Part One
Ami rushed to the Forward Command Center where she knew her mother was briefing troupes, planning battles, and whatever else war generals do while on duty. An alarm blared somewhere outside the fortress, heralding the arrival of an enemy battalion. Her progress was slowed by multitudes of passing Resistance fighters, who were racing to arm themselves for the ensuing battle, and the little girl she was carrying on her shoulders. Ami and several other politicians' children had been looking for tree frogs and light beetles on the outskirts of a nearby jungle; however, as soon as they heard the siren begin to blast, all eight of them ran back to the fortress as fast as their little legs could go, with Ami straying to the rear of the pack to ensure the smallest of them made it to safety.
The youngest of the Mud Warriors, as they dubbed themselves, was Ilyaa, a Twi'lek toddler who'd taken a shine to Ami when they'd met the day before. She hadn't been able to keep up with the rest of the kids, all of whom were at least twice her age and three times as fast as she was, and was too scared to do much more than cry anyway.
"It's okay, Ilyaa," Ami gently reassured her as they sped through the stone corridors. "When we get to my mom, she'll help us find your parents and get you out of here. My mom's the General, you know. She can do anything." The two companions rounded a large pillar and entered a tight, well-hidden servants' staircase that lead straight to Forward Command. Ami had discovered it when they first reached the base, and had since used it many times to play pranks on the stuck-up command officers, most of whom were mean to her when her mother wasn't looking.
Ascending the stairs with a toddler on her back was hard for Ami, who was trying desperately to hide the foreboding that had been bubbling in the pit of her stomach all week; she could feel it growing stronger with each step she took. By the time she reached the top of the stairs, her hands were trembling and her breath was coming in short, painful gasps. She felt like the oxygen was being sucked out of the air as the walls closed in around her, Ilyaa's arms became a noose around her neck, and every unexpected sound and shadow caused her heart to jump. Something very, very bad was about to happen to them all.
With Ilyaa still in tow, Ami pushed through the stone door and into the buzzing command center. The lights from dozens of tactical stations stabbed at her eyes, making them blur. Her hands automatically rubbed her eyes in an attempt to clear her vision, and when they smeared moisture all over her face she realized she was crying. The foreboding was beginning to envelope her as she pushed toward the middle of the room. Mom! she cried out in her mind, Mom, where are you? Please help me!
Suddenly, she could hear her name being called from across the room, but when she tried to reply her voice froze and her eyes began to blur with tears again. She vaguely recognized Admiral Statura's voice as two hands gently guided her through the fog into her mother's loving embrace. General Organa continued commanding the troupes over Ami's shoulder while she caught her breath.
When she had finally recovered enough to be cognizant of her surroundings, Ami noticed that Ilyaa was no longer clinging to her back. "Ilyaa?" she cried, jerking out of her mother's arms and frantically searching the room for any sign of the toddler's small, purple lekku.
"It's all right, sweetheart," Leia said, gently stroking Ami's hair, "Ilyaa's father is taking her to the transport ship with the rest of the children." Ami heaved a sigh of relief and buried her face in her mother's shoulder. "Why are you so panicked, princess, hm?"
"I… Uh… I just feel like something really, really bad is going to happen." Ami whispered. "Can we leave, mom? Please? I don't like it here any more."
Leia searched her daughter's face with an expression of mild disbelief. "I think it would be a good idea if you left with the other children on the transport ship, princess, but I can't leave. Not yet, anyway. You know why I can't leave."
Ami's panic began to settle in her chest, making her tighten her grip on her mother's arms. "No, please! I can't leave without you! Let me stay with you, or go with me. I don't want you to leave me."
"General!" Admiral Statura called, interrupting Leia's reply, "The transport ship has to leave within the next few minutes or they won't make it safely off the planet. You need to send young miss Solo now, or she stays here until the battle is finished."
Leia nodded, her mouth set in a firm line. "Have Lieutenant O-Djo escort my daughter to the transport ship," she directed Statura. When she turned back to Ami's tearful face, her expression was hard as stone. "Ami, y-"
"No!" Ami shrieked, tears spilling down her face, "No, I'm not going. You can't make me!"
"Amidala Organa Solo!" Leia barked, "Get a hold of yourself. You are twelve years old, too old for these antics and foolish displays of emotion. When I give an order, I expect it to be followed. Do you understand?"
