"The course of true love never did run smooth."

– A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare

Suppression

An Expanded AOTC Courtship Story

Prologue

I don't possess the Force ability to influence minds, but my time as queen, as senator, and as Anakin's obsession has taught me there is power to be found in the consequence of my words.

Scrutinizing outsiders have judged my relationship with Anakin from the beginning. Our tale is like a misunderstood creature in a zoo, the spectators pressing their noses up at us on the plexi-glass. Gaping with their pointed fingers. Vocal with their opinions and privileged hindsight of how they would've handled the twists and turns differently.

Unaware, or uncaring, of the elevated audience rows they hurl their uninvited speeches from.

They single out the warning signs as bombastic, obvious signs of doom. Fuel for the fires they burn us in. They do not see these as the moments they were as we lived them. What to us was one rough conversation in an endless day— our bodies and minds perhaps taxed from duties, unending travel, or even grief, mixed with natural hindrances like hunger, lack of sleep, etc— or a passing disagreement that was returned to after we'd had a chance to process and re-frame… to them, all of it only became chopped and isolated historical fodder. It's easy to throw sentiments like stones at these events when you know they are events and understand their future importance.

How nice it must be, to absorb and contextualize simultaneously with the big picture. As the great Master Yoda might say, we had not that luxury.

Stand and judge me. Stand and judge Anakin. Force knows we both deserve it, to various degrees. It's easy to pass down the verdict when you weren't caught up in the wave yourself, hijacked in body and mind by forces beyond your control. We were all of us— and I include Obi-Wan in this— just trying to navigate each day as it came, doing the best we could with the information we had at the time. And so I'll charge you to remember: Even the combined insight of the mighty Jedi Council never saw this coming. How could I be expected to?

{Are you an angel?}

No one knows the full story. Our true story.

In terms of emotional presentation, what is the opposite of a highlight reel?

We were inexperienced, the both of us, and it handicapped us in painful ways. Regardless, the cliché oldage stands frightfully true— when you know, you know, and Fate does not make allowances for how unprepared you are when It comes. We're told in romantic holomovies and wispy fables that such sudden, deep knowledge of finding your soul's intended sweeps you off your feet, making you dizzy with the butterflies and happy certainty of love.

We lacked such rapturous fortune.

Our recognition of fate came dosed in fear. It was absolute certainty wrapped tightly in nothing but the uncertain on all sides, with no air to breathe. It was the sudden lurch from familiar, solid ground to standing on the edge of a wet precipice, the wind ready to push us over at any moment. So we fought it. I swear it on the barren wasteland of all I hold dear— we did try. We fought it, until we… we couldn't. Until we had no choice but to either forfeit our sanity and suppress, or give in to the abyss and hope we came out the other side whole.

We chose to hope.

Hope has always moved this galaxy forward. Always will. But in its progression, some get crushed beneath the wheel.

I would never separate my fate from my husband's. However, if I am allowed to speak in my own defense, he was far more prepared than I when destiny reunited us on Coruscant. He'd had a decade to process, to accept, to plan, to commit. I was late to the game. Popular thought seems to be that Anakin was the rash one— the unmanageable wild bull— and I the level-headed stoic. But I can never say enough how much I regret the pain I caused him and the precious time wasted, as he struggled to stabilize me in the chaos alongside him. He knew we were inevitable from the first moment I stepped foot in Watto's shop. For a man infamously known for his lack of it, his patience as he waited for me to catch up to him was nothing short of astonishing. Albeit, that patience was far from perfect.

This realization of fate for a pair when thrust upon individuals in two very different stages of acceptance of it does not make for an easy-breezy love story. There were milestone moments that didn't play out like the glossy holomovies. Mutual inexperience coupled with raw intensity, making for clumsy actions and unpolished words.

But then there were those magical instances, which, unrestrained from knowing any better and ignited by our hungry want to experience, actually far surpassed possibility.

Those that would label us a toxic cocktail of abruptly rushed feelings and dramatic declarations knew scraps of the story. The closest people around us— the select few who knew— barely understood us, what we were to each other. The Jedi didn't even want to try.

So much has happened to him. To me. To us. I shoulder my share of blame without contest.

But I draw the line at any who would reduce us to shallow caricatures.

We were playful. We teased. We laughed. Oh, how Anakin could make me laugh. We bonded over losses, helping each other through grief. We fought— furiously. We made sacred amends. We peeled back sides of ourselves we hadn't yet shared with another soul. And we desired. Gods, Anakin and I desired like we'd invented it. We burned for each other like two stars going nova under our very skins, a touch both acting as the curative relief and as the explosive trigger for craving more. Professionals in the Red District of Coruscant practice for years to do with their entire bodies what we could do to each other with a single look. 'Boring' was not a word in our relationship's vocabulary.

I've been accused of falling for him too fast, before I really knew him. Such a charge is wrong on two counts. First, I knew exactly who Anakin Skywalker was when I married him. I saw firsthand glimpses of the wraith that would consume him long before most others did— even Obi-Wan. But, just as clearly, I likewise saw the good, the exorbitant amount of light in him that others failed to see. Even Obi-Wan.

And second, I did not fall for Anakin. One does not meet with the life-altering experience which made me feel more alive than anything ever had before and call it a fall. It will be difficult for the hindsight spectators with their superiority complexes to believe, but Anakin brought more excitement, passion, and joy into my life than anything I had ever known. Whether running a planet or a blockade, the nervous energy of addressing the Galactic Senate, or being surrounded in a war zone, it was all paltry compared to the rush I'd feel when his gaze simply met mine across a room. One does not fall for a man, a lover, a—forgive me, but— born pilot like Anakin Skywalker. I flew.

I acutely know this because the fall did come, only much, much later. By that point, the glorious height to which we'd soared became fatal once the descent began.

There are plenty who would have my Ani suffer eternally in hell for his crimes. I am not here to invalidate their reasons, nor to silence their cries for justice. I know what he has done. If they get their wish, my only request is this— let his same flames engulf me as well.

For this angel will gladly burn in hell by his side.