Bail Organa, Chancellor of the New Republic, had had a long day. He was exhausted and very much looking forward to returning home to Alderaan over the weekend, leaving affairs in the hands of his capable Vice-Chancellor, Padme Amidala. A frown crossed his face at the thought of his friend. She had fought alongside him during the days of the Empire, all the while raising two young children with little or no help, and yet had become so closed off since the creation of the New Republic. They worked together well still, but she was no longer the young woman who he was able to share such long conversations with on every subject. Although, he admitted to himself ruefully, that was partly his fault. If he had stopped the Jedi from continually pursuing her over her children, if he hadn't broached the subject with her so many times, perhaps she wouldn't have grown so cold to him. One thing for sure, he was no longer the 'Uncle Bail' he had been during the early years of the Rebellion. Though the Jedi's attitude in regard to the Naberrie twins did concern him. It was Republic law that it was the parents' right to refuse their children to the Jedi, and that the Jedi should accept this decree. But the persistence was a little unnerving. No wonder Padme had banned them from her apartment a month ago.
Bail shut down his terminal and returned to his apartment, to collapse gratefully into bed and drift off to sleep thinking of the fact that he only had to spend a half day at the office tomorrow.
At five standard hours the next morning he became aware of one of his security detail shaking him awake. "Yes?" he asked blearily.
"I'm terribly sorry Chancellor," the man began anxiously.
Bail waved a sleep-addled hand. "What is it?"
"Your office just called sir," he replied. "There's an emergency transmission waiting for you from the Citadel."
Bail sat bolt upright instantly. "Padme!" he exclaimed, already moving as he tossed the covers aside. "Summon the Jedi Council immediately," he commanded.
The Captain saluted and withdrew from the bedroom. Bail flung on some robes, ran a comb through his hair and dashed out the door. His detail got him to the Senate within fifteen minutes, and he was in his office within twenty. The Jedi were waiting for him, each of them also looking as if they had been hastily dressed, bar Master Yoda. His secretary handed him a cup of coffee and he gulped it gratefully as he sat in his chair. Bail put the mug down and straightened his robes. "Put him through," he ordered.
A dishevelled Commander Stultus appeared before him.
"Commander," Bail greeted, trying to hide his surprise.
"Chancellor Organa, Master Jedi," the man responded, clearly rattled. "I am sorry for disturbing your night."
"The message said that it was an emergency," Bail replied, eyes on the man's face. "Is Vice-Chancellor Amidala well?"
Stultus refused to meet his eyes for a moment. Then he sighed. "The emergency is Vice-Chancellor Amidala," he admitted. "But she's not ill or injured your excellency."
"She's dead?" Bail asked, fearing the worst.
"She…" he faltered over the words, then straightened up and delivered his report crisply and professionally. "Chancellor Organa five standard hours ago by Citadel time, Vice-Chancellor Padme Amidala broke a prisoner out of the Citadel and escaped along with her companions."
"Which prisoner?" Windu asked.
Stultus again refused to meet his eyes. "This particular prisoner, well," he paused. "The protocols in place mean that it would be advisable if you came here to review the footage Chancellor, Master Jedi, I don't want to risk sending it over a signal, no matter how encrypted."
"Very well," Bail replied automatically. "We will be on the way within the hour."
Stultus inclined his head and disappeared.
The Jedi exchanged glances as Bail looked at them. "Well?" he asked wearily. "She broke out Vader didn't she?"
"That is the most likely supposition," Obi-Wan Kenobi conceded. "I think we should examine Vice-Chancellor Amidala's apartments before we leave for the Citadel."
"No," Bail refused. "We wait and see if this is true before we enter her apartment. Stultus has been known to exaggerate."
"Very well," Windu nodded his acquiescence, but even without the Force Bail could feel his displeasure.
In under half an hour they were loaded into the Chancellor's private starship and on the way to the Citadel.
When they set down on the platform the Chancellor and the Jedi disembarked as quickly as they could. Commander Stultus met them by the door, his face white, and escorted them swiftly to the Command Centre in total silence.
They took their seats around the conference table. Stultus stood at the head, mimicking the pose of Padme Amidala only a few hours earlier, although he didn't know that, and Bail took a seat at the other end.
"Well?" he said sharply. "Play the footage."
