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“Growing Up Naberrie in the Shadow of Civil War: Pooja Naberrie”
0 reviewsTITLE: “Growing Up Naberrie in the Shadow of Civil War: Pooja Naberrie” PAIRING: Pooja is approximately four and a third(ish) through not quite eight years of age during the Clone Wars era, pe...
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“Growing Up Naberrie in the Shadow of Civil War: Pooja Naberrie”
01.) Hero: Mamaithryn Padmé is her hero, the person she wants to be when she grows up, and, as far as she’s concerned, nothing her mother says will ever change that.
02.) Grave: She’s visited her older sister and older brother’s gravestones many times, but it wasn’t until Padmé took her to see the memorial for fallen handmaidens and she realized that this was the marker for all those wonderfully brave women she’d heard so many stories about that the reality of her family’s loss really struck home.
03.) Repent: Mamaithryn says that, if bad people repent of their evil ways and truly want to make good for their past ill deeds, then it’s the duty of good people to accept their penitence and give them another chance, but she rather thinks Mamaithryn didn’t mean to include the Sith or mass murderers or Trade Federation goons or boys who put gum in one’s hair for no good reason among those numbers.
04.) Change: Da’mâth Jobal says that Sola has changed so much over the past decade that sometimes she hardly recognizes her little girl anymore, and Pooja wishes that she could have known her mother before all those changes, because it sounds as if she used to be a lot happier then than she is now.
05.) Power: Mamaithryn says a good leader should never crave power but rather the responsibility to help people (whether they always want that help or not), and Pooja thinks that this sounds like the key to avoiding all of the corruption that’s helped lead up to the civil war currently gripping the galaxy.
06.) Glory: The glory of /Mamaithryn/’s smile is such that she’s quite sure it cold light up the whole of the galaxy, and she’s sure that anyone who could ever see that smile and yet still want to harm her must be entirely without a heart or a soul or both.
07.) Bitter: The rule is that medicine is bitter to make a body want to get better, rather than to crave a reason to remain ill enough to keep taking the medicine, and she supposes that this holds true for the war, too, since it’s supposed to be curing so many of the galaxy’s ills, but she worries, sometimes, that the cure might be worse even than the disease.
08.) Smiles: Her mother’s smiles are so rare and often so empty of real joy that it’s always a bit of a shock, to see her truly happy.
09.) Her: Her sister, Ryoo, says that she’ll protect her, until she gets old enough to have handmaidens of her own, and, sure enough, no more boys at school bother her again, after Ryoo’s little “discussion” with Feyd Janra.
10.) Love: Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé are in love, but Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé are also in love with Bendu Master Kenobi, and Mamaithryn Padmé brought Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, home with her to meet the family, and Pooja’s so confused by the sudden seeming preoccupation everybody has with Mamaithryn Padmé’s love life that she swears she’ll either never fall in love at all or only ever love one person.
11.) Escape: In the second year that the war has continued, a bounty hunter attacks their school and tries to kidnap her and Ryoo to use as leverage against Mamaithryn Padmé, but they escape, with help from Feyd and his gang of followers, and their mother is so terrifyingly angry that she doesn’t even protest the orders that yank them out of the school, afterwards, and put them into a modified version of training with Mamaithryn Padmé’s and Queen Jamaillia’s handmaidens, instead, though she would’ve appreciated a chance to thank Feyd for his help and to apologize for thinking badly of him ever since the gum incident.
12.) Rose: Feyd sends her a lovely bundle of pinkish-yellow roses with a note, telling her that he hopes that she’s safe and happy in her new school, and she’s happy to hear from him and to get such pretty flowers right up until the moment when Ryoo starts to tease her about her new boyfriend, at which point she resolves to send a coldly distant thank you cared with whatever arrangement most closely approximates the message of thanks and utter disinterest in any kind of lasting tie to or relationship whatsoever with the recipient.
