Imagine Padme. This is a universe (details in my pinned post) where Anakin's not found until the start of the Clone Wars, so she is isolated on Coruscant, and the only people she has are the people she almost died with on Geonosis (Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon), and there is so much horrible trauma there (sometimes, on the bad nights, she can taste sand in the air and hear the rumbling growl of the nexu and feel the slash of its claws against her back and see the bodies of Jedi and clones all around). They've protected her since she was a teenager, they're always there for her even if her ideals don't always match theirs, but now there is suddenly a war being fought by a sanctioned slave army. And Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are going along with it when all Padme wants to do is tear the system down from the inside, and I just??? This is your kind of brother and best friend, but he commands a battalion of slaves. This is the closest thing you have to a father (a protector) on Coruscant (and you never have time to see your real father and you miss him so much all the time), but you asked him what you and he were going to do about the clones (you always do things together, even when you fight, you are still a team), and all he said was that you were going to use them, and you screamed at him -- not like he was a stranger because that would have been easier, but like someone you love who has abruptly become a stranger, which is so, so much worse -- and ran to cry in your surrogate brother's arms, even though you knew he was going to walk in Qui-Gon's footsteps (he always does). Then you meet a former slave, a revolutionary named Anakin, and he is the first person to tell you that you're right, to be just as angry as you are, and it's like you can finally breathe again, but now Qui-Gon is treating him like an enemy (you saw Darth Maul too, you know what a Sith looks like and Anakin isn't it, but Qui-Gon doesn't listen because he never listens to you any more) and suddenly he is forced into the same blood drenched slave army that is like a knife in your chest. And you look at the man who has looked after you for years, and it is all you can do to stop yourself from spitting in his face (you thought he was different, you thought you were safe with him). So you join the GAR, you fight amongst the slaves (you fight for the slaves). Because it's all that is left to do, and the anger and hurt are burning embers behind your ribs, and you pick up a blaster because the last time you felt helpless was when you counted the clone bodies in bags in a destroyer's hold (you lost count). And you're never going to feel helpless again.
Imagine Obi-Wan. He almost aged out of the Jedi Order and was swooped up at the last moment (but too late for him to not feel like a lost boy for the rest of his life, always fighting to measure up) by Qui-Gon, who didn't want him (he did, but he was afraid, and Qui-Gon hates to be afraid). So every minute of his apprenticeship, he has felt like a burden, like he's constantly two inches from rejection. And then he is fourteen, and the shadow of grief that follows his master around becomes solid in the form of Xanatos, who kidnaps and tortures him (he thinks he is rescuing Obi-Wan, "Just break, little one, and the pain will stop, and you'll find the power beyond it. Stay with Qui-Gon, and he'll get you killed, just you wait and see"). Then Qui-Gon comes (he rescues him, and Obi-Wan is ashamed to have doubted he would) and kills Xanatos ("I told you. He gets all his apprentices killed," he whispers through red stained lips) to save him. And Obi-Wan feels something break inside his master, and he knows it is all his fault, that Qui-Gon blames him and is to kind to say. They never talk about it (if they did, Obi-Wan would know that Qui-Gon blames himself to the point of fatal hubris). Obi-Wan is a grown man when he meets Padme, a girl too small for her age with eyes too old, who doesn't cry over the handmaidens and planet she is forced to leave behind (but he feels something break inside her too), and he vows to protect her and see her to safety, whatever it takes. He keeps that vow, and suddenly it becomes lifelong. Naboo is safe, but Padme never is, and he is assigned as her bodyguard when Jango Fett tries to assassinate her. She is the one who tells him, in a fit of frankness, that he is the best Jedi she's ever met (she's wrong, the best Jedi is Qui-Gon, but he loves her for what she said anyway). She is the one who goes with him to save Qui-Gon from Dooku, and she is the one who squeezes his hand tightly in hers when Dooku draws too near (she knows all about what happened with Xanatos). She is the one he gives his padawan braid to because he didn't think Qui-Gon wanted it (he did but he never knew how to ask, and really it was better to let the past die, he thought). She is the one who pushes him to be better, who tells him he is not Qui-Gon and he doesn't have to be Qui-Gon (it would be better if he weren't). Just picture it. You are thrown into a war, there are dead clones (men) all around you, dead Jedi, dead senior padawans, and you've spent hours comming the Temple to let padawan after padawan know that their master is dead, and suddenly Padme (your little sister, she is your little sister) bursts into the comms room and throws herself at you, sobbing (things with Qui-Gon finally broke, like a storm overhead, and you have the horrible suspicion as she weeps in your arms that they will not mend this time). You watch things unfold, slowly spin out worse and worse, and you don't know what the Republic has become or what Qui-Gon has become (or what you have become), but now there is a young revolutionary with fire (not yellow, not yet) in his eyes, and his name is Anakin Skywalker. He wants to free the slaves, but you are a slave master (you know this, though you cannot admit it to yourself). He looks at you, and there is contempt, and suddenly Padme is looking at you with same contempt as you go along with your master and let him take Anakin to the Senate, to the Council, and she spits at you, tells you to be your own man (because now you are being Qui-Gon, and it is just as bad as she always warned), and you are losing her and you cannot bear it. You are caught in the middle between her and Qui-Gon (always caught in the middle), and you so desperately want to choose a side. You think you have, you think you chose Padme, but Qui-Gon is looking at you like you are Xanatos, like you are another one of his failures (not your failure, Master, mine, all mine).
And now your little sister is going to war (she is still tiny, and when you look at her you see the small queen who hurled herself into danger without a second thought, all for her people, always for her people -- and now the clones, Anakin, are her people) (are you still her people?), and you have to protect her, the young (so young) padawan that was foisted upon you (and you love her already, more than a Jedi should), and Anakin. Anakin, who looks at you and says, just as Xanatos did, "Qui-Gon is going to get you killed someday." And Padme looks at you and says, with tears in her eyes, "I thought you were different (please be different)," but she still takes your hand and squeezes it tight. And you squeeze back.
