Chapter Text
Ch-thunk. Ch-thunk. Ch-thunk.
Six white-armored men surrounded Sabé as she made her way through vaguely-familiar hallways, with their twelve boots pounding the gleaming floors in flawless unison. Each step echoed like a drumbeat through the corridor. She tried matching their cadence, but her steps kept falling a half-beat out of time—as if even her own feet felt the need to remind her, again and again, that she didn’t belong here.
She was not, of course, here under duress - the clone troopers who had shown up at her door on Tatooine had made sure to emphasize that they had been sent to extend an invitation, not to conduct an arrest. The clones had, in fact, been ordered to treat her with all possible deference and respect while ensuring her safety and anonymity as they crossed the galaxy together, and every one of them had fulfilled that mission to the letter. At no point had anyone ever suggested that an attempt to refuse this unexpected invitation to Coruscant would end with her being bound hand and foot and carried onto their waiting spaceship - and yet, somehow, she had known almost immediately that the request had been no request, and what would have happened if she had tried to say 'no.' It was impressive, really, how some messages could be communicated even while the messengers verbally contradicted them....
Ch-thunk.
The men in front of her stopped moving and stepped aside as an unexpectedly familiar pair of doors whispered open, giving her a clear view into a familiar space. Unless someone else had moved into it and hadn't altered a single thing from the way it had been three years ago, then the clones had just made such a production out of bringing her to Padmé's apartment. Frowning, she strode in, tart words for the Senator already forming on her tongue -
- and dying there, unspoken, when she recognized who was at the door to meet her.
“Dormé?" There was no reason why her stomach should sink, then. Being greeted by one of the Senator's aides was no insult, even for an old friend. But although Dormé's face was a mask of composure, Sabé realized as she took the other woman's hands that Dormé's were shaking. "What's happened? Why - "
"That," a third voice - a man's voice - said, "is a very long story."
Her head whipped to the side as the man in question unfolded himself from one of the deep chairs in the sitting area, where - somehow - she had overlooked him. He was tall, dressed in black, and, despite looking like he hadn't slept or seen a razor in days, someone she recognized at once.
“Skywalker?”
Even a month ago, his presence might not have been welcome - she had never become truly comfortable with Padmé's husband, with how he could shift from immaculate manners to looking ready for a fight at any moment - but it would not have been a surprise. A month ago, though, the Jedi Order had been a pillar of galactic society. Since then, even unreliable Outer Rim newsfeeds had communicated enough fragmented stories of anarchy and rebellion on the capitol world to make it clear that Anakin Skywalker should not be in Padmé's apartment. He shouldn’t even be alive. The Jedi were outlaws now, hunted with ruthless efficiency by the very armies they had once led. Yet here he was, standing as though the apartment belonged to him alone, and, aside from a certain feverish intensity in his eyes, as if nothing at all had changed.
“Sabé,” he acknowledged. Then, with a brittle attempt at courtesy, “I trust your trip was uneventful.”
He didn’t mean it, and she wouldn’t have cared if he had.
“You cannot be here,” she informed him. “You cannot put Padmé in this position. If half of what I've heard is true, then if she's caught letting you hide here….” Here. In the official residence of the Senator from Naboo. Which was currently, as far as she could tell, occupied only by her, an outlaw, and Dormé, whose reddened eyes and shaking hands spoke volumes. “Where is Padmé?”
“That's...what I need to discuss with you, actually," he said. A muscle twitched in his cheek as he grimaced. Dormé caught Sabé's eye and then looked at one of the doors which led into the private wing of the apartment. Before Skywalker could stop her, Sabé crossed the room and pushed past it, and found herself looking at -
“Padmé!”
But there was no answer, nor any response when Sabé seized one of Padmé’s hands between both of her own. Her friend's fingers remained cold and slack, her features pale and immobile; the only sign of life Sabé could see in her was the regular rise and fall of her chest, and that was accompanied by the equally regular hiss of a respiration unit. There were quiet footsteps behind her, and Sabé didn’t look over her shoulder as she said, "I don't have time for any long stories. What's the short version?"
