A/N: hello and welcome to my newest fic. this idea has been haunting me for a while and i've finally managed to write enough to start publishing it here. i hope this will bring justice to the relationship between padmé, leia and luke that we've never gotten to see.

a special thank you for twitter user FluffyTimelord, for drawing the most beautiful fanart to this story.

without any further delay, i hope you enjoy this :)

Summary: Mustafar leaves Padmé with a broken heart, and, after being told that Anakin and her unborn had died, she goes into hiding. She flees, deep into the outer rim, resolved to escape the Empire's clutches.

23 years later, she learns of the existence of a Luke Skywalker, the young Jedi responsible for overthrowing an Empire, defeating Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. Believing him to be her child, taken from her, she returns to the galaxy determined to find him and make amends for the time they had lost, only to discover that she had given birth to twins.

Tether Between Our Hearts

"Amor matris: objective and subjective genitive." - James Joyce

Padmé Amidala would never forget that day.

A cold chill reached the base of her spine; she felt disconnected with reality. Being a diplomat, she was trained to pay close attention to details and store every little thing in her mind, in case it would come in handy later. However, that day felt different.

Like an out of body experience, where she had watched everything unfold from afar, and her emotions came a second too late.

That day where everything felt strange; she was numb, a part of her soul having been ripped from her and only her vain body had been left behind. She was disoriented, like her strings to the Force had been abruptly terminated and she bore no connection to life itself anymore. The only coherent thought on her mind was, something bad had happened.

Except—she was no Jedi. She hadn't been privileged at birth with the powers of sentience, and, though she often saw the Force as a curse, in moments like this she wished she had ability to glimpse into the unknown and understand everything. In moments like this, she wished she was capable of becoming one only with the Force, with life itself, therefore being able to say without a shadow of a doubt, something bad had happened.

It was fortunate, at least, that, as a former Queen and a Senator, she relied on her instincts just as much as the Jedi relied on one big force that united them all.

And her instincts were screaming at her.

Something bad had happened.

Padmé woke up in a strange room. She had no idea where she was — lying in someone else's bed, for sure. Forcing her body up, she tried to assimilate as much of her surroundings as possible. The chamber looked calm and tidily arranged, with its walls painted in beige and little furniture dispersed around, no more than what absolutely necessary to survive. Whoever had designed the place didn't seem to care about the luxury of life; to them, being alive seemed enough.

Somehow, the lack of decor brought her peace.

Peace. That word felt funny on the tip of her tongue. As her senses slowly abandoned their defenses and her memories came back to hers, she realized — she hadn't savored peace for what seemed a long, long time.

Padmé Amidala wasn't known for cracking under pressure and panicking. But, in that moment, she did.

Her hands unconsciously fell to her own belly; out of concern, out of habit. There were little things she cared for more than for the life growing inside of her — in that moment, she couldn't think of any. The life flourishing within her and tidying them together, forever, in the force. The life that came from nothing but love and happiness and peace.

Her heart all but stopped at the realization that her there was nothing there. Life was no longer there.

Panic grew into despair. She wanted to scream, but her throat was sore. She wanted to sob, but her eyes were dry. She wanted to punch a wall, but her body was motionless.

How could she live when her life had been taken from her?

How could she, who had always answered for life, suddenly become so lifeless?

Padmé wasn't a Jedi; she couldn't sense her child, there, or anywhere else. There wasn't any baby memorabilia spread around, there was no baby faintly crying in the far distance — there was just silence. A silence so loud that it was deafening her. She worked with facts and figures, and the scenario she was stuck with screamed at her — her child was no longer with her.

Gone. Like everything she had ever loved and believed in.

Her face was blank, she felt numb. Unsure of how to proceed, unsure of her willingness to proceed. At every blink, a flash of memories from the past days would blind her, accompanied by a wave of sadness that only strengthened her heartbreak.

Tiredly, she fell back to bed. Staring at the ceiling, focusing on nothing but the ache inside of her. Her lower lip haltingly started to tremble, despite her best efforts, and her hands desperately clutched to her neck - like some sort of force was permanently wrapped around it — in whatever illusionary attempts of getting herself to breathe .

At last, she realized her life was gone and she was never, ever getting it back.

