Was going to post this earlier in the day, but then my computer charger broke, and I had to spend three hours running around to buy a new one.

"What do you mean, gone? " Padmé demanded. They couldn't be—they were supposed to be safe on Tatooine, hidden from the Empire's sight.

"I was doing errands in Anchorhead with Arrel Darklighter," Beru said. "Owen was out working on the vaporators. When he went back in to get lunch, they weren't there."

A block of ice wedged itself in Padmé's chest. "Raiders?"

"We don't think so. The speeder is missing, too, and Raiders wouldn't take that. We don't think they were taken at all. It's only the speeder that's gone, and a couple of canteens and some food, nothing else of value."

Padmé tried to force herself toward a semblance of calm. The twins hadn't been in any immediate danger. That was a good thing.

"So, they took the speeder," she said, trying for optimism—and failing dismally as she thought again of Raiders, and of anoobas and sarlaccs and krayt dragons. "Where might they have taken it? And how? "

Beru shook her head. "I don't know. It's almost midnight here, and they haven't come back. We've searched Anchorhead, and no one has seen them. I don't want to panic—probably they're playing sleepover in some canyon rock cave, and they'll be back tomorrow morning in time for breakfast—but—"

But Tatooine was a dangerous place for two children alone.

"Owen and I will take shifts staying up until morning," Beru said. "I'll call you again then, let you know if they've come back, or—or what the plan is from there."

Drawing a shaky breath, Padmé nodded. "Okay. Call me, as soon as you know anything more."

Asajj came over when the call ended, with the hesitancy of a lothcat inspecting an unknown quantity. "I heard everything. Are you…?"

"I'll be fine, Asajj. Beru is right. They probably went on a little adventure, it got dark, and they decided it would be safer to stay in a cave than travel the desert by night."

It sounded reasonable. Perhaps too reasonable, for two children who had decided to run away for an adventure. Asajj pursed her lips, and Padmé turned away.

Luke and Leia would come back. They had to. She wouldn't allow herself to consider any other possibility.

Still—she didn't sleep much that night.

Breakfast time brought another call from Beru, who sounded weary and disheartened as she broke the news that the twins had not returned that morning, nor even by early afternoon.

"We'll try the cities," she said, "but they're huge, especially Espa, and I'm afraid..."

Pirates. Slave traders. Hutts. Inquisitors. Palpatine.

Padmé pushed away the plate of fruit and bread she had been picking at.

"We will keep looking," Beru continued. "The Darklighters are going to help us, but with only four to search… not wanting to draw attention, and not even knowing where to look... There's no knowing if they're even on this world anymore. I'm so—"

"You couldn't have known," Padmé interrupted. The words sounded curter than she had intended. "They've never done anything like this before. It's not your fault. I… I'll…"

Contact Ahsoka. Contact Sabé. Yes, there was time to send messages to both of them before her daily round of

"Tell me as soon as you know anything," she implored Beru again, and then ended the call and debated her next move.

There was no point in calling Obi-Wan. He would be comm silent for another two weeks at least, undercover with another operative to gain access to shipping records from a mining company the Alliance suspected of supplying the Empire's mysterious project at Geonosis.

Ahsoka—she was on duty ferrying another Force sensitive child to safety, but if the mission was going well, she might be able to answer a call. Padmé tapped her code into her comm.

Pick up , she willed. Pick up, Ahsoka, you have to pick up!

But Ahsoka did not pick up. Nor did she pick up after a minute, nor five, nor ten, nor in an hour, so next Padmé called Sabé, who did not answer, either. She swallowed down a keening cry of frustration, then recorded a message for her Handmaiden.

"Urgent. Genetrix to Facsimile. Sunshine and Spitfire have gone AWOL on Haven, possibly transported offworld. Pass on the message, and keep alert." She left the code for her burner comm as well.

The Handmaidens didn't have the Force, but they did have connections. There was a small chance that one of them might hear something.

