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The holocall comes at a slightly awkward time.
It’s quiet on Mandalore, the dead of night. Concordia and Custos hang fat in the sky, a rare double full moon, their bright reflected light hiding the stars. In their bed, Din has an arm flopped over Luke’s waist, the first hints of snores just starting up. Luke, lying on his stomach, has his face buried in the pillow. Everything is still.
That’s when the commlink beeps, sharp and startling in the warm silence.
Luke groans and flings out a hand, sleepily dragging the offensive thing towards him with the Force. It bounces off the side of his hand and hits him in the shoulder.
“Kriff!”
He flails around and finally grabs it. Beside him, Din swears something colourful in Mando’a and rolls away, taking half the blankets with him.
Luke sits up.
“Whu’?” he snaps, squeezing his eyes shut as an offensive beam of blue light hits him right in the retinas.
“What time is it there?” asks his beloved, wonderful sister.
“Too kriffin’ late for a holocall,” Luke spits out through gritted teeth, attempting to open his eyes.
Din drags a pillow over his head.
“Sorry, I forgot what the best time was,” Leia mutters, and the tone of her voice makes Luke frown. She sounds vaguely irritated, but in an anxious sort of way. If he reaches, stretching his consciousness along the thin tendril of their Force bond, he can sense her uncertainty. He rubs his eyes and can finally squint at the holo.
She’s wearing a flowing robe and skirts, her hair piled ornately high – she looks like she’s just come straight from the Senate, no time to change. Her arms are folded, but with both her hands tucked in, very uncharacteristic of her. She’s frowning, chewing her lip. Luke would call her disgruntled, if he had the mental capacity to do that right then.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I’ve been given… leave,” she says, hesitant, the word catching on her tongue like it tastes nasty. Luke raises his eyebrows.
“‘Been given’?” he echoes, drawing the full story from her in the best way he knows. She huffs.
“Mon forced me to. She told me I have at least three years of unclaimed holiday time and if I don’t take some now, she’ll make me take the rest of the year off.” She rolls her eyes. “I don’t see why.”
“Because if you don’t, you’ll work yourself to death,” Luke says with gentle admonishment. Leia has the grace to look sheepish, not a look Luke often sees on her.
“I wouldn’t—”
“When was the last time you got more than five hours sleep? That you took time for yourself? Hell, Leia, when was the last time you spent time with Ben?”
“The other day—”
“Without Han.”
She stays tellingly quiet. Luke waves a hand with a universal ‘I rest my case’ expression. She sighs.
“I just don’t know what to do with myself!” she says.
She’s interrupted by a very loud and perhaps somewhat pointed snore. Luke shoots a glare beside him.
“Jerk,” he says without any heat, and Din replies with a gesture that Luke is pretty sure is something rude in Tusken. Taking the hint, he slips out of bed, pulling on the oversized Jedi robe that Din steals more often than not. Taking care not to make any noise, he slinks from the room, padding barefoot down the hall to the living room and closing the door behind him. The chrono puts the time at well past midnight, and if Grogu were to wake up now, they’d never get him back to sleep.
“So, why did you call me?”
Leia blinks. “You were the first person I thought of,” she says. She gives him a look, big brown eyes that are more vulnerable than usual. “I think… I don’t know, I was thinking about you. We never spend time together.”
Luke is stung by a pang of guilt. She isn’t wrong. The Order, the Senate, Mandalore… everything seems so huge and vast and urgent and specifically designed to keep them apart. Ironic, really, how a galactic war kept them joined at the hip and peace keeps them worlds away. Their Force bond ripples, sending a wave of feeling through it: I miss you, they both say, and meet in the sorrowful middle.
“You could… come to Mandalore?” he suggests. He doesn’t miss the face she makes. It’s always diplomatically awkward, even for personal things – the Senate hates the idea of its most notorious hothead leaving the confines of the Republic, and Mon would probably send someone along to try and coerce them into joining the Republic, which would go down like a blown up Star Destroyer.
He drums his fingers on the armrest of the couch, casting his eyes around. He could get away, probably, and—
His eyes fall on the datapad on the caf table. He remembers what he was looking at the night before, hit with a wave of melancholy. An offhand mention of a name that never used to mean anything, and something they’ve been meaning to do ever since they found out.
“We could go to Naboo,” he says.
Leia’s eyes widen, and she hums thoughtfully.
“We could go to Naboo,” she replies, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “We could go and… and find out more. About Mother.”
A hunger rises in Luke’s chest, of the kind that hasn’t risen since he was young and foolish and desperate to know why he was with an aunt and an uncle instead of his parents. A hunger unsatiated by irritably told tales of spice haulers and petty criminality, and genuine ignorance of the identity of the woman who birthed him.
“See you in a couple of days,” Luke says. “I’ll bring Grogu, too.”
Leia smiles at that.
“Can I land the ship?” Ben asks, weaponising the wide brown eyes he got from Leia as they descend gently over the skyline of Theed. Grogu babbles excitedly, waving his arms, his presence in the Force nothing but desperate demand. Luke chuckles.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says. Ben pouts – and that’s all Han – and Leia gently pinches his cheek, which makes him wriggle.
It’s easy enough to get a good landing spot in the Royal Palace spaceport, Leia’s diplomatic weight doing all the heavy lifting.
“Any idea where to start?” Luke asks as the Alderaan’s engines power down. Ben and Grogu dash towards the loading ramp, impatient to be off the ship and in the Nabooian sunshine. Leia sighs.
“Not a clue,” she says. “I guess we can just ask at the Palace and go from there.”
Luke can sense in her the same nervousness that’s in him, almost a fear of what they might find. Mon had shared, upon learning their parentage, a couple of old holos from the days of the old Republic, a fierce firebrand of a woman standing in front of the entire Senate and demanding they listen.
“She was inspiring,” Mon had said. “I longed to be like her, as ardent and compassionate.”
And that was that.
It wasn’t until meeting Ahsoka that he’d truly thought of his mother properly. He’d assumed Leia had everything of her, what could they share? He was content to take the parts Leia didn’t want, the Anakin, and keep them for himself – someone had to give them some value. But then… “You are truly your mother’s son”. A floodgate had opened, a desperation, a raw need to know before it was too late. But it wasn’t like with Anakin, a heritage with precious little but memories from those few left that remembered (Anakin’s Force ghost notwithstanding) that Leia wanted no part of. Padmé had to be shared.
And now they’re finally here, sitting in the Theed spaceport, in the cockpit of Leia’s yacht, and both lost in their own thoughts even as their Force bond writhes with anxiety.
“Mama!” Ben calls impatiently, accompanied by Grogu’s babbling, and they both exchange glances and fond, exasperated smiles.
“Coming!” Leia calls back.
Queen Yané Paisalim is there to welcome them, in full regalia, surrounded by handmaidens and guards. Leia leans in towards Luke.
