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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Padme Naberrie had never thought much of marriage. As a young girl, she had been much more concerned with playing in the green fields and scattered trees of Naboo, the future an intangible thing far over the horizon.
She grew older and still did not think of marriage, busied as she was with her work in the Legislative Youth Program. Her flirtation with Palo had been a novelty and a distraction; the choice had been easy when she had to decide whether to pursue their relationship or pursue her chosen career. She became the Princess of Theed, a ceremonial position that still wielded real legislative and executive power and she had been so proud. Visions of a bright future in which she made a real difference to her people and reached every height she turned her thoughts to bloomed before her eyes, and Princess Amidala thought of marriage less than ever.
After the Federation razed her planet, she no longer thought about anything at all. She drifted through her life, a dust mote that floated without purpose and forgot that she had ever had dreams of any sort.
When Anakin Skywalker arrived, he stirred none of the old thoughts - he created new ones. And suddenly Padme not only saw a future with a husband and with happiness; for the first time in many years, she saw life.
Padme was running out of patience. Even her carefully trained calm and diplomacy could only stand so much, and the constant surprise attacks were fraying her nerves like an aging rope. She arranged herself on the uncomfortable seat of the air taxi and tried to relax her muscles a few at a time, still trembling after the latest onslaught of reporters.
"Where to?" asked the Malastaran in a bored tone. Mercifully, not one of his three eyes spared her a glance. She kept her hood up and her eyes down just in case and rattled off the name of her housing complex. It was not a particularly exclusive or expensive area, so the Malastaran fired up the engine and peeled away from the landing pad without giving her so much as a look.
Padme relaxed marginally and slipped her comm from her pocket. She had racked up several missed calls during her scramble for a cab, and she was fairly certain that they had a single origin point. Sighing, she replaced her comm and tried to remind herself that calling her fiancé while in public was never prudent; the last thing she needed were more tabloid exclusives featuring the pair of them. A tiny groan slipped past her wall of concentration and the driver finally caught her eye in one of his mirrors. She ignored him and focused on trying to reach out for Anakin's presence the way she occasionally could.
I'm coming, she tried, but couldn't feel any recognition. She rubbed her temples and wondered what it would be like to share Anakin's Force sensitivity. It would certainly make private calls easier, she mused with a mix of amusement and weariness - an all too common emotion for her in recent days.
The cab made good time through the congested Coruscanti traffic lanes and finally turned to approach Padme's building. She directed him toward the landing pad and retreated behind her hood as he coasted to a stop. She paid as quickly as possible and held back a wave of raw relief when she stepped onto her landing pad without any ambushes from reporters. The cab lifted away from the permacrete, disappeared into the nearest traffic stream, and only when Padme was confident that the driver hadn't noticed anything about her did she allow herself to relax and turn towards the door.
She felt Anakin's worry and relief swell around her like gusts of wind before the door opened and she saw his face. He gathered her into his arms immediately and finally she could truly relax.
"I can't take much more of this," she confessed against his shoulder.
"Reporters again?" His voice carried a chill that didn't match the warmth of his embrace.
She kissed him instead of answering, and was very pleased when he forgot his line of questioning entirely. She felt warmth finally break through her lingering stress and, more importantly, she felt Anakin release the tension in his back and shoulders. He was always so intense.
"You were worried?" she asked, her arms looping around his neck.
"Always," he muttered with a pathetic attempt at a smile. She felt a niggle of disquiet at his obvious distress, but settled on comfort as the best response for the moment. Her arms traveled to his waist and she settled against his chest, rubbing at his back to chase away the remaining tension.
"Where were you?"
"The Senate Building. Bail had a question about some correspondence and I stopped by to help him out."
"Padme, you don't have a bodyguard yet."
She sighed at the old argument. "I know. I-"
"You could have been hurt. The reporters are getting bolder... Palpatine won't issue a gag order no matter how many times I ask him, and I'm..." he stopped to take a deep breath and Padme could feel the air crackling with the electric tingle of his anger... and the chilly prickle of his fear. "I'm afraid that something might happen to you. There's also the fact that assassins might target you-"
"I know, Anakin," she interrupted, not quite able to keep the irritation from her voice. He had a habit of fussing more than a mother with a sick child. She felt him pick up on that last thought and a genuine smile surfaced at last.
"A mother? I never quite saw myself as the maternal sort..." It felt good to laugh after all the stress of the past few weeks. He pressed his forehead to hers.
"It's just the wedding that has them so up in arms," she said, willing herself to be calm and to share that calm with him. "This will pass. I just wish..." she drifted off, speaking and thinking all at once, which was never wise.
