Attack of the Clones (21 page)

“Why do you keep saying such things about me and Anakin?”

“Because it’s obvious,” Sola replied. “You see it—you can’t deny it to yourself.”

Padmé sighed and sat down on the bed, her posture and expression giving all the confirmation that Sola needed.

“I thought Jedi weren’t supposed to think such things,” Sola remarked.

“They’re not.”

“But Anakin does.” Sola’s words brought Padmé’s gaze up to meet hers. “You know I’m right.”

Padmé shook her head helplessly, and Sola laughed.

“You think more like a Jedi than he does,” she said. “And you shouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?” Padmé didn’t know whether to
take offense, having no idea of where her sister was heading with this.

“You’re so tied up in your responsibilities that you don’t give any weight to your desires,” Sola explained. “Even with your own feelings toward Anakin.”

“You don’t know how I feel about Anakin.”

“You probably don’t either,” Sola said. “Because you won’t allow yourself to even think about it. Being a Senator and being a girlfriend aren’t mutually exclusive, you know.”

“My work is important!”

“Who said it wasn’t?” Sola asked, holding her hands up in a gesture of peace. “It’s funny, Padmé, because you act as if you’re prohibited, and you’re not, while Anakin acts as if he’s under no such prohibitions, and he is!”

“You’re way ahead of everything here,” Padmé said. “Anakin and I have only been together for a few days—before that, I hadn’t seen him in a decade!”

Sola shrugged. Her look went from that sly grin she had been sporting since dinner to one of more genuine concern for her sister. She sat down on the bed beside Padmé and draped an arm across her shoulders. “I don’t know any of the details, and you’re right, I don’t know how you feel—about any of this. But I know how he feels, and so do you.”

Padmé didn’t disagree. She just sat there, comfortable in Sola’s hug, gazing down at the floor, trying not to think.

“It frightens you,” Sola remarked. Surprised, Padmé looked back up.

“What are you afraid of, Sis?” Sola asked sincerely. “Are you afraid of Anakin’s feelings and the responsibilities that he cannot dismiss? Or are you afraid of your own feelings?”

She lifted Padmé’s chin, so that they were looking at
each other directly, their faces only a breath apart. “I don’t know how you feel,” she admitted again. “But I suspect that it’s something new to you. Something scary, but something wonderful.”

Padmé said nothing, but she knew that disagreement would not be honest.

“They’re a lot to digest, all at once,” Padmé said to Anakin later on, when the two were alone in her room. She had barely unpacked her things, and was now throwing clothes into her bag once more. Different clothes this time, though. Less formal than the outfits she had to wear as a representative of Naboo.

“Your mother is a fine cook,” Anakin replied, drawing a curious stare from Padmé, until she realized that he was joking and had understood her point perfectly well.

“You’re lucky to have such a wonderful family,” Anakin said more seriously, and then, with a teasing grin, he added, “Maybe you should give your sister some of your clothes.”

Padmé smirked right back at him, but then looked about at the mess and couldn’t really disagree. “Don’t worry,” she assured him. “This won’t take long.”

“I just want to get there before dark. Wherever
there
is, I mean.” Anakin continued to scan the room, surprised at the number of closets, all of them full. “You still live at home,” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t expect that.”

“I move around so much,” Padmé replied. “I’ve never had the time to even begin to find a place of my own, and I’m not sure I want to. Official residences have no warmth. Not like here. I feel good here. I feel at home.”

The simple beauty of her statement gave Anakin pause. “I’ve never had a real home,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Padmé. “Home was always
where my mom was.” He looked up at her then, and took comfort in her sympathetic smile.

Padmé went back to her packing. “The Lake Country is beautiful,” she started to explain, but she stopped when she glanced back at Anakin, to see him holding a holograph and grinning.

“Is this you?” he asked, pointing to the young girl, seven or eight at the most, in the holo, surrounded by dozens of little green smiling creatures, and holding one in her arms.

Padmé laughed, and seemed embarrassed. “That was when I went with a relief group to Shadda-Bi-Boran. Their sun was imploding and the planet was dying. I was helping to relocate the children.” She walked over to stand beside Anakin and placed one hand on his shoulder, pointing to the holograph with the other. “See that little one I’m holding? His name was N’a-kee-tula, which means ‘sweetheart.’ He was so full of life—all those kids were.”

“Were?”

“They were never able to adapt,” she explained somberly. “They were never able to live off their native planet.”

Anakin winced, then quickly picked up another holograph, this one showing Padmé a couple of years later, wearing official robes and standing between two older and similarly robed Legislators. He looked back at the first holo, then to this one, noting that Padmé’s expression seemed much more severe here.

“My first day as an Apprentice Legislator,” Padmé explained. Then, as if she was reading his mind, she added, “See the difference?”

Anakin studied the holograph a moment longer, then looked up and laughed, seeing Padmé wearing that same
long and stern expression. She laughed as well, then squeezed his shoulder and went back to her packing.

Anakin put the holographs down side by side and looked at them for a long, long time. Two sides of the woman he loved.

T
he water speeder zoomed above the lake, the down-thrusters churning only a slight, almost indistinguishable, wake. Every so often, a wave clipped in, and a fine spray broke over the bow. Anakin and Padmé reveled in the cool water and the wind, eyes half closed, Padme’s rich brown hair flying out behind her.

Beside them at the wheel, Paddy Accu gave a laugh at every spray, his graying hair spreading out widely. “Always better over the water!” he shouted in his gruff voice, against the wind and the noise of the speeder. “Are you liking it?”

Padmé turned a sincere smile upon him, and the grizzled man leaned in close and backed off the accelerator. “She’s even more fun if I put her down,” he explained. “You think you’ll like that, Senator?”