“Thank goodness you finally got Grogu out of that horrendous brown sack,” she hisses out of the corner of her mouth. It takes everything Luke has to not chuckle as Artoo trills in amusement. Grogu, the sound of his name hitting those enormous ears, turns his head; he does indeed look smarter in a well-sewn little robe, still brown but not quite as ratty, with a hint of beskar beneath the collar.
“Welcome to Naboo, Senator. And welcome to you as well, Master Jedi. It has been a very, very long time since one of your esteemed Order has come to our planet.”
“There unfortunately haven’t been many left who could, Your Majesty,” Luke says. The Queen looks suitably sorrowful at his words.
“Indeed, and we are sorry. Nevertheless, I welcome you both with open arms. Please, walk with me.”
They fall into step beside her, ignoring Threepio’s incessant nattering, and Ben gazes up at her curiously. Queen Paisalim smiles down at him.
“I find myself obliged to enquire as to the nature of your visit,” she continues.
Luke and Leia exchange another glance.
“We’re here for personal reasons,” Leia says. “We wish to learn more about our mother, Senator Padmé Amidala.”
The Queen nods solemnly. “Ah, yes. It was quite a surprise to us all when the nature of your parentage was revealed. It almost seemed rather like a holodrama.”
One of her handmaidens clears her throat, and the Queen looks down hastily, the backs of her ears, free from the pure white makeup of her station, burning vividly.
“I apologise,” she says hastily. “I merely meant it was all very—”
“Dramatic, yes,” Leia agrees, offering a reassuring smile. Luke is vividly reminded then that, despite the trappings of state and the regalia of office, and the burden on her shoulders, Queen Paisalim is only sixteen. Two years older than their mother, but still… far too young for such a burden. That, of course, just reminds Luke of what Leia was doing at sixteen, a junior Senator, already running rings around the Empire for a Rebellion that barely even existed yet. Luke can’t imagine doing the sort of things they do at that age, when he was saving up for his first, decrepit speeder, shooting womp rats at fifty paces and trying to figure out what was so damn alluring about Biggs Darklighter.
They continue into the cool, marble corridors of the Palace. Grogu wriggles, demanding to be let down, and Luke obliges, allowing him to toddle up to Ben.
“It was a surprise,” Luke says. “But a welcome one. Finding out I have a sister meant more to me than anything else, especially when Leia and I were already friends.”
The Queen beams at him. “That is truly lovely, Master Skywalker. I am afraid I personally cannot help you to know more of Senator Amidala, my schedule is very packed and I doubt I could give you more than the simplest of stories from my history lessons, but I am more than happy to leave you in the custody of the curator of the Royal Museum of Theed, Professor Veen Rutopatonis. I also offer an apartment in the Royal Palace for your personal use.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Leia says, inclining her head. Luke mirrors her gesture, when something niggles at him in the Force. It feels like the itch of sand in the nostrils, the unpleasant sensation leading up to a sneeze, mingled with intense foreboding.
He turns, just before a loud, splintering crash echoes through the halls, making everyone startle. He grimaces. Leia turns pale.
They should have known they were too quiet.
Grogu sits on a sideboard, eyes even wider than usual. Ben is staring at the floor, completely frozen, looking decidedly sick. At his feet, scattered like stars, are the remains of a glass… something. It’s too fragmented to discern anymore, but Luke is filled with cold dread at the sight of it. The silence lengthens.
“Oh dear,” says Threepio.
“That was a Reina Madyexater original,” says the handmaiden from before, eyebrows raised.
“We didn’t mean to!” Ben cries, eyes welling with tears. Grogu’s ears droop and he tries to shrink into the collar of his robe. Shifting a course through the shards with the Force, Luke heads over, kneeling beside Ben.
“It’s ok, it was an accident,” he says, hoisting his nephew into his arms and straightening to gather up Grogu as well. “Are you hurt?”
Ben and Grogu both shake their heads, and Ben buries his face in Luke’s neck, sobbing wetly into the light chaughaine of his cloak. Luke winces at the scattered remnants on the polished marble floor that a cleaning droid is already scurrying to attend to – it probably cost more than a year of Luke’s veteran’s pension.
“I apologise, Your Majesty,” Leia says quickly, bowing. “We’ll pay for it, have no concerns.”
“It’s alright!” Queen Paisalim says graciously. It’s clearly not, but what else can she say?
The atmosphere of warm hospitality is a little shrivelled from then on. They make polite conversation with the Queen, but she soon excuses herself for matters of planetary importance, leaving Luke and Leia to their own devices.
“That could have gone better,” Leia says dryly, and Ben peeks out from Luke’s neck, still trembling slightly.
“S-sorry, Mama,” he says, ever-so-quietly. Leia reaches out and Luke hands him over. He’s getting too big for her to lift him easily, it’s clear she’s using the Force, and Luke is suddenly dazed by how quickly time has flown. It seems like only yesterday he was a tiny pink thing peering up at him, at a world where everything is new. He looks away, down to Grogu, who pushes gently at him in the Force, curious, and a new wave of emotion hits Luke like a tidal wave: those who knew Grogu as a tiny creature, new-born and fragile, are long gone or very far away. He holds his son just that little more tightly.
“It’s ok, sweetie,” Leia says, kissing Ben gently on the cheek. “It was hideous anyway.”
It’s just enough to get a smile out of him before they head to the apartment the Queen offered them.
They leave Grogu and Ben in the apartment, set down for a much-needed afternoon nap.
The Royal Museum of Theed isn’t that far from the Palace. To get there, Luke and Leia cross the Palace Plaza and enter the streets, heading along one of the spacious portico-flanked avenues. Across the street is a cantina that looks far more expensive than any others he’s ever been to, the outside seating full of people sporting the latest fashions. A student artist paints portraits on a corner. A quartet of musicians plays beneath a vine-covered gazebo, some complex melody Luke assumes is traditionally Nabooian. This place is, truly, like nowhere he’s ever been before, and he’s never felt more like an uncultured moisture farmer from the Outer Rim.
Leia, on the other hand, seems like she’s at home, although Luke senses a wave of sadness in the Force, a yearning for something long mourned.
“Does it remind you of Aldera?” Luke asks gently. She offers him a sad smile.
“There was always music there, too,” she replies.
They reach the museum, a large building that’s all verdigris domes, colonnades and pediments hewn from the same warm sandstone as the rest of the city. It’s gorgeous, but intimidating as they head inside.
The lobby is cool and immaculate, a round room with a glass dome ceiling that allows light to pour in, down onto the circle of statues in the middle. A gaggle of schoolchildren in puff-sleeved uniforms stand around, listening to a pretty middle-aged woman talk.
“…And this is the statue of Sandé, the first elected monarch of Naboo! She was chosen at the death of the last hereditary monarch, King Polto, after a referendum on the governance of the planet, and her first act was to commission the first Nabooian Constitution…”
Across from the woman and her less-than-rapt audience stands a man with a flowing beard, ornately embroidered robes and sharp, corvine eyes. His eyes snap up from his chrono at their approach.
