Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Star Wars. Nothing. Nada.

AN: First attempt at the Star Wars universe. I try to stay as close to canon as possible, but I originally wrote this years ago and some of the previous canon has been changed, sorry about that. I updated it, but I'm sure there's still some stuff I missed. I have this story planned in three parts, to show the three prequels from Sabé's pov, but we'll see how far I get into that. Thanks for reading.

Chapter 1

"I wish I were like a star."

A warm breeze ruffles Sabé hair as a laugh cuts through the night.

"Gassy and distant?"

Sabé rolls her eyes and snorts. "No. Bright. Guiding."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You know, stars are brightest right before they die right?" Saché tells her, grin widening.

"Yeah, but they can be seen for ages afterwards too. They're still…beacons, guiding people to their destinations. Guiding them home."

"Or sucking them into a black hole," Saché snickers.

"You are just a right little ray of sunshine, aren't you? Massacring a perfectly lovely analogy."

Sabé listens to her sister, Saché, laugh loudly, it echoes across the courtyard.

"Just remember, sissy, the stars can only incline, they can't determine where you actually end up," she reminds Sabé, her laughter still vibrating in the air.

Their fellow handmaiden, Rabé's, eyes widen and she shushes them frantically.

"Will the two of you please be quiet? If the Captain catches us out here he'll skin us alive!"

Saché snorts. "The captain can bite my ever widening backside. What is the Trade Federation going to do? Snipe us from one of the moons? Besides, we aren't hurting anyone."

Rabé bites her lip. "He's worried, he's just trying to be careful. Dangerous times and all."

Sabé sighs.

She does feel slightly guilty climbing out her window with the other two, but as Saché had said, they weren't hurting anyone and they were still on the palace grounds. They just needed a walk. Without having to be in formation, or having to keep straight faces, or any of the other million and one things Eirtaé insists they do.

"What'll we do if we run into a guard?" Rabé asks still looking anxious.

"Club him over the head and have our way with him," Saché answers flatly.

It was Sabé's turn to snort. "If Eirtaé hears that you'll give her a stroke. How uncouth!"

"Remind me to say it when she's listening then."

She schools her expression into the most regal and haughty look she can muster and sticks her nose in the air as she turns to her sister.

"Though, I'm fairly certain she'd murder me first. Disgrace that I am."

Rabé smiles weakly. "She's only trying to make us look and act the part of cultured ladies, don't be so hard on her."

Saché rolls her eyes. "Rabé, you've gotta learn to lighten up a bit. I simply adore TayTay! But she keeps her cheeks squeezed so tight it's a wonder she hasn't exploded from all the gas building up in her."

Her arms swing out wildly, and she flings herself unceremoniously onto a patch of grass.

Rabé and Sabé sit on either side of her as she rolls onto her back and tugs a large, exotic looking flower with her as she sits up. Closing her eyes, she sighs, an uplifted look on her face.

"What are you thinking about?" Rabé inquires, trying and failing to look relaxed..

"Nothing," Saché grins, eyes still closed.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing? Glorious, wonderful, freeing, nothing."

Rabé shoots Sabé a confused look.

'What is wrong with your sister?' she seems to ask, though she doesn't voice the question.

Sabé , who has just over fourteen years of dealing with her slightly mad sister, simply gazes blankly back.

Sometimes it's fun to simply sit back and watch people decipher her sister's antics.

Rabé looks back at Sache. "Nothing?"

Saché slowly opens her eyes and gives Rabé a politely confused look, as though nothing should be the most obvious thing in the world.

"Nothing...everything but anything"

Rabé's shoulders sag and she gives a withering look to her fellow handmaidens. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Anything is…the Trade Federation"

"And the rationing of food," Sabé adds.

"And proper protocol."

"And keeping your elbows at a ninety degree angle when walking."

"And not doing that."

"And," Rabé lights up, finally catching onto the game, "stepping with your right foot first!"

"Exactly!" Saché smiles.

Rabé frowns again. "But I still don't know what nothing is?"

"Nothing is…boys, no men!" Saché giggles.

"New shoes!"

"Comfortable shoes."

"Dancing!"

"Only if it's in my new comfortable shoes," Saché mumbles, eyeing her calloused feet sadly.

