Chapter Text
It was winter on Naboo. The air was crisper and the roads of Theed were smoky and packed tightly with bustling crowds. Thick flakes of snow shuddered from the sky, gathering on the ornate stonework of high balconies and domes. Though there were no mountains in sight beyond the arching buildings, Luke felt so vividly that he was actually in Aldera that he tipped back his hood and dipped his head back toward the falling flakes.
"Enjoying yourself?" his companion asked, her silvery voice as stark and lovely as the bright white world around them.
Luke blinked rapidly, thick snowflakes melting on his lashes, and he turned to face her. She was shorter than him, her face round and framed by ringlets of sleek brown hair which was half caught in a sweeping array of small braided buns at the crown of her head while the rest fell free at her shoulders. A beaded golden fillet maneuvered around her curls and disappeared into the buns. She wore a velvet cloak much like his own, but while his was silver and embroidered with shining stars and white-winged birds tucked into highly stylized grapevines, hers was a deep emerald and sparsely decorated with gold threaded florals. He had not seen the dress beneath it, but it was likely just as elegant.
Pooja Naberrie offered him a steaming cup of something that smelled very sweet.
"What is this?" he asked, taking it very carefully, fearful that he might spill it on her. He had forgotten to wear gloves, and his fingers were chapped and growing numb.
"Mulled Honey Milk," Pooja said, taking a sip from her own cup and smiling warmly. "A Naboo specialty."
Luke smiled back at her and politely took a sip. It was even sweeter than it smelled, blindingly sweet and causing the tips of his fingers and toes to tingle. He couldn't be sure if it was because the drink was alcoholic or because he was freezing.
"I've never seen Naboo in the winter before," Luke admitted as Pooja hooked her arm through his and led him slowly down the cobbled street. "It's very beautiful. Reminds me of home."
"Ah." Pooja smiled, the corners of her brown eyes wrinkling in delight. "Alderaan is a gem of a planet, so I've heard. I keep telling your father that I want to visit, but I never have the time." She sighed emphatically, raising her gaze toward the flurried heavens. A few children streaked past them, snowballs dashing through the air. "The senate is so grueling, I often feel guilty for not being more understanding with my aunt when I was young."
"Your aunt?"
Pooja blinked, glancing down at him curiously. They had been acquainted for about two days, since Luke had arrived at Naboo for the coronation of Queen Mandira and Pooja had been assigned as his tour guide of sorts. He felt guilty for that job being thrust on her, especially since he had been to Naboo before and figured he could get around fine, but Eulalia had insisted and so here they were. He didn't know much about her other than she had worked with his father in the Imperial Senate.
"My mother's sister was Padmé Amidala," Pooja explained slowly, as though she was not used to providing such information. Maybe it was common knowledge here and in the senate, but to Luke it was completely new.
"I've heard of her," Luke gasped, his eyes brightening. "I'm not sure where, but the name is familiar. So she was a senator?"
"And a former queen of Naboo, yes."
"A senator and a queen?" Luke whistled low, blinking down at his mulled Honey. "Ambitious. Just the thought of the senate scares me to death, and she took on all that? Your aunt must have had real guts."
Pooja laughed, and she took a sip of her Honey. "Oh," she murmured. "Yes, she was certainly gutsy. Mother says she was the most fearless, stubborn person she'd ever known. She says I take after her, but…" Pooja's soft brown eyes darkened considerably, and she pried her arm from Luke's. He watched her, a twinge of guilt and concern muddling up in his stomach as she took a big gulp of Honey and turned her face away. "Should we head back?"
Luke wanted to pry a bit more about her aunt, courtesy be damned, but he tamed his impulse and smiled at Pooja warmly. "Lead the way," he said, gesturing forward in a grand sweep.
"Troopers," Pooja greeted statically as they approached the front gate of the palace, flashing her identification. "Prince Luke and I are returning from our stroll."
"Yes," the trooper said, glancing down at his datapad, "Miss… Senator Naberrie. We were informed of your absence, and you both have been summoned."
Both Pooja and Luke jolted to attention, sharing a startled glance. "By whom?" Pooja demanded, her shock melting into the calm and stately exterior of a seasoned senator. Luke marveled at her, and took a mental note. He calmed himself similarly, staring straight at the Stormtrooper's glassy white helmet and forcing himself to appear authoritative
"By Lord Vader, ma'am."
Pooja's eyes flew wide, the whites of them reflecting the salient light of the winter sun and the snowcapped rooftops of the palace. She clasped her gloved hands, her soft chin lifting high as she nodded curtly to the Trooper. The gate clicked open, and they were escorted inside the palace by another Trooper.