13.) Heart: Ryoo says that, if she can reject Feyd’s offer of friendship so out of hand, then her heart is too cold for her to ever make as good a leader as /Mamaithryn /Padmé, and she cries until she feels sick to her stomach and Ryoo finally says she’ll take it back if she makes it clear that the first response Pooja sent to him was as much for Feyd’s safety and to please their mother as it was a real rejection of his friendship.
14.) Bleed: She and Feyd start to trade comm calls, after her second (far lengthier and nicer) note and floral arrangement, and, when he’s killed in a Separatist strike that just happens to target a marketplace in Theed that he and his family are shopping at, her heart bleeds and she cries until she feels hollow and strangely light.
15.) Crimson: She carefully pricks her left index finger with a thorn and uses her crimson blood to paint the petal edges of a yellow rose, as an offering at the funeral, and Ryoo holds her so tightly that she almost feels better.
16.) Pain: Mamaithryn says that the pain will lessen, in time, and that she must not think ill of herself, when it does begin to go away, as healing and even forgetting is a natural process of life and the Great Goddess’ way of helping her children survive loss, and she’s sure that Mamaithryn Padmé has lost enough people close to her to know what she’s talking about, but all the same she hopes that she’ll never forget what Feyd looked like, even if the pain does eventually go away.
17.) Relax: It’s hard to relax and play and pretend to be a normal little girl, when so many bad things are happening all over the galaxy and the war seems likely to stretch on forever, but she and Ryoo have a rule about pretending like everything’s okay, when they’re home alone with Mother or when Daddy is home from work, so their parents won’t worry more than they already do, and they’re both already very good at pretending.
18.) Lover: She just can’t believe it, when Sola declares that Mamaithryn Padmé took Anakin Skywalker (of all people!) as her lover, but Mamaithryn doesn’t deny it (though her face goes very pale and unhappy), so she’s forced to accept the fact that maybe her mamaithryn isn’t quite perfect after all.
19.) Without: It’s a lot harder to pretend, without that perfect ideal to strive to live up to, but Ryoo carefully explains that the fact that even Mamaithryn Padmé is human enough to make mistakes and have regrets only makes the many good things she accomplished all that more special, and, after thinking it through for about a week, she finally has to agree that Ryoo has a good point.
20.) Human: After Pooja’s had awhile to think about it, she realizes that it’s not so much that she’s disappointed to discover her aunt’s still human as it is that she’s afraid of the consequences of that humanity, since she’s seen lots of HoloNet footage and quite a few holos of Bendu Master Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and she’s met them both (separately) and she knows how much they love each other, even if Obi-Wan seems kind of oblivious of the fact and Anakin tries ridiculously hard to hide and even deny the fact.
21.) Child: Some people treat her like a child, because she’s so little, and she hates it more than almost anything, because even though she knows her body’s young, she’s equally aware that her mind isn’t, and, anyway, the times are such that people like her and Ryoo can’t afford to be selfish and insist on lengthy childhoods, not when they’re so obviously going to be needed as adults in the political sphere soon.
22.) Banned: Her mother tried to ban her from politics, once, but it only took one request from Da’mâth Jobal and Mamaithryn Padmé to put an end to that folly, a fact for which she is endlessly, eternally grateful, for she knows, absolutely, despite her relative youth, that this is her calling in life.
23.) Grin: Anakin Skywalker grinned at her once and called her Padmé’s little shadow and her miniature self in training, and she’s cherished that memory close to her heart ever since.
24.) Pattern: There’s a pattern in the attacks against Mamaithryn Padmé and her handmaidens, she knows that there is, but it seems to suggest that someone close to her has a hand in the planning, and Pooja can’t quite bring herself to believe that, and so she keeps searching for whatever bit of information it is that she’s misinterpreted or overlooked, so sure is she that she must have made a mistake somehow in her interpretation of the apparent pattern.
25.) Imprint: After Apailana is elected the new Queen of Naboo, Ryoo tells her that most sentient beings will imprint on a charismatic leader like young imprint on their mother, and that this is why she has to be absolutely sure she’s willing to give pretty much the whole of her life over to her career and the people she’s going to represent, but she’s had a long time to get used to the idea, and she’s isn’t afraid of sacrifice.
