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Chapter Text

A few irritable beeps issued forth from the console, and Durdo grumbled incomprehensibly to himself as he pressed different buttons, squinting at the computer interface. Finally, he sat back in his seat and said, "well, that's as much as wesa can do, probably." 

"All transmissions signatures switched over? Even for the shuttle?" 

"Yes."

M'renn sighed, shaking her head. "I had hoped we wouldn't need all this again, but I suppose it's inevitable, in these times."

"Bad times," Durdo agreed. "Always good to have a mask - but especially in thesa times."

"Suppose you’ve dug me up another name to use, too?" she asked. 

"Mariel Tarron. Mesa Dorrin Bassal. This boat, she’s the Aurelian Star again." 

M'renn nodded curtly. Mariel and Dorrin hadn't been too far Rimward in several years, but they'd used those names often enough, coming and going, that she expected it would be relatively easy to slip them back into the easily-obscured thick of things if it became necessary. If the Emperor had his personal gang of slicers on the case, then they were completely doomed, but even Skywalker's resources weren't, technically, limitless. There were too many ships active at any one time in the galaxy for him to have a prayer of closely inspecting all of their credentials, and using established names increased the odds of human error, if it came down to it - the odds that they could just be waved through without anyone bothering to check too closely were higher. Or would have been, if not for the three massive problems currently on board....

"Not sure how we'll explain having an old soldier and a couple of teenaged nobs with us, if it comes to that." 

"Wesa best hope it doesn't come to that," Durdo muttered darkly. "Best story, I guess, is the same one Leané had with Velissa - just this time, we also got an old man following them around." M'renn nodded again, seeing no need to point out the bloody obvious, which was how thin of a story that had been to begin with. After a moment, Durdo asked, "M'renn?"

"Hm?"

"Why wesa doing this?"

"Be more specific."

"Leané and Velissa sneaking on, that's not our fault. Maybe we would have saved Princess Padmah anyway, damn you for a soft old fool. But Leané, she was telling us to leave her. Wesa coulda been long-gone, not had the Emperor after us, probably. So what's she here for?"

M'renn considered this for a long moment. "You've gotta good point," she conceded, noting how Durdo kept referring to the girl as Leané even though it seemed pretty well-established, now, that she was the heir to the Empire. "I don't know. Just didn't occur to me for some reason. Too soft for my own good, I guess." 

"Yeah, but it didn’t occur to mesa, either, then." 

"Don't try to convince me you've got better sense than me, Durdo. We're both damn fools. How else would we put up with each other this long?"

"We wouldn’t. I keep thinking, though...."

"Dangerous pastime, thinking. I don't recommend it." 

"Huh. But yousa know, too - the Emperor. He was one of those Jedi, before there was an empire. People say they had all kinds of powers - witch-powers, and witch-ways...." 

"Eh, don't believe everything you hear about what it was like - before," M'renn muttered. "Most of it's exaggerated. If the Jedi were as powerful as all that, then the Emperor wouldn't've been able to kill 'em all so fast, would he? And besides, even if he's a witch, it doesn't follow that she is, too,” she reasoned. “They never had families, in the old days, so no way to know if it's hereditary." Durdo didn't reply, but she could tell from the set of his ears that he was still uneasy, and so she tapped the side of her head. "And even if she is a witch - nobody's running anything up here except me. You really think a fourteen-year-old girl could - what - magic my brains out without me noticing?"

"Mesa hope not," said Durdo, sounding more morosely resigned than skeptical. 

Me, too, my friend, she thought, wishing that he could have helpfully failed to make her think about this in the first place. She didn't feel like she'd been prodded around by a witch or anything of the sort, but....Me, too. 

* * * * * * * *

More mist than ever seemed to roll in off the river, obscuring the uninspiring view of plain mud and reeds and scrubby grass, and there were no visible corpses in the water. It still took Leia one glance around the area to realize where she was and mutter, "oh, not this, again." 

"I'm afraid so, my dear." 

It was the disembodied man's voice again. Leia realized it was difficult to be sure she was glaring at someone she could not see and took a moment to turn around and scowl in every direction, just to increase the odds that she'd hit the right one sooner or later. 

"Why don't you show your face, whoever you are?" she demanded. 

"Still haven't quite figured out how to do so, I'm afraid. Perhaps another time. For now - as much as I hate to encourage you to act at all like Anakin, you should be as insistent as you need to be about traveling to those coordinates you found in the good Senator's computer."

"Why?"

"The coordinates indicate the most habitable world of the Dagobah system - not that that's saying much." The voice assumed a very faint note of distaste. "I suppose Master Yoda must have felt the need to do penance as well as hide from the Emperor, to settle there, when he had at least thirty other options. But he is one of the two sentient life-forms on Dagobah, and I think you'll find it...educational...to meet them both."

"Why is my education any of your concern?" Leia asked. "I don't suppose you're going to say you're my real father on top of the dead lady being my real mother?" 

"Oh, goodness, no. Your real father...the good man your mother and I loved...I do consider him dead, but he'd dispute the claim on the grounds that he still walks about and talks...He never really understood. But then, neither do you - yet. That's why you need to go to Dagobah. In the meantime, think of me as...perhaps more of an eccentric uncle."

Leia's eyes opened, and for a moment, looking up at an expanse of unadorned metal and noticing that she appeared to be lying down on another one, she didn't know where she was, or why, and she was almost afraid. Then her memory came back to her, and she felt even worse. 

What am I doing? What have I done?

It was bad enough to think about being on the run from - everyone, really, at this point - by herself, but that wasn't the situation at hand. The situation at hand was much worse. She had led people who had shown her....at least a rough sort of kindness into danger, she'd kidnapped the daughter of one of the more influential couples in the Core Worlds, and one of her friends was dead. And it was her fault. 

Velena hadn't even known why they were running away from home. She'd never asked - just followed, or occasionally dragged Leia after her if they ran out of better options. And now she was - 

She sat up too fast, and could feel her teeth chattering as she wrapped her arms around herself, even though she could tell it wasn't cold. Why was she shaking so much? A reassuring hand patted her back while a familiar voice assured her that she was safe. 

Oh, yes. She'd dragged Book into this, too. 

"I - I fell asleep?" she managed. "How did I - "

"That was partially my fault," said Book. "You were dead on your feet anyway, the closest thing to a decent anxiety medication they had on here was a sedative, and it looked like you were starting to go into shock. Thought you'd be better off sleeping the worst of it off - nothing to gain from overwhelming yourself into a malfunction." 

Leia pulled her knees up toward her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hoping to at least reduce the shaking as she blinked at her bodyguard, a piece of home that couldn't have looked more bizarre in their current settings if he'd tried. "I thought you were angry with me," she said, and hated how small her voice sounded as she did.

"You thought right. Still am, too. But it's my duty to take care of you, and I'm not so angry that I expect to stay that way forever, anyway." He raised an eyebrow at her and added, "it might help if you told me why we're here. How any of this started. Why you didn't just come to one of us to begin with. You know any of us would take a bolt for you - you know I've done it, twice. So what made you think any of this was a good idea?"

"I don't know," Leia whispered, her eyes fixed on her knees. "I didn't think of it. I didn't think of - anything - after I saw - " 

Words failed her for a moment, and with an effort, she forced herself to look at Book's face again as she found other ones. "Did you know the Empress wasn't really my mother?" 

She felt a little bad for how relieved she was by the confusion this question seemed to elicit. "As far as I know, I don't know that yet," he said. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know exactly - it just started when I - realized that a wall wasn't supposed to be where it was, and I found a window, and in the room, there was a woman I've been having nightmares about all my life...."

* * * * * * * 

Twenty to forty seconds. 

One of the Imperial guardsmen, unreadable behind his white helmet, had accompanied Bail into his office, but if it came to it, he still thought he could access the affide crystal hidden in the carved edges of his desk before anyone could stop him. Short of catastrophic failure, he'd need perhaps ten seconds to flip the switch, retrieve the crystal from its tiny hiding place, and throw it into his mouth; after that, he would have roughly half a minute left to live, give or take ten seconds. Either way, he'd be dead well before anyone could get any answers out of him. 

He did not think he'd need to kill himself today, but it was reassuring to remind himself of how easily he could do so. Reassuring enough that he was able to sit calmly at the desk, his hands folded in front of him, carefully not doing anything. He tried not to think about Breha, or Padmah, or how he had no idea where either of them was. If Breha had a last option, wherever they were holding her - if Padmah was anything even resembling safe. He tried not to think of anything at all until he heard the too-rhythmic strikes of boots on the tiled floor outside the room. When they stopped outside his door, he stood up; the guardsman in the room adjusted his grip on his blaster in response to the movement, but took no further action before the door opened and admitted a small, dark-haired woman in a dark dress, the worry lines sharp around her eyes and forehead. 

"What happened?" asked Dormé, without preamble.

"Princess Leia seems to have escaped," he said. He decided to take the liberty of sitting down again, here in his own office; he was not entirely surprised when Dormé also took a seat, without asking. They were old friends. Of a sort. He had been friends with her employer, once, and had mostly seen her as a feature of the background...but matters had changed. "And to have kidnapped my daughter on her way out the door." 

She stared at him, incredulous. "Leia kidnapped Padmah?" 

"That's what it looked like on the footage I saw, before it...became unclear if I'm under arrest or not." Dormé inhaled sharply, almost a hiss. "In more good news for you," Bail added, "the other girl you mentioned - her companion - she's still in surgery. She covered for her mistress by opening fire on a group of guards who were searching for them all and got shot twice for her trouble. The Emperor's orders meant they weren't shooting to kill, but she'll need a complete joint replacement at the very least, if they can save her leg at all. Or her at all; I'm not exactly sure how severe the second wound was."

"Oh, shit." 

"That's more or less my assessment of the situation as well." 

Dormé's brown eyes scanned his face, though he was confident that she'd find nothing. "You're very calm about this, Bail." 

"I'm a politician. It's called bluffing." 

Amidala's Hand managed a rueful laugh, though her bitter attempt at a smile faded quickly as she asked, "and the Emperor...?" 

"Is not a politician, which is what worries me." He waited for some response, but got none, and so he spoke again. "What happened, Dormé? What's the girl running from, and what induced her to run here looking for it? What have you all brought upon my house?"

Dormé remained silent for a long moment more, then said, "I wish I knew." 

* * * * * * * *

"I don't know about this," said Karin. She was speaking toward Carré's ear, but her eyes were on her sister, who was carrying on a happy-sounding one-sided conversation with a computer terminal. "If Lady Dormé comes back and doesn't approve - " 

"Then she should have given us clearer instructions," said Carré, hopefully with more confidence than she felt. 

Karin sighed and closed her eyes. "Why did my sister have to be recruited by Royal intelligence?"

"Because she has a gift," Carré said warmly, knowing that one twin would always take at least a glimmer of reflected pride when her sister was praised. "Kanna's practically a planetary asset, with her mind...." 

"What does that make you, then?" asked Faraé.

"I'm just a public servant," Carré demurred. "I'm sure they only brought me along because I had that internship with Her Majesty's friend, and because you're all too valuable to have you waste your time listening to court rumors."

Faraé scoffed a little, but Carré could tell she was pleased. 

They had a common curriculum, of course, across their disciplines - Carré and Riya and the twins had learned bodyguard tactics and assassination techniques right along with Faraé and Velena, even though none of them would ever compare to the two former dancers in physical strength and speed. After three months together, they all knew at least a little about courtly graces, close-quarter combat, use and concealment of weapons, basic interrogation resistance, misdirection, computer slicing, disguise, and the makeup and purposes of all three of the major offices of the government. There was no denying, though, that each of them was just a little better at something than any of the others were. Kanna, of course, was a standout, she was probably too dangerous to ever be allowed to leave government service, but Karin's artistic skills had translated well into the management of the Queen's appearances and make-up, which was a more serious business than people gave it credit for. Velena was the ground tactician, the one who was best in an open fight, whereas Faraé was the one they'd prefer to have holding the knife if someone needed sneaking up on. And so on.

Somehow, she didn't think Lady Dormé would actually be that impressed with an argument about how Carré was simply practicing, if she found them and disapproved, but it had the advantage of being true. She could also blame the protocol droid Lady Dormé had left with vague orders to keep the five of them occupied; it was no fault of hers that nobody had told it not to show her where the Princess had been. Nor was it really her fault that Kanna was now probably breaking about forty Alderaanian laws right now; she hadn't told the other girl to go do anything, just pointed out that a computer was in the room....

Abruptly, she noticed that Kanna had gone quiet, no longer monologuing at the computer. Instead, she sat stone-faced as screens flashed in front of her before she reached out with one hand to pet the console like a cat.

"Poor baby," she said. "Please let it be Lena who did this to you, so I can break her face, whenever we catch up with her...." 

"What's going on?" asked Carré, stepping closer to the computer to try to get some idea of what Kanna was doing. 

"Whoever got into this didn't slice it," Kanna said irritably. "It's more like someone took a cannon and...eugh. I might need an hour or two just to straighten this out...." 

A long time, for Kanna. "You probably shouldn't," she said reluctantly. "In case the Alderaanian security forces want to do it themselves. They'll be...annoyed with us, if they find out it was our people who broke their system twice in about twenty-six hours. But..." Her eyes scanned the data, taking in what she could understand. "This is interesting just by itself."

All information, after all, was worth having. The question was just when one should use it or not. 

On one hand, quite a lot of people would probably find it even more interesting to know that someone - possibly Princess Leia, or some servants she'd acquired along the way; Lena was far more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, but she had a lighter touch than what Kanna was describing and no reason to pretend otherwise that Carré could think of. In theory, she could have buried a message for Kanna in all the static or something, but how could Velena have known that the five of them would come here? - had done...something unspeakable enough to the Aldera palace's internal network that it had made Kanna want to not only choose violence, but to start a fight she couldn't possibly win. On the other, the Grand Princess' prospective ladies-in-waiting were not exactly who anyone except maybe Dormé would want to know had discovered this, and she wasn't sure of Dormé...on one hand, they were supposed to take initiative, do anything that could serve the throne, and figuring out what Leia wanted out of a computer on Alderaan could certainly count as service to the throne, but on the other hand, she was absolutely certain, now, that both Leia and Kanna had broken a lot of laws. What to do....

She bit her lip for a moment, then said, "get out of there. You can volunteer to work with the computers later, and we'll see what Lady Dormé says. It's probably why you're here."

"Probably," agreed Kanna. "I just wish I could figure out why the rest of you are here. No offense." She stroked the console gently again and said, "I'll come back, I promise." 

Faraé laughed nervously. "Sometimes, it's so weird to think that you're probably one of the most dangerous people I've ever met, Kanna." 

Kanna frowned, seemingly puzzled. "I am?" she asked, and if she wasn't being sincere, then Carré thought she must have underestimated the other girl all along. She'd thought Kanna was just here as an analyst, and that she and Riya were the spies. 

* * * * * * * *

I, Padmah, Princess of Alderaan, write this with my own hand. 

Today I was successfully kidnapped for the first time, though it was partly my own fault. More of it was the fault of Grand Princess Leia. For some reason, Her Imperial Highness is on the run in the company of some common people, criminals I imagine. Yesterday they saved me from being kidnapped, but today they kidnapped me themselves. They had another girl with them, too, at first - I don't know what her real name was, only that it was probably not Velissa. I think she's dead now. I should probably be happier about that than I am. She was the one who pulled a blaster on me, after all, and then probably did a million credits of damage to the family art collection and the palace in general. But it was all so horrible - 

And the Emperor is with my parents. To hear HIH tell it, this doesn't matter, as he's a reasonable person - but my father and mother were afraid, and they wouldn't be afraid for no reason. Especially my father, since he knows the Emperor and the Empress, or used to, at least. What did HIH mean when she said she could claim he was a traitor? Surely she was bluffing. 

HIH isn't what I would have expected. She seems very cold at one moment, but then she isn't. She says we are all being dramatic about her father - but she's the one who is on the run from the man! 

Padmah looked up from the beginning of the chronicle of her first kidnapping. The old man they had picked up on the way out, the one who had tried to talk Leia down, seemed to be checking over his weapons, apparently for lack of anything else to do. Leia was reading a very old, battered paper book, and she wasn't crying at the moment, but looked like she had been doing so again recently. 

Metal creaked, and the pilot and her grammatically odd, amphibious-looking copilot both came into the room. The old man looked warily at the alien, but neither of them made any move to resume violence, which Padmah had to say was a relief. On one hand, the old man seemed like he was probably closer to Padmah's side than to the others', but on the other, she just...didn't want to see any more violence today. She had wanted to throw things at her cousins before when they made fun of her for her bright red hair and how obvious it was that she wasn't 'really' an Organa, but that was the closest thing to violence she'd personally come close to before today, and she wished today had never happened. 

"Well," said the old woman. Her hands were on her hips, but Padmah thought that might just be how she stood by habit, rather than because she was going to make a point. "We've done what we can to obscure our callsigns, and we'll be jumping to some of your more obscure backroutes in the next five minutes. Got us pointed toward a little side post I know, good place for refueling and patching up anything that needs patching - but that's no place for staying any length of time, which raises a question." 

Leia blinked slowly. "Did you look up those coordinates I found in Senator Organa's computer?"

"Aye, and there's nothing there. Nothing plotted, anyway. It's barely off the Rimma Trade Route, not far south of Triton - "

"Wesa not going to Triton," the alien said firmly.

"No - even if I had anything to pay their tithes with, which I currently don't, I still wouldn't put me or you either one through a visit there," the old woman agreed. "Not after what we've just...." 

"First good news I've heard in a while," said the old man. 

"What's wrong with Triton?" asked Padmah, looking between the three of them. 

"Customs checkpoint," the old woman said, with obvious distaste in her voice, which only increased as she continued talking. "The natives are all religious fanatics - or at least, if there's any of them who aren't, I've never seen or heard of 'em, and I imagine they left a long time ago. Everything happens on three moons, and there's not a drop of anything to drink but water on any of them." The two males both shook their heads in evident disgust. "No uppers, no downers, nothing. No idea how the place stays operational, especially so close to Eriadu - not that there's much worth mentioning on Eriadu, either, just fake nobs with - " The old woman made a face, then shook her head and decided to drop that line of thought. "Point is, these coordinates of yours - they don't show up in the map, but I know for a fact there's several routes that don't make maps in that region, too, and it's not the end of the Rimma Route. Close, but you're not completely in wild space yet. I wouldn't be surprised if there's something there, but there's always the question of whether we actually want to know what it might be."

"It's called Dagobah," Leia said. They all looked at her, since she'd seemed as clueless as any of them about what the coordinates meant earlier. "It sounds like it should be a trade world. At least, based on everything around it...."

"But if it was a trade world, then we'd know it. Even if it was just a smuggler's den - I happen to run a decent operation, but only a fool would come out here in the Dark without knowing where other operations happen to be. Since I don't know what's there, though, that makes me think it's got to be one of a few things." The old woman started ticking off items on her fingers. "Illegal research facility, legal but top-secret research facility, prison, legal or illegal, or boneyard, again, legal or illegal."

Leia shook her head. "No," she said. "There aren't...that many people there. Just two. But I'm supposed to find them there." 

Padmah tried to pretend a chill didn't run down her spine then, at the odd way the Grand Princess said that. The old man looked at the other girl and said, "where's this coming from, my lady?" 

"I can't explain," Leia whispered, sounding miserable. "I just - need you to trust me."

The captain did not look best-impressed by this answer. "Can't think of any reason why anyone would have hidden coordinates for it if it was just uninhabitable, to the extent anything counts as uninhabitable these days," she said. "My money's on finding where Alderaan hides inconvenient bodies, if you're right about how many people are actually there."

"My parents wouldn't be involved in anything like that," Padmah said flatly. 

"Oh, grow up," scoffed Leia. "Everybody lies." 

Padmah considered throwing something at her, but decided there was still some chance that she might get home alive. If she got home after throwing things at the Grand Princess, that could be...bad. Instead, then, as the other four resumed arguing, Padmah looked back down at her notes and added to them.

If she has any idea what she's doing, or even why she's doing it, then she's doing a wonderful job of pretending not to, she wrote. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone else does, either, so I really hope she's lying, even though I'm more than half-certain she isn't.

Chapter Text

The Queen of Alderaan was, obviously, not a prisoner, and that was half of the reason why Sabé paused at the door of the sitting room she’d had tea in earlier and reluctantly passed off her blaster to the standing guard. Access to weapons had been tightly restricted on Alderaan since the end of the Wars; planetary laws didn’t apply to Sabé in any real way, but it was…undiplomatic…to openly flout them just because she could even on a normal day. On the day when her daughter had just violently abducted Breha’s daughter for no apparent reason….

That was the other reason why she didn’t want to carry a visible weapon in there with her now. When she’d realized that Luke was gone, it had plunged her into a state of mind so bizarre that now, ten years later, she almost felt like she had been an unwilling witness to the inside of someone else’s head. Right now, mere hours after Breha had lost her daughter, she suspected there might literally be no predicting what the other woman might take it into her head to do. 

At first, it appeared to be nothing - just sitting quietly by the window, turning a small ceramic pot between her hands. She didn’t look up as she said, “Padmah had just come home from a visit to Chandrila. She brought me this.”

Sabé looked at the odd flower protruding on a stick-like stem. “What is it?” she asked, even as she automatically filed away the information that the princess had been to Chandrila. It felt important, like something to unpack later, but she had no time to give the information her attention now. 

“A rare orchid. I collect them.” The queen smiled ruefully at the plant. “When her ship was attacked just outside of our atmosphere, then she actually took a moment to make sure she brought it with her when she escaped.”

Ah. That. Sabé had forgotten all about the report that the Alderaanian princess had been attacked by either pirates or rebels - that their chancing upon this encounter and deciding to intervene was the only thing that had brought Leia and her companions to the Organas’ attention. As much as her primary focus was still on Leia, she could still hardly imagine what that must have been like, to have Padmah narrowly avert one attempt and then almost immediately get swept up in another - 

“Oh, Breha. I’m so sorry.”

