Head of State, Head of Table

Gods, I hate formal wear, Padmé thought to herself, shifting from side to side in an attempt to render the burgundy dress she wore a shade more comfortable. The damn thing was everything she'd feared when she'd reluctantly selected it from the Coruscant shop window—rustling every time she moved, constricting her ability to take a full breath, and picking up dust as if it were summoning it closer. She'd worn dresses on Oseon, but that planet's definition of elegant was decidedly different from the Core's. Wearing this thing felt like being trapped in a labyrinth of fabric.

"You look great," Anakin had told her as they were getting ready. "Seriously."

"If I wanted your opinion on how I look, Skywalker, I'd have asked," she'd growled in reply, hoisting the thing a bit higher on her waist. "It's not how I look, it's how I move. Or how I don't move, more like." With an exasperated exhalation, she'd turned to look at her husband, who was leaning against the far wall and fiddling with the cuffs of his dress uniform. "Why is it that you get to wear something functional?"

"Hey, it's not like I exactly like this thing either," he'd said, holding up his hands defensively. "I was hoping when Obi-Wan requisitioned it it'd get lost in the mail."

Sighing, she'd reached for a comb to run through her hair for the umpteenth time. "The new chancellor had better look fancy when we show up for dinner."

And, she supposed, to his credit, Chancellor Palpatine had indeed spruced himself up appropriately. Where his predecessor had favored a shirt and pants, with a cape to complete the ensemble, Palpatine wore a flowing robe whose shade was very similar to her dress. On another man it could have looked foppish, but somehow the former senator from Naboo managed to get away with it. In a bizarre way she couldn't explain, it made Padmé not trust him.

He matched the establishment, at any rate. The food wasn't bad at all—whatever spice-drenched meat Padmé was sticking in her mouth was almost alarmingly delicious, especially compared to the rations she'd been eating til so recently—but the decor was so obnoxiously ostentatious. The carpet appeared to be actual velvet, and exotic metals covered the walls. Real plants sprang up from tables. Hell, there had even been a fountain in the entryway. And while the server droids probably weren't plated in actual gold, the fact that they looked like they were was bad enough. If this was where Palpatine dined on a regular basis, he had to spend a significant portion of his salary on reservations alone.

As if he could sense the thought radiating off her, the Chancellor glanced over in her direction and smiled. "I must say, Ms. Amidala, you look absolutely lovely this evening."

She offered a tight return smile. "Thanks."

Compliment paid, Palpatine turned his attention back to the other side of the table, where Anakin was doing his best not to let the tableware clink too loudly against his metal fingers. "And how have you been getting on with General Kenobi, Anakin?" No Mr. Skywalker there—Anakin had promptly insisted on being called by his first name. Padmé was not ready to be quite so accommodating.

"Oh, fantastic," Anakin replied, in between mouthfuls of some kind of bird. "Though he hasn't exactly been happy with some of my more extreme shuttle maneuvers."

Chuckling, Palpatine swirled the wine glass he held between his fingers, letting the liquid circle around. "I must say, I didn't expect the greatest general of the Republic to be squeamish."

The pilot grinned. "You should see him fly sometime. Though it might be a little dangerous for you to be in the area."

Absurdly, Padmé felt a twinge of annoyance at her husband for this . . . disloyalty? Not as though she hadn't swiped at Obi-Wan plenty of times before, but something about the Chancellor laughing at him felt distinctly irritating. She'd earned the right to mock him, damn it.

"He was doing the best he could," she said, aware too late that she had cut off Palpatine's next statement—he kept his mouth open for a second, then clipped it shut. "He'd been beat to hell," Padmé continued. "I'm amazed he was able to stay conscious, much less fly us out of a cave."

If he was annoyed at the interruption, the Chancellor did not show it; he simply smiled pleasantly. "Of course, I meant no disrespect." Finally, he stopped swishing his wine around and took a sip. "General Kenobi is a hero, as are the both of you. We shall need him in the coming days."

A silence fell over the next several moments. Padmé took a too-large bite of her dinner and burned her tongue; looking over at Anakin, she noticed a faintly scandalized expression on his face. So he's a head of state, she did her best to think at him, big deal.