“The Chancellor betrayed us all," said Skywalker. His voice was too flat, too steady; the words sounded rehearsed. “It seems he conspired with Count Dooku to set up the Separatist Alliance." Disgust broke through the monotone for a moment as he said, "They started the war for their own benefit, and then he betrayed Dooku, too, so he could assume enough power to declare the Galactic Empire - "
"What does any of this have to do with what's happened to Padmé?"
"Because he's the one responsible for her...condition. Padmé was close to exposing him, and he tried to kill her once he realized there was no other way to stop her. I saw it happen, and so...I killed him first.” A note of something like bitter amusement crept into his voice. "All that work, and he only got to see the end of it for two days. I hope they were worth it."
Something was wrong. He was not telling her the truth, or at least, not telling all of the truth. That was, however, far from the most important issue at hand.
"Palpatine's dead?"
"He certainly looked dead enough to me. Pretty much like every other man I've ever run through with a lightsaber."
It was too much to take in. Palpatine - the galaxy relied on Palpatine. The newsnets were all propaganda now, next to useless, but there was at least a kernel of truth to their presentation of Palpatine as the father figure of much of the galaxy, and as one of the few things which had held the Republic together during the past three terrible years of war. And beyond that - he had been a beloved figure in planetary politics on Naboo since before she was born. He had dedicated his life to the service of the throne. Padmé had considered him a friend, once, as well as an advisor. To think that he was dead - or that he would try to, have ever tried to -
“So now you're a traitor and a murderer? And you’re putting her and - and Dormé, and the others, the whole staff, in danger hiding here? What are you thinking?!”
“I’m not hiding anywhere,” he said coolly. “Not anymore. Not ever again." The vehemence of the last two words made her want to step back, but she remained where she was. "I told you - the Chancellor betrayed us, not just her. All of us." A bitter expression twisted Skywalker’s face for a moment. “Because I saved him from the Jedi Masters, he said the galaxy belonged to us, now. With him out of the way, that means that the galaxy belongs to me. And with Padmé by my side, when Padmé's well again...then we can finally make things be the way they're supposed to be." It was hard to say what was more disturbing: the words he was saying, or the movement from barely suppressed rage to almost singsong earnestness with which he said them. His serenity was, however, certainly more discomfiting than his anger; the way the one could slip onto or off the other, as though his very personality was a mask, reminded her of the predatory narglatch, back on Naboo. A narglatch could kill a human easily, but only in part due to its strength: the real danger was in how the moment a human first noticed a narglatch spring tended to coincide with the moment it ripped out that human's throat.
Finally, he looked up from the woman on the bed to the woman beside him. "In the meantime, though...I could do us all a favor, and just burn down the Senate building, and take power that way - but even I know enough about politics to know that it will…simplify…things, if I at least go through the motions - and if the people think I have the support and advice of someone like Senator Amidala."
He didn’t say it, and that was because there was no need to do so. There was hardly even a need for the pointed look he gave her as he finished that speech. Sabé swallowed hard.
“We agreed that she would never ask me to be Amidala again,” she said. “That was what she promised me, years ago. Just after that time you tried to strangle me,” she added dryly. “My hands are hers - but we agreed that she wouldn’t ask me for them again. Not like that.”
“You and I, however, didn’t agree to anything,” said Skywalker. “And besides - if she could ask you herself, would you really refuse her? I can sense your feelings. You love her, too, even now." Sabé didn’t reply, and he added, “I’d prefer it if you did this for Padmé, and for the good of the galaxy - but I can give you other reasons, if those aren’t good enough for you.”
“Are you threatening me, Skywalker?”
“Yes.” And while she was still taken aback by the bluntness of his response, he turned to Dormé, who had been joined by that odd golden protocol droid of Padmé’s. “Threepio - are they awake? And preferably not screaming too much?”
