Before the Saga Masters of the Game (Senator Palpatine's mistress)

Title: Masters of the Game/COMPLETED STORY
Author(s): LLL
Timeframe: Before the Saga
Characters: Palpatine, OCs, Sio Bibble
Genre: political intrigue, drama, angst, romance
Keywords: Palpatine, Senate, Election

Summary: Palpatine's first run for Republic Senate from the Chommell sector. As the appointed incumbent, it should have been an easy victory. However, a ghastly blunder by Palpatine makes the headlines at exactly the wrong time. Then, the decisions of the beloved Sio Bibble and the electric Olivia Sen to enter the race opposing him plummet a chagrined and anxious Sith Lord to the bottom of the polls. Welcome to Republic politics, where one wrong move can derail an entire career ... and, for a Sith Lord, a lifetime of work. But what Palpatine learns from his failures will truly make him Master of the Game.

This is the first prequel story to Midnight in the Garden. The second prequel to Midnight is What Lies Beneath.




***

CHAPTER ONE: HELIUM

TWENTY DAYS TO ELECTION DAY, CHOMMELL SECTOR, YEAR 48 BBY


“Oh, protestors.” Tomal grabbed Sereine Lumisol’s arm and pointed. “There.”

“Of course, they couldn’t wait til they reached the stage.” She blew an irritated sigh. This tour was the longest and the toughest she’d run yet, and her candidate was in no mood for the heat and the crowds to begin with.

Now this.

Too bad he’d brought it on himself.

Several people in tattered tunics, dull against the fashionable wear usually seen in downtown Ariaru, Kreeling, closed their distance to incumbent Senator Erasmesheev Palpatine waving homemade signs and shouting. The candidates had emerged from the Civic Center, walking to the outdoor stage, ready for yet another of the hundreds of debates and public appearances on this six week tour, flanked by the blue-robed Republic Senate guards who accompanied Palpatine everywhere.

“Mmm, I’d better get down there,” Sereine said. “Stay, watch the monitors for me.” Tomal Gilio had a level head even at the young age of twenty-two. She’d made him her deputy campaign manager at the start of this and hadn’t regretted it for a second.

Sereine raised her hood to cover her russet hair and dashed out into the hot sun, headed for the stage. She’d hoped to stay by the monitors in their makeshift command post this afternoon, but it wasn’t to be. Slipping past latecomers to the candidates’ debate, she hurried down the walk as the Senate guard surrounded the protestors and pushed them to the side, out of the candidates’ way.

She had more fears for Palpatine’s mood than for his safety. These people didn’t look scary. They would do more damage to Palpatine’s demeanor than to his person.

And they were too close. Of course, her candidate had to be closest to the sidewalk. Sereine flashed her credential and slipped behind the barrier.

“Incompetent!” someone screamed.

“Murderer!”

Already the guards were moving them away, and their shouts grew muffled behind tall bodies in long robes and full helmets. The local constabulary came over to meet them and take the offenders into custody.

Palpatine looked in her direction but not at her. Before this infernal campaign, her presence in the front rows of any audience would have helped to focus him. Not so much anymore. He knows I’m here, she thought. Sheev, look at me.

Palpatine stubbornly refused to make eye contact, and for the briefest instant Sereine had had it. If he wouldn’t look at her, there was no point placing herself front and center as she usually did, as a focal point for him. If he had a moment of temper and said something untoward, perhaps it was all for the best. The protestors, now meters away, were being put into patrol speeders; she couldn’t do much if he wouldn’t even look at her.

Sereine turned and made her way back to the huddle, where five of her staffers and three of her interns crowded around the monitors, waiting for the debate to start. As she drew closer, she saw them all pull together in a knot around one screen.

A collective cry went up.

"Stars!”

"Oh, kriff!"

Tomal’s voice rang out above them. “Where’s Sereine?”

Sereine broke into a run. Then she heard, “Oh, my gods! She slapped him!”

Tall Tomal was easy to spot. His dark, longish hair stood out against their cream-colored tarps. He raised a hand and spun around, spotted her, and frantically waved her over. As she drew close, he said, “They missed a protestor! She just jumped over the barricade and spat in Palpatine’s face and then slapped him!”

Sereine’s heart dropped into her stomach, even as she realized that anything she might do would be too late. The instant he was slapped, it was all up to Palpatine. Every twitch of his reaction was already on the holocams in excruciating detail, and everyone had seen it but her.

“Is he all right?” She elbowed her staff aside, making a wind-back motion with her hand. “Roll back, roll back.”

Sereine held her breath, watching someone jump the barricade like a professional hurdler. The view changed as the ever-ready holocameras adjusted to the moment. Palpatine blinked as the woman stopped within a hair’s breadth of him, spat, and then slapped him hard enough to turn his head.

“Ow!” said Maisine, her newest intern, at the very front. The red print of a hand showed plainly on Palpatine’s face.

“She slapped him hard,” Arias, one of her teahouse crew, leaned into a screen on her right.

Sereine strained forward to catch Palpatine’s expression. From his demeanor this morning, she expected homicide. Instead, his face went slack as he straightened, as if the slap had knocked the breath out of him.

And then she saw the briefest, gentle lift to his wheaten brows, and his eyes lowered briefly to his shoes. Blue gloved hands reached out, yanking the protestor back out of frame; Palpatine bowed his head with the air of one justly chastised. Just before the holoangle changed again, Sereine caught the motion of his shoulders and his robe in an involuntary shudder. The expression and the bow were deliberate; the shudder was not.

Anyone who didn’t know him well would assume Palpatine was frightened. Sereine knew better.

That shudder was pure rage.

But it was perfect. As she stared, she reached out to claw Tomal’s arm. A little triumphant squeak escaped her throat.

Tomal whistled. “He saved that one.”

“Perfect, perfect, perfect!” Sereine whispered. She gave her head an amazed shake. “He couldn’t have handled that any better if I rehearsed him for a week.”

Arias said, “I hope he can hold it together for the next hour and a half.”

Sereine laughed. “Oh, no. We just won this one, baby. Nobody’s going to remember a word anyone says on that stage today. It’s going to be, ‘Palpatine got slapped, Palpatine got slapped, oh my stars, Palpatine got slapped!’ All he has to do is show us some grace up there and our numbers go up. And I think he knows it, too. Look at him.”

“The moderator’s going to ask him about it.” Logane, one of her permanent staff.

Sereine put her hands on as many shoulders as she could reach. “Well, let’s just hope he’s thinking if she does.” She tapped Tomal. “I’m going back down there. He’s going to look for me.”

Logane said, “’I’m out there getting beaten to death, Sereine, where were you?’”

Sereine couldn’t hold back a guffaw at that. Before she could compose herself, everyone recited, “Don’t ever do that in front of the candidate, his family, his guards, or his staff!”

“You people have been on this campaign too long,” said Sereine. “Hold it down; I’ll be back.”

***

Palpatine avoided Sereine’s eyes the entire debate. She saw him glance directly at her once, just to see that she was there, and then he addressed the cameras and the audience and ignored her.

Not what she was used to. For the past year—no, more than that—they had eased into a comfortable working relationship that grew even more comfortable behind closed doors. Even now, her body tingled and moistened at the memory of his hands on her, his lips upon her mouth.

She had a feeling that would never happen again. The way this was going, it would probably be the last time they ever worked together. He had gotten back at her with someone else, working off steam from the difficult tour … until Tomal cornered a holographer on the Senator’s hotel corridor and took his cam off him and offered to either pay him for it or break it.

Sereine had had to show him the holos and query him whether he wanted those in the news just now or not. She said nothing about the woman. But of course he would be bound to think the entire episode was based in jealousy.

She would miss him. But, it hadn’t been her with a questionable relationship with a firm known for mob ties and malfeasance, and he hadn’t consulted her before making an insensitive remark about it when it hit the headlines in the middle of an earthquake in the Karlinus system.

She was struggling with all her wits to raise his poll numbers, but she hadn’t felt confident revealing her entire strategy to him or anyone else. And the constant walkabouts in suffocating crowds in the heat of Chommell summers was tearing at his nerves, affecting his performance … and destroying their relationship.

What would she be dealing with once he got down off that stage? She had tried to talk to him, she was trying to buffer him all she could from the things she knew got on top of him, but this afternoon was going to take the whole pie.

She already knew.

The moderator spared him any questions about the slapping incident, but she knew the holocams after the debate would not. She cornered him as soon as he stepped off the stage and murmured to him a few words he might say about the slap. He listened, but he looked past her, sweat beading on his forehead, heat in his cheeks. She looked down and saw his sleeve quivering. He had done a slow burn for an hour and a half up there, and he was still holding it in.

***
There's more to this first bit, but ... um ... I'm not sure of the current rules regarding explicit-y.

 

The nuances of the body language are my favorite thing here, beating out how slightly Aaron Sorkin the writing felt. Looking forward to more with Sereine.

 

I guess there are worse comparisons you could make! Thanks. I wasn't quite done with this, but I fell asleep last night before I finished this bit.

EDIT: Okay, here it is. There's a more explicit bit to Chapter One, but it's in the version on Wattpad.

***
CHAPTER TWO: THE TURNING POINT

“If you hadn’t wanted me tonight,” he told her, “I think I might have jumped out of that window.”

“Sheev, ask me,” she whispered. “Any time. I always, always want you. Always.”

“I thought you were angry with me.” He turned his head on his pillow, trapping her with his eyes and a quick smirk.

“I thought I was, too.” She ran her hand back and forth across him, enjoying the feel of warm soft skin, the masculine bristle of the light hair across his chest. He had one long scar on the left side of his chest and one across his left arm, which he wouldn’t discuss, so she tended to avoid them. Even though he wasn’t conventionally handsome, they marred what to her was perfect poignant beauty. “It took me a while to understand why you were doing that. You’re very angry at me, and we’re stuck together on this tour and you can’t tell me. All we’d do is argue and that won’t work.”

He looked away from her and said nothing.

“And, whatever it is that’s bothering you on these walkabouts, apparently sex does a lot to blow the tension off.” Palpatine had never won an elected post before, he’d always been a political appointee with several failed elections behind him. She had expected a thirty-six planet tour to throw both of them—she’d never done a tour this huge, either—but she’d expected him to be able to handle himself with a little more balance than this.

One side of his mouth quirked up. “Sex does a lot to blow any tension off.”

“Sheev, what is going on? You handle yourself so well, and then we have to do a walkabout and I’m on edge just watching you. I’m glad the holocams haven’t caught your facial expressions yet, but when they do, we’ve got a real problem. We come back and you’re testy and snappish for hours. The staff all notice. They’re just young kids, Sheev. They’re all starting to be afraid of you.” He looked away from her again, and she stroked him a little lower, back and forth across his taut stomach.

“Sheev,” she asked him, “are you … agoraphobic?”

His head snapped to look at her, his brows rushing sharply together. “No, Sereine. I am not. Agoraphobic!”

“Can you help me decide what to do about this? Because we have tons of walkabouts left—” she shook her head “--and they’re going to undo all the progress we’ve made so far.”

“Don’t schedule them!” he spat.

“I can’t do that, and I’ve already explained that to you. Sheev, when you’re out walkabout, what is going on for you out there?”

He turned his head away from her, and then he heaved an enormous sigh, and all the tension she felt under her hand just left him.

“I have got to get better at this,” he said suddenly, with more feeling than she was accustomed to from him. She was about to say, Well, yes, you do, but something stopped her.

His blue eyes flickered to meet hers and then skipped away again. “It’s different on the floor,” he said, and she understood him to mean the floor of the Republic Senate. Everyone working in the Rotunda said, “on the floor,” and it was understood what was meant.

“Those are colleagues,” Palpatine said. “They may need something from me, but they’re colleagues, and it’s a business relationship and respectful. It isn’t even so bad in a ballroom. Two or three hundred beings, it’s not a problem. Again, they’re dignitaries or colleagues, and it’s distant. They’re business relationships.”

“Some people bother you,” said Sereine, massaging his flat stomach again, weak with relief that she was at last getting him to talk about this. “Jedi. You don’t want to be on the same floor with a Jedi knight.”

“That isn’t so.”

“Yes, it is.”

“It isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

Palpatine heaved an angry sigh and his gaze flickered off to the far wall again. “All right, yes, I am uncomfortable around Jedi. And I have got to improve with this, and I—"

An unaccustomed strain crept into his tone. She lowered her head to his shoulder briefly, allowing him the privacy of his thoughts for a moment.

She raised her head to find him looking straight into her eyes, and then he looked away again. “You can never understand this,” he said. “Sereine, you’re putting me out there among thousands of people something like three times a day. And the common citizen is needy. I have thousands of people who all want something from me in this needy, soul-sucking manner that I can actually feel. People clamor for my attention, they call my name. They touch me.”

