AN:
Ivy – I like your thinking!
Cheire – Yeah in canon Padme didn't date Clovis and for good reason. There is a scene coming up soon between Dorme and Padme where she explains why she fell for him. One thing I did want to bring to Clovis was how he changed to get ahead like he did in canon. And yeah, I don't believe anyone thinks Clovis is actually a threat to Anakin. Anakin will always be the better man in my eyes :D. I just try not to have those judgments when I'm writing any character and leave my personal opinion out of it. And you're exactly right about what Clovis' presence will mean for Anakin.
Sun – Yes exactly don't forget about what Sola did! Because it comes up in this chapter!
Angie – Yes you said what I feel so many people confuse. They automatically assume a dark and tragic love story means the couple won't end up together, but that's not always the case. The same way couples can separate and it not be an unhappy ending. For me, in the two endings I have, the reason I feel I want to and have to post both is because they both have scenes that I feel are so relevant to Anakin's character. I don't really decide what's right or wrong in the story, I just like to dive into the character's psyche. And omg yeah it always makes me a little sad that he didn't leave Miraj and go back to his family :(
To everyone – Thank you SO much for your continuous reviews! I absolutely LOVE reading your opinions and takes on things! XOXO
Winding Road
Today is gonna be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you
And by now, you shoulda somehow realised what you gotta do
I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now
Clovis entered the office, his feet gliding through the door. He raised a hand in greeting, electing a state of friendliness.
"Cozy." He said as he scanned the office, taking a chance to comment on the size of the space, like he was on the prowl for defects. And Padme knew he was being sarcastic—not friendly.
Padme's eyes moved slowly to Dorme with a tediousness etched in her face. "Dorme, this is Rush Clovis."
Clovis flashed Dorme with obsidian eyes as he took the hand she held out, "Vallorum only hires beautiful women or what?"
Padme barely restrained an eye roll.
Dorme kept the awkwardness she felt under wraps but she signaled it to Padme through a wordless head tilt. "I think I'll take my break now."
"Good idea." Padme said enviously, wishing she too could take a breather.
Once Dorme closed the door behind her, Padme leaned back in her chair, rotating the wheels from side to side. "So Clovis, what brings you by?"
Clovis pranced around a little, admiring the view from the large window that captures and critiques all the character in the high street. "You know this little town, it's got that small country vibe, everyone knows everyone, and yet there's this undercurrent of. . .darkness. Feels like I'm in an episode of Twin Peaks."
Padme chuckled softly. "That's what you came to tell me?"
He caught her gaze and smiled, pulling up a chair for himself. "...I haven't been completely honest about why I'm here."
"Shocking." Padme feigned surprise. But the hint of softness in her features trapped Clovis' sight; he had forgotten how enchanting those crystal-like glossy brown eyes were.
"You're looking at Palpatine Law Firm's special counsel." He began, resting back on the chair, a gunmetal coolness. "And by the end of the year, if all goes well I hope to make partner."
"Clovis, that's great!" Padme seemed genuinely happy for him. If there's one thing he was good at, it was his job. It just took her a while to see that she had loved a brilliant lawyer, not a brilliant man.
"Yeah." He grinned, pleased with himself as he plucked the collar of his shirt. "And it gets better! I have a say in who to promote as senior associate and. . .you were my first choice."
Padme's eyes rounded, shocked, touched, speechless. "Oh. Wow, I'm. . .flattered."
Clovis stared at her with a courageous confidence. "I can't think of anyone who deserves it more."
She appreciated it but she knew what the job offer meant – it meant going home. It was a great job only available to a sacrificial life. There's something contagious about the monotony of city life, and what she had in Tatooine was something more spiritual. Clovis may have been right, there was certainly an undercurrent of darkness here, but Tatooine's darkness was blunt, brave, out in the open. Not like Coruscant's, which was hidden under the niceties, tricky dances and witty conversation. Not to mention charming personalities like the people she had worked with who hid a wealth of deception underneath. Tatooine was home to more straight-talkers. At least you knew where you stood. Life wasn't watered down here. It was original, rough, powerfully grounded, it was not yet laminated, repainted with a convincing, unnatural finish, an optical illusion.
