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She shouldn’t be down here, because Naboo's secrets are its own and Padmé would never betray them, but right now, in the wake of Anakin attacking Rush, it’s hard for Padmé to think straight. It’s hard to think past the fear, the horror, the anger—at Rush, for never accepting her lack of interest, but at Anakin too, in his lack of trust, in his possessiveness.
Padmé has always secretly thought that possessiveness in a partner would be charming, exciting. Naboo has a long history of tales where angry, possessive partners are dragged down and drowned, and displays like that are sneered at, treated disdainfully, but—Padmé has always thought, private and secret, that being loved so fiercely would be a blessing.
She isn't feeling that now, though. It’s so much easier to understand why her ancestors devoured those kinds of husbands and partners now that she’s been the target of possessiveness like that.
Light steps, slipping through the reek and press of Coruscant's lower levels, bring her to a quiet stretch of walkways, dark and deserted. Padmé pauses for a moment at the edge of a rusted-over building, listening, but Anakin is back in her apartment nursing his rage, didn’t follow her when she made her excuses and slipped out before their argument could turn into an outright fight.
Cowardly, to do that. But Padmé had realized, as his voice rose, that her hands were shaking, and she couldn’t forget the sound Clovis made when Anakin hit him. She’s not a coward, isn't fearful of people, but in that moment, she had remembered the Tuskens, Anakin's rage afterwards, and she’d pretended to get a comm from her office that needed immediate attention. Anakin had let her go, moody and not willing to bother pressing, and somehow, that almost feels worse.
Padmé wasn’t some romantic cause he was fighting for, willing to cause harm to keep safe. She was just an object, a thing Anakin owned and that he didn’t like Rush touching. Like R2, or a favorite starfighter.
In light of that realization, Padmé wants water, wants to swim. And even if it’s Naboo's secret, even if she would normally never risk such a thing, she’s down in the depths below the Senate Building, even Sabé left behind, with scales so close to the surface of her skin that it feels like one wrong motion will tear the skin entirely, let her true self out.
It’s always hard for Padmé to resist the call of the water hidden below Coruscant's groaning, teeming metal surface. The actual earth of the planet is so far below the top level that there’s no trace of it in even Padmé’s water-sense, but a hundred levels down there’s a web of canals and pools, some natural and some forged by convenience, that sing like pearls cast out across a muddy lakebed. They're nowhere a senator should be, the lower levels dangerous and webbed with GAR checkpoints, but—
Regardless of the risks, Padmé finds herself leaving behind the metal and smoke and pollution, the hot, rank dark of too many bodies without the blessing of fresh air. Here, the district is all but abandoned, and she can sense actual water instead of smog, cool and quiet and still.
Down a back alley, beneath an old warehouse, the water-song is strongest. It comes from a cracked stretch of duracrete, pitted and covered in greenery she’s never seen before, the water collecting in what look like the empty foundations of a building that was simply never finished and eventually built over. The pool is wide, wider than she expects, and natural, rather than manmade, or at least made so long ago that it’s since run wild around the edges. There are plants growing up, strange and unfamiliar in the day-spectrum lights that never change, and the smell of flowers and green growth hangs heavy in the air. Down by the water’s edge, the earth is covered in delicate purple flowers with feathery emerald leaves, the blossoms a pale and dreamy lavender with silvery centers, their scent sweetly sharp and undercut with a heady musk.
Breathing it in, letting it settle her, Padmé slips out of her heavy dress on the shore, wipes off her makeup, combs out her hair. Then, deliberate, like coming home, she steps into the water and lets herself sink.
Like a revelation, her body cracks open, sheds all the lies and false faces in a rush of bubbles as Padmé gasps. Fingers grow webbing, limbs grow fins. Her legs lose form, stretching and contorting and cracking like stiff fingers finally moved the right way, red scales washing out from under the skin, and Padmé takes a deep breath of water, closes her eyes, and dives with one hard flick of her long tail, skimming along the algae-covered duracrete bed of the accidental lake. It feels like she finally can breathe again, like she’s finally unlaced a corset that’s far too tight and can fill her lungs, and Padmé laughs, silent in the water as she whirls, gauzy fins catching the current, her long claws skimming the stone.
It’s been so long. It’s been too long. Last time she had the chance to wear her first form was at the lake house, with Anakin always near her, and he had refused to let her slip away even for a moment, too set on guarding her, too obsessive in his feelings.
It’s jarringly cold in the depths, though not as cold as the rivers on Naboo, the deep ones that carve paths through the planet’s core and teem with monsters bigger than any Mandalorian mythosaur. Cold enough to stop her, and Padmé lets herself drift, cradled by the currents, eyes open as she drinks in the feeling of being somewhere like home. Somewhere familiar, her senses opening up in a vast spread as she just breathes for a long, long span of minutes.
Padmé was obsessive about Anakin too, strange against her bone-deep discomfort before their trip to Tatooine, and in the cold water, with a sense of all the rivers that flow into and out of this body, with the horror of Anakin lunging for Rush so close, it finally feels like she can think clearly. Like hindsight is suddenly vivid and sharp and unsettling, setting its teeth in her throat.
Something is wrong, and Padmé has been wrong, and she has a terrible feeling she knows what the source is.