Stultus moved aside and a holoscreen flashed up.
They watched in silence as the cruiser landed elegantly and Padme disembarked, exchanging a few indecipherable words as Stultus escorted her into the prison, and then around it. At one point they paused near the double set of doors behind which Darth Vader resided and Pad-Amidala, it was definitely Amidala, asked a question so sweetly that Bail almost choked. She never acted like that to anyone for no reason, it usually meant she was trying to weasel information out of them. Sure enough Stultus provided her with exactly what it seemed she wanted readily enough. The Jedi and Bail took careful note of the way her eyes flashed in triumph.
The gathering watched the meeting as it unfolded, Bail rolling his eyes at Padme's clear bluff about the protocol that was applicable in that scenario. What was more concerning was that the collective staff of the Citadel had fallen for it, and easily judging by the willing way in which they handed over their comlinks once their objections had been intimidated into silence by Ahsoka Tano. Although he was half-surprised she hadn't used a mind-trick…no. Padme wouldn't have agreed to that.
Bail knew roughly what was coming next and so he removed the part of his brain that still saw Padme, no he must remember to call her Amidala now, as a friend, a close friend.
On the screen Amidala pulled a blaster on the command staff of the Citadel. The Jedi, Bail and Stultus watched in silence as Ahsoka Tano and two of the guards ran out of the room and Amidala held the rest of them hostage.
Stultus paused the holo as the three ran out of the room. "I think," he said. "It would be best to watch how they broke Vader out before I tell you what Vice-Chancellor Amidala said to me before she departed to join her companions."
Bail considered this for a moment and then nodded. "Proceed."
Stultus pulled up another holo. "We cut all the security holos together so there is a roughly chronological version of the escape," he explained, before starting the holo.
The Jedi and Chancellor Organa watched in silence.
Ahsoka Tano dashed out of the control room followed by two of the guards and made her way down the stairs. She wore one of the outfits she had habitually donned during the Clone Wars and her lightsabers lay in her hands. She dashed down the corridor, the guards behind her stunning every slumped guard. Tano and the guards each had filters over the lower half of their faces, protecting them from whatever sleeping gas they had released in the system. They made their way easily to the sealed wing where Vader was held. The guards watched Tano's back as she plunged her lightsabers into the door and it turned into molten ore and fell away. She dashed into the small tower and took out the guards with a few slashes of her sabers.
As part of the highly classified security arrangements that Padme had been briefed about, and immediately shared with her co-conspirators, only droids guarded the former Darth Vader to prevent them being mind-tricked. As such Tano sliced through them easily, her years of experience on far worse battlefields in the Clone Wars coming into use, the guards following her, shooting with ease. Master Kenobi leant forward as they continued down the hallway and up the stairs, clearing droids as they went.
"Those are clones," he said incredulously. "That's Kix, the 501st's medic on the left. Anakin's Clone Wars battalion."
"Then this is bigger than just Amidala and her family," Windu said soberly.
"Of course," Obi-Wan said with a light laugh. "The 501st were always extremely loyal to Anakin. I'm not surprised that they were willing to join Amidala and Tano on a mission to rescue Vader."
"Their loyalties are not what we are concerned with at the moment," Bail intervened severely. "I wish to see how exactly Vice-Chancellor Amidala broke Vader out of the most secure prison in the galaxy."
Obi-Wan coughed slightly. "I would just like to remind you that during the Clone Wars Anakin, Ahsoka and I infiltrated the Citadel to rescue Master Piell and Captain Tarkin, as he was then. It is not altogether surprising that Anakin shared that information with Padme, if they were having an affair at the time, and Ahsoka would no doubt remember."
"Right," Windu acknowledged. "I'd forgotten about that."
"May we continue?" Bail enquired. "We can discuss exactly how they managed to breach the Citadel later."
"Certainly," Commander Stultus inclined his head and restarted the recording from where he'd paused it when the discussions began.
Inside Vader's cell Tano took out the two droids standing over Vader who was curled on the floor and then sliced through the chains holding him to the wall. The clones dashed into the room and one of them thoroughly destroyed the droids and tossed them out of the cell with Tano whilst the other one, Kix, bent over Vader and began administering medical attention. Tano returned to where Vader lay and ignited one of her white blades. She cut round the three men, two clones, one Force-Sensitive in a large circle and then flung out her hands, guiding the circle she had cut out down to the floor below. She repeated the process twice more, bringing them down to the ground level. Then she sliced open the cell door. Kix and the other clone had Vader on his feet by this point and they guided him out of the cell where he collapsed again. Tano bent over him, begin to work on removing the Force-suppression collar welded around his neck.
