***Chapter Three

At 10, Padme was ready to leave the theory of government behind and start severing the people of Naboo. As a young student herself, Padme turned her attention to education policy. While Naboo had a system of public education, it was far inferior to those that could afford private schools and tutors, and it only educated children through age 14. Padme worked directly with the sitting Queen to improve public primary school education and to create a secondary education program open to all of Naboo's young people.

The Life and Times of Amidala, the People's Queen, By: Softa Jiane, Oralist and Historian

When Leia Organa, current princess of the former world Alderaan arrived in docking bay three, she felt the guilt swell up in her chest. Luke was standing in next to the Rebel Star, a well-used rebellion issued ruck sack at his feet picking at a depressing looking sandwich. His shoulders were slumped down and his face looked long with exhaustion. Mon Mothma had designed this particular plan when she found out Luke's squadron would be granted leave around the same time Naboo was scheduled for New Republic entry negotiations.

Leia had initially objected when Mon Mothma has suggested that Leia take along Luke as a traveling companion, convinced that her mentor did not have the confidence in Leia to take on this job on her own. Instead, the elder women gave some statement about how romantic the story of the Jedi and the Princess was. Unfortunately, Mon Mothma, not knowing the truth about her family always saw the innocent farm boy turned Jedi a more suitable partner than a foul-mouthed pirate nearly 10 years her senior. Mon Mothma, knowing Leia since she was a child, had become a sort of surrogate mother after the destruction of her planet and the concurrent death of her own parents. Leia realized she would need to find away to tell her inner circle about her newly discovered brother without revealing the more nefarious member of the Skywalker line.

"Princess Leia, we should get going, the trip to Naboo is going to take a full 24 hours and the Nabooans look down on tardiness," The said the whiney voice of C-3PO, the protocol droid, that while annoying in a sort of enduring way, had been a necessity in her diplomatic work the past year.

"Of course, threepo," Leia said and approached the entrance to the yacht that would bring the tiny diplomatic contingent to the opulent plant of Naboo.

"Luke, you all right?" Leia questioned as she approached the spot where the Jedi was waiting, giving him a small clap the on the shoulder.

"Fine, how about you, are you ready?" He replied back, the weariness leaking through his voice.

"Let's go." Leia said, approaching the ship and punching in the code on the key pad by the door so the party could board.

Luke took the pilots seat and Leia settled into the co-pilots seat, Artoo plugged into the ship to help navigation and C-3PO buzzed around in the passenger portion of the ship, spitting out facts and figures about Naboo. The droid seemed unusually excited about the excursion.

The ship, New Republic owned and at the disposal of the diplomatic core, had been pre-cleared for immediate take off and it was less than an hour by the time they had left Coruscant space and jumped into Hyperdrive.

"If you don't need me for anything, I'm going to get some rest." Luke said nervously. Even though He and Leia had spent a great deal of time together while fighting the against imperial forces, they had spent very little time together since the battle of Endor and none of it actively discussing their familiar relationship.

Leia nodded in agreement, "That's a good idea."

Luke headed to the bunks located in the rarer of the ship. The bunk was made with clean sheets and at this point, any bed would feel comfortable. In the last year, Luke had slept in crowded bunk rooms, tents with sleeping bags on the ground, his X-Wing (More times than would like to count), the bridge of the ship that his squadron worked with and a very small amount of times, the bed in the back of a spaceship just like this. There were, of course, the nights where he'd forgone sleep, substituting his Jedi training and the nights where time to sleep would only be available for two or three hours. Sometimes, while his squadron was sitting in their X-wings, moving toward the next fighting or coming back from a fight they had just won, they would describe, over the Comm unit, the type of sleep they longed for. Nights on their home planets before the Empire and the war had gotten real bad where they would share a hot meal with family and friends before everyone would retire to a non-moving actual real-life bed for an un-interrupted night of sleep. Even Luke, who grew up a poor orphaned moisture farmer, would think back to the simple meals and early nights on Tatooine, envious of the life he had been so desperate to leave behind at the time.

Now though, Luke realized that this holiday was not yet going to provide the full night of sleep in a quite bedroom planet side, but this bunk was one of the best he had had in the better part of the year. Either way, Luke could feel his body protest his awakens and he slipped his boots off, laid his head on the pillow and fell asleep almost instantly.

