Hey everybody! I'm sorry about the wait – real life got a hold of me, chewed me up, and spat me back out. But I'm on break right now, recuperating, so expect another chapter within the week. But then again, don't set your hopes that high...

I should mention that the time frame right now is about four weeks after Vader has left. And I'm sorry if there are any discrepancies in this chapter - I know next to nothing about hacking.

I don't own Star Wars, please review, and enjoy! :)

Today was the day. Today, I would find out what Vader was hiding. Who Padme was, what his relationship to her was, everything. As I strode down the halls, Jix at my side, I recalled the conversation (if you could call it that) in which I convinced him to teach me the tricks of hacking.

"Hack? Ha! I'm sorry, Princess, I'm not the man for you – I don't know how to," Jix said just a little too innocently. I raised my eyebrows in polite disbelief. "No really, Leia, I don't," he said.

"Oh? Then what was my master referencing when he mentioned your "other" skills?" I countered.

After the briefest of pauses, he said very slowly, "I don't know what you mean, Princess."

"Oh really?" I said. "No 'personal servant' of Lord Vader has no extra skills whatsoever. I'm still trying to figure out what kind of a servant you really are, Wrenga Jixton. Right now I would say, based on your conversation with him and the display of your skills this morning, you are either a spy or a private assassin. Either way, you would know how to hack."

I paused, letting the implication sink in. His eyes widened slightly at the extent of my knowledge. He gave a low whistle. "Okay, now I see why Vader chose you." He shook his head in quiet wonder, and said half to himself, "Geez, you're quick." He sat up and told me to follow him to his room. I acquiesed, and once we got there, he told me the whole story: he had attended the Imperial Academy of Carida before he was court-martialed and sent to the spice mines on Kessel. He escaped and through a series of unforeseen circumstances, ended up saving Darth Vader's life. Vader agreed to spare the life of a certain species, and in return, Jix pledged himself to Vader for eternity. "...And now, I am his personal information gatherer. A spy, you might say," he concluded.

I was silent for a few moments, my mind whirring. "So, you do know how to hack?" I said slowly, already knowing the answer, but wanting to make him say it.

"Yes, I do," he answered. "But I'm not going to teach you how to if it's going to undermine Lord Vader."

"Why not?"

"I'm not the most avid supporter of the Empire, but what loyalty I have left, it belongs to our dear old Uncle D. Therefore, I can't let you go selling him out or something."

I fixed him with the Look – politely skeptical with just enough steel behind it to make the most hardened soldier back down. "I can promise you one thing, Jix – all I am trying to find is information about a woman he mentioned to me. Nothing to undermine his rule in that, is there?"

He considered for a while, scrutinizing me as he did so. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he held his hand out to me, saying, "Fine. Shake on it?"

Over the next thirty-two days during my free hours, Jix taught me almost everything he knew about hacking, from the little ins and outs to the tricks to remaining undetected.

Now the day was here – Day 33 under Jix's tutelage and Day 61 at Raze. I took a seat at the main computer console, Jix standing like a sentinel over my shoulder. The plan was for me to enter the HoloNet the normal way, then hack through the blockades that Vader had set up around certain people and events. Then Jix would walk me through the steps necessary for erasing my escapade from the databank. Jix, though he didn't say it, had become as curious about this Padme woman as I was. He had the inborn curiosity of the Corellians, and he did nothing to hinder it.

My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my pants and brought my hands up to the keyboard. I typed in Gregorei Voskra's passcode (lifted from his pocket during one of our teatimes), watched as it unlocked, then opened up the HoloNet. I typed the keywords, "Padme Senator" into the search engine. Immediately, blockades and firewalls sprang up. I took a deep breath in, pulled the Force through me, and approached the first firewall. I soon surprised myself. If I hadn't been raised as a royal (an unwilling one, but a royal nonetheless), I could have done hacking for a living. Dodging firewalls, sliding beneath barriers of code - I could hear Han snickering. The Princess, Miss High-and-Mighty herself, hacking! I knew you had it in you! he said, finishing with his trademark lopsided grin and a wink.

Soon I was in the clear. All barriers were behind me, and all that I had been seeking right at my fingertips. I selected the first site, a proffessional-looking galactic encyclopedia. Quickly scanning the whole page, I made a copy of it for later perusal and put that on the untraceable flashdrive Jix had smuggled into Raze for me. I went through this process nine more times, each time finding less and less new information. Eventually, I started getting into the tabloid and Coruscant gossip pages. Here there was less real information and more speculation, but I did find several nuggets that would be worth looking into. Soon, I had all that I had been looking for and more. I slid out of my seat, pulling the flashdrive out as I went. Jix settled into the chair and began the process of erasing my "visit". I watched in awe as his fingers flew across the keyboard, cutting out certain pieces of code, replacing others with "false fronts" as it were, and twisting still more code into different forms. Before I knew it, every trace of my excursion into Darth Vader's databank had been erased. I thanked Jix as I walked from the room, and he gave me a wink. We had agreed together that the rest of the day would be all mine - no workouts, no training, nothing. I jogged through the twising hallways of Raze to my rooms. As soon as I was in, I locked the door and escaped into my bedroom, locking that door as well. I crawled under the bed and lifted one of the floor panels up to reveal a small hole. Within, I had stored all the contraband that Jix had gotten me in preparation for this little venture; one of the pieces of said contraband was a small, hand-held computer. Plugging the flashdrive into it, I settled back on my bed to read about Padme the Senator, Vader's most valued secret.