He plucked at her bare arm, pecking her with his fingers. ”They touch my hands, they touch my sleeves, they pull at my robes. On and on and on. And it’s too many, it’s overwhelming. I can’t screen it out. On a stage, there’s some distance, but not trapped in the midst of them.”

He had never shared this with her before. He would not look at her, but the stress etched lines in his face.

Finally, he did look at her, and raised his hand, palm flat, a meter above the mattress. “It starts to feel like a giant hand, just pressing and pressing on my mind.” He lowered his flattened palm to illustrate. “On and on and I can’t stop it. And you’re doing this to me over and over. Maybe one walkabout a day, I could deal with, but you’re abusing the privilege.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Kriff you are,” he growled. “You have no idea what this is like.” His blue eyes grew flint hard and glittered like steel. One corner of his mouth jerked up in a sardonic half smile. “Ironically enough, you’re the only person I can tolerate after hours of that. You’re quiet and restful. Calm.”

She smiled. “Well, maybe not just now.”

“Trust me, you were a more restful presence half an hour ago than that is.”

Sereine considered that, wondering at the possibilities. He could be speaking metaphorically from a place of deep compassion. Or perhaps—

She dropped a kiss onto his chest. “I wonder if you’re mildly telepathic,” she said.

She looked up to find him scowling at her. “Clearly not, or I would be able to discern the reason you’ve trapped me in this in the first place.”

She wasn’t going to start this discussion again. She kissed him again and said, “Well, I added all these dates, and I can’t cancel them. I can’t cut your schedule, Sheev. But I’m going to try to help you all I can, and we’re almost there. We’re almost home.”

“Sereine. We are not in the lead.”

“But we will be. We will be. I want you back in the Rotunda next year just as much as you do. I know you’re angry at me, but I’m going to ask you to trust me. I’m just looking for something to happen, the harder we work, and then we’ve got Bibble, we’ve got him. This will pay off, I promise.”

He clasped his hands over his stomach and studied them with a troubled expression. Finally he whispered, “I can’t see that.” Louder: “I no longer see my way ahead.”

She clasped her hand over his. “That’s what you have me for.”

He didn’t look at her, but the old closeness and warmth in his manner with her had crept between them again. Things would be better from here out.

Sereine said a silent prayer of thanks. Because his mood and his demeanor here were everything, and those had been fraying in the past weeks no matter how she had tried to remind him of that.

She was beginning to realize you always needed an ace in the hole with Palpatine. She’d had one for weeks, but getting control of his moods was crucial. Those two things were the blocks on his way back to the Rotunda, and now she could feel them slowly shifting out of their way.

 

It’s so unusual to see him both this unguarded and this vulnerable. It prepares the way for what he does to turn those tables when he comes into greater power. And much as I’m sure the blowing off steam helps, he needs more widely-applicable coping mechanisms. The Aaron Sorkin comment was because I could practically hear Leo and Josh from West Wing getting anxious about his reflexes in social situations.

 

I've heard people compare this to WW before. But I've never seen WW ...Anyway, he's done something really stupid, which I'm about to explain, and stepped right in this, and she's Force-blind, so his Sight isn't going to be operational until things turn decidedly in his favor.

Palpatine is on a learning curve. He hasn't figured out how to mask his Force sensitivity to the Jedi yet, and he wasn't born master of the game. OTOH, he can speak a little more candidly and she won't have a clue WTF he really means.

Sith Lord on a hot tin roof ...

 

CHAPTER THREE: SIX MONTHS EARLIER

A major earthquake sounds like a trillion armored tanks.

The rumbling booms low in the ears, convulsing the stomach, the lungs, the heart within the chest. Powerful vibration pummels the feet as beings run amok, crazed with fear … to where?

A massive earthquake cannot be escaped. The danger is everywhere.

On the mid-rim system of Karlinus, the danger centered on the Acropolis of Karlin, a major population locus on the South Coast and the planetary seat. Home to mostly Humans, a few Gungans, and a smattering of other races, most notably Ithorian, the entire city and suburbs lay in ruins. Skyscrapers fractured in half and collapsed onto passersby below; huge fissures yawned in roadways, swallowing people and vehicles; fuel mains burst and vital power conduits ruptured, starting multiple fires which eventually coalesced into one large one that threatened to burn the entire city …

Until the waters came. A tidal wave began in the Karlin Sea and washed miles ashore, dousing the flames, but killing millions. Since the disaster came in the middle of winter, tons of freezing, salty, silty water engulfed the disaster area, sending the entire city adrift in algae, sand, and dark, slimy, treacherous muck that glittered with ice crystals.

Blackness engulfed the major metropolitan area. Its citizens struggled to find and bury their dead, create some semblance of usable infrastructure, and group, house, and feed survivors in the middle of a wet, freezing, wintry nightmare.

Help came from several neighboring systems, including the Sovereign System of Naboo. Within a week, refugee camps had sprung up around the city, burning toxic wreckage in their attempts to stay warm. In due course came a fleet of brand-new heaters from Naboo, one for each camp, said to be large enough to meet need, along with pallets of fresh food, a month’s supply of fuel, and promises of more.

None of the heaters worked, and thousands of people froze to death.

Investigation over the following weeks found the heaters were factory castoffs known to be defective, and delivered by one Kinman Doriana, a shadowy figure with mob ties, who had been hired by none other than the Naboo representative to the Republic Senate, who had just announced his campaign for reelection.

Doriana, it appeared, had received a princely sum of government money for the heaters, and now was nowhere to be found.

The situation made headlines in the Capitol, of course, but the real furor occurred, as it should have, in the Chommell sector, preparing as it was to fill that seat. Senator Palpatine’s office issued a statement claiming deep regret, and ignorance of the origin of both heaters and provider, but requests for an interview kept mounting. Angry correspondence from constituents started as a trickle and turned into a steady stream.

Sereine Lumisol sifted through the history of all this two weeks later from what was left of the presidential campaign headquarters on Cyrillia, where she had just led the incumbent to reelection and had stayed on an extra week writing and vetting speeches to the new legislature. Busy as she was, she might never have known, had a high-priority message not arrived from the Office of the Chommell Sectorial Senator with a request: Please View Immediately.

She never got holocommunications from Palpatine when she was offworld on another assignment, no matter how long she was gone. She sank down into her chair, staring at the request on her screen, thinking, Oh, no.

What has he gotten himself into?

Attached to the message was a playback of a weekly political show Palpatine had been invited to appear on just the day before. Apparently they had lured him with a plan to interview him about something else, because when newscaster Limn Jocand pinned him down about the scandal, it showed on his face: Surprise, anger … apprehension.

Palpatine regurgitated the contents of his original statement on the matter with an expression that suggested he might be about to regurgitate, himself. He said that he took full responsibility for what had happened, that not knowing the background of the contractor who furnished the heaters was indeed a grave error.

Except for his demeanor, so far, so good. He looked well, at least, and as handsome to her as he always did.

Then Mr. Jocand, whom Sereine remembered was himself from Jafan, the neighboring planet in the system, went for Palpatine’s jugular.

“What surprises a lot of our viewers most is that you’re even here today, Senator. Most people, I think, would have the grace to resign rather than stand for reelection.”

Sereine found herself nodding. Cyrillia, not so much. The system was full of casinos and other, more dubious entertainments and places of business, and the people here were rough in nature and manners. But Chommell sector voters were high-minded as Jedi and not nearly so forgiving of an error of this nature, well-intentioned or not.

She watched as Palpatine swallowed. Then he said, “This was an honest mistake, one I dearly regret.” Not the greatest choice of words; it could be taken to mean he regretted it simply because of sequelae like this interview.

Then he said, “I have nothing against those people.” Again, not good. He should have stressed the suffering of the victims and their families, how bitterly he regretted that any action of his might have added to that.

And then he said the worst thing he possibly ever could have.

“We need to get over this and move on.”

On Cyrillia, no one would have cared. The common people stalked about armed as if they were going to war, and convincing anyone to actually vote had been the central problem of the campaign.

But on Naboo? A statement like that would be considered deplorable.

The interview segment wasn’t all Palpatine had sent her. Following that was a sampling of headlines, most of them from home:

“10,000 Freeze To Death; Senator Palpatine Says, ‘We Need To Move On.’”

“Naboo Senator Has ‘Nothing Against’ Karling Freezing Victims”

Sereine covered her mouth with her hand. Stars above, what had Palpatine been thinking?

“In Major Gaffe, Senator Palpatine Urges That We Need To ‘Get Over’ Karling Earthquake Tragedy”

That last one was about the kindest headline of the bunch. Sereine sat there shaking her head.

The transmission ended with a request for a private holoconference with the Senator at her earliest convenience. I’ll bet, thought Sereine. She keyed in a message back, letting the Senator’s office know she was at this location and available all day. Her terminal beeped in less than ten minutes, with a ticker letting her know it was a personal transmission from the Chommell Sectorial Senator.

Sereine hit “Accept,” reflecting that the response time said a lot about Palpatine’s state of mind. Her screen flickered to life in a few moments and she held her breath.

 

Hoooo boy. Get over it. Move on. Pardon me while I get a headache from a long-dead megalomaniac who I’m way too fond of reading. I loved your intricacy of detail on what went wrong in the disaster. I’ve only been in several minor earthquakes, but can vividly imagine this.

 

We actually have an earthquake here once in a while, too. A little scary since there's a nuclear power plant ..

 

Palpatine’s face filled her screen, a worried pinch between those blue, blue eyes. Even despite the headlines and the scandal, she was still glad to see him. “Are you alone?” she said. It was a bad idea to speak too personally if staff were in the room with him.

“I am,” said Palpatine.

“Kinschem, what a mess,” she said, using an endearment in their native tongue. “What were you thinking?”

Palpatine cut his eyes to the corner of her screen. “I wasn’t, obviously.”

She leaned forward. “How can I help?”

“I’m afraid this isn’t the worst of it,” he said, avoiding her eyes. The screen changed to more pictures and more headlines.

“Princess Olivia Sen Announces Candidacy For Republic Senate”

“His Right Honorable Sio Bibble Announces Run For Republic Senate, Opposing Palpatine”

Olivia Sen was minor nobility from Jafan, more known as a fashion plate than anything else. But His Right Honorable Sio Bibble had been in the public eye for decades and held posts from Press Secretary to the Monarch of Naboo to Sector Ambassador. His was a name everyone recognized, and he was well-loved.

Prior to this, Senator Palpatine had been running unopposed.

Sereine’s hand flew to her mouth again as Palpatine reappeared onscreen. “Oh, Sheev. This is bad.”

“I was in negotiations with Broi Tappan to run my campaign and received a most unwelcome brushoff.” Palpatine frowned. He closed his eyes and recited, “We aren’t strictly in the business of damage control, and we don’t court clients with this kind of image problem. We have a premier reputation we’d like to protect. It would be different if you were an existing client, but as it is, Senator, I must respectfully decline.”

Broi Tappan was the senior partner of Tappan and Associates, the premier political consulting firm. It had been in business over three hundred years and had all the best clients ... that is, until Supreme Chancellor Valorum had left the firm after Chancellor's primaries and decided to do his campaign for Supreme Chancellor in-house. He had hired Sereine to write speeches for that--making her one of the campaign's directors--thus giving her her first big break in the business.

Valorum did not like Tappan. Neither did Sereine.

She blew an angry breath of air and turned her head for a moment. “Tappan said that to you? Oh, I hate him!”

One side of Palpatine’s mouth quirked up. “The feeling is mutual.”

“But, Palpatine … if the head of the Tappan agency is going to say that to a sitting Republic Senator …”

“I imagine he’s pretty sure I will not be a sitting Republic Senator next year, else he’d never dare to speak to me that way.”

A beat. Sereine said, “Yes.” Some things you just couldn’t sugar coat.

“And my second choice is conveniently not returning calls from this office.”

That would be the consulting firm of Kail, Wyga, and Eleen, the second oldest and revered political consulting firm in the galaxy.

Sereine drew little circles with her index finger on her desk. “What can I do for you, Palpatine?” she said, using his last name to make it clear she was speaking in a business capacity. “Do you want some thoughts about how to snare one of the larger firms?” She looked up. “I feel a little hurt that you haven’t asked me.”

“Sereiné,” he said, using her given name. She had dropped the accent because it made her name easier for non-Naboo to spell and pronounce. “It’s a sectorial campaign. It’s a huge task.”

She met his eyes. “I have a ten-win streak. Name me one firm who can say that. Including Broi Tappan.”

“Yes, my dear, and I appreciate the work you do for me, but those are local or global contests only. You haven’t got the experience for a sectorial election.”

“I have an election for Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic on my resume. Who else can say that … other than Broi Tappan?”

