Saga WITHOUT A TRACE: Late Ep. 3 to ... 7?

WITHOUT A TRACE



A dark thunderstorm was in the air of Alderaan as Obi-Wan Kenobi roused from his fitful afternoon sleep. The sun was just beginning to set over the outskirts of the capital, and Obi-Wan knew time was short.

Donning his Jedi cloak, he walked from his small room in the medical wing of the Palace of Alderaan to the clinic area, where he came to a door guarded by several armed soldiers.

"Allow me to pass," Obi-Wan said, slightly raising his hand. The soldiers nodded. "We must allow him to pass," they murmured.

Obi-Wan allowed himself a brief chuckle for the gratuitous use of the Force. Certainly he would have been admitted quickly enough, but he didn't have time for explanations or discussions this morning.

Walking down a long hallway illuminated by Alderaan's reddish evening sunlight pouring through a skylight above, he came to the suite entrance of Senator Padme Naberrie Skywalker.

"Come in, Obi-Wan," Padme said over the viewscreen at the door entrance.

"How are you, milady?" Obi-Wan asked. The Senator appeared tired, but also happy and radiant. "You had a long night."

"It was, Obi-Wan," she said, "But worth it. Two times over."

The door tone sounded and Bail Organa, Viceroy of Alderaan, entered. "They're both fine, Padme," he said with a thin smile. "But as we know, the danger is growing."

"Yes." Padme uttered the word with a firm finality. "He knew that I was pregnant. He knows I may still be alive and he knows my time has arrived. He will come to find me - and when he does, he will find them as well."

All remained silent for what seemed a long moment. "There are many things I can and must do to aid our cause. But what I can do, or any of us can do, pale when compared to what THEY can do, someday, if they receive the training they need."

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. "You are right, Padme. But that same power could be turned to the Dark Side in time, if the children fall into the wrong hands."

Padme looked out the window at the gathering thunderstorm, and blinked. "What I would give if all this never happened - if I were just a peasant girl on some remote planet with nothing to worry about than feeding and clothing these two babies." She paused, and blinked again. And again.

"But that's not the way it is," she said. She abruptly turned away from the window. Despite her small stature, she seemed to loom large against the window frame. Her cobalt-blue robe flowed over her shoulders to the floor. Behind her, lightning flashed against a dark sky as the storm system moved in.

Her hair, usually elaborately styled, fell in a dark halo about her face. Her eyes were steady, with a shadowed brilliance that illuminated the dimly-lit room. She spoke softly, but with a resolve as hard as iron.

"I know every day of my life, I will think about Luke. I will think about Leia. They won't know me, or remember me. But I will be with them. And some day, I will return for them."

Organa and Obi-Wan looked at each other. "The children cannot both stay here," Padme said with a clear finality. "The risk is too great. Anakin - you know I still call him that, Obi-Wan, even though no one else does - will not rest if he knows they are out there. He will come to find us. We must separate the children far enough apart that they cannot be captured together. One can stay here, but the other must be sent to another star system."

A nurse brought in a rolling crib containing two infants. Padme again looked out the window and for a moment lowered her face into her hands.

"Obi-Wan... will they remember me? Can they remember me?"

"Every day they remain with you, they will retain more of your memory through the Force."

"Which could be turned against them someday."

"Yes."

"We talked of this before last night, you remember."

"Yes. I will take Luke somewhere Anakin will never look - a place filled with pain and bad memories he will never want to return. I will give him to people we know will give him a loving home. I will be close enough to keep track of him, but not so close

 

This is very good.

 

EPILOGUE: AND THROUGH THE YOUNG ...

(Episode VIII?)

FIFTY YEARS LATER


Leia Organa Solo looked up into the early morning sky over Endor. Had it really been 25 years since she saw the Death Star blaze into oblivion in that very same sky?

She looked at herself in the mirror on the wall of the simple but stil elegant executive quarters she called a home on this forest world.

Now half a century in age, Leia remained a striking figure. No longer youthful and dewy-eyed, she still retained a radiance unlikely for her years. Almost imperceptible tinges of silver could be seen in her long flowing hair.

Since the Battle of Endor, care had been taken by the Republic and then the Alliance to preserve the primitive culture of the Ewoks.

Commercial traffic and other avenues of exploitation to Endor were closed off within the ranks of allied star systems; the only outside visitors to the Ewoks were diplomats and explorers whose mission was to maintain contact with the species and facilitate their advancement at a pace they wished to follow.

This was a duty which suited Leia well. Her role in the climactic battle which saved the forest moon was well known; although the natives no longer regarded her as a near-deity, they still held her in high esteem.

Her own memories of the moon were warm. There, she had learned that her biological parents were Padme Naberrie Skywalker and Anakin Skywalker.

She remembered her mother only in brief images and feelings from her infancy. And she had no memory of her father - at least no memories of him as the man her mother had loved.

She knew Anakin Skywalker helped Emperor Palpatine rule the galaxy with cruel force as Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

Vader! She remembered the chilling feelings she had as his captive on a star destroyer. She remembered his rumbling, ominous voice trying to frighten information out of her. He remembered him standing by impassively as Grand Moff Tarkin directed the destruction of her home planet, Alderaan.

But she remembered some other things. She remembered Vader placing a cold metallic hand on her shoulder on the bridge of the starship - and somehow feeling strangely reassured. She remembered Vader commuting her death sentence, when it really made no sense to do so. And somehow she knew that in all the blackness and hate that filled the soul of Darth Vader, something else remained within.

