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SIDE A
TRACK 1: “True”, by Spandau Ballet
Tonight’s soirée flourishes with ambrosia, bon mot, and opulence as Padmé Naberrie moves from one tight coterie to another like a sociable (albeit restless) bird. The dress she has on is a pale eggshell blue — structured at the shoulders and nipped at her waist while curls have since been swept back into a glossy cascade.
“The administration’s current stance on nuclear deterrence is, at best, short-sighted. We are investing in escalation instead of diplomacy. It’s not sustainable.” A few heads nod along as she puts her two cents forward amidst the university’s lecturers and guest speakers alike.
One of them smiles at her youthful vigour, if nothing else. “A valiant take… for an intern.”
“Ideas only require great courage if we assume the systems of power are set in stone. I don’t.”
From across the room meanwhile, Anakin Skywalker watches her where people like him aren’t supposed to. He knows that. He’d known it as soon as he stepped through the door with a toolkit in hand — following the directions of a distracted graduate student who waved him inside and said something about faulty wiring in their back hall.
A quick fix, really, in and out.
Now he’s leaned against a nearby doorway, faded black shirt open at the collar where a thin chain catches in low light. His hair is just a little too long and unruly compared to the yuppies milling about this room, emphasised especially by a lone silver pendant hanging from one ear.
He looks… out of place.
Regardless. Anakin cannot take his eyes off her and how passionately she speaks to those who appear either uncomfortable or amused for whatever reason he cannot fathom. There are fragments that his ears are able to pick up on through the music and it certainly doesn’t sound like she’s making a joke. What the Hell is so funny to these old bastards anyway?
He should leave. Anakin knows damned well he ought to. Though every instinct that has ever gotten him into trouble lines up and tells him to push forward anyway. The young man doesn’t even realise he’s moving until he winds through that crowd and several pairs of eyes meet his towering figure, tracking up, briefly confused.
None of that matters.
God, it’s so much worse up close.
This dark-haired stranger isn’t just ridiculously beautiful — but she’s also focused in a way that makes everything else feel somewhat unreal. For a second? Anakin forgets how to exist in a conversation… or at all. “Hi,” is all he manages as their gazes lock for perhaps a beat too long.
Her mouth curves, curious but still polite. “Hello.”
TRACK 2: “Waiting for a Girl Like You”, by Foreigner
He replays the moment over in his head. “Do you know where the back hall is?” Christ. It needles at him even now as he works in silence, jaw tight with self-reproach.
The wiring he’s met with is a poorly installed mess. His left hand moves with practiced efficiency nonetheless, compensating for what isn’t there. A shoulder braces against the panel while Anakin strips insulation with a small tool he flicks open one-handed — twisting connections tightly with precise, economical movements that speak to years of adaptation rather than struggle.
His body already knows the balance required and thus it’s properly fixed in less than ten minutes. Machines have always been simple to him. People are more unpredictable. The only thing he can think about while he wipes his hand clean of dust is how he’d wasted that one shot by acting a fool, asking for obvious directions.
He’s still sulking at himself, in fact, when a soft and melodious voice drifts closer from behind him. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Shit, shit, shit. “Yeah,” he tries not to gawp at the angel in blue standing there as if summoned by his own whirlwind thoughts. “Whoever botched this panel the first time shouldn’t be allowed near electricity again,” he nods toward it when his brain fails to come up with anything else. A candid reflex that would’ve likely ruined his night even further, had she not laughed.
“Oh. Well, I don’t know. This isn’t actually my house.” One arm slings across her waist as the other hand idly plays with a pearl earring. “My name is Padmé, by the way.”
“I’m Anakin.”
“Far out,” she tilts her head toward the back door “I was just heading outside for some air.”
On instinct, he squats down and begins gathering his toolkit from the floor. “Right. Sorry. Let me get this out of your way and you can—”
“No, no!” Padmé giggles again and the sound almost makes him lightheaded when he looks up at her “I meant… would you like to join me?”
It is significantly cooler outside when Padmé descends onto the concrete steps, gathering her dress as she sits down. They can barely hear the party from here — music now replaced by the steady thrum of campus night life. Anakin follows her lead, in any case, and takes the empty spot beside her at a respectable enough distance away.
“God,” she exhales “I was dying in there.”
He frowns, curious. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Yeah. I get that a lot,” she reaches into her clutch and pulls out a pack of Parliaments then. A fancier brand than he’s used to. “Want one?”