”Why is this happening, Amidala?" Breha hadn't known Padmé as well as Bail had, so she pressed the line with Sabé's official name instead of her supposed birth name - which was, ironically, easier for her to respond to. "What does she want? Padmah hasn’t - she’s attended a few sessions at the Senate with Bail, but I don’t think that she’s ever spoken to Her Imperial Highness. I know Padmah didn’t recognize her - neither did I, only Bail had any idea that - “

”If I could give you any answers, I would,” Sabé told her. It was the best kind of statement - one that appeared to deny knowledge without actually doing so. She was disgusted by how readily such statements came to her now, even in a moment like this, but there was no way to answer the question that didn’t reveal too much. This would have been so even had Bail not already been suspicious of her for whatever reason, but since he was - “We weren’t aware what Leia was doing until we got here, and put it together from her - behavior.” Her mouth flattened into a disapproving line for a moment, and then she had to bite down hard on a laugh at how insane it was, apologizing for her daughter behaving badly while speaking to a woman whose only child Leia had just kidnapped. “When she first disappeared, we thought - we didn’t know what was going on, so I’m sure….” She took a shaky breath and said, “well - I’m sure you know where our minds went.”

Breha paled slightly, which made Sabé think the queen had, in the excitement of everything, forgotten about that detail. “The little prince.”

”Yes.” Sabé had to swallow hard against real tears. “I probably shouldn’t say it, when my daughter is responsible for your - situation - but we…the Emperor and I…we probably do…understand. To a point.”

”You know why someone took your son, but not who did it. I know who took my daughter, but not why she did it. We make a fine pair.” 

"Yes."

Someone knocked on the door, which meant it was, at the very least, not Anakin. Sabé turned and reluctantly gave the knocker permission to enter. Her eyes widened as she recognized the woman who obeyed; either more time than Sabé had realized had passed, or else, new records might have just been set for the length of a flight between Naboo and Alderaan.

"Dormé."

Without thinking, she went over and embraced her friend; it was only a moment later that she processed what Dormé's posture and expression had been - that she'd been planning to play the unflappable and impersonal majordomo this time, rather than the Empress' confidante. That could be explained by Breha's presence, but Sabé felt an extra tingle of unease at the realization. "You arrived quickly."

"Of course," said Dormé, and then she made a carefully measured curtsy to Breha. "Queen Breha." 

"Lady Dormé." Breha tried to force a smile and almost succeeded. "Have you come to organize all of this unpleasantness away for us?"

"I will gladly provide any assistance to your Majesties that I can," said Dormé. Her tone was one of perfect diplomatic neutrality - but her hands gripped her skirts still, even though she was no longer curtsying. Her face seemed to catch halfway through a grimace, which made Sabé even more uneasy, before she smoothed her features over again and said, "I apologize for interrupting you now, but if I may have a word, urgently, with Her Majesty the Empress...."

Blatantly dismissing Breha from a room in her own palace. There were times when Sabé truly thought that whoever had made the Empress become the ranking woman in any room by default had done so just to give her headaches. 

"Do you feel safe going on your own, Breha, or would you like an escort?" she asked, giving the woman back a little power, or at least a little dignity - hopefully, anyway. Unless Breha saw it was more of an insult to pretend she hadn't been under guard all this time, and could have walked out of the room at any time she chose. That she'd been waved in here, presumably with little to no ceremony, by Imperial troops purely for her own protection, a thing she was grateful to them for providing her with during the chaos which had threatened to overwhelm the palace in the first hour or so after that unpleasant scene in the hangar.

The queen made the slightest curtsy that protocol allowed. "I believe I can manage on my own, Your Majesty."

"Go, then, to your husband, and pray for both of our children." She had, without quite intending to, slipped back into Amidala's voice, the lower pitch an effective mask against all but the strongest of emotion. "We will speak again later." 

* * * * * * * *

Bail knew better than to assume that being alone in an empty room meant he wasn't under observation, but when his wife walked into their private sitting room, he crossed the room to catch her in his arms without taking a moment to give a damn. Her hands crushed fistfuls of his doublet into knots against his back, but the rest of her was still trembling as he clutched her to his chest.

You're still alive. I'm still alive. Padmah's still alive - she has to be. That's all that matters. 

For a long moment, they just stood there and held each other - but no moment could last forever. Finally, Breha, with her mouth still close to his ear, asked, "why in the Havens did you tell them she was here?"

"I was more afraid of what might happen if I didn't," he murmured back. "They keep her on such a short leash, I couldn't believe she'd actually gotten away, and that it wasn't a trap - " 

“You think everything is a trap.”

”To be fair, it helps that I’m usually the one setting it.”

Breha chuckled weakly. "I wish you would stop bringing your work home with you, Bail." 

"I can't imagine anything I'd like better than leaving it on Coruscant, my love." Reluctantly, he loosened his grip on her enough to walk, if no further than the nearest settee. He allowed his knees to finally go to water as he sank onto it; to his surprise, Breha threw her legs across his lap and curled as tightly into the crook of his arm as she could, her head pressed against his shoulder. He took the opportunity to kiss her and then, without looking up, ask "guards outside?"

"None that I could see," she whispered back. He exhaled for what felt like the first time in too long and squeezed his eyes shut, just for a moment, in relief as he rested his forehead against hers. It didn’t mean they were safe, but it did mean that they were no longer all but open prisoners in their own home. That was progress. “I think we're…all right." 

"How did you get away?"

"Dormé showed up - said she needed a word with the Empress - " 

"You were with the Empress?" 

"Only for a few minutes. She was...I think she was trying to be kind. She didn't ask any questions." 

Well, that was a relief, at least. And it would be in keeping with Padmé's character - the character of the Padmé he'd known, anyway - to take a moment to try to be kind to Breha even in the midst of her own troubles. Could he have been wrong, before, about the woman being a double? Had Dormé brought the real Padmé with her? Or....

He must have tensed, because Breha said, "Bail?" in an undertone that was as frightened as it was inquisitive. 

...Or did it even matter? He wasn’t dead. Breha wasn’t dead. If the Empress, whoever she was, was trying to lead them into some kind of trap, then he could only fathom a plot so elaborate that he couldn’t imagine any actual politician thinking it would work; there was, of course, still the Emperor, but it just wasn’t Skywalker’s style. One thing you could say for the man, you always knew where you stood with him; sometimes he changed his mind about where that should be too quickly for you to react, and when that happened, then your name was never mentioned at court again and your close relatives were usually soon integrated into terrorist cells or else quietly evacuated to one of the harsh-but-habitable colony worlds just outside the fringes of the Empire’s control, but…if the Emperor had wanted to make a production out of killing them, he’d have custom-built some mechanical monstrosity to do the job, not constructed an overly-elaborate plot. Anakin Skywalker was a genius when it came to anything related to combat, aviation, or machinery generally - once, during the Wars, Bail had seen him construct a crude-but-operational drone from essentially nothing but scrap metal and broken wires in order to get a message out of a particularly tricky situation - but the incredibly fine adjustments he could make to droids had not come with much of a corresponding ability to do the same to people. He could put on a good show for an hour or so on the holovids, but if he’d discovered their involvement in various plots against him over the years, then either they’d have ended up very artistically deconstructed by assassin droids or else he’d have just stabbed them both himself and been done with it. If there was any trickery here, then it had to be Padmé behind it, and there was simply nothing here that made enough sense for him to attribute it to Padmé or anyone who even reasonably resembled her. The Naboo could be a touch overly-clever for his taste, but they were rather known for turning out effective political operatives, not simply bizarre ones.

Maybe, sometimes, things just went wrong even in the Imperial machine. Perhaps sometimes a child did take it into her head, for whatever reason, to run away from home on her own, with absolutely no regard for politics. Perhaps, somewhere in the midst of the power and madness of the Emperor and the power and sometimes brutal sanity of the Empress, there were still some - fragments left of Anakin and Padmé - of people he’d once known and liked, merely dealing with the perfectly ordinary situation of a rebellious teenager with the perfectly abnormal resources at their disposal….

Or perhaps he was being sentimental. But either way, there was nothing he could do about it now.

”Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing. We made it another day. We’ll be here to see it if tomorrow is better. That’s what matters.”

* * * * * * * *

“We have a problem,” Dormé said, standing close by Sabé‘s side so they could converse as quietly as possible. Neither of them knew if Alderaan’s ruling couple bugged the even semi-public areas of their own home the way Sabé herself did, back on Coruscant, but it seemed likely enough to warrant the precaution.

”Tell me something I don’t know,” Sabé replied, just as quietly.

”I’m afraid that Leia’s coming here might not be as random as we’d first thought.” Sabé turned to stare at her. “I brought the girls with me - “

”The entire finishing school group?”

”I had no idea what we were walking into," said Dormé, a touch defensively. "I wanted to have eyes and ears on hand if we needed them. That’s why I also brought Rabé and Eirtaé - they’re presumably still gathering information for us right now. The girls, on the other hand….”

Dormé paused, evidently needing a moment to find the next right thing to say - as if this day hadn’t already been terrifying enough. Sabé decided she was too tired to care about social niceties. “What have they done?”

”The girls have all been worried about Velena and Leia, and - well, they’re handmaidens; they were all chosen in part because we believed they could take the initiative. This time, they…took more of it than I would have advised, and the girl we took on as an analyst started slicing into the palace networks.” Sabé must have looked as horrified as she felt, because Dormé was quick to add that, ”she did stop, though, once she was far enough along to tell that someone else already had.” Sabé closed her eyes, as if that would somehow block out what she’d just heard. “Though to hear - our girl - tell it, the other person didn’t so much slice inti the network as make their way through a maze with a turbolaser.”

Sabé swallowed, a scrap of memory coming to her. “Anakin said something earlier about how Bail needed to mend his firewalls,” she said. “And about Leia not wanting us all to know what she was doing with the computer.”

Dormé nodded, looking grim but resigned. “We couldn't be that lucky, could we? It had to be her.”

”It gets better. His Majesty found a loophole in the New Constitution earlier,” Sabé informed her dryly. “The Imperial bureaucracy may not be allowed to ask for too much confidential information from a subject system, but it says nothing about the Emperor personally telling an individual planetary leader or two to give him access to whatever he wants.”

Dormé winced. “I suppose I should be fair," she muttered, "and acknowledge that Leia and her girls have probably already demolished relations between us and Alderaan for the foreseeable future anyway - but he would have to make things worse - “

”What can I say,” said the man himself, behind them. “It’s a gift.”

Dormé froze in place and Sabé winced. She had expected him to feel perfectly comfortable walking into the room without knocking, but she’d forgotten exactly how quiet he could be about it.

”Dormé. A pleasure, as always.” He raised an eyebrow - the scarred one - at Sabé. “I didn’t catch all of that, but I’m assuming from the part about me making things worse that you didn’t get anything we would actually want to hear out of Breha Organa.”

”I suppose that depends on your point of view. I can’t say I was eager to find out anything incriminating against either of them. You couldn’t exactly respond the way you usually do when we’re this close to home.”

”Oh, I don’t know. Some of our nearer neighbors could probably do with a demonstration or two of why they shouldn’t cross me.”

He almost sounded amused by the prospect. She wished she could still convince herself that such things were not possible. "I can name ten systems that would be in open rebellion within a few days,” she told him. “And that’s before the Hutts start pouring credits into the situation to get back at us for the Outer Rim reforms.” Fear was, ultimately, a tool every government used to one degree or another, but it was one that had to be carefully balanced with rewards for obedience, and do not put your enemy in a position where he’ll have nothing left to lose had been an established rule of warfare since before the foundation of the Old Republic. An enemy who saw some potential for survival would, after a certain point, retreat; one which had its back against the wall would usually turn savage, determined to make its inevitable defeat as costly for the victors as possible. She hoped he hadn't been talking to that idiot Tarkin again; his proposals had the potential to turn the entire galaxy into a collection of enemies with, at the very least, not enough left to lose, but Anakin insisted on maintaining an odd degree or something like respect for the man….

“The last thing we need when Leia’s already in the wind is for a few spice kingpins to increase the prices on all three of our heads again, much less for them to do it when we'd already have twelve fronts a day opening, no matter how quickly we close the ones from the day before.”

”Twelve fronts? We were fighting on twelve hundred during the Wars - “

” - Which were a three-year-long bloodbath that eliminated both of the super-governments that started fighting in the first place," she cut him off, still with as little emotion as she could manage. "And that was the least of the damage they did. I have not worked all these years just to leave Leia with the same mess to clean up that we had after we took charge. Wasn't that your excuse for why we should do any of this? To make things the way you thought they were supposed to be? The way you thought - she - would think they were supposed to be?"

She didn't need to clarify which 'she' was under discussion now; the look he gave her when she said it let her know clearly enough that the point had gotten across. "Don't you throw her in my face."

"Am I wrong?"

His expression darkened, and she braced for an outburst - but he surprised her. “No," he said, in a much more level tone than she would have expected. "No, you're not. In the big picture, anyway.” His voice began to rise and sharpen, though, as he continued talking. “In the smaller picture, the one we're looking at right now? I want my daughter back, and I don't care what - or who - it costs. If I need to suspend the Constitution, or the Senate, or turn this city into a sheet of glass to make it happen, I will. I don't care. I just - " 

He faltered, then, as something worse than fear broke through the anger. Something that Sabé strongly suspected was what the ancient masters had meant when they'd said to never leave an enemy without some means of escape during a direct confrontation. 

"I cannot do - that again. I will not. Do you understand?"

She thought she did - probably better than he understood himself. He wasn't afraid of losing Leia for her sake, but for his own. Because Leia was all he had left, and he could not - would not - tolerate another loss. Because he was, underneath it all, too weak to handle it. The only thing standing between her and a contempt strong enough to break the galaxy was the knowledge that she was no stronger. 

"Perfectly," she said coolly. A way out for him - because if he didn't have a way out, then neither did she. The ancients hadn't written about how the enemy you pushed into a corner could be yourself, much less what would happen in such a circumstance, but she couldn't imagine it would be anything good. 

* * * * * * * *

The girls looked uneasy as they climbed into the same shuttle Dormé had brought them to Alderaan on, and being waved toward seats in the tiny lounge instead of the more secure ones used for takeoff and landing did not seem to reassure them too much. This was understandable in light of who was already seated there: she was far from her most gloriously impractical still, but nobody was going to mistake Sabé for anyone other than the Empress now. She was not heavily made up, but Dormé, post-debriefing, had taken extra care with the contour palette to ensure that she looked as much like Padmé as possible, and she had done her hair. Simply, by Naboo standards at least, but nobody else on Alderaan would wear her hair arranged that way or with a golden filigreed tiara set with large carved pieces of coral. Nor was anyone else especially likely to have a strand of pearls the size of small grapes falling from her neck to almost her waist, hopefully distracting some of the attention away from how relatively plain her maroon gown, with only a few wide bands of golden embroidery to distinguish it, was.

The corals were too bright compared to the dress - but there was only so much that even she could do, given how little notice she'd had that what she'd assumed was going to be the simplest sort of diplomatic mission, optically speaking, had actually turned into a full-blown crisis. In context, though, she supposed that the exact color match between Sabé's tiara and dress was probably the least of the optics issues involved in this meeting.... 

Sometimes, though, privacy was at least as important as optics, and it was entirely possible that the minor insult to the Organas implicit in having a meeting with staff members on one of their own ships instead of inside the palace would go completely unnoticed anyway. Bail and Breha seemed content to stay to themselves even now that they were no longer under imperial guard, and this was not supposed to be a long meeting. 

"Your Majesty," each girl murmured as she noticed the woman waiting for them, words overlapping at the edges as they curtsied, at least as well as they could in the relatively confined space. Dormé suspected they would have knelt, had she not already told them to sit; she forgot, sometimes, how intimidating Sabé could be to people who weren't used to her, which a clutch of parochial gentlewomen most assuredly were not. 

"Girls," Sabé replied, acknowledging them as one. "Sit, please." There was a slight shift in the set of her eyes, and suddenly, the mask settled completely: there was no-one left in the circle besides them and Amidala. Sabé had, for all intents and purposes, temporarily ceased to exist. "Lady Dormé tells me that you've been - concerned - about the welfare of the Grand Princess since she left you, and that you were eager to find out the truth of the situation when given a chance. That is good." A slight stir went through the five teenagers; they had not expected praise, not even delivered in Amidala's voice, which made almost anything she said sound like a pronouncement of judgment. "That is why I am not angry with you right now, in light of the...issue Lady Dormé tells me you unearthed, and how she tells me you unearthed it. We should have anticipated what you would do, as we might have done much the same ourselves, long ago." 

By 'we,' of course, she meant 'Dormé.'  Amidala had matters far more serious than a gaggle of future Handmaidens on her mind, and it was more than a little absurd for her to take any part of the responsibility for the mistake that had been made. Dormé loved her friend for the kindness, but couldn't approve of such indulgences being handed around by the Empress. Sabé was leaning on her too openly for her liking at the moment, here, where they were never really out of public view. The last thing Amidala needed was for rumors to spread that she needed the support; any show of weakness, and the endless number of factions within the court which would rather see someone else appointed as the Emperor's proxy would eat them all alive.

If the girls noticed the discrepancy, though, none of them reacted to it; Dormé was fairly certain they were all too cowed by the Imperial presence to have really noticed.

"You were also wise, to realize when you should stop - however painful it might have been for you." This with something akin to the ghost of a smile in Kanna's direction; not being allowed to tend to the network had genuinely distressed the girl, but she had obeyed, at least thus far. "That is also good. Under normal circumstances, I would be entirely pleased with you all - but what we have are not normal circumstances.” The Empress looked around the semicircle, no hint of anything but sternness in her demeanor, now. "This is not a test. This is not a challenge. I am being as direct right now as I possibly can be. I am ordering you, by my authority as Empress, to stand down unless and until you receive a direct order from me or one of my aides to do otherwise. Or one from His Majesty the Emperor, in the unlikely event that should happen. Until such a time, do not speculate about what is going on. Do not discuss it, not even among yourselves. Be my eyes and ears; if you see something that stands out to you, then all you do is transmit that information to me. Do not try to do anything with it yourselves. Do you all understand me?" The girls murmured frightened-sounding assents, and the judicial mask softened slightly. “But make no mistake - I appreciate your concern for my daughter, and I won't forget it. His Majesty and I will be glad to have girls like you around the Princess when she returns to us. You all have skills you can practice harmlessly enough in the meantime, and I recommend you do that."

"Yes, Majesty," five voices murmured in all but reverential unison. Dormé found their faces more interesting than their voices, though. Riya was clearly speaking in earnest, and if Carré wasn't, then she was doing a very good impression of it. Karin and Faraé were anxious, Karin especially, which made sense, given the degree of her sister's involvement in this affair. All of these responses were good and proper. Technically, it was also good and proper that Kanna should remain unreadable, but at the moment, Dormé would have preferred it if the girl had shown more expression, just this once. At Dormé's nod, all five rose and curtsied deeply, bumping into each other's skirts as they did.

"Very good. Before I dismiss you, do you have any questions? Here and now - " the emphasis on the words was subtle, but unmistakable - "you may ask whatever you wish, and we will all forget about any questions you ask that I choose not to answer, as though they had never been. But only here, and only now."

The gravity of the group shifted ever so slightly, so that Carré was now at the center of it again. Even she, however, was not as comfortable taking the lead now as she had generally become since they'd lost Velena, and had to pause to wet her lips before she could finish speaking on everyone's behalf. 

"Is - if it pleases your Majesty to tell us - is Her Imperial Highness well? And - one of our number disappeared the same day as her Highness. Are they together?"

"I saw the Grand Princess briefly, and she appeared unharmed. Senator Organa also assures me that he has seen nothing to indicate she is unwell since she arrived on Alderaan." Dormé suspected Bail might not technically stand by that statement now, not after the sheer madness of Leia's decision to abduct Padmah, but the girls didn't need to know about that yet, if ever. "I'm told she has several companions who seem to serve her well, or at least well enough for the moment. Anything else?"

Nobody spoke up, though Dormé thought for a moment that Kanna might, and that she might do so to call the Empress out on how she had sidestepped the question about Velena Merron. Fortunately for them all, though, she repressed the urge, and so the silence stretched on for several seconds before Sabé said, "good. Return, now, to your quarters, and wait for further instructions."

"Yes, Majesty." "Thank you, your Majesty." Five voices almost in synchronization; five more curtsies the lounge area had not really been constructed for - and then they made what Dormé could only think of as a tactical retreat, falling back faster than they had come in, with only just enough control to maintain their dignity. Dormé still, however, went to a viewport and watched until she was sure all five girls were inside and completely out of eavesdropping range before she spoke again. 

"That went...as well as I had hoped for," she said finally. 

Amidala relaxed imperceptibly, and was once again just Sabé in fancy dress. "Yes. Now to hope they stick to even the essential orders." She managed a half-smile. "A group of teenage girls is going to speculate and discuss their speculations, no matter who tells them not to - but I hope I was able to at least terrify them into discretion."

"With any luck," Dormé agreed. "Do you not intend to tell them anything about Velena, then?"

Sabé looked, momentarily, almost embarrassed. "Probably not - but at the moment, I wouldn't know what to tell them if I wanted to. If you told me already, I don't remember it. Is she alive?" 

"I haven't heard any reports to the contrary, so I assume so."

"Good. This is already enough of a disaster with how much damage she apparently did to the palace - the last thing we need is someone that close to Leia dying in someone else's court." She started to remove her tiara, and then stopped short as another thought occurred to her. "And, of course, it's just...better if nobody dies."

Dormé nodded, and let it slide how it had clearly taken Sabé a moment to remember that the diplomatic headache was, after all, also a fifteen-year-old girl who'd been entrusted to their care. The mask of the Empress stuck too tightly, sometimes; it resisted some of Sabé's efforts to remove it, and given the amount of stress Sabé was under right now, Dormé was not completely sure that was a bad thing. If some lingering traces of Amidala were the glue that held everything together, then so be it, so long as the center held. If Sabé faltered now....

But it's my job to make sure she doesn't, she reminded herself. That was the system: Sabé put on the mask, and Dormé made sure it stayed in place as long as they needed it to, and they propped each other up when it started to seem likely that either of them might lose her footing. If Sabé fell, then they all went with her, which was why Dormé could not allow her to ever fall. 

