Padmé has never been happier to get out of a meeting with Senator Paddie early. She perhaps didn't give him a fair go when he first arrived on Coruscant to replace Senator Wrede; she and Wrede hadn't always seen eye to eye, but she'd valued his opinion and they'd supported each other's bills on occasion. And now he's dead, and she can't help but compare him to Paddie and find Paddie wanting.
In her defence, Paddie is also interminably dull. Yes, his information about the harvests on Sermeria is important for the resource redistribution they have to do every time a world secedes to the Separatists, but he's uniquely skilled at making it even less interesting than it should be.
Thankfully, his daughter is visiting and he's anxious to finish up; on another day this might have annoyed Padmé, but today it means she gets to sit in the sun outside the Senate building until Aayla meets her. She almost doesn't recognise her out of her Jedi robes—the differences between the padawan who helped save her people ten years ago and the woman standing in front of her now are even starker. She already saw how tall she is now (when do Twi'leks stop growing?) and how she's so much more self-assured and comfortable in her skin—the benefits of no longer being a teenager—but her legs, impossibly, look even longer in trousers. Her lekku, free of the brown leather binding that matched her robes, are now long enough to frame her face, enhancing the angles of her jaw and cheekbones. Her breath catches as she realises that she is going to be in very close proximity to an unfairly attractive woman for… for an inadvisable amount of time. This is definitely a mistake and Padmé might die before this ruse has even begun.
Aayla kisses her on the cheek in greeting and Padmé can smell her perfume, light and citrusy.
"Hello sweetheart," she says, her Ryl accent slightly thicker than it had been last week.
"How are you?" Padmé says. She's relieved to find her voice sounds completely normal.
"Better for seeing you," Aayla says, and Padmé has to laugh.
"Does that line work on all the girls?"
"Hmm, I'm not sure. I could get a bigger sample size to test it out, but I really only want it to work on one. There's this senator from Naboo, see—" Aayla ruins the gag by laughing, but keeps going, "—I don't know if you've met her but she's very beautiful."
Padmé knows this is pretend—Aayla had told her that she planned to play it up when they were on Coruscant and checked what she was comfortable with beforehand—but she still blushes and ducks her head. That's just playing the part, right?
"I can't believe it," Padmé says, shaking her head, but she's not trying to hide how much she's smiling. "You'd cheat on me with a senator from Naboo?"
Aayla ducks down to kiss her on the cheek again and puts her arm around her shoulders. "What can I say? Very beautiful."
Padmé takes them to a café just off the Concourse and makes sure to get an outdoor table. The food is overpriced and mediocre—she'd certainly not take an actual date here—but the foot traffic is the important part. Even as they order (Callosian spring vegetable soup for Padmé, grilled opee for Aayla), Padmé can see Senator Dio's aide glance over at them both.
Now that they're still, Padmé can see tension in Aayla's shoulders and her lekku are restless in a way they weren't when they arranged this. She doesn't seem nervous, though; more upset.
"Are you alright, darling?" She justifies it to herself by reasoning that if Aayla were her girlfriend, she would check on her, and if this is actually Aayla struggling with her girlfriend persona, it's a reminder to try to get it together more.
Aayla looks surprised and then quickly embarrassed. "Sorry, I'm—distracted."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Aayla begins to shake her head but then slumps a little and rubs at her face with her hand. "I assume you've seen the news," she says grimly.
"Which news?" Most news is bad these days. It can't be anything to do with the Jedi—they've both done too much undercover work to make that rookie mistake.
Their food arrives, and Aayla waits until the server droid has left before speaking. "About the slaving ring that had a bunch of senators involved." She stabs her opee more viciously than necessary.
Padmé pulls a face. "Yes, I found out yesterday—it's absolutely horrible. How can they sleep at night, knowing their own people are being sold?"
"On a bed of credits, I imagine."
"It's not as if we're poorly paid," Padmé points out. "Not that that would be an excuse, but it's just… unimaginable."
Aayla focuses on her food for a minute. It feels almost as if there's something balancing precariously between them, and Padmé doesn't know what it is. "You can't imagine it?" she says at last. Padmé can't read her tone, nor the subtle flick of the end of her lekku that she's sure means something. What is she doing? Is this part of the fiction?
"I can't imagine doing it," Padmé clarifies. She doesn't have to try to imagine her people rounded up in camps, of course. Her stomach swoops and she drinks some water instead of trying to eat more soup.
"I—" Aayla says, apparently lost for words. "I keep picturing… every time I see an enslaved Rutian, there's a moment where I worry it's my family. They're safe, but…" She trails off and then shakes her head. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought this up. Ruined our date." From the way Aayla mutters it into her lunch instead of looking at her, Padmé suspects this wasn't planned at all. "I know full well it's something that happens on the edges of the Republic, so this shouldn't surprise me; speaking Ryl is useful because it happens on the edges of the Republic." Aayla shrugs. "I don't know why it's getting to me this time."
Padmé wishes she could hug her. If they didn't have a table between them, she would, but instead she can only take her hand. That's how a girlfriend would act, she thinks. "They don't usually arrest slavers on Coruscant. It's horrible to think about how I've had any number of unremarkable interactions with them and they just pretended to be respectable colleagues. It hurts more to imagine you might have been to the same café or shared an elevator with them."
Aayla squeezes her hand. "You're probably right." She gives Padmé a small smile as she says, "Clearly dating you has made me forget that politicians…" She makes a hand gesture that Padmé can't interpret and one of her lekku flicks.