26.) Cost: The cost of this war in incalculable, to be perfectly honest, because of the amount of lives not only lost but ruined – lives upon whom it is impossible to set an upper limit, in terms of value – and it becomes harder and harder, with each passing day, to believe that it’s all ever truly going to be worth it, in the end, no matter what they may end up gaining or how long the peace that might follow could end up lasting.
27.) Calculate: When she told the handmaiden trainer who asked her that it was impossible to rank the acceptability of several different worst case scenarios, based on the amount of damage done and lives lost (as it is impossible to calculate the value of any given life), the woman looked angry, and then confused, and then stricken, as though she’d received an actual blow, and Pooja felt sorry for upsetting her, but then, the truth is the truth, and there’s really no use trying to dress it up or sugarcoat it, when it’s about something like this.
28.) Gasp: She has time to register a gasp of shock and a glint of light off metal where no metal should be, and then she’s being tackled to the ground by her escort and the world explodes into the insanity of battle.
29.) Benevolence: Her father is so angry and frightened that he snarls something ugly about the fact that while tolerance and benevolence are all well and good in a leader in times of peace, harsher measures and an unhealthy level of paranoia better serves the people in times of war, and it’s far past time for the new Queen to realize this.
30.) Adrenaline: She sits with Shmé for hours in the med-center, talking to her cheerfully and willing her to come out of the coma the Healers put her in (to protect her brain from swelling, they said), and it isn’t until after she wakes up and smiles up at Pooja that the adrenaline wears off enough for the reality of what happened to really sink in, and she cries, then, with fierce desperateness, for the two handmaidens who died, getting her and Ryoo to safety.
31.) Angel: She’s heard Padmé say that Anakin calls her his angel of mercy and deliverance, and it warms her in a place she’d feared might never be warm again, to hear Mamaithryn call her an angel of compassion.
32.) Teddy: She’s not sure how Aeshtaúr Bail knew she needed a cuddly toy to hug to herself at night, but she thanks him so many times for the present that he proceeds to sit her down and tell her the most fascinating story about a stuffed bantha that he had, as a child, who helped him keep the nightmares away.
33.) Failure: This war started as a failure of diplomacy, but so much blood has been shed on both sides that it’s long since become personal, and she’s starting to fear that it’s just vengeance and vendetta for wrongs both real and imagined on both sides that are fueling the fighting now.
34.) Sigh: Athro Kenobi told Padmé once that a good long sigh is an excellent means of letting go of all of one’s worries and doubts and misfortunes, and she’s taken to sighing so often, since Mamaithryn shared that story, that her father actually notices and asks her what’s wrong.
35.) Overdose: Her explanation for her sighing was apparently an overdose of reality, because Daddy gives her that silly speech about not worrying and letting the grown-ups handle things, and she’s so insulted by the notion that she has to bite her tongue until it bleeds, to keep from pointing out that the adults haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of seeing to much of anything related to the causes behind the war, yet.
36.) Saviour: Ryoo is her guardian and protector and savior all rolled up into one, just like the handmaidens are for the Queen and for Mamaithryn Padmé, and it’s no surprise to her at all, when Ryoo rescues her from Daddy’s well-intentioned by foolish protectiveness, by quietly pointing out that they can’t afford to ignore what’s going on around them – not if they want to I’ve long enough to actually become adults – and reminding him that Da’mâth Jobal and Mamaithryn Padmé got them into the handmaiden training modules for several good reasons, including the fact that they patently needed to be able to defend themselves, shutting his mouth on any protest he might’ve made by adding that knowledge is a resource they cannot afford to ignore any more than Padmé or Queen Apailana might.
37.) Epitome: Obi-Wan Kenobi is the living epitome of everything good about the Jedi (and of everything evil that the Order inflicts upon its own, according to Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé and even Mamaithryn Dormé, when she forgets her shyness about the Bendu Master enough to speak her mind), and Pooja rather suspects that he’s the one who’s the living avatar of the Force spoken of in prophecies as the Chosen One, but she doesn’t want to hurt Knight Skywalker’s feelings any, and so she keeps that opinion strictly to herself (though she rather thinks that Ryoo shares her opinion).