Chapter Text

"Well, kid, your mystery source was right about one thing," said M'renn. "There's definitely either a planet here, or else a very big space station." 

"It's got to be a planet," said Padmah. They all glanced at her and she scowled at them. "Think about it logically," she added tartly. "The only person who could possibly build something that big would be the Emperor, and using that much money to build a space station would be stupid, so the Empress probably wouldn't approve it unless he went over her head, and when was the last time he did that?"

Everyone looked at Leia, who shrugged, feeling more than a bit stupid. 

"My parents don't make it a habit to have disagreements in front of me," she said.

"I'm pretty sure it helps that your father is usually away...doing...whatever he does," said Padmah, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She had been brushing it out when M'renn had called for Leia, and it was still hanging loose around her shoulders. Her head looked sort of strange now, after Leia had gotten almost used to the copper earmuffs. "Assuming it's not just avoiding you and your mother."

"Your father was the only member of your family that I recognized on Alderaan," Leia replied with what was technically a smile. "Is that because of you and your mother?"

"Hey!" Durdo barked. "Yousa girls, you shut up now, we're entering atmosphere - " 

Leia and Padmah both turned to glare at the Gungan, but he was paying them no attention for reasons that rapidly became apparent. It wasn't as obvious from space, but the closer they came to the atmosphere, the more difficult it became to tell they were even looking at a terrestrial planet.

"Visibility's disappearing as soon as we're in the atmosphere," M'renn muttered. "Can't tell if it's fog all the way down, or if this is some planetary defense system I've never heard of, or - "

"So how are we supposed to find where the landing docks are?" Padmah demanded, squinting as they continued their descent into what looked like impossibly dense fog on all sides. 

"We don't," said M'renn. "Unless the entire sensor array's had another nervous breakdown, which I don't think it has, there aren't any docks. Can't imagine why they'd bother having docks without having anything around them, but unless they're all on the dark side of the planet, there's nothing that even resembles civilization showing up - "

"So there's nobody alive down there?"

"There's-a plenty alive down there," said Durdo. "But whatever it is, it's not living in palaces, or anywhere between here and the grou - "

There was a loud crack, and they all fell silent as they looked in disbelief at its source: it was nowhere near strong enough to break through the viewscreen of even a light spacecraft, but they’d just been hit by what was almost definitely a tree branch. They only had a few minutes to gape at that, though, before they were flying into what looked like a tangle of vines. 

"This not a good sign," Durdo informed them all flatly.

"I swear, kid, if my ship doesn't make it out of this in one piece - " M'renn said threateningly as she worked the controls. 

"Then we're all going to be dead and it won't matter?" Padmah shrieked. 

"I'm going to have to insist you two go strap yourselves in," said Book, looking between Leia and Padmah. When they didn't move, he proceeded to clamp a large, lightly-armored hand on each royal shoulder so he could steer them in the correct direction whether they wanted to go or not. Leia had enough experience with her guards putting her where they wanted her to be that she didn't think much of it, but Padmah looked like she was about to throw a fit. "I think this is going to be a rough ride...." 

* * * * * * * *

In the end, they came to a halt in a position where their feet were closer to the planet’s surface than their heads were. Leia couldn't tell if they had really landed or if they had just crashed, but at least they were upright. 

M'renn's voice came back to Leia and Padmah and Book as she said, "Well, on the bright side, if there is an Alderaanian death squad here, it's going to have a hell of a time finding us, first." 

"On the not-so-bright side..." said Book.

"Don't know how we're supposed to find anything else, either. Or what there is to find, if the planet's covered with life-forms and no buildings...." 

"It's-a swamp," said Durdo, and, to Leia's surprise, the Gungan almost sounded cheerful. Since when did Durdo know how to sound cheerful? "Of course there's lotsa life-signs. And cities wouldn't show up on yoursa sensors, M'renn, if they're underwater." 

"Why would anyone build a city underwater?" asked Padmah, unfastening herself slowly, apparently not quite sure that she was really no longer at risk from the vehicle itself yet. 

"You'd be surprised how many species build underground," said Book. "Mostly tunnel systems underground in hostile environments, but you get water-worlds, too, where you'll find sapients underwater - of course, a lot of those are too large to fit in anything we'd recognize as a city, but you do hear of 'em." He made a face. "I was created to serve the Empire - but I always was glad that nobody ever decided to put me in the seatroopers." 

"It might have come in handy now, though," Leia pointed out, peering through a viewport at the landscape beyond. There had to be solid land somewhere, because otherwise it didn't make sense to see...at least apparently immobile trees, but it was hard to credit it just based on what she could see from here....

"Yousa best hope not, Leané," said Durdo. He had yet to get the hang of using either her real name or her title. Padmah was consistently 'Princess Padmah,' but it seemed he was either unwilling or unable to fully accept who Leia really was. "This isn't good water for living in here. Gotta be monsters in it." 

"How reassuring," muttered Padmah. Leia pretended not to hear her. 

"You want to take the lead, Durdo?" asked M'renn as she started lowering the ramp, allowing the unpleasant smell of swamp water to flood into the ship. "You might have a better idea how to avoid the monsters than we do."

"That I can do," Durdo agreed. "Except...where's we supposed to go?"

And once again, everyone was looking at Leia. Once again, Leia felt more than a little stupid, or at least like she should expect to start feeling stupid at any moment, but she hid it as best she could. 

"We'll take the lead," she said to Durdo, assuming the voice of the Imperial Princess. On the somewhat rare occasions she got to use it on anyone outside her immediate household, that voice tended to get people to do what she said without asking too many questions. She had no idea where she was going to lead them, after all, and she knew that she really, really did not want to know how they would respond to that information. 

One good thing about landing in a swamp, at least, was that they could only move very slowly. This helped her conceal the problem of not knowing where she was going, at least for a little longer, while she tried to think of a plan that the others would probably not mutiny upon hearing. Would it work to say she was using the Force? Because if she was using anything at all, that was it: just...sensing her way ahead, reaching out with her feelings to try to find something that seemed like a good goal and pointing Durdo in that direction while the rest crept carefully along behind them. Everyone was afraid to make noise, at least at first - after a few minutes, Padmah lost her footing and fell into mud that turned out to be a lot less solid than it had looked at first glance with a shriek. Book hauled her back upright before she could get in, quite literally, over her head, but she still looked like she was about to cry as she tried to wipe mud off of her arms and legs, shivering in a way that even a dunking didn't explain, at least not in the damp heat of their surroundings. 

“I have a bad feeling about this place,” M’renn muttered, now that there was no more point in trying for stealth; even sound seemed a little muffled in this murk, but Padmah had probably drawn any attention there was on hand to them anyway. "Only reason I'm not going back right now is because nobody with sense dumps the bodies somewhere like this - sometimes it preserves them too long, they say."

“It’s-a not so bad here,” Durdo disagreed. The Gungan was, at the very least, finding navigation through the swamp easier than any of the humans did, and he was still using a tone that wouldn't have been appropriate for announcing a death to the Senate. “Reminds mesa of home, a little.”

”Didn’t you leave home voluntarily?” asked Book. Just the process of walking through the swamp had started wearing away at the color of his white armor, but he was really a mess since he'd rescued Padmah; Leia just hoped that none of the mud had gotten anywhere near his blasters, where it could make them stop working properly.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and Leia glanced back to see Padmah looking warily into the trees. She followed the other girl’s line of sight and quickly saw what must have gotten her attention.

”I think I’m going to have to agree with M’renn,” Leia said slowly. “It feels…strange, here.” She slipped one hand into her bag, and her fingers almost immediately found her lightsaber handle. “It feels like…we’re being watched.”

She nodded, and M’renn pulled aside a tangle of foliage just as Leia switched on the blade. For a split second, she saw wide blue eyes go even wider with surprise, but their owner recovered quickly from his surprise and landed lightly on his feet in front of them, so she could get a clear look at the bizarre picture he presented. 

He was taller than her or Padmah, and had the sort of weathered look of someone who had spent too much of his time out of doors, but she thought he was about the same age as them. He had blond hair, which for the most part had been cut short by a none-too-skillful hand, all except for one long, thin piece which reached his shoulder and seemed to be twisted into a braid. For clothes, he had coarse, roughly made brown robes. He did not smile, but there was something affable about his expression anyway as he looked over them all with open curiosity bordering on fascination.

”Hello," he said. "Who are you, and why are all of you here? Did you mean to be here?"

It was, Leia supposed, a fair enough question.

"That's not your concern," she said, slipping into the mask of the ice princess, her best imitation of Amidala, so she could hopefully reassert some control over the situation. It was a fair question, but she was still not eager to elaborate on why they were here where anyone else could hear, much less to do so to strangers. 

The boy frowned, but he looked more puzzled than annoyed, seemingly unperturbed by her rudeness. "Of course it's my concern," he objected. "This is my home. And if you aren't more careful in it, something is going to eat you pretty soon, because I can see none of you except - that individual - knows anything about this sort of terrain." He did smile, politely, at Durdo then. "Hello. I've never seen anyone like you before, but I'm assuming your kind is from somewhere that's like here?"

"Wesa Gungans," said Durdo. "Lake people. But we come up, use the swampy parts to hunt in. Yousa got lake cities here?" he asked, sounding almost hopeful.

"Oh, no," the boy said, and Durdo's ears slumped back into their usual, gloomy position. "Nothing like that - at least, not as far as I know. I don't think I've seen the entire planet. I have seen a lot of it, though, and I've never seen a city in a lake - or anywhere else. I've only heard a little about them, even. Will you tell me what they're like?"

"Maybe," said Leia. "If you can give us directions. We're looking for intelligent beings who are supposed to have things to teach me." Since he was apparently an intelligent being and she could not imagine learning much from him, she was starting to feel uneasy; she was sure that the dream had included the detail that there were only two people here. Had she led them all astray? 

"If you mean people who can speak, there aren't many of those on Dagobah," the boy said, a little wistfully. "Just me and my master. But he's a great teacher. Have you come to learn from him, then? You're going to stay for a while?" he asked hopefully.

"I'm...not sure what your master could teach me that I'd need to know," Leia observed, looking him over again.

He grinned, seemingly unoffended by anything. "He could teach you how to use that," he said, pointing to her lightsaber. 

She felt a cold tingle down her spine that had nothing to do with the fear of what might be trying to climb down her back from her collar. Something was - wrong, here. Something wasn't right....

"I know how to use it already, thank you," she said, and his face lit up. 

"You do? So you can talk and you can spar with me?" And then, to her astonishment, he, too, produced a lightsaber hilt to show her. "This is wonderful! Who's your master?" He looked eagerly between the adults, even including the Gungan. "You're not old enough to be a Jedi yet." 

Padmah gasped at the word; Book stiffened and adjusted his grip on his blaster, looking around warily at the surrounding trees and vines and mudholes for any hint that they were about to be attacked by a cadre of Force-sensitive traitors to the Empire. M'renn and Durdo just stared. 

"Of course not," Leia said coldly. "The Jedi were traitors. They killed my brother, and they tried to kill my father and mother and me so they could take over the galaxy." She adjusted her grip on her sword. "Are you saying this - master - of yours is one of them?"

For the first time, the affability the boy practically projected in a wide sphere of cheerfulness around him faded. "Well, of course," he said, and this time, he was offended. "Master Yoda was the grandmaster of the Order. But you must be mistaken about your family. The Jedi were peacekeepers. Killing people's families and taking over the galaxy is what the Sith do. They killed my father."

"Then you must be a lot older than you look," said Leia. "My father told me there aren't any more Jedi or Sith. Darth Vader slew Darth Sidious before he could learn from him, and that was the end of their order." 

The bizarre person in front of her suddenly brightened again, a little. "Oh, so Vader hasn't taken an apprentice yet? I'm so glad. I was afraid you might be his apprentice, for a moment, and I really don't want to have to kill you."

Leia's hands moved before she could think, swinging the blade up in front of her into a defensive stance. Book had moved, too, so that his blaster was now trained directly on the kid, who he was harshly ordering to put the weapon down. The boy continued to look confused, as though this was all some big misunderstanding that they'd all sort out any moment now and laugh about later. And then, in the midst of the increasingly tense moment, Leia...froze.

It wasn't anything that he had said, or even what he looked like, really. It was the way he said it, and something about his expression. Her brain raced, trying to catch up with the rest of her and stop her tongue, but before it could, she'd already spoken.

"Luke?"

Book and the boy both turned to look at her in astonishment. She was pretty sure Padmah and M'renn and Durdo were staring at her in just as much astonishment, but she couldn't see them. Her heart was pounding violently, and it felt like the world was narrowing, everything in her peripheral vision falling away as her eyes focused on the only person who mattered, who finally closed his mouth from gaping at her and smiled brightly. 

"Hey, that's my name! How did yo - " 

But then he stopped, too, and blinked. "I do know you," he said, his voice suddenly sounding strange without its customary upbeat note. He sounded like he was talking about a dream while still half-inside it. "I don't remember how, but - I know you. Don't I?" 

"Your sister, she is," an ancient, croaky voice said, sounding resigned.

Leia looked around, saw Luke looking down, and looked down as well as a tiny humanoid shuffled out from the decaying greenery behind Luke. It was an alien, green-skinned and white-haired, wearing the same rough robes as Luke and leaning on a walking stick and standing no higher than Book's waist. "Welcome here, she is not - but your sister, she is." 

"What?" asked Luke, but the question was lost as all hell broke loose.

"Traitor!"

By the time Book finished the word, though, both Luke and the creature had ignited green lightsabers. This was not, in Leia's estimation, a smart thing for them to have done, because Book, without the slightest hint of hesitation, started shooting at them, or at least at the alien while Luke threw himself into the situation, as if it needed more complications. Trees exploded into soggy splinters as blaster bolts were deflected by the two lightsabers; Padmah almost did the same, and M'renn and Durdo both had blasters out, now, too, both looking unsure who they should shoot but pretty confident that it would be a good idea to shoot somebody - 

”Book!” Leia screamed. “Book, sto - “

But Book had already, it seemed, realized how close he’d just come to killing the Grand Prince, and he stopped shooting at almost the same moment she started screaming, though he was still clinging to his blaster for dear life. He looked horrified and - frightened, somehow, and, worst of all, confused, all at once; it was a look Leia had never seen on any of her guards before, much less from Book.

It had been her fault, one of the times Book had almost died. She had still been learning protocol, back then, and she hadn't done what she was supposed to do during an assassination attempt; instead, she had frozen in place, refusing to move, and he'd gotten shot twice shielding her while still assisting the others in shooting back at the threat actor. All she really remembered was how she hadn't wanted the others to take her away from him, because he'd still been the calmest person in sight; she hadn't realized how serious the situation had been until her father had come home and she'd realized that he'd only done so because of the attempt on her life - because it had frightened him. It had been a long time before Book was able to return to duty, and she could only assume he had done so completely voluntarily, because there had been a big ceremony just before that where her parents had both give Book lots of medals and a sum of money which had made the Minister of Finance look like he had indigestion. All he'd ever said about it was that some mercenary scum getting that close to her meant he should have been paying more attention, but that he was glad to be back at work. 

Book did not lose his head in a crisis. He never really got flustered, even, at least in front of her. He certainly didn't get scared and confused. That was not how things worked...but it was how things were working right now. 

”Book,” she said for the third time, her voice wavering on the edge of any semblance of calm. “Let’s ask questions first and shoot later, okay?”

”Good soldiers follow orders,” Book said, his voice shaking, seemingly to himself. “Good soldiers….”

”Yes,” said Leia, trying to keep his attention on her, on the meaning of what he’d just said. “Good soldiers follow orders, Book. And I’m giving you orders to not shoot at that person yet.” The word ‘yet’ was crucial here. “If there’s any chance this really is Luke - “

”His fault it is not,” the ancient creature proclaimed, and then, to Leia’s surprise, it spoke to Book directly. “Young you would have been, when the Wars ended - but the order you heard, did you not? But now, it is not the Republic you serve, hmm? No longer does that exist. Nor is there a Jedi Order that could try to harm your master, even if it wanted to. It is not logical to attack a group that does not exist for betraying a government that does not exist.”

“No.” Book seemed to struggle with something, something invisible but huge and immensely strong, and then, to Leia's relief, he started to sound a little more like himself, a little less like he was reading lines poorly from a script, as he added, “but I know your face, Jedi, from after the foundation of the Empire. We all learned to remember it after you kidnapped Prince Luke - “

”A Jedi, I was, once," the creature sighed. "But rescue Luke from the Emperor myself, I could not.”

"Rescue?!" Leia snapped - probably too loudly, but her head was spinning and the smoke from the already half-drowned fires the blaster bolts had started was making it harder to breathe and also - "What do you mean, rescue?" 

"Important is he," the creature said, and for the first time, something like warmth crept into its tone. "My last student, he is. Bring balance to the Force, he will." 

"Great," said Leia. "Couldn't he do that without you kidnapping him when we were three and dragging him off to this - this - " she gestured at Dagobah broadly with one arm. "This disgusting swamp?!" 

"I thought it was the Emperor who kidnapped me?" Luke looked extremely confused. "After he killed my father. Our father, I mean." 

Leia stared at him and wondered for a moment if any of this was real, or if she was dreaming it all up in a brain fever. "No, Luke," she said. "The Emperor didn't kill our father. The Emperor is our father." 

"What? No!" Luke's eyes had gone wide with horror. "Don't say things like that, Leia - that's - that's impossible!" 

Leia knew she must have almost the same look he did on her own face - that, despite their coloring, she and Luke were definitely recognizable as siblings now. She heard Book swearing repeatedly under his breath - he, too, must have noticed that Luke had just used Leia's name before anyone else mentioned it. They really had just done what multiple armies had failed to do - they had found Luke. This really was her brother. And he was completely, probably irrecoverably, insane. 

* * * * * * * *

I, Padmah, Princess of Alderaan, write this with my own hand.

Today is almost as terrible as the day when I was first kidnapped. We found GP Leia’s mystery planet, and then we crashed into it. It is a horrible, stinking place full of rotting trees and dirty water and mud and insects. I fell into something that was not quite water or mud. Leia’s guard rescued me - from that and who knows what else, if the Gungan was right about the dirty water being full of monsters. I am glad to say I didn’t stay in it long enough to find out. 

I still think that HIH doesn’t really know what she’s doing, but we did eventually find something. Somethings. The first thing we found was a Boy. He was very polite, and might be handsome if he didn’t have such a stupid haircut, but he is very strange. That, I suppose, is because he was raised by the second thing, which found us: a very old green alien named Yoda. The way he talks is almost as strange as Durdo the Gungan - he puts verbs everywhere except where they should go. I am not sure why the Boy does not talk like that, since he has supposedly been here since he was three. Of course, he is also supposedly Grand Prince Luke!!!!

Right now we are back on the ship, since the hut that Yoda and Luke live in is very small and there isn’t really room for all of us to sit down there. There isn’t really enough room for us all to sit down here, either, but it’s better than the alternative. M'renn made a pot of tea. I told her I thought that this situation might be too serious for tea, but she said it couldn't hurt, anyway, and I see her point. This tea is not good, not like we have at home, but it is hot and gives us all something to fill silences with.

Leia’s guard worries me; as soon as he saw Master Yoda, he started shouting about treason and trying to shoot people!!! And nearly shot me by mistake when Luke and Yoda took out electrical sword things like Leia and the Emperor have and deflected all the blaster bolts with them. That wasn’t all, though - he turned sort of…strange…when he did it. As though some switch flipped inside his head and someone else was in charge for a moment. And even now, he still seems…off. Jumpy. I have only had the displeasure of his acquaintance for a few days, but this is not what is normal for him. I must say, I really wish Leia would not let him have all those blasters tonight. If he has gone mad, then we might all be murdered in our beds (if you can really call these beds).

Of course, if the alternative is continuing to listen to Yoda and Leia arguing, I might not mind being murdered in my bed so much. I think Prince Luke has also gone mad, which makes sense if he has really been living here for eleven years, and I think Master Yoda is also mad, and Leia seems to think that mad people will somehow understand her better if she repeats everything louder, and if I have to listen to it all much longer, I think I might go mad, too. How many mad people can one swamp hold, realistically?

Leia’s teacup hit the table with an audible click, hard enough that some tea spilled over the edge - tea surely gone cold by now, since Padmah hadn’t seen her take a sip from it yet. She didn’t seem to notice as she glared at her brother.

”Luke,” she said. “He’s - “ this with an accusatory point toward Master Yoda “ - been lying to you about everything all your life. If you say ‘Master Yoda says’ one more time, I’m going to scream.”

Master Yoda sat up a bit straighter, his pointy, white-tufted ears twitching. “Lie, I did not,” he said indignantly. “When a Jedi falls to the Dark Side - then he is more lost than if only his body had died. Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi was - though he should not have been - but the Emperor is not him. Darth Vader he is, and defeat him, Luke must.” Yoda narrowed his eyes at her and added, “and lies you have also been told, hmm? His shadow consort - she is not Padmé Amidala in mind or body, and Master Obi-Wan tells me that you know this now.”

Leia went very white while Padmah, her eyes widening, leaned toward the scene as though she might have heard wrong; from the corner of her eye, she could see Durdo and M’renn doing much the same. What in the world was the old one talking about? Had he lost his wits? Of course the Empress was Padmé Amidala. Padmah's father had known her Before, as a Senator. He would have noticed at some point if she was suddenly someone else, wouldn't he?

”Who or what,” Leia said, in clipped tones that immediately let Padmah know that what the old alien said - bizarre as it might sound - was true, “is a Master Obi-Wan?”

”Know him already, you do. I told him that to send you here would be to put all of our plans in great danger, but bah - listen, I see, he did not.”

“All of your plans,” Leia repeated coldly. “All your plans to murder my family, you mean? His family?” And this time, she pointed, just as accusingly, at Prince Luke, who was a picture of misery. He looked so exactly like a sad puppy would if it were a human being that Padmah wanted to go pat him on the head and assure him everything would be all right. “You knew who I was without anyone telling you,” she added, now looking at her brother. It was odd - at first glance, they really didn’t look alike at all, but a second look showed that they did have almost the same bone structure in their faces, so that the major difference was the Grand Prince’s height and golden hair. “You still remember me, a little, just like I remember you. We’re twins. If he really wanted what was best for you - " her voice cracked, just a little, as she continued. "Do you really think he would have taken you away from me?”

