Archive of Our Own

Theed

The headache had been pounding at her temples for hours, and Ryoo Naberrie wanted nothing more than to go back to her cramped apartment, turn off all the lights, and go to sleep. She was halfway there, her hood pulled low to block out the last rays of sunlight, when her comm buzzed on her wrist. She ducked into the shadow of an office building to answer it.

“Mom?” she asked in surprise.

“I know we said dinner tomorrow, but can you come tonight?” Sola’s voice was calm on the surface, but Ryoo could hear in the hush of it that something was wrong. Goosebumps prickled on her neck despite the sweltering heat of the day.

“I’ll come,” Ryoo said. “Let me get the wine.”

It could be any number of things, she thought as she let herself into her apartment. None of them good. Better not to think about it. She changed out of her work clothes into flowing blue trousers and a matching top. She downed a tab of painkillers, then grabbed up the wine. Just a nice dinner with her mother. The billow of her trousers easily concealed the small, round device she slipped into one pocket just as she left the apartment.

The house she had grown up in was very empty these days. For three, it had been nice; a narrow detached house, bedrooms and other private rooms upstairs and an open and inviting living space downstairs. A terrace overlooking a long stretch of garden. Today it felt more cavernous than ever; only the light in the kitchen was on when she let herself in.

“Mom?” she called.

Sola appeared at the top of the stairs, and Ryoo tilted her head back to meet her haunted gaze. One hand clutched the banister, and she seemed to be drawing all her strength from that one support.

“Dinner’s in the oven,” Sola said.

“Come down here,” Ryoo replied.

They settled onto the same sofa, neither wanting to be far from each other. Ryoo drew the device from her pocket, and it let out a soft, low tone when she activated it. A light on top flashed amber, then purple, then settled on a clear, cool cyan. “All right, no one can listen in,” Ryoo said. “Tell me.”

Sola reached out and took both of Ryoo’s hands between hers. Her palms were like ice. “I got a call from a medical center on the edge of Wild Space.”

“It got through?” Ryoo said, startled.

“It came through the Theed hospital system; I was named as next-of-kin. My...cousin, it seems, has been in recovery there for some time.”

“But your cousins are all here.”

Sola shook her head, looking lost. “They said she gave her name as Tsabin Naberrie.”

Ryoo’s breath hissed in through her teeth. Tsabin—Tsabin had been the birth name of her aunt Sabé. They hadn’t had contact with her in months; not since offworld communications had locked down. “It must be serious, for her to risk this.”

“She doesn’t have any papers with her. They won’t release her until she can get valid scandocs.”

Ryoo pulled her legs up onto the couch, curling them tightly beside her. “Do you want me to go?” she said seriously. “I can find a way—”

“It’s too dangerous,” Sola said sharply.

An argument rose up in her throat, but Ryoo closed her teeth over it and swallowed. Her mother’s fear was understandable. Ryoo was also an adult who knew the stakes as well as she did, and could weigh them, and her own skills, for herself.

“Did they say what happened?” she said instead. Slowly, she steered the conversation through the treacherous waters of this news, and when her mother was in the fresher, she snuck upstairs and made a copy of the message for herself.

“She’ll find a way through this,” Ryoo reassured her as they exchanged an unusually long hug goodbye. “She always has.” She buried her face in Sola’s neck, breathing in the familiar floral scent she wore and silently apologizing for what she was going to do.

They parted, and the next morning Ryoo put in her request for time off work.

Onoam, first moon of Naboo

They were mirror images, a queen and a former senator.

Blue tiles of all shades spread around them, a courtyard made to look like the rippling surface of a pond. Water poured from the queen’s outstretched hands into a fountain basin, and the statue stood high enough that its blank eyes stared out over the heads of anyone in the courtyard. Pooja Naberrie stood just below the queen, looking up into the serene stone face. Often and often, she had found a moment’s peace in this silent companion.

“Who was she?”

Pooja jumped a little, then turned to face her interlocutor. “Minister Aldamar,” she said. “This is a representation of Queen Mushta, one of the first queens of Naboo. She’s remembered for…charitable works.” She was remembered for draining the royal coffers to feed her people during the first terrible famine to hit the Naboo on their new homeworld.

“One of your selections?” he asked.

“No, I believe it came with the house,” Pooja said.

Aldamar nodded, folding his arms behind his back. “The former owner was old-fashioned, I suppose. You’ve never considered replacing it?”

Pooja’s heart clenched, but she kept her face disinterested. “It would likely be a long and costly undertaking, particularly if we disturbed the tiles here. It never seemed like a priority, as long as Moff Byrit doesn’t mind it.”