"So," Palpatine said, after another slow sip of wine. "What are your thoughts on the war to come?"

Anakin shrugged, inartfully setting his fork down. "I just fly ships."

"And I simply try to corral senators into voting a certain way. Who can say which of us is more useful?" The Chancellor put his glass down, leaned slightly forward. "Tell me."

Going slightly red, Anakin picked up his fork again and started fiddling with it. "As far as my experience with the Republic military goes, they're the best of the best. No vat-grown soldiers could compete with Typhoon Division, anyway, that's for sure."

"And quantity over quality isn't a concern? You don't think they could simply churn out enough troops to make their relative incompetence irrelevant?"

Another shrug. "We'll see, I suppose."

"Indeed we shall." Thoughtfully, a few moments later: "It's the poorest areas I'm most concerned about, myself. Of course the Confederacy could never penetrate as far as the Core, but we're spread too thin to cover the border worlds. Had Abbadon is a case in point."

"Funny," Padmé said before she could stop herself, "I didn't think it was a matter of being stretched too thin so much as the Republic not caring enough to send troops. Except the man you replaced, of course."

This time, she thought she saw the mask slip a little—not in the Chancellor's face, but in the way he gripped the stem of his wine glass just a bit harder. "Let me assure you, Ms. Amidala, many cared quite deeply, myself included. But one does not simply invade other planets' airspaces in an attempt to solve their problems. I should think you'd agree with me—you're from a non-member world, are you not?"

Great, who'd told him that? Kenobi, probably. "Oseon," she replied, forcing a smile to rise back up on her face. "Not that the Republic hasn't tried to bring us in. I remember the ships, every few years."

"Consider it a compliment," Palpatine said, his own smile perhaps a touch smugger than it had been a moment before. "But I assume that, were we to simply send Typhoon Division into your orbit uninvited, you would not approve."

She felt her smile grow just a bit wider. "Ask me if we ever catch on fire."

A passing waiter droid refilled the Chancellor's glass; when this was finished, he raised it in a toast, inclining his head. Whether this awarding of a point was meant sincerely or patronizingly, Padmé couldn't tell. "To that day never coming, then."

After her own glass was refilled, Padmé clinked it against his perhaps a bit more forcefully than was warranted. "I'll drink to that."

"I'm curious," Anakin said, at the same time tugging at his collar in what he hoped was a discreet manner. "What would you have done differently? On Had Abbadon, I mean."

As an attempt at a segue, it was a bit desperate—the look Padmé kept giving their host was identical to the one she'd thrown at Obi-Wan throughout the first 24 hours or so of their acquaintance, and Anakin worried that if they kept talking it would end with her openly insulting a head of state—but the pilot was also genuinely curious. One thing Palpatine definitely did not appear to be was flippant. Something behind his eyes had seemed to be at work the whole evening, thinking over every single response or question before it was voiced. Anakin had no doubt that, whatever the Chancellor's opinion on the cave planet's liberation was, it was not one he would have come to easily.

"Not an easy question," Palpatine replied, almost as though he'd overheard this last thought He looked Anakin's way—was that gratefulness in his eyes, thanks for being rescued from Padmé's verbal fencing? "But I did put you on the spot, I suppose I owe you an answer in return." Pausing to take a bite of his dinner, the Chancellor considered. "Well, I suppose my evasive answer is that had I been in charge of things, Had Abbadon would have been under Republic jurisdiction to begin with."

Furrowing his eyebrows, Anakin sipped at his wine. "What do you mean by that?"

"I'll be frank with you, Anakin. The Republic is . . . not what it was. We are eaten alive by special interest groups and petty squabbles. There's not been a new member world added in two decades, all because no one has paid any sort of attention to the situation outside our own borders. The Senate has been consumed with bickering over free trade and planets' rights and things of that nature. Oh, we'll send ships to non-member worlds every now and then as a matter of habit—as you saw on Oseon, I've no doubt," he said, inclining his head toward Padmé. "But the Republic has experienced a crisis of indecision for years now."

