Chapter Text
Coruscant does not sleep.
It shimmers.
Even in the Senate district — where the architecture aspires to solemnity and an almost sterile type of permanence — light bleeds from a thousand different transparisteel facades, diffused through the perpetual haze of traffic lanes and atmospheric processors. Speeders trace luminous veins across the night sky.
It would seem that war has not yet dimmed the capital. If anything, a sense of urgent purpose now only sharpens the very ether here. Padmé Amidala moves through it all with practiced composure, her outer robes subdued for once: deep slate trimmed in muted silver rather than Naboo’s brighter ceremonial blues. She had dismissed her aides an hour earlier than usual under the pretence of retiring for some much needed reprieve.
She plans to do no such thing.
The reports that occasionally crossed her desk had only ever inspired minor confusion at first. Missing shipments? Easy enough to explain away at a glance — piracy in the Outer Rim, Separatist interference, clerical delays, etcetera. Something the Senate had grown disturbingly accustomed to filing under “regrettable… but inevitable.”
At least, of course, until it became clearer and clearer to her that these losses weren’t so random. They clustered. Entire systems flagged for relief — food, medical supplies, reconstruction aid — marked as fulfilled in Republic records while independent reports painted a different picture entirely. Starvation in place of stability? Shortages where there should have been recovery? Padmé had pulled the numbers herself, just to be certain that no one in her office could’ve missed an obvious detail.
Much of it was buried beneath bureaucratic layers so dense that the average person would never think to question such a behemoth — but the Naboo senator had built a rather illustrious career, for her young age, on excavating mountains nobody else dared to. It was how she made allies and enemies in equal measure.
Padmé enters one of the district’s elevated gardens then. An engineered oasis suspended above the cityscape with carefully cultivated foliage arched overhead, their leaves glinting bronze in artificial glow. Trees that have never known soil. Grass that will never grow wild. Even the air is filtered and conditioned by climate control systems, worlds removed from Coruscant’s industrial underlevels.
Her steps idle around several benches bordered by a balustrade of glowing fixtures. They overlook the vertical abyss that vanishes into smog below.
The message she received this morning — an encrypted ping routed through three different channels before resolving into something halfway intelligible — continues to play over and over in her head meanwhile. “I have information about the supply discrepancies. Not safe to transmit. In person only.” No name, code or otherwise.
Just coordinates and a time.
For a moment, she considers the possibility of this being a mistake. Perhaps even a coincidence stretched too far by a mind unwilling to accept easy answers. Wouldn’t that be much simpler? Safer, certainly. Her jaw tightens at the thought. No. If there’s even a chance that relief meant for suffering systems was being diverted — if lives were being bartered away in the margins of Republic red tape — then she cannot make room for the luxury of doubt.
Padmé stops altogether, in any case, noting a clear view of the path leading inside from her current position here. Gloved hands thus fold before her skirts as if she is just another salary worker taking a moment’s reprieve from the endless machinery of governance. Her guards remain at the garden’s entrance as instructed.
They will intervene if summoned, but something tells her this faceless informant might immediately retreat into fear upon sensing official oversight.
That is when movement at the far end of this terrace quite suddenly catches her attention — an unassuming figure emerging from the shadows of a sculpted arbor. He pauses as though orienting himself, then spots her.
Padmé can see the tension in his spine even from a distance… but nothing else. She does not recognise his slight build or cropped dark hair. He’s wearing a civilian coat, although it could very well be covering up a uniform or other he doesn’t want to be seen in.
Her head inclines slightly as their eyes meet across the distance — a subtle acknowledgment — and thus relief flashes across his face as if he cannot believe she’s come.
The distance between them isn’t far when he begins walking towards her, yet in that moment? Everything is stretched thin by anticipation. Path lights carve sharp angles into his face, revealing fear and exhaustion as he keeps glancing over to the shadows behind him.
Some might call it paranoia — but Padmé feels it too. A shift in the air. She turns slightly, scanning the upper terraces around them. Decorative balconies. Sculpted alcoves. Ornamental statuary. All potential vantage points… and her pulse invariably quickens.
Then it happens.
A sharp, contained crack splits the night and her unnamed stranger jerks forward. She watches him stand there at first, confused by his own body’s betrayal until a dark bloom begins to spread across his chest.
Padmé’s breath leaves her in a sharp gasp.
Another crack and he staggers, knees buckling.