And of course, most importantly, Tatooine had Anakin. She had embarked on a journey to find the carefree joy of her childhood, and it led her to him.
"Thank you. Really." She spoke earnestly. "But. . .I'm not coming back."
"At least consider it?" He suggested. "The pay is a lot better than here I'm sure."
Padme's shoulders lifted stiffly, mentally moving away from the suggestion. It wasn't about the money. "My life is here... Anakin's life is here. His friends, his racing."
Clovis gave off an uninterested half-sigh, getting comfortable in his seat. "It's not like he's bringing in that kind of money."
Padme's brows furrowed at the abrupt dig. It was one thing to belittle the town and her office, it was another to take a dig at her husband. "What?"
And Clovis felt a sudden cold gust of wind flitting across the room, from her mouth, over the desk, and to his seat. "I – I just figured since Sola offered him money–"
Padme's eyes were glowering; her fierceness marked her uncensored look, the demand in her voice. "She did what?!"
"Oh." Clovis paused. "I thought you knew."
"Knew what, Clovis?" She pressed, now leaning forward in her chair. Her words were whetted, a razor-like stroke to his ear.
Clovis took a deep breath of hesitation. "...She wanted him to get an annulment." His words grew silent towards the end of his sentence.
Padme set her palms down flat on the desk, as though the act gave her a second to fan out her fury. "She told you this?"
"Well, I mean–" Clovis scrambled for a place to file the claim, holding out his hands helplessly. "–come on, Padme, you do this crazy move, and—and we were just talking about it and she blurted it out. She regrets it deeply. It was just. . .desperate times..."
Padme felt her chest squeeze, inspecting the news with a forlorn heart as she sat up straight, her eyes glazing over the room, too preoccupied with the turmoil, the lies, the disturbance.
"Get out." She said finally. Her snappy tone zipping through him.
"Padme–"
But before he could make his case, her hand jerked up, objecting. "Clovis, get out so I can call my sister!"
And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how
Anakin arrived home, placing the shopping bags on the counter where Padme was dicing carrots. There was something cathartic about cutting vegetables, aligning your center, a stability when you feel you're being pulled away by your hair into the depths of a foreign sky, and the territory you stood on was conquered and abolished.
"I got you the chocolate you like." He took the items out of the bag, one by one. "Giving my baby what she wants." He said playfully as he lifted a handful of the many bars up for a second. He then stood behind her, massaging her shoulders and pressing his lips to the side of her head. "See?"
"Yes, Anakin. I saw." Her words snippy, blistering, her patience drying up. Anakin lifted his palms off her shoulders, holding them up and backing away as though not to poke the bear. He strolled over to the couch, letting out a huff as he sat down and kept his distance.
He toed off his shoes and stretched his legs in front of him, crossing his ankles. She watched him incessantly press the button on the TV remote, flicking past one channel after another.
The lens in which she saw things right now was small, complex. She felt her emotions were held by a thin thread, a ticker tape of images, studies. She was pulled in by an ironic approach as she waited for the right moment for her words to escape. The delay was fixing her in an impassioned state, where a fire was building, and not a good one. One that could burn down the house and leave every freckle of trust behind in the ashes. She found it hard to retain hope. The knowledge she had garnered was on the edge of her tongue, itching to come out.
"When were you going to tell me that Sola tried to pay you off?" Her question strong, scratchy, and shredding as it set sail in his direction, through a calm storm that had yet to tip everything over.
Anakin was taken aback but his face didn't show it. He let the mood roll under a vehicle of stoicism, even though his hand with the remote stilled in the air. "Who told you that?"
"Does it matter?" Padme put down the knife on the cutting board and crossed her arms over her chest.
A pessimism stirred within as he glanced at her, testing his limits, breaking his barriers of restraint. "Clovis?"
"He stopped by." Padme's pitch didn't waver from a steady score of determination. "But this isn't about him."
Anakin called her bluff with a quick scoff, shooting her a doubtful look. "It's not? What's he coming by your office for anyway?"
