White is the Color [Dormé, mature]
Title: White is the Color
Author: Pandora Beardsley [pandore27]
Rating: Mature
Prompt: Padmé Amidala/Dormé: Love in a dangerous time.
Author's Note: Yes, this was supposed to be posted July 6th. I was having trouble with it, so I dropped the prompt. I was then able to go on and finish it. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.
It does deviate from the prompt in a few ways, but since I came up with it, and the prompt was really more like a guideline, I'm giving myself a pass.
White is the Color
1.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a bed in a dreamwhite room. It was so white, and so bright and polished, that I didn’t see the window. But then I did, and I saw the sunlight glowing outside. It took me a minute, or more, before I could feel myself breathe. My throat was still sore, and I understood, or remembered, that it was from the breathing apparatus in the bacta tank. It wasn’t too bad, even when I swallowed, and then swallowed again, until my mouth was damp. There was a shift hitched up around my knees, and my thighs were woodenstiff. But I could feel them.
I tried to shift, just a little over onto my side, and I could, though I did feel the closed-up peephole in my shoulder where I had been shot.
I wiggled and clenched my toes, but I didn’t try anything else.
The room was clean, and too bright, but it also had a faint, whisper-smell of some sort of flower. It was probably a wild growing plant with a name I didn’t remember, or had never known, that had a medicinal, calming effect. The Naboo Embassy Medical Center used, and preferred, those. A chrono started chiming the hour off down the hallway. It sounded normal.
It stopped, and I shut my eyes again, almost squeezed tight, but not to fall back into sleep, or even unconsciousness. I was awake now.
“Oh, don’t be so silly,” a woman’s voice said.
That made me open my eyes, and push myself up against the stuffed fat, wildrose for sleep and forgetting scented pillow. The door slid open, and Coté and Moteé came in. They wore matching night-purple cloaks with lily-plush broaches. I had a cloak just like them, back in my wardrobe. Moteé had let her hood down, and she stayed back behind Coté. Moteé, who looked sly and flushed with a secret, but was really a good, traditionalist girl. She had dark eyes and muddy-brown hair, which she kept sleeked back. And (I had known, but not really noticed) she was small. She was, of course, and too much so, like Amidala. Amidala did not come into the room after them, and I didn’t expect her to. I already knew she wasn’t there.
“She’s awake,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and my voice still worked, and sounded the same. My throat didn’t even bother me. That surprised me, but only until I realized that the medication, or the healing herbs or flowers or whatever they were, had to be working.
“Well, that’s good to see,” Coté said, and I wondered if she sounded amused, or only pleased. I didn’t know her well enough to know. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I said, and made my mouth twitch.
“I would suppose so,” she said.
She smiled, and came closer, over to my bed. Coté was tall, though not as tall as she seemed, with honey-dark blonde hair and green eyes. She was polite, and friendly, but didn’t regard Amidala with the same adoring, sweet-eyed way Moteé did. The same way, I knew, I watched her. She didn’t remind me of Cordé and Versé (or my own bruised-eyed image floating in the mirror several nights before) and that was a relief.
“Where is Senator Amidala?” I said, and my voice almost stumbled over, before I managed to make myself calm again.
“She should be back on planet in another day or so,” said Coté. “You know, she left Ilium as soon as she heard about-- the attack.”
I nodded, and the room swayed. “Do they know anything?”
Amidala had been on a mission, which was another one of her secrets, on Ilium, a Mid-rim world that was frozen in an ice age, and had been for thousands of years. It would continue that way for several more thousand years, I had read in the database, before the ice melted, the oceans receded, and it turned into a plush, green place. Once, I would have been there with Amidala, but she had only taken her protocol droid. I didn’t see what use she could have for it, for him, but Coté and Moteé accepted it. Of course, they did. This was how it had always been for them.
“If they do, they haven’t told us,” said Moteé. She looked down, at the floor, and her feet, and twisted and fretted her fingers together. She must not have learned to remember not to do that, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t as though there was anyone there to see her, or as though (I tried not to think) anyone ever saw her.
The room blurred away, into a snowstorm, and I sank down into the pillows. I blinked, once, and then twice, but my eyelids had turned too heavy.
“I’m afraid I need to rest now,” I heard my voice say.
“Of course,” Coté said, and I heard her skirts ssssh as she walked past my bed, back towards the door. “We are glad that you’re going to be all right.”
Then I shut my eyes, and everything was dark and closed again, like a slammed shut door. I don’t remember falling asleep. I do remember, in that last minute, clutching the edge of the blanket, as though it were a love letter, or the hem of Cordé’s white dress, the stained, burnt white dress she had died in.
0.
It happened when I was walking across the public park near Republica 500, in the middle of a warm, pale day. I was returning from an errand, from delivering a document to Senator Danu, or rather, his senior assistant. The grass smelled like velvet, and not really grass, and I was staying on one of the main paths that went past a grove of tiny, bone-white trees native to one of the southern continents of Naboo. It was my favorite place at that park, and I would usually, if not always, go that way. The assassins would have known that, and they would have known when to wait for me to come.
The park was quiet, and I didn’t hear anyone, or anything other than the leaves rustling and shaking around me, when the first shot was fired.
They shot me in the leg, in the thigh, first, and it did bring me down. A woman screamed, somewhere, and everywhere, and I jerked back, I gasped, I screamed, as they shot me in the shoulder, and then, finally, and only two, or three, seconds later, in the chest.
While rather conveniently missing all the major organs, Zillah Fulber, the agent from Chommell Sector Intelligence would say, much later.
It should have hurt, but it didn’t. I couldn’t feel anything, only my shuddering, shocked breathing, before I was surrounded by emergency personnel, and someone pricked a needle into my arm, and the world snapped shut. But I hadn’t passed out quite yet. My mouth tasted like copper, like pennies, or like a choked on marriage ring. It tasted like blood.
2.
Amidala came to my room the next day. I was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out, and daydreaming, at the sky, and I didn’t hear her, or see her in the doorway. My hair was loose, and I had changed into a green silk dress. It was, well, more feminine than I usually prefer, but I had decided I liked it. I was still barefoot, and I had my feet pressed tight and warm together. I wasn’t well, but I felt better. There was only a fading, star splashed scar on my upper thigh, but the medics had told me it would be gone soon.
“Dormé,” Amidala’s voice suddenly said. “May I come in?”
It isn’t as though she can think you would refuse, I thought to myself, almost sneering and gleeful, in my mind. I wouldn’t want to remember that later, but I would.
“Of course, Milady,” I said, without having to think about it, and turned around in my seat. She watched me, and I know she sighed in relief when I stood up without difficulty.
Amidala smiled, as she came, as she swept over to me. She was wearing one of her elaborate gowns, a midnight blue velvet thing with jet black, nightbird black beading, and a yellow underdress. Her hair was done up in an arrangement of braids, and a new headpiece that had only arrived from the artisan a week, or perhaps more now, before. I thought she was alone, but only for a moment, before I saw C3PO, her protocol droid, glittering in the hallway with the reflections of the overhead lighting.
