Padmé Amidala (queenofnaboo) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-09-13 07:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, anakin skywalker, padme amidala |
Who: Padmé Amidala and Anakin Skywalker
What: First meeting
Where: Huntington Beach Farmers Market
When: Friday afternoon (Sept 13)
Rating: Family Friendly
Status: Complete
It was a lazy late summer Friday and Padmé couldn’t be happier to not be in the office at the moment. She was waiting for the results from her exam, so she was taking some time off from actually working and enjoying a late summer break. She had enough money to support herself if she needed to, but she was hoping to get hired on with Sam and Percy’s firm as soon as she could. But, today she was going to enjoy the weather and decided to go to Huntington Beach to check out the farmers market and art faire that were going on. She could blame her other Sam for getting her addicted to farmers markets because now she looked forward to the fresh produce before it went away for the season.
After wandering the market she finally found a stand that she was seriously considering buying from. She approached it with her reusable tote bags over her shoulder and started to look over the various vegetables that were laid out in front of her. She hadn’t come with a shopping list so she had to mentally figure out what she could use for the next couple weeks. While she did this she became lost in her own thoughts and didn’t notice anyone else joining her at the table.
Moving to California had been a bit of a shock in itself, but what had surprised the normally frugal Anakin more than anything was the cost of just about everything. It hadn’t exactly been easy for his mother to make it back in Arizona where they lived in a town that was so geographically isolated most things brought in were double what they should be, but he was quickly growing thankful that they hadn’t tried to make it in California. They would have been out on the street in no time. He was more financially secure these days, of course, but that didn’t mean he still didn’t keep that same frugal mentality that was now nearly causing his eyes to bug out of his head when he discovered the prices of the produce tantalizingly arranged before him.
As someone who’s cooking skills extended only to as many settings he had on his microwave he would gladly admit that he was out of his element here, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a fine looking orange, cabbage or summer squash. Not that he knew the difference between one squash and another, but he could say that they looked nice enough, some of them even looked nice enough for Anakin to ignore his sticker shock as well as lack of cooking skills and consider buying one. The person beside him most have thought the same thing as they reached for the same yellow squash at the same time, their hands briefly touching before they both drew back.
He smiled bashfully at the incredibly beautiful woman at his side, quickly offering an apology and silent thanks that he hadn’t touched her with his artificial hand. “Oh, sorry, excuse me.”
Cooking was something she quite enjoyed doing, but something she didn’t get to do enough. School had been rough and so had all the internships. With the amount of studying she had been doing lately she had forgone trying to make her own meals from scratch. Thankfully things were slowing down in her life so she could start cooking once again. She had recently obtained a crockpot and she was enjoying the idea of throwing everything in it and leaving it alone for the day to hopefully be rewarded with a good meal when she got home. She was recalling the recipes when she reached for the squash only to meet someone else’s hand.
The contact caused a blush to instantly brighten her cheeks and she turned her head to look at the person. Well, she hadn’t expecting an attractive looking man and she brought her bottom lip under her front teeth and bit for a moment as she tried to suppress a smile to return his. When he apologized she shook her head as she reached forward to take the squash and offer it to him, “Oh no, not a big deal. Here, you can take this one.”
She was even more lovely when she smiled, which only made him smile more, it changing from bashful to as charming as he was able to make it. He may have thought it sweet that she was offering him the vegetable but right now the squash was the last thing on his mind. As hard as he tried to retrain himself he still usually used his right hand without thinking, so when he held up a hand to stop her it was his artificial one, but at least it was covered with the realistic looking skin he usually wore when out in public. “No, it’s okay, you take it, I’m not sure I’ll get one. I’m not even really sure what it is.”
He didn’t see a ring and she was smiling at him in a way that really made him want to make her keep smiling, so he wasn’t about to leave it at that. “It’s probably better off with you, I wouldn’t know what to do with it and it would probably just sit in my fridge until it started to rot. So please, you go ahead, I think it might have summoned you here to be it’s guardian angel so it wouldn’t have to suffer such a horrible fate with me.”
The comment about him not even knowing what it was made her face scrunched with confusion as she regarded him, “Seriously? It’s a squash. You can just throw some olive oil in a pan and fry it up, fairly easy. And I’m kind of surprised that someone would admit to not knowing what to do and letting it rot when the internet exists. And trust me, I am definitely not a vegetable guardian angel if I fully intend on eating them. It’s kind of mean.” She was taken aback by the fact that he was out at the market and didn’t know much about the produce he was looking at. It almost made her question if he came to the market to pick up girls.
“Do you know what anything on this table is and how to cook it? Because you might really need to figure out that whole internet thing before you go home with stuff,” her tone was a little more playful because she didn’t want to completely offend him. She was just surprised. Hopefully he didn’t take offense to it and she would perhaps offer a few ideas on how to cook some things.