“No—” she whispers, already moving, but the man is too far away. What looks to be a datarod flies from his grasp as soon as he collapses onto stone.
“Get down!” Captain Typho’s voice cuts through the stunned stillness then. Having lingered at the perimeter and allowing Senator Amidala an illusion of privacy as per her instructions? He and the rest of her security detail now surge forward in a coordinated sweep, blasters drawn, bodies forming a living shield around their asset before she can even take another step.
“He’s alive!” Padmé trills, though she doesn’t know that for certain “Call for medical— now!”
Typho doesn’t argue. He signals sharply to another, who activates his comm. “Senate District to emergency response. Civilian down, possible sniper—” and still she slips through the narrowing gap in their formation.
“Senator!” Her security starts returning shots toward a balcony several stories up, obscured by the dizzying verticality of Coruscant’s architecture.
Padmé reaches the man’s fallen body nevertheless and drops to her knees. Up close, the damage is far worse than she feared. The shot had been precise — centre mass, designed to kill quickly. Definitely the work of a slugthrower or projectile rifle because there’s… so much blood. It spreads rapidly beneath him, pooling in the shallow grooves between tiles. His memory rod lies shattered just beyond an outstretched had, internal components sparking faintly before going still.
She presses her hands against his wound, in any case, applying pressure despite knowing the futility on some level. “Stay with me,” she urges through the smell of coppery metal and scorched fabric. “Help is on the way.”
One of the guards covering her shifts uneasily. “Senator, we don’t know if the shooter is still—”
“We can’t leave him.”
Hearing her stern voice, the stranger stirs, glassy eyes unfocused — rolling toward the skyline as if searching for something beyond these garden lights. Then, slowly, they fix upon her face. Another distant exchange of fire cracks through the night as Typho’s voice echoes somewhere behind her, directing pursuit teams through adjacent access corridors. It would seem that the assassin is already retreating. A consummate professional, no doubt.
A hand twitches weakly then, brushing against her sleeve, trying to anchor himself. His pained gaze darts toward the Senate dome’s distant glow — and with what appears to be the last of his strength, he forces a few words out.
“Don’t… trust…” voice little more than a rasp, his breath hitches violently and so Padmé leans in. “Who?”
Pupils dilate as shock overtakes him.
“… anybody.”
A final syllable barely forms before his body slackens, tension draining from the hand clutching at her sleeve. Eyes remain open and directed to her face… but empty.
Padmé doesn’t move as a wave of déjà vu sweeps across her consciousness. The world continues around her in fractured bursts of motion and noise. Boots pounding across stone. Comm units crackling with status reports.
“Sniper appears to have disengaged. Pursuit teams en route to sub-level transit shafts.”
“Medical inbound — two minutes.”
Typho eventually returns and crouches beside her, scanning the perimeter even as he speaks. “Senator… we need to move you now.”
She does not look at him immediately.
Her hands are slick with blood.
“Did you see them?” Padmé asks quietly.
“Only a silhouette, milady. This was a professional operation. They knew the layout.”
Swallowing the lump inside her throat, she shakily withdraws from this man’s body.
Don’t trust anybody.
So many different implications settle like cold durasteel as Padmé forces herself back into motion by reaching for the datarod lying nearby. Whatever he had wound up sacrificing his life to deliver? The information must be in here, if she can just salvage it somehow.
Only as she takes her Head of Security’s proffered hand to pull herself up do emergency speeders, rather coincidentally, arrive screaming into the airspace — blue lights flashing against the garden’s serene space.
Padmé draws a steadying breath. “Captain,” she levels her voice “I want to see a full analysis of the balcony positions within a two-hundred meter radius. Also, access logs for every maintenance shaft connected to this terrace.”
Typho studies her bloodstained gloves, suddenly understanding what has shifted in the young woman’s disposition. “Yes, Senator.”
An endless skyline looms ahead of them, crowned by the radiant spire of Republic leadership. Don’t trust anybody. Questions only invite more uncertainty. Though if there is one thing she’s willing to bet on right now? It’s that this was nothing less than deliberate suppression.
“—Varin Sate was not a man of rank,” Bail Organa offers his two cents in the midst of their meeting. “He served in logistics for Alderaanian relief convoys. Hardly the sort of man who draws attention to himself.”
