Dusk has settled now upon Westview. Padmé stands at the kitchen sink, running her hands delicately under the faucet, contemplating. Anakin steps about the area, collecting the various toys that the children had left strewn about.
"How are they?" Padmé finally questions, if only to break the suffocating silence that blanketed the room.
"A little heartbroken," Anakin answers absent-mindedly, not looking up from what he was doing, "but they'll be alright."
"It's not everyday that you get a pet and then bury it in the same day."
"Well," he hums, setting the basket of toys down on the island counter, "life moves pretty fast out in the suburbs."
There is another few moments of silence, before Padmé shuts off the sink with a sigh. She turns around, drying her hands and not meeting her husband's eyes, "I spoke with Norm today."
"Oh?"
"Free of your oversight. His..hidden personality was unearthed. He was in pain, Ani."
Anakin looks confused for a moment, then chuckles nervously, "Padmé, dear..can we just-?"
"Can we what?" she interupts, looking up with only serious eyes, "Watch T.V.? Turn in for the night, so you can... change everything all over again?"
She set the towel down, folding her arms underneath her chest. "No. You can't control me the way you do to them."
He tilts his head, and a flash of deep gold flickers in his sapphire eyes, "Can't I?"
The look is gone as quickly as it appeared, and Anakin turns on his heel and walks out of the kitchen. "I'm going to bed!" he declares, throwing a hand up defensively.
"No! We're not done here!" Padmé exclaims, stepping out after him. "Anakin, what is the Skywalker Anomaly?"
"The what?" he replies back incredulously.
Padmé lets out another aggravated sigh, running a quick hand through her hair. "Norm has a family, Anakin! He has a family and he can't reach them because you won't let him!"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Stop lying to me!" She practically screams, face full of an insurmountable kind of anger she doesn't think it's ever held before.
When Anakin turns to her, slowly, his eyes are a pure yellow and his expression is utterly terrifying. "This," he says, almost in a hiss, gesturing about the room, "All of this, is for us. So let me handle it."
"What is outside of Westview?" Padmé demands anyway.
"You don't want to know, I promise you." Anakin states, staring briefly out of the window.
"You don't get to make that choice for me, Anakin!" she shouts, pulling roughly at the ends of her brown curls in her utter vexation.
"You've never spoke to me like this before," Anakin says, and it's almost as if he's mentally noting that down. There is no emotion in his tone. His head is tilted ever-so-slightly and his eyes are scanning her. Searching.
"Before what?" Padmé asks him, "before what? I can't remember my life before Westview! I don't know who I am, and it's scary!"
He steps forward, slowly and calmly, taking her hands in his, and Padmé fights the urge to back away because this man..this golden-eyed man is utterly horrifying.
"You are my wife," he says to her, so certainly and with such reverence as if he is daring any one person to argue with that, "and you are Luke and Leia's mother. Isn't that enough?"
And she figures that it should be.
But it isn't.