“I know it’s a kind of squash… thing.” he did chuckle though, getting a kick at how she came back at him. “And I wouldn’t say mean, being properly cooked is a good end for a vegetable, they all probably hope for an end like that, to pass on their nutrients to someone beautiful and wise in the ways of cooking.” the beautiful comment might have been coming on a little too strong, or so he thought, but he tried to tone it down with his next words.
“But that was mean, ow,” he put his left hand to his chest in feigned pain, making sure it was the left this time, and gave her a hurt look though the smile easily shined through. “Well, I know those are tomatoes, you can do lots of things with them, though mainly make ketchup. Those are zuchinni, you don’t cook them as much as you trick people into thinking they’re cucumbers. And you’ve got onions there, you bread them and fry them and serve them with hamburgers and more ketchup. And I think those purple-white things at the end are turnips but I don’t have to go online to find out that no one actually eats turnips. I mean, you chop them up and put them with other root veggies but they always get skipped over and just end up sitting on your plate, staring up at you as if to say ‘no, I don’t know why I exist either’. Or something like that.”
As he stalked spouting off about how she was beautiful and wise an annoyed look passed across her face. Oh yeah, definitely here trying to pick up women. The urge to roll her eyes was strong and she barely resisted and he was on to the next thing. At least he managed to list off some of the normal vegetables and she couldn’t help but chuckle a couple times when he talked about ketchup and tricking people. The comment about the turnips did make her smile a little, “Turnips are actually delicious. If you do them right. I like doing them like potatoes and making them au gratin or scalloped. But I guess I can give you credit for knowing the normal vegetables.”
She pulled out her wallet and pointed at the couple things she wanted and paid the woman running the stand. She put the vegetables in her tote and started to move on to the next stand. She wasn’t going to say anything to him and assumed he would probably be following her along anyway.
“I can see a man has to work hard to impress you, but sadly that’s really the extent of my knowledge of vegetables aside from knowing which ones are good deep fried.” He said nothing while she paid and started to move away, since she did not truly seem to want to lose him he followed along, not all all put off by her teasing. He hadn’t intended to try to pick up anything other than produce, despite whatever she might have been thinking about him, but seeing her and talking with her had changed his priorities. What living-breathing, heterosexual male would blame him?
At the next table he stayed near and pretended to be looking at the wares when he was truly only paying attention to her. “This credit you mentioned, has that earned me your name or do I have to show off more of my rather pathetic general knowledge of vegetables? You should ask me about potatoes, I know all about potatoes except for that fancy French thing you said. Gratin de pommes à la dauphinoise, or whatever it was.”
As he followed along she tried to keep a neutral face as she looked over the selections at the next few tables. She was really aiming to get down to the flowers at the end of the row and pick some up for her apartment. He was just something that was slightly hindering her from it, but she couldn’t help but admit it was fun to be flirted with. It had been a while since her nose had been stuck in books for the past few months and she hadn’t done much except go out with Sam a couple times. Although, she wasn’t completely sure if those were dates or friends hanging out. But she was shaken out of her thoughts when he started asking her for her name and then spouted off a bit of french. The irony wasn’t lost on her and she let out a loud laugh as she turned to look up at him with a smile, “Clever. My name is Padmé and the fact that you just spoke the proper french name for that potato recipe is not lost on me.”
“N'était-ce pas en anglais? Je suis désolé.” he teased. French had been one of the few languages he had attempted to learn in the academy, he hadn’t kept up with it much past the first year but he knew enough to pull out a phrase or who when he needed it. Usually it had to do with food, drink or showing off for a woman, and it hadn’t hurt him so far, he just hoped he wouldn’t be asked to carry on a complicated conversation in the language.
“Anyway,” he beamed at hearing her name, then extended his left hand for her to shake. He didn’t want to scare her off by giving her his right first. And he really didn’t want to scare her off, she was beautiful and witty, not a combination he saw often enough. “It’s nice to meet you, Padmé, that’s a very pretty name. I’m Anakin.”
Anakin. The name pulled at something in her memories and she furrowed her brow just slightly as she reached out to shake his hand with her own. Anakin…. it was slow to recall the name and then suddenly it hit her. She almost gasped and dropped her hand from his as the pieces slid into place. It wasn’t a name that you heard very often and especially not when the only place you had heard it before was in your dreams. Thankfully she did neither, but her eyes did widen slightly and she looked away, “Thank you and it’s nice to meet you as well.”
It took a lot of restraint to ask him what his last name was because she didn’t want him to seem like she was fully interested him in at this point and time. But it had to be the same person, right? But the Anakin she had met was a small child, but she could see how that boy could grow to look like the man in front of her. “So, do you always come around the Farmers Market and speak french to random girls? Or do you actually buy potatoes?” she tried to move onto something else so she wouldn’t continue to think about this. She continued walking as they finally made it to the small stand that sold flowers and she reached out to look at the flowers before turning her head to look at him and await his response.
He liked to think that he could read people fairly well, not that her eyes widening made it much of a challenge for him. Something about his name had surprised her though he was relatively sure it had nothing to do with him himself, he hadn’t been in town all that long and his life before hadn’t exactly been of note. His name was different he knew, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t others out there that shared it, perhaps she knew someone else with it. It was all he could conclude at the moment, so while his eyebrows went up a little he said nothing about her reaction.
