Thank you to everyone who was kind enough to leave a review. Your encouragement is always immensely appreciated. I was asked if this was a 'redemptive' fic. If you recall, Darth Vader is redeemed at the end of Episode VI in the Canon. In my alternative universe here, perhaps Padme will have something to do with that?

CHAPTER TWO

"You breathe new life

Into my broken heart"

Little Star - Madonna

Obi Wan arrived at Padme's hiding place on Naboo just as she was drying off from her final swim. She was dressed ready to go but her thick, curly hair was still wet.

"Where are you taking me Obi Wan?" she asked, as they boarded the small transport.

"I had best not tell you until we get there. I am very nervous about what Darth Vader may or may not be able to sense," he replied, obviously preoccupied by the thought.

"Anakin," Padme corrected. "His name is Anakin."

"Anakin is gone, Padme. He is not coming back," Obi Wan said, regret and disappointment underlying his educated accent.

Padme pressed her lips together and said nothing more. She knew Anakin existed somewhere under all that Darth Vader had become. Not that Obi Wan had spoken much about what Anakin had turned into. All she knew was that Anakin had been injured but was still alive. Obi Wan would not discuss the extent of his injuries which made Padme suspicious. Was he hiding how much harm he had done to his old Padawan? Was he afraid that Padme would be angry with him for harming her husband? Padme didn't know who to be angry with apart from herself. She had ruined her life and she had no-one but herself to blame. She had made her choices against her own better judgment. Now she was paying for it.

- - -

They traveled for a long time in the small transport. Neither spoke a great deal, even over the simple meals they shared during the journey. For both of them, their mind was far away. Padme was thinking primarily of Leia and Luke. Obi Wan was keeping his mind clear to receive instructions from the mitachlorians.

After nearly 30 hours of travel, they landed on a dark planet consisting primarily of swamps. As soon as the transport door opened, Padme could smell rotting vegetation and damp. Very little light was admitted through the canopy and deep green shadows lay over the dark and foggy pools of water among the swamp trees.

"Can you tell me where we are now?" Padme asked.

"We're in the Dagobah System," Obi Wan replied.

"Why this place?" Padme asked, wrinkling her small nose.

"It's Yoda's home. He had gone into exile here," Obi Wan said, helping her out of the transport. "This is why I told you no fancy clothes," he added, indicating the swamp around them.

Padme followed Obi Wan silently. They walked for an hour over a narrow path of dry ground until they came to a large and ancient tree. Ducking down suddenly, Obi Wan walked into a narrow entrance. When she followed, Padme found herself in small and Spartan living area.

"Come to visit me, you have," Yoda said as he limped from another room, clutching his walking stick.

"Yoda, I've brought Padme with me. Darth Vader has managed to use the Force to mentally connect with Padme," Obi Wan explained.

"Time was all that was a matter of," Yoda said, obviously not too concerned. He turned his ancient gaze on Padme and considered her in silence for a long time.

"I thought you could teach Padme to use a mind shield," Obi Wan said finally.

"Hmmm, teach you mind shield I can," Yoda said to Padme with a shrewd look. "Problem it will not solve. Problem not mind," he stated with a shrug. "Problem is emotions. Open a door to Darth Vader in your mind, your emotions do. Scream out across the galaxy, your heart does. Prevent that, we cannot. Is not easily broken, the connection of marriage," Yoda said and with a sigh, limped over to the fire to heat up some soup.

Padme stared after him, unsure of what to say. She looked appealingly at Obi Wan.

"Perhaps training in the mental arts won't be wasted, Master Yoda. I think we have to try everything we can," he said respectfully.

"Never wasted is Jedi training," Yoda replied, limping back to the table in the centre of the room. "Teach I will, what I can."

- - -

Padme spent several peaceful weeks with the Jedi Master in the Dagobah System. He was a tough teacher but inspiring. In his presence, Padme found herself worrying and despairing less. It became a time of healing for her. She was ashamed to be weak when in the presence of such discipline and simplicity.