In her first form, free of the constraints of everything above water, it’s harder to keep her temper. Everything is closer, sharper, and Padmé turns and twists along the bed of the lake, claws dragging furrows in the stone, sharp teeth aching with the urge to bite. The Gungans have horror stories about the Naboo, whisper tales about them seizing anyone on the shore who’s a little too slow to get away, anyone who makes them angry. Tales about bones cracked open and marrow sucked out, teeth worn like pearls, chum in the water. And—they aren't wrong.
The Naboo are respectable, these days. Part of the wider galaxy, part of society, devoted to morals and rules and upholding the greater good. But there’s a reason they put such a focus on that. There’s history that they're trying to make up for. Trying to paper over, maybe, and Padmé feels all of it when she’s like this.
It’s vivid, in a way, that anger, that hunger. Wrong to give in to these instincts, and she knows that, but—
The sound of Anakin's fist on Rush’s flesh makes her teeth ache, and she’s so angry that if she had that moment to live again, she’s not entirely sure what she would do. Not the diplomatic thing, likely.
Padmé surfaces with a breath of warm air, sprawls out to float as the current drags gently at long fins, her tangled mass of hair like seaweed spinning out around her. The echoes of water-song hum along her bones, showing her a path from this pool all the way down to Coruscant's surface, a route through channels and locks and lakes that few other creatures have taken. There's an ocean somewhere down there, dark and secret, hidden away from the light, and if Padmé took that path, found it, she would be a predator in a brand new sea, the most dangerous thing there. Could hunt, indulge, never come back to the air-breathing world where she has to face all of these complicated, tangled feelings.
It’s more tempting right now than it should be.
And then, soft, there's a rustle, a brush of silk on leaves. Padmé dives on instinct, ducking under the surface but keeping her eyes on the shore, and pauses in surprise as the figure slipping through the tight press of flowers and fruiting trees comes clear.
Bana looks as beautiful down here in the darkness as she ever does in the halls of the Senate, elegant and lovely wrapped up in soft lavender silk. Most of her focus is on the plants around her, brushing leaves, touching petals, and as Padmé watches, the growth turns towards her like she’s the sun.
Strange, Padmé thinks, and swims closer to the edge, fascinated despite herself. she’d thought that Bana was simply Human, but—no Human makes flowers react like that.
And then, deliberate, Bana reaches up, draws back the silk headscarf she always wears, drapes it over a branch. Her dress slides off, pooling around her feet, and she steps into the water with a breath that Padmé feels, pure relief and welcome as she lets the water close over her—
Freezes, breath catching sharply, as her eyes catch on Padmé’s abandoned dress on the shore.
Instinct and intrigue drive Padmé to the surface, and she breaks through the still water before Bana can leap back, offers her a crooked smile that doesn’t do quite enough to hide her sharp teeth. “Bana,” she says.
Bana's wide eyes sweep over her, flicker back to the dress. After a bare second, though, she smiles a little ruefully, recognition of a shared secret as she sinks down all the way into the water.
“Padmé,” she returns. “This is not where I would have thought to find you.”
“It’s the closest private place where I can swim,” Padmé says, and slides closer, circling around Bana. There's a thrill in it, like play-hunting the way she and Sola used to, and the way Bana's dark gaze follows her, the way her lips part and her breath comes a little quicker, feels like power or maybe like Padmé finally fits into her own skin again. She lets her long, trailing fins slip over Bana's arm, then asks, “The flowers, they're your doing?”
Bana reaches out, touches the crimson scales over Padmé’s hip, the scattering of gold scales among the red. Playful, Padmé twists, curls around her, catches her hips as she presses up against Bana's back, and feels the shiver that runs through Bana as if it’s her own.
“There was—there was too little green,” Bana answers, faintly unsteady as Padmé breathes in the flower-scent of her. “Down here it’s protected from the wind.”
“The wind?” Padmé asks, and releases Bana, slides back a little as Bana turns to face her. There’s no hesitation at all before Bana steps forward, her feet leaving the lakebed as she swims out into Padmé’s territory.
“It shakes the petals from the flowers,” Bana says, and smiles, meeting Padmé’s eyes. “If too many fall, my kind will die.”
Padmé pauses. Flower spirits, she thinks, realization settling, and glances at the lavender blossoms covering the shore. Humbarine has a tradition of nature spirits, but—they're supposed to be old folk stories.
The same way, she supposes, that merfolk are on Naboo.
With a laugh, Padmé catches Bana's hands, draws her out into the deep water. “I’ll keep an eye on them,” she promises. “Nothing will disturb them here.”
Bana smiles, catching her shoulders, letting Padmé draw her close, and the press of her body makes heat curl sharp and hungry though Padmé’s veins. She wraps her arms around Bana's waist, pressing them together again, and breathes in Bana's scent, the same scent as the flowers on the shore. Touches, and wants, and—
It feels as if she hasn’t had her own wants in so very long.
“Padmé?” Bana asks, soft, breathy, and Padmé wants to lay her out on the shore, pull her down into the depths, fit their bodies together and never separate them.
“I want to kiss you right now,” Padmé says, soft, a confession. Wants something of her own, something that reaches out without grabbing and crushing, something that doesn’t feel like unease twisted into obsession. Wants something for herself, without the fear and horror and anger, and—
Bana kisses her, mouth as soft as petals, as sweet as honey. She cups Padmé’s face in her hands, kisses her around the needle teeth, without fear of the claws Padmé splays across her back, without worry for the long tail that curls around her legs. They sink together, under the cool, still water, mouths pressed together, and Padmé never wants to come up for air.