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Mon’s normal, frustrating, predictable day fell off a cliff at three in the afternoon, with a text message.
— Hello Ms. Mothma. I know it’s been a very long time, but you have told me once to turn to you if I ever needed help. I have just arrived to Coruscant and my plans for accommodation have fallen through. Would you be able to house me for a night? Sabé.
She stared at the datapad.
Oh.
So this was how it felt to fall off a roof.
Her feet felt very far away. Somewhere on the back of her skull, a memory played out: a city muffled by grief; a dim room; a woman whose face Mon could not bear to look at. “Please, if you need– anything, if you need anything, just ask.”
Get it together.
She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t strong enough.
Get. It. Together.
Oh, the irony. She’d had many moments worth falling apart over in the last few weeks. Yet this was what—
GET IT TOGETHER.
She lowered her hand and raised her eyes. On the wall in front of her hung the Piaris piece - a rich, intricate painting to represent a rich, intricate society, or so the official brief went. It was hideous.
Her fingers spasmed on the datapad, a deep-seated urge to drop it on the floor and pretend it did not exist. Instead she turned back to it, the spite a familiar burn that helped keep the memories away, and quickly scribbled a reply.
— Hello Sabé, of course, you’re always welcome in my home. Do you need me to pick you up?
— It’s alright, I can get there on my own.
— I’ll let the housekeeper know you’re expected. Unfortunately I have some meetings this afternoon, but I will see you at dinner.
— Alright. Thank you.
There. Done. She even had a few hours to shore up and—
Stars. The treason was easier.
Her last meeting ran over but she still made it home in time for dinner. A brilliant victory if anyone asked her, not that Perrin or Leida did. They joined her at the table with the barest of hello’s and waited for the dinner to be served in matching disinterested silence.
Sometimes it felt like she was a mother of two, instead of one.
Only three places have been set, she noticed at last, and only three plates were brought from the kitchen. “Ensee, where is Sabé?” she asked the serving droid. She knew she’d arrived. She got the security notification.
“Lady Sabé is—“
“She said she was tired,” Perrin spoke over the droid. “I ran into her in the hallway.” He shuddered theatrically, “It was like seeing a ghost.”
Leida perked up. “We have a guest?”
Mon smiled at her. She missed the way excitement would lit up her eyes. “Sabé. An old friend - she had been an aide to Senator Amidala of Naboo.”
Leida scrunched her face. “Is that the one who died? They played us a holo about her at school, I think.”
”…yes.” These days, Mon almost didn’t want to scream when she saw Padmé’s face plastered over a piece of propaganda.
Perrin fiddled with the knife in his hand. “Amidala had been your mother’s lover, during the war.”
Leida’s jaw dropped. “That’s—“
“Allowed by the precepts. You agreed,” she snapped at Perrin.
He shrugged. “I never minded sharing. Always wondered about that Jedi that tagged behind her, though. He looked like a real—“
“Perrin, enough.”
Silence descended on the room. Mon’s politician instincts listed all the things she ought to be doing: keep the conversation, comfort Leida, defuse whatever mood Perrin had gotten into.
She stayed mute. She was so tired of fighting losing battles.
Dinner done, she gave up on the pretense of a happy domestic evening and hid away in her study. She sat at her home data station. She penciled in a few invitations into her and Perrin’s shared event calendar. She replied to messages from her personal inbox.
No.
She couldn’t do this.
It felt like there was a ghost in her home - a specter from a past she’d worked hard to put to rest. She couldn’t sit here and pretend everything was normal, couldn’t go to bed knowing that Sabé was a few rooms away, Sabé who’d been nearly a friend once, Sabé who’d been present for some of Mon’s happiest memories.
Mon slid through the residence, from her office to the guest rooms. She would just… knock. Go away if Sabé slept; say hello and make some excuses if she opened up. She needed this over with; tear off the plaster and breathe through the burn.
She rapped her knuckles on the door, and waited. A second. Another. Another one. How long would she stand here, how long should she, how long—
The door opened.
Oh.
That was horrible.
She’d hoped— Sabé would have grown older, she’d thought, grown apart in likeness from Padmé who would stay forever young in Mon’s memory. She did not. Somehow, every unfamiliar wrinkle and scar and blemish just emphasized how much she looked like Padmé.
“Come in, please.”