I walked forward a few steps to meet her. “How are you, Milady?”
She looked sad, before she shook her head. “Oh, Dormé. I’m fine. Of course, I’m fine. I ought to be asking you how you are doing.”
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The medics think I should be able to come back (home, to work, to you, to my life) to the apartment tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” she said, but she sounded worried. Her droid’s footsteps went walking off down the hallway, which meant she had asked him to give us privacy. She was so close, though still not close enough. I could smell her, and her dust-warm velvet gown, and see the little, just kissed mole on her cheek. Her breathing was warm, and she nipped at her lower lip. I didn’t want to look away.
“This was my fault,” she said, mostly whispering to herself.
“Don’t say that, Milady,” I said.
She took my hand, and I clenched hers back, almost tootight. Her hand was warm, and I felt the bump of the ring she was wearing. Since there was no around to see, she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. I waited, and then she kissed me again, neat and shy, and schoolgirl proper. I allowed my hand to flutter close to her hip, but I didn’t dare to actually touch her, not there, and not yet.
Her mouth tasted like iced wine, and then only her spit. It had been several weeks since we had last had sex, or made love. And I had left her room, and her warm bed, and tangled sheets, right afterwards, and snuck back to my own room. I had blinked, hard and quick, before I could cry. There wasn't any reason to, since I wasn't sad. I was only empty, as though there was a dark hole dug between my legs.
It had been several months since she had shown much interest in me at all, since (and later, I would realize that it wasn’t a coincidence) her return from Naboo. When she came back with her friend, her protection, and her bodyguard, Anakin Skywalker.
3.
Several days later, the agents from Chommell Sector Intelligence arrived at the apartment to see Senator Amidala. She waited for them on one of the long, creamsleek couches near the window-walls in the sitting area, and I sat with her, while Typho let them in. Amidala wore an ash-grey dress, with her hair loose and sweetly curled, to look innocent, and I wore a dress to match her. I had my hands dumped in my lap, and I could feel, if not hear, Moteé and Coté, hidden away in their cloaks behind us.
They followed Typho into the room. First, the senor agent, a senior man with tan hair and tan skin in his plain, secret black cloak, and then his partner.
Agent Zillah Fulber could have been fifty, or even over sixty years old. She had short, spiked iron-grey hair and cat eyes, and her mouth twisted at us. She nodded, in a professional, yet awkward-stiff way. She had thorn-black eyebrows, and cut short, boyish, manish fingernails. She looked, I would decide later, like a schoolteacher, a stern, sterling spinster, and I would learn she had been, once, years before.
“Senator Amidala,” said Typho, and his voice was careful, and stern. Oh, they had had words about this earlier. “This is Agent Tate, and his partner, Agent Fulber.”
“We apologize for the intrusion, Senator,” said Agent Tate, and he kept his voice carefully modulated, as though he were trying to smooth it out.
“Agent Tate has some suspicions he has shared with me,” Typho said.
Agent Tate nodded. “We’re still looking at possible suspects. But we think it’s likely it’s the Ceilian Moons radicals, or another group from our sector. It seems more and more certain that they deliberately targeted your handmaiden. It was common knowledge that you were off-world at the time, Senator Amidala. They wouldn’t have been looking for you.”
Ohno, I almost said, or perhaps it was Moteé or Coté.
“But I don’t see any reason for attacking Dormé,” said Amidala.
“They have their reasons, mad as they might be,” said Agent Fulber. “If their motivation was revenge, they might have targeted her because they know, and they have their ways, that she serves as your decoy.”
She had a rough, sharp, backalley accent I didn’t recognize. That could mean she was from any one of the several thousand colony worlds I only knew as names on a sector star map. Or she could just be from one of the isolated city-islands in the northern hemisphere, or down near the frozen pole, of Naboo. I didn’t know.
“Senator Amidala, you do have a reputation for going through guardsmen, and handmaidens, as though they were disposable paper,” said Agent Tate.
“Dormé,” Agent Fulber said, and I could only look at her. The air felt as though it turned cold and heavy into glass. Everyone was watching me, they saw me, they noticed me, they were aware of me, and I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t know if I could endure it. Amidala’s leg, or rather, her skirts, bumped up against me. I pressed my legs tighttight together. “Did you see anything?”
Amidala touched my thigh, and I shook my head. “No, I didn’t see anything. Or if I did, I didn’t know it for what it was. I’m--” (I was about to apologize, when I suddenly knew I couldn’t say it.) “I wish I could be of more help.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Agent Tate. “None of the witnesses at the park that day saw or heard anything. This man was good, too good.”
“What else are you doing to do?” Amidala said, but for a moment, I thought that I had heard my own voice, and I had spoken.
“We’ve brought in several of the Ceilian Moons leaders for questioning,” Agent Fulber said. “We can’t waste time here. If they are involved, this attack was only a warning. They don’t bother with death threats. They just kill.”
“That means that, for now,” Agent Tate said, looking over at Typho, “we must ask you to remain here on Coruscant, Senator Amidala.”
“Milady, this is necessary for us to keep you safe,” said Typho.
“Oh, I can’t believe this,” Amidala said, or rather, almost snapped. Her eyes were burnt dark, with anger, with frustration, and she almost bared her teeth.
But the agents did not respond to, or even acknowledge, her sudden loss of tact, and she sighed, and almost slumped down into the couch. I wanted to touch her, but she had looked away from me, and her back was turned into a stiff-locked door. I couldn’t let the agents see me turn moon-eyed and loving and, always, and always, and always, rejected. They wouldn’t understand.
Everyone was quiet. I think Typho cleared his throat behind his fisted hand. Then there was a tickticktick as C3PO came into the room, carrying a tray loaded up with drinks, with bluesilk stuff in windowpane glasses. The agents looked relieved, and Amidala knew enough to smile, in a polite, friendly, but distant way. C3PO must have noticed the situation, because he knew enough to remain silent.
0.
It happened when Amidala was just leaving the senate, and I was her shadow right behind her. My shoulders were numbed from the hours I had spent slumped, though not enough to hide the fact that I was taller than she was. The security detail was waiting at her new, and thoroughly checked, speeder. Most of them had only been on staff for several months, though the sergeant had been with Amidala as long as I had. I had never spoken with any of them. Or rather, none of them had ever acknowledged me. They might have thought it was against the rules.
Amidala had just turned back to speak with Senator Breemu and Senator Mothma, and yes, Baiseis Locke, the senator from Kekropia. Her aide, Ayaira Sade, that woman, that girl, who had been friends with Cordé, would have been with her.
She would have looked, and then glared, at Amidala.
The lieutenant, the young man who had only recently been a sergeant, opened the door and stood to the side, looking and bowing at the ground. His men had turned to speak with the man who had just approached the speeder. He was average height, and average looking, and well dressed. I have to say that. He could have been any political aide, or businessman, or lobbyist.
