She wakes up to white.
It surrounds her. She finds herself staring up into a ceiling—but it feels like she is staring into nothingness, like she is caught in a void. Her ears are filled with a symphony of mechanical humming noises and the steady beep of something beside her. She tries to say something, but her lips struggle against the weariness that takes over her body.
"Padmé?"
Her eyes zero in on a robed figure sauntering to her side. Their face is familiar, and yet her mind cannot register who they are. Their hair is snow white to match the stubble across their jaw, and they have wrinkles across their forehead and around their eyes and lips. But those eyes—they are crystal blue and wise—strike her. She knows them.
When she finally musters the strength to speak, she says, "Obi Wan?" He nods. "Why are you—"
"So old?" he finishes her sentence with a smile. But it does not reach his eyes. His face relaxes, and when it does, she sees only graveness. "Padmé . . . you've been frozen in carbonite for a long, long time."
"What?"
"You almost died in childbirth. The only way to save you—and protect you—was to freeze you in carbonite. Your body was able to heal in hibernation," Obi Wan explains.
"How long?" There is a long, eerie pause. "How long, Obi Wan?" Padmé demands.
"Eighteen years."
His words seem to stop time and turn the air around her into a sea. It's like she's drowning for a few moments, unable to breathe, unable to speak. She does not find herself for several moments—she has gone under into the dark deep, falling into an abyss—
Obi Wan steadies her with the soft touch of his hand on her shoulder. "I know. I'm sorry. We had to protect you from Darth Vader."
"Darth Vader?" she asks. Trembling, she sits up on her bed.
"Who Anakin has become," Obi Wan tells her solemnly.
There is a pang in her chest at his name. "And the children? Where are they? Where are Luke and Leia?" she asks, trying to avoid the subject of Anakin. It has been eighteen years, but to her, it feels like only a few hours ago that he crushed her heart with one hand.
"Luke is on Tatooine, with his family. I have watched over him there for the past couple of decades. He is a strong boy, Padmé," says Obi Wan. "And as for Leia, she was adopted by Bail and Breha Organa—she is the princess of Alderaan. We had to split them up and raise them separately to protect them. If Vader knew—"
"If Anakin knew," Padmé corrects him.
"—they would be turned to the dark side. They are our last hope, Padmé. Anakin hunted down and destroyed all of the Jedi, except myself and Yoda. We must restore the galaxy to how it was before the Sith took over."
"Why awaken me now, Obi Wan? What's changed?" she asks him.
"The time is right," he says. "It's time to take back the galaxy. There is a rebellion growing. It has become very strong—there is hope that we may be able to overthrow the Empire."
"What role do you hope I will play in this?"
"You very experienced in all things politics, not to mention combat. We will be reuniting your children soon and training them as Jedi," says Obi Wan.
"Until the time is right—exactly right—where will I go?" asked Padmé. She knew that she would have to hide from Anakin, no matter how much she hated the idea. "It wouldn't be safe for me to go back to Naboo, would it? Or Coruscant?"
Obi Wan shook his head. "No, not to stay there for a long period of time. Perhaps for a visit—a short visit." There is a grim, tense pause. "I was thinking you could move every six months, to ensure that no one on any planets become too familiar with you. I plan on you being away for perhaps a year, until the rebellion progresses enough. Iridonia and Corellia may be suitable."
"May I visit Naboo, for just a week or less, every few months?" she asks.
With reluctance and a sigh, Obi Wan nods. "I doubt I will be able to stop you."
She nods in turn. With a tremor running through her body, still heavy from hibernation, she rises from her bed and saunters to the mirror on the wall. Peering at herself, she sees exactly what she remembers—chocolate curls of hair, dark eyes, supple skin, a soft, young face. She has not aged a single day.
"If it's been eighteen years—" she begins, but Obi Wan cuts her off.
"Your body was in hibernation, so the years that have passed did not touch you," Obi Wan explains.