Sereine smiled. “You have to start somewhere. Since no one else seems willing to touch you … perhaps you should consider a young upstart with … deep motivation.” She allowed her smile and her tone to slide into something more sensual. “Palpatine, you know me. You know my work for the Valorum campaign, and you keep coming back to me because I’m good. At my job. Besides, you need a manager now … not weeks from now when you can finally convince some third-rate firm to wade into this.”

Palpatine looked away from her and down. She caught the troubled expression that flashed across his brow. “You’re a tiny firm, Sereiné.”

“I won’t be, working for you. I know exactly what hires I need and just where to find them. And I know exactly what I’d do with them. It's a home election, Sheev! It will be so much easier than what I've just done.”

Palpatine looked up at her from under his thick wheaten brows.

“Besides, I know you.” Sereine let passion creep into her tone. “Better than anyone else. I want to make everyone else see what I see. Because you make every other senator in that Rotunda look like spineless nothing.”

Palpatine gave her a small smile. “Cheering, my dear, and good for the morale, but I’m going to need a bit more detail. You have a plan, I presume. What’s on your mind?”

Sereine clasped her hands on her desk in front of her. "I want you to do one thing right away, and it's going to be expensive, but it's going to be worth it ..."

 

Intrigued by this one thing. And I know that he’s Senator in TPM, so Sio Bibble doesn’t ultimately win, but he’s a real contender here. Love the realistic responses from Tappan.

 

Music: YouTube watch?v=csGoVMysHz0&list=PLyXt6P7d1IjUO-m8nsVSPZivqdDfn6S9_&index=2

CHAPTER FOUR: NOBODY SAID IT WAS EASY

THREE MONTHS TO ELECTION DAY

The Lofquar system.

Sereine had tried to spread the trips out somewhat; there was no way they could pack every venue they needed to visit into what was sure to be an insane last six weeks of campaigning, even though those six weeks always counted the most.

Of course, a stop earlier in a campaign might not be expected to turn out the sort of crowds that would attend campaign stops toward the end of one. Still, unless it was a joint stop, with Bibble and the Princess also appearing at the same venue, not many people came to see just Palpatine.

It was worrying. People simply weren’t as interested in the troubled incumbent as they were in Bibble and the beautiful Olivia Sen.

Palpatine’s strength going in had simply been that he was the incumbent, and he had traded that away, for what, she didn’t know. She knew he would notice the difference in attendance at the different bookings, so she tried to schedule mostly joint stops.

And that was irritating, for Palpatine and for the entire traveling staff. Tonight, for example. Sitting there in the darkened hush of Lofquar Scope Ampitheatre, Sereine bit the inside of her cheek as, once again, Princess Olivia finished speaking before her allotted time was up. Always the least prepared and the least well-read, the woman led a charmed life—granted her by her huge blue eyes and her elegant and patrician face, capable of the sort of beauty, mirth, and charm that beamed from holovids like a supernova.

What nature hadn’t graced her with, her hairdresser, makeup artist, and dressmaker made short work of. Tonight, the podiums were all glass, which the Princess made use of, as she always did, by wearing the new shorter skirts she was singlehandedly making a new Republic fashion trend. Neither of her opponents sported legs like that, and she made sure every viewer knew it. And her hair was her crowning glory, blonde, cropped startlingly short, and exquisitely styled.

Sereine knew every campaign was essentially a beauty contest, but this was blatantly unfair. All Sen had to do was show up at the refugee camps, smashing even in work dungarees, and nobody cared what any of the candidates said.

Which was a shame. Palpatine’s green light went on, and he handled an extremely boring topic—taxing merchants for use of the Enarc Run, the system’s main trade route—with engagement and gravity. Difficult though it was to make anyone care about so dry an issue, Palpatine made the point that when major corporations were taxed, average citizens had better lives, in a succinct manner, without too many facts and figures. His cultured voice was easily the best on the ears that night, and Sereine was proud of his resonance and inflection. They’d worked hard on every single word of that.

Bibble stepped on his last line with the tired joke about spending other people’s money, and he got the laugh even though he didn’t wait for his green light.

As always, every moderator and pundit named Palpatine the winner of the debate, yet the public most decidedly did not. Sereine checked the realtime polls surreptitiously on her datapad as the candidates left the stage. They were still hovering around the thirty-four percent mark.

The number pierced her heart like a knife. Her ace in the hole was a slow ace in the hole, and the thought that all their hard work on his speeches hadn’t moved the needle at all hurt.

At least the Princess’s numbers were dropping, too. People were beginning to realize that beauty might not be all she needed to handle the job.

Unfortunately, their losses were Bibble’s gains. The Unstoppable Bibble, Sereine thought bitterly.

Worst of all was the fact that hotels tended to group visiting political candidates together in the same wing. Staff together, campaign managers close to one another.

Which meant running into Tappan during every single one of these. After his curt brushoff to Palpatine, he had wasted no time courting the Bibble campaign.

Palpatine slipped away from her and made a detour into the staff room as soon as they got back, while the passing Broi Tappan cornered her in the corridor. Sereine was not a short woman, but she had to crane her neck to look Tappan in the face. His broad shoulders and solid physique, displayed to perfection in a dark gray suit from the most exclusive Republic tailor, seemed to press in on her. Anywhere from about age thirty-eight to forty-five, he had a face any woman would find attractive.

She might have, too, had he not approached her during the Valorum campaign despite having an attractive wife and children at home. He didn’t favor a high-minded approach to any campaign when dirty tricks would do, and Sereine suspected certain leaks from the Valorum campaign had to have come from him. The fact that he could no longer count the Supreme Chancellor as a client tended to suggest Valorum thought so, as well, although Sereine didn’t feel close enough to him to ever ask.

Tappan brushed his black hair back with some sort of oil, and Sereine reflected that that aspect of his grooming suited his character perfectly. She tried to duck past him and he clutched her arm.

“Sereine, I’m more and more surprised to see you at these … you and your dead horse.”

She pulled her arm back, trying to see past him to the staff room door. Palpatine tended to be pleasant to junior staff when confronted with hard news. Mostly. She should be in there.

“How unsportsmanlike, Broi, now let me by.”

He kept hold of her. “Sereine. Concede already. Let the real contenders run the race.” He wet his lips. He always seemed to do that when he spoke to her, and she always found it unnerving. “You know your guy hasn’t got a chance. Trying to make a name for yourself being good in a bad campaign?” He wet his lips at her again.

“Whatever you’ve got isn’t enough, and you know it,” he said. “I’ve still got your resume in my desk. There’s still a place for you at Tappan and Associates, you know.”

“Really?” said Sereine, her voice low and honey-sweet. “Who do you have on your desk after you worked your way through most of the lower-level staff in the Chancellor’s office?”

Tappan laughed at her, showing huge white teeth. “Only losers hit below the belt, Lumisol.”

Sereine finally wrestled her arm away from him and made a short bow from her shoulders. “All the same,” she said, and retreated to the stairwell. She’d really rather climb all the way up than speak to him at every venue.

She leaned against the stairwell door and closed her eyes. In a business where your life depended on thinking on your feet, couldn’t she have thought of a better comeback than that? Deep in the pit of her abdomen, her stomach was starting to hurt.

She hoped Palpatine would feel like company tonight, although she rather doubted it. His ardor toward her had cooled lately along with his polling numbers. To be expected, she thought, but there didn’t seem to be anything that the feel of his warm skin against hers didn’t make better, at least for a while.

She checked the corridor and, finding it free of enemy staff, crossed to the elevators. Whatever had happened in the staff room, it was already over.

***

Palpatine did slip into her room that night, but passion was not on his mind. He stood behind her as she sat at her vanity brushing her hair, still in his debate robes, and then he started to pace back and forth. She followed him in the mirror with her eyes.

“Thirty-four percent. Sereine, I had a bit more faith in you than that!”

He stopped pacing at her chair and his hands dug into her forearms. He growled into her ear. “I had hoped when you convinced me to nearly bankrupt myself over those heaters, that it might do something to redeem this campaign.”

He was gripping her too tightly. She shrugged in an attempt to telegraph that. “All in good time. You know I don’t think that will do you any good at all if that information appears to come from this campaign.”

“It would be helpful if it were to emerge, period.” He grated that into her ear in his low register, then gave her arms one more painful squeeze and let go of her. He ran his hand down the long river of her hair.

Palpatine was in no danger of going bankrupt, she knew that. He had old family money and could well afford to fix his mistake. But what she was trying to do would take time. The good thing about newly minted political interns, fresh out of college, was that no one knew who they were. Sereine had hired only from home system planets, a street team who could lurk in teahouses and report to her on the political conversations of the day … and then spread any rumor she cared to plant.

She had expected it to take several months for the rumor to percolate up to the higher journos. The trouble was, no one was interested in her candidate. He didn’t have the beauty of a Sen or the good will creds of a Bibble, and people tended to remember the last bad news they heard.

She was beginning to think she had misjudged her ability to handle things, and had done her Palpatine a grave disservice. She could have done better if she’d joined the Tappan firm and then convinced him to take Palpatine on.

And that was so not what she had wanted. A top-ranking consultancy firm worked you to death, and if they didn’t have any ethics, neither could you. The Valorum campaign had shown her that in this job, you really held the keys to the kingdom. Your vote counted sooner and more than anyone else’s, and she had dreamed of her own little boutique agency, very exclusive and set apart from even Tappan and KWE. One she could run any way she pleased, with clients she handpicked. One that would fund a comfortable retirement; although, with clients like the current Supreme Chancellor and one newly elected Palpatine, she wouldn’t want to. This job was too much fun.

Except when it wasn’t.

Palpatine lifted the mass of her hair in his hand. His surreptitious glances at her whenever she chanced to wear her hood down and her hair loose always confirmed to her that he liked it. Now he tightened his grip on it, close to her neck, turning her head back and drawing her face up to look at him. “I did expect better of you,” he said, an edge of steel in his voice. From this angle, she couldn’t see his eyes well.

“It’s not nothing that we’ve done, here,” she told him. “Bibble isn’t the one eating into Sen’s numbers, it’s you.”

“And yet, his lead widens,” said Palpatine. She shook her head, asking him to let go of her hair.

Palpatine waited an imperious second before letting her go, a gesture that rankled her. She stood up to face him. “I’m doing all I can right now,” she said … and she knew as the words left her mouth that that was exactly the problem.

Palpatine’s face looked hard as stone and the blue eyes glittered like ice. She wished she could ask him to hold her a minute, for once. She needed shelter and support now and again, too. But faced with that look, she would never.

Palpatine turned to stalk out of her suite. She followed him. At the door, she laid her hand on his arm. He met her eyes with anger in his own and slipped away from her like a wraith.

Sereine returned to her vanity table, leaning on her elbows, her chin in her hands. Tappan was right; she just didn’t have it, here. She needed something, something. Some inspiration was tip-of-her-tongue missing, she was desperate to find it, yet the key to this race was eluding her like quicksilver.

Someone was going to have to drop out soon, and it wouldn’t be the Princess. Sen would get Palpatine’s paltry numbers, putting her in a position to nip at Bibble’s heels.

Sereine had counted on her winning streak to establish herself. This had been a poor campaign to pick if she wanted to do that. She’d still be in business once her candidate dropped out of the race; contrary to what Tappan said, it wouldn’t kill her to be good in an unwinnable campaign. But it would set her plans for herself back years, and oh, worst of all—

--she would lose Palpatine. Even if he forgave her—and if he didn’t, it was grossly unfair of him, given the circumstances—he would leave the Core and go home to some other pursuit, and they’d never see each other again.

The truth sat in her stomach like stone. Her heart jerked in her chest.

She stared at herself in the mirror, honestly asking herself: What was this man’s hold on her? Those fine eyes, that cultured voice, that whipsmart mind, those torrid nights?

Am I in love with him?

She didn’t think so. Yet their minds and their ambitions complimented one another so well. She always felt they were pulling on the same rope. Work preoccupied them both; even over a game of firepath and glasses of wine, the intricacies of Republic politics dominated their minds and their conversation. He worked in the public eye and she behind the scenes, to the same ends, and she liked it that way. He had always seemed to, as well.

To her, they fit together in every way. It was so hard for someone in her position to find a suitable lover at all, let alone one as passionately addictive as Palpatine. She couldn’t imagine having a working relationship with anyone that clicked the way theirs did. The Chancellor, maybe … if she got a chance to know him better. He, too, struck her as a wonderful man, someone she itched to work more closely with. And Palpatine seemed to know that, and supported her in that.

Yet, she didn’t want something so insipid as to marry Palpatine. She couldn’t do her job if she were so stupid as to marry a client. The boutique agency she dreamed of would only be half of what it could be if she limited her alliances that way. Of course, Palpatine knew that, and he seemed to be in no hurry to tie himself down, either.

