A/N: This is a random story I decided to write for no apparent reason except too much Gilmore Girls, too much analyzing and comparing Star Wars to everything in the universe, and too much caffeine, also getting soap in my eye which was extremely painful. Don't ask.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, sadly, because my version of the world is so much better than the actual thing. Nor do I own Gilmore Girls, which I will be paraphrasing in my Star Wars fanfiction. "He doesn't want me to jiggle baby" is from Gilmore Girls, so, you know, don't sue me.

Shit. That's what I think, first, which is funny because I don't swear. Or burp, or scream, or drink, or dance, or get excited, or jump, or laugh, or breathe loudly. Then, I think about that word, shit, and about the substance in the little cup in front of me, and I think, Close enough. And then I start to cry, and laugh, all at once. Because of the reason I don't swear or burp or scream or dance or get excited or jump or laugh or breathe loudly. I am a Senator. And if that means I don't swear or burp or scream or dance or get excited or jump or laugh or breathe loudly, it sure means I don't get pregnant. Not when to the rest of the world I am not married, because the man I am married to is a Jedi and technically not allowed to be married to me, or anyone. Especially not when the man I am married to is Anakin Skywalker, the Hero With No Fear, the heroic public face of the Clone Wars…of the Jedi Order, and for some reason that strikes me as extremely funny; after all, you could say it was he and I who started the Clone Wars. You could also say it was his former Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or you could say what everyone says, but which I said first, about an entirely different matter: I think Count Dooku was behind it.

Anakin and I have been married for three years, but it was thirteen years ago that he told me we were going to get married. He was nine years old and I had just met him, and he had asked me if I was an angel. A few minutes later, he looked at me with that intense stare of his, and informed me that, "I'm going to marry you someday." Then, I had wanted to laugh but something in his eyes didn't let me.

Anakin was a slave, I was a queen, but he didn't know that, and he wouldn't for days. First, he thought I was a farm girl, then a handmaiden. No one knew, not even with Sabe, my handmaiden, and I switching places several times, when I was Amidala and when I was Padmé. Well, really, I was always Padmé somehow, I just hid it better under layers of robes and ceremonial face painting. Padmé was a fourteen-year-old girl from the mountains. She was human, imperfect. She wasn't what the planet needed to see in a time of crisis. But still, she was me. Sometimes I think, with our double lives, it's a wonder both Ani and I don't have some kind of identity crisis. But I was seventeen when I figured out who I was, Padmé Amidala, girl and symbol both. It wasn't an easy process. But Anakin is just himself, Anakin the hero, Anakin the man, Anakin the husband, and now- now Anakin the father, even if he doesn't know it and won't until he comes home from the Outer Rim. He is reckless, heroic, and funny with me, and when he's saving planet after planet from catastrophe. I am still split off, still have the reserved, dignified, Senator shell I wear in public. And when Anakin's gone and I am alone, I am never myself. And does that ever sound pathetic. But I learned long ago I couldn't have friends and now it's even worse. They would never know the biggest part of me, the part I share with Anakin- and soon, with this child inside me- and they would be intimidated by the other part of me, the politician part, the icy chill that keeps everyone at arm's length. Anakin is more than friends with Obi-Wan; Obi-Wan is like his father and his brother and his best friend all in one. All the years Anakin and I were far apart, both growing up, me far more than I would have cared to admit, liking to think that at fourteen I was fully mature, he was with Obi-Wan, and I was…with myself and my family, and learning all the differences between us by heart, studiously ignoring the similarities.

My family- my mother and father and my sister and then her husband and two children- have never understood me. Well, Sola's daughters understand me, sort of, but then again they are eleven and eight. My mother wants me to get married (Ha!) , have children (yet again, Ha!) and settle down. Well, two out of three isn't bad. She will never understand that, as much as with Anakin, danger is a part of me. I never wanted to leave Coruscant, even after I was nearly killed twice, and I was the one who got Anakin to go to Geonosis, where we nearly died, a war began, and Anakin's arm was cut off. But we did save Obi-Wan's life. Our marriage is as much- more- of a risk than anything we've ever done. My father- he understands me more than my mother, but he doesn't get why the life he and my mother had can never be enough for me. He doesn't understand why, again like Anakin, I look up at the sky and see billions of stars, and in those stars see all the places I want to go. My sister, the perfect one, who did exactly what my parents want me to do, understands me least of all. I confound her, I make her mad. She watches me play with Ryoo and Pooja, her daughters, and not-so-slyly asks me why I don't want children of my own (Ha!) and I say I do, and then she says…well, then it gets ugly and my mother comes in and asks us how old we think we are, six? My family, it pains me to think, would founder in my world, where there are bounty hunters and assassinations and ulterior motives, and where the city is built on foundations of age-old secrets. They don't know I have a bounty on my head, or that I don't care. Crap, now I have to, I can't get shot. I do not know this child, but already I know I have to protect it. At all costs. Even if it means letting everyone know. I just hope Anakin agrees.