“I am pleased to report there’s been no screaming for the past two hours, Master Anakin,” the droid said. “And that Miss Leia is simultaneously awake and content, in fact, though I believe Master Luke is still napping.”
Babble, meaningless babble - but something around Skywalker’s eyes softened slightly, and she realized, then, what the droid was saying.
“You have children?”
Skywalker’s expression instantly closed off again, but - because, she could only assume, he realized it would be rather difficult for Sabé to pretend to be his wife, voluntarily or otherwise, without this information - he nodded. “Two," he agreed, with the closest thing to a genuine smile she'd yet seen from him. "They’re twins. A boy and a girl. Padmé wanted it to be a surprise, so it's good, I suppose, that she'd had names for a boy and a girl in mind....” He paused, then added, in a very low voice, “the girl - Leia - she already looks so much like Padmé.”
“So she does, sir,” the droid agreed happily, evidently taking one of the worst reads of a room that Sabé had ever seen. “Shall I bring her to you?”
“No. But you two - " his gesture included Dormé - “take Sabé to see them. Then start briefing her on what Amidala’s up to these days.” He removed Sabé’s hands from Padmé’s, turning them over in his own to look at her callused palms. “And start doing your magic, Dormé - if her hands are Padmé’s, then they’re going to need some substantial improvements before we let her go outside without gloves. I’ll find you when I have more instructions after that.” He dropped Sabé’s hands and took one of Padmé’s. “I’m going to stay with Padmé for a while longer.”
* * * * * * *
Skywalker had been lying about something - and more than one something, even - from almost the moment he’d started talking, but he had told the truth about one thing: once she looked past the half-open, unfocused eyes and vacant expression and doll-like tininess of the twin with brown hair, it was just, past the vague sameness of all babies, to tell that the little girl did look very much like Padmé, or at least that she was very likely to look like Padmé once she grew a bit. Dormé cradled the second infant, rocking it back and forth, presumably in an attempt to convince it that waking up was no reason to escalate from fussing to full-blown screaming, and Sabé stepped away from the little girl and closer to the other woman.
“So what really happened?” she asked, quietly in the hopes of being overlooked by the protocol droid.
Dormé shook her head. “I don’t know. I knew she was pregnant - it’s been everything I can do with her wardrobe to conceal it - but we never acknowledged it out loud, not even between ourselves.”
“But why was she trying to conceal anything? Her sister’s had two children without a partner. Yané and Saché have filled their house without a man or a clinic. If a single woman has a child, nobody's first thought is going to be that she must be secretly married to Anakin Skywalker."
Dormé shook her head again. “One thing I’ve learned, living here for so long,” she said, “is that there are many cultures in the galaxy which don’t see things the way we do on Naboo. Many of which have powerful representatives in the Senate. But it doesn't matter - if she had chosen one of those routes, then there would be records, and the holonets would snoop until they realized those records don't exist. It's no secret in most of the circles that matter that the Senator and Skywalker are...close friends. And that was before a few networks reported that he might had been killed in the Outer Rim…."
“How long has the public known?”
“It still doesn’t, yet. As far as I know, only you and I and a few droids know right now - and Skywalker, of course. There’s rumors everywhere about why the Senator hasn’t been seen in public since - " Dormé’s mouth twisted - “Empire Day, but overall, we’ve done a good job of keeping it secret, especially considering the number of surgical droids we had to have in here."
Sabé sank into one of three chairs - all of them, she realized, borrowed from other rooms of Padmé’s apartment, and haphazardly borrowed at that: no two pieces of furniture in the room matched, and there were no carpets on the floor, no artwork on the walls, not even the sort of wall colors one would expect in a nursery - and clasped her hands together in her lap. “This…it doesn't seem real,” she confessed. “I can be Amidala - I don’t want to, but I helped create her. She’s both of us and neither of us. I can lie; I've done that almost every day since I was fourteen years old. But what he’s asking me to do - “ she gestured to the room at large, in a sweep meant to encompass the city, but which also lingered in particular over the cot-pod containing the little girl.
