A/N: I have never been so terrified to post a one-shot in my entire writing life, but with recent Star Wars media running wild with the reunion theme, I needed to write the one I most desperately want to someday see - Anakin and Padmé in the afterlife. This is perhaps one of the most sacred playgrounds to enter and one of the most daunting pieces of fiction I have ever written. I hope my version does them justice. Lord knows I've sobbed buckets trying to get it done.

As always, reviews/comments are deeply appreciated.

Inspired by The World Between Worlds, "Shadow Warrior", "This Love" by Taylor Swift, and the likelihood of Anakin spending the rest of eternity on an apology tour. My bleeding Anidala heart would not let him do it on his own.

Transcendent

This love is good, this love is bad
This love is alive back from the dead
These hands had to let it go free and
This love came back to me

~Taylor Swift, This Love

He's been here before.

At least, he's fairly certain it's a similar expanse. This realm usually bleeds red at the edges, which makes sense considering it's built upon flickering flames, obsidian smoke, and his inner demons.

But this blue version undulates with an energy reminiscent of water. He half-expects to hear the characteristic slosh of liquid echoing in his ears, half-anticipates the cool surrounding darkness to soak through his clothes. Yet the black leather and brown rough spun - fabrics he hasn't seen or donned in years - remain immune to the effects of the ebony lagoon. Vibrating in silent ceruleans ribbons, the Force races away from him as if he was a pebble cast down from beyond to disrupt its cosmic surface.

Perhaps he is. He can't know for sure.

Death is tricky like that.

Sitting up, Anakin watches the ethereal pool rippling outward to a distant celestial boundary, its indigo trails like the ghostly paths of starfighters long since purged from the heavens. The endless backdrop of stars and time and space is mesmerizing. He'd never been able to stay long enough to appreciate this world between existences before he'd be torn from the extracorporeal plane and summoned back to face his harsh tormented reality.

It's impossible to know what to expect next. There had never been water before.

There had never been peace.

So, when he hears the impossible behind him, his incredulous disbelief is easy to understand. After all, she never visited his hellscapes.

But he would know that voice at any time and in any corner of the galaxy. And only she would know to ask…

"Are you an angel?"

Without the cumbersome suit, it's easier to turn around yet harder to believe what his unfiltered eyes find there. Internal life support systems no longer regulating his every move, Anakin sucks in air like he's gasping for it; for the first time in two decades, he has to consciously remember to breathe.

Padmé.

Somehow, shimmering in the blue light, his love, his heart, his wife, his everything stands before him, solid despite her diaphanous presence.

"Hi, Ani," she smiles at him.

She never smiles at him in his dreams.

"Are you…?" he tries, not trusting his vision. "Are you really here?"

Padmé tilts her head, the exquisite joy on her face making room for something less beautiful. "I've always been here," she replies slowly, her silhouette flickering in and out with her careful tone.

Panic bolts through Anakin, then gives way to a different sort of thrum when Padmé mirrors his sudden step forward as if she too is concerned about one of them vanishing into thin air.

She never walks towards him in his dreams either.

"But I've been here before…" Anakin says warily, unable to believe her continued approach.

"You have," Padmé agrees, her smile returning.

"…and yet I've never seen you." It's not quite a question, but his words wrap themselves in bemusement.

Inexplicably, her face darkens at some unseen memory.

"I wasn't allowed to let you see me," she confesses, now close enough he can feel her warmth - real and tangible and tempting. Closing the final distance between them, Padmé tips her face up to his. Her eyes sway a shade, a poignant sadness staining the beautiful brown. "But I was here," she nods, reaching up to stroke his cheek. "I was always here."

Anakin almost bursts into tears at the silken feel of her fingertips on his skin. She's so much softer than he remembers, her touch more divine than anything his memory had been able to conjure. Terrified he's seconds away from waking up to that bright, cold, sterile bubble and losing her all over again, he crushes her against him, and Padmé melts as if she had wanted him to.

"How do you not hate me?" Anakin whimpers into her hair, voice breaking, tears now freely falling to dampen her crown. "I ruined everything, Padmé, and I…"

"Shhhhh," she soothes, looking up and pressing a finger to his lips. "I've waited a lifetime to see you again, Anakin." Her delicate hands smooth the unruly curls at his ears. "Anger has already stolen so much from me; I wasn't going to let it take this moment too."