An uncontrolled sob escaped her agape lips, soon followed by another, and another. There laid only the shell of the person that she used to be. And she mourned for everything she had lost — including herself.

She wasn't sure how long it had taken for her to calm herself — it felt like an eternity. Inside of her there was an emptiness unfamiliar to her; when she was pregnant, she couldn't wait to meet her child, to carry precious life in her own arms, to embrace and protect the innocent living being that came from her. Now, she would give anything for a chance to start over and relish every moment of her pregnancy, to cherish the bond between mother and unborn child — because, it seemed, it would be the only connection they would ever share.

Pushing her grief to the back of her mind, she forced herself to stand up. The best course of action was to treat the situation as political arena — access the environment, and then make the better choice from there. Being a politician, fighting for the greater good, for what was right, was the only thing no one would ever take from her. Her fire would never be extinguished, or so she believed.

There was a door in the room, and she frowned at herself for not noticing it before, so immersed in her sorrow had she been. She scanned the room with her eyes, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon, only to let out a disappointed sigh at the bareness of the den. With no other alternative than to putting on a brave face, she stepped outside.

However, the reality that met her was unlike anything Padmé had imagined. Nothing except nature surrounded her, for miles on, it seemed. Around her, only the singing of birds and the swirling of the wind existed. It was so quiet and peaceful that it reminded her of the Lake House in Naboo, where she wished to raise her child.

Stop it, she cursed herself quietly. There was no point in dwelling in days that should have been but never would.

A sudden movement in the corner of her eyes caught her attention, and she turned around in half a startle. The sudden shock of surprise only intensified once she recognized the figure there, sitting above the brown earth with features so uncharacteristic to whom she was. To whom she used to be. Someone that she hadn't seen in such a long time, and it brought a sense of comfort to her heart.

"Ahsoka?!"

The young Togruta's alarm after being called upon was even more remarkable. She drifted her stare from the horizon to the woman she had once called her friend, and stood up. Her sad eyes were heavy.

"Padmé. You're awake at last."

There was some awkwardness between them for a few seconds, but it dissolved into thin air when Ahsoka could no longer hold herself back and ran to Padmé, clashing her arms around her into a tight embrace.

A warm embrace that Padmé had once visioned offering to her child in moments of need.

"I'm so relieved you're okay," a small voice spoke in her ear.

Padmé allowed herself to abide her feelings in the so familiar grip, to be vulnerable for a mere moment. But the moment passed, and she pulled back to look at Ahsoka's face and directly ask, "Ahsoka, what happened?"

The pained expression that took over her features was loud enough; the young girl who had once been so full of life was now drained — Padmé began to dread hearing the terrible truth, even though she knew she had to.

Ahsoka's hands slipped from around Padmé's shoulders to cling securely around her hands. She knew the words she had yet to say would be the hardest she'd ever had to hear, and she disliked being in the position of potentially ruining her life.

Or whatever was left of it.

"Anakin…" her throat was dry and she had to force the words out, "Anakin is dead."

Padmé took in a long breath, doing her best to steady herself. Her last memory of Anakin had been in Mustafar, when he begged her to rule the galaxy by his side, when he broke her heart. After that, everything was black.

When she thought about Anakin, she only thought of pain. But when she thought of Anakin dead, she only felt pain.

She, that had just been so insistent on eye contact, found out she could no longer sustain it. Every beat of her heart was a punch to her chest.

"What… What about Obi-Wan?"

"He's dead, too. They all are. Every Jedi that ever was. Even Master Yoda. They're gone. A stroke blew through the force the moment it happened, and I… I couldn't breathe. There was so much life, and then, there was nothing."

She knew Ahsoka's pain to be in a deeper stratum than hers, as she was strong in the Force, and she was one with all the other Jedi. However, Ahsoka didn't know Anakin like she did, and she certainly didn't share the emotional connection the two of them had.

And it took everything from her not to dissolve herself into the grief she felt for the loss of her husband.

Her lip turned into a thin line, that tried to mimic a smile. "He won, then. Palpatine won. He killed every Jedi that had a chance of standing against him. He killed every hope we might have had of ever seeing the galaxy free from his grasp again."

