A/N: i don't own star wars; if i did Padmé wouldn't have been done so dirty and thats the facts lads. Special thanks to ratherbeme over on tumblr who read this before anyone of you and encouraged me to post it, even though i was very dubious about the whole of this concept. as always, please R&R, the food of the starving author.
i. Padmé Naberrie
Padmé stands on the balcony of her home, staring out at the mountains. Tomorrow is the day that her life changes forever — tomorrow she will be in Theed for her coronation. One cannot see the mountains from the palace in Theed — the palace that will be her new home. Today, is the last day that she will ever be Padmé Naberrie.
She had known that she would be leaving herself behind doing this for some time now, but the idea of it in the abstract is wholly different than the dawning reality of it. Tomorrow Mother Amidé and the sisters will be coming to whisk her away. Even though she knows that she will be able to return to her parents' home after tomorrow, there is a feel of finality to this leaving. She knows that she will be a different person, someone with experiences wholly different than those of her family's, and she wonders how much they will change in the time she is away. The idea of their home changing feels ridiculous — the mountains are solid and steady, the silvery bark and green leaves of the trees shining in the distance as the sun sets over them; they have been the same for millennia. Today the mountains that Padmé watches in the golden glow of the sunset are the same as they were when beings first settled in this valley. There is something comforting about the thought of the mountains.
The force murmurs around her, hazy and more inscrutable than she has ever felt it, which only adds to the apprehension and anxiety that is squirming in her stomach. She reaches for it, trying to grasp some thread of it, glean something, but it all slips away.
She had spent all of yesterday morning with her father in his cobbler's shop in town, the thick scent of shoe polish and nerf leather comforting and familiar. He is simple and doesn't truly understand her goals and career choice, but he is proud, so proud of her. She could feel his pride and love wrapped around every corner of his shop, hugging her and fortifying her and she wishes that she had some way of bottling the feeling to take with her, to warm herself on lonely nights.
Strictly, she is not meant to be dependent on this kind of warmth, but what do Mother Amidé and the sisters know of it really? They grew up without parents and homes, and it creates a divide between them that she is constantly trying to bridge. She had joined their sisterhood at nearly nine years old, and she certainly hadn't expected that she would become their leader, their face. Rabé, Sabé and Eritraé have been training their whole lives for tomorrow, making her four-odd years of training pale in comparison.
Her mother, a healer like her mother before her, back and back and back better understands the things that Padmé wants in this life, even if she always carries the faint taste of disapproval.
When Padmé was first born, the Jedi had come and asked for her, but Jobal Naberrie, like her mother before her had refused them. When the Jedi had left, the sisterhoods came, three of them, and Jobal had turned them all away, just as she had done when Sola was born. When Padmé had come home from school to tell her mother that she had joined the sisterhood of Amidala, her mother had been a riot of emotions, bleeding all over the place. Jobal was proud of her daughter, a girl ready to become a strong and fierce woman, frightened for her, scared to lose her child, and disapproving of the sisterhood.
Padmé had spent yesterday afternoon in their family home with her mother, prepping herbal teas and health kits for her mother's patients; the familiar rhythm of working side by side with her mother had been just as calming as her father's shop. The familiar scent of bacta and Avalé tea is so deeply buried in her bones, in her earliest memories of home that it makes a different kind of warmth in her.
"Your strongest asset is your kind heart Memé," her mother had said, "Do not let them break it."
"I won't," she'd said, so, so sure of it in that moment, speaking the words without a tremble in her voice.
But here, alone on the back porch of the house, watching the sun set, Padmé isn't so sure of her strength. In this moment she draws her strength from her father's slow and steady love, her mother's rough hands running through her long hair braiding in the same style that Naberrie women have been wearing back and back and back. It comes from Sola's laughter and the smile on her face, from the mountains and the forests and the rivers. It comes from the warm song the force sings in their home on nights where all of them are together in one room, dancing and telling stories, and from the stories her mother and her grandmother tell. These are all things that she is leaving behind, and she wonders what ground she will have to stand on tomorrow.
