They take Padmé's yacht to Scipio. It's half the size of the ship they'd used during the blockade crisis, but it's still relatively luxurious compared to many of the ships Aayla's flown in the past. Once they're on the Namadii Corridor, the cloudy blue of hyperspace all that can be seen out the windows, Padmé leans back from the controls. "Tea?" she asks.
"Sure," Aayla says, and then pauses. "Shouldn't… I be the one getting you tea?"
"Why?" Padmé asks, walking backwards towards the galley. "It's my ship."
Aayla shrugs. "I serve the Republic, and you're a senator?" She is far too aware that they are completely alone and there is no one watching them, no role to play.
Padmé rolls her eyes and turns around. Aayla, for lack of anything better to do, follows.
"It's alright, I won't tell the Jedi Council that I waited on you if you don't."
Aayla is very glad that Padmé is not looking at her, because she doesn't even want to know what her face is doing at the concept of Padmé waiting on her.
Padmé sets the water to boil and portions out tea leaves in silence, and just as it's stretching a little too long they both go to say something at the same time. Padmé gives her a 'go ahead' gesture as the water heater clicks off.
"I'm sorry I've never been back to Naboo for the celebrations," Aayla says, watching the water turn purple as the galley fills with the scent of some tisane she can't quite identify. "We weren't avoiding you, or anything—"
"I know you weren't," Padmé says, carrying both their cups to a small table and sitting down. "Master Vos sent a very apologetic letter, though I don't remember what it said, exactly."
"He did?" Aayla has no recollection of Quinlan mentioning anything like that, but she had been quite stressed at the time. "I picked some courses that were… perhaps overly ambitious, and exams are always right around then."
Padmé smiles. "Very understandable. They sent some other Jedi—Qui-Gon Jinn, I think? I can't recall who he was with."
"Obi-Wan Kenobi, maybe?"
"Yes, that's him. They send different Jedi every year." Aayla tries not to feel bad about never asking to be sent. She doesn't always remember the anniversary; when she does, she's inevitably in the middle of something that she can't just drop to pop over to Naboo for some light public relations. And perhaps, just a little bit, she's always been nervous about encountering Padmé again.
"I'll ask if Quin— if Master Vos and I can attend this year," she says. "I assume there's going to be something special, given it's been ten years."
"I don't know any of the details, but I imagine so, yes. The Queen will be glad to hear it; we can finally celebrate you properly." Padmé's expression makes Aayla think she might be teasing, but it doesn't stop Aayla blushing.
"We were only doing our job," she says and takes a gulp of tea.
"You went to Naboo expecting to conduct diplomacy and instead you saved us from an invasion. Not to mention the fight with the Zabrak—I know Master Vos said you would heal fine, but—" Padmé looks down at the table and swallows. "—you were so pale and still when he brought you up. You did heal alright, didn't you?"
"Yes," Aayla says quickly. "I was in a bacta tank for a bit, but there was no lasting damage." Well, there's a scar, but it doesn't impede her movement. She's not sure Padmé would take that generous a view of injury, though, so she doesn't mention it.
Padmé lets out a relieved sigh, but she still looks troubled. "I should have followed up—"
"You had more than enough on your plate," Aayla says. "People don't usually follow up, you know."
"They should," Padmé says, frowning. "You're only there to get hurt because you're requested."
"We go where we're needed," Aayla says. "Usually someone asks for us, but sometimes we reach out to them. And between you, me and the airlock, sometimes we go even when they say no, if it's bad enough. And even when we do get hurt—how much worse would someone else get hurt, someone who can't use the Force?"
"I suppose," Padmé says reluctantly. "Thank you."
Silence descends, but it's not oppressive—Padmé seems lost in thought and Aayla feels no need to interrupt, so she sends a message to Quinlan about the Naboo anniversary instead. As they drink their tea quietly, Aayla feels comfortable for the first time in days—she's had complicated feelings about the prospect of all this ending, and meditation hasn't helped. In thirty-six hours, they'll be on their way home, mission completed, and they'll be a Jedi and a senator once more. They probably won't even meet again, given the usual sorts of missions Aayla takes. Quinlan has been giving her worried looks occasionally but he's already said his bit—he's not going to reprimand her or say 'I told you so' for failing to keep her cover and her own feelings separate. He'll probably even be willing to get her spectacularly drunk and listen to whatever soppy nonsense she'll say about Padmé, and then Aayla will go back to teaching initiates and researching tax law.
(It's the only thing she dislikes about remaining at the Temple to teach—perhaps she can convince someone to let her do some slicing instead of tax codes slowly liquifying her brain.)
