A/N: Thank you so much to everybody who reviewed the last chapter and added me to their story alerts! That was so much more feedback than I was expecting! Please, keep it coming!

I'll be updating a couple more times this week, hopefully, because I'll be on vacation all next week and unable to update at all. This is poor Captain Typho's chapter. At first I was mad at Padmé, actually, for putting Typho in a position where he would almost certainly get fired, but then I realized that she had arranged it so that, if he did what she told him, without realizing it, he would be saving his job. I built this off of that and the fact that we don't see him at the funeral.

Captain Gregar Typho

All of Naboo, it seems, is at the funeral now. The streets here, on the outskirts, are utterly dark, utterly silent. For the first time since it happened, I am alone with my thoughts.

I don't want to think—my thoughts are no comfort to me, they are full of pain, they are full of her. But I won't go, with everyone else, to her funeral.

I can't go to her funeral.

I can't. I can't mourn publicly with everyone else. My grief is different from theirs, a different thing entirely. It's my fault. I was trusted, and I failed. It's my fault she's dead, almost as surely as if I'd killed her myself.

How can I face her family, knowing that? I could barely face my uncle, when I saw him, I could barely face Dormé. How can I face an entire planet of people, every one of them crying for her? Many of them, no doubt, wondering what her security was doing when somebody snuck in and murdered her? I've wondered that, too. Here, alone, I have to face myself, and in ways that's just as hard as facing everyone else.

I would have died for her when I was sixteen. I was in the Junior Palace Guard, she was the new fourteen-year-old Queen, and I was swept up in her campaign for reform, just like all the rest of the planet. Every time I saw her, I thought, "she's my age." I would have refused to admit it then, but it can't have been coincidence that that I joined the Guards at the same time as she was elected. No, it wasn't just that she was a pretty girl—Amidala made the young Naboo believe that they could accomplish something.

Then, when she came back from Coruscant and fought for us… I lost my eye in the Battle of Naboo, and I was glad to make that small sacrifice for Naboo, of course—but more than anything I did it for her. She fought for us, and so I fought my hardest for her, and when she came to visit me while I was recovering… She floored me. She was my age—younger—she was a kid, but she was stronger and wiser than I was. She had me under her spell from that moment. I worshipped her.

It took me years to figure out that she was a person, not an idol. I was never quite comfortable with that fact. Working in her service, I saw her good and bad moods, her Senate moods and her private moods, I saw her with her hair down, her makeup off. I argued with her to no end because she seemed to think that nothing could actually kill her, but because she was Amidala she often won. I chased her around like she was a badly-behaved child. But still, when it came down to it, she was still Amidala to me, and I never really believed anything could kill her, either.

Uncle Panaka says it's not my fault. So does Dormé. They don't understand. I could have stopped her. I could have dragged her away from that skiff, if all else failed. I should have said… there are a million things I should have said. I should have gone with her. She was trusted to my care.

I didn't trust that Jedi when she married him; I could have killed him for letting her go through with it, but there's one thing I'll say for him: he could have talked her out of going. But then, he was the one she was going to meet. Skywalker and I came to an understanding, eventually, because we'd both proved that we would have died for her. Maybe he actually did. Lucky him.

I know a Jedi didn't kill her. I know more than almost anyone else about her activities in her last few days. She was championing the Jedi when most of the Senators wouldn't. The one she distrusted was Palpatine. What she and the group she met with were working against was the Empire. Why would the Jedi kill their greatest ally? And why would the Emperor leave his most vocal opponent alive, when others in that group suddenly started turning up dead? But most of all I know the Jedi didn't kill her because I watched her get onto that skiff, of her own free will, with only the droid (I let her take a droid for protection!), to see her husband and the father of her child.

The ironic thing is, while I was failing to protect her, she was protecting me, and I didn't even realize it. A sleepless night, an anxious morning went by, and then the call came, and the first thing they asked was, "Do you know where Senator Amidala is?" And because almost the last words she'd spoken to me were, This is a personal errand. And it must remain personal. You know nothing of my leaving, nor where I am bound, nor when I can be expected to return, I answered, "No. She retired to rest yesterday evening, and I have not seen her since." She knew what might happen, and she did not want me to suffer for it. They told me she was dead, and only later did I understand—she made sure I would give a safe answer because she didn't want me to get fired. As though I still want this job! As though I can still be trusted to do it! As though all I was protecting did not die with her, all through my own fault, my own negligence!

It's too much to be expected of me. I can't even bring myself to go to her funeral. I'm hiding here, in the dark, away from the people who still trust me even though I let her die.

The last thing I told her was that I disagreed with her decision, and she smiled a little and said, "I'll be fine, Captain," just like a thousand times before, and her strength and vulnerability at once floored me, just as always. Then she turned, walked up the ramp, and was gone. If I had known I'd never see her again… I can't bear to see her now, in her casket, looking like a statue for the throngs to worship and weep over. I can't face that, I can't face her knowing I did it.

She didn't want me to hide. But what did she want? How do I go on living with myself when scarcely a day will go by for the rest of my life when I do not think that I should have protected her better? What should I do anything for, now?

In the dark and the silence it comes to me: for her, still. For her memory—protect that. Help the Jedi, like she did. Fight the Empire, like she did. Quietly let them know that what Palpatine said about her death is nothing but lies. Then I won't have failed until the galaxy has forgotten who she really was.