“Nah. I’m trying to quit…” he fishes a lighter out from his pocket nevertheless and flicks it once. Twice. It catches on the third try, a wavering light held out like an offering.
The flame instantly gilds her eyes amber. A molten chocolate alive with flickers of gold when she leans forward — and when they lift to his? He forgets how to breathe. Padmé inhales before pulling back, by contrast, exhaling slow. “Thank you.”
“… my pleasure.”
A comfortable silence settles as she stares at the cigarette burning between her fingers. “Politics is all networking,” the young woman says after a moment. “Every conversation in there is a transaction. What you can offer in exchange for the chance to make a difference.”
“You don’t like that?”
“I hate every second… but it’s a necessary evil.”
“Why?”
She looks over to find him already turned in her direction. “That’s how you get anything done.”
“With all due respect, it sounds like an awful lot of talking and not much changing.”
Padmé blinks. The instinct to defend and reframe such a simplistic view of her field rises naturally — though he isn’t wrong. Not altogether at least. Everyone is answerable to a certain level of bureaucracy. It is, after all, how you keep things honest and above board. At the same time? They could stand to be more efficient.
“You don’t think that’s a little unfair?”
“No. What’s unfair is how you understand more than that entire roomful of idiots combined… and you’re the one who has to prove herself?” he huffs despite her widened eyes. “You mentioned scaling back stockpiles and actually investing in people instead of weapons because that makes sense. At least if the goal is to, shit, I don’t know… not keep threatening to end the world every five minutes.”
“No, exactly!” she perks up — thrilled to find somebody on the same wavelength as her tonight, albeit surprised that he even caught a word she said earlier “… but then it gets buried under propaganda and whatever keeps men like Ronald Reagan looking strong on television.”
“Fuckin’ Reagan,” he mutters sourly.
“Fuckin’ Reagan!”
“It’s bad enough that they’ve spent the last few years breaking unions and undercutting honest folks who actually fix things for a living. You can’t say you want disarmament and then keep pouring money into the same machine that makes it necessary in the first place.”
Padmé nods in agreement at Anakin’s angry observation, taking another drag of her cigarette as if to recalibrate herself while she observes his hard lines and edges. “I have to admit something,” her voice grows a touch lighter after a moment. “I initially invited you out here because, well… I thought you were very cute.”
That same tension breaks almost instantly. A flush creeps up his neck as he looks away, throat clearing, uncertain of what to do with that information “… and now?”
“I don’t know. That depends,” she looks at him from underneath the fan of her eyelashes. “Do you always say exactly what you think?”
“Usually gets me into trouble.”
“I can imagine,” Padmé laughs again. The sound is softer this time, aimed more at herself.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s just,” she shakes her head in search of the right words. “I try so hard to be taken seriously… that I forget what it feels like to just talk sometimes.”
He smiles. Conversation shifts, easy and unforced, into what she wants to do — how she plans to get there. He tells her about maybe opening his own shop someday and taking odd jobs in the meantime, working his way up from nothing. They don’t go back inside for a while as the evening stretches quietly around them.
TRACK 3: “Leather and Lace”, by Stevie Nicks & Don Henley
Padmé Naberrie’s neighbourhood is exactly what he expects and, truth be told, a part of him feels like somebody might wind up calling the cops with him driving through it. Anakin considers this even as he escorts her into the passenger seat — fatalistic train of thought derailing only when he turns the key and his stereo instantly floods them with music. “My city, your mountains… stay with me, stay...”
She startles at the sheer volume, though he’s quick to turn it down. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay! This sounds really familiar.”
As they pull away, a cool breeze slips in through an open window and carries every last gold thread of sunset inside while she examines the empty cassette sleeve on his dashboard. “Ooh. I didn’t take you for a Stevie Nicks fan.”
“It’s, uh…” fingers drum against the steering wheel “this album belonged to my mom.”
“A woman of good taste,” she brightens. “Does that mean you listened to it all the time?”
“Oh, yeah. She had her first copy completely worn out. It got stuck in the player a couple times.” The road stretches out ahead of them, edged with sodium lights just beginning to flicker on. “Once, I think I must’ve been eleven years old — she picks me up from school blasting ‘Edge Of Seventeen’, right? I’m already having a bad day… and she just hands me a juice box, tells me to sing it out.”
Padmé feels her smile stretch even wider into an endeared laugh. One Anakin mirrors when he steals a brief glance at her. “I know… like that was gonna fix everything.”
“Did it?”
“Sort of,” he thinks about it. “I guess.”
