Interlude Chapter 6: Padmé Amidala, a star wars fanfic

A/N: Just made it by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin! Oy, this one has been a doozy to write, but I'm glad I stuck it out! I do have one little note to add here before I let you have at it. Slight spoiler alert: This is the last time you'll see a previous scene from a different POV. I don't intend to repeat the dual POV for any remaining scenes in this work. I wasn't actually sure I was going to include competing perspectives where I did. But I really wanted to showcase how these pivotal conflicts hit differently for each character. It becomes much more consequential down the road if you know where Anakin, Padmé, and Obi-Wan land. If I've done my job as writer, it makes what comes later not only make more sense, but also rounds out each character's arc from start to finish. So, in advance, thank you for humoring me! I hope I laid my groundwork well. :)

PS: I tweaked some dialogue for that dueling perspective scene here, AND adjusted it accordingly in Chapter 5. It doesn't require a re-read, but if your sharp eyes catch the subtle change, rest assured, you aren't imagining things!

As always, reviews/comments/thoughts are greatly appreciated!

Chapter 6

PADMÉ AMIDALA

It didn't matter the reason – be it for school retreat, a safe house to escape assassins, or just to indulge a family vacation – Varykino was always a sight for sore eyes and a respite for tired souls. Since their arrival in the late afternoon, they had only been on Naboo and the family property for a smattering of hours, but already Padmé felt the weighted stresses of her Coruscant life and the galaxy's war sliding off her slim shoulders.

This time of year, when life flourished under the vernal sun, the waters surrounding Varykino were warm, so it wasn't surprising when her bare skin acclimated quickly, her feet dangling off the dock into the lake. Lazily, she kicked them back and forth, relishing the somnolent drag of the water between her toes juxtaposed with its carefree buoyancy around her limbs.

"Gah!"

The strangled groan at her side suggested that her companion did not share her fondness for this particular evening excursion. Though she failed to her amused smile, Padmé did manage to stifle her giggle as Anakin sank his long legs over the dock's edge into the water - albeit very, very slowly. He sensed the lightness in her mood, catching her eye, his wince momentarily melting away to mirror her carefree grin.

"You actually enjoy this?" he asked, wrinkling his nose.

"Give it a minute," she answered, the laugh she had been suppressing finally escaping her efforts to contain it. "You'll get used to it."

Then again, she thought, would there ever be a temperature of water warm enough for the man hailing from perhaps one of the driest and hottest biomes in the galaxy? Judging by the scrunched look on Anakin's face as he mimicked the languid movement of her lower legs with his own, Padmé doubted it.

Playfully, she kicked sideways at him. The errant motion disturbed the swirling vortices they were creating on the moonlit surface enough to splash up on Anakin. As lake water peppered his exposed calves just how she intended, he yelped, then made a show of leaning away from any further pre-meditated liquid attacks.

Padmé smiled back sweetly at him, her tongue peeking out between her teeth, no remorse in the slightest evident for her watery torment. Anakin narrowed his eyes at her assumed innocent expression, eventually relaxing his defensive posture when the moment lapsed from rousing flirtation to comfortable silence.

Faint calls of a pelikki mother to her boisterous young danced along to the gentle tune of the evening breeze. Soft sloshes of water against the anchored posts of the dock provided a rhythmic harmony to the melodic chorus of awakening crickets. Adding to an already enchanted evening, the night music of Naboo's Lake Country serenaded them as they sat, until a louder and much closer maternal call of warning interrupted the natural concerto.

Anakin flinched, twisting towards the lake house when a child's shriek punctured the peaceful night air. "I wonder who that was," he grimaced

Padmé listened to the unintelligible but firm matronly command that put an immediate stop to any more high-pitched youthful protests. Her nieces had been so ecstatic when they had finally arrived to Varykino that Sola had had her hands full corralling their exuberant energy ever since. Ryoo and Pooja had almost physically knocked Anakin off his feet with how hard they had crashed into him with excited hugs upon their arrival.

"They can be a bit overwhelming when they get wound up," Padmé said gently. The fondness in her voice softened the edges of her statement considerably.

"Ryoo and Pooja?" Anakin asked, shaking his head, his full lips parting in a genuine smile. "No, they're great." His eyes gleamed suddenly in the cover of the night. "Your sister though…" He let out a low whistle and heaved an overly dramatic breath.

Pulling a wry face, Padmé bumped her shoulder into him at his good-natured teasing. His acknowledging laugh rumbled softly out of him, her heart dancing at the sound of it. His laughter was one of the most beautiful sounds Padmé had ever heard. It delighted her to no end whenever she was responsible for eliciting such joyous emotion from him.

"What about me?"

Both dock dwellers turned to see the topical trio walking toward them down the weathered pier. Well, Sola walked. Ryoo and Pooja bounced along the wooden boards, their energy reserves clearly not in danger of being tapped despite the deepening evening hour.

"She started it," Anakin said, shamelessly pointing a finger of blame Padmé's direction.

His grin only grew wider at her raised eyebrow of warning.

"We aren't here to interrupt you two for long," Sola explained, snagging a wayward Pooja who had been leaning a bit too far over the edge for her mother's comfort. "I just brought these rebels out to say their good-nights."

"But Mama," Pooja whined. "I want to go for a midnight swim, too!"

"They aren't swimming – Ryoo, get back here!" Sola barked. Padmé watched her older niece sulk her way through her return, beckoning encouragingly with her arms when Ryoo caught her aunt's eye as Sola turned back to deter her youngest. "Uncle Ani and Aunt Mé-Mé just came out here to get a little peace and quiet. They've had a long day."

"Good night, starlight," Padmé said, kissing the still frowning Ryoo on the cheek. She reached for Pooja next, the little girl giggling loudly, her dismay at missing out on any presumed water activities already forgotten. Folding the little girl into her embrace, Padmé glanced up at her sister. "We'll be in soon," she promised.

Sola waved a dismissive hand at her, though she directed her next words at Anakin.

"Don't let Padmé get too lost in her thoughts out here," Sola warned warmly. "She'll walk these skies all night, if you let her."

"Good niiiiight, Sola," Padmé called out pointedly, before the eldest Naberrie present could bestow any more unsolicited "sisterly wisdom".

Considering Sola's words, Anakin tilted his head curiously at her, but she merely winked at him with a sly grin, before gathering her brood and bidding them a final good night.

"Their energy always amazes me," Padmé said, watching her sister shepherd her nieces back toward the glowing lake house. She turned to study Anakin watching their retreat. The question burst out of her before she even knew she was even going to ask it. "Do you think our children will be like that?"

"Nah," Anakin replied blithely, not even balking at the directness of her abruptly forward question. "Ours will be way worse."

"Worse?!" Padmé gasped, somewhat incredulous.

"With you as their mother…?" Anakin trailed off deliberately, a smirk gracing his handsome face. "You can't even sit still for five minutes before joining yet another committee in the Senate or proposing a new bill or…"

"Okay, okay," Padmé laughed, smiling sideways at him. "Point taken."

Anakin let go of the grip he had on the edge of the dock to pump his hand once in silent victory.

"Though I'll have you know," Padmé teased, not yet willing to let him bask too much in his early triumph. "I've now been sitting here for a solid fifteen minutes." She made a show of glancing all around their immediate surroundings. "And I don't see any datapads, do you?"

Cupping his hands about his mouth, Anakin called loudly out across the lake, "Someone alert the HoloNet!" then, raising his arms as if to highlight a headline written in the stars. "Esteemed Naboo Senator Slacks On The Job... Ow-hey!"

Feigning injury, Anakin clutched his side where Padmé was primly removing her roughly driven elbow from.

"Oh, and you're one to talk."

"I sit still for long periods of time every day!"

