AN:

Ivy – Yeah :( I felt a bit bad for Anakin there too. Yup, Palpatine will appear. He's not being name-dropped for nothing :D

Cheire – Yeah, I understand Vallorum but I agree it explains Anakin's anger towards the world. Well said! I don't like Clovis either – a womanizer is also a man who lacks discipline.

Guest 1 – "Learn to cope with uncertainty."—that's exactly right! It's something I tell myself often when I'm anxious :D And I understand where you're coming from about Anakin – you come across very sweet in your reviews and in your empathy for Anakin. Don't hesitate to share your authentic opinions. I'm very grateful that you're invested in the story.

Guest 2 – Yeah people love Anakin (I can't blame them :D) but thank you for coming on to defend Padme and looking at it from both points of view. Anakin needs to learn to control his emotions – no one else is responsible for that. My personal opinion aligns more with yours. I feel like she hasn't technically done anything wrong. And it could be worse, it could be like the cartoon where she takes Clovis on a date to the opera and then back to the house! LOL it offends me more as a writer than a prequels fan because it makes no sense :D. Here I wanted a natural progression of the characters and to make sure their motives are clear, logical, and consistent with what we know about them.

Angie – You shouldn't compare it to your marriage though. I'm assuming your husband doesn't have an extreme fear of loss nor did he bury a woman in sand :D I gotta stay true to the character in this story and sometimes when suppressed emotions come out, they're not pretty. They definitely need marriage counseling lol. I agree with you that it was a little insensitive for Padme to leave. As for how it resolves... I always try to take a page out of David Lynch's book, to never spoon-feed the audience. They don't need all the information at once ;)

Guest 3 – You're right – it's not all on Padme. As Obi Wan warned Anakin in the beginning that relationships are a responsibility and he has to be ready for that. You make some important points and I appreciate you coming to bat for Padme. Although I gotta defend my regular commenters here (the Anakin fans :D) because the story romanticizes Anakin by showing you where he's coming from. Kinda like how the show YOU makes you fall for Joe Goldberg by showing you his perspective. It doesn't mean they'd accept this for their daughter lol. You may like Romeo and Juliet but you probably wouldn't date a man who killed your cousin irl :D (Unless your cousin really sucks lol).

Guest 4 – This was a very interesting read. Great points!

Thank you guys so much for all your reviews! I absolutely LOVE reading them whether you see it as black and white or see the grey area XOXO

The Sweetest Thing

My love, she throws me like a rubber ball

But she won't catch me or break my fall

Baby got blue skies up ahead

But in this, I'm a raincloud

You know she likes a dry kind of love

Anakin heaved a duffel bag over his shoulder and made a beeline for the door. His mother, who was sitting in the kitchen, followed him.

"So you've decided to leave...?" She asked, her arms tactfully crossed in front of her chest.

Her adolescent son didn't look at her. Already he had overtaken her in height. Sometimes she couldn't see through the curtains anymore – the hope, entrusted intuition that used to enlarge his blue eyes. He became closed off; his veiled heart unresponsive.

"I'm going to stay with Ben for a while." He patted down his pockets, checking whether he had forgotten anything.

"Anakin, you can't keep doing this."

Her tone unnerved him. She was tired and calling him out; his excesses were his downfall. He could be great, golden. He had so much potential. But she knew either way it was his choice – he would dip his toes in the pool of resilience or terror. But he chooses loneliness, imbalance, he lets pain win.

He faced his mother with a need to micro-manage his distorted image. There's this subconscious built-in monster – it would creep up to enclose around his chest ever since he was about three or four years old. It protected him from vulnerability, manipulated him into thinking he could ignore what made him sad or mad. It was a scapegoat – for him to play with when he wanted freedom, to blame whenever he was tempted to jump off a moral cliff, to merge with when he felt powerless.

–and it smashed the rose-glassed picture of her son and opened the floodgates of his suffering.

"Why not?" He hissed. "You don't need me anymore. You have a new son."