When Luke opened his eyes and looked at his Chrono, he realized he had been asleep for nearly 12 hours. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and stumbled into the living space between the cockpit and the bunks. Leia was sitting at the table, a few different data pads spread-out in front of her.

"Morning," She said, only looking up briefly when Luke walked into the space.

"Hmph," Luke said, though in fairness he meant to return the greeting but his voice was still gravely from its half day of nonuse.

"There's fresh caf in the kitchen," Leia responded.

Luke nodded and headed for a cup, needing something to clear the sleep from his head. Luke poured a cup of the dark bitter warm caffeinated liquid and took a drink, savoring the feeling of the substance running down his throat. He took another glug before refilling the three quarters full cup and returning to the bunk room where we had left his ruck sack. Luke set his cup down and then reached into the bottom of the ruck sack for the rare and delicate paper books that he had carefully wrapped in plastic to avoid damage and returned to the living space where we set the books and his cup of caf on the table opposite of Leia.

"Paper books?" Leia questioned.

"Gifts, two from Mon Mothma and one from a former imperial officer who had pledged allegiance to the rebellion the day after the battle of Endor. They had kept these in their private collections, they are books about Jedi, written by Jedi." Luke explained.

"They survived the purge?" Leia questioned.

"Apparently it is hard to destroy things that no one knew existed." Luke Continued, "I mean, Mon Mothma explained she didn't think much of these until we talked about the future of the Jedi after the battle of Endor. But she returned to her home and found these in her personal library. I've wanted to review these for so long, but I can barely find the time for a full night's sleep, let alone pleasure reading."

"You know, when the Empire was killed and the second death star destroyed, I thought things would get easier. I really thought we could be able to start the New Republic in the next month and things would quickly become business as usual. But this has been the most exhausting year of my life." Leia explained, knowing Luke would understand. When Leia had voiced these same thoughts to Mon Mothma and General Ackbar, they had worked hard to hide their smirk, General Ackbar mumbled something about "the optimism of youth," reminding Leia she was still only 24, not the 84 years she sometimes felt.

But Luke nodded, but was unsure how to complete the sentiment. Leia refocused her attention on her data pads and Luke opened the first paper book. The pages smelled earthy and dark print was cracked in places, still completely readable but the output not as smooth as electronic.

The first book Luke took out was nearly two hundred years old. Reading the front flap of the book, Luke realized it was an autobiography written by a human female Jedi. Her fame derived from the unification of the Outtrim worlds into the Old Republic through peaceful negotiation. The Jedi was famed for never carrying a light saber or for that matter any weapon at all. Luke opened the book the first page and read:

For once I came from the magnanimous ecosphere justly named Alderaan, but I was swiftly repositioned to the gentle embrace of the Jedi Knights. Whilst I remember little about the time I spent in the Alderaan archipelago, the recollections endowed to me at the earliest stages of my life are much beloved. As a small child, mother and father lived on the seashore. Our quaint seaside bungalow was often embraced by the tender ocean breeze, of which the sound would lull me to sleep, dreams fashioned of flying amongst the non-sentient avian bipeds which shared our glorious world.

Luke looked up from the book and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He has already both confused and frustrated from just the first paragraph. Luke was vaguely familiar with the style of writing. One term in the Tatooine school he had attended in his youth, the Imperial cultural ambassador had insisted that his year group take a class on proper literature in addition to the full course load in math, agricultural science and technique, mechanics and engineering, farm management, and imperial history. Mostly, Luke and the rest of his class ignored the reading assignment and focused on the course work that was relevant to farming and flying, the two things a kid from Tatooine was likely to spend their life doing.

He looked over at Leia and was frustrated, assuming she had the proper education to read this sort of flowery non-sense with relative ease. Then, almost automatically he remembered his Jedi training and pushed the anger and jealousy away.

"How's the book?" Leia questioned when she noted he had already paused from his reading.

"Dense." He said flatly.

"Can I see?" She asked.

Luke handed the book over and Leia almost instantly gave a little groan. "Of course, one of the three books you have on Jedi would be written in style of High Alderaan. What a ridicules way to write, all flair and complete disregard to both reader and plot," Leia said as she handed the book back to Luke.

