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When Padmé died, Sabé went to Alderaan.
Not right away. For months, it felt like time had stopped and that she was encased in ice. For months, she did nothing.
She hadn’t seen Padmé in almost four years. They’d attempted to write to one another but as the days, then months, then years marched on their messages had grown more stilted and less frequent. Sabé’s last message to Padmé was dated nearly eight months ago. She didn’t know the woman who died. Not really. Not anymore. But once they had been closer than sisters. Once, Sabé had very nearly believed that they were one soul separated into two bodies.
So when the ice surrounding her finally melted—when she finally felt like she could breathe, move, think—she followed the path of Padmé’s life and it led her to a tiny baby on Alderaan.
Senator Organa and Queen Breha had been horrified when she showed up in baby Leia’s life a little more than a year after Padmé’s death. In hindsight, Sabé supposed she probably shouldn’t have broken into the palace, snuck into the nursery, and then cradled the darling baby girl while sobbing as quietly as she knew how. Sabé had never been much good at crying quietly and there were probably better ways to introduce herself to the people raising Padmé’s daughter than being dragged before them in chains. But once she’d found a way to explain who she was and showed the Organas how she’d managed to find Leia and what they could do to make sure no one else ever would, things worked out.
Sabé was installed in the royal household and she saw Leia every day for a good three years.
She didn’t like it. Sabé was not meant to stay still. She was not meant to be a nanny, to do laundry, sing lullabies or change diapers. Just like she wasn’t meant to be a Senator’s handmaiden, to arrange schedules, do paperwork, or stand one step behind someone for the rest of her life. But she had left Padmé’s shadow and Padmé had died. So she passed three years in the child’s shadow, to ensure that Leia lived.
Then, the Organas entrusted her with the truth of Luke. Well, maybe entrusted wasn’t the right word. Sabé had decided to do a surprise test on the encryption of the Organas’ private comms. As it turned out, the code had a few holes. Also, Padmé had given birth to twins and the second child was on the ghastliest planet Sabé had ever had the misfortune of stepping foot on.
After wrestling with herself (and the Alderaan royal guard) for nearly a month, she finally convinced herself that Leia could probably be kept safe for a few weeks and that temporarily kidnapping the girl would be unnecessary. With that decided, she left Leia with her adopted parents and a host of guards happy to see the back of her.
Sabé arrived on Tatooine less than a week after she left Alderaan.
It did not take her long to find Luke. Owen and Beru Lars, while probably decent enough people, had no notion of subterfuge whatsoever. Luke had kept his father’s last name. They openly told people that his father was a pilot who had married a pretty off-worlder with a government job. The coordinates of their moisture farm was practically public knowledge. The shady looking man at the cantina had given her directions without so much as a tiny bribe.
It had taken her a year to find Leia. She eased her speeder to a stop a mile from the Lars homestead only two days after arriving on planet.
Grumbling to herself about whatever fool had thought that this was a suitable place for Padmé’s son, she flung her hood over her head and started marching towards Luke.
“Handmaiden.” A voice floated across the desert.
Sabé spun fully around, blaster in hand, before the cloaked figure finished his announcement. Then, she blinked and re-holstered her weapon.
Sabé had only ever spoken to Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi while in the guise of Queen Amidala but his face had been plastered across the holonet for years. Padmé had mentioned him in her messages.
The man standing in front of her had more lines on his face than the man in the news reports and showed no signs of the sense of humor Padmé had sworn he had.
“Jedi,” Sabé said in return.
Kenobi winced. Sabé stared at him impassively. She did not feel sorry.
“What brings you to Tatooine?” Kenobi asked, as if he did not already know.
“I swore a vow.”
“As did I. But those we swore to are gone.”
Sabé’s brow did not furrow because a handmaiden was inscrutable. But, then again, her lady was gone—she was no handmaiden, not anymore. She let her eyebrows draw together and, for good measure, added a scowl to the top of it.
“As if that’s how promises work. You may be happy enough to abandon your vows now that everyone who would hold you to them is dead, but I intend to keep mine. Where’s Luke?”
