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Padmé awakens before Naboo’s sunrise, and not with the rush of shame she had feared might haunt her after yesterday’s impulsive moment. The young woman surfaces from sleep with an ache instead. A low, molten awareness curled somewhere beneath her ribs to accompany the lake’s faint lapping under Varykino Villa.
As she stares at the faint silver outline of her ceiling, dreams turn into realised memories. It’s so easy to recall now how they gravitated towards each other like a comet pulling into orbit. All because she had wanted him to — because for one unravelling heartbeat, Padmé forgot every reason she used to build a wall between them.
Her stomach tightens with recognition then. Oh, she is attracted to him. Deeply. Inevitably. It’s been growing like sunlight through cracked shutters since the moment he stepped foot into her senatorial apartments; spilling and illuminating every last inch of square space that Padmé thought she could keep neatly compartmentalised.
Anakin Skywalker is not a man who fits inside any of the compartments she has arranged her life into. He never could be. Even ten years ago, that little boy looked at her with a sincerity so blazing — seeing things Padmé was never sure she possessed — that that intensity has only grown over time, radiant and impossible to ignore. “Too bright,” she thinks. Too much like staring into the sun.
In truth, it would be easier to just feel mortified. Perhaps even chalk the kiss up to adrenaline and heightened emotions from going into hiding. She doesn’t, though.
Neither does she regret it. See, that’s what has Padmé shifting beneath her linen sheets right now. She can still feel the imprint of his soft, warm mouth and — “What am I doing?” Her mind wonders restlessly. “A Senator and a Jedi? No! No! No!” Shiraya help her. She had been right to stop this from going any further, yes, for both their sakes. Even Anakin must think so with how immediately he sought to back away and respect her wishes after.
Either way, the covers are flung off before she can trap herself in yet another downward spiral.
Some fresh air ought to clear her head.
Thus the terrace doors swing open and reveal a world suspended. Somewhere she hopes her thoughts may unravel without judgment as it has certainly been for the Naberries many times before; where she can perhaps admit to herself that something deep down keeps leaning toward the strange and unmistakable glow Anakin carries. Such is her muddled mind whilst the first edge of sunlight begins to spill over distant mountains.
Though a faint shift in the air eventually alerts Padmé of his presence before she ever sees him. Inclining her head without turning in full then, fingers curl around the veranda’s cool stone railing “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
When he doesn’t appear beside her, however, a traitorous pang of disappointment follows.
Anakin moves after a few moments. Not toward her, but sideways, settling near a pillar and leaning against it with his gaze fixed upon the lake. He positions himself where Padmé can see him if she chooses to look over — and where the young woman can easily ignore him if she prefers not to. It’s quiet for a long while then.
Birdsong drifts from the trees. Rising sunlight flares off the mist, turning it into drifting embers. Padmé glances over her shoulder again to find him watching the sunrise and not her; expression open and strangely serene as the morning bends to his person with a strange, celestial intensity that has always surrounded him.
He’s giving Padmé room to breathe, though a part of her doesn’t want that anymore — or rather she doesn’t want it to become distance. To have yesterday sit like a barricade between them. The tugging behind her ribcage grows stronger and even as she tells herself to remember what their respective paths demand? Her body leans imperceptibly in his direction because space, she realises, can only soothe so much before it begins to ache.
He may be a great Jedi padawan now. Though beneath all that is their even greater friendship. Padmé still sees the boy who beamed with unguarded joy upon showing her Threepio, whom he’d built from scraps to assist his mother. The boy who had every reason to withdraw into bitterness, yet ran head first into danger just so he might help her anyway — a stranger — without hesitation.
Anakin and his mother, both enslaved then, had shown her more humanity than anybody else in the galaxy ever did. That kind of courage tends to leave an imprint behind and perhaps she has never admitted how deeply it changed her… even to herself. It is there, however, fluttering behind her ribcage like a small and faithful bird.
Now, he is here again — older, taller — but with that same instinct burning at his core, undimmed. When they reunited at 500 Republica, Anakin was the only person who truly listened to what she wanted. He fought harder for her during those first few minutes together than the Senate or Jedi Council themselves had in weeks. This boy man was, again, offering everything humanly possible in his power to give just as he did a decade earlier.
Perhaps that is why the kiss shook her.
Perhaps that is why pulling away hurt more than she expected — because he shines even when he’s trying to dim himself and for a moment? The awkwardness between them shrinks into a weight Padmé no longer wishes to carry. What remains is a strange, steady brightness she cannot name. One she has sensed around him since the day they stepped into that dusty Tatooine workshop and saw a boy who believed everyone deserved help.
Padmé reaches for the smallest thread of connection then “Did you sleep well?” His glance at her is brief, almost embarrassed, before it returns to the distantly brightening horizon “Well enough, milady. What about you?”
No. “Yes,” though something softens in her chest despite the lie. An invisible knot coming loose when she hears his voice. She can feel him notice, because he stills rather subtly like a tuning fork adjusting to a new resonance.
Instinctively then does he follow her lead. Anakin’s body eases into a more natural stance, no longer bracing for her discomfort or his own self-reproach. Something within him opens and it’s the first real equilibrium they’ve found now that any lingering awkwardness from yesterday dissolves, quiet as dew evaporating in sunlight.
The air is tinged by something faintly sweet from Varykino’s gardens as a slow, majestic unfurling of light spills across lake waters — and it is in that rising brightness whereby Padmé sees the truth, revealed with tender clarity. She doesn’t want to avoid him any longer.
The thought arrives without conflict because it’s simple: spending time with Anakin Skywalker is like gravitating towards a warm hearth after being in the cold for too long. He makes the world feel vivid. Immediate. As though every moment matters because he has the rare gift of being fully present in it; so alive that it forces her own heart to remember its pulse each time.
Avoiding him would only mean carrying yesterday’s tension into every room and they cannot afford that. If somebody must set the pace? Then she will do so. Padmé has done it her entire life, after all, balancing emotion and reason with the grace of a stateswoman raised to lead. Now, this gentle and luminous thread between them is far from a planetary crisis. She can handle it.
“Ani.” The sunrise has gentled her nerves, in any case, and drawn Padmé even closer to him “Shall we go on a picnic today?” Suffice it to say, the wideness of Anakin’s blue eyes immediately gives away his surprise. Hope too, shimmering like a mirage, yet he remains purposefully restrained and shapes his answer with the same respect that has guided him thus far “If you’d like that. Yes.”
Despite the rogue flutter in her stomach, she maintains a sense of composure as well — holds his gaze a moment longer than necessary just so he understands that there’s no hesitation on her part “Very good. After breakfast?”
Though as the morning breeze tugs several curls across her cheek, that self-assurance might have gotten somewhat lost beneath a blush when Anakin’s focus briefly follows their trajectory. He offers a reverent nod nonetheless “I’ll be ready whenever you are, Padmé.”