Views expressed by certain characters do not represent the author's point of view. Check the bottom for more detail.


One mistake changed the galaxy forever.

"Go to Mustafar, and bring me the heads of the Confederacy leaders," Palpatine croaked, his yellow eyes luminous in the deep shadow of his dark hood. "And then, we shall destroy the Jedi once and for all. They will no longer be able to control you with their lies, my apprentice."

Killing the traitors was easy. Like pigs, they squealed and begged and tried to run, turning on each other. Chattel for the slaughter. Anakin couldn't remember if he laughed or if he wept as he killed them, first with clean, defined strokes, then wilder and wilder and they fled death.

The ash from the volcanic surface seared his eyes and nose, and inside Anakin felt cold. His furnace, shattered iron, smothered out of existence.

Was this the peace and power he had spent his whole life searching for?

Why did it feel so empty?

The Jedi had preached peace, and yet their peace couldn't calm the fires that raged within him. He found no solace in their lonesome ways, in their distant and impartial justice. He'd wanted to get his hands dirty, he wanted to feel, driven by the engine that roared in his soul, jettisoning him forward into action.

But that wasn't power. Time and time again, he was foiled. The Force showed him his fate and he was a puppet that danced to its cold, unfeeling tune.

Palpatine had promised him power.

But this felt like death.


Leia met Sola before she met Padme, but she remembered both meetings vividly.

Her cousin Ryoo was their nanny, and Sola used to visit on the holidays. She was a loud, short woman with the longest hair Leia had ever seen.

At first, she didn't understand they were related. Mom was mom and dad was dad, but that year began the photographs and Leia met Mother.

At the start, they would summer at Varykino. Leia and Luke learned how to swim, fly a speeder, shoot blasters, and ride banthas. Padme told them fairy tales and stories of all her times as a Senator.

Over them hung a cloud, a great mystery, and Leia was determined to get to the bottom of it. Leia and Luke had mom and dad, and now Mother and even an Aunt and Uncle and two cousins, but if Leia understood families correctly if there was a Mother there should have been a Father-except no one would talk about him, ever. Whenever Padme would start, and she would, often, Sola, who had been supervising their visits at first and later became a regular visitor, would shoot her a sharp look. Something in Padme would wither with sadness every time. If Leia noticed, Luke definitely did; he was more perceptive in that strange way only they two could sense things.

Luke was content to let things lie, and follow things as they went, to wait, and strike when the time was right, like the water snakes snapped up fish from the river that rounded the west wing of the palace.

Leia couldn't sit and wait. She was impatient in the way of children, with the keen and sharp mind of an old soul.

In the year they turned seven, Padme moved to a villa just outside the capital of Alderaan. All their life, they had been kept apart because Dad had told her Padme was sick, and needed time to get better, and that she couldn't mind two small children.

"She seems fine to me," Leia argued, upset. She didn't believe it, didn't believe that Padme was too sick to want Luke and Leia just because talked a little slow and often lost her train of thought.

It was Sola who told her the truth, unknowingly. She had been talking to Padme's live-in nurse, a woman named Rabe.

"That bastard ruined her," Sola wept bitterly over a nearly empty bottle of wine after the two of them had finally put Padme to bed.

Luke was outside with the boat-keeper, sailing on the lake. They had been hastily told to go out after Padme, who had been spacy and slow all visit, started jerking, shaking hands dropping her delicate cup. Her eyes had rolled back, and the whites were darkly speckled red, like the bloodstone she and Luke went diving for. Spit had frothed at the corners of her mouth as she made odd, coughing whimpers, interjected with loud snorts.

That was the last Leia had seen before they were removed forcefully. Luke, being a good egg who could always tell what she wanted, had gathered up a paddle boat and moved them around the side of the estate so Leia could sneak back in.

"I don't really want to go," he'd said when she asked if he wanted to come, looking down at his hands with shiny pale eyes, "I'll stay out here in case they come looking, I'll tell them you're with me."

Leia knew he just wanted to be alone to cry, the baby, so she had let him go.

Rabe poured the last of the wine into a glass and chugged it, sighing. "She's not ruined, Sola. Just because she needs a little more help—"

"Help? That thing is not my sister, not the Padme I knew. That bastard may as well have killed her. He strangled her and his spawn finished her off, and now the brilliant woman called Amidala is as good as dead."

"Sola!" Rabe shouted, slamming her hand on the table. She was angry, her dark eyes burning. "Padme is disabled, not dead, and if you want to talk about her like that, she doesn't need you in her life."

"Will she understand me today?" Sola sneered, her pretty face ugly with despair. "Because right now, she couldn't tell me to fuck off herself. That bastard strangled the life out of her, and the first thing she did when she woke up was defend him. He broke her spirit long before he broke her neck."

Leia, from where she crouched behind the doorway, couldn't see Rabe, couldn't see the handmaiden rub Sola's back as she let out great, heaving drunken sobs. Leia had closed her eyes, and wrapped her skinny arms around her knees to stop her shaking.

"It's my fault you know," Sola wept bitterly, "I was so happy when she brought that wretched Jedi home, all those years ago. A monster with a fair face. I encouraged her, you know?"

"You couldn't have known," Rabe sighed, "you couldn't have known what Anakin would do."

Leia had stopped listening then, but the secret knowledge weighed on her.

The next morning, Luke and Leia were pulled aside by Rabe, who explained the situation much more clearly.

"You've been told before that your mother couldn't take care of you because she was sick," Rabe had sighed. "You've just seen why."

The words washed over Leia like a wave— a long time ago (seven years ago, Leia mentally supplied) Padme was hurt, and her brain was deprived of oxygen, so now it didn't work quite right. Sometimes, the electricity in her brain would fire all at once overwhelm it, and she would have seizures— the fit that had so terrified Luke and Leia. It was why she was so tired, and couldn't run with Luke around the house, and why she spoke slowly sometimes, early in the morning or late in the day.

Luke had gone to Padme on the settee and held her hand until she woke, offering her a warm and sincere smile, even though she knew he was sad.

But Leia? Leia was angry, because as much as she loved Mama and Dad, now that she knew Padme existed, she couldn't help but wonder what might it have been like. Raised by her biological mother, she wouldn't be the pitied orphan in the palace.

All those years, angry and ashamed because she thought her mother did not want her. Leia had been stolen from Padme as surely as Padme had been stolen from Sola.

And Anakin Skywalker was the one who did it.


People who have a disability are people, period. They have a right to live, have children, and deserve respect and equity. The galaxy a long time ago, far, far away is imperfect.

YellowWomanontheBrink,

November 18, 2020

10:15 PM