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Invisible Moonlight: Padmé Amidala/Sabé for @star-wars-wlweek

Padmé winged easily through the steps, whisking Sabé along with her, and for a moment, they were waltzing in their nightgowns through the ballroom of Theed Palace, Sabé’s touch electric at the small of her back. It was only on her planet that petticoats and ballgowns, stiff and unforgiving on the bodies of Imperials, turned beautiful, their hems flaring vibrantly over the floor with their soft, silken sighs.

It was only in Sabé’s arms, dancing through her memories of Naboo, that Padmé became weightless.

(Or, Padmé and Sabé have a romantic night to themselves following the rise of the Empire.)

Rating: Teen

@star-wars-wlweek

Read here or on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33233989

Invisible Moonlight

“Were you surprised?”

Sabé whispered the question as if they were kids at a sleepover, scared to be caught out of bed after lights-out. They essentially were, Padmé reflected, only this time, it was being caught in bed that would get them in trouble. She tried and failed to banish that image from her mind: palace guards breaking down the door to her and Sabé’s hidden bedroom, finding them tangled up in the sheets and in each other. A humiliating arrest, after which they would be hauled to the throne room and tossed at the feet of a furious Emperor Vader. He’d throw his jealous little tantrum right then and there, which would subside only after he’d locked away his wife and executed her lover, all without ever addressing the women who frequented his room each night. The sparks of resistance that she and Sabé had so painstakingly kindled would be snuffed out; Luke and Leia—well, thank the gods that they were Anakin’s, too, because envisioning her children at risk, especially as a byproduct of her own actions, squeezed the air from Padmé’s lungs faster than if she’d been chucked off a skyscraper—

Sabé curled an arm around her waist, breaking her free from her ruminations. Padmé’s lips twitched into a fragile smile. Sabé’s every touch felt like a lullaby, like a murmured, “I’m here.” They had taken all the necessary precautions, she reminded herself: Dormé was covering for them and Anakin was spending the night with his own mistress. Not that Padmé thought of Sabé as her mistress. If anything, she liked to imagine that she was her girlfriend, and sometimes even indulged in fantasies of one day calling Sabé her wife.

Emboldened by the dream kneaded into that word—wife—Padmé giggled and touched her nose to Sabé’s. “Was I surprised by what?”

“Realizing that you were attracted to me. Were you surprised?” Sabé shimmied coyly out of Padmé’s grasp; her sultry, side-eyed gaze was enough to send tingles down Padmé’s arms. She found herself admiring Sabé’s lip gloss under the muted, golden light, the way it drew attention to the delicate purse of her lips, and thinking about how, whenever she was deep in thought, those lips would fall open just slightly, like a rosebud puckering into bloom…

It took Padmé much too long to focus on the question. She inhaled and blew out a slow stream of air, hoping Sabé hadn’t noticed. “Yes,” she hedged, “and no. I mean, there were some things about us that finally made sense. Like back when we were girls, and I got jealous when Harli Jafan started flirting with you—”

“You did?”

A blush stole into Padmé’s cheeks at Sabé’s unabashed delight. “Why else did you think I was upset about her trying to kiss you? I should have realized it earlier, but everyone around me just assumed I was only into men. Maybe I assumed it, too. Until…”—she met Sabé’s gaze from beneath her eyelashes—“until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”

Sabé smiled and took Padmé’s hand in hers, absentmindedly tracing the lines of her palm. “If you don’t mind me asking, what made you so sure that people had those assumptions in the first place? No offense, but I can’t imagine Theed Palace being thrown into chaos over your sexuality. Yané and Saché were openly a couple, and I was out as bi before I signed on as your handmaiden.”

“It wasn’t that. I’m sure that if I made a point of coming out, everyone would have been supportive, but…” Padmé rested her head on Sabé’s shoulder, pondering how to translate her emotions into words. “My parents and sister were always asking me when I was going to bring home a boy. Maybe I started to believe that that was the ultimate goal, that liking anyone else made me somehow…less than. And then one day, Anakin happened to accompany me to my parents’ house. He was only there as my bodyguard—a Jedi one, at that!—but my whole family leapt to the assumption that he was my boyfriend. Sola and my mother were so happy—relieved, even—and…I don’t know. I told myself that none of it would matter if I could just fall for Anakin, but then I caught myself thinking, how would they have reacted if I’d brought home a girl instead?”

“I know your parents,” Sabé said. “I’m sure they would have been supportive.”

“Oh, they would have, if they had known. But I brought home you and Dormé a few times and they never assumed either one of you was my girlfriend.”

