eirianerisdar:

Summary: The first time one member of each of the three iconic couples of Star Wars realised they were in love – or perhaps they did not realise, per se, but fell anyhow. In short snippets. Anakin and Padme, Obi-Wan and Satine, and Han and Leia. Oneshot.

I think line breaks still aren’t working on tumblr mobile, so I’ve put a > for every new section.

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>“Boy, get in here now!”

Watto’s Huttese was as gravelly as the fan switches Anakin was in the process of cleaning, but Anakin dropped the filthy rag and jogged into the shop immediately; he knew by experience that any delay would be met with consequences.

It was only after he had barely avoided a clipped ear and climbed on the countertop to watch Watto’s shop as instructed that he saw her.

She seemed a little older than he, but far from an adult; her head turned from the tall man in the tan poncho to face Anakin just as he raised his own; their eyes met in shared curiosity.

And Anakin, in the inexplicable and instinctual way he sometimes understood things simply by looking at them, felt a surge of something far-off and aching, light-years in the distance.

The girl smiled at him, politely. The smile did not look any less genuine for it, and it lit her face with a light that seemed to lance through space-time. She simply appeared, for a moment, like the entire galaxy existed to provide a backdrop for her smile.

In the Spice-taverns by the cargo bays, Deep-space traders, after one or two stiff drinks, would often tell of the angels of the moons of Iego; celestial beings with starlight for blood.

And so Anakin Skywalker met Padme Naberrie’s gaze for the first time, and said, “Are you an angel?”

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>“It seems strange to shed blood for a cause not your own.”

Obi-Wan glanced up at her words, one hand still grasping a branch with which he had been tending the campfire.

“Duchess?” he murmured. Qui-Gon was scouting ahead, and so she could not have addressed any other than himself.

Satine met his gaze unflinchingly, plasma-singed hair curling around her cheekbones. “You killed a man today.”

“For your sake,” Obi-Wan countered, eyes falling back to the hungry flames.

“You did not have to.”

Obi-Wan’s fingers tightened on the branch; it smouldered at its end, smoking in the flickering firelight. “Yes, I did,” he replied, and perhaps it was less eloquent of a reply than usual, but they had been on the run long enough by now that he could see a pattern to their philosophical arguments.

He expected Satine’s cool blue eyes to flare into a blaze brighter than a lightsaber core – beautiful and terrifying all at once, like a blade of words and not of plasma – but they did not.

“Why?” she said, simply. The firelight lined her features with rose gold, limned her shawl-wrapped form in forge-fed steel.

The branch slipped out of Obi-Wan’s fingers, and he found himself looking away.

Why, indeed.

He could say it was his duty to the Republic, an oath sworn to it service from the moment his hair was braided into its padawan braid.

But here, sat across the fire from this duchess, with whom he had spent more hours verbally sparring with than any other person his age, who watched him steadily even now, with hunger in her belliy and firelight in her eyes, he knew it would be a lie.

So Obi-Wan did not reply at all, and strove to ignore the flutter in his heart as Satine tucked a strand of liquid gold behind her ear.

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>“Can’t get out that way,” Han said bracingly as lowered his blaster, craning his neck to peer back down the corridor to the control room of the detention center.

“Looks like you managed to cut off our only escape route,” a sharp voice sounded behind him.

Han turned in place to face a pair of irate brown eyes that held a far more determination and confidence that one would have expected given that barely came up to the shoulder-plate of his stolen armour, and Han met the challenge within them with one of his own.

“Maybe you’d like to get back in your cell, your highness,” he said, pointedly.

The princess’s eyes flashed with a verbal duel acknowledged, but then Luke flinched beside them just before a blaster bolt slammed into the wall over their heads, and the group split apart and dove for the barely-sufficient cover of the wall brackets.

There followed a whole lot of yelling – Luke through the comms at Threepio, Han at Luke for ideas to get out of what rapidly seemed to be one of the worser shootouts Han found himself in, Chewie roaring in general, and eventually the princess, who snarled at their incompetence and snatched up Luke’s weapon to blast a hole in a grate bare inches from Han’s right ankle.

Afterwards, Han would never admit that he was startled. Han Solo didn’t startle. But somewhere between “Into the garbage chute, flyboy!” and the ever-closing walls of the trash compactor, he found himself re-evaluating things.

And then the trash compactor ground to a halt, and as the four of them stared at each other and began laughing in giddy, breathless giggles of relief, Han found himself with an armful of a slight, white-clothed form, Leia laughing by his ear.

Later, he would wonder when the princess became Leia.

But it was there, in that murky trash compactor, in grime and grit and filth, that Han first realised how beautiful she was; in that slime-soaked white dress, curls falling out of her hair-buns as she smiled once before getting right back down to the business of rescuing them all.

Because that was what it really was; they might have helped open her cell door, but Leia was the one who rescued them.

Han was in for a whole lot of trouble, he knew. But it didn’t stop him from grinning about it.

END

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I do think Anidala, Han/Leia, and Obitine remain three of the most beautiful things in Star Wars. Thanks for reading.

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