"Aren't always upstanding citizens doing their utmost to represent their worlds' best interests?" Padmé suggests.
"Something like that, yes." She starts eating again but doesn't let go of Padmé's hand, instead just using the side of her fork to cut her fish. "HNN is claiming that all four senators were working with the Thalassians completely independently."
"Claiming? We were told they had proof." The announcement that went out to all senators yesterday said that there had been testimony—from a slaver, sure, but she doesn't know how Aayla would have heard differently.
"I haven't seen anything, obviously, but it seems unlikely that they'd all have the same idea to ally with the same slavers."
"Not if the slavers went around the Outer Rim approaching them with the offer." Padmé assumes that's what happened, but she's not sure they got any details on how exactly it went down.
"What, and they managed to pick the only four senators corrupt enough to take them up on it? If they were shopping for senators, someone would have reported it."
Padmé hesitates. She's not wrong. "Maybe they were lucky?" It sounded weak even to her ears. "I'm sorry. I can try to find out for you?"
Aayla shakes her head. "It'll come out in the investigation, probably. I did enjoy reading Senator Orn Free Taa's quote, though. It must feel weird to agree with him for once." If Aayla is teasing her, she must have succeeded in making her feel a little better—or making her girlfriend feel better? Not knowing what is real is bothering her more than she expected.
"I agree with Senator Taa plenty," Padmé says. "I don't know what he said, but we've never disagreed about slavery, certainly."
Aayla hummed. "That's true. Just on most other things." Padmé tries to look disapproving, but it clearly fails—Aayla just smiles fondly at her. "He said exactly what you'd expect—that Ryloth has suffered particularly from slavery and demanding the senators go to prison. Maybe a bit more inflammatory than you'd say it, though."
Padmé resists saying something about a broken chronometer being right once a day, because she's been a politician since she was eight. She does think it very loudly, though—she's never quite got to the bottom of whether Jedi can read minds.
Aayla doesn't pull her hand out of Padmé's until they have to get up to leave. It is, Padmé is certain, good optics. That's why Aayla takes her hand again as they walk down the Concourse, rubbing her thumb back and forth over Padmé's knuckles.
When it's time for them to part just to the side of the enormous door to the Senate building, Aayla whispers, "I'm going to kiss you now," in her ear as she gives her a hug and then kisses her chastely on the lips. Padmé leans forward a little as she pulls away and Aayla smiles. "Bye, Padmé," she says, and Padmé stares after her, feeling entirely too breathless for the fact that the kiss had only lasted a second or two.
As she finally remembers she has a meeting to attend, Senator Looruya sweeps past, giving her a disapproving look. It's proof that their public display of affection was noticed, but it doesn't really feel like the achievement Padmé thinks it's supposed to.
"Don't you have something better to do?"
"Better than watch my darling padawan get ready for a date with one of the most recognisable senators on Coruscant? Of course not." Quinlan is lounging on her bed as Aayla puts on makeup. He has already made his opinion known on her outfit—he claimed it was not sexy enough, to which she pointed out that they were having a picnic, not going to a nightclub. The dress she's wearing is new; dating Padmé has required several new outfits. The sort of missions where she can't wear her robes usually don't call for the clothes a respectable girlfriend of a senator would own.
"Obi-Wan wants me to remind you that politicians shouldn't be trusted," Quinlan says. "I think he's worried about you."
"Why would he be worried about me?" Aayla says, biting back the instinct to defend Padmé. If she said the phrase 'she's not like other politicians' out loud, Quinlan would never let her hear the end of it.
"Because he's Obi-Wan, primarily, but also because you have already managed to create rumours about how the elegant Naboo senator has been seen kissing a Twi'lek around the Senate District."
"I haven't kissed her that much!" She can see exactly how much she's blushing in the mirror, which is not helping her convince Quinlan, she's sure.
"I'm afraid you have, in fact, been seen canoodling all over the place. Three separate people have told me about it." This is, unfortunately, probably true. Kit asked her about it last week. He'd taken her at her word that it was part of a mission and she'd managed to distract him by asking about his recent mission to Mon Cala, which had involved a lot more fighting local fauna than she expected.
"Why are they telling you? You're not my master anymore."
Quinlan puts his hand to his chest as if she's stabbed him, and she rolls her eyes.
"Did you at least tell Obi-Wan that it's fake?"
"He was sceptical." Quinlan makes a so-so gesture with his hand. As she finishes applying lipstick he gets up, his expression becoming serious. "I trust you, but I hope you're being careful. There's an expiry date on this, and I don't want to see you get hurt."
It's been years since Aayla has felt like squirming under Quinlan's gaze, and it's something she hoped she had left behind. At least now she has enough self-control that she doesn't visibly fidget. "I know," she says softly. "I'm trying."
He looks at her for another long moment before nodding and pulling her into a hug. When he releases her, he kisses her temple, rising up on his toes slightly to do it.
"Besides," Aayla says as he steps back, "you and Obi-Wan are hardly people who can lecture me about flirting." She knows as she says it that she's missed the tone she was aiming for just a little, but Quinlan doesn't mention it.
"Clearly, I've taught you well," Quinlan says, breaking into a smile. "Watching me do all those negotiations wasn't a waste of time after all."
Aayla wouldn't call them negotiations, but he's not wrong. The slide back into banter calms her a little—if she doesn't look directly at it, perhaps none of this will catch up with her. She doesn't really believe that, but she leaves her rooms a little early to escape him anyway.