( closed. )

[naberrie]

Who: skywalkers
When: evening, after moving to the boneyard
Where: away from everyone else because no one deserves this drama
What: episode 3.5: the force would like to be excluded from this narrative

[ she lost track of time speaking to luke. a short sojourn become a getting to know each other, seated on the cooler sand underneath a ridge of earth, trading questions and stories, trying to pack nineteen years worth of memories into hours. padmé held luke’s hand.

how long she spent there she doesn’t know only that the sun had tracked further across the sky when she raised her head. neither does she know how long anakin observed them, mother and son both too engrossed to take notice of anything around them until luke found him. padmé’s smile was radiant. it transformed her face, cutting through so much of the heaviness that had been draped around her shoulders like a mantle since she struggled out of her pod.

when she climbed to her feet, she still held luke’s hand.

padmé had remained near him since. sometimes speaking, often listening with something very close to awe every time she looked into the face of their grown-up son. “he looks like you,” she spoke to anakin quietly once, eyes still on luke, her voice caught in a bittersweet vice. there was never a hint of doubt. padmé loved him completely and immediately when she learned she was pregnant; she loved him completely and immediately the moment he spoke his name.

if only she could see leia, as well. if only she could hold her daughter. only once. her joy would be perfect.

distracted though she is, padmé does not fail to notice when anakin draws away from the circle gathered around the fire. pushing off the ground, she follows him. the sun since set, and the desert is both dark and cold. the fire is a flickering red-orange point at their backs when she reaches him. her arm slides across his back; her fingers curl lightly around his wrist. her smile is a gentle, little thing, gone from view when she tips her chin down and rests her head against his shoulder.

she does not need the force to know something is wrong. nor does she need it to tell her where his thoughts lie. where her own would were their positions reversed. padmé holds her husband, and she waits. ]