In her watery gaze, patience and adoration far beyond what he deserves greet a hiccup Anakin's embarrassed to hear belongs to him. It's unfathomable - her love and its unyielding constancy in the face of all that he's done…

A painful hollowness gapes inside, screaming tirades and threatening to swallow him whole. His knees wobble and sobs wrack through him until he's a trembling mess in her arms. Padmé must recognize his self-loathing descent because her palms slide to still his shaking head and she stretches up on her tip toes to press her mouth to his.

Under the stabilizing anchor of her lips, his swirling despair and chaotic doubt sink into the abyss. Gently, patiently, she waits for him, holding the tentative touch the same way Anakin had awaited her response on a lakeside terrace a lifetime ago. Even though the shores of Varykino are lightyears away, the memory of their first kiss rouses something deep inside his soul. He slants his head, feels her smile at the familiar angle, and steps into an intimate dance known only to them.

Searching pressure shifts to an all-consuming blaze, burning its way through his veins to reignite a bond Anakin had yearned for, a tether he'd desperately needed. Overwhelmingly aglow, he floats, buoyed by her enduring love, two hearts and souls finally reunited, finally once again whole.

Reluctantly, Padmé pulls back but remains close, her eyes refusing to leave his. There's a heady flush on her cheeks and a smolder still simmering in the Force surrounding them. "Don't ever make me wait that long again, Anakin Skywalker," she whispers against his mouth.

"Never," he whispers back, the softness in his voice belying the fierceness of his vow.

Padmé seals his promise with another kiss, breaking the contact before they're swept away in another passionate current. Tucking herself beneath his chin, she lingers in his embrace as if the idea of parting already is too much for her to bear. Anakin understands. He'll hold her for the rest of eternity if she'll let him.

After a moment, her soft laugh disrupts their enchanted silence and she lifts her head, her eyes shining with mirth. "I suppose they were right after all," she muses, earning herself a raised brow.

"Right about what?" he asks.

"Everyone insisted I be the first one you see," Padmé explains, snuggling deeper into his chest and sighing. "I think I now understand why."

Still adrift in her heavenly wake, Anakin exhales a humored huff. "Who's everyone?"

He regrets his question the instant Padmé removes herself from his encircling arms. She's only separated by a shared breath's distance but already his whole being begs for her return.

Gesturing to the long, illuminated path before them with one hand, Padmé stretches her other back to thread her fingers through his. "Come," she says. "It's going to be a bit of a walk."

At her gentle tug, Anakin follows her lead without protest. Not that he would ever argue with her again. In another life, he'd gone back on that pledge once and had lived the disastrous consequences of his error. Padmé could be leading him to his infernal fate, and he'd go willingly if only to avoid making that mistake once more.

They walk in comfortable silence, following the glowing path as it navigates them around gentle bends and mellow dips and rises in the inky invisible terrain. Despite their steady pace, Anakin notices they never seem to gain on the interminable route before them. But Padmé seems unperturbed, and he forces himself to bask in her effortless serenity.

He's almost subdued his fretful nerves when she stops abruptly, scattering his tenuous control to the winds. Her grin widens at a point just ahead of them, but Anakin's gaze only finds an endless sea of stars until…

"I always knew you were going to be the death of me."

Anakin winces, as Obi-Wan materializes from the obscure expanse chuckling heartily at his own joke. While he's relieved to be greeted once again with apparent welcome, Anakin thinks several millennia in the afterlife still wouldn't be long enough for that sort of humor to not sting on some level. Recognizing his unease, Padmé offers him a sympathetic smile.

"Master." Anakin inclines his head in necessary deference, the old habit yet to be vanquished.

"None of that now," Obi-Wan corrects, gently but firmly clasping his former apprentice's shoulder. "There's no need for masters of any sort here."

Chagrin, steeped in more than just the good-natured admonishment, takes an appropriate step back but hovers in Anakin's periphery. Reflexively, he murmurs an apology, but his mentor waves it off with a dismissive hand.

"We'll have plenty of time for that later, old friend," Obi-Wan says. "Far be it from me to keep her waiting any longer."

A strange tightness settles in Anakin's chest, confining the tumultuous hope of his suddenly pounding heart. With Padmé by his side - her small fingers still wove with his own - there's only one other woman that could be waiting for him.

Anakin senses the additional presence just seconds before his consciousness recognizes the rough Basic accent that rolls the first syllable of his name and truncates the last.

"Anakin."

