AN:

Ivy: Ahhh thank you so much for your reviews! I agree Padme is an angel! And yeah they both have a past! You'll find out about Shmi as the story goes on. :D

Guest: Thank you so much for your review! I haven't read the books so it's always interesting to hear those tidbits! :D

Cheire: Yeah Anakin has been through some stuff – which will become clearer as we continue :D

The Little Picture

My mama said to stay away from guys like you

Stay away from bad boys they got one thing on their mind

Their hormones are raging and they want it all the time

And I know (know) 'cause she said so

And I can't just let you go

And I know (know) 'cause you said so and I can't just let you go

"Good morning!"

The voice that appeared with an old familiarity and courage on the other end of the line caused Padme's eyes to round out with enthusiasm after a morning of seeing through the sleepy slits under her eyelids – not wanting to get out of bed and leave the soft embrace of her luxurious linen sheets. "Sabe!"

"Forgot about us already?"

"I'm sorry I know I haven't been good at keeping in touch." Padme sat up straight in bed. "How've you been?"

"Well I'm home for the holidays." Sabe's reply gave off the tonality of an inside joke – both women knew of the challenge it could be to return home and be met with the worries of frantic parents, afraid of what befell you in the big city.

"How is Naboo?"

"Same as always. My parents want me to stay. Listing off reasons why I should settle down and get married. Saw your sister. She thinks you're crazy." Sabe noted off each new bit of information with a monotonous recurring drawl.

"What else is new." Padme blurred the pathways to her past as if simply listening to what was happening in Naboo was a threat. Her pitch sounded like she was rejecting the cyclical drama, dropping out of the conversation as if the act wrapped her in protection.

Sabe's gentle chuckle was phased out by her reluctance to update Padme with the rest of the news.

"...Clovis called me."

"Oh."

Sabe could perfectly detect Padme's standoffish, disapproving tone, detaching herself from any connection to the name. "Says you broke up with him in a note...?"

"Surprised he noticed..." Padme groaned with immediate disregard. "Was that before or after he realized I wasn't around to do his work for him?"

"Padme–" Sabe tried to interject kindly and conscientiously but Padme was having none of it.

"–No, you know, I've had to work twice as hard to prove myself – to prove that I earned my place as a junior attorney at Palpatine Law Firm and not because I was Clovis' girlfriend. And I heard all the whispers behind my back... I did all the work while I was his associate – but he was my senior so he gets the two-page article in The Coruscant Times and all the credit... And you know what I didn't even want the credit. Just acknowledgement, a shout out, or some gratitude for my effort. He didn't care then so don't pretend he does now."

"He was going to propose..."

Padme felt her body tensing up, acting as a barrier to shed off the unwanted emotional weight. "Well it's a good thing he didn't."

"Oh really?" A waft of doubt hung off Sabe's words. "You would've said no?"

"Yes." Padme said without missing a beat, strong in her convictions. "I may not have known exactly what I wanted but I knew what I didn't want."

"You would've been secure for life..."

"Well maybe security is overrated."

"Padme. . .we went to college together, moved to Coruscant together. We've never made a decision without each other... Why didn't you tell me any of this?"

Padme's voice was frayed, marred by unspoken thoughts. "I didn't think you'd understand."

"I probably wouldn't have. . .but I'd still have been there. You know you didn't just walk out on your job and your boyfriend. . .you left us too." Sabe could feel Padme's defensiveness through the phone. She could tell her friend was tired of the same old repetitive judgments and rigid rules conveniently disguised as concerns and a search for clarity. And she started to worry that she too played a part in making Padme feel like she had no one to turn to. "Look, I'm not saying this to make you feel bad – I want you to be happy. I just. . .want to be in the loop."

"Hey!" Padme began, bright eyed and cheerful when Anakin opened his front door. She radiated in a steel grey wrap-dress and with her straightened hair pulled back into her signature bun – not a hair out of place.

"Hi," Anakin displayed a calm registering of the start to the day – not his usual approach to a new day, opportunistic, hedonistic, and in abandon.

"I got the job!" Padme exclaimed with an innocently charming, girlish squeal. "I'm meeting uh Dorme something. . .she's going to show me round the office."

"That's great!" A genuine sense of joy dispersed to Anakin's face before being effaced by the grip a tugging anxiety had on his body. "–Listen I, I gotta take care of something but uh come by later. We'll celebrate."

"Okay!–"

"–Who is it?"

Padme was cut off as the voice of a female sprung out from inside Anakin's apartment, producing an unwavering tension – and a gradual awakening of distrust and disappointment in Padme's eyes as she stared at the vagueness of Anakin's expression.

