Title: Tangle
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Darth Vader
Rating: PG
Timeframe: AU, sometime around what RotS would've been.
Author Notes: Old Christmas present for fellow A/P-er vanimy, though this is slightly cleaned up from that original. The AU setup is that when Anakin went to Tatooine to follow his nightmares about Shmi, Padmé (trying to respect the boundaries they'd created for themselves) didn't go with him, and isn't there to pull him back from the brink after the Tusken slaughter. Anakin joins Palpatine and becomes Vader far sooner, the Empire's started sooner, Obi-Wan's dead (since no one answered his distress call on Geonosis), and Padmé is now the latest in a string of 'rebels' rounded up by Vader. The scene in this drabble is the first A/P have seen one another since their goodbye on Naboo years before. She never knew what happened to him after that moment.
Disclaimer: It's all George's.

"...Ani?"

The tiny voice cut through the swaths of leather and armor and invisible emotional barriers he'd built around himself, straight through to the part of him it sought. It took an iron fist to push it back out again.

He should not have allowed himself to come face to face with her. His mother and Obi-Wan were no longer there for him to see the disappointment in their eyes, and somehow for four years he'd managed to avoid the one person left, whose eyes would have shone clearer than anyone's.

But it wasn't disappointment in her eyes, as he turned back toward her. He wasn't sure he did recognize what was there. He saw her flinch as she caught a glimpse of the eyes he could feel burning red, and shoved down the impulse - Anakin's impulse - to comfort her, focusing on the part of him that took pride in such a strong creature trembling, even if it was only slightly, before him. Fear was there on her face, yes, and that unnamable something else - but not disappointment.

She was more beautiful than he had remembered, and seeing the glistening in the corners of her eyes he knew was for him somehow made her more so. He remembered it was not the first time he'd put that expression on her face.

As he watched, she not only stood firm - a small hand reached from her cloak, toward his face. Before he could remember reacting his own hand had shot out and locked around her wrist like a vise, inches from its intended destination. He saw her bite her lip and her eyes harden, but otherwise she did not react. Something in him inexplicably felt shamed and he relaxed his grip; his eyes softened, though he did not entirely let go.

He'd simply intended to keep that hand, that skin that when it had once brushed his own had driven him mad, from touching him. Now with her hand in his, it was no better. He couldn't seem to drop it. She didn't try to move it, either. Whether out of fear he would crush it or something else, he didn't know.

How many nights had he dreamed he'd see her again? How many nights had he reminded himself that it had been she who'd let him go that day?

He'd wanted to search her out, after everything had changed. To stand at her side at the galaxy's fore, the Empress and her iron enforcer. He didn't want it without her. But the blood on his hands that had never faded taunted him, and it had been absolutely out of the question that he stain her with them.

And now here she was, and the blood that had merely tinged those hands before now drowned them. And there her hand was. Warm. Unflinching.

When she reached up again, he didn't stop her. He felt his breath start to go ragged as fingertips brushed his forehead, igniting nerves he'd been sure were long dead. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

He finally recognized the pity in her eyes for what it was, and snarled. He took a step toward her - he saw her stiffen, but she did not step back.

Why had he not called the guards in to remove her, to stop things before they had begun? Why was she not yet in a cell with the rest of them?

Why was he not moving away from her?

Because something hadn't changed.

Even with all he'd done - he still desired her above all else.

He saw the heat in her cheeks, felt her pulse under his hand - quickening as he stood there - eyes locked with his. He knew it was not all fear, knew some part of her was still drawn to him, attracted to him. Not unsurprising, he supposed; he knew she'd found his former self handsome, and his appearance was simply a somewhat more matured from the one she'd known four years ago. But he wondered why she did so little to disguise her feelings now, when it had been so important to her before. Had that not been why she'd let him go? Because that had been more important than he was?

A sudden image: that rain-soaked balcony, her arms around him in the early dawn. Her cheek against his bare chest, his fingers in that endless cascade of curls down her back, his whole heart beating for the first and only time he could remember, before she'd pulled away. He didn't know if the memory had come from his mind or hers, and for an instant, he did not care.

He tightened his grip, pulled her even closer, breath hot on her cheeks, the rest of him coming to full attention at the contact. He saw her wet her lips, and suppressed a groan. And for a moment, he had intended to kiss her. Savagely, totally, to silence the gnawing voice in his mind as well as the part of him that had always longed to do this with her again. To close the wide eyes that wouldn't stop beseeching him why he was here, like this.

He knew it wouldn't have stopped there. He would've taken her - her not being entirely unwilling, it seemed - and sated this heat that threatened to overwhelm him, then pushed her aside and never seen her again. She would become property of the Empire, and likely wither away in one of a thousand facilities across the galaxy established to house known traitors, of which she ranked near the top.

So why wasn't he?

"I never stopped," she said, quietly yet clearly enough that she was perfectly understandable. Her hand brushed her collar, at a chain around her neck that held some unseen trinket.

He knew what she meant. Better than he had any right to.

[end]