"But you know how to read this? I mean, I can read pretty much any technical manual and I am big fan of those San Lancy books, you know those old spice mine novels, but this is out of my league." Luke exclaimed, feeling the inadequacy hot on his cheeks.

"Not any better than you I am afraid, there are scholars of this sort of work of course, they spend all of their days in in academic buildings decrypting this sort of text, but even they are few and far between these days, most of them… well they were mostly from Alderaan." Leia explained.

"Unfortunately, I think this is the easiest of the three to read." Luke explained he had flipped through all of them a bit, and was disappointed that Leia would not be of any help. If any one he knew had the education to get through this sort of language, it would be Leia.

The cabin descended into silence before Leia said, "Look, not to change the subject, but I wanted discuss this… mission… I think you were chosen to be my escort because of this highly improbable legend about a queen and Jedi the Naboo people are so engrossed in, and Mon Mothma's really misguided effort to set us up. I mean, I think it's great that you came along, and it might be a good place for you to have a bit of a Holiday, but really, I could have handled myself, there is already an entire guard protecting the subject matter experts and the Naboo government is really interested in joining the New Republic, their security would be adequate." Leia explained matter of fact.

"You don't think they legend is real?" Luke questioned, excited at the prospect of an easy week and the opportunity to investigate the Jedi.

"Not really, I do know the queen in the Legend is Queen Amidala, I have her biography on holonovel if you would like, it's a lot easier to get through than the Jedi books, but there is very little about the Jedi, the Empire would never have allowed it. And even if there was a Jedi, they were required to remain celibate, so it highly unlikely she was pregnant with the child of a Jedi." Leia explained, handing a data pad over to Luke to take a look.

"Says the child of Jedi," Luke argued while turning his attention to the data pad, happy to have something that was not so stodgy to read and a legitimate excuse to read it.

Leia shuddered a little with the mention of her biological father, confused as to how Luke could throw the sentiment around so casually. And then, the question that Leia had pushed in the back of her mind so fiercely had returned to her mind. She wanted to push it down again, too scared to the truth, but before she could, it came tumbling out of her mouth as if she had lost some sort of impulse control.

"Luke, our biological mother, do you ever think, I mean, our biological father was Darth Vader, how do you think she became pregnant with his children?" Leia asked, her voice trembling.

Luke blushed, his farm boy modesty engrained, paused and then said, "I don't know, I mean he was once, Anakin Skywalker, there was a good part of him, there is fair chance that they fell in love and we are one of the last acts of love our real... our biological father ever showed." Luke stumbled, sensitive to the fact that Leia would always considered the Organa's her real parent, embarrassed by the topic of discussion. Luke had also yet to reveal what exactly had happened on the second death star. Leia knew that something had happened, and she knew Luke had felt the need to give Vader a private funeral in Tatooine tradition, but Leia did not know that Vader's final act was giving his life to kill the Empire and save son. Luke knew he should tell her of all people, it had after all been their father's last dying, but he was not yet ready to speak it allowed. The night of destruction the second Death Star still elicited nightmares at least monthly. Even when he repeated Yoda's mantra on fear, he still could not gather the courage to tell Leia.

"But there is also a real chance we were conceived without the consent of our biological mother?" Leia questioned.

"I guess." Luke confirmed, the thought making him queasy.

"Have you ever tried to find who she is?" Leia probed.

"I've thought about it, I mean I would like to, but I don't have time to sleep, let alone find out who our mother may be." Luke explained.

"Have you?" Luke returned the question tentatively. This was the first time Leia was open to talking about their parents and Luke did not want to ruin it.

"No, I mean, I never really wanted to know about my biological parents, and that was reinforced after my real parents died. I wanted their memory to be the only memory, you know?" Leia hoped Luke would understand, like her, he was also been adopted, his formative years had been influenced by people that were not his biological parents.

"Would you rather you didn't know then about our father, about me…" Luke trailed off.

Leia sighed, she had walked into dangerous conversation. "Luke, I already knew you and in a lot of ways you became the closet thing to a brother during our fight in the rebellion. Learning you were my actual brother just codified what was already true. But yes, I could have gone my whole life without knowing I was the child of Darth Vader." Leia said, knowing her honesty to Luke was going to sting like salt in a wound. She instantly wished she could take it all back. Sometimes it is easy to forget one's own privilege when it seemed as if you had none at all.