The girls continue on for a while longer, clearing their heads of all the anything they can and going over all the nothing they can without squealing too loudly. When they finally climb back through their window, past the deeply sleeping Yané and Eirtaé , they're more contented than they had been the past week. Rabé quickly falls asleep, but the sisters still have much too much anything floating around in their minds.

"Saché?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you awake?"

"No."

Sabé rolls over and smiles at the dark lump in the bed across from her.

"Do you think the chancellor's ambassadors will end the blockade?"

The Saché-lump shifts. "I don't know…I hope so. We're at the end of our rope here. Something's about to happen though, I can feel it. Can't you?"

Sabé frowns. "Yeah, it's like the air is…heavy, odd, uncomfortable."

"Sabé , I don't know what is going to happen, but whatever does," there's a sharp intake of breath, "be careful. Promise me you'll be careful."

"Only if you do," Sabé whispers and stretches her hand across the gap between the beds. She feels her sister's little finger link with hers.

"Always."

#######

Saché glares up at the sky, arms crossed.

"This is intolerable."

Somewhere above them, out of view but present, the Trade Federation is strengthening their blockade, threatening to strangle Naboo.

"They won't win, Sach," Padmé assures her, eyes not leaving her datapad, still composing what Sabé is certain will be strong appeal for assistance from the Republic and words or encouragement for her people.

It won't help, but Sabé admires her dedication, her hopefulness.

Naboo isn't important enough, powerful enough, to garner much attention. If they're lucky, someone will take pity on them and send at least a delegation to investigate. Sabé doesn't have nearly as much optimism as her Queen though, in that regard.

Besides, no one seemed to even believe they were being blockaded. It was such a pointless exercise on the Trade Federation's part that most of the galaxy was happy to pretend it was either an exaggeration on Naboo's part, or not even happening.

There was no logic in it, and their constant denial that it was even occurring made it just as baffling.

Sabé shakes the questions away. She isn't going to divine the true meaning behind the Trade Federation's senseless moves, and trying to is only going to give her a headache.

Padmé will figure it out. She's their queen for a reason after all.

"This is cruel." Saché shakes her head, sighs loudly ash she dramatically flops back on the lounger on the veranda. "I'm going to miss the exciting conclusion to the Luke Absolom bacta arc on Corellian General."

"Oh, shut up, Saché," Eirtaé snaps. "There are more important things in this galaxy than your stupid holodramas!"

Saché doesn't defend herself, simply makes a rude hand gesture in Eirtaé's direction. Apparently, of all the indignities they've suffered recently, losing her life line to sordid, scripted holodramas with bad acting is the last straw. She's too angry for words finally.

Before Eirtaé can begin lecturing on proper protocol and behavior, how Saché was an embarrassment to all handmaidens, Yané and Rabé distract her with a question about proper footwear.

Picking up her own datapad, Sabé steps onto the veranda and pulls the doors shut behind her, cutting off Eirtaé's detailed knowledge of Corellian verses Alderaanian flats.

"You just enjoy riling her up, don't you?" Sabé asks as she settles herself at the end of the lounger and flicks on her datapad.

Saché chuckles. "Who wouldn't? She's ridiculous."

Rolling her eyes, Sabé snorts. "True as that may be, please don't needle her. Padmé has enough on her plate without the two of you bickering all the time."

"Oh, baby sister, Padmé wouldn't notice if Eirtaé and I had a good old fashioned veermok wrestling match in the ballroom," she waves a hand dismissively. "She's focused. That's why she's queen and I-I am but a lowly handmaiden."

Setting her pad down, Sabé nods, gnawing on her lip.

"Saché? Do you think they'll send help? They've been promising ambassadors for ages now and no one has come."

Because Sabé is certain they're doomed. She's an excellent student of history, and small besieged planets aren't often on the upside of these kind of disputes.

For a moment she's quiet, the silence only broken by the rush of the waterfalls echoing in the distance, then Saché sits up.

"I don't know," she shrugs, trying and failing to look unbothered by her uncertainty. "But if anyone has a snowball's chance in a Mustafar summer of getting us any, it's Padmé. Besides, the stars burn brightest in the darkest nights, and if we can see those stars, there's hope."