It was easy for Padme to learn how to shield her mind. For anyone with any degree of intelligence and will, it was not difficult.

Yoda often spoke to her about the dangers of both fear and attachment. "At young Anakin, look closely," Yoda said one day. "The future indeed, did he see. Of losing you, most afraid was he. His goal, saving your life it was. To the Dark Side, it did lead. Reject him, the Dark Side made you do. His prophecy, it came true. Made his own fears true, he did," Yoda explained and shook his white-haired head sadly. "Fear, what do you?" Yoda asked her after a pause.

"I'm afraid that he'll find me," Padme said softly.

"Why?" Yoda asked.

"I'm afraid he'll find out about the children somehow and then turn them to the Dark Side too," she admitted with a sigh.

"Legitimate fear, this is," Yoda said. "Avoided easily, it is."

"How?" Padme asked curiously.

"If find you Darth Vader does, tell him dead the children are," Yoda replied calmly.

"Do you think he can find me?" Padme asked.

"Find you, I know Darth Vader will," Yoda said with finality.

A cold shaft went through Padme's body. She did not question Yoda's wisdom for a moment. As though he sensed her thoughts, Yoda looked at her astutely. "Have you now different fear?" Yoda asked.

"Yes," Padme breathed, goose bumps breaking out on her skin.

"This fear's name, what is it?" Yoda asked with half-closed eyes.

"I'm afraid of facing him again," Padme said in a small voice.

"The truth, that is not," Yoda said uncompromisingly. "You still love him, that your fear is. Your heart, he again may hurt. Who you love, he may no longer exist. These things, fear you do."

"I guess no-one is allowed to stay in a comfortable state of denial around you, huh?" Padme said wryly.

"About denial, what is comfortable?" Yoda demanded, tapping his stick once on the ground for emphasis.

"You can pretend for a little while that things are not as they really are. It gives you a break from the pain," Padme replied introspectively.

"To heal, hurt it must," Yoda insisted.

"Some wounds are never healed," Padme argued without rancour.

"Accept them then, better it is. To the wound, learn to adapt we must. If go away it not, compensate for it we must learn," Yoda replied. "Learn we must, the pain to manage."

"I just want it all to go away," Padme said, more to herself than Yoda.

"Go away, it will not. Accepted sooner, easier it will be to bear," Yoda said calmly.

"Do you think if he finds me, he will kill me?" Padme asked feeling remarkably calm about the thought.

"What think you?" Yoda asked shrewdly.

"No, he won't," Padme said finally with a sigh. "I don't know what he'll do, particularly if I tell him that the children didn't survive."

"Mention the twins, I would not. A son stillborn, tell him he had," Yoda advised.

"Yes," Padme agreed without enthusiasm.

"A prisoner, he will keep you. Without you, he cannot live he believes. Sadness to both of you, this imprisonment will cause. Changed much is your husband," Yoda said.

"Changed how?" Padme asked questioningly.

But Yoda had gotten up from his seat by the swamp and was limping back to his tree cottage. "Changed how?" Padme called after him.

"Find out you will soon enough," came Yoda's faint reply.

With an exasperated sigh, Padme followed him.

- - -

After 3 months (standardized galaxy time – the phases of the moon, and length of the month and year were different on every planet in every solar system), Obi Wan came back to fetch Padme. He tried a simple test to see if he could penetrate her mind. The block was as solid as a steel door.

"Where are you taking me Obi Wan?" Padme asked in a rather resigned way after saying regretful good-byes to Yoda.

"To see Luke and Leia," Obi Wan assured her.

Padme's heart skipped a beat and then began pounding. "Really?" she breathed. "Do you promise?"

"It can only be for a short time and I don't know when next you will be able to see them but they are both in the same place for a very brief period so it is a perfect time to go," Obi Wan said.

Padme's eyes lit up. Obi Wan realized with a stab of pain that he had not seem Padme look happy since he had visited her with the news that Anakin had turned Sith.

