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Sabé is very good at being Padmé.
Their hair is the same length, they are the same height and her features mimic Padmé's. Becoming Padmé, that was a different talent. All the handmaidens had learnt it, perfected it, but Sabé liked to think she was the best at it.
She didn't like to tell Padmé this but sometimes it was hard to tell where she began and Padmé, or rather the Padmé they had sharpened over the years, ended. She caught herself doing the same gestures, using the same jokes.
The handmaidens had always been family. They had all grown up together of course: traded clothes and stories. They all stuck together, they had had to become a fluid unit. One person shared.
Then Cordé died.
Dormé grows distant after that. Sabé sobs to her own reflection. They'd been hurt before and it felt like they were all wounded. None of them had died before.
Cordé had been so quiet when they were teenagers. She liked to sew and make clothes for them all. She had tried to teach Sabé to but her fingers didn't work like that and Sabé conceded to just picking fabrics for Cordé.
There are three dresses hidden in Cordé's cupboard. One unfinished. All identical.
Padmé continues her work. Sabé wants to lie in bed and never get up. Whilst Padmé is away she doesn't do much. She could be drafting bills on Naboo or protecting someone else but she can't bring herself to do anything. She is not very good at being Padmé.
Things happen so fast after that.
Padmé is in love, and in love with someone who is not Sabé.
Sabé has her own things to do, she repeats to herself, she visits her family on Naboo. It's stilted, they never had much in common and they weren't really her family, as the furious stares from her younger brother told her. She had given them up, given her very name up for Padmé. But Sabé promises to visit more. She sends them postcards from planets they've never been to.
She takes up chess and plays with Rabé in silence. Rabé normally beats her.
"Do you ever think about your family? Before this?"
Rabé moves a bishop and sighs.
"I write to them, I have since I was young. They always think they see me on television."
Sabé doesn't know what to say because Rabé never does television appearances and she looks at the chessboard.
The war hasn't reached Naboo yet but Sabé can see it now. She remembers it the way she remembers the fabric of the dress she wore beneath her fingers. Naboo remembers droids.
Dormé says she wants to move away after the war, give up her place and start afresh. Sabé thought she would've been more angry, more outraged but the voice in her head pleading that they were meant to be a team sounded more like a frightened teenager than who she actually was.
The handmaidens didn't have secrets. But Sabé did not tell Padmé.
She had been so worried back then, nerves drawn taught by the war and, although this was Sabé's speculation, a reckless husband.
Sabé thought very little of Knight Skywalker and although she liked his little padawan who looked up at her with wide eyes, she did not like him. Perhaps, Sabé mused bitterly, she should have thought more about him.
Especially when Padmé came to her rooms, eyes red and swollen saying how it was over but she was pregnant and she didn't know what to do and she wanted to go back before this wretched war. But she had just let Padmé sob into her shoulder and told her she would figure it out like always.
She’s never understood Padme’s reckless streak. The way she always wanted to push the boundaries, leap further and run faster just to see if she could do it for the sake of it. Recklessness and drive were often muddled to Sabe, she could never imitate that type of spark. It was not a particularly nice thought, nor kind, but Sabe often considered Padme’s marriage as that, a jump Padme had tried to make to see if she could do it.
When they were children, she remembers exploring for the first time the forests of Naboo. Sabe had only known the city and although there were buildings plenty taller than these trees in her old home, she felt nervous. She remembers looking over the sharp incline of a hill and thinking how easy it would be to lose her footing and never be found again in a place like this.
As soon as they had started training as bodyguards and not just handmaidens, Sabe slowly eroded away the fear that came with her death. She still thinks of never being found again though.
Sabé is called away back to Naboo for legal advice and by the time she returns Anakin and Padme have reconciled but that's fine right? They're in a war, whatever happiness can be squeezed out of it the better.
It's not like Padmé and her are on bad terms: Padmé suggests baby names that Sabé frowns at and they talk like the old days. There is a gulf though whether it be the strange reminisce yet avoidance of the past or the suspicion of Padmé's that she is no longer Sabé's number one.
At least she has the luxury of just suspicions.
It's very hard to be good at being Padmé now when Sabé doesn't understand her.
When she was a girl, her mother had taught her how to survive natural disasters.
She couldn’t remember why but Sabé knew it had been important. Her mother had told her that before the waters rage they retreat, that the tide will draw itself back before surging forward so, she had said, if you ever see the ocean retreating like that you get to a safe place ok my love? A very high place.
Coruscant is full of high places.
From her high place, she can see fingers of smoke reaching into the sky.
Sabé understands enough to know the Republic fell a long time ago but she knows this is the end of things. Ever since the emergency powers were declared she's been waiting for smoke in the sky.
The war is over! Now don't look too closely at who won it or what is left.
She wants to scream.
But if she is very honest, Sabé wants to go back to Naboo now. She wants to see her parents and her brother and sit at her parents' table and ask awkward questions about their lives.
Instead, she goes to see Padmé.
They fight. Of course they fight.
Padmé is leaving Coruscant and going somewhere she won't tell Sabé but Sabé knows who she is going to and hates her, just a little, for it.
"You ask me to die for you, for your Republic-"
Sabé had choked up past then, the abandonment taking root in her throat.
"I am truly sorry, Sabé."
She thinks Padmé is a hypocrite. Her precious Republic she had had them all believe in was now over and she is chasing a thrill. Padmé was to leave the smouldering remains of the Republic behind and leave Sabé and the rest of them behind. And Padmé knows, that's what twists the knife, Padmé knows Sabé wants her to stay so badly and still doesn't.
"Do you even think of what you ask of us?"
She thinks Padmé is a hypocrite but perhaps Sabé is a coward because she lets Padmé take her hands gently and lets Padmé, the master diplomat and speaker, leave her with just a kiss on the cheek.
When she looks back on that day, Sabé wishes she had demanded more.
In the corners of her mind that is not so fogged with grief and rage Sabé remembers how Padmé had tucked Sabé's hair behind her ear and how her hand had lingered on Sabé's cheek.
She has had to decide that that is a good last memory of the woman she had dedicated her life to.
Sabé used to help her button up the more complex dresses Padmé was given. She used to say how Padmé needed another pair of hands for everything that she did and Padmé would respond the same way each time, gently saying that she didn't need another pair of hands when she had Sabé.
She is the one who dresses Padmé one last time. She is the one who does the funeral rites. She is the one who kisses her cheek, in the same spot Padmé kissed her that day.
She had been the queen's shadow, the senator's spy and when Sabé looked at her hands she thought of them as Padmé's. And Padmé had still died.
Sabé is not cool or calm or collected or anything remotely like what she had learnt over the years from the Padmé who was queen. So the day she brushes Padmé's hair for the last time she takes a pair of scissors to her own and feels nothing but rage.
In her grief, it is hard to hold anything.
Padmé had told her she didn't believe in revenge.
Now the time is long gone for Sabé to being anyone but Sabé.