“Senator Amidala!” he said, loud enough to hear himself over the wind.
There wasn’t time to react before the bomb he had implanted and hidden inside his own skin went off, and the world turned into fire and dragon-hissed smoke. The others, the senators, and their aides, shrieked, and gasped, and stared, but I didn’t have time to look around, to know the guards were all dead, all dead along with the bomber. No, I only pushed Amidala to the ground, covering her with my body, and my nightmare-purple skirts, and keeping her alive, and safe.
4.
Amidala was with the Chommell Sector Intelligence agents, and a group of men, or rather, males, from Senate Security and CorSec, for most of the afternoon. It was turning grey, and glowing with speeder lights outside, when she finally returned to the apartment. Typho wouldn’t come back until much later that night, when we were all asleep. He had to make the identifications, and he had to send word to the next of kin, to the families, as soon as possible, so they would know before the bodies were shipped back to Naboo.
She must have been tired, but she was too well trained to ever show it, or even acknowledge it to herself. She came in, not looking back to see the speeder slip away, and go back to the garage. She didn’t cringe, waiting to hear an explosion.
“Milady,” I said, in a lullaby-voice. “Are you all right?”
Yes, it was stupid, but really, there was nothing else I knew how to say. Coté and Moteé came into the room behind me, looking concerned, and worried.
“They’ve identified the bomber,” she said, and I realized later that was her answer. “His name was Rhys Danlé. He was Lieutenant Danlé’s brother. Apparently, he was with the Ceilian Moons group, but they think he might have been acting alone.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If he wanted to avenge his brother’s death, then he would have gone after you. Or if he was mad enough, someone in the Trade Federation. Why would he kill those guards?”
“He was Naboo,” she said, and she wasn’t looking at me, or at us. “He shouldn’t have been capable of what he did. It shouldn’t have been possible. And-- They’re going to send people to talk with the families of everyone who died in that explosion, all the guards, and Cordé and Versé. Oh, I understand they have to consider every possibility, no matter how unlikely. I do. But--”
She shook her head, too hard and dizzy fast. “I can’t talk about it anymore.”
“Oh, Milady,” said Moteé, or perhaps I said it.
I don’t remember now. I only know that I walked up behind her, and rubbed her shoulders, leaning into her. My breasts (and my nipples were suddenly nervous-sharp) pressed against her back. She fell back against me, and I caught her. She sighed. I didn’t think of my own recent wounds, which were already gone. My skin was already new. Coté and Moteé must have returned to their rooms, but I didn’t see or hear them leave. There was only the one lily lamp glowing in the corner, and Amidala was with me. Those men were dead. But I was still alive.
“You’ll stay the night with me, won’t you?” she said.
“Oh, Milady. You already know that,” I said.
When we were back in her bedchamber, with the door closed and safe, she kissed me, and I kissed her, suddenly and desperate, her tongue filling my mouth. It only took a moment for me to undo and open up her dress, and then we were fallen across her bed, and she was giggling as I pulled up her petticoat. I had just kissed her between the legs when her comm. unit started buzzing, over and over and over again.
It was Anakin Skywalker, far away, frantic, and wanting to know that Amidala was all right. She moved into another room, and I could only hear the murmured secret of her voice. I waited. Finally, I straightened my clothing, and went, hurried, and on tiptoe, back to my room. Back to my bed, and a half-read holo novel, and the chrono ticktick. I didn’t know it yet, but that was the last time we would be together. It was already over.
0.
Of course, I had noticed Ayaira Sade before that night, that last night, at the senate offices. I even knew what her name was. I had seen her with Senator Locke at meetings, standing or appearing nearby, with a datapad or a document. I suppose she was pretty enough. She was tall, with long, slightly gawky legs, and glass-grey eyes and seethrough skin. She didn’t only look sly, and amused, she was. She wore mostly dark, discreet, and expensive dresses, but not because she had to hide.
It was all right for people to look at her, and see her.
It was all right for her to speak in a deep, drawlingbored voice.
Mostly, I remember only one time: Cordé was in the square outside the senate, stopped to talk to someone. It was Ayaira Sade, and that surprised me. I hadn’t known they were friends; I hadn’t known Cordé had friends. She was drinking what was most likely an iced fruit drink. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they hadn’t seen me.
5.
Amidala was staying late at her offices, hours after even her senior aide had left. She had an early, and secret, meeting the next day with the Loyalist Committee, and she had several documents she needed to read, or prepare. I didn’t ask. She kept her door closed, with only a ribbon of light showing. Even though there was nothing for us to do, Coté and I stayed close by in her reception room, waiting to hear her chair shuffle back, to hear anything at all. I couldn’t pretend that I was much of a bodyguard, but if I was only a lady-in-waiting, I would serve, and wait.
It was Coté who suggested that we go out on a security check. She came up to the chair where I was sitting, and reviewing Amidala’s schedule for the next two days. “We might as well make ourselves useful, if we’re going to be here.”
Somehow, I stopped myself before I said: But the Senator might need us.
She hadn’t needed me for over an hour, when I had brought her a glass of water, fresh and limon flavored from Naboo. I snapped my datapad shut.
The hallways had been filled with the ssshing of the cleaning droids, but now they were whisper-hushed and empty. It helped that I had my blaster, tucked away, and unused, under my skirts. We wandered through several floors of dark hallways before we decided to turn back. It wasn’t until we were walking back to the glass bubble lift, not far from the locked up offices of the Kekropian delegation, that we saw her.
She had just walked around the corner, past a bronze statue of a long ago king or senator or prince. She might have been surprised, but she didn’t start. She only continued to come towards us the lift, and us. Even then, I could tell something was wrong. She was pale, almost glowing white in the dark, and her hair was loose. I had never seen her with her hair that way before. She would always have it done up in some complicated, fashionable way, sometimes with a silk sweetviolet tucked inside it.
She wore a black cloak, with (I noticed, as we came closer, or she did) a enamel-green leaf pin she had pushed and jammed into place.
“Oh, Miss Sade!” Coté said, and she only sounded friendly, not suspicious. “We didn’t expect to see you. Did you forget something at the office?”
“You could say that,” said Miss Sade, Ayaira Sade.
Then she smiled, mostly baring her upper teeth. Her lips were slightly bruised-chapped. Her eyes were full and swollen with pupil. But she didn’t look mad, only, if anything, mean. I stayed back, and only watched, as Coté approached her. She almost jerked away, before she stopped herself, when Coté touched her arm. I don’t think she had ever spoken with Coté before, though she would have noticed who she was. Ayaira Sade had a talent for noticing the people, the attendants, no one else saw.
“Are you all right?” she said, and she only sounded soothing and concerned.
“I’m going to see Senator Amidala,” Ayaira said. “It’s quite important. You won’t understand, but it’s possibly the most important thing I’ll ever do.”