"Wait here," the Trooper said, depositing them in a small room down the main corridor of the lower rotunda of the palace. It looked like it had once been a room used for entertaining, but now it simply served as a sort of memorial to past monarchs of the planet. There were two lavish couches, a fireplace, and a constantly scrolling holodoc listing the names and years in office.
When the Trooper left, Pooja strode toward one of the couches and collapsed onto it, dropping her face into her hands.
"Pooja?" Luke glanced around nervously. He unhooked his cloak, shrugging it off his shoulders and tossing it over the back of the couch she had chosen. "I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding. Surely Vader will—"
"Vader doesn't come to Naboo," Pooja hissed, "he shouldn't be here, he— he wasn't here for Eulalia's coronation, so it can't be that, can it?"
"Sometimes the simplest explanation is the truest one," Luke said calmly, sitting down beside her and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Pooja, we've done nothing wrong. You're Naboo's senator, and I'm Alderaan's prince. He can't kill us."
She blinked twice, as though she had been in a daze and now recognized that she was not in any immediate danger. "You're right," she sighed, her shoulders slumping. "I'm overreacting. It is strange though, him being here… the Emperor makes more visits than he does, and the Emperor hates making huge public journeys."
"He was probably ordered to come here in the Emperor's place," Luke said with a shrug. "Naboo is the Emperor's homeworld, isn't it? It would look bad if the Emperor didn't seem interested in the power shift."
Pooja nodded, though she didn't look completely convinced. She unhooked her own cloak, revealing a silver dress with a high collar that billowed loosely around her upper arms and torso and cinched rather dramatically at her elbows and waist in a burgundy corset. The skirt gathered in satin folds around her legs, melting like liquid metal against her body.
Luke sat in his plain blue jerkin and dark trousers, and he wondered who would pick him as the royal one if forced to guess.
"I wonder where he is," Pooja said, glancing around the room suspiciously. "It's unlike him not to be waiting here dramatically for us."
"I've only really had one interaction with him," Luke admitted, "and that was when I was young. I hope he doesn't remember me."
Pooja snorted at that. "Did you get arrested or something?"
Luke smiled at her sheepishly. Pooja glanced at him, and suddenly whirled to face him, her tight brown curls fluttering at her shoulders.
"Really?" she whispered excitedly. "Luke, how in all the stars did you manage to get yourself arrested by Lord Vader?"
"Well, I was eleven," he said, leaning back in his seat and glancing up at the ceiling. "I was shadowing my father in the senate in preparation for my entry into the Legislative Youth Program on Alderaan, and ended up a bit turned around while in the Rotunda. I was lost and trying to find my father, so I was in the lift, and suddenly I was on a floor I really had no business being on, hiding for no reason other than because I heard the name "Vader" and panicked, and then without any real warning he appeared in front of me. Then he sort of dragged kicking and screaming down to the nearest ISB office where I was interrogated and forced to take a test. It's all kind of hazy now."
Pooja stared at him blankly, her expression very still and very carefully devoid of a reaction. "Luke," she said cautiously, "you are telling me that you were abducted by Darth Vader when you were eleven, and… your father just let it go?"
"Well, it wasn't really an abduction," Luke muttered, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "Legally the ISB was allowed to take custody of me because I was in a restricted area, and could have overheard top secret information because I was resisting the law by hiding. Don't think I didn't try to invoke my rights, because I was well aware of them. Imperial Law is ridiculous and binding, though."
"Still!" Pooja looked angry now, her brow furrowing and her jaw set. "You were a child, and there should have been a guardian present before any sort of interrogation was set forth! Was your father even notified?"
Luke grimaced. He shook his head hesitantly. Pooja gave a disbelieving huff, and Luke sighed. "He only found me because he went searching for me when I went missing. Some Trooper let it slip that he'd seen Vader dragging me out of the building with an ISB agent. He said he'd just used deductive reasoning."
"What would have happened if he hadn't found you?" Pooja asked, clearly horrified.
Luke sat in silence. He had never thought of that before. What would have happened to him if he had stayed in Imperial custody that day?
The door slid open behind them, and a shuddering breath made them both freeze.
"Eventually we would have been forced to release him," Vader said, his deep baritone seeming to strike a tremor through the floor.
They both sat, sharing a look of utter misery as Vader swept in and stood before them. He seemed to pause briefly, his helmet stuck in an odd position as he observed the two of them on the couch, Pooja in all her extravagance and Luke looking rather plain beside her.
"Were you lurking behind us the whole time, Lord Vader?" Pooja asked with a delightful amount of unrestrained bite to her tone. "Or did your name simply summon you?"
