A lesson of the heart

Pebble in a river

Padmé was roused from her dreamless sleep by the warm light of the sun shining down upon her and the sound of a child's voice calling out to more voices chattering away in the distance. "There's a woman sleeping on the shore!" After a moment of utter confusion the horrible memories of the past days fell back into place inside her mind. The nubian senator sleepily blinked her eyes open against the bright sunlight to see the silhoutte of a toddler kneeling down next to her. "What's your name?", the child inquired curiously. "Ah...Padmé...", the name tumbled from her mouth before her brain caught up with it to inform it that a wellknown, supposedly dead woman maybe shouldn't be going around telling everyone her name. She couldn't be sure if the news had reached Naboo yet, didn't want to think of her family's reaction. Still mostly blinded, she tried to look around. At least it had only been her given name, thank the goddess for small miracles. "Nice to meet you Padmé.", the child replied, though there was an odd undertone of suspicion to the words. She still couldn't make out much, her eyes only slowly adjusting to the bright light shining down on her, reflecting on the lake surface. Despite the typical mild climate that her homeworld had blessed her with ever since she'd mysteriously appeared there, Padmé felt a headache take form. Oh. Dehydration, she realised. She couldn't actually remember the last time she had supplied her body with any fluids. Must've been before Mustafar... Padmé stopped the painful train of thought at that from taking form. She winced at the dull pain deep in her skull, bringing up one hand to dig her nails into her scalp. "Are you alright?", the child reminded her of its presence. Squinting, she could make out a small head of light red hair and almost unsettlelingly intelligent blue eyes. "I'll be fine.", it was an automatic response, born from many dire situations during the clone wars when any aches were more of a sign of being alive than something to be alarmed about, though they probably should've been. The child, a boy it seemed by haircut and clothes, only hummed thoughtfully. Taking a deep breath, Padmé opened her eyes fully, slowly but surely having adjusted. His face seemed oddly familiar, Padmé mused. The clothes suggested that he was born into one of Naboo's noble families. "Melah!", he suddenly called over his shoulder. A servant girl in a simple dark blue dress seperated from a group of people, apparently setting up camp on a hill in a short distance, and hurried over to them. "Yes, Lord Palpatine? Oh.", she broke off when she spotted Padmé who'd paled considerably at the name with which the servant had adressed the boy. "This is Padmé, I found her sleeping here. She needs medical attention.", the boy, a Palpatine, ordered. "Yes, my Lord. I can see that. I'll go get one of the servant speeders to bring her to a med center immideatly.", the servant girl, Melah, curtsied and ran off. The Palpatine boy turned back to Padmé who had trouble breathing at this point. Yes, the boy's features did remember her of chancellor Palpatine but there hadn't been any other Palpatines for decades, not since the chancellor's family was killed when he was only a teenage boy. A mysterious case that had never been solved, mainly because there hadn't been much of an investigation, if she remembered correctly. This boy was young enough to be his grandson. Had he had a secret family all along? How would the newly proclaimed emperor react upon her sudden appearance on Naboo with his family taking care of her? How had nobody noticed them? Padmé was still shocked into silence by the time Melah guided her to a seat in the speeder she'd come back with, thoughts racing through her head faster than podracers. She decided that she'd stay mute and act traumatized, well, more traumatized than she was, for the time being, just as long as she couldn't grasp her situation. As if to highten her discomfort, the weird redheaded Palpatine boy slipped into the back of the speeder next to her despite the yells of protest coming from the hill. Probably a parent disagreeing with him accompanying her, but the boy apparently ignored them. She watched Naboo's beautiful landscape pass by in a haze until they reached civilization and had to slow down in the streets that looked underdeveloped compared to what Padmé was used to. Her ruse of the traumatized woman found in the wild held up as Melah proceded to keep an arm around her and guide her carefully out of the speeder once they arrived as if she was fragile. Even more unsettleling was the interior of the med center though, she felt as if she was on the set of a historical holodrama set about half a century before her own birth. It was when she had to take a double take on the date shown by the chrono in the entrance hall that her heart skipped a beat. "What is the year?", Padmé croaked out suddenly, making Melah give her a worried glance. Before she could reply though, the little Palpatine answered her instead, brow furrowed in suspicion. Padmé barely registered the words before she fainted. If he was speaking the truth then she was indeed on Naboo- like just about less than half a century before her own birth.

Padmé awoke in a med center bed. Her breath caught and stilled as her body stayed completely paralyzed while her brain sprung into action and ran five times around the equator of Naboo to enable her to comprehend her situation. How was such a thing even possible?! The only explanation Padmé could even imagine was the Force. But why the Force would decide to sweep her of all people away after her death and carry her along like a pebble in a river, only to drop her decades in the past was utterly beyond her. She didn't hear the frantic beeping of the machines she'd been attached to as her heartrate spiked, her body protesting the lack of oxygen as she was continuously forgetting to breath. Just as the alerted healers stormed into her room, her busy, nearly hysteric, thoughts faded away as Padmé blackened back out again from a lack of oxygen.