Prince Luke looked down at his teacup uneasily. “A Jedi doesn’t have attachments, Leia,” he mumbled. “Those lead you to the Dark Side. We probably should have been separated earlier - " 

Leia looked as if she had been first stabbed and then slapped across the face. She looked back and forth between Yoda and Luke, her lips trembling, as though she might either cry or launch into a scathing diatribe at any moment, but she couldn't, it seemed, decide who to lash out at first. Instead, then, she pushed back her seat with a loud scrape and strode out of the room, now looking like she was about to order an execution. Her guard, regardless of whatever else was wrong with him today, seemed to react automatically to this and followed her, leaving the rest of them sitting there looking at each other, at least until Padmah got up to pour herself another cup of the rough, cheap tea that M'renn and Durdo apparently drank on purpose sometimes. 

She had never been sorry that she was adopted, or thought that life would have been better if she'd known her biological parents - how could it have been? But she wasn't, she thought, sure she had ever felt quite this glad to be adopted before.

Chapter Text

When Luke had first noticed the group of strangers wandering around the swamps, it had seemed like it was going to be a wonderful day. The weather was no worse than usual, nothing had tried to eat him before breakfast, and he'd had the novelty of seeing people who weren't Master Yoda for the first time in...he wasn't exactly sure, but it had been a long time now. All of that should have added up to a wonderful day.  He had no idea how it had turned around and become horrible so quickly. 

Master Yoda looked at him sternly as he watched his sister leave, almost as though he knew Luke was considering following her. 

"A good answer you gave, Luke," he said. "Correct, you were. Dangerous, she is. Too much like her father. Too much fear, too much anger. Be careful around her, you must." 

Luke looked at his master and, for the first time he could remember, felt uncertain about something other than his ability to live up to the expectations Yoda had for him. 

No, Luke. The Emperor didn't kill our father.

Lie, I did not.

The Emperor is our father.

A thousand questions tried to bubble up to the surface, but he couldn't figure out which one to ask. He couldn't even figure out how to label the unwelcome feeling he had right now - it was a bad feeling, a wrong feeling, but there was more than one way to be bad and wrong. All he could say for sure about the kind of bad and wrong he was being right now was that he needed to - not be this way anymore. 

"May I be excused, Master?" he asked. Yoda's eyes narrowed slightly, and he quickly added, "not to follow her - I just - I need silence for a moment. To meditate. Please?" 

The old Jedi continued to look at him for what felt like an eternity, as if weighing something up, but finally, he nodded. Luke almost slumped with relief, but instead took the chance to stand up and walk away from all the people watching him as though unsure what he might do next, the way he thought they would look at any swamp creature that posed a danger to them. Outside, the world was simple. Outside, there was nothing but life and death, growth and decay, predictable cycles that ran deeper even than Master Yoda's memory, never mind mere human memory. The swamps did not really acknowledge that any of them were here, and the swamps wouldn't acknowledge it when they were all gone, either. Everything lived, and died, and then lived and died again. There was nothing - personal about it.

He had given his word, so he didn't follow Leia, or at least, try to follow Leia - his sister was already out of sight before he got outside the space ship. A real space ship! A few hours ago, just seeing this thing would have been the high point of his year. Now, though...now, he just found a mostly-intact tree stump a little way away from it and sat cross-legged on it, trying to school himself to calm and let go of the feelings that tempted him to - 

To - 

To what, exactly? He didn't feel tempted to do anything specific, either with the Force or just by himself. He was too confused to know what he should do, much less what he wanted to do. But feelings like the ones he was having...they were supposed to be temptations. Temptations of the Dark Side. The way that seemed quicker and easier, at first, but which would finally betray anyone who walked its path....

"It's funny," a girl's voice said behind him, making him jump in surprise. "Oh - sorry." A pause and then, with a hint of question in the words, "Your Highness."

Luke shuddered at the words. "Please don't call me that," he said. "I'm not - I'm not anything like that. I'm...just Luke." 

There was another pause, but then, to his relief, she said, "If you say so, Just Luke. I'm Padmah." She drifted into his field of vision, a bizarre tropical bird in her deep blue dress and with her hair...it was her hair that fascinated him the most. He had never seen any creature, that he could remember, with hair such a color before - it was as if she had taken part of a sunset and draped it over her head and shoulders. Even in the dim near-twilight, which was very dim indeed on Dagobah, he thought the light sparkled off of it in places. It was hard to stop looking at it.

"What?" she asked after a moment, after selecting her own log to perch on. "Do I still have mud on my face?"

"Oh, n - no," he said, almost tripping over one of the shortest words in existence in his embarrassment. “I’m sorry - I’ve just - never seen anyone with hair like yours. It’s beautiful.”

”Oh!” She turned red and looked at her lap. “Thank you.” She fidgeted a little, as though completely unsure how to proceed, but collected herself quickly. “What I was saying…it’s funny how Leia and Master Yoda talk about you, when you’re sitting right there.”

"I don't know what to say to them," he admitted. She remained quiet and he found himself talking to fill the silence. "It doesn't make any sense. It's like Leia grew up in another world."

Padmah looked off into the distance. "I've been to Coruscant a few times," she said. "It's definitely a very different world from this." He chuckled and she ducked her head as though embarrassed again, but she smiled too. Luke thought she might be the most interesting being he'd ever seen. It was like she was constantly feeling or thinking two things at once, all of them unpredictable. 

"You know what I meant," he said, still smiling.

"Yes. Sorry. I couldn't help myself." 

"It's okay," he assured her, but grew serious again as he added, "I guess I meant - different realities. It's like everything she's learned about how everything works, I was taught the opposite, and now - " he hesitated, but he had gone this far already - "now, I don't know what to believe." Somewhere, far away, two swamp-birds called out to each other. He hoped their attempts to communicate were going better than his were today. "I've never doubted Master Yoda in my life - but Leia's been in the world, she's known all these people. And she's my sister. I don't think she's lying to me." 

"I think it's...complicated," Padmah suggested. "I'm a princess, too, but…I don't think she really...ever sees people besides servants and guards. Ever. She's not…lying, but I don't think she knows the truth about a lot of things. I don't think you do, either," she added bluntly, and Luke wanted to withdraw in defense of his master, but....

"For as long as I can remember, all I've heard about is how I'll have to kill the Emperor someday," he said. "I don't like killing anything, but I don't see why a man I don't know, and who's trying to kill me, and who is supposed to be evil, would be any harder than a beast out here, so it's not that - I'm not a coward." It did not, of course, matter one way or the other what Princess Padmah thought of him...but it did, at the same time. He was suddenly very, very aware that he did not want her to think poorly of him. "But if he's my own father?" He looked at her, desperate for any lifeline. "What do you know about - him?" he asked, but then, because he wasn't a coward, he forced himself to clarify. "My father." 

Padmah looked...wary, somehow. "Not very much. Nobody knows His Majesty anymore, really. He doesn't stay on Coruscant to do...emperor things very much. Everyone assumes that he's still looking for you." 

"To kill me?" Luke asked hopefully. If the Emperor was trying to kill him already, then that would make things a lot simpler. He wasn't totally surprised when Padmah shook her head, though.

"No. Well - I don't know what goes on in His Majesty's mind, of course, but I'm pretty sure it's not because he wants to kill you."

Her eyes were almost the color of light smoke. "There's something you're not saying," he pointed out. 

Padmah's mouth thinned, but finally, after a long moment, she spoke. "I was only two when you were kidnapped, so I don't...know very much about this," she warned him. "But...I've heard that...bad things happened after their Majesties lost you. Father thought they were both so upset that they might have gone mad, while they were trying to get you back. That's probably why we still have all these - people running around who try to convince planets to rebel - because Father said that even Her Majesty didn't really govern for the first two years you were gone, and His Majesty kept setting things on fire for another year after that...." 

Setting things on fire. To find him. Not, if Padmah was to be believed, because it was Luke's destiny to defeat the Emperor, but because he wanted...what? For Luke to live in the same kind of cage Padmah said they kept Leia in? To train him to be a Dark Lord instead of a Jedi someday? 

This was not helping. He'd thought - hoped - that more information would help him sort out all of these intrusive feelings, and would make it easier to find clarity and know the will of the Force, but it wasn't helping. Instead, he just felt even worse.

"I never really got to meet their Majesties, before Leia kidnapped me," Padmah added, "but I did see them for a moment, when they arrived. Mother introduced me to Her Majesty - your mother. She was very nice - you wouldn't expect the Empress to be like that in person. His Majesty..." she sighed, and wrapped her arms around herself, even though it wasn't cold out here. "He's tall. Hair a little darker than yours, and mostly longer. No beard. He...I suppose he's handsome, but you don't think like that, when you see the Emperor. Or at least, I couldn’t, anyway. It would be like having an opinion on what the Sun looks like." 

Luke had tried to resist forming a mental picture based on what Padmah had said, but it was hard. He wished he knew what 'handsome' meant to her....

"You said that you've been to Coruscant - so you live somewhere else," he said. He knew it probably wasn't very good manners to suddenly change the topic like this, but he couldn't talk about it any more. Not now. "Where is it? Will you tell me what it's like there?"

"Alderaan, you mean? Or just Aldera?" He was about to ask what the difference was, but she caught herself and said, "of course you don't know - Alderaan's the planet, and Aldera's the city where we live - me and my mother and my father. It's very nice there, much nicer than Coruscant. There's more air, and open ground, and the buildings are prettier, if you ask me. On Coruscant, if you want to see anything that's lovely, you have to go to the very top, and even there, it's all artificial - the entire planet's just one huge city, built on top of itself over and over again for thousands of years. At home - my home, I mean - you can see the mountains from everywhere, and...." 

She glanced at him occasionally, as though expecting a reply or an indication that she’d said enough, but he just kept listening and so she just kept talking, and he sort of wished, just for a moment, that things could stay this way forever.

* * * * * * * *

“Princess!”

Leia was not entirely surprised to hear Book pursuing her, and she was not entirely unhappy about it, either. When she had walked out of the ship, all she had been able to think about was how much she wanted to stab that Yoda thing in the face and how she needed to get away before things got violent again, but it had not taken long for her to realize that it was nearly dark, now, and that she was in a strange, dangerous place. Even if there weren’t more Jedi traitors lurking out here, there were places where the ground might give out, or where who knew what wild animals might be lurking….

”I’m here,” she answered, and a moment later, Book swam into view through the gloom which was making thin air harder and harder to distinguish from the sullen water.

”My lady,” he said. “It’s not safe out here - you need to be inside - “

Leia laughed bitterly. “I don’t know that it’s safe for either of us to be in there right now,” she said. “Because I want to cut that thing in half so much right now, and if I try to do that, you’ll probably start shooting at people again, and then….” Book flinched, only just visibly. She wiped her nose, for lack of a better option, on her sleeve and looked at him. “What happened - earlier, Book? What were you thinking?”

”I…I don’t know.” Book looked momentarily very, very old and haggard as he sat down on a log. “On my honor, Princess - I don’t know. There was - it was like - there were orders in my head. And I didn’t know who was giving them, but I had to obey - “ He took a shaky breath and admitted, “I didn’t - it didn’t feel like I could stop myself at first, until I saw His Highness was in my line of fire, and that they were both deflecting back toward you and the civilians - “

"But you did," she said quickly, sitting down beside him. 

"None too soon," he muttered. "If you had anyone else at all out here, I'd hand myself in to the psych-clanks." He surveyed their surroundings for a moment and then said, "at least, I would if I was also on duty somewhere that had psych-clanks. Don't know why, but I suspect they're a little understaffed out here." 

He was trying to make her laugh, now, but a weak, slightly watery smile was the best she could manage. "Probably," she agreed. "I know how you all feel about 'clankers', but they do make life easier sometimes."

"They do, at that. And it's not their fault they - are what they are. No more than it's yours or mine. Sometimes I think we're more like them than we are like your standard baseliner." 

This was not quite as shocking as Book just trying to turn someone who hadn't shot first into a sieve on sight, but it was shocking enough to turn Leia's head. Droids had been the enemy in the Clone Wars, and a certain distaste for them had somehow even been inherited by the baseline soldiers who made up most of the army now, even though few of them had actually participated in the war with the Separatists. Book seemed to be talking half to himself, or perhaps to one of the not-present psych-clanks, as he went on.

"We've all got a purpose - you, me, droids. Ah, you weren't made for any good reason, but you were a month old when their Majesties took the throne, if that. You've had your duty to carry out since then. A month of freedom's not enough to split hairs about, I won't hold that against you." Leia did have to bite back a laugh, then, at what was possibly the most bizarre compliment she'd ever sort of received. "Most baseliners...they're just...accidents. Some of 'em are useful, some of 'em are just...bad code, but there's no reason for any of them to exist, unless they can find one for themselves. Nobody needed them. They just...started taking up space, y'know? Me or a clanker - we don't have that problem." 

"You could," Leia objected. "If you wanted to. Threepio's free, you know - he hasn't been reset since Father built him, so he's basically a person now, and he could just...leave, if he wanted to." It was hard to imagine Threepio wanting to do so - just to imagine the idea forming inside his head - but it could happen, in theory. "And you - I was thinking earlier about that situation with the Corellian mercenaries. You could have retired with honors right then." 

"Nah - civilian life's not for me. I don't judge my brothers who did take it up - I just don't understand 'em." 

"But you didn't have to come back to taking care of me even if you didn't want to retire," said Leia. "Mother and Father would have probably made you a general, if you'd asked them to."

"Their Majesties were grateful, but I'm not sure I'd go that far,” he chuckled. “If you're just trying to prod me into admitting I've gotten a bit attached to you, though, the answer's yes. Which you already knew." Leia supposed she could have denied the accusation, but she also knew it wouldn't have done any good, so she just grimaced apologetically, and then his tone suddenly shifted. He was now as serious as she’d ever seen him. “What happened today - it’s not the only time something like that has happened.”

”It wasn’t?”

”No. The other time - the other time was at the very end of the war. I was still a shiny, out on patrol - orders came through over the commlink. An order I’d never heard of, that I could remember - but I knew what they were ordering us to do, and that I had to do it. Or I would have had to, anyway, if I’d been in camp then; by the time I got back, our commanding officer was already dead, and ten of my brothers were still shooting the body.” Leia flinched at the description; for once, Book didn’t seem to notice her at all. He was staring at something far beyond the swamp, now - into a different world, a different time. “It was like a dream where you watch yourself doing things and don't know why. When we all came to ourselves…it was like coming out of a nightmare, but we knew it was real. The mission was finally over. We had done our duty. We were good soldiers, and good soldiers follow orders.”

Leia tried to think of something - anything - appropriate to say. She completely and utterly failed to think of a single thing before Book spoke again. "You’ve still got Lady Velena’s piece, don’t you?”

”Of - of course,” she said, startled by the change of topic and pushing past the horror of the story he’d just told. It caught up to her almost immediately, though, when Book pulled a second compact hold-out blaster, only a bit larger than Velena’s but with a good bit more power, out of his boot and extended it toward her, grip first.

“There - now you’ve got two. Always better to have a backup. The first time - there was no stopping ourselves, for any of us, I imagine. Today - today, there was. That makes it even odds which way it might go, if something like that happens again.”

Leia recoiled, looking at the weapon as if it were alive and poised to bite her. “What are you saying?” she whispered.

“If anything like what happened today ever happens again - don’t wait to see if I can snap out of it again next time. You do whatever you have to do to put me out of commission before you can get hurt, you hear me? Just like any other threat.” He put the blaster in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “It’s my duty to keep you safe, and if I can’t do that anymore, then it’s your duty to keep yourself and the Prince as safe as you can.”

Armored shoulders weren’t the best for bursting into tears on, but Leia gave it her best try, anyway. “Hey. Hey. It might never happen. I hope it never happens. I just don’t want you to worry about it if it comes to that,” Book said. “Always better to have a plan before you need it. Come on, now. You’re a soldier’s daughter. You wouldn’t want your old dad to see you like this, would you? Calm down. We’ve got to think about what we can do about Prince Luke.”

A soldier’s daughter. And saying that her father had lived like a soldier was the highest compliment Book could think of. Leia pressed her sleeves into her eyes, trying to get herself under control. She couldn’t break down; she had to be strong for everyone else. That was what a leader was supposed to do. But - 

”I don’t know what do to about Luke,” she admitted, and another wave of misery hit her at the very thought. One bad decision, and now, one of her friends was dead, she had so little of an idea what to do next that she was listening to voices in her head, her brother had been brainwashed by some traitor who wanted Luke to kill their father without even knowing he was their father, and now Book was asking her to.... “I never thought this could happen - that any - that we'd ever end up like this -“

”It’s not his fault, Princess. Think. He was three when they grabbed him. He’s been a prisoner in hostile territory almost his entire life. You could turn a grown man, if you kept him locked up for fourteen years and knew what you were doing. We just have to be patient with him, and do what we can to bring him out of it.”

”What if..." She didn't want to say it. She didn't want to even think it. "What if we can’t? What if Luke's just...one of them now?" 

”Then we do what we have to do to get out of this place, and then we come back with half the Imperial Navy to get him out whether he wants to go or not before we blast this whole miserable rock out of orbit.” Leia blinked, taken aback by the striking, if not unpleasant, mental image presented to her. “Let Psych deal with it from there. And then we can all sit down with their Majesties and talk all this through, sort out everything. You’re a family - even if it’s…complicated, now, with Prince Luke and the Empress. You’re still a family. You can work it out.”

The way he said it, she could almost think he really believed it. She wanted to believe it, too. She didn’t know how it could happen, but she wanted to believe it, and so she nodded.

”It's going to be okay,” she said, trying to sound as confident as she could. “We’re all going to be okay. Including you. Nobody gets left behind.”

Maybe, she thought, if she said it enough, she might even start to believe it. 

* * * * * * * *

It was slow going, navigating through the swamps in the near-dark to make it back to the ship, and it didn't help that Leia's limbs all felt like they had been filled with lead. The lights from the ship, however, were enough to let her see that she was walking back into trouble, and somehow, she forced her back to straighten up a little further and her feet to go a little faster as she approached the not-quite-standoff going on. 

"What's happening?" she demanded, walking right into the middle of it and looking around at the participants. The residents and the crew hadn't yet put an open space between them, but it was hard not to think that Yoda and Luke and - for some reason - Padmah were on one side and she, fortunately, was on the larger one. 

Luke's face brightened with apparent relief. "Oh! There you are," he said. "Master Yoda says it's time for us to go home, now, but I did want to say - " his eyes flickered, and for a split second, she thought he might say he wanted to apologize for the horrible thing he had said to her earlier. Only for a split second, though, before he finished his sentence with " - good night before we left." 

"Go?” Leia wished she had sounded more imperious and less fragile when she repeated the word. “You can’t do that. You have to stay with us.”

"Since when do I run a boarding house?” M’renn muttered to Durdo. Leia chose not to hear that remark.

”I can’t," Luke protested. He looked like he was thinking very hard, and then added, "but maybe you could come with us!”

”No,” Book and Yoda said at the exact same moment. Yoda, it seemed, was prepared to be gracious about her bodyguard trying to shoot him, but had limits that stopped short of sharing a miniscule hut with the man. If he'd been anyone else, Leia supposed she could have been more understanding, but he had committed and was currently committing high treason. She was the Grand Princess of the Galactic Empire. Being understanding to traitors wasn't part of her job description. There was also about as much chance of snow in this miserable swamp as there was of her going anywhere Book didn't, whether she wanted him to or not...and, of course, Jedi didn't have attachments. 

She looked at the old alien and said, "you know, I don't think I ever really hated anyone until right now." 

"Hatred a path to the Dark Side is," Yoda said, serene but a little stern, now. "Learn to let go of such feelings, you must." 

"I'll make you a deal," she proposed. "I'll try letting go of my feelings if you let go of my brother." 

"Deals I make not," said Yoda. "Instruction, I give. Instruction, you take. Come, Luke." 

Luke hesitated, and for a second, she thought he might make a good decision. Instead, he just said, "I mean - we'll all still be here tomorrow, won't we?" 

When your word is law, Leia, you have to think very carefully about what that word should be.

Her word wasn't law here, and the woman who'd said that hadn't really been her mother...but it was true. I can't break down, she reminded herself. I have to be strong for everyone else. 

It occurred to her that she might understand, now, at least one reason why Father never seemed to want to spend much time at home. She loved her brother, she knew that - but being the strong one meant feeling as distant from him as she was from the stars that couldn't even be seen from down here, and it hurt more than just being alone ever had. 

"I know this isn't your fault," she said tonelessly, her voice lower than normal, a near-imitation of Amidala's throne-voice. "Remember that, when you start seeing sense. I know this isn't your fault. And I love you. Good night."

The ship only had one passenger accommodation, a room barely more two steps across that had two beds stacked on top of each other. She had observed that before, but had confirmed it a hundred times over before Padmah, who shared the near-cell with her, finally, almost timidly, poked her head in, only to almost immediately start looking surprised instead. 

"What?" asked Leia. 

"Are you...okay?"

"I'm not going to stab you, if that's what you're asking."

"It wasn't." 

Padmah slipped into the room and allowed the cabin door to slide shut behind her. With an effort, Leia forced herself to stop pacing the two and a half steps she had to pace in. "I'm guessing you don't know any particularly awful methods of execution I could use on the green guy?" she asked. 

"No," said Padmah. "We don't have those on Alderaan."

Oh, well. It had been worth a try.

A two-step ladder led from the floor to the top bed, and Leia took it in one and a half before flopping down on her back, massaging her temples, which were already beginning to throb. She supposed they could set an ambush, and hope that everybody shooting at the traitor would be more effective than only Book shooting at it had been, but aside from the possible risk to Luke, she also didn't want to do that to Book, now, after what he'd told her. Did she have any options available as far as poison went? There had to be ten thousand lethal things growing in a cesspit like this planet, but using them would probably require more cooperation from Yoda than Leia suspected she was going to get any time soon. Cautiously, Padmah crossed the room and slowly, as though afraid of making noise, sat down on the lower bed. 