What they had was perfect, at least to her. She wondered if it were as perfect to him.

From his behavior tonight, maybe not.

If she lost this campaign, and she lost him, she recognized that a large and very satisfying piece of her life would go missing. And she may not be in love with him, but she knew she would mourn this time in her life, she would mourn him, forever once he was gone.

Sereine sat alone in front of her mirror and put her face in her hands.

*I have pictures. But all this does is ask for a URL, rather than letting you upload anything besides an avatar. This is also going up on Wattpad. Artwork there.

EDIT: Good Lord. I just realized in transferring this from Wattpad, I left out an entire chapter.

There's nothing I can do but shoehorn it in here. Sorry.


***

The next day.

The Senator's campaign shuttle idled in port, getting ready to return to the Core for several key votes in the Rotunda. Amidst the usual flurry of getting the candidate, his entire contingent of guards, and all of Sereine's staff loaded in without leaving anyone behind, Sereine spent her time with her staff—all of them crestfallen by now—and avoided Palpatine.

Tomal told her he had been courteous last night reviewing the polls, but abrupt. Through the harsh lines of his mouth and the terseness of his movements, his state of mind was plain to all even though he said little.

"Sereine, what else have we got?" said Tomal, concern in his brown eyes. "This can't be it."

"I know, Tomal, I'm thinking about it," she said. She got up to retreat to her own quarters. All these young eyes following her around were getting to be too much.

At the door, one of the flightstaff protocol droids met her and handed her a message. It was from Maisine Templar, who had just interned for her on the Cyrillia election and had moved on to a staff position with the Bibble campaign.

Are you about to go? I need to talk to you.

Sereine put her hand out and stopped the droid. "Can you ask the pilot to delay departure? I need to invite this person on board and speak with her briefly."

The droid gave her a quick bow. "I will check for you, ma'am."

In due course, Sereine sat at her desk in the shuttle's campaign office, nursing a mug of kaffe, and Maisine, an uncharacteristically shy Arkanian girl, a recent college graduate, was shown in.

"Maisine! How are you? Melting in this hot weather, no doubt." Sereine had liked the girl; she didn't have the party mindset some of these kids had, and she always asked penetrating questions.

"I'm well, ma'am, and you?" Maisine's silver skin shone with perspiration even in the cool of the shuttle. Dressed in tan native garb, a lacy dress that hung almost to her ankles, she gave Sereine a quick bow. Most of her staffers simply called her Sereine, but Maisine always clung to a nervous formality that progressed to tremors whenever the Cyrillian President had visited their campaign headquarters.

"Please, sit." Sereine gestured her to a chair opposite her desk. "I'm afraid I have to make this rather quick. We're delaying departure so I can see you."

Maisine sat, and twisted the handle of her bag in her hands. "Well ..." she said. "I feel like I'm sort of facing an ... ethical dilemma, ma'am, and I didn't know who I could talk to other than you. I'm so far from home, and my parents don't even understand my interest in politics, let alone how any of it works."

Sereine sat back in her chair.

"I mean, I trust you enough, ma'am, that I don't think you'd publicize this."

"What is it, Maisine?"

"It's our candidate. I don't think they should be running him. Were you aware that Honorable Bibble had a stroke some weeks back?"

Sereine stopped in mid-sip and swallowed hard. "Um, no, I wasn't. I hope he's all right."

Maisine blinked and looked at the floor. "I hope he is, too, ma'am."

Sereine cradled her mug in her hands. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"He seemed well enough after it happened, but something isn't right with him. He's starting to have trouble speaking, and I don't know if that's all it is."

"You would never know that from last night," said Sereine.

"They give him something before he goes onstage. And he seems worse after, and I don't think it's right. His son is on the campaign with him. I don't know how he can support that. I worry about what's going to happen if he keeps on, and what if he wins?"

"Do you know anything about his condition? What have his doctors and medical droids had to say?"

"I'm just a low-level staffer, I wouldn't know. I don't know if his son is angling for the job if his father falters, or what the intent is. I just don't feel comfortable working around that, ma'am."

Sereine put her mug down. Sadly, the girl was going to have to get used to a lot worse if she wanted to continue in this field. "Maisine, are you asking me for a job?"

"I wouldn't turn one down, if you were to offer one."

Sereine smiled. Little Maisine was growing some nerve. "You're hired. Are you packed?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go load in. Hurry. And welcome. I'll be glad to have you back. And, Maisine?"

The girl froze, half out of her chair.

"Not a word to anyone about this. Not until I have a think about it. You're just a new hire, and I don't want anyone to hear you just came off the Bibble campaign. Got me?"

Maisine nodded. "Yes, ma'am." She rose and slipped out, leaving Sereine to wonder about her motives. If she expected Sereine to owe her one, she was correct in a big way.

It didn't make sense that she would be here to spy for Tappan's operation. He had such a comfortable lead, there was no need for it. Nonetheless, she would be wise to watch what Maisine had access to, at least until she was able to observe the girl and feel her out more.

Sereine thought some more. Should I tell Palpatine?

She hated to think this, but her first instinct about that was no. She ran the past few weeks back in her head, Palpatine's speeches, his expression, his inflection during each one.

Her Palpatine ran well as an underdog. The more he worried and the more the press chastised him and ignored him, the more his bearing supported him as someone carrying the responsibility of office, someone who was thinking about it and taking it seriously. He had the Princess there, that was certain. People adored her for her beauty and because she came across as a lovely and caring person, but the gravity in the race belonged to Bibble and Palpatine, that was sure.

Palpatine could gloat when he beat her at firepath. Need that, this campaign did not. His hands on her arms and in her hair last night carried an undertone she did not like. If he turned that on Bibble, trying to elicit some evidence of speech or health problems in a debate, or worse, if Bibble were to evince any, and Palpatine's reaction were even a twitch wrong, it could sink him.

And after last night, she didn't trust that telling him that would be enough. He hadn't bruised her, no, but why would he treat her like that?

There was such a thing as temper. Anger that threatened to erupt like a brush fire made for a totally different scenario.

She wondered briefly if Palpatine would ever actually hit anyone.

She had been hit during a campaign before. Because they were in the public eye, people tended to think politicians were genteel. She was discovering they had the same foibles as anyone else, only magnified because their lives were so insular. Before she started her streak, she'd had a candidate get drunk and knock one of her teeth loose. She had filed assault charges; the only reason the news hadn't made a bigger splash was that he'd lost his race.

The only bruises she had ever had from Palpatine were from sexual encounters she had enthusiastically participated in, and she hadn't even noticed them at the time. If that ever changed ...

If that ever changed, their whole relationship would change. She didn't want that, and she didn't need unchecked anger spilling over into their campaign.

The right thing to do was tell him all that, even if she found it difficult, before misunderstandings and unclarity took hold.

She walked to her door and it slid open, revealing her ten staff she had chosen for this trip, tapping at computers and talking and laughing among themselves. She knocked on the wall to get their attention.

"Everybody in here. Gather, gather, gather!"

They had a long discussion in which they discussed the feasibility of keeping certain news from Palpatine. Logane and Arias, her two technical whizzes, decided to use Palpatine's time voting on the floor to commandeer Palpatine's holoset on the shuttle and put it on a time delay. They couldn't control what he saw in the Capitol, of course, but from here on out he was going to be spending more and more time here, not there. Then, clips of any stumbles Bibble made could be deftly extracted before Palpatine saw them.

Amidst some laughter, they named it The Bibble Blackout. Of course, a private compilation of these outttakes would be saved for Sereine to review when the candidate wasn't around. She could craft Palpatine's speeches around these without making it obvious to him or offending any citizens who would be primed to take offense if Palpatine compounded his blunder over the earthquake disaster by attacking Bibble directly. She would have to speak to his guards, as well. By training, they were mostly silent, but any stray remark could have unfortunate consequences, especially if Palpatine discovered what she was doing before she was ready for him to discover it.

She sat back at her desk after the meeting was over. Her kaffe had long gone cold, but she sipped it anyway, lost in thought.

This new development potentially put victory in her hands, but something was missing. She needed more. And she did not like how her thoughts revolved around Palpatine, this morning.

She crossed her arms on her desk and put her head down. Erasmesheev Tiberius Palpatine had fascinated her for years. She thought back to her own college days, when Palpatine had been but a lecturer in political science in her freshman year, having only recently finished his degrees himself. All the faculty coached some extracurricular there, and Palpatine's was fencing.

He didn't fence in matches himself, but he often demonstrated as he coached his students, and she had happened upon a practice one spring day and been transfixed. His fencing was sheer grace and athleticism, in the sort of fluid motion she could have watched all day long.

He'd been married at the time—soon to be widowed, and his wife was in a repulsorchair. He would never have noticed Sereine anyway; but she attended his lectures, read his scholarly pieces, and admired him. She never would have thought she would be here eleven years later working with him ... sleeping with him. Campaigning with him.

Other than his odd behavior last night, it had been a dream.

She thought about what she loved about him: the fine eyes, the beautiful voice. A mind sharper than any other she had encountered, except possibly for Valorum himself. The easy warmth and the crackling passion in his embrace. A humor, sometimes ribald, sometimes cutting, that few ever got to see. The way he moved.

She saw him in her mind's eye that first day, feinting, spinning, graceful high kicks. What had she told him when she asked for the assignment? I want to make everyone else see what I see.

And then she sat up suddenly, for she had her inspiration.

 

CHAPTER SIX: OF TRUST AND LIES IN THE DARK

Sereine spent Palpatine’s time in the Rotunda apart from him, doing laundry and restocking her berth aboard for the next trip, thinking about what to tell him and how. When Palpatine boarded his campaign cruiser again after the votes were over, he found Sereine in the office, musing over a large calendar she had posted on the wall. A stylus in hand, she drew a large circle around first this date, then another.

“Dismembering my corpse on these dates, are we?” She heard him, sotto voce in her ear.

She turned. “Nope,” she said brightly, taking in her staff, who also watched her with questions in their eyes. “I know exactly what we’re going to do now, I’ve got the whole thing in my head.” She smiled at him.

“Well, would you care to enlighten me?” Exasperation laced Palpatine’s tone and sparked in his eyes. He put his hands out at his sides.

“Not just yet,” she said, and turned to address the room. “I’m going to be asking some things from all of you in the next few weeks that will seem a bit strange. I need all of you to do as I ask and bear with me for a bit. By the time we hit Theed at the end of the campaign, it will all come together and make sense, I promise you.”

“Um …” said Tomal from the back of the room.

Maisine took over. “Ma’am, can’t you at least tell us something?”

“We’re taking a page from Princess Olivia’s book,” Sereine told the room. “We’re running a nonverbal campaign beside the one we’re doing already. Phase One: We’re going to oust one troublesome Princess from the race. Holoview crew, aside from what we already talked about, I’m going to need some views of every campaign venue at the time of day the Senator is scheduled to be there, a few days ahead of time. Be planning ahead to get those to me.”

A few faint, “Yes, ma’am’s” answered her. Palpatine took her arm and drew her into the corridor.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

She turned and offered him a tolerant smile. “How can I help?” she said.

“You know our next stop is Karlinus. I have heard nothing from you yet as to whether I have any visits to the refugee camps there on my schedule.”

She turned and walked him down the hall towards the small conference room, fresh kaffe on her mind. “I’ve been turning that over and over in my head, and my feeling on that is leaning toward no.”

His wheaten brows shot skyward. “No?” He stopped and let her walk in ahead of him. After she walked through, she turned and hit the door prop button so it wouldn’t close behind them. “Care to explain that?” he said.

She walked to the kaffe station, pulled herself a mug from the stack, and raised an eyebrow at him as she reached to draw herself a brew. “You weren’t looking forward to that anyway, were you?”

“Not exactly,” he confessed, reaching for a mug for himself. “Especially after the Princess’s well-publicized visits there. She’s no act I care to follow. But I can see no way around it.” He filled his mug. “I was hoping for some advice from you on how to handle those visits. I didn’t think we were going to skip them.”

“We’re not skipping out entirely. I want you to do the memorial instead.” She added cream and sugar and walked to the table with her drink, drawing him along with her.

Close to the largest refugee camp, people had made a memorial to children they had lost in the disaster by leaving toys they had reclaimed from their destroyed homes. “I don’t want to make a big show of it, with you out there in broad daylight possibly looking disingenuous.”

Palpatine bridled as they sat down. “I am not—"

She stopped him with one hand over his. “I know you’re not. But others don’t, and who knows what pundits might say over the expected holos of you leaving a wreath, or something. No, we need to do something different.”

Palpatine sipped his kaffe. “And that is?”

She keyed up a few news stories on her datapad and passed it over to him. “Have you seen these?”

