Padme woke up six weeks after giving birth.
It wasn't a sharp opening of the eyes, and she didn't gasp as much as cough and choke on the tube in her throat in the bacta suspension. They had sedated her again— that she did not remember— and then removed her from the bacta and slowly brought her out of the coma.
She didn't remember anything after naming the baby— babies—she'd had twins. That she remembered well. They hadn't even let her hold them, before she had the stroke on the operating table. Sola told her that there'd been assasination attempts on her because the New Republic had adopted the constitution she'd written for submission with the Delegation of 2000, so they'd moved her to a secret facility in the Far Mid-Rim.
To her surprise, they had left there, on Polis Massa Care Station— supposedly for her protection. It took another two weeks for Sola to arrive to bring her back to their parents house to begin her rehab on Naboo. For months, she couldn't talk, couldn't move. All was pain, from the bedsores along her back and legs to the poorly healed prolapsed uterus she was too embarrassed to look at. She was painfully thin, and the droids had shaved her head to reduce the cost of hygienic upkeep.
All for her protection.
Any questions she had about her Anakin and her children were rebuffed, when she was even given the tools to communicate.
Recovery passed by like a hellish blur, interspersed with painful physical therapy. When she was able to move her mouth again, they'd fitted her with a vocoder while her throat healed from the intubation.
"My children?" she asked her sister.
"A closed adoption," Sola couldn't meet her eye.
"Why didn't you take them in?" she spat. The vocoder was such high-quality that every bit of censure was translated through.
Sola sighed. "By the time I found out, the papers were stamped and the case closed. Believe me, I tried." Her dark eyes welled with tears, and finally, Padme could appreciate the amount of stress her older sister had been under. Her thin face was wan, her hair cut short and messy, and she wore no makeup, and looked like she hadn't for a while. Sola was as unrecognizable as Padme.
Padme couldn't think of anyone other than the Jedi who could extradite and close adoptions that quickly. The Jedi, or someone with means.
It was easy to throw herself completely into her physical therapy after that. She would find them, and get them back, vacate the adoption if it was the last thing she did. Sola didn't have much to stand on, but Padme was their biological mother, and she had friends in high places. People owedher. They were herchildren, she'd borne them, she'd carried them for seven months, she'd nearly died to bring them to life. And she would be damned if they took that from her. She'd hire a bounty hunter to find them, if she had too. No price was too high.
She didn't want to press about Anakin. She knew what he'd done, what he was going to do next. If the Jedi expelled him, and they certainly would've when they found out he had a wife and child, the Republic would've executed him for treason and conspiracy to commit a coup. Most days she tried not to think about it; she didn't watch the HoloNews. It would be too much to bear to see the remains of the failed state she'd dedicated her entire life to. Disgust made her stomach churn when she remembered the applause as the Senate voted in an imperial constitution.
It took a year before Padme could speak again and walk for short distances. The moment she was stable enough to space travel, she set out for Coruscant.
Force sensitivity, contrary to popular belief, was not hereditary. Having a parent who was Force-sensitive didn't guarantee that the child would be. But, Padme was desperate, with no place to start, and the galaxy was a wide, wide world. Being nearly in the Outer Rim hadn't helped, she was sure.
Any parent could reclaim a child given up to the Temple under the age of six. She hoped the Force was with them, even though she knew how such power had driven Anakin to madness. She remembered almost nothing after Anakin had choked her; faces were a blur, then all was pain, then she remembered, plastisteel cold walls-a ship? The cry of a baby— Luke, she had named him, then another whimper, Leia. She could hardly speak then, and felt no pain, as if she were a ghost and her dying body something apart from her. All her thoughts had been of Anakin, at that last moment.
She was afraid that they'd killed him.
Well, no more.
She couldn't help Anakin. He'd made his choices. But her babies hadn't chosen to be born.
She'd get her children back and give them the life they deserved. A life unencumbered by duty to a broken galaxy, free of the heavy weight of destiny that had bowed her husband's mighty shoulders. She'd raise them with wisdom, and kindness, and love, and she'd give them all the love and more that they deserved. Padme would make sure that they never ended up like her, so shackled to duty that love felt like desperation, or like Anakin, so sure of what his own power told him that he was blind to reality right before his eyes.
Padme would give them choices,and freedom,and the unconditional love children received and returned without question.
They argued for three weeks about how to do it.
Master Kenobi was the sort of man who was always busy, rushing off from one end of the galaxy to the other liberating worlds and negotiating peace and the like; whatever it was Jedi Knights did. He stopped by frequently on Alderaan, every four to six months, because he was the councillor in charge of officiating their father's parole.
