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Ten Years Earlier
She’d seen the galaxy for what it truly could be, and what it actually was. War, politics, a decade and more of loss and catastrophe had all done something to her. Love in the midst of it all had let her keep faith.
Smoke rose from the Jedi Temple and she stood at the window, ice cold from the shock of it. What could have happened, what was this all about? She hadn’t heard from Anakin in hours, assuming he was with Master Windu and Master Yoda, or with Chancellor Palpatine.
Palpatine. She shuddered. Something was wrong and she’d known it for awhile. She didn’t have the Force, couldn’t reach out like Anakin, but her political instincts were well-honed. That man was off, somehow, had been….
Threepio announced Obi-Wan’s arrival, startling her. Seeing his face, she was filled with immediate dread.
She would wish nightly for insight that could have stopped all of what came next, and it would never be granted.
-
“Younglings….”
She hadn’t wanted to believe Obi-Wan when he told her. She insisted on seeing for herself what Anakin had done. Obi-Wan had put up token resistance, but just the fact he had brought a recording from the temple spoke to how he’d known he might need proof.
“How could you!”
They’d gone to Mustafar together, and Obi-Wan had agreed to let Padmé try and speak to Anakin. But though it hadn’t been more than a day since he’d said goodbye and held her close, she couldn’t recognize him in the creature standing before her. Anakin’s face, voice, even his gestures – but he was a husk of who she’d known, taken over by evil and driven by fear and hate.
Had it always been there? Had she really been so blind?
They argued, and he attempted…well. He would have killed her, had Obi-Wan not been there, had he not stepped in. Padmé fell to the platform and knew no more.
-
Later, she awoke on the ship, a bloodied and bruised Obi-Wan clasping her hand as he wept. She squeezed his hand, a light, fluttering touch.
“Anakin?” she whispered. Obi-Wan shook his head.
At that moment, she gasped, her back arching up as sudden pain and knowledge shot through her. Obi-Wan’s eyes widened.
“The babies,” they said together. He fled from her side to disable the autopilot and get them into hyperspace.
She assumed they had no real destination in mind. Obi-Wan, however, had contacted Bail Organa before they’d left Mustafar, and sent Threepio down to her with a message that they would rendezvous with Organa’s ship, where there would be a medical team waiting.
She did not labor long; once she’d been boarded on to the waiting transport, everything became a blur of physical pain pushing away all her emotional turmoil. The twins were born in fairly quick order – Padmé had no real frame of reference for the experience – and when presented with their achingly small faces, the boy’s so like his father’s and the girl’s so smooth, Padmé felt so much that was conflicting and painful. The medical droids twittered at one another in concern, but there was no need. Padmé was not fading. Not now, when she could see her children, when she had given them names.
There was so much more she needed to give them.
Obi-Wan was by her side – it should have been you, Anakin, why, why, why – and held her son carefully. He looked down at Luke in awe.
“Younglings,” she whispered. Leia was in her arms, lying on her chest while the medical droids applied the bacta strips and began healing Padmé from the trauma of birth. Obi-Wan looked from Luke to Padmé, and she could see reflected in his eyes her own resolve.
A deadly, protective resolve.
-
Bail Organa had offered to hide the children, in plain sight. He and Breha would raise them – Alderaan had no enemies, had remained untouched in the Clone War, and it would be simple enough to create stories that wouldn’t likely need to be told.
Obi-Wan hadn’t thought it likely to work and offered to take the boy to his family on Tatooine. But in the end, since their mother couldn’t be with them, it was generally agreed that the twins needed each other.
“It’s certain they will be Force-sensitive. Won’t that raise suspicion?”
Yoda, quiet for much of the debate, looked up at that.
“What the Emperor knows and what comes next, know that now, we cannot. Together, stronger the twins will be. Teach them to hide, we must.”
Bail looked concerned. “How soon? When would we even know what they can do?”
“Signs there will be. Know, you will.”
That sat heavy for all. Signs there will be.
“My wife and I will limit their contact with the world. Alderaan draws little attention from the galaxy and can continue in this vein, but we will make it safe for them, I swear it.”