Some hours later, after having sifted through all the data I had found, I was tired and my eyes were aching, but I was no longer in the dark. I knew who Padme was, or more acurately, who she had been. Her full name was Padme Naberrie, and she had been born on Naboo some fourty-nine years ago. She was elected as Queen of Naboo at the age of fourteen and took the name Amidala. (I recalled sitting bolt upright at this point - Queen Amidala of Naboo was one of my greatest heros!) Not only did she successfully defend her people against the invasion of the Trade Federation, she also changed the constitution to limit the monarch's power, all in the span of eight years. And then, she became the Senator representing Naboo upon the request of the Queen at the time. Due to her outspokenness and sheer stubbornness (I remembered grinning outright at this point), an assassination attempt was made during her third year in office because an unknown party wanted her out of the way. A Jedi was assigned to protect her and escort her back to Naboo. Very few of the sources said who exactly that Jedi had been, but one disgustingly gossipy tabloid made a small mention of her "association" with Anakin Skywalker. (I remembered my mind going completely blank - my two greatest heros, connected? A rumored connection, but a connection nevertheless.) From the article's choice of words and the recurrence of the theme in my other tabloid sources, I gathered that a connection (no one really knew what) between the two had been common knowledge at the time. And of course, tabloids being tabloids, the aforesaid connection was thought to be romantic. (I rolled my eyes here - as Crown Princess of Alderran, I myself had been subjected numerous times to the scrutiny of the galactic rumormongerers. I remembered feeling a great rush of sympathy for Padme at this point.) Anyways, the unknown Jedi brought her home to Naboo, and somehow she ended up on Geonosis and became involved in one of the biggest battles in recent galactic history. In the three years that followed, nothing major happened besides of course, the Clone Wars, the most terrible civil war since the foundation of the Republic. Nothing major. But about four months before the ascension of the Emperor, the tabloid sources started reviving themselves once again. With the use of wardrobe trickery, she was able to keep it concealed for a while, but it became increasingly obvious that Padme Amidala was pregnant. No one knew who the father was, though the tabloids made sure to put in their two credits. Then, on Empire Day, she abruptly left her apartment and flew off. No one knew why, no one knew where - all that was known was that later that day, she turned up dead in the Polis Massa hospital. All the autopsy reports showed that her larynx had been crushed, but there were no bruises on her throat. The baby had died with her. She was buried on Naboo, and hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Theed to honor her. Today, her grave never lacked for flowers - from friends, from family, and from anonymous sources.

I sat up, pondering this new information. For one moment - one shining moment - I had thought that this woman, Padme Amidala, was my mother. But, no: The baby died with her. It was a blow. I didn't really understand it - it had felt right, ringing with truth in the Force, that she was my mother. And logically, it all fit: I was born on Empire Day, and she died on Empire Day. And then there was our uncanny resemblence. Several of the articles had carried holos of her, as Queen and as a Senator. We were both short, we both had long chocolate-brown hair, and we both had dark hazel eyes. It all fit! But then again... She had a very fine-boned face – smooth, oval-shaped, yet with delicate features. If you didn't see her eyes, you would think she would break if you touched her. I, on the other hand, had a much longer and narrower face. I was all angles – long, narrow nose, sharp cheekbones, and a rather pointed chin. Besides our height (short), hair color (chocolate brown), and eye color (hazel) – all of which were incredibly common for human females throughout the galaxy – we didn't look that much alike. But it still felt like there was something, something that we both shared, something unique. Was it how we carried ourselves? Frustrated, I soon gave up trying to relate the two of us. The more I thought about it, the more I started to think just how much Luke looked like her. Could he be related to her? If the connection between Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker, his father, had been romantic, she could very well have been his mother. But then, there was still that little detail: the baby died with her. Still, none of this explained Vader's intense memory of her. For when I saw the first holo of her - her Senate ID holo - the Force brought up in my mind, unbidden, a memory I had wrenched from Vader's psyche...

I'm seeing her, and I know with a certainty beyond certainty that she is the most beautiful creature in the galaxy...

I knew now that the she in that memory was Padme Amidala. Vader had loved. He had deeply and truly loved. What was going on? I felt like I had been given a mystery novel with the middle and half of the ending missing. There was something, something, hovering on the outskirts of my mind that would bring this whole mess into order. But that something kept evading me; I couldn't latch onto it, no matter how hard I strained to grab it. Now I was mad - all this work, all this anxiety, and for what? More questions. But this defeat didn't quench the fire of my curiosity: on the contrary, it only heaped the flames higher. I was going to find out what Vader was hiding and what that had to do with me if it killed me.

Press the blue button and make my day!