Chapter Text
Coruscant - 25 BBY
Senate Building
Office of Padm é Amidala, Senator of the Chommell Sector
“Flowers?”
Padmé glanced down at the massive arrangement of luxurious blues and lush greens on her gleaming new desk. There had to be at least seven varieties of flowers there, and all of them native to Naboo!
“Who would…” she stepped closer, and could not stop the smile from leaping to her face as she recognized several of them, her favorites. The loon-blossom with its bill-like blue petals leaping gamely toward the sky, the shuura fruit still flowering a deep life-green, the delicate buds of the chak-root, all of them lay perfectly arranged to accent each plant’s defining feature. She even spotted a cambylictus sapling, the bright green leaves curling around each other as if the plant were hugging itself.
Padmé suppressed a giggle of delight. It would be unbecoming of a new senator, and former queen of Naboo, to giggle. However, she had discovered ever since laying down the mantle of the High Royal that her emotions felt more real, more grounded, and she enjoyed it. Padmé gasped as she leaned in for a closer look.
“That’s a… miniature Zaela tree!” She admired the green puffs and marveled at it. Normally Zaela trees were massive in the swamps of Naboo. She remembered walking among them before the fight to retake Theed from the Trade Federation not too many years ago.
“Sabé,” she called. “Someone brought me flowers!”
Her most trusted handmaiden and dearest friend entered from the office door, not a hair or stitch of clothing out of place. Padmé's clothing. Sabé’s dark eyes widened as she beheld the extravagant floral arrangement. “Padmé, who would send you that?”
Padmé grinned. “I was hoping you could tell me. They were here, on my desk.”
Sabé leaned down on the opposite side of the desk to inspect them. Her eyes danced after a moment. “Your new secretary must have put them here. Well, I would almost guarantee a fellow Naboo, or someone wanting to get close to a Naboo. Maybe that one young senator… Rush Clovis?”
Padmé felt her face heat up like one of the solar suns. “Sabé! I doubt that!”
“I don’t,” Sabé smirked.
“What are you grinning like a nexu about?” Padmé lowered her head next to her friend’s and glanced down. “Oh!”
There, nestled in the middle of the greens and blue, perched a slash of daring ruby red.
“That’s a bloodflower…”
Sabé nodded. “It certainly is. You have a secret admirer.”
Padmé swallowed. The bloodflower’s petals, wide and shimmering, were nearly concealed by the taller bursts of life around it. Red… the color of blood, yes, but also the color of passion. The Naboo did not give red flowers lightly. Blue was the color of friendship and loyalty, green spoke of endurance and patience, of a shared bravery and struggle to maintain life.
But red… red spoke of war and blood and passion between sheets. And the bloodflower in particular was a bold choice. Until Padmé had seen it, she wondered if her dear friend and advisor, now the most powerful man in the galaxy, had sent them to her. Sheev Palpatine would not send a bloodflower… would he?
She fought to keep the flush from her cheeks, and failed. When she had been younger, she had sighed over his holos in the news, like most of her friends. To be frank, he was aging very well in his mid-fifties now, and his once fiery red hair was in the process of fading to a distinguished silver. Sheev Palpatine was her friend, though, he had never expressed anything but the politest professionalism she could ask for in their work together. Even when she secretly longed for him to look at her with something more.
So no… not Sheev Palpatine. The thought sent a shock of disappointment through her. Padm é, get a grip, you’re not a hopeless junior legislature member with a naive fascination anymore. He would never think of you that way.
Rush Clovis, then? Padmé pursed her lips. “They’re beautiful, but I think perhaps I should have you take them - ”
She stopped at the chime of her office doors. Sabé paused and straightened. "I'll get it," she said and glided to the doors. She slipped outside with all the grace of the Queen she once impersonated, and disappeared before Padmé could see past her to the visitor.
A moment later, Padmé heard lowered voices, a hush of soft words in Naboo, and then her sole remaining handmaiden's clear voice, sounding happily surprised.
