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There is a hell.
Padmé Amidala knows this. She knows the smell of it. It reeks of white heat and seared flesh and short-circuited machinery. She knows the taste of it. It is the bitter tang of blood in her mouth, the sour taste in the back of her throat, and choking smoke. Hell has solid ground as well as molten rock and she knows all of this because she has stood on that ground with a red ribbon wound through her heavy braid. She knows this because she has pressed her lips to those of the man she loves there upon the rocky crags of Hell and she has felt the surprising softness of flesh breaking—splitting silently—upon the sharp silver of a Corellian dagger.
It is not until later, trying to navigate a ship flying at light-speed through a veil of hot, burning tears, that Padmé Amidala understands; Hell is also the microscopic contraction of amber eyes (beloved eyes) as a knife slips between two ribs. Hell is the warm bloom of blood like dreadful red night-orchids. Hell is her name whispered like a benediction. And again like a curse. Hell is her knees shaking as she pushes the man she has killed, the man she has loved, off an outcropping of rock. Hell is watching him fall like a broken toy toward the roiling red-hot mantle, reaching for her still. Hell is turning her back on the terrible high-pitched keening and walking away.
No matter how fast she flies, no matter how far she runs; Padmé Amidala will carry Hell with her for the rest of her life.
XXX
After Hell, giving birth is nothing. It is simple; almost painless.
But perhaps, that is only the cocktail of painkillers and poison flowing through her veins. Somewhere close to her, Obi-Wan Kenobi is smoothing tiny sweat-soaked curls from her forehead. She is glad her eyelids are far too heavy to open; she could not bear to look at him. She is afraid he would see the blood-orange of Hell staring out of her. He seems to be trying to tell her something, but his words slip past her as the lakewater washes over the bottom step of her family’s palazzo. Padmé does not know it, but Obi-Wan Kenobi’s eyes look as if he, too, has seen Hell.
She lives long enough to kiss her children and to name them. Her stuttering fingers trace their red knees and caress their tiny toes, but she will never hold them in her arms. She will never inhale their sweetness as they are cradled in the crook of her elbow or lie sleeping across her thighs. She will not sing them the Naboo watersongs of her youth. She will not know instinctively that Leia has grown a quarter of an inch since yesterday evening or see how every morning turns Luke’s hair lighter and lighter until it is the same as his father’s. Her children, whom she has loved and whom she has named, will never know hers.
Standing on the rocky black ground of Hell and breathing in its stink has a price. This is what it will take from her.
XXX
Padmé Amidala died.
Naboo is rent with mourning. She is laid to rest swiftly and with flowers in her hair. Her belly is still round and swollen, though perhaps that is only an effect of the gown her handmaidens have chosen to dress her in. Obi-Wan Kenobi does not attend. He tells himself it is because the journey to Tattoine is so long, and it is of the utmost importance that the task he has been set is carried out swiftly. He lies to himself so that he will not have to stand beside the funeral boat and feel his heart break. He goes to Tattoine so that he will not need to remember arriving at her chambers that terrible twilight and finding them empty. He does not wish to remember that he still draws breath, and she does not. Obi-Wan Kenobi will never forgive himself for arriving too late.
The procession arrives at the shores of the Sapphire Sea as the purple twilight deepens and the stars come out. The Naberrie family pushes their daughter’s boat onto the water. Padmé’s mother wonders how well she really knew this daughter as the boat drifts dreamily into the far-off deeps. She wonders how her daughter managed to carry a child in secret, if Padmé loved the man whose bed she had shared, if she was ever afraid of this lifeform growing like a waterlily inside her. Jobal Naberrie will never know, because soon this daughter who has become a stranger will be nothing but ash and incense.
Sabé Noname looses the burning arrow. Her aim is renowned and here on the shores of the sea, it is true. Padmé Naberrie Amidala, once Queen of Naboo, mother of the Rebellion, lover and murderer of Anakin Skywalker is wreathed in flames. A great cry goes out of Naboo. Obi-Wan Kenobi believes he hears it even in the desert nighttime of Tattoine.
In his arms, an infant with ever-lightening hair stirs in his baby-sleep, reaching out with tiny hands for a mother who is never going to be there.