Today was filled with packing, and going over the scripts for her speeches and saying her good-byes. Theed is a two hour journey from her family's home and four from her grandmother's estate by train — the distance hardly insurmountable. Tomorrow, she is certain that it will feel infinite. They had each packed to come along to Theed tomorrow to watch the coronation — but it will not be the same as it is today. She will not get to see them, to speak to them directly. Her parents and her sister will be three beings out of thousands in the plaza outside the palace, specks in a crowd.
Tomorrow, she will be Padmé Amidala, queen of Naboo. She will be an adult, a leader with a part to play. Tonight, Padmé Naberrie dies. It sounds dramatic, even in her head, like one of Sola's Corellian Holo dramas, but it's how she feels.
A leaden weight settles in her stomach, and it knots, she wonders if she can do this, or if she is doomed to fail.
"I am one with the force, and the force is with me," she whispers, to herself, to the mountains and the woods, to the wind, into the force. The words softly spoken are picked up by the breeze and carried away, and they do not warm her as much as they ought to.
She feels like a separate entity to the coils of warmth that make up her family, an interloper standing on the porch of their home, basking in the escaping light from their presences. She wants, desperately to reach out and be warmed by them, their love the most solid, sure thing in the whole galaxy, making the foundation of the ground on which she stands. But she is leaving it behind, carrying only the memory of it with her, and she must learn to do without.
Sometimes she wonders if this would be easier if her mother had given her to the sisterhood when she was an infant. When she'd announced her intentions to her mother nearly four years earlier, Jobal had seen fit to remind Padmé that there were other options for her. But, even then Padmé had felt the rightness around her choice — this is what she is meant to be, where she is meant to go, and the force rings with it.
Once more she whispers, "I am one with the force, and the force is with me," just as Mother Amidé had taught her. She narrows her focus to her breathing and the soft whispers of life beyond the house, the crickets, the animals the plants. It works, mostly, and she is relieved for it.
But her oldest lessons in the force are not from the Sisterhood; they are from her grandmother. Padmé recalls in this moment sitting on her grandmother's lap on the porch of Varykino learning to reach out for all of the life around her, and to reach into herself.
"Before you can do anything else with your gifts nouru," grandmother had said, "You need to listen to yourself, to know yourself, even the worst parts of yourself."
It isn't, strictly a teaching of the sisterhood, but it is a lesson sprouted from her bones, unprintable by any other teaching.
"I am Padmé Naberrie," she says to the mountains, "and I know myself, I stand here before you and I know myself."
The mountains don't answer, and she's not sure why she thought they would.
Padmé is surprised to find that she has been crying, a detail lost to her in her musings. Her cheeks are wet and sticky with tears, and her stomach aches with longing and grief she can't shake.
She feels Sola's presence before she sees her sister. Sola makes her way to stand beside Padmé. She is dressed in her nightgown already, her hair dangling free from her head, soft and wavy from the braids. She doesn't say anything, at first; she only offers her hand to her. Padmé finds herself greedily grabbing Sola's hand and reaching for the love radiating from her in the force. The feeling of it crashes over her and steadies her body.
"You," Sola says with utter conviction, "Will be the best Queen that Naboo has ever had."
"You think so?" Padmé asks, her voice small and quivering. Here there is no one that she has to pretend to be strong around.
"I know so," says Sola, and she really, truly means it, "You will be better even than Queen Maaré."
Perversely, Padmé finds herself laughing, the sound bubbling up out of her chest filling the silence around them, "That's ridiculous," she says.
Queen Maaré is the stuff of legend, a Queen from five thousand years ago whose name still sits on the tongues of grandmothers and schoolchildren alike. She was the warrior queen who freed Naboo from the great darkness, saved the children of Naboo from chains and brought freedom to the people. The idea of becoming more well known than Queen Maaré is absurd.
"Okay, Okay," says Sola, between breaths, now laughing too, "You might not be better than Maaré, but you will make us all proud."