Ahsoka strengthen the bond between their hands, and brought them close to her own heart. "Not so long I'm here."

It was a small, perhaps even vain promise, but the idea of people unwilling to let the spark of freedom die spoke to her, brought her some sense of comfort. She wanted nothing more than to make her ground and stand tall, too.

However, for the first time in her life, she did not feel like fighting.

"Ahsoka…. My baby. Did you see my baby?"

Just like that, her orange skin became pale and she lost all the grasp over Padmé's hands. Her eyes became watery, and she only didn't give in to her every emotion because it wasn't her place .

"I'm so sorry, Padmé."

Biting hardly down on her lip, Padmé merely assented. Although she had known, from the moment she woke up and found herself alone, hearing it said aloud made it real, and her agony was unspeakable. She had yet to face this much misery.

Still, she held herself strong.

"Was it… a boy? Or a girl?"

She felt silly for asking such a question. She had just lost her husband, she had just lost her baby, and she was concerned with irrelevant details. But if she could not give a face to her child, she would like to at least give them a name.

"By the time I got to you, it was already gone. I'm sorry, Padmé, I don't know."

Ahsoka's insistent apologies would soon drive her insane. She wasn't the first person to lose everything dear to her, neither would she be the last. It would be ridiculous to think she wouldn't survive it.

Or wouldn't she?

She looked away, trying to force her tears back to where they shouldn't have escaped from. Her gaze lost upon the horizon brought her to the second question that permeated her mind, "Where are we?"

"Raada," Ahsoka replied in a quiet voice. "It's a quiet farming moon in the Outer Rim. It doesn't have much, but it has enough. And most importantly, you'll be safe here."

Safe. Of course, because she was a senator with too loud a voice in a galaxy now ruled by evil. And she was the wife—widow—of a haunted Jedi Knight; even if people didn't exactly know about their relationship, it was ought to have caught someone's attention. She wondered, however, what was the point of being kept alive if she didn't have anything left to live for.

"That's not all."

The hesitancy hidden within her words spoke loud enough to regain Padmé's eyes on her, although her mind seemed to linger just a few seconds longer on the life that she could have lived. The life that had slipped through her fingers.

"Padmé Amidala is dead," Ahsoka grieved, "She died, alongside her child. She was buried. She was mourned . You can't come back, not now, not ever; not as long as you want to survive. Not as long as the veil of evil and deception reigns upon us."

She simply nodded, although it was unclear whether she was lost amidst the new information just presented to her or that of a past not so distant. And then, she spoke lower than a whisper.

"There's nothing to go back to."

And she smiled sadly at Ahsoka, who looked at her with condescending eyes. Ahsoka, too, had lost nearly everything that seemed important to her, but her losses appeared to be so minimal compared to the pain Padmé was enduring. Or, perhaps, she was just being selfish.

The realization that everyone in the galaxy had lost the day the Empire set its claws on freedom had yet plague her.

"I've got you a new scandoc, and several hundred credits. It's not much, but you'll manage to survive for the next months while you recover," she tightened her grip on the hands that Padmé had forgotten that were united. "Padmé. You'll get through this."

Even if Padmé were starting to think she didn't want to.

"What about you?" her voice was horse from all the emotions she was holding back. "What are you going to do next?"

"Whatever I have to do next. I'll fight," she said fiercely. "I won't sit idle and watch the Empire destroy everything that I once stood for. I know others will join, too."

Although she hadn't intended to guilt-trip the senator, Ahsoka realized the fault in her words the moment she said them — even if Padmé herself didn't seem to hear it.

"I wish you could come with me. I wish it wasn't so damn complicated."

At last, Padmé broke their physical contact and crossed her arms under her breasts—they were swollen and sore, most likely craving to have a child feeding on them. She did her best to ignore that sensation. "My fight is over, Ahsoka. I fought, and I lost. It's time I make way for someone else's fight. For your fight."

Once again, startling Padmé as she went, Ahsoka threw herself into another hug. Padmé was taken aback, at first, and then—she was warm. Understanding that, in her core, Ahsoka still was the child she had come to know and love a few years before. Her presence almost compensated for those she wished to have by her side.

Padmé Amidala would never forget that day.