Palpatine glanced down. “Yes. Yes, I have.” At last the rumors of his good deed in replacing every defective camp heater at his own expense were finally breaking in the news. They hadn’t caused a huge splash yet, mostly because they were rumors and as yet unconfirmed. But the Princess had moved on to other campaign stops, so Palpatine wouldn’t have her starpower on Karlinus to compete with this week.

“We’re going to make a very early morning stop, when no one else is around. And hope for some very good holography. That means we have to give any holoshill who might happen to follow us there nothing but stellar pictures.”

Palpatine frowned down at the table. “How do you mean that, exactly?”

“I’m still thinking about that. The staff are going to take some holos at the memorial for me at dawn, and I’ll tell you more then. In the meantime, I’m thinking about what you might wear. Perhaps we can go through your closet in a bit?”

“Very well.”

Now, the hard part of this little talk. She cleared her throat. “Did you read all of those headlines?”

“No, I hadn’t.”

Palpatine looked. He reached the bottom, read that piece, and pushed the datapad back across the table at her.

“I assume you saw fit to include that for a reason?” She had placed a story about the assault charge at the bottom.

She lowered her eyes to the table, and then realized she needed to be looking at him. “The way you had your hands on me the other night. I—I didn’t like it.”

Palpatine digested that. He sank back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. His brows came together severely. His fingers tapped on his arm.

The door prop let go without warning and the door slid shut, trapping them alone in the room together.

“What’s the meaning of this, Sereine? I’ve never hurt you. I’ve seen bruises on you that I obviously put there, but ….”

“That’s different,” said Sereine. “We were playing, and I enjoyed it. I know you didn’t intend it, any more than I do if I bruise you. But the other night, I asked you to let go of me, and you had this way about it. Sort of, ‘I’ll let go of you when I feel like it.’ It bothered me.” She stopped and amended herself. Clarity was important, even when it was hard. “It made me uncomfortable. And I need you to understand that threats won't win you this election, in any case.”

Hard lines appeared around his mouth. “I don’t like what you’re doing in this campaign. It’s making me uncomfortable. I deserve to know your plans. All of them.” His voice croaked in the low register on this last.

Sereine finally allowed herself to break contact with his hard eyes. She gestured with her index finger next to her mug. “Number one, I don’t touch you in uncomfortable ways when I’m angry with you. Number two, I know you’re concerned, and you have every right to be. But, Palpatine!” She looked earnestly into his eyes and tapped the table for emphasis. “Every single thing you’re doing right now is spot-on perfect. If I tell you everything right now, it might change what you’re doing, and then I can’t untell you. Does that make sense?”

His mouth tightened into a hard line. “Clarity,” he said with studied determination, “is the soul of every relationship.”

“I know it is,” she said, “but if something I tell you ruins your performance in these appearances, I lose this election. We’ve got our work cut out for us as it is.”

He cocked his head at her with a twitch of his brow. “You know some crucial information you’re not telling me. I presume it has something to do with our delay earlier … when you accepted a recruit from the Bibble campaign onto this cruiser?”

Sereine lifted her mug. “Loose lips sink ships.”

His voice sunk toward the low register again. “I want you to tell me!”

“And I’m afraid to,” she said. She took a breath and held it for a moment. “Just like I was a little afraid of your hands on me the other night.”

His cheeks flushed a little. Now he was angry. “What do you want of me, ‘Reine? Shall I ask, every time I put my hands on you? You said nothing. Rather like now, as it happens.”

She glanced down into her mug. “Fair enough. I did not ask you to let go of me. I thought shaking my shoulders and head would have made that clear. In the future, if you’re making me uncomfortable, I will verbally ask you to let go of me.” She allowed herself a small smile; she couldn’t imagine doing anything physically that would intimidate Palpatine. “If you’ll do as much for me.”

Palpatine spread his hands on the table and looked down for a moment. “Agreed. But, I must know your plans, Sereiné. This is my career; it’s vitally important to me, for reasons you can’t even imagine.”

She sighed and put her hand over his right one. “I know that. But this issue isn’t the same as that. That’s just between you and me. This campaign is between you, me, and millions. We only have one chance to get it right. I’m sorry I have to ask you to trust me, but I just do. Do you see that?”

He sat back and crossed his arms again. “Sereine … you don’t trust me.” He looked down at the table again. “Yet, you expect me to trust you, implicitly, with my very life.”

“Aren’t I trusting you with mine? Palpatine, I sleep with you.”

He looked away with something between a dissatisfied grunt and a snort.

“I know how strong you are. You could probably snap my neck, if you wanted to.”

“Don’t tempt me,” he muttered, cutting his eyes to the side.

“Don’t joke about this. This is all Human women, in bed with all men. We have to trust you.”

Palpatine looked back at her, a question in his eyes.

“It’s a whole lot easier and more probable for you to hurt us, than it is for us to hurt you.”

He pounded the table suddenly; then he gathered himself and got control of himself.

She watched, and she smiled briefly. If he could do this all the time, neither issue would be an issue.

He caught her smile. Relaxed his fist; spread his palm flat.

She said, because she had been wondering about it, “If you ever intend to sleep with me again, anyway. You are so angry with me.” She put her hands on her mug and steered it between them as if it could protect her.

It had to be said. “I did not do this to you, Palpatine. I am trying with everything I have to get you out of this. Yet, you don’t trust me.”

The truth hit her, driving her gaze to her lap for a moment. Then she raised her eyes to his. “Sheev, if we cannot trust one another, we’re not going to get out of this. Do you see that?”

Elbows on the table, he looked away from her. She saw his chest rise and fall.

“Sheev, do you trust that I am trying my best to help you?”

He said nothing, and didn’t meet her eyes.

That gesture went to her heart. It didn’t seem personal to her in any way.

If he couldn’t trust her, could he trust anyone?

“I don’t want to lose this election, either. Don’t you think it’s my life hanging here, too? I had plans for myself, the same as you.”

Silence.

“Sheev. You know I care for you, very much. Why would I lie to you?”


She watched as a faint shudder rippled down his back. Whatever was on his mind, she had a feeling it was much older than her and this election cycle.

Finally, she asked, in a carefully modulated, respectful tone: “Are you all right?”

At last he said, eyes on the table, “In my milieu, trust is a very delicate thing. Not to be given lightly, and most often repaid with treachery.”

She wondered what had happened in his past life that he would say that to her.

Yet, she still wanted him. And she wanted to be able to trust him. She wanted him to trust her.

“Hm,” she said after a time. “I guess I can understand that feeling. And, I hope not.”

She leaned forward, her own elbows on the table, and peered at him, trying to get him to look at her. At last, he met her eyes; sort of sideways, a blue light in them she could only describe as fearful.

“Sheev,” she said, “I put all of my well-being in your hands. This contest, my own future, and my body, as well. I ask that you do the same. We will come through this, I promise you.”

He sat back and looked at her, his hands dropping into his lap.

That fearful light in his eyes hurt her soul. She wanted to take his hands, but he had withdrawn them from reach.

She whispered it to him again. “I promise you.”

He shook his head once. But slowly that fearful light died out, leaving them alone together in the room.

“Trust, without honesty, transparency, or clarity,” he said at last. “I reserve the right to be as angry with you as I wish.”

“Of course, you do,” she said.

They sat there together and sipped their kaffe.

 

I admire her setting those boundaries and standing against his darker tendencies, even if his most guarded angers aren’t revealed and I don’t know if they’re there yet. I’m looking forward to the memorial visit and seeing the way the princess is ousted from the campaign.

 

Floating a trial balloon. This may be a little over the top. If it is, she can pick something else ...
<snipping this out> because it is repeated below.

 

Okay, I like the “family heirloom” explanation and the unsettling fact that it’s the one thing that makes him look appropriately sober about an event. The hood thing made me laugh because my dad didn’t catch on to something until Palpatine raised his hood in ROTS and his response of “oh my god, it’s THAT guy?!” made me crack up in a very catastrophic moment.

 

Oh, my goodness. Your dad.

So if it's not TOO ridiculous, maybe I'll leave it.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN: CALAMITY COMES OUT TO PLAY

Now, this, you should hear.

***

Sereine stood in front of Palpatine’s closet, riffling through his working wardrobe.

“I love you in these blues, you know that, but they’re just too bright for tomorrow. And they’re all too ornate. We need something somber and simple.”

“Nothing somber and simple is quite in fashion on Naboo, you know that, Sereine.”

“And normally, I’m all in favor. Just not today.” Her hand touched something rough, plain, and black then, and she stopped. “What’s this?” She grasped it by the hanger and drew it out.

“Is this yours?” A long, flowing, black garment with a hood trailed behind the hanger. “Looks like you would be lost in it.”

“Sereine. You don’t want me to wear that.” A glance at his face showed him regarding her with a blank expression.

She held it aloft and inspected it. “I don’t know. It sort of reminds me of what Jedi wear. That sort of association won’t hurt.” She lifted a sleeve. “These sleeves. And this hood!” Her hands found an ebony clasp at the throat, something carved, apparently by hand.

She held it to the light to get a better look at it. “This is interesting.”

Palpatine strode forward and held his hand out for it. “Don’t touch that.”

She froze.

He stood, his hand out. “It’s an old family heirloom,” he said.

Sereine let go of the brooch and handed the garment over by the hanger. “Would you be willing to wear it?” she asked. “Can I see it on you?”

His face was indecipherable. “If … you insist,” he said slowly. He undid the clasp and put the garment on, lifting the hood.

She wasn’t sure if she liked him in it or not. The sleeves might work; but the hood was miles too big. Then again, that could work to their advantage.

“Fold your hands inside the sleeves.”

Palpatine did.

“The sleeves are graceful,” she said. “It sort of trails behind you a little. But that hood. Can I see you without it?”

A bemused-looking Palpatine put the hood back. She walked behind him and adjusted it, then walked around him, studying him from all angles.

“You know …” she mused. “I’d never ask you to wear this in broad daylight. But the holos the kids took show that it tends to be foggy there in the morning, and the tint in the sky is actually sort of green. It might work for as early as we plan to go. It’s the simplest thing in your closet, and the color is appropriate. No one would shoot you with the hood up; you can’t even tell it’s you. But, when I like the pose, I’ll tell you to put the hood back, and then they’ve got their pictures.”

She crossed her arms in front of her. “What do you think?”

Palpatine kept smiling, a sort of rueful smile. “I think I never thought I’d be holo’d in public wearing this.”

“Would you be willing to wear it?”

Palpatine chuckled and gave his head a little shake. “If you say this is the garment, ‘Reine, then wear it I shall.”

She smiled. “All right, then.”

He took it off and folded it over his arm, stopping to regard the brooch in his hand, and she saw just the mood, just the reverence, she wanted.

She spoke to him softly. “Whatever it is you’re thinking right now. Just freeze this moment, and remember it. This is what I want to see at the memorial tomorrow.”

He glanced over at her. “Is it?”

“You’re visiting and handling the toys of dead children. That’s exactly what I want to see. Can you remember it?”

Palpatine turned the brooch in his hand, catching a subtle play of light on the obsidian. “Oh, I believe I can.”

***

KARLINUS

SOUTHERN ACROPOLIS

JUST BEFORE DAWN

The early morning sky on this planet literally was green. Sereine wondered at the chemical and atmospheric basis for it and made a mental note to look it up later, should she find some spare time.

Palpatine rode at her side in this mid-size speeder driven by Gram, the chief officer of the Senator’s Away Guard. Two other guards rode with them in the back seats, and Sereine had also decided to bring Tomal. His job was to monitor any journalists they might observe following them.

Tomal turned backward on his knees to scout out the back window using a night viewer. “It’s hard to see, because they’ve got a cover speeder or two,” he reported. “I think we may have lost one … no! There’s still two back there, the ones we picked up outside the hotel when we left.”

Sereine leaned forward. “Gram, I wonder if we could detour around a bit. We don’t want to actually lose them. We just need to look like we’re trying to lose them.”

Gram, whom Sereine had never seen unhelmeted before, had removed his headpiece in order to pilot the speeder. He’d turned out to be a handsome Soccoran who could have been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty. He turned and glanced back and said, “Begging pardon, Ma’am, but that isn’t very helpful.”

Sereine heard a quick guffaw from Palpatine, whose face she couldn’t see at all. She wondered briefly if she’d made a mistake in the choice of outfit. With the hood down, it was serviceable, but the bulk and silhouette of the garment gave it a sinister air every time he lifted it over his head.

After several turns, they straightened and turned south again for Restoration Open Air Camp and its children’s memorial.

“What do you think, Tomal?”

“I can’t tell … Wait … One of them is still back there. I don’t know about the other one.”

“All right, good enough,” said Sereine.

In short order they were there. She had the speeder set down some distance from the makeshift camp house, which was put together from pieces of debris and made a ramshackle wreck of a building even in this light. The idea was to visit the memorial without attracting the attention of anyone in the camp house.

