AN:
Ivy – yeahh haha it's fun to switch it up. She gets even more jealous here. :D
Cheire – you're close... time will tell :D
Free Fallin'
Anakin assumed it would be a quick dip in and out of the party. In the car as he drove to Palpatine's house, Ventress climbed over to the backseat.
"What the hell are you doing?" He asked, his voice became hard, clear and challenging.
"There'll be some rich men at this party. I ought to look my best." She lilted as she pulled her little black cut-out dress out of her briefcase. Anakin realized she was about to change and kept his eyes on the road. She swung around strewn clothes in the disorder she had created back there. After slipping the dress over her hips and her arms through the straps, she climbed back into the passenger seat and was met with Anakin's shaking head.
"Cheer up. You're about to meet Grievous."
Anakin scoffed at her antics, chuckling in disbelief about the prospect of meeting a famous athlete. "Still can't believe he got caught with his nanny."
"It's not surprising." She lowered the sun visor to apply her lipstick in the vanity mirror. "He's got 6 kids with 3 different women."
He blinked and jerked his head in her direction. "6 kids?!"
"That's why he has a nanny."
Anakin recalled his own fears about becoming a father. "And here I was freaking out about two!"
Anakin was quite antsy as he walked ahead to the pavement, waiting for Ventress to get out of the car so he could lock the doors.
"What do you think?" She stood up straight, posing in her outfit.
"It's fine. Come on." He faced her briefly before he started to the few steps to Palpatine's front door.
"Jeez, I know you're married but it's not like we're brother and sister." She sulked as she caught up with him and straightened her dress down the sides. Anakin was an untamed, classic romantic... and it ruffled her feathers, staunchly reflected in her glare.
Anakin smiled to himself as he rang the doorbell. "Stop fishing for a compliment. Wait until–"
"I know, I know." She huffed in annoyance. "Wait until it comes from someone special."
"No..." He drew out. "That's not what I was gonna say at all. I was going to say, wait until we get inside; one of your rich guys will need someone to try their pickup lines on."
Ventress sealed her red lips between her teeth, retracting that bright color from her face, trying not to reward his joke with a laugh.
Someone opened the door and greeted Asajj Ventress like a long lost sister. Evidently, this elite circle of people shared something, a past, a secret, a club, a quality. Anakin took one step in and felt he was immediately transported into some ancient cave embossed with wealth and glamour that only arose from some hidden depths when the chosen people needed it and would vanish again come morning. Vampires – that's what they looked like. With money for surgeries and jewels around their necks. This was where they came to celebrate their financial successes, traditions, youthful aspirations.
The house was segregated into sections for the explorers, the gatherers, the conversationalists and the observers. Within these halls was 1920s' elegance. Massive stone walls were swallowed by pictures of legendary artists who were once in this very room. A picture showed one was sitting right here at one time, by that table in the corner hosting a glass sculpture with rivulets weeping to break free, an object, a fountain, a prisoner in gold chains.
More than a dozen heads blocked most of the view of what could only be described as a mansion. There were black-tie caterers carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres. The room was exploding with smoke and laughter, and people were swilling drinks all over the place, with a feral sense of importance, living their exclusive life to the fullest.
So much for a little gathering with a few clients.
Ventress chatted away and Anakin wandered off as he often did – his signature move, active on impulse. He came across a vintage bookshelf in the more secluded part of the corridor. He cocked his head to one side to read the titles, hovering over a few favorites. John Steinbeck's East of Eden, the Poems of Charles Baudelaire, and of course Bill Moyers and Campbell's Power of Myth. Book after book, souls of all ages tried to reach out and grab him. He was almost tempted to skip the gathering altogether, grab that wicker chair and devour this bookshelf.
Then he heard Palpatine's cackle. The old man was surrounded by devout eyes like they were under a spell. He drew every listener in with a slow hypnotic voice. He must've had a zest for entertaining. He always made an entrance and left an impression, the hand-talker, the storyteller.
In the middle of his sentence, he spotted Anakin and his zest only grew. "Anakin! Come." He ordered simply as he approached him, taking him through the crowd like he was his own little prodigy, introducing him to intimidating people Anakin never would've walked up to normally, but seeing how they greeted him, like they were impressed to meet him gave him a subtle confidence.
Finally they had entered the cushiest part of the living space with silk cushions covering couches and lavish decor and collectibles on the mantle. Palpatine was a wise investor.
"Meet Grievous."
Anakin carried his sight up the path to the 6 foot 5 basketball player's eyes.
"Anakin Skywalker." The athlete said his name. The athlete knew his name. "Your boss can't say enough good things about you. With your reputation, I didn't expect to meet someone so young."