A small chance? asked Padmé's cynical side. Twelve busy Handmaidens trying to find two children in this entire galaxy—a snowflake's chance on Mustafar, maybe.

The second morning, Beru's call came while Padmé was pacing her room and rehearsing the finer details of her cover story in preparation for the day's meetings.

"Have you found them?" Padmé blurted, the moment she answered her comm.

"No." Beru's voice was subdued. "There's still no sign. No one's even seen the speeder. Of course, if they left it somewhere, it's probably been picked up by Jawas, or some lowlife looking for a ride."

Unless, of course, speeder and twins have been collectively taken possession of first, which was just as likely. Padmé continued to pace.

"Owen checked the slave markets in Espa," Beru added. "He didn't see them there."

"That's…" Padmé started, but she couldn't finish the sentence.

That's good. It was good, wasn't it? Owen hadn't seen the twins in the Mos Espa slave markets. That was good. Unless it just meant they had already been—

A wave of blank terror threatened to overwhelm her at the thought of her children being sold as slaves. They couldn't have been. They just couldn't. But if they had…

I might never see them again. They might grow up as slaves. Unless someone discovers what they are, and Palpatine finds out, and—

"Find them," she rasped, her voice cracking. "We have to find them."

"We will," was Beru's parting assurance, but she sounded far from certain. She knew Tatooine too well; she knew families whose children had disappeared, never to be seen again. She had been there when Shmi had been taken by the Raiders.

Padmé moved to the window and stared listlessly out across the grey, smoggy sprawl of Mohr'aa ' s capital city. TIE fighters buzzed like wasps through the sky, in an endless cycle of patrols designed to remind the citizens of Mohr'aa that the Empire was always watching. Escape was impossible. Never had Padmé felt so powerless, trapped here as she was with Asajj, unable to fly to Tatooine to take up the search herself, unable to reach either of the two Jedi who might stand a greater chance of finding Luke and Leia. Unable to turn to the one person she should have been able to turn to during any time of trouble.

[Anakin would still move the cosmos to find their children, something in her whispered.]

But at what cost? Not one she was willing to pay, so there was no point in entertaining the idea. She shouldn't even have thought of it in the first place.

Keep it together, Amidala! You have a job to do. The Rebellion needs you. You can't get off this rock until the ship comes, so keep it together and do your duty.

A knock sounded on her door.

"Amidala?" came Asajj's muffled call. "The Third Undersecretary of Something-or-Other's protocol droid says the Undersecretary expects to meet with you in twenty standard minutes."

The mother in Padmé was two seconds away from snapping. She wanted to throw up her hands and demand of the universe how she was supposed to stay calm and wade through bureaucratic sludge when for all she knew, her children had been captured by Raiders, mauled by wild creatures, or bound by chains or explosive chips.

Instead, the Rebel agent drew a deep breath.

"Just a minute," she called back to Asajj.

Then she molded her features into Amidala's impassive mask. Reminded herself that she had kept her cool when the Trade Federation had attacked her planet. She had endured three years of war, with her partner on the frontlines. She had held her own when her life had been upended and her world shattered. This would be no different. She could do her duty while her children were missing and might be—might be—

[Lost. Kidnapped. Enslaved. Dead.]

The mask wobbled. She willed it back into place.

You aren't the only parent in the galaxy who feels this way. You've done what you can. There's nothing more you can do to help Luke and Leia right now, but there is work to be done, so no parent ever has to feel this way again. Now, go and do it.

She stepped out into the sitting room, where Asajj greeted her with a nod and a terse, "You had breakfast?"

When she didn't reply, Asajj shoved a roll and a cup of tea into her hand. "Eat that. I'm not dragging you back here if you collapse in the middle of a meeting."

Halfheartedly, Padmé bit into the roll. It was dense and grainy, plump with fruit and a rich cheese. It should have been a welcome break from the cheap, tough shava grain that was a staple of Alliance base breakfasts, but she found it cloying and pasty, and only managed to consume half before dropping the rest into the waste receptacle.

Asajj eyed her with clear disapproval, but kept her peace.