At the top of the flight of stairs leading down to the corridor where the three rescuers stood with the former captive a door was flung open and Padme Amidala burst through, blaster in hand, hair slightly dishevelled, and an expression of determination reminiscent of the rebellion days on her features. The next moment she caught sight of Vader and gasped, flinging herself down the stairs, holstering her blaster as she went. The clones behind her sealed the door and made their way around their former General to guard the door leading out of the corridor. Tano managed to get the collar free off Vader just as Amidala reached the two of them.
She flung herself down beside him and lifted his head into her lap, brushing the blonde curls away from his face tenderly. Vader's eyes blinked open blearily, and the watchers could see that he was struggling to keep them open. Obi-Wan sucked in a breath. Blue. His eyes were blue. Not the yellow-gold, red and orange of the Sith but the pure blue of the Padawan he had taken so long ago.
Vader, he forced himself to keep calling him that, blinked again and looked up at Amidala. One of his arms lifted uncertainly, reaching for her face.
"Padme?" he croaked, laying a hand incredulously on her cheek. Amidala placed her hand over his and leaned into it, turning her face to kiss his palm.
"Ani," she replied quietly.
"You're here, you're alright, I'm so sorry, all my fault" he said.
"I'm fine," she reassured him. "I'm just fine my love. I forgive you darling, I forgave you a long time ago, you're going to be just fine. I'm so sorry it took me so long to get here."
"S'alright," Anakin replied thickly. His eyes began to drift close again and then came open in complete terror. "Baby?" he managed, beginning to struggle upright.
Amidala pressed down on his shoulders gently even as she spoke. "The baby is fine, Anakin," she soothed. "Our baby is just fine. Our baby was twins darling!"
"Twins?"
Amidala nodded, blinking back her own tears. "A boy and a girl," she looked up and smiled at Leia Naberrie who had just rushed in with a medical capsule. "They're perfect darling. Our son looks so like you, he's good with machines, he loves flying and he's got such a great faith in everything. Our daughter looks like me, she's a great diplomat, she's good with languages, and she's got your temper. And they're both so Force-sensitive, I've had quite a job protecting them from the Jedi," she looked down at Vader again. "And here's our daughter," she motioned to the small dark-haired girl who dropped down on her knees. "Anakin, this is Leia."
Leia Naberrie smiled hugely, brushing away her own tears with one hand as she took Vader's right hand with the other. "Hi Daddy," she greeted. "Luke and I have wanted to meet you our whole lives. But you need to get better for that."
Vader smiled up at Amidala and their daughter, and then his eyes drifted close. Instantly Leia Naberrie (or would it be Leia Skywalker now?), was on her feet, arms outstretched as Vader lifted gently off her mother's lap and began to levitate into the medical capsule. Tano was by her in the next second, steadying and lifting higher. Vader landed softly on the bed of the capsule and the cover slid over him in the next second.
Leia began guiding it to the doors, the six guards, her mother and Tano all taking various positions around her and the capsule as they rushed out of the facility and onto the Naboo cruiser. The ramp was closed immediately and they lifted off within a minute, sliding easily into the thick cloud cover that hung over the Citadel and disappearing from sight.
The Jedi, Chancellor Organa and Commander Stultus sat in stunned silence for a moment. Finally Chancellor Organa choked out a comment:
"Vader and Padme?" he demanded incredulously. "Luke and Leia Naberrie are the children of that monster? How is that possible?"
"It was never entirely out of the realms of possibility," Obi-Wan remarked. "When Vader was Anakin Skywalker it wasn't like his feelings for Padme Amidala were a huge secret. I just never thought that Senator Amidala would actually have given in to him, she assured me when he escorted her home to Naboo that she would break her relationship off with him. Maybe she didn't or maybe they struck the relationship back up again part way through the Clone War. Either way, evidently the Naberrie, or rather Skywalker, twins are the result."
"Would you like to hear what Vice-Chancellor Amidala related to me before she departed to meet Vader and Tano?" Stultus enquired. "It may shed some light on the questions you are considering."