“I was told to expect visitors,” he says, and his tone is like a bad day on Hoth. His presence in the Force is like thick grease, sticking to the back of Luke’s throat. “Like some common tour guide.” He sniffs, slipping his chrono back into his pocket. “And you are?”
Leia frowns slightly, but takes it in her stride. “Senator Leia Organa of New Alderaan, and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker.”
Luke nods, impassive, slightly out-of-practice with the impenetrable Jedi façade he’d been honing for years before Din and Grogu. He thinks he’s probably doing a much poorer job at masking his distaste than Leia.
The man looks them up and down, lip curling. “Jedi?”
“Last I checked,” Luke says, unable to resist some cheek while still keeping his tone polite.
“What do you want here?” the man (Professor Veen Rutopatonis, the curator, for who else could it be?) asks.
“We’re here to find some information on Queen Amidala,” Leia says. “We were hoping to learn more about her and to see some of her artefacts, perhaps even handle them?”
“Handle them!?” Rutopatonis exclaims in horror, as if the very suggestion is repulsive to any decent sentient.
“Yes,” Luke says. “As her children, we’d be interested in—”
“Senator Amidala’s child died with her,” Rutopatonis says coldly, somehow managing to look down on them both despite his height being exactly between theirs.
Luke can feel Leia bristle beside him. He places a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“It certainly didn’t, and it wasn’t a single child, it was twins. It was us. We have a right to see our mother’s possessions and ask more about her.”
“You have no right to anything, since you have no proof of your births,” Rutopatonis says dismissively. “Besides… I’ve heard of the damage you two wreaked in the Palace. You could hardly be trusted around such delicate and important artefacts.”
Not even a wave of calm in the Force can stop Leia from shrugging Luke’s hand off and taking an angry step forward, glowering up at the man. Rutopatonis is nothing but disdainful.
“You can’t just deny us our birthright!” she snaps. “She was our mother!”
“As far as official records are concerned, she was nothing to you,” Rutopatonis says. “And that temper might have done you good in the Rebellion, Senator, but here in civilisation you might show some more restraint. Now please, kindly leave my museum, or I shall be forced to have you removed against your will. Good day to you.”
With a scornful flick of his voluminous sleeves, he turns on his heels and leaves, heading deeper into the bowels of the museum. Leia, incandescent in the Force, takes a few forceful steps forward, ready to march after him, but Luke stops her.
“Leave it, it’s not worth it,” he says, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice.
The schoolchildren, he notices, have been ushered away by their guide, who keeps giving them furtively anxious looks.
Leia takes a deep breath. “Son of a bantha,” she mutters, barely audible, straightening her long jacket. “Let’s get out of here. This place feels awful.”
Out in the sunshine they find a bench beneath an arbour of flowering queen’s heart. The scent is incredible, and fat, jewel-like bees float lazily from flower to flower. Leia, however, is stormy in the Force, at odds with the world around her, bent over with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Despite her mood, she still leans into the arm Luke places comfortingly around her shoulders.
“That was a dead end,” Luke says. Leia huffs.
“What a sleemo,” she grumbles, emerging from her hands to glare out at the fountain courtyard in front of them.
“Don’t say that in front of Ben,” Luke says, chuckling. That does get Leia to at least smile, something pinched but present. That’s good enough.
“I’m sure he’s heard worse down at the spaceport with Han,” she says philosophically.
“I’ll be honest, I’m dreading Grogu’s first word,” Luke says with a sigh. “There’s no way it won’t be ‘dank farrik’.”
Leia laughs fully now, a genuine snort, and Luke can feel her ire melting away – not fully gone, but waning. Luke smiles.
“How about we try somewhere else?” he suggests.
“Do you have an idea?” Leia asks.
“I might.”
The Memorial Gardens of Theed are beyond beautiful. They burst with lush green vegetation and myriads of colourful blooms, and the only noise is birdsong and the whispering of the wind in the trees. It is a place of quiet contemplation and memory, where people grieve but do not mourn.
The children will no doubt be awake by now, Luke supposes, but Threepio and Artoo can handle anything. Well, Artoo can, Luke has every faith in him from the many times they’ve left Grogu alone with him before. He’s not worried about them, and allows his thoughts to come back to the Gardens, as they make their way beneath shady bowers studded with delicate white starblooms.
Padmé’s tomb is a beautiful thing, pure white and gleaming in the early sunshine, tucked away in a quiet corner as if to offer her visitors the utmost privacy. Her statue is stately in her regnal regalia, but… distant. It is her, but there is nothing to be found on that carven face beyond the trappings of queenliness. She is a monarch, nothing more, and certainly not a mother. It is a fitting tribute, but that’s all it is. Whoever made this did not know her.
Luke looks up at her, and wishes, with every part of himself, that there was something. Some flicker of recognition, some spark of realisation. But there is nothing, and it clenches around his heart like an iron grip, excruciating.
Leia must sense something, because she moves closer, tucks her arm through his and rests her head against his shoulder. Luke can sense her sadness, but it is foggy, something dredged up through distant memory. Of course, there’s no way Leia could truly remember her, but the Force is mysterious. Luke has never resented her for the few, paradoxical tatters of memory she has, but he does wish he shared them. And that, over the years spent dreaming of the starry void and starships, he’d spared a thought to her as well, but there had been even less told to him than of Anakin. The freighter pilot and the mystery, and in his child’s foolishness there was no place for her when there was the romance of adventure in the stars.
He’s watched things since: holovids of speeches to the Galactic Senate of the old Republic, passionate, fervent, determined. He sees a lot of Leia, but… Ahsoka said she saw him, too. “You have his eyes, but the rest is Padmé. You even feel like Padmé.” Others make a better mirror, he knows this, and he can’t see what she sees. Not yet, maybe not ever. It hurts to think about, to be unable to make a connection other people find so obvious.
They stand in silence for a while, and Luke lets the Force wash over him. Something flickers within the tomb itself, something that sparks his curiosity, but it’s gone before he can grasp it and figure out what it is.
“Can I help you?”
They both turn. An older woman is standing there, a heavily embroidered hood drawn up, a bouquet of rominarias cradled in her arms. She gives them a quizzical look.
“Admirers of Queen Amidala?” she asks.
Her Force signature feels like something slightly familiar, like a foreign language related to something already known.
“I’m Luke Skywalker, this is my sister Leia Organa,” Luke says.
A flicker of recognition crosses the woman’s face. “My daughter used to mention you, Senator. Do you remember Pooja Naberrie?”
Leia’s eyes light up. “Yes! We were friends!” She hesitates. “We haven’t spoken in a while. I’m sorry for that.”
The woman smiles slightly. “You’ve been busy after the war,” she says. “And I know of you, Master Jedi, though only by fame. What brings you both here?”
Luke and Leia exchange a nervous glance. How much to reveal? How much to tell a stranger?
“We… we wanted to visit her,” Luke says, fighting to keep his voice steady as he places a hand on the foot of her statue. There are no shreds left of Jedi distance in this place.