“To do temporarily,” Dormé corrected her. “I can’t think anyone would expect it to work for long. Just until the Senator recovers….” The question Sabé didn’t want to ask lay heavy in the air between them before Dormé, with what Sabé recognized as a politiican’s mask of false confidence settling over her face, continued. “The medical droids don’t know any way to awaken her, but they say Skywalker was the most powerful of the Jedi even before - all this, and who can say what knowledge is buried in their secret archives? He swears he can find a way to help the Senator, and if anyone can….”
“The man is a butcher, Dormé,” hissed Sabé. “Not a healer. Death’s followed him wherever he goes since before the war. They can call it heroism in the holovids all they want - I know enough to have some idea what he is. You must as well. You’ve been here all these years - "
“ - Yes, I have been here. I’ve been in the room when people were trying to assassinate Senate leaders, and I've been here when half of Coruscant was on fire. I am here now, when half of Coruscant is on fire," Dormé added sourly. "For the second time in as many months - and that's only counting the times when the damage was from legitimate battles. If the galaxy sprouts many more terrorists, we’ll have to start bringing in new planets just to give them more targets to attack. If Skywalker is a butcher, then he’s far from the only one that the Wars taught that trade - and we may need a butcher in charge anyway, after we've spent all these years turning the Republic into a slaughterhouse.”
Sabé stared at her. “He called the galaxy itself his property. You may not have been a handmaiden when she was queen, but you have to know how much Padmé - cared about democracy, believed in it. You cannot seriously believe she’d want me to put on her face and use her name to support the foundation of an empire!”
Dormé laughed - or maybe sobbed; she ducked her head, which made it hard to tell. Either way, though, it was the kind of sound someone only made on the brink of complete despair. “The empire was founded the day they abolished the Chancellor’s term limits, Sabé. They just didn’t change the name for a while, until after it was too late to turn things back around. Maybe the galaxy can learn democracy again someday - but I don’t think we can just go back to it right now, immediately, not with what passes for most of the Senate now. I don’t know if you can really understand how bad it’s gotten here. The Constitution does not exist anymore. The Senate has given away so much power. The galaxy has rested in one man’s hands for so long, and if what Skywalker says about who that man was is true - ”
“And if it isn’t?”
Dormé’s eyes flashed, and, for a moment, Sabé felt the slightest hint of relief. They did not know each other as well as Sabé had known the women she considered her sisters, back on Naboo, and had only ever served together sporadically and under strange circumstances - but even before she spoke, that expression reassured her that she was, after all, still in the presence of another Handmaiden of Naboo.
“If it isn’t, then we’ll kill Skywalker ourselves, and avenge the Senator and the Chancellor both,” she whispered. The baby, which had been quieting down, made a noise, and Dormé shifted it to rest its head on her shoulder and patted its back distractedly. “But if we’re ever going to know the truth - or even have a chance to discover what the truth might be - then I don’t see a clearer way forward than staying close to Skywalker and letting him think we’re his allies. But - ”
A trace of doubt made it back into Dormé’s eyes, but she managed to meet Sabé’s without flinching. “She was dying when he brought her back from - the gods alone know where, Sabé,” she said. “None of the medical droids could say why, but they were all certain she was going to die. They had given up on her already. I heard them say it myself, I know that much is true. Skywalker did - something - though, and that kept her alive long enough for them to stabilize her. I don’t know if she can ever recover, but I do know she’d be dead already without him. And I know the Senator trusted him. I don’t think we have a better option than trusting her judgment and doing the same, for now- and I know we don’t have a better option for looking after her children.” Dormé’s gaze wandered slightly to the side, away from Sabé’s. “She trusted me, too, I know - but if she could have had a say in who was to protect these two, we both know there’s no one she’d have turned to before you.” It was Sabé’s turn to look away, then. “We all swore that our hands were hers, for as long as she needed them - and I doubt she’s needed them this much at any time since the Occupation.”
