Darth Vader's Private Quarters
Executor
"Some introductions are probably in order," the seated woman said. "My name is Padme Amidala Naberrie Skywalker, and I am Anakin's wife."
Piett stared at the woman, then at his cloaked and masked superior, and then back at the women.
"Anakin?" he repeated feebly.
"Lord Vader," Luke Skywalker said helpfully. "It is common for Sith Lords to take new names when they turn to the Dark Side."
"Piett might not know what the Dark Side is, exactly," the dark haired woman who looked like Leia Organa said. The woman, who was hovering near the food and drink dispenser, turned around with a glass of some liquid blue substance in her hands and a moment later, the glass floated over to Padme.
"Drink up," Organa (?) said. "You are dehydrated."
Piett's brains was whirling at all this bizarre peculiarity, but one part of his brain talked to another part of his brain and came up with something explosive.
"Your husband is ... was ...Anakin Skywalker?" he said in a dazed voice, looking at Vader's gigantic form.
"Yes," Skywalker said in what could only be described as a sunny tone. "Darth Vader, formerly Anakin Skywalker, was married, and Padme, his wife, had twins, and I am his son and this is Leia Organa, who is my twin sister."
"But we're not really this Vader's twins," Leia Organa said in a way that was supposed to be helpful, but only made Piett's head hurt more. "See, we're from another timeline, so the Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa from this timeline are ... somewhere else."
"On Hoth," Piett mumbled, and then flinched. He hadn't intended to blurt it out quite like that.
"See, I knew you were smart," Skywalker said, striding over and wrapping an arm around the hapless captain. "Hoth it is."
"Where is Hoth?" Padme asked, having drained her glass of weird blue substance.
"Anoat sector," Leia Organa said. "It is a totally horrific place to put a base, but that was the point; go where no one would think we would go. It is very very very very..."
"Very, very, cold," Skywalker finished, and pushed Piett, not unkindly, away from the door and Vader.
"The twins are on Hoth?" Vader boomed suddenly, causing Piett to jump.
Leia Organa wandered over to wave an indignant finger in the Dark Lord's mask. "That is not the important thing here, Vader. You have far more important issues to deal with, like your wife is alive and recovering from a near death experience, and Palpatine totally sucks, because he tried to kill her!
Vader stared down at the girl, filled with guilty bewilderment. "No, I … it was … I am the one…"
"No, you didn't," Luke said firmly. "You choked her, she lost consciousness, you fought with Kenobi and were dipped in lava, Kenobi rushed Padme to Polis Massa, she gave birth to the twins, and then Palpatine followed the bond between you and drained her life force to keep you alive. I mean, you were more than mostly dead, you were 99% dead."
"Palpatine…Palpatine…"
"Nearly killed her, yes," Leia said sympathetically. "In our timeline, he did kill her, but this time I was sent back to save her at the last second."
Vader stared at his Alter daughter, then at his Alter son, with a mixture of relief, for being guiltless of murdering his wife, and enraged, epic, fury, because Palpatine had… had…
"Look, I know you want to go and slash Palpatine's throat with a lightsaber," Luke said even as he sent calming waves through the Force at his Alter sire, "but realistically, you need to focus on now. The Emperor knows that your wife is here. You need to move Executor immediately, so Palpatine can't send a fleet to destroy her."
Piett, who had been feeling wobbly with all this information, actually lurched in horror at the very idea of the Lady coming under friendly fire.
"Piett is very competent," Luke continued cheerfully. "I suggest you replace Ozzel, who is very much the Emperor's man…"
"But don't strangle Ozzel," Leia said firmly. "Strangling people because they irritate or displease you is just one of your many bad character qualities."
Padme, who had been thinking hard, jerked to attention at these words and demanded, "Strangling people? Anakin strangles people?"
"Yes, it is one of his things, I'm afraid," Leia said irritably. "It is mean and rude."
The woman stared at her Alter daughter, then rose to her feet and stalked over to poke her husband in the chest plate again. "Why in all the galaxy do you strangle people, Anakin? I mean, you shouldn't be murdering people at all, but if you must do it, why not break their necks or slice them in half. Doesn't strangling people remind you of me and Mustafar? Did you like strangling me, Anakin?"
There was a mixture of ferocity and heartache in Padme's face, and Vader's throat clogged such that he could only make a few negative noises, which sounded like an irritable loth bat communicating with his fellows. To his surprise, his sort of son sort of came to the rescue.
"The Dark Side thrives on pain, guilt, and anger," the younger man explained gravely. "So when Vader strangles someone, he is simultaneously letting out anger, feeling pain from his victim, and experiencing guilt from when he attacked you. It is a Dark Side trifecta."
"Is that true?" Padme demanded, her dark eyes boring into his mask.
Still, he could not speak, so he only nodded his great head.
"That…is a horrendous way to live," she said, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
"It is," Leia said briskly. "Vader's life is pretty rotten – dead wife, badly burned, four cybernetic limbs, and his kids off fighting and hating him."
"Well, I can't solve everything," Padme said fiercely, "but I am here now, and I am going to do everything I can to bring some happiness into my beloved's life. And Palpatine can jump in a vat of eel flavored pudding for all I care. He is done running your life, Ani!"
/
Hoth
"The first transports are away!" a voice said over the speakers, and the Skywalker twins heaved sighs of relief.
"I hope that this wasn't all for nothing," Solo grumbled, looking around at the secure, if icy, meeting room where he, his friends, and General Rieekan has secreted themselves. "Maybe that probe droid wasn't even from the Empire, or maybe the transmission didn't make it back to the Empire before I blew it up."