"You just wish what?" Anakin immediately pressed, drawing back from her so he could study her eyes. Their connection (a Force bond, Anakin called it) awoke like a living thing and hummed between them. It was as though a door had sprung open, letting loose a flood of his emotions and hers and they swirled into one current of worry and love and a distant fear of his that she couldn't quite understand. She reached for it, stretching out to try and define the ice that lurked amongst so much warmth, but Anakin was faster at tracing thoughts and he interrupted her.
"You want to elope?" he asked, his eyebrows raised.
The river of connection drained away, taking his phantom fears with it. She felt their connection shrink into the fragile cord it usually was, warm and reassuring in the back of her mind.
"I-" she began, sifting through her thoughts much more slowly than he just had. "Yes," she decided. "I'm tired of this ridiculous media circus. I want to be with you, barricade ourselves in your home if necessary-"
"Hmm. I like barricades," said Anakin, his smile turning wicked. He kissed her a little more fervently and Padme nearly lost her train of thought. She had to gently push him back before she could gather her presence of mind enough to speak. His wicked grin was still firmly in place when she continued.
"We could have a private wedding, announce it to the press, and then retreat out of the public eye and live happily ever after. How's that for a plan?"
Anakin smiled, but she saw the objection in his eyes before he made it. "Padme, I would love that more than anything. But the Emperor won't agree."
And there it was - the real issue. Padme suddenly hated Emperor Palpatine more than ever before.
"I know," Anakin sighed, kissing her forehead apologetically. "You know that if there was anything I could do about this, I would do it."
"I know," she whispered, contenting herself in the feel of his arms around her and the safety she felt there.
"You know," Anakin said after a heavy moment had passed. "We may have to have a state-endorsed wedding complete with media circus and live broadcasts to every corner of the known Galaxy..."
Padme glared at him half-heartedly; Anakin only smiled.
"...but the Emperor never said I couldn't get married now and still go through his galactic spectacle later."
Padme laughed until he kissed her into silence.
Maxiron Agolerga awoke in his stiff-backed chair feeling chilled and out of sorts. Not quite able to determine which of those sensations had awakened him, he stood and stoked the fire, recognizing distantly that his aging back popped and crackled much more than the dying flames. Failing to coax much life from ashes, Maxiron turned his attention to the parchments he had been reading before he had dozed off.
A dozen yellowed scrolls were piled around his chair, thankfully well away from the fire. He collected as many as he could hold and opened his trunk to pack them away. The Nubian designs carved into the wood caught the fading firelight and for just a moment he felt a wave of sorrow. He clutched at the lid tightly for a few unpleasant moments as he allowed the feeling to crash over him, memories and grief thrashing around him and inside him like so many storm-driven waves... and then he allowed it to drain away, just as even the angriest waves must do. He stilled himself and waited for peace. After a moment it came.
He packed away the rest of his scrolls - relics of his time as a holy man with the Brotherhood of Cognizance - and returned to his chair. The fire had subsided into a faint glow that ran like veins through the blackened heaps of wood. Naboo was just as blasted and dead, a heap of lifeless rock in the silent void of space. Most of his brothers had died with her.
He sighed, resigning himself to wading through the thoughts, seeking as always for a mental foothold where he could ride out the storm and wait for peace. Peace through wisdom and intelligence - it was what he had always believed in. It was what he still believed in, even if the peace in his life was now largely caused by the absence of people rather than through any metaphysical achievement of his own. He was, he reflected, entirely too alone, even in the teeming Core of the Galaxy. Here on Coruscant, in the midst of trillions of beings, he sat in his rooms, stoked his fire (a reminder of simpler times in the mountain monasteries), submerged himself in ancient parchments, and drowned in memories.
The temperature dropped around him as the fire's warmth faded. Maxiron summoned the momentum to stand and move toward his bedchamber; he had dwelt enough on sad things tonight. Tomorrow, he would reflect further and meditate on whether he needed to make some changes, to reach out to others, to connect somehow in this wild city-
A knock, quiet and somehow hesitant, interrupted the stillness, sounding as loud as a bell tower in the dark silence. He could barely see to cross the room, but he managed. He opened the door and squinted against the rush of light from the walkway beyond.
When his vision cleared and focused, he saw a young woman before him, wearing a hooded cloak that left much of her face obscured in shadow. Her voice, however, was soft and kind.
"Are you Maxiron Algolerga, the Nubian holy man?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied simply. His voice cracked slightly from disuse.
She smiled at him, then. "I wonder, sir, if you would perform a marriage ceremony? We would like to be married immediately... and privately. Completely secret - is that acceptable to you?"