Sabé looked down at her hands. It was peculiar - she had never thought of what they looked like in years, but once, they had been as much part of the Queen as her shadow. Her hands were no longer those of a noblewoman - but...
"As far as I can tell, there's nothing in this galaxy that he cares about besides Padmé,” said Dormé, not looking at her at all, now, as she stood to put the baby - Luke, the droid had called it; a Tatooine name - back down in the cot beside his sister. There were two cots hovering, but the two infants both comfortably fit into one. Immediately, they smacked their hands into each other’s faces before seeming to nestle, apparently content. It was the first time, Sabé realized, that Dormé had used Padmé’s name. “I've had to organize all his meetings; he knows almost nothing about the Senate except that he resents it for continuing business even when he's on-world. He wasn’t lying when he said he wasn’t much of a politician; I’ve overheard a few of the...meetings he's had since they returned, and he’s not subtle, not even by the standards of this wretched city. I don't know if he'd go as far as he says he will to get what he wants, but I don't want the blood on my hands if he is serious. The Senator would not like anything we may have to do, and I don't know if we can control him - but I am sure she would rather we at least try to prevent things from getting worse than they have to be, if we have the chance - and I think we do."
Unsubtle even by the standards of Coruscant - a planet with poor districts that never would have been allowed to exist as they as were on Naboo or on any civilized world, a world where there were so many places where criminals could carve out fiefdoms openly, and where some of those criminals were not even from the distant streets, but openly walking the halls of government. To say nothing of the veritable infestation of assassins....
“I’ll need your help,” said Sabé at last. “And with more than just the cosmetics. And the other girls as well, even to keep it up for a short time.”
Dormé nodded, so casually that it almost felt like an offense - as if she had assumed the conclusion from the beginning. Her words, however, were a different matter.
“Your hands are hers. Our hands will be yours.”
"Temporarily."
"Yes. Temporarily."
* * * * * * *
The Senate chamber would never be a pleasant place, but Sabé had expected it to at least seem less claustrophobic than it had the last time she'd been inside it. The war was over, but the Separatist systems had not yet had their rights restored, which put a noticeable dent in the number of pods crowded into the cavernous space. Instead of spreading out, though, the remaining Senators and representatives seemed to have drawn closer together, as if afraid to stray too close to either the periphery or the center.
Perhaps, she thought as she reacquainted herself with the controls, it was because of the Red Guards. The last time she had been here, there had not been a ring of faceless outsiders above the heads of even the highest pods. From what she'd heard, there had also at least been a lot fewer of them the last time anyone else had been here, and the nervous glances beings around the chamber kept sending upward seemed to confirm this. They were an innovation of Skywalker's. For everyone's security, of course. He'd recalled two assassination attempts against Padmé that had involved high-placed ventilation vents. Neither of them had happened in the Senate chamber, but you never knew. Better safe than sorry. That was why there were far more guards than there could possibly be vents - if one man went down, two more would have dispatched the assassin before their comrade could finish falling. That was all, and if it wasn't - well, if it wasn't, nobody here was going to say so.
The Senate was, indeed, for the most part, a tamed beast - that point had been driven home again and again over the past week, as Sabé had watched recording after tedious recording of sessions Padmé had been present for. There was the occasional debate, sporadic spasms of apparently democratic behavior, but for the most part, votes had become mere formalities, with far too many representatives tripping over themselves in their attempts to hit the correct buttons first. The last recording, when a hooded Palpatine had declared himself emperor, had made her feel almost physically ill to watch. Today, though, the beast's components were disturbed - a little uncertain, now that their master was not there to guide them, a little restless, now that he wasn't present to placate them. One thing Sabé had noticed in the recordings was how little noise such a large group of people seemed to collectively make just by default, but today, there was a murmur running throughout the pods. If she had closed her eyes, she might have thought it was rushing water, and let her mind wander to Naboo, and happier times, but the tension in the room allowed for no such indulgences.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," she muttered to Dormé as the pod began rising.