"Grievous!" Gobsmacked, it took a while for Anakin to figure out what to say. Now, he could gush about what a big fan he was... But with Palpatine by his side, he developed a little pep in his step. He felt like he could belong here – with the athletes, the bankers, the models, the screenwriters, the movie-makers. And Anakin found himself having a little too much fun with the idea. "You're shorter than I expected."
He wasn't quite sure if Grievous got his sarcasm by the befuddled look on the extremely tall, bulky man's face, but the crowd bracketing them erupted with laughter. Anakin's face flushed with pride; he had tapped into a new, inviting energy.
Anakin sat on a leather couch to enjoy his drink in a more languorous area. A lair toned with the calmer, older crowd who preferred to shape the party with their brand of cigars and whisky. It left a sharp scent, assailing Anakin's focus. It allowed Anakin to rest his head back on the imprinted square patterns of the leather backrest and take it all in: how they all embraced him, how good it felt... These were people with a prestige he could never dream of gaining and yet they took considerable interest in him – Palpatine's new guy, his right-hand man.
There was a woman, possibly in her late twenties, talking to an older man whose eyes never fully opened, on the verge of falling asleep, and caressed by the opulent fumes of his cigar. The woman was also quite relaxed as she placed her champagne glass on the oak coffee table. It was a darkened serenity coupled with enigmatic, jeweled antiques, and the only burst of bright colors came from the pictures on the wall. It could have one dozing off. But through the swells of sweet smoke came Ventress, lowering herself to the couch's edge beside Anakin.
The couple to Anakin's left, although they weren't actually a couple, immediately welcomed her, and Ventress made sure to introduce him. "Anakin, have you met Zam Wesell? She's an award-winning journalist."
"No I haven't." Anakin shook hands with the woman beside him, and Ventress signaled over to the elder gentleman on the other side of the coffee table.
"And this is Mr Lott Dod. He's a banker." Ventress gave the man a smile that reads like a dirty limerick. "And this is Anakin. Palpatine's guy."
"Oh. You're Sheev's new guy." The man's eyes impaled Anakin with his incisiveness.
"Anakin. That's a rare name." Zam contemplated, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I've only ever met one other."
Anakin was surprised that there was any other Anakins out there. "I always assumed my mother just made it up."
"It means warrior in Sanskrit." The lady said warmly, admiring Anakin's timid blue eyes.
"I did not know that." Out came Anakin's boyish grin. "My mother said she liked that it sounded like Achilles."
"Why would anyone name their son after Achilles?" Lott Dod's grumpy voice could make things awkward, but the finely-tuned relief of Zam's saved the conversation.
"Oh I don't know." She harmoniously let out an exaggerated sigh. "Maybe because he was strong and supremely handsome."
"Achilles was a flawed man. His lack of emotional stability was fatal. Hardly aspirational..." Lott Dod's grumbling recommenced as he puffed on his cigar, impelling Ventress to change the subject.
"Anakin is married to Padme Amidala, you know her from the firm?"
"Oh yes." Zam's gaze floated back to Anakin, her ring clicking against her champagne glass. While everyone else drank whisky, she drank champagne. She liked to change it up. "You know what Padme means, don't you?"
"Nope." Anakin lifted his shoulders with a helpless smile. "Don't know that either."
"In short, purity. Directly translated it means lotus flower. In Buddhism, it is seen as a sign of purity."
"He needs that." Ventress joked, humorously poking Anakin.
"Would you like a smoke?" Zam offered Anakin her pack of cigarettes on the table.
Anakin's stare roved over them, then a quick exhale followed his reply. "No thanks."
"He quit." Ventress snatched the pack and took a cigarette for herself. She tapped the filter downward on the coffee table a couple times for good luck.
All the vampires walking through the valley
And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows
And the good girls are home with broken hearts
Anakin had never been around such extravagance before and not felt out of place. Zam and her friends and even Lott Dod eventually would stop to hear what he had to say, like Palpatine's stamp of approval meant he was someone to be respected. They hung off every word like it was priceless. Whenever he cracked a joke, their laughter lit a tiny fire in him, unlocking a dream he had buried and a power he didn't know he had.
Ventress, who had gone off on her own to chat up some successful men, returned and tapped Anakin on the shoulder in the height of his fame and frivolity. "...Maybe you should call your wife."
Anakin's smile faded as he met Ventress with a paleness slashing his cheeks, recognizing that he had let the night completely absorb him. Perhaps he was more impressionable than he expected, more easily swayed than he'd like to admit. He turned to his company and excused himself with a gentlemanliness. He stood rather stiffly and faced Ventress when they had distanced themselves from the group. He scrubbed a gruff hand over his mouth and down his jaw. "I completely lost track of time... I better get going. Need a ride?"