Padme looked at Obi Wan sideways. "You've been a good friend to me, Obi Wan," she said gratefully.

He glanced at her and smiled briefly. "I failed Anakin in many things but I won't fail him in this," he replied.

"Anakin would probably kill you if he could right now, particularly if he knew you were deliberately hiding me from him," Padme stated flatly.

"I know," Obi Wan said grimly. "But I didn't fail him by not allowing him what he wanted but by not teaching him to want the right things in the first place."

"Yoda told me that the Jedi Council had not wanted you to take on Anakin as a Padawan," Padme said quietly.

Obi Wan glanced at her again but he could only see the soft curves of her profile. "I insisted," he replied bluntly. "I see Yoda's wisdom now. I should have listened to him and let Anakin find a different path. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now that Anakin had loved you from the time he was 10 years old on Tatooine. He did not have an unattached heart to offer the Jedi. He had deep fears instilled in him during his childhood as a slave and he was not ready to leave his mother at 10 although he thought he was. I don't know why I didn't see what was so clear to Master Yoda. I think I was blinded by his obvious and pronounced talent. It seemed such a waste to leave him on Tatooine."

"Sometimes I think those who believe in destiny are right," Padme said with an unusual moment of fatalism. "If you had left Anakin on Tatooine, we never would have met again. He childish crush would have faded when he fell in love with someone else."

"I'm not sure what he felt for you was childish or a crush, in retrospect," Obi Wan said, his eyes narrowed. "It was certainly obsessive which is unhealthy. If you believe in fate, then you have to believe that you and Anakin would have met up again inevitably in some way."

Padme was silent. She didn't know what to believe any more.

When they landed, Padme looked about her in surprise. There was something about this planet that reminded her of Naboo. It had a similar landscape. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Alderaan," Obi Wan replied. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Obi Wan deliberately did not tell her that is was actually Leia's home. If Vader ever caught Padme, he didn't want their mind probes to find out the children's location.

It turned out that Leia and Luke were together just for two days in order for the naming ceremony to take place. It had been arranged in this way solely to allow Padme to see her babies briefly.

In order to protect Padme from the knowledge of Leia's hiding place, Padme was told that Bail Organa was visiting from another planet but was friends with the Alderaan King who had agreed to allow the party to stay in his Palace for the naming ceremony.

Padme's hands trembled when she picked up both Leia and Luke for the first time since being forced to leave them after their birth. Both sets of adoptive parents assured her that the babies would know from a young age that they were adopted and that Padme was their birth mother. For the entire two days, Padme was never far from either child.

She examined their faces carefully. Luke would be the spitting image of his father and Leia would look very much like her, judging by their colouring. It was painful to look into Luke's sky blue eyes; they were too much like their father's.

From the other side of the galaxy, Darth Vader could sense her strong emotions. He had been unable to establish contact for months now and the frustration had been excruciating. He had had time to rethink his strategy, however. He had been so desperate to make contact that he had crashed full speed into her thoughts making his own presence so obvious and intrusive that she had immediately and easily shut him out. This time, he would be wiser. He would only touch on her mind if he could, and try and stay hidden from her consciousness. Perhaps he would have more time to discover the information he needed that way.

This time he could sense deep happiness as well as an underlying ache. She was happy but she was aware it would not last. There was love there but of a different quality to what they had once shared. The grief had dissipated for the moment but the sorrow was still there.

With great caution he reached out to her. He noticed that a powerful mind shield was now in place – a Jedi mind shield. So, she was still in contact with Jedi remnants, he thought with a curl of his scarred lips. Obi Wan, no doubt. Her Jedi mind shield could not keep him away from her emotions, however. He could sense them regardless.

Unfortunately, he could not get any of the information he needed from her while the mind shield was up but he could enjoy her presence. He had always found it soothing. He still did. He sat in his private chambers for hours, savouring it. When a droid messenger tried to interrupt him with a diplomatic message, his light sabre quickly took care of the disruption.

