Chapter Text
19 BBY
As the Republic died amongst the cheers of the Senate, as the Empire rose from its ashes once the Jedi had been massacred, Rabé was on Naboo while Padmé’s body was led through the streets to be set out on the water and sunk in the Queen’s Tributary like her predecessors.
Bail had personally delivered her body, and told her that Obi-Wan had taken one child into hiding while the other was with him, because the children were Force-sensitive and the Emperor would take them and make them into monsters. He stayed there, for the funeral, walking behind Padmé’s family – her father and mother, older sister and her husband, and her two nieces.
Rabé had carried her friend’s casket with Sabé, Eirtaé, Yané, and Saché, each donned in black Handmaiden’s robes provided by Neeyutnee.
Quarsh had led the rifle salute, with Gregar by his side and his second, while Padmé’s parents had pushed her into the water.
Then they’d all brought flowers forward and set them afloat after their Queen as the Gungans rose up out of the water, gently caught the sealed casket, and guided it down to the depths where it would rest alongside tens of generations of queens and kings.
Rabé had joined her sister in bracketing the Nabierré family in from the crowd, giving them space from the apologies and laments of a people united in grief.
It was once the crowd thinned some, that she told Padmé’s family the fate of her children and why neither had come home like Padmé had intended for when her duties at the Senate would call her back to Coruscant.
~
Padmé’s funeral was the last time they stood together.
As a new Queen was named, after Neeyutnee abdicated under pressure from the Emperor two years early, Rabé had snuck in – with Eirtaé’s help – to meet Apailana who’d she’d met only once when the young girl, barely twelve, had approached Padmé earlier in the year with her intent of running for Queen after Neeyutnee. Padmé had supported her, and Rabé wanted that support returned when she put herself forward as Padmé’s successor as Senator.
Her sister did not intend to return to Coruscant for any other reason than to spit on the Emperor’s face for the story he’d made up of rogue Jedi killing Padmé when they suspected he’d had a hand in her death, to kill him herself, or to space him to a sun – alive or dead. Instead, she went and joined Yané and Saché in preparing to make an army out of their militias, and Jamillia went with her.
Neeyutnee instead, became her Aide.
Eirtaé became Apailana’s Captain Panaka, as Quarsh insisted on being her security with his nephew, Gregar.
The Nabierré family retreated from Naboo’s spotlight to grieve in private.
Rabé tried to remain in contact with them, but they’d circled the wagons around the two little girls and went radio silent.
Her last message to them, and one that she sent to all of them, was that she would paint a red scar of remembrance on her lip for Padmé, and they were welcome to join her in memorial for the woman that had brought them all together.