"The inside of a cockpit doesn't count, Ani," she retorted dryly, rolling her eyes for effect.

"Alright, you win this round," he agreed.

Padmé watched Anakin absently toss some grit into the dark lake. The disturbed surface tremored with bright silver ripples around their submerged feet, reflecting Ohma-D'un's, Onoam's and Veruna's light. Even though Naboo boasted three moons, their varying sizes and vast distances still only allowed them to cast a soft glow over their ruling planet's night.

"What did Sola mean?"

Pulling her gaze away from the serene waters, Padmé glanced back at him quizzically.

"'Walking the skies?'" Anakin explained.

"Oh that," Padmé said, somewhat dismissively. "It's just a bad joke."

Patiently, Anakin waited for her to elaborate. She sighed and lifted her chin towards the myriad of pinpoint lights twinkling down at them.

"During school retreat, or sometimes during my reign, I would come out here, by myself, and star-gaze for hours. I could just let my thoughts wander." She glanced back at him, flushing a little under his attentive gaze. "Sola says I 'let my mind walk the skies' when I go into deep-thinking mode down here."

"It's a great way to escape," Anakin offered. "I star-gazed all the time on Tatooine. Never can see any on Coruscant though." He tore his eyes away from hers, searching the night canvas above their heads. A wistful look crossed his face, and Padmé held her breath, hoping he would divulge whatever thoughts or memories he saw scribed in the heavens.

"What are you thinking?"

She desperately wanted to know.

His pensive expression shifted into something more devilish, sending Padmé's heart fluttering wildly with anticipation.

"I think…" Anakin trailed off. Instinctively, Padmé leaned towards him, her encouraging smile faltering when she took in the mischievous twinkle in his cerulean stare and the way the corner of his mouth was trying a little too hard to not turn up in a roguish grin. Unfortunately, she recognized the look on Anakin's face a second too late, though her body was already spinning away from him in a vain attempt at escape.

"…little Pooja had a great idea."

"No, no, no, don't you dare!" Padmé yelled, as strong arms suddenly wrapped themselves around her waist. Shrieking with indignation at his laugh, she flailed hard, but he anticipated her movements, using them against her, until she realized her only option was to stop fighting the inevitable plunge and just lean into it. So quickly, it took Anakin a bit by surprise, she twisted in his arms, pulling her feet from the water and locking her arms around his neck and her knees about his waist in a desperate attempt to anchor herself. Their faces only inches apart, they froze. Padmé's heart hammered away, its rapid pace set by more than the rush of adrenaline and the promise of a spontaneous after-hours swim. Anakin regarded her carefully, trying to decide just how much trouble he would be in if he made good on his threat.

She squeezed her arms and legs a little tighter. Ever so slightly, brown eyes narrowed at blues with the most intimate of challenges. Without warning, Padmé pulled his face closer, capturing his mouth with hers. Anakin groaned softly as her lips danced in the familiar wicked manner that she knew drove him insane with want. She released him just as suddenly as she had started the kiss, meeting his electrified stare gamely from beneath her lashes. Anakin's eyes dipped in lazy appraisal, pulling a shiver from her that had nothing to do with the gentle night breeze at her back.

"Ah, that's not gonna work this time, milady."

Padmé watched Anakin continue to calculate his odds for one more moment before his handsome face broke out into a wolfish grin. Her elbows raised once briefly as he shrugged, seemingly indifferent to whatever solution his calculus had solved, and then suddenly he scooted closer, readjusting his grip solidly about her hips.

"No, Ani!" she half-screamed, half-laughed. Strangling on a protesting shriek, Padmé buried her face in his neck and drew one last breath before she felt him topple them both off the wooden platform and into the watery oblivion.

Padmé should have known her efforts were hopeless.

Once Anakin Skywalker made up his mind, there was very little anyone could do to change it.

Early on in her tenure as Senator, Padmé had learned a hidden benefit to falling asleep in the living room. The panoramic windows allowed the first tendrils of dawn's light to seep into the apartment, greeting anyone slumbering on the couches long before those same rays burned with enough power to pervade the adjacent sleeping quarters. Though the golden glow presided over a vastly different landscape, Coruscant's sun did its best to mimic the artists of Naboo, wielding fantastic streaks of color across its atmosphere in a silent but powerful display of nature still resilient amongst all the artifice. In those rare moments of stolen tranquility, Padmé had always appreciated the capital star's welcoming efforts. After working tedious hours late into the prior evening, watching the sunrise in solitude was a remarkably gentle way to ease into another burgeoning, busy Coruscanti day.

That is, as long as she was willing to leave behind night's temporary respite.

This time, tucking her chin away from the solar wake-up call's rousing rays, Padmé buries her face further beneath the blanket. In her dark, cozy cave, it isn't hard to let her subconscious continue conjuring the feeling of Anakin's arms wrapped tightly about her. As she turns into the firm couch cushions at her back, she's only too happy to imagine, instead, the support of his solid, warm chest sheltering her from the sobering reality of daybreak. Despite the ferocity with which she clings to it, the dream recedes without Padmé's permission.

Reluctantly, she surfaces from sleep's fantastical realm.

Peeking over her shoulder, Padmé blinks awake and squints, the soft, infantile light harsh compared to her dream's enchanted night. Around her, the air doesn't stir with the Lake Country's spring winds tender caresses. The still apartment atmosphere is calm and quiet, eerily so after her mind had been serenaded by the pleasant and familiar susurrations of her lakeshore haven.

Sitting up sluggishly, Padmé swipes her palms across her face, gradually taking in the room around her – its solid blue walls, the blanket's weight pooling into her lap, the lack of a devilish smile that skitters her pulse every which way – and finally forces herself to accept that Varykino had, in fact, been a dream.

It had all felt so real.

But it wasn't.

Sometimes, when you believe something to be real, it becomes real.

So clearly do Anakin's words echo through her mind that Padmé startles, half-rising from her seat and spinning about expecting him to be standing behind her. The abrupt motion jostles sore muscles that had tightened overnight, and she collapses back into beige cushions that no longer offer the mirage of his embrace. Her eyes wandering her solitary surroundings, her heart pounds with devastating hope only to falter in despair when the growing light of the Coruscanti dawn further draws back the curtain on her dreamworld, leaving reality's cold presence to shimmer obtrusively where Anakin had spoken from.

Or rather from where her imagination had projected her hopeful phantom.

Her heart thumps hard several times rejecting her conclusion.

Anakin is not here. Nor would he likely be present in her living room ever again, no matter how much she wished for or willed it to be otherwise. Especially at such an unprecedented hour of the day.

Especially not after her conversation with Obi-Wan last evening.

"…you must understand that any relationship between you two…"

Padmé blinks again, all too happy to banish that unsolicited specter from her ghostly reminiscing as frigidly as she had dismissed its owner last evening. Yet, Obi-Wan's words linger, hauntingly.

"…if you truly care for Anakin…"

And that was the problem – she did care. She cared too much. Far too much. And not in a way that was appropriate for a Galactic Senator to care about a Jedi. Obi-Wan's pedantic scowl had done nothing to curtail the frenetic way her pulse rocketed into lightspeed the moment he acquiesced to her plea to see Anakin. Even now, the memory of his ominous concern isn't enough to slow the wild galloping of her heart.

Her feelings regarding Anakin were so much more than just concerning; they were downright problematic.

But Senator Amidala didn't run away from a problem. She hadn't in the past, and she wasn't about to start now. Padmé had built her career on solving the seemingly unsolvable, on coaxing the compromise out of unyielding colleagues, on finding even the most elusive answers to the most irresoluble questions.

Leave no asteroid overlooked.