Aldamar contemplated the statue, his face unreadable. At length, he said, “I have never been to any of Naboo’s festivals. I hear they’re quite the party.”

“You won’t be asked to partake in anything too uncivilized,” Pooja assured him. He had a crisp Coruscanti accent, and the manners to match; one of Byrit’s hand-picked guests for the festivities.

“Nevertheless, it promises to be entertaining.”

Pooja was examining his stony face, trying to find a second meaning in it, when a jovial voice rang out across the courtyard. “Ah, Aldamar, I wondered where you’d got off to.”

Byrit himself stepped up to join them in contemplation of the statue. He was a young man for the position, by Core standards—only thirty-six years old, although the trim moustache and goatee aged him a little. His flamboyant style, Pooja knew from experience, would likely garner him derisive glances on Imperial Center, at least from those who dared slight a Moff. He reached out, putting a possessive hand on Pooja’s shoulder. “I hope that my chatelaine is keeping you well-entertained.”

“Most diverting,” Aldamar agreed, his cold eyes slicing towards Pooja.

“How is the speech coming along?” Byrit asked her.

“I’ve got it up here,” Pooja assured him, touching one temple. She gave him her most charming smile. “It’s a good speech.” If she added sir, would it be too much? Definitely too much.

Byrit’s hand fell from her shoulder and he gave a short nod. “Don’t forget the importance of this speech in your other preparations. The people must hear from you. They look to you for hope in these troubled times.”

He turned on his heel without a further word. Pooja watched him go and wondered at how she had found herself here. It would be so easy to throw herself into everything but the speech, right now. As chatelaine of Byrit’s Onoam estate, it was her job to fete the elite of Naboo on his behalf. The house and staff were her responsibility. There were still caterers to harry, and decoration to supervise.

“Will you excuse me?” Pooja asked Aldamar.

“Oh, yes,” Aldamar said. “I think I’ve seen all I need to see here.”

Pooja drew out her pocket secretary, considering the tiny screen. She considered, as she had every day since her return to the Naboo system, reaching out to her benefactor. She could if she wanted to; as a member of the governor’s household, she had free access to transmissions in and out of the system. She clung to his sparse messages as a reminder that someone in the galaxy was looking out for her well-being, but she did not need him complicating her life here.

With a snap, she shut the device’s screen and tucked it away. She would not let her unease make a fool of her.

She had come out to see Queen Mushta to remind herself of her duty. Whatever the complexities of her day-to-day work, her real importance was as a symbol. She had been the voice of the new order on Naboo in the Senate. She would continue to be its voice here in the system, too.

In four days’ time, she would stand before a crowd of thousands to remind them of Naboo’s prosperity under the Empire, and when she did, she must be radiant. “I don’t suppose you could lend me your face,” she whispered to Mushta. She looked up into the unseeing eyes again, and chuckled. “No, I suppose you’re a little cold for what I want to present, aren’t you?”

Hasssh Medical Outpost

The patient known as Tsabin Naberrie stood beside a vast wall of clear transparisteel. So far out into Wild Space, looking towards the Core, the galaxy she knew clustered and sparkled like a crown of jewels. There was a weight to it, a oneness, never seen when close up. As soon as she had been well enough to walk, she had begun coming here every day, yearning to be lost in that light once again.

She knew, of course, that light had been hard to find these last twenty years. Even out here, the HoloNet rang with Imperial jingoism and the clamor of stormtroopers’ boots. The medical droids had found her frowning over the datapad they gave her one too many times and confiscated it on the doctor’s orders. Still, she knew.

She heard the whirr of one of the droids’ tracks and turned to look. It was a familiar one—she’d learned all of their markings at this point, green and yellow glyphs along the stem of their necks. “Hello, Esso Ate,” she said. She made room as the droid maneuvered closer, coming to a halt beside her.

“The stars are fine tonight?” TS-O8 said.

“They are beautiful every night,” she replied. “That is one thing that will never change.”

The droid contemplated this for a moment, giving every appearance of looking out at the stars as well. “Their beauty will wait for your dinner.”

The patient laughed. “Very well, they will.”

“Do you think you will be discharged soon?” TS-O8 asked.

She turned to look at the droid, tilting her head to look at its photoreceptors. The droids didn’t have faces on which one could read emotions, but TS-O8 seemed to appreciate the gesture. “Not soon enough for me,” she said. For now, she had no way off the station but to wait; there were no ships permanently docked.

TS-O8 gave a soft trill. “It will be quiet when you have been discharged.”

“I’ll miss you, too, Esso Ate,” the woman said with a little grin.