He looked off into the distance, as if thinking the matter over further before replying. "Chancellor Organa's idea of unilateral action wasn't necessarily wrongheaded. He simply deployed it too late. When you've come to the choice between letting a planet burn and declaring unlawful war, you've mucked things up."

Anakin's first instinct was to defend Bail. The man was one of Obi-Wan's best friends, after all, and had moved heaven and earth to rescue him. But it wasn't as though the Chancellor was insulting him, exactly. In fact, hadn't he just said his predecessor had had the right idea? "So," he asked, "what are you going to do now? I mean, aren't all those problems still here? The arguing and whatnot?"

Palpatine nodded gravely. "Too true, I'm afraid. And the biggest problem of all lies with the military."

The pilot frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, Anakin, look at how you and Ms. Amidala landed here. Not that we're not thrilled to have you here, of course—but what was the reason Typhoon Division was in the Had system in the first place? Why did they go there against any semblance of constitutional law?"

"The Chancellor told them to."

Shaking his head, the current Chancellor leaned slightly closer, as if imparting a secret. "No. I can guarantee that if I, or Vice Chair Sapir, or Senator C'born of Malastare, had been in charge and had ordered them to do something outside protocol, they would not have done it. It's personalities that matter. Tribalism. Not government." A deep sigh escaped his lips, and Anakin could suddenly see the overwhelming weariness behind the old man's eyes—and Palpatine was old, not ancient but decidedly past his prime. Bail, when he'd met with Anakin and Padmé before the victory parade on Alderaan, had been haggard but still clearly fit, young. For a moment, Anakin felt the oddest sense of worry roll through him, almost as if the Force were telling him that the toll this war would take on the new Chancellor might be too much.

As Palpatine continued, the pilot yanked himself back to the conversation. "Typhoon Division," the old man said, "thinks of themselves first and foremost as Alderaan's finest. Because Senator Organa is also of the royal family of Alderaan, they did as he commanded." Blinking his troubled eyes a couple of times, he continued: "It's the same the galaxy over; Alderaan does not stand alone. The Republic was conceived as a unified body, systems coming together for the greater good. In practice, lesser loyalties still hold sway."

"So, what?" Anakin almost jumped when Padmé spoke; in the last several moments it had seemed almost as though it were only him and Palpatine at the table. Glancing over, he saw that the potential danger in her expression hadn't waned. "People are just supposed to forget who they are when they join the Republic? I can just kiss Oseon goodbye and never go back?"

Palpatine reached over, then, and laid his hand on top of hers. The concern in his expression was unmistakable. "My dear Ms. Amidala, of course not. Do you think I forget Naboo? But were my planet to secede from the Republic, I would know where my duty lay. I do not think I could say the same for all members of the Senate."

Toying with his fork, the Chancellor settled back in his chair and thought. "Let me share with you a riddle that was posed to me when I was a boy on Naboo. I'm sure you'll have heard some variant of it, of course, it's not unique to us. Which is the greater sin: to betray a friend or to betray the laws to which you hold yourself?"

Padmé, who'd drawn her hand away from her host's as quickly as she could without seeming rude, answered without hesitation. "The friend."

When the Chancellor's gaze drifted back across the table, Anakin nodded and echoed, "Yeah, the friend." As soon as he'd said so, part of him whispered that he should have put more thought into the answer. Absurdly, that part felt a bit guilty at the answer, a reflexive response utterly unlike Palpatine's considered sentences. It was as though he'd said something that would be answered with a parental frown.

None appeared, however. Nodding, Palpatine replied, "You know, when I first heard the riddle, I said the same thing. Most of my class did, in fact. And then our teacher said: it is inarguably the greater sin to betray the laws. For in doing so, you betray not only yourself but the society that raised you and your friend—and so betray the friend as well, in a deeper sense."

Snorting, Padmé replied through a mouthful of dinner, "Sounds like something Kenobi would say."