Padmé isn't sure what to say, because she's not certain that she can make them all proud. So she says nothing, but she knows full well that Sola knows that she doesn't agree — Sola can read Padmé just as well in the force as Padmé can read her.
"We have one last night you know," says Sola.
Padmé is grateful, so grateful for the subject change.
"We have a fort to make in out room, loads of choc and booda berries to eat and what might be the trashiest Corellian holo drama yet to watch," says Sola.
Padmé follows her sister back into the house and into their childhood bedroom. Even before the campaign had begun in earnest, Padmé hadn't been sleeping in this room, in this bed most nights, but it was still hers. Walking into the room tonight feels less like coming home and more like walking into the past. She and Sola haven't made blanket forts in years, not since before the Sisterhood and the Queen's School, but they make one tonight; it's a mini send-off party for Padmé, bittersweet and loved.
The chocs are the same brand that the one that Sola once stole from a booth at the town market when she was nine and Padmé six. The booda berries are seasoned exactly like how Grandmother used to season them and the holo drama is just as trashy as advertised. There is a thick layer of gauzy warmth around them, and the force hums contentedly. They are up to the wee hours of the night, and they fall asleep blanketed by the warmth of their love for one another.
In the morning, Padmé wakes on the floor to her mother shaking her shoulder, and prodding her gently in the force.
"Your people are here for you nouru," she says gently. Grief dances around her head, but she doesn't say anything to Padmé about it.
After this, she is rushed from room to room in the house, Mother Amidé, Rabé, Sabé and Eritraé all taking their turns at readying her. They bathe her and dress her in her new clothes. Her face is painted with ceremonial makeup and her hair is done up in a style meant for queens. When she finally sees herself in the mirror, Padmé is looking at a stranger, a character from a storybook, maybe some kind of children's doll. The white face powder and the red lipstick feel like a mask, and she has a sudden desire to tear her skin off and crawl away.
I am, she reminds herself, a mountain and I will not fall.
She concentrates on the familiar weight of her blaster and her lightsaber hidden underneath her many skirts.
"Oh!" Her mother cries when she sees her, "You are so beautiful nouru!"
There are actual tears on her mother's face, and her pride and fear twirl around her like the branches of a weeping tree sprouting and deadly.
The Sisters and Mother Amidé may not understand family like Padmé does, but they respect it and they leave her in the kitchen with her family. Mother and Father and Sola will not be taking the same train in for the Coronation that she is.
This is good-bye.
Padmé can't seem to make words come out of her mouth.
"We are so, so proud of the fine young woman you are becoming Memé," her father says, eyes twinkling.
They are all bleeding love and pride and Padmé grabs for it, filling her heart with it and searing her skin with it.
I am solid as a mountain, she tells herself once more, holding back tears so as not to ruin her makeup.
Her father cannot feel the force like the women in his family, but he is an expert at reading Naberrie women, so she is unsurprised that he picks up on her anxieties before her mother and sister.
He smiles at her and says, "Wherever you go from here Padmé, you will carry us with you. This isn't really good-bye."
"I know," she whispers.
What she means is, I love you, but at this moment she feels too fragile to say it.
They all understand her meaning anyways.
Then. She turns and leaves, rejoining the Sisters and Mother Amidé, leaving Memé, Padmé Naberrie behind in the arms of her family. She carries with her the warmth of their love, the strength of her ideals and the undeclared but understood love of the Sisterhood, and she walks on into the future.
ii. Queen Amidala
For the second time in her young life, Padmé finds her life turned upside. Naboo has been invaded and she is being held captive in her own palace. Her people are dying and there is nothing she can do — the primary rule of the Sisterhood is secrecy, so she hides her gifts and plays the demure frightened prisoner. She is afraid, and would be a fool to think otherwise. Even when (if) this situation is resolved and peace is returned to Naboo, everything has changed irrevocably. Her home might not have been destroyed physically, but the idea of it, the feel of it is cracked all the way down to its roots now, poisoned by the greed of the Trade Federation. The feeling of safety that has surrounded Naboo for the whole of her life is gone, replaced by a kind of nothingness that she can't penetrate. Her stomach feels empty, and the ground beneath her feet feels as though it is shaking and cracking. The swirling whispers of the force around her are even more sharp and insistent than she has ever felt them, but for all their insistence they are frustratingly indecipherable. So, whatever happens next has to be rooted in the known, the solid, the whatever-she-has-left.