“This is my first time at a Farmer’s Market, actually, but I might make a habit of coming here if each visit will be like this one.” If you’re going to be here, he thought. “Again, sadly I must disappoint you, I usually buy potatoes cooked or at least pre-cooked. Probably why I should simply stick to speaking French, most end up too intrigued to ask about my skill, or rather lack of skill, when it comes to cooking.”
“It’s not always this interesting. Although the art faire is the more interesting part. Things change every week and they do farmers markets all around Orange County. And you really should buy some stuff and try to make your potatoes from scratch. It tastes a million times better than the pre-cooked stuff,” she pointed out to him as she continued to look through the flowers. There were quite a few different arrangements and she wasn’t quite sure which ones she liked the best. However she kept being pulled towards the ones that had a lot more color to them, “You can always take a cooking class to get better skills.”
He wasn’t going to pretend to be interested in anything other than her any longer, those bright blue eyes fixed on her as she inspected the flowers that paled in comparison to her. “I think you overestimate my ability to cook, but a class isn’t a bad idea. I wish I had the time for one, but my new job keeps me fairly busy, and when you’re just cooking for one TV dinners and take-out seem pretty acceptable as well as easy. Can’t live on Pizza Rolls and Chinese Food take-out forever though, I figured a piece of fruit now and then wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”
When she finally picked a colorful arrangement she liked he got his wallet out, having to press the hidden pair of buttons on his artificial hand that turned it palm and fingers up to hold it while he pulled out the appropriate amount of cash. He hoped the noise of the market had drowned out the mechanical whirring noise that had come with his hand turning, “Here, let me get that for you, to make up for talking your ear off.”
“Oh god, the idea of eating pizza rolls and chinese take out forever makes me want to puke. So gross. You really need some better eating habits,” she commented as she was bringing over the arrangement to the vendor to pay and then suddenly he was paying for the flowers. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth and she could feel her cheeks flushing, “Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I feel like I should be buying you some food so you’ll actually eat something healthy. I can tell you that I’m not overestimating your ability to cook because it is incredibly simple.” She was surprised and pleased that he paid for her flowers and she tucked them in the crook of her arm as she moved to walk out of the vendor’s area.
“I don’t think you know the gooey-goodness that is Pizza Rolls, or crab rangoon.” he chuckled, glancing over in time to see that adorable blush of hers while he paid. If she had noticed the odd movement of his hand she hadn’t said anything and he was fine with that either way. That sort of thing could wait until he had more of a chance to get her to like him, not that he pegged her as the type to be repulsed by it, but it always helped to be more familiar when explaining it.
“Well, if you really are concerned about my diet, I do have an idea.” after getting his change back he slipped the wallet back into his pocket then pressed the button again to turn his hand to a neutral position and let it hang at his side. “Let me take you out somewhere nice, your choice as I’m new around here and only know where the take-out places are. And you can make sure I eat something mostly healthy, I’ll even eat a salad if you want.”
She knew this was coming and she pursed her lips together with her eyebrows slightly raised as he went through the process of asking her out. It was very clever how he put it together, but she really wasn’t sure if she wanted to go out with him or not. Part of her was curious about if he was the boy from her dreams, but she also knew that she had other obligations to do. So she relaxed her mouth and her lips turned into a small frown, “As much as I would love to fix up your diet I can’t. My family is coming into town and I’m obligated to them for the weekend. But, maybe you’ll luck out and we’ll run into each other again at some point.”
He should have expected that from her, after all she had been tricky from the beginning, but his spirits weren’t dampened. She wasn’t completely shutting him down, there was room for hope and he could work with that, especially as he could tell she had enjoyed their conversation. “There’s no such thing as luck, but if you ever start to think about me and worry I might be sending myself to an early grave with my poor dietary choices, you can always give me a call,” from his other pocket he pulled a white business card with the words ‘Anakin Skywalker, Pilot and Aeronautical Engineer’ printed on it along with his work and mobile numbers, address and email. “Call me anytime, day or night I’ll be happy to hear from you.”
The moment her eyes fell on the word Skywalker on that white card her heart plummeted to her stomach. He was the same boy from the dreams. Is this what he would grow into in her dreams? She had no idea where her dreams were going because they were still just getting started. She didn’t know there was anyone else from her dream world beside Obi-Wan and Atton. Well, well, contacting him might more interesting than she thought even though she wasn’t sure if she ever would discuss these dreams with him. She respected Obi-Wan for not saying anything about them until after they had started when they first met and she should give Anakin the same respect if he wasn’t have the dreams yet. So, she pocketed the card after glancing at the details and looked back up at him, “You should start believing in luck, fly boy. It was nice meeting you, Anakin. Have a lovely day.” With another smile she turned to walk away from him and towards her own car while his business card burned a hole in her pocket.