#scnatormadc

He had been lied to. That much was apparent now. How it had managed to slip through the cracks, Vader was not sure, but now he had found her. Padme. They’d taken her aboard the ship as a prisoner. No signs of their children in sight. He would ask her where she took them later, but for now, he had other questions for her.

Luke had grown up surrounded by people saying he was just like his father. Whether it was his sandy hair or his dogged tenacity or the fact that his eyes were always on the horizon, his heart soaring in the clouds, it was one of the few things about his parentage that he truly knew for certain. ‘You’re just like your father’. The words had been said in awe, in exasperation, in praise and in disappointment.

Few had ever mentioned anything about his mother.

Ben, of course, hadn’t had time to before he died, and had been solely focused on completing Luke’s Jedi training afterwards. The rest of the Rebellion were too hung up on the legacy of the Hero With No Fear, and expected great things from Skywalker the Younger as a result. Luke wouldn’t lie and say he didn’t sometimes bask in such attention, hungry for any scrap of knowledge about his father he could glean from those who’d lived through the Clone Wars, but… there remained a gap in his heart. Anakin Skywalker had been his father, but who had been his mother?

Aunt Beru had told him once when he was very young about a beautiful woman who had come to their home. She had been a kind senator from the Republic with uncalloused hands, a heart of gold, and the stubborn determination to help out in any way she could. Aunt Beru had told him that the woman had been from Naboo, a world of water and green things so unlike the dunes of Tatooine. When Uncle Owen found out, he’d forbidden his wife from telling Luke any more stories, and that had been the last Luke had heard of the beautiful woman after that.

It was a risk visiting the homeworld of the Emperor himself, but this was something he could put off no longer. He had to know. Naboo is a quiet world, a world of water and green things just as Aunt Beru had said. He’d come in search of… something. Answers, perhaps. Peace of mind. Whatever it was, the Force had guided him here to the tomb of Padme Amidala, a dearly beloved queen and senator who’d been taken from the universe before her time.

This was also the tomb of the unborn child that had died in the womb with her. A daughter, it had been revealed, bearing the name Luka Naberrie. Luke reached out, his fingers running across the words engraved in stone. Luka Naberrie. Who would Luka Naberrie have been, he wondered, had things gone differently? Would they be a she? A he? A they? Would they have been a dreamer, head in the clouds, lusting for adventure? A Jedi? Or something else? Though his heart ached to find out, he knew also that, no matter how much he wondered, he would never know the answers. The door to that life had been shut for him a long time ago, the path of potential sundered.

“It’s called being a decent human being.” Han said with a scoff, “I’m not gonna assume the lady wants me to warm her up in bed unless she asks.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s what you always say.” Han said with a shake of his head. “Leave the bargaining to the professionals, alright?”

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“How do you expect them not to be?” He questions, “You don’t know the pain I’ve had to endure.”