"I'd be worried about the state of your mind if you didn't," said Dormé. Sabé gave her a sharp look, but what she could see of her face, beneath the deep blue hood she wore to complement Sabé's violet-colored gown, betrayed no hint of humor.
Dormé’s “magic,” as Skywalker had put it, had already wrought significant improvements to Sabé's appearance, but events were moving too quickly to wait for the process to fully conclude. Fortunately - to the extent anything in this situation could be counted as fortunate - the occasion of Sabé’s first performance was one of the highest formality, which allowed for the greatest possible amount of concealment: Padmé had seldom used it, but as a former queen of the Naboo, she had the right to cover her face in a specific shade of very pale foundation on formal occasions, and while it was not as opaque as the stark white mask worn by an active queen, it was more than capable of obscuring quite a lot of the wearer's individual features. As for the rest - it really was art, what Dormé could do with a contour palette and a few shades of powder applied strategically around someone's eyes When she had looked into a mirror after all the preparations were done, Sabé had not seen herself or Padmé: only Amidala had remained.
Palpatine's viziers were still technically among the highest-ranking individuals in the room, but Mas Amedda sounded as though he was struggling not to vomit as he recited the lines to formally open a session, and to announce that someone who was not a member of this body would address it first.
"Uh - good morning." Skywalker seemed surprisingly ill at ease, for someone who'd had the press eating out of his hand for years and who presumably was used to addressing large groups of soldiers - but at least he sounded...normal, today, sane; it was when he turned too calm and too self-assured that Sabé found it difficult to shake the idea that she was in the room with a sando monster somehow contorted into a human skin that might burst at any moment. "I'm sure you all notice that the Emperor - isn't here with us today, and that most of you have heard many rumors about why that is. Only one of them is true - that Palpatine is dead."
It seemed unlikely that any of them were truly shocked, but there was a ripple of surprise around the room just the same. It ended in absolute silence, however, as soon as Skywalker resumed speaking. "A member of the Senate acquired evidence to prove the Emperor committed multiple acts of treason during the war - deliberately prolonging it for his own benefit. When he discovered that he was about to be exposed, he reacted like all cowards and traitors do, and tried to murder the person capable of exposing him, and he did so by accessing the Dark Side of the Force. I was present for unrelated reasons, so...." He shrugged. "I stopped him."
Amedda took back the speaker's controls and managed to ask, "You say a member of this Senate can - can corroborate your story, General Skywalker?"
Skywalker grimaced; Sabé had spent enough time with him, now, to know he was easily irritated by meaningless repetition. "Yes." And then came the moment she had been dreading: he turned to look directly at her and said, "Senator Amidala?"
A slight buzz; they had known someone was going to speak, but they hadn't known who. Every organ recognizable as an eye in the room seemed to be fixed on her as she advanced toward the center of the floor.
I can do this, she thought, and repeated the words to herself like a mantra: I can do this. It had been years since she had thought of herself by any name other than the one she had taken in Padmé's honor, all those years ago, but once, she had been a girl called Tsabin, who had diligently practiced all the breath control exercises of a hallikset player despite having no real passion for the instrument - who had looked down the vista of a long, empty life and chosen to walk it anyway, for those she'd loved. Padmé had saved her from that, but she could still control her breathing at need, regulating her voice no matter how disturbed she might feel beneath the facade. I must do this. Because it's the least bad choice. Because it's the only way I can possibly protect her and her children from a monster. My last service. I will do this.
Amidala had been a Senator for almost ten years, and Amidala was Skywalker’s wife - he was the one thing she loved more than serving her people, the one thing she loved as much as Sabé loved her. Amidala, therefore, had no difficulty speaking the words that Sabé and Dormé and Skywalker had worked together to write for her, laying out a case against Palpatine for treason and singing Skywalker's praises for saving her life. As Amidala spoke, though, Sabé’s eyes were free to observe the chamber, and she did not like what she saw.