"Enough." His mother's voice was never rude but always strong, compassionate, succinct – a balancing act. She embodied what control really meant – controlling yourself, not those around you. She was self-taught. A victim who never believed herself to be one. She sought fulfillment, nobility – she had found peace in the love of Cliegg Lars. She wished she had learned some lessons sooner. Maybe she would have put better boundaries for herself and her son instead of sweeping so much of their trauma under the rug to protect him from the darkness he had been exposed to so young.

She walked over, reaching for his hand through all their evolved history, futile efforts of the past. She wanted to show him how they could originate their dreams, their imperfect ways off the beaten path. They could redesign a home, free themselves from pneumatic pressures of circumstantial hardship. "You can't walk around mad at the world. It's not healthy. Whining and complaining and stomping your feet is not going to get you your way."

She knew her son. He did not do well with restrictions, change. He wanted everything they way he wanted it – to him it was stabilizing. If everyone would just comply, he wouldn't be afraid. He had this compulsive need to put all the chess pieces where he wanted – they move where he tells them to, when he finds a safe choice. It would carry the load off his back, the anger, hate, the lack of reassurance, the claustrophobic anxieties weighing on him like a heavy plank that was getting harder to hold up. He felt it was his responsibility to keep the plank above his head, above everyone's head. It would provide shelter for them all. But he needed them to let him call the shots, he needed them to play their part, oblige, and stop holding him back like dead weight.

Shmi knew that Anakin would fight for dominance just so he could have it both ways. He wants the power to protect, a natural instinct, but on his terms, with none of the restraint, none of the hard work. And he would cut corners, past the discipline and patience, if it would make it come easy. He was impulsive, tyrannical with his quick-fixes. It was the fastest track to rid him of his anxieties. And God did he sometimes need a break from the havoc in his head.

"Life is going to happen whether you like it or not – things change. You're fifteen years old now, Ani. It's time you find a way to roll with it."

Anakin shrugged with delusion as he fought to stay on the easy path to control. "You said it yourself, you can't stop me."

"No I can't." Shmi accepted. "If you feel that this is what you need to do, then you should see it through. But I really hope one day you learn to let people in. . .because when you do, you'll see there's more good than bad in the world. There is a lot more love. . .and if you can love, you can heal."

He looked into his mother's eyes for a somber moment before walking out the door. He walked into a new book, leaving the pages of his childhood home, looking for a new world to fit into.

And she let him go, doing the hardest, most important thing a mother could do – encourage her son to detach from her, and let him become his own man. He'd have to slog through the petulance, arrogance, ignorance of a gifted, stubborn child, and learn the hard way. She could not coddle him.

Anakin chugged his whiskey and tossed the shot glass with the rest. It glided across the wooden bar, clinking against the others forming a Bermuda triangle, where senses disappear. Anakin motioned for another drink while the barman collected the empty glasses that had accumulated in this one lonely spot.

Chewie jostled his way between the bar staff on this busy night. With two strong hands on the rustic bar, he held himself up. Energy had fled his face, the overbearing crowd seemed to have taken it out of him. "I think you've had more than your share tonight, Ani."

Anakin was lazy with his eye contact as he searched for his lighter in his pocket while a cigarette dangled from his mouth. "Right now my wife is out with another man. So I think I'll have another."

Chewie waited a few seconds while Anakin tilted his head and lit up. Smoke disrupted the bleakness – Anakin needed a little air tonight, even polluted, poisonous air. People often come to this bar to either forget or refashion events.

"Go home, sober up and talk to Padme." A sympathetic, neutral-eyed Chewie lent a helping hand. "Come on, let me call you a cab."

"Nah." Anakin waved him off with a drunkenness as he stood up. "No need. I'm fine."

Anakin drove past Hotel Kamino. He almost hated himself for it. Torturing himself. Why would he take the longer way home? The inconvenience alone made his vision blurry. The alcohol in his system was supposed to be burying his anxiety. But discontentment continued to brew in his stomach when he saw something that made woefulness flutter up — Clovis and Padme through the window of an upscale restaurant.

He blinked to focus and he saw red. He blinked again only to see black. There were two roads, two directions here as his hands squeezed the wheel. He wanted to restructure a third option in the middle, between the white lines painted on the tarmac that brighten with the red hue of the traffic light. He reminded himself to keep on the straight and narrow. When the light turns green he will drive calmly, forward. He will go home. He will wait patiently for his lover to come home.