Or at least, to look as if that was what they were trying to do.

Sereine insisted the guards stay back, so Gram rehelmeted and they fanned out, some distance from the memorial but still close enough to shoot anyone who might threaten the Senator. Palpatine got out, his voluminous hood shrouding his face, and she followed and stood beside him.

“Now, we walk,” she said. “Just slow, maybe put your head down.”

She and Palpatine approached the haphazard memorial alone. It rose against the greenish-twilight sky, a giant pile of ruined children’s toys almost twice as tall as they were. Here and there they stepped on scattered flowers; but cards and letters were sparse. Flimsies, paper, and parchment were hard to come by here, even six months after the disaster.

Palpatine studied the memorial; Sereine studied him. She moved a little apart in the gloom, glad for the wispy fog that rose from the perpetually wet ground here. This time of day, it was humid outside but not yet hot. She appraised the light, the way the fog touched the hem of Palpatine’s robe, the line of his arms and shoulders, the sweep of his sleeves.

“Perhaps not the most sensible time to do this, Sereine. One can barely see anything.”

“You could crouch or kneel,” she whispered to him, mindful of the ears of anyone stealing close enough to snatch holos. “I know! You want to see the toys, but you don’t feel certain you should touch them.”

“Ah. A sacrilege, as it were,” Palpatine whispered back.

“It could work.”

Sereine crouched, herself, and a few feet away, Palpatine lowered himself to his knees at the edge of the pile. “’Reine,” he whispered. She looked at him. “There’s no reason you can’t touch the toys. Then, when I do not …”

“Good thought,” she said.

Her datapad beeped. She slid it from her pocket and looked. Someone looking through a viewfinder around the corner of the building to the Senator’s left, Tomal had written.

Sereine looked at Palpatine. With the simple, Jedilike design of the robe, he looked almost like a pilgrim or a postulant at the foot of the mound. A first ray of sunlight touched the top of the pile.

“Sheev,” she whispered. “Look up at the top of the pile and slide your hood back.”

She decided to put hers back as well. A gray hooded robe—with a small hood and sleeves, not like Palpatine’s gargantuan ones—constituted her normal working dress, because she felt that her client was the one on display, not herself, and because the color of her hair would draw the eye if she happened to be caught in the same frame as her client. But, in this case …

She drew her own hood back, and reached gingerly forward to pick up a small, mud-encrusted toy tank at the edge of the pile. She drew it close, feeling the almost putty-like texture of the mud that caked it and reflecting that, if this was what filled people’s houses, it was a wonder anyone had survived. The thought of tons and tons of this choking the entire city, starving out anything growing, so much of it, it would take years to clear it all away, staggered the mind.

“Now …” Palpatine whispered to her left. She loved the sound of his voice in the stillness. “I’m going to just reach forward, and …” He put his hands out toward the toy closest to him.

Sereine watched the stretch of his arms, the sweep of his sleeves, the pose. “Stop and just hold a second.”

He did, his fingers hovering just above the toy a split second; then he withdrew his hands and placed them on his thighs.

“Lovely,” whispered Sereine, with real approval in her tone. “What if you bowed your head?”

He waited a beat and reverently lowered his chin. Naboo weren’t a particularly religious lot, but anyone who didn’t know that could well imagine Palpatine whispering a prayer in that attitude.

Sereine put her toy gently back in its resting place, in the exact position from which she had picked it up, and said, “I’m going to leave you for a minute.”

She went back to the speeder and retrieved the flowers she had brought. Untying the cord which bound the stems, she circled the memorial and dropped them, slowly, one by one.

Palpatine didn’t move.

When she was finished, she drew close and knelt beside him.

“What do you think?” he murmured.

“I think we’re all right.”

With an easy motion he rose, and then he held out his hand to her.

“Most gallant of you, sir,” she whispered. “I guess we’ll see what happens. I think we did a good job, but that’s about all I can say.”

***

It turned out that the one holocamera operator wasn’t taking stills … he had taken a motion video. One Sereine realized, viewing it once it hit the news cycle that morning, that she had directed to perfection. The light, the mist, the sunlight touching the top of the pile, and the grace and humility in Palpatine’s movements lit the holovision screen in perfect composition; a living tableau of regret.

Sereine said a silent prayer of apology for having used the monument in that manner. But it was the most inspired piece of publicity she had ever come up with.

The early wakeup had everyone yawning by the tenth hour of the morning, and she took the opportunity to put her hood down, shake her hair loose, and keep herself alert by walking to a small teahouse that, like their hotel, had somehow survived the quake on that block, to get herself, Palpatine, and a few of her staff who wanted some, cups of gourmet kaffe.

On her way back, several journos jumped into her path out of nowhere, holocams running. Three microphones appeared in her face.

“Madame Lumisol! You were with Senator Palpatine at the Children’s Memorial early this morning, weren’t you?”

Someone had taken the time to discover the name of Palpatine’s campaign manager, and they had recognized her red hair, too.

They were right in her path, so she had to stop. Sereine faced the cameras, ready for anything.

“Did Senator Palpatine actually replace all those heaters at his own expense?”

She was ready for this one. She opened her mouth, and then shut it again. “I can’t—I’m not going to answer that.” She lowered her head a little and looked down at the unseemliness of the question. “I can’t answer a question like that about a client. If you’ll excuse me.” She put her head down, ready to plow her way between the cameras, and then she heard the question she was most hoping to elicit:

“Sereine! Why didn’t the Senator actually visit the refugee camps?”

She stopped and faced the journo who had asked, looked directly into his camera, and bridled. She hesitated, then said, “Because he was afraid he wouldn’t be welcome there.” She ducked her chin with a quick, nervous sidelong glance, as if she were afraid she had said too much, and then snapped, “Excuse me,” and started forward again.

“Madame Lumisol!”

“Madame Lumisol, why would he think that?”

She stopped and spun to face the cameras again, trying for an impulsive air as if the words were being ripped from her on the spur of the moment. I must defend my candidate with all of my might! she instructed herself, reaching for a quiet, chastising, righteous emotion for the cameras.

She said, “You know, Senator Palpatine has had some hard moments over what happened. He very nearly dropped out of the race. The only reason he’s here now is a bunch of us cornered him and argued with him.” Then she glanced away again, trying to convey, I don’t know if I should have said that.

She softened her voice and said, “We who know him know Senator Palpatine has something very special to give, and we weren’t going to let him quit.” She spun this fiction out, proud of herself. If her face were as sincere as her delivery, she would have bought him ten points in the polls this morning alone. She paused, as if she were shocked at what she’d just said, then whispered, “If you’ll excuse me,” turned on her heel, and headed off down the fractured sidewalk. Scanning passersby for any more microphones or cameras, she finally allowed herself a huge smile.

***

A couple of her staffers who had been with her since she started the company laughed at her outrageous misrepresentation as it played to perfection over the holovids in the staff room fifteen minutes later.

“Anyone who says any different gets fired, and then I’m dumping your body somewhere,” she announced.

Palpatine watched with a mirthful sparkle in his eyes and his hand over his mouth. Finally, those blue eyes tracked to the right and settled on her. “My, my,” he said.

“Well, you could never say that, but I can,” she said. “And I believe we just knocked the Princess out of the headlines for the first time since the campaign started. You going to fire me for telling tales out of school?”

Palpatine laughed a short, throaty laugh. “I think I’ll let you live,” he said.

Sereine burst out laughing, and an answering smile fought its way past Palpatine’s normally patrician dignity. She watched him fight not to laugh harder, and joy bubbled within her. A win and a happy Palpatine in the same day.

She could handle that.

The normal cacophony of beeps signaling incoming calls droned in the background, until tow-headed Arias stood up.

“Sereine! It’s Restoration Open Air Camp. They’re asking the Senator to come out tomorrow and visit.”

Sereine looked at Palpatine. Palpatine looked at her. “I presume you have this in hand, as well?”

“Are you up for it?”

“If you are.”

“Then, yes, sir.”

Arias accepted the invitation, and when he cut the call, the entire staff applauded. Sereine made a playful half-bow.

Tomal walked up behind her. “Good graces,” he said.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “I try not to do things like this, Tomal, but sometimes, you have to do what you have to do.” She raised her hands. “Everyone, phase one! We’re going to knock the Princess out of this race yet.”

And then she turned to Palpatine. “You and I have some work to do.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHT: NO MATTER HOW YOU SCREAM AND SHOUT

She advised Palpatine not to give a speech or do any work at the camp for photos, as Princess Olivia Sen had. Instead, they decided Palpatine would just walk about, quietly introduce himself to people, and ask them something that would get them to talk about their experiences. And then, Sereine said, the most important thing would be the words, “I’m sorry.” The words that, just after the disaster, would have conjured images of incompetence and weakness, were safe words now because they would be linked with images of reverence and compassion. The camp was made up of many small buildings, of which Palpatine would visit three.

Tomal had the idea of sending additional staff with the Senator to speak to more people than Palpatine himself had time for, jot down their stories, and put them on Palpatine’s official bulletin page. So, this was done.

Sereine watched him in the speeder, just before they got out, her eyes on his hands. She was learning, if Palpatine had any feelings of trepidation at all, they usually showed up in his left hand. As she watched, that hand picked fitfully at his trouser leg. She decided not to put her hand on his; that might come across as too condescending.

"Sheev," she said, and when she had captured his eyes, she said, "All you need to remember is this: Good questions start with "How?" or "What?" and they ask the person to dig for some detail. You spend five or ten minutes with each person, and you use that low, soft, round voice and those gorgeous eyes, and you always express sadness for what they're going through. Do that, and you can't go wrong. Got it?"

He blinked, and then clarity shone in his eyes. The left hand stilled. "Got it," he said.

Palpatine visited the miserably hot camp site in a sort of casual light linen shirt and slacks, dove gray, which blended in rather than standing out. People stood back from him respectfully and spoke quietly. At the end of his visit Palpatine bethought himself to take the administrator aside and ask about any special needs the camp had, promising to see to them “effectively this time,” with a wry tilt of his mouth marking the humor Sereine usually had to get him alone to see.

She was embarrassed she hadn’t thought of that herself.

The most prominent headline ran, “A Time of Healing and Forgiveness.” It featured several very good holos of Palpatine with refugees, and Sereine could not have been any more pleased. The same day, some enterprising journo got independent confirmation of where the working heaters actually had come from, which didn’t hurt. They got invitations to other camps after this, and had time to schedule two more before the campaign had to move on.

After the final successful visit, candidate and staff gathered in the campaign cruiser staff room, admiring the latest polling numbers. The staff cheered; Palpatine smiled. Bibble still had a commanding lead, but Palpatine was drawing even with the Princess now, and Sereine predicted the imminent end of Phase One.

“She’s going to realize she can’t catch Bibble, and we’re gaining on her. And running a campaign is expensive.”

Sure enough, the next night, the Princess dropped out of the race. Palpatine seemed pleased enough that, briefly, Sereine imagined he might invite her into his quarters that night.

But he didn’t, and almost the next day, the bottom dropped out.

Sereine began Phase Two—the defeat of Sio Bibble—immediately, scheduling Palpatine on as many walkabouts among the common people as she could. He delivered speeches, as well, of course, but she wanted him as visible and accessible as she could make him.

And discovered: Her candidate did not do well among large throngs of people, even accompanied by guards who kept them from packing too closely around him.

Palpatine became short and snappish. His expression grew taut and tense. His first day, the issue was tolerable, but by the third day, everyone realized they were in trouble. He fairly snapped his hands away from people who reached out to touch him.

Sereine watched him on the transport back from his last walkabout on Day Three and did a slow boil. He huddled at the rear of the transport and turned his back to everyone. Staff and guards alike gave him a wide berth, as if he were radioactive.

Tomal walked up and stood beside her. After a moment, he murmured, “I’m not so sure I want to see the holos from today. I don’t know how they’re going to look.”

“There should have been some bad ones yesterday, and there weren’t. We were lucky. The press is still getting ratings with their Palpatine-forgiveness-and-redemption angle. But they’re not going to cover for him forever.” She sighed and brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead. “Is he purposely trying to ruin all our hard work? How can he do so well for three days in the camps and then come out here and do so poorly?”

“Seems as if you’d recognize it’s all the same thing,” said Tomal.

“Exactly!” said Sereine, and fumed all the way back to their current hotel. This sort of behavior was one thing on Karlinus, where they had won over some friendly journalists, but they wouldn’t have that advantage on Chommell Minor, their next stop on the campaign trail, and she knew Palpatine had the sense to know that.

Palpatine excused himself at the lift door and retreated towards his suite. This made Sereine even angrier and she stalked after him.

