#sabédala & how their reliance on e/o parallels obi-wan and anakin

[masterkeynobi]

god i can't stop thinking about padmé & sabé & anakin they've consumed my fucking brain like. (partially under a cut bc this gets Long)

queen's shadow establishes several things: first, that sabé is padmé's hands and that padmé is sabé's heart. every other handmaiden has a life planned out after amidala's reign; sabé doesn't, sabé who was the first to be chosen and who will be the last to leave. sabé's own parents don't call her tsabin anymore. sabé, in short, is sabé before she is anything else.

second: padmé is invested in the freeing of slaves. padmé is a pacifist. padmé broke ties with captain panaka because she only ever advocates for violence in self-defense. padmé naberrie would have gone to tatooine herself — but she is padmé amidala, and she must be senator, and so she sends sabé in her stead.

on tatooine sabé goes by tsabin and it doesn't feel right. she & tonra go about things the wrong way, lose the trust of the locals, cannot find shmi skywalker. twenty-five people isn't nothing, but it's not nearly enough, either. she doesn't find shmi skywalker. she's unhappy; tonra's unhappy; it's a failure. but padmé calls from coruscant — padmé has other priorities — and sabé goes.

senator amidala is not the queen. the voice is different; the clothing is different; it's taking down the walls built up over four years of a reign and rearranging them to form something new. worth noting, too, that amidala's voice as queen was formed from all herself & her girls, was formed from sabé more than anything. senator amidala is imitable, still, but is padmé. padmé can remake herself, did it once at fourteen and lived by it, but — coruscant is hard. her peers discuss politics as though they are philosophies and not people impacted. she thinks: this is not me.

for the first time since all those years ago, giggling children in a shared bedroom, sabé and padmé aren't attached at the hip. sabé is padmé's eyes and ears on coruscant; she isn't there to watch the senator's day-to-day growth, but still. they are familiar. padmé is herself and amidala; sabé is herself and tsabin. they are each other's peace, each other's steadiness, and they navigate the upper and lower levels of coruscant together with each other as their anchors.

time passes. the galaxy goes to war. padmé meets anakin.

here's the thing about anakin skywalker: the way he sees the world is inextricable from the fact that he spent his most formative years couched in horrific exploitation. anakin grows up wanting more than anything to have full control over himself and his surroundings. anakin curls around those he loves like a dragon, possessive, protective. service, to anakin who was born a slave, will never not feel like violence. possession is all he understands. anakin skywalker is in love with padmé.

& sabé, too, is in love with padmé. but sabé's devotion is boundless and without expectation. she says my hands are yours — my life is yours, should you ask for it — and knows down to her bones the implications of her fealty. she would die for padmé and padmé would let her and that's a choice she would make a hundred times over. she doesn't want pity for it. she kisses tonra and loves padmé and has no trouble reconciling these two things.

the galaxy is at war; padmé marries anakin and tells no one.

sabé isn't around for geonosis or its aftermath. sabé is on tatooine, doing things the right way this time around, settling in and gaining the trust of the people who live there. she sets herself and tonra (a couple. partners. equals, truly, in a way she and padmé have never been) up as a pair to be trusted to get slaves offplanet. not because they've been ordered to, this time, or because they're looking for shmi, but because it's simply the right thing to do. their quality of life suffers — they are naboo — but it's so fulfilling for both of them, a task they want to dedicate time and effort to.

padmé calls sabé and sabé knows before she picks up that she'll be asked back to coruscant. her hands have always been padmé's. she goes.

padmé is different now, though. is hiding something. sabé catalogs her fake smiles and doesn't know why she's wearing the mask of amidala, doesn't quite understand her anymore, and though both of them speak of things being just like old times — sabé, playing decoy while padmé gallivants off to be brilliant — it rings false. padmé has changed. sabé doesn't know senator amidala. there's something padmé isn't telling her, padmé who kept no secrets, whom sabé knew better than she knows herself.

sabé hates coruscant, she realizes. hates playing senator and stumbles around the chancellor and desperately doesn't want to lose herself in politics the way padmé almost has. (it is easier now, padmé says, to think of politics as ideas and not people. is that bad?)

your husband says hello, says sabé, brushing through padmé's hair. sabé's love for padmé has never been possessive, has never needed reciprocation, has only ever been loyalty and devotion and time spent so close together they might as well be the same person. but padmé didn't tell her. she only found out because the man himself barged into her bedroom and almost choked her out. the issue isn't that padmé's in love with someone else, it's that she didn't even tell her. the padmé she knew (the padmé who was hers, more or less! shared faces and shared goals for years on end) isn't the padmé of the present. the padmé of the present is anakin skywalker's wife.

still, for sabé, unrequitedness doesn't have to mean heartbreak. she talks to padmé, says anakin — scares her a little, honestly. padmé mentions an incident with the tuskens. sabé goes still, because they're talking about that massacre on the other side of the planet.

isn't that the funny thing, though? that sabé knows tatooine, now, better than the prodigal son of its suns? padmé sent her there, dear pacifist senator amidala, padmé who wanted post-election to free slaves, but it is sabé in the end who's doing the freeing. sabé has been padmé's hands for years; sabé does her dirty work and finds personal fulfillment in it. sabé frees slaves because she wants to do it. because it's right.

sabé leaves padmé's service that very night — my hands are yours. please don't ask me for them again. — and goes back to tatooine. & when she returns there she finds that the white suns have reached out; she greets tonra and she smiles. there is work to be done and she will do it as herself, casting her own shadow.

padmé amidala is married to anakin skywalker — who, it has to be said, never freed anyone who wasn't himself. anakin who doesn't even really know tatooine at all, anakin whose genius could have dismantled the slave chips the white suns come to tonra about in the blink of an eye, anakin, born in the desert, who lands on tatooine and ignites his lightsaber and leaves with blood on his hands and darkness in his heart. and padmé marries him. and padmé pulls sabé off tatooine and asks her to stay on coruscant and sabé says no.