Both Padmé and Anakin looked at him curiously, neither quite understanding.

“We were going out to the island,” Anakin remarked, a note of concern in his voice.

“Oh, I’ll get you there!” Paddy Accu said with a
wheezing laugh. He pushed forward a lever—and the speeder dropped into the water.

“Paddy?” Padmé asked.

The man laughed all the harder. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!” he roared, kicking in the accelerator. The speeder jetted off across the water, no longer smooth in flight, but bouncing across the rippling surface.

“Oh, yes!” Padmé said to him. “I do remember!”

After a moment of initial shock, looking from Padmé to Paddy, wondering if the man was up to some dark deception, Anakin caught on, and was also swept away by the bouncing ride.

The spray was nearly continuous, thrown up by the prow and washing over them.

“It’s wonderful!” Padmé exclaimed.

Anakin couldn’t disagree. “We spend so much time in control,” he replied. His mind went back to his younger days, on Tatooine, Podracing along wild courses, skirting disaster. This was somewhat like that, especially when Paddy, in no apparent hurry to reach the island dock, flipped the speeder up and down from one edge to the other, zigzagging his way. It amazed Anakin how this little adjustment, dropping into the water instead of smoothly skimming above it, had changed the perspective of this journey. It was true, he knew, that technology had tamed the galaxy, and while that seemed a good thing in terms of efficiency and comfort, he had to believe that something, too, had been lost: the excitement of living on the edge of disaster. Or the simple tactile feeling of a ride like this, bouncing across the waves, feeling the wind and the cold spray.

At one point, Paddy put the speeder so far up on edge that both Anakin and Padmé thought they would tip over. Anakin almost reached into the Force to secure the craft, but stopped himself in order to enjoy the thrill.

They didn’t tip. Paddy was an expert driver who knew how to take his speeder to the very limits without crashing over. It was some time later that he slowed the craft and allowed it to drift in against the island dock.

Padmé grabbed the older man’s hand and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Thank you!”

Anakin was surprised that he could see Paddy’s blush through the man’s ruddy skin. “It was … fun,” he admitted.

“If it isn’t, then what’s the point?” the gruff-looking man replied with a great belly laugh.

While Paddy secured the speeder, Anakin hopped onto the dock. He reached back to take Padmé’s hand, helping her stay balanced while she debarked with her suitcase in her other hand.

“I’ll bring the bags up for you,” Paddy offered, and Padmé looked back and smiled. “You go and see what you can see—don’t want to be wasting your time on the little chores!”

“Wasting time,” Padmé echoed. There was an unmistakable wistfulness in her voice.

The young couple walked up a long flight of wooden stairs, past flower beds and hanging vines. They came onto a terrace overlooking a beautiful garden, and beyond that, the shimmering lake and the mountains rising behind it, all blue and purple.

Padmé leaned her crossed forearms on the balustrade and stared out at the wondrous view.

“You can see the mountains in the water,” Anakin remarked, shaking his head and grinning. The water was still, the light just right, so that the mountains in the lake seemed almost perfect replicas.

“Of course,” she agreed without moving.

He gazed at her until she turned to look back at him.

“It seems an obvious thing to you,” he said, “but where
I grew up, there weren’t any lakes. Whenever I see this much water, every detail of it …” He ended by shaking his head, obviously overwhelmed.

“Amazes you?”

“And pleases me,” he said with a warm smile.

Padmé turned back to the lake. “I guess it’s hard to hold on to appreciation for some things,” she admitted. “But after all these years, I still see the beauty of the mountains reflected in the water. I could stare at them all day, every day.”

Anakin stepped up to the balustrade beside her, leaning in very close. He closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of Padmé, felt the warmth of her skin.

“When I was in Level Three, we used to come here for school retreat,” she said. She pointed out across the way, to another island. “See that island? We used to swim there every day. I love the water.”

“I do, too. I guess it comes from growing up on a desert planet.” He was staring at her again, his eyes soaking in her beauty. He could tell that Padmé sensed his stare, but she pointedly continued to look out over the water.

“We used to lie on the sand and let the sun dry us … and try to guess the names of the birds singing.”

“I don’t like the sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere.”

Padmé turned to look back at him

“Not here,” Anakin went on. “It’s like that on Tatooine—everything’s like that on Tatooine. But here, everything’s soft, and smooth.” As he finished, hardly even aware of the motion, he reached out and stroked Padmé’s arm.

He nearly pulled back when he realized what he was doing, but since Padmé didn’t object, he let himself stay
close to her. She seemed a bit tentative, a bit scared, but she wasn’t pulling away.

“There was a very old man who lived on the island,” she said. Her brown eyes seemed to be looking far away, across the years. “He used to make glass out of sand—and vases and necklaces out of the glass. They were magical.”

Anakin moved a bit closer, staring at her intensely until she turned to face him. “Everything here is magical,” he said.

“You could look into the glass and see the water. The way it ripples and moves. It looked so real, but it wasn’t.”

“Sometimes, when you believe something to be real, it becomes real.” It seemed to Anakin as if she wanted to look away. But she didn’t. Instead, she was falling deeper into his eyes, and he into hers.

“I used to think if you looked too deeply into the glass, you would lose yourself,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

“I think it’s true …” He moved forward as he spoke, brushing his lips against hers, and for a moment, she didn’t resist, closing her eyes, losing herself. Anakin pressed in closer, a real and deep kiss, sliding his lips across hers slowly. He could lose himself here, could kiss her for hours, forever …

But then Padmé pulled back, suddenly, as if waking from a dream. “No, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m sorry,” Anakin said. “When I’m around you, my mind is no longer my own.”

He stared at her hard again, beginning that descent into the glass, losing himself in her beauty.