"Your conversation was being monitored," Vader said flatly. "Senator, you were acting rather distressed at the thought of this meeting. Why?"
Pooja's eyes narrowed. Luke stared up at Vader, gaping openly and unable to school his features. Was he serious? Pooja's fear when they had gotten here was a natural response to finding out they were about to be interrogated by Vader for no reason!
"Why wouldn't she be distressed at the thought of being alone with one of the most dangerous men in the galaxy?" Luke asked candidly. Pooja pressed her lips together thinly.
"Luke," she murmured.
Luke frowned, but he reeled himself in. Vader's shadow was yawning over them, and the room seemed to grow oppressively small since his sudden appearance. He was so tall. Luke had forgotten, in the years since their first encounter. The fear in him that he had shoved onto a shelf in his heart tipped over and spilled out. It stained every surface.
"You two left the palace at 1300 hours this afternoon, correct?"
"Yes," Pooja said calmly. "Are we being interrogated? Shouldn't we be informed of our crime?"
Vader's respirator filled the silence. Luke forced himself to stare up at Vader defiantly, his gaze hard and unyielding.
"An intelligence officer was gunned down in an alley not far from where you two were taking your little stroll," Vader said.
"Well, that's awful," Pooja remarked, "but I don't see what that has to do with us."
"Eyewitnesses say that it was the ghost of Queen Amidala who killed him."
Vader's voice was different then. Luke looked up at him, puzzled, and he tried to figure out just what it was. His tone had shifted. There was an odd sort of crackle to it, and a softness to the phrasing that made Luke wonder.
Pooja, who had already sitting with impeccable posture, seemed to jolt even straighter as though a rod had been inserted into her spine. "Queen Amidala…?" Pooja lowered her eyes, her schooled expression crumbling as she tried to put the pieces together. Then, with a sudden horror, her eyes flashed up to Vader's helmet. "You think I did it."
"No one alive possesses more of a likeness to her than you, Senator."
"I was with Pooja the whole time," Luke objected, jumping to his feet. "This is an unfounded accusation, Lord Vader."
"You may be suspect yourself, Prince," Vader told him sharply. "If you were with her the entirety of your little stroll, then will you agree to a mind probe?"
Luke froze. I could, he thought. I could let him into my head. But then he'd know— he'd see. Papa. I can't. He realized after some consideration that he had not been with Pooja the whole time anyway. She had been gone for a few minutes to get that mulled Honey. Luke swallowed very hard, and he stared into Vader's mask.
"I'll do better than that," Luke said confidently. "I'll find you the real culprit."
"Luke," Pooja said sternly, rising to her feet. "The law will work it out on its own. This is an internal affair, and I trust the authorities here on Naboo to handle it."
"That is where you are wrong, Senator." Vader did not look at her directly, which Luke found odd and incredibly uncomfortable because Vader had decided to stare at him instead. "Because it was an imperial agent who was shot, and we suspect the crime was premeditated, it falls into the jurisdiction of the Empire. You will be processed and tried by Imperial Law."
Luke watched the color drain from Pooja's face. Even if she was found innocent in court, the scandal would almost certainly cause her career to take a blow. Her fear was legitimate, and Luke knew he had to help her. In his heart, something was aching as though from years of disuse, and he knew, he knew, he knew as well as he knew his own name that if he didn't help her, she would die.
"I will find the culprit," Luke said firmly. "Pooja is innocent, and I swear I will prove it or so help me I'll die trying."
Vader had not taken his eyes off him. So he watched in silence, respirator hissing, and finally turned to Pooja.
"I have no reason to allow this," he said.
"Then don't allow it," Pooja replied, crossing her arms over her stomach and glaring at him. "You have the authority, and Luke is only a prince. What can he do to find a murderer?"
Vader seemed to consider that, and he nodded.
"Prince Luke," he said, "you have until Queen Mandira's coronation to deliver the true culprit to me."
"But—!" Luke stepped back in alarm. "But that's tomorrow!"
Vader merely looked at him. A chill ran through him, and his whole body seemed to feel as his fingers had when he had been out in the snow for so long without gloves. Numb and chapped, stiff from a strange and asphyxiating feeling of being submerged in a tank of black fluid.
"Your alternatives are a mind probe, or Senator Naberrie's arrest. I have no stake in either."
"I'll find her," Luke said, folding his arms across his chest and scowling up at the man. "I want your word that she will not be harmed or taken into custody."
"My word," Vader rumbled. Pooja seemed to scoff at that, though she hid it behind her hair. "Fine. But she will be placed under armed guard."
"I won't run," Pooja said flatly.
"I do not know that, Senator."