"Very well Commander," Bail acknowledged. "Please proceed."
"Vice-Chancellor Amidala began asking me if I knew who Vader had been before he was a Sith, and I confirmed I did. And then she asked me if I knew why Vader had turned and joined Palpatine."
"What did you say?" Master Windu asked intently.
"I gave the reasons that you had given me," Stultus replied. "That he had turned for power and ambition, but that I didn't think that it was important. But she contradicted me almost immediately claiming that it was important. Then she told me how she knew Skywalker, she told us how she had met him when he was nine, that he had saved her planet. She told us that he hadn't turned for power."
"Did she tell you what it was he turned for?" the Chancellor asked.
"I asked her your excellency," the Commander replied. "She said that he had turned out of love."
"Love?" Windu asked incredulously.
"Yes," Stultus confirmed. "She told me that Skywalker had been forced to abandon his mother to a life of slavery on Tatooine as a child, and that when he had been protecting her from an assassination attempt he had horrible dreams of her suffering. So the Senator, as she was then, demanded that they go to discover the truth. Apparently they arrived to find that Skywalker's mother had been taken by Tusken Raiders. Skywalker went to find her and she died, beaten and in pain, in his arms."
"Did you know of this Obi-Wan?" Windu asked quietly of his friend.
"I knew his mother had died shortly before the Clone Wars," Obi-Wan replied numbly. "I didn't know his dreams had been that prophetic though. Wait!" he paused. "Anakin was having dreams of someone else in his life in pain and dying just before he turned."
Stultus nodded. "The Vice-Chancellor confirmed this," he answered. "That he had dreams of someone he loved in pain. When I asked why the Jedi didn't know of this she explained that love and attachments were against your Code-"
"Indeed they are," Windu confirmed.
"The Vice-Chancellor began speaking of love," Stultus continued. "What passionate love could do, that it could cross any boundaries. She said that Anakin Skywalker was dreaming of his wife."
"His wife?" the exclamation came from several throats.
"Yes, his wife. When I asked why she hadn't told you Master Jedi she said that Skywalker's wife had their children to protect, and that Skywalker would have wanted his wife to protect their children above his own life."
"Their children," Bail breathed. "The Naberrie twins."
"Yes," Stultus agreed. "The Vice-Chancellor's son commed her at that moment and stated that Tano had retrieved Vader from his cell, and that Vader would need her there. One of her guards then addressed her as Lady Skywalker. The Vice-Chancellor confirmed her marriage to Skywalker before leaving the room to join her companions."
"So Padme Amidala was married to Darth Vader all along," Bail said flatly. "No wonder she refused to turn her children over to you, Masters."
"Yes," Obi-Wan mused. "She spoke of protecting them from us. I suppose I can understand her reasoning."
"You can?" Windu asked incredulously. "I do not see how. They could have saved us all if we had not overthrown the Empire when we did. They should have been ours to train to defeat the Sith as the children of Skywalker!"
"That is why," Obi-Wan responded in frustration. "She didn't want her children being used as weapons to commit patricide!"
"Vader is a Sith! Why would they care about him?"
"Because Vader is their father!" Obi-Wan shouted. "Padme would never allow them to fight him! She may have hated Vader for what he did to the Republic, hated him for how he destroyed Anakin but she would certainly have hated us more if we had taken her children away!"
"We had lost her respect as it is, all of us," Bail pointed out strongly. "After she refused to allow her children to be trained for the first time we should have left her be, abiding by Republic law."
"Those children-" Windu began again.
"Those children," Bail cut him off. "Were minors in their mother's custody and as such she is the only one entitled to make decisions about them, and she made the decision not to allow them to be trained. If we had any respect for her or for the justice we all," he sent a glance around the circle, noting absent-mindedly that Stultus had shrunk back in the face of the argument, "claim to uphold we would have left her be," Windu made to interrupt and Bail held up a hand. "No matter her children's paternity or not. Now, I suggest we return to Coruscant and investigate the Vice-Chancellor's apartment before we make any decisions or announcements."
Windu subsided mutinously and the Chancellor rose from his chair. He exchanged brief pleasantries with Commander Stultus and then led the way back to their diplomatic escort. The trip back to Coruscant promised much to think about.