Maxiron saw no one else to form the other half of the girl's "we," but that was the least confusing part of her question in any case.
"I am sorry, my child... a marriage ceremony?"
She nodded.
"I have not presided over anything of that nature in years. I do not believe I could bond you in any sort of civil union that Coruscant would recognize." It was the truth, plain and simple. He ignored the faint disappointment he felt.
The girl was already shaking her head. "We don't need a legally binding union. We just want..." She trailed off, and even though her face was not clearly visible, he could recognize a besotted young person when he saw one. It was the sweetest thing he had seen in many years. "We just want to make our vows. We will take care of the legal aspect later." She smiled at this last statement as though it were a private joke. The joke, private or not, eluded Maxiron.
But he had not been a part of anything so simple or so beautiful in so very long. He thought of the dead fire and the aging parchments behind him and the young woman standing in the artificial lights of the walkway ahead of him.
"My dear," he said at last, "It would be my honor."
Her smile was wide and genuine and it was the most beautiful thing he had seen all day. He invited her inside and circled his study to light all the lamps, and find his book of ceremonies. It was dusty and yellow, but he felt as cheered as if he had unexpectedly encountered an old friend.
Two sets of footfalls followed him inside after a moment. He turned, book in hand, to greet the bride and groom. The young woman finally lowered her hood, and Maxiron made an embarrassing sound in the back of his throat. The brown hair falling loosely around her face, the graceful nose, the compassionate eyes - they were all etched into his memory. It was Princess Amidala of Theed. "My Lady," he said softly, and he could not quite help the tears in his eyes as he remembered the well-loved princess who had served her people so well in the days before the Federation. He had not quite decided whether to embrace her or simply try to get a better hold on his emotions when the second, much taller figure dropped his hood as well.
His book of ceremonies made a rather ungainly clunk as it hit the thinly-carpeted floor, sliding from his suddenly nerveless fingers. Standing before him was none other than Lord Darth Vader.
"You could have tried to be a little less scary."
"And where is the fun in that, Lady Vader?"
Padme groaned, but wiping the smile from her face seemed like an impossible feat, even trapped as they were in the ever-congested skylanes. "I told you to stop calling me that."
"Of course, Lady Vader."
"I'm going to file for a divorce first thing in the morning."
"Well then it's a good thing that we aren't legally married yet. Good luck finding anyone to annul a marriage of the heart..."
Padme was laughing now. "You're ridiculous."
Anakin merely raised an eyebrow. "And yet you married me."
"A few vows spoken before a holy man - not legally binding, as you so helpfully pointed out."
Anakin turned away from the viewport to meet her eyes. "I meant my vows." As usual, his energy filled the entire cramped space of the rented speeder, and prickled across her skin. Padme reached for his hand.
"So did I." The engines whined in the silence as they crawled forward. For once, Anakin did not complain about their speed.
"I know what you can call me," she said after a moment.
"By all means, please tell me what I can say to avoid a messy divorce," he replied dryly.
"Padme-"
"That's your name?!" She would have hit him, but his hand was conveniently clamped around hers. She settled for a dramatic sigh. Anakin only grinned.
"Padme Amidala-"
"Of course, your majesty."
"Will you stop interrupting? Besides, that wouldn't be an appropriate address. Only queens are called 'your majesty.' I would have been called 'your highness.'"
"A thousand apologies, oh high and mighty highness." He kissed her hand for effect.
"This divorce is happening," she muttered, but her smile betrayed her. Anakin clasped her hand against his chest.
"I'm sorry, Padme. You were saying?"
A short burst of honks sounded behind them as traffic suddenly surged forward and Anakin lingered in place.
"Alright, alright!" he grumbled, accelerating until they came to yet another stop.
Padme stared at him and wondered that he could look so very handsome even when he was irritated. He was lining up to slide into another lane when she spoke.
"Padme Amidala Skywalker."
The speeder froze along with its pilot. The surrounding airspace exploded into a cacophony of honks and angry shouts as he took both hands off the wheel and kissed her.
Padme had never thought much about getting married. She had never considered it when she was young, for she had always been too focused on her political career to give it much thought. She did not consider it when she grew older because she was buried in her grief. Joy was not something that she had prepared for or considered - not when her family and her planet and her dreams were all buried together.
But Padme Amidala Skywalker was almost a new person and she thought about it quite a lot after the ceremony bound them together. And when the sun came up the day after her wedding, and she woke to find herself tangled in Anakin Skywalker's arms, she thought that marriage wasn't so very bad after all.
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