38.) Syringe: The syringe of knock-out drugs the bounty hunter’s carrying frightens her more than his actual weapons, and she’s rarely been so relieved as she is at the moment Shmé breaks cover to shoot the man’s hand – needle and drugs and all – into a smoking mass of exploded particulate matter.
39.) Mask: She’s been working hard on her leader’s mask and voice, as Apailana said she must, and so she’s able to remain utterly calm in her report on the “incident” to their father, which fools him into believing that they were in no real threat of harm this time and saves her and Ryoo both another painful round of counterproductive good intentions.
40.) Macabre: It’s not so much that she really minds the various attempts on her and Ryoo – after all, as macabre as it might seem to others, the truth is that she thinks it pragmatic to regard most of the various dangers and loss and pain she’s experienced because of the war as training for later on in life, after her career’s had a chance to really blossom – so much as it simply offends her that anyone would stoop so low as to think to use /Mamaithryn/’s nieces against her, as they people so obviously keep intending to try to do.
41.) Angst: Every now and again, she finds herself angsting about being too young to be able to do more than she is to help, but she almost always manages to bring herself around by reminding herself (as Ryoo has done for her, more than once) that the galaxy will need good, strong, just leaders, post-war, just as much if not more so than it does now.
42.) Loss: She considers herself no stranger to loss, so she fails to understand how anyone in the media (even somewhere as far removed from Naboo as Coruscant and wherever the Separatists have made their secret headquarters) could believe her or her family insulated and cozened and spoiled by the wealth and power and influence afforded to them by their family name.
43.) Wrapper: She’s enough of a child still to buy sweets based on the wrappers, and it eases the slight twinges of conscience she occasionally has over the silliness inherent in saving chocolate wrappers because they have pictures of the Team on them with the pleasure her father takes in knowing she still collects such things.
44.) Christmas: The galaxy usually parties like mad during Winter Fete, especially on the actual last day of the year, but the Nabooians tend to celebrate the coming of spring and summer instead, since those seasons are a more obvious natural reflection of the Great Lady’s love of life and growth and light, and there is something hideously unnatural about the fact that the war technically began on one of their most holy days, something that makes her wonder, sometimes, if someone, somewhere, didn’t deliberately plan for the war to start on that particular day . . .
45.) Flicker: The thought that it might actually be better for everyone, if the Supreme Chancellor is killed and the Jedi and certain loyally democratic elements of the Senate (led by Mamaithryn Padmé and Aeshtaúr Bail, of course) are forced to take over, flickers though her mind first, on hearing the news, and so she’s oddly disappointed to learn that the Team is already en route for a rescue attempt, since she’s quite certain that they’re sure to succeed.
46.) Glimmer: The glimmer of a thought (always violently suppressed and denied) that there might be something seriously wrong with their mother – something so unspeakably bad that it could explain that pattern of attacks on Mamaithryn and the Queen that can’t be made to come clear without the acknowledgment of a high placed traitor – explodes into harshly unforgiving illumination, when their mother has a fit in the midst of lunch and begins screaming for the loss of her promised chance at vengeance against her sister.
47.) Bells: They have a tradition of hanging bells and various objects that chime sweetly over the cradles of newborns and the beds of the sickly, to soothe the thoughts and dreams of the sleeping and to ward off evil spirits with the sweetness of the music made, thus, but she’s fairly certain it would take more bells and more music than the whole of Naboo holds, to bring their mother anything like true calm.
48.) Voice: The voice is a strange mixture of Mother’s intonations and /Mamaithryn/’s warm, loving cadences, and she listens with everything in her, committing not only the scene and the words spoken but the whole of the experience to her formidable memory, determined to never forget a thing.
49.) Listen: When she listens with her heart, she knows Mamaithryn has to go, and so she manages not to cry, even though she desperately wants her to stay.
