Another unexpectedly slow update, sorry! There's only one chapter left after this (!) and hopefully it'll be up sometime later this week. *insert the usual "everything I know about babies and parenthood I learned from google" disclaimer here* hope you like this chapter!

The first weeks of parenthood were a blur. Twins meant twice as many feedings, twice as many diaper changes, and twice as much being woken up in the middle of the night, because Luke and Leia had apparently decided that having the same crying schedule would be much too convenient for their overwhelmed parents. Padmé had never been more exhausted (or sore) in her entire life, but despite all that, she was utterly over the moon.

The three grandparents had all wept the first time they met Luke and Leia, which had set Padmé and Anakin off again until their entire hospital room was a crying mess. Sola and Darred had beamed and promised to spoil them rotten, and Ryoo and Pooja had been delighted with their infant cousins. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka, meanwhile, had declared that they were the most perfect babies they'd ever seen. Padmé was inclined to agree. It took her breath away every time she looked at Luke and Leia and thought in amazement that they were hers. Two tiny beings that were half her, half Anakin, and yet simultaneously their own unique little people.

Anakin took to fatherhood like a natural, just as Padmé had prayed he would all those months ago when she'd first found out she was pregnant. It warmed her heart beyond description every time she watched him with their babies, every time he cuddled them against his chest and kissed the tops of their heads, every time he sang them to sleep, every time he gazed at them as if they were miracles brought to life (which, of course, they were). And even the less glamorous moments, when he was changing their diapers or getting spit up on or desperately trying to soothe their wailing—even then, Padmé would get a funny feeling in her chest as she watched him.

She recalled the thoughts she'd had after she and Anakin had almost kissed, when she'd convinced herself that the growing attachment she felt to him was a side effect of pregnancy and it would vanish after Luke and Leia were born. But that wasn't happening. In fact, Padmé felt as if the opposite was happening. By now she fully acknowledged that the friendship they'd once shared was gone, and in its place was something so much stronger, so much deeper. She couldn't even begin to put a label on what Anakin was to her now. "Best friend" wasn't quite enough, but "father of her children" wasn't quite enough either.

But their current equilibrium was only temporary, she reminded herself. Someday Anakin would move out of her apartment and into one of his own and they'd start shuttling Luke and Leia back and forth between them and they'd become co-parents instead of partners. Just as it had that day she'd tried to imagine her and Anakin married to other people and having their own families, the thought stung Padmé keenly. She didn't want him to leave. She wanted him to live with her forever. But she just didn't know why.

Actually, when she really thought about it, when she really, truly thought about it, she did know why she wanted—

But whenever Padmé got that far, it was like an alarm system went off in her brain, flashing red lights and all. Danger! Danger! Turn back! Stop thinking! And fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately?) for her, not thinking was a very easy thing to do when you were responsible for two newborns. Most of the time, Padmé didn't even know what day it was—hell, she hardly even knew what time it was, since the twins' lack of a sleep schedule meant that she no longer had one either. Wake up, take care of the twins, grab a bite to eat, take care of the twins, sneak in a quick nap, take care of the twins, take a shower if lucky, take care of the twins. Padmé quite literally did not have the time, energy, or attention to focus on anything other than Luke and Leia. And she especially didn't have the time, energy, or attention to focus on anything Anakin-related that didn't involve nudging him out of bed and burrowing under the blankets when one or both babies started crying what felt like five minutes after she'd finally fallen asleep.

Until one afternoon six weeks after the twins' birth.

For the rest of her life, Padmé would always remember The Moment. At the time, she had no idea what prompted The Moment, nor was she ever able to figure it out, but regardless, The Moment happened. And it changed everything.

She was coming back from her six-week postpartum doctor's appointment; Anakin had stayed home with the twins while she was gone. Padmé walked through the front door of the apartment and was greeted by the sight of Anakin stretched out on the sofa with Luke and Leia lying on their tummies on top of his chest. He was making silly faces at them, probably in an attempt to make them smile—Luke's first real smile had occurred a few days previously (both parents may or may not have cried a little bit), but Leia's still had yet to show itself.