"Someone in there?" A tremulous realization spread through Padme's features.

"It's not what you think." Anakin sighed.

"Well, what do I think when there's a girl in your apartment at seven-thirty in the morning and you're not dressed?" Padme folded her arms."Did you pick her up after you dropped me off?! You wanted a goodnight kiss so bad you didn't care where it came from?"

Anakin pinched the bridge of his nose. "No – look, I'll explain everything later, alright?"

"Don't bother." She shook her head.

Padme walked away like she was carried by a swift breeze giving her a dose of reality.

Trying to compose a mist of peace while being chained to the situation in his doorway, standing there in merely pajama pants, was rather difficult. Anakin called after Padme, trying to bring together a fair dissolution to describe the scene, reassembling a structure of hope if possible, praying it will have some effect on Padme's attitude. "She's just a kid. She's fifteen!"

Padme glanced back at him with a dark disgust in her eyes and sarcasm in the lashing of her tongue. "Nothing's really illegal here, right?"

"Oh come on, Padme!" With a rushed explanation Anakin knew he wasn't going to draw out much helpful conversation right now. "It's not like that!"

Padme walked off without looking back, waving her middle finger in the air. Already trying to churn the reversals of any memory, retractions of their date, refusing to succumb to any of the interposed fantasies that it may have ignited throughout the night and at the dawn of the morning sky. She was not going to be side swept by galloping wonders in her head. Better to erase the words and feelings before they hurt.

Anakin closed the door behind him, trying to balance the messy distraction in the hall with the task that awaits him in his apartment.

Legs perched over the armrest of the chair and hands interlaced behind her head for support, Ahsoka felt quite at home. "Who's the girl?"

"She's – no don't change the subject." Anakin raised a stern finger, retaining the continuity of his vexation before the knock on the door made his thoughts indistinct. "What the fuck were you thinking getting into a car with a drunk driver?!"

"You're one to talk Mr. Sky Guy––or whatever they call you as you fly over to the finish line."

"That's different. I know what I'm doing. Some dumb fifteen year old kid doesn't." He bit back...

And his face was quickly awash with a pensiveness, a secret melancholy, a volcanic fear he wouldn't let erupt but it still burned deep. Even with a carefully designed facial expression, on guard, a metaphorical mask of preservation, protection, Ahsoka could see the burns, they were written in his frown lines, they were echoed through his words as he spoke. "I don't need to remind you just how fatal car accidents can be."

Ahsoka's face began to carry the symptoms of guilt at her unpremeditated actions. The dawn of a buried (with the desire to be forgotten) reality forced them both into a somber silence.

"I'm sorry, okay?" She responded, ducking her head reflectively and reassuringly. "But I'm fine. No one got hurt... It won't happen again."

"Damn right." Anakin insisted.

Walking in circles, Anakin was driven by a sequence of ever-changing solutions flowing in and out of his head. "From now on I don't care where you are or what time it is... You need a ride, you call me and I'll pick you up."

"Okay. Thanks." Her big, bright, cerulean eyes aimed at him with an apologetic softness... before reflectively asking him to ratify a treaty. "Just – please don't go down to my school and threaten the guy like you did with the boys who stole my lunch money. No boys would talk to me after that."

"Good. Then you know their true intentions." He said firmly, unaffected by her sulky silences. But... he did start to come down from the authoritative stance, willing to lighten the mood. With a subtle shift, he loosened up in both body language and tone of voice, cocking his head to one side in a comical manner. "Besides. . .the girls at your school liked it."

Ahsoka glared back at him with an adolescent angst as she gathered her jet black hair with blue and white highlights upwards and wrapped it round in a messy bun. "Yeah that's what I need. More girls trying to be my friend to get to my brother."

"Padme! What brings you by?" Obi-Wan greeted from behind the counter of his diner. And it felt good for her to hear a voice that sounded so warm, mature, offering a feeling that materialized into a safe space.

"I'm starting work just next door – Vallorum." Padme gestured over.

"Oh congratulations!" Obi-Wan said. And Padme felt comforted by the friendly tone. The sorrows of a stranger wasn't something she wanted to be burdened with right now. It was almost as if he knew she was vacillating between what she's feeling and what she should be feeling. "Well, if you're ever in dire need of lunch or a cup of coffee, pop over."

"I'll take you up on that right now. I could use a coffee."

Her brief smile dropped, stating her coldness once she saw Anakin come out from the bathroom. "To go."

"Sure... " Obi-Wan picked up on the repurposed external energy of two people carrying an undertone of friction in their faces.

