Title:  A Misplaced Link
Author:  AdraLoran
Disclaimer: Star Wars is the legal copyright of LucasFilms Inc.  No infringement is intended.  I am not making money off this.
Summary:  AU. This is basically the history of Adra Amidala [relation to Padmé Amidala explained on my page]. It starts on our lovely Earth and goes off to Coruscant and the rest.
Rating: PG

Chapter One

"Lucas is a genius!" The exclamations whirled around from all sides. Even Anna, the girl who'd gone with Adra to see Episode II, Attack of the Clones, was ranting on how great a guy George Lucas was. But Adra's memory somehow seemed to be yanking her thoughts in a different direction. Almost as if to tell her that Lucas, the great, awesome Star Wars producer, had got it wrong. But that couldn't be. Star Wars was fiction...wasn't it?

Anna prodded Adra's arm sharply to get her attention. "So? What did you think?!"

Her excited face swam in and out of focus as they exited the theater with the rest of the throng. Not until they reached that parking lot did she find an answer.

"I liked it; liked it a lot. George Lucas really is amazing," was all she could muster for the moment. Her hand had unconsciously gone to the necklace hanging at her throat.

It was odd, that necklace. The clasp wasn't what you would've expected. Rather than being one of those things you had to pull the lever thing down on, it was a tiny circle that had two large indents on each side, then two tiny ones at the top of the sliver that was left in between. And it was perfectly symmetrical.

And dangling at the center of the icy-blue and lime green beads was another one of the exact same symbol, only much larger. Adra's mother wouldn't comment on where she'd gotten it, even when some of Adra's Star Wars friends begged her. They all liked it. That symbol was, at least by Master Lucas, the symbol for the Rebel Alliance.

Fingering the red charm slowly, Adra looked back to Anna. "Mom said she'd pick us up over by the Episode II sign." She attempted an enthusiastic smile, for Anna's sake.

"Alright! This is so awesome. You know we'll be talking all night. Or at least I will and you'll have to listen." She grinned and inwardly Adra wondered why she had had to ask her to sleep over afterwards. Right now she wanted to have quiet…so she could examine these intruding thoughts that said George Lucas was wrong.

As a strand hair fell across her face, she made no notice of it but to push it back behind her ear. Everyone seems to like long hair; that's probably the only reason she had it...other than the plain and simple fact that she could do a lot of styles with it. But Adra didn't care for that right now.

A tan van pulled up next to us and her mother's face appeared when the window rolled down.

"Hey you two! How was the movie? Absolutely fabulous? Well, hop in!" Her usually cheering disposition was unscathed. Adra pulled on the sliding door handle and then released as the door electronically went back.

"After you," she grinned at Anna. Anna climbed in the van and took the center seat. Adra climbed in after and pulled the inside handle up. The door closed.

While her mom and Anna ranted on the entire drive home, Adra instead took the time to remain silent and focus 'inward'. More like thought-ward. As the movie had progressed, certain images- where they memories or mere imagination?- had jumped forward in her mind. The Naboo cruiser hadn't done much of anything…but by the time it had gotten to the Geonosis arena scene she had dozens of images in her mind. And they hadn't come from the movie.

Like the Tusken Raider scene: those huts? They seemed to be right…but then once Anakin got us inside, an image flashed forward, showing that the interiors were padded with the same 'material' as the outside. It didn't show the supports, as the movie did.

A bump in the pavement jolted her into the conversation. Anna was still bubbling on about how she thought Hayden Christensen was the cutest guy she'd ever seen and about how she was so jealous of Natalie Portman for getting to kiss him in the movie, and so on and so forth.

Putting her elbows on her knees, Adra's forehead went into her hands. Why did she get these mind flashes?! How did she get the images…or even the knowledge that such things weren't so?

Anna suddenly tapped her shoulder. "You okay? I asked you if you'd help me with French. You always seem to get it…and considering we have a test tomorrow..."

Her face looked pleadingly at her own. French studies. But Adra didn't even need to study it. It just...clicked. However, duty called. "I suppose. But we can't go off trying to conjugate the word for 'land-speeder', or 'cruiser'."

She laughed openly at Anna's fake look of sadness. Anna grinned back at Adra and then the van slowed to a halt in the driveway. Adra opened the door once more, unbuckled and jumped out.