XXX
A young woman who in life was Padmé Amidala gasps for breath on the far shore of the Sapphire Sea. It is night, and cold. The young woman’s hair streams behind her, blooming with flower petals. Her shift is thin and singed. A wooden charm dangles from her neck. The blood which has been slowed by the secret poison for almost two days now is charging through her veins with all the fury of Theed’s waterfalls. Her fingers burn and ache, her head pounds, and her mouth is painfully dry. The woman climbs out of the water with heavy, lead-like limbs and collapses upon the white sand, watching the wheeling stars and a burning boat far out on the sea. She watches, and she waits.
At the cold hour past midnight, a tall, quiet woman who looks much the same as Padmé Amidala had once looked, pads silently over the sand to sit beside the half-drowned girl.
“Oh, thank Shiraya,” breathes Sabé Noname. “I wasn’t sure you’d been able to get off the boat. It was darker than we’d anticipated.”
Sabé wraps the woman who used to be dead in a heavy cloak. Her thin hands rest lightly upon her companion’s shoulder. She seems to be afraid to get too close.
“It’s time, Padmé. We cannot turn back now.”
“Did they live, Sabé? Luke and Leia? Are my children safe?” Padmé’s voice is hoarse with exhaustion and it breaks like waves upon her words.
There must be some light of madness in her eyes, for Sabé takes Padmé’s face in her hands and her words are gentler than Padmé has ever heard them.
“They live. I do not know where Kenobi has hidden your son, but I have found your daughter. I swear to you, my Queen, they live.”
Only then is the woman who had been Padmé Amidala able to rise to her feet, turn her back on the burning boat, and leave herself behind.
XXX
She goes by Palma now and her hair is short.
Sabé cut it just before they landed and Padmé is still not used to the lightness; how the ends of her curls brush against her chin.
“We should dye it too,” Sabé had said. She had reached out and lifted a flyaway from Padmé’s forehead. “Just to be safe, we should dye it.”
But Padmé had refused. She still holds onto the hope that her children will recognize her one day. She cannot change too much. She must still be their mother.
They have taken lodgings in the garment district of the capitol city. When Padmé looks out her bedroom window, she can see the purple snow-capped mountains and low-lying clouds and the Royal Palace where a baby princess is being rocked to sleep in arms that are not hers. Sabé does not like her looking too long. She is afraid that Padmé will start to get ideas.
They are in the marketplace. It is morning and the mountains cast hulking shadows. Padmé buys food while Sabé negotiates fair prices for basic supplies. Cutting through the marketplace babble, there comes a cheer followed by a humming hush. Padmé turns and shields her eyes. Her chopped hair flutters. The dark-haired family inside the ornately wrought hovercraft does not recognize her. They look right through her.
Padmé-who-is-now-Palma falls to her knees. She knows now what Sabé has always been afraid to tell her. The infant who is cradled so lovingly in Breha Organa’s lap will never be her daughter. For a moment, the sweet mountain air of Alderaan turns to ash and the smell of Hell fills Padmé’s nostrils. She reaches out for the daughter who will never again be hers as her husband had reached for Padmé as he fell, and she knows, as he must have known, that there will be no one to catch her hands.
Then, like a dream, Sabé Noname is there. With two thin but strong arms, she lifts Padmé-Palma and holds her as she weeps.
XXX
Her nightmares are getting worse.
She dreams of Mustafar, fiery and terrible. Over and over, she feels the dagger as it breaks upon his body. Sometimes in these dreams she tries to stop herself, but the knife moves of its own awful will and she does not have the strength to turn it from its course. Some mornings she wakes in another room, curled like a conch shell against Sabé’s back and clutching the japor snippet necklace so hard the pattern imprints itself on her palm. She has no memory of how she got there, and as soon as she is awake she slips back to her own bed. If she looked back, she might have been touched by the devotion in her handmaiden’s open eyes. But Padmé never looks behind her, for all that is there is sorrow and pain.
“Tell me again why we did it,” she demands as they fix a humble dinner.
The knife does not stop chopping. Sabé has answered this question so many times she knows the words by heart.
“The Emperor will be searching for you. It is best that he believes you dead. It’s the only thing keeping you alive.”
“Sabé…” The name is spoken as little more than a strangled whisper, full of grief and hopelessness.
The knife stops then.
“Wouldn’t it have been better if I had been allowed to die? I think that would hurt less than all this.”
