This chapter may not be for younger readers or for readers who don't like (slightly) racy material. As always, thanks for reading. Your feedback is ALWAYS welcome and appreciated. - CG
Anakin and Padme laid in bed, a tangled mesh of post coital bliss. He rested with the back of his head pressed between her exposed bosom as she ran a hand through his hair, watching as the bouncy blonde curls sprang to life between her fingers.
They were married. In every sense of the word.
He tilted his head back, peering at her from the top of his eyes as he stroked her upper arm with his mechanical hand.
"I didn't know it would be like this..." he said.
Padme smiled. "Nor did I."
He raised the other hand, and stroked her other arm, both of his hands caressing her skin at the same time.
"Let's do it again," he said, with a devilish smile.
"Anakin!" Padme wailed, face ablush.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No, of course not, I'm just..."
"Embarrassed still? You should probably get used to this..." he suggested in a matter-of-fact tone.
Padme groaned and covered her cheeks with both hands.
"I still... can't believe..."
"We're here..." he grumbled, finishing her sentence.
"It's not you, I love you, I'm glad we're here together."
"ah huh..." Anakin replied.
"It's just so surreal," she explained. If I close my eyes for even a second I have a flashback of ... well... everything... Is this normal?"
Padme paused.
"Anakin?"
She pulled his head back and looked at his face. Anakin was already fast asleep.
Padme sighed.
Obi Wan Kenobi sat on the edge of his bed in a lonely little room inside of the Jedi Temple. His home away from home. He sat very still, and very close to tears holding a comlink in his hand...
Static laughter rang through the receiver. He could hear them talking and there was no way to turn it off.
And how it tortured him.
He tried to transmit a message to Anakin but the comlink went dead for several minutes, then clicked on again, the button apparently crushed in the "talk" configuration.
"Oh my, Anakin... what have you done?"
Unable to bear it any longer, Obi Wan slipped into his brown cloak and left his room for the temple hall. There, he ran into the little golden protocol droid, See-Threepio.
"Threepio? What are you doing here? And where is Anakin?" he asked. He prayed the little droid would tell him something different. That it all was just a big misunderstanding. Would Anakin take advantage of Senator Amidala?
Would she let him?
"Oh! Master Kenobi, I'm not at liberty to say."
Obi-Wan grimaced. "Then perhaps I might say it for you. I understand Anakin is at Senator Amidala's apartment, is he not?"
"Senator Amidala..." Threepio mused...
"Yes. That would be, the senator whose apartment you reside in." Obi Wan's mouth compressed into a thin white line.
"Ohh, that Senator Amidala. Well, respectfully sir, if I were there, then I might have a better sense of whether Anakin is there also. But since I am here, I have no way of telling."
Droid logic, Obi-Wan thought. "I shall be there soon enough to find out. Thank you, Threepio, I'm sure Master Skywalker appreciates your loyalty."
"You're going to Senator Amidala's apartment? Oh! No no no! Master Kenobi, please don't. They... love each other."
He didn't know what love was, but knew from his own impersonal artificial experience, that love must have been something worth having if it were anything like that which he had been programmed by Master Skywalker to long for.
Threepio tried to assume the begging position, but forgot his knees were not made to bend... gold plates and all.
Obi-Wan rubbed his beard and paced the hall. Turn him in to the council? Have him expelled? What would Qui Gon do? Qui Gon once told him, some rules should be broken, if it would benefit the greater good. Anakin was the chosen one. If he left the Order... then how would he bring balance to the Force?
Obi-Wan retreated, walking back to his little lonely room in the Jedi Temple. He slipped out of his cloak, then sat on the edge of the bed.
He knew all too well what Anakin was going through.