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This is how it feels like to be Anakin Skywalker. In love.
He can't even remember when it started. It was so long ago, that when she asked him about it one night, he could only use the same words Mr. Darcy managed to Elizabeth, “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”. it felt cheesy then even for his nineteen year old self. Still, it was the truth, and when she blushed at that, reminiscing about their start over classic literature lessons, he knew she felt the same.
He had always been in love with Padmé Naberrie, and he felt in his bones and soul that he would always be. He was one of those who, having once begun, would be always in love.
No matter how their lives changed from middle school when they met, to high school, when they started dating, to now, university life, he knew they would always be a part of each other's lives. It was fate.
Even if now they could only meet in rushed moments between classes, Padmé was pursuing a law degree, and Anakin was pursuing his engineering master's, so not much time was spared for a normal dating life. But, even if nights were spent awake juggling multiple equations or law books together, they were together.
Summer would be better. Internships would start again, but there wouldn't be classes or all-nighters or too early wake-up calls. Only a few months to go.
They should be used to it by now. The bad food, the awful housing on campus or the expensive ones outside. The horrible teachers, the terrible Palpatine administration. Soon, it would all be over, and they would be able to be fully present with each other. Not just in the little details that they looked out for each other every day, like coffee pots filled or lunches cooked.
Still, everything was done as close as they could. Visits to departments, quick messages sent in between classes. It felt as if they could never get enough of each other.
Obi-Wan said that he and Padmé should take it slow sometimes, but even he could feel their love and how it overflowed.
As a mentor in his young days (not that Anakin was old now, at the sweet age of twenty-three, but Obi-Wan was older and at most times, wiser), he had seen them meet, two shy kids at a youth centre. He had watched their friendship bloom into something more, and when they simply showed up holding hands one day, even closer than before, if that was all possible, he expected they would be like that for a long time.
And Anakin knew he was right.
They've been dating for six years, and their love is still the same.
Sometimes Anakin woke up and still felt like the seventeen-year-old boy who suddenly got the courage to tell Padmé his true feelings. He still didn't understand how he had done it. In a library nonetheless.
It was a sunny day, and classes had been long until that library hour after lunch, mainly because he could not stand still.
The night before had been spent on the phone with Padmé, a makeshift study call for a project they had due in one of the few shared classes they had. An English literature class, the same one in which he read Mr. Darcy’s love confessions and declarations of love (when he looked back at it, he felt it fitting that those were the only words he could suddenly remember years later).
During that long phone call, which he was sure his mother and stepfather would be upset about its price, he heard her laugh over something silly he had said and he knew it then, when he pictured her smile, she was the only one he could ever really love, that the feelings he had for her were no other than love, admiration and care.
He said once, when they met, two shy nine-year-olds, kids still, that he would marry her someday, that promise long kept away in his brain as they grew, and he didn't expect more from her than her genuine friendship.
So, that night when he felt his chest tighten and his smile grow with the one he was sure was on her lips, his mind only played the one line they had discussed just moments before in Jane Austen's Emma. If he loved her less, he might be able to talk about it more.
He felt like his love was overflowing sometimes. As if it were something bigger than himself, bigger than the stars above or the vast galaxy beyond what he could see.
His love needed no long speeches, no big showcases of love. He felt as if he only needed to tell her the three words that had always been at the back of his mind. He realised Padmé deserved beautiful declarations of love. He knew she deserved more. He would always aim to give her the stars, the moon, the sun, the planets.
He still felt that way many years later.
After a long night contemplating and unable to focus much on anything that wasn't Padmé, he realised that his love for her grew stronger each day, and the idea that he should tell her, she deserved to know. He did not expect anything; he shouldn't. But he felt that she deserved to know his heart belonged to her.
So, walking down the halls to the library to finish their project, he felt every step as a turning point. He replayed moments, stories shared, what their future could look like, a house, children that looked like both of them, a loving family.
