"So Padme was married to Anakin Skywalker?" Jobal Naberrie confirmed, a hint of amusement in her voice. Beside her her eldest daughter Sola Naberrie Janren hid her own smile in her cup of tea.
"Did you know of her marriage?" Bail asked incredulously. "Did you know of her plan to break Vader out of the Citadel?"
Jobal sobered immediately. "Of course not," she replied. "Padme never confirmed her marriage to dear Anakin. But-"
"But," Sola continued. "It wasn't so hard to figure out. The Naberries are not known for having blond hair and blue eyes. And you only had to see the twins floating their toys to work out that their father was Force-sensitive. Besides, Padme wouldn't look at just anyone the one she looked at Anakin, and he looked at her the same way."
"What way?"
"Like she was the centre of his universe, and he was the centre of hers," Sola answered quietly. "You had to be blind to not see how much they adored each other. Padme never confirmed it in so many words..."
She trailed off exchanging another significant glance with her mother. The door into the lounge where they were seated opened and a teenager, a girl on the brink of adulthood entered. It was clear she was a Naberrie, and intelligent eyes like Padme's shone out of the young face under the simple hairstyle.
"Talking about Auntie Padme and Uncle Ani?" she asked casually, reaching for a small biscuit.
"Uncle Ani?" Bail asked quietly.
"Pooja," Sola said in a warning voice. "The Chancellor is here because your Aunt broke Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader out of the Citadel, and it turns out that she was married to him. He is Luke and Leia's father."
Pooja rolled her eyes and flung herself into a chair. "Well there's a big surprise," she said with a laugh.
"You knew of this?" her mother asked incredulously.
"Well not of her breaking Uncle Anakin out, obviously," Pooja replied, rolling her eyes again. "But about their marriage, yeah, sure. Ryoo and I knew."
"Ryoo and I knew what?" another voice asked, as another teenager entered the room, younger than Pooja, but looking remarkably similar to her again.
"About Uncle Anakin and Auntie Padme being married of course," her older sister replied.
"Oh, that," Ryoo sighed, curling into an armchair. "Old news. We've known for years." She indicated the two of them.
"How?" Jobal demanded. "Why would they confide in two children, for that is what you were then, instead of us?"
The two sisters rolled their eyes in tandem. "It was an accident Mama," Pooja placated.
"Yeah," Ryoo agreed. "Completely. Auntie Padme was at Varykino, and we were there too, remember, Auntie Padme agreed to look after us?" she received a nod of confirmation and surged onwards. "Uncle Ani arrived in his fighter and surprised her. We saw her run out and kiss him. Then he sensed us."
"He and Auntie Padme sat us down and told us why they were hiding their marriage, and that they loved each other very much," Pooja explained. "They said that they were going to reveal their marriage after the war."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Jobal asked.
Pooja shrugged. "They asked us not to. When Auntie Padme came back after the end of the Empire Ryoo and I spoke to her and she explained almost everything, except what happened to Anakin. We didn't push her. She looked really upset."
"That's all we know." Ryoo backed her sister up.
"Thank you." Bail rose from his chair. The Naberrie women copied his movements. They escorted him out and just as he was about to leave Jobal Naberrie reached out and caught his arm.
"Keep us updated?" she entreated. "She may have broken the law, and Anakin may be a dangerous criminal, but she's still my daughter, and they are still my grandchildren."
Bail hesitated and then nodded. "I'll do what I can," he allowed. "But you must understand Madam Naberrie, this will have the highest security classification."
She nodded and then shut her front door.
Back in the Naberrie living room Jobal and Sola exchanged a glance. Pooja caught it.
"You knew?" she whispered incredulously.
Jobal laughed lightly. "Of course I knew," she replied. "I'm her mother. She didn't tell us about the marriage, but she told us about the pregnancy and it wasn't hard to figure out."
"Plus she visited us in the middle of the political year," Sola added. "Padme never did that. She told us she was going to do something dangerous and that we might never see her again. So I gave her an encrypted comlink and told her that if she needed anything to call. That I was willing to hide her." At her daughters' amazed glances she laughed. "Padme's my little sister girls. Tell me you wouldn't do anything for each other."
Her two daughters giggled and agreed. "So now what?" Pooja asked.
"You don't say anything about Auntie Padme, Anakin, Luke or Leia at school or work," her grandmother said severely. "As far as the rest of the world is concerned, we don't know anything."
Ryoo nodded. "Got it," she replied.
