Come, Aala, they're asleep. It's only been an hour since they last ate. You need to get some rest."
"But what if they need something," she whispered, reticent.
Obi-Wan wrapped his arm around her waist, guiding her toward the door. "I'll feel it in the Force." He assured her. "I promise I'll wake you as soon as they need you."
She gave one last lingering look at Luke and Leia, each in their own cradle and then leaned into Obi-Wan, hardly able to hold herself up. "Alright."

"Aala. Aala..."
"Mmmmm... Mmhm."
"Wake up, Aala."
"Mmmmmm." She groaned, not wanting to leave the peacefulness of deep sleep, but he touched her shoulder again, and she rolled over. "Hm?"
"It's been a couple hours. We should feed them."
Aala sighed, her tiredness overwhelming, and she couldn't quite seem to shake the cobwebs from her mind. Feed them? What in the...
The babies. She sat up then, trying to listen. "Are they crying?"
"No, not yet, but they should have another bottle. Newborns need to eat every three hours, at least."
"How do you know that?" She frowned at him. How, after 13 years, were there still things she didn't know about him.
His only answer was a soft smile.
Aala groaned again, pushing back the covers. Stars' end. Every three hours? Even if they weren't crying? But this was her only chance, this one night.
Rubbing at her eyes, she pulled herself out of bed, following Obi-Wan back to the room where the twins were sleeping. As the soft yellow nightlight came on, she could see Luke was indeed still asleep, but Leia was awake, her little fists waving haphazardly above her.
She went to Luke this time, leaning over the cradle and running her hand over his downy hair. Pausing, she looked to Obi-Wan and he nodded, so she picked him up slowly and held him close to her chest. Obi-Wan handed her a bottle and she settled on the sleep couch, arranging pillows around her. Luke took the nipple of the bottle in his mouth and began to suckle without even opening his eyes.
As Obi-Wan sat down with Leia, Aala turned, stretching her legs across the couch and pressing her bare feet against Obi-Wan's thigh so she could watch them as well as Luke. She fought the urge to yawn as fiercely as she fought the dark thoughts that constantly threatened to surface, instead trying to focus on the three beautiful people she was sharing this tiny room with.
"The war's over..." she murmured after a long moment of peace.
His mouth drew in a tight line and he sighed before he looked at her. "You were right, Aala. I never should have made you a promise I wouldn't be able to keep. I shouldn't have..." he trailed off.
Though neither had said it out loud... they both knew... Aala would stay on Naboo with her family and Obi-Wan – would not. His vow was made, the path laid.
"It's the thought that counts." She tried to smile at him, but she was sure it came out kind of wobbly. She knew he felt he had given her nothing, but he had given her more than she had ever hoped for and she felt she needed to make him see that. "My – 'ex'... he offered those things – a family, stability, a normal life – but it was hollow, it meant nothing. I would've been miserable with him. You've always been there for me in a way he didn't understand, and that's really all that matters. Maybe in another life... we'll get more time..."
"I'm so sorry, Aala."
They were quiet again, for a long time, and as she looked on Luke and Leia, Aala couldn't help but think it should be Padmé here, enjoying these moments. She tried to picture her sister, smiling, laughing, but it was so hard now. How long it would be before the image of her sister faded completely from her memory? Maybe if she kept having nightmares... she felt like that was all she had left of Padmé.
"The nightmares..." she murmured quietly to Obi-Wan.
"The crash?" he asked.
Aala nodded. "Yes. But now Padmé's there... and the lake... You know, I told her once, I had nightmares about that, and she didn't even remember it."
"Sometimes the ones we care for don't realize what we've done for them, but it doesn't make it any less important."
Luke finished his bottle first and as Aala cradled him to her shoulder, rubbing his back, he burped and Aala felt something warm. Looking to Obi-Wan with wide eyes, she noticed both the amused glint shining past the exhaustion in his eyes and the precautionary cloth on his own shoulder. Her eyebrows knitted together in admonishment, but then she couldn't help but laugh. "You have to tell me these things," she muttered with a small grin. "I don't know what I'm doing here, and apparently you do, somehow."
Offering an apologetic smile, he leaned over to wipe the spit up from her arm.
Shifting Luke to lie in her arms again, she watched as he fell back asleep, and she knew, he wouldn't remember her, feeding him in the middle of the night, holding him, but Obi-Wan was right, it didn't matter.
Knowing they were only hours away from Naboo now, she made no move to put the baby back in his cradle and she thought of her family – Sola, her nieces, her parents... Closing her eyes, she dreaded what was to come.
Obi-Wan's hand fell on her knee, trying to reassure her with an affectionate squeeze and she looked up at him.
"What am I going to tell them?"

"Something went wrong." Her head bowed in sorrow; she couldn't look her father in the eye, couldn't lie to her mother's face.
"There was an – accident." The tears were coming now, streaming down her face.
"The Jedi...?" her father began to question, and she nodded quickly, before he could finish. Sola, as still as a statue, looked on from behind their parents and Aala could not bear the unspoken doubt in her distraught stare.
'You must tell them this,' Obi-Wan had said. 'It will protect you. The Emperor will say the Jedi killed her on Coruscant. You have to back this up.'
She could never tell them what really happened, and she couldn't stand it any longer. Falling into her father's arms, he held her tightly like she was a little girl. They didn't ask her anything else.