The heavy mood made her eyes downcast, fatigued as they rested on the countertop, watching the patterns to appear busy when Anakin arrived beside her, draining what was left of her strength today – and what's more, he was single-handedly taking away from her professional achievements today.

"Padme," Anakin began."–there's nothing going on between me and that girl. She's practically–"

"You don't have to explain." She said quickly, not looking up at him. "Truth is, it's none of my business. I don't know why I expected you to act differently."

She wasn't going to reveal an ounce of vulnerability because why should she? These are fleeting emotions that counter her productivity. Compassion for work is one thing but to bare your soul to a stranger was too much to ask of her – especially one who made her emotions too transparent, too risky, too attainable when he's around.

"You're pretty stubborn you know that?" Anakin leaned his forearm on the counter.

And Obi-Wan sniggered at the irony – the pot calling the kettle black. He quickly refocused his attention to the coffee machine when Anakin heard him.

"Look," She cut him off with her hand held up. "This has all been one glaring reminder of why I moved here in the first place. I don't have time for this kind of drama, okay?" She talked so fast – with the adamance of a lawyer or a disapproving mother – Anakin was trying to fit in between her transitions of words from angry to indifferent, her arguments, her stances, her evanescent interest. "I just got a job that I'm very excited about. And I really think my focus should be on that."

She needed to reserve whatever hope she had left for herself, her future, her dreams she had yet to map out and discover. She had already lost so many vital parts of herself in the tumult of overexertion, stress, giving too much to the bigger picture. Which wasn't always a bad thing, to think of the big picture, but it left very little for her to paint personally, with a brush of originality, with the strokes of all she is if she could ever take the time to find out who she was outside of the shades of work, of being a daughter, a sister, a lawyer – responsible for everyone's happiness but her own.

"So," She sighed after the outpouring of words which she wasn't sure were her defiance and strength or naivety and fear. "We'll just be friends."

"She wants to be friends." Anakin slumped into a bar stool once Padme had walked out and Obi-Wan approached and poured him a coffee.

"Well if that's what she wants you should respect that."

Anakin groaned as he rested back, his neck craned far back enough for his head to hang as he swung around on the stool. "But..." He wallowed in his imaginings. In the fantasy of Padme. She was his dream girl. He knew it with every fibre of his being. She was to him what the muse is to every poet and writer – the artists are chained to their desks until they put passionate pen to paper, trying to elaborate on the drug, the sensuality, the gift of aliveness so they can re-live it through their art and prose. "She's perfect."

And he's off. Obi-Wan's eyes glazed over the counter, disturbed and entertained by the forthrightness of Anakin.

Anakin gave the stool another spin with a flair of humour about him, a smile that would not vanish, and deliberate gestures as his hand pressed against his heart as though it were to fall out. "I burn. I pine. I perish."

"Calm down there, Lucentio." Obi-Wan was equally as unimpressed by this phase of Anakin as he was surprised. Anakin was known for his reckless impulsivity and often needed an anchor to put limitations on his impetus but that was usually the case when it came to taking risks with cars, money, and sometimes even his emotions. But one emotion Anakin didn't give away freely was love. You had to earn his trust, his loyalty, his attachment. And once you had it you were also granted his unrelenting protection.

The witnessing of this new phase in itself was laced with strangeness, instability, uncertainty. Obi-Wan knew Anakin wasn't one to let things go – but the boy he called his younger brother had never been this tempestuous with such fervor for a woman.

"Look," Obi-Wan continued warily, "You don't wanna drag that girl into your mess."

"What mess?" A vertical lined appeared between Anakin's eyebrows, dismissive of Obi-Wan.

"Well, you need to get it together." Obi-Wan never did tiptoe around criticism. "Trust me a girl like that is not going to be content running aimlessly around town with you. She's going to want more, something real, something substantive."

"So?"

"So you're not ready for that."

"You need to be ready for love?" Anakin quizzed, always doubting Obi-Wan's need to follow a rulebook.

There was a rulebook for everything according to Obi-Wan. He liked to adhere to universal truths. After all, throughout generations, civilizations, all religions, all mythologies, all tribes, there was always an overlapping of wisdom that trickled down. And when it came to the dance of love, there weren't many gaps in ideologies.

"Anakin, it's a commitment, a responsibility."

Anakin made it known that he was slowly but surely floating away from the lecture. Anakin always did have contempt for authority, hating the idea of conformity.

"Why don't you come back and work for me for a while? Like you did when you were fifteen."

"I had just ran away from home. I didn't know any better." Anakin teased.