She hates The Trade Federation. She shouldn't, strictly, but she can't help it.
One of Mother Amidé's oldest lessons for them was Hatred clouds your judgment and makes a poor negotiator and strategist of you.
The theory and concept of this is easy to grasp, but the practice is just beyond Padmé's fingertips. Sabé, Rabé, and Eritraé can all feel Padmé's hatred, and Padmé can feel the ghost of it in her Sisters.
Mother Amidé was right though. Sitting, trapped in the throne room of the Theed Palace waiting she meditates, trying to clear her head.
Older than Mother Amidé's lessons on tactics and emotion are Grandmother's lessons.
"Sola, Memé, you can't do anything until you understand the things you are feeling, if you move forward without understanding that which drives you, fills you, you are sure to run into trouble."
Grandmother had pulled Padmé and Sola into her mindscape and led them to a cave there. The cave had been spewing inky black ropes of something indescribably sickening and strangely alluring.
"What is that?" She remembered asking.
"Chaos," Grandmother had said, the lines of her face pulled tight, "This is what you become when you lose your anchors and let yourself and your actions be controlled by your feelings. You have the force with you, so it is far easier to sink into chaos if you lose sight of yourself, lose control of yourself."
Padmé had shivered and grabbed tightly onto Sola's hand, frightened of the ink. Her sister had squeezed back.
Grandmother had returned to her familiar refrain, "You must listen to yourself and know yourself, even the worst parts of yourself."
She hated Nute Gunray and the Trade Federation, but she could not become that hate, couldn't let it blind her. It was a difficult balancing act requiring all the concentration and discipline she had at her disposal to achieve.
Her hate was useless on its own. What she needed was action.
"My lady," Sabé whispered, clearly aware that Padmé had come to an epiphany of some kind, "What are you thinking?"
"We need to escape," Padmé said.
"Wherever we go on Naboo the Trade Federation will find us again," said Rabé, "I don't see how escape will help us."
"Negotiation isn't going to work with the Trade Federation," said Padmé, "Diplomacy has failed, and Democracy on Naboo will cease to exist if we do not take action."
"You suggest we escape Naboo my lady?" Eritraé said.
"Yes," said Padmé, voice hardened.
She would be leaving home, possibly for good, but it was a risk worth taking. They needed to get word out to the greater Republic about the invasion. Whether she and her Sisters stayed prisoners here or left Naboo, their people would still be dying.
The choice wasn't easy to make, but it was the only one they really had. Padmé felt sick to her stomach at the thought that she and her Sisters were leaving their people defenseless and in peril, but this needed to be done.
She wondered if she would ever see the Theed Palace again, if she would ever talk to Sola, Mother and Father again, if she and her Sisters would see Mother Amidé's grave again.
If she thought too hard about this, she would lose her nerve. The Chancellor had promised them Jedi aid, but his gambit had clearly failed. She and her Sisters were alone. A tiny, burning match of the love that Sola, Mother, Father, the Sisters, Mother Amidé and the people of Naboo had for her warmed her, fortifying her.
As it had, the night before her coronation the force remains frustratingly inscrutable, the only thing she gets is a sense of warning from it, the whispers of the universe are speaking a language she doesn't know and the only thing that is certain is that change is coming.
Danger this way comes, the wind whispers.
I am as solid as a mountain and I am not afraid, she thinks and she is startled to find that it is true; her fear has bled out of her leaving behind only the fires of determination.
"We will all make it through this night and see our people saved from bondage," she says, as if willing the force to agree.
Tonight, she is Queen Maaré. The spirits of the Queens past whirl around them, watching with great interest whispering in voices inaudible to living ears, watching over their daughters. Padmé thinks she sees Maaré's face somewhere in the crowd and she stands and breaks the chains that bind her hands.