Padmé, staring in shock at herself, nods once more, trying to keep herself steady. "I should get ready to go, then. To Iridonia."
x x x
Padmé Amidala spends the next six months living in Iridonia. She feels like an alien, an outsider, there. She keeps to herself in a cottage behind a strip of hills where a crystal river snakes through. The days run by her like background noise, and it is like she is falling through thin, sharply cold air. After the six months pass and she is finally familiar with the planet and the community she lives in, she leaves to maintain her safety as Obi Wan said. Between moving from Iridonia to Corellia, Padmé boards her ship to travel to Naboo.
She clutches a suitcase in her hand—her knuckles are stark white in all of the tension stiffening every muscle in her body. She feels the risk deep within her, and yet the wistfulness to see her home planet wins her over.
Before taking off, she rests her hands on the control panel, lowering her eyes to the active button. She remembers sitting here on Mustfar, before—
No, she tells herself. Stop that. Block it out.
Even as she commands herself not to think about it, her thoughts flow in an endless stream. They are relentless, even as she covers them with thoughts of how the sun will feel on her skin when she is back on Naboo. They are cruel thoughts.
Endless blackness falls past the ship in sheets. To stare out the windshield of her ship is to stare into abyss, into oblivion. Pulling the lever back into lightspeed, she takes a deep breath to break down the tension in her body. But it is a stubborn thing—it remains.
When she lands on Naboo, no one asks any questions. She is not given strange looks. She is like a shadow, invisible and silent, as she moves through the streets of her small hometown. It is nothing compared to the city she once served as queen in—perhaps that is why she has not been recognized, or because it has been nearly a whole new generation. It's a good thing—it is peaceful to be calm for a moment in a world where she is constantly gripped by fear.
One small suitcase trailing behind her, she makes her way down the rocky, rugged path drawn in the grass to a quaint cottage by the sea. This secluded place reminds her of the island she used to swim out to as a girl—all of the sand, rough against her skin, and the salt in the air. Before opening the door to the cottage, she casts her gaze out to the shore, where the waves crash and roar. For a moment, her mind breaks free and roams back to all those years ago, when she was under Anakin's protection. She remembers standing with him on the balcony and watching the sea and kissing him—his lips were soft and tasted like the sea—
She has to stop herself as she turns the knob to the cottage, shutting her eyes in frustration.
x x x
After a few days, her stay on Naboo has become a lonely one. It is empty—she can speak to no one, she can go nowhere but her secluded island. There are only the waves and the sand and the sun. Nothing more. She yearns to see her old friends and her family—her mother, her father. If they are even still alive. She has no way of knowing, because she is completely and forever alone. And she realizes, with a pang in her chest, that this is her new reality for as long as her heart beats. A part of her wanted to hate Anakin for it, but she couldn't, because she knows that she still loves him, regardless. And there is nothing she can do to change that.
She wonders if he still loves her, or if he even remembers her. It feels like only a matter of months to Padmé, but it has truly been a little over eighteen years to Anakin.
On the third night of her stay, she dreams of him.
The two of them are in the fields of Naboo, a sky full of daylight and cotton clouds. It is something of a paradise, with its beauty and Anakin and all. They are laughing over some ridiculous joke Anakin made, gazing into each other's eyes. They are full of light Padmé thought she had forgotten.
"Don't say that in front of the children," Padmé giggles.
"Never," says Anakin, a childish grin curling up the corner of his lips.
"I love you," Padmé says before leaning in to kiss him.
The last thing she sees is his hand reaching for the side of her cheek and his eyes, the same color of the Naboo sky.
She awakens from her dream crying. Tears soak her cheeks like raindrops—they are sticky and hot and they seem to drown her with every breath she takes. "Anakin," she says, the words cutting into the air, raspy and dry, from her trembling lips. The sound of his name claws her apart from the inside and out. Her hands grab the sheets in fistfuls as she tries to keep herself steady. But there is nothing but chaos—tonight, she will not sleep peacefully again.
"I love you," Padmé repeats the words from her dream. And when she says them, it is like she is letting everything go and extending out far, far into the galaxy, as if she is trying to reach out and touch Anakin with her fingertips.
"I always will."