"Guess what time it is?" Anakin was saying in his baby voice as she walked in. "It's time for…the tickle monster!" He immediately started tickling them, one with each hand, and though the twins wouldn't start to laugh for a few more months, the way they were cooing and gurgling at him and flailing their arms was just as adorable.

But for once, the perfection of her children wasn't what caught Padmé's attention. What caught her attention was Anakin. He was wearing a pair of ratty pajama pants and an even rattier T-shirt, and his hair looked like it hadn't seen a comb (or a shower) in several days, and there were dark circles under his eyes, and all things considered this was possibly the least attractive she'd ever seen him.

And yet, in that moment, Padmé realized she was in love with him.

She would've expected the abrupt realization to feel like missing a step on the stairs, or like a trumpet fanfare was going off in her head, or at the very least like she was having a heart attack. But it didn't. It felt like the missing piece of a puzzle was finally sliding into place. It felt like eating her mother's lasagna. It felt like the sensation of waking up snuggled cozily in bed and looking out the window to see that a blanket of snow had fallen over the neighborhood while she was asleep.

It felt like coming home.

Oh. Of course. Of course it's him. It's always been him.

Though years seemed to pass as she stood there, in reality it was only a few seconds, and Anakin stopped tickling Luke and Leia and turned his head to smile at her. "Look who it is!" he told the twins. "Is that Mommy? Yes, it is! Say hi to Mommy!"

Padmé was in love with him. She was in love with her best friend. She was in love with Anakin. He was looking back at her and waiting for her to say something. She needed to pull herself together. "Hey," she managed after a moment, hoping her hesitation wasn't long enough for him to notice. She walked over and planted a kiss on both babies' heads before scooping Luke up.

Anakin pulled himself up into a sitting position so she had enough room to sit beside him. "How was the appointment?"

"Good. The doctor said everything's looking great and I'm healing well."

"That's great."

"Yeah." Padmé bounced Luke up and down, desperately trying to focus on him instead of on the fact that she was in love with Anakin. "How were they while I was gone?"

"Great," said Anakin, smiling at Leia, who stoutly refused to return the gesture. "Well, Leia was crying for a little half an hour ago, but I sang to her and she calmed down."

"Of course she did," Padmé muttered; thus far, Leia was the fussier of the two, but Anakin's singing almost always managed to soothe her, whereas Padmé's never did. She tried not to take it personally. Their daughter just clearly had no musical taste, that was all.

"Hey, I'm a great singer," Anakin informed her, grinning. "And you're terrible. It's no wonder she always cries harder whenever you sing to her. It makes me want to cry, too."

Padmé would've given him a punch to the arm, but her right arm was busy holding Luke while her left hand was trapped by Luke's own tiny hand clutching onto her index finger, so she settled for bumping Anakin with her shoulder. "Shut up, asshole."

He gave her a mock-horrified look and covered Leia's ears. "No swearing in front of the kids!"

"You're the one who always breaks that rule," Padmé pointed out. "So I think I'm allowed to do it just this once."

He laughed, and they sat there chatting and cuddling the twins until it was time for their nap, at which point they settled them in their cribs and Anakin headed off for a shower and Padmé finally had some time alone to think.

She. Was. In. Love. With. Anakin. What the fuck? How had this happened? When had it happened? Because judging by her lack of shock, it had happened a long time ago. Well, no, she was shocked, to be sure, but still, it felt so…right? Like this was the way things were meant to be. Like this was the way things had been for ages but she'd been too oblivious to realize it.

