Padmé hadn't been a child in many years. Not in any meaningful sense of the word, regardless of what her age would suggest. Still, she begrudged her parents nothing, or almost nothing. The choice had been hers, she'd remind herself, when she was in one of her more disgruntled moods. After all, hadn't sister had been raised under the same roof, received the same gentle nudges towards politics? If Sola, too, had been thrust into a political role, maybe then Padmé would feel justified in a little resentment. Feelings fair or otherwise, they flooded her mind all the same, insidiously leaking through explanations she longed to cling to. She heard her own words to Anakin echoing in the recesses of her mind: I wasn't the youngest queen ever elected, but now that I think back on it, I'm not sure I was old enough. But… no. No. Padme had to believe that the life she was living had purpose, was meaningful. That her secret had to be kept, to preserve all she had worked for.
And so those familiar, niggling doubts were stirred up, once again. As Padmé pressed her eyes firmly shut, trying to invite sleep, her mind traitorously cycled through mountingly disturbing images. Flashes of the past that made her stomach sink, hazy images of a future she'd more than like to avoid. Starving children in the streets of Naboo, a girl her own age with sunken cheeks, her moon-large eyes the only untouched remnant of a body racked with hunger. Anakin hurt, Anakin in pain, engulfed in light. The shadow of an old anxiety as she entered her first council meeting. Her father's too-tight grip on her shoulder, as she hesitated in her entrance. HIs words, meant to be comforting: "Do not worry, my daughter. You were born for this." Then only fire. Fire, and fire, and fire.
You were born for this. Padmé sat up in her bed, drew her knees in close. It looked so large without him here. The bed, that was. Destiny was a daunting foe, to be sure, she thought, tracing her fingers in small circles in the linen. And if fate was really so unchangeable… But there was nothing to be gained in that line of thinking. She placed her fingers on her temples. Stretching out her legs, letting her stomach inflate with a practiced inhalation, Padme attempted to calm herself with deep breaths. In her line of work, it was necessary to have techniques to stave off anxiety. But, of course, in placing a hand on her rising stomach, Padmé was confronted with the most preeminent of her worries. She exhaled, shakily.
Would there be no comfort for her? Her mind answered in his image. Anakin. Her husband. Her husband. He was all her comfort now, for better and for worse. For worse a lot of the time lately, a dark voice said from the back of her mind. As if it were not enough that she had to hide the exponential swelling of her abdomen- a favorite feature, embarrassing to admit even to herself - she couldn't even tell him. Couldn't speak to him, even, until he returned to her again. There was nothing to be done about her situation.
Well. Almost nothing.
Padmé sighed, shaking off unwelcome thoughts rather physically by throwing the bed coverings onto the floor. There would be no sleep this night, she knew, heading for the balcony in defeat. The noise and light of other beings, criss-crossing through in the smoky darkness, would be a welcome distraction, if nothing else. Stepping barefoot into the night, she drew her limbs around herself instinctually, fastening her nightgown at the shock of the cold. Padme grimaced. Nights like these called for a stronger drink than her condition would allow.
Her "condition". Such euphemistic terms, even in the safety of her head. A child, that's what it was. Or, not quite yet a child. But, yes, motherhood was what lie ahead if she saw this path through. Her sister had daughters, of course. She was an aunt, a sister, a daughter, and now a wife. But a mother?
It wasn't that she didn't want a family of her own. Nor that she didn't want a family with Anakin. It was just…
Could she ask this of him, to give up his life? Would she be prepared to leave behind her post, to stop advocating for her people in the middle of a war?
The big questions were almost easier.
She was far from being the only qualified representative of Naboo. And they loved each other. She knew it could work, if they wanted it to. It was too much to think of all the permutations, to worry that…
But could she even be a good mother? She hadn't spent time extended amounts with any child since she was one. What did she have to offer? Didn't she lack the right kind of experience? Sure, she had a political career that spanned a decade, but raising a child would likely mean leaving that behind. That is, if she were raising a child with Anakin, as she imagined in her brightest scenarios. The lake country. Somewhere beautiful and faraway and safe, above all else.
She had done so much in her life, especially in light of her relative youth. Battles and podraces, parades and exotic retreats. Countless lifeforms from any multiplicity of systems knew her by name, by reputation. She had made a difference. She had done the best she could.
Politics had always come easily. People were another thing altogether.
Her first love was storybook-innocent, sugar-sweet: Palo, a sensitive boy even before he became an artist. Anakin had been so openly distraught, jealous even, as she recounted the tale. She had smiled then, had to smile even now, to think of sweaty preteen hand-holding making a fully grown Jedi Knight pout. And yet, the sweet left bitter remnants as she turned the matter over in her mind. Palo was the only such story she had to tell. The only time in her life that had felt even the slightest shadow of her current feelings. It had been spun-sugar, melt on your tongue, gone in the second it takes to consider the taste. It had hardly been real.