When faced with the impossible, Padmé considered all the options before her, no matter how ridiculous or untenable the solution seemed. Learned early in her education, it was an exercise that had served her well time and time again, first as leader of a planet under attack, then later as a representative navigating hostile political environs. Real life applications had honed her skillset until she excelled at unraveling even the most unmanageable of tangled webs. Ingenuity combined with open-mindedness had never failed to overcome the insurmountable odds facing her as reigning monarch and public servant… but as a young woman in love?

Could level-headed reasoning answer the irrational riddles of her heart?

Well, won't know if I don't try.

Wrapping the blanket about herself in a makeshift robe, Padmé stands and places the throw pillow in its proper place. Satisfied that her overnight presence in the living room is sufficiently undetectable, she steals one last wistful look at the sunrise before retreating to the shadows of her bedroom. Resting comfortingly across her shoulders, the blanket's illusion of Anakin's secure and steadfast presence is a welcome one. Just like his heavy outer robes did, its lower edge trails softly on the carpet after her as she walks and considers all of her – their options.

Three come to mind. Feel free to chime in with any others, Ani.

The first and most obvious path before them, not so ironically, leads to a dead end. Whatever feelings stirred up on Naboo needed to be squashed, all further and future contact terminated before they were swept out farther into the sordid sea. All too well, Padmé recalls Anakin's unamused reaction to this previous proposal, his impassioned counterarguments still roaming dangerously free in her head. From the way her heart yanks the reins of logic out of her mind's desperate grip, Padmé knows she won't be able to refuse him a second time.

Even if she could find the strength again to recount the unyielding rules standing in their way, or to reiterate the multitudinous reasons why they shouldn't, she seriously doubts Anakin would believe her conviction now. As the saying went, the nexu was already out of the jungle; she had her declaration in the face of their certain doom to thank for that.

So where does that leave us?

At an impasse, Padmé halts in the antechamber of her private quarters. The gloom of the unused bedroom stares back silently, its empty void all too symbolic of the bleakness of an existence without Anakin. Clutching the blanket tighter to her chest, she pushes past the shudder working its way up her spine and steps across the threshold.

The second, potentially more palatable option is to maintain a strictly professional relationship. The onset of civil war drastically increased the likelihood that her path would cross with Anakin's, and likely more frequently. If she and Anakin were trying to avoid each other at all costs, another unnecessary level of drama would add to already tense and challenging circumstances. For both their sakes, they would need to find some manageable middle ground.

Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden.

But nowhere in his recitation of the Jedi Code had Anakin mentioned rules expressly forbidding friendship. Nor did she recall any restrictive definitions in her own limited knowledge of their doctrine. While not the norm, Padmé knew of a colleague or two who harbored genial relationships with the Jedi that hadn't raised any eyebrows. Casual companionship could be a reasonable compromise for them, as long that was all that they indulged in.

And how well did that work out for you?

Grimacing, Padmé slips the blanket from her shoulders, its comforting weight falling to the floor in a pile of disheveled plush.

After Anakin's bold intensity during their freighter conversation, Padmé made herself a silent promise to wade into those uncharted waters delicately, carefully. It would do more harm than good to outright shut down her bodyguard's hopeful and leading advances only to suffer the awkward aftermath in forced isolation - together. However, if Padmé could safely fashion Anakin's expectations (and her own) in a more appropriate veneer, then maybe, just maybe they could find themselves standing on firm, friendly footing.

Fashioning his expectations?

A parade of her wardrobe choices during their time at Varykino flashes through her mind. Flowy pastel fabrics barely shrouding sun-kissed skin to boldly clinging corsets that, while covering, left no curve unseen.

So that's what you were doing?

Padmé flinches. Honestly, Anakin's tolerance of casual companionship is irrelevant when considering her own non-adherence to this tamer standard. Walking friendship's high wire left them both open to precipitous slips to either side. Thankfully, when she lost her precarious balance, Naboo's sandy lakeshores provided a somewhat soft, if uncomfortable landing; falling at Coruscant's social altitudes would be much more… catastrophic.

"could ultimately have far-reaching catastrophic consequences… for you both."

It can't be coincidental that Obi-Wan's dire prediction chooses this moment to resurface. Frowning, Padmé snatches up the blanket at her feet and busies herself folding it, momentarily letting her hands distract her the same way she had watched them work through countless loads of laundry during a long, lonely Tatooinian night.

Catastrophic consequences? She can think of things far worse than public scandal.

Besides, even if she and Anakin were somehow able to maintain their balance, misery inevitably waited for them at the end of the narrow beam. Misery in the form of their unfinished undertone. Could they handle the possibility of 'what if' always lingering between them? As unthinkable as it was right now, what if she met someone else capable of turning her head in the future? Would Anakin be able to watch from the sidelines without interfering? If the tables were turned, could she?

From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you.

His avowal, spoken with such passion, unnerved her in its sincerity. Not only had Anakin bared his soul by the fire, he had simultaneously stripped off the blindfold smothering her own leaving her to contend with a frightening truth. Padmé couldn't claim having held a reciprocal vigil during their ten-year separation, but she had been terrified to confess that since their serendipitous reunion, not a minute had passed when she hadn't been consumed by thoughts of him.

And now this idea of keeping Anakin at arm's length? Indefinitely?

The thought of not being with you… I can't breathe.

As if to stop her hearts' thunderous pounding, Padmé presses a palm to her chest and gasps for air that won't come. Panic seizes her in its relentless grasp. Shaking hands abandon their orderly task, the blanket once again falling forgotten to her feet.

Who was she kidding? Friendship would never be enough. Not when she had only just tasted delicious temptation. Not when she knew she would always crave more.

We could keep it a secret.

Anakin's easy assurance of the impossible last choice is as alluring as it is alarming. Her heartrate surges, now chasing the memory of an azure gaze holding an irresistible hope that had set her ablaze with wild and dangerous ideas. There's no containing the sudden swell that bursts forth, pressing outwardly, overwhelmingly underneath her skin until she feels like she's coming apart at the seams. She knows, because she's tried. She knows because Anakin…

"Good morning."

Whirling about, Padmé blinks owlishly at her handmaiden waiting in the doorway.

"Good morning," she replies, only remembering herself after several long moments. She prays her treacherous thoughts aren't written all over her face. Padmé needn't have worried. Flushed cheeks, on their own, wouldn't raise anyone's suspicions.

But as Dormé ventures further into the room, her eyes quickly flitting over the crumpled covering at Padmé's feet and the comforter still draped pristinely over the bed, Padmé remembers that handmaidens weren't selected to be just anyone.

"How are you feeling?" Dormé asks, her tone light, deliberately so, though her watchful gaze continues to weigh Padmé's every move.

"As good as can be expected." Gathering her loose waves over one shoulder, Padmé twists away to show her back, deftly shifting the conversation and Dormé's attention away from her ongoing emotional soiree. "My bandages are a bit itchy. Would you mind…"

"But of course, milady!"

Beckoning Padmé towards the vanity, Dormé springs into action, intent on gathering the necessary supplies. Gratefully, Padmé breathes a sigh of relief, the rising awkward air now dispelled by duty's familiar routine. Three short strides carry her to the chair her handmaiden slides over to the dressing table.

Carefully, Dormé peels the bacta pads from Padmé's back, a gasp interrupting her stalwart focus as the wounds come into view.

"The Jedi's bacta must be extra strength. Your scratches look much better this morning," Dormé comments, pressing a finger inquisitively along the healing skin. Then, regret darkens the pleasant surprise spread across her features. "Though, I'm afraid, these still might scar."

My heart is beating…

Anakin's lurid confession dancing between her ears, Padmé bites down hard suddenly on her tingling lower lip, ducking her eyes away from Dormé's in the reflective surface.

Misinterpreting Padmé's unease, Dormé places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Not to worry," she soothes. "With time, they'll barely be noticeable."