Time was hard to gauge on a space station for one used to living planetside, but she thought she had been here for about a month before she was well enough to get up and work on getting her strength back. All told, it had been several months since her arrival, with rare appearances by the doctor. There had been another patient, at the beginning, but he didn’t seem to speak Basic. Befriending the droids had been the only way to keep from loneliness, and they were pleasant, if sometimes odd, company.

The lack of contact with other sentients made it all feel so distant, everything the HoloNet had told her about what was happening in the galaxy, her own situation. Some of the month she had been bedridden had been less physical illness than the despair and the aching, wrenching pain of loss. That still lived in her, not far under the surface, but most days now she could get up, look at the stars, stretch and run and nourish her body, and chat with the droids.

Every day, the restless itch grew in her. She needed to be back in the galaxy. There were things that needed doing. She hoped that there were people who needed her, as well.

One morning, as she ran through a shadow-boxing drill, the change came.

“Patient Naberrie.” TU-9D’s voice had no tone to it, it never did, but the interruption was signal enough of something unexpected. She stopped, swiping an arm over her forehead.

“Yes, Ninedee?”

“You have a visitor. Your papers are in order. You are being discharged.”

TS-O8 met her in the hallway outside her room. It held a bag dangling from one manipulator. “I packed your things.” Its photoreceptors flashed. “There is an extra jogan fruit packed inside.”

“Thank you.” She reached up to lay a hand over the top of TS-O8’s head, then stepped away. “Where am I meeting them?”

“Let me show you to the visitors’ area.”

Her message had gone to Sola; she supposed if she expected anyone, it was her. Maybe a friend, or another family member. The woman in the visitors’ area was a stranger about her own age. She registered short-cropped brown hair and dark eyes in the moment before the woman turned to look at her and flinched.

“Oh,” the woman said. The smile she donned was utterly unconvincing. “Glad to see you alive. Come on, our ship’s waiting.”

She followed, bemused. Just who had Sola sent after her? There was something niggling at the back of her head; something familiar about the other woman. Those dark eyes, wary even in repose. She did some mental arithmetic, a suspicion forming in the back of her mind.

They didn’t get far up the boarding ramp before the other woman swung around to face her, her eyes searching her face. “You’re not Sabé,” she said.

“No. I’m Padmé.” She reached forward to steady the other woman, one hand on her shoulder, the other reaching up to brush hair gently off her forehead. Those eyes, yes, but also the round cheeks, the stubborn chin. She pictured them on a much younger face. “And you’re Ryoo, aren’t you?”

“That’s not possible,” Ryoo said. She jerked away from Padmé. “She was my mother’s age. You’re my age.”

“A little younger on both counts, actually, I believe,” Padmé said. “It’s a very long story, and I’ll gladly tell it, but—are we leaving?”

Ryoo opened her mouth, then gave a disbelieving laugh. “No. I want to know who I just vouched for.”

“Ryoo.” Padmé frowned, looking into her niece’s eyes. “Maybe you don’t remember me, you were so young, but surely you’ve seen pictures. My face hasn’t changed since then.”

“You could be anything. You could be a clone, or an impostor with a really good surgeon.”

This time it was Padmé’s turn to laugh. “Does that seem likely to you?”

“Compared to my dead aunt showing up looking exactly like she did at her funeral?”

Padmé drew in a sharp breath. It hurt. Thinking of her family, friends, mourning her and then living on without her. And then the sense of the words hit her, and she frowned. “I wasn’t...Ryoo, I wasn’t at any funeral.”

The disbelief had settled into hard skepticism. “Then who was? There was an open casket; there was a procession.”

“I couldn’t tell you that,” Padmé said gently. “I was in cryostasis for twenty years.”

Ryoo took in a sharp breath, then turned away. “Fine. Fine! But I’m not taking you anywhere I care about until I’ve got verification.”

Padmé gave Ryoo her space as they got underway. She needed it herself; suddenly the gulf of years between the last thing she remembered and the present was very real. One of her first goals, once she got out of the medical station’s tender care, was to find her children—but she was keenly aware now that she would likely not recognize them. She had held them for a few seconds each, and after that everything was just a blank. 

Eventually, she ventured up to the cockpit. Ryoo was sitting in the pilot’s chair, the co-pilot’s seat empty. She jumped a little when Padmé settled there.

“When you were six, I came to visit your grandparents and your family stayed over as well; do you remember? I brought Anakin, and he gave you those terrible battery-powered gundarks—I think your mother never forgave me.”

Ryoo stirred, her eyes skimming over Padmé. “I remember those,” she said grudgingly. “Pooja used to make hers roar over and over. Mom said the sound gave her headaches.”