Her mother smiled and extracted a small comlink from a clip in her hair. A moment later an image of her sister sprang up.
"Sola?" Padme asked.
"Chancellor Organa was just here," Sola said. "We fobbed him off with a story about how we could guess everything, and the girls told us that they had known. I think we threw them off our trail. How's Anakin?"
Padme bit her lip in worry. "He's ok," she answered after a long moment. "It's going to take him a while to get back up to full strength, but he's not in critical condition anymore. I'll keep you updated as often as I dare. Love you all."
"Love you too," Sola replied and then cut the connection, tucking the comlink away again.
On board the Chancellor's personal starship Bail Organa was on a call with the Jedi and Security Councils.
"So I don't think they know anything," he concluded. "Certainly they had suspicions, but I doubt they confronted Amidala over them, and besides, she would have given evasive answers if she'd given any answers at all."
"We don't have any basis for wiring their homes," one of the security officers said with a frown. "And we can't get the location of Amidala's lake home from anywhere in the system. The Queen of Naboo says that the files can only be unsealed by Amidala herself, or a Supreme Court Order from the Republic."
"And that will be far too much publicity," Bail agreed. "I did get the name of it. Varykino. It doesn't sound familiar. Amidala was always intensely private about her personal life."
"She was threatened with assassination enough times to have these files sealed," Master Windu said with a frown. "We will be hard put to get anything from them. The Lake Country on Naboo is big enough that we could never find it anyway, unless we take ships and search..."
"We can't," Bail interrupted. "The Lake Country is a no-fly zone. The Naboo designated vast swathes of their planet no-fly zones years ago for environmental reasons. You can only get a diplomatic exemption, and those are few and far between, and you have to meet high standards in order to get one in the first place. I think Amidala only had two in her whole time as Queen and Senator. We'll never manage it, not for the kind of search you are suggesting. The Naboo will block us at every turn, and they will have support."
"Fine," Windu sighed.
"Any luck on finding her ship?"
"We activated the beacon as instructed," Windu replied. "We tracked it to just off of Mon Calamari. A squadron of ships surrounded the cruiser, tractor beamed and boarded it. It had been sold twenty four hours ago to a dealer in rare ships. A Naboo Senatorial cruiser is a prized collector's item. The dealer bought it for nearly a million credits. It was sold by three men in spacers clothes. They looked and sounded remarkably similar according to him."
"Clones."
"Quite," Windu agreed. "It makes sense. So she's got rid of the ship. They must have a replacement but no hope of tracking that. So we back to the beginning."
"So it seems." Bail cut the call as his ship launched into hyperspace.
18 months later.
On Chandrila.
It was early morning when the tall man strolled into the Registry Office. He had a head of black curls and a thick black beard over which bright blue eyes shone. He wore fairly rough and ready, worn spacer's clothes, a blaster holstered to his side.
He charmed the receptionist into giving him a secluded booth and showing him how to fill out two records simultaneously. He joked around cheerfully as the receptionist laughed and then excused herself.
As soon as she was out of sight the smile dropped from his face and he turned back to the booth, pulling a piece of flimsi out of his pocket. His fingers moved quickly over the screen, inputting the information as quickly as he could. Some of it could be copied over from one record to the other. He finished filling out the information, checked it carefully and then crammed the flimsi back in his pocket. He entered both the records and then rose and dashed out of the booth and the office, flashing another smile at the receptionist.
He was embarking on his ship by the time the records finished submitting and the alarm bells began ringing in the computer system. He was off Chandrila by the time the message had got through to Coruscant.
Bail was rushed from a meeting with some of the Senators into an enclosed conference room with the leading Masters of the Jedi Council and some of the chief security officers of the New Republic.
"What is it?" he demanded brusquely, sitting down at the head of the table.
"This just came through from Chandrila," Master Windu said. "As of one standard hour ago."
He nodded to one of the security officers who flicked on the holo. It was from the Galactic Records, and as soon as he saw it Bail knew automatically why this particular record had been flagged and caused an immediate meeting. All eyes were drawn to the information.
The registry of day-old twins to Anakin and Padme Skywalker:
Shmi Jobal Skywalker
Jinn Ruwee Skywalker
The room was in uproar only moments later, Jedi and New Republic officers and Senators shouting in shock, horror, disbelief.
"Quiet!" Master Kenobi roared over the din. There was a stunned silence. "Now," he continued. "We need to make sure that these are indeed their children. For all we know, it could be a prank!"
