An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The forbidden tale of Anakin and Padmé's AOTC courtship. A detailed expansion covering the movie, known deleted scenes, and many new scenes. If George showed 20% of their screen time, this is the other 80%. Written for the enduring fans of Anidala.
Prologue
I don't possess the Force ability to influence minds, but my time as queen, as senator, and as Anakin's obsession has taught me there is power to be found in the consequence of my words.
Scrutinizing outsiders have judged my relationship with Anakin from the beginning. Our tale is like a misunderstood creature in a zoo, the spectators pressing their noses up at us on the transparisteel. They gape with their pointed fingers. They're vocal with their opinions and privileged hindsight of how they would've handled the twists and turns differently.
They're unaware, or uncaring, of the elevated audience rows they hurl their uninvited speeches from.
Such detractors single out the warning signs as bombastic, obvious signs of doom. How resourceful they are at finding fuel for the fires they burn us in. As if blinded by these flames of their own creation, they do not pause to view their kindling as the moments they were as we lived them. What to us was one rough conversation in an endless day— our bodies and minds perhaps taxed from duties, unending travel, or even grief, mixed with natural hindrances like hunger, lack of sleep, etc— or a passing disagreement which was returned to after we'd had a chance to process and re-frame… to them, all of it only became chopped and isolated historical fodder. I imagine it's quite effortless to throw sentiments like stones at these events when you know they are events and understand their future importance.
How nice it must be, to absorb and contextualize simultaneously with the big picture... As the great Master Yoda might say, we had not that luxury.
Stand and judge me. Stand and judge Anakin. Force knows we both deserve it, to various degrees. It's easy to pass down the verdict when you weren't caught up in the wave yourself, hijacked in body and mind by forces beyond your control. We were all of us— and I include Obi-Wan in this— just trying to navigate each day as it came, doing the best we could with the information we had at the time. And so, I'll charge you to remember: Even the combined insight of the mighty Jedi Council never saw this coming. How could I be expected to?
Continued at AO3 and Fanfiction.net...