Sabé nods, trying to force down the knot forming in her stomach. Lorrdian proverbs, pretty as they are, aren't the most helpful. "Yeah."

She's not being entirely truthful, every fiber of her being tells Sabé that. She can read her sister like book. She isn't lying, not strictly speaking. Padmé is the only person in the galaxy that might be able to rouse support for Naboo, but Saché hardly believes she's going to be able to do it.

Saché reaches out and squeezes her sister's shoulder, forcing a smile. Her half-truth hasn't brought Sabé comfort, she knows that, and her expression is clearly an apology.

"It's a curse sometimes, being able to read people so well," Saché finally says. "Things would be so much simpler for us if we could just lie every now and then."

"You lie constantly," Sabé reminds her.

"But not to you, Sissy," she reminds her, grinning. "Like I said, it's a curse."

The doors burst open a second later, just as Sabé is about to pick her pad back up and indulge in silly stories about people with much simpler lives, lies she can't read through, and Yané trips out.

She stumbles over the hem of her gown before spotting the sisters.

"Saché! Sabé! Get in here!" She squeaks, flagging her arms, the ridiculously large arms of her handmaid's gown flapping loudly as she urges them to come.

Knocking her datapad to the ground in surprise, Sabé hurries in, Saché at her heels as they rush through the sitting room and to the chamber adjacent to it.

It isn't a hopeful scene that greets them.

The holoprojector is on, blue light bathing the ground around it and the image flickering. Padmé and Captain Panaka are both staring at it, expressions equally stormy.

On it, the grim news flickers in from Coruscant, more of the same useless political double talk and no one offering any real solutions for the small, besieged planet. 'Ifs' and 'Maybes' peppering the speech, promising everything and nothing in a single breath.

"This is pointless!" Padme shakes her head in irritation as the figure drones on. "Don't they know every second they sit and debate they are straining us to the breaking point!"

Rabe gives her a sympathetic pat on the hand. "I don't know, m'lady."

"Even if they did I doubt it would make much of a difference to them," Sache mutters darkly, so low only Sabé hears her. "They're taking their sweet time sending those ambassadors they promised."

Letting out a huff, Padme turns on her heels, "I have to go work on my speech for tonight, though I don't know what I can possibly tell everyone. There is no news either way."

With that, she leaves, Eirtae at her heels. Sache lets out a sigh, glancing at Sabé.

"That snowball is melting."

#######

Naboo's troubles aren't confined to simply not being able to get Saché's favorite holo for long.

"Dammit!" Saché curses, slapping the projector as if flickers feebly. "This stupid thing is new!"

Yané crawls under it and begins to fiddle around, searching for the source of the problem.

They'd just received a communication from the Supreme Chancellor, giving them the slimmest hope in the form of the promised ambassadors' arrival date. A delegation was being dispatched to negotiate an end to the blockade, finally.

"They'd better negotiate aggressively after all the waiting they've made us do," Saché grumbled. "This blockade has gone on long enough."

Sabé nodded, gnawing her lip as the image spoke, promising 'a swift resolution' to their 'troubles'.

"Troubles? Is that what this is?" Saché had muttered, glancing at Sabé. "Troubles, Sabs. They act like our conservator has gone out and spoiled our food."

The message hadn't even finished when the image blinked out.

Yané crawls out from the projector, frowning deeply. "There's nothing wrong with it."

"What do you mean? Of course there is. It's not working is it?" Saché asks, an annoyed glare settled on the obviously malfunctioning projector.

Yané shakes her head, her expression baffled. "The projector is fine. The connections are fine. I don't know what the problem is."

A loud bang draws their attention, and Padmé comes storming in followed quickly by Eirtaé and Captain Panaka.

"They've knocked out our communications!" Panaka growls, shooting the projector a dark look.

"That's not a promising sign is it?" Sabé whispers under her breath to Saché, now looking uncharacteristically somber.

The Republic finally deciding to step up and help had apparently spurred the Trade Federation into action.

"This is just step closer to what we had feared from the beginning," Panaka tells them. "They must be preparing for a full scale invasion."