By the time Padmé arrived back at her quarters that evening, she was more drained and discouraged than ever. She still hadn't received any updates from Beru. Nothing from Ahsoka. Nothing from any of the Handmaidens. So, frantic for information, for action, for something , she called Mon.

"Mothma."

"This is Genetrix. Mon, Sunlight and Spitfire are missing."

Padmé heard Mon's sharp inhalation. She also heard the beat of silence that followed, and knew Mon was trying to find a way to let her down gently.

"Mon, please. I need to find them." Her tone was calm, rational even, but she couldn't keep her voice from shaking.

I will not see my children become slaves. I will not lose more of my family to Palpatine.

"I'm sorry," Mon replied. "We don't have the resources to divert for a dedicated search. Until Fulcrum and Silvertongue get back, all I can do is alert our agents to—"

"Then send the transport early," Padmé broke in. "Get me out of here, and I'll search for them myself."

"I'll help," Asajj added, her sharp face drawn still sharper by worry.

"You know I can't do that. The Empire is checking every ship that enters or exits your location's hyperspace lane, and unscheduled ships are subject to detainment."

"So that's it? I'm just supposed to stay here while my—while my proteges are taken Force only knows where? I need to get out of here, Mon! I can't let them fall into Palpatine's hands!"

Mon didn't rebuke her for her uncharacteristic outburst. Her voice was sympathetic as she said, "I'm sorry. I'll tell our friends in high places to keep their eyes and ears open, and once you and your colleagues are back, you can move on any intel we receive. That's the best I can do, Genetrix."

Padmé clenched her teeth on a sound of frustration. She knew the Alliance's scarcity of resources as well as Mon. She knew they couldn't pull people from their missions and reassign them to search for the twins. She knew she wasn't being rational. [How was she supposed to be rational when her children had been missing for two days?]

She dipped her head in grudging acceptance. "I understand, Mon. Thank you."

And ended the call.

"We could make a break for it," Asajj suggested, turning one of her lightsabers in her hands, as Padmé pocketed the comm.

"There's no guarantee we'd get away clean. And we could bring further punishment on Mohr'aa for harboring Rebels. Besides, who knows. Beru and Owen might find them tomorrow."

But those last words sounded empty, and both she and Asajj knew it.

The third morning's call with Beru yielded the same news as its predecessors. Luke and Leia were still missing, the Larses and Darklighters still combing Mos Espa. The speeder hadn't been found abandoned anywhere, but it was impossible to say how far the twins might have gone by speeder. Maybe Beru and Owen hadn't searched far enough. A couple of Jawa tribes hadn't seen the twins, but that didn't mean much.

Ahsoka was still unreachable. There was no word from any of the Handmaidens as yet. Padmé picked at her food, paced the suite, and felt as if the walls were closing in around her. Every moment that passed was a moment wasted. Perhaps Luke and Leia might still be safe, somehow, but every passing moment reduced the likelihood that they would remain so. Her early panic settled into a bone-deep desperation. She was distracted during the day's meetings, and Asajj had to cover for her more than once when she hesitated on details she should have known. Turned out, there was a difference between knowing you should do your duty even if your children were missing, and actually doing it well under the circumstances.

"I told them you just learned your mother had a stroke," Asajj announced upon entering their suite that evening.

"So that's why you stayed behind after the meeting," Padmé said. "Thank you."

Asajj shrugged. "Best to stave off any questions about why the cool and collected foreign diplomat's suddenly on the blink. Anyway. Do you really still believe this place's got an underground resistance? It's been how many days, and we've seen nothing."

"With as much obstruction as they've been creating, I'm sure of it. It's just a question of who in the administration is in on it. Whom we can drop our ruse in front of in order to gain access to the heads of state."

And how was she supposed to figure that out, Padmé wondered dismally, when she'd fumbled even basic details of her cover story earlier because her mind was consumed with worry for her children?

"What am I supposed to do?" she murmured.

Asajj shrugged again, and bent down to wipe an invisible smudge from the toe of her boot.