"Well, come on then!" She pretended to be impatient. Looking up at the 10 PM sky, she stared for quite a while. Anna came to stand next to her, also looking up; as though trying to see what Adra was looking at.

Finally she had to ask, as Anna always did. "What are you looking for? Or at?"

Adra shook her head- she didn't even really know. But then a star flashed again. She looked to it…and saw, again by memory, the star moving closer and closer, finally close enough that she could see the details past it. A squadron of TIE fighters was moving through real space some ways off. And even beyond them was a desert planet. She recognized it at once: it was Tatooine. The Tatooine System was very possibly one of the closest systems to that of the Milky Way; not counting the Ryloth System. She looked back to the TIE fighters, only to see them for a millisecond. They had jumped into hyperspace. And there direction was not headed to Ryloth, or so some unknown sense told her. They were headed towards Earth. They were headed to Earth…and Earth was only 30 parsecs away. They would be at destination by tomorrow at noon.

Blinking, Adra suddenly realized what this meant. First off, it meant that she wasn't just imagining things. Secondly, it meant that in order to do anything safely they had to be ready. Grabbing Anna's wrist, Adra pulled her inside. Looking at her mom, who had taken to the couch, she glanced at the T.V.

"Mom, we're not going to school tomorrow. Urgent request but please don't make us." Before she could so much as contradict, Adra hurried upstairs, Anna in tow.

Once in her room, she looked at Anna's face. "All right girl. You tell me what's wrong." But Adra didn't reply. Instead she was digging through her closet. Coming upon an old black box, one she had never really bothered to investigate more than opening, she grabbed it and pulled it out.

Anna blinked. Adra never had ignored her before. Before taking off the top of the box, she looked to Anna. She was going to have to lie. "I'll tell you what's wrong. We can't go to school tomorrow because there's going to be a huge Star Wars show. It's going to be a life-like version of a squad of TIE fighters here on Earth."

It was close to the truth. And besides, Anna suddenly looked delighted. "How did you know that?! That is so neat!"

Smiling stiffly, Adra merely shrugged. "I got some notice about it a week or so ago. It's at noontime tomorrow."

Now she opened the box. Inside was a small pouch made of black material. Then there was a board. The only other immediately visible thing was a fake lightsaber handle that looked amazingly like the blue one Anakin Skywalker had held in parts of the film. Taking this out, along with the pouch- which Adra knew held what looked like food capsules- she pressed down on one side of the board, willing it to not be a raised, permanent bottom. The other end moved up. Grabbing under it, she pulled the board out. A brown piece of material covered the top. This Adra pulled out, only to find it was a mere rectangle of fabric. But she was immediately aware of what lay beneath…just as Anna was.

"Oh my God..." Anna's voice was hardly more than a whisper of amazement, but it was there none the less. "How did you get all this stuff? Did you make it?"

Adra cringed inwardly again at having to lie to her. So instead she cut back on details. "It was a gift a few birthdays ago." She had gotten it when she was about four; nine years ago.

Pulling out the leggings, Adra spread them out carefully on her bed. Then she pulled out what appeared to be an inner tunic, an outer tunic, an obi and the tabards. Putting these in there respective places on her bed, she looked back into the box. At the bottom lay just three more things: a leather belt with all the little gizmos on it, a pair of Jedi-like boots...and the Jedi Robe. Though she had never opened the box beyond the lightsaber and pouch, and the clothes had been in there for Sith-only-knows how long before now...

At school, a lot of people liked Adra, but everyone thought she was weird. Instead of saying stuff like 'Oh my God!' or 'That is so cool!', she would say stuff like 'By the Force!' or 'Wizard!'. Even the teachers had a few issues with her… Like in Science class: her teacher was always trying to find ways to give her a fair F. Not only because she always came up with the most amazing projects, or that she used technology that scientists hadn't even cracked yet, but that Adra corrected a lot of the stuff the teacher said. She just wanted everyone to get the facts right.

Standing at the foot of her bed, Adra fingered the pants of the tan pants. Then she looked over to Anna. "What's say I try them on?"

Anna nodded enthusiastically. "Do it! I want to see you look in them!"