That evening on Alderaan, Padme dreamed of Anakin as he had been when they fell in love. It was both beautiful and painful, and Padme could not make up her mind whether it made her more happy or sad to remember it all so clearly. When she woke up, she reached out her bare, slender arm for her husband but the bed was empty. His presence had been so strong again but this time, it was only a dream.

With a shiver, she got up to see Luke and Leia.

Padme's friends were glad to see her smiling at the naming ceremony on her second day on Alderaan. Padme, Beru and Bail Organa's wife shared the responsibilities of the naming ceremony, so all mothers were involved. Padme dressed in her old elaborate style for the day and felt rather glad that she no longer had to dress so ornately. In some ways, she had lost almost everything but she had also gained an odd sort of freedom too.

The sun was shining with gentle brilliance out of a clear blue sky and a cool breeze blew in from the mountains that boarded one side of the Palace. Out of the terrace where the naming ceremony was held, there were fleeting moments of real and deep happiness for Padme. She knew without doubt that if she had been able to take care of Luke and Leia herself, it would almost certainly go a long way to helping her cope with Anakin's loss. There would be profound moments of joy to counteract the other grief. Unfortunately, that help was denied her too.

When the priestesses held Luke and Leia aloft to the sun for the final blessing, a deep thrill of happiness brought tears to Padme's eyes. As suddenly as she felt that thrill, she also felt Anakin's presence so strongly that once again, she thought he was standing right behind her. Instinctively she turned, her alarm showing clearly on her face.

Obi Wan, who was standing on the other side of Bail Organa, saw her reflex action. He shot her a questioning gaze which Padme returned with an anxious look. Obi Wan made a subtle gesture with his hands which obviously meant, 'calm down'. Taking a deep breath, Padme forced her emotions down. Would Anakin ruin even these brief happinesses for the rest of her life, she wondered? Her lips thinned as she realized that the answer to that question was definitely, 'yes'.

- - -

Darth Vader had been inspecting progress on the Death Star when he felt an emotion so foreign that it made him gasp. By now, he knew immediately where it came from. With a guttural bark at the engineers, he cleared the deck he was inspecting in order to have some peace. He struggled for a few moments to identify the emotion. It was not until long after he lost contact with her again that he realized it had been pure happiness and joy.

Because he had been so taken by surprise, he had connected too strongly and she had recognized him and withdrawn quickly once more. The disappointment was intense and burned him up like a flame.

He puzzled later over why it took so long for him to recognize her joy. He finally realized that he himself had never felt happiness or joy that hadn't been tainted with some other negative emotion. Even on his wedding day, he had felt anger and shame over having recently lost his arm and having to hide their marriage. When Padme had told him about her pregnancy, he had felt fear over being discovered and worry over her career. Even when Padme had told him that she loved him, his heart-stopping emotional response to her confession had been tainted by fear of what would happen to her in the arena.

Underlying his happiness was always fear. Damn Yoda had been right all along. There was much fear in him. It tainted everything.

Now the heart of his angel was flying upward with pure joy and he couldn't follow her to that place. He couldn't even recognize that place. He wondered what was making her feel that way. He had felt her happiness on their wedding day and at other times when they were together. Once, he had only been able to sense her emotions when she was close to him but the Dark Side obviously had increased his powers more recently.

Whatever was making her so happy, he was jealous of it. He wanted to be the main source of her joy. He would have gladly shared her with their children but if he couldn't be with her himself, he resented anything else that could make her so happy.

He knew he should be glad she was happy regardless. That was the most unselfish thing but when it came to Padme, Anakin was selfish. His love for her had made him selfish towards the Jedi Order and in a sense, towards Padme herself. He could see that now. He was greedy for her and everything else could (and did) go hang.

He paced the unfinished deck of the Death Star and contemplated his next move. He already had scouts and spies trying to track down Padme but with so many solar systems to explore, it could take years. His gloved, mechanical hands clenched in frustration. There was nothing more he could do and he knew it.

Once again, Darth Vader did not sleep that night.