Questions lingered about how, and what, could be done to keep children of a Jedi safe. It was not an unprecedented scenario, perhaps, but none there could say what would be necessary with any certainty. What was certain was the danger Padmé was in, that Obi-Wan and Yoda were in. They had yet to hear from living Jedi, and Obi-Wan strongly suspected they would not. Even so, the reality of what had happened and what it meant had yet to fully hit their band of refugees, and they were making decisions with a degree of blind faith.
Padmé sat at the table, wan and sad, letting her life be arranged for her because it was all she could do. She was shattered. She didn’t sleep – when she closed her eyes all she saw was the cold blue light of a holovid, the blur of a lightsaber, fallen Jedi.
“I want this.” Her voice was raw, so she repeated it. “I want this. They must be protected. Palpatine, who or whatever he is now…if he finds me, when he finds me….”
Obi-Wan covered her hands with his.
“They will be protected. As will you.”
And the decision was made. They would each go their own way, not to be disclosed except for the twins’ location, and then only to the four of them at the table that day.
All that remained now was whether Obi-Wan could even hope to keep such a promise.
-
Bail left with the children first.
Padmé couldn’t watch. She said her goodbyes – loving touches, kisses, imparting wisdom they would never remember but she prayed would find root any way. But it was agreed, Bail would leave during the standard night, while the others slept or pretended to, and the separation would be as quick as could be.
Of course, she still stood in the doorway of her compartment, still listened for the separation of the transfer pod, and tears still poured down her face. She shook, hard. Would this work? Would they be safe, would she?
Would she ever hold her children again?
“Padmé?”
She turned. Obi-Wan’s face, so resiliently young during his time in the war, had become harshly lined and sad. Padmé didn’t think he slept any more than she did, and that the exhaustion she saw in his face was reflected in hers. She reached out a hand to him, and he took it hesitatingly.
“We don’t have time for our sorrows,” he said, voice cracking.
“Don’t we?” she responded, squeezing his hand. “Isn’t sorrow, grief, over what we’ve lost…isn’t that what separates us from them?”
They’d heard about the Empire’s celebrations and festivities in the core worlds. That forced joy over manufactured military victories, dancing on the grave of democracy but also good itself, had been hard for all of them to take in.
Obi-Wan sighed. “It isn’t the Jedi way.”
She let go of his hand and fixed him with a stern gaze. “It should be.” She leaned back against the bulkhead, letting her hands drop to her sides. “If he had been allowed to grieve, what need would there have been for fear?”
He tilted his head, holding his hand up to his chin in a familiar gesture, and shrugged.
“Maybe the Jedi ways need reexamining,” she said, voice quavering. “And maybe, you need a good cry. I know I do.”
She tried to turn from him and walk away, but he surprised them both by reaching out for her.
“Padmé, I am so sorry. So terribly sorry,” he murmured into her hair, tears falling.
She knew, and had her own apologies to make, but grief overtook her. They stood there, holding one another, holding on, and they cried together.
-
Bail had been told where Obi-Wan and Padmé would go, but not when they might arrive at their destinations. Yoda took the time to counsel them both on what must come next – for Obi-Wan, training and reflection, time to reconnect with the Force.
It wasn’t so different for Padmé, but Yoda’s request for her took her by surprise.
“For you, training there must be. No Jedi will you become, but ready, yes, ready.”
Yoda planned to head for a planet on which he could conceal his presence. Deep among living things well-connected to the Force, where he could concentrate and heal. Anakin’s betrayal had done much damage, and Yoda knew, even if Obi-Wan could not yet fathom it, that what Anakin had done was the fault of many, all of whom had some culpability in what befell the galaxy. Even more immediately, they would each have to grapple with what had happened to their kind. The Jedi were nearly extinct now. Yoda knew it wasn’t the end of the Jedi Order, nor really the end of Force users, but he could not know the extent of what they faced without a good deal of meditation and communion.
But first, Padmé.
He watched her carefully for a few days, before Bail’s departure and after. He had known of Anakin’s attachment, but not the pregnancy. Another blind spot for which he could perform penance.
She was Force sensitive; it was slight, and she would never be able to develop her innate talent far. It was impossible for Yoda to know whether her ability came from carrying the Skywalker twins or had already existed. Either way, she glowed in the Force now in a way she had not before, and would need to learn at least enough to conceal herself.