"He does have a reputation for wisdom." Gently laying his silverware across his plate, Palpatine chuckled briefly. "At any rate, Anakin, to address your original question: I, too, have to act within the law, so my options are necessarily limited. But if I have one goal for now—besides, of course, winning the war—it's to make the Senate realize that the Republic is first and foremost that, a Republic. Not a temporary club of neighbors. And while I don't intend to . . ." He cast about for the right word. "Overstep my authority, I will do anything within it to see that goal realized."

As the droid waiter circled back around to take the Chancellor's plate, Anakin hazarded, "Well, you've got an ear in Alderaan's neck of the woods now, so that's something. I'll take care of Obi-Wan, he'll take care of the military. Between the two of us we can keep 'em loyal."

Palpatine chuckled. Padmé did not.

Afterward, in the aircar back, Padmé started out the window, watching the dancing lanterns of lit skyscrapers scroll by. It was almost like being underwater, watching schools of bioluminescent creatures drift by in the currents. In general, she was finding Coruscant difficult to get used to—her Oseon-instilled preference for open spaces had only redoubled since being trapped in a cave system for a month—but at night, it was almost relaxing.

Almost being the operative word. Especially after tonight's meal.

"So what did he say to you just as we were leaving?" she asked, making the minimum effort to keep her voice casual. "I missed it."

"Oh," Anakin said, his own voice as faux-airy as hers, "just that he'd like to keep in touch whenever we're on the planet."

Rolling her eyes, Padmé turned her head to look at her husband. "Cute."

"What?" he asked, putting on an expression of wounded innocence.

"'Oh, nothing, really, Padmé, the head of state just wants me to pop over every time I have a chance.' You're terrible at hiding things."

She watched his own eyes roll in turn. "Hey, I knew you were gonna react like this, I had to try. What's the big deal? It's kind of an honor. And if we're gonna learn to be Republic citizens, wouldn't the leader of the whole thing be a great teacher?"

"That's just it. It is inarguably the greater sin to betray the laws, that doesn't sound a little dictatory to you?"

"I don't think dictatory is a word—"

"And the little jabs at Organa and Kenobi—what the hell was that about? You didn't get mad at that?"

"You insult Obi-Wan all the time."

"That's different," she insisted, knowing even as she said it that she sounded like a child. "Anyway, what did you think of him?"

"I mean, what do you want me to say? I hate his guts?"

"Just telling me your actual opinion would be nice."

Anakin threw up his hands in the air, the right one making a muted clank as it hit the aircar's ceiling. "He seemed . . . sincere. Tired, but like he cares. And you can't tell me that he doesn't want the best for other people. He wants to treat places like Oseon better! How is that bad?"

"Believe me, Skywalker, being treated better by the Republic was never high on our list of priorities."

If the pilot had any reply to this, he kept it to himself. After several moments' silence, Padmé went back to staring out the aircar window. Traffic whizzed by like giant fireflies.

"He was just doing his job, y'know," she finally heard Anakin say. "It's not like he arranged for Bail to get railroaded out of office. Organa screwed up by sending Obi-Wan to Had Abbadon, he was the first to say so when we met him on Alderaan."

"I don't have any conspiracy theories buzzing in my head, trust me." And she didn't. But still . . .

"It's just weird," she said. "Why should the leader of trillions of people decide to take an interest in us? We're just a couple of nobodies who got dragged into a war he didn't want."

"Hey, c'mon, we're heroes. We're gonna have to get used to an adoring public." When Padmé looked back over at Anakin, he waggled his eyebrows. "Gotta give 'em what they want, right?"

Despite herself, a snort of laughter escaped. "Dork."

"Crank."

He slipped his arm around her, then; the cool metal of the mechanical hand stung against her bare collarbone for a second, but she leaned in anyway, resting her head on his shoulder. "I'll be honest," she murmured. "I'd like him a lot more if I hadn't had to wear this damn dress."

Padmé felt her husband's mouth move upward in a smirk. "Next time we'll do business casual. You can wear a tank top or something."

The way he said next time, as if it were a given thing, made her prickle just a little.

"Just . . . don't get too friendly with the guy," she said, digging her head a bit harder into the hollow of his neck. "The last Chancellor knowing about the Jedi caused enough problems."

"Don't worry. I'm sure he doesn't find me that interesting."