50.) Miracle: When Obi-Wan and Anakin present the miracle of the twins to her, she knows she’ll happily spend the whole of her life striving to make the galaxy safe for them, and the love and fierce protectiveness that kindles in her heart and spirit is (all unknown to her) precisely the maternal fire meant to burn in the Great Lady’s elected avatar.
01.) Hero: Mamaithryn Padmé is her hero, the person she wants to be when she grows up, and, as far as she’s concerned, nothing her mother says will ever change that.
02.) Grave: She’s visited her older sister and older brother’s gravestones many times, but it wasn’t until Padmé took her to see the memorial for fallen handmaidens and she realized that this was the marker for all those wonderfully brave women she’d heard so many stories about that the reality of her family’s loss really struck home.
03.) Repent: Mamaithryn says that, if bad people repent of their evil ways and truly want to make good for their past ill deeds, then it’s the duty of good people to accept their penitence and give them another chance, but she rather thinks Mamaithryn didn’t mean to include the Sith or mass murderers or Trade Federation goons or boys who put gum in one’s hair for no good reason among those numbers.
04.) Change: Da’mâth Jobal says that Sola has changed so much over the past decade that sometimes she hardly recognizes her little girl anymore, and Pooja wishes that she could have known her mother before all those changes, because it sounds as if she used to be a lot happier then than she is now.
05.) Power: Mamaithryn says a good leader should never crave power but rather the responsibility to help people (whether they always want that help or not), and Pooja thinks that this sounds like the key to avoiding all of the corruption that’s helped lead up to the civil war currently gripping the galaxy.
06.) Glory: The glory of /Mamaithryn/’s smile is such that she’s quite sure it cold light up the whole of the galaxy, and she’s sure that anyone who could ever see that smile and yet still want to harm her must be entirely without a heart or a soul or both.
07.) Bitter: The rule is that medicine is bitter to make a body want to get better, rather than to crave a reason to remain ill enough to keep taking the medicine, and she supposes that this holds true for the war, too, since it’s supposed to be curing so many of the galaxy’s ills, but she worries, sometimes, that the cure might be worse even than the disease.
08.) Smiles: Her mother’s smiles are so rare and often so empty of real joy that it’s always a bit of a shock, to see her truly happy.
09.) Her: Her sister, Ryoo, says that she’ll protect her, until she gets old enough to have handmaidens of her own, and, sure enough, no more boys at school bother her again, after Ryoo’s little “discussion” with Feyd Janra.
10.) Love: Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé are in love, but Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé are also in love with Bendu Master Kenobi, and Mamaithryn Padmé brought Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, home with her to meet the family, and Pooja’s so confused by the sudden seeming preoccupation everybody has with Mamaithryn Padmé’s love life that she swears she’ll either never fall in love at all or only ever love one person.
11.) Escape: In the second year that the war has continued, a bounty hunter attacks their school and tries to kidnap her and Ryoo to use as leverage against Mamaithryn Padmé, but they escape, with help from Feyd and his gang of followers, and their mother is so terrifyingly angry that she doesn’t even protest the orders that yank them out of the school, afterwards, and put them into a modified version of training with Mamaithryn Padmé’s and Queen Jamaillia’s handmaidens, instead, though she would’ve appreciated a chance to thank Feyd for his help and to apologize for thinking badly of him ever since the gum incident.
12.) Rose: Feyd sends her a lovely bundle of pinkish-yellow roses with a note, telling her that he hopes that she’s safe and happy in her new school, and she’s happy to hear from him and to get such pretty flowers right up until the moment when Ryoo starts to tease her about her new boyfriend, at which point she resolves to send a coldly distant thank you cared with whatever arrangement most closely approximates the message of thanks and utter disinterest in any kind of lasting tie to or relationship whatsoever with the recipient.
13.) Heart: Ryoo says that, if she can reject Feyd’s offer of friendship so out of hand, then her heart is too cold for her to ever make as good a leader as /Mamaithryn /Padmé, and she cries until she feels sick to her stomach and Ryoo finally says she’ll take it back if she makes it clear that the first response Pooja sent to him was as much for Feyd’s safety and to please their mother as it was a real rejection of his friendship.