Leia squeezes his arm, taking the lead, as she always does. “She… was our mother.”
The rominarias fall to the ground as the woman goes deathly pale. Her expression then morphs, darkens.
“What in the name of Shiraya are you talking about?!” she demands, hand pressed to her chest.
The twins look at her in alarm.
“Are you alright, ma’am?” Luke asks, stepping closer, the good manners Beru drilled into him still second nature. The woman recoils.
“Her child died with her!” she cries, voice shaking. But even as she speaks, her voice falters. She stares at him, her gaze slowly slipping to Leia as her face crumples. “Oh… oh, you both look like her…”
Luke darts forward, catches her as her knees give way. Leia rushes to help, and together they settle her gently on one of the smooth marble benches dotted around the Gardens. The woman’s hands are trembling madly, pressed against her mouth, but it seems she can’t stop staring at them.
“The Jedi boy… Anakin…” She looks at Luke. “You have his eyes.”
Luke swallows, fingers flexing. Leia looks away, and he feels the surge of red-hot anger, hastily tamped.
“Yes. He… he was our father.”
“How… how did you..?” The woman shakes her head. She reaches out, still trembling, for their hands, clasping Luke’s left and Leia’s right. “You can tell me later. Oh, I can barely believe it. I’m… I’m Sola. Padmé was my sister.”
The Force spins for one blinding moment, before settling. Of course. Of course, everything fits into place with almost comedic ease. It’s always this way, everything so tangled, everyone a stranger until the Force drags it out, dilates it into perfect clarity like a spun thread. He’d almost be sick of it if it weren’t so convenient.
The Naberrie house is plainer than Luke expected, but there’s definite wealth here, the sort of wealth that gets a pre-teen girl the education necessary to become a political powerhouse as soon as she hits puberty, and then gets another in the Senate. Luke almost feels awkward while he and Leia wait in the parlour. This is Leia’s kind of environment, not his. This house may belong to family, but at times like these he still feels like the farmboy from an Outer Rim backwater, awkward and unaware of anything beyond the harsh realities of the dunes.
“Don’t look so nervous,” Leia says. She’s standing like she’s at attention, straight-backed and chin up, and if Luke pokes at the Force he notices her writhing with nerves just below the façade of a calm surface.
“Hypocrite,” he replies fondly, and she gives him a pained smile.
Sola returns then, helping along an elderly woman with sleek grey hair and half-moon glasses. The woman walks with a cane, and when she sets warm, clear eyes on the two of them they widen.
“Sola… Who are they?”
Sola wraps an arm around the woman’s shoulders. “These are Padmé’s children, Mother.”
Luke is hit with the sudden realisation that this is his grandmother, at the same time the woman presses a shocked hand to her mouth. She looks like she’s been struck by lightning, or has seen a ghost.
Perhaps it’s both.
Jobal Naberrie flaps a hand at her daughter, but Luke is faster. He raises a hand and settles a chair behind her with the Force, and she’s even more startled when Sola eases her into it.
“He’s a Jedi,” Sola explains, smiling slightly. Jobal’s eyebrows shoot up, and Luke offers a smile he knows can only be defined as sheepish.
“Another Jedi,” she says with a sigh. “Just like that boy all those years ago.”
“I’m Luke Skywalker,” he says. “This is my sister, Leia Organa.”
“The Aldaraanian Senator?”
Leia nods.
“How in the Stars did that happen?”
Luke chuckles. “That’s kind of a long story,” he says, shrugging helplessly. Jobal is quiet for a moment, eyeing them shrewdly.
“You can tell it over dinner,” she says.
“Well, that means we have to go get the boys,” Leia says.
Grogu rides along on Artoo’s dome, cooing at the people all around them, while Ben walks along between them, holding both their hands as they head back to the Naberrie residence.
“I have a grandma?” he asks.
“No,” Leia corrects gently, “a great-grandma. She’s Grandma Padmé’s mother.”
“Oh.” He seems very intent on the paving slabs beneath his feet, taking care not to step on any of the cracks between them. “Is she nice?”
“She seems nice,” Luke says. “I’m sure she’ll love you both.”
Luke is right. As soon as they reappear in the house, Jobal is all over them.
“Oh, aren’t you just darling?” she twitters, reaching out to pinch Ben’s cheek. He shies away, as he always does from strangers, taking refuge behind Leia’s legs and hiding his face in her thigh. She smiles, carding her fingers through his hair.
“Sorry, he’s very shy,” she says. Jobal shakes her head.
“That’s alright.”
Grogu, on the other hand, has no idea what shyness is. He coos at her, reaching out from Artoo’s dome.
“Oh, goodness me, who is this?”
“That’s Grogu,” Luke says. “He’s mine.”
“What a peculiar little thing,” she says, plucking Grogu from his perch and settling him in her arms. “How did you find him?”
“Now that’s another long story,” Luke says with a chuckle.
Sola walks in then, presumably to tell them something, but all she can do is blink in surprise.
“I recognise both those droids,” she says. “The protocol droid belonged to Padmé. And the astromech, too, but she gave it away.”
Luke and Leia exchange startled looks.
“Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry, I have no recollection of ever belonging to anyone before Senator Bail Organa,” Threepio says. “I fear my memory bank was likely wiped.”
Artoo, Luke notes, is uncharacteristically silent. He makes a mental note to grill him about it later. “Do you know who she gave it to?” he asks.
Sola shakes her head. “No, I think it was just surrendered to the war effort. Perhaps the Temple? They needed astromechs for their starfighters, if my memory serves.” She smiles, something sad. “How fitting that they made their way back to the two of you.”
Luke sets his hand on Artoo’s dome. “We wouldn’t have gotten through the war without them.”
“Well, you can tell us how right now,” Sola says. “Dinner’s ready.”
Luke has to venture into a large, gloomy attic for it, but a highchair is retrieved for Grogu, kept from the younger days of Sola’s daughters, and Ben sits high on a stack of cushions. And the tale is told, everything from the separation, Leia to Alderaan and Luke to Tatooine, to the Battle of Endor. Luke leaves Leia to tell the very end, letting her weave it in a way that requires no mention of the truth of Vader and what happened on the second Death Star, she’s far better at telling the necessary than he is. He hides a wince with his wine glass when she says he killed the Emperor and Vader, but it’s a convenient lie, even if he hates it. It’s a tale that takes them all the way through two courses to dessert.
He casts his mind across infinite space to Mandalore, and to Din, and he misses him. Din knows everything, accepting the reality of it with nothing but square-shouldered bullishness and a complete disinterest in the rest of the galaxy’s bantha crap, and Luke loves him so much for that it’s overwhelming.
It’s also funny, Luke thinks with a private, mirthless smile, how they came here to learn of Padmé, and have somehow made it all about the two of them all over again.
“Truly,” Jobal states when they are finished, drying her eyes with her napkin, “Padmé could not have asked for two braver children. She would be so proud of you.”