Sabé stepped back and Mon stepped forward. The door dragged at her clothes as it shut. She swallowed. There were things a normal person would say, she’d been in harder situations, even though she could not recall a single one just now.
“It’s nice to see you, Sabé.” Good. A lie, but a polite one at least.
Sabé’s hands knotted in the front of her tunic. Her eyes stared at Mon, from a face kept so blank it made Mon worry. How did Sabé feel? Was Mon a reminder of a lost past as well?
Sabé lifted her hand. It shook. She touched the corner of her mouth, slid down and—
No. No, that was— an accident, a cruel one in a way Sabé couldn’t understand, but—
She did it again. Slowly. As if making sure Mon would catch it; as if hoping she would understand.
“It’s nothing, don’t mind me.”
“Mon…”
“Oh, for— I didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s—“
“I know, that’s the whole point! I told you, I’m just being foolish.”
“Hush. What if we made a sign? One that nobody else will know. Look: here, and…”
She— she couldn’t, she—
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Padmé said. “I feel very secure here.”
Mon forced air into her lungs. “The room is clean,” she said, on automatic. “What…” The rest of the sentence failed to appear.
Padmé bit her lip. “Mon…”
“I’m involved with the Rebels,” Mon blurted out.
“Mon! You shouldn’t have told me that!”
She looked worried, of all things. “Why not?” Mon asked. She felt like laughing; forced it down, this was no time for hysteria. “Whatever has happened… I know you’re fighting against the Empire.”
Padmé’s lips tipped up. That little smile, that was what nearly broke Mon. “What happened?” she rasped.
The blank mask was back. “It is dangerous to know,” Padmé said.
“For me or for you?”
“You.”
“Tell me.”
Padmé did. She spoke in small words, short sentences; she delivered her report to the spot somewhere left of Mon’s shoulder. When she was done, the silence was so thick Mon could feel it in her lungs. Stars. What should she say to that? What was there to say?!
Padmé smiled again, a horrible, twisted thing. “You will tell me ‘I told you so’.”
“No.” Mon lurched forward. She reached out, remembered herself, yanked her arms back. “I would never. Padmé, I…”
Padmé stepped back. “I shouldn’t have come.” She shook her head, lose strands flying everywhere. “I shouldn’t have contacted you. If he senses me here, if the Emperor—!”
“No!” Mon grabbed Padmé’s hands, kissed her knuckles. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Padmé keened. She threw herself at Mon, hard enough for Mon to stumble back and hit the door - stars, as if she minded! She wrapped her arms around Padmé, pressed her so close she could stamp Padmé’s body into her own.
“I missed you so much,” Padmé sobbed.
Mon pressed a kiss into her hair. How was she supposed to put her feelings into words? Me too – that didn’t even begin to cover that. You were dead. You were gone, I lost you, I had to learn to live with a hole in the middle of my chest—
She wasn’t sure which one of them started the kiss. Just that suddenly they were kissing, deep, desperate mash of lips; the kind that they used to mock in holonovellas, ew, they look like you’re trying to bite out each other’s lungs, and look at them now…
Padmé pushed away. Tried to; Mon refused to let go and Padmé did not struggle, leaned her weight back into Mon and hid her face in the crook of Mon’s neck. “You should go,” she mumbled. “Perrin will—“
“I’ll tell him I want to get involved with you. Sabé, I mean. He’ll believe that – it’s appropriately pathetic. Unless…” She swallowed. She shouldn’t… well, she’d have a right to assume but still… “Unless you don’t…”
“I do.” Padmé chuckled; the puff of breath tickled Mon’s neck. “I’d think that’s obvious.”
Letting Padmé go was the hardest thing in her life, but somehow she managed. Open the door. Walk across the apartment. Enter Perrin’s bedroom. Tell him - because she did not ask, would not give him the option to say “no” - about her and “Sabé”. Ignore his sarcastic “thank you for informing me, darling”. Walk across the apartment. Open the door.
“You’re here.” She had Padmé in her arms again, and she wasn’t letting her go until the world made her.
Judging from the fingers buried in Mon’s robe, Padmé felt the same way. “I’m here.” She tilted her head to look up at Mon; her eyes were red, but her smile glowed brighter than a sun. “We’re both here.”
For now, the pragmatic part of Mon’s mind whispered, for how long?, but she stomped it into silence. They were fighters, the both of them. They would fight.