The day when she came home, after an exhaustive day at work, turned on the holovision and saw her life crumbling before her eyes.

It was the first Empire Day ever since Palpatine seized power over the known universe — and, on a personal note, two days before the anniversary of her child's death. The child that had never drawn a breath.

Her anxiety was building up to that date; for the past few days, she couldn't think of anything else, even if she didn't allow herself to think about it at all. Hence why she didn't welcome any other stressors at the end of her day.

After Ahsoka had left — in her mission to save the galaxy by herself, as it seemed — she had allowed herself to grieve and cry and scream. Until she had no tears left to sob and no shrieks left to wail, and she realized she couldn't spend the rest of her days like that. She didn't exactly envision a future for her, but any prospect of a future was better than no future at all.

As soon as the first rays of light shined on the next morning, Padmé set herself on a journey to the nearest town centre. It had been a long walk amidst the nature, amidst the humming of the birds, the flowing of the creek, the path of wild animals — and it had brought her peace. Peace that her chaotic mind hadn't seen inside her troubled, little cabin, and she welcomed it; for the first time, she came close to understanding the serenity that the Force might have brought to the Jedi.

Not that it mattered, anymore. They were all gone, just like the religion they dedicated their lives to.

When she arrived at the nearest village, she was welcomed with glares. Nobody approached her, but neither did they stop staring. She buckled up, assuming from their reception that they didn't get many visitors — if at all.

In her head, she went over the story she had come up with during her journey, in case anyone asked who was she, or where did she come from. Paz Naminé was her new name, her new identity ; chosen for the phonetics similarities with her birth name, Padmé Naberrie, so it'd be easier for her to respond to — and, more importantly, Paz was also the equivalent to peace in Nabooian, the mother language of her homeworld. A gentle nuance brought by Ahsoka that made her face lit up.

Paz Naminé was a widow whose husband and child had died in the Clone Wars, leaving her all alone. Unable to live in a world surrounded by little reminders of their existence, she had left and sought a quiet place to start over, without the constant remembrance that they were gone — hence ending up in a small, calm farming Moon such as Raada. Her story was too close to reality, but she knew that the only way to start a new identity was by sticking to a story close to home — no matter how much it hurt.

Eventually, she landed herself a job in a farm in the outskirts of the village as a laborer, which mainly consisted of harvesting the crops. The pay wasn't big, but it was enough to cover any necessities she might have. Some days, however, when the Lady of the house was absent or had fallen ill, she was tasked with looking after the toddlers — a boy of five, Taro, and a girl of four, Safira. Those days, she hurt the most.

She had grown to love and care for them, of course, they were sweet and tender and, more times than often, mischievous. They were children, and therefore stood for everything that children stood for. However, she tried her best to keep her distance — before she ended up loving them as her own.

Because, again and again, she would find herself picturing her child looking like Safira, if a girl, or looking like Taro, if a boy. And she hated herself for it.

On that particular day, she had been asked to look after the kids, and they had ended up giving her more trouble than in their usual behaviors. They had asked her to play outside, to which she naturally agreed, staying behind to tie up the mess of toys they had left in the living room. By the time she finally thought to check on them, she found them covered in mud, in their brand new clothes, brought by their father on one of his trips to a fancy Core world, in the middle of a mud ball fight.

Padmé shouted at them, her blood pulsating against her veins, ordering them to stop. Instead, as if previously conspired, the children threw mud at her, dirtying both her clothes and her skin. Their carefree laughter was the only thing standing between her and her desire to strangle them.

Mrs. Abdallah got home just in time to find them in the middle of their act of defiance, and she was mad like Padmé had never seen her. Safira and Taro quietened down at the sight of their mother, and lowered their heads, afraid of the lecturing and the grounding that was still to come.

Padmé herself wasn't off the hook, when Mrs. Abdallah came to find her afterwards, as she tried to clean some of the dirt away from her face and arms. The words of disappointment at her own incompetence, though spoken quietly, were so loud in her ears she thought her head was going to explode. She was told to go home earlier, to clean herself properly up, and that, once a proper nanny had been found, she would no longer be asked to babysit the children.