Ignoring Anakin's mockery, Obi-Wan went on, "Here at the diner you'll get a stable income, get a chance to officially sort yourself out..."

"Thanks but," Anakin placed his hand on the counter to lazily pull himself off the stool. "If I recall correctly that didn't work out too well last time." His lips grew into an audacious smile. "We both know I've never been good at taking orders."

Anakin walked through the rowdy midday events at the sandy car park. Images of various people drifted in and out of his eye-line; some were sunbathing on their picnic blankets; others were dancing around a scrawny college-aged boy carrying a boombox on his shoulder.

It was typical for a good-weather day like this where the sunshine lightly coats the air with a warm, refreshing breeze.

Anakin joined his friend Kitser who was close to where the cars were set up, surrounded by an even bigger crowd – those waiting for their own style of fun to commence – the infamous races.

"Ani!" Kitster met Anakin with a familiar handshake, a tight grip followed by a snap of the fingers as he sat on top of the backrest of the bench. "You here for the races? Tuskens versus Jawas! The winner will race you."

"Then they need the practice." Anakin smirked as he sat down on the bench.

"Teeka's trash-talking you already."

Anakin's eyes glossed over the area, weaving through all the crowds in summer clothes until he spotted the sight that pulled his heart out onto his sleeve. His eyes landed on Padme, cutting through the entire park and all the action, letting the iridescent colours of the crowd in motion fizzle out. The only clear visual was her in a yellow sundress with her hair now set free on her day off, letting her rebellious untamed curls wave in the wind, shimmering in the daylight. She might as well have a golden halo floating over her with how peaceful she looked with her head buried in her book.

"Well, you gonna do something about it?" Kitster continued, having no idea that he had lost his friend's attention. Anakin could not recover from the view that aroused his intensity, imagination, neuroticism. "Anakin. . .Anakin!"

Anakin's gaze remained straight ahead, lost in the view that demanded his attentiveness, his soul.

Kitster nudged Anakin with his elbow. Anakin finally looked up at his friend sitting up on the bench's backrest, and acknowledged him gallantly repeating his name. The voice drummed against his ear with a gradation of volume as though it was dragging Anakin out of a dream-like state.

"Yeah... " Anakin stood up like everything had aligned, a formation of his hubris, his determination, his impatience, and opportunity.

He aimed with tunnel vision towards Padme, who was just getting up from a bench, putting her book back in her handbag. Each step he took in her direction was a reminder of the urgent, necessary resolve – to have it, hold it, claim it.

Padme finds him in front of her and became instantly reactive, displeasured as she readjusts the strap of her bag to fit comfortably on her shoulder. "Anakin I don't have time for thi–"

He wasn't hearing a word she said. His eyes draw a line to her mouth as his hands, steady as rock, cradle her face. And with raw, carnal and steady devotion his lips touch hers.

A kiss, slow and soft at first. Until his tongue opens her mouth... and her body opens up in a sense of abandon, with her hands flailed either side of her. He is given permission to deepen the kiss as she submits to the soulful release, the shudder as she descends into the magnificent awakening of passion. It becomes metamorphosed from what she had been conditioned to believe about desire. It is no longer a myth but mystic.

He releases her mouth, and his fingers slide away from her jaw, sharing in inhalations as his eyes hold hers.

"She's not my girlfriend. She's like my sister." He asserts as Padme remains claimed by a racing heart, drunk, exalted, still in shock.

About to turn away, he is consumed by the hierarchy of his thoughts, the most important, as he refuses to let the world deny him what he knows to be a deep-seated truth in his rapacious heart. He shoots her a final determined look, one of intent, indulgence, certainty – one that invades any rational thought she could grasp onto in the lull. "Oh and. . .we're not gonna be friends."

He walks away, leaving Padme to percolate her emotions – extraordinary, confusing, profound, vague. She was hesitant to move, too inflammable in this moment, wobbly, tender, delicate, ecstatic. She had to settle herself, calm the bouncing nerves. But she couldn't wipe the smile that crept on her face.

She takes a distinct breath, letting go of her embellished thoughts already creating an impression of new pictures that could be painted.

She glances at the ladies sitting on the bench beside her, witnessing her experience. And she needs to shut the sensation down. Padme notices her vulnerability is revealed to the strangers beside her.

She quickly grumbles to cover it up, "What?!"

Well I love you very much – you're nice to see and nice to touch

And I'd never ever ever treat you wrong, been waiting for you all along

And I know (know) 'cause you said so, and I can't just let you go

And I know (know) 'cause you said so and I can't just let you go

Save Ferris - I know