Heritage/Chapter 17

“Are you sure you want to stay here?” Luke asked his wife.

Mara nodded resolutely. “Mirax and I are going to stay and help with the editing. I’ll be home soon.”

He smiled and kissed her cheek in parting. “All right. Comm me before you broadcast, so we can see how it turns out.”

“I will,” she smiled. “Love you.”

“You too.”

Luke stepped out of the NRI Operations building and turned towards the street, marching to the spot on the causeway where his mother was saying her goodbyes to Leia’s children. “…sure you don’t want to come with us?” Jacen was asking as Luke came within earshot.

“Perhaps this evening,” Padme replied, her face wrinkling gently as she smiled. Her grin turned slightly towards Luke, and she slipped her arm through his as he came up beside her. “But Luke has already promised to take me to lunch.”

“All right,” Jacen conceded. The three waved goodbye to mother and son, then went to rejoin Han where he waited with Jag Fel and their own speeder.

“So,” Padme began as they started off leisurely, “are we going to wait on Mara?”

“No, she’s going to help fix up the holocast so we can transmit it as soon as possible,” Luke answered.

Padme nodded pensively, taking in the sights and sounds around them as they sauntered along with no specific destination. “I like her.”

Luke beamed. Even though—or, maybe because—he had only known his mother a day, he found himself scrambling to please her, to be perfect, to make her proud. He desired her praise and attention more than anything. All his life he had dreamed of her, and now that she was really here, he wanted every moment to be just right. “I’m glad.”

“She seems to love you very much,” Padme continued. “How long have you been married?”

“A little over six years,” he replied. “But I’ve known her for sixteen.”

“You have no children,” she observed. Somehow, she managed not to sound critical. It was only an observance. She was trying to get a feel of who he was.

“No,” he agreed. “There’s never been a good time, a time when we thought it was safe enough, or that we could both give our all to being parents.”

“Do you ever plan on being parents?” she asked again. Then a blush colored her face. “I’m sorry. Is this too private? I’m just trying to get to know you a little better.”

He laughed and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “No, not at all. I’m glad you ask things. There’s so much to talk about, I don’t know where to start first.”

“Believe me, I understand the feeling,” she whispered dryly. “I’ve had forty years to think about what I want to say to you, and suddenly I can’t remember any of it.”

They shared a laugh. It was wonderful.

“To answer your question, no, we haven’t really talked about it,” he sighed at last. “I don’t think either of us are opposed to it, we’re just not ready yet.”

“I see,” she mused. “Tell me, where are we going to eat?”

He shrugged. “I have no preference.”

“There used to be an open air cafe right across from the Senate Hall called Coruscant Breeze,” she began, but suddenly he stopped in his tracks.

“You’ve been to Coruscant before?”

She turned back to face him, perplexed. “Well, yes. I lived here when I was a senator.”

He balked at her. “From where?”

“Naboo,” she answered, finally having realized that they had not yet covered this topic of conversation. “After I completed my two terms as Queen.”

“Queen?” his eyes widened. Then she nodded gently. A smile slowly cracked his solemn expression. “Well. I guess we know where Leia gets her political panache, then.”

Padme grinned and returned her hand to the crook of his arm as they continued. “I knew Bail very well, and a lot of that should be credited to him. He was an excellent politician, and a good man. It’s no wonder Leia grew to be the same.”

Luke paused for a minute before he finally asked what had been on his mind the whole time. “How did you meet my father?”

She took her sweet time in preparing a response. When she did speak, it was like reciting from a story book she had read too many times. “I wasn’t born Padme Amidala, you know.” He raised his eyebrows, encouraging her. “My surname was Naberrie until I was elected queen. Then I took the royal name of Amidala. I hadn’t been queen very long when there was a trade and taxation dispute between our planet and the Trade Federation. I was a severe pacifist then, and held off on anything other than negotiations until we were backed in a corner. The Trade Federation droid army invaded Theed, the capital, and we fell quickly under their control.”

“When was this?” Luke frowned. “I seem to remember hearing something about the Blockade of Naboo in the histories.”

“About thirteen years before you were born,” she answered. “The Viceroy tried to force me to sign a treaty that would make their actions legal. I would not, and they probably would have killed me had I not been rescued.”

“By whom?”

“Jedi,” she responded simply. “A Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Her brown eyes cut up at him knowingly. “I’ve heard that Obi-Wan played a significant part in your life, as well.”

Luke nodded sagely, took in all this information slowly, so as to remember it all in detail. “He was my first master. I…saw him die.”

Padme was quiet for a long time, until Luke thought he might have somehow injured her feelings. “He was…well, we’ll get to that later. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon rescued me and tried to bring me here, to Coruscant. Our ship failed soon, though, and we made an emergency landing on Tatooine. By then I had switched roles with one of my handmaidens to protect myself, and I accompanied Qui-Gon into Mos Espa to find the parts we needed. Anakin was nine years old, and worked as a slave for a Toydarian in a junkyard.”

Luke smiled, imagining his parents’ first meeting. He had reconciled his father’s fate many, many years before Leia did, and no longer felt discomfort acknowledging either Anakin or Vader. “Was it one of those love at first sight things?”

She laughed merrily. “Hardly; not on my part anyway. He was enamored from the beginning, though, I believe. But I was five years older than him and had much more important things to worry about at the time. Anyway, he won the Boonta Eve podrace for us, and allowed Qui-Gon to buy both the parts for our ship and Anakin’s freedom. He came with us to Coruscant to become a Jedi. After the Naboo conflict was over, Obi-Wan took Anakin as his padawan, mainly because it had been Qui-Gon’s dying wish before he was killed by the Sith Darth Maul.”