She went home with a heavy heart. She assumed she was going to be fired, but being separated from the children she had come to known in the past year was, somehow, the worst punishment.

She had failed, and she wondered if she would have failed her child just as much.

Her head was pounding when she got home, and it continued to do so even after her long, relaxing bath. She considered going straight to bed, but the senator buried deep inside of her would never allow her to sleep idle if not attuned to the political sphere of the galaxy.

Specially on a day as important as Empire day.

Settling on the fuzzy couch of her home, Padmé turned on the holovision to find Palpatine's face — as hideous as ever. He was giving some grant speech about the importance and the power of the Empire, receiving rounds of applause as he went.

What caught her attention, however, wasn't the Emperor and his delusions of grandeur. It was the person standing behind him — Palpatine's second hand. They stood tall and powerful in the podium, hands clasped at their waist, projecting a sense of superiority at anyone who dared to look at them. They hid behind a dark mask, behind a dark armor, so still that they could be mistaken for a droid. The only sign of his life was the subtle, mechanical sound of his breathing, colliding with the Emperor's words.

And the Emperor finally spoke of him, "Darth Vader."

Darth Vader.

Her breath was caught in her throat, her eyes became wild. The color drained from her face as Obi-Wan's words to her, said such a long time before, made it back to her mind and realization creeped into her.

"Palpatine is the Sith Lord we've been looking for."

"Anakin became his new apprentice."

She had been blind enough not to believe him back then, even though she knew , deep inside of her, that something was wrong . The person to whom she had fallen in love was so subtly changing that she missed every sign of his fall.

"Anakin has turned to the dark side."

"He is in grave danger. From himself."

"He has become a very great threat."

Padmé couldn't breathe; she was frozen within time, staring at the blued image of Darth Vader, feeling his eyes piercing her soul. Trying to dismantle all the good that it held to, because, ultimately, their love for each other had once meant his and her soul were made of the same essence.

"I have seen a security hologram… of him… killing younglings."

Anakin was gone. That man standing next to Palpatine wasn't the love of her life; he was a murderer, who had murdered even herself. Her mouth had fallen open in despair and silent yells escaped her lips — hollow; hollowness became her.

She grasped at her neck, desperately trying to free her airway of the force strong around it. The force that had come from him, from his vendetta against her. And suddenly her hands fell to her barren womb, where she hadn't carried life in almost a year.

She found herself slowly losing any and every connection to the world weighing in around her. Her vision became blurry, unable — and unwilling — to make the shape of the black armor in front of her; she felt dizzy, and, worst of it all, she felt unbelievably alone , like she hadn't ever felt in her exile.

The thought was loud in her head — Anakin had killed his own child, too.

"Anakin is the father, isn't he? I'm so sorry."

Turned out, she was sorry, too. She just hadn't known it before.

Padmé Amidala would never forget that day.

The day when the entire galaxy was celebrating. The day that oppression had finally lost as the second Death Star crumbled into ashes, taking Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader themselves with it. The day when it finally felt safe to breathe again.

She had been tending to Safira Abdallah's crops when the news came through. When Mrs. Abdallah had been shot down during an uprising, after Imperial forces had arrived on the moon to exploit its population and steal them of their every harvest, leaving them barren and to starve, the stripped land had been left to the youngest child. Safira had been no more than a teenage, suffering from a broken heart over the inevitable loss of both her parents and bearing the responsibility of regrowing the farm.

A child, of merely 19 years old. Padmé felt for her, regardless if she herself had been already on her second term as the appointed Queen of Naboo by that age. But she had been raised for a political career, whereas Safira had had her entire youth to enjoy herself. Taro, one year older than his sister, had left in the prior year to join the Imperial Academy, but effectively dropped out once he heard the news of the death of his mother, returning to Raada to content with a life as a farmer.

Safira often turned to Padmé in her moments of need — which came more often than Padmé cared to tell. The two of them had grown admirably close during her adolescent years, with Safira coming to Padmé with matters of the body and the heart that she didn't feel comfortable bringing to her own mother.

Padmé didn't mind — in fact, she embraced those moments, believing that, had she had a baby girl, her daughter would also come to her, to lavish her with her many years of life and wisdom. She had grown remarkably close to the Abdallah children during her many years working for them, to the point they even offered her own quarters in their big house once they gained control of the facilities — to which she tried to decline, but after loads of begging, she caved in.

