strongvoice.

            ^{❝ anakin, it’s definitely been that long, ❞       padmé offers, patting his shoulder before she falls back into listening to his voice.}

            ^{she doesn’t want to think of palpatine right now, even as she requests their meal with a touch pad against the wall of her apartment. thinking of palpatine means she must think of senate, and the senate is supposed to be far from her in these moments   —   or at least she HOPES it is. padmé would never be one to shirk her responsibilities where possible but there is only so much she can do, take, FOCUS ON before the weight of the world becomes like a vice on her already struggling lungs. breathing is hard, and though she can not sense the force it’s   —   presence and impact on her daily life is impossible to ignore. to love a jedi   —   she licks the inside of her bitten lip.}

            ^{she is fiercely in denial, she’ll admit to that. padmé needs to believe this can work. and she leans into his touch and into his chest. inside of her is a wound that she did not KNOW until she knew him. a LIFETIME of making choices for the greater good had taught her to ignore her own wants, own needs, left her unprepared to deal with turmoil and temptation of LOVE in it’s purest form.}

            ^{naboo elects children to their leadership, to their head of state, believing that more than anything their innocence of action is IMPORTANT in their leadership, their child like curiosity. what they FAIL to mention is that padmé had been RAISED for that life, from the moment she’d gone with her father hand in hand to do charity work in their small village. the desire to play had been replaced with textbooks and study. her INNOCENCE had been lost when she’d realized that to SOME, she was better dead, well before her term had ended. and while she’d EXCELLED, grown and thrived in the environment   —   she was… a song bird, caged by expectation to look and sound and act the part, over complicating even the simplest of things.} 

            ^{the faults in their marriage lie on BOTH their heads, let it be said.}

            ^{❝ you know i respect and admire the chancellor, but i worry that the war efforts are   —   TIRING him. from the GROUND it doesn’t look much better, ani, and i understand the need to keep POSITIVE, i DO believe in the war effort, but it’s good to be realistic as well. HOPE for the best, PREPARE for the worst. ❞             but still padmé pushes on a smile, reaching up with both hands to brush hair out of his face. she loves him. LOVES him.            ❝ if you were any less capable i’d play the part of war wife constantly looking out at the hangar to see your ship come in. but i believe in you and i always will. your job is just COME HOME SAFELY. ❞}

               HIS SHOULDERS SHAKE with silent laughter, conceding to his wife’s wisdom — as he should probably do more often. She bends his head towards better thoughts, disrupting the despairing alchemy of his brain. Anakin doesn’t ordinarily focus too much on the chancellor, though the man’s words hold a lot of weight with both him && the senate. He feels very little need to examine Palpatine’s actions, a cold dark smog swinging his attention away from the subject every time he attempts to explore it. 

               On the far rim of his consciousness, there’s a scurrying, fleeting impression something rushing towards him, across leagues of black mirror. The chancellor is a good man, a wise man. He cares about me, doesn’t lie to me like—

               Like? The Jedi Knight blinks, eyes unfocused && obscured by storm clouds. What…what had he been saying? ❝ Uhh, what do you— what do you count a safely? Because this last arrival was a crash landing. ❞ Anakin smiles crookedly, pushing down the strange fuzziness that follows. A hot pang travels up his chest, fingers of pain settling behind his eyelids. Every blink massy && weighed down by a sudden onset of exhaustion. Like a bag of wet sand settling behind his gaze. Anakin braces one hand against the back of the couch, pulling Padme with him. 

               Time to change the subject.

     ❝ Did you hear someone wants to make a holofilm about me && Obi-Wan? Windu passive-aggressively sent him a clip of the interview last night. A Jedi must know humility, after all. ❞ It’s funny how someone who lives their life in loose accordance of a code can sound so stifled by its mention. He is not the Jedi he should be, && he’ll take every opportunity to complain about that && the reins that bind him. Surely something as fundamentally good as the Order can understand the unnaturalness of detachment. The Jedi know love, but not selfish love. They cannot possess or be possessed by another. 

               Anakin has always struggled with this concept. He was born to a lifestyle that was run by possession. The slaving industry is all about who you own && who owns you. && though Anakin has never viewed sentient lifeforms as objects, he has always wanted to lay claim to something or someone in the way slaves never can. Thirteen years hasn’t been enough to free him of that particular desire.