Across the Chancellor’s chamber, Grand Master Yoda is perched upon his hover chair. “Unremarkable. Hmm…” ears angle slightly forward with pensive thought. “Yet struck down near Senator Amidala, he was. Coincidence, this is… difficult to believe. Very difficult to believe.”
Attention shifts to the woman in question, shaken but not undone by what had transpired just several hours ago. She is every inch the dignified Queen they have come to expect during times like these. Measured, even in distress. “I was at the district gardens for air because the city has felt… suffocating of late. I didn’t even notice Sate until—”
Until he died on his way over to me.
Don’t trust anybody.
Suffice it to say, Padmé had turned her options over and over the entire night — but ultimately decided to heed Sate’s instruction despite this being a roomful of known allies. “Until he got in the way,” she says before anyone else can shape the narrative. It was best that they believe the shot had been meant for her. Only then would they look elsewhere, leaving the senator free to investigate this matter on her own terms. Silence follows, however, as the Chancellor himself watches her with paternal concern.
“My dear. You are certain of this?”
“I had no scheduled meetings on the terrace. The route was unannounced, even to most of my staff.” She meets his gaze solemnly. “If someone, who has indeed been surveilling me, intended to make an attempt? It was the ideal opportunity.” Granted, a faint tightening of Captain Typho’s jaw whilst he stands rigidly near the entrance suggests he takes that as a personal failure.
Master Yoda hums “… and Varin Sate — caught in the middle by accident, he was?”
“He was only passing by,” Padmé says softly. “The shot came before either of us could react.”
The latter part isn’t entirely untrue.
Bail exhales, tension weaving through his posture. “Then it would appear that his death was unfortunate collateral.” The word settles uneasily between them as Yoda continues to study her in interest. He searches, perhaps not for deception — but a disturbance in the currents of the Force. Padmé holds her composure with discipline, either way. Whatever tremor that passed through her in the gardens had long since been sealed away on instinct.
“Why targeted, do you believe yourself to be?”
Though her lips part to answer, Palpatine already swoops in and offers a gentle rescue. “This would not be the first time extremists have targeted a vocal senator,” he mentions knowingly. “If this is true, Senator Amidala, then our response must be swift as usual.”
Bail stops pacing beside her, thoughts visibly shifting course. “I agree. If this was an assassination attempt, then the threat remains active.”
“We must look into increased security and—”
“No.”
Despite its immediacy, her interruption remains firm in the face of their surprise. “With respect, Your Excellency, confining me will only make their task easier. Predictable routes? Controlled environments?” She shakes her head. “I’d rather not become a stationary target.”
“Dangerous, your preference is.” Yoda notes.
“… but a necessary one all the same.”
A beat passes as they consider her position, and then Palpatine speaks again. “Very well. We will still, of course, ensure that every resource is made available to investigate this attack on you.”
Unmistakably does the assurance lift a weight off her shoulders. “I appreciate that, Chancellor. Truly.” She thinks of Sate in the meantime; about the way he looked at her during those last moments. No. His death cannot be in vain. There have been too many for as far back as her memory stretches. Padmé is tired of feeling helpless.
The elderly man thus rises from his seat, signalling a satisfactory conclusion. “You are valuable to the Republic, Senator Amidala. We cannot afford to lose you. Ah—” he pauses mid-sentence when the doors behind them part with a quiet hydraulic sigh and frankly? Time does not stop so much as fracture in that instance.
Padmé feels a familiar, burning presence before turning to find none other than Anakin Skywalker standing in the doorway still bearing his war armour. Dust clings to heavy boots, faint scoring marks apparent along his cuirass — there’s a thin cut across his jawline that has not yet healed. It looks like he’s been plucked out of the battlefield and dropped amidst civilians without warning.
Blue eyes find her first, in any case, and Padmé must tamp down every instinct to melt into the visceral pull between them. When did he return? It has been far too long since his last transmissions came through, where he’d explained that the 501st and himself were engaged in a skirmish near Boz Pity. Thus her mind now roars with equal parts relief and incredulity so disorienting that fingernails dig into the fists within their overhanging sleeves just to keep herself from reaching for him.
“There you are, my boy.” The Chancellor’s smile deepens with warmth. “What fortunate timing.”
Shoulders straining against discipline, Anakin’s gaze flicks once — imperceptibly — over her form as though confirming she’s intact before bowing. “Your Excellency. Master Yoda. Senators,” still his tone remains carefully caged in formality. “My apologies for the interruption.”