"I don't know, Amidala. I'm not going to tell you they'll be fine. I can't and you know it." When she straightened, however, an unexpected trace of sympathy lingered in her icy eyes. She closed the drapes, then held out one of her lightsabers toward Padmé. "Up. Three rounds."

"Now?"

"You need to get your mind off worrying for a little while at least, or you'll go crazy."

Asajj was right, of course, but Padmé wasn't sure she wanted to get her mind off of worrying. It felt wrong to put aside all thought of her children at a time like this. She was their mother, and not only that, but she was responsible for their disappearance. She had sent them back to Tatooine. She was the reason she'd had to send them back to Tatooine in the first place.

"I'm a terrible mother."

Asajj snorted. "Right. Because you did what you thought was best to keep your kids safe."

She ignited her other saber and swung it in a lazy warmup arc. Her eyes glinted in the blade's yellow light. "You know what terrible mothers do, Amidala? They transform their sons into monsters. They sell their daughters to pirates."

A chill seemed to pass over the room—and then it was gone, and Asajj raised her blade in a Makashi salute. "Come on. If we work long enough, maybe you'll actually get some sleep tonight."

No such luck, of course. Though Padmé was bone-tired by the time Asajj had wiped the floor with her in five successive rounds, her slumber was riddled with restless dreams. Luke's lifeless body, bruised and battered like his grandmother's when Anakin had brought her back from the Raider village. Leia, her eyes burning yellow through a crackling storm of lightning. Both twins, yanked apart by cruel hands, crying out as they were dragged toward separate ships. And so Padmé drifted on between nightmares and wide-eyed worry. Eventually, she gave up altogether on trying to sleep and reached for her comm, catching her breath when she saw a transmission from Sabé.

Please—let her have found something. Anything.

She played the transmission.

" Facsimile to Genetrix. Message received and understood, sisters informed. No news yet. Will update if anything turns up. "

Whatever reserves of fortitude Padmé had been running on evaporated. Tears welled in her eyes, and she drew a shuddering breath.

Four days, now, Luke and Leia had been missing. Four days. Something terrible had to have happened to them. They weren't thoughtless enough to run away in the desert for four days. One, maybe. Two, perhaps. But four? They weren't just missing, after four days. They were gone. In the inky darkness of midnight, she knew it as certainly as she knew her own name. Because what chance did a handful of Handmaidens, a couple of Jedi, and a few other Rebel agents have of finding two children in a whole galaxy?

Every beat of her heart echoed down the abyss that had begun to open in her chest.

Gone.

She pressed her pillow over her mouth to stifle a sob, crying in earnest now, her face wet with tears of despair.

Gone.

She couldn't accept it. There had to be something else she could do, someone else she could reach out to for help. But she had already tried Mon, and the Handmaidens, and Ahsoka—and they were all she had. She wasn't a queen anymore, with the resources of a wealthy planet at her command. She wasn't a senator, with powerful allies and the ear of her monarch and a Jedi general by her side. There was only so much a Rebel could do and still fly under the radar of the Empire she was rebelling against.

She felt so alone, stranded and powerless, with no one else she could call on for aid.

Dimly, she became aware of a small object poking her in the ribs. Fishing it out, she found it was her commlink. She must have forgotten to replace it on the bedside table after listening to Sabé's transmission.

Commlink .

There was one more person. One person who should have a vested interest in keeping Luke and Leia safe.

He'll take them. He'll try to corrupt them. He'll try to turn them into Sith.

But he will find them.

She still remembered the code Artoo had retrieved during her last call with Vader. She had memorized it—of course she had. If she was ever captured by the Empire, she'd have a greater chance of staying alive if she was taken into custody by Vader than by Palpatine. Now, at her wits' end, she also knew that she'd rather her children be found by Vader, if it came down to a choice between the two Sith. Vader hadn't told his master about her, or Luke, and at this point it was clear he didn't intend to.

Her finger skimmed over the commlink's power switch.

