A Destiny Rewritten

chapter i: the mission.

Alderaan is nothing like Naboo, but it is certainly just as beautiful. Padmé Amidala watches the snow gently fall from the overcast sky from her bedroom window. Bail is still asleep, but she has been awake for a few minutes now. As leaders of the Rebel Alliance, they have a great deal of work to do today.

But for now, Padmé stands with her arms folded across her chest, contemplating as she stares blankly out the tall window that looks into the courtyard. She is dressed in an elegant, silken lavender nightgown that pools down to the floor, and her dark hair falls in loose ringlets down her back. For more nights than she can count, she has shared a bed with Bail Organa, who was once her good friend, but now her lover. Other than Anakin, he was the only man she had ever felt safe and comfortable with. And if it were any other day but today, Padmé would have woken up feeling elated, but instead, her spirit feels crushed, just like it does every time this specific anniversary comes around: the day she and Anakin were married. It would have been their twenty-second.

Instead, he is dead, and Padmé is with Bail. Not that she resents her relationship with the King of Alderaan, and it is not that she doesn't love Bail. In her mind, she knows that she would be wasting her life away if she spent the rest of it alone and mourning him. But in her heart, Padmé knows that Anakin was her soulmate. It didn't matter how much she loved Bail; nothing would ever change that. So rather, she will spend her life with Bail and mourn him.

She would have cried if she were alone, but she doesn't want to wake Bail. If she did, she would have to explain, and... she didn't want him to think that he wasn't enough for her. So instead, she swallows her tears, and plays with the japor snippet that hangs around her neck, the one Anakin gave her when he was a boy.

The pain of losing him is still intense for her. To Padmé, only seven standard years have passed since the last time she saw Anakin alive, even though in reality, it has been nineteen long years. In order to save her from dying in childbirth, she was frozen in carbonite for twelve years. Slowly, she was rejuvenated enough to be awakened, and when she finally did rise from her slumber, she was thrown into a world without the love of her life. It was Bail Organa and Obi-Wan Kenobi who greeted her in her hospital room and explained that Anakin had been killed by a fellow Sith Lord named Darth Vader, another one of Palpatine's apprentices.

Seven years have passed since Padmé's awakening; biologically, and mentally, she is only thirty-four years old, since she did not age a single day while in her carbonite chamber. She should be forty-six, or dead at twenty-seven. (Padmé is just glad that it wasn't the latter.) And although Padmé has been awake for a long time now, the galaxy is still strange to her. Seeing Bail so much older, forty-eight years old now, seeing his hair slowly gray while hers stays the same chestnut brown. The same goes for everyone that Padmé knew before the Empire's insurrection. Time has gone by too quickly; losing twelve years can take a toll on a person. Part of her doesn't believe that nineteen years have gone by; she would like to believe that it would take less time to overthrow the Empire.

Her greatest regret is that she was not able to raise her children. When she met Leia, she was already twelve years old, and had an established mother figure, Breha Organa, Bail's former wife and the Queen of Alderaan. However, by the time Padmé awakened, Breha was dead, killed by Imperials when Leia was eight. If anything, Padmé was not a true mother figure to Leia, but a replacement for Breha. But at least she was accepted by Leia into her life; that was the most important thing to Padmé.

Luke, on the other hand, she was never allowed to see. The only reason Padmé could see Leia was because she chose to join the Rebel Alliance. Obi-Wan convinced her that she must keep her distance from Luke; it was already dangerous enough that she would be a part of Leia's life.