Ami nodded, head bowed, arms now straight at her side and ending in tightly balled fists. A cold, thin hand gripped her chin and jerked her head up, forcing her to hold her mother's eye-level gaze. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, young lady." Leia reprimanded, letting go of Ami's chin to gently tuck her daughter's hair behind her ears. "I need you to be safe," she whispered. "I love you so much."
"I know." Ami breathed, throwing her arms around her mother's shoulders and holding her in a death grip. "But I'm so afraid!"
"General!" Admiral Statura called, a scrawny human boy twitching impatiently at his side. "Lieutenant O-Djo is here. They need to leave now."
"Go," Leia commanded, kissing her daughter on the forehead and then gently pushing her toward the two officers. "We'll be all right, Ami. Don't worry." Amidala took Lieutenant O-Djo's proffered hand, turning to wave when they reached the entrance to the room. Her mother blew a kiss and motioned her away, then turned back to the buzzing interior of her command center.
Ami and her accompanying officer ran the rest of the way to the hangar where the transport ship was housed. The room was large and daunting, with every sound echoing off the walls, creating an almost unbearable wave of noise constantly pounding on Ami's eardrums. Multitudes of pilots were scrambling into their red and gray X-Wings, while even more technicians and mechanics hastened along their last-minute tune-ups and began packing supplies onto freighters for an inevitable evacuation.
Lieutenant O-Djo stopped a nearby technician. "Where is the transport ship with the children and politicians?" he yelled over the cacophony.
"It just left!" the technician replied, pointing at a large, rectangular ship quickly ascending into the sky just outside the hangar doors.
"Did no one inform them that General Organa's daughter was supposed to be leaving with them?" O-Djo barked, his dark skin flushing angrily.
The technician scoffed, shrugged, and walked off to tend to a nearby astromech droid. The lieutenant turned to Ami. "I'm sorry, young miss, but you'll have to go back to Forward Command. It's not safe for you here."
Ami was beginning to nod and reply when she saw an orange flashing in the sky outside the hangar doors. "The transport!" she shouted, jerking her hand from the lieutenant's grip and racing outside. Several screaming TIE fighters twisted menacingly through the air as they concentrated all their fire on the nearly-defenseless transport ship. Ami howled as the ship burst into flaming pieces, jettisoning in different directions and hurling to the ground. X-Wings roared around her, trying to draw the mass of incoming First Order pilots into a skirmish further away from the base.
Her feet suddenly left the ground as two officers picked her up and began carrying her back to Forward Command, Lieutenant O-Djo following swiftly on their heels. "Put me down!" Ami cried, but only lightly squirmed about - she knew better than to pick a fight with members of the Resistance army. "What about the other kids? We have to help them! They could still be alive! Ilyaa was on that ship! Please!"
"No one could have survived that explosion, young miss." Lieutenant O-Djo replied as they entered the command center. "You should count your lucky stars they left without you, or you would be dead as well."
The officers set Ami gently on the ground and ran back to their stations with a swift salute to General Organa. "Ami!" Leia cried as her daughter rushed into her outstretched arms. "Thank the Force you're safe. I'm so sorry - I didn't understand your fear."
Ami nodded and drew back from her cradled position, pulling a long ribbon out of her blonde braids. She tied one end of the ribbon to her mother's wrist and wrapped the opposite end around her hand. "Just in case," she said as she plopped onto the floor and scooted under the command table, releasing enough of the ribbon to create slack for Leia to move her hands freely. Once under the table, Ami laid down and closed her eyes. Fear still hovered over her like a dark cloud, but her young mind was exhausted from its emotional turmoil; finally, still clinging to the edge of the ribbon, she drifted off into the welcome oblivion of sleep.
Part Two
Eyes open, seeing nothing.
Ears listening, hearing the pitter-patter of rain.
Skin feeling the cold drops of water... solid ground beneath her body...
She stands. On what, she does not know.
She is so alone. She opens her mouth to speak, but the sounds will not leave her throat. They are afraid.
So, she turns. She turns around to see an endless wall of windows, stretching farther than her eyes can see from left to right and ground to sky. Lights shining through the windows, inviting her inside.
