My Heart Is Nuclear

This is more about Padme getting a really cute labour gown and some ~FEELS~ because apparently that’s how I roll. 

Fashion has always been a way to communicate for Padme. She’s been in the political arena since she was a little girl and has grown up knowing that the way you dress and wear clothes means something. She’s seen people on Naboo be shunned for wearing the wrong colors at a memorial, seen judgement be rained down on people who wore ill-fitting garments, and seen people make announcements with their garb. Naboo has customs for the way you dress, from the fabric to the cut to the colors to the amount of skin showed.
 

She wore traditional red and black colors during her time as queen, with heavy Nabooian wool with soft cotton lining. It was hard to move in and didn’t breathe well, because the mantle of Queen wasn’t supposed to be comfortable or light – you were in charge of an entire planet, you had to be aware of your every move and word, for they meant something even when you were tired or careless. Her hairpieces were elaborate and their centerpiece was always the Jewel of Zenda, the deep red ruby of Nabooian Royalty – she remembers it being a cold gem, with dark pools that reminded her of fire racing across plains. She could have worn it as a necklace, but whenever she did that the chain seemed to suffocate her and the gem would get progressively heavier and heavier until her shoulders ached with holding it up. It was all in her head, of course, but all the same she preferred it in headpieces where she didn’t have to see it.
 

The Queen could never show any skin but her face and hands, and her face had to be covered with traditional face paint. In summer, the face paint would leak into her eyes and sting, sink deep into her pores and cause her to breakout. She was an expert at different acne treatments, nightly routines, and touch-ups by the time she was out of office.
 

The first day after she was no longer Queen was surreal. She remembers standing in front of her closet, staring at the clothes and realizing she could wear whatever she wanted. (Within reason, of course – no way could she wear anything that showed off her knees and her shoulders without getting a swarm of potential suitors. And she couldn’t wear any gungan-silk, not unless she wanted people to think of her as a prostitute.) She picked out a soft orange and blue dress, in Alderaanian cotton, that covered her shoulders and stopped just under her knees. She didn’t bother with shoes and put her hair up in a simple ponytail. For the first time in eight years, she didn’t wear any makeup and when she went outside, it was by herself without an entourage of handmaidens. People respected her colors and didn’t approach her, even though she knew that a lot of people wanted to ask to court her now that she was no longer Queen.
 

So when her pregnancy started to show, she knew exactly how to cover it up and downplay the baby bump. She wanted to wear the colors of the expecting mother – navy and yellow – but knew that she was already pushing things just by not resigning immediately. If she wore those colors, she’d have to tell people she was pregnant, and if she ever wanted to go back to work after, she’d need to tell them who the father was. Naboo was traditional like that – she would be able to get away with not being married to the father, but she would need to have someone claim her child.
 

And she couldn’t do that to Anakin. Never mind that he would love to be able to broadcast on all open comms that he loved her, was married to her, and yes he is partly responsible for the baby inside her. The Order would expel him immediately and she couldn’t let them cast him aside like that – he would drive himself crazy having to sit out of the war and not being able to watch Obi-Wan’s back. If something happened to him and Anakin wasn’t there…he’d never forgive himself.
 

But this baby was theirs. She wasn’t ashamed of that and she did want people to know. That’s the only thing she can think of, as an excuse, for why she bought it. She wasn’t even going to bother with one, they seemed frivolous even by her standards, but the design had been so cute and appropriate she couldn’t help it.  
 

So here she was, standing in front of her bathroom mirror in a labor gown that sagged around where her stomach was. It felt like a medcenter drape more than any actual article of clothing, but when she held the sagging bits out in front of her and imagined how large she’d get, it seemed more fitting. The strings were a dark navy blue and the background fabric was a soft orange, like Tatooine sunsets – more solidly orange than Naboo’s were, less red.
 

And in clear yellow and blue were tiny lightsabers printed all over it. She’s pretty sure the designers almost put smiles on the things, they looked so childish and joyous. She looks like one of those overzealous fans that camp out at the spaceports when it’s reported that starships are coming back from the front, the foolish children wearing Jedi shirts and begging for toy lightsabers. The ones who get to jump at Anakin when he comes home, get to be photographed with him in the sunshine, get to put their arms around his neck and people laugh when he grins at them awkwardly before detangling himself from them. She looks like one of those selfish, foolish children that cause biter jealousy to bubble up her spine and coil around her jaw, make her cold and brittle as she judges them more harshly than they perhaps deserve.
 

But she’s not one of them, because she can’t run up to him when he comes home and yank him down into a hug. She can’t hang off his arm and smile as reporters record them and tease him about how he’s “so popular” with the young people. She couldn’t break out into sobs at the news that his squad got shot down in Separatist space, couldn’t hold vigils in crowded coruscant parks and tell cameras that she’s “devastated” at the news that the Hero With No Fear will never come home. She’s not one of them because when that news reached her, it stole her breath away and took the colors from her world. She’s not one of them because if she let herself cry, let even one tear fall, she’d collapse into herself and end up screaming with it.
 

She’s not one of them, because when he finally came home – safe, he was safe, praise all the gods of the old world, oh, Anakin – she was the one he clung to desperately.
 

She pulls the edges of the gown out a little, spreading the fabric out, and like this it doesn’t look quite so big on her. This will be a statement to anyone who sees her in it – to everyone who sees her in it. This baby belongs to her and to a Jedi and she is not ashamed of that fact. Once the baby is here, she doubts there would be anything she could do to talk Anakin into staying with the Jedi Order so really, it only makes sense that she start the announcement as soon as she could, to get ahead of the news of his resignation and/or expulsion, depending on how things play out.
 

Besides, the gown really is cute.