(Even if you are a monster like Obi Wan seems to think, she adds in her head.)
x x x
She boards her ship a few days later and heads off to what will become her new home for the next six months: Corellia. As she sits in the pilot seat, her mind drifts off into the future for a moment, in a time where she will be reunited with her children and Anakin—the Anakin she knew, not Darth Vader. The real Anakin. Taking off, she sighs and asks herself, over and over again, how it all ended up this way. But she can never find an answer she wants to accept. She doesn't think there is one anymore, not after going over the topic again and again, no matter how hard she tries not to think of it. These thoughts are like ghosts—they haunt, they stick, they never quite fade away as they are supposed to.
Many minutes later, perhaps an hour, Padmé has exited lightspeed and is no approaching Corellia soon. She has seen the planet before from the window of her ship while traveling elsewhere, and in maps. It reminds her of Naboo or Alderaan, with all of its blue and green and white pouring over it like runny paint.
But then something else catches her attention.
It looks like a small moon of some sort, but according to the map on the control panel of her ship, it is uncharted. If it isn't a moon, she thinks, what could it be? Out of curiosity—and perhaps some foolishness, too—Padmé switches off of autopilot and drives closer to the strange moon-like mass. Once she is close enough, she can see that it is most certainly not a moon.
It is a space station.
Made up of metal with short-range ships encircling it—it could be nothing else but a space station.
Just as her ship trembles against the force of a tractor beam, she feels ice creep over her body and she knows that she is in danger. Padmé tries to put her ship in reverse, but it struggles to no avail in the tractor beam. There is no escape. She knows that deep down. Because this can only be an Imperial space station. It could not be so large and powerful if it was not.
Her heart throbs within her chest. She is not going to make it out of this one.
When her ship lands, she is greeted by a horde of Stormtroopers and commanders. The hanger is all dark gray and the suits of the commanders and other Imperial personnel blend in with the walls. Padmé had never thought much of hell, or what it would look like. But she thinks that in this moment, she is staring it in the face. She is feeling its fire just inches away from her flesh.
One of the commanders motions a group of Stormtroopers to her ship. She bites her lip and balls her hands into fists, knowing that she will be taken prisoner. Knowing that potentially, she could die. She could die, and she wouldn't be able to protect her children or see them again . . . or see Anakin again.
The door bursts open. She whips around, her long braid flying against the seat, to see Stormtroopers heading her way. Despite knowing that fighting is hopeless, she pulls out her gun from the holster on her belt, but the moment she does, it is taken from her by one of the Stormtroopers. They grab her by the arms and shove her into the hanger, where a commander awaits.
He straightens his collar and clears his throat. "What is your time?" he demands.
"Padmé," she replies.
"Your full name," the commander growls back impatiently.
"Padmé Amidala," she says reluctantly.
The commander furrows his brow. "The name sound strangely familiar," he says, and then turns to one of the men in gray next to him. "Look up Padmé Amidala in the computer and give me a full report immediately."
"What is your business in this area of space?" the commander questions further.
"I was going to Corellia."
"Why?"
"Because I was moving there," Padmé deadpans.
One of the Stormtroopers clears his throat. "Um, sir," he says. The commander turns to him, and the Stormtrooper hands him Padmé's weapon. The commander scrutinizes it closely, squinting in curiosity and puzzlement.
"This is an old weapon," he says. "From the times of the Old Republic. Where did you possibly dig up this old fossil?"
"I've just always had it," Padmé responds simply.
"There is something off about this one," the commander says to the Stormtroopers. "This ship is of a design only made for Naboo royals. Perhaps she is a smuggler or a thief. I want a search crew aboard immediately, bring me everything they find. In the meantime—"
The commander is interrupted by the man in a gray suit identical to his own, carrying a paper in his hand. He gives it to the commander, who reads it aloud. "Padmé Amidala. Twenty-six years old. Deceased. Born 47 BBY, Naboo. Died 19 BBY, Polis Massa, from strangulation. Served as queen . . . and a senator . . ."
He looks up in absolute astonishment. "This report claims that you died eighteen and a half years ago. And yet, it has your photo. Explain."
Padmé holds her silence.
"Perhaps you will respond to a different kind of interrogation," he says, and then turns to the Stormtroopers. "Take her to the detention center. And inform Lord Vader we have a prisoner—perhaps he will be interested in a dead Nabian queen."