Luke blinks back his own tears. They don’t come often, but in this place their mother knew… they seem to surface more easily.
“But what happened to Anakin, then?” Sola asks quietly.
Luke swallows, and he feels a slight chill in the Force, something cold and bitter and all from Leia. The truth is something they can never, ever reveal; few people know it, and those people are precious to them: Han, Din, Chewie and Lando, Ahsoka… It is a secret they must take to the grave, or their entire existence in the galaxy could fall to pieces. Leia’s career would be in tatters, and what good would a Jedi be as the son of a Sith? No one can ever know that the young hero Anakin Skywalker was Darth Vader, the Emperor’s attack dog, murderer and subjugator of worlds.
Leia remains stonily silent, and leaves all the talking to Luke.
“He died,” Luke says. “Before we were born. In the Purge.” He hates lying, but it is a necessary lie, and one he’ll keep telling until his dying breath.
“I see,” Jobal says sadly. “He was a bright young man, from what I could see, but nervous. Restless. He acted like the world was too tight a fit for him.”
Luke can sense Leia’s disquiet, her tension something jagged in the Force. “Can you tell us more about Padmé?” he asks, both for himself and for Leia.
Jobal smiles. “Gladly.”
Ben, whose head has been drooping for the last fifteen minutes, snaps up and turns to Leia.
“Mama,” he mumbles. “’Eepy.”
She smiles. “Of course, darling.”
Sola gets up then, chuckling. “We have the perfect room for them, although I fear Luke might have to venture up into the attic again, for a crib.”
They settle the children down, and Ben is out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow. Grogu takes a little longer, however, reaching out insistently until Luke gives him his hand. Little claws curl around his finger, tight but gentle, and Luke stays there until he’s drifted off and he can slowly pry himself away. Grogu is adorable when he sleeps, he thinks, his heart a puddle of goo in his chest.
“He’s an odd one,” Sola says as she heads back downstairs with Luke. “He reminds me of the old Grandmaster of the Order we’d see on the Holonet. Yoga? Toada?”
Luke muffles a snort. “Yoda,” he replies. “Yes, they’re the same species.”
They retire to a comfortable lounge that looks on to a pretty terrace. They take after-dinner caf, the strong Nabooian kind, and Jobal starts her tale of Padmé.
She tells them of the headstrong, brilliant little girl who was giving speeches in the playground and rousing her classmates to protest unfairness. How she would stand up tirelessly for anyone or anything she perceived as having been wronged.
“I had my misgivings about it, at first,” she says, “but truly Padmé was born to be Queen, as much as she honed herself for it.”
From the Battle of Naboo – all her idea, actually – to the halls of the Galactic Senate.
“I can understand why you were sent to Alderaan, Leia,” says Sola. “She and Bail were more than political allies, they were great friends. He even visited, once, on some official business, but he made the effort to see us and give us his condolences. He was a wonderful man.”
Leia’s head dips and she nods, uncharacteristically quiet and small-seeming. Luke can sense the grief, the gaping loss, always there. He takes her hand and squeezes it, and she squeezes back.
“She fought bravely against the Clone Wars,” Jobal continues. “She would write home about the despair she felt at it, the hopelessness of it all. At how the Supreme Chancellor always seemed to just… never care. Of course, we know why now,” she adds, bitterly. “But we’re not here to talk about that wretched man.”
Jobal and Sola trade anecdotes, laughing at escapades and sighing at accidents. Luke devours them all, every detail, committing them as best he can to memory. He knows Leia is, too. He’s never asked, but he wonders whether Bail and Breha ever mentioned her, ever let Leia have a tantalising tidbit of her biological mother in a way Owen and Beru simply couldn’t do for Luke. He doubts they even knew who she actually was. He listens, rapt, to summers on Varykino and that time she tried to impress some boy, and the one time she attempted to bake that resulted in utter disaster (Luke looks sideways at Leia at this, though she pointedly looks elsewhere).
Eventually the conversation drifts to an inevitable gundark in the room, and Luke can’t help but wince about it when it does.
“I would never have expected that young Jedi to be your father,” Jobal says, her lips pursed. “You know… as a Jedi.”
Luke is quiet for a moment. “Sometimes people fall in love, and it’s not with the right person,” he says. “Or… rather it’s not with an appropriate person. But I can’t see it as a mistake, as something they did wrong. We wouldn’t be here without them. They were young, they were in love… what was so wrong with that?”
Sola smiles softly. “You seem like a romantic, Luke,” she says, eyes twinkling.
Luke can’t help the heat that creeps up his cheeks and lowers his gaze. Is he? He’s never thought about it, but perhaps he is. He’s always just done things, trusted the Force and the feelings he has, because it seemed natural, but well… falling in love with a Mandalorian, an ancient enemy of the Jedi? There’s something inherently romantic in that, he supposes.
The conversation continues, but slowly begins to lull as the night crawls on, later and later, until Jobal is, much like her great-grandson, drooping in her chair.
“Bedtime, I think,” Sola says, setting down her cup. She accompanies Jobal to bed and then leads the two of them to a pair of small guest rooms with an adjoining balcony. After goodnights, Luke heads out into the moonlight, and it’s surprising how clear the night sky is above a city as huge and populated as Theed. Even Hanna City suffers from light pollution, but it seems that Theed makes an effort to be soft and quiet.
Leia steps out beside him, sits at the tiny table, her chin propped on her hand. They remain silent for a long moment.
“You don’t have to always defend him,” she says.
He sighs. They’ve had this conversation a thousand times before, and will probably have it another thousand times after this. “It’s fine. Someone has to.”
“You certainly don’t,” Leia retorts. “What he did to us, to you—”
“I know! You think I’m not reminded of it every day?” He flexes his right hand, the gears and servos and miniaturised hydraulics within it contorting beneath fake skin in a farcical approximation of realism. “But… we’re alive because of them. Because of him. There’s nothing we can do about it. He’s our father, whether we like it or not.”
Leia’s ensuing silence is bitter, and he can see the twist of her mouth, the distaste – not at him, never at him, only ever at Anakin Skywalker.
“Sometimes,” she says, stilted and quiet, like the words are broken glass in her mouth, “I imagine what it would have been like. If things had been… fine. If evil hadn’t won.” She dips her head. “I can’t divorce him from Vader. I can’t see the man from the holocrons you showed me, only… only that mask and that horrible voice and that icy cold…” She shudders. “I look like him, don’t I?”
Her voice is so small, then, when she looks up at him. Her eyes are wide, afraid like they haven’t been since Endor, when he said he was heading into the beast’s lair itself and she told him to run, run far away. He quickly sits and takes her small, cold hands in his, cradling them.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “What matters is who raised you. Bail is your father, Leia, in all the most important ways. You’re more like him than you could ever be like Anakin.” He swallows, his gaze drifting to the side. “But… but I worry you hate him so much that you hate I’m your brother.”
