Prologue:

The room was dark and nearly silent, save for the soft beeps of constant running machinery. Her body lie, prone, gently covered with a white cloth as though she had only just gone to sleep. They hadn't had it within them yet to redress the senator's body for a funeral. Under the blanket, the stains of labor were still caked on her thighs.

Somewhere in the depths of her cooling womb, life stirred, pushing its way out the lifeless corpse. Naked eyes would not see it, natural ears could not hear it, but the thin, heartbeat was enough for the sleeping maidbot.

For a moment, the droid slowly scanned the room, bright eyes roving the silent darkness for the life signs that had woken it. She started as she noticed it was from the body on the bed. Moving quickly, the droid went first to Padme's chest, expecting that perhaps the senator was not dead after all, but, indeed her pulse was nonexistent and her body was losing warmth. No, the droid realized, the heartbeat was coming from deeper within.

She scanned the body and gasped as the infant's form came across the scan. "Oh my. Three. My readings said only two. Oh my." The baby was too weak to push itself out and with its mother dead, there were few chances for it to survive. Acting quickly, the droid removed the shift covering Padme's lower half and pressed gently at her stomach until she located the general shape of the infant. With mechanical precision, the droid sliced into the mother, shifted through the organs, and pulled free the child.

A girl: frail, and thin; skin almost translucent so the blue veins seemed stark even in this darkness. It was a miracle she had made it to term at all.

Giving no care to the senator's body – she was dead after all – the droid swept across the room and activated the Infant Emergency Care Unit. Lights suddenly flooded the room as machinery whirred to life and the droid gently placed the girl into the care of her equipment.

The maidbot looked down at the slowly wiggling but silent newborn and sighed. "I must alert Master Kenobi."

The maidbot's search to find Obi-Wan was cut short when it noticed the Jedi master leaning against the wall – despite the late hour - holding another sleeping bundle in his arms. At the robot's approach he looked up and by the redness in his eyes it could tell he had been crying.

"Master Kenobi, there was another child."

Obi-Wan frowned and instinctively shook his head. The information was difficult enough to process on its own, but combined with his own swirling thoughts, the words struggled to reach his conscious.

"How?" He finally said.

"She is very weak. I believe the other two monopolized most of the nourishment and overshadowed her development."

Again, Obi-Wan frowned, concern whisking away his other thoughts. "Show me."

"Yes, sir."

The pair returned quickly to the medical room, now fully alight as the many machines worked on the tiny infant. Several tubes and wires had been attached to her skin and the glass of the unit was slightly fogged as it adjusted the temperature to keep her warm. To the droid, the child looked worse and she could not hide her disappointed sigh. "I do not know that she will be able to survive very long. She did not receive enough care while in the mother and was in the corpse without anything for quite some time, considering her condition."

As she spoke, Obi-Wan crossed the room and peered at the baby. She still wiggled weakly and her mouth would open a little as if she wanted to cry but simply didn't have the strength. As though in response, the infant boy, who had been silent in his arms, let out a long wail. Immediately, the droid came over to address the infant and shush him. In the silence, the two could just make out, a soft gurgled, cry, just as weak as the baby making it.

Again, the droid sighed. "The best course of action is to make her passing as comfortable as possible."

"No," he answered, eyes locked on the little form. "No, do everything you can to keep her alive."

If asked later, Obi-wan would say he felt Padme's eyes on him from the other side of the room; heard her pleading that her children survived. They are all I have left of him.

"Master Kenobi, I'm sure – "

"She is the daughter of two of the strongest wills I know. She will fight; she will live. I will not abandon her."

For a third time, the maid bot sighed. "As you request."

To be continued…