She hears something. There are voices beside her - the shadow children have found her, even here. They hold her hand in theirs, their words unintelligible but their intentions pure.
The windows beckon them all.
So, they walk.
They walk for years, the shadow children growing into a shadow man and a shadow woman, while she remains a little girl. When they finally reach the edge of the windows, they look in.
Suddenly, a corridor, never-ending, eternal. Each door looks the same, except for one. No door has a handle, except for one. The same door. She needs to open it.
Where are the shadow children?
She is in front of the door, her hand resting on the doorknob. Her hand, black and wispy as shadow. She turns the doorknob to view what lies inside...
Somewhere, at the edge of her consciousness, Ami honed in on a familiar voice screaming something unintelligible. She tried opening her eyes, but it felt like there was a pound of bricks on her eyelids that prevented them from opening more than a tiny slit. The screaming became louder and more intelligible as her brain continued its attempt to translate the garbled words into something more understandable, and suddenly she shot awake, banging her head into the table above her. She felt no pain, just an overwhelming terror at the words that were finally sinking into her brain: the fortress was being overrun.
A wave of sounds slammed into her ears, overloading her sensory processes. Alarms blared, people shouted, torpedoes screamed, explosions boomed. Ami pulled herself out from under the table and stood to face a scene of destruction: huge cracks had appeared in the walls, dust and chunks of stone were falling from the ceiling, and from the myriad officers working in the command center previously, only a handful remained. The room shook, causing her to teeter and flail her arms for something steady to lean against. It wasn't until the ground had stabilized that she realized the ribbon she held was no longer attached to her mother's wrist.
"Mom!" Ami yelled, searching the room frantically for any sign of her mother's characteristic brown braids. The air was filled with dust and weirdly-flashing lights from damaged displays, creating a fog-like atmosphere that only allowed her to see forms and shapes.
"Amidala!" Leia's voice sounded from somewhere near the entrance.
"Mom!" Ami screamed, trying to run over the rubble and around the broken tactical stations. Her foot caught on something, making her fall flat on her stomach. Glancing back at what she'd tripped over, she saw a limp, bloody hand sticking out from under a large slab of stone. A chill ran down her spine and a scream caught in her throat, her arms and legs weak from the shock. Suddenly she was being heaved unsteadily to her feet, her mother's voice yelling frantically in her ear.
"Amidala, we have to get out of here!" Leia cried, dragging the petrified Ami into the hallway. "I can't carry you the entire way out of here, princess! Princess!"
Ami, finally regaining control of her limbs, turned and began running toward the hangar like a bat out of hell. She hurtled through the halls, flying so fast she had no choice but to slam into the opposite wall when turning the corners. Her lungs were on fire from the dust in the air, and all the running and screaming she had done that day was exacerbating her plight, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Rounding a corner toward the hangar entrance, Ami was forced to stop, her breath coming in painful, jagged gasps that tore through her throat and lungs, ending in a series of explosive coughs that left her on her hands and knees. She felt a pounding on her back as her mother attempted to help shake up whatever mucus and dust particles had lodged in her lungs.
"Come on, baby girl," Leia murmured into Ami's ear, "Just a few more steps to get into the ship and we can stop and cough all we like." Reaching her arms around her daughter's chest, she hoisted Ami to her feet and began supporting her toward the only ship left in the hangar: their old, two-seater Cloudjumper. Ami saw what she thought were the bodies of fighter pilots laying on the ground just outside the hangar, but her vision was blurred from the strain of coughing.
An astromech unit nearby the Cloudjumper began rapid-fire bleeping at them, and even though Ami had never learned to speak droid, she could tell it was frightened. Outside the hangar she caught glimpses of starfighters dancing in the sky, weaving terrifying - yet beautiful - patterns with their blue and orange blaster fire.
"You first!" Leia called, shoving Ami up the narrow ramp toward the ship. Just as Ami was beginning to duck into it, a flaming TIE fighter shot into the hangar and crashed into the ground a few feet behind Leia, causing the Cloudjumper and everything in the near vicinity to go flying into the opposite wall. The impact threw Leia face-first into the underside of the Cloudjumper, knocking her unconscious; Ami was flung into the wall just above the ship and fell behind it, mind once again releasing itself to welcome oblivion.