He's glad Padmé is holding his hand because his knees go weak, and he feels like he might plummet right through the path beneath his feet. Several other silhouettes coalesce around their small gathering, but Anakin cannot pull his eyes from the one forming right in front of him.

"Mom?"

Shmi's whole being shimmers with her warm smile. He doesn't remember moving, doesn't remember dropping his wife's hand to run straight into his mother's outstretched arms. Even though he towers over her, she holds him as tightly as when he barely came to her waist - solid, strong, and reassuring. He buries an anguished sob into her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

At the sound of another cry, he peeks over his mother's shoulder, his drowning vision barely able to make out Padmé's own cascading rivulets. The Force trembles with her rawness, cleaving him clean through when he realizes the other mother-son reunion his wife aches for. As much to her as to his mother, he gasps, "I'm so sorry. I'd do anything to change it all."

"But you can't change it," Shmi says, straightening his shaking shoulders, "any more than you could have stopped the change from coming. You can only go forward now, Ani."

"But I've made terrible mistakes," he protests.

Shmi lets go of him, her expression boundlessly maternal, wholly acknowledging his horrific past without shrinking away from it. She steps back, shoulder to shoulder with Padmé, and Anakin is floored by the way the Force winds between the two most cherished women in his life.

"So many terrible mistakes," he repeats. It comes out almost pleading, like he can't bear their endless reservoirs of absolution and love. "How can I possibly make it right?"

"The journey before you will not be easy," Shmi says.

"I'll do anything," Anakin begs, but his mother holds up a cautionary hand halting his pledge in its tracks.

"That may be beyond your control, Ani," she warns. He recognizes her wistful look, the one she had given him so many times in his youth, where she folds briefly inward considering the words with which to bestow her infinite wisdom. When she finds them, Shmi sighs heavily once. "You must walk a path to seek forgiveness but there are those who may not be willing to grant it. Now or possibly ever."

"But I will walk it with you," Padmé says, coming to his side, her left hand entwining his right. He grips her palm, flesh to flesh, as if she was a lifeline. Her smile fades beneath the pensive weight of her stare. His throat in a knot, he almost chokes on the resurgence of his regret when her meaning dawns on him. "What do you mean 'with me'?"

Bumping her hip into his, Padmé leans closer. "I've asked to serve my penance with yours."

Anakin frowns, unable to follow how an angel of her caliber would have anything to atone for, but before he can speak, she silences his inevitable defense.

"I know you think otherwise, but I'm not perfect, Ani," Padmé says, her eyes forlorn and far away. "I've made my fair share of mistakes too."

"We all have."

The trio of Skywalkers turn towards Obi-Wan. Behind him, Anakin puts names to the silhouettes he had ignored before - his Jedi brethren with none other than Mace Windu and Yoda at their helm.

"But your children have already righted some of these wrongs and seem hell-bent on course-correcting their family legacy."

"Luke," Anakin says thickly, remembering the shade of bright blue that had been his salvation. "Luke never gave up on me."

"Headstrong, that boy. I can't imagine where he gets it from." Obi-Wan grins, his eyes twinkling in Padmé's direction.

Hers shine back with hope and pride and a small flare of defiance, and suddenly another set of graceful features is impossible for Anakin to unsee.

"I can't believe I never saw it."

Padmé turns to face him, a question parting her lips, but his thumb strokes the words away in a parallel of her own soothing gesture from moments before.

"Leia looks just like you."

Her small frame quivers then dissolves against him, an energy Anakin has never known barreling through their rekindled bond. He's faintly aware of those around them disappearing slowly, some perhaps still uneasy in the presence of such powerful emotion, some perhaps now able to grasp its sacredness.

"I tried so hard to reach you," Padmé says when they are the only ones left, her eyes seeking forgiveness she'll never need in Anakin's own. "But I couldn't."

"No, my love, you did," he murmurs, capturing her face between his palms and whispering one final reassurance before recapturing her lips. "I promise you, you did."

While Anakin Skywalker had made many, many mistakes, Padmé had never been one of them. He kisses her until she knows the gravity of that truth in her very soul.

In the shadows where he had lived in red rage and wrought black carnage, the darkness had deafened him to her desperate pleas, had blinded him to her luminous beacon, had tried to smother her everlasting echoes out of jealousy and spite. Out of fear, the darkness had tried to deny her, and in doing so, had made its fatal error.

Their daughter had been the spark, their son had been the catalyst, but it had been her transcendent love, never wavering or forsaking him, reaching through time and space, that had guided him back to her from across the stars.