Unable to trust her voice, Padmé nods. How can she explain that her physical souvenirs from the past week were not the ones she was most worried about?

Presuming acceptance over her assessment, Dormé changes the subject.

"What news did Master Kenobi bring?"

At Anakin's mentor's name, Padmé stiffens. Mustering a dubious smile for her handmaiden, she forces herself to relax. There was no reason to give Dormé's already piqued suspicions any more fodder on which to ruminate.

"The good kind," Padmé lies, proud of the breeziness she manages to instill in her voice. With more confidence, she adds, "He said I am allowed to see Anakin this morning."

"Oh," Dormé says, tearing open a new bacta pad. "I didn't realize the Jedi held visiting hours."

She raises an inquiring eyebrow at Padmé in the mirror.

"No, not usually," Padmé agrees slowly. "But as my bodyguard, he is my responsibility."

It's a politician's response, designed to explain without revealing any real details. A sly smile starting in her eyes before catching up to her lips, Dormé recognizes the evasive maneuver instantly.

"I thought you were his responsibility."

Like a strigo paralyzed by a blinding head beam, Padmé stares into the glass, heart pounding. A part of her knows she can trust Dormé with absolutely anything. But another part of her recoils, her feelings regarding Anakin suddenly too precious to share - even someone she considers her closest confidant.

Under Padmé's frozen trance, Dormé's smirk falters. "Forgive me, milady, I –"

"It's my fault he got hurt," Padmé interjects, the pink bloom across her skin unmistakable now. It's the only admission her heart will allow, but it's one she needs to voice. Even a life of lies needs some support by pillars of truth. "I need to know he's okay."

Pausing her ministrations, Dormé glances back up to the mirror. As she watches her handmaiden process the reflection in front of her, Padmé hopes that Dormé hears the words she cannot openly speak. After a moment, Dormé's face softens with a new level of understanding.

"Does Typho know of this morning's itinerary change?" she asks wryly.

"No, not yet," Padmé admits, then sheepishly adds, "I was hoping you could inform him for me?"

"I can manage that," Dormé assures her. Smoothing the final bandage into place, she starts to collect the used gauze strips when Padmé catches her hand and gives it a grateful squeeze. With a wink and a acknowledging squeeze of her own, Dormé grins then resumes her path towards the fresher.

"Should I fetch you on of the Senate gowns?" her handmaiden asks. "Or…"

Twisting around her seat at Dormé's leading pause, Padmé notes the mischievous glint in her friend's brown orbs.

"… would you be more comfortable in something less?"

It's impossible to keep the excitement from building. Like a potent elixir, it thrums through her bloodstream, making her heart race and her skin burn. Padmé's not sure what exactly Dormé gleaned from their brief mirror impasse, but it's nice to feel like she has an ally.

"Something less formal will be fine," Padmé replies, stressing the word she knows Dormé cheekily left out.

With an overly demure nod, Dormé curtsies once.

"Yes, milady."

In her haste to see Anakin, Padmé had completely forgotten about her meeting with Bail.

Thankfully, her wardrobe mistress hadn't.

Far less grandiose than the normal requirement for the Senate Rotunda, the green dress Dormé selects is still stately enough for her afternoon appointment with the Senator from Alderaan and comfortable enough to accommodate her healing back. While Dormé highlights the details allowing the garment to pull double duty, all Padmé can wonder, as she takes in the scooped neckline and slender-fitting waist, is how many shades she'll see cycle through a certain pair of blue eyes.

That curiosity alone rushes her through the rest of the morning routine. Before Padmé knows it, she's settled in the back of an M-class airsedan on her way back to the Jedi Temple.

In addition to outfit selection, Dormé had worked another form of her magic on Typho. Her security captain had accepted their morning's detour with far less pushback than Padmé had anticipated, leaving her growing anxiety nowhere to focus but on her reunion with Anakin.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Some of her angst had spent itself on Threepio. When he realized he was not invited along, Anakin's protocol droid had been massively put out, so much so that Padmé's harshly raised voice had stunned everyone present.

Gazing out the speeder's window, Padmé cringes at her poor handling of Threepio's obstinate worrying; after all, he had every right to be concerned about his maker. In the future, she'd have to find gentler ways guiding his stubborn programming into compliance.

But there was little she could do to relieve her remorse now.

Looming ever closer, the Jedi Temple's impressive façade shimmers silver in the dawn's light. Only yesterday, Padmé had lamented the five-spired silhouette's disappearance from view, but as her heart soars upon seeing the unique pyramidal wonder gracing Coruscant's skyline, her pulse also thrums with underlying trepidation.

"You should really eat something," Dormé says, interrupting her thoughts. Gently, she nudges a bag of muffins closer to Padmé. Grabbed during the quick departure, it sat untouched on the bench seat between them.

"I will," Padmé replies, though she makes no motion to take Dormé up on her suggestion. Pointedly ignoring the look her handmaiden throws her way, Padmé turns back to her window. Even if she had an appetite, she doubts she could stomach anything given the Endorian jumping beans currently in residence there.

The closer they get to Anakin, the more feverish her anticipation becomes. The closer they get to the Temple, the more reality menaces.

Dropping them out of main traffic, Typho slips the speeder into the Temple's shadow still stretching itself awake. The sudden descent only adds to her mounting queasiness. Silently, Padmé sends a grateful prayer to the abruptly darkened interior that hides her face from Dormé's fastidious peeking. Out of the corner of her eye, Padmé can see that her handmaiden's enthusiasm for this venture dwindles with every passing second.

It's not long before they round the final turn onto Processional Way, one of the only surface-level sites still privileged enough to see Coruscant's sky. Aside from the five Jedi standing guard around the plaza, the Temple's main entrance is nearly empty at this hour.

Nearly.

Hands tucked into long sleeves, a lone Jedi Knight stands at the end of the thoroughfare, awaiting their arrival. As Typho parks the airspeeder, Obi-Wan's piercing gaze locks onto her window, seemingly able to see right through the tinted transparisteel.

Taking a deep steadying breath, Padmé unbuckles her safety restraints and pulls up the hood of her cloak. She tells herself it's to ward off the chilly air outside and not to hide from scrutinizing eyes – Jedi or otherwise.

Hovering over her door's sensor, her clammy palm hesitates over the door's sensor when several other clicks echo through the small cabin.

"No," Padmé says, halting her handmaiden and security captain's collective movements. "Wait right here, please." Questions screaming from their eyes, the duo frown at their lady's command, but before either can protest, Padmé exits the speeder, slamming the door firmly behind her.

"Senator," he nods.

"How is he?" she asks in return. The nervous eagerness surging through her veins refuses to be chastened by his stoicism.

Obi-Wan frowns.

"His surgery went well," he offers. Then, without elaborating, he spins on his booted heel, heading up the stone stairs. "This way."

Obi-Wan makes no further attempt at conversation. Padmé is thankful for the small kindness. After the previous evening, she imagines even the most banal topics would feel awkward and strained. He had made it expressly clear that he was allowing this reunion only out of reluctant necessity.

Like its outdoor neighbor, the Great Hall yawns with serene stillness, its soaring mezzanines and marble pillars awaiting disciples to fill them with the unraveling day. No linger littered with injured clones and overrun Jedi healers, the vast emptiness should be heartening; instead, the tranquility makes Padmé feel even more unwelcome.

For good measure, Padmé tugs on her hood as they navigate their way through its endless corridors. Though she doubts she's fooling anyone, the illusion of anonymity brings strength to her shaky legs.

How many Jedi have walked these hallowed hallways, their footsteps printing paths of peace, their destinations directed by selfless duty? How many times had Anakin tread the tiles and carpets of this centuries-old marvel in pursuit of his own destiny?