“Senator!” she called out, mindful of the ears of the staff. Palpatine turned. “I need to talk to you!”

A few murmurs behind her told her some of the college kids had not missed her tone: the Senator was being called into the principal’s office. She knew she needed to mind how she addressed him in front of others and that she could potentially embarrass and anger him. Too late now!

Palpatine entered his suite and held the door open for her. She flew in like a bat, gray work robe trailing behind her.

“Could you tell me what you think you’re doing, exactly?” She threw her hands out to the side. “How can you do so well in three refugee camps and then perform so poorly this afternoon? It’s only a matter of time before your poor attitude ruins everything we’re trying to do here!”

He warded her off, palm raised. “Sereine, I don’t need this kind of lecture from you at the moment.”

She should have heard the warning in his tone and didn’t. “Well, you need it from someone. Even friendly journalists are going to catch you snapping your hands away from people and turn it into a story we don’t need. You can’t afford any more negative press, and you know this!”

Palpatine rubbed his temples and turned away from her.

She was so angry she stalked after him. “What are you using for common sense out there? We’ve just begun a positive turn in the press, here, and you seem to be intent on wrecking it!”

He turned and looked over his shoulder at her. His brow darkened in anger. He turned to face her, and she saw him ball his fists. “Who do you think you are to address me with such disrespect?” His voice dropped an octave. “You don’t know who you’re speaking to.”

She crossed her arms in front of her. “I’m speaking to someone who obviously needs it.”

His cheeks reddened and the look in his eyes frightened her.

Cold swept down her spine at the look in his eyes, and she knew he saw the violent shiver that took her.

They stood, caught in that trancelike moment before someone moved or spoke. And she was afraid of what might happen if he broke the trance first.

At last she said, “You wrecked your career in one unguarded moment. I’m trying to save it.”

A quick twitch touched his right cheek.

“I don’t know what you were thinking then,” she said, feeling she could breathe easier, because he hadn’t moved. “But you need to be thinking when I put you out there in the middle of thousands of citizens with holocams on you. If you can’t, maybe I backed the wrong candidate.”

Palpatine quivered with anger. “You puny … little … intellect,” he said finally, in a low tone she had never heard him use. “You know your entire little area of expertise … and nothing that really matters.”

“I don’t know,” she told him, seeing her way out of this before things escalated any further. “But from where I’m standing, this is all that matters.”

He could find nothing to say to that, and she turned and swept from the suite. As his door closed, she heard something shatter against the wall.

***

As the days passed, she became aware that she may have won a battle in standing her ground with him, but she had lost in the larger view. Because Palpatine continued to struggle on walkabouts, and she got the sense finally that something deeper was wrong.

The first few days, she thought he was in a bad frame of mind, or that some passer-by had said something that rankled him. But now she saw fleeting looks of stress in his face, a passing expression in his eyes she couldn’t name. He was better in the mornings and worse as the day went on, and she couldn’t talk to him about it. She tried, but he would turn his back or his shoulder to her and refuse to speak. Tomal found the shill on his corridor with holos of Palpatine slipping someone else into his suite, and Sereine began to realize she had built an unscalable wall between them.

Politicians were all different, and they needed different things from staff, she was beginning to realize. Someone like Bail Organa enjoyed hanging around with staff and practically knew everyone’s pet’s names before a campaign was over, never had any problem with crowds, but had problems standing out as a speaker and resisted any advice about it. A few candidates, such as the one who had hit her, had surreptitious drinking or death stick problems, had larger egos then they did brains, and collapsed along with their poll numbers. A Finis Valorum always doubted himself, despite showing every evidence of being a sterling person and a fine speaker, but she was not close enough to him to help him personally in any way. Some people were simply degenerates and corrupt, the sort Sereine would sooner leave the business than ever work for again.

And every once in a while, a Palpatine popped up. Someone with odd problems, difficult to define, who needed support from her in a way that was hard to work out. She had worked it out with Palpatine, in a delightful way she thought they both enjoyed; and then she barred herself out, somehow. Belatedly, she realized she ought not to have flown at him the way she did and spoken to him so disparagingly.

A Bail Organa would have shouted right back at her and then forgotten about it, but then a Bail Organa would never have gotten himself into this mess in the first place. People like him resonated so well with everyone they met, they needed no help establishing rapport with anyone.

Palpatine did. She remembered how well their conversation had gone that day over kaffe, and she understood that if she needed to give Palpatine feedback, that was the way to do it. She realized that he was terrified of losing this Senate race and uncertain because she had not shared all her thoughts about the direction she was taking in the campaign.

Yet, something darker loomed with him. How strange he had been that night she confronted him. And his problems in large crowds of people seemed to frighten him and trouble him, somehow.

Erasmesheev Tiberius Palpatine was a deep cauldron, one who fascinated and repelled her at the same time. The things she saw that worried her, worried her; yet he sparkled and shone so bright at times, in ways she found irresistible.

She resolved to remember this lesson with her future clients, for she seemed to have burned her bridges with Palpatine and there was no help for it. She tried to apologize to him and he would not hear it. She tried to ask him what specifically bothered him in his walkabouts, but he simply told her she could never understand it and cut her off. So, she kept apart from him, accepted his indiscretions—could she call it infidelity, when they had never discussed exclusivity?—and concentrated on everything else she could do to push his numbers. She knew from the Bibble Blackout that they were entering striking distance. It was just going to be harder now, was all.

Harder, and much less enjoyable. She had looked forward to spending time with Palpatine on this campaign, and now that was definitely a lost hope.

And then, when she least expected it … things got worse.

 

Sorry for needing to catch up on two, but I’m fascinated by this snappishness and have theories on it in general. Palpatine feeling more at ease revealing his less affable side and punishing people who try to intervene is…well, triggering. But I’ll leave that to the side. Looking forward to the next calamity.

 

Maybe I should reorder it, but he explains it at the beginning.

Wondering if I should just put things in chronological order.

 

Having an explanation doesn’t make it less of a headache when he reminds me forcibly of people I know. He’s written well. I just hate him for it at times.

 

Oh. Sorry ...

 

CHOMMELL MINOR

THE TWENTY-THIRD HOUR

Sereine sat up in bed, reviewing the latest Bibble Blackout outtakes Arias had sent her. A tap sounded on her door.

Sereine always wore something to bed that she could walk the halls in if need be. She arose and went to the door. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, ma’am.” Maisine.

Sereine touched the panel and her door slid open. Outside in the hotel corridor stood Maisine, in the typical go-out-and-party uniform of the young and frisky Human: short, brightly colored dress, tights, high shoes. The tears streaking her pale cheeks did not match the outfit.

“Maisine! What’s the matter?”

“Someone broke into my room, ma’am.”

Sereine followed her to the level below. A mess met her eyes, drawers opened, garments flung everywhere. She didn’t see anything that looked like vandalism or hate; it just appeared that someone was looking for something, and in quite a hurry, too.

“Have you had any interactions with anyone that frightened you, or were maybe less than pleasant?”

“No, ma’am. Everyone’s been very good to work with.”

The most clutter surrounded Maisine’s desk and small computer terminal. Sereine walked over to investigate.

“They got into my terminal, ma’am. I think they looked through all my files.”

Maisine sniffled, and fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “I don’t feel safe sleeping here tonight,” she said.

“I’ll have them move you to a different room,” said Sereine. “Only I don’t think you need to worry about this again. I think this was a political break-in. They didn’t find what they wanted, because it’s all in your head and mine.”

“A political break-in? I thought those happened in campaign offices, and … to people like you? It’s my first job. Why would anyone break in on me?”

“Because you just came off the Bibble campaign,” said Sereine, anger settling into her chest.

“Does this happen a lot? Does this happen to everyone?” Maisine was starting to hyperventilate. “I—I want to call my parents. I want to go home!”

Sereine drew close and hugged the girl. “I don’t think anyone is out to harm you, Maisine. I doubt very much you’ll have to deal with this sort of thing again. I know it’s scary to walk in on this, but political break-ins happen on campaigns. We clean up, and go on. It’ll be all right.”

Maisine nodded and tried to stop the tears. Sereine said, “Do you have any friends on the staff who can help you move?”

***

Palpatine’s schedule the next day was campaign speeches only. He carried himself well; Palpatine was always at his most competent on a podium, giving a speech. He commanded an audience with authority, and the texture and cadence of his voice fit his bearing and his position like no one else’s. Sereine often thought he was one of the most beautiful speakers she had ever heard, when he put his mind to it. She thrilled to the sound of his voice even as she dreaded what she had to do at the end of the day.

The hour rolled around, whether she wished it or not, at which Palpatine took leave of his staff and retired to his suite for the rest of the evening. Sereine strode out into the corridor and stopped him.

“Palpatine! I need to speak with you a moment.”

He made a scowl of bored impatience and said, “Very well. Come up with me.”

She shook her head. “No. My office, for a minute.”

Palpatine followed her into her cubicle, resplendent in his bright Naboo blue, a look of amusement playing about his eyes.

Sereine walked to the table she was using for a desk and sat. Her cup of tea stood cooling where she’d left it. “This incident that took place last night.”

Palpatine raised his brows at her. “Beg pardon?”

“You know what incident I mean. Maisine Templar.”

Palpatine sighed. “Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?”

“Oh, come off it, Sheev. No one else would have had Maisine Templar’s belongings ransacked. The Princess already dropped out, and the Bibble campaign wouldn’t attack us trying to find out what we know. They already know what we know! There’s only one person dying to know, and that’s you.”

Palpatine’s face settled into a sort of angered patience.

Sereine sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “You want to know my strategy so badly, I’m going to give you part of it. One thing we’re doing is forcing Tappan to work Bibble harder, as hard as we possibly can. Broi thought you were going to be easy to beat. You’re not. It’s absolutely crucial that we force him to push Bibble into as many appearances as we can. And that’s why the walkabouts. We need them.”

Palpatine’s brows lowered; she caught a quick tilt of his head. She had his attention with the remark about forcing Bibble to work harder; she could almost see him thinking. She added, “Another thing I’m doing here is a ban on dirty tricks.”

His tawny brows rose in response. He crossed his own arms in front of him. “Dirty tricks.” It wasn’t a question.

“Political wet work. You know what I mean.” Sereine laced her fingers over her stomach. “I don’t understand you, Sheev. Do you not trust my abilities, or do you just not trust me?”

Silence. His jaw tightened as they glared at one another.

“So far, no harm done,” said Sereine. “Well, except poor little Maisine’s pants are wet, and she’s rethinking her choice of career—briefly, I hope. Senator, we didn’t do this on the Chancellery campaign, and we’re not going to do it here. You’re not having good enough luck with it lately.” Sereine raised her own brows on the word luck. “You don’t even need it. And I don’t like it.”

Palpatine straightened his arms at his sides. “I have had just about enough of what you like.”

She let her gaze drop to the table and then met his eyes. “I’m not saying, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’ Palpatine. I’m telling you, ‘Don’t do.’ I’m not above walking out of here if you do one more thing to damage yourself and this campaign.”

“Is that so?” He crossed his arms again and leaned back against the door with a coy smile. “You would ruin your own reputation in the process. Do that in this business, and you’d be dead, my dear.”

Sereine picked up her cup of tea. “I have a track record I can start over from,” she said. She raised her cup to him in a mock toast. “Do you?”

Palpatine’s cheeks flushed bright red at that. A frustrated growl escaped him; then he turned on his heel and walked out.

Sereine blew out a breath and sat back. On the one hand, she was proud of herself. She may have told a few white lies for this campaign; but on the whole, she ran a clean shop. She had worked for enough people who didn’t while she herself was young and struggling, and she had promised herself that once she made it, she would never have to again.

Standing up to Palpatine, the creature of mercurial temper, had made her prove her mettle. It could only get easier from here.

She tried to hold to that, and ignore the hollow pain in her chest.

An almighty crash from somewhere outside jolted her from her chair. Amid cries of, “What was that!” from her young staff outside, Sereine jumped to her feet and went to investigate. Across from their space, a huge chandelier in an empty ballroom across the hall had given way and crashed to the floor.

Far down the corridor, Senator Erasmesheev Palpatine stalked toward the lifts, agitation in every jerk and sway of his robes.

 

I admire Sereine’s stance on political wet work. She came off well sympathizing with the inexperienced while holding back a lot of instinctive realizations. And sorry, but your mention in another conversation about Phantom of the Opera made me laugh at the crashing chandelier.

 

CHAPTER NINE: IT’S JUST YOU AND ME AND I’M ON MY KNEES

From that night, their relationship was over.

Palpatine simply refused to speak to her unless he obviously couldn’t avoid it. He began to speak to Tomal when he needed something, and ignored her if she was in the room. Ironically, he performed somewhat better on his next few walkabouts, but everyone in the staff room knew the dynamic had frozen to a much chillier point, and even the less mature kids got quiet and withdrawn.