“It’s probably because you’re so feminine,” Sabé said with a hint of bitterness. “No one ever expects feminine women to be into women.”

“No one ever expects women to be into women.”

Sabé’s only response to that was to grip Padmé’s hand a little tighter.

They sat together in silence until Padmé had collected her thoughts. “I think,” she confessed, “that I was most afraid of seeing the shock on their faces. It would have felt too much like letting them down, like turning my back on a dream they’d had for me since childhood. No, more than a dream: an expectation.” She worried her lip. “I don’t know when ‘assumption’ turned into ‘expectation’, but it did, and I couldn’t bring myself to ruin it—not for them, and especially not for myself. I still don’t know of anyone in House Naberrie who isn’t heterosexual, and there was enough tension between my relatives and me as it was, what with some lingering contention over my career choice and my not-entirely-pacifist politics—and then this—!” Padmé didn’t realize she was crying until the tears were flooding down her cheeks. She clapped a hand over her mouth, just in time to muffle the sob that escaped her. “Gods, I wish I had told them—now that Anakin won’t even let me talk to them—”

“Hey, hey, hey…” Sabé stroked Padmé’s hair with her free hand, pausing only to tuck a stray curl behind her ear. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? We all move at our own pace. I knew pretty young, but if I’d figured it out just a little bit later, I would have had the same insecurities as you. Probably more of them, since in my case they would have been justified.”

“Stop it, Sabé. You know how I feel about you talking yourself down.”

“I know, love.” Sabé raised Padmé’s chin to drop a quick kiss on the corner of her mouth. Somehow that still ignited every nerve in Padmé’s body. “For the record, my career path was also hard for my family to accept. Being chosen as your handmaiden was an honour, of course, but my parents were just so hung up on this fantasy of me following in the family tradition, playing hallikset in the back row of some orchestra for the rest of my life.”

Padmé sighed, wiping the last of her tears on the back of her hand. “I think that’s one of the main problems on Naboo. Everyone wants their child to go into the arts, but we still need people who can run the government or fill any of the other thousands of jobs that are necessary to our planet’s survival. My father did support my engagement in politics growing up, but even he still hoped that I would ultimately pursue a career in the arts. Thankfully, once I announced to my parents that I was running for Princess of Theed, they understood that politics were my calling and stopped trying to wrangle me into an artistic pursuit. But before that, they’d tried everything: poetry, original oratory, debate, the like. My mother had desperately wanted me to be a musician, like you, but I wasn’t a standout talent at any particular instrument. At least I took all those years of dance classes—”

“No way, that doesn’t count. Everyone takes dance classes.”

Padmé shoulder-checked Sabé in mock offense. “How dare you dismiss my prodigious dance skills. I’ll have you know, I was recommended to a couple of ballet conservatories thanks to my ‘natural poise and diligence’.”

“Oh, I can believe it. I was watching you dance tonight.” Sabé’s voice had taken on a genuine, if a bit seductive note. She grinned and dropped her lips to Padmé’s ear. “You want to know a secret?”

A thrill shot down Padmé’s spine. “Yes…”

“I was jealous tonight, love. Really jealous, having to watch you dance with him in front of everyone. His hands, just…digging into your waist, as if to lay claim to you or something…” Padmé was horrified to find that the passion in her girlfriend’s voice, so hot and sensual a second ago, had suddenly been zapped dry. “Gods!” Sabé cried, sharpening and spitting the word like it was dirty. “That man is insufferable, I—I hate him!”

Padmé remained silent, rubbing the silk of her nightgown between her fingers. She had thought for a moment that this was going in a different direction, but then somehow Anakin had ruined it without even being here and—no. She refused to let the thought of him spoil her mood. Instead, she took a deep breath and examined the small, windowless bedroom that she and Sabé shared. Already a warm pulse of pride was pushing out the anger in her chest. They may have lost the bulk of their past lives to Anakin, but they had still succeeded in making this one thing their own.

Padmé’s favourite shimmer-silk robe had taken up permanent residence on the back of the desk chair, and Sabé’s hallikset case lay nestled at the foot of their bed. On the walls, they had hung every holophoto they’d rescued from Anakin’s war on the past, regardless of whether said photos were personally relevant to them. Decade-old letters from Padmé’s sister and Sabé’s brothers, penned on real arbovellum paper, were piled lovingly on the vanity; next to them, a meticulous arrangement of eyeshadow palettes and perfume bottles. What really caught her eye, though, was Sabé’s music player, its bulky form squatting somewhat obtrusively in the corner. Sabé had held a strange affection for the battered old thing since Padmé had known her, despite—or perhaps because of—her brothers’ alleged attempts on its “life” over the years.