"Not a very funny one," one of the Senators muttered, and then quailed under an evil eye from the Jedi Master.
"How are we supposed to ascertain that?" one of the other Senators demanded frostily.
"Their names, along with other information," Kenobi said sternly.
"Yes," Bail agreed. "Their middle names for example. Jobal and Ruwee are the names of Amidala's parents. Not a matter of public record unless you know that Padme Amidala's birth name is Padme Naberrie."
"Quite," Obi-Wan agreed. "And Shmi is the name of Anakin Skywalker's mother," he looked down for a moment. "Shmi Skywalker was murdered by Tusken Raiders on Tatooine only a day or so before the First Battle of Geonosis. As I understand it Anakin Skywalker, as he was then, made it to Tatooine, just before her death. I believe he had managed to rescue her, but it was too late for any advanced medical attention. She died only a minute after being liberated, while he was holding her. He'd been having dreams of her in pain for a month or so beforehand, but it was not known then that his dreams could be prophetic," he paused and then added as an afterthought. "Senator Amidala, as she was then, was with him on Tatooine. He was protecting her from an assassination attempt. She found out about his dreams and insisted that they go to Tatooine, as she knew Shmi Skywalker from when we landed on Tatooine during the Trade Federation crisis on Naboo."
"So it makes sense that Vader and Amidala would name a daughter after her?" Bail hazarded.
Obi-Wan nodded. "Very much so."
"What about the boy?" one of the security officers demanded. "Jinn? Where did they get that from? It's not exactly a normal name?"
A couple of his compatriots laughed. Bail noted that one of Obi-Wan's hands had clenched on his belt. Master Yoda had evidently noticed as well.
"Jinn the surname of one of the Jedi's fallen Masters is," he said gravely. The laughter stopped. "Master Qui-Gon Jinn. Master Kenobi's Jedi Master he was, and brought Skywalker to our attention he did. Died in battle, he did, on Naboo, with the first Sith in millennia. A hero he was."
"Anakin thought of him as a father figure," Obi-Wan said, his voice perfectly even. "It was Master Qui-Gon who found him on Tatooine, Master Qui-Gon who freed him. I took Anakin as an apprentice to fulfil my master's last wish."
"Freed him?" a Senator asked. "What do you mean, freed him?"
"I would've thought it would have been obvious," Obi-Wan almost snapped, gaining his emotions back under control just in time. "Anakin was a slave on Tatooine until he was nine years old. He won a podrace to get the parts we needed to fix our ship, and inadvertently won his own freedom in the process. He had to leave his mother behind on that dustball of a planet, knowing the kind of situation she was in, and then got thrust into a completely alien situation, where he again had to call people Master, and the first thing any of you said to him," he gestured towards the Jedi Masters assembled. "Was that he wasn't good enough, that he was too old. It took an incredible amount of courage to leave everything he had ever known for an unknown life on a faraway planet and you tossed him aside like he was nothing more than a slave, only accepting him because you had no choice!" Obi-Wan sucked in a deep breath, visibly calming himself. The Jedi Masters stood in stunned silence. The rest of the gathering didn't dare to move. Obi-Wan raised his gaze and looked Mace Windu directly in the eye. "Do you know how long it took me to get him to believe that he was worth anything to anyone?" he asked quietly. "Do you know how long it took me to get him to trust me? Do you know how many times he flinched away from being touched, or would cower whenever he did something wrong, because he thought I was going to beat him?" Mace Windu dropped his eyes.
Obi-Wan looked around the gathering, his gaze scornful as he met the eyes of each of the Senators. "You asked everything of the Jedi during the Clone Wars," he said. "We gave everything, even our own lives. Anakin lost his arm when he was nineteen to a fully-trained Sith Lord that he should never have had to fight. Then you thrust him directly into a war where he saw things he'd buried for over ten years. My Padawan." The last bit was said through his teeth. Obi-Wan sighed again. "I won't even start on Ahsoka or everything that happened with Palpatine," he said wearily. "Everything we exposed him to. To be quite honest I'm surprised he didn't have some sort of reaction earlier. I suspect we have Padme to thank for that. I didn't know exactly what was between them, but I could take a pretty good guess and I didn't begrudge him that. Force knows the galaxy had taken enough from him already, and was going to take more," he looked at Windu again. His next sentence was enunciated clearly. "It was worth turning a blind eye to what he was doing, if it meant my brother in all but blood was laughing and smiling even occasionally."