Sereine found herself unable to get the kind of holostills in the press that she had hoped for from these campaign stops. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t all she’d wished for, because she did not have the cooperation from him she had received at the memorial. If she’d tried to explain her intentions now, she didn’t know if he would have listened; and part of the problem, she realized, was that she was not sure how to explain it to him in the first place. She had a vision, when she looked at the huge calendar hanging in the office, what kind of holos she wanted in each circle she had drawn, but it was all very intuitive to her.

And now everything intuitive between them was lost, not only their easy collaboration over work, but the unspoken affinity with which they had slipped into one another’s arms once, the crackling passion they had shared.

Sereine chastised herself for caring. He was a client; it couldn’t have lasted forever, it would have had to be over sometime. She tried to remind herself that she would have her boutique agency now. Even if Palpatine lost, the way this campaign had gone so far, paired with her prior record, put her in striking distance of all Tappan’s clients, all the clients of KWE.

This, that, and Supreme Chancellor Valorum put together would hand her the crown. Soon, her services would be the ones all those with true power chased.

And yet, the past two years had lent an intensity and a wholeness to her life that she hadn’t had before, and this new time without him, after the campaign was finally over, yawned ahead of her like a chasm. Difficult and infuriating though Palpatine was, no one would ever replace him. He had burned through her life like a comet, dazzling bright; and after he was gone, nothing would ever be the same.

She watched over him from a high balcony as he made his way through yet another crowd, flanked by robed blue guards, and whispered to him.

“Goodbye.”

How else had she expected to feel, when she put all of her wits into seducing him, so many months ago?

***

That night, she watched as a tall man in a hooded robe appeared on the cams Tomal had planted in the hallway outside Palpatine’s suite.

She summoned his chief guard and played the recording back for him. “Gram. Who is this little fellow wandering down the hall to Palpatine’s room at the twenty-third hour?” Little fellow and wandering were obviously facetious; even on the cameras the man clearly would tower over her, and his manner was anything but aimless.

“Sate Pestage, ma’am. He works for the Senator, I don’t know in what capacity. Senator Palpatine gives explicit orders that he be shown directly up.”

It wasn’t the first time she had seen him visit Palpatine late at night. “When he comes out, will you please detain him and show him to my office? Thanks.”

She looked up twenty minutes later to find Gram showing in a very tall, severe-looking man in a close-fitting scarlet cowl. She stood and offered him a polite nod.

“Mr. Pestage. Sereine Lumisol. I’m the Senator’s campaign manager.”

Those eyes could cut diamonds. Sereine wondered what he did for Palpatine and decided not to ask. She kept her face neutral as Pestage spared her a small bow.

“I don’t know what your business is with Palpatine and I don’t intend to interfere. I’m just concerned that any business of yours doesn’t interfere with my business.”

Pestage raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“I’m interested to know if any of your business with the Senator has to do with the Bibble campaign.”

His stony eyes regarded her in silence. Finally he said, “No, it doesn’t.”

“All right.” The man made her distinctly uncomfortable, and she restrained herself to ensure it didn’t show on her face. But anyone around Palpatine who made her this uncomfortable, she felt she needed to press on and question.

“What is it exactly you do for Palpatine?”

“You would need to direct that enquiry to the Senator himself.”

Sereine gave him her own slight bow. “I will.”

“Is there some reason for this, Ms. Lumisol?” The man stood there like a mountain. The thought occurred that he blocked her access to the door. Stupid to think that, she thought. No one would hurt me in here with staff on the other side of the door.

She tried, “I’m trying to win a campaign, here. My candidate is putting every foot right so far. I’m afraid overconfidence might ruin him. So much depends on his demeanor, in these campaign appearances.”

Something in Pestage’s expression slackened. He gave her a stiff nod.

“No doubt you’ve noticed the recent stories in the news cycle questioning the health status of Honorable Bibble.” Sereine tried to keep her diction formal. “We’re keeping this from Palpatine for as long as we can. I would appreciate it if these were not mentioned to the Senator.”

She caught something in the yellow-hazel eyes, a sort of bemused look.

Sereine lifted her hand in a balancing gesture. “This campaign is teetering on a knife blade right now. It could fall either way. The Senator needs every edge. Any help with this, and I would be most grateful.”

Pestage seemed to withdraw into thought, considering. Then he assented with a nod. “Good evening to you,” he said.

“Good evening, Mr. Pestage.”

The man turned like a crimson ghost and was gone.

Sereine sat down with something of a shaken feeling. What was Palpatine doing associating with a man like that? Her first thought was indeed to ask him—and then, she remembered.

It didn’t matter now, anyway. Once the campaign was over, she and Palpatine were done.

***

It should have shaken her devotion to winning this, but it didn’t. Part of it was her innate drive to prove herself the best. Part of it was her yearning to rub Tappan’s nose in his treatment of her, of the Supreme Chancellor himself, and of certain low-level staffers in Valorum’s employ. And part of it was still for the Senator she watched with apprehension, as his behavior on walkabout slid into barely-concealed surliness once again.

“What is his problem?” Tomal whispered into her ear a week later. “He’s got to know he’s risking everything here.”

“I think Palpatine has some deeper problem. It’s as if he’s agoraphobic, or something. He can handle it as long as he’s on a stage or in the Rotunda, but put him out here and he just starts losing it. I wish I could cancel some of these, but it’s too late. And, we need them.”

“Well …” Tomal began, and Sereine turned to look at him. “As long as we’re being, um, somewhat disingenuous in this campaign … we could put it out that the Senator knew about the heater issues before they were delivered, tried to handle the problem, but they got delivered anyway? Bad timing?” Tomal shrugged.

“Wouldn’t work,” said Sereine. “All Palpatine’s office would have had to do is let the camps know the heaters were bad, they knew about it, and apologize.” She thought a moment. “Nice try, though.”

She watched Palpatine as he spoke to people, the hard lines in his face, the tension in his movements. Someone reached to touch his robe, and he turned and pulled his arm away.

“If the holojournos don’t get some of this, they’re being awfully kind,” she said, and shook her head.

Then, Tomal grabbed her arm and pointed. “Oh, protestors. There!”

***

She awoke shortly before Palpatine’s alarm. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. It took the sound of his even breathing next to her to remind her that last night had actually been real. He curled on his side next to her with his arm resting on her waist.

She decided not to move; she didn’t want to wake him. Palpatine had nightmares, she knew from experience, and didn’t sleep easily. If he had her and then slept peacefully all night, she felt she had done him one more good turn than the obvious.

Her body still hummed with remembered pleasure. If he wanted to work off stress and tension this way, it was quite all right with her.

She wondered how he would behave when he awoke. As if in answer, she heard him breathe in a long sigh, and his hand slid up her side.

In a moment he pressed against her and took her lips in a languorous kiss. She melted into him; this was the Palpatine she remembered.

His sleep alarm sounded in an annoying whine. Palpatine broke the kiss. “Infernal noise,” he complained, and turned to silence it. He turned back to her, propping himself on his elbow, and she wanted to chase him for another kiss and stopped herself.

She ran her hand along his hip instead, and then down. “Welcome back,” she whispered. “I missed you.”

“Then stop being so difficult.” His tone was light and teasing. He turned away from her and got up and put on a light. She lay, enjoying the sight of him from behind. She had no idea how he stayed as lean and fit as he did, working the hours he typically worked. Age was on her side for now, but not his.

Having lost her bid to keep him in bed for a bit, she gathered the sheet around her and propped herself up, preparing to get up.

He turned and looked down at her. “Stay a moment.” A quick smile. “I’m enjoying the view.”

She smiled and dropped the sheet a little. “So am I.”

He drew closer and sat down beside her. “While I’m thinking of it. You had my guard detain a visitor of mine the other night.”

“Yes, I did.” No use lying about it. “Sheev, what work does that man do for you?”

A thoughtful expression wrinkled his brow; then he said, “You employ investigators to do background checks. So do I.”

She lay back against the pillow. “I found him very intimidating. Not the sort I associate with you, normally.”

A half-smile crossed his face. “He found you … quite loyal, to me. Sate Pestage is a man it’s difficult to impress.”

She found his eyes with her own. “I am loyal to you.”

He regarded her in silence for a moment, then rose to his feet. “Breakfast, in a bit?”

“Just say where.”


CHAPTER TEN: GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS, TOO


They breakfasted in the hotel restaurant off to themselves, apart from everyone else. She caught Tomal looking at them with a barely-suppressed simper. Of course, if he had caught Pestage and whoever Palpatine had seen prior, he would have seen that she didn’t emerge from Palpatine’s room last night.

En route to the Senator’s first engagement that day, Tomal stole up beside her. “Interesting … management technique, ma’am.”

Sereine held back her own smile. “Palpatine and I have a relationship.”

Tomal look aside at her with alarm. “But, Sereine … he …”

She whispered, “It’s all right. We’ve discussed it. However, we don’t need anyone else discussing it.”

“Of course not,” said Tomal. “But if you should need to be apprised of something in the middle of the night …”

“The Senatorial Guard is requesting secretly adjoining rooms from now on,” she said. “And I have my datapad.”

She thought over what Palpatine had said the night previously and tried pulling him aside when he started to look stressed. “I’m sorry, Senate business, I have to steal him away for a minute.” He had three engagements that day; she tried talking him down, she tried encouraging him, she tried a moment of silence to let him collect himself.

Over the next weeks, the combination of these tactics and those after hours started to show. His tolerance for large crowds and people tapping him and touching him grew; he even began asking them if they had relatives in the quake and stopping to listen to their stories himself. At night, his manner with her was easier and less driven.

His polling rose within striking distance of Sio Bibble’s, and she began to breathe easier. She only hoped nothing happened to Bibble as a consequence of trying to match Palpatine’s schedule, because that, apparently, was what Tappan was trying to do. He no longer spoke to her when they encountered each other, casting her angry looks instead. And that made her angry.

One morning she stepped over to him and took him aside. “How can you do what you’re doing?” she hissed. “If you press on, and something happens to him—how can you live with yourself?”

Broi Tappan gave her a look she couldn’t fathom, and then he said something that made even less sense. “How can you live with yourself?”

Sereine blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

Sereine drew herself up to her full height. “I most certainly do know what I’m doing!” She turned to stalk off, shaking her hair behind her as she stared back at him over her shoulder. “You’re going to find out, Broi Tappan: I’m the best that’s ever been.”

***

Bibble’s problems grew worse and became a major news topic. It was only a matter of time now before Palpatine found out, no matter what she did. It was highly possible he would be very angry once the truth was clear. She thought hard about how to present it to him: Why she had carried on the deception for as long as she did; what she thought he needed to win this election.

Their next stop was, finally, Theed. Their final home base while they made last campaign stops all over Naboo.

Home. This was their home planet, not Tappan’s. If she couldn’t pull it out here, she would consider it a major failure, especially after all the improvements of the last weeks. The last ten days of the campaign would take place here.

Palpatine drew her into his arms and they made love again, that last night on the cruiser on their way to Theed. As she lay beside him after, luxuriating in the feel of his warmth on her skin, she wondered if it was the last time for this campaign. She had long since given up her apartment on their home world, since she never spent time there, but she knew Palpatine still kept an apartment there and wondered if he wouldn’t prefer the comforts of home to the confines of the campaign cruiser. If he did, it would be impossible for her to join him there all night without the entire staff knowing, and probably the press, as well.

His breathing slowed next to her, and with satisfaction she heard him slip into sleep. At least I’m good for his health, she thought. Briefly she wondered what his apartment in Theed looked like; she had never had occasion to visit him there. Statues, probably. Red décor, and lots and lots of statues. Palpatine the art freak.

And then she smiled in the dark, for she knew exactly how to explain her strategy to him.

It happened the following morning, as the cruiser drew close enough to Naboo to pick up Theed’s major news channel as their main broadcast. It blared into the cafe as they all ate breakfast; Sio Bibble obviously losing his train of thought during an interview in a way that made it clear that something was wrong.

Palpatine turned an accusing eye on her. “And so. This was what you didn’t want to tell me.”

Twenty college kids all tensed and held their breath as she sipped her kaffe and met his gaze.

She set her cup down. “Yes, this is what I didn’t want to tell you.” She shifted her chair back and stood up. “All right, the gig is up,” she announced to the room. “Everyone finish your breakfast, and then it’s a full strategy session in the staff room. I’m going to explain to everyone everything we’ve been doing these past six weeks, and what our job is from here on out.”

She smiled at him as he fitfully stabbed meat onto the end of his fork. “This had better be intriguing, my dear. Since I should have heard it weeks ago.”

She let her smile grow in response. “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

*the Wattpad version of this has artwork I don't know how to post here.