“No!” The word is torn from Sabé. “Your children need you.”
“My children will never know me.” It is the truth, and it crushes her with its weight.
“The Republic needs you.” Sabé’s eyes are fierce. “You cannot let the Empire destroy everything you have worked to build. Do not let this darkness swallow you up! You, Padmé, my Queen and my friend, you are the best of all of us. The Emperor has taken your husband and your children and your life’s work, but he will not have you! I forbid it. Can’t you see? I need you too.”
No more words are shared on the subject. Padmé does not ask the question again.
XXX
Padmé has to remember to answer to Palma.
She works in the Palace of Aldera now as a laundress and seamstress. She knows that Sabé does not like the idea. Sabé still worries that Padmé will let her heart get them into trouble. But Padmé…no, Palma…has not yet seen the Princess. And if she does, Breha Organa’s daughter will be a stranger to her. Her hands are rough and cracked from the hot water and the hard soap. Her face begins to show fine lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. Her hair is a little longer, and her fellow laundresses have never heard her laugh. (They do what they can to make her smile.) Sabé has been accepted into the Alderaanian Airforce. There was some fear that Bail Organa would recognize her when she was presented with the rest of the new recruits. But his eyes slid over the tall, thin woman as the mountain shadows passed over the grasslands. Sabé grinned when she told this tale to Padmé that evening, her teeth bright and feral under the flickering fluorescent light of their small kitchen. Sabé’s hair is almost blonde now, and when Padmé looks at her, she is reminded of Tattoine sandstorms and Angels.
“Palma…Palma?”
It takes Padmé a moment too long to remember that this is her name now.
“I’m sorry Miryam, this color distracts me,” she says to cover herself, holding up a newly dyed veil of deepest cerulean. “It reminds me of my childhood.”
Miryam the laundress smiles and pats Palma’s hand.
“You are not born of Alderaan, are you?”
“I am of the Naboo. This blue is the color of Lake Varykino.”
“The Naboo? Then you have heard how your countrymen rebel against the Empire? And of Queen Apailana?”
Palma does not want to hear this, but Padmé Amidala birthed three children. A boy she has never seen but once, a daughter she loves only from a distance, and a Rebellion.
“Tell me,” she says, and her eyes are bright.
XXX
Sabé is gone a great deal these days.
Padmé is almost too tired for nightmares between laundry work, and smuggling supplies and weapons for the underground Resistance, but every now and then the suffocating memory of Hell resurfaces and Padmé wakes up in Sabé’s empty bed. When the sun rises she does not leave. Instead, she clutches Sabé’s pillow close and prays that whatever covert mission her handmaiden has been tasked with carrying out will also carry her home. Her prayers are always answered. Sabé returns tired and sometimes bloody. She is not supposed to talk about her missions; she could be tried for treason if anyone ever knew that she comes home to a dingy two-bedroom apartment and tells a woman who used to be Padmé Amidala everything.
Things in general do not look good. The Rebellion is by-and-large a homespun operation and very poorly armed. The blankets Padmé packs to hide the blasters and ray-guns are blankets she has dyed and spun herself—rough and not particularly pretty. Miryam the laundress hides political refugees and once, a Jedi Knight, in a secret room beneath her kitchen table. And Padmé knows that a handful of Palace workers forge identity documents or pass information or smuggle weapons. She has spoken to them all in a darkened room, telling the story of the Republic’s fall and begging them all for support and funding. They know her as Palma Nané and they nod at her as they pass in the corridors. She binds wounds and delivers forged papers, takes apart blaster rifles so that they fit more compactly into durasteel tins of kaffe and salt. She does all this and she does not know that on Naboo, her true name is written in the textbooks of children playing in the canals. Palma's name will never be written here; writing is too dangerous, too permanent. This does not stop it from traveling. Indeed, soon there will be a time when it is impossible to speak of the Alderaanian Resistance effort without the name Palma Nané. But neither account--written or whispered--will tell of her husband, or the twins that she bore him. Her children will become myths in great stories that will last long centuries, but their mother will forever be nameless.
When Sabé comes home from Coruscant, she almost does not tell Padmé. For the first time in her life, the handmaiden considers lying to her queen. They have made a life here. It is not easy, it is not perfect, but it is sweet. Hell does not care for sweetness and it devours happiness whenever it can. Hell has followed Padmé for so long now that she knows it as one knows a lover. She washes the soot from Sabé’s face and wraps her arm in a sling and even as Padmé does this, she knows, as perhaps she always has.