But here, drinking tea together—the passage of time has slowed temporarily; there's nothing to perform, not even to each other.
And then, of course, the moment ends, but Aayla feels like she's come out of a good meditation: something in her has settled.
For the next few hours, apart from the occasional interruption to change hyperspace lanes, they spend their time meditating and practising katas (Aayla) or rewriting speeches (Padmé). Dinner is by far the nicest meal Aayla has ever had on a ship—soft buns with a meat and vegetable filling in a sauce that Aayla accidentally spills out the first bite she takes. Padmé laughs as Aayla says, "Oh no," instinctively, and even as Aayla is trying to work out how to salvage her bun (she ends up getting a spoon), she can't help but note how pretty her laugh is.
She's sure that somewhere, Quinlan is sighing and he doesn't know why.
Padmé suggests they watch a holofilm afterwards. It's a drama featuring a Jedi who goes back in time to prevent a dictator from gaining power and, of course, falls in love along the way. It's the sort of thing Aayla usually likes to be drunk for—films about Jedi are, without exception, made by people who have never met a Jedi—but this is Padmé's ship, so Aayla's not going to be picky.
She's not picky, but she doesn't do much to hide her amusement at the way it portrays the Force in the opening scene—there's a so-called "Jedi ghost" that tells the hero, Rai Spliff, how to travel back in time; supposedly, this skill had been lost over the centuries but the old master had rediscovered it. The Jedi lands back in time but has somehow arrived decades earlier than they expected and travelled halfway across the galaxy, ending up in the Core when they had been in the Outer Rim.
She's completely willing to suspend her disbelief about all that, given it's the premise of the film, but when the first thing Rai does having landed on Chandrila is communicate telepathically with the first person she meets, she can't help but laugh. At Padmé's inquisitive hum, she says, "I know it's supposed to be serious but it's just so—"
Before she can even finish the sentence, Rai uses the Force to repair a statue that's shattered, and she says, "Oh no," through giggles.
"Is this… not how the Force works?" Padmé asks. If not even Padmé knows, spending so much of her time on Coruscant, perhaps things are more dire than she thought.
"Not at all. It's also not blue. I mean, some of it I can understand as being necessary for the plot, but there is no reason to make it blue." That's a new one, actually—the telepathy is pretty standard for these kinds of films, but usually the way they clue in the audience that the Force is being used is just having the Jedi look slightly constipated.
Padmé allows her to keep up a running commentary on the things the film gets wrong about Jedi (the celibacy, the leaping several storeys in the air, the repeated communication with the dead), and by the end Padmé has somehow ended up with her arm around Aayla's waist, her body pressed up against Aayla's side and Aayla's lekku draped around her shoulder like a warm blue scarf. She thinks it might have happened during a particularly tense scene between the evil dictator and the Jedi so Padmé could hide her face against Aayla's shoulder.
As the credits roll, Aayla realises she has no idea what to do. Does she acknowledge it? Does she wait for Padmé to remove her arm? Does Padmé understand how accidentally intimate she is being with putting her lekku where they are? Was it actually necessary to facilitate getting through the nerves of the climactic scene? Has she forgotten that there's no one to see them pretend to be girlfriends on the ship?
She could reach out and ask the Force—while it isn't telepathy, it's often possible to get an idea of someone's emotional state—but that would feel too much like an invasion of privacy, a trespass of the trust that has built between them. So instead she has to rely on her own judgement of Padme's expression, which isn't proving to be particularly successful.
"Did you enjoy it, even if it was wrong about Jedi?"
"Yes," she replies. "Watching it with you was—" She has no idea what's appropriate to say. Padmé's arm around her is so warm and comfortable, her lek fits perfectly in the crook of her neck as they cuddle, and she doesn't want to move, but none of this is real. Padmé is probably just too used to pretending to be Lyn's girlfriend, and this will all be over once they leave Scipio.
She leans into Padmé's embrace anyway. "I enjoyed watching it with you," she says, the words feeling clumsy. She swallows the things she can't say and lets the end credits music wash over her.
They spend the next morning going over Aayla's cover and information about the RRM, and Padmé tells her about the people she expects will be attending, though she doesn't have any concrete information about the guest list.
"About Clovis," Aayla says, and Padmé pulls a face that very clearly communicates she would rather not discuss him. Unfortunately, Aayla's job is to protect her, so she continues on. "Captain Typho said that while he doesn't think Clovis would try to kill you, he is still worried about him because of your history. He was pretty circumspect about what that history actually is, but he impressed upon me that I shouldn't leave you two alone together."