“How is she? How is everyone?” Padmé had been starved of news beyond the basics.

“Mom’s...fine, I guess. Still living in the house in Theed. Pooja’s in government. Granddad and Nana retired to the hill country, as much as they’ll ever retire.”

“That’s good. That’s...wonderful, I’m so glad they’re all right,” Padmé said, releasing the breath she’d been holding. “What about your cousins?”

Ryoo shrugged. “Kallistan and Urey? I didn’t know you were close to them. Last I heard they were doing all right.”

“No, your…” Padmé paused, an inkling of dread settling on her heart. “I didn’t mean Sola’s and my cousins. I meant your first cousins.”

“My…?” Ryoo said blankly.

“My son and daughter. The twins,” Padmé said.

Ryoo’s eyes widened, just for a moment, just enough for Padmé to understand that something was very wrong.

“What is it?” she asked sharply.

“I didn’t,” Ryoo said, “I don’t...Aunt Padmé, when they said you died, they said your child was still unborn. You had the belly and everything at the funeral.”

“That isn’t true,” Padmé whispered. “I saw them both. I named them. They were supposed to go to your mother if anything happened to me and Anakin—” Her voice choked off as a sudden panic seized her. Anakin, full of rage, a hand outstretched...invisible fingers around her throat, she was choking, dying, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even get enough air to plead…

She stared fixedly at the dials and levers, solid and real and very obviously not of that landing pad on Mustafar. The cool blue of hyperspace swirled around her. She was on a ship bound for home, she was safe.

“Aunt Padmé?” Ryoo asked hesitantly.

“Where’s Anakin?” she hissed.

“He’s dead,” Ryoo said. “I mean...we always thought he was probably dead? Most of the Jedi died, and he didn’t come to your funeral, so we were told he was probably…”

“Thank the stars.” It came out like a first breath of air after minutes underwater, like finally coughing up the thing that had been choking you, terrible in the relief it brought. Her husband, the man she had loved with a fierceness that sometimes scared her, was dead. Her would-be murderer, a man she no longer trusted to raise her children, did not have them.

She finally managed to look into Ryoo’s face, and she saw bewilderment and a little fear. “At the end, he wasn’t a safe person for them,” she said. “Almost anywhere would be safer than with him.”

“But where are they?” Ryoo asked. “If not with him, and not with us. I mean, someone faked your death, maybe…”

Maybe they had them. That was a possibility. The idea filled her with rage—that her children should be taken away from her family, if they couldn’t have her!—but everything she had seen of what had happened during the Republic’s metamorphosis into an Empire said they had been perilous times, indeed. Especially for anyone strong with the Force.

Like the children of a Jedi Knight.

She looked into her niece’s eyes. “It might all be a secret to protect them. The people who saved me were very dear friends; some of the people I trusted most in all the galaxy.”

Ryoo’s eyes were still wary, but she scrunched her fingers in the knee of her trousers, holding Padmé’s gaze. Padmé watched her take a breath, two, clearly thinking something through. “I can keep a secret,” Ryoo said at last.

“It might be a dangerous one.”

Ryoo’s expression cracked like an egg, careful distance giving way to a laugh so profoundly bitter it made Padmé ache. “Danger is nothing new,” she said. “If I have family out there I don’t know? If there’s any chance they’re in danger, if there’s any chance we could reach them? I want to know that, too.”

Padmé needed to probe that bitterness, the pain underneath. “I thought your family was safe.”

“We’re all safe as long as we keep our heads down,” Ryoo said. “Naboo is the Emperor’s home, and we’re meant to be proud of it. We’re loyal. We’ve prospered under the peace and security of the Empire. If Alderaan was the stick, then Naboo is the carrot.”

“Oh.” Finding out about Alderaan, and the relapse into despair that followed, had been the last straw for the medical droids; Ninedee had confiscated the datapad and never given it back. The thought of billions of lives ended for their rulers’ defiance, of Bail and all his people dead…

Alderaan, the stick. The consequences for rebellion. Naboo, the carrot? “No one speaks out?”

“People speak out sometimes,” Ryoo said. “But if they’re loud enough for the people in charge to hear, they regret it.”

“All of your queens have been…”

“The queens are a joke now,” Ryoo said flatly. “The real power is the Moff, who is directly loyal to the Emperor.”

Padmé sat back, feeling hollow. “I knew democracy was dead in the Republic...I knew we had failed even before it became the Empire. I knew it could die on Naboo, if the people and their rulers weren’t vigilant against it. But I never truly believed it would.”