So when had she fallen in love with him? Padmé racked her brains, trying to pinpoint which moment it could have been. Had it been when he'd held her hand and kept up a constant stream of encouragement as she'd struggled to bring their babies into the world? Had it been when he'd made her breakfast in bed on Mother's Day? When he'd looked at her nine-months-pregnant-with-twins body and called her beautiful? When he'd felt the twins kick and talked to them and almost kissed her? When she'd told him she was pregnant and he'd promised to always be there for her? Could it even have been back when she slept with him? Or before that? After all, as Sola had once said, even drunk, why would Padmé have slept with him if she wasn't attracted to him on some subconscious level?

She put her head in her hands, sighing. She had no idea when she could've fallen in love with him. It could've been any of those moments, or none of them, or all of them. Perhaps she'd been falling for him a little bit every day, too gradually for her to even notice it happening until suddenly she was head-over-heels without knowing how she got there. If that was the case, how long had the process been going on for? Months? Years? What if it had started in, like, high school or something? No, surely it couldn't have taken Padmé ten years to figure out how she felt, it had to have been more recent. She rubbed her temples and tried to push aside wonderings of when it had happened. What mattered was that it had happened. She was in love with Anakin, her strictly platonic best friend with whom she now had two six-week-old children, and she needed to figure out what the hell she was going to do next.

Should she tell him? Padmé grimaced at the thought. Waking up beside him after a drunken one-night stand, mumbling to him that she was pregnant because of said drunken one-night stand—as mortifying and terrifying as both those experiences had been, the idea of admitting to him that she was actually genuinely in love with him was a thousand times worse. The other times had been accidents, they'd been drunk, they weren't thinking straight. But this time…

And even if she did tell him, what would he say? Surely he didn't return her feelings, so the best case scenario was him politely letting her down and the two of them proceeding to be massively uncomfortable around each other for weeks, if not months, if not years, if not the rest of their lives. And the worst case scenario…Padmé admittedly couldn't picture Anakin actually being angry with her for loving him, but what if he was? Either way, their relationship would become strained, to say the least, and it would negatively impact Luke and Leia to grow up with two parents who were always tense and awkward and miserable around each other.

No, Padmé decided, she couldn't tell him how she felt. She couldn't jeopardize the twins' stability—or her friendship with Anakin—like that. But the prospect of continuing to raise kids with him, continuing to live with him, continuing to sleep in the same bed as him all while struggling under the weight of her bottled-up feelings…could she really live like that? And what about when the inevitable day came when he did move out? Would it feel like she could breathe again, not having Anakin so close to her anymore, or would it just hurt even worse now that she knew she was in love with him? Would it feel like she was losing him forever?

Stop it, Padmé told herself firmly. She couldn't do this, fretting and dithering and wondering what the future might bring. The best thing to do would be to just to forget about it. Luke and Leia needed her. She couldn't waste time worrying about her newly discovered feelings for Anakin. Feelings which might not even be real, anyway. Maybe she was just delusional from lack of sleep. Either way, she needed to just put everything on the back burner and hope it would go away soon.

Padmé spent the rest of the day putting her resolution to the test. Unfortunately, ignoring it was easier said than done, given that her heart practically thumped right out of her chest every time Anakin so much as looked at her. Hopefully he wasn't noticing any odd behavior, or was just chalking it up to exhaustion if he did.

But there was a tense moment when they went to bed that night. It wasn't as if they ever snuggled in bed (or at least, they never fell asleep snuggling; whether or not they woke up that way was another matter) but after so many months sharing a bed, they were now perfectly comfortable sleeping close together and brushing against each other—until now. Anakin rolled over and accidentally grazed Padmé's thigh with his hand, and she jumped about a mile and jerked away from him.

"You okay?" he asked, sounding puzzled and perhaps a tiny bit hurt.

"Yes. Sorry. I just, um, I'm…worried I might be getting sick," Padmé stammered. "So I don't want to get you sick, too."

"Really? Well, you should go to the doctor tomorrow. Don't want Luke and Leia to catch anything," Anakin said anxiously.

Dammit. Poor choice of lie. "Yeah…I'll try to go if I'm not feeling better. It's probably nothing, though. I just…have kind of a headache. But it's probably just from being overtired, not from being sick." God, what was she saying? She needed to shut her mouth before she ended up making her little white lie way too weirdly specific.