The song swells around them as she leans back against her seat “Your mom sounds really fun.”
A beat passes.
“Yeah, she was.”
Blanching, she turns her head slightly to regard his profile. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “She passed a few Summers ago. Accident.”
“Oh, my God… I’m so sorry.”
Anakin feels her gaze drop to where his right sleeve ties into a knot just below the elbow. An unspoken question there he doesn’t hesitate to answer. “We were in the car together…” he affirms, glancing at her again and then back. “It’s alright. I was a kid. Sometimes I don’t even remember what it felt like, y’know? To have it.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re good. Trust me,” he chuckles and the sound is hearth-warm. His hand on the wheel shifts easily as they take a turn. “I don’t mind you asking. I’d rather that than either of us pretending not to notice the obvious.”
Her expression softens.
It first blossomed as a hunch since that night at the party… but in all seriousness? Padmé had never met anyone like Anakin Skywalker before.
TRACK 4: “Lovesong”, by The Cure
This feels natural in a way Padmé has otherwise learned to distrust. After all, that which comes too easily often costs something dearer later. Regardless. The music store is loud as Madonna bleeds from every corner, occasionally clashing with sale announcements. Bright lights. Glossy covers. Rows and rows of possibility stacked in plastic cases. “What do you listen to?” the question inevitably sends them both into the Top Forties cassette bin up front and before long, she pulls one free to show him Wham!
Anakin raises a brow and her eyes narrow.
“Don’t start…”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Ani. Are you serious?” Padmé looks genuinely disappointed by his reaction, to which he relents and looks the cassette over in earnest while she presses him “You’re telling me you don’t even like ‘Edge Of Heaven?’”
“They’re not on my radar. I’ve just never listened to it,” he shrugs in a goodnatured attempt to appease his date — the slight pout on her face lighting an even bigger fire under him “… but, uh I’m sure I would if I did.”
She doesn’t buy it. “I’ll have you know that George Michael is incredibly talented,” thus the young woman primly launches into her favourite pop artist’s defence without so much as missing a beat “and handsome.”
The challenging smirk on her face is too mesmerising, however, and he has to contain himself with an idle bite of his lip. “Suppose I can’t argue with that.”
The two drift around the store for a while then, trading records and playfully arguing over what counts as either “good” or “overplayed”. They eventually round the corner and into a listening station — a shared setup with two sets of headphones hanging from a single player. An album is already queued. “Hey,” Anakin stops to tap the black and blue cover “I know these guys. They’re pretty good.”
Padmé leans in beside him, shoulder brushing together with his. “The Cure? Never heard of ‘em.”
“Come on,” he hands her one of those headphone sets and picks up the other. It’s already playing midway through the first disc as their heads inadvertently angle toward each other. They’re standing close enough that she can feel the warmth of him by her side like a furnace. Brown eyes flutter shut anyway, swaying with the beat for whoever knows how long until she feels him gauging her reaction more than he’s even listening to begin with.
She looks at him again. The music hums steadily in their ears while everything else fades away. It’s impossible to hide in this proximity and when his gaze drops a mere few inches? Padmé’s breath catches feather light — welcoming his slow lean in, desire written all over her face.
… but what if this quickly becomes something she doesn’t know how to manage? The thought is terrifying only because it doesn’t fit into the neat boxes of a life she’s managed to compartmentalise without complaint thus far.
So, she gently pulls back at the last second.
“Sorry. Sorry…” Anakin mirrors the distance she puts between them without hesitation, wincing “that was my fault. I didn’t mean to make you—”
“No. You weren’t doing anything untoward,” Padmé quickly shakes her head and the truth spills out before she can think twice to stop it “It’s just… been a while since I’ve gone out with someone. I don’t really want to think about anything physical until like, the third date.”
Mentally chastising herself, a part of her is still stuck on the fact that she’d used the word “untoward” when he suddenly looks relieved — perhaps for the clarity. “Okay.”
Padmé braces for any sign of teasing or frustration on his part. Though, when it doesn’t come and she’s only met with casual reassurance? Eyebrows lift with instinctual skepticism for what has otherwise turned her off from dating at all. “You’re not upset?” she chances.
“No…” his expression shifts from confused to angry then. “Do people get upset about that? Tell me their names.”
