The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter One Hundred And Eleven: Mother And Daughter

PADME AMIDALA

It was a long and laborious process, working up to a goodbye. Padme had come to appreciate that over the last few months, but now, she finally felt like she was ready to go her own way and let her daughter do the same.

Which was, of course, a lie – what parent ever wanted to let their baby go? But if it was going to get her through this, then she was going to tell it to herself over and over again until she believed it.

Her hands with their mask of aging hovered for a moment over the lids of her two suitcases, which now held her only belongings in the entire world. Most of it was for show, seeing as where she was going, at least for a little while, she would have no need for them. The only thing she would be keeping with her was the japor snippet Anakin had given her so long ago, which now shared a chain with a pouch containing locks of her son and daughter's hair.

Padme reached up to touch the two charms where they fell beneath her shirt, and pressed her lips together for a moment before allowing them to part again in a sigh. Leia was just like her father: headstrong, wise, cunning and fearless. Luke, as she had determined in the short time she had been able to spend with him, had taken more after her, but he still had so much of his father in him...

And even after all these years, she missed Anakin so much. She had had Leia by her side, but no one she could talk to about the way things had been before the war... or even Morvolo and beyond, with what had happened with Kaylira on Lothal.

After all, she wasn't supposed to be alive, and none of her friends now remembered she was.

Suddenly, there came a knock at the door. Even without her gift of foresight, intuition was all she needed to know who it would be. Perhaps if she didn't answer, she could let herself stay in the dark; pretend she didn't really have to go. But the logical side of herself she had never been fond of out of the Senate Rotunda told her that doing so would just be forestalling the inevitable, and so she called out, "Enter."

As she had known it would, the door slid open to reveal Leia, her arms crossed loosely behind her back and face all smiles. Suddenly very glad her bags were on the other side of the bed, Padme inclined her head in welcome, and said, "Hello, Princess. How was your trip to Coruscant? Did the refugee issue resolve itself as you and your father predicted?"

"Not... exactly," Leia replied, with the smile so like her father's that Padme knew from experience meant she had a good story to tell.

Padme's eyes drifted up to the loose bun her daughter had tied her hair in, and said, "Come, sit by me here. I'll do your hair and you can tell me how it went."

"I'm not a child anymore – I can do my own hair," the girl said with a soft laugh, smoothing a wrinkle in her long white dress, but she obliged nonetheless.

Padme fetched a comb and bid the princess sit on the bed and begin her tale. Padme listened with interest to Leia's recollections of the politics that hid evil plots and secret Rebel meetings and as she sorted through her long dark waves with even strokes of the comb. But soon, what she had to do came back to her, and it broke her heart to think she was about to lose all these wonderful talks and quiet moments...

Finally, she sat back to examine her work, which was a Nabooian style that Leia had said before she liked: a pair of round twists, one rolled over each ear. Padme supposed it was fitting that if nothing else, at least her daughter would have this little piece of her heritage to keep with her.