"I always thought," Leia said to the ceiling. "If I ever saw Luke again, it would be the best day of my life." 

Padmah didn't reply at first, which Leia didn't find surprising; it wasn't as if they were friends, after all. After a long moment, though, she said, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry." Leia didn't really understand what she meant, and after a moment, there was some rustling as Padmah pulled her feet up. "He's very nice, Prince Luke. Like your mom was. He believes some...strange things, and he knows even less about real life than you do - but he's very nice." 

Leia tried to think of a proper response, but all she could come up with was, "that's good." 

Neither of them said anything after that, and eventually, Leia supposed exhaustion must have interrupted the thunderstorm in her head, because for the first time since she'd found out that the woman was real, she dreamed about the Drowned Lady. Padmé - Mother and Amidala still made Leia picture the woman she'd known for as long as she could remember - was still screaming. Just sitting in the mud, her hair and dress now obviously sodden, with her hands on her head while she just kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming. 

Chapter Text

When Leia first woke up, she tried to tell herself that the day before had just been another nightmare. Unfortunately, she had never been very good at convincing herself that things were true when she knew that they weren't. 

She washed her face and braided her hair and tried to avoid eye contact with everyone as she slipped out of the ship. Within seconds, though, she heard Book behind her, as always, just as if the conversation from the night before had changed nothing. As if they were back in one of the artificial floating gardens of Coruscant, mostly safe and sound, and not squelching through a swamp as she looked for an area open enough to practice lightsaber forms in. It still felt a little unnatural to use the real thing instead of just a practice saber, which, of course, meant she needed to practice more. 

It shouldn't have been like this, she thought mutinously as she dueled a tree. Not the best opponent, since it couldn't move; she tried to pretend it was because it was using one of the forms that involved keeping one's feet planted, but that still didn't explain why it wasn't interrupting her mechanical repetition of the exercises in the exact order she'd been taught them. Still - I should have had someone besides the stupid droid to practice with years ago. And someone to teach me about the Force instead of an hour or two a day of old hologram recordings. I should have had Luke and Father - 

She cut off the end of a branch, which she was pretending was the extended arm and sword of her enemy, with a little more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary before also stabbing it in the trunk. Some sixth sense - be it due to the Force or their relationship or both - made her aware of another presence seconds before what she now recognized as Luke's voice, sounded winded, said, "you're pretty good." Then, after she turned around, "What?"

"You look awful," she pointed out, though she didn't think this should have been necessary. He was very red in the face, his blond hair was almost as dark as hers from sweat drawn out by the humidity here, and he was spattered in mud almost head to foot on top of it all. His eyes, unexpectedly, flicked away from hers, looking around the area for any other audience members. He found Book, who had stood up and saluted him, but somehow, Leia had a feeling that wasn't what - or who - he'd been looking for. 

"Master Yoda - " he caught himself, apparently remembering what she had said about the words Master Yoda said the night before. "Told me that I had to go take a run. Because I was restless during morning meditation." Luke bit his lip. "Do you...know the Emperor at all, Leia?" he asked her. "Like - what kind of person he is?"

"He's our father, Luke," Leia sighed. "Of course I know him. Sort of." She had to repress the urge to stab her improvised wooden opponent again at the thought. "He's not home very often, but he said he was going to stay on Naboo for a while after I became queen. I'm pretty sure he was going to teach me things, before - " 

Before I ran away. That wasn't the ending she'd wanted for that sentence. She'd been looking for something that pointed more of an accusatory finger at Master Yoda, something about how everyone thought the reason Father wasn't home very often was because their family had never really recovered from having Luke stolen from them by criminal, traitorous lowlifes, but....

"Anyway. If you're asking if Father has horns and cackles a lot, then the answer's no," she said, probably more brusquely than she needed to. "He's not evil. He's just either Father or - or he's the Emperor." It was uncomfortable, realizing that she really couldn't describe her own father in much more detail than that. It would have been a different thing if he'd asked about Mother, but.... "I can tell you - things - like how good he is with machines, or that he's a pilot, or the archaeology thing, or - whatever, but that's the only thing that matters: that he's the Emperor. The will of the Emperor is the will of the Force, which is the way of all things; to deny the will of the Emperor is evil...." 

She had recited that creed nearly every day of her life, for one reason or another. How seriously she took what she was saying depended on the day and the context, but the catechism had never felt less meaningful, more like nothing more than a meaningless jumble of words, than it did when she said it now. The look of absolute horror on Luke's face, though, as he physically recoiled from her, distracted her from her doubts. 

"You can't say things like that!" he exclaimed, looking around as though he expected something to jump out at them at any moment. He made an odd sort of gesture; it looked symbolic, the kind of thing superstitious people did to ward off evil. "That's - that's not how it works at all." 

"It is in the New Constitution," she said stubbornly, citing the document which established both religious and legal norms for billions of entities around the galaxy, and he made the odd hand gesture again. 

"No single person's will is of any significance to the Force," her brother said, sounding just as stubborn, and worse, more like he really believed what he said. "It exists between all living things; we're all equal within it. That's why you trust the will of the Force - that its will for you is what's best, not what you think. Trying to fight it - that's dangerous. That's what leads to the Dark Side. You can't say things like that, Leia. It's wrong." 

"Perfect equality is anarchy; some must be leaders so that the majority can be safe and secure," she recited. She felt like she was on sounder ground with that part of the catechism; that wasn't just doctrine, it was political science. Mother had written a lot of the New Constitution herself, which meant it tended to express itself in legalistic terms even in the religious portions of the document. "All citizens stand equal in the face of Imperial justice, but it is wrong to disobey one's local authorities unless they expressly contradict the will of the Emperor, or, in his absence, another member of the Imperial family. Though Mother says it's a good idea to be diplomatic and try to follow local laws and customs anyway, when we're visiting other people." Which she had very much not done on her first trip outside by herself; they were going to keep her locked in her rooms until she was forty whenever she got home. "Er - that last part was me, not the New Constitution. But if the situation's bad enough, then the New Constitution doesn't really apply to any of the four of us." 

The four of us: their family. Now it was torn into matching pairs of two, and while most of the blame had to be laid at the feet of the evil people who'd taken her brother away from her when they were toddlers, she had done some of the damage - quite a lot of the recent damage, even - herself. Going somewhere Father had told her not to go, running away from home, defying a clear implicit Imperial order and escaping Alderaan by the skin of her teeth while also kind of kidnapping the planetary princess...She had found Luke, but that wasn't really because of anything she'd done, it was because she'd had a dream that had given her a word to say when the others asked what was going on. It didn't count, as far as putting the family back together went. Hopefully, just having to exist in this muck for a while would be deemed penance enough for disobeying Father...at least three separate times now.

"Anyway. You know what I can do, now. Let's see what you've got." He looked startled and she added, "you did say you wanted to talk to me and spar with me yesterday, before you knew who I was. So come on. You know I'm good. Let's see how it compares to the best your...master - " her lip curled with contempt as she pronounced the word like some foul obscenity - "could teach you on this rotting excuse for a planet." 

"I would, but if I don't start back, Master Yoda will know I...took a break in between following directions." It was a little thing, but Leia couldn't help but feel a jolt of something like hope; this was the first time she'd heard her brother say anything that implied he didn't have a small fleet of nanodroids in his head, compelling him to always agree with Master Yoda without reservation or hesitation. "And I have to get to my morning lessons." 

"What kind of lessons?" 

"Whatever kind Master wants to teach today - usually there's things about the Force, and history, and different things to practice. Like with my lightsaber." 

Leia thought for a moment, contemplating just how bad of an idea she'd just had. It would involve forcing Book to spend more time around Master Yoda. It would involve exposing herself to filth of every kind, mental and physical. She would probably have to pay lip service to the idea of being polite to a traitor who'd helped ruin her life. But....

"Fine," she said. "Then I'm coming, too." 

* * * * * * * *

Master Yoda was already standing outside his hut when it came into view, and Luke's heart sank as he realized that this almost certainly meant that the master had sensed something - wrong - about Luke's approach - if only that there were too many life-signatures involved in it. He doubted, considering that part of his sister's madness involved hating Master Yoda for some reason, that was all Master Yoda had sensed, though the tiny Jedi's eyes did widen as he took in the sight of Luke, obediently running back and pretending not to notice the entourage he'd picked up along the way. 

For a second, Luke was delighted with his sister's proposal, but then he started thinking. 

"You really can't," he informed her, a little sadly. "Not now. I can ask him if you can come tomorrow, though." 

"Luke," said Leia, and he winced on the inside before she even continued. "You are the Grand Prince of the Galactic Empire. You're the fourth-most important person alive. I'm third, and we're not three years old anymore. It was a little different the last time you were at home, but we don't ask favors from - almost anyone, now, much less strange little swamp-dwellers. We give them orders." 

"Not when they're Master Yoda! And please don't call me that. It just...sounds wrong. Jedi don't use titles of nobility."

"It's not just a title!" Leia snapped. "It's what you are, and who you are, and everything we are. The Emperor is our father, and that makes us not like other people. You're the equal of a king right now, and you outrank him if he's visiting us instead of the other way around. Our family is sacred - "

"Do you even hear what you're saying? Isn't it enough that - " he cut himself off before he could go any further and complain about his fate. It was the will of the Force that he defeat the Emperor; that was the purpose of his existence. It didn't matter that he hadn't wanted to carry that burden even before yesterday, and it didn't matter that the Emperor was his father, or had been his father once, or - whatever. It was his destiny. “Look - if Master Yoda ever hears you say anything like that, he’ll never let me talk to you again."

"Let you. Did you not hear a word I just said?"

"I heard them, and they sounded like you have brain fever," he complained. "Setting himself above others is what makes the Emperor -  what makes the Emperor evil. You talk about him like he's a god or something."

"Just half - if you want to call it that. We usually don't, because it does sound odd, but - our grandmother was human." Leia began wrapping her dark braid around itself and then doing something with ties that must have already been in it to keep the resulting ball in place on the back of her head. While Luke was still gaping at her, trying to figure out some way to make sense of what she'd just said that wasn't either madness or blasphemy, she kept talking. "But Father's more than that, and so are we. Even Mother counts, because she's the woman who was good enough to be his wife and our mother." For a moment, she looked blank, and then annoyed, before she continued. "Or...something like that. The situation with our mother is - complicated. But it doesn't change anything about who the rest of us are, which is why if I want to go somewhere, I go, and your Master Yoda will have to kill me and Book both to stop me. Are you going to let him do that?"  Luke opened and closed his mouth several times and nearly swallowed an insect. His holy sister didn't act like she even noticed as he coughed it back up and spat it out. "Or do you just want us to shoot him for you? If you do, just say so, and we'll bring M'renn and Durdo, too. Surely enough people shooting at the same time would work." 

He very much did not want Leia and her pet maniac to shoot Master Yoda, much less bring along reinforcements, and he'd told her so. She had been disappointed, but said it would have been too much to hope for him to come to his senses overnight after fourteen years in captivity. He had decided to not even touch that statement in favor of going back to the issue at hand, which was how Leia couldn't just tell Master Yoda that she was part of lessons, now. The best compromise they had been able to settle on involved her (and, of course, the alarming person she called 'Book,' weapons and all) just following him, on the grounds that really, it wasn't his fault if she did that, was it? If he thought he was just some human, then Book could shoot him if he tried to stop her, and if he wasn't, she still outranked him, for reasons she had not yet made clear. He had also wrung out a promise not to talk about her bizarre, wrong ideas about the Force in front of Master Yoda. She had muttered about how there was still plenty of time to teach traitors the errors of their ways, and he had pretended not to hear her. This, it seemed, was how things were going to have to be between them, at least for now....

On the way back, Luke had even indulged the thought that once Master Yoda explained things properly to her, Leia might realize that she was wrong before noon, but the look on Yoda's face as they approached made him less and less sanguine about how well this was going to go - if his master would even say anything in front of his sister. Then they all stopped running and Yoda did say something, and, even based on the little information he'd gleaned about Leia from the exactly three conversations they'd had, Luke wished his master had just gone with giving them all the silent treatment until he got the behavior he desired. 

"Go and come back, I told you - and a circus you bring back with you!" He didn't dare look at Leia. Luke had never seen a circus, but Master Yoda had used the phrase before when he'd made pets out of some of the swamp beasts, so he knew that Master Yoda had not just offered her a compliment. There was a slight creak as the pet maniac apparently adjusted some aspect of his armor or blasters, but at least he didn't start shooting this time....

"They - sort of followed me, Master," he said apologetically. "I couldn't really stop them - " 

"I followed him, and Book followed me," said Leia. She, too, was now spattered with mud almost to her eyebrows from the effort of keeping up with him - since she was so much shorter, he suspected he probably looked even worse than he did at the moment - but she still spoke almost as though she was giving orders, even though she'd only made a statement. Luke wasn't sure why what she'd said was different enough from what he'd said to matter, but he was learning rapidly not to ask that kind of question too much and to avoid asking his sister anything at all in front of his master if at all possible. "We do regulate education in this Empire, you know, Master Yoda." She still didn't pronounce the name with proper respect, but at least she didn't sound like she was about to curse him this time. "You're well past due for review."

"Review." Yoda seemed to chew on the word for a moment. "Part of your empire, Dagobah is not," he pointed out. 

"It is now that the Emperor's representative knows where it is," she said. "That's how exploration missions work." 

To his surprise, Yoda laughed - a sound to terrify most who weren't used to it, but Leia didn't flinch. "Oh, it is the Emperor's representative you are? Sent you here, he did? To review the last Jedi academy?"

Leia's chin rose fractionally and Luke knew she was displeased. "I am always a representative of His Majesty, wherever I go," she said coolly. It would have sounded very impressive, coming from someone a foot taller who wasn't covered in mud, on Dagobah, and also fourteen years old. "All that I learn is his, if he chooses to ask me for it, and I suspect he'll be very interested to know about a whole habitable planet existing in between two planets that are part of his empire." 

Luke hoped he imagined the hint of a threat in the statement, but if he hadn't, Master Yoda didn't seem very worried about it. "Hee-hee! Speak to him again you must, to tell him this," he said, and Luke did a double take - for just a second, he thought Master Yoda was threatening Leia back, despite her very violence-capable follower - before the old master finished his sentence. "You disturb me and my Padawan because the Emperor, you wish to avoid now, hmm?"

Leia's face was already red from exertion, but Luke saw it go redder even past all the mud. "I am here because I - was given a message," she said, more coldly still. "That there was something of value that you could and would teach me. I will return to His Majesty's side as soon as I know what it is. Believe me - I do not want to spend eleven years here with you." 

"Insult our home, she does, Luke," said Master Yoda, still clearly amused. "Heh! Much has changed since here I came, if these are the new manners. And to teach you, I do not wish - too old. Your mind, I sense, younger than your body is - not like your father - but still - too old. A mistake, I made, in allowing Anakin to enter instruction when he did." Luke looked uneasily at his feet. He'd always known that his father had been a Jedi named Anakin Skywalker; he'd also always known that Master Yoda blamed himself for the state of the galaxy, because he had allowed the Emperor to enter the Temple when he was much too old to learn the discipline....but he'd never heard the two stories made into one like that before. The Emperor, the person he'd been training all his life to defeat...really was his father. "Repeat it and provide another strong arm for the Sith, I will not." Then, to Luke's astonishment, he almost casually added, "But review, you may. No questions, no teaching. You are not a student here. But observe us, you may."

"Fair enough," said Leia. She didn't sound quite as disdainful as before, but her chin was still tilted at a dangerous angle. "You may proceed." 

Yoda laughed so hard at that idea that he thumped his stick on the ground, but, to Luke's disbelieving relief, he proceeded. 

* * * * * * * *

"There you are! Where have you been all day?"

Leia blinked at Padmah's greeting as she walked back into their tiny cabin on the ship after a long, long day of biting her tongue to keep up her end of the bargain. If it had been any other situation, she might have almost thought the Alderaanian princess was glad to see her. She waited a moment, to see if Padmah would qualify the statement in some way, but the redheaded girl continued to look at her, eyebrows slightly raised in inquiry. 

"Finding out what sort of treasonous garbage my brother's been poisoned with," she said, and sighed as she took up the position in front of the polished sheet of metal, riveted to the wall, which passed for a mirror around here, and began to undo her hair. "Eugh, I need to wash my hair, but given the local water quality, I'm not sure it would actually help that much - " 

"If we ever get home, I'm going to spend every day in the bathtub for a month," Padmah sighed. "Though surely there has to be - something that works out here. Not as well, but Prince Luke and that Yoda person aren't caked in filth, so there must be some way to wash in this godsforsaken place that does more good than harm." 

Leia paused what she was doing to think about what Padmah had just said. "That's...actually a good point," she acknowledged. "I'll have to ask him about it." She smiled, without humor, and added, "since Master Yoda has made it quite clear what he thinks about me asking him questions. I don't know why he cares, when he's so obviously planning to try to kill me, but I suppose he thinks I'm too stupid to see it. Maybe he knows the odds are stacked against him." 

Padmah looked at her in disbelief. "What makes you think he wants to kill you?" she asked. 

"Easy," Leia replied. "If I get off this miserable planet, then I come back with a Star Destroyer. Or six. If he doesn't kill me, then I'll probably eventually get off this planet. That ruins his whole plan to use my brother to murder my father." She closed her eyes, but opened them promptly again when the sights behind her eyelids were even more unpleasant than the ones in front of them. She thought she would prefer her life, as messy as it was, to Luke's - unless being herself had meant eventually being there when Luke attempted suicide in a very elaborate way. In the worst pictures her mind had supplied of such a situation, she didn't realize it was Luke until she'd already fired the blaster.... "How has it been less than two months since my biggest problem was the annoying apprentice ambassador from Sarapin?" she asked rhetorically. 

"I was supposed to be the annoying apprentice ambassador from Alderaan, once," Padmah reflected. "But then someone tried to blow up the Apprentice Legislature, not long before I was supposed to leave home, and...." The other girl smiled wryly. "Mom decided that maybe I should learn the art of government and my place in the Empire some other way." 

"I can't really blame her," Leia agreed. Her hair was finally unbraided and she began trying to brush it. 'Trying' was the operative word in that sentence, though; she really was going to have to harry Luke about what passed for cleaning products in this swamp as soon as possible. "Nothing good ever happens at Apprentice Legislature, but that was...an especially bad day. It was awful." 

"You were there?"

There was something...strange, about the way Padmah said that, though Leia couldn't put her finger on what it was. "Well, of course," she said. "I was the target. That's why the bomb was right under the - platform-thing that my apprentice throne is on." She scowled at her reflection. "It was so stupid - how did that idiot woman not realize we knew there was an open space beneath the platform? It's there to post a guard in. Poor Trevor...that was one of my guards. That was the second time I lost someone." She noticed that Padmah was staring at her. "What?"

"Exactly how many times have people tried to kill you?"

Leia frowned, not really at Padmah, just at the air as she went over memories, counting incidents off on her fingers. "...Four or five? That I can remember," she said finally. "There were more plots, but most of them got shut down by Intelligence a long time before there was any danger. Why? How many have you had?" 

Padmah continued to stare, with a strange look on her face. Finally, she said, "...None. None that I can remember, anyway. I've known about a few plots, but they always got shut down before anyone got close to...actually killing me."

"Really?" Leia was so intrigued by this that she turned back from the mirror just to look at the other girl. "Your security forces let Velena - " she ignored the stab of pain mentioning Velena caused her; Padmah, presumably having the same bad memories she was, flinched just a little - "in the palace with a hidden blaster. In the room with you and your parents at the same time. Is Alderaanian intelligence really, really good or something?"

"You'd have to ask my father," said Padmah. "I'm not sure he even tells Mother everything he knows, and she's the Queen...I think...I think it's just that nobody's ever made that serious of an attempt to kill me." 

"But you're the heir to the throne. I thought it was like this for...everyone like us."

Slowly, Padmah shook her head. "I...don't think there really are other people like you," she said slowly. Leia wasn't sure what the peculiar, unfamiliar note in her voice was; it...didn't sound quite like sadness, but...."There's the rest of us, and then there's...just you." 

"Yes, well." Her mouth twisted as though she had a mouthful of something bitter. "That's not how it was supposed to be." 

"On the bright side, at least Prince Luke didn't have to deal with all the assassination attempts," Padmah said. It sounded like she was trying, quite badly, to force an attempt at humor. "Is he...well today?"

"Except for the brainwashing," she said. "That's the most annoying thing. I've gotten that Yoda creature to agree that I can watch what he does - but I can't say anything. Which is infuriating when he's so - so - wrong! I think I might prefer the assassination attempts." 

"I'm glad I don't have to make the choice," said Padmah.

Leia thought, but couldn't find a good response to that, and so finished brushing her hair in silence. What was she supposed to say, that she wished she didn't, either? What did it matter how she felt about it? How anyone felt about it? She wished all of it had never happened, and various conspirators probably wished that she'd been killed, one time or another. The Drowned Lady being real, and the things Leia had seen and overheard when she'd found the woman, made it look more and more likely that even her father had things he wished could be different, and as Luke had awkwardly pointed out earlier, official doctrine was that Father was as close as people usually got to being living gods. If he couldn't always have his way, then who could?

But she was going to get her way, this time. Finding Luke changed everything. She had to go home, now, no matter what might be waiting for her there after everything that had happened since her birthday dinner, to make sure Luke made it home and didn't do anything terminally dumb when he got there. Plus, she suspected her parents - or Father and...whoever - would forgive her for a lot worse than just causing a serious diplomatic incident with Alderaan in exchange for having Luke back. The issue with Mother, and the Lady, and...everything - it was like what Book had said the night before. Everything could be worked out, once they were a family again. She just had to maintain the faith until she could make it happen. Whatever it took.

Chapter Text

The murmuring from the throne room was not - yet - precisely unfriendly, but nor did it seem to brim with confidence that the Queen could solve everyone’s problems. Breha hoped that meant they wouldn’t be too disappointed when she almost certainly failed to live up to that standard.

