Edges of the World

Interlude III

"Breaking news from Naboo, Senator Padmé Amidala, home to address concerns related to the death of Sheev Palpatine, collapsed today in the streets of the capital city of Theed. We are not yet sure what was the cause behind her collapse, and are waiting for an official statement from her team. She was immediately taken to a private medcenter to receive top notch treatment."

"Wow, I knew the Senator was under stress, but that is a bit much, isn't it?"

"I'm telling you, if she can't handle the pressure of her job, she should not be in office..."

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"She just collapsed? In the street?" Jobal was frantic, sick with worry.

"Madam Naberrie, now that she is here and receiving a blood transfusion, your daughter is going to be fine."

Jobal barely heard the healer's reassurance. "I should never have let her go out alone, how could I have been so lax..."

"Madam, if the healers on Coruscant had cleared her after the birth, there is no way you could have known she would have hemorrhaged." The healer kept speaking, technical medical jargon and assurances that Padmé would be fine, that Humans who had just given birth experienced complications with regularity and the facility was prepared to handle them.

Jobal did not hear any of it.

She sat by Padmé's bedside, clinging to her daughter's hand, and blamed herself for Padmé's condition. How had she missed so much that was happening in her daughter's life? How had she been so unaware? A whole marriage and pregnancy, and she'd only found out at the very last moment? What sort of mother was she?

She should have been there, should have given Padmé the same warnings her mother had given her, that she had given Sola.

Jobal remembered how during her pregnancy with Sola she had somehow expected she would give birth and then recover immediately. That her body would just return to normal, that she would instantly and magically transform into an unrealistic ideal of motherhood free of regrets or doubts related to her role and children.

Jobal had of course discovered how wrong that was.

She had learned that mothers are still sentients, with all the emotional complications that always ensued, and even putting aside all the medical complications of birth, postpartum life had been far from the return to normalcy she had expected.

Now all these years later she worried that her youngest child had gone into her own pregnancy with the same false expectations of ease and simplicity.

Jobal knew her daughter was a woman who had devoted herself to her work, and had romanticized all other aspects of life. She knew that marriage as well as motherhood were a fantasy Padmé had nurtured from a young age. That when it came to matters outside of her job, Padmé tended to see the good, and avoid the bad. That had always suited Padmé just fine, her job was hard enough, her concerns there were so far-reaching, why complicate her personal life with layers?

Padmé had dreamed of a perfect love and perfect pregnancy and perfect life all around, because all she had ever known was a world where work was hard but personal relationships were perfect and easy. Jobal had not realized Padmé would continue to stubbornly hold onto those fantasies for so long.

Now that Jobal knew about her daughter's marriage, her secret relationship she had balanced all through the war, she began to suspect she knew why her child was acting as she was. She was starting to form theories about her daughter's life, and she hated all of them. Jobal had always loved her Padmé's idealism, but now she suspected that it could have been hurting her child.