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they say there’s a ghost in the senator’s home on alderaan.
the organas laugh it off, sometimes saying that it’s the force, perhaps, or just another idle fantasy. but then bail gets a distant look in his eyes, and he hopes-
the gardens are her favorite place to go. they’re still just as bright and beautiful as they were in life, and she imagines that she can still feel them in her fingers when she reaches out to touch the velvet-soft petals, pretends she can smell their strange, spicy fragrances when she leans in to sniff, delicately.
padme doesn’t know quite what this half-existence is, but she’s gathered enough to know that her daughter can see her, but almost no one else.
the children of the villages surrounding the rural estate often roam the open gardens. it’s a favorite spot for play.
they catch glimpses of a sad, pale woman in a beautifully rich gown of red and black - she’s never there for more than a few seconds, and she’s always gone when they blink. sometimes, they hear humming, sweet, gentle cradle hymns from a distant system. it always seems to grow louder when the youngest organa, leia, decides to play with the village kids.
(leia sees her more often than most, and usually when she’s alone. a beautiful, melancholy angel that takes her hand and tells her over and over again how much she loves her - she imagines that she can feel that porcelain-smooth skin when a hand reaches out to touch her face. the word ‘mother’ stings on her lips, bittersweet, and she is too young to have the words for the kind of breathless emotion that takes her in these private moments.)
soon, though, the visions of the sad woman in the beautiful gowns stop coming, and the rumors of the haunted estate fade into nothingness.
(leia grows up. she knew that, eventually, she would have to grow up and get rid of the fanciful notions of childhood. she shoves aside the disappointment. she keeps going. it’s what her mother would have wanted, anyway.)
padme - flickers. she doesn’t know another way to describe it. one moment, she’s reaching for her daughter, the next, it’s two months later and she’s standing in the gardens, the memory of the flowers’ scent filling her mind. she does her best to make each moment count, but - she’s so very tired. she’s sure leia can forgive her this, if she sleeps for just a moment -
suddenly, it is ten years later, and alderaan is no more. padme feels the loss of each soul like a knife in the heart, and takes solace only in the fact that she can feel both of her children are alive. (why she cannot visit luke, however, is lost to her. all she knows is that she cannot, and she despises the force for creating another boundary in her life. death. half-life.)
she mourns them each. she returns to that space-in-between-spaces, and forgets about the universe as it is, for a time. she slumbers, if it can be called that.
but then, she feels a pull, a bright thread that calls her back to the waking world, and it feels so shockingly familiar -
she’s watching a celebration on a planet she’s never seen before - people of all creed dance and sing around a raucous fire, and she feels that thread pull again. she steps, unsteady on feet that haven’t seen use in a long time, and finds herself staring into the face of her son for the first time.
he is beautiful, she thinks, and when he gasps, she knows he sees her, too.
“hello,” he says, breathless. padme smiles.
“hello, luke. i’m-”
but just before she speaks, a voice interrupts them. “padme?” shaky, scared, and so full of hope she thinks she might sob.
anakin looks just as he did when she last saw him, looking for all the world like he never left her side. she smiles. “hello to you, too, annie.” she’s smiling, and laughter threatens to burst from her throat. she doesn’t think she’s ever felt this full of light.
leia sidles up to luke, gently pushing his chin upwards to close his gaping mouth with a laugh. “say hello to mother, luke.”
padme looks from her children, to her husband, to the revelry around them, and feels like the universe might finally be at peace.