"Senator Amidala, a friend of yours is here."
Padmé fussed at the ends of her sleeves, straightening her spine and lifting her chin. It surely wasn't Chancellor Palpatine, he would not have time to greet a first-year senator, even if she were from his own planet. The Senate had been in session today, and that made for a hectic pace for everyone.
Her mouth dropped open when he walked in anyway.
"Senator - I mean, Chancellor Palpatine!"
"Yes," he chuckled as his fine black boots crossed the rich rug. "You are the senator now, my lady. It's good that you remembered."
Padmé flushed scarlet at the gentle tease, something Palpatine would have never done with her in public as queen, but something he had done often when it was only the two of them. Soft jibes to clear her head, to make her think twice about her choices and words. Well, she had grown up now.
Carefully, she softened her voice and slipped into the language of their people. “<Is it content/well/ pleasant for you, Chancellor of our Republic?>” The thing about Naboo was the fact that its language was a tricky affair, many of the words with three or more possible meanings, and the meaning relying on the inflection, tone, and hand motions of the speaker. To make matters more confusing for outsiders, especially traders and money lenders, the Naboo could also choose to purposefully leave the meaning unclear.
This time, Padmé could not help choosing the greatest of the three meanings, pleasant. For right now, she felt pleasant too. The crisis of Naboo long averted, one of their own the Chancellor of the entire Republic, and herself as a senator, a position she already loved in this short time. She smiled at Palpatine. He had earned this as much as any of them.
Palpatine paused a few steps from her and smiled back. She liked the way some of the furrows in his brow buffed out with that smile, the way his clear eyes took her in as though she was the freshest sight he had seen all day.
“<Things are very content/well/ pleasant for me, Senator Amidala,” he replied at last, clasping his slender hands together and inclining his head. Once, when she was Queen, he would have bowed, but now he had grown far beyond her in stature. “<I confess the life of the Chancellor suits/satisfies/ fulfills me.>”
The way he said that, luxuriated in it, it must have been a figment of her imagination, but Padmé suppressed a shiver anyway. “<Yes,>” she murmured, barely trusting her own voice. “<It certainly does.>”
He reached out to her, then seemed to think better of it and tucked his hands back within his voluminous sleeves. Palpatine moved toward the window seat and spoke over his shoulder as he watched the traffic sling by outside, “<I could not resist coming here to congratulate you on the passing of your bill in the Senate last week. Very solid/impressive/ magnificent work, Senator, especially for a first-year.>”
Padmé definitely heard his emphasis. Such a compliment from him could not be taken as jest. In the years Padmé had known Palpatine as her most trusted advisor, she knew he said such things rarely.
“<Thank you, Excellency,>” she swallowed back more words, not sure of their standing now that he was Chancellor, and she, only a senator. How quickly the tables of life turned!
Palpatine turned solicitously to look back at her, but his gaze landed on the desk at her side. His kind expression instantly brightened to something of interest and pleasure, thin lips quirking up on one side. “Ah,” he beamed. “<You received them.>”
Her mouth went dry. “<You… sent them?>” He sent them? But… the bloodflower hidden among the others! Her face heated to scarlet. “<I… I don’t know what to say…>”
"<Thank you?>" he grinned, dropping the stiffer, dignified lilt of the high Naboo and sounding more like she remembered him. "<I thought you deserved a proper welcome to Coruscant, even after all this time of my avoiding/neglecting/abandoning you.>"
Padmé blinked. He had left the word too vague to parse out his meaning. Had he been trying not to see her? But why? Or was he apologizing for leaving her to discover the role of Naboo senator on her own? He was a very busy man now…
"<You haven't,>" she said quietly, bringing her hands to her middle, unsure. The bloodflower had to be an oversight. Perhaps his new aide did not understand Naboo color theory meanings. Suddenly Naboo felt too intimate, strangely, and she fell back into Basic. "A Chancellor's work is never done."