I am as solid as a mountain. I am Queen Maaré, Queen Amidala and I am not afraid, she vows.
"I am one with the force and the force is with me," she says in a reverent whisper with her Sisters, all as one.
Something in the force twangs and curls around them. The shadows watch and wait.
iii. Queen Amidala (Again)
Her term is up, the character of Queen Amidala is to retreat to history and Padmé Naberrie cracks an eye open, wondering if she can awaken once more. The people of Naboo clamber for the law to be changed, to allow Padmé Amidala to remain their queen — she is their Maaré, the one who freed the people. But agreeing to this feels wrong — more than that, she is certain that it would be a betrayal to the ideals of democracy that she holds dear, so she doesn't.
Padmé is set to return to her parent's home, and she is more than ready to see them again. She misses the smell of nerf leather, shoe polish, bacta and Avalé tea — the very things that smell of home. Sola will be there to greet her too, freshly returned from university, husband in tow.
There is no question of her Sisters following her. The four of them have sworn a solemn oath to protect one another, to stand by one another as long as they shall live.
The palace in Theed feels like a home now and her parent's home seems like a storybook, something belonging to another life. She remembers standing on the porch of parent's home afraid to leave there, and now she stands on the balcony of her bedroom in the Theed Palace, afraid, again of leaving.
Is a fear of leaving a flaw baked into her? There is no one to ask, so the question never passes her lips, remaining unanswered.
Her heart loves wholly and once her mother told her that it was her greatest strength. She still believes this, but she also sees now that it is her greatest weakness. In the four years of her term as queen, Padmé has seen more evil and darkness than she could have ever imagined there was in the galaxy, and it is taking all she is to keep it from poisoning her heart and breaking her.
The lights of the city of Theed are bright, warm and beautiful. The murmur of the thousands of minds coming from the city, which had been overwhelming that first day is now soothing. Her people live and laugh and love, and that is a precious thing. This is a place that changes, year to year, grows and dies in a cycle. The houses and shops that make up the city are sturdy but they are not mountains. The false pools scattered throughout the city are beautiful and calming but they dry up when they are not watched, losing their magic. They are not the rivers and lakes of the countryside.
Still, she is filled with grief at the thought of leaving. The halls of the palace are now as familiar to her as the rooms of her parent's home, perhaps now more familiar.
Rabé is the one who finds her sobbing on her balcony and helps her to her bed, soothing her into a dreamless sleep. When she wakes in the morning, the servants have packed up the last of her things and there is a speeder ready to take her to the train station waiting in the garage. Outside the palace, the masses have gathered in a giant send-off parade. There is so much warmth coming from them, fortifying her, searing deep into the marrow of her bones, as they make their way through the crowd. It is almost enough to hide the chaos that has been building around them all, muting it for a moment. Padmé is grateful for the reprieve and her Sisters are as well; none of them speak a word of this, but understanding passes through them all.
She sits in the final car on the train and watches the whole way out of Theed, staying awake as long as she can.
The train station in her hometown is the same as it was four years earlier when she left it, still a child, dressed in a woman's clothing.
She doesn't know what she is now, and it is frightening to think about it. She is no longer queen, but she cannot be Padmé Naberrie anymore, of this she is certain. A new character, a new mask waits to be made.
The force still tastes of warning and she wishes that it would be more direct in its complaints for once.
Her parents' home looks the same from the outside, but she is not the same, and she feels even more like an interloper than she had the last time she was here. She can feel them all in the house, full of happiness and excitement, all for her. She should feel it back, but all she feels is lost.
The inky ribbons of chaos dance around her throat and feel sticky against her skin; she finds that she cannot lift her arms to swat them away, so she stands, statuesque letting them dance around her. She wants to go home, but nothing feels the way it ought to. Sabé squeezes her hand, and perhaps it is enough for now — the tongues of chaos leave her skin be, though they still dance around her head. She steps forward, to the past and the future.