Often, Padmé let wisdom far beyond her twenty-four years guide her in times of uncertainty. But the prodigal maturity that had earned her a monarch's seat seems woefully ignorant when compared to the knowledge held in this ancient and honored institution.

Now, here she is, an outsider walking straight through the belly of the beast with nothing but selfish desire as her shield and the dregs of a delusional dream as her map, looking to lead their Chosen One astray.

But I haven't stolen him away yet. Anakin will tell you that.

At her pathetic denial, the Great Hall's expansive silence sounds a lot like laughter.

Pushing away the guilt behind that unnerving thought, Padmé barely manages to avoid a suddenly still Obi-Wan. Halting outside a non-descript doorway, he forgoes a pin entry and presses his palm to the access panel. The door races upward to comply with his request.

From the quiet interior, someone speaks.

"Ah, there you are Master."

Padmé's heart stutters in her chest. She would know his voice in any distant corner of the galaxy.

"I was beginning to wonder if…"

Anakin's witty remark fades when she follows Obi-Wan into the room. Finally lowering her hood, she braces herself for a familiar blue burn. The searing intensity of Anakin's stare doesn't disappoint.

Purposefully, Padmé keeps her eyes anywhere but Anakin. It's not often that she must work to conjure the Amidala mask into place; she's used to donning it as easily as if she were sliding her hand into a glove. Even in her peripheral vision, she can see him looking at her like she hung all three of Naboo's moons. Unless she was in complete control, she knows if she were to look back, her hopeless gaze would accuse Anakin of the same.

Thankfully Obi-Wan seems more interested in his Padawan's reaction than her own. A stern set to his bearded mouth, Obi-Wan turns towards her and speaks the longest sentence he's said to her all morning.

"I'll give you what time I can."

"Thank you, Master Kenobi," she hears herself reply.

His eyes darting warily back and forth, Anakin's watches their terse exchange. Bewildered deep blue darkens with clouds of uneasy realization, begging her to soothe his ratcheting anxiety away.

Desperately, Padmé's heart pleads with her to answer Anakin's silent stare. Desperately, her mind pleads with her to remember her watchful audience of one.

Only when she's certain she's in complete control does she lift her gaze to calmly meet Anakin's.

Her attempt at blithe appearances fools no one. The moment their eyes meet, a crackling explodes into the atmosphere of the room. Just as quickly as she had indulged it, Padmé severs the power coupling arcing between them.

Though he doesn't comment, Obi-Wan peels away his scrutiny far too slowly for Padmé to believe he hadn't felt the impassioned flare. An uncomfortable silence settles over the room, each member of the trio all too aware of the intimate subtext gathering around them. Then, without further ado, Obi-Wan nods to himself, inclines his head to them, and departs without another word.

In an instant, Padmé and Anakin are completely alone.

After a moment's poignant pause, she cautiously ventures further into the room, compelled to move closer either by want or inevitability. Moving slowly across the tiled floor, Padmé fixates on the way her slippered toes peek out rhythmically from beneath the hem of her dress. Skin still atingle from his vision's caress, she wishes her racing mind and galloping heart would slow to the steadfast pace of her strides.

Anakin's impatience bursts before her own.

"How are you feeling?" Anakin asks, stealing the very words from her dry mouth.

His uncanny ability to read her so clearly unnerves her, even as his hyperawareness of her presence simultaneously thrills her.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, finding her voice at the same time she finds herself at his side. Her heart patters precipitously, awaiting his answer.

"I think that may depend on why you are here," Anakin answers carefully. At the familiar tenor of his voice, her heart dances in sheer joy, ignoring how his words rumble with dubiety and exigency. Her ears, however, don't miss the disquietude aimed her way.

He's right to be suspicious; Padmé can't really fault him there. Between her unannounced arrival with his Master and Obi-Wan's subsequent and pointed departure, the situation they now find themselves in is inexplicable at best, and unnerving at worst. She had plenty of time to prepare for their reunion and its unfortunate circumstances. Anakin had not had that luxury. More prone to paranoia and distrust, he likely sensed a trap and Padmé knew him well enough by now to know that his acerbic response was an attempt to raise his guard.

Nevertheless, it still hurts to know that Anakin feels the need to enact that protective reflex at all.

Especially with her.

Hoping to bridge the distance between them before it becomes a completely uncrossable chasm, Padmé shuns the chair at his bedside, easing herself down onto his cot so as not to jar any of the injuries present. Watching her nervously, Anakin relaxes a bit when her weight settles next to his. The press of his thigh against hers is distracting. Dangerously so. Despite being separated by several layers of clothing and a thin sheet, her skin all too readily remembers the feel of his hips under the crook of her knees, the vestiges of her dream resurfacing at the slightest provocation.

Inhaling deeply, Padmé forces back fantasy to face her reality. She hopes her sigh doesn't sound nearly as shaky as it feels rattling around in her chest.

"Obi-Wan told me your surgery went well," she starts, raising her tone and her eyes expectantly.

Padmé knows she's stretching the truth. Obi-Wan's short answer to her inquiry in the plaza was not remotely an admission of medical achievement. But the fact that Obi-Wan hadn't outright denied her visit suggested at least some level of surgical success.

The devastating weight of his bold stare weakens her spine and her hopeful resolve. She doesn't know if she should proceed with caution or revel in the reawakened electricity that surges between them.

"That's one way to put it," he replies sullenly, rolling his right shoulder.

Trying to reconcile Anakin's apparent disagreement, Padmé's eyes slide sideways from his to take in the available evidence before her. Secured in a sling, most of his right arm is hidden from view. Aware of Anakin's watchful gaze, Padmé keeps her face neutral as she lets her eyes roam the thin strip of tanned skin just visible over the top edge of the canvas before traveling to five motionless fingertips that glint in the overhead light. Concern frees the question from her before she can coat it with tact.

"Are you hurting?"

"Wouldn't know," Anakin replies abrasively. He's still watching her with that intense stare, the one that makes her feel at once alive and unsettled. "I can't even feel it."

Her brow crumples in confusion, her eyes flicking to the bag of fluids hanging over Anakin's shoulder as if it might offer a more constructive explanation than its owner.

Sighing, Anakin deflates a little, his rigid posture softening in the wake of her concern.

"The attachment went well," Anakin says. "The integration not so much."

"Integration?" Padmé asks, tilting her chin. "I'm sorry, Ani, I don't fully understand."

"Integrating the arm's sensors with my nerves," Anakin explains. "I wasn't awake for it but apparently…" His voice drifts off, and suddenly he looks like a sandy-haired boy unsure of how far to press his luck. She looks at him expectantly, patiently and he nods slightly, as if encouraging himself to resume his train of thought.

"Apparently I arrested once or twice…," he says, a little too casually. "Something about residual electrical anomalies from the duel…"

Alarm floods her so thoroughly that what her ears manage to pick up does little to soothe her increasing panic. Padmé doesn't even try to hide her crescendoing fear. She's not even sure she could have hidden it from him even if she had wanted to.

"It's not important." Digging his hole of failed reassurance deeper, Anakin waves his left hand dismissively. "They want to try again this afternoon, so it really wasn't that serious."

Narrowing her eyes at him, Padmé frowns and fixes him with a hard, unamused stare.

"Not that serious?" The pitch in her voice rises, betraying barely controlled hysteria. "Anakin, arrested means you died!"

"Yeah, but only for a minute…"

Frowning at his smile, Padmé gawks at him. The words of a retort stumble over each other until all she can do is make an indignant noise to combat his cavalier claim.

"Don't worry," Anakin snips a little, turning away from her and muttering under his breath so low she almost doesn't hear. "The Jedi wouldn't let me just die."