She felt, after several days of fasting and prayer, as though she ought to be draped in full mourning, but when she had summoned the strength to face her maids, everything she was to wear had already been picked out for her: a cheerful blue and yellow gown over a high-necked cream-colored stola, with a blue veil beneath the crown. Perhaps the Empress thought that she was the sort to adjust her emotions to match her attire. Golden bracelets surrounded both her wrists, and more gold was in place around her neck to support a grand set of blue sapphires. The very ones she'd always fancied giving Padmah as a wedding present, someday, since they would look so striking with her red hair....

It was not a deliberate cruelty. She’d never mentioned the thought to anyone before, after all. But it felt like another jab from the invisible knife between her shoulders anyway, along with the bitter taste it left in her mouth to not even be allowed to choose her own clothing. Neither the Emperor nor the Empress had troubled her today - yet - but as much as anything, Amidala’s interfering with her wardrobe underlined how she and Bail might not be under arrest, but they still certainly weren’t free, either.

When her makeup artist had finished with her, she had looked at herself in the mirror for the first time in days and had immediately known that the ridiculous cover story they had come up with to explain why she and Padmah had supposedly been in seclusion was actually going to work: even in cosmetics, she looked less like a queen than like someone who’d stolen clothes from a queen a size larger than her. She had been eating so little that the dress now hung a little too loosely, and her eyes looked like those of a woman who had just arisen from a sickbed. She hadn’t, but crying enough seemed to produce rather similar visual effects after a while. She wished she could have died without knowing that.

The murmurs cut off almost immediately after her impending arrival was announced, leaving a silence filled with the various creaks of an uncoordinated bows and curtsies before she entered the room and began the impossibly long walk to her throne. The chamber was crowded: courtiers, aides, offworld envoys, citizens granted audience. And, of course, the Imperial troopers, posted at the doors and pillars, their gleaming white armor and black blaster rifles all conspicuous in their unsuitability for the occasion. Their presence was supposed to be reassurance. To Breha, it looked like a warning.

She could see surprise in some eyes, and concern in others; the latter seemed strangely touching to her, though she imagined she could have expected some of those looks even if she’d been physically well, and had both Bail and Padmah with her. As it was, though….

”Good morning,” she said once she’d taken her seat on the throne. She tried not to look at the somewhat plainer, lower seats her husband and daughter sometimes used, when they were trying to bring Padmah along as heir-in-fact as well as heir-in-name. It was not as though she hadn’t held court without them both before; all that had changed was the reasoning. “As you've probably all heard, I fell ill unexpectedly after the - stress of the attacks against Princess Padmah. I apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused those of you who traveled to be here.

”I also apologize for any - discomfort - anyone may feel with some of my...guests,” she added. The murmuring resumed for a moment. Some of the Alderaanians in the room hadn’t laid eyes on a weapon since the end of the Clone Wars, and the sight of Imperial troopers in the throne room was no doubt triggering unpleasant memories for some of them. “In light of recent events, Her Majesty the Empress sent them here only to protect me and my family while we investigate the - incidents. A temporary measure.” Or at least, that was what it was supposed to be. If she was lucky, it might even really be one. If. “Until the present - situation - is resolved. So long as you remain law-abiding, you have nothing to fear from them.”

She had to pause to swallow, trying to force rising acid back down her throat. “This - situation - is also why you won’t see Princess Padmah with me for some time. I will not - “ cannot - “speak of her exact location right now, but rest assured, the Princess is safe and well and sends her love to all our people. We appreciate your prayers and kindnesses at this unprecedented and difficult time.”

The words felt dead and heavy in her mouth, the lies clumsy on her tongue as she told them, but from the general atmosphere of the room, Breha supposed she must have sounded more convincing to her people than she sounded to herself. Of course, it helped that they generally expected her to tell the truth, because the truth was never that she didn't even know if Padmah was still alive to do any of those things, much less do them from a position of safely....

”With that said, we'll begin catching up on my audiences. For my...health, I am advised against merely doubling the length of the sitting, so we'll do a two-hour session now, in the morning, and another after luncheon until everyone’s petitions have been addressed.” She smiled wanly, aware that the soldiers weren't the only eyes on her performance. Why did none of them seem to realize that she might as well have been dressed and laid out for her own funeral? "Again, I thank you for your patience with the delays."

* * * * * * * *

Tarkin had not had time to fully review the personal and naval intelligence reports in front of him, but he did have enough time, after he found out that the Deputy Director of Imperial Intelligence was heading his way, to arrange the papers as though he had just finished reading them. The effort did not go unrewarded, because he saw Ysanne Isard’s eyes narrow, however fractionally, the moment that she came into the room and saw them in front of him.

“Admiral Tarkin,” she said. “A pleasure to see you again.”

She had spoken within easy range of his desk. The Empress would soon know, then, that ImpInt was talking to the Admiralty, if she didn’t already. Tarkin considered for a moment whether he would benefit more from her knowing Isard was snooping around his office than he would from leaving her guessing which of them had asked for a meeting, and decided that he would not.

“Miss Isard.” He stood up and gestured for Isard to join him in one of the less-buggable portions of the room: a spot as far as one could get from his desk without getting too close to a wall. For the ceilings, they would have to speak quietly. A simple baffler would have solved the problem entirely, but if Amidala had even one eye in here, the odds were excellent that bringing one into the building would be a shortcut to ending his career in an abrupt and messy fashion, and he was not foolish enough to assume that she didn’t. On Coruscant, it was always best to assume the Empress could see and hear at least fragments of everything which occurred. It made operating on the planet a damned nuisance, but also something of a sport, and he did enjoy a good competition with someone he was sure he’d defeat eventually, every now and then.

“Mircas told me you demanded that I make room in my schedule to speak with you,” he said, and then repeated the verb he had taken offense to. “De-manded. And all to tell me something that I almost certainly already know.”

Isard’s sharp, distinctly unfriendly smile didn’t waver. “Ah, yes. Another accomplishment for the fabled department of naval intelligence,” she said, a hint mockingly. He had, of course, not gotten much of the information she’d be here to bother him about directly from NavInt; it was possible that the man who had passed the word had also passed it to NavInt, there was always some overlap between spy networks, but he had brought it to Tarkin through his personal network. Which it was, of course, quite illegal for him to have.

“All of the intelligence agencies must be eating well today,” he replied. She - or at least her father - would, of course, have also gotten the information from multiple sources. It was a fool who tried to walk amongst the mighty without a personal network; failure to recruit the right people and attempts to recruit the wrong people for such networks was a leading cause of death among the ambitious these days. “The Emperor, of course, will do what he wishes, but the Empress unexpectedly vanishing from one planet and appearing on another….”

“The two of them playing happy families on Naboo was already less than ideal. Now they’re still together on another planet? I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t need spies to tell me that, Ysanne,” he said dryly. “I doubt there are half a dozen people on Coruscant who are pleased about them spending so much time together again, after all these years.” Isard nodded, automatically using the same definition of the term ‘people’ that he did. It did not involve a number anywhere near the majority of the residents of even the upper city. “But the Alderaanian royal family were the targets of two attacks in as many days, and Their Majesties both fought with Bail Organa in the Wars. Quite the cozy group of old friends, the three of them. Add in how close Alderaan is to Coruscant, relatively speaking, and it would almost be stranger if His Majesty didn't show up to address the problem himself before it can go any further. He is not, after all, very subtle.”

“Drawing him out into the open could explain the choice of Alderaan as a target, then. If the idea was to kidnap the crown princess and then dispose of Breha, though, then why did they still bother doing - whatever they did they did the next day, after the kidnapping failed?”

“I really couldn’t tell you,” said Tarkin. “I’m not the deputy director of Imperial Intelligence.”

“You are, however, commander of the Imperial Navy. And from what I’ve heard, His Majesty is not pleased about the Navy being so lax in its efforts that the sole heir to the throne of a sovereign planet could almost be kidnapped within view of a Core World." She was enjoying herself, now. "I suppose it’s understandable that he’s a bit touchy about things like that….”

Tarkin wouldn’t know; he’d never been especially fond of his own family, but one of Anakin Skywalker’s flaws always had been that he was far too sentimental. Which was why Tarkin had, in fact, caught the rough edge of his temper several days previously about the Alderaan incident. And Isard knew this, which implied that either she’d somehow been taken into the Empress’ network (unlikely) or else that she, too, had spies who were nominally under his command (very likely). Not that he minded very much; ImpInt was honeycombed with agents of his. He did not think NavInt was nearly as compromised as ImpInt, which was less of an agency than a place where hundreds of individual spy networks happened to overlap to sometimes amusing effect, but only an idiot would have assumed it was actually secure.

“And of course, Lady Dormé has rejoined her mistress…along with a flock of girls who I assume are meant to serve the Grand Princess the same way Dormé serves Her Majesty. I must admit, I’m surprised they’d leave the sole heir to the Galactic Empire alone on Naboo like that….”

“They’ll have to, eventually, if they plan for her to play at being queen of the place,” said Tarkin. “Unless Her Majesty intends to cut off her hand and gift it to her daughter, anyway. However, unless you know something I don’t, I see no reason to believe the Grand Princess isn’t on Alderaan with her parents.”

“None of my agents in the palace at Aldera have reported seeing her, though with Princess Leia….”

“It’s at best even odds that most agents wouldn’t recognize her if they did see her?”

“Quite. They would, however, recognize Padmah Organa…and none of them have laid eyes on the girl since the Emperor arrived on planet. The Queen and the Senator and the Princess haven't appeared in public in days. The backlog of audiences is apparently getting out of hand.”

He never would have survived this long in Imperial high command if he’d been in the habit of reacting to every little thing, but beneath his composed sabacc face, he felt a jolt of unease. He'd known about Breha's possibly-diplomatic illness, but not that the girl had vanished, too. Two royal couples in the same household, both of which were trying to pretend they weren’t in residence? Both with their sole heirs out of public view? Grand Princess Leia not appearing in public for days at a time was nothing unusual - the child not appearing in public for months at a time was not entirely unusual - but Alderaan was one of those tedious worlds where the monarchy tried to maintain a rapport with its citizens. The Organa girl was made visible at least once a week, even if all she did was wave at the people from a balcony over the holonets. Padmah Organa was highly recognizable, at least to anyone who’d spent any amount of time on Alderaan or actively spied on the place. 

“Fortunately for the backlog,” he said lightly, "I just received information this morning that Queen Breha has resumed her duties. Seems she was ill and that the princess’ nerves were rattled by the attacks. And you know how the Emperor feels about making appearances.”

“Especially appearances with Princess Leia. Even considering - what happened - “ Isard looked faintly ill for a few seconds, and Tarkin experienced a brief moment of satisfaction; ImpInt had undergone especially heavy purges after The Incident, and had done so at least twice again when the Emperor had unexpectedly arrived on Coruscant in the years immediately following it and they still hadn’t been able to produce his son for him. Which even Tarkin would admit had been a bit unfair to them; Prince Luke had almost certainly been murdered within minutes of his removal from the Residence and dissolved in a barrel of acid at the conspirators’ earliest convenience, and the Emperor’s refusal to accept that for almost three years had caused several agencies to take losses so heavy that Tarkin was sure someone of value must have been lost before it was over.

“Even considering that,” Isard continued. “They do keep the girl almost unnaturally sequestered, don’t they? It’s why I didn’t credit this Naboo business for months after I heard about it. Portraits are easy enough to fake that I wouldn’t be surprised if half the Empire didn’t think that the princess….”

“Didn’t actually exist? I can assure you she does.”

“Oh, of course. A strange creature, isn’t she? And always so far away from everyone.”

“Her Imperial Highness waves very prettily from the balconies on Empire Day. And attends Apprentice Legislature.”

“All of which she does at least a quarter of a kilometer away from anyone besides her bodyguard, and behind more deflector shields than a senatorial ship. I saw her once in person, but as far as most people  know, the girl at Apprentice Legislature might not even be the same girl in the official portraits.”

Once again, he felt a jolt of surprise. How, after all, could she have gotten into a room with the Grand Princess without Amidala’s blessing? Which Amidala had virtually no reason, that he knew of, to give her….

She had to be lying; unless one counted soldiers and Lady Dormé, no one ever got within earshot of the child. Tarkin couldn’t even get a spy into her household, because she’d been mostly raised, not only by droids, but by the Emperor’s personal creations, whose programming involved suicidal loyalty and had also, the one time he’d managed to capture one without bringing the wrath of the Family down on his own head, been designed so atypically that reprogramming it and sending it back had proven beyond the skill of his technicians. As far as anyone could tell, Grand Princess Leia’s interactions with real, exploitable people were limited fairly strictly to her mother, Dormé, and, if one counted them, the members of her personal guard. Until very recently, that had been comprised entirely of clone troopers, and the two baseline humans who had been grudgingly accepted into the group were apparently not looked on too kindly by their fellows. Since both were as fanatically devoted to the Emperor as said fellows, though, there was no real difference from an intelligence point of view....

He had to admit, the coup had been a brilliant bit of political theater on Skywalker’s part. Everyone had known something was wrong; no one had known what it was, or where the newly-declared Emperor Palpatine was, and under the oppressive conditions of the last year of the Clone Wars, those facts had paralyzed most of them until it was too late. Skywalker had already had an advantage, considering most had assumed him dead at the time, and it had been simple enough for him to acquire several extra legions to add to his own without anyone really noticing until the upper city had already had a white-armored hand around its throat, just waiting for the word to snap the necks of any opposition to their last surviving general. 

Things were changing, though. Amidala almost certainly knew it, too: ordinary beings had almost entirely replaced clones, and as such, the celebrated absolute, unshakable obedience and loyalty of the entire military was slowly becoming less and less absolute and unshakable every year. If the Emperor and his wife were to, say, die in an exploding shuttle accident tomorrow, Tarkin thought he might be able to keep enough of the Navy together under his command to seriously challenge Leia’s claim to the throne. Some of his ships would desert to the princess, no doubt about that, but enough might stay to even out the odds even before they considered the probability that the army wouldn’t be able to rally for a civil war even if it wanted to, not without full naval cooperation -

For that to even become an option, though, both the Emperor and Empress would have to die, and they were both reasonably young and unreasonably abnormally hard to kill. If Amidala lived long enough to become a widow, she’d either continue to rule through Leia, with little changing except perhaps what little check there was on her power disappearing, or just go ahead and make official what had been the case for years by declaring herself Empress Regnant instead of Empress Dowager; either way, she was still too popular and well-informed for many contenders to stand a chance of removing the obstacle she would present, and there was no real reason to hope for any shuttles to become abnormally explosive simply because one unhappily married couple among billions in the galaxy had spent a couple of weeks in the same star system without disaster. But it was hard, presented with this borderline treasonous speculation about how deep the public and military's loyalty to the invisible princess really ran, not to toy with the idea....

Which was, of course, the point. Was she actively trying to entrap him into saying something that could be construed as treasonous? She’d need to get up earlier if so. He doubted it, though. Most likely her father had sent her here to needle him simply to waste Tarkin's time and get her out of the way while everyone adjusted their networks around the unexpected change to the Empress' schedule, and if she came back with something ImpInt could eventually use against Tarkin, well, so much the better.

“Far be it from me to question the word of Their Imperial Majesties on anything, but especially not something of as much import as that,” he said smoothly, and at a slightly higher volume. “Thank you for the updates on the Alderaanian situation; NavInt will be in touch as soon as we find anything that we could use your assistance with as we rid our stars of these unabashed criminals.” He opened the door for her, pointedly. “My compliments to the Director." 

When she was finally gone, he hesitated, but then did go get his datapad. Once he unlocked it, he began making the arrangements for the use of his personal transport at the end of the week.

* * * * * * * *

Sabé already had as many problems as she could possibly handle. Naturally, Wilhuff Tarkin had decided it was the perfect time to start whispering, and to start listening to others whisper. 

"You're sure of this?" she asked the screen in front of her. She already knew that none of her personal servants would contact her with something like this if they weren't sure, but she got to cling to hope for a few seconds before the information was confirmed with a nod. 

"Yes, Your Majesty." Only two of her best agents even knew who she really was, and one of them was Dormé. This particular cleaner was not quite that close to her, but she trusted him. "And not just him - officers have been visiting each other all over Coruscant today, I hear, and I've seen more than are supposed to be in this building myself. Tarkin's the one groups form around, though, whenever he comes out of his office. He wasn't with the group I overheard, but everyone in it's friendly with him - well, not unfriendly with him."

She couldn't blame him for the re-wording. It would come as no small surprise to her to discover that Tarkin had some kind of medical condition that inhibited his ability to make actual friends, instead of 'friends' for a certain value of the term also translatable as 'disposable assets.' And now he was whispering in corners with people who whispered in corners about rumors that something strange had happened on Alderaan, and that the Imperial family had abruptly interrupted its planned vacation on Naboo to come back to the Core just to attend to the matter personally. 

"All right," she said. "Thank you, Gus. Return to duty." The round face beamed at her as its owner bowed and then, recognizing his cue, terminated the transmission. 

Sabé had, over the years, taken to keeping bits of paper around her person. They were slow, and could not be easily replaced if lost - but they also couldn't be sliced into, didn't leave any hints that a transmission had taken place, and were, along with the words on them, very easily destroyed. What more could someone immersed in secrets ask of a recording device? Producing one of them, she wrote the date and then wrote the cipher for the word payment, to remind herself to start giving Gus his bonus in a few weeks, when there was less chance of it being connected to anything he was seen doing today. It was unlikely that anyone would ever realize he'd been slipped a meaningful sum under the table, but if they did, they would probably assume that the earliest payment corresponded with when the information had been passed along. A short delay like this could be very helpful, in terms of keeping agents out of trouble, or at least keeping information out of the wrong hands. That done, she worked her way through the set of biometric locks on a case on what was, for the moment, serving as Dormé's desk so that she could pluck a different datapad from it and activate it. A few more taps, and then an array of small windows appeared, each giving her a different view of Tarkin's headquarters on Coruscant. He was unusually good at keeping the number of active bugs in his vicinity down, to her perpetual annoyance, but she was still able to keep her own eyes on him to an extent. Now, with just a little luck...

She couldn't hope to get so lucky as to overhear much of import for herself - that was why she had eyes and ears like Gus on the case, too. R&D assured her it was close to several breakthroughs that would make it easier to invisibly monitor individuals electronically, but for now, she'd continue to work around how some of the oldest and canniest courtiers had long since learned not to speak too close to solid objects if they were discussing things they wouldn't want her to hear. She would have to keep the bugs up, to some degree, even when R&D did finish these new additional sensors that could be parts of an Imperial official's wardrobe and credentials - if she kept them looking for very, very discreet microphones on every solid surface in a room, she would keep their attention off other potential points of vulnerability.

"Start two hours ago," she instructed her datapad. "Scrub footage until you find multiple people together, then stop." 

It did not take very long before all the windows were stopped. "Show me Tarkin, in chronological order," she said, and the majority of the windows vanished to allow a smaller number to take center stage. Most of them were from inside Tarkin's office, and all of the meetings which took place in the office featured Tarkin and his guest standing near the center of the room. 

"Too bad for you boys that the floors listen, too," she murmured, with a twist of a smile. Tarkin tended to favor rooms with multiple rich rugs, perfect for at least muffling the audio from the recording devices embedded in the floor, but she didn't need much to just confirm a tip she'd already gotten. Some of the devices she had planted were always decoys - real and functional, but less advanced than the most advanced tech she had access to, and thus put there for the 'exterminators' to find. Eventually, the day would come when she'd need to use information gleaned from a source she shouldn't have possibly been able to capture one too many times, and then she'd have to get cleverer yet, but that was why R&D took up such a large portion of her annual budget. 

The audio quality was terrible - new rugs, she supposed - but she got a troubling bit, especially from his fencing match with Ysanne Isard. The declaration of faith in the regime, she ignored, but she watched with interest as Isard left and Tarkin immediately began putting information into a datapad. It would take quite some time to access it, if that was even possible, but he was standing at just the right angle relative to one of her ceiling cameras. If she could zoom in and enhance the image far enough....

A few minutes later, she raised her arm so she could press one of the jewels on her bracelet. "Dormé," she said. "Summon that girl you thought might work as Leia's shadow - no, you stay where you are. I'll be the one speaking to her." The girl was worrisomely single-minded, almost obsessive, and very, very smart. Useful, dangerous, or both; Sabé suspected Saché had recommended her for precisely that reason. It would be best to throw her off her stride as quickly as possible. She didn't really think a fifteen-year-old could outsmart her, but nor did she have the patience for an extended verbal fencing match of her own at the moment. Not when Tarkin had just scheduled a flight from Coruscant to Alderaan.

* * * * * * * *

Saché sighed as she locked her office doors, and, for perhaps the second time since she was fourteen, she almost regretted getting into politics. If she hadn't been in politics, she would have been somewhere else - anywhere else - maybe even with her wife and children, who were still wherever Dormé had secreted them away on request. Or at least she could have gone to Alderaan with her friends. But she had obligations, and that was that. 

It could have been worse. Now that Sabé was no longer insisting on tearing Theed apart on a daily basis, the number of death threats had returned to baseline, which she had worried a bit about - with Rabé and Eirtaé offworld, now, and Yané in hiding, she was the last Handmaiden standing, as well as always being the second-most visible after Rabé. She might even stay near the city the next time the legislature went into recess - she had been spending her work breaks with Padmé at the Lake House, which meant missing out on occasions for off-the-records meetings that might prove advantageous, and it had just become a bit depressing.... 

She didn't know what they were going to do about Padmé. She had never known - it had always been a conundrum - but since Sabé had come home...It had been one thing, putting herself through the largely pointless visits she and Yané made three or four times a year. Doing so weekly for a month, and for half of one without her wife, however, had underlined to her just how bad the situation was. It was no wonder that the Emperor had, it seemed, gone more than a little insane, and that Sabé worried her a bit, now, too, at times. Truly, she thought it might be concerning that Sabé and Dormé didn't both have white hair by now. They all suffered, to some degree, from the strain of always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the Emperor and Sabé were...different, in their ways. And as for their workloads -

"Legislator Saché. How good to see you." 

...though on the other hand, there were still people who made even worse company than a near-corpse. Keeping her face straight, she turned and bowed to Queen Treillana, hands over her heart.