Leia’s hands tighten on his, and he can sense the hurt through their bond. “Luke, how can you say that?” she asks, her voice cracking. “I love you so much, I’ve never been happier than when we found each other.” Her breath hitches. “I… I wasn’t alone anymore, and it was someone I already loved more than anything.”
Luke’s smile is small and fragile, but it’s there, and he has strength enough to look at her again.
“I know, it’s stupid… Or irrational, anyway. But the fear… it’s always here.” He touches his chest, over his heart. “Losing you would be agony.”
“You never will, Luke,” she says. “Not if I can help it.”
With Leia, he can believe those words. Nothing stops her when she sets her mind to something.
“I know you don’t want to share Anakin,” he murmurs. “But we can share Padmé, at least.”
Leia’s nostrils flare, but she takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out. “The only good thing he ever did was giving me you,” she says. “You can forgive, Luke. I can’t. I just can’t.” There’s a splinter of a smile on her face, despite the lingering sadness in her eyes. “That’s why you’re the Jedi, and I’m not.”
Luke sighs. “Fine Jedi I am, doing everything I’m not supposed to.”
“Well, you’re in love. What’s so wrong with that?” She shakes her head as he lets out a soft huff of laughter. “You’re a good man, Luke. That’s what the galaxy needs more than a bunch of self-righteous old monks.”
Luke snorts in earnest at that. “Fair enough.”
They sit in silence, hands still clasped, the Force serene around them. From somewhere in the distance, soft music plays, gentle on the night breeze, and for a glowing, beautiful moment, their parentage is immaterial. No Skywalker, no Amidala, no Organa: just Luke and Leia, two halves of a whole, two twin hearts beating in the Force.
Leia bids him goodnight a little later, kissing him on the forehead as she leaves. He stays out a little longer, his heart restless. An energy rises in him, something demanding, an itch beneath his skin he can’t reach to scratch, and he’s certain it’s not the caf from earlier. Something calls to him, out in the city, tugging insistently like Grogu when he wants something.
He stands, gathers his cloak, and sweeps from the room into the night.
Is it a violation? He’s probably breaking a law or two, considering the gates are very much shut this late at night, but they’d been easy to leap over – breaking and entering is so very easy for Force users. And it’s easy to walk swiftly through the silent gardens, through the quiet dark broken only by the occasionally nightly birdcall, right to where her statue stands.
It’s also easy to open the beautifully carved doors to the mausoleum itself, and enter the cold, thick noiselessness. There is a beautiful stained-glass window, tipping coloured moonlight down upon the tomb itself.
Luke places a hand on the lid. This carving is more natural, more delicate, serenity in her carven face as if she merely slumbers. Far from the queenly distance of the statue outside, this woman, Luke thinks, could be a mother.
He wonders if she held them before she slipped from them forever. She named them, didn’t she? Was that her final act of motherly love, no tender touches, too weak to even raise a hand to offer a single caress?
The thought fills him with a grief he hasn’t felt for years, a very different one to what he felt for Anakin. It surges up, cloying, overwhelming, clawing at his throat until it wrenches forth a sob. The loss of Anakin was for a man fallen, and the endless sea of possibilities that never came true. It was grief for the loss of a hero, of a hope Luke had carried since childhood. But for Padmé… his grief is for the nothing he was given. He never even had stories of her, begrudging tales told by an uncle pestered into it. Padmé hadn’t even been a ghost, or a shadow of what she could have been. Padmé hadn’t even existed for him.
Tremblingly, he reaches forward. He cups her stone cheek, and wonders what comfort her arms might have given him. Would the scent of her hair have smelt like home? Would her voice have chased away nightmares, would her kiss have banished pain? Would he have fallen asleep with his head on her lap, her fingers stroking his hair, and felt that no place was safer than with her? Yes, Beru had given him all that, but… perhaps Padmé might have as well.
We wanted you, Anakin once said, nothing but a shimmer in the Force. So badly, so fiercely. She would have moved mountains for you both.
He closes his eyes as tears fall, silent as always. He startles when he feels something, a ripple in the Force, something strange and unknown, like nothing he’s ever felt.
It’s like wildflowers in a meadow, sweet lapping of sun-dappled lake waves against the shore. It’s springtime and solace and the scent of rominarias, and his eyes fly open, wide with shock.
She is there, a faint wisp, a flicker, but it’s her. There, in front of him. He reaches out, and her delicate hands find his cheeks.
Oh, my sweet Luke, she says, though he doesn’t hear her with his ears. It’s an echo in the Force from somewhere far distant, somewhere the living are not meant to know. I’m so proud of you. I love you.
And then she is gone, snatched by wind he cannot feel. The tomb is dead, the Force the same as ever. It took less than the time of a heartbeat, but Luke feels like he’s been standing there for a thousand years. His knees buckle, and he grips the side of her tomb for stability, tears dripping onto the cold stone of her.
“Mother…” he whispers, his voice catching, and he cries silently until he is empty.
He doesn’t know how long he stays there, but eventually the shadows are long and the tomb is very dark, the moon gone. He sees white from the corner of his eye, turning towards it, and there is Leia.
“Oh, Luke,” she murmurs, and wraps her arms around him. He crumples into her, face buried in her shoulder, and lets out a shaking sigh.
“I saw her,” he croaks, his voice a mess. “In the Force.”
Leia squeezes him more tightly, tight enough to hurt, but it feels good. It feels grounding. Here she is, beloved sister, alive and real and solid, and not some spectre that could be a figment of his imagination. Force-nulls don’t reappear in the Force. It’s not possible.
But what he felt from her… the unending waves of love and devotion. Those had to be real. They felt real. Isn’t that enough? Is it enough? He doesn’t know.
Leia holds his hand all the way back to the Naberrie residence. They walk in silent companionship, together but each in their own head, and Luke refuses to think about what she might be thinking. He’s too preoccupied with himself.
There is a world, he thinks, a softer, better world, where she got to love them. Where the birth was easy, the galaxy was safe, and she got to be with them, name them and watch them grow. There is a world where things weren’t dark and full of terrors for twenty years.
But it is not this world. It can never be this world. All this world has is memories from other people and useless wishes, and only half of those are any good to anybody.
It’s quiet in Theed, late enough that even its eternal music slumbers. It’s nice, Luke thinks, to have a place so serene in the galaxy, despite everything. There is a light on in the entryway, and Sola stands at the door with a shawl around her shoulders, looking at them worriedly. Luke tries to offer a reassuring smile, but his heart isn’t in it. He simply lowers his head and leaves Leia to explain.
He slips like a shadow into the room where the children are sleeping, Ben in a bed too big for him and Grogu in a crib that hasn’t seen a baby in decades. Luke heads silently over to the edge of the bed and sits, using the Force to keep it still. From here he leans on the rim of the crib, staring down at the small, peculiar little thing he’s come to call his own. He reaches a hand in, brushes his fingers along the soft shell of an enormous ear, through the soft, downy hair on a little wrinkled head, smiling gently at the lightest of snores. Beside him, Ben sleeps soundly. The Force is tranquil, and ripples gently, like a curtain in a breeze.
