A Love Story

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

–

You don't know how you took it

You just know what you got

They don't know what you're doing

Babe, it must be art

You're a headache in a suitcase

You're a star

–

Padme turned around to face her husband. Anakin's stance was relentless as he stood there, his back turned, hands loosely on his hips, and she just knew he had already built up his own ideas in his head. She had to collect herself in the occult of easily swayed moods, fear plays on their faces.

Padme gently placed the bracelet case on the coffee table. "Clovis gave it to me." As she breathed out, she was slowly tuning herself to the mood she wanted to reflect. To wash away the heavy melancholic undertone and fall back into the comforting arms of reassurance.

But he had bordered the energy of the room with his quickness; he made a haphazard hand gesture, flinging his arm to his side as he began to face her, a ferocious quest to transition the talk to a realm she couldn't control, and it was cold. "Yeah I figured as much – what I want to know is why did you accept it?!"

An unassuming Padme watched him start to move around. His eyes wouldn't meet hers as the circumference in which he roamed about the living room increased. "I didn't accept it. I was going to return it."

He stood still again. And this time, she found herself tuning into the flush of anger he released with serrated words and more awkward and anxious hand gestures, clamped muscles and stale fingers. A surgical knife carving out the fluff, doubting her. "Did you or did you not tell him to leave you alone?"

"I did." It seemed that the tameness of her gesticulations and voice did nothing to reward the interplays, bridge the souls. "But it's not that simple."

"Why not?" He said with gritted teeth. A swift duel simmered, hindered only by the hesitation of movement.

"He. . .offered me a job. It's in Coruscant but – it's a good offer. I guess. . .maybe I was somewhat curious... But I promise you, work is all we talk about."

Anakin restrained a huff, reevaluating painful knowledge – trying not to discard discipline, biting the inside of his cheek. "I don't want you seeing him."

Padme drew a breath and walked over to him. Her hands reached for his hair, hoping to soothe, to take hold of him and make the tension flow out.

"Anakin, I can handle Clovis. There's nothing to worry about–"

Somehow he found cracks in her words of solace; his fingers encircled her wrists and lowered her hands from his face. His face was still, spiteful; his breath tight behind acute lips. "–You're not seeing him anymore."

Bars shot up, rebuilding those cages made up of anxieties, tentative thoughts, dismantling anything she could say. His face changed from one illumination to another, back and forth, the glare of his with or against me mentality. "Now either you tell him or I will."

There was little movement between them, even when he left her, only the sound of his feet was firing off on his way to the bedroom.

Her feet were nailed to the floor. She had been grasped by a cold heat in the mind, blood is boiling and suppressed with nowhere to flow. She felt like prey falling victim to the flames of annihilation and then crushed to ashes. In some strange way, it felt like the death of something, making her completely remote from reality while simultaneously diving her head first into realism. A hard fact juggling the corners of confusion, beyond knowledge, beyond repair.