Charley in the sky with diamonds

There wasn’t much to see. Pictures of a young girl queen. Her father was in some of them. A funeral procession. Some clips of speeches. A blip on the galactic political radar. Just a scattering of images and impersonal factoids about a long-gone Senator.

“So you were my mother,” Leia murmured.

 Queen Amidala didn’t respond. Her visage, forever fourteen in the picture, kept smiling serenely.

“I wonder…”

The words stopped.

Leia didn’t know where to take them next. They had no destination. They never would. That was all there was. Wonder and guesswork.

She had come on an instinct she didn’t want to explain. The knowledge was still fresh—raw, in some ways—and Leia had meant to see this queen for herself. This stranger. Chart out the threads running from her to her. It made a neat, horrible sense. Clearly she had known Bail. Leia looked just like her. Everything about her fit as neatly as a torn-out piece of Leia could. Kind, beautiful, and sad. Wise, discerning, and kindhearted. Dead.

Leia wished she could have met her. And then felt glad she hadn’t. And then didn’t know how to feel at all.

She was lost in her reverie when footsteps approached. Instantly, Leia straightened and wiped all expression off her face with the clean practice of a former princess. Vulnerability was not something she cared to share with strangers.

She looked up.

And blinked.

Padme Amidala stood before her. Not the girl queen flush with youth and beauty—this Padme was weathered. Aged. Still elegant, but silver haired with fine wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. Harder.

Leia was dumbfounded. And then somewhat hysterically wanted to laugh. Why not. She had had a long-lost Sith Lord father; a long-lost twin brother; this was all that was needed to complete the oh-so-happy family, if Coruscanti soap operas were to be believed. Leia had wished to meet her mother, and there, on cue, her mother was. It was more surprising that dramatic orchestral music hadn’t started theatrically strumming.  

Hi, mom, she thought wildly, and somewhat savagely.

Padme Amidala did not speak. Instead, she brushed past Leia to look at the beginning of the exhibit. Leia’s caustic surprise turned into offense. Then she chided herself. This woman wouldn’t know her.

Still, she spoke.

“Pardon me, but—”

“I know. I look just like her.” The woman’s tone was curt. She didn’t so much as glance at Leia, eyes scanning the exhibit in front of her. “That’s what you were going to ask, yes?”

Leia fell silent. She had known it wasn’t her mother. And yet—

“You look like her too, you know,” the woman had finally brought her gaze to Leia, eyeing her bluntly. “You could have been a handmaiden if you had been born a few decades earlier.”

Ah, yes. Of course. A former handmaiden.

“I should have guessed. Forgive me,” Leia said smoothly. “I overstepped.”

“What’s your interest in her?” The woman’s gaze was back on the exhibit. “Or did you just wander in?” Then, before Leia could summon a politely vague and believable answer, she shook her head with a snort. “Now I’m overstepping, and now I’ll have to ask you to forgive me.” More curtness. “No one really cares about her anymore. So when I see people still drawn to her, I…” Her voice trailed off.

“You must have given her a lot, as a handmaiden,” Leia said softly. She knew this kind of grief.

“I would have given her my life for her,” said the woman simply.

The words hung in the air. Unspoken memories lay heavy on the atmosphere; the woman’s gaze was far away, now, deep in long-gone times and a woman Leia could only remember in dreams.

Leia turned to the exhibit that flickered with various Amidalas.

“She appeared to be a woman who inspired great loyalty.” It was a flatly routine response, but the best Leia could offer.

“You never answered my question.” A shrewd gaze was back on Leia. “What drew you to her?”

Leia decided on an answer true in more than one way: one lovely, one sharp. “She knew my father.”

“Really? And who was he? I probably knew him too.”

Leia froze. Because it was true. The woman probably did. Whether Bail, or…not. Here there were answers. Here there were likely memories of the friendship between Bail and her mother, warm and golden and a small light on days when the galaxy felt too cold and dark. Here there were personal bits of knowledge of a stranger that could fall together to add the mosaic Leia had in her head, small pieces to add to the kind beautiful discerning wise.

Here there were other truths, that Leia had deliberately pushed down and down, refusing to look at their lurking shadows that seemed to have crept into every part of her life.

She had waited too long. The woman nodded. “I see. Didn’t mean to pry.”

“Bail Organa.” Leia’s voice was rougher than it should be. “My father was Bail Organa.” She cleared her throat. “I believe they worked in the Senate together?”

“Yes.” The woman was gentle now, understanding. “They had deep respect for each other. She would have loved to meet his daughter.”

The words were jagged in Leia’s ears, too unintentionally implicative. But she needed more.

“They were close.”

“You could say that.” The woman considered. “They were friends. Padme admired him. I did too. He and I used to laugh over her love affairs.”

“Love affairs?!”

“She was obviously a woman of great beauty. There was many an interested suitor. She never returned any of the interest, though.”

