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“Mommy?” Leia’s gaze jumped from one woman to the other, and then to another. “Mommy? Mommy?”
They were in the green parlour of the Theed Royal Palace, the location of Padmé’s long-awaited reunion with her handmaidens. There was six of them in the room, all mirror images of the Empress Padmé Amidala. And there was a seventh one, the real Padmé.
The trouble was, nobody knew which one.
The three-year-old Princess Leia’s brown eyes widened in awe, and they kept getting glossier. Anakin knew where this was going; he sensed the rising threat of tears. Leia’s chubby arm reached out, and her finger pointed at one of them—Anakin wasn’t exactly sure who.
Leia turned to look at her father, her gaze full of question.
“What’s the matter, girlfriend?” Anakin asked playfully. He was holding Luke, balancing him on his hip, and rocking him in hopes of finally getting him to sleep, since he’s been resisting afternoon nap.
“Mommy?” Leia’s voice thinned, and she took a step toward her chosen woman. She gave the child an encouraging smile, a smile that was a mirror twin to Padmé’s, yet Anakin was suspecting it wasn’t actually her.
“Why so many mommies?” asked Luke with a raised voice, eyeing them all suspiciously. He plugged his thumb into his mouth with unmistakeable indignance.
When Anakin didn’t answer him, Luke squirmed impatiently and repeated, with a full mouth, “Daddy, why are so many mommies? Hah?”
“They are not all mommies. They just look like mommy. But only one of them is really her.” He would have never admitted, but beneath his amused smile, the presence of seven Padmé-looking women unsettled him, too. Maybe even more so than his children. “Can you spot the real one?”
“No!” Luke was quick to declare, with an edge of panic in his voice. He buried his face into Anakin’s chest. “Daddy, make them go away! I want real mommy back!”
Leia didn’t back down from the challenge that easily. She took another careful step towards one of them, her eyes narrowing as she evaluated her. The woman was sitting on the edge of the sofa, with a glass of champagne in her hand, wearing a long silk dress of yellow.
The dress could have given it away, Anakin thought to himself, playing along with Leia. But after lunch, Padmé left to get changed, and she came straight to here. We have no idea what she’s wearing.
After a long moment of contemplation, Leia announced her judgement: “You’re not mommy!”
“What makes you think that?” the woman asked softly.
Her jaw is too pronounced. Her eyebrows are slightly too arched.
“It makes me think that...” Leia paused. She darted toward the woman, climbed up on her lap, and buried her face into her hair. “It makes me think that because you don’t smell like her!”
Luke squirmed again, his face reemerging from his father’s robes. “She is not mommy!” he repeated his sister’s words, pointing at the woman accusingly, his soft face twisting into a fierce scowl.
“Wow,” said another woman, grinning at her yellow-dressed twin. “Dormé is officially cancelled.”
The group burst out in laughter. Their mirth frightened Luke back into Anakin’s safeguard and even startled Leia. She shied away, behind Anakin’s legs, hugging it and pressing her face against the back of his thigh.
A protocol droid arrived, delivering their afternoon tea just in time. While the group settled down on the sofas and sunk into their light conversation of reminiscing about the past, the Skywalker twins stayed on alert.
Though being on alert meant two entirely different things in Luke and Leia’s dictionary.
Luke kept clinging to Anakin with his eyes firmly shut, sucking his thumb, and refusing to let go of him. Anakin kept stroking his soft, blond hair. The boy was getting tired, and grumpy, and his usual body pillow—his mother—was currently unavailable.
On the other hand, Leia kept circling the group of handmaidens, stalking them, daring to approach some, and being repelled by others. Occasionally, she even attempted to touch or sniff them, in a desperate attempt to identify her mother.
Luke was falling asleep; the grip of his chubby fist on Anakin’s robe faltered, and a trail of drool dripped out of his mouth. Finally, Anakin thought, recalling the morning filled with Luke’s tearful struggle against taking a nap.
The handmaidens were in the midst of a fascinating story time.
“...and then he asked me if we could do an Amidala role-play and I was like, dude, if you have a hard-on for the Empress, you're dating the wrong girl!”
Hysterical laughter roared through the room, shaking Luke up from his sleep. Anakin groaned internally. Disturbing.
Was this worth more than the peaceful rest of his son?
He didn’t think so.
Sucking his annoyance back, he shifted and began rocking his fussy baby again. Luke was curled up in a ball, and as Anakin looked closer, he saw fat tears rolling down his cheeks. He was silently crying.
“Oh, Luke,” he murmured, cuddling him closer. “Oh, baby. What is it?”
Luke pressed his face against his father’s neck. “I want mommy back. I want... my mommy back.”
“She’s right here, in the room.”
“But I—I can’t see her. I can’t...” he sobbed. “There’s too many.”
One handmaiden straightened and caught Anakin’s gaze. The two looked at each other for a stretching moment. Her face softened with a shade of genuine worry; her expression was one Anakin knew better than his own reflection.
Padmé.
It’s fine, Anakin mouthed to her. He’s just fussy.
Padmé’s eyes lingered on her son, disheartened, and Anakin suspected she was regretting this jest. But she couldn’t back out of it now. It was her idea. Her game.
It was almost the end of teatime when Leia’s triumphant cry filled the room. “I FOUND YOU!”
She threw herself at Padmé and clung to her from behind, hooking her arms around her neck and bouncing up and down. She yanked a necklace out from under her dress and held it up as high as it would go. It was the japor snippet, the one she always wore. The one only she wore.
The one that was carved by the hands of a little slave boy from a distant desert planet.
As soon as he heard Leia’s yelling, Luke jolted awake from sleep, elbowed himself away from Anakin’s arms, and aggressively raced towards his mother, stomping and shoving everyone out of the way.
“MOMMY!” he screamed with full lungs as his body collided with Padmé’s. His hands kept grasping at her clothes and hair, and his voice went squeaky with excitement. “IT’S YOU, MOMMY!”
“Yes, it’s me!” Padmé was on the verge of crying. She raised her face at her husband and embraced her twins just as fiercely as they clung to her.
And she didn’t let go of them for the rest of the vacation.
For the rest of her life.