Title: Break
Author: Alixy
Summary: angsty one-shot Sabé's thoughts at Padmé's funeral.
Timeframe: end of RotS
Disclaimer: Me? Own Star Wars? I'll keep dreaming.
A gentle breeze stirs her hair beneath her hood, and she crushes the urge to reach up and tuck the wayward strand behind her ear. She refuses to move. She can't begin to imagine how to live, not when her best friend, who is- was like a sister to her is dead.
She thought she would die when she heard about Cordé and Versé, but she knew they had given their lives protecting her senator. She had put herself in the same position almost 13 years ago.
Cordé's sacrifice had only given her senator 3 more years of life. Three more years to fight the Clone Wars, to strive for a peace that her handmaiden now felt would never be attained. Little Anakin Skywalker was now the most feared man in the galaxy, and he had taken his wife's life, and with hers, his child's.
It was for the child that the handmaiden grieved most. He hadn't even begun to live, and yet his life had been snuffed out so quickly. She wondered what he would have looked like. His mother's hair and his father's eyes, or the opposite? Or would he look more like his father than his mother? She would never know.
To her left, Yané wipes a tear from her eye. Saché's arm encircles her waist, supporting her.
To her right, Rabé stares stony-faced at her senator's body. Eirtaé can't stand to look at anything but the floor.
And she, Sabé, the unwavering handmaiden, the decoy queen, the one with nerves of steel who had tried her hardest to keep her friend alive, stands still, not daring to move a muscle, for fear that her mask might fall, and she might show some emotion. Emotion of any kind would break her mask, and take her with it.