"Answer the question, Anakin." Padme's words were a sling shot, a trap locking in the information. There was no going back. Anakin's gaze traveled to his lap, dwindling from unspoken confessions.
He had drenched the memory in rivers of peace a long time ago – any raindrops of it now were irrelevant. He had bigger storms, oceans of insanity to weather and the raft that carried him through was only getting smaller.
"I didn't take the money." He shrugged like it was a careless, pointless debate.
Padme felt an annoyance bubbling up. Sometimes she just couldn't understand how his mind worked. "That's not the point!"
"What is the point?!" He now leaned forward, growing irritated by the clinginess of the past. He didn't need anything causing a rift between them. He eyed her with the same impending outrage she fixed on him.
She walked over to him and fired off her words with urgent hand gestures. It looked like she was reaching out into the air, hoping some sort of logic and consistency would fall out of the sky. "The point is that you had this information – this life-changing information and you didn't tell me. Again!"
He was looking up at her but his mind was chronicling the journey in his head. He leaned back on the couch, laid-back, quiet, unspooling the stress of it all. "So I should've told you...?"
Padme's hands balled into fists, wanting to shake him. She couldn't believe she had to spell it out, especially after the last secret uncovered over a year ago. "Yes! Yes, Anakin, you should've told me!"
Anakin slapped one of his hands over the other as his forearms rested on his stomach. "And then what? Drive a wedge between you and your sister? Because of me? I didn't want that... Besides it was ages ago. She said she's sorry. She. . .thought she was protecting you."
"P–protecting me?!" Padme blinked hard as if her hearing was affected by his admission. A burning steam came out of flared eyes. "So you think controlling my life behind my back is protecting me?"
He opened his mouth but it took a second for words to fly out. He was treading on eggshells now, looking for tried and true, elemental solutions as he cocked his neck to one side. "I think. . .in certain circumstances–"
"–No!" She cut him off with a furious waving finger. "There are no circumstances where that's okay!"
She glared at him and the chaos of his words. She didn't know what to expect but she didn't expect this. It left her questioning this brokenness that was playing out in her mind with a panicking speed. She could deal with many things. Many trials and tribulations. But she could not deal with another liar. She shook her tired head. "I can't believe you're defending her..."
Anakin grew restless, his elbows propped up on his knees as he leaned closer, and his hands in front of him, his fingertips poking at his chest so hard they were digging in. "What do you want me to do?" He said hopelessly, angry, edgy. "What do you want me to say?!"
She looked at him as though he had pulled the wool over her eyes. She felt weakened by a wicked composing thought that destroyed her reality.
"Nothing... Nothing at all." She said with a sullen, soulful defeat. Locked in this ugly, cancerous obliteration of her story. It possessed all she knew with its brutal clutches. It was perilously vaporizing all the warmth until she was gripped by loneliness.
She headed back into the kitchen area and picked up where she left off, dicing carrots. It felt like her safe haven, in here, was stolen. A privacy she doted on. They were gravitating to this realm of insecurity, lost perspectives, and incapable of receiving help. A gateway to a rising prison, twisted and stomping all over them.
She looked down at the cutting board, wrought with a sickness. "I thought you'd be the one person on my side. To hear about this from Clovis of all people!"
Anakin got up, his eyes firming, chilling, unflinching as he made this rash, deadly move, bridging his turbulence and his disdain. His cynicism carried over as he spoke. "I'm sure it's out of the goodness of his heart."
"Really?" She hissed. "You're mad at, what, him telling me the truth?"
Anakin's eyelids almost shut as his stone-heavy gaze floated across the floor he walked on with ragged, insensitive steps, inert. "I'm going down for a smoke."
"Anakin!" She yelled, warning him not to walk away in the middle of an argument.
He held onto the open door, stopping it from swinging, and faced her, hoping to break the shell of misunderstanding that enclosed them in an existential crisis. "When you get some distance from this, and get Clovis out of your ear. . .you'll see I was on your side."
The door slammed behind him, leaving her to harbor the pain in her internal mirror.
I said maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall
Oasis - Wonderwall