As she speaks, Padmé slumps a little and pulls even more of a face. "We dated briefly. He fancied himself in love with me, and I think he still does. I… wasn't. I've never seen him be violent and I would be surprised if he were, but he's not very good at understanding 'no' and is convinced he can win me back."
Aayla generally finds that not understanding 'no' inevitably becomes violence, and she's not sure whether Padmé is deliberately eliding that or has fooled herself into not seeing it. She suspects it's the former —she made plans to not only get a date for the party but to have verifiable proof of their relationship, and nobody goes to those lengths to avoid a good person.
There is the outside chance that Padmé knows she might say yes, if given the opportunity, even though it's a terrible idea. In that case, the very public dating they've been doing might serve as additional pressure.
"I won't leave your side," Aayla says. "I wouldn't mind a list of people you think could get violent, though, once we arrive. My primary purpose is to stop you from getting assassinated."
Padmé's face falls just a little at her last sentence, and Aayla doesn't know what she said wrong.
"Rush wouldn't—" she says, but stops. "There's likely going to be a significant number of Separatists there. The Banking Clan is technically neutral, and I'm sure you've seen the reports on how… profitable this whole crisis has been for them."
"But we can't kick them out of the Republic because the bottom would fall out of the economy if they left," Aayla says, sighing. There's a reason she's not a consular, and it's because she hates dealing with these kinds of loopholes.
Padmé nods. "I don't see what Separatists would get out of murdering me, though," Padmé says, in much the same tone Aayla would say, 'I wonder if I can find a Twi'leki tailor this close to the Temple district'. In other words: far too casual for Aayla's liking. "The militarist faction would benefit, but the Republic has never suggested making the first strike; if the Separatists want to attack us, it doesn't matter how the Military Creation Act vote goes. The Trade Federation definitely wants me dead—I don't know if they've actually put out a contract, but they've tried before—but I doubt they'll be attending."
"So you're saying that I should be most concerned by other members of the Republic," Aayla says. She's not convinced that Padmé's view of the situation is accurate—her blasé attitude towards her own safety leads Aayla to suspect she underestimates the danger she's in—but she can't think of a good reason for the Separatists to kill her, either.
"I really don't think there's any reason for concern," Padmé says, even though she had just said that it would be in the militarist faction's interests to murder her. Aayla isn't sure how Captain Typho hasn't quit yet, but she has half a mind to get drunk with him when they get back to Coruscant. Perhaps after she's nursed her wounds a little about this all being over.
"Sure," Aayla says. Padmé looks surprised for just a moment before smoothing her expression out again. She may have expected Aayla to try to argue, but Aayla knows there's no point. She has to protect her either way. "A different question, then: who do you find most personally unpleasant? It doesn't have to be a life-or-death situation. Any other admirers that you know of?"
Apparently there aren't (if that's true, she's glad for their terrible taste), although just as there are people Aayla would rather not meditate with, there are people Padmé would rather not mingle with while trying to convince as many politicians as possible to vote against the MCA. Aayla files the names and pictures Padmé shows her away and hopes she doesn't have to use them.
They move relentlessly towards Scipio and the end of all of this. Aayla releases her feelings about it into the Force, but it doesn't make them go away—it feels more like emptying a bucket you've put under a leak in the roof. It's less overwhelming and helps her quarantine it from the other things she's doing (meditation, katas, a pre-Ruusan philosophy book that Sarissa recommended to her), but it's a slow drip at the back of her mind. She'll ask Quinlan to help her after she's been a maudlin drunk about it, she decides.
As they get closer, they take turns getting changed. Even though Aayla already owns several dresses, Padmé insisted on taking her shopping for the occasion—she claimed that even though Lyn Dira isn't Naboo, there's a delicate balance necessary when dressing to complement the intricacy of Padmé's wardrobe. It was a negotiation between Aayla's relatively simple Jedi taste and Padmé's inclination towards elaborate designs, but they reached a compromise eventually. It's a deep blue dress with a square neckline that's common in Lessu; in acquiescence to Padmé, there's delicate embroidery in gold on the bodice which matches the equally delicate jewellery entwined around her lekku and over the crown of her head. And, of course, they made sure the skirt is easy to run in and effectively conceals a pocket big enough for a lightsaber.
When Aayla returns to the cockpit, Padmé looks struck, staring at her with her mouth slightly open. Before Aayla can get seriously concerned about whether she's done something wrong, Padmé says, "You'll be the most beautiful person there."
Aayla's first instinct is to point out that any room with Padmé in it has that role filled. She catches herself before she does, remembering that they're still on the ship. Does that mean… no, she can't let herself think about what it might mean. This is already torture enough.
"I'm sure I'll have competition," she demurs instead, and tries to calm her racing heart as Padmé leaves to get changed.