Work Text:
I'd been turning over soulmate ideas for the Star Wars universe, trying to come up with something that hasn't already been done, because once people started in on the soulmate goose concept I knew that there was relatively little ground left untreaded.
I am, as I said above, pulling an idea from another fic of mine for part of this. The idea behind the heartsfriend was the pseudo-science concept that when two people meet who have brains that run on a similar enough wavelength that the minor electrical signals of an active brain will coincide with the other person's when they touch. When that happens it sparks a biochemical reaction causing a pigmentation change in a person's skin. That will resolve into a symbolic image and location that is of significance to both people. Not the same meaning, mind, but the same degree of importance.
To pull the example I used in my Doctor Who fic Heartsfriend, Rose gets an infinity symbol on her foot. For her, that represents all the running she and the Doctor do, and infinity for her promise to stay with the Doctor 'forever'. The Doctor gets the Seal of Rassilon (which is basically an infinity symbol) on his hand - the hand he uses to hold Rose's hand whenever they're running. To him, the symbol is important as a representation of the Time Lords. They're the same image, but different personal meanings.
So, say Anakin and Padme both get a tiny picture of a Naboo starfighter, to Anakin that could be the freedom of flying, while to Padme it's a representation of the combination of art and science that is fundamental to Naboo culture. Padme's is on her hands as she perceives it as representative of her and Anakin's devotion to working to make things better, while Anakin's is over his heart because he's about the fact that they both feel deeply about people.
The difficulty with a heartsfriend is that it's not a soulmate in the classic sense of someone who is the other half of your soul, a missing puzzle piece etc. etc. It's just someone who kind of thinks the same way you do. This can mean you develop a (idealised) sibling closeness, it could mean that you are matched for romance, it could make you best frenemies - sort of a Sherlock and Moriarty thing, perhaps - or it could mean nothing at all, just that you operate on a similar wavelength mentally.
Popular fiction within Star Wars (the classic romance pulp novel The Heartsfriend of Damian Sunstone that I just made up) tends to treat heartsfriends as soulmates and there is a societal bias and belief that when you find your heartsfriend you've found an important something-or-other. Since this only happens when you touch skin-to-skin to a person who happens to share that mental wavelength, not everyone finds a heartsfriend. It's also something that mostly doesn't work across species barriers because, shockingly, the brainwaves and physiology of a Twi'lek is not the same as a Rodian. Sometimes that actually causes cross-species misfires as one species' brain wavelength coincides with another's but it's not actual compatibility, just similar electrical signals.
Enter the Jedi. They do not believe in heartsfriends as anything more than the biological coincidence it is. Now, heartsfriends do usually mean something when you have two people of the same species, but it's more like those compatibility quizzes for roommates at university. You're similar enough to have a better than usual chance to get along, so if you do share personal values there's a much higher likelihood of a romance of deep friendship working out. But it is not a guarantee and it does basically leave out the interpersonal connections across species.
What the Jedi (and other force sensitive groups) have, is what I would term a 'true' soulmate concept - the force partner (or come up with a better name, but that's what I'm using because I'm too lazy to really work at a good name) - where you reach into the force upon meeting a person and the force itself tells you that this person is someone with a deep personal connection to you. That is, not that you can't live without them, you're a whole person (or you should be), but this is a person who gets you fundamentally, shares all the same important values and both of you will be willing to make alterations to your lifestyles in order to accommodate the other. That is, if you're a Jedi's force partner, you will fundamentally have the same determination to put duty first as your Jedi partner, but both of you will be willing to put in the work to make time for the relationship around your respective obligations. It means that as a general rule a Jedi will get a force partner who is able to live in the same place the Jedi is primarily stationed and if not a fellow Jedi, will be, for example, an emergency aid worker who gets themselves normally deployed to the same regions as the Jedi, thus allowing them to be together, or someone who lives on Coruscant who can always be there when the Jedi gets home. There is none of this silliness where the couple is one New Mandalorian and one Kyr'tsad member, both dedicated to their causes. Those could be heartsfriends, due to similar stubbornness and faith in the cause, but not force partners.
This brings us to a perceptual problem between the Jedi and the Rest of the Galaxy. Non-force sensitives think that Jedi don't believe in soulmates because Jedi do the whole not having attachments thing. It's perceived on the outside that Jedi give very short shrift to anything to do with heartsfriend marks, leading people to see them as uncaring droids because 'normal' people usually glom onto a newly discovered heartsfriend.
