Chapter 16. Challenges

"You were very rude to him, you know," Padmé said mildly after Obi-Wan had left. Anakin had stayed behind, of course. It would take more than a disapproving Master to keep him from the evenings and nights with Padmé that he had quickly come to think of as his right.

She was walking back and forth between a wardrobe and a table, sorting gifts for her family brought back from Coruscant. Anakin lounged on the bed, never taking his eyes off her.

"He took me by surprise," was all he was willing to say.

Padmé stopped momentarily and gave him an ironic look. "You are a Jedi and he is your Master. It must have taken some doing to be that surprised."

"I've worked very hard at shutting him out," Anakin finally conceded, a bit sulkily. Then he brightened. "I succeeded, too."

Padmé shook her head. "And that's something you're proud of?"

Anakin shrugged. "I wanted some privacy." He continued to stalk her with his gaze as she moved around the room, holding up objects like scarves and carved boxes for inspection, and then placing them on the table.

Padmé glanced up, enjoying his attention. She felt sorry for Obi- Wan but being at close quarters with Anakin always had the effect of obliterating anything else. Then she remembered the gift for her father in the bottom drawer. As soon as she disappeared from view to retrieve it Anakin flung himself to the bottom of the bed so that he could still see her. She looked up, startled, to find his eyes directly in front of hers.

"What are you doing?"

"Memorizing you."

Padmé stopped what she was doing and stared back from her position on her knees in front of the open drawer. It was the first indication Anakin had given that he might not be there by her side forever. Until now he had steadfastly refused to contemplate anything but the immediate present.

He was so good at denial that sometimes Padmé was able to pretend along with him. It made for some blissful moments.

"Memorizing me…so you have memories to take with you when you go?" She forgot about the open drawer and the box in her hands that contained a deftly carved pipe for her father.

"I didn't say I was going."

"But you are thinking about it."

He loomed closer and just managed to kiss her nose.

"Obi-Wan will call me to account sooner or later."

He did not refer to him as Master Obi-Wan.

"It was never a matter of whether you would return," Padmé said, looking down at the box in her hands without seeing it. "But of when."

"Not to me," Anakin said in a tone whose resonance made her look up. "I am completely serious when I say that you are the most important thing my life."

Padmé got up off her knees and sat down on the edge of the bed, still holding the box.

"And I meant it when I said that I don't want to be the cause of a rift between you and the Jedi Order." She frowned. "Although it may have gone too far already. I honestly don't understand why Obi-Wan is being so patient with you. With us. I would have expected him to haul you unceremoniously back to Coruscant and lock you up for the next five years."

"He couldn't if he tried," Anakin said, angling toward a particularly sensitive spot on her throat. "And he knows it."

Padmé pulled back and warded him off with the box.

"Stop it," she said. "This is serious. Aren't you obligated to do exactly as he says?"

"Technically, yes," Anakin said, lounging back on one elbow after being thwarted. "But I have to be willing. The only way he can make me do anything at this point is by persuasion."

"So that is why he is here. To persuade you."

Anakin leaned back on the bed and started tossing a small pillow into the air. "I've put him in a difficult position. He knows that if he demands that I return and I refuse, he has a potential renegade Jedi on his hands. Very dangerous."

"Anakin!" Padmé was genuinely shocked. "You wouldn't do that!"

Anakin kept tossing and catching the pillow. "The only way they can keep control over me is to keep me close."

Padmé stared at him in disbelief. "You sound so…cold…about this!  I thought you wanted to become the greatest Jedi ever."

He abruptly put aside the pillow and sat up, his posture unconsciously adjusting to a change in the level of the conversation.

"Of course I want to be a Jedi," he said, looking into her eyes with the intensity of a saber blade. "I am a Jedi. But not on their terms. I will no longer allow the Jedi Order to keep me from the people I love. Not again. Not ever."

"Anakin, are you threatening to leave the Order?"

Again, Anakin would not confront the question directly. "Let's see how much it's worth to them to keep me on. How important their Chosen One is to them." There was a certain bitterness in his tone.

Padmé was deeply troubled. "So… you're going to challenge them to make an exception in your case. You're squaring off against the Jedi Order by yourself…because of me." Her stomach was starting to turn over unpleasantly. "I can't possibly support that. I can't live with myself if I'm the cause of that! Anakin, you have to stop this."

"Why?" he asked softly. "Why must I not challenge the Order?" He looked down at his right arm and flexed the wrist. "I wouldn't be any good to them anyway. I would be maimed without you."