TRACK 5: “Father Figure”, by George Michael
The latest George Michael cassette tape had been her gift to Anakin when they eventually left ‘Tower Records’ for some food. He wasted no time placing it in the deck, at first to prove his honesty about never having acquainted himself before. Though after the first few tracks? He begins to tap against the wheel — happily letting her indulge in the triumph of expanding his horizons without resistance. Padmé finds that fascinating, she realises, as his car inches forward in the drive thru line. He wants to experience what she enjoys through her lens too.
Anakin is fully present in that sense.
It’s an attractive quality.
By the time they pull out with a generously filled paper bag, in any case, she feels her cheeks grow redder. This is crazy. He parks somewhere off to the side while Padmé stares straight ahead and realises she simply cannot sit through another two dates, pretending this animal awareness between them doesn’t exist.
She doesn’t want to hold this at arm’s length and analyse it into disappearing altogether. Thus as he reaches for the bag — distractedly saying something about the fries — she leans in without preamble, anchoring herself to one shoulder the very second her lips find his.
Suffice it to say? ‘Surprised’ is an understatement here. “Padmé…” he breathes to check if this is really happening “are you sure?” She answers by kissing him again with much firmer intent. Yes. That’s all the confirmation either of them need and so, he exhales deeply. Restraint loosens when his left hand settles around her waist and she closes the distance that much further herself.
“What about your rule?” he murmurs against her sweet, sweet mouth after a moment and she cannot help the breathless laugh that dissolves into yet another languorous kiss “You’re an exception, Ani.”
She grabs a fistful of his shirt and climbs over the console to straddle him then, George Michael’s dulcet tones reaching a fevered crescendo.
SIDE B
TRACK 6: “I Melt With You”, by Modern English
Things grow more serious in pieces so small, they almost feel insignificant on their own.
The first time she really notices it is when he’s got her CD player taken apart in front of him. There are screws lined up in careful rows. Wires exposed. He’s basically midway through surgery with the plastic casing tilted open. It had been temperamental for weeks, really, and she’d complained about the tracks skipping maybe once? Padmé never expected him to launch into action so swiftly.
“That’s not fixable…” she hangs over the edge of her bed, already missing his warmth and growing impatient about it. “You’re just taking that apart for fun now.”
“Everything’s fixable, angel.” He tells her it’s what his mother always used to say before the accident. There are days when grief hits him like a fracture line through glass and all he can do is carry it inside his chest as one does something splintering beyond control. Others, where he talks about her like she’s still in the next room — laughing as he recalls the sound of Shmi’s voice and how she used to say his name. He moves between such extremes without warning sometimes. Astronomical highs. Terrible, hollow lows. Either way, she learns not to force him out of either and simply meet him wherever he is instead; loving him just the same in both his breaking and bending.
Padmé yearns for him even when all she feels is the safety of being curled up against his side. It isn’t often that he can go an entire night without waking before she does… but in such instances? She finds that he looks younger in his sleep, like the weight across those broad Atlas shoulders suddenly disappears for a few hours. She often wonders if the same can be said for her. What version of her exists in no one else’s company but Anakin’s own?
He offers an answer every now and then, like when she has to explain why the lunch he’d packed for her goes untouched at work — that there’s just not enough time to eat when she’s been spending every break drafting her boss’s proposal for affordable housing funding and still coming up empty. She’ll be pulling her hair out, bemoaning to him of these devastating failures as the numbers never stretch far enough… but all he hears is Padmé Naberrie trying her best. “You care that much more when nobody else does,” he murmurs against her temple. “You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever known.”
… except Padmé does feel selfish around him. Her heart wants things now, and not necessarily because they align with some larger scale plan. The freedom he provides, more than anything, feels like stepping into a version of herself that isn’t constantly measured or managed.
It’s a feeling she wishes to live in forever. One they both share, for Anakin has never felt more seen in his life either. Not like this — not without the looming sense that he must be something to deserve any space he inhabits. She looks at him like he’s already enough.
Neither talk about what this may lead to, but it exists inside these in-between spaces all the same.
TRACK 7: “Baby Can I Hold You”, by Tracy Chapman
They’re lying in bed, his studio apartment dim save for the low spill of lamplight beside them. Padmé is focused entirely on the steady rise and fall of his breathing underneath her cheek. Nothing can stir the young woman when she’s relaxed and draped across him like this.
“I was thinking…”
Teasingly does she hum, eyes still shut. “Uh-oh.”
She feels a faint smile nudge at Anakin’s lips and he pauses for long enough that her palm eventually caresses his bare chest. “What is it?”
He doesn’t usually hesitate with her, after all.