This isn't the solution you want to think it is, her common sense scolded. Are you mad?

Mad with worry, perhaps, as images of her children standing before Jabba raced through her mind, her children standing in a Mos Espa slave market—standing before Palpatine, writhing under a torrent of purple lightning—

If it was a question of Vader or outright slavery, a question of Vader or Sidious…. She switched on the commlink.

You'll regret this.

Yes. But what other choice do I have?

Vader or slavery. Vader or Sidious. At least if the twins were with their father, Padmé would know where they were and there might be a chance, however slight, for her to do something —even if that something was causing a distraction and letting herself be captured so her children could escape.

And so she keyed in the code Artoo had traced.

At Fondor Shipyards, aboard the hulking maze of girders and paneling and half-finished chambers that comprised the pupal form of the SSD Executor , Vader dismissed the project director who had briefed him on recent construction progress and set off alone through the ship, ostensibly to make his own inspection.

Following the hyperdrive incident, Devastator 's engineers had managed to patch up the systems, but Piett had informed Vader that the fixes to the main drive were only temporary, the mutinous clones having been nothing if not thorough in their work. Accordingly, Devastator had limped to Fondor to put in for repairs, while the rest of Death Squadron had gone on under Piett's command to repel a Rebel raid on the tibanna gas mining facilities at Taloraan.

Vader's presence was not strictly required at Fondor, but Devastator 's repairs provided him with an opportunity to look in on his apprentice without raising suspicion. Thus he adjourned to the spartan suite wherein Starkiller had been secreted away, and found the boy sitting off to the side of the training room, surrounded by an array of tools and hunched over a prone training droid whose hand lay in an advanced stage of disassembly.

"I presume, Apprentice, that this exercise has a purpose."

At this sardonic supposition, Starkiller threw Vader an indignant look. "I'm taking it apart so I can see how it works and put it back together, to help put PROXY back together." He pointed to a collection of droid limbs in a crate a few feet away. "I did his arms already. But hands are hard."

Vader summoned one of the droid arms into his own hand for closer examination, and Starkiller sprang to his feet, hands on hips.

"You put that down! Don't touch him!"

Holding the arm out of reach of his apprentice's frantic attempts to reclaim it, Vader studied it. The handiwork was on the clumsy side, the alignment of some of the pieces careless and a few bolts rather loose, but the arm was basically functional. Starkiller had even managed to scavenge and adapt a few parts from another droid to replace originals mangled beyond repair.

Eventually the boy gave up trying to retrieve the arm and faced his master, hands on hips.

"Well? Did I do okay?"

"You will only know that once you test it," Vader replied, returning the arm to its crate.

"But I can't do that till the rest of him is fixed."

"If that were true, droid construction would be a very haphazard art."

"But how can I test his arm if the rest of him isn't there?"

Vader deliberated. It was not Sith practice to provide instruction. The Master held knowledge, and the Apprentice sought it. This was one of the basic principles of the Sith Order. For a Master to provide instruction was for them to lead their Apprentice by the hand. It was soft—a Jedi practice. Leading an Apprentice by the hand engendered weakness. Strength could only be gained and proven through pursuit, through conflict.

However, Vader had not the luxury of being able to visit his apprentice often, to guide his flailing education with a more Sithly hand. Judicious instruction, such as would quicken a return to classical Sith practice via PROXY's resurrection, would be expedient. It was for this reason—and this reason alone—that he pointed to the droid Starkiller had been working on.

"PROXY's design was based on a standard training droid."

"So?"

"If you were to enhance an existing model, would you choose to alter its most basic functions?"

Starkiller let out a frustrated huff. "I don't know! "

"Then reflect on the question at your leisure, and perhaps you will reach a solution."

Another huff, this time accompanied by a glare. "That doesn't help!"

"If I present you a solution on a platter, you will learn nothing."

If I gave you the answers, Padawan, then how much would you really learn? The acquisition of information is as valuable as the information itself, if not more.