“You are no interruption. Quite the opposite.”
Padmé glances at Bail, deciding to mirror him and merely incline her head in polite greeting whilst Palpatine carries on. “I took the liberty of recalling General Skywalker to Coruscant. His fleet was nearest when news of the… incident reached me,” conversationally then does he turn towards the others. “He has already been briefed with the basest of details. I trust that is acceptable?”
The air immediately shifts.
“Hmm…” there is an uncharacteristic edge to Yoda’s murmur now that he finds himself reminding the room of a simple, albeit important fact. “Decisions of deployment, the Council oversees.” A line quietly redrawn in the sand.
Regardless, pale eyebrows pull together as he implores to rationale. “Of course… and I will, naturally, defer to the Council in such matters moving forward.” His gaze drifts back to Padmé, “though I felt time was of the essence in this case. It’s only right that any personal guard we assign Senator Amidala during this rather delicate investigation is someone she has worked with before.”
On some level, Padmé realises that she ought to question the Chancellor’s subtle assertion of control just as Master Yoda had. Yet seeing her husband standing there, alive? “I am grateful,” the young woman says instead because she means it — because whatever else this is, the result remains undeniable before her.
Anakin, who had been keeping his head ducked during the tense exchange, only then looks up. “If there is an active threat against Senator Amidala, I’d prefer to be directly involved.” Though his words come off clipped and professional if nothing else. “She has saved me on many occasions, Master. I owe her my life.”
Yoda regards him for a long, fraught moment. “Protect the senator, you will…” he concedes “but mindful, you must remain, General Skywalker. Elsewhere, the war continues.”
“I understand, Master.”
The meeting doesn’t last for much longer after that. With everyone parting ways, Padmé and Anakin eventually move through the Senate rotunda at a somewhat resolute pace — the distance between them practiced and deliberate as Gregar Typho follows several meters back, far enough to grant them some necessary privacy.
They walk in silence at first.
While Anakin’s hands are clasped behind his back in an affectation of calm, Padmé can feel the tension radiating off him like heat from an overworked engine.
This carries on until they turn into a less trafficked administrative corridor with tall, transparisteel windows overlooking the lower levels. “You’re being awfully quiet.” He keeps his gaze painstakingly forward. “There’s something else on your mind. Isn’t there?”
Padmé purses her lips without a word and looks around once before leading them toward a narrower passage, of which she knows its acoustics are dampened by inset panels — his awareness sharpening as soon as he recognises the route they’ve taken many times together.
“He asked to meet me.”
“Who?”
“Varin Sate.”
Anakin’s head snaps toward her, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. “The civilian bystander?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning — through a secure channel somehow. He was supposed to provide information about irregularities in the supply chain. Diverted relief shipments, to be exact.”
His expression darkens at the implication. “So, you believe they were targeting him all along?”
“Yes. That’s why I couldn’t say anything back there,” she wrings her hands together to bring some feeling back into them. “If they think Sate isn’t important, then they’ll stop digging into what he might have known. That leaves me to find out the truth for myself… before it gets covered up.” Padmé takes a deep breath and steals a glance at her husband. “— most likely by somebody in the Senate.”
Anakin searches her face, piecing the truth of it against everything he knows about this war. The Republic. The system he’s still trying to believe in. He looks away, thoughtful. “That’s a serious accusation.”
“It is.”
“You don’t think the Chancellor can help?”
Padmé hesitates. “I don’t know how far this goes… but if Sate was killed to keep this quiet, then whoever is behind it has reach. Possibly even beyond the Chancellor’s office.”
Slowing her steps, however, she gives him a subtle look upon turning down a service corridor. He doesn’t question it. The lights are dim here. There are maintenance panels instead of decorative sconces, and fewer security holocams around. Only one more stretch of polished floor, curving away from the main thoroughfare, until they finally reach a recessed alcove half-hidden by what looks to be a structural support beam: their blind spot.
One that has long since become a sacred site for stolen moments and hidden rendezvous. Proof, time and again, that something real still exists beneath the weight of their secrecy. Typho clears his throat and continues farther ahead at Padmé’s quiet instruction to “keep an eye out”, in any case — but as soon as he disappears around the bend? Anakin catches her wrist.
