Padme was startled to receive a group of very official-looking visitors to the apartment. Apparently they had arranged to meet Anakin there at that time, though he was still absent. Padme welcomed them politely, offered them tea while they waited, and went to ask Mark whether Anakin could be contacted. On her way back to the sitting room she couldn't help but overhear a chunk of conversation between two of them.
"Well at least that's one thing you can cross off your list." The voice sounded amused.
"What?" That one much less amused, probably irritated at being kept waiting.
"The succession of course. Looks like Lord Vader has already started to take steps on that score."
"The mere presence of a young woman is hardly evidence..."
"I was thinking more about her choice of reading material."
Oh gods, that pile of books again. Out in plain sight in front of people who wanted to talk to Anakin about a whole 'list' of things. Though... if 'the succession' was on that list... she considered the implications and smiled, then walked back to the door she had come through, opened and closed it rather more loudly than before, and walked back along the corridor and into the room, where the conversation was now about how charming the garden looked at this time of year.
She studiously avoided looking at the pile of incriminating books, and poured them tea while they waited.
Once Anakin had returned, she had politely taken her leave of them, and sat in the parlour until they were gone. Anakin came and found her there, picking her up and spinning her around with a huge grin, then kissing her enthusiastically. And then... just standing and holding her, gazing at her as if truly seeing her for the first time, before leaning in for another, softer kiss. Then another. Then, with a sudden shake of the head, remembering that he had been planning to talk rather than kiss. "I'm to be Emperor." he said thickly. "They made a few conditions, but nothing I wouldn't have wanted anyway. A review of the emergency powers mainly, increased democracy, that kind of thing. With luck I shall be able to hand over a lot of the real power and be more of a figure-head just as soon as we can get the Senate used to making proper decisions again. They are going away to write up a press release about Palpatine's death now, and they'll let me go through it before it goes out. It'll mention his age, and the medical procedure going wrong, but nothing about the doctor or what the procedure was. I think they have convinced themselves that Palpatine wasn't to blame for any of it, that it was all the doctor's fault for promising him an anti-aging treatment that worked, preying on an old man's fears, that kind of thing." He frowned. "I don't approve... but, I don't think I could convince them of anything else, their opinion of him would take a lot of shaking. And the important thing is that we stopped him, right?"
"Right. Well, you stopped him. I mostly just lay there being a damsel in distress."
"A damsel who, in spite of her distress, managed to tell her knight in shining armour exactly where she was and what was happening, and kept the villain occupied and distracted until he got there, therefore allowing him to strike the final blow." He smiled, and then added more seriously "Honestly, Padme, if you hadn't kept your head and contacted me I don't know what would have happened. I was... well I was not in a good place after I found the messages he had faked on your account, about how the only person who mattered to you was your father. I had started to hope..." He carefully put her down and stepped away. "I hoped maybe you cared about me, just a bit. And that maybe this was turning into something a lot more than I was expecting. But your messages talked about getting away from your 'owner', as if I was nothing more to you. It made me think I was just kidding myself, expecting a girl I bought for money to have feelings for me."
Padme paused carefully before answering, painfully aware that what she said now might be the most important words in her life. "I do have feelings for you. I think I... I'm well on the way to falling in love with you, if I haven't already. It's all been a bit quick and overwhelming, though, and I don't want to make promises about 'forever' or anything like that when we're both a bit... bruised by it all. I'm guessing you... well it's been a lot to take in, hasn't it? About your mother, about things that happened when you were younger, even about why you felt so strongly about having a child at all."
"I still want one" he assured her, then "Dammit I shouldn't, should I? That was just him manipulating me into making..." he pulled a face of horror and disgust. "Force, it's all a mess. I thought I was rebelling, doing what I wanted and not what I was ordered to do for a change. But I wasn't, I was just doing what he wanted all along."
"Well, maybe it doesn't have to be 'either or'. Maybe you can want something because you want it yourself for your own reasons, as well as because someone else is suggesting it? When you think about pregnancy, what do you picture?"
He smiled gently. "You. All big and rounded and soft. And then a little round soft baby, with pudgy little hands and knees. Have you ever noticed babies' knees? They are the cutest things; I just want to kiss them..." He blushed. "Oops, my knight in shining armour disguise slipped a bit there. Far too soft for a knight, kissing babies' knees."
Padme slid an arm around his waist and said "You can focus on its knees, if I get to blow raspberries on its tummy. Deal?"
He laughed. "Deal. Maybe I could practice on your knees? Not that they're pudgy of course" he hastily added as she raised an eyebrow.
Padme thought for a moment, then blushed but said it anyway. "You can practice on anything you want. And not just... practice. If you... well if you can decide whether or not to start a pregnancy, then we don't exactly have to wait, do we?"
