A Parody of Manners, 15/? PG-13: Anakin, Palpatine, Padmé, Obi-Wan, Sola, Bail Organa, others
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am in no way making a profit from this story, which is purely a work of fan fiction in any case.
Author's notes: This chapter comes to you with much love, and also with the following things:
- extra virtual chocolate chip cookies for ansketil_rose, who beta'ed the previous chapter.
- many cyber-hugs for attanagra, who offered insightful commentary on Ryn's Foray Into Gender Studies.
- ferocious poking for veronicaprof, who has not been nearly visible enough on LJ lately.
Chapter title from "Trouble," by Over the Rhine.
A PARODY OF MANNERS
~ CHAPTER 15 ~
make me a double
I trust Anakin. I do.
It wasn’t that Padmé didn’t feel sorry for Arielle Osso, either. She did; who wouldn’t? Her husband had hardly gotten his Senate seat four years ago before he had begun carrying on like a courtier. Whether he had been parading around with younger women before he got his post was harder to say, but anyway the meat of the problem was that he was doing it now, and showed no signs of stopping.
That doesn’t give her a right to grope my husband!
Of course, Lady Osso had no way of knowing that Anakin was married and it wasn’t like Anakin could exactly tell her. To her, he was just a handsome young Jedi with kind eyes who might be able -- and willing -- to ease her loneliness for a while.
Or, if one were inclined to be cynical, just rub her ache.
The tenor of her own thoughts made Padmé uncomfortable. Besides being crude ... she wasn’t sure it was even fair.
Would I have taken him as a one-night stand?
That night by the fireplace ... if Anakin hadn’t given in to his feelings and made that disastrous confession of love ... hadn’t she been thinking about giving in to some far less honorable feelings of her own? Did the fact that she’d married him, in the end, make her motives any more deserving?
She could give herself credit for calling a halt to things when she realized how deeply Anakin had been affected -- but was that substantially different from Arielle Osso’s advances tonight? After all, the older woman had conceded defeat and retired to her own bed, alone ... more or less gracefully, too. And she certainly hadn’t flirted shamelessly with him for days beforehand!
In the end she decided that it didn’t really matter what might have happened. She had never stood in Arielle Osso’s shoes, so there was no way of telling how she might have walked in them. More important now was the fact that Anakin seemed to be attracting a veritable horde of yearning females. Besides Padmé herself and Lady Osso, there was his friend Ryn, who had evidently lost no time in moving in to secure Anakin’s company. She was sitting with him against the wall even now, and Padmé couldn’t help but notice that they were leaning into each other as they talked, clearly comfortable invading each other’s personal space -- or, worse, on such intimate terms that they never thought of it at all.
Get a room, Padmé thought at them uncharitably, an expression she had picked up among her brief forays into Coruscant’s local nightlife, and then drew herself up short, struck powerfully by how much she did not mean that.
I’ll never know why he chose me.
There was the obvious answer for a Jedi, destiny; but somehow Padmé had always found it rather less than satisfying. Padmé wanted, selfishly, to be loved for her own sake, for a better reason than because he had no choice.
Maybe I’ll ask him tonight.
Anakin would tell her nonsense, but it would be enjoyable nonsense, and she could bask in the certainty of his love for a while.
The dancers broke up as the the music came to a stop, and Padmé looked around; surely she’d had her hand engaged for the next dance? But if she had, the aspirant did not appear to claim it, so she looked around and grinned when she spotted Senator Orn Free Taa. He hated dancing ... but it would do both of them good to try.
: : :
Sola took an emphatic sip of her punch, determined not to show any ire over the fact that her two most attractive guests were sitting out the dance. Together. Again.
It hadn’t seemed unreasonable to hope that Orun might take advantage of the opportunity afforded by a set of clothes that didn’t make her look like the underpaid employee of some fetishistic gentleman’s club to do a little casual flirting of her own, preferably with someone less outrageously ineligible than Orn Free Taa. But the girl showed not the slightest interest in her own social future, or indeed in anything except her present companion. That would be fine -- maybe -- if Anakin were similarly entranced by her; it would hurt Padmé, to be forgotten or supplanted, but in the long run it might be better for her than this forbidden longing for a man she could never have. And certainly in the short term it would be more healthy for both Anakin and Ryn.
It wouldn’t hurt to take Anakin off the table for Padmé; but Anakin did not seem to have any interest in being removed.
She caught her sister watching him with Orun and sighed. It’s going to be a long night.
: : :
Palpatine sized up the pair against the wall, as not a few of the other guests had been doing for the last half-hour. Beautiful, charming, uncontestedly heroic: they were set to become the HoloNet’s latest power couple, and they couldn’t have cared less.
Only a fool would have thought they were playing for publicity -- there was so far very little evidence that either of them was even capable of such strategy -- but then, Palpatine had long acknowledged himself to be surrounded by fools. They were attracting a lot of interest, much of it malicious.