14.) Bleed: She and Feyd start to trade comm calls, after her second (far lengthier and nicer) note and floral arrangement, and, when he’s killed in a Separatist strike that just happens to target a marketplace in Theed that he and his family are shopping at, her heart bleeds and she cries until she feels hollow and strangely light.
15.) Crimson: She carefully pricks her left index finger with a thorn and uses her crimson blood to paint the petal edges of a yellow rose, as an offering at the funeral, and Ryoo holds her so tightly that she almost feels better.
16.) Pain: Mamaithryn says that the pain will lessen, in time, and that she must not think ill of herself, when it does begin to go away, as healing and even forgetting is a natural process of life and the Great Goddess’ way of helping her children survive loss, and she’s sure that Mamaithryn Padmé has lost enough people close to her to know what she’s talking about, but all the same she hopes that she’ll never forget what Feyd looked like, even if the pain does eventually go away.
17.) Relax: It’s hard to relax and play and pretend to be a normal little girl, when so many bad things are happening all over the galaxy and the war seems likely to stretch on forever, but she and Ryoo have a rule about pretending like everything’s okay, when they’re home alone with Mother or when Daddy is home from work, so their parents won’t worry more than they already do, and they’re both already very good at pretending.
18.) Lover: She just can’t believe it, when Sola declares that Mamaithryn Padmé took Anakin Skywalker (of all people!) as her lover, but Mamaithryn doesn’t deny it (though her face goes very pale and unhappy), so she’s forced to accept the fact that maybe her mamaithryn isn’t quite perfect after all.
19.) Without: It’s a lot harder to pretend, without that perfect ideal to strive to live up to, but Ryoo carefully explains that the fact that even Mamaithryn Padmé is human enough to make mistakes and have regrets only makes the many good things she accomplished all that more special, and, after thinking it through for about a week, she finally has to agree that Ryoo has a good point.
20.) Human: After Pooja’s had awhile to think about it, she realizes that it’s not so much that she’s disappointed to discover her aunt’s still human as it is that she’s afraid of the consequences of that humanity, since she’s seen lots of HoloNet footage and quite a few holos of Bendu Master Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and she’s met them both (separately) and she knows how much they love each other, even if Obi-Wan seems kind of oblivious of the fact and Anakin tries ridiculously hard to hide and even deny the fact.
21.) Child: Some people treat her like a child, because she’s so little, and she hates it more than almost anything, because even though she knows her body’s young, she’s equally aware that her mind isn’t, and, anyway, the times are such that people like her and Ryoo can’t afford to be selfish and insist on lengthy childhoods, not when they’re so obviously going to be needed as adults in the political sphere soon.
22.) Banned: Her mother tried to ban her from politics, once, but it only took one request from Da’mâth Jobal and Mamaithryn Padmé to put an end to that folly, a fact for which she is endlessly, eternally grateful, for she knows, absolutely, despite her relative youth, that this is her calling in life.
23.) Grin: Anakin Skywalker grinned at her once and called her Padmé’s little shadow and her miniature self in training, and she’s cherished that memory close to her heart ever since.
24.) Pattern: There’s a pattern in the attacks against Mamaithryn Padmé and her handmaidens, she knows that there is, but it seems to suggest that someone close to her has a hand in the planning, and Pooja can’t quite bring herself to believe that, and so she keeps searching for whatever bit of information it is that she’s misinterpreted or overlooked, so sure is she that she must have made a mistake somehow in her interpretation of the apparent pattern.
25.) Imprint: After Apailana is elected the new Queen of Naboo, Ryoo tells her that most sentient beings will imprint on a charismatic leader like young imprint on their mother, and that this is why she has to be absolutely sure she’s willing to give pretty much the whole of her life over to her career and the people she’s going to represent, but she’s had a long time to get used to the idea, and she’s isn’t afraid of sacrifice.
26.) Cost: The cost of this war in incalculable, to be perfectly honest, because of the amount of lives not only lost but ruined – lives upon whom it is impossible to set an upper limit, in terms of value – and it becomes harder and harder, with each passing day, to believe that it’s all ever truly going to be worth it, in the end, no matter what they may end up gaining or how long the peace that might follow could end up lasting.