Irritated to have given an unconscious imitation of Kenobi, Vader stalked away from his apprentice's makeshift workshop. "Enough. My time here is limited. Show me what you have learned."

Starkiller summoned a lightsaber from a rack of weapons in the corner. His frustration began to ebb as he entered the opening stance of a Djem So kata. He'd learned it after Vader's warning during their last lesson, about how he shouldn't rely on Shien to win a duel, and had practiced during holocalls with Piett, who had praised him roundly and given critique as best he could. The kata had thus become Starkiller's favorite, and he'd practiced until each move flowed effortlessly into the next. When he ran through the exercise in front of Piett, it felt as if the Force flowed in harmony with him, even before he commanded it. A pleasant, warm feeling would fizz through his veins, guiding his blade to strike and his feet to maintain an easy balance.

That didn't happen now, for his master's stormcloud presence perturbed both the Force and his focus alike, but he still gave what he felt was a creditable exhibition of his skill. As he leapt and struck, twisted and blocked, he noticed a faint waft of something from the Force-cobweb that seemed to have attached itself to him. It almost felt like pride. Almost.

His master watched the exhibition with crossed arms.

"Acceptable," he pronounced, when Starkiller had completed the exercise.

Almost giddy with triumph, Starkiller bowed to hide the smile that threatened to sneak out at the corner of his mouth. For the first time since those long-ago hazy days, he had gleaned a glimmer of approval from Vader.

Perhaps, he thought, now might be the time to ask one of the questions Piett had been unable to answer. So he ventured a cautious, "Master?"

"Apprentice."

It wasn't exactly an invitation to ask questions, but neither was it a reprimand. Starkiller decided to press his luck.

"Why'd you help me last time you were here?"

"Help you."

"With the bacta and stuff."

The helmet tilted downward. It reminded Starkiller of a raptor tracking a rodent—deciding whether such a small creature was worth the effort of dispatching—and he struggled against the urge to squirm. At last, Vader replied,

"You are more useful to me alive than dying of infection."

"But I thought if I died then I was weak and I didn't deserve to be your apprentice anyway," Starkiller said. Then he froze as a gust of cold rolled over him and shrieked along the Force-cobweb in his mind. He shouldn't have said that. He couldn't just blurt out whatever thoughts came into his head. This wasn't Piett, who was happy to let him blather on about anything he liked and ask anything that came to mind. This was his Master , whose will was not to be questioned.

"Sorry! I—I mean, I misspoke, my master."

He bowed low. When Vader's displeasure continued to envelop him like a swarm of maddened hornets, he sank to one knee, recalling the proper Sith Apprentices from stories PROXY had told, and cast his gaze toward the floor. But his master's swirling displeasure only sharpened to a deadly edge. The Force-cobweb burned like shame. He heard the creak of synthleather gloves and awaited judgement.

What seemed an eternity later, Vader growled, "Get up."

Starkiller scrambled to his feet, not a little bewildered.

"Master?"

Four practice droids whirred to life—two with blasters, two with lightsabers.

"Ataru, Jar'Kai," Vader commanded. "Fail, and next time there will be eight."

Starkiller's head spun, but there was no time to ponder his master's erratic behavior. Igniting his lightsaber, he dodged the first blaster shot, deflected the next, and summoned a second saber from the corner rack just in time to intercept one of the droids' blades.

Vader stood by, only half paying attention to the boy's frantic peregrinations, as he tried to bury the discomfort which Starkiller's display of humility had evoked. The boy had knelt before him, and the memory prickled like sand under his skin. To kneel before a master—that was the obeisance of a slave. Starkiller was Vader's apprentice. An apprentice was not a slave. [He should not be.]

It came as something of a relief when this disconcerting train of thought was interrupted by the chiming of Vader's commlink. He dispatched the two remaining droids with a wave of his hand and ordered Starkiller to make himself scarce so he might take the call without interruption. Doubtless the caller was some inept fool—but even that would be preferable to reflecting on the finer points of apprenticeship and enslavement.

Somebody's in for a surprise... 😈