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Padmé doesn’t know quite when it started.
She loves Anakin, of course. That goes without saying. She loves his warmth, his energy. The way he can take the worst things life can throw at him, pick himself up, and keep going. Keep caring. She’s seen his heart broken again and again and still he comes back to her, full of warmth and light and love.
He gets a little possessive sometimes, but he always backs off when she tells him to, and it’s not like she doesn’t get possessive as well. She’s just better at disguising it.
He loves her, he loves his mentor, he loves his mentee. He loves the men he’s been given to command as individuals when most people look at them and see only faceless droids made of flesh instead of metal. He loves the broken and the lost and the unloved. Like her.
He can be vicious and ambitious and fiery. He gets angry quickly and shows it in a blaze that can leave nothing but bones behind. His capacity to love is only equaled by his capacity to hate. Like her.
Padmé didn’t think there would ever be anyone like her.
She’s never seen anyone love him back besides her.
She’s seen grudging respect from the Jedi Council, and a teacher-student friendship from Ahsoka. She’s also seen a teacher-student bond from Master Kenobi, though it always seemed strained after the first few years, after Anakin became more of a man and less of a boy. She’s seen hero-worship and pride in his accomplishments from his troops. But never effortless, easy, unconditional love. That’s only ever come from her.
But now she’s seeing it, and she doesn’t know what’s changed.
~
The first time she sees it, she’s in the Senate, and officially doesn’t know him or Master Kenobi beyond their contact as professionals. She has to fake a hurried sneeze to hide her shock.
Master Kenobi has just smiled at Anakin, open and bright, and pulled him in for a quick side hug, one arm slung around his shoulders, as though they do it all the time. Anakin doesn’t look surprised. He leans into it easily, bending his head down a little to rest it for a breath on his Master’s shoulder.
They’d been discussing the war, as usual, in a loose group of senators and a few of the Jedi, and Anakin had pointed out that they’d be better served by taking care of the soldiers they do have instead of spending billions of credits they can’t afford on creating more clones. He’d done it with unusual tact and passion, and hadn’t fallen into the trap of becoming frustrated and discouraged when his audience didn’t immediately agree with him.
Every time he’s done that before, Padmé’s heart has twinged in sympathy. She’s had a lifetime of political training to hide that exact reaction. He hasn’t, and it makes him stand out in a bad light among so many career politicians.
And Master Kenobi had agreed easily with his reasoning, backed him up with extra arguments, and then, when Anakin had made a particularly hard-hitting point, done . . . that.
She doesn’t know what to think.
~
Ahsoka starts coming around to her apartment more often. Padmé doesn’t mind; in fact, she loves having the girl with her. She doubts she’ll ever have a child of her own, as much as she’s come to like the idea. She doesn’t want to condemn another life to live in the world she does.
Whether Anakin realizes it or not, the two of them have started acting as parents to his padawan.
Soon her private rooms are full of traces of Ahsoka – datapads of her coursework forgotten, clothes left behind, the food she likes in the cupboards and around the kitchen. Togruta are mostly carnivorous, and she always comes back from the front underweight and hungry because it’s too hard to get the right kind of food for her there.
Padmé takes to having Ahsoka picked up from the Temple right after she debriefs, and bringing her back to her apartment to eat and rest. Ahsoka doesn’t seem to mind.
Anakin doesn’t seem to mind either. His face softens every time he walks into a room and sees them both there.
Soon enough, Ahsoka has a room of her own and her few possessions are divided between her quarters she shares with Anakin in the Temple and the apartment they own.
~
Obi-Wan starts coming around more often too. Even though he’d been her friend when she was the Queen, they’d drifted apart after she was elected to the Senate.
Padmé spends a few hours one night trying to think of why that happened, and can’t come up with a reason. If anything, it was easier for them to be friends now that they lived on the same planet, and yet . . .
He ends up on her couch as well after missions, slowly unwinding enough to fall asleep. She buys more pillows when she sees how he likes to burrow into them, and takes to leaving soft but light blankets draped over the backs of all her couches.
He wakes up panicking if the blankets are too heavy.