On Endor, she learned that Luke Skywalker, a daring pilot and lone survivor of the Jedi Order, was in fact her brother - something she had somehow sensed before but never realized in its entirety.

Luke - now Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, she reminded herself - had turned their father back from the Dark Side in the climactic battle in orbit above the planetoid. Luke told her what their father - the resurrected Anakin Skywalker - had told him before he died. And he spoke of seeing them again - Obi-Wan Kenobi, the venerable Jedi Master Yoda, and even their father - standing in pride after the victory of the Republic and the defeat of the Empire.

And she had seen them too. She only remembered seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi once in her life - a brief, fleeting moment on board a star destroyer before Kenobi serenely surrendered his existence to the lightsaber of Darth Vader - and she had never seen Yoda, knowing him only through the descriptions given to her by Luke.

She had seen them, and she had seen Anakin Skywalker too. But while Yoda and Obi-Wan seemed happy and satisfied, Anakin Skywalker still seemed incomplete - as if he were unable to communicate with his daughter until some missing piece was returned for the puzzle.

Whenever she had a Force vision - infrequently at first, more often later on - she could pick up thoughts and concepts from Obi-Wan and Yoda with increasing ease. But from Anakin, all she saw was a look of wistful sadness - the same look she had seen in the eyes of her mother when she had been an infant.

Luke said, as he was a Jedi, so would she be too - the legacy of the Force in their family ran as strongly in her veins

 

ADD EPILOGUE: COMPLETION

ABOUT 65 YEARS LATER

The greyed and mature figures of Jacen and Jaina Solo - themselves in their late eighties - and the distinguished Jedi Master Ben Skywalker, stood beside a bed in the med facility on Endor.

The three cousins - now, the senior members of the Jedi Council reconstituted generations before by Ben's father, Luke Skywalker - gathered in solemn silence.

They looked down on the elderly yet still radiant figure of their grandmother, Padme Naberrie Skywalker, who lay in the bed with an infintely weary, yet satisfied, look on her face.

Outside, their children - Chew, Lando and Shmiana Solo, Ryoo and Mothma Solo-Fel, and Owen and Sola Skywalker, and dozens of grandchildren, waited for word on the family matriarch - the "Mother of the Rebellion," as she had become known throughout the galaxy - who was nearing a century in physical age, not counting the five decades she had remained suspended in carbonite by the evil emperor Palpatine.

Few of the extended Skywalker family spoke. They all shared a common bond in the Force, and they didn't need to. They knew the time was near.

----


She looked around the room, the same room in which she had returned to consciousness nearly seven decades years earlier. She had lived a full life - more than a full life, she thought to herself - but now the passage of time could not be denied.

Her vision was hazy again - but this time it was the ravages of age, not the aftereffects of carbonite freezing, which blurred her sight.

She saw the personal items brought to the room by her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

She saw the pendant which Anakin Skywalker had given her, more than a century before ... she saw the ceremonial crown she had worn as Queen of Naboo ... she saw the holograms of her children, Luke and Leia, themselves now gone for a generation ... and she knew it was her time to go.

She spoke softly, haltingly, but firmly. As her body weakened, she felt an inner strength beginning to build.

"Jaina ...Jacen ... Ben ... For me it is finished. Now, I am complete."

The three were silent for a moment, then Jacen Solo responded, pleadingly. "Stay with us, Padme," he said.

Padme took a shallow breath. "No ... It is my time. As the will come for you sooner than you know. Your children, your grandchildren, will be the ones to carry on."

Jaina Solo spoke. Even in her own old age, the revered Jedi still exuded fire and determination - as those who challenged her on the Jedi Council were well aware.

"I won't accept this. There must be some way to keep you here..."

Padme smiled. "That's Han talking," she thought to herself... "and Leia. And Anakin too..."

She looked at her granddaughter. She thought about the limitations of the Force - what it could, and could not do. Anakin taught her some of that; Luke taught her much more, and she had learned much of it on her own.

She knew Jaina realized those limitations too, but they were still sometimes hard to accept.

"Jaina, it is just my time. With the Force, we can do many things ... but we are not all-powerful."

"Well, we should be," Jaina replied, bitterly.

Padme thought back more than a century, to a dusty garage in the deserts of Tatooine. She remembered the same bitter words being spoken by Jaina's grandfather when death had taken one of HIS beloved.

Padme murmured the same words she had used those decades before. "Sometimes, there are things nobody can fix."

She took another shallow breath, and knew the end was near. On the opposite side of the bed, Ben Skywalker leaned intently toward his grandmother.

Padme's thoughts were hazy. "He looks so much like Luke ... and Ani ..." she realized.

And also, she thought, like his namesake Obi-Wan Kenobi ... In his mid-seventies now, Ben Skywalker bore a striking resemblance to the old pictures of the legendary Jedi - as had Luke when he had reached the same age, Padme remembered.

In Ben's weathered, bearded face, she even saw the image of his own great-gr

 

That was so sad and wonderful. I like how you tied in some of NJO characters and what happened to them, Obiwan and Yoda etc. But most of all I like the line you put in that Padme says. Sometimes, there are things nobody can fix.

very good job. I hope to see more of your work.

crystal kenobi

 

Very sweet, I definitely enjoyed it

 

Wow. This would be so great to expand into a fuller story, the beginnings are so fraught with emotion and wonderful interactions.