With a laugh, she gathered the collection of clothing and went out to the bathroom to change. A few minutes later Adra returned, bedecked in tunics, tabards, obi and robe. The boots, amazingly, fit. The belt fit her too, though at its smallest point. Coming back into my room, she looked over at Anna.

"What do you think?" Adra couldn't even contain her excitement. The tiny braid on the right side of her head, very near the front, dangled down; the rest of her hair was in a pony-tail.

Anna stood up and walked around her friend, as though in an inspection. "You look like a real Jedi. Wait! You need your lightsaber!"

With a laugh she hurried to the bed, grabbed the pouch and the lightsaber and handed them to Adra. Putting the lightsaber on the belt, she then opened the pouch. Letting its gold and silver contents fall into her hand, she suddenly realized how light they weren't. The look of confusion about to spring onto her face was held in firm check. Adra opened the top part of one of them to look inside. A strange substance was in there, but no offending odor came to warn of it going bad. Putting the cap back on, she hooked all eight of them onto the belt.

About to pretend she was a Jedi suddenly under siege, her mother's voice called up the stairs.

"Adra, would you come down here a minute?" She didn't have time to change out of the Jedi robes so instead Adra just nodded to Anna, told her she'd be right back and went downstairs.

Adra almost wish she had changed. She could've sworn she nearly gave her mother a heart attack. The look on her face was one of horror and disbelief. Going over to her, Adra sat down in the chair next to her end of the couch.

"What's wrong?" That was the only thing she could think of to say. And she got an immediate reply.

"You...you're...you can't have... Oh my. Adra... I never told you this. I didn't know how to. But, you see... You're not my daughter. You're not even related to me. In truth...well, you weren't even born in the same generic way as other people. And what you're wearing isn't a costume. It's real."

Dumbfounded Adra merely stared at her. Real? Jedi were real? It was amazing... awesome... frightening even... If Jedi were real, then that meant she wasn't a freak for speaking as she did and using the expressions...and the images. They weren't just imagination. They were memories! Excitement mounted inside her, a grin willing to force itself on to her face. Then the full scale of what her mother had said hit her.

"What do you mean I wasn't born in the same generic way?" She was surprised by the amount of emotion in her voice.

Adra's mother took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "I'm sorry I never told you earlier. But now I can't back out of it. Adra… you and I aren't even from this planet. My name is not Sera Tallon." She took a deep breath, as though that might help her story make more sense to the both of us. "My real name is Thracia Cho Leem. I was once a Jedi Master, but that was before I decided I didn't want to see my former Padawans die in combat. I withdrew from the Order and went to live on Tatooine. There I was approached by Master Yoda about 20 years later. He quickly explained to me that a Jedi had just died, but she had been carrying a baby that was not to be just a future Jedi, but possibly one who could rival a Dark Jedi like Lord Vader. The odd thing though, as Master Yoda told me, was that this child wasn't this Jedi's own. The child's- your- generic make-up was through a donation from two people: Han Solo who was about 10 years old at the time, and Padmé Amidala as one of her dying wishes.

"I agreed to take you as my own child until you were 14 years old… or until the Empire found out where you were. You were born on Tatooine, but by the time you were three the Empire had nearly gotten you more than a dozen times. Master Yoda told me to take you to a different planet, but even if I did it would only be a matter of time before the Empire knew where I'd taken you. And then there would still be the risk of losing you; the Jedi couldn't afford that. So, in theory, you are both related to Luke, Leia and Han, but also Jaina and Jacen."

As she finished, Adra sat in a stunned silence. Related to them? Amazing. They were the greats that George Lucas had portrayed nearly perfectly in the Star Wars series. So it was real. It was real and it was an amazing thing.

Thracia looked at the lightsaber on Adra's belt. "That's real. Try it."

Adra stood up, took the lightsaber off her belt and inspected it with interest for a few seconds. Then she activated it, almost afraid it wouldn't work. A lime green beam sizzled to life, the humming a quiet constant.

"Wizard!" was all she could think to say for a minute. Then she got her thoughts together. "This is amazing! Just…wizard! Who did it belong to?"

"It didn't. I made that a long time ago- maybe 12 years- for when you were older." Thracia's reply was quick and concise.