Captain Antilles had orders to take his time, and deliver his weary passengers to destinations of their choice, staying clear of the war-torn planets and systems that may not even be recovering yet, so deeply affected had they been by the war.
To Dagobah, then, the trio went. And later, when they separated for what they had to assume would be forever, they did so prepared.
-
-
Present Day
The comlink’s piercing sound reverberated in the small, neat room – her home, hard as it was to believe, even now – and her heart stuttered with it.
She kept the device hidden in her robes, had done so from the very first day. She knew it was not wholly safe; it was an old model, by now replaced a dozen times over by advances, or just changes, in technology. Even the tone signaling a call was outdated. She hadn’t heard the like in years.
How long has it been?
She fumbled for the button to activate the holo, and blue light blinded her for a moment before she could make out his features.
His hair was longer, and he was dressed in common civilian clothes that didn’t resemble his Jedi robes at all. He’d kept his facial hair. He stood with arms crossed and he appeared to be frowning, and as the image cleared some, she was certain he was.
But then, he couldn’t have reached out for a good reason. As she waited for confirmation that their connection was secure, her mind skittered over the reasons they had agreed on for communication, all those years ago. She couldn’t concentrate, so great was her sudden fear. And what if this wasn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi at all, what if it was an imposter, an illusion, and all their careful plans….
“Padmé.”
Despite the distance across space that usually distorted voices, in only the way he said her name, she knew without a doubt it really was him. The fear contorted, images of her children and of other children mixed in her mind and she swallowed hard, blinked back the visions.
“I don’t have much time; I am aboard a ship, headed your way.”
She blinked, taken aback before remembering she’d told Bail where she was. “Did he contact you, or the other way around?”
“When we meet, I can tell you more. All is well for now, but we don’t have the luxuries we’ve enjoyed any longer.”
“Where?” she said, her own trusting nature betraying the caution she knew she should have exercised.
“In the town closest to you. Tomorrow, midday. Be ready to leave.”
“You’re sure it’s safe?”
“As I can be. Watch your back.”
They held each other’s gaze as best they could and signed off.
Her hands shaking, Padmé stood and began to clear out the scant real belongings in her tiny home. It had been such for half a decade or less, as she’d kept moving in the earliest days before realizing she was more vulnerable on worlds the Empire had an active interest in.
She wondered what he’d done, in all this time, where he’d gone. She could have asked Bail at any time and he would have told her, but she hadn’t wanted the temptation, had decided it best to be apart. She couldn’t remember her reasons just then, having seen his face for the first time in so long. All she wanted now was the reunion, and it was all she could want, until he told her why.
The twins. Luke. Leia.
Tears welled up and Padmé pressed on through them. She had things to gather and people from whom to take her leave.
There was no time for her sorrows. Not until she knew that’s what was coming.
-
“But you saw him die. You told me he was dead,” she hissed in a low voice, anxious that she be overheard, anxious either of them might be recognized, even here.
“He was. I…there was nothing left of him in the Force. But I had been wrong before. I was wrong then. He is alive, and we neither of us would recognize him now.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Heard of him. Bail describes him as mostly droid, now, more machine than man, but our contacts in the capital describe actions that cannot be…,” Obi-Wan stopped to drink the swill passing as Corellian rum he’d ordered. “But it is more than that. I felt him, Padmé.”
She’d never pretended to understand the Force but had spent more than enough time in intimate company with Jedi to feel a shiver at that. More than a shiver. Dread settled into a knot in her chest.
“The children.”
Obi-Wan nodded.
“There is a rebellion building.”
His voice was pitched at its lowest and she had to lean in to hear him.
“I cannot elaborate here. But this is why we have to move now and must do it quickly. One hour.”
Padmé nodded. There was not time to talk in depth; every moment they stayed even on this remote, former mining world where she’d found refuge for so long, they were likely to attract attention and the notice of someone with a line to the Empire. It was unlikely – but everything they’d experienced a decade before had been unlikely, impossible.
He left first, pushing a piece of paper in her sleeve as he touched her arm in farewell. She tried to ignore the warmth he left behind and sat back to finish her own drink.
