AN:
Cheire – haha yeah I figured it out :D
Guest – you bring up a good point that just because Qui-Gon was the father figure, doesn't mean he could've prevented Anakin turning to the dark side. It's like that old alcoholic father story/motif. One son goes "I'm an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic." The other son says, "My father was an alcoholic, so I don't drink." In the end, you are not what happened to you, you are how you react.
Make Your Own Music
Padme woke up to the soft touch of Anakin's lips kissing down her back. Between the sheets, inspired by a light-headed, magnificent morning, the mind evaporates so you can be present, in your body. There's something calming, mystic, paradisiacal about physical touch.
"Good morning." He murmured in his sleepy voice.
"Yes, it is." Padme said with emphasis. She feels a distention of deliverance through her body as she stretches her arms out to him, to hold him close to her.
His arms wrap around her as his chest rests on hers. His face hovers above hers and he is overcome with a celestially supreme catharsis – like he breathes better when she's around, like she tugs at his heart to keep it beating. His eyes are rolling out a red carpet in her direction, to place her on a pedestal.
"I've never felt this way before, about anyone." He spoke like he surprised himself, roused by the realization – the brilliance of it. "Have you?"
She shares with him an enchantment whirling inside them, fantastical, otherworldly – they can't describe what the feeling is but it is akin to a drunkenness without wine, a tastiness without food. There is no perfect word for many feelings but there are many words to describe one perfect feeling.
"Never." She sounded equally as startled by the epiphany. "I've never felt this way before."
"So, let's get married."
It rolled off his tongue so offhandedly, casual and natural.
"What?" Her eyes almost pop out. She didn't know whether to laugh or scold. But his expression remained the same, it doesn't deviate from its aloofness and ease.
"Marry me."
"Anakin, this is crazy!" Padme insisted as she sat up in bed, indirectly pushing off his body weight, but her pitch was overflowing with glee. Her eyes are wide in shock, but mesmerized, away with the fairies, like she was waiting to wake up from a dream, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was impossible to be this free, this elated; surely, there's a looming shadow waiting to pounce.
Anakin still surrounded her, with an arm over her lap. He has the centeredness, concentration, and confidence of a lion stalking its prey.
"Why?"
"We've barely known each other a month!" She laughed at the absurdity.
He sighed deeply, blasting away her "reason", sliding through on his impetus, his verve, his determination. His eyes looked right into hers. "I know you. I love everything about you... I love you."
As soon as he said those three words, it rescued her from any uncertainty. His words ring with such charm and sincerity that reason would only water them down.
She watched him with delight. She can't help but fall into it, into this daze. Anakin gives her such effort, such heightened emotion, such deliciousness of each moment, as if he wants to prove to himself these fascinations exist. That life can be this marvelous.
And he made it so for her.
"I love you too." The warmth on her face brought her back to the sheer scintillations of her innocence – being so content with life like when you're a little girl not yet polluted by the big things, so you can really see the little things, the true beauty of life, the signs of magic everywhere.
"So?" He pressed gently, anticipating a response.
Her mind reached a culmination of acceptance – no longer looking to disprove the fairytale, or fight the unpredictability. She was ready to jump in blind and adopt his energy, his worshipping of their life together.
"Okay." She embraces passivity, with smiling eyes.
"Yeah?" His grin grows bigger with zest.
"Yes!" She cried happily. And he is almost jumping for joy. She should mourn her rational mind but she couldn't. It was all too seductive, joyful, aggrandizing to be tainted with the outside word and its rigidity. And she was more faithful to her heart than her head.
"What are you doing?" Padme asked as Anakin paced around her living room with the phone practically glued to his ear.
"Calling the register office."
"Now?"
And he made that face again, like he had no time for her rationale. "Why wait?"
Her eyes followed him across the room; she was barely listening to his conversation over the phone. She is in awe of his inventiveness, his uprising of everything ordinary. She can see in his eyes a burgeoning ambition, a fearless strength rebelling against a life of insignificance. It is a dance of poetry and art, stripping her away from a standard kind of life.
"Talk to them." He handed her the phone, taking her out of her thoughts.
She listened to the instructions – she was surprised by how many instructions there were to just get married, but it couldn't dampen this sublimation. She held the phone slightly away from her mouth as she turned to Anakin. "We need a witness."
"Ahsoka." Anakin loosed off.
"Too young."
"Kit." He simply listed off names like it was nothing.
"Kit. Meet me at the courthouse at 2." Anakin said. "Oh and lend me a suit."
He sat on the couch, phone on ear, with Padme beside him. They were giddy, silly, nervous with excitement. The weather outside was like them, hot, out of control. Ideas were snowballing, everything was falling into place. This day has been bookmarked, a spontaneous planning of forever – for happily ever after.
He hung up and gave her knee the caress of a lover infatuated. "Got a white dress?"
The room, the clerk, the entire scene all felt illusory. The courtroom only appeared big because of how empty its interior made it look. The clock ticked, papers ruffled, and breaths baited and bartered among the few people in the room. They were confined in tall walls with wooden tones, and the lighting was a soft illumination, pretty but cold and formal.