“Whatever this is,” Coté said, never looking away from her, “I know you don’t really want to do it. You can still stop, and you know it.”
“Senator Amidala,” Ayaira said, or recited. “She is the former queen who has outlived half of her decoys. She has survived by climbing over the bodies of dead women.”
“Ayaira,” said Coté. She had already started to lead her away, and Ayaira wasn’t a murderer in her heart, wasn’t a killer, and let her. “I know Cordé was your friend, and-- I won’t pretend to know how you feel. But she wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
“She has to be stopped,” Ayaira said. Her voice echoed and echoed and echoed in the quiet, and I couldn’t bear it, before she slumped, and gave up, against Coté.
Then she looked at me, and she stared, mocking, and cold, for an endless, breath held, constant moment. “How many more people are going to die because of her?”
But I only brushed my fingers against the bump of my blaster. It wouldn’t take me a moment to pull it out, and even though I had never shot a live being before, in the shoulder, the back, or into the beating, bloodyred heart, I would do it. My hands were tightened and closed up into fists. Any minute. Any second, as soon as she started to move.
Milady, I might have whispered to myself.
(But I was Naboo. I shouldn’t have ever been capable of this.)
I don’t know if I could have done it, and I won’t have to, since I only stood there and watched as Coté and Ayaira walked away, down the hallway into the shadows, until I couldn’t see them or hear their footsteps. Coté knew what to do, and she had never needed me there. Then I went back to the lift, and up to the offices. Amidala hadn’t stopped working. She would never have to know what had happened.
0.
It happened when Cordé was lying on the landing platform in the ruined white dress, in the gown that had been white, and Ayaira Sade saw it on the holonet. It happened when Versé died instantly, without pain, when she was flung from the wreckage. It happened when my fingers shook so hard and constantly I could barely get into the dress I would wear as Amidala, a dress that had to be made for me because I was too tall to wear her clothes. It happened when Rhys Danlé, the good son, and the revolutionary, stood near his mother and grandmother while they identified his brother’s body. It happened.
6.
Agent Fulber came to see me at the apartments when she knew Amidala was away at a luncheon with Senator Organa. She was on the balcony, near the fountain, and the constant softwhispering, when I came back from Amidala's bedroom, after I had selected, and laid out, her next outfit. She leaned against the wall, in her black, standard issue cloak, with the sleepy golden eye brooch. She had left her speeder parked and floating just by the steps, so I knew I didn’t have to ask her how long she was staying.
My eyes were swollen-damp, as though I had been crying. But I hadn’t, and that was why I could go out and face her. I hadn’t left the apartment that day, so I was wearing an old gown, a blue dress that had once been my favorite, for an old maid, an elder sister, and I had done my hair in a fat, easy, and yes, quick plait.
Amidala would be wearing a dark gown with star-blinking mirrors scattered over the skirts, still cold from the wardrobe climate controls, and the trip from Naboo and the seamstress’s hands, to her meeting only an hour later with the Finance Committee. The corset was made from blaster-proof material, though no one else would know that. The dress would smell like her, or at least, I would imagine it did, when I held it, and then put it away.
“Would you care for something to drink?” I said, and my voice sounded like the cooing, soft water in the fountain.
“No, that’s all right,” she said, in that dark-alley accent. I wondered if she was from the slums on Chommell Minor. She wasn’t, I could tell, from Naboo.
I waited, and she said: “Ayaira Sade’s mother, her adoptive mother, has considerable influence on Kekropia. Influence enough and more to keep her from being executed. But if she had even managed to enter Senator Amidala’s office last night, she would have been dealt with. Most likely, they would have kept her under house arrest, at some remote and comfortable location, for the rest of her life.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that nothing happened,” I said.
“But what if something had,” Agent Fulber said. “What if she had managed to get past you, and into that office. She might have been armed. She was certainly prepared for anything. Would that have been enough for you?”
“Agent Fulber, I’m a pacifist,” I said, looking away from her into the apartment, so she couldn’t imagine she knew what I meant, and what I was thinking.
“That didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“But it is all I’m going to tell you.”
She sighed. “We have to keep this investigation under high security, but I can tell you this much. Rhys Danlé was involved with the Ceilian Moons group months before his brother was killed in that explosion. We may never find out what his motives were. He was the only one who knew, and well, he won’t be talking.”
“There’s something else you wanted to tell me,” I said.
“You’re very perceptive, Dormé,” she said. “There is. We’ve reason to believe that the attack in the park was only meant to injure you. Think about it. That man, or woman, was a good shot, and careful, and discreet. They made every shot they wanted-while rather conveniently missing all the major organs.”
“But you must have known all along,” I said. “Why are you telling me now?”
Perhaps I didn’t believe she would answer me. It was the last time, though I couldn’t know it yet, that I would see her. Just as I couldn’t know that they would interrogate the leaders of the Ceilian Moons group a second time, and fail to prove a connection between them and the attacks. Or that their other leads would go nowhere. Or that both the Royal Security Forces and CorSec would make arrests that only seemed promising. Finally, when they closed the case, almost two years later, I would be relieved.
It was also one of the last times, along with the one, and only time, after I had returned home, to my parents, and the house where I mattered, I would discuss the attack, and admit that I hadn’t forgotten, and that it had happened.
“Oh, I thought you should know why you’re alive,” she said.
Then, she smiled, almost as though we could be friends, and she respected me, and straightened up from the wall. She was already leaving, already walking back to her speeder, and the huge, sheet-white sky outside.
1.
When Amidala left her senate pod, there was rainstorm of clapping, and a few cat-hissed boos. She didn't look back to see me as I followed her, slumped and matching in a sleek, violetpurple dress. Typho and Coté joined me, and we stayed close and watching while Amidala, and Jar Jar Binks, Representative Binks, big-footed and awkward in his shuffling robes, stopped to speak with Senator Mothma. Binks stayed properly silent. Amidala looked fierce, and yet almost flushed and giggling. She was beautiful, so beautiful I could hardly bear to look at her, or to look away.
“It looks as though you have made a few more enemies,” Senator Mothma said, stepping back and out of the way of several other senators.
“Then I know I’ve said what they needed to hear,” Amidala said.
We followed her down the hallway, and outside to her waiting speeder, and the guard, the sweet-faced, fresh boy who had just arrived from Naboo.
I want you to know that I hadn’t yet considered leaving her service, and from wanting to see her reflection when I looked in the mirror.
I wanted her to look back, and see, and love, and appreciate me.
Moteé was at the apartment, hidden away in Amidala's bedchamber. She was sitting on the vanity bench, in a copy, an imitation of the gown Amidala was wearing, waiting for the comm. ring, and her orders. She had long, long dark hair that was made up mostly of her hairpiece. She folded her hands in her lap, in her bunched up skirts. It was the most beautiful gown she had ever worn. It was the dress that she expected, and perhaps even hoped, she would die in.