Skywalker and Orun, he mused to himself, not immediately concerned with the biting gossip no doubt beginning to circulate about his future apprentice and his determined young sidekick. Or use her family name, instead: Skywalker and Llewellyn. It has a certain flair.
It might come to nothing, after all. Dark Side precognition was far from an exact science. Padmé Amidala had to die, that much was clear: separating Anakin irrevocably from his past and her democratic ideals. But would it be worth the trouble to throw him a sop, afterward -- give him a new (or, say, recycled) woman to replace his lost love?
Orun was the obvious choice, if she could be brought to heel. It might be possible; she lacked Padmé’s shining purity, being something of a damaged instrument herself; she might yet prove herself malleable to the right application of force. Orun was a soldier, not an idealogue; behind closed doors, Anakin admitted that she had little interest in Jedi dogma, except as a point of academic inquiry; and whatever she had done to retake Jehara Plateau, after Mace Windu was injured in the initial assault, it could not have been the peaceful surrender portrayed on the HoloNet. Dooku’s Separatist allies remained unequivocally terrified of her. The reports were … unsettling.
Well; there was potential under Orun’s fair skin, and between her and Skywalker -- and plenty of time yet to let it ripen. Whether he chose to break her and give her to Anakin as a gift, a harrowing comfort in his new life as a Sith ... no need to rush that, when events might easily shape the tools to his hand. The Dark Side appreciated patience as much as the Light.
In the meantime, Anakin’s current paramour -- except, tediously, he had married the fool -- was behaving with a blind jealousy that would have been maddening if it had not been so vastly entertaining. She apparently believed that not only Orun -- who had at least the advantages of beauty and long-standing affection to commend her -- but also Arielle Osso (who possessed nothing more attractive than her own ardent desire) was a serious threat to her marital bliss. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: the only person capable of instigating that sort of disharmony was Padmé herself, and she could hardly be doing so more effectively if she had set herself consciously to the task of making her husband miserable. She was, even at this moment, flirting quite flagrantly with that insipid young artist who had arrived earlier in the day; Palpatine could not see the attraction, but then, it seemed unlikely that Padmé could do so, either.
At different points around the room, Anakin was looking sick, Obi-Wan Kenobi was looking thoughtful, and Bail Organa was looking troubled. The infamous Commander Orun, whose sincere devotion was causing so much consternation in her rival’s breast, was simply looking at Anakin; no surprise there, and even less subtlety.
Osso was still trying to go spelunking in someone’s ample cleavage; really, the woman had breasts like a dairy maid -- or better yet, the dairy itself. Obnoxiously full teats, threatening to spill out of her corset every time she moved -- utterly tasteless. But Osso was clearly not a man of discriminating taste, especially while drunk, and he appeared entirely taken in by this overblown offering of secondary sexual characteristics.
At least Padmé Amidala keeps hers reigned in.
Sola, too; she was a matron and could have afforded a slightly more daring advertisement of her wares, but she did not stoop to such grotesque displays of unseemly flesh.
Orun was so flat it hardly mattered: two pert little hemispheres, cleverly disguised by that eminently respectable corset Sola had evidently adjured her to wear. Her lack of bosom was to Palpatine’s taste, but probably did her little service with the object of her desire. Anakin had several times demonstrated a lamentably plebeian aesthetic when it came to feminine beauty, and there could be little doubt that he would enjoy the prospect of Padmé’s unrestrained breasts, if she could ever be brought to expose herself in such a fashion before her husband’s uncritical gaze.
Considerations of femininity and flirtation aside, Palpatine presented himself before Ryn and Anakin’s chairs at the end of the next set; Anakin moved instantly to get up, but Palpatine waved him back down with the Chancellor’s fond smile. “No, no, don’t get up on my account,” he reassured the boy genially. “Just tell me: are you enjoying your first taste of high society?”
Anakin resumed his seat and tried to assume an experienced air with it. “Jedi are often called upon to attend social functions in the pursuit of their duties,” he instructed the Chancellor somberly, raw pride stirring beneath the surface, so easily touched.
“Of course,” acceded Palpatine, nodding wisely. If the boy had to attend social events regularly, why hadn’t he more polish?
He turned to Orun, looking biliously miserable in that truly heinous shade of drab green. A woman with a darker and warmer complexion might have pulled it off reasonably well -- Sola Naberrie probably had the golden rose skin that costume demanded -- but Orun just looked ill, the faint blue undertones in her pale skin making her look more than ever as though she were on the verge of dying from hypothermia. On the other hand, anyone who had ever seen her easy, native grace of movement could hardly help but view that stiff dark brocade as imprisoning her, a cage to put the half-tamed barbarian on display. The effect -- this socially-condoned bondage, combined with the array of cuts and bruises cross-hatching her exposed skin -- was decidedly erotic.
“And you, milady?” he inquired of her. “Dare I hope that you may favor me with a dance?”