Luke had definitely heard that story. He had both read about it in Ben’s personal logs, and from the other pre-Imperial Jedi histories he managed to salvage over the years. “I’ve heard of Darth Maul.”

“Obi-Wan was the first Jedi to kill a Sith in thousands of years, I believe,” Padme thought aloud. “But back to my story.” By then they had crossed the skywalk between highrises, and had taken a left towards the distant South Senate District. “I served out my two terms as Queen, and then—at the request of the new Queen—served Naboo in the Senate. It was ten years after the Trade Federation ordeal that I started to have assassination attempts on my life. I hadn’t seen Anakin at all in that time, but Chancellor Palpatine insisted that I have Jedi protection; the Council sent Anakin and Obi-Wan.”

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. From even then, he could see Palpatine’s sinister hand in his father’s life. He had been manipulating him for years before Anakin Skywalker ever fell. “This was near the beginning of the Clone Wars?” he clarified.

“The very onset,” Padme affirmed. “Obi-Wan went to hunt down my attackers, and Anakin was sent back with me to Naboo, to keep me safe. He was relentless in his feelings for me,” she sighed, as if the thought somehow troubled her still. “I swear to the stars, I did my best to discourage him, despite my own growing affection. It tore us both apart.

“We ended up back on Tatooine, after he had visions of his mother in pain. She had been kidnapped from her moisture farm by sandpeople, and he rescued her only moments before she died.” There was a painful lapse in Padme’s tale. “That was the first time, to my knowledge, he displayed dark side tendencies. He slaughtered the whole tribe.”

Luke’s head snapped up suddenly. “You were with him on Tatooine?”

“Yes,” she frowned.

He stopped, facing her and taking both her hands. His breathing quickened in excitement. “And you stayed at a moisture farm? Was it right outside Mos Eisley?”

A nod.

“That’s where I grew up!” he felt dizzy, couldn’t believe it. “All those times I wondered about my parents, and there both of you had been, right in my own home. You walked through the same sand I did. You sat in the same kitchen.” Tears touched the corners of his eyes. A soft hand tenderly wiped them away.

“Don’t cry, Luke,” she whispered, and somehow kept her voice steady. “We never need to cry for each other again.”

He pulled her close, wept against her shoulder despite her pleas to the contrary. He didn’t care that the people passing stared. He only cared that his mother, his true mother, had finally been returned to him. She pulled away from him first, wiping his cheeks with her sleeve. “I’m so very sorry for ever leaving you. I should have ran away with you and Leia, maybe even hidden with Obi-Wan.” Her voice took on a faraway tone as the ‘what ifs’ raced through her head. “Surely we would have been safe. He would have protected us. Anakin would have never known.”

“He did what was best,” Luke assured her. “He did what he had to to make sure we had this day.”

“You’re right,” she let out a weighty breath. “I would only change it so that Leia would be here too,” a hesitation, “and Anakin.”

“I want you to know that I forgave my father a very long time ago,” Luke locked onto her eyes, so like his sister’s. “I harbor no animostity towards him. He was a troubled and miserable man. I pity him and the fate he was doomed to suffer. I know that it wasn’t in his heart. He loved me—probably you, as an extention through me—more than the power, the Emperor. He died to save me.”

She patted his arm, but looked away. He thought it was uncomfortable for her to let him see the breaking inside her. “He did all those things…all those terrible things…because he loved me too much. The dead are as much a weight on my soul as his. If I had been a stronger woman, more impervious to what we knew was forbidden, he might have never fallen. I am as much to blame as Palpatine.”

“That’s just not true,” Luke argued. “Palpatine had his fingers in it from the beginning. He would have found a way. You were just one available means. And besides, if you hadn’t married, Leia and I would not exist and the Empire might still be in power. It was the will of the Force. I believe that with all my heart.”

She graced him with an appreciative smile. “I pray you are right.”

He took her hand and pulled them again into the flow of foottraffic. The conversation was becoming too depressing for her. They needed to focus on the future. “The twins and Anakin had really taken to you.”

Her smile was full-blown. “They’re so wonderful. They have such character for people so young.”

“It hasn’t always seemed like it, but everything Leia does is for them,” Luke told her. “She would be so proud to see how they’re handling all of this. They’ve really stepped up and matured. They’ll be great Jedi Knights one day.”

“I agree,” she concurred. “I’m amazed at what you’ve made out of ruins, Luke. I was there during the Purge. There was just nothing left of the Jedi. You’ve restored their kind, singlehandedly. I can’t even fathom the lonliness there must have been in that, the resolve.”

“It was very difficult at first,” he admitted. “But I had Leia, even though she was less than eager to learn. Soon I found others. The Dathomiri witches, Kyle Katarn, Kam Solusar, Mara, Corran the Ysanna. It just grew. I found people, and I taught them. Eventually, people came of their own accord. That too was the will of the Force.”

They walked in silence for a very long time. It was comfortable silence, both mother and son contemplating each other and the news they brought. It was Padme who eventually spoke again. “I would like to return to Naboo, when this conflict is over and Leia is home safe. There is a chance some of my family still live.”

Luke was shocked. “We could have other relatives?”

“I had parents, and a sister, who had children of her own,” Padme told him. “My nieces, maybe even my sister, could still live.”

It took several heartbeats for Luke to be able to even fathom such a thing. “Cousins…”

“We will go then? After the war?” she asked, hopeful.

“Of course,” he promised, and meant it wholeheartedly. He didn’t even consider that something in between could change that, or that they might not win. He would take his mother home, and Leia would be with them. “As soon as it’s over. I promise.”