"No I'll stay." As Anakin stepped away, retrieving his car keys from his pocket, she called after him. "Had fun?"
He looked back and thought for a moment. "Yeah."
"Then don't beat yourself up about it." Ventress raised a hand slightly, wagging only two of her fingers in a downward motion before turning on her heel. He watched her head back to the group still engrossed in their gaiety. They were a fun bunch, and one cozy, rocking chair thought glided through him: he loved his job.
It was almost 10pm and Padme was still wide awake. She had called that rangy, chatty colleague of hers around 7pm, asking about Anakin. She was in bed, pillow propped up against the headboard, and reading one of Anakin's books. Bukowski... whose words were quite fitting here: Find what you love and let it kill you.
She heard Anakin come home, the smell of scotch hurtled at her indrawn breath before he had even arrived. He traipsed into the bedroom, tugging at his loosened tie around a shirt already unbuttoned at the collar.
"Home so soon?" She asked with a frowning mouth, not looking up from the book.
Anakin held up his palms in the air, sheepishly. "I passed by Palpatine's after work. He had a little gathering..."
He fell forward onto the bed, landing beside her, and she shifted to the other side, sensitive to the pungent odor alcohol had stained him in. He could sense her lack of interest in his explanation. It bothered her a lot. It was hard for her to explain. It took a lifetime for her to understand it herself. But him being pulled into that world felt like a distant bad dream or even a bad movie – one she had seen before, and she already knows how it ends. Clovis would say the same excuses whenever he showed up late. First it was a party, then it's a meeting, then an emergency, and eventually it's. . .all the time.
There was something about how quickly this world takes decades from your life, how it makes you numb to feelings, your own and others'. It evokes a war when you don't even know you're in battle. It had ensnared Clovis in his mid-thirties. Anakin was only twenty-two. She didn't want him to get lost in the big blur, too.
"I'm sorry, I was only going for one drink. I just. . .got carried away. But I met Grievous!" He tried to sway her, coalescing cheery and cheeky.
But her body had coiled tighter, twisting as she turned from him. "I called Jar Jar."
"Binks? That guy on the 6th floor who never stops talking?" His facetiousness had her eyes drifting away restlessly, abstracted.
"He said you left with Ventress."
Anakin lips parted in realization. The last three hours must have been a spiral for her. Forced awake under the stimulus of over-analysis, a mind swirling incessantly from all that was unanswered.
"...I drove her there." It came out as reassuring as he wanted it to, but her mind was running wild. She needed an interlude. "Is that what this is about?" Anakin reached over to pacify her, but her hand shot up, cutting off any contact. "Padme, come on–"
Worked into a state of fright where all logic is stolen from her, her anxieties were bubbling up. She couldn't stop it. The words just slipped out, denting his unfinished sentence. "Are you sleeping with her?" She anticipated the worst once she blurted it out, but Anakin's chin jutted forward, stunned, gawking at her as he tried to gauge the seriousness of her question without laughing.
"No." He drawled slowly. But her downcast eyes held clingingly onto the quiet. "Look at me." He pleaded, but she couldn't face him. He pushed himself to sit up straight on the mattress. "Look at me."
She finally did when his fingers encircled her wrist.
And softness awaited her in his turquoise eyes and in his declared promise: "I'm not looking at anybody else... My eyes are all over you. It's always you."
She heard what he had to say with a sad smile. She then threw her head back, feeling lost. It seemed silly to doubt him, and on a good day, she wouldn't. But this party crept in like a terrible depression. "I know I'm probably not making any sense. But things are so different now. This city is different. My body is different... You're different." Her voice lowered in volume the more personal her words got.
"How am I different?" He rasped soothingly. "Okay, I'm a little less punctual... And I'm gonna work on that." His lightheartedness was rubbing off on her. The rascal. He pressed his lips to her belly and all she could see was the top of his head as he descended, his full hair roused her fingers to delve into those golden sun streaks. His forefinger drew a line down the roundedness. "And your body. . .is beautiful."
He lifted his satiny gaze and it elevated her yearning for his smoothness, his charm.
I want to write her, her name in the sky
I want to free fall out into nothing
Oh, I'm gonna leave this, this world for a while
Padme drove Artoo under the afternoon's fiery sky. It was a beautiful drive, and it might be her last. Soon she would be too big to be driving. She parked by the racetrack close to work and got out of the car.
She looked ahead and spotted Anakin almost immediately. He was the one in the yellow car that drove by in a flash down the track. She knew it was him. He had a way behind the wheel. It reminded her of Tatooine and the sand park. Occasionally, he'd take her there as soon as the sun came up over the pretty lights of the night before. And Padme would get in the passenger seat while he drove; they're sphered by the open road ahead, and the snoring world was yet to rise. Sometimes he'd put the top down and the wind would make her hair come to life.