Is he her brother-in-law? She’s never quite sure, but he loves Anakin, and she loves Anakin, if in a different way, and so she likes the thought of being somehow related to him.
His favorite tea and snack food ends up in her kitchen as well, and even though he refuses to take a spare room, his clothes slowly migrate into Anakin’s closet. Her med-kit slowly gets upgrades as well, until it’s literally able to supply her for major surgery.
Obi-Wan comes home bleeding a lot.
~
Of course, where Anakin and Obi-Wan go, their men follow, especially Rex and Cody.
Rex is more awkward around her for some reason, never quite meeting her eyes and always scrupulously polite. He treats her like she’s made of crystal, and while it irritates her a little, she can sense that he isn’t trying to patronize her. He genuinely believes her to be something precious.
She wonders what Anakin has inadvertently told him.
Part of her wonders if Rex will ever loosen up enough around her so that they can bitch about Anakin together. After all, they both have to live with him, and while they love him, he can be incredibly annoying sometimes.
Cody is easier to deal with. He’s usually fixated on making Obi-Wan sit down and eat something, or go to sleep, or accept enough medical attention to keep from actively passing out or bleeding out on her furniture. She backs him up every time and they’ve made an unlikely friendship.
Sometimes when Obi-Wan or Anakin is being particularly frustrating, she’ll comm him or he’ll comm her and they’ll commiserate. She learns a lot of interesting things from Cody.
Like how General Secura and Commander Bly got married for a mission, and have never bothered to get divorced, and how Cody’s pretty sure they’re actually courting. That’s the word he uses, and she finds it incredibly endearing.
And how the entire Jedi Council knows about it and is encouraging General Secura.
She knows how half General Koon’s men have taken his surname, and the rest are only waiting for another offer of citizenship to come from somewhere.
Again, the entire Jedi Council is encouraging it.
She knows how General Unduli once single-handedly destroyed an entire battalion of droids with skills even a seasoned Jedi knight couldn’t possess, to get to her injured padawan. How the Council praised her for her compassion and care for her own instead of rebuking her for wanting vengeance and giving in to her emotions.
She knows how General Windu and General Yoda argue day after day for rights and citizenship for all the clones, and for the Kaminoans to turn over all the data and DNA they have to the clones themselves.
She sees how the orders the Jedi are given on the war from the Senate often lead to bloodbaths, and how frustrated Cody is with them. She knows that often the generals receive their orders and don’t follow them, instead doing what is needed to save lives while keeping the war from escalating more.
She’s helped Cody fake his reports to the Senate.
She’s walked into her living room late at night and seen Obi-Wan asleep on her couch, Cody perched on the arm of it, standing guard, watching him breathe just to know he’s alive.
She knows the look in his eyes, and she is there when he needs someone to complain to.
He’s there when she needs someone to vent to, though she keeps in mind that he has enough worries of his own.
She doesn’t know if they’ll ever make it to official in-laws, but she doesn’t think it’s necessary.
It’s nice to have a brother, Padmé has decided.
~
Padmé Skywalker Amidala watches as the Jedi become less aloof and more compassionate, and wonders at the change.
She doesn’t know what started it all, but she’s glad for it. When she accidentally lets slip to General Windu and General Unduli one night -- when she’s been arguing in the Senate for twenty hours straight and she’s exhausted -- that she’s married to Anakin, they only exchange looks, give her genuine smiles and congratulations, and escort her home.
A passcode for the Jedi Temple arrives the next morning, with a note saying that they can move her and Anakin into bigger quarters there if she ever wants them.
There’s also a pile of belated wedding presents, with apologies and many requests for wedding holos, from the entire Council and some of the Knights she knows.
The Senate may not like the new way the Jedi are stepping up and taking responsibility for making peace on their own shoulders, but Padmé feels that they should have done so years before. It’s breathing new life into their members and new hope into the civilians who see them defending them.
Once, the Jedi had been peacemakers, before they were forced into leading a war. Now it seemed that they were taking themselves back to being peacemakers, and it couldn’t make her happier.
She doesn’t care how they’ve done it.