She might have killed the man she loved, but Anakin Skywalker still lives.
XXX
Incredibly, life goes on.
She sleeps in Sabé’s bed more than she sleeps in her own. She dreams of a boy with sand in his hair and she does not know if this child is her husband or her son. She has passed Queen Breha many times in the white halls of the palace and she has never once cried out to see Leia tripping gaily at her side. Her daughter does not spare a glance for her as Padmé bows low to hide her face. Leia laughs often and pulls on her mother’s brown hand. Child of heaven, this is the name that Padmé gave to her daughter, and it suits her well. Padmé does not see much of herself in this child; but she has Anakin’s jaw and his quick temper; the girl has her father’s stubborn will. It almost hurts to look at her. Padmé has to turn quickly and hurry away. Sometimes she rejoices that her daughter has a father who carries her on his shoulders and reads her treatises instead of bedtime stories. Surely this is better than a half-machine of black metal and burned skin. Sometimes Padmé is glad that Leia has a mother whose hands are not stained with blood; a mother who has never stood in the mouth of Hell and killed the one she loved in order to save a doomed Republic.
More often, she remembers Leia’s first wail and those small bunched-up fists the night she came into the world, and Padmé cries herself to sleep.
XXX
Today is Leia Organa’s fourteenth naming-day.
“Excuse me?”
Palma Nané, palace laundress and undisputed leader of the Alderaanian Underground looks up from the torn hem she is mending.
“Princess,” she says breathlessly. The burst of love and pride that suddenly explodes within her blurs her vision.
The princess is staring and this is when Palma sees for the first time; they have the same eyes.
“Are you all right?”
The laundress smiles—really smiles—for the first time in fourteen years. “I am now. How may I be of service, Princess?”
The princess shuffles her feet and sheepishly reveals a ragged tear in her sleeve.
“It was an accident. Do you think…I mean—would you be able to…I wouldn’t ask, only it’s a new dress for my naming-day and I’m meant to wear it to the festival tonight and…well—I…”
Palma the laundress smiles again. She is beautiful when she smiles, and the princess wonders how a woman like this has come to work in a palace laundry room.
“Of course, Princess. We’ll fix it right up, and no one will ever be the wiser. Come and sit while I get a needle and some white thread.”
Later, Padmé wonders how she did it; how she was able to act so calmly, to speak and laugh while her heart pounded against her throat and her daughter sat across from her, close enough to touch. All she can think of is that we do what we must for the ones we love.
They sit and talk for much longer than it takes for Padmé's practiced fingers to stitch up the sleeve. The princess tells the beautiful laundress about her lessons, her parents, about the books she is reading and the summer she spent in the Lake Country of Naboo.
“Have you ever seen it?” Leia asks. She bites her lip the same way Queen Amidala had when she was fourteen.
Palma smiles again. She has smiled many times in this last hour, and her face is beginning to ache. It is a glorious ache.
“I was born beside Lake Varykino,” she says. “I swam before I spoke. I slept in lemon groves and snuck out at night to dip my feet in the lakewater. I have walked in the Hanging Gardens of Theed and I have known great men and women who climbed the steps of the Senatorial Seat. I remember the Day of Peace when the Gunguns and the Naboo became allies and the capitol was full of the scent of waterlilies. You yourself, Princess, have the grace and elegance of my people. You wear your hair in two sections today, as was once the fashion in Naboo.”
The princess smiles shyly. This laundress does not speak like a laundress. This laundress reminds her of someone in a dream.
“Yes. I saw a stained glass when I was there last summer. It was of a woman who had died, a Senator my father had known. I cannot remember her name.”
Palma the laundress does something very strange then. She leans forward and the young princess can see the silver hairs threading through the brown curls. Very gently, the laundress traces the curves of Leia Organa’s face.
“She would have loved you.”
That night, Padmé lies beside Sabé and she dreams of the Lake Country in the summertime. She wakes smelling of lakewater and lemons.
XXX
Hell has a way of coming back to haunt us.