“Sabé,” she proposed lightly, “how about a dance?”

Sabé followed her gaze to the music player, and her eyes widened in surprise. “What, right here?”

“Why not? We’ve got music and two people who know how to waltz. What more could we need?”

“Hmm…fair point.” Sabé stood up from the bed, her hips swaying just slightly as she approached the music player. Padmé felt a fresh blush heat her cheeks. “I’ve still got this recording my brother gave me a few years ago, from the orchestra he was playing with at the time.”

“Perfect.” Padmé closed her eyes just before the first strains of music wove through the air. When she opened them again, Sabé stood before her like a vision: her hair haloed by a cross-section of candlelight, her hand extended to Padmé with the palm up. “May I have this dance, my lady?” she asked in a manner so formal, they could have been at an actual ball. Padmé giggled like a lovestruck teenager and took Sabé’s hand, pulling her eagerly to the centre of the room. Their nightgowns traced the movement with a cool flutter of silk. “You may,” Padmé whispered belatedly, unable to look anywhere but into Sabé’s eyes.

She could feel the night wrapping them up in moonlight they could not see, driving them closer, closer, closer until her breasts pressed up against Sabé’s, whose open lips hung just a tantalizing breath away. Lost in the glossy expanse of her girlfriend’s pupils, mesmerized by an orchestra’s melancholic cries, Padmé let the past flood the present, transforming the world around her. She was dissolving into another time, a place where thousand-pound chandeliers hovered overhead like they weighed nothing at all, where moonlight came streaming through arches and marble reflected the world at her feet. Padmé winged easily through the steps, whisking Sabé along with her, and for a moment, they were waltzing in their nightgowns through the ballroom of Theed Palace, Sabé’s touch electric at the small of her back. Padmé gasped into the cello’s sonorous vibrato, each pull of the bow a tug-of-war between desolation and desire. It was only on her planet that petticoats and ballgowns, stiff and unforgiving on the bodies of Imperials, turned beautiful, their hems flaring vibrantly over the floor with their soft, silken sighs.

It was only in Sabé’s arms, dancing through her memories of Naboo, that Padmé became weightless.

The bow paused on the string, still trembling, as if on the cusp of climax. Padmé’s eyes fluttered closed and Sabé kissed her, firmly on the mouth and then more passionately, parting Padmé’s lips beneath her own. Padmé clung tighter to the curves of Sabé’s waist, unable to suppress a shiver as the music exploded around them. Sabé’s lip gloss tasted of strawberries, of carefree summers in the open air of the Lake Country. Padmé tugged insistently on her girlfriend’s bottom lip, frenzied by the elusive sweetness of home, and felt Sabé deepen the kiss in response.

Coruscant was a cold planet, in every sense of the word. But Sabé always managed to make it just a little bit warmer. As soon as their lips had parted, Padmé lowered her head to Sabé’s ear. “One day,” she promised, “after all of this is over—the Empire, the Rebellion, everything—I’m going to take you to Varykino. We’ll put ourselves first for once and leave everything behind. No Amidala, no handmaidens…just us. Well…except for maybe one thing.” She laced her fingers through Sabé’s and gently stroked the side of her palm, hoping it would distract from her own quickening heartbeat. “I…I’ve decided that I’d like to raise Luke and Leia with you, Sabé. Assuming…that’s something you would want?”

Sabé’s rosebud lips dropped open in shock. Padmé panicked and nearly jumped in to amend her request—what she would actually say was beside the point—but then Sabé laughed—a full-bodied, dazzling laugh—and breathed, “Padmé…” Her fingers were feather-light on Padmé’s skin as she lifted her face to hers; Padmé was met with the glorious sight of Sabé’s eyes, glistening beneath a thin layer of tears. “I can’t think of anything else I’d want more than to raise children with you. I love you.”

Giddiness overtook Padmé then, a rush like free-falling back into love. The laugh that emerged from her was watery, nowhere near as melodious as Sabé’s, but she didn’t care. “I love you, too,” she replied, and because that still didn’t feel like enough, “I love you, I love you, I love—”

Sabé kissed her again, robbing her lips of the words so that only raw passion remained, and in that moment, in that small, windowless, beautiful room, Padmé’s cares slipped away beneath the invisible moonlight.

#starwarswlweek2021 #padme amidala #sabe #starwars #sabedala #dancing #lesbian romance #lgbtq+ themes #naboo royal handmaidens #post order 66 #padmé amidala lives #emperor vader au #wlw writing wlw

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