/
Padme Ami- no she was just Skywalker now she had relinquished Amidala, Padme Skywalker stood at the window of a medical room and gazed inside. Her husband lay on a medical bed, droids and readouts buzzing around him as they fought the infection racing through his body. They had broken him out just in time, and the medicines pumping through his system would bring him back to health. It would be hours before they finished but she refused to leave Anakin. She knew that he, as Force-Sensitive as he was, would be able to feel her presence outside, and hopefully relax.
Ahsoka stepped up to her side silently and Padme glanced towards her. "Rex just commed me," she murmured. "They've managed to sell the cruiser for a tidy sum of credits. Evidently the news of our actions has not been released yet."
The former Vice-Chancellor breathed a gentle sigh of relief. "That gives us at least two days grace then," she replied. "Long enough for Anakin to recover a significant amount. We may even have a day more. I doubt anyone will think to come out here, or make it out here, for at least a day."
"No," Ahsoka gazed out the window onto the asteroid which the medical base of Polis Massa was set on. "It's hardly well known."
"Quite," Padme agreed. "Unfortunately, Bail does know of its existence. It just depends how long he takes to recall."
"We have time."
"We have time," Padme repeated. She returned to her silent vigil.
/
The Jedi and the Chancellor landed back on Coruscant in the middle of the day. Bail had commed Breha on the way and explained the situation. His wonderful wife had expressed concern for Padme and then merely stated that she would join him within the day.
The small group collected Master Yoda and then made their way to Padme Amidala's Coruscanti apartment in 500 Republica. As they rode up in the turbolift Obi-Wan was reminded of when he had done this with Anakin, the first time the two of them had seen Padme in ten years. The doors slid open and they entered the apartment.
It was decorated elegantly as always, drapes blowing in the windows and the couches arranged comfortably. But Padme's prized vases and paintings were gone, the holos stripped from the walls, couches bare of cushions. So this was planned well in advance then.
They combed through the apartment from top to bottom, seeing emptied bedrooms decorated for a boy and a girl, the master bedroom with the stripped bed, wardrobe doors flung open. One of the bedside tables was empty, the other had a single magazine on its top. Obi-Wan picked it up and flicked through it.
"Anakin favoured this, it was one of his favourite mechanical journals," he said, placing it back down. Other evidence of Skywalker's presence was found in a few other places. Anakin's favourite kind of tea, a dark brown Jedi cloak hung neatly in the wardrobe, a man's razor in the bathroom.
Finally they re-congregated in the main lounge.
"Well," Windu began before being cut off by Bail.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing to a book with some flimsi set on the coffee table. Obi-Wan hurried over and looked at the top sheet of flimsi. He looked up.
"It's addressed to you, Chancellor," Kenobi stated. "There's others as well, one packet for her family, a message for the Queen of Naboo, and," he hesitated, "one addressed to me as well."
Bail hurried down the steps and took the paper extended to him. It was several sheets folded together and sealed with an unfamiliar crest. Padme's clear writing ran across the front:
'Chancellor Bail Organa.'
He turned it over and broke the seal. It was Padme's official letterhead, but the letter was handwritten and informal:
Bail,
If you are reading this now then what I believe is correct, that Anakin Skywalker is indeed held within the Citadel Prison, and I will have broken him out. What else can I say? I apologize, of course, for deceiving you as to my true intentions in wishing to expect the Citadel, but I find I am unable to apologize for what I have done, or at least as I write this letter, what I plan to do if my information is correct.
I am sure you are angry and confused my old friend, but allow me to explain.
First and foremost, I should say that I never betrayed the Alliance. My loyalty and fervour for our cause was genuine, made perhaps more so by everything that Palpatine took from me when he tore down our Republic, most especially my husband.
You will have worked it out by now, we were never especially discreet in the Clone Wars, so I was shocked when no one questioned my story in regards to my children's father more closely, especially given their Force-Sensitivity. Yes, I was, I am, married to Anakin Skywalker, who became Darth Vader and is now Anakin Skywalker again.
The Jedi will tell you that once a Force-Sensitive has fallen to the dark then they are irredeemable. My answer to that is that all those who became Sith in recent memory have had no deep enduring bonds of affection, they have turned for power, nothing more. I do not deny that Anakin did indeed turn to the Dark Side for power, but it was power to save me from the dreams he was suffering, dreams I suspect were planted by Darth Sidious although I did not know so at the time.