*
Author: Pandora Beardsley [pandore27]
Rating: Mature
Prompt: Padmé Amidala/Dormé: Love in a dangerous time.
Author's Note: Yes, this was supposed to be posted July 6th. I was having trouble with it, so I dropped the prompt. I was then able to go on and finish it. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere.
It does deviate from the prompt in a few ways, but since I came up with it, and the prompt was really more like a guideline, I'm giving myself a pass.
White is the Color
1.
When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a bed in a dreamwhite room. It was so white, and so bright and polished, that I didn’t see the window. But then I did, and I saw the sunlight glowing outside. It took me a minute, or more, before I could feel myself breathe. My throat was still sore, and I understood, or remembered, that it was from the breathing apparatus in the bacta tank. It wasn’t too bad, even when I swallowed, and then swallowed again, until my mouth was damp. There was a shift hitched up around my knees, and my thighs were woodenstiff. But I could feel them.
I tried to shift, just a little over onto my side, and I could, though I did feel the closed-up peephole in my shoulder where I had been shot.
I wiggled and clenched my toes, but I didn’t try anything else.
The room was clean, and too bright, but it also had a faint, whisper-smell of some sort of flower. It was probably a wild growing plant with a name I didn’t remember, or had never known, that had a medicinal, calming effect. The Naboo Embassy Medical Center used, and preferred, those. A chrono started chiming the hour off down the hallway. It sounded normal.
It stopped, and I shut my eyes again, almost squeezed tight, but not to fall back into sleep, or even unconsciousness. I was awake now.
“Oh, don’t be so silly,” a woman’s voice said.
That made me open my eyes, and push myself up against the stuffed fat, wildrose for sleep and forgetting scented pillow. The door slid open, and Coté and Moteé came in. They wore matching night-purple cloaks with lily-plush broaches. I had a cloak just like them, back in my wardrobe. Moteé had let her hood down, and she stayed back behind Coté. Moteé, who looked sly and flushed with a secret, but was really a good, traditionalist girl. She had dark eyes and muddy-brown hair, which she kept sleeked back. And (I had known, but not really noticed) she was small. She was, of course, and too much so, like Amidala. Amidala did not come into the room after them, and I didn’t expect her to. I already knew she wasn’t there.
“She’s awake,” she said.
“I know,” I said, and my voice still worked, and sounded the same. My throat didn’t even bother me. That surprised me, but only until I realized that the medication, or the healing herbs or flowers or whatever they were, had to be working.
“Well, that’s good to see,” Coté said, and I wondered if she sounded amused, or only pleased. I didn’t know her well enough to know. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I said, and made my mouth twitch.
“I would suppose so,” she said.
She smiled, and came closer, over to my bed. Coté was tall, though not as tall as she seemed, with honey-dark blonde hair and green eyes. She was polite, and friendly, but didn’t regard Amidala with the same adoring, sweet-eyed way Moteé did. The same way, I knew, I watched her. She didn’t remind me of Cordé and Versé (or my own bruised-eyed image floating in the mirror several nights before) and that was a relief.
“Where is Senator Amidala?” I said, and my voice almost stumbled over, before I managed to make myself calm again.
“She should be back on planet in another day or so,” said Coté. “You know, she left Ilium as soon as she heard about-- the attack.”
I nodded, and the room swayed. “Do they know anything?”
Amidala had been on a mission, which was another one of her secrets, on Ilium, a Mid-rim world that was frozen in an ice age, and had been for thousands of years. It would continue that way for several more thousand years, I had read in the database, before the ice melted, the oceans receded, and it turned into a plush, green place. Once, I would have been there with Amidala, but she had only taken her protocol droid. I didn’t see what use she could have for it, for him, but Coté and Moteé accepted it. Of course, they did. This was how it had always been for them.
“If they do, they haven’t told us,” said Moteé. She looked down, at the floor, and her feet, and twisted and fretted her fingers together. She must not have learned to remember not to do that, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t as though there was anyone there to see her, or as though (I tried not to think) anyone ever saw her.
The room blurred away, into a snowstorm, and I sank down into the pillows. I blinked, once, and then twice, but my eyelids had turned too heavy.
“I’m afraid I need to rest now,” I heard my voice say.
“Of course,” Coté said, and I heard her skirts ssssh as she walked past my bed, back towards the door. “We are glad that you’re going to be all right.”
Then I shut my eyes, and everything was dark and closed again, like a slammed shut door. I don’t remember falling asleep. I do remember, in that last minute, clutching the edge of the blanket, as though it were a love letter, or the hem of Cordé’s white dress, the stained, burnt white dress she had died in.
0.
It happened when I was walking across the public park near Republica 500, in the middle of a warm, pale day. I was returning from an errand, from delivering a document to Senator Danu, or rather, his senior assistant. The grass smelled like velvet, and not really grass, and I was staying on one of the main paths that went past a grove of tiny, bone-white trees native to one of the southern continents of Naboo. It was my favorite place at that park, and I would usually, if not always, go that way. The assassins would have known that, and they would have known when to wait for me to come.
The park was quiet, and I didn’t hear anyone, or anything other than the leaves rustling and shaking around me, when the first shot was fired.
They shot me in the leg, in the thigh, first, and it did bring me down. A woman screamed, somewhere, and everywhere, and I jerked back, I gasped, I screamed, as they shot me in the shoulder, and then, finally, and only two, or three, seconds later, in the chest.
While rather conveniently missing all the major organs, Zillah Fulber, the agent from Chommell Sector Intelligence would say, much later.
It should have hurt, but it didn’t. I couldn’t feel anything, only my shuddering, shocked breathing, before I was surrounded by emergency personnel, and someone pricked a needle into my arm, and the world snapped shut. But I hadn’t passed out quite yet. My mouth tasted like copper, like pennies, or like a choked on marriage ring. It tasted like blood.
2.
Amidala came to my room the next day. I was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out, and daydreaming, at the sky, and I didn’t hear her, or see her in the doorway. My hair was loose, and I had changed into a green silk dress. It was, well, more feminine than I usually prefer, but I had decided I liked it. I was still barefoot, and I had my feet pressed tight and warm together. I wasn’t well, but I felt better. There was only a fading, star splashed scar on my upper thigh, but the medics had told me it would be gone soon.
“Dormé,” Amidala’s voice suddenly said. “May I come in?”
It isn’t as though she can think you would refuse, I thought to myself, almost sneering and gleeful, in my mind. I wouldn’t want to remember that later, but I would.
“Of course, Milady,” I said, without having to think about it, and turned around in my seat. She watched me, and I know she sighed in relief when I stood up without difficulty.
Amidala smiled, as she came, as she swept over to me. She was wearing one of her elaborate gowns, a midnight blue velvet thing with jet black, nightbird black beading, and a yellow underdress. Her hair was done up in an arrangement of braids, and a new headpiece that had only arrived from the artisan a week, or perhaps more now, before. I thought she was alone, but only for a moment, before I saw C3PO, her protocol droid, glittering in the hallway with the reflections of the overhead lighting.