"Unless your name is Valorum," he rejoined in like, giving no indication he noticed or cared about the switch in language. His eyes twinkled.
Padmé gasped, she felt she had to, and without thinking about it, she blurted, "Sheev, that's no way to talk about your predecessor!" And then she laughed. "Even if it is true."
Palpatine laughed with her before growing more serious again. "I haven't heard my name in months, it feels like. Not even Palpatine. It's Chancellor this, Chancellor that. Perhaps that is my name now."
Stepping forward, Padmé took him in. He looked as healthy and energetic as ever, his eyes that same pale ice blue, that thick head of curling reddish-silver hair, slicked back now, his skin still pale, and his frame as wiry as ever under the rich blue and black robes he was wearing. Clearly he shunned the more opulent opportunities of the Chancellorship as much as Valorum's predecessors had not, and many of her fellow senators.
"I don’t think so. I prefer Sheev Palpatine," she dared to say. "My old friend."
She thought again of the hidden bloodflower, and her heart skipped a beat.
"I suppose I could summon him up for you," Palpatine's smile softened into a thoughtful thin line. "I have missed our talks, Padmé."
She fought an inexplicable shiver.
Why would her name on his lips sound like that to her? "As… as have I, Chanc- Sheev." She looked for the courage of the Queen, and found it strangely gone. However, something else lurked there that kept her talking, spilling the truth.
"I've missed you as well," she murmured. Not just the talks.
Palpatine smiled broadly. He clasped his hands together as if very pleased and straightened. "Ah, I'm certain the flowers that preceded me were a far more pleasurable sight."
"No, actually," Padmé said.
Then she realized what she said.
Flames shot to her face. "I mean, they're lovely, they surprised me! I…"
He left her scratching for words for far too long. Then in that Palpatine way of his, he took pity on her. Which meant taking none at all. He appraised her, one still-red brow arched.
"I sought carefully for each of those flowers, you know, perhaps I should be insulted."
He drifted closer to them, appearing interested in the arrangement like a Naboo lord might look over his gualama herds. Padmé panicked. He might see the bloodflower that had to be a mistake, it would be too embarrassing for both of them!
She stepped to the other side of the desk and reached out. "It was too kind of you, Sheev,” she said, then saw his expression. “What’s wrong?”
“There seems to be one missing,” he peered down. “I expressly asked if…. Ah, there we are.”
He glanced at her, eyes unreadable and gleaming strangely in her office light, and suddenly it felt as though Padmé hardly knew her dear friend. She shivered. “I…”
No time to protest or distract. A delicate flourish of his slender fingers, and the bloodflower now lay in the palm of his hand, wide, shimmering petals spilling over the sides. It looked obscene. It looked breathtaking.
Palpatine eyed her and held it out. “For you, my lady.”
The room spun. Padmé barely kept her feet. He - She - all those years of watching him and thinking he would never - it didn’t - oh chaos! She looked down, her dark eyes wide in her flushed face. She could smell his scent, blossom flower and heady vinewood, she could hear the rustle of his robes as he stepped closer.
Padmé fought for her control. I don’t mean that to him, how could I? “Shee- Chancellor! You didn’t… surely you didn’t mean to choose… the color, it’s… red...”
“Oh, I made very certain of it, Senator,” he stressed her title, but Padmé knew he didn’t mean it in any official capacity. He only mimicked her formality. A shocking little twist of heat shot down her spine at the realization that now he was speaking truths like she had rarely ever heard in her complicated life.
“But… why?” She reached out, touched the soft bloodflower petals with her fingertips, and jerked her hand back as though burned. Perhaps she was, burning in the cool reflection of his lake eyes. Her eyes darted to his face. “Why would you hide something like this?”
Palpatine stopped less than a step from her. His gaze speared her to the floor, and when he spoke, his smooth voice had gone rough, husky, dark , and it went straight into her.
“Ah, but my dear Padmé, why would
you?”