Padme has always soothed him. Now shouldn't be any different, right?

sorry for the delay! Life stuff is happening.

Comments are appreciated.

Padmé. Being with Padmé will be safe. She has always soothed him, her presence a needed balm. Of course being with Padmé will help, and he's not sure why he didn't think of it earlier. Anything to keep from giving in to the urges that threaten to overtake him at any moment, anything to keep him from feeling like he is going mad. Padmé will help.

Padmé... Is not home. He walks through her empty apartment, brushing his fingers over her things, breathing in her essence, trying to take comfort in the fact she WAS here, and will be again. Still, Threepio has no idea when she's supposed to be home, and there is only so far echoes of her existence will carry him.

He thinks about running himself a bath, but when his brain helpfully reminds him how easy it would be to drown himself in her deep tub he reconsiders. Instead he stands in her fresher, staring at a reflection he barely recognizes, until he catches sight of a container of tablets next to her face wash. He picks it up, turning it over in his hands, recognizing the contents as sleep aids. Exactly what he needs: sleep. He shakes a couple into his palm and swallows them dry.

He's not sure how long it will take the pills to work so he heads to the bedroom - their bedroom. Her lingering presence is strongest here, and he climbs into the bed he shares with her all too infrequently, pulling the covers tight around himself, not bothering to undress besides removing his boots.

The pills work quickly, and soon he's feeling the embrace of sleep tugging at him, beckoning. For a few long, agonizing, minutes he fights it - the last thing he wants is to get stuck in a nightmare he can't wake up from - but soon exhaustion and despondency win out, and his eyes close.

Threepio informs her she has a visitor the moment she steps into her apartment. Since said visitor is still here, Padmé knows it can only be one person. She tears into the bedroom only to find Anakin sleeping soundly in bed, chest rising and falling gently. She perches beside him and runs her fingers through his hair: her preferred method of unobtrusively waking him. He doesn't so much as stir. "Ani?" she whispers. Her heart is pounding with the excitement of seeing him, even if he's not awake. The Jedi - and the Chancellor's office - had been unexpectedly tight lipped about her husband's latest mission; all she knows is that he's been gone for months and no one seemed to have any idea where he'd gone.

She leans down and kisses his forehead. Anakin shifts slightly now, letting out a breathy moan, brow furrowing. Suddenly his arm flies out and manages to catch her right across the chest, nearly knocking her over, and Anakin is screaming, rolled tightly in on himself, pulling at his hair. "Anakin? Anakin!" She's seen him have nightmares before, but never like this. She shakes him, yelling his name, imploring him to wake up, and suddenly he's sitting upright, arms wrapped tightly around her, sobbing violently into her shoulder. "Anakin, shhh, what's wrong?" She hopes he is honest with her; he hides so much from so many people.

"Sorry," he gasps. "I'm sorry." He looks up at her with watery eyes. "Did I hurt you?" He sounds agonized.

Padmé shakes her head. "No," she assures him. "Anakin, talk to me, please?" Their marriage is built on lies to others, the last thing she wants is for distrust to spring up between them too.

Anakin shakes his head violently. "Just a nightmare," he replies. "This last mission was... it was rough. But I'm back, and I'm okay, and I'm sorry if I scared you."

"Tell me about it," she all but begs. He doesn't like to talk about the war when they're together, but he clearly has something on his mind.

He stands, paces away from her, raking a hand through his hair and pulling on individual strands nervously. "I can't," he mutters. "I can't talk about it." Whether because the Council has told him not to, or because he himself can't find the words, he doesn't clarify.

Realizing with a sharp sigh that she's not going to get any other information from him, she walks over to him, runs her hands down his back, embraces him and rests her cheek against his chest. "Dinner?" she suggests and he nods.

Dinner turns out to be a rather uncomfortable affair. Anakin doesn't speak much, and drinks far more wine than she is used to him doing. Still, it's just good to see him again, to spend time with him, to know he is alive and relatively well. Once dinner is over, they head back to the bedroom. Almost as an afterthought she asks if he needs anything to help him sleep; her own medic had prescribed sleep aids several weeks prior as she's found herself lying awake night after night in fear for Anakin - and the Republic's - safety. She can certainly spare some if it will help.

He screws up his face a bit, but accepts and washes them down with the last of the wine. She frowns, but can't judge. She's done the same, and something is clearly troubling him greatly. She decides that the first thing she does in the morning will be to call Ahsoka; she's not going to stand by and do nothing while the man she loves suffers. She just hopes Anakin will accept the help.

The realization that even being with Padmé doesn't help feels like a cold hand wrapping around his insides and squeezing. He couldn't even bear to allow her to touch him; why would she want to, after everything that has been done to him? That he was complicit in being done to him. If she knew... But she doesn't know, he's sure of it. Still, her hand and Omega's hand blend together and he jerks away from her as she tries to caress him awake the next morning.

She looks hurt, and that hurts too - he can't even keep himself from lashing out at the people he loves anymore because he has no idea what's real and what isn't. Pathetic. He wants to disappear into her soft sheets and never emerge; he wants to throw himself from her balcony. He wants the Galaxy to come to a screeching halt and turn back to before this all happened because if he can't use the war to fix himself, if he can't lose the trauma amidst the kind of trauma he can DEAL WITH, he's not sure what to do.

Except he does. It's the answer that has been beckoning since his first day out of the bacta tank, the answer that had provided the only relief when he was actually in Omega's clutches. The answer he KNOWS is a product of Omega's twisted games, but an answer that nonetheless is his last hope of regaining himself. He'll just do it for a little while, just to help him get back to feeling like himself again, then he'll stop. Easy, and no one would ever have to know.

He's feeling almost better by the time he's able to get out of bed, a plan firmly fixed in his mind, now. It's a good plan, foolproof, and he kisses Padmé goodbye gently, and tells her he has to report to the Council. What's one more lie in the grand scheme of things anyway. She sounds wary when she replies, saying she loves him, asking him to come back to her soon, to stay safe. He agrees readily, because soon he'll be her husband again, and will be safe from himself if nothing else.

He heads not to the Temple, but to the Orange district. He's not overly familiar with what to do in this particular situation; though he's not a stranger to mind altering substances, he's never truly sought them out in such a manner. It doesn't help that he's easily recognizable and soon he figures that the Orange district is still too close to the surface, too close to the Temple. He goes lower, where natural light does not penetrate, where it's harder to make out his features, and where beings don't ask as many questions.

He doesn't know what to ask for, exactly. Glitterstim is out; it enhances the user's Force connection and that's the last thing he wants. Death sticks are a maybe - lower Force sensitivity, but he's not sure he likes the idea of taking years off his life span with each dose. He kind of wishes there was some kind of manual for this sort of thing, an instruction guide, anything. He thinks back to the few times outside of Omega's machinations that he's used hard drugs: Alderaanian grass doesn't count. Pyrepenol, maybe, he thinks because it's one he remembers the name of and remembers just how amazing he'd felt for the time it had lasted - he'd been a Padawan, then, freshly rescued from Omega and aching for relief. It had helped, until he hadn't needed it anymore, and that's what it will do for him now.

He hands over a sizable amount of currency to get a fair-looking supply, and heads back to the Temple and the peace he hopes will come next.