I walked forward a few steps to meet her. “How are you, Milady?”
She looked sad, before she shook her head. “Oh, Dormé. I’m fine. Of course, I’m fine. I ought to be asking you how you are doing.”
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “The medics think I should be able to come back (home, to work, to you, to my life) to the apartment tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” she said, but she sounded worried. Her droid’s footsteps went walking off down the hallway, which meant she had asked him to give us privacy. She was so close, though still not close enough. I could smell her, and her dust-warm velvet gown, and see the little, just kissed mole on her cheek. Her breathing was warm, and she nipped at her lower lip. I didn’t want to look away.
“This was my fault,” she said, mostly whispering to herself.
“Don’t say that, Milady,” I said.
She took my hand, and I clenched hers back, almost tootight. Her hand was warm, and I felt the bump of the ring she was wearing. Since there was no around to see, she leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. I waited, and then she kissed me again, neat and shy, and schoolgirl proper. I allowed my hand to flutter close to her hip, but I didn’t dare to actually touch her, not there, and not yet.
Her mouth tasted like iced wine, and then only her spit. It had been several weeks since we had last had sex, or made love. And I had left her room, and her warm bed, and tangled sheets, right afterwards, and snuck back to my own room. I had blinked, hard and quick, before I could cry. There wasn't any reason to, since I wasn't sad. I was only empty, as though there was a dark hole dug between my legs.
It had been several months since she had shown much interest in me at all, since (and later, I would realize that it wasn’t a coincidence) her return from Naboo. When she came back with her friend, her protection, and her bodyguard, Anakin Skywalker.
3.
Several days later, the agents from Chommell Sector Intelligence arrived at the apartment to see Senator Amidala. She waited for them on one of the long, creamsleek couches near the window-walls in the sitting area, and I sat with her, while Typho let them in. Amidala wore an ash-grey dress, with her hair loose and sweetly curled, to look innocent, and I wore a dress to match her. I had my hands dumped in my lap, and I could feel, if not hear, Moteé and Coté, hidden away in their cloaks behind us.
They followed Typho into the room. First, the senor agent, a senior man with tan hair and tan skin in his plain, secret black cloak, and then his partner.
Agent Zillah Fulber could have been fifty, or even over sixty years old. She had short, spiked iron-grey hair and cat eyes, and her mouth twisted at us. She nodded, in a professional, yet awkward-stiff way. She had thorn-black eyebrows, and cut short, boyish, manish fingernails. She looked, I would decide later, like a schoolteacher, a stern, sterling spinster, and I would learn she had been, once, years before.
“Senator Amidala,” said Typho, and his voice was careful, and stern. Oh, they had had words about this earlier. “This is Agent Tate, and his partner, Agent Fulber.”
“We apologize for the intrusion, Senator,” said Agent Tate, and he kept his voice carefully modulated, as though he were trying to smooth it out.
“Agent Tate has some suspicions he has shared with me,” Typho said.
Agent Tate nodded. “We’re still looking at possible suspects. But we think it’s likely it’s the Ceilian Moons radicals, or another group from our sector. It seems more and more certain that they deliberately targeted your handmaiden. It was common knowledge that you were off-world at the time, Senator Amidala. They wouldn’t have been looking for you.”
Ohno, I almost said, or perhaps it was Moteé or Coté.
“But I don’t see any reason for attacking Dormé,” said Amidala.
“They have their reasons, mad as they might be,” said Agent Fulber. “If their motivation was revenge, they might have targeted her because they know, and they have their ways, that she serves as your decoy.”
She had a rough, sharp, backalley accent I didn’t recognize. That could mean she was from any one of the several thousand colony worlds I only knew as names on a sector star map. Or she could just be from one of the isolated city-islands in the northern hemisphere, or down near the frozen pole, of Naboo. I didn’t know.
“Senator Amidala, you do have a reputation for going through guardsmen, and handmaidens, as though they were disposable paper,” said Agent Tate.
“Dormé,” Agent Fulber said, and I could only look at her. The air felt as though it turned cold and heavy into glass. Everyone was watching me, they saw me, they noticed me, they were aware of me, and I didn’t know what to do, and didn’t know if I could endure it. Amidala’s leg, or rather, her skirts, bumped up against me. I pressed my legs tighttight together. “Did you see anything?”
Amidala touched my thigh, and I shook my head. “No, I didn’t see anything. Or if I did, I didn’t know it for what it was. I’m--” (I was about to apologize, when I suddenly knew I couldn’t say it.) “I wish I could be of more help.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Agent Tate. “None of the witnesses at the park that day saw or heard anything. This man was good, too good.”
“What else are you doing to do?” Amidala said, but for a moment, I thought that I had heard my own voice, and I had spoken.
“We’ve brought in several of the Ceilian Moons leaders for questioning,” Agent Fulber said. “We can’t waste time here. If they are involved, this attack was only a warning. They don’t bother with death threats. They just kill.”
“That means that, for now,” Agent Tate said, looking over at Typho, “we must ask you to remain here on Coruscant, Senator Amidala.”
“Milady, this is necessary for us to keep you safe,” said Typho.
“Oh, I can’t believe this,” Amidala said, or rather, almost snapped. Her eyes were burnt dark, with anger, with frustration, and she almost bared her teeth.
But the agents did not respond to, or even acknowledge, her sudden loss of tact, and she sighed, and almost slumped down into the couch. I wanted to touch her, but she had looked away from me, and her back was turned into a stiff-locked door. I couldn’t let the agents see me turn moon-eyed and loving and, always, and always, and always, rejected. They wouldn’t understand.
Everyone was quiet. I think Typho cleared his throat behind his fisted hand. Then there was a tickticktick as C3PO came into the room, carrying a tray loaded up with drinks, with bluesilk stuff in windowpane glasses. The agents looked relieved, and Amidala knew enough to smile, in a polite, friendly, but distant way. C3PO must have noticed the situation, because he knew enough to remain silent.
0.
It happened when Amidala was just leaving the senate, and I was her shadow right behind her. My shoulders were numbed from the hours I had spent slumped, though not enough to hide the fact that I was taller than she was. The security detail was waiting at her new, and thoroughly checked, speeder. Most of them had only been on staff for several months, though the sergeant had been with Amidala as long as I had. I had never spoken with any of them. Or rather, none of them had ever acknowledged me. They might have thought it was against the rules.
Amidala had just turned back to speak with Senator Breemu and Senator Mothma, and yes, Baiseis Locke, the senator from Kekropia. Her aide, Ayaira Sade, that woman, that girl, who had been friends with Cordé, would have been with her.
She would have looked, and then glared, at Amidala.
The lieutenant, the young man who had only recently been a sergeant, opened the door and stood to the side, looking and bowing at the ground. His men had turned to speak with the man who had just approached the speeder. He was average height, and average looking, and well dressed. I have to say that. He could have been any political aide, or businessman, or lobbyist.
