A Love Story

Anything for Love

Anything For Love

–

Will you raise me up? Will you help me down?

Will you get me right out of this godforsaken town?

Can you make it all a little less cold?

Maybe I'm crazy, but it's crazy and it's true

I know you can save me, no one else can save me now but you

–

Anakin arrived home, finding Padme on the couch. Her feet up on the seat; her legs bent in triangles, arms hugging her knees, a self-soothing position.

"I went looking for you." He said as he dropped his key in the bowl, drained, exhausted.

"Told you I wanted to be alone."

He made his way over to her, his hand smoothed down his t-shirt against his chest, scraping off the residual bile from his fight with Miraj. "Padme, we need to talk about this."

"Now you want to talk?" She practically groaned, inert. Faint lines appear around his mouth as Anakin breathed out, a muscle in his cheek flexed. He crouched down onto his knees before her. His hands running down her sides, fingertips gently grazing against her hips. His chin resting on her propped up knee.

But Padme didn't want to look into his eyes. She did have some self-control. Although maybe not much around him. But she couldn't ignore her errant thoughts. And if she lifted her gaze now, the mood they were stuck in would tarnish the sight of the beautiful man that awaits her. She couldn't get past the disappointment; she tried to simplify it with excuses but nothing changed the fact that there was this newfound distance between them now. A dishonesty – from the man who wasn't like the ones she knew in Coruscant. Anakin was different. He was supposed to stay different. They're the indirect, secretive ones. Not him. What happened to her bold, wears-his-heart-on-his-sleeve husband?

"You knew she was my client and you didn't say anything." Her eyes warring with the disappointment, and losing.

"I didn't know how to handle it. What was I supposed to say?" His shoulders sagged, hopelessly. "I was sleeping with this woman . . . oh and she paid me...?"

She allowed herself to finally look at him – the unpolished allure, hair in disarray, and as she expected, soulful, dreamy, apologetic eyes, an ocean deep. Aayla was right, there's so much under the surface. It hurt to look at them.

"She's not over it." Padme's voice was bound with this sullen reality. The honeymoon daze they allowed themselves to get lost in had been splintered, shattered. "I've been reading her book." Her eyes closed as if to bandage up what would pour out. He's the Uncapturable Adventurer... The affliction was too great, and she, despondent. "If you knew what she wrote about you. . .how having an affair with you made her feel–"

"–I don't care what she wrote. And you shouldn't either." Anakin assured, coddling her with strong hands on either side of her when she tried to avert his gaze – determined to bring her back. "You can't trust a word that comes out of her mouth."

She saw his features had gone soft when their eyes leveled. They were worried but warm. Her hands reached up to her face, her fingers rubbing against the crinkles on her forehead before raking through her hair, overwhelmed, confused, irked. But Anakin took her hands in his, this thumbs gentle, sensitive, as they drew calming circles in her palms.

"What she did was wrong, Anakin." Padme insisted, releasing her hands from his.

"And she's gotta live with that. But we don't." His hands coasted up and down her vertical thighs. Hoping they would shed the skin of the past, the pain, the obstacles, and both of them would come back anew, shiny, unpolluted.