But Padmé does more than hear – she understands. Enlightened by Obi-Wan's revelations regarding his prophetic destiny, Padmé absorbs the resentment that used to confound her whenever she heard it in Anakin's venting. With no way of knowing that he's done so, Anakin redirects their runaway conversation until the doomed locomotive is bearing down on them.

Still, she wishes they had more time.

Hoping he recognizes the empathy in her voice, Padmé imbues as much gentleness as she can into her question.

"Because you're the Chosen One?"

It's not enough.

Eyes widening with sudden alarm, Anakin freezes. "Who told you about that?"

"Never mind," she backpedals, shaking her head. Some conversations were best left unexplored. She needs to get them back on track. She hadn't come to discuss the prophecy. Not fully anyway. She was here to discuss it in regards only to what it meant for them. "That's not why I came here…"

Anakin snaps forward at the waist, the movement so sudden, she jumps, settling into a startled freeze of her own. Vanishing in an instant, the feigned nonchalance of his demeanor bows beneath a more oppressive weight.

"Who told you?"

His tone is uncompromising, his blue eyes unyielding. Her spine shivers with an emotion she's afraid to acknowledge.

"Anakin, please," she whispers.

It's her last-ditch effort to make him stand down. His stare burns back at her with unmistakable fire, assuring her that he most definitely won't.

Padmé gives him a pained sort of look, wondering if she will ever recover from this discussion she's about to begin. She really doesn't want to do this. It's neither the time nor place, but what choice had Obi-Wan left her with? That's not fair, she thinks to herself, sighing heavily and dropping Anakin's intense stare. Her fingers flex and unflex with unease. If she's honest with herself, she had always known this moment was inevitable. She and Anakin had struck the match to light this timebomb that evening by the fireside on Naboo; Obi-Wan had only voiced concerns over the already burning fuse.

We live in a real world. Come back to it.

Wincing against her own prophetic words, she presses on, hoping she still might stumble upon some way to save them both from inexorable heartbreak.

"Obi-Wan," Padmé admits slowly, carefully. "He came to speak with me last night…"

"About the prophecy?" Anakin asks, the disbelief dripping out of his words like fresh-pressed boaboo juice.

"No," she says softly. "But it did come up in the conversation."

"Conversation about…?"

About us.

She tries to speak the words, but her mouth won't move. Her lips and her tongue are numb, her inhale seizing painfully in her chest.

His guard is up again, this time the wall being built so fast that she's losing sight of him from where she stands. Reaching for Anakin, Padmé entwines the fingers of his left hand with hers in a feeble attempt to maintain their endangered bridge as its wooden planks smolder under their very feet. Even though she knows she will ultimately burn it, Padmé sidesteps for just a moment longer.

"Why didn't you tell me, Ani?"

Anakin blinks at her, incredulous.

"Really? When would you have liked me to enlighten you?" he sneers.

This time Padmé doesn't flinch at his sarcasm. It's an attempt to reroute her, but seven days she had taught her to recognize Anakin's manifestations of pain. His fingers sliding between hers, Padmé tightens her grip, refusing to let him leave. His threatening scowl does little to cow her resolve.

"Just casually works it into one of our dinner conversations?"

A petulant frown upsets his handsome face. Steadfastly keeping her attention on him, Padmé tries not to notice the unnatural way his shrug breaks at the level of his right elbow.

"Drop it on you out of the blue during our picnic? 'Hey, Padmé, I know your life is in danger and all, but have no fear, the 'Chosen One' is at your service." Anakin snorts with displeased mirth. "As if you would have even believed me."

"I would have, Ani."

Skeptically, Anakin's eyes harden, but if she looks to the lighter shades of cerulean, she can see his want to believe her.

"I was ruler of a planet when I was barely a teenager, Ani," she says. "I understand what it's like to be saddled with immense responsibility and expectation. The difference is I volunteered for that mantle. You didn't."

She's getting through to his him, peeling away his sardonic armor to the misunderstood man beneath. She can see it in the way his lower lip disappears from view.

"I did, though, volunteer in a way."

Padmé tilts her head, not quite following but recognizing his reach for her. She waits patiently, keeping her posture soft, offering him a safe place to land.

"I left my mother behind and now…" he tries, his voice cracking.

"That's not the same thing, Ani," Padmé absolves, squeezing his fingers, keeping him tethered as waves of grief threaten to wash him away from her. "Your mother wanted a better life for you. You were following your dream…"

"Does this look like a dream to you!?"

His outburst of anger stuns her. Frantically, Padmé tries to read his face for what she should say, what he needs to hear.

"I've lost everything. My arm. My mother," he sighs heavily. Lowering his gaze, he cuts off blue windows to his soul. "If it weren't for you, I'd have nothing left."

Nothing left.

Nothing left.

He's already put so much faith in her small hands, confided that he'd question his very existence if it weren't for her. One young woman from Naboo means the galaxy to a man who has nothing left without her except…

Wincing, Padmé forces her next words out, even as her heart screams at her to keep quiet. She has to know what she would be asking of him. She has to know that she's not stealing him out from under his own destiny.

"Do you believe in it?"

"What?"

"The prophecy?" Her chest in a vise, she forces her question past her tightening vocal cords. "That you're the Chosen One?"

Searching her own just as desperately as she had searched his, Anakin gapes at her, trying to understand what she wants him to say.

"I have to, otherwise my mother died for nothing."

There goes her impossible dream.

His reply is a knife to her heart. Her face crumples, the tears are already halfway down her cheeks before she even realizes they started falling. She can't make herself look up at him.

"What is it? Why…"

Padmé feels him press and lean closer. His tender concern only makes what she's about to do all the more painful.

"What did Obi-Wan say to you?"

Hearing the tremor in his voice, Padmé looks up at him.

She really, really does not want to do this.

They had arrived at the crux of the matter.

Padmé gives him a pained sort of look. It's not the time or place. But what choice does she have? She presses on, hoping they can find some loophole that will save them from damnation. At this point, she doesn't even know which side damnation is on.

"Everything we already knew, Ani," Padmé answers miserably. "Everything we already know," Amidala amends more firmly.

Anakin scowls at her.

Despite the cool, regulated air of the Jedi Temple flowing about her, Padmé feels the heat of Varykino's fireplace at her back once again. She may as well be sitting on that couch; the loose gown she had intentionally chosen this morning so as not to further irritate her back feels way more confining than the black leather corset ever did.

She had made him a promise – unbeknownst to him and however one-sided it was – that she would never unpack that evening's awful conversation ever again. Not with him. Not with Dormé. Not even with herself in her own spiraling moments. They had already lived it. They had bled their hearts with the could-bes and could-nots. They had hurt each other with woulds and shoulds. Picking off the scabs wouldn't help the wounds to heal any faster.

But then Geonosis happened. For better or for worse, Padmé had thrown all caution and consequences out of the proverbial airlock and told society/galaxy to suffocate on its rules and decorum. If it meant she and Anakin could let their love breathe freely, even for a few stolen moments in those catacombs, then she would let it, all else be damned. After all, what regulation did Life hold over Death's dark world?

Ironically, she had been more than prepared to deal with the aftermath of her confession in death, not even remotely considering the possibility that the ramifications of her affirmation may haunt her the rest of her actual life.

She supposed that now she was about to learn how to live with ghosts.

Avoiding her eyes, Anakin picks absently at the sheet covering his lap.

"And what is it exactly that we are supposed to know?"

Padmé's mouth falls open, her stare incredulous. Her silence eventually draws his eyes to hers, the blue darkening with suppressed fury. His anger doesn't cow her, and her brown eyes blaze right back, silently rebuking him for his audacious ignorance. His bravado wilts a bit at the edges, his lower lip disappearing between his upper teeth before he firms his lips together and wills his gaze back up to hers to continue their defiant stare down.

