#I THINK? THIS IS WHAT THE GODDESS AU WAS.... I CAN'T REALLY REMEMBER RIPPO

[naberiie]

goddess au anidala i beg of u... i know we haven’t talked about it in ages but it was truly the good stuff

Anakin had always loved Naboo, that world where he had first experienced the wonder of a society built around that which his own childhood had so thoroughly lacked. Even in the heart of Theed, one could expect to find fountains, grottos, aqueducts that flowed alongside the sun-warmed streets. One only had to walk towards the palace and soon the sound of half a dozen roaring waterfalls drowned out all other sound. To Anakin, it still seemed like the most decadent display of wealth - but water was not fought over, killed for, wrung from the air itself, like it had been on Tatooine. Life itself wasn’t a decadent display of wealth on Naboo, it was a simple fact of its reality, and he loved it for that.

Life was in such excess supply on Naboo that not even the dead could stay buried for long.

You’re very poetic today, Ani, whispered on the wind through the leaves. He shivered as Padmé’s warmth pressed gently against his hand, his back. Logically, he knew that she wasn’t behind him - that she would never physically be behind him ever again - but his heart still seized with the longing to turn around and see her standing there, smiling, her hair in lazy loose waves cascading down over her shoulders. Poetic and morose, and he could almost hear the smile in her voice. Her voice got stronger with every step to the vast building, and if he listened carefully, he could hear Rabé’s laughter, too.

The marble temple to Naboo’s ancient deities had been polished to gleaming perfection. Ever since the accident, the fiery explosion that had taken the bodies of Padmé and her three handmaidens away from those who had loved them, it had not taken the Nabooians long to understand what had become of their most beloved Queen.

Ever since Padmé-as-Shiraya had taken up residence in the temple in the heart of Theed, her three handmaidens by her side, the Naboo had restored the temple to its former, blazing, brilliant glory. What had once been derelict and abandoned, a sentimental relic of a bygone age, was now pulsing with hidden life, deep life, complex and unfathomable life, again.

Padmé had become one with the Force when she died, and she had settled into the halls of her ancestor’s deities like a clear mountain spring. The building itself felt invigorated, bursting with powerful, unseen energy.

Anakin reached out with the Force as he climbed the sun-soaked steps, and Padmé-as-Shiraya reached back, blossoms in her hair, laughter in the shadows. She was no longer compact and contained. Her energy flowed, boundless and eager, in the very waters of Naboo itself. He still didn’t understand how it had happened. Padmé and the three handmaidens that had died in the crash with her had become something more, something almost impossible. 

When the breeze rustled the flowers on the vines that wrapped around the temple’s columns, Anakin felt her lips brush against his cheek. He stepped inside and felt her arms wrap around him, cradle him, and he let himself imagine - just for a single, selfish moment - that he could still do the same with her.

His heart had broken, and had mended in a strange, unfathomable, impossible, beautiful way.

Padmé’s laughter echoed in the high dark ceilings of her temple.