Summary: I don't like how this dress looks on me. It reminds me of how this is all a sham. Not Padmékin.
Pairings: not Padmékin
Author's Note: Please don't hate me for taking this pairing and completely turning it on its head. I put depressing spins on everything; you should know that by now. And, safe to say, I don't particularly believe in the love of Anakin and Padmé.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.

I don't like how this dress looks on me. Its white is dull and tarnished, neither shining nor pristine. It's of a lighter weight than many, if not most of the clothes I have worn during my tenures as Queen and Senator, but somehow it feels so much heavier, like it's dragging me down with it to depths unknown.

The veil the young girl who helped me get it on finds so lovely in fact smells of must and dark places, having been kept in storage for so long. The pins holding this heavy, cumbersome veil in place scratch at my skin, driving mercilessly into my skull, and I wish I had simply dispensed with it altogether.

Every pin picking at my skin, every bit of old, yellowed, musty lace tugging at me is there, I think, just to remind me of how this is all a sham.

This marriage of mine, this wedding, is not about love, though I might protest that to Anakin, to myself, to the priest who has officiated, and to anyone who will in future find out.

What do I see in his eyes, as I approach him, tall and dark, on this secluded balcony as the sun starts to sink, mauve and lavender, over the water? I see devotion so intense it can't be real. How can Anakin feel this way; we've only known each other on equal terms (that of two adults) for such a short time. What I see in Anakin's eyes is something that can not grown and bloom over night.

I simply do not understand it.

Everything is set. It all looks like what every little girl has ever dreamed of for her wedding. A tall, handsome groom (disfigured and bloody, the murderer of innocents) with eyes full of love (Black pits that want to devour me whole). A gorgeous lake house out in the middle of nowhere (With stone walls that feel like a prison, growing smaller and smaller with each passing moment, as freedom flies further out of reach). And a beautiful bride (cold and hard, with diamond facets ready to cut and scratch and draw blood in pinprick drops), clad in lovely, lavish attire (Musty, outdated, garish clothes that drag me down and threaten to crumble at even the slightest touch).

Everything is present.

Everything… except the bride's love.

I do not love him.

Oh, I will not deny that I feel no small measure of desire for the young man waiting for me; that much is certain. On Tatooine, sexuality is kept under wraps, hidden, as though it is a delicate creature that will be killed by the smallest touch of the sun and can only thrive in moonlight. But here on Naboo, things are different. We glory in our sexuality, at least here in the southern hemisphere we do, and I, being a woman grown, am not inexperienced in such matters.

Yes, there is hunger in my eyes to match the adoration in his (Poor boy. So young that he can not tell the difference between love and desire. If he wants to see love for what it really is, in all its perfections and imperfections, then he need look no further than his Master). But marriages that last are not built on this foundation of sand.

I do not love him. Perhaps in time I will be able to equal Anakin's devotion, but I am not hopeful.

What am I doing here?

I have never thought much about marriage. I have been married to my work, to my people, to my world. I am wife and mother in that capacity alone, and as a Queen and a Senator of Naboo, it should have been enough. But I always imagined, girl-Queen that I was and woman-Senator that I am, that if I was ever to be married some day far off in the future, that I would at least love the man I was marrying.

Great Mother, what am I doing here?

Matrimony is a sacred state of existence, one that should never be taken lightly or taken for granted. This should, by all rights, be the happiest day of my life. I have the right to be happy on my wedding day.

But when I look at Anakin, all I can see is dark blood. Blood that was soaking the ends of his sleeves, sending up a foul reek that day in the garage. Black blood that clumped and coagulated on the hilt of Anakin's lightsaber, stains like spots. The blood of Tusken women and children, slaughtered in cold blood, in disproportionate retribution by a mad berserker.

And when I picture us in out marriage bed, I feel not heat, but nothing but the icy sensation of a cold, metal hand running down the length of my spine.

I do not love Anakin, and I'm risking everything I've ever worked for for a man I don't love. And though I profess to fear nothing, warnings of wariness scream in my skull when I near him.

But I have always been able to make everything work in the end (And somehow simultaneously cause everything I touch to die).

And I want to save him.

In defense of Lucas's horribly written romantic plot between Padmé and Anakin in AotC (an otherwise enjoyable movie), I don't think Padmé actually loves Anakin. The confession at the arena was so obviously forced that Padmé could have easily been lying, and Anakin (whom I do believe is genuinely infatuated with her) just took Padmé at her word because he was so relieved/ecstatic to hear her confirm what he's believed. And thus, I somehow managed to turn Padmé into every guy or girl who ever got married for all the wrong reasons. Come on, people: if you don't know one now, you will eventually.