Ryn stared; clearly she had gleaned enough understanding of the social code in the last few days to recognize that men like him did not dance with girls like her. A war hero on the HoloNet, in elite society she was an acknowledged nobody -- not even a Jedi, just their pet. A curiosity, rather than an interlocutor.
Well, at least she wasn’t completely oblivious.
“Oh, come now,” Palpatine coaxed her, holding out a hand in invitation. “Surely you don’t mean to crush me by denying me a dance with the loveliest young lady in the room? Besides,” he added cajolingly, “Anakin speaks of you so warmly, I have been most eager to make your better acquaintance.”
And Orun, who had been entirely unmoved by the tribute to her beauty, blushed with pleasure at this mention of Anakin’s praise.
She lowered her eyes demurely and murmured with husky sweetness, “Of -- of course, Chancellor. I should be delighted.” Nudged by Anakin, she shook herself and took the proffered hand, slipping to her feet in a quick motion rather like dancing itself.
“Shall we?” said Palpatine, and spun her out onto the dance floor with a flourish.
The musicians (someone had been found to join the poor woman on the keyboard with a string instrument) had been preparing for a stately march, one which suited Palpatine’s purposes exactly ... but now they shifted keys and tempos with bare warning, settling into a much more racy and decidedly vigorous number more appropriate to Senator Osso’s pursuit of a flagrantly indelicate affair (and once he saw Osso taking his place in the set, Palpatine was almost sure he had been responsible for the change of pace) than the Supreme Chancellor’s efforts to make a new acquaintance.
Inwardly, Palpatine fumed. He wanted to take Orun’s measure without the close supervision of her Jedi keepers, not cavort about the room with her like some randy old lecher. Outwardly, he offered his partner a slightly rueful smile. “Well? Do we test our mettle, or sit this one out and wait for a tamer tune?”
Orun shrugged lean shoulders liberally decorated at random with strips of bacta sealant; no doubt a product of her adventures with Master Kenobi earlier in the day. “It’s up to you, sir. I’m game for anything.”
Palpatine was about to suggest rather more pointedly that they should, indeed, wait out this absurd romp rather than participate in such an undignified spectacle (Orun didn’t seem to be reading his signals, or perhaps she simply didn’t care) when he realized that well over half the guests present were watching them with ill-disguised avidity.
I might have known. Gossipmongers.
He smiled genially at his partner. “It would seem, my dear, that we are becoming the object of some attention.”
“So we are,” Ryn agreed.
"Should we retire before we are judged and condemned?"
A flicker of unexpected mischief lit her eyes, and for a moment Palpatine thought he discerned a glimpse of what Anakin saw in her. She gave a sly glance toward the edge of the room, and a half-shrug. “Or we could give them something to talk about.”
Well. The idea had more flair than retiring to the wall in ignominy, cowed by the malicious speculation of tongues wagged by smaller minds.
Palpatine took Orun’s hand and positioned it aloft, poised for the first steps of the new dance. “If we are going to do this,” he informed her, “we had better do it right.”
: : :
She danced well because she moved well, her lithe young muscles responding with the instinctive grace of the hunter’s prowl; giving herself over to an animalistic, almost savage enjoyment of her own sensuality. After the first few steps, she hardly seemed even to be aware of the stares they attracted together, losing her consciousness in the physicality of the act itself. Palpatine was half-tempted to entertain doubts about her sentience, so complete was her presentness. It was both like and unlike Maul’s visceral vigor; it partook of the same vitality, but felt sharper -- at the same time less angry, and in its own way as fascinating. And lacked completely Anakin’s fierce exuberance. Certainly it was nothing Palpatine ever had or would experience himself: an utterly foreign way of approaching the moment, possibly because it wasn’t so much a confrontation as a surrender. If he had been thirty years younger, or less thoroughly steeped in the enervating potency of the Dark Side ... No, not even then. I’d have killed her the first night -- and probably enjoyed it, too. This girl would never have had what it took to hold his interest for longer than it took to break her. And in the event Palpatine was far more interested in the effect Ryn might one day have on young Skywalker than in her thrilling personal abandon.
He tried, surreptitiously, to get a sense of her mind as they danced, but either Orun’s shields were stronger than the average Jedi’s or she didn’t do much thinking on her own. Most of what he picked up from the surface of her mind Palpatine could have guessed without ever touching the Force: she loved Anakin unconditionally, resented Padmé, held most of their present society in contempt. Palpatine doubted whether he would constitute an exception to that rule; he had long been aware that Anakin’s other non-Jedi friend did not like him, but he had never been able to pin down the source of her displeasure in his company, unless it were a simple jealousy of Skywalker’s affections. If that were the case, it seemed unworthy of both of them -- but then, experience had made Palpatine an excellent connoisseur of sentient foibles. They had, on more than one occasion, served him in far better stead than any virtues could have done -- and there were plenty of them here tonight.
The only question was: how to turn them to account?