"Your Highness."

Treillana was, of course, masked by the opaque white and red makeup of her office, but she was nearly thirty, and it was easy to see the toll the state of the planet had taken on her recently. Saché didn't think she and the Queen would have ever been friends, but she did think they would get along better than they actually did if Treillana had taken the throne one term earlier. As it was...although they were nominally part of the same loose political coalition, their greatest point in common was often that they both spent at least half their time on the outs with Queen Jamillia, arguably the most influential former queen still involved in affairs on Naboo. And they weren't even on the outs with Jamillia for the same reasons: Saché was tainted by her association with the Empress, who Jamillia thought ought to have a much more active role in the politics of Naboo than she actually did, whereas Treillana had been a very cooperative candidate who'd turned out to have a mind entirely of her own once in office. All of their views more or less aligned, but Treillana was more extreme than either Saché or Jamillia, and Saché was unsure how warmly Treillana would be welcome among the other former queens when her term ended. Which it would, and soon. The campaign season was only just dawning, but there were already a few contenders in the field; it was, at least, too late for the Emperor to simply suspend the elections altogether without starting riots. The problem was, one of the points she and Treillana didn't agree on was the advisability of encouraging riots against Imperial decrees....

"I wondered if you had heard from Her Imperial Majesty." 

Sabé? Why would she care if I'd been - 

"Not today, Your Highness. Not for several, now. It has been a long time since she and the Emperor and the Grand Princess have been together for this long, so I imagine they are all focusing on their vacation." 

"I heard they had all gone away together," said Treillana. "Do you know where? I was surprised that Her Majesty didn't at least say goodbye before she left." 

Saché felt her throat go dry. Oh hell, she thought. She knows.

She had no idea how Treillana could have learned that all three members of the Imperial family were off-world, but she was nearly certain that the woman knew. Treillana knew Sabé was off-world, and Treillana was, whatever else one could say of her, not stupid. She'd already known something about the Imperial visit had gone wrong when Dormé had returned to the city and had it searched from top to bottom, and now she knew the Imperial family was no longer on Naboo. And if she knew that, what else did she know? How much access had she obtained? Officially, Sabé and Leia and the Emperor were at the Lake House. Padmé was actually still there....

"I'm not sure that's of any concern to either of us, Your Highness, unless it pleases Her Majesty to tell us. I wasn't aware she had any plans to leave the planet before the elections." 

"Curious that she's taking a holiday now, when the campaign season is about to begin. If the Grand Princess actually intends to run for office here...." 

And there it was. The reason Saché was on the outs with Jamillia and Treillana at the moment....

This election scheme had not, she knew, been Sabé's idea. Sabé wouldn't think of such a thing. Treillana presumably knew it, too, and therefore knew it was a scheme of the Emperor's. Both Treillana and Jamillia would have been greatly pleased if Saché had come out against it, albeit for different reasons: Treillana was opposed to the scheme because she was a political idealist who felt the end of the Republic should have meant independence for the systems of the galaxy; Jamillia merely disliked the idea of altering Naboo's democratic traditions and potentially becoming a permanent training ground for the heirs to the Empire. Saché privately agreed with Jamillia, but she wouldn't openly oppose the scheme out of loyalty to Sabé. This had lowered her stock significantly with all traditionalists, both progressive and conservative, without necessarily raising it with the splinter group which quite liked the idea of keeping Naboo close to the Imperial throne in perpetuity....

If only this could have waited a few more years to happen. She'd heard the governor was about to retire, and had been rather hoping to make a bid for that seat once it was vacated. Unless a compromise candidate of advanced age was selected, though, she was unlikely to get another shot - governors could, and frequently did, remain in place for life. It occurred to her that she should probably resent Sabé and Padmé both for creating these problems, but she shrank back reflexively from the very idea. 

"Again," Saché said levelly. "You'd need to discuss that with Her Majesty, not me. She knows what I think, but I am an old friend, not her keeper. She and the Emperor and the Princess will come to their own conclusions."

The faintest shadow - it might have been disappointment - crossed Treillana's face before it reverted to regal stillness. "That is so," she agreed. "Well. Good day to you, Legislator. All the best to your wife." 

Chapter Text

Traina Prestor had long since mastered the art of the checkpoint, but the muscles in her stomach still knotted up, just a little, every time. Fortunately, even people without secrets were expected to be a little afraid when confronted by the government machine; if she’d been too confident, that would have raised a lot more flags than a flutter of fear ever could. Very few people old enough to remember the Troubles went through an Imperial checkpoint without at least a flutter of nerves anymore, and although she liked to tell herself she looked much younger than she was, the days when Traina could pretend to not recall a major event from only about ten years ago were nevertheless far behind her, now. As such, she stepped forward and presented her documents to the starport security officer with a flutter of nerves, but without any serious doubts about her ability to get off of Alderaan without stirring any suspicions up against either herself or her House.

Her destination was read off to her. “Only five days?” the officer asked once she’d confirmed the information.

”Business trip,” she said. 

He chuckled affably. “Business stops for no man, woman, or anything else,” he said as he scanned the documents into the computer.

“You know it,” she said cheerfully, accepting them back with a smile.

The business trip to Scipio was real, and had been planned for months; nothing would look at all suspicious even if ImpSec made a note that someone from the Senator’s original House had left the planet during some palace crisis. The fact that there were perhaps a few more documents in her valise than she technically needed, not to mention the tiny data strip hidden in between the soles of her shoe, was incidental. It was, however, sheer dumb luck that a cousin who worked in the palace had managed to get that last, extra message out of the palace and to Traina at the last minute before her flight. Whether it was good or bad luck…well, that remained to be seen.

Bail Organa was her favorite cousin, but that alone would not have convinced her to add a complication to her trip. In fact, knowing the sender was Bail normally would have been enough to make her refuse the job altogether. She seldom, after all, knew the contents or priority of the messages she slipped from world to world on behalf of the loose coalition of Core nobles who were in theory trying to restore the Republic, and she tried not to know who exactly the messages were from or for, either, or what routes they would take once they left her care. The less she knew, after all, the more convincingly she could disclaim any and all involvement if something went wrong. Aldera, however, had been buzzing for days, and while she was skeptical of the tale that said the emperor had sneaked on-world in the dead of the night, she did think there was even more wrong at the palace than anyone outside it knew - and considering there had been two attempts to kidnap the crown princess in a week and that the Queen had fallen ill from stress, that was saying something indeed.

It got yet worse when she considered that it was Bail breaking operational protocol like this, because he was the Queen’s Consort and an influential senator. Aside from the risks of unexpectedly adding an extra data strip to a run, Bail usually didn’t need couriers, because diplomatic immunity, despite the limits it had been given in the New Constitution, meant he was even less likely than she was to run into trouble. Now, though, he needed her to be his errand girl, and urgently. The data strip in her shoe was too small to really feel it as she walked, but she imagined she could, anyway, as she boarded her ship and tried not to think any more about dead drops, or disturbing behavior, or anything besides which cocktail to order. 

* * * * * * * *

"Good afternoon - Carré, isn't it?"

Good afternoon. Two short, simple words, easy to say. She'd said them thousands upon thousands of times, most likely. And yet they froze on Carré's tongue as she took in the sight before her and instantly fell into the lowest curtsy she could manage without actually kneeling. 

"Your Majesty!” she gasped. “I beg your pardon. I thought - "

" - You were coming to see Lady Dormé," the Empress finished for her, and she nodded mutely. This was a disaster from which she might never recover. How could she have - ?

"You didn't come to the wrong room," the Empress said, as though reading her thoughts. Could Her Majesty do that? She wasn't supposed to have actual powers of her own - those were the preserve of the Emperor - but... "I wished to speak with you. Close the door and have a seat. Would you like some tea?" And the Empress poured two cups with her own hands.

Numbly, Carré accepted one of them, holding it closer to her chest than she should have, carefully, as though it had passed the point of merely being a precious object and into the territory of a sacred relic. The Empress had just poured tea. For her. Like...the thought was ridiculous, but she'd done so as if Carré was almost...an equal.

"Th - thank you, Your Majesty," she managed, in response to the unforeseen gift, and then she latched onto ceremonial words as a way to ensure she didn't make any further mistakes. "My hands are yours. How may I serve?"

The Empress took a sip of her own tea, her dark eyes bright and clever above the rim. There were shadows underneath them, but no hint of dullness within. As far as Carré had known, Her Majesty had spent the past several days mostly in seclusion with Queen Breha, praying for their daughters while stormtroopers filled the halls and plans were made to go find those daughters. She did not, however, look like someone who had spent several days burning incense on her knees. 

"Do you know why you were chosen to serve?" the Empress asked. 

This was a test. Carré tried to think how to navigate it. "I thought it was perhaps because I'd worked with Legislator Saché," she said carefully, avoiding it, just a little, for now. 

"And why do you think you were chosen to work with Legislator Saché?" 

So much for avoiding it. She could only think of two responses: the modest one and the honest one. 

"I assumed I was accepted into the internship program because of my test scores, Your Majesty. I know they're very good. I don't know how assignments within the program are determined, though." 

"And you never once suspected that perhaps it wasn't a coincidence, your being assigned to Saché? Or hoped that perhaps it wasn't a coincidence?"

Carré bowed her head. The Empress would not ask a question she didn't already know the answer to. Not at this stage of the conversation. "I hoped," she confessed. "Please forgive me."

Her Majesty put her cup back on its saucer with a delicate chime of fine china on china. "Forgive you?" she asked, and she sounded as if she was truly surprised. "What do you mean? What am I supposed to forgive you for?"

"For my presumptuousness," she said humbly. "For thinking about - " words caught in her chest, the ambitions she had cherished all her life suddenly looking cheap and tawdry and repulsive, like costume jewelry beside the crown jewels. "The honor of being close to one who was once close to you." 

The Empress took another sip of tea and then put her cup and saucer down on Dormé's desk. "Your test scores are not good,” she said. “They are exceptional. You have always been exceptional, and I suspect you've always known it. You've also written at least twenty papers about me, that we could find records of. Almost every time you've been given the freedom to choose your own topics for research, you've chosen something related to me, even though you've been clever enough not to make all of the associations as overt in the past two years." Her voice dropped even further. “Your name, before you came to the School for Public Service, was Kary Laugn. Your parents are factory workers from Pacmary, and you haven’t seen them since you were seven years old - which is also when you changed your nameto sound and look more similar to my birth name.”

Carré had thought Kary Laugn, the general laughingstock of her primary school, was as good as dead, but she felt as though she was shrinking back into the role, now, under the tidal wave of information the Empress seemed to have about her. “Yes, Your Majesty," she whispered. 

"Why?" 

There were good answers, she knew - comments singing the Empress' praises for her good governance of her people, comments about her duty to the Empire requiring that she only ever behave in a way that would please the Emperor and the Empress. She opened her mouth to say some of them, but what came out was, "you were so beautiful." 

"What?" 

Carré swallowed hard against a knot in her throat and unthinkingly took a sip of the precious tea, trying to relax it. "In - Pacmary, at least, on the first day of school every year, they play a holorecording," she explained. "It's always a recording of Your Majesty, addressing us. Telling us that studying hard is an act of service to Naboo and the Empire, and that you hope we all will do so. My - first day of school, the very first one...You were so beautiful. I wanted - " 

"Yes?"

"To be like you," she admitted. "As much like you as possible." 

An uncomfortable silence followed as Her Majesty continued studying Carré like a new book. Carré tried to keep her face as unguarded as possible; perhaps the Empress would see something she could make use of there.

"I suppose that explains your accent," she said finally. "You taught yourself to speak like me." 

Was there a hint of accusation there? Was that an insult? Did the Empress take it as one? Carré had only done it because she admired Amidala so, because Amidala was the best example she knew of for how to be...the best. 

With an effort, she forced herself to look at the Empress before she answered. "Yes," she said. Her voice perhaps wasn't as strong as she might have liked, but she bit back the urge to apologize again. Her eyes were desperate to latch onto her own reflection in the surface of the tea, but she took another sip of it instead and kept her eyes at least turned in the woman's general direction.

The Empress studied her for another long moment before she spoke again. "Could you do it again?" she asked finally.

Carré blinked. "I - I don't understand," she admitted. 

"You've spent your whole life trying to become me." Amidala leaned forward, her eyes arresting, probing - and yet somehow sad, too. "Do you think you could learn to become Leia instead?"

Become Leia. Become the heir to the Empire. Become a sheltered princess who was - Leia was, at best, pretty; Carré thought that Leia had the potential to be beautiful, but she was a little too - childish, really, right now to manage it, at least outside of ceremonial occasions - and somehow, Carré’s didn’t think that the Empress was asking her to do something as simple as stand in for Leia during a ceremony or two. That wouldn't require her to become Leia.

"My hands are yours," she repeated. "I will gladly serve Your Majesty in any way I can."

Another silence. She kept her back straight. Maybe she had started her life as Kary Laugn, but that wasn't who she was now. She was perhaps not on par with her idol, but she was - she was still something, now, not nothing. Exceptional, the Empress had said. That would do. She was exceptional.

Finally, the Empress nodded. 

"Good," she said softly. There was approval there - but more sadness, too. As though she wasn't entirely sure if she was giving Carré an opportunity or reluctantly pronouncing sentence. "Very good." She finished her tea and put the empty cup and saucer on the desk. "I'm afraid your first performance will be an unpleasant one, and it'll be soon." 

The abrupt shift to logistics made her blink. "I will do all I can to serve Your Majesty," she repeated, finishing her own tea as well and reluctantly letting go of the cup. "May I ask what sort of - performance - Your Majesty wants me to give?"

"Hopefully a very brief one. The first thing to do is see if the illusion holds, once Dormé's performed her magic. The best way I can think of to do that is, unfortunately, to show you off to the Emperor without warning him ahead of time." 

* * * * * * * *

When Sabé had told the girl what she required of her, she'd half-expected Carré to either faint or bolt. Since doing either would have been fully understandable, she was more than a little impressed by how her best chance of preventing the crisis from spreading outside of Aldera had held up. She'd been mute as a stone the whole time Dormé was working on her make-up and hair, and was quite pale before she lifted up her hood to mostly obscure her face, but she didn't falter. 

Impressive...and concerning. Padmé had made Amidala beloved of many, and Sabé supposed she had kept their identity admired enough, but a normal person, however devoted to the Imperial cult, did not write twenty papers about one woman, not outside of certain very narrow academic contexts. That wasn't interest or admiration - that was most likely mental illness, even though Handmaidens were supposed to be screened carefully for that. It was possible that Carré was obsessed less with Padmé than with the ideal of erasing herself in general, with Padmé, or at least her idea of Padmé, only serving as material to fill the resulting void with, but there was an obsession involved just the same, combined with either suicidal confidence or an iron will or both. Carré had admittedly been in a room with Anakin twice before, and he'd even made the effort to be charming on both occasions, but even so - that had been under good conditions, when everyone had been where he or she was supposed to be, playing out the roles of everyday life. Only an idiot would expect those two occasions to be any predictors of anyone's behavior today, and obsessive or not, Carré wouldn't have gotten this far in life if she was an idiot. And yet, she continued to walk smoothly, regardless of what was presumably going on in her head. 

The rooms where the palace security cameras were monitored had been transformed into Anakin's headquarters. Most of those around were droids, but there were several men, too, either reviewing reports or speaking into commlinks. A small door led to a smaller room which seemed to have originally been a break room for low-ranking security officers on monitor duty, but which now acted as the office of the most powerful person in the galaxy. She stopped just outside of it and touched the girl's shoulder to stop her as well. She could hear C-3PO talking, apparently finishing a report.

”I am sorry that we can't tell you anything more promising, Master Anakin,” said Threepio. The old droid was always fussy, almost always sounded slightly anxious, but if Threepio had possessed the ability to approach the brink of tears, Sabé thought that was where he'd be now. Artoo also emitted a whistle that even someone who didn't understand droid languages could tell was supposed to be sorrowful and apologetic. “Artoo is not slacking off at all for once - as far as I can tell, no one is. We all will be beside ourselves until Her Highness is found - “

”Thank you, Threepio," said Anakin. "I’m sure you’re both doing everything you can." His pet astromech was not, however, apparently in a mood to be comforted, as it merely whistled sorrowfully again. “Absolutely not. I don't think a newer model would help at all. If I thought going out would help, we'd both be there right now. How many missions have we flown together?” Artoo chirped, presumably offering a number. "It's like I tried to tell them all before - Kenobi went to Utapau," he muttered, as much to himself as Artoo. "You don't split up the team. When you start doing that...They can do the grunt work out there - but I don't want to know anything that doesn't come through you two. Go keep an eye on that lot out there. I don’t trust them. Not as much, anyway.”

"As you say, sir," said Threepio. Artoo whistled something else, in a different tone, and Threepio looked down at him and added, "and you watch your language" as they both turned to leave and noticed Sabé and Carré near the door. "Oh! My lady Empress. I am sorry to report - " 

"I think I got the general idea, thank you, Threepio," she said. "I'm also sure you're doing everything you can." She was less certain that Threepio and Artoo were the best agents available, but she let that matter drop. She was already not looking forward to explaining to the old protocol droid that they were faking a princess - that he would need to not only lie, and pretend this child was the same one whose education he'd largely supervised, but also do so convincingly. Undermining his confidence, such as it was, just now was the last thing she needed to do. "Go about your business, please." 

Sabé hoped Carré was paying enough attention to notice that the Emperor and the Empress had both been polite and conversational with the pair, and to take a hint from this behavior. It would be no good if she tried to act like a social climbing child’s idea of a princess and got off on the wrong foot with either of them; Artoo would have far too much fun putting her in her place - Anakin really did allow him too much leeway, sometimes - and Threepio would just get flustered, and either of those things could cause moments that might be difficult to smooth over in front of an outsider. That was a matter for later, though. Now, she closed the break room door behind the droids without asking as the Emperor looked back and forth between her and Carré with what she interpreted as guarded curiosity. 

"What's this?" he asked. "That's one of those girls you hired to be friends with Leia, isn't it? Have they been investigating on their own again?"

"Not as far as I know," she said, and then looked at the girl. "Take off your hood." 

Carré's hands shook as she obeyed, but obey she did. When Anakin got a clear look at her face, he dropped the stylus he’d been fidgeting with as he appeared to go through about three seconds of complete shock, followed by an almost wild burst of joy mixed with relief and disbelief…which faded rapidly into confusion and then annoyance as he put two and two together and sat back in his chair.

“Dormé and her magic tricks,” he said. "Am I right?”

”Yes.” 

He glanced again at Carré, then quickly away again, focusing back on Sabé. “And you’re turning this person into a replica of our daughter and nearly giving me a heart attack because…?”

”It seems we're about to have company," said Sabé. "Your old friend Tarkin knows we're here. I needed to know if it would work before he got here, and send her back to Naboo as Leia tonight if it didn't. The look on your face thirty seconds ago tells me it did.”

"For about three seconds," he pointed out, and for a few more seconds, something about his tone made her feel almost bad about what she’d just done.

"If it's good enough to fool you for three seconds, it's good enough to fool the public for months, probably," Sabé said grimly. "And Tarkin for...long enough. I don't think he's ever met Leia - I certainly didn't authorize it if he has." She raised her eyebrows, but he didn't take the bait, much to her relief. "Meet Carré." 

For a moment, Anakin merely looked back and forth between them impassively - or at least, she couldn't quite read the look in his eyes, which was worse. ”The Queen's Shadow," he said quietly. "Of course. Where else would your mind go? I should have thought of it myself, all things considered." To Sabé's amazement, he smiled. "You should look for someone who can pass for me, too," he suggested. "Then you can have a perfect model family.”

Her lips twitched in mild amusement even as she gave him a warning look. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," she said, trying and failing to think of many good situations where she'd need an artificial emperor on hand to fill out the ranks of an imitation Imperial family. The best option she could come up with involved the real thing being dead and it seeming politically prudent and logically plausible to pretend for a time that he wasn't, and there would almost certainly need to be a catastrophe for even that much to happen. Certainly she saw no reason to ever pretend he was simply anywhere near her when he really wasn't.  

* * * * * * * *

"Princ - Carré?"

Faraé, who had started to speak before realizing who she was really speaking to, stared as though unsure whether she was seeing a ghost or on the wrong end of a joke. Karin and Riya both jumped up from their seats and rushed over to embrace her - something that puzzled her until Riya, with obvious relief in her voice, said, "you're still alive!" 

Carré still felt as though she was hearing her friends through the wrong end of an ear trumpet, but she blinked and managed to focus for a moment on Riya's face. "Am I not supposed to be?" she asked.

"We had to wonder," Karin said grimly, holding Carré at arm's length as if to assess her more fully for mortal injuries. "After whatever happened to Velena that they won't tell us about, and whatever's going on with the Princess - if you disappeared, too, I was going to let Kanna steal a ship after all, it's like they're picking us off, one by one - "

"What's going on?" Kanna demanded as she and Faraé joined them. “Where have you been? And what happened to your face?"

That last one was easy. "Cosmetics," she said. That led her, though, to answering another of Kanna's questions, which was a bit more complicated, on levels she'd never thought about it being until this moment.... "I'm - I'm supposed to be Leia." 

"’Be Leia?' Faraé crossed her arms and frowned. "What do you mean, be Leia?"

"It...wasn't really Lady Dormé who wanted to see me earlier,” she explained, her voice shaking a little with disbelief even now. “It was Her Majesty. Someone - she called him a friend of the Emperor's, but the way she said it, I think it was sarcastic, but...someone is coming here, so Her Majesty had Dormé do my make-up to make me look more like Leia, then marched me over to the Emperor just to see how he reacted."

Carré's mouth was suddenly, painfully dry, and she slipped away from Riya and Karin in order to go pour herself a cup of water. "He...actually believed it,” she croaked. “Only for a few seconds, but - he’s the Emperor. And Leia’s father, I suppose,” she added as an afterthought. “Her Majesty says that if he could believe it for three seconds, the public could believe it for months, so until we get the real one back.…” She drained her cup, but her lips still felt parched again by the time she said the words. “I'm Leia now." 