I will relate the tale of those last days, but perhaps I should start at the beginning of it all.
Master Kenobi can tell you about the Trade Federation blockade of Naboo, our time on Tatooine and Master Jinn's death. I then did not see either Obi-Wan or Anakin for ten years until the attempts on my life before the start of the Clone Wars. After the second assassination attempt Palpatine ordered that I go into hiding. I agreed reluctantly and the Jedi arranged that Anakin would protect me while Obi-Wan followed leads to try and discover my assassin. We went to Naboo, to my home in the Lake Country. My house is sealed from public record, and the Lake Country is a no-fly zone on Naboo. Only my family know of my ownership of the house, it is my private sanctuary, and it became our refuge.
We spent almost a week there, swimming, eating, going on picnics, slowly falling in love with each other, though both of us knew nothing could come of it. Anakin taught me how to meditate, and I told him some of the myths of the ancient Naboo. It was an idyll really. But harsh reality soon intruded. Anakin had been having dreams of his mother in terrible pain. I came across him one morning standing on the veranda attempting to meditate. He had been screaming in his sleep the night before. When I questioned him he begged me to allow him to return to Tatooine to check on his mother. I remembered Shmi Skywalker, and so I agreed.
When we arrived we found that Shmi had been freed and had got married to a moisture farmer. She had been happy, and had been healing from a lifetime of slavery. A month before Anakin and I arrived, when his dreams began, Shmi had been abducted from near the vaporators one morning by Tusken Raiders. They are an indigenous species to Tatooine, brutal and without mercy. Shmi's husband, Anakin's step-father, had gone with others to try and retrieve his wife. He was one of only a few that returned alive, and he was without one of his legs. Anakin went to find his mother. I don't know exactly what happened, only that she died in his arms. It took a terrible toll on him.
We had little time to grieve however. I insisted on answering Master Kenobi's distress call, and we were captured and sentenced to death on Geonosis. We were waiting to be executed and I told Anakin that I loved him. I believed we would not survive the day, and I needed to tell him before it was too late.
We survived the arena, and Anakin survived his duel with Dooku despite the loss of one of his forearms. After his prosthetic was fitted I requested that he escort me home to Naboo so I could break off our relationship as Master Kenobi had asked. The Council acquiesced and we returned to the Lake Country. I am slightly ashamed to say that I lied to Obi-Wan. Anakin and I had decided to be married, and so we were in a private ceremony in the Lake Country at my home, or rather our home as it became. We had four wonderful days of being newly-weds and then we were thrust back into the war.
Throughout the Clone Wars we managed as best we could, snatching moments whenever Anakin was on leave or on Coruscant. Once or twice we managed to sneak away to Varykino for the times we were together for more than a day or two. It was during one of those retreats that our twins were conceived. Suffice to say we forgot the birth control and we didn't think it would matter for that week. Well it did. Evidently.
Anakin left only a few days after for the Outer Rim sieges, and a few months later I discovered I was pregnant. We were obviously still concealing our relationship and so I couldn't go to a human doctor and merely found a medical droid and then wiped its memory.
My husband returned to Coruscant when I was just over seven months pregnant. He was overjoyed when I told him. We had always wanted a family but had decided to wait for after the war. That very night Anakin began to have terrible dreams of my death in childbirth. He could not go to the Jedi with his concerns, and there was little I could do to comfort him when he considered his mother. Palpatine, Palpatine told him stories of a Sith Lord who could save people from death, and Anakin fell for it. He turned to the Dark Side, and although I begged him not to, he would not listen. So I left Coruscant and went into hiding, fearing what Palpatine would do to the child I carried.
The blame for Anakin's turn and subsequent actions rests solely on Palpatine's shoulders, and I hope you can see that, even if the Jedi never will.
You wondered repeatedly throughout the years of the Rebellion why the bounty on my head was so high, and specified that I must be alive. I suppose Anakin was protecting me, or perhaps he merely wanted me for himself. I have no way of knowing, but I raised our children in the full knowledge of who their father was, which is why I prevented the Jedi from having any contact with them. I couldn't say exactly how Force-sensitive Luke and Leia are, but I didn't want them being trained to hate their father, no matter what he'd done. I still believed in my husband's inherent goodness, after all, he'd only turned to save me from death, he'd turned out of love, not out of a desire for power.