"You may be right," Leia said briskly, rubbing her chilled hands together to generate some heat, "but we would be sitting Nubian ducks if the Empire came here. It is so difficult to see approaching ships due to the asteroid fields in orbit around the star. At any rate, I feel better having most of our people elsewhere for now. If no belligerents come calling in the next few months, maybe we can return to Hoth. Now, General, what about my request?"
"I don't know, Leia," General Rieekan said unhappily. "We really need you here. You and Skywalker are, effectively, the very faces of the Rebellion."'
"General," the princess said gravely, "if the Other Leia was right, if Luke and I are Darth Vader's children, we need to sort out this Force stuff. Luke had a vision about some Jedi Master named Yoda, and I think both of us need to talk to him."
There were surprised noises from Chewbacca at these words, and Solo cocked an inquiring eyebrow toward his copilot before saying, "Chewie says he knew Master Yoda a couple of decades ago. Says he is a good guy, though short, and he's very powerful."
Carlist Rieekan rubbed his forehead and said, "All right. I officially give you permission to leave for a few weeks, but don't be gone too long, all right, Leia?"
"Of course. Thank you."
/
Mon Mothma's Private Ship
In Space
Six parsecs from Corellia
A day later
"Hello, Mon!"
Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebellion, stared blankly at the large holoscreen in front of her. She was in her private office, and she was confident that no one was listening in to this transmission, though she had alerted her pilot that they might need to leave quickly.
The last twenty-four hours had been peculiar thanks to the abrupt arrival of a coded message which reached back more than two decades to codes used in the waning days of the Old Republic. But this…this…
"Who are you?" she demanded harshly of the woman who appeared so much like her dear, dead friend, Padme Amidala.
"I'm Padme," the woman said with a warm smile. "I know that seems ridiculous since I'm still twenty-seven years old …"
"Not to mention supposedly dead," a feminine voice said from off screen.
"Right," the woman who looked like Padme agreed. "Right. But I am not, in fact, dead, Mon. I was just yanked forward in time twenty-three years, and here I am!"
Mon Mothma glanced to the right and was reassured to see that her ship, which was floating in space in the middle of nowhere, was not being attacked. This was so stupid, so crazy, that the only possible explanation for it was that the Empire had pulled Padme Amidala's codes off of some ancient machine, or extracted it from some poor soul, in order to capture her. Mon, as recognized leader of the Rebel Alliance, was the most wanted woman in the galaxy, after all, though Luke Skywalker, thanks to his destruction of the Death Star, actually had a slightly higher bounty than her own.
"I don't think she believes me," the Padme lookalike said.
"Let me talk to her," another feminine voice suggested, and with that, the Padme person disappeared and a new woman took her place. A woman who looked like…
"Who are you?" Mon croaked.
"Leia Organa, but from the future," the Leia lookalike said. "Not this timeline, you see. My twin brother and I are sent to different timelines…"
"Leia Organa doesn't have a twin brother," Mon Mothma said. Whoever these people were, they were making some basic factual errors, which was oddly reassuring.
"Ah, but I do have a twin brother," the woman said. "In fact, this is my twin brother, Luke Skywalker."
Another individual popped up on the screen, a dark blond man with familiar blue eyes and a cleft in his chin. She had only met Skywalker a few times, but this person looked a lot like Skywalker, except at least a decade older.
All the same…
"That is ridiculous," she sputtered. "Skywalker is the son of a dead Jedi named…"
"Anakin Skywalker, I know," the Luke person said. "But Anakin was married to Padme Amidala, and she gave birth to healthy twins before she nearly died, whereupon my sister showed up and rescued her, and then both were transported to Vader's flagship, Executor. Leia was adopted by the Organas and Luke ended up on Tatooine, which sucked…"
"Vader's flagship?" Mon repeated through numb lips, and again she glanced at the console on her right. No one was within range of her ship's sensors but still… if these people were on…what was going on?
Skywalker (?) and Organa (?) exchanged glances and then both slipped out of sight, and Padme Amidala appeared again and said, "Yes, we ended up on the bridge of Executor, which sounds weird, but actually makes all the sense in the world because…"
She trailed away and beckoned firmly, and a moment later Mon Mothma choked on her own spit at the sight of Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, who hovered for a moment until Padme pointed downward, and the great masked figure and armored form apparently lowered onto a seat, whereupon Padme sat down on … the cyborg's knees?
"Because," Padme continued, "Anakin Skywalker turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader after falling into lava so yes, I am actually married to Darth Vader."
The leader of the Rebellion stared into the screen and then slapped her own cheek, which hurt enough for her to be convinced this wasn't some kind of bizarre dream.
"That's impossible…" Mothma said weakly. She ought to order the ship to go into hyperspace, but she was too stunned to move.
Padme grimaced and said, "I wish it was impossible, but it is the sad reality. It is complicated, but Anakin is going to kill the Emperor, and our twins need to be kept safe."
Off screen, she heard Leia Organa's voice say, "You should tell Mon that the twins known they are twins, but they may not know Vader is their father."
"I heard," Mon Mothma said hastily. "All of this is crazy. I mean, the family relationships are impossible, and Darth Vader has been the Emperor's right hand man for decades. Why would he…"
"Because he tried to murder my angel!" Vader suddenly roared, and the image on the holoscreen shook as if in an earthquake. "I will murder him, and I will cut him to pieces, and he will rue the day…"
"Basically," Padme yelled over the tumult, "Anakin loves me, and he is furious at Palpatine for the Emperor's aggression against me. Don't worry about it, Mon; we'll kill Palpatine and go from there in restoring democracy. Anakin, calm down. You know I love you very much, but if you break the window…"
Before Mon Mothma's incredulous eyes, the petite form of her dear friend Padme leaned over to plant a firm kiss on Darth Vader's mask and a moment later, the transmission ceased.
