❝peace —— i’m tired of pulling your teeth, senator. ❞ when her ghost lies with your concussed demons awake, dull eyed and ravenous, every incision her reach carves and wounds her tongue soothes becomes a vicious, hungry mouth.
peace, she vindicates, dismembering the tattered loins of your disjointed rib cage, sinew by sinew, until all the intent her once sun - lined fingers sows, deep into the seeping mulberry of your exposed muscles, becomes a surrogate for each corrupt beat of your fickle, sordid heart.
do you see it now, wound? her knife practices something cleansing, something holy. dismemberment, however, poses its advantage : god gets to see all the dirty parts as she slices your sins lose for all to see, until you’re forced to look at yourself and see that all there is is the hope she’s forcing down your throat.and the look in her eyes, like sunlight through the window, makes you want it too but fuck,your father’s doing something bloody and murderous in the broken flesh of your mouth and he swears that between your first and second fang that i’ll always there, girl, always in you, and you know that as long as he’s hungry you’ll never be good enough for her or the peace she promises you’ll choke on.
GOD SCREAMS AS YOUR SENATOR, LIKE A TREMOUR OF PURE SUNLIGHT, HOLDS YOUR LIVER FOR ALL TO SEE: can’t you see that you want it too, just like the decayed corpse of your father’s ghost? he sees what you see, darling. he knows what you know in ways you don’t know yourself. (you can’t hide from your daddy’s crowbar hands forever, girl. )
❝offering peace alludes to an indication that there’s something you need to atone for too, senator.❞ and in ways too, you want to scream at her : senator, in ways neither of us can ever understand, we have come home. i did this to you in ways you will never understand. lay your liver down at the altar of god and wipe the blood off her trembling hands. whisper into her dying corpse as you coddle her ghost in your tired, wilted arms. wound, try not to wet her with the blood oozing from the wound on your jugular : how did it feel when you died, senator? did you feel me there, too? ask for the purifying cross and your mother’s knife as you plead to her so : senator,senator, we are singing now while naboo burns.
( the cold Force of the jedi temple succumbs to silence under the old sole of your used, tattered boot. the Force molds itself, devouring whatever’s left of your being as you venture closer into it’s old bones. you wonder if it feels her, too. now, you feel it as it shifts and knows what you did. it hungers for vengeance. you welcome it home. ) ❝ i’ll admit to mine if you admit he was yours. ❞
admit it. go on, padmé naberrie, admit it. these are the voices of kingdom come, of the devils who dwell in your heart & mind first. under the bludgeonings of chance, her head is blood but unbowed. how is she to pray when the shattered remains of general skywalker still reached under her clothes and around her throat? what forgiveness is there in a love that still lingers no matter how much one tries to purge it?
a voice whispers in her ear: all things are cleansed with blood, my dearest padmé. this is how you atone for his sins. do as she says. admit it, admit it, admit it.
nausea would creep up on her now if she were alive. his actions were not hers and yet, because of their vows and the red string he refused to cut when he went astray, she became associated with them by proxy —– the senator would always be remembered as the reason why he fell, but rarely as the face of the rebellion that she so wholeheartedly believed in though her words were happily used as teachings. this is what the other believed; this is what people’s souls screamed to padmé in the dead of night.
—– as the silence between them dawdled, she began believing them too: perhaps there was a chance, a slight domino effect, that she could have stopped this. maybe in another life she never fell in love with anakin skywalker or maybe she did, and discouraged any engagement immediately. perhaps then her death would not have sparked a rise in an empire that knew no mercy but then her children ——— shiraya give her strength, please. she does not know if she is brave enough for this.
it is the moons turn to talk to her now: your blood was not his to spill, my child. there is nothing to confess; you are safe with me. come. take my hand. let us leave.
she is stuck in the chorus of a hymn, unsure as to whether or not she should pray or beg.
❝ my admission will not give you peace but ——– yes, he was mine. ❞ she edges closer, echoing a notion of trying to coax the other out, her arms are waiting for a hug, the holding of hands, whatever her companion needed. she speaks with an invocation of ancient naboo. she has listened. ❝ though he is not me, and i am … so, so sorry. ❞
there it is, twelve, your apology laced with atonement, yells shiraya & the gods. padmé cradles the japor snippet between her breast: she is ready to get on her knees and beg, she has decided, if it meant the the cosmos would give her the other’s pain to shoulder for the next millennia.