27.) Calculate: When she told the handmaiden trainer who asked her that it was impossible to rank the acceptability of several different worst case scenarios, based on the amount of damage done and lives lost (as it is impossible to calculate the value of any given life), the woman looked angry, and then confused, and then stricken, as though she’d received an actual blow, and Pooja felt sorry for upsetting her, but then, the truth is the truth, and there’s really no use trying to dress it up or sugarcoat it, when it’s about something like this.
28.) Gasp: She has time to register a gasp of shock and a glint of light off metal where no metal should be, and then she’s being tackled to the ground by her escort and the world explodes into the insanity of battle.
29.) Benevolence: Her father is so angry and frightened that he snarls something ugly about the fact that while tolerance and benevolence are all well and good in a leader in times of peace, harsher measures and an unhealthy level of paranoia better serves the people in times of war, and it’s far past time for the new Queen to realize this.
30.) Adrenaline: She sits with Shmé for hours in the med-center, talking to her cheerfully and willing her to come out of the coma the Healers put her in (to protect her brain from swelling, they said), and it isn’t until after she wakes up and smiles up at Pooja that the adrenaline wears off enough for the reality of what happened to really sink in, and she cries, then, with fierce desperateness, for the two handmaidens who died, getting her and Ryoo to safety.
31.) Angel: She’s heard Padmé say that Anakin calls her his angel of mercy and deliverance, and it warms her in a place she’d feared might never be warm again, to hear Mamaithryn call her an angel of compassion.
32.) Teddy: She’s not sure how Aeshtaúr Bail knew she needed a cuddly toy to hug to herself at night, but she thanks him so many times for the present that he proceeds to sit her down and tell her the most fascinating story about a stuffed bantha that he had, as a child, who helped him keep the nightmares away.
33.) Failure: This war started as a failure of diplomacy, but so much blood has been shed on both sides that it’s long since become personal, and she’s starting to fear that it’s just vengeance and vendetta for wrongs both real and imagined on both sides that are fueling the fighting now.
34.) Sigh: Athro Kenobi told Padmé once that a good long sigh is an excellent means of letting go of all of one’s worries and doubts and misfortunes, and she’s taken to sighing so often, since Mamaithryn shared that story, that her father actually notices and asks her what’s wrong.
35.) Overdose: Her explanation for her sighing was apparently an overdose of reality, because Daddy gives her that silly speech about not worrying and letting the grown-ups handle things, and she’s so insulted by the notion that she has to bite her tongue until it bleeds, to keep from pointing out that the adults haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of seeing to much of anything related to the causes behind the war, yet.
36.) Saviour: Ryoo is her guardian and protector and savior all rolled up into one, just like the handmaidens are for the Queen and for Mamaithryn Padmé, and it’s no surprise to her at all, when Ryoo rescues her from Daddy’s well-intentioned by foolish protectiveness, by quietly pointing out that they can’t afford to ignore what’s going on around them – not if they want to I’ve long enough to actually become adults – and reminding him that Da’mâth Jobal and Mamaithryn Padmé got them into the handmaiden training modules for several good reasons, including the fact that they patently needed to be able to defend themselves, shutting his mouth on any protest he might’ve made by adding that knowledge is a resource they cannot afford to ignore any more than Padmé or Queen Apailana might.
37.) Epitome: Obi-Wan Kenobi is the living epitome of everything good about the Jedi (and of everything evil that the Order inflicts upon its own, according to Mamaithryn Padmé and Mamaithryn Sabé and even Mamaithryn Dormé, when she forgets her shyness about the Bendu Master enough to speak her mind), and Pooja rather suspects that he’s the one who’s the living avatar of the Force spoken of in prophecies as the Chosen One, but she doesn’t want to hurt Knight Skywalker’s feelings any, and so she keeps that opinion strictly to herself (though she rather thinks that Ryoo shares her opinion).