“I haven’t been here in many years.”
Luke doesn’t turn. He knows who it is.
A blue form stands beside him, glowing faintly but casting no light, and looks down into the crib, and then to the bed.
“This is more than I ever could have dreamt of,” Anakin says, his voice catching.
“It almost didn’t happen,” Luke says, and there’s a sharp edge to his words, cutting atomically. Anakin has the decency to not flinch.
“But it did, despite me. Despite what I did, there is still good in this world.”
Luke doesn’t answer. He just feels the warmth of Grogu’s skin through his fingers, watches the rise and fall of his chest in deep slumber. When Anakin next speaks, his voice trembles.
“She would have loved them so much.”
There is no use thinking of might-have-beens. There is only now, and there is only making the galaxy as good and kind as possible. For their boys. For every child. Because it’s the right thing to do.
The Force ripples again, and Luke knows Anakin is gone. The night is quiet, serene, and Luke almost fancies he can smell rominarias.
They let him sleep late, something Luke never usually does – he’s been a morning person since he was old enough to hold one of Uncle Owen’s hydrospanners. When he wakes up, the sun is higher than he expected, but he’s still tired. He buries his face back in his pillow and sighs. He can still feel the cracks in his heart, the hollowness of it all. He’s glad to have come here, to have met family he never knew he had and learnt so much, but he also regrets it. The pain is stronger than he thought.
He sits up and tugs towards himself with the Force, summoning his belt and the commlink that sits in its pouch. He can’t be bothered to figure out what time it is on Mandalore, but he needs…
It takes longer than Luke would like for there to be an answer, and unfounded worry starts to niggle at him, but he sighs with relief when finally Din’s image comes into view, the planes and curves of the helmet welcome and familiar even through blue static.
“Hey,” Din says, soft and vocoded.
“Hey,” Luke replies. “Everything ok?”
“Yeah, I was in a council meeting. Bo-Katan gave me the stink-eye as I left.”
Luke huffs in amusement, picturing it clearly in his mind: Din’s commlink going off, and him getting to his feet and leaving without even a word of excuse. Sweet, but very rude. “So where are you?”
“Storage cupboard.” He turns away from the holoprojector, fiddling with something, before turning back and removing his helmet. Luke can feel his face crinkling with joy.
Din looks as handsome as ever, even with his ridiculous helmet hair, and Luke stares his fill through the crackle of lightyears between them, the signal bouncing off myriad relays from one side of the galaxy to the other.
“How are you?” Din asks, eyeing him with concern. With anyone else the words would be courtesy, but Din isn’t like that. When he says them, he means them.
Luke is quiet for a moment, but he’s sick of lying. “Not great. This has all been… a lot.”
“I get it,” Din says, and Luke knows he does. They’ve both lost so much, Luke doesn’t need to explain for Din to know. “How’s the kid?”
Luke grins at that. “Broke an incredibly expensive art piece in the Royal Palace yesterday,” he says cheerfully. Din winces.
“Is that a diplomatic incident?” he asks warily. There’s no way Mandalore has that sort of money yet, Din is terrified of every potential debt.
“I think Leia’s paying for it, so no,” Luke replies drily. He sighs again (he’s been doing that a lot, this morning). “I’ve found out a lot, but also nothing at all. I’ll be glad to be home.”
“I’ll be glad to have you home,” Din says, smiling that soft smile Luke is sure he doesn’t know he does, because he’d be self-conscious about it if he did. “Both of you.”
Luke smiles at that, and the quiet moment lengthens between them. Luke likes these silences, the comfort of them, the knowledge that words are irrelevant when they simply have each other.
Suddenly he frowns, sensing something rushing towards the room.
“I have to go, category five Grogu event is about to happen. I know you, I love you.”
Din’s moustache twitches. “Say hi to him for me. I know you, I love you.”
The call ends, just as the door bursts open and a small green hurricane tosses itself on the bed.
“Pah!” Grogu exclaims. He’s been polite for a whole day now, and he’s clearly very much over it.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Luke says. “What if we go exploring today, before we head home? We can go to the river.”
Grogu thinks deeply about it, before nodding. He crawls up into Luke’s lap and babbles something that in the Force translates to questions about why they’re there in the first place.
“You had a grandma,” he says. “My mother. She used to live here, she was a Senator before the Clone Wars, when you still lived in the Temple. She was very kind, and she would have loved you.”
Grogu still struggles a little with traditional family structure, but he seems to understand. Love transcends simple comprehension, after all, and knowing that he would have been loved is enough for him. It’s the most important thing to him.
Grogu snuggles up to Luke’s chest, and Luke presses a kiss to the top of his head, stroking one of his long ears.
He feels nervous as he follows Grogu downstairs after freshening up – something Grogu evidently never feels, because he hops downstairs as if he owns the place, strutting into the kitchen.
“Look who’s just rolled out of bed,” Leia says, smirking. Luke groans, rubbing the back of his neck.
“How late is it?”
“Mid-morning,” she replies. “Not too bad. Sola had errands to run and Jobal went to the library, so we’re here alone. They had someone bring our things over.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” he says, sitting at the table and gratefully taking the cup of heavily sweetened caf Leia offers him. Ben is playing with a cluster of small Nabooian animal figures. “Where’d you get those, kiddo?”
“Auntie Sola,” Ben says, meticulously using a placemat as a watering hole.
“I promised Grogu we’d go to the river,” Luke says. Grogu perks up at the sound of his name.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Leia replies.
The Solleu River is as lovely as Luke imagined it would be, with its pleasure barges and pretty boats and pleasantly shaded shoreline. Once again there is music, and Theed’s schools must be closed for the day because children splash in cleverly designed calm inlets, shrieking playfully. Ben steers clear of them until Grogu bounds over, brave as always.
“Theed really is beautiful,” Leia says as they stroll by the water’s edge.
“It must be nice to live here,” Luke muses. “But I wonder if the people get a bit… tedious.”
Leia grins. “You’d have hated Aldera. We had some incredible snobs there.”
Luke laughs. “Some people have never done a day of honest manual labour, have they?” Oh, Force, he sounds just like Owen.
They’re leaving in the morning. Luke wonders if he’ll ever come back here. He’d like to, and he’d like to bring Din, too, even though Din would have far less patience for pretentiousness than he does. He’s ignoring the whole… Mand’alor thing, for the moment.
Din would definitely have punched Professor Rutopatonis. Or at the very least threatened him. It’s very attractive when Din threatens people on Luke’s behalf, which isn’t a very Jedi thing to think, but his relationship with Din isn’t very Jedi to begin with.
Suddenly Leia’s commlink beeps. She answers, and it’s Sola.
“Could you meet me at the Royal Museum?” she asks. “In about… half-an-hour?”
Leia exchanges a wary look with Luke. “Of course.”