And then the light turned green on this dark street. And he swerved the car around; screeching wheels left any and all reason in the dust.

I wanted to run but she made me crawl

Eternal fire, she turned me to straw

You know I got black eyes

But they burn so brightly for her

Mine is a blind kind of love

"What are you thinking?" Clovis asked as he pulled a napkin from under a knife and fork set, disturbing the parallel cutlery.

Through her fingers drumming on the ceramic surface, Padme wanted to posit a fair assessment. Clovis could see she was contemplative, elusive.

"I'm thinking... " She sunk back in her seat, retrieving her hand from its mindless activity long enough to take it all in. "It's great, a great job, a great career move."

"But." He replied instinctively.

She smiled politely, a more relaxed pose, an affirmation to bookend her observations. "...But it's not what I want."

A waiter came to take away her empty plate.

Then the threat of steel. The sound of someone familiar clearing his throat loudly above her head. She found her husband behind her seat, who was doing his best to suppress a raging flash of red heat on his face. And almost monotone words came out of his willful mouth.

"You done?"

Padme hesitated, eyelids hovering low, almost shut.

"Go." Clovis assured.

Padme offered a faint smile, barely curled lips, before rising to her feet. "—Oh, how much is the—" She reached in her purse, suddenly clued in to the present.

Clovis half-raised his hand, interrupting. "It's on me."

She gave him a small nod in gratitude before draping her handbag strap over her shoulder. Anakin's glance collided with Clovis', exchanging unspeakable repulsions, before following his wife outside.

Padme noticed Anakin wobbling to the truck, stranded and sluggish.

"Give me the keys."

Insouciant, Anakin grumbled, brushing back a loose hair. "I'm fine."

"You're drunk! I'm driving." She snatched the keys out of his hand and slid into the driver's seat when he swung the car door open.

His truck bobbed up and down as she got it onto the main road. He had parked recklessly. The car ride home was quiet – he was looking out the window to his right, her eyes were straight ahead. The lights fluctuated on their faces the faster she drove. Cars went in and out, blocking and clearing her field of vision, obstacles of impact, madness, mirroring her hectic mind.

Blue-eyed boy and this brown-eyed girl

You can sew it up, but you still see the tear

Baby's got blue skies up ahead

And in this, I'm a raincloud

You know we got a stormy kind of love

The door shut behind them when they arrived home. Anakin's careless movements had him waddling past her. He was separate from the world, sleepy and renounced, countering his typical proud rhythm. But before he could walk off, she swooped in with a brusque turn.

"So you're gonna get drunk every time I do something you don't like?"

Anakin had made it halfway round the dining table before slumping himself into one of the chairs. "Or you could just not do stuff I don't like?"

She snorted. "How mature of you."

"Well I'm sorry I'm not as refined as your friend Clovis." He gestured with his hands the act of tightening an invisible bowtie.

"You're being ridiculous."

The disregard she showed had slashed him, and he felt unresolved trauma crawling up a ladder to abandonment. It felt like the situation with his mother all over again – a crossroads, losing control, losing focus. Chess pieces aren't moving the way he intended. The plank is heavy with arguments, misunderstandings, a flashback – being afraid to lose the person he loves when she doesn't do what he wants her to. He felt like he was trying to hold together fracturing glass, slipping and cutting; he was failing again. He is older now, bigger, stronger, supposedly wiser. Yet his efforts are never good enough. But he can't carry anymore guilt – so he redirects it.

"–Padme!" He yelled. "You went off with your ex-boyfriend to discuss a job in another city! Without even talking to me about it!"

"...You're right." Padme said, exhausted, washed out. She walked the few steps to the table and put down her handbag with the last of her effort. "I didn't tell you about the job at first because I wasn't interested. But. . .after ruminating on it, I got to thinking about how stale my career has been this past year. There's no room to progress. Everything is a fight – fighting the law, the mentality. . .with little to no resources. So I started to wonder, you know... I just – I didn't see the point in bringing it up unless I was sure it was something I wanted."