He cast another scathing gaze around the circle. "I raised Anakin," he said quietly. "I should have been there for him more, and I wish I had been. Instead it was Palpatine he went to, and I regret that more than I can say. But what I regret most of all," he cast another look over at the assembled Jedi. "Is believing you all when you said that you had gone back to Tatooine to make sure that Shmi Skywalker was freed and alright," a bitter laugh. "Imagine my surprise when I found out what little I could from Anakin what had happened to her. Imagine my shock when I spoke to Padme and she told me that you, Master Windu, had told her that you, the Jedi Council, had checked in on Shmi Skywalker and so assured her that there was nothing that needed to be done for her. She trusted you, and you are very lucky that she never confronted you about it. Spitting flames would be an apt description in her case." Obi-Wan let out another short bitter laugh. "I'm not even remotely surprised at Padme's actions. I'm not surprised that Ahsoka and the 501st joined her."
He looked directly at Bail. "I respectfully request to recluse myself from this investigation Chancellor," he asked formally. "I can see that I cannot remain objective."
"Of course Master Kenobi," Bail replied numbly.
Obi-Wan bowed sharply and then turned on his heel and left the room, his robes fluttering behind him. He made his way down and out of the Senate building.
Across the galaxy Anakin Skywalker's fighter shot out of hyperspace and swirled through the blackness of space. A klick or so from him a large freighter burst into existence at the same time. There was an exchange of communication phrases across the reaches and the freighter unshielded one of its bays, where the fighter docked.
Anakin Skywalker leapt out of his fighter and headed for the turbolift up to the living quarters of the freighter. Ahsoka Tano met him as he stepped out of the lift.
"Hey Skyguy," she greeted. "Got those sweet twins all registered as formal Galactic citizens?"
"Yeah," he said easily, pulling off his gloves and arm gauntlets as he made his way down the corridor. "Should be kicking up a storm on Coruscant right now."
"Sounds like fun," Ahsoka replied with a laugh. "Padme wants to discuss something, she didn't tell me what, Luke wants a hand with rewiring the hyperdrive of that small ship that crashed on Dantooine and Leia wanted me to ask you to test her Huttese when you have the time."
"Got it, thanks Snips," Anakin answered, ducking inside a doorway and smiling at the sight that awaited him.
Padme looked up from where she was bent over a small bundle of blankets and smiled in welcome. "Hello Ani," she said quietly. "Everything all right then?"
"Everything all right," he confirmed, making his way to her side to look down at the sleeping face of their infant daughter. "The babies ok?"
Padme laughed lightly. "They're fine. Get Jinn for me?" she motioned over her shoulder to the cradle attached to one wall. Anakin crossed the room and carefully picked up his tiny son. He still marvelled that he and Padme had created these tiny humans together. After all he had not really been…around when Luke and Leia had been this tiny so it was an entirely new experience for him. His wife, however, had taken to it with a practised ease, feeding, changing and soothing like an expert. His mind shied away from the reason why she was so competent on her own.
He settled onto the couch next to Padme and they swapped babies easily. Padme began murmuring to Jinn as he fed and Anakin winded Shmi and then soothed her to sleep, telling her stories about her and her brother's namesakes.
"Did you complete our other objective?" Padme asked after a moment.
Anakin removed a small datachip from within his belt pouch and slid it over to her. She slipped it into a holoprojector and a moment later data flashed up. Padme smiled in satisfaction and returned her attention to her newborns.
In front of the Skywalkers the paperwork for the newly registered company 'Geworpena Ventures' revolved in a slow circle. Beneath it the patent for several new components for ships scrolled down. Already there were applicants pending.
"Excellent," Padme said, smiling down into Jinn's sleeping face. "So our new life begins."
"I suppose so," Anakin agreed. "How will you like running a trading company?"
"I think I'll like it just fine," Padme mused quietly. "Not something I've ever done before but there's no harm in trying new things, and with those new machine parts and the money we'll have from them, we should have no trouble living comfortably, and in secret."
Anakin murmured in agreement and placed their small daughter in the twins' crib, the tiny body shifting in sleep and rolling onto one side.
The large freighter, newly created the headquarters of Geworpena Ventures, rocketed through hyperspace.
AN: So my medical issue is all sorted out now, thank you to all for the good wishes :-)
I promise I am working on Hope of the Rebellion but this chapter wrote itself much more easily than the next chapter for HotR.
I hope you enjoy this and please review!
The8thDalmuti