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Anakin wakes with the sun on his face and Padmé in his view, and he knows he has lost a lot to get there, but here and now in the warmth of Padmé’s bed and his love for her, he could feel complete. His arm raises as if of its own mind to reach for the angel still asleep across from him, and he doesn’t want to wake her and this moment to end, but he needs to — he stops when his arm comes into sight. It’s a golden skeleton, and maybe it has a mind of its own, for it is not his arm, and it looks so crude and offensive next to her soft flesh. Soft. He can still feel her through sensors, but he again finds himself unsure she can stand to reciprocate. Nevertheless, he is here, wanting to feel and touch her… Will they touch now? The Jedi don’t welcome it, but he wants it so badly, needs so much of what the Jedi are against, and he has to admit he doesn’t know how established love relationships evolve, let alone secret ones.
She opens her eyes and smiles and he forgets he was thinking about his arm as a snake he would want to protect her from, and puts his dead hand in her hair. A gesture that would be frowned upon by the Order he has committed to. Jedi practice distance and detachment, and he is a Knight now. A true Jedi doesn’t seek physical contact, or float objects around with the Force like he does to distract himself.
Will it all ever come to him?
“What are you thinking about?”
“I love you.”
He can’t express how happy he is she asked. She wants to know him, she wants them to be close and closer, and he can’t believe he is lucky enough to be in this time and space that allows him to hear her voice.
She smiles. Her hair is all messy from the night, and seeing it free captivates him. He cannot help but be aware of the unparalleled intimacy of the sight. (That she is entirely beautiful is beside the point.) His is now too short to express anything else than a recent cut and knighting, but it is at least freed from the conformity of the braid. Hers is flowing on her feathered pillow, and his hand running through it — doing so without him even realizing it, and maybe he won’t have to become left-handed as he had imagined. She doesn’t mind that it’s him, but not him touching her, and he can’t believe they really got married. He remembers how she had reached for his hand, without breaking eye contact, with perfect acceptance of what had changed in him. In his hand, her hair is so soft… and airy, immaterial. He knows it’s because he doesn’t have sensors all along the apparatus, but he can’t help fearing she will disappear, vanished in thin air.
She reaches back to kiss him lovingly. She gets closer still and has her two hands on his face; he smells and feels and hears paradise, and maybe he could add some kind of casing made of carbon or the like around the mechno-arm so that it wouldn’t be cold to the touch and worried eye — he also knows he can’t just leave it unprotected, the limb open and wirings exposed to anything. They part to catch their breath before joining again, he thinks of the increased strength he can have in his hand, and the shivers she sends down his core when she traces his body with hers, and the comfortable warmth between them: Bliss. It’s unexpected when his metallic arm gets caught and pulls in her hair. He thinks about a glove, he thinks about being ashamed, but he can’t help but grin, because he always liked machinery and now it is part of him, and he always loved Padmé and now they are part of each other.
She laughs too, and they’re tied.