She barely has enough time to take a breath before his other hand finds her waist, pulling brunette into the shadows and collapsing whatever careful distance they’ve been maintaining thus far. The war has carved itself even deeper into her husband since she last saw him up close. There are new lines at the corners of his eyes, Padmé notes, just as their lips collide into a kiss that only intensifies with an urgency borne from distance and time.
Their hands are everywhere meanwhile, fervent with the need to ground themselves. You’re real, you’re real, you’re real! She’s weightless in his arms and can only rake her fingers through those bronze curls, holding him there, just to keep herself from flying apart with emotion.
When they finally break, it is to breathe more than anything else — an attempt she pursues with her forehead pressed into his chest. “My love…” Anakin embraces her tighter against their shared warmth “You’re shaking.”
She hadn’t realised it, but he feels the fine tremors beneath her skin nevertheless. For how long has she held it at bay through sheer will alone? “I’m alright,” her answer is a knee jerk instinct. One he anticipates as he gently strokes the back of her hair “Padmé.” It’s enough to break something open within her altogether.
There is a strange, prolonged moment until she whispers to him — voice thin and stripped of its practiced strength. “Ani, he was so afraid at the end. I could see it in his eyes.” Her breath hitches. “I’ve seen death before, but…” fingers curl into his leathered armour. “He came to me for help. He trusted me, and then… and then…”
Anakin cradles his wife’s jaw and tenderly prompts her to look back up at him. “Stop,” the word is firm in its insistence. “You cannot do that to yourself.”
Brown eyes thus shimmer, unguarded. “The gardens were always going to be too open a spot. I should have found a way to coordinate our meeting. I knew better.”
“… and he knew the risk of involving you.” Anakin brushes his thumb beneath her eye, catching the moisture there before it can fall. Padmé doesn’t know if that’s true. Though when he leans in to press a softer kiss upon her lips this time — a promise and steady reassurance all at once — she cannot help but linger in the familiar safety of his presence, sighing as he traces absent patterns against her skin. Still. The exhaustion in his own shoulders is unmistakable beneath her palms.
“The HoloNet reported on what happened in Boz Pity,” she says after a beat of silence despite knowing that he doesn’t usually speak about the worst parts — but unless she presses first? He never does. Anakin knows this and so, upon seeing the softness in her gaze, his own drops.
“It was supposed to be a simple operation. In and out,” his jaw tenses. “We were ambushed in the canyon pass. Lost two gunships before even touching down. I had to order the retreat while men were still pinned under wreckage.” Sombrely, he doesn’t hesitate to admit “I left them.”
“You got the rest out.”
“That doesn’t erase the ones I didn’t.”
They stand together within the shadows in silence. Senator and Jedi. Diplomat and General. Both holding the line on different battlefields, constantly being reminded that all they ever do is fail the people around them in one way or another. They hold each other’s gaze amidst the painful absurdity of it all. Is this how they’re destined to always catch up after weeks apart, aching without the other? On the heels of more death and destruction?
Padmé leans up on her toes to close the distance between them again, in any case, their kisses turning far more languid — and when they part, she traces her lips along every new scar in an attempt to seal the fractures of his spirit. “I love you so much,” she whispers against his skin.
Anakin pulls back a little if only to rest their foreheads together. “I love you too, Padmé.”
An eternity spent in this alcove and he would die a happy man — but alas, he reluctantly shifts first because duty finds him even in the darkness. “I have to report in.”
The words diffuse through her hair and she holds on a little tighter. “To the Temple?”
He nods once. “The Council will want a full debrief on Boz Pity… and about the recall,” something deeper than irritation crosses his features then “especially the recall. You saw the look on Master Yoda’s face.”
She exhales softly through her nose. Of course they will. Palpatine’s unilateral decision to summon him back without consulting the Jedi cannot possibly sit well with them. It had been a subtle assertion of authority. Another thread in a pattern only few seem to notice.
“Do you think they’ll want to reassign you?”
“Perhaps,” he considers the possibility “or they may not think it’s worth to go against the Chancellor’s wishes. Either way, I have to face them eventually.” A brief pause skips by. “I’ll come to the apartment right after.”
“You’d better.” Her tone is light, but he sees everything else she won’t say — particularly in the faint downturn of her lips. A pout. Subtle enough that Padmé likely doesn’t even realise it’s on her face right now.
Anakin’s own expression softens in return, sunlit warmth breaking through a soldier’s otherwise dutiful restraint. How often does he get the privilege of easing his wife’s pout off her beautiful face, after all? “I won’t be long.”