38.) Syringe: The syringe of knock-out drugs the bounty hunter’s carrying frightens her more than his actual weapons, and she’s rarely been so relieved as she is at the moment Shmé breaks cover to shoot the man’s hand – needle and drugs and all – into a smoking mass of exploded particulate matter.
39.) Mask: She’s been working hard on her leader’s mask and voice, as Apailana said she must, and so she’s able to remain utterly calm in her report on the “incident” to their father, which fools him into believing that they were in no real threat of harm this time and saves her and Ryoo both another painful round of counterproductive good intentions.
40.) Macabre: It’s not so much that she really minds the various attempts on her and Ryoo – after all, as macabre as it might seem to others, the truth is that she thinks it pragmatic to regard most of the various dangers and loss and pain she’s experienced because of the war as training for later on in life, after her career’s had a chance to really blossom – so much as it simply offends her that anyone would stoop so low as to think to use /Mamaithryn/’s nieces against her, as they people so obviously keep intending to try to do.
41.) Angst: Every now and again, she finds herself angsting about being too young to be able to do more than she is to help, but she almost always manages to bring herself around by reminding herself (as Ryoo has done for her, more than once) that the galaxy will need good, strong, just leaders, post-war, just as much if not more so than it does now.
42.) Loss: She considers herself no stranger to loss, so she fails to understand how anyone in the media (even somewhere as far removed from Naboo as Coruscant and wherever the Separatists have made their secret headquarters) could believe her or her family insulated and cozened and spoiled by the wealth and power and influence afforded to them by their family name.
43.) Wrapper: She’s enough of a child still to buy sweets based on the wrappers, and it eases the slight twinges of conscience she occasionally has over the silliness inherent in saving chocolate wrappers because they have pictures of the Team on them with the pleasure her father takes in knowing she still collects such things.
44.) Christmas: The galaxy usually parties like mad during Winter Fete, especially on the actual last day of the year, but the Nabooians tend to celebrate the coming of spring and summer instead, since those seasons are a more obvious natural reflection of the Great Lady’s love of life and growth and light, and there is something hideously unnatural about the fact that the war technically began on one of their most holy days, something that makes her wonder, sometimes, if someone, somewhere, didn’t deliberately plan for the war to start on that particular day . . .
45.) Flicker: The thought that it might actually be better for everyone, if the Supreme Chancellor is killed and the Jedi and certain loyally democratic elements of the Senate (led by Mamaithryn Padmé and Aeshtaúr Bail, of course) are forced to take over, flickers though her mind first, on hearing the news, and so she’s oddly disappointed to learn that the Team is already en route for a rescue attempt, since she’s quite certain that they’re sure to succeed.
46.) Glimmer: The glimmer of a thought (always violently suppressed and denied) that there might be something seriously wrong with their mother – something so unspeakably bad that it could explain that pattern of attacks on Mamaithryn and the Queen that can’t be made to come clear without the acknowledgment of a high placed traitor – explodes into harshly unforgiving illumination, when their mother has a fit in the midst of lunch and begins screaming for the loss of her promised chance at vengeance against her sister.
47.) Bells: They have a tradition of hanging bells and various objects that chime sweetly over the cradles of newborns and the beds of the sickly, to soothe the thoughts and dreams of the sleeping and to ward off evil spirits with the sweetness of the music made, thus, but she’s fairly certain it would take more bells and more music than the whole of Naboo holds, to bring their mother anything like true calm.
48.) Voice: The voice is a strange mixture of Mother’s intonations and /Mamaithryn/’s warm, loving cadences, and she listens with everything in her, committing not only the scene and the words spoken but the whole of the experience to her formidable memory, determined to never forget a thing.
49.) Listen: When she listens with her heart, she knows Mamaithryn has to go, and so she manages not to cry, even though she desperately wants her to stay.
50.) Miracle: When Obi-Wan and Anakin present the miracle of the twins to her, she knows she’ll happily spend the whole of her life striving to make the galaxy safe for them, and the love and fierce protectiveness that kindles in her heart and spirit is (all unknown to her) precisely the maternal fire meant to burn in the Great Lady’s elected avatar.
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