"Wounds heal," said Padmé, stunned by the strength of his simple declaration. She also looked down at the arm and wondered why she was arguing the other side.

"They never heal completely. And they leave you changed."

Padmé felt a chill. She crept closer and leaned against his back as he sat on the end of the bed, drawing comfort from his physical presence and warmth.

"What has changed, Anakin?"

Trust. The word did not need to be spoken out loud.

"My mother always told me to be brave and to follow my heart. She encouraged me to find my own path. She believed in it so much that she willingly let me go so I could follow Master Jinn and become a Jedi."

"I remember."

"I was only a few years older than Balé – can you imagine that? I look at her now and I can't believe it. And unlike Balé's parents, my mother was alive. But they never let me see her or talk to her again."

"I know." Padmé deeply sympathized with Anakin on that one. She couldn't imagine being forcibly separated from her family.

"I was a child and I accepted it. I was powerless to do anything about it." He seemed to be looking into the far distance. "If I hadn't disobeyed my mandate I would never have seen her before she died."

Padmé wrapped her arms around him from behind.

"If I had disobeyed sooner I might have saved her."

"You don't know that," Padmé whispered.

Anakin went on as though he hadn't heard. "Now they are going to try to do it again. But I'm not a child any more. And I don't accept the idea that the Jedi are the only ones who know the right path."

"The Jedi are known for their wisdom," Padmé said softly. "What makes you think you know better than they do?"

"They're the ones who always tell me to trust my feelings." Anakin turned around suddenly and captured her, heading straight for that spot on her throat again. "My feelings say that I want you."

"I'm sure that's not what they meant!" Padmé gasped, escaping him long enough to retrieve the box and place it on the table with the other gifts. Venturing closer again, she said,  "I don't want to be the excuse for your estrangement from Obi-Wan or from the Order."

"I think it would have come to this eventually with you or without you. Believe me, it's been going on for a long time." Anakin's arms encircled her waist and drew her to him. "I just didn't realize, until I saw Obi-Wan sitting there glaring at me, how unwilling I am to go back to the way things were."

"Stay away from the Senator, my very young Padawan," he said in his best Obi-Wan voice. "Attachment is forbidden." Padmé, who just a short time ago would have disapproved of his disrespectful behavior, giggled in spite of herself.

Before long Anakin had insinuated his way back to his original destination at her throat, teasing out a very satisfying response. Throughout the entire conversation he had never once lost sight of his original objective.

"What are you going to do?" she asked apprehensively once she had collected herself a bit.

"I'm going to make Obi-Wan work very, very hard," he said with deep satisfaction. "If he wants me, he'll have to come and get me."

"So," Padmé said, evading him so that she could continue the conversation just a little longer,  "you're willing to speak with him?"

"If I have to." He was very focused on other things.

"Good," she said, slithering backwards to gain just enough time to finish what she was going to say. "Because I have invited him to lunch. Here. Tomorrow. With us."

"Fine," Anakin mumbled, undeterred.

Padmé was deeply uneasy about the rebellious path Anakin was outlining, as well as with her own role in it. She had decided after her conversation with Obi-Wan and after observing Anakin's reaction to him that Master and Padawan needed to talk to one another. As much as she wanted Anakin in her life, she did not believe that it was in anyone's interests to allow the rift between him and Obi-Wan to become permanent.

But for the moment unease was rapidly becoming overpowered by other, more immediate feelings. Anakin was artfully navigating his way across her body in a way that was making any kind of rational thought impossible.

"Anakin," she whispered, and when he did not respond she tried again. Anakin.

He stopped and looked up.

"Anakin, what if this is the last time?  What if we never have time together again?"

"It isn't," he said firmly. "It won't be. I won't let it be."

"I don't know how to let you go," she said, holding on to him as though he might disappear any minute. "I know I have to, but I don't know how."

"Don't worry," he said to her softly. "There is nothing they can do to keep us apart."

"Of course there is," she protested. "Your Master is here to bring you back…"

"Shhhh." Anakin refused to allow any more worries. "There is no Obi-Wan. There is nothing outside of us. In the whole universe there are only the two of us…"

Padmé decided to believe him. She needed to. Together they were learning to weave a complex and intimate world of two in which nothing else in the Universe mattered. I'll just pretend that everything is going to be all right, Padmé thought to herself as she desperately lost herself in that magical and private realm where the boundaries set by others did not exist. Just for now.

I will not leave you, Anakin reassured her, over and over again.