That little moment, that tiny acknowledgement, infuriates her beyond belief.

"This can't…" The hand he dropped gestures between them. "We can't…" she falters. Suddenly, she can't breathe. There were never any other choices to consider besides the first. The exercise had only allowed denial and false hope to lure her to reality's noose.

Gathering herself, Padmé swallows down bile.

"We can't do this, Anakin."

She says it for his sake as much as her own.

Anakin's eyes flash, his face darkening considerably.

"Why?"

She looks at him, anger now coloring her wet cheeks.

"You know why," Padmé grits out. "Anakin, please don't…"

"No!"

Startled by his volume, she jumps, yanking her hand out of his. Tensely, Padmé eyes him, the hair on the back of her neck standing at full attention. "What I mean is, why won't you even try?"

"Try?" she gapes. The Senator from Naboo is speechless.

"We can keep it a secret, Padmé. I know we can," he begs.

Already shaking her head in protest, Padmé summons air to her lungs to fight back.

They've had this conversation.

They've entertained the impossible.

The outcome is the same.

I was a fool to believe otherwise.

"We aren't fooling anyone, Anakin," she cries. Underscoring her upset, she throws her arms, no longer able to contain her waterfall of emotion. Unbecomingly, a disgusted laugh erupts from her. "We haven't even begun a relationship and they already see right through us!"

Anakin stiffens, and Padmé braces for his impossible counter.

"Then we lie low, let the dust settle a bit, and…"

"It won't work. They'll never believe it. They…"

"They'll never have to know..."

"But they already do!"

"Who does?"

"Obi-Wan. Yoda. The Council," Padmé lists, shaking her head in dismay. "Obi-Wan came to tell me the Council forbids us from any further contact other than what is professionally necessary."

Anakin snorts, unamused. His cerulean stare sweeps their surroundings with an air of disdain, before settling on hers with a skeptically raised brow.

"So, this is why you're here with me now… alone?" The simper is all too evident in his voice. "I have a hard time believing the Council would find this…" He gestures between them. "Professionally necessary."

His acerbic arrows land squarely where he aimed them – her heart shatters under the shame and regret now flavoring her misery. The blatant show of emotion upends Anakin's sardonic shield.

"Padmé?"

His voice is soft, soothing, searching. It makes her next confession heinous in her ears. She looks up at him, miserable and desperate and pleading.

"I… I tried to act like nothing happened, Ani." Her swirling emotive storm stirs up distress in him. Padmé can see it in the way his handsome face tautens, his jaw clenching and unclenching. "I thought I could convince Obi-Wan that I didn't feel this way about you, but… I… I had to tell him."

He stares at her like she isn't speaking Basic anymore, like what she's telling him is incomprehensible and absurd.

"What? I don't… understand."

The confused pain on his face hurts more than she can bear. Disappointed in herself, she looks away.

"Why would you tell him?" he cries.

"Because it was the only way he would let me see you again!" Padmé blurts out, scrambling to salvage anything she can. She's never felt so lost or so out of control.

Anakin's baffled blue eyes shade to dismayed disbelief.

Before she can bring her fingers up to brush his cheek, Anakin sits back, his face suddenly filled with thunderous thought.

"What did he do to you?"

"No, no, it wasn't like that," she rushes to soothe. "He didn't do anything, Ani." Finally capturing his face, her fingers stroking over his cheekbones, his lips, his hair. Even if the truth is more disastrous than his presumption, she didn't want any more blamed placed at Obi-Wan's feet. If the galaxy was to force Anakin and her apart, she supposed she would learn to live that broken life. But, there was too much at stake for Anakin's future to have the fractures damage his relationship with his mentor as well.

Pulling away from her, Anakin eyes her like a caged animal, caught somewhere between doubt, anger and fear. Her fingers ache from the sudden loss of his warmth.

"He only agreed, because I told him I had to be the one to stop this. That if he told you, you weren't likely to believe it, and…" Padmé's chest heaves, her voice breaking. "I had to see you again."

Her heart disintegrating before him, Padmé lets him see everything in her guilty admission. Anakin's eyes narrow, suddenly suspicious.

"You don't really want to do this," Anakin growls, his tone bordering on threatening. "Do you, Padmé?"

For one heart-stopping moment, Padmé thinks it might be easier to lie to him. After all, it had worked once before when she had successfully rebuffed his offensive on an enchanting Nabooian night. But she's too far in for her lies to be believable now.

"I don't," she concedes. Anakin huffs with victory. Ignoring his premature celebration, Padmé gives him a vexed look hoping to corral his pride. "But I, we have no choice, Anakin," she continues sternly. "No matter how many times I've thought it through, looked for another solution, there's no way around it. There are rules and I can't change them."

"Then break them," Anakin retorts through clenched teeth.

"I. Can't."

He glares at her, unimpressed.

"You can't?" he snarls. "Or you won't?"

"We can't do this. We knew this!" she cuts back, her voice rising with desperation. She swallows hard, not dropping his gaze though everything about his blue stare makes her want to melt. "We discussed this. To live this lie would destroy us," she grinds out. Internally, Padmé screams as Amidala shoves practicality and obligation down her throat like a child refusing necessary medicine.

Whether fueled by his own ire or sensing her own consternation, a dangerous spark alights in his cerulean hues. He searches her, the same indiscreet way she had searched him, leaning closer until his lips are only a whispered sigh from her own. Heat rushes to her cheeks as an aroused shiver dances down her spine; Padmé prays Anakin can't sense the impetus for that betraying motion.

"So, you'll lie to yourself?" Anakin asks. "For the rest of your life, you'll just lie to yourself?"

"There are rules, Anakin," Padmé repeats crisply. Her monarch's accent slips in, letting Anakin know he's skating on treacherously thin ice.

Anakin's nostrils flare, his hesitation brooked by anger, the fire in his eyes clearly unafraid to melt this slippery slope.

"There are also universal truths that demand higher respect than the laws you make within your precious Senate," Anakin says with a scornful smirk. "To deny them is folly. I didn't take you for a foolish woman."

She winces noticeably. It's uncanny that he echoes the same sentiment she had chastised herself with only mere minutes ago. Almost as if he had been privy to her thoughts. The idea of any intrusion, whether real or imagined, outrages her, fuels her.

"To deny that you are a Jedi and I am a Senator is to deny the real world we live in…"

"And I need to come back to it?" Anakin smiles dangerously. "I was living a very real momentin that Geonosian cart. Were you? Was that real enough for you, Senator?"

As if physically struck by his words and vicious use of her title, Padmé recoils, rising from the cot and backing away. The brokenness in his voice flays her, its jagged edges cutting through to bleed the honest heartache from her own bones. With silent foreboding, Padmé realizes just how deep Anakin Skywalker had managed to crawl in.

"Anakin," she whispers, letting her splintering heart bleed all over his name. The softness of her voice could easily be mistaken for a caress though the betraying thickness underscores her pain in each sacred syllable.

He looks away, his inferno finally spent, shifting uncomfortably away from her hemorrhaging. With something fatalistic on his handsome face, he bites out a question that makes her blood run cold.

"Was any of it real?"

For an agonizing moment, neither of them moves.

Though his face remains hard, Anakin's eyes dip, returning to look at her with the mirror image to her own soul. Unbidden, Amidala warns her that their time is almost up, that Padmé needs to leave before she destroys herself further. Glaring at the door, the defiance that flares within her is more than even the deserved anger she had fostered and relied on when facing down a Neimoidian in her own throne room.

This next moment might kill them both, but Padmé will be damned if Anakin lives the rest of his life believing it had been easy for her to walk away.