Some of the collected Senators were not, she realized, just watching her; some - too many - watched her as if their very lives depended on it. It didn’t take her long to figure out why, either. She had been trained to look for patterns in gatherings the way she had learned to see them in music, and to spot any anomalies, any discordant notes - and seeing the same face more than once, in different places throughout the assembly, was just such an anomaly. They were making some effort to be subtle, but several of the pods were manned by clone troopers. Those pods were not positioned randomly, either: they had been carefully spaced through the assembly, with extra concentrations near those who looked the most like they were trying to suppress either shock or anger - the ones she recognized from recordings as either Padmé's most outspoken allies in trying to preserve democracy or as Palpatine's most devoted allies in destroying it.
"He’s not subtle, not even by the standards of this wretched city."
The Red Guards could - the human in her found it unthinkable, but the strategist in her, the girl Quaresh Panaka had taught to kill or die for her queen at need, saw it clearly - unleash a rain of blaster bolts that would leave the walls dripping with blood, if commanded to do so, but there were simply too many senators for the Guards to kill them all before some managed to escape the chamber. There were some senators who Skywalker clearly felt could create problems for him particularly well, if pushed to the point, and Skywalker had become a general almost as soon as he'd been knighted. He was famed - beloved, even - for being the sort of general who led from the front, who would risk his own life anywhere he would send his men, but a general had to know more than that: he had to know how to prevent some problems before they could even manifest. Once a territory was conquered, a good general figured out where resistance or retaliation was most likely to come from, and made sure to put enough armed loyalists in such places to crush rebellions as soon as they began.
Dormé had not been certain how far Skywalker would go, but now, here, Sabé was. Senators who were watching her as if their lives depended on it were not doing so because they thought Amidala had the solution to a terrifying, unprecedented situation. They were watching her as though their lives depended on it because they did.
When at last she was finished, there was only silence - until one of the other Senators, human or near-human at least, finally, nervously, spoke into it.
"Forgive me - but if the Emperor was the traitor, and not the Jedi - then how do you explain Lord Palpatine's...condition, when he spoke before us?"
Sabé had no answer ready for that - but Skywalker, it seemed, did.
"Because the Jedi did try to assassinate Chancellor Palpatine," he said, as matter-of-fact as if he was discussing what he'd had for breakfast - almost the voice that made her think of how very invisible a narglatch could be, just before it sprang from concealment and attacked its unwitting prey. "I understand that very few of you had much direct experience of the Wars - " contempt flashed across his face, and there was a momentary murmur of discontent from some pods, before some of their occupants glanced at the nearest pods of soldiers - "but anyone who has could tell you that you can have more than one enemy at a time. The Masters were right to confront Palpatine, but they should have brought him here to stand trial, not tried to take the law into their own hands. They were both traitors, and they've both been dealt with accordingly."
Another Senator requested the floor, and this time, Sabé had to assume the speaker was simply suicidal, because there was no chance that Skywalker had asked someone to point out the obvious problem with this story: "Dealt with by you, alone, General Skywalker. And while her evidence is convincing - not all of my colleagues have been members of the Senate long enough to recall, but it was also because of Senator Amidala's actions that Palpatine ever became chancellor in the first place - "
The murmuring grew louder, to the point of a few audible agreements. Beneath her make-up, Sabé felt herself go red with anger, and she reactivated her microphone.
"You speak truly," she said, cutting through the babble. She could feel Skywalker's eyes on her, doubtless displeased by her going off-script, and tried to ignore them. "I did ask the Senate for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum, during my term as Queen of Naboo - after this Senate saw fit to respond to the Trade Federation's invasion of my world by forming a committee to look into the matter." Sabé had not been present for that, but she had seen the recordings, and found it easy enough to imagine the outrage Padmé must have felt, confronted by that answer in a room where delegates of a corporation had more rights and support than the entire sentient population of a planet. "May I remind you, though, Senator, that I had no part in the selection of Palpatine as his replacement. I returned to Naboo to help liberate my people while this body sat by and did nothing. You were the ones who nominated him for the chancellorship and then took the vote to install him."