The racetrack wasn't busy, and it was in a fairly open space. The tall skyscrapers bordered one side of the area. But it wasn't the same as seeing Tatooine's cold pink mountains as a backdrop.
Anakin finally parked, and when he stepped out, she could see on his face that he had found solace behind the wheel. Somehow the wheels planted him firmly in the earth's peace. He was dressed quite casually today with a t-shirt under his blazer. He'd been a suit-and-tie guy for a while now. It made him unrecognizable at times – the power of fashion.
She almost missed this Anakin, the carefree racer...
He was barely out the car when a group of three girls flocked to his space in shorts and colorful tank tops, swinging ponytails and cleavage. Two blondes, one tall and wiry, the other short and curvy, and an unreserved brunette in between, bright and overly friendly.
It was clear that Palpatine's name attached to him made Anakin very popular, and this newfound attention spread to the racetrack. Back in Tatooine, if Anakin was swarmed by a group of strangers, he'd politely nod and zig-zag his way out. He never liked the crowds and he wasn't very smooth back in the day. Life was rough and it made him rough. Although there weren't any screaming girls back then either. Everyone knew everyone in Tatooine. Anakin would tell Padme that dating was awkward in a small town. Most of its citizens grew up together, and they all saw him as the rebel kid who lacked self-worth.
But this new venture had struck something in him, a self-assuredness. The city was bigger, badder, and so was the test of temptation. Anakin even seemed to adopt a suave new language as he moved through the adulation the girls threw at him and over to the two men who owned the racetrack – former racers themselves. These men looked like your quintessential biker boys. Beards and beer bellies.
Anakin did a double take when he saw Artoo on the outskirts, and his eyes landed on that familiar crème brûlée glow and rose-pink lips. The hair a portrait waiting to be seen, a sensual waterfall to ravish him in. Padme, ever photogenic, curved her lips slightly.
He made his way over to her, his lips curling in a big, idolizing smile. "Hey you!"
"Hey gorgeous." She murmured. And he did look gorgeous in a heart-shattering kind of way, hair in disarray, and that excitable racer vibe of his demands her attention enormously.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, the frisson of the ride still steaming through his driving gloves bracing her shoulders.
"I had to stop by the office. Palpatine said you were here."
"Yeah, sometimes I come here on my lunch break. . .go for a drive."
He stalked her eyes as they flicked downward.
"You okay?" He ducked his head to meet her eye-line. She nodded impassively. She was then badgered by the intrusive eyes on them. The same girls that lurched at Anakin with wide grins had little cordiality when they lasered their attention on her. And it set off familiar discomforts.
"Got a little fan club over here." Padme discreetly gestured over and Anakin's glance bounced there and back. A rumble of protest was heard from deep in his chest as he stared back at his wife, full of directness and thrust. He felt she was complicating it, creating a cause for concern where there was none, and it exhausted him.
"Come on." He groaned with an almost annoyed inhale, thinking they already had this discussion after Palpatine's party. She had no reason to feel insecure.
Her hormones were definitely getting the better of her, distorted by a jealous vision. It had a power over her feelings. "Anakin, I'm just saying those girls–"
But before she could dredge up another word, he swooped in, with an arm around her shoulders, and cut her off with a sumptuous kiss. A good kiss that makes the world stand still. A kiss that reclaims the cosmos and she literally couldn't think about anything else. It had been a while since he kissed her like that. With his full lips pulling hers into his mouth, and his tongue, potent and subjugating, curling against hers. She melded to the hands that were normally tense with aggression. Now a gentled touch seeped through those fingers, turning soft, free to roam her.
And boy did she miss this side of him, completely consumed by the Anakin she loved. It is a side the outside world rarely sees. His originality that he had abandoned a little too often lately.
So, she abandoned the version of herself who suffered all this tension and gave herself to his seductiveness.
That shut down any irrational fears.
"Come meet the guys." He brought her over to the two men of earlier. The beards and beer belly owners were lively yet laidback. One took Padme's hand and kissed it. And a playfully possessive Anakin warded him off with a hand on the man's chest, the rigidness of a metal, militarily-precise vise preventing him from coming any closer.
The girls watched on from afar with an eye of envy and didn't share the men's ebullience. It made Padme wonder... If she could see Anakin's talent, strength, and uniqueness, then she supposed she should be prepared that others will see it too. This was a major chapter in Anakin's life. And along the way, there would be unplanned and unpursued obstacles.
And if our lives are lived in chapters, then there will be continuous rebirths. She could only seek comfort in distractions and believe that her trepidation, too, shall pass.
Now I'm free
Free fallin', fallin'
Now I'm free
Free fallin', fallin'
Free Fallin' - John Mayer version