Padmé wasn't afraid that her love for Anakin shared that same impermance. Just the opposite. They burned so bright, it felt dangerous. Not unsustainable, but unstable. And she had nothing to compare it to, no glimmer of instinct to guide her.
There had been other men, of course. A small, string of suitors, if not entirely negligible. Men who did nothing more than fill the few blanks allotted in her busy schedule. The first had been an older man. Although they all had been older, now that she stopped to think. Padme let her eyes go blurry, as the memories rushed back. The lights of the passing ships of Coruscant became doubled in her eyes. They looked no different from the stars.
A seventeen year old Padmé, looking younger than her age without her Queen's makeup. The image came clear, unbidden, as Padmé curled her fingers inward, toward her palms. The man, a dignitary, a guest in her palace. An invitation cloaked in some lazy lie, hardly even bothering with any guise of virtue. Padme knew, as she was scrubbing her face, as was she cajoling Sabé into covering for her, what the man had in mind.
Palm sliding down the doorframe as she entered his room, a gesture that could have been seduction or hesitation. Padmé stood, unspeaking, shivering from a combination of gauzy clothes and fluttering, fizzy anticipation. He looked at her long, lingering, without restraint. Moonlight flooded his room, but it did not feel romantic. It felt overly bright. His over-large hands on her neck felt clinical at first, then frightening. But that, more than anything, was sort of the point.
He told her she was beautiful, which she knew. He told her she had always been a temptress, he had seen it in her since her coronation. That, she did not know. I wasn't the youngest queen, but now that I think back on it…
The second and the third had been less direct, but Padmé was no fool. She was young, she was beautiful, she was a good story. A warm body in her bed, a hot mouth on her neck, empty words in her ear. It all made the nights less lonely. Or, if there had been a cancellation in her schedule, the afternoons. For a while, her visitors were frequent, too frequent, according to Sabé's unspoken chastisement, her tight lips. But Padmé payed no mind, floating through the day knowing that she was wanted, that she was seen, that she, Padmé existed apart from Amidala. Touches and kisses and heat and the dull throbs that spelled out, You Are Not Alone.
It ended when she started wondering if they meant it.
Once she started touching them with eyes open, it became impossible to lose herself in the heat. Look me in the eye, she might say coyly. The man, ontop her, heavy. No. It started throbbing just Alone.
Her life was her career.
Padmé was Amidala, and she was not. It was a regnal name, one she had chosen for herself. She had liked the sound at fourteen. Now, it was jarring to hear the collection of syllables and be expected to answer. The figures that cast the largest shadows in her life recognized her by that name. Senators, dignitaries, advisors. All with an agenda, ever calculating. Not that she could afford to operate any differently and keep a career, but feelings would remain, as they did. It was tiresome, so many treading lightly around her, handling her like fragile glass. Even her handmaidens, constant and reliable, could not provide what she longed for. Their loyalties were brokered in their own blood. To see a friend fall, perhaps not by your own hand, but because of you… people thought the ladies her companions, and in many ways they were. But they were companions obligated to be subservient, self-sacrificing. They gave, and Amidala took. Padmé longed to give. Longed for someone to share her self with.
And now she had him. But so, so much more often than not, he was not hers alone. Of course, Padmé noted, sitting a little straighter, arching her back in the stiff chair, she did not belong to only him. Together, they served many, stood for so much more than themselves. She hoped, perhaps impossibly, that they would not have to choose between their dedication to each other and to that of the galaxy. Padme winced involuntarily at her own naïveté, curling inwards, bringing her knees to her chest. Hope was all well and good, essential even. She really did believe that. But nights like these, face to face with the inevitability of a nighttime void, she did not know if she should dare. Who told you that you'd have it all? Why shouldn't you expect just the opposite?
Their love burned brightest in the landscape of her mind. Was it right to give herself over to a love that raging so uncontrollably? Padmé had many questions without answer. She only felt certain that their fire did not have to mean destruction. Fire could mean creation. Fire could mean new life.
Waves of hope and fear crashed over her, swallowing her in equal measure, in the crash, swell, recovery. She could not allow herself to be dragged under.
It would be necessary to occupy herself, lest she be swallowed in cyclical thoughts. Soon, she must go inside, busy herself with the work of the still unseen day. Padmé tracked the motion of a ship with her eyes, trailing it's light of white-blue until it faded into the vista. Home or away? she wondered idly. Either way, there would be a ways to go. Padme could empathize. The night loomed ahead, long and impenetrable. Though she felt still, even stuck, she was hurdling into something yet unseen, obfuscated by choices still unmade.
But for now, she must breathe.