He looked at her in astonishment. She blushed more deeply. After the revelations of the previous day, a woman trying to push him to have sex with her was hardly what he wanted, she should have realised. He lifted her face and said very gently. "It's not that I don't want to. I do, very much. And... waiting has never been one of my strongest points. But... my mother taught me that certain things were right and others were wrong. A lot of those things got muddled up over the years, since Palpatine could argue black was white when he felt like it, but this feels like one of the ones that matters, even if there's no real reason why one day is different from the one before it. Ten days." He entwined their fingers together. "And I will be counting every single one of them and wondering why I'm such a stubborn idiot. But that doesn't mean we can't... practice..."
And with that he leaned in and kissed her again, gently at first, then more passionately, and their arms wrapped around each other, sliding over clothes, until they ended up in a tangle in one of the armchairs and stayed there for quite some time, practicing.
They practiced a lot over the days leading up to Padme's birthday. Despite the fact that Padme had already seen (and felt) him naked, they settled to a self-imposed rule of keeping their underpants on and in place no matter what else they found to practice on, which tested their self-control at times but allowed them to find all kinds of ways of enjoying each other's bodies.
In theory, Anakin had been planning to take Padme out on her birthday for a tour of the city, conscious that she had barely been out of the apartment since her arrival. But he popped by her room in the morning to say 'Happy Birthday' and deliver her present before breakfast, and their plans evaporated when he saw her sitting up in bed in her skimpy nightdress and tousled hair. All their practice paid off, each knowing just how and where to touch to send thrills down the other's spine, amongst other places, and soon her nightdress and his robe were on the floor as they gave themselves to each other completely. The sense of completeness, of connection between them, was more than just a physical thing, the pleasure in their thoughts caressing and entwining even as their bodies did the same, until they rushed headlong to ecstasy in each other's arms before lying in a naked exhausted tangle on crumpled sheets.
In the end, they didn't bother to dress at all that day - each time either of them started to find some clothes, or suggest an activity that needed them, they got distracted again.
They had decided not to worry about getting pregnant or not - Anakin's feelings on the subject were still confused, and they both agreed that whether it happened or not was something they would accept, and they wouldn't allow themselves to feel rushed or pressurised if it didn't happen. If and when Anakin wanted them to conceive, it would happen - assuming of course that nature felt like going along with it at the time, which could never exactly be assumed. And so they spent every night together, learning to enjoy everything about each other, and not worrying about whether their choices were on the 'good for causing pregnancy' list or not.
One month later:
Padme frowned and counted on her fingers, then dug out the chart she had started earlier, and realised somewhat belatedly why their nightly pleasures had been quite so uninterrupted. She blushed as she went through to find Anakin and suggest that, maybe, he had been in favour of pregnancy after all. He was startled, then thrilled.
Two months after that:
They sat together in the doctor's office after the first scan, to check that all was going well with the new little life they had created - though they were luckier than most in that Anakin could feel a strong presence, he could not pick up any detail at such an early stage, beyond a general idea that he or she was healthy and strong in the Force. The scan would hopefully give them a bit more information, and possibly help them to know which of the two names they had chosen would be the more appropriate.
The doctor had done the scan very thoroughly, and seemed determined to check everything out in great detail before giving them any information. Anakin was visibly fidgeting, having promised not to grab the information out of the man's head before he could tell them both together. But finally he was ready to tell them.
They stared at each other in amazement before both breaking into laughter simultaneously. If they had needed any confirmation that Anakin really wanted this pregnancy, then the doctor's news would have dispelled it completely.
He knelt down at Padme's feet and pressed his lips to the gently swelling belly and said, both out loud and through the Force. "Hello Luke. Hello Leia. The two of you are the most wonderful thing that has ever happened, and your mother and I are going to love and cherish you until the end of our days." Padme pushed the same thought towards them, and felt Anakin amplify it and send it on in case they could not hear her yet. Palpatine had been wrong about that, as about so many things. She could sense the growing life - lives - inside her, alongside her link to Anakin, but it didn't drown it out, just added beautiful harmonies. She had love and attention enough for them all.
She didn't fool herself into thinking things would be easy - apart from the difficulty of carrying and then raising twins, Anakin was never going to be the most settled of people, and he had a lot of issues to work through. But, since Palpatine's death, he had begun the slow process of dealing with his confused and contradictory feelings, and of addressing the fragmentary memories of his adolescence. He woke with nightmares sometimes, and Padme would hold him and reassure him. Sometimes he would tell her what had frightened him, or just talk about things that had happened, or about his mother. Other times he would just lie in her arms and allow her to soothe him, or they would make love, and finally he would sleep again. It would be a long and difficult path, but they were on it together now. Even if they were both still wary of talking about 'love' or 'forever', she knew in her heart that those things were true, and one day they would say them out loud.