Leia knew it was rude. But she had to point it out. “Except she clearly did.” She jutted her chin towards the funeral holovid.

The woman stilled. “Yes. That’s true.” She watched the funeral for a minute. “I remember being there, that day. Your father was there too…it felt as if the entire galaxy was watching. At the time, I thought that would never end. Everyone would always be watching for her. Grieving her. I’d spent nearly my entire life with her, you see. That white-hot focus on her was what I spent every waking hour on. How to protect her. How to hide what needed to be hidden. I wasn’t capable of imagining a galaxy otherwise. But then, people forgot. I hadn’t yet learned they always do.” She ended crisply.

Leia thought of Alderaan.

“Just look at you. Young. Born after her time. You don’t know anything about her, do you?”

It hadn’t been meant as an insult. If anything, the statement was an open wound. It still felt like a slap in the face.

“Very little.”

“And what do you know?”

“Kind. Beautiful. Wise. Discerning.”

The woman let out a rather loud snort. Leia’s head pulled back.

“All that’s missing from that list is a halo.” She shook her head with another snort. “Trust Bail to be so kind with his words. Well, they’re true. She was wise and kind. She was also stubborn as a bantha mule and more than a little extravagant.”

Leia found herself…laughing. There was a lightness to the words; Leia hadn’t expected to find them so sweet, and yet this somehow meant more than all the platitudes before. Real, Leia decided. They’re real.

“Do tell.”

Please tell.

“She was very particular about what she wore. Even beyond what you can see here. She noticed every wrinkle—she thought of everything down to the color and the trim—for her, clothing was as much a message as speaking. It sounds noble, until her robe rips the night before banquet on a droid free retreat and she insists on staying up until 3AM to figure how to fix it. I doubt this will come as a surprise, but she was more than a little of a perfectionist. Damn her and that stupid stitching. It wasn’t enough to sew it shut; it needed to match the rest of the embroidery, and goddess forbid if it didn’t.” The woman’s eyes were wet.

“I told you she never showed interest in suitors – except for one, obviously. The absolute last person you would have thought she’d land on. They did love each other, I’ll say that much for them. She always could see the best in others. But he was perpetuallylate. I’m not sure he was capable of being punctual. He told one of us that he had been cursed by a Night Witch to never be on time, but it was obvious bantha shit. Straight down to his grin when he said it. She just would laugh and pretend to believe it. Then one time, he came to her office and—she wasn’t there. Waited—bothered all of us—waited some more—she still didn’t show up. He was huffy about it, then after two hours, a handwritten letter arrived, and it said in perfect cursive: caught up with a night witch. He was slightly better about time after that.

“I said she always saw the best in people. That’s not necessarily a compliment. She would believe in people until the end. In a way, that was how she was the most stubborn. There was a delivery man for the floor of the Senate where her office was. Gruffest man you could imagine; take a cranky ronto on its worst day and multiply that by five, and it would take a look at him and run away squealing. He was also terrible at his job. We’d get the wrong packages all the time. She was always polite to him though. Always greeted him by name. Utterly unafraid of him. It took me a while to understand, but I eventually realized she saw past the mean shields to who he was: a miserable, lonely old man. He never got better about it, but I saw him at the funeral.

“It bit her more than once though, believing in people like that. Palpatine is the best example.” She went quiet. “She was also…so earnest in some ways. So determined to help. It changed as we got older, but I was there for its more awkward phase. One time, we were twelve and at an intergalactic forum for cultural appreciation, some word salad like that. We were next to a group of Muun—you know how particular they can be—and they were talking about an unfortunate incident involving someone sitting down on a hot plate that had been left on a chair. Being Muun, of course they were dancing around what had been scorched—so when they came to the end the story, the one just simply patted his solemnly. Upon which Padme leaned over and said gravely, ‘His bottom.’ She genuinely thought they couldn’t remember the right word because Basic wasn’t their first language. You could physically feel the horrified silence that followed.”

Leia was grinning now. “That sounds like my brother.” Her eyes were wet too.

The woman laughed, then sighed. “Thank you. For listening.”

“Thank you for sharing. It means more to me than you know.”

The woman nodded, and before she could turn away, Leia asked: “Could we talk again sometime? I…I have some things to share as well. Not here. Not now. But…someday.”

The woman glanced up, looking a little startled. Then, her eyes fell on Leia’s face, and then flicked to the picture of Padme and Bail, and faint understanding glimmered; only faint; the truth must have been too much. Leia knew how that felt.

“Yes. I think we should.”

She made to leave, but Leia had one last question.

“The japor snippet. Do you know…”

“A gift from her husband. It was supposed to bring her good fortune.” She stopped and eyed Leia up and down. “In the end, perhaps it did.” At that, she left.

Leia watched her go, and then turned back to the pictures of the queen in front of her.

Wise. Kind. Discerning. Stubborn as a bantha mule.