Never had Aala seen Padmé look more beautiful. The sun had set only minutes before, and the light grew dim as the clouds changed colors in the sky. The yellow light of the lanterns began to glow, scattered in the crowd of thousands and the buildings along the street. Padmé was radiant; little white flowers strewn in her dark hair, like they were floating around her.
Aala's eyes settled, again and again, on Padmé's rounded, empty stomach and she prayed for those children. She prayed her sister had finally found the peace she couldn't find here.

They stood, Obi-Wan and Aala, facing each other, in the empty white corridors of the Tantive IV as if in some sort of limbo.
He finally reached for her, taking her hand in his own and grasping it tightly.
"Aala..."
Something in his voice broke, and it took her breath away. He looked so unsure, and it was so unlike him, she was lost. He took a step toward her, but still seemed unable to find the right words and the only thing she could think of was to throw her arms around him, anchor herself to his solid form, and she hoped she was providing something of the same measure of comfort for him.
"It's so unfair," she whispered as she pressed her face against his shoulder and he hugged her tighter, his arms encircling her waist. Pulling back to look at him, she fought the sting of tears she could feel and swallowed thickly. "I should've tried... I should've made her –"
"Aala, it's not your fault," he interrupted her. "You have to know that. Her decisions were her own. It's not your responsibility."
She nodded her head. "I –," she wished she could voice the same words back to him, ease the tension she could see around his blue-grey eyes, take away the pain she knew he was feeling inside, but she couldn't think. "It hurts so much."
"I know," he answered and he pressed his lips to her forehead, weaving his fingers into her blond hair and embracing her again.
Aala was overcome with emotion: fear, sadness, worry, hope, love. They were each so raw and clear in her mind and it was overwhelming and she knew Obi-Wan was right. Padmé's actions were her own, she had ceased being her responsibility a long time ago; and she only hoped Obi-Wan would come to realize the same about Anakin.
"I couldn't have done this without you," she said to him. "Losing Padmé, I wouldn't have been able to bear it, if I didn't have you, if you hadn't have been here." It was so obvious, the strength he had given her for so long, what he meant to her.
"I feel the same way," came his quiet reply.
"I love you," she professed, tears rolling down her face and she was taken aback by the sound of the words, by the truth she felt behind them, but even more so by the lack of surprise on Obi-Wan's face.
Smoothing her hair back, he held her head in his hands, his thumbs brushing the tracks of wetness from her cheeks. "I love you, too."
"What? How?" She breathed, astounded by his surety.
"You made it easy," he teased her. "No commitments, no expectations..."
"Don't make fun of me," she scolded him for using her own silly words against her, but she was smiling and looking at him and she realized she couldn't remember the last time he had kissed her. It seemed imperative now to correct that.
The thought had barely crossed her mind when he pulled her toward him, tilting his head to the side and sealing his mouth over hers. It was nothing at first, just their lips pressing together, the tickle of his beard on her skin, then it deepened, the desperation of a kiss goodbye taking hold. And then he pulled back and swept his lips across hers, soft and lingering: an admission. Again – an assurance. Again – a promise.
And she knew, this could not be the end. This would not be all they had. This man would hear many more 'I love you's' from her; he had to, he'd earned it. Somehow, sometime, there would be more. She could not give up on love now, not now that she had finally found it.
Pulling her tight again, he pressed his face into her hair and whispered in her ear. Barely moving her head, she nodded once then looked into his eyes one last time.
"What will you do?" He couldn't help but ask, she knew.
"Go home, for now." The Jedi could not have peaceful, domestic lives, and neither was she meant to, but Padmé had let love rule her, and despite everything, she'd given Aala the chance to have a taste of it. Hope and love now swelled in her heart more than anything else. "And dream of a galaxy where you're just you, and I'm just... I."
He gave her a warm smile, and she thought she could see tears begin to well in his eyes.
"I wish..." she began. There were so many things she wished for, but she wasn't sure any of it needed to be voiced out loud.
"I know," he sighed, and she was reminded so acutely of how well he knew her.
And then Obi-Wan kissed her one last time before she turned and walked away.

I picture you in the sun, wondering what went wrong
And falling down on your knees asking for sympathy
And being caught in between all you wish for and all you seen
And trying to find anything you can feel that you can believe in
I know I would apologize if I could see your eyes
Cause when you showed me myself, you know, I became someone else
But I was caught in between all you wish for and all you need
I picture you fast asleep, a nightmare comes, you can't keep awake
May God's love be with you
Always

AN: Lyrics at the beginning taken from Fallen by Sarah McLachlan, lyrics at the end taken from In the Sun by Joseph Arthur.
The end! But there's always more to come - soon an epilogue and then even more after that. If you're reading, thank you! And please let me know what you think.
This story would not be what it is now without the never ending support, encouragement, kind urging, help, comments, reviews, talent, skill, creativity, etc, etc, etc, of laloga, so thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Fallen