It came across small, dull, spiritless in comparison to Anakin and Padme, who stood opposite each other, flushed with pride, radiance. Kitster and Ahsoka are beside them, along for the ride. It was hard for them not to be influenced in the presence of the bride and groom when you see them glow with idealism – rosily messy, adventurous yet purposive. They were determined.
Until they realized they had forgotten something – rings.
Anakin eluded the tension in the room and quickly lifted his necklace over his head and put it over Padme's. It was a haphazard, romantic, cloying sweetness, a sentimental notion. Padme looked at the wooden necklace carved with symbols, holding the pendant between her fingers. The bystanders, the courtroom, everything has faded in this effervescent state of ampleness.
Anakin takes her in his arms, kisses her with perpetual insatiability. Their kisses are bountiful, dependent, devout, drowning out everything around. His hands slither, grope, and ravish down her body to her thighs, grabbing onto what is pure nourishment, vital. He sweeps her off her feet, literally, carrying her out of the courthouse.
As mandated by Kitster, the four of them headed over to Ben's Diner, where Kitster had gathered the racing community. He took Ahsoka in his car, who had spray painted 'Just Married' on the back of Anakin's truck.
As soon as they open the cafe doors, Anakin and Padme are met with loud copious cheers. Anakin was pulled in different directions by faces unfamiliar to Padme. She was relieved when Aayla approached to congratulate her, taking her away from the crowd and giving her some stability in the commotion.
Anakin felt a tight grip dig into his arm and was pulled into the storage unit.
"Obi-Wan!" Anakin greeted him with his go-to boyish grin. But it never could penetrate through Obi-Wan's tepid exterior.
"What the hell is the matter with you?!"
Anakin sighed, almost jaded by the surfeit of objections on Obi-Wan's part. Anakin expected this – the tone, the attitude, the criticism – to be met with Obi-Wan's austerity.
"You got married to some girl you hardly know and I have to hear it from Kitster?" Obi-Wan's head did more running than his feet as he seemed to walk in circles with his hands trembling erratically at either side of his face, probably picturing shaking Anakin out of his hallucinatory aims. "For God's sake, Anakin. You just dive in head first, you don't think sometimes!"
"I thought about it." Anakin said with a laid-back confidence.
"How long, a day? An hour?!" Obi-Wan was in no mood for Anakin's nonchalant replies. "This is impulsive – even for you."
"Look, I get it." Anakin tried to steer Obi-Wan away from the apprehension with genuine concern. "You're scared for me. But you and I both know that life can take things from you like that." He snapped his fingers. "I walked out on my mom and two years later she was dead. At least when Satine got sick you knew how much time you had left with her... I found someone I love more than anything. . .I'm not letting that go this time. "
The evening was accompanied by glory, vertigo, and maybe even a little insanity. Anakin's friends had a sense of humour, playing songs like Uptown Girl, which amused Anakin. Obi-Wan at some point headed to the jukebox to put on Paradise By The Dashboard Light – and Anakin sensed Obi-Wan was sending him a signal.
Anakin winked at Padme when Billy Joel's song was on and they waded through the crowds that separated them, finally back with each other. He cradled her in his arms, transferring an enhancement, the sensation of butterflies in your stomach, and their hips sway together to the music. It was obvious to anyone in the vicinity that they were madly in love. Their faces lit up with brilliant smiles when they looked at each other – like no one else was in the room.
"What do you say we sneak off and go consummate this marriage?" Padme looked up in amazement at the man who defies gravity for her.
"Mrs Skywalker." Anakin warned. "Control yourself."
She reaches up for a kiss, and he pulls away teasingly. Until her lips find his with an intimate, affectionate touch, and he becomes pliant, malleable; his act of unavailability quickly falters.
"Let's go." He rushed.
Anakin stepped out of the bedroom that evening to find Padme on the couch, phone in hand. Her posture resembled trees in autumn, the sad mist permeates her like it does forlorn leaves. Her face is the shade of fallen skies; her eyes droop and lose their colour.
"What's wrong?" He made his way over to sit beside her, placing an attentive arm around her.
"That was my parents." Her tone was dense but his arm surrounding her gave her courage to spill the words out. "I gave them the news."
"They didn't take it well huh?"
She shook her head. "Let's just say we don't have their blessing." She was downtrodden. The whole debacle exacted her strength. She could no longer uphold her joy from the celebrations. She began to weep.
Anakin pulled her onto his lap, holding her tightly, consoling her, never wanting to see her cry. He speaks words of solace with calming tones to relax her. "So let's go get it."
She looked up at him and her tears no longer fall down her cheeks; they dissolve in bewilderment. And he, in typical Anakin fashion, came across self-assured, assertive, protective. – as The Fixer, he fishes for solutions.
"What?"
"You can afford to fly out, right? Ben'll lend me the money for a ticket. We'll go down there and sort it all out."
Her mouth slowly curved up with appreciation. "Really?"
He inspires and soothes with a reassuring smile. "They're my family now too, aren't they?"
You gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nobody else sings along
Cass Elliot – Make Your Own Kind of Music