“He looked like a good one.”
Padmé turned to address the bar owner, an older woman Padmé had come to know well, who knew next to nothing about her that was real or true.
“He was.”
“Still is?”
“I hope so.”
It was as good a farewell as any, and Padmé left only moments later. There were preparations to make, and a dangerous path to follow. She chased away the anxious thoughts of what her children would make of her, what she would tell them. She chased away all stray thoughts of her children, as she had done for a decade to, predictably, little success.
-
Padmé met Obi-Wan at the appointed time. It really was a planet time and the Empire had forgotten and they were able to leave without being harassed, if not totally unnoticed.
“Tell me,” Padmé said, once they reached hyperspace.
Obi-Wan turned to her after setting the auto-pilot, and fidgeting a bit with dials and controls, an act of procrastination he never would have engaged in, before.
“The twins are fine.”
She let out a long breath. “Okay.” She stood up and rubbed her hands down her face, feeling truly unsettled for the first time in ages. Luke and Leia were okay, fine, but she could admit now she hadn’t expected them to be.
Yoda had trained her a little too well, it seemed.
“The Empire’s search for remaining Jedi has let up, considerably. We think – that is, Bail Organa has intelligence saying – that it’s believed if there are remaining Jedi at all, they’re dead.”
It was Obi-Wan’s turn to sigh deeply, gathering his courage for the next part. He looked down at folded hands, clasping them tighter.
“Obi-Wan, tell me. I can sense your anxiety, you know.”
“I know.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I was there for your training, but also, I’m not doing a very good job of holding it in.”
She let out a short laugh before coming over and kneeling in front of him. She put her hands on his and he hissed in shock. There was something to unpack there, but she just looked up at him.
“Tell me.”
“Anakin. He’s…he was, or likely still is, in charge of the hunt for the Jedi. He is as Yoda described him – a Sith Lord, no Jedi. He isn’t the man we knew. He is Vader, as he was that night at the temple, on Mustafar. Only…worse.”
She held tighter to his hands. “So, the children are fine, but.”
“But we don’t think we can keep them a secret forever. We never did anyway, but we didn’t see this coming. Padmé, the intelligence suggests he knows you live. And if he confirms that, he could begin a search for the twins.”
She nodded, and stood up again, letting go of Obi-Wan. “He lives, and I never knew it. I didn’t consider it could be, not after what…what happened. And he must have thought, or been told, I died as well.”
She folded her arms tightly, and Obi-Wan stood, close but not touching her. He wanted to ask her what she felt, and he didn’t have to.
“He did die, to me. He killed whatever remained of himself, of love, of hope. It was intentional, violent. I had time to wrestle with this, Obi-Wan,” she said, still tightly wound but looking at him and calling his attention to her features, tired and older, but radiant. “I mourned him. A part of me might always do so, and I wonder, what will I see in the twins? Their father before, or….” And she broke off, looking out at the blurred galaxy.
Silence settled around them as they both let the memory of who and what Anakin became loom in their thoughts. It was important, in a way, to remember that there was danger. The man they knew had died, but there was a monster in his place.
“You felt him, you said,” Padmé whispered. “You felt him. You must have been close. Could he have felt you?”
“Yes. He could have. I have had no reason to believe he is looking for me now, but it is a matter of time. I will help you retrieve the twins, but it’s as far as I can go.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and this time, he reached out and clasped a hand on her arm. She leaned toward him, and he held her.
“Obi-Wan, I can’t…I just….”
“Shh.”
“I just got you back. I knew I wouldn’t…we wouldn’t…but how….” Padmé was hiccupping as sobs took over. “We have to do this together.”
Every reason he had for why that couldn’t be fell apart in his mind. He knew it as well as she did – there would be strength in connection, in numbers. The nascent rebellion was learning that as well, and he hadn’t even told her about that yet. For ten years the idea had been to scatter. He’d let out a message warning living Jedi – and he knew now, there had been many, could still be many – and avoided gathering together at all for so long, after Dagobah. But if there was any hope whatsoever in fighting back, in protecting those they loved, things had to change. Why else had he come all this way?