Anakin was quiet with edginess. His foot was tapping the floor, this obsessive repetitive knee jerk – it seemed to be the only thing containing his cool.

"You should know I declined. Decided it wasn't worth it." Her words could have sounded reassuring, but her tone was lacking. Instead she was stressing a need for order, a punctual apology. Her hands braced the top rail of the dining chair in front of her. The moment between them became uncertain, prickly, uncomfortable. She gradually grew direct. "But I don't deserve this. You showing up at my work, tracking me down at the restaurant, not trusting me. What have I done to deserve any of it?!"

Anakin's restless anxiety-soothing leg shaking finally came to a halt. "It's not you I don't trust. It's him."

She shook her head, decisive, strict - she left no room for excuses. "If you trusted me, you wouldn't worry about him." The last straw almost breaking as she spoke, slowly hitting the consonants, clear and concise. She was charting how long it would take before feelings of frustration elude her.

Her losing her composure had him losing his as well. A ring of fire grew in him, immense, driving him further into his own perpetual bubble.

"Oh come on, Padme!" He slammed his fist on the table. "You think I don't know what he's doing? Buying expensive gifts for my wife?! Whisking you away to glamorous places I can't afford? He's going out of his way to prove he can provide everything I can't. And I'm supposed to stand there and take it?!"

She was gripped in her spot by the sight in front of her. His elbows on the table as he hunched forward, palms open and screaming for common sense, the arches of his feet resting on the cross stretcher of the chair, his legs forming a diamond shape. His whole body moved with burgeoning anger.

"Anakin, it's not a contest. You're my husband!"

She could feel his tone turn brassy, metallic as he stood up, making his way to her. "You know what I think? I think you like it."

"What?!" She blinked.

"Yeah. Ever since Clovis got here, he represents how much easier life in Coruscant was. And you miss it. Just admit it!"

They're in this box now. A discord, an estrangement, a war.

"Fine." She said, looking him dead in the eye now that he stood right in front of her. "Life in Coruscant would make things easier, yes. But just because something's easier doesn't make it better – it doesn't mean it's what I want. And for the last time, Anakin, I don't want to be with Clovis! This isn't about him!"

"Of course it is! And he knows it." The momentum of his gesticulations had his arm swatting away the clouds rolling in, covering the sky, a canvas painting with his darkness that he can't wipe out.

She ran her fingers through her hair, overwhelmed, frantic. She couldn't keep having this conversation. But he was gone under the billow of pain, and they were back to square one. The smokescreens could no longer hide that they were poked and stirred in a circular story.

It starts to suffocate him – like someone is playing a social experiment on him, and he is unable to release himself from societal trappings. It's in his head. He knows it. But he feels helpless. He's aware that he's taking her down with him in the panic. She's in a chokehold, and he can't break her free without letting go. But he can't let go.

So he fights, fights against the waves of rejection. Hating the unknown. He'll regret it later. But he keeps going. It's too late to jump out of this moving car – he's going to make the crash a certainty. He's going to snap.

"That's why he's doing what he's doing! He's all. . .even-keeled all the time! Never loses his temper, never does the wrong thing." Anakin's hands swung down to his sides, offhandedly, a mean shrug. "And a part of you wants that, but you know he can't fuck you like me."

Padme slapped him across the face. Hard. Leaving a red mark on his cheek. She was quivering with shock, anger, gutted. Anakin was stationary, robotic, he just flexed his jaw to stretch his cheek.

"Don't you ever talk to me that way again." She scolded.

Padme stormed off, slamming the bedroom door behind her. He heard the lock fasten, shutting him out.

Anakin pulled up the throw blanket that barely covered his body, his toes popping out the end. He thrashed around trying to get comfortable on the couch. His mind and hands irrational, fighting off worry with rage. His arrogance is insecurity masquerading as confidence.

He did this. He was making his fears a reality, a self-fulfilling prophecy. He let the sweetest thing slip through his fingers like sand.

I'm losing you

I'm losing you, yeah

Ain't love the sweetest thing?

U2 - The Sweetest Thing