Padmé's face is drawn tight with fury. "I agree with Captain Panaka, this move is more aggressive than anything they've done so far. They're getting bolder. An invasion is growing more and more likely."

Grim faced, Captain Panaka leaves Padmé's side as she begins strategizing out loud, Eirtaé taking notes on her datapad.

"Sabé, if it comes to that, if they do invade...I have to ask, are still prepared to take up the mantle of decoy?" Panaka's voice is kinder than she's ever heard it. He knows the position she's in.

It hadn't been long ago, not really, when they'd been selected as handmaidens for the newly elected queen, when Sabé's resemblance had first been noted.

"And being Lorrdian gives you an extra advantage," Panaka had told her, a little too cheerfully. "You and Saché will be able to mimic her absolutely."

"Now I see why they recruited us," Saché had grumbled, eyeing her hair critically. "The little Lorrdian girls can pass on kinetic mimicking. Boy are they in for a shock."

The kinetic communication and mimicry skills of their ancestors wasn't something easily passed on. They'd spent their entire lives using it. It was as natural to them as breathing.

Their attempts at teaching it had been exactly as successful as they'd both anticipated.

Still, they tried, all while Sabé and Saché studied Padme's every gesture, manner of speaking, the way she carried herself and how she walked.

"You're so much better at this than me," Sabé had complained to her sister as they'd retreated to their quarters, in their early days in Theed. "You should be the primary decoy."

Her sister could fool anyone from any corner of the galaxy. She could be a weequay or a twi'lek and no one would question it.

She was also braver.

"I don't know if I'll be able to do this. I'm not-I can't pretend I'm not afraid."

Saché had laughed at that.

"Being brave isn't about not being afraid, sissy. It's about barreling on even though you are. That's what Gram always says, remember?"

That hadn't been quite as comforting as she'd clearly meant it to be. Their grandmother's wisdom rarely was.

Whatever Sabé's feelings, she did barrel on. She'd chosen to be a handmaiden. This was simply part of her duty.

"You know I don't like this Sabé," Padmé's voice breaks through the memories. "I won't ask you to do this for me."

She'd apparently noticed Panaka and Sabé's change in demeanor and stopped her planning to investigate.

Her back is straight and her jaw set, gaze steady. She's every ounce the queen her people had chosen. She's terrified though. Leading her people against an invasion is one thing, possibly sacrificing a friend is another.

"It's the little things that get you in the end," Sabé hears her Grandmother's voice tell her, some dusty memory peeking out in a time of need. "No one cares about a massacre until they break it apart, show you the lives lost. A single soul means more to anyone than a hundred dead eyes."

Padmé cares about her people, but she loves her friends, and it kills her that it's come to this.

"You won't," Sabe finally assures her, voice falsely steady, part of the illusion that she's more than just a scared girl who happens to look like someone important. "It's my duty to help our people and my honor to help my friend."

It's an honest truth, one of the few she's ever been able to tell. She'd made a vow to protect her queen, but she's protecting a friend too now, and that's infinitely more important.

Beside her, Saché moves, a gesture so small it's imperceptible to anyone but Sabé.

'Be brave, little sister' she tells her.

She knows Sabé is being honest, but she also knows she's terrified.

Padmé's expression eases, though Sabé can still see the anxiety clawing at her.

"Thank you, Sabé." She forces a smile. "But let's still hope it doesn't come to that."

Yeah, Sabé thinks wearily. That would be the worst.

#######

The worst, as it so often does, did came to pass and Sabé found herself dressed in the ridiculous and uncomfortable Queen's garb.

"I look like a feather duster!" She complains as Eirtaé secures the unwieldy headdress.

"You look royal and regal," Eirtaé counters.

"Royal and regal are clearly coded words for 'stupid' and 'impractical'," Saché mumbled, just loud enough for Sabé to hear.

Before Sabé can so much as laugh, give her sister a silent look and let her know she appreciates her levity among the chaos, she's shoved forward.

Everything happens so quickly, she barely registers where she's being marched, before or after the Jedi arrive.

She's on autopilot. The only thing she recalls later with any detail is Padmé silently giving the order for Saché and Yané to stay behind and her big sister's wide brown eyes pleading with her to be safe before rushing off with little Yané at her elbow.