“Most of our conversations these days are just about when we can see each other again,” comes after a long and pensive moment. “So, what if we moved in together?” She blinks and lifts herself up to regard him then. “I’m serious,” he lets her slide out from underneath his arm without missing a beat. “I want us to come home to each other, Padmé. These scraps of time in our schedules aren’t enough for me anymore. Are they, for you?”
A wave of confusion passes over her face. “You get all of me when I am here, though. I don’t understand why you’re saying this like I’ve been pulling away or—”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant…” Anakin is quick to sit up and gently take her hand, holding it against himself. “Of course that’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“Then, what is it? I like what we have.”
“I do too.”
Padmé starts to panic at the resignation seeping into his voice — because how does she broach an explanation that sounds irrational even to her own ears? Asking for their relationship to become something more ‘conventional’ might wind up ruining the very essence of what makes it feel so necessary. She hesitates. “I don’t want things to change,” is the unfair truth of it all.
Anakin studies her in the low light for a moment.
“… but they will, angel.”
Everything does, and relationships cannot stay suspended forever. They either deepen… or die.
TRACK 8: “Free Fallin’”, by Tom Petty
Driving through the city, a familiar tableau crawls past their windows time and again. These are the streets she could anticipate with her eyes shut and more than anything else? Padmé Naberrie knows who she is here.
So, when Anakin tells her of an opportunity that had just opened up for him out west — she needs a second to understand what that means. “He builds from the ground up. Custom jobs, restorations…” he glances at her earnestly. “We’ve worked together before and he knows what I’m about. If it works out? There’s a chance I could open something of my own one day.”
Padmé swallows. “That’s amazing,” and she does mean it in her heart because Anakin is nothing if not a man of constant forward motion. He has a restless spirit, which was what drew them to each other in the first place.
“It’s in another city… but I figured since your fellowship is ending soon, it’d be an exciting place to look for your next job.” The idea lodges somewhere deep and uncomfortable in its precision. He wants so badly for her to come with him. While she should be happy that whenever Anakin talks about the future, he repeatedly carves a space for her to step into — her mind has yet to stop from racing with every fatalistic possibility imaginable.
“Maybe,” she manages because it’s easier than addressing what’s actually unfolding in the depths of herself. “Don’t get me wrong. I know you’ve always wanted this.”
“Yeah… but none of it means anything without you.”
There is no hesitation in Anakin, by contrast, and she envies that about him. His feelings for her are wholly uncomplicated as they have always been.
He deserves better than this.
“Padmé.” His calm voice draws her back into the present, in any case, and so when she looks over at him? There is only hope. Oh, God. Padmé knows she could do it — with her brilliant qualifications, she could succeed anywhere. It’s what Anakin has always assured her of too.
This has nothing to do with capability, however, but about choosing a path that isn’t necessarily guaranteed to lead anywhere except…
TRACK 9: “Purple Rain”, by Prince
To Padmé, the street on which she has lived since graduation is very much an ordinary one. She imagines this entire stretch of buildings has witnessed a thousand goodbyes before theirs and yet? It feels like an atomic bomb has just destroyed her entire world.
The air between them is charged with promises that almost take shape — but they quietly die on her tongue, one after the other, because it wouldn’t change anything. She refuses to be the reason he throws his future away.
Regardless, her tearful gaze traces every line and slope of him then. The way a stray curl always seems to fall into his stormy blues. The steadiness of his focus on her. Padmé wants to remember him this way. “You’re gonna do wonderful things with your life, Ani…” she manages a smile. Though, judging by the set of his jaw, she’s certain he doesn’t believe her cheery facade either.
Anakin’s kind enough to let it pass. “Likewise,” he reaches into the pocket of his jacket and fishes a cassette tape out. “Here. I made this for you.” She stares at the handwritten label for half a second too long before finally accepting, fingertips brushing with his “What is it?”
“Something to remember me by.”
Their eyes meet. She doesn’t know what to say. Even the faintest hint of gratitude would unravel her right now because love — as it turns out — isn’t always enough to make you reckless. Sometimes it can only help your heart let go. Thus Anakin descends the steps that lead to Padmé’s apartment complex, leaving her in place. “Take care of yourself, okay?” is spoken a little too hastily as he doesn’t wait to hear her meek “you too” in return.
Perhaps he cannot.
She simply watches as he gets into his car without a second glance behind, standing there even long after he’s pulled away and disappeared.
TRACK 10: “Time After Time”, by Cyndi Lauper
Anakin’s absence is deafening in the apartment.