He pressed his lips to her hair, the most tender and intimate gesture he’d attempted with her. She responded by moving still closer to him.
“Together,” she repeated, tears subsiding.
-
There was time to talk, and figure out how they would approach the children, how they would train them. For training they would need, as the galaxy headed for open war.
“It’s certain, then, the rebellion you spoke of….”
“It is. Pockets, or cells, have been developing from the beginning. For a long time, I ignored what I heard.”
Padmé didn’t have to ask him to elaborate; after their short time with Yoda on Dagobah, the grief had hit, just as they’d been forced to part. It had immobilized her for a long time, keeping her trapped in a cycle of remembering and fighting the truth. She knew it had to have been as bad, worse, for him, in a lot of ways.
“Bail found me, a month ago, to tell me Luke had begun to ask questions about what he could do. He also told me, there are those who not only know the Jedi aren’t extinct but are very interested in our participation in what they are planning. It isn’t much, not yet. But it is something, and I can’t stay out of it, Padmé. I can’t.”
She nodded. “The Empire wasn’t in the system I finally found, but for years I had to dodge them. I tried, once, to go back to Naboo. I didn’t recognize it, and in the end I had to leave, because eventually they were going to recognize me. It was reckless of me.” She sighed, thinking back on that and other times she’d moved in the shadows, too close to danger. “You’ve mentioned Jedi more than once, you know. Are you going to explain? Did anyone…anyone at all….”
“Survive? Yes. There are survivors.” The proximity alert sounded to let them know they were near the Alderaanian system, and Obi-Wan sat down to guide the ship out of hyperspace and prepare the next steps of their arrival. “Yoda lives, as far as I know. Beyond that, there have been rebel cells specifically helping Force sensitives survive the Empire’s genocide. Bail had contact with one, in case he had to move the twins without us. But are there Jedi that you and I knew, out there?” He waved his hand at the window as the stars stabilized, their craft slowed. “Every so often, I think I sense one. I couldn’t confirm a single one. I think…I would hate to speculate.”
She knew why. To hope for a reunion, to have it dashed, that would have been as bad as the mourning had been.
They were hailed by the ground crew on Alderaan, and Obi-Wan gave a landing code he and Bail had agreed on, so it would be clear who was on the ship. There was a tense moment while they waited for clearance. The Empire could be below, someone may have chased them, so much could go wrong.
They were cleared, and a code was given that Obi-Wan understood to mean all was safe below.
Padmé sat down, strapped herself in, and held out a hand to Obi-Wan.
“Let’s get our family,” she said.
-
Breha spent the first hour after they arrived preparing the children. An hour, she would realize, was almost unnecessary, because the twins had known, and could feel, the truth as well as if it had been shouted from rooftops.
So she brought them to their mother, and if her heart broke over it, she never let on.
“Mother?” said Luke, as his sister shouted the word and ran to meet the woman halfway.
Obi-Wan watched Padmé and Leia – Leia, so small, so confident, the Force illuminated around her, and Padmé, slight and nervous but every inch, even now, the Queen she had been. But Luke drew his attention. He was wary and inquisitive. Eager, but also eager not to misstep.
And if Obi-Wan wasn’t reading into it, there was fear, as well.
He went up to the boy, sandy-haired where his sister was dark, and Obi-Wan recalled another boy on another world and tried not to look for Anakin in Luke’s face.
Luke looked up at him and after a moment, held out his hand. Obi-Wan felt how he straightened his back, deciding to be as confident as his sister, or more so. If she could, he could.
“Hello.”
“Hello there.”
-
It was felt throughout the galaxy, though very few could understand what it was.
A tremor in the Force. A positive, life-giving tremor that could strike fear into the very heart of evil.
A bright future was begun in tentative embraces, in shy looks, on Alderaan. A rebellion rallied around a remnant. A Jedi Knight forged a new path, and a Queen took her place among the people.
A family came together, and faced their future as one.
Somewhere in the galaxy, as Project Stardust hit a standstill and the Empire began to get a grasp on the scope of what more and more people were calling the Rebellion, a Sith Lord and his apprentice were among those who could sense the change, but not understand it.
And that, really, would be their undoing.
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