She was tending to the harvest when Taro came running to her, completely out of breath — and something told her that his running hadn't been responsible for his state of euphoria. He babbled many words she couldn't possibly comprehend, until he grabbed her by the wrist and they were both running back towards the house.

She found Safira fallen to her knees, inches away from the blued image of the holovision. She had her hand hardly pressed to her mouth, indicating both consternation and a desire to keep her cries muffed, with streams of tears freely running down her cheeks. Padmé gave her shoulder a tight squeeze, trying to comfort the young woman, before kneeling down as well and diverging her attention to the hologram in front of her.

"The Empire has fallen," the reporter spoke, in a quest to remain impartial but the light in her eyes betraying her. "A second Death Star, built in secrecy from the public eye, has been destroyed by Rebel forces, killing both Emperor Palpatine and his second hand, Darth Vader, who resided in the battle station during the moment of attack."

The hand that lodged on Safira's shoulder suddenly lost all its strength and was pulled down by gravity. Padmé was astonished; she had dreamed about this day for years, she had follow the Resistance's work in the shadows, but she had never expected this day to come, much less that she would still be alive to see its glory.

A glory born from everything that she and millions of other sentient beings had died for.

For a brief moment, however, a wave of sadness brushed her feelings. Darth Vader was dead , taking along every reminiscent of the man that had once been Anakin Skywalker.

The man for whom she and her child had died.

The thought soon escaped from her mind, as her lips turned up in a joy that she hadn't known in many, many years. "It's over."

Of course, she knew better than that. As a retired politician, she knew that the ultimate fight was just beginning — the Empire wouldn't simply cease from existence from dawn to dusk. Still, the first step had been taken, the Alliance was winning . They had started the path to making the galaxy a better place.

Taro at last joined them on the floor, taking Padmé's hand on his. "I wish Mama was still alive to see this."

Safira nodded. "At least, Mama can finally rest in peace."

Padmé remained silent. She, too, wished that she could be sharing that moment with her child — with a child that, because of the Empire itself, did not live. In her solitude, however, part of her was thrilled that the child had not grown under the shadow of that tyrannical reign of power and abuse; that they had not spent half their life watching worlds burn and innocent people agonize in unfair pain.

On most days, that thought came as a source of relief to her.

The hologram continued, switching from the reporter to the picture of a previously unmentioned figure. "Luke Skywalker, Rebel pilot and fighter responsible for the destruction of both battle stations, has declined all requests to make a comment. Thanks to his fearless actions, the destiny of the galaxy lies on a different path."

Right then, Padmé could have sworn she was seeing a ghost.

The picture of that man, of that young man, although still and lifeless, seemed to be looking directly at her. He looked at her with sad, but kind eyes — the same eyes she had seen over two decades before, on Anakin Skywalker's face. Those big sad eyes, full of life, full of stories, that reflected the vastness of the universe in them. Eyes that spoke of pain, that spoke of loss, but that also spoke of an unwillingness to give up. She gasped loudly.

She had seen those eyes before.

"Paz, are you okay?" Taro suddenly asked, taken aback by her sudden display of agitation.

"You're pale, Paz," Safira complemented, "You look like you've seen a ghost."

She had , hadn't she?! No; it couldn't be. Not a ghost, but a completely different person that, when she looked at him, filled a hole in her unmended heart. When she looked at him, she no longer felt hollow.

It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? Could it? No; it couldn't be. He shared his eyes, and he shared his name .

Luke Skywalker.

At night, she had dreamed of him.

A nudge to her leg brought her back to reality, and she looked at the two adults that she considered all but her children with spooked eyes. Then, she regained her composure, and said, "I'm fine ."

And for the first time in twenty three years, Padmé Amidala meant it.

She was fine, and there was only one thing in her mind.

She had to find him.

Her son.

A/N: Amor Matris (latin) is a term found in Joyce's Ulysses, and depending on the syntax of the phrase, it either means a mother's love for the child (subjective genitive), or a child's love for the mother (objective genitive). And I think the ambiguity of this phrase is the epitome of this fic.

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