He decided it was all worth it. Even if a part of him questioned if she felt the same, if it would be too big a change for her to take in, too big a step to take.
Still, he couldn't hold it any longer.
He loved Padmé Naberrie.
He made plans and ways, things he could say. Should he use the same words spoken to Emma Woodhouse? The ones spoken to Elizabeth Bennet? Or maybe the ones Anne Elliott read from Captain Wentworth, offering her his heart, even more her own than ever was his. It felt only fair, he had loved none but her, after all, and he felt his soul piecing, in half agony, half hope.
But when the moment came, when he looked at her, sitting near a window, sunlight shining on her, that no words could compare.
No word would ever be enough.
“From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you.” He started once he managed to get her to go with him to a space between bookshelves away from prying eyes and ears, “I know we are friends, and I'm scared this could change, but I- I think I love you more than I can ever explain.”
He was rambling, he was sure he was. But he couldn't stop.
“If you never wish to hear from me again, I'll understand, and I'll expect nothing from you than our friendship if you wish we remain that way, but I just had to tell you that I-”
“I love you.” She was said, and he suddenly could feel, hear or see anything that wasn't her. “I wasn't sure if you ever felt the same, it's a big step from our easy friendship, and I didn't know if you would find it worth it and i-.”
“How could I not?” was all he managed before lowering to her height, faces closer than ever and suddenly he wasn't scared anymore. She loved him back. It was all that mattered. He kissed her, and he felt like he was among the stars.
They left the library that day still the same, but somehow different. They were still Anakin Skywalker and Pedmé Naberrie, but now they were more. They were each other's.
Their friends joked that they weren't even surprised; some felt as if they were always like that, only now made it official.
Their parents said it always felt like only a matter of time, that they always knew.
They were right.
Now, years later, both grown and older, still attached at the hip, still a packaged deal.
Feelings somehow only grew, even when at times both felt like there would be no more room in their hearts for more love. With each sunrise and each sunset, each word, each look, their love would grow.
Now, when he thought about which love declaration he should tell her, his mind searched for all the words he could, but they were still not enough.
Sometimes, he felt as if he had kept his feelings to himself, because he could find no language to describe them in.
Nothing would compare. Nothing ever could.
He wondered if that was what pure love felt like. That somehow no word could ever describe such emotion, such deep love based on understanding. That does not require many words for them. They knew each other now on such a deep level, the kind that only one look, one word would be enough to understand their wishes.
He knew that there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.
Anakin often thought to himself that he must learn to be content with being happier than he deserved. She brought happiness to his heart, a lightness, an easiness that nothing could ever compare to, not fame, not power, only her love.
So, when the time came, he felt his heart swell at the thought of spending the rest of his life with her. For some, proposing at twenty-three felt like insanity.
Their colleagues who didn't know them very well assumed it was a quick moment of insanity. No. Anakin felt like he was ready from their first kiss all those years ago. No, not then. Before. Probably not even the night before, when he realised he had to tell her, as well as he could. Maybe it was really all those years ago, in the day they met.
He noticed they did not want syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.
The coffee is made in the morning. The books are taken back to their shelves after a long project when one is too tired to put them back. Clothes folded. Lunch cooked. Domestic life suits them, he noticed. And no one could come in between.
Where the heart is really attached, they knew very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of anybody else. It didn't matter how many looks anyone would give one of them, or how strangers tried to flirt.
Their hearts were not their own.
Anakin's heart belonged to Padmé. Her heart belonged to him. They were two halves of a whole. Two sides of the same coin, two pieces of a puzzle, two people who fit together.
They don't need words because they fully understand one another.
Her love was shown in how she looked at him early in the morning, in the whispered sweet nothings at night. So when he, one night, lying in bed, paused and simply asked if she would marry him, he was not surprised when she said yes.
How could he ever be?
From the very first moment he beheld her, his heart was irrevocably gone.