“Senator Amidala!” he said, loud enough to hear himself over the wind.
There wasn’t time to react before the bomb he had implanted and hidden inside his own skin went off, and the world turned into fire and dragon-hissed smoke. The others, the senators, and their aides, shrieked, and gasped, and stared, but I didn’t have time to look around, to know the guards were all dead, all dead along with the bomber. No, I only pushed Amidala to the ground, covering her with my body, and my nightmare-purple skirts, and keeping her alive, and safe.
4.
Amidala was with the Chommell Sector Intelligence agents, and a group of men, or rather, males, from Senate Security and CorSec, for most of the afternoon. It was turning grey, and glowing with speeder lights outside, when she finally returned to the apartment. Typho wouldn’t come back until much later that night, when we were all asleep. He had to make the identifications, and he had to send word to the next of kin, to the families, as soon as possible, so they would know before the bodies were shipped back to Naboo.
She must have been tired, but she was too well trained to ever show it, or even acknowledge it to herself. She came in, not looking back to see the speeder slip away, and go back to the garage. She didn’t cringe, waiting to hear an explosion.
“Milady,” I said, in a lullaby-voice. “Are you all right?”
Yes, it was stupid, but really, there was nothing else I knew how to say. Coté and Moteé came into the room behind me, looking concerned, and worried.
“They’ve identified the bomber,” she said, and I realized later that was her answer. “His name was Rhys Danlé. He was Lieutenant Danlé’s brother. Apparently, he was with the Ceilian Moons group, but they think he might have been acting alone.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If he wanted to avenge his brother’s death, then he would have gone after you. Or if he was mad enough, someone in the Trade Federation. Why would he kill those guards?”
“He was Naboo,” she said, and she wasn’t looking at me, or at us. “He shouldn’t have been capable of what he did. It shouldn’t have been possible. And-- They’re going to send people to talk with the families of everyone who died in that explosion, all the guards, and Cordé and Versé. Oh, I understand they have to consider every possibility, no matter how unlikely. I do. But--”
She shook her head, too hard and dizzy fast. “I can’t talk about it anymore.”
“Oh, Milady,” said Moteé, or perhaps I said it.
I don’t remember now. I only know that I walked up behind her, and rubbed her shoulders, leaning into her. My breasts (and my nipples were suddenly nervous-sharp) pressed against her back. She fell back against me, and I caught her. She sighed. I didn’t think of my own recent wounds, which were already gone. My skin was already new. Coté and Moteé must have returned to their rooms, but I didn’t see or hear them leave. There was only the one lily lamp glowing in the corner, and Amidala was with me. Those men were dead. But I was still alive.
“You’ll stay the night with me, won’t you?” she said.
“Oh, Milady. You already know that,” I said.
When we were back in her bedchamber, with the door closed and safe, she kissed me, and I kissed her, suddenly and desperate, her tongue filling my mouth. It only took a moment for me to undo and open up her dress, and then we were fallen across her bed, and she was giggling as I pulled up her petticoat. I had just kissed her between the legs when her comm. unit started buzzing, over and over and over again.
It was Anakin Skywalker, far away, frantic, and wanting to know that Amidala was all right. She moved into another room, and I could only hear the murmured secret of her voice. I waited. Finally, I straightened my clothing, and went, hurried, and on tiptoe, back to my room. Back to my bed, and a half-read holo novel, and the chrono ticktick. I didn’t know it yet, but that was the last time we would be together. It was already over.
0.
Of course, I had noticed Ayaira Sade before that night, that last night, at the senate offices. I even knew what her name was. I had seen her with Senator Locke at meetings, standing or appearing nearby, with a datapad or a document. I suppose she was pretty enough. She was tall, with long, slightly gawky legs, and glass-grey eyes and seethrough skin. She didn’t only look sly, and amused, she was. She wore mostly dark, discreet, and expensive dresses, but not because she had to hide.
It was all right for people to look at her, and see her.
It was all right for her to speak in a deep, drawlingbored voice.
Mostly, I remember only one time: Cordé was in the square outside the senate, stopped to talk to someone. It was Ayaira Sade, and that surprised me. I hadn’t known they were friends; I hadn’t known Cordé had friends. She was drinking what was most likely an iced fruit drink. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and they hadn’t seen me.
5.
Amidala was staying late at her offices, hours after even her senior aide had left. She had an early, and secret, meeting the next day with the Loyalist Committee, and she had several documents she needed to read, or prepare. I didn’t ask. She kept her door closed, with only a ribbon of light showing. Even though there was nothing for us to do, Coté and I stayed close by in her reception room, waiting to hear her chair shuffle back, to hear anything at all. I couldn’t pretend that I was much of a bodyguard, but if I was only a lady-in-waiting, I would serve, and wait.
It was Coté who suggested that we go out on a security check. She came up to the chair where I was sitting, and reviewing Amidala’s schedule for the next two days. “We might as well make ourselves useful, if we’re going to be here.”
Somehow, I stopped myself before I said: But the Senator might need us.
She hadn’t needed me for over an hour, when I had brought her a glass of water, fresh and limon flavored from Naboo. I snapped my datapad shut.
The hallways had been filled with the ssshing of the cleaning droids, but now they were whisper-hushed and empty. It helped that I had my blaster, tucked away, and unused, under my skirts. We wandered through several floors of dark hallways before we decided to turn back. It wasn’t until we were walking back to the glass bubble lift, not far from the locked up offices of the Kekropian delegation, that we saw her.
She had just walked around the corner, past a bronze statue of a long ago king or senator or prince. She might have been surprised, but she didn’t start. She only continued to come towards us the lift, and us. Even then, I could tell something was wrong. She was pale, almost glowing white in the dark, and her hair was loose. I had never seen her with her hair that way before. She would always have it done up in some complicated, fashionable way, sometimes with a silk sweetviolet tucked inside it.
She wore a black cloak, with (I noticed, as we came closer, or she did) a enamel-green leaf pin she had pushed and jammed into place.
“Oh, Miss Sade!” Coté said, and she only sounded friendly, not suspicious. “We didn’t expect to see you. Did you forget something at the office?”
“You could say that,” said Miss Sade, Ayaira Sade.
Then she smiled, mostly baring her upper teeth. Her lips were slightly bruised-chapped. Her eyes were full and swollen with pupil. But she didn’t look mad, only, if anything, mean. I stayed back, and only watched, as Coté approached her. She almost jerked away, before she stopped herself, when Coté touched her arm. I don’t think she had ever spoken with Coté before, though she would have noticed who she was. Ayaira Sade had a talent for noticing the people, the attendants, no one else saw.
“Are you all right?” she said, and she only sounded soothing and concerned.
“I’m going to see Senator Amidala,” Ayaira said. “It’s quite important. You won’t understand, but it’s possibly the most important thing I’ll ever do.”