Padmé keeps a list of names under her bed. They are the names of those who have died for her. For a long time, the only name written there was that of Cordé Parsa. Then, there was Teckla Minnau. Anakin’s name is written there too, and the paper is wrinkled as if it has been dried out many times. (His name has been scratched out.) Now, there are many more names. Rabé and Ellé, Saché, Umé, and Motée—all members of the Resistance. All because they had loved and believed in her memory. Last night, she added another. In the morning, the thin paper is more wrinkled and deformed than ever and it lies crumpled on the floor of a room that is not hers.
The sunlight shows the name at the bottom with terrible innocence. It is Sabé Noname.
XXX
Padmé lives and dies all at once.
There is a tall and thin woman struggling through a crowd of medical droids and pilots in orange flightsuits at the Palace airbase. Someone in a dark uniform calls for this woman to stop and have her vitals checked. Her hair is long and artificially golden and she shouts a name that belongs to no one.
Padmé does not believe she is real until they are folded in each other’s arms and both their faces are slick with tears.
XXX
In her dream, she is falling with him.
The smell of Hell is inside her, and her skin is on fire. She watches as the man she loved is sheathed in black metal. Every scream, every nerve ending that is fused to cruel machinery is a stabbing pain in her stomach. Every time he cries her name is her heart splitting in two. She did this. All of it is her fault.
It was not supposed to go this way. When she left Coruscant with that red ribbon wound through her long braid, it was supposed to be the end. The boy she had fallen in love with was gone and the husk she was left with was in danger of toppling the entire Republic; on the verge of enslaving the universe. So she armed herself with a dagger and walked out to do what needed to be done. She had not once considered turning back. She had not known she would be a mother in three hours’ time. The babies weren’t supposed to come for another two weeks. When they were born, she and Sabé were supposed to be in the Outer Rim and Anakin Skywalker was supposed to be dead. He would be remembered as a hero of the Clone Wars, a noble Jedi Knight; no one but Padmé would ever know of his treachery. She would be strong enough to bear it for the sake of the children growing tall at her side. But she had stood unflinching upon the burning canyons of Hell, and for such courage, there is always a price to be paid.
In the dream, the thing that is no longer her husband reaches for her. Padmé cannot move. Her feet seem to have been bolted to the floor. He curses and screams and shakes in agony, but still she does not come near. The black helmet is lowered and her Tattoine boy will soon be gone forever. Then, in this dream, he speaks in the voice she still remembers so well.
“Forgive me,” he sighs.
And she does it, as best she can.
She turns on her heel and walks away. She never dreams of Anakin again.
XXX
On the last morning this planet will ever see, Padmé is in the Temple of Aldera.
She is lighting a candle for her daughter who is serving in the Galactic Senate. She has seen Leia Organa often these last years. The princess likes the warmth of the laundry room. She likes her conversations with Miryam and Palma even better. Padmé prays for this spirited, angry child of hers, so young and so headstrong and so frustrated with the injustice of a broken system. She lights another for the son she has not seen for nineteen years. A boy that she has thought of and prayed for every single day since he came into the world. She prays that he is his father’s son—that Luke inherits Anakin’s kindness to strangers, his laughter, and his loyalty to the ones he loved. She prays that one day she will see this son and hold him in her arms.
The candle flames burn straight and strong. They do not stutter.
She turns and walks out of the Temple. Already, she is thinking of the supplies that need to be gathered and shipped in secret to the base on Yavin. She will send some sweets and small toys as well, for it is the children who suffer most. The mountain sunlight—so much stronger than the light glinting off the surface of Lake Varykino—almost blinds her and she raises a hand to shield her face, still stately and beautiful after so many years. Sabé is waiting for her. Padmé Amidala smiles and laughs. She pulls Sabé close. Sabé who has loved her from the day they were introduced. Sabé who knows her better than she knows herself. Sabé of the perfect aim and the thin hands and the sharp teeth. Sabé who she loves and will never let go. Sabé who keeps the shadow of Hell at bay. They kiss there in the sunlight, and perhaps this is when it happens. Hell is ever the enemy of happiness.
Or perhaps it is a moment later, as they walk hand-in-hand back to the simple home they have built together these nineteen years. Perhaps it is when Padmé tilts her head up to look at the sky, as perfect and blue as the waters of the Lake Country. Perhaps it is when she thinks to herself…
This might be Heaven.
END