* * * * * * * *

Mon Mothma knew things had gone seriously wrong the moment she realized that one of the slips of data smuggled to her in a dead drop from three planets came from Bail Organa, of all people. She refused to speculate about the contents before she decrypted them. But if she had, she was certain she never would have imagined anything so bizarre as the message that came out of the code:

Lord and Lady C visiting the house. Other one’s in the wind. She took my little bird.

For a moment she simply stared at the words, certain they had to be wrong. She had heard the rumors about Amidala vanishing from Naboo, and she was aware of more than one attempt to snatch the Alderaanian princess — and she knew none of those attempts involved Leia Skywalker. Still less did any of this involve the Grand Princess somehow taking Bail’s daughter hostage, or ending up “in the wind,” or whatever this was supposed to mean.

The note was too strange, too close to nonsense. She nearly convinced herself Bail had sent it under duress - deliberately filled it with gibberish to give her a chance to run before the stormtroopers knocked down the door. Almost. But there was only really one thing “little bird” could mean, in this context, and it was not something Bail would use to create ‘noise.’ Padmah was too precious to them; she and Bail had exchanged words, more than once, about how uncompromising he could be about the idea of Padmah’s safety or even happiness being put at risk, greater good be damned. 

Mon remembered the nickname too well. She remembered, even now, Breha’s bright laugh as the child had hopped and flailed about, seemingly trying to take to the air with wings of a bird that did not yet know how to fly. Bail’s voice, sharp with mock offense, when Mon teased that the child resembled a rooster: “you’re not in any position to talk.” It was an absurd memory - a rare moment of laughter in a dark time, which was, perhaps, why the nickname had stuck, at least enough that it couldn’t possibly mean anything else now.

That left her with only one logical conclusion. Leia Skywalker had slipped the leash. Somehow,  she had drawn her parents’ attention to Alderaan, and somehow - voluntarily or otherwise - the Organa girl had gotten swept up into it all when the Grand Princess abandoned that planet, too. And if Mon had learned this not from a blare of news alerts and panicked spies, not from lockdowns and stormtrooper deployments, but from a battered datastrip carried off Alderaan and across half a dozen more planets before it finally reached her by doubtless painfully indirect routes…if she was learning this surreptitiously, then the Emperor and Empress were trying to conceal the situation from the public. They were not launching a full-scale search and suspending the Constitution the way they had when they lost their son. They were trying to maintain the illusion that everything was normal. And so, unexpectedly, they had provided their enemies an opportunity - or at least, the opportunity to create opportunities.

She could not publish the truth, or even anything close to it…but she could start a rumor. If she activated the right agents, if they let drop the right careless words in the right ears, then the galaxy would start to wonder. To doubt the stability of the regime, and the nigh-omnipotence attributed to the Emperor. How could he claim to be the next thing to a god and yet lose both of his children? How could he and Amidala say they were essential to the safety and security of the people when they could not protect their own family? Because no matter how hard they tried to prevent it, there was almost no way to keep the public at large from believing it was Prince Luke all over again. That would make at least some people willing to do desperate things to prevent another witch hunt - things that would exhaust and frustrate the regime at every level. Chaos would sprout, however slightly, in a hundred places at once, and the group of Imperial core loyalists would become overworked and overextended. Which would only further undermine public confidence in the regime, creating a potentially near-endless negative feedback loop. And such circumstances…such circumstances were where opportunities arose. 

Chapter Text

The reintroduction of normal meals had started to reintroduce shape to her days, but for the most part, Velena still only thought of two definable units of time: Day and Night. Those were, after all, the two states she could always tell the difference between from her bed. The tiny room which had been her world for what felt like forever didn’t have real windows, only clerestory ones, narrow and placed high above her head, and they offered a view of nothing but the unadorned sky. The room must, she thought, have been designed to make it as difficult as possible to even tell time by the sun: sometimes it shone, sometimes it did not, and most of the time, she gleaned minimal information about what was going on outside from it. Between that and the amount of time she’d spent under various degrees of sedation, she couldn’t even say for sure if she had been in what she increasingly thought had to be a prison for days or weeks.

It can’t have been months, she told herself, over and over again. Surely it hasn’t really been months.

But all she knew for sure was that right now, the sun was shining; therefore, it was daytime. The angle of the windows meant a good deal of natural light made its way into the room, and right now, there was enough of it that she could feel a little warmth on her hands and face. That, she knew, made it illogical to cling to the coarse hospital blanket which covered her lower half. It wasn’t cold, and she wasn’t cold, which meant she was probably going to be hot soon, under the blanket and sheet - but every time she tried to push the blanket aside, her hands knotted into uselessness at her waist, high enough that she could, for one more moment, avoid the confirmation of her suspicions.

It was humiliating. She had never considered herself a coward, but what else could she call this besides cowardice? It wasn’t as if she didn’t already know, both deep down and, reluctantly, several layers higher as well, what she was going to see. Medical science was a wonderful thing, but she remembered thinking, just before she’d lost consciousness, that she thought she now knew what burning bone smelt like. There were only so many ways things could go from there, especially when she already knew that one of her kidneys had apparently been a lost cause and required a synthetic replacement.

I’m not a dancer anymore, she reasoned, despite how she still felt slightly hollow whenever she consciously thought about that fact. So what does it matter? It doesn’t. No company will ever hire me if I’m right, but no company was ever going to hire me anyway, not if I tried to come back after I spent at least two and a half years off-stage for this job. It doesn’t matter -

For one moment, she thought she heard something - indulged in the rare fantasy that she could hear sounds from the corridor she assumed existed outside this room, and that a nurse droid was about to come into the room and distract her - but then nothing happened, and, caught, she gritted her teeth and almost threw the blanket aside, so that she could finally see her legs. Or what was left of them.

Her left leg was thinner than it had been, but other than that, it appeared nearly as perfect as it had been before. Her right leg, though….

There was…something…lying on the bed beside her left leg.

It was not her right leg.

At first glance, she thought it must be some contraption meant to either straighten out bones or perhaps, in the hands of a torturer, break them. It did look vaguely like a human leg on closer examination, but that didn’t make the skeletal arrangement of black metal tubes and rods look anything like one of her legs. She tried to flinch away from the thing, but it moved with her; she could even feel it drag between the paper-like sheets. That did not reassure her, instead, she covered her mouth with a whimper, struggling not to throw up, as she realized: it wasn’t enough that she had lost her leg. No. Now, instead, this hideous, unnatural - thing - was attached to her. Permanently. Her nervous system was accepting input from it. It was part of her now.

From what little she knew about the subject, it seemed she’d gotten a very good prosthetic. That should have made her feel a little better, if only because it meant she wasn’t likely to be executed any time soon - but it didn’t. Instead, she just stared at it, first in disbelief and then in horror, biting her sleeve and struggling for air, now, even though she wasn’t currently in pain.

The Lady did not explain Herself to Her human worshipers, and they were not supposed to ask - but the thought came  unbidden: Our Mother of Pearls - how did this happen? Why? Why did You let them save me, if it was only just for - just for this?

* * * * * * * *

It didn’t hurt, and that was even worse than the alternative. Desperate, she stood up unaided for the first time since getting shot, certain that would do the trick, but she still felt nothing. Her balance was all off, now, but it was because her left leg was weak; the mechanical one was less burdensome than the real one beside it. If she didn’t look at it, she could almost convince herself that she was still whole and merely recovering from an injury, and not some grotesque combination of droid and human being - but only almost. She had seen what she had seen.

She wanted to scream, and throw things, and commit blasphemy, just to tempt the goddess to strike her down with lightning - but she couldn’t even open a window on a pleasant day, much less run out into a storm while saying irrevocable words. Her cell hadn’t been designed with throwing things in mind, either; the only equipment she was still fastened to was the piece they probably expected her to be grateful for, the bed was bolted to the floor, and there was no other furniture. All she had available, really, was bedding, and throwing that was such a stupid idea that she knew it would just make her feel even worse. Screaming, at least, was an option - but she didn’t want to give whoever had done this to her the satisfaction. She hadn’t seen another human since the first time she’d woken up in this room, but the nurse droids were doubtless programmed not only to ignore screaming, but to report it back to their masters, whoever those were, if it occurred. And so she was trapped - 

Days dragged by. The nurse droids all seemed apprehensive about her using the bed rail as a substitute for a barre, but they encouraged her to spend as much time out of bed as possible. She cursed, occasionally, during the exercises she used to rebuild her strength, but she didn’t cry - not at first. Then, one morning, she woke up with the music for the Procession of the Swans playing in her head.

It had played in the room, too, for most of the night, but she’d been mildly sedated and hadn’t woken up. When the drugs wore off, though, just as the sun found its way through her slips of window, she woke up with it in her head, almost as clear as if she’d been in the studio with a pianist on hand.

She had been, more or less, well for days - there was no reason why she should have still been confined to a medical setting, and especially not one which was utterly devoid of all forms of entertainment besides whatever exercises she could develop for herself. The silence had been maddening, but now, it seemed, the never-ending music might be worse. Again and again and again, no matter how she tried to think about something else, until she almost thought, at times, that it really was being piped into the room at a volume just beneath notice -

She tried to resist the urge to practice, and did for - a while. Her attempts to count days had been useless, but she was sure she held out for more than one day. Somehow, though, it didn’t make her feel any better when she at last realized why she was on her feet, eyes fixed on the room’s tiny mirror, even though she could barely see her face in it, never mind her footwork. They had always practiced while facing mirrors at school, so they could keep an eye on themselves for any imperfections; it would have been unnatural to have neither a mirror nor a darkened audience in front of her.

“A series of movements, however well-executed, is not our art, my children.” She could hear one of the older teachers as clearly as if the woman had been right beside her. “Other fields produce art, but as dancers, we become art, in the moment when the dance leads us as close as a mortal being can come to our kind of perfection. The sublime is difficult to find in the best of circumstances; for a dancer, it cannot be done if the body is in any way defective, which is why you must always take care of yourselves.”

There was one lesson, she thought bitterly, that she must not have taken enough to heart. She’d been a bit of a favorite with Madame, back then; it made it even worse that she wasn’t sure her first instructor could even stay in a room with her without vomiting, now, much less watch her try to….

Step in glissade, pas de bourrée couru. Not that she could do that properly without proper shoes, instead favoring her left leg by switching from en pointe to demi-pointe. It also, she was sure, looked absurd, running en pointe or demi-pointe by herself like this, but she had practiced this so many times in class that it was easy to imagine the other bodies alongside hers, forming a circle, each in turn going through développé and into arabesque penchée, even though she was alone and the room wouldn’t have been large enough for the corps anyway. She didn’t really, after all, smell the resin they ground into the toes of their shoes at the beginning of class, or feel the way it subtly changed the feel of the wooden floors underneath the pointe shoes she wasn’t wearing, but - 

An intricate bit where the two lines wound between each other and finally crossed, so that each dancer ended up on the opposite side from where she had started, before they all spread out into a wide half-circle, feet moving rapidly in place en pointe and their arms suggestive of wings even without the feathers they would wear into a real performance of this dance…and then one girl broke out of the circle, which quickly closed behind her as she reached center stage and performed the first of the three demi-solos, each danced by one of the three best in the corps.

Velena’s dream had been the third demi-solo, but she had never been quite able to perform it to satisfaction, because of the part where all three dancers went into fouettés en tournant together, after the third part had already involved sustained periods in dramatic arabesques and attitudes. She had never managed to complete the correct number of fouettés - her supporting leg would wobble, every time, almost at the end, before the swans could be ‘startled’ into jetés that would take them back into the line before its exit from the stage.

Now, though, she danced all three of the mini-solos herself, alone, and her supporting leg still wasn’t fatigued as she went into the fouettés. It did, however, hum and whirr just a little - just enough to cut through the music in her head and constantly remind her: she had finally done it perfectly…and yet made it hideous, just by attempting it in her state. She had not approached perfection, she had simply stayed upright, supported not by strength she’d dutifully cultivated, but by the attempt, not even hers, to mend an acquired defect. Jeté, jeté…the next part was not supposed to involve folding down onto the floor, sobbing into one’s knees, but that was what she did.

The doorway slid open, then shut again, sealing her away from the world again. There was humming, and then, to her surprise, something stroking her hair, almost like a person. Looking up, she saw that the nurse droid was one of those with cloth-covered hands and a sort of padded vest over the torso - one which could provide some measure of physical comfort as well as simple care.

She’d been allowed to wear real clothes for - a long time, probably over a week - but the next time her slivers of the sky turned from black to grey to blue, she took extra care in picking between the handful of options provided to her. The one nurse droid that spoke Basic had said nothing out of the ordinary, but somehow, she knew, from the moment she woke up, that today was when they were finally going to come for her. She was trembling from head to foot within seconds of leaving the room, but she managed to keep both her leg and the metal one under enough control to walk, and at least spare herself the indignity of being dragged into what was quite obviously, based on the emptiness and harsh lighting and the way a chair had been designed to restrain its occupants, an interrogation room.

The person who fastened her to the chair at the wrists and ankles seemed almost apologetic, saying something about this being more of a formality than anything and how he was sure this state of affairs wouldn’t last long. Then he left her and…nothing else happened. She just sat there, alone, in silence, waiting for something to happen as it grew harder and harder by the second not to put up a pointless struggle.

When the door finally opened again, it was almost a relief - for a few seconds. Then, though, she recognized the tall, black-clad figure stepping through the door and froze, fear locking her in place more securely than any restraints ever could.

It was the Emperor.

* * * * * * * *

Anakin looked over the file one more time for any last details of note, and then asked his lieutenant, “any difficulties with her?”

“No, my lord. The poor mite’s frightened – “ there was almost a hint of reproach in that – “but cooperative.”

“Good – that she’s cooperative, I mean. For the other, I’ll do my best to put her at ease.”

Unless she says the wrong thing, of course.

“Very good, sir.”

The girl in the chair already managed to put him in mind of a lightsaber, a line of energy so tightly focused as to become dangerous, but when she saw who was entering the room, he saw her pupils constrict with terror. She was trying – oh, she was trying to be brave, but she already doubted her ability to be brave enough.

Good, thought a few of the people he pretended to be. Another, dimmer part of his mind flickered uneasily; it did not like seeing a girl who could have passed for Leia’s sister in such a state. He pushed most of that uneasiness aside, though, only just leaving enough in his awareness to draw on for emotional effect if he needed it. For now, he maintained a carefully neutral expression as he walked slowly into the room, watching her to see what she would do. For a few seconds, he thought she might be paralyzed with fear, but then she threw herself as far forward as she could, into the lowest bow the restraints permitted. Her elbows were pressed outward in a way that reminded him of a bird’s wings; her arms had twisted so that the wrist shackles cut into them, blanching thin bars of the skin.

“Forgive me, my lord,” she said. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, but surprisingly close to steady. “This - this is as close to curtsying as I can manage right now - “

“I’m aware, “ he interrupted her, almost amused. So she wasn’t quite past the point of coherent thought…yet. “But that can’t be very comfortable. Sit up, please. Compose yourself.” She made an effort; her face was still a bloodless grey and her lips were trembling, but she sat up and looked…in his general direction, at least. Good; she’d obeyed for the first time. Not in a consequential way, but the precedent was set. “There. That’s better. I know you’re frightened, but as long as you tell me the truth, you have nothing to fear.”

“Y – yes, my lord.” She swallowed and added, “Your Majesty is merciful - “

”Am I?” he asked. He could imagine Sabé’s reaction to that. The girl was laying it on a little thick, the groveling - “I would only need to show you mercy if you had done something worthy of condemnation. I’m not sure that you’ve done such a thing.”

The file indicated she was quick, but pure terror, it seemed, was dulling her wits now. “My lord?”

She was starting to hunch over in the chair again. “Look at me,” he ordered, as gently as he could manage. “Sit up straight.” Again, there was the effort, at least, to obey. “People who I trust, and who have reason to know, have told me that they don’t think running away from home was your idea. They tell me that all the evidence points to my daughter becoming – agitated – on her own, and you simply got caught up in her wake. Is that what happened?”

“I was – was afraid of what might happen if the Grand Princess left alone,” she said. “I didn’t think I could stop her, so all I could do was follow her, and try to protect her as far as I could – “

“You’re not lying,” he observed. “That’s very good. Never lie to me, Velena. And since you are not lying, I think it would be more appropriate for me to offer you gratitude than mercy.” She looked up at him, her eyes huge and barely comprehending. “And so I offer it. Thank you, Velena, for trying to help my daughter. Ah – lieutenant?”

She flinched when he raised his voice even slightly, but he pretended not to notice in favor of giving orders. “Remove Miss Merron’s restraints. The matter is what I’d hoped it was. She is a loyal citizen who was just…mistaken…about what her duty was in a stressful moment. She did not intend any harm to me or my family. Did you?”

“No, my lord,” she said fervently. “Never.”

She didn’t move in the slightest until all of her limbs were free, and even then, she only withdrew into herself without relaxing. He suppressed irritation with how high her guard still was - the verbal groveling was indeed deliberate, then; perhaps she wasn’t lying, but she was still too much in control of herself, when he wanted to crush any and everything he couldn’t control in an iron fist right now -

Don’t think about that. He focused, or tried to focus, on the more practical matter of continuing the game. 

“As I said,” he continued. “I am in your debt. Leia can be…impulsive, sometimes. Gets that from me,” he joked. “Her mother’s usually the sensible one. She needs good friends to watch her back, when she’s like this for – whatever reason. Do you know why Leia decided to run away from home?”

“No, my lord.”

“And do you know where she intended to go next?”

“No, my lord.”

“But you had more complicated thoughts than that before you answered either of those questions,” he observed, and saw her hands curling in on themselves, digging into her palms. “Shadows of doubt in your mind. You don’t know the answers to my questions – but you have your suspicions. Tell them to me.”

“I – I – “

That wasn’t just fear. Oh, it was mostly fear, but there was a tiny kernel of resistance left there, too. Well, she never would have been recruited into the Handmaiden program if she hadn’t had a core of steel in there somewhere – something that would be faithful to her friends even to the point of death. That was one reason why he was handling her somewhat delicately this time. One reason. The combination of what he knew about handmaiden training combined with what was written in her psych profile and a touch of pure curiosity were the other reasons. It was one thing to manipulate a person’s circumstances until they became unbalanced, but although on one hand, she’d been taught about basic interrogation techniques, and how to resist them, and was notably strong-willed…she was also fifteen years old and, for some reason, even more afraid of him than he thought most people were. Yet she was still trying, and not even completely failing. Off-balance, he thought, was as far as he wanted her to go. For now.

“Relax,” he told her. “You’re safe here. I know you aren’t lying to me. Just breathe. And then tell me.”

He drew on the Force with that last sentence, manipulated it around her as delicately as possible. It was not quite one of the old Jedi mind tricks, but on someone in the right state of mind, it was almost as good as compulsion. She started to talk – slowly at first, still measuring her words, but then faster and faster, spilling forth everything she knew: that Leia had some odd things about the Empress. That Leia had seemed terrified of seeing either of them again, not just him. That Leia had sliced - or bludgeoned - into the palace computer systems here….

Finally, Velena stopped talking and instead just…sat there, not even seeming to notice the tears running down her face. He closed his eyes for a moment, recentered himself, and offered her a handkerchief, which she buried her face in at once.

“Thank you, Velena,” he said again, quietly. “You’ve done a good job. You’ve done a great service for the Empire, and for me personally. That’s all for now. Lieutenant? Take Miss Merron to her room. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the liberty of having your things moved while we’ve been talking,” he added to her. “To a location with a few more amenities, and a view of one of the gardens. Go and get some rest.”

She was nearly sobbing as she all but fled from the room. A tiny flicker of conscience made him wish that hadn’t been necessary, but he ignored it in favor of mulling over what he’d gleaned from the interview, and what he was going to do with that information.

He’d already known that Leia’s flight had something to do with Padmé, but confirmation was still unpleasant. When they found her, she was going to want answers he didn’t particularly wish to give her. There was at least some chance of using the old Palpatine story to explain her mother’s current condition, but the issue of Sabé…that wouldn’t be easily explained. There would be unpleasantness. He would have to be very careful, there, because he could not harm her. He’d promised his wife a lot of things, both before and since her illness, and there was only one he hadn’t broken. He didn’t know if she’d even be able to forgive him for his failure to protect Luke, but if anything happened to Leia, much less anything it was totally within his power to prevent -

No. Even Padmé couldn’t forgive that. He didn’t know if he could even bring himself to ask her to.

It seemed, in context, like a minor problem now, but he should also probably figure out if the Organas were really traitors or if Leia had just been bluffing about that. Carefully, though, for now, because his informant had proven more interesting than he’d expected, and therefore at least a little less trustworthy. Another minor issue, though, unless -

“They tell me that all the evidence points to my daughter becoming – agitated – on her own, and that you simply got caught up in her wake. Is that what happened?”

“I was – was afraid of what might happen if the Grand Princess left alone,” she said. “I didn’t think I could stop her, so all I could do was follow her, and try to protect her as far as I could – “

It made perfect sense to him, that line of thinking - but this girl had known Leia a few weeks, and had only been friends with her because Sabé had paid her to do so. And how, anyway, had the girl managed to at least keep in step with her when no one else had? He’d watched the glimpses of Leia that had been caught on camera that day a hundred times at least; she’d been alone until almost the very end, when Velena had caught up with her. As if she had been able to predict what Leia would do more accurately than people who’d known her since infancy had done. Either she was, somehow, lying to him, as impossible as that seemed, or else something…odd…was going on. Odd - but potentially useful. If she could get in Leia’s way more effectively than anything else once - 

Padmé’s getting better. I’m going to find Leia, come Hell or whatever else may. This - nightmare…it doesn’t last another year. He thought again of the girl he thought might be an unexpected path to making that happen. If his guess was any good, she was probably even now trying to evaluate her surroundings without being seen to do so, trying not to show any emotion due to a suspicion - accurate - that a more comfortable box came with even tighter surveillance, and he stamped out a twinge of discomfort at the thought of what he was doing, and what it dimly reminded him of. She wasn’t Leia, even if she did remind him a little of Leia. She wasn’t Padmé. Those were the only people who mattered. One way or another, cost what it may - it ends, now.