When I was captured it was Anakin who saved me, as he attacked Palpatine and slew him in order to give me a chance to escape. I am ashamed to say that I did not look into what had become of him, I didn't want to read that my husband had been executed.
So when the Jedi came to me with word of a prisoner that needed securing, a highly Force-sensitive prisoner, I was surprised. Ahsoka and I guessed that it might have been Anakin, and we laid our plans accordingly, with the full support of my children.
We've left to live the life of peace we have wanted for over ten years. I apologize for abandoning you my friend, and I only hope you can look a little kindly on my actions. You hurt me deeply Bail when you pressed me constantly about Luke and Leia, and I am sorry for the distance that caused. It well may be that we will never meet again, except as enemies. I shall think of you and Breha fondly often, and I hope you will do the same for me. My thoughts will lie also with the New Republic and the rebuilding process that must continue, I can only apologize for leaving you during this time.
This is an album of holos, and I hope you will see what my family was, and what it could be again. I fully accept each and every consequence of my actions, I did not make them unknowingly, and I was not coerced. I love my husband, I always have, and I always will. I will not, and I do not regret our marriage, and how can I regret our children?
But enough, I must go, we go to Naboo to see my parents and sister for what they do not know will likely be the last time.
I suppose if it is not Anakin in the Citadel then I will return home and destroy this missive. If it is, well then farewell.
My best wishes for you all, and may the force be with you.
Padme Skywalker
Bail folded up the papers and tucked them away in the pocket of his cloak, to re-read at a later date. Then he picked up the holos, settling in on the couch.
He opened it to see a picture of a young Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala on a starship. Holos followed of the events leading up to, and after, the Battle of Theed. Then there was a break of around ten years, and then holos of the two of them on Naboo, laughing together and clearly enjoying each others company.
He flipped the page over and sucked in a breath. It was an entire page full of wedding holos, Skywalker in his brown Jedi robes and Padme in a flowing ivory gown and veil, and the both of them with possibly the biggest smiles he had ever seen them wearing. And then images of them during the Clone Wars: domestic bliss on Naboo and in Padme's apartment on Coruscant, the two of them at Republic functions and on battlefields and cruisers, often in the company of others, but sometimes just a moment or two snatched alone. The next pages showed them both again, clearly at the end of the war, Padme hugely pregnant, obviously so in the light gowns and nightclothes she wore in these private holos, her stomach dominating her small frame. Even though there was a clear atmosphere of worry, the delight and anticipation both young people felt at their forthcoming parenthood still shone through every photograph as they were often pictured touching her stomach.
Then Skywalker disappeared from the holos, and Padme became harder, lines of grief carved into her face as she was always pictured with a blaster by her side, even as she held a toddler on her hip and smiled. The twins grew as the photos continued, and gradually Ahsoka Tano began to be included in them, yet there was always a space in the full family photos, and Padme always stood with her head tilted slightly to one side, as if leaning into an invisible someone. The album ended and Bail placed it back down, taking a deep breath.
"Have some of your Knights sweep this apartment," he ordered. "See if you can work out where Amidala would go. She would have had to take Vader for medical treatment. Activate the beacon on her cruiser, we might be able to track her for that. I will take the holo album and the letters to Naboo. Her family and the Queen deserve to be informed in person."
The Jedi bowed in unison as Bail left 500 Republica. They had much work to do, as did he.
/
Across the galaxy Anakin Skywalker shifted in his sleep. The Force had been returned to him at long last, and he was being cradled in its soothing feeling. It was helped by a presence nearby, a familiar one, feeling of water, greenery, home, hope and love. Love for him. A deep breath ran through him and he slumbered again.
Outside his medical room Padme still watched in solitude, her children asleep and her friends preparing their next move. They were all about to step into an uncertain future, and she could only hope that Anakin would be ready for it when he awoke.
AN:
I meant to update this sooner, and I apologize for that, but I've had a medical issue this week that has prevented me from writing, but it's a lot better now, although not fully fixed. Although it should be soon, fingers crossed.
Anyway I hope you enjoy this next chapter of 'The Lineage of the Naberrie Twins'!
The8thDalmuti