We travel as civilians. Cheap robes of worn fabric our disguise, hoods low enough to make us unrecognisable but not so concealing as to arouse suspicion. Esmé tried to hide Anakin's scar with some of my make-up, though my skin is a shade paler than his. Perhaps it will be mistaken for a birthmark. I am unused to travelling with my famous husband, though I am myself infamous.
He makes me laugh in his usual way, but there is a shadow behind his forced smile. I haven't told him yet about the twins; we can figure that out once we know his mother is safe.
Disguised as we are, there is no problem clasping hands or caressing faces. We wear someone else's wedding rings. I wonder if this is what married life is supposed to be like. Restraining ourselves from public displays of affection only because it is inappropriate, not because our relationship is forbidden.
Anakin catches my hand and traces the edges of the ring on my finger. "I wish I could give you one of these," he murmurs.
I encircle both his hands in mine. "You have given me something better. You." And children who will one day smile with your eyes.
The civilian transport is escorted out of Coruscant's orbit by a clone envoy. We alight at Frianden, a small planet not far from the Outer Rim. There a friend of Irdé takes us to a mountainside safe house and we exchange one disguise for another. Our new personas are not a couple, but I keep the ring, tucking it into a hidden pocket in the homespun dress.
Irdé's friend is a Twi'lek person who gives their name as Reef. Reef's orange lekku are adorned with a myriad of small tattoos, from jagged trees to blaster pistols, and I wonder at the story behind them. But it is safest if Reef remains largely unknown to us; they have not been officially told our true identities, but they know who Irdé works for. They provide us with a filling meal bereft of small talk, before bidding us good evening.
We wake before first light and follow Reef to a shuttle bay carved into the mountain beside the safe house. There, a nondescript shuttle awaits us, and Anakin claims the pilot's seat. I clamber into the gunner's chair behind him and thank Reef before we set off for Tatooine.
As the desert planet comes into view, I remember the first time I came to this place, half my life ago. I was a fourteen-year-old queen desperate for a peaceful solution to the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo. And yet I wanted to get to know this alien planet we found ourselves on in search of a hyper drive. Little did I know we would discover a boy who would change my life irreversibly. A boy who could fix anything and fly a podracer with superhuman reflexes and welcome strangers into his home. A boy who doesn't like sand.
"You okay back there?" Anakin asks.
I lean forward and squeeze his shoulder. "I'm fine. Just lost in a memory. Are you okay?"
I can't see his face, but I can feel the tension in his body. "That depends on finding my mother."
"We can do this. Take us down, pilot."