Padmé considers how much she’d come to rely on his mere existence in her world as she turns the tape over, round and around, before at last finding its designated cradle with a loud click. Then… music.
The first song spills into her bedroom, immediately harkening back to that night they’d met at a postgraduate party. Spandau Ballet had been playing softly in the background when he strode up out of nowhere and changed her life forever. Slowly then does Padmé lower herself to the carpet — body understanding before her mind does that she needs to absorb this as one song bleeds into the next, each burrowing even deeper.
She remembers everything. Not just the big moments, but small ones. The way he made space for ‘Padmé Naberrie’ to exist outside of whatever was expected of her. Wasn’t that what made their relationship so liberating in the first place? Oh, God. Suddenly it feels so obvious that a hysterical laugh catches somewhere inside her chest.
Caution mistaken for wisdom, she’d told herself that staying behind was the right choice — but listening to Anakin’s gift and feeling the weight of everything they have ever been for each other laid out in song rather than logic? It doesn’t feel responsible. Only cowardly.
“No!” Padmé rises abruptly because she knows what he is to her, and for the first time in a long while? The young woman knows what she wants more than whatever it is she’s supposed to do, terrifying as that may be.
She grabs her keys and handbag.
Having ventured an educated guess by mapping Anakin’s journey to where he’s stopped right before the first highway, Padmé pulls into a local Mobil.
He doesn’t expect her, of course. It’s obvious when he turns at the sound of his name and pure confusion colours every feature. “Angel?” Gas pump still in hand, he throws a cursory look around if only to check that she isn’t some hallucination he’s conjured up on the road.
“I listened to it…” brunette gestures back to her car a little breathlessly as she rushes out, suggesting that she’d brought the mixtape along “the whole thing.”
Anakin sets the pump back into place without looking, his attention wholly fixed on her now. “I didn’t think it would change your mind. That wasn’t why I gave it to you.”
Her stomach drops. “Why then?”
“I just…” he hesitates, hand running through his hair. “I didn’t want to leave without giving you something that was real. Something that wouldn’t disappear the second I drove away.” A beat. “It wasn’t some ploy to force you into a decision against your will. I swear.”
A wave of relief washes over her at that, and so she draws closer “Ani, no. I almost let you go… not because this wasn’t ‘real’ to me.” Padmé shakes her head in search of the right words. “I thought I needed my life to look a certain way — or be far more stable before I could ever begin to choose anything for myself. Take bigger risks… but that’s just no way to live. It can’t be.”
“Padmé…”
“I don’t know how this next part is going to go,” she nervously babbles onward despite the honest smile that stretches across her face as certainty plants its roots even deeper “… but I know that I can do it. I can do anything, as long as I’m with you. Please don’t say it’s too late.”
The world stills for only a second before Anakin closes any lingering distance between them by sweeping her up into an all-consuming kiss. His hand finds her face. Hers grip his jacket, anchoring herself lest she float away from pure and unadulterated joy. There is no hesitation any longer. No holding back. She wants to be free.
When they pull back, it’s only enough to breathe as their foreheads rest against each other. “I love you… God, I love you. I just didn’t want you to choose me,” he admits quietly “and then regret it later.”
Padmé shakes her head. “I love you, Ani!” Her words are a celebration like it’s the answer to every fear neither of them have ever been brave enough to voice aloud. Delicate hands thus slide up into his hair. She’s been trying to find her way here all along and when she pulls back to speak, that brilliant smile still brushes against his “I’m choosing you.” Their lips find each other once more, bright and unstoppable “I’ll choose you—”
Another kiss.
“… again.”
Another.
“… and again.”
She’s laughing now, the declaration breaking apart between kisses “… and again!”
Anakin joins with her laughter, though it sounds more like an exhale of disbelief and relief all tangled up together as his head drops briefly in an attempt to steady himself — but then his left arm wraps around her and before she can even think twice? He’s already lifting Padmé off the ground, strong and sure, prompting another bout of giggles much louder this time. It rings into the warm night air as she clutches at his shoulders, letting him spin her around whilst lights blur into streaks of gold and white.
Somebody honks in the queue behind Anakin’s car, though they eventually give up and move towards another pump when all Padmé does is kiss her beautiful boyfriend again. Even when he stops moving, he leans back and keeps her mid-air as if he’s still not convinced she’s really here. She looks at him like she’s thinking the same.
The future is risky in every way that matters… but for once? It fills with possibility rather than fear.