Ryoo shrugged. “Everyone knows you were one of the leaders of the opposition. We’ve been living under the shadow of your legacy ever since. It was okay for a while, but it’s gotten worse since the new Moff; Granddad had to step away from relief work a couple years ago. With all the scrutiny and red tape, he said he was holding them back from doing any good.”

A new thought occurred to Padmé. “If it’s that bad...How did you get off Naboo to get me? And you can’t have given them my real documentation.”

“Luckily for you, I’m an excellent forger,” Ryoo said.

She had said it completely flatly, but Padmé examined her face for signs of a joke. “Are you really?” she finally asked. As a flash of irritation crossed Ryoo’s face, she added, “It’s just...you’re Sola’s daughter.”

Ryoo laughed. “No, you’re right, she’d hate it if she knew. You know your friends? The former handmaidens? They kind of adopted Mom after everything. Said we all needed to stick together. Aunt Rabé was a really bad influence.”

Suddenly, Padmé was laughing as well. Rabé as an aunt was an almost horrifying prospect; she wished she had been there to see it. (She wished she had seen her own children learning to pick locks and break past parental controls). But the mental images were something nice to hold onto, to remind her that many of the people she loved were still here.

When silence had fallen, Ryoo said. “So what about your kids?”

“I want to know if they’re safe, but I don’t know where to start,” Padmé admitted. “Bail Organa is one of those who would know; he’s...he was on Alderaan. The other two were high-ranking Jedi Masters. If the Empire hasn’t killed them as well, they’ll be deep in hiding, unless you know of any Jedi in the Rebellion.” She glanced at Ryoo.

“I don’t think so,” Ryoo said. “Not that I’ve heard. But...I don’t know a lot about the Rebellion.”

Padmé closed her eyes, trying to remember the hazy hours after Anakin’s betrayal. The facility had been staffed by droids; Obi-Wan had carried her in and laid her on the table himself. Bail and Master Yoda had joined them; she remembered their voices. But there was another, she knew. He hadn’t been there, but she had overheard Bail making a call and recognized the voice on the other end.

  “Captain, she’s safe. Can I trust you with something very important? Can I trust you with her life?”

  “With all due respect, Senator, protecting her life is my job.”

  “Of course.” A faint smile in Bail’s voice, despite everything. As he moved away down the hallway, the words trailing off: “I’m working on a plan…”

She looked up. “Then I suppose Gregar Typho is the only one who would know.”

Ryoo looked grim. “I wish you hadn’t said that, because that means I have to find a way to get you back onto Naboo.”

“Then isn’t it lucky that Rabé was such a bad influence?”

“Let me think,” Ryoo said.

Padmé let her think. It didn’t take long to learn her way around the small shuttle they shared, and they found ways to give each other privacy. Ryoo was usually either in the cockpit or the single bunkroom; Padmé took to haunting the galley, diving back into catching up on galactic affairs on a borrowed datapad.

Several days later, Ryoo interrupted her hunt for food that didn’t have “instant” on the label. “I know how we’re going to get onto Naboo,” she said.

Padmé turned away from the food lockers. “All right. Talk to me.”

Ryoo settled into the small booth. “So you remember the Midsummer Festival?”

It would almost be that time on Naboo, wouldn’t it? Padmé smiled a little. “Of course.”

Midsummer Festival was a holiday smack in the middle of what some Naboo called the festival season, and some the growing season. Padmé had always loved it, even more than the Festival of Light, which marked the end of festival season. The Festival of Light was all civic duty and fireworks and celebration of the Republic, and perhaps it ought to have been her favorite. But Midsummer was both wilder and more intimate; it was celebrated with bonfires and dancing, drink for the adults and sweets for the children. Little girls whispered of seeing their true loves in the flames, and spirits were said to walk the nights surrounding the holidays.

“It’s changed since the last time you went,” Ryoo said.

“What hasn’t?” Padmé grumbled.

Ryoo shot her an impatient look, and Padmé raised her hands in surrender. “They shut down the celebrations in Theed years ago. Something about rowdy university students, keeping the peace, property damage. No one cares if the kids wreck Ohma-D’un, though, so once midsummer break at the university hits, Ohma-D’un is one big party.”

“Big crowds are good for hiding,” Padmé said.

“Yeah, and hundreds of party shuttles flooding a spaceport used to much less traffic are even better,” Ryoo said, grinning. “Dunno how Midsummer was in your day, but the Ohma-D’un one is loud and boozy enough to bring in tourists from sectors around.”

That wasn’t at all how Padmé remembered Midsummer—but Ryoo was right, it sounded perfect. “So we go in as tourists,” she said, smiling. “It’s not the worst cover I’ve ever used.”