Luckily, Anakin just chuckled and said, "Yeah, I hear you on that. Speaking of being overtired, the twins'll be awake again in, like, two hours, so we'd better get to sleep as soon as possible."

"Yeah. Goodnight, Ani."

"Goodnight."

Anakin's breathing evened out within minutes, but Padmé was wide awake. She was in love with him. She'd gotten pregnant with his children, moved in with him, and then fallen in love with him. And now he was right there, about two inches away from her. This was a sick cosmic joke if ever she'd seen one. She sighed and rolled over to face away from him. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Padmé was going to act like everything was normal, and sooner or later she'd fall back out of love with him. Probably. Maybe. Possibly.

This was a disaster.

The weeks flew by, and soon Luke and Leia were three months old and Padmé was still in love with Anakin. It was a warm August day and they'd driven to the park to take the twins on a walk. Anakin unloaded the stroller from the trunk of his car, and he and Padmé each moved one twin from their car seats to the stroller before starting down their usual path.

They'd only been walking a few minutes when Anakin started feeling the pockets of his jeans and then said, "Huh, I guess I forgot my phone in the car. I'll be back in a second."

"All right," said Padmé, taking control of the stroller as he hurried back the way they'd come.

A minute or two later, she heard someone say, "Aren't they just the cutest little things!"

Padmé looked up and saw an elderly woman smiling at Luke and Leia, and she swelled with pride. "Thank you," she said.

"How old are they?" the woman asked.

"Three months. They're twins."

"Twins? Goodness, that must be a handful."

Padmé chuckled. "It definitely is, but it's so worth it."

"Oh, I'm sure," said the woman, nodding. "They're adorable."

Padmé beamed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw that Anakin was returning, phone in hand. Just as he'd come to a halt beside them, a firetruck whizzed by, sirens blaring, and Padmé immediately winced and looked anxiously down at the twins, knowing how much they hated sudden loud noises. Leia just scrunched up her face unhappily, but Luke, sure enough, burst into tears.

Padmé started to reach for him, but Anakin beat her to it, lifting him out of the stroller and snuggling him. "It's okay, Luke, it was just a truck," Anakin said, kissing his cheek. "It's all gone now."

"Poor dear," the elderly woman said sympathetically. She looked from Anakin and Luke back to Padmé. "This must be your husband."

"No! No, no, we're not together," Padmé said quickly, feeling her cheeks heat up. "We're just friends." She didn't know why she felt the need to say so; she usually just smiled and nodded whenever strangers made assumptions about her and Anakin's relationship.

Indeed, both Anakin and the woman were giving her odd looks. "Oh, excuse me," the woman said politely, but then she smiled again. "Well, I hope you all enjoy the rest of this beautiful day."

"Thank you. You too," said Padmé, and the two parties continued on their separate ways.

"Who was that?" Anakin asked once the woman was out of earshot.

Padmé shrugged. "She just stopped to tell me how cute these two are. I can't believe she thought you were my husband." She laughed nervously. "As if, right?"

She thought she saw a weird expression cross Anakin's face, but then he laughed, too. "Yeah. As if," he echoed. Was it just Padmé, or did he sound oddly disappointed?

No, she was probably just imagining things or projecting her own feelings onto him. After all, when the woman had referred to Anakin as her husband, for a moment, Padmé had wanted nothing more than to be able to say that he was.

So not only was she in love with Anakin, but now she was wishing she was married to him? This wasn't a disaster. This was a catastrophe.

Later that day, Anakin tentatively tried to question Padmé's overly aggressive reaction to the woman in the park thinking they were married, but she mumbled something vague and immediately changed the subject, so he never bothered bringing it up again, to her relief. Still, she couldn't help but worry that she'd given herself away and now he knew how she felt about him. But surely no one was that perceptive, especially not Anakin. She was just being paranoid. Right?

