Chapter 42
'Okay then I'll be happy to move into your apartment on Coruscant,' Padmé replied after hesitating at first for a few minutes and Leia was very happy that her mother had finally agreed. The three finished up their little picnic right in the middle of this wonderful green meadow; standing at a big cliff Padmé and her children took a moment to enjoy the wonderful view in front of them. As she was standing there enjoying the view Padmé could not help but wonder what the future would hold for her and her children, but one thing was for sure: She would definitely embrace it with open arms, no matter what lay ahead of her.
Of course the whole situation was still very new to her, as a lot of her dear colleagues from the former Senate of the Old Republic had not survived the Galactic Civil War, but she also admired the great work that Mon Mothma had done so far. The three finally made their way back to the little landing pad, from where they would take a taxi back to Theed, the capital of Naboo, and Padmé of course could not wait to finally meet the man that her daughter had already told her so much about: Han Solo. She did have her doubts at first as she heard about what he had done in his past: his life as an outlaw and the time he had spent in the Imperial Fleet but it seemed that he had really become an honorable man as the years went by and that was definitely all that mattered in the end.
Also hearing the story of how her good friend Bail Organa had died during the Galactic Civil War had been very hard to digest for her, but she also could not help but notice how shook up her daughter had been after telling her how difficult it had been for her to watch the destruction of her home world with not being able to do anything to stop it.
Padmé had felt so helpless at this point as she did not know anything to say that could make her feel any better. She was thankful of the fact that Bail and his wife had taken care so well of her daughter; having Bail and his wife as her replacement parents certainly gave her the best childhood that you could have under those circumstances, and it was such a sad thing that she was not able to thank them personally for all that they had done. But there were other things that she wanted to focus on: being as close to her children as possible and spending every free minute she had with them, even if her job as the Advisor of Queen Mairayn would be as time consuming as her job as the Senator of Naboo in the Galactic Senate had been.
She had missed so much of the lives of Leia and Luke and she just wanted to do one thing: just not miss any important events in their lives and of course being at their disposal every time they need their mother to talk about anything that bothered them. She did not envy Luke one bit for having so much weight on his shoulders, even if she surely was proud of what he had accomplished so far and was sure that he was up to the challenge; but deep down even he probably had felt some days like all this was just too much for him to handle.
Finally reaching the little landing platform where the speeder waited to bring them back to the space port of Theed, the former Queen and Senator asked her daughter, 'What happened to my apartment on Coruscant after the day I supposedly died?' Of course Leia had somehow expected this question to be asked by her mother at one point but she really didn't know how she would take the answer to this question. Taking one deep breath she finally replied: 'They converted your apartment into a restaurant called The Naboo Queen in your honor.'
Padmé felt torn as she heard this; of course she was flattered by this whole thing but on the other hand she thought that she had not done anything spectacular to deserve this honour. No matter how she decided to feel about the whole thing in the very end, she had to take a moment to digest all this before she answered: 'That is definitely something unexpected to hear, because I don't think that I did anything out of the ordinary to deserve an honor like this, instead I always just did what was best for the people of Naboo and nothing more.'
Of course she remembered very well that one time where Anakin had told her the story about how a lot of citizens of Naboo wanted to amend the constitution so that she could stay in office. Padmé had been a little flattered by that but she had been glad as her term as Queen was finally over, because being the youngest Queen ever elected on Naboo surely had been a very big burden to her, even if she had started to get interested getting into politics at some time at a very young age.
Padmé was happy that her daughter was able to enjoy her childhood without any interruptions and she had the feeling that her relationship did have a much better future than her parents had, even if some danger from rogue Imperial forces was still lurking out there, trying their best to bring down this newly founded democracy; but whether they would really succeed with that was another question that still remained to be unanswered.
Star Destroyer Chimera
Thrawn's flagship was located just a few minutes away from the Saarn system and the Grand Admiral was studying some data on a pad that a lieutenant had just handed him. He put the pad away for a moment to ask Captain Gilad Pellaeon, 'How long till the Storm Falcon is here, Captain?'
'The Storm Falcon just passed the fourth planet of the system; so far there are no signs of any counter-measures from the New Republic outpost,' Captain Pellaeon answered without much hesitation and the Grand Admiral seemed quite pleased with his status report.
Thrawn was quite satisfied that everything was going as planned so far, but the destruction of this listening post only was the beginning of a his big plan to crush the New Republic once and for all and help the Empire to get back to the glory that it had back in the old days.
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