Luke hadn't known that, but on one sleepless night, he'd stayed up all night slicing with Artoo and had uncovered the Madame Towleit's case files. The Jedi Order's databases were much more secure. He hadn't been able to touch them, and the codes and bypasses he'd found in Artoo's memory files were outdated.
Luke thought if they called him, he would be too busy to answer. In all honesty, he was a little bit afraid that Master Kenobi might think that Father had done something to hurt them during one of their three visits, but Leia didn't need to know that. She was too honest to lie about that sort of thing, but still, Luke was afraid.
They decided on recording a message. That way, they could say everything they wanted, and he could open it at his own leisure.
"Ready Artoo?" Luke bounced on his heels, running nervous fingers through his dark blond fringe.
Leia, dressed in white, stood resolute, her long braids dangling down her back. She wasn't even a bit nervous. When he grabbed her arm and looped elbows, she flashed him a warm smile, and together, their presence seemed to brighten. The elaborate beads Mother gave her jangled quietly, just audible over the whirring as Artoo started the holorecorder. The droid beeped a cheery countdown…
"Master Kenobi, it's Luke and Leia Organa," Luke began.
"We've become aware of circumstances about Anakin Skywalker's crimes," Leia's chin was held high.
Luke eyed her, though his voice remained even, "and we thought that you, being a witness, could tell us about what happened ten years ago."
"We only want to understand what happened, and our mother doesn't want to explain," Leia continued.
"And you had told me that our father was once your dearest friend. Please call us back soon!" Luke finished, and then leaned forward to shut off the holorecorder.
As Artoo rolled off to transmit the message through Padme's holoreceiver, Luke met Leia's dark eyes.
"Do you think this'll work?" she asked.
"Of course it will," Luke replied. "Obi-Wan's a good man. A little odd, but maybe that's just because he's a jedi. I don't think he'll lie to us. He told me the truth about wanting me to be a Jedi, and he didn't have to do that. He always tells the craziest stories about the things he'd done when he was a General, and sometimes he tells me about the missions he goes on now."
"It's just strange that I haven't really met him," Leia pursed her lips thoughtfully.
"Usually you're with Breha," Luke shrugged. "It's odd, but he does ask after you. I think maybe they don't want you to meet with the Jedi."
"I just wonder why. Either the Jedi want something with you, or Mama is protecting me from them," Leia sighed.
"I could've been a Jedi," he reminded her, "and maybe you could've been as well."
Leia scrunched up her nose at the thought, then laughed loudly. "Me? A jedi? Cloistered in that dusty old temple in those robes? Meditating all day? I'd be terrible at it."
"You'd scare off all the Masters," Luke agreed.
Padme's manor was humble, as far as these things went. They'd used her holocode, and anxiously pittered around it while she was out in the capital. Finally, in the late afternoon, it pinged with a message. The message was short, with only a date and time.
"What luck!" Luke was agog, "He was on Coruscant, and he says he'll come to Alderaan, tomorrow at dinner. And...he wants Mother there."
They exchanged looks of dread. Neither of them had spoken to their biological mother about their search for answers. She clearly didn't like talking about it, and had all but told them to ask their father.
"This is bad," Leia muttered, "she hates the Jedi."
"It's not hate," Luke disagreed. Leia had never been there, for the times that the Master Jedi had visited the palace. Luke had only ever seen his mother interact with Kenobi once, but he'd never forget how it felt in the Force; the anger, the fear, the regret, the sadness. He'd been too little to make sense of the rush of emotion his mother had felt then, but he understood it now. Maybe...maybe before he'd met Father, he would have thought it was hate. He could never forget the complex, roiling feelings in the Force that Anakin Skywalker had carefully tried to hide. "But she definitely doesn't like Master Kenobi. So what, should we cancel this whole thing? Say never mind and give up?"
"Of course not! Adults always say much more than they mean to when they're upset. Maybe finally Padme will tell us the truth instead of deflecting! And Aunt Sola is a horrible gossip, she'll be talking about it for weeks afterward."
He laughed, and Leia smirked at him before breaking down into nervous giggles as well.
"Hey, Luke," she said once they were quiet again.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. I know you wanted to know more about...him. I know it meant a lot to you. So thanks for not going for me. There's no way we'll have to go if neither of us want to."
He wrapped his arm around her to hide his burgeoning guilt. Leia was content, but Luke wasn't. As short and stressful as the visits were, he loved them. Now that Artoo had given him a way into the Temple, unsupervised…
Well, he'd be a fool not to take it up, no matter what Leia said.
Is anyone even reading this? Please leave a review if you like!
YellowWomanontheBrink
March 22, 2021