The twins were slowly starting to sleep in longer stretches during the night, but even so Padmé was constantly exhausted, so when Obi-Wan and Ahsoka came over the next Saturday, she only managed to make small talk for ten minutes before excusing herself for a nap and leaving Anakin to entertain them and the twins on his own.

After about an hour, faint crying started weaving itself into Padmé's dreams until at last she was fully conscious, and she reluctantly opened her eyes. She debated for a minute whether or not she should go deal with it, but then it faded again into silence. Anakin must have successfully soothed whichever twin it had been. Padmé closed her eyes again, but to her annoyance, she couldn't fall back asleep. She spent twenty minutes trying in vain to drift off, and at last she gave up and climbed out of bed, intending to rejoin her friends.

But she'd only taken one step into the other room when she froze upon hearing her name.

"…nothing to worry about, because Padmé's your best friend," Ahsoka was saying. "Just talk to her about it."

Talk to her about what? What was Anakin worried about? All three of them were sitting on the sofa with their backs to her, but Padmé drew back into the bedroom slightly anyway, though she left the door open so she could continue listening.

"That's exactly why I can't," Anakin replied, sounding gloomy. "It would make everything so weird between us, and I just can't deal with that happening again, especially now that these two are here and needing us to be calm and normal." He gave Luke a kiss, then leaned over to kiss Leia, who was in Obi-Wan's arms.

"But aren't things weird now?" Obi-Wan asked, bouncing Leia up and down a bit and making her gurgle happily.

"No, things are fine."

"Well, you're not fine."

"Yeah, but she is. She has no idea about any of this. I don't want to mess that up." Anakin sighed. "Look, whatever. I don't want to embarrass her, so I just won't say anything, and eventually it'll go away."

"I guess," Ahsoka said doubtfully.

"I still think you should be honest with her," Obi-Wan added.

Anakin scoffed. "Well, you're the last person I'd take romantic advice from, Obi-Wan. You've been trying to work up the courage to ask Satine on a date for, like, three years."

Ahsoka's laughter and Obi-Wan's indignant splutters became muffled as Padmé beat a hasty but silent retreat towards the bed and got back under the covers, heart pounding. Romantic advice…about her…something Anakin was afraid to talk to her about…there was only one explanation.

He—he knew. Anakin somehow had figured out that she was in love with him, and it was making him uncomfortable, but he didn't want to embarrass her by bringing it up. So he was planning to ignore it and pretend he didn't know until she fell out of love with him again and everything went back to normal. But how could he possibly—? It must have been the park incident. She knew she'd been too obvious, had acted too strangely for it to go unnoticed.

Padmé burrowed further under the blankets, tears pricking her eyes. It was mortifying to think that Anakin knew how she really felt, and as if that wasn't bad enough…she'd known he'd never be interested in her, but still, if he not only didn't feel the same way, but her feelings actually made him uncomfortable…

Things are fine.

Well, you're not fine.

Yeah, but she is.

Anakin was unhappy that Padmé was in love with him, but he wasn't going to let on that he knew in order to spare her feelings. God, he was so nice, so good to her. He always had been. That was why she loved him so much. She almost wished he would be awful to her about it; at least that might help her get over him more easily. And, humiliating as it would be, if Anakin confronted her, then everything would be out in the open instead of them both dodging the truth and acting like nothing had changed.

But that train of thought still wasn't incentive enough for Padmé to want to bring the topic up with him herself. If he wanted to pretend he didn't know how she felt, then she'd just follow his lead and pretend she didn't know he knew so that he wouldn't know she knew he knew. She groaned softly. This entire situation was ridiculous. It was her own damn fault for falling in love with her best friend. Why the fuck had she had to go and do that? It was ruining everything. Padmé longed for their simpler days, the days when the two of them had always gone to each other to talk about crushes and first kisses and first heartbreaks.

But now, when she needed his ears and advice the most, Anakin was the one person she couldn't confide in.