Luke glanced around him, taking in the scale of the paintings that lined the walls. "Which one is Queen Amidala?"
He had been expecting Pooja to respond, but he was shocked when Vader grabbed him by the shoulder and wheeled him around. He was pushed forward and deposited before the painting of a girl whose face was painted starkly white, as her predecessors, with a smooth line of red slashed vertically upon her bottom lip and two dots of paint at the center of both her cheeks.
Luke looked into the young woman's eyes, and for a moment he forgot where he was and what he was doing and perhaps who he was entirely. It was a strange moment, to lose oneself to a great surge of what he could only describe as unfounded nostalgia.
She's beautiful, he thought. He did not say it aloud, but he stared at the painting with an open mouth and shining eyes.
"If you two are done gaping at my aunt," Pooja said in a sharp, defensive tone, "could we continue with this? Or was that all you wanted, Lord Vader?"
Her voice was so smooth and steady, it was as though Vader had appeared to tell her of a minor inconvenience, not that she was under suspicion for treason and murder.
Vader released his shoulder, which was now rather sore, and whirled on Pooja. Luke's eyes lingered on Queen Amidala's serene young face, round and stolid beneath the white paint that caked her nose and cheeks and forehead.
"There will be consequences," Vader rumbled. His words seemed to echo emptily in the vastness of this room, rolling over Pooja and Luke in a wave of malice. "If no one else can be held accountable, then you will die, Senator Naberrie."
Luke tore his gaze away from the languid brown eyes of Queen Amidala, and he turned to look at Pooja. She was standing tall, with her round face held high and her brown eyes valiantly bright and unyielding. Luke could see, suddenly, why Vader seemed so certain that Pooja had been the one who had done it. Her serenely defiant expression seemed to mirror the painting of the young queen behind him.
"Sentenced to death for deigning to resemble my dead aunt," Pooja drawled. Her shoulders jerked toward her chin as she scoffed. "What a way to go. Will my family be allowed to keep my remains?"
"Pooja!" Luke stepped forward, cutting in front of Vader in what may have been a rather dramatic sweep of his arms. "You are not going to die. I am going to settle this whole thing, find the real culprit, and clear your name. Okay?"
Pooja looked at him, and the defiant coolness of her gaze softened into that languid look he had noted in the painting of Queen Amidala.
"Okay, Luke," she said gently.
But it wasn't okay. Because she did not believe he could do it. He realized it— he felt her resignation, clear and sharp as the winter wind outside the palace, and it hurt.
It hurt because in his heart, he feared his own vulnerability. He didn't need a droid to tell him the odds of finding the true culprit was slim, especially in such a short amount of time.
"You will stay in this room," Vader told Pooja. She did not even look at him as she nodded mutely. Vader turned his helmet toward Luke in a sort of cold consideration. And then he left. The air in the room seemed to leave with him.
Luke found himself dropping onto the couch, feeling rather drained and shivery, as though some sort of fever had rushed him and he was only now feeling its effects. Pooja stood quietly in the middle of the room, her head bowing and her glossy curls curtaining her face.
"That was… different," she murmured.
"What?" Luke forced himself back to his feet just as Pooja collapsed onto a couch, her face once more in her hands.
"Why would he allow this?" She shook her head furiously, dragging her hands through her hair and exhaling sharply. "It makes no sense. This is Darth Vader! Ruthless, cold blooded killer. Giving me a chance to prove my innocence… even such a slim one… it's rather out of character, don't you think?"
"I don't really know him well enough to judge," Luke admitted, sitting down beside her. "But… Pooja, does it really matter? A chance to live is a chance to live! All I have to do is figure out who really did it."
Pooja sighed heavily and dropped her hands into her lap. She smiled at him. "Are you detective now, Prince Luke?"
"Nope," he said brightly. "But I'm confident enough in my intuition that I think I can save you. So have faith in me, okay?"
Pooja looked at him, and her eyes glimmered with the faintest bit of hope. She took his hand, and said very somberly, "Please tell my sister what happened. Ryoo Naberrie— she's a historian, she'll be able to tell you everything and more about Aunt Padmé. Start there."
Luke nodded. "You can count on me," he swore to her, squeezing her hand tightly and rising to his feet. He looked her in the eye, and he saw the terror that lingered there. She really believed she was going to die. "Don't you dare despair. You are a senator, the niece of a senator and a queen, and you know in your heart that you are innocent. And even if you were not innocent, have faith, Pooja Naberrie, that you are meant to do incredible things and so your life cannot simply stop short. Don't let it. Keep clinging to it."
Pooja's eyes widened. She simply stared after him as he slipped his hand from hers, gathered his cloak in his arms, and exited the room.