She knows her feet are going to move before her brain tells them to do so. Closing the gap between them once more, her momentum propels her to Anakin's side yet again. Cerulean eyes widen realizing her intent just before her palms come to rest on his cheeks. Her fingers find their hold under the angle of his jaw and she presses her mouth to his.

Kissing him desperately, almost angrily, Padmé fiercely slants her lips over his. She means for it to be one last indulgence, a sacrament to all that they have acknowledged and all that can never be. She means for it to say farewell when she fears she may not be able to.

But the slide is delectable, his taste exactly the way she remembered in her dream. Heat and hope and something indescribably him. The hum that stirs in her soul asks for more and when she allows it, Anakin's reciprocates on the same potent wavelength. His flesh hand cradles the back of her head, his fingers twisting into the thickness of her braid, holding her to him as her lungs burn for oxygen. Even then, Padmé thinks it's not the worst way to drown. Her forehead resting against his, his breath gasping for hers, she can't make herself back out of his embrace.

When she looks up, fresh tears pool in her eyes, spilling over cheeks finally flushed not from frustration but desire. Utterly defenseless in his embrace, Padmé hides nothing from him.

"It will always be real to me," she whispers against his mouth.

"Padmé."

She ducks her eyes away from his, unable to hear the pleading way he speaks her name. Her fingers encircle his wrist to tug away his ensnaring hand, pausing when Anakin's grip tightens in the base of her braid, holding her closer to him even if for only one more stolen moment. Gently, he presses a kiss to her forehead, his fingers tilting her chin up. Reluctantly, she lets him, his thumb smearing her falling tears out of existence.

"Please don't do this," he begs.

She lets him see the depth of her despair in her mournful gaze.

"I don't have a choice," she whispers. It sounds like an apology.

With immense effort, she brings her hands to his chest, forcing herself to sit back. Every inch of her feels like the atoms are just waiting to fly off into histrionics and away from this torturous being they are responsible for defining. Physics denies her wish to come apart, keeping her solidly together as she slides off his bed, somehow strong enough to stand and turn away from him.

He doesn't even try to stop her, his hand falling away from her face as if it was under the command of the paralyzed arm. She flinches at its audible thud on the mattress.

Refusing to look back, Padmé tries to ignore the ache that settles over her at the sudden loss of his warmth. With each step she makes towards the door, she feels like her soul is being ripped from every individual cell in her body. The pain makes her stumble, and she floats hopelessly adrift on a tiled sea.

Traitorously, her feet pull her further and further from the truth. The lies of her soon-to-be everyday existence feel oppressive on her shoulders, rattle angrily in her mind, steal the air from her lungs.

Somehow, she reaches the door. As if meeting a magnet of opposing charge, her palm hesitates over the button, inexplicably unable to make the final connection.

"I really thought we were past pretending we could wish away our feelings."

Some part of her knows to ignore his barbed statement, to not dignify his hurt with her own answer.

She flees the room before her subconscious desire wins a full mutiny over reality's reason.

Padmé doesn't remember the walk back to Processional Way. She doesn't remember pulling up her hood, or how long it takes to make the trek out the Temple, down the grand staircase, and back to Typho and Dormé waiting anxiously for outside the speeder.

The only thing she does remember is the irony of how easily a heart could shatter in hallways dedicated to healing.

Until a sudden touch condenses her foggy existence into concrete.

"I'm so sorry, Padmé," Obi-Wan murmurs. "But you are doing the right thing."

It's meant to be a consoling gesture. She knows on some level Obi-Wan believes a kinship might be forming between Master and Senator regretting the tremendous pain they've caused their mutual friend. But that's only more lie she refuses to swallow.

Abruptly she yanks out her shoulder from under his hand, her bruised back screaming obscenities at the sudden movement only to be overtaken by the crippling cold wrath that stills her heart.

"Do not ask me to hurt him again."

Her voice is icy and thick.

If her lips weren't singing from the dangerous desire of Anakin's plunder, she would have expected them to be frostbit by her cutting words.

At first startled, Obi-Wan lowers his gaze, appropriately cowed by her aggressive tone. It's too bad she's not in a jovial mood; the look on Obi-Wan's face closely approximates Anakin's own chagrin from the master and apprentice tense standoff in her sitting room only a week ago. She lets the moment pass without due appreciation.

Smartly, Obi-Wan raises his gaze to supply the necessary deferential nod before relinquishing her security to her normal detail.

As she climbs into the speeder, Padmé leans heavily on Amidala to give her the strength to not look back. Usually, the mask is impenetrable.

Please don't do this. I don't have a choice.

"Milady? Are you alright?" Dormé leans past the blurring of her vision, worry written all over her friend's face.

The mask doesn't hold.

"I think I just over did it," Padmé says numbly. "I'd like to go home."

"Okay," Dormé agrees.

She hears her captain twist in her pilot's chair, doesn't need to see the concerned silent look he shoots over his shoulder at her handmaiden.

"Please just drive, Captain," Padmé chokes out.

As Typho powers up the speeder and lifts of Processional Way, her dammed tears spill over, bleeding freshly down flushed cheeks. She can't bring herself to look back.

After all, the only thing left to see fading in the rearview are her dreams.

It didn't matter what the reason was – be it school retreat, a safe house to escape assassins, or just a family vacation – Varykino was always a sight for her sore eyes and a respite for her tired soul. Arriving later in the afternoon, they had only been on Naboo and the Naberrie property for a smattering of hours, but Padmé was still waiting for the stresses of Coruscant of her Coruscant life and the galaxy's war to slide from her slim shoulders.

The waters surrounding Varykino were warm, especially this time of year when life flourished under the vernal sun. What surprised her was the unusual slothfulness her bare skin took to acclimatize to the normally refreshing temperature as she dipped her feet into the lake. Lazily, she kicked them back and forth, hoping the somnolent drag of the water between her toes juxtaposed with its carefree buoyancy would encourage warmth to find residence around her chilly limbs.

Padmé was about to give up all hope when her sister appeared like a ghostly apparition at her side.

Kicking off her sandals, Sola slipped her feet into the water beside her. Much to Padmé's relief, her sister sat quietly, only eyeing her once, but not pressing for an explanation as to why her little sister had sequestered herself to the dock all evening. Sola's solid presence was enough to voice her concern.

Unsure of how many minutes passed, Padmé waffled on how to broach the topic of her self-imposed isolation when Sola swirled her legs, the gentle currents still not warm enough for Padmé's liking.

"Soooo," Sola started, cautiously. "He seems nice." Her sister trailed the words deliberately, extending an implied invitation for Padmé to elaborate.

Her attention called by a distinct trio of male laughter, Padmé glanced back towards the villa. The sound should have evoked happiness and a lightness in her soul. Instead, her heart and breath seized in her chest. She swallowed thickly for an answer.

"He is," she forced out, her voice rough with poorly hidden pain.

Sola hummed noncommittally, waiting for Padmé to elaborate. When her little sister remained silent, eyes roaming the stars overhead, Sola nudged Padmé gently. She had meant it to be light, teasing, to break her sibling out of whatever despondent reverie she was brewing out here all alone. Instead, Padmé whipped her head to her, her eyes suddenly ablaze.

"Is Darred the love of your life?"

"I like to think so," Sola chuckled. "Though I would probably have to live a full lifetime to know for sure."

At this non-answer, Padmé sighed heavily, once again her gaze searching for the heavens.

"Always the sky-walker, weren't you?"

Sola's old joke crushed Padmé to the bone. Spine melting with sorrow, Padmé curled in on herself, her knuckles clenched whitely around the edge of the dock, crying ardently over opportunity long lost.

"Oh, Mé-Mé," Sola whispered softly, gently. "C'mere."

Padmé doesn't have it in her to resist as Sola folded her in a comforting hug.

The starry skies above keep silent vigil over her heartbreak.