There was an obvious weakness in that argument, too, of course - that Palpatine wouldn't have been on Coruscant for them to nominate if Queen Amidala hadn't named him as a senator and her ambassador - but Sabé was not entirely surprised when no-one stepped forward to point that one out. The shame of being the ones who had elected Palpatine would forever leave black marks on the records of some of the room's occupants - a thought which gave her another idea, which she decided to risk putting forward before anyone else could speak again.
"You all know, or can easily access, my voting record from the day I became a member of this Senate," she continued. "I have consistently stood for the rights and protections of the people of all our worlds, and against the measures which Palpatine used to decimate the Constitution that protected the Republic for so long. I advocated for diplomacy and greater efforts to find a peaceful end to the war even when I knew many of you would denounce me as a traitor for it. I bear some responsibility for the crimes of Chancellor Palpatine - but so do we all, those of you who cooperated with him and those of us who didn't resist him enough, although I am sure none of us ever intended such a thing." Her heart shook her like a demolition bomb, but this time, it was anger, not fear. This - this creature had the nerve to stand before her and blame Padmé for everything that had happened - after all she had done, all she had been, and after they had all failed her so completely, been everywhere but where she'd needed them - "There are untold numbers of beings in this galaxy who will suffer from - regrets - all their lives about the actions they took and some of the actions they didn't take during this war, and we here stand first among them - but however and whyever it happened - the war is over, and it will do us no good to dwell on mistakes we could not have known we were making. All we can do now is dedicate the rest of our lives to atonement, to rebuilding this galaxy into something even better than the one we accidentally helped the traitors devastate so thoroughly."
The silence rang in her ears as she ran out of words and sank back to her seat. Beneath the console, Dormé reached out and took her hand, and she couldn't tell whose fingers were trembling more.
"Uh - yeah," said Skywalker after a moment, sounding almost like a boy as he was caught off-guard, but he collected himself swiftly and stood to address the Senate once more. "When I returned from the Outer Rim sieges, I did not know the Jedi Council was plotting treason, but I already intended to leave the Order because of the weaknesses of the Jedi code - such as the ones which have made it so that Senator Amidala and I can only now tell you what we should have been able to tell the whole universe three years ago - that for all that time, all these years, I've had the honor of calling her my wife."
That had not been part of the script, and as a thousand audible gasps rippled through the room, Skywalker gestured for Sabé to join him. Numbly, she steered the pod alongside his, but apparently, that wasn't quite theatrical enough for him, as he extended a hand to her, evidently planning to help her move from one pod to the next. Sabé tried to figure out how to communicate that there was absolutely no graceful - or even especially safe - way for her to do that, but it seemed Skywalker had noticed that problem for himself; at least, that was the only reason Sabé could imagine for why it felt as though something invisible but strong clamped around both of her ankles just before Skywalker made another, smaller summoning gesture, at which point she felt her feet rise from the pod floor. It would make absolutely no difference if whatever he was doing with the Force failed, but she grabbed the proffered hand, anyway, as he steered her around like a speeder and concentrated on not sagging in relief as soon as she realized her feet were back in contact with a solid surface again.
"The Jedi failed, and the Republic failed, and the Emperor failed - but we - together - we will not fail," he informed them. "Never again. Things are going to be the way they're supposed to be."
It wasn't Palpatine-level rhetoric, but for a group so used to cheering on whoever stood where Sabé now stood - and which was, after all, still at some risk of getting shot if it didn't cooperate - it seemed it was enough: the Senate began to cheer sycophantically. Skywalker seemed to relax slightly and glanced down at her as though seeing her for the first time.
"Not bad," he said quietly in her ear, with a hint of respect. "We might not make too bad of a team after all."
The cheering grew louder, and Sabé forced a smile onto her face. When she looked back at Dormé, though, she saw only the one thought which was already throbbing inside her skull, reflected back at her: what have I done?