Work Text:
Padme speaks before the senate, and her voice is flat in the cadence of the Queen. The senate spreads out beneath and around her in every direction, it seems to go on and on without end, a sea of faces she cannot comprehend as people. She is interrupted. The Queen is never interrupted on Naboo, but this is not Naboo, and never in all her years of politics has she felt so young. But she is the Queen, and her face betrays nothing. When she responds, her voice is still that of the Queen, but she fills it now with her passion, with her anger, and with her sadness. She demands a vote of no confidence, and the vast ocean of the senate erupts in response.