"I understand, you got literally the best parents ever and learning you have a second set of inferior ones can only ruin a good thing." Luke fired back icily and buried is noise in the book about Queen Amidala.

"Luke, I didn't mean it…" Leia trailed off, unsure how to right this.

"It's fine, I get it." Luke said, his voice already calm and sedate, as if he were never angry but he did not move the data pad from in front of his face.

Leia signed, but did not try to engage further, at least not yet. The thing with Luke, was that in a lot of ways they were similar or at least they had a similar life experience at the same age. Luke had lost his Aunt and Uncle when they were murdered by Storm Troopers, Ben Kenobi when he was cut down by Vader and his best friend Biggs during the battle of Yavin, all within days of each other. While he did not literally lose his entire world as Leia had, he had lost about the closest thing to it. In the days following the battle of Yavin, once the metals had been given and the adrenaline had worn off, Luke and Leia spent a lot of time together, sometimes talking about their lost families and sometimes talking about things that were not and sometimes not talking at all. Their lives were in a sort of odd parallel as a farm boy and Princess, but as twins who should have had a bevy of shared experiences, they were complete opposites.

Leia watched Luke a little bit longer and he did actually seem to be reading the data pad about the queen. Leia went back to her own data pads full of the reports sent to her from the subject matter expert team on the ground, but she could not focus and was mostly marking time, waiting for Luke to calm down enough so she could give a proper apology.

After a sometime, maybe an hour or so Leia was hopeful Luke had clamed down enough for her to actually apologize.

"Luke?" She said, waiting to see how he responded before she proceeded.

"Hmm," He said, sounding engrossed in his book rather than angry. She figured she was okay to proceed.

"I just wanted to apologize for before, I didn't mean it quite the way it came out…" Leia was not doing a great job, all her diplomatic training and she could not even talk to her own brother.

"Leia, I understand, I mean, everything you have ever said about your parents sounds great and to learn that your father is Darth Vader is not." Luke confirms. "I get it, I get that is would be easier if you never found out the truth. I wish I still thought my father was a hero Jedi betrayed by Vader rather than being Vader. But not knowing the truth does not make it not true, it just makes us ignorant." Luke explained, sounding more like the wise Jedi he has become rather than the farm boy he once was.

Leia nodded but the silence that followed was awkward and needed to be filled and Leia, the diplomate, was the first to speak, still wanting to get in a proper apology.

"Do you remember when Han sourced all of those favttie beans as a solution to keeping the troops feed cheap, I mean there were enough beans to keep everyone feed for like two months. But it turned out we were super allergic to them and spent the night covered in hives, hopped up on antihistamines in the infirmary?" Leia questioned.

Luke chuckled a little at the memory, in hindsight it was a bit funny, "I mean, they did keep most of the rebellion fed for two months." Luke pointed out.

"And we got stuck eating emergency rations which was somehow even worse than the beans I think." Leia continued the story.

"So, what's the point of this. The Rebellion was a lot of hard work and they fed us beans we were allergic too?" Luke asked.

"No, I think it was at that moment I realized you were my brother." Leia said.

"That was like a year before even Hoth, there is no way you knew."

"No, I mean, I didn't know it, I guess, I couldn't describe it to anyone, but it was then that I knew we were more alike than we were different. That no matter what happened, we would always be life long friends, like we were connected somehow." Leia explained.

Luke nodded, he got it and a sort of truce settled between the twins. Talk about their parents was halted for the time being.

The next few hours went by in a series of naps, meals and data pads. Mostly, the two humans and two droids remained quiet, the silence comfortable and welcome in a galaxy that always seemed to loud.

When the ship was nearing Naboo, Luke changed into what he thought his most Jedi looking outfit, though Luke was just guessing, he had elected on a simple black tunic that fell just short enough on his waist for his Lightsaber to be prominently on display. Yoda and Ben had worn long brown robes, but those seemed impractical to daily movements and rather ridicules. Surely the Jedi of the past had not spent their days galivanting around in such clothing.

When Luke exited the bunk room and returned to the living space on the ship he noticed the Leia had changed out of her simple traveling clothes of leggings and tunic into a long white dress.

"The princess and the Jedi," Luke said. Leia gave shrug and then they both walked to the cockpit to start the landing protocol.