“Safe.” Kenobi’s face smoothed into polite emptiness even as Sabé rolled her eyes.
“If he’s so safe, why does the entire planet know where to find him?”
Sabé waited for his reply but he simply stared at her. She gave him another moment before turning back around and striding towards the Lars homestead.
Kenobi fell in step with her. Sabé resisted the urge to speed up. The Jedi was significantly taller than her—speeding up would do no good.
“You should know I’m taking him with me,” she finally said when the silence became overwhelming. “This is no place for a child of Padmé Amidala.”
“It is the only place for a child of Anakin Skywalker.”
She stopped. The sand swirled around her feet as she slowly turned to look at Kenobi again.
For all his face remained calm, Kenobi’s blue eyes were hard as ice and there was a certain stubbornness to his jaw that she probably should have expected.
“If I can find him, the Emperor can find him,” Sabé said. “Tatooine is not safe. And he may be Anakin’s, but he’s Padmé’s too.”
“How did you find him?”
“Isn’t it enough to know that I did?”
Kenobi simply stared at her. Sabé was getting quite tired of his stares. There was something about his gaze that made her feel like he was taking the measure of her heart.
“I found Leia first. From there, it wasn’t too hard to find Luke. Those who come looking now will have a much harder time of it. I made sure of it.”
Her answer did not stop Kenobi from staring at her so she started walking again.
“You are not the only one who lost someone you loved.” Kenobi’s words echoed across the sands and, to her frustration, Sabé found herself drifting to a halt yet again.
“I thought you Jedi forswore all attachments.”
“And I thought your vows to Padmé only lasted as long as her reign.”
Sabé slowly turned around. Kenobi, damn him, was still staring.
“I failed Anakin as you failed Padmé,” he said. “But I do not intend to fail his son. Why are you here, when her daughter is not?”
When Padmé died, Sabé went to Alderaan. Not right away. Sabé had to thaw her heart and stop her guilt from drowning her before she could face the journey. And when Anakin died, Obi-Wan Kenobi had gone to Tatooine. She didn’t know if his heart ever felt like ice or if his guilt ever felt fathoms deep and impossible to breathe through. But standing in that desert, with the sand stirring gently at her feet, Sabé very nearly believed she could see Obi-Wan Kenobi’s life path stretching out before him. And it was the same as hers.
“You swear you will keep him safe? You swear no harm will come to him while you yet breathe?” Sabé demanded fiercely.
“I swear.” Kenobi’s voice was as steady and firm as bedrock. “And do you swear you will keep her safe? Ensure no harm comes to her while you yet breathe?”
“I swear.” The vow was the easiest she ever made, as she had been whispering it to herself every night since the first, when she cradled Leia in her arms, unable to believe the second chance she had been given.
“So we speak,” Kenobi began.
“So we intend,” Sabé continued.
“So let it be done.” They finished together.
Sabé stayed the night with Kenobi—with Obi-Wan. They stared up at the endless sea of stars and left unspoken all the things that mattered most. The next day, he let her catch a glimpse of Luke and she showed him her holo of Leia.
Then she left the desert, never to return.
Instead, she watched Leia grow from the shadows and repeated her vow to herself like a lullaby on the nights she couldn’t sleep. And when her life seemed unbearable, when the aching stillness of her days threatened to overwhelm her, she stared up at the stars, thinking that maybe, a galaxy away, Obi-Wan might be doing the same.
After all, just as she was not meant to stay still, to spend her life in someone else’s shadow, Obi-Wan wasn’t meant to molder away in the desert, wasn’t meant to condemn himself to a forsaken wasteland for the sake of child he had been forbidden to love. And yet he had made the same promises as her. He, too, was sacrificing his life in penance for the people they should have saved. In her darkest hours, when fear and guilt crept over her in the night, Sabé very nearly believed she was not alone—that, even though he was a galaxy away, Obi-Wan Kenobi walked life’s path alongside her.
It was very nearly enough.