The thing about the Jedi practice of non-attachment is that a Jedi who is devoted to the whole Jedi way of being will normally avoid such entanglements because you can't tell whether that partner will be able to truly step away and let a Jedi do their duty. But, a force partner has been ordained by the Force to be someone who gets you, who - whether as a romantic or platonic partner - will always understand and support your need to put the mission first. They may even provide that important counterweight to remind a Jedi that if they burn themselves out from stress they're no good to anyone, forcing them to take breaks because self-care is important, but they will always in the end assist their partner with their duty. That said, of course, if that person is not meant to be a Jedi, that partner will often be the person to help someone understand that maybe this isn't their path and they should get off it before they get into trouble.
However, there's no outward indication like a spontaneous tattoo, and force partners are even rarer than heartsfriends, so non-Jedi see the Jedi as non-believers in soulmates.
So, let's go with Anakin and Padme being force partners. Anakin when he met her knew he was going to marry that girl. They are also heartsfriends, and Anakin is just as vulnerable as the rest of the unwashed masses to thinking that the marks they share are symbolic of something more than compatible brainwaves.
When Anakin cheerfully talks to Obi-Wan about the heartsfriend marks, Obi-Wan gently disabuses Anakin of the belief that he and Padme are meant to be together and never thinks to talk to Anakin about force partners because it's such a rare thing, and anyhow you don't want to have a force-sensitive kid confusing what they want for the will of the force.
Between one thing and another, Anakin never gets the force partner talk that older padawans are supposed to get. It's something they're given at age twenty (or equivalent), so that they can recognise it if it happens, but when they've gotten out of the bulk of the turbulent teen years. The thing is, the war starts and Anakin is knighted and needed on the front lines and it's just not a priority.
Palpatine, meanwhile, being a Sith, doesn't believe in any of this (in no small part because Banite Sith are functionally the kind of people who are highly unlikely to have a force partner - so it's not a part of his education) and obviously doesn't believe in the heartsfriend marks any more than the Jedi. So, he falls into the trap of thinking the Jedi don't believe in soulmates at all.
So, Anakin and Padme run around hiding their relationship from all and sundry, until one day Anakin stumbles across another Jedi who is cheerfully open about their relationship. Bly and Aayla, say. At first Anakin treats it as a chummy conspiracy, he and Aayla are both bucking the Jedi rules together, until the day that Aayla cheerfully shows off Bly as her husband to someone on the Jedi council and Anakin has a breakdown about it, because what is Aayla doing? Why aren't they booting her out the way that Obi-Wan promised they would to him? Why is Aayla so special that she can get married and he can't?
They insist to Anakin that the pair are force-ordained and if the Jedi follow the will of the force it'd be pretty dumb to ignore force-ordained partnerships. Didn't he take that course on force partners and relationships within the Order?
"Wait, I think that was the course that I was allowed to miss because I was in that siege on [planet X]."
"What about when you were fifteen and the course on sexuality and relationships?"
"I think Obi-Wan said I didn't have to take it after I had told him about what I learned when Mom was making sure I'd survive being a pretty slave child, just in case I got sold to a child brothel." Cue the choked shock from the Council except Obi-Wan because when it came out years ago that Anakin was once a slave they didn't think that through to its logical conclusion.
"In any event, it's not important Skywalker, you don't have a force partnersh- oh kriff. That's a longstanding bond."
Anakin squeaks and realises his shields had slipped and hides it the way he usually does, though it's kind of like kicking the porn magazine under the bed after people have already seen it on the floor.
"Anakin," Obi-Wan cuts in, "Is that why you said you were going to marry Padme when you were nine?"
"We're heartsfriends," Anakin insists.
"Heartsfriends doesn't mean anything," says another Councillor.
They go back and forth until Obi-Wan gets in a word and asks Anakin whether the force had told him that Padme was his future wife. When they manage to pry out of Anakin the division between the force and the tattoo, he says yes. Then Obi-Wan has an argument where the Council blames him for not making sure Anakin took the course that explained these things and Obi-Wan pointing out that they handwaved Obi-Wan's efforts to get Anakin into the course and there's a lot of infighting.
Eventually Anakin learns that the Jedi do make exceptions for force partners and Anakin starts to doubt the things Palpatine said to him, because if Anakin doesn't know all the things about Jedi, why would Palpatine. And then we fix the things.
Though it could be entertaining to have Anakin frothing at the mouth at Obi-Wan having a relationship with Cody and Obi-Wan being all, "You don't have a force connection with Padme" and then Anakin in a burst of frustration asking what counts as a force connection and showing Obi-Wan the bond he has with Padme, the Bond of Evil he has with Palpatine and some other stuff that forces Obi-Wan to have to re-evaluate all the things ever, because his former student has a bleeding and horrifically damaged broken bond with his dead mother and Obi-Wan had no idea about any of this, because Anakin does not understand subtlety and what-all and Obi-Wan abruptly has to rethink every lesson he ever gave Anakin because Anakin can be very like Amelia Bedelia ("Let's hit the road" "Amelia, why are you hitting the street with a stick?").