Author's Note: Disclaimers are in the first chapter. Enjoy the frequency of updates while they last! :)

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Padme and Obi-Wan just looked at each other for one awful moment.

Then Obi-Wan made a decision. He pulled a chair over next to the window-seat and took both of Luke's hands in his. "Luke, have you ever talked to Leia in your head?"

Luke blinked owlishly at him. He looked a little sleepy still. "Mostly Leia talks to me. Her gremmel is more fun than mine."

"Her gremmel?"

Luke furrowed his baby brows, as if astonished that a grown-up wouldn't know what a gremmel was. "You know. Leia can do fun t'ings with her gremmel. Like – oh, like she always win hide-and-seek, an' she never loses things, an' she can get toys from across the room."

Obi-Wan, despite the seriousness of the situation, nearly laughed at the description of the Force as a "gremmel". Padme did not appreciate the humor.

"I see. Can you persuade your gremmel to talk to Leia's, just this once, for me?" Obi-Wan asked.

Luke looked at him like he was stupid. "Gremmels don't talk. I talk. The gremmel helps me. And I guess I can try."

Do or do not. There is no try, Obi-Wan heard in his head, but he merely nodded. "Try, Luke."

Luke closed his eyes, but a few seconds later he reopened them. "I can't," he said. "She's too far 'way. I can barely feel her."

Obi-Wan looked down at Luke, who innocently thought that Ben could make everything right. He looked at Padme, who was rapidly approaching hyperventilation at the thought of losing one of her babies, but who on some level also believed that "Ben" could make everything right. For the millionth time since Qui-Gon's death, he wished with everything in him that his old Master were here.

"I'll go to the hangar," he said finally. "I'm sure someone saw her get on a spaceship."

Two hours later, Obi-Wan returned to the apartment building where they lived.

Luke was in the 'fresher, and Padme sat at the kitchen table, a holo-album in front of her.

He cleared his throat to alert her of his presence. She didn't look up.

"Padme, no one saw her. She's vanished." Padme's shoulders twitched, but she still made no sound. He braced himself for the rest of what he must say. "I think that at this point we're going to have to accept the fact that Leia is lost to us."

The rest of his carefully prepared speech died in his throat as Padme shot to her feet and whirled to face him, fire in her eyes. "As long as there is a breath in my body, I am not abandoning my daughter! And you are a pitiful excuse for a Jedi if you want to abandon a four-year-old child to the mercies of the galaxy!"

She glared at him for a minute – no, shot liquid lava at him more like – then continued. "If you don't want to help me, I understand. I've been thinking it through all the while you were gone. If you want to take Luke to Tattoine now, I won't stand in your way. It'll be easier for them both now anyway, now that the twin bond has been dulled by distance." She paused to catch her breath, hand still clutching the holo-album. Obi-Wan could see some of the pictures, and in particular one of Luke and Leia grinning at the camera from last Christmas. "But I am going to go planet-to-planet, city-by-city, home-by-home, if need be, and I will find my daughter!"

Obi-Wan simply stared.