“You say that every time,” she murmurs.
He smiles as a tender kiss on her forehead follows “… and I mean it every time, my love.”
Needless to say, Padmé isn’t so much frustrated with him as she is with the weight of everything else. The way their lives cannot possibly align for more than stolen moments at a time. She lets herself imagine a simpler life every now and again. Waiting for him at home without ever having to wonder if he’ll make it back in the first place. Complaining about how late he is over dinner instead of agonising, counting the days in between their secret transmissions. Falling asleep beside him without the looming certainty that one of them may have to disappear again in a heartbeat. A normal married couple.
The thought comes soft — but then, just as quickly, Padmé pushes it away for how selfish she sounds inside her own head. Beings are dying across the galaxy. Entire systems are burning. Yet, here she is, wishing they could bicker about something as mundane as curtains.
“Anakin, wait. Before you go…” she then reaches into the concealed fold of her sleeve and from within its seam, a small item is withdrawn. A datarod, or at least what remains of one. The slim cylinder is scorched along one edge, its casing warped from impact.
Anakin’s eyes instantly sharpen at the sight. “What’s this?”
“Sate was holding it when he died.”
“You didn’t mention that.”
Her fingers briefly tighten around the device before she places it in his hand. “I am now.”
Anakin turns it over, examining the damage with a mechanic’s eye. “It’s fried,” he says at first glance. “These models are delicate. The duracrete probably fractured—” he pauses and holds it up against what scant light they have here. “Hang on. There might be something left,” a gloved thumb traces the split seam at that. “Let me try to repair it. If the core’s still functional, I can reroute any damaged circuits and have Artoo pull the data manually.”
Watching him, hope and apprehension war behind wide eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. “You forget I’ve built entire podracers out of scrap.”
“Forget how we first met? Impossible.” The levity fades, however, as her expression shifts and she must remind him: “If there’s anything on that memory rod — anything at all — it might explain why Varin Sate was killed.”
He nods, though hesitating for a moment before asking “are we sure about keeping this just between us? I could send a transmission and ask Obi-Wan if he—”
Padmé reaches out and keeps his hand clasped over the datarod with a shake of her head. “You’re the only person I trust with this, Ani. The only one.”
A flicker of surprise crosses his face. He’s never seen her as cagey as this before — but even with his own theories and beliefs now pulled in too many different directions, Anakin locks around that one statement with a shred of doubt no longer. “I won’t let you down,” he vows quietly.
“I know.”
The distant echo of footsteps remind them then that time has steadily been slipping. “Stay with your guards,” he advises “No more keeping them at a distance just so you can walk off-route alone. Alright?”
Shiraya, Goddess of The Three Moons, help her. They really did brief him on his flight over here. Nevertheless, a faint smile teases Padmé’s lips. “Yes, General.”
It warms his blood instantly, that single word from her mouth — sends a ripple of heat through Anakin that has nothing to do with war or any such responsibilities waiting for him at the Temple. Thus darkened blue eyes linger on his wife for another second longer, head shaking, the beast of desire wrangled at last when he tucks said datarod safely into a compartment along his utility belt.
Had it not been for Captain Typho’s reappearance, he would have likely pulled her into yet another kiss right there against the duracrete. “Senator…” Padmé’s Head of Security offers a respectful nod, gaze flicking back and forth between the two. “Your transport is ready.”
Their usual code for ‘company incoming’.
Thus her posture straightens meaningfully, the shift instantaneous. “Thank you.” Brown eyes flicker over to Anakin once more. “Until later then.” A promise to keep.
“Until later, Senator.”
An appropriate distance locks into place again as he bids them farewell and leaves first — passing several aides when he swiftly takes her heart together with him to the Senate rotunda’s landing platforms, certainly before anyone can question their lingering presence there.
Watching him go, Padmé remains where she is for a moment longer; a hand unconsciously pressed to her abdomen in some fragile attempt to steady herself.
A house in Naboo.
Mornings, noisy with the pitter-patter of small feet.
Arguments about nothing.
Padmé lets herself picture all of it, at least until the fantasy dissolves and she is reminded yet again that daydreams have no place in a galaxy that desperately needs her — them — to fulfil their duties, lest they lose everything altogether. Still. It may not be their time yet… but one day, she thinks. One day soon.