“Whatever this is,” Coté said, never looking away from her, “I know you don’t really want to do it. You can still stop, and you know it.”
“Senator Amidala,” Ayaira said, or recited. “She is the former queen who has outlived half of her decoys. She has survived by climbing over the bodies of dead women.”
“Ayaira,” said Coté. She had already started to lead her away, and Ayaira wasn’t a murderer in her heart, wasn’t a killer, and let her. “I know Cordé was your friend, and-- I won’t pretend to know how you feel. But she wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
“She has to be stopped,” Ayaira said. Her voice echoed and echoed and echoed in the quiet, and I couldn’t bear it, before she slumped, and gave up, against Coté.
Then she looked at me, and she stared, mocking, and cold, for an endless, breath held, constant moment. “How many more people are going to die because of her?”
But I only brushed my fingers against the bump of my blaster. It wouldn’t take me a moment to pull it out, and even though I had never shot a live being before, in the shoulder, the back, or into the beating, bloodyred heart, I would do it. My hands were tightened and closed up into fists. Any minute. Any second, as soon as she started to move.
Milady, I might have whispered to myself.
(But I was Naboo. I shouldn’t have ever been capable of this.)
I don’t know if I could have done it, and I won’t have to, since I only stood there and watched as Coté and Ayaira walked away, down the hallway into the shadows, until I couldn’t see them or hear their footsteps. Coté knew what to do, and she had never needed me there. Then I went back to the lift, and up to the offices. Amidala hadn’t stopped working. She would never have to know what had happened.
0.
It happened when Cordé was lying on the landing platform in the ruined white dress, in the gown that had been white, and Ayaira Sade saw it on the holonet. It happened when Versé died instantly, without pain, when she was flung from the wreckage. It happened when my fingers shook so hard and constantly I could barely get into the dress I would wear as Amidala, a dress that had to be made for me because I was too tall to wear her clothes. It happened when Rhys Danlé, the good son, and the revolutionary, stood near his mother and grandmother while they identified his brother’s body. It happened.
6.
Agent Fulber came to see me at the apartments when she knew Amidala was away at a luncheon with Senator Organa. She was on the balcony, near the fountain, and the constant softwhispering, when I came back from Amidala's bedroom, after I had selected, and laid out, her next outfit. She leaned against the wall, in her black, standard issue cloak, with the sleepy golden eye brooch. She had left her speeder parked and floating just by the steps, so I knew I didn’t have to ask her how long she was staying.
My eyes were swollen-damp, as though I had been crying. But I hadn’t, and that was why I could go out and face her. I hadn’t left the apartment that day, so I was wearing an old gown, a blue dress that had once been my favorite, for an old maid, an elder sister, and I had done my hair in a fat, easy, and yes, quick plait.
Amidala would be wearing a dark gown with star-blinking mirrors scattered over the skirts, still cold from the wardrobe climate controls, and the trip from Naboo and the seamstress’s hands, to her meeting only an hour later with the Finance Committee. The corset was made from blaster-proof material, though no one else would know that. The dress would smell like her, or at least, I would imagine it did, when I held it, and then put it away.
“Would you care for something to drink?” I said, and my voice sounded like the cooing, soft water in the fountain.
“No, that’s all right,” she said, in that dark-alley accent. I wondered if she was from the slums on Chommell Minor. She wasn’t, I could tell, from Naboo.
I waited, and she said: “Ayaira Sade’s mother, her adoptive mother, has considerable influence on Kekropia. Influence enough and more to keep her from being executed. But if she had even managed to enter Senator Amidala’s office last night, she would have been dealt with. Most likely, they would have kept her under house arrest, at some remote and comfortable location, for the rest of her life.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing that nothing happened,” I said.
“But what if something had,” Agent Fulber said. “What if she had managed to get past you, and into that office. She might have been armed. She was certainly prepared for anything. Would that have been enough for you?”
“Agent Fulber, I’m a pacifist,” I said, looking away from her into the apartment, so she couldn’t imagine she knew what I meant, and what I was thinking.
“That didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“But it is all I’m going to tell you.”
She sighed. “We have to keep this investigation under high security, but I can tell you this much. Rhys Danlé was involved with the Ceilian Moons group months before his brother was killed in that explosion. We may never find out what his motives were. He was the only one who knew, and well, he won’t be talking.”
“There’s something else you wanted to tell me,” I said.
“You’re very perceptive, Dormé,” she said. “There is. We’ve reason to believe that the attack in the park was only meant to injure you. Think about it. That man, or woman, was a good shot, and careful, and discreet. They made every shot they wanted-while rather conveniently missing all the major organs.”
“But you must have known all along,” I said. “Why are you telling me now?”
Perhaps I didn’t believe she would answer me. It was the last time, though I couldn’t know it yet, that I would see her. Just as I couldn’t know that they would interrogate the leaders of the Ceilian Moons group a second time, and fail to prove a connection between them and the attacks. Or that their other leads would go nowhere. Or that both the Royal Security Forces and CorSec would make arrests that only seemed promising. Finally, when they closed the case, almost two years later, I would be relieved.
It was also one of the last times, along with the one, and only time, after I had returned home, to my parents, and the house where I mattered, I would discuss the attack, and admit that I hadn’t forgotten, and that it had happened.
“Oh, I thought you should know why you’re alive,” she said.
Then, she smiled, almost as though we could be friends, and she respected me, and straightened up from the wall. She was already leaving, already walking back to her speeder, and the huge, sheet-white sky outside.
1.
When Amidala left her senate pod, there was rainstorm of clapping, and a few cat-hissed boos. She didn't look back to see me as I followed her, slumped and matching in a sleek, violetpurple dress. Typho and Coté joined me, and we stayed close and watching while Amidala, and Jar Jar Binks, Representative Binks, big-footed and awkward in his shuffling robes, stopped to speak with Senator Mothma. Binks stayed properly silent. Amidala looked fierce, and yet almost flushed and giggling. She was beautiful, so beautiful I could hardly bear to look at her, or to look away.
“It looks as though you have made a few more enemies,” Senator Mothma said, stepping back and out of the way of several other senators.
“Then I know I’ve said what they needed to hear,” Amidala said.
We followed her down the hallway, and outside to her waiting speeder, and the guard, the sweet-faced, fresh boy who had just arrived from Naboo.
I want you to know that I hadn’t yet considered leaving her service, and from wanting to see her reflection when I looked in the mirror.
I wanted her to look back, and see, and love, and appreciate me.
Moteé was at the apartment, hidden away in Amidala's bedchamber. She was sitting on the vanity bench, in a copy, an imitation of the gown Amidala was wearing, waiting for the comm. ring, and her orders. She had long, long dark hair that was made up mostly of her hairpiece. She folded her hands in her lap, in her bunched up skirts. It was the most beautiful gown she had ever worn. It was the dress that she expected, and perhaps even hoped, she would die in.
*