There’s suddenly a very familiar shriek, an enormous splash and Threepio letting out a cry of “oh my!”.
Leia winces. “Once the children are dry, anyway.”
“Try not to get in any trouble while we’re inside,” Luke urges, setting Grogu on top of Artoo’s dome. Artoo trills that he can’t promise that, and Luke tosses a glare back at him as he follows Leia inside.
“I worry that we’re the ones who’re going to get in trouble again,” Leia mutters. She isn’t nervous often, but she is now, Luke can sense it. He tries for comfort as they loiter in the main hall, but he fears he isn’t very successful.
A young, impeccably dressed man with his nose permanently in the air eventually saunters over with a datapad. “Senator Organa and Master Skywalker?”
“Yes?” Leia asks.
“Please follow me,” he says imperiously, and strides off towards a door that takes them away from the main exhibit halls and into the bowels of the museum, to the archives and collections not on current display. He leads them along narrow corridors to a room labelled ‘Collection Viewing Room’. Luke’s heart skips a beat as the young man opens the door and gestures them inside.
Jobal and Sola are both there, and Sola beams when she sees them. They’re not alone, however: Professor Rutopatonis is standing there, and he looks livid when he sees them enter.
“Madam Naberrie, what is the meaning of this?” he barks.
Jobal, rightfully, ignores him. There are two plasto boxes on the table, still lidded, and she slips the covers from the both of them.
Within one is a gorgeous dress in brocart the colour of spring leaves, tied at the waist with a purple cyrene silk sash. In the other is a glorious velvoid cloak, a deep midnight blue that shimmers beautifully under the bright glowlamps of the room.
“These are for you,” Jobal says, smiling. “You deserve something to remember her by.”
Rutopatonis looks like he might rupture something: his face is now a burning red, and seems to be swelling.
“My dear Madam Naberrie, this is an outrage!” he exclaims, flapping his hands. “You cannot seriously be considering offering these priceless artefacts to these… these charlatans!”
“I do believe that, as Padmé Amidala’s sole heir, our mother has every right to decide what to do with her things,” Sola says icily. “Furthermore we took the precaution of having our genetics sequenced this morning.” She thrusts a datapad at the spluttering man, who snatches it from her. “As you can see, it verifies I am their maternal aunt. These are Padmé Amidala’s children and nothing you can say can deny it.”
Genetics? Luke goes still, eyes darting between Jobal and Sola, and he knows Leia is doing the same beside him, but there’s nothing in their gazes that betrays anything. There is nothing that might tell that they know one of the darkest secrets in the galaxy, and Luke is certain that any genetic material Anakin might have left beyond themselves is long burnt, ash on a distant forest moon.
With relief he reaches within the box and lifts the velvoid cape, takes in the exquisite embroidery and the delicate lining. It’s a beautiful thing, but even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Because it was hers. Something she wore, something she cared about, something that still carries some part of her with it. He swallows, blinking hard, and places it reverently back in the box, replacing the lid.
“You… you don’t have to…” he says, but Jobal shakes her head, reaching over to place her gnarled hands on his.
“I don’t,” she says, “but I should, and I want to. You deserve it, Luke, dear.”
He can’t help the single tear he sheds then, hastily wiping it away with a knuckle, and he looks at Leia. She meets his eyes, and smiles at him with a gaze as heavy as his own.
They have something. So little, but it’s something beyond secondhand memories and ghostly holovids. It will never be enough, it will never truly be her, but… something.
In the children’s room, as Grogu and Ben play with their animal figures, Leia pulls out the dress and holds it up to herself.
“The hem will need taking up,” she says, swallowing. “And the waistline lowered.”
Luke, for his part, doesn’t want to take the cloak from the box properly just yet. He simply touches it instead, with his left hand, the velvoid whisper-soft beneath his fingertips. It’s ridiculous, but he’s almost childishly afraid of it disappearing should he let it loose of its confines.
“It’s pretty,” Ben says, looking up at Leia. Leia smiles at him.
“Thank you, darling,” she says, twirling a little. Grogu claps, cooing happily, more entertained by the shimmer of it than the garment itself.
The children go back to their game, and Leia carefully folds the dress again, placing it back in its box, before sitting on the bed beside him.
“Credit for your thoughts?” she murmurs.
He shakes his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. There are too many for me to articulate properly.”
She places her hand on his. “That’s fine too.”
“Ready to go back to Mon and tell her you had a good holiday?” Luke teases. She snorts.
“Was this even restful? I feel emotionally drained.”
“Well, the kids didn’t get into too much trouble.”
“Small blessings,” Leia says wryly.
They watch the boys play, arranging the animals meticulously in a pattern they can evidently comprehend but Luke for the life of him can’t. Music filters through the open window on the gentle breeze. Everything is serene, and Luke is grateful for it.
Goodbyes are offered – not tearful, thank the Force – and promises to return are given, “when Pooja and Ryoo can come as well”. Grogu and Ben are fussed over, final embraces are exchanged, and the four of them head to the Royal Spaceport to board the Alderaan.
“Want to stop for a bit on Mandalore?” Luke asks, even though no one at the Senate will approve, but who cares, honestly? Leia shakes her head.
“I think I just want to go home,” she says. “I miss Han.”
He nods. That’s more than fair, he misses Din as well. It will be good to simply be home, in the four walls he shares with his family.
It’s been a whirlwind two days, and Luke still doesn’t know what to do with his emotions. He knows perfectly well that, as a Jedi, he should process and let go. But that feels so final, so… dismissive. As if Padmé and her legacy aren’t worth carrying with him.
He might never have known her, but she was still his mother, and she deserves his love, even apart as they are. He still wonders, sometimes, how very different his life would have been had he stayed on Tatooine, or not gone to Cloud City, and this simply adds another, bewildering what-if to his roster. But there are infinite crossroads in the Force, and musing on might-have-beens is an exercise in futility. What has happened has happened, and he cannot change it. Padmé Amidala was never there to love them, to be with the family she so desperately wanted with the man she loved.
Luke has today to worry about, an Order to carry on, and a family to care for, and that’s more than enough. He lays Padmé somewhere safe in his heart, never known but never forgotten, longed for but not coveted, and steps forward towards tomorrow.
The cloak fits perfectly. Luke isn’t much taller than Padmé was.
“Looks good,” Din says, leaning against the doorframe as Luke tries different angles in the mirror.
“It’s really beautiful, I’m almost afraid to wear it,” he admits, chuckling softly.
“I’m sure some fancy nonsense will come up, you can wear it then.”
Din pushes himself from the door with his shoulder and crosses over to wind his arms around Luke’s waist and press a kiss behind his ear. He grows bolder with affection every day, as if slowly realising bit by bit that he can have and want without worry, and it fills Luke’s heart to bursting.
“Yeah, something special,” Luke says. He turns in Din’s arms and